An American in Lima

I’ve been away from An American in Lima for a little while (understatement) but thanks to my friend Levi Novey, aka Mr Green HuffPost, I’m getting a bigtime nudge to return to blogging. Which I do love doing, by the way.
Levi let me hijack his column today to guest rant about bullfighting (The Twisted Temptations [...]

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Ten-year-old Michelito waves a bloody sword to crowd after his drawn-out debacle in the Acho bullring last November; photo c. Jorge Vera 2008

November 29’s corrida marked the penultimate bullfight of the Señor de los Milagros festival, held in Lima’s historic Plaza de Acho bullring.
The last day to see bullfighting in Peru’s capital is December 6, next Sunday. (Ticket information [...]

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Puppy by La Bruja; photo by Barbara Drake C. 2009

Last month a Weimaraner named La Bruja gave birth to six puppies including Arena (”sand”), above.
La Bruja belongs to one of El Fotógrafo’s cousins who lives in Jesus María. We had heard that La Bruja was embarazada but we weren’t keeping track of the due date or [...]

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Frank Zappa once warned: Don’t eat the yellow snow.

Vizcacha en escabeche (pickled vizcacha), a traditional dish of the Argentinean countryside where cute vizcachas run wild and free, as they should; photo courtesy La Cocina de Ile.com

The same might be said about the vizcacha, a reclusive member of the South American bunny family that some food experts have recommended as [...]

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Lola, coiffed and perfumed (actually, smelling like someone’s abuela)

A perk to living in Lima is that you can have your hair cut and styled for ridiculously low prices. A salon down the street from us charges S/.20 to do a full blowout, for any length hair. That’s less than US$7 for something that stylists in the [...]

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Many thanks to the concerned people who’ve sent their good wishes to our dog Lola, who was poisoned last week in Parque Leoncio Prad0, in Miraflores. Lola recovered thanks to the efforts of her vet, whose office is just blocks away.
Not every animal that is poisoned in Peru is fortunate to live close to a [...]

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Crying or laughing? Schoolchildren react to poisoned dog in street (photo courtesy Dr. G, www.hermanoperro-hermanogato.blogspot.com)

I wish I never had to write this post, but since my Labrador nearly died from ingesting poison in a Lima park this week, I must share what I’ve learned to alert other pet owners.
A surprising number of people in Peru like [...]

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Dog at Yungay National Cemetery; Mount Huascaran in background (photo by Barbara Drake 2009)

 Last Sunday, El Fotógrafo, El Híjo and I toured the cemetery above the buried town of Yungay, about 30 miles north of Huaraz. We were with a group of scientists and historians taking part in a glacier adaptation conference, and there couldn’t have [...]

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Can you say attitude?
This Spanish torero fought at Plaza de Acho last November. He was a show stopper who would do anything to please the crowd — even throw off his shoes and kneel in the sand before the bull.

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Herpetologists have discovered a new species of frog in the Andes cloud forest. Nobel’s pygmy frog, as it is called, is so tiny that it can sit on a dime, which makes it the smallest frog in the Andes mountain region.

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A young yellow-tailed woolly monkey plays in the rubbish behind a family’s house in Alto Mayo Valley, Peru / photos c. Shanee-NPC

Noga Shanee of the Neotropical Primate Conservation group and Univ. San Marco researcher Fanny Cornejo visited this blog a few days ago to share some facts about the yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Oreonax flavicauda), an [...]

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Girl feeding pigeons in Plaza de Armas, Arequipa / photo c. Jorge Vera 2008

Arequipa, the White City
rimmed by volcanic mountains
home to cloistered nuns, virgin sacrifices
& this sombre girl in the Plaza de Armas
feeding pigeons from her fingertips.
– Barbara R. Drake

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Lola had an eventful morning. El Fotografo and I took her for a long stroll along the Malecón in Miraflores, overlooking the ocean, and in the course of one and a half hours she met:

her longlost mother
her longlost father
author Mario Vargas Llosa.

We had been walking for an hour when we ran into Pepa. The eerie thing about [...]

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Animal-rights protestor Jessica Santilla, demonstration at Plaza San Martin, Lima, Peru, Nov. 2008 / photo c. Jorge Vera

El Fotografo and I met this protestor at an antitaurino (anti-bullfighting) rally held on the opening day of the Plaza de Acho bullfights, last November.
Jessica Santillan is 20 years old, a student and an ardent vegan. Unlike many of the antitaurinos [...]

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