The Andes - the longest continuous mountain chain in the world - is a land of its own, containing flora and fauna that are not encountered elsewhere on earth. In this informative book, Anthony Morrison has taken a close look at this strange world: a world of rarities and intense fluctuations of climate, where temperatures may range from minus 30 degrees centigrade to plus 35 in the space of twenty-four hours, where the rarest flamingo in the world may be found nesting on its only known site, and where taxonomists will still find new insects and lower animals that have hitherto been unknown to them. The author surveys the work of the classical Andean explorers and writers: the painstaking La Condamine, Richard Spruce, the great Humboldt. He takes us on a voyage of great discovery, from the habitable high Andes north of the tropic to the desolate and lunar landscape of the Puna of Atacama; and region by region he introduces us to new species of plant, animal and bird life, as well as interesting aspects of folklore - the strange Kallawaya doctors who will recommend a live dragonfly under one's hat as a headache cure, and who carry a fair selection of love potions; the witch-doctor's market in LaPaz with its boxes of dried starfish and llama grease.
