Page 3 of deano222 Travel Blog Posts
Dinner - The Band
This blog to date has detailed the many tourist activities of this Kumuka tour, today the tour took some of the gang on a local cultural tour to understand how the majority of Peruvians live. The Arequipa Reality Tour is run by a local called Miguel, whose family works with the lesser fortunate of the town to help evolve their economic wealth. Arequipa is said to be the southern capital of Peru, the south dominated by mining and agriculture, important to the countries economy. It is small, only 1 million people, compared to 7 million in the capital Lima, all of Peru has 27 million citizens. Arequipa has the densest living of the two cities due to the economic nature of family real estate. Miguel explained how this works for himself and the majority of the ... read more
Astronout
Post the New Years day big sleep, the tour took us to the site of the Nazca Lines and Chauchilla Cemetery. The only way to see the lines is from the air, 25 minute flight to circle around all the various symbols. A video later in the day explained various theories of the lines. The most popular belief is that around the 600 AD, a period of drought for several decades caused the Nazcan people to begin drawing huge symbols in the desert as offering to the Gods, preying for rain. The majority of the lines aligned with significant mountains ranges, or sources of water, the layouts trying to coax the Gods to deliver water. The second part of the day was at the Chauchilla Cemetary of the Nazca people. The ghastly sites showed the traditional ... read more
Oasis - nothing more to say
Huacachina Oasis is a tourist village set in the middle of the sand dunes. It is quite surreal, a lake in middle of towering sand dunes, complete with palm trees, ice cream carts and pedal boats, with the main form of transport being dune buggies. The gang boarded dune buggies for a tour of the desert and some sand boarding. Cruising through the desert on buggies is like a make your own adventure roller coaster ride. It was awesome, with the drivers taking us up and down a variety of dunes at rapid stomach churning pace. Hales of excitement and screams of uncertainly filled the buggies, but all agreed the ride increased everyones adrenaline… ready for the sand boarding. The buggy ride was overshadowed only by the sheer speed of sliding down the dunes on boards. ... read more
transport...
Our tour guide Mel joked with us as we left the dock to look out for the boobies! Huh, nudist beach, no Peruvian booby birds, and thousands of them. The Ballestas Islands are home to a great variety of wildlife. There are huge colonies of sea lions and unusual marine birds, such as - Humboldt’s Penguin, cormorants, Peruvian booby and Peruvian pelican. The islands surrounding seas are rich in creel, and associated upper food chain fish. They provide a safe breeding ground for sea lions, pelicans and a large variety of bird life. The tour enabled the gang to get up close with much of the wildlife on the island. An astounding amount of birds and sea lions were seen all over the island. The locals take advantage of the bird droppings by collecting these twice ... read more
Lima - Random Shots
Lima, The capital of Peru - Wow, so much to see, and I just didn’t get round to seeing it. Ok, I needed some downtime, 3 weeks on the road, a bit of sickness, and an emergency with iPods and altitude to solve. Resulted in not too much touring... I’ll pinch other peoples photos and read the guide book... By the way, if you want further detail, on the tour I’m on, check out the following two links from the Kumuka web site. http://www.kumuka.com/TourPage.aspx?ContinentId=SA&TourId=SA2 http://www.kumuka.com/Dossier.aspx?TourId=SA2 The point ends one leg, from Quito to Lima, and begins another, Lima to La Paz. From there the tour will continue onto Rio for Carnival. I will finish up on the tour at La Paz on the 20th, with a few days to kick about before heading home. At the ... read more
Andes Landscape
Huarez is located in the Peruvian Andes at 3200m, a great base for climbing the local mountains, including those experienced in "Touching the Void". The activity for the gang was to scale a 12m tall ice wall using crampons (spiky shoe addons), ice picks and natural skill! The ice wall was located at altitude of 5400m, the highest that the majority of people had ever been. You can see the beautiful scenery that was experienced and certainly a change from the arid, blandness of the Peruvian west coast. The ice climb itself was exhausting for all, physically very demanding, but exhilarating successful upon completing the ascent. Cheers and words of encouragement from below enabled people to push themselves further. I was given some words of advice the day before arriving in South America by a good ... read more
Xmas Eve Post Dinner Drinks
Merry Xmas to all! Christmas eve and day were spent at a little beach side town called Huanchaco. The gang received some Christmas chocolate from Santa, aka Mel, and all participated in a secret Santa. Some confusion was had by the northern hemisphaerians as to where the snow was during this time, but a little local Pisco sour soon cleared this up. The beech didn't compare to Auzzi golden sand standards, locals enjoyed the time off. Many of the gang called or sent messages home. A great way to spent xmas. Boxing day, the tour turned east to head into the Andes for some altitude adventure. ... read more
Where r we now?
The trip from Cuenca proved much longer and difficult due to the main road being blocked by protesting locals. This led to a rather long day through unknown routes eventually stopping for dinner somewhere in the highlands of Ecuador. This became camp for the night, as the gang buckled in for another night in the truck. Toasties (Jaffles) plus rum and coke were dinner, with an early morning start to find the nearest town for a hot breakfast. Finally coming back to the main road, we continued on to Peru. Arriving at Punta Sol, around 18 hours later than scheduled, the gang welcomed with open arms the warm north western Peruvian beachs… For those from the southern hemisphere, it was feeling more like Xmas. The landscape has changed dramatically in 36 hours, from the lush equatorial ... read more
La Inmaculada
Cuenca is Ecuador’s 3rd largest city, the crew arrived after a long days drive from Banos to unwind, check some internet and off to dinner for Mexican. The major activity was a visit to the ¨Panama Hat Factor¨ This factory produces genuine Ecuador Toquilla straw hats. These hats got their names, and were made famous during the construction of the Panama Cannel in the late 1800s. Originally these hats provided very functional protection from searing sun, but later became popular movie accessaries and symbols of sophistication and luxury for foreigners. The toquilla straw is harvested by local farmers from two provinces in the south of Ecuador, Azuay and Manabi. It is then sold to hat makers, traditionally, and is still mostly woman, who weave the hats. The weaves vary greatly in pattern and quality. A low ... read more
Local Parade
Banos Accommodation for Banos is on private property 30 minutes drive outside of Banos. This hostel is owned an operated by our host Mel´s boyfriend Franko. Having not seen each other since the start of the trip, she was in a great mood and left us to our own devices for much of the time. Franko was also our host for Cannoning. Banos Celebrations Like when I arrived in Quito, Banos was on the last night of its annual celebrations. The town held a street festival, completed with a parade of marching bands and floats. The evening tho was spent drinking and dancing in the streets with locals and foreigners alike. It was voted that this combination certainly improved everybody’s Salsa dancing. Cannoning With a sleepin post last nights dancing well deserved, 6 of the gang ... read more
