If you make your way to Puno it is a must to see the Floating Islands! They are unique in the world and really interesting to see. The Floating artificial Islands are generally made of bundled reeds, and the best known examples are those of the Uros people of Lake Titicaca, Peru, who build their villages upon what are in effect huge rafts of bundled totora reeds. The Uros originally created their islands to prevent attacks by their more aggressive neighbors, the Incas and Collas. We booked an organized tour to see the Floating Islands – again I had to make the experience that the tour agencies promise more than they will actually give to you!!! You can also go by yourself to the islands, but I think it is [Continue reading...]

After doing the Jungle Trek to Machu Picchu, me and Chani were “toured out“. No way that we were gonna go onto another tour in Arequipa…
We went to the local bus station, bought a ticket to Chivay and then we took it easy from there. In the same afternoon we walked to the local hot springs of Chivay and we got healed from all kinds of diseases that we did not even know that we had haha.
Next day – following the “instructions“ of the Lonely Planet we made our way to Yanque and back to Chivay– and the hike was sooooooo beautiful. There were almost no tourists around and we were enjoying the silence and of course the beautiful landscape of the Colca Cañon. We passed pre-Incan terraces that are [Continue reading...]

I guess every tourist who visits Peru goes to Machu Picchu; so that’s what we did! Since flights to Cuzco are really expensive if you don’t book at least one month beforehand, I and Chani took the bus which instead of a one hour flight takes you like 22 hours to get there. I was like – “well that’s cool, I’m just gonna sleep on the bus”, but NO WAY. Since Cuzco lies high up in the mountains it takes some curvy roads up the Andes to get there and there was no way to sleep on the bus. Because of the altitude (Cuzco is like 3000 meters high) and because of the road conditions loads of people were getting sick on the bus; a rock was thrown on one [Continue reading...]

In one of the weekends during my volunteering stay at Julio’s house, Julio took us (Chani, Peter and me) to Marcahuasi. Have you ever heard of Marcahuasi? Well I had not and my personal travel bible – the Lonely Planet doesn’t cover it either – it is so to say a “touristic secret“! Marcahuasi is a Quechua name and means something like the “Guardian’s home“ – but what is it??? Well no one knows exactly but local people say that pre-Incan people formed rock formations – known as Marcahuasi – on top of the hill close to the pueblo called San Pedro.
As I mentioned before Marcahuasi is not really a tourist attraction (I mean it is, but no one knows about it) and therefore the whole trip was a real [Continue reading...]

By TIM RATH.
The noise produced by a near-capacity crowd of Peruvians packing Eduardo Dibos Coliseum may have been heard all the way to the United States.
However, a raucous crowd was not enough to keep Peru’s national women volleyball team from falling to the U.S. Thursday in the second day of the 2009 Final Four Intercontinental Cup, 25-10, 20-25, 25-14, 25-20.
“The match was a lot about trying to manage the crowd,” said the U.S. coach, Hugh McCutcheon. “The fans are great, it’s such a great environment … so, it was a tough match for us and we’re happy to win.”
Captain Leyla Chihuan led Peru with 14 points in the loss, while Diana Soto chipped in 12 points. The Americans were led by Angie Pressey, who tallied 23 points via 15 kills [Continue reading...]