Finally, I arrived on Thursday morning at 11am Peruvian time (German time -7h) in the NGO Taxi Headquarter (HQ) after a 30h trip from Nufringen via Frankfurt via Madrid via Lima to Cusco. Eli - the very friendly coordinator of NGO, where I will do a 2 month volunteer work in two different projects with children - picked me up from the airport and after having a shower I tried my first coca tea. The taste is very delicious, similar to green tea and very helpful in an altitude of 3.400m above sea level.
Together with the other volunteers (at the moment we are 5, Lisa, Lexy, Alex, Emma and myself) we walked to the city venter of Cusco for lunch in Cafe Punchay (we get our lunch there from Monday to Friday). On the way I tried some typical streetfood: Tamale (corn flour dough cooked and stuffed with some salty or sweet stuff served in a corn leaf) and Chicha Morada (a drink made of purple corn and spices) - both very delicious!
After lunch we went to the chocolate museum and walked around the streets, which are full of street dogs and in the evening we had a nice dinner at our HQ together with Libi, our Spanish teacher for next week.
Still a bit jet lagged I got up quite early on Friday. Eli went with Lisa and myself to the school opposite of the HQ to talk to the director about the lessons we will hold (I will start mid of August there with English and Nutrition/cooking) and then we went into the classes wow! I've never seen such heartily and open people. The kids were welcoming us with a lots of hugs and after they heard that they will get cooking lessons they started dancing and singing "clases de cocina" (Kochunterricht) - now I'm looking forward to this volunteer work even more!
For lunch we went again to Cafe Punchay and afterwards I did an other city walk with Lisa and Lexy. We had so much fun on the markets, trying different stuff, taking a bunch of pictures, finding a friend for my unicorn Starly (Ernesto, the Alpaca), drinking some fresh orange juice on the street etc. Later we met the others again in Cafe Punchay for some funny salsa lessons and trying the local beer "Cusqueña" (not bad, but not comparable to the European beers). Hungry from the dancing we did a hard upstairs walk to enjoy dinner in a restaurant with a beautiful view over the lightened city (sunset is already at 6pm). On the way home we joined a street party with a live band and lots of locals dancing - unexpected and spontaneous! We had a lot of fun, although the temperature was very low (on the days we have around 30°C in the sun, but at night it gets freezing cold down to nearly 0°C - without any heating).
This morning started very crazy. We were a bit late for our day trip, so we (1 small girl, 3 tall girls and a tall guy) decided just to take the next taxi which will pass by. This was a small Kia Picanto...no problem here, the gils squeezed together on the backseats and the guy together with all our backpacks next to the driver. There are no belts anyway, but together with the Peruvian driving style is felt a bit scary. In the end we arrived on time and started our trip to a textil factory/shop, Moray and Salineras. In the textil factory the ladies showed us how to make alpaca clothes out of the fresh pelt (washing in water together with puree of a yucca type plant, drying, making wool, coloring the wool with different veggies/plants (e.g. purple with the purple corn, weaving it). In Moray there are natural terraces where they did a lot of studies with planting and harvesting mainly potatoes and corn (upper levels are warm, lower levels are cold because of the wind circulation) - today it is only a nice touristic event of an other Inca place. Salineras are the salt terraces, where very salty water is coming down from the mountains and is dried out in the terrace pools to produce the (healthy ^^) salt.
The rest of the day we spent in the HQ, talking, watching our thousands of pictures, laughing, cooking, eating and writing this (a second time now, shorter and less motivated - the homepage was crashed and my 2h work was gone *angry*). It is 9:30 pm now and soon time to go to bed... The day was very exhausting with the crazy bus trip (they drive their buses on these off-road paths faster than the Germans their buses on the "Autobahn" ^^), a lot of sun and an altitude of 3.700m - but it is definitively worth it! :-)
Tomorrow we will join an other full day trip to the lovely countryside of Cusco and on Monday our Spanish course starts, where we will see and learn a lot more of Cusco. This will be followed by a one day trip to the Rainbow Mountain on Saturday and a 5-day hiking trip (Salkantay Trek), before my first part of volunteer work in the jungle will start... Unbelievable that I'm only here for 3 days now, it feels like weeks!
¡Hasta la próxima y un besito! :-***