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.