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Tales from Lima, Stories from Peru

From fertility festivals to family feuds, from modern crime to ancient waterways, these takes of Lima and around Peru have a unique take on a remarkable country that is part pre-colonial peasantry and part seventeenth century slavers. Chasing phones in … Continue reading

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01 – 256 Shades of Grey – Contents

A good place to start is … the beginning. These pages should link to each other, but if you take a wrong turn you can always come back here. Chapter 0 0. The road to 256 Shades Chapter 1a 01a. I … Continue reading

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I Arrive on Christmas Eve

For all that it is late December, the sun is beating down and the streets are hot. I have flown in on a Christmas eve, from a European winter. Flying down the Andes from Bogota I look out on grey-red … Continue reading

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001. The Road to 256 Shades

The stones are real enough. You can take a bus to Calango and La Capilla, from the back of the market in Mala, next to the kiosk selling cakes. You may find Wilma sitting beside you, heading to her chacra, … Continue reading

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1aa – To begin at the beginning

Two streams of traffic cross at the junction and knot. Cars nose across the shared space, inches apart. They thrust themselves between slow moving vehicles and edge forward. They advance two metres and are blocked, as they in turn are … Continue reading

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1a – First Contact

“So Mayra, what do you think?” I ask as we sit on a the simple balcony of wooden planks looking out over the river. “The stone is a star stone. But it is surrounded by a high wall and locked … Continue reading

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4. Rock Art in Peru

Sitting at a simple wooden table in the echoing concrete hall of the National Library in Lima, with an anglepoise lamp at my elbow and fifty silent researchers for company, I discover a long history of art on stone, throughout … Continue reading

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5. Inca domination

I have spent the week examining the photographs, looking for patterns, looking for meaning. I have found out what I can about rock art in Peru, in South America, in Mexico and Easter Island. I have researched the history of … Continue reading

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6. Metalworking and war

The waiter brings two glasses of cold beer and a couple of pinkish trotters, and we are quiet for a while as we suck on the knuckle bones and wash down the vinegary juices. Then I push the plate of … Continue reading

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7. A trip to the Zoo

Mayra meets me in the Haiti Café on the corner of Parque Kennedy, where white haired men in grey suits sit at the pavement tables reading Gestion and taking an espresso with their crisp pork and sweet onion rolls. We catch a … Continue reading

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8. The Zoo to Miraflores

“You can see a thousand years of history in a walk through modern day Lima.” Mayra explains, as we walk besides the dual carriageway that separates the zoo from the Catolica University. “Just over that wall,” she points to the … Continue reading

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9. Pilgrimage to Pachacamac

The bus wails through the suburbs of Lima past mounds of uncollected garbage, where the homeless search for food, and down the Panamerican highway, with a grey sea on the right. We are dropped off at the the entrance and … Continue reading

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10. The Spring of Eternal Youth

From our lookout point, our mirador by the outer walls of the Inca sun temple at Pachacamac we see two ancient roads heading out from the maze of ramped pyramids below. One heads from the ancient complex across a dusty … Continue reading

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11. Metalworking in Mala

I am thinking how to escape from school to visit Yauyos with Mayra, when she calls me unexpectedly one Tuesday night. ” I have to go back to Caracas.” We have a short tense conversation. The newspapers and TV here … Continue reading

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Short Stories Collection

Funny, curious, surprising, amazing travel tales in Peru and South America from floods in Lima to street demos in Sao Paolo… Continue reading

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101 – Hallucinogens

  In March 1990 two bodies were found at a rock shelter over the left margin of Matanza river, 15 km from Cusi-Cusi, a small village in Santa Catalina department of north west Argentina. The bodies had been buried with blankets … Continue reading

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75 – Gary Urton and Chaupi Ñumca

In the high clear skies of the Andes, people see a great stream of brightness crossing the heavens. Within this are areas of darkness which appear to have the form of earthly creatures, llamas, toads, serpents and foxes. There is … Continue reading

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08 – Llama trains to Cochineros

Walking up the valley from La Capilla on the modern road, you pass through riverside orchards with occasional houses and farm buildings. There are workers in the fields, they are farming their own lands. Behind a simple brick building with … Continue reading

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256 Shades of Green

It has been eighteen months since I left Peru with Mayra and Amy. We still have not taken a ride on a red London bus, because things happened. I am all for making plans. I spent years following a vague … Continue reading

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To begin in the beginning

After three months in Lima, looking for a reason to get out of the noisy grey city, I read on a blog that “Calango houses an enormous stone with magico-religious symbols … that performs miracles for women that wish to … Continue reading

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