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Extreme Bird Love, That
Here in Lima, the trees and rooftops are overrun with cuculis — plumpish grey morning doves who coo mournfully, mate in treetops, and shit absolutely everywhere. With all this cuculi mess around, it’s easy for a Limena to forget that Peru itself is considered a birder’s paradise. I certainly forgot. Then I read an article in last Sunday’s El Comercio about “the four types of foreign tourists” in Peru and what they like to spend their money on, and of the four prototypical turistas, one of them was The Birdlover. Otherwise known as Wads ‘o Cash. Birdlovers, the article claimed, spend more than other visitors to Peru — more than Archaeology/Cultural Tourists,…
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Peru’s Porters Win Ausangate Gold Medal for Weightlifting
The Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics are officially over, the winners have scurried home with their medals, and the losing athletes are either chastised, pitied or forgotten by most of the world. No laurel wreath, no glory, the Olympic equation goes. Not on this blog, however. In the same spirit of honoring athletic excellence that inspired the first Olympic Games, An American in Lima introduces the Ausangate Awards for High-Altitude Athletic Achievement. Just as the Olympic Games are named after Greece’s highest mountain, Mount Olympus (2,919 meters above sea level), the Ausangate Awards take as their namesake the tallest peak in the Cordillera Vilcanota, Mount Ausangate (6,384 meters / 20,945 feet above…
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Lessons Learned Writing about Peru’s Olympians
Seventeen days ago I wrote a short post on “The Big Olympics and Little Peru,” about my shifting perspective, as an American expat in Lima, on the Olympic Games. I thought that one post would be it on the Olympics. Instead, as I dug for background material on Peru’s thirteen Olympians, I discovered that little was being written about the athletes in English. Not only that, Peru’s Spanish-language media outlets gave scant coverage to the Games. Newspapers in Lima were more focused on South American fútbol matches than track & field or gymnastics in Beijing. Faced with an information gap, I decided to fill in as best I could. I’m…
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Peru Olympic Wrap-up: Week 2 in Review
As I’m writing this post, Peru’s long-distance runner Constantino León is racing the last five kilometers of the Men’s Marathon (42.15 km), in Beijing’s National Stadium. Out of the 95 runners who began the race, only 82 remain, and León is 63rd at the 35-km mark. The first-, second- and third-place winners have just crossed the finish line: Kenya’s Samuel Wansiru wins the gold with the impressive time of 2:06:32, setting a new Olympic Record. At 44 seconds behind Wansiru, Jaouad Gharib of Morocco grabs the silver with 2:07:16 (he also breaks the previous OR), and Deriba Merga, of Ethiopia, wins the bronze with 2:10:00. It’s an African sweep. I…
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Peruvian Food “Next Big Thing,” Predicts Todd English, Bon Appetit
Forget Machu Picchu. Ceviche, tiradito and gourmet roast guinea pig are the real reasons to visit Peru, tastemakers are saying this month. In an interview with Guest of a Guest, restauranteur Todd English let it slip that he predicts Peruvian Food Is the Next Big Thing, and foodies are rushing to weigh in on his opinion. The new “Bon Appetit” blog agrees with English, reports Grub Street, with chef Gaston Acurio seen as a leading light in the Peruvian culinary movement. The Grinder notes that some traditional Peruvian fare (lomo saltado, roasted cuy) may be too ordinary to rate as a trend, as some blog commenters have pointed out, but innovative chefs like Acurio may have…
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Constantino Leon Last Olympian to Compete for Peru; Peter Lopez Misses Bronze in Taekwondo
Peru’s original field of 13 Olympic contenders is now down to one athlete: marathon runner Constantino Leon. Leon will compete Saturday, August 23, starting at 6:30 p.m. (Beijing time), in the Men’s Marathon. For fans in Peru, that translates to Sunday, August 24, starting at 7:30 a.m. Thus far, no athletes representing Peru have won a medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Constantino became Peru’s last Olympic contender after taekwondo athlete Peter Lopez failed to secure the bronze in the Men’s 68 kg. competition on Thursday, August 21. Lopez was victorious in his first two matches on Thursday, beating Australia’s Burak Hasan 3-1 in the preliminaries and Nigeria’s Isah Adam Mohammad…
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Hey, Police Dude! Don’t Shoot My Shaman!
Lately I’m struck by the enormous disparity between the sudden crises that erupt in Peru – the events that make news headlines — and the idyllic, often mystical image of Peru that’s promoted by the tourism industry. As I write this post, thousands of travelers around the globe are busy planning their once-in-a-lifetime visit to The Land Where Time Stands Still. They’re salivating over glossy images of Machu Picchu at sunrise, of colorful handicrafts markets in the Sacred Valley, of gentle Shipibo women embroidering sarongs in the Amazon, and of red-cheeked Andean kiddies hugging llamas. They’re reassured by brochures that show tourists eating The Complimentary Continental Breakfast at The Recommended…
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María Portilla: I Am Thrilled to Have Given My All in Beijing
I'm very happy because I gave it my all, and everything went well. I am happy -- very happy. The weather was good; happily I improved my time, and that's very gratifying," Portilla told RPP News on Sunday.
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Hit by Truck, Tree Weeps Blood in Miraflores
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 that his vehicle couldn’t fit on our tiny streets. And no police or guards stopped him from making an improper detour. A 32-foot-long trailer bearing a shipping container detoured off busy Rep. Panama into the old family neighborhood of San Antonio, Lima, at approximately 3 p.m., Saturday, August 16. The oversized Ausa truck barrelled down the first block of…
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The Buzz on Peru’s Olympians, Week 1 in Review, Aug. 9 – 16
The first week (August 10 – 16) of competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympics saw some encouraging efforts by Peruvian athletes but no medals. Here is a roundup of how Peru’s 13-member Olympic delegation has performed so far, along with buzz about the athletes from English-speaking media, bloggers and fans. (Plus blog reactions by Peru athletes like Peter Lopez, who posted the photo above on his Olympic blog “Camino a la Gloria” (Road to Glory) on Monday, Aug. 11.) SIXTO BARRERA / WRESTLING Wrestler Sixto Barrera, considered by many to be Peru’s best chance for a medal, got off to a strong start on Tuesday (Aug. 12), when he trounced the…
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Remembering the Peru Earthquake, One Year Later
August 15, 2007: It had been little more than a month since El Fotografo, El Hijo and I had packed up the contents of our 4-bedroom house in Florida, stuffed it all in a shipping container bound for Callao, and hopped on a plane to EF’s hometown of Lima. Everything in Peru’s capital was new and strange to El Hijo and I, then — and to EF as well, since he hadn’t lived in Peru for 25 years. The food, the climate, the traffic, the language — just stepping out of the front door each morning was an adventure, not always an easy one. For several weeks we had been staying in a friend’s second-floor apartment in…
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Olympic Ceviche with a Political Bite – Pescados Capitales
The ultra-hip cevicheria Pescados Capitales, one of Lima's finest seafood restaurants, plays on the Beijing Summer Olympics theme in its current "Pescados Olímpicos" (Olympic Sins) menu.
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Peru’s Olympic 13 Are a Horde Compared To…
I was feeling rather forlorn about Peru’s small Olympic delegation of 13 athletes. Then I stumbled upon Mashable’s “18 Smaller Olympic Countries to Root For.” Sean P. Aune writes: It’s easy to get wrapped up in all of the big name countries that go to the Olympics, such as the United States or Russia, but have you ever thought about those countries that don’t have as much money for a team or only have a few athletes who qualify? My family has a tradition of picking one or two of the smaller countries that can only send one or two athletes to the games, and sort of “adopting” them for…
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Peru’s Olympians, Part II
This story continues the coverage began in Keeping up with Peru’s Olympians, posted August 11. BEST PLACE TO VIEW LIVE OLYMPICS COVERAGE Log onto http://www.NBCOlympics.com for streaming videos and up-to-the-minute coverage of the events as they happen. The site is in English and is easily navigated. Now I can stop kvetching about the poor Olympics coverage by Peruvian television stations. WRESTLING RESULTS Barrera told reporters in Beijing that his elbow was seriously injured in an earlier match with China’s Yongxiang Chang, who applied an “improper” hold. Medal winners in the 74 k category are: Gold, Manuchar Kvirkelia (Georgia), Silver, Change Yongxiang (China), Bronze, Yavor Yanakiev (Bulgaria) and…
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