A Tour Of Peru

In the thin, cold air atop the Andes mountains in Peru rises Quelccaya Glacier, one of the many. The blue ice that has claimed these tops for a millenium, which feeds the streams below, is rapidly disappearing. Glaciers provide water that grow crops, generate electricity, and sustain cities and rustic areas. Farmers in Peru say that during the last two decades they have noticed a dramatic dip in the quantity of ice and snow on their mountaintops. The regular supply of water they have to grow crops has become haphazard, gradually decreasing each year, at a fast pace! If thereis a lack of water, their land manifestly becomes a desert.

Cuzco hasalready resorted to continual water rationing and started pumping from a stream 15 miles away to provide drinking water to its 400,000 inhabitants. In Peru’s capital, Lima, with 8,000,000 residents, engineers have encouraged successive govts to drill a tunnel through the Andes and build massive reservoirs to hold water. Authorities say it is too expensive an activity. Towns all over the world also face extreme water shortfalls as the glaciers shrink.

You can think about these glaciers as a bankaccount built over millenia, said Lonnie Thompson, one of the first scientists to make this information public. “If you subtract more than you gain, ultimately you go bankrupt. That what is in process here. ”
Thompson turned up at the Quelccaya glacier after a two-day hike from the closest road, climbing into the oxygen-thin air of 17,000 feet above sea level. Since he started his annual visits to Peru in 1974, he revealed, the huge ice cap has shrunk by thirty percent. In the last year, the rim of the ice had pulled back a hundred yards, superb speed for a glacier.
The surface of the mountain had softened leaving giant holes scattered across its face. A large chunk had bust off in March, crashing into the lake below, thus flooding the alpacas’ lower grazing grounds. The face of the glacier now sags with one or two dips. During the past, it was frozen so completely that Thompson could identify the annual snowfalls back 1,500 years. Yes, the times are changing.

Pack your hiking boots and backpacks. Let’s make a journey to Peru to witness the joys of Pachamama, Mother Nature, as she is now. Discover the resources of the land and see how jewelry was made during the past and the way in which the same methods are still used today. According to many Peruvians, as well as Mayans and other indigenous cultures, the earth is getting ready for a cleaning. It has started and will culminate in 2012, according to Dr. Canales, of Arequipa, Peru. Complete photography coverage is available for this trip. Please ask for details.

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