Swim Team in Banos

In Banos del Inca, they have a swim team. I entered. Can you imagine -- swim team in a pool that's heated by a volcano! Since I did swim team at home, I wanted to keep it up while I could. Swim team's on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday but I go Tues. and Thurs.

This is my swim team on a Thursday night when they empty the pool to clean it. By now all the little ones have gone.

These are my friends, the twins. Their dad's the coach.  I have no idea what their names are. Something like Nadielle? You can not keep track of names when they belong to twins and you can't hear them because the coach is going like SO-AND-SO! SWIM LIKE THIS!

After swim team I always get a papita from this person in our church. Papa means potato, and if you add "it" at the end of a word it means a little  _______. Papitas are baked potatoes mashed and made into a potato shape again. They're stuffed, and they're just a potato messed with.  You can put sauces (ketchup, mustard, ocopa [green sauce, oh-coh-pah]) or salad on them. Mmmm!

 This is in the plaza we walk through to get between house and swim team. It's a fountain (empty right now), which they have in every city's plaza. That's Atahualpa on top. It was fun to climb on the statue!

A few weeks ago now, (I am so behind!) there was a national swim meet at our pool! People came from Chiclayo, Trujillo, Lima, etc. and maybe Cuzco. Don't remember.... Our team was called SAETA. We had really uncomfortable shirts, but keep it for my T-shirt quilt! The girls' SAETA team won 1st place, and the boys' team got 2nd! This is our combined team.

 ME!!! I bought a cap, used it for a day, and got too claustrophobic. My coach gave me this stretchier cloth one that even looks better! My goggles leaked, so I used my sister's which are a bit better. And they match my suit better!

 There were these girls from Chiclayo that like other people tried to talk to me in English (still think that should be spelled Ingles like in Spanish!). They were saying "My name is" over and over again. I liked them. They were 9-12, now I'm 9, aged nicely. I told them "My name is" means "Mi nombre es" but "Cómo te llamas" was "What is your name" (more precisely translated "what do you call yourself"). They were like "Oh!" and were impressed that I knew a bit of Spanish. 

 This is the advertisement/picture they had up of the swim meet. Kai (biggest bro) got 3 gold medals and 1 silver! Renen got a silver (next bro down) but somehow I didn't get one. I was a bit jealous, I have to admit. The bottom right corner symbol is the SAETA symbol we have on our shirts. I was still not as worn out as when I finished my first I.M. (CO swim team)!

Swim team was sometimes not that fun, but, I guess you can find pros and cons to everything. 

Trujillo: Chan Chan

Chan Chan is a palace of the Moche people.They had a different section per king, so during 100 years I think they would use about 100,000,000,000 pounds of mud. What kind of poems are these?*

"They scathed the land, 

so now it's just sand!"

"Wikipedia

says that Chan Chan was not dry,

But it must've lied!"

Chan Chan. This was one of the "courtrooms." There were two paths from this room to the same place. One was smaller. My mom thinks that the bigger one was for the king, since he needed to be carried, so he's big. But I remember that he took the smaller one because he was private.

It was easy to get lost. But our private guide told us that if we get lost, follow the birds. They are always at the bottom of the walls, and they point one way --  the way out.

All the walls were made out of these diamond windows. Some had holes in the part that wasn't lines. Some were filled in. See that part of the wall that looks a bit red? These used to be painted.

Sometimes there were fish. You followed them too. See the birds at the bottom? They contradict, but the birds have better eyes. The lines stood as the tides, which they honored.

These squirrels also say "follow the way." See the number of tail "feathers"? Three or 4, right? They honored those numbers.

See those circles? Those are full moons. They honor the "luna" (moon) too! On the far wall, you see the moons between the waves? The guide asked us what that meant. Kai suggested that the moon guides the tides, but then I said "The reflection?" I was right! It was so easy it was hard!

We had to walk on a "sidewalk" which was more like a precipice. It was scary. I hugged the wall. It was scarier than that time in Lima. I told of it in my post Lov'n Lima.

Afterwards, we went to the Chan Chan museum. They carried their king. The king wore a cantaloupe-slice-like-thing to cover his mouth. It's because everyone had rotten teeth (as many still do) but the king was supposed to be nice and "perfect." But he had rotten teeth, too, so they put that gold thing over his mouth so no one could tell. Dad thought it was so  he could make any expression he wanted,  like disgust, at his subjects and people couldn't tell. Renen doesn't like pictures.

During our stay at Huaca del Sol y la Luna, (temple of sun and the moon) we learned about about the Viringo, (sounds like Gringo, but they're black) the only native Peruvian dog. It's hairless. Most have this hair on the back of their heads, so some people think they're Chinese, but they're not. Because these dogs are special, they let them into buildings -- even temples!

* Answers: 1st poem: couplet 2nd poem: haiku

Llacanora

Llacanora is a waterfall place. I thought it was one of my best 3 trips! I loved it! Here it all is.

On almost all of our trip, weird teens always say, "Oh, Mira! Gringos! Un foto, por favor." Translation: "Oh, look! Gringos! (that's what they call whites) A picture, please." I really don't like it.

This is the stream that the waterfalls produce. We followed it the whole way.

Llacanora was like U.S.A. whole way though. Mountain, rural, wetlands, but mostly mountains. I MISS HOME! :( 

Family picture, me picture. Zoom out, zoom in. This is the first waterfall. I loved it.

We found this gigantic rock. I thought it was a great view and a great rock, so I decided to take a picture.

This is the second waterfall. It is is a lot free-er than the other one. I loved feeling the mist. 

Near the second waterfall lake, there was this island of rocks. Kai, Lily, and I went to the island and practiced skipping rocks.

After the second waterfall, we went up this barren hill to see where the waterfall started. I have a paragraph that I wrote about it for school. Here it is.

Llacanora Mountain    

     Llacanora (ya-ca-nor-ah) is a beautiful place in Peru. There are waterfalls there. Once, my family went there. After we got to the second waterfall, we wanted to see where the source of it was. We went up a trail. It was very muddy, and on the sloped trail, there were stone stairs instead of a dirt trail like you would expect. We climbed up, and then we went onto a hill with no trails. The hill looked like it had been in a fire, but since it was not far from the stream the waterfall created, it must've not been possible. The many trees were barren, and leaves were darkly colored. The other side of the stream, though, was green with moss and grass. We walked up the hill, and there was a little trail bordered with rocks. It was for water to go down, so it could join with the stream. We continued up that path. It was a long path, and sometimes we had to jump over trickles of water or a rock that was in the way. The path was zig-zaggy and long. The trail ended at a very steep and very high cliff. Oh, and the view from the cliff was beautiful! I felt like I was part of the mountain, and it was giving me it's favorite thing. Off to the right, there was the stream we had been following for quite a long time, bordered with trees, and way down below us was a channel. Then, another cliff started, which was steep and high, like ours. On the other cliff, though, were a few caves covered in moss and grass. To the left, the channel continued, giving way for a wonderful view of a thick stream traveling into the beautiful blue mountains. We sure didn't find the starting point of that waterfall, but I think we found something worthwhile!

Here is the cliff we found. I LOVED it!

I LOVED IT! 

After the cliff, Kai found a water pipe that had a hole in it. There were lots of bags tied next to the hole. It looked like people had tried to fix it before. We took a bag and tied it on anyway. It took a few minutes, but he got it.

On our way to get a combi home, we saw this house. That mototaxi (that's what we call those 3-wheel cars) is someone's who helps with El Bichito! Why was it there? And that spiral staircase didn't have boards in it.

This is the restaurant we went to. We tried all the dishes. I liked the beef jerky stuff. (I rarely like meat at all! That was surprising to my brothers.)

2nd waterfall on our way down. I mastered climbing down that rock. 

On our way down, we ran into the youth in our church. Let's see... who are they?

Come here! You need to see it for yourselves!

Santa Apolonia

Santa Apolonia is a little Catholic chapel on the top of a big hill in the middle of Cajamarca that is for some reason famous. It was one of the least interesting places I went to. If it seems interesting, it was. Just all the other ones were more interesting. My mom is trying to make movies about all of our trips. She puts everything in it. Here is the one for this trip. But I am also going to share some other things.

On our way down the way cool steps from the church,
 there were some statues with plaques by them.
They said: "This person has been here." This
 one was like Kuntur Wasi, the guy who got Atahualpa
in trouble by saying that he did something bad.
 He probably did. Did I do a good imitation?

The most interesting part was when it rained. It started raining, then drizzling, then it started raining harder. We decided to find cover. It was raining harder now. We went down some steps and then we saw a rock tunnel-one of those earth-made ones. A lot of people were gathering over there. But it was a big enough tunnel to fit 200 people and 2 cars! (Or so I estimate.) Right then, a car came though. We all huddled in and ate our "lunch" Mom packed for us. Carrots and apples. Mmmmmmmmmm!

After... I don't know, 5 minutes, we sent Kai -  who had a raincoat - out to find the dryest path. Five more minutes after, Kai came back, and it was only drizzling again. We went on a path, and it was wet for the rest of the trip. It started raining a bit after that, but we were under a little jut-out roof that the church had, since we couldn't go in. It was kind of scary when I thought we were going to be under that tunnel for the rest of the day.

But we got out and had a good day! You should, too!