I´m on the clock at an internet dive by the northern shoreline of Peru, in a town called Huanchaco. I´m about to make my way over to the mini mercado [re. alleyway] where I´m going to haggle in Spanish over the price of some beautiful hand crafted, hand dyed leather sandals. It should be noted that I am a terrible haggler... while I was trying them on the other night for the first time, I had the very American woman reaction that would have probably been more appropriate over a pair of Frye boots in a Nordstroms [¨Oh my gosh I loooooove them! Don´t you just looooove them aren´t they just precious!!] The Peruvian keeper smiled and her eyes gleamed as she immediately raised the price about 20 soles. David ushered me away and we practiced looking vaguely unconvinced over delicious postres and the freshest ceviche in the country.. the takeaway is that I should basically never, ever gamble.
Peru has been a pretty charming trip thus far, as we´ve lazily drifted from Lima up the coastline. We´ve seen some good ruins [basically, if it´s broken and covered in dirt, it´s a ruin...learned that lesson about guides and booked tours the hard way in Trujillo] museums, beaches, and nightlife. The food has been mostly fried [chifa is a big one here, which is fried rice with everything they have in the scrap pile mixed in] or a product of corn, but I´ve had my fair share of scary chicken parts [Mallory, you take the cake with the goat liver in Africa].
The best thing about Huanchaco so far was the luck we had with lodging. As we were lugging ourselves up a random street toward the shining oasis of a Hostal´s neon sign, a lovely young local called out to us on behalf of her middle aged, beach worn patron sitting behind a stack of fried donuts. Do you want a room overlooking the beach, hot water and a private bathroom in a large, open air beach house for only 25 soles a night- yes. Keith is a 40ish Brit ex pat who lets rooms and hammocks in his rottweiler-guarded beachhouse at the end of the strip. It´s like staying at a luxury resort in Kona-- quiet, white washed, with low hanging hand woven hammocks grazing a glossy wood panel porch with a brick layed barbecue pit in the corner. Keith has given us great tips about where to eat, buy gifts, and where to see the ´real´ Peru. We spent the day trolling the mercados for fresh fruit and chasing crabs on the beach. Before we had keys yesterday we had to wait for Keith to come to open the door while Rocky the bilingual rottweiler lost his shit on the other side of the wall, and not five minutes past the point of wondering if we were lost Keith comes speeding up in the back of a bicycle taxi clutching dog biscuits and an industrial size package of toilet paper. He speaks what he calls ´Cockney Spanish´ and is thus a little less decipherable than the most articulate Peruvian, but so far we´ve figured out the important bits-- don´t walk by the rottweilers at night, and if we need towels or want to flush paper down the toilet it´s an extra 25 soles.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
A small album
Yoga at the highest peak of the Catskills.
Sitting on a very wonky dock at the top of the mountain.
I used to play Mario Cart with this guy.
Nigel enviously watching as grumpy Chaucer goes for a leashed walk.
Nigel hiding out in David's suitcase while Chaucer tries to figure out how he did it.
Nigel's favorite thing to do.
A new nook. Getting my clothes all covered with hair is a small price to pay for this cuteness.
Jasper checking out my studio.
My studio! 
At the Butterfly house in Oneonta.We're heading to the airport in a mere 6 hours to begin our journey to Lima! I'm getting more and more anxious to get there by the minute. The only tiny nag in my excitement is my kitties: we dropped them off at their foster home the other day, and Nigel was so angry to be in someone else's territory (there are two male cat roommates for them) that he just stalked around, hissing indiscriminately at table, chair, cat, carpet, looking more and more like a tiny deranged panther. Their foster mom is great and her place has plenty of space for all the kitties, but it still made me a little sad to see my super friendly guy being such a little asshole.
We're watching Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet in Spanish and they're about to get married. Somehow, Shakespeare in Spanish is really making a lot of sense to me. Adios!
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
So much for blogging: an open letter to my two faithful readers
I could blame it on the mountains I guess.
"There really wasn't an internet connection anywhere and when I could one it was on the library's 1998 tan, cracked Compaq... you know the kind from 7th grade computer class... and the guy who plays tetris on it stood by, picking at his stubbed, black-rimmed fingernails and sweating nervously over my shoulder until I finished checking my email and I mean, you know, could you blog under such nerve-wracking conditions??"
That's about 15% true. I'll admit to it. I'm a lazy blogger, my dear two readers, you need to know this before you jump into a blogging commitment with me. Also, I am not super keen on the length of time it takes to upload photos, so though I know this lowers my chance of you dear two readers actually reading my rare and scant blog updates by a frighteningly large percent, I must reiterate: I am a lazy blogger.
Here's where the actual update begins:
If I had been blogging all summer, I would have mostly been writing as I did in my previous post: star-struck by flora and fauna, you would have been regaled (I mean, you know, in this passive and unobtrusive way that we call blogging) with tales of beaver-sightings and bear poop and having to keep coyotes out of the sandbox where a particularly stupid rabbit built her nest of bunnies. I would have written about that rainbow, which became an almost daily sighting, and about eating a chanterelle pizza made entirely from the mushrooms found on the long hiking trail at Minekill Falls. OH and then I would get started on the food-- almost everything, from the sushi to the bluberry-lemon jam to the panini have been homemade. And delicious. Lee is an adventurous and undaunted chef, who, according to the cooking book that strikes his fancy, will go on these culinary themes for full summers. We picked a lucky summer to leech on to their kitchen-- this year is the summer of bread. Last year was pickles.
Now, we are less than a week from departing for South America. The part of me that has been climbing mountains and trekking woods and following rivers all summer is super excited and ready to be there; likewise the part of me wracked with the guilt of claiming Hispanic heritage and only a compositional (not really conversational) level of Spanish.
But then there is the part of me who had never voluntarily hiked a trail before this summer in her life (forced, family-friendly hikes fraught with frequent consultations of a tree-identification guide, sure) and whose only international travel over the age of 15 are tritely European (and exclusively in large academic groups) is a little nervous. When did I get old enough to plan and fund a trip to another continent? Itineraries always came ready-made with the check that was turned in to the school... I didn't even have to worry about keeping track of a plane ticket until we were at the security checkpoint and had counted off to 40, and nevermind holding on to hotel reservations or museum ticket stubs.. half the time I would sort of wake up as the bus stopped and groggily inquire which city we were even in.
Now, that lush kind of travel is long behind me, and I'm going to cities whose elevations reach 3600 m (when we were first hiking up the mountains here, we had mistakingly read that as feet and were patting ourselves on the back for the 3500 foot mountain we conquered here.. turns out, we're only prepared to be at a quarter of the elevation point in Bolivia) and whose guidebooks tell of phony police officers who will demand foreign fees and papers from gringos or a mugging chain whose cheif form of distraction is to spit on you.
We have to be prepared to identify real officials, money and modes of transport from their counterfeit counterparts. And, my favorite line from the guidebooks describes a city where "panthers stalk locals from trees." Now, I took all those years of Texas standardized testing and I excelled in reading comprehension in my SAT. But nowhere in this book can I determine if this is meant to caution or relieve: do the panthers strictly hunt locals? Am I in the clear? What do you think, dear two ones?
I will be blogging on my travels, from various internet cafes and hostels, as much as the availability and my dedication will allow. I therefore beseech you, my dear readers, to keep your faith in me. I will come back to you. I will deliver, queridas.
"There really wasn't an internet connection anywhere and when I could one it was on the library's 1998 tan, cracked Compaq... you know the kind from 7th grade computer class... and the guy who plays tetris on it stood by, picking at his stubbed, black-rimmed fingernails and sweating nervously over my shoulder until I finished checking my email and I mean, you know, could you blog under such nerve-wracking conditions??"
That's about 15% true. I'll admit to it. I'm a lazy blogger, my dear two readers, you need to know this before you jump into a blogging commitment with me. Also, I am not super keen on the length of time it takes to upload photos, so though I know this lowers my chance of you dear two readers actually reading my rare and scant blog updates by a frighteningly large percent, I must reiterate: I am a lazy blogger.
Here's where the actual update begins:
If I had been blogging all summer, I would have mostly been writing as I did in my previous post: star-struck by flora and fauna, you would have been regaled (I mean, you know, in this passive and unobtrusive way that we call blogging) with tales of beaver-sightings and bear poop and having to keep coyotes out of the sandbox where a particularly stupid rabbit built her nest of bunnies. I would have written about that rainbow, which became an almost daily sighting, and about eating a chanterelle pizza made entirely from the mushrooms found on the long hiking trail at Minekill Falls. OH and then I would get started on the food-- almost everything, from the sushi to the bluberry-lemon jam to the panini have been homemade. And delicious. Lee is an adventurous and undaunted chef, who, according to the cooking book that strikes his fancy, will go on these culinary themes for full summers. We picked a lucky summer to leech on to their kitchen-- this year is the summer of bread. Last year was pickles.
Now, we are less than a week from departing for South America. The part of me that has been climbing mountains and trekking woods and following rivers all summer is super excited and ready to be there; likewise the part of me wracked with the guilt of claiming Hispanic heritage and only a compositional (not really conversational) level of Spanish.
But then there is the part of me who had never voluntarily hiked a trail before this summer in her life (forced, family-friendly hikes fraught with frequent consultations of a tree-identification guide, sure) and whose only international travel over the age of 15 are tritely European (and exclusively in large academic groups) is a little nervous. When did I get old enough to plan and fund a trip to another continent? Itineraries always came ready-made with the check that was turned in to the school... I didn't even have to worry about keeping track of a plane ticket until we were at the security checkpoint and had counted off to 40, and nevermind holding on to hotel reservations or museum ticket stubs.. half the time I would sort of wake up as the bus stopped and groggily inquire which city we were even in.
Now, that lush kind of travel is long behind me, and I'm going to cities whose elevations reach 3600 m (when we were first hiking up the mountains here, we had mistakingly read that as feet and were patting ourselves on the back for the 3500 foot mountain we conquered here.. turns out, we're only prepared to be at a quarter of the elevation point in Bolivia) and whose guidebooks tell of phony police officers who will demand foreign fees and papers from gringos or a mugging chain whose cheif form of distraction is to spit on you.
We have to be prepared to identify real officials, money and modes of transport from their counterfeit counterparts. And, my favorite line from the guidebooks describes a city where "panthers stalk locals from trees." Now, I took all those years of Texas standardized testing and I excelled in reading comprehension in my SAT. But nowhere in this book can I determine if this is meant to caution or relieve: do the panthers strictly hunt locals? Am I in the clear? What do you think, dear two ones?
I will be blogging on my travels, from various internet cafes and hostels, as much as the availability and my dedication will allow. I therefore beseech you, my dear readers, to keep your faith in me. I will come back to you. I will deliver, queridas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)