[Doug and Maria have been traveling between Lima and service locations visiting students the past two weeks. Here is the last blog entry from the trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Starting tomorrow entries will be posted from the first service visits, to pause again when we leave Lima midweek…
Early this morning a massive fire started in this shantytown that we visited about a month ago. About 300 homes burned down and an estimated 2,000 people are homeless now. We heard that the school we had visited did not burn down, fortunately. The entry from our visit and the…
Tuesday, Oct. 11 Tim with the Pinkuylluna ruins behind him. This town, sitting halfway between the Incan capital of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, was originally inhabited by pre-Incan tribes before the Incas renovated it. Structures built before the Spanish arrived are still in use today. We visited…
Monday, Oct. 10 The women apply the dyes to the wool. After breakfast and bidding adios to our Mennonite host families in Lucre and Huacarpay, we traveled to the small town of Chinchero. At many of the other tourist sites we had been impressed by vendors selling…
Sunday, Oct. 9 The view from the palace at the top was gorgeous. At the end of yesterday we headed for the outskirts of Cusco and two small towns – Lucre and Huarcapay – that have Mennonite congregations. Half of the students stayed in one of 3…
Saturday, Oct. 8 A genuine 16-person Andean musical and dancing troupe. On Friday we took a short flight from Lima to Cuzco (a trip by bus through the mountains takes 21 hours!). Saturday was dedicated to visiting sites in Cuzco, the capital of the Incan empire that…
Thursday, Oct. 6 Josh and Maddie sing an Andean folk song. To mark the end of the study portion of their SST the students hosted a goodbye (despedida) and thank-you party for their host families. Instead of a regular afternoon lecture on Thursday, the students prepared a…
[Note: No blog entries were posted while we took an extended trip to the Andes to visit Machu Picchu and the surrounding area. After returning to Lima the students traveled to their service locations for the next six weeks. All arrived safely at their service locations. We will now go…
Friday, Sept. 23 This rock stood in a central plaza and was part of a sundial. Ancient Caral is very ancient; at 4,600 years old it is the oldest civilization discovered in the Americas, having been built at the same time as the pyramids in Egypt. Indeed,…
Thursday, Sept. 22 The level fields in the valley are irrigated from a river flowing down from the Andes or from wells. We took a two-day field trip to see the ruins of Caral, a city built north of modern Lima about 4,600 years ago. But before…
