Peru - the Highlands, the Lowlands, the Deserts and the Coast!!!

So its been about 10 days since our last post and I feel like we've been everywhere!! We have been travelling through the vast country of Peru and although this has meant alot of time sitting down on our new home "Dragoman Truck Amber" we have seen alot!! Again the country has so many completely different landscapes and totally changeable weather which we were completely unprepared for!!! In 10 days we have seen beautiful coastline, vast deserts, high altitudes (the highest we've been is 4500m above sea level), amazing volcanoes, deep canyons, sunshine, snow, hail, torrential rain and temperatures getting close to 0'C!!!

It was intially a shock to try and switch from being at the volunteer house in Pisco to being back on an organised tour. In Pisco we felt part of a family and got to know the locals really well, we were obviously staying in the one place so we didnt have to unpack and repack our bag everyday and our spanish was beginning to come along as we were being forced to use it with Jose and his family. We were really sad to leave Jose's shop unfinished and if we had not booked the tour in advance we certainly would have stayed for longer. But the tour started with a bang and the first day in the desert was amazing!!

The Desert

On day one on our Dragoman Overlander we made our way from Lima to Huacachina in 4.5hrs. Huacachina is a very small village built around a beautiful oasis in the middle of the desert. When we (a group of about 35 of us) got there we picked up some sand boards (which are basically snowboards) and also some flat sandboards that we just lay on to come down the dunes!! We jumped onto some Sand Buggies who had some pretty mad drivers and headed off into the desert where the fun was about to start!! The sand buggying was mad!! The drivers would take you up and down the dunes and it pretty much felt like a roller coaster!! Then we would stop at the top of the biggest dunes and get the boards out to either sand board down them standing up (it was much harder than snow boarding as the sand was so heavy!!) or you could just lie on the board and fly down!! Both ways were pretty cool but definitely the speed was when you lay down!!! Then they would collect you at the bottom of the dune and head to the next one so no trekking up massive dunes wohooooo!!



Huacachina
Beautiful oasis in the middle of the desert



Dragoman goes Sand Buggying!!!



Sun Set in the Desert



Everyone getting their beds ready - roll out your sleeping bag!!



At the end of the days buggying and boarding we stopped in a little dune valley and set up camp!! Which basically meant roll out your sleeping bag!!! The guides set up an amazing BBQ and made us some Pisco sours!! The food and drink was AMAZING and the partying was cool. Then we headed to our sleeping bags and snuggled up in all layers of our clothing under the stars of the desert!! Definitely an experience we won't forget!!

Nazca Lines and Chauchilla Cemetery

Then we headed for Nazca to check out the famous Nazca lines. We travelled along the Panamericana Highway and stopped on the side of the road north of Nazca town. It is unbelieveable that the main highway has been built directly through such a famous historical site! We climbed a small observation tower and saw three of the figures, a lizard, a tree and a pair of hands. I must say it was a little bit of a let down and some people say you can only really appreciate it from the air but from the look out we could see the mini tornadoes so it didnt look like a great place for flying!! We decided to leave the Nazca lines a mystery and check them out on google earth!!

The next day we travelled onwards to a nearby cemetery called Chauchilla cemetery. Not very many people bother to go to this site and actually we found it much more interesting than the Nazca lines. We travelled across the barren desert in true overland style [sitting with the roof boxes open] to the cemetery.

The tour was given by a local archaeologist [who had an article published in National Geographic]. He was extremely interesting and passionate about his job and his tour of the cemetery was amazing. There were lots of mummies located in the various graves dating back to the Nazca era, pre-Inca times. The mummies were buried in the foetal position facing east towards the rising sun. They were buried with food and some belongings which they would need in the afterlife. Many of them still had very long hair, teeth and finger nails and one guy was buried with his pet parrot, which was so preserved as you could still see the feathers. Grave robbers have taken many of the treasures from theses graves over the years. It was definitely worth a visit and one of the most under advertised visitor attractions we have seen.

Mummy buried with his Pet Parrot on the left!



Baby mummy buried wrapped in cotton. This one had been beheaded with a cotton head in its place. It was probably a child sacrifice to the gods.

Camping on the Beach

Next stop was Puerto Inca where we camped out on the beach!! It was a really cool beach with huge waves, cliff faces and more inca ruins. It was nice just to chill out, sun bathe, listen to the waves, watch the fisher men (who didnt catch much!!), check out the ruins and watch the sun set!!

Arequipa

After a night on the beach it was great to head on to the 'white city' of Arequipa, to a nice hotel and a big city!! After a nice hot shower we headed to the see the famous 'Ice Princess' - Juanita. She was yet another mummy but a very special one!! The story goes that she is a 14yr old Inca maiden who was sacrificed on the summit of Mt Ampato over 500 yrs ago. She is so well preserved because she was found under the glacier at the top of the mountain. She still had her hair and you could clearly see her facial features. The story of how she got there was amazing and unbelievable how a child of that age could have hiked from Cusco to Arequipa and then to the summit of the mountain to be sacrificed!! We couldn't take any pictures as obviously she is being preserved in cold, dark conditions but im sure you can google her!!!

We also visited a really nice Convent in the centre of Arequipa. Its probably the most picturesque place we have visited and clearly the nuns were some of the richest people in Peruvian society. It was like a city inside a city...it was full of quaint little streets with beautiful flowers, fountains and statues. Different parts were painted orange or blue...orange represented earth and all the novices could go in those areas but blue represented the passage to heaven and only the ordained nuns could go there. It was a cool place to spend a sunny afternoon with Russell and Lisa (2 friends from the tour - Russell is from London and Lisa is from NZ)

 

Andean mountains - Wildcamp and Homestay Raqchi

So off we headed again!! This time high into the Andean mountains and we were totally ill prepared!!! We thought we were coming to South America for the sun and clearly did not pack enough winter clothes!!

As we got higher and higher into the mountains the roads got bumpier and the weather got worse. It started to snow and it was so cold on the truck that we were wearing everything that we had on the truck and were tucked up inside our sleeping bags!!! We thought the guides were crazy even thinking about camping in these conditions but as we dropped in altitude on the other side of the mountain the weather started to get a bit better!!! We found a spot and quickly pitched the tents before it started to rain or snow again!! We had dinner and pretty much jumped back into the sleeping bags for bed - it was Baltic!! When we got up the next morning a little old lady with a large bull, who looked like she had been walking for miles, arrived to tell us that we had camped on her land and so we needed to pay up!! We gave her all of our bread and milk and $20 but she still tried to get us to buy some socks (which she just happened to have with her on her trek in the middle of nowhere!!) for 25soles - these socks are usually about 10soles max anywhere else!!!! So we packed up quickly and got the flock outa there!!

The scenery along the way was amazing, the mountains were majestic and the wildlife was cool. We saw llamas, alpacas and flamingos. We also saw a lot of people in their traditional dress herding their cows and sheep.

After a night wild camping the homestay seemed positively luxurious!! We were back in beds with sheets and blankets staying with the most welcoming local Andean families. The village, Raqchi, we stayed in was really cool. It is a small village of 80 families and they have worked hard as a community to develop the skills and services necessary to attract tourists. The government funded 20% of the start up costs for the village families to adapt their houses for tourist homestays, learn a little bit of english, learn about health and hygiene etc. The community pulled together then to fund the other 80% collectively. It is a village well know for their traditional pottery making skills and they showed us how to do it!! Clearly I wasnt that talented!! They also dressed us up in traditional clothing (which made you look about 10stone heavier but was very warm!!) and showed us a traditional ceremony of making offerings to the Pacha Mama (Mother Earth).

Me trying to learn how to make the pottery - honestly the finished product
will sell for millions unfortunately I dont have a picture of it!!

The whole gang dressed up in traditional costumes for the night. Tom danced with the locals and we all took part in the ceremony to offer some coca leaves to Pacha Mama.



Our host families kids doing their homework - the whole community are so hard working - kids with school work, men and women in the fields tending their crops, women making the pottery and selling it in the market and they honestly look after the tourists so well!! When we left each host family gave their guests a small piece of their pottery to take home...it really felt humbling to stay with them.

Pisco Rocked!!!

For me the highlight of the trip, by far, has been our 2 weeks volunteering for Pisco sin Fronteras.

I won´t tell you about Pisco and the charity PSF as we wrote about them in our last blog, but instead I will tell you about the unbelievable opportunity we had to help a very special family, one who we will never forget and will really really try to visit again in the future...

Whilst at PSF I worked on a few different projects, playing with kids in a local playgroup funded by PSF, making toys for Christmas from scrap wood and metal, teaching english to local fishermen etc. But for the vast majority of our time there both myself and Tom worked on a site helping a local family rebuild their lives.

The family was the Hugo family. Their house and small shop had been flattened in the earthquake in 2007. Since then they have been saving to afford enough materials to rebuild but could not afford to pay for the labour. So PSF were there to help, offering highly skilled free labour - US!!!

Jose Hugo (or Papa as I called him by the end of our time there!!) was the head of the family and clearly a man who was working extremely hard to provide for his family and make a future for them. He currently lives in a make shift house beside the site we were building on. The house was made of bamboo and tarpe and was filled with, what looked like, things they managed to rescue from their previous home.

He was a man of few english words and our spanish isn´t that hot yet but the relationship we built over the 2 weeks of working for him and his family meant at the end of the 2 weeks we didn´t want to leave.

Jose was there every morning greeting us with a smile and gratitude that "The Irish", myself, Tom and our leader Emmett from Longford (who handed over leadership to Tom in the second week) had turned up again to help him build! Over the 2 weeks we mixed mortar, layed bricks for all his internal walls, dug trenches and poured concrete for his floors and columns. And generally had a great days craic with him.

His daughter, Pillar, would also be on site helping out were she could and running to her sisters at 2.00 everyday to pick us up some fantastic lunch made by her sister, Chara and Mum. They even made me a special soup on the day I was sick and Pillar came to the hospital with me to translate the "difficult impatient Cuban Doctor" spanish into "simpilar spanish that Michaela could understand" ie she would say a sentence 20 different ways until I got it!!!

To be honest at the beginning of the 2 weeks I questioned why PSF were helping Jose´s family when there were many families much worse off than them. But the more I thought about it the more I concluded that everyone has the right to a good standard of living and some might be on the very bottom rung of the ladder and some might have managed to work their way up to the fourth rung but they are all still at the bottom of the ladder and deserve help. Jose had worked extremely hard to save and buy the materials for his house and shop and with them he will be able to provide a secure and better future for his family and I feel very honoured to have been able to help him do that.

Before we left we made a quick dash to the printers to buy Jose a sign for the front of his shop as a leaving present. They named it ´Tienda D´Chin´ after his son who had died when he was only 7. He invited us back to see the finished shop and get some free beer woohoooo!! Hopefully we can make it back some day :o)

We've handed the project over to Welsh Mel as team leader. Hopefully she carries the good work on and gets a ceiling onto the shop pretty sharpish!!! Bueno Suerte Mel and the Team :o)