Barbara
I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.
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Photo of the Day: Callejón de Huaylas, Peru
El Fotografo took this shot during the drive to Huaraz last week. It's of the Callejón de Huaylas ("Alley of Huaylas"), a valley in the Ancash Region in the north-central highlands of Peru. Glaciers all along the mountains there are melting due to rapid climate change.
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Child’s Artwork in Huaraz: Care for Our Water & Air
We visited a school in Huaraz, where the children had created art works about the environment. Some showed melting glaciers, or apus -- mountain deities -- losing their "ponchos" (white snow). This child's picture depicts the need to care for our water and air.
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Blogging & Social Media, Festivals, Sacred Rituals, Religion, Money, Economics, Politics, Peru's Andes Mountains
Blogging about Greed and Injustice in Cusco
Many thanks to Alenja and Holly of Collecting Tokens for including my rant on the archbishop of Cusco as a June “Just Post for a Just World.” The Just Posts roundtable highlights “posts about topics of social justice and activism in all shapes and sizes,” writes Alenja. She adds that “Holly and I are pleased to share this wealth of posts that inspire and move and make us think.” I am honored to be part of the June roundtable, and I encourage everyone to check out Collecting Tokens’ recommended readings. I’ll be adding that “Just Posts” logo to my left sidebar as soon as I figure out the code. 🙂
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Sisters from Pucarumi — claimed by deadly cold spell?
Spoke to Alberto last night, our guide at Qoyllur Rit'i and around the Mount Ausangate area. He told El Fotografo and I that he's heard of six children under age 5 dying in his area (towns of Tinqui, Upis, Pacchanta) due to extreme cold snap. The BBC ran a story on this several days ago. I met many children on my trek around Ausangate last September. Lively kids who run around in thin sweaters and sandals made of rubber tires.
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Photo of the Day: Boats at Lake Llanganuco, Peru
We visited this lake in Huascaran National Park last Sunday. The turquoise-blue water is fed by glacier streams. Lots of trout in the lakes.
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250 Children Dead of Cold in Andes: Death Toll Keeps Climbing
I was on Twitter tonight when I learned from actress Qorianka that the death toll in the Andes due to extreme cold is up to 250 children, reports the BBC's Dan Collyns....
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Cemetery Dog, Buried City of Yungay, Peru
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 been a more stark reminder of nature’s destructive potential than to wander about this picturesque yet oppressive site — a place where nearly 20,000 souls perished in minutes from a massive avalanche that trapped them in mud, ice and rocks on May 31, 1970. Stuart of En Peru explains the catastrophe vividly. We stood on the uppermost tier of…
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Greetings from the Glacier Pow-wow
The United States is doing a good, not-so-small thing in Peru by co-sponsoring (via USAID), with The Mountain Institute, an international conference in Lima and Huaraz on the topic of “Adapting to a World without Glaciers.” El Fotografo and I were graciously invited to be part of this effort, which brings together social scientists and biophysical scientists working on climate change. The idea is for all of these brilliant minds to come up with suggestions on how to cope with the pending water crisis in Peru. (Just to clarify: EF and I aren’t scientists. We just like to hang out with them.) So much to learn from these interesting people. El Hijo is coming…
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Supermarket Cowboys
Peru’s biggest supermarket chain – Wong – plays up Fiestas Patrias in a big way, sponsoring patriotic events and featuring the “flavors of Peru” during the month-long season. The store’s colors are red and white, the colors of the Peruvian flag, but to celebrate the Independence Day spirit during July, some employees wear outfits distinctive to Peru. The young men who bag your groceries wear these white ponchos with red scarves and big straw hats – the traditional costume of el chalán, the horse trainer or cowboy from northern Peru. Peru is such a service-oriented country that the Wong bagmen will walk you home with your groceries, free of charge…
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Archbishop of Cusco to Evict More Local Restaurants
Screw the locals, screw the poor, screw the backpackers, screw anyone who wants to eat healthy Peruvian food at decent prices.
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Happy Father’s Day, Peru-style
A tension has been building up all week in our house as Father’s Day approaches. This was a low-key holiday for us back in the States — El Hijo would make El Fotografo a card at the last minute, or I’d haul him off to the mall to buy an electric razor — but since moving to Peru in ’07, Father’s Day has grown into an Event. This change is partially due to the hoopla made by EH’s British-Peruvian school over Dia del Papá (and over Mother’s Day as well). From what I understand, this is common practice at schools in Lima. I’d always thought of Father’s Day as a family…
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Photo of a Pilgrimage Leader
"The Lord of Qoyllur Rit'i wants us to live together on this earth peacefully," he explained. "We travel to Qoyllur Rit'i in comparsas to learn to share, to stop being egotistical and hypocritical."
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Peruvian ‘Viagra’ Soup: Does It Hoist Your Sail or Is It Just a Crock of Chupe?
Yesterday's post on the medicinal powers of chilcano de pescado led to my discovering a Peruvian restaurant in Chicago that's serving up a traditional fish soup as a wonder aphrodesiac. Taste of Peru in Rogers Park is touting its seafood-crammed "Sopa de Viagra" as a "natural elixir to jump-start the love life," reports the Chicago Sun Times. And at $25 a serving, the lovers' soup competes with U.S. pharmacy prices for the little blue pill:
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Peru’s Answer to Jewish Penicillin: Chilcano de Pescado
Chilcano de pescado, as made by Gaston Acurio I need my Jewish chicken-noodle soup in the wintertime. I grew up on the U.S. East Coast, where delis and diners and Jewish moms cook up barrels of this fragrant, healing soup all year long. Then I moved to Miami where at gourmet delis like Epicure, you can buy big jars of delicious matzoh-ball soup that will cure you overnight of colds, bronchitis, pneumonia. I’ve been restored from the Dead with homemade chicken soup glistening with beads of kosher chicken fat. Then, a year and a half ago, I moved to Peru where there are like, 3,000 Jews in the entire country and no…
