Cuzco

Its been over two weeks since our last blog entry so this may be a long one. Sorry about the delay but we have been very busy. The best way to begin this would be to pick up from where we last left off, but I can't really remember that far back! Most of our days have been similar, but with a few events that have affected us quite a bit.

To begin with, Our first day at Yanapay was very interesting and taught us a lot. We are assigned 'families' where we act as teachers to a group of kids and work on a general theme for the week with each family being given a sub theme. I was assigned to Familia Uvas (grapes) and Ilona was assigned to Familia Corazon (hearts). The general theme was to teach them things in English. My group was concentrating on the family, and Ilona's had been given the days of the week. Unfortunately, the resident troublemaker was in my family, so my last two weeks have been quite stressful at school, though still very rewarding. I had two other girls helping teach in my group; Bettina, who was German and Sanne, who was Belgian. Ilona had a French girl called Maud and a Spanish girl called Fani with her. Our Spanish isn't the best, so thankfully there were Spanish speakers with us to help us along.

The kids at the school are all very underprivileged, coming from abusive homes, neglect, malnutrition and inadequate living conditions. Despite this, most are very vivacious and loving, always greeting us teachers with a hug and kiss from the girls, and a hug or handshake from the boys. They address us as 'profesor' too!

The next day, Ilona woke up feeling quite sick and spent the next three days in bed fighting a bad cold. My next three days at school were very testing due to the little troublemaker, but we managed to pull together a half decent song to present at the show on Friday.

Throughout the week we had been making friends with many of the other volunteers, notably a guy and a girl from England called Neil and Ria who are in the room next to us at the hostel and another group of English girls who are here for a couple of months. We had been going out to dinner a couple of times, unfortunately without Ilona who stayed in bed. On the Tuesday night I went to play bingo and the pub quiz at the organisation's restaurant where I won the super bingo, earning myself a free meal and cocktail at a nearby restaurant.

Ilona would begin to feel better every morning when she woke up, but deteriorated as the day went on, so was never quite up to going to the school, which she found very frustrating. I would try and get her up out of bed at least once a day so that we could go out for lunch or something, but that only ever seemed to make her more tired. We had found an English owned restaurant called The Real McCoy which made home favourites like fish n' chips and bangers and mash, along with the best vanilla milkshakes I had ever tasted! Needless to say, we went back there numerous times.

Come Friday, Ilona was well enough to return to school where we presented our songs at the show. My usually loud family hardly sung our song, but we got a resounding 'awwwwww' at the end as we finished with a big group hug. Ilona's family's song was one of the favourites as it was sung to the tune of the Addams Family theme. That night we went to the restaurant again for the buffet, where the theme was elves, fairies, pixies and gremlins. I made some ear extensions to be an elf out of the pink paper Ilona had bought to make fairy wings. Our costumes came off halfway through the night, as they just got annoying (or in my case, just kept falling off). The food was amazing once again, this week was an Italian style buffet, with risottos, spaghetti bolognese and salads. Ilona still wasn't 100%, so I took a taxi back to the hostel with her and then returned to the restaurant to join the others, who were going out to a bar and some nightclubs later on. I tried a mojito at the restaurant, which I had never tried before, and loved it. I also loved the price, which was 14 Soles for two (as volunteers we get happy hour all day), which roughly equates to around NZ$3.50 each!

We moved to an Irish bar called The Wild Rover after the restaurant, having a few more extremely cheap (and extremely strong) drinks, then moving to a nightclub for a wee boogie to terrible music (which I actually ended up enjoying dancing to). On the way between the bar and the nightclub I caught a glimpse at the true side of the city we were in. Some children are forced by their parents to sell small items in the main plaza throughout the entire night, being out until 4 or 5 in the morning when they should really be sleeping in bed. This was the sad reality that Yanapay was aiming to eliminate and it really hit home for me that what we are doing is important, as we aim to teach respect, equality, love and strong family values to children who we hope will grow up to instill them upon their own families.

We spent the weekend chilling out and recovering (from a slight hangover on my part and the flu on Ilona's). On Saturday we went out to lunch with Neil and Ria, ending up quite disappointed with the size of our 'huge' pizza we all shared, and decided to get a second lunch at The Real McCoy, where I ordered another milkshake with my cheesy chips. At this point Ilona has started to get a lot better, with her energy and appetite returning. But as we were leaving, Ilona forgot to duck under one of the typically short doorways and hit her head very hard. The ensuing days brought more fatigue, headaches, dizziness and lack of appetite, opening her immune system up for a stomach bug.

Our next week at school was much like the first; tiring, fun and educational, with a hint of frustration. The altitude, taking care of Ilona and school started to wear me out, as I ended each day very tired and hungry. The two of us went to bingo on Tuesday, which wasn't quite as successful as the previous week. Wednesday saw us go to a delicious buffet at an Indian restaurant, where Ilona began to go downhill again. Stomach aches and some diarrhea have been plaguing her ever since and when Friday came again, she had to force herself to go to school as it was our last day there. We took lots of photos and said our goodbyes to the kids, who we had begun to like a lot and get to know quite well.

Our buffet at the restaurant that night was supposed to be Mexican themed, which we were quite looking forward to, but an ex-volunteer was coming to visit that night with 20 of his friends and wanted Peruvian themed food, so the dinner was changed. The food was still very good however, and the 'myths and legends' dress code bought along some fantastic costumes. My feeble attempt solely consisted of a stolen fern from the hostel's garden wrapped around my head to look like Ancient Greek style wreath. Once again, Ilona was not well enough to go out with the rest of the volunteers, so took a taxi home with a couple of others while I stayed on, drinking a couple more mojitos. At The Wild Rover I only had one drink worth 12 Soles and never spent another centivo after that.

If you plan it right, you could have a night out in Cuzco for nothing at all, as some nightclubs want patrons so badly that they will give free drinks on entry. So the rest of the night was spent going between to clubs right next to each other, taking advantage of the free drinks. I wanted to enjoy the next day, so didn't drink too much, which turned out to be a good thing as my week finally decided to catch up with me on Saturday. I was so tired and could hardly move when I woke up, which made things hard as Ilona was still unwell and we both blobbed about in bed until around 2 in the afternoon.

We finally got the motivation to get up, only to head to the TV room to watch a Jersey Shore marathon on MTV. There is a big group of English girls volunteering that we had all made friends with, who came over later that afternoon and we decided to all go out to dinner together, heading to a Chinese restaurant. Ilona and I ordered one meal between us, which was lucky as we couldn't even finish it between us, having to take the leftovers home.

Sunday began with a lot of rain, which cleared up mid-morning in time for me to join some of the volunteers for a game of volleyball at the local park. I am now very very sore as it was the most intense exercise I have had in quite a long time! In the afternoon a big group of us took taxis up to a big statue of Christ overlooking the town called Christo Blanco. After taking a bunch of photos of the town, we made our way down to some Incan ruins called Saqsaywaman (it sounds like sexy woman) and then walked back down into town, ending up in an Israeli restaurant that made amazing falafels and fresh lemonade.

Today (Monday) Ilona was still feeling decidedly average, so I took her to the travel hospital to get some tests done. The results came back quite fast for New Zealand standards, and confirmed that Ilona has an unidentified parasite, which in a was was good to know, as we finally had an idea of what we were dealing with. Unfortunately we came to the decision that we wouldn't go on the Inka Trek, a decision we had been putting off making and were not wanting to head towards. Later on I went to talk to the travel agency about getting a refund and unfortunately they were unable to as permits into the national reserve are non refundable. Luckily, they were able to transfer our trek fee to pay for food and accommodation for one night in the nearby town of Aguas Calientes (literally, warm waters) and for us to go to Machu Picchu the same day as we had planned, but not coming from a 4 day trek. They also gave me a form to send our insurance company to facilitate us getting our money back, since it was because of a medical issue that we were unable to go.

So now it seems like thing will work out, Ilona has some meds for her parasite which should hopefully work in the next couple of days, we still get to see Machu Picchu and we will hopefully be getting a refund for our non-completed Inka Trail hike. Updates will come faster in the coming days as we will be on the move again, down towards Bolivia where we will spend our 2 year anniversary in Copacabana and where I will be mountain biking 'Death Road' outside of La Paz. Exciting times ahead!

Mike.

Lima to Paracas to Lima to Cuzco

We decided to venture into the center of Lima on our second day, leaving the peaceful suburbs for the madness of the central city. The center of Lima is full of plazas and old colonial looking buildings - parts of it reminded me of central London. We had read about a museum that was housed in a building used in the Spanish inquisition and had information about torture methods as well as displays, this appealed to both myself and Mike so we decided to go and check it out, unfortunately it was rather small and although multilingual guides had been advertised the only tour we saw was in Spanish and all the signs were too, so apart from seeing some mannequins depicting various methods of torture we were not able to gather much information which was a shame. We were lucky enough to see the changing of the gaurd at the presidental palace - it was extremly hot and the guards and band were all wearing what looked like full woollen uniforms, it must have been hard for them to stay so in time and kick their legs so high in the heat. We headed back to our hostel afterwards, catching the metro bus, which runs down the middle of the main roads and you top up a card which you swipe to enter, which is a really efficient and great system. What I also found cool is that the main roads are all set lower to the rest of the streets, kind of like the motorways in Auckland, and the bands are all covered in grass and advertising down through plants which have been planted to spell out company names, pretty cool I thought!

We decided to book one last flight, this time from Lima to Cuzco. My environmental concience is not the happiest about this but for a few reasons flying was our best bet. Firstly we managed to find cheap flights that were not much more than what we would have paid for a bus trip meaning our budget was not stretched too far. Secondly we have been running out of time to get to Cuzco to volunteer and the thought of a bus trip that would be around 30 plus hours did not sound like fun and also meant we would have to miss other things out. As a result of this we decided to book a flight to Cuzco and with the days we would have spent on buses we went down the coast for two days to see the Islas Ballestas, otherwise know as the poor man's Galapagos.

The Islas Ballestas are off the coast from the small town of Paracas which is just outside of Pisco where we had originally planned to volunteer. Driving through Pisco it really hit home just how severe the damage to Christchurch must be, and now Japan too. Pisco was hit by an 8 magnitude earthquake in 2007 and still over 3 years on there is rubble littering the streets and empty spaces where house had once sat. I can't imagine the state that Christchurch must currently be in and also the amount of work that it takes to rebuild a city.

Just out of Pisco on the beach is Paracas, a small fishing town that thrives of the tourism that the Islas Ballestas create. We stayed in our simplest accommodation so far, a plywood room at the back of a man's internet cafe, the walls may as well have not existed as they did nothing for soundproofing however is was just under $15NZ for the two of us and did everything we needed it to. We spent the evening wandering along the beach, unfortunately the wharves and fishing boats are all based along the one beach so we gave swimming a miss. We did however have dinner watching an amazing sunset with pelicans fishing in the water in front of us. The following morning we waited amongst the growing crowd for our boat to take us first to view the El Candelabro and then to the Islas Ballestas.

The El Candelabro was our first stop and it was really amazing. It's a huge geoglyph about 175 metres tall that is around 2300 years old, still visible in the rock. People are still not sure why is was made, however they do know that salt was used to preserve the form allowing it still to be visible today. After stopping to take photos our boat continued on to the Islas Ballestas. The islands are protected and tour boats are not allowed to land however we were able to get close enough to clearly see the thousands of birds and sea lions that populate them.

We returned to Lima and organised our packs for our flight the following morning. We arrived in Cuzco around midday and headed to our hostel which is to be our home for the next two weeks. We decided to stay with a hostel that is connected to the volunteering organisation we will be with as some of the money the hostel earns goes towards the project. It's nice to know that we will be in one place for a decent amount of time and we have even somewhat unpacked - a real luxury!

Yesterday morning we had a meeting with everyone who is going to be involved in volunteering next week and the organisers explained everything to us. Each week day from 3 till 7 kids aged between 4 and 12 come to the centre and between 3 and 5 spend time doing art, playing educational games, doing their school homework and additional maths and reading etc. Then in the later part they are split into "families" according to their ages and each week there is a theme such as areas of Peru and each family prepares a performance for the Friday afternoon show. We went to watch yesterday and the kids did dances, sang songs and put on plays which was really nice to see. Most of the kids come from families where their parents don´t express love towards them and many of which are alcoholics. Because of this the school is trying to teach the kids that they are valued and there is the hope that through expressing love towards them - lots of hugs and kisses are given out - they will in turn grow up to be parents who respect their children and express love towards them. It looks like the next two weeks will be very rewarding and I´m really happy we decided to come here as it sounds like a wonderful project. After the show we headed back to the hostel to get ready for the weekly dinner/party that is held at a restaurant whose profits go towards the Yanapay school. Each week they have a dress up theme and yesterdays was historical figures - kinda hard to do with only the limited clothes in our packs! Mike however borrowed my hat and we drew on a french moustache and with a pencil behind his ear he was a french artist - he couldn´t decided which to be so was everyone combined into one! I struggled to think who to be but wore my red dress and made a crown and went as a pacific princess. It was a fun night as it was a good way to meet others. Tomorrow they also have a sports day with some of the older kids and a BBQ after so that should be fun.

As we only have to volunteer in the afternoon - we do have to do some lesson plans too - we have decided to do some Spanish lessons in the mornings. There is one company who does 4hour lessons five days a week which we are thinking of going to as we will be able to get a 5% discount. It will be pretty full on but definitely worth it. I'm finding that I am understanding more and more Spanish, and through picking up main words I can somewhat understand sentences. Speaking however is a lot harder but it is slowly coming and hopefully with some lessons and being around the kids it will improve.

As we didn't have school or anything today we went for a bit of an explore of the city and headed up a hill to one of the many plazas. I've been struggling being back at altitiued having headaches and feeling short of breath but as Cuzco is 3400m above sea level it is expected and should pass in a couple of days. We've been doing our food shopping at the local market, buying eggs from one stall, oats from another and so forth; it is definitely a more exciting way to shop than the supermarket and we even got to see some live and skinned frogs!!

The next blog may not be for a while but we will update you with how volunteering goes.

Ilona

P.S We are interested to know who is reading this so if we don't already know that you are please message us on Facebook or give me (ilonabrooks@gmail.com) or Mike (michael.leijh@gmail.com) an email. Thanks

Riobamba to Alausi to Cuenca to Vilcabamba to Piura to Lima

So the Nariz del Diablo was a bit of a letdown. After busing to Alausi from Riobamba, we caught the 11am train hoping to see some hair-raising railway action. The train ended up going no faster than 40kph and on a smooth, gentle track with only two switchbacks. I, myself was expecting sheer cliffs with 5 or 6 switchbacks, rocks falling around me and cloud hindering the conductor's view. But we got a clear day, a wimpy little hill and a camcorder rudely shoved in our faces by some dude who was clamouring over seats to get a better shot out the window.

Nevertheless, we came back in one piece (which was the main objective) and jumped on the first bus we could heading to Cuenca. An uneventful four hours later, we hopped off the bus and got talking to a nice girl from Liverpool called Jayne, who shared a taxi with us and eventually a dorm, when she decided to stay at the hostel we had booked into. That night saw Ilona cook up a great satay using yoghurt as a substitute in the sauce instead of coconut cream, which was a whopping US$3.79 (ludicrously overpriced, even by New Zealand standards). One thing that I quite like about supermarkets here in South America is that you can purchase bottles of spirits for very little (not that we have...). You can even buy a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label that is locked away in a cabinet for around US$300. For some reason, I have developed a great desire to acquire a bottle of the said variety, but alas, the little angel on my shoulder advises me otherwise, as does our dwindling bank balance.

The valley of longevity was our next destination, after a quick night's rest. Vilcabamba is a tiny little town in the south of Ecuador that has a large expat population and is famous for it's long-living residents. We stayed at a very luxurious hostel (more like a resort) called Hosteria Izhcayluma, where we had planned on staying two nights to relax, take things slow and prepare for a full week's travelling ahead. Riding on the back of a pickup truck between the bus station and the hostel, we got talking to an Irish fella who advised us that our current border crossing plan was inefficient and not worth the time. Another route to a different border crossing would be longer in distance, but shorter in time and would place us in a better position to continue our travels down to Lima at a faster rate. So we took his advice and booked another bus for two days time.

That night, we discovered that the room we had been given, which contained two single beds, didn't in fact contain two beds at all. One was, it seemed, a section of the floor that was raised and disguised as a bed, with the other not being much softer. Ilona could not find any sleep, so came over to my bed and climbed in, beginning a night of restlessness and little sleep(due to the hard bed and little space, not the other thing). The next morning, we asked to be switched to another room and were given a much more comfortable double bed that was conveniently located in the room next door. We had planned on going for a walk, however the rest of the day was spent lounging around in a half-asleep stupor, complaining of our back problems and fatigue, saying that all we needed was rest.

Massages were on offer at this hostel (or resort) for US$12, so Ilona immediately signed up for one on the first day we arrived for the morning of our departure, convincing me to do the same. I agreed due to the cheap price and the fact that we are on holiday after all, and carrying massive packs on our shoulders all the time was beginning to take it's toll. These massages proved to be quite nice for us both, but all of the masseuse's hard work was undone by our 8 hour bus ride straight afterwards. On a bus that took f o r e v e r to get to it's destination (according to me at least), we both developed upset tummies and further back problems, but managed to cross the border OK and end up in the Peruvian town of Piura at around 9.30pm. The town is in the middle of the desert and very hot, which didn't impress us one bit that we were back in the oppressive heat.

Our next day started early, with numerous rides on rickshaw-like mototaxis, which are basically motorbikes with a cab at the end. We booked an overnight bus to Lima, which is 15 hours away so we needed to kill 7 and a half hours in a town that offered little to tourists, especially since all of the churches (some of the only real sights) were closed. We did, however, visit a nearby town called Catacaos where we read that the largest crafts market in Peru was situated. This was still quite small, so we returned to Piura still needing to kill 4 and a half hours. It was lunchtime, so we headed to a restaurant that was recommended to us by our guidebook so that I could try a local delicacy called cabrito, which is baby goat - YUM! Ilona was craving fresh fruit, which is surprisingly hard to find in any place to eat in South America, as they just seem to concentrate on serving meat, carbohydrates and more carbohydrates. Salads or veggies are not high on restaurant's priority lists. Anyway, Ilona's cravings directed us to a cafe across the street whic was also recommended by our guidebook as a good place to get fruit salads, and it didn't disappoint!

With 3 hours or so still left to waste, we went back to our hostel to pick up our stuff and bum about for as long as we could, checking emails, facebook etc until 5pm finally rolled around. A short taxi ride later and we were at the bus station. Our bus was the most luxurious bus we had been in yet. We decided to treat ourselves with an executive bus as we were getting very tired of long bus trips and the executive bus was also leaving at a time that better suited us anyway. Where regular tour buses fit four seats in a row, this bus could only seat three as the leather seats were so wide. I could easily fit into one width wise, but due to the design, I couldn't extend my legs under the seat in front of me, denying me of an opportunity I had hoped to take of being able to extend my legs completely. Nevertheless, it was extremely comfortable (for a bus) and Ilona and I got the best bus-sleep we had ever had, albeit for a guy behind us who snored extremely loudly and sounded like he was choking most of the time. We even received dinner and breakfast on this bus, though Ilona found them both difficult to eat as they were both just like airplane food.

We reached Lima half an hour head of schedule, so we ended up arriving at our hostel at 9am; well before the designated check in time. Thankfully, our entire dorm was free so we could come in and settle straight away. We are at a eco-friendly hostel in the Miraflores district called The Red Psycho Llama that has half bath tubs as seats in some places and recycled cOKe bottles as chandeliers, which is quite cool. Our day today has been spent exploring our surrounding area, which is the metropolitan/touristy area of Lima and is very nice to walk around. We had lunch and dinners at nice restaurants, spending a bit more than what we should have, but that's OK as the food was very good. Lima is on the ocean, so there is a huge seafood dining scene here, which is reported to be some of America's best. New Zealand seafood is better in my opinion though! At least better than what we tasted today, which was at quite a nice restaurant on top of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific.

Mid afternoon saw us take in an ancient ruin from the pre-Incan civilisation (Incans built their stuff in and around the 14th to 16th centuries, whereas the pre-Incans were more like the 4th century AD) which was situated right in the centre of town, creating a very interesting contrast between the new and the old.

We are currently trying to sort our transport to Cuzco, so don't have any concrete plans as of yet, but we are needing to be there by thursday, so here's hoping that all works out.

Until next time.....

Mike.