Year: 2015
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![Riding the Interocianic highway into the Peruvian Amazon [37/50]](https://www.craigbellamy.net/images//wpid-img_54051.jpg)
Riding the Interocianic highway into the Peruvian Amazon [37/50]
The diversity of landscapes and climate in South America is challenging to traverse at times, especially on a small 125cc moto. But South America keeps giving up the gold as does the moto that only seems to scream and splutter and skip a heart beat to tease me when I’m on top of a 4000-metre…
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![The Choquequirao trek: alternative to Machu Picchu [36/50]](https://www.craigbellamy.net/images//wpid-20150917_0949471.jpg)
The Choquequirao trek: alternative to Machu Picchu [36/50]
The 4-5 day Choquequirao trek begins about 200 Kms north of Cusco near Abancay. Far from a little frolic in the Andean mountains, the trek traverses a broad and deep valley with no less that two back-breaking climbs of about 1500 meters each (one on the way to Choquequirao and one coming back). But the…
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![Cusco, not dangerous enough! [35/50]](https://www.craigbellamy.net/images//wpid-img_4856.jpg)
Cusco, not dangerous enough! [35/50]
Some people travel forever on predefined routes (and not just geographically). It’s not that the places they go are necessarily breaking bad, it is just that there are always many more options. The herd goes to Galapagos when Manu is possibly better. The crowd goes to Rio when Puerto Maldonado has far less rabid street…
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![Walking the Lares Valley trek [34/50]](https://www.craigbellamy.net/images//wpid-mg_5195.jpg)
Walking the Lares Valley trek [34/50]
About 100 Kms outside Cusco branching off the famous Sacred Valley, with it’s numerous Inca ruins, is the Lares Valley that is possibly the most pretty valley that I have ever traversed. Peru and the other Andean countries are not short of valleys, and there are thousands of them each with their own unique geographic…
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![Walk like an Inca [33/50]](https://www.craigbellamy.net/images//wpid-img_4786.jpg)
Walk like an Inca [33/50]
The Incas in the 16th Century controlled an empire of states and bands of indigenous South Americans that stretched from the south of Colombia to just below Santiago in Chile. To connect the empire, they constructed a vast and complex road network, similar to the Romans in Eurasia, but unlike the Romans, the Incas had…
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![Machu Picchu: returning the Inca gold [32/50]](https://www.craigbellamy.net/images//wpid-img_5083.jpg)
Machu Picchu: returning the Inca gold [32/50]
After riding the pre-Colombian moto for half the length of the Inca empire in about two weeks, I decided to stop in Cusco for a while where there is good food and coffee. Cusco was the capital of the Incas, the largest South American empire, that violently imploded with the arrival of the Spanish in…