Peru 2018 - Prologue

Tomorrow afternoon Andrea and I leave for Peru. We are travelling there with a group from Davis Orthodontics (where Andrea works as a Dental Hygienist) as volunteers with Kindness In Action. Kindness In Action facilitates mobile dental clinics in marginalized communities throughout the world. This will be our third time volunteering with them (we have also been to Guatemala and Ecuador).

We leave Toronto at 4:40pm tomorrow. I’m not packed yet. I’m typing, but I should be packing. I don’t really enjoy packing.

I have all my photography gear together – I spent a few hours making sure everything is ready to go, charging batteries, and collecting cables. Everything is together, I just need to pack it all into my camera bag (backpack style) and daypack. My only concern is rain. We are heading to Peru at the beginning of the wet season, and have been told to expect rain almost every afternoon. I will need to be extra careful that all my equipment stays dry. Thankfully both my packs have built-in rain covers. I am slo packing ziplock bags.

There are a lot of things to plan for when heading to the Amazon. Most important is looking after one’s health. That means making sure we have all the necessary vaccinations:

• Hepatitis A (series of 2) lifetime
• Hepatitis B (series of 3) lifetime
• Typhoid – good for 2 years
• Tetanus/diphtheria – good for 5-10 years
• Yellow Fever
• Anti-malaria pills

We are also bringing along Ginko Biloba since we will be travelling to the Cuzco (3,399m), the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu (2,430m) during our trip. At these high altitudes there is a good chance of altitude sickness, also known as acute mountain sickness (AMS). Ginko Biloba is known as a great natural remedy to the symptoms of AMS, which can feel like a hangover – dizziness, headache, muscle aches, nausea. I suffered a bit of AMS in Quito, Ecuador and it wasn’t pleasant. I also remember waking up at night feeling like I had stopped breathing, but it was just my body getting used to the lack of oxygen at high altitude.

I almost forgot the most important thing — supplies for battling “the Hershey squirts”, also known as “the green apple quick-steps”, also know as “diarrhea”. We usually take some over-the-counter medicine with us, as well as acidophilus supplements to keep our tummies in top shape. I hear that corn starch will also thicken things up in an emergency…

Here is our itinerary for the first half of the trip:

We will be flying direct from Toronto to Lima, leaving Toronto on Friday, Feb. 16 and arriving at 1:45am Saturday morning. We will have a layover in the Lima airport and then fly directly to Piura, arriving 7am Saturday morning. Once in Piura, we’ll have breakfast and then take the bus to Chulucanas. The mayor of Chulucanas will tell us where the need is highest, either Chulucanas or Morropon.  Either way, we will set up the clinics, have some dinner, and rest after a very long day.  Our accommodation is in Chulucanas. We will work in our clinic Sunday through Wednesday. Wednesday night, we will have a nice dinner to celebrate all that we've accomplished. Early Thursday morning (Feb.22), we will fly back to Lima.

I am hoping to have access to wifi every day so I can post daily to the blog. Bear with me. I have no idea what the facilities will be like. In Guatemala we had access to one very slow dial-up connection. In Ecuador it seems like wifi was everywhere. You just never know!

Thanks for following along!

(Photo: Babak Fakhamzadeh)