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Peru - 'more up and down than sideways...'
Peru is a country that is much more up and down than sideways.
When Francisco Pizarro the conquistador returned to Spain from the New World he was asked to describe Peru. Ever a man of action, he crumpled up a sheet of paper and dropped it on the table: “It looks like that,” he said.
Pizarro was more aware than most of just how difficult it could be to get over the high passes of the Peruvian Andes and across the endless 'paramo' plateaus. But he was obviously completely astounded - as generations of travellers have been since - by what are certainly some of the most spectacular wilderness landscapes on earth.

Until not so very long ago the jungles of this wild and unexplored continent were still able to conceal the great Inca city of Machu Picchu and the source of the world's mightiest river. Even for the adventurers of today the immense rainforest and bleak highlands of Peru remain among the most thrilling and mysterious places in the world.

Profile:
Area: 1,285,220 sq km
Population: 28 million
Population density: 22 people / sq km
Languages: Spanish and Amerindian languages (especially Quechua and Aymara)
Conversation stopper: In 1975 thirty Peruvian fighter planes took place in a target practise on fourteen condemned fishing-boats. In front of a crowd of thousands they unleashed the full might of their combined fire-power, strafing and bombing for a full fifteen minutes...and failed to sink a single boat.
Factfile: Click here for more information.
Articles:
Walking in Thin Air - the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu
Andes and Amazon – on the South American overland trail
Trucking the Gringo-Trail – Ecuador to Bolivia

 

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