Driving in Peru and First Day in Curahuasi

Early Sunday morning, luckily due to our early checkout time of 8am (quite common for Cusco due to the early departures for Machu Picchu travelers), we were greeted at breakfast in our hotel by Augusto, our friends' father who came to pick us up and take us to Curahuasi. Augusto and his wife, Hilda, are fantastic people and a delight to spend our time with here in Peru. In fact, after leaving Cusco and twisting through the curvy roads through the Andes, the topic of my hobby in racing and enjoyment of driving cars came up, and August offered to let me take the wheel. I couldn't turn down such a kind offer, especially with those beautiful curves ahead.

After a short while of driving some fun mountain-side curves, we heard a loud hissing sound and I quickly pulled to the side of the road. A patch in the front tire had blown and we had a flat. We unloaded the trunk full of our gear, and pulled out the spare only to find that it had no air, and we had no air compressor. After watching a few cars ignore our request for help, Augusto headed down the hill to try to find help, while I watched for cars to try to wave down to pick up Augusto futher down the road, and Haley and Hilda waited with the car. However, not one car passed for 30 minutes. Luckily, Augusto found a house just around the bend and they helped get the spare in order. Augusto and I replaced the flat with the spare, and we were off again, Augusto assuring me that it wasn't my fault for the flat and that I should continue driving.

After a few short layovers, including a stop in Limatambo to fix the flat tire, and a stop on the highway where everyone got out of their cars to stretch their legs due to some road work, and two visits to see Agusto and Hilda's sons, and then some homemade mango ice cream at a shop just outside of town, we arrived in the beautiful mountain-top village of Curahuasi. Augusto and Hilda took us to eat at a restaurant where we had a delicious meal of roasted pig, trout and guinea pig. Then we grabbed our swimsuits and headed to some hot springs down near the river below and soaked away some of our travel stress.

The next day, Monday, we went to the all girls high school where Augusto works and talked with the director and a couple of English teachers to discuss how we could help around the school. We then headed over to the convent to meet Father Walter, Sister Pila and Anana to discuss how we could work with the church to help the girls that stay there and take classes in the evening.

Upon returning to the girls high school later that morning, we had a meeting with one English teacher, Carlos, who upon informing us of the topics to be taught that day in his class, also informed us that we would be teaching his English class that same day – alone – and just one hour from that time! This was so that he could help work on another project for the school. So one hour later, with what little preparation we could make, we taught our very first English class. Also, many of the girls in the class do not even have Spanish as their first language – they speak the indigenous language Qechua in their homes. And we were supposed to teach for 1 hour and 20 minutes. You can guess that we were quite nervous.

But in the end, we had a wonderful time, and we think we might have helped the girls with a little better understanding of some basics, including the verb “to be” and possessive adjectives (my, your, his...). At the end of class, when it was time for the girls to go home, we were actually wishing we still had 15 more minutes to teach just a little more.

That night, we watched Augusto and several other teachers from the school play in a local teachers' volleyball tournament, where Augusto's team prevailed. Hilda prepared us a delicious dinner later that evening, and we slept very comfortably in our apartment in the family home.