A tour through nature.

Tour number 13, for some this would be an unlucky number, but like I wrote last time, I believe that luck and bad luck depend a lot on yourself as well. The best example for this will be a little story about my trip to Ecuador, before tour number 13 started.

I had 12 days off and decided to follow a new route for going to Ecuador. This route would go from Chiclayo to Jaen, San Ignacio, la Balsa (the border crossing), to Zumba and Vilcabamba in Ecuador. It was suppose to be a beautiful route through a non touristy area and I wanted to see if it was worth to travel on with the new tour that I would like to guide in the future.

It all started positive when I found, unexpectedly, a very nice hotel with swimming pool in the boring little city of Jaen. My future tour would come from Ecuador, so this would be a good end of a long day travelling across the border. The next day I left early to see if it was really possible to travel in one long day from Jaen to Vilcabamba (or the other way around). The road was unpaved and in some parts very bad, but the surrounding was great! Through the window of the small van I could see beautiful green valleys with great nature and lots of fields where they grow rice, corn, bananas and other fruits.

The trip to San Ignacio took about 3 hours and when I arrived around 9:30am I decided to have a late breakfast in a small restaurant next to the bus stop. I put both of my backpacks next to a small table in the middle of the restaurant and ordered breakfast. Because the bus driver to San Ignacio had been helpful I decided to ask him how to get further to the border. He was standing just outside the door, so quick before he would go again. It took us only a few words, but when I turned around again, my small backpack wasn´t on the ground anymore??!! Where! How?! I runned outside again and saw one of the motor taxi´s driving away, but I couldn’t go to far afraid to lose my other backpack as well. I will never know if it was on that taxi, but I do know how they got my backpack and that it was partly my own stupid fault… However I was standing just in front of the open entrance I hadn´t seen or thought about the second open entrance. The thief must have used this entrance and maybe even with the help of the woman from the restaurant, because when I arrived later with the police, she started to lie, saying that I had only one backpack with me.

Off course the police couldn´t do anything useful to find my backpack, but at least they were quick (less than an hour) with fore filling the paperwork for my insurance. I even didn´t have to go to a bank first. In most places in Peru they made up a new rule for going to the police; Before they make up a report about the theft, you first have to go to a bank and pay 3.5 soles on an account. This rule is not only for locals but also for tourists, which can be very frustrating when they rob you on a Friday night, Saturday or Sunday and you have to wait until Monday before you can go to a bank…

After the paperwork of the police and their ´promise´ that they will continue looking (I offered a tip of 100 US$, without questions, for the finder), I continued my trip to the border, Zumba and further. Luckily I still had my money and passport on my body, but yes I did lose my laptop with all photos and music (I had a copy of the important data). I calculated that the total value of my backpack, computer, books etc. could be around the 1000US$!!

Around 15:40h I reached Zumba, but with the bus of 16:00h it took almost 5 hours to get to Vilcabamba. However the view was beautiful today, keeping in mind the long time to travel, the bad condition of the road, the fact that I had to wake-up the migration officer of Peru and the small problems I had leaving Ecuador a week later passing a different border crossing (the computer didn´t recognize the entrance stamp of Ecuador, so they told me that I had to go back!), I´m not sure if this route can be useful for my future tour? I will think about it.

September 15, exact a month after the big earthquake for the coast of Pisco, began my new tour. However the agency had skipped Pisco and Ica from the tour, we would closely pass by the area and I was wondering how it would look?

The tour code of this journey was LPZ and these tours end in Huaraz instead of Cusco. It would be for the first time in 3.5 years that I will go back to Huaraz and it was also the first time that I had such a small group to guide, 8 pax.. I usually prefer big groups, because smaller ones give less ´power´ to organize special tours and you have a bigger risk that some people can´t find connection within the group. However there is also a possibility to benefit from a small group, when they are flexible, have more or less the same interest and all like each other well enough to spend time with. What are my changes? It was again a group of Monkey King, but before that one group I never had a lot of problems with groups of Monkey King.

As result of the earthquake we would have one day longer in Lima, drive direct to Nasca and have one more night there as well. After Nasca the program would be as usual.

Following the Pan-American to Nasca we passed through the most effected cities of Chincha, Pisco and Ica. In the beginning it was difficult to separate the usually not well constructed houses and garbage from the results of the earthquake, but the closer we got to the cities, the more damage we saw. Broken walls and houses without a roof, or even houses which were hard to recognize and looked more like piles of adobe bricks, is what we saw when our bus was passing by. In between we could see lots of tents donated by international organizations for those who still didn´t have a solid place to sleep. It was a sad scenery and it made a big impression on us. At least 595 people got killed, 318 were still missing, thousands of people got wounded and even more were (are) still homeless after this big earthquake. And within the tail of this disaster Chili has started a heavy argument about their border line in the sea between Tacna and Arica?! It is only about a pies of seawater, but apparently full with fish. Talking about timing…

On the way to Nasca we visited the Pisco brewery ´El Catedor´ which was partly working again and already open for tourists in the hope to receive enough tourists and money to reconstruct everything again. After a tour through the brewery we went to Huacachina for lunch and an optional buggy-tour through the dunes. In Huacachina there wasn´t much damage left to see, but the tourist industry was complaining about the amount of tourists that came by. It felt good to help at least a little bit.

In Nasca we did again a combination of tours with Liliana. But this time we finally worked with another airliner to fly over the Nasca lines. In the evening I went to one of my favorite cappuccino places. They have very good cappuccino and cakes and the owner is a ´girl´ of only 22 years old. Because I come so often to this place, we now treed each other like friends. This evening she invited me to drink a few small glasses of pure Pisco, but because we had been drinking some glasses of wine before, with two of her friends, this Pisco came hard. Especially for my friend, so around 2am Í had to close her restaurant.

In Arequipa I met, by coincidence, the new girlfriend of one of my former group members and she asked me if I know a way to learn Dutch. With the help of a colleague I found a place to learn Dutch, so now it´s up to her. Good luck!

After Arequipa we continued our way according to a similar schedule like my last tour. We only had to leave already at 5:30am, because in the national rally of Peru, they would race today from Cusco to Arequipa. At least this gave us plenty of time to do the beautiful walk along the edge of the Colca Cañyon.

On our way to Puno we went again to Sillustani and because we didn´t have any really sick people, we also passed by a local farm. Here they explained a bit about their live and we ate different potato´s. I learned here that the long potato´s are tastier when you eat them raw instead of boiled, like we usual get them.

Unfortunately we didn´t have time to go to Tiawanaku this time, but instead we were now fortunate to be able to sleep at the less touristy and more beautiful side of Amantani Island. We stayed with a very nice family and had a longer, but more beautiful walk to the top of the island, to see the sunset. Even the rapidly upcoming thunderstorm and showers couldn´t change our positive opinion about our staying on the island.

If I can offer this same tour the next time, I guess I will start to recommend it again. Only I will then recommend it as a tour to enjoy nature, because even on Taquile island (or maybe especially on Taquile), there is nowadays more nature than real culture to enjoy…

During our time in Cusco, it was now included to stay a night in Urubamba, in the Sacred Valley. Off course I tried again to organize my new Sacred Valley Tour (thanks to two previous groups) and again it was a success.

Since my ankle is now almost better again, I decided in Aguas Calientes to climb up Putucusi (happy) Mountain and on the site of Machu Picchu, to climb Wayna Picchu again. I needed new foto´s to show the trail conditions to future group members who doubt if they want to climb up these mountains. I was also curious if the guards of Huayna Picchu had listened to my advise from last time to do something about the dangerous steps and route to climb the last bit of Huayna Picchu. As expected, nothing had changed, so I started the discussion again. Only this time I went up a little higher by going to the office of the director of Machu Picchu in Cusco. Unfortunately he wasn´t there, because it was the national week of tourism in Peru and there were also some special festivities around Machu Picchu. I left him a note and next time I know were to find him…

This time Machu Picchu and Cusco weren´t the end of our tour, so after we went back to Lima, we took an 8 hour bus ride north to Huaraz.

Huaraz is not a very pretty city and it wasn´t possible for me to do the 2-day trekking in the mountains, so I was a bit disappointed. But in the end it actually wasn´t so bad, because now it gave me enough time to do some day-tours around Huaraz.

The first day we were all still together, so we made our own little tour by visiting the site of Wilcahuaín (some small ruins of the Wari culture). From here we followed a very beautiful trail to the small village of Monterrey. At the end it turned out that some rich person had bought the rock/mountain at the end of the trail?! He had not only made a climbing wall from it, but he had also securely closed the nice steps at the end of the trail. We now had to follow a small and steep trail down the hill. Still our own little tour was a nice adventure J

The next day started the 2-day trekking and I went with one of the group members to the special ruins of the Chavin Culture. This culture is the oldest know big culture of the Andean. For this theory they found proof of more than 8000 years old! However the ruins aren´t that old, the oldest part is still estimated to be build around 1500 BC. It is special to be able to walk in the same building as people did 3000 years ago. It is also special to find on this site already signs and statues of Wiracocha, representative of the Sun-god from Tiawanaku and the Inca´s.

The third day we went on a tour to Laguna Llanganuco. This was a pretty lake with a very beautiful surrounding of old fairytale paper-trees and sharp snowcapped mountain peaks!

But however this was an impressive view, our visit to the town of left an even bigger impression. Actually I should say a visit to the old town of Yungay, because in 1970 this town got whipped away from the map.  It happened on May 31, when first an earthquake of ´only´ 50 seconds (in Pisco it was almost 2 minutes) and7.8 on the Richter scale hit the area. Lots of houses, made of adobe (like in Pisco) went down and a lot of people in Huaraz, Yungay and surrounding got killed. But for Yungay the biggest disaster had yet to come. The earthquake had shaken an instable part of the huge Huascaran mountain slope, causing a big, a very big landslide, or alluvium. This alluvium traveled about 15km and before it reached the town of Yungay it had reached a speed close to 300 km/h, enough to almost literary jump over a protective mountain range of more than 200m high! It is estimated that within 3 minutes after the earthquake about 50 million cubicle meters of granite, rock, mud and ice came down the hill and buried 90% of Yungay and its citizens! Ironically only the cemetery and 4 palm trees survived this major disaster. These survivors are now not only a tourist ´attraction´, but also a reminder of how powerful mother earth can be. The authorities of northern Peru are now keeping a close eye on the mountains and lakes and also most buildings are now made of concrete, trying to prevent this kind of disasters in the future. To bad Pisco, Chincha and Ica were not involved in these plans. There first had to come a big earthquake as well, before they will now start to rebuild these towns with concrete. It is a bit like when I started to complain about the route on Wayna Picchu. The answer they gave me was that nothing had happened, yet…

Well, I have to say that it were some very interesting weeks, I´ve made new connections/friends on Amantani Island and in Huaraz and never in my live I´ve made so much pictures in such a short time. The group was small, but they were nice and flexible, which makes my work more fun and interesting. However it was my 13^th tour in Latin-America I´ve seen and learned again a lot of new things. Even that Belgium people on tour are far worse in giving tips and spending money than we Dutch people. Unexpected, but really true.

I´ve also learned that I can better be not to honest with insurance companies. I was suppose to be covered against theft with 3 different insurances, but because of bad luck, expire dates and illogic rules one of these wasn´t activated and the two others covered together only about half of the damage L I guess next time I wouldn´t be that honest anymore, because one of these insurances does cover an expensive camera of more than 1100US$, but no laptops of about 800US$...

Maybe I can make this lose up with selling the latest print of my book. With the help of one of my group members I´ve checked the whole book again for mistakes and on request of some readers, I now also put some maps in it. Hopefully next week they can print the 40 new books.

In Merazonia everything is still calm and I keep you informed about my new quest on Huayna Picchu ;-)