Last night me and the other volunteers along with bernabe and some friends went to the only club in town, Taj Mahal. To say it's different from everything you may expect is an understatement! Compared to the rest of the town the club is like something from the future, in the main room they have an abundance of strobe lights, which they NEVER stop using! The oddest thing of all was the music, peruvians are huge fans of regaton music and seem to love Sean paul, but definitely do not shy away from the likes of Madonna and Wham!
Before we went out I was advised that partying at this altitude can be a challenge so before we went out we used some coca leaves. Coca leaves are used to help with altitude sickness and also help with energy after a long day of work. You can use them a few different ways but the easiest is to rip a few leaves up, place them in the side of your mouth and suck the juices out of them. There is no real taste to the leaves but they do leave the side of your mouth numb, and work pretty quickly. Unfortunately by the time we got to the club the effects had warn off so even doing the basic awkward 'gringo' shuffle was difficult!
After a lie in this morning we all decided we would go an a walk, with Bernabe as our guide and this was by far the best experience I have had so far. We got a combi to the countryside and set off up the side of a large hill, pitting me against the altitude, with me coming out on top, after a long, sweaty, breathless battle. From the top you could see across the entire valley and the views were amazing. From there we headed towards the canyon to descend down to the road. This descent started with what can only be described as a natural slide that lead into the depths of the canyon. The slide was lined with grass making one fast and crazy descent which everybody seemed reluctant about but turned out to be hilarious. From then the best way to describe it was like the movie 127 hours. We weaved our way through narrow gaps, army crawled through holes, climbed over boulders and fought through bushes until after a journey not dissimilar to the likes of bear grylls we made it to the end where a car was waiting to take us to a restaurant for lunch. All 11 of us, yes 11, climbed in to this average sized family car and head off for lunch. What started off as a short 2 hour walked turned in to one big adventure and possibly the best day of my trip so far!
After such a long day the evening holds a night of subtitled films and an early night!
On the Spanish front, iv been able to pick up quite a bit of the language and can hold a basic conversation! Hopefully by the end of my stay with Expand Peru I will be fluent!