An unexpected trip to a mountain village

Last Friday we were invited by a nice family we met in church the Saturday before, to eat breakfast with them at the market where they sell chicken. Or so we thought. So we got up at 6am, ate a small breakfast and walked the 5km to town. There we met the father of the family, and after a few pictures together with his friends, we went to his house. There they asked us if we wanted to go visit their relatives in a village in the mountains for lunch. So apparantly we had misunderstood the breakfast at the market part, and this was turning out to be a full day excursion. But it turned out to be an awesome experience in a tranquil mountain village. We were met by their very friendly relatives in a cute house, lying in a valley. The mother was weaving a beautiful coloured rug. And after they gave us some delicious homebaked bread and mango, we went for a hike up a hill. Up to 4270m. The view from the top reached all the way to Ilave, the town we had come from. And the fact that there were wild pumas and vicuñas (a type of llama) in the area, made the trip more adventurous, although we didn't see any. On our way down, the guys (including Andrés) helped herd some sheep from another hill side. When we came back to the cottage, we had a humungous lunch, with fried trout, tons of potatos, large green beans, maize and vegetables. And second dish we got fish soup with a carachi fish lying in each bowl. Carachi is a native fish of Lake Titicaca. The food was delicious. And yes, Andrés ate the trout and the fish soup! All of it. 

After a relaxing afternoon, we drove back to the town. It got a bit late because they stopped at a friend's house to talk. We tried to find a taxi or bus back to our house, but there were none. So we had to half run, half walk back, with very dark clouds all the way around us, all with flashes of lightning and very loud thunder claps in them. We were walking in very open country and felt pretty exposed. But we prayed for God's protection, which we always can trust in, but sometimes is hard to do. He protected us the whole way, and instead of a frightening storm, we were walking through a spectacular light show. And we reached home in time before the rain started pouring down.

Our friend Jaël from Ilave tries on his mother-in-law's homemade poncho.

On our hike up the hill, where Bhone was practicing with his homemade slingshot, used for the sheep.

While the guys were out herding sheep, Shandy and Maria tried a conversation with very bad Spanish (by Maria) and a few English words (by Shandy). But she was cool to try and understand Maria's attempt at Spanish.