First Random Peru Story
So obviously the book didn't make it to press on schedule. Here's a random story I was reminded of the other day:
My first night in Aguascalientes, the little mountain town beneath Macchu Picchu, rumor had it that a big party for people coming back from the hike (in which an epic case of the runs prevented my participation) at a club in town. Although the village, built exclusively for tourism, was so small and isolated that it had no cars, Eli and I managed to get lost searching for the crowd.
We were walking down the street in front of our hotel, trying first to find the club and, failing that, a bar. We were going in the wrong direction for both. As we meandered, we heard a voice from behind us.
"Hey, where's the fuckin' booze around here?"
Enter our new friend, we'll call him Steve, who was visiting from South Carolina. He was a couple of years older than us, but similarly motivated. He tagged along until we reached the end of the town.
In America, it's usually kind of hard to tell when you reach the end of town. This is not the case in Peru. The road ended in a mountain that farts out things more impressive than the entire Rocky Mountain range.
Anyway, as we were about to turn around, two Peruvian girls ran out to drag us into a small bar nearby. The place had an obvious Rasta theme: the bartender had dreads. The customer had dreads. The goddamn lampshades had dreads. I shit you not.
The place was offering three-for-the-price-of-one Cuba Libres, so naturally I perked up. Steve did, too, but more because of the attention showered upon him by girls whose occupation could not be more obvious if they wore a sign with the word "whore" in every Indo-European language. In neon letters.
Anyway, I tossed back my drinks and then finished off one of Eli's. Poor Eli is a tiny kid and couldn't hold his booze. And even when he WAS holding it, he was still jumping up and down yelling, "Hey, look at me dance!"
The girls wanted to know if we wanted to go to a club with them. I didn't care too much one way or the other about THEM, but I understood that there was only one club in town, so our friends were probably there. It turns out that the place was two buildings down from our hotel. We had walked eight blocks in the opposite direction. I'll blame it on the altitude and the coca leaves.
When we got to the club, our hooker friends promptly abandoned us for friendlier prospects. Steve tried to give me many important lessons in life, most of which involved why I should go hit on all the girls in my group. I had already seen what that brought about. Ryan, my roommate, had tried it, and spent the rest of the trip dodging a lynch mob of girls who were surprisingly turned off by horndogginess.
Eventually he left (to go back to his fiancee, no less, who "always falls asleep so early...I want to PARTY, man!" I sat down at a table and watched the dancing.
At this point a fine-looking girl from our group named Kate ran up and sat beside me. Before I could bask in my own pimpness, she started explaining a concern of hers.
Now, I've taken Spanish for eight years. My skills as a translator, thus refined, were finally put to good use: putting into Spanish the sentence, "His penis is hard and he keeps rubbing it up against me!"
I hope I've gotten your attention.
It seems that a Californian gentleman, who had rather eerily been around us quite a bit back in Cuzco, had apparently started dancing with poor Kate that night, and in the course of the grinding had become a touch excited. As a result, of course, Kate got touched by his excitedness as well, and was subsequently freaked out.
At any rate, I gathered I was to be her "creep shelter" until the guy lost interest. He didn't. He sat next to her and asked, I gather, what was wrong; she got him to leave for a moment through some or another feminine wile.
At this point Javier joined us. Javier was a young-ish guy from Lima who the program hires to help with the hike and keeping everything in line for the first few days. He looked to be about four feet tall but was cooler than holy hell. Anyway, he sat down and asked what was wrong. But Kate, inexplicably, barely spoke any Spanish, and Javier's English was mostly limited to the dirty words and phrases we'd taught him the first couple of days. Thus my translation services came into play.
Javier scratched his chin and nodded thoughtfully. After a moment, he said (in English), "If he talks to you again I'll smash a beer bottle over his head."
Four feet tall or not, homeboy was a carpenter by trade and it showed. I also wouldn't wager heavily against his having been a bit rough as a kid, too. If Javier had wanted to beat a Californian within an inch of his life, he could have managed it by himself. Still, I was excited at the possibility that I might get to help. Fighting side by side with our diminuitive comrade would have elevated me to demigod status.
Sadly, it was unecessary. Javier went and talked to the guy. By his hand gestures, I gather he was telling him basically the same thing he had told me. The situation was defused, and thus, boring. Javier walked Kate back. Given his status as Pimpmaster General of Peru, he probably could have rubbed his junk around much more sensitive areas than the back without anyone complaining. But you know what? He earned it.
My first night in Aguascalientes, the little mountain town beneath Macchu Picchu, rumor had it that a big party for people coming back from the hike (in which an epic case of the runs prevented my participation) at a club in town. Although the village, built exclusively for tourism, was so small and isolated that it had no cars, Eli and I managed to get lost searching for the crowd.
We were walking down the street in front of our hotel, trying first to find the club and, failing that, a bar. We were going in the wrong direction for both. As we meandered, we heard a voice from behind us.
"Hey, where's the fuckin' booze around here?"
Enter our new friend, we'll call him Steve, who was visiting from South Carolina. He was a couple of years older than us, but similarly motivated. He tagged along until we reached the end of the town.
In America, it's usually kind of hard to tell when you reach the end of town. This is not the case in Peru. The road ended in a mountain that farts out things more impressive than the entire Rocky Mountain range.
Anyway, as we were about to turn around, two Peruvian girls ran out to drag us into a small bar nearby. The place had an obvious Rasta theme: the bartender had dreads. The customer had dreads. The goddamn lampshades had dreads. I shit you not.
The place was offering three-for-the-price-of-one Cuba Libres, so naturally I perked up. Steve did, too, but more because of the attention showered upon him by girls whose occupation could not be more obvious if they wore a sign with the word "whore" in every Indo-European language. In neon letters.
Anyway, I tossed back my drinks and then finished off one of Eli's. Poor Eli is a tiny kid and couldn't hold his booze. And even when he WAS holding it, he was still jumping up and down yelling, "Hey, look at me dance!"
The girls wanted to know if we wanted to go to a club with them. I didn't care too much one way or the other about THEM, but I understood that there was only one club in town, so our friends were probably there. It turns out that the place was two buildings down from our hotel. We had walked eight blocks in the opposite direction. I'll blame it on the altitude and the coca leaves.
When we got to the club, our hooker friends promptly abandoned us for friendlier prospects. Steve tried to give me many important lessons in life, most of which involved why I should go hit on all the girls in my group. I had already seen what that brought about. Ryan, my roommate, had tried it, and spent the rest of the trip dodging a lynch mob of girls who were surprisingly turned off by horndogginess.
Eventually he left (to go back to his fiancee, no less, who "always falls asleep so early...I want to PARTY, man!" I sat down at a table and watched the dancing.
At this point a fine-looking girl from our group named Kate ran up and sat beside me. Before I could bask in my own pimpness, she started explaining a concern of hers.
Now, I've taken Spanish for eight years. My skills as a translator, thus refined, were finally put to good use: putting into Spanish the sentence, "His penis is hard and he keeps rubbing it up against me!"
I hope I've gotten your attention.
It seems that a Californian gentleman, who had rather eerily been around us quite a bit back in Cuzco, had apparently started dancing with poor Kate that night, and in the course of the grinding had become a touch excited. As a result, of course, Kate got touched by his excitedness as well, and was subsequently freaked out.
At any rate, I gathered I was to be her "creep shelter" until the guy lost interest. He didn't. He sat next to her and asked, I gather, what was wrong; she got him to leave for a moment through some or another feminine wile.
At this point Javier joined us. Javier was a young-ish guy from Lima who the program hires to help with the hike and keeping everything in line for the first few days. He looked to be about four feet tall but was cooler than holy hell. Anyway, he sat down and asked what was wrong. But Kate, inexplicably, barely spoke any Spanish, and Javier's English was mostly limited to the dirty words and phrases we'd taught him the first couple of days. Thus my translation services came into play.
Javier scratched his chin and nodded thoughtfully. After a moment, he said (in English), "If he talks to you again I'll smash a beer bottle over his head."
Four feet tall or not, homeboy was a carpenter by trade and it showed. I also wouldn't wager heavily against his having been a bit rough as a kid, too. If Javier had wanted to beat a Californian within an inch of his life, he could have managed it by himself. Still, I was excited at the possibility that I might get to help. Fighting side by side with our diminuitive comrade would have elevated me to demigod status.
Sadly, it was unecessary. Javier went and talked to the guy. By his hand gestures, I gather he was telling him basically the same thing he had told me. The situation was defused, and thus, boring. Javier walked Kate back. Given his status as Pimpmaster General of Peru, he probably could have rubbed his junk around much more sensitive areas than the back without anyone complaining. But you know what? He earned it.