Game: win an Inca Kola t-shirt now!

Want to win a cool Inca Kola t-shirt signed by us? Here is your chance!

Rules in english | Las reglas en espanol | Les rêgles en français | Jatekszabalyok magyarul

All you have to do is make a donation using the button on the right hand side. The donation system is operated by PayPal, the most widely used system on the Internet, thus it is secure and you can use any type of credit card. The donation can be a minimum of 5 EUR and each 5 EUR extra will additionally increase your chances to win. All money collected will be forwarded to the accounts of the Aldea Yanapay Foundation, directly helping the children of Cuzco. The game ends on the 12th of December and we will draw a lucky winner from the donators, who will receive the t-shirt. It is a game for you and an experiment for us to see if a non-profit organization like Yanapay can use a similar model to raise funds. So go ahead and show us some gaming spirit!:)

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Quieres una camisa de Inca Kola firmada por nosotros? Bueno, ahora tienes la oportunidad de ganarla! lo único que debes hacer es: completar una donación utilizando el botón a la derecha. La sistema de donaciones está operando por PayPal, el sistema más popular y seguro de Internet, acepta todas los tarjetas de crédito.Puedes donar un montante mínimo de 5 EUR, y cada 5 EUR adicionales te dará oportunidad adicional. Todo el dinero recibido será transferido a la fundación Aldea Yanapay, ayudando directamente los niños de Cuzco. El juego terminará en el 12 de Diciembre.Escogeremos el ganador entre los donadores.

Es un juego para ti, una experiencia para nosotros y para ver si una organización sin fines lucrativos puede utilizar juegos similares para ganar dinero.

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Vous voulez gagner un T-shirt Inca Cola signé par nos soins :) C’est votre chance!

Tout ce que vous avez à faire est de réaliser une donation en cliquant sur le bouton situé à droite de cette page. Le système mis en place est PayPal, le plus utilisé pour des payements en ligne et également le plus sécurisé, fonctionnant avec tous types de cartes de crédit. La donation peut-être de 5 EUR minimum et chaque 5 EUR supplémentaire augmentera vos chances de gagner. Tout l’argent collecté sera transféré sur le compte de la fondation Aldea Yanapay, pour aider les jeunes enfants défavorisés de Cusco, Pérou. Le jeu prend fin le 12 Décembre et nous tirerons au sort le vainqueur qui gagnera le T-shirt. C’est à la fois un jeu pour vous et une expèrience pour nous, afin de voir si une ONG comme Yanapay peut utiliser un modèle similaire pour lever des fonds. Alors, n’hésitez pas à nous montrer votre bonne volonté :)

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Szeretnel egy szuper Inca Kola polot az alairasunkkal? Itt az alkalom, hogy nyerj egyet!

Nem kell mast tenned, mint egy csekely osszeget adomanyoznod a jobb oldali gomb hasznalataval. A rendszer az Internet legelterjedtebb es legbiztonsagosabb rendszeren, a PayPalon keresztul mukodik, igy barmilyen hitelkartya elfogadott. Az adomany osszege minimum 5 EUR, de minden tovabbi 5 EUR tovabbi eselyt nyujt a szamodra. Az osszegyujtott penz teljes egeszben az Aldea Yanapay alapitvany javara lesz jovairva, igy kozvetlenul segithetsz a cuzco-i gyerekeken. A jatek december 12.-en er veget, a szerencses nyertest az adomanyzok kozott sorsoljuk ki. Ez nem csak egy jatek az olvasoink szamara, de egy kiserlet is a mi szamunkra, hogy kiprobaljuk, hogy ez a fajta modell mukodhet-e egy non-profit alapitvany anyagi tamogatasara. Jatekra fel! Nekem mar van Inca Kola polom!:)

Volunteering at Aldea Yanapay

After Colombia, we once again had the opportunity to help out with some volunteer work in the city of Cuzco, Peru. Aldea Yanapay is an organization to help children develop their skills after normal school hours. To participate is for free and one can help out in a multitude of ways. During our stay we were helping out a bit the marketing team and were teaching arts and other classes for the kids. Contrary to that what we experienced in Colombia, there are much more volunteers and much more children. The children are divided into certain age groups, thus it is easier to take care of the ones with similar abilities. The kids not only have a 2 hour class of arts, tutoring, library or games, but after they all gather in a circle where they can express their options in an organized way. What was amazing during these sessions is that a lot of kids have an attention span of a few seconds. If they were asked to repeat something that was just being said, very often they failed to do so. The lack of listening skills is not only present amongst the children, but we experienced amongst Peruvian adults as well. After the circle each age group has a special class where they learn about a certain topic of the week and prepare a little show for the Friday afternoon presentation. During our stay the topic was the creation legends of the Inca empire. The legend of the Ayar brothers and the legend of Mama Ocllo and Manco Capac. The kids were preparing various dresses, shields and coronas out of recycled material during art classes and used them in their theatrical performances. After all all the classes end, the kids get a mug of warm milk, and whenever there is budget for it, a pill of vitamins.

The organization is mostly funded by the Aldea Yanapay restaurant and the Hostal Magico. Anyone eating or staying at these places would support the project and thus the children. The founder of the school and the related facilities is Yuri, a guy from Cuzco, his passion for the project is captivating and inspiring for all volunteers who work there. We had a great time with the children of Yanapay and respect to all the volunteers who donate their time and effort to make something better. To our greatest surprise, just when I started to feel sad about not seeing any Hungarians since leaving the USA, we even bumped into Nerissa, another volunteer from Hungary. No wonder the children already knew about Budapest, the Danube, the goulash and the paprika:)

How you can help?

If you have the possibility, spend a few weeks in Cuzco by volunteering, believe me, it is worth the experience. If not, donations are always very welcome, visit the site of Aldea Yanapay for the details.

Peru: World champion in surfing

On October 27th, the team of Peru won the ISA World Surfing Games held at Punta Hermosa, near the city of Lima. Congratulations for the team and well, we have been there! But we had arrived to the spot just a little bit too late: the local fishermen interrupted the event that had to be continued the next day:)

Traces of Hungarians in Bogota

I have learnt with great surprise that there is a college in Bogota that has the name of a Hungarian princess Elisabeth.
// Bogotaban jartunkkor kaptam lencsevegre egy helyi foiskolai tanar igazolvanyat. Az iskola nevet Szent Erzsebetrol kapta, aki mellesleg II. Andras magyar kiralyunk leanya volt. Tyuuha!

Caribbean–English dictionary

After spending a few weeks examining the behavior of the Caribbean mankind, and observing that truth here is almost always half-truth, we hereby make the first steps to create a comprehensive Caribbean-English dictionary for the benefit of the visitors to this area. Following you will find commonly used expressions and their most likely explanations.

pickup service at your hotel at 9am – if you call the agency at 8.30, they will be surprised that you exist, but if you call again later, they will send someone at 9.40 to lead you to the main street a couple of blocks away and push you on a bus

drop-off service at your hotel – …they will bring you back to the same city

rapid boat service – normally it is rapid, but to fix the engine they have to make a 30 minute stop, nevertheless it is a good opportunity to make new friends with your fellow travellers

lunch included – …there will be rice

there is internet – …if you search for it in the McDonalds right next to the hotel

twin beds – this can be any number of beds from 1 to 8

hot water – …on a first come, first serve basis

bilingual guide – speaks Spanish and Castellano

Volunteering at Fundacion Mariposas Amarillas

This was the very first volunteering mission of our trip, and happened to be in Santa Marta, a city located in the north part of Colombia. The whole project is run by Oscar, a Colombian guy from Cali, taking care of two schools alone, with the help of some volunteers coming and leaving…
Our school was located in an unfavoured district called “Los Fundadores”. A district considered so dangerous that five out of six taxi drivers flatly refused to take us there. Some children being at the public school in the morning, we welcomed them each afternoon in the frame of the project. We took care of children from 6 up to 10 years old, unfortunately mixed in the same classroom, which made it quite difficult due to the level difference between them.
 
During our stay, we asked them to draw up a story, taught them English, and geography (having 2 maps for 20 children…).
 
Other striking thing… the teaching conditions… During rainy days, the water is infiltrating the roof, spilling on some tables and on the whiteboard (which had to be constantly dried to be able to write on it…). There was a small locked cupboard to put the pencils and the books (in Spanish and English, given by some friends or associations). It was incredible to see at which point a child was asking to bring home a book or a pencil, for himself or to give to a sibling… Such a simple thing would have made them so happy, but due to the limited quantity, it had to remain in the cupboard for the use of everybody.
   
Oscar and his project need the help of everybody, through volunteering or donations. If you want to help, you’ll find below all the necessary links:
http://fmacolombia.weebly.com
http://fmacolombia.weebly.com/donations.html
Thank you for your support !

Cartagena: back to the eighties

On October 12th, Aires flight number 8174 with Captain Jose Escobar safely touched down onboard with us on the runway of Cartagena. If you ever take a flight to Cartagena, sit at the left window. As the city emerges from the surrounding estuaries, the tall and white hotels on the thin strip of Boca Grande give the impression of Miami. As the plane continues its descent, you will see favela-like districts without paved roads, often covered by waters, where little rafts are used instead of cars.
The flooding is a problem in the whole city: half of the day the streets of the hotel zone are covered by the waters of high tide and as a pedestrian you need acrobatic skills to get from one street to the other.

The hotel zone itself is funny. There are a number of hotels built in the seventies or eighties and still operating with the same technology. We had the luck to stay in Costa del Sol, which is a brilliant example of such hotels. The whole building is covered with single layer windows and large gaps between them. The air conditioning is solved in a per floor level and besides being inefficient it breaks down in an average twice a day. Since there is no way to control it, you either freeze or sweat your heart out since the outside temperature is hot and 110% humid. The hotel offers two pools, both of them suspiciously yellow in color as there is no system to circulate and clean the water. Internet theoretically exists in the lobby, but they are always working on it to get it fixed by the next day. Best part though is the number of paintings and mosaic art found all over in the hotel, depicting Colombian supermodels from the eighties or simply a woman in bikinis.

The historical city center is charming and colorful and even has some cool bars on top of the city walls. At all times there are couples hiding in the holes where once cannons were set to protect the city from pirates. Apart from the historical center there is a more or less interesting castle with a huge Colombian flag, and you can make a number of organized daytrips to one of the islands nearby. Beware though: nothing can be more disorganized than an organized trip in the Caribbean. Pack plenty of water and patience with you when you embark on such trips:)

One of the most popular daytrips take you to Playa Blanca. The beach is not that bad, if you move away from the heaps of tourists, just a few meters, you already reduced the number of handicraft sellers and masseuse candidates by a factor of 10.