Peru

In July, Machu Picchu, Peru’s biggest tourist attraction, will mark its 100 th anniversary of rediscovery. Hiram Bingham III, a Yale professor, came upon the vine-covered ruins on July 24, 1911. Here, then, as we lead up to the century mark, are 100-plus facts about Machu Picchu, its country, its history and its players. We will post one each day for the next 100 days. 1. At 496,218 square miles, Peru, in western South America , is about the size of three Californias.  California, however, has about 8 million more residents than Peru.

After surging in the polls in the campaign's final weeks, retired army officer and populist Ollanta Humala appeared to lead Peru's presidential race Sunday but was likely to face a runoff in June. With about 43% of the votes counted Sunday night, Peru's electoral commission and unofficial tallies put Humala ahead of his closest competitors, Keiko Fujimori, a former congresswoman and daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori, and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former economy and finance minister.

The Lakers didn't appeal to a higher power Wednesday, though Archbishop Jose Gomez was at their practice, as was Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani from Peru, taking in a scrimmage from folding courtside chairs. Gomez used to be a San Antonio Spurs supporter but switched allegiances after taking over leadership of the L.A. Archdiocese this month. "A lot of people were praying and telling me to switch from the Spurs to the Lakers. Prayers work. Now I'm a Lakers fan," Gomez said. "I'm also praying for the Spurs, but a sign from God is that the Lakers are playing much better.

If you've ever yearned to take an Amazon River tour, your riverboat may have just come in. International Expeditions takes $1,000 off the price of a 10-day river expedition in Peru that offers a close-up look at wildlife, the rain forest and village life along the renowned South American river.  The deal: International Expeditions' discount applies to a single  June sailing that explores the river, the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve...

The San Diego Zoo is taking over a research facility in one of the most remote and biologically diverse places on earth: the Amazon rain forest of Peru. Few places on the globe have had as little contact with the modern world, researchers said. The Cocha Cashu Biological Station is accessible only through a flight into the jungle on a small plane and then a two-day trip by boat up the Amazon River. It's a perfect place to study unruffled nature, including more than 1,000 species of birds, 200 of reptiles and amphibians, 125 of mammals.

LAN Airlines has a deal for travelers heading to Peru this spring: Fly round trip from the U.S. to any of 11 cities within that country for the price of a round-trip ticket to Lima . In effect, you get free domestic airfare to see spectacular Incan ruins near places such as Cuzco and Tumbes. The deal: The deal includes free domestic connections to Arequipa, Cajamarca, Chiclayo, Cuzco, Piura, Pucalpa, Puerto Maldonado, Tacna, Tarapoto, Trujillo and Tumbes. The round-trip fare for all destinations starts at $882 plus taxes and fees.

ATLANTA -- A particularly virulent strain of cholera in Haiti has the potential to become a problem in Latin America, scientists said in a study in the New England Journal of Medicine published Thursday. The cholera strain identified in Haiti, a hybrid, has been previously detected in South Asia and is so strong it displaced an older strain in that region, the report said. The strain now in Haiti causes more severe dehydrating disease, increases production of infectious stools and has increased antibiotic resistance, according to the report.

Since 2007, members of the Achuar tribe, indigenous to Peru's Amazon rain forest, have been fighting to have their class-action suit against Occidental Petroleum tried in the United States. The Achuar allege that over a 30-year period, the Westwood-based oil company dumped millions of gallons of wastewater into their rivers and disposed of waste in unlined pits, sickening people and contaminating the land. The company, they maintain, should be held accountable in California courts. This week the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, overturning a lower court ruling that said Maynas Carijano vs. Occidental Petroleum should be tried in Peru.

The road crashes through the jungle like the fevered dream of the indomitable Fitzcarraldo, who schemes to transport a steamship overland through the Peruvian tropics in a cult film celebrating demented ambition. The Transoceanic Highway, evoking engineering marvels such as the Transcontinental Railroad and the Panama Canal, has been talked about for decades, assuming a mythic stature that has led many to question whether the east-west thoroughfare linking Brazil's Atlantic ports with the Pacific docks of Peru would ever come to pass.

The first thing the graduate student saw was a set of foot bones at the surface of an excavation site in Peru. He turned over a rock and noticed a pattern of scales. This hinted that the large fossil might still have soft tissue intact ? a rarity. The team of paleontologists nicknamed the specimen "Pedro" and took it to the lab for further examination. It turned out to be the remains of a 5-foot, 120-pound penguin ? one of the largest ancient penguins ever found, according to an online report this week in the journal Science.