Peru: Pisaq, Cusco & STRIVE Program

 I’m standing next to the roped off area of Cusco’s airport parking lot as travelers stream out, the intense heat of the sun beating down on my face. It’s hot today. I’m patiently waiting, looking for guys and girls to walk out who fit the build of college athletes that are looking for someone. I eagerly hold my STRIVE sign out with both hands; competing for the first glances among the exiting travelers, while dozens of other drivers do the same. Twenty minutes pass by as a flood of new people brush past me, none of which register STRIVE as anything relevant for their lives. Then I see a young red-haired kid look out into our crowded space and smile at my sign, then wave. My first student has arrived! It was Tim, from Colgate College. We threw his bag into the car then sat down and chatted for about an hour. Then it was time to head back into the sun, and look for the remaining four kids. Ten minutes later a guy named Liam saw the sign and ran over, then shortly following came three more kids, Bryan, Gabe and Katie. I looked down at my list of names, checking all of them off, and we were ready to rock! We got in the two cars waiting for us and began the winding descent towards where we’d be living: Pisaq, the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

The road from Cusco to Pisaq is only 19 miles, but it is quite an adventure. Cusco sits at 11,200 feet, and though Pisaq is at a lower altitude (9,751 feet) you basically need to go through a winding, curvy mountain pass before the road opens up and descends into the Sacred Valley (it can definitely test your stomach if you get carsick). As we rounded the last turn of the mountain road with the kids we looked out and gazed down at the entire town of Pisaq, descending right towards the track and school where we’d be teaching.

For the next five weeks we would call Pisaq home. Josh and I would be group leaders for STRIVE’s 15 college interns. We’d found out about STRIVE initially from workaway.com and we felt like it really spoke to us. STRIVE (acronym: Serve, Train, Reflect, Immerse, Voyage, Empower) is an international service trip program designed specifically for student athletes. Most of the athletes are runners (both high school and college) who desired to train at altitude for the summer. They’d spend their time training as well as teaching in local schools, and helping out with local projects as needed.

Josh and I were looking for a volunteer program based in South America but wanted to find something different than us teaching English to kids each day, since we’d already done that. We wanted to find something where we could make a difference and be a mentor to others. STRIVE basically combined all the things we were looking for along with our own passions. We are both runners. Being a group leader for the college interns seemed perfect to us. We could be positive role models, provide advice from our experience abroad (and with teaching), make sure they got where they needed to, and even try running with them (though they are much faster than us!)

There are two parts to STRIVE, the high school program and the college internship. The high school program is shorter than the internship, lasting a total of three full weeks. The college internship begins two weeks before the high school kids arrive, making it five weeks long. The two extra weeks allows the interns to get familiar with Pisaq, start altitude training, and get setup with the tutoring program and their teaching assignments at the schools. The last week for both groups ends with us all trekking to Machu Picchu via the legendary four day Salkantay Trail.

Josh and I hadn’t been to Peru before, but we wanted to make sure that we had a general idea of the area (and altitude) before the kids came, so we got to Cusco a week early.

We explored much of the city and got a general idea of the surrounding Inca ruins and sites nearby. We ended up arriving to Pisaq two days before the kids arrived, where we met Nic, one of the program owners. Nic and Ty are both program owners, and were also the group leaders for the High School program. Nic showed us around Pisaq and gave us the rundown of all our responsibilities and expectations as group leaders. We were a little unsure of everything at first because it was all so new, but we were really excited to meet all the kids and start working with them!

Our first week was a lot of fun ‘getting to know you’ activities and prep work. On our first day we led an orientation and played some ice breaker games, then on the second day we organized a scavenger hunt for the interns to learn all about Pisaq and where things were located. Being that they are all competitive athletes, the game was much higher intensity than initially anticipated! Josh and I were handing out clues in a little café, and saw them all flying by us to finish as fast as they could, it was a ton of fun! We also ran our first group run together, where Josh and I quickly realized that we were screwed if we had to keep up with all of them because they were in phenomenal running shape. I felt absolutely schooled, even for the ‘slow’ thirty-minute jog.

The first week everyone had to be careful running at over 9,000ft elevation. It can do some pretty crazy things to your body and definitely make you sick if you aren’t cautious. We had to make sure the group eased their way into running at altitude and remind them that all the things that matter to a runner (times, mileage, pace etc.) are all irrelevant at altitude. The key is to listen to your body, be conservative at first, and gradually work your way into the longer distance. It was definitely hard for some of the kids, but generally everyone managed to do ok at the higher elevation and luckily no one had any severe altitude sickness problems.

We did however, have more sickness problems in the five weeks than I’ve ever seen in my life (or thought possible). Each day there were 3-5 people out of commission due to stomach bugs, pain, diarrhea, or fever. It was shocking! I had heard from a lot of friends and other travelers about Peru and how they or their friends had gotten sick. I was expecting we’d all have some little bouts. But for our group these bouts seemed to linger, or repeatedly come back. Some people had it much worse than others, but we all had our moments. Josh and I managed to stay fairly ‘healthy’… I put that in quotes because for probably 3 out of the 5 weeks total neither of us felt at our best, we always had something going on. But usually we were functional and could run, go to school and tutoring, and get by fine. I will definitely say that in Peru we had more problems than anywhere else!

We stayed in a hostel right on the edge of the town square, nearby Pisaq’s big market. Pisaq is known for being a market town and its streets near the square are filled daily with stalls full of local artisan handicrafts. Each morning the locals setup all their crafts back into their respective spots hoping to sell, then that night they take it all back down again. On the weekends the market is busiest with tourists buses coming into town in droves, filling up its streets. It can feel pretty hectic, but for the most part Pisaq is pretty relaxing. We walked through the market each day to come and go from our hostel but since it was perched up on a hill on the edge of town, it was also close to the entrance to the Pisaq ruins. Pisaq’s ruins are beautiful and well-retained sitting up in the mountains above us. You could see the terraced cliffs from our hostel, and the views were stunning.

We took over half our hostel, and lived in double and triple rooms on the second floor. We also had access to the kitchen (shared with the family who ran the hostel’s personal kitchen) and there was a nice courtyard where the interns could go to do core workouts and weights. Every afternoon our whole group would be in the courtyard doing abs, pushups, and lifts, blasting some loud American dance music, so when other groups came to stay at the hostel they thought we were all insane!

Since our group had a low budget for meals, to keep costs down we had dinner partners and took turns cooking dinner for the whole group. Each night we would all sit down at our long blue table and eat a home cooked meal together. It was a lot of fun but definitely took more effort than it would back home. The kitchen was a pretty tight squeeze, with no hot water and no working oven, so it limited the things we could cook. We tended to each vegetarian most dinners because the cost of meat and the amount of effort it took to cook the massive hunks of meat sold at the market was usually not worth it. We pretty much ate eggs, avocado, tomato, and bread from our favorite bakery (Shout Out to Sophi’s!) at every meal. We’d alternate between quinoa, lentils, beans, and pasta. It was a lot of fun to see what creative ideas everyone came up with each night (on top of cooking for 17 people).

Tutoring English at our after school program.

The private school we taught at

Our second week got much busier, and our schedule became more normal. We would always start our days with a morning run, then grab breakfast at the market. Then we’d head to two of the local schools (one public and one private) and have our kids teach in English, Art, or Gym classes.

After class they’d grab lunch, and then at 3:30 each day we started an after school English tutoring program. It took place at our hostel’s courtyard, for anyone local who was interested in learning English. We promoted the tutoring with flyers around town, and on our first day we had over 20 kids show up. It increased each day, some days we ended up having over 40 kids with only our small group to teach them!

The schools were definitely a bit of a struggle for Josh and I. The first day we had to get everyone into his or her proper classes, and the teachers didn’t really speak any English. They were also extremely unorganized, so it was difficult to figure out who should go where and when, and figure out which classes actually needed (and wanted) help. It was a pretty frantic scramble, but we eventually got into somewhat of a rhythm, as best as we could. There were a lot of random holidays while we were there, and it was also hard to keep track of when there was no class. The interns did a great job rolling with the punches and just being happy and excited faces with the kids each day.

After tutoring our kids would have to clean up the bomb that went off from having so many students at the hostel, then they’d have some time to go for a second run or do their core workouts before the group dinner. Usually after dinner we’d have some evening activities and a briefing about the next day, then we’d crash. We were so tired each night; our days were pretty long and filled with excitement!

Then the high school group arrived. There were 18 of them, so it exponentially added to the chaos at the schools, and figuring out who should be where and when. Our interns did a great job with the high school kids, helping them plan lessons for teaching, and getting into the groove with the after school tutoring. The HS group stayed in a different hostel down the street from us, so we started spending much more time there. In the evenings our interns would give STRIVE talks, which were presentations to the HS group about interesting topics such as ‘running in college’, ‘recruitment’ or ‘overcoming disappointment’ etc. It was great to see them all prepare something they were passionate about and speak to the younger kids about something that would matter to them now or in a couple years.

On weekends we explored. There is so much to see in the Sacred Valley area, especially if you are into the Inca history and their ruins. The interns got to choose what we did on the weekends and so we would vote each week on what our next adventure would be. We hiked the Pisaq ruins, went to an animal rescue center and saw condors, llamas, alpacas, and hairless dogs. We did an overnight trip and visited Ollantatambo ruins, Moray, and the Salineras salt mines. We went to Lares and swam in hot springs. We ate guinea pig and scaled a 15,000ft mountain. We also got to experience Cusco during the region’s biggest festival of the year, the Inca Festival of the Sun Inti Raymi, at Saqsaywaman, what was once the historic capitol of the Incas overlooking Cusco even today. And of course, we had some fun at the Blue Llama Café, who had all you can eat pancakes on their menu. There was definitely a contest that involved up to 15 pancakes for some of our kids, and Josh and I definitely lost (by a lot). We made it to 6 pancakes, which was a lot for us – they were so good though!

Check out some pictures of our weekend adventures:

STRIVE was an experience of a lifetime. It’s one that goes down in the books. So much happened in our five weeks together, it’s nearly impossible to capture the essence of our life in Pisaq in words. Each and every intern we worked with was so awesome in their own way, and taught us something about ourselves or about life that I would not otherwise have known.

Being group leaders was a lot of responsibility for Josh and I, more so than we initially thought it would be. But it gave us an idea of what its like to be a parent (on a much smaller scale obviously), where you are always ON, always positive, making sure you’re kids are safe, and hope they are getting the most out of their experience. We nursed fevers, filtered water, bought endless toilet paper rolls, treated dog bites and cuts from falling, cleaned up puke at 3 a.m., made dinners, and cleaned up dishes. We had to discipline a bit, and get those people who didn’t wake up on time out of bed, but we also had tons of silly jokes that made us laugh to tears, and made lasting relationships. At the end of the day we were all exhausted and beaten down, but we had plenty of great card games, trivial pursuit, music, jokes, and Sophi’s treats to keep us moving. We became a family.

“Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and to keep it.”

-Mary Lou Retton

Our kids reminded me what it was like to be in college again. To have the passion and intensity of being an athlete, with such tenacity and determination that nothing will stand in their way. They also reminded me what it was like to be young and to be in that moment when you start to realize who you are and what you want to become. You start to dream big and you aren’t worried about practicality or what others think. It made me remember how I was at 18 and at 21 and how I thought anything was possible. I’m so grateful to be brought back to that place in life, because anything is possible. It’s important to never lose sight of your dreams, they can become reality.

*SENDING A SHOUT OUT to all our interns for an amazing journey: Kaleigh, Laurel, Zoe, Jake, Weston, Sam, Zach, Gabe, Mike, Bryan, Liam, Tim, Reba, Sandie, Katie