Huanchaco via Cockney

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.

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!

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.

Daily things

These are from the documented slide images David took for the Rackateer piece he's showing in Philadelphia right now. It put the clothesline to final use during a rare hour of sunlight-- mostly, it's just been this sad, dropping thing, dangling tiny forgotten socks and dirty towels in the rain.

Summer has finally graced us with her presence, and next weekend we are going blueberrying (a dollar a pound!) at a nearby berry farm. We are entranced by wildberries; on a hike a few weeks ago, we discovered a handful of wee strawberries growing near a stream-- stragglers at the end of their season who, though a poisonously vivid scarlet, would grow no larger than a thumbnail. Our inexpertise reasoned that tiny did not equal edible, and we ignorantly left these perfectly ripe little jewels for some lucky squirrel or deer.

Once enlightened by our hosts, we've been all-too-eager to pounce upon the first glimpse of red, purple or blue within the bushes along the trails. Mostly, this has been succesful (early elderberries are apparently only meant to be made into jams) and yesterday we feasted on bruise-colored blueberries by the pond. This morning, we stopped mid-run to devour miniscule juicy raspberries, barely pausing to brush off the occasional insect resting on those plump little seeds.

With the better weather also comes the daily rainbow, and for the first time in my life, I have seen the full arch across the sky, as though that elusive end were really just over the hill and in the apple orchard.
For the fourth of July, Lee and Kirsten invited us to their friends' house for an annual effigy burning party. Almost all of the guests were art professors and colleagues from Bennington, Cornell, and Ithaca, and many of the effigies were cardboard representations of academic buildings or dean's offices. Lee and Jasper made a giant beaver, and David and I burned a happy earwig, whose population boom has made them so ubiquitous even our cats don't bother chasing them anymore.
This unusual summer has very chilly evenings, and I've taken to reading books curled up with a cat and a sweater, and a warm mug of tea. I've started to listen for the animals at night, and recently I've heard a small pack of coyotes, but I'm mostly listening for bobcats, whose cry is apparently indistinguishable from a woman screaming. There were half-eaten moths hobbling all over our doorstep yesterday morning, and that kind of strange carnage can only mean bats, so we're going scouting for them tonight. I've heard you can throw up breadcrumbs and they'll come swooping down gently like seagulls.

Shoestring wanderlust

Our tickets to Peru have been purchased!  We are arriving August 18th in Lima and then we will be flying out of Santiago October 7th.  I have purchased the first three levels of Rosetta Stone and all our South American shoestring travel books arrived a few days ago.  We're budgeting $10-$50 per person per day and I think we'll make it back with enough money for a security deposit on a new apartment (that we don't have yet) and some foodstuffs until we start our new jobs (that we also don't have yet).  

It seems a little reckless sometimes when I think about it, but it's also kind of ridiculous to expect to be able to find a job now that doesn't start until October.  I'm hoping that I can just show up at some inner-city early childhood program, mention that I've encountered children before and know CPR, and have a job.  My absolute last resort is nannying, though in all honesty it's probably generally more lucrative than a job in a school to begin with.

And so now I wait.  I began painting portraits of the more Germanic versions of my favorite fairy tale characters (I'm laboring over what I'm hoping will be a more sympathetic Rumplestilskin.. is it just me, or does he sort of get screwed over in that story?) and researching their origins.  The most widespread of the classic princess tale seems to be Cinderella, though across cultures and centuries, we've still been fed the most watered down, sugar-coated version possible.  From the most inane and only slightly scandalous discrepancies (in the French oral tradition, fur and glass are almost indiscernible, but they go with glass because a Prince trying to find the perfect fit of a fur slipper on every maiden in the land makes him seem somewhat less.. noble) to much more disturbing details (the wicked step-sisters hack off their toes and heels to fit in the shoe and later have their eyes pecked out by birds for their wickedness) to the absurd (in China, the fairy godmother is a giant talking fish) the most boring is the Disney version.  It seems bestiality, mutilation, and incest are hardly uncommon themes, and unlike the Scandinavian versions (which sought to frighten children into desirable behavior) most of these tales were for adult men in seedy taverns.  

My favorite so far has been Sleeping Beauty.  In an early version, she doesn't get pricked by a spindle but rather gets a piece of flax lodged under her fingernail.  When the prince finds her sleeping, he doesn't nobly awaken her with a chaste and dutiful kiss but simply is so "overcome by her beauty" that he beds her, which of course does not awaken her as the flax is still beneath her nail.  So, he leaves.  She then becomes pregnant and gives birth to his twins while comatose, who eventually suck the flax out while searching for milk.  She wakes, and presumably has a lot of questions for the prince who knocked her up, only he is in his other kingdom with his wife.  The end.

Rumplestilskin is hardly a disappointment as well-- the little man throws his tantrum as we've all learned, only he either rips himself in half or lodges himself in the Queen's vagina, depending on the translation. 

Beaver fever

I am currently at a coffee shop outside Albany, a good 60 miles away from the house in the mountains.  I would be a liar if I said we came for the coffee and not for the wifi.. to our credit, this WAS the closest Bank of America and we had $2000 in checks we needed to deposit (and neither one of us trusts the whole mail-in system...) But I'll be honest: once we connected to the high speed internet we both sort of did this sigh/shudder combination so intense that it resembled a drug-addled Watutsi dance. 

The house is unbelievable: built in the late 1800's and the product of a quirky series of renovations by the decade since, it hosts chartreuse cabinetry, wood burning stoves, exposed birch support beams and large, wrap-around glass porches.  The property is also in the throes of being reclaimed by nature: there are foxes living in the storage barn, blackbirds in the studio attic, chipmunks burrowing through the stone steps and bright yellow finches that erupt around you in the grass like butterflies.  

Outside our window, a mother hummingbird has nested above the porch light, and she has mistakenly seen my poor cats through the screen as potential threats.  She spends hours taunting them-- these slow, lazy and completely unobservant indoor cats who never would've known she or her babies existed if she hadn't started dive bombing them through the window.  Nigel almost threw himself through the glass in frustration and I've had to barricade them from view with my luggage.

One of the artists we are living with is an amateur chef and in the mornings he whips up home made scones and frittata.  Last night we had a smorgasbord of fish tacos, sweet corn, lemon-broccoli and fresh guacamole.  

My studio overlooks the pathway to the garden, and beyond that there is a pond swarming with beavers: every morning, someone has to go down and break up the dam they rebuild each night in front of the tiny stream that runs through and down into a ravine, catching frogs and small fish in the mud.  The beavers wait outside and slap their massive flat tails against the water, and you have to be careful not to slip and fall on the thousands of beaver-made stakes surrounding the shore.

Pre-Columbian Mountaineer

This cake is from the crafty Miss Hall, baked for my pre-going away going away party held at the beginning of May due to scheduling conflicts.  Now, the beginning of June, I have taken flight and with nary a backward glance; adios Houston!

Every now and then I allow myself a book that I call "in-flight reading," namely, "something I found in the airport bookshop 5 minutes before boarding and it looks like it may keep my from falling asleep on the person next to me for the next few hours." High lit is not necessary: page-flipping fluff is the general objective.   I have sought and received in-flight insurance against drooling on strangers most recently with the following: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, and The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie.  

The results?  Shoddy on the whole.  Gruen's was by far my favorite, if not only for my penchant for elephants and Depression-era circus trains (elephants love alcohol!  And lemonade!).  As for Silverberg and Niffenegger?  I tried.. I tried to get into the fun (is that why they do it?) of telepathy and time-travel but in the end find the whole bag so fraught with gimmicks and problems I can't help but roll my eyes.  Also, each author had sex ticks that really got under my skin; Silverberg is a breast man, and he will never be able to convince me of an equally as vested interest in a single other subject on planet earth, and Niffenegger couldn't quite pull away from a lilting dependence on Nora Roberts-esque lovemaking scenes.  Even if they happened across time, across worlds,  the presence of a tuxedo and white opera gloves whilst swiping a V-card does not equal romance.

And Rushdie: I cannot get that image of him from Bridget Jones out of my head.  Not even long enough to marvel at the breadth of languages necessary to catch those pithy name puns.  Jerk.

Anyway, the in-flight pleasure of my move to Baltimore was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  This is not one of those obnoxious-looking Sweet Potato Queen books, but rather a collection of correspondence taking place directly following WWII.  Even though the chief recommender on the book's cover was that Eat, Love, Pray Operah-nite, I was fortunately undeterred and am very charmed by the thing.  I may even take up real, carpal tunnel-inducing correspondence once finished.  

Now.. packing, storing, and trekking off to the mountains in a week.