I continue writing this post back in the house we are staying; we are renting a room for a week for 20 bucks each from Senora Wilma. She is a rather cute older Peruvian lady who has the world’s most complicated domestic water supply in the world. The two Dutch girls and Canadian woman who have been here for three weeks confess they haven’t got worked out how it works. Never the less it is a fine place to stay, with a cool patio next to a cactus garden frequented daily by an emerald throated hummingbird. What have we been upto? Let me think. Well we spent about a week in Lima, it is a nice city. I was expecting something along the lines of India or Cambodia when I arrived but it was very civilized (aside from a very long immigration queue). Things were quite clean, there we no touts and we easily got a safe clean taxi. The following day we explored the city and again very civilized. The streets we pretty clean, little rubbish, they were not overly crowed with people, everything was paved. So far so good! People seemed pretty well dressed too, there were hardly any beggars, touts or down and outs. This said we were in the centre of Lima which seems to have a large police (normal and tourist) presence. My first call of the day was to visit the Britanico centre where I will sit my exams in a few months time so final arrangements for that, we decided to brave the public bus system and what fun that turned out to be! We were helped by some kind people also waiting for the bus and hopped on the right bus. And were helped trhought the day by a string of curtious people. The busses themselves are tiny, ramshackle and driven by wanna be race car drivers. They have a list of streets through which they will pass written on the side which is quite a good system, although if you ever go make sure to double check with the conductor that that list is uptodate. Oh and those buses only cost one sol as far as you want to go (within city limits)! That's only 30 cents (US)! You would pay ten or fifteen times that for a taxi! So we got my business done, I paid my exam fees at the Scotia bank to sit my exam at the Britanico centre. Next, siteseeing! While looking for the San Fransico monastery we were approached by our first random Peruvian, an old lady wondering if she could help us with where we wanted to go. I was initially suspicious and kept a keen I out for any funny business as we she walked along with us to the Monastery, she was very pleasant and warned us about the robbers posing as tattoo artists on a nearby street and about the inflated prices of the street vendors, much better to buy souvenirs from the official shops and markets she said. She apparently taught English to primary school kids in Lima but as we said our goodbyes and thanked her at the Monastery I still half expected her to ask for some money (as is not unusual in say Thailand) but no, nothing! After the monastery tour, with the large and creepy catacombs being a highlight, we said outside and pondered our next move. A shoe shiner approached us then, be turned him down but then he too started to chat to us. Saying he was from some little rural mountain town and didn't really like Lima. Then another chap came up, asking if the church next to the monastery was open, it wasn't. He went to check and then returned to, yes you’ve guessed it, to chat! He was a trainee lawyer in Lima who was studying English. We chatted for a while and he taught us some Lima slang. Then a yellow uniformed tourist policeman approached and started speaking to us. He said he had noticed how we talked to two people and that although some people were nice we should be careful as others may have ulterior motives, and then it seemed like he too just wanted to chat to us. He was also studying English and wanted to go to the USA to teach Spanish. Oh boy! As lovely as those people were, after that we were a little wary of dallying in one spot for too long for fear of someone wanting to chat to us! I continue writing this blog now after a break of some days. In that transition period my view of Peru has changed. Up until Wed the 27th it had seemed to me Peru was actually quite well off. Lima as I said was quite civilized. Huanchaco the smaller town in which we are now domiciled also shows no signs of desperate need, the beach is packed with Peruvian holiday makers bedecked in their quicksilver and such like surfer/beach apparel. There is a new shiny American style mall near by which has an entire floor dedicated to the 'back to school sale'. Interesting as we have been lugging circa 80 ish pounds of school materials with us to donate. However this all changed on Thursday. Juani, one half of the husband and wife volunteer coordinator team, took us to see first a refuge for women (escaping domestic abuse) and then a land fill site. The woman’s refuge was sobering enough; domestic abuse is rife here and men and women alike sometimes view it as the norm, the woman’s refuge receives no government money. There funding was cut some time ago and now a few volunteers struggle to keep this small operation going, able to help on average 6 women a month. They serve a population area of around 2 million people. Next was the dump, a land fill site serving the city of Trujillo (768,300 people) and surrounding area. We visited the families who both live on and make a living from the rubbish of the land fill. They live in crude shelters, pieces of cloth or plastic strung between poles, with perhaps a mattress underneath. Right on top of the garbage. They sift through the rubbish separating out what can be recycled which they then sell to rickshaw driver who in turn sell it to lorry drivers and so on until it returns to the recycling plants around Trujillo. After a long day of grueling work a person working the dump would expect to earn one dollar....on a good day. As we drove away we passed a dump truck going to unload Juani commented in a tone heavy with the bitter anger and disgust of this situation "now they will fight over it." Oh my dear goodness! So people will fight over what is thoughtlessly thrown away by the relatively affluent inhabitants of a city less than 30 minutes drive away. Like dogs fighting over scraps fallen from the table. Well anyway, makes you wonder at the nature of the system at work here. The volunteer project, ACJ, operates right next to the land fill and provides a YMCA/ school for the children of the dump families. They actually have a really nice building and good supplies, courtesy of foreign aid (which has now dried up as European attention now focuses most on Africa). The Parents of the children must agree not to use their little'uns as child labor and in return the children are always welcome at the centre and to all its resources, I believe they periodically check the dump to make sure the parents are holding to their side of the bargain. Another things which causes pause for thought is that the people on the dump has moved there willingly because where they come from is worse. They come from the Peruvian highlands to work on the dump because they can earn more money there. So there we have it. We gave the lion’s share of the school materials, clothes and crafty things that Kelly's mother's school has so kindly donated to the ACJ project. As luck would have it they were having a birthday party that day (for all the children who had a birthday in Feb and also Jan as they had missed that month) so our timing was quite fortuitous and they kids were very excited about the gifts they were all of a sudden getting. We had to rush off though to be at the volunteer lunch. There are now I think about 19 volunteers who have been placed through Otra Cosa in various projects in Peru. They were a varied and interesting bunch although hopefully we will not get to know them. I wish this not for any failing on their part but because I hope we can get our project for March sorted out and be up in Chilclayo by Monday or Tuesday. We will be teaching English to volunteer eco tourist guide up there (it is further north), but as yet there is a distinct lack of communication, it is Peru after all. If that doesn't work out then we will have to wait at least a week, maybe two for another project here in Huanchaco to start up. In April we will be off up into the Peruvian Andes to again teach English there, should be an adventure, there are lots of exciting temples and fortresses and things hidden in the jungle up there that require days of hiking (with machetes) to get to. Awesome. Oh and also people to teach English to. Shouldn't forget them. Time to wrap things up before I start having to serialize this post! Last night we went to a club (fundraising event) with our Spanish teacher and some of the other volunteers. Pheeeeeeeeeeooooooh! It was heaving! The club was packed to the rafters with young (like 18ish) Peruvians and gyrating and jiggling and generally creating far too much body heat. It was like a sauna in there, we are all dripping with sweat after just sitting down in there for 5 minutes. The condensation in the air was clear to see, like I said just like a sauna. And then we danced. If the diarrhea wasn't dehydrating me then dancing in there certainly was, but it was fun! We were dancing on the upper floor which flexing alarmingly under our boogying weight. When we all jumped in time (required for certain tunes) it felt like we were on a trampoline. I figured it was going to be the people bellow us who came acropper and not us and kept on dancing. Today will be boring, tidying and laundry but tommorrow we are going to rent boards and surf all day. Kelly surfed for her first time last week and surfed across the face of a wave, like really, properly surfed a wave! She's a natural! However as a little boy who had the missfortune to get in her way discovered she didn't have much experience in turning, but don't worry he survived.
Adios!
Hasta Siempre!
ps. we went in search of rehydrating drinks today and found for some strange reason that each little shop here in Huanchaco (of which there are many) had one and only one bottle of sportaid. No more or no less. Wierd. So we had to visit several little stores to get as many as we wanted.
The traditional peruvian fishing boat, called Cabaito toertiga, which have been used esentially unchanged since at least the moche culture 200 years ago.
The reed boats drying in the sun.
In you look closely at this relief at the moche pyramid (Huaca de la lun) you can see clearly one of the reed boats (upper left). The site dates back to around 200 years ago.
The humming bird who visits the garden of the house were we stay everyday.
We were lucky enough to arrive in Huanchaco just before the carnival, the after party went on (officially) until 6am!
At the carnival parade
A colourful barrio overlooking Lima
The beach at Miraflores, Lima
