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How to Prepare for an Earthquake in a Third World Country
The devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake that ravaged Chile on Saturday could easily have happened here in Lima or anywhere else along the Pacific coast. Sooner or later another big one will hit Peru, as one did in July 2007, and there are only a few ways to increase your odds that you won’t get killed when it happens. Living in a well-constructed, “earthquake-proof” home is the best way to protect yourself. I put quotation marks around that phrase because no structure is guaranteed to withstand the most violent earthquakes. Still, as engineer Andy Johnson notes, a well engineered building should hold up long enough for the people inside to escape before it…
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A Puppy Named Arena
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 even thinking ‘puppies on the way.’ This past Sunday we went to a family almuerzo, and one of the kids brought this little velvet-furred creature in a cardboard box. I was kind of floored. The puppy has a wrinkled old-man face and a fat panza and a tail like that of a chubby rat. Who knew Weimaraner puppies were so tragically cute?
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Goodbye, Pastoruri
Once upon a time, the easiest way for a visitor to touch ice in Peru was to climb the tourist trail to Pastoruri Glacier, a flat-topped glacier 70 km south of Huaraz. Roads from the highway made the glacier easily accessible to daytrippers, and even though its peak is a staggering 5,200 meters above sea level, the trek upward is relatively gentle, as far as glaciers go. If things got really rough, you could always rent a burro or a horse in the parking lot and haul yourself up that way. Not now. No longer. There are no burros for hire at Pastoruri because the glacier is officially off-limits to…
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Off to Huaraz Again — Puya Raimondi in Bloom
Tomorrow morning I fly to Huaraz to help out with a U.S. network shoot about melting glaciers in Peru. I’ll be taking the group to Pastoruri, which I didn’t get to visit the last time I was in Huaraz, and I’m looking forward to seeing the once-mighty glacier up close. And, as it happens, something else is happening up there as well that’s rather amazing. The van driver that we’re hiring tells me that hundreds of puya raimondi are in bloom now. This is the rare bromeliad found only in the Andes and known as the “living fossil.” Puya raimondi flower only once in their lives, after many years, then die…
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Climate Change Threatens Peru’s Native Potatoes
Here’s a timely article from Eliza Barclay on a topic close to many Peruvians’ hearts: potatoes. Cover photo from The Potato, Treasure of the Andes Extreme weather shifts caused by global warming are interrupting millenia-old agricultural cyles in the high Andes, reports Barclay for the Miami Herald. That turmoil is having a devastating effect on crops of native Peruvian potatoes, which grow at altitudes of 3,000+ meters above sea level. Barclay notes in “Peru’s Potato Farmers Adapt to Climate Change” (Sept. 11, 2008): For the first half of his life, Gregorio Huanuco farmed to a rhythm that dictated the survival of his grandparents and ancestors for thousands of years. He waited…
