February World Heritage Listed Literature Challenge – Peru

Well the struggle of finding something from Mauritania has passed and we are now into February where the “lucky” country that features on our UNESCO World Heritage Listed Literature Challenge is Peru.

I’ve chosen Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa’s 1993 novel “Death in The Andes” –Mario Vargas Llosa was the 2010 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, he even ran for the Presidency of Peru in 1990. My review will be posted here shortly. I have also purchased Daniel Alarcon’s collection of short stories “War By Candlelight” a young writer who lives in San Francisco but was born in Lima Peru. I’ll try and get to these over the month of February too.

Peru has eleven World Heritage sites, seven being cultural, two natural and two mixed. The challenge only related to natural World Heritage Sites so details of those four are below.

Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu

I don’t know if I need to write a lot about this place as it is featured in depth in numerous travel brochures etc. The Inca urban empire with terraces, giant walls and ramps all fitting into the natural rock escarpments. The natural side of the park is the eastern slopes of the Andes encompassing the upper Amazon basin, incorporating the diverse flora and fauna of that region.

 

Image courtesy of http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/machu-picchu-mystery/

Huascaran National Park

Huascarán National Park is located in the Cordillera Blanca Range, in the Sierra Central of the Peruvian Andes. The park covers the most of the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range in the world. It has 27 snow-capped peaks 6,000 m above sea level, of which El Huascarán (6,768 m) is the highest.

The park is populated with spectacled bear, puma, mountain cats, white-tailed deer and vicuna.The park contains 120 glacial lakes

Manu National Park

The Manu National Park is 1.5 million hectares in size and covers areas on the Eastern Slopes of the Andes and the Peruvian Amazon. Typically tropical rainforest the last 10 years has seen 1,147 new plant species being identified and that is only within a small area (for example a 1 ha plot near the Cocha Cashu research station supports more than 200 tree species along. More than 800 bird species and 200 species of mammals have been identified alone, with 13 different species of monkeys, over 100 of bats, 12 different reptiles and 77 species of amphibians.

Image courtesy of http://www.manu-wildlife-center.com/manu_national_park_manu_national_park_tapir_macaw_lick.asp

Rio Abiseo National Park

The park was created in 1983 to protect the fauna and flora of the rainforests that are characteristic of this region of the Andes. There is a high level of endemism among the fauna and flora found in the park. The yellow-tailed woolly monkey, previously thought extinct, is found only in this area. Research undertaken since 1985 has already uncovered 36 previously unknown archaeological sites at altitudes of between 2,500 and 4,000 m, which give a good picture of pre-Inca society.