In hot water.

It's been a long time since I last wrote but I'm glad you're still around to read all about my adventures! There seems to be a bit of an issue with blogging. When I'm off doing lots of stuff that you might want to hear about, I don't have time to write about it but then when I'm just hanging around at home I have all the time in the world to tell you about all of the nothing that I'm up to. Well, as you might have guessed it have been an eventful last month so lets get started.

Three or four weeks ago a bunch of the people on the program decided to take a trip to Santa Teresa. Santa Teresa is a small town just outside of Machu Picchu where there are natural hot springs. We thought that the town was about 3 hours from Cusco so we hired a private van to take the eight of us there. This was probably our first and biggest mistake. The van arrived to pick us up over 2 hours late. We were all so stoked to be on our way that we jumped in the van. The van took us across town and then stopped. The driver turned around and told us that the van we were in was big enough for 10 people and we were only 8 so he wanted to pick up more passengers even though we had told them in advance that we were only going to be eight people. We argued with him for over an hour because the group had come to the agreement that we did not feel safe picking up more people that we didn't know. Finally we agreed to pay him a bit more money so that we could go. Six hours later we arrived at the hot springs in Santa Teresa. It was 3am so we went into the hot springs compound to set up our tents. Oh, I guess I didn't mention we were camping. The guard told us we would have to pay in the morning which was fine. We spent the rest of the night swimming and hanging out around the pools, enjoying the fact that we had finally arrived. The next morning we all woke up happily in our tents. That is until we stepped out of them. It turned out the with all of the still water there were an INCREDIBLE number of mosquitoes! They're not like mosquitoes in the States though (you know, that ones that don't like deet) and when they bit you they would leave behind small spots where you would be bleeding. The counter-attack to the mosquitoes could only be to stay in the water all day which I really must say was no burden at all. The water was warm and the pools had a natural pebble bottom. Eventually two of the boys and I needed a pool break so we ventured to town. It was about 5 kilometers to town. (You'll see these same boys ending up in a lot of my photos. There are only three boys on the trip and these are the two that I always travel with.) We arrived in town and sat down for a good meal with a monkey came running our of the restaurant, playing with some kids. Turns out this monkey really like me!! We got to play with him a lot before our meal came. He was super cute and probably the highlight of the weekend. After our meal and some monkey time we went back to the hot spring only to find out that a morning guard had sold us fake tickets! Luckily the regular staff understood and didn't make us pay again though I will say that from what I gathered talking to the day people, I think that the night people have some sort of scam going on. I say this because later in the next day, as we were packing to leave, the guard who had scammed us came back over with a new woman from the front desk to say that we needed to buy more tickets. Of course we told him that there was NO WAY we were giving him more money after what had happened to which he tried to legitimize himself with this new woman. Anyway, point of this bit is the something funky is going on in Santa Teresa. But anyway, we made it home safely and a little wiser to boot.

Alright, now might be the time to take a breather, go to the bathroom and or get a snack. Something of an intermission. The next week we had a couple more days off and just like that we were on the move again.

At 2pm, one Wednesday afternoon Caitlyn, Kyle, Juan and I got on a bus headed south of Cusco to a town called Tacna. We were headed on an 18 hour journey first to Tacna, a small boarder town and then across the boarder to Arica, Chile. The first bus that brought us to Tacna was a lot of fun. We had come well prepared with snacks, blankets and games to play to pass the time. A great thing about this bus was that it had 2 levels. We got to sit up front on the second level which meant that we got massive windows with panoramic views of the Peruvian countryside.

We passed a lot of villages (if you can even call them that) that consisted of little more than a couple of adobe houses with some fields being plowed by oxen and no electricity or indoor plumbing. I spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to live somewhere so isolated. What do they do with all of their free time? What about a night after the sun sets? What do they eat? What do they talk about? This has been a topic that has been swirling around in my head ever since and I'm still not sure how to answer it. I've been trying to figure out how to spend some time in a rural village at the end of my program to get my questions answered but as of yet I haven't been able to figure out how to do that. It seems that they must have different concepts or feelings about time in general but especially about free time. I find myself occupied pretty much every day from morning until long after dark but if I simply couldn't do anything after dark. . . . what would I do? It's something I'll have to spend more time thinking on and get back to you.

We arrived in Tacna at 6am, grabbed some breakfast and found a cab to take us the two hours across the boarder. We passed through customs without a hitch. The smoothness of this journey was a welcome change to the previous weekend. We arrived at the bus terminal in Arica and asked where the main plaza was. The man we asked just looked up, pointed at a cliff that overlooked the town and said the plaza was below that. We figured we had been in a cab long enough so we started walking. We found a hostel right by the center of town call the Surf House. It was perfect because they had a kitchen we could use, internet, a ping pong table and most importantly a clean room the four of us could share. Another great thing they offered were surfing lessons! Two of the people in the group could already surf and then me and one of the boys had never tried before. Did I say that Arica is a beach town? Well, it is. Early the next morning we go up for our surfing lessons and I must say that I was a little bit nervous. I was scared that the board would pop up, hit me on the head, I would pass out and drown. Fortunately you already know how this story ends. I do not drown, yay! Surfing in the Pacific, if nothing else, was a really cool experience. The waves were amazing and I had a great time paddling around. What I wasn't so great at was the standing up on my board thing. I did manage to get up on my knees though. I was proud! Overall we had a great time surfing and ended up taking off our wetsuits at the end and just playing in the water.

That night we enjoyed having our own kitchen and made ourselves dinner. I think that many of the volunteers have been experiencing the same, unexpected desire to cook our own meals. All of our host families have been wonderful to us but sometimes you just want to eat what you know, cooked in the way you like it. Our host families have been so nice though that they want to do everything for, especially cook for you!

We met some really nice American girls studying abroad for the semester in Arica. They invited us out with them that night to show us around the town. It was a great night to be in Chile because the Chilean soccer team was playing their last qualifying game to go to the World Cup finals. Chile won, 3-2 and the streets went wild. People screaming, instant parades of cars and people flooded the street. We even learned Chilean soccer chants.

CHI-CHI-CHI
LE-LE-LE
VIVA CHILE!

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