Oh, the Places We'll Go

Generally speaking, the countries we’ve visited so far have been very tranquil and safe places. Not once have we felt threatened or in danger in Ecuador, Peru, or Bolivia. But twice now, we have been the unintended victims of peaceful protests, preventing us from accessing our planned activities.

The first, and more significant issue we encountered occurred throughout the south of Peru. We were in Cusco at the time, and had just returned from our Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu. During the 3 days we were set to be in Cusco, we had arranged AWR product testing biking, rafting, and hiking in the Sacred Valley. We got to do the mountain biking, but after that, transportation in all of southern Peru was halted due to these protests, apparently tied to water rights. During these protests, road blocks are put up and no traffic is allowed to pass. Any cars caught on the road during these protests are in danger of being stoned (the only violent aspect to this civil disobedience, and stoning rarely happens because everyone knows not to drive). In addition to the roadblocks, protesters walk the street, chanting their calls to action, while police in riot gear stand idly unless something breaks out (but never does).

Such protests have come to be quite regular in Peru, happening roughly 15 times per year! So regular, that certain tour operators put roadblock bribes into their operating budget. For us, it was a bummer to miss out on the rafting and hiking days, but it allowed for some very tranquil days exploring downtown Cusco with no automobile traffic.

Our second encounter with roadblocks occurred in northern Bolivia. We were excited to do one of Bolivia’s most famous tourist activities – mountain bike down the “World’s Most Dangerous Road” (the road is no longer that dangerous, as nearly all vehicle traffic now takes the new road to Coroico, leaving the road pretty open to bikers). Well, it turns out that a lot of the country’s coca is grown near Coroico, and the coca farmers were a bit angry at the government for some new regulations put on their production (coca is both legally and illegally produced in Bolivia). As a result, they blocked the roads to their town, and thus our access to the bike trail.

All in all, we’ve been very lucky in our travels to date, with no major interruptions, detours, or delays due to uncontrollable circumstances, so I’m not complaining. When traveling in the Andes, you never know what roads might wash out, what bus might break down, and what roads are impassible. So far, our patience hasn’t been fully tested….yet.

There is a lot going on in Cusco. It is the most visited city in Peru – and for good reason. Anyone who visits Machu Picchu travels through Cusco on their way to the ruins – whether they take the train, hike the Inca Trail or do an alternative route like we did. Beyond the draw of Machu Picchu, the city has a lot going for itself – it’s beautiful, there is a lot of history there (being as it was the capital of the Inca empire shortly before it’s demise), there are tons of great restaurants and beautiful hotels, and it serves as an access point to the Sacred Valley which is an awesome spot to do just about anything outside including hiking, horseback riding, rafting, mountain biking, etc.

As part of our trip and activity research for Adventures Within Reach, we had the opportunity to do some mountain biking in area and we were not disappointed.  The group consisted of Ted and me, as well as another couple from Canada. We had a lead guide in front and an assistant guide who brought up the rear. Both Ted and the other gentleman from Canada had some mountain biking experience under their belts so they were able to fly down the hills with the lead guide.  Myself and the other woman were not quite as experienced and appreciated having the assistant guide back with us going our pace.

The Sacred Valley is a wide open valley used heavily for farming but also surrounded by 20,000+ foot mountains. The scenery is spectacular. Just before lunch we had the opportunity to visit the ruins of Moray which anthropologists believe were constructed as an experimental farming technique that dates back to Incan or possibly pre-Incan times.

After a delicious lunch the mountain bike trail changed from mostly flat and rolling hills to being essentially a straight downhill ride. It was at this point that our guide informed us that we would be riding on one of the most popular downhill racing routes in the South America and that he in fact competed in the race! It was a fun ride, for sure, but as it maneuvered around tight corners and over slippery gravel patches near the edges of a cliff, I found myself relying more and more heavily on my brakes.

On the way down we stopped another time at the Maras Salt Pans. People from the town of Maras still use the the pans and literally mine for salt. The water that comes out of the mountain is naturally high in sodium and as it evaporates in the shallow pans, salt forms. Every few days they gather the salt and allow more water to fill the pans. It’s quite a sight, actually! We were told that some of the salt is used for human consumption and some is used for animals.

After the final stop, we cruised down a bit more before celebrating with a beer at the bottom. It was quite a day and we were able to strongly recommend Amazonas Explorer’s mountain biking day-trip to Adventures Within Reach for their future clients! We looked forward to doing a rafting trip and hiking trip with Amazonas Explorer as well, however, our plans were unfortunately canceled due to a nationwide strike that was brewing…

A few weeks back, I wrote a post about mixing work with play, and how I’m using this trip partially as a professional development opportunity. Well, in addition to the WTFs and the Pictures of the Week, I’m starting a new regular installment of posts, Industry Bloggin’, when my responsible tourism articles are published on the web. This week, check out the story I wrote for Sustainable Travel International’s monthly e-News about my friend Peter Shear and the great work he is doing in Ecuador. You can find the original at this link or copied below.

Featured Article: Community-based Tourism is Changing Lives in Rural Ecuador

By Ted Martens

Pucara, Intag River Valley, Ecuador – The Intag River Valley, a gorgeous and lush mountain landscape northwest of Quito, is home to one of the most bio-diverse zones in all of Ecuador (a UNESCO biodiversity “hot-spot” and deemed one of the 10 most bio-diverse ecosystems in the world, due largely to its extreme elevation change – sea level to 11,000 ft in only a couple dozen miles).  In addition to its one-of-a-kind forests, flora, and fauna, the region is also home to a wealth of valuable minerals and ores beneath its surface.  A number of mining enterprises are in pursuit of digging rights, and many locals are tempted by the short-term financial returns promised by these companies.  Without a financially viable alternative, the region is doomed to be exploited and destroyed by the mining industry.

Pucara, a small Intag community of roughly 300 residents, is confronting these challenges with the help of The Inter-American Center for the Arts, Sustainability, and Action (CASA), an NGO committed to helping rural communities realize sustainable economic development opportunities.  CASA Director Peter Shear, an American who has lived in Ecuador for over 12 years, is working closely with the Pucara community to develop viable economic alternatives to combat urban migration and unsustainable resource extraction.

While CASA’s projects span a wide range of economic development initiatives, a core component is community-based and volunteer tourism.  For over 7 years, CASA has been bringing groups of student and young-adult volunteers to the area, working side by side with the locals to build community projects and infrastructure that benefit the residents and the community at large.  Volunteers participate in “mingas”, organized project days where residents come together to work on a particular construction, farming, conservation, or other community-benefiting initiative.  Funding for minga projects comes from local sources, as well as money raised by volunteers prior to their trips.  To date, CASA volunteer tourism projects have included:

• Building homes for residents in need (recipients of the homes were chosen by a community housing board that accepted applications and prioritized based on economic and social factors).
• Construction of a community center for meetings, events, celebrations, weddings, etc.  The center is the largest of its kind in all of Intag, and has turned into a source of revenue for Pucara, as neighboring communities have begun renting it out.  Proceeds from this program now pay for transportation for Pucara students to attend high school in the neighboring community of Apuela (prior to this program, most kids in Pucara did not attend high school due to the prohibitive transportation costs).
• Purchase of land and construction of community organic gardens.
• Purchase of land and construction of community farms.  Some of the poorest residents in town have no land, and were in need of space for subsistence farming.
• Construction of solar hot water showers for community use.
• Construction of soccer field facilities.
• Conservation through land purchasing, reforestation, and preservation.
• Education through organic and agro-ecological farming instruction and testing.
• Construction of community-based tourism facilities, including the Intag Spanish School (which employs 4 local women who otherwise would have little or no income); a trail network through the town and the protected area; and other visitor infrastructure.

This impressive list of projects, while organized and guided by CASA, was driven primarily by community initiation, participation, and democratic decision making.  The result is a community with a much richer set of resources and infrastructure for creating new economic opportunities for local residents.

One of the most lucrative opportunities that has arisen from CASA’s work in Pucara is a well organized community-based tourism infrastructure.  While initially developed primarily for the volunteers, Pucara is now well equipped and actively receiving independent travelers interested in an authentic experience interacting with rural Ecuadorian families and communities.  A rotating homestay program with 20 participating local families allows travelers the chance to live, eat, sleep, and participate in lives of the residents of Pucara for US $10 dollars per night (which includes 3 meals).  The rotating nature of the program ensures an equal distribution to families throughout the community.  The CASA-established Spanish school, the first of its kind in Intag, allows travelers to hone their language skills while supporting local women teachers, all of which are government-certified. Travelers pay US $6 per hour for private lessons.  Of course, there are always volunteer opportunities available, independently or through community mingas.  The Intag River Valley also has a wealth of activities to offer visitors, from guided or independent hikes through protected areas and native cloud forest, to natural hot springs, local markets, and agro-ecological tours.

The Intag Valley (and most of rural Ecuador) is faced with a growing number of challenges in an increasingly globalized economy.  With the majority of the younger working class fleeing traditional farming for greater financial opportunities in urban areas, Intag residents face an uncertain future.  While the proposed mining project would reverse this trend and bring short-term returns to these poor regions (local jobs, mining subsidies, etc), the long-term environmental impacts would be disastrous.  Volunteer and community tourism is one example of a successful alternative sustainable economic development model that is bringing similar benefits to the local population, allowing these communities to preserve their heritage, culture, and environment.

Interested in visiting Pucara and the Intag Valley?  Contact CASA Interamericana Director Peter Shear at info@casainteram.org, 086-849-950 (within Ecuador), www.casainteram.org. 

Ted Martens is STI’s former Director of Outreach. He is taking a yearlong sabbatical to explore the world and indulge his passion for learning about the latest and most innovative developments in sustainable travel. Keep in an eye out for Ted’s latest dispatches from across the globe in future editions of The Responsible Travel Report.

Remember your first furry little pet, that cute guinea pig?

In Peru and Ecuador, they double as a delicacy, a food for special occasions.  We gave them a try – not much meat on them, kinda fatty, not all that great.  But the locals sure do love them!

Our next trip research assignment for Adventures Within Reach took us to the jungle. We flew from Lima to Iquitos, Peru which is the largest city in the world that can not be accessed by road! There are over 500,000 people in this place and you can only get there by boat (on the Amazon) or by flying. Immediately after we landed we were sweating. This place is hot! I mean, damn hot! Not only is the temperature high (in the 90s), but the humidity was the main challenge as we had gotten used to the dryness of being at altitude.

Taking our transport into the city, I kept getting the feeling we were near the beach – everyone is driving around on mopeds and wearing skirts. The bars are advertising tropical drinks and the weather is hot and sunny. However, though there is no beach nearby, there is plenty of water, and that water is the Amazon River.

We took a boat for over two hours up river before transferring to a smaller boat and continuing up a tributary for another half hour before reaching Muyana Lodge. Muyana is perched on stilts in the middle of the rain forest, hours away from anything. We were visiting towards the end of the dry season so the water level was quite low, but during the wet season the river comes up all the way to the stilts and rooms are essentially islands connected by the boardwalk pathway.

Both our room and the main lodge/eating area were entirely screened in, which did a fantastic job of preventing bugs from finding their way to us. Though overall the Muyana Lodge was quite nice, the fact that it is in the middle of nowhere means that electricity is a luxury. There is no electricity in the rooms (they provide you with a couple oil lamps each evening) and there is limited electricity in the eating area, depending on the time of day. No electricity means no air-conditioning (which we obviously weren’t expecting), but it also means no ceiling fans or any kind of relief from the heat. We would have paid good money for a breeze could such a thing be purchased!

Once we kinda adjusted to sweating all the time, we were happily distracted by our guide Moises (pronounced Moses) who was born and raised in the jungle. Our activities included:

• A boat trip up the river looking for birds (herons and macaws) and wildlife (several kinds of monkeys and a sloth!), that culminated in a beautiful jungle sunset.
• A hike through the rainforest with Moises who was amazingly adept at making a variety of bird and animal sounds as well as pointing out incredibly scary insects hiding in tree trunks, underground, etc.
• Fishing for piranhas and other fish. I caught nothing but Ted snagged a couple piranhas and we then ate them for dinner!
• A nighttime boat excursion where a different guide literally got out of the boat and caught a caimen (an alligator-type creature) with his bare hands!
• Seeing pink-bellied dolphins and swimming in the Amazon!

I was pretty unsure about swimming in the Amazon after fishing for piranhas only the day before, however, after nearly 3 straight days of being uncomfortably hot, I couldn’t help but see any other alternative. Our guide led the way followed by Ted and another woman in our group. We all lived to tell about it and it certainly was worth the dip!

Ted and I loved our time in the jungle. It was an incredibly unique experience that we are happy to have had. That being said, we have decided that we are NOT jungle people and if it wasn’t for those cold-water only showers that we utilized at least three times a day, we might not have made it out without melting first!

We had a lot of opportunities to conduct trip research in Peru (best job ever!) for our good friends at Adventures Within Reach. The reason there were so many trips to check-out was because our time there coincided with the largest travel industry gathering in Latin America called TravelMart. Buyers and sellers of trips from all over the world, gathered in Lima and to incentivize the buyers (i.e. tour operators in North America, such as Adventures Within Reach), sellers (i.e. Mountain Lodges of Peru) offered low to no cost opportunities for people to go on their trips (known as “familiarization” or FAM trips in industry lingo). We were happy to be those people!

And another wonderful benefit of the TravelMart being in Lima when we were there meant that we were delivered another cute laptop computer just like the one we had stolen from us in Ecuador! A huge thank you to Mark Lewis in Boulder for doing the on-the-ground shopping to replace our belongings, and an equally big thank you to Barbara and Robin at Adventures Within Reach for schlepping our items all the way from Colorado to Peru. We can’t thank you guys enough!