Huaycan comes from the word huaico which means landslide

At the airport  on the way back from Arequipa, I catch the news over breakfast.  On the screen are images of a terrible landslide/flood that happened this week in Chosica, a town just about a half hour from Huaycan, where we go out sometimes.

[slideshow]

Holy oh my god!  I grab Tricia and point her at the tv.  Oh my god.  If this is happening there, what about Huaycan.  What about the roommates who are home now?  And the people there?  Is everyone okay?

I call my boss and apologize for bothering her, but ask if she knows about what’s happened and if everything is okay in the big H.  She says it happened a few days ago, and that she “didn’t get any phone calls from Dina [chef] or Queta [cleaner]” so she assumes everything’s fine.  Right.  Unless they’re under a pile of rocks and couldn’t call you.  Wouldn’t this be a good time to call them?

When we land I chat with our resident taxista about it.  He lives a few towns from us, where landslides are not an issue. He tells us the government has been trying forever to get people to stop building in these areas, but that the people have no where to go.  It’s been over 15 years since the last one, but you just never know.  Since it rarely rains in Huaycan, he says, we’ve got nothing to really worry about.  But he points to the hills surrounding our house as we get home and says, “If you ever notice that it starts to rain really hard here, you get to your roof as fast as you can.”  Great.  Like I need another thing here that could potentially kill me.