Blanco y Celeste

Another of our little forays into the country was a place called La Flor. This involves a two-hour drive in an old van up a four-wheel drive track bumping along. As we climb higher we leave behind the sticky heat of Bagua and start entering the clouds...cool drizzle. Out come the jackets, and on come the gumboots. We arrive at the end of the line, a one-horse town where everyone piles out and go off to their various destinations. It looks like we're in the middle of a very green farm, about 2,500 metres above sea level! The mud is knee-deep in some places (hence the gumboots instead of hiking boots). It's going to take us two hours to walk in to the house where we will stay the weekend. So we adjust our backpacks and make sure our snacks are handy and off we go picking our way over the muddy muddy paddocks. The drizzle doesn't get any stronger and eventually slackens off. The scenery is stunning, very much like NZ farmland and bush...but all at high altitude!

Imagine the first brother workers arriving here after a three day walk.... One of them hoped there owouldn't be any interest there so they wouldn't have to return!! Fortunately his wish wasn't granted...

Looking back down on Bagua Grande from the van as we climb up and up and up

Mud, mud glorious mud...

Starting our hike

This photo doesn't capture what this river of mud was...

Arriving to the final destination... a handful of houses scattered over the farmland. This is La Flor!

These random-looking palm trees are really common

The little Sunday morning meeting. At the back is don Segundo (red sweater). He is the owner of the meeting house. His wife in pink jacket and daughter with green scarf. His niece is the other young lady (Lola) with baby on lap. The two men are brothers and are the husbands of the two girls.

The gospel reached these people in the early 90s when Norman Nash and Pedro Huanca went up there looking for some relative of someone professing in another area. When they were returning after a seemly unsuccessful visit, they got chatting to a man who had the same surname as Pedro's mother, and discovered they were 5th cousins twice removed - or something like that!! Don Domingo wanted them to visit him when they came back next. He is Lola's father, and Segundo's brother. He professed, and through him many others in the area came to hear the gospel and profess, including Segundo. He was coming to meetings and wondering whether this was truth or not. He had read or heard about the Book of Life, and was praying that God would show him what was right. One night he had a dream that he was in heaven and Jesus was sitting in a big room with a pile of books on a table. Segundo went to him and asked him if that was the Book of Life. Jesus replied that yes it was, and Segundo wanted to know if his name was there. So Jesus opened it and wrote in it, and said now it is. Then Segundo asked him which is his true way...and Jesus replied to him that his true way is found in the four gospels. When he woke up he knew that what the workers were telling him about was truth. Sadly don Domingo didn't continue, his life is a mess, but recently he has been to some meetings again. This little group all live within a stone's throw of each other and each Sunday have their little fellowship mtg together.

The meeting room

One of the houses up there...the rooms all open onto this yard. This is a very typical house in the mountains

Cool doors!

Our room. Beds are always double, and the mattresses are hard as boards, maybe stuffed with wool? Walls are a mud/straw mixture.

Looking toward the toilet and washing area. A closed-off space beside the toilet serves as an area where you can tip water over yourself in privacy! You take a bucket from the tap there.

Looking out over the La Flor area from the garden

Palmira washing off her gumboots after the hike in

From inside the "shower cubicle"

Down the hill from Segundo, live his niece Lola and her husband Idelmo and kids. Outhouse is the little building in the foreground with blue plastic hanging off it (that's the door). To be visited as little as possible!!!

The "shower" and laundry

Lola has just killed a chook and is now preparing it for dinner in her kitchen.

peeling spuds all hands on deck

16-yr old Kleima es handy with an axe! After-school jobs...

She's also good at grinding up all the corn kernels we peeled off the cobs. (I was extremely unskilled at all these jobs btw, and ended up with painful fingers and calloused hands!!) Mincing the corn is a mammoth effort! They were making humitas that day. Little parcels of minced up fresh maize with cheese in the middle and wrapped in the corn leaves and steamed.

Little Damaris - a real terror

Attempting to read with the kids...

Monday morning we had a two and a half hour walk ahead of us to get to the road, so we were to leave at 4am. All night were heard the rain drumming on the roof incessantly... at 4am the packhorse was saddled up and off we went by torch light. I don't remember darkness SO thick, total absence of streetlights or moon and stars, it was BLACK. I was on the horse as Palmira didn't want to ride. The mud was everywhere, the creeks were roaring and high, fierce rapids difficult to cross for people. But the sure-footed horse had no trouble. We walked and walked and walked, don Segundo leading his horse and shining his torch, Palmira with her head lamp. Up hill, down dale, along one path, up another. How that man knew his way in that pitch blackness I don't know. It started to drizzle, and then turned to rain. I was dressed for walking thinking I was going to walk, and got pretty freezing on the horse! Not to mention soaked. We eventually got to our destination, which was a small town from where vehicles leave to go down the mountain. We were to travel about 20 mins to the next town to visit an old lady who has lost her memory completely, and lives with her invalid son who takes care of her.

Once it got light on the walk out. The blue plastic sheet is their version of a raincoat!

Waiting for the transport under the rain

This is the little town where we were walking to get the transport. That horse was my transport out through the mud and over the creeks! I suppose don Segundo would have ridden him home again after escorting us out.

This is doña Magdalena...who knows her age? 90-something at least! I so wish I could have taken a photo of where we found her curled up in bed still (it was only 7:45 am). It was one room with two beds, and small gas ring and a bucket of water. That was the house where her lame son takes care of her. Pretty touching!!

By 9am the visit was over, but now how to get down the rest of the mountain? The only vehicles leave at 7:30 am and then no more till next day. So. We. Walked. The road was at least dry, and a good surface. As we descended the heat and humidity started turning up... hence the umbrellas, to shield us from the sun! 4 hours later we got down to the main road. Our packs were getting very heavy by then, and the water had run out. Only Ronda and Fernando singing us hymns thru Palmira's phone kept us going!! 😆

Getting going after a break

The river Marañon that we were walking towards

A sight often seen in Peru still

In the rice paddies

This is the Postscript of the trip... washing ALL my stuff coz of the fleas that got into my bed!!😫

One of the areas we visit is Perlamayo, a lush coffee-growing area in a mountain valley. It's a tiny little town straight out of a western, in a place where you would least expect to find a town! So, in the late 80s, Trevor Loechel and his native companions went looking for a contact of someone who had professed in another area, and they came to this town. There they met a man called Antonio Delgado, who straight away saw truth and made his choice to serve God. Through him, many others who are still continuing today, came to also listen and receive the gospel into their hearts. It was at the height of terrorism in Peru, a group called the Shining Path were agin the government and trying to reform people of their own accord. They operated throughout the country, but had bases in certain places, one of which was Perlamayo. When I see it, I can see it would be a perfect place for terrorists to hide out, and hide their stash of arms. It's surrounded by mountains covered in thick vegetation, and probably more so in those days when there was no road, and the only means to get there was walking (the workers walked several days to reach there). The terrorists were very violent, blew up police stations etc, and would reign by terror...killing whole families sometimes if they deemed them to be off-side for some reason.

When the workers went in, the rumour went around that they were terrorists, or spies, spying out the land for mining companies! So Antonio professed, but began to delve into village politics, and that led him to joining up with the terrorists. He became quite high up, and the workers believe that perhaps he had a big part to play in the fact that they were never touched by the terrorists in their forays in there.

The day came when the National Army was beginning to get the better of the terrorists, and Fujimori who was the president at the time was offering amnesties to the lesser terrrorists in exchange for info on the leaders and where their arms stash was. Story has it that the soldiers went in to Perlamayo, the little plaza full of them. Antonio's mother went out and called for him to come out of hiding, pleading with him to come down and give himself up. Eventually he did, and received protection for many years after showing them where all the weapons were. Antonio and his wife are still outside of the God's will, but now and then the workers visit them. They always receive them gladly, and recognise that there is no other way...but!! Hard to get back I suppose.

So this is how we get there! Pack up all our stuff, put the backpack inside a big plastic bag to protect it from the elements, then go along to a depot from where the vehicles leave from. The vehicles come down the mountain early, like 6am, bring their passengers into town, then return anytime from midday on. So we go and wait for one to fill up, then pay our fare, pile in and we're off. This is one such ute loaded with anything from sacks of corn, to live chooks.

A local - straight out of Lucky Luke

Some shots of the road over the mountain range to Perlamayo. Definitely need 4x4! It is the rainy season and there is a lot of mud and slips.

Part of the township of Perlamayo - where Antonio handed himself in

Two dear old faithful souls, Sofia and Camila. They are part of the original group. Sofia can't read, they are both up in their 80s.

Inside Sofia's son Alvaro's house. Simple living!!

Looking down toward the township from the house...nice street!! All the waste water gets chucked down there.

After Sun am mtg

Alvaro in pink t-shirt is the owner of this house. He was professing, but for some reason has stopped taking part. Lady in blue top comes to mtgs when we are there! The man in blue t-shirt is Camila's grandson, not professing as yet. This was our Sunday am mtg.