Jungle Fever
After every entry I make on this blog I swear to myself that I’ll be better disciplined and update it more frequently. Well, that hasn’t worked out too well for me so far. So once again I’ll try to give a very brief update on the past month+.
At the end of October, 4 of my good buddies (other volunteers) came to visit me for my birthday. One walked for 5 hrs and the others came by bus from up to 10 hrs away… talk about good friends!!! It was really nice having English speaking friends at site for once. We volunteers tend to enjoy speaking English in our communities so that the people understand that Spanish is not our first language (we’re not really as dumb as we sound!. In some villages the fact that not everyone in the world speaks their languages is really hard to comprehend.) That night my Peruvian friends threw me a party so we had a nice dinner, cocktails and danced until the bus passed by at 2am.
In November I took advantage of some vacation days that I had saved up and went on a week and a half trip to the jungle with 8 other volunteers. For being a fairly small country, Peru is very geographically have three main regions: coast, mountains and jungle. The final destination of the trip was a city called Iquitos, which happens to be the largest city inaccessible by road in the world. Only by plane and boat can you get there. We decided to take the scenic route to get there, taking a bus for 17 hrs, a car for another 4 and then a 2 ½ day boat ride. Though it was a pretty tiring voyage, it was well worth it. The bus ride was pretty unpleasant since the roads wound up and down mountains for a good 10 hrs. That combined with the odor of urine from the bathroom (whose door wouldn’t stay shut) made it fairly difficult to sleep. We spent a few hr in a small city called Tarapoto where we ate and bought hammocks for the trips. From there we took a rollercoaster car ride to the port. It was a mixture of off roading in 4 inches of mud and literally squealing tires around tight corners at 70mph. Apparently the drivers have some sort of daily competition, so it’s literally a race.
Fortunately we survived the ride, only to arrive at the dark port, greeted by 3 drunk men. We found our way to the boat and (after paying off the drunk guys so that they’d leave) boarded the three story cargo boat. In the bottom floor they were loading all sorts of fruits and sacks of rice and the top two floors we for passengers. The way it works is you find an open place on the floor and hang your hammock up. There was not a whole lot of security, but since we were a nice sized group we had no problems.
A day a half later we arrive at a small town called Lagunas where we would take a 4 day canoe trip into the heart of the jungle. Each hollowed out canoe had a guide (who did all the paddling) and two of us. We spent a good 5-6 hrs a day in the boats floating down the winding river taking in the beauty of the jungle. It really was exactly how i´d pictured it… a national geographic type of thing. We saw monkeys, sloths, snakes, tarantulas, macaws, piranhas, and even the rare pink dolphin. We camped out under the stars and enjoyed fresh caught fish everyday. It’s really difficult to describe just how amazing it was. I shot a good bit of video so I’ll try to put some online soon.
From there we spent another day and a half on the boat until finally arriving in Iquitos. It was a very tropical city, very hot and humid. We had a great time there visiting a couple zoo-type places where we played with monkeys and held boas etc. but I must say that the highlight for a bunch of us was eating every single meal at a tex-mex restraint. It was like a dream come true. BBQ chicken, burritos, alligator nuggets, meaty hamburgers, french toast… and the list goes on… I guess it’s not exactly what you’d imagine would be the most memorable part of the trip, but it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to eat good hardy American(/Mexican) food.
So anyway, after all that excitement, I am back in site for another couple weeks. There have been a number of developments on the project front:
We started weaving workshops about a month ago. The first couple classes went well, however there was a problem with the project that the NGO sent me from Piura so they no longer are working with us. The deal was that they were to pay half of the instructors salary and we would pay the other half. They later decided that they we not going to pay her, so that kind of messed things up. Fortunately we have been able to continue with the workshops with the help of a woman from the community who knows a lot about crochet. Long story short, the ladies are progressing well, reading diagrams and getting ready to begin putting together actual products.
The baker boys have been having a lot of success. They have become well know now throughout town and have sold over 65 cakes in the last 3 months. We’ve also been working on baking panetón which is a fruitcake-like bread that nearly every able family in the country buys around Christmas time. They boys are really excited about their business and the fact that they can now make the cakes without any help. They’re now getting orders for birthday cakes and for graduations etc. I’m looking into the possibility of getting a grant to buy a better oven and a nice mixer.
I´ve recently started working on a bimonthly with a number of the high school students aimed at promoting communication between the various institutions in the community and the general population. The students are writing articles and I also hope to use it as a forum to discuss development. Our first issue will hopefully be released on the 17th of this month, although we have a lot of work to do before then.
In other news, I have once again been pulled into being the “padrino” of TWO graduations: kindergarden and the primarty school. This means that I have to buy a lot of presents.
Mom and dad are arriving in Lima on the 23rd for which I am extremely excited. We´ll be in Lima for Christmas and then heading to Cusco for a few days to see Machu Pichu.
At the end of October, 4 of my good buddies (other volunteers) came to visit me for my birthday. One walked for 5 hrs and the others came by bus from up to 10 hrs away… talk about good friends!!! It was really nice having English speaking friends at site for once. We volunteers tend to enjoy speaking English in our communities so that the people understand that Spanish is not our first language (we’re not really as dumb as we sound!. In some villages the fact that not everyone in the world speaks their languages is really hard to comprehend.) That night my Peruvian friends threw me a party so we had a nice dinner, cocktails and danced until the bus passed by at 2am.
In November I took advantage of some vacation days that I had saved up and went on a week and a half trip to the jungle with 8 other volunteers. For being a fairly small country, Peru is very geographically have three main regions: coast, mountains and jungle. The final destination of the trip was a city called Iquitos, which happens to be the largest city inaccessible by road in the world. Only by plane and boat can you get there. We decided to take the scenic route to get there, taking a bus for 17 hrs, a car for another 4 and then a 2 ½ day boat ride. Though it was a pretty tiring voyage, it was well worth it. The bus ride was pretty unpleasant since the roads wound up and down mountains for a good 10 hrs. That combined with the odor of urine from the bathroom (whose door wouldn’t stay shut) made it fairly difficult to sleep. We spent a few hr in a small city called Tarapoto where we ate and bought hammocks for the trips. From there we took a rollercoaster car ride to the port. It was a mixture of off roading in 4 inches of mud and literally squealing tires around tight corners at 70mph. Apparently the drivers have some sort of daily competition, so it’s literally a race.
Fortunately we survived the ride, only to arrive at the dark port, greeted by 3 drunk men. We found our way to the boat and (after paying off the drunk guys so that they’d leave) boarded the three story cargo boat. In the bottom floor they were loading all sorts of fruits and sacks of rice and the top two floors we for passengers. The way it works is you find an open place on the floor and hang your hammock up. There was not a whole lot of security, but since we were a nice sized group we had no problems.
A day a half later we arrive at a small town called Lagunas where we would take a 4 day canoe trip into the heart of the jungle. Each hollowed out canoe had a guide (who did all the paddling) and two of us. We spent a good 5-6 hrs a day in the boats floating down the winding river taking in the beauty of the jungle. It really was exactly how i´d pictured it… a national geographic type of thing. We saw monkeys, sloths, snakes, tarantulas, macaws, piranhas, and even the rare pink dolphin. We camped out under the stars and enjoyed fresh caught fish everyday. It’s really difficult to describe just how amazing it was. I shot a good bit of video so I’ll try to put some online soon.
From there we spent another day and a half on the boat until finally arriving in Iquitos. It was a very tropical city, very hot and humid. We had a great time there visiting a couple zoo-type places where we played with monkeys and held boas etc. but I must say that the highlight for a bunch of us was eating every single meal at a tex-mex restraint. It was like a dream come true. BBQ chicken, burritos, alligator nuggets, meaty hamburgers, french toast… and the list goes on… I guess it’s not exactly what you’d imagine would be the most memorable part of the trip, but it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to eat good hardy American(/Mexican) food.
So anyway, after all that excitement, I am back in site for another couple weeks. There have been a number of developments on the project front:
We started weaving workshops about a month ago. The first couple classes went well, however there was a problem with the project that the NGO sent me from Piura so they no longer are working with us. The deal was that they were to pay half of the instructors salary and we would pay the other half. They later decided that they we not going to pay her, so that kind of messed things up. Fortunately we have been able to continue with the workshops with the help of a woman from the community who knows a lot about crochet. Long story short, the ladies are progressing well, reading diagrams and getting ready to begin putting together actual products.
The baker boys have been having a lot of success. They have become well know now throughout town and have sold over 65 cakes in the last 3 months. We’ve also been working on baking panetón which is a fruitcake-like bread that nearly every able family in the country buys around Christmas time. They boys are really excited about their business and the fact that they can now make the cakes without any help. They’re now getting orders for birthday cakes and for graduations etc. I’m looking into the possibility of getting a grant to buy a better oven and a nice mixer.
I´ve recently started working on a bimonthly with a number of the high school students aimed at promoting communication between the various institutions in the community and the general population. The students are writing articles and I also hope to use it as a forum to discuss development. Our first issue will hopefully be released on the 17th of this month, although we have a lot of work to do before then.
In other news, I have once again been pulled into being the “padrino” of TWO graduations: kindergarden and the primarty school. This means that I have to buy a lot of presents.
Mom and dad are arriving in Lima on the 23rd for which I am extremely excited. We´ll be in Lima for Christmas and then heading to Cusco for a few days to see Machu Pichu.
posted by Ryan Nelson | 5:26 PM
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