An American in Lima

A new book (March 2008) co-edited by a UC Davis professor of environmental science and policy looks at the world’s glaciers from all sides, scientific, social and economic.
“Darkening Peaks: Glacier Retreat, Science and Society” (Univ. Cal. Press) brings together researchers from five continents to discuss how scientists study glaciers, how climate change is altering glaciers’ [...]

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Adorable big sister from Puca Rumi

I met this girl two weeks ago while trekking around Mount Ausangate. We were camping on her father’s land in Puca Rumi, and she shyly came up to our tents, wanting to meet us.
When I took out a bag of chupetas (lollipops) her two brothers magically appeared in our campsite.
For [...]

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Justina weaving on her hand loom, in Pacchanta

We spent about 45 minutes talking with this lovely Quechua-speaking woman, who lives with her children and mother-in-law in a small village called Pacchanta. It’s on the trekking circuit around Nevado Ausangate.
Justina earns money by weaving textiles on her handloom. The day I met her she was weaving [...]

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I spotted this unusual blue-eyed alpaca on a hillside in Upis

I returned to Lima this past Saturday after a week trekking around Mount Ausangate, in southern Peru, with my cousin and a Quechua-Spanish translator from Cusco. What an experience.
It was a work trip, rather than a vacation per se; we’d wake up at six each [...]

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For the next eight days I’ll be in the Andes with little to no Internet access, so I won’t be publishing new posts. This wasn’t my plan. I wrote a bunch and wanted to schedule them in advance, but the Schedule Post feature in WordPress (what this blog runs on) is a dud and it [...]

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The beautiful Apu Veronica, considered a female mountain lord by indigenous people in the Peruvian Andes

Many mountains in the Andes are considered male by the local people, but a few are female, like Nevado Veronica.
She rises wide and conical over the Urubamba Valley, like a big-hipped mama towering over her children.
In the photo above, she’s bathed in [...]

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Masked dancer at Qoyllur Rit’i festival, Peru, 2006

 El Fotografo spied this guy at the 2006 pilgrimage. He embodies the fertility cult that underpins the festival’s Catholic traditions, which have been sycretized with older, Andean rituals.
I find this image rather terrifying, for some reason.
We looked again for the Sheep’s Head Dancer this past May but didn’t [...]

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The local Quechua-speaking people consider Ausangate the mightiest apu or mountain lord of the region. Like all apus, Ausangate has a gender (male) and a personality (powerful, easily offended). Local customs dictate that we pay our respects to the apu prior to beginning our trek, to ensure a successful journey.

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It’s not every day that you can spend an evening with several brilliant climatologists and have them give you a simplified mini-course on climate change – a sort of “Global Warming and Glacier Recession 101,” if you will — but that’s what I experienced this past Tuesday (6/17) at Lima’s Catholic University (UCP). What a [...]

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Media outlets such as National Geographic speak of Qoyllur Rit’i as “the largest indigenous religious pilgrimage in the Western Hemisphere.” But how big is it, really?
The number of pilgrims most frequently cited by writers is 40,000. I’ve also seen estimates at 60,000 and 80,000. Wikipedia lowballs attendance at an incredible 10,000 pilgrims.
But these figures seem [...]

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 Just back from the annual pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i, which takes place just below a 17,000-foot-high glacier (actually, three glacial tongues) in the southern Andes, about 80 miles south of Cusco. Since pre-Inca times, Qolqepunku Glacier has been revered as a sacred site associated with nearby Mount Ausangate, the tallest mountain in the region, considered by [...]

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El Fotógrafo and I are back from the pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i in the Sinakara Mountain range, 80 miles southeast of Cusco, where for three brutally cold nights (May 16 – 18) we camped out below Qolqepunku glacier, along with tens of thousands of pilgrims from parts of Peru and Bolivia. Our goal? To document, [...]

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We’re in a frenzy here in our house packing to go on an expedition to a glacier near Mount Ausangate, in the southern Andes. Qolquepunku Glacier is the site of the ancient pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i, whose name in Quechua translates “Shining Snow Star.” More than 100,000 pilgrims come from all over Peru and Bolivia to [...]

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