In Peru: the plight of the indigenous Quechua

A Quechua farmhouse within view of Llanganuco Lodge, on the slopes of Mount Huascaran

My family visited the Peruvian Andes this past summer. We loved trekking and birding in the most biodiverse country on the planet, but more than that, we loved the people of Peru. In the Andes, the majority of people we met were indigenous Quechuas. Their first language is Quechua; the women still wear distinctive traditional clothing, including the well-known fedora hats and colorful handmade garments. Some of the Quechua people we met were employed outside of their communities - as taxi drivers, or cooks at tourist lodges. But most still live the farming life; they are, in Spanish, "campesinos" or "country dwellers."

While we were in the Cordillera Blanca near the trekking mecca of Huaraz, Peru, we stayed at Llanganuco Lodge. We got to know the lodge owner Charlie Good, a transplanted British economist. He is the only Westerner in his community - his neighbors are all Quechua families who live and farm their ancestral lands. As an environmentalist and a socially-attuned resident of his community, Charlie is concerned about his neighbors' future. Apparently, the Peruvian government wants to privatize the water supply and charge Quechua farming communities in the Andes for using water from the irrigation canals that their own ancestors dug hundreds of years ago. That's a serious problem for families living on the edge of subsistence. Another accelerating problem is the influence of TV and modern technology in rural communities. With new Western aspirations, Quechua teenagers are moving to nearby towns. Their departure leads to "under-usage" of the land. Under Peruvian law, underused farm land can be reposessed by the government. So Quechua families are in danger of losing the farms that have been held by their families for a very long time.

Quechua farmers at market in Yungay, Peru (photo by Sally Kneidel)

Charlie Good, owner of Llanganuco Lodge, wrote the following piece for a publication in the nearby town of Huaraz. He gave me permission to reprint it here:

The Community Challenge- Yurak Veshi by Charlie Good

For visitors to Huaraz, the life of the Quechua Campesino may seem an idyllic one, and sure their balanced and sustainable life is enviable. Especially as they have their own plots of land, live with their families, are surrounded by their friends, and can produce all that they need.

Indeed we could do with taking a leaf out of their book in modern “society”. However the poor Andean communities of Peru are facing a crux move. Challenges are mounting from many angles. The seemingly benign and beneficial arrival of electricity, bringing TV and all its woes, the free trade agreement with the USA, rising seed and fertilizer costs, and the government’s water privatisation plans will end their way of life.

Privatisation is a good idea I hear you say, well maybe… considering the problems this country faces with hastily retreating glaciers, but to use bureaucrats to charge the campesinos for the water they use for irrigation from the very irrigation ditches they themselves constructed….to me is highly questionable – firstly cost vs benefit issues are obvious and secondly does “Ancestral rights” not ring any alarm bells? Ancestral rights – being the very reason for the land reform act in 1968 that handed back ownership to the people of this land, which brings us to another cute one, the government legalising the sale of community land, perhaps a rumour, but a dangerous one if true. These factors and more amount to huge pressures to leave the communities. So with dwindling populations and under-usage of the communities’ lands, what happens? The government instigates old laws to seize these lands, due to under-usage, which they will now be able to sell. This all sounds like scaremongering? I just hope you are right because maintaining the knowledge of self-sustainable societies may well be essential for our survival.

In the meantime I'll be living in one of these communities promoting sustainable development and tourism, and trying to give these youngsters a reason to stay - that's my main challenge. You want to help? Great!

Charlie Good is an economist from Bristol Uni, UK. He is a full-time Peruvian resident and owner of Llanganuco Lodge.

charlie@llanganucolodge.com

Llanganuco Lodge: an ecolodge on the flanks of the world's tallest tropical peak, Mount Huascaran (photo by Sally Kneidel)

Keywords:: Llanganuco Lodge Peru Quechua ecolodge Cordillera Blanca water rights privatization

Devon discovers illegal scam, rushes to protect forest

Devon Graham of Project Amazonas

My family met Devon Graham in June of 2008 - he's a tropical biologist and president of Project Amazonas, a conservation nonprofit in the Peruvian Amazon. See our previous post about our visit to Iquitos and to two Project Amazonas biological stations on tributaries of the Amazon River. We loved Iquitos - part of its charm is being the biggest city in the world inaccessible by road. But Devon told me recently that this distinction is changing - a new road is underway that will link Iquitos with the Napo River port of Mazan. A road through rainforest brings bad news for rainforest wildlife. The road provides, for commercial interests, access to areas that were previously too remote to be profitable. Loggers, slash-and-burn ranchers, and illegal wildlife traders move in. A new road unleashes an avalanche of forest exploitation and development.

Devon points out that the Amazon is in many ways a frontier. The area lacks adequate law enforcement, so illegal exploitation is commonplace. See our post on the market in Iquitos, where threatened wildlife species are sold for the same price as a couple of mangos. The following is a story of Devon's discovery of attempted theft of rainforest trees along the new road-under-construction. It's a systematic exploitation by logging companies that works because local communities lack the infrastructure to stop it. But this time, maybe it won't work, if Devon has his way.

Here is the story, in Devon's words:

"I’m really starting to regret having decided to check out the new road. What was going to be a quick jaunt has turned into aching thighs, sunburned face, tense arms, hand spasms from gripping too tightly, and a lot of déjà vu of the time I put 10,000 km on a 75 HP Suzuki motorcycle in 5 months – most of it off-road.

The drivers in this story, Ricardo and Luis

But that was in the Peace Corps 20+ years ago, and my body isn’t as tolerant of such punishment any more. The new road between Iquitos and Mazan in the Peruvian Amazon might be new, but it is far from finished.

The new road from Iquitos, under construction

Some sections are 50 feet wide and relatively smooth (apart from grader-tracks), but other, longer sections are definitely of “off-road” quality: deeply rutted, muddy, dusty, blocked by heavy machinery, covered with grasses and brush, composed of curving 20-percent grades, and crossed by drainage channels – sometimes seemingly all at once. At one point the road crosses directly across a soccer field in front of a school, and we zoom though the goal posts. “!Gol!” exclaims Luis, my driver; “doble-gol” I respond, and he chuckles as we bounce along. I wonder what happens when a game is actually in progress. Later on we lose Fernando Rios, the in-country Project Amazonas manager, and his driver Ricardo for a while. When they catch up they explain that they were held up by an ornery cow. “¿La vacita negra?” (“The little black cow?”) Luis asks. They nod. We’d both noticed it staring madly at us as we went past where the road crossed a pasture. I guess a suffering gringo on the back of a roaring motorcycle pushed its bovine brain over the edge. It couldn’t take any more, and I’m getting to the same point. The pasture-lands and farms grade into tall forest on both sides as the ribbon of dirt and mud slides by beneath the wheels, and fourteen kilometers down the road I spot a sign on the side of the road – the first sign we’ve seen on this newest of roads. I breathe a sigh of relief, tell Luis to stop, and stiffly and ungracefully get off the back of the motorcycle. We have arrived.

The sign at the eastern extension of Project Amazonas new land purchase

Fernando and I are on a mission to check out the road access to the newest of the Project Amazonas field sites and forest reserves in Peru. This site is different from the other three that Project Amazonas already operates. It has no river access, but instead is located on a new road between the Peruvian Amazon’s largest city (Iquitos), and the Napo River port city of Mazan. Once that new road is a little less new, and presumably in better condition, there is little doubt that the tall primary forest that covers the hilly upland terrain will soon disappear. In January 2008, we purchased the first two lots of land with funding from Margarita Tours. In February and March, two additional purchases and some creative land-swapping enabled us to double the size of the acquired lands to 84 hectares (208 acres). In the subsequent months, all the survey work and title-work for the 4 parcels we’ve acquired of lands was completed though the Ministry of Agriculture which handles such matters. In July, however, an adjacent land-owner offered to sell his parcel of 24 ha to us as well – acquiring this parcel would put us just two narrow parcels away from the Santa Cruz community’s forest reserve lot of 300 hectares – and so I say yes, we’ll buy it, I’ll get the money one way or another! If we can border the community’s forest reserve, it will create a block of protected forest area of over 600 acres, and open up many possibilities for developing collaborative management of the lands for education, conservation, research, and ecotourism purposes. So we’re there to check out the new parcel, as well as to determine where we’d like to put a caretaker’s house and, in the near future, an educational center. To seal the deal with the landowner, Fernando has given him a used motorcycle and a cash sum from his salary. Tomorrow I’ll pay the landowner the remaining amount and we’ll sign the paperwork for the bill of sale. Both Fernando and I will be reimbursed our personal funds out of a conservation donation from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey which was made for the express purpose of acquiring the new parcel of land. Perhaps we could have waited until those funds arrived in a week or so, but things can change fast when a new road opens in the Amazon, and we aren’t taking any chances.

Fernando Rios in forest interior at the Santa Cruz site

The sign we’ve reached was installed by Fernando in July at the eastward extension of our new lands. He has another sign ready to install at the western extension border with the road once the pending land sale is completed. I’m so glad to be off the motorcycle that we walk the entire 2 km extension of road frontage of the property. Approximately mid-way along, there is a bend of the road with a nice flat area lacking large trees. Centrally, it drops off gently to the valley bottom, and more steeply on either side to a pair of small creeks. Fernando and I agree that it would be an ideal location for a caretaker’s house and educational center. Patrolling the road frontage would be easy from such a centrally located site (we’re envisioning a regular dirt-bike for the caretaker to use), and a trail network could be started from the same location without having to navigate any immediate steep slopes. As we walk along the road, we notice numerous shungos, (below) the hard, rot-resistant heartwood of long-dead trees of various species bulldozed to the side.

A "shungo" or long-dead tree good for construction instead of living trees

These will serve as excellent material both for fencing the road frontage, as well as for construction. There won’t be any need to cut large living trees for those purposes. Fernando is enthused by the number of large tornillo trees (right and next page) – these are highly valued for boat building purposes and for certain types of construction that require a very dense wood that can resist the rot that results from frequent wetting and drying. I’m more enthused by the number of birds that I can hear in the forest or that are flying across the road. Unfortunately my binoculars are waiting for me at the Madre Selva Biological Station – several hours downriver from Iquitos by boat, and where I’ll be headed in two days.

Before long we reach the border of the lands that Project Amazonas has title to. A narrow cleared line in the understory marks where one parcel of land begins and the other ends. These border lines are the standard means of marking property boundaries in the Amazon. Curiously, however, this border line appears to be freshly cleared, and at the road edge is a wooden post sporting a trio of blue plastic “A’s”.

The mysterious blue "A's"

We puzzle over why the land owner would bother to put in a post and clear the border right before a sale is finalized. Walking down the road to the other edge of the to-be-acquired-parcel, we spot another wooden post with the enigmatic blue “A’s”. Fernando tries to call the land-owner, but cell-phone reception is spotty in this hilly area, and so we continue to wonder. We decide to take the motorcycles a bit further onward to where the Santa Cruz forest reserve lands end and another community’s lands begin. The delineation couldn’t be much more obvious. On one side of the cleared border strip is tall forest, the other side is covered by bananas and plantains, with the odd remnant tree sticking up as if to emphasize the lack of forest cover. The air itself feels hotter. We hop back on the motorcycles and head back toward Mazan – we could have continued on to Iquitos, but that would mean sitting on the back of the motorcycle for twice the distance that we’ve already come. I’m not ready for that – maybe when the road is in better shape, but not today. The trip back doesn’t seem so long – we stop once to watch a troupe of marmosets cross the road, and again to visit a local farm. Then my driver hits a slick spot and we start to fishtail. The fishtail turns into a wipe-out and there is the sound of breaking plastic. We both hop off, unhurt, and upright the motorcycle. Fortunately damage is minimal – just some plastic housing broken, nothing essential. We head on to Mazan again.

A mature rain forest tree, a prime target for illegal loggers, in the Santa Cruz forestry reserve

Once in Mazan, there is good cell coverage again. Fernando makes a series of calls, and eventually we’re in touch with the landowner. The mystery of the triple blue “A’s” begins to unfold. The landowner is surprised, and is not responsible for them. The community of Santa Cruz isn’t responsible either, but they do have more information. The posts were installed two days previously by unknown persons who were marking a “bosque local” (a local forest slated for logging) belonging to the community of Paraiso (Paradise), some 20 km distant on the Napo River. How one community can designate logging lands inside of the titled lands of another community is a mystery to me, but Paradise has designated about 1000 hectares (nearly 2,500 acres) of Santa Cruz land as having timber belonging to Paradise. Community leaders and land-owners in Santa Cruz are upset, and rightfully so, and on Tuesday (5 August) are presenting a formal denunciation in Iquitos at INRENA (the government agency in charge of forestry and natural resources use). Fernando patiently unravels my confusion. He explains that crooked forestry engineers take money from equally crooked logging barons to fabricate official looking studies and documentation giving the loggers the authority to log on lands that don’t lie within any logging concessions, and which may or may not cross into private lands that are somewhat remote from community centers where everyone would know if something was going on. Inspection and enforcement is expensive and sparse, and loggers may move fast, counting on official inertia to allow them to take out high value lumber from an area and be gone before anything can be done. Some landlords don’t actually live on their plots of titled lands, others may agree to accept a small sum of money from the loggers in exchange for not raising a fuss – while such sums may seem like a fair bit of money to a poor landowner in need of ready cash, these payments are a mere fraction of what the timber on the land is actually worth. Bribing of key community officials sometimes helps as well. It really is still a frontier area. Ironically, community leaders in Paradise may not even be aware of their “claim” to the timber of Santa Cruz. Instead they are probably being set up to take the blame and to shield the identity of the true parties responsible. Fernando refers to such fabricated land claims as “títulos fantásmicos” (phantom land titles) that have no legal basis to them, and which count on local people not having the economic resources to fight a well-financed logging scam. It costs money to send a delegation to Iquitos, and many communities simply don’t have the resources. Besides, everyone “knows” that you can’t fight the government, so when loggers show up waving official-looking papers with all the stamps and signatures and backed with plenty of muscle-power, what is a simple land-owner without connections in high places supposed to do? Most just try to make the best of an unjust situation.

Forest creek at the Santa Cruz site – although there was only a couple of inches of water with intermittent deeper pools, at least a half-dozen fish species were present

This time, however, the plot has been caught early before any damage has been done. I instruct Fernando to let the Santa Cruz community leaders know that we’ll help out with transportation expenses for their delegation if needed. The incident also drives home the need to quickly fence the lands that we’ve acquired and to build a caretakers house* so that there is someone on site to keep track of things on a daily basis, and, more importantly, so that everyone else knows that the land is valued, cared for, and not to be messed with! As they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Fortunately, I already have a financial commitment from Nature’s Images, Inc., natural history writing and photo company in Texas to fund the fencing of the property, Building a sturdy caretakers house with associated kitchen and bathroom and a water collection system will be around $1,800; monthly salary and benefits for a rotating caretakership (where all community members who wish to participate can do so for three months at a stretch) will be about $175 monthly. This is the fourth time that Project Amazonas has had to face the threat of illegal logging, and so far we’ve “won” three times, thanks to the intervention of local communities and the fast action of our on-the-ground people in Peru. We won’t loose the fourth time, either, and with strong local community support as well as international assistance, we’ll be going 'four for four'.

My butt may be sore, my arms and face burned, but I’m burning hottest inside! There’s forest to be saved and work to do."

Photos and text by Devon Graham, PhD

*If you would like to help protect the new Santa Cruz forest reserve from illegal logging and poaching, here's how:
Project Amazonas needs to raise $175/month to fund a caretaker position at the new forest reserve. The caretaker will assist students and researchers, maintain trails and buildings, and prevent logging and other activities that might damage the mature rainforest at this site. To make a tax-deductible donation (in the USA), please contact Project Amazonas president Devon Graham (mionectes@aol.com) or mail a check to:

Treasurer, Project Amazonas, Inc.

701 E. Commercial Blvd, #200

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33334, USA

Postscripts by Devon:

On 6 August 2008, thanks to a lot of footwork by Fernando Rios, we finalized the purchase of the adjacent 24 ha (60 acres) from the adjacent landowner, and now have the official title to Lot 77, along with the transfer of title and all other legal papers. We need about $750 to finalize the transfer of title, official survey papers, and notarization fees for Lots 73, 74, 75 and 76 which, when done will give us the single contiguous block of land of 104 ha (260 acres).

5 August 2008: The authorities of Santa Cruz presented the formal denunciation of the logging claim within their community. Project Amazonas helped to cover their transportation costs, and we have a copy of the denunciation. This will now be worked through in the courts, and the forestry engineer and/or logging company responsible will be sanctioned accordingly. There is virtually no chance that the community will lose its case.

1 September 2008: An additional plot of land has become available which would connect our existing 260 acres directly with the Mazan River, giving us a long corridor of protected lands. The asking price is s/10,000 (about US $4,000 including administrative and titling fees). If you would like to fully fund the acquisition of this parcel of land, we would be willing to name the annex as you wished (assuming of course, that you wouldn’t choose an offensive or derogatory name for it!).

At the same time, the Iquitos-Mazan road has undergone further improvements, and is now accessible to 4-wheeled vehicles. At the Iquitos end of the road, extensive land-clearing activity is already underway. This activity will march steadily toward Mazan, so the window of opportunity for acquiring additional tall forest is very limited.

22 September 2008: In October, Peruvian herpetology student Jhon Jairo Lopez began the very first scientific work at the Santa Cruz property - herpetological survey of the area. In December, ornithological, fish and botanical surveys will also begin with the work of Dr. Haven Wiley (UNC) and myself (FIU). Volunteer Nicholas Arms will be assisting with the herpetological work as well. We will be spending the Christmas holidays at the site starting around the 15^th of December. If you would like to participate in survey and other work at the new field site, please contact us as soon as possible.

Project Amazonas, Inc., is a USA-Peruvian non-profit organization which maintains and operates four biological reserves in the Peruvian Amazon. These are open for use by students, researchers, courses and ecotourists. Project Amazonas manages the sites in collaboration with local communities, and also engages in medical, education, and community development activities with isolated communities in the north-eastern Peruvian Amazon. Project Amazonas is registered as a 501(c)3 organization in the state of Florida, and as the Asociación Civil Proyecto Amazonas (as it is formally called) is registered at the national level in the Republic of Peru. For more information, visit www.projectamazonas.com.

Dr. Devon Graham is a tropical biologist who has been involved with Project Amazonas since the fall of 1994, and who became president of the organization in 2000. When not working in the Peruvian Amazon with Project Amazonas, Dr. Graham hosts a variety of ecotours in the Amazon and elsewhere with Margarita Tours, Inc., and also teaches in The Honors College at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He can be contacted at mionectes@aol.com.

If you’d like to have Devon's previous article "Ancient trees look for love in the Amazon" (Aug 08), contact him at mionectes@aol.com and he will be happy to send it to you.

Devon with a Smoky Jungle Frog

Keywords:: birding Peru Amazon Devon Graham Project Amazonas deforestation logging Iquitos road ecotourism biodiversity

Ecotourism can buffer the effects of poverty

a wild Vervet Monkey, common in South Africa (photo by Sally Kneidel)
 

Travelers from the United States spend 12 billion dollars each year in Africa. Some of that money goes to foreign owners of hotel chains and safari lodges. But not all of it. When destinations are chosen mindfully, travel dollars can go directly into the pockets of villagers who desperately need the money to support their families. Supporting impoverished families also reduces the overharvesting of natural resources such as trees and endangered wildlife. When families are struggling to find food just for today, they can't afford to think about the long-term environmental consequences of their actions.

So what can we do? What can Americans do who don't have big bucks to spend abroad?

My husband Ken and I have a modest income; we've both been educators our whole adult lives, and I make a tiny bit writing (2 cents an hour, to be exact). As a rule, we don't buy anything we don't absolutely have to have. When we do buy, we almost always buy secondhand. But our one area of "splurging" is green and culturally-sensitive travel.

We plan all of our trips from scratch, by ourselves. No packages, no big hotels, no cruises. We cut out the middleman and as much as possible, we avoid foreign-owned lodging. We do our best to funnel our dollars directly to local people.

In South Africa, we visited the village of Welverdiend, just outside the Orpen Gate of Kruger National Park. The villagers here rely heavily on natural resources to provide their basic needs: fuel, housing, food. They use wood from local trees for home-construction, cooking, fencing, livestock corrals, furniture, etc.

a Welverdiend family's kitchen made of local wood (photo by Sally Kneidel)

The Welverdiend villagers also harvest local plants, insects, and wildlife for food. They make bricks for some of their housing, using sand from the nearby river. Their relationship with these resources was the fascinating focus of the tour. But all of these resources are diminishing rapidly due to earlier population growth, unsustainable harvesting by "outsiders" who sell the resources, and climate change. For example, the area gets less rain now due to climate change, so river volume is reduced, less sand is deposited on the banks, and the villagers don't have enough sand to make bricks. Also vegetation patterns are changing due to changing rainfall. Consequently, villages across Africa are looking for new ways to provide their families' basic needs of housing, food, and fuel. The villagers of Welverdiend are trying to generate income by offering village tours, and they're doing a good job of it. When we visited there, all of our payment went directly into the villagers' pockets. Supporting their tours helps the villagers in the short run, and also gives them an incentive to preserve their culture and to preserve a sustainable relationship with their natural resources.

We went to Peru this past summer, and stayed in a remote research facility on a tributary of the Amazon River owned by a nonprofit, Project Amazonas. The mission of Project Amazonas is to promote conservation, conservation education, and the health of impoverished villages in remote areas of Amazonia. Project Amazonas has just gotten funding for a medical boat that will move from village to village providing basic health care for impoverished families. All the money we spent along the Amazon went directly to support the projects of Project Amazonas, or directly into the hands of remote villages we visited along the Rio Orosa: Santa Ursula, Comandancia, Santa Thomas. We donated money also to ACDA-Peru, a nonprofit working along a different tributary of the Amazon, for their September health fair to provide medical services and family planning options to families along the river (organized by Rosa Vasquez of Hospedaje La Pascana). When families have access to medical care, family planning, and education, birth rates go down, which in turn helps families use rainforest products (including trees and wildlife) at a more sustainable rate. All of the support people we employed on the trip - our cook, our boatman, our driver, our guide on the desert coast and in the Amazon - were all native Peruvians.

My son Alan, our excellent bird guide Edgardo Aguilar (edgardoaguilarh@yahoo.com), and husband Ken on the coast of Peru

With one exception, all of the hostels where we stayed, in the Andes and elsewhere, were owned and operated 100% by local people. Our only exception was Llanganuco Lodge, a Mount Huascaran eco-lodge owned by a transplanted Brit, who donates money to support the local Quechua community and employs local Quechuans.

A Quechuan family cooking lunch to sell to tourists in Huascaran National Park in the Peruvian Andes (photo by Sally Kneidel)


My family (Sadie, Alan, and Ken) birding at Llanganuco Lodge in the Cordillera Blanca of the Peruvian Andes

A trip to Thailand and Viet Nam is in the works. I'm going with two friends this time, not my family. I'm booking places right now via the internet. I'm trying to choose places that promote conservation and that are owned by local people. It takes a lot more time to do the research required to screen providers and to book places myself, rather than through a travel agency. But it's fun. When I get back from trips, I try to maintain contact with villagers, with local providers, and with conservation groups we've met during the trip. I post their contact info on my blog, and promote their fundraisers on my blog. My goal is to get American travel dollars into the hands of people in developing nations who are struggling toward sustainable livelihoods. By doing so, I hope to help them live more comfortably, to give them additional incentive to maintain their rich traditions and way of life, and to reduce the overharvesting of natural resources. When I get back, I'll post contact info for the local providers and organizations we met in Asia.

Text & photos by Sally Kneidel, PhD

Keywords:: green travel ecotravel Thailand Asia Viet Nam Peru South Africa Welverdiend Edgardo Aguilar Rosa Vasquez Project Amazonas

Peru's desert coast surprises us: Paracas and Islas Ballestas

A make-shift home on Peru's Pacific coast (click on any pic to enlarge it)

I was leery of the "desert coast" south of Lima. What kind of place to live could that be, with no plants of any kind? What kind of wildlife could we see? It sounded like a moonscape! Bleak!

I live close to the Carolina coast with its maritime forests, or what's left of them - Palmetto trees, gnarly oaks draped with Spanish moss, Southern bayberries sheered by ocean winds. I love the stalky "sea oats" that anchor our white dunes.

What would a barren seashore look like? I imagined a dull and empty gray beach stretching on and on....

As it turns out, I was all wrong. Parts of Peru's southern coast are devoid of plants, but the lack of rainfall doesn't affect life in the ocean. In fact, the marine life offshore is unusually rich and diverse. That's because of Humboldt currents in the area that bring nutrients up from the ocean floor. Plankton feed on the nutrients, fish eat the plankton, and hundreds of oceanic and coastal birds and marine mammals feed on the fish. We knew there would be coastal birds, but were pleasantly surprised by the diversity of birds and mammals. Even Andean Condors venture to this coast during the sea-lion birthing season. As scavengers, the condors feed on the afterbirth left on the beaches.

Below: a Peruvian Pelican,
flourishing on the abundant fish offshore

Once we'd decided to check it out, our first challenge was how to get there safely?? We'd planned to take a bus south along the PanAmerican highway from Lima to Paracas, but then heard that these buses are often stopped by bandits, and that the Paracas bus stations are hot-spots for baggage theft. We were advised to hire a driver instead.

On the recommendation of Dr. Devon Graham, director of Project Amazonas, we hired Miguel Quevedo of Lima to drive us. Miguel proved to be a great choice. He drove at a reasonable speed, he was careful, he couldn't have been more attentive to our needs. When we made pit stops, he found out where the bathroom hole was, if any, and whether there were any snacks or drinks to be had. He stopped when we saw birds to identify, or Tyson-style chicken "farms" to gape at, or photos to shoot. When we left the car to track down a bird, he stayed with the car to guard our stuff. He drove us down muffler-scraping rural tracks without complaint, and prevented many potential problems by thinking ahead. To call him from the U.S.: 011.511.9664.1254. Or email our travel agent in Peru, Rosa Vasquez, at reservas@pascana.com; she can call him from Peru for you.

Above: a clean bathroom along the way

The 5 hour drive from Lima to Paracas turned out to be illuminating. About half of Peru's population live in poverty, many in extreme poverty. Political and economic chaos and guerilla activity of the 1980s, during the presidency of Alan Garcia, fueled an exodus from the Andes into the cities, especially Lima. A lack of adequate space and services has created outlying informal settlements known as pueblos jovenes (young towns). We passed dozens of such settlements on the road to Paracas, many of which lack sanitation and electricity. Some are more solidly constructed than others.

Below: informal settlements along the road to Paracas (click on photos to enlarge)

As we drew close to Paracas, we passed through small towns that had been devastated by a major earthquake in 2007. We saw collapsed walls and lingering piles of rubble alongside rebuilt structures. Reconstruction is progressing, but slowly. The earthquake spawned a tidal surge that flooded buildings close to shore, and those left standing bore the evidence - paint was peeling up to 3 or 4 feet on most older buildings.

Our primary destination was Reserva Nacional de Paracas, and the offshore islands Islas Ballestas, which support thousands of breeding oceanic birds. Our friend and travel agent Rosa Vasquez in Iquitos booked 2 rooms for us in the town of Paracas. The rooms were perfect. The little inn is quiet, small, simple, and inexpensive - we were the only guests of proprietor Isabel Coello, who was extremely helpful. The inn (called Paracas Bay) is also her family's home. It is located on Paracas Bay and right around the corner from the wharf where tour boats take off for Islas Ballestas. It's also across the street from a grocery store, and a 5 minute walk from several affordable and good restaurants. For rates and reservations, contact Isabel at bird002@hotmail.com or call 011.56.545082 from the U.S. Our rooms worked out to about $9.25 per person per night. While staying with Isabel, we met her friend Jorge Ibanez Vignolo, an energetic Peruvian birder who lived in California for 10 years, and now runs a kiteboarding business in Paracas Bay. His website is www.kiteboardingparacas.com; his e-mail is jorgeibanezbsc@yahoo.com; phone 011.511.440-2265 from the U.S.

Isabel Coello and her lovely inn, Paracas Bay. Behind the broom you can see the high-water marks from the flooding following the recent earthquake.

Isabel booked our boat tour for us (roughly $10 per person) and the next morning Ken, Alan, and I took off for Islas Ballestas. The tour took about 2.5 or 3 hours, most of which was spent on the boat journey outward and back. Sadie had traveler's digestive distress and stayed behind at the inn with Miguel and Isabel.

Below are shots taken from the boat. We spent an hour cruising around the rocky islands' arches and caves, watching sea lions sprawled on the rocks and thousands of birds: Humboldt Penguins, Neotropical Cormorants, Inca Terns, Peruvian Pelicans, Peruvian Boobies, Oystercatchers, Red-legged and Guanay Cormorants, Surf Cynclodes, and more.

Alan Kneidel searches for rare birds like the Surf Cynclodes from the tour boat.

Pic below: Peruvian Pelicans and Peruvian Boobies perched on ledges.


Above, Peruvian Pelicans.

Below, Humboldt Penguins on Islas Ballestas.

Below, sea lions lounging and socializing on the rocks.

Below: our tour boat approaching a cave on Islas Ballestas

Below: An Inca Tern in one of the caves Photo below: After we returned from the boat tour, Isabel hooked us up with a professional bird guide, Edgardo Aguilar. He normally charges $80 for a full day of birding, but gave us a reduced rate since we used him for only about 3 hours. His email address is edgardoaguilarh@yahoo.com.

Edgardo (left) showing Alan and Ken the Slender-billed Finch,
in farmland a mile or so back from the water's edge

Edgardo speaks excellent English, is very friendly, and knows his birds. Even better, he's very good at describing exactly where a tiny bird is hidden in the foliage. (Yes, there were plants after we drove a mile or so inland.) I highly recommend Edgardo if you're birding in the Paracas area. He lives in one of the nearby towns - Ica or Pisco - and knows the area intimately. He took us through an offroad agricultural area where we saw Vermillion Flycatchers (my first), Slender-billed Finch, Coastal Miner, Common Nighthawk, Peruvian Meadowlark, etc. and best of all - a colony of Burrowing Owls!


Left,
the
owls'
burrows



























Above: a burrowing owl near Paracas


Below: A child saw us looking at the owls and ran out from her home to see if she could help. She pointed out another couple of burrows to Sadie.

Below, the owls and a lot of the other birds
Edgardo showed us were near irrigated plots
of paprika peppers

After an early afternoon with Edgardo, we dropped him off at home and tooled away in Miguel's car toward Reserva Nacional de Paracas, just a few miles down the road from the town of Paracas.

The reserve is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen - with absolutely no plants in sight.

Pics below: Reserva Nacional de Paracas, on Peru's southern coast

Above: a turkey vulture dines on a seal carcass washed ashore
Below: more shots of the Paracas reserve

Below: Miguel, Miguel's car, and Sadie at the Paracas reserve

Below, Alan peers over Ken's shoulder at pelagic birds offshore

What do you think, beautiful or bleak? I loved the Humboldt penguins on Islas Ballestas - my first penguins. I loved Isabel and Edgardo, I loved the burrowing owls and the little girl who showed us more. I loved Miguel, I loved the stark and haunting coast - the colorful cliffs and hungry birds.

I understand that the area is experiencing a boom in tourism. I'm glad the reserve does actually seem to be protected, and hope the coming development of the adjacent areas can proceed mindfully. The residents could really benefit from more tourist dollars from industrialized nations - mainly, the U.S.

Sadie, Alan, Ken and Sally Kneidel at Reservas Nacional de Paracas

All photos and text by Sally Kneidel

Keywords: Paracas Humboldt penguin Islas Ballestas birding Peru Rosa Vasquez Los Zarcillos birding South America Reserva Nacional de Paracas

Other recent posts about our travels in Peru:

Deep in the Amazon: the wildlife delivery crew

Careening through the Andes

Roasted guinea pig: trekking at 12,000 ft

Rainforest in need: here's how to help

Rosa the Peruvian activist: helping people help the rainforest

A child in the Amazon village of Comandancia.
Photo by Sally Kneidel

I really want to help Rosa. Especially since I'll be helping the rainforest and Amazonian villages at the same time.

We met Rosa Vasquez in Peru in June, when we stayed at her family's hostel in Iquitos, Hospedaje La Pascana. Rosa runs a travel agency at the hostel and she's really good at it. She helped us change a lot of our travel plans after we left the Amazon, giving us great advice for the Andes which I've mentioned in my last 3 posts. I'm very grateful to her for that help. It made a huge difference in our trip.

But Rosa, as we are learning, is a lot more than a travel agent. She's also an environmental activist and humanitarian. I just found out today that she serves on the board of a ACDA, a highly-regarded nonprofit that promotes health and sustainability in Peru. Right now Rosa is focused on five remote villages along a tributary of the Amazon River.

An Amazon home near the village of Yanashi.
Photo by Sally Kneidel

Rosa travels back and forth between the hostel in Iquitos and the five villages. She can't always answer my emails right away - there are no computers or even electricity in these villages. The villages are in the Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Communal Reserve (ACRCTT), a critical area for conservation. The rainforests of the region have a mind-boggling diversity of primates, 16 species!! These 16 species represent every South American primate family. There are few places in the Amazon that have as many as that - maybe no other places, I'm not sure. The primates there include squirrel monkeys, tamarins, capucins, marmosets, night monkeys, saki monkeys....ACK!! I want to go there! Maybe next time....

A monk saki monkey in Peruvian Amazonia.
Photo by Sally Kneidel

Rosa's project is a health fair this September for the 900 people living in these five villages. The health fair will provide not only dental care and basic health care, but also reproductive health care and family planning, services that the villagers are eager to have.

Rosa sent me some info today from ACDA, advertising the health fair. The e-mail pointed out that the Amazon rainforest is the lungs of planet Earth. It said that ACDA is working to reduce the stress of human impact on the rainforest by educating and training local villagers to become stewards and conservationists of the forest, for the benefit of the world as a whole. "The health of the rainforest of this region depends on the health of these villagers who are trained to protect it," says the e-mail.

Children in the Amazon village of Santa Ursula
Photo by Sally Kneidel

Rosa and ACDA are right - the connection between family planning and stewardship is well established. All over the world, smaller families are more likely to be able to provide for all of their children's needs and send their children to school, where they can learn about choices in using natural resources. Right now, many or most Amazonian families rely on logging as their primary income - a practice that pays them very little, is dangerous, and is destroying the rainforest at an accelerating rate. This was something we learned and observed when we were there. Anytime we took our skiff out on the river, we passed local people floating downriver on rafts made of logs they were taking to sawmills. We passed the sawmills too. Sometimes we passed a single man standing on just one huge tree trunk, or a section of it. Just floating down the river to sell the wood. We didn't blame them, I don't mean it that way. They were doing what they felt they need to do to support their families.

A man floating a piece of tree trunk downriver to a sawmill, on a tributary of the Amazon River.
Photo by Sally Kneidel

Not surprisingly, ACDA's health fair is sponsored by the Rainforest Conservation Fund. And by Planned Parenthood South America. Ken and I have promised Rosa $50 for the health fair. Rosa's phone numbers, from the United States,are 011.51.65.236.002 and 011.51.65. 233.466. Her email address is reservas@pascana.com. Call or email her if you'd like to make a donation.  You can also support this project by making a tax-deductible donation to the all-volunteer Rainforest Conservation Fund. Click here for the RCF webpage about how to make a donation.

My post about our trip to the Amazon is here.

All photos and text by Sally Kneidel

Keywords:: ACRCTT Rosa Vasquez ACDA RFA Rainforest Conservation Fund Planned Parenthood South America Peru Amazon logging timber industry sawmills primates tropical deforestation