KSouth

La Paz is very different from Cusco. It is a huge city with tons of traffic and people. Nearly every street is a market and you can buy absolutly anything you want. It also is a lot less touristy which is really nice. The food though is not that great. I have found a couple cafes with good sandwiches and some thai and middle eastern food that is good, but there are probably a million fried chicken places and some sketchy street food. The other day I went to El Alto, which is a couple miles out of La Paz and is the largest street market (black market) in south america. We walked for about three hours and never had to retrace our steps. I bought some new shoes for about 4 dollars. Once Sabine arrived ... read more

This trip started bright and early at 430am, we were picked up from our hostals and then drove 3 hours to our starting point. Here we hiked next to Salkantay Mountain (witnessed a HUGE avalance) and hiked uphill to the highest point of 4550m. I was feeling the altitude a little bit and it made me kinda nauseous, but after we reached the highest point the rest of the day was downhill into the valley where we were camping. It was a very cold night, and had rained a little bit earlier in the day too. I wore just about everything I brought to bed. But in the morning we were awoken with Coca Tea and had really good pancakes. The second day was the easiest day and we mostly continued walking downhill for 5 or ... read more

This past weekend I headed to the Sacred Valley, first stop in Pisac. Me and Jessica arrived and settled in and then I took off to Lamay to hike up to Huchay Cusco. The hike was about 1.45hr uphill (maybe the steepest part of Mt. Si the entire way!) but the views were amazing! You could see miles and miles across the valley (the pictures dont do it justice). At the top there were tons of ruins and I walked around those for a bit before heading back down. It felt so good to get a good workout in and to get out into the mountains. Pisac is a pretty small town and there isnt much to do at night, so we had some dinner (fresh trout), walked around, and went to bed. It is known ... read more

This past weekend was a lot of fun. I was able to get out of the city and enjoy the sun. On Sat me and a couple other volunteers went horsebacking riding around the Sacsayhuaman ruins. We saw the Temple of the Monkey and the Temple of the Sun/Moon. We also explored a ton of caves all connected to each other, but our "guide" (an eight year old boy) told us to just go up there and didnt tell us the significance. It was really pretty riding through the hills and valleys and we had a great view overlooking the city. Sunday 11 of us went river rafting down part of the Ollantaytambo river in the Sacred Valley. We rafted for about two hours and hit rapids up to class 3++. It was a lot of ... read more

This week I have started my volunteer project. Im volunteering in a small walk in clinic. It has a dentist office, general medicine, and topico area, which is were I am working. I am giving injections, cleaning and dressing wounds and removing sutures mostly. The language barrier is pretty hard to work with, but I am with several other volunteers that speak better spanish than me. The clinic here is very different from anything in the US. Gloves are barely ever worn (too expensive), the nurse never washes her hands, the patients bed and chairs are never wiped down, the sterile field is constantly broken, etc. Also each patient purchases all of the items needed to be seen (meds, needles, syringe, sterile gloves..) and brings them with them, they use all of the materials very sparingly. ... read more