Sacred Valley

The last 3 days were probably the best in all the time I've been here. Friday was a particularly successful day at the school. My first and only class for the day was with two other volunteers, and seemed to go very well. The class was quite small, only about 8 kids were there. First, we sang Heads and Shoulders Knees and Toes with the children (in Spanish!) and then, with the help of the teacher, we asked the children to draw people, because what do people have? That's right! Heads and shoulders knees and toes! As well as other things, which we later asked them about (is your person missing eyes? How many eyes should your person have?) At the end of the class we all sang the song again, before leaving to do some construction.

My job was cleaning the tiles in a new classroom. We had just put in the grout a few days ago, which now needed cleaning off. It was a bit difficult due to a lack of proper equipment. But not too long, the room looked quite presentable. A further feeling of satisfaction came when those working on the bathrooms declared it complete! This meant that in that week alone they had finished painting it, inside and out, lovely bright colours, they had finished tiling it, and the doors were on the cubicles, whereas at the start of the week there was only a bit of tarpaulin covering each toilet. There is even a shower! After our work the teachers ordered us to wait, wait, because they were baking bread in the school oven, which we had to try. We did this and then left with a great feeling of accomplishment! That night we celebrated one of the group's birthday by going out on the town, an intriguing experience as we somehow ended up in venues that seemed to have only tourists as their patrons. Not a very authentic experience, but for sure the ride there was, as at every frightening swing of the taxi, a number of cement blocks that were in the boot would topple around!

The weekend was also very enjoyable, involving a bus trip where we stopped at a number of Inca sites. We spent the night in a hotel in the Sacred Valley, which had... bliss... hot water, a bath, and a heater! Today, the end of the weekend, we drove to the top of a mountain where the Incas had constructed a number of sacred temples and walls and steps... yes, lots of steps... in fact, we walked all the way down this mountain (approximately 2 hours of work), down many many steps.

Incan Ruins (Saqusaywaman) and School

Natural 'slides'

An Inca tribute to water

Children at the school

Anali is very impressed that I now know her name.

The kids took my camera and took their own photos...

Some of the dogs look terrible... skinny, matted fur, missing teeth....

Let's learn about how to play with dogs, shall we? To start with, don't lift them by their heads!

Cusco

Lima and Cusco

I arrived in Lima on the 17th of May, where I met with some of the other volunteers who were already at the hotel. The next day we had a tour of the city, and we also where taken out for dinner by a pair of Peruvian brothers, who I had met the previous day. It was a very amusing night on account of the fact that neither of the brothers spoke english, while out of the 6 girls, only a few of us felt able to communicate. One of them called the night ´una aventura´- an adventure. We also met an english fellow who was dining alone, who later joined us at our table, making us 9 in total.

The next morning we flew to Cusco, where I met a friendly Puerto Rican/US couple who were celebrating there 29th wedding anniversary by travelling to Argentina and then Peru to see the Incan ruins, Machu Picchu. Once off the plane, I felt the altitude quite strongly, in that the air felt thinner, it seemed harder to breathe, and there was a kind of pressure in my head. But it settled down. The real challenge came today, when we went higher into the mountains to visit the schools where we will work. The children were incredibly friendly, rushing up and hugging us and grabbing our hands to lead us around. ´Hola amigas! Hola!´. We were treated to a few performances. In one class they sang us a song about a playful cat (in spanish) with the teacher accompanying them on the guitar. In another class, one little girl whispered to her classmates and they then also sang to us ´Hola amigos, como estan? Muy bien, muy bien!´ We then walked 20 minutes up and down hills, and across a stream which my foot fell in, to get to the next community where Peru's Challenge works. It was amazing to see the Andes all around, and the fields that were irrigated, and the women with their colourful native clothing walking through the fields, often with babies strapped to their backs with colourful cloths. It was definitely a struggle walking these paths though, especially at altitude. The return trip was harder, as it was mostly uphill.. but it's good practice for the Inca trek yet to come.

Viña del Mar and Valparaiso

Today I went on a tour to see two coastal towns in Chile. Valparaiso was the first one, a strange town with houses built quite higgeldy piggeldy, seemingly piled on top of each other up steep hills. There were a number of 'funiculators', like elevators that went diagonally up hills. The houses were brightly coloured but I couldn´t detect a particular colour scheme. The next town was called Viña del Mar, apparently THE holiday destination for Chileans and others during summer. Unfortunately my camera is out of battery and I didn´t bring an adaptor for Chile, so this will be my last post with photos probably until after the 17th of May, when I will be in Peru.

One of the curious elevator type creations in Valparaiso

This is why they need the elevator type creations...

Some sand artwork in Viña del Mar with the question 'do you want to go out with me?'

 

Dogs chillin' by the seaside at Viña del Mar...

An amusing thing...

Let me share one curious incident as I am waiting for a tour bus to pick me up....


I thought that my phone would be completely uncontactable, seeing as I brought it but didn´t do anything special to turn on 'roaming' etc.


But here I have received one extremely amusing and yet bizarre text, this is what it says:


'Hello Major: Hope you and family are having a good time. I do not miss you at all.
Anyway, enjoyself. Come back to have holidays at desk. Rgds. Boatperson'


And I did NOT make that up!!!

Santiago, Chile, 13 May 2011

I´m happily settled in my hotel in Santiago after arriving here yesterday. The flight to Auckland was quite pleasant, I was sitting next to a couple from New Zealand who helped me work out the video system. They made me feel better by saying that it had taken them about 30 hours to work out. Then I had a few hours in Auckland before the longer flight to Santiago (11 hours). This flight passed pretty quickly through a comfortable combination of sleeping, eating, and watching movies. I was sitting next to (well actually there was a free seat between us), a lovely lady from Chile. She talked to me for quite a while (in Spanish) about various things including what I should see in Chile and about her recent experiences in China. I was quite proud about the percentage that I understood (about 50%). All in all everything feels quite difficult without an extensive knowledge of Spanish, but I´m doing ok and I hope to understand at least 75% of what I hear by the time I leave.

Yesterday I did a bit of exploring and then slept for about 15 hours, waking up this morning to check out the hotel breakfast. It wasn´t too impressed... until I saw the bananas! Later on I went to a supermarket and saw that they´re about the equivalent of $2 a kilo.

I also did a tour of the city today, on my own initially, and then a guided tour in a tour bus. The traffic here is a very curious thing, firstly as a pedestrian it´s quite interesting that you don´t have to press any buttons for the man to go green, he does this automatically, clever guy. And in the bus I noticed that entire streets are dedicated to one direction. In order to go the other direction you basically have to keep going left or keep going right, to go round the block onto another street that will let you go in that direction. There´s a lot of beeping that goes on, and there are often people as well as stray dogs crossing the road. One dog tried to cross a very busy highway today, I felt quite afraid for him, but he decided against it when the cars started beeping at him. He seemed quite annoyed that he couldn´t cross and started barking quite heartily. There are a lot of dogs that wander the streets, sometimes in packs of 5 or 6. They don´t seem too unhappy, they look moderately well fed, and people leave them alone. I saw a few sleeping today (at first I thought they were dead but they did a bit of twitching), they choose funny places to sleep, like in the middle of the sidewalk

Here are some photos from my tours of the city. Mostly it is the architecture that fascinates me, as well as some of the vehicles ie. the coca cola van.

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1 day to go...

So this time tomorrow I will be, all going well, on the way to Santiago, Chile, where the weather will be a maximum 29 degrees minimum of 15 degrees, and "pleasantly warm", one website tells me. I have 5 days in Santiago with a tour where they will check me into a hotel (Best Western, seems they're everywhere), and take me around to the city and the countryside until I leave for Lima, Peru on the 17th of May. From Lima I will go on to Cusco, which will be my main destination until the 12th of June. Here I will be able to unload the donations I have packed for the school that I will be volunteering at. Thanks to the very kind donations from friends in Australia, I have bought such items as children's vitamins, exercise books, staplers, scissors and glue, gardening gloves, and hand wash and hand towels. And vegemite for a certain Swedish volunteer who has apparently become addicted!

5 days to go....

5 days to go and my excitement is overwhelmed by anxiety about how much I have to do. The last few weeks have been a mad rush of moving into a new house and completing 9 month's of uni work, the culmination of which sits demurely on my new armchair, waiting to be passed to my supervisor for his final approval, and then to the uni. It mocks me in its simplicity- there they sit, all 60 pages, multiple copies, on time, minimal mistakes evident with the printing... I feel sure a flood is going to rise up and destroy them before tomorrow.

As a result of the hecticity (I don't think this is a word, but it should be), my suitcase sits mostly empty, looking forgotten, open wide like the mouth of a giant beast, waiting to be fed. I've thrown it a few odd pieces, and they lie haphazardly over the sides and in the thing. It looks happier every time I toss it something. My To Do list spans several pages, incorporating such vague yet crucial tasks as "sort out money for overseas". I'm looking forward to the long plane trip as a chance to finally sit back and relax.