Advice to Future World Travelers

I guess we never officially told you guys that we're home safe. We are! I moved back to Charleston this past Thursday and Krista heads up to Vermont next week. We're missing each other like crazy, slowly adjusting to our independent American lifestyles, struggling to answer questions like "Was it amazing?", "What was your favorite part?" and, in my case, "What are you doing now?" so excuse the nervous giggles and/or blank stares while we figure out the answers to those questions....

Anway, thank you everyone for the thoughts, prayers, and emails throughout - it was a wonderful trip, logistically everything went so smoothly, we learned so much about other cultures and more about ourselves, and for those of you worried about our health from the first few blogs (sorry for being so graphic!!), we came back in ship shape, even a little more round and rosy than when we left!!

To give ourselves a laugh during the trip, we kept a continuous list of things we wish we'd thought of, might have done differently, and/or did (without too much thought but much benefit) for future world travelers! I hope we've inspired some of you.... it's not all puking and haggling :-)

Here they are:

1. Print business cards with your name and email address on it for people you meet in passing, so much easier than finding scrap paper, pen, and rushing to write your email while a train is pulling out of the station...

2. Check the seasonal weather in all destinations i.e. don't go to India in June if you can help it. ha
It's impossible to be in every country during their most beautiful season, but it is possible to be a bit more prepared

3. 1 good wrap (sari in India, kikoi in Kenyan) is a very handy item to pack. Can be used as a wrap, scarf, sheet, napkin, pillow, tablecloth, picnic blanket, towel, cold compress, bad smell blocker...

4. Make sure your watch is waterproof and sunglasses are cheap.

5. Start the trip with a real holiday like relaxing on a beach in Costa Rica rather than in the middle of the city of Lima so you have some time to adjust to being away, but not shocked into it.

6. Change continents to keep things fresh - we talked to a lot of travelers just visiting Southeast Asia and they said that although it was cheap, all the countries and experiences started running together.

7. Go to the dentist at least a month before you leave so you have time to get any work done!

8. Really don't drink the water! A good investment is a super duper water filter that plugs into the top of a reusable water bottle (I can't remember the brand, Krista help!). It saves a lot of toothbrushing agony and saves the expense and extra garbage of buying bottled water all over the world...

9. Carry around a palm-sized spiral notebook that's not your journal to scratch notes and directions, etc.

10. Bring face wash pads and or wipes instead of bottled facewash - you don't need running water to wash your face!

11. Eagle Creek packing cubes are AMAZING!

12. Always clean your underwear in the shower, especially if you're in a warm climate where they can dry - it's always the first clothing staple you run out of!

13. Budget for domestic travel which can be expensive.

14. Do volunteer while you're abroad- it's a quick way to see a culture from the inside.

15. Do not eat all street food! You have to try some, but try to go to stalls that look clean and well-attended by locals with their children and other tourists.

Bye for now....back to real life.

With love and dreamig of future adventures,

Cate and Krista

We're coming home.

So, Cate and I are in the Seoul airport having completed the first of our 12+ hours flights to get home. It's a bizarre mix of emotions, which we have decided when combined with very little sleep last night mostly just leaves us feeling numb! Ha. But lots of sadness, gratefulness, reflection, excitement, awareness, and surrealness also.

We had a good trip up the rest of NZ...the glacier hike was beautiful and we had a hunky Maori guide who looked like a Disney hero.
We then drove up the stunning west coast to Punakaiki where there is a Pancake Rock formation and stayed there for a night. We walked on the beach looking for greenstone, or jade, and out to the rocks, which are layered stacks of limestone, in the morning. Then we made it through Marlborough. the wine country, stopped for one wine tasting and stayed the next night in Picton because we'd missed the last ferry to the North Island. It'd just like to state here for the record that NZ has the most pimped out hostels in the world (we can make statements like that now being world travelers and all)...there was a hot tub in Picton and we got free chocolate pudding and ice cream!
We got the ferry in the morning and started a mission of a drive up to Whitianga where our friends Sarah and Juddy were at Juddy's family's beach house! Totally sweet. On the way we lunched in the hip area of Wellington (like the village in NYC), stayed a night in Taupo (which is surrounded by steaming hot springs that smell like sulfur), and stopped for the world's biggest hot chocolates in Rotarua (seriously, it was served in a soup bowl). It was pretty exciting to see Sarah and Juddy after 3 years! They had a couple of other friends staying so we had dinner and drank lots of wine and played a card game called 45's (For the Buckley family, it's like Euchre on crazy pills!). The next day we ((very)briefly) ran into the freezing ocean then checked out the much photographed Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach, where geothermal hot water comes up through the sand! Today we got up at 3:45(!) to drive to Auckland to catch our flight here and we after a 14 hour flight tomorrow we will be back on American soil for the first time in 5 months.
Just wanted to send one more post from the road. I'm sure we'll post a few more times now that we'll have regular internet access(!) and will post some links to photos etc., so keep checking but just wanted to say thanks for following along throughout this trip. It truly has been incredible, and we'll try our best to accurately convey it to you when we see you. :)
Love and adventures,
Krista + Cate

Down Under!

Down under looks pretty much on the up and up after the rest of our trip! We've battled through a strong dose of culture shock (we can drink the water?! the shower is hot?!) and have had an indulgently enjoyable couple of weeks in Australia & NZ! Highlights include:

*Marveling at the amenities of the Seoul airport on our layover- free showers and TV rooms!, a Smoothie King!, and even southerners (Cate met a girl from Spartanburg in the airport!)

*Being picked up in Sydney by Cate's parents' friend, Averil. Such a luxury and no haggling for taxi prices.

*Sydney was gorgeous! Coastal walks along Coogee and Bondi beaches watching surfers.

*The Opera House at night, the Taronga zoo with a view of the harbor, walking around markets.

* Walking past the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, in the botanical gardens.

*Meeting up with my friend Mike, from Sydney, for a drink and then reuniting with Flynn, an Irish friend who hiked Machu Picchu with us and happened to be in Sydney also!


Onto New Zealand, where we jumped to Queenstown to meet up with my sister, Marissa, for a week!

*Seeing my sister after 9 months of not seeing her and 5 months of not seeing any family was pretty exciting!

*Also meeting up with my friend from high school, Stephen Downey and his wife, Rachel, who have moved to NZ! Pretty awesome to reconnect with people in crazy places.

*We took a cold, but beautiful trip to Milford Sound, skied through a cloud at Coronet Peak, Marissa and I bungee jumped 134m (amazing!), survived a pub crawl, danced the night away a few times at Winnie's, the bar where Marissa bartends, attended the 'Top Bloke' contest which is basically a 'Mr. Queenstown' contest complete with a talent portion and hilarious choreographed dances.


Now we've taken to the road with our rental car to make our way to Auckland where we fly home from on the 16th!

So far we've hiked the Franz Josef Glacier and stayed at some pretty pimped out backpackers hostels (complete with hot tubs!).
We'll try to post one more time before heading home!
xx k+c

For Kathleen, our number *one* and only supporter

Thanks for reading our blog and knowing how to comment on it!

We spent a week in the hippie Himalaya oasis of Vashist outside of Manali, hanging with Argentinians, hiking up waterfalls, yoga-ing, gawking at drum circles, taking baths in the hot springs, and just enjoying the view. Were very sad to leave.

After an overnight bus and an overnight train, we are back in Mumbai, where it's cooler as the monsoon has arrived (not nearly as scary as it sounds, more of a drizzle), awaiting an overnight plane to Sydney and the last leg of our trip. :(

We will be in Sydney Friday morning and are admittedly both glad to be getting back into first world territory - most excited about drinking water straight from the tap, reliably safe public transport, well and MARISSA!

Report soon from Down Under!

xx

Apparently 46 Celsius is 115 Fahrenheit.

It was hot. Real hot.
But also unbelievably stunning, serene, magical.

Golden Triangle

We've been in India for about a week and half now and have already seen a good bit of the Golden Triangle!

We moved from steamy and humid Mumbai where we spent a day at Elephanta Island, had a fancy dinner near the Racecourse with one of Krista's dad's friends from business school, and starred as extras in a Bollywood film to Udaipur where we saw a beautiful sunset from the Monsoon Palace, watched a late night screening of James Bond's Octopussy (a majority of which was filmed in Udaipur), played dress up with saris and were convinced to have some Indian clothes tailor-made, to Jaipur where we took a day break from the bustle at an organic farm, read our books and paddled in the half-full pool and then had one day touring the Pink City with a rather incompetent, but well-meaning tour guide. Highlights included Mantar Jantar, one of the largest and most well-preserved astrological parks in India, and seeing Dr. Vinod Shastri for a palm reading and astrological charting (after the guru that our guide took us to tried to sell Krista a pendant to unblock her heart shakra(?!) and made me cry!) Looks like according to the stars both Krista and I are going to have long, happy lives filled with travel - let's hope he's right!

Yesterday, we spent the day in Agra. We were both feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the heat and victimized by pushy and somewhat mafioso drivers/tour guides/shop owners, but a late afternoon and sunset at the Taj Mahal was a cure-all. The Taj really is the jewel of India - more beautiful and grandiose in real life than any photo or postcard can portray and a calming aura with the pristine white against a stark bright blue sky pervades which is refreshing after the mishmash of colors and sensations of the Indian streets.

We got into crazy Delhi late last night and are staying in the Tibetan refugee area of town having our own little refuge. It turns out that, at least in India, Krista and I are country girls! Doing some maintenance today- emails, postcard writing, uploading photos - and are excited to head north to the hill stations of Shimla and then Manali tomorrow morning where the temperatures should be less than 46 degrees Celsius (we're scared to look up what this means in Fahrenheit, I think over 100!) and perhaps do some hiking and, if I can convince Krista, some yoga.

Namaste!

Charmed Indeed.

Having sundowners at Shaba National Park, Kenya.

New continent. New internet connection. Maybe a chance at posting pictures...let's see if our charmed streak is still going...here goes nothing...post!

Charmed

Think my dad termed it "charmed", but K ingeniously called Delta and we got put on the Nairobi direct to Mumbai flight, leaving 24 hours after we were supposed to and arriving in Mumbai 3 hrs after we were originally scheduled to. Effectively we saved 21 hours of travel time and ourselves the hassle of going back to Europe to fly to India. We're pretty happy little bunnies about that!

Arrived in Mumbai at about 3 o'clock in the morning and it felt like we were arriving on a tropical island - hot, humid, and lots of buzz, even at that time.

Made our way to the hotel in Colaba (I told Krista it felt like the taxi driver was driving in a figure 8), showered, passed out, woke up, and we just had our first authentic Indian meal. Pretty yummy, wish us luck with the digestion process.

More from Mumbai when we get out of this internet cafe and look around.

xx

Mumbai express

Krista now has important things to do at internet cafes like find housing and scholarships for next year, so you guys are stuck with me, really just trying to look as busy as she is!

We fly out of Nairobi tonight via Paris (and now it looks like Amsterdam thanks to last minute changeroo from Delta) to Mumbai. We'll be in Mumbai for three days and headed north toward the Himalaya's pretty immediately as India in June is supposed to be in the high 90's!!!!!

We both struggled to say goodbye to our projects. I cried and Krista almost cried which is pretty indicative for both of us! Looks like K is planning on coming back with a "blitz" team next summer, so she's pretty pumped and passed out stamped envelopes to her kids so they can keep in touch and remind her how inspired she was once upon a time, while studying away in snowy Vermont.

On Saturday morning we headed north to Isiolo on a series of matatu's and then hitching on a 1940's Land Rover which was in pretty bad disrepair, following the vague, but trustworthy advice of Lali to go and see her mom who was temporarily managing a game reserve in Shaba National Park.

We met up with Lali's mom, Sue, who is very obviously Lali's mom by looks and charm, and had two nights at a game lodge more beautiful than anything we could have imagined leaving Nairobi on Saturday morning. Joy's Camp http://www.joyscamp.com/ was such a treat. We had the most spectacular room overlooking a watering hole (we gave each other high fives upon entering!), had three successful game drives, ate a series of delicious three course meals and closed it off with a spectacular sundowner session on the last evening! We then got a ride back to Nairobi with the Austrian ambassador to Kenya and his wife (other guests at the lodge) stopping at a gorgeous little restaurant called Tree Trout, a tree house over a trout farm! We both felt pretty glamorous for a moment- so funny to be dropped back off in Lenana slum yesterday- but we definitely had the perfect Africa send off.

We're somewhat well-rested and ready for our next adventure. Krista has kicked the malaria, a blood test this morning confirmed it. I'm battling a little tonsilitis, but that's easy so hakuna matata (which is swahili for no worries!).

Love to everyone and asante sana to our hosts in Kenya!

xxxx

A funny story from class today

The kids that I'm working with are all 4 and 5 year olds, pre-school age. I've really been enjoying it because they are all very sweet and very starved for affection, so just giving a squeeze, a pat on the head, or high five feels like it's having some effect. Too, they're at the age when concepts like ABC's and 123's are changing from something they've memorized or sung about to useful tools and every once and a while you can catch the smile or the proud gleam in an eye when it's clicked that they can read a word, add two numbers, or understand my English instructions (all of the kids speak Swahili at home and many live with grandparents who speak no English).

All that said, the school is in desperate need of supplies. Much like the school that Krista mentioned in her post, there is no running water and just about one pencil per child. The kids love using molding clay because it's creative and interactive, but it's expensive here so, filled with energy and ingenuity and aided by our host family's cute kids, Morgan, Maureen, and Maurice, I decided to make homemade play-do, printed a recipe off the internet, and made great big batches of pink, purple, blue, and green play-do.

Last night it was looking pretty good, but this morning after I passed out a hunk of play-do to every kid in the class (about 40!) I realized that it hadn't really set, was too wet, and stick-to-your-hands-impossible-to-roll-or-rub off. It could be washed off but have no running water!!!!!!!

The play-do stuck to everyone's hands. All the kids panicked because the dough was not coming off. We had tears from the youngest ones, lots of hands in the air pleading "teacher, teacher, help", play-do stuck to the desks, hanging in kid's hair, and very eventually we had laughter...

Anyway, Teacher Cate (as I'm called) if I'm not being called "muzungu" (white person) by the cheekiest kids made her first flop as a teacher today. Tonight she's going to add some flour to the mix and hope that works, but if anyone has any play-do insight, I'm all ears!

MALARIA!

Krista has just been diagnosed with Malaria to add to the thrills so send her lots of sympathy! She's a trooper! xx

Chasing Cate and Krista

*So, since our last comprehensive post...we went to lay by that pool, but it was cold. Apparently fall arrived in South Africa three days after we did! This was definitely another set back in our return-to-the-states-way-tan-to-make-everyone-jealous plan.

*Went to a benefit dinner organized by C's aunt Diana's family friend. It was delicious Italian meal, complete with a grappa tasting that benefited the Starfish Foundation. After the dinner we stayed with C's godmother Karin, who's a little fireball with more energy than the both of us combined, and her lovely husband Loew, as a closer launching off point to explore Cape Town. We woke up early the next morning to tour Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 16 years. We were about to load into the car when due to the early morning combo of malaria pill on empty stomach and eating yogurt K threw up. (The tally is currently C=75 and K= 10, K is gaining on C with much thanks due to doxycyclin!)

*Anyway, K toughed it out, Robben Island happened and it was amazing. Nelson Mandela and many other important political prisoners were imprisoned there (including our guide!) for much of the apartheid era in SA. It's nickname was "the university" because it became such a breeding ground for ideas about how a new South Africa should be run and even an opportunity to implement a more socialist and anti-segregation lifestyle model.

*We spent four days with C's gran in Simonstown braving the bold wind and hitting all of the highlights - Boulders (where the Jackass Penguins were full swing in mating season), Cape Point, Gran's favorite fish and chips restaurant, a picnic at Nordhoek, a visit to Uncle Peter, and interminable amounts of tea!

*We got brave and independent (after being mollycoddled by family for over a week) and hired a car for a week. Krista drove.

*We drove to Rawsonville where C's aunt and uncle have a beautiful vineyard. http://www.eensgevonden.co.za/Farmstead.html. We had some nice dinners and discussions, a long walk up the mountain, and an early(ish) jump into the swimming hole.

*We then drove to Wilderness on the Garden Route for two nights at a backpackers hostel on the beach. Here we picked up an adventurous, good looking, hitch-hiker-picking-up Brit and exemplary third muskateer, Max (or Maxine if you'd prefer!), who came with us canoeing and canyoning (they call it kloofing in SA) and provided us with this fun clip: http://gallery.me.com/yatesmax#100106

*We drove back to Cape Town and convinced Max and Sonya to climb Table Mtn with us which was steep, but well worth the effort and intense organization by all family members! To celebrate, we went for lunch at fancy Camp's Bay and then said sad goodbyes to our new friends and the beautiful city.

*Had a final dinner of Aunt Diana's delicious babootie, packed up, slept one last night in our borrowed house, and grabbed an early morning flight to Joburg.

*Spent the day in Joburg (very last minute, thank you for taking us) with Martin family friends - the Osborne's. Had time for a flick ( the new Hannah Montana, very soul nourishing, a bit homesick making, and completely age appropriate!) and a lovely steak dinner with Richie O and all his very important banking friends.

*Began an epic trip to find Laura Henson, Peace Corps volunteer extraordinaire, in Vilankulos.

*Took an 8 hr. overnight bus from Joburg to Maputo, Mozambique (a pretty sketchy thing to do in Africa apparently), a 11 hr. chapa (or chicken bus) from Maputo to just outside Massinga where the radiator burst. Charmed a NGO worker into giving us a lift into town where the triumverate of super PCV's saved us, fed us avocado sandwiches (much needed), taught us a few new GRE words (we knew most of them coming in) and were our guides to hitching in Moz.

*That said, we hitched the remaining 4 hrs in the back of police truck hitting or swerving to miss potholes approximately every 6 minutes while super Ali tried to convince the interested men in the front that all the girls aboard were married and super Chase and super Pat read difficult books in Portugese.

*Arrived in Vil, elated, and went straight to the beach.

*Spent night grooving with Peace Corps Mozambique volunteers who were preparing for Beach Beer Olympics the next day.

*Missed a majority of the Olympic events the next day due to a pre-arranged and fabulous snorkling trip.

*Joined BBO in the late afternoon, joined in the reveling of the volunteers still standing, and added a few interesting competitions of our own - the shimmy competetion, the pick-up-the wallet-on-from-floor-dance competition, and the midnight-swim-with-the-phosphorescents- who's-in?-competition.

*Played a pretty intense game of beach volleyball, had a delicious dinner at an oceanside resort, shopped the markets for our own kapalanas with Laura as a trusted guide, and left a little sad to say goodbye.

*Another chapa, punctuated by a lovely dinner with super Ali in Maputo, another overnight bus back to Joburg, a rearranging of bags in Joburg and a flight to Zimbabwe where some faulty landing equipment gave Cate a bit of a fright and Krista a reason to open her eyes for a sec and hold Cate's hand, but clearly proved to be ok.

*Arrived in Harare, picked up by C's cousin Christy and daughter Keira. Dinner with the whole Martin brood at Murray Martin's house. An evening pick up of the effervescent and good looking Mr. William Cathcart, Jr. who seems not to be bothered by his 24plus hr trip.

*A day of planning and recovering followed by a long weekend in Mana Pools, a game reserve in Zimbabwe, with a group of good people. Highlights include a hippo in the camp on the first night as Will is stubbornly taking off for an advised-against night walk, an elephant walking through the camp midday strikingly close to Cate alone in her tent, many scary animal-attack stories and delicious dinners by the camp fire, and some good animal spotting. Check out Will's article for the Charleston Mercury. http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=12145ed645d300c9&mt=application%2Fpdf&pli=1

*A sad farewell to Will, a day of K shadowing C's uncle, the now infamous Dr. Kevin who delivers babies by torch light and looks up surgeries he's never done online before performing them, and C visiting Aunt Gill's schools.

*A terrifying Air Zim flight (at a very low flying altitude) to Victoria Falls preceded and delayed by an official Zimbabwean welcoming ceremony to some Asian dignitary on the tarmac!

*Two days at a cool backpackers in Vic Falls, a risky canoe trip down the Zambezi on the lookout for lurking crocs and hippos the whole time, almost running out of money and not being able to use any ATM's in Zim as they've just switched to the US dollar and don't have enough currency, a flight to Nairobi where we're safe in the ghetto with a Pentecostal preacher as a house mom and projects that we're thrilled with!

More anon....

Help Wanted!

So the volunteering has started in earnest, and I think someone in Zimbabwe best described the difference between Africa and the rest of the world as:

In Africa you're a free-range chicken, and everywhere else you're in a cage.

Meaning there is more danger, but also more freedom. And in the case of this volunteering placement, there is more chaos, but more opportunity to really make a difference.

In Peru, I was slotted into an already established system. Granted it was a system that needed an overhaul, but that wasn't going to be achieved by me in 2 weeks, so I used the time to learn, observe, and give them another pair of hands.

This placement, however, with the Local Aid Organization (actually their official name) is much more...entrepreneurial. As Cate said, we're living and working in a slum (more on that later), and many years ago two women from this community started reaching out to people in the community with HIV/AIDS. Josephine, a social worker, and Elosy, a teacher, both eventually quit their jobs to do this full time. It's a grass-roots effort on their part and in my opinion the best kind of aid since it comes from people within the community who are familiar with its people and challenges.

Their outreach has come in many forms:

• Counseling women with AIDS
• Home visits to make sure the women are ok, have food, and are taking their medication
• Working on starting a clinic in their office so people can receive treatment without having to pay to get to the hospital
• They started a school for orphans, kids with HIV, and other kids that have fallen through the government's school system since there aren't enough schools and the fees are expensive.
• Started a bead making program where they sell necklaces the women have made to give the women some income and to help pay the rent on their office ($75/month).
• Running workshops on business management and providing care for HIV+ children.

So, I've spent the last few days going on home visits (by 'home' I mean 10x10 tin-roofed shacks that house families of 5), teaching health and hygiene to the kids at the school (hard to tell them to brush their teeth twice a day when they don't have toothpaste!), and talking to Josephine and Elosy about what their priorities are and what they need.

I was planning on emailing my friends who have worked in development and with non-profits, but realized I should send this out to everyone because the more minds we have working on this the better! What the women have already accomplished is amazing, so we're just trying to figure out ways to sustain what they are doing and implement their priority programs. So if you have any ideas, please post them on here or email me at: krista.buckley@gmail.com!

Bead Program:

They'd like to have a way to sell these necklaces. Most of the local places charge a large percentage that makes it impractical to use that avenue. If anyone can think of specific groups that are already selling crafts made by women in Africa please let me know.

Other Income-generating schemes:

Their aim is to make these woman as self-sustaining as possible, so they are always looking for new incoming-generating plans like the bead program, especially since so many other groups are making necklaces also. I know it's hard from there to imagine what enterprises might be possible for this women, but throw your ideas out there! Some other things the women do are knitting sweaters for school uniforms, selling fish or groceries, etc.

Sponsoring a child:

We'd like to set up a website, either an independent one or through an established charity that already links donors up with children so their school fees can be paid. There are only 2 government schools for the well over 100,000 people in this slum, and they charge $63 a term which many people can't afford. So there are many 'informal schools' like the Glad Kids School that have sprung up to fill the gap. Glad Kids, which currently has 70 kids enrolled from ages 3-14, only charges $15/term but many kids can't pay their fees. We'd like to have the fees paid so that the teachers can receive a little stipend because it's hard to retain teachers very long on a volunteer basis. If you know of any website designers that would make a website for free for an NGO/charity let me know! Or of a good established one that might be taking on more students to sponsor!

Porridge Program Donations:

Many of the kids who go home for lunch don't actually get any food, because there isn't any. So they are trying to set up a feeding program so they can give the kids porridge once a day (I tried it last night...frankly I think I'd rather go hungry, but the kids seem to love it!). Someone in the community has donated the corn meal for the first term, another lady has given them an extra pot to cook it in, and I'm planning on buying the coals for cooking it and the bowls to serve it in tomorrow for the first month (it's about $100 to feed 70 kids lunch for a month). If you're at all interested in helping with that you can donate on our website: cateandkrista.com. I know most of you have already supported us a LOT, so no pressure, I just thought it would be a very direct way you could literally help feed a child if you were interested and I'll try to post some pictures when the program starts next week.

Sister School:

Ideally, for a sustainable way to support the school and the porridge program, I'd love to set it up with an elementary school in the US. The school is like an expanded version of the tin-roofed shacks with three classrooms and an office. They don't have running water or a kitchen to cook in (current plan is to cook porridge outside). So those are two improvements they'd like to eventually make happen, but they also struggle with daily issues of some kids not having any shoes, not being able to afford books, etc. Setting them up with sister school could ensure donations of old books, equipment, etc from US schools and also start a cross cultural understanding- so the kids in the slum in Kenya can see that there is another way to live and the kids in America can see how lucky they really are! Lots of schools already have this set up, but I thought I'd throw it out there to see if any of you guys knew of a school that might be interested.

Ok, I'm going to go now because I've somehow found the most expensive internet cafe in Africa, but we'll fill you in our adventures (and misadventures) we haven't posted about yet soon. :)

Much love!

Safe

We're safe in Nairobi, living with a lovely host family in what GVN aptly called an "urban slum". Internet in Africa has been patchy. In fact, electricity has been patchy, but we are alive and safe and happy! We survived two twelve hours chapa rides (some people call them chicken buses) in Mozambique, a rather harrowing flight to Vic Falls on Air Zimbabwe, a four day camping trip in a National Park in Zim, Mana Pools, where elephants came very close and Will tried hard to get himself killed, and canoeing on the Zambezi (avoiding crocs and hippos!). Volunteering starts tomorrow! I'm going to be working at an orphanage and Krista at a local HIV/AIDS clinic, outreach center. We'll try to report back as often as possible. Much love. xx

Catch us if you can.....

So this is what we have been doing since the last post (which we realize is a while ago, sorry!)-

*Eco-village in Bolivia where we were shown around by an ex-model, ex- rock star and his Russian cohort! Bonfire highlight and the architecture was like a dream sequence from a Tim Burton film.

*Blitz trip across Bolivia including back-to-back overnight bus from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz and overnight Death Train from Santa Cruz to Corumba, Brazil.

*Being questioned about the Dengue Fever outbreak in Santa Cruz when we arrived in Corumba of which we were completely oblivious and are luckily Dengue Fever-less.

*An introduction to Brazilian buffets (a very popular phenomenon in Brazil) and an early evening boat trip into the Pantanal where we saw some HUGE herons and a crocodile!

*Bus (another one!) to Campo Grande on which Cate lost her sunglasses, we found a highly recommended pizza restaurant and, much to the waiter's disbelief, polished off a large pizza with lots of strange toppings including boiled egg.

*Had our first American food meltdown and went for chocolate shakes at McDonald's which was more luxurious than any McDonald's in the US and was highlighted on a Campo Grande postcard (clearly there wasn't much to do) although with more time and money Campo Grande and Bonito nearby are both good jumping off points for Pantanal adventures and pink dolphins, etc. Next time!

*One more overnight bus, just for good measure, to Sao Paulo.

*Trek through morning rush hour in a city of 11 million people to a farm outside of the city (area = Mogi das Cruzes) via subway, train, bus, a nice old farmer named Euripeydes who put Cate's pack on his bike (and still thinks we're French), and a car full of bananas and kids that took us the last few miles up a quite steep dirt road, and a hike up a mountain (still with bags) to what looked like an unfinished building with no electricity or plumbing.

*Said unfinished building became our home for two days and we loved it.

*Sitio Sao Francisco is the permaculture farm of friendly Brazillian farmer and civil engineer, Felipe Pinheiro. We found it through WWOOF, a website that sets people up with free room and board on organic farms worldwide in exchange for work.

*Krista, an Egyptian dive instructor named Raheen (I'm not sure if this is how you spell it, but he thought my name was Jane the whole time!), and I jumped in on Felipe's life and helped out where we could, painting beams for an office under construction, consulting on sign placement, meeting his suburban parents, filling in holes in the dirt road, organizing two rooms of the house for a workshop he was having the next week, and our personal favorite, cooking for the group with the weird and wonderful ingredients (mostly grains we'd never heard of).

*Highlights of the farm - eating honey straight out of a hive, Krista (initially afraid of bees, having to move said hive out of living room when bees swarmed it), showering in a freezing stream, Cate using a composting toilet for the first time (discovering that composting toilets are more sanitary than all the toilets we used in Bolivia), surviving a midnight ant march across our bed (Raheem's genius solution of water bowls at the foot of the bed), AND eating fruit that drops straight off the trees!!!!

*Krista's birthday where we were rewarded with a trip to the beach! Felipe's parents had a beautiful house and with the forecast calling for good surf it was easy to convince the boys to leave work behind.

We swam - the water was warm like South Carolina, but the waves were huge.

We ate - We cooked a whole fish on a banana leaf (with the eyes still in) and were pretty proud of how it turned out, (also made a choc cake!), and then Felipe's friend, the Russian fisherman,
showed us to really cook a fish the next day. It was by far the most delicious seafood Krista and I have ever had.

*Headed back to the farm with a dinner stop at the roadside "Corn Palace", serving all things corn: corn on the cob, mashed corn, corn JUICE (gross), etc, etc.

*Sadly left this idyllic farm to brave SAMPA, the bustling metropolis where we, pretty bushwacked, were picked up by dad's lovely friends Claudia and Christian.

*Spoiled rotten by Claudia and Christian for two days. Lived in one of their daughter's lovely rooms with lovely shower(!), ate so well - mostly buffets and to a famous Churrascaria where Krista proved her worth as a carnivore, went to the MASP (Museum of Art Sao Paulo) and the Ibirapuera or SP's Central Park, and hung out with their oldest daughter and boyfriend who showed us where cool kids drink and gave us a brief car-tour of the city!

*Flew to Casablanca via Paris, trained to Marrakesh (had running after train, leaping in moment) and spent four blissful days in Marrakesh at Riad Doha.

*Seduced by the souk (or market) we bargained very hard for Berber carpets, colorful lanterns, leather bags, and some beautiful boots.

*Choosing to spend travel money on stuff, rather than food, we ate in the Jemaa El Fna, the main square, every night where at six pm about 40 food stalls set up and sell traditional Moroccan dishes like tajine, couscous, snails, and sheep's brain (mostly sticking to the first two!)

*We took a day trip to the Atlas Mountains where we visited a traditional Berber house, a women's cooperative producing Argan oil products, and hiked up a waterfall in the Ourika Valley (a popular getaway destination for people from Marrakech because of the cool air and beautiful views).

*Visited the beautiful Majorelle Gardens, made famous by Yves St Laurent and ate a fateful piece of street coconut.

*Packed our bags (which had pretty much doubled in size) and made our way to Casablanca for the night.

*Cate spent night puking up everything eaten after fateful coconut while Krista tried to sleep as the next day was our biggest travel day yet. Such bad timing.

*Tried not to puke in taxi to airport, success. Tried not to puke at check in line at airport, success. Tried not to puke when explaining to airport pharmacist about ailment, failure.

*Got diagnosed with septic stomach (sounds worse than it is) and got pills, I'm mending.

*Made it to Paris, rushed through airport to make last boarding call for flight to Amsterdam.

*Arrived in Amsterdam at exactly 4:20 and giggled.

*Spent the night in a lovely hostel called Flying Pig Downtown.

*Had delicious vegetarian meal by the canal and a nice stroll home.

*Managed to wake up at six (Thanks to lovely Will's wake up call) and get flight direct to Cape Town where Mom met us. Yay - a mom!!

*Just so mom could get a feel of what Krista's been going through, I managed to puke one last time our first night in Cape Town. hehe

*We had a lovely day at Pringle Bay at my godmother's house. Jumped in the freezing cold ocean, had tea with mom's friends from childhood - very enlightening!!

*Had Krista's first proper South African braai thanks to Uncle Trevor!

*Got day-tour of beautiful Cape winelands, lunch at Franschooek, drinks at Buena Vista Social Cafe, and a round of drinks and life advice at Uncle Trevor's bar.

*Brunch at Rhodes Memorial and a topless bus tour of Cape Town (the passengers weren't topless, just the bus), a stroll along the Victoria & Albert Waterfront, tea with Granny Mac, and one last family dinner.

*Said bye to mom this morning, got to sleep in (finally!), and are headed to the pool now that we've updated you people!

Much love and promises to be better. Sorry for the lack of updates. There was a lot of travel, puking, not much internet in Morocco, and really, really confusing Arabic keyboards!

One month and 1 day!

Last minute change to our travel plans, we`ve decided to postpone our death train experience til Friday. We took a bus to Cochabamba yesterday and are headed to a really cool ecovillage called El Poncho just outside of town for the night. You can check it out here.

Salkantay & Machu Picchu: Part 1

Our Machu Picchu adventure started the last Friday of our volunteering. My good friend and super intrepid traveler, Susannah, joined us in Cusco to hike to Machu Picchu. We had a fancy dinner (I had alpaca!) overlooking the Plaza de Armas to welcome Susannah and celebrate our time in Cusco. After dinner we met up with Mariluz and her daughter Gabi who I worked with at the clinic along with a couple other volunteers and went dancing at a local bar.

Saturday saw us (unsuccessfully) trying to track down Susannah´s luggage which was hanging out somewhere in Mexico City, booking our bus to Bolivia for when we got back, and getting things organized for the trip...complete with a brand new Peruvian wardrobe for Susannah...yay llama socks!

And now, go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, snuggle up in a comfy chair, because this is gonna be a long one. I give you ¨Survivors of the Salkantay¨.

DAY 1

The trek officially started on Sunday morning at 4:30am when we got picked up outside our house. We hopped in the van, slightly bleary eyed, as the van swerved around the narrow Cusco streets picking up 13 other equally bleary eyed passengers. We had a 2 hour bus ride to our jumping off point, Mollepata, full of nodding off, hairpin turns, and looking at the beautiful sunrise. In Mollepata (2830 meter elevation) we had a half-awake breakfast trying to get to know the other 13 people in our group, plus Eduardo and Mariluz, our guides. We purchased our (much used!) walking sticks, some last minute supplies, and started what we would be doing for the next 4 days...walking! The hike started through a forest with fresh air that felt like an early summer morning in Georgia, and it was good to be free from the choking exhaust of the city. We stopped a couple of times to take off layers, drink water, apply sunscreen, or learn about local plants. We had one temporary mishap of losing our main guide Eduardo for about an hour, but reconnected and stopped for lunch with a pretty stunning vista. We had porters who led the horses that carried our tents, sleeping bags, etc. And cooks that led the horses that carried our food and somehow conjured full meals, complete with soup and tea, out of what was on the horses backs.

After lunch we kept climbing in altitude. We were well above the tree line at this point, working our way through some very Lord of the Rings-esque landscapes. Mountains hid in clouds with glacier-fed rivers running down them all joining together to form a tumultulous Rio Blanco barreling through the valley. Susannah started to struggle a little with the altitude. Cusco is over 11,000 feet and we were headed up to over 15,000 feet at the base of Salkantay, which is higher than any mountain in the continental US. So with only 2 days of acclimatization, it was a super human feat for her to even be walking up a flight of stairs, much less up a mountain. She was a trooper though, and we just kept trekking. About an hour and half before we made it to our camp for the night, it started to rain. Like "it´s rainy season in South America" type rain. The kind that soaks you even though you put on the $2 plastic poncho you bought that morning. We finally made it to our camp in Soraypampa (3700m) and all crammed into the lean-to´s trying to find our bags with dry clothing, hang up the wet clothing to dry, and generally control shivering (did I mention it´s cold at high altitude?).

We got our tents situated for the night during a brief hiatus in rain, then crammed back under the lean-to´s for hot chocolate and popcorn, which we scarfed down like pack of ravenous dogs. Then we waited...and got cold...and waited some more...for dinner. To Cate´s credit she tried her best to buoy the group by getting everyone to tell where they were from, what they did, who their boy/girlfriend was at the age of 15, but we were a pretty miserable, cold, hungry, tired group. A couple gave up on dinner and headed to bed. When food did come 2 hours later, it was devoured in silence and then we all crawled into our tents praying for them to hold against the rain.

DAY 2

I´m not sure how much anyone slept that night. Most people´s sleeping bags got wet and Susannah was fighting the effects of altitude sickness all night (i.e. nausea and vomiting, because someone must always be hurling at all points on our trip :), but the morning was beautiful! It´s something else to wake up and upzip your tent and find yourself face to face with snow capped peaks settled in a valley with a running stream and wandering horses. Plus we got pancakes for breakfast! We packed up and Susannah opted for riding the horse, as today was our toughest hike up to the base of Salkantay. And they weren´t messing around. Our first 30 minutes were straight up hill, but it took us to a plateau where we got our first glimpse of Salkantay. It means ´savage mountain´in Quecha and it looked pretty savage indeed...craggy and imposing and covered in snow about to avalanche. No one has ever successfully summited it.

We kept going with the uphill through some pretty intense switchbacks which when coupled with the altitude meant lots of stops, chewing on cocoa leaves more than a redneck chews tobacco, and just putting one foot in front of the other...slowly. The scenery was amazing though. Eventually we planed out into a grassy meadow strewn with huge boulders and a glassy, serene little pond. We stopped for a while so we could regroup and eat something, then started the final push to the base of the mountain. We finally made it to the last of our uphill walking! The base was a jumble of rocks looking up at the huge, snowy monolith. Our guide hadn´t been able to see the top of the mountain for the last 5 months of leading this trip, but the clouds cleared and we got some stunning views. We took pictures with the elevation sign and left our offerings to the god of the mountain (all praying for no more rain!) and headed down (blissfully).

We descended into something that felt like a sacred valley. Flanked by mountains reminiscent of the Scottish highlands with rivulets of water running down them, it looked as if a group of giants had left in the middle of a game of marbles with the biggest boulders I´ve ever seem lying around the soft green valley in what seemed like casual significance. We (and our knees) worked our way down to the valley floor and walked along a river, by llamas grazing, to the lunch spot. Having already done a good 6 hours of hiking, we all napped in the sunshine as we waited for the rest of the group and I stuck my feet in the icy cold stream.

On the way down we´d noticed that Susannah had fallen behind a little with Marilu, the guide, as she´d decided to walk the downhill section. However, unbeknownst to us, altitude sickness doesn´t care if you´re walking uphill or downhill! And poor Susannah had pretty much passed out at some point and then had to lean on Marilu the rest of the way down the hill. Luckily once we saw them from the lunch spot, the guide sent one of the porters off with the horse to fetch them. Unfortunately, when Susannah was riding back, the horse did not so much want to cross the stream and reired back knocking Susannah off! Somehow, I´m not sure how she did it, she managed to joke about all this during lunch. Recap: altitude sickness, nausea, vomiting, not being able to breath, passing out, bucked off a horse, and still social and making jokes. Like I said, most intrepid traveler I know.

After lunch we had 3 more hours of hiking as we got back below the tree line and into the jungle. At one point the trail was so muddy from the rainy season that for about 400 meters we were jumping from rock to rock in the sludge pit, kind of like that game you would play when you were little where you put pillows on the floor and jump from couches to pillows to chairs but can´t touch the ground or the alligators will get you. It was fun. :) Our assistant guide Mariluz kept assuring us that we were álmost there´and it was ´just around the corner´and the camp finally did appear just before twilight started setting in. We set up our tents on a green plateau that jutted out overlooking the lush jungle and waterfalls falling into the river below. The bathroom at this stop was accessed through the muddy (´that doesn´t smell like mud´) pig-sty, which provided lots of slippery entertainment after dark! As twilight faded into darkness, we realized that Susannah, her ´mighty´ steed, and Eduardo, the guide, still hadn´t made it to camp. Apparently they had to navigate the last part of the narrow path carved into a hillside on a finecky horse with only the help of a headlamp. So Sus can add that to her list! Once they made it though, we had our popcorn and hot chocolate ´happy hour´, waited for dinner, ate, and crawled into our sleeping bags, praising the gods of Salkantay that it wasn´t raining.

DAY 3

I´m not sure if I mentioned this before, but the organizers of this trip had ingeniusly realized that the only way to lure us out of our sleeping bags at 5:30 every morning was to have the cooks come around and knock on our tents (in as much as one can knock on a tent) and offer us piping hot mate de coca. Ingenius. After that we would rustle around, sometimes changing our clothes, mostly just wearing the same dirty things, and pack up for another day of hiking. Then, the only thing that would actually get us to emerge from the tents was the allure of a hot breakfast. They had me pegged I tell you. We all felt a lot better this morning after some sleep in dry tents at a much lower altitude, so Sus bravely opted for walking. The hike planned for the day was 6 hours through the jungle, which was gorgeous...lots of rivers, waterfalls, fruits, plants, butterflies. I´ll try to include a picture of the bridges we crossed. At one point there was a gorgeous new suspension bridge spanning a river, and then underneath was the Incan version we crossed, which was comprised of two big logs filled in with a bunch of sticks. The whole group had to stay together today because apparently with all the rains there had been some rock slides and a group had recently slid down the mountain (dear mom, please ignore that last sentence. love, your totally responsible daughter :) ), but it was actually really nice to have everyone together after we had fragmented the day before due to very different climbing speeds.

It was a relaxed, beautiful hike. The main excitement came when we reached a group of workers rebuilding a bridge that had been washed away by the rains. The river at this point was frothy and fast, so we couldn´t just cross it and the workers had only gotten to the ´put down two logs and about 4 of the sticks´stage of the Incan bridge building. So. We had to cross it. The best part of this whole endeavor was that no one said anything about it! Everyone played it totally cool and walked across the balance beam bridge pearched over the rushing river as if this was something they did every day. For me, it really underscored the whole endeavor of this trip...there was no other way across this river and I was responsible for crossing it, myself. There were no safety nets, no way to negotiate other options...

TO BE CONTINUED....

***We´re about to catch a flight to Morocco(!), but hadn´t posted in so long (largely due to a stint on a farm with no electricity) that we thought we´d leave you something to read. The rest of this epic post will be added as soon as possible! xoxo k+c

We´re alive, just lazy.

We survived the Salkantay (the alternate Inca trail route), Krista is writing more on this soon, and we´re expecting a guest post from Susannah who was a trooper and joined us on the trail without having the two weeks in Cusco to acclimiatize to the altitude (which turned out to be a very helpful thing for Krista and I... still feeling bad about that, Sus), but we´ve left Peru and the comfort of Ana Maria´s home behind and taken to the road. Successfully crossed the border into Bolivia after an overnight bus ride punctuated by an early morning combi ride. K had to fork out a large chunk of cash (apparently since Evo´s been President all US citizens have to pay $100 at the border despite what Lonely Planet says). I got by with my Irish passport but did have to spend sometime justfying a South African birthplace and American accent in bad Spanish to a rather militarial and unhappy official.

We spent three days in Cococabana on Lake Titicaca, the largest lake in the world at the highest altitude (I think I have my facts right here!) It´s a cute little bohemian town and on the first night we hiked up the hill overlooking the town and watched the sunset over the lake, had dinner at The Cupala, the nicest place in town, (don´t worry it´s all Boliviano´s so I think we had a bottle of wine, steak, and choc fondue for under $30 total).

On Saturday we woke up and took a boat across to Isla del Sol which according to Incan myth is the birthplace of Incan civilization. It´s a beautiful, very slighly inhabited island in the middle of Lake Titi with a number of Incan ruins and terraces of crops. We hiked to the south of the island and then back to the north toward an enigma of a hostel that Krista´s guidebook had recommended because of the good food and owner´s interest in sustainable development. After many reassuring, ¨poco poco¨ just around the corners from the in awe locals (the native language here is the indigenous amayru (sp?) not Spanish), we found the hostel as the sun was setting, but it seemed abandoned. All was dark, the kitchen was locked, and no one was anywhere to be found - just a few kids´ clothes hanging out to dry on the fence. Luckily, the rooms were open with beds made (!) so K and I made the executive decision to eat some crackers that we had bought for the boat ride for dinner, get in bed, and see what the morning brought. About an hour later two precious little girls, their mother on their tail, knocked on the door and made our unofficial crash, much more official with a delicous trout dinner and some peek-a-boo.

The next morning, I woke up spewing from all ends (think I was being punished for a piece of lettuce that I ate the day before) so we took pretty slow. Took a row boat to the north of the island and Krista bravely hiked to the northernmost Incan ruins while I lay on the side of the trail and got all kinds of sympathy, odd looks, and magical nausea-reducing herbs from the locals and tour guides walking past.

We met some nice American girls on the boat back to Coco and ended up having dinner and going to a little local beach party with one of them and with a local dreadlocked bar owner/bartender in Amsterdam who´d warmed to Krista (and her almost dreads) earlier in the day.

This morning we left Coco and after a relatively painless bus ride (thanks so some incense burning, music playing Argentinians who sat in front of us) we made it to La Paz this afternoon. La Paz is kind of wild and a little overwhelming after the peacefulness of Isla del Sol and Coco. It´s the capital of Bolivia with over a million people. The drive in was incredible as the whole city is in a valley surrounded by mountains with the buildings slowly creeping up the sides of the mountain. We walked through the main Plaza and the witches market (where one can buy dried llama fetuses and all sorts of cocaine by-products) and up to the main market (where one can buy anthing imaginable - lights, toilets, locks, shoes) and we felt very local.

More anon. I think ("I think¨ because we´ve now entered the blank portion of our intinerary until April 4) we´re headed to Santa Cruz on an overnight bus tomorrow so we can catch the ¨Death Train¨ into Brazil by Wednesday. Then planning on doing some WWOOF-ing volunteer work on a farm in Brazil (with a very friendly farmer named Felipe) for a few days before heading to stay with Dad´s friends in Sao Paulo, so we´ll try to keep the blog updated, but think it will be a lot of travel time and the farm has no electricty.

Oh and my tummy is ok. Krista´s a good doctor. xx

Llama Mamas!

We are off to hike Machu Picchu for 4 days, but we left you with veritable essays to read, so we´ll post again on our return.

Catch you on the flipside!

xo

k + c

Casa de Chicas sin las famillias

The above is not the name of the place where I volunteered- I never quite knew the name. It´s sort of a butchered Spanish version of what the home was - a house where girls without suitable families could come for food, shelter, some schooling, and the support of the ¨Mamas¨ (three little Peruvian ladies - the grandma, the sporty (v. competitive) one, and the young one who spent the nights with girls), the ¨Misses¨ (us, the volunteers!), and most importantly each other.

Everyday for the last two weeks after my lunchtime siesta, I told the taxi driver ¨Plaza Modena circa el cemetario" (which does mean near the huge town cemetary) and then on the right hand side of the plaza in the middle of the strip of ladies selling beautiful flowers there was a 7 ft door (huge by American standards, gigantic by Peruvian ones) that I knocked on or, the few times it was working, rang the door bell.

For two weeks, I felt nervous at that very moment. Partially because I spoke absolutely no Spanish even after two weeks of classes (I told Krista that my brain feels more like a rock and less like a sponge daily) and just because everyday I didn´t quite know how the afternoon would go. Would the Mama Psychologist be there talking to the girls while I listened on, struggling to understand words like ¨self esteem¨in Spanish (apparently ¨autoestima¨), would the girls be involved in an epic game of volleyball which I would inevitably have to join, or would all the girls be waiting with their notebooks and dictionaries, ready to learn, and prepared with pages of sentences needing to be translated into English? Everday was a mystery.

Anway, despite the confusion (some I attribute to a bit of disorganization, some to the culture, and some to the communication difficulties) here I was a let into the lives of ten special little girls who, for some reason or another, had run away from their families.

Here are the names and a little description of each of the girls, mostly so I´ll remember. It´s still amazing to me what you can glean just from body language and general demeanor without being able to communicate much verbally and being from totally different countries, cultures, perspectives, and stages in life.

Shirley - who ruled the roost, bossed the other girls around with an iron fist, but gentle smile and pretty much did whatever she wanted. One of the only girls who could get away with teasing the Mamas.

Albina - one of the older girls who was tiny, with a mane of long hair, and terribly shy, but would grab my hand and pull me over to the English translations what she was working on out of a colorful little primary book.

Guadeloupe- the goof. Always asking if I brought candy and frequently staring up at the sky with a dazed look in her eye.

Vanessa - the brains. Used to being the best in the class and not needing much attention, but every once and a while surprising me with a charming question.

Ruth - something a little naughty about Ruth, but her English (and her French, mind you!) were impeccable if you could con her into saying something.

Leonarda - another one of the older girls who struggled with English as her native language was Quechua (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua) and who would wander off, lost in her own thoughts, a little sad, but would always respond to a hug or a shoulder squeeze.

Yaneth - Shirley´s protege - young, but tough and also a native Quechua speaker. My lasting memory will be her serving a volleyball with a whole lot of power straight at me (already established as the worst player of the group and an easy point-builder) and saying ¨Miss, Contesta??¨. Oh yes and she´s missing a front tooth - this is important for the last image. :-)

Elsa - If you are allowed to have favorites, she was mine. Always looking out for me with a shy smile and a little tear in her eye that broke my heart when we said goodbye yesterday.

Lidia- knitting whiz kid. (They were in fact all good knitters, but I think Lidia knitted at least one sweater and one scarf while I worked there.). This is important because part of the goal of the house is to make the girls self-sufficient and perhaps where they haven´t had the opportunity to get an education and may not be able to do any further schooling, they´ll be able to use skills like knitting and cooking to make money in the future.

Rosemary- my dancing queen. For two of the days, when life just got too serious, we had afternoon dance parties. Rosemary, who the girls called Mery, was my most adept student and taught me a few moves, too. Something we had a lot of fun with.

The circumstances behind each of the girls being there is still a little unclear- in bits and pieces I got a few details over 2 weeks, but it would have taken a lot more time to gain the girl´s complete trust. I know that a few were physically and-or sexually abused by fathers or husbands and while it wasn´t always so obvious from the outset, each girl was dealing with issues too complicated for young girls to have to deal with.

Too, I think there was a little bit of a stumbling block in that these girls had seen a myriad of volunteers who come in and out for a week or two weeks at a time. And, like any good teenagers, they´d learned to work the system - asking me for photos to be developed, a new volleyball, and a trip to the pool, etc. (the first two of which I obliged!), but I realized, a bit too late and despite the warnings during our orientation, the valuable thing I could provide was my time and energy.

That said, it´s frustrating that I don´t have more time and in a perfect world I´d be fluent in Spanish, but I feel like during the time I was there I made them giggle, gave them some much needed affection which does, I hope, translate into confidence, and hopefully, hopefully they´ll remember an English word or two and maybe a recipe to chocolate chip and banana pancakes.

Clas Ttio

Sam and I outside the clinic

That´s the name of the clinic I´ve been volunteering at for the past couple weeks (thanks to many of you wonderful people!). I´ve been thinking a lot about how to sum up my experiences there. The interactions, lessons, and revelations are varied and intense. Mainly though, I´ve learned a lot, met some amazing people, and filled in some much needed man-power.

The clinic I´m working out is a state-funded, low-income health clinic. The government provides universal subsidised healthcare (People with no income are subsidized 100% by the state. In addition, those who make less than S/. 700 soles ($220) per month only have to pay S/. 10.00 for SIS coverage.) for its citizens, but many opt out for better, private healthcare provided by their employment packages.



The things I noticed when we went to the clinic the first day were the lines and lines of people waiting to be seen, the flies in the open air waiting room, and the fact that there was no soap or toilet paper in the bathroom (standard for Peru, but this was a clinic!). I had been prepared for less than stellar conditions, but seeing them in real life and trying to imagine that this was your only option for healthcare, was a harsh reality.



My first week there, I was stationed in the social work office with the tough-love-mama social worker Mariluz and her 17-year-old-bubbly-med-school-bound daughter, Andrea. There is no computer in the office (I´ve only seen one in the whole clinic so far) only $.20 notebooks with handmade columns, so there was plenty of paper work I could help them catch up on. It was a good place to be for the first week, getting my ears accustomed to the cacophany of Spanish, learning how the clinic and healthcare system ran, and putting together a bunch of paper work to sign up senior citizens for a support and social group.



Most of the people coming into the office were applying to receive SIS, the government insurance. They went through an application with such questions as: do you have electricity? do you have a radio? Do you have a refridgerator? Almost unimaginable questions to us. I´m pretty sure if they had a TV that put them in the elite bracket. A lovely trend I noticed was the gratitude many of these people had for Mariluz´s help in securing healthcare, they would give all of us big hugs and sometimes return with some home cooked bread or treat from a street vendor. Whatever the social work office lacked in technology to an extent it made up for with true human interactions.

This second week, I´ve been in ´Triaje´. When people come to the clinic, they line up to get a number. then they line up to come through Triaje to get their vitals (height, weight, blood pressure, pulse, and temperature) measured, then they wait for their number to be called to see the doctor. I was in charge of taking everyone´s heights and weights...so far, no one, man, woman, or child, has been as tall as me. Did I mention I was a giant in this country? It was good to get to interact with patients though. I love the idea of getting to take care of people and while it was a little frustrating to not be able to help as much as I wanted with the language barrier and my lack of training, it got me excited about the next 4 years at medical school and beyond.

It was also frustrating though, the thermometers used are glass ones that are marginally sterilized in soapy water that has been sitting there for who knows how long. The taking of the blood pressure was the rate-limiting step that had sick people waiting in line outside the door for 30 minutes because there was only one person taking it and it sometimes didn´t work. I worked for a couple days with 2 Peruvian med students who were there on one of their rotations and they were wonderful. One explained (in Spanish) to me how to take blood pressure during a slow time, and I got to quiz them about the med school process, the healthcare system, and their opinion of the clinic. I asked if they thought it was lack of man power or lack of equipment and resources that kept it this way, and they thought lack of organization.

I had to agree. Apparently the private clinics had appointment times. Why couldn´t this one to add a little ease and dignity to the process? I calculated the daily number of patients with the number of doctors and open hours, and it was definitely feasible. I found myself wanting to swoop in with American efficiency, but the specter of paternalism was leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I think the best way to make aid sustainable is for it to come from within the community itself. And if these people were happy enough to have their health clinic run as such, or at least not unhappy enough to do something about it (because we all know South Americans have no problem protesting), then who was I to judge? After all, much of the cultural and way-of-life differences in Peru are neither bad nor good, just different.

Then again, we haven´t exactly left Peru to its own communitarian devices. We´ve swooped in with globalism and left Peru scraping the bottom of the capitalism barrel. So to that end, if we as a country have reaped profit from entering Peru, do we not also have the responsibility to leave some good behind? It has definitely been an interesting and challenging experience, and as the best of experiences do, it has left me with more questions than answers. I realize this might not be as entertaining a post as our ones about BEEF HEARTS! or Dan, the international salsa man, but this is exactly the type of growth and exposure I was hoping for on this trip, I didn´t only come for the shopping in markets and chance to get dreadlocks. :) I loved meeting the people I did, seeing healthcare in a different country, and getting to help out patients where I could. I´m curious though about everyone´s thoughts on international aid, intervening in other countries, paternalism, sustainable aid, etc? Comment away.

p.s. Tried to post more pics...I even tried to do a whole Photo Montage! but alas Peruvian computers = uncooperative. I´ll keep trying though!

Some tibits for our two regular readers :-)

Krista is in the midst of composing the story of our epic bus ride to Cusco (I couldnt bring myself to re-live it and thus it´s nice to have someone to share the blogging with!) and she has done a good job describing our first days in Cusco, too. That is all coming soon, so I thought I just share some fun and funny things about our trip so far in case all of our puke stories were scaring off readers!

1. Dan, the dance instructor, remains the ultimate ex-roomate from our hostel in Lima and ultimate inside joke. I don´t think in the next five months we will meet anyone as dynamically involved in giving salsa lessons to the world as Dan. He had all of his salsa clothes -red silk shirts, etc - hanging outside on the hostel balcony, he had very sexy business cards (one of which is safely pasted in Krista´s journal), and he spent hours in the hostel patio composing lists of people who had attended his class at some point.

2. Inka Cola. For the Scots, ex-Scots, or Scotiaphiles reading our blog Inka Cola is Peruvian IronBru. It´s wonderfully sweet and flourescent yellow and highly caffeinted and somehow drinkable even on an upset stomach.

3. First days volunteering. Krista was thrown right into a low income clinic with an abundance of patients and a lack of doctors. It sounds like she proved her competence (in Spanish and basic healthcare) and is well on her way to being a major help. She´s going to be working there from 8-1 everyday. I started with a group of about 12 girls between the ages of 12 and 19 who have been abused at their home and or run away for some reason. I´m really on my own to come up with 3 hrs of engaging lessons for these girls every afternoon. We´re doing a little big of English language learning and I´ve also been asked to pass along any ¨life skills¨...For example, today we made banana and chocolate chip pancakes (a life skill, possibly?). The eating certainly went over well and I think a few of the girls really enjoyed learning to cook the pancackes. Frantically coming up with life skills to impart for the rest of the week...

4. The people at Maximo Nivel. The people who work here and run the volunteer organization full time are amazing people who mostly have stories of abandoning their ¨real¨ and sometimes intense jobs and city lives and coming to Peru to help people. There´s Carlene, a spunky, actressy blonde from California who just up and left her LA life and came to Cusco last year. There´s Silva, a beautiful German girl who worked in disaster relief for the United Nations for 8 years (with a staff of 60) and decided to take two years off to run Maximo Nivel. Stephen, who was legal counsel for a big cosmetics firm for many years, and now runs Patas, the adventure tours side.... Anyway, the list goes on, but everyone is mellow and well-traveled and passionate about their non-traditional lifestyles and the service they are doing.

5. Where is THE Maximo Nivel? Apparently for those of you who have never taken Spanish, Maximo Nivel translates to ¨The Highest Level¨. Since we learned about our volunteer project, I´ve been excited to meet Maximo Nivel, the dynamo who founded the language school and bounds around greeting all of the students and kissing all of the teachers. Krista broke the news to me on Day 1 that Maximo Nivel is not actually a man! Fortunately, we met Ken Jones who is the equivalent.

6. Trivia at a totally English pub. Last night a group of us went to The Real McCoy which is an English pub just off of the main plaza, Plaza des Armas. After our bouts with Peruvian food, it was so nice to be in a place serving all recognizable foods from university including salad cream (eek!) and Haribo gummy bears!

7. How we feel about the handicaps? After the pub last night, we were stopped by a student interviewing tourists for his English class. He asked a few understandable questions regarding our stay in Cusco and then asked, ¨How do you feel about the handicaps?¨. Krista and I both began to go into a rather heartfelt response about how Cusco must be a difficult city for handicaps given the cobblestones and high alititude, quickly realizing that he meant ¨handicrafts¨which are in fact very beautiful and difficult to pass by!

8. Our first friend, Sam. We made our first friend. This is pretty exciting given that it is just the two of us for 5 months. Sam is cool and kind of goofy and good to talk to. He is a fourth year medical student at the University of Portland, Oregan about to specialize in Internal medecine. He came to medecine late, too, so Krista and him have lots to chat about and I interject frequently.

9. Ana Maria. Ana Maria is our host mother. She teaches English at Maximo Nivel. She is full of life, has a lot of insider info on Maximo Nivel and getting around town, and is taking pretty good care of these chicas!

Cuzco-topia!

We arrived in Cuzco after a 22-hour bus ride, of which we will spare you all the details but suffice it to say hairpin turns on a double decker bus through the Andes at night=slightly terrifying and the bus ran out of puke bags (with Cate using 8 of them). Definitely broken in on the travel front, we got a taxi to the office of Maximo Nivel, the organization with which we are volunteering. Brian (apparently his real name), a baby-faced 19-year-old local who worked in the office greeted us, showed us around Maximo Nivel, and then bustled us into another taxi to take us to our homestay. We were greeted by a lively and welcoming Ana Maria. She was rocking some cute jeans and yellow converses, and took us up the 4 flights of stairs to her apartment she shared with her father (who speaks no English) and her shy 19-year-old son. She has the quick laugh of a gossiping school girl but the caring maternal instinct of a Peruvian mother.

She stuffed us with a homemade 2-course lunch and insisted we rest, as we must be exhausted from the bus ride and the altitude, while she ran off to the Lima vs. Cuzco soccer game. The abuelo gave us our keys to the apartment and made us practice using them to make sure we understood, showed us how to use the shower (only use the one knob and only turn it very slightly if you want hot water), and showed us to our nice little attic room on the third floor of their apartment. After a hot meal and walking up 2 more flights of stairs at an altitude of 11,000 feet we were both ready to pass out. I ventured out to find an internet cafe for a while and then we both crashed out hard underneath the weight of the 6 wool blankets on our beds. We were roused a couple hours later so Ana Maria could show us how to get the bus to Maximo Nivel in the morning. We pushed our way onto a crowded, glorified van as she pointed out the best pizzeria in Cuzco, what areas to avoid, and where to get money. Once we made it to Maximo Nivel we couldn´t find any taxis back because of the soccer game crowd so we learned how to walk back. We met up with her boyfriend, Dante, who is a doctor along the way who came back and had a light dinner with us. They have a cute teasing relationship and between our Spanish and their English had a pleasant conversation. After dinner we retreated to our attic room, Cate took a hot shower to wash ´the bus´off, and we happily unpacked somewhere for 2 weeks.

In the morning after a breakfast of rolls, jam, and coca tea and my failed attempt at a hot shower, we found our way back to Maximo Nivel for our 10am orientation. We met the rest of the incoming crowd of volunteers from Australia, US, Canada, etc, got a welcome packet, and a presentation about general guidelines/info. I had to take a slightly daunting Spanish placement test, and we found out when we started our projects. Cate was going to her´s that afternoon, and I would start mine in the morning. Maximo Nivel actually started out at as an English school for Peruvians. They started teaching street children for free and then kept adding more and more volunteer projects. (More on our projects in a whole separate post, don´t you worry!)

We were still a little disoriented after our orientation but chalked that up to the Peruvian way and figured it would all become clear in the next day or so. We got to know one of the other volunteers, Sam, who is a 4th year med student from Oregon and the three of us found a cute cafe with delicious sandwiches for lunch. After lunch Cate got ready to head to her project, and Sam and I decided to explore the town. We walked to the Plaza de Armas or the Plaza Mayor which is flanked by 2 rather impressive churches and also has a McDonalds on it in whose bathroom I got to ´revisit´ my lunch. (Hoping the Revenge of the Beefhearts is only a trilogy!) We wandered up past the plaza to the artist area and got a good view down on the Plaza del Armas and town, as Cuzco is build cascading down the hills surrounding it.

We headed back to Maximo Nivel to meet up with Cate after her project orientation at a home for abused girls where she aparently through speaking Italian and gesturing had promised to make chocolate chip pancakes with them the next day! We stopped back at home for a quick dinner and then headed to a cute British pub for Maximo Nivel´s weekly trivia night. We met some more of the volunteers,including some intrepid recent high school graduates, and managed a 3rd place finish. We called it an early night though and hopped a taxi to home and to bed.

Comfort Zone

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” - Cesare Pavese

So the thing about growing and pushing yourself and stepping outside your comfort zone is that, well, it can be highly uncomfortable. The last 24 hours or so have handed us our first missteps on this trip, the parts that make the good stories and make you really open up to the country that is surrounding you instead of cruise controlling through your trip. So they´re good...even if they are uncomfortable.

Thursday night we both did manage to shower (much to the relief of each other´s nostrils :) and got picked up by a local friend of Cate´s friend. He whisked us all around in his car taking us through a bunch of different neighborhoods and all along the coast which was beautifully lit up at night, pointing out beaches he went to as a kid and the place on the hill overlooking the water where teenagers would park their cars on the weekends. He also took us to a couple different places for food and drinks that probably snagged a few more stars on their ratings than the backpacker budget dive restaurants we´d been frequenting. It was interesting to see this other side of Peru. And you would´ve thought we´d found Mecca when we got to use a clean bathroom WITH toilet paper in one of the places! Don´t worry, as soon as we find a place to upload pictures there will be a whole post dedicated to bathrooms in Peru. :) At the end of the night, he took us to a late-night local food place and only told us AFTER we´d eaten the food he´d ordered for us that we´d in fact just eaten a shish kebab of beef heart.

Discomfort No. 1: Cate had a late-night battle with the shish kebab.

BEEF HEART 1 : CATE 0

The next morning we were a little tender and were supposed to be at the bus station at 3pm, so we packed up, wandered to downtown Miraflores, and hung out in a cafe. Then we caught a taxi to the bus station to get there early for our 5:30 bus. We waited our turn to purchase our tickets and when we got to the counter found out that our reservation was in fact no longer in the system, the bus was full and there weren´t anymore buses until tomorrow. Nice. After talking to a couple people it became clear that even though they had told us to arrive at 3pm to pay for our tickets, they in fact only held the reservations until 2:30pm. Interesting.

Discomfort No. 2: We loaded up our packs and trekked in the heat to all the different bus companies around to find out that all the buses were full and we were stuck in Lima for another night with no bed.

We returned to the first bus company, Cruz del Sur, and actually purchased our tickets for a 2pm bus the next day and after confirming four times when we needed to arrive, started calling hostels trying to find a bed. The first few we called were full as it was now the weekend. So we turned to a couple of friendly looking gringo backpackers and asked if they had found a place. They had and there were still beds there so we loaded down a tiny cab with our packs and selves and headed back into Lima. The boys were sweet and from Belgium. One was studying abroad and other was there visiting him for a month. We wandered down to the water and along the coast with them, grateful for some temporary male protection, even if they were only 19-year-old little boys. Then we split off, and Cate and I found a nice quiet restaurant for a pizza dinner...we decided to play it safe after the previous nights culinary tricks. We returned to the hostel and I crawled in bed planning on an early night, only to succumb to the Revenge of the Beef Heart, Part II.

Discomfort No. 3: Getting to taste my pizza for a second time.

BEEF HEART 2 : CATE & KRISTA 0

This morning we´re just been taking it easy and are heading to the bus station soon, much earlier than they recommend...just to be safe. And we´re going to test how well Dramamine works on foreign food induced nausea on our 19-hour bus ride. Should be fun!

But we´re traveling for real now, slightly off balance, floundering in miscommunications, reaching out to strangers for help, not able to jump in a car and head home when we don´t feel well, and very much, electrically involved in life.

Day 2, No shower

Yesterday, we walked from Miraflores (the district of Lima that our hostel is in) to Barranco which is a slightly quieter and more peaceful district to the south, apart from the main square which is surrounded by buildings that are all painted a bright mustardy yellow. The majority of the walk was along the ocean cliff which has been really nicely paved and landscaped and opposite blocks and blocks of glassy beachside condos. Only at one point did we have to walk down a hill, cross over a busy road, and scale up the otherside!

The day was slightly overcast and not too hot and the ocean is really lovely from above. It's the Pacific so there are waves enough for surfing and lots of kids out because it is school holidays. The guidebooks all say that the water isnt suitable for swimming due to the pollution, but that doesnt stop the locals and I think tomorrow we are going to try and find a good beach for the morning... The beaches that weve seen so far are not sandy -more pebbly - and everyone has warned us about safety on the beaches so we are a little apprehensive, but we are going out with a local tonight and hope that he will give us some insider info.

Barranco was nice. Apparently it has become a clubbing hotspot with DJs that spin all night - dance music and traditional Peruvian beats and is particularly busy on the weekends, rather than a Wednesday. We were there during the day and so just had a nice lunch. I ordered the traditional Peruvian special (understanding only that lentils would be included) and got a huge portion of beef liver...eek.

Last night, we went out for Pisco Sours, the traditional drink of Lima, made with Pisco, egg whites, and sour mix. They are delicious and pretty potent.

We both got burnt over the course of the day and woke up today with red rings around our necks. In downtown Lima today at least 3 Peruvians have commented on it, given us warnings about the sun, and one even pointed us in th direction of the nearest pharmacy to buy sunscreen. In my defense, Krista's burn is a little worse than mine, but we both look like burnt gringo's that just arrived in Peru (which we are!).

Downtown Lima today was a little shocking. We both realized that Lima is one of the first 3rd world or developing countries that either of us has been to. It really is very poor. We were mistakenly dropped off one stop past Plaza de Armas (the main plaza) and ended up close to the slums that border the city. It's an incredible area, colorful and alive and reaching up the hill behind, but it's a shanty town with homes built out of an assortment of materials - wood scraps, cardboard, old billboards - and without any ammenties, plumbing etc. The bus driver was very concerned about dropping us off so close and forcifully told us to walk quickly in the other direction.

We eventually found the Plaza de Armas where a worker's demonstration was about to begin so we scooted off and toured the Catedral de San Francisco (I think this is right!) and its catacombs and went to the Museum of the Inquisition.

We've booked a bus to Cusco for tomorrow leaving at 5.30 PM and getting in at 2PM the next day!! I think we're both looking forward to being in a slightly smaller city, being settled in a place for two weeks, and are both excited for the projects that lie ahead.

Oh and the title of the post is true. Neither of us has showered since we arrived in Peru (which makes our last showers the morning of the 24th). The hostel's bathrooms are the kind of bathrooms that make you feel dirtier for having used them, so we've been avoiding but today I could smell myself, so I'm off to brave it now......

We arrived in Lima late last night . Wayruros Backpackers hostel is sort of a casual affair, half outdoors, and graffit from previous guests on the walls - a majority of whom seem to be from Israel. Our room upstairs has about 4 bunks, 8 beds. The only occupants when we arrived last night were two men..one of which looked like he hadn´t planned on staying at the hostel, had just drunk too much and wrapped himself in towels. Also his mattress was covered in plastic so we assumed there might be a chance he´d stayed at Wayruros before and wet the bed. We were both too exhausted to mind much and slept really soundly albeit with our backpacks an arms reach away.

This morning, things were a lot brighter. We had delicious coffee and tea and fluffy rolls with jam and butter that the hostel provides, got some good advice from Dayro, the hostel do-everything teenager who´s English rocks and we´re discovering Lima by foot.

Too, phone is working now thanks to my wonderful father and a very calm and collected person at Verizon.

Goodbye Sweet South!

It's past midnight. We leave tomorrow at ten - wake up is at 7. Krista is sitting at the computer making our INCREDIBLE contact sheet, weeding out contacts we deem necessary as it gets later into the night! I've updated and "neatened" our itinerary (it's still full of gaps and pretty ugly!), but we're going... Tomorrow we fly to Lima and stay there for a couple of nights before our volunteering in Cuzco begins. We're staying at Wayruros Backpackers Hostel at the beach - the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima- and they've promised a man with a sign at the airport. Oh man with a sign, see you soon in the land of summer.

Farewell/Fundraising Party!

THANK YOU!

To everyone who came out to see us off,
asked about our plans,
bought a raffle ticket,
drank "peru punch",
contributed,
and left us crazy tips!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
You guys are amazing,
and I hope you had as much fun as we did!
We raised over $700!