Peru

Peru is three lands laid side by side. A strip of desert follows the whole Pacific shore, kept almost rainless by the cold Humboldt Current and crossed by green river valleys. Behind it the Andes rise to the ice of the Cordillera Blanca, crowned by Huascarán. East of the mountains, more than half the country is Amazon rainforest; near Iquitos, a city reached only by river or air, the Marañón and the Ucayali join to form the Amazon.

By about 2600 BC the people of Caral were raising stone pyramids, and later cultures left the Nazca lines, the royal tombs of Sipán and the mud-brick city of Chan Chan. In barely a century the Inca of Cusco built an empire running along the Andes from Quito to central Chile. Francisco Pizarro seized the emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca in 1532, and Andean silver flowed to Spain. José de San Martín declared independence in July 1821; victory at Ayacucho in 1824 ended Spanish rule.

Potatoes were first farmed in these mountains, and highland markets sell hundreds of kinds. Ceviche, raw fish cured in lime, rules the coast, and Chinese and Japanese immigrants added chifa and Nikkei cooking. The cajón, a box drum, came out of Afro-Peruvian music. Mario Vargas Llosa received the Nobel for literature in 2010. Andean mines produce copper, gold, silver and zinc, anchoveta from the cold sea becomes fishmeal, and irrigated desert valleys grow asparagus, grapes and blueberries.