In this Grand Tour post, the description of the trip as written in 1967 may be read in the "South American Trip Diary". The 12 pages of that document may be found below.

Each Peace Corps Volunteer received two paid vacation days per month of service. Many volunteers used a major portion of this time to travel to nearby countries. My South American Grand Tour took 30 of these days (September 15, 1967 to October 15, 1967). Most of the trip was traveled with a fellow volunteer from my group.

South American Trip Diary


Pages 3-4, Cusco and Machu Picchu

Pages 1-2, Lima and Cusco


Pages 7-8, La Paz, Såo Paulo, Rio

Pages 5-6, Machu Picchu, Boat-Train & La Paz

Pages 11-12, Santiago, the desert, home

Pages 9-10, Montevideo, Bueno Aires, Mendoza

Three maps are included to provide a better sense to readers not familiar with the continent. A quick overview of my travels may be found in the image to the left. A more detailed view is contained in two maps; the first of the Andean portion of the trip and the second of the remainder.

Supplementing the written pages, photos of places traveled to and through on this trip are included. To satisfy the curious about changes in the subsequent decades, I am including photos from the 1960s and more recent times. In the following years I both traveled to Ecuador (2007) and Brazil (2012) and a daughter in 2005 traveled on the Inca trail to Machu Picchu, my favorite discovery on the 1967 trip..

Showing the route through the Andes of the first part of South American Tour,
Map courtesy of Wikipedia

Lima

These two photos are current images of Lima, Peru. I seem to have taken no pictures of the city on the trip. With an average yearly rainfall of 18.2 mm, Lima is a desert city. Strangely, despite the aridity, Lima has overcast skies much of the year. It seems that cloudy skies does not guarantee rainfall. Lima is Peru's capital city, with a metropolitan population of 10 million people.

Coastal Lima

Central Lima

Cuzco

As our Faucett Airlines plane neared Cuzco, I was mesmerized by the window view of range after range of glacier covered mountains as we neared our destination. Cuzco is located in a broad valley at over 11,000 feet in elevation. Its population is a little over 400,000 persons. Before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, it was the capital of the Inca Empire, the "Roman Empire" of the Americas.

Glacier covered mountain wall west of Cuzco

Historic section of Cuzco

Llama and woman resting on Cuzco sidewalk

Sacsayhuaman, Inca fortress overlooking Cuzco

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu remained a "hidden" Inca citadel for 400 years. In 1911 American explorer Hiram Bingham reached the site and brought it to international attention. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was constructed prior to the Spanish conquest as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472).

It is located about 80 kilometers northwest of Cuzco in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru, on a mountain ridge about 2,400 meters (8,000') high. A canyon cut through the Cordillera by the Urubamba River lies below it.

The image on the right illustrates the fine quality stonework customary with the Incas

Illustration of steep terrain upon which
the citadel was constructed

Close up of the terraces constructed to hold fertile
soil transported up from river in canyon below

Lake Titicaca

The next objective for my tour of the South American continent was La Paz, Bolivia. Our mode of transport for that travel segment was a boat-train across Lake Titicaca which is shared between Peru and Bolivia.

The daylight portions of this trip leg would occur in two trains. The night would be on the boat crossing the lake. The travel modes would include a train from Cuzco to the lake, a boat ride across the lake, and the Bolivian train from the lake to La Paz. The total distance is about 500 miles.

On the shores of Lake Titicaca

The SS Olanta, which I believe was our ferry across
the lake

La Paz

The Altiplano is a plateau at an elevation of about 3500 meters, with scattered mountains located on its surface above that height. Most of the altiplano is located in Bolivia. The rest may be found primarily in Peru, with a southern extension in Argentina and Chile. Only in Tibet is there a plateau of this size and height on the planet.

The section between Lake Titicaca and La Paz is flat. The eastern edge of the plateau drops off sharply in a significant escarpment. La Paz is located at the bottom of that escarpment where it appears a chunk was bit out of the edge of the Altiplano.

High rises of central La Paz come into view as
the train continues its descent.

The beginning of the train's descent to La Paz.
Note the almost flat altiplano just below the higher
mountain peaks. Alicia Graham © 2005

Bob Jensen, my Esmeraldas adventure companion

The letter excerpts below describe contacts with world travelers and various activities involving co-ops, including a muddle of poor planning that ended well and resulted in me meeting a unique Peace Corps Volunteer.

Meeting world wanderers during our Peace Corps service was one of those interesting experiences which you don't hear much about. I googled Roger Hart and the book, "Four Against Everest" after reading my June 13, 1967 letter about the same. Turns out, their telling of the story was very accurate. Their survival of the climb seems to have involved some luck. Disappointedly, the book is now out of print.

This mini-review from the Kirkus Review gives a taste of the Everest Four's experience. - This is the story of a nearly incredible attempt to scale Everest's North Face, which had been previously attempted eight times without success. Since Prof. Sayre and his three companions couldn't get permission from the Chinese communists of Tibet, they had to make a secret dash through the country to reach the North Face. Getting to the base camp was ""like walking up and down ladders from Boston to Albany."" The climb itself became excruciatingly difficult, only a few hundred feet a day at the heights. Very near the summit and after several bad falls, they didn't have the supplies for the final week they needed to reach the top. They had set off on a light expedition without Sherpa guides or porters or oxygen and proved that an unburdened group made faster time. The author has many interesting comments about the mystique of climbing, as well as the psychology of climbers, and a literary gift for description.

Moritz Thomsen left the world and the poor of Ecuador a powerful literary memorial. His book, "Living Poor", is a chronicle of his four years service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rio Verde, a small town a few miles up the coast from Esmeraldas. Reading it for the first time in the year 2021, I found it one of the most readable, vivid and honest books describing life for the some of the poorest inhabitants of this planet.

Read it! It is still available it paperback.

Moritz Thomsen

Two Years Below Chimborazo

Monday, April 19, 2021

Grand Tour