Toledo's life took a dramatic turn in 1963 when an American
couple with the
Peace Corps arrived in his village and rented a
room from the 17-year-old boy's mother. "We became friends and they
helped me get a one-year scholarship to the University of San
Francisco. It was the 1960s and my hair was very long," Toledo
remembers with a smile. People were always asking me if I was from
the Navajo reservation."
With money earned from coaching AYSO soccer and playing the pan
flute on
Union Square,
Toledo stayed after his scholarship ended
and eventually was accepted to graduate school at
Stanford. While
studying economics in Palo Alto, he met his future wife, Eliane
Karp, the only daughter of Israeli Jews. Toledo taught her how to
speak the Amerindian dialect of Quechua; she taught him to eat his
bagels with a schmear. After receiving his PhD in 1974, Toledo
taught at
Harvard and worked at the UN and World Bank before
returning home to enter politics. In 2001, he was elected
president, the first Quechua Indian to govern
Peru since the
arrival of Francisco Pizarro in 1532.
As we begin our descent, the plane swings out over the ocean, which
sparkles brilliantly in the sun, as if pieces of crumpled aluminum
foil are floating on the sea. "Those are anchovies," Toledo
explains. The cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt current surfaces here,
attracting anchovies, and the marlin and tuna that follow them.
Sport fishing off Peru's
Pacific coast is the best in the world.
Birders claim Peru is also the best place to spot coastal
seabirds.
The region's most accessible attraction, however, is Huanchaco
Beach, a strip of sand pounded by waves rolling in off the Pacific.
The best surfers in the world migrate annually to Peru in their
endless quest for the perfect wave. But Huanchaco is also a
favorite of families, who for a few pennies can ride the waves on
rented horn-shaped rafts called
caballitos.