Jaunted

Southern Peru Field Trip / Peru Travel / Cocoa Leaves / Lake Titicaca / → All Tags

Seeing Peru's Amantani Island Through The Eyes of a 13-Year-Old

All this week, Nathan Paluck will be filling us in on "The Real Peru" outside the capital city of Lima. Any questions or suggestions, send 'em to us here.

You can't visit Lake Titicaca without spending a night on one of its islands. That's what people told me, and they were right. Late Titicaca straddles Peru and Bolivia and is one of the world's highest at 2.3 miles. It has three populated islands and a series of floating, human-made reed islands. They're all reportedly amazing, but Lonely Planet advised that Amantaní Island was the least touristic, so I chose it for a night stay (LP's South America on a Shoestring was my reference throughout).

Two persistent workers at the lake dock tried selling me on a trip to the islands that included a homestay on Amantaní. Large groups of white tourists filed into tour boats. But I was determined for a DIY trip, and at 8 a.m., I and a couple dozen Quechua-speaking villagers from Amantaní embarked on the four-hour boat ride.

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Southern Peru Field Trip / Peru Travel / Puno Day / Inca Travel / → All Tags

Getting Puno With It In The Folklore Capital Of Peru

All this week, Nathan Paluck will be filling us in on "The Real Peru" outside the capital city of Lima. Any questions or suggestions, send 'em to us here.

Though I didn't plan it, I arrived to Puno, called the folklore capital of Peru, on the eve of its anniversary day. In a region that lays claims to 4,000 distinct traditional dances, you better believe there was some fierce dancing. From 2-9 p.m. the next day, Puno elementary and high schools performed choreographed street parades in lavish costumes.

Puno is a port of Lake Titicaca and is way high up: 3,800 meters, or 2.3 miles. It was so high up that I had a headache upon arriving. After I found decent lodging (Hotel Arequipa, on Arequipa with Oquendo, has private rooms, a computer room with Internet and a clean, shared bathroom for 15 soles), my altitude problem seemed cured by a couple of coca leaf teas at a bar on Calle Lima.

In the morning, there was an impressive theatrical procession of the Incas. Legend has it that the Inca empire was founded by a couple that was born from Lake Titicaca. The royal couple comes back from the lake on Puno Day, carried on a platform by young men and throwing potatoes out to a large crowd.

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Southern Peru Field Trip / Peru Travel / Mineral Baths / Thermal Baths / Bus Travel / → All Tags

Put Out to Pasture (In a Good Way) in Chivay

All this week, Nathan Paluck will be filling us in on "The Real Peru" outside the capital city of Lima. Any questions or suggestions, send 'em to us here.

When I arrived at dawn to the bus station in Arequipa to leave for El Cañon del Colca, tickets were sold-out for the 6 a.m. departure and there was already a crowd buying spots for the 9 a.m.

A woman and I went to the bus anyway and eventually convinced the driver to let us stand in the middle. Seriously. But as we learned, there seems to be a lot of local commuting between Arequipa and the villages along the canyon, so we recommend buying a ticket beforehand.

The ride to the canyon is five hours long and passes through a protected reserve, home to vicuñas, the wild, skinny cousins of the llama.

I ending up stopping in Chivay, a small town full of hostels. A couple miles out of town there are mineral-rich thermal baths, which I later walked to. Beyond the baths houses, cow paths lead to small parcels of pasture and farmland. I caught up with a man and daughter walking with two dozen head of cattle.

Marlene, the 25-year-old cowgirl pictured above, and her father Emiliano turned out to be extremely friendly and didn't mind the company and questions from a gringo (although the cows were wary). I helped Marlene get the cows into their stone wall enclosure and left thinking I might actually deserve the dip in the thermal baths.

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Southern Peru Field Trip / Peru Travel / Cathedrals / Food Travel / Monasteries / → All Tags

Eat, Pray and Eat Some More in Arequipa

All this week, Nathan Paluck will be filling us in on "The Real Peru" outside the capital city of Lima. Any questions or suggestions, send 'em to us here.

After sandboarding in Huacachina, I head out to Arequipa, a cozy city with an attractive colonial center and views of three nearby active volcanoes.

I arrived at 5 a.m. from an overnight bus ride. At that hour the volcanic stone used in old Arequipa buildings, called sillar, appears cold and gray. In the afternoon the sillar glows white, and at dusk it's golden brown.

Many use Arequipa – itself at 2,300 meters above sea level – as a base for hikes into the surrounding rugged territory. The volcanoes Chachani (6075 meters) and El Misti (5833 meters) beckon climbers.

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Southern Peru Field Trip / Peru Travel / Sandboarding / Musica Criolla / → All Tags

Dancing in El Carmen and Sandboarding in Huacachina

All this week, Nathan Paluck will be filling us in on "The Real Peru" outside the capital city of Lima. Any questions or suggestions, send 'em to us here.

People here told me that to see the real Peru, I needed to travel outside of Lima, the capital city and home to 30 percent of the country's population.

Getting off the bus in Chincha, a coastal city two hours south of Lima, I knew I must have entered the so-called real Peru. Chincha smelled of pueblo dust and burning trash. Three-wheeled mototaxi traffic buzzed around street stands selling cheap wine from local vineyards.

I chose Chincha to begin travels in southern Peru on an invitation from Lima friends. There was to be a peña that night, a big party to celebrate October 31, Peru's day to celebrate música criolla. The genre is instilled with African rhythms, and Chincha is considered the heart of the country's small but culturally significant Afro-Peruvian community.

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