Welcome to Peru

So Digital Hope is back on the road! This time we head back to South America and the beautiful country of Peru. 9 flights in 18 days allows us to visit the cities of Lima, Trujillo, Arequipa and Cusco and some wonderful projects, SKIP, HOOP and My Small Help. You can google Peru for the history and the culture, but let us offer our insight on what we have found. So far, our stay in Peru has been magnificent. Not least for the food. Known as the culinary centre of the America’s, Peru has some wonderful local dishes, flavor a plenty, and for us dollar carrying ‘tourists’, value for money. My rice making abilities may be minimal at best, but from now on, adding lime juice to my recipies is a must. The ‘street meat’ is tasty, deep fried jacket potato filled with beef and cheese, beautiful, grilled beef heart, amazing. That doesn’t include the ‘street cake’. Some of the best apple pie I’ve had. We look forward to more of the same as we travel, not least the grilled guinea pig which is a ‘delicacy’ here in the mountain regions. The roads certainly offer us plenty to talk about. The taxi drivers back in our base city of Chicago have a reputation which is well deserved, but try that on sand tracks, in cars from the 70′s which have seen better days and non-existent highway rules and you get the picture. What is more fascinating is the number of 70′ and 80′s VW Beetles on the roads. They would be in high demand back in the UK where they are very popular, and would probably demand a hefty price, but they are everywhere here. Our first trip is to Trujillo, one of Peru’s largest cities and a region where poverty and a lack of basic human needs are hugely apparent. We will visit a project that is providing the most amazing services to the poverty stricken region of Alta Trujillo, a mass of roofless shacks with a lack of running water, electricity and basic sanitation. The children in this region are one of the most impoverished in the country. We have just concluded our visit to SKIP, and we will provide an update on that amazing project in the next few days. Please stay tuned to find out more, and keep in touch with Johnny Ruiari and I via Facebook and Twitter (@digitalhope) Many thanks Jock and the Digital Hope Team