Tacna, Peru

This week we went to Tacna, Peru to learn about their health care system and gave some fun!

Machi and I in the city!

Arica is so close to the border that it was only an hour of driving to get there. We stayed in a hotel right in the center of the city, so we got to walk around, shop, and check out some restaurants and bars. The exchange rate is really good for travelers in Peru, so things were ridiculously cheap. I got a pair of sunglasses for $2.50, mixed drinks and glasses of wine for $2 each, and these really cool maracas carved out of gourds for $3 after some good bargaining. On the last day there, we found this little booth that sells pirated DVDs and CDs for super cheap.  I guess the Peruvian government has more important things to deal with than shutting down little shops where their citizens can make a living. We stocked up and bought so many! My friend Machi bought 30 DVDs! I was convinced they weren’t going to work, so I just bought a few DVDs and a couple CDs. Turns out they all work perfectly, and there are tons of little shops like this one all over Tacna. My host family was so excited about the Juanes Karaoke DVD I bought them that they bought 15 more the next day when they were in Tacna! Right now they’re actually home watching my Eat Pray Love DVD in Spanish! (I’m sitting in McDonalds right now because they have wifi and needed a change of scenery after working on my ISP proposal all day!)They are so obsessed with Karaoke and will literally just sit there on the couch and sing Spanish love songs all night long. My host dad is teaching me some of his favorite songs and I’m learning,..it’s awesome because I can actually understand songs in Spanish when I see the lyrics!

We got to do some cool things with the health care system in Tacna. We visited a community on the outskirts of the city with the most sever poverty I had ever seen or imagined. We did a workshop with some mothers in the community to teach them about proper nutrition and portions for children and pregnant women. It was informative but seemed a little silly because I’m pretty sure they couldn’t afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables if they wanted to. But at the end they got to eat the food, which was nice.

The poor neighborhood we visited for the nutrition workshop

We also got to shadow a doctor on a home visit. Patients over 60 years of age have to go for monthly check-ups, and this man was 72 years old and hadn’t been to a check-up in ten years. So we walked to his house to see what was up, and he told us that he has private health care so he doesn’t need checkups at the public clinic. Then we did a little health education for him and left. We all thought it was kind of crazy that the doctors would waste their time going to their patients’ homes to just find out that their patient has been getting medical attention every month for the last ten years. Just another thing that I can’t figure out…

Cameron and I wondering why there are bottles of used syringes outside the health center.

On the last day we went to a vineyard and winery where they make pisco. Pisco is a popular alcohol in Chile and Peru. It’s made by heating up wine and condensing the vapor the rises from it. So it’s basically an expensive condensed wine. They make these amazing drinks out of it called Pisco Sours, which we learned how to make! They are a combination of fresh squeezed lime, ice, pisco, sugar, and egg whites. They are SO GOOD! We toured the vineyard and got to try all the different kinds of pisco drinks.

Pisco tasting!

The Vineyard