Yo this is cracked, by Aaron

Wanted:  A truck driver who has no concept of how to keep gravel on a flat bed trailer.

This is a flyer that I’m just going to assume is posted on random street corners in southeast Peru.  I’ll explain later.

I believe where Hans left you off we had just arrived into the hottest city in Brazil; Cuiaba.  Cuiaba has been blessed with the opportunity of hosting World Cup games in 2014.  Unfortunately they are nowhere near ready for this honor, thus the city streets are ripped to shreds as they try to improve the roads and put in a small subway system.  They actually don’t even have a soccer team currently.  Because of these changes to the city, one is left with many detours.  Detours in Brazil consist of a road that abruptly ends, a sign in Portuguese telling you it is impossible to continue, and then it is completely up to the driver to figure out how to get around the mess.  The several times we had to drive through the city we would  find ourselves in back streets resorting to Urim and Thummim, and even water witching sticks to get us back to where we wanted to go.  No, we actually used Sheldon’s handy GPS map on his phone, but it was still pretty tricky.

We were blessed with the opportunity to stay at the YWAM base in Cuiaba because of a close connection we had.  Thanks to being acquaintances with Delton and Fernie Hochtedler, we were able to stay at their house in Sao Paulo.  Though they were gone, we got to know some missionaries that they worked with.  Those missionaries told us about their friends who lived in between Sao Paulo and Cuiaba.  Those missionaries had a daughter(who coincidently went same international school in Quito as Kenton Kauffman) who had a husband who was friends with the leaders of YWAM in Cuiaba.  Yes, the leader of the YWAM was Kevin Bacon.  No, of course not but I bet your were thinking I was playing 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon there.  If you don’t get that joke then you are probably older than 30 and just ask someone younger.

Though they really didn’t know us at all, the leaders at the base welcomed us warmly.  Marcello, a doctor who is connected with YWAM, explained that he was planning to visit the Pantanal on Friday which was  2 days away.  He then suggested that we visit Chapada, a national park to the north of Cuiaba.  This sounded like fun so we just kinda went with his suggestion and a man named Amos accompanied us the Chapada.  Chapada is an area that has large cliffs surrounding a large basin of plants and trees.  There are waterfalls and rivers to explore.  In order to visit the park you have to go with a tour guide so we set up a tour and spent the night in the town.  The next day we met the tour guide and he took us around showing us the cliffs and some good sites.  Then he took us a pool in a river where we could snorkel with a bunch of Piranhas.  No, they were fish that were only about 2 inches long but they did like to nibble on your feet.  To quote Shakespeare, “It was rockin’ awesome!”  We also did a snorkel session (I’m not really sure what the official term for time spent snorkeling is) where we floated/swam down a river.  In fact we liked it so much we did it twice.  To finish off the tour in the afternoon we went to a nice waterfall that was about 150 feet high.  Tired, we headed back to Cuiaba excited for our adventure in the Pantanal.

The Pantanal is a large wetland mostly in Brazil but it also extends into Bolivia and Paraguay.  It is most known for it’s incredible wildlife and the original home of the Rockettes.  Okay, the Rockettes part isn’t true but what is true is that the Rockettes kick 300 hundred times each show and perform as many as 5 shows a day during the Christmas season.  That’s 1,500 leg kicks a day.  Anyway, I had really been excited for the Pantanal and had looked into animal sightseeing tours but they were way out of our budget so we were happy to go with Marcello and another YWAMer named Mimi.  After a two hour drive to the edge of the Panatal we loaded into a small boat and enjoyed a 2 hour ride back in to a small town.  During the dry season it is possible to drive there but since it was the rainy season there was about 3 feet of water in the road/canal leading there.  There we got to experience the typical life for those living in the Pantanal.  As we walked around the dusty streets of the tiny town and around our “hotel” I came to a realization.  Everyone there had a horse, a bunch of chickens, and a bunch of pigs.  Animals roamed freely and the relaxed atmosphere of the town got to us.  One couldn’t help but take a nap in the afternoon, especially since it was about 194 degrees.  That evening we strolled about and saw more birds than I had ever seen.  Every type possible was there: large, small, hunters, song birds, feathered, beaked, fire breathing.  You name it, it was there.  The coolest birds we saw, in my opinion, were the blue macaws.  Their large tail feathers and bright blue bodies are a sight to behold.

The next day we went on a boat trip with a local to see some wildlife.  After quietly walking around what I believe was actually a pasture, we saw some monkeys.  They followed us around some time while we struck out on seeing any other wildlife.  We did see some Tapir tracks but nothing else.  In fact, our evening boat ride yielded similar results.  Nothing.  This was a bit of a disappointment for me but I realized that it was the wrong time of season to see animals and we had not hired an official guide to show us around.  Saturday night we went to an authentic Pantanal party.  I was amazed at how similar it was to a Mennonite gospel songfest.  Like the Mennonites there was alcohol, smoking, a band, and dancing.  It was really cool to see how they get together for fun.  The band would play a song that consisted of about 2 chords and 3 notes for around (to quote Dave Barry “I am not making this up”) 10 minutes.  Kids and adults milled around the party while a central stage was for dancing.  Their dancing reminded me of little bugs just kind of skittering around in a counter clockwise direction.  The next day, Easter morning, we got up and started on our journey back to Cuiaba.  On the way back we were able to see 2 caimans which made the wildlife spotting a little more rewarding.  We got back to Cuiaba and hung out the rest of the day knowing that we were going to have a couple terrible days as we drove straight to Cuzco, Peru.

And that’s what we did for four days.  Get up around 6:30, have a breakfast, drive until close to dark, find a hotel or hostel, eat, sleep, and then get up around 6:30.  We had been warned that the roads were going to be terrible and that it was a major drug route so we should be expected to be stopped often to be searched.  That never happened and I felt perfectly safe the entire trip.  Of course cars would go barreling past one another and we would have to slam on our breaks to avoid head on collisions but we were used to that by now.  It really wasn’t that bad, and only once did we really have to slam the breaks.  We all did agree how funny it is that if we saw people passing like that in the States we would be wondering who the lunatic was but down here we’re all just used to it.

Day four we crossed into Peru.  Pretty much our first real welcome into the country was the afore mentioned semi truck.  Sitting shotgun this is how I witnessed the incident.

-See truck: don’t think much of it
-See truck is full of gravel on a flatbed trailer: think that’s probably not wise
-See truck going way too fast around the curve in the road: think that’s not good at all
-See a bunch of gravel bouncing on the road: think that’s REALLY not good
-Close eyes
-Hear THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
-Open eyes
-See 8 cracks in the windshield: the largest about the size of 2 golf balls in directly in front of my eyes
-Shout that every blessing possible fall from heaven and rest upon the head of that truck driver
-Contemplate trying to go back and get the truck driver
-Just keep going

So that’s what we did the rest of the day.  We drove through the mountains and by the evening started to go up up up up.  Close to dusk we found an awesome town full of authentic Quechua people.  It was small, tucked in the mountains with a 500 year old mud church with a grass roof at the center.  We got a hostel for about $8 a person and ate a large supper for $1.60.  The town was full of kids frolicking everywhere, playing soccer, tag, and just roughhousing.  The locals also told us about some hot springs and we paid a kid to show us where they were.  A man had built a building with 2 pools, one at about 115 degrees and the other at 140.  We enjoyed the “cooler” pool but even just putting our feet in the hot pool would scald us.  The next day we got up and went over for a big breakfast for another whopping $1.60.  Soon, however, Sheldon and Hans we overcome with altitude sickness and had to go back to the hostel.  After a nap they felt much better.  Some locals to us a chew Coca leaves to prevent altude sickness and we drove higher into the mountains.  So we continued on the road and just kept going even further up and up and up.  The poor car wheezed up the mountains as I kept her in 2nd gear.  She couldn’t take anything more than that.  We finally got to the top which was said something about “meters” but I still have yet to believe that those “meters” are an actual measurement.  Actually it was about 15,550 feet high, which is even higher than the Empire State Building.   Then we went down down down into Cuzco which is where my writing responsibilities stop.