wholly owned property and not its many joint venture properties with major partners such as Phelps Dodge del Peru.  The analysts felt Pierina had multi-million-ounce-potential and the market loved it.

Lowell's timing was right. Shining Path guerilla leader Guzman was captured in the spring of 1993, Chinese interests bought the Marcona copper mines in 1992 adding legitimacy to the mineral scene and in April 1995 Peru's 23 million people saw Alberto Fujimoro returned to power with 65% of the vote offering a secure political outlook.

McLeod wasn't shy about promoting with  Lowell merits either and early up stood in front of roomful of stockbrokers "If you had backed a company with our assets and credentials in Chile when it opened up - you would have found La Escondida."

A Vancouver "shell" company was used to build Arequipa with a 50% stake in the Peruvian portfolio initially being offered to the market through Arequipa.  Once their value had been effectively pegged by the market, Lowell vended the second 50% to Arequipa boosting his stake.

McLeod's all-female office in Vancouver is a tight machine and leaves Lowell free to work from his ranch:  "They don't invite me very often... but that's entirely due to Catherine doing such a good job up there," and of course the fact that Lowell would rather be down on the ranch.

"So..." we asked Lowell "What do you really like about the rocks in Peru?"

"What I really like about them is that for 25-30 years nobody looked at them. There has been no porphyry-copper exploration for some time.

"Pierina is a totally virgin discovery. There was no shaft or tunnel or pit or pick mark in the outcrop. At a depth of a metre below the outcrop its high grade gold. That is just phenomenal - that something like that could not have been found by the Spaniards or Peruvian high graders years ago."

The company's logo is drawn from an Inca gold mask Lowell bought at an auction in Santiago, Chile.

"The reason we have Pierina is that the stage of looking for "[sub]micron gold deposits" in North America, Australia, Russia and everywhere else, by-passed Peru because it was bogged-down in a corrupt socialist government for a whole genera