Livin' The Dream: The search for a new home

My parents were on their way home and it was time for me to start the next leg of my adventure on the north coast of Peru. My trip itinerary before leaving the states was to spend 4 months volunteering in the mountains, 4 months on the coast, and then 4 more in the jungle working on projects in the fields of sustainable development, microfinance, and rainforest conservation. After spending 4 months in Cusco working on my stove project and one month traveling with my parents, I am now left with 7 months in my trip. I plan to stay on Peru's northern coast until March working in microfinance (and surfing) and then traveling to the jungle city of Iquitos to finish up my time before coming home in June. My plans for the jungle have now changed a little bit as I now plan to continue my stove project and potentially add a new element installing biosand water filters in rural homes. As many people don't know to boil their virus and bacteria infested water, or don't bother to do so, it is a major health concern in rural villages. Water filters would provide villagers a simple way to clean their water keeping them healthy.

My time over the last few weeks has been devoted to scouting cities on the northern coast in which I wanted to live, talking with volunteer organizations working in microfinance, looking for a new place to live, and getting settled in my new home. In my search I spent about 2 weeks in 4 different cities trying to get a sense of what life was like. I checked out Chimbote, Trujillo, Chiclayo, and Mancora. You can click here to see a map of these 4 cities. In the end, I decided to live in Huanchaco which is a small beach town just outside of Trujillo. Here is a map of my new apartment. Chimbote was scratched from my list of potential places to live because of the constant smell of fish in the air from the processing plants there. Chiclayo seemed to have a very fast paced life as well as a coastline that was filled with dilapidated buildings. Mancora was absolutely beautiful, but as it was a very small town filled with tourist I could see myself getting sucked into the gringo life there and not spending my time with Peruvians. As one of my main goals here is to master Spanish and learn a bit about the culture, Mancora didn't seem like such a good fit.

Where I'm now living, Huanchaco, is a small little beach town of about 8,000 people that is sunny and 75º all the time and is very well maintained and has beautiful beaches that fill up on the weekends. It's also about 20 minutes from the city of Trujillo (pop 700,000) which has everything that I could want in a big city. It even has a movie theater, which is an upgrade from Cusco! I'm finally starting to feel a bit settled here, but am still searching for work, and friends :( I think I now have a couple of leads on both though, so hopefully things will start getting more exciting soon.

Until next time, keep livin' the dream!