Banos Fiesta!

In Banos, they had (and still have) a party. There was a ferris wheel, some carousels, rides, and trampolines. These are the rides.

One of the activities that we did was a jungle gym/obstacle course thing. I did it with my little sister, Lily.

 The playspace had slides,

a ball pit, and more. It was really fun.

 We went on the ferris wheel, or what they call a "wheel of Chicago". It was so cool! It was so high. There was loud music playing from speakers by the wheel. When we went by the speakers, it was super loud! It was cool to see all the mechanism. The view was super cool! Here are some of the pictures we took.

Smiling at the ride 

The amazing view

See all the rides? There were even horses, from what I could see on the wheel.

There was sugar cane all over. There were alleys of shops and shops of sugar cane...

 and sugar cane juice. We bought some sugar cane to try.

 

Here's a funny face on a trash can. No, it's actually a cane juicer, but it does look like a face. One black eye, bug antennae,  and a big round nose.

 

Remember the cane that we got? Not that good.

 

 Besides the sugarcane, we also got treats during the party. Left to right: Lily, with a candy apple in front of her face, me, who wants to start eating this delicious chocolate-covered weird new treat right now, Dad,  you can see his treat beside my head, which were marshmallows covered in chocolate and sprinkles, and last but not least, Renen, who is deciding if this candy-coated apple is really okay to eat, or if it is a copy of Snow White's apple, covered in red poison and sprinkles. Well, it looks good.

Ransom Room

Hello. I am your tour guide for your trip to the Ransom Room/Cuarto del Rescate.(Spanish lesson: In Spanish they say Room of Rescue, even though they didn't rescue Atahualpa.) If you want to see it, look. Seek and you will find. The ransom room was a place that the Spaniards collected ransom. They got the ransom because they were holding the Incan king, Atahualpa (pronounced A-ta-wuall-pah) hostage. That is how they conquered the Incas. The Ransom Room is there because that is where they put their ransom. The Incas had to bring gold to fill the room. It took a long time, since they had to bring the gold by llama. So, while the Incas were bringing the money, the Spaniards slowly took the gold away. In consequence, the room never got filled. So, they burned Atahualpa alive. Hey, my story wasn't THAT boring!

One book that I like (which was a Newberry award winner by the way) is Secret of the Andes. The picture of the cover is shown in the picture by the right of this text. Also, the movie preview is above the text. It mentions the Ransom Room. The book is about a little boy named Cusi (pronounced Ku-ci), about 12 years old, and he's an Inca llama shepherd boy. He figures out a secret - to figure out what it is, read the book. The boy ate parched corn while he walked. Parched corn is Peruvian popcorn, but not inside out. It's like bread on the inside. Many Peruvian restaurants serve cancha (parched corn, shown in the picture below.).We ate the parched corn at the restaurant that we ate at when

we went to the ransom room.

Below is a photo of the cathedral right outside the restaurant that we went to for lunch. It was right by the Ransom Room. 

See? Right by the ransom room. The ransom room is the brown place. The restaurant is the Restaurant El Gordo 2. Gordo means fat, and its funny that the fat guy is right outside the restaurant. See the window above the restaurant? Since we ate on the second floor, we could look out that window. That's where we took the picture of the cathedral from.

This is the window that we took the picture from. Can you see Dad in this picture? I think the lighting is cool. And I didn't edit it much.

Guess what Kai ate on the second floor of the restaurant!

Did you guess chicken, turkey, beef, stake, or goat?

If you did, WRONG! Kai ate cuy, a national dish that is just guinea pig, cooked. Who would like that dish? Who thinks it's sad? Me. Poor guinea pig. They do this all over the place.

"See" you next time!

Walk around!

Every once and a while, my family goes on a walk. This is the story of one of my walks. First, there was a dog with blood red eyes, that was laying in the middle of the path. It was sick, and it was twitching, but it was scary.

This is a ruin we found on our way up. It's cool. 1/3 of our walls around here are like this. I wonder if this was actually a house before, or just a wall in the middle of the wilderness. Why is that there?

Below is a picture of the view. You can see El Bichito from up there, and you can see the railing from El Bichito! Oh, pretty.

Next: the path! On the way back, we took a different "trail" that wasn't really a trail, and it came out to a little path like this. I think this picture is pretty, don't you?

Next: the view! Again. It was pretty, we couldn't resist! The rural view of patchwork fields always makes a good picture. On a sunny day, with a hill, also covered in patchwork...who could get a better picture than that?

I was doing a school assignment, and we had to list the characteristics of 10 organisms in our area. I listed them on this walk. Here are some: tadpoles, cats, dogs, donkeys, cows, pigs, birds, sheep, chickens, and ducks. I got more than ten, though. I probably got the most variety. 

Fiesta!

This is me dancin' around with some stranger guy. In Puyllucana, where I live, they have this parade for their patron saint. We were trying to find the parade, just to take a picture, and they pulled us in to dance! The man I'm dancing with has maraca shells on his ankle cuffs, and the men also have these whip-like things with sticks at the end made with rope, and, well, sticks. They make music like maracas, but the whip things don't make sounds. One of their instruments is like a drum, in fact it is a drum that they beat with their hands. To hold the drum, they do have a string around their necks, but they also have a flute/recorder without any holes, because they're beating the drums with their hands. So, they wouldn't be able to play the flute. They play the flute thing just by blowing. They also have these trumpets that are approximately 6 feet long. They have this horn on the end, like a normal trumpet. They play it sideways, like a flute. It's also like a bugle, because it doesn't have any valves. But they can make more notes than a bugle. If you look closely at the pictures, you might be able to see the instruments. They make a lot of noise.

And then after the day and all the fun we've had, at midnight, spooky spooky midnight...

BOOM! Oh, pretty. They use these towers for fireworks. Peruvian fireworks are much cooler than American fireworks. They set them off at midnight, so I didn't see them. But my mom, dad, and brother saw them, and my brother made a video with his ipad mini. You might want to see it.  They say there a lot of towers like this around our little plaza and it went on for more than an hour.