Cabo Blanco, an old man and the sea
January 25th 2023, Cabo Blanco. There are a couple of ways out of Paita. One is directly back onto the Panamericana. OK. So we know what that heralds -- a flashy duel carriageway north and out of Peru. The other is a lesser, local road that hugs the coast and...
Cabo Blanco, an old man and the sea
January 25th 2023, Cabo Blanco.There are a couple of ways out of Paita. One is directly back onto the Panamericana. OK. So we know what that heralds -- a flashy duel carriageway north and out of Peru. The other is a lesser, local road that hugs the coast and...
Faded elegance of old whaling port that still lands big catches
January 21st 2023, Paita, Peru. Paita on the north coast of Peru close to the border with Ecuador is a place easily overlooked. Its small enough not to make much of a dent on most maps -- even though it calls itself a city and has a population close to 200,000 -- and...
Casa Real Hotel — quietly classy but with the feel of a family home
December 14th 2022, Buin, near SantiagoOne of the reasons I wanted to visit the Santa Rita vineyard was something their main man in Ireland, Terry Pennington, said to me a while back about climate change, the drought and how the company was trying to mitigate the...
How Chile’s wine producers are trying to address their country’s water problems
January 7th 2023, Valparaiso Jaime de la Barra strokes the leaves on a row of cabernet sauvignon vines with his open palm, in a loving and gentle way, the way he might stroke his daughter's hair. If [the rustle] sounds like paper," he says, "too much water [has been...
Protests erupt again and a high Andes road disappears into tunnels
January 19th 2023, Pacasmayo, northern Peru.I spent a little time today seeking to reassure various people, not least my wife Moira that, whatever they might hear about Peru over the coming days, I was OK, far removed from the likely epicenter and well on my way out...
Cusco and Machu Picchu
Cusco and Machu PichuThe mountains nestle Cusco in their palm.The arms of three great Andean cordilleras -- Vilcabamba, Urubamba and Vilcanola -- come together and where they meet, there is something of a natural bowl in the landscape. That's where Cusco is, at 3,416...
Navigating Peru’s trail of anger and bloodshed
January 14th 2023 Pisco, Peru.Hundreds of trucks are lined up on the road out of Puquio, a medium-sized town in south central Peru, home to some 15,000 people. The line of vehicles snakes back into the town, right back into the center where the streets are clogged...
Patricio Corcoran 1954 — 2023
January 13th 2023, Lima.Well, this is a blog I wish I was not writing. I have just learnt of the death of my friend, benefactor and guardian angel in Punta Arenas, Patricio Corcoran. He died yesterday, apparently after a short illness, but more I know not. He was only...
A great white nothingness
December 30th 2022, Uyuni, Bolivia.Uyuni is famous to outsiders for two things: its train cemetery and its ginormous salt flat -- transport and minerals: the story of Bolivia, in so many ways.The city's main drag is called Avenida Ferroviaria and the raised median...