THE COUNTRY: WORLDS APART

Peru has what could be called an all-or-nothing geography, nature taken to extremes. Three distinct geographical regions run north to south. On the coast there is a thin strip of arid desert which is surprisingly fertile where it is broken by narrow river valleys. The costa or coastal region makes up just ten per cent of the territory, but is home to about 60 per cent of Peruvians. A broad backbone of brown hills and huge snow-topped mountains fractures the country in two before slipping in the east through rolling green hills of high jungle that drop into a huge expanse of lush rainforest which covers around sixty per cent of the country. Even now, the clear geographical split is also a cultural and psychological one, with most inhabitants considering the costa, sierra (highlands), and selva Uungle) to be different worlds in every sense.

Few countries can match Peru's natural variety. You can travel inland from the coast, where rarely more than two inches of rain falls a year, eked out in a misty drizzle, over mountain ranges topped by snow and slopes pounded by seasonal heavy rains, on to the hot, wet, and sticky rainforest.

An amazing mix of altitudes and climates means that in Peru there are 84 of the 104 known bio-systems in the world. Desert sands, glaciers, and verdant rainforest exist side-by-side. Peru has jaguars, alligators, sea lions, and vicuñas. It has around a tenth of all the known mammals on the planet and more than a fifth of known birds. In the jungle there is the oddly-beaked blazing red Cock of the Rock, parrots in green and scarlet, yellow and blue. Elsewhere, pink-winged flamingos, majestic, circling condors, waddling Humboldt penguins, and flocks of seagulls are just some of the rich bird life. Peru has an estimated 50,000 plant species, including the world's greatest variety of orchids, and an innumerable array of insects. In only three square miles of Manu National Park in the southeastern rainforest, biologists and botanists have recorded 91 species of mammals, 1,100 different butterflies, 600 types of beetle, and 545 species of birds.

Blessings and Curses

Every October in Lima, thousands of people wearing purple tunics crowd the downtown streets to catch a glimpse of the city's most revered image, a painting of El Senor de los Milagros, the Lord of Miracles. Veiled black women carrying silver chalices of smoking incense accompany the icon, which is paraded through the streets on the shoulders of purple-robed men. Some people follow in wheelchairs, others walk backwards or crawl on their knees. Members of the brotherhood of devotees hold crying babies up close to the image. Street sellers carrying purple coat-hangers strung with luminous rosaries and holy necklaces work their way through the crush. Lining the sidewalks are stalls selling turrón, layers of biscuit and sweet manjar blanco, covered with sprinkles.

The cult of El Señor de los Milagros grew out of a deep-seated fear of Peru's natural wrath and unpredictability. In October 1746, this religious image painted by a black slave on a wall in 1651 remained standing after an earthquake devastated the capital, leveling most of the buildings. The mural had already survived an earthquake in 1655, and miracles were attributed to it from 1670. October is still considered the month of earthquakes, temblores as they are known in Peru.

In a country where earthquakes, flash floods, and landslides come every year, it is not hard to understand Peruvians' deep and ancient respect for the gods of thunder and lightning, the mountains, the land, and the spirits who control the earth. Peru sits on a seismic fault. While the Nazca plate buried deep off the coast of Peru shifts as it sinks underneath the continent, it unleashes powerful tremors. This constant activity means that in 1996, Peru suffered 1,652 seismic movements, of which 66 were strong enough to be felt by its inhabitants. The most devastating of that year happened in April 1996, when a tremor virtually flattened the city of Nazca and several mountain villages inland. A dozen people died. The impact of the natural disaster was greater than it might have been because of the inadequacy of the adobe constructions. Earthquake experts said that the older adobe buildings, constructed with thick walls, survived, while the newer ones, where adobe bricks are modeled on the size of modern fired bricks, were too flimsy to stand up to the quake. The root cause of the destruction was that the smaller bricks are cheaper.

Strange Waters

The waters off Peru are special, but the country's unusually good fortune is offset by a curse. Unlike other countries on the same latitude, Peru's waters are strangely cold. The Humboldt current that flows up the coast of western South America from Antarctica keeps water temperatures low. Cold water from near the sea bed wells up to the surface, chilling the sea. This plankton-rich cold current hosts a huge fish population which in turn supports a whirling variety of birds, including pelicans and seagulls.

The curse is El Niño, a current named after the Christ-child, which sweeps down every few years, warming the waters and driving the shoals away. Changes in ocean temperatures brought on by this current turn rivers into torrents of destruction. The advent of El Niño is for fishermen the equivalent of a drought for farmers. It also affects agriculture because it can drive away rain in the south and cause torrential rains in the north.

Land of Plenty?

There are very few crops that cannot be grown in Peru. A walk round any street market will show the exuberance of fruits and vegetables that Peruvians take for granted. There are dozens of different kinds of potatoes, from the meltingly smooth yellow potato to the pink-tinged papa huayro. Peru is home to the potato and Peruvians are potato connoisseurs. Among the familiar apples and oranges are many exotic fruits, from football-sized papayas, knobbly chirimoyas, and orange-fleshed lúcumas to red or yellow mangoes. From the ceja de selva — the high jungle where the sierra meets the selva — there is aromatic coffee and cocoa.

Yet this show of plenty does not mean that the land is without its problems. Although Peru is one of...