Pisco Sin Fronteras

Peru
3/26/2009

After leaving Arequipa, we pretty much headed directly downhill(in elevation) and straight to the coast. After a full day of traveling we found ourselves in Pisco, a medium sized coastal city that was struck by an 8.0 earthquake in 2007, and has lots of rubble, half destroyed building, and lot fo happy excited people rebuilding and spending time on the beach.

We are volunteering with an organization called "Pisco Sin Fronteras" who spend their days working different public projects in the city, all based around construction, demolishing, rubble removal and general help. When we arrived to PSF headquarters, we met the begining of all the volunteers here. We met Karl and Nienm from Ireland, Will and Jen from Australia, Tomas from Belguim, Jens from Denmark, Chester, Paddy, Benedict and Eloise from Canada, Aaron from Austin, Texas, Hopefully I didnt leave anyone out! SO once we got the run down on how we will vonlunteer we need to find a bed!When i took a look in the volunteer dorm, i only saw one bed. Hmm, in the end, laina and I used one of PSF tents, and pitched it on the roof of the building, which is nice and flat, and offers a great view of the city(and sunset).

So our first day at work! We were assigned to work with chester, tomas and jens and we are assigned to spend the first half of the day demolishing a half destroyed building and cleaning up the rubble. We all piled into the truck and got dropped off at the site, whew! it is so hot! At our house(demoilishing house) we are only 100 feet off the ocean and even though it is hot, there ia an awesome sea breeze, and it cools us down. Jens is standing on the roof with no shirt on(jens has a huge beard) and swinging the sledge hammer to knowck down the side wall. We all take turns with the sledge, and eventually knock down the wall! The next step is to take out the doorway, and we need to smash some glass to do it. With everyones help we manage to get all our work done. For lunch, the woman who owns the house, makes us all some soup and a stir fry. After lunch we head to a school, where we need to remove whats left of the roof, so that they can rebuild a new roof. It was difficult work, and we had to remove 2 220lbs iron frames from 15 feet in the air. amazing what a little rope and brain power can do. Once we got the iron down, we asked the principle if we could have the iron, and she gave it to us (these are old rusty iron frames) it took 6 people to move it, and we dragged it to the town market and sold each one for 30Soles, 10$, and donated that money to another project where we are building a house(cement foundation) for a woman who lost hers. At night we went to a birthday party for the child of the owner of the school, and danced, drank chicha(purple corn juice) and had a bast! The family was so nice and excited to meet all these volunteers!

Our first day of work was a blast! for our second day, we went to the house where we are building the womans house, and started mixing concrete to pour the foundation. We did lots of digging, and levelign to get the ground ready for the foundation. I helped alot with the concrete mixing, and now I know a great deal more about the process then before! For lunch the woman and her friend made the lot of us (most of the volunteers were there) pasta and hard boiled eggs, Mmm it was good!

It was about that time that I started to get sick. I have been not feeling so well in the intestine area for the last month and a half, and that night i really started to feel poor. I didnt go to work the next day, and headed to the doctors instead. Betwen the autorickshaw(tuk tuk) and a colectiveo, I got to the doctors for under 1$. When I got there it cost 4 Soles, 1.30$ for my appointment. I got ushered to the front of the line(i didnt know why) and the doctor saw me. She determined i didnt have parasites, but did have travellers diarreah, a bacterial infection in my stomach and intestines. She proscribed cipro, which i wouldnt normally take, but 2 months of diarreah, i wanted it to stop, and some others.

At the Pharmacy, cipro is 1.60sol/pill, about 0.50$ per. I think its a deal! I started taking them and now i feel so much better.

I felt good enough to go out with everyone to the nearby oasis town of Huacachina. on the bus for an hour and a quick taxi ride will get you there. Huacachina is famous for is sand dunes, some of the tallest in the world. We had a fun party night, stayed up late and swam in the pool at the hostel. Waking up the next day, we saw how big these sand dunes were! I would say they are at least 500 feet tall!surrounding Huacachina on all sides amazing! Everyone grabbed lunch, and afterwords, a huge water polo match in the pool, so much fun. Karl from Ireland and Jens from denmark were the champions, and mike from england and I were put on the girls team because of our hair. After we dried off, laina and I climbed the big dune for sunset, and when we look out to the horizon, all there was , was dunes and dunes as far as you could see, it looked like that sahara, truely amazing!

We headed back to pisco for a late night and some dinner. Our next few days here in town has been lots of internet work for laina and I because of our job search and moving arrangements to the Virgin Islands! But back to work soon, there is more digging to do!!