Simon Reeve’s South America episode 3: Simon travels through the Andes mountains, visiting Peru and Bolivia. Simon starts his journey at the world-famous ruins of Machu Picchu, one of the glories of the ancient Inca civilization. But since the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous people of the Andes – the descendants of the Inca – have suffered horribly, and to this day they live in some of the poorest communities in the region.
Simon visits a remote Peruvian valley called VRAEM, where the mostly indigenous population farms coca leaves, the primary ingredient of cocaine. Simon meets the impoverished farmers and goes on a raid with the heavily armed Peruvian police to destroy a cocaine making facility. Further and higher into the Andes, he visits the hellish informal mining town of La Rinconada. At over 5,000 metres, it’s one of the highest human settlements on Earth, and Simon meets the indigenous women who chip away at the rocks in appalling conditions to look for tiny fragments of gold.
Travelling across the border into Bolivia, Simon’s guide is one of the country’s famous cholas – indigenous women who wear traditional skirts and bowler hats. In the world’s highest capital city, La Paz, he discovers how the cholas have battled for increasing influence and representation in the country with the highest number of indigenous people in the whole continent.
Simon Reeve’s South America episode 3
Simon Alan Reeve is a British author and television presenter, currently based in London and Devon. He makes travel documentaries and has written books on international terrorism, modern history and his adventures. He has presented the BBC television series Tropic of Cancer, Equator and Tropic of Capricorn.
Reeve is the New York Times’ best-selling author of The New Jackals (1998), One Day in September (2000) and Tropic of Capricorn (2007). He has received a One World Broadcasting Trust Award and the 2012 Ness Award from the Royal Geographical Society.
Reeve was born in Hammersmith and brought up in west London, attending Twyford Church of England High School. He rarely went abroad until he started working. After leaving school, he took a series of jobs, including working in a supermarket, a jewellery shop and a charity shop, before he started researching and writing in his spare time while working as a postboy at the British newspaper The Sunday Times.
After the attacks of 11 September 2001, Reeve began making travel documentaries for the BBC. Tom Hall, travel editor for Lonely Planet publications, has described Reeve’s travel documentaries as “the best travel television programmes of the past five years”.