Los campesinos enojados

Comfy back in my Cusco homestay once again, yet trying to recover from a week of stomach sickness, sinus sickness and striking. It´s been almost two months since I left the great state of California and while this journey is definitely beautiful and full of interesting places and people I am officially missing home and creature comforts. I´m guessing that once I rest for a couple days I´ll be ready to set out again and finish up my adventure.
Adventure it is down here especially two days ago as I made my way from Puno (far south near Lake Titicaca) back to Cusco. We were told that buses were allowed to pass through the roadblocks as long as we went through in the middle of the night. So, we left Puno at 9pm on Friday only to be stopped around 2am. We lined up with all the other buses and trucks to wait for the blockades to open up. Nine hours later and we had not moved more than 500 ft. A dutch boy looked me in the face and said, "You want to walk, don´t you?" And I did. I couldn´t imagine sitting on that bus for two or three days like some of the others in the lineup had already done. Entonces, six of us took our bags, put on our sunscreen and began the hike to Cusco. It was over 60 miles away, mind you.
All told, we probably walked about 10 or 12 miles with our packs. We passed through countless villages where everyone told us we were crazy to try to get to Cusco, we should turn around and go back where we came from, and occasionally we got some support. The people are striking because the Peruvian government wants to build a dam that would cut off the water supply to four semi large communities south of Cusco. Understandably so, the people are extremely upset. There are stones all over the road and I have never seen that many Peruvians looking so angry. They are normally so happy and welcoming, it was quite frightening to say the least. Luckily I fell in with a group of awesome people who were committed to getting back to Cusco and finally, eight hours later, we made it! It took walking, talking, busing, taxi-ing and a fair amount of patience, but once I arrived at my host family´s house it was all I could do to throw down my bags and hug Pablo as he rushed out of the house to make sure we were alright. It is so comforting to have a house and family to "come home" to in another country. But don´t worry, I will always come back to California.