Our Guest Speakers on April 8, 2013, were Rotarian Bob Black and his wife Ginette, who spoke about their recent trip to Peru. They were gone eight weeks, five and a half of which were spent volunteering.Bob was involved in building a preschool and Ginette was working with teenage girls between the ages of 12 – 18. They would spend mornings working and then the afternoons they would have a tour...
They were approximately 11,000 feet above sea level. They both found it hard to adjust and found breathing hard due to the difference in air quality.
Peru was the first to be growers of potatoes. They have approximately 200 varieties of the vegetable.
They stayed in the Amazon rainforest for eleven nights, and their means of transportation across the water to get into the forest was by zip line. There were lots of spiders/tarantula.
The national bird is “Cock of the Rock” – an intensely vibrant coloured bird. The forest was so dense that they could not see the animals but could hear them going. It took them 10 hours by bus to get out of the woods. If there were any places in the road that were washed out, then everyone got off the bus to fix the way – then they would drive a little further to the next wash out.
- Animals are free to wander everywhere
- Communities are nestled in the mountains
- Colca Canyon is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon
- Most buildings/homes are white as they have been built out of the volcanic rock
- A city within a city:
- Where years ago 400 nuns used to live
- Where is a high % of self-employed people
- People in Peru love to party and have parades
- There were people there from all over the world that Bob and Ginette met during their visit
- The cost of a taxi fare by van was $.30. Taxi fare to go anywhere in the city was $1.20
- The people of Peru love to negotiate on everything they sell
- Snowboarding on the sand was one of the activities available
- There are lots of plants for medicinal purposes – Ginette and another person had an experience in chewing a specific type plant that would then applied on a bullet ant sting. The pain from a bullet ant lasts approximately 24 hours.
- Ants were plentiful
- None of the people in Peru speak English. They are Spanish. Ginette was a translator during her visit not only to translate from English to Spanish and vice versa, but for people that she met were French, and she was able to help them out as well.