Vancouver

so glad to leave New York - not sure whether it was the return bout of Giardia or the city itself, but I am completely exhausted and feel like I can almost breathe again after a week of walking all over the place and being so hot. I never thought i would say this, but i actually wouldn't mind it being even cooller in Vancouver. It is 19 today when i arrived this morning, and after New York i wouldn't mind it being peru-cold for a while. I've had no sleep in i don't know how long, maybe 30 or 40 hours, too tired to work it out. I thought it would be a good idea to get to the airport the night before my early morning flight and try and either check-in or get an earlier flight. As usual the person serving me was rude and snapped back that there is only one flight, and threw the paper back at me. I couldn't beleive it. Actually i totally could beleive it. I had heard about New Yorkers having a reputation for being rude and grumpy but i didn't expect it to prove so true and so obviuosly. I've never had so many rude encounters in one week ever. Almost every person is grumpy, and shops act like they don't want customers and the man at reception one day pointed at me and barked "pay your rent!!". It's funny how after a while you find yourself become grumpy just because everyone around you is - although i tried to remain happy and tried to make a joke about paying my rent and he was just like "yeh? you think that's gonna make me feel better?". pfff. go away.

Arriving in Vancouver seemed like i'd dropped into some heaven on earth where people smile and say thank you and have small-talk and don't look at you like your from another planet. aggh. The actual city, from what i can see so far, is quite pretty with the snowy-mountains surrounding it. Ususally i would have described these as "huge or spectacular" but compared to Peru mountains they are more like pretty mountains, but still pretty big as fas as mountains go.

i pretty much spent this afternoon sleeping as i am trying to recover and get some sleep but i think i am beyond not sleeping and for some reason can't sleep even though everything is blurry if i just sit and stare. I think i may regret this post if i read it later, sounds really wierd.

In future i will only sleep at the airport if it seems absolutley necessary. The time actually went quite fast, but i just on a cold stone bench and listened to music and read my book. I was sitting in a table area when this guy from Zambia just sits right opposite me and i look up from my book and look around at the acres of empty chairs (at 1.00am) and really strain my brain as to why he sat right there and not somewhere more away. Just as i am about to lie down on the bench to try and sleep he starts striking up conversation. He started doing 20 questions Nicky-style. He was firing random questions about if i have ever been to Africa. He even forgot my answers and asked the same questions twice. eg. Have you been to Africa? No. Then ten minutes later in the conversation. Where have you been in Africa? I haven't been to Africa. Ooh ooh and also he was perplexed that i would book my own travel and not use an agent. He couldn't beleive that i would arrive at an airport and not have someone waiting for me. He looked at my bag and asked "Is that not somewhat cumbersome?". i think i said something like hell yeh. oops.

well you can tell i am on my own again as i have resorted to writing about odd social encounters and insignificant things.

Happy Birthday Dad!!!! Love Nicky

New York

Must be quick as once again i am using the free internet in the amazingly crazy packed apple store on fifth avenue which is underground enter via a glass cube. Been in new york for i have no idea how many days. Honestly, this morning i discovered it was saturday instead of friday. I couldn't beleive it. I was going to go to the free Guggenheim night tonight (being friday) but now i can't because it is actually saturday. I have no idea where i lost a day, but i intend to find out. Last night, after lining up in times square at 4 i managed to a half-price last-minute ticket to broadway musical "Rent". it was pretty good as far as musicals go, but maybe in general i'm not a musical fan. They kept singing and dancing all the time. hehe. just kidding.
Yesterday i went to MoMa and wandered round the galleries for a couple of hours and got an updated photo of me with picassos goat (i have one of me sitting on it as a 12 year old). The subway system is so good. You just find a station, pretty much everywhere you look, then transfer to your line and get where you want in a couple of minutes.

There is also way way way too much choice for food and yet no choice all at the same time. Everywhere there is Dunkin Donuts, and every other kind of food place you can think. plus every second shop is a 'deli' selloing cakes, sandwiches, salads and biscuits, muffins, bagels. Every steeet corner sells hot dogs, pretzels and nuts. Every street has a pizza shop where you a 'slice' which in itself is the size of a persoanl pizza. It's impossible top escape the thought of food or spending in some way. It's interesting and fun but exhausting at the same time. The weather is really nice compared to being in cold Peru, but it is almost too hot (for me that is pretty hot). Tomoorw will be 85. I ahevbn't worked out what that is but it sounds pretty damn hot, especially because today is only 70 something and i'm sweating like a pig. When i go back to my shoe-box tonight i will plan what i will do for tomorrow and work out what day it is. Maybe i'm only noticing the consumerism compared to living on an island for three weeks, but even Sydney has nowhere near this level of consumerism.

This afternoon i went to the united Nations building and had a look around. It was all empty so nothing much to see but the building and the gardens are really great. All the americans in the tour wanted to know if people got kicked out of the UN for being bad or going against the rules. HA! obviously not. i chuckled to myself at their questions, most of them seemed to have no idea about anything. The tour guide talked about NGOs and they all asked simultaneoulsy "what is an NGO??". haha.

well i think i have outstayed my welcome at the apple store for today and feeling increasingly pressured to leave as many shopkeepers hanging around me and asking if i need help. only so many times i can say "no, just testing the performance with the net."

Macchu Picchu to Lima

wow already it feels like so long ago that we were all waving goodbye to our host families on Amantani Island. Since then i´ve done the Inca trail and visited Macchu Picchu and now i´m writing this from lima before i fly out to New York tomorrow night. Having been living away from a lot of western culture for the past three months, especially the past month living on the island and being able to count on one hand the number of times i washed, and not being able to count on both hands the number of times i ate potatoes, it is the strangest feeling being in a big city. Now that i am in Lima with its cars, smog, fast food chains, shopping malls etc etc i feel totally overhwhelmed, aware, and unable to process everything. Like in the movies where a caveman is transported into the future and they cut his hair and give him a shower and dress him up but he still walks and has no idea about anything - this is the closest i´ve been to understanding how that caveman feels. Sounds stupid but that is the closest i can describe.

The Inca trek was four days of hard walking but totally worth it. The first day was fairly easy and pleasant with an amazingly big and tasty lunch cooked by the porters. We got to campsite fairly early with a view of big snowy mountain in the distance. The night was cold and i was scared in my tent because i couldn´t sleep and all night i could hear a cow outside my tent chewing really loudly and breathing. For some reason i got it in my head that the cow would fall and crush me in my sleep - so i didn´t sleep much and was very glad when the morning came.

The second day was very tough. probably my toughest walk. The morning, starting at 7, was 5.5 hours of continual and steep uphill walking with a heavy pack on my back. I started off well and energised and then after and hour or two i got exhausted (that damn cow near my tent) and started going quite slowly and taking breaks. The track was quite full of people and there were lots of people struggling in the hot sunshine. The scenery was quite good but that was the time when you more concentrate on the dusty gravel path and try not to look up too often. It´s also the bit when you tell yourself you´re an idiot for thinking you want to do the inca trek. But then when you finally finally reach the top and stop and look out over where you walked you feel so satisfied and excited about the next bit.

That second day was Dead Womans Pass and we walked for anoither hour or so steeply downhill after that to the second campsite. This campsite was the highest one and pretty damn cold when the sun went down. We sat around in the dark under the clear starry sky as the mist rooled up the valley and told scary stories. It was pretty fun if a little cold. We had another awesome meal, not that i remeber what it was, but i´m sure it was good and then had an early night as were all exhausted from the days walk.

The third was the most diverse and spectacular of the three days. we stopped at several ruins along the way and had to cross two passes. The environemnt syarted getting jungle-like and moist and humid and started seeing more flowers and birds. The first pass of the day was stunning when you reached thew top and looked out across the next valley and the snowy mountains in the distance. The second pass wound around a mountain side with a few uphills and downhills and even a few wonderful wonderful flat normal paths with neither an up or a down to speak of!!! The descent down from the last pass was good at first as it was downhill but after several hours (including a lunch break about two thirds down) of downhill walking it was a killer, especially on my knee. Having doubted being able to even do a one day walk with my knee i was amazed i was able to walk so far, so the pain that continued to get worse as i went on pounding down the mountainside didn´t really matter because i knew i was going to make it to the end. As i limped into the final campsite at altitiude 2000m (so nice and not cold) next to the Urubamba river and facing the back of macchu picchu with my walking stick and heavy pack, sweat soaking my clothes, dirty sweaty hair, stinky shoes, aching legs and puffing like crazy i felt so satisfied and happy that i´d completed the trek. suddenly being clean didn´t really seem so great but looking around me at the mountains and the river, and the thought of being at macchu picchu the next morning was enough to keep me going for anohter night of camping. I´d ,managed to avoid squat toilets in peru up until then, but that was the only option at the campsite. I was going to have one of the cold outdoor showers there but ended opting for the river instead - which really didn´t clean me at all but i think it made me think i was clean.

After an apparently bad tip ofr the porters we got up at 4.30 next morning to a very miserly breakfast and walked along the rail tracks for an hour or so until we arrived at Agues Calientes. The base town for Macchu picchu. It´s a shame we couldn´t walk the classic way through the sun gate and see the ruins appear in the valley, but due to a landslide we had to avoid that way and go via the town and via the bus up the hillside.

we got to the macchu picchu ruins by 6.30 when it was still misty. It was diffcult to see anything much further than a few metres. It was a bit eery and mysterious to walk in and not be able to take everything in. As the mist rose away and the early morning sunshine burnt through the ruins slowly became visible. Suddnely we were standing amongst the stone walls and terraced hills surrounded by tall pointy jungle mountians with warm sunshine just scraping over the hills and through the remaining clouds. It was a pretty stunning way for the ruins to appear, made for not walking through the sungate. We walked pretty far up to the sun gate anyway to get the class9ic view over the ruins. I knew the ruins would be pretty fascinating, but what i didn´t expect was that the surroundings mountains and views would be what makes it so beautiful there. You could see why the incas built it in such a way and also why it had been lost for so long. It feels so remote and isolated. You look out past the ruins and out over the vastness of the mountians and the valleys and feel so small but so happy to have seen such a beautiful part of the world.

The rest of that day was spent running back down the hill to Aguas Calientes, to avoid the 18 soles bus ride, running past other tourists and making them wonder why the hell we would want to run down the hill. It almost felt like an explanation as we ran past one group hollering and with Stephen yelling ¨voluntarios!!!¨.

In the late afternoon we all headed up to the hot springs (aguas calientes) for a much needed relaxation session. After briefly washing off in the cold running water next to the pool I got in the very warm water and it was like heaven - especially having had no hot shower for almost a week, and only one hot shower in over a month. We stayed there until dark and sipped on pina coladas. agghhhh

The next day we all discovered that if you´ve already seen macchu picchu and been to the hot springs, then there really isnñt much to do other than walk the railway lines, sit on rocks near the river, or eat tourist food at expensive restaurants. I opted mostly for the first two until finally 4 o´clock came and we got on the train fotr the four hour ride to cusco.

That was less than 24 hours ago and now the program has finished and i´ve said good bye to everyone, flown to Lima and here i am for 24 hours in Lima with Amy and Will before i say goodbye to them as well and head to New York by myself.

For now i am still very sad to have finished the program and left everyone, and also feel strangely disjointed at being in lima and not being with a bunch of people and wondering the hell i am doing.

Overall though i feel happy to have gotten so much more out of the program in Peru than i ever expected. For that i feel happy and optimistic and looking forward to the next part of my journey.

Nicky

Amantani Island

Today we arrived back from Amantani Island, having been there for three weeks. It´s pretty hard to sum up the whole experience in this post but i´ll write a bit about it.

My host family met us when we came off the boat and we walked about 15 minutes from the main port to our house. Other people in the group were spread over this part of the island. We arrived at the mudbrick, courtyard house and walked up the stairs, banging my head as i went and we were preparing ourselves for the worst. They opened the tiny metal door and we walked into a long room with four single beds and a long table in the middle with sunlight pouring into the windows. It was so much better than expected and we were really happy with our room. The view from the balcony overlooked the lake through eucalyptus trees and other houses. Our host mother Esther is only 23, she has a four year old daughter, betsy and a mother and sister.

At first we were really happy about the food. After a while though, the food became repetitive. Every single meal, except breakfast, involved some sort of soup - and a big bowl of it. Our family usually served us either soup with fried batter balls, or fried egg on rice, or potatoes with fried egg, or as on the second last night, cold potatoes with tuna. agggh. For breakfast, on a good day we got a pancake with jam on it, or otherwise we had fried egg in bread, or fried flat batter things, or egg on rice, or just plain bread with jam. Everything is extremely salty, and when i say ¨fried¨i really mean fried. They don´t hold back on the oil. When you bite into a fried egg sandwich you sort of get squirts of oil that come out of the egg! But despite that i think i still probably lost weight, purely because you are walking all the time about the island, and at that altitude you get quite puffed. Oh, also that fact that we were working everyday doing physical labour probably helped.

We worked for five days each week for four hours each morning. The project was to build a school lunchroom for the school there called Inti Wawacuna. It wasn´t quite as satisfying as our last project. We had a new maestro who wasn´t quite as cheerful as the old maestro in Huaran. We pretty much did all the bitty work like collecting sand and rocks from the beach for the cement etc. Obviously still an important job because someone had to do it, but it didn´t help with feeling like we were part of the project. That´s probably why i´m finishiung this paragraph here because there really isn´t much to write about it other than we finished it andf did a good job and now the kids have somewhere to eat - all the other stuff is the interesting stuff.

Quite a few times we played volleyball against some of the local teams (volley is really popualr in Peru). Of course they always beat us but we had quite a few really fun games, and even some really competitive games. One time we walked up to the high school and me and Stephen took the net from my ¨mum¨Esther. When we got there we were swarmed by kids who wanted to play, but we didn´t know how to set the net up, so they grabbed it from us and and set it up. Even the kids were really good players and beat us!

The lifestyle was very different. There were no cars of course, and there is no electricity (i think purely because people in general can´t afford it, even though it works out as about 5 dollars a month per household to pay for power), no showers or running water or flushing toilets. Every few days we would go down to the lake after work and try our best to clean our clothes. I think i washed my hair three times in three weeks. The first time i went in the lake i underestimated the coldness. I had my bathers on and thought it would be a good idea to wade out into the deeper part and try to submerge myself in order to wash properly. I got down to my shoulders and had a sudden feeling of not being to breathe properly. I think the cold stunned me and i flapped around for a few seconds saying ï can´t breathe, i can´t breathe¨. From that day i decided i would rather be dirty than be that cold again. Other washing times consisted more of a light splashing motion than a full bathe. The strange thing is there was no point, except maybe once, when i said to myself that i really really wanted a hot shower. In fact, a hot shower was out of my realm of thinking - the m,ost your mind can comprehend is cold unning being a luxury.

Before i went there i thought that the lack of mod cons would be a big deal. But the longer we styaed there the more i realised how unimportant all those things really are. Of course, having lights and hot water is great and i wouldn´t want to live without them, but i can understand different priorities now. If i had to choose between hot water and lights, or more food, i would definitly choose food. All the other things fade away, but hunger is not something you get used to.

As a result of living by candlelight our bedtime was usually in the hour of 7. Which meant my candle was usually blown out by 8ish. We had one or two late nights which meant going to bed at about 10.30. Its amazing how much of an impact the moon has when you have no lights. A full moon means you can walk around after dark and see where you are going, or got to the outhouse without a torch.

On the thrusday night of the first week we had soup for dinner and we ate in the small, smoky kitchen withy the family. I was quite full and really didn´t feel like eating but the family is so poor and i didn´t want to be rude and not eat, especially when food is so precious. So i ate, then i went to bed and started feeling sick, and that was the beginning of one of the worst nights ever. I was up all night running outside to the cold balcony and throwing up. I don´t think i got any sleep. I didnt realise until about two later that that was the beginning of the return of the Giardia that i had had in Huran. This time it was worse and it took me much longer to recover. On sunday went to the doctor and got some medicine, and Rob and Bonny organised for the three sick people to stay in a house called the Casablanca owned by the people we were working with on the project. The house had solar power which meant we could switch lights on at night time, but there was still no running water. I didn´t go back to work until the tuesday, but even then i wasn´t any help because i had no energy. it wasn´t until thurday or friday that i could really do much or eat much. From the thursday when i got sick, for about a week, i had no appetite and pretty much just ate bread.

On the last wednesday there i walked up one of the big hills on the island where there is an old temple on top and watched the sunrise. Me and Stephen left just before 5am and it took about 45 minutes to get up the hill. i wore my thermal pants, two thermal tops plus my overclothes becaus ei knew it would be cold. It was getting colder every night when we were there and apparently it gets fown to minus 10C in mid-winter. So anyway, from the top of the mountain the view is spectacular and the there was already an orangey glow when we got there and the wobbly ball of sunshine appeared from behind a distant mountain across the glassy still lake. It rose quite quickly and as always began a brilliant sunny, clear, but cold day.

On the middle weekend saturday i spent the morning walking around the island. It is a fair way but i stuck to some of the inner paths and overlooked the edge of the island the whole way. There are several different communites spread around the island and i passed through some of them. It was one of my best walks ever, it is hard to describe so i will include some of the diray entry i wrote whilst walking:

After walking for an hour i´ve just sat down at a beautiful pebble beach on the southern side of Amantani. There aret iny waves lapping lazily at the edge of my toes and the calm water ripples and twinkles in the bright sunshine. At firslt glance on coming down the hill the beach appears deserted, but as you approach you notice a man washing from rocks to the left, and in a sheltered cove two fishermen sit in seperate boats talking to one another, oars ready to go. Up to the right above some terraced walls is one mudbrick house - a little girl carries a bleating lamb in her arms.

After another hour of strenuous walking i sit perched on some rocks on a steep hillside overlooking a wide cove and a large but sparse village of red-roofed mud huts. The sun shines behind over the steep, jagged rock formations towering above me. To my left a line oif sharply rising narrow rocks splinters its way down the hillside and becomes smaller in the valley below. etc etc

Another hour of walking and i am sitting sheltered by a small semi-circle stone wall in a grey dusty landscape looking down at the shear drop below me where grey chunks of rock become big speckled boulders, which cascade vertically into the dry terraced hills below which in turn runs sharply down into the lake where it abruptly meets the clear green water. The only sounds come from the wind and a family harvesting their crops from a small field on the hill face below me. On the wayi stopped and asked a woman working in the field whether it was possible to walk out here to the edge of the peninsula. I had already walked up a massive hill, through old stone archways on a paved path and it appeared to be the highest point. It platueaed out into dry fields bounded in a maze-like fashion by stone walls. After discovering i was a volunteer her mood instantly changed and she smiled and asked me where i was from and let me know the best route through the maze of walls.

Of course i have to mention this next thing. It happened as i was finishing my gour hour walk that i describe above. Lunch was at the school at 1, so i ran for the lasy half hour because i got a bit lost and was jumping ovver stone walls and running through peoples courtyards and corn fields in order to find my way back down to the port where the school is. It was saturday and there was a fiar bit of action down at the port. Obviuosly some boats had come in and there were many locals down at the port hanging around. I came down the very steep path from the plaza and had to walk past the port area to get to the school for lunch. I had just seen from above everyone wlaking inside so i was trying not to be late and was concentrating on trying to walk fast. A large bull was coming in the opposite direction to me and i was going to walk right past it but didn´t give it much thought as i have been walking past bulls for the past 3 months. This time, i should have noticed that it didn´t have an owner and was actually walking around by itself. All the locals that were sitting around on the grass began to stand up and yell to me but i couldn´t work out what was happening. Well, it only took a second or two for everything to start after they yelled at me. Just as i appsed the bull i saw out of the corner of my eye that it was lowering its horns and turning around ready to charge. When this happened i was only a mtre or two from the bull, and thats when i knew i had to run. I bolted and then the bull charged. There was a one mtre drop down to a pebbled beach area next to the pier, so i jumped down there and continued running. To my horror the bull obviouldy had no problems jumpiong down and following me. I kept running and there was an uptunred dingy on the pebbles so i ran towards the water and then around the dingy - the bull still followed. The only thing left to do was run back up the hill and to my extreme relief the bull slowed on the hill and eventually stopped. I slowed down and everyone was looking at me and shaking their heads as if to say ¨that was close¨. I didn´t stop but kept towrds the school as there was still the issue of being late! My hand was shaking all during lucnh. it wasn´t until the next day that i walked past another bull (with an owner) and then when it had gone i sat down on a rock and cried my little eyes out!

Speaking of the next day - we had a boat trip to the closest island an hour away, called Tequille Island. It was quite pretty but very touristy and not nearly as spectacular or untouched as Amantani Island.

On frisday we had our official opening of the lunchroom where we spent the morning cooking lunch for all our host families and all the kids at the school which was about 80 people. We bought lamb and bread and salad stuff and cooked the most massive barbecue operation i have seen. Luckily some of the local women cut the whole two lambs up for us. That morning our family dressed us in traditional clothing as organised by Bonny. I had to wear my thermal pants and then a bright underskirt, then a bright blue and very puffy, knee length blue skirt. As a top i wore a white, long sleeve shirt with clourful floral embroidery. A colourful woven thick belt was wrapped around the waist and the final touch was a black shawl type thing with coolourful floral embroidery that is used as a sunshade and usually worn on top of the head draped over the back. Eventually we all had our traditional clothes on as we prepared lunch in the dark smoky kitchen by the eucalyptus fire. It was a really fun morning as some people in the group played guitar and everyone chopped, peeled, washed, stoked, fried and sang! It was such a big job that we didn´t serve everyone till 2. The families all gathered outside on the grass and we all lined up and served platefuls of lamb and lettuce, tomatoe, cheese and bread. It may not sound like much, but meat is rarity and probably a never-ity for most of the families. The closest we had to meat was a small piece of boiled something with lunch, and even that was a treat. So to have succulaent, juicy barbecued lamb, and lots of it was a treat for both them and us. It felt like quite an acheivement to cook for and serve 80 people - 80 deserving people who probably won´t eat such food for a very long time.

There are many other bits and peices and impossible things to describe including seeing the sun setting across the lake a different way each evening, or hanging out with Bonny and Stephen, or sitting in the sparkling afternoon sun with not a care in the world washing my clothes, or being freezing cold and drinking Moonah tea to warm up, and just the general pace of life where you are able to think clearly enough and see through everything else and realise the things in life that really matter - family, friends, beautiful nature and possibly pancakes for breakfast!! yep, that´s all you need.

I have many photos which i shall try and put a few up when i get Cusco tomorrow or the next day. Love you all : ) Nicky XX OO

Next stop: The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.