Carlos and Linda had a meeting in the morning, so we went out. First was to a Honda shop where we could look at some motorcycles. Most all motorcycles here are 125cc or 90cc, they have bigger ones, but not very many people have them. You can buy a nice 125 for about $3,000. The 250s were available on special order, but you could get them for about double the 125s.

Then we hit up the moto taxis. They have these motorcycle taxis that have a two seat rig on the back of the motorcycle, and they move all over the country with those things. Gringos have a problem with Taxis here though, they get over charged, but learning this early on, we were tough (but still got overcharged once) So we got to a place that sold heavy machinery and talked them for a while, and got a reference for where we could rent some.

We met up with Carlos and Linda and started making our rounds. First we went to meet Cesar. Cesar owns a very nice construction company in Chiclayo. They are currently building some low cost houses in Eten, and also building two new colleges. We decided to go to Eten and check out some of the low cost housing there.

Eten was an interesting place. It was quite far off the path any tourist would go. The town center was actually fairly nice, with concrete streets, but thats not where the low cost housing was. We met up with a representative of Cesar’s and proceeded out into the housing area. About 5 miles out was this little community.

Their houses are sold to them with some government help. They come in different sizes and different stages of finish out. The newest one we saw looked great from the outside, and once inside you found out that it was a brick box. The good thing about the area is that its never really that hot or that cold, so you can live in your box and do alright. They did have a bathroom on it, and running water, so thats a plus.

We took some information about how much time and materials they spend on building these buildings, and the rep from Cesar’s wanted to take us to lunch.

Eating here always makes me nervous. But up till now, we have been eating at nicer looking places, and being careful not to eat anything that would make us sick. But now we were in a place that look pretty rough. Linda had the raw fish (holy crap) and Andrew and I had the chicken and rice. Trying to pick the safest one, since the other stuff on the menu was raw or goat.

On the way back to Chiclayo we stopped at a little church. This church had been built on top of another church without knowing. Then in August the found it. So they have been excavating this church for the last 6 months, and had some interesting stuff in it. I guess in the early early days when people died they didn’t have cemeteries, if they weren’t important or didn’t have money, they were just buried wherever. So in the churches, if a child died, they would allow them to be buried in the church. So when excavating this building the found quite a few skeletons of children.

Another stop on the way back was at the “Casa de la Piedra” which is the house of the rock. This home was completely built using rocks. The seats, the table, the bed, the shelves, everything was made of rock. But the coolest part of this stop was the tour guide. Our tour guide was named Maximo, and he was 10 years old. Max took us through the whole house and described what everything did with some detail. Then the rest of the neighborhood kids showed up. Ask Linda about pulling out your iPhone in front of a bunch of those kids, lets just say she was swarmed.

Back to work we visited a place that rented heavy machinery, and then a concrete company. Both were very professional, and had all the expertise and equipment we have at home. Hey, and they also had the same prices too.

We got dropped of at 5 o’clock and spent the evening working on our emails and things, and also using google earth to plot the GPS points for the project. Then we went out to eat at one of the Plazas. This one was just like a mall that you would find in the states. It had a big food court where we ate dinner.

January 12th, 2010