Travels with Sherpa Tom: Sunday April 6 - Palabra de Vida and Rio Cañote

I got up around first light and took a walk around the camp – it is obvious that Palabra de Vida had put a lot of time and money building this camp. It is a true oasis in the middle of the desert. There are multiple buildings, sports fields, kitchen, gymnasium, infirmary, hospital, bathrooms, shower facilities, etc. – a small city which is much nicer than anything in the town of La Florida where we will build. I feel guilty staying in such nice accommodations when the local residents have so much less.

We men stayed in the ground floor rooms in this building

At breakfast, we got to meet the rest of the crew who had arrived at 4:00 a.m. Pam is a nursing director in Fort Wayne, IN. Debbie and Steve are from Oakland, CA – he is a retired school counselor and she is a psychotherapist still working part time. Mike is a retired school principal. Jean is a retired school teacher. Marcia works for Home Depot. Mark is an engineer for Cummins Power Generation.

After a late breakfast and leisurely morning, we met around 10:00 and headed into to town. Our first stop was to visit the Fuller Center office where we were greeted by some of the homeowners and children. One thing I noticed was an absence of men. I was told that there is a large number of single mothers in Peru and many of the homeowners we will meet and help are single mothers. This includes Monica, who was there with her son Kevin. They and Grace came with us for our adventures of the day.

We drove through La Florida – while there are streetlights, the streets are not paved. There is water coming into the town by canal, but there is no water treatment plant as we would see in the USA. Thus, the water here and at the camp is not safe for drinking – bottled water is what we will consume for our time here.

We headed out through the hills to the Rio Canete valley. Along the way, we stopped to see some remains of the Inka Trails built some 500-600 years ago.

Our next stop was the Pisco Zapata factory. We saw how the grapes were crushed, the juice was boiled and fermented, distilled and then aged in kegs. The sugar content of the grapes is too high to make good wine, so they are used to make pisco – it is similar to brandy. We sampled the pisco at the various stages of production and then we bought some of the pisco – I got a sampler of four types of pisco. Our tour was conducted by the 82 year old owner, Señor Zapata.

Crushing the grapes and removing the stems

Quality control checking the pisco at the first stage

The heat source the distillation

The store where we bought some pisco

This is where the pisco is aged at least two years

Then we went to the town of Luanhuena (check spelling) and to the sports emporium run by the Zapata family. For 20 PS each, eleven of us choose to go white water rafting on the Rio Canete, five in the first raft and six in the second. I got to ride at the front of the second raft. They had a video camera mounted at the front to tape the entire ride, and to also take some photos of each of us.

Kevin, Monica and Grace at the office for the rafting and ATV rides

One of several businesses that do the whitewater rafting

I bought the DVD from the river rafting. Here are some of the photos.

Three people went for rides on four wheeled ATVs. The rest of the crew spent time in town. We all got back together for lunch that had been provided by the camp.

We then visited the swinging bridge – a suspension bridge that is for pedestrian traffic only. There were many tourists there and many vendors on both sides of the river.

Monica bought some local fruit – I think it is called bacqui. It looks like a foot long green bean and has large black seeds wrapped with a white cotton like edible stuff – you eat the white stuff, and spit out the black seed. It was a tasty treat.

Our last stop was Incahuasi ruins – Inca House. This is another huge site that is an active excavation site and much work is going on. I am amazed that this was a city of many thousands of people.