trekking tagged posts

Antigua and Pacaya

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I wanted to visit Antigua because of Pacaya volcano. It was in my imaginary this Guatemalan small town surrounded by active volcanoes. I had in my mind the image of colorful houses and the triangular mountain in the background. Unfortunately, it was not easy to see this image because there was a lot of fog. Antigua reminded me the images of Licancabur volcano, one can see it from almost everywhere in San Pedro Atacama.

Even though without Pacaya in the background, I loved Antigua. A small town, organized, grounded with cafes, cultural activities and good restaurants. I spent my days walking around, stopping in one café or another, reading, photographing. I enjoy reading in cafes.

On my last day I decided to do a trekking tour to climb Pacaya. We left the hotel around 5 am. When we where picking up everybody, far away I saw the volcano, timidly appearing on the fog. I asked the driver to stop the van so we could enjoy the landscape and take a photo...

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Tours on the north of Thailand

We did two tours to the north of Thailand. The first one was a day trekking. We went on a minibus for one or two hours. Then, we walked for about an hour to a hill village. There lives the Hmong tribe, originally form the region of Tibet and Mongolia. Later they went on refuge in China and during the 50s and 60s many came to Thailand, while others went to Laos and Vietnam. It was a quick visit, and it caught my attention a sign saying “2 photos 5 baht” and also to see they were selling Coca-cola.

From there we went to ride elephants. It was 45 minutes riding the animal around the forest. It stopped to eat all the time. And in the end of the tour, the guides sold bananas so we could feed them. The elephants were like a vacuum cleaner strongly sucking the banana. We also visited a hill tribe called Karen. A great part of the Karen people lives in Myanmar (Burma). In this tripe the majority of the women were dedicated to sewing and the men to produce musical instrument...

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Cañón del Colca

I wanted to do a 3-day trekking in the Colca Canyon. Since the area was in alert of another possible earthquake, any travel agency wanted to organize a tour there. I talked to a local guide, he suggested me not to go down the canyon, that could be very dangerous at this time. I decided then to do a two-day tour in the canyon. In the city exit we already could see the volcanoes: Mist (means gentleman), Chachani (means well dressed, referring to its snow top) and Pichu Pichu (means peak). In the way we stopped to see Vicuñas (a wild relative of the llamas) in the Reserva Nacional de Salinas y Aguada Blanca. An hour later we stopped to have a coca leaf tea to go through the highest point of the tour.

From the viewpoint we could see the volcanoes and the snow peaks in the area. In this place people do offerings to Pachamama to protect the travelers, these are called “Apachetas”. It is a pile of rocks with coca leafs under it...

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