Featured Articles
Beyond Machu Picchu: my wild adventures in Peru
November 20, 2021
Beneath the intense Andean sun the dusty avenue lined by the jagged remains of once imposing stone and adobe walls stretches over the undulating valley floor into the distance. The purpose of this prehistoric thoroughfare remains a mystery. Andean cultures never developed writing and the dozens of surrounding crumbling houses were not just abandoned a millennium ago but even had Read more
Parched Peru is restoring pre-Incan dikes to solve its water problem
December 12, 2022
SAN PEDRO DE CASTA, Peru — On a mountainside high above Peru’s capital, Javier Obispo pauses from the backbreaking work of renovating an amuna. The abandoned irrigation dike distributed water before Europeans came to South America. With Lima’s water supply under increasing pressure, the 42-year-old veterinary technician has been working with other villagers here to bring the ancient technology back to Read more
The changing face of Andean glaciers
September 2, 2011
To the untrained eye, the view from the Yanapaqcha glacier, some 17,000ft above sea level in the heart of the Peruvian Andes, represents nature at her most sublime. Sheer, snowcapped peaks stretch to the horizon while, through the clouds below, fertile ravines drain into perfect turquoise lakes. But as our crampons crunch into the hard ice, it quickly becomes apparent Read more
Lucha de gigantes
August 23, 2011
Mientras que el toro se retuerce y corcovea, el atemorizado cóndor amarrado a su lomo bate sus gigantescas alas, casi eclipsando al enfurecido animal. Con un coro de cuernos aballados, un comunero con una capa arrugada entra a la plaza. Son las dos de la tarde, en Cotabambas, un pueblo a cuatro horas de Cuzco, la antigua capital del imperio Read more
We visited the front lines of Paraguay's slash-and-burn war on weed
July 12, 2016
From the air, the neat rows of cannabis plants in a clearing carved into the tropical dry forest along Paraguay's lawless border with Brazil look like pine saplings. But once our Vietnam-era Huey helicopter carrying members of the country's anti-narcotics special forces lands, it becomes clear why this small, conservative nation is one of the world's biggest producers of marijuana. Read more
A surprising move on LGBT rights from a ‘macho’ South American president
July 17, 2016
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia has a new gender identity law that might put it in Latin America’s vanguard on LGBT rights — but the story behind the measure reveals how far the Andean nation still has to go before ending homophobia. That’s according to Carlos Parra, aka Paris Galán, the country’s best known drag queen and a prominent gay Read more