An American in Lima

I knew there was a word for catching a ride on the back of a moving vehicle: It’s ”skitching,” as I’ve just found out. I posted on some skitchers in northern Peru in ”Dangerous Skateboarding in Peru” (October 30). Skateboaders in North America skitch rides mainly for the thrill of it, but in Peru, kids do it out of necessity. Skitching [...]

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My eyes popped when I saw this image on Boing Boing, taken from Zeraga’s Flickr pool via Street Use:  In Perú from Huánuco to Tingo Maria, where the road from the Pacific coast across the Andes finds its way towards the Amazon lowlands. This is near the top of the last mountain pass. From there, [...]

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Aug. 19, 2008, Lima: More neighborhood destruction to report, resulting from poorly rerouted traffic from Av. Republica Panama (the old Pan-Americana Highway) into our neighborhood. A beautiful old tree was murdered by a reckless Lima truck driver, who had to get from Point A to Point B in as little time as possible –  no matter [...]

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The body of the teenage boy who drowned in a Lima sewer has finally been found, Lima police announced July 24. After a 12-day search, the body of Ray Pomiano Villanueva was found in the Huaral district of Chancay, approximately 186 miles from where he fallen into an open manhole. Pomiano, who was trying to catch a bus [...]

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This is one of the most awful events I’ve heard about recently. Lima has a huge problem with people stealing manhole covers, and the streets are becoming hazardous to pedestrians – now fatally, for one Lima teenager. El Fotógrafo told me about the incident over breakfast. “What a way to go,” he said, shaking his [...]

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Looking through El Fotógrafo’s photos of the car crash in our neighborhood in April, I was struck by the irony of this image: The driver of the combi had just crashed his busload of passengers into a small car driven by a mother with her preschool daughter. Medics had already arrived on the scene to cart [...]

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LIMA, PERU (4/29/08): You don’t usually see car crashes in my quiet neighborhood of San Antonio, but that changed abruptly last Saturday afternoon, April 26, when a speeding combi bus collided with a small car carrying a mother and child. The combi plowed into a concrete pole at Avenida Arias Aragues and Calle General Silva, by [...]

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