Adventures on the West Coast of Peru!

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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 two other girls (Kristine and Christine) who are also learning Spanish and going to volunteer in Cusco, the program coordinator Kent and another girl named Rachel who is volunteering in an HIV/AIDS clinic here in Lima. Rachel actually lived with the same family I´ll be living with and has informed me that it´s an interesting house - apparently I´m going to be eating lots of cow hearts and intestines in the near future. The house in Lima is really cute and it feels weird to be in a foreign country and have a permanent-ish place to stay (compared to staying in a different hostel every day or two as I´m used to). We even have our own cook namd Lupe who makes local style food for us! Here, lunch is the main meal of the day and dinner is just leftovers.

I have Spanish classes from 9am-1pm Monday to Friday with the other volunteers at our house. There´s also quite a bit of studying involved for that, which makes sense I guess if I´m hoping to learn a new language in a month! At this point, I´d say my most frequently used phases are ¨¿Como se dice ____?¨ (How do you say ____?) and ¨¿Que significa ____?¨ (What does ____ mean?) Also, please note the awesome upside down question marks at the start of a question.

The whole studying and pseudo-school gig is also good because it´s making me feel like a student again instead of a lost soul wandering around.

Basically, my life for the past two weeks has been: Spanish class in the mornings and studying or exploring Lima in the afternoons and either chill evenings at home or going out (and do they ever go out here - even on a week night people will stay out until 3 or 4am...we did that for a Peruvian dance show last Thursday and it was good times). The dance show was interesting not only because of the fancy dancers with their incrdibly colourful costumes but also because of the audience! There were three live bands that played for the dancers and between performances, they played for the audience to dance to. Most of the people there were in the 40s-60s age range and they were dancing up a storm until we left after 3am on a Thursday night! It was pretty funny and also great to see - they were all having a fantastic time. We had a few pisco sours that evening, which is the national drink of Peru. Pisco itself is kind of similar to tequila and actually is rather disgusting but in a mixed drink is pretty good!

Speaking of drinks...here´s an example of how cheap things are here. We went out for beers last week and ordered a ¨pitcher¨which ended up being a 1.1L bottle of decent beer for S/.10 or about $3! That´s like $1 a beer!

Last weekend, Christine, Kristine and I took a little trip to the town of Huacachina, a five hour bus ride south of Lima. I had previously seen one shanty town when we went on our tour of central Lima, but the bus ride was pretty much nonstop shanty towns not to mention garbage lining the side of the highway, it was crazy. The homes were tiny and some were literally made of straw. Others were just four walls, without a roof, because it doesn´t rain in the desert. I´d been told over and over for the past few weeks that Peru is a really poor country but that´s been difficult to see when most of my time is spent in the rich areas. My eyes have really been opened to the poverty here - the main priority of most Peruvians is to simply have enough food for their family. It really made me appreciate how lucky I am to be able to travel down here and see other parts of the world because that opportunity is not available to many people. Even in Lima, with its free-for-all driving patterns, there are people everywhere either begging for money or selling random things. There are vendor carts with produce and snacks EVERYWHERE, and at large intersections, people will come out at red lights to dance for money, sell drinks, wash your car...you name it. The unemployment rate is pretty high here and the social services available are minimal.

Anyway, back to Huacachina. We arrived Friday evening to our hostel, Casa de Arena (house of sand) because the town is literally situated on an oasis in the desert. I´ve never seen a desert like that one before either - there were huge dunes as far as the eye could see (basically as soon as we left Lima the land turned to desert) that were bascially sand mountains. They say that BC has a desert in the Cache Creek area but this was more extreme, with basically no vegetation anywhere except near water sources. The hostel was awesome - for $7/night the three of us had a private room with our own bathroom (and it was all quite clean too!) and the hostel itself had a freaking pool along with a lovely yard filled with hammocks, puppies and a turtle. Not that I know what it´s like, but I felt like I was staying at a budget resort.

On Saturday, our new friends at the hostel Carlos and Sergio woke us at the crack of dawn (6am) so that we could travel to the Paracas Islands boat dock for a tour. As soon as we arrived at the dock I caught my first glimpse of PELICANS and went right over to visit them. They have HUGE beaks - I would not want to be on the receiving end of a peck from them. The boat tour entailed seeing a gigantic cactus in the sand like the Nazka lines (180m x 75m x 1.5m deep) that noone knows how it/they were created. Pretty cool stuff. Next, we arrived at the Paracas Islands, affectionately known as the Peruvian Galapagos! It´s nesting season now so there were literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of birds all over the islands (they were COVERED...and in the air and water). Among the birds were Peruvian boobies and more excitingly, PENGUINS! The penguins were small and few in number, but I absolutely loved them. There were also loads of sea lions - all over the rocks, in random caves, in the water, just everywhere. The boat went up close to some of the islands and I was pretty much face to face with a sea lion at one point. They´re super cute! Vultures were also spotted, which was wonderful.

The real kicker was when we returned to the harbour at the end of the tour...we saw BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS! I had asked the tour guide earlier in the morning about them and he said it was possible but rare to see them, however we were lucky and saw three of them!!! It was great. And THEN on the dock there was a boy with a monkey trying to get people to take pictures with it for money. I refrained because I´m going to be seeing loads of monkeys soon enough, but it was really awesome nonetheless!

That afternoon we went on a wine tour to this sketchy vineyard and also to Tacama (which I think is sold at home).

On Sunday we also got up reasonably early and went on a dune buggy to go sandboarding on the sand dunes! The dune buggy ride was crazy (and we didn´t even have one of the out of control drivers) - we were going down steep hills, racing through the desert, getting a bit of air off small dips and generally having a great time. Sandboarding was sweet - we were provided with boards and a piece of a candlestick to wax them with by hand and them laid on them facefirst to slide down the dunes, much like sledding in snow. Some of the dunes we went down were absolutely huge and so much fun!

Sunday night it was back to Lima and back to school...but only for four days because tonight we´re headed north to the mountains and Huarez! I´ll post stories about that upon our return!

Regading photos - many of you have probably already seen some of my pictures on facebook. Because I´m feeling lazy now and also because I have to pack and run out the door for the red-eye bus to Huarez, I´m going to leave links to the albums for people without facebook and not post new ones on here.

Mom, let me know if this works!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2222142&l=13905&id=21003528

and

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2222290&l=bc53d&id=21003528

Chao amigos!

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