Blogs from Peru, South America - page 1133

Hi everybody Everytime I do this, I have a hard time thinking of where to begin. I had my first class this morning and I thought it went really well. My Spanish tutor is in the class, and she kept cringing everytime I mangled a word in Spanish, which was often!! We had a good time, and by the end of the class I had 16 adults singing the ABC song! There are so many things to write about. Today´s adventure was trying to buy some real coffee. No Wegman´s, that´s for sure-took me 3 hrs. First walk 1/2 hr to the market. Second find the shop, named ¨New York Cafe¨. Then, listen while the proprietor lectures you (in Spanish, I´m only picking up about every 3rd word, but nodding and smiling) about the 3 kinds ... read more

Okay so i started my charity work 3 weeks ago but have been way too busy to get round to updating the blog, so here is a brief summary of what i have been upto here in cuzco: Firstly there are 12 of us aged between 17 and 24, 4 boys and 8 girls all from the UK other than one of the boys who is from the states. We are working in a boys orphanage located pretty near the centre of Cuzco (about 10 mins walk from the centre) that takes kids from ages 4 to 16, there are 25 of them. The work that we av been set is to renovate 3 bathrooms, putting in toilets, showers and hot water, and to completely re-do a massive games room (plastering, painting and designing the interior) ... read more

Huacachina is a small town close to Ica. It is an oasis in the middle of sand dunes, a popular place for backpackers and people usually go there for sandboarding and drives on sand buggies. And that´s what we did as well. It was amazing to see this large scale sand dunes, as there is in Huacachina, in Peru. When you think about Peru sand dunes is probably the last thing you would assume to see. We decided to go to sandboarding and sand buggy drive at the evening, so that we are able to enjoy the sunset. And what a drive we had. Our driver seems to be the most experienced one of the three and although we were going at least 80 kph we felt quite safe. We enjoyed from stomach aching downhills and ... read more

Some hundreds years BC the Nazca people created these lines and figures in the desert by removing the stones and revealing the lighter sand underneath. No one knows why. There are tens of drawings scattered in the desert: monkey, dog, condor, humming bird, astronaut, parrot, lizard, hands, tree etc. We took a flight for half an hour to see the lines from the air, since you can't really see anything from the ground. It is difficult to understand how and why Nazca people have created these figures and extremely straight lines, because they haven´t been able to see them from the air. One theory is that they have used ropes to scale up the smaller figures. They probably did them to please the gods during drought. Impressive anyway. ... read more

Time for another entry- I haven’t written since Wednesday because I have been really busy working on the English curriculum which I have to start teaching in a few days, and we just got what appears to be reliable internet connection here at the school yesterday. Presumably I am going to be able to get my own computer on line tomorrow. Well see. I won’t hold my breath! I have had 3-4 hrs of Spanish lessons each day, and have gone out to the big market a couple of times. What an adventure especially if you don’t speak the language! Today Roxana went with me to the market to show me where to get cheese, and it turns out there were about 4 or 5 big piles of it right in the aisle, I just didn’t ... read more