La Ciudad de Amistad

     Warm air, busy streets and sandy beaches. I don't think we're in Cajamarca anymore Toto. It's because we were in Chiclayo this weekend! We took a rather impromptu trip to the coast for a few days and had a glorious time.
After sitting in the bus station playing cards for 2 hours we took an overnight bus to Chiclayo and arrived early in the morning. Some people slept just fine, but some of us were up for pretty much all 6 hours and got to watch some Harrison Ford movie translated into Spanish. We were picked up at the bus station by Victor Sanchez and his son. We stayed the weekend with this wonderful family and are so grateful that Liz had these friends. After resting up a bit and downing an entire pitcher of mango juice we headed to the beach.
 The city itself is pretty humid and hot but the beach was windy enough to make it the perfect temperature. We played in the water, ran on the shore, read books, attempted body surfing (and failed) and did not wear enough sun screen. Me and Erin got burned to a crisp. The big joke became that "Yo soy de Colorado y yo estoy colorado". Ok, so it's not really that funny, but the Peruvians thought it was hilarious... Our sunburns kind of incapacitated us and Erin sort of waddled for the rest of the weekend, but we still had fun. One of the highlights of the trip was eating the incredibly delicious food of Hermana Lupe. Bread, fruit, ahi de gallina, lomo saltado (for breakfast!) and some super awesome chicken wings made us all very full and very happy.

We came the weekend of the Stake futbol championship and we got to watch the wards battle it out on the concrete soccer field. These teams were super legit too, each ward had their own soccer jerseys with the ward name on it and a nice percentage of the ward showed up to watch. For some reason the game only lasted 30 or so minutes,  but it was fun all the same.






I also had the opportunity to meet another wonderful family in Chiclayo. I was put in contact with the Ramirez family by a friend who had baptized them several years ago. The oldest son has served a mission and the father is now a bishop. It was great to get to know them a little better and when they found out that I had never tried cuy they insisted on making it for me the next day. For those of you who don't know what cuy is, its guinea pig, and a pretty big deal here in Peru. So the Ramirez family cooked me my first cuy and afterwards I taught them how to make snowflakes out of paper.

 Chiclayo is known as "La Ciudad de Amistad" or "The City of Frienship" and we can't tell you how true this is. We are so grateful for our new friends in Chiclayo and that they could make our stay so wonderful.