Peru - Nazca lines

We arrived in Lima late after taking 2 hours to get through customs! We only had time for a few hours sleep before catching an early morning bus to Nazca. The town is famous for the Nazca lines which are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert of Peru. They have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The high, arid plateau stretches more than 80 kilometres between the towns of Nazca and Palpa. Scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture nearly a millennium ago, between 200 BCE and 700 CE. The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, llamas, and lizards. The only way to see them is from the air so we arranged to go up in a small plane overlooking the lines. We had an hour to kill before hand so we went in search of a restaurant. We ended up eating a mountain of food and then proceeded to get in a very small plane. I´m used to small planes but nothing I´ve experienced in a ´Joey´ was anything like this! I have never felt so sick. Tommy went a very yellow colour and I thought I was going to be sick. The views were incredible but we spent the whole 30min flight trying to keep our food down! There is nothing much else to do in Nazca so we decided to leave that night on a night bus to Arequipa.

Christmas at BSQ

This year I organised the BSQ Christmas Appeal again. I arranged for the children from Escuela General Fiscal Pintag to come to our school to receive their gifts from our children. Instead of one gift, they each made up a shoe box of items. Our kids loved it and got a lot out of helping those less fortunate than themselves. It was lots of fun!!!





Santa also visited BSQ! He came around with his team of elves to give each child a gift, below are a few pictures.

Peace Child - Primary Chistmas Production

This year we held the BSQ Primary Christmas Production at the San Fransisco University. It was a story all about two tribes that don't get on until a baby is born in one tribe and given to the other tribe in the name of Peace. Below are some pictures I took of the children during the dress rehearsal.

Alisa and Adam come to visit

Alisa and Adam came to visit after travelling around Central America before heading back to Australia to live. They arrived and both were feeling really ill, Alisa had a high fever and spent the first two days in bed! We had to take them to the Doctors in Tumbaco where they were given loads of medication and told to rest. Luckily they were well enough to fly to the Galapagos Islands for the week.

They following weekend we picked them straight up from the airport and headed to Otavalo and the Lagunas de Mojanda. It was really chilly so it was great to have fires in the bedrooms. We also had one of the regular powercuts at 7pm so ended up eating our dinner in candle light which was very romantic! We wondered around the market in the morning and picked up some Christmas pressies, then headed back to the hostal. We had planned to grab a quick lunch then head to the lakes but they cocked up our order and we ended up taking over 2 hours to eat, by which time it was too late so we decided to head back to Quito. Tommy and I will have to go back another time and see the lakes properly!



On the Sunday we met up with Ewan and Miranda, played some pool then had a walk down the Canyon and ate in the restaurant at the bottom. The steak was good but not big enough for Adam! It was great to catch up with them, we hadn´t seen Alisa for 3 years! We´ll definitely have to go and visit them in Oz in the next couple of years....

Is Harper a Daddy?

There is a husky dog called 'Nuve,' who lives in the other house on our land. She had pups three weeks ago now and we currently have 3 beautiful puppies living in our garden. Her owner told us that the father is a black lab, but from before she came to live here! It is extremely coincidental and there are hardly any Labradors around. Tom googled it to see if the time frame fits and it's possible - we hope they're his because they are gorgeous!! Not sure what we will do with more dogs but we'll wait and see. The good thing for him if he is the Dad, is to know that he was able to have puppies, as he had the chop about 6 weeks ago!

Escuela General Fiscal Pintag

This Saturday we were doing more work at the Escuela General Fiscal Pintag. It is a school in a poor community only 10 mins from the BSQ. An ex-colleague, Yvette and I set up a link with the school in July this year. Between our friends and families and some money raised at school we are paying the nursery teachers salary for 6 months. Last year the nursery was shut down because they could not afford to pay the $150 a month salary! We are also running a programme with the secondary students at the BSQ. They have to complete a certain number of hours of community service, so they are helping with a programme to improve the school at the weekends.

So far Martyn and I and lots of BSQ students have rubbed down and re-painted desks in one of the classrooms, we have provided the school with lots of books that have been donated by parents of the BSQ, we have given the school a number of rugs so that the children can have a reading area, we are in the progress of re-painting the playgroud and have cleaned up the nursery.


Below are some pictures from previous visits to the school. See October post for some more pics.

Arenal market and Lauralee's birthday

This weekend was very busy. After helping out at the school in Pintag in the morning, we went to Lauralee's for lunch. It was her birthday and friend and family were invited over to celebrate. She had a lovely marquee in her garden with great food, I think there were 5 courses in all! On Sunday I went with Miranda to the Areal market whilst Tom played golf.