Monthly Archives: June 2017

(CNN) — Paris perhaps? Or maybe New York, Rome or Tokyo? Naming the world's greatest gourmet city is the kind of confoundingly simple challenge that foodies could spend all night fighting over. Yet now there is a new candidate for the title, one that until recently few associated with haute cuisine but which has been taking the gastronomical world by storm: Lima. Since the turn of the millennium, the Peruvian capital has been the epicenter of an increasingly acclaimed culinary renaissance. A generation of creative young chefs trained in some of the top…Read more …

LIMA, Peru — In Brazil, Michel Temer's brief presidency inches closer to an ignominious finale amid allegations he took $5 million in bribes, the latest chapter in a massive, slow burn corruption scandal that has tainted virtually the entire political class. Across the Andes, all three of Peru's presidents spanning 2001-2016 are under investigation for graft. One, Alejandro Toledo, a sometime lecturer at Stanford University accused of taking $20 million in kickbacks, is now fighting extradition from his Palo Alto home. Elsewhere in Latin America, one high-level scandal after another has tainted current or recent…Read more …

Twelve months ago, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pulled off a major upset when he beat Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the jailed hard-right strongman Alberto Fujimori, in Peru’s presidential runoff. The septuagenarian centrist economist squeaked in by just 41,000 votes — out of a total of more than 17 million — after Fujimori’s populist campaign was undermined by serious corruption allegations, including the revelation that her principal financier was being investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Many in Peru regarded the result as a victory for decency and the rule of law. Kuczynski’s triumph…Read more …

It's not hard to see why the Incas called it the Sacred Valley. The 70-mile narrow strip of land, in the Peruvian Andes, that runs roughly from the old imperial capital of Cusco to the enigmatic citadel of Machu Picchu remains a place of eerie natural beauty. Against a backdrop of snow-capped peaks, the fertile river valley winds below steep forests and ancient agricultural terraces while the mountain light at dusk gives the landscape an otherworldly glow. Many locals still speak Quechua -- the language of the Incas. They also grow corn, raise…Read more …