North Augusta High graduate travels to Peru to research flooding issues near Machu Picchu
Aug. 25—Traveling over 3,000 miles from North Augusta to Peru, Matthew Price wanted to learn about flooding in one of the seven modern wonders of the world.
The North Augusta High School 2021 graduate recently received an education grant to look at residual flooding and damages near Machu Picchu and in the Cuzco Valley.
Price, a sophomore biology and neuroscience student at Denison University, originally applied for the $500 grant through Verto Education after a study abroad semester in Costa Rica.
After witnessing similar flooding aftermaths in Central America, he wanted to see how natural disasters displace and interrupt the lives of people.
"I think that if I had not stayed three weeks, I wouldn't have understood the town and the area as much as I did. I wouldn't have gone off the beaten tourist track in the area, which is oddly enough, as you venture out of the main square, the beaten areas, you can see the residual flood damage and the displacement," Price said.
Using his anthropology, sociology and international relations class background, he took the trip south to Peru in May 2022. Price spent three weeks getting to know the locals and utilizing social media to see the differences in the cities and towns.
"Google Maps ironically enough ended up being one of my bigger tools because you can go back into satellite views and look at different dates; and I got the opportunity before I went to have a bunch of different screenshots and images of areas I wanted to check, and I geotagged them and recorded them for myself," he said.
Price found the trip important to see how natural disasters affect communities and what that means to tourism based economies like the Cuzco Valley.
"I don't think many people in Aguas Calientes were aware of what had happened, and I got that impression the whole time I was there was that out of the hundreds of tourists in passing everyday who were there to see Machu Picchu, I don't think many of them were aware of what had happened four months earlier.
"These places are more than pretty Instagram pictures and people live here; and while it is kind of nice to think about tourism as a way to bring in money from a different economy to be spent in Peru, it definitely has its downsides and if people are going to go, it's worth being educated on the area that you are going to."
Price was thankful for the opportunity to explore and learn more about the South American country, with a possibility of extending the project into a full research project in the future.
"I think it was an incredibly unique opportunity for me as a student having gone through an international relations class, an anthropology and sociology class and going to actually apply what I have learned to a real-life situation ... and do my own research on something that is not really widely reported on," he said.
Samantha Winn covers the cities of North Augusta and Augusta, with a focus on community oriented business and events. Follow her on Twitter: @samanthamwinn and on Facebook and Instagram: @swinnnews.
