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VOLUNTEER
VACATIONS
to nourish your soul

2. Featu res
Digging up Louisbourg 22
Scouring the dirt for long-lost trinkets may not
sound like a relaxing holiday, but you'll really dig
the public archaeology prcgram at the Fortress
of Louisbourg on Cape Breton lsland
By Douglas Hunter with photography
by Dan Doucette
Sweet equity 33
Believe it or not, there's something even more
heart-warming than Anne of Creen Cables in P.E.l.
By Patricia Pearson with photography
by John Sylvester
The manure tour 4&
lf you still think milk comes from the grocery store,
spend a few days working under the backside ofa
herd of Holsteins on a Manitoba farm
By Dawn Calleja with photography
by Dawn Coss
Romancing the stove SS
Heaven help the Peruvian families boiling corn
and potatoes on brick-walled cooktops built by
urbanites on vacation
By Patricia D'Souza
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NoteBook 6
Can I help) By Eric Harris
GateWay 11
Home beach advantage, Calileo, king of night vision, On the trail
of the temples, Curdsmiths, Walking on water, Peak experiences,
True Norse strong and free, So this is where bling came froml
OneCity 20
When in Kingston, go directly to jail, visit an ecological sweet sPot,
or dust offyour regalia for a high-ranking night oui By Alan Morantz
TenBest 62
A prolific cookbook author, regional foods champion and culinary activist
digs into Canada's bumper crop of farmers' markets By Anita Stewart
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CONTENTS
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On the cover: "WWOOFer".lule Briieggen
travelled from Germany to Manitoba to
Volunteer with the organization World
Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.
Depa rlments
CANADIAN CEOCRAPHIC TRAVEL 5

3. Romanci ng
the stove
For hundreds of years, the
lnca built stone temPles
on Peruvia n mou ntain-
tops. But the lnca are no
more, and heaven help
the families boiling co(n
and potatoes on brrcl<-
walled cool<tops built
by , r6anites on vacation.
BY PATRICIA D'SOUZA
THE INCA WERE MASTERFUL stonemasons. Machu Picchu, their r5th-century sanctuary in
the sky, was buiit to exacting detail, each block cut to fit tight against the next. On a rainy day
in December, I run my finger along one of the ancient mortarless ioints and wonder at this
marvel that has stood for hundreds of years, withstanding earthcluakes, waves of tourists and
outlasting the Inca thernselves.
I,m no Inca mason. Heck, I've never laid a single stone, but I've come to Peru to build a vented
stove of adobe bricks with the hope that it will improve the health of a family living in the coun-
try's northern highlands, where women sti11 cook indoors over open flames and respiratory
illness remains the ieading cause of death.
"Christmas is about giving," says Carol Germain of Barrie, Ont., explaining why she has
chosen to spend a week here while her young kids holiday with their dad on a beach in Mexico'
Lili Cretu, a Romanian chemist transplanted to Oakvi11e, Ont., and Austin Woods, a housepainter
and adventurer from Cranbrook, B.C., round out our group. We bond quickly ovel oul poor
Spanish, nonexistent constructlon skills and our desire lor a meaningful vacation.
We fly to the smal1 city of Caiamarca, where the Inca empelor Atahualpa was captured and
killed by Spanish colonists, effectively ending the 3oo-year-o1d civilization. We huddle together
on an eight-hour bus ride, careening along narrow gravel roads that climb higher and higher into
the Andes. At Chota, we bump and jostle for another hour in the back of a four-whee1-drive truck
to our fina1 destination, Cadmalca, a community of zoo families that's about 3,ooo metres above
sea level and served by a single winding mountain road. When i learn that it's a lo-minute hike
up the side of a mountain in pitch darkness to the Blue Poncho Lodge, i nearly collapse in a cow
prtty. Sorr" people spiash in the ocean in December. Others hike up morrntainsides for the
privilege of mixing cement and laying bricks.
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4. The lodge, our home for the next
rseveral nights, turns out to be a dormi-
tory-style abode of several rooms open-
ing onto a long porch overlooking the
5urrounding hills and skinny conifers. It is the only structure
in the communitywith rtinning water and indoor plumbing and
I leam that the facilities were installed only three years ago after
the building was purchased by an Australian with an interest in
attracting tourists
- and infiastructure funds
- to the poverty-
,stricken north.
' The next day, we build stovepipes from the comrgated sheets
of metal used to roof Peruyian homes. Our Spanish-speaking
guide and instructor, MercedesZanta, instructs us in painstak-
ingly flattening the waves with long wooden sticks, then rolling
the flattened sheets and joining the
tubes. It seems inefficient, when I
could have packed the necessary hard-
ware in my luggage. I might have just
shipped over a doggone stove. But that would have missed an
important point of the project
-
learning to live within simple
means. Fo'r Zarala, who has built 5o stoves, this is a chance to
teach city folk some humiliqv.
ON CHRTSTMAS EVE DA-, rve split into two groups and slog
through rutted lanes of dried mud into the mountains. Austin
'Woods
and I are teamed with H6ctor Gonz|lez, a local farmer
who has built 3o stoves in these hi11s. Woozy from altitLrde
sickness, I whine like a child. "On1v ro minutes more," Gonzilez
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VACATIONS Women in the community of
Cadmalca (eorrorra), in Peru's
northern Andes mountains,
cook indoors over open fires.
They work in kitchens lined
with soot (r-rrr). Not surpris-
ingly, respiratory illness is the
leading cause ofdeath.

5. t't
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I r.,ffi
quips cheerfully in broken English every time i plead rvith him
to stop and let me rest. The next day, he brings me a horse.
When we reach the home of Carrol Bunga ar.rd Delida perres,
the painful trek is forgotten. The small compour.rd is forested
on two sides, with several buildings to house the couple,s five
adult children and their growing families. The soot_stained
kitchen is falling down, but the family still uses it, The new stove
is destined for a new i<itchen, though the building is, as yet, just
four posts and a roof.
N l(:,^ lt.( tL,
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Group member Lili Cretu (ABovE, at right),
offers gifts ofcoloured pens and balloons
to local kids in Cadmalca. The 3,ooo.year-
old city of Caiamarca (lrrr) is known for
its churches, hot springs, dairy products
and bustling markets (BErow). Most of all,
it is known as the place where the lnca
empire fell after the capture and execution
of the emperor Atahualpa.
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6. SMOOTH
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a
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Gonz|lez and Bunga, a carpenter by trade, hang a plumb bob inside the
open-wa11ed shucture and hold intense discussions in Spanish as I work with
the couple's four-year-old granddaughter Mireli. We carry bricks to the
back of the house from the front, where they had been transported by
horse, and soak them in water. (r try not to notice how much better she is
at the task.)
Under the roof of the kitchen-to-be, we make a rectangle in the dirt,
roughly a metre long and two-thirds as wide, line it with the waterlogged
bricks, then trowel on a mixture of cement and sand. when we have built
an enclosure three bricks ta11, the teenaged Bunga boys head into the hills
with a wheelbarrow and return with mounds of limestone rock, which
woods and I crush with a ma11et into go1fba11-sized pieces to fi11 the
centre ofour brick box and hold the stove's heat. Fina11y, we add another
layer ofbricks, creating a shelffor a cast-iron stove plate, and add a layer
of cement around the p1ate, leaving a hole lor the stovepipe.
Mercedes Zarata (BELow) rests at a look-out point
in Cadmalca. Cretu (eaovr, in back seat ) and Austin
Woods (front window) get ready for the ride to Chota
from Cadmalca. G,A.P. group members put the finish-
ing touches on a stove (oneoslre).
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54 CANADIAN CEOCRAPHIC TRAVEL SUMMER 2OO9

7. The finished project looks a little lopsided and has nothing
on the walls of Machu picchu, but perres seems pleased. She
has a tear in her eye and pulls me in for a bear hug. Over lunch
ofgreenish eggs from grass-fed chickens, heavily salted pota_
toes and weak tea, she hands me a cloth saclt. Two scared
guinea pigs toss uncomfortably inside. A peruvlan delicacy
known as cul.. the lr.riggling rodents probably realize they will
be or,rr dinner. pan-fried r,ith bufter
-
perhaps even the very
first test ofolrr stove.
Paticia D'Souza is a seni.or editor with Canadian Geographic.
To comment, e-mail editor@canadiangeographic.ca
Visit www.canadiangeographic.ca.
Potatoes, large.nibbed corn and the afore-
mentioned guinea pigs are plentiful in
northern P-eru, and so is human capital. With
lots ofavailable labour, there is no real need
to import white-coliar workers for simple con-
struction jobs. But the project is about devel-
oping a thriving tourism industry in the north
-
to rival the beaches of Lima, the history of
Cusco and the jungle rhythms of lquitos
-as much as it is about building stoves.
With that in mrnd, Toronto-based C.A.p.
Adventures is among several sustainable
tourisrn outfits offering eight-day stove_
buiding expedrtions to Cadmalca. C.A.p.,s
Project Peru tou r (www.gapadventures.com/
tour/SPPI), covers mid-level, shared accom_
ffiffi'modations, meals and transportation within
Peru. (An additional fee is earmarked as a
donation to the community.) Aside from
covering the cost of room and board, tourist
dollars go toward local construction materials
and help employ a networl< of Spanish-
speaking guides who take care that you don,t
get lost, sick or mugged.
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Call us for your free
outdoor adventure map.
(3278)