3rd Christmas, 3rd New Year's... on to 2016

Ollantaytambo

Ran into the Stones from Tintaya in the Cusco airport

Christmas Eve dinner with the Agüeros

Only in Peru, Uno, completely in Japanese

Sunny, warm Lima

Christmas in San Isidro

Lima street cat

Yes, we did.

Look who we ran into on Christmas day in Larcomar, Victor Pariona and his wife from Tintaya

The Lima Temple

Out for lunch with the Agüeros after the temple in Lima

The Tirados Home. David our Family Search Supervisor

Indexers in the National Archives

Julie with David, our Family Search Supervisor

Callao's recycled tire Christmas tree

Rich with David

Gamarra Lima, on a given pre Christmas day this place boasts 500,000 shoppers! It has 20,000 shops over about 20 blocks!

Hygienic meat transport

One last Uchu's with the Johnsons

Recovering Spike

Our maintenance/watchmen

New Year's yellow balloons

Recovering dog

Recovering dog

Recovering cat (seems less than friendly)

Recovering dog

Recovering dog

Good luck pica pica

Señor de Q'olloriti procession

Revelers

Itsy-bitsy New Year's Day carnival

Chicken bits

Uncooked hind quarters

Incense vendor 

Popping in to get their baby Jesus' blessed

Recovering dog

Electric blue

Recovering cat

Alertish llama

Sneaking a peak

Recovering dog 

Recovering dog

Sounding her barbaric yawp, as-it-were or maybe just yawning

Satisfied elders

Nearly done 

Our office staff

We spent Monday, Dec. 21 in Ollantaytambo with the Johnson’s. We had beautiful weather, and enjoyed our last outing with them. The ruins are spectacular and we shake our heads in wonder trying to figure out how the Inca built these places. The Johnson’s are back in Farmington, Utah now and we miss them and the Rhoades! We are the only Senior couple in the mission again, until the Poulsen’s arrive on Tuesday. 

We worked hard on Tuesday and then went on vacation. Wednesday, we took the Johnson’s to the Santurantikuy ("saints for sale”) fair that is held on December 24 every year in the Plaza de Armas of Cuzco, Peru. This year however, the market took place on Dec 23 and 24, the first time for a two day festival since the time of the Spanish viceroyalty. Today it is one of the largest arts and crafts fairs in all of Peru. We had a lot of fun walking through the myriad stalls and then had a yummy lunch together.

We flew to Lima on Christmas Eve and spent the evening with our dear friends the Agüeros. In most of Latin America, Christmas Eve is the “big night,” usually with a late turkey dinner.  We enjoyed fabulous turkey, rice and salads with them and loved visiting and catching up. We arrived back at the hotel around midnight.

On Christmas Day we walked to Larcomar, an outdoor mall on the ocean cliffs and watched the new Star Wars movie. We then enjoyed lunch at “La Trattoria” overlooking the ocean. Our Christmas was balmy and warm and we had a lovely day. Of course we missed our children and grandchildren but we were happy knowing they were all together, minus Maria who was in Indiana with her husband Isaac and his family. 

We met Brother and Sister Agüero Saturday morning to attend the Lima Temple. When we got out of the taxi, we saw two big travel busses parked and we knew we were in trouble. Sure enough, there was a three hour wait to attend a session so we did sealings instead. Being in the temple is always a wonderful experience no matter what, and we had a wonderful morning.

Sthefania and Marisol Agüero met us at the temple with Brother Agüeros parents and we walked to a seafood restaurant for lunch. We had lots of fun together, they are truly dear friends and we will miss them when we leave.

We were lounging around Sunday morning when our supervisor for Family Search, David Tirado, called at 8:45 am to make sure we knew our way to the church. Rich had said that church was at 12:00pm, which we thought was odd. Church actually started at 9:00am and we were to have lunch with David’s family at 12:00pm, after the meetings.  Needless to say, we were ready in record time and made it for most of the sacrament meeting talks and the other classes. 

Lunch with the Tirado’s was tasty as always. Sister Tirado makes delicious “Papa a la Huancaina” It’s a Peruvian version of potato salad, with boiled, sliced potatoes and eggs, covered with a sauce of fresh cheese, yellow chilis, oil, peanuts, milk, garlic and lime juice. It’s pretty decadent. She also prepared a delicious pasta dish called “Tallarines verdes,” (green noodles, ha!) A pesto sauce of  fresh spinach, basil, garlic, olive oil and milk. Julie knows all this because she helped prepare it.

The Tirado’s are a wonderful family, he is the president of the Limatambo Stake and she is a family counselor, they stay very busy.

David picked us up Monday morning to visit his new office in the National Archives building. It was interesting to see the books they work with and they now have seven full time workers doing nothing but indexing. They don’t use the Family Search indexing program but have created something similar. They need to get this program going in Cusco, but of course it takes money.

After the archives we visited Callao, the sea port town. There are some really pretty little communities along the coast and we enjoyed walking along the seawall and watching the waves crash. As we were headed back Rich slipped on an uneven spot in the walkway and twisted his ankle. It was pretty painful but he managed to eat some great ceviche before we headed back to the hotel. David drove us through parts of Lima we have never seen and shared history and stories with us. It was a lovely day.

As soon as we were back in the hotel Rich iced his ankle and rested it. It bruised some, but turned out to not be quite as bad as we had feared. Thank goodness.

Lima got really hot on Tuesday so we were glad to be heading back to Cusco. We arrived in the late afternoon and spent Wednesday readjusting to the altitude. We did have our last lunch with the Johnson’s and said our goodbyes. 

New Year’s Eve was relaxing, we brought some groceries and fixed some Thai chicken wings for dinner. Julie managed to stay awake until 9:30pm, so Rich was on his own. At midnight however, the fireworks started and Julie got up to watch them with Rich from the front window.  Peruvians know how to do celebrations and fireworks. Oh my goodness! The noise was deafening and what a spectacular display of pyrotechnics and an audacious amount of CO2 gas produced and probably some nastier stuff. They sell fire crackers that are advertised as "hand blower offers"… It was awesome! What a great way to welcome the New Year!

New Years Day was quiet as everyone was recuperating from the night before. We went for our walk and enjoyed the day together. We counted the dogs asleep on the sidewalks and imagined that they were just glad to have the fireworks over.

We invited the five office elders and the assistants to lunch on Sunday so we spent Saturday preparing New Mexican red beef chili, beans and Spanish rice. It was a busy, busy day.

The elders sure can eat! They loved the food, six of them are North American so they were in heaven eating Mexican food with tortillas and all the fixings.  Julie even made “sour cream” from whipping cream by adding lime juice, vinegar and salt. It was a huge hit! When they left we were worried that they were going to be sick since they ate so much, but last we heard, they are all well and happy.

We are excited for the New Year, for the adventures and challenges that will surely come.  We love our mission and are anxious to finish our work in the archives.