El Pavo Clásico

Western & Ends

2007-08-14T23:25:00.001-05:00

I crossed over the border to Peru under a bright and burning sun. In winter and in summer, the air over the mountains is a perpetually thin cover, neither holding in heat at night nor filtering the sun during the day. Standing outside the border crossing, Tuesday morning coming down, and my red pack radiated heat into my back. We were held up at immigration as someone, some American, didn't have an entrance visa and was trying to get an exit visa; always a problem, for me and for her.

And then it was a bus around the lake, from the south to the north, on the way to Puno. Winding back and forth by the lapping waves, the little kitten waves rushing over the rocks on shore, and I was stuck in the fourth seat of the second-to-last row, my knees stuck together and my head leaning to the right. A young girl to my right peeled an orange, breaking each wedge off and tossing the peel out the window. She wore a heart-shaped locket and as we rounded a bend, she closed her eyes and opened the heart and kissed it - once, because once was all she needed.

I walked through Puno and caught my bus to Arequipa. The ride was quiet and uneventful.

Into Arequipa at night, past the chicken shacks and car parts, empty-lot restaurants lit with florescent bulbs, the endless parade of brick-built walls and stained-tin roofs. Peru's second city.

The great cathedral is made of sillar, some sort of luminous volcanic rock, and in between the bell towers the form of a volcano rises, hazy through the dust and the smog; the perfect cone-shape volcano on the edge of town. In the sunshine, the white stone walls are just a single sheet of bright light drifting through the air, but as the sun passed to the west, the rocks still glowed; the lighter lines where the blocks meet, the grayed reliefs and blackened shades.

The plaza is bright and well designed, flanked on three sides by Doric arcades, also made of sillar, with balcony restaurants and wooden roofs. It is, perhaps, the most beautiful plaza I've seen in Latin America.

I spent two days in Arequipa just wandering around, eating ice cream, and drawing a little. It was the end of my trip, the last place I came to I didn't know. Eventually I boarded a bus, the most expensive bus I took, and came back to Lima.

Brothers & Lakes

2007-08-07T22:32:00.000-05:00

The hike out of Copacabana started out low and warm, hugging the lakeshore for a quarter mile past farms and sheep and fields, burned and charred. Lake Titicaca is at tremendous altitude and the sky was completely cloudless except for a few low puffy things far off on the other side of the water.

And far it was; the lake is an ocean, it's Great, it's Tahoe, it's seemingly endless and endlessly blue. Color seems more saturated at altitude - or so it seemed to me - and the sky and water swirled with hues so brilliant and intense that 'blue' or 'green,' single words, just can't do them justice. The sky and the water deserved whole phrases; they earned endless streams of adjectives.

We, the same Americans and I, were hiking to some small village to catch a ferry to the Isla del Sol. Like usual, I had no map - but I wasn't concerned; as it is in life, there's only one road. You just never know how long you're on it, that's all.

Well, we hiked - we must have, I was wearing my hiking pants. The road climbed around a mountain, and in between the pines and eucalyptus, the lake would suddenly spill into view; the vast and terrifying lake. You start at altitude and you gain some more, and the lakeshore, the far lakeshore is a dark arc of land, bright brown, maybe spotted a little, but bent around the lake and the curvature of the Earth itself. Below us, waves broke around rocks, less threatening now, leaving white trails of foam to float back out with the water.

After a long while, we started asking the few people on the road how much further we had to go. Some said an hour. Others said three minutes. Then some said four minutes, so at least those numbers matched, right? Of course they were all wrong, but what can you do? Maybe we just walked especially slowly.

Eventually we staggered into town, village really, and walked to the water's edge. The man there hustled for ferry passage to the Isla del Sol, stopping us in the middle of the lake and asking for money. He wasn't even upfront about it, saying he'd like to charge us less but his hands were tied; suddenly we're the bad guy for complaining. Bolivian business.

It was sunset on the other side of the island, but even near the top we were obscured by shadow from the ridge. I looked back across the water, but not in the direction I had come from, but farther east, at the white-capped mountain range and the moon, that celestial dinner plate, rising off the low hills. As it rose, the sky darkened into the bright blackness of a fullmoon night, and I settled down to dinner.

Into the Void, But Hopefully Not

2007-08-06T21:02:00.001-05:00

The buses in La Paz that go to the west, over the hills to Lake Titicaca and beyond, leave from the Cemetery District - or, perhaps more accurately, from the various streets directly next to the cemetery, which is never a good place to begin a journey - end, maybe, but never begin.

The cemetery is on the outskirts of town (which in La Paz is more "up" than "out") and in the dark the taxi ride was just a blur of light and dust, half-caught cries from peddlers, pavement and not. I was with three Americans, the first I'd seen since Buenos Aires: Maggie, very sweet, very tough but a six foot blond - a visual liability; Corey, the boy from Mendocino County, whose mysterious time "in the mountains" of North California has funded seven months of travel; and Eleanor, the professor's daughter with the British accent, baby-faced at 29, a professional traveler. We didn't know each other and we didn't know where we were going; strangers, at altitude, heading higher.

We piled in a van, a combi, probably because someone thought it would be more authentic to be cramped in a rattling deathtrap through Bolivia. The first half of the ride was more uncomfortable than dangerous, as we slowly weaved out of La Paz and then, in great sweeping turns, climbed from the valley. There were few towns. The driver seemed to be in a hurry.

At a certain point, though seemingly at random, we got on a ferry. Well, to be accurate, the combi simply turned off the road and onto a wooden boat, barely twenty feet long - like an overgrown dory or an open-ended barge. A man punted us slowly from shore until the motor kicked in. On a moonlit night, on a moonlit lake, we pulled towards Copacabana. It was beautiful and serene, the quiet night.

And then I was forced to remember we were in Bolivia. The cobrador poked his head into the van and asked for a boliviano fifty from each of us to cover the ferry. This is the thing about South America: no one seems to grasp the idea of "price" as something all-inclusive, as the complete cost of getting from point A to point B to the traveler. For our cobrador, as is often the case, the price of the journey was reflexive only to himself - that is, his cut - and everything else was someone else's problem. (When we protested, he made a big show of charging all the Bolivians the same B\ 1.50) It all makes little sense to me: if he just made the price seventeen to start, kept fifteen, and paid the "toll" himself, he wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of irate tourists and surly Bolivians. Another mysterious piece of commerce in South America.

Eventually we got off the boat, up the concrete embankment, up the long semi-paved road to the west. Maybe we climbed for awhile; no, we must have.

I don't think about death very much, maybe more than the average person, but it never is a possibility, just an abstraction, a conversation starter; "What if I got hit by this bus?" You simply can't live your life preoccupied with the thought of death - it's like flipping through a book to get to the end; there simply isn't any joy in it.

Well, we climbed for awhile, the driver, the Americans, the Bolivians, the Peruvian honeymooners necking in the front seat, and I. And then we started to go down, down the narrow road of broken pavement, down with mechanical acceleration.

Really, we were flying down this mountain road, and if the driver had any reason to hurry, he took it. The first few minutes I was simply in disbelief that anyone would drive so recklessly; "He's a professional," I thought, "and he knows what he's doing. This little stretch will flatten out just around the bend - He'll break if he needs to. "

But the road never stops, just twists and turns across the mountains, and the drive never ends - hairpins taken wide, riding on the wrong side of the road - and as we go I see the first cliff, because we're on cliffs over the lake, thousands of feet above the lake, and with each new set of switchbacks the cliffs go from my left to my right and back.

There is no guardrail. There are no signs. And the driver never takes his foot off the accelerator.

I was sitting in the jump seat, by the door, and I instinctively reached down with my right hand and gripped the edge of the seat, locking my elbow and bracing my shoulder. Maggie screamed out - in English - but the driver refused to yield. He was too busy explaining the history of the lake to the Peruvians, using his right hand to point out into the darkness, just as natural as can be. He looked at them when he made a point, to emphasize the point. I hated that couple. I focused every fiber of my being onto that couple, and with my elbow locked I wanted to throw them from the van, off the cliff, those beautiful Peruvians making sloppy kisses, holding hands, but now, no now, looking and nodding and asking the driver who, what, when as we screamed around the mountain.

And then, as we swerved around a boulder in the road, a feeling came over me, one of those feelings of complete and total sadness. I sat up as my back tensed, and I could see the van flying off the road, or rolling down the cliff, and there was nothing I could do about it; it was an inevitability. The faster we went, the quieter I grew.

Being in a situation like that, you just can't prepare yourself mentally for it, you can't rationally explain why you're in the situation and how it could possibly be anything but dangerous. On a rollercoaster, getting the cheap and ersatz thrill of death, you always know you will pull into the station safe - it's the return you're paying for, the vuelta.

Well, sadness passed through me and off the cliff and I was at peace. The world flattened a bit, and my eye divided the background out the windows and the interior of the van into separate spheres. It scanned the inside, the faded seats, the looks on people's faces, the calm hand movements of the driver, the little hugs of the couple, the way the Virgin prayer card swung from the rearview. That's all that was left in my life, but maybe that's all there was to life to begin with; just a van filled with strangers - some in love, some gripped with fear, some asleep, a van driven by a madman who won't slow down, can't slow down, hurtling through the unmarked darkness, caught between life and death.

I lived, I lived, but it wasn't a cheap thrill. I had mentally prepared myself for my own death, and that's something I don't want to repeat.

The shower in our hostel didn't work. Now that's Hell.

The Snows of Bolivia

2007-08-05T23:15:00.000-05:00

It's rare that I stop my day in America to watch the sunset, and the little fireworks around the setting sun - maybe from my car, on PCH, I'll see it go into the sea somewhere north of Catalina between the oil platforms, but even then I'm moving, driving, going somewhere in particular. But on my trip, for whatever reason, I've seen dozens of sunsets, a few sunrises, and I always seem to have a sense of the sun moving across the sky, the changes in temperature and brightness, the atmospheric things.

Lying in my bus seat, staring out the window in Bolivia, I thought I saw the sky change shape; the horizon seemed to close around the sky, drawing in, shrinking in circumference behind the near mountains, pushing the very top, the crown of darkest blue, higher and deeper. The sky was a high-peaked dome of royal hues, and it fell vertically from a point above me. I don't know why I remember this so distinctly, but for some reason it's stuck in my mind as something important.

Outside of La Paz there is nothing, absolutely nothing, just brown hills and scrub, winding roads and tin-roofed shacks. But then, just after dawn, the bus comes through a small pass onto a wide highway, descending from the mountains, and you see it, La Paz, for the first time: a million people, an entire city, a capital, built into a canyon, the suburbs marching uphill, the snowbound Andes in the background, everything perched. That's the only word for it, a city perched in geography.

I stayed at some dive off the main tourist street, near the Witches' Market. La Paz is - and this is a bit of urban studies wankery - one of the easiest cities in the world to navigate. Not that the street plan makes any sense, and there aren't any street signs really, but if you get lost, just head downhill. The city's main road, it's only main road, was built on top of the river that made the canyon, so everything slopes towards this one avenue. Very easy.

The tourist scene in La Paz is its own foreign culture; neither Bolivian, nor produced Bolivian, nor European or American - just a bunch of young foreigners operating without restrictions, fueled by cocaine, beyond regard for themselves or others. I was fairly terrified.

The stories! Two girls who didn't eat for two days because they couldn't get out of bed. Another who had a hundred dollars left and needed to get back to Sao Paolo. People with sunken eyes and greasy hair, barely communicative, disheveled and destroyed. They came six thousand miles for this?

I met the German girls for drinks, and later, as I left their hostel, it started to rain, and I skipped from stone to stone uphill back to my dive. Halfway there, on the deserted street at three am, the rain stopped - paused really, because it took a moment for the rain to become snow, singular flurries of snow falling on the peaked roofs, 'on the living and the dead.'

Well, I pounded the pavement, rode in combis, uphill and downhill. Somewhere near the stadium I got directions from this little high school girl, probably about 15, who must have just gotten out of school because she had loosened her tie and unbuttoned her blouse. She had tattoos, she wore too much eye makeup in that way teens do, but she was very, very nice. Live the dream Bolivian goth teen girl - just stop cutting yourself.

The last day I was in La Paz, a parade took over the main street. I waited for a couple friends in the main square, eating peanuts. It was my 4th of July, or closest facsimile, to be eating peanuts, wearing a baseball hat and aviators, watching a parade on a sunny afternoon.

I even had a beer.

Sweet & Sucre

2007-08-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

I´ll be honest: I didn't have high hopes for Bolivia. Perhaps I had been swayed by every South American I had talked to, who each had their own stereotype. Peruvians think Bolivians commit all the crimes in Peru, Paraguayans mock how cold it is on the altiplano, and Argentines, in their Argentine way, declare Bolivian girls to all be ugly, each and every one. In retrospect, I think this says something more about Peru, Paraguay, and Argentina than it does about Bolivia, but when everyone tells you something, you listen.

My stereotype, or gut feeling really, was that Bolivia was going to be like Peru, the sierras of Peru, but poorer. Well, when I rolled into Sucre, my feet numb, I quickly learned how wrong I was.
Not that Bolivia isn't poor. It´s extremely poor, and you can see on the faces of the shoeshine boys in the plaza the look of want, for food, for education, for opportunity to do anything but be a fifty-cent-a-shine boy on a Sunday in an empty plaza. (They kept asking me if they could shine my shoes, which puzzled me greatly since I only have one pair of shoes on this trip, and they are old dirty Asics running shoes - I should have let one try to get a shine off my polyester clogs. )

And Bolivian culture is similar to the high sierra of Peru, with short dark women in long bright skirts, layered with aprons, vests, and cardigan sweaters, with tights on but no socks and open-toed shoes. They wear their hair braided in long double strands down their backs, and on their heads they tilt black derby hats, very narrow-brimmed. They are bell-shaped women on the sidewalks and in the street, bundles on their backs, dust on their feet, walking uphill.

Sucre is on a hillside high in the mountains of Bolivia, probably around 10,000 ft or so, and from the bus station and my hostel the city slopes downward to a palm-tree filled plaza, the historical sights of Bolivia´s independence, and a generally touristy street of fancy cafes. It is a beautiful city, and though I had to walk about a mile uphill to get to bed every night, I remember it fondly.

It amazes me how large the disconnect can be between the touristy part of town and the rest, the local stores and restaurants and bars; it is a social divide, not a geographic one, because people will see and visit what they want to see and visit, and a backpacker is just as unlikely to visit a hole-in-the-wall polleria as a Bolivian is to go to Paddy´s ex-pat Irish pub. Almost everywhere I´ve been, if you walk two blocks from where the tourists are, there won´t be any tourists around.

I´m not saying anything is necessarily more authentic, because nothing is so static and produced as authenticity, but that there has to be a happy balance in travel between new experiences and the familiar tastes of home. A lot of backpackers I´ve seen reward themselves for anything, for just traveling, by associating only with what food, drink, or people, they already know. But, two blocks away, with a little extra effort, they could see so many new things that, as haughty as it sounds, really represent how life is in Bolivia, or wherever they are. That step is one few people make.

Personally, I wander from the tourist areas because I get bored with how clean and nice everything is, and my inner urban student wants to take in as many blockfronts as he can. So I walked, a lot, up and down, in no general direction, through the white-washed colonial streets of Sucre until I came to the cemetery in the far north, on the edge of the desert wastes.

The cemetery was fascinating: above ground, vaults six or seven high in long houses maybe two or three hundred graves long. In the center of the site were the tombs, family mausoleums in an eclectic mix of ages and styles and levels of decay. The grave buildings went on for a long time, ten, twenty rows, some vaults glassed-in, with gold letters and wilted flowers, while others had quickly painted stenciled names and dates, the paint having run down from the letters, mingling with the concrete dust. Five hundred years of funerals.

As I walked back towards the entrance, I saw a crowd gathered by one of the buildings, a low hum that comes with crowds, and as I got closer I could hear the wailing, the sobbing, the quiet emotion of a funeral. And I watched the two workers carefully raise the casket up the ladder to a fourth-floor vault, and the campesinas in their black mantles over the bell-shaped skirts, and saw the general disregard some people near the edge of the crowd of mourners had for the goings-on; men dressed in black shirts and sandals, sitting on the edge of a planter, sharing a cigarette, spitting on the walkway. Eventually the workers sealed the vault, and the moaning died down, and the crowd dispersed, but I was walking ahead of them back up the hill.

Later, at night, I walked into town but turned right, away from the plaza, towards the rotunda chapel at the east side of Sucre. I had seen a market there on my way to the cemetery, and I figured it would be more lively at night. For once, I was right: thousands of people jammed the streets around the chapel with a festival market nearly two miles long, with stalls selling everything and everything was cheap. At the upper edge of the market, for the market was arranged in the horseshoe shape of a carnival, were hundreds of foosball tables, literally hundreds, all occupied, five games for a dollar.

And there it was, Bolivian life and Bolivian death, all on one day. I think everyone else in the hostel went to the Joy Ride Cafe, an Irish bar on the plaza, for drinks.

Ride the Reading Railroad

2007-07-31T20:49:00.000-05:00

I walked across the bridge in line wth the other tourists in the pre-dawn darkness, leaving behind the relative comfort of Argentina for the unknown and inconsistent world of Bolivia. Argentina´s officials were courteous, smartly dressed even at dawn, and used just enough ink to stamp my passport - in a blank box no less - and they wished me a buen viaje.
I took this all to mean, the great show of patriotic devotion to bureaucracy, that the La Quilaca border agents are not only bored, but almost certainly corrupt. The easiest way for a government official to extort money is hide behind the exact letter of the law. Everywhere, even in the States, policemen look the other way about hundreds of little offenses because it simply isn´t in their interest to enforce every statute. But in South America, where everyone is woefully underpaid, it is in their interest, if they make it so. But the tone is always the same - it isn´t extortion, it´s just following the law. I guess it´s easier to have your hands tied than to hold a gun.

Now, when you arrive in America, a stern man asks you three questions you can´t hear, stamps your passport with as little or as much ink as possible, and turns away in disgust to say ¨Next!¨as if each person he sees is another little bit of hell itself. This is the mark of an honest nation.
Bolivia, then, was something more than an honest nation - there was, and I´m not joking or exaggerating, a hobo jungle fire outside the border post. The post itself was a poorly-constructed wooden building basically empty: just a table, a stack of visas, two broken pens, and a massive portrait of Evo Morales. Evo wears the complicated necklace of the Bolivian presidency - it pales next to the one Dick Levin wears - but what struck me is that he isn´t wearing a suit. I guess I just assume leaders wear suits, so to see a president, in his official state portrait, in a sweater and slacks, struck me as a bit odd. Now, Evo, he´s not even in business casual. Heck, I get more dressed up to go on a second date.

Well, wouldn´t you know it, but Bolivia was on strike the day I arrived. Something about miners, or coca growers, or whatever - most people in South America will take any excuse to protest ineffectually. (In America, we store up that energy and have massive ineffectual protests. Much more efficient.) So the buses weren´t running, and ¨no hay tren¨was the refrain, but I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no bolivianos in my pocket.

I found a bus to Sucre, eventually, that was to leave at four. Four wasn´t so bad - it was eleven, and I was in a no-horse, no-ironhorse town, but five hours is nothing.

Well, four became around five.

And five became seven.

Around six, I had a minor argument with the ticket agent, who assured me that the bus would leave at seven on the dot. She was wrong, but by five minutes, so I´ll cut her some slack.

But as my bus was loading, order began to fall apart. The bus company had been selling tickets for buses long delayed, or possibly non-existent, and people kept coming on and sitting in seats that, for all they cared, they had bought. Since no one wanted to confront the surly Andean women piling onto the bus, the rightful ticketholders just chose new seats, or ignored their assignments, creating one of those chain-reaction seating disasters that never ends well for someone. In this case, the woman sitting in the window seat next to me was told to move - not get off the bus, just move to the aisle seat across from me. Well, this woman went crazy, yelling at the ticket lady, calling her filthy names, and physically restraining me from getting up to let her out of her seat.

So the ticket lady, the woman, and the surly Andean man whose seat was occupied shouted at each other, with a thin American unable to move, or understand exactly what people were saying. In the middle of this, a small boy, maybe seven, comes on the bus. Local children come on South American buses all the time trying to sell gum or soda or whatever. This kid decided that in the middle of a shouting match to start his routine, warbling a song of hardship in the worst whiny children-singing voice I´ve ever heard. He stopped long enough to whip out his panflutes. It was like a Marx Brothers movie, except filled with Quechua insults.

Fourteen hours after crossing the border, I was on my fourteen hour busride to Sucre. The window didn´t close, and I lost feeling in my toes sometime before dawn.

Close to the Maddening Crowd

2007-07-30T13:45:00.000-05:00

Salta looked like it needed more trees - set in the northern Argentine hills, sunny, everything had a brown glow to it that wasn't quite golden but more like ... burnt toast. The plaza is quite lovely, surprisingly dense and colonial, with pedestrian streets radiating from its sides, but the sky and the hills, the amber glow made Salta seem like a Wild West Buenos Aires, a porteno with dust on his boots.

By chance or by fate, I checked into a hostel called "Backpacker's Soul" which was about everything you can imagine it would be. It had two sister hostels in Salta and there was always a BBQ or a salt flats tour or an empanada course going on - suffice to say, I wasn't pleased.

Maybe my mind had been altered a bit by being in Paraguay, but I couldn't stand backpackers, the backpacker scene, or even just knowing that there were other Americans around. Backpackers are a culture unto itself, and while there are plenty of interesting people to meet in hostels, there are a lot of pseudo-spiritual hippie wanderers, exiled frat boys looking to score, and gritty Ernest Hemingway wannabes with more pockets on their pants than talent in their writing.

Perhaps I'm being a bit hypocritical. I feel at times like all of these people, these stereotypes, while I'm on the road, in hostels, telling stories - maybe I just would like a bit of balance in my fellow travelers.

Oh, and to never hear Bob Marley "Legend" again.

For whatever reason, and I've said this before I believe, I never felt so lonely as I did when I met other Americans. When I've been by myself, truly and utterly isolated from everything comfortable and familiar, I feel comfortable and self-reliant because I know, no matter what, I have nothing else but myself. In Salta, hearing English on the street, or watching Americans pound pints at the bar, laughing and joking, it all just reminded me of what I miss in America, of being truly and utterly alone on my trip. The tastes of home were torture because they were not and could not be home; just simulacra, shades from my past.

But then you learn something new about home unexpectedly, in the cookie aisle: I was in the cookie aisle, buying cookies for my bus trip to Bolivia, when I noticed a couple, both about twenty, dressed as only tourists dress, debating cookie purchases themselves. They were a head taller than everyone else and had a easy way about their interaction that marked them as Americans. Indeed, they were Americans, tall Americans from Wheaton College, and we went and got coffee because that's what Americans do.

I was jittery for days at a time in Argentina.

Well, they were named Amy and Steve and they were sophomores - as if they could have been named anything else. If I were in the States, I would have written them off immediately as hearty religious Midwestern folk I had nothing in common with, but there, drinking my fifth coffee, speaking wildly and authoritatively, as with a speech practiced many times, I talked to them, and I listened in return.

They were about as sensible and decent as you could ask a couple to be. They had faith, tremendous faith, the faith that builds and helps and heals, and they bore it like a shield against the unsolvable problems of existence.

Well, I was a West Coast Ivy League Jew, and they were religious Midwestern folk, but if nothing else we were all Americans together. May our faith, our mutual faiths that transcend religion, our Union remain strong forever. Amen.

I boarded the midnight bus to Bolivia and ate my cookies.

The Che of Making Mistakes

2007-07-27T15:46:00.000-05:00

I had two hours to kill, so I went to Brazil.

Brazil - the vast land of samba, futbol, and the Amazon. A nation alive with passion, history, dynamic tensions. Brazil! Is there a more romantic place to visit?

I saw three blocks before I had to catch my bus.

________________

It was planned so perfectly, my bus travel, all the way to Bolivia through the Chaco - thirty hours of unpaved roads. All I had to do was sit back, relax, and get to Asuncion in midmorning.

Well, I woke up in an uncomfotable position, in the dark. We weren´t moving. I pulled back the curtain to see the dirty white concrete of Asuncion´s terminal awash in sodium-orange light. I checked my watch. Four am. I checked my watch again. Four am.

The bus to Bolivia only leaves at eight pm, and I wasn´t too keen on spending a day in the bus station before boarding a thirty hour bus. My mind started to drift a bit, away from reality and real options. At one point I went into the center, probably around seven, and couldn´t find a hostel.

There I was, next to the abandoned train station, with all my junk, at dawn in Asuncion. My mind continued to drift. I was stuck, couldn´t stand pat, couldn´t move forward. I headed back to the bus station.

Instead of waiting twelve hours for a thirty hour bus, I took a six hour bus back to Encarnacion (because you can´t cross the river at Asuncion) then a hop to Posadas. This part went well.

Then I bought tickets to Salta.

I arrived in Posadas around six in the afternoon, maybe seven - but my bus to Salta left at two in the morning. I hadn´t slept in a day or two, so it just never occurred to me that this was, clearly, a terrible decision.

I don´t remember much of what I did, I think, because everything kept closing and the temperature kept dropping. A man fell asleep on my pack for awhile. I think I had some tea, and a medialuna. Argentina lost a football match. I had a sandwich. I paced back and forth for a couple hours. I drank a Coke then returned the bottle. I read the titles of the books in the window of the kiosk. I never sat down except to eat.

I was not happy. It was not a happy time.

Well, seventeen hours later I was in Salta - tired, broken, confused and agitated. It only took me two days to get to Salta, twelve hours from the Bolivian border. Much better than a 30 hour bus.

The streets immediately around Salta´s bus terminal do not have street signs. I walked down Avenida San Martin, past Parque San Martin, and like a modern Joseph, no hostel would take me. Five hostels rejected me. The sixth try, as they say, is the charm. I slipped through the door to my room, and quietly, in the dark, went to bed, in a bed, for the first time in three days.

Cut to a Nation´s Quick

2007-07-25T09:56:00.001-05:00

Paraguay is something of a puzzle, geographically the heart of South America, yet completely isolated from the world, land-locked,´an island surrounded by land,´ a country both unknown and forgotten. It´s a place with all the modern conveniences that still feels out of time, as if the entire nation has been misplaced by history and no one seems to care. If ever a country and a people could be said to sleep-walk through the future, it would be Paraguay. Everything was just as I thought it would be, and yet everything was completely unexpected.

All of this was far from my mind out in the national park, a huge swath of northern Paraguay along the Brazilian border. I never got a map, and I´m not sure there was one anyway, but I sketched a rough guide from a display at the visitors´center, and hit the trail. I was the only visitor to the park that week.

There was a mirador at the far end of the park, a thousand-foot outcropping twenty kil0meters away, that I was saving for later in the week. Until I got my bearings, I had more modest goals: a small historical monument to Mariscal Francisco Solano Lopez, and a thin jungle stream. It would be a rather pleasant hike.

As I walked up the red dirt road, I quickly became lost. Nothing really matched up to my map, and there weren´t signs, so I just had to mentally arrange the landscape with digital pictures. While I was at a crossroads, tilting my map to make it reflect reality, I saw far to my right, a white bust set upon a stone pedestal; a general staring across a dirt path south into the forest - at nothing. And then I saw them, dozens of white busts upon stone pedestals arranged at ten meter intervals in an arrow-straight line to the northwest. I followed the statues through the forest, past each simple monument, until the trail ended and I was standing in a clearing, a perfectly rectangular clearing of packed red earth carved out of the jungle. I followed that too, over a quarter mile, but it led nowhere; after a while, it just fell back into the trees.

This wasn´t a clearing, it was an airstrip.

I found the monument to F.S. Lopez at the opposite end - a soaring 60s spire encrusted with tribute plaques from each department of the country. From the monument, leading once again through the trees, a stone path ran to the tomb of F.S. Lopez - a thirty-foot cross - and the grave of his Irish mistress. Later I found the third monument to Lopez, at the site of his death, facedown in a creek with a Brazilian bullet lodged in his back.

I never made it to the river.

(Back in Asuncion, two guards smoke a cigarette beside the Pantheon, their blue and red uniforms starched, their demeanor relaxed. Inside, the bodies of Paraguay´s heroes sit in the dark beneath ¨Fides et Patria.¨ The guards toss their cigarettes into Ave. F.S. Lopez and retake their post in the afternoon heat.)

I learn about the War of the Triple Alliance. In the 1860s, Paraguay amassed a huge military under the direction of Mscal. F.S. Lopez, a dictator constantly looking to expand his influence. After Uruguay´s government fell into chaos, Lopez declared war on Brazil and Uruguay, smashing north, waiting for Argentina to ally against the Brazilians. When Argentina dragged its feet, Lopez declared war on Argentina. The Paraguayans enjoyed early success, but after a disastrous river battle against the Brazilian navy, the Paraguayan army suffered defeat after defeat. Disease and a prolonged guerrilla war devastated the population. Eventually, Lopez, his son and successor, the top generals and the leaders of the Catholic Church in Paraguay fled to remote Cerro Cora, where they staged a fight to the death against the invading Brazilian army. They lost. But the Paraguayan president flies in every year to Cerro Cora to honor the man that led to the death of fifty percent of his country.

A couple days later, I´m waiting at the bus station in Pedro Juan Caballero, waiting for the bus to take me back south. Across the street is a stadium, more like a high school gym, and it´s jumping, it´s just filled with people and energy. A banner tells me, in Portguese, that this is the world under-16 girls ´hambol´championships. I pay my dollar and go inside.

Handball, it´s called. But it´s not handball, it´s something else, some sport I´ve never seen before, a bizarre amalgamation of basketball, mini-soccer, hockey, and insanity. The crowd is apoplectic. It´s Paraguay´s best squad against the Brazilians, and the Paraguayans are down by two with five minutes to play. The Paraguayan team looks like the Paraguayan people, short and dark, thick girls with broad shoulders and flat feet. The Brazilian team is anchored by a pair of twins, blonds, probably over six feet tall; lean girls with too-long legs and small heads.

The Brazilians commit a foul, I think, and a squat girl takes a penalty shot, holding the handball and throwing it overhand. One of the twins, the goalie, blocks the shot with her forearm. The crowd groans, men leaning against the boards turn in disgust, kick the ground, and throw their arms across their bodies. Immediately a chanting begins, and a clapping, and the crowd rallies as the girls go on defense. The Brazilians score from the outside.

And then it suddenly hit me, something cultural about Paraguay, and for a moment I thought I saw into the heart of the heart of South America, into the forgotten country and unknown people. Here it is, I remember thinking, Paraguay in miniature; defeated by the beautiful Brazilians, living, dying, losing at a game no one plays, at a game no one knows. The guards and the Pantheon, the busts in the forest, and handball - it´s all the same veneration of defeat, the complete and utter inability to ever recover from disaster, the same jealousy that comes with any small victory - this is the dark weight on Paraguay´s soul, and whether I´m right or whether or I´m wrong, I don´t care. I saw something there that I can´t explain away.

Here It Is or There It Went

2007-07-22T16:11:00.000-05:00

Concepcion was a nothing town, but it was a town, and there aren´t a lot of those in western Paraguay, so I took my chances. If you were to believe Lonely Planet, it sounds like a calming respite, an oasis in the vast Paraguayan plains - it isn´t. It´s a nothing town, with nothing, no one, and nowhere. I spent two days.

The only men in town were gathered along the one paved road in front of the national bank, waiting for government money to start the sesame season. They stood there, an average group of Guarani, men with wide eyes and sunken cheeks, clad in worn denim with straw hats, kicking the dirt with the toes of their boots, laughing and talking until the bank door opened, then the talking stopped and the men surged forward, looking only at the door and the guards in front of the door; looking hungrily, greedily, at what could be on the other side.

I spent a dollar on half a chicken and hit the road.

Armed with two bags of bread and virtually no information, I went north towards Brazil to go camping; alone, without a tent or a sleeping bag, and - as I found out later - no insect repellent. In retrospect, it´s easy to say this was a bad idea, but in the moment, with no one to disagree with me but myself, ideas tend to grow and expand without reason. Only the most aware mind can remind itself of external opinions.

Well, I wasn´t thinking of this when I jumped off my bus somewhere along a deserted stretch of highway north of Ybiyui - all I wanted to do was piss, and I did, into the forest, with my pack on the edge of the asphalt. In South America, as in North America, I refuse to pay to urinate, as I am yet to find a bathroom that looked like it spent my fifty centavos on actually maintaining the facilities.

I walked back along the highway about a mile without a car passing me, turning at the small park entrance, and continuing up the dirt path to the visitors center. It was dusk, or thereabouts, and the last birds of the day were making long spirals in the sky. The crickets joined in as the temperature dropped and the sun´s last bit bled over the hills to the west. I walked up the path with nothing behind me.

Lucky for me, I didn´t have to improvise a shelter - the park had an extra bunk in the rangers´cabin. I ate some bread and fell asleep, exhausted.

At times, sleep can be a terrifying thing. For about a month I´ve been taking Larium, an anti-malarial pill with extreme psychotropic side effects ranging from irritability and depression to ¨homicidal psychosis.¨I took it in Africa and I´m taking it here, and I´ve had the same problem each time; namely, dreams so vivid, so clear and life-like, that they are indistinguishable from reality. But they follow a pattern, more or less:

Towards the end of all my dreams on Larium, there is a moment that could only be found a dream, and I am suddenly aware I am dreaming, and mentally (that is, second-mentally, in my character in my dream) I think about how strange it is to be a character in a dreamworld filled with such bizarre choices. I count out my options, slightly bemused by the situation. While this is happening, my first mind, the mind that is dreaming, discusses with itself the action I, in my dream, should take. The other parts of the scene - the other people, the setting and mood - simply fade away until it is just me thinking about what to do as I think about what to do.

Suffice to say, I don´t understand why Larium isn´t used recreationally. That night I dreamt a dream I can´t remember, as I can´t remember most of my dreams in South America.

It´s German for ¨Boredom¨

2007-07-21T15:03:00.000-05:00

As slow as Asuncion is on a weekday, it simply becomes catatonic on the weekends, without even the perfunctory openings in the morning to keep up appearances. I wandered through downtown, figuring I could fit in all the government buildings into an afternoon. It was a Sunday constitutional through Constitution Plaza, so to speak.

None of the major buildings had much to get excited about, other than the novelty of a presidential mansion without a fence; ¨Dubya, hey, I was just walking by...¨ The Congress building is a hideous mass of gleaming steel and glass, buffed brick, and cantilevered overhangs; that is, the type of ugly that could have only been designed through a competition and by an architect. Across the street, at the edge of the bluff that falls away to the Parana, is a small plaza, once probably quite grand, but now in a poor state. Marking the boundary of the plaza is a chipping white Italianate edge rail, and I paused in the afternoon heat to take a few touristy pictures of the fading glory. As I looked down at my camera - I still don´t really know how to use it - I saw something trot out of the bushes, and nuzzle a tree. The animal came over to me - it was a fat black pig, snorting with delight over a nut it had found.

I suddenly smelled smoke, thick oily smoke, and heard children yelling. It occurred to me to lean over the rail and I did - right into the face of some of the worst slums I´ve seen since leaving Lima. There is no transition between Congress and the shantytowns, just a bluff, over which the pavement ends.

Asuncion was dead, but I had hurried back to my hostel - I had an appointment for dinner with two German girls, Jennifer and Mareike, the only other tourists I met in Paraguay. It´s a strange thing, really, that I have met very few foreigners my age in South America, because everyone (including the German girls) seems to be either 19 or 27. Makes me wonder what I´m doing here, or what everyone else is doing differently.

Anyway, the German girls were unimpeachably German, holding their cigarettes with their index and middle fingers pointed directly up, rotating their wrists back and forth with each drag. They spoke in English to me, German to each other, and Spanish when necessary. They both had nervous laughs - suffice to say, they were wonderful.

Well, they left the next day on the Death Bus to Bolivia, and I headed north up the Rio Paraguay to the town of Concepcion. Auf Wiedersehen!

All Quiet on Plaza Uruguaya

2007-07-18T12:48:00.000-05:00

Taking a bus in South America is always an adventure; even when the most average, everyday things happen en route, a bus just can´t escape the absurdity of travel. On my bus to Asuncion - which, though a direct bus, picked up every campesino it could find . the cobrador breaked for lunch in one of the small villages scattered along the rivers and hills of eastern Paraguay. The bus slowed in front of a restaurant, stopped, the corbador got out, paced to the counter, ordered, waited, got his plate of food and proceeded to eat this meal as our bus idled on the roadside, packed with farmers and chickens and exhausted Americans. Sometimes, you just have to laugh at these things or lose your mind.

Asuncion is a strange and quiet town, somehow devoid of life in a downtown full of people. Sitting on a bluff over the Parana, the city steams during the day, thunders through the night, and never works. Shops - whether because of the weather or a cultural malaise - are open from mid-morning to about noon and then maybe...maybe...again from four to six. Everything closes, supermarkets, gas stations, everything. It´s a city in phases, day to day.

The downtown, or what seems like the downtown, is like a less cluttered Lima Centro - low, deceptively ornate colonial homes, small cornerstores that never open, half-finished, half-hearted high-rises. Not many ambulantes out, and the street vendors seem loathe to motivate a sell in the oppressive heat. Nothing in downtown is new, and even new things feel worn and tired.

On the Plaza Uruguaya, I think I see a protest; dozens of black plastic tents slung low between the trees, with men and women engaged in nothing beneath the cypresses and oaks. This was late in the afternoon, and I was wandering the city trying to find a hostel, so I didn´t pay much thought to it. This is South America, these things happen.

The next day I walked back through the Plaza, in no particular hurry. I saw men crowded around a stool, waiting to get a haircut. I saw women hidden in the triangular pup tents, pounding corn. A couple police officers sit in the shade, comparing batons. There are no banners. No literature or graffiti. This isn´t a protest at all - these are squatters, living apart from the swirl of business around them, in the heart of downtown. I see a section of concrete pulled up, filled with water, surrounded by children beating the stains out of shirts. I break for lunch myself just to get out of the sun.

I head to the Lido Bar, a diner across from the Pantheon of Heroes, one of Paraguay´s many, many monuments to its disastrous wars. Paraguayan food is delicious, if a bit odd - not nearly enough potatoes or corn to truly be South American. I started with sopa paraguaya; not a soup at all, but a cornbread with layers of cheese and onions, fried. It´s dense and tasty. The Lido Bar has to be one of my favorite restaurants in South America, and one of the few true diners on this continent. I guess I take for granted how American the diner really is - all bustle, ¨How´s it going, darlin´?¨greasy menus, staring into your cuppa at 3am. South America has cafes and comedores, but give me a diner - or give me death!

Well, the Lido had it, the American thing. (It´s a Peace Corps favorite, apparently.) All the waitresses are short, homely, and squat, obese actually, except for the one - and there´s always one - the skinny one who is just too skinny, too quiet, and too dour. They all wear these hideous striped orange and yellow nurse´s uniforms so snugly cut that they no longer seem like clothes being worn but an intrinsic piece of the body itself; an exoskeleton of starched cotton. Suffice to say, they were perfect.

I move on to a catfish empanada. The fans try to keep pace with the humidity in the afternoon. I pick at the remains of my cornbread, pushing aside the crumbs to fit my catfish onto one plate, staring across the street at the honor guard at the Pantheon sweat in sheets, and I start to think Paraguay is more like some lost South American Dixie - in spirit, if nothing else.

A bus streaks by, heading to the bus terminal.

Out of Time on the 4th of July

2007-07-15T18:30:00.000-05:00

South Americans seem much more proud of specific dates than in America - we have fireworks and hotdogs and baseball on the 4th of July, but nearly every Argentine town has a Ave. 9 de Julio or a plaza or something. There must have been an entire cottage industry churning out busts of San Martin or O´Higgins or Bolivar, because every city, even the smallest pueblo, has something to honor the liberadores. America´s had too many wars to get that excited over the Revolution, but since it was my first 4th abroad, alone, I decided to spend it in style at the Jesuit reduccion Trinidad, a UNESCO World Heritage Site about two hours north of Encarnacion in the rolling hills of eastern Paraguay.

[A little history: After the initial conquests of South America, huge sections of the continent remained largely ignored by the Spanish Crown because they lacked, well, things worth conquering. In these areas, the religious orders became the de facto government presence and, as long as things remained calm, were free to do as they pleased. In the Rio de la Plata, the Jesuits took the warring, semi-nomadic tribes of the delta and organized them around mission towns, or reducciones, scattered throughout the region. Souls were saved, cultures smashed, etc.

Well, this worked fine for about three centuries. But then the Spanish Crown decided the Jesuits had too much power (which was probably true) and kicked them all out, burned down the missions, and gave away the rights to native labor to political cronies and big landowners.

And that was the last time the native peoples of South America were ever mistreated. The End.]

One thing I´ve noticed about South Americans is how helpful they are. You ask them a question, and you´ll always get an answer; even if they don´t know, they´ll always send you somewhere. Maybe it´s shameful to not have any answers, to say ¨I don´t know.¨I was walking around Encarnacion trying to catch a colectivo, and everyone told me a different place. The police officers told me the colectivo didn´t exist, no, never - what day is it? - no, not today, no. I saw my hostelkeeper, and she wasn´t sure where the bus stopped, but that there was one, somewhere. She also told me to adjust my watch an hour; Paraguay and Argentina are in different time zones - who knew.

Despite her encouragement, I just about gave up. It was nearly two, the ruins were an hour away, and they closed at five. ¨Some Fourth,¨ I thought, and with nothing better to do, I went to an Internet cafe to catch up on my email.

I sat there, languidly typing, disinterested in life. Something wasn´t right about the day - I had just given up my plans and a distant part of my mind kept rolling, rebelling against the actions of the rest. Its synapses kept firing. My eyes burned, my stomach churned; I could hear the minute hand turn, each click from the clock. The clock. Something´s not right. The clock...something´s not right...with the clock. Something´s not right with my clock.

The woman was right: Paraguay is in a different time zone than Argentina, and my watch had been set to Argentina time. Well, wouldn´t you know it, but Paraguay is an hour behind Argentina, not an hour ahead. So it wasn´t two in the afternoon, it was barely noon, and I still had the day, the Fourth, Independence Day.

An hour later, I´m on the non-existent colectivo, having just walked out to the highway and asking every bus that went by. Paraguay is a very flat country, with only occasional red outcroppings of rocks as hills - more like small monoliths than anything. The ground is a very bright red color, a lush color, and the uncultivated fields are thick with palms and vines, brush still green in the depths of winter. We pass through small towns, we pick up people at lonely paradas and drop them off by the side of the road where only a couple tire tracks snaking through the grass shows that somewhere, behind the trees and vines, is a home. At times we pass brush on fire, being burned to clear a field. It was a bright and sunny day.

I was dropped off by the side of the road myself, by myself.

It´s not often you get a UNESCO World Heritage Site to yourself, but I did. I guess I was the first visitor all day, the first English-speaker in a month, and the first American in several. The day could not have been better.

The ruins themselves were impressive and, having lived in Peru, I know ruins.

Trinidad was once the home for five thousand Guarani and their Jesuit overlords, with dormitories and workshops, orchards and graveyards, and all religious buildings the priests could think to build. The main plaza is about four hundred feet square, with the red brick arcades of the workshops flanking either side. None of the buildings have roofs, though most are in pretty good shape, good enough to see the remains of ornament.

The highlight of the site is, as you might expect, the cathedral. It must have been an unbelievably impressive building, a hundred foot high Romanesque church perched on a hill at the edge of civilization, clad in gold, with a three piece golden altar to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The gold´s all gone now, long gone, melted after the church was burned and the Jesuits expelled. I sat across from the pulpit, in the choir. In the dying afternoon, the light slants across the walls of a once dark and holy place, revealing the chipping rock of another man´s time and another time´s faith. I felt something inside, in the choir in the sun; a sort of resigned respect for the ferocity of time - how nothing, not even faith, can overtake time.

It was a beautiful day and very quiet on the hill. At night, I thought about the Fourth, the fireworks and hotdogs back at home, and the few stone saints sitting smashed in the apse on the hill, all growing less distinct, worn, day by day.

Udon on the Parana

2007-07-09T10:28:00.000-05:00

Back south again on a four hour bus to Posadas, which I knew wasn´t going to be four hours when I saw the ticket taker bring three DVDs onboard. At least the volume was low and the road smooth as the dense jungle of the far northeast gave way to a rolling landscape of hills and farms of Misiones Province.

I got in late to Posadas (thanks to The Devil Wears Prada) and stood for a few minutes trying to orient myself, being very touristy with my bag and my Lonely Planet under a streetlight as everyone else hopped on and off the local buses. A local couple, Tamara and Marco, put me out of my misery by pointing me in the right direction. They were both very nice and very Argentinian, and were really excited to show me around Posadas; in short, they were much more helpful in their hometown than I am in my own.

Besides eating an ice cream cone, some temperamental showers, and a street protest by mate farmers, not much happened in the couple days I was in Posadas. The city is well designed and very pedestrian friendly, with a lengthy costanera boardwalk down the bluffs by the Parana, and some new ritzy mansions to the northwest, but, as far as cities go, it´s all nothing much to speak of. So, I left, over the bridge to Paraguay.

Paraguay is, as you can imagine, a little off the beaten path for Americans and, pretty much, for everyone else. Someone at the consulate told me that the Republic gives out fewer than 2000 tourist visas to Americans each year (certainly not helped by Paraguay´s slogan: ¨Paraguay: You have to feel it.¨) It´s most famous author once called it ¨an island surrounded by land¨- all the Argentines said it was cheap, dirty, and poor.

Our bus broke down right after immigration on the far side of the bridge. Soldiers with rusting AK-47s directed people onto later buses. Hello, Paraguay!

By sheer luck I got off the bus right near my hostel, ¨The German Hostel¨run, naturally, by a thin Asian woman. Encarnacion, the only city of any size in southern Paraguay, did a thriving business in selling Argentines tax-free goods until Argentina one-upped them by imploding its own economy in 2001.

Encarnacion is divided in half by a steep bluff, cutting the hectic shabby commercial district off from the sculpted plazas up the hill. For a border town, it is quite pleasant. The highlight of the city - at least in my opinion - is Hiroshima, a Japanese cultural center\restaurant with the best udon I´ve ever had. I suppose it feels a bit strange to be an American sitting in Paraguay eating Japanese food, but such is the world we live in. The next day, July 4th, I headed north.

Currents, Rapids, & Falls

2007-07-04T21:14:00.000-05:00

Iguazu was the coldest it has ever been - so I was told - and for a few nights it did seem less than the tropical getaway I had imagines. Back in December, Jeff Warren whined incessantly about how hot it was at Iguazu, how he almost had to wear shorts, how his moonlit champagne dinner with Alex Dadok was nearly ruined. So when I arrived in the depths of winter and had to wear my coat at night, I was mildly disappointed. My shorts remained packed away deep in my bag.

The only person at the hostel when I arrived was a Kiwi, mid-forties, who claimed to have been a grade school teacher many years ago. He seemed like a decent enough guy, excepted the entire time I was there he was either high, or drunk and high, or on cocaine or something. I was watching Rambo II on TV, and he walked in and started shouting, 'Is this the Boca game? Boca! Boca! Is this Boca game?' 'Uh, no, it's a movie, it's Rambo...'

With the cold, I packed up for my trip to the falls - long-sleeve shirt, coat, hiking socks; I was prepared. Naturally, as is always the case in these things, as I stood on the bus to the park, the clouds parted and glorious tropical sunshine poured down on the green hillsides. The air heated, the sky was a brilliant blue, and I dutifully tucked my coat under my arm, where it remained the rest of the day.

The park itself is amazingly well organized, well signed, and just generally a joy to visit. There are two main sections to the falls themselves and I went first to the cluster of flat-faced cascades nearer to the entrance, saving the star attraction - The Throat of the Devil - for the afternoon.

The river flows slowly south, widening into something more like a rolling lake than a river, divided by small islands into faster flowing channels, always moving placidly to the sea. At a certain point the land simply falls away, and the water follows it in a series of mammoth falls, marked more by their abruptness than their height or volume. There are indeed higher falls, and larger falls, but Iguazu has something special, something spectacular that makes it a jewel of nature and not just a mildly pleasing natural place.

The upper circuit is a series of catwalks along the rims of the falls, arranged to give as many photogenic views as possibly. The view from the top is amazing; perched hundreds above the brackish Parana, the eye just can´t take in all the little details of beauty - the falls wide and tall, the rainbows and mists, the jungle trees and in the distance, climbing hundreds of feet in the air, the giant plume of watery smoke rising out of the Garganta del Diablo. Truly, Iguazu is one of those places where it really is hard to take a bad picture

Strangely, I often found myself looking at where the water was coming from, the slow streams running cool through the forest and - in some strange way - was more impressed that a small babbling stream could turn itself into something beautiful so quickly.

The lower circuit and the Isla San Martin gave a different perspective, from the base of the falls, and I spent a good amount of time shielding my camera from the sprays. One of the outlooks is perched on a ledge maybe twenty feet from a raging wall of water. As the day got hotter, I let myself enjoy the free shower.

By the late afternoon, I headed on a little tram to the Big Deal, the Garganta del Diablo, the living postcard. It´s a pretty good walk out to it, probably half a mile, crossing over the river heading towards the other falls, over some islands, out to the middle of the river. That´s maybe the strangest part about the Garganta, that it sits by itself in the river, a sudden hole in the shimmering calm of a tropical meander. The Garganta is, as best I can figure, a sort of submerged box canyon only a few hundred feet wide that the river simply collapses into in a titanic rush. It is impressive, for sure.

I found myself oddly depressed at the Garganta for some reason, probably a combination of dehydration and exhaustion. There was some so final, so terrifying about the falls, like looking into some loud oblivion, that I couldn´t stand to look at them for too long.

Upstream, the river widens, presenting new channels and paths for the water to take, and for miles it rolls along south, long and lazy and content. I paid close attention to the water above the rim, to the way it is pulled to the edge, slowly, endlessly; to the small eddys that hold promise but dissolve away as the little streams advance, gaining momentum, mixing with others, rounding rocks, becoming great torrents - green and white foamed rivers-in-rivers - and rushing off the first cataract onto a long low ledge, pausing briefly, and then - All the water in the river will take those falls and pass beyond into a calmer world. I took the bus back to town, bought myself a steak, and ate my supper.

Ida Y Vuelta Y Ida Tambien

2007-06-28T13:55:00.000-05:00

I wandered out of the Callao Subte station down Viamonte, looking for the Paraguayan consulate, pausing every few blocks to reorient myself with my crumbling map. I was alone, as usual, and as I then knew I would be for the next month and a half. No one would be coming down to South America to meet me and, with no one to tell me better, I scrapped Brazil (and its 120 dollar reciprocity fee) and decided to go for broke on the dusty trail through the Chaco, into the heart of South America.

You'd think I'd be depressed at all of this; the flimsy hints of plans I had were still plans, and to abandon them stung just a little. But as I was standing in the Paraguayan consulate waiting for my visa, it all sort of crystallized in my mind, this new idea that for almost two months I can make my own life on the road, staying where it's worth staying, seeing what's worth seeing, and dictating the pace, the timing, of everything. I had nothing to wait for, nothing to look forward to - only now, only the present, me and the road.

At the same time, a Argentinian kid, probably seventeen, came into the consulate and bribed the visa official with seventeen hundred dollar bills. No words were exchanged. In fact, the Paraguayans wouldn't take anything but American bills - not Argentine pesos, not their own Paraguayan guarani. Such is the world.

When I arrived in Buenos Aires, there were four other people in my room, including Caroline's replacement, Stuart, a fastidious Mexican, a Brazilian I didn't see much, and a goofy-looking Frenchman. All, other than Stuart who is stuck looking for an apartment, were replaced by two British youths, both straight out of officer training. They were British, very British, and referred to each other by their last names like the sub-villains in Diamonds are Forever. "Mr. Fitch, see to it we bring the key back to the innkeeper." "Right-o, Mr. MacArthur."

They navigated the city with their military compass, taking bearings at street corners. Such is the world.

So I left Buenos Aires heading north on the long slow bus ride to Iguazu Falls. I think we changed a tire in the middle of the night but I was asleep. I woke up at about ten in the morning, stepped off the bus - three miles from Paraguay, two miles from Brazil, all by myself.

In The Land of Thin Women

2007-06-27T14:33:00.000-05:00

I bought seven donuts in the airport in Santiago, Dunkin´Donuts, with the Chilean change in my pocket, and dutifully carried my white box across the continent, into a taxi, into my hostel and onto my bed. A week ago, the day after I landed, I finished off the last two - manjar cremes - and every meal since then has been almost infinitely better. I have the steak - it´s delicious. I try the pasta - perfect. The pizza? Not New Haven thin, but rich and flavorful. Add some cheap wine from the west, and it´s a wonderful thing. Buen provecho!

Though it´s a beautiful city, it´s not a sightseers´city in the same way London or Washington DC or New York are filled with unmissable monuments. Buenos Aires is a city to wander through and appreciate as a functioning aesthetic object in itself, a monument to histories past and present. In the last week I´ve probably walked a hundred miles from neighborhood to neighborhood, and I only think I understand the surface of the things that I´ve seen.

I went to the Botanical Gardens the other day and just watched people go by the other side of the fence, trying to detect a pattern or a theme. Argentine women are beautiful, dark-haired, large dark eyes, with thin noses that stretch down their face to lips that are just slightly pursed and drawn-in. Many of them are quite thin and fashionable, and walk with long strides. Argentine men are much like Italian men, and can be quite handsome, but nearly all have terrible haircuts that spoil their look.

I met Caroline repeatedly in the short time she was here, and though she was leaving, I never saw her cry, which is impressive, because emotions run high in Latin America. I felt a little bit like a ghost in the background of her last days and Stuart´s (Caroline´s replacement) first days in Buenos Aires, but I couldn´t have expected much more. After all, she was the last American I saw in Lima a month ago, so I guess it´s always about balance.

Boca Juniors, the major soccer team in Buenos Aires, won the Copa Libertadores, the South American club cup, and people celebrated loudly. There were elections over the weekend, and Mauricio Macri (the owner of Boca Juniors) was elected mayor, and people celebrated loudly.

The city has a good amount of graffiti, most of it simple tags or political phrases. My favorite: ¨Dirigibles.¨Just dirigibles.

I bought a watch today, so I must be ready to travel. I´ve set it to Subte time.

Go a-roamin´

2007-06-23T11:11:00.000-05:00

The cold chased us north, off of Chiloe, back up the coast to Valdivia, an industrial town on a placid river. The weather was bad though, still cold and intermittently rainy, and we spent most of our time hunkered in the unheatable confines of our hostel. After a night and half of this, Jeff and Alex headed east, to Bariloche, leaving me behind to wait for my bus to Santiago. With a handshake, it was over, and another bit of the old life finished itself. Always with a handshake. My bus wasn´t until ten at night, but it was only ten in the morning, so I had a long lonesome day to spend in shuttered Valdivia. It was Sunday and through custom rather than faith, most of the businesses were idle, closed, and otherwise unwelcoming. Though the weather stayed sunny, the temperature kept dropping in the unheated terminal and I paced back and forth, taking exactly two minutes to shuffle by the kiosks and counters, the bathroom and the door. I had two dollars to spend, two days worth of stubble, and knew no one within an ever-increasing distance. Suffice to say, I had become a hobo.

I had wisely spent all my money the night before, the final dinner of the organized trip, on a delicious meaty burger of some quality. So, as I paced every two minutes, I mentally organized my finances. I needed a degree of food, a few victuals, so I walked to the local market and bought a kilo of bread, a Chilean variety, a hard biscuit-like round loaf.

Had I been anywhere else but Valdivia, in the swamps of the Panatal or Lima or anywhere, the day would have passed with ease. But it kept getting colder, and you just can't lay about in the cold with nothing to do but think about the cold as it creeps around your wrists and ankles. I spent almost all of my money on coffee and internet.

Around four, as things looked most bleak, I simply paid my small fare and read a book in a bathroom stall, fully clothed, just to be in a more tightly enclosed structure.

As night fell and an icy fog rolled in off the river, and the pace of the buses increased, I ate my bread with the secret jar of peanut butter I have more closely guarded than any other possession in my possession. It was delicious, and briefly made me wish for warmer days in the States, away from hostels and hard bread and difficult travels.

Back to Santiago for the third time, and it was marginally warmer. The sad-eyed girl who worked my hostel helped me call Aerolineas Argentinas, but left me on my own when the woman at the other end spoke English. Sort of.

I tried speaking in Spanish, but she'd answer in English, so I'd respond in English as well, to which she would respond back in Spanish. She asked for my reservation code, which I tried to spell in Spanish. Understanding the names of letters in any language is difficult through a difficult medium, and for the life of me I couldn't think of Spanish words that started with any letter of my code.

A distant voice spoke through the receiver: `Sir, are you speaking in Spanish or English.`
I replied, weakly, `Both, I'm...I'm switching back and forth.'

I am a man without a country, without a friend, without language, alone at the end of the world. I made it to Buenos Aires alright.

On the Islands

2007-06-18T18:54:00.000-05:00

The straight south of Puerto Montt was calm and mirror-like, cold and still in the early morning sun. We boarded a bus, which boarded a ferry, for the brief trip to Chiloe Island, a huge low landmass off of Patagonia. We planned to go to the national park on the west side of the island, maybe not that day, but later that week. This would be our first real stop, our first few days not in preparation or worry; just relaxation amongst the rolling hills of the far south.

It took us four hours to get to Chonchi, a ten street fishing village tucked in one of the many bays and inlets of Chiloe. The island of Chiloe is famous for having a unique architecture, one adapted to the harsh weather off the Pacific. The main church, which had rough-hew logs as buttresses, is a luminous yellow, with wood shingles on the walls, and a bright blue dome. It reminded me of the distant Russian Orthodox churches of Alaska, sitting on some lonely island out in the Aleutians. Many houses use very warm and bright colors on Chiloe, and it really does work to make the place a little less dreary.

Our hostelkeeper was a Canadian, Charles, late 50s, who apparently has spent most of his life moving from place to place, living in Indonesia, spending time in Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, all sorts of places. Well, now´he´s settled in Chonchi, running his hostel and mussel farm, generally being a regular guy. For an internationalist, he has fairly conservative politics- he offered pretty effusive praise for Pinochet, which is a little rare these days.

Anyway, Charles told us about a pirate fort (or, more accurately, an anti-pirate fort) just a few bays over. When Jeff´s eyes lit up, and the little sail loving child inside him stirred, I knew we were going to end up going. Sort of a mistake.

The tide was in, so we couldn´t walk along the beach (which would have been a three hour hike) so we instead walked in giant directional vectors, up the highway, down the highway, down to the beach, back up through some hedges, over a fence, through a cow pasture. We walked. By about hour four we were, maybe, halfway there.

We eventually found the beach, and things looked hopeful. Around a small bend, we come across a river, a deep, frigid, fairly fast moving river emptying directly into the bay. At this point we have three choices:
1. Give up and turn around.
2. Strip and wade across, hoping the tide will be out when we come back.
3. Hire an Indian guide.

Alexander goes first, carrying his clothing. Jeff goes next, and for reasons only he can explain, goes naked. This is a man who won´t wear shorts, but will stand around naked in a stream in Chile. I go last and, through sheer skill, manage to keep my boxers pretty dry. The water was indeed icy, but not enough to stop men on a mission.

So we walked. Though farmland, beautiful land with sheep and cows, friendly dogs, clucking hens. It was very pastoral to walk through, really, much better than I expected.

Well, we walked until we found out we were still miles from this fort. Then we quit. It felt pretty good. We hitched a ride back into town with some salmon farmers, blasting along roads it took us hours to follow. Charles cooked us a pot of mussels and we went to sleep.

The Southead

2007-06-14T18:55:00.001-05:00

Back on the road, back heading south towards the lands of fog and ice, snow and sail. Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego - these are names that resonate with remoteness and adventure. Unfortunately, to get there, you have to go through Chillon.

Chillon is a one horse town in the middle of the fertile but boring part of middle Chile, a desolate wet farm town whose only claim to fame is being leveled repeatedly by earthquakes. We wandered for three hours around its small downtown, nearly missing the few malls, the tattered market, the German but not really German restaurants. Eventually, after a day or so, as I waited for the overnight bus to Puerto Montt, I found a strange Zen about Chillon, its complete and total normalness, its utter sameness with thousands of small towns in thousands of small places. A lot of people go traveling to see the sights, to experience an ersatz uniqueness honed by decades of tourists´buses- But in Chillon, I saw the authentic Chile, just hundreds of people living their typical lives.

That isn´t to say I didn´t want to get the hell out of there. The night bus to Puerto Montt was uneventful, generally quiet and generally warm.

Ten hours to Puerto Montt. We were now over seventeen hours south of Santiago, and I saw frost on puddles in the shade. The city looked like a nice town on the edge of something rough, built with rough woods, everything wet and cold. What little skyline exists is totally dwarfed by the seemingly endless horizon to the south, an immense bay dotted with rusting ships pointed into the wind. The downtown is clear and sculpted, but beyond that, along streets radiating back up into the hills and cliffs, the wood homes and small businesses of the city simply crowd together, trying to warm themselves off the frentic energy of the locals.

Puerto Montt is like Anchorage, or whatever I imagine Anchorage to be like in my mind.

Legends of the Fall came on TV in our hostel. The next day we headed south, onto the water, to the big island of Chiloe.

Plan C from Outer Talca

2007-06-01T10:51:00.001-05:00

Santiago is about as modern as it gets in South America, from the tops of the highrises scraping smog to the inflation-adjusted prices of everything from hot dogs to cab fares. Other than wearing a coat in June and speaking Spanish, Santiago might as well be Los Angeles or Seattle or Boston - everything is slick, new, and Chileans are proud of it. Yet everywhere there are signs that all is not quite right in the city, that there are chinks in the Gucci armour. I saw a few bums, and graffiti, but nothing like Lima´s onslaught of poverty´s poverty. Maybe it´s just sour pisco grapes from Peru, to believe that no country could put it all together the way Chile has.

There was some debate as to what city Santiago really resembled. It´s definitely first world, or maybe a pastiche of the developed world. Whatever- it was expensive. We rented our car and got out of town.

Santiago, the only real city in Chile, bleeds down its valley and out along the highways, down Route Five to the south, past farms and fruit processors, vineyards and new developments on either side of the thoroughly-modern road. Route Five runs all the way to Patagonia, maybe beyond, and it was a straight shot to the rest of our vacation. A good day of driving later, we stopped in Talca for the night.

Talca is the Columbus Ohio of Chile, a decently-sized university town with a few parks and well-lit streets and nothing really going on. We parked out truck, threw all our bags in the cab, and dined on fresh fish.

When we exited the restaurant, everything went to hell. Our truck´s doors were open, the locks drilled out (can you really do that on a modern car?) A quick tally revealed only one thing missing: Jeff´s computer bag. The thief, passing up the radio, the ten other bags in the car, and the bottle of wine on the drivers´ seat stole a broken Mac with login passwords, a Belgian keyboard, and no charger. Also a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. Bummer.

So the police arrived, eight of them, all olive drab in clothing and demeanor, asking if we´d been drinking and telling us we just gave away our possessions by parking where we did. The local security guard said they had a night watchman, but he gets off at nine. Typical.

Eventually, after some discussion later - I´m a sworn witness in Chile - Jeff read the official police report aloud. Holding a ballpoint, he scanned the words, making sure it reasonably comported with reality. The computer model number was wrong, so Jeff scratched it out. The chief shouted out, grabbing the Bic, and ripping the sheet from Jeff´s hands. Jeff, only barely remembering that he just tampered with official documentation, swung his hand, in a half-backhand, half-fist at the carbinero´s arm, giving his a punch. Alex, Dave, and I tensed up and started to slink away - maybe we could run for it. The officer took it well, but asked us to follow him to our hostel.

He ended up being a fairly relaxed guy, making fun of his two lackeys for never having left Talca, and trying to bum American cigarettes from us. Since we aren´t GIs in post-war Europe, we didn´t have any. I gave up my Macanudo, my victory cigar, instead. My sister had given me the cigar at graduation, so it had some meaning, but everything passes away. All possessions are temporary on the road.

The cops, sniffing their cigars, told us about a bar, the Witches Three Bar, and that we should go there.They were going, we should too. So we started walking away from the river, back into town, looking for this bar. We asked people to give us directions, but everyone in town kept telling us they didn´t know where this place was, but if they did, it would be down this street.We waked up to a guy and his girlfriend, and he only smiled and shook his head. Eventually, we ran into some other cops and they pointed us straight there.

The townspeople weren´t being difficult, just tactful: the Witches Three bar was a strip club, probably a brothel, with pudgy girls in blacklit white flirting with loud men in sweaters.We all had beers, looked nervous, and left.

This all was less than 24 hours into Chile, and we were already on Plan C. We drove back to Santiago, past the fruit factories, into tunnels, out of tunnels, back to square one.

Goodbye Love, Goodbye Lima

2007-06-01T10:50:00.000-05:00

Two days before we were supposed to leave, 183 Victor Larco Hererra hosted the party to end all parties, not in its size but in our need to find new homes for a variety of furniture, tools, brooms, bottles, and the assorted detritus of ten months of failed and halfhearted projects. Everyone we knew showed up; some stayed longer than was necessary. All in all, good cheer and good feelings began our roadtrip.

The Irish girls arrived first, lovers of fine hats and difficult slang, followed by Alex Dadok, Fulbright fellows, hangers-on, Bruceperu people and a dozen other flunkies and vagabonds. It was mostly Americans (plus Diego) and we had might be called an American Party, with American music, American drinking, and angry yelling in American voices.

At some point Alex White sally-ed out and went to sleep. This he denies, but it is well-known. I write it here.

Anyway, there were others: girls in puffy sleeves, blondes sleeping under tables, machetes, Caroline representing for Fran who had to go get a job, a whole apartment run amok.

Things looked promising, but feelings can be deceiving.

The next day, as Dave and Alex and Jeff sat mapping days on our fancy driving plan to Peru, I went to get a sandwich and some fresh air. By the time I got back, everything had changed. ´The combi wasn´t going to make it´ it was declared, ´we don´t have time,´ ´what if it breaks down?´, ´how will it all work out?´ ´How much would it be to fly?´

To be honest, I was disappointed to leave our plan behind, sell the car, and fly to Chile. Anyone can fly, maybe I just have the romance of the road. But I understand I have three months to see what I want, not three weeks, so I should be more flexible. Goodbye combi: you were a fine beast and we never gave you a chance to succeed.

Another ´what could have been´ on top of all the others.

I landed in Santiago, into the brisk midnight, and I put on my coat. South, south, south, forever south.

Como Poems Integral Este As Unto

2007-05-29T21:01:00.000-05:00

There is only one day left in my Peruvian life, and I'm sad to see it go. From June 1 on, I'm a ramblin' man - my only friend, the road - and I'll ramble as best I can throughout this fine, fine land. But for now, as if college never really does end, I'm in the middle of packing up my belongings, selling my own bed, and generally reducing my possessions to what I can carry on my back. Here is the short list of objects that will supposedly sustain me through the end of winter:

Red framepack
Green backpack
Sleeping bag + sleeping pad
Pair of aviator sunglasses
Two hats (both Andean)
Sweater (black)
Pair of long underwear
Ex-Army wool field shirt
Ex-Army raincoat
Winter coat (olive drab)
Underwear (11 pairs, various colors)
T-Shirts (9)
Socks (three pair)
Shoes (three pair)
Pencils (seven)
Books:
Underworld - Don DeLillo
Two Years Before the Mast - Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Collection of Short Stories - Various
Sloop of War - Alexander Kent
Bottle of Dewar's Scotch Whisky
Jar of peanut butter
Machete (No joke.)

What could I have forgotten? Almost everything we come in contact with in our day-to-day lives is so beautifully specialized as to be inconsequential. Is life to be frittered away with lemon zesters and lint rollers? A good pair of shoes, a clean pair of pants, and a cotton shirt; a young man could do worse in life.

You Ain't Woman Enough To Take My Man

2007-05-19T22:29:00.000-05:00

Last night, and for the first time in a long while, we hit the town on a Friday night. A friend of Alex's inexplicably arrived in Peru, so we met him, his friend (a Yalie,) and his friend's boarding school roommate for dinner in Barranco, the poetic crumbling capital of lovers' sighs. Dinner was followed by drinks, and by midnight all seemed lost. You could read it on everyone's face - it was the time of night when most give up and retreat to the constant comfort of a made bed. But Jeff and Alex and I fought on, and when our friends the Irish arrived, all turned for the better. The three Irish women have names, to be sure, but are so completely alien to my English tongue that they remain part of a collective. Anyway, they were drunk.

But, when Irish eyes are smiling, Peruvians play good music. Our bar was a run down brick room that Jeff believed to be a jazz club. It wasn't, but they played American music and seemed, dare I say, legitimately cool. When the DJ switched to Britpop, Alex and I did our best to adjust. (Jeff was so many sheets to the wind it didn't matter.) We failed to remember the chorus to Blur's "Boys and Girls." We didn't know a single word of a Pulp song. I don't know if they played Oasis or not, but it wouldn't be a bad guess.

In a year in Peru, I've seen very few hipsters, if any. Lima is, in many ways, the Omaha of South America, a capital without cultural capital, seemingly two steps behind the times. But after this bar - I don't know - maybe even sleepy foggy Lima is changing.

Also, on the wall was a poster of a couple of river otters frolicking in the Amazon with the caption "Lobos del Rio - Madre de Dios." Alex and I kept turning to each other and - with mock seriousness - literally translating the poster: "River Wolves....Mother of God."Spanish seems to have a unique difficulty describing marine mammals: otters = "river wolves" seals = "ocean wolves." Do they not have otters in Spain?

On Property

2007-04-14T00:24:00.000-05:00

Money is useless to me sitting in a bank. Consequently, I have spent all of my savings to buy a quarter share of a late 1980s Volkswagon Vanagon from a professional potter in Chosica. She is a fine beast, the pride of the combi fleet, and with any luck she'll take us 'round Cape Horn come winter.

I'm Living, I'm Happy, & I'm Free

2007-03-01T21:40:00.000-05:00

The dry crunch of crumbled pavement and sand; it's the sound that bends through the reflected sunlight and it tells me I'm back in the desert. In Peru, being in the desert isn't difficult since it doesn't rain, not here, not anywhere along the coast from Mancora to Antofagasta, not for two thousand miles of burnt, brown, barren soil and salt.

And now the sky is raining down sheets of light in the late afternoon, cracking the ground, putting a last bit of heat into Huacachina's dusty roofs, the budget hostels and shuttered resorts, the aimless Europeans sunning themselves on thin white towels by the pool. Somewhere far above, the long lines of clouds have spaced themselves from east to west like pink-hued ripples from a sun about to drop into the Pacific. I shake some sand off my shoe, and the sun falls without a sound.

There is no world beyond Huacachina, just more desert crossed by strips of road in all directions.

I should mention one other event while we were in Huacachina: we took a dune buggy tour, out into the vast and terrifying wilderness. After sand boarding, we raced west to catch the sunset over dune and dale to the edge of a ridge. There, slightly burnt, Jeff fell on his knees, then on his back, moaning and acting rabid. The German tourists muttered to themselves, wondering if we were on drugs. Alex and I kept focusing on the colors of the sunset, while Jeff lay prostrate on the sand.

And then, as the Nikons clicked away in the growing twilight, a ringing. There, in the middle of hundred foot high dunes, there as far away from anything as anyone can be, sitting quietly staring at the dimming corona, Jeff got a phone call. In that bit of nature, it was somehow fitting. Absurd, but fitting.

A Day at the Beach / A Night behind the Camera

2007-02-01T14:21:00.000-05:00

When I first came to Lima, at the tail end of the coastal winter, the city was wrapped in a constant fog, a garua, that formed an unchanging grey backdrop over the tops of the buildings. Spring was similar, with the fog lightened only by a diffuse brightness slipping through the sky. But now it's summer, my first summer without a birthday to start the celebration, and everyday the light burns through my opaque plastic walls to wake me up in a sweat. I'm probably becoming chronically dehydrated, but you know what they say, "don't throw stones if you live in plastic houses."

So it is summer, and Jeff and I went to the beach. It's supposedly the hottest summer in years, though it's probably in the high 80s - which is warm, but not exactly Death Valley Days. Though there are playas right here in Miraflores, we decided to hitch a ride to the south and a little pleasuredome called Asia, the richest and swankiest resort on the entire Peruvian coast. We loaded up our towels and headed to the bus station.

Asia is about an hour south of the city, down the lonely Pan-American past long empty stretches of arid nothingness. The beach doesn't seem to change considerably in quality, but every few kilometers is another resort, or a club, or something with a wall and a billboard covering the scrub between the highway and the ocean. But Asia is a different beast, an exclusive exclave of Lima's aristocracy sitting in the southern sun, and the bus rolled right up to it.

Unfortunately, Jeff and I didn't get off our bus. We stayed on, until after the bright lights and big boards of Asia had receded into the distance. We alerted the driver, and he stopped long enough to kick us out onto the pavement in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing there, nothing, just dirt and sand and the brittle remnants of grass by the side of the road. Another fine mess.

We ended up in Asia a little while later, and the town (if it can be called that) is nothing more than a single unpaved street flanked by white-painted beach homes and a giant outdoor mall. Hidden behind a gate - and an armed guard - the mall sprawls out like anything you'd find in Orange County, filled with the same selection of high- and higher-end stores, each built in a bizarre, post-modern, Gehry-on-the-cheap style. There are luminous cubes selling flat-screens. There are leggy blondes in mini-skirts trying to get me to fly LAN Chile. There are Crate & Barrel clones selling the decorated accessories of some anonymous, or even fictional, ethnic group to wide-brimmed housewives. Several famous Lima restaurants have outposts here; the mall is Lima in miniature, the Lima of Miraflores and San Isidro, of ostentatious displays of wealth in a very poor country. Jeff and I remarked that the mall reminded us of a stage, or a set, with its ersatz urbanism trying to hide the barren mountains, the empty fields, on the other side of the highway. Fairly disgusted, we continued on towards the beach.

Walking in the opposite direction along the main road were dozens of young women, all toweling their hair, all wearing the androgynous rough-cloth smock of a Peruvian maid. We asked them what they were doing. They said protesting for human rights. It turns out, if we hadn't gotten off the bus in Asia + 10km, Jeff and I would have seen these women walk down to the water's edge, strip out of their costumes, and dive into the cool blue waters of the Pacific. If only all protests could be so refreshing.

These women were protesting the right of maids to enjoy the beach at Asia - which is not private - whenever they want. Currently, all maids (which basically gets expanded to anyone too dark or too poor) cannot be on the beach unless they are working, and cannot go into the water before 6pm. This rule, enforced by who knows, is just part of the great expanse of Peruvian racism.

It isn't like I've never encountered racism before, either at Yale or in Southern California, but the openness with which it is practiced in Peru is shocking. Por ejemplo: clubs in Miraflores have bouncers at the door, but I've never been asked for ID. No one is ever asked for ID. Their job is to turn away anyone who "doesn't belong," the cholos, the perjorative to describe anyone darker or poorer or just lower class than you. White people in Miraflores cholar the middle class, who in turn cholar the people out in the shanty towns. Heck, even they cholar the people still up in the mountains or down in the jungle. Everyone knows their place.

(Also, racial caricatures are perfectly acceptable. We have a bag of "Negrito" brand charcoal with a logo that hasn't been seen on an American product in a hundred years. It's a Sambo, a no-shame-about-it Sambo, and I'm horrified what it says about Peru. My favorite product that could never be brought to the States is at D'onofrio, the Baskin Robbins-equivalent. Up on the board above all the flavors are little sundaes, each shaped like something goofy, like an elephant or a cannon or something. But number 23 is the "Chinito," a scoop of vanilla with a Fu Manchu, a conical hat, and slanted eyes. Yikes.)

I got burned, but the beach is nice, with a giant monolith two miles offshore as a crude approximation of Catalina. Eventually, the sun went down and Jeff and I went home.
________________________________________________________________

In other news, our office had a little movie-making competition, and this is my submission. I did it three days, and is pretty much self-explanatory.

Go Here!

Bonus: At The Sore Thumb Dance

2007-01-24T17:13:00.000-05:00

The first sunrise of the year was bright and clear, full of lucky yellows and reds climbing high above Cuzco. I didn't see the dawn - for the first time since Thursday - but Jeff did, inexplicably flying back to Lima at seven on the first, leaving Sarah and I to dawdle away the day looking for souvenirs and vegan lunches. Then came the night and, somehow, everything came together to make my trip.

It all started with Andrew Pastor, that transplanted Angeleno, suggesting we all go crosstown to some sort of concert; "one with dancing." I was suspicious, having avoided most gringo-y things, but without a better plan I trusted Andrew to lead us well. After a brief dinner, we headed to the outskirts of the city.

As we stepped out of the cab, I quickly realized this would be no Andean minstrel show: this was a serious locals-only event, and we weren't locals. Outside a high-walled concert ground, several thousand people milled about, pushing towards the door, hawking sodas and candy, and generally not moving much at all. On the other side of the wall, the top peaks of a great white tent could be seen, and through that tent and over that wall came the muffled and distorted sound of music: what kind of music, I couldn't say.

We didn't have tickets, and the line at the booth stretched around the block. Andrew suggested we scalp some tickets, which I wasn't initially thrilled about since I didn't want to pay that much money at the end of my trip. As it turned out, the scalper value of a ticket was still two times the face value...but that face value was only ten soles, so we did the deal, turned 180 degrees, and gave our ticket to the man at the door.

The venue was an open-air field, like a fairground, dominated by an enormous dancefloor beneath a tattered, greying white tent. A stage had a strange faux-Incan stone backdrop, a few laser lights, a struggling fog machine, and a blaring 'Cusquena' sign. But the real show was on the floor, with several thousand drunken Peruvians boogying down to the strange exotic sounds of huayno, the Andean pop that is both ubiquitous and incomprehensible.

I've never seen so many people, such a variety of people, so happy in one location. Whole families, grandparents, toddlers, were lifting their feet, arranged in loose circles, some around babies wrapped in blankets lying on the ground. The huayno beat is a galloping tinging rhythm of harps and drums, chanting and rechanting, a genre that is basically unheard outside the Andes, and thus exerts almost no cultural pressure on music around the world. Like much of Cuzco, huayno exists, to a certain degree, a world apart. If you can find me a London grime DJ spinning Anita Santivanez, color me impressed.

Anita herself was on stage, and the crowd was going wild. Men and women and children moved in the particular Andean dance for the huayno, a sort of manic shuffle between feet with a light bounce of the knees, girls holding both their hands out for boys to hold and sway. Thousands of people danced this way, boys spinning girls, girls spinning boys, whole masses of people swirling around each other and the runners holding Cusquena making their way through the crowd. Andrew, Andrew's Peruvian friend, Sarah, and I worked our way towards the center of the tent and started to dance.

At this point, I should mention that we were, without question or exaggeration, the only white people in the crowd. [Also, for the first time, I had a completely unobstructed view of a concert. Where's the Peruvian Paul McLaughlin?] There, standing in the center of the floor in two sweaters and coat, awkwardly shimmying, holding hands with a red-head, people looked at us like we were, well, the only white people in the room. I've never felt so out of place, but I felt completely welcomed, as everyone was too amazed by the spectacle - or too drunk - to care. Two girls even stole Andrew and I away for a few dances. "Otis, my man!"

Anita, one of two headliners in the daylong festival, wore a beautiful but bizarre dress, a sort of colonial Spanish outfit with every detail stretched into caricature. The skirt didn't just fall away from the body, or sit on some sort of hoopskirt, but formed a rigid shelf extending from her hips then down in a bell to her knees. This is, apparently, the costume of the huayno singer, and is meant to be especially flashy.

The backing band is a show unto itself, encompassing an unimaginable assortment of traditional and modern instruments: at least two Andean harps, one European harp, an electric bass guitar, a set of congas, a couple other percussionists, and a set of ultra-cheesy 80s drum synth pads. A couple guys just dance around stage, and there may have been superfluous girls in bikinis too. Huayno performance has a set pattern, with a male singer pumping up the crowd, egging the female singer on, shouting random words, etc. The song often ends in the female singer giving shout-outs to the various districts of whatever city she's in. The band, depending on its mood, then continues the song on indefinitely, jam-band style, so that nothing really ends or begins at all. Nevertheless, the crowd moved more furiously every time the song seemed to change, or applauded wildly when Anita called out their neighborhood.

And so it was. I was there, in that crowd of drunk Peruvians, dancing for hours upon hours, being looked at and looking back, stripped to a single shirt, thinking about the last four days and everything it brought and everything it took. Life can be a grind, a little machine that takes minutes and hours and crushes them into a fine sand that just, well, blows away. But sometimes, and not usually, life can be a something singularly wonderful.

To understand this fully, here's Sonia Morales (the other headliner) singing her heart out. Note the Lima district shout-outs towards the end.

Also, there's a Carl Sandburg poem I read once that expresses something similar:

Happiness (1916)
I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

End of the Year: Pt. 4 - Alone, Forgotten, and Out of Time

2007-01-15T19:05:00.000-05:00

And as the last hour of the year crept across the clock face of the Cuzco Cathedral, the steady movement of the minute hand drove the crowd into a state of celebratory inhumanity, each tick unleashing waves of cheers and counter-cheers from the bundled masses in the church's shadow. Jeff had pushed his way into the closest market, and as he jockeyed for the last box of Gato Negro, Sarah and I watched the growing madness in the plaza; nearly ten thousand people jumbled and swayed, setting off firecrackers, throwing confetti, drinking, yelling, all at once but never at the same time. It was 11.20 when we broke open the wine and, dodging the endless taxis around the corner, slipped into the plaza.
Cuzco, despite being in a tropical summer, is still two miles high, and I wore a hat, a sweater and a jacket, but not yellow underwear. Andrew had explained to us that wearing yellow underwear, specifically panties, brings prosperity - at least in Cuzco. There are other traditions with less clear meanings: walking outside at midnight carrying a briefcase of fake money, lighting piles of garbage on fire, candlelit family conferences, etc. As of late, I'm still unsure what my green boxers will bring me.
Making slow, single-file progress through the crowd, we attempted to reach the fountain opposite the cathedral in the center of the plaza. What had been a largely empty park in the afternoon, filled with a few ambulantes and tired tourists, now pulsed with bodies packed too tightly, facing no particular direction, crowded around bottles and cans or waving across the plaza, each carrying massive fireworks of every size and volume. Holding each other's hand in the crowd, we tried to get to the center, only to be repulsed by immovable groups, or redirected by the waves of people turning away from a mis-thrown firecracker. Roman candles haphazardly flew through the air, over our heads, into the crowd, bursting and burning on the ground. It was like a party and a war zone had merged into one swirling, exploding, drunken mass and we were heading for the flickering heart of it.

At one point we reached the edge of a large circle of people, each tossing fireworks into their center; some would explode and rattle windows, some would just shoot flames or smoke or sparkle, others would hiss past people's legs. We turned to go around, towards the fountain, but I was stopped by a kindly old Andean woman, who just smiled and tossed firecrackers at my feet. We retreated back across the plaza and turned towards the cathedral. It was 11.59.
At the same time, somewhere in the north, Diego sat sixty seconds from glory on the beach, Alex counted down with a rediscovered twang, the cat pounced on a piece of paper in our empty Lima apartment, and my camera was stolen. Ten seconds to midnight, memories taken from me with a supple wrist.

I knew it happened. I saw who did it. I don't think I've ever been the victim of a crime before, except when someone took my coat at Smith and wandered into the Northampton night, and even then some woman found everything on her lawn the next day. My grief lasted until 2006 had burned its last second, for then the great hands of the cathedral hugged, and the Cuzco sky erupted in flame, a streaking, whizzing, bursting fire for 2007.
After the initial shocks had reverberated through the city, a police cruiser started making its way around one side of the plaza, directing great groups of people around its path. I thought the party was over, or at least being contained, but the masses began trailing the cruiser, soon forming a great swirl of humanity around the plaza, with people running in staggered lines, or linking arms to rapidly skip down the street. The police were acting as a pace car of sorts, and, having nothing better to do, we all joined in.

As we walked, fireworks rained down from balconies, and drunken Brits with yellow underwear on their heads darted in indecipherable circles. As we passed by the cathedral, where the more reasonable Cusquenos had gathered with their families, many sharply dressed men and women frowned at the spectacle before them, of the morose American sipping wine with a gringa and chino. They may have frowned, but I didn't mind. After all, it was 2007, and I had nothing left to lose.

End of the Year: Pt. 3 - In the Dense Shadow

2007-01-10T20:17:00.000-05:00

As we head north, the valley closes around us, surrounding our train with dark cliffs streaked with jagged lines of rough, sloughing stone. Sarah is asleep, or half-asleep, in the seat next to me as we slowly wind our way up the Urubamba, past rows of corn, past unknown villages, past everything I've left behind in Cuzco on the last day of the year. For a third day we were up at dawn, this time to catch the train to Aguas Calientes, the gateway city to Machu Picchu and, despite Sarah's example, the first switchbacks leading out of town do little to calm my restless left foot, tap-tapping away in harmony with the quiet monotony of the clickety-clack.

The color palette in the Urubamba is limited but by no means muted: rich jungle hues of every shade of green, thin wispy whites and greys in the clouds, and the roiling browns rushing over the gravel in the river. A bright fog covers the tops of the mountains, extending over the entire valley, reaching down in little tentacles of mist wherever a small stream has carved a notch in the hillside. The high forest trees - great, thin trunks with barely perceptible cones - give way at a train's pace to the lush complicated shapes of the cloud-covered jungle. The walls are closer now (it's becoming darker) and nothing reflects in the forest.
The ridgeline, the river, the sloping canyon - these things give form to the forest, but they are only the outlines of a great green organism devoid of order. The jungle is an incomprehensible landscape, a complete quiet world living by hidden rules. It is a tangled mass of lines and swirls, hanging vines and colored curling leaves, purple-petaled budding blooms. Trunks of trees are interrupted by the branches of another, an intertwined conversation in damp green wood. And everywhere, life - living things, breathing, absorbing, eating, dying, reaching towards the sky, snaking across the ground, doing as Nature in all her providence provides. It all cannot be appreciated or understood, only accepted. No matter what you tell me, what books you buy, what sites you show me, there is nothing that will make sense of that place, nothing in this world, and maybe nothing in the next.
I fell asleep, I believe, but by eleven, we stepped off the train into a light drizzle, into Aguas Calientes.

The city, even more so than Cuzco, exists solely for tourists to eat, sleep, and shop in, so I braced for the worst. But the market stalls are orderly, the streets largely quiet, the hostels freshly painted. Spurious claims of "sabor andino" aside, there isn't much to Aguas Calientes except for the queues and desires of the tourists, and even these come and go with the trains. I pretended to be a student at the information booth - a minor coup - and bought us tickets to the park. Soon we were climbing the hillside, heading up the mountain, straight up the Hiram Bingham Highway.
Machu Picchu disappeared from the world five hundred years ago, retreating back into the mists, each new vine a piece in an endless procession against remembrance. The Spanish never found it, never bothered in fact, as the Incans had already retreated into the high jungle at Vitcos and Vilcabamba to wage their futile wars. In the meantime, the jungle, held back only so well as a force can be repelled, brought Machu Picchu under its eternal anonymity. And so it was, or so it wasn't.

That is, until a blue-blood Bingham followed rumors of wonderful things deeper still. In a light rain he climbed a desolate path through the forest, upwards, to the silent splendor of a lost city - one that had never been lost and never been a city. Hiram Bingham had found it - even if he didn't know what he had found. In typical fashion, a Yale professorship awaited his return.
A harder rain fell on me as I climbed the first steps past the entrance into Machu Picchu. The narrow path is filled with tourists: scruffy backpackers, pressed khaki Kansans, Japanese tours marching in lockstep with their guide, a pair of aimless hippies. It's a sad irony I suppose, that a place famous for being remote can be so accessible to so many people. But what reality can tourism replicate? Should Bingham's tropical solitude be preserved, a city out of time, or is it better to resurrect hundreds of Incan courtesans with poncho-clad Germans clicking away on their Nikons, here and forever? Something about the place, something fundamental to its existence and history is lost with every pair of hopeful eyes, each taking a little more from the landscape.
Machu Picchu's location and architecture, its very concept is impressive in every way possible. The idea that a large mass of people could put so much brute force into a place, a single stone and the way of life it represents, is as astounding and as troubling as it is impressive. Did an Andean peasant ever take a break? And if he did, as he stood there, staring over the edge of the trail leading to the ultimate project of a society on an edge, did he wonder why he bothered at all? But what are we pushing for? What is our collective labor doing if not constructing impermanent monuments to our own acquiescence? Our greatest works will some day be swallowed by a digital jungle, our mummies long since placed in a museum, our loves waiting to be misconstrued by another blue-blood Bingham in over his head. None of these questions are particularly compelling, but in the rain, at 8000 feet, surrounded by an ever-dwindling number of wet tourists, they'll have to do.

By the late afternoon, the rain cleared just enough to let a downpour in. The quiet vistas of mountains and ruins gave way to a melancholy smear of grey and green, my dollar rain jacket started to fail, and Sarah and I left the park.
Three hours of train. Three hours of passing trees, briefly stated villages, failing light. We dipped down from the cloud forest to the humid land below, then onward through dry forest, sparse desert with shrubs like little explosions, straight rows of sweet corn. At dusk most of the tourist got off at some suburb to take the four sol buses back into town. I stayed on, and as the train went up and back through the darkness above Cuzco, past New Year's fires lit too early, I opened the window and just leaned out of it, the toasted blues of early night leading me back to Cuzco, back to everything I left behind on the last day of the year.

End of the Year: Pt. 2 - Up the Urubamba

2007-01-04T16:22:00.001-05:00

Dawn, again, in Cuzco. Up at five am, out by six, Sarah, Andrew, and I set out on the grand tour of all the major Incan sites outside of town, up the Sacred Valley, almost all the way to Macchu Picchu. In the ensuing twelve hours, I saw so many rocks, so precisely stacked, so artfully engineered, it is almost inconceivable. Grabbing my rain slicker and my camera, we stumbled out the door.

Our tour guide was a very pleasant woman named Katie (?) who was the cousin of Andrew's roommate Jose. Her driver - and I didn't learn this until much later - was also Jose's cousin, but that he had never met Katie. [Such are the demographics of the Andes.] A simple, quiet man, he napped in his taxi while we walked around.

We were up early enough to arrive at Sacsaywaman before the control agents did, so we got in for free. In many ways, Sacsaywaman (go ahead, pronounce it like a gringo: "sexy woman") is just as impressive as anything else the Incans built; the stones here are larger, expertly joined, and perfectly finished. The imposing temple fortress of the city of Cuzco, Sacsaywaman towers over the valley as the 'head' on Cuzco's puma cityplan. As was explained to me repeatedly, the Incas had symbols for their three worlds: the condor (for the world of the gods) the puma (for the earth where we live) and the serpent (for the underworld of the soul.) Cuzco, as the center of the world, was designed - literally - to resemble a puma. To be fair, Modernism's response, on the other side of the continent, was to shape Brasilia like a jet airplane.
From the top of the mountain, Cuzco looks lost in time. No building is more than four stories, billboards are discouraged, and all foreign chains have been banned. Every roof shares a ubiquitous red tile - if they have a proper roof at all - and a dirtying attempt at whitewash. As much as I dislike the forces of capitalistic change, of creative destruction, there is something melancholy in a stagnant landscape, in a living museum that's already dead.

{Interesting side note about preservation: Sacsaywaman has a huge Incan festival in late June featuring thousands of dancers and such dancing and such. All the gringos pay big money to sit on the main field, while Peruvians used to be able to picnic on the temples themselves, looking down on the festivities. About five years ago, after years of Peruvians leaving all sorts of Coca-Cola bottles and sandwich wrappers, the park got fed up with cleaning up all the litter, and banned everyone from the temples. Such a globalist irony: tourists enraptured with native ritual, while actual natives are banned for their tourist behavior. Take that, Thomas Friedman!}

Heading up the mountains, we stopped at a holy fountain of Tambomachay. Pretty much everything in Incan architecture is made up of twos and threes. The dualities of the universe are, in order, man/woman, black/white, and convex/concave. Anything in three means the condor/puma/serpent are coming for you. Anyway, girls: if you drink the water you'll have twins. One will probably be convex.
After a little trip around a bend, we came upon the vast and lush Sacred Valley, a fraying green checkered tie around the otherwise rock-strewn Andes. A huge variety of corns and potatoes grow in the shadow of the valley, varying plot to plot, up the hillside, onward past ruins, to the edge of the jungle itself. We stopped at a curve in the mountain road; on the other side of the valley, dozens of abandoned Incan terraces cling to the cliffside, disused for whatever reason, certainly not by law.

We descended the mountain to reach the village of Pisac, the local market town, before venturing up the other side to the archeological park, also known as Pisac, home to more Incan cleverness. We hiked around, across parts of the Inca Trail, over some rocks, around some terraces, up a hill, down a hill, past a throne, and generally without direction. It was bright and clear, and I was carrying my rain jacket. Pisac is very impressive, like a miniature version of Machu Picchu, but by the time we left the tourists had started arriving. Many of them (Italians mostly, though with a blonde in Viking braids) were not happy hiking up the hill. I wasn't happy, Andrew wasn't happy and Sarah dragged behind us all. We roused our driver and headed back to Pisac.

I should mention a typical exchange in the Pisac market:
Obvious tourist to a Peruvian giving her a necklace and change: Gracias, es muy bonita.....hey, wait, I gave you a hundred! Hey!
We just kept walking. Typical.
After a trucha menu and an afternoon rainstorm, we were on the move again, up the valley to Ollantaytambo, high water mark of the Conquista. Only reachable by hundreds of stairs, Ollantaytambo is an imposing mountain fortress with clear views all across the valley; not surprisingly, it was taken without a fight. Manco Inca had retreated from the Sacred Valley to Vilcabamba in the jungle to wage his futile guerrilla war, leaving Ollantaytambo for Pizarro and his armies. Pizarro, content enough with his success, never pursued past Ollanataytambo leaving the other sites to get covered by the jungle. But more on the Indiana Jones stuff later.
If Machu Picchu is a condor, and Cuzco is a puma, then Ollantaytambo is a llama, complete with nuzzling baby llama, set onto the mountainside. The site overlooks a sacred mountain, so sacred the Incas dragged two-ton stones across the valley to construct the buildings, or at least half-complete them. On our way out of town, Andrew and I debated how much it would cost to buy every building in the village.
As the sun began to set we arrived in Chinchero, a middle-of-nowhere town perched on the far side of the mountains at the beginning of the great high desert plains. Though very small, the city boasts an unbelievable church and altar, even as opulent churches and altars go. The entire wood roof of the building, as well as the supporting columns, are covered in intricate Arabesque flowers and vines, painted in natural dyes in the 1600s. The altar, which protects one of four Black Jesus relics in Peru, is all glittering with silver and gold, done in the style of the Cuzco school, the blend of indigenous and European art from the Peruvian Andes of the 17th Century. (No cameras allowed.)

We also encountered our favorite ambulante, a sweet little girl hawking hats:

Girl: Miss, Miss, hats one sol!
Sarah: One sol! Really!
Girl: Yes...one sol...noooo, and four more.
Sarah: No gracias.

Three hours later, Andrew, Sarah, and I meet up with Jeff at a Bolivian empenada stand in el centro. They are delicious, better than those of other South American nations, because the empenada is filled with such juiciness, it just runs down your chin. I fall asleep almost immediately, preparing myself for another 5am wakeup call. Macchu Picchu awaits, on the last day of the year.
(They were singing. Look at me, I'm a Let's Go photographer.)

End of the Year: Pt. 1 - Cuzco, Puma City

2007-01-04T15:29:00.000-05:00

Another 5am taxi to the airport. The drive to the airport alternates between light and dark, speed-bump side streets and neon boulevards, toll booths and the shining teeth of incandescent billboards; nothing in Lima is regularized. The airport wait and the flight were thankfully short. By 7am, we were walking out into the mountain morning.

Andrew Pastor (SM 05) met us at the airport. The man who used to live across the hall from me has been living the dream in Cuzco on Uncle Sam's dime for the last month, having spent his time since August toiling in a village three hours outside of town. A much more adventurous man than I, and not just for eating the dubiously priced lunch menus. Weeks of potatoes and chicha will make a man of anyone, even the only gay Jew in all of Peru.

A little about Cuzco: located deep in the Andes at almost 10,000 feet, Cuzco is the oldest continually occupied city in the Americas, stretching back several thousand years before Christ, (the love/hate symbol of the city's destruction.) It's a strange place, nestled between steep mountains and jagged valleys, but by the mid-1400, Cuzco was the center of the Andean world, the capital of the vast Inkan Empire, and home to several hundred thousand people. Of course, then came the conquistadores conquistadoring across the landscape, imperial buildings were dismantled to make churches, and Lima replaced Cuzco as the capital of the new Viceroyalty of Peru. A bunch of history happened after that, whatever.
But then, they came. First the adventurous, then the wealthy, and finally anyone with enough time and money to find their way south. Cuzco depends on tourism for an unbelievable amount of its economy; one woman said 90% of all jobs in the city are directly or indirectly related to the tourist trade since the small industrial sector collapsed. Hell, even Cusquena beer is made in Arequipa. While a boon to the population in general, tourism brings mixed blessings, as it attracts ambulantes, thieves, and everyone else trying to pry another dollar from your hand. More on this later.
I remember being especially exhausted from being up so early in so high a place. Despite a short jaunt to the main square, I was content to nap for much of the day in Andrew's cold bedroom. Ah, but dinner, glorious dinner! Though a generally mediocre meal, I finally broke through the last barrier to my Peruvian heritage - I ate cuy al horno. And alpaca. In the same meal. Alpaca was pretty delicious, very steak like; I could taste the cuteness. Guinea pig is a whole different experience. First, you're not eating an abstract animal; you're literally eating a small beastie and you know it. Because cuy is a complete guinea pig cut lengthwise, boiled, and roasted in an oven, many details remain: eyes, teeth, a nub of a tail, paws. You can even see the defiant sneer on its little guinea pig face. And, to be honest, it wasn't very good. Maybe I just got a dud, but the meat is a little greasy, very tender, and difficult to obtain.
More important than anything, I added another two meats to my life's rich pageant. No bets on what will be next, but penguins, watch your back.

A New Home for the Holidays

2007-01-02T12:01:00.000-05:00

After returning from Buenos Aires and the sun-drenched pampas, I needed to slow down my personal pace, reflect on five months in Peru, and enjoy the simple pleasure of living in a hand-built home built by my own hand. By then it was mid-December, and Christmas was about to come to Lima.

Christmastime in Lima: what a joy! The radio stations played no carols, I didn't have to look at cartons of eggnog, and the ambulantes on the street switched from cigarettes to wrapping paper. Even the weather cooperated, breaking the last vestiges of spring in a scorching summer. In the meantime, a new plan came together: a year-end trip to Machu Picchu, with the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco my Times Square. Two weeks on vacation, two weeks back preparing for another. December proved to be a disjointed month, split by trips to and from the airport.

Suddenly, the organized little world we have in Lima collapsed. Alex White went home to Atlanta by way of Los Angeles to see his family and have a beer; thousands of gallons of jet fuel to get that first, hoppy drop. In his place, Argenta Price (MC 06) flew to Peru to renew her Argentinian visa. Yes, yes, Argenta is in Argentina. We talked about Reno, Nevada.

Christmas Eve, all of us tucked in our shirts and set off to the other side of Miraflores to Diego's grandmother's house for dinner. (Apparently, grandparents' decor has an international standard.) The Rotaldes are a hilarious bunch, his father making jokes in English, his mother passing me rice, his younger sister acting like a teenager should, and everywhere, more food. First came the turkey, great gobbling beast. I gobbled him, then eyed the yams. At about ten, after I saw evidence of the Rotalde's fine naval tradition, we set off across the town to Christmas dinner number two.

More turkey and rice, and the Garrido Lecca's did their best to be inviting. And then, midnight! Fireworks erupted across the city, the small square of linen came off the baby Jesus, and the entire family tore through various packaging. Diego's grandmother even gave Jeff and me woolly hats, probably just to keep us busy. All the better though; I needed a hat.

The next day, because a tall Nevadan isn't nearly enough to replace Alexander T. White, my old friend Sarah Boughey arrived, bringing good tidings, my copy of A Confederacy of Dunces, and a Nutrageous. Oh, the simple joys.

After a few days of assorted Lima nonsense, with the year winding down, Jeff, Sarah, and I woke up early and flew to Cuzco, city of the Inkas.

Vacation: Pt. 3 - Bodacious Cowboys, Such as Your Friend, Will Never Be Welcome Here.

2006-12-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

Farewell wires, silicon chips, and internal combustion. Goodbye concrete, asphalt, and liquid refreshments; onward to the pampas, onto the plains with the sound of oiled leather.

And with that, we were on the move across Argentina, to the south, past the sprawling suburbs of Buenos Aires, the edges of the great delta, and the first invasions of open grassland. I would have seen them all, but on a night bus to Santa Rosa, with only the occasional streetlight flashing though the dark of the cabin, I had to content myself to a Hollywood throw-away and fitfull sleeping.

Dawn sharpened over Santa Rosa, capital of La Pampa, and the only city of any significance for several hundred miles. The city, pleasant as it is, has little to offer besides low houses, faded paint, and cheap sandwiches; I munched on a fine pollo milanesa watching Dadok bargain for our rental car. I was doing nothing, nothing but wait for morning to turn to midday.

"I can mash potato. I can do the twist. Now tell me baby: do you like it like this?" A supermarket compilation of overplayed 50s classics is the only soundtrack to our southbound truck; the radio draws a blank. We're pushing across the continent to an isolated ridge of red rocks rusting in the chrome-bright sun. With unkicked tires rolling along, a hundred kilometers clicks by in converted units. But, every thirty minutes, do the highways love me?

We turn off the highway onto a gravel road when the sign tells us to; even in the wilderness, signs hold some power. Parque Nacional Lihue Calel, as the cheerful ranger tells us, is empty: "You can check out the museum building, but remember to close the door when you're done." Thousands of acres of Argentine land, ours to claim.
Though beautiful, the park is - at best - starkly beautiful; that is, by the time I left, I had the suspicion that the boundary fence seemed to lean inward, as if whatever desert emanated from Lihue Calel needed to be contained more than protected. Nevertheless, our campground was in the shadow of an intimidating mountain of jagged boulders, over which lay....nothing, the most beautiful nothing in the world.
We climbed about 600 meters in twenty minutes to see the sunset into the pampas, and it didn't disappoint. If only it could have lingered more, the sun melting so, until only the saffron glow lit the way down. Later, I slept in the pickup bed, under thousands of unknown stars, seen between the passing clouds for what felt like the first time.
Two days beneath the sun and the stars, two days with buzzing and creeping interlocutors, two days with iodine water. On our final afternoon, the sky filled with clouds rolling in from the north. Then from the south. Then from the west, a swirling torrent of rain, rain driven horizontal, came to wash away two days worth of footprints.
"They said you was high class; well, that was just a lie." The Toyota Hilux once again rolled through the Argentine version of Baker, Barstow, and Berdoo back to Santa Rosa. There we were met by a cheery, rambling man with a black idling truck, ready to take us two hours north to his estancia. Dadok had been insistent that we spend a night at an estancia, even if it was by far the most expensive part of the trip. Not wanting much of fight I had acquiesced. To be fair, after two days in the desert, the possibility of a fluffy bed, hot food, and showers was enough to tempt me.

The man must be in his seventies - he said he finished at Bowdoin in 1958 - and has lived a colorful life as Eastern European immigrant, ranch baron, and hotelier. He owns vast swaths of the pampas, knows the names of the grasses, and clearly loves his life. His wife, a homely chain-smoking Argentinian woman, is very warm. They have it figured out, boy howdy.

Immediately upon arrival, it's time for lunch. (To explain our subsequent hunger, I should mention that Jeff Warren and Alex White - two former FOOT leaders - led us on POW rations while camping. We ran out of food, which led us to buy disappointing breakfasts at a gas station. I made off the best on that deal: mmm, mini-muffins filled with dulce de leche.) First course was some sort of rolled dough (cornmeal, actually) filled with tuna, served cold. Very strange, even more so when the frosting on top of my portion turned out to be mayonnaise. Then it was time for veal milanesa, dozens of them. I had eight, plus mashed potatoes. Zoltan (a fine European name) kept egging us on, like he was our relative. Then dessert.

Not surprisingly, I took a nap for most of the day. Jeff and Alex White rode horses, I think, while Zoltan took the other two around in his truck. We all gathered before sundown, piled in the truck, and headed out west to the highest hill to watch the sunset over the prairie. Very romantic. A few small cows lowed in the background.
The man himself had turned on the 50s classics, perhaps more appropriately. "Blue moon, you saw me standing alone." We zipped by fence posts in the twilight. "Without a dream in my heart." Dust clouds billow as we turn a corner. "Without a love of my own." The wind resonates across the windowpane.

And then dinner, out, under the stars. This was just pure asada, with nary a vegetable in sight. Cow after cow crossed our plates; tender, juicy, steamy, flame-kissed cows. Behind me, the Platters' pleas rolled across the lawn, "I count the moments, darling, until you're here with me, at last, at twilight time."
The next morning we rushed for the bus out of Santa Rosa, back to Buenos Aires and one last day in the city. Over nine hours I saw the last hints of grasslands, the first trickles of the great delta, and slowly, certainly, the long stretches of urban eternity. An unremarkable day later, LAN takes me home to Lima. Ciao, Argentina, ciao.

Home to Lima. I've been here barely four months but Lima - hectic, sooty, divided, loud, delicious Lima - is my home. To celebrate, we sang a song of worn-in shoes in a worn-out cafe.

Vacation: Pt. 2 - Meet Me, My Love, in Uruguay

2006-12-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

By midday on Sunday, Jeff and Dadok had left for (as we would learn later) a steamy trip into the jungle of Iguazu, leaving us with their assorted gear, no real plan, and only the vaguest of directions. Diego, Alex White, and I wanted to go to Uruguay, not for any real reason, but it was cheap, close, and promised relaxing afternoons at the beach to the East. But by midday on Sunday, we had missed the (relatively) inexpensive ferry across the river, and lacking a tenacious grip on our plan, took a tip from our innkeeper. We gathered our possessions and headed for the train station...

No one can fault us for our ever-evolving scheming: barred from catching the ferry from Buenos Aires, we then planned to take commuter rail to Tigre, an unknown suburb of the city, where we could "hire a boat" - or so the hostel owner told us. The taxi driver to the station claimed the boat would take five hours, a dubious figure but a dangerous one. The police officer we asked said it would take an hour, at maximum. Stuck between these extremes, we huddled together beneath the Victorian spans of the retiro; do we go ahead to Tigre (an hour away) and risk it, or do we wait and take the expensive boat to Montevideo? A slight pause, a small hush, and the answer was simple: Go with the one that could lead to the better story.

Three tickets to Tigre, please.

An uncomfortable hour later, we emerge from the Tigre train station to see...gingerbread pavilions? A distinctly Delft McDonalds? A tree-lined canal with punters? Where the hell are we? Belgium, more or less. We never found out why Tigre looked like the Low Countries, or why the outlying areas looked like Martha's Vineyard swallowed by the jungle, but there, in the wood-paneled ferry terminal, with the rowboats gliding by, the sun at its height, Diego found true love.
She had blue eyes, but they weren't a singular ocean; they were the afternoon sky, bright, transparent, as if you were looking through her, something vast, awesome, and terrifying. There she was: a tight white shirt, tight black slacks, a coiffure dissolving beautifully around her face. I don't remember her being particularly tall, but her posture sent her gliding across the room to a spot not two feet from us, and leaning forward slightly, quietly asked us, "How may I help you?..."

"...because this is the last ferry of the day, and I can't guarantee you a seat."

It was love at first sight.

The other ticket agent - a dark-haired girl with a seductive look but, having only brown eyes, could not be called equal - revealed our latest predicament: the ferry docked outside was the last until 8am the next day, and wasn't going to Colonia (our preferred destination) or Montevideo. It was going to Carmelo, a town we knew nothing about and, from the looks of the '70s travel photos mounted proudly around the terminal, nothing was all there was to know. Oh, and there may not be seats for us on standby. We prepared for a night in Tigre.

But then the love began. Having nothing better to do but talk to these young women, Diego slowly won their hearts. We asked about Tigre. They asked about us. We told them all we knew, and then some lies to keep them talking. Diego had a thousand dinners within those azure eyes, a thousand and one sunrises over the pitched roofs of Tigre, but - like all great and true love - it wasn't to be. There were three seats on the boat, and three of us, and we punched our ticket to Uruguay.

As we went through immigration, Diego turned and shouted, from the bottom of his heart, that he would buy both of the girls chocolates upon his return. And, as if planted by the sour saints themselves, a faceless voice opined "Shhh!" Later, I consoled Diego by saying that somewhere, out in the void, a parallel Diego misses the ferry, stays in Tigre-by-the-sea, and is happy, forever. Small consolation.
Three hours later, I'm standing in the immigration line in Carmelo. To my left, across the river, is nothing but jungle. To my right, empty cinderblock streets leading into the distance. In front of me, an old man is about to have his passport stamped. And, in a scene no doubt repeated thousands of times across America's borders, the passport control agent leans forward, warmly kisses the man on the cheek, and stamps his documents. Welcome to Uruguay! (None of us gets a kiss.)
Carmelo, at least the ten blocks from the river, is deserted. The light, though supplemented by a full moon, is fading, and we have no map, no bus schedule, and no clue where anyone - if there is anyone - is. And then....music. A few notes, reflected off the concrete, then more, then finally words..."You're beautiful.....you're beautiful, it's true....I saw your face, in a crowded place..."

Carmelo, in the four hours I was there, did its best to impress me. After weaving our way around the stage where two men armed with guitars belted out James Blunt, and finding the main square, we waited for the bus to Colonia. Carmelo's square is quite large, with a giant forest tree of some sort in the center, and everyone in town took turns relaxing in the Sunday evening air. But, like nothing on this trip, could even waiting for the bus be a simple exercise. Because then, from behind us, came the noise of drumming, and it was coming towards us.

Naturally, like most of Latin America, Carmelo decided to have an impromptu parade around the square, one featuring hundreds of drummers, flamboyant costumes, old women all in white doing the hully-gully, and pre-pubescent (and one definitely post-pubescent) girls in bikinis shimmying around a man in black face with a top hat. And that was just the first segment.

To be fair, I have no clue if the parade was planned or not. I base my opinion on the long line of cars stuck on the perpendicular streets to the route, patiently waiting for the procession to pass. In the end, our bus (now thirty minutes late) whisked us away to Colonia, where we greeted the next day.

After eating brunch in Colonia, and buying ferry tickets for the next day from the terminal, we took a bus to Montevideo in search of beaches. The plan, vague as it was, called for us to sit on a beach, soak in the sun, drink heavily, and enjoy the good life as only young, tan, drunk men can. But first, we needed to cross the entire nation of Uruguay to reach the blue water of the ocean and the white sands of the ocean's beach.

Uruguay, for as little as everyone knows about it, is quite lovely. It looks like Tuscany, with bright yellow fields of grain waving to the sky. Very beautiful, beautiful enough to make me think of real estate prices in pesos.

Montevideo, where our bus ended up, is beautiful in its own right, much like Buenos Aires but smaller, greener, and quieter. Eventually we decided that if Argentina was once the United States of South America, then Uruguay was Argentina's Canada.

Another Fiat later, we find ourselves on the Rambla de Peru, staring out on the white sands of Montevideo's closest decent beach. It must be nice, I decided, because of the Miami Vice high-rises across the street. Three beer bottles later, I've forgotten my mis-hewn lumber, Alexander has forgotten to apply his sunscreen, and Diego - well, Diego may never forget those eyes.
Twelve hours (and a dozen games of ping-pong later) we're back on the streets find of Colonia waiting for the ferry. Colonia is, and I do not kid, a smuggler's port. Or was, back when there were things to smuggle, and though I didn't fall into a Hardy Boys mystery, we did admire the well-preserved ciudad viejo, which was very postcard friendly. My personal highlight was not the church, the museum, or the bastions but the black-and-white mint condition 1958 Ford Fairlane, the last car I saw before heading out of town.

Again the last passenger on the boat, which was practically empty, we noted that of the eighty or so passengers, a vast majority held American passports. As we neared Buenos Aires, with the first skyscrapers in view, a man and his young sun pressed their faces against the big picture window on the front of the boat:

"Look at the city, do you see the big buildings, son?"
"Yes! Is that where New Jersey is?"
"No son, that's Argentina."

Somewhere a Camden tourism man's heart leapt, and somewhere in Perth Amboy smiles spread uncontrollably, and the Palisades shined in the December winter, but for us - the pampa, and nothing but new sky.

Vacation: Pt. 1 - The City Can't Ever Sleep

2006-12-11T12:26:00.000-05:00

At three in the morning, I showered and shaved in quiet dignity, letting each razor stroke stand for the upcoming week's neglect. My razor (along with my sleeping bag, a majority of my underwear, and anything that required electricity) would be left behind in our apartment, waiting, waiting to be used. For we were going on vacation, and nothing would stop my grizzled, masculine return to Lima.

We landed in Buenos Aires around one in the afternoon and basked in the sunshine searing our skin with its tangible summer. In Peru, summer is still a distant concept, tropical though it is, with Diego's constant promises of "two weeks" starting to ring hollow. After a slow bus ride, we shifted into a taxi and hurtled towards the ocean.
The city, Buenos Aires, second city of Latin America, the Paris of South America, is everything and more. Decaying Napoleonic apartment blocks give way to modern skyscrapers (including Cesar Pelli's newest work that I think he designed on the can) and everywhere the slow creep of tango floating between the Fiats and the avenues. Or, in another way, Buenos Aires is like a middle-aged woman - born in Barcelona, living in New York - buying a second set of pearls in her second-favorite gown. You must go there.

More importantly, everything in Buenos Aires is covered in graffiti, ranging from the political "Down with Bush!" to the social "Nazis = putos" to the bizarre "Kill the monkey!" Even the obelisk on the city's triumphant axis is plastered with signs and slogans; the population of Buenos Aires, the young workers, are very very angry. But, oh, if they only knew what they have that we lack: on-time American movies, trees and seasons, pasta, subways, fashions, and a connection with the modern world. Make that Porteno a Limeno for a day, and we'll see his mettle.Everything is more cultured, more involved, more fashionable in Buenos Aires; suffice to say, I felt like I just got off the Plains Chief in Manhattan direct from Omaha. Lima is a huge city itself, but for all the wrong reasons, and is more like an overgrown provincial center, a necessary city existing for no other reason than to exist. It's not a Cleveland or a Detroit because the population filters in daily from the interior, but it lacks a cache; maybe its more of a Phoenix, a ugly, untidy city in the desert filled with people with nowhere better to go. We checked into our hostel on the edge of downtown and hit the streets.
The humidity coming off the river, and the sunshine, and the pizzerias, and the ever-present pouty glare of the billboard girls made me think, just for a second, I was back in New York. Though we knew nothing of the city (it was, after all, Diego's first trip to a South American nation other than Peru) we were lucky enough to have an amazing guide, Johanny Cruz, a 06 Yalie Alex Dadok half-knew through Davenport. She greeted us off Plaza Libertad, and we headed for the bars.

Johanny Cruz is a quarter-Dominican firebrand burning through Buenos Aires' nightlife. Nightlife may not be entirely accurate because, for a society that eats dinner at 10pm, the clubs don't fill until nearly three, a schedule that left leaves me befuddled still. Anyway, she hadn't slept in three days, and, as best I saw, may never.

That night we felt our first breeze of the good air, the swaying leafy trees, and the swaying, oh-so-good hips of the sauntering Argentine woman. Maybe it was the exhilaration of being on vacation, or the part of town we were in, or the cheap wine, or just our dumb luck, but for the first day in Buenos Aires, we saw nothing but beautiful women - ranging, long-legged, black-haired, fair-skinned women; gold-lined slingbacks outlined by the failing light of the Argentine summer.

Naturally, we fled from Buenos Aires in a day and half. We had seen the sights, the Pink House, the streets, the bars, the pizzas, the women, so we had no choice but to leave. Jeff and Alex Dadok headed to Neuberry Airport to catch their flight to Igazu Falls, leaving Diego, Alex White, and I to find our destiny. Destination: Uruguay!

Also, for my grandmother, here's a picture of the largest synagogue in South America.

Building My Building Pt. 1 - Two Steel Hands On My Wooden Woman

2006-11-12T00:21:00.000-05:00

The decision to build a home on the roof was an easy one, made in between meals when I'm at my most confident. Just a little wood, a little roof, and I've got a little home for my humble, little life. I drew up plans - more for show, so I thought - and though I'm not trained as an architect or an engineer, I figured my experience living in buildings was experience enough for this.

Turns out, there is something to be said for professional knowledge.

My design - unlike Jeff's ashen tower - is much less grandiose but much more complicated. I wanted a futuristic Japanese tea house with a black facade, all made from a combination of wood, plastic, and metal. Problems arose immediately on my first trip to Maestro Ace Home Center, the Peruvian Home Depot equivalent. Wood in Peru has to be imported from Brazil (so that's where the rain forest goes...) and is much more expensive than in the States. Many items, like various cuts of lumber and sizes of metal, simply don't exist. Some sizes of screws are missing, just for fun.
I should take a moment to describe the reason for these buildings in the first place. Our house has three bedrooms, though the double is enormous. Jeff and I are, apparently, bold enough to take advantage of Lima's constant dry weather, relative cheapness of materials, and lack of responsibility. Once we move onto our roof terrace, Alex will slide into Jeff's old single, and our old double will become the new office. Our current office, in the adjoining room, will be given over to classes, our fancy new digital projector, and a nice couch. Wonderful!
Anyway, here's a general list of my problems, each one representing a day's worth of worrying and anger:

No power tools except a drill with a broken chuck.
No screws longer than 1 1/2 inches
No wooden slats longer than 7 feet
No metal flanges
No angle iron
Mis-hewn lumber
Poorly fit pipes
No black paint

I won't deny my culpability in my design's resulting problems. While I stick by my plan, in retrospect, I couldn't manage the hundreds of small and large changes I was making on the fly at the hardware store as my carefully written parts lists were smashed by the hard realities of Peruvian DIY.
Leading up to all of this, I had been making plastic panels, over a hundred of them, out of plastic bags heated with an iron. Though time consuming, the panels are superb things, slightly opaque, and unique like little melted plastic snowflakes. Plus, I didn't burn myself with the iron; my memories are dull but pleasant ones. Stapled to wood slats and connected to aluminum tubes, they made beautiful walls.
The facade, which should have been rather straight forward, almost doomed the whole project. First, the lack of long screws meant I tried to get buy nailing everything together; this worked, briefly. But when Alex and I tilted the half-finished construction upright, it almost collapsed from its own weight. Apparently, you can't nail 2x2s to plywood and expect a reliable 3-d structure. I felt a little like Wile E. Coyote, and it was back to the drawing board.
Four 6x1 planks later, all was well, though my plans had been further altered. You could say architects shouldn't compromise their vision, but I'll trade vision for mechanical stability. From there, it was only a matter of putting up the walls, measuring out fifty nails, and zip-tying the roof to the frame. More to come...

Like our new cat, Renata Comandante Espinosa de la Huaca Catface Mittens.

The Chincha Itch

2006-11-05T18:54:00.000-05:00

[I wrote this a few weeks ago, but forgot to post. I don't have any pictures, so I've included day-to-day scenes. - ed.]

Halloween limped into Lima, spoiling a good holiday for another year. Last year, I remember sulking in a dark coat on the dance floor off Crown Street with an increasingly frustrated girlfriend, watching hungry-eyed seniors look down blouses and past four years of faults. It was the beginning of devilish days in the New Haven chill.

...

"Go on, try it."
In a foreign country, this is an especially dangerous phrase. Alex White, Diego, and I have crossed to the other side of Miraflores to attend a Canadian Halloween party hosted by someone we don't know and may not have met. It's apparently a costume party. I'm in a t-shirt and jeans, so Alex and I head straight to the impromptu bar stuffed with Johnny Walker Red, the standard Peruvian party gift. One bottle catches our eye: it's bigger than a wine bottle, and has the acronym "S.V.S.S." as its only label.

A madman dressed a monk sees us feeling up his bottle and dares us to drink it.
"You know what this means?" We shake our heads. "'Siete Veces Sin Sacarla!" Haha! It's from la selva. Go on, try it."

Some may say I'm adventurous for being in Peru, and I may agree with them. But nothing will convince me to try the unlabeled Peruvian aphrodisiac jungle hooch "Seven Times Without Taking It Out." Alex, already walking with Johnny, took a swig. Results: Inconclusive...

...

Jeffrey Warren was missing, lost on a week-long romance with America and the romantic Americans. Diego, Alex, and I celebrated by rocking the hardest early 90s pop we could find on the office stereo, defiling this hallow jazz space with power chords. The masses were happy.

The center of Afro-Peruvian culture, Chincha is a one-caballo town three hours of south of Lima; a dry dirty place tucked between the ocean and vast tropical deserts. The town itself isn't worth visiting unless you enjoy unpaved roads, litter, and unstopping glare. Beyond all this, tucked on back roads in the vineyards past the highway, is the true sight: dozens of massive haciendas, remnants of faded colonial glory reborn as lavish get-aways for Limenos in the know.

Diego, Alex, two Canadian girls, and I took four uncomfortable hours to get to Chincha (and beyond...) at 11pm on Halloween. The six of us are jammed in a taxi flying down more dirt roads looking for an obscure estate, a sprawling complex hosting an all-night party produced by one of Diego's friends. In exchange for the graphic design work on the invitations, Diego has gotten us all free tickets. For free, it's hard to argue.

Thirty dirty minutes later, we step out of the cab in the middle of nowhere; no lights, no sign, just a high white-washed wall and a gate. A bouncer checks out wristband, and we step through to the other side, a long walkway of similar white walls, with no real end. The architecture is somewhere between sugar plantation and cocaine baron, which was probably the point. And then, around the corner, the first sounds of music and the first chandeliers, wagon wheels and sconces; a chess-board arcade. The home opens up before us with dim lights and rich wood, spilling forth into an inner-courtyard several hundred feet on each side.

The dancefloor is empty, but the sounds of the cajon bring the first pioneering group of girls out. One of Diego's friends explains that the men wait, not to drink up the courage, but because the specific dance is so complex, only the most foolhardy would try to attempt it. Upon further review, I'm not sure these two things are necessarily different.

Nine hours later I'm sitting on the main street of Chincha, my eyes squinting in the rising daylight. A mototaxi goes by, and then another. I'm down to my last sol, and the only breakfast I can afford is a chicken soup at a cheap and dirty luncheonette. Someone finds a spider in the broth, and we stack the bones in the center to be reused throughout the day. We catch the first bus out of town, and I stay awake the whole three hours back, three hours on the Panamerican between the lonely ocean and the endless desert.

When the Power's Out...

2006-10-25T23:05:00.000-05:00

A flash of green, a burst of pink, and a slow hiss of blue dropped over Miraflores. Somewhere an anonymous substation failed spectacularly, throwing its own funeral pyre into the evening sky, leaving only the yellow glow of the city over town. Sitting at my desk, the lights flickered briefly and fizzled. I went up to the roof: San Isidro's lights spilled over the huaca to the north, but my town sat quiet, the few warning lights on distant high-rises blinking slowly.

I thought I had plans tonight, but plans can change.

Thirty-six hours before, I wake up to a commotion coming from the bathroom; never a good sign. Twelve hours before that, Diego's friends held a massive party on our roof for some one's birthday, inviting many swarthy Peruvians and their tight-jeaned girls to mingle aimlessly through the night. The Americans had already failed in going to Oktoberfest in San Borjas - sponsored by Cusquena, no German beers allowed - and were huddled in a corner of our terrace. Instead of meeting new people, Alexander White and I plot the old music switcheroo, replacing the constant stream of lackluster reggaeton with something, anything, that isn't reggaeton. I choose American hip-hop, thinking it will go down smoothly. Alexander chooses two songs that seem to work, then switches to "Sittin' on the Dock of a Bay"; the Peruvians revolt - as they should - and bring back the Atrevetetetetete....
The next morning, our house is a mess. Everything's scuffed and dirty, plastic cups and cigarettes litter our roof, and Diego has placed two phone books on the toilet as a warning. The commotion I only half-heard through my bedroom door seems to have past; I don't ask about the toilet.

By mid-afternoon, curiosity kills this cat. I lift up the phone books to see...a rat? Beady eyes blinking, a small rat shivers in our toilet bowl. Jeff, Alex, and I organize a plan - I will reach in an grab the poor little guy, Alex will take the rat in a bag across the street to the park and release him. Jeff, not known for his love of animals, will document. The results speak for themselves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI2p3sUIjYQ

We gave him some bread and sent him on his way.

Eight hours before the blackout, my parents landed in Lima. The City of Kings is only a stop-over on the way to Cusco for them, but they took advantage of 'their man in Peru.' Seeing them here was strangely familiar; since this is Parents Weekend time anyway, why shouldn't they be here? Other than giving them churros and showing them to the Inca market, nothing much happened during the day. We planned dinner at 8.

After the blackout, I wondered what became of Jeff Warren, a man determined to design his own cake. I later found out he was locked in the shop. The cake emerged unharmed.
A buzzing brought Miraflores down, and a buzzing lifted her back up. With the power restored, I met my parents at the upscale Huaca Pucllana Restuarant, a four-star Peruvian moderne set amongst the flood-lit huaca ruins. The eight of us (my parents, their friends, my coworkers, and me) split some of the finest food I've had in Lima, perhaps ever. Appetizers of Parmesan scallops, beef hearts (anticuchos) yucca frita and ceviche; main courses of lomo saltado, seco, aji de gallina, and baby goat. In total we ran up a bill "something less than 1000 soles" which is a tremendous amount of a money for a young man spending less than 700 a month. Nevertheless, dinner for eight (plus wine) at the nicest restaurant in New York or LA would be several thousand dollars, not anything close to a 1000 soles. Apparently the high-end market in Lima just plateaus; even the rich have their limits.

After cake back at my house, I wished my parents well on their way to Machu Pichu. It's nice to see a friendly face and hear a friendly voice, even for a little bit.

In others news, I made this lampshade:

Ciao, Independencia / I Want a Love I Can See

2006-10-05T19:21:00.000-05:00

No one is optimistic these days, not in the boundless possibilities of the past, not about that future, not about ourselves. Where are the fights to fight? The thousand little challenges of a life worth living? We're a generation like a car pushed downhill; all spinning wheels, stuck in neutral, a driverless car with nowhere to go.

Five months ago, I wore a tie, tucked in my shirt, and got a $140,000 diploma in front of a couple hundred generally disinterested people. Today, I stood on the roof after scraping paint off a door and drank a two dollar beer because we had no water. My diploma collected dust in a closet six thousand miles away. I scraped that door another hour and tossed the bottle in a box with the others.

I'm optimistic these days, in the potential of tomorrow, in my surroundings, in myself. Why shouldn't I be? After weeks of being stuck in a sixth floor closet, we've relocated to a ramshackle house two blocks (and two worlds) away. Suffice to say, I'm now an intercontinental playboy from the wild west, an all-singing all-dancing cavalcade of scuffed shoes and lowdown blues. Let me take you on a brief tour:

Our colonial staircase, very classy.
The Evita Balcony, where I sip my drinks in the afternoon. Don't cry for me, Lima Peru.The office, with Diego #2 working. My computer is camped here indefinitely.My room. Not pictured: large closet, red door.
Like most bachelors straight out of college, we have a music parlor in our home. The upright piano was surprisingly easy to move. The organ is a new acquisition. Also note the suspiciously Buttery-like kitchen arrangement. As best I know, it is an exact copy of the JE Buttery. Our roof terrace after a BBQ for Canadian Thanksgiving. Not pictured: future steamroom.
Our view from the roof, the huaca across the street. The huaca is a giant pre-Incan temple complex in various states of disrepair. Jeff took the tour and said there are a bunch of mummies in the little holes of the huaca, so it's probably haunted too. Not many Limenos care much about the huaca, which is strange, considering if Cahokia was in the middle of Manhattan, Mick Jagger would probably buy it.
Future site of my room, to be built. ETA: Now.
Also, since I know longer live at the intersection of Chiclayo and Independencia, I had to change the name of my blog to the name of my favorite sandwich. What could go wrong?

Expedition: Pt. Three - The Last Lost Love of the Laguna

2006-09-18T17:17:00.000-05:00

I woke up in a start, as the deep recesses of my mind vibrated in alarm. There was a rustling outside the tent, a slight and subtle sound of leaf and leaf, and though Jeff and Alex couldn't hear it deep in their slumber, I knew something was wrong with the sound. Could be robbers - but at 14,000 feet? Cougars, panthers, or jaguars? Rock slide? I remember moving my eyes from left to right and back again in vaudevillian excess, conveying fright as distinctly as possible for no apparent reason. A shadow appeared in the dawn light covering the tent and then - a tongue. And licking. And snorting.

I carefully unzipped the tent door to see a shaggy brown cow tear a twig off the nearest bush. We sat there, staring at each other as I munched breakfast.

The plan was nothing but ambitious: hike up and back to Lake 69, pack up camp, walk down the mountain, find a ride an hour back to Huaraz, catch a night bus to Lima, and be at work Monday morning - all in 18 hours. What could go wrong?

The trail out of the valley was steep and intimidating, creeping along a sheer rock face a thousand feet high. Miles of scrub, damp needles, and granite gave way to barren white rock jumbled by endless slides. And then, at first a reflection, the blue sliver of success. The path flattened, narrowed, then burst forth on top of a boulder. There it was: Lake 69, at ten in the morning.
Nothing seemed of much importance after that.

On the night bus back to Lima, sitting at the front with the low cinderblock homes of Huaraz fading into another dark cold trip south, I wondered what is the point of camping if not to be uncomfortable and unsure, even for just a minute.

Expedition: Pt. Two - Headaches & Heartbreaks

2006-09-18T17:15:00.000-05:00

The first step was a right, pointing east, with the morning sun at my face. We had awoken at the beginning of the valley's dawn, as the first bits of light slipped through the self-imposed fog of the high Cordillera Blanca, to ready ourselves for the day ahead. We hoped to hike the entire trail to Lake 69 that day, a tantalizingly possible feat sitting there in the morning sun. Our path would take us from Cebollapampa through the valley, up over the granite wall into the high mountains and onward through boulders and meadows to the lake. From our campground, the trail stretched twelve miles; a more than respectable distance, with almost a mile in elevation gain. But on that first right, into the sun, it didn't matter.

The sierra of Peru is much like the Sierras of California taken to its fairytale conclusion; everything is steeper, snowier, taller, more transcendent than even those most transcendent of American peaks. The scale of the mountains is staggering, a range absolutely beyond comprehension. Every vista stretches for miles, innumerable waterfalls tumble down endless cliffs, and always, always, more above you. There is no end to the heights. North America has three mountains above 6000m. In our national park, we saw nearly fifty.

By noon, when we stopped for lunch on the switchbacks leading out of the valley, I could feel the altitude coursing through my blood vessels, pounding away at the walls with little ball peen hammers. Cebollapampa, our campground three hours back, is at 12,000 feet and we've only been going up since then. We all popped our pills - available without a prescription, like usual - and took our chances.Though it's midday, we're getting our first taste of hail off the mountain, sometimes falling in complete sunshine, sometimes mixed in with the fog. Halfway up the switchbacks we're treated to a visual reward: a plummeting nine-tier waterfall running off the altiplano. As the image alternates from our left to our right and back again, we debate its height. All agree hail is better than rain.

A few ridges and a few hours later, we clamber over a small boulder and look out on the most surreal valley I could have imagined. I was honestly surprised to see it. A massive plain, over a mile wide and eight miles long, rests between vertical cliffs of granite, some rising to peaks of over twenty thousand feet. The meadow is made up of a dense mat of lichens and mosses, shrubs and sparse tufts of grass, each one a golden firework caught mid-burst. Oxygen is difficult to come by, so Jeff and I take a breather by an old signpost. Our map tells us the good news: there in that field, sitting on that rock, looking at a green poof, we're at 14,600 ft. Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the Lower 48, is 14,505.Without much change, the mood goes grim. We're an unknown distance from the lake, our heads are pounding, light is fading. A sharp wind tumbles down from the mountain, cutting across the plain, chapping our skin and making life just that much more difficult. We're stuck; we can't retreat, we can't stay exposed on the mountainside, and we can't risk the conditions at the lake. It begins to hail. I'm miserable, Jeff's miserable, Alex is going delirious, and the weather is turning against us. A lone French climber passes us - the first person we've seen all day - and she's heading downhill. She points to her head, saying she cannot go on. As she slips beyond the ridge, I see something bright and dull next to my pack. It's a cow vertebra, long since cleaned by the snow. I hold the bone up to the horizon: Oh, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!

After some fruitless debate, we decided to pitch our tent behind a little toe of the mountainside, the only area we can find with any sort of protection from the wind. A few cows saunter over to investigate, and finding no comfort, content themselves on some low bushes. Our bodies floating away on the thin air, we throw in the towel on getting to the top. It's about two in the afternoon, and we're napping the day away...

Expedition: Pt. One - To Huaraz, with love

2006-09-18T17:11:00.000-05:00

For the record, I wanted to go to Ica, the southern sunny city of pisco sours and rolling dunes. Instead, I'm sitting in a Cruz del Sur bus sailing through the night to Huaraz, the hiking capital of the Peruvian Andes, trying to get comfortable in a seat designed specifically (and poorly) for sitting. We're due to arrive at dawn, but I can't sleep; the tires, the lights, the slick hum of new pavement, the dull glow from the bus rattle through my mind. A waning moon slips a little light through the clouds, and every little crack and fissure in the rock reflects it into my blurry eyes. In the moonlight, it's like coasting through clouds rendered in negative...

Dawn breaks over Huaraz in a wave, the sky rushing through greys and purples and hundreds of hues of orange and rose. Jeff, Alex Dadok (another Yalie burning through Fullbright's money) and I are waiting outside a hostel, hoping to ditch our packs for the day. We are planning to spend the day seeing the sights and catching our breath; Huaraz, even tucked in an Andean valley, is over twice the height of Denver. We spend the day at the Cafe Andino, an American-run rooftop retreat for hikers complete with flirtatious waitresses and disheveled Canadians.

After picking up our packs, we catch a cab out to Yungay, the nearest city of any size to Huascaran, the highest mountain in Peru, fourth highest in South America, and over a half-mile taller than Mt. McKinley. Yungay will always have a difficult relationship to the mountains; in 1970, an 8.0 earthquake dislodged a slab of rock and ice a half mile wide, a half mile tall, and a mile long that fell vertically off Huascaran onto the city, killing thirty thousand. Only the tops of the plaza's palm trees remain. The city was rebuilt a few kilometers down the highway.

Our taxi drops up off at the main corner of Yungay, where dozens of white Toyota Corolla station wagons idle. After a brief bit of negotiation, we hop in one of the many and peel out up the dirt road to the mountains. A minute or two in, our driver - a slick looking fellow named John - mentions that we're not in a taxi but a colectivo. The subtle difference, as I quickly discover, is a colectivo will stop at nothing to fill itself with tired looking Peruvian farmers and a taxi, well, won't. Twenty minutes into a gut-wrenching spin up the hillside, we've picked up six passengers, three of whom are in a pile in the trunk next to our packs. Despite the load, John is flooring his Toyota along the gravel road, breaking only to navigate a hairpin; I spend the entire ride with my hand on the door handle, watching rocks fall off the road thousands of feet to the valley floor. The drive takes over an hour, an hour I am grateful to see pass by. John promises to return in three days to pick us up.

Our campsite, Cebollapampa, is deserted. A small river splits the meadow in two, and a few lazing burros stand quietly, occasionally munching some turf. Light is fading in the valley, and though I can see the imposing faces of cliffs on all sides, the distances and heights are all vague. Huascaran is lost in the fog of its own creation, the tropical sun sending up huge clouds of mist that obscure the peak. We set up our tent, eat a hearty meal of mashed potatoes, and go to sleep.

I awoke at dawn, to see this:
On the other side, we see this:
We hoisted our packs and hit the trail.

Skulls & Gold: Christianity's Finest

2006-09-13T15:43:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday, Jeff and I gave in and did the tourist trip to Lima Centro, the original downtown laid out by Francisco Pizarro and home to the city's main historical centers. We got a ride to the Plaza San Martin, named after the liberator of Peru, and started walking north towards the Plaza de Armas.

A little history from a history major: the Spaniards who arrived in Peru in the 1530s were some of the most hardened fighters in Europe, veterans honed in combat against the Moors across the Iberian peninsula. They were not, by any stretch of the imagination, professional architects. So when Pizarro moved his colonial capital from Cajamarca to the banks of the Rio Rimac in 1535, he drew on his personal background in sketching out his new city, favoring a design based on the fort-town of Santa Fe, a military camp built by the Christians at the siege of Granada in 1491. The strict rectilinear grid, broken only by a main square, was a complete departure from the unplanned, convoluted streets of medieval Europe and, in broadest terms, marked western civilization's first comprehensive city plan since the Romans. With the passage of the Laws of the Indies in 1580s, Pizarro's design became the official town plan in the Spanish Empire, the basis for thousands of pueblos stretching from California to Tierra del Fuego; not bad for an illiterate thug.

Anyway, a lengthy pedestrian street connects the Plaza San Martin to the Plaza de Armas and serves as the main shopping area in the district. You can buy or sell anything you want, though the liberal use of 'the hard sell' can be fairly unnerving. I barely tolerate that tactic in English, let alone in frantic Spanish.

The Plaza de Armas is immense, flanked on one side by the ornate cathedral, on another by the presidential mansion, and the third by Lima's City Hall. It's all very colonial, and quite beautiful and orderly and Baroque. As we walked past the Plaza towards the Church of San Francisco, I saw a bunch of kids doing skateboard tricks off a hand-made grind pipe on the sidewalk in front of the Presidential Mansion. Now that's punk rock.

The Church of San Francisco isn't too exciting from the outside, though the massive flocks of pigeons show the true devotion to the memory of Francis of Assisi. After a few minutes wait, we began our tour of the monastery.

The ornate wooden ceiling of the main staircase, though missing several large chunks from assorted earthquakes, started a fundamental theme in our tour: Christianity is a giant gaudy expression of a faith that either conquers continents or heals the sick. Though trying to follow the example of Jesus or St. Francis, every nook in the monastery is covered in a precious metal pulled out of Potosi by mita-bound slaves. Such is empire.

The end of the tour was a trip through the catacombs, which were quite spacious but not particularly tall, much to Jeff's difficulty. The first series of rooms had nothing in them, though Jeff and I debated how a roof made of bricks could support itself without any sort of vaulting. Apparently 27,000 people were buried under this one monastery, a number I doubted until we reached the Giant Skull Pits of Doom! In adjacent rooms are two cylindrical holes in the floor, each about thirty feet wide, filled with thousands of skeletons. The top layer was a frighteningly beautiful swirl of skulls and femurs doing an eternal Busby Berkeley in the dark.

What was more shocking was the noticeable pieces of litter thrown in with the skulls. I'm not a strong adherent to Christianity, but even I won't risk 27,000 Limenos haunting me for the rest of my life. Como se dice "boo!'?

On Class

2006-09-03T09:37:00.001-05:00

Winter has begun its slow slide into spring here; every once in awhile a little bit of blue will sneak into the sky and things will start to cast shadows. Enticed by the promise of sun, Jeff, Diego, and I joined with the few other people we know to head for Cieneguilla, a resort valley about an hour to the east of Lima. By some fluke of meteorology, Cieneguilla is fog-free year round, making this desert oasis a Palm Springs for Lima's upper class.

Out beyond the city, there is the most horrifying desert imaginable; dead walls of dust and rock roll into hills on either side of the two-lane road east. Nothing can scrape together an existence out there. I thought we were in a mine, like one of those big operations out in Utah where no one cares about the landscape as long as bauxite prices are high. Despite the fog, Lima is the driest major city in the world; goodness, I believe it.

Cieneguilla is really more of a single street than a town, a long straight burn through the valley flanked on either side by lawn clubs and country retreats. We got off our combi at our club, Mesa de Piedra, hidden behind a King-Kong gate. Consisting of a large outdoor restaurant, a pool, and an expanse of lawn, Mesa de Piedra was completely empty; it was 9.30am after all.

I spent the day lounging on the grass, harassing the two llamas near the entrance and otherwise doing nothing. Strangely, every so often a troupe of dancers would come out to the restaurant and do native dancing which, from what I saw, involves skipping a few times, stopping, and yelling, "Yah!' Very strange. Maybe the strangest part was that this wasn't some tourist enclave, this was a place for Limenos to relax in the winter. It's like if you went to the Balboa Bay Club and a bunch of Southerners came out and did a hoedown.

I should note the band, whose four-hour set of traditional Andean music included such traditional favorites as "Hotel California" and "El Condor Pasa." Nothing like late-70s rock on the pan flute.

An hour back to Lima, I took a shower and took a nap. The sun takes a lot out of a man, even in the winter.

Yo No Soy Marinero, Soy Capitan

2006-09-03T09:37:00.000-05:00

Wednesday was a national holiday honoring Santa Rosa de Lima, the first saint born in the New World and patron of Peru. Rosa is famous for her extreme penitence, from sleeping on a bed of broken glass, to wearing a crown of iron thorns, to rubbing acid on her face to avoid men's leering eyes. What better way to honor this woman than to cut work and go fishing.

Jeff and Diego Bandini insisted we go to Tip-Top, a bizarrely American restaurant in Miraflores for breakfast. First, I should mention Jeff's fascination with Tip-Top comes, in my opinion, from the mistaken impression that Tip-Top is some sort of Peruvian Denny's; a Denny's without breakfast, without all-night hours, and without the Moons Over My Hammy. I had a clasico burger, which in Peru apparently means a burger with relish and mustard and nothing else. It was good, I guess, but certainly no Denny's.

A short taxi ride to Chorrillos later, we're standing on a pier haggling rates with Julian, captain of the mighty Marina, a 15 foot fishing skiff. After some half-hearted bargaining, we hop into the Marina and paddle towards the jetty. Actually, Julian is doing all the paddling, and though the sea is fairly flat, Jeff nervously offers anti-nausea medication. I decline, but Diego and Jeff refuse to take any chances.

We're fishing with lengths of line wrapped around small blocks of wood because poles are for losers. Our bait, our live bait, are small creatures collected from the beach called muymuy, and though I'm told they are crabs, muymuy look exactly like giant fleas. Whatever they are, they don't entice the fish, as we go empty-handed by the jetty. Technically, I caught several rocks, so our time didn't go to waste.

I should mention that Diego got seasick and returned his Tip-Top to the briny deep, Jeff felt uneasy, and I was fine. So far, gastroesophageal junction 1, Lima 0.

Like usual, we all came back to Miraflores and sipped espressos by Parque Kennedy on a Wednesday afternoon. Self-employment sometimes works.

Puede Ser

2006-08-23T19:33:00.000-05:00

The plan was simple: take a combi out to the slum of Villa Salvador, pick up a giant bamboo pencil, convince a taxi driver to let us strap a four meter bamboo pencil to the top of his car, and get back to Miraflores. The pencil had been commissioned by the NGO we've been working with to advertise a big campaign for free education for all Peruvian children and all morning we'd been hearing reports from volunteers saying that our pencil had been sitting, unloved, on the street waiting for someone to go get it. Jeff and I had our plan, so we hit the road...after Jeff had a slice of cake.

Leaving the cafe, we picked up a combi right on Av. Angamos, a major east-west thoroughfare about two blocks from our apartment. Combis, I should mention, are not taxis nor any other form of transportation found in America. They are small vans with set routes along the major streets but no set stops. You wave them down like a taxi, and drivers will careen towards you with frightening skill. Working with the driver is another man, sort of like a conductor, who yells out the route, looks for passengers, handles the money, etc. There are thousands of combis in Lima, and every major corner is overrun with calls of "Bajo aca! Dale! Dale! Dale!" I'm amazed at the combis efficiency; hardly thirty seconds goes by without one driving by and you can get almost anywhere in the city for S/1, or about $.30.

After about forty minutes, we arrive in Villa Salvador, a hard town sprawling from organized Lima out to the nuevo invasion, the shantytowns at the very outskirts. Our combi had decided to take a slightly different route than usual, winding down side streets past schools and churches and the flecking paint of election murals, until it became abundantly clear we were nowhere near the pencil. Jeff and I exited at a corner that, visually, could have been any corner in the entire city. Villa Salvador's major streets, hugely wide semi-paved boulevards, all look exactly alike. The real problem with disorientation comes, I believe, from Lima's weather. The light in Lima comes as an ethereal glow in the sky, a muted desert sun trickling through a near-constant layer of clouds. Because nothing casts a shadow, orienting yourself relative to a cardinal direction is nearly impossible during the day. After a short debate, Jeff and I hopped in a three-wheeled mototaxi "El Gato II" and sped south.

Within five minutes, the mototaxi pulled to an abrupt stop - in the middle of the street - to tell us his machine could not take us where we wanted to go. Apparently, after realizing how far we needed to go, he simply gave up and directed us to the nearest combi.

Most combis are fairly quiet, but this particular one had a sense of style. There I was, trying to see if we were heading the correct way, an old Incan woman staring me down across the car, as the combi flew through the slums to an unbelievably loud and tinny "True" by Spandau Ballet.

Finally, after twenty minutes of "El mejor de los 80s," we turn the corner to see our giant pencil sitting on the roadside, a true thing of beauty. Another twenty minutes later, I'm stuffed in the back of a taxi with the pencil as we blast down the Via Expressa back to Miraflores. As proof of their urban conditions, no Limenos so much as raise an eyebrow at a Jew, a Korean, and a giant paper-and-bamboo pencil on the highway.

Our mission complete, we celebrate over a home-cooked Indian dinner. Delicious!

Views of the City

2006-08-20T22:43:00.000-05:00

Despite being in Peru two entire months, Jeff Warren seems to be fairly unsettled: his room has nothing on the walls and only a few personal effects attempt to fill his closet. His big purchase, an ornate upright piano from the 1920s, deserves to be in an opulent palace's den instead of his minimalist bedroom. My arrival has stirred something with him, and together we have taken the first steps towards accepting this city and this apartment as our home. We bought shelves, bought me a bed, and - most importantly - a water filter for our tap. Lima's drinking water has both E. Coli and arsenic and is not safe for pretty much anyone. Apparently, lots of people here drink it anyway, get sick, and continue on with life....hopefully.

My room itself is fairly small, and has taken on a distinct dorm-room quality with a mish-mash of furniture types, colors, and attempts at organization. Since we live on the sixth floor, and most buildings in the area are only three stories, our apartment enjoys beautiful views south towards the skyscrapers on Ave. Pardo and north towards San Isidro. My view is dominated by the Huaca Pucllana, a pre-Incan temple complex about two blocks northwest of our apartment. If I squint, which is fairly often, I can see archeologists digging at the top of the ridge early in the morning.

Today, the first buds of spring began to bloom. I may declare September 2nd El Dia de la Marmota. Since the sun never shines here until November, instead of watching a woodchuck we'll just eat a cuy.

On Food & Friends

2006-08-20T21:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I accepted Diego's offer to have lunch at his parents' home in Surquillo, a middle-class district about twenty minutes east of Miraflores. We took a combi to his neighborhood, a very nice maze of cul-de-sacs and quiet parks set away from the bussle of the major streets filled with traffic. Next to the gate to his apartment complex, a stray dog lounged on the sidewalk and I petted him, even if every guidebook told me not too. Only suckers get rabies.

Diego's family has a small one floor apartment on the second floor, and after a brief tour we settled down with Diego's mother for a little limonada and lunch. An appetizer of huancaina came first; sliced potatoes in a spicy cold cheese sauce. Next a lomo, a simple steak with mushrooms and rice. For dessert: Peruvians call them panqueque, but it's clearly a crepe. Still, a crepe with a banana and some condensed milk is pretty good, no matter what it's called. Dessert here is an event, and practically every corner in Miraflores has a churro cart selling hot caramel-filled churros, two for S/1 or about $.30. High levels of churro availability will probably keep me sane.

I briefly met Diego's father, an exceedingly happy and energetic man. He was wearing the same white 'Y' baseball hat my father wears.

Afterward lunch, Diego and I drove over to BrucePeru, the NGO both Diego and Jeff have been working with in a big campaign to get free education for Peruvian children. The volunteers there are all wonderful people, each with their own little story: Chris, the physics major from San Diego, seems to be semi-dating a girl here whose name I'm not quite sure of who may or may not be from Finland. Tom - a lanky Cockney - hooks up with a lot of girls by playing the "Tall White Guy" card, something that probably won't work at Fabric. Then there is Kat, a sweet British girl just this side of eighteen with a penchant for cursing at just the right time. These people are our only friends in a city of nine million, and most of them will be leaving at the end of the month.

Salut!

2006-08-20T21:14:00.000-05:00

Five hours into my flight from Houston, I finally have a breakthrough with the girl sitting next to me, a plain Midwestern-looking girl I later learn is, in fact, from the Midwestern Plains. I passed her a glass of water and, seeing the opportunity to avoid watching 'Mean Girls' in Spanish, I engage her in the typically small talk of complete strangers. She tells me her name, her life story, her hopes and fears about teaching at an American school in Lima; useless details about a decently useful life. I forget her name almost immediately and then must feign interest as I try to remember it.

Eventually she asks me where I am from, what my jobs is, and who I was visiting in America. To be mistaken as a Peruvian an hour before landing - even by Sarah Plain and Tall - is a good omen for my bad Spanish.

I wait in Customs for nearly an hour before Diego and Jeff welcome me to Lima, the City of Kings.