Spanish Study, Volunteering, and Sight Seeing

My friends and I were looking at combining our shared interests in travel, volunteering, and learning. Our recent trip to Cusco, Peru organized through United Planet was almost custom tailored to fit what we were looking for!

Ours was a party of four. My friends were travelling with their 3 year old son. Our trip happened to coincide with another family traveling with children, which turned out to have been a great bonus and a new friendship born from this experience.

A typical day consisted of a breakfast made by our host family who ran a guest house. We would walk to our Spanish language class at the San Blas Spanish school, followed lunch back at the guest house. This was our biggest meal of the day and was a great way to fuel for the energy required at the volunteer project. Our afternoon was spent at the Las Molinas Kids Club afterschool program in San Jeronimo. A 30 minute bus ride to this neighborhood brought us to the project where our short walk through the neighborhood where the kids lived. Our walk would be accompanied by kids shouting out greetings and following in tow.

Due to our participation during the school break, our time at the afterschool program was less structured than usual as this was designed to provide an alternative to just playing all day while on break. We would have an hour of instruction consisting of English review or craft projects, followed by an hour of play time.

On the weekend, United Planet had given us the option of booking a tour of Machu Picchu, which we went on with the other family we met. It was a fun and beautiful trip. At the beginning and end of our stay, we were treated to a nice dinner. Our final sight-seeing event was a short walking tour of Cusco and a drive to neighboring sights.