Simeon_Tegel
I am a British freelance journalist based in Lima, Peru, but regularly roaming across Latin America. Environmental stories are my speciality but I also write about most other topics under the sun, from food and travel to the drugs trade, political corruption and inequality.

I contribute regularly to The Washington Post and The Telegraph, and my reporting has appeared in numerous other outlets, including US News & World ReportVice, The Independent, USA TodayForeign Policy, The Spectator, The New Republic, GlobalPost, The Guardian and on NPR. My writing in Spanish has been published in Spain’s El País newspaper. I have  also been interviewed on air numerous times, including by the BBC, CNN and NPR as well as Peruvian TV and radio.

I wrote and presented the 2020 Audible docuseries El Impenetrable, an environmental murder mystery set in the Chaco tropical dry forest of northern Argentina. I am also a three-time recipient of grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, for my 2012 series on climate change across Latin America, my 2016 look at counter-narcotics policies in South America and my 2023-24 trilogy of stories for The Washington Post on indigenous cultural survival and logging in the Peruvian Amazon. I also fix for documentaries and factual television, and carry out political and business risk research and analysis on Peru and neighbouring countries.

Originally from London, I previously lived in Mexico City for four years and California’s San Francisco Bay Area for six years before settling in Lima. I am bilingual in English and Spanish and have a MA in Latin American Studies from UC Berkeley. A lifelong foodie and outdoorsman, I climb, mountaineer and surf, and am equally at home dining in Lima’s most acclaimed restaurants or bivvying on a glacier 17,000ft above sea level.