There And Back Again Without Orcs

Julie and Sthefania

Lunch with the Agueros

Sister Frame making a difference

The district presidency

Mechanic doing his best

Hotel view Quillabamba

Hotel view Quillabamba

Hotel view Quillabamba

Andean Crest

Rainy Cusco

Gotcha

The Boss

Protestor of... pretty much everything

La Faena

Huge  sacks of hooves and heads

Fresh Brains

Cusco's Finest

Street  Butcher

Soggy dog and soggier garbage

Watch Chicken

Early Monday morning we flew to Lima to finish the paperwork for Rich’s passport and to do the rest of his dental work. We even had our teeth cleaned what a treat! We’re in good shape. Lima was actually quite pleasant and not too hot. 

The Johnson’s, another couple serving here in Cusco were also in Lima to get their residence visas. We arranged to pick them up and take them to our favorite Italian restaurant. The route, by car should normally take about 20 minutes. Traffic in Lima is horrendous! It took us nearly 2 hours to make the trip! We kept calling the restaurant and the Johnson’s to tell them that we were still coming. What a nightmare! However, dinner at “La Tratoria de Mambrino” was totally worth the headache and stress.

On Tuesday, we met Socorro and Sthefania Agüero for lunch. They are our good friends who lived downstairs from us in our old apartment. Sadly Fernando and Marisol couldn’t join us but we will see them in June when we are back in Lima. We had a wonderful lunch and visit with these dear friends. We miss them!

We had dinner with our supervisor David Tirado and his wife. He is a stake president and she is a counselor by profession. We had a wonderful evening with them and enjoyed hearing about their experiences with Family Records Preservation. 

We flew back to Cusco on Wednesday and we both felt pretty icky with the altitude so we didn’t go in to work in the afternoon. We took it easy and slept. We were pretty wiped out.

We worked really hard on Thursday and Friday and Rich taught the Pearl of Great Price class for Institute Thursday night.

Saturday morning we left for a district conference in Quillabamba. We traveled with the President and Sister Harbertson and the zone leaders for Quillabamba. It has been raining a lot here; they say it is because of El Nino. The drive to Quillabamba is about a five to six hour drive up over the Andes ridge before everything drops down into the Amazon Basin. It’s a spectacular drive, especially with the water pouring off the mountains because of the rain. The road is made up of severe switchbacks with full-on hairpin turns for the majority of the time and one of the poor elders got pretty violently sick. It was an extra-long trip for him.

The road passes through Ollantaytambo and continues up to the pass of Abra Malaga, which lies at nearly 14,500 feet above sea level and at the foot of the massive glacier of a peak called Veronica, 20,000 feet above sea level. This is essentially the Continental Divide of South America, from here it drops nearly 20,000 feet down to the Amazon jungle basin, and the views are incredible! This section of highway has been described by many as one of the most beautiful in South America. It takes your breath away, not just because of the incredible scenery, but the road isn’t very wide and doesn’t have a lot of guard rails etc. and it is a sheer drop off the side. 

It is freezing on the pass and it is fascinating to see the vegetation change as you drop down into the jungle. We had great meetings with the members and after the evening session of conference we got in the car to go to our hotel and it wouldn’t start. There was a member who is a mechanic still at church and he and several other men fiddled and tried to figure out what the problem was. We finally, left the car and a member took us to our hotel.

Sunday morning we took moto-taxis to the church and had a wonderful conference session with the members. Naturally it is hot in Quillabamba since it’s in the jungle, but the church was extra hot even with all the fans going. It was even more extra hot on the stand because church maintenance put in a screen that forced them to take out the ventilation fans. Go figure!

President Harbertson and Rich had interviews after so Sister Harbertson and I waited with the mechanic who was waiting for his friend to show up who had some diagnostic equipment for the car. He was to be there in 20 minutes, ha! About 1 ½ hours later he came, and the men all tried to figure out what was going on with the car. They finally determined that it was the fuel pump so we left the car and keys with the members there and found a taxi car to drive us back to Cusco. 

As we climbed back out of the jungle the setting sun and the clouds and fog on the mountains were truly incredible. We just kept oohing and awing. We arrived in Cusco about 9pm and Rich had to set apart a missionary from Abancay who is going to serve in Xalapa, Mexico, what an adventure for her. Fortunately the sister missionaries upstairs had picked her up from the bus station and had her there, so when we arrived Rich didn’t have to go clear across town to the mission office. We are so grateful for small blessings and the privilege to serve and help here in Cusco.  Pretty well exhausted, we sank into bed and sawed logs.