The 20 hour bus ride wasn't too bad because the seats were really comfy so I slept a bit and watched a few movies and it went by quickly enough. I had been looking forward to the views, but we drove through the mountains at night so missed all the good stuff - just saw a lot of dusty desert, which wasn't much anything special.
After settling down in our original hostal in Lima that we had spent our first few nights at, we set off to go out for dinner with Ray, a guy I had met on the train from Macchu Picchu and who we had taken a taxi with back to Cusco. Tried to get a taxi but everyone kept trying to charge us wayyy more than we knew the ride was worth, so we turned down about four drivers before we finally found a reasonable one. The taxi ride was the craziest ride I've been on in Cusco, and that's saying a lot, because they are all crazy there. I'm so surprised we didn't get into an accident, I guess the drivers are pretty skilled at dodging each other and speeding in every which way. So we were trying to find a restaurant in Miraflores but the driver insisted that the street we were going to only existed in a nearby district, San Isidro, so he took us there, and the address was some sketchy old building. After asking a police officer, he found out the street we wanted actually did exist much crazy driving later, we finally arrived to dinner over an hour late. It was a fancy restaurant, but amazingggg food. We started with caprece-type thing and really good potato bread, and then I had garlic-y portabello mushrooms, I wish I knew how to flavor them so well. Yummm. For dessert, they let us try a fried plantain-and-stuff donut with honey and some really good caramel, and I ordered something that I have no idea what it was... I thought it would be a lemon merengue pie but it turned out to be some kind of tart-tasting caramel milk cream topped with lemon flavored merengue. really sweet but delicioussss. After dinner, went to a live music bar for a little bit, and the band was surprisingly really good and did a lot of covers of American music. Off to bed and up early in the morning for more traveling. Managed to get a taxi ride for 20 soles to the airport, which is really cheap - we were expecting them to say 40 and then bargain it down to 30. (1 dollar is about 3 soles). Line at airport check in was ridiculously long, but got through it with plenty of time to spare. Flew to San Salvador, five hour layover here, then flight back to SF, where I have a whole two days before the drive down to San Diego. What a month. Travel travel travel! :)
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Nearing the End
9/14/09
Today was my last day of touristing in Peru. The month went by way too quickly! Right now, I’m at the beginning of my 20+ hour bus ride between Cusco and Peru. Right now they are playing the intro film about the bus company and sites in Peru, etc, that I’ve already seen twice on my other Cruz del Sur journeys. Last night, got home from dinner and slept. Slept slept slept from 5pm until 8am. Definitely needed it after sleeping less than six hours over two days. Now I have way too much time today on the bus to get more sleep, but I don’t know how much that will happen. Hopefully there will be some good movies. Anyway, knocked out last night after a dinner of pizza (yes, that’s what they had everywhere, made in a wood fire oven) and pineapple juice. Yum. But strange pizza… the vegetables were carrots, green beans, and bell peppers, from what I could tell. In the morning, walked down the hill and found the train station, and took the train to Ollantaytambo. Abby and I had seats in separate rows for some reasons, but I was sitting with really interesting people and we talked the entire two hour ride. The others were all from the US too. The ride was really pretty, in a valley between towering mountains, the train running alongside the sometimes rapid, sometimes smooth Urubamba river.
In Ollaytaytambo, one of the guys I had been riding with already had a taxi there to pick him up and bring him back to Cusco, and they had extra seats, so he let Abby and I go along for the ride instead of taking our two buses back. It took about an hour and a half total instead of the two and a half it would have taken with the bus. After getting to Cusco and dumping our luggage at a hostal for the afternoon, went back to the vegetarian restaurant for lunch. Mmm salad, soup, bread, tea, and saltado de soya… loma saltado, beef with fries, is a typical Peruvian food, so I had the vegetarian version of that, along with veggies and rice. It was pretty good and a nice filling lunch for 2 bucks.
We were considering going to a zoo in the area to see Andean animals, which I really would have liked to do, but we already had a few museums left in the religious circuit that we had already bought and we only had two hours before we had to head to the bus station, so we skipped the zoo, unfortunately. Went to the two remaining churches on our ticket, both of which were really pretty and fairly interesting, but I think I’ve definitely reached my limit of religious things for quite a while. Every church seems to have a black Christ that used to be white but because of the material it is made from and the ash from the candles that burn around it, has turned dark skinned over the years. A lot of the same styles we had seen in previous churches, the mixture of Catholicism and the Andes culture, Baroque style, very intricate pulpits and altars made of cedar wood and coated in gold leaf. Something I hadn’t seen before was that some of the paintings had coca leaves placed in as part of them, which was interesting. In one of the churches, we went to the second level and had a cool view of the central square, the Plaza de Armas, and the Cuscan hillsides.
Lastly, went to the Incan Museum by myself. The most interesting part was the musical instrument exhibit. Lots of different Incan instruments were on display, and there was a table with replicas of these instruments and a guy was demonstrating them. The instruments with water inside that you moved from side to side and different notes came out, the animal shaped flutes that somehow made the sounds of the animals they looked like, the bird filled with water that tweeted if you blew hard enough (he let me try this one), and lots more. It was really fun to watch and to talk to him about them. Then upstairs to a very extensive collection of pottery, jewelry, masks, cups, replicas of Incan foods, pretty much everything Incan you can think of.. I had less than an hour there and there were 23 rooms, so I had to race through them, but it was still really interesting and a great ending for the trip, I love pre-Columbian and Incan cultures.
Today was my last day of touristing in Peru. The month went by way too quickly! Right now, I’m at the beginning of my 20+ hour bus ride between Cusco and Peru. Right now they are playing the intro film about the bus company and sites in Peru, etc, that I’ve already seen twice on my other Cruz del Sur journeys. Last night, got home from dinner and slept. Slept slept slept from 5pm until 8am. Definitely needed it after sleeping less than six hours over two days. Now I have way too much time today on the bus to get more sleep, but I don’t know how much that will happen. Hopefully there will be some good movies. Anyway, knocked out last night after a dinner of pizza (yes, that’s what they had everywhere, made in a wood fire oven) and pineapple juice. Yum. But strange pizza… the vegetables were carrots, green beans, and bell peppers, from what I could tell. In the morning, walked down the hill and found the train station, and took the train to Ollantaytambo. Abby and I had seats in separate rows for some reasons, but I was sitting with really interesting people and we talked the entire two hour ride. The others were all from the US too. The ride was really pretty, in a valley between towering mountains, the train running alongside the sometimes rapid, sometimes smooth Urubamba river.
In Ollaytaytambo, one of the guys I had been riding with already had a taxi there to pick him up and bring him back to Cusco, and they had extra seats, so he let Abby and I go along for the ride instead of taking our two buses back. It took about an hour and a half total instead of the two and a half it would have taken with the bus. After getting to Cusco and dumping our luggage at a hostal for the afternoon, went back to the vegetarian restaurant for lunch. Mmm salad, soup, bread, tea, and saltado de soya… loma saltado, beef with fries, is a typical Peruvian food, so I had the vegetarian version of that, along with veggies and rice. It was pretty good and a nice filling lunch for 2 bucks.
We were considering going to a zoo in the area to see Andean animals, which I really would have liked to do, but we already had a few museums left in the religious circuit that we had already bought and we only had two hours before we had to head to the bus station, so we skipped the zoo, unfortunately. Went to the two remaining churches on our ticket, both of which were really pretty and fairly interesting, but I think I’ve definitely reached my limit of religious things for quite a while. Every church seems to have a black Christ that used to be white but because of the material it is made from and the ash from the candles that burn around it, has turned dark skinned over the years. A lot of the same styles we had seen in previous churches, the mixture of Catholicism and the Andes culture, Baroque style, very intricate pulpits and altars made of cedar wood and coated in gold leaf. Something I hadn’t seen before was that some of the paintings had coca leaves placed in as part of them, which was interesting. In one of the churches, we went to the second level and had a cool view of the central square, the Plaza de Armas, and the Cuscan hillsides.
Lastly, went to the Incan Museum by myself. The most interesting part was the musical instrument exhibit. Lots of different Incan instruments were on display, and there was a table with replicas of these instruments and a guy was demonstrating them. The instruments with water inside that you moved from side to side and different notes came out, the animal shaped flutes that somehow made the sounds of the animals they looked like, the bird filled with water that tweeted if you blew hard enough (he let me try this one), and lots more. It was really fun to watch and to talk to him about them. Then upstairs to a very extensive collection of pottery, jewelry, masks, cups, replicas of Incan foods, pretty much everything Incan you can think of.. I had less than an hour there and there were 23 rooms, so I had to race through them, but it was still really interesting and a great ending for the trip, I love pre-Columbian and Incan cultures.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Macchu Picchu
Train last night was not fun, I was completely sleep deprived and hoping to sleep on it, but after taking forever to come and for them to let us board, it ended up being a long sleepless ride full of lots of bumps, chugga chugga choo choo, and loud German people, who don’t speak a very headache-friendly language. Eventually stumbled up the hill to a hostal and crashed into bed… until we left at 4 am.
We sat in line at the bus station at the bottom of the hill (yes, the whole town is pretty much one big hill covered in hostals and restaurants, tourist land but surrounded by gorgeous hills), waited until 5:30 when the buses came. There were a ton of people in line and they sent about 20 buses supposedly, and we got onto the third one. Turns out that to climb the mountain, they allow 200 people at 7am and another 200 at 10am. I was worried we wouldn’t be in the top 200 but waiting in line to get in, they gave me number 53, so we were easily in. Luckily we did the early one, because it was really hot by 10 or 11 and that hike would have been awful in the heat.
Getting up so early was definitely worth it. Hiked through Macchu Picchu to the back end of it to the base on Wayna Picchu, meaning Young Peak in Quechua. It’s the peak that you see in all the pictures of Macchu Picchu, the giant one sticking up behind the ruins. From the bottom, it looked enormous, and it definitely felt like it when we were climbing. Really intense hike, not helped by the fact that the stone stairs were either huge and far apart or for the most part, tiny, smaller than my feet. I felt so bad for people with bigger feet than me. The first chunk of it was the hardest, really steep uphill, having no idea how much longer it would be, just more and more stairs, really exhausting. There were a couple lookout points along the way with views of Macchu Picchu that were really pretty, and it kept getting smaller and smaller. At some points during the hike, we could see the clouds moving around in the valleys below us…that’s something about the Andes I had definitely remembered and liked from Ecuador. After what felt like forever but was really only a little more than an hour, we crawled through a tunnel, up some more stairs, and up a ladder, and finally, we were at the top of the mountain. Sat up there for quite a while enjoying the view of Macchu Picchu way down below and the valleys and mountains surrounding us, taking tons of pictures. After a while, hiked back down, through some sets of ruins up on the mountain, down, down, down all the stairs we had hiked up. Poor ankles and knees!
Spent the next four hours exploring Macchu Picchu ruins, snacking on granola bars and saltines we had brought along, and needing to pee, but there was no bathroom in the ruins. Didn’t have a guide so didn’t get all of the interesting information about each of the rooms and areas, but it was still really interesting and amazing. Attempted to follow along with the map and figure out what was what, the temple of the condor, the temple of the sun, the three doors, the three windows, the royal palace, the guard’s house, the tower, on and on. There were friendly llamas wandering around everywhere, it was random. The ruins were both smaller and bigger than I thought we would be. When we were actually walking within them, they somehow seemed kind of small, but when we were above them looking down, it was obvious how massive they are. Overheard a little bit from one of the guides about there being sixteen fountains, arranged in a zigzag manner, maybe to slow down the flow of water and maybe to appear like a snake, which symbolizes the connection between earth and the underworld. Tried to listen in on a French guide, but couldn’t understand enough of it to get what was going on. Lost all my French when I was learning Spanish, unfortunately.
The best parts of Macchu Picchu were probably when we were on lookout points and hills above it, looking down and seeing the whole picture, which cannot actually be captured in a picture, it was very surreal. Walked around a lot, up and down different paths, just wandering around, and saw it from different angles, took millions more pictures. Eventually left a bit past one, having been there for seven hours. We thought it would take us a lot longer, but we probably covered every inch of the place, minus the Incan bridge that we started walking to but decided not to when we saw a huge uphill leg of narrow stairs and our legs refused to do it.
Getting in was cheaper than I would think it to be for how famous it is, the student price was about 14 dollars with our international ID card. But it was getting there that was the ridiculous part. Before coming here, I thought of Macchu Picchu as being in/near Cusco, but no way. We did the cheap route, taking the train from Ollataytambo instead of all the way from Cusco, and this cost 62 dollars roundtrip for a total of four hours. And then, to take the bus from Aguas Calientes to Macchu Picchu, it cost another 14 roundtrip for 25 minutes each way. Stupid government, taking advantage of tourists! So it cost a ridiculous amount of money for seven hours of touristing. Was it worth it? Definitely, but I don’t think I would go back, or if I did, it’ll be a long time from now and I’ll spend the extra money for a guide.
We sat in line at the bus station at the bottom of the hill (yes, the whole town is pretty much one big hill covered in hostals and restaurants, tourist land but surrounded by gorgeous hills), waited until 5:30 when the buses came. There were a ton of people in line and they sent about 20 buses supposedly, and we got onto the third one. Turns out that to climb the mountain, they allow 200 people at 7am and another 200 at 10am. I was worried we wouldn’t be in the top 200 but waiting in line to get in, they gave me number 53, so we were easily in. Luckily we did the early one, because it was really hot by 10 or 11 and that hike would have been awful in the heat.
Getting up so early was definitely worth it. Hiked through Macchu Picchu to the back end of it to the base on Wayna Picchu, meaning Young Peak in Quechua. It’s the peak that you see in all the pictures of Macchu Picchu, the giant one sticking up behind the ruins. From the bottom, it looked enormous, and it definitely felt like it when we were climbing. Really intense hike, not helped by the fact that the stone stairs were either huge and far apart or for the most part, tiny, smaller than my feet. I felt so bad for people with bigger feet than me. The first chunk of it was the hardest, really steep uphill, having no idea how much longer it would be, just more and more stairs, really exhausting. There were a couple lookout points along the way with views of Macchu Picchu that were really pretty, and it kept getting smaller and smaller. At some points during the hike, we could see the clouds moving around in the valleys below us…that’s something about the Andes I had definitely remembered and liked from Ecuador. After what felt like forever but was really only a little more than an hour, we crawled through a tunnel, up some more stairs, and up a ladder, and finally, we were at the top of the mountain. Sat up there for quite a while enjoying the view of Macchu Picchu way down below and the valleys and mountains surrounding us, taking tons of pictures. After a while, hiked back down, through some sets of ruins up on the mountain, down, down, down all the stairs we had hiked up. Poor ankles and knees!
Spent the next four hours exploring Macchu Picchu ruins, snacking on granola bars and saltines we had brought along, and needing to pee, but there was no bathroom in the ruins. Didn’t have a guide so didn’t get all of the interesting information about each of the rooms and areas, but it was still really interesting and amazing. Attempted to follow along with the map and figure out what was what, the temple of the condor, the temple of the sun, the three doors, the three windows, the royal palace, the guard’s house, the tower, on and on. There were friendly llamas wandering around everywhere, it was random. The ruins were both smaller and bigger than I thought we would be. When we were actually walking within them, they somehow seemed kind of small, but when we were above them looking down, it was obvious how massive they are. Overheard a little bit from one of the guides about there being sixteen fountains, arranged in a zigzag manner, maybe to slow down the flow of water and maybe to appear like a snake, which symbolizes the connection between earth and the underworld. Tried to listen in on a French guide, but couldn’t understand enough of it to get what was going on. Lost all my French when I was learning Spanish, unfortunately.
The best parts of Macchu Picchu were probably when we were on lookout points and hills above it, looking down and seeing the whole picture, which cannot actually be captured in a picture, it was very surreal. Walked around a lot, up and down different paths, just wandering around, and saw it from different angles, took millions more pictures. Eventually left a bit past one, having been there for seven hours. We thought it would take us a lot longer, but we probably covered every inch of the place, minus the Incan bridge that we started walking to but decided not to when we saw a huge uphill leg of narrow stairs and our legs refused to do it.
Getting in was cheaper than I would think it to be for how famous it is, the student price was about 14 dollars with our international ID card. But it was getting there that was the ridiculous part. Before coming here, I thought of Macchu Picchu as being in/near Cusco, but no way. We did the cheap route, taking the train from Ollataytambo instead of all the way from Cusco, and this cost 62 dollars roundtrip for a total of four hours. And then, to take the bus from Aguas Calientes to Macchu Picchu, it cost another 14 roundtrip for 25 minutes each way. Stupid government, taking advantage of tourists! So it cost a ridiculous amount of money for seven hours of touristing. Was it worth it? Definitely, but I don’t think I would go back, or if I did, it’ll be a long time from now and I’ll spend the extra money for a guide.
And The Touristing Begins
9/12/09
It’s been a long couple days of traveling. At the moment, I’m sitting outside at Ollaytatambo, way early for our train but the earlier train is all filled up. I can’t believe I was still in Huancayo yesterday. Went to the vet place and cleaned the floor, washed a dog (Pisco was back to get his bandage changed, and they for some reason changed it first and then told me to bathe him… doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a new dry bandage?)… Said goodbye to the doctors and wanted to take a picture with them, but one of them insisted on taking out his old digital camera, putting the batteries in, and using that to take pictures instead of letting me use my camera. I kept explaining to him that I could email the pictures to him but he said of course, of course, and kept taking pictures of me in every random place of the hospital with his camera. Strange.
After goodbyes at the house, it was off to Lima on the bus. Really really nice bus with seats that reclined back to become almost beds. Really comfortable and tons of room, but it was during the day, so I couldn’t manage to get any sleep. I’ll be on the same type of bus for my long 21 hour trip from Cusco to Lima, so I should hopefully be able to sleep then at least. Watched Slumdog Millionaire in Spanish and a pretty funny Wallace and Gromitt movie, and talked a bunch to the guy sitting next to me. The seven hour ride went by quickly enough. It was snowing for part of it, which was really cool to watch from the window… I hadn’t seen it snow in such a long time, and especially in the Andes, it was really nice. Then off to the airport to spend the night, where I probably got about twenty minutes of sleep total. Wasted time messing around on my computer, snacking, and attempting to sleep but it was really bright and loud so it was pretty hopeless. Abby, of course, is way too lucky and can sleep standing up if she wanted to. No fair!
Finally, took our one hour plane ride to Cusco. Really gorgeous trip, going over the Cordilleras Blancas and watching the sun rise. We landed just at 7am to reports that it was going to be 5 degrees Celsius outside. Eek. I didn’t remember where I had packed my gloves! But luckily, it ended up being a pretty nice day, a bit windy, but not too cold at all. Dumped our stuff at a hostal in central Cusco for the day, wandered around dodging the people offering us hostals and breakfast and massages and on and on. Cusco is a really pretty city, reddish brown and green hillsides accented by rows of red roofed houses in the mountains. I loved the narrow cobblestone streets at first, but soon, my feet were not very happy with the slippery and sometimes sharp stones. Definitely wearing my other shoes tomorrow.
Nothing was open at first, but eventually found Iglesia Santo Domingo. It was interesting at the time but not particularly memorable aside from a really nice bathroom, pretty flowers, and a cool architectural structure. Oh, there were also some ruins inside, mostly empty rooms with unknown purposes, some with holes in the walls that used to allow sound to come in from the street. Lots of stones carved in different styles from Incan times. Ooh, there was a cool room with a description of Incan astronomy and a painting of the way the dark and light spots around the stars line up to make a llama and her baby and some other animals that are very important in the culture.
Then walked around trying to buy tickets to get into Macchu Picchu and also to get from Aguas Calientes, the nearby town, to Macchu Picchu in the morning. We asked a ton of people and just got sent in circles over and over again, it was really frustrating. Finally found the place to buy the tickets, and had to go somewhere else to buy the bus tickets. Took way longer than it should have and it was hidden in this tiny little place because almost everyone goes with a tour, so no one tries to buy tickets just on their own. Oh such fun.
Our errands finally done, we set off to the Cathedral of Cusco. Was pretty expensive (by Peru standards) to get in, but we got a ticket that covered that and three other places as well and it lasts for ten days, so we can finish them off on Monday when we are back in Cusco. Did an audio tour of the church… they have headsets and numbers of what you are supposed to play at which place in the church. It was really, really long and got a bit tedious and too much religiousness for me, but overall, it was interesting and worth doing. The church was gorgeous. Simple but huge domed ceilings, fourteen chapels, countless paintings. The tour talked about a bunch of the different saints, including the one that women pray to to get a certain man to marry her (they write him messages and turn his figure upside down every Friday to remind him of their wishes), the one men use to keep these women away, the one that wards off earthquakes, etc., etc. There was a lot of pure silver and gold shaped into people and birds and basilicas. Paintings over all the domes by a famous painter whose name I of course can’t remember, all very red and blue in color. Lots of paintings showing the cross and combination between the local Andes culture and Catholicism… one of the last supper where the foods on the table were local fruits and cuy (guinea pig. Ick). They talked a lot about the Mestizo presence in the church, how it had a lot of Spanish influence from the conquistadores but also so much from the natives, all meshed together into one. And then of course different bits and pieces of it redone in different time periods thanks to earthquakes and damages so of different, more modern styles altogether. In the choir, there were two organs that were made when the cathedral first opened in the eighteenth century and have been since refurbished and are still used today.
Last museum was of religious art, which I wasn’t really into. Had the audio recording thing again. Lots of paintings of bishops and priests, angels and other religious figures, all meaning something to so many people but not too much to me. The one group of paintings I liked in there were a set of zodiac paintings that each represented one member of the zodiac and were based in the Netherlands, because basing them here in the Andes would be too normal and not special enough for the zodiac symbols, which were tied in these paintings to Incan gods. There were only nine of them – the painter didn’t start them until he was 70 so he died before he got around to finishing all twelve.
Lunch at a vegetarian restaurant was very yummy… wheat bread, salad from a mini salad bar, lentil noodle vegetable soup, a broccoli dish with rice, and chamomile tea… all for 2 dollars. I can never get such full meals at normal restaurants because they offer cheap big meals all the time (set menus are always wayyyy cheaper than any of the things would be on their own)… but this is the only time it isn’t meat. So stocked up on all the veggies I had been missing from the last week. Then got our stuff back, took a bus to Urabamba. I actually fell asleep on this bus even though it was a completely rickety old bus with tiny uncomfortable seats. I woke up to amazing views outside and tried to keep myself awake for them but couldn’t. Then had to take a shared taxi into Ollaytaytambo, where we were going to see the ruins. They turned out to be almost as expensive as the entrance to Macchu Picchu and we only would have had just over an hour to see them, so we gave up on that and just wandered the tiny town a bit and ate. So now I’m still stuck way too early at the train station, just over an hour to go until we leave. It’s supposed to be a really pretty trip, but it’s nighttime so there won’t be much anything to see… we’ll see it on the way back on Monday. Have to find a hostal once we get there and then get up super early, 4 something, to be in the first 200 people to get to Macchu Picchu so that we are allowed to climb the biggest mountain there…. Number 201, too bad. So we’ll have to get to the bus station super early to make sure we can do it.
It’s been a long couple days of traveling. At the moment, I’m sitting outside at Ollaytatambo, way early for our train but the earlier train is all filled up. I can’t believe I was still in Huancayo yesterday. Went to the vet place and cleaned the floor, washed a dog (Pisco was back to get his bandage changed, and they for some reason changed it first and then told me to bathe him… doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a new dry bandage?)… Said goodbye to the doctors and wanted to take a picture with them, but one of them insisted on taking out his old digital camera, putting the batteries in, and using that to take pictures instead of letting me use my camera. I kept explaining to him that I could email the pictures to him but he said of course, of course, and kept taking pictures of me in every random place of the hospital with his camera. Strange.
After goodbyes at the house, it was off to Lima on the bus. Really really nice bus with seats that reclined back to become almost beds. Really comfortable and tons of room, but it was during the day, so I couldn’t manage to get any sleep. I’ll be on the same type of bus for my long 21 hour trip from Cusco to Lima, so I should hopefully be able to sleep then at least. Watched Slumdog Millionaire in Spanish and a pretty funny Wallace and Gromitt movie, and talked a bunch to the guy sitting next to me. The seven hour ride went by quickly enough. It was snowing for part of it, which was really cool to watch from the window… I hadn’t seen it snow in such a long time, and especially in the Andes, it was really nice. Then off to the airport to spend the night, where I probably got about twenty minutes of sleep total. Wasted time messing around on my computer, snacking, and attempting to sleep but it was really bright and loud so it was pretty hopeless. Abby, of course, is way too lucky and can sleep standing up if she wanted to. No fair!
Finally, took our one hour plane ride to Cusco. Really gorgeous trip, going over the Cordilleras Blancas and watching the sun rise. We landed just at 7am to reports that it was going to be 5 degrees Celsius outside. Eek. I didn’t remember where I had packed my gloves! But luckily, it ended up being a pretty nice day, a bit windy, but not too cold at all. Dumped our stuff at a hostal in central Cusco for the day, wandered around dodging the people offering us hostals and breakfast and massages and on and on. Cusco is a really pretty city, reddish brown and green hillsides accented by rows of red roofed houses in the mountains. I loved the narrow cobblestone streets at first, but soon, my feet were not very happy with the slippery and sometimes sharp stones. Definitely wearing my other shoes tomorrow.
Nothing was open at first, but eventually found Iglesia Santo Domingo. It was interesting at the time but not particularly memorable aside from a really nice bathroom, pretty flowers, and a cool architectural structure. Oh, there were also some ruins inside, mostly empty rooms with unknown purposes, some with holes in the walls that used to allow sound to come in from the street. Lots of stones carved in different styles from Incan times. Ooh, there was a cool room with a description of Incan astronomy and a painting of the way the dark and light spots around the stars line up to make a llama and her baby and some other animals that are very important in the culture.
Then walked around trying to buy tickets to get into Macchu Picchu and also to get from Aguas Calientes, the nearby town, to Macchu Picchu in the morning. We asked a ton of people and just got sent in circles over and over again, it was really frustrating. Finally found the place to buy the tickets, and had to go somewhere else to buy the bus tickets. Took way longer than it should have and it was hidden in this tiny little place because almost everyone goes with a tour, so no one tries to buy tickets just on their own. Oh such fun.
Our errands finally done, we set off to the Cathedral of Cusco. Was pretty expensive (by Peru standards) to get in, but we got a ticket that covered that and three other places as well and it lasts for ten days, so we can finish them off on Monday when we are back in Cusco. Did an audio tour of the church… they have headsets and numbers of what you are supposed to play at which place in the church. It was really, really long and got a bit tedious and too much religiousness for me, but overall, it was interesting and worth doing. The church was gorgeous. Simple but huge domed ceilings, fourteen chapels, countless paintings. The tour talked about a bunch of the different saints, including the one that women pray to to get a certain man to marry her (they write him messages and turn his figure upside down every Friday to remind him of their wishes), the one men use to keep these women away, the one that wards off earthquakes, etc., etc. There was a lot of pure silver and gold shaped into people and birds and basilicas. Paintings over all the domes by a famous painter whose name I of course can’t remember, all very red and blue in color. Lots of paintings showing the cross and combination between the local Andes culture and Catholicism… one of the last supper where the foods on the table were local fruits and cuy (guinea pig. Ick). They talked a lot about the Mestizo presence in the church, how it had a lot of Spanish influence from the conquistadores but also so much from the natives, all meshed together into one. And then of course different bits and pieces of it redone in different time periods thanks to earthquakes and damages so of different, more modern styles altogether. In the choir, there were two organs that were made when the cathedral first opened in the eighteenth century and have been since refurbished and are still used today.
Last museum was of religious art, which I wasn’t really into. Had the audio recording thing again. Lots of paintings of bishops and priests, angels and other religious figures, all meaning something to so many people but not too much to me. The one group of paintings I liked in there were a set of zodiac paintings that each represented one member of the zodiac and were based in the Netherlands, because basing them here in the Andes would be too normal and not special enough for the zodiac symbols, which were tied in these paintings to Incan gods. There were only nine of them – the painter didn’t start them until he was 70 so he died before he got around to finishing all twelve.
Lunch at a vegetarian restaurant was very yummy… wheat bread, salad from a mini salad bar, lentil noodle vegetable soup, a broccoli dish with rice, and chamomile tea… all for 2 dollars. I can never get such full meals at normal restaurants because they offer cheap big meals all the time (set menus are always wayyyy cheaper than any of the things would be on their own)… but this is the only time it isn’t meat. So stocked up on all the veggies I had been missing from the last week. Then got our stuff back, took a bus to Urabamba. I actually fell asleep on this bus even though it was a completely rickety old bus with tiny uncomfortable seats. I woke up to amazing views outside and tried to keep myself awake for them but couldn’t. Then had to take a shared taxi into Ollaytaytambo, where we were going to see the ruins. They turned out to be almost as expensive as the entrance to Macchu Picchu and we only would have had just over an hour to see them, so we gave up on that and just wandered the tiny town a bit and ate. So now I’m still stuck way too early at the train station, just over an hour to go until we leave. It’s supposed to be a really pretty trip, but it’s nighttime so there won’t be much anything to see… we’ll see it on the way back on Monday. Have to find a hostal once we get there and then get up super early, 4 something, to be in the first 200 people to get to Macchu Picchu so that we are allowed to climb the biggest mountain there…. Number 201, too bad. So we’ll have to get to the bus station super early to make sure we can do it.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Sick
It was bound to happen, hard to go through a trip like this without getting sick. Of the five volunteers... all of us are sick. Last night we were all crashed out on the couches watching tv forever because we were too out of it to do anything else. Surviving on carbs and lots of tea. Skipped work today and yesterday, so not much exciting news going on here. I was the only one who felt well enough to go to Urpaycancha with the kids yesterday (along with Eli and Neto, the volunteer coordinators).. and there were only five kids so we ditched the lesson again and just let them color. We were going to have class again today because the others were going to go to the jungle on Friday and we are leaving, but thanks to sickness, jungle is postponed for them and the Thursday class is pushed to Friday. Meaning yesterday was my last day with the kids but I didnt know it till I was actually there, so I dont have any pictures of or with them and I didnt get to say goodbye to most of them. Boo. I´m going to definitely be stealing someone else´s pictures.
I can´t believe its already almost time to go. Leaving tomorrow at 1:30 for the long journey back to Lima and so on. Time went way too fast.. always slow at the beginning and then boom it´s over. I hope I can go to work tomorrow just for a few hours to say goodbye and take some pictures, I´ll see how I´m doing. We may all take a trip to the doctor today to get some antibiotics, maybe. Way cheaper here than in the US and not even worth using travel insurance because it costs way less than the deductible.
Okay, I still havent written about Saturday´s adventures... Started out early driving out to the valley to go horseback riding. My horse was named Harry (with a Spanish accent.. though I keep thinking of his name with a Harry Potter accent for some reason).. and he was the crazy of the bunch. Yay. We rode for three hours, which was awesome, but we were all really really sore for the few days after. Completely different than riding in the US... our guide was in the back and when we were at a juncture and asked him which way to turn, he just shrugged his shoulders and let us go wherever we felt like going, most of the time. We got to lead and my horse being himself, always pushed up to the front and started running off way ahead of the others. So I got an amazing view of the valley and a really fun ride. Went really deep into the valley and up a mountain, and we could see in the distance the glacier that we had climbed to the weekend before, just the tip peaking over other mountains. Passed through a little pueblo (town) where a costumed band was practicing, and through another pueblo where a celebration was going on, and we stopped for a few minutes to watch them dance and sing. At one point, got off our horses and let them rest for a bit while we climbed up part of a mountain to an amazing view of the entire valley. Called Wawi wawi, it means baby in Quechua. Hard to describe what it looked like; I´ll post pictures later. But it was breathtaking. Back down with the horses, we climbed up another hill and felt horrible for the horses because it was really steep and rocky and hard to climb. Harry liked to wander off in his own direction and when I steered him back in the other direction, he trotted off the wrong way instead. Naughty horse! But it´s more fun that way :D Passed by sheep, cows, locals wandering around doing who knows what in the middle of nowhere, far away from their towns. When we were almost back, Harry´s harness decided to break off and suddenly I had no control of him. I held on to his mane and tried to get him to stop, but he kept running away from the guide, who was trying to catch us to put it back on. Eventually cornered him next to a wall and the guide ended up taking out one of his shoelaces and using it to tie the harness back on. The rest of the group had gotten way ahead at this point and Harry, wanting to be the leader, went off at a full paced gallop to catch up with the rest of them the moment the guide let him go. Weee. He was also quite a nasty horse and liked to nip at his cousin and some of the other horses. I almost got nipped at once in return. At the end of the ride, had to go through a river, where I luckily didnt get wet because Harry was the tallest horse, but the others got soaked because the river was really deep.
Drove through a town and stopped to watch part of a wedding, where we felt completely out of place in our disgusting horse clothes and just being foreigners, but it was interesting to see. Stopped by a dairy factory and had the most amazing ice cream ever, the fresh cream from the cows stuck directly into a machine and then right to us. Yummm. Then we went this really pretty place for lunch.. yes, it was completely man made fountains and stones and everything, but it looked almost real and they definitely knew how to make it look good. Everyone else got fresh trout from the river right there, and I got.. yup, potatoes! Was still hungry after so ate a granola bar too. After lunch, we visited a silver factory in another town, where they showed up how they make jewlery using these cool old methods, and for some reason, we have no idea why, put on this really creepy costume and said something about it really quickly in Spanish. Was really cool to watch the jewlery being made and just know that all the really intricate pieces there were pure silver and all made by hand. Then we went to a fabric factory and saw them weaving on their looms and they told us a bit about that.
Back home, we had been planning to go to a Peruvian rock concert of a band whose song we kept hearing on the radio, but we were too exhausted, so rested for a bit and then went to a karaoke bar at night. Yumm pina coladas are good. But actually really expensive (for here) at the place we were at. Went home and crashed after a long day and spent Sunday just lazing around.
Hmm what else.. food is always potatoes potatoes potatoes. One day we went to a chicken restaurant and I asked for potatoes and a salad and my potatoes were a giantttt plate of french fries. Really good fries with a good sauce, but still, I dont think I´ll be eating fries for a while. Another day, we went for pachamanga, a type of food cooked in an underground oven with coals, and almost entirely meat. I got potatoes and this sweet cornbread thing, humitas, wrapped in leaves like tamales are. Actually was a really good lunch. Tried Inka Kola, the most popular soft drink of peru, a neon yellow soda, and it was really really overly sweet and just..yuck. But I had to try it sometime since I´m here. Another night, we went to a Chinese restaurant, and I got a break from potatoes and had really good fried rice. Also had an amazing pisco sour, the famous drink of peru, really really good at that restaurant.. I had tried one somewhere else and this one was a million times better.
Okay, well, I think I´m mostly caught up on everything now, nice super long blog. Goodbye.
I can´t believe its already almost time to go. Leaving tomorrow at 1:30 for the long journey back to Lima and so on. Time went way too fast.. always slow at the beginning and then boom it´s over. I hope I can go to work tomorrow just for a few hours to say goodbye and take some pictures, I´ll see how I´m doing. We may all take a trip to the doctor today to get some antibiotics, maybe. Way cheaper here than in the US and not even worth using travel insurance because it costs way less than the deductible.
Okay, I still havent written about Saturday´s adventures... Started out early driving out to the valley to go horseback riding. My horse was named Harry (with a Spanish accent.. though I keep thinking of his name with a Harry Potter accent for some reason).. and he was the crazy of the bunch. Yay. We rode for three hours, which was awesome, but we were all really really sore for the few days after. Completely different than riding in the US... our guide was in the back and when we were at a juncture and asked him which way to turn, he just shrugged his shoulders and let us go wherever we felt like going, most of the time. We got to lead and my horse being himself, always pushed up to the front and started running off way ahead of the others. So I got an amazing view of the valley and a really fun ride. Went really deep into the valley and up a mountain, and we could see in the distance the glacier that we had climbed to the weekend before, just the tip peaking over other mountains. Passed through a little pueblo (town) where a costumed band was practicing, and through another pueblo where a celebration was going on, and we stopped for a few minutes to watch them dance and sing. At one point, got off our horses and let them rest for a bit while we climbed up part of a mountain to an amazing view of the entire valley. Called Wawi wawi, it means baby in Quechua. Hard to describe what it looked like; I´ll post pictures later. But it was breathtaking. Back down with the horses, we climbed up another hill and felt horrible for the horses because it was really steep and rocky and hard to climb. Harry liked to wander off in his own direction and when I steered him back in the other direction, he trotted off the wrong way instead. Naughty horse! But it´s more fun that way :D Passed by sheep, cows, locals wandering around doing who knows what in the middle of nowhere, far away from their towns. When we were almost back, Harry´s harness decided to break off and suddenly I had no control of him. I held on to his mane and tried to get him to stop, but he kept running away from the guide, who was trying to catch us to put it back on. Eventually cornered him next to a wall and the guide ended up taking out one of his shoelaces and using it to tie the harness back on. The rest of the group had gotten way ahead at this point and Harry, wanting to be the leader, went off at a full paced gallop to catch up with the rest of them the moment the guide let him go. Weee. He was also quite a nasty horse and liked to nip at his cousin and some of the other horses. I almost got nipped at once in return. At the end of the ride, had to go through a river, where I luckily didnt get wet because Harry was the tallest horse, but the others got soaked because the river was really deep.
Drove through a town and stopped to watch part of a wedding, where we felt completely out of place in our disgusting horse clothes and just being foreigners, but it was interesting to see. Stopped by a dairy factory and had the most amazing ice cream ever, the fresh cream from the cows stuck directly into a machine and then right to us. Yummm. Then we went this really pretty place for lunch.. yes, it was completely man made fountains and stones and everything, but it looked almost real and they definitely knew how to make it look good. Everyone else got fresh trout from the river right there, and I got.. yup, potatoes! Was still hungry after so ate a granola bar too. After lunch, we visited a silver factory in another town, where they showed up how they make jewlery using these cool old methods, and for some reason, we have no idea why, put on this really creepy costume and said something about it really quickly in Spanish. Was really cool to watch the jewlery being made and just know that all the really intricate pieces there were pure silver and all made by hand. Then we went to a fabric factory and saw them weaving on their looms and they told us a bit about that.
Back home, we had been planning to go to a Peruvian rock concert of a band whose song we kept hearing on the radio, but we were too exhausted, so rested for a bit and then went to a karaoke bar at night. Yumm pina coladas are good. But actually really expensive (for here) at the place we were at. Went home and crashed after a long day and spent Sunday just lazing around.
Hmm what else.. food is always potatoes potatoes potatoes. One day we went to a chicken restaurant and I asked for potatoes and a salad and my potatoes were a giantttt plate of french fries. Really good fries with a good sauce, but still, I dont think I´ll be eating fries for a while. Another day, we went for pachamanga, a type of food cooked in an underground oven with coals, and almost entirely meat. I got potatoes and this sweet cornbread thing, humitas, wrapped in leaves like tamales are. Actually was a really good lunch. Tried Inka Kola, the most popular soft drink of peru, a neon yellow soda, and it was really really overly sweet and just..yuck. But I had to try it sometime since I´m here. Another night, we went to a Chinese restaurant, and I got a break from potatoes and had really good fried rice. Also had an amazing pisco sour, the famous drink of peru, really really good at that restaurant.. I had tried one somewhere else and this one was a million times better.
Okay, well, I think I´m mostly caught up on everything now, nice super long blog. Goodbye.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
House Calls
No blood and gore today at the veterinary clinic. Instead, we were out and about. First went with the doctor to the house of a really old, kind of out there lady. Took the bus there but it wasnt too far so we walked back. Took stitches out on a dog who had anal gland abcesses a few weeks ago, from what I could understand of the conversation. There were a ton of dogs in the house and I met a Peruvian breed dog - its a hairless dog with a fuzzy white head and tail and besides that, its just a bald dark grey. Look it up - hideous but cute at the same time. Apparently they do house calls a lot - the old lady lived with her kids who easily could have brought the dog in, but the doctor went because he said the lady couldnt go.
Back at the clinic, a dog was getting a warm water bath, which is pretty rare up here. Then came a haircut, where they actually used electric blades like we use in the US. I asked why they didnt use them during surgery and he said using it on dirty hair dulls the blade so they only used it for grooming after baths.
Then a woman came by and told the doctor about her very sick cow, so we got on a combi and rode for about 20, 30 minutes out into the countryside to Cullpa. Twas my first time being in a rural home here, and it was really interesting. Walk in the gate into a courtyard full of dogs, cats, roosters, chickens, pigs, and cows. The sick cow is tied up under a roof. Clothes hanging on the lines to dry, screaming children, extended family everyone. Such a scene from a movie, and also reminded me of backyards in Ecuador. The cow was giving milk from one of her teets but from another came a weird liquid that looked like oil. Not eating, etc, etc, lots of problems, the doctor diagnosed her with mastitis. Gave vitamins and another injection. The part I had to try so hard not to laugh about - the doctor asked for a beer bottle and warm water.. empty beer bottle it turned out, luckily. poured a powder into the bottle, filled it with water, shook it around, pried open the cow´s mouth, and poured in all the liquid, and did this twice. it was really funny to watch a cow drinking out of a beer bottle. yepp.
Finally figured out my schedule for the rest of the trip. Took forever and involved my credit card being frozen and having to defraud and authorize it, and lots of websites just not working. But finally we have a plan. It sucks cause I dont get to do Nazca lines or the jungle, it was a lot of back and forth ridiculous travel just because of the way the buses work. Ugh. But I´ll fly out of Lima to Cuzco Sat early morning and spend Monday at Macchu Picchu and then take the 21 hour bus ride back to Lima and then fly back to SF through San Salvador. Oh it´ll be a crazy couple of days with wayyy too much travel in between the fun parts. But the buses are nice ones, with bed seats, so hopefully I´ll just sleep and watch the scenery.
Back at the clinic, a dog was getting a warm water bath, which is pretty rare up here. Then came a haircut, where they actually used electric blades like we use in the US. I asked why they didnt use them during surgery and he said using it on dirty hair dulls the blade so they only used it for grooming after baths.
Then a woman came by and told the doctor about her very sick cow, so we got on a combi and rode for about 20, 30 minutes out into the countryside to Cullpa. Twas my first time being in a rural home here, and it was really interesting. Walk in the gate into a courtyard full of dogs, cats, roosters, chickens, pigs, and cows. The sick cow is tied up under a roof. Clothes hanging on the lines to dry, screaming children, extended family everyone. Such a scene from a movie, and also reminded me of backyards in Ecuador. The cow was giving milk from one of her teets but from another came a weird liquid that looked like oil. Not eating, etc, etc, lots of problems, the doctor diagnosed her with mastitis. Gave vitamins and another injection. The part I had to try so hard not to laugh about - the doctor asked for a beer bottle and warm water.. empty beer bottle it turned out, luckily. poured a powder into the bottle, filled it with water, shook it around, pried open the cow´s mouth, and poured in all the liquid, and did this twice. it was really funny to watch a cow drinking out of a beer bottle. yepp.
Finally figured out my schedule for the rest of the trip. Took forever and involved my credit card being frozen and having to defraud and authorize it, and lots of websites just not working. But finally we have a plan. It sucks cause I dont get to do Nazca lines or the jungle, it was a lot of back and forth ridiculous travel just because of the way the buses work. Ugh. But I´ll fly out of Lima to Cuzco Sat early morning and spend Monday at Macchu Picchu and then take the 21 hour bus ride back to Lima and then fly back to SF through San Salvador. Oh it´ll be a crazy couple of days with wayyy too much travel in between the fun parts. But the buses are nice ones, with bed seats, so hopefully I´ll just sleep and watch the scenery.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Pop Eye
Cleaning the vet clinic consists of: every day, sweep the floors and dust off the surgery/exam table. to clean up pee, sprinkle sawdust on top and sweep it up. the end. but on mondays, fill a bucket with water and disinfectant and reuse this very dirty water to scrub the floors and make them cleaner, or attempt to. then take petroleum and coat the floors with it for a final coat of cleaning, and hope that no one decides to light a match. interesting.
the first dog that came in this morning had one of his eyes popping out of his face. knocked him out and tried to stuff his eye back in but they werent using enough anesthesia so he didnt like it too much, to say the least. gave more anesthesia, cleaned off the eye, which was completely out of its socket and oozing pus, beautiful, and then pushed it back in. they sutured it up a bit and used two cut up pieces of plastic tubing to hold it shut. in five days, they will take that out and see if they can save the eye. was a really interesting procedure, ive never seen anyhing like that because they always send eye cases to specialists.
the other case for the day was a dog with a huge bloody pussy abcess on his neck. he seriouly did not want to be aslèep and we had to keep putting more and more anesthesia and pìnning him down while they were cleaning it off. not a happy dog. thery flushed out the absess and put a ton of ampìcillin into the wound, which i hadnt seen before. sutured in a drain and theyll check on it in a couple days. all the owners are so clueless about their dogs... this is something yucky but pretty fixable and the owner was really freaked out and asked me if pisco (the dog, also thew name of the wine here) wquld die. nope, this one has plenty of fight left in him. after the proceudre, they covered his neck in gauze and wrapped masking tape around his head very sloppily. was pretty funny looking. and this keyboard suckssss.
so i´m noticing more and more the huge differences between vet clinics here and in the us. never would a doctor scrub the floor or do the intake on a patient in the us. only in other countries do they reuse bloody pieces of gauze and have such little care for sterility. but thats how it goes when money is such a huge factor. they reuse needles as long as it is on the same animal. owners are allowed to stand in on surgeries and watch, sometiemes even help. so weird. the doctors do everything, there are no technicians to do anything for them, so they do everything from the dirty work to the surgeries. never never never in the US would a vet do so many of these things, its so strange. but definitely good in a way, keeps them from becoming above everything and everyone.
okay, time to go eat lunch and go work with the kids, but ill update about this weekend´s adventures later on. :)
the first dog that came in this morning had one of his eyes popping out of his face. knocked him out and tried to stuff his eye back in but they werent using enough anesthesia so he didnt like it too much, to say the least. gave more anesthesia, cleaned off the eye, which was completely out of its socket and oozing pus, beautiful, and then pushed it back in. they sutured it up a bit and used two cut up pieces of plastic tubing to hold it shut. in five days, they will take that out and see if they can save the eye. was a really interesting procedure, ive never seen anyhing like that because they always send eye cases to specialists.
the other case for the day was a dog with a huge bloody pussy abcess on his neck. he seriouly did not want to be aslèep and we had to keep putting more and more anesthesia and pìnning him down while they were cleaning it off. not a happy dog. thery flushed out the absess and put a ton of ampìcillin into the wound, which i hadnt seen before. sutured in a drain and theyll check on it in a couple days. all the owners are so clueless about their dogs... this is something yucky but pretty fixable and the owner was really freaked out and asked me if pisco (the dog, also thew name of the wine here) wquld die. nope, this one has plenty of fight left in him. after the proceudre, they covered his neck in gauze and wrapped masking tape around his head very sloppily. was pretty funny looking. and this keyboard suckssss.
so i´m noticing more and more the huge differences between vet clinics here and in the us. never would a doctor scrub the floor or do the intake on a patient in the us. only in other countries do they reuse bloody pieces of gauze and have such little care for sterility. but thats how it goes when money is such a huge factor. they reuse needles as long as it is on the same animal. owners are allowed to stand in on surgeries and watch, sometiemes even help. so weird. the doctors do everything, there are no technicians to do anything for them, so they do everything from the dirty work to the surgeries. never never never in the US would a vet do so many of these things, its so strange. but definitely good in a way, keeps them from becoming above everything and everyone.
okay, time to go eat lunch and go work with the kids, but ill update about this weekend´s adventures later on. :)
Friday, September 4, 2009
Poor Bobby
Started off the day at the vet clinic with the usual cleaning up the mess made the day before. There were no clients, so we restocked the cotton balls. And this means taking a sheet of cotton, tearing it into strips of rectangles, and rolling them around your finger to form a cotton ring. I guess it´s a good way to save money.
I had asked the owners of the house I´m staying at if I could get Bobby, the dog of the house, neutered, because there are way too many pregnant dogs on the street and this should prevent at least a few babies, hopefully. They said yes, and because it was so quiet at the clinic today, I went home and dragged Bobby back with me. Literally dragged and carried because he doesnt know how to walk on a leash and I think he knew that I wasnt taking him to a very fun place. Of course when we got there, he peed in about five different spots inside. Lovely. Watched as the vet neutered him. I guess they do it a lot less often here, so they have much less expertise at it. Usually vets can do a neuter in 5 or 10 minutes in the us once the dog is down on the table, but this took almost an hour. Not quite sure why it took him so long. Then because the anesthesia isnt nearly as good, it took him two hours, as opposed to a couple of minutes, after the procedure to even stir. Scared me a bit that it took so long. He was pretty groggy and drunk looking afterwards, and I havent seen him in a bit, but hopefully he´ll be better tonight. He´s on some antibiotics for the next five days, so I get to be the vet in the house for a while. All of the guys who know Bobby were completely freaked out for him, whcih was pretty funny ' they just arent used to animals being fixed so this seems like something completely cruel to them. But its all for the better. And including meds, it only cost me 30 US dollars for everything. One dog, but its better than no dogs. Bobby is confined now to his dog house for a while, which is tiny, but its better than letting him roam around the inside courtyard caue he keeps banging into things and they dont have a cone head here so he doesnt chew on his stitches.
With the kids.. we only had four kids today, as opposed to seventeen last time. So had to scratch the lesson we had planned. Tried to teach them a little bit about possessive pronouns in asking questions about different people, but they had a really hard time with it. DUring the play hour, I entertained little Lucho, which was fun. We lost the key to the house so had to look around on the field to find it. Was very exciting when I found the glimering gold key in the grass before it got dark.
Then had to go and pick up Bobby´s meds while the others went to a dance class here, which would have been interesting, but maybe I´ll go some other day. We´re going to meet up soon for dinner in the main plaza, I´m hiding out in the internet cafe away from the rain until then. And then desserts. Mmmm I love peruvian desserts.
I had asked the owners of the house I´m staying at if I could get Bobby, the dog of the house, neutered, because there are way too many pregnant dogs on the street and this should prevent at least a few babies, hopefully. They said yes, and because it was so quiet at the clinic today, I went home and dragged Bobby back with me. Literally dragged and carried because he doesnt know how to walk on a leash and I think he knew that I wasnt taking him to a very fun place. Of course when we got there, he peed in about five different spots inside. Lovely. Watched as the vet neutered him. I guess they do it a lot less often here, so they have much less expertise at it. Usually vets can do a neuter in 5 or 10 minutes in the us once the dog is down on the table, but this took almost an hour. Not quite sure why it took him so long. Then because the anesthesia isnt nearly as good, it took him two hours, as opposed to a couple of minutes, after the procedure to even stir. Scared me a bit that it took so long. He was pretty groggy and drunk looking afterwards, and I havent seen him in a bit, but hopefully he´ll be better tonight. He´s on some antibiotics for the next five days, so I get to be the vet in the house for a while. All of the guys who know Bobby were completely freaked out for him, whcih was pretty funny ' they just arent used to animals being fixed so this seems like something completely cruel to them. But its all for the better. And including meds, it only cost me 30 US dollars for everything. One dog, but its better than no dogs. Bobby is confined now to his dog house for a while, which is tiny, but its better than letting him roam around the inside courtyard caue he keeps banging into things and they dont have a cone head here so he doesnt chew on his stitches.
With the kids.. we only had four kids today, as opposed to seventeen last time. So had to scratch the lesson we had planned. Tried to teach them a little bit about possessive pronouns in asking questions about different people, but they had a really hard time with it. DUring the play hour, I entertained little Lucho, which was fun. We lost the key to the house so had to look around on the field to find it. Was very exciting when I found the glimering gold key in the grass before it got dark.
Then had to go and pick up Bobby´s meds while the others went to a dance class here, which would have been interesting, but maybe I´ll go some other day. We´re going to meet up soon for dinner in the main plaza, I´m hiding out in the internet cafe away from the rain until then. And then desserts. Mmmm I love peruvian desserts.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Jars of Fetuses
I forgot to say the other day... So combis are the minivan things that we ride to get around. There is a driver and a guy who collects the money and calls out where the combi is going to, chupacachupacachupaca. We were on our way to work and at one point, the money guy got out for what we thought would be a minute, no one knows why, and then he didnt come back. the driver blared his horn for like five minutes straight, drove a block, waited again, and finally just left without the guy. People sitting in the front of the bus took turns calling out the destination, opening the door, and collecting money for people. It was pretty funny. Next thing for a combi guy to do - fall out the door, we are just waiting for that because they always practically hang out of the door looking for people as the combi is driving along.
I won´t get to go the jungle this weekend because not enough people wanted to go and things didnt work out for it, I´m not really sure, so that kind of sucks, I wanted to go back to the jungle after Ecuador. Next time I´m in South America, I guess. This coming weekend is already my last weekend with Carisma Peru - next weekend will be Machu Picchu and Nazca lines on our own, and then it´s time to go home and be off to school already. Time flies. Anyway, instead, we are going to go horseback riding in a valley this weekend and visit small towns and eat trout fresh from a river. Well, potatoes for me!
In other news... I´ve switched from volunteering at a human clinic to an animal clinic. Got kind of bored there and sick of not being able to do anything to help. So yesterday I went around with the volunteer coordinators and they asked for me and we found a clinic a really short walk from the house that I can volunteer at. So I´ve been there yesterday and today.
First thing I see when I walk in - jars filled with preserved animal fetuses. Baby food jars, jam jars, jars with labels pulled off, each filled with a few fetuses. A very strange sight. The clinic is obviously very different than in the US. There´s pretty pathetic sterility, though that was to be expected. I´m surprised by the way they use gloves - even to just do a basic exam, they put on gloves, but they reuse these gloves between each patient. Doesn´t that defeat the point? It´s a really dusty, dirty place that we clean each morning but gets disgusting within a few minutes again. Mm, dirt inside the bodies during surgery. Luckily they change needles between each patient, at least. Instead of kennels in the wall like in the US, the floor in the waiting room is covered with the kennels that you can carry around, and that is where animals stay overnight or when they are waiting to be looked at or have surgery. There are a few glass cases with scattered collars and dog tags, toys, shampoo, toothbrushes, and some strange anti-parasite medicine. Inside the office, a lot of the medicines are the same brands as we use in the US, but there really arent very many meds at the hospital. For most things, including xrays and bloodwork, the doctor has to write an rx and the clients go to a human clinic to get whatever it is taken care of.
Yesterday there were quite a few interesting cases. But my body didn´t have a very fun time with them combined with the altitude. When I first got there, I helped with the surgery of a dog who had eaten a plastic bag. Churro, an adorable cocker spaniel, had completely white gums and was barely there when we started the surgery. The doctor tied sutures into the stomach and had me hold up the stomach for him to cut into, and then I fainted. It wasn´t even bloody. I blame the altitude. Luckily I managed not to fall face first into the stomach, though, but rested in another room until I was better. The dog didn´t survive the surgery. :( Hmm who else was there... a surgery on a dog who had the most disgusting ear I´d ever seen. He had been in a dog fight and was a really aggresive dog, so we had to knock him out before even putting the catheter in. Shaved his ear using a gilette razor held in a blade holder, very different and soooo much harder than the nice electric shaver that we get to use back in the US.
They also docked two tails yesterday, grrrr! Why do they dock tails here when money is an issue and the dogs arent even castrated? The doctor took me out to lunch at a veggie restaurant and I was asking him about the system and he doesnt do anything at all for any of the street dogs and rarely castrates any of the animals, even though its only about 20 bucks US to neuter a male and about 60 to spay a female. I might pay to have Bobby, the dog at the house I´m staying at, neutered, cause the dogs here are completely out of control and no one, not even the veterinarians, do anything about it. Most people seem to have pets, and I´ve been really surprised to see a lot of cats come into the clinic because you never see cats on the street, only dogs, but the cats actually seem pretty well taken care of. There are two completely separate classes of animals here - the dogs who live on the streets and those who are loved pets. All of them eat table scraps and dig in the garbage for food and are pretty friendly with people (which they definitely werent in Africa, where no one had pets)... Here there is a more positive attitude towards dogs because pèople do keep them as pets, but street dogs are street dogs and there are just too many for anyone to bother doing anything about it, it´s really sad.
Today at the clinic almost nothing happened, there was a cat in renal failure who came in (who the vet diganosed solely on symptoms without doing any tests at all), and a cat with crazy owners who got mad and stomped out when the vet told them the cat had fluid in his lungs. Besides that, I sat around, cleaned a bunch, and attempted to read part of a vet textbook in Spanish. All of this is happening in Spanish, no one here really knows English, so some of the time they don´t realize I´m not fluent and they talk really really fast. I catch bits and pieces and just smile and nod. But most of the time, I´m able to get the main gist of what´s going on, and it´s really interesting to see all the differences.
I won´t get to go the jungle this weekend because not enough people wanted to go and things didnt work out for it, I´m not really sure, so that kind of sucks, I wanted to go back to the jungle after Ecuador. Next time I´m in South America, I guess. This coming weekend is already my last weekend with Carisma Peru - next weekend will be Machu Picchu and Nazca lines on our own, and then it´s time to go home and be off to school already. Time flies. Anyway, instead, we are going to go horseback riding in a valley this weekend and visit small towns and eat trout fresh from a river. Well, potatoes for me!
In other news... I´ve switched from volunteering at a human clinic to an animal clinic. Got kind of bored there and sick of not being able to do anything to help. So yesterday I went around with the volunteer coordinators and they asked for me and we found a clinic a really short walk from the house that I can volunteer at. So I´ve been there yesterday and today.
First thing I see when I walk in - jars filled with preserved animal fetuses. Baby food jars, jam jars, jars with labels pulled off, each filled with a few fetuses. A very strange sight. The clinic is obviously very different than in the US. There´s pretty pathetic sterility, though that was to be expected. I´m surprised by the way they use gloves - even to just do a basic exam, they put on gloves, but they reuse these gloves between each patient. Doesn´t that defeat the point? It´s a really dusty, dirty place that we clean each morning but gets disgusting within a few minutes again. Mm, dirt inside the bodies during surgery. Luckily they change needles between each patient, at least. Instead of kennels in the wall like in the US, the floor in the waiting room is covered with the kennels that you can carry around, and that is where animals stay overnight or when they are waiting to be looked at or have surgery. There are a few glass cases with scattered collars and dog tags, toys, shampoo, toothbrushes, and some strange anti-parasite medicine. Inside the office, a lot of the medicines are the same brands as we use in the US, but there really arent very many meds at the hospital. For most things, including xrays and bloodwork, the doctor has to write an rx and the clients go to a human clinic to get whatever it is taken care of.
Yesterday there were quite a few interesting cases. But my body didn´t have a very fun time with them combined with the altitude. When I first got there, I helped with the surgery of a dog who had eaten a plastic bag. Churro, an adorable cocker spaniel, had completely white gums and was barely there when we started the surgery. The doctor tied sutures into the stomach and had me hold up the stomach for him to cut into, and then I fainted. It wasn´t even bloody. I blame the altitude. Luckily I managed not to fall face first into the stomach, though, but rested in another room until I was better. The dog didn´t survive the surgery. :( Hmm who else was there... a surgery on a dog who had the most disgusting ear I´d ever seen. He had been in a dog fight and was a really aggresive dog, so we had to knock him out before even putting the catheter in. Shaved his ear using a gilette razor held in a blade holder, very different and soooo much harder than the nice electric shaver that we get to use back in the US.
They also docked two tails yesterday, grrrr! Why do they dock tails here when money is an issue and the dogs arent even castrated? The doctor took me out to lunch at a veggie restaurant and I was asking him about the system and he doesnt do anything at all for any of the street dogs and rarely castrates any of the animals, even though its only about 20 bucks US to neuter a male and about 60 to spay a female. I might pay to have Bobby, the dog at the house I´m staying at, neutered, cause the dogs here are completely out of control and no one, not even the veterinarians, do anything about it. Most people seem to have pets, and I´ve been really surprised to see a lot of cats come into the clinic because you never see cats on the street, only dogs, but the cats actually seem pretty well taken care of. There are two completely separate classes of animals here - the dogs who live on the streets and those who are loved pets. All of them eat table scraps and dig in the garbage for food and are pretty friendly with people (which they definitely werent in Africa, where no one had pets)... Here there is a more positive attitude towards dogs because pèople do keep them as pets, but street dogs are street dogs and there are just too many for anyone to bother doing anything about it, it´s really sad.
Today at the clinic almost nothing happened, there was a cat in renal failure who came in (who the vet diganosed solely on symptoms without doing any tests at all), and a cat with crazy owners who got mad and stomped out when the vet told them the cat had fluid in his lungs. Besides that, I sat around, cleaned a bunch, and attempted to read part of a vet textbook in Spanish. All of this is happening in Spanish, no one here really knows English, so some of the time they don´t realize I´m not fluent and they talk really really fast. I catch bits and pieces and just smile and nod. But most of the time, I´m able to get the main gist of what´s going on, and it´s really interesting to see all the differences.
Monday, August 31, 2009
And A Sheep Strolls In...
I forgot to mention yesterday that when we got to the part where we were going to start hiking up the mountain towards the glacier.. there was a dog and a young llama cuddling together. Adorable.
Today with the kids was lots of fun. I took the girls group and ended up with eight girls, which was a pretty big group compared to the usual and is especially big when trying to teach them English. They were completely distracted by the boys, who were being really bad, and one of the girls was goofing off like crazy, but finger on your nose along with a sticker rewards system that we are making helps quiet them down a bit. taught them hello, goodbye, and introductions today. we were supposed to get through a lot more but they take quite a while to get it down, especially with prononuciations, they say I like EE, the spanish pronunciation, so everything sounds way off.
So I was in the middle of my lesson, writing on the white board and making the kids repeat things after me, and in walks a sheep. The kids didnt seem to think much of it, I guess its pretty normal around here, but the other volunteers and I had to try sooo hard to not laugh and get the kids all riled up. It´s also hard during the lessons because in the classroom area, there are a bunch of kittens and puppies that live there that the kids want to play with. But for the most part, they are pretty good about paying attention and wanting to learn, because it isn´t a required program, they come there after school on their own.
After an hour of a lesson, we went to play outside for an hour. Red light green light, a game called matagente (meaning kill people - i dont know what it is, the kids play it themselves), and a bit of monkey in the middle, which was hilarious when the tiny kids tried to throw the ball over the heads of the older ones. One of the girls brought snacks for everyone at the end, which was super sweet. The volunteers ate the one chocolate bar cause it was too hard to divide up between the 17 kids we had today :D
Today with the kids was lots of fun. I took the girls group and ended up with eight girls, which was a pretty big group compared to the usual and is especially big when trying to teach them English. They were completely distracted by the boys, who were being really bad, and one of the girls was goofing off like crazy, but finger on your nose along with a sticker rewards system that we are making helps quiet them down a bit. taught them hello, goodbye, and introductions today. we were supposed to get through a lot more but they take quite a while to get it down, especially with prononuciations, they say I like EE, the spanish pronunciation, so everything sounds way off.
So I was in the middle of my lesson, writing on the white board and making the kids repeat things after me, and in walks a sheep. The kids didnt seem to think much of it, I guess its pretty normal around here, but the other volunteers and I had to try sooo hard to not laugh and get the kids all riled up. It´s also hard during the lessons because in the classroom area, there are a bunch of kittens and puppies that live there that the kids want to play with. But for the most part, they are pretty good about paying attention and wanting to learn, because it isn´t a required program, they come there after school on their own.
After an hour of a lesson, we went to play outside for an hour. Red light green light, a game called matagente (meaning kill people - i dont know what it is, the kids play it themselves), and a bit of monkey in the middle, which was hilarious when the tiny kids tried to throw the ball over the heads of the older ones. One of the girls brought snacks for everyone at the end, which was super sweet. The volunteers ate the one chocolate bar cause it was too hard to divide up between the 17 kids we had today :D
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Intense Hiking
Argh I´m trying to find flights to Cuzco so that we can go to Macchu Picchu after volunteering, but they are so expensive. The bus ride there would be 14+ hours and is apparently pretty awful and everyone says don´t do it. So that leaves taking the plane, the cheapest of which I can find is over 200 round trip, plus another 100 for while we are there taking the train to Macchu Picchu and actually being there. Gross. I don´t want to do it but I do. We´ll see.
Anyway, yesterday, we went to a glacier in Huaytapallana (meaning where flowers gather, in Quechua), about a two hour bumpy combi ride away from Huancayo. We drove alongside a river, often going over really narrow bridges or even driving through it. I went with the other volunteers and a group of other people who had come up from Lima to hike the mountain. Bundled up with a ton of layers because we were so high up and near the snow. The base of the mountain was at about 15,000 feet and we hiked 8 km total (about 5 miles). The way there was really tough because I got pretty bad altitude sickness combined with the exertion of hiking. Stomach ache, headache, dizziness, all that good stuff. Had to rest a lot and really wasn´t feeling well. Eventually, the guide gave me coca leaves to chew on and those helped a lot - I didnt feel sick for the rest of the day. It´s what everyone here uses for altitude sickness and I was pretty desparate at that point. Yes, coca leaves are the basis of cocaine, but to make a tiny amount of cocaine, they use a tonnnn of coca leaves. Went up one mountain, back down the other side, up and down another, and then arrived at the glacier after a little over three hours of hiking. It was gorgeous, really out in the middle of nowhere, way out in the Andes. As we were hiking, we passed a bunch of lakes and lagoons, some of them an ugly brown and others a beautiful agua-marine color that reminded me of Laguna Quilotoa, the crater lake that I went to in the Ecuadorian Andes. Snow peaked mountains, glaciers in the distance, vast endless brown mountains, green fields everywhere we looked. The path was pretty dangerous, lots of walking on unstable rocks and near cliffs, but luckily no one got hurt. There was a little boy hiking with us who the guide somehow managed to carry on his shoulders and run despite all of the barriers on the path. Eventually after lots of water and chocolate and what seemed like forever, we could see the glacier. From a distance, I could see pèople trekking up the mountain pretty far up, and I thought that was what we were going to do. I was too tired to be able to do that so thought I wasnt going to get to climb the glacier. As it turned out, our group just climbed a little bit up the glacier, pulling ourselves up against a rope that the guide had brought. When we reached a certain point, we sled down the glacier on tarps, which was really fun but pretty scary because it seemed like we wouldn´t ever stop. The guide stopped us by pretty much letting us slam into him. The glacier had icicles hanging down from it and was this enormous mass of ice and snow so huge that I couldn´t even see the top of it from where I stood at the bottom. An intense journey there but definitely worth it. The hike back was really easy in comparison and we walked really fast the whole way back with very few breaks. A little bit of uphill but not too much. A lot of the downhill was steep and I had no idea how we had been able to walk up that on the way there. Arrived back at the bottom and most people had chicken soup because it was so cold, I just had some coffee to warm up - all they have here in instant, thought, not very good but at least it was hot.
After the ride back, I did my spanish homework (just writing a little bit of past tense stuff in Spanish about the day) and then knocked out without dinner by 7:30, we were all so exhausted. Slept a tonnn.
This morning after breakfast, we went to the Sunday market, which is a pretty big thing in Huancayo. Longer walk there than we thought, but not too bad and managed not to get lost. There was a long road with tons of stalls of everything from American clothes and shoes to Peruvian jewlery and traditional clothing and bags and food and artwork and anything you can think of. Pretty similar to the one that I went to in Ecuador, but a bit bigger. Bargained a lot and bought a bunch of stuff. The people were actually less willing to bargain than the people in Ecuador, but I still managed to get some pretty good deals, just walked away from the people who wouldn´t bargain with me. We were the only foreigners at the market, I still haven´t seen a single other foreigner in Huancayo besides the volunteers. I would think there would be at least a few.
I wish I could put pictures up, but my computer is dead and the computers here don´t have slots to put my camera card into and I didnt bring along the cord. So you´ll have to wait for pictures till I can charge my computer again in Nazca or Cuzco in a couple of weeks.
I locked myself out of my room and the house and the volunteer coordinators are out in the mountains until later tonight, so I have to wait to go back to the house until the others are back from buying chicken at the open market. Hopefully they will be back soon, though.
Anyway, yesterday, we went to a glacier in Huaytapallana (meaning where flowers gather, in Quechua), about a two hour bumpy combi ride away from Huancayo. We drove alongside a river, often going over really narrow bridges or even driving through it. I went with the other volunteers and a group of other people who had come up from Lima to hike the mountain. Bundled up with a ton of layers because we were so high up and near the snow. The base of the mountain was at about 15,000 feet and we hiked 8 km total (about 5 miles). The way there was really tough because I got pretty bad altitude sickness combined with the exertion of hiking. Stomach ache, headache, dizziness, all that good stuff. Had to rest a lot and really wasn´t feeling well. Eventually, the guide gave me coca leaves to chew on and those helped a lot - I didnt feel sick for the rest of the day. It´s what everyone here uses for altitude sickness and I was pretty desparate at that point. Yes, coca leaves are the basis of cocaine, but to make a tiny amount of cocaine, they use a tonnnn of coca leaves. Went up one mountain, back down the other side, up and down another, and then arrived at the glacier after a little over three hours of hiking. It was gorgeous, really out in the middle of nowhere, way out in the Andes. As we were hiking, we passed a bunch of lakes and lagoons, some of them an ugly brown and others a beautiful agua-marine color that reminded me of Laguna Quilotoa, the crater lake that I went to in the Ecuadorian Andes. Snow peaked mountains, glaciers in the distance, vast endless brown mountains, green fields everywhere we looked. The path was pretty dangerous, lots of walking on unstable rocks and near cliffs, but luckily no one got hurt. There was a little boy hiking with us who the guide somehow managed to carry on his shoulders and run despite all of the barriers on the path. Eventually after lots of water and chocolate and what seemed like forever, we could see the glacier. From a distance, I could see pèople trekking up the mountain pretty far up, and I thought that was what we were going to do. I was too tired to be able to do that so thought I wasnt going to get to climb the glacier. As it turned out, our group just climbed a little bit up the glacier, pulling ourselves up against a rope that the guide had brought. When we reached a certain point, we sled down the glacier on tarps, which was really fun but pretty scary because it seemed like we wouldn´t ever stop. The guide stopped us by pretty much letting us slam into him. The glacier had icicles hanging down from it and was this enormous mass of ice and snow so huge that I couldn´t even see the top of it from where I stood at the bottom. An intense journey there but definitely worth it. The hike back was really easy in comparison and we walked really fast the whole way back with very few breaks. A little bit of uphill but not too much. A lot of the downhill was steep and I had no idea how we had been able to walk up that on the way there. Arrived back at the bottom and most people had chicken soup because it was so cold, I just had some coffee to warm up - all they have here in instant, thought, not very good but at least it was hot.
After the ride back, I did my spanish homework (just writing a little bit of past tense stuff in Spanish about the day) and then knocked out without dinner by 7:30, we were all so exhausted. Slept a tonnn.
This morning after breakfast, we went to the Sunday market, which is a pretty big thing in Huancayo. Longer walk there than we thought, but not too bad and managed not to get lost. There was a long road with tons of stalls of everything from American clothes and shoes to Peruvian jewlery and traditional clothing and bags and food and artwork and anything you can think of. Pretty similar to the one that I went to in Ecuador, but a bit bigger. Bargained a lot and bought a bunch of stuff. The people were actually less willing to bargain than the people in Ecuador, but I still managed to get some pretty good deals, just walked away from the people who wouldn´t bargain with me. We were the only foreigners at the market, I still haven´t seen a single other foreigner in Huancayo besides the volunteers. I would think there would be at least a few.
I wish I could put pictures up, but my computer is dead and the computers here don´t have slots to put my camera card into and I didnt bring along the cord. So you´ll have to wait for pictures till I can charge my computer again in Nazca or Cuzco in a couple of weeks.
I locked myself out of my room and the house and the volunteer coordinators are out in the mountains until later tonight, so I have to wait to go back to the house until the others are back from buying chicken at the open market. Hopefully they will be back soon, though.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Such Different Systems
Yesterday in the hospital, I shadowed in ob/maternity, which was really interesting. the thing about it is that the people have no privacy whatsoever, and there are multiple patients in the room at the same time. at one point, one of the nurses took out his camera phone and started taking a video while a pregnant woman was on the table. a lot of the women come in to get prescriptions for condoms because its taboo here to use them unless you have an rx from a doctor. there were lots of depo provera shots, some family planning appointments, and pregnancy checkups. There was a 16 year old girl I had seen the previous day in the general consultation who had a severe infection and had refused treatment. We went to see her in the maternity ward - she had had her baby overnight and was really sick and would have died without treatment, but still refused it. she also didnt understand much of what was going on because she only speaks Quechua. The nurses started a fund to chip in for her meds so that they can treat her and her baby.
In the afternoon, we went to the outside market to get produce. I got a bunch of guanadillas, this really yummy fruit with goopy seeds. it´s really hard to eat because its so goopy, you have to kind of suck it out of the peel, but they are really good. weird, they are playing american music at the cafe im at. anyway.. i got 8 of theçose fruits the size of oranges for a dollar, and then a pineapple for 10cents. potatoes and rolls of bread are about 3 cents each, its quite nice. while we were driving to the market, we drove past two of the kids that go to the kids program i work at, which was really random because its completely the other side of town from where they live. the car broke down when we were driving and spit out lots of smog but neto, one of the volunteer coordinators who we live with, used a wrench and managed to fix it pretty quickly.
Today, went to the med center and followed around the psychologist, which was really interesting. completelyyy different system than in the US, as with everything else. people don´t make appts for anything, they just come in whenever they want to. no one came in for her today even though it´s usually busy, but she was giving a lecture on burn out syndrome to the nurses, so i sat in on that and helped her use the computer for her power point because she had no clue how. talked to a bunch of the nurses and had a good spanish speaking day, understood most of what was going on. it all depends on who is talking, i think. i´m going to take spanish lessons a few hours a week to brush up on my conjugations, etc. í´m starting tonight.
Going out to teach the kids in a little bit. I think I´ll take the girls today, they are really stubborn and think English is too hard so don´t make an effort to learn it, so I´ll give that a go and hopefully be able to get somewhere with them. We´re reviewing to be and teaching them family words today.
I just washed Bobby, the dog we live with, who was completely smelly and disgusting. Used my shampoo because of course there isnt any dog shampoo. Not great for him but oh well, its better than nothing. And then as soon as I let him out of the tub, he rolled around in the mud. Lovely. He´s dirty again, but probably a little bit less smelly than he was, at least.
Hmm, I had other things I was going to say, but I dont remember what anymore. So that´s all for now.
In the afternoon, we went to the outside market to get produce. I got a bunch of guanadillas, this really yummy fruit with goopy seeds. it´s really hard to eat because its so goopy, you have to kind of suck it out of the peel, but they are really good. weird, they are playing american music at the cafe im at. anyway.. i got 8 of theçose fruits the size of oranges for a dollar, and then a pineapple for 10cents. potatoes and rolls of bread are about 3 cents each, its quite nice. while we were driving to the market, we drove past two of the kids that go to the kids program i work at, which was really random because its completely the other side of town from where they live. the car broke down when we were driving and spit out lots of smog but neto, one of the volunteer coordinators who we live with, used a wrench and managed to fix it pretty quickly.
Today, went to the med center and followed around the psychologist, which was really interesting. completelyyy different system than in the US, as with everything else. people don´t make appts for anything, they just come in whenever they want to. no one came in for her today even though it´s usually busy, but she was giving a lecture on burn out syndrome to the nurses, so i sat in on that and helped her use the computer for her power point because she had no clue how. talked to a bunch of the nurses and had a good spanish speaking day, understood most of what was going on. it all depends on who is talking, i think. i´m going to take spanish lessons a few hours a week to brush up on my conjugations, etc. í´m starting tonight.
Going out to teach the kids in a little bit. I think I´ll take the girls today, they are really stubborn and think English is too hard so don´t make an effort to learn it, so I´ll give that a go and hopefully be able to get somewhere with them. We´re reviewing to be and teaching them family words today.
I just washed Bobby, the dog we live with, who was completely smelly and disgusting. Used my shampoo because of course there isnt any dog shampoo. Not great for him but oh well, its better than nothing. And then as soon as I let him out of the tub, he rolled around in the mud. Lovely. He´s dirty again, but probably a little bit less smelly than he was, at least.
Hmm, I had other things I was going to say, but I dont remember what anymore. So that´s all for now.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
It´s Raining
Yesterday for lunch we went to get pachamanga, which is this type of food that is cooked in a kind of underground oven. it´s mostly meat, and the others tried cuy - guinea pig. yuckkk! i just had potatoes, as usual.
This morning at the clinic, I shadowed a doctor who was doing general consultations - basically just physical exams for sick people who came in, children, adults, babies, everyone. She spoke really quickly and so did all the patients, so it was a lottt harder than Monday to understand what was going on. I did a lot of smiling and nodding and pretending I knew what was happening. It was really sad, there were four pregnant women who saw the doctor this morning - ages 15, 16, 20, and 24. So young :(
When the doctor needs to use gloves for the exam, the patient has to go out of the room and buy a pair of gloves for them. I dont know how much it costs, but that seems a bit extreme, when all kids get free vaccinations and such. Oh, instead of using carbon paper, they have this plastic carbon paperish thing that they put between two pieces of paper and when they write on the top paper, it goes through to the bottom paper too. good cheaper way of copying stuff, probably just very old fashion before today´s carbon paper existed.
Saw an ultrasound, an ob exam, a lot of people sick with fevers, bronchitis, etc. They were constantly precribing medicines and from what I could tell, each person got between two and four medicines! Mucho!
Washed my laundry in the sink after lunch and hung them on clotheslines on the roof. then when we were out with the kids, it started raining, so boom, now all my clothes are soaking wet. Lovely.
The kids were a lot of fun as usual. We split up the younger and the older ones and I took the little guys today, two boys, ages 4 and 5, Pedro (who we call Pedrito) and Luis (who we call Lucho). The older kids are working on leaving basic English, but Í just worked with the younger ones on Spanish things (yes, me teaching Spanish doesnt make much sense!)... but I got them to draw pictures of their families and write out everyones names. They werent into it at first but then got super excited and kept asking me, how do you write this, how do you write that? It was pouring so we didnt play outside games the second hour, just kept drawing with the little kids. Lucho got really really excited when I showed him how to do mazes and he kept saying I can do it, I can do it in Spanish, really cute!
There are also puppies that live in the room where we have the class. Well, its not really a room, it´s a covered area that goes out into a courtyard. The courtyard got flooded with water when it was raining so we held the two pups so they didn´t get soaking wet. they are really young, i dont know where their mom is, but they are adorable babies.
This morning at the clinic, I shadowed a doctor who was doing general consultations - basically just physical exams for sick people who came in, children, adults, babies, everyone. She spoke really quickly and so did all the patients, so it was a lottt harder than Monday to understand what was going on. I did a lot of smiling and nodding and pretending I knew what was happening. It was really sad, there were four pregnant women who saw the doctor this morning - ages 15, 16, 20, and 24. So young :(
When the doctor needs to use gloves for the exam, the patient has to go out of the room and buy a pair of gloves for them. I dont know how much it costs, but that seems a bit extreme, when all kids get free vaccinations and such. Oh, instead of using carbon paper, they have this plastic carbon paperish thing that they put between two pieces of paper and when they write on the top paper, it goes through to the bottom paper too. good cheaper way of copying stuff, probably just very old fashion before today´s carbon paper existed.
Saw an ultrasound, an ob exam, a lot of people sick with fevers, bronchitis, etc. They were constantly precribing medicines and from what I could tell, each person got between two and four medicines! Mucho!
Washed my laundry in the sink after lunch and hung them on clotheslines on the roof. then when we were out with the kids, it started raining, so boom, now all my clothes are soaking wet. Lovely.
The kids were a lot of fun as usual. We split up the younger and the older ones and I took the little guys today, two boys, ages 4 and 5, Pedro (who we call Pedrito) and Luis (who we call Lucho). The older kids are working on leaving basic English, but Í just worked with the younger ones on Spanish things (yes, me teaching Spanish doesnt make much sense!)... but I got them to draw pictures of their families and write out everyones names. They werent into it at first but then got super excited and kept asking me, how do you write this, how do you write that? It was pouring so we didnt play outside games the second hour, just kept drawing with the little kids. Lucho got really really excited when I showed him how to do mazes and he kept saying I can do it, I can do it in Spanish, really cute!
There are also puppies that live in the room where we have the class. Well, its not really a room, it´s a covered area that goes out into a courtyard. The courtyard got flooded with water when it was raining so we held the two pups so they didn´t get soaking wet. they are really young, i dont know where their mom is, but they are adorable babies.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Kids Day
I´m at an internet cafe paying 33 cents for an hour of internet cause the plugs dont work in the house in addition to that i dont have the right converter even if the plugs did work. boo. its loud in here and the keyboard is different so its weird to type on. but anyway...
so yesterday the drive up to huancayo was gorgeous. it was so nice to escape from the smog of lima into the beautiful andes. i´m in a fairly large town here, but it´s still really nice with the mountains in the background and kind of has the feel of the wild west in spanish.. plus mountains and altitute (which ive been lucky with so far). though there is a huge mall thats completely out of place in the middle of the town. it has kfc and pizza hut and burger king and all that. boooo. went to the supermarket there to pick up groceries, a bunch of stuff for the week for 9 bucks, yay. decided to cook for myself instead of payin 15 a week for food to be made for me cause ill get more variety and more assurance that its actually vegetarian.
anyway.. today was the first day of work. got up early, took the combi for 30 minutes to the clinic in chupaca (i love the name of the town).. and on the bus they chant chupacachupacachupaca as they drive to see if anyone wants to get on. awesome.
got to the clinic, spent my four hours there shadowing in pediatrics. its completely different than any hospital in the us, in different ways than i expected. the parents take the kids to one room to be weighed and measured and get a nutrition consultation and vitamins. then they wait and theres another room or vaccines, and another yet for physical exam, and then the laboratory for blood tests. weird. i actually didnt see any doctors today, just med students and nurses. in the nutrition consultation room, they also did a developmental measurement thing, which was pretty cool that they do here.. based on their age, they check a couple of things that they can do, not only walking, but also like piling blocks, grabbing onto things, understanding a story, finding a block that is hidden under a blanket, communication level, psych development sort of stuff. so that was really cool. if they werent at the approrpiate level, the nurse would write some prescription for a communication class or give the parents advice, etc. everything there was in spanish and i understood the gist of it, not every word, but i was able to get most of what was going on. also talked to the med students a little bit about how med school works there, very different. there was pretty much no sterility there, but that was expected. i´m not going to get to do mcuh at the hospital, mostly a lot of observing, but it should be interesting. i´ll alternate between different areas, general, dental, ob, maternity, psych, etc.
three afternoons a week, we go out to a tiny rural town that has a really strange name i can´t think of, and work with kids there. there were about a dozen kids today ages 4 to 11, and it was a lot of fun. they are poor kids from a rural area and its a kind of after school learning program that my volunteer program has set up. its pretty disorganized, though, so hopefully ill be able to help a lot with getting it more under control. the kids are the most adorable things ever and come up and kiss you immediately when they meet you and are jut so affectionate and adorable and i am already in loev with them after only two hours of working with them today. we are going to teach them bits of english and play with them, so i´m definitely excited for mwf afternoons.
well, thats about it for now. leave me messages!
so yesterday the drive up to huancayo was gorgeous. it was so nice to escape from the smog of lima into the beautiful andes. i´m in a fairly large town here, but it´s still really nice with the mountains in the background and kind of has the feel of the wild west in spanish.. plus mountains and altitute (which ive been lucky with so far). though there is a huge mall thats completely out of place in the middle of the town. it has kfc and pizza hut and burger king and all that. boooo. went to the supermarket there to pick up groceries, a bunch of stuff for the week for 9 bucks, yay. decided to cook for myself instead of payin 15 a week for food to be made for me cause ill get more variety and more assurance that its actually vegetarian.
anyway.. today was the first day of work. got up early, took the combi for 30 minutes to the clinic in chupaca (i love the name of the town).. and on the bus they chant chupacachupacachupaca as they drive to see if anyone wants to get on. awesome.
got to the clinic, spent my four hours there shadowing in pediatrics. its completely different than any hospital in the us, in different ways than i expected. the parents take the kids to one room to be weighed and measured and get a nutrition consultation and vitamins. then they wait and theres another room or vaccines, and another yet for physical exam, and then the laboratory for blood tests. weird. i actually didnt see any doctors today, just med students and nurses. in the nutrition consultation room, they also did a developmental measurement thing, which was pretty cool that they do here.. based on their age, they check a couple of things that they can do, not only walking, but also like piling blocks, grabbing onto things, understanding a story, finding a block that is hidden under a blanket, communication level, psych development sort of stuff. so that was really cool. if they werent at the approrpiate level, the nurse would write some prescription for a communication class or give the parents advice, etc. everything there was in spanish and i understood the gist of it, not every word, but i was able to get most of what was going on. also talked to the med students a little bit about how med school works there, very different. there was pretty much no sterility there, but that was expected. i´m not going to get to do mcuh at the hospital, mostly a lot of observing, but it should be interesting. i´ll alternate between different areas, general, dental, ob, maternity, psych, etc.
three afternoons a week, we go out to a tiny rural town that has a really strange name i can´t think of, and work with kids there. there were about a dozen kids today ages 4 to 11, and it was a lot of fun. they are poor kids from a rural area and its a kind of after school learning program that my volunteer program has set up. its pretty disorganized, though, so hopefully ill be able to help a lot with getting it more under control. the kids are the most adorable things ever and come up and kiss you immediately when they meet you and are jut so affectionate and adorable and i am already in loev with them after only two hours of working with them today. we are going to teach them bits of english and play with them, so i´m definitely excited for mwf afternoons.
well, thats about it for now. leave me messages!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
In Huancayo
Just a quick one today, we have dinner cooking in the oven back at the volunteer house. Rode on the bus for seven hours today up to huancayo, have been up since 5am since we were told to get to the bus station way earlier than we needed to. won bingo on the bus ride and got a free ticket, but it expires before i´ll be able to use it. there aren´t any plugs here that my computer fits in so i cant charge it, or at least unless i find a converter somewhere, so i dont know how much ill be able to write. boo. so much for bringing my computer. but we´ll see. i´m excited to start at the hospital tomorrow and then working with kids in the afternoon. the family i´m staying with at the volunteer has a dog and an adorableee baby girl, so thats fun, and the other volunteers are the same age and really cool, so it should be fun here. :)
Saturday, August 22, 2009
I Flew, I Flew!
At breakfast, we discovered that the “child” that has been making constant annoying screeching noises every morning was actually a parrot named Papi. There was also a giant turtle wandering around outside the hostel restaurant.
Started off the day going to Pachacamac, a set of ruins near Lima. Took a taxi there because the girl at our hostel said the bus took a really long time. Of course, the taxi driver way overcharged us even after bargaining, which we found out from our guide at the ruins after we had already agreed to the price. So it goes being a tourist. We thought that since we were going pretty far away from central Lima, we would get away from the smog, but nope, it was still there as a backing to the ruins. Somehow during the summer, the sun manages to overpower the smog and the sky is blue, but it’s winter now and it’s just grey all day long and then dark grey at night. Yuck.
Our tour guide at the ruins was a really nice 21 year old girl who was interesting to talk to and gave us a pretty good tour of the ruins.
She talked about the different cultures that had been there over the times and the different sized adobe bricks they used. In Quechua, Pacha means earth and camac means creator. The site is named after the oracle Pachacamac, who the people believed could see the future. They prayed to his idol, which was made out of wood and had symbols of both a man (serpents) and a woman (corn). In order to make a sacrifice at the main temple there, the Temple of the Sun, people needed to purify themselves for one year – no chili, salt, meat, or sex. It was twenty days of purification for the smaller temple of Pachacamac. We walked up to the top of the temple and actually saw green for the first time in a few days, and had a really good view of the ocean and all around Lima. There were also three pyramids with ramps and storage areas for animals and foods to sacrifice. There was the Acllahuasi, the house of the chosen women, where young women were taught how to care for men and then chosen by the men to be their wives or to be sacrificed to the gods.
We had taken the highway there, but took city roads on the way back and the change between each city was so clear as we drove on. Central Lima is completely dirty and worn down, no high rises, but full of churches and old colonial mansions. The area near Pachacamac was the same. As we entered Barranco, one of the richer areas around Lima, the houses got much nicer and the buildings got taller and shinier. In Miraflores, it practically felt like we were in a city in the US, minus the Spanish. Such a huge difference in two places within 15 minutes of each other. .
We got dropped off by our taxi in Miraflores to go paragliding. We still hadn’t gotten hold of the people by phone so didn’t know if it would work out, but got there to find a bunch of people on the field with their paraglides. Was more expensive than we had thought it would be, but still had to do it.
I loved flying, it was such a cool experience. Went over to a lighthouse and back again, really high up over buildings, really low near the ground, over the ocean, around in circles, over a shopping mall. It was only ten minutes long but it was awesome, I loved it. It’s such a cool job to have to take people paragliding all day long, the guy who took me had been doing it for 18 years.
Wandered around Miraflores for a while, looking at the tiled murals in the Parque de Amor. Ended up in this huge high-class shopping mall. Again, felt like America. It was kind of disgusting to see all the ridiculously fancy shops and such a nice mall so close the an area where most people live under the poverty line. We wandered around the mall a bit but I was mostly just annoyed at the concept of it. We ate lunch there, which was much more expensive than the usual – it was just over 3 dollars for a sandwich, which would have in other areas cost about a dollar. Got cheap (compared to the US) mango gelato for dessert, yum. There was a KFC, Chilis, Pizza Hut, Burger King… America taking over the world. I thought, at least there’s no McDonalds or Starbucks, but boom, there were those too. Lovely. Our guide at Pachacamac had told us about a park with fountains that spouted higher than the buildings, so we were considering going there, but asked probably four other people about it and no one gave us much of an answer about whether it was worth going to or not. Since it wasn’t very safe to go there with only two of us, we ended up not going.
Took a taxi instead to Museo de la Nacion in East Lima. Saw Peruvian paintings, ancient ceramics and textiles, photos of the different indigenous cultures.
There was one floor about the Inca trail with amusing cartoons of archaeologists all over the wall along with photos of ruins and trails. The top floor was an exhibit about the Peruvian civil war that happened between 1980 and 2000. The captions to the pictures were in Spanish and English, but the main panels were in Spanish and we were rushed so didn’t have time to figure out what they said. So we were completely confused about who was even on which side and what the whole war was about. Have to look that up later.
Now it’s time to go hunt for dinner somewhere near our hostel before it gets too dark. We have to get up really early in the morning to take a 7am bus up to the mountains to Huancayo where we’ll be volunteering. Yay, a seven hour ride where I doubt I’ll be able to sleep. There should be a nice view out of the window, though.
Started off the day going to Pachacamac, a set of ruins near Lima. Took a taxi there because the girl at our hostel said the bus took a really long time. Of course, the taxi driver way overcharged us even after bargaining, which we found out from our guide at the ruins after we had already agreed to the price. So it goes being a tourist. We thought that since we were going pretty far away from central Lima, we would get away from the smog, but nope, it was still there as a backing to the ruins. Somehow during the summer, the sun manages to overpower the smog and the sky is blue, but it’s winter now and it’s just grey all day long and then dark grey at night. Yuck.
Our tour guide at the ruins was a really nice 21 year old girl who was interesting to talk to and gave us a pretty good tour of the ruins.
She talked about the different cultures that had been there over the times and the different sized adobe bricks they used. In Quechua, Pacha means earth and camac means creator. The site is named after the oracle Pachacamac, who the people believed could see the future. They prayed to his idol, which was made out of wood and had symbols of both a man (serpents) and a woman (corn). In order to make a sacrifice at the main temple there, the Temple of the Sun, people needed to purify themselves for one year – no chili, salt, meat, or sex. It was twenty days of purification for the smaller temple of Pachacamac. We walked up to the top of the temple and actually saw green for the first time in a few days, and had a really good view of the ocean and all around Lima. There were also three pyramids with ramps and storage areas for animals and foods to sacrifice. There was the Acllahuasi, the house of the chosen women, where young women were taught how to care for men and then chosen by the men to be their wives or to be sacrificed to the gods. We had taken the highway there, but took city roads on the way back and the change between each city was so clear as we drove on. Central Lima is completely dirty and worn down, no high rises, but full of churches and old colonial mansions. The area near Pachacamac was the same. As we entered Barranco, one of the richer areas around Lima, the houses got much nicer and the buildings got taller and shinier. In Miraflores, it practically felt like we were in a city in the US, minus the Spanish. Such a huge difference in two places within 15 minutes of each other. .
We got dropped off by our taxi in Miraflores to go paragliding. We still hadn’t gotten hold of the people by phone so didn’t know if it would work out, but got there to find a bunch of people on the field with their paraglides. Was more expensive than we had thought it would be, but still had to do it.
I loved flying, it was such a cool experience. Went over to a lighthouse and back again, really high up over buildings, really low near the ground, over the ocean, around in circles, over a shopping mall. It was only ten minutes long but it was awesome, I loved it. It’s such a cool job to have to take people paragliding all day long, the guy who took me had been doing it for 18 years. Wandered around Miraflores for a while, looking at the tiled murals in the Parque de Amor. Ended up in this huge high-class shopping mall. Again, felt like America. It was kind of disgusting to see all the ridiculously fancy shops and such a nice mall so close the an area where most people live under the poverty line. We wandered around the mall a bit but I was mostly just annoyed at the concept of it. We ate lunch there, which was much more expensive than the usual – it was just over 3 dollars for a sandwich, which would have in other areas cost about a dollar. Got cheap (compared to the US) mango gelato for dessert, yum. There was a KFC, Chilis, Pizza Hut, Burger King… America taking over the world. I thought, at least there’s no McDonalds or Starbucks, but boom, there were those too. Lovely. Our guide at Pachacamac had told us about a park with fountains that spouted higher than the buildings, so we were considering going there, but asked probably four other people about it and no one gave us much of an answer about whether it was worth going to or not. Since it wasn’t very safe to go there with only two of us, we ended up not going.
Took a taxi instead to Museo de la Nacion in East Lima. Saw Peruvian paintings, ancient ceramics and textiles, photos of the different indigenous cultures.
There was one floor about the Inca trail with amusing cartoons of archaeologists all over the wall along with photos of ruins and trails. The top floor was an exhibit about the Peruvian civil war that happened between 1980 and 2000. The captions to the pictures were in Spanish and English, but the main panels were in Spanish and we were rushed so didn’t have time to figure out what they said. So we were completely confused about who was even on which side and what the whole war was about. Have to look that up later. Now it’s time to go hunt for dinner somewhere near our hostel before it gets too dark. We have to get up really early in the morning to take a 7am bus up to the mountains to Huancayo where we’ll be volunteering. Yay, a seven hour ride where I doubt I’ll be able to sleep. There should be a nice view out of the window, though.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Day One - Central Lima
We were going to go paragliding today, but hadn’t been able to get hold of the company, so ended up switching with our plans for tomorrow and were tourists around central Lima. Began the day getting majorly hit on by our waiter at breakfast, so that was great…Then was hit on by two other guys that I know of during the rest of the day, including one from a taxi who blew us a loud kiss as he drove by. Oh Peru.
Anyway, started off at Monasterio de San Francisco (yes, how appropriate). First were paintings and history about the Franciscans and a lot of religious things, which didn’t interest me too much. Then came the strange and morbid paintings and carvings of each saint and important figure and the way that they died – there was one lovely painting of a saint with his head chopped off kind of lying on his shoulder. Interesting, though. Then we went down to the catacombs in the monastery, the first floor of them, at least… there were countless floors of bodies beneath us that hadn’t been excavated. We walked around under low stone ceilings and looked at piles and piles of mostly femurs, and a few collections of skulls here and there. The architecture in the building was also pretty cool. I’m loving all the buildings around here.
We wandered on and ended up at the president’s palace next to Lima’s main plaza. It was exactly noon, so we arrived to the sound of a band. We watched the changing of the guard ceremony. The palace was a huge, really nice old building, but sadly, to get inside, you need to make reservations two days in advance, so that was that. Continued on, past people trying to force us to eat at their restaurants or buy this or that.
After some searching, asking, misunderstanding confusing Spanish directions, and ending up in the warehouse side of the post office, we eventually found it to buy some stamps – which are ridiculously expensive, btw. Went to the museum of the old post office and saw stamps that they’ve used over the years, back from when they first started using them here, and some stories about Incan forms of sending messages.
Next, on to Parque de la Muralla, where the museum turned out to be open by appointment only, but we saw some excavations of some walls and some views of the city. Well, views of the city… you can’t see much here because it is so polluted. But we saw colored houses off on the hillsides through the smog.
You can feel the pollution constantly outside and also because it is winter, but mainly because of the smog, the sky is always that nice smoggy shade of gray. Everything in Lima smells like gasoline, especially near the main streets. It’s hard to see off in the distance because everything is obscured by the smog. Yuck. I wouldn’t be able to stay here for too many days, though I’m sure people just get used to it.
Next was Casa de Oquendo, one of the highlights of the day. It’s an old colonial mansion that’s open to the public. We walked in and were greeted by a really nice guy, Ricardo, who took us on an amazing tour of the house. We saw the library, which had some of the oldest books I’ve ever seen, including a bunch of old medical books with really scary pictures of people tied down for different medical procedures.
Went to a room that was used as a classroom. The chairs in there were really old and had cool images on them. One was about a marriage between a Spanish king and an Incan woman, so combined some of the Incan gods with Spanish symbols and linked the images together in a really nice way. Up and up the stairs we went, from the restored part of the house to the upper two floors which were not restored, so were just as they were (minus a bit thanks to the humidity and earthquakes) in the 18th century when the family lived in the house. We went into the tower of the house, the tallest colonial in the area, and could see all over Lima. When it isn’t so smoggy, you can see all the way to the coast. The man who used to live in the house apparently was really rich and owned a lot of boats so would sit in the tower with his binoculars and watch his boats moving out on the water. 
It’s hard to describe, but everything up there was completely run down in an incredible way, gross and worn out by the pollution, the weather, and time, but almost magical still. We were way up high but when on the edge of the roof, could look down the four stories into the middle of other houses where people lived.
Had lunch at a yummy vegetarian restaurant, where I didn’t know what anything was so just ordered something off the menu and it turned out to be a giant pancake-ish thing that I can’t think of the name of with soy and yummy cheese and lots of vegetables inside. Also a really good juice/smoothie thing with a combination of a bunch of fruits. Mmm.
Then off to the bank museum, where we got another really nice tour. The bottom floor started off with a huge collection of pre-Columbian art, which our tour guide knew a ton about and he spoke English really well, so learned a lot and it was really interesting. He went through all of the different cultures up until the Incan time and the way that the art changed in each one. Some didn’t like using many colors, others focused on animals, some used two pipe things in their pottery while others consistently only used one, etc. One of the cultures, I can’t think of which off the top of my head, had really cool musical instruments in the shape of animals where you either blow air in or put water in and sound comes out through holes in the eyes, ears, and so on.
After that collection, we walked through the doors of an old vault (the museum is in an old bank) into the gold collection, where there were tons of awesome gold vases, masks, jewelry, ornaments for the dead, all pure gold and made with so much detail. This mask was use to put over the face of the important dead, and has teardrops symbolizing the people asking for rain. Oh, and gold and silver were really important because gold symbolizes the sweat of the sun and silver, the tears of the moon.
The last place we went was to a Dominican church, which was so amazingly decorated with huge ceilings and really intricate religious scenes and altars. Soon after we got there, a mass started, so we sat through a bit of it listening to the booming voice of the preacher/bishop/someone, but couldn’t understand a thing, so left after a bit.
Boiling hot shower tonight to compare with my freezing cold shower last night. Maybe I’ll get somewhere in between tomorrow night.
Things are so cheap here, I love it. Five mini churros for about 33 cents, dinner for $1.75, museums either free or about a dollar each, 6 bucks a night each for our room. Okay, this is probably long enough for today.
Anyway, started off at Monasterio de San Francisco (yes, how appropriate). First were paintings and history about the Franciscans and a lot of religious things, which didn’t interest me too much. Then came the strange and morbid paintings and carvings of each saint and important figure and the way that they died – there was one lovely painting of a saint with his head chopped off kind of lying on his shoulder. Interesting, though. Then we went down to the catacombs in the monastery, the first floor of them, at least… there were countless floors of bodies beneath us that hadn’t been excavated. We walked around under low stone ceilings and looked at piles and piles of mostly femurs, and a few collections of skulls here and there. The architecture in the building was also pretty cool. I’m loving all the buildings around here.
We wandered on and ended up at the president’s palace next to Lima’s main plaza. It was exactly noon, so we arrived to the sound of a band. We watched the changing of the guard ceremony. The palace was a huge, really nice old building, but sadly, to get inside, you need to make reservations two days in advance, so that was that. Continued on, past people trying to force us to eat at their restaurants or buy this or that.
After some searching, asking, misunderstanding confusing Spanish directions, and ending up in the warehouse side of the post office, we eventually found it to buy some stamps – which are ridiculously expensive, btw. Went to the museum of the old post office and saw stamps that they’ve used over the years, back from when they first started using them here, and some stories about Incan forms of sending messages.
Next, on to Parque de la Muralla, where the museum turned out to be open by appointment only, but we saw some excavations of some walls and some views of the city. Well, views of the city… you can’t see much here because it is so polluted. But we saw colored houses off on the hillsides through the smog.
You can feel the pollution constantly outside and also because it is winter, but mainly because of the smog, the sky is always that nice smoggy shade of gray. Everything in Lima smells like gasoline, especially near the main streets. It’s hard to see off in the distance because everything is obscured by the smog. Yuck. I wouldn’t be able to stay here for too many days, though I’m sure people just get used to it.Next was Casa de Oquendo, one of the highlights of the day. It’s an old colonial mansion that’s open to the public. We walked in and were greeted by a really nice guy, Ricardo, who took us on an amazing tour of the house. We saw the library, which had some of the oldest books I’ve ever seen, including a bunch of old medical books with really scary pictures of people tied down for different medical procedures.
Went to a room that was used as a classroom. The chairs in there were really old and had cool images on them. One was about a marriage between a Spanish king and an Incan woman, so combined some of the Incan gods with Spanish symbols and linked the images together in a really nice way. Up and up the stairs we went, from the restored part of the house to the upper two floors which were not restored, so were just as they were (minus a bit thanks to the humidity and earthquakes) in the 18th century when the family lived in the house. We went into the tower of the house, the tallest colonial in the area, and could see all over Lima. When it isn’t so smoggy, you can see all the way to the coast. The man who used to live in the house apparently was really rich and owned a lot of boats so would sit in the tower with his binoculars and watch his boats moving out on the water. 
It’s hard to describe, but everything up there was completely run down in an incredible way, gross and worn out by the pollution, the weather, and time, but almost magical still. We were way up high but when on the edge of the roof, could look down the four stories into the middle of other houses where people lived.Had lunch at a yummy vegetarian restaurant, where I didn’t know what anything was so just ordered something off the menu and it turned out to be a giant pancake-ish thing that I can’t think of the name of with soy and yummy cheese and lots of vegetables inside. Also a really good juice/smoothie thing with a combination of a bunch of fruits. Mmm.
Then off to the bank museum, where we got another really nice tour. The bottom floor started off with a huge collection of pre-Columbian art, which our tour guide knew a ton about and he spoke English really well, so learned a lot and it was really interesting. He went through all of the different cultures up until the Incan time and the way that the art changed in each one. Some didn’t like using many colors, others focused on animals, some used two pipe things in their pottery while others consistently only used one, etc. One of the cultures, I can’t think of which off the top of my head, had really cool musical instruments in the shape of animals where you either blow air in or put water in and sound comes out through holes in the eyes, ears, and so on.
After that collection, we walked through the doors of an old vault (the museum is in an old bank) into the gold collection, where there were tons of awesome gold vases, masks, jewelry, ornaments for the dead, all pure gold and made with so much detail. This mask was use to put over the face of the important dead, and has teardrops symbolizing the people asking for rain. Oh, and gold and silver were really important because gold symbolizes the sweat of the sun and silver, the tears of the moon. The last place we went was to a Dominican church, which was so amazingly decorated with huge ceilings and really intricate religious scenes and altars. Soon after we got there, a mass started, so we sat through a bit of it listening to the booming voice of the preacher/bishop/someone, but couldn’t understand a thing, so left after a bit.
Boiling hot shower tonight to compare with my freezing cold shower last night. Maybe I’ll get somewhere in between tomorrow night.
Things are so cheap here, I love it. Five mini churros for about 33 cents, dinner for $1.75, museums either free or about a dollar each, 6 bucks a night each for our room. Okay, this is probably long enough for today.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
San Salvador Airport
My computer keeps having random things on the internet that are written in Spanish and I don't know what half of them mean. I better get used to it, though! I'm sure I'll catch up on my spanish soon enough once I'm surrounded by it, especially if people stop speaking so fast like they do on the airplane. Combined with the roar of the engine, I couldn't even understand the English they were saying, let alone the Spanish, on my first leg of my trip. I'm in the San Salvador airport now for a seven hour layover. At least we found free wireless and my computer's not acting up. Taking turns sleeping and computering/watching our bags. One hour down, six to go until we're off for a four and a half hour flight to Lima. It's just as much time today waiting at airports as it is flying... a couple months ago, they cancelled the original flight (with less of a layover) and stuck us on the much later flight. Then we get to the airport today and there is a flight leaving in an hour for Lima with space on it (same airline, so I don't get why they didn't switch us to that one instead of the later one)... but we didn't switch to that one because it would have cost a bunch of money and been a pain with luggage and our airport ride and all that. So here I am, wasting time away.
The first leg of the flight was pretty good, uneventful. Slept a bit and talked to the guy who sat in between Abby and I (we didn't sit next to each other because neither of us wanted a middle seat).. He was just a year or two older and was going to Peru too, but had gotten some other flight with a connection through Costa Rica after El Salvador. He had the travel bug also and we were talking about wanting to visit all of the continents and just traveling in general, so that was fun. Just Australia and Antartica left for me and I'll have all the continents down. If Israel counts as being in Asia, that is. He was going to hike to Inca Trail at Macchu Picchu, which I definitely want to do someday but I'm sure it's really intense hiking in that altitude and I just don't have enough time this time, with just a short weekend for there including traveling time. I'm sure it'll be worth going back there sometime in the future and backpacking around more. Maybe after graduation.
Well, not much exciting has happened yet. It's pretty hot in the airport here, jeans definitely aren't the most comfortable thing to be wearing. It's really pretty and green outside, I wish I could go out there and explore, but supposedly it isn't safe near the airport and it also would be complicated with going through customs and all that when we really aren't staying here. Oh well, the time will pass eventually and then I'll finally be in Peru! :)
After spending five hours in the San Salvador airport, I think it's the best airport I've ever been in.
- free wifi
- free computers to use if you don't have one
- 4 free nintendo ds to play with
- free alcohol (sample cups of baileys)
- a store called "tienda libre" (free store)... though that isn't free
-giant boxes of cigarettes saying that smoking kills in HUGE letters
:)
The first leg of the flight was pretty good, uneventful. Slept a bit and talked to the guy who sat in between Abby and I (we didn't sit next to each other because neither of us wanted a middle seat).. He was just a year or two older and was going to Peru too, but had gotten some other flight with a connection through Costa Rica after El Salvador. He had the travel bug also and we were talking about wanting to visit all of the continents and just traveling in general, so that was fun. Just Australia and Antartica left for me and I'll have all the continents down. If Israel counts as being in Asia, that is. He was going to hike to Inca Trail at Macchu Picchu, which I definitely want to do someday but I'm sure it's really intense hiking in that altitude and I just don't have enough time this time, with just a short weekend for there including traveling time. I'm sure it'll be worth going back there sometime in the future and backpacking around more. Maybe after graduation.
Well, not much exciting has happened yet. It's pretty hot in the airport here, jeans definitely aren't the most comfortable thing to be wearing. It's really pretty and green outside, I wish I could go out there and explore, but supposedly it isn't safe near the airport and it also would be complicated with going through customs and all that when we really aren't staying here. Oh well, the time will pass eventually and then I'll finally be in Peru! :)
After spending five hours in the San Salvador airport, I think it's the best airport I've ever been in.
- free wifi
- free computers to use if you don't have one
- 4 free nintendo ds to play with
- free alcohol (sample cups of baileys)
- a store called "tienda libre" (free store)... though that isn't free
-giant boxes of cigarettes saying that smoking kills in HUGE letters
:)
Sunday, August 16, 2009
So Ready To Leave
I'm off to Peru on Wednesday night, a red eye flight. All my things are packed and ready to go, I'm just waiting for a few more days of work to pass and then it's time for a long night day of flying, including a long layover in El Salvador because they canceled my original flight. Hopefully I'll get to go outside in El Salvador a bit instead of just being stuck in the airport all day with nothing much to do but look at expensive things. I'll get to Peru Thursday night and spend a couple days touristing around Lima before I head up to Huancayo in the Andes to volunteer at the hospital. Humans, this time, not animals. I'm excited - hurry up, time!
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