Peru

Peru is a country on the western coast of South America. It shares borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile. The Pacific Ocean lies to its west. Peru is the third-largest country in South America, after Brazil and Argentina. Its capital is Lima, a big city of more than 10 million people right on the coast.

Peru has three very different landscapes. Along the coast, a thin strip of dry desert runs north to south. Inland from the desert, the Andes Mountains rise high into the sky. The Andes are the longest mountain range on Earth above water, and some peaks in Peru climb over 22,000 feet. East of the mountains, the land drops down into thick Amazon rainforest. More than half of Peru is actually jungle, even though most people picture mountains when they think of the country.

Long before Europeans arrived, Peru was home to powerful ancient cultures. The most famous was the Inca Empire. From their capital at Cusco, the Inca ruled a huge stretch of western South America in the 1400s and early 1500s. They built stone cities, terraced farms into steep mountainsides, and connected their empire with about 25,000 miles of roads. That is enough road to circle the Earth.

High in the Andes sits Machu Picchu, an Inca city built around 1450. It was hidden in cloudy green mountains and mostly forgotten by the outside world for centuries. An American explorer named Hiram Bingham brought it to global attention in 1911. Today it is one of the most visited places in South America. Historians still argue about exactly why the Inca built it. Some think it was a royal estate, others a religious site.

In 1532, Spanish soldiers led by Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire. Peru stayed under Spanish rule for almost 300 years. It won independence in 1821.

About 34 million people live in Peru today. Many speak Spanish, but millions also speak Quechua or Aymara, languages that are older than Spanish in South America. Peruvian food is famous around the world, especially a dish called ceviche, made from raw fish "cooked" in lime juice. Peru is also the birthplace of the potato. Scientists trace nearly every potato eaten anywhere on Earth back to the highlands of Peru and Bolivia.