Escape the winter and join Brenda Gardiner and her group of pink-jacket-clad ladies on an amazing trip to Peru and Bolivia in the next installment of the Bouchie Lake Lawnchair Travel Series.
Gardiner will be the pilot for the Monday, Feb. 24 flight, which will take guests on a three-week journey to Peru and Bolivia, over ancient geoglyphs, to floating islands and through the jungle.
Gardiner ended up travelling in a group of five women, some of whom she didn’t know very well, and she says it turned out to be a grand adventure. Gardiner and her group — herself, another Brenda, Honey, Susan and Laura — wore pink jackets and travelled from Dec. 18 to Jan. 9. All together, they took 11 different airplanes, three trains, one tour bus, a couple of open-air double-decker buses, a tuk-tuk and several boats.
“The Five Pink Jackets, we did the country,” said Gardiner. “People were smiling at us and saying ‘that’s a great idea.’”
Gardiner would highly recommend Peru for anyone interested in travelling, and she says the whole trip was amazing.
“It was a 10 out of 10 when you talk about culture and really getting the feel for the people,” she said. “I always go with the intent of immersing myself with the real people, and this did not disappoint. We had amazing hosts at our Airbnbs we booked, just wonderful people.”
Gardiner says Peru is well-known for its counterfeit money, and the five women were very careful. During their three-week trip, out of the five of them, only one woman lost the equivalent of $39 Canadian.
During her Lawnchair Travel presentation, Gardiner will share some highlights from the trip. And there are many highlights from which she can choose.
After landing in Lima, Peru, the group went to Desert Oasis, where they went sand boarding and dune bugging.
They also flew over the Nazca Lines, large geoglyphs etched into the sands.
The group spent a few days based in Cusco and taking day trips from there, then they climbed Machu Picchu, which Gardiner describes as “phenomenal.”
The women took a 10-hour cross-country train trip to the floating islands of Lake Titicaca.
“It’s absolutely phenomenal how these people live on these floating islands,” said Gardiner.
This whole time, Gardiner says they had wonderful food and met fabulous people.
After travelling to the southern tip of Peru, the five women went to Bolivia and visited Copacabana and La Paz. Gardiner says Copacabana is a very resort-like town right on the ocean, and it was very cool to experience the cable car system in La Paz, which is considered the most state-of-the-art system in the world.
In Bolivia, the women also took a jungle tour, and a couple of them swam with pink dolphins.
Gardiner’s Bouchie Lake Lawnchair Travel flight takes off Monday, Feb. 24 at 7 p.m. at the Bouchie Lake Hall, and the boarding gates and security open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $8 for First Class and $6 for Economy.
The series is hosted by the Friends of Bouchie-Milburn Society, with proceeds going to support the Fourth Annual Billie Bouchie Day Celebrations, set for the weekend of May 30.
READ MORE: Sixth Bouchie Lake Lawnchair Travel series takes off Feb. 17
editor@quesnelobserver.com
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