Sixto Barrera carries Peru’s flag during Opening Ceremonies, Beijing Summer Olympic Games, August 2008 Peruvian wrestler Sixto Barrera, who represented his country in the Beijing Summer Olympic Games of 2008, was honored on August 26 by the United Nations, reports RPP Noticias. The wrestler was decorated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for setting an [...]
Entries from September 2008
Peru Olympian Sixto Barrera Honored by United Nations
September 2nd, 2008 · 2 Comments · Sports
Tags: Peru Olympians
Moby Dick, Herman Melville & “Strange, Sad” Lima
September 2nd, 2008 · 7 Comments · Art, Film, Music & Dance, Race Matters
“…like a Lima tower, cutting my boat in two” Rereading yesterday’s post on writers and Lima’s weather, I became curious about Herman Melville’s riff on Lima as “the strangest, saddest city thou can’st see.” When did Melville visit Lima? What prompted him to go into spasms of melancholy? A quick Google search revealed that the [...]
Tags: Lima weather
Desperately Seeking Sunlight
September 1st, 2008 · 1 Comment · What's up with the Weather Down There?
Valley of Santa Eulalia, Peru, which has sun, big rocks and amazing avocado ice cream There is no sun in Lima during the South American winter. No shifting light. No shadows. No way to tell 8 a.m. from 5 p.m. Just a flat grey sky that stays put, like lint in the dryer basket. I wrote [...]
Tags: Lima weather
“Panza de Burro”: The Donkey-grey Sky of Lima
September 1st, 2008 · 18 Comments · What's up with the Weather Down There?
The sun disappears almost completely. The sky is the same dead grey color, from 8 in the morning to 6 at night.
A strange weather condition called garua invades the city. Garua is a damp, cold mist that hangs in the air like a cobweb and turns the sidewalks into slippery deathtraps.
It never truly rains, however, so the dirt and soot don’t wash away. Buildings, plants, cars, street signs – everything is covered in layers of dust (polvo) made moist by the garua.
Humidity levels climb during winter, intensifying the cold. As the months wear on, the chilly humidity creeps into the marrow of your bones, until you feel like an old carrot left in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.
Tags: cold·garua·Jews of the Amazon·weather






