Laguna de Paca

Sunday morning I got to talk to my mom for a long while, which was really nice.  She got to meet Mari, Angela, and Mabel while we were on Skype.  Mari was asking her for tips on parenting since she said my mom did a good job with me...awwww.  She was trying out her English on my mom and my mom was trying to speak in Spanish with her.  It was really sweet.  Later on Mari was telling me that my mom was very nice...muy simpatica.  :)

After that, Mabel took Lauren, Dwan, and I to Laguna de Paca.  We had to go to Jauja (pronounced Howha) first.  We took a taxi there from Huancayo.  Mari had been telling us some things about it before we left.  She said that Jauja used to be the capital city of Peru.  There's also a small airport there.  When we got there, there was a big outside market there, just like in Huancayo.  We took another taxi from Jauja to Laguna de Paca.  Mari told us the legend of the lake before we left.  She said that it used to be a town, but the people of the town were bad.  A man came down from heaven to tell them that if they continued to be bad, the town would be turned into a lake.  The people of the town were mean to him, throwing boiling water at him and yelling at him.  He came back and told them he had warned them.  Little by little the town was filled with water until a lake formed.  Now the lake is 260 feet deep in the middle.  When we reached the lake, there are only a few stores and restaurants along the lake.  

La Sirena restaurant from the boat.

A woman from a restaurant called La Sirena told us to come to her restaurant and we could take the boat ride from there.  She took our lunch order before we went on the boat so that it would be ready when we got back.

On the boat on Laguna de Paca.

A young guy was rowing our boat along the lake.  We saw another boat rowing out to this small island.  There was a little patio there and they were served there lunch out there in the middle of the lake.

The little island where the family was eating lunch.

Mabel was asking him a bunch of questions about the lake.  He eventually told us the legend of the lake in Spanish, so Lauren and Dwan had no idea what he was talking about.  The he set down the oars, took out a bunch of keychains from his bag, and told us to buy one or give him a tip for telling the legend.  Mabel was shaking her head.  He hadn't really done a great job telling us the legend, so I just followed Mabel's lead and shook my head.  He told us also that there were two islands nearby: one was the island of love and the other was the island of divorce.  He said after a few hours with your significant other on the island of love, you would leave as three if you were lucky.  I'm not sure if he meant you were supposed to consummate your love there or just that being there would bring you luck in that area.  :)  He said if you were lucky after going to the island of divorce you with your spouse, you would leave divorced, otherwise you would be forced to stay together forever.  I was thinking it was all a bit strange.  He told Mabel that there were ruins up in the mountains above the lake.  She was asking him how to get up there and he said he could take us for 5 soles a person.  Mabel had rolled her eyes I don't know how many times since we had gotten on board the boat.  Everything had a price to it.  He even told us that going further across the lake would cost us more.  

Me on the boat at Laguna de Paca.

After we got back to the restaurant, they brought us our pachamanca.  It was pretty good, but I was disappointed because they didn't give us a sweet potato with it.  I think that's one of the best parts of pachamanca even though we've only had it at two of the places we've ordered pachamanca.  Mabel was not impressed with the restaurant.  

The shop selling wood carvings by Laguna de Paca.

After eating, we walked along the road and went up to a shop selling wood carvings.  We looked around and then were going to walk up a little further on the mountain, but he told us it cost 1 sol.  It's not much money, but we were a bit put off by all the hidden costs.  We'd been to touristy places before, but this one has been by far the worst as far as having a price for every little thing.  It made the trip much less enjoyable.  We didn't pay to go up further on the mountain for a better look a the lake and just took a taxi back to Jauja.

When we got to Jauja, we walked through the market along the street.  They had different things than the Sunday market in Huancayo.  I prefer the market in Huancayo, but we did see some interesting things like a dead snake for sale, birds in a box, snails in a box, and frogs in a box.

The birds in a box in the Jauja street market.

We also saw a stand with the biggest avocados I've ever seen.

Look at the size of those avocados!!!

I got an ice cream and Mabel got some doughnut and cookie type things from a vendor and then we made our way along the street back to the place where all the taxis and buses leave from.  There were two people from two different buses coming up to us and each telling us to take their bus.  They were both claiming to be faster, have just enough seats available for us, and one of them even said that their shocks were better and we wouldn't be so jarred when we passed over potholes in the road.  Lauren was asking me what was going on and I told her we were trying to decide which bus to go on.  I ended up asking her, "Red or Blue?"  She picked the blue bus.  When we were on the bus, she said she'd probably picked the wrong bus.  It left after the other one, there were loud teenage boys standing in the aisle over her seat, spitting on her, and halfway through the ride we thought we were going to suffocate from the heat in the back of the bus.  Someone finally opened the window and thankfully we were almost home.  It took us an hour and fifteen minutes on that bus to get back to Huancayo.

We walked to Plaza Vea to get a few things when we got home.  Lauren had to wait outside because she had a backpack with her while we ran through.  It was so crowded that I ended up losing both Dwan and Mabel in there.  I bought my things and then went out to find Lauren.  We waited and then Dwan showed up.  After a bit, Dwan went back in to go find Mabel.  By that time, the weather had turned on us and it was pouring rain.  Lauren had spilled water on her rain jacket in the morning, so she hadn't brought it.  We all trudged through the rain back to the house.

Lauren and I were happy once we were back at the house.  After I finished weaving for the night and Emil, Ylfa, and Dwan had gone to La Rustica, Lauren and I sat down to watch Seven Years in Tibet with a bowl of popcorn.  It was a great way to end the weekend.