Jihuay: Ruins and Penguins and the Ocean! Oh My!

Hello from Cusco! I arrived here a couple mornings after a long (16 hour) ride from Playa Jihuay and the farm I had been staying at for my latest workaway. It was a totally different experience from my last workaway but just as interesting and perhaps an even better immersion into daily Peruvian life.

After bussing from Paracas to Nazca, I caught a colectivo (vans that run fixed routes but leave whenever they feel like it) to Santa Rosa, a "town" that maybe contained 30 buildings. From there, I continued following the instructions sent to me by, direct quote,"from Santa Rosa, you should walk down hill 20 minutes to the beach Jihuay. At the bottom you will cross a dry creek and 200 m further, at the entry of the small valley, you will find at your right, a wooden door. Just knock and ask for Miguel." Semi-surprisingly these I instructions worked rather well, though as I passed a man riding a donkey up the hill I did wonder what I had gotten myself into.

The farm, yes it's rather isolated 

Turns out what I had gotten myself into was a place that seemed right out of a children's adventure novel - the kind where you wonder where the heck their parents are and why aren't they supervising their offspring's adventures. The farm was located in a valley where the desert meets the sea, and on either side rose hills with all sorts of cool things to explore. On both sides were old stone ruins that dated back to a pre-Incan civilization, complete with broken pottery and human bones. What blew my mind was that nobody was there studying it.  Apparently there just isn't money or interest or some lack of something that keeps archeologists from exploring and cataloguing everything. And some of the ruins are in great shape, the houses still have roofs and you can go inside and really feel like you've been transported back in time. The lack of development in the area means the landscape is probably almost identical to the view the ancient owners of the house probably had out their front door 1000 years ago. It's really incredible. In addition to the ruins there were also penguins and sea lions and an abandoned mine to poke around in (yes I was careful). All in all a pretty cool place to spend some time in.

I wasn't making it up that there were bones everywhere 

View from inside one of the pre-Incan houses 

When I first arrived at the farm there was one other volunteer, the farm manager Miguel, and two other men hired to build some more  buildings on the site (side note, having a Peruvian and a German working on one project is not a good idea - at least in this case they had hilariously different styles of working, or really not working). The other volunteer didn't speak much Spanish, which was really his loss because Miguel was very well read and had a lot to say about Peruvian history, culture, and politics. And mostly it was a pretty scathing review of the current state of things. He laid a lot of Peru's problems at the level of corruption in the government that hindered adequate economic development or educational opportunities for a large chunk of the population. One person's opinion and I don't know enough about Peru to agree or disagree but it was very interesting to listen to.

In addition, to talking about Peru, Miguel was really good about getting the volunteers involved in daily Peruvian life. One evening the other volunteer wanted to fish, so we headed to the beach. The volunteer wasn't having much luck but while we were down there, Miguel helped a couple from the town above set their net up, and all of a sudden we were hauling in some huge catch of fish up onto the beach in the moonlight. The people gave us some fish as thanks for helping, which turned into our dinner an hour later. Definitely the freshest fish I've ever had. Another day, Miguel wanted to head up to the town to sell some other fish he had caught (he spent years working on big commercial fishing boats) so we hopped on the moto and I watched as he bargained with a small restaurant owner over the price. On my last evening there, we went to his friend's house to drink some pisco, the national liquor, while his friend played a selection of Latin American songs on the guitar (and a little Stevie Wonder). Again one of those experiences I wouldn't have had if I hadn't jumped off the typical tourist trail.

Miguel (right) and his friend singing

As cool as the place was, and as kind as everyone was, with only working in the morning (feeding animals, irrigating plants, general property maintenance, etc.) and only a few people around, I had time to be reaally homesick, for the first time on my trip. It passed, but I miss everyone, so don't think that I'm not thinking of you. Hope everyone is doing awesome! Next up Cusco!