Moving to ventanilla

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Today ladies and gentleman I am both excited and aprehensive at the prospect of meeting my new family for the next 10 weeks. Later on this morning I will be moving to Patchacutec in ventanilla which is about an hours drive north of Lima, as explained in my last post it´s a daunting place.

The hot totally ran out in the shower as well, I just wanted one more hot shower before I go, but no luck!! The quality of the housing quickly detoriated as we moved out of Lima, when Shanty towns are initially setup they tend to be wood and cardboard, the next stage is a mix of wood cardboard and brick, then the final stage is brick with most amenities. Thus three stages. Well the nearer we got to Patchacutec the quicker the stages reversed from 3, then 2 and finally lots and lots of one!

There were quite a few gangs of middle aged men drinking heavily (10.30 in the morning) and making mucho noise. The infrastructure was visabily different as well. It was also extreamly sandy and dusty, its the makup of the land around here. Throughout the journey there we travelled uphill constantly and boy does the ocean look a long long way down now.

As we edged closer to our destination one of our team started to cry, I guess she was shocked about what she was seeing and what she had got herself in for, I think if you are not used to it then it will be quite a shock.

We initially met the area chief who gave us an almighty speech in Spanish, which was shortned to about 2 sentences by the interpreter (I love it when they do that)

Chief- ¨thank you for coming, I hope you can help us to help ourselves.........etc......10 minutes long.
Interpretation- ¨Hello, cheers everyone¨

I introduced myself in Spanish and met the people i´ll be staying with, Tom and myself went to the house and unpacked. We had a tour around and the toilet looks like its out of trainspotting, I think it actually might be, it also harbours a shower, which is a pretty horrible one and the chickens seem to always be in it........twats.

Its a highly humble abode, its really simple and one story, it has 2 bedrooms including ours and a corregated roof, kitchen and living room. I think its hard for me to percieve people living like this, I guess it takes some getting used too.

I´m dreading going for a shower or number 2, thats 2 things i´m pretty anal about I suppose. I guess its quite disgraceful of me. We eventually settled down to a silent dinner (neither can speak a language other than they´re own) Well I can constantly introduce myself in spanish?

Oh yeah, we saw a cock fight and placed bets, we also tried guinine pig, it was alright, the skin was pretty fatty though.

Ariba ariba.

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