Perhaps in a parallel universe there’s a version of me that’s a prolific writer who updates his blog at least every couple of days with good doses of wit and wisdom and has a huge audience hanging on to his every word. I’m kinda envious of that guy!

As it is, I’m sat here struggling, as usual, to make my brain connect with interesting words and sentences that people might enjoy reading, oh and when was the last time I updated this blog? October 2010! Jeeez, I’m living in the wrong parallel universe that’s for sure.

Well whatever, I am where I am, and that happens to still be Iquitos in the middle of the jungle, towards the end of 2011, somewhere in this apparent infinite universe! No doubt in another parallel universe there’s a version of me wishing he was having adventures in hot and interesting places. So I’m not complaining

So, it’s been over a year since I updated this blog! What’s happened since? Quite a lot actually. It’s been a crazy, fun and ultimately enjoyable year, but with several road blocks, challenges and serious frustrations thrown in for good measure. But that’s how you grow and learn right?

Anyway, here are a few highlights that stand out in my mind from 2011. I’ll start with the good stuff!

Starting an Ayahuasca Retreat Company

About a year ago I visited my good friend Alex at his lodge in Huaraz to further discuss our ideas and come up with a concrete plan for setting up an Ayahuasca retreat company. That quickly evolved into Ayahuasca Odyssey and we hosted our first retreat just 6 months later in June 2011. It was a pretty small affair, just 3 people attended which perhaps wasn’t bad considering we only launched the website about 2 months before that retreat which didn’t give us much time to promote it!

I remember being pretty nervous about that first retreat, mainly from having doubts as to whether I could be an effective facilitator or not. An Ayahuasca experience is undoubtedly one of the most powerful, life changing and paradigm shattering experiences that most people will ever have. Almost nothing else comes close and it can also bring up a whole lot of shit (such as deep fears, painful emotions and old wounds) that people then may need help to process and heal. I don’t have any formal training in counselling or psychotherapy and I think those kind of skills might turn out of essential in certain circumstances. However, I’m pleased to report that so far things have gone pretty well and I’ve received some very positive feedback on my facilitating skills, so that’s something I feel much more confident about now.

The following retreats were also pretty small affairs, and then in September Alex met an American guy called Zach who had also just started his own retreat company called La Familiar Medicina. Alex was incredibly impressed Zach and the main shaman he was working with, a relatively young guy (35 I think) called Gumercindo, and for the sake of brevity let’s just say that we’ve now joined forces with Zach and Gumercindo and now we’ve become Ayahuasca Satsangha. Our last retreat was fully booked and the next two retreats are fully booked with 12 people, so this can undoubtedly be labelled a success!

I’ll attempt to follow-up with more thoughts about my experiences with Ayahuasca Odyssey and Ayahuasca Satsangha in a future post, but for now this experience has definitely been the highlight of 2011 and has resulted in lots of conscious growth for me.

Encounters with Brujeria

Not everything related to Ayahuasca shamanism is infused with love and light. There’s a dark side too and sadly many shamans fall into its grip, after perhaps starting out with good intentions in some cases. Here in the Amazon the bad shamans are usually refered to as brujos (pronounced bru-ho’s) and what they engage in is referred to as brujeria which is what we would call black magic or witchcraft. And whether you believe in it or not, its effects are definitely very real.

Usually they do what they do for money. Someone might get really upset or pissed off with someone, and as a form of revenge they pay a brujo to cast a spell on the person they’re unhappy with. Some spells can cause misfortune, or accidents, while others can cause serious illness and even death. You certainly have to be very careful about who you piss off in the jungle, because the wrong person can do a lot more harm than simply shout at you or punch you in the face!

So what happened to me? Well, I’m still getting to the bottom of it all to tell you the truth. What I can say is that about a year ago (Nov 2010), after a ceremomy near Cusco, I stopped getting visions or useful insights from drinking Ayahuasca. I would usually get some kind of experience, but it was always a little weird and almost never interesting or useful. In the first half of 2011 I was regularly taking tourists out to Kapitari to one of my favourite shaman Don Lucho, and as a result I would always take part in the ceremonies, but I was never getting a good experience. Among the Ayahuasca community you regularly hear the mantra “Ayahuasca doesn’t give you what you want, but it always gives you what you need!” There’s certainly a lot of truth to that, but in my case something really weird was going on – month after month after month,  and I never felt for a moment I was getting anything I needed (or wanted) from the ceremonies.

I had 3 theories as to why I was having these problems and brujeria was one of them, but it wasn’t until early August that I got confirmation that brujeria was indeed the source of my troubles, and I’ve had several more confirmations since then. I don’t know how it works exactly, but somehow the brujeria has blocked me from connecting with the spirit of Ayahuasca. And as a sidenote, this to me is further proof that Ayahuasca is almost entirely a spiritual experience. If for some reason you can’t connect with the spirit of the plant, then almost nothing is going to happen, no matter how much you drink!

In future I will write a follow-up post with the full story – or at least when the story is finally over, because I’m still not out of the woods yet. Just last weekend I did a ceremony and drank 3 cups of super-strength ayahuasca and got almost nothing out of it.

I’m supposedly clear of the brujeria now. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been working with an amazing healer who’s staying in Iquitos for awhile. This guy uses a combination of intuition, prayer and experimental kinesiology to do what he does, and he’s been getting some remarkable results around here. All the tests say I’m now clean, but as the last weekend demonstrated, there’s still some work left to be done.

It’s been baffling as well as frustrating, but many lessons have been learned.

Dealing with more rejection (the cycle continues)

In the very early days of this blog, when I was living in Cusco, I wrote some extremely personal stuff about my lack of success in love and relationships – even though I only scratched the surface to be honest. Two and a half years later I can’t say things have got a whole lot better for me, although I’ve certainly gotten much better at dealing with it emotionally so I guess progress is always being made on many levels.

It seems that one of the recurring themes of my life so far has always been rejection (at least in terms of love and relationships). Now, I’m very aware that EVERYBODY has to deal with rejection at least sometimes in their life, it’s good, it’s normal and in some ways it’s very healthy because it’s the difficult and gutwrenching experiences that help us grow and become better and more conscious human beings. But sometimes I can’t help but want to scream at the universe “COME ON NOW, ARE YOU SERIOUS? GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK WILL YOU!?”.

It’s happened to me too many times to even remember and surely I’m now way beyond having my fair share of this type of experience. Well apparently not it seems, because they just keep on coming. Clearly I must be missing some important part of the lesson, which is odd because usually I’m a pretty fast learner!

I began 2011 being rejected by someone I really thought I connected well with, and now I’ve just ended the year being rejected by someone I know I have connected really well with over the last 12 months, so much so that many people actually thought she already was my girlfriend! But as usual I’ve gotten deeply stuck in the ‘friend zone’ and as I’ve come to realise it’s a very hard place to escape from!

Anyway, I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining about life, it is what it is, and thankfully I’m not someone who dwells on the negatives for very long. I may feel sad and perhaps even a little angry for a few days, maybe a week or so, after it happens, but if nothing else, I’ve learned to process my feelings pretty quickly and come out of the other side feeling as happy and optimistic about life as always. I seem to be incapable of feeling depression and any feelings of self-pity I may occasionally indulge in are quickly put aside. So at least I’ve got that ability to be thankful for. But I can easily understand how some people can become very bitter and angry as they get older, and if I didn’t have a strong connection with spirit sustaining me through difficult times, I think in a different parallel universe that could easily be me by now!

This seemingly continuous cycle does leave me feeling bewildered though. It surely has to end eventually (or does it?), but I’ve been saying that for over 10 years now. Finding a girlfriend has never been something I’ve obsessed over. I’ve always been happy and extremely comfortable on my own, and will continue to be, no doubt. But I do feel like I’m done with all the lessons of being single, and that I’m beginning to stagnate in this area of my life. I definitely don’t see having a relationship as being some kind of holy grail, and nor do I believe that a relationship will necessarily make me any happier, but what it undoubtedly will bring is new lessons, new experiences and hopefully a lot of conscious growth, and for those reasons more than anything, it’s something that I desire to happen in my life.

Financial Struggles

Love is not the only thing I’ve often struggled with over the course of my life, the other is money, and it seems that I’ve had more than my fair share of bad luck in this area of my life as well. But it has to be said that 2011 (or at least the first 8 months of 2011) saw me going through one of the roughest financial periods of my life. As you may know I make most of my living as a freelance web designer, and although I’ve never made a lot of money from it, I’ve almost always made enough to support myself and it seems that the universe has always sent me work when I’ve needed it. So I’ve gotten by ok, but can hardly say I’ve experienced much financial abundance.

My financial problems started about the same time as the brujeria did, and I suspect there may be a connection but it could of course just be a coincidence. I’ve always found that work has come to me when I need it, but that just didn’t happen during the first half of 2011. I’ve rarely done any self promotion and have generally relied on word of mouth or people finding me through serendipity. That failed me big time this year, and for the first time in my life I started doing  self promotion only to find that it didn’t bring me anything but more frustration (and very little money). There were a few times this year when I had to rely on my family and my business partner Alex to send me a bit of money just so that I could live and pay the rent and there’s almost nothing I hate more than having to ask for financial help from people. It makes me feel utterly powerless and useless and not in control of my life. But sometimes there are no other options, and thankfully I’m blessed with a few people who are willing (and able) to support me in tough times.

Anyway, since about August (about the same time I started working to cleanse myself of the brujeria – coincidence?), things started picking up again and I’ve finished the year doing ok for myself. And I’m also very optimistic about the year ahead (presuming major financial crashes don’t happen around the world just yet). I’m in the process of launching a new internet business venture with a couple of friends that I expect will be pretty successful next year, but more on that another time perhaps.

Let’s end this review on a slightly more positive note!

Giving up the Booze

This year I stopped drinking alcohol for almost 5 months. I realise to some, that may not seem like a great deal of time, but it’s undoubtedly the longest period of time I’ve gone without having a drink since before I started drinking when I was about 17 years old. It may even be the longest time since I was about 13 because even when I was about 14 or 15 I was allowed the occasional glass of wine or beer with my parents.

Now before I gave it up, I don’t think it would be true to say that I had a problem with drinking, but let’s just say I never needed much of an excuse to go out and drink a beer – much like most of the British population in fact! Drinking is such a huge part of our culture and for most people in Britain, the pub is like a second home. Drinking was certainly a huge part of my adult life for all the time I lived in the UK and although I’ve generally drunk a lot less while I’ve been living in Peru, it’s perhaps something I’ve still indulged in a little too often to be good for me.

I decided to stop drinking because I thought it might help with my problems I was having with Ayahuasca that I just wrote about. Initially I made a decision to quit for 3 months, but then I decided to keep on going, although I confess I did have my first beer again a couple of weeks ago (and yeah it tasted pretty good!).

The first couple of months without drinking were hard work, and I frequently found myself desiring a beer  (particularly if I was anywhere near a bar!), although I never did give in to temptation – I can be pretty strong willed when I really want to be. But then it started getting easier and easier, and after about 3 months I found, for probably the first time in my adult life, my desire to drink beer had almost vanished. Wow! What a change!!

For the first time in my adult life I now find it easy to say ‘no’ if someone suggests going out for a beer. That’s not to say I always will say no. I haven’t gone off the taste just yet, so it’s something I can, and probably will enjoy sometimes, but for the first time in my life I feel almost completely in control of it – and I’m very pleased about that.

Now I just have to remain in control. I don’t want to blow my trumpet too hard just yet because I know it probably wouldn’t take much to slip back into comfortable old habits – if I’m not careful – and these last couple of weeks have certainly been extremely testing for me. Rejection in the past has usually led me to drinking copious amount of booze for a week or two to help numb the pain, but so far I’ve avoided falling into that trap and I’m feeling pretty good about it. However, I do confess to still missing some of the all night benders I used to enjoy with some of my close friends in Iquitos. I realise they were not good for me, but boy were they sometimes crazy fun!

Looking ahead

So that was my year in a nutshell. It probably doesn’t sound like a great year overall when you consider the main ‘highlights’ were mostly pretty negative. But I’d be lying if I said I thought it was a bad year. Despite all the challenges and setbacks I enjoyed it immensely, and as they say, what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger. I definitely feel stronger than ever and I’m really looking forward to 2012 and everything it will bring. I think I need to write a separate post about that so hopefully I can get back into the habit of blogging once again! There’s a definitely a lot of things I can write about.

So, here’s me toasting (with a glass of water) to 2012 being an awesome year! Given the current global economic/political climate, it’s likely to be a very challenging year to be sure, but I feel the conscious growth potential is going to be immense! Have a great one everybody.

I was going to start this post a few weeks ago and call it  ’3 months in Peru’, didn’t quite get round to it, and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly time seems to fly for me these days. In about 10 days time I’ll have now been here 4 months and that seems hard to believe! Is time flying as fast for everyone else?

Anyway, it’s been awhile since I regularly updated this blog and I’m sorry about that. I’m hoping to get back into a more regular routine but you just never know with me. Writing has always been something I’ve struggled with and if I can put it off I usually will! Although the truth is once I get started I usually enjoy it more than I expect!

So what have I been up to this last month that’s made the time fly even faster? Not a whole lot strangely enough but it’s been a whole lot of fun!

As stated in one of my lasts posts I went without my laptop for almost 2 weeks due to my power adapter getting fried. At first I thought I was cursed but in the end it proved to be a blessing and I really enjoyed having a chunk of time away from the computer. I must admit I went a little bit crazy during that period, having a brief affair with a Peruvian girl called Ysabel (on vacation in Cusco from Lima), I ended up going clubbing, getting fairly drunk,  and staying out very late about 7 nights out of 10, which is definitely not my usual way of being. I certainly had a lot of fun but I was grateful for the rest when Ysabel returned home to Lima (she’s actually just returned to Cusco a few days ago but that’s perhaps a story for another post!).

Right now I’m busier with work than I’ve been in a long time with about 5 projects on the go, so definitely no late nights and parties for me at the moment! Hopefully this will mean I’ll be able to afford to take a trip into the Amazon in the next month or so which is something I really have my heart set on.

About a month ago I also did my fourth Ayahuasca ceremony while here in Peru. I’ve been meaning to write about that for quite sometime because I haven’t really talked about my Ayahuasca experiences so far on this blog and I really felt I received some lessons I want to write about any explore further. I will get round to that soon, and please give me a nudge if nothing appears soon.

Another positive development over the last month or so is that I’ve made quite a few friends with people who are either living permanently in Peru, or who are like me, staying here indefinitely. During my first 2 months here most of the people I developed friendships with were mostly just passing through on their travels, so I had to keep saying goodbye to a lot of people I really liked which was difficult at times. It feels really great to finally have some solid friendships with people who won’t be leaving anytime soon!

I’ve now been learning Spanish for about 3 months and I have to say I’m still really struggling with it, although perhaps I was expecting too much too soon. One thing is for sure though, it’s a very frustrating language to learn and I’m probably going to dedicate a whole post soon to my struggles with Spanish.

Anyway, it’s getting late and I have an early morning Spanish class, so it’s adios from me for a little while.

Machu Picchu, surely one of the most amazing sights to behold on this incredible planet we live on, is probably the main reason why many hundreds of thousands of people feel drawn to visit Peru each year. The first time I remember seeing pictures of Machu Picchu I was about 22 years old and immediately I thought – I have to go there! and less than 6 months later I was there  – and awestruck. I’ve waited a long time to go back!

I will write more about Machu Picchu in my next post, but this post is about how I got there. The first time I visited Peru we travelled to Machu Picchu by train. This time I wanted to walk there!

There are a few treks in this region that enable you to finish at Machu Picchu. The most well known is the Inca Trail, a stone pathway built by the Incas to connect Cusco (their capital) with Machu Picchu. However, at this time of year you need to book over 3 months in advance if you want to hike the Inca Trail due to laws enacted several years ago to help preserve the trail, which allow only 200 people a day to begin the trek – and only with a licensed tour company.

The second most popular trek to Machu Picchu is known as the Salkantay Trek. This is because it passes right by the regions second highest mountain – Mount Salkantay. You’re free to hike this trek alone if you want to, but as I’m not an experienced hiker (and always looking for ways to meet more people) I decided it would be better to do an organised trek with one of the trekking companies that operate in Cusco.

The Salkantay trek would be a 4 day trek arriving at Aguas Calientes (the village below Machu Picchu) at the end of the 4th day. The 5th day would be spent exploring Machu Picchu and then finally getting the train back to Cusco.

Each of the 4 trekking days would be split into 2 hiking sections of about 4 hours each (with lunch in the middle). The first 3 nights we would be camping in tents and the 4th and final night would be spent at a hotel in Aguas Calientes.

Day 1 – Mollepata to Soraypampa

The first day of the trek began at 4.30am when everyone was picked up at their hotels, or residencies, by a taxi driver. We were then driven to a waiting bus that took us on a 3 hour drive out of Cusco to the town of Mollepata where the trek would begin around 9.30am.

Mollepata is 2,900masl (metres above sealevel) and is a small village only accessible from an incredibly long and winding dirt track that seemed to go on forever. After arriving in Mollepata we were taken to a local cafe for breakfast which was the first real chance to meet the rest of the group and our guides. The impressive group consisted of 14 people (5 Brits, 2 Americans, 2 Australians, 2 Germans, 2 Polish and a Belgian). There were also 2 tour guides to lead the way, 1 cook to keep us well fed, and 3 horsemen to ensure the horses ended up in the same place as we did (the camping equipment and some of our bags would be carried by horses).

The trek began after breakfast around 9.30am after we’d all introduced ourselves and taken a few group photos. The first morning was mostly uphill but not usually on a steep incline so it wasn’t too difficult. But still, after 3 or 4 hours trekking you become rather tired and hungry and incredibly grateful for a hearty lunch. All our meals were excellent I’m thankful to say. Both lunch and dinner usually consisted of a soup for starter and then a main course and a hot drink. Rice and/or potatoes were a common feature of the main course along with beef or chicken in the form of traditional Peruvian cuisine such as Lomo Saltado.

According to my infosheet we hiked 19km on the first day in about 8 hours. Our destination was the campsite at Soraypampa, at 3900masl, so we went about 1km uphill in total. Soraypampa, which is just a campsite (there’s no village or anybody living there), would be our highest campsite of the trip and also by far the coldest. I think we arrived there about 6pm and it was already starting to get really cool. Once the sun sets in this region of Peru, it can get very cold.

Most people were in bed by around 9pm as it was just too cold to be anywhere else but your sleeping bag! And thankfully I had a warm sleeping bag, you needed one, because night time temperatures in this area would drop below freezing. Some guy whose watch could read the temperature said it was about -5 Celsius inside the tents! A few people experienced an uncomfortably cold night because not everyone had great sleeping bags. You were expected to bring your own unless the booking agency provided you with one (which was the case for me). Not all sleeping bags are designed to be used in sub-zero temperatures!

Views like this were all around us for much of day 1

The snow-capped mountain in the distance is Mount Umantay. Our first night camp was at the base of this mountain.

Getting closer to Mount Umantay

Our first view of Salkantay would come as we almost reached the campsite towards the end of Day 1

Day 2 – Soraypampa to Chaullay

Day 2 was by far the most difficult day of the entire trek with about 10 hours of hiking in total. We were woken about 5.30am for a 6am breakfast and I think a 6.30am start. The first 4 hours of day 2 would be spent hiking entirely uphill and it was pretty steep in places and quite gruelling. After about 4 hours of hiking uphill we would finally reach the highest point of the trek at 4650m, right in front of Mount Salkantay. Mount Salkantay is probably one of the most impressive peaks I’ve ever been close to and I’m sure it would be a challenge to any mountaineer planning on reaching its peak.

After 4 hours of hiking uphill we were all pretty hungry; however, we wouldn’t be having lunch here unfortunately, that was another 2 hours away. But thankfully after the highest point it was pretty much all downhill the rest of the way.

Not long after a much needed lunch we then entered into a long and very lush valley where we would hike for about another 3 hours in a downward direction. It was amazing how quickly the landscape changed. Some of these valleys appear to have their own micro-climates and get a lot more rain than other much drier regions at a similar altitude. In about a 10 minute period of walking we dropped down from a fairly dry and barren landscape to being surround by incredibly lush and beautiful vegetation.

The second campsite was a place called Chaullay which is 2900masl, so we dropped down about 1750m in the space of an afternoon. This campsite was on a small isolated farm so there were a few people living there but I think it’s about half a days walk from here to the nearest road so they’re pretty cut off from the outside world, although that’s definitely not unusual in Peru.

I think we hiked 21km on day 2 and even though the campsite was a lot warmer most people still had a very early night!

This photo was taken about 3 hours into the steep accent of Day 2. The first campsite is down in the valley about as far as you can see.

This was taken fairly close to the highest point of the trek where we get up close and personal with Mount Salkantay, the 2nd largest mountain in the Cusco area.

After reaching the highest point of the trek we begin our descent downwards and we spend over 5 hours walking downhill. The 2nd campsite was further than the eye can see in the above photo.

After a few hours of walking down through a fairly dry and baron landscape the scenery quickly changes as we enter a lush green valley.

We finally reach the 2nd campsite at the bottom of a beautiful valley.

Day 3 -Chaullay to Santa Teresa

Day 3 was certainly the easiest day of the trek, although it’s fair to say we cheated a bit because after about a 3 or 4 hours morning hike through another beautiful, green valley, we then met up with a bus that took us to our third and final campsite at a small town called Santa Teresa. The reason they took us part of the way by bus was so that we would have time to experience the amazing hot springs at Santa Teresa, and I think everyone was glad for this. The hot springs were incredibly beautiful and a very welcome relief for 14 tired and sore bodies!

The morning of Day 3 is spent walking through the lower regions of the valley you can see in this photo

This nice waterfall is one of the many pretty sights on day 3.

A shopping center in the middle of nowhere!? Or just a place for hikers to buy drinks and snacks!

This is the bus that took us to the final campsite at Santa Teresa so that we could have a few hours at the beautiful hot springs before dinner.

Day 4 – Santa Teresa to Aguas Calientes

The morning of Day 4 would be spent walking to the Santa Teresa train station (about a 3 hour walk) where for those who who were feeling worse for wear could travel the final part of the trek to Aguas Caliente by train – except that wasn’t an option today. Over the last few months there’s been a series of transport strikes in Peru and today was such a day, so the trains weren’t running. I think everyone would have walked anyway, except their was a slight problem. Usually all our bags would be put on the train (we said goodbye to the horses when we got on the bus in the middle of day 3) and then everyone would walk up the tracks. But with no trains running everyone had to carry their own bags for this last part of the hike (I’m sure the horses would find that funny but we certainly didn’t).

After 3 long hours of walking with a much heavier loads than we were used to, we finally made it to our final destination of Aguas Calientes where we checked in to a rather nice hotel for our 4th and final night. Our 4th morning would be an early start of around 4.30am to get to the bus stop for 5am to get the first bus up the mountain to Machu Picchu (write up coming in my next post).

The final stretch of the hike, walking up the train tracks to the town of Aguas Calientes

For the full slideshow of this trek go here

It’s hard to believe but today marks the beginning of my fifth week in Peru. I can hardly believe I’ve been here 4 weeks already, the time has simply flown by – a sure sign I’m having fun!

I haven’t written a great deal about what I’ve actually been getting up to and to be honest that’s because I haven’t yet done a great deal that’s worth writing about. I found out about 10 days ago  that a friend of mine from the UK wants to come out and join me for nearly a month (she arrives 10th June) so I’ve decided to wait until she arrives before I do all the touristy sight-seeing stuff like trekking to Machu Picchu and visiting the jungle etc.

Anyway, I can’t wait for my friend to arrive because I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun and adventures together, and also it’ll be nice having regular company for awhile because there have been occassions lately when I’ve felt a bit lonely. One of the downsides of living in Cusco is that most of the people you meet here are travellers passing through so they don’t usually hang around long enough to form any real kind of friendship.

Anyway, most of the last few weeks I’ve just been settling into Cusco and getting to know the city better. I’ve also been quite busy with client work so I’ve spent a lot of hours on my computer working although I usually work from a couple of pubs I like because they have much better wifi connection and a better atmosphere too.

I’ve had two trips to Pisac in the sacred valley where I’ve taken part in Ayahuasca ceremonies and they’ve both been amazing experiences. The place where I stayed, Paz y Luz, is just in the most incredibly beautiful and tranquil location surrounded by mountains. I would love to spend more time there but there isn’t a good internet connection unfortunately so I can’t really stay for more than a few days right now.

This morning I finally got around to enrolling at a Spanish school and I have my first class tomorrow morning. I must admit I should have done this much earlier and it’s pretty shameful of me that I’ve now been here 4 weeks and I’ve made very little attempt to learn the language. Better late than never I guess. I’ll let you know how I get on!

So what does anyone actually know about Peru apart from the fact it’s where Paddington Bear came from and that it’s home to some fairly spectacular ancient ruins and monuments such as Machu Picchu?

Don’t worry, your in the field reporter decided to do a little research for you!

Location: Peru (officially the Republic of Peru) is on the west side of South America, below the equator. It is bordered by 5 different countries. Ecuador and Colombia to the north. Brazil is to the east, Bolivia the south east, and Chile to the south.

Capital: The capital of Peru is Lima, which is located on the west coast.

Population: The population of Peru is 29,180,900 according to WikiPedia. It is the fourth most populous country in South America. Over 8 million people live within the Lima metropolitan area, which is almost a third of the population.

Ethnic groups: Amerindian 45%, mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) 37%, white 15%, black, Japanese, Chinese, and other 3%.

Language: The main language of Peru is Spanish, however there are several native languages that are still spoken by the more indigenous populations. Quechua, the language of the Incas, is the most common native language, spoken by over 13% of the population.

Currency: The currency of Peru is the nuevo sol (plural is soles). Virtually everyone just says soles, ie. ten soles (or diez soles). Many shops and businesses in Cusco (and probably many other parts of the country) also accept American Dollars. More at wikipedia.

Income: The average household income in Peru is about $4,400. Peru is largely a poor country.

Politics: Peru is a presidential representative democratic republic with a multi-party system. Under the current constitution, the President is the head of state and government; he or she is elected for five years and cannot seek immediate re-election, he or she must stand down for at least one full constitutional term before reelection.

Independance: Peru declared independance from Spain on 28 July 1821.

Flag: Here is an image of the Peruvian flag

Geography: Peru covers 1,285,220 km² (496,193 sq mi). There are 3 very distinct geographical areas of Peru. The entire west coast is mostly dry and desert.  Then running parallel with the coast from the north west to the south east are the Andes mountains . Then to the north and north east of Peru is the Amazon basin. The Amazon rainforest in Peru covers 70 million hectares, giving Peru the fourth largest area of tropical forest in the world after Brazil, Congo and Indonesia.

Natural Hazards: Peru (or certain regions of Peru) are prone to earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, landslides and mild volcanic activity. Yikes!!!

Life Expectancy: The average life expectancy for Peruvian males is  68.88 years, and for females is 72.69 years.

Religion: Peru is a very christian country with over 81% of the population Roman Catholic. However many Peruvians still maintain some of their indigenous beliefs.

Food: Peruvian cuisine is considered by many to be the best in South America. Common ingredients found in Peruvian dishes include rice, potatoes, hot peppers and garlic. A Peruvian speciality (in the Andes region) is guinea Pig (known as Cuy). More about Peruvian cuisine at Wikipedia

More info about Peru can be found at:

CIA World Factbook

Wikipedia

Unicef

What else would you like to know about Peru? Leave a comment below!