Hey everyone!! This is part two of my blog, having a great time here in Pisco. The weather has been lovely for the past few days, been keeping busy and having lots of (partly alcohol fueled) fun! A few new people have arrived since i got here and they seem like great guys. I'm really starting to broaden my horizons in the food department, have been eating all kinds of stuff that I normally wouldn't touch!!

Midweek madness!
Had a pretty easy day on Thursday; was at the fisherman's centre, which was a hangout for fisherman that is being renovated into a museum/ information centre for locals to learn about environmental issues and other useful information. I was just doing some research for one of the displays, which entailed going to an internet cafe, taking notes on dynamite fishing, minimum fish sizes for catching and problems with tourism. It felt like i was back at school doing Geography!! Had lunch at a local restaurant with a couple of the others who were working on the roof, then we decided to call it a day after about half an hour. This gave me the rest of the afternoon to chill out at the house before typing up my notes in the evening. Had a pasta bake for dinner, which was suprisingly good! Was about to start a game of cards with some of the guys but I got called up to do the dishes (which I had volunteered for in the morning) just before it got started. Had a few more drinks by the fire before heading to bed.

Friday was a bit more active; headed back to Super Fun Town where i spent the day wheelbarrowing cement over to the moulds. It took a bit of time to get the hang of it, but I was soon barrowing like a pro! There were only a couple of moulds made so we finished them in pretty good time. This gave me a another free afternoon... or so I thought as when I got back to the house my room-mate Will roped me into helping him with filling a column of the new dorm with cement. I was plugging holes in the form (the mould for the column) with bits of cement bags to stop it from leaking, or at least in theory, as when we poured the cement into the form, most of the plugs fell straight out and cement was gushing from the holes!! After dinner we played some more cards and then decided to get some rum and coke, This was a bad idea!! Some of us had a few too many (myself included) and we spent the night messing around and having way too much fun. This culminated in a bit of a mishap as I thought it would be a good idea to give my fellow Timberland-er Milan a piggy back ride back to the house. She promptly fell off my back and landed face first, chipping her tooth and almost losing her glasses!! She was alright, although I've been profusely apologising to her since!!

Living for the weekend!!
Saturday is a half day at PSF, so I spent the morning tree planting in a local community. This was pretty fun and some of the locals came to help us out. A 15 year old kid called Carlos was helping me out, so we got through about a dozen trees during the morning. Most of the group went to a local family's house for lunch but I had bought a ticket for a barbeque at a local "Padrilla", so I ducked out and after a while of searching for it, I finally got some nice chicken. I relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, went to the internet cafe again and played some more cards before heading off to a restaurant for some chicken fried rice. Also tried someone's squid, which was a full tiny squid (see my pictures I've put up!). I tried to avoid going out after Friday's exploits, but I was dragged along on a pub crawl through the town centre. There were some great spots for dancing and drinking and I had some good laughs. Took a tuk-tuk home at about 2ish, then headed for bedforshire again!

Although Sunday is a day off, I volunteered to spend this morning at "Fun Days" an environmental festival at the beach, where we encouraged some of the school kids to clean the beach front. We got a lot of rubbish picked up and I had a good time talking to some of the kids in Spanish. We then played football with some of the locals, who seem to make up a lot of weird rules, but nevertheless we still managed to win! When I got back I helped one of the new girls learn a bit of Spanish, then Ido, (one of the travel veterans of the group) taught me Poi, which is basically swinging two tennis balls on the end of ropes (which is much harder than it sounds, beieve me!) which, after bashing my head several times, I soon got the hang of!

Really looking forward to next week, got a few thing planned; will be watching the world cup somewhere, which should be particularly fun given the significant American contingent of the group, then at the weekend I'm probably going to Huaccachino for some sandboarding, buggy racing and drinking by the pool if the weather's nice!! Will probably do another blog next Sunday or Monday, depending on how much stuff I've got to talk about!! Check out my pictures in the picture section of the site, there's some good ones in there! Please feel free to write something on my message board so I know at least someone is reading these!!

Tom x