In August and November, 2014 Kathie Manthorne and I made two trips to the Andean region of South America. The first trip was to Lima, for an academic conference at the Catholic University, with an excursion to Cusco, the Valle Sagrado and Macchu Picchu. Against the advice of our handlers we hired a private driver who delivered us to the ruins of Pachacamac, along the coast just south of Lima. In November we took a holiday to Imbabura, in the northern part of Ecuador. Both Alexander von Humboldt, and the American painter Frederic Edwin Church had passed through the area, decades apart. Humboldt’s great epiphany came to him as he scaled the volcano Cotopaxi (19,347 feet of elevation). Inspired by his writings, Church retraced Humboldt’s Andean travels, but never saw Cotopaxi without its peak shrouded in clouds. We had the same experience with Cayambe. On our last night in Quito, we finally saw its snowy peak–a dot on the horizon.
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