Interhemispheric Smuggler Extraordinaire of Coca, Paramecia, Dick and/or Awesome for Hire. Cheap.
Buenos tardes, los internets! How have mi negros fared this past fine week-and-change?? I have missed you while in the southern hemisphere, boys and girls. What new and fabulous and/or comitragic news have I lost out on in my absence?
So, I got back from Perú yesterday. I'm back at work but still totally discombobulated after like 40 hours without sleeping and jetlag and swapping continents and serious third-world-stomach issues and general post-travel distractionary glow. I have not yet sifted through my nearly 700 fucking photos. I have not yet washed my disgustingly smelly and tropical dirty laundry. I have not yet completely woken up or adjusted to no longer being in South America. I have not accepted that I can't be a Perúana anymore. Le sigh.
I kept a (paper! and pen! in analog!) journal while I was gone, and I have decided that all my travels from now on must be accompanied by journalizin'. So whilst I get my shit together, dear internets, I am going to be posting each day with various trip stories straight from mi diary, which is just rough musings about the meanderings and meandering musings about everything else. Hopefully by tomorrow they will be accompanied with photographic illustrations. At any rate, being home is totally blech and blah and poop and suck and I really want to move to Perú and yadda yadda.
Day 1
1:23am (01/26/08)
Here I am in Lima. The old-money antebellum coastal suburb of Miraflores, to be exact, which means something like "looking at the flowers." Settled in to the Hostal Porta now. I can't believe my feet are tap-tap-tapping on the terra firma of a wholly foreign continent. It is surreal and vivid and chock-full of magical realism. In fact, the very term was obviously coined exclusively to describe South America.
Perúvian people are beautiful. Not as in "beauty" per se... but so many of the faces, the smiling Perúvian - no, Perúano - faces I've seen are full of the comfort of stories. They tell stories, clear stories, about where they're from and what they've emerged as. They're about laughing brown flat-nosed natives and nefarious conquistadores, about how to be happy without the entrapments of wealth, about the gregariously good-willed countenance of an indomitable spirit, about warmth and outward-reaching, and figuring out effortlessly what's important and what's not. When harried, they become visibly impatient and aggravated, and yet it still seems as though the impatience stems more from having their collective mellow harshed than misanthropy.
I got off my plane in Lima and, after dealing with customs crap, flung myself headlong into the undulating throng of drivers picking up passengers, or hoping to. I nearly missed my name on its tiny placard in the crowd (it was kind of cool to have a stranger await me, my appellation in their hand the only dot connecting me to he across two continents. Thank you, Rosa Maria.).
My driver, Juancarlos, seemed excited to have an innocent to introduce his proud city to. A friendly, cleancut guy in his late 30's, Juancarlos launched nearly immediately - after a random packed combi (minivan for hire) sprang its doors open at high speed to pick up someone, a whore from the looks of it - into a story about a "Perro Party." Which turns out to mean, apparently, taking a shit in a van packed full of people and then hot-boxing them? Heh. It was... refreshing to hear something so hilarious inappropriate out of an otherwise extremely polite cabbie's mouth within 5 minutes flat. He thought it was hysterical. So did I. :P
I asked him if he had been waiting long. "Oh, about an hour," he said good-naturedly. He dismissed my useless apologies. We talked about food. I'm not allowed to leave the city until I've had my fill of chicha morada, a sweet and fragrant drink made out of Perúvian purple corn. "The... kernels? The kernels are the size of my thumbnail," he swore. Chicha morada is his favorite drink in all the world.
We drove - as nonplussedly frantic as, well, every fucking Hispanic driving culture ever seems to prefer - up the winding boulevard on the coast, wedged narrowly as it is between the ocean and the gorgeously crenulated mountain cliffs. Waves were crashing on the breakers behind a few skinny Perúano dogs fighting over scraps, as we wound our way up the Costa Verde into the heart of muggy, tropically genteel Miraflores.
Eventually I got to the Hostal, a converted old mansion which, coincidentally, used to be owned by one of Silvia's (my brother's Perúana mother-in-law, whose sister I would soon be staying with) childhood friends. The house was only a block from that beautiful green coast and her parks. It was just what I'd pictured: stucco and bougainvillea and intricate tile floors and hidden hallways leading to walled-off interior courtyards. There are no screens anywhere, and no air-conditioning equals windows open all the time.
Perú doesn't need to hide behind a screen. She requires no high-tech solution to a simple and age-old problem. Whereas screens and air-conditioning and pristine sleekness are designed to tame, to order, to regulate one's experience of the world and to keep it at bay comfortably... Perú says: I'm here. I open myself to you. I require no barriers and I am devastatingly rich in vividness, both good and bad, but you can make peace with both. Learn to enjoy and revel and accept rather than to wall off and retain control, and you'll get the hang of it.
Perú, in short, is an entire country seemingly bursting with the beautiful sound of "OH, FUCK IT."
So, I'm running on zero sleep for days and am still emotionally hung over a bit for various reasons, and already missing Cute Boy. So I'm stopping and getting my ass to BED. Tomorrow, I shall go exploring.
****************
So, I got back from Perú yesterday. I'm back at work but still totally discombobulated after like 40 hours without sleeping and jetlag and swapping continents and serious third-world-stomach issues and general post-travel distractionary glow. I have not yet sifted through my nearly 700 fucking photos. I have not yet washed my disgustingly smelly and tropical dirty laundry. I have not yet completely woken up or adjusted to no longer being in South America. I have not accepted that I can't be a Perúana anymore. Le sigh.
I kept a (paper! and pen! in analog!) journal while I was gone, and I have decided that all my travels from now on must be accompanied by journalizin'. So whilst I get my shit together, dear internets, I am going to be posting each day with various trip stories straight from mi diary, which is just rough musings about the meanderings and meandering musings about everything else. Hopefully by tomorrow they will be accompanied with photographic illustrations. At any rate, being home is totally blech and blah and poop and suck and I really want to move to Perú and yadda yadda.
Day 1
1:23am (01/26/08)
Here I am in Lima. The old-money antebellum coastal suburb of Miraflores, to be exact, which means something like "looking at the flowers." Settled in to the Hostal Porta now. I can't believe my feet are tap-tap-tapping on the terra firma of a wholly foreign continent. It is surreal and vivid and chock-full of magical realism. In fact, the very term was obviously coined exclusively to describe South America.
Perúvian people are beautiful. Not as in "beauty" per se... but so many of the faces, the smiling Perúvian - no, Perúano - faces I've seen are full of the comfort of stories. They tell stories, clear stories, about where they're from and what they've emerged as. They're about laughing brown flat-nosed natives and nefarious conquistadores, about how to be happy without the entrapments of wealth, about the gregariously good-willed countenance of an indomitable spirit, about warmth and outward-reaching, and figuring out effortlessly what's important and what's not. When harried, they become visibly impatient and aggravated, and yet it still seems as though the impatience stems more from having their collective mellow harshed than misanthropy.
I got off my plane in Lima and, after dealing with customs crap, flung myself headlong into the undulating throng of drivers picking up passengers, or hoping to. I nearly missed my name on its tiny placard in the crowd (it was kind of cool to have a stranger await me, my appellation in their hand the only dot connecting me to he across two continents. Thank you, Rosa Maria.).
My driver, Juancarlos, seemed excited to have an innocent to introduce his proud city to. A friendly, cleancut guy in his late 30's, Juancarlos launched nearly immediately - after a random packed combi (minivan for hire) sprang its doors open at high speed to pick up someone, a whore from the looks of it - into a story about a "Perro Party." Which turns out to mean, apparently, taking a shit in a van packed full of people and then hot-boxing them? Heh. It was... refreshing to hear something so hilarious inappropriate out of an otherwise extremely polite cabbie's mouth within 5 minutes flat. He thought it was hysterical. So did I. :P
I asked him if he had been waiting long. "Oh, about an hour," he said good-naturedly. He dismissed my useless apologies. We talked about food. I'm not allowed to leave the city until I've had my fill of chicha morada, a sweet and fragrant drink made out of Perúvian purple corn. "The... kernels? The kernels are the size of my thumbnail," he swore. Chicha morada is his favorite drink in all the world.
We drove - as nonplussedly frantic as, well, every fucking Hispanic driving culture ever seems to prefer - up the winding boulevard on the coast, wedged narrowly as it is between the ocean and the gorgeously crenulated mountain cliffs. Waves were crashing on the breakers behind a few skinny Perúano dogs fighting over scraps, as we wound our way up the Costa Verde into the heart of muggy, tropically genteel Miraflores.
Eventually I got to the Hostal, a converted old mansion which, coincidentally, used to be owned by one of Silvia's (my brother's Perúana mother-in-law, whose sister I would soon be staying with) childhood friends. The house was only a block from that beautiful green coast and her parks. It was just what I'd pictured: stucco and bougainvillea and intricate tile floors and hidden hallways leading to walled-off interior courtyards. There are no screens anywhere, and no air-conditioning equals windows open all the time.
Perú doesn't need to hide behind a screen. She requires no high-tech solution to a simple and age-old problem. Whereas screens and air-conditioning and pristine sleekness are designed to tame, to order, to regulate one's experience of the world and to keep it at bay comfortably... Perú says: I'm here. I open myself to you. I require no barriers and I am devastatingly rich in vividness, both good and bad, but you can make peace with both. Learn to enjoy and revel and accept rather than to wall off and retain control, and you'll get the hang of it.
Perú, in short, is an entire country seemingly bursting with the beautiful sound of "OH, FUCK IT."
So, I'm running on zero sleep for days and am still emotionally hung over a bit for various reasons, and already missing Cute Boy. So I'm stopping and getting my ass to BED. Tomorrow, I shall go exploring.
****************