Machu Picchu with our baby girl!

Hi there fellow travelers! Long time no see..I've been spending some quality time with the family, and by now you should know quality time can only mean one thing: traveling!

Who said traveling with a child is difficult?

2 Months ago, My wife Karin and I decided to go back to where we started off 10 years ago: Machu Picchu. Times have changed since then and our personal situation has evolved as well. Since August 2004 we are the proud parents of Edie Annemare, our by now 1,5 year-old daughter. Edie is used to traveling, as our line of work pushes us around the globe throughout the year, but we had never before taken her to places too far off the beaten track, let alone high altitude. Therefore we were a bit anxious to know if we would be doing the right thing by bringing her along. We were basically weary of Altitude Sickness, or “Soroche”.



Soroche is caused by 2 main factors:

Lack of oxygen in the air:

The higher you go the less oxygen you will find per m3 of breathable air. Therefore your lungs will obtain less of this existential gas per each breath taken, while your brain and heart need the same amount. Therefore you need to breath more often to get the same amount of oxygen, which gives you the feeling of being “out of breath” constantly.

Lower outside air pressure at higher altitudes:

Due to the fact that at 3,400m (10,000ft approx.) altitude there is the same amount of meters/ft less air above your head and therefore less air-pressure on your body then at 0m/ft. At sea-level your body has to have built up a certain inside pressure, to withstand that outside air-pressure. This is done through nitrogen bubbles in your bloodstream. These bubbles have a certain size and strength as to create an inner pressure that meets the outside pressure. Once you get to a certain altitude (for me the barrier lies at 3,000m/9,000ft) very quickly (for example in a plane), your body may have difficulties adjusting itself to the sudden difference in outside pressure and for a while (mostly a maximum of 24 hours) your inside pressure may be higher than the outside air-pressure, causing a series of possible discomforts, such as headache, dizziness, intestine unrest, etc. This all has to do with the fact that your body tries to make the nitrogen bubbles in your bloodstream smaller and readjust itself to the outside pressure, but hasn’t gotten there yet. Normally this is no big problem and you will get over it within 24 hours.



After some research, it turned out that actually smaller children do not or hardly suffer from this sickness, as their bodies tend to adjust themselves much faster then those of grown people. So, we took the plunge and it turned out to be a great experience. People ask: “why would you do it at that age, when they do not have any recollection of it later?”, but we feel children are as susceptible to travel experiences as they are to languages at that age; their mind is a spunge and they will pick up a lot from a trip like this. Maybe they will not remember much in the future, but at some level (I have no medical proof of this of course, but it feels right and some of our friends who traveled with small children confirm it) it will make an impression, open up their mind, make them more open to the different ways the world can present itself… Or at least so we hope…

Bottom line is, we had a great time, Edie as well, and we feel we can take her along on many more of our trips, until she has come to the age where it becomes necessary for her to be in school and with her friends. It will give us a couple more years of traveling freedom and we hope will open up our daughter’s mind for the world. We sincerely feel that getting to know different cultures and ways of living should help in becoming a more tolerant person, and as far as tolerance goes, one cannot start learning early enough.



Best regards from Buenos Aires!
Bart
http://www.cat-travel.com

Just Back from Patagonia...

You won’t believe it when I tell you, but I have found a portal into mental piece and quiet. My last journey to the southern parts of Argentina and Chile turned out to be the most mentally relaxing and creativity inspiring trip I have made in a long time.




The ancient ice near Calafate and Puerto Natales, the whales and sea elephants near the Valdes Peninsula, a glance at the end of the world (which was actually quite comfortable!) in Ushuaia… Amazing experiences, dotting a region that is so vast, so open, so wild and unexplored…





All this beauty and peacefulness makes one wonder if we humans -allegedly at the top of the evolutionary chain - are making a good job in managing the rest of the "civilized" world. In this remote spot of the globe, almost untouched by men, species co-exist within an incredible balance... For those of us who believe in ecologically conscious adventure travel and understand the necessity to leave a soft footprint during our encounter with this amazing regions, the experience of visiting Patagonia is a remainder of our duty as keepers of our planet instead of just acting as temporal tenants.

New version of CAT Travel's site Online!

Hi fellow travelers!

I'm very proud to announce that the new version of our site is up!

If you're thinking on a Peru Travel or a trip to any other Latin American destination, we'll be very glad to help you out planning it!

One of the main changes we've made is to present example tours so you can see what we're capable of doing, instead of just listing tours that are "ready to go". That way we can emphazise our conviction that every traveler is different from the other sowe can plan our clients' trip together based in their wishes and our experience.


I can't thank enough to all people involved in this project: our IT and design department, the MK people and every single person in the company who gave us great ideas to have the travel site our clients deserve!





But above all we want to thank you, readers of this blog and of the various travel forums of which we are members, for giving us inputs of what you think a tour operator site should look like!

Of course and as always, your comments , critics and praises ;) are very welcomed!

Have a nice day

Bart

Bart's Travel Guide Reviews II: Footprint Peru Hand Book

Footprint Peru Handbook is original in its kind as it focuses on information and not storytelling.

It has more up-to-date info on the things you actually need in day-to-day travel, most of it presented in a factual way rather than using endless pages of interesting but not-really-necessary info.

From a tour operator point of view, I need to know as many facts as possible in order to prepare, quote and carry out the tours we offer to our public. The Handbook is a great source of information in this area, as I don't have to read around the stories, but get the facts presented in a direct way. Due to the inclusion of much better maps and a very serious work at updating the info accurately, the latest edition is a big improvement, and one of best single guides on Peru currently available.

If you decide to visit the awesome Manu Reserve in the Amazon Jungle, fly over the mysterious Nazca lines, or If you hike the Inca Trail on your way to Machu Picchu, this guide is a must as you'll find all the data you need.

As a matter of fact, if you decide you're going tojust Cusco, I'd advice to get this guide instead of a Cusco-only one. You'll find all you need in Footprint Peru Handbook for sure.

Bart

When traveling touches your heart.....

Dear fellow travelers:

Today I'd like to tell you two travel stories that ended in something even more special than unforgettable memories and amazing pictures.

These are the kind of stories that reflect how much getting in touch with new cultures and realities can put your life in a whole new perspective.

These are the stories about two foundations dedicated to help Peruvian’s poorest children.

Both were born during some of my trips through Peru. Those travels begun as any journey does: like a brand new book with blank pages waiting to be filled with new experiences. But the journey never ended and instead evolved into beautiful initiatives which proof that any of us can make a difference if we really want to.

These are the stories of Paz Holandesa and Pasa la Voz.

Paz Holandesa, was founded 19th august 1999 by Mrs. Marjan van Mourik and Dr. Daniel Paz y Geuze.

In december 1998, Marjan van Mourik was on holiday in Peru and happened to get in touch with the 'street children's'-project of in Cusco. In June 1999 she returned to further learn about the needs and possibilities for starting a project on her own. It appeared that the Lions lub in Cusco just had kicked of a programme aimed at the lowest social classes of the people in and around Cusco. For this programme they were looking for medical teams that could possibly help out. When back in Rotterdam, Marjan discussed the possibilities to support the efforts of the Lions Club in Cusco and encountered an unexpected and spontaneous enthousiasm.

The Academic Hospital in Rotterdam was more than willing to help with expert knowledge as well as by sending medical teams to fix the job in Cusco. Dr. Daniel Paz y Geuze is helping his country Peru already for a long time by executing operations on children from time to time. He also collects and ships medical tools and goods to help Peruvian hospitals. However, he was more and more looking for some kind of continuity and a more sructural and durable way of cooperating with local Peruvian hospitals in his home town Arequipa as well as in other locations in Peru. Marjan van Mourik and Dr. Paz understood eachother and all things fell in place: the foundation Fundacion PAZ-Holandesa became a reality.The foundation Fundacion PAZ-Holandesa is officially registered in The Netherlands as well as in Peru

http://www.pazholandesa.com/ (please click on the link above-right for the English version)

Pasa la Voz is peruvian slang for "Tell everybody" and is also the name of our second sponsored foundation, set up and led by a Dutch/Argentine couple; Liesbeth Kerstens and Martin Maleta.

In the city of Cusco, they cooperate with several other projects directed at working children. PLV offers a platform for information exchange between the children and teachers/group leaders of the various participating organizations. This way PLV creates a cooperation network for a variety of entities through the production and sales of a children’s street newspaper. The Dutch Foundation “Hoedje van Papier” (Paper Hat) supports PLV from The Netherlands in the areas of policy development, fundraising, collection activities and management support. PLV’s own website is under construction; I will inform you when it goes live!. http://www.stichtinghoedjevanpapier.nl/

We at CAT Travel are very proud to support both Pasa la Voz and Paz Holandesa as sponsors and active members in some of their projects and are thankful to have the chance to give something back to Peru's amazing people.

Donations can be made in any of the above-mentioned websites. In case you want to know more about Pasa la Voz, please write to: Liesbeth Kerstens (ljkerstens@gmail.com). In case you want to know more about Paz Holandesa, please write to: Marjan van Mourik (info@pazholandesa.com).

Have a great day!

Bart

http://www.cat-travel.com/

Bart's Travel Guide Reviews I: Insight Guide Peru

Hello there,

Here I'll start a series of South America Travel Guide Reviews , that I hope are useful to my fellow travelers. Comments will be greatly apprecieted!



I have lived in South America for the last 10 years (7 years in peru, 3 in Argentina) and am constantly looking for accurate Travel Guides to recommend to CAT's always demanding clients and to steadily improve our work on giving pertinent and useful info as well. Insight Guide Peru has one noticiable strenght by its side: This is probably the best source of deep background on specific destinationsand activities. As a tour operator in Latin America I always recommend this particular guide when, for instance, travelers are deeply interested in birdwatching in, say , the Manu Reserve in the peruvian amazon jungle, a less well known destination when comparing to Macchu Pichu, the Nazca Lines or Senor de Sipan. Nevertheless, this level of detail is also available for the abovementioned "classic" destinies as well. Visually stunning, Insight Guide is the National Geographic of the Travel Guides.

Have a Nice Day,

Bart

A little about Myself

Hi there fellow bloggers!

I'm Bart de Graaf, I was born in The Netherlands some 35 years ago. I'm married to Karin and father of Edie, our beautiful 16 month-old baby girl. I studied International Tourism Management and Consultancy at the Superior Institute for Tourism Studies in Breda, The Netherlands, but my constant urge to get away into the wide open spaces of traveling freedom made me a nightmare for my professors and fellow students.

I dreamt up the idea of setting up a tour operating company on my way to Ecuador's inner jungle in 1994, on one of several trips through the area. I've been an active South America explorer for over 12 years now and have seen and experienced many of the surprises one can encounter living, working and traveling in this wild continent. After barely graduating in 1996 I almost immediately made my way to Peru to make my two dreams reality: turn my hobby into a professional way of living and try to help building the cultural bridge between South America and the rest of the world.

After 10 hard working years in Peru we now own and run what we like to think of as one of the most efficient tour operating companies in the region, managing not only Peru, but also Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, with proper offices in the first three countries and growing! You're welcomed to visit us at www.cat-travel.com.

What I expect of this blog is to share the experience of how traveling up and down Latin America has molded my life and determined in one way or another, who I am today.

Well, guess that's pretty much my life so far. In the words of Jan Myrdal: "Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. But the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes."

See you!