Peru Travels, Part I: Lima

Well well well, now onto the good stuff. I had one night here at my host family's house in Angol after camp, and then my friend Caroline and I took the night bus to Santiago to meet up with another volunteer, Jen, and catch our flight to Lima. We did have an afternoon to kill in Santiago, though, so we climbed to the top of Santa Lucia hill to see the snow-covered mountains behind the city. Just enjoy this panorama, if you will:

Then Peru! For some crazy reason, there were mobs of people waiting to see loved ones get off their planes at the airport, so when we walked out we felt like celebrities rushing past paparazzi. Nice national welcome. We got to our hostel late, crashed, and got up the next morning to walk along the cliff over the beach.  Within the first few hours there we saw more gringos and heard more English than we had in 5 months in Chile!  It was a little mini-culture shock for us.  Going back to the U.S. is going to blow my mind.

But anyway, the neighborhood we were staying in was called Miraflores, and it's the new ritzy part of Lima right on the coast, full of high-rise condos and fitness clubs and expensive restaurants and perfectly manicured parks.  It was pretty cloudy that morning, but we learned that's the norm for Lima so we were just lucky it wasn't raining.  That part of the city felt very American, probably due to all the gringo tourists as much as its actual appearance.

cloudy, but you get the idea: that's Lima as far as the eye can see

We came across The Park of Love on the coast overlooking the beach, with pretty mosaic benches that had romantic lines of poetry on each one. Looking closer we realized that couples had signed the little mosaic tiles (cue: awwww sweet!). 

"Tu de este lado y yo del otro como dos remos" / "You on this side and I on the other like two oars"

"Amar no es un delito porque hasta Dios ama" / "Loving is no crime because even God loves"

From there we made our way down to the beach itself, where there were a bunch of surfers doin' their thing (and a bunch of Peruvians trying to get us to buy surf lessons). Then our first restaurant meal in Peru! Can't even remember what I ordered here but I remember that we were starving... 

From there we walked through some parks, where we found this weird bull thing, and some artesanal markets. This was the first of many many many souvenir-shopping trips we indulged in. I hadn't bought any gifts at all in Chile, so I went a little crazy at all the markets in Peru! But here's this bull. It's called a torito de Pucará, and it represents wealth, happiness, and fertility. Throughout the rest of the trip we saw little ones everywhere, made of clay and painted different colors.

By that point we had pretty much seen all there was to see in our neck of the woods, but the next day we ventured into the historic city center.  We took a little local bus to get there, and it was not until that bus ride that we realized how immense that city is.  One of the girls pointed out when we were leaving Lima later that we had not crossed our own path at any point the entire 3 days we were there. Every time we got in a cab to go somewhere, it was in a new direction and through parts we had not seen. Yesterday I finally googled how big Lima actually is and learned that it's almost 8 million! Yup, that would explain it.

But regardless of how big it is now, the heart of historic Lima is the area around the Plaza Mayor, which is huge and beautiful and edged by the national cathedral, government palace, municipal buildings, and pedestrian zones.  It felt very European, and I realized stupidly that would be because Peru was a very important Spanish colony (read: SILVER) so their presence there was huge compared to Chile (where I have felt hardly any Spanish influence at all). If you ignore the palm trees, this could easily be nestled in some major European city, right? Also, there was a doctor's strike going on so the riot police were out in full force, even though when we finally saw the strike it was only about 50 people in front of a news camera. Whenever I see riot police, I get excited that something is going to happen no matter how unlikely that may be, so I was pretty pumped.

Plaza San Martin

Plaza Mayor

national cathedral

We had lunch up on a terraza overlooking the plaza, and I tried some ceviche (a seafood dish) that was DELICIOUS. This was one of my favorite meals of the trip!

We were quite pleased with ourselves after that meal. Then we took a tour of the Archbishop's Palace, which is now a museum with art/religious relics and then saw the cathedral attached (both of which are on the right side of the plaza from our view at lunch).  We learned a lot about Peruvian art schools and religious ties to Europe and whatnot, which brightened our understanding of Lima's history a bit.  Also, it was really pretty.

the staircases make the shape of the cross, which tells you that it was built for a religious man to live there

you can tell this Mary was made in Cuzco b/c she has the rosy cheeks typical of people of Incan descent and her hair is curly just like that of cusqueños (people from Cuzco) when they take it out of the braids they typically wear

In the cathedral next door, we saw Francisco Pizarro's coffin! He was, just as a little refresher for you, the Spaniard who settled the Spanish colony in Peru, conquered the Incas, and founded the city of Lima.  It was a little weird to see him exalted in the capital cathedral like this, based on the views we usually take regarding his methods for conquering the natives, but I guess we kind of do the same for Christopher Columbus, right? It was very interesting to see the balance between Spanish and Incan heritage in Peru, where the Incan culture is much more recent and present than other native cultures are in other countries.  Anyway, Pizarro's body is here in this box and his head was kept separate elsewhere (which, incidentally, I saw later).  This whole nook is covered floor-to-ceiling in beautiful mosaics with murals about his life and family, and their family shield. 

There were also some tombs underneath the cathedral, where we could see actual skeletons and remains through glass.  Here I am gettin' real excited about some skulls:

After that we walked to a monastery nearby (San Francisco) and the other two girls rested outside while I went on a tour of the monastery, church, and its catacombs. YES, I SAID CATACOMBS. I was unfortunately not allowed to take any pictures, or else I would have been bustin' that camera out all over the place.  There were a lot of really beautiful rooms in there, including an old library (complete with spiral staircases and skylights to read by) and a wooden cupola carved into geometric patterns. You know what, I'm just gonna find pictures of these on Google because they were too pretty not to share...

 But my favorite part by far was the bones and tombs in the catacombs.  We learned that over 25,000 people were buried there, their bodies stacked one on top of the other in rows of deep graves, each separated by just a layer of sand and lime.  They went in in the order that they died, without any way of keeping families together or noting who was buried where.  Apparently they finally stopped burying people there in 1808 because it started to stink up the city.  But they used femurs and skulls to line these tall drums that served as seismic wave absorbers whenever earthquakes or tremors hit. LOOK (also from Google):

Yeah that was pretty awesome.  There are still Franciscan monks living there, but only about 30 now, compared to the 300 it used to hold.  

That night we were ecstatic to discover that Papa John's had found its way to Lima, and that they offered free delivery, so we got Papa John's for dinner. I mean, it had been 5 months since we'd eaten Papa Johns, what else could we do? We were afraid it might taste different, but nope! Good old Papa Johns! We had to get up for our flight to Cuzco the next morning, so that was the end of our Lima adventures the first time around.  I had seen a lot of gorgeously-colored buildings and graffiti murals I loved, so I'll leave you with some of those...

that's a fresh mint, if you can't tell

On to Cuzco! 

I'm back!

Alriiiiighty made it back to Angol the night before last, after about 3 weeks of shenanigans.  I'll start from the beginning: English Winter Camp!

My program, English Opens Doors, has a lot of initiatives outside of just us volunteers, and one of the biggest is English Camps.  During winter and summer vacation they put on week-long camps around the country, and as volunteers we are required to work in whichever camp they assign us.  A lot of volunteers say that camp is their favorite week of the whole program, because the students who apply for camp are the students who are most excited and advanced English-speakers, and you just get to do fun activities with them for 5 days.  We work with Chilean university students who are studying to become English teachers, and some already-teaching Chilean English teachers who oversee everything for us counselors.  I was assigned to overnight camp in Panguipulli ("pangy-puyi"), a town in the region south of ours. I had never seen it, but everybody kept telling me how gorgeous it was so I was excited to go! 

We got there Sunday afternoon and had our first team meeting to plan out the opening ceremony the next day. The national camp theme this year was music--to be more specific, "Rhythm's gonna get you!"--so there was going to be a lot of singing and dancing and music-making all week.  To be honest, I was pretty shocked by the lack of planning and organization, which did not bode well for the week ahead. That night I dreamed that I was in a play but nobody would give me the script, and they just glared at me onstage whenever I had lines.  So... yeah... that's what it felt like. Unfortunately, that ended up being a pretty good vision of the week, camp-activity-wise. Every day we got up around 8:30 (we stayed upstairs in the school dorms, while the kids were downstairs), got breakfast in the cafeteria, and started our activities at 10.  There were 9 of us leaders and 60 students, so we split up into 3 groups with 3 counselors and 20 students each.  We did most of the activities with these groups, stumbling through the national outline that English Opens Doors had made for all camps.  It was a little difficult because we didn't have functioning laptops or wifi for the first few days, which made the music-y projects all but impossible.  An hour and a half for lunch at 1, more activities, an hour and a half for dinner at 6, and then more activities from 7:30-9:30.  Then all of us leaders usually got together for planning meetings and to hang out each night.  A goooood portion of my energy that week was spent trying not to let my incredible frustration show through to the students or our bosses.  

But it wasn't all bad!  Our group of leaders all got along really well and had a good time together, and our school setting was amazing. For one thing, we were at a technical school where one of the career programs is gastronomy, and students there got to use camp to practice their cooking/serving, so we had fantastic meals all week. Secondly, we had a breathtaking view of Panguipulli and the lake and volcano behind it. It was one of the most beautiful parts of Chile I've seen!  We all kept taking the same pictures of the lake every day because it looked different every time, depending on the light and clouds and time of day. So I have photos for you! I took way more than necessary, so these are just the best ones:

this was the morning view out my dorm window!

Because we had such long days with the students, the leaders took shifts and everybody got at least one morning off. I was lucky enough to get beautiful weather on my free morning, so I went for a walk up to the top of the hill we were on.  I had to climb under a barbed wire fence to get to the spot I wanted, but I found it!  From up on this high point I could see the volcano across the lake (Choshuenco, I think) perfectly and also the Villarrica volcano perfectly on the other side.  While I was up there taking pictures, somebody walked up and I was afraid they were going to tell me to get off their private land, but instead we had a nice chat. He was the ranch hand who had been working on that hill for 20 years and pointed out all the points of interest on the horizon to me. Quite the morning! 

Choshuenco

Villarrica

+ cows

Wednesday was probably our busiest camp day. We had to make a lipdub video for the Kelly Clarkson song "Stronger," as did all the other camps, for a national competition (we did not win). It was a LOT of work, but the kids got into it and we were proud of it by the end! Here's the finished product. My group had the middle section, so we start around minute 1 and end at minute 2. For your viewing pleasure:

I actually hadn't watched that since the week of camp, it makes me miss my campers! They were such a sweet group of students.  But more on that in a second.  Wednesday afternoon we got to take some time off while the campers watched a movie, so the leaders all walked into town together and went to check out the lake! 

heading down the hill into town

volcano hiding under the clouds

here we are, minus one girl who was taking a nap. can you tell which are the gringos and which are the Chileans??

I just like this picture

Ok now for the best part: the campers. They were our saving grace that week.  I have never met so many well-behaved, respectful, loving high school students.  My group happened to be mostly boys (15/20), so it was a little tricky to get our team engaged in all the song and dance thing we had to do, but they were exceedingly polite and helpful. It was almost shocking to me! One of our first tasks was to create a group name and posters, so we set to work and they decided on "The Wolves" (I swear they came up with that and not me! They were a bunch of teenagers after my own heart). They made 3 different posters and we decided to keep them all. 

teenage boys for ya. but LOOK HOW BADASS THIS IS

We took tons of pictures all week, but here are the best group shots: first the whole camp, and then just The Wolves. 

the campers plus me and my Chilean co-pilots Bastian and Gary : ) 

For the last day we all had to prepare something for a camp talent show, and we decided to do Michael Jackson's Thriller dance. It took a loooong time and we didn't really have any dance-gifted people in our group so the choreo was a struggle for us, but we pulled it off and it was really fun! Here's a video of it that a camper uploaded to facebook (I think you should be able to see it!): https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=576295015745754&set=o.482730088485699&type=2&theater

I added a lot of my campers to the facebook I made for my Chilean students so I can stay in touch with them. All in all, it was a challenging but very rewarding week!  

p.s.  The leaders made a harlem shake video as a treat for the campers, and as soon as I can get my hands on it I will share it here too! It's kind of awesome...