Day 4: Saturday, July 25

Today after breakfast, our local guide met us again and we headed along the coast. Our first stop was a fish market in the Chorrillos District, situated on the edge of a large bay with a view of Lima across the water.






Looking over the morning catch, there were plenty of choices - all fresh from the sea.











It was interesting to watch the women cleaning the fish. Working with a super-sharp knife, they keep up a running conversation with each other, barely looking at the fish. You get the feeling they could do this job with their eyes closed.





Down on the dock, others were cleaning boxes of anchovies.







The fishing boats aren't very large - rather like a rowboat. The fisherman use nets of different sizes, depending on the type of fish they're after.







When they're back on shore, their spare time is spent mending their nets. Sea lions are the main problem here - they rip open the fish nets for an underwater feast.





We stopped to chat with this fellow and our friend Sonny tried to give him a hand with his work.










Next we stopped at a local market to pick up some food items such as rice, beans, eggs, and bananas to take to Villa el Salvador.







Villa el Salvador is an urban, largely residential district on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. It began in 1970 as a shantytown in the vast, empty sand flats to the south of Lima because of the urgent housing needs of immigrant families who had left the mountains of Peru. These squatters formed a makeshift community housing thousands of people living in tiny reed and plastic 'homes' with no electricity, water or school. Villa El Salvador evolved into a huge urban zone, self-organizing to eventually gain recognition as an official district of the city of Lima. Largely through the efforts of its inhabitants, the neighborhood now is supplied with electricity (borrowed or bought from private homes nearby) and water (trucked in several times a week).









A women's federation has helped to organize activities such as public kitchens, health committees, milk for kids program, income-generating projects, and committees for basic education. One of their projects is this soup kitchen (Comedor), where we dropped off the food we had brought. Much has been done, many challenges remain - We were pleased to make a small contribution to their efforts to better themselves.




The children thought we were pretty interesting - they loved seeing themselves in the digital camera.