When I started planning the itinerary for The Global Citizen Project, my 12 country, 12 volunteer project over 12 months plan to give back, Peru was a priority. I toyed with volunteering in places I know, love and have seen need in, like Cusco and Puno, but decided that this was an opportunity to give Lima a fair shake – and not simply for an overnight stint. [Continue reading...]

Taking a taxi in Lima is not for the faint-of-heart. You really have to have a thick skin and an affinity for close calls to even get into one without cowering at the surrounding chaos of traffic. The fact that most of the seatbelts in these cabs don’t work or are missing altogether doesn’t help the matter much either. Aside from the unstable and ungoverned condition threatening the safety of traffic in Lima there is an equally pressing reason to take the road seriously in this city – taxi theft. [Continue reading...]

If you are going to live in Peru for a long period of time as a wandering outlander, you better well like it. However the life of a vagabond is not always full of adrenaline-rush-water-rafting-paragliding-mountain-climbing fun. I was warned by many fellow adventurous wayfarers before my Peruvian journey of the notorious traveller’s cycle in which we are eventually entangled into three distinct stages. First we are drawn into the romance of the honeymoon period where the novelty seduces our senses and our exploration of the country is full of endless possibilities. [Continue reading...]

Peru has plenty to fill up your holiday schedule, but if you’d like to explore more of the continent that close to 400 million people call home, it’s time to check the entry requirements for the eleven other countries that make up South America. Currently listed below are details for Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay; Venezuela does not give out visas to non-residents of Peru. [Continue reading...]

Marcahuasi is the Quechua name given to a plateau 60 km northeast of Lima, one that roughly translates as “the House of the Sovereign”. Exactly who this sovereign is, or what the stories are behind the stone abodes and rock monuments that dot the landscape, most experts have little clue. Some have offered a geologic explanation for the sculpted landscape, while others, such as proto-historian Dr Daniel Ruzo, believe that the rocks, which resemble everything from faces to dinosaurs, are markers left by an ancient civilization, long since annihilated by cataclysms of (literally) Biblical proportions. [Continue reading...]