Chorrillos

This guide to Chorrillos in Lima opens with a birdwatcher crouched in the reeds of the Pantanos de Villa before sunrise, tracking a call she recognizes from thousands of miles away. It follows the wetland's unlikely survival between apartment towers and a highway, from decades of neglected wastewater and rubbish to its recognition under the international Ramsar Convention in 1997. Best heard at the boardwalk, where the reeds hiss in the wind and a coot paddles past unbothered.