After two weeks of traveling around Peru’s mountains, canyons, and historic sites, I decided to do something different.  I got out of the cool, damp highlands and flew north to the sweltering heat.  Two flights and a 5-hour layover later, I was greeted by the sweet smell of salt air – and the understanding that my altitude-induced fatigue would no longer be a problem.  I had arrived in Trujillo, gateway to the north.

Having been severely disappointed by Lonely Planet’s coverage of Machu Picchu, I discarded my guidebook before coming to Trujillo.  I figured I’d wing it, and let the locals tell me where to go.  My first two days were spent wandering lazily around town, shopping for a swimsuit and flip flops, and sampling the local seafood.  The region is renowned for ceviche – a dish of raw fish lightly marinated in citrus – and people are very particular about how and when it is prepared.  I learned on my first night that seafood is only eaten in morning and early afternoon, and almost never after 4pm.

On the third day my hotel’s receptionist inquired,  “Why haven’t you gone to Huanchaco?  Why haven’t you seen the Huacas?”  I was baffled.  Apparently Huanchaco was a nearby beach town with seafood that rivaled Trujillo.  The Huacas?  Peru’s ancient mud-brick pyramids.  That’s right.  Pyramids.

In no time I hired a taxi to Huanchaco – I had to get there in time to eat more ceviche!  Less than a half hour later I was sitting in El Kero, a restaurant overlooking Huanchaco’s beach.  For 55 soles (the equivalent of about $20) I had a small but delectable portion of ceviche followed by delicately battered local fish and shrimp.  It was one of the most expensive meals I ate in Peru, and worth every sole.  I topped it off with a local beer and set out to explore the beach.

Now let me make something clear.  Huanchaco is not an upscale beach resort, with high-end hotels and restaurants, fancy cars, or expensive nightclubs.  The beach is not pristine and the sand is not pretty.  The water is even kind of murky.  But Huanchaco is a beach town in every sense – and it is a Peruvian beach town.  It’s a bustling place where people from Trujillo, Lima, and other cities come to cool off and party in the summer.

Some relax in Huanchaco’s sand with a beer while others might venture into the water on a reed boat.  The more courageous might even surf a few waves.  Crowds pack the pier to try their hand at fishing.  Young men and women socialize along the strip, laughing and exchanging kisses.  Personally, I just enjoyed wandering around taking in the scene.  Huanchaco is the kind of place where you could easily lose track of time and spend a day or two.  Sadly, the sun was setting and I had to return to Trujillo before evening.

It was the following day that I joined a group tour of the Huacas – Peru’s pyramids.  Once again I’ll clarify: these are not the sort of pyramids you fly eight hours to visit, but if you’re in the area you shouldn’t pass them by.  The Huacas are remnants of mud-brick pyramids built by the Moshe people, long before the arrival of Europeans.  We wandered around the ruins of one of the largest pyramids, examining excavated bricks and exposed facades.  I thought, “neat”, and I was getting kind of bored.  Then we walked out the rear exit of the Huaca.  Looking back, I was faced with a well-preserved mud-brick structure, several stories high, covered in ornate and colorful frescoes.  I was blown away.  It was amazing to see construction so ancient and extensive, literally built from dirt, surviving until the modern day.

Trujillo had offered me warm hospitality and interesting surprises, but it was time to move on.  That evening I departed for Mancora, the fabled beach destination of the north.  I bought a few beers and some snacks, and boarded a double-decker bus for the nine-hour ride.

The behemoth vehicle lurched slowly forward on an infinitely straight road, stopping in numerous towns throughout the evening.  I slurped my beer and watched poorly dubbed American movies until I passed out sometime around midnight.  I was awoken around 3am when the bus started swaying. We had reached the end of the straight road and were now winding our way through hills and alongside cliffs.

Just past 4am our bus pulled into Mancora.  The streets were empty, except for a few taxi drivers sleeping on mopeds and rickshaws.  We came to a stop in the town center and just one person stepped off: me.  The bus pulled away, leaving me in its exhaust.  It seemed like a ghost town but the moped and rickshaw drivers must have heard the bus, because I wasn’t alone for long.  I quickly negotiated a ride to my hotel – or rather to the path I’d climb to reach my hotel.

I had decided to stay in a slightly removed place called Kon Tiki.  It’s run by a Swiss and Peruvian couple who must have harbored dreams of thatch roofs and endless surf, and it’s actually a pretty nice place.  The bungalows sit atop a hill overlooking Mancora, with a spectacular view.  This also makes for a nice breeze, fewer mosquitoes, and less noise from the town's nightclubs.  It was worth the five-minute slog up a steep dirt path at 4am.  I reached the top and the reception was closed.  I passed out on a couch in the lobby.

I must have slept for a couple hours before being prodded awake by the eager receptionist.  "Tienes una reserva?" Yes I did, and I had simply arrived a day later due to the inconvenient bus schedule.  After shuffling me between different bungalows the receptionist got everything straight and I prepared for a day on the beach.

Mancora is much different from Huanchaco.  It's also a fairly low-key beach town, but it's a destination for foreign tourists - particularly surfers.  The beach is incredible and it stretches for as far as the eye can see, but I was warned against walking too far north.  Apparently "delinquents" frequent the quieter areas and have been known to mug tourists, so I left my more distant forays for morning jogs and did my lounging near the center.

The town has a number of good restaurants and the seafood is extremely fresh - even at night!  At La Sirena d'Juan I watched fishermen carry in fresh whole tuna, which I promptly ordered.  My first course was a chef salad with crunchy shrimp, prosciutto, and mango.  This was followed by the most tender tuna steak I have ever eaten, lightly seared and served in a soy and rocotto pepper sauce.  For dessert I had a piece of lucuma and coffee mousse cake, with a rum-infused crust.  Nothing short of exceptional, and now my most expensive dinner in Peru, at approximately $50.

There's not much to do in Mancora besides bumming around town and enjoying the beach, but if you have spent a couple of busy weeks exploring the Peruvian highlands, it might be just what you're looking for.  It's not easy to get there, but the trip is half the fun!

Dieu c'est l'amour War, rape, conflict minerals: terms frequently associated with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  We often hear news of attacks in North and South Kivu, stories about warlords ordering villages to be burned, or foreign armies wresting control of mineral resources that will eventually be used in cell phones and iPads.  Based on news reports it would seem that DRC is simply a land fraught by ethnic strife and torn apart by a never-ending battle for resources.  So why should we care?  Isn’t it a lost cause?

In August 2010 my employer sent me on a three week trip to DRC.  Arriving in Kinshasa, I was overwhelmed.  This vast city of 10 million sprawls well into the countryside, its streets clogged with traffic and pedestrians.  Congolese mostly live in slums or simple neighborhoods on the periphery of the city, while UN and NGO employees populate the more established and developed city-center.  In fact, there is even a strip of road along the river where Congolese are not allowed – a sort of “green zone” for the expat population.  Smart new boulevards slice through the downtown, allowing traffic to breeze past office towers and shopping centers – only to slow to a crawl at the city’s edge, where four lanes merge into one.

On a visit to health facilities in Ndjili, a community near Kinshasa’s international airport, a group of children playfully chased our vehicle.  Accustomed to this not so uncommon sight in Africa, I paid little attention.  However, after about ten minutes the number of children had grown.  They were rushing from makeshift houses and schools as we passed, and they continued to follow us for hundreds of meters.  By the time we reached the community clinic, the crowd easily numbered in the hundreds.  “Mayi, mayi!” they cried.  After asking one of my colleagues, I was told that mayi is Lingala for water.  He went on to explain that the community, with a population of over two-hundred thousand, had only three working water points.  That’s an entire city like Arlington, Virginia or Rochester, New York – with fewer faucets than I have in my apartment.  I was blown away.

Mayi Mayi

Yet something about Ndjili astonished me: despite the rutted dirt road, lack of water and nonexistent community infrastructure, this community was remarkably resilient.  Young men tended to a dry-season riverbed terraced with immaculate vegetable gardens, children played soccer on a dusty field, women pounded grain for the next meal, and medical staff attended to the needs of new mothers.  There was still a level of vibrancy in this community – signifying a potential that has yet to be realized.  Imagine the impact that a water system would have by reducing illness and child mortality, improving nutrition, and alleviating the burden on women and children who spend a disproportionate amount of time carrying water to their homes.  That’s more time to take care of families, to study and to play.  Ndjili is not a lost cause – with just a little assistance its residents would be much better off.

Wherever we went I witnessed the same phenomenon.  People were making the best of their situation, and small projects had a marked impact.  Such was the case in many of the villages I visited near Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu in the eastern part of the country.  Here the International Rescue Committee is running a community-driven reconstruction project called Tungaane.  The program seeks to instill values of democratic decision making and local governance while providing villages with training and funding to work on the project of their choosing.  One village had constructed an access road and a community center, and young men were continuing to use tools from these projects to build furniture for sale.  They even donated a portion of profits to their Village Development Committee for future projects.  Another village had built a new school so that class would not be cancelled every time it rained.  Yet another village purchased a grinding mill so that women and children would no longer need to walk to the market in order to make flour.  This community had even drawn up an operating plan for the mill, detailing hours, maintenance, expenditures, and the distribution of some profits to the village’s elderly and disabled.  Seemingly small improvements were making a big difference in the lives of people in these communities.

Chenilles

Yes, it is true that conflict continues in DRC.  Rebel armies control vast portions of the country’s eastern provinces and launch frequent attacks on innocent people.  Indeed, the push for control of mineral resources fuels much of these conflicts; the country’s northern and eastern neighbors are not innocent in this regard.  Neither are we, since many of our electronics purchases help to fuel the violence with arms and ammunition.  It is important for us to be aware of such injustice and to take action against it, but at the same time we must support efforts to improve everyday life for those affected by these conflicts.  In order to build peace we must help strengthen communities.  That’s why last week I went to a fundraiser for a promising small organization called Now AfriCAN.

Now AfriCAN has a unique approach to helping youth in post-conflict regions by improving their access to education and providing them with an outlet to express themselves through new media.  The organization also seeks to fund the initiatives of young entrepreneurs.  Many of the people on their web site are orphans or former child soldiers who deserve a second chance.  The purpose of last week’s fundraiser was to provide some of these youth with netbooks so that they would have better access to the web for writing reports from their communities.  It’s a novel approach to restoring hope where it is needed most – in communities brushing off the scourge of war.

For more information on how you can get involved, please visit Friends of the Congo.

What are your thoughts about the situation in DRC?  How accurately do you think the media portrays this country?  Are you familiar with other organizations that are helping Congolese communities to reestablish themselves?

~Travis