LA TURISTA (The Tourist)

You know you're a tourist when you keep seeing the same gringos in all the different towns you visit. It's a bit strange after being one of about a dozen white people in Tumbes.

It's hard work all this tourism. We seem to be constantly on the move, fitting in as many sites as possible. My trigger finger is starting to ache from all the photography.

Here are some of the highlights so far:

• Las Islas Ballestas in Paracas (South of Lima, near Pisco on the map), often referred to as the 'poor man's Galapagos', were rather cool- I've never seen so many birds in my life. Not surprisingly it's famous for it's guano (bird droppings used for fertiliser) production.

• Nazca Lines - who made them? when? why? ooh, mysterious. We checked them out by air but all my photos sucked so I'm afraid you're just gonna have to check them out yourself. Have fun in the wee plane - it's a bit of a roller coaster. The pilot circles around the figures in both directions and tips the plane to point out the patterns with the wing.

ALTITUDE TRAINING

• Arequipa (the White City). 2325m above sea level. Many of the buildings are made from sillar (volcanic rock) and they look very cool. We also visited a convent that was like a little city. Apparently all the well-to-do Spaniards used to send their daughters there until some church head honcho came and told them that nuns shouldn't really have a lifestyle that included having three slaves each.

A confession box for nuns at the Santa Catalina convent.

• Colca Canyon - I think it's the world's second deepest canyon (the deepest is nearby but we didn't see it, and yes, the Grand Canyon is behind both of them on the charts). Gorgeous green hills covered in Inca terraces and lots of llamas, alpacas and vicuñas hanging out around the place. We stayed in Chivay - 3700m above sea level and stopped in one spot that was almost 5000m.

All I need now are some llamas.

CIAO TUMBES

I leave town tomorrow. It feels really weird at the moment. I don't want to leave. Luckily various married women have plans to introduce me to their relatives or neighbour's cousin's brothers tonight at our farewell party so that I can fall in love with them, get married tomorrow at mass and stay in Tumbes. I don't care how good-looking and professional they are, I here Macchu Picchu is very sexy and I'm quite keen to see it. So I reckon I'm gonna go ahead with my plan to travel around for two weeks and then I'll probably stick to the plan of returning to NZ on 5 Feb. I love it here but I'm also ready to see my family (especially the new additions) and friends again.

Also, incidentally, the streets are getting more and more dangerous here. It seems there's a mid-summer custom that involves throwing water balloons at girls. Only at the girls, mind (as if they didn't have enough to deal with with the whole machismo/subjection thing, the guys gotta throw things at them too) and gringa girls seem to be an especially popular target. It was kinda funny until I got hit with a balloon that didn't break and it just hurt. It's been banned in many cities cos there have been injuries.

I was starting to feel especially harassed the night I got bitten by a dog (completely unprovoked) and then hit by a water balloon on the way out of the hospital. After that I felt like hiding away in the house for a few days. I'm out and about again now, though. Don't worry it was just a small dog and it's been vaccinated against rabies. I contemplated getting the rabies vaccination anyway, just to be safe, until I found out it wasn't just one injection but a series of ten, into the stomach muscles!
A man in the hospital asked me if it was a black dog, and when I said it was and asked him how he knew he said that, "los hombres negros les gusta la carne blanca" (black men like white flesh)!

After that info you're probably wondering why I don't want to leave, but really I do love this place. I've been trying for the last 15 minutes or so to upload some images of the people and places I'm leaving behind but the computer is not co-operating. So here is the black hole of sadness that represents all the things I'm going to miss about Tumbes, e.g. the people, the community feeling, the food, the dancing, the music, the cars, the warmth, the easygoingness, the chaos, the life in the streets, the beach, the celebrations every five minutes, the dulcerias (sweet shops), being able to buy everything really cheap, the language.












Ciao for now. I'm travelling to the Nazca Lines, Puno (Lake Titicaca), Arequipa, Cusco, Macchu Picchu. Hopefully I'll be able to do some blogging on the way but if not, I'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.

LAS CASAS (The houses)

I've had a request from one of my loyal fans to give a bit more information about houses and, having recently had the chance to view and photograph a few more dwellings, I feel better placed to provide more detail. So, here you go Mum, Peruvian houses...

Thought I'd start with my house. It's probably one of the flashest in our street. It's three storeys, has five bedrooms, running water all day (we also have a water filter on the tap), electricity, a flushing toilet and a shower. There's tiles on almost all the floors and glass windows. All the walls are made of brick and concrete and are freshly painted. I'd put it in the middle class range and would go so far as to say that it's really rather flash for Tumbes.

Most of the houses I've visited in Tumbes have been similar but usually a little bit less classy. All have had indoor, flushing toilets but some only have water for part of the day or run out often.

People that can't afford bricks use mud, old cans and whatever else they can find to construct their walls. The frame is provided by thick cables of iron(?). You can see them sticking up in this photo, ready for when the homeowner decides to add another level.

For a while I was trying to work out why there weren't any houses made of wood. I thought maybe it was something to do with the climate - maybe it keeps the house cooler if you use mud or bricks. This may, of course, be true but I also realised lately that there really aren't any trees here which quite likely means there's not a lot of wood around and bricks are just easier to come by.

There are also quite a few houses below road level...

I asked Frinetd why they're like this recently and she said that when it rains a lot (still to see any real rain) the mud piles up around the houses. So this is a house that was built a while before the proper road was constructed and i'ts been surrounded by a few years of mud. In the areas without sealed roads the houses will eventually completely disappear.

I've also visited some very basic houses. Some without electricity (they go to bed early), some with internal walls made only of woven flax-like stuff, some with great indoor/outdoor flow - animals inside and toilet outside. I also now understand why some people looked confused when I tried to explain what a bbq was by saying that it's when you cook outside over a fire. For lots of people here that would just be called 'cooking'.

In Tumbes you can have a fancy house like my family's right next to a much more basic one. Our house started off much more basic and they've gradually been improving it, which I think is a great way to go about it. In larger cities (Piura for example) there are much more obvious rich areas and poor areas. Some houses have full-time segurity guards in little cages. I hear that in Lima the difference between the rich and poor areas are ridiculously large and getting worse.

"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

- Plato

MIS PROYECTOS (My projects)

I've just finished the first ever periodical for the Community Participation team here at the Tumbes Health Board. It's been an interesting project and I now feel that I understand a lot more about who's involved in health promotion and what they do. Now I just have to wait while they work out if they've got enough money to print it. My co-workers are busily working on the 08 budget. There's not much I can do so I'm just hogging a computer to write emails and blogspots while they sift through numbers with seriously knitted brows.

Next week is my last week in Tumbes and we (the gringas) are planning a week-long English course for local English teachers. Last night we had a couple of television interviews for local stations to talk about it (a little scary in another language but it seemed to go ok).


We appeared on two different channels which brings me up to three television appearances in Tumbes (had to introduce myself and dance a bit when I accompanied my little sister for a dance thingy she did a month or so ago). I've also lived with two television journalists (Chimbote). Add that to the fact that everyone on the street seems to know my name and want a photo with me, and I feel like quite a star. I'm actually kinda keen to get back to New Zealand where I'm not quite so interesting. At least famous people can wander the streets in disguise - it's a bit tricky to disguise the colour of your skin.

Next week we're moving the office across the road to the main DISA (District Health Board) building. I think the move is partly so we'll be together with the whole promotion team in one office and partly because AECI (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation or somesuch translation) are gradually winding down their work here and we're currently in their building. About half the AECI employees got laid off last week. DISA have also just thrown out the old director and installed a new one. Because a large number of people don't have secure contracts this may mean a whole lot of redundancies in DISA too. It seems quite common that new mayors and such kick out all the the government employees and start afresh with new ones when they enter office, and it seems this could be a possibility with the new health director too. Those on more secure contracts could also get reshuffled. There doesn't appear to be much job security in this country.

PROSPERO AÑO (Happy/Prosperous New Year)

I'm expecting a fantastic 2008 as I have now diligently observed a number of local traditions aimed at increasing my luck. I wore yellow underwear for 'general' luck, ate 12 grapes for month-specific luck, sat down in a chair 12 times in order to get myself a husband, and ran around the block (well, we walked so we could eat the grapes at the same time) to improve my travel prospects. (Oops, just realised that I forgot to put money in my shoe to improve my financial outlook. Never mind.) Needless to say, it was a busy night.

We also set fire to el Año Viejo (the old year) - a mannequin stuffed with fireworks. Oh how the Kiwi firefighters would shudder at this one.

Before...

El Año Viejo. Ex-president Fujimori apparently.

We had a little trouble getting it to burn until a friendly passerby threw some alcohol on it for us.

During...

After...

This is actually the one down the road. Ours wasn't really in any kind of recognizable shape after the local boys had played with it (while it was still burning, and, yes, I did try to stop them but they just looked at me like I was a crazy foreigner).

Question for the day: Can you change your luck?
There are all sorts of amulets and potions you can buy here to change your luck and I'm just wondering if that's actually possible. Luck, I would have thought, is, by definition, random. If you can do something to change it it's no longer luck. Comments welcome