PSF Memories… Dirt Bagging

As you all probably know by now, the reason why there is devastation in Pisco is due to the fact that the city rests on a very active fault line. In the past (and still now) they have built houses from brick with single walls and used concrete for their roofs. This is obviously NOT an earthquake friendly way of building, but is all the people of Pisco know how to make.

PSF have begun building using a new technology that I’m sure you will have heard of before, earth bags. Earth bags are literally a sack (imagine a potato sack, possibly like the type you would have used as a kid to have sack races) filled with dirt and then manipulated to form a brick-like shape.

These sacks are then placed on top of each other, like giant bricks, to make an earthbag wall. We use barbed wire in between each layer to hold them together as well as steel rebar hammered though all the bags from the top.

Many truckloads of earth are needed.

The wall is built pretty much the same way as a brick wall.

Mel worked on the bathroom for the Earthbag Community Centre, which was the first complete building made from earthbags that PSF completed.

The making and putting together of the bags and roof only takes a few days. The step that takes the longest time is the rendering process. You need to make a wet mix of cement and sand and then flick it on the wall. Leave it to dry and then repeat… and repeat.. and repeat!

The final outcome of the community centre was this…

Looks awesome, don’t you think?

Earthbags buildings are almost completely earthquake proof, better insulated and protected from other elements as well. PSF used the Community Centre as a means to show the community how they can also use the technology for building their own houses.

Hopefully in the long term more residents of Pisco will choose earthbags as a building form over bricks.

If you want to know more about this, check out the following link…

http://www.piscosinfronteras.org/earthbag-construction.html

You named your town after a toilet…?

We left the colonial town of Cuenca with one thing in mind… mountains!

Baños was our next destination. In Spanish, the word ‘baño’ is usually used for ‘toilet’ which seemed an unfortunate name for a town. It actually means something closer to ‘bathroom’ or ‘bath’ which makes more sense when you get to Baños and see how much water is around.

The town of Baños is close to many different rivers and even has a waterfall right in the middle of the town centre.

It’s a great little town, with lots of cool street art.

There are a couple of nice buildings there.

But wait, look a little closer at the tree in the picture…

Yes, it is indeed a BOTTLEBRUSH!!! Who would have thought we would find a native Australian tree in the plaza of a tiny town in Ecuador!

We hiked up a muddy, steep path to a lookout over the town.

As we were walking we passed a cement mixer exactly like the ones we had been using when volunteering in Pisco…

And wondered how the hell they managed to drag the thing up there!

The hike was quite challenging due to the humidity, but the view from the top was definitely worth it.

After our extensive concreting experience in Pisco, we often find ourselves analysing the work of others and couldn’t help but investigate how they formed a curved roof on a shrine-like building at the top!

The town of Baños is unfortunately situated near the bottom of a volcano, Volcán Tungurahua. This was fine for many years while the volcano was extinct but about 20 years ago it came back to life and devastated many nearby towns when it erupted in 1996.

Because of the proximity of the town to the volcano, there are all these wonderful signs showing what you should do if it were to erupt again…

We did wonder why the arrow was pointing to a street that sloped DOWNHILL… but who are we to argue with people in the know?

Banos is known for being an adventure town, with things like rafting and mountain biking on offer.

We have already done many adventure-type activities on our trip, such as skydiving, rafting, biking, mountain climbing and glacier walking but there was one thing Bevan had been dying to do that we hadn’t already done… canyoning!

This was the view from the top of the waterfalls…

And this is what part of the waterfall looked like…

Here is what we saw looking down…

Mel was slightly nervous about the prospect of abseiling down waterfalls (considering she had never really abseiled before and all of her rock climbing experience was contained to indoor climbing gyms) but she put on a brave face at the top.

There was no need to be nervous though, we both had a blast!

Although it was sometimes hard to smile for the camera with a waterfall in your face!

We went down the falls backwards…

And forwards…

And feet first…

And on our bums!

We went down seven waterfalls in all, ranging from 8 metres to a whopping 35 metres (which happened to be the one we went down forwards!)

We had a great time with the two guides and the other two Aussies we went with.

Even after 12 months of travelling South America, we can’t help but laugh at some of the names for things…

Sorry Mama Fanny, we’re sure you are a lovely lady!

Baños was a great place to spend a few days, but we’re still dreaming of those snow-capped mountains… Cotopaxi here we come!

Not a Panama hat… what’s with that?

We left Guayaquil and continued on to another city of reasonable size, Cuenca.

The first thing we noticed about Cuenca was how colonial it was. Cuenca was full of beautiful old buildings.

The parks were lovely and the people were very well dressed.

It reminded us a little of Buenos Aires in those ways, but without the hustle and bustle or the rudeness.

The shoe shiners that were all over Bolivia were back!

It was also the first time in Ecuador where we had seen a large percentage of indigenous people. We had been missing their long plaits, colourful skirts and gentle manner.

We visited an Inca site within the city, called Pumapungo.

We were amazed to find the entire complex, including a fantastic museum with five floors of artefacts, was completely free! The museum also had a fascinating exhibition on the Shao people (one of the tribes in the Amazon) and their shrunken head trophies. We can’t post any pictures of them because cameras weren’t allowed in the museum, sorry!

Mel was impressed to find that the people on the sides of the street who would usually have been selling cheap kebabs, burgers etc. that we refer to as ‘street meat’ were actually selling mainly vegetarian food. They had plantains grilled with cheese, tortillas made of corn and cheese as well as empanadas made from plantain filled with cheese.

Mel refers happily to this phenomenon as ‘street not-meat!’

We also discovered that Cuenca and the surrounding towns are the home of many places that make the ‘Panama’ hat. No, it does NOT actually come from Panama at all! The hat has a distinctive shape, as modelled in the following picture by a sleeping backpacker in the park…

Many of the indigenous people wore these hats instead of the bowler hats like in Bolivia.

We caught a bus for three hours to Ecuador’s most famous Inca ruins, Ingapirca.

They are also the only known Inca ruins to have a round shaped Temple of the Sun.

The ruins were obviously not as impressive as Machu Picchu but were only US$6 to enter instead of US$50 and not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

We spent a good day researching how we would be getting back to Australia and have finally booked our flights home! It’s a very roundabout way, but saves us $500 each compared to what we paid to get to South America this time last year.

We begin the journey from Panama and fly to New York, with a stopover in Miami. We are then planning on spending almost a week in NY as we have some friends from PSF who live in Brooklyn and have offered us free accommodation at their place (yay!) After that we fly from NY to LA and then LA to Melbourne with a stopover in Auckland.

We are going to be VERY sick of airports and planes after all that!

Our arrival date back in Melbourne is the morning of the May 13^th. Yes, we are flying on Friday the 13^th but thankfully neither of us are superstitious, so we should be fine!

After a year away with not one haircut, Bevan’s hair has become something very special indeed. We’ll finish this blog entry with a picture of just how amazing it has become…

***************PSF Memories**************

PSF has all their wood given to them free from a steel company called Aceros Arequipa. The wood is in pallet form, and is picked up once a week. The pallets are then taken apart carefully (not a super fun job, as you can probably imagine!) and used to make the modular homes for families, furniture and whatever else is in process at the time

There are left over pieces of wood that were never used for anything more than burning in the nightly fire. Sometimes there was so much to burn we would have a fire just to clear the wood box!

Bevan came up with a great idea in early November to use some of the wood to make toys. Originally he and another guy, Pete, decided to make wooden cars out of boredom but soon realised more could come of the idea.

They started thinking about all of the children who would not have presents at Christmas time and this led to the ‘Toys for Christmas’ project, which became a constant project on the board for people to volunteer for.

Over the following weeks they and their ‘Elf’ helpers designed, made and painted a variety of toys for children of all ages.

Here are some examples…

And here are some happy children playing with their new toys!

The project was an absolute success (except a minor set back when realised some of the paint was water based and would come off when wet – which was solved with some clear laquer) and many children were able to have a happy few moments at Christmas.

From beach to big city

We said goodbye to the beach and caught the bus a few hours south to the largest city in Ecuador (but not the capital) Guayaquil.

Before we came to Ecuador, people we met along the way told us the roads and buses were terrible and we envisaged something similar to Bolivia. Those people are kidding themselves, the roads have so far all been paved and the buses are of a reasonable standard – admittedly not as good as Peru, but WAY better than Bolivia!

We spent two days in Guayaquil and can say, as far as big cities in South America go, it’s not bad.

Guayaquil has its fair share of nice old buildings…

And a really nice river front that you can walk along.

There was a nice tourist walk through a restored area, made to look like an idealistic South American city…

But our favourite part by far was a little plaza right in the middle of the city (seriously) called Parque Bolivar. The park was home to hundreds, yes HUNDREDS, of iguanas!!!

As you can see, they were all over the grass (and didn’t seem to care about the pigeons…) but also all over the trees!

They were all over everything!

We enjoyed being able to drink REAL coffee. Who would have thought it would be so hard to get a decent latte in South America – the home of amazing coffee beans – but Ecuador is the first place where good coffee is not a luxury.

We leave Guayaquil with mountains on our minds. We’re heading to another relatively large city first and then altitude here we come!

******************PSF Memories*********************

One of the early projects that Mel took part in was painting a very big mural over two ugly walls a few metres from the PSF house. She was lucky enough to get on the job from the first day, so took part in planning, designing and creating the mural.

Here is what the walls looked like before…

The lovely lady who lives in the house with the wall on the left, Fabiola, asked PSF to get rid of the political slogans.

****SIDE NOTE: Fabiola is known as Cake Lady to PSFers. She makes and sells yummy cakes for 1 sol and 50 centavos. She is visited by most PSF volunteers on a daily basis and is always happy and cheerful, earning her a big reputation in the volunteer house. We will make sure to include more about her another time.****

When people are running for government in South America they ask locals with large, obvious walls such as this one to allow them to paint their name on them. The local gets nothing for it unless the person wins the election.

Johny Olivares did win, but had told Fabiola that he would clean up the area in front of the wall and never did. She decided she didn’t want to have his name plastered on her wall any longer so requested some help from us.

She just wanted the wall a blank colour but we decided to do something different. The aim was to show the people of Pisco that they could have a beautiful town again.

We decided on a theme of day and night, with the focus on a large, central tree. The leaves from the tree were falling in both directions and transforming. We also wanted to incorporate Peruvian icons, such as the sand dunes, Nazca lines, tuk tuks (the little cars that are actually called motos by Peruvians, and only tuk tuks by gringos), a roof dog, fish and a fisherman.

Unfortunately nobody took photos of the early days of the mural in progress, but here are a couple near the end…

We made sure to include Fabiola and her famous cakes.

And here is the finished product!

The entire process took over two weeks! Mel was incredibly proud to have been involved in this project. She worked closely with two other girls, Christine and Sarah, who were both very talented artists. Many others cam on and off the project. Mel learned a lot from Christine and Sarah and feels as though her painting talents are drastically improved!

Life’s a beach… still!

After almost a week hanging out in Mancora we were ready to leave Peru and start exploring Ecuador. By chance, we discovered three friends from PSF were in Ecuador and decided to head where they were for a catch up.

We have become old hands at overland border crossings in Peru, but were a little apprehensive to learn that the border we were about to cross had earned itself the dubious name of ‘Worst Border Crossing in South America’… mainly due to tourists being ripped off, robbed or, scarily, kidnapped.

We also knew that we had overstayed our tourist visa in Peru (by more than a few days!) so were a little worried about how that would be taken by the immigration officials.

We decided that we would attempt the crossing in daylight hours and, after some investigation, found the one bus company that would cross the international border and wait for us to complete formalities on both sides before continuing on to Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil.

South American bus terminals are hilarious. Sometimes they are massive, and industrial-looking, with formal ticket booths and food courts. Sometimes, like this time, you are literally sitting in the front room of a family home waiting for the bus to arrive, with a hand written invoice for your seat!

While we waited, Mel enjoyed one of her favourite new fruits, which looks like a giant pea pod and can be bought in Peru for 1 sol (which is about AUD$0.33) The name is something like guava, but is not guava obviously as that is a completely different fruit! It may be guara or guada, or guyara – who really knows!

This is what it looks like…

To begin eating it you need to bash it on something hard to crack it and then peel the skin apart. Inside it has a gooey, white, sticky substance surrounding large green/brown/black seeds.

The seeds are not the part you want to eat. Instead you peel the white stuff off and THAT is what you eat.

Mel says it tastes really sweet and has a similar consistency to lychees. Bevan thinks it’s horrible, which means more for Mel!

We had an uneventful bus trip to the Peruvian border, where they happily informed us we had overstayed our time in Peru by 84 days and needed to each pay US$84. They didn’t seem surprised or angry and as soon as we had paid them we were allowed to go on our way. Stamp, stamp.

We climbed back on the bus and drove for about 20 minutes, through an entire town, before we reached immigration on the Ecuadorian side. We couldn’t quite work out how a whole town could function in the no-man’s land that was between the two countries, but decided that probably explained the high crime rate in the area and why the border had such a bad name.

We arrived at the Ecuadorian border to be confronted with semi-chaos as people tried to exit and enter the country at one window. We had to line up in a long queue just to be given the paperwork to fill out. They didn’t have any pens, so we had to ask a stranger if we could borrow theirs. We then had to line up all over again to have our passports stamped and the formalities completed. It wasn’t scary, or dangerous… but it WAS bloody disorganised!

Formalities completed (stamp, stamp), we climbed back on the bus one more time to finish our journey to the city of Guayaquil. We arrived around 10pm, stayed the night and then caught a bus early in the morning to our destination of Montanita to meet our friends, James, Laura and Toby.

Ahhh Montanita…. what can we really say? Another beach town, further up the Pacific coast. The beaches were beautiful.

The sunsets were just as nice as in Peru.

The water was even warmer than Mancora. We went swimming one morning at 6am and it was STILL amazingly warm! The days were scorching, and the nights just as hot. The mosquitoes were terrible, and loved Mel to bits (or bites, hehe.)

Catching up with our friends was great. We shared a room with them for a few days with a pretty nice view.

Montanita was a very touristy town, but with reason. Not only was the beach beautiful and the food of a high standard, but the town had a hippy-alternative vibe. The streets of Montanita came alive at night with artists selling their crafts and street performers. There were a few clubs and bars and even a street full of little stands all making cocktails – we named it Cocktail Street!

It was an ultimate beach haven, with wooden buildings and palm trees used as roofing.

Mel’s favourite part about Montanita (apart from catching up with good friends, of course!) was the juice stands.

Juices in South America are almost always amazing. That’s one thing they get right first time, every time! Mel’s favourite is maracuya, which is very similar to passionfruit except not as sour. Bevan loves mango, and Mel agrees that South American mangoes are in a league of their own. The best juices though, are the blended varieties. Pineapple, mango, strawberry, raspberry, maracuya, orange, watermelon, rockmelon, pear, banana… the possibilities are endless!

Oh, how we will miss the tropical fruits of South America!

After our third beach town in a row we have decided we are actually getting sick of beaches (I know, can you believe it?!!) and that a change of scenery is necessary. We plan to head back to Guayaquil and spend a couple of days there before making our way east for some high altitude adventures.

**************** PSF Memories *****************

Okay, so we forgot to mention PSF last blog but will add a little bit on the end this time, and try to remember from now on!

This, my friends, is BURNING MAN. PSF, otherwise known as Pisco Sin Fronteras, actually began their life in Pisco under the name of a different organisation – Burners Without Borders.

It’s a long story which we will try to keep short, but we’ll post some links below for anyone who is interested to hear more.

The concept of Burners Without Borders started at the Burning Man festival, which is a massive, annual, week-long music and expression festival in the Nevada desert. Anyone who goes is a little ‘different’ in a lovely way; a little crazy, a little artsy, a little hippy, a little bit of a pyromaniac and a big fan of music.

They dress in crazy costumes (or nothing at all) and dance around the desert expressing themselves however they like. There are live music acts and artists displaying their (usually flammable) works.

The name pretty much says is all – Burners like to burn things. There is always a giant wooden man (hence our fellow at the top) who is displayed in the middle of all the craziness until somewhere near the end of the festival where he is set on fire and burned to the ground amid copious amounts of cheering and whistling and merry-making.

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans during the Burning Man festival in 2005. The people who were there enjoying themselves felt that something needed to be done to help the people of New Orleans. They got together and formed Burners Without Borders.

Burners Without Borders is an aid organisation that helps in disaster areas. They are usually one of the first groups to enter a disaster area and their assistance is focussed on demolition and rubble removal – which is what they did for the people of Pisco. Rebuilding is obviously important, but can’t be done until there is a clear space to build on.

When they felt that they had done all they could, the members of Burners Without Borders moved on to disaster relief elsewhere. A few members, along with other volunteers and locals from Pisco, felt more was needed and decided to set up Pisco Sin Fronteras, which (in English) means Pisco Without Borders. And there you have it.

So, back to the giant wooden guy at the top. PSF is still linked to Burners Without Borders. They still have a large say in what happens at PSF and members of BWB often come to Pisco for short or extended stays. People who have attended Burning Man but are not BWB members also come to help. In our whole stay at PSF there was never a time when there was not at least one or two ‘Burners’ in our presence.

Because of the shared love these people (and a lot of the other members of PSF) have for burning things, every few months something large would be made out of wood, transported to the beach, and burned.

We were lucky enough to be there when the man himself was made. He was taller than a two story building and full of fireworks.

We put him in the back of our truck and drove down to the beach. We had music and anyone who was into circus arts (which was always at least a few people at PSF) would get out their fire sticks, fire hoops, poys or whatever else and put on a burning performance.

As the fire crept up his legs, ropes attached to his legs were burnt through, allowing his hands to reach skywards, one holding a pick-axe and one holding a shovel – like the people in the PSF emblem.

As the flames crept higher fireworks went off and the fire got hotter and hotter until, at last, to a chorus of cheering and yelling, the man was no more.

Obviously burning a giant wooden man has nothing to do with helping the people of Pisco, but it has everything to do with remembering the history of the organisation and keeping the morale of the volunteers high. It was a great way to spend a Friday night and just think… where in Australia would you be allowed to drive a giant wooden man onto a beach and set fire to him using large amounts of bio-diesel and methanol while fireworks randomly exploded….? Good times!

http://www.burnerswithoutborders.org/

http://www.burningman.com/

http://www.piscosinfronteras.org/