The Gwinners: December 2009

Saturday, December 19, 2009

It's beginning to look like Christmas?

It's December 19th.

A blizzard is hitting the Eastern seaboard of the US, dumping what is expected to be 20 inches or more of snow on DC. Friends and family in Paris, London, and Brussels are dealing with the beauty and travel delays associated with snow storms there late last week. Not to mention the ones in the northern Midwest.

Meanwhile, here in Lima it is nearly summer. The spring was unusually gray and chilly. But a few days ago, the sun and warmth finally made an appearance. Today, we awoke to a blue sky and sun in our garden. It inspired us to go buy some charcoal and fire up the parilla (grill) for dinner. By midday, however, the clouds had rolled in, so now it's back to gray, though still warm enough to cook outdoors for dinner.

We are coming close to the one-year point of our lives in Lima. There's much we've learned, and gotten used to. Little by little we are adapting. But, it's definitely hard to get our minds around the concept of Christmas with palm trees. There are many fewer decorations here for Christmas than in a typical US or European town. And it's funny to see the efforts some do make to hang icicle lights or put out the dancing reindeer in a country where Christmas signals the beginning of beach season.

We did buy a Christmas tree (even though we'll be in DC for the holidays). And for the first time in any of our lives, we had to buy an artificial one. Firs and pines simply do not grow here, though the poinsettas thrive and turn into trees. And you should see what happens to a ficus, when it's not constrained to a pot and left to grow in a tropical climate...

We put up the creche. And we decorated our putti.

So here are some photos of the pre-Christmas season in Lima:

This photo was taken near our apartment, by a fancy hotel. The colors are Christmas-y - even the red and white Peruvian flag on the building. The palms trees and 70 degree temperature are not what we are used to associating with this time of year, but that's just our biased perspective.

This is our putti. He's a permanent feature of the apartment, located by the entrance. We can't move him, so we decorate him to suit the seasons.

Here is the first fake tree we've ever had. And I guess we'll be using it for the years to come. We all groused about it initially, but it's nice to have a tree and hang it with the ornaments we've collected over decades. It even drops fake needles...

A sign of Christmas in Peru. The weather is warmer and beaches more crowded. Britt and Addison celebrated the early morning sun by going surfing - though the clouds rolled in by the time they hit the water. They don't seem to mind.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Cows on parade in Lima

Some years ago, fiberglass cows started showing up in cities around the world. The first ones were developed by a Swiss fellow interested in promoting the dairy industry. The concept moved to the US in 1999, where a Chicago businessman acquired the rights and used the cow sculptures as a big fund-raising activity. The cows are painted and named by local artists or groups, then sold at auction with the proceeds going to designated charities.

In DC, we never had the cows, but we had our own versions: first, the party animals, which were decorated donkeys and elephants, followed by the painted pandas.

I think it would have been really fun if for the Peruvian version of this perfectly wonderful activity they'd come up with colorful "cuy" (guinea pigs) or painted camelids (taking their pick of alpaca, llama, or even the wild little vicuna). But no one asked me.

I've read that there are about 80 of the Cows on Parade scattered around Lima. I've seen only a fraction of them. Here are a few:

These cows are all from the Plaza Bolivar in the Pueblo Libre neighborhood of Lima. The National Museum of Anthropology and Archeology is located on this square, as is the house in which Simon Bolivar lived.

This cow is made up of small photos of people holding up glasses of milk. Interestingly, you can't buy much fresh milk here in Lima. It's primarily available in the long-term-conservation format, packaged in rectangular cartons.

The blue skies, green hills, and smiling people depicted on this cow are a bit utopian. Peru is not really cow-raising country. Most of the land is not suitable for it, unlike those vast expanses of grassland in Argentina or Uruguay. Along the desert coast, you mainly see people raising chickens (they taste a bit fishy because they are fed fish meal). In the highlands, there are some cows and cattle, but they can be pretty scrawny. And its not an animal you see in the Amazon (which covers 2/3 of the country). There are big dairy farms in the northern part of the country, evidently. Otherwise, the livestock of choice are fish (ocean varieties, river trout, and exotic ones from the Amazon), alpaca, chicken, and guinea pigs.

In the background, behind this cow sculpture, there was a pair of young men with 2 afghan dogs plus another lap dog. They were sitting in front of Simon Bolivar's bust and gave the scene an unusually NYC-ish feel.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Thanksgiving in Jauja - Part II

These are photos from our hike to the Nevada de Huaytapallana. To get there, we drove from Jauja down to Huancayo, through the pretty Mantaro Valley, then turned and headed uphill.

Jauja is situated at an altitude of 3,400 meters. Our destination, which included several glacier lakes and glacier-topped peaks, was at more than 4,500 meters.

Luckily we'd had a few days to acclimate. Though even then, it still feels like you are top of the world.

Eating in Huancayo after our hike

The weather was not promising when we started out.

At this point, we were very cold and wet, but the views were still splendid.

The clouds eventually lifted and we could see the clear blue water of the glacial lakes and tops of the glacier-covered peaks.

The glacier emerges

Three lakes empty into each other, then into a valley that turns to jungle and joins the Amazon River.

Rainbow

alpaca

sheep

alpaca and Andes peak

Llama and sheep traffic jam on our way back toward Huancayo

Vicuna, the wild version or ancestor of the llama. Their wool is considered the finest. It's more rare and considerably more expensive than alpaca. The wild ones are rounded up annually to be shorn and tagged.