Travelogue
Potosi - Smoking TNT and Drinking Dynamite - 22 May 2011
It has been said that if the bones of all the slave labourers who died toiling in Potosi’s silver mines to make Spain rich were laid end-to-end, they’d stretch all the way from Bolivia to Madrid. Before Britain and its Commonwealth, there was another empire on which it could truly be said “the sun never sets”. The Kingdom of Castile dominated Spain then ruled by King Charles V as part of the Holy Roman Empire. In reality however, it was neither holy nor Roman, or even much of an empire. The sun never set on the British Commonwealth some joked because, “you can not trust the English after dark.” “Spanish” rule in the Americas was no laughing matter and history records it devastated the continental indigenous population. Following the arrival of Columbus in 1492, 80 percent of the America’s population died following contact with Europeans. As with others, the Andean people suffered terribly. There is some justice then that given the gratuitous violence associated with their greed, the Spanish conquistadors never found El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. But they did get their hands on Potosí in modern day Bolivia and its Cerro Rico, a ‘Rich Hill’ full of silver. The quote, “I am rich Potosí, the treasure of the world… and the envy of kings” from the city’s first coat of arms, sums it up. The city was founded in 1545 as soon as the ore was discovered as part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, and pretty soon the silver extracted there
La Paz - Every Breath You Take - 16 May 2011
La Paz is one of the highest capital cities in the world. Life there is highly stratified, culturally, economically and geographically. Affluence is measured in altitude, with more of the former equating to less of the latter. The higher up you live, the poorer you are. By the time you get to the city airport, life is barely subsistent.La
Lake Titicaca - Living Between Water and Heaven - 30 April 2011
Lake Titicaca is the second largest lake in South America and at 3800 metres above sea level the highest navigable lake in the world. The lake is part Bolivian and part Peruvian, the border between the two snakes its way across the waters which are 80 kilometres wide at the broadest point and almost 200 kilometres from end to end. At over 8000
Cusco - Stone Temple Pilots - 25 April 2011
Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca, sits high in an Andean valley. The modern name is a Spanish corruption from the Aymara and Quechua languages, which drew on mythical origins to name the city.The origin of civilisation in Peru can be traced back 20,000 years before the Incas, making the country one of the cradles of ancient cultures
Machu Picchu - The Temple of the Sun - 20 April 2011
Peru’s Machu Picchu has survived 500 years of rain, earthquake and landslides. The mountaintop religious retreat and citadel city is one of the world’s greatest archaeological achievements, built by Inca emperor Pachacutec probably in the 15th century, to prove his place among the gods. It’s an early start in the cold morning at Cusco
Nazca - Secret on the Desert - 10 April 2011
Nazca is a dusty town located on the Pan-American Highway between Peru’s second city Arequipa and the capital Lima. People usually pass through on their way from one city to the other. Just outside town is located one of the mysteries of the world, the Nazca Lines. The Nazca Lines are a series of ancient hieroglyphic drawings and symbols
Arequipa - El Misti and The White City - 3 April 2011
The road from Chile to Arequipa, Peru’s second city, takes you along a famous highway and through the dusty provincial centre of Tacna. San Pedro de Tacna, the southern most city in the Republic of Peru, is connected to Chile by road and by rail. The rail line was built in 1855 and is one of the oldest in South America. The
Arica - The City of Eternal Spring - 27 March 2011
Arica is the northern most city in Chile and the jumping off point for Tacna, in Peru. By measured rainfall, Arica is one of the driest inhabited places on Earth. Oxford academic Nick Middleton came here when filming for the television series, Going To Extremes, on the trail of the coldest, wettest and hottest places on Earth, this
Atacama - The Most Perfect Desert in the World - 24 March 2011
The Atacama Desert is often described as the world’s most perfect desert. Parts of the desert haven't seen a drop of rain since recordkeeping began. It is the second driest place on Earth after Antarctica. The desert stretches 1000 kilometres from Peru's southern border rising from a thin coastal shelf to the pampas—virtually lifeless plains
