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

Taking Rosa's good advice, we veered up the road into Huaraz and the Peruvian Andes

Rosa looked concerned. "Why are you going to Huancayo?" she asked, brow furrowed. Rosa Vasquez Zanetti runs a travel agency out of her family's inn where we were staying, on the Amazon River in Iquitos Peru. Rosa had been so helpful already, I'd asked her to look over our plans for the Andes.

"We picked Huancayo at random - because it's a small mountain town with no Americans, and not too far from Lima by bus," I answered.

"But...that's not the best plan," Rosa continued, in her soft-spoken way. "For birding and trekking, you should go to Huaraz in the Cordillera Blanca. And you should ride the Cruz del Sur bus from Lima. It travels during the day and makes no stops so it's safer." Night buses that make frequent stops are vulnerable to occasional muggings, as we heard from more than one source.

a view of Huaraz from Zarela's hostel

"Stay at Zarela's hostel in Huaraz for a couple of days to get acclimated," Rosa told us. "Then from there, you can go up to Llanganuco Lodge and Llanganuco Lake. You'll like that better than Huancayo."

Rosa arranged it all. As it turns out, the Cruz del Sur bus does make pit stops on request (the onboard bathroom is for liquids only, the driver announced). But no scheduled stops. And it didn't freak me out like I feared it would, swooping around mountain curves with no guard rails. I just didn't look out the window.

kids of a Huaraz street vendor

We loved Huaraz - at 10,200 feet, the highest place we'd ever spent the night. (Click for map.) We loved La Casa de Zarela too, a first-class backpackers' hostel with hot water, great views, and helpful staff, especially spunky owner Zarela Zamora (online reviews and contact info). Most of the guests staying there left early in the morning on treks or climbs arranged by one of the local trekking companies. Huaraz (and Zarela's) are featured in Outside Magazine as the mecca for mountain adventurers in the northern Peruvian Andes. Nestled between the Cordillera Negra (brown peaks) and the Cordillera Blanca (frosted peaks), Huaraz is within spitting distance of some of the world's highest summits. The Cordillera Blanca has more than 50 peaks of 5700 m (18,700 feet) or higher. North America has only three; Europe none. (Click here for a Huaraz trekker's online journal entry.)

Much of the adobe town was leveled by an earthquake in 1970 that killed 20,000 people in Huaraz alone - half the population. The town has been rebuilt, this time with rebar reinforcement in every wall. In fact, a good proportion of the homes and buildings still have rebar poking out the top. But the funky construction and the steep cobbled streets just add to the town's personality - a blend of local enterprise and Andean indigenous culture, along with the trekkers, birders, and wanderers like ourselves.

a Huaraz weaver and her alpaca

I spent our time in Huaraz skulking around the town, trying to get pics of Andean street scenes and the beautiful Quechua women who were everywhere, with their long thick braids and brilliantly colored hand-woven clothes and baby-slings. In the afternoons and evenings, indigenous women from outlying farms and villages set up stands or spread blankets on the sidewalk to sell produce or woven items. They all wore traditional fedora-style hats, often with an arrangement of feathers lying flat against the felt. Most of the women didn't want their picture taken, even when I asked politely. But a few acquiesced, a couple of them even asked me to mail them prints. It was a blissful day for me, I can't say why exactly - one of those few days where the world seems a lovely place; I felt grateful to be alive and well.































































After just one day of acclimating in Huaraz, and scampering about annoying people with my camera, we hired a taxi driver from Yungay to take us to Llanganuco Lodge at 11,500 feet, and later Llanganuco Lake (12,500 feet) in Huascarán National Park. The lodge is right smack at the base of snow-covered peaks Huascarán and Huandoy. At 22,200 feet, Huascarán is the highest tropical peak in the world. I'll tell you about the National Park and the lodge - and altitude sickness - in my next post. Between our amoeba issues along the Amazon and altitude sickness in the Andes, we had a few sick days. But that's all forgotten now. I said in my previous post that I'd move to Iquitos in a heartbeat; I'll have to include Huaraz as well. If a job opened in either place, I'd be gone in a flash.

Huascarán by Alan Kneidel

All other photos, and text, by Sally Kneidel

Keywords:: Huaraz, Andes, trekking, trek, climbing, Huascaran, Llanganuco, Pascana Amazon Services, Rosa Vasquez, Quechua, La Pascana, Zarela, Zarela's, alpaca, Kneidel, Sally Kneidel, Alan Kneidel