Delivering the goods in the Andes

At last Project Peru is able to travel again to isolated communities in the high Andes to distribute much needed goods and clothes. Sadly restrictions beyond our control, principally Covid-related, have prevented us for several years from making such journeys to villages that can almost seem forgotten. Our administrator, through his family connections, was recently able to go to distribute Project Peru’s donations. Despite a three and a half hour’s walk to reach a community of around fifty people, luckily the un-made up road was opened up in time to allow our camioneta with our boxes through!

The smiles on the faces of the children … sporting their recently arrived woolly hats from Guildford and beyond … says it all … sheer delight! … and as also can be seen from the group photos (below) of everyone in front of the boxes … or of the men showing off their new waterproof jackets in many sizes … and the children too, with one new hoody! The houses are built of adobe bricks made of straw and mud as is the white-washed church with its beautiful wooden door.

Beautiful misty scenery as everyone ‘signs in’ to receive their clothes once the camioneta finally arrived. At the check-in for the donations many cannot read so make their mark with a finger-print. There’s a glimpse of the road that links the village to the outside world with gorgeous views of the mountains, and the community dwellers in their fantastic hats, each with their bag of donated goods: just for the record each region has its own typical hat.

This village is in the Apurimac region in the south of Peru near the town of Andahuaylas. The altitude of Andahuaylas is about 2,897 metres (9,505 feet). Andahuaylas itself is about 800 km (500 miles) from Lima and a normal journey by road can take 16-18 hours but on this occasion our team’s return trip took over 30 hours due to widespread miners’ strikes in the area.

To see more of this sort of work we have done in the past see