Posts under ‘Peru’

In Donald Miller’s memoir A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, he begins his story in a funk. Writer’s block keeps him from producing a successful follow up to his best selling book Blue Like Jazz, he has no significant other, and there’s a lack of adventure in his life. His awakening comes when he [...]

For my last post, I described the four different types of Latin America travel writers: earnest, intrepid, rogue, and smug. Unlike the rest of the varieties, I was unable to come up with an example of a writer who I thought was “smug.” Fortunately, two Travelojos readers came to the rescue. A commenter who goes [...]

The anti-corruption group Transparency International annually publishes a “corruption perceptions index,” which measures the level of government corruption in each country. In the latest index, which was released in November, the majority of the 180 countries analyzed scored below five on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (perceived to have [...]

The area surrounding Peru’s main attraction, Machu Picchu, was hit hard by floods last month and won’t be available to tourists until April. Even before the flood, I’ve heard some people say that Machu Picchu was “over-hyped.” At the same time, Peru’s neighbor–Chile–is recovering from massive earthquakes. Both countries are most likely experiencing steep declines [...]

Originally from Seattle, Jessie Kwak and her husband Robert Kittilson are living in Peru and sharing their experiences on their new website Unpaved South America. With Jessie doing the writing and Robert capturing the images, the website will highlight the lesser-known destinations in South America. By Jessie Kwak Machu Picchu will be closed at least [...]

Another member of the Lonely Planet tribe has condemned the disparaging statements about Peru made by Jens Porup, that the coordinating author of LP’s Colombia guide. Commenting on Travelojos was Sara Benson, the coordinating author of Lonely Planet’s Peru guide. She disagreed with the notion that other LP authors agreed with his statements. She says: [...]

The changing leaves, breezes, and cool damp weather that comes in the fall signals marathon season to me. After following the results of the New York City marathon today, it was impossible to resist going out for a long run. One idea I’ve been toying with is running a marathon in Mexico or another country [...]

Peru has taken a real beating lately on Travelojos. It all started a couple of weeks ago in a post about travel writer Jens Porup’s harsh characterization of the country. Since then Travelojos readers have weighed in both for and against Peru. While most readers said they believed Porup’s assessment of the country was unfair, [...]

There’s been a 65 percent increase in North Americans traveling to Honduras over the past five years, Ensley Eikenburg, associate publisher at Frommer’s told USA Today last week. The story was about Frommer’s recently released guide to Honduras. She added that since Frommer’s began publishing its Costa Rica guide in 2001, it’s been one of [...]

Two posts last week (here and here) mentioned some disparaging remarks the author of Lonely Planet’s guide to Colombia made about Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. The author, Jens Porup, made the unflattering characterizations of these countries in a speech in Bogota before Colombia’s minister of tourism and other highly ranked officials. His comments generated a [...]