Huanchaco month 1

  Huanchaco, Peru Thursday, January 7, 2016

Our bus arrived in Trujillo which is to the south of Huanchaco and there we were met by Johannie. It was really nice to be met at the station and not have to worry about where to go or how to get to where we were needed, she took care of all of that for us :-) When we arrived at Huanchaco - our first glimpse of the town that was to be home for the next 2 months - she took us straight to our hostel to drop off our bags. This place was just a short term stay as we were moving to a new apartment in a few days time - it just wasn't quite ready for our arrival which was a shame. But this hostel is ok. There is a nice private garden with a pet bunny rabbit who is quite cute and friendly.Johannie is from Quebec but had lived here in Huanchaco for a couple of years now so really knows the area well. She gave us a walking tour and showed us all the best places to eat and shop. The town isn't very big at all but there are lots of little back streets with little shops and restaurants in. There doesn't seem to be any rule about when they open either. It seems as if most places just open when they feel like it! There isn't a big supermarket here just the super market! it is like stepping back in time going there and every time we shop there, we are reminded that this was probably the way our grandparents and their parents before them shopped for groceries. It's a huge indoor space with lots of different sellers all selling from their allotted section and it is rammed with fruit & vegetables of every shape and colour, meat stalls, fish stalls, and many people whom just seem to sell a bit of everything. One lady has proved very helpful to us, if we go to her and ask her for something, if she hasn't got it she goes out the back of her stall and shouts to another lady who then comes running around the corner with it. It's great and what a service!After a few days in the temporary hostel, we moved into our apartment on the 4th floor of Casa Lichy. Oh what luxury! We only have a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom but it is all new and very comfortable. There is a roof terrace with a sofa right outside our door if we want to sit outside but it is cooler in the apartment so we tend not to sit out there. The roof terrace is also fitted out with a smart barbecue area and a fully equipped laundry room with washing lines up onto another roof terrace above us. We have everything we need! One thing we warned against doing was drinking any of the tap water here. So we order potable water in big 20 ltr urns with a tap on.  When we need a new one we make a call then 15 minutes later, the man arrives with it on his motorbike and carries it all the way up the stairs for you for the extortionate sum of s/10 (£2)! He takes the empty one away for refilling and is a much better idea than keep buying little plastic bottles all the time. What a great system.Lichy our landlord is Peruvian and speaks excellent English and his wife Nadia is from the Ukraine. They seem to be great landlords and have been really welcoming. They do seem to care about making sure everything is right for us and providing everything we need - like barbecue tools!. Nadia is expecting a baby - very very soon - but Lichy has had to go to work on the cruise ships and he does a 5 week stint at a time. I hope he arrives back before the baby shows up! Most days in the week we spend at our projects. If we are not physically at the project then we are planning the next lesson, writing stuff up for it or shopping for it. We are here with Otra Cosa Network and we first contacted them 4 years ago when we returned from our first round the world trip. We looked at several NGOs in our quest to find a volunteer programme which would suit us both on this trip. And we are very glad we chose Otra Cosa.They have 5 projects on the go here HELP Women, HELP Youth, HELP Environment, HELP Literacy & HELP English. Bryan has been teaching kids to swim and Jody started off helping with kids English classes 3 times a week but now gives baking lessons to kids and mums. You can read more about our projects separately. The other volunteers here are all lovely. A great bunch of people whom we really enjoy working with. The 3 girls in the office - Jenny, Bibi, and Amy are great and really helped us get going.Bryan worked with Fiona and Quique (say Kiki) with the swimming but unfortunately for Bryan, we had to say goodbye to Fiona after 3 weeks. She had just been here for 1 month whilst she waited for her boyfriend to join her from Glasgow where he was working his notice from his job, before joining her and travelling the world. We gave her a good send off though and held a barbecue on our roof terrace which actually became a bit of a party. Good job we had warned the neighbours and even invited them. Nadia turned up too as she was a volunteer here herself at some point and knows a lot of the girls from the office. We didn't want to leave her sitting downstairs on her own either. Jody worked with Jeannie who is from New York on the English lessons and with Marketa who is completely mad and from Prague, on the HELP women projects. Marketa shaved her head to raise money before she arrived in Huanchaco. See we said she was mad!The parcels did all turn up eventually as we knew they would. It has been like Christmas here for us with everything arriving and not knowing what would be in them. Absolutely everything that was sent has been distributed amongst the various projects where they will be best used. Both our projects centre around a community Centre named El Comedore. It is part funded by the church here and all walls have pictures of Jesus watching your every move. As it is school holidays here in Peru from December until February, El Comodore is a centre where the mums can leave their children whilst they go to work. Bryan takes these children swimming a few times a week and Jody works with the mums rostered on that day, with cooking lunch for everyone. It seems to be mutually beneficial and the kids are not roaming the streets.There are a few settlements on the outskirts of Huanchaco where people have set up houses in something like shanty towns. Although they are very poor the homes are a bit better than shanty towns but the house that Jody went to, had no glass in the windows, concrete dusty floors and very basic facilities. These settlements sprung up a few years ago when large mountain communities were washed away by heavy rain. They came here to live and the area has just grown but without any real facilities being put in place. This is where NGOs come in and help make their lives just a little bit better hopefully. Lastly, we cannot write about Huanchaco without mentioning the famous reed boats or 'caballito de totoras' to give them their correct name. This is what Wikipedia says about them. Caballitos de totora are reed watercrafts used by Peruvian fishermen for the past 3,000 years, archaeologically evidenced from pottery shards.Named for the way they are ridden, straddled ('little reed horses' in English), fishermen use them to transport their nets and collect fish in their inner cavity. The name is not the original name as horses were not introduced to South American until after the Spanish arrived in the 15th Century.  Fishermen in the port town of Huanchaco famously, but in many other locations practically, still use these vessels to this day, riding the waves back into shore, and suggesting some of the first forms of wave riding. There is currently a minor debate in the surfing world as to whether or not this constitutes the first form of surfing. The Swamps of Huanchaco about 14 km northwest of Trujillo city, is an ecological Chimu reserve located in Huanchaco Beach. From this ecological reserve the ancient mochica extracted the raw material for the manufacture of the ancient Caballitos de totora used since the time of the Moche for fishing. Currently Huanchaco fishermen still use their materials from this swamps to make their ships of workMany times whilst walking to teach English, Jody observed a man quietly working away making new boats in the same way they have been made for centuries. As Wiki says, they are found in other places but these boats are iconic for Huanchaco. During the tourist season, you see many fishermen giving rides to tourists on their boats.They don't go out very far but you have to sit in the bit where they put the fish from their catch each morning. Urrggh! Well month one has been great. We have met lots of great new people, got to know this great little town and started our Spanish lessons again. Can month 2 top this? We shall see!   [gallery columns="4" ids="14251,14252,14253,14254,14256,14258,14260,14264,14269,14271,14274,14278,14283,14290,14295,14308,14315,14328,14337,14346,14353,14362,14367,14371,14378,14384,14388,14398,14410,14418,14429,14436,14442,14447,14450,14455,14471,14477,14484,14488,14501,14506,14514,14523,14530"]