The Sacred Valley

Firstly, a mini apology for the overall slight depressing edge that my last post had to it! I was lonely and fed up but now I have a buddy and am in the Sacred Valley and so I´m back on top of the world again!
I met up with Mariko on Friday afternoon and we went and bought our train tickets to Machu Picchu, despite the fact that no one knows whether it´s going to be open or not! We decided that we absolutely had to try because coming to Peru and not seeing Machu Picchu would suck a bit, so at least this way we know we are doing our absolute best to get there.
Yesterday we got a bus to Pisac in the Sacred Valley and spent the afternoon scrambling about the ruins that are high above the town and getting thoroughly lost and a little bit sunburnt! The setting here is beautiful, there are lush green mountains on every side you look and the remains of Inca terracing can be seen climbing its way up almost all of the hills. Sadly though, the effects of the terrible rain and flooding in January and February can be seen clearly. Driving up to the ruins yesterday and on our way to Ollantaytambo today you could see where houses had been washed away, where cliffs had crumbled down onto the roads and where whole fields of corn had been ruined. It´s sad, and the economy in the Valley has suffered because of the reduced influx of tourists.
We are now in Ollantaytambo, tomorrow morning I´m going to go look at the ruins and in the afternoon we are catching our train to Machu Picchu Pueblo with the hope of seeing Machu Picchu itself on Tuesday. Fingers crossed folks!

Lost and a little bit lonely in Cusco

I arrived in Cusco at 6am Monday morning after a 8 hour bus ride with Mariko, another volunteer who happened to be going the same direction as me. We found the hostel that had been prebooked for her (she's doing a tour) and then after some breakfast we tried to find a niceish place for me that wasn't too expensive. This proved to be hard. In the end I allowed myself to be accosted and ended up in this horrible little hostel, by myself in a room for about 10 people!! I decided to give it a go for a night though! We then went out and about, just absorbing the city because we were both too tired to do any serious sightseeing. After a cheeky Mcdonalds (my first international chain meal in 2 and a half months...give me some slack!) we went our seperate ways for the next few days. I went back to the hostel and attempted to snooze but unfortunatly there was extremely loud regaton (peruvian hip hop type popular music) playing, this went on until about 11pm. After only a few hours of unsatisfying sleep the night before, this did not put me in a good mood. The next morning I was up and out of there by 8:30 am and I found myself another, slightly nicer hostel a bit closer to the centre of the city. I then spent the day getting lost and going to a couple of museums. The problem with being by yourself though is that museum visiting takes a very short time because you have no one to discuss stuff with. Anywho, I was back in my hostel by 6pm, I'm a little apprehensive to go out by myself, and spent the evening eating cheese sandwiches and watching rubbish TV. The next day, Wednesday, was pretty much the same story. As you can maybe imagine this meant that I was not feeling 100% on top of the world about all this backpacking malarky, mostly because I was fed up of my own company!
However, I am not really being fair to Cusco. It is a beautiful city. There is a huge Plaza de Armas with a great big cathedral and then in almost every direction you go in you end up on these tiny cobbled streets with whitewashed buildings on each side. Half of them are far too steep for cars to get up and all in all it's an extremely picturesque place.
Today I decided to get out of the city and to go see the four ruins closest to Cusco. After 3 days of perfect weather, when I woke up this morning, it was, of course, raining! Nevertheless, I got out of bed with a slight spring in my step and hailed a taxi to take to the top most site on the road, five miles away from Cusco. To be honest I can't even tell you what this first site was, Inca Baths maybe, it wasn't all that interesting to be honest! I then walked five minutes up the road to the deserted site of Puca Pucara, which is believed to have been a fort or outpost of some sort. My plan was then to continue walking to the next site, Quenqo. It took over an hour! It was a beautiful walk though, I was following the road down the mountainside and there was mist in the all the valleys and for some reason I felt a little bit like I was in Wales! This is possibly due to all the greenery and eternal drizzle, a novelty after living in Arequipa for 2 and a half months! Eventually I arrived at Quenqo, starving and really needing the toilet. It was a really cool ruin though. It looked as if a temple type structure of some kind had been carved out of this huge piece of rock. There was an underground table with a sacrificial table and thrones of some sort and apparently there was a flat altar on top of the rock too. It was pretty cool.
By the time I arrived at the final, and most impressive site, Saqsaywaman (said 'Sexy woman'!) I was too exhausted to really appreciate it properly (that shows how unfit I am!!). It was impressive though, there were three tiers of walls in a zig-zag shape made out of huge blocks of rock, apparently the heaviest of which weighs 7 tonnes! The whole site was massive and it's only 20% of what originally stood there, the Spaniards plundered most of it to build their own homes in the city.
So today was pretty good although I am now completely exhausted (I don't think I could ever live permenantly at altitude). Mariko also comes back off of her trek this evening so I will have a friend again tomorrow :)
Still not sure what the situation with Machu Picchu is though, just kind of hoping for the best! We'll see!

PS. I was going to put photos up but I left the lead at my hostel so I'll have to do it some other time!

Adios Arequipa!

Yesterday was a sad day: my last day at school. We did a despedida at school which is where all the kids make cards for you and then the classes stand in front of you and sing you songs. It was really sweet and funny and sad, I have to admit that I cried just a teeny bit! I was also presented with a really nice plaque saying thank you from the teachers which was really generous although it's going to be a lot of effort to lug around.
Then last night I had my final barbecue, as a leaving present I received a very cut llama (to add to my quite substantial collection of llama related objects!) I also had to start packing which is proving to be quite a feat, despite the fact that I am leaving some stuff behind. I will keep pushing though and hopefully it'll all squeeze in!
I've really really enjoyed my time here in Arequipa and I'm finding it strange that I'm not going home now because it feels like the end of a holiday when in fact I am only halfway through my entire trip! I'm going to miss knowing the city, my host family, the kids and the all the other volunteers. But it's okay...I'm moving on to other exciting experiences. I leave for Cusco tomorrow night where I'm going to stay for ten days and then I fly up to Quito in Ecuador where I'm meeting my next GVI project: the Amazon Rainforest Expedition. So far I am approaching it with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. The apprehension is mostly due to the fact that I know that it's going to be ridiculously humid, there will be a lot of bugs and I have a sneaky feeling the showers are going to be cold. It will definately be an experience though!
So it's a sad farewell to Arequipa...for now!

Final Fortnight

The last two weeks have been fairly uneventful but pretty hard work.
Last Tuesday I moved from 3rd Grade to 1st Grade because it seemed like they needed more help...which they do. There are six kids in total. For two of them it is the third time that they are doing 1st grade. Two don't know their alphabet and can hardly hold a pencil and two know what you hope a first grader would know. So the last two weeks have mostly been spent going over the alphabet and doing simple 3 plus 4 is 7 sums. This week tarea also started. This means that we have to stay at school until 4 instead of getting home at 2. This makes me super tired but that's mostly because I am a lazy person and need more relaxation time!
In my host family however there has been some drama!
I broke my bed but managed to fix it without my host mum finding out, I blew two lightbulbs and my host mum went into hospital for the weekend. Luckily she's out now and seems fine.
The weekend was super relaxing because 13 volunteers went to Colca Canyon which left about 8 of us here. So we mostly lazed around the garden at the Casa and generally chilled out.
Exciting news though:Machu Picchu should be open before I leave Peru! I found out on Saturday that it should be opening 2 days before it was expected to. This means that I can go. YAY!

23 hours in Chile

I arrived into San Pedro de Atacama on the Thursaday morning at about 10am on a mini tour bus that took people from the Bolivian migration post in the middle of the desert to the slightly more civilised (but incredibly touristy) town. I made it through customs although my sunglasses case did manage to get crushed in the process (the sunglasses survived though!)
San Pedro was small and jam packed with tourists. Thanks to my super useful South America Rough Guide book (thanks Grandpa if you're reading this!!) I found the bus station and managed to get the last ticket to Arica that night...at 8:45. This meant that I had about 9 hours to fill. I went for lunch in a deserted place where I don't think the waitress much liked me, probably because I hadn't had a shower for a good 3 days at this point! I then sat on a park bench for 3 hours solid. It was super boring and depressing. But eventually, after spending over an hour eating one pizza, it was time to board the bus. The bus was, incidentally, one of the nicest ones I've been on since being in South America and the trip was uneventful apart from the fact that I got breakfast. When we arrived in Arica it was about 6:30 am so some nice Americans adopted me and I sat with them on the bus station floor for a couple of hours until I thought the Peru-Chile border might be open.
I managed to get a colectivo taxi over the border and then decided that I would pay that little bit extra for a super nice bus up to Arequipa from Tacna. It cost me 38 soles...which is less than 10 pounds and it was AMAZING!! There was hardly anyone on the bus so I got to stretch out, I was fed and watered and got to watch a film or two. I think I may take a few more nicer buses in future!!
I arrived home at about 6pm extremely tired but quite contented.
Chile is not a place that I would choose to visit again however. The people were impossible to understand (they cut all their words in half and speak really fast) and it was crazily expensive (it cost me over 50 US dollars for one bus ticket and two meals...compared to Peru this is a lot!) But at least it's another country ticked off on the list!!