Villa El Salvador

Last weekend I went on a little excursion with my program to Villa El Salvador.Villa El Salvador is a "distrito" of Lima. "Distrito" ,or districts, are like neighborhoods but really they're so much more. Villa El Salvador is a suburb on the edge of Lima that didn't exist 10 years ago. As more people come from the Andes and the Jungle, these little shanty towns pop up because the city is gettting over crowded. Villa El Salvador isn't a shanty town but it has grown tremendously over the last few years and is now a self-sustaining, large suburb. It has a population of about 20.000 people and it's own government officials. I was just amazed at how organized the city seems to be. The neighborhoods are planned and every few blocks has a primary school, a park, and grocery stores. Basically, they have everything they would need, right there. They have clinics, stores, everything so technically it's more of a separate city, or atleast county.