Songs of Joy: Grand Adventures in the Great Outdoors

One Saturday in March, the gals of Dulce Refugio went out for a paseo. "What is a paseo?" you say? Well, my dear friend it is an outing most often in the country or somewhere where there is a patch of green grass. You could possibly have a paseo in somebody's backyard if you wanted. The main point is to get out in the great outdoors and enjoy some fresh air.

This particular paseo was a trip out to Lucre with some of the youth from the Huacarpay Mennonite Church. The plan was to go fishing and cook out in the open countryside. Well, it started with several delays. First we had to find some other sort of meat option (in case there were no trout), then we had to track down some choclo (corn) and then when we were already on our way, someone had to go find some matches. Oops! Well, we walked for about 45 minutes from the small pueblo of Lucre out into the beautiful countryside. It wasn't too long of a trip but felt longer for the pots, pans, meat, fruit and choclo that we were lugging along with us!!

The trip ended by crossing the river twice. We had to take off our shoes and hang on desperately to each other as we crossed with the water rushing around us!! woohoo!! On the way we saw some people washing their sheep in the river. Poor sheep! Scrub-a-dub baa baaa!! We found a patch of grass were we put our stuff down. While the boys went fishing we set up our "stove" out of rocks and collected firewood to start cooking chicken and choclo. There was also a trip to find some capuli trees. Capuli is a type of small cherry like fruit. It's kind of bitter but our paseo buddies were very excited about picking and eating them.

Crossing the stream!

Rosa picks some capuli.

Bethany and Juana clean the chicken before cooking.

Wilma starts a fire with leaves and sticks.

It was a very good thing we brought chicken because in the end there was no trout. The chicken, choclo and cheese was very yummy and I don't think anyone went hungry! We ended up leaving very quickly because the sky started to look very stormy. We went back to Lucre on a fun skinny path above the river (trying to avoid any more crossing). Along the way the sky cleared up and we stopped by some capuli trees (which were once again the attention of the group). Most of the people climbed the trees to pick the fruit. We played "sticks" there under the capuli trees. I say "sticks" because we had no spoons to play "spoons" with!! Then the sky started to look dark and stormy again so we headed back to Lucre.