011 Back Yard, Cold Shower

011 Back Yard, Cold Shower, originally uploaded by walterjii.

This is a picture of our back yard in Los Lomas just south a few miles from the Ecquadorian border on the Pan American Highway. Giovanna is cleaning up our jury-rigged shower system, black plastic curtain- makes us feel right at home. You will find more pictures in our library at www.flickr.com/photos/walterjii - It was here that I developed a serious case of the creeping crud, a fungus common to athleets and those living in high heat and humidity conditions.

Living in Los Lomas was wounderful, very hot, but cool in the evening, a small village deep in a valley surrounded by major hills or small mountains. The town was established back in the 1930.s and is a major rice producer for the Peruvian ecomony.

Here cattle, dogs, goats, pigs, you name it roam free, no fences to speak of, yet return home for feed at a predictable time. Great to get up in the morning at the beck and call or a bunch of roosters harmonizing at 5:00 AM
and then to go outside to see a sow and a litter of small pigs on their way to the local garbage dump or nieghbors back door.

Most of these houses have tin roofs, very noisy late at night as the cats hunt on the roofs for eguaneas, rats and brown bats. We were here two months beginning in early January and were able to put in a workable outside shower, toilet and outside cooking range out of adoby and reclaimed brick. Just before leaving in late February, the misquitoes became abundant and it was quite hard on Giovanna, being a city girl and not used to blotches and itching as is common with such critters, not to mention the big pinching beetles with huge horns and wing spans of up to six inches visiting your abode at most unexpected moments. You sometimes had electric and then maybe you didn.t, just the same as the water, yet everybody took that in their stride as just part of life up there. Happy people, you did not see hungry children, farming community with considerable abundance and everybody worked doing something, no welfare, just living as it should be.

Prior to leaving, the local Doctor, across the street in the Health Clinic gave us one of his pippies, a german shephard-terrier cross who we put in a box for the long bus ride to Lima, 14 hours South. If you would like to stop the word and get off for awhile, then Las Lomas is the place for you !!!