"It's not easy to catch a condor", Americo Waman said. He leaned in closer and his voice fell to a whisper. "You have to pay the Apus (Andean Gods) with incense, a coca seed, and a piece of llama heart. You must ask the mountains if you can borrow the ...
The southern tip of South America, made up of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego and thousands of smaller islands, is separated from the continent by the Strait of Magellan, where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet in tempestuous seas, and shared...
Legend has it that mountains used to walk and talk like humans. One of these mountains was Tunupa, a woman who lived with her husband and three children. One of the children died and the husband left, taking another child with him. In her grief, ...
It sounds like a contradiction in terms, and in many ways it is. But Bolivia - completely landlocked and at least 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean at its western-most point - is maintaining, and intensely proud of, its Fuerza Naval Boliviana, or ...
Bolivia is one of several countries in South America which is home to communities of Mennonites, a group of Christian Anabaptists who migrated to the Americas from Eastern Europe in a number of waves from the late 17th century until the 1950s. ...
On their epic 7 month journey from Quito in Ecuador down to Tierra del Fuego at the bottom of the South American subcontinent, Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky encountered myriad different communities, landscapes and experiences. The last foray was to...
"Jallalla maestritos!" - "Jallalla," they all respond. In complete darkness, illuminated only with the lights on our helmets, I was chewing coca leaves with five miners and a devil made of clay, better known as Uncle Lucas. In front of him, coca ...
Richly adorned multi-storey mansions with elaborate turrets, balconies, pillars and adornments from across the history of architecture are not the first thing that springs to mind when one thinks of Roma, or Gypsies as they are disparagingly known ...
The Yasuni National Park in the east of Ecuador, home to the indigenous Waorani and Kichwa groups amongst others, is one of the most biologically diverse places on earth, boasting the world's highest density of amphibian, tree and bat species. The ...
Every May, the small mountain communities of Acatlan and Zitlala in the Mexican state of Guerrero erupt in raucous celebrations during the Catholic Holy week which coincides with the beginning of the spring planting season. The annual celebrations ...
The afternoon sun ignited the dust clouds as silhouettes danced along the mountain path between Salasaca and Pelileo. They passed like a pack of wolves closing in on its prey, with swords in the air and aguardiente (cane alcohol) on their breath, ...
Carmen Rosa works in a restaurant high in the Bolivian Andes. Like many Aymara women, she wears large colourful dresses, several petticoats and a bowler hat tipped slightly to one side. But unlike most Cholitas, Carmen spends her free time leaping from...
It's a painfully familiar story: a huge, ruthless oil company descends on a quiet, rural location, extracts vast quantities of crude oil with total disregard for the environmental pollution caused, then winds down its operation and leaves the ...
The Gringo The handsome Techno-Cumbia star took the Ñusta, an indigenous beauty queen, by the hand. "Are you single", he screamed into the microphone, holding her hand up in the air. "Yes, I'm single, and looking for a man", she yelled out ...
An industrial estate on the outskirts of the Colombian capital Bogota may not be the most romantic association most buyers of elaborate flower bouquets would want to make with their colourful and fragrant expressions of affection. Yet Colombia has ...
Once known as "Little San Francisco" and "The Jewel of the Pacific" for its vibrant atmosphere and hilly seaside setting, the Chilean port city of Valparaiso lost much of its status and trading traffic with the opening of the Panama Canal in the ...