Experiencing Peru, from the class room to the Amazon

Written by Natasha Jones - GapBreak Peru, 2009

Living in Cusco is just awesome, coming back from weekend trips really makes us appreciate this place and the fact that we have become locals here - with our host families and with the restaurants that we hang out where we are recognised its such a great feeling, and the fact that we only have 3 weeks left here is such a depressing thought.

Only three weeks of the placement to go, its getting very scary and sad! The past 2 and a half months have just been amazing, classes with the kids at school have been coming along - slowly but surely - and no doubt the kids have started picking up the English classes with more confidence, as well as some great relationships developing between us and the kids (even if sometimes we get our mean teacher faces on).

Construction has been focused on cleaning up a room, which will be turned into a computer room for the kids, again this has been a slow process but hopefully the outcome will be great. The past few weeks have been very broken up in regards to the school, however we are all seeing improvements and a good influence and we are all motivated to work extremely hard for our last couple of weeks at Ccorrao School.

We’ve gotten some great travel in as well as working at the school, from White Water Rafting, which was such an exciting, fun trip, to a 5-day trip to Bolivia. We stayed with a traditional family one night which was so amazing, on this little remote island, the little cottages we stayed in were just gorgeous - no electricity or running water but just beautiful scenery and atmosphere and it was great to experience how traditional families live in Peru, very simple lives and they went out of their way for us.

Our other major trip has been to the Amazon Jungle!! The part we went to was Manu, we spent four days, three nights there and had such an amazing time. It was great to be closer to sea level again, breathing in the huge amount of fresh oxygen was such a relief and some people actually got altitude sickness on arriving back to Cusco! It was also great to have 30 degree Celcius weather again! We camped out the first night in the jungle, having spent the first day looking through little villages and taking in the jungle’s amazing landscapes. We spent a couple of hours travelling to our campsite on this little boat which was so nice and relaxing, sitting back while riding on a boat down the Amazon!

I have about 3 weeks here after the placement is over and can’t wait to travel more with the friends I’ve made along the way. But for now, the next three weeks of the placement are going to be concentrated on the kids’ classes and finishing off the construction.