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Showing 1-25 of 49 results
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The Choquequirao Trek or How to Be a Weekend Warrior in Peru
Blog: Vagobond.com - 1 November 2011
We descended such distances that the climate visibly changed around us, getting warmer and subtropical until the trees were dripping with ripe mangos and avocados.
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Daily Travel Snapshot: Cusco, Peru
Blog: WildJunket - 23 August 2011
Girls in colorful dresses in Cusco, Peru.
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An Unseen Side of Machu Picchu: La Gran Caverna or Templo de la Luna
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 24 June 2011
With 2,500 people trampling over its manicured lawns and shooing its herd of chilled-out llamas into the optimally photogenic pose, finding an unseen corner of Machu Picchu seems impossible. And it is: almost. But there is one corner you can slip away into, if you have the time and energy. You won’t see an incredible [...]
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Cusco’s Sacred Valley by Car
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 14 June 2011
There’s nothing quite like a family visit to spur an expat into hyper-turistic mode. I’ve been in Peru for about a year and a half now, and the list of places I haven’t been yet is embarrassingly long. The last few days have seen quite a few of them scrubbed off the list, at least. [...]
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Cusco to Colombia in a Combi: Days 1 – 6
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 10 May 2011
“Bad news, guys. The engine’s doing that thing again.” It’s 4:30 am in the morning and we’re at a service station in a place called Huacho, somewhere between Lima and Trujillo. This is not news we want to hear. The five of us plus dog that are heaped on top of each other in the [...]
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When the rains stop… Cusco in Festivals, 2011.
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 11 March 2011
The rainy season will finally come to an end in a few weeks, Cusco will once again be blessed with too-blue skies and clear mountain air, and all of a sudden every time I turn around there will be a raging Andean fiesta going on. Peruvians, like all latinos, love their festivals. Most tend to [...]
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Wait, What Do You Do Again?
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 27 December 2010
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru As a Kiva Fellow, no two days are the same. One morning I will wake up at 5am to try to visit a borrower before they head out to work, and the next I’ll be in the office uploading loans or training the Kiva team on how to take [...]
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Catching the Christmas Spirit
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 20 December 2010
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru First of all, I love Christmas. The tree, Christmas lights (you can ask my parents about what I did to our house when I was a little kid), hot cider, going over to Grandma´s house on Christmas Eve, eating tamales (everyone has their own Christmas traditions), the stockings, Eggs Benedict Christmas morning, watching my Beagle open up his gifts. The feeling of being around those who you love and those who love you.
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A Look Under the Hood (Fine-tuning an MFI for 2011)
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 14 December 2010
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru Last weekend, I had the chance to attend Asociación Arariwa´s year end planning retreat out in the Sacred Valley in Urubamba, Peru. More than just spending the weekend having fun with my co-workers at the institution, I was excited to finally see what a microfinance institution (MFI) really is about. On one hand as a Kiva Fellow, I get a very in depth look at how my MFI works, but on the other hand, Kiva is still perceived as a funding source for the MFI so they are constantly “putting their best foot forward”.
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Bewildered in Machu Picchu
Blog: MuseumChick - 11 December 2010
This man still gives me nightmares. Two years ago I was hiking in the Andes for the holidays. On the train to Machu Picchu, this festive sock headed man was on the train from Cusco to Agua Calientes. In New York City if a man is on a train wearing a sock mask you should [...]
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Living the Dream
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 29 November 2010
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru Back when I was just a Kiva lender, I thought how cool it would be to meet one of the borrowers that I had lent too. I mean that is what just about every Kiva lender dreams of, right? You lend out to people halfway across the world all based off of a couple of paragraphs on a website and a 3” by 5” photo.
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The Kiva Community
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 24 November 2010
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru I am always surprised by the power of online social media and networks. Facebook, Twitter, blogging sites like this Wordpress one, dating sites like eHarmony, sharing sites like Freecycle or rating ones like Yelp all command huge followings and powerful networks. The world becomes smaller thanks to sites like Facebook—it is sites like these that allow me to keep in touch with friends while I serve abroad as a Kiva Fellow.
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The Long Road To Cuzco
Blog: The Road Chose Me - 50,000kms of ebb and flow - 2 November 2010
I see on my basic maps a route passing through the middle of the mountains and set out, aiming in the far distance for Cuzco. Along the way I pass through Huánuco, The extremely high & cold Cerro de Pasco, Huancayo, Ayacucho, Abancay and finally arrive in Cuzco many days later after some very long [...]
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The Long Road To Cuzco
Blog: The Road Chose Me - 50,000kms of ebb and flow - 2 November 2010
I see on my basic maps a route passing through the middle of the mountains and set out, aiming in the far distance for Cuzco. Along the way I pass through Huánuco, The extremely high & cold Cerro de Pasco, Huancayo, Ayacucho, Abancay and finally arrive in Cuzco many days later after some very long [...]
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Found! World’s best hangover cure – the Vía Ferrata in the Sacred Valley
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 18 October 2010
I spent Friday hanging from two carabiners 400 metres above the Sacred Valley. We crawled along convex cliff faces, inched across a hideously wobbly hanging bridge, admired a view along the valley towards the Incan ruins of Ollantaytambo, zip-lined and abseiled our way back down to flat, homely earth. Sitting on the heights, munching on [...]
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You’ve come a long way, baby…
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 7 October 2010
Last night I realised how far I’ve come. I arrived in Cusco almost 10 months ago, backpack on my back, sweaty and dusty, with just enough Spanish to chat up boys in bars and negotiate taxi fares. Every night was a party. I would walk home through the Plaza de Armas at 6 o’clock in [...]
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Mission Impossible: Learning Quechua in Cusco
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 15 July 2010
Image: unojofuerte via flickr Sorry about the radio silence the last few days, everyone – Yamanyá Backpackers will be opening its doors in 12 days (!) so I’ve had my hands quite full (as an even cursory look at our still below par website will tell you). Uni also started back this week. What sound [...]
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Surviving Inti Raymi: What Not to Do
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 26 June 2010
Inti Raymi, or the Festival of the Sun, is the peak of Cusco’s June festivities. An Incan ritual that was declared pagan and outright forbidden by the Catholic church in 1572, to be revived almost 400 years later, it takes place every year on June 24, the winter solstice. On this day Inti, the Sun [...]
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Cusco Feriado
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 6 June 2010
June in Cusco: an entire month of fiestas. What a terrible place I live in! It all kicked off with Corpus Christi on Thursday - 16 icons of saints from the surrounding districts were paraded about the Plaza de Armas and deposited in the Cathedral. Next Thursday, after a week in the Cathedral soaking up lots of holiness, they'll be marched back out and home.
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Snapshots: 秘魯 Peru
Blog: Diaries of a Vagabonding Couple - 3 June 2010
Woman from Colca Canyon and her hand made doll Woman peering out of a stone house in the Sacred Valley Charlotte and her red balloon Traditional handicrafts in Cuzco Floating reed islands of Lake Titicaca Plaza de Armas, Cuzco Arched walkway in Cuzco Cuzco bathed in morning light More Snapshots...
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Near misses in Cuzco and the Sacred Valley
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 17 May 2010
For anyone planning on visiting Cusco, please remember that incidents like the one described below are exceptionally rare; I for one will be in Bullfrogs, as usual, several nights week, playing pool upstairs (but perhaps hanging extra close to the windows). It is an excellent bar. We pulled up alongside the smashed-up taxi around 3. [...]
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Do You Believe In Magic?
Blog: The Brink of Something Else - 1 May 2010
I've never been much of a believer in magic. A friend and I spent three months terror-struck that we were being haunted by vengeful spirits after an ill-advised experiment with a ouija board back in my rather less skeptical youth, but a thoroughly scientific secondary and part-of-my-tertiary education has instilled a firm faith in the power of the scientific method and rather less in otherworldly explanations for, well, anything.
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第七十三天：有賊呀！！！
Blog: Diaries of a Vagabonding Couple - 1 May 2010
我們的東西不見了！今早才說秘魯天下太平... 我應該用 "老貓燒鬚" 來形容自己嗎？對上那次遇小偷是七年前的事；還記得事發後我哭得死去活來 -- 接待我們的朋友在最後一天忽然說要參加婚禮著我們找旅館住，旅費緊絕的我們找不到相宜的住宿，唯有睡在街頭。坐火車到了接駁長途巴士的車站附近，打算倒頭就睡前在車站被小偷以分散注意力方式偷去背包，相隔 10 多分鐘始發現背包不翼而飛，最傷心是日記本沒了！也許我實在哭得太厲害，不法之徒偷去貴重物品後把背包丟到警局旁，早上警察到車站找我並物歸原主。雖然日記簿失而復得但我仍咬牙切齒說不會讓事件重演。 這一次，沒哄沒騙，只怪我們太相信巴士公司的職員，並把我們的行李 check-in 得太早，讓歹徒有機可乘。可是我必須讚揚他們的高超技術，好讓我們坐完車到旅舍打開行李時也不覺有異，直至三天後執拾輕便行裝才知攝影機、電話和現金不見了！ 我這個人很古怪，
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Day 74: Where's our money??
Blog: Diaries of a Vagabonding Couple - 27 April 2010
POLTUR - Tourist Police in Cusco Bad news. We were repacking our bags for a side trip to Machu Picchu when soon enough things didn't seem right. My cash stash envelope disappeared. Well, it must be in the backpack somewhere... "look carefully" I thought to myself. "I think someone's been through my pack" I heard KF say soon after. A couple of her items were misplaced in different parts of
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Day 73: About a boy. A shoe shining boy.
Blog: Diaries of a Vagabonding Couple - 27 April 2010
Christian came over and asked if I wanted my shoes shined when it started to drizzle. The rain got heavier and we sought cover together. "Where are you from?" "China." "China? That's far away. Are the people in China rich?" "Not really. Like Peru, there are some rich people living in the capital and many poor people living in villages." "Peru is poor. I'm very poor, I have no father, just my
