Beach and water fountains!
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Tags: beach in Lima, Lima, Peru, water fountain park in Lima
Prasada, high altitude = less oxygen, muchs escaleras, Sabino Huaman, yoga with Sunday, Granja Heidi, El Buen Pastor, Tai Chi at Lila´s, mass at the Cathedral, running into new/old friends, volunteers!, El Molino, Qorikancha, Pachacuteq, Sacsayhuaman – ¨sexy woman¨, Monestary of Santa Catalina, El Encuentro, mate de coca, Marley at km 0, Mama Africa, Norton´s, Cusco – Alucinando la ciudad, Govinda Lila, Wisdom of the children, Puro Peru, Dia de la concepcion inmaculada , fruit juice from Yahuu, panatones, San Pedro market, muchos perros, lluvia fria, hot sunny days, McDonald´s, city views from San Blas, ¨Tonight´s gonna be a good night…¨, mi casa Home Sweet Home con Pamela, Idee, y Rosa!
A weekend excursion with the volunteers to the natural hot springs in Santa Teresa, Colcamayo.
The roads were a bit scary.
Also a trip near Quillabamba to Siete Tinajas – Seven Waterfalls. ¡Que bonito!
It was not exactly easy to climb.
Mucho cacao for making chocolate.
We also attended a Social with the volunteers from the other projects in Peru: sports, medicine, teaching, and care. Nature walk around Urubumba followed by a four course dinner!
Tags: Colcamayo, natural hot springs, Peru, Quillabamba, Santa Teresa, Siete Tinajas, Urubumba
I have just returned from a two-week volunteer project in and around a very small village called Huyro. Huyro is about four hours northwest of Cusco near the city of Huayopata…just two valleys to the north of Machu Picchu. Huyro is in Lucumayo Valley in the Cloud Forest, the area between the Andes mountains and the jungle at 1,576 meters (5,170 feet) altitude. It was absolutely beautiful there! Very green and tropical in the valley, but also surrounded by mountains. And the clouds are almost always touching the mountains. Loved it!
We worked with the Instituto Nacional de Cultura (INC), the National Institute of Culture of Cusco. Their current project in the Lucumayo Valley is restoring a ruin called Capillayok, which means the place of the church. They think that it used to be an Incan religious temple until the Spaniards destroyed the temple and built their structure on top of it. Many of the ceramic pieces that we found were broken into small pieces. We helped the archeologists in excavating and reconstructing the ruin.
The volunteers were extremely dedicated and worked very hard with no complaints! These guys are from from Sweden, Denmark, France, Holland, Ireland, New York City and Overland Park, Kansas.
The volunteers have also been exploring a nearby mountain called Cochapata for undiscovered ruins. Cochapata was an agricultural center primarily used for growing coca for ceremonial use in Cusco. They have found 94 ruins in total on Cochapata! This one was found by a volunteer just a few weeks ago! We cleared the ruin with machetes. All of the 94 ruins were either found by a volunteer, project staff member, or a local who led the volunteers to the ruin.
There was not much of a path up to the ruins…this is the mountain terrain that we walked up to get to the ruins.
When the group discovers a new ruin, they clear the site, record the GPS location of the ruin, map and measure the ruin, and report the information directly to the INC. The INC determines how to proceed with the ruin. Maybe one day there will be tourist treks to Cochapata and I can say that I helped discover those ruins! Pretty cool seeing these ruins that no one else has been to yet! The INC takes the volunteers´ work very seriously, as they have just renewed their contract with the volunteer project for another two years! Great news!
The group also works at two other ruins called Inkatambo and Wamanamarka. They also occasionally work on maintaining the Inca Trail.
Tags: Capillayok, Cloud Forest, Cochapata, Huyro, Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Peru
A remote location deep in the Amazon rain forest surrounded by howler and spider monkeys, toucans, jaguars, caiman, red macaws, rainbow parakeets, wild orchids and hundreds of other flora and fauna species. As one of the most biologically diverse areas in all of Planet Earth, at the heart of conservation work in the Amazon, sets an international research center located next to one of the Amazon’s tributaries, the Rio Madre de Dios. This is where I will be living this fall for six weeks.
After a two-hour boat ride down river from the nearest town, Puerto Maldonado, I will arrive at this very remote lodge in the rain forest.
My conservation work will include collecting data from the highest canopy walkway in all of South America, raising and releasing wildlife back into their natural habitats, teaching sustainable livestock maintenance and crop farming to the local people, botany studies, raising and releasing side-necked turtles to prevent poaching of their eggs, trail clearing and many others.
After six weeks in the jungle, I will travel to another location near the city of Cuzco, to work on an archeological project in the Incan ruins. I will complete my trip with a four-day hike in the Andes to Macchu Pichu on the Inca Trail.
Corridors and cubicles will be left behind for bird canopies and primitive bungalows. The river will host my new commute.
Stay tuned. More to come regarding my preparation for the trip!
Tags: Amazon, Conservation, Flora and Fauna, Macchu Pichu, Peru, Puerto Maldonado, Rain Forest
