Although Peru does not have an official religion, the Roman Catholic Church–to which over 90 percent of Peruvians belonged– is recognized in the constitution as deserving of government cooperation. Traditionally, the Roman Catholic Church has monopolized religion in the public domain.

The church and convent of San Francisco was built around 1674. The exterior of the building is a yellow colonial styled structure with Baroque architecture. Upon entering you pay $2 for a 45-minute tour. On your tour you first see the church with its wood carvings and tiles. Next, you walk to a monastery with a museum of religious art. Paintings by the local artist Francisco Zurbaran and painting of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi can be seen here. As you continue walking you are taken to a library with an impressive collection of over 25,000 books. This room houses massive choir books on floor stands. As you continue walking you end up in the convent area where at the far end of the dining area is a huge painting of the Last Supper. The artist added some Peruvian elements to the scene. The apostles and Jesus are dining on cuy, roast guinea pig and drinking Chicha, an alcoholic Peruvian corn drink from a gold Peruvian cup called a queros.

Although Peru does not have an official religion, the Roman Catholic Church–to which over 90 percent of Peruvians belonged– is recognized in the constitution as deserving of government cooperation. Traditionally, the Roman Catholic Church has monopolized religion in the public domain.

The new church replaces a small, corrugated metal structure and will serve the Seventh-day Adventist community on the 40-plus islands that float on Lake Titicaca, Peru, some 12,500 feet above sea level. The new church will seat 250 people and contain two Bible study classrooms and a baptistry. The building will also serve as the community’s general auditorium.

The church is scheduled to be dedicated on Nov. 12, four weeks after Maranatha Volunteers International starts construction. Church members, Peruvian officials and representatives from the Adventist world church, including Pastor Jan Paulsen, world church president, are planning to attend the ceremony. Maranatha Volunteers International is a California-based non-profit organization that constructs urgently needed buildings through the use of volunteers.

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The old cuisines are the best. Leave people in the same general place for a thousand years or more, and they’ll figure out what’s good to eat. Migration and fusion add something to food, of course, but there’s no substitute for a millennium of culinary experiment, and that’s what attracts New American chefs to Santa Fe and fusionists to Chinese and Indian food, and even what provides some of the underlying savor of Italian food.

Peru has had high civilizations as long as anywhere has. Besides bringing us the potato (and quinoa), the country had a lot to do with the development of chili peppers, peanuts, squashes, beans, and corn. Add a Spanish colonial history, immigrant populations from Asia and Europe, and a few Afro-Peruvians, and you have quite a cuisine in Lima, and some very tasty food at Machu Picchu, a 15-table storefront in Somerville.

Peru is known worldwide for its extensive and varied menu and in the South America is rivalled only by Mexico in terms of variety of its cuisine. International food is served throughout Peru, but those wishing to sample traditional Peruvian dishes will not be disappointed.

In Peru, lunch is the main meal of the day and is normally served between 12.30pm to 1pm. Dinner is served from 7pm on, although when Peruvians have guests, dinner is customarily served at 8pm.

As Peruvian cuisine varies from region to region, the following pages will highlight specialities from each region. The tour begins with traditional dishes from the Highlands.

Peru is a country of dramatic geographic contrasts and a very long history, longer than most people imagine. For centuries, dating as far back as 2000bC Peru had developed societies with their own complex religion and administration. Diverse ethnic groups lived scattered throughout the Andes, the jungles and the coast, organised in city-states, regional centres and even empires.

The mixture with the Spanish and subsequent immigration from Africa and the Far East, as well as Europe, has brought about a society that is immensely rich in culture and folklore.

Peru will also lead visitors into a world of art and age-old wisdom, the legacy of major pre-Hispanic civilizations such as the Quechua, Aymara and jungle peoples, whose view of the world was based on their observation of the Heavens and Nature. Over the course of centuries, Peru incorporated the cultural contribution of European, African and Asian migrants. A diverse nation featuring many cultures, Peru is an endless wellspring of creativity. In addition to its historic, archaeological and architectural legacies, folk art is another of Peru’s tourist attractions. Its rich folklore is evident in more than 1,500 musical genres, combining instruments from the outside world with native Andean equivalents, such as the quena and zampoña flutes, which provide the accompanying music for more than 3,000 festivals such as the Candelaria, Inti Raymi, Carnivals, Corpus Christi and Easter Week. At the same time, Peru boasts one of the most exquisite and varied cuisines on Earth, as local chefs have succeeded in adapting a diverse variety of native ingredients while remaining open to outside influences. Peru’s cooking is an invitation to discover flavors and fragrant smells which are as authentic as they are ancient.

A highlight of any visit to Lake Titicaca is seeing one of 300 traditional festivals that happen in this area each year. Lake Titicaca has the richest and most vibrant dances and celebrations in all of Peru and it is worth timing your trip to see one. Entire towns participate in the festivals of orchestras, musical groups, and elaborately costumed dancers move with precision and endurance. Though performed on Catholic holidays, most of the dances in Puno are rooted in pre-Columbian rituals of harvest, planting, herding, and magic.

The most famous dance is La Diablada, performed each year on February 2 during Puno’s Fiesta de la Virgen de la Candelaria. The dance is essentially a struggle between dozens of elaborately costumed angels and bug-eyed, horned devils, along with an ever-growing cast of new characters: the Widow, the Skeleton, the Old Man, the Mexican, the Redskin, Batman, etc. Other dances include Choq’elas, which is performed before the roundup of the vicuñas, and Q’ajelo, which ends when the gun-toting shepherds steal the dancing maidens before them and carry them off over their shoulders.

Ecotourism is popular and rewarding in Peru. Peru’s astounding variety of climates and eco-systems ranks the country amongst the world’s top eight nations in terms of biodiversity. In Peru one can find 84 of the 104 life zones existing around the planet. The country is home to more than 400 species of mammals, 300 reptiles, 1,700 birds and more than 50,000 plants registered to date.

Tourism is now the largest foreign currency-earner in Peru, affecting the lives of millions of people. While it can bring benefits, these are seldom spread evenly.

The arguments for mass tourism emphasize the economic benefits, yet the evidence suggests that - while ruling elites, landowners, government officials or businessmen might benefit - tourism can make poorer people even worse off - both materially and culturally. It’s only recently, however, that governments, NGOs, communities and environmentalists have begun to wake up to the need for tourism to be developed more responsibly and sustainably.

Common problems caused by mass tourism include environmental destruction, eviction of local people to make way for tourist developments, the commercialization of culture and the lack of local grassroots economic benefit. Andean Travel Web aims to raise general awareness of these problems, as well as bringing specific projects and campaigns to your attention.

Almost 3,000 km of coastline facing the Pacific Ocean, a blessing: source of unlimited natural resources, among them: the consistent and perfect waves of the Peruvian coast. Irregular and full of bays, sandy beaches, peninsulas, cliffs, and rocky places, the extensive coast of Peru holds among its richness the permanent pulse of the planet; the never ending pumping of the Pacific Ocean waves breaking day and night, enledlessly.

Living in Lima, the surfer´s luck is unbeatable, we thank those who long before us were initiated in this sweet dance over the waves and made it come to us, showing us the path to happiness.

In fact, it is pretty easy to live happy in Lima with it´s Costa Verde full of popular waves daily ridden by hundreds of surfers beginners and experts. Almost 10 points with waves for every level, special mention for La Herradura, one of the most powerful lefts in the Peruvian coast, located in a surprisingly deserted bay in the Chorrillos district. In La Herradura you need to be apt and patient, reward is big.

Leaving Lima to the south, the Panamerican highway runs close and parallel to the beack, letting us see miles of sandy beaches full of beachbreaks. The most surfed ones are Conchan at both sides of the pier and San Pedro. To the end of the beach is Arica and its small wave points: a sandy bottom beachbreak and a rocky bottom beachbreak. It is always clever to give them a check if the swell is small.

Peru’s far north coast, between Tumbes and Piura, features superb beaches of white sand and deep blue sea that stretch along a number of bays uninterrupted by bars, points or islands. They are ideal for watersports such as windsurfing, water skiing and scuba diving.The area also has adequate and comfortable hotel infrastructure.

Some of the most popular beaches include Punta Sal, 84 km (52 miles) from the city of Tumbes, where the sea is gentle and warm; and Zorritos, 27 km (16 miles) from Tumbes, where the water temperature averages 26°C (78º F).

The Grissom Air Museum is located at the edge of Grissom Air Reserve Base, formerly Grissom Air Force Base and, prior to May 12, 1968, Bunker Hill Air Force Base. Bunker Hill was renamed Grissom AFB in honour of Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Indiana native and the second American astronaut into space, who had perished in the Apollo I launch pad fire on January 27, 1967. This museum has approximately 20 aircraft on outdoor display that reflect both the base’s rich history and that of the USAF in general. The indoor museum contains a number of artifacts related to the 305th Bomb Group and the AVG, among other subjects, and has some interesting artifacts, including a Phantom cockpit that you can sit in.

Grissom’s draw for me can be summed up in one word: Hustler. In its heyday in the 1960s, the 305th was one of only two supersonic bomber units in the world, flying the Convair B-58A Hustler. The Hustler on display at the museum, a rare TB-58A trainer, is the oldest Hustler in existence, and one of the most significant. As part of the testing for the B-58 program, this plane, the fourth prototype, became the first bomber in history to release weapons at Mach 1 and then Mach 2. I would have loved to have visited this base back when B-58s were flying out of it.

The museum’s aircraft are mostly USAAF or USAF types, with a few exceptions (perhaps the most unusual is a NAMC YS-11 Japanese-built turboprop commuter plane, which visitors can go into). The planes run the gamut from World War II types such as the B-17 and B-25 through to such Cold War classics as the B-47 and KC-97 to several Century Series planes (including an F-100, F-101B, and F-105D) and some more recent planes, including an A-10A and an O-2A. Although all of the museum’s aircraft are on outdoor display, they are in remarkably good condition. The relatively benign climate (at least to a Canadian!), coupled with a program whereby local groups sponsor and take care of aircraft, seems to account for this.

The Gold Museum was established 20 years ago and prided itself on possessing one of the largest collections of pre-Columbian gold in the world. However, in July, after more than four months of tests carried out by specialists at the Catholic University of Peru, the museum was examined by the Instituto de Defensa de la Competencia y la Propriedad Intelectual (Institute for the Defense of Competition and of Intellectual Property, or Indecopi).

In fact, since the 1980s Indecopi has been suspicious about the authenticity of the collections in the Gold Museum. The first reports suggested that 85% of the metal pieces on display were fakes. In August, the cultural commission of the government also looked into the scandal. Sanctions, which have not yet been imposed, could consist simply of a threat to prosecute, but there could also be direct legal action. The museum might, for example, be forced to publicize the fact that of “4,349 metal pieces analyzed, 4,237 are false and more than 100 have aroused strong suspicions concerning their authenticity”.

Peru is a large country on the Pacific coast of South America, encompassing a desert coastline, tropical rainforest and soaring mountains, each with distinct environments. These offer an exceptional opportunity for travellers to experience a variety of landscapes, an abundance of wildlife, a rich history and archaeological heritage, and the vivacious character of durable native cultures, all within one nation.

Fishing villages, fine beaches, agricultural lands, and Peru’s major towns and cities, including the capital of Lima, are interspersed along the narrow belt of desert coastline that stretches the length of the country. The lush Amazon Basin takes up half of Peru and is an ecologically rich area of tropical rainforest that encompasses some of the world’s most remote and least explored areas, sparsely populated and for the most part, inaccessible. Separating the coastal desert from the jungle is the splendid Andes mountain range, an endless chain of soaring peaks over 22,000ft (7,000m), and home to millions of indigenous highland people, speaking the ancient Inca language of Quechua, and living in traditional villages with steeply terraced agricultural fields, with their wandering herds of llamas and alpacas.

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Peru is an environmental masterpiece of diversity, arid coastal deserts, farming oasis, quaint fishing villages and the Amazon basin. The tall Andean Sierras where the mystery and intrigue of the ancient Inca Empire still lies. Machu Picchu ruins, laying quietly undiscovered beneath dense foliage for thousands of years until somewhat recently discovered in 1911.

Cuzco, Peru…where past and present collide. The mythical capital of the Inca Empire and today’s archeological center of Peru. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake with over 3,000 square miles of deep blue waters with over 30 islands. The most sacred body of water in the Inca Empire is a most popular adventure tour in Peru.

Peru is a once in a lifetime tour experience that so few will ever know. Motivation is a keen eye for the incredible, love and respect of mystical nature, a thirst for ancient history and a spirit of adventure. Peru is simply remarkable. Its people and colorful traditions are equally and refreshingly astounding. That’s Peru. An unforgettable travel adventure. Tourism like no other.