5/30/2016 Chocope and Adventure to Casa Grande

Adventure to Chocope and Casa Grande

Jim and Patti Fackrell planned an outing in Casa Grande and invited the Hartman's and us to join them. This morning at 8:30 am Bill, Sandy, me, and Wayne got on the bus for about an hour bus ride to Chocope.

One picture along the way.

When we got to Chocope, we walked to Jim and Patti's, we stayed for a minute and then we walked to catch the bus to Casa Grande.

Along the way from Jim and Patti's house to the bus stop.

Bill liked this old truck

Patti and Bill going to the bus stop to Casa Grande

Wayne and Jim waiting for the bus to Casa Grande

Bus to Casa Grande

We arrived in Casa Grande.  Jim and Patti had arranged with Alex Rodriguez, who lives in Casa Grande, to take us on a little tour to see the town and some ruins that aren't tourist spots.  He met us when we got off the bus and we walked around the town. 

Sandy took this picture of me and Patti waiting for Alex to meet us.  

Alex Rodriguez and Bill

There weren't very many taxi's or cars in Casa Grande.  These motto taxis were all that were on the streets, they use these in the smaller towns instead of taxis.

Motto Taxis

Motto Taxis everywhere

Oh My!

The Theater in the plaza

This statue is in the center of the plaza.  The man is harvesting sugar cane which is the main crop there.

This is the sugar cane factory. Sugar Cane is grown everywhere in all the fields. This is where they bring it to process it.  The factory was very big, it took up a block. There was a strike going on so the factory was closed.  I wanted to take a tour, but they said even if it was open, they wouldn't be doing tours.  There were policemen with shields outside the entrance.

Sugar Cane Factory

The gate to the sugar factory.  They were on strike,  so you can see the guards there with their guns and shelds.

This is the area in town, where the Germans built houses and lived. The Germans migrated to Casa Grande trying to get away from the cold German winters. And founded the area in the 1800's. The Germans gave the Peruvians a wage for working, grains, rice, and food, they also gave them a pension.  Life was very good then, but they were under the strict rule of the Germans and after a while the Peruvian people got tired of them ruling them and took control.   Life hasn't been so good for the Peruvians since.

 The streets where the Germans lived look very different with the light poles and trees down the middle of the streets.  The front of the houses were different, and the houses had pitched roofs.  Alex lived down this street.

This is a cute little entrance to two houses.  We don't see this much at all, pots of plants adorning the entrance.

Alex, his Mom, Dad and his wife

Alex invited us to his home.  We visited for a few minutes and his wife served us some lemon meringue pie. It was very good.

Their boy is Denzel, he's 5. They also have a daughter who's in school.

From here we got in two motto taxis with Alex's Dad driving one and a friend driving the other one. We rode along some country roads.  The fields along the way were full of sugar cane in different stages of growth. 

These are the two Motto Taxis and Sandy.  We always have fun and some good laughs riding in these.  There were 3 of us in each one. It was a tight squeeze and quite the adventure.

Alex rode his motorcycle with his wife and Denzel.

We stopped at the base of a mountain. Alex's Dad was our tour guide.  He had grown up there, so we followed him.

We hiked along the mountain and saw houses  were people once lived.

This picture was taken from the mountain looking back.  Sugar cane was all around the area.

These cactus plants were as big as trees.

Holes where the graves had been dug up.

As we hiked, we saw hundreds of graves that had been dug up.  They went down several feet and were several feet wide.  Around these holes was broken pottery. We even saw some little shells, which I thought was interesting because the ocean isn't close.

This shows where there were houses. If you look close to the top left, you can see a square door.  All of the Inca ruins have a square entrance door.  

This is zoomed in from the previous picture.  See the square door, probably an entrance to places where people lived.

This is more of the houses

This shows down in a grave. They told us this was probably a human bone, it wasn't just a tree root.

To the left, is a cave, inside it looked like it might be a place they slept. We found a lot of pottery, i'm picking some up.  Jim found a really good piece of pottery.

Jim and Denzel

More graves that have been dug up

We walked back around the backside of the mountain to get back to our Motto Taxis. There were still lots of graves and lots of broken pottery pieces all along the way.

This is a fruit that was growing by the Sugar Cane.  The people break it in two and rub it on their face.  It smelled like a cucumber,  probably a relative.

This is Alex rubbing it on his face.

Denzel found a Lizard.

Of course I had to hold it.

Our fun group!!

We had a great time looking at the ruins, hunting for treasures, and being together with great people and wonderful friends.

We loaded up in the Motto Taxis and went back to Casa Grande.  We got in two cars and rode back to Chocope, and back to Jim and Patti's. They fixed us a yummy lunch which tasted very good and hit the spot.  We had a wonderful time! It was so thoughtful of Jim and Patti to take us to such a unique place. 

Sandy captured this photo of me and Patti walking back to have lunch.

We went back to Jim and Patti's and they fixed us lunch.  Jim made some Venezuela fried patties, that we put cheese in and we had Jello with whip cream and a green salad.  It tasted so good and was delicious.  it was quite an afternoon with memories and a good time with great friends.  

 We relaxed for a minute, then all six of us hurried to catch the bus back to Trujillo and to the airport to say goodbye to Elder Heward and the missionaries leaving.