Over the last couple months we have been preparing ourselves for the arrival of our new playground equipment. We have been finishing sidewalks, laying grass and buying tools and materials needed for its installation. Other things that teams have been doing included finishing the sunrooms at the back of each house and repainting all of the interiors of the houses. Finally a few weeks ago the team arrived to install the playground in Pachacamac. Unfortunately for us, the container with the equipment inside had not yet been released from customs. The team was here 6 days before the container was finally released.
The late release of the container meant that we had to unload it in a hurry and build the playground inside of 2 days. That meant working very long days and even working into the night. The equipment was finally done and the children are loving having fun each day on it. Included in the equipment are 5 slides, 2 monkey bars, 8 swings, a firemans pole and a tire swing.
After the Pachacamac installation was complete I was off to Andahuaylas with another team to install the playground equipment there. One thing about going to Andahuaylas that is different from Lima is the elevation. It is nearly 11000 feet above sea level. Therefor it is necessary to spend a couple days acclimatizing before starting work. We spent one such day visiting a large lake in the area and the ruins pictured above. These ruins are called Sondor and were a dwelling of the Chanka civilization. The ruins were very impressive, but maybe more impressive was the view from the top of the pyramid.
After getting used to being that high above sea level it was time to get to work. This playground was unique in that it's structure is made of wood. We could not import the original wood structure from the U.S. so we bought new wood here in Peru. It came from the jungle and was an extremely hard wood. Once we started working on it, it was obvious that the drill we had would not handle drilling the 80 or so inch and a half holes that we had to do. We searched all over Andahuaylas before finally finding a new drill that would do the job. The build was completed in 4 days and we were able to see the kids enjoying it before we left. This is by far the nicest play structure in all of Andahuaylas and word started getting around about its arrival. The last day we were there we had about 15 or so neighborhood kids show up to play.I don't have any pictures of the playground that was built in Pucallpa, but the same week that I was in Andahuaylas, there was a team there putting up a playground. It was by far the biggest of all the structures built at our Peru facilities.
