public transportation in lima
We’ve all taken pictures for stories that don’t get published. Oscar and I recently shot a short video about new public transit offerings in Lima for a video we edited for the Bienal de Fotografía de Lima. A week or two before we inaugurated the exhibit the story got cut. Thanks to Vimeo and our blogs we can still give this video life.
Lima is a giant city, about 8.5 million people. Only in the past few years has the city started to develop a system of mass transit. Most in the city rely on an informal system of transportation that consists of micro-buses and vans known as combis. They follow the same routes every day and pack Lima’s main avenues. They are affordable and come frequently. They are crowded and lack formal security. For a new arrival to Lima they are a bit tricky to understand, even worse if you aren’t a native Spanish speaker. The best way to know whether you are getting on the right combi is to ask the cobrador, who usually hangs from the side of the bus, shouting out the route and trying to get more passengers.
Metropolitano – a bus system with a dedicated lane – came to Lima about two years ago. You swipe a re-chargable card and pass through a turnstile to enter the stations. They have video surveillance. Your commute time is almost certainly shorter than braving traffic in a combi. But riders aren’t all happy. They complain that the buses are too crowded and don’t have air conditioning in the hot summer months.
Another recent addition to public transportation options in Lima is Línea 1 – Metro de Lima, known more commonly as the Tren Eléctrico. Construction started decades ago on the line but was later halted. It was finally inaugurated last July. A north-south line, it reduces commute time considerably and has 16 stations with escalators and modern infrastructure. Work on a second line has already begun.
Both projects are a step in the right direction but are only a start to responding to the needs of public transportation in a city the size of Lima. Until a larger and more inclusive system is complete, the combis will fill the streets of Peru’s capital.
gold mining ghost town
They have no time to gather their belongings. No time to pick up after themselves. They leave on foot and on motorcycle, like a string of worker ants fleeing through the forest down a small dirt path. A helicopter hovers in the air. Three hundred armed police officers raid the camp and blow up their motors – the motors they used to take gold from the earth. Mega Once – a camp in the Peruvian Amazon where hundreds of illegal gold miners once lived – is now empty. Skeletons of their homes remain, charred wood and deteriorating blue and black plastic tarps among the dead trees, heaps of garbage and gaping pits filled with murky brown water. Once tropical rainforest, now desert. The flowered sandal of a child sits on a cocktail table where men paid for sex. Remnants of a pair of cutoff jeans lie near the edge of the pit where gold was mined. A yellow stuffed animal rests belly up in the sand. Cotton oozes from where its smile once was.
Just got back from two weeks in Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon. It’s an an incredibly biodiverse area that is also full of gold. The government hopes to formalize mining in the region and has recently ramped up efforts to control the gold rush. While some miners have begun the formalization process, many refuse to formalize and continue to protest the recent changes in the law. I wrote the above text for COLORS Magazine Lab. Check out their website for additional photographs.
the amazon
Just returned from two weeks in Madre de Dios in the southern Peruvian Amazon. Here are a few pictures from around Puerto Maldonado. More stories from the region to come…
View of the city from a 47-meter high observation tower
Continental Bridge | Interoceanic Highway
Puerto Tambopata
streets of flowers
On my way to Ayacucho for Holy Week I was excited to see the “rugs” made of flowers that I’ve heard about so many times. Generally groups of about a dozen or more make these pieces of art on the procession routes. While the rugs are supposed to be tread across for the first time by the important people in the processions, dogs often steal their job. The rugs are made of chalk, flower petals, leaves and all sorts of other interesting materials. Every night the hard work is swept away to make way for a new rug the next day. While the carpets were beautiful I didn’t expect to see advertising amidst the artistic creations. Capitalism has made its way to the Andes on Holy Week!
peruvian food with a twist at nanka
My favorite part about photographing food is being introduced to new restaurants. I would have never stumbled across Nanka if I hadn’t gone there to take pictures for the magazine G de Gestión. It’s owned by a Peruvian/Australian couple, and it was fun to see their twist on traditional Peruvian dishes (and their amazing vertical garden!). You can see Nanka’s version of ceviche and pachamanca (cleverly called pachananka on the menu) in the photos below. Pachamanca is usually cooked in the earth with hot stones and is a tradition that comes from the Andes. The recipe has also been adapted for clay pots on a traditional stove, called pachamanca a la olla. I’m pretty sure Nanka’s chef didn’t dig a hole in the kitchen to cook this version but cooked with hot stones or not, its flavor was perfect.
el encuentro procession
One of my favorite processions of Holy Week was the “Procesión del Encuentro” last Wednesday. The images of Jesus and Mary both leave from the same church and travel down separate streets. Then they meet back in the plaza where hundreds of people are gathered to watch the giant religious floats “bow” to each other. I photographed Jesus on his way to the plaza and then headed up to a balcony in the plaza to photograph the meeting. I think I appreciated the floats even more since I saw them from start to finish while working on a video about a family that has been building these things for five generations.
holy week in ayacucho, peru
Oscar and I traveled to Ayacucho, Peru, last week to cover Holy Week in the Andean city known for its traditional celebrations. While there we produced this video for Catholic News Service and dozens of images. The celebration lasts 10 days. Almost every night there is a procession of hundreds of people, and visitors come from all over the country. Now that we are back in Lima I hope to look through my images again and share a few that didn’t make the cut.
andean flavor at lutheran service
Just wanted to share a few recently published pictures from The Lutheran. The pictures are of a family of musicians I photographed last year who play traditional Peruvian instruments once a month at Cristo Rey Lutheran Church. The group, known as Emanuel, started in 1980 when Javier Regalado Guerra and his wife Florencia Arica Gutierrez sang together. Now the group includes five of their children, one in-law and several Andean instruments.
neblina
The first signs of winter in Lima have arrived. For at least six months clouds move in and rob the buildings along the coast of their ocean views. The sky turns a greyish-white. The Limeños say the color is like that of a donkey’s belly. The expression makes me laugh. The sun shines above the clouds, but we don’t see it here in the city. The two biggest surprises Lima has given my friends and family? 1) That it gets cold and cloudy (But it’s always sunny in tropical Peru, right?) 2) That the city is in the middle of a giant desert
beach bound
Pan-American Highway south of Lima, Peru