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DREAMWEAVER
South America Journal
October 1, 2001 to January 20, 2002INTRODUCTION
My wife, Peggy, and I will be leaving on the 1st of October for a 3 1/2 month trip to South America. During our trip we will be visiting as many communities , indigenous tourism organizations, parks, and other sites as we can in order to identify future destinations and design future tours which DreamWeaver Travel will promote. We will be visiting the countries of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Guyana, and Venezuela.
DreamWeaver Travel was originally created in order to share the richness and beauty of West Africa with people from Western (northern) countries. It is our philosophy that tourism should be a positive experience for both the traveler and the host community and that it should involve an exchange which brings about greater understanding. The destinations which Peggy and I identify, and the tours we design, in South America will reflect the participatory, community-oriented style of tourism which DreamWeaver Travel strives to promote. We should be able to offer our first trips to South America by early next year.
During our travels, Peg and I will periodically post journal entries to this website. Any of you who are interested in South America, indigenous cultures, shamanism, community- or eco-tourism, or adventurous travel in general, please drop by from time to time to see how we're doing and to see photos (we hope) and descriptions of some of the most remote, beautiful, and fascinating parts of South America.
In the meantime - Happy Trails!
Peace,
Dudley and Peggy Parkinson
October 5 - Rio de Janeiro
Ola from Brazil!! We made it just fine to our first rest stop -the island of Ilha Grande, about 4 hours from Rio. Everthing has been wonderful so far - the weather, the people, the scenery, the travel, the accomodations - everthing! We spent yesterday hiking through the "jungle" to what is said to be the most beautiful beach in Brazil and one of the top four in the world. Beautiful but somewhat difficult trekking, but indeed one of the most spectacular and secluded beaches I´ve ever seen. We took a boat back to the village of Abraao where we´re staying so we didn´t have to trek both ways. Lovely day, lovely people... Snorkeling yesterday, and exploring around the island from a schooner-style boat. Beautiful.... Abraao, the main town on the island, is very quaint and simple and beautiful. There are no roads - only a couple of short streets - and it´s literally a one-horse town! The forested mountains serving as the backdrop when looking from the sea make it truly a beautiful little town. The mornings are full of birdsong and other forest sounds. Dolphins can often be seen in the bays near the village. A wonderful place: unpretentious; comfortable, but rustic. Back to Rio today and on tomorrow (or the day after...) to Iguazu Falls, said to be spectacular, and then north to the Pantanal, which is extremely rich in birds and other wildlife. All is well in Brazil! More later... Our best to you all, Dudley & Peggy
October 25 - Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Hola, everyone! What a trip! We hadn´t been able to post any messages to the site since the last one because of technical difficulties, i.e. we had to figure out how to use this system... Sorry for the delay, but I´ll try to fill you all in on what we´ve been up to - at least the high points.
First of all, it´s been an absolutely perfect trip so far - perfect weather, great people, lots of wildlife and beautiful scenery.
We went from Ilha Grande to Rio de Janeiro, stayed there for three days, visiting the famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema and taking the cable car up to the top of Sugar Loaf for a fantastic sunset view of the city. Rio was wonderful! Peg and I usually aren´t much for cities, but we´d both love to go back and spend some time in Rio. The people there were incredibly friendly and helpful. Gracious is the word that comes to mind when I try to describe most of the Brazilians I´ve met.
From Rio we took a 21 hour bus ride west to Iguacu Falls, which wasn´t nearly as bad as we´d feared. The bus system in Brazil is fantastic and the buses are really comfortable - we even watched American movies on a couple of our rides! Iguacu Falls was incredible - it took a day and a half to see it all and it´s definitely near the top of my list of natural wonders. Soon I´ll figure out how to put some pictures on this Journal page so we can share a little bit more of the trip with you all....
From Iguacu, we took a 14 hour bus ride to Campo Grande where we located a tour service which had been highly recommended for Pantanal trips. The Pantanal is a huge area of Western Brazil which is seasonally flooded and which is home to one of the greatest concentrations of birds and other wildlife in the world. It turned out that we were well informed in taking the trip we took, because it was better than any of the others we heard about, before or after. We took another public bus for four hours to a dirt track leading off into the bush, where we were met by a small truck with benches in the back which took us for another four hour ride deep into the Pantanal. There we stayed for four days, sleeping in hammocks in thatched-roof screened huts and sharing meals around big log tables under another thatch roof. Every day was full of looking for and at wildlife, whether from horseback, on foot, or from a vehicle. Monkeys, macaws, parrots, parokeets, capybaras, alligators, rheas (emus), coatimundis, herons, eagles, hawks, jabiru storks, and finally, the last morning, I saw an anteater. Just a wonderful trip - great weather, great scenery, wonderful people. Traveled with a Dutch couple, a German/Brazilian couple, a South African girl, and a German girl. Our guide, Pedro, was a great guy and knew pretty much everything there was to know about the Pantanal.
After we returned to Camp Grande, we spent a day just relaxing and visiting the museum in town before we headed on north to Cuiabá, where we stayed with a guy named Joel who we´d heard about from several sources and who organizes expeditions into the Pantanal from the north end. We stayed at his house and took a 3-day trip as well as visiting the Chapadas dos Guimaraes, a wonderful area of waterfalls and cliffs not far from Cuiabá. Although the ambiance at Joel´s place was wonderful, we´d been spoiled by the trip into the southern Pantanal and would recommend that over the North.
Now we´re in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, after a marathon 2-day bus trip from Cuiabá. Got in at about 6:30 this morning from a 24-hour bus ride. This is a very large city, so we´ll catch up on our internet work, cash in some travelers checks, and do some research concerning where to go next. There is a lot to see in Bolivia....
It´s been a great trip so far, exceeding even our wildest expectations. Next year I hope DreamWeaver can begin to organize some trips to Brazil which would include Ilha Grande, Iguacu Falls, and the Pantanal. It would be about right for a two week trip.
I hope this finds all of you well and happy and living your dre
ams.
Happy trails!
Dudley & Peggy
November 2 - Rurrenabaque, Bolivia
Rurrenabaque is on the eastern edge of the Andes and is the jumping-off place for trips into the surrounding pampas and the rainforest of Madidi Park and environs. It`s kind of a touristy little town, but beautiful, with nice little cafes and bars. It´s possible to fly here, but Peg and I did it the hard way - about 26 hours by bus, with a short morning layover in Trinidad. First leg wasn´t so bad - an all-night ride in a comfortable ¨cama¨ or sleeper bus. The seats recline most of the way and there weren`t too many on the bus, so we could stretch out. The second leg was a different story.... Very bad roads, lots of dust, hot, SLOW. But, we made it just fine and the last stretch was beatiful as we entered more a more hilly, forested region illuminated by an almost full moon.
We spent two days here checking out the town and the various tour companies which operate from here. We finally settled on Chalalan Ecolodge for the forest part of our visit, as it is a community-run lodge and interpretive center operating inside the Madidi National Park. We had heard about the place before from several sources and, `though it was quite a bit pricier than the other alternatives, we decided to give it a go. We just returned this morning and it was definitely a good choice. It`s an incredible place, deep in the park, a 5-hour boat ride from Rurrenabaque. The lodge is built with all local materials and run by people from the nearby village of San Jose. Situated on a little lake and urrounded by true virgin rainforest, there are a network of trails radiating from the lodge into the forest. Our three days there were full of hiking and canoeing on the lake. We saw many more birds and animals than we expected, as it is more difficult to see wildlife in the forest because it is so huge, they aren`t concentrated around water the way they are in the Pantanal, and there is so much cover from the trees and other vegetation.
The rainforest is a fascinating place, so full of life of every imaginable kind. I think the insects were the most interesting - with so many exotic shapes and sizes and colors. We also saw lots of monkeys and various birds, though not quite so many as in the Pantanal. Yesterday we had a wonderful encounter with a mixed group of brown capuchin and common squirrel monkeys while we were canoeing. They were feeding along the lakeshore and we were able to approach until the fruit they were feeding on was falling into the canoe with us. There must have been a hundred monkeys and everywhere you looked there was a funny little face peering down at you, munching on a fruit! Felt like WE were the ones under observation, rather than the other way around....
Tomorrow we head into the pampas for two days and then it´s on to La Paz, Lake Titicaca, and the Inca trail to Macchu Picchu.
We`re still having a wonderful trip! Bolivia is much different from Brazil: less developed and touristy, but just as warm and friendly. It´s a beautiful place - and we haven`t even gotten to the mountains yet!
Happy Halloween!! :-) :-)
Dudley and Peggy
Saturday, November 17 - Cuzco, PERU
Whew! It´s been awhile since I posted anything here to our journal. Not sure why - just don´t ever seem to get more than enough time to catch up on email. It continues to be an incredible odyssey we´re living - I really can´t imagine things going much better than they have (yes, I just tapped on the table top!).
Since I last wrote, we flew to La Paz and spent a couple of days there doing laundry, email, shopping, and checking out tour operators to locate someone in the country to work with. We also took a day and went on a mountain bike trip through the Yungas, a part of the Andes north of La Paz which is where a lot of the coca is grown and where the U.S. is helping (forcing?) the Bolivian government to spray the coca fields in order to prevent cocaine production. A really futile endeavor and it really angers much of the Bolivian population. The general opinion is that the U.S. should work on the problem from the aspect of decreasing demand rather than eliminating the source. Makes sense to me....
Anyway, Peg and I biked down through the Jungas from a pass called El Cumbre almost to the little town of Coroico. Almost all downhill (our hands were sore from using the brakes constantly), some of it pretty steep, mostly dirt road, one lane with wide spots for passing and meeting vehicles, under waterfalls and across streams - really an incredible ride! We had a guide and a support vehicle, which I probably would have scoffed at if I´d just heard about it, but which I was very thankful for several times that day... Stayed overnight in a great guest house in Coroico, overlooking a beautiful mountain valley, and took a local minibus taxi back to La Paz the next day. The taxi ride ascent was actually scarier than the bike descent, because of the blind corners with trucks coming down and the one-lane nature of the road. At times our wheels were inches from the edge of drops of several thousand feet. Guard rails...? Ha!!
From La Paz we took a bus to Copacabana, a small town on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world and the religious center for the Inca empire. We took a boat out to Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun), which was believed by the Inca and pre-Incan civilizations to be the birthplace of the sun, moon, and humankind. We visited ruins on the north end of the island and then hiked to the southern end, where we spent the night in a very basic little hostel with one of the best views I´ve ever had from a hotel room - the highest mountain in the Bolivian Andes! The hike was incredible, starting with a guided tour of some Incan and pre-Incan ceremonial and sacrificial ruins and continuing with the trail leading roughly down the center of the island, with views of sky-blue Lake Titicaca, first off one side of the central ridge, then the other; ancient terracing and building ruins on the barren hillsides - breathtakingly beautiful and, at the same time, humbling to think of the history and of the Aymara people who still make their living from this land and this lake...
After returning to Copacabana, we caught a local bus to Puno, about 3 hours north and also on the shores of Lake Titicaca, but now in Peru. This is where the the local Uro people use the totora reed (papyrus)to build boats as well as many other things like walls, sleeping mats, and even islands to live on in the lake. We took a tour which included the reed islands, a night with a local family on Amantani Island, and a stop on our way back at Taquile Island. Lots of ancient ruins, hillside terraces, and artifacts from the Incan and pre-Incan civilizations. Llamas, alpacas, sheep, small terraced fields of potatoes, quinoa, barley, coca, and some other local foods which I never figured out. The gracious hospitality of the local people, especially the women, will always remain a highlight of this trip. Both Isla del Sol and Amantani Island of Lake Titicaca moved us greatly by their beauty and the simple generosity of their people.
Monday, Christmas Eve - Iquitos, PERU
Hola again, from Peru. It´s continuing to be an amazing odyssey we´re travelling here. We´ve been so blessed with good weather and good people! I´m getting more & more excited about the trips DreamWeaver will be able to offer soon and about the prospect of being able to come back down here myself from time to time.
Ecuador is an amazing country! So diverse in terms of climate, geography, and ethnic groups - from the coast to the Andean highlands to the rainforests of the Amazon basin. Volcanoes, beaches, jungle, mountains, hot springs, remote villages, modern cities - Ecuador has it all. And we didn´t even get to the Galapagos! Next trip...
Right now I´m thinking of two trips to Ecuador - one to the mountains around Quito, including the volcano of Cotopaxi (a challenging, but non-technical climb), the hot springs of Papallacta, and the huge craft market of Otavalo. I am also in the process of identifying a traditional community which can offer the option of family homestays to our travelers.
The second trip would actually start in Ecuador and end in Peru and will be much more challenging. Peg and I went east in Ecuador from Quito to the end of the road in Coca, then took local boat transportation down the Rio Napo, across the Ecuador/Peru border at Pantoja, and on down to the Amazon River at Iquitos, Peru. An absolutely incredible trip, by dugout canoe and cargo ferry, through some of the most remote jungle rainforest in the world, with villages all along the way, stopping to pick up people, livestock, and produce as we went. The whole trip took 8 days, but it can vary according to how long you have to wait for the boat at each stop. I think I´d like to take a group on a similar trip next year at the same time or maybe a little earlier and would include about 5 days in and around Iquitos for a visit to a traditional Amazonian village community. Iquitos is a great town: large, but isolated - you can only get here by river or air! Very friendly and safe.... Anyway, the whole trip would take about two weeks and would allow someone to see some of the most remote territory and interesting cultures left on earth, as well as a great deal of Amazonian rainforest wildlife. Let me know if any of you are interested and I´ll keep you posted on developments.
From here, Peg and I will be flying to the town of Leticia, on the Columbia/Peru/Brazil border, where we´ll get back on the Amazon for a four-day trip to Manaus. Wish us luck!
All our very best wishes for a safe and happy Holiday season,
Dudley & Peggy