Sacred Valley, Peru

This scene is an original illustration set in Sacred Valley, Peru. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is subtropical highland — dry winters, mild summers.

Curving dry-stone walls step a hillside into broad terraces of golden fallow ground. One white and one brown alpaca graze in the foreground; a farmer in a bright woven poncho stands further up the slope. Above it all the sky is a deep ultramarine that darkens toward the top of the frame, and snow lies on the peaks behind.

Why is the sky a deeper blue at high altitude?

That sky colour is thin air: at high altitude there is less atmosphere to scatter light, so the blue deepens and the sun bites harder. Terracing on this scale is what people build when the only flat ground is the ground they make. Alpacas are high-altitude animals, and the fallow gold says dry season — which, at this southern latitude, means the middle of the year.

Terpano is a free daily geography puzzle. You study one original illustration, place a pin on a borderless terrain map, and see how close you were. There is no account and no sign-up; progress stays in your own browser. It plays in 11 languages.