Hola from Lima, Peru!

Wow, this is our final stop on our three month globe trot! We only had one day to spend in Lima (we actually need to go back to work!) so we made the most of it. We found a great small tour company that offers an all day private tour of the major sites in the city. Here is a recap of the great sites we got to see:

Barranco Bohemian District: This is a neat area near the Pacific Ocean. We got to see the famous Bridge of Sighs, the Mirador, and the main city park.

Miraflores: This is one of the major sites of the city. We got to see several beautiful parks with lots of flowers as well as walk past several neat European Houses. The Love Park looks very similar to the Baudi architecture we saw in Barcelona, Spain!

Plaza San Martin, the Main Plaza, & San Francisco Church: These plazas are the two most important in the city. The Main Plaza of Lima is surrounded by several major building including the Government Palace, City Hall, and the city’s Cathedral. The day we were there was crazy with every group possible sharing views on religion, being a Vegan, or home cooking.

Parque de la Reserva: We capped off the tour with a visit to Parque de la Reserva, the biggest fountain park in the world. We timed out the tour to finish at dusk when a pretty light show occurs on the fountains. It was neat!

A Taste of Lima: Lima is known as one of the dining capitals of South America. Unfortunately our only night here was a Sunday, which is when many restaurants are closed. We did manage to find a great restaurant that was open, Huaca Pucllana, a restaurant overlooking Inca ruins!!

Our tour also took us to local markets to try things like Inca Kola (tastes like bubblegum soda and to see local vegetables)

Mmmm…guinea pig!:)

Pacific War: it has been fascinating to hear about the Pacific War from the perspective of the Bolivians, Peruvians, and Chileans. Each side has its own story which is quite interesting. In the end Bolivia lost its land on the Ocean. Bolivia hasn’t given up as the still celebrate an ocean day even though it has no ocean! Additionally, Bolivia has a navy….just for Lake Titicaca!

The End
Wow, our world journey is complete! We have had a blast and have so many memories that we will remember for a lifetime. Thanks so much for coming along with us on our trip! We loved hearing from several of you and hope that you enjoyed the journey too! We now need to head back to the real world. 🙂

If you ever need any travel recos or are crazy enough to travel around the world, let us know. We’d love to help!

Adios for now, and we hope to see several of you again soon! (Tuesday morning for those of you at work :)) A final recap post will be posted Tuesday morning for those interested!

Ryan & Emily

Hola from Bolivia!

Wow, it’s been a great week!

Our mission trip officially started on Sunday, but we had to arrive in Bolivia on Friday evening. Unfortunately, OneWorld only has flights from Santiago to La Paz every other day so we had to come in a bit earlier than needed. While we were sad to miss seeing Santiago, the extra time in La Paz ended up working out well!

We read that about 60%-70% of people experience altitude sickness when arriving in La Paz. Emily was fortunate to be in the 30% of people who don’t have any issues, but I ended up with several symptoms – headaches, shortness of breath, and tiredness. Our first full day in La Paz involved walking to the grocery store (where we found lots of Western food including Nutella and OralB Toothpaste :)), watching college football, and catching up on reading. In fact, we got to see the OSU vs. Northwestern football game thanks to our SlingBox! I was thankful for this low-key day as it allowed for further acclimation to 13,000 ft+.

We also had a chance to venture out for dinner our first night in the city. The hotel arranged a taxi and had the taxi wait 1 hour for us to finish before driving us home. This cost a total of $5 – quite a difference from Bora Bora!

Sunday was the official start of the trip as our four other team members arrived from the US. We spent the day getting to know the local team leader as well as the rest of the team over lunch, dinner, and shopping in the old town market.

To the Field
On Monday we left bright and early for the altiplano region, our home base for the next 5 days. After dropping off our bags, we headed out to homes of two families to start digging!

Landscape of Altiplano

Home base where we stayed

Another spot where we washed clothes 🙂

Water Wells!
The focus of our construction work was digging water wells for 4 families. Prior to Samaritan’s Purse putting in these wells, the families had no clean water source and were drinking from streams that were often contaminated. The water is particularly toxic to infants who don’t have built up immunity so Samaritan’s Purse selected families with small children to serve.

So… how do you dig a well?
On the first day we were both surprised to see that the water well was entirely dug by hand! The wells were often around 30-40 feet deep, and the wells were literally dug out with shovels, picks, and buckets.

The neat part is that the family has to commit to helping dig the well, which helps ensure they are vested in the project and exposed to the work of Samaritan’s Purse.

Our team of volunteers were spread out over 4 different wells and worked right alongside the families with the digging. Some of our team actually went into the wells to dig, which was quite a task since you only had a rope to get in/out of the well! Emily and I spent much of our time working bucket duty. We lowered bucket after bucket (mas baldes! in Spanish) down to the person digging and then hauled up the mud by hand. Many of the buckets were around 50 pounds so we definitely got a workout!

Much of the actual digging was also done by the families and friends of the family. We were amazed at how long several of the people could dig! One man spent 4 hours digging! Those of us from the US were all panting from the higher elevation!

Emily and I also had a great time interacting with several of the children. Samaritan’s Purse focuses on relationships with the families in addition to digging the wells. I spent two days at the same well and spent a lot of time playing soccer with two children, and Emily spent a lot of time playing volleyball with one of the girls at another site.

After the Digging + Concrete Rings
Once the well was 6 feet below the water table, the digging was finished! At this point our work changed to putting in concrete rings. Emily actually had the opportunity to help build the concerte rings on a 5th well site on one of the days. Samaritan’s Purse provides the families use of concrete molds, steel rebar, and concrete mix to help make the rings. Building the concrete rings is actually a very early phase of the well (before digging) so that the concrete has time to cure. If you ever need to help making concrete rings, Emily is now experienced!

These concrete rings lined the well so that clean water could seep into the reseviour and allow for continual fresh water. Samaritan’s Purse had a pulley system on a metal stand so we all worked together to lower in the rings. This was an exciting time as this meant the well was almost done! After each ring was lowered, someone went into the well to straighten the ring, cement the seams, and place rocks outside of the concrete to act as a filter for the water.

Seeing the joy on the families’ faces when the last ring went in was absolutely incredible! Although many of the families were very poor (earning < $2 per day), many had food because they were farmers. The major outage for these families was clean water. They were so incredibly grateful!

Family after last well ring was placed!

Other Activities
In addition to digging water wells, there were several other events. Here is a quick recap:

– Youth Activities: One night our group helped with a local youth activity, and several members of our group gave gifts to the children. On Friday we had the chance to meet with local students and play games. One member of our team brought balloons which were a huge hit!

– Llamas: On Friday, our group helped for a short time with Samaritan’s Purse’s Agricultural Program. This program helps to provide livestock, parasite treatments, and veterinarian education to local farmers. Our job was to help with vaccinations. I am not a big fan of animals so Emily and I were assigned the job of marking the heads of the llamas that had received the vaccination treatments. 🙂

– Music!: Wednesday night the local staff of Samaritan’s Purse shared their music with us. It was a wonderful evening! They even let us join in – I got to try my hand at the drums, and Emily played a tambourine that was made of sheep toenails!! (Mrs. K – Have you played sheep toenails before??)

– Salt Mine: The altiplano region has lots of salt so one day on the well we stopped by to visit a local salt mine. It was interesting! You’ll notice in these pictures that the clouds seem really close to the ground. This happens when you’re at 13,000 feet!

– Lake Titicaca & City Overlook: After returning from the field, we spent our last day in Bolivia doing a fun excursion to Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. The lake is also known for the reeds that grow on its shores (which we happened to also see on Easter Island – the only other place our guide said you could see them!). We got to see reed boats being made and took a boat ride out on the lake in one (although… the captain used a motor vs. rowing! ;))

Favorite Memories:
– Seeing the faces of the families who received a well for the first time
– Getting to see the staff at Samaritan’s Purse in action. We were absolutely blown away by the humility, kindness, love of people, and passion for Samaritan Purse’s mission that each of these people showed.

We’re almost back to reality! We will spend one day in Lima, Peru, on our way home. We’ll be back to work by Tuesday!

Adios for now!

Hola!

This post will be about as short as our time in Santiago! Our flight from Easter Island arrived about 9 PM, and we flew out the next morning. With just one night in Santiago (unfortunately) we made the most of it! We had hoped to stay in Santiago at least 1-2 days but irregular flights to Bolivia (our next stop) limited us to just one night.

Off the Plane and Running!
With only carry on luggage, we can get out of airports quickly. We were staying at a hotel at the airport so we were checked in about 15 min after landing and back on our way. We grabbed a cab and headed for one of Santiago’s top restaurants – Astrid & Gaston.

The Restaurant
The original location of this restaurant is in Lima and has been ranked in the world’s top 50 restaurants. It will be closed the day we will be in Lima so we tried it in its Santiago branch! We first heard about this restaurant last year when working on an MBA project on Brazil restaurants so we were excited to try it!

Our dinner was great! Since people eat very late in Chile, we were right in the heart of the dinner time at 9:30 PM. Here are a few snapshots of our great dinner:

Ceviche… Raw fish cooked in lime juice (Emily wasn’t up for trying this :))

And the finale… Carrot cake with passionfruit covered bananas!

We were greeted in the morning with beautiful views of the Andes Mountains from the airport. While it was a super short stay, we enjoyed our one Santiago outing!

lorana from Easter Island!

Where on earth is Easter Island? It is the world’s most remote inhabited island! It is located about 2,500 miles from both Tahiti and Chile in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

We took this photo from our iPad:

The Flight
There is only one flight a week from Tahiti to Easter Island so this flight was tricky to book! Thankfully we got a ticket… and the flight was on time! We’re not sure what the airline does with you if this flight gets cancelled… maybe you wait until the next week? We’re glad we didn’t have to find out!

The interesting part is that the flight leaves at 1:55 AM! We have no clue why a flight would leave at this time, but it does!

Where to stay?
Finding a place to stay on Easter Island was an adventure! There was a place that looked great… until I saw it was $1,000-$1,500 per night. My goodness!! There were a couple of other very very expensive options… and then it dropped instantly to not nice at all. I hunted and hunted and finally found a new eco cabin. It is actually great! It won an eco design award and is complete with solar panels on the top for heating the water.

The cabin had a full kitchen, a flat screen TV, and was super clean. It was very nice for the island! We were even greeted at the airport with a flower necklace…and our own flock of wild roosters and hens!

Driving – An Adventure!
The island is about 50 km around so we definitely needed a rental to get around. While some roads are fine, lots of the roads here are an adventure to say the least!

The rentals are almost all SUVs with 4 x 4. Even with a 4 x 4, the rental car representative told us that there was a “bad” road we couldn’t go on as it could be unsafe for the car and the people. They also showed us specifically where the spare tire and toolkit were… hmmmm….

We understood the road restrictions and spare tire when we saw the “good” roads! While there are several paved roads, there are lots of roads with huge rocks, red mud, and massive ruts.

There are wild horses all around the islands so they are sometimes on the roads… as well as cows, dogs, and roosters. This little SUV was also a manual. The whole experience was an adventure!

What time is it?
Our friends at Apple certainly don’t know!

Normally the airline announces the local time when you deboard the plane, but it didn’t seem to happen on our flight in. The rental car clock was also several hours off, and the cabin has no clock. To get the current time we updated our iPhones via the local cell carrier and went on our way. In fact, all was well for our first half a day here as we started exploring the island.

On the morning of Day 2, we got up to see sunrise. We had looked up the sun time table on http://www.timeanddate.com and saw it was for 7:55 AM. When we woke up, the sun was already up!

Ryan (forever the time manager) was of course very distraught that he could be operating 1 hr off for half a day and have no clue. It took him a while to figure out what was off, but it turns out Apple hadn’t programed in new Daylight Savings Times for Easter Island! While DST begins in mid October next year, last year it was in early August. This year DST happened in September. What?!

Thankfully we figured out in time that we arrived for our main tour of the island on time!

The Crazy Statues & A Brief Overview
Why go to Easter Island? It is know for the Moai statues that are all over the island. These statues were carved by the islanders between 1000 – 1600 AD in honor of ancestors. Each statue took about a year to complete and often weighed several tons! The really crazy part is that the statues then had to be transported to their chosen resting place… which was often several kilometers away! This transporation process often took 1 – 1.5 years!

Things were ok for the islanders for several hundred years, but then they ran out of wood. Much of the island’s wood had been used for transporting statues and had left the island barren. This resulted in intertribal fighting in which tribes likely knocked down the moai of other tribes.

Eventually, the tribes started to settle disputes through what was called the “Birdman Competiton” in which the tribal leaders competed to see who would be the overall head leader for the year.

Things forever changed on the island when raiders from Peru came to the island and forcibly took many islanders as slaves. Only 15 were ever returned to the island, but these returned slaves brought back smallpox which decimated much of the remaining population. At one point the population was just 111 people.

With Chile winning a war over Peru and Bolivia, Chile took over control of the island. After a disastrous move of turning the whole island into a sheep farm for 40-50 years, things have finally turned around. Many statues were stood back up, and Chile is investing in the island. Tourism has gone from 6,000 visitors a year a decade ago to 60,000 a year today.

Don’t step on the statues!

Touring the Island
To understand these people and the statues, we took a great tour led by a New Zealander who had moved here. This allowed for an English tour and lots of kiwi humor! We had a great day visiting all over the island and getting some fun pictures!

I have been working on my long jumping skills!

While in Easter Island an exciting discovery occurred…two additional moai were found! Archeologists are coming from around the world to research.

We also saw the main quarry where the moai were carved. There were hundreds of moai in various stages of construction left there.

We also ventured out in our 4 x 4 to see the island’s main dormant volcano as well as see the remnants of the Birdman Competition huts.

On try #2 we also saw sunrise since we overrode Apple this time! 🙂

After a fun stop at Easter Island, we will spend the night in Santiago before moving on to Bolivia for a very exciting part of our trip! We will be volunteering with Samaritan’s Purse on a mission trip. We will tell you more about the mission work soon, but until then we appreciate prayer for our team and the work that will be done!

Hola!

We wanted to take a moment before entering the last portion of the trip to update you on what we’ll be doing. One thing that we have wanted to do for several years is to serve on an international mission trip. When planning this sabbatical a mission trip was top on our list to include.

Our mission trip runs from Oct 6-12, and we will have no Internet access most of this time. We have scheduled our last blog posts from Easter Island and Chile to post over this time for your reading enjoyment. 🙂 We will blog on the Bolivia work once we have Internet again.

What is Samaritan’s Purse?
Samaritan’s Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. The organization serves many missions, including medical missions, water/hygiene improvement, disaster relief, and church constructions.

We have been blessed to be a part of Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Program for several years. As part of this program, individuals from all over the world pack shoeboxes full of small toys, school supplies, and hygiene products that are dispersed with Christian literature. This work is near and dear to my heart so I really wanted to volunteer internationally with this fantastic organization!

Bolivia Water Well Project!
We were very excited when we learned that there was a mission trip to Bolivia over a time that could work. For this particular mission, we will be helping to install a water well in the Bolivian mountains at about 15,000 feet.

This work is important because many here suffer and die from contaminated water that could be fixed with a clean drinking source. Learn more about this work here from a recent trip and a short video:

A Well of Love

http://video.samaritanspurse.org/player/?vid=k2f4w3y2&c=16&title=give-clean-water

Meeting the Team
We’re very excited to meet the rest of the mission team! We will be serving with 4 others from a church in the US. We’ve been exchanging emails and had a phone call, but meeting at the hotel in Bolivia will be our first in person introduction.

Help Needed
We certainly feel blessed to be able to serve and are excited to see what God will do over the next week. We appreciate any prayers for our work and the people with whom we will interact.

If you’d like to learn more about Samaritan’s Purse or to volunteer, check out their website at: http://www.samaritanspurse.org/

Interested in putting together a shoebox? Let me know. I absolutely love putting the boxes together and could help you still do one this year!