Cajamarca, Peru by Skyler and Kelly

After following the blog for a year, we feel a bit starstruck!...

From Skyler
I really really liked my trip. Especially with Erin and Drew. I had a great time. My favorite part of Peru is finding cow teeth and playing uno and go fish. The coolest part was going through a dark cave. We took a tour of a place called Cumbemayo – it is called a rock forest. It looked like a forest of huge rocks. I thought they looked like popsicles. We saw girls herding the sheep there and then we gave a baby and a toddler an orange and a banana. They were Peruvian. They had big hats and colorful clothes.




We walked through the street market in the city. There was a lot of stinky fish there. There was a lot of fruit and all it smelled like was fish. The smells changed over and over. We saw potatoes and hair clips and Barbie shoes. There were also baby chickens and lots of ice cream carts (helado). I ate a lot of ice cream and drank soda that tasted like bubble gum (Inca Kola).

We rode on a combi (a small local bus). Taking the bus was really bumpy and we didn’t get car sick. We saw lots of markets while we were riding on the bus. There were lots of women on the bus with us. We were so squished like pancakes. This is how many people travel in Peru. I would not like to ride to school like that everyday.

I went to two schools and three classes with my mom, Erin and Drew. One little girl gave me one sticker. But, it actually turned out to be 100 stickers. After one girl gave me a sticker, all of the girls and boys started to give me stickers. I felt like I was taking a sticker shower.

In Miraflores, Lima we saw lots of paragliders. If I went on it, I would say “yippee-kay-a”, but I think it would also be scary. If I was on a paraglider I would be so scared people! On our walk, we found a red bus. It was a bus that drove around and told people about Lima. There was an upstairs on the bus that was very tall and very windy. I touched a tree on my forehead on the bus. We drove around the city and learned about Lima.

Beep-beep, honk-honk! The cars never stop making noise here. All it was was beep beep and honk honk. We think that beeps are the way that the drivers talk to each other. They honk a lot! They honk in the city and in the country.

In the country hacienda that we stayed at a cow was eating a garden. It looked like the girl was herding the cows. I jumped on a trampoline with the cow. He ate the garden and I bounced up and down (and learned how to do a sit jump!). I also saw sheep, pigs, roosters and chickens, horses, and lots of dogs.

The airplanes were bumpy. We rode a small airplane that was so loud we had to wear earplugs. It had two propellers. On the other airplanes I was really sleepy, except for today. I made a new friend from Bolivia on the airplane from Lima to Mexico City. We played Uno and spaceship.

I miss my Daddy. I miss cereal, my dogs, and eating fruit. I really liked Peru. Peru is my favorite place that we have ever been to. It was fun and I saw lots of animals.


From Kelly
Cajamarca, Peru was a wonderful experience. We are so happy that we got to spend a week with Erin and Drew near the end of their trip and soak up all of their stories about their journey. The fact that we were swapping stories over fried guinea pig made it even better!

It is a place that is easy to travel with children for the most part because everyone is so incredibly friendly. Aside from the Lima airport, which is just a tad intimidating to navigate with a child, I never felt uncomfortable. Skyler is an incredible travel partner who complains very little and tolerates a lot.

Cajamarca proved to be a great learning experience for me to see first hand how Erin and Drew have been writing the ebooks with local schools. The first school we worked with was anything but common; Davy College is a tremendous K-12 program to rival any school in the states. It sits on a private sprawling campus with manicured gardens and topiaries cut in the likeness of llamas. The teachers are from all over the world, the resources are plentiful, and the students are clearly benefiting academically from their experience there. We worked with a 2nd grade class where Erin taught completely in Spanish. It was very fun to watch her explain her travels and engage the kids in writing about their community without a word of English. We also worked with a 6th grade class, in English, who brought in photographs from home to add to the book. Our contact there was passionate about her work and has made it her mission to use the ebook software and Global Library Project at the school. Our second school was more typical of a school in a city in Peru. Walking down the tight city street, there is nothing more than a nondescript door and sign at the entrance of the school. When through the door, it opens up to a 2-story tiled courtyard that is the center of the classrooms. This was a much different experience in terms of teaching (which Erin and Drew did again 100% in Spanish). The class size was much bigger (~30 students) and the classroom was much smaller. The students put together a wonderful book about where they live all while showering Skyler with gifts like stickers, keychains, bracelets, and pens. After seeing the books being written, I am more convinced now than ever that these ebooks and this project have a purpose.


We enjoyed the architecture of the churches, the constant flow of people in the central plaza (Plaza de Armas), and finding nice little spots of interest and amazing 3000 year history. At the end of the week when the work was done, we spent two days away from the city in a big hotel and had the entire place to ourselves. Even though it was only 6 km from the city, it felt like 100. It was muy tranquillo – quiet, relaxed, beautiful, and a small taste of rural life. They had a small trampoline, which made it a wonderful place for Skyler, and we got to just sit and read, talk, and be together.

The trip was also one of juxtapositions. Skyler jumped on a trampoline while a cow grazed a few feet from her. We saw a street performer in Cajamarca dressed as a robot who came to life when you put money in his cup…and a rural woman poking him in the bottom with a stick trying to figure him out. There are layers of city and country at every turn, and very few gringos (at least where we traveled). There are tightly woven cities with crowded sidewalks and people everywhere and then a few kilometers away there are vast spaces with evidence of the ancient peoples, including petroglyphs, tombs, and irrigation systems. The colors of the people are a brightly stark contrast to the drier colors of the landscape – you could always find the campesinos on the hillside because of their brightly colored cloths.

Every journey is a gift. I am grateful for the opportunity to bring Skyler here and to hook up with Erin and Drew in such a magical and rich place.