Photo Gallery

The photograph shows the picturesque Laguna Chinancocha (one of the Llanganuco Lakes) in Huascarán National Park in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca. The lake lies at an altitude of around 3,850 metres in the Áncash region, not far from the town of Huaraz. It is characterised by its intense, bright turquoise-green colour, fed by glacial meltwater and framed by steep mountain slopes and typical Andean flora (such as the gnarled queñua trees). – Peru – 1976

High above the small town of Yungay, which was buried by an ice avalanche in 1970, the Llanganuco high valley opens up in the Cordillera Blanca, featuring a lake dammed by a wall of rock and moraine. Towards the outside – towards the Callejón de Huaylas or Santatal – it transitions into a vast trough-shaped valley. - Book: Picture 99 - Peru - 1976

The area around Patarcocha, in the Chacas district (Ancash region), within the famous Huascarán National Park, is world-renowned for having the densest populations of Puya raimondii. This rare plant belongs to the bromeliad family (Bromeliaceae) and is native to the high Andes of Peru and Bolivia; it is also known as the Queen of the Andes. It grows at extreme altitudes of between 3,500 and 4,500 metres in barren, sunny mountain steppes. The plant often lives for over 80 to 100 years, flowers only once in its lifetime with a gigantic inflorescence up to 10 metres high, and then dies. – Peru – 1977

The most striking plant of the humid Puna regions of Peru and Bolivia is the Puya raimondii, a giant bromeliad. This plant, which flowers only once before dying, develops a spike of bright green flowers up to eight metres high, pollinated by hummingbirds. This photograph of the plant, which has now become rare, was taken at an altitude of 4,200 metres in the area of Laguna de Patarccocha, Ancash Department, Peru. - Book: Picture 98 - Peru - 1976

Highland landscape (Puna) featuring the striking, snow-capped massif of Nevado Huantsán (6,395 m) in the southern part of the Cordillera Blanca in the Peruvian Andes, situated in the Áncash region. The barren plateau in the foreground, characterised by ichu grass, is typical of the Puna altitude zone between 3,800 and 4,000 metres. – Peru – 1976