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.