Results tagged “Peru” from Intelligent Travel Blog

I can't get enough of Peru and though I've never been, I'm fascinated by it. I've fact-checked our May/June feature on taking the "High Road" to Machu Picchu, and our editor-in-chief wrote about visiting the pre-Inca city of Kuelap in our October "Places of a Lifetime" issue. So when I heard about Machapu Adventures, a new company offering environmentally sustainable, community-based surfing trips to coastal Peru, I had to find out more.

The founders of Machapu Adventures, Carlos Zuñiga and Nico Parkerson, stopped by National Geographic headquarters to tell me about their company, the kinds of trips they offer, and how travelers can help Peru's coastal communities.

Richard Morgan looks down on the world from his perch in the Peruvian jungle.

If you're going to go so far as to have a private luxury treehouse in the Peruvian Amazon accessible only by Ewok-inspired treetop canopy wooden bridges, it makes sense to have an on-call jungle butler on the ground. For emergencies. Or for more towels.

That's the idea behind the recent expansion at Inkaterra's Reserva Amazonica, about an hour down the river from Puerto Maldonado. The treehouse suite hopes to ameloriate a particular thorny problem Peru has: how to get tourists to enjoy its spectacular environmental splendor - the jungles, the rivers, the mountains, the World Wonder of Machu Picchu, etc. - without having the whole country look like the last day of spring break in Acapulco, all cigarette butts and crushed beer cans and regret.

Much has been written about this dangerous game. There's the fratty party town at the bottom of Mount Everest. The trashing of the national parks. The concerns about preserving ruins. It's an especially weird problem for luxury travel; the Grand Canyon gets too touristy, so people head to Arches National Park, which gets too touristy so people head to Denali, and on and on. Like locusts with fannypacks.

National Geographic staff was lucky enough to sit in on the Society's annual Explorers Symposium earlier this summer at Headquarters. Scientists and conservationists affiliated with and supported by the Society presented their findings and explained their recent work.

Texas State University Anthropologist and NG Expeditions Council Grantee Christina Conlee talked about her research at La Tiza, in southern Peru's Nasca region. I was intrigued by her fieldwork excavating tombs in the region (she recently uncovered evidence of human sacrifice at the site) despite the fact that many having been ravaged by looters. As she spoke about the iconography of the grave goods they've discovered and its similarity with the mysterious geoglyphs etched into the region's Pampa Colorada desert, I wondered how an eager traveler might go about seeing the Nasca Lines firsthand and what that experience would be like.

First off, some background on the pre-Inca Nasca Lines: The 1,500-plus geoglyphs were constructed by the Nazca culture (200 BC - AD 600), not aliens, some 2,000 years ago, and extend over 190 square miles. Though they're virtually indecipherable from the ground, from the air, a monkey, killer whale, hummingbird, condor, and pelican among flowers, trees, and geometric shapes are clearly visible. The lines were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994. The region's arid climate preserved them all these years though they are threatened by the nearby Pan-American Highway. The big question is what are they: Are they sacred, ceremonial paths, maybe outdoor temples, or did they perhaps serve an astronomical or agricultural purpose? Do they indicate the location of underground rivers or irrigation canals? Are they the creations of hallucinating shamans paying homage to a cult of water and the god Kon?

Plant a tree in the rainforest. Provide clean water for a river community. Deliver school supplies to an Amazonian school. By traveling with International Expeditions, not only will you experience the rich cultural and biological diversity of the world, but your trip will also help ensure that future generations can experience it, too.

IE, a world leader in nature travel and Amazon conservation programming, offers trips to awe-inspiring locales including the Amazon, the Galapagos, Antarctica, Belize, India, Kenya and South Africa.

The efforts by IE and its travelers take the term "voluntourism" to a new level, demonstrating just what it means to see the world and save it, too. Led by local naturalists and historians, their goal is to cultivate a greater appreciation and understanding of the earth's natural wonders as well as the welfare of the local people and communities within them.

To learn more, I caught up with Maggie Hart, President of International Expeditions, to discuss the program, its conservation efforts and ways that travelers can get involved. See full interview after the jump.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

"Welcome back" were not the words we wanted to hear with six weeks left on our year-long journey, but there was no avoiding it unless we didn't tell anyone about the forty-hour layover we had in New York before flying on to Peru. "We're not finished yet," we had to say again and again. Carol and I were actually quite apprehensive at the thought of breaking up the flow of our trip to spend two nights back where we started last July. The benefits of doing this, besides seeing some family and friends, were that the boys could play with their long-lost buddies while Carol and I seriously downsized our luggage for the trip's final leg that would be spent mostly in tropical climates.  

As far as how it felt to be home for the first time in ten months, it was actually quite revealing. If there's one thing I've realized throughout all my travels, it's that your senses are elevated. Food, fashion, architecture, language, landscapes, wildlife, smells--you are much more aware of everyday details whenever you leave the familiar surroundings of home. Since I've been in this heightened state of awareness for almost a year, it didn't go away when we landed in the U.S. Just the opposite. I seemed to walk around in an "all that's old is new again" frame of mind.

Meanwhile, our trip to Peru would also be a sort of homecoming, for we were joining up with the winners of the National Geographic Kids Hands-On Explorer Challenge, which would reunite me with fellow staff members and other colleagues from The Society.  It also meant that Tyler and Stefan would have plenty of peers to share the experience with, a huge bonus for two boys who only had sporadic interaction with other kids their age in the last year.

To compile his new book, My Favorite Place on Earth, Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr., interviewed dozens of famous people -- from Natalie Portman to the Dalai Lama -- about the places they loved most. He'll be guest blogging about his experiences here for the next few weeks. Click here for recent posts.

"Cultural, authentic, and sustainable"- the triple aspirations of the Intelligent Travel blog - are watchwords for some of the accomplished people you'll read about in My Favorite Place on Earth.  

I think of Jean-Michel Cousteau, whose favorite spot wasn't undersea but a lost corner of Peru, where 25 years ago he met a remarkable man. "Chief Kukus [of the Achuar, a group of the Jivaro] had nearly as much impact on me as my own father," Mr. Cousteau told me. "He taught me his values...His village stood on a river in the deep forest...There were a lot of birds in the trees, and monkeys all over the place. The people hunted with blowguns and poison darts, but in a sustainable way. They only killed what they needed, what nature could provide.

"Chief Kukus showed me some trees he had planted that were about ten feet tall. He told me: 'I'll never see them grow big enough, and my children won't either - even my grandchildren, probably not. But my great-grandchildren, they'll be able to use those trees that I have planted.' He pointed to one in particular and said, 'That's going to make a good canoe.'

"For me, the chief expressed the unwritten constitution of the future. In our modern culture we deal only with the present - now now now. We say we care about our children and grandchildren, yet we do nothing about it. But the Jivaro people had the right concept. They knew how to live in harmony with nature in a sustainable way."

Like Jean-Michel Cousteau, the world stands to learn much from traditional people who have managed to survive in one place for a long time. I think of the Earth as "one place" - and I hope we take the long view.

Photo: via the Ocean Futures Society

Our current issue has a fantastic story about trekking "The High Road to Machu Picchu" by Scott Wallace, and I'm already tired just looking at photographer Aaron Huey's shots of the craggy Peruvian mountains. But I'm just smitten with this gallery of Peruvian faces we just put up on our site. So many smiling faces, and the gorgeous colors of their fabrics remind me of our friend Lolly's knitting quest. Check out the entire set here.

Photo: Aaron Huey

Tomorrow, April 1st, at 10 pm the National Geographic Channel (NGC) will premiere the third season of its critically acclaimed series, Locked Up Abroad. In fourteen new episodes, they'll examine harrowing real-life stories of kidnapping, imprisonment, and other nightmares faced by travelers abroad.
   
We were lucky enough to preview an upcoming episode about an innocent victim of a drug trafficking scam in Peru. Briton Simon Burke haplessly went along with a new friend, Sarah Jackson, on what seemed like a dream trip to Machu Picchu. After ten days exploring Cusco and the Lost City of the Inca, he and Sarah were detained in Lima on their way back to the UK. Sarah was smuggling nearly ten kilos of cocaine to pay down a debt she'd dangerously accrued back home.
   
Both were imprisoned, he for ten months in a men's maximum security prison, packed with over 230 prisoners and only 56 beds. Finally, his companion pled guilty and attested to Simon's innocence. He was released from prison but the authorities did not return his passport. At the time of filming, Sarah was serving seven years for trafficking cocaine and Simon was still in Lima, in limbo, living in a tiny apartment while his status was sorted out.
   
Locked Up Abroad's travel horror tales are entertainingly shocking. But don't let these stories put you off traveling - the series teaches essential lessons as you plan your next overseas adventure. What Not To Do, after the jump.

Quick hits from our travel radar:

• Though widespread public opinion indicates the opposite, Playmobil toys is convinced that going through the security checkpoint in airports is actually a fun game. [Amazon]

• Earlier this week, heavy rains damaged the geoglyphs known as the Nazca Lines, one of Peru's biggest tourist attractions. Officials say they should be restored relatively soon. [Jaunted, The Age]

• France's President Nicholas Sarkozy has announced that as of April of this year, the country's national museums and monuments will be free for visitors under the age of 25. [ABC]

• Perhaps the best souvenir from the Inauguration? Ojamas. [Escape from New York]

• Hidden in the midst of the city of Istanbul are historic wooden homes from the 17th century; seeing them transports you back to Ottoman times. [IHT]