What is Antioquia? I get asked this question several times. So I thought I should create a blog post talking about this new interesting place, and explain what it is and why it has became more famous recently.
Street in Antioquia
First of all, Antioquia is a village, located in the Valley of the Lurin River at 1500masl, 75km away from Lima (43km away from Cieneguilla). It can be reached through the paved road that leads to Huarochiri, passing by villages like Chontay, Sisicaya and Antapucro, in 2 hours by car.

The reason it has became famous among Limeans and local travel agencies is that the inhabitants of Antioquia have decorated its houses with colorfull paintings of flowers, horses and birds. The village now is full of joy, energy and happiness in its streets. The new environment invites the traveler to stay there and to visit again.
House in Antioquia
The drawings look like they were made by 3-year-old children. Almost five years ago, the local Center of Research, Education and Development (Cied) thought how the Limeans can be interested in a village in the 65 Kilometer of the Highway to Huarochiri, the project consisted in painting the houses that in those times looked unpainted and dirty.

A group of peruvian, argentinian and uruguayan plastic artists arrived to the village and for a week experimented with many designs to decorate the houses of the village, these artist where supervised by the paintor Enrique Bustamente, finally they chose the paintings to turn Antioquia into something different.
Beautiful Painted house
In July 2003, the Andres Avelino Caceres school had the first paintings on its wall. The Main Square had the first flowers and birds of many colors, besides a big sun and a moon in each side of the main gate. At first, the inhabitants where not happy with the project and did not care about the paintings, but after they saw how beautiful it looked everybody wanted to have their house painted as well.

Finally, the 300 families of Antioquia changed their skeptical attitude and got inmersed in the project.

Basically, they got an idea, put it into reality and now more and more people wants to visit Antioquia year after year, and the reason is mainly because the travelers want to see the famous, beautiful and unique painted houses! Of course when visiting you can also feel the great environment, and you can relax in a really peaceful place while enjoying the greeat green scenery.

The Church

Best time to travel
This area can be visited almost all year, nevertheless during the winter months (April - November) there is a sunny and warm weather.

To take into account
In these villages (excepting Cieneguilla) there are not all basic Tourist services like restaurants or hotels (this is why it is so attractive), modest restaurants can be found in the highway. In the Antioquia Main Square a restaurant and restrooms can be found. Also there are grocery stores where you can buy drinks and snacks.

If you have any input about Antioquia please leave a message hereunder.

Also, if you want to enjoy Antioquia with us, we have a programed Tour Package Full day to visit Antioquia for this Easter - Thursday April 09th. The spaces are limited so if you want to join us book as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading and see you around Peru!
http://www.sumaqperu.com
http://www.toursdesemanasanta.com

As promised, here is the fourth entry post on Lunahuaná. This time I will talk a little about the tours that you can do during your staying there.

Continuing along the Yauyos-Cañete road, about 3Km. from the main square is a home of a dark aspect, which is becoming slowly known and holds a mystery inside it. It is known as the "Haunted House of Lunahuaná". The villagers tell stories about the house (quite big by the way), mentioning that it was built and inhabited for a short time by their owners until they died in a very rugged way. Since then, several people that have approached at night have seen some apparitions and heard wailing inside the home that has given rise to a local legend that there are ghosts in the house. Then a fence was built and is now in a better shape in terms of its exterior facade. From the main room of the house you can see through the window the wide valley of Lunahuaná. In the photos you can see parts of the interior of the house.

Waterfalls in Nor-Yauyos Cochas ReserveAs every year, in march or april, we receive the easter time. This year it came a little late, in April, exactly from April 9th till the 12th.

And usually, It is in this season that the tour packages and promotions start to appear in the market, of course, everybody wish to travel in this period of time and enjoy the 4 days off. It is like a little vacation. The most visited places are Huaraz and Ayacucho, but the offers are little by little being diversified to let the travelers discover new places.

Here, in Sumaq Peru, we have our tours and promotions ready. We are offering full days and complete tour packages of 4 and 3 days.

Now, I want to show you some of them and maybe you join us ;)

Full days:

• Full day Antioquía: Thursday 09 de April
• Full day Lunahuaná: Thursday 09 de de April
• Full day Canta: Friday 10 de April
• Full day Ballestas and Paracas: Friday 10 de April
• Full day Antankallo: Saturday 11 de April
• Full day Caral - Vegueta: Saturday 11 April and Sunday 12 de April
• Full day Tumbapaccha: Sunday 12 de April

When you enter to the promotions you will find out that they are in spanish, I am sorry for that. Also the tour packages have a spanish-speaking guide. So I think if you live in Lima maybe you can manage a little of Spanish and understand the content of the promotions.

Usually we do not promote these tours for foreigners living in Lima, but please let me know in the comments if you will be interested in having the promotions throughout Peru in English.

Thanks for reading and see you around Perú!
http://www.sumaqperu.com

Miniature still in "Viña Los Reyes"

Lunahuaná is not only Rafting, but also a big vineyard, where grapes (the ones of the "uvina" variety) of good quality offer us the famous Pisco. Is included within the route of Pisco that is even part of a new tour circuit that is being promoted more and more.

The first thing that occurred to me when we started to see the wine cellars and pisco, was how traditional they look like. You can go through several small bodegas and see how the owners and producers are working with the passion that is a characteristic of those lovers of good drinks, like wine or pisco. You can sense the mysticism in the air.

Statue in the Main Square of Lunahuaná

It is interesting to see how tourism in Lunahuaná grows during the rafting season. I already wrote about how to get to Lunahuaná in my previous blog post.

When I visited Lunahuaná for the first time, I couldn't do rafting because of a health problem, but had the opportunity to go during the days of february and march, which is the best season of the year for rafting and I cannot recommend more your visit there, if you can even more than once.

There are many hotels you can find in Lunahuaná, as camping centers for the most adventurous that prefer a direct contact with nature without spending too much money.

Rafting in Lunahuaná

Lunahuaná is one of those towns that, just by pronouncing its name one can recall emtions of adventure. And it is true that adventure is everyday bread in Lunahuaná, specially if you are young and you like adventure sports.

Even tough many people think that in Lunahuaná we can only do rafting, the truth is that there are many other things to do there, many other attractions to visit and enjoy. It is a destination for adventure as well as for family, and in this first post (the first one I write), I will try to give a description of all the various activities that you can do once you get there. Specially now that we are approaching the Rafting Season, and in this coming Holly week during the holidays it is a close destination and very attractive at the same time.

Obviously, if you go with your family, the best thing to do is to book for a tour to avoid all problems in transportation and in the schedule of activities. At the same time, the most adventurous can go sighseeing in a four-wheel motorcicle or simply visit all the different tourist attractions.

One of the most beautiful places of Peru is The Colca Canyon in Arequipa. It is one of the deepest of the world (reportedly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the USA)and it preserves natural landscapes, flora and fauna and the customs, rituals and way of living of their inhabitants.

And it is most beautiful during Christmas. I found a very nice picture of Lima Main Square at night, It is hosted in PeruInside. Take a look:

Lima at Night During Christmas

Something that I wanted to comment, and that at the time I did not for lack of time is How the APEC summit has changed the Peru stereotypes of journalists who came to Lima.

I found it very interesting that journalists confess that prior to his arrival did not feel attracted by the country as a destination, they thought it was boring, with nothing to do, and that the visit will pass without much emotion or funny times. But that did not happen.