Q: Pirates vs. ninjas? A: Batman

I come from a photographically retarded family.

No, really. We’ve never really been into taking photos, or looking at photos, or thinking in photos; at least, not until the advent of the Parent-As-A-Teacher. Now, we’re evidently all about documentation. (Tsch, leave for a few years, and your family goes all wacky on you.)

Which is why the eight hundred plus photos we ended up with from our trip in Peru is a little shocking. I mean, more than a hundred of them are actually decent! Madness. With that heartening intro, I’d like to share some this unexpected photographic ( windfall. )

Ok, so spelling issues aside, Qosqo is totally charming. I very much wanted to hate it, but this just doesn´t seem possible.

The brilliance:
Cody and I are going to a futbol game tomorrow. OH YES. You read that correctly. Cusco v. Lima, which is kind of a grudge match of epic proportions, and my excitement levels are ... Ok, I´m stupidly excited about this. I haven´t seen a professional futbol game live ever. I know, I´m as shocked as you are.

The tragedy:
We´re flying out of Lima on Tuesday. Day after day after tomorrow Tuesday! This just doesn´t compute. I have to go back? And speak English? Holy cow, people, the wrongness of this is just amazing.


So: the postcards have gone out, and this is your last chance to ask for stupid things from Peru. We´ve just confirmed that coca is not an exportable product, but anything else, anyone? Come on! Don´t you need a fuzzy llama that looks like a duster?

Am deep in the jungle and it is raining. I saw bats.

The first time I saw murcieligo, I was about five, and hanging around in Ecuador. (The jungle-y bits, I guess.) I woke up in the middle of the night, and there they were: four vampire bats feeding off the dogs and pig. (... What dogs and pig were doing in my room is not something I'm real clear on.) I must have made some noise to startle them, because every single one suddenly turned to look at me. We looked at each other for a moment, then they flew out the window. (An open window in the jungle at night? Yeah, I'm not sure either.)

Ok, so, this is one of those stories we can´t examine too closely, because it stops making sense under scrutiny, but the point is: there were bats, and they were awesome.

And that is what the jungle is like. Provided you don´t look too closely at the details- the biting ants (Holy fuck ow.), the mosquitos (Itchyitchyitchy.), the oppressive humidity (Seriously, what is this?), the intermittant electicity (This is the third time I´ve typed this out, for the record.), the eight-hours-on-a-bad-dirt-road-from-anything (sweet fancy moses!)- it´s totally, completely, amazingly, awesome.

It´s lush and green and exciting in a yay! exploration! sort of way. There´s so much here- so much life in weird forms, so much general strangeness, and we hardly know anything about it. (Well, it´s not entirely unknown, but it's unknown to ME, and that needs to change.) Provided enough DEET to allow my poor sangre dulce self to survive, and I'll move down here in a heartbeat. Did I not have a family along, cramping my traveling style, or a room-mate expecting my return in August, or a non-refundable plane ticket (I think my family knows me better than I would like.) I would be begging a job off Jesus, and settling down here, in the middle of nowhere-jungle-of-awesome-ness.

Jesus is the owner of the terribly comfortable hostel we are staying in. A dispatrieated Spaniard, he´s fast on his way to my top five favorite grumpy old men ever list. This is in no small part because of his library, (shelved, as far as I can tell by language family, but no other disernable method) containing bad sci-fi next to interesting biography alongside puzzling romance novels in German and no less than three copies of "In Cold Blood" in Spanish.

I am currently reading most of these, but the best one is a history of exploration in the Amazon. I have determined that weird asexuality aside, I would very much like to be Baron von Humbolt, if I have to grow up. (If any of y'all have tips on inheriting vast fortunes, becoming fluently sept-lingual, discovering the movements of something important like- oh, say, electricity, or getting several interesting and important things named after you, because you happen to be coolness personified, I would very much like to know.)

Whoah. Spell check? Broken. I´m sorry, but this'll just have to do.
edit: I went back though this with a spell check, because no one should have to attempt my phonetics unless they've been really terrible and deserve it. Chances are you don't.

This is what I have to say about high-altitude treks: the next time I go on one, I am taking you with me, and thus will save myself the bother of trying to tell you about it. It's fascinating, just on the physical level. (Your eyesight becomes useless, but your hearing magnifies times a billion.) And then the vistas! I hope some of these photos come out.

But instead of that, I will talk about coca.

Growing up in Latin America, coca has this incredibible mystique. It's a miracal drug, good for everything, from headaches to blisters to depression. It's not given to children, except in the mate de coca form, which is to the real thing, like gasoline fumes are to skydiving.

Until yesterday, I'd never actually had it.

So: Intellectually, I know coca is only .0001 percent cocaine, and it's got something ridiculous like forty vitamins in it. I know it's not clinically addictive.

Emotionally, I feel that nothing that makes your cheeks numb can be good for you. It's a very head-with-wings-y experience. You can hear yourself huffing and puffing, but the only muscle you're conscious of working is your tongue.