There are a number of things to consider when planning on moving to Peru. For the sake of getting them out of my brain and onto paper (as it were), these are some of the things we have to consider, but first The Plan: moving to Peru to build an earthship bed and breakfast in the Sacred Valley to help raise food for Path of The Heart childrens charity.
Moving To Peru To Build and Earthship B&B in the Sacred Valley
Sell House, Move to Peru, Build Earthship
We want to sell our house and move ourselves and our 2 cats to Peru for 6 months while we search for property to purchase where we can build a self sustainable house with an attached green house. We want to eliminate our debt to the bankers, build an off the grid house that has no monthly expenses other than cooking fuel.
Support Local Childrens Charity
In this solar powered, sun heated, earth cooled, rammed earth tire filled walls with south facing windows Earthship, we will grow our own food using aquaponics inside, under the roof while raising chickens outside as egg laying hens. Eggs and fish will be donated to a local childrens charity called Path of the Heart in ollantaytambo.
Path of the Heart provide food, clothing, education and necessities to the indigent children and families in the sacred valley region and surrounding areas.
Their website describes a typical day this way: “Hot lunches are served daily during the school week to 80-100 children all year long. Many of these children walk hours from their villages to attend school and without the restaurant this may be the only meal of the day for many.”
When Darlene was in Peru in 2007, her tour group volunteered here preparing and serving meals while also handing out school supplies.
Create Bed and Breakfast Artist Retreat
A second phase of construction will include lodging for about 20 people in an apartment style Earthship which will begin our Sacred Valley Bed and Breakfast and artist retreat.
Employ / Support Locals
A smaller single unit dwelling will allow for us to employ a local single mother or family to live on site and provide cleaning and cooking services (in a perfected world, this person would be a masseuse).
Grow Our Own Food
We want to have Llamas, chickens for eggs / compost material and a pet pig. We’d like our attached greenhouse to act as a large aviary as well, home to a bunch of birds. I’d like to keep bees myself for honey, pollen, and simply to assure bees have a home and maybe make some mead.
House Swap
Once the Sacred Valley B&B is in operation, with live on site staff running the operations, we want to consider house swapping for a part of each year. This could only really be done with on site staff running the farming operations and a manager operating the B&B.
That’s the plan. Acting each part out is another matter.
Preparing For A Move and Acting Out The Plan
There are a number of steps involved in this plan. We’ve got to consider them all before even stepping into the basement to begin cleansing / purging goods. Most of these have been or will be conducted using the internet for research, while others involved a goal board (dream board) where we can create a visual tool to help us “create” what we want and attract the resources we need to us. Visualization and the law of attraction make the whole process that much smoother.
So here are some of the things we’re considering. Eventually, as each pans out, We’ll write about it and link to the applicable post.
Sell the House
Having recently returned from our RV adventure where we were living in an RV for 6 months while we drove 17,000+ miles through the US and Canada, we still had most of our house goods packed up and in storage in the basement. It should be an easy task moving them from the “store” pile into the “garage sale” pile and get them a permanent home in a house elsewhere.
Clothes – Dar has already begun the process of downsizing her closet and drawers, trading or giving away clothes that are no longer in style, dont fit or simply don’t like. She says that if she hasn’t worn it in a year, it’s gone.