Comiendo en Cusco

Hi everyone,
I know I'm late once again but there have been problems with the internet....again.

Last week was pretty quiet and I spent practically all my time working through samples for the larvae project. The only other really funny thing was playing clips of peoples accents in Orkney and in the North East of England (since that's where my family's from) - the best clips where from Radio Orkney and some old clips of Auf Weidersehen, Pet. However the end of the week was much more exciting - Jimena and I headed to Cusco for a few days off.

On thursday we got the bus around 10.30am and after a pretty speedy journey (only 7 hours) we arrived in Cusco and our hostel - Estrellita. It was a nice enough little place and the people there were lovely but it was really noisy on a night with cars coming past beeping their horns all night.
For dinner we met up with a couple of the guys from Villa Carmen who where also down in Cusco. We went to a great pizza place called La Bodega and the food was amazing - unfotunately the rich cheesy pizza disagreed with my altitude-effected stomach so I only got a couple of slices but it was so worth it!

The following day we headed over to San Pedro market for a little shopping - Jimena to stock up on chocolates and I needed to get an extra jumper to combat the Cusco climate. The trip was a success and I managed to get a lovely alpaca-mix jumper for only 33 soles (£7.20). After the market we chilled out in a nice juice bar near the main plaza and used their wifi for a bit before splitting up.

Incan part of Qurikancha

I headed to Qurikancha - the Temple of the Sun. In Incan history it is the most important temple of the Empire, dedicated solely to the Sun God - Inti. It was an interesting place to visit and to see the variations in architecture between the Incan building and the more recent Spanish alterations, although the set up made it a little difficult to navigate.

The Spanish part of Qurikancha

Next we regrouped and headed across town for a real un-Peruvian afternoon. We went to the cinema. We'd heard about the latest Hunger Games movie coming out so we grabbed some popcorn and fizzy drinks then found our seats. Now the movie in general was pretty awesome visually, unfortunately it turned out to be dubbed in Spanish with no subtitles so I didn't understand a fair portion of the film - though I did get to keep working on my language skills I guess.
After the movie we had to head over to the ACCA office so Jimena could pick up so things for her project then we went back to the project to chill out for a bit.
Eventually our stomachs had just about settled after the mass amount of popcorn but we decided to keep it simple for dinner. We found a chinese restraunt off the plaza behind the main one and settled for wanton soup and spring rolls for dinner.

popcorn anyone?

Saturday got off to a slow start as we actually both managed to ignore the traffic long enough to get a lie in. After a late breakfast (fried egg sandwich) we walked up to San Blas where they have a craft market on Saturdays. We had a good look around and I now have some great ideas for what to get for a few luckily people back home. After that we found this amazing place in the same little Plaza called The Meeting Place where they have delicious Belgian waffles and an extensive coffee selection (including a very yummy hazelnut latte).
We headed back to the hostel very much satisfied with our morning's adventure and spent a good part of the afternoon making the most of the reasonable internet connection by skyping home.
By mid evening it was good time and we opted for Indian (trying to cover yet another foody base). There's a place on the main street with an unlimited Indian buffet for only 15 soles (about £3.80). The food was great, even if we did try our best to avoid eating the rice - our main ingredient back at Villa Carmen). After food we decided that we should grab a couple of drinks as we were heading back to the project the following day. There's a great bar on the corner of the main plaza (Plaza de Armas) called Norton Rats which is run by a motorbike enthusiast. It looked like it could have been a regular pub back in the UK with its dark wood decor, flags and bike raly shirts everywhere, plus dart boards and a pool table. Although we stuck to the local beer (four times cheaper than anything recognisable back home at £2.20) we still had a good time. Jimena made friends with the bar staff - including one little guy who set us up with an almost impossible game of darts - while I got chatting to a group of Dutch expats who now live in Cusco.
By around 11pm we called it a night and went back to the hostel.

Norton Rats bar!

On Sunday morning we got all our stuff together then waited for a new member of the VC team to meet us at the hostel. The girlfriend of one of the current volunteers was coming to visit her and we'd been charged with the mission of getting her there safely.
The bus left at around 11.30 - only an hour later than scheduled - and despite making some strange detour which we had no idea about we finally made it back to Villa Carmen just in time for dinner, followed by an early night.

The search for the lost petroglyphs

This post was written on Monday but posting was delayed due to lack of internet.

Sorry!!!

 I know I was meant to be getting back on schedule and posting yesterday but we were super busy and I didn't have time.

It's been a reasonably busy week over all. On tuesday (since I wrote about Monday in my last post) Claudia and I spent most of the day finalising and finishing up our Villa Carmen leaflet advertising some of the wonderful goings on here at the centre. The design was finally sent off to Cusco with the idea that it would be here in time for the stand we were going to have at Forest Week's fair on Saturday.
Tuesday also saw two big groups of school kids showing up to work with SFS (School for Field Studies). They planned out a bunch of activities including a display of the local watershed and some games about the food web.
They all had a pretty good time by the sound of it but their second group apparently had a little too much energy, especially when the teachers wouldn't help control them.

Our team of volunteers and researchers (some of them anyway)!

On Wednesday we had more kids coming to work with SFS so a lot of time was spent making sure everything there was going to plan, including making sure they all got their snacks sorted out.

By thursday I think the SFS students were glad to see the end of their brief teaching roles and we had no more visitors. Apparently the community outreach team (that's us) were meant to be giving some sort of presentation in the school but for some unknown reason they decided that wasn't going to happen. Instead I decided I would help Jimena - one of the visiting researchers who's here for a few months - with her research project. She's studying population of larvae in the rivers in this area and after a week of concentrated sampling she's been left with a lot of samples to work through. I'm now going to be helping her on a regular basis with studying samples and in return I'm hoping she'll teach me more about the scientific aspects and how to recognise different macroorganisms that we find in samples.

Going to collect water samples: seeing full sized trees floating past was pretty crazy!

Friday started far to early due to the constant thunder storm in the early hours of the morning. By the time it eased off it was basically time to get up. This would be fine under normal circumstances but it was day three of the same and we were starting to get a little grumpy from the lack of sleep.
For forest week we were eant to be going to cheer on and encourage the kids in a drawing/painting competition they were taking part in but once again we ended up staying on base - I'm not sure if it was because the competition was cancelled or if we just didn't go for some reason.
Instead I went with Jimena to collect samples. The state of the river was pretty amazing - there was no longer any sort of beach, the water level had moved up over 10ft and full sized tree trunks were being carried downstream.

On saturday we were supposed to be going to the Forest Week fair except due to some organisation issue we didn't have a tent set up or anything else prepared. I don't know if anyone else ended up going, but like the other events we were supposed to go to over the week we ended up not going.
Instead I spent the day studying and learning all about water treatment techniques.

Yesterday was our day off and we decided to go do something a little different. Not too far away there are some ancient petroglyphs which we'd heard about and wanted to go check out, so sraight after breakfast we set off. We'd been given brief instructions as to how to get there, apparently it was only about a two hour hike, but either we were walking to slowly or there was a bit of a miscomminication there cause it took us about three and a half hours to find them - also the might we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way might have accounted for some of that extra time...
It was a nice walk though and we did eventually find the petroglyphs.

Petroglyphs

I'm not sure if we were expecting a bit more but there were a couple of big rocks with a few drawings on - though I'm not sure how old. It was a good trip out anyway.
We got back a little before dinner with just enough time for a nice cold shower and a little Skype call with the other half and after dinner it was bat feeding time and the start of the first Lord of the Rings.

Looking out over Pilcopata, Andes in  the background 

Today has so far been dedicated to processing water samples and installing a new rain gauge.

Well back to work anyway - lots of samples to go through!

Field Trip!!

Hi everyone,
so I know my schdule for posting has gone a bit funny thanks to last weeks internet problems but I'm planning on being back on track for my next post - it just seemed silly to write a whole new post for a couple of quiet days. But on with the post.

So Friday morning was mostly spent studying - I've been reading all about water quality which isn't too bad for short bursts of time reading.
 After lunch though I went into 'town' with a couple of other volunteers (well one volunteer, one reseacher). We hung out for a while, checked out the fruit market and got some ice cream from the usual place - that place gets so much business from us lot here at Villa Carmen! We also gathered a couple of things for the night since none of us were too interested in going out to the bars.
Our evening was spent sitting out on the porch of one of the cabins with a couple of drinks, good music and nice conversation; What better way to spend a Friday night?

This little guy was discovered in the toilet block - tiny but deadly Coral snake

On saturday we discovered that the guy I'm working wih had gotten back from his break in the night so we wasted no time getting back to work. Since we have to have a stall ready to go for thursday we began designing leaflets. For some reason there's absolutely nothing in the way of publicity for Villa Carmen so Claudia and I spent all morning working on the perfect template and layout for the flier - unfortunately the official information we could use was all online and the internet was done so we couldn't access it. However we'd finially finished the design just after midday - perfect timing for lunch.
The afternoon was spent doing  little more studying before a short trip out to Huacaria on the bike. There was some money problem to discuss with the chif although i couldn't really understand a lot of the conversation. Instead I distracted myself playing with a couple of super cute puppies that came out of nowhere to meet the strangers. They must have only been a few weeks old and were still so tiny but they weren't shy.

Sunday was a little confusing from the start because I thought it was actually Saturday which meant I managed to miss my regulr Skype call with the other half - least I managed to do it today instead. After breakfast we got to do something a little different as we were invited to oin the students on a trip to a town called Salvaçion. It's about an hour away by car, can't always be accessed in the rainy season and - the best thing about the town - it had a swimming pool! Don't get me wrong I enjoy swimming in the river but it's sometimes nice not to have to worry about what you're standing on or what else is in the water too!
First stop though was a little ox-bow lake where they had these flat bottom rafts to paddle around in. The water was really only a foot deep and it wasn't the most exciting thing to do in your free time but it was a good laugh and we all enjoyed getting to do something a little different.

Getting Jimena to do all the hard work

On the way back to the car there was a sudden downpour which threatened to call an early end to our trip out but after about half an hour it relented and by the time we got to the pool it had stopped. We sat and ate our packed lunches (rice, avacado, and aubergine pancake) by the pool side before getting in. Everyone definitely appreciated the clear, chlorinated water and while the others had handstand competions on the bottom of the pool I just enjoyed floating around without having to worry about being carried downstream!

Tonight has been fairly productive so far: we've almost finished creating our leaflets for the forest week stand later in the week, we went and gathered some photos to use to help promote the station and we even made a couple of examples of things to make from your recycling.
Now I think I might go have a little seista while it's too wet to go outside then see about getting some more real work done.

Visited these little guys on our photo collecting wander

So until next time everyone - ciao!!

Happy Halloween!

Hi everyone,
Sorry it's taken me longer than normal to get this post up, but power and internet have been in short supply around here lately - I'll explain why later.

So it's ben yet another relatively unproductive week around here. On Monday we headed over to the schools to check in and finish sealing the gaps around the posts holding the fence in place around the weather station. Because the fencing around that particular schol isn't complete it had been decided that it wasn't safe to have the weather station on the ground - insted we fixed it on top of a flat roof of one of the school buildings. Unfortunately as they'd had to drill into the roof to fit the fence, the ceiling was starting to leak - oops. However we're pretty sure it's all fixed up, might go and check tomorrow.

On that trip we also discovered that the school kids were all going to be on holiday for two weeks. Apparently there was some teacher competition thing going on although I don't know if that was the reason for the two week holiday or if they just held the competitions over pre-existing holidays, either way it meas we haven't been abe to do any school related stuff for a week and a half now.

I did get to spend some time making up a couple of very proffesional looking signs for our weather stations so I'm looking forward to getting them up soon.

Another 'outreach' task over the last week has been to plan a stand for Forest Week which is happening in town (Pilcopata) over the space of next week. It sounds like there's going to be events and things going on all week but we have a stall on the Saturday with, I presume, a few other 'green'groups in the area. We're going to be showing what Villa Carmen is all about, some information about our community outreach programs, things like that. I'm looking forward to it, I just hope that with our limited resources we can actually make a proffesional job of it.

Spending some free time playing football with the workers

Meanwhile in my free time I finally decided to make myself some swimwear. Now I know how silly it sounds not to have some with me already but the plan had been to pick some up in Edinburgh before I flew out here. Unfotunately that didn't happen so I've been improvising lately. However using a pattern I found online (link to be found here) I made my own bikini top - since I'm fine just wearing the swimshorts I 'borrowed'of my other half. Despite the fact the pattern was geared up to be made using a sewing machine I slowly but surely finished up and it only took me about two days - I was being very precise with the lines I stitches I needed to sew.  I got to test it out yesterday and luckily it had no problem in the water and doesn't look near as makeshift as I expected!

One big thing from last week was the fact we all got together for some Halloween fun. The School for Field Studies (SFS) students all dressed up and we along with anyone else they could convince and we all spent the afternoon playing halloween games, like pin the parts on the zombie, halloween pinata and other things like that. They also all carved watermelons and had competions for face painting.

Me trying to hit the piñata

Now in the early hours of Halloween - literally around 3am - there was a huge storm that sat over Villa Carmen for hours, with thunder so loud I and lightening so bright it seemed almost inevitable it would hit something on site. Instead it seems the storm saved it's damage for when we weren't expecting it. The power went out Halloween evening, clearly due to the storm. The power out lasted almost 24 hours which wasn't such a big deal but it did mean going in search of an actual pyhsical book once the battery on my tablet prevented me from reading what I had been working through.

Everyone in their halloween costumes

Although the power came back pretty quickly, the internet was completely gone all weekend, and even though its back at the moent it's been coming and going for the last few days - so I guess I better hurry up and finish writing while I can still post this!

Besides I can't think of anything that's been going on here lately, except for some more studying, oh and we now have a second bat to look after, since it was knocked out of it's nest by some of the workers (who I'm not too happy with because they killed a nuber of other bats from the same nest). So the second bat is a little bigger than the first but we've only had it a couple of days. I've been trying to focus on getting it to eat but it's still kind of scared - hopfully it'll come around soon.

In the mean time I think a few volunteers are heading off into town so I'm going to go see what's happening there - hopefully we can go and grab some ice cream!

Speak to you all soon!!