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Yesterday was by far the most physically challenging day of my life and I´m quite amazed that I´m sitting at a computer today and am not on a helicopter being air lifted back to Canada.

We visited a community yesterday that is the most remote and poverty stricken of all the communities that Cafe Femenino works in. I knew before our departure that it would involve some walking as the community was in an area where trucks could not go. However, it ended up being far more than I ever expected.

To begin, on Saturday my new translator sent me an email to tell me that she could not come with me the following day. I thought that for sure this would mean that I wouldn´t be able to make the trip and was quickly filled with the usual feeling of frustration. However,  I found a back up that was available and so the plan was set back in motion.

I was told that I would be picked up at my hotel at 4.30am. I have now come to realize that Peruvian time runs anywhere from 1-6 hours behind, but being the queen of punctuation, I cannot find it in me to just show up late. I am convinced that the one time I show up late will be the one time a Peruvian shows up on time. So there I was, waiting outside my hotel at 4.30am on the dot. After an hour of waiting and then watching a prostitute sift through a pile of garbage on the curb in front of me, I decided to head back indoors. At 6am Isabel showed up with the driver and my translator, who ended up speaking impecible english and was a really sweet person. I knew it was too good to be true to be making the trip with only four people in the four-seater truck and of course I was right – we crammed in a couple more before hitting the road. We stopped at a restaurant around 7am and memories from the last weekend of eating rice and chicken for breakfast flooded back to me. I was so grateful when Delia, my translator, ordered us eggs and bread in place of the rice and goat dish that was being served to the rest of the table. After we left the restaurant, we took a dirt road that seemed to be a metropolis for bulls, pigs and chickens. The bulls all had the names of their owners burnt into their flesh on their rumps, but I still found it hard to believe that the chaos had any order. Pretty soon the road ended and the land opened up to what I thought were sand dunes. This is when Delia explained that it was actually a river, but would dry up in the winter (it is winter here right now). Eventually we found another road that was nestled on the side of a mountain and was covered in mud and rocks. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable being bounced around in the back seat with three other people and was only too happy when we finally pulled into a town and stopped. At this point, we were to walk since we were going to a community that was not accessible by truck. At first, the land was flat and it felt good to be stretching my legs and taking in the beautiful scenery. We began to make our descent down what I realized was the side of a mountain and this took about an hour. At the bottom, we had to cross a river of rapids by jumping from slippery rock to slippery rock. Thank goodness for water proof shoes. At this point, I was still smiling and thinking things were pretty great. This is when I realized that we would now have to walk UP a mountain. After an hour, we were covered in sweat, gasping for breath and my legs felt like jelly. There were points of the walk where rock climbing harnesses should have been used, as the path was so steep and nearly impossible to navigate. Desperately not wanting to be the weak link of our team, I plugged on but was at least comforted when Delia told me that she was having a hard time pressing forward. At least someone else was feeling my pain. Actually, looking at our group, I knew everyone was feeling my pain, but we had little choice but to keeping going. The great part was that we were constantly being passed by people that lived in the area, including small children. Apparently many of the children had to take this path to school everyday, so they were quite used to it. Anyway, just when I thought I couldn´t take another step, a man with a horse showed up and offered me a ride. Having never ridden a horse before, I was nervous, but couldn´t see an alternative since I was sure my legs would not take me another step. I got on the horse and thankfully the man walked along beside me and steered him in the right direction. After another hour, we finally arrived and were greated by a man who I swore I was 200 years old, offering us giant lemons.

It was quite incredible to see this community existing in such a remote region. There was a futball game going on and it seemed to have attracted most of they people from the region. The members of CECANOR and Cafe Femenino were participating in a general meeting and I was quickly whisked to a chair in front of everyone along with the communities leaders. Not having much of an idea of what was going on, I was happy when we were excused and able to start our interviews. Delia turned out to be a great translator and we got a few good interview completed. However, we were both so exhausted that we quickly lost interest in doing anymore and were only interested in starting our venture back home before it got dark. Before we left, I used the community toilet, which was a hole in the ground, surrounded by cement walls. Oh, and there were two giant hogs inside….

I was not looking forward to the way back since it started to rain and my head was pounding. A group of men came along and offered me their horse, so I jumped on. Except this time, there was no one leading the horse and I had no idea how to control it. My group walked ahead of me until they were out of sight and I had a profound moment of “what the hell am I doing here?” Ahead of me were three women in traditional dress and behind me, four men. All spoke spanish, but in an accent that I had a terrible time understanding. All at once, the women moved out of the way and then men ran in front, yelling goodbye to me and laughing. The women fell behind and there I was – on a horse, on the side of a mountain, completely alone. I had little choice but to put my faith in the horse and hope to god that someone in my group had the good sense to remember my existence. Eventually we came to the river and the men were waiting there, telling me steer the horse across. Apparently they didn´t realize that I had no idea how to control a horse. Eventually one of the men took the reigns and led him across. When we got to the other side, my horse took off and I found myself a good mile ahead of the rest of the group. At this point, I´m hurting all over, as my body has been completely tensed since getting on and I´ve been bounced around and almost thrown off more than once. My head is pounding and I´m starting to feel really, really sick to my stomach. The few times i consider getting off the horse, I find us faced with a cliff that I know would be impossible for me to climb, so I stay on and let the horse do the work. After two hours, the men stop me and tell me to get down. We are at the point where they must take a different path and at this point I don´t know if it´s safer to ask them to wait with me or to be alone. Thankfully, my group is closer than I realize and I continue the remainder of the trip on foot. It quickly gets dark and we are having more and more trouble seeing the path. Eventually we´re lost and are lucky to find a kid who will lead us to the right path for a dollar. The kid, who obviously knows the area and is experienced in climbing cliffs in the dark, seems to take us on the hardest route possible. I find I have no shame in hugging one of the men in our group as he helps me down the side of the mountain in the pitch dark. The dark ends up being a blessing, as my body decides it can´t handle it anymore and I have to stop to be sick more than once. Four hours after leaving the community, we find the town and our truck and I almost cry tears of hapiness. This is until I sit down in the truck and realize that the horse has done a serious number on my bottom. All of us are so tired, but it is impossible to sleep when you are bouncing down a road of rocks. At one point I did doze off and when I opened my eyes I saw that the fog had gotten so thick that the driver and the person sitting shotgun were actually hanging out their windows to try to navigate the road ahead of them. I quickly had flashbacks of our drive there and knew that were driving on a road that hugged the edge of the mountain and throught for sure that we were going to go over the side at any moment. Soon the fogged cleared and we were able to get our speed up to 40km. I could not believe how much pain my body was in and was desperate to get out of that truck. Eventually, we made it back to Chiclayo and I was dropped off at my hotel at 10.30pm. I could not believe everything that had taken place and I was only too eager to take a shower, a gravol and get some sleep.

As you can imagine, I am not moving a whole lot today. It is painful to sit, and everything from my inner thighs to the palms of my hands are brusied. I remember thinking yesterday that I was going to take the first flight home today. That I was going to have to be met at the airport by an ambulance who would treat me for dehydration and feed me morphine by the gallon. While I do feel awful today, I am blown away by the fact that I survived yesterday and now feel like I could handle just about anything this country throws my way.

As of today, I only have 10 more days left here and only more more community to visit. At this point, I feel like I have the resarch I need and am overall happy with what I was able to do. This week doesn´t involve very much, other than recovering from yesterday, which I imagine will take a few days. Delia invited me out to her farm outside Chiclayo city, so I hope to make it out here at some point too. I have some interviews on Friday with the technical team and then we are going to La Florida for two days, which I think only involves driving (no horses or mountain climbing). Other than that, I will be counting down the days until I return….

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