A few wonderful days in Huaraz

Last Thursday, our group from the Institute of Investigation of Nutrition (IIN) traveled out of Lima the city of 8 million and into the mountains to a beautiful, but noisy much smaller city called Huaraz.



 

 

This was the view from the roof of our hotel in Huaraz. This southern girl was SO excited to see snowcapped mountains! Surprisingly Huaraz was almost as noisy as Lima. Peru is just full of barking dogs, honking horns, and car alarms that go off nearly every 5 minutes.

 

The bus ride from Lima to Huaraz was a little under 8 hours but it was an awesome trip. We traveled along the coast for a while.

 

Then the road went a little further inland and the dunes and farmland began to appear.

 

Then the dunes turned to rock.

 

Then the rocks turned to green mountains.

 

We stayed in Huaraz for 2 nights, went further up the mountain to a village for 2 nights, then returned to Huaraz for 1 more night. Here are a few of the highlights from Huaraz:

Our 1st night in Huaraz we ventured into a little Italian restaurant and were treated like queens. Even in the bathroom.

 

Another night in Huaraz we went to a restaurant that had this sticker on the door!

We visited the market where we saw so many potatoes and some other beautiful Andean fruits and vegetables.

We also saw these fellas. He even smiled for the camera!

 

You know traffic is bad when the crosswalk lights show the little man running! This picture was taken in Huaraz, but these can also be found in Lima where the traffic (and driving) is TERRIBLE and life threatening.

 

We traveled up the mountain to a town called Yungay. In the 70's an earthquake struck that destroyed this town and others nearby killing an estimated 100,000 and injuring 200,000. A beautiful cemetery was constructed at the site.

The view from the top of the cemetery.

We found this guy near the cemetery! I finally got a picture with an Alpaca!

From Yungay we travelled even further up the mountain around crazy windy roads with breath taking views (literally...we reached almost 4,000 meters above sea level). This is what we found at the end of the road...

A glacial lake!

As we hiked around this incredibly beautiful lake in my mind I kept singing the Vacation Bible School song, "My God is so big, so strong and so mighty there's nothing my God cannot do. The mountains are His, the valleys are his, the stars in the sky are his too." I imagine the water in the rivers and lakes in Heaven will be even more magnificently blue than this.

And of course, I had to climb this really cool tree.

 

 

We visited a pottery shop in a nearby village and got to watch this guy make a vase. He spun the pottery wheel with his foot while he molded the vase. It was fascinating!

 

 I really enjoyed the few days in Huaraz. It was nice to have a little bit of tourist time and also get to relax.  As I mentioned earlier, from Huaraz we travelled further up the mountain to a tiny village. My experience in this village was so incredible that I have decided to make a separate blog post for those 2 days. Look for it to come soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal for Monday and Tuesday (For those of you reading, this is probably really boring. Scroll to the bottom for the more interesting pictures!)

Monday, June 10

Today we completed our data collection and began analyzing our results! I spent the morning playing with babies and the afternoon reviewing our data and discussing the results. The hypothesis for our study was that mothers of overweight and obese children put more sugar into their child’s manzanilla (type of tea served hot or cold to Peruvians of all ages) than mothers of normal or underweight children. (I should note that we did not choose this study nor did we develop our own hypothesis. The point of the study was really for us to learn the research process by applying it. We also got a lot of practice taking anthropometric measurements of babies and infants!) After weighing and measuring around 50 children 6mo-3yrs of age our hypothesis was not confirmed. In fact, none of the children were obese and only one was overweight. I expected this after the first few children on Friday. Peru is awesome at promoting breastfeeding and the majority of Peruvian mothers breastfeed. Since these children were under 3, I suspect most of them were still breastfeed, especially given the economic status of the people of Manchay. While manzanilla and sugar are extremely cheap, breast milk is free and will keep the baby full! One interesting result of the survey given to each mother was the mother’s answers to a question asking if they had heard any negatives or positives regarding adding sugar to their child’s drink. The majority of the mothers, greater than 70%, answered yes. What was really interesting was exactly what they heard. Some of the interesting answers: Too much sugar in the baby's drink will give him worms in his poop. When my baby has a snotty nose I give him more sugar in his drink to reduce the mucous.

My fabulous research team! Melanie, Katya, Me, Milagros, and Jolyn!

 

This is what we use to measure the height of the moms and infants.

Device used measure the length of the babies.

 

After class most of the girls decided it was time to do some laundry. We took a little walk down the street to the lavanderia where I dropped off 2.5 kilograms of dirty clothes to be washed. That’s actually not a lot at all….I have been wearing and re-wearing clothes all week! We go Wednesday to pick up our clean clothes. We are all really excited for clean clothes!

The rest of the evening was not very eventful. A few of us decided to run to the Metro (grocery store) to buy more peanut butter and walk back. We bought all of the peanut butter in the store. Seriously, no more. Hope they restock before next Monday! Dana and I went through a jar of peanut butter in one week. Easy to do when you have peanut butter for two meals a day! We try to limit our eating out to once per day (usually at the Institute) to save soles ($$) so this leaves peanut butter and banana for at least one meal a day, often two. 

On our walk back I had three jars of peanut butter in a bag in one hand and bag with a 2 liter water bottle in the other, so I did bicep curls and arm raises the whole way back. I don’t know why we got more stares and crazy looks than usual tonight?? I’m already kind of getting sore.

Tuesday, June 11

This morning we walked to the institute for a brief lecture on bias in research. According to Dr. Mary, bias in research creates “rubbish results.” After the quick lecture, we headed to Manchay for a door-to-door survey. This was a really interesting experience! I had seen many of the mothers over the past few days at the community and HELP center but today I went to their homes. To my surprise, the families at every door we knocked on were more than willing to participate in the survey. This would not have been the case in the States. It is very hard for me to imagine everyday life for the people living in Manchay. Even being immersed in their community I still cannot imagine being there every day. It just seems so temporary.  Their houses were built so quickly they appear to only be temporary and many have what we in the States would consider to be part time jobs or jobs that we would only hold while preparing for a career. (This is not all people in Manchay…there are many barbers, mechanics, “convenient” store workers and some of the people commute to the city.) There is also a large percentage of women my age that have children and had to drop out of school and now stay at home. Katya, one of the Peruvians, told me that many Peruvians never actually get married. The government recognizes a couple as married after living together for two years, but many women remain single. There are a lot of single moms.

The people here LOVE their dogs! Many of the dogs, even in the poorest areas, wear sweaters and hats. There are dog saloons and pet boutiques on every street.

 

 

Here is a little fellow we met in Manchay. I call him Pete the Puppy Pirate!

Guiney Pig. It's what's for dinner. These little fellows will soon be fried up and added to the menu at a restaurant nearby.

There are giant cacti everywhere!

 

Day 8 and 9: Weekend adventures!

 

This weekend has been great! Yesterday was exhausting but SO much fun! My awesome roommate Kelsey found a tour for us to take to Ica, which is several miles south of Lima. All 15 of us decided to go and the tour company cut the price in half! The company was run by this precious little Peruvian man named Ervin (or Erwin?). He was our Papa for the day. We were picked up from our hotel at 7am and set out for a 4 hour ride to Ica. Thankfully this bus was private, just the 15 of us, and much more comfortable than the city bus we took to the water park.

 

Along the drive from Lima to Ica we saw just about every terrain there is. On one side of the road we would see the Pacific Ocean and on the other side there would be massive sand dunes jutting out of the earth. A mile later there might be miles of flat green farm land with crops like pumpkin, asparagus, artichoke, and paprika on one side while the other would be sandy, dusty desert again. Then we would see the coast again and million dollar beach homes and across the street would be huts made of straw. It was a fascinating ride.

The Pacific Ocean. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of the cliffs and blue color of the water but it was really foggy and I was taking the picture from the other side of the bus.

 

A shanty town in the middle of the desert.

 

I think that is asparagus growing behind the shepherd herding his flock.

 

A few of us sitting in the back of the bus were entertained by this bread roll get closer and closer to falling on our tour guide's head with every bump. And it finally did! He said, “De bump made de bread go boop bump.” Haha it gave us all a good laugh. He was so sweet!

Along the way we stopped in Chincha Alto, a very nice town in the middle of the desert, to get breakfast. I had an empanada de pollo (chicken). For those of you from Starkville, the bread tasted just like Stromboli’s pizza crust!

 

A little before noon we arrived at a small Vineyard outside of Ica. We had a tour of the vineyard that grows the grapes to make Peru’s national drink Pisco, which is a grape brandy. Our tour included tasting pecans, fresh jam, and of course, Pisco and other wines! The Pisco is very strong not tasty AT ALL. One “wine” we tasted (it was more like strong liquor) was called "Perfecto Amor". Our tour guide said the common name was “Baby Maker”. Ahh, good thing no one had more than one sip!!

From the vineyard we hopped back on the bus and headed to the Huacachina Oasis for a delicious lunch and then, highlight of the day: SANDBOARDING AND DUNE BUGGY RIDES!!! The view was beautiful and the sandboarding was so much fun. The buggy rides were surprisingly the most fun! It was like a roller coaster. Our guide laughed the entire time because we screamed so much.

 

Boarding on the belly! See that little red speck at the bottom...that's where I ended up! Had to scream with my mouth closed to keep the sand out!

The oasis

 

Sadly, we had to leave the dunes and head back to Lima. I sat in a window seat hoping to get a picture of the sun setting over the ocean but unfortunately we didn’t make it in time.

 

I did get this picture of the sun setting over the desert.

On the way back we stopped in Chincha Alto again and grabbed dessert! I had a fabulous chocolate tart! We made it back sometime before 10, took much needed showers to get the sand out of our nooks and cranies, and hit the sack. We all slept very well!

This morning I woke up and had a very strong cup of coffee from the hotel and spent some much needed time in the Word. I am so thankful for this experience. This trip has truly been a blessing.
 

Breakfast grenada!

After my breakfast of quinoa and grenada, a yummy fruit that looks like an orange grenade from the outside and frog eggs on the inside, my roommates and I headed to the Historic District in Central Lima for shopping in some Ica markets and site seeing! It was a very relaxing trip to town. Very little traffic on Sundays. We had a taxi drop us off in front of the Church of San Francisco and then we walked all around the area. We thought this would be a touristy area, but we only saw a handful of tourist. In fact, this area must be a hot spot for Peruvians on Sundays because it was packed!!

At one point we were walking through a crowd that reminded me of walking in Time Square in New York, except that we were the tallest people and our light colored skin/hair made everyone we walked by do a double take. Dana's blond head attached to her 5'9" body sticks out just a little. 

A glimpse of the Historic District. My pictures do not capture the beauty of the buildings or the view. I forgot to put the SD card back in my camera so I had to take pictures with my phone.

The Church of San Francisco. All of those black dots on the building are these nasty little pigeons that really enjoyed swarming my head.

 

Outside.......................................Inside

 

Plaza de Armas

 

Just doing a little vacuuming. If you look closely you can see a little red train packed with Peruvians. We didn't take the train around the district because we thought it was too touristy. Apparently the locals didn't think so!

 

We had a great time shopping and I got a few souvenirs to bring back as gifts! Thomas, get excited!!! I may have bought you a llama (well something with a llama on it).

 

I love the mannequins here.

 

We also had a wonderful lunch. I had vegetables!!!!!!!!! Vegetables (that are safe to eat) are hard to come by here so when we saw grilled vegetables on the menu of course we, the nutrition students, were SOO excited!! And they were delicious. My actual meal was pretty good too. Beef, beans, and rice. Always rice. I think this was my first meal without potatoes!

 

 

 

Now I am back at the hotel visiting with my roommates and getting ready for school tomorrow. Day 2 of data collection in Manchay. More weighing and measuring babies!!