On Boxing Day (wow I´m getting behind with this) I left La Paz for the second time and headed to Villa Tunari, a little jungle town in the middle of nowhere to volunteer in an animal refuge for two weeks. The organization is called Inti Wara Yassi (meaning sun, moon and star in the three indigenous languages of Bolivia respectively) which was started by one man and a group of street children he took in about fifteen years ago. Their idea was to rescue wild Bolivian animals that were being maltreated in captive situations and rehabilitate them as much as possible. [View Full Entry]

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Whoops, it seems I have been sadly neglecting this blog for my entire time in Bolivia (which is pushing five weeks now). I'll try to briefly summarize some of the escapades I've been taking part in the last little while. After finishing up my volunteer position in Ancahuasi I happily left Cusco December 12. My first stop was Puno, near the Peruvian side of world famous Lake Titicaca (or locally Lago Titikaka). Lake Titicaca is the highest ''navigable'' lake in the world, which is an extremely strange title in my opinion and after some asking, have found it to mean that [View Full Entry]

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Last week I finally saw Machu Picchu, one of the ¨New Seven Wonders of the World¨ and it was absolutely spectacular. I did a four day jungle trek with some friends to reach our destination and had a blast. I´ll attempt to summarize the awesomeness of that journey now. Day 1 - Mountain bike day! We descended over 3000m through gorgeous mountains shrouded in mist (this was a theme and it was just fantastic). It rained pretty much the whole time so we all wore ponchos and looked completely ridiculous. The bikes were rather poor, which simply made the whole ordeal [View Full Entry]

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Well, I´ve been in Cusco (think The Emperor´s New Groove or Inca Capital or oldest countinusouly inhabited city in South America or city shaped like a puma) for over three weeks and it´s high time I sent out an update! I have been doing lots of activities, thinking about many issues and generally experiencing countless new things, so be warned this is likely going to be long, but hopefully interesting. I´ve decided to include a summary at the END (so as not to spoil anything) so if you want the one minute read instead of ten minute read, scroll down. Volunteering: [View Full Entry]

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Last Friday afternoon I finally left Lima...for good (or until I return in February to catch my flight home). I was quite pleased because Lima and I didn´t get along so well. My ultimate destination over the weekend was to make it to Cusco in order to start actually volunteering in the Ancahuasi Posta (small medical clinic). I decided that since I had four days before I needed to start, I would make a little trip out of it and see some essential sites along the way. The first leg of the journey was from Lima to Nasca, a lovely seven [View Full Entry]

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Today marked the last day of my Spanish classes after an entire month. I can´t believe how quickly the time went by! I do feel like I´ve learned A LOT of Spanish and am eager to be more or less completely immersed in it so that my speech improves (I´m a visual learner and as such am fine with the written language, but speaking and listening/understanding is a bit harder for me). Last weekend the Ch(K)ristines and I went straight up the coast to an adorable little surfing town called Huanchaco. We didn´t do much there except eat a lot of [View Full Entry]

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Well, last weekend I went to the hot desert in Huacachina and this weekend it was the complete opposite, as Christine, Kristine and I went to Huaraz and into the mountains! We started the weekend off by going paragliding on Thursday afternoon in Lima. It was totally awesome to jump off a cliff and be sucked up into the air by the wind. I did some tricks swirling over the ocean and swooped precariously close to the cliffs, it was great. We left on a ¨red eye¨ bus ride at 10pm on Thursday evening and arrived in Huaraz at the delightful [View Full Entry]

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It´s hard to believe I´ve been in Peru for two weeks already! This trip is definitely feeling a bit weird because the first half of it is with my volunteering program and thus there isn´t that much travelling and exploring going on. On the flip side, I suppose I actually get to experience what life is like in Lima and will similarly get to know the ins and outs of Cusco when I go there in two weeks. Also, the whole learning another language deal is pretty awesome. I´m staying in the volunteer house in Lima for all of October with [View Full Entry]

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Well, I have arrived in Lima without any incidents! Ricardo and I even managed to go for a reasonably sketchy hot air balloon ride over Langley on the night of the 30th before I left. It was quite fantastic, and since we were an hour late it involved me scaling a fence and running across a runway to the balloon before they took off without us. Then we landed on a baseball diamond with children playing on it. Overall, it was fabulous. Yesterday I departed Vancouver for Toronto at 8am and from there flew to Lima, arriving at midnight local time. [View Full Entry]

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Hello friends! This is probably going to be my primary means of updating you all on my excellent adventures whilst in South America. I'll try to make a new post every week or two, internet availability permitting. The next post I'll be in Lima!!!! I can't wait! [View Full Entry]

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