Hola!

Grace and Katie here to share another exciting week that has come to an end here in Pisaq. We said a sad farewell to James and welcomed the high schoolers. We began teaching at a new school, Tambo de Gozo, that sits next to the Urubamba River on a much larger campus than Divino Corazón. Sponsored by American churches, Tambo de Gozo is complete with everything from a computer lab to a playground and a zip line, offering a lot to the students.

Tuesday we packed into a bus, a van, and yet another van as we made our way to Ollantaytambo. Here we worked at a school that was a direct contrast to Tambo de Gozo – it wasn’t even built yet! We found it inspiring to see how a school could work so well with classrooms walls made only out of bamboo and tarpaulin. We put in a day of hard labor and successfully built a sturdy wall, a sandbox, and cleared away soil. In the late afternoon we took up the opportunity to see some more amazing ruins. Climbing up hundreds of ancient steps rewarded us with an amazing view of Ollantaytambo and the ruins below.

We also got to meet the high schoolers staying in Ollaytaytambo on the Spanish immersion program. Each of the three high schoolers got to fully envelop themselves in Peruvian culture as they spent the week with a host family.

The ride home was quite the adventure as we got to see how many people we could fit into a minivan- we counted 24! Singing along to American pop songs on the radio made the uncomfortable journey a lot more fun and moment hard to forget.

On Wednesday, the challenge that had been talked amount for many weeks was finally undertaken. Scott, Dalton and James tackled the 10K challenge with full gusto –at least initially. The 24 hour challenge begins and finishes with a 10km run. During the day competitors are also required to eat 10,000 calories of one type of food and lift a total of 10,000 kilos of weight with one type of exercise. As predicted the calories proved the greatest challenge. Scott was the most successful maxing out at around 7,000 calories with his combination of chocolate milk and oreos. Dalton and James perhaps regret picking peanut butter as their chosen food!

On Saturday the boys took on Mount Doom. This challenge had also been long awaited. After a 5:30am start they embarked on the exhausting hike which ended up taking 8 hours. The view and experience was said to be worth it however. Feeling somewhat worn out from an eventful week we (Katie and Grace) chose to take a day off and spend the morning relaxing in Pisac instead!

We returned to Cusco on Sunday to explore ruins and enjoy our final day with James. We first explored Q’enqo, followed by Saqsaywaman, both spectacular monuments of precise stonework. Huge rocks perfectly stack to create towering walls along with strange curved rock formations which made for great slides. We got an amazing panoramic view of Cusco city and some fighting llamas. With James’s big travel bag in hand we descended down the trail from Saqsaywaman to the main plaza for lunch and massages.

-Grace and Katie