So after 2.5 weeks of working away on a building site, it became time to say our goodbyes and move on.

We had to stand up in front of the whole volunteer group and do a speech each (not in Spanish this time which was handy!) and then completed our final day on site whereby the awesome tiling team of Dave and Emily (almost) completed tiling the last room.

Dave and Emily have now learnt the skills of sanding, rendering, concrete mixing, concrete floor laying and tiling. All useful stuff for their future house (although both Dads and Mark will no doubt be required when this time comes!)

Tonight is a 'tuc-tuc´ party at the Pisco Sin Fronteras headquaters, which as far as we can tell is just a loud stereo in a tuc-tuc taxi, also there is a hot chili pepper compeition but Dave and Emily may just spectate at that event.

So the last few weeks have been somewhat up and down, Dave was never sure about voluntering but Emily persuaded him. It took a while to get into the swing of the organisation which at first seemed to be a bunch of drunk, loud people freeloading of the charity. However in the end we were proved wrong it was an excellent, interesting, fun and really worthwhile experience, and we made some great friends which we hope to keep in contact with.

The highlight for us was the building work on site. Not many people (especially Architects!) get the opportunity to help build a hospital, not only that in itself but in an area that is in dire need of such a fundamental facility.

The existing hospital is very interesting, dogs wander around in and out of the building, there was nothing really to stop people walking into the building site and the waiting rooms were exposed to the dust from the new-build. Patients are given there x-rays to take away and wander around the site looking at them (and therefore getting covered in dust!)

A special mention to the hospital toliets which were shocking, a lot of the time the water was not running so no hand washing or flushing, dirt and blood all over the place and even if the water worked there was no way of drying or sanitising your hands. In England this place would be closed down, over here it is just the way things are, the differences between our very developed homeland and the developing Pisco were very evident.

So all done here for us, in the end we were very sad to leave. It has been a very humbling experience and we are both proud that we could help in a small way.

Next adventure is to get a long distance overnight bus from the nearby town of Ica to our next stop Arequipa in the south of Peru.

Not really noticing that it is December over here, 30 degree heat and blue skies all day. A few Christmas trees around but not like back home, Christmas will be very different this year!