Blogs from Peru, South America - page 2

(Day 250 on the road)The ongoing protests in Peru are certainly not helping the country's tourism industry: Most of the fellow travellers I met over the past few weeks had already left Peru or were in the process of doing so. In fact, there were so few foreigners in some places in the south that I found myself unconsciously nodding as I walked past another traveller. Mostly though, I was the only foreigner in the places I stayed or on the tours I took. What a shame for Peru. The protests are concentrated in the south of the country, particularly in the Puno region, which has the only two land border crossings with Bolivia, my next destination. Both have been crossed since December. More than 50 people have died in the demonstrations so far, so the ... read more

(Day 201 on the road)I am back from an adventurous week in the Peruvian Amazon. It was a fascinating glimpse of life on and along the mighty river. But after a while I realised that this was not the life for me. Call me spoiled, but life there was very, very basic, the infrastructure was poor to non-existent, the heat and humidity were oppressive, as were the mosquitoes. It was great to experience it, but to be honest I was not too sad when I left after a good week. I entered via Iquitos, on the banks of the Amazon. Fun fact: Iquitos is the largest city in the world that is not accessible by road. It has a whopping 500,000 inhabitants, but no road access. You can only get there by plane or boat. I ... read more

I had signed up for the U.S. State Department Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) in 2019 in preparation for the aborted 2020 European holiday. It’s a worthwhile program that provides information on current topics and alerts regarding safety and security concerns for U.S. citizens traveling abroad, including relevant non-security issues like road closures. I updated my profile after I returned from Europe, and almost immediately was emailed information about political unrest in Peru. I haven’t explored any of the emails in depth as I decided that if the situation was treacherous, the ship’s captain would bypass Lima altogether or I would just remain on the ship. I had learned that the President of Peru was impeached and that strikes have shut down inland railroads, amongst other morsels, but I adopted a wait-and-see posture. Well, the wait ... read more

Friday 23rd December - Tuesday 27th December Arriving early Christmas Eve morning back in Cuzco, we decided fate had made us still be in Cuzco for Christmas for good reason; the massive Christmas market in the centre square that spiralled out to the side streets and outer squares, and the chance to hear the ancient organs and choir sing in the huge cathedral for the Christmas mass. We couldn’t wait to start celebrating and with a calmer Peru and believing everything was normal again (at least until January) we had settled with plans to move down to Puno by bus after Christmas and then into Bolivia for new year. However, as good as we were feeling, when finalising our rearranged buses, we soon learnt that the political truce had obviously not been agreed by the protesters ... read more

Tuesday 13th - Sunday 18th December 2022 The celebratory drink and lunch was soon consumed and we were left with a big decision to make with very little reliable information to hand. Our guide Ivan tried to offer a choice of plans with the information he had, but we could see even he (and all the other guides and staff swapping info with each other) didn’t really know for sure what the situation was. At this point, we either waited in Aguas Calientes in hope the train starts again later this afternoon (and, if the highly likely situation that it does not run then we end up staying a night and hoping again tomorrow) or we start walking the train track ourselves to the point where the road joins at km82 and we can get our ... read more