Peruvian Highlands: Vicos and Huamachuco Adventures

Vicos and Huamachuco, Peru were the two Peruvian Andean villages we visited May 2005, as a part of our Crooked Trail tour of Peru.

For five days we lived and worked with these villagers who have had little interaction with outsiders. They have maintained their own traditional customs as well as their language, Quechua. They are just beginning to set up their own community based eco-tourism programs and Crooked Trails Tours has been invited to assist them. During our visit, we lived in adjacent accommodations and small groups of us ate and helped our host families. In Vicos, we hiked up to their potato and tuber fields to dig up the vegetables for a community feast called Panchamama feast or mother earth feast. They operate communally to assist each other in bringing the crops to harvest as well as community maintenance of roads, utilities, and buildings. Most marriages are arranged and they have no electricity.

In our visit to Huamachuco, we learned that this village has had electricity for about 3 years and many of its men supplement their income by providing guide and porter service to the many tourists to come here to climb the famous Cordillera Blanca Mountains. Although we stayed with our host families here, we ate all of our meals at the community center. Our activities here included visits to the school and various handicrafts. The highlight was a daylong hike up to Lake 69 with an elevation of about 15,000 feet where we drank hot mate from china cups and ate meat and cheese sandwiches while resting by the bluest lake in the world.

Part of the video also features activities, including the El Senor de la Soledad Festival, in Huaraz, our base location for visits to these two villages.

This video is 48 minutes long. Rick Hunt filmed it May 2005. For more travel pictures go to www.huntforgold.homestead.com.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Vicos
• Huamachuco
• Peru
• Andean villages
• Quechua
• eco-tourism
• potatoes
• tubers
• Panchamama feast
• mother earth
• arranged marriages
• commune
• guides
• porters
• Lake 69
• handicrafts
• schools
• hike
• Huaraz
• Huripampa
• dances
• flutes
• drums
• vaca
• no electricity
• villagers