Tuesday 25th, September 2007
The Peru MS Challange01:16:14 PMWritten By : Eileen FitzgeraldCategory : Charity Hike
Location : Wicklow
Well I'm just back from Peru where I've spent the past two weeks hiking on a charity hike with MS Ireland. It was fantastic, absolutely brilliant the people on the trek were wonderful ranging from early 20's to 59, singles, couples , sisters , brothers etc. Everyone had a reason for being there and when I heard the hard work that everyone had put into the fundraising I really considered myself very lucky and privilidged that ILUG and its supporteres supported my fundraising. I did some investigating and because of numbers and the fact that the charities have been running these challanges for so long , Two Thirds of all funds raised go directly to the charity. So do the math and with approximately 40 of us on the trip in total a great deal was raised for a very worthwhile charity.
But the trip , Peru is an amazing place , it really is beautiful and the history is astounding, the stories of the Andeans and the Incas and their achievements is amazing and to actually see the ruins of the fortresses and Machu Picchu itself was a humbling experience. What is really interesting is that they used to walk for miles and would not think twice of building their grain stores , and fortresses high on the mountains to take advantage of the drier air.
The people are lovely , and the kids are dead cute, at one stage we visited the house of a rural dweller, now obviously those that live in the caves are dying out so it is not the norm. I was initially worried that it was patronising ( showing tourists around someone's house ) but she received five sols from each of us ( about 150 sol) which, for them is a lot of money so everyone benefited. As you can see from the photos have the Guinea Pigs (dinner) running around was a bit creepy and having a sheep in the kitchen would not be my idea of hygiene but then I would imagine that these people have constitutions of iron ( which would explain why most of us ended up with Delli Belly for the two weeks ) .
We spend in total eight days hiking and approximately four days travelling. The hiking was amazing and I was pretty lucky not to get blisters ( some of the team did and it was not funny ). The last day was tough as it was mostly ascending , steep narrow paths and steps , steps and more steps. But it was all worth it when we got to the Sun gate.
Not only did we raise money for MS but we also visited two schools when we were there and we all brought over crayons , toothbrushes etc etc for the Kids ( what was very interesting was that the school teacher said that they were still using the stuff that the MS hike had brought last year. Also we all left behind our fleeces and medical supplies that we had brought with us for the earth quake victims.
The Photos are on Flickr and I also would recommend Tambo Treks who were the local guides, they were excellent. Thank you again to everyone who contributed , especially to Volker and the ILUG organising team who really pushed this. I'm just sorry that I'm missing UKLug as I'm just back to work so cannot take off again so soon. It promises to be an exceptional event.
Comments :
1. Comment posted by Vitor Pereira25/09/2007 21:55:57
Homepage: http://www.vitor-pereira.com
I'm not sure I can make it to ILUG2008 but will definitely contribute to your next charity challenge.
Well done Eileen!
