22 September

This morning we sat out front and watched some very large animals in the ocean. We could see the spray from blow holes and saw some very large dorsal fins but no flukes. We suspected they were dolphins but they seemed so large. Our fisherman friend said he had seen the whales throughout the morning. Oh so much fun.

We went down to meet Perico when he came in from his morning fishing. It still amazes us how he can support so many people by fishing from a very crude raft. You can see the large paddle he uses to maneuver. As he came in through the surf, Sanchez, another friend, Doug and I met him to help him beach his raft. Perico comes in as far as the water will bring him and then a log is put under the front. They push the raft up onto the log and leap frog using two logs to its spot high on the beach.

Today, Perico's catch was rather small. He still gave his friends some of the smaller ones and then will take the rest to town. He showed us a red colored fish whose dorsal spines looked quite lethal. When the fin was fanned out, you could not push the frontmost spine flat to the back of the fish. However, if you pushed the second spine down first, the other followed quite easily. He has given us the names of the fish, but they aren't sinking in yet.

Then this afternoon we went into Los Organos to buy bus tickets for our upcoming trip to Chiclayo and further to Luis' home village for their spring celebration. Two tickets cost us S/. 50 ($16.80) for what will be a six hour drive. We'll leave Los Organos at midnight and arrive about 6 a.m. We were very thoroughly warned by our taxi driver that Chiclayo is a dangerous place for foreigners; especially at the bus station and at night. Our driver wanted to be sure I understood (which I did after the first five explanations) that he stopped someone along the street that spoke English and Spanish and asked him to translate for us!

We visited our friends at Samana Chakra for a bit and then brought them back up to the house so they could see our land.