December 5, 2004: Headlines: COS - Peru: COS - Korea: Adventure: Exploration: Chicago Tribune: Don Montague founded the South American Explorers (SAE) in 1977, after a Peace Corps stint in Korea and six years spent roaming South America as part of a freelance film crew

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Korea: Peace Corps Korea : The Peace Corps in Korea: December 5, 2004: Headlines: COS - Peru: COS - Korea: Adventure: Exploration: Chicago Tribune: Don Montague founded the South American Explorers (SAE) in 1977, after a Peace Corps stint in Korea and six years spent roaming South America as part of a freelance film crew

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Don Montague founded the South American Explorers (SAE) in 1977, after a Peace Corps stint in Korea and six years spent roaming South America as part of a freelance film crew

Don Montague founded the South American Explorers (SAE) in 1977, after a Peace Corps stint in Korea and six years spent roaming South America as part of a freelance film crew

Don Montague founded the South American Explorers (SAE) in 1977, after a Peace Corps stint in Korea and six years spent roaming South America as part of a freelance film crew

Legendary club bolsters South America tourism

By Patrick Joseph
Universal Press Syndicate
Published December 5, 2004

Anyone who has spent much time on the so-called "Gringo Trail," the loosely defined backpacker's circuit that loops through Latin America, is bound to be familiar with the South American Explorers (SAE). The group's clubhouses--in Lima and Cuzco, Peru, and Quito, Ecuador--are homes-away-from-home for many long-haul travelers. Clean, well-kept homes filled with books and maps and tended by helpful staff, the clubhouses are great places to stash gear, get mail, research the next foray, or just swap tales over coffee.

Don Montague founded SAE in 1977, after a Peace Corps stint in Korea and six years spent roaming South America as part of a freelance film crew. Speaking from his current home in upstate New York, Montague, now 66, confesses that when the Peace Corps asked if there was any place he wouldn't go, "I answered, `South America.' Back then, I guess it didn't have the same allure for me that the East did."

Twenty-seven years later, he still presides over what amounts to a one-of-a-kind information network for independent travelers, covering a continent that is decidedly Western and famed for such magnificent tourist draws as the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador and the vast Amazon Basin.

The club publishes up-to-date information packets on all these destinations and more, plus detailed primers on such things as volunteer opportunities in different countries, marrying in South America, and the ins and outs of adopting children. Says Montague: "We now have more information than most people want, which is too bad. Now we're kind of disappointed when people just want to hike the Inca Trail. We're like, `Don't you want to visit some prisons? We have a packet on that, too."'

As for adoption, well, people started to call. "At first we wondered why they even thought we'd know anything about it. But by the third call, we were ready."

Not that he set out to build such a comprehensive resource.

"The club was really started as a way to attract writers and stories to the magazine," Montague recalls. These days, he continues to edit and publish the quarterly journal South American Explorer from an office he keeps in a room above the garage at his home in Ithaca--the Ithaca clubhouse. A cursory scan of recent issues reveals interests that range far and wide, from articles on archeology and mountaineering to surprising items such as a story about the Confederate legacy in Brazil and another on midwifery in the Bolivian Andes.

The magazine comes with membership, which, in contrast to such vaunted institutions as the Explorers Club of New York, is open to anyone with $50. Which is not to say there are no bona fide explorers belonging to the club. Dr. Johan Reinhard, discoverer of the Inca Ice Maiden, is a member, as was Loren McIntyre, the renowned National Geographic photographer who, in 1971, discovered the source of the Amazon. The latter reportedly once said it was the only club he ever wanted to join.

At its high-water mark, SAE membership hit 8,000. Since 9/11, however, it has fallen to half that. It's not the first time the club has weathered hard times. When the Shining Path guerillas terrorized Peru in the late 1980s, Lima was under curfew and the countryside posed serious threats. "We were lucky to see one visitor per week at the Lima clubhouse then," Montague remembers. Later, widespread rioting and unrest slowed travel to Ecuador. But the club made it through somehow. While the riots have died down and the Shining Path has been contained, SAE continues to grow. The club is now on the verge of branching out to Buenos Aires.

Meanwhile, all the best guidebooks refer travelers to SAE. Lonely Planet Peru highly recommends the club and even calls it "something of a legend."

Montague laughs. "Just by not dying in South America, you become a legend."

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To join, visit the club online at www.saexplorers.org or call 800-274-0568.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune





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Story Source: Chicago Tribune

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Peru; COS - Korea; Adventure; Exploration

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