Animalia

I'm finally getting around to sharing trip photos, a task that becomes quite daunting once your photo counts surpasses 500. My very human instincts are telling me to do so in a methodical, organized fashion, one that presents the photos by motif, and most importantly, in much more manageable sizes. Today I offer a small sampling of Animals Encountered (with the sub-theme of "Animals with whom we directly interacted.")

Llamas in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

Sea lions at Las Islas Ballestas, "The poor man's Galapagos."

Kitten on Las Islas Flotantas in Lake Titicaca, (Uros woman behind me)

Kitten in Llauar, Colca Canyon, Peru.

Llama at Machu Picchu. Those things are a little frightening in person.

A staple of South American streets: stray dogs. Atacama desert, Chile.

Addendum:

There were alpaca and vicuna herds, condor sightings, flamingos. Those will probably be included in a more touristy, picturesque category like "Landscapes." I've begun with these photos because these are some of the moments from the trip that I recall most vividly and with much relish-- I remembered sitting on the back of a llama on a childhood trip to Santiago, and hunted down the sequel experience as resolutely as I scoured shops for the Nestle Trencito chocolate bar my abuelita used to send Christopher and I in the mail. Nostalgia is a powerful motivator and I found myself, an otherwise somewhat nervous foreigner, demanding candy in almost-perfect Spanish and staring down those cow-like, long-lashed placid eyes of South American livestock without trepidation. Someone would be proud.

But I really included these photos not for their uniqueness (cats, incidentally, are equally as impassive to their human companions across the Americas, though South Americans appear to have the good sense to be impassive back) but because I, much to my humiliation, never quite shed that childhood impulse to want to keep, love, and be the best friend of every solitary living animal I meet. Thank god for Customs, or I would have returned happily but stupidly a-lugging quite the array of companions for my two feline friends.

I don't know how, why or when this idiot love of animals was born, but it seems to have become exponentially illogical and emotionally-fraught. As a child, my father used to cook these semi-raw, fatty steaks a lo pobre (with a fried egg on top) for dinner. I remember barely grasping the ability to poke the flesh, pooling in its own blood, with that obscene strip of fat gleaming on the sides. "Be a man!"my father was known to exclaim. "That's where all the flavor is; don't be so American!" My brother, ever the sycophant and red-blooded hispanic male, devoured the cow while I choked back bile. My only saving grace was Lent, when Dad permitted abstemious vows. At 14, rebellion coincided with my father's death, and he was thus spared the event of becoming a vexed witness to a six year stretch of vegetarianism.

For monetary and health reasons, college re-introduced fowl and seafood to my diet, though I can only maintain the appetite if the foods in question in no way still resemble the animal from which they came. Granted, this tends to stem more from a "gross-factor," than emotional attachment, but I am hardly immune to Peta, or worse, Homeward Bound. Eight Below. The Never Ending Story. Once, on a very crowded bus crossing the Peruvian border to Chile, the same discerning film censor who had brought us Homeland Security and Human Trafficking just hours before, puts on the Will Smith blockbuster I Am Legend. Guess who lost her shit when the dog gets attacked by the zombies? And I'm not talking about one shining, silent tear-- no, that would have been mildly acceptable to our stoic and seemingly blood-thirsty passenger companions. I was sobbing. Blurred vision, hyperventilation, dry-heaving. The couple next to us, who had been ascribing to the South American tendency to offer zero consideration for personal space the first 6 hours of the bus drive, were looking at me with the dawning realization that I wasn't just some American tourist, but a very unbalanced American tourist. They inched away with the cautious deliberation of a level-headed hostage held at gunpoint.

I'd like to think that my pets feel love for me. I'd like to imagine that when my cat curls himself a nook on my chest, he is consciously cuddling. When my dog met me at the door with such violent tail-wagging he knocked himself over, I liked to think it was overwhelming happiness to see me. Do I understand that these are wildly fanciful notions meant to feed my ego? Yes. Does that deter these notions? Absolutely not. Consider the dust bitten.