Renovation, maintenance and beautification of the Colonial Estate Murillo (Various projects)

Location: Cuzco, Peru

Various proyects: bio construccion, artistic proyects of all kinds, dog shelter, organic farm, animal breeding, product marketing and organization of parties and events…
My name is Luis, I am 25 years old and I live in the Sacred Valley of the Incas (eighty minutes from the city) for fourteen months, in a very big and very old property that belongs to my family since colonial times.
At age 19 I left university because I love freedom, travel, adventures, life itself! And because I dream of becoming one day in a great writer with many interesting things to say, with many adventures to be able to count. Live here, in Cusco, in the countryside, in the state of my ancestors that was abandoned since my grandfather's death, eleven years ago, is one more adventure in my life, a beautiful adventure that fate has given me.
In all this time I learned to many things that I now can to put in practice with my volunteers; I learned to work the land, to sow and to harvest fruits and vegetables; I learned from my volunteers to cook dishes from different parts of the world (many vegetarians, and dishes from the Andes too); I learned to build using stones, mud, wood, clay, plastic and glass bottles, cement, adobe and plaster; I learned to work the wood, to restore doors, windows and wooden objects; i learned about the life, the customs, the ideas and knowledge from the people who lives in los Andes; i learned to many things in all this time.
I have a lot of raw material (stones, adobes, clay, plastic and glass bottles, wood extracted from my forests ...) and tools of all kinds, old and modern, to work: wood cutting machines, sanding machines, stones cutting machines, machines to cut metals, I have a drill to drill wood, concrete, and to many tools more ideal for construction and agriculture.
Creating this project and starting to fight for it is something that really fills me with pride; And it will not be difficult imagine the work that is needed to transform and carry forward a property so big and so old that it has been abandoned for so many years.
Without a doubt, the first months of my stay have been the hardest:
The property did not have a modern water and drainage system, so I was forced to use a "dry toilet" to make my needs, and, to take a shower, I had to go to the river or use buckets with cold water.
Nor was there a good electrical system, so there were nights when I had to read, eat or just walk around the house using candlelight.
The house were full of mouse, spiders and spider webs; the walls and the floors full of stains; The balcony and the wooden stairs of the second floor were badly damaged by rain, weather and insects. The old roof of the house was demolished and replaced by a new one, so now the rain dont represent any problem. We did the same with the big tile roof of our temple.We fixed the big garden and the swimming pool.
Anyway, I came across these and many other difficulties...but all this things change and now i have a very beautiful and confortable DRIVE
The village in which my state is located is called Ttio and has less than four thousand inhabitants, all with firm roots and Andean customs. The village is surrounded by two rivers where you can practice fishing (one of which is the famous river Vilcanota), by Eucalyptus forests where sometimes we can see deers, by innumerables mountains that ask to be climbed (in some of which we can find parrot nests) and some native communities (such as Qayattia and Orinqosqo, located 90 minutes on foot) that until today retain their language and ancestral traditions.
I have too 1 hectare of infertile soil filled with grass. This is located at the foot of a mountain and here is where I want to make all kinds of constructions: some bedrooms, cabins or bungalows, one tennis court, one swimming pool and a mini golf court.
And here I would like to build a shelter for abandoned dogs.

My proposal for volunteers is simple: to combine work with fun, with good food, with good music ... well, with the good life!
I'm very young and I like to have fun, but I'm also aware that I need to work hard to learn and get my project going.
As for work, because it is so varied and there are so many things I want to do, I think the best thing I can do is to accommodate each volunteer and give each person a job according to their skills and tastes, in this way the volunteers will feel better And, consequently, work better
For me, the ideal would be to do the work during the morning, until lunchtime, and sit down together at the table. Having all the rest of the day free to wander around, to climb some mountain, to play a sport, to chat while we share a few glasses of wine and make some music in the middle of a campfire ...
But I also have no problem if someone prefers to do the opposite and work in the evenings and have free morning.