in the headwaters of the Amazon River east of the Cuzco.

"I'd had the idea of doing work in Peru in my mind for a long time. I did a reconnaissance flying program in late 1969 which was the first time I had looked at it. I came back again and did more flying in 1985 and by 1992 I to a large extent already knew what I was interested in," he says.

From Chile, he worked on satellite images and  hired a special high altitude Cessna that could handle the 16,000-17,000 ft altitude he needed to photograph the 12,000-14,000 ft high prospective belts he was targeting.  When the staking moratorium lifted he lodged 39 applications including 23 porphyry copper targets, unaware then that these would become the backbone of a company - this time controlled by himself.

He had used his own cash and some help from a friend to research and claim the areas and beat major block staking blitzs by majors such as Cyprus and Amax, and a bit later, RTZ.

Lowell had never had experience with a small company before and might never have if Catherine McLeod, a stockbroking livewire working in Santiago with Canada's Yorkton Securities, hadn't got in his ear - consistently over about six months.

Well she had never done anything like Arequipa before but she knew the game and also as daughter of Vancouver mining identity Don McLeod, she had the right genealogy.  Initially, Lowell didn't even make her an officer of the company but simply worked with her to construct Arequipa.

"I guess it was a good idea!" says Lowell of his later decision to make her president. "Really it was an excellent decision. She has done an exceptionally good job and as far as I have been able to determine, has not made one single important mistake."

This January, Arequipa's stock shot from a base around $2 up through $7 and beyond on the back of the first exceptional gold results from a series of pit results at Pierina. Already Lowell's controlling stake - on paper - had returned him an order of magnitude more rewarding than his finder's fees. 

This steep price hike came on before this project was even drilled. Initial results from a series of 14 pits to just three metres returned grades up to 43 g/t Au over 500 m by 150 m.  Significantly, these were results generated by Arequipa itself on