Adventure!

I'm sitting in the hallway of a hotel using free internet. I have quite a story to tell, and I don't want it to wait til I get back from Kusi, because it's just too good.

So at 7pm Tuesday night we loaded up the bus with a team of 31 Scots, along with 5 SUP interns. We rushed to leave much earlier than expected because miners and teachers across Peru scheduled a strike to begin on Wednesday morning. The plan was to sneak out of Lima and make our way to Kusi before the strikers blocked the roads with rocks (they do this to cripple supplies of food, etc. to Lima to get the government's attention).

About 6 hours into our 8 hour bus ride, we hit a road block and we're stopped with a bunch of other buses and trucks at 2am. We're relieved that after an hour or so we're allowed to pass through, only to hit another road block an hour later. This next road block is much larger. Giant stones and piles of gravel block the only 2 bridges to Kusi, not to mention the 70 protesting miners.

After the sun came up the police arrived in riot gear to control the protesters. A couple of the "gutsy" Scots walked ahead to see what was going on at the bridge, and reported to us the chaos. There were two factions, possibly the townspeople and the protesting miners, and the police were trying to keep them from conflicting. Apparently an old woman tossed a stone at the police, and chaos broke loose with a hail of stones from the protesters toward the police. The police began using teargas, but were horribly outnumbered and retreated without serious injury. Once the police were gone, there was not a whole lot of excitement.

We spent the entire day stranded in the small town where we had to sneak food from boys selling crackers and candy in the street because the protesters came through town and shut down all the shops. Everyone was exhausted, especially the Scots, who had been traveling for two and a half days already with little sleep.

During mid-afternoon, a good number of travelers decided to hike past the roadblock, seeing as there was no end in sight. I'll also mention that at this point, the roadblock that we passed was reinforced, so we were stuck. Things got a bit worrisome when a group of protesters with hankerchiefs over their faces and sticks came marching up the road and ordered the buses from the highway into a different location in town. They said it was because the new place was safer. I have to say that this was the one time I was a little worried. Driving down the small alleys felt like we were being led into a dead end, but we eventually came into a main square, where a number of buses parked.

Around 5 or 6 pm the folks from SUP in Lima, through some different sources who were passing informatin about the roadblocks, decided on the plan of action. Johnson, a teacher from the school in Kusi was in the area, and will forthwith be known as Magic Johnson. MJ meet us at our bus and is going to lead us in a hike across the roadblock, leaving most of our luggage behind. The drivers stay with the luggage which will be delivered to the hotel when the protests end.

We begin our hike. One of the ladies is ill, and 6 men have to take turns carrying her the entire way. We pass crowds of people at the roadblocks sitting around flaming oil drums. Far off in the hills above us are flaming oil drums surrounded by miners who are waiting through the night to make sure no trucks pass through. From the hills they can safely hurl stones at anyone who tries to go through the barricade. Fortunately for us, the miners have nothing to gain from hurting a group of gringos. They merely want change from the gov't because they make about $3 per day, under horrible conditions, working for foreign mining companies that get rich.

So we hike past roadblock after road block for a couple miles, greeting protesters and townspeople along the way. At one point we stopped and chatted with some very kind people that lived in one of the houses past the bridge. They had a Gloria Yogurt truck and offered us a ride down the road, to where Magic Johnson had gone forward to procure transportation from a contact of his. So we piled into the truck like sardines and drove forward slowly passed the rocks until we were met by Magic with a cattle truck

We thanked the kind people with the Gloria truck, and piled into the cattle truck, less like sardines and more like cattle. We slowly weaved our way passed roadblocks, stopping to convince miners that the truck was empty and that they shouldn't hurl stones at us. This whole time I couldn't stop staring at all the stars above us and the nightime landscape of the Andes.

We arrived at a beautiful hotel in Huaraz in the evening, where we ate a delicious dinner and quickly passed out from an exhausting 2 days for the interns, 3-4 days for the Scots.

Because the roads were still blocked today, we spent the day relaxing in Huaraz and took a tour of the town. Our luggage finally arrived this evening, and we get to change into clean clothes now - Woohoo! The bus drivers stood outside the bus all night to make sure no one stole any luggage from the compartments under the bus. We learned today that all the passengers on one bus were robbed during the evening. No one was seriously injured. The bus was located on the road just near where we were before the masked protesters moved us to a safer location. Interesting that my greatest fear at the time (the protesters) are actually the ones that saved our luggage from being robbed.

The landscape is georgeous here. I have lots of pictures of this whole adventure and the beautiful snowcapped mountainside surrounding Huaraz, but I can't upload them on this PC. Many apologies - you'll see them in a week or so. Apologies that this post is hastily written past my bedtime and not proofread. If anything doesn't make sense here, feel free to fill the gaps with your own interesting fiction.

So we leave for Kusi early in the morning, and I could not be more excited to get to work and meet the boys there. We're all safe and had a wonderful adventure. I didn't realize how I was jinxing myself in my previous post with promises of good stories...

God Bless