Peru may be an Andean nation, but 60 percent of the country is
jungle, a fact that becomes evident the following morning when the
President and his party helicopter past native longhouses
partially obscured by canopies of variegated green en route to an
Indian village of Yahuas beside a river the color of well-steeped
tea. Beyond Iquitos, in the
Amazon there are no power lines or
cellphone antennas. Instead, there are women in grass skirts,
hunters bearing blowguns, and old men with pet anacondas in the
villages.
"Kuelap and
Machu Picchu are in the high jungle, while the Amazon
is
Peru's low jungle," says
Toledo as we return to Iquitos. "The
Amazon has spectacular jungle lodges. Okay, the phones don't work
and there is no TV. So kick back, drink a pisco sour, have a great
fish dinner, and enjoy the chorus of monkeys, birds, and frogs.
"Seriously, ecotourism is the only way I know to save the Amazon,"
the
President continues as the helicopter soars over small plots of
mango, sugar cane, and bananas. "The world can't afford to lose a
river basin that contains 20 percent of the world's fresh water.
Modern medicine wouldn't exist without the pharmacological wonders
of that rain forest," he says, gesturing out the window. "Insects
found only here produce venom that immobilizes without paralyzing.
Men in the village we just visited dip their darts in the venom
before going out to hunt. Heart surgeons use a derivative of the
same substance when they operate."
PERU IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE of
Alaska and contains more than 90
climate zones, the most dramatic of which is Ica. A vast desert
located midway between
Lima and the Chilean border, Ica is filled
with mountainous sand dunes, irrigated vineyards that produce the
grape liquor called pisco, and a vast pampas that contains the
mysterious Nazca Lines. Etched into the landscape around 500 AD,
the Nazca's giant astronomical calendar (at least that's what some
academics think it is) contains more than 70 large figures covering
400 square miles of desert and is a UNESCO Cultural Heritage of
Mankind site. Pictographs shaped like monkeys, hummingbirds, and
spiders are easily visible from airplanes flying south from Lima to
cities in
Chile and
Argentina.