Perú: Tesoro Escondido (2017)—Perú

With a history of over a thousand years, this 76-minute documentary shows why Perú really is a "hidden treasure" (the subtitle of the film). The Uruguayan filmmaker Luis Ara and his team spent eight months in the country in order to capture its cultural, geographical, and natural riches. The "travelogue" begins on the Pacific coast near Lima (population 8 million) with surfing and marine life (sea turtles and humpback whales), then goes to one of the driest places on earth—the Nazca desert with its mysterious and gigantic "geoglyphs" in the earth that depict animals, plants, and geometric shapes (created sometime between 500 BC and 500 AD). After a brief take on Peruvian culinary traditions, the film explores the Andes mountains and the Amazonian rain forests, including the spectacular Machu Picchu, but also the Chachapoya culture 3,000 meters above sea level that flourished three hundred years before the Incans. This film might be a little melodramatic with its inspirational soundtrack and breathless narration, but it still made me want to go to Perú! I watched this movie on Netflix. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Dan Clendenin: dan@journeywithjesus.net