Kia Ora, Buenos Días and Hello,
I’m Adam McPhail, a Kiwi and an AFS exchange student living in Chincha Alta, a small city in the south of Peru. I’ve now been here for just over 5 and a half months and today I am going to talk about my experience so far, as I am just over halfway through my exchange. Although Peru is a very different country to New Zealand, and everyday life can feel very strange to begin with, I’m now at the point where everyday life has become normal and I find less and less things standing out. My skills in Español are decent and I don’t find myself using English. I think going on a cultural exchange is the best thing I have done in my life so far and I think more of our Kiwi youth should invest in themselves and explore the world with AFS. For me, exchange is about the exchanges that you’ll remember for the rest of your life – it’s in the definition. Let me tell you. 
About 3 months ago I found myself awake at 6 in the morning on a Saturday sitting inside a market building with 2 metre high ceilings (I’m 194 centimetres tall) talking to a local as she poured me my soon to be breakfast into a bowl. The thought probably crossed my mind, how did I go from eating my free lunches at Massey High School to eating cow’s foot soup in a building of alleyways crammed to the brim with Peruvians and Venezuelans, fresh fish, produce and plucked chickens hanging from rafters?
But then I realised how cool it was, that I would remember this forever, so the thought slipped my mind and I guzzled back my soup. We then went outside to buy fish heads and vegetables before heading to my host Dad’s restaurant to prepare the place for the day.
Couple weeks later on a Friday night and I’m at a little party dancing to some reggaeton with some mates. Someone googled songs from New Zealand on spotify, went to an essentials playlist and clicked the shuffle button and suddenly we’re jamming to How Bizzare, the O.M.C classic that I was practically raised on.
I looked to my left and I saw the swimming pool, turned to my mates and said “You guys want to learn some New Zealand culture?”. They laughed and nodded. I said “Well I’ll tell you something, New Zealand has the best cannonball in the world, It’s called the Manu, wanna learn?”. Next thing you know there’s four of us, stripped down into our underwear, and they were all trying to get the technique right. And I was just going again and again with these beautiful bombs, and then I’m watching them, back slapping and laughing, just trying to copy me. It was just a great night.
Next morning I’m with my fellow AFS exchange friend and we wake up at 7 am and pack our school bags with snacks and spare clothes before heading down to the bus station and grabbing the first inter-city bus that we could to a city called Ica. Ica’s beautiful, So different from anything I’ve ever seen in my life. For one it’s in a desert surrounded by giant golden rolling sand dunes, and the heat hits you, just entering the city it went from 24 degrees in Chincha to 32 degrees.
We get off the bus and are immediately surrounded by taxi drivers trying to convince us to go with them because we look foreign. They were offering tours and saying they know the best restaurants in town. We only had one goal in mind and that was to see Huacachina, the desert oasis that was famous in this city. So I said that’s where I wanted to go, and one guy was like “I will take you for 14 soles”.
Now at this point I’ve lived in Peru long enough to know that because of my skin tone and accent, every Taxi driver will double the price and try to rip me off. So I low ball him, “For 5 soles” he looks at me like I’m crazy, another driver speaks up “I’ll take you for 12 soles”. I turn to the second driver but then the original taxi man says “I’ll do it for ten”. But that’s still steep if you ask me, so I knocked his price down to 7 soles, exactly half of the initial offer, and not wanting to lose his customers he took us to Huacachina.
We climbed up the biggest sand dune we could find, and sat up there for an hour, just taking in the view of the city, of the blue and green lake in between the sand dunes. Then we went for an extreme buggy ride that took us to the most beautiful sunset spot way up on a sand dune hidden from sight, and watched the sun disappear from the horizon. We took a cab back to the bus station, and we went home.
On my next adventure, I opened my eyes after relaxing for an hour in a steaming natural hot pool with pebbles under my feet in Aguas Calientes, the base village for the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu. I’d been connecting with my spiritual imaginative side, the hot pool was the same spot that the Incas had come to relax in 500 years ago and yet here I was taking a dip.
The next day there I was, standing in front of ruins of Machu Picchu, one of the 7 wonders of the world. It’s right on the ridge of this mountain surrounded by native trees and bush. I felt so alive, seeing these ruins that were so old. When I had finished viewing I spent several hours hiking down the mountain and walking up the bank of the sacred river, just trying to take it all in. I could almost see the Incas dragging huge blocks of stone up the mountain to build their village. I don’t think it is possible to forget something like that, memories become seared into your brain like a hot iron branding on a cow. It still seems crazy to me that at 17, alone, I walked those ruins at complete peace with myself.
Peru’s a developing country, it has its problems and there’s no denying that. At school we’ve been studying the illegal gold mining operations in the Amazon, this gold is then smuggled to other countries and leaves the Amazon destroyed. Trees are forested and the mining uses mercury, which leaves permanent damage to soil making it impossible for the soil to rejuvenate so the Amazon rainforest won’t regrow in these patches. It’s sad, but we know all about it. How many times have you seen a TikTok or a YouTube video talking about the shrinking of the Amazon rainforest? What’s really sad to me, is that the only people who would have hope of stopping these damages are the Peruvian government. Unfortunately the government is so corrupt, with members of parliament and police forces taking bribes from cartels and embezzling money for personal gain. Peru has had 7 presidents in 6 years. It’s terrible, and really the only way this could change is if the people of Peru really tried to change their ways.
I walk down the street on my way to the gym with my friends and I see the lives of people that Peruvians consider normal. I see the guy that has several mental issues picking up pizza crusts from the ground before returning to his home on a park bench and a blanket. I see the little kids walking up to random people trying to sell things to you. I see moto taxi drivers bartering with people trying to get good money for their service of driving people around town. I see people with survival in the mind. So many people are struggling but happy, because you can’t wave a magic wand and change their fate, that’s just not how it works. 
Yesterday I was getting my hair cut and I was talking to my Venezuelan barber who immigrated to Peru in 2018 because of the political crisis in his country. He told me that he and his family walked across the border to Colombia without a dollar to their name and then from there took a bus to Peru. I commended him on how hard that must have been, but he shrugged it off and said “Well that’s just my life man, and there’s 7 million other Venezuelans that experienced the same thing”. When you speak to people with stories like that, it makes you reconsider simple and unenjoyable tasks. Spending a day doing chores around my house at age 13 I would have been miserable, But that seems so much more enjoyable than what he went through. They left everything they ever knew in hopes of something better and they pulled through and came out the other side.
If someone were to ask me, “Should I go on an exchange?” I could spend an hour talking about reasons why they should, but I like to sum things up nice and simple. Exchanges help you find yourself. New people, new life, an experience where you will learn to never expect the expected. I’d say pick a country you know nothing about, learn some basic language skills, get on that plane and go. I did. I realised that the key to my happiness wasn’t with consumerism and that I don’t need to have McDonalds in my life or the latest Nike sneakers. The key was just to be happy with the basics, nothing more, nothing less. Life’s about communication, being around people that you like, that’s why we are all different. Going on an exchange you don’t lose who you are, your passion, your dreams, well – maybe they change a little as you learn new things. But you’ll grow like a compound investment, and what’s better than investing in yourself?
Ngā mihi, Muchas Gracias and Thank You AFS,.
Adam McPhail.
Inspired?? Check out our programmes in Peru or view our full list of countries to find a country that you know nothing about!