City Girl’s Trip Leads To New Life In Peru

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30284, 9 November 1963, Page 2

City Girl’s Trip Leads To New Life In Peru

A wedding in Lima, Peru; a honeymoon spent on a tributary of the Amazon river; and butterfly-hunting high in the Andes mountains with a net she and her husband made from the tulle on the top of their wedding cake—these were some of the unforeseen experiences that lay ahead of a young Christchurch woman, Miss Jill Elizabeth Rimmer, when she set out on an overseas working holiday 14 months ago.

With two friends, both of whom had attended Rangi-runi Schol with her, Mis Rimmer sailed from New Zealand on the maiden voyage of the Northern Star, intending to be away from home for about a year. Instead she is settling down in a new life as the wife of a young Peruvian engineer, Ernesto Emilio Henriod, whom she met while she was in London.

Her parents, Mr and Mrs L R. Rimmer, of Weston road, Christchurch, have not met their new son-in-law, but they have been put in close touch with their daughter’s new family, life and country through the descriptive letters she sends home. Before she went overseas, the former Miss Rimmer was

a draughtswoman. In London sb- took a position with the “Economist.’’ She met her future husband, who had been studying engineering in England, at a Commonwealth party in London. Separation after Mr Henriod had returned to Lima did not make the couple forget each other, and Miss Rimmer finally went to Peru herself. Then the complex formalities for their marriage were begun. It was a trying time. There were a great number of laws that had to be observed, and documents obtained from

New Zealand. Mrs L R. Rimmer said yesterday. There also had to be two marriage ceremonies, a civil wedding being performed three weeks before the "white wedding” in a church in Lima. The bride wore, above her Irish linen wedding frock, a veil of Swiss organza she had bought in Switzerland during a continental tour she made before flying to Peru. Tingo Maria, where the couple spent their honeymoon in a “log cottage" motel, was an “absolutely glorious place, high in the jungles of Peru, on a tributary of the Amazon," Mrs Henriod wrote to her parents. Hot, and with frequent rain, it reminded her of Tahiti.

“We caught the most beautiful butterflies—2l varieties —in a net made from the tulle off the top of the wedding cake, a piece of wire and some cane we found. . . .” The Henriods are at present living in an apartment in Lima, but will shortly move to the site of the engineering project on which Mr Henriod is engaged, in the Pampas, a region some 10,000 feet up in the Andes. In Lima, the sun never broke through the over-hang-ing clouds, though the temperature was warm, Mrs Henriod wrote. The city has both large modern office blocks, and many old, dignified Span-ish-style buildings. Mr Henriod’s family live in a large, Spanish colonial house. There is a great variety of country within reach of Lima, including desert complete with oasis and date palms, beaches, cotton lands, and of course the mountains and jungles. Mr and Mrs Henriod are planning to come to New Zealand for a visit toward the end of next year.