Pisco Sin Fronteras

Hello everyone,

So much to report since the last post! We got to Peru on the 10th, spent the night in Lima, then caught a bus the next morning down the coast to Pisco, where we spent the last 10 days volunteering with an incredible organization, Pisco Sin Fronteras (PSF).

An earthquake in 2007 destroyed much of the city, destroying around 80% of the homes and killing roughly 600 people (although many more died later from water contamination from the sewage and water lines mixing). Burners Without Borders came to Pisco soon after the quake to help with disaster relief and when they left 12 months later PSF emerged as a replacement NGO. It was an incredible group to be a part of, even for a short time. There are between 30 and 60 volunteers at any point- and people can stay for as long or short as they want. Many plan to stay for days and end up staying for months. People live in a communal house (although we opted to stay in the hostel around the corner) and breakfast and dinner are cooked by volunteers and eaten together. Lunch is usually provided by the family at your worksite, which is a nice way to get to know the families you are helping. Here´s a picture of the part of town where we were staying.

The living situations of so many people in Pisco are heartbreaking. So many of the neighborhoods are nothing more than shanty towns made from woven bamboo mats, cardboard, paper mache and whatever other materials the families can scrounge up. Many people live on dirt or sand floors that are often full of glass, trash and animal feces. PSF helps by providing free labor to families who have the materials to construct or improve their homes. Some of the standard projects involve leveling ground for a foundation, pouring cement, building new homes, constructing community bathrooms and so forth. Andy went around with one of the main, long-term volunteers to talk to families about the work they need done. Apparently within months the organization has switched from actively searching out new projects to having a 2 to 3 month waiting list. Here´s a picture of a typical neighborhood where we worked.

Also, PSF has recently started a Miracle Fund to help families who cannot afford either the labor or the materials for the work they need completed. Two volunteers, who trained as architects, designed a prototype for a home made out of bamboo poles- a bit sturdier than the bamboo mats and cheaper than bricks- which was the first miracle fund project. It was just finished as we left Pisco. In the future PSF hopes to focus the Miracle Fund on building community bathrooms, which are desperately needed and significantly benefit many of the community members where they are constructed. If the holiday mood has you feeling generous PSF and the Miracle Fund are always in need of donations!

Back to what we were doing during our time there. We each had the opportunity to work on a variety of projects, which was a wonderful way to get a feel for the organization and community. The first day I (Cassie) helped move a home for a woman who had previously been squatting on a patch of desert but was finally receiving the papers for a plot of land. Unfortunately the plot she was given was about 300 meters from her current home so we had to help her relocate. The front of the house had a few patchwork rooms constructed out of bamboo, cardboard and plastic sheeting that we disassembled. The actual house was a one-room box sitting on the dirt that 20 or so volunteers picked up and carried to the new location.

Later in the week Andy and I worked together for a woman who needed a room added onto her home. She was 21 with a 1 year old son (who was adorable but definitely a handfull to have around a worksite) and an absent husband. She was amazing- such an incredibly positive and energetic person despite all she was up against. We constructed her walls out of packing crates that we broke apart for plywood and nailed together to make frames, then covered with particle board. Thankfully PSF is donating a cement floor to her so her son doesn´t have to crawl around in the dirt (which a few other volunteers spent a long time picking glass and feces out of).

Some of the other projects we worked on involved breaking up foundations for new cement, pouring new cement, helping out at an afterschool center (me) and leading a soccer practice for kids (Andy). I also offered to cook dinner one night- which is a full day job, involving going to local market and then making sure dinner for 40 is ready by the time people get home in the evening. I made lasagna and it was fun, but probably the most stressful day of the week for me!

Last Sunday we had a free day (volunteers work Monday-Sat morning) and a group of us took a tour of the nearby Islas Ballestas and Paracas wildlife reserve. The islands are covered in all different types of birds- pelicans, penguins, seagulls, etc- which leave behind mountains of bird poop, or guano, that´s used as a fertilizer. Apparently it´s harvested every 3 to 5 years and it takes over 2 months to collect! The workers live on the islands during the harvest and apparently only work in the mornings because by the time the sun is high the smell is too bad. Nearby Paracas is an incredibly barren and desolate desert that stretches out from the beach. It´s a really beautiful place, in a severe sort of way. There were flamingos down by the beach, but that´s the only sign of life we saw.

By the next weekend we decided it was time to get moving again, so took an overnight bus to Arequipa. Arequipa is Peru´s second largest city, located in the desert in the south of the country. It´s surrounded by 3 volcanoes and many of the buildings are made out of white volcanic rock, earning it the nickname of ¨The White City.¨ It´s pretty and a nice place to relax for a few days. Today we went to a museum that has the frozen body of a girl, now known as Juanita, who was sacrificed by the Incas to the mountain gods around 550 years ago. Her body, along with the bodies of 3 other children, were discovered on a mountain top in the 90´s because a nearby volcano was erupting and the volcanic ash melted the snow and ice enough for explorers to climb to the summit. She´s remarkably well preserved and the museum had all kinds of interesting information about the Inca culture, the rituals of sacrifice and so forth.

I think we´ll be here for another day or two before heading off to Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving if we don´t write before then- we´re sad to be missing it!

Love to all,

C & A

Antigua, Lanquin, Semuc Champey and back again

Hi all,

We've had an incredible last week. We're pretty confused, because the calendar says it's been something like six days since we last wrote here, and surely that is wrong. It must have been longer. We got to Antigua (and realized the curvy road thing is something we just have to get used to around here) and hung out in a sweet bar called cafe no se, an "illegal" mezcal bar advertising a confused staff, uncomfortable seats, and 2.5 dogs. The next day we traveled 8 hours northeast to a town called Lanquin. We planned to leave early morning but were delayed to midday, and then our drivers got lost in Antigua, and then it was six hours to Coban, where everyone else in the shuttle was stopping and where we informed our slightly crestfallen driver that we actually wanted to go another hour and a half along a dark, rainy, unpaved road to Lanquin. He was really nice about it. We arrived to our hostel, El Retiro, a little after 10, hungry and ready for bed.

Which made waking up in our cabin on a little bluff overlooking a river in the jungle the next morning that much better. We hung out in hammocks most of the next day and enjoyed the hostel's massive communal buffet style dinner.

The next morning we set off for a tour of Semuc Champey. The tour started by going into the Santa Maria cave nearby. A river runs through the cave, so we entered in our bathing suits and tennis shoes, with a candle for light. We waded, swam, climbed and crawled through the cave. At some parts the water was maybe ten feet deep so we all had to swim through holding our candles above water for light. Other times matrices of ladders led us up narrow passages next to subterranean waterfalls. Towards the end of the tour we held back from the others to get away from the light of the other candles, and the darkness was absolute. Over the course of an hour we made it about 300 meters in, but according to our guide the cave is 11 km deep.

After that we moved on to the river, Cahabon. There was a sweet rope swing and we tubed down the river for a piece. Next, we hiked up (with some seriously wet tennis shoes) to the mirador overlooking Semuc Champey itself. Semuc is a natural limestone bridge that the Cahabon river runs underneath. The bridge has spring pools running up into it, creating warm turqoise water not unlike Agua Azul, in Mexico. The half hour hike was steep and seriously slippery from recent rain, but the view once we arrived was breathtaking. Our pictures still aren't loading, but we pulled this picture of the view from the mirador from the google.

After descending, we went swimming. You can swim across one pool, walk or slide to the next one, swim across that, the whole length of the natural bridge. Our guide took us to both ends, to see the river rushing underneath the top, and the spring water fall down to the river at the bottom. At the bottom the drop from Semuc Champey to the river is about 40 feet, and it's jumpable. I (Andy) did it twice - it was fantastic, although you had to be sure to swim to the side of the river right away so as not to be caught up in the rapids (high due to recent rainfall).

So that was one of the best days either of us have ever had.

Then back to Antigua, where this morning we got up early to climb an active volcano, Pacaya. We had an interesting group - a German couple, a Swiss couple, and four good 'ol boys from Kentucky in Guatemala for a long weekend of fishing. The hike up was two hours of pretty intense climb. At the beginning there was a thick fog, which was beautiful in its own way but afforded no view. By midmorning, though, just as we were getting to the volcanic rock, the mist cleared away revealing the countryside below and smoke above from the cone of the mountain. The last piece of climbing was up large chunks of volcanic rock, made only one or two months ago, sharp and brittle and sometimes clearly in the shape of a lava flow. At times it was so hot you could feel it through your shoes (which was convenient, actually, because our shoes had not yet dried from the cave). At the top we got right up next to a live lava flow. Literally within feet, I stuck my walking stick into it. The most surprising thing about it was the noise, you could hear it crackling as it slowly flowed down the mountain. The whole scene was impressive and otherwordly.
Now we are getting ready for our flight tomorrow morning for Peru. Cassie says she is going to go back through this and loot more pictures from the internet, to give a better idea of where we've been.

Love to all,

C & A

Technical issues.

Well. We can't figure out quite why, but the camera has stopped uploading pictures onto the computers we've been using. Until we figure out why, no more pictures. Sorry. For the ones we did manage to upload, here´s a reminder of the photobucket account.

Palenque, waterfalls, to Guatemala

Hi everyone,

Well, we've finally stopped moving for a day or so, so time for an update. After hanging out in San Cristobal for a day and getting me (Andy) more or less acclimated, we took a bus into the jungle to visit the Mayan ruins in Palenque. The ruins are from the 6th to 8th centuries, mostly, with the city reaching its peak during the reign of King Pakal, who lead the city for 68 years, from age 12 to 80, in the 600s. The road to Palenque was five hours of the most consistently stomach turningly curvy road either of us had ever been on, but it was worth every minute. The ruins themselves were a workout, climbing up intense staircases to palaces and temples in 100% humidity (100%? we don't know. a lot). Suuuuper sweaty. We took a tour in Spanish from a Mayan man from a nearby community.

We stayed in a resorty community just down the road from the ruins, El Pachan, fun and convenient and in the middle of the jungle, with all kinds of streams in between little cabins and one restaurant with live music and local hippys, where everyone ate every night. I originally thought the restaurant was named Dos Muchos (you know, like the bad pun, 'too much!') and so was majorly disappointed to realize it was actually Don Muchos. The whole place felt like a cross between a Hawaiian resort, the Jungle Book, and the Swiss Family Robinsons.

On the way back to San Cristobal we stopped at two waterfalls - Misol Ha and Agua Azul. Misol Ha is a traditional, single big fall, and was fantastic because you got to climb along the rocks behind to the other side of it. Here are some pictures of Misol Ha.

Agua Azul had, as advertised, stunningly turquoise waters. It is a series of cascades and pools and Cassie went swimming before the hot curvy ride home - by which I mean San Cristobal, but Cassie had spent s0 much time in that city by that point that it began to feel like home, I think. We made a sweet Swiss friend on the way back - it was surprising to me how many Europeans (and Australians and Israelis) there were in Chiapas and how few Americans we came across. Pictures of Agua Azul.

We got back and barely found room in a hostel, with the city packed for Halloween and Day of the Dead, and woke up early the next morning, the 31st, for an eight hour journey
south across the border into Guatemala to Quetzaltenango, nicknamed Xela (pronounced shay - la). On the trip with us was a French family with four adorable blond girls, ages about 5 to 11, who are in the first month of a year long, around the world trip. The girls were stunningly well behaved, but were going to a city past ours and still had four hours left after the eight hour journey to Xela. We hope the parent's marriage survives.

It was a little bit of a tough call to miss Day of the Dead in Mexico, but with only 10 days before our flight to Peru and plenty we want to do in Guatemala, we decided to keep moving.

Saturday night in Xela the hostel was packed with peace corps kids in town for the weekend and travelers looking for language schools or homestays with local families, but by Sunday morning we found ourselves alone in the hostel, and practically in the city. Most of the town was at the cemetery for All Saints Day, the peace corps kids returned to the small towns where they work, and most of the travelers had found schools. There were also, we hear, massive kite flying festivals in parts of the country, with some kites as big as a building, and in some pueblos in the country men celebrate All Saints by oiling up horses, getting really drunk, and then trying to ride them. We went to the cemetery with everyone else in town. Xela has a truly huge cemetery and it was jam packed with families visiting, cleaning, and adorning the graves of loved ones with flowers.

Monday we were up early for a bus to San Pedro on Lake Atitlan. The lake is not quite Tahoe big, but it's close. It is also, unfortunately, plagued with an algae infestation at the moment that is threatening to harm the tourist industry here and renders the lake unswimmable. Still, it is beautiful, ringed all around with some of Guatemala's many volcanoes. San Pedro is a small, cheap, tourist town, supposedly with a big night life, but at the moment it's too rainy to investigate fully.

Tomorrow we head to Antigua.

Love to all,
C & A