Santa Cruz was full of very nice people, including Rachel. AND it was warm. As someone who finds winter highly overrated, I thoroughly enjoyed being very warm/on the brink of hot for a few days.
I got to hang out with the youth group on Monday night. Then Tuesday I went to check out things at the school where Rachel works. Listening to seventh graders do presentations on biographies is a fairly interesting anthropological experience. Ah, the memories of junior high awkwardness. Then I got to "enjoy" the sixth grade music class. If I start to ask, "what?" a lot, it's probably because I can't hear anymore.
Wednesday I went to school again, got to experience eighth grade literature and fifth grade music. Then I went with Rachel to the SAM prayer meeting, and got to meet more great people.
Thursday morning we went over to the hangar to take a tour flight around Santa Cruz. Unfortunately they got an emergency medical call right as we got there and weren't able to. However, because we were supposed to, the plane was all set for the emergency - so that's a blessing for the other person.
Our flight to La Paz in the afternoon was super delayed because it's South America and these things happen. We had to be at the bus station at 8:00pm to catch our ride to Cuzco, so we had Sarah and Scott meet us there with all my stuff (which I was originally going to go back to their house and get, but didn't have time). When we went to the terminal, we discovered we were only 12 hours late for the bus.
That's right, the translation barrier again. Man, it can get discouraging. What we thought was a night bus (and what I thought I had clarified to the ticket lady) was in fact an 8:30am bus. Oops. So we bought new tickets for the next morning and went to Sarah's for the night.
The bus to Peru was...confusing. We stopped before the border so they could check our passports. Most the time we didn't know what was going on because the bus guy only spoke Spanish, and that he spoke super quickly. When we got to the border they told us to get out, walk a ways, then go to the Bolivian border control. Rachel didn't bring her passport so we ran back through the muddy marketplace to the bus and then back to the border control. It was a little stressful.
But not as stressful as it was after we got our passports stamped. No one told us what we were supposed to do, so we just tried to follow the guy in the green jacket that we saw from the bus. We walked across a bridge packed with people, completely unsure of where we were supposed to go. On the other side, Rachel asked a police officer what where the bus was. We managed to understand, "Bolivia, Peru, Bolivia." I think that meant, "Go through the border in Bolivia, then Peru's border, then back to the bus in Bolivia." I think.
So we meandered until we found the Peruvian border control, and the giant line there. Seriously, it took us almost 2 hours to get through that line. And it was mostly outside in the sun. In the middle of the day. Totally unprepared was I, so I ended up with a nice little sunburn. When we were almost through the line, we saw something that was so relieving - the BUS! Yay! Seriously, it was like all the stress just melted away.
We got to Cuzco 3.5 hours late. Before crashing for the night, we swung by the train ticket place and got some new ones (since we messed up our whole schedule earlier). THEN we got to crash.
I realize that there is a lot that has happened since then, and I'll get to that, but I'm going to end here for now. Look forward to pictures and fun things in the next update!
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