A tailor made journey to the Andes awaits you
‘Tis the season for giving!
In line with our commitment to supporting communities in Peru, we are sponsoring a football (soccer) team from the community of Huayllabamba in the Cusco region.
Libio – the chef for our adventure, trekking and camping trips – hails from the community, along with some of our trekking porters, and so we decided to provide some snazzy new football strips for their local team.
The Question
Which UK- and Peru-registered charity has a café on the main plaza of Ollantaytambo?
The Answer
UK and Peru registered NGO Living Heart is associated with Heart’s Café on the main square of Ollantaytambo, a small town in the Sacred Valley.
Tasneem, owner of Tasneem Gallery in Barcelona, could be forgiven for having been slightly nervous ahead of last night’s inauguration of the exhibition El placer es más importante que la victoria; from shipping delicate works of contemporary art across the Atlantic from Peru to Spain to coordinating the display of some 13 contemporary Peruvian artists, setting up an exhibition of this scale has been no easy task.
The Question:
Why is Aracari the patron of a contemporary Peruvian art exhibition in Barcelona?
The Answer:
A good question: why would a travel company want to so fully involve themselves in the visual arts?
Well, that all depends on how you define travel.
By Simon
La Tierra de los Yachaqs -translated as “The land of the wise” – is the name given to a community-based tourism project located in and around the Sacred Valley.
When I participated in the project earlier in the year, I found out first-hand that the name was very appropriate.
She was hailed by the likes of nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa as “the lady of the Colca Canyon”, while an article published in renowned British newspaper the Observer in 1999 echoed that this was one indomitable spirit in the Andes that dedicated her heart and soul to helping those less fortunate than her.
by Simon
One of the most important aspects of Aracari’s mission is that we give back to the communities that we visit, and that we make sure that any of our guests who want to donate arrive in the places that need them most. This was the purpose of my visit to the small school of the Huama community in the hills above the Sacred Valley yesterday.
In order to broaden the options for those wanting to visit indigenous communities living beside Lake Titicaca, Marisol Mosquera of Aracari has recently visited the village of Luquina Chico, a small and rarely visited rural population living on the tip of the Chucuito peninsula, around 1 and a half hour’s boat ride from the town of Puno. This visit, she discovered, allows for the chance to relax in a friendly and unassuming environment, while having an authentic look into the lives of indigenous Aymara speaking Peruvians who continue thousands of years of tradition.
In the spirit of the holidays, Aracari just returned from a gift-giving trip to the village of Patakancha set high in the Sacred Valley that surrounds Cuzco.
Belen giving dolls to the children
There’s no better feeling than giving back to a community that has given us so much over the past 13 years. For anyone who’s ever trekked with Aracari, you have been touched by this community as the porters and cooks we work with all come from Patakancha.
In the following video you will see the sons & daughters of our trek porters, receiving gifts as part of the several projects we support in the communities we work in. They live in a town called Patakancha, nestled in the hills above Ollantaytambo, easy to get to in one of our authentic treks.