Peru and Bolivia...summary

I started my volunteer placement with street kids in Trujillo, 7 hours north of Lima, on 29th December. This was the plan anyway until I got there and was told it was actually holiday time for another week, so I got to know (and mainly partied with) other volunteers whose number increased each day as they, too, had taken holidays to other parts of the country / continent. How lonely though, when I arrived there were just 2 other volunteers! So we met up with the ex-volunteers in Huanchaco, went to the beach, went out lots... till about 8th January when the kids came back to our centre and we started our work. I had never taught, only had A-levels so was really quite concerned about how I'd manage about teaching but it turned out ok in the end. Even though Spanish was my fourth language I somehow taught it to the kids, doing creative writing, dictations and so on. In the evenings we all taught English to adult classes. It was an amazing experience, an eye-opener and a real insight into the Peruvian society. Lots of kids came to our centre with clear marks of abuse from parents at home, negligence,

no care nor love. 13-yr-olds would come running up to the volunteers to get a hug as soon as they see us because they get absolutely no attention at home, or even worse, they get beaten, hit, abused. It was really difficult working with them thinking that individual contributions are so insignificant, but we did what we could do at the time to help.

After a month of teaching and spending time with the kids, it was so difficult to leave Trujillo..but nevertheless forced myself to go take the jungle trip (that sounds silly but I would have never left otherwise). So off we went, me and Gareth (another volunteer), bussed it to Tarapoto and Yurimaguas, then a boat trip to Iquitos, spending 2 nights at the national reserve in between. It was a fantastic experience but I did manage to get bitten 91 times. Cool animals we saw in the jungle include puma, all sorts of monkeys and lots more...tarantulas and snakes were deadly.

I wasn't really planning on going back to Trujillo after Iquitos but had a long weekend before I was to meet 2 of my friends to go travelling together, so I decided to make my

way back. Partied the whole weekend, but it made it so much harder to leave the second time as I knew I really wasn't coming back in the near future.

Ali and Jo flew into Lima on 9th February so we met up the next day. We ended up staying in Lima for 4 nights because I thought my Peruvian friend Antonio might come join us with the travelling down south of Peru, but didn't in the end. Went to do some touristy things there like the catacombs and the plazas but not much else apart from that. Next town was Nazca, took a flight up to see the geoglyphs which was cool. Arequipa was absolutely beautiful, we chilled around the plazas eating ice creams, taking it easy...then did a day trip to the Colca Canyon to see the condors and a tiny bit of hiking. On to Cusco, Machu Picchu (no inca trail as the path was closed due to wet season) - which we loved, did horse trekking around the ruins, great clubs by night. Some very amusing memories....from our drunken nights (always!). The last town in Peru was Puno, ugly really compared to Copacabana on the Bolivian

side, but we were recommended a family stay on isla Amantani so we did. The floating islands where the Uros lived was absolutely fascinating - where they built the whole island with post office, school and all with just reefs. They built their strong boats with the reefs too. I think they said they eat reefs too.

Into Bolivia, La Paz was big and vibrant and we went to almost all the markets...stayed in a gorgeous hotel for very cheap, went to nice restaurants (really roughing it weren't we) and just chilled generally as we were all quite ill. A stop-over in Oruro, where there was a festival (but we were all still ill) and I ate a burger which made me even more ill a few days later. We got to Potosi and wanted to do the mine tour next day but it was Sunday, and the miners weren't working..so waited another day, Jo and Ali went out while I slept to recover from my stomach bug. The mine tour was extremely interesting, they performed dynamite explosions a couple of times and told us about the appalling conditions of working in mines, but out of choice and probably a

life time job. Then I went off to Uyuni to do a day tour to the salt flats - which I regret not doing the whole 4 day one to see the different lagoons as people tell me that was the highlight of their trip. Next time.....really, because my parents now want to go to South America as well. But the day tour was still amazing. From there I took a bus to Santa Cruz via Sucre - change in weather as it's a jungle town. Lots of shopping, ice cream parlours and took a trip to a nearby town from where you can go visit the last site of Che Guevara. Again, I regretted not having enough time....

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