Miguel Grau and the Battle of Angamos

Known as the Gentleman of the Seas, Admiral Miguel Grau is remembered by friends and enemies alike as not only a great tactician in naval warfare, but also for his chivalry, the like of which had not been seen before or since. He died in combat defending Peru against invading aggressors at the Battle of Angamos on the 8th of October 1879, and is remembered on this day each year with a public holiday.

October 8, 2009 | Beyond Peru, Culture & History

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Día de la Canción Criolla… en Londres?? [Featured]

Creole Song Day… in London??

Alan Malarkey writes, with photos, from London.

November 2, 2008 | Beyond Peru, Opinion

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Argentina: Buenos Aires

My long awaited and expensive application for residency has been well on it’s way for a while now. When you do receive it, you are asked to leave the country to collect it, making it easier on the immigration system. This way they see a tourist leave and a resident enter – rather than them having to put a function on the system to change the status.

Argentina is a land with a currency at the same value as the Peruvian Nuevo Sol, which means its relatively cheap. The only problem for us was finding the money and waiting for a good offer on a flight. After more than a month waiting to travel it finally happened.

November 5, 2007 | Beyond Peru

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Ecuador: Vilcabamba’s Rumi Wilco Eco-Lodge

It all started as home. After 16 years mostly as a naturalist in the Galápagos islands (one year in the Amazon, two and a half years in the USA studying zoology), Orlando came to Vilcabamba in southern Ecuador, fell in love with the valley, and found his perfect land by the stream.

June 7, 2007 | Beyond Peru, Nature

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Ecuador: Vilcabamba

The small town of Vilcabamba is 40 minutes south of Loja by colectivo or 1 hour away by bus. It is nestled between green forested hills in what was once an Inca sacred valley.

Vilcabamba was made famous in the 1960s when doctors announced that it was home to one of the oldest living populations in the world. It was said that people here often lived to well over 100 years old, some as old as 135. It was then that an embarrassing discovery was made – the researchers had been working with the parish records of the patients parents.

June 7, 2007 | Beyond Peru

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Ecuador: Loja

The city of Loja is Ecuador’s most southern major city and base from which to explore the country’s green mountains and cloud forests, in villages such as Vilcabamba.

June 7, 2007 | Beyond Peru

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Ecuador: Macará

The border town has a strangely painted red and yellow cathedral that looks as if it could be a children’s toy model. Crossing into Ecuador, the mountains became more green.

June 5, 2007 | Beyond Peru

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Macará border crossing

I’ve crossed the Peruvian/Ecuadorian border twice at Tumbes (1,2) at it was not a very pleasurable experience. Macará is said to be very different, so when having to cross into Ecuador last week, I decided to try that route.

June 5, 2007 | Beyond Peru

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Ecuador: Race to the border

We left Cuenca mid-afternoon, eager to return to Perú. We needed to arrive at the border and cross it before dark, worrying about what might happen if we were wandering through the Huaquillas border-market at night. There are buses direct to Huaquillas from Cuenca, but if we waited for that bus we’d be crossing the border at sunset at the earliest so we opted for the bus to Machala, a small city less than 2 hours from the frontier. From there we could take a local bus and waste no time at all. It turned out that we were lucky we couldn’t take the later direct bus.

February 8, 2007 | Beyond Peru

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Ecuador: Cuenca

From Ingapirca we returned to El Tambo to take a bus to Cuenca, no more than 2 hours away. As we approached I noticed the city seemed less run-down and dirty than the other cities we had seen so far. We arrived in the late evening, got something to eat and went to sleep.

February 6, 2007 | Beyond Peru

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Ecuador: Ingapirca

The Cañaris, a strong and proud people, didn’t want to submit to the Incas, as many other civilisations had done when the empire was being expanded into what is now Chile/Argentina and Ecuador/Colombia.

When the Inca armies finally did bring the Cañaris and other peoples from what is now Ecuador under their control they incorporated their cities and religious centres into their own. This is what happened to the formally Cañari ruins at Ingapirca, the heart of Cañari territory.

February 4, 2007 | Archaeology, Beyond Peru, Culture & History

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Ecuador: Alien visits the Incas

A local woman was walking up the same mountain and confirmed that the Pan-American (a road from Chile to Alaska) was indeed at the top. The walk was arduous but we did make it – and faster than anyone else as they kept to the main path whilst we were led through a short cut. We were finally on the most important road in the Americas where we could flag down a bus to anywhere we wanted. We wandered along this heavily transited highway a while, finding it strangely empty. But before long a bus finally came by. We flagged it down and got on.

February 3, 2007 | Beyond Peru, Opinion

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