Volunteering begins! Cusco: Week 5

I can't believe we're now on the "back end" of our time in Cusco. It has flown! 

This week we have shifted our daily schedule entirely, with homeschool in the morning, lunch with Blanca, then we head to our volunteering jobs at an after school program! We are volunteers in a public after school program that provides a place for the children of vendors (the ones selling goods and services in the plazas) to go so that they can do their homework, have a snack, and have some fun time off of the street for a few hours. We start at 1:30-2pm, do homework until 3:30pm, have a snack, and then spend 4-5pm doing English or French lessons (Katreina teaches French!) or playing games. At 5pm, the kids head out. But here's where the real humbling begins. Many head right out into the plaza to help their parents sell stuff or to hang out while their parents sell. We don't know when they finally go home, but we saw one of our kiddos in a cerveceria (taproom) at 9:30pm selling keychains one night. He stopped to give Frank a hug and told us what he was doing so we bought some of his keychains, and off he went with a smile on his face. These families and the kids work hard and seem to always smile despite the long hours on the street. We buy a few things here and there, but the best thing we hope to offer is homework help and a cozy environment for a few hours of their day. We see "our" kiddos in the plaza and it's so sweet when they say hi or give us hugs (Frank gets a lot of hugs!). It's only been a week, but I can already tell that we are really going to miss these kiddos when we leave Cusco.

Our crew of volunteers and kiddos! We do a lot of homework help, snuggling...

...and general cleanup. The walk to the program (and the playground) is steep, but it's worth it!

We kept it a little low-key this week, but we did hit trivia night with the kids (and they helped us get 3rd place!) and we went to our Spanish school for a Pisco Sour lesson. It was great to see some old classmates again and meet a few new ones. I even went to Salsa lessons with Katreina and we worked up an appetite for a nice girls' night out.

Always so much fun taking classes at Amauta! And we love Pisco Sours!

Green Point Restaurant is a bit of a splurge for us, but it is sooo good! Vegan/vegetarian menu, amazing kombucha, great beer, and a fantastic atmosphere. K & I really love it!

Yesterday after an awesome lunch in the Mercado de San Blas we did a little hike from the city up to Cristo Blanco, past Sacsayhuaman, Q'enqo, and Qochapata, over to Temple de la Luna, down to K'usilluchayoq, through the Plaza de San Blas and the Coca Museum, and into a bar for 2x1 drinks. It was about four or five hours on foot and had a lot of vertical gain...think of it as a test-run for the coming week. Everyone did ok and enjoyed wandering through some of the free archeological sites just outside of the city. Today is a day of rest and packing as bright and early tomorrow we leave to trek the Salkantay Trail for five days!

Cristo Blanco sits atop a hill over Cusco with great views of the city. About 30-min away by foot we arrived at the Temple de la Luna.

Did a little cave exploring around the temple before checking out the ruins of K'usilluchayoq.

Frank and I have also spent a ton of time this week ironing out travel plans. I may not have given enough consideration to bus schedules at the southern tip of South America when booking some our places at the end of the year, so we had to adjust some lodging plans. We are getting into the high season in Patagonia so lodging and tours/treks are a little harder/more expensive to secure, but we're working on it. Our joy of the week was securing a 5-day trek on the famous "W" in Torres Del Paine National Park! Almost 16 years ago we did that trek and even though we only had one kid at the time, we said we wanted to return with our kids. Well, we're doing it in December! And does the word, "Paine," look familiar???

~Jo, Nomadic Momma