I read that Travel + Leisure has posted on its website the list of “The best places to visit in 2017” and Pisco, Peru has been included within this important list. What is it that makes Pisco an unmissable destination for visitors from all over the world (even though I think it is largely ignored by the majority of Peruvian tourists)? 

For one thing, it is close to several other places that I found to be very interesting when I travelled to there:

I am re-reading a book I had read years ago (Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice) and it got me to remembering when I was researching my first trip to the Amazon over 20 years ago. I had been reading trip reports at an office in Quito and read things like:

• "our guide knew the jungle like an animal, but he did not know how to communicate"
• "during the day, our guide was great, but then he would start drinking and pass out and leave us to ourselves to cook"
• "he would get drunk and start flirting with the females in our group"
• "the guy at the airport that we bought a trip from promised us a great trip, but that wasn't what we got"

As a person who loves exploring, I have an interest in going to places that might not be big tourist destinations, but should be (at least I think so). But it seems that not many others find those places interesting. Would you be interested in visiting places like these?

20 years ago I traveled to the Chachapoyas region of Peru with a friend of mine and a group of others that he put together. At that time the government had it in it's 5 year plan to develop the area as the "Machu Picchu of the north".  Peter Lerche, the German in the video below, which was published last month, showed us un-excavated ruins on many mountain tops (as he mentions in the video, only about 10% have been excavated now).  I sent a group there a few years later and they got to visit a lost city that had only been discovered the week before they arrived. Since that time, some of the highest waterfalls in the world have been discovered and in 2013,  35 sarcophagi belonging to the Chachapoyas culture were found. Archaeologists believe that the sarcophagi –  painted clay coffins placed upright above ground  – were placed in a cemetery for children because the figures measure some 70 centimeters tall.

Though you can read all types of lists of animals that have been spotted in certain areas over the years, wildlife is bound by no rules and does not always cooperate with hopeful viewers.

Some of the lodges in the Tambopata Reserve area combined sighting statistics from 2014 and came up with these results:

I had an interesting conversation with a person who has been a guide in the Peruvian Amazon for 26 years and has worked with several cruise companies over that time period, from moderate to upscale, and now has his own company, which operates the Cattleya ship