Pisco Sin Fronteras

Arriving to a site by local transport.

Two weeks have passed since Matt and I have disjoined, and it has been 4 weeks that I have been volunteering with Pisco Sin Fronteras (click on the title to check out website). Though the weather is sunny only half the time (at best) and the surf is not right here in Pisco, the group here is filled with terrific people doing some amazing work.

In short, a massive earthquake hit the area in August of 2007 and caused immense damage. Like Matt mentioned, not a lot of funding reached Pisco. I heard that a lot of the international aid money went missing (aka was stolen) so funding for reconstruction is very limited and donations are crucial. Because there is such poverty, some of the reconstruction families are forced to do is not sustainable.

PSF is here to help communities and families however we can. We have people come to us to ask for a helping hand, or go wander communities assessing sites that we could do some work on. Most of the work needed is reconstruction, so we do everything from rubble removal and resurfacing to digging trenches and leveling ground to pouring concrete and building and/or moving houses. Also, some people go to play with high energy kids at a Unicef Play Centre. It is run by a lady as a place for children to play safely rather than in the streets or the rubble. Some Saturdays, local English teachers come to practice through conversation.

Brick laying

Andy, Dom, Dae and David moving walls of a modular house.

Putting the modular back-together again.

The turnover of volunteers is pretty freakin fast, but a few long term peeps keep it familiar and somewhat organized. It is a pretty laid back organization and I can honestly say I am not sure when I will leave. All in all, it has been one of the coolest things I have been involved with; great to help this community and great people to be around. Having said that, most of us are native english speakers, so my spanish hasn´t gotten much better, though I can understand most things quite well.

Dom, Andy, Felipe, Jake and Selene enjoying some icecream.

The school-yard hangout area.

Matt's Mission

Well I quickly learned that the greatest downfall of traveling alone is most palpable while waiting for buses. You can only play one player card games for so long before you lose your mind completely; so you can imagine my dismay when I discovered I was to spend 9 hours in Arica, Chile all by my lonesome. Lucky for me there was an internet cafe just across the street from the terminal and after some long chats with Robyn and my folks the nine hours didn't seem nearly as bad. I still played a great deal of one player card games though and departed some what lucid. However, this layover put some stress on me to reach Salta in time for my pick up on the 14th to head out to the Sayta Horse Ranch. I needed to quick departure from San Pedro, Chile, to Salta, Argentina, but of course, things do not always work out the way you need them to and the next bus to Salta was not until the next day. This actually was a fortunate turn of events in the end as I had no choice but to check out the cool little desert town of San Pedro and spend my first night in a bed in a few nights. San Pedro and the surrounding area is quite beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed its slendor on a mountain bike as I biked between rocky desert mountains, across mostly dried strems, and through a winding canyon with tight turns and low overhangs for 28KM. I loved every minute of it! Boy did my bum hurt afterwards though. Perhaps not the smartest activity just before heading to a horse ranch for three days, but well worth it.

As I did not have an alarm clock I hit the hay at 7:40 to ensure I would not sleep past my bus departure time. I was tired anyways, so it was an almost justifiable plan. After an amazing bus ride to Argentina filled with incredible flat expanses of desert, rocky protutions, salty, mostly frozen river beds, classic forking cacti, llamas, ducks, and small dear-like critters in which my eyes were glued to the window the entire ride, I arrived to Salta around 9:00PM and met up with my friend Cristina who is Ecuadorian but lives in Buenos Aires. We reminisced over Ecuadorian fun and then hit the hay to head out to the ranch bright and early.

Sayta Ranch was i n c r e d i b l e and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute there. The owner (Enrique) is a teenager trapped in a mid-fifty year old body who cracked a joke about sex every third sentence at least, the horses were well behaved and beautiful, the scenery and wildlife was amazing, the three resident dogs were great and definitely got a lot of attention from me, and I ate more steak of higher quality than I could have ever dreamed of eating. I think I ate more money in meat than I paid for my entire stay there. We also learned to gallop and post, jump on the horse without a saddle and ride bare back, and use a lasso. I told Enrique in two more days I would be a true gaucho (an Argentinian cowboy essentially) and he responded "tal vais dos mas vivas" which means maybe in two more lifetimes. A very fun man. It was definitely sad to leave the ranch after our short stay.

After three days on horse back we took out tender bums North with two other travelers from the ranch and headed to Permacarma where we hiked to view the Seven Coloured Mountains. I am not too sure how it happens, but apparently different compounds are compressed together in layers and upon exposure to the air they oxidize to form different colours. However it happens, it is very pretty. We then headed a little further north to Humahuacha where we hoped to see the White Mountains that our trusty Lonely Planet suggested... Not quite worth it. Sure they were a little white, but not very impressvie.

After our little hike Cris and I hopped on a bus to Buenos Aires (BA), or at least we thought it was to BA. Turns out the women who sold us the tickets decided to play a trick on us and lied to us to put us on a bus to Cordova. Needless to say we were unimpressed and made sure the bus company bought us our next tickets to BA like we were supposed to be traveling to. We arrived 6 hours later than we were supposed to, but we arrived! BA is gorgeous and full of opportunities. I am really looking forward to my couple weeks here. I'll keep you posted!

-Matt

The Oasis of Huacachina and Pisco Beyond

Casa de Arenas. Where we stayed our first visit to the oasis.

Well after some great times in the high altitude of Cusco, we set out to the desert town of Huacachina. The small oasis is a five minute drive from the large city of Ica, but the rising dunes all around the lagoon make it feel all the more remote. There are probably about 40 buildings in the community and at least half have pools. Our hostel was no exception and had a definite resort hotel feel to it with a pool side bar and a open air bar at the back with pool and foozeball tables. The only disappointment with the hostel was the staff who were rude, rarely smiling and seemed to make a point of not being accomodating. Not the best idea when you are in the accomodation business, but who are we to judge? All we know is that we would never go there again nor recommend it to anyone.

High velocity sand sledding.

Sandboarding!

The surrounding dunes were nothing shy of incredible and Mitch and I could not get enough of them. There was not a single evening that the dunes were not covered with silhouettes of tourists hiking the dune for the sunset and we definitely opted to enjoy the sight a night or two as well. From the top of the dunes you can see vast expanses of rolling sand mountains that not only served as a breath taking, picture perfect view but as a giant playground for dune buggies and quads and most hostels offered a dune buggie experience combined with sand boarding. Such a good time! The dune buggie ride is like a roller coaster and then it makes various stops at the tops of giant dunes for you to try your luck on a sand board. Mitch was a pro from his snow boarding experience where as I was much more so the neophyte. After smacking my head on the much-less-forgiving-than-snow sand on the small hills, I opted to ride down on my stomach like a toboggan and got to some intense speeds which I definitely prefered to the head ache. While fun, I still think I prefer sledding on snow.

Our driver and buggy looking over Haucachina.

A little sand in the shoes...

After four great days in Huacachina we decided to head off to the city of Pisco where we hoped to volunteer with an organization devoted to helping those affected by an earthquake two years back. The drive into Pisco shocked both Mitch and I and was evidence enough that a lot of work was needed to help repair the damage done. We are not too sure as to why Pisco received such little funding, but we have a feeling that the larger cities like Ica may have gotten the majority while Pisco was left unnoticed. We checked into the first hostel we found and after a short nap set out to find the volunteer organization called Pisco Sin Fronteras or PSF (roughly, Pisco without borders). We ended up finding a tourist agency that played soccer with them that very night and were invited to play against our soon to be co-workers. PSF is super laid back and it was extremely easy to get signed on with them and we started the very next day. After working one and a half days, it turned out the whole PSF crew was heading to Huacachina for the birthday of the director, Harold. Well as it turned out it was Mitch's birthday the day before Harold's so we decided what better place to celebrate than a wonderous desert oasis. It also turned out the PSF crew loves our hated hostel, so we stuck to our guns and did not stay with them. Another bonus was meeting us with our friend Brad from the Lost City Trek and our friend Jake from Montañita. It was a great weekend of reminiscing, dancing and more dune buggying and sand boarding, then back to the grind stone.

Sandboarding, Take 2.

Two weeks of hard and extremely rewarding work in which we worked to repair a playground, pour concrete for building wall foundations or floors, remove garbage from beaches, digging trenches and removing old walls, participating in a parade, and more just flew by. It was particularly easy to work hard when you are removing glass from a playground as you watch the cute kids run in bare foot, or when you are digging a trench for a family's new house when they are living in a tent on the site. I had intentions of visiting a gym not far from our housing, but definitely did not need it with all the manual labour I was putting in each day. Sadly, I had to leave today to make my way down to Chile briefly and then Argentina. After a busy morning in which Mitch and I cooked breakfast for everyone (a french toast special), I said my many many many good-byes and then packed my bags. It was particularly sad and decidedly weird leaving Mitch behind. While it is exciting and new to be traveling on my own, I sure am going to miss traveling with my buddy. We traveled five months together to the day and had an amazing adventure. From here on out you will be reading two separate stories as he continues to do amazing work in Pisco and I make my way south to Buenos Aires. We'll keep you posted, thanks for reading!