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