Funeral Crashers

In Chupuro a couple of drunk men in a small convienience store called us over, so not really knowing where to go for hang gliding we joined them for a few beers. My Spanish still blows, so understanding slurred Spanish was ridiculous. Nevertheless, we found out that hang gliding isn't for another week, so when they invited us to join them we had nothing better to do for the afternoon.

They took us to the shores of the Rio Mantaro via rickety trikes to meet about 20 of their family. After hello's I sat down with the younger folk and chatted what us young people like to chat about - swears, girls, drugs and politics. Later I found out the drunk guys brought us to a funeral gathering, which we felt pretty bad about. Wedding Crashers was a funny movie, but I never anticipated on actually crashing a funeral.

Anywho, the day passed with us witnessing local funeral customs of washing the grieving in the river and chewing coca leaves while drinking the sorrows away. Some of the older men - who happened to be the coolest dudes there - invited us to dinner with the family. We've heard not to refuse a dinner invite here, so naturally we accepted.

After a delicious courtyard meal we shared a sunset cab back to town with some older ladies. Along the way, in the neighbouring town of Breña, there was a carnival going down. While inching our way through the crowd a girl pulled us out of the cab for a quick dance before continuing our way on back home.

written by  ryanmyers on March 1, 2009 from Huancayo, Peru
from the travel blog: Ryan's First Sabbatical
tagged Funeral and Chupuro
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