Project Peru always tries to support a wider community beyond our refuge. Recently we were able to visit an isolated community in the area known as the ‘eyebrows of the jungle’ (cejas de montaña). This is an area that has fast been being destroyed – it is where mohogany grew and now is been deforested for coffee plantations. A little visited region with few roads and collapsing mule tracks. But beautiful, although cloudy and damp, and known for overlooking the flat Amazon’s dense jungle.
At the refuge everyone had helped packing boxes to take to Cuyaco with toys, clothes and blankets. Then these were loaded into a bus to go to the Tingo Maria area. Then offloaded onto a car and with loads of boxes on the roof and taken on a perilous journey on narrow, twisting tracks. First, having had to manoeuvre with such load on the roof, they then had to take the boxes on their backs and walked to the village itself.
Everybody was over the moon to receive donations and the children were especially happy with knitted teddies and soft toys while the older inhabitants were thrilled to receive jeans and other goods. The whole community expressed their thanks with their notice saying ‘Thank you friends from Proyecto Perú from the village of Cuyaco.’
The village of Cuyaco is in the Huánuco region in central Peru near the town of Tingo Maria. This is in the tropical hilly jungle area of Peru, so over the Andes from our refuge and down towards the Amazon. Cuyaco itself is at approximately 920 metres (3,000 feet) altitude above sea level. Tingo Maria is about 500 km (310 miles) from Lima and a normal journey by road can take 11-12 hours including, on the Central Highway, crossing over a 4,818 metre pass (15,807 feet) above sea level.
To see more of this sort of work we have done in the past see…
