In Search of Snow

So, I was supposed to be burying myself in drafting my systematization report yesterday morning since I only have a week left of work to provide a finished copy, but instead I decided to leap at the offer to head to into the mountains with my family. I´m weak for anything that involves mountains and leaving computer work behind… After all, word had it that some of the peaks were snow-covered and my little host sister and her friend wanted to get to snow for the first time! How could I pass this up! You only live once, right?! All I know is that there´s nothing like a spontaneous Wednesday morning jaunt! Since I´m the only one in the fam that has a job or school at this point, Wednesday morning´s just as good an option at Saturday or Sunday anyway. Both Bubi and Susi told me separately that we´d be back NO LATER THAN 1PM, which perfectly fit with my need to get to the office in the afternoon to plan this weekend´s tree planting with my co-worker, so off we went!

I should have known better than to think that things would go as planned since they rarely ever seem to here. The first sign that something was up should have been the road littered with BIG rocks from a landslide just on the outskirts of the city. 6 of the 7 of us climbed out to move the boulders to the side so we could pass and keep climbing up the muddy trail of a road. Ends up that was just the first of many times we´d have to get out of the car whether it be to push or just to lighten the load so that poor car could get up the next hill. There were beautiful waterfalls flowing over the road at different points (from all of the melted snow) and llamas grazing all over the place.

Only 20 miles or so outside of Cocha...

LLAMAS! LLAMAS! LLAMAS!

For all that effort, other than the craggy peaks who had there fair share of unreachable snow, we only came across two or three patches of the white stuff each smaller than your mattress or bedroom window. Although the girls were disappointed at first, I´m proud to say that we used ALL the snow we could scrape off the ground for quite the Midwestern style snowball fight. There was a lot of giggling and cold hands. Bubi topped it off by busting out his parachute which we did more of a photo shoot with rather than actual flying (which was alright by me).

Us and our snow!

After finding some snow at last, we got lost a few times on entirely unmarked roads in the middle of nowhere before coasting without any gas for the last 45 minutes – it was a damn good thing we had a mountain to descend! After we were lucky enough to find a (natural) gas station for a fill up at the bottom of the mountain, we got home just short of 6PM. Surviving 8 hours in a tiny car on bread, bananas, and coffee sure made us ready for some dinner when we got home. I love unexpected adventures!

All I know is that I´ll be really glad I went as long as we can still plant trees this weekend, as long as finish my report on time, and as long as my co-worker forgives me for being a no-call, no-show, not so dependable staff member… Good thing I don´t have a paycheck riding on the line:)