Brittni’s Blog

We took an overnight bus from Piura to Guayaquil, stopping twice for Peru’s and Ecuador’s immigrations, and were originally intending to stay in Guayaquil, but when we arrived we just realized it was another big city and decided, since we’ve been anxious to get out of the cities and see more small towns, to just not give it a chance and instead head straight to a town outside of one of the Volcano’s just south of Quito. This decision lead to another day on the bus and in total from Piura to Baños we spent about 21 hours. But when we arrived in Baños we immediately knew it was worth it. Its located just at the base of Volcano Tungurahua, which makes for a spectacular view and is surrounded by beautiful waterfalls, lush green vegetation, and natural, mineral water pools. Plus the town itself is lovely and just what we were looking for; a place to take a leisurely stroll through cobble stone streets lined with quaint, historic buildings and churches.

After Trujillo we decided to go to Paita, a small fishing town 6 hours north, to see Ernesto’s (Vlad’s dad) fish/squid factory. We went with Vlad’s uncle, Rafael, who set up a ride to the factory, gave us a tour, and showed us where to get the best ceviche (a typical Peruvian dish of raw fish with onion in lime sauce). Unfortunately, the factory wasn’t in production when we were there, but nonetheless it was very interesting to me and Brent, since we’ve never seen anything like it before. In my opinion, the best part of traveling is when you can get away from typical tourist attractions and you have local hook-ups to show you the real life of the country. We weren’t expecting to see Vlad’s dad because we thought he was in Lima, but luckily we ran into him last minute and had lunch before we headed to Piura.

After a night in Paita we got a ride in the back of the truck of Vlad’s dad’s friends and headed about 30 minutes south to the larger city of Pura. There we visited Vlad’s god-father, Alejandro, who is from Costa Rica and met Ernesto when they were living in Russia. He owns a very nice hotel and restaurant where we got to sleep and eat for free. After being taken care of so well by all of Vlad’s family in Lima, Trujillo, Paita, and Piura, Brent and I feel well spoiled and are hoping to show Vlad and his family as good of hospitality in California.

After selling Vlad’s car and saying goodbye to his family in Lima, the three musketeers finally set out on there long journey north to America. Brent has about 6-7 weeks left before he heads back for his second year of university in the fall and for now the vague plan is to either stay in Colombia or take a short 4-5 day boat trip to Panama (since there is no road in the thick jungle between Colombia and Panama). Our first stop in 6 hours north of Lima in the town of Trujillo where Vlad has his grandma, 2 ants, 2 uncles, 4 cousins, 1 niece, and 1 old friend from Russia. Of course visiting and getting to know the family was the highlight, but we also went to the ruins of Chan Chan, the temples of el sol y la luna, the beach in a small town nearby called Huanchaco, took a car ride to another town called Simbal, hung out a lot in the center, and recovered from a couple big nights out to the clubs.

The ruins at Chan Chan.	Chan Chan	Chan Chan
Chan Chan	Chan Chan	Museum next to Chan Chan
The beach at Huanchaco	Huanchaco	Huanchaco
Huanchaco	The Plaza de Armas in Trujillo	Vlad and Roma (friend from Russia)
Carving on a wall at the temple of the oon	Temple of the moon	Temple of the moon
Dinner on the 4th at the house of Vlad\'s uncle Rafael, aunt Rosario, and cousin Carol.	After dinner drinks with Roma	The Russians
Starting the night out	Tio Rafael and Tia Rosario	Roma
Roma and Vlad.	Roma and his girlfriend Becky.	.
Spending a day in Simbal with Vlad\'s grandma Graciela, aunt Teresa, and cousin Carla	.	Buying fruit on the way to Simbal.
.	Buying avacado, guava, and milk.	El Gato.

While Vlad finished up his exams Brent and I decided to take a trip to Cusco and without planning out anything on purpose, Brent and I just happened to be in Cusco during the biggest festival of the year. To celebrate its anniversary during the month of June there are free outdoor concerts, fireworks, carnival games, and daily parades with floats, marching bands, and dancers in elaborate costumes. We were originally planning on only spending about a week in Cusco, but ended up there for 12 days, both because of the festival and because many of the roads leading to different cities in the south were closed due to bus strikes. But we had a good time hanging out in town and watching the parades everyday, and Brent even got to learn how to ride a motorcycle when we did a half-day ride outside of Cusco to see the countryside and nearby cities.

Of course its the most touristy thing to do in Peru, maybe even all of South America, but Machu Piccu is something that just couldn’t be missed. Brent and I also wanted to go to Waynu Picchu which is another sent of ruins on a higher mountain next to Mahcu Picchu. Since they only allow 200 people up twice a day and tickets sell out early we spent the night before in Aguas Calientes which is a city about an hour and a half hiking from Machu Piccu and started hiking by 4am. The hike up Waynu Picchu was a bit of a challenge, but the view from the top made it well worth the while. From the very top you have a 360 degree view of the valley and a spectacular view of Machu Picchu.

Oh, and you might also notice Brent’s new hair in these photos.

I was thinking that I wanted to do some volunteer work and when I read about the opportunity to volunteer at an orphanage, something inside me instantly shouted out and I new it was something I wanted to do. The main things I was looking for going into it were to improve my Spanish and learn about the culture, but I learned so much more than I ever could have imagined. I’ve don’t a lot of volunteer work in my life, with the hungry and homeless, with the elder, and with families in 3rd world countries, but I’ve never worked directly with so many children.

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but let me tell you, it is soooooo much work! The kids are amazingly energetic and its exhausting trying to keep up with all 17 of them. But the kids, oh, the kids. They are the most extraordinarily affectionate, precious, lovable little angels I’ve ever met. By the end of my two and a half months with them I felt closer than I meant to get and had a hard time leaving them. They taught me so much about myself and changed my life forever.

On day we got to go on a field trip and we took the kids to a big park/zoo were we played, snacked, ran around, looked at the animals, played some more, ate lunch, walked around with the kids all attached in a long line by holding hands, the other teachers and I gossiped, and played some more.

Here are just some random pictures from the last 2 1/2 months I’ve spent hanging out in Lima with Vlad and his family.

Vlads 26th Birthday	with the best drinks Ive ever had!
called .\"Loving Flames!\"	Out for Vlads B-day.
Mothers day lunch with Alla (Vlads mom), aunt Lucia(Allas friend from Russia), cousin Veronica, Nadia (Vlads sister), and Vlad (taking picture)	Vlads cousin Veronica and sister Nadia.
Buy me! Buy me!	.\"I just really want to sell my car so I can finally go traveling with Brittni!!!\"
My friend from the orphanage, Yolanda, at a tourism exhibition.	In the background: Mochica culture from Trujillo.
Brent finally arrives!	.
Last drive in the car.	Finally making the deal.

Warning: This entry may be extremely dull to some people and may cause death through boredom. It will probably only be interesting to dorks like me.

I´ve been at Corporation Triveño, a distributor of mercury, also known as quicksilver, for about two weeks now and have learned some interesting things about mercury that I thought I would share. (I´ve also found that, and you might have noticed, its hard to keep the blog interesting when I´m not traveling.)

First of all, mercury is the only liquid metal at room temperature and pressure. Its a beautiful silver color which looks like melted chrome and is surprisingly heavy, weighing ________ per ounce and _______ per _____. Its mainly used in mining for other materials, mainly gold. When its spread out over the rocks coming out of the mine, it melts away all other substances except the gold. Then when heated up, the mercury turns into a substance like clay and all you have left is the gold. We also sometimes sell a very pure form of it to dentists who use it for fillings, and occasionally to artist. There is a very small amount used in electronics, florescent lamps, and thermometers, but we generally distribute it in larger quantities. Its hard to get a hold of, not because it´s scarce, but because there are strict controls on it.
So, why is it dangerous? Its not very common that it harms the environment (as my dad pointed out that would be very un-Santa Cruzian to be working for such a company), but there are several ways that it ends up hurting humans (which i guess I don´t care as much about). The way it was explained to me is that occasionally when uneducated miners finish using the mercury and it is in its clay form they don´t dispose of it properly and it occasionally ends up in a lake, river, stream, or other water source. It then causes little silver bubbles in the water, which the fish eat, then we eat the fish, and are poisoned. Its also a bit of a problem when a truck runs off the road and dumps a bunch of mercury into the local water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)

http://www.kissfunny.com/view_funny.asp?id=1219&subcategoryid=

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(I didn´t write this, I got it in a chain e-mail and am just posting it cause I thought it was funny)

I just realized I’ve been in Lima almost 4 weeks. On one hand, that’s really amazing because I was originally going to be here only a few days before heading north and I thought I’d be in Ecuador, Colombia, maybe even Panama by now. On the other hand, I was getting tiered of my routine of living out of my backpack, changing hostels every couple days, making new friends everywhere I went, and never being able to have a real conversation with anyone, so I´ve known for a while that I needed to settle down somewhere for a while, I just wasn’t sure where yet.

Looking back on it, it was a strange sequence of events that kept me here. If I were more religious I would say it seemed like God’s clever, divine plan. I bought my bus ticket for 2 days after I arrived, and kept pushing it back over and over for different reasons. The final reason I decided to stay, yes, you can probably guess it…love. And I know what your thinking, “Brittni, how can you possible give up traveling for a boy!?” And I know it seems like something I might regret in the future, but one of the new things I´m trying and learning this year is to stop planning so much and do more what I feel is right in the moment.

Anyway, I´m only postponing my travels until June when Vlad finishes his architecture degree and at which time we will travel north to Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, and eventually to California, where we´ll be looking for a place to live in San Francisco. I´ll still be working for Frank, Rimerman, hopefully in San Francisco, but my start date has been postponed until January.

As for my professional life, for now I´m working part time in finance for Corporation Triveño, which distributes mercury. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that native English speakers with degrees form the US can make it very well here in Lima. In addition, and more in the spirit of my year off for exploring new things, I´ve been volunteering at an orphanage, taking care of about twenty 3-year-old orphans.