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/

Sun, surf and six months of sand!

We left Huanchaco around midday and caught a local bus (yes, we crammed ourselves and ALL our stuff on with the locals and their kids, aunties, uncles, grandparents, pets, livestock and produce!) to the nearest big town, Trujillo, about 30 mins away.

Trujillo is not on the coast but is the transport hub for the area and has many connecting buses. We were warned by people we have met and the Lonely Planet that it is not a very safe town and our aim was to get a bus out as soon as possible.

Towns in Peru don’t just have one big terminal for all buses (except for Cusco) butinstead they have different mini-terminals for every different company – and they’re not always near each other. We caught a taxi to the bus terminal for El Dorado buses as we had researched and learnt that they were the only company that had a direct overnight bus to our next destination, Mancora. We went up to the desk at 2pm to buy tickets for the 9pm direct bus only to be told it was full… great.

The lady behind the counter said we could catch a different bus, at 11pm, to a town called Piura (another very dodgy transport hub/town in Peru) where we would need to change buses to get to Mancora. The worst part was the bus would get there at 4:30am and we would need to buy our tickets and wait in the “terminal” for two hours before the connecting bus left for Mancora…. it really is never easy in South America!

As we had no other choice we bought tickets for the 11pm bus and decided to have a quick look around the town. We left our luggage at the El Dorado terminal free of charge, which was a pleasant surprise as they usually try to get money out of us for everything!

We started to walk down the street when two taxi drivers asked if we wanted a lift. We said no thanks and then one of them said “No caminar, es muy peligroso,” which in English means “Don’t walk, it’s very dangerous.” We looked around and realised the streets were empty, dirty and the only people we could see were not the type you would want to mess with so we decided to get in one of the taxis.

We had no idea where to go so asked the driver to take us to the Plaza de Armas, which is always the centre park in any Peruvian town. We took a few photos in the plaza, which was actually very pretty…

It wasn’t long before we were sick of being hassled for money by every second person. The vibe wasn’t positive in the centre of Trujillo, so we flagged another taxi and asked what we could do for six hours. He suggested a local shopping centre with a cinema, and we decided that sounded better than anything else we could think of doing.

We walked around, had some dinner and watched some kids playing a giant Scaletrix game in the middle of the centre.

We saw the only movie that was playing in English, Friends with Benefits. It wasn’t brilliant but it wasn’t terrible, and it helped to pass the time!

The bus trip ended up being quite uneventful. We slept most of the first leg and spent the time in between buses being horrified by the way animals are transported as cargo in Peru. There were boxes and boxes of baby chickens, chirping away…

But the thing that made us both really sad was this poor goose tied up in a shopping bag, being moved around like a suitcase…

We arrived in Mancora around 10am and found a lovely hostel called Kokopelli Beachpackers. It was like a resort, with hammocks and lounge chairs around a great pool with a swim-up bar!

It also had a dart board for Bevan.

He played that while Mel tried her hand at giant jenga!

Mancora is a backpacker haven. We ate like kings while we were there. We had sushi one day, amazing Mexican another, falafel burgers, spinach and feta pastries as well as real Italian pizza and juicy steak (well, Bevan enjoyed the steak and Mel had barbecued, buttery veggies!)

The town is supposed to be the best surfing town in Peru but while we were there the waves weren’t fantastic. The beach was nice, though and the water was warm enough to swim for hours.

We didn’t get up to much more than relaxing, swimming, reading,playing darts and eating and we both enjoyed every minute!

We were in Mancora when the earthquake in Japan happened and, as we were right on the beach, there was plenty of excitement to be had with the approaching tsunami.

The local police made all the beach front restaurants close for the day and anyone staying in a hostel in the ‘red zone’ had to evacuate also – which included the entire Loki party hostel of 70 plus backpackers! We were lucky enough to be staying on the main street which was up the hill enough that we didn’t need to evacuate.

The locals were pretty sure it wasn’t going to be too large.. the reports predicted up to 1 metre higher than normal (which was almost spot on) but they quite as good at predicting the time it was supposed to hit. Many people from the town, and most travellers had made their way up to the cliffs behind the town and spent most of the afternoon and night there.

We decided to be stupid (sorry mums!) and go down to the beach to see what would happen so, along with a friend we had made at the hostel, Kevin, we walked along the laneway to the beach and waited with about 30 other locals and surfers.

The beach was usually full all day, every day… but not then!

After about 20 minutes the police came along the beach and told us all to move along…

So we did… through a hole in the fence and onto the balcony of one of the restaurants owned by a funny old American couple!

The place was called Papa Mo’s Green Eggs and Ham and is a definite need-to-visit place if any of you ever go to Mancora. They “technically” weren’t allowed to serve food and drinks but the lovely lady said that if we happened to walk to the fridge, take out a beer and leave the money on the counter then she wasn’t serving us and that was fine!

We sat on the balcony drinking beers for four hours with some others from our hostel and local gringos.

We decided to call our little adventure a Tsunami Party, except for the fact that the tsunami didn’t seem to want to show up.

We were told it would come at 6:30pm, then that changed to 7:10pm, then 7:41pm… by 8:30pm we gave up and headed back to our hostel. It did come, at 9:24pm, and did flood all of the beach front restaurants and hotels. There was no massive damage but it was enough to fill the places with sand and move chairs around a little. We were just upset that we had waited that long and then missed it!

Mancora was a great little beach town to stop for a few days, although it was super touristy. All this beach time has helped both of us to get nice and tanned, especially Bevan!

Gotta love those tan lines!!!!!

Mancora was our last stop in Peru, after six months in the country. We celebrated both of our birthdays, our first Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and Australia Day while there. We have a lifetime of unforgettable memories and wonderful new friends to show for it – Peru definitely exceeded our expectations.

It’s time to say goodbye Peru (for now) and hello Ecuador!

On the road again…

We finally managed to pack our bags and leave Pisco Sin Fronteras for good… at least for good on this trip anyway. The last two weeks were spent trying to make sure we did all the things we wanted to do before we left.

We found it really hard to put what we were doing there into words, hence the serious lack of blogs for the last four and a half months. We will post more things about the experience – and try to include something at the end of each blog – but for the moment we plan to continue writing about each city we visit, like we did before.

We left PSF after dinner and caught the four hour bus to Lima, arriving around midnight. Mel cried for the first half an hour of the trip and then we both fell into heavy sleep, so heavy that we didn’t realise we had arrived in Lima and woke up alone on the bus after everyone else had already left!

We caught a taxi to the hostel and went straight to bed. Again, we slept so much. Bevan woke up at midday, just as they were putting the free breakfast away, and Mel didn’t wake until 2:30pm! We realised we were both completely exhausted from our four and a half months at PSF – and not just physically, but emotionally as well.

We let ourselves have some movie therapy, and watched a couple of old classics. We bought some gourmet cheeses and wine and had an eating session in front of the TV, before another early night.

We decided that we should get moving as quickly as possible again as we were both feeling depressed about leaving PSF and needed something to distract us.

We packed our things and headed to the bus terminal, not 100% sure about where we were actually headed… we knew we wanted to go north and make our way to Ecuador. We decided on a little surfing town called Huanchaco, about 10 hours north, bought the tickets and were on the way.

Huanchaco (pronounced Wan-chuck-o) is a lovely little beachside town.

It’s a hot spot for surfers and definitely on the Gringo Trail, but is missed by many travellers making it quiet and relaxed – just what we needed!

The view from our room was pretty nice.

The weather was great, it just keeps getting hotter at the moment as we head towards the Equator! Huanchaco is on the Tropic of Capricorn, but the weather was not as muggy as it is in Queensland. It is still in the desert region of Peru, that’s probably why it still felt dry.

We stayed at a hostel that felt more like a resort.

As you can probably imagine, there was plenty of this…

And this…

We saw yet another AMAZING sunset over the ocean…

We visited the old cathedral on the hill.

We played with the pet tortoises at the hostel…

And laughed at their dog-like behaviour of sneaking into rooms when doors were left open…

Even if people were sleeping!

We checked out the reed boats that the fisherman still use (although they are definitely there for the tourists these days as well.)

There are many archaeological sites around Huanchaco. We visited a pre-Incan site called Chan Chan, where they have unearthed palaces made from adobe. The outer walls were ridiculously high!

The people who lived there formed the walls with adobe bricks before rendering everything.

They decorated the walls with different animals and patterns.

Huanchaco was a nice little town to visit. The weather, waves and relaxed nature of the locals made it the perfect remedy for our exhaustion.

******************

PSF Memories

Okay, so we said we’d put a little but about PSF in with each blog entry…

This is Pete, Charlie and Bevan posing with a picnic table they made to go into a community area that was being built in the poorest neighbourhood of Pisco, El Molino. Some volunteers had put their own money in to build a concrete football/basketball court, a community centre that they hoped would one day be a school, and a park area for the community, complete with picnic tables, benches, swings and a see-saw.

The community area was built back in November and early December and by the time we left in March, the swings had been cut down, the slashed tyres that had been concreted into the ground under the see-saw had somehow been removed, the benches had been broken and some of the panels in the community centre had also been broken.

I know what you’re probably thinking… why help people who behave like that? And we had the same thoughts. The reason I guess is because not everyone who lives there has that same attitude, many of them appreciate what we do and are desperate for any help they can get. We help that area because we want to help the children, babies and older people who have nothing and nobody.

 

 

 

Demolition Woman!

The government in Pisco, and Peru in general, makes some decisions that seem downright stupid.

The poorest area of Pisco is El Molino, where people live in terrible conditions without proper floors, walls, roofs or toilets.

The government tries to pretend El Molino doesn’t exist by surrounding it with a large wall.

El Molino is the area where many people fled to after the earthquake as there was a tsunami and they wanted to get to higher ground. They have since set up shanties and shacks to live in but do not actually own their land. Because of this they are not supposed to build anything permanent such as a concrete floor or brick house.

The government has finally decided to give them a small plot of land each but, instead of simply giving them the land they were living on, they replanned the entire suburb and are making everybody move. Some people are only moving five metres from where they were while others are moving further.

Even though we weren’t supposed to, PSF built a concrete and brick toilet block last year in El Molino, with two toilet cubicles and two showers. Unfortunately the building was in the middle of what is going to be a new road and needed to be demolished.

Mel was put in charge of the demolition job and had a crew of three other people working with her each day.

The first step in the demolition process was removing the water tank from the roof. We considered an interesting technique using large bamboo poles…

Until we decided that was a little dangerous. Once we tipped the water out we realised it was actually very light and we could simply lift it down, duh!

There was, of course, time for some fun…

We got to use three of the most fun tools, in Mel’s opinion anyway. The sledgehammer, the jackhammer and the angle grinder.

Mel was a tough chick with the jackhammer…

Slowly the building came down, after lots of sweat and muscle power. We had a lot of fun getting the beams to fall. We had to jackhammer around the steel on half of the bar, then angle grind the steel, then jackhammer the remaining half and…

TIMMMMMBERRRRRRRR!

Local kids were happy to help and took to the concrete columns with sledgehammers and lumphammers to get the steel bars from the middle. The steel is worth about 50 centavos (about AUD$0.15) per kilogram and each column had about five kilos worth of steel in it. The boy on the left wanted to get enough money to buy himself a new pair of shoes.

We spent a lot of our time working hard, but also some of it playing with the local children.

And a little El Molino puppy.

It took a few days to finish the job but finally it was just another pile of rubble in Pisco.

We had a good time bashing the bathroom down but it was such a waste, thanks to a stupid decision by some politician. It seems so stupid to get rid of working toilets when most people in El Molino use a bucket to do their business but that was the decision reached by the government.

Halloween, Pisco style!

We know we’re late with this one… major photo backlog!

Halloween was celebrated in style at PSF. We don’t normally do anything for Halloween when we’re in Australia so we were excited to hit the market looking for costumes.

Poor Bevan was sick over that weekend so he didn’t participate in the partying, but Mel made up for that!

Check out some of the costumes…

On the left we have North (yes, that’s a nickname) dressed as South Paul the boxer. Laura in the middle is a carrot – it only cost her $1.25 to make that costume! Laura on the right is a mummy… obviously!

This is one of our good friends, Hannah, vamping it up.

And this is Hannah’s boyfriend and another of our good friends, Eoin. Yes, he really did go there! He actually hired the mannequin from a stall in the market – that’s dedication!

Justin on the left is dressed as a ‘Never Nude’ from one of Mel’s favourite TV shows, Arrested Development. Pete on the right is a rice bag with a Peruvian knitted mask.

This is Allan, dressed as the Mad Hatter (the Johnny Depp one, not the original.) He won best costume for the night. He spent the night walking up to people, pouring them tea and forcing it down their throats – only it wasn’t actually tea but straight rum!

And here’s Mel dressed as Regan, the girl from The Exorcist. The ‘vomit’ was actually mashed banana and avocado, which smelled much better than it looks!

There were other fantastic costumes, such as all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles accompanied by Splinter, zombies, two Mexican wrestlers and lots of bad fairies, devils, angels (and other assorted girl costumes involving short dresses.)

Mel had a ball and Bevan unfortunately slept through the whole thing, as he was recovering from a 48 hour bug.

So there you have it, Halloween Pisco style.

Hard at Work for a Cause

A few more pictures of Pisco…

Bevan is testing out the chair he made. We have made 50 chairs and tables for children to use in their houses. The most amazing thing is that they are made from used pallet wood donated by a local company, reused rusty nails and a lot of love.

 

And here is Mel demonstrating how we break the pallets into usable pieces of wood. Talk about tough, sweaty work!

This is the job board. Every morning the jobs are listed and in the morning meeting we go through each job one by one before deciding what we want to do that day. Check out the job fourth from the bottom – with Pete and Skywalker. Skywalker is Bevan’s name at PSF as he apparently resembles Mark Hamill!!

And here’s one more of Mel using her favourite tool, the jigsaw, to cut turrets out for a castle themed puppet stage. The stage was given to the children at the local ludoteca, complete with handmade puppets and a performance of course!