Paragliding and Bungee Jumping

by Spenser Pawlik

Our last full day in Cusco was packed with activities including paragliding, last minute souvenir shopping and bungee jumping for a few brave members of the group (Kelly and I). We woke up around 8 am, feeling well rested from the busy day at Machu Picchu yesterday. After yet another delicious breakfast we left the volunteer house around 9 am and headed off to paragliding. Using a combination of 3 different taxies, a hectic ride brought everyone safely to the top of a small mountain overlooking the Sacred Valley.

Our travel guide, Cesar, informed everyone we would paraglide with one of three experienced pilots provided by the paragliding company. When the wind was right, one of us would start running with their pilot towards the edge of the mountain until before we knew it there was no longer ground beneath their feet and they were hundreds of feet in the air.

Once getting situated with the pilot in the air, it was time to take in the amazing views including the snowy peaks of the Andes, the Sacred Valley far below and plots of farmland as far as the eye could see. The flight lasted anywhere from 5-15 minutes depending on the winds and then ended with a landing in a field. Some landed smoothly while others were not as lucky and were left with some scrapes and bruises.

After finishing paragliding, Kelly and I headed to the bungee jump while the others either waited for the wind to cooperate for their flight (unfortunately the winds became so strong in the afternoon Garret was not able to go) or headed into the city center for lunch and some shopping.

Once arriving at the bungee jump, we signed a few waivers and performed some advised stretching activities before the jump. The bungee jump was 122 meters (400 feet), the highest in South America! One at a time, we were raised up in a cage with an instructor. I was the first to go and I was a little nervous once at the top. A few final instructions were given and the instructor then started counting down… 3…2…1…GO! There was no refund for people who didn’t jump so I took a deep breath and took the leap. After falling for a few seconds, the cord attached to my feet went taught and kept me a safe distance from the ground as I bounced up and down. The cage then lowered me safely to the ground and it was Kelly’s turn to jump. Kelly took the same cage ride up and took the same leap of faith from 400 feet up (It looked much less scary watching from the ground). Once we were both back on the ground, feeling accomplished, we took a quick picture in front of the bungee jump and then took a taxi back into Cusco. 

Everyone made it back to the volunteer house that night and we each shared our stories about the rest of our day. It was an early bedtime as we all had flights out of Cusco in the morning. We were sad to leave but everyone felt accomplished after a busy last day. 

Finishing the Greenhouse and Farewell

by Mitch McKinstry


After 2 grueling weeks of hard work and a lot of fun, we finally finished the greenhouse on Thursday August 21.  As normal in the Quilla Huata village, we celebrated the completion of the greenhouse by breaking a bottle of Pisco (an alcohol widely used in Peru) that was hanging from the doorway.

We also received an awesome farewell from the kids.  They showered us in confetti and gave us all big hugs.  The teachers and mothers of the community thanked us greatly expressing how much we have helped the community.  At this point we also gave the school our donations and all the kids held up their new frisbees as they were excited to practice what we taught them.

At this point we were very tired, but the ceremony that the kids gave us helped rejuvenate us.  We were ready for another soccer match against the fathers.  But first we ate some potatoes that a community member for whom we made the green house for made for us in an oven made entirely from dirt.  This oven is used widely by the community when they take their animals up in the mountains.  

After a surprising victory against the fathers in our soccer match, we were ready to pack up and head back to our place of stay to get ready for an early trip to Machu Picchu the following day.  It was a bittersweet moment to see the greenhouse finally finished but know that this was our last time in Quilla Huata.  We are sad to leave but wish the best for the village!

 

Bringing Ultimate Frisbee to Quilla Huata

by Lizzie Grobbel

As part of the Peru’s Challenge volunteer experience, the EGL group had the privilege of working with the Quilla Huata schoolchildren on two separate occasions. The children range in age from kindergarten to 4^th grade. The Quilla Huata school has one teacher for the kindergarten class, one for the first and second graders, and one for the third and fourth graders. The school also provides the children with a nutritious lunch each day. Peru’s Challenge volunteers often work with the schoolchildren on art projects, sports, hygiene, and English. Prior to leaving for the trip, we collected nearly 40 Frisbee discs for the children that were generously donated by the Detroit Ultimate Frisbee League and the Ann Arbor Ultimate league.

Our first day of working with the children consisted of an hour of sports lessons. We split up into two groups based on age and worked on the ultimate Frisbee basics of throwing and catching. A couple advanced groups moved onto throwing to a runner and running for discs. There was no shortage of energy during the lesson! Apparently the disc resembled an American football to some of the children, as some running and tackling with the disc was spotted.

Our second day with the children included both sports and art. Again, we split into two groups by age. One group of EGL students started with the older children and instructed them on making paper “snowflakes”. They learned the English word for snow and decorated their own handmade snowflakes. The other half of the EGL students taught another ultimate frisbee lesson to the younger group. This time, we focused on the finer and more social points of ultimate, including sitting in a circle while calling a teammate’s name and throwing to them. A few errant discs landed on some unsuspecting members of the circle, but overall, it was a calm game in which the kids’ throws noticeably improved. The groups then switched places. The younger group had quite an artistic flair with the snowflakes and loved learning how to cut heart shapes into their snowflakes.

After our two sessions, it was a joy to see each individual child’s personality begin to shine through. They each had unique interests and talents. They were incredibly patient and understanding of some of our members’ rudimentary Spanish. It was an inspiration to see their happiness and love of life.

EGL Peru 2014 - Build Week 1

by Melissa Boelstler

Stepping off the plane into Cusco, everyone took a deep breath of excitement and realized that their breath really wasn't that deep. At 11,200 ft up in the air, we were about to experience some of the most difficult work we've ever done and still have a blast doing it.

Our goal for the trip was to complete a greenhouse from the ground up with the eight of us from Michigan along with four fathers in the community. Day 1 we jumped right into it, but only for half of a day. After moving 30 pound adobe bricks and digging trenches, we began to realize how much the altitude really effected the work, and it would have been hard enough anyways! We practiced stretching and yoga led by Lizzie during our breaks, and made sure we stayed hydrated.

Once the foundation was filled in, we began to layer the bricks (adobe) and mud (barro). Working with the fathers was a great learning experience in communication. Our group varied in their levels of working Spanish, so we picked up on a lot of nonverbal communication but also improved immensely with Spanish to better communicate with the fathers.

By the end of week 1 we made pretty significant progress on building the greenhouse, practicing our Spanish, and even on our strength and conditioning. We challenged the fathers and other community members to a soccer game on Friday. Although we did not win, it was still a great end to the week, and we were all looking forward to the next!

A Pictorial Progression of the Green House

Step One: Mud with some straw mixed in

This mud is then crafted into a lot of bricks.

The mud bricks we used for the green house we made for us before we got there, but here you can see the workers fitting mud into a wooden tool (seen best near the guy on the right's foot). They do this for hours.

And here is the original site of the greenhouse, taken after the first day of work. There were already some plants growing in the middle, and we spent the majority of the day moving brick mountain near the sit of construction. We also put rocks in the trench, and made an outline for the cement with

 wooden boards (Kevin, Maria's son is sitting in between them and in a couple pictures below).

The rest of our work site

Day Two!

There was a team brick, and a team cement. Team brick continued to move bricks closer to the job site, while team cement started to make cement using pebbles, special cement powder (first picture below), water, and the machine in the below picture. The cement was going to be the strong foundation we would later put bricks on top of.

Team cement also began pouring the cement into the board skeleton we made the day before. We would pour some of the cement, throw rocks in the middle of the cement block, and then we would smooth out the top.

We also made another board mold for the one remaining side. Here is a nice action shot of Joe doing so.

Then we had a great weekend! Here is day three. Today was the day the mud pit began. We had a hose running through some dirt we had moved, and we mixed the dirt with water to make mud that we would use to fill in cracks between the mud bricks. We mixed the mud using our feet, shovels, and pick axes.

And we started laying the mud bricks! It was easy to see the results of our hard work today.

We layed the cement for the last side also.

Day 4, the mud pit got significantly smaller, but we worked really hard to make the greenhouse 8 bricks tall. It was so exciting to see our progress today!

Day 5 began with these giant trees (as Patrick Wilson put it, "the lost truffula tree"). We had to take hammers and pics and take the outer layer of bark off of them. It was a pretty fun task! These were going to be used to the structure of the roof and top of the windows.

Jamie flashes a winning smile at the trees she stripped

After that, we began to form the brick pyramid that would give structure to the roof. This part was deemed as two fragile for us to build ourselves, so we would hand the bricks up to experienced workers. This was also a rough day because we needed even more bricks, and we had to wheelbarrow 300 of them from a different site. The first brick pyramid was finished today.

Day six (Thursday) began with wheeling about 100 more bricks from a different site. The other brick pyramid was built, and the experienced Peruvians started to put up the rafters (the trees we had stripped).

Day Seven! Last day of the greenhouse! The morning started with the local women teaching us how to make ovens to cook potatoes--then, they let us try to build them! Unfortunately, I got caught up in the oven making so I didn't take pictures. Once we began working on the greenhouse, we started unrolling yellow plastic across the top. We held the plastic down as a team while a Peruvian worker would hammer wood over the plastic to keep in taut. 

And alas, we were done!! 

Cheers,

Katelyn Rowley

Macchu Pichu

I woke up to, "LAST DAY YEAH YEAHHHHH!!" ricocheting down the stairwell of our hotel...This was the end. The homestretch, 27 hours until departure to the states. Thinking of our time with Maria, so full of grace, as done and untouchable twisted my heart.

It was one of those rainy, misty mornings where there wasn't a ray of sun, the kind that of weather that made you feel like you're part of a Lemony Snicket novel and the weather has been bad for days, months, years, you've lost track.

It was about 7 in the morning, and our fuel for touring one of the wonders of the world would be a complimentary breakfast of an omelet, a piece of ham, and coco tea. Berta, our faithful tour guide who gallantly swept us through Peru, led us into the hazy fog.

We hitched a ride on our noble steed (a bus) and took the half hour winding route that thinly snaked up to the top of the mountain. The bus was completely enveloped in a cloud--we could only see about fifty feet in each direction--so whenever a view beyond the trees developed, it felt as though we were traveling higher and higher into a grey oblivion (pic below). Losing a reference point for how high we were, it felt as though we entered the lands of the Gods.

The bus dropped us off near a bathroom, a couple overpriced restaurants, a dark-wooden gateway with workers feverishly checking passports, and a hotel (the type Oprah could afford). And this was the entirety of our world--the rest was fog.

And we shuffled through the entryway. I think we were all quiet. We didn't know if letting our stomachs boil with excitement with the wonder we were about to see was appropriate or if the whole place had been swallowed by the cloud and the beauty had been lost.

Berta, our guide, took us to our first outlook--and this spot is supposed to be the chariot that oversees all of the mountain range--and it looked like this (below). She started laying down her knowledge, and we learned that the phrase Macchu Pichu had no meaning, that the Incans worshiped the sun, and that they built Macchu Pichu high in the clouds to be a sort of resting sanctuary to worship the sun.

Even though the view at the time seemed anticlimatic, the rock structures were impressive. We could see some of the famous Incan terraces wrapping around the mountain, an already impressive feat knowing that they must have been carved through an Amazonian jungle like domain (click for visual). We could see people exploring the same pathways the Incan people must have walked, except today the people walking up the paths looked like a pathway out of the board game Candyland via all of the colored ponchos (below).

But Sellvy insisted the day would clear up, and we would not leave disappointed.

Have you ever felt some sort of determination, or a visceral longing, pulsate through your ribcage...? I really wanted the showers to pass. And slowly...ever so slowly...

The paradise in the clouds slowly revealed itself to us. Something about the llamas (or alpacas?) grazing in the fertile, healthy grass and the perfect terraces that delicately carved the earth made it feel like such an escape, a sort of bliss in the most unexpected place.

On a quick side note, Berta, our knowledgeable guide through the back alleys of Peru, grew up in the mountains, and she saw a llama being sacrificed when she was very young. I will probably never be able to understand what seeing that meant to her, or to her people, but I was happy she felt comfortable enough to share an insight to her culture.

We continued to wander through the sanctuary of the Incans, seeing things like tombs, their homes (the stone base with a straw top), and old sewage systems, all while the clouds decided we were becoming more and more worthy of seeing the beauty surrounding us. Maybe it was a good thing the clouds receded slowly--let me explain.

Think of someone you love, and looking at them after a liaison. They are golden, perfect, and the overwhelming emotion in your chest ascents to your smile. But, if you saw them a little at a time, you could have time to appreciate everything-- the mole on the side of their face, the curve of their body, the depth of their eyes--and they are infinite. Witnessing the golden pieces of them unify allows you to have time to treasure everything about them.

And as the entire structure had so much beauty with the mountains, the terraces, the structures, and the great people around me--Macchu Pichu was infinite too. And I'm thankful the clouds let us focus on little pieces before admiring the bigger picture.

This is actually the view from the overlook that was foggy earlier in the day

 

And since the clouds cleared, we could climb Wayna Picchu! A mountain at an altitude of 2693 meters (8835 feet) above sea level (compare that to an 838 feet right now in Ann Arbor in my apartment)...this is Wayna Picchu below!

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And so the climb began! I'll do you a favor and leave how much I sweat as I trekked up the mountain. It was a rough climb in the thinning air, but we climbed and climbed...

And it was worth the pain! The mountain's peak we climbed to was only jagged rock, and we were rewarded with a 360 degree view of the surrounding mountain range, with Macchu Pichu casually resting on the mountain in front of us (below).

If the hike up was like trying to pass a calculus test blindfolded with a pen as a writing utensil, then walking back down was like drinking a juice box. But after the climb, it was maybe three in the afternoon. Most of us were starving and thirsty, and the energy from the omelet had faded at about 9AM.

Worth it.

We left the mountain sanctuary and went out for Jamie and Leif's birthdays--Sellvy arranged for some pizzas for us along with cheesecake for dessert.

And we did a little last minute shopping (aka I bought chocolate for the train ride), and departed. During the journey home, I witnessed the end product of an evolution. We began the trip, all of us getting to know each other with questions like, "What is your favorite Disney movie?" (Mulan obviously) and "Do you have any siblings?" On the way back to our homebase (about a 4.5-5 hour trip by train and bus) our questions had grown to, "What are the two or three things in your life that are most important to you?" and "Could you date someone with a different religion from you or your family?" We answered each other with uninhibited honesty, and I think this goes to show how much we matured as a community.

I am thankful to be a part of EGL. I am thankful I was challenged by all of the fellow EGLs to push my body for six hours a day. I am thankful to have seen something purely wonderful. I am thankful to Sellvy, Maria, Angelica, and Ramiro....I am so thankful, and I won't forget this day.

"I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive...There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put in time. They freeze what cannot be stopped."         -Let the Great World Spin

I'll miss my time in South America...and even wringing out my heart wouldn't be able to make words for how happy I am to have gotten this chance.


Best,

Katelyn Rowley
Junior in Biomedical Engineering