So we woke up bright and early today to have breakfast and make our way to "Pisco Sin Fronteras - Pisco without Borders" We met everyone there. There was about 15 people there - pretty much a full table. We all had a meeting while eating breakfast (we ate ours earlier so we sat, listened and chatted). It's pretty casual there. And everyone was very nice and friendly. There was another Canadian in the house named Dominic from Ontario. It was nice to hear someone who knew where Edmonton was. We ended up telling people it's near Vancouver as most people know of Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal. There are a lot of Quebec traveller's here as we've been asked many times if we were from Quebec when we say we are from Canada.
There were 2 projects on the list of to do today as one of them was just completed yesterday - the bamboo house as they call it. The 2 projects was rebuilding the school and collecting rubble from a site. Eva and I chose the latter as it was more general and the people there were staying there for weeks and it makes sense for them to team up and get things together. So we went with Edwin and Johnathan, brothers, and speak mostly Spanish. It was a bit frustrating for both of us to communicate what we wanted to say correctly.
When I heard rubble I thought of a building that collapsed and we had to pick up the cement pieces or whatever the building was made of. But when we reached the site, less than a block away, it was a local's side yard. I'm not sure if this site will be used for something but my gut is not really ... perhaps a garden of some sort. But it was pretty much grass that has grown for months and garbage that was left there. It was pretty filthy and we were there to do landscape cleaning really. So we used shovels, a rake, and 2 hoes. It was a pretty tough job as we are so used to using other tools that would help us more for this ... perhaps even a bobcat or a simple grass snipper but nope... just what we have and a wagon for the debris.
The sun was blazing hot and it really took a toll on us in the first hour. We had to rest many times as it was really hard to work under the direct sunlight. There was all kinds of garbage from sample packs of shampoos to garbage bags to plastic shopping bags to plastic bottles to wet cardboard ... I can go on. I even found an egg! God knows how long it's been there and if it had been hatched it would probably be deformed or something. I wish we took a pic of this place for you to have a picture in your mind. Let's put it this way ... every time we raked ...dust and weird stuff came floating up. I'm allergic to dust and in the end it was a bit my fault for not using a mask like Eva as my allergies kicked in at the end of day around 2:30 pm and go home to take a benadryl. There were even times when all I smelt was dog piss ... yuck!
The family was appreciative of our efforts and their son (about 10 years old or so) helped us out by loading the wagon and dumping the stuff off. Also getting water. The family cooked lunch for us but Eva and I got hungry an hour earlier (as we had early breakfast) and went to a restaurant a couple blocks away that serves kick ass yummy chicken and rice. We've been there twice and both times we have been pleasantly surprised how wonderful it tasted!
We are both exhausted and we should get a good night's sleep even though Eva is now napping as I type lol Our bodies will definitely be stiff esp our back and arms I think. Tomorrow after breakfast we are heading back to Lima. We will meet up with Helen and Steve (Eva's friends) who will join us. Can't wait to meet them!
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