READ IT
HERE
Peru is one of the larger South American
countries - some ten times the size of England -
covering an area of 1,285,000 square kilometres
and with a population of over 26 million. Around
seventy percent of its inhabitants live in
cities, which are mainly located along the coast
and limited almost exclusively to half a dozen
thin but relatively fertile river valleys
running into the Pacific.
Peru is unique in possessing such a wide variety
of ecosystems ranging from the dryest hot desert
in the Americas, to the high Andean peaks (over
7600m above sea level); from a two- thousand-kilometre-long
belt of cloud forest, rich in flora and fauna,
to a vast area of lowland Amazon jungle,
covering about half the country. The three main
zones of Peru are known as La Costa (the coast),
La Sierra (the mountains) and La Selva (the
jungle). Within a matter of hours, you can leave
the scorching desert coastline with some of the
Pacific Ocean's best fishing, cross the world's
highest tropical mountain range - the Andes -
and plunge down into our planet's biggest
tropical rainforest.
The unusual weather conditions in Peru are
created mainly by two major offshore ocean
currents - the cold Humbolt Current coming up
from Chile and the Antarctic, which meets the
warm, tropical El Niño current coming down from
the Pacific along the Ecuadorian coast. The
Humbolt is largely responsible for the dry
desert coastline of Peru and Northern Chile,
sending Pacific clouds up into the Andes where
they precipitate as rain. Traditional Peruvian
wisdom says that it only really rains on the
Peruvian coast about once every twenty years or
so, when the El Niño current pushes further down
the coast, warming the seas and causing
disruptive rains in the desert. These rains
bring devastating floods to towns and
settlements poorly prepared for torrential
downpours and often inhabited by migrants from
the mountains. However, the rains also bring the
desert into bloom as all the wild flower seeds,
preserved by the drought conditions, suddenly
burst into life. Over the last few years, the
Peruvian weather has been rather unsettled and
El Niño has been acting even more unpredictably
than usual, possibly as a result of global
warming. However, it still rarely rains on the
coast, although the Lima region does experience
substantial smog, coastal fogs or mists and even
drizzle, particularly between the months of May
and November.
The climate in the Sierra and Selva regions can
be fairly clearly divided into a wet season
(Oct-April) and a dry season (May-Sept). There
is, of course, some rain during the dry season,
but it is much heavier and much more frequent in
the wet season, when travel becomes much harder:
roads are often impassable, flights are
frequently cancelled or delayed due to poor
conditions, and landslides affect trains and bus
routes alike. Trekking in the mountains and
canoeing on the Andean or jungle rivers are also
much less enjoyable during the wet season than
at other times of year. Equally frustrating -
especially if you've travelled halfway across
the world to be here - is the fact that some of
the stupendous views, particularly those around
Cusco and in the Cordillera Blanca, are often
obscured by clouds at this time of year. If you
want to visit several different regions of Peru,
then your best bet is to travel round in the
middle of the dry season between June and
September.
Again, weather conditions have been quite
unsettled in these regions over the last ten
years or so, with the Altiplano zone, around
Puno, being affected by serious droughts , which
have left the water level of Lake Titicaca at
its lowest for years.
|
|
| Best
of peru, batan grande, huacachina lagoon, mancora
beach, hiking huraz, alpamayo, huascaran, iquitos,
taquile island, inca trail, machupicchu, colca
canyon, cotahuasi canyon, nazca lines, manu,
tambopata, candamo, kuelap, lord sipan, tucume,
choquequirao, vilcabamba, lares mountain, salcantay,
ausangate, carabaya |
|
