Arriving in Arequipa

February 17, 2008
Long bus trip, basic bus. No bathroom, but we Peruvians all operate a little dehydrated most of the time anyway. Arrived home at about 5:30, slept all morning and just finished dinner with the family. We’re going out to the corner place for Peruvian fast food tonight, polla and papas. I’ve been spending down the money that I brought, mostly for rent, but this week will take out about $700 for the donation to the nuns and to have some cash in Trujillo.

Our Ica visit was reasonably successful. We visited three small communities new Ica where we’ll actually do the project, and it looks like the sites will be ok. It really was almost exclusively the adobe construction (which includes some churches) that sustained significant damage, but in the little villages, you can really see it, even five months later. Instead of the little adobe houses, there are quite a few government constructed wood houses about the size of a single car garage, bare concrete floor and that’s it. Two windows, no plumbing. A few are still in tents, and many have constructed small houses using those woven fiber mats for walls and roof. They now have electricity, but now sewer and no water in one, 40 minutes a day of water in another, and about three hours in the last. The last would include the house (hacienda) where we’re planning to stay. It’s really quite adequate, but needs a little fixing up, beds and bedding hauled in, cleaning, and most important, some tank so that we have adequate water. Big pleasant open courtyard in the middle. Ica is in an irrigated desert valley, with huge sand dunes, or maybe sand mountains around it. Desolate.