Gigantic Tortoises, Volcanic Moonscapes And A World Of Life Below The Ocean's Surface=Las Islas Galapagos...

We just got back from Galapagos and mang, what a place that is. It costs enough to get out there and take any sort of tour that it kind of keeps the riff-raff out. Which is a good thing considering how fragile the ecosystem is there. It was eight days full of activity and adventure, and I am still trying to work out how to document it. I think I will start with an itinerary, and then some specifics.

We landed in Baltra, which is a small island connected to one of the biggest islands, not far from Puerto Ayora, which is where the majority of excursions are based out of. We were soon on our boat, alternatively called Friendship, Amistad, and Gabi. We went immediately out to the big water and made our way south to Bachas Beach, where we saw our first big batch of sea lions. Those things are everywhere. Seriously, you get tired of them, no matter how 'cute' they may seem. From there we traveled overnight down to Santa Fe and watched a lot of lizards of different kinds. Crabs all over the place, birds, iguanas and the occasional snake. From there we sailed for a long overnight to Española to see a huge island haven for sea lions, marine lizards in all sizes and colors, and blue footed boobies. (Insert boobie joke here, you get over it) On the fourth day we sailed to Floreana and did some diving in an area called The Devil's Crown. In the middle of the trip, we returned to Puerto Ayora to drop off the short-timers, and to pick up a few more. While on the big island of Santa Cruz, we went to the Darwin Center to see how they are protecting and breeding endangered iguanas and tortoises and then in the afternoon we went to the highlands to see the huge Galapagos turtles in the wild. That night we were back on the boat and we went to the east to Bartolome and Sombrero Chino. We were in that area the last couple days and then back to Baltra to see the Frigate birds with their huge red balloon bellies before we got on the airplane yesterday afternoon to come back to Guayaquil on the mainland.

The wildlife in Galapagos is really interesting and the situation there offers a rare opportunity to get really close to the animals and see them close up. These animals have no history with humans, and so consequently, they have no fear of us. (One day they will figure out that we should be feared.) You can walk right up to almost any of these creatures and look them right in the eye. The sea lions will flop right up to you and touch you if you don't watch out. There are rules against touching any of these animals. The sea lions cluster themselves on the beach and often go on for as far as the eye can see. There is a lot of grunting and groaning, and if you have ever heard the sound that Jeremy and I use to greet each other, than you have a round about idea of how these big critters sound. The iguanas where some of the coolest animals for me. They have all sorts of colors and are really big! Some of them are smaller, but many of them are just gigantic, lying on the hot rocks in the sunlight of the morning. There are land iguanas and marine iguanas. I had the chance, one day while diving, to see a marine iguana feeding in the ocean, down about fifteen feet. It was unlike anything I have seen before, with his feet and tail pushing away the multitude of fish that swirled nearby while he used his teeth to scrap food from the rocks. The turtles are also quite amazing. Or I should say, just as amazing as I hoped they would be, having grown up with the idea of those giants living in my imagination. We chased them around this swampy area in the highlands of Santa Cruz. They move very slowly so it really isn't chasing. But you can walk right up to them and they draw their heads into their huge thick shells and make sounds that sound like Darth Vader. They look like ET, and sound like Darth. They weigh hundreds of pounds and are suspected of being able to live as many as two hundred years!!! Many people come to Galapagos to watch the variety of birds. There are finches and boobies of three kinds, and hawks and albatrosses with a wind span of almost fifteen feet! For me, the most interesting of the birds was one called the Frigate Bird. The male is a good sized bird with a huge red balloon that can be inflated on its chest when attracting a female. The females will fly around, circling above while the males will puff ot their chests and make unique calls to them. (Not unlike our species...ha ha.) We also saw a couple snakes crawling around on rocks and cactuses, which is rare.

For me, the really interesting wildlife was to be found below the surface of the great green ocean waters. Everyday we went snorkeling a couple times and would spend hours floating around underwater, watching hundreds of colored fish, octopus, sharks, starfish, devil rays, and jellyfish. The water was warm and most of the time it was very clear. I got good at diving down really far to check out the things happening on the bottom. We saw numerous sharks of various kinds. Not the kind that attack you, but they are very big and the way that they move is reminiscient of the movie Jaws. When I see them coming from a distance I get the feeling that I can't swim anywhere near as fast as I wish I could. I really liked following the octupus' around. The way they move and swim is quite trippy. When you get close to them, they have these srange deep eyes that look out at you. It's unsettling. The various rays were also a bit worrisome to me. I don't know why, but when those huge pancake looking bastards float towards you, you tend to want to move the other way. A couple times I floated into clouds of small jellyfish and that isn't where you want to be either. Those stings hurt in a unique way. Kind of electrical. When you watch them, they are interesting enough, light green with translucent skin. But when they hit your skin you put your fins to water and get the deuce outta there!!! The fishlife down there is terrific. The colors and varieties of the fish are overwhelming. You can swim right into huge schools of silver and gold and blue and follow them as they make their way along the channels of coral.

I will include more info in the following blog...there is a lot to recount...

Living On The Equator, International Family And Functioning While Rocking...Galapagos Part 2

We had a number of things go wrong on our boat and with the crew. We think that the boat had been having problems over the course of the previous weeks and the crew seemed a little bit shell shocked. I think they had gotten some harsh comments from the group of passengers before us. We were never introduced to any of them and we had very little contact with them the entire time. I think they were good enough guys, but they wouldn't talk to us or even look at us a lot of the time. Our 'captain' was a solid, first rate douchebag...no doubt about that. We had great waiter named Daniel who left halfway through because things weren't going well for him either. He was a really nice kid and worked his ass off and we were sad to see him go. He was replaced by a guy who must not have had any experience because he managed to wait on us in a puzzling and at times frustrating way. Not a big deal. What kinda sucked bigtime though, was our guide. His name was Sergio and he had a major chip on his shoulder. He looks like a cross between Tarzan Of The Jungle and Keanu Reeves in Point Break. He usually works for a much more high-dollar boat, and at one point he remarked that he was happy to get back to more 'well-educated' customers. Yeah, nice. We lost him halfway through and the guide who replaced him was great. Rodrigo was his name. He was excited by the nature there was to see and knew all about it and was very excited to share it with us.

Our boat was pretty much a junker. Because of all the bad comments they had recieved from previous customers, they were spending a lot of time while we were on the boat re-painting things and fixing them. The night we spent in Puerto Ayoro they had an inspection by whoever inspects boats in Ecuador...and, well, our boat failed the test. So they had to bribe the inspector, which took time, and that resulted in us spending a day sitting in port. That sucked. The Douche Captain was not even on the boat that night and we made up all sorts of stories of how his debauchery was keeping us from the open seas. That night the air conditioning in a couple of the rooms didn't work and so myself and three others slept for a while on the roof of the boat until someone fixed it at 2 in the morning. While they were painting the boat, they roped off sections that we couldn't enter and that was rather annoying too, considering the fact that we each payed a grand to be on that boat, and it was tiny to begin with. The food that they cooked went over fairly well with the group, although a few of us had some gastro-intestinal fallout. I was one of those people...again, nice. We often ate and slept while sailing and those times were very unstable on the boat. Glasses would fall off the table and plates would slide. A few of us experienced nausea and we all had a tough time eating a lot with the boat flying back and forth and side to side. Dramamine is a good thing.

This description probably makes it sounds like it was a crappy trip, but it really wasn't. I think the main reason it was great was our group dynamics. We had a varied collection of people from all over the place and people really got on well, which made the whole thing fun and made the shitty parts funny instead of frustrating. Jake and Rebecca roomed together. My roommate, who was really nice if also really stinky, was an Israeli named Omri. There was another Isreali couple in their fifties who have spent most of their lives in Canada and now live in Brasil. They were really nice as well. There was a Japanese guy named Keiji, a Scot named Mandela, three people from Sweden, a lone French girl, a French girl who was living with an Italian guy in Quito, two cute Belgian girls, a British girl, an Irish couple and a lone American girl from New York. We spent a lot of time talking and reading and eating together...and a lot of time walking and watching wildlife and just hanging out. It was really nice. We got to know each other pretty well. I get the feeling that if we didn't have such a good group, things would not have been so fun. The nature alone in Galapagos is worth going to see, but if you go on the 'budget' end of the traveler's spectrum, it helps to have a good group of comrades with whom you can brave the not so desirable parts. Like a boat that was lucky to float and a couple of bags of douche in the forms of capitan and guide.

We would generally take two walks a day; one in the early morning and then one in the late afternoon, each with a snorkeling session attached to it. As I mentioned, our first guide was not a very nice guy, so the walks we had while he was in charge were interesting, but in an odd way, sort of stressful. He would snap at you for asking the wrong question (?) or for not heeding his exact orders. If you weren´t ready to get on the motorboat to head to land five minutes before scheduled...you were chastized. (Which is odd because normally in Ecuador, EVERYTHING happens 20 minutes late!!) At one point Uri, the Isreali Canadian guy was trying to take a photo of our group on this silica and obsidian beach and the guide burst out with, "If you want to take a picture of me, you just tell me and I will stand out in front of the group, but don't try to take a photo of me while I'm trying to do my job because I know you are going to post it on the internet with a sign that says, '>Worst >Guide In The Galapagos'!" We were all like, "Whoa man, chill out." But he didn't chill out, so it was nice when he left. He made a pretty big ass out of himself and so it was funny and fitting that his last tour that he gave us was a disaster. First he dragged us through this ancient lava cave, and then through the mud-marshes nearby in search of the huge and legendary turtles. We did find them, which was great, but our enjoyment was cut short when he suddenly announced, "We're lost, we have to go now!!" and then he proceeded to run (literally) off down the path. I know we weren't very lost, if you've ever been in the woods before, then you know more or less what is going on. But he was afraid of us getting stuck out there when the sun went down so we power-walked after him. We found a road and were power-walking down it for almost an hour before we were picked up by a pickup truck carrying dogs that hunt and kill feral pigs!! Sounds exciting right? It was! So sixteen gringos pile into the back of this jalopy of a truck and we bounce all over the dirty gravel road for a long damn ways before we were let off. Sergio, the guide, was pissed off and not saying anything or looking at us at all. Our bus driver had gotten confused by the fact that we hadn't returned, and so he took off!!! With all our stuff on the bus! We ended up having to call him and he came and picked us up. Thank the lord and baby jesus that even the poorest of people in Ecuador can somehow afford a cell phone! So we made it back to the port and all, but it was a hilarious set of events. It was actually really fun, because of the group's attitude towards it...and I think it actually made that day a lot funner!

I have to mention Bernard a bit too. Every now and again you meet people while traveling that just wow you. A super unique combination of influences who have made them who they are. Well this guy Bernard, from French speaking Quebec, was one of these types of people. He was born on a farm in rural Canada and had ten brothers and sisters. (Who we learned all about.) He was raised working on the farm under the strict hand of a his father and didn't begin to travel until he was 28 years old. But once he started, he didn't ever stop for long. He never married and he struck me as being a little bit Forrest Gump-like. Just walking through mayhem right and left without a scratche left on him. He has travelled seemingly everywhere and his stories, and the way he tells them, are fantastic. He is a very just man, a man who sees things as they are, and describes them with a clarity that I find rare in humans. He has negotiated extremely dangerous situations without breaking much of a sweat and his recountings of these tales are accompanied by his great, life affirming laughter. Ejemplos: He crossed a huge desert in India on a camel, he hitchhiked through The Golden Triangle (major opium growing region in Laos, very dangerous), he lived on a houseboat amongst the violence in Kashmir, and the stories just go on and on. He remembers every date and person exactly and he does 100 pushups every morning at 6 AM. He is 53 years old and he drives a cement truck for a living. He is very difficult to sum up. He had us all laughing almost constantly with his accent and choice of words, and his unique perspective on seemingly everything. He has no email address and carries no camera. The kind of person you wish you could travel with more often.

Each night a group of passengers would play a card game called Yanif that the my Israeli roommate had learned during his mandatory three years in the army. Some would read and some would nap and we all seemed to talk non-stop about the new deck chairs that we had to sit on, the parts of the boat that were being painted, the rumors about the new guide or what would be served for dinner. After a short week we had turned into a little family of internationals. At any time one could hear conversation in english, french and spanish. It was nice.

There are, of course, many other stories to be told, but there is not the time to tell them here and now. I am sure that I will talk with each of you about this trip and I look forward to showing you photos. My camera got wet when a huge wave came over the bow of the rowboat we took to shore and so I am having a tough time getting the photos uploaded because the technology here is really out of date. Eventually I will have many more loaded onto my myspace page to check out. I hope you are all well...chau...

The Border, The Bus, And The Heat

Mateo Del Norte is, at this point, very close to being, technically, back in the north. I am now in the country named after the line that separates the hemispheres and man does the weather reflect it!! It is hot as a bastard up here in Ecuador and each afternoon it rains bucketloads and floods the streets and washes the buildings without cooling things down much at all. I just braved a torrent with an umbrella to get down the hill from my bro Jake's house to the cibercafe. There was a dead and rotting cat in the road and lots of wet Ecuadorians plodding along. It smells good...that is a bonus...it smells like you'd think it would in the tropics, moss, moisture, flowers and fruit. We have a couple days of hanging out before leaving for the Islands of Galapagos on friday.

The day before yesterday I left Lima in the late afternoon after having a really nice lunch with Waldy and Christian. I went back to the house of Silvia to endure the inevitable sadness of leaving her and Marta and the rest of the family. I got a chatty driver and listened to his theories all the way to the airport. Theories about life in Peru and the world, education, politics, the seasons, the regions. It seems as though at times the Big Guy In The Sky gives you what you need when you need it. I have been from bliss to breakdown and back a number of times in the last couple weeks and the whole time it seems as though He/She/It has got my back. The chatty guy helped me to not oversulk. I was in no state to sulk. Long story. I got to the airport in time to get in line behind a family of six, and as we waited to amble up to the AeroCondor counter, they pulled the pants off this little toddler, and while one little daughter smelled at his butt to see if he had shat, another held a blue plastic pitcher in front of the little guy while he pissed into it. It reminded me of a pit crew in Nascar. After he was through, the dad oversaw the operations while two daughters put the kid back together and another son took off with the pitcher to pour it into the toilet in the bathroom that was apparently too far away to take the kid to. In the meantime it was their turn and the mom had been lugging the bags up to be weighed. It was something else. I had never seen that operation performed in an airport waiting line. I was impressed and entertained and what was most funny was that the little kid hardly seemed to notice it all.

On the plane I put my mind to the navigation of the city of Tumbes and the reputedly grim borderland beyond. The travelers circuit is full of horror stories regarding muggings and various ways of getting ripped off there. I was ready for whatever, but again, fate sent me a gift. As we were departing the aircraft I met a guy from Switzerland who spoke spanish at about the same level that I do. And he had the same game plan as me, so just like that, we had backup!! If you have traveled a lot in the third world, then you know how good it feels to know that you have someone that you trust. The Swiss are good people. Their country is organized and well run and the people reflect those imprints. This guy, Eric, was from the french speaking part of Switzerland and we spoke mostly in Spanish, with a little english, and then I dusted of a few old french sentences as well. We got into a place to stay in Tumbes and then got a bus across the border the next morning. It turns out that the guy is a real philosophe and we really enjoyed our conversation. He's a smart guy and we share a common skepticism of the sterility of the modern world. The bus ride up was a lot more tranquil than I had expected. We had a few random detours that could have eroded into trouble, but all in all, it went well. Because I have been without a guidebook since my encounter with the Ladrones in Mendoza, I usually look into travel information online before I go to a place. Some places have more info about them than others. There is not much beyond horror stories in blogs when you google info about the aforementioned border crossing, so at this time, I want to include a little insider info, in case others who will be crossing are interested and happen to find this blog. Please pardon the interruption.

Border Crossing Between Peru And Ecuador At Tumbes:

If you are wanting to go from northern Peru northward to Guayaquil, you obviously have to get across the border. You have no doubt heard that this is a tough border point and you may be a tad bit stressed out about the details of crossing. I made this crossing yesterday and it was fairly easy, and I want to let you know how to do it. I don't know what it is like to get to other destinations besides Guayaquil, so if you are not doing the Tumbes-Guayaquil trip, than this may only partially help you. Ok. If you are not in Tumbes yet, Tumbes is not as bad as it is made out to be. You need to be aware there, but it is not the land of the dead as some people make it out to seem. Find a hostel or hotel that has decent security. There are numerous hotels near the Plaza de Armas so at the very least, if you show up with no plans, get a cab or a tuk-tuk to the Plaza, and work outwards from there. We stayed in a nice place about twenty paces from the plaza. From the airport to the Plaza de Armas, you should only have to pay 15 Soles...don't let them get you for more...agree to this BEFORE you get into the cab. If you speak spanish this is easier, but it is 15 for the ride, not for each person. From the square, you can catch a 1 Sol tuk-tuk to the office of CIFA bus. This is the only company I found that goes more or less direct to Guayaquil. The good part about this is that they are with you throughout the customs process. I have heard of many people trying to cab through the labyrinthine process of the immigration borders and that just seems like work you don't want to be doing. There are so many ways to get had in that area. So a ticket from Tumbes to Guayaquil costs 21 Soles, and lasts about 6.5 hours. You leave from their offices and they take you through the Peruvian side's Aduana station. DO NOT pay anyone here...just wait in line and get your card stamped. There are people there trying to "help you" and change your money, don't give anyone anything and mostly just ignore the bastards. They are preying on the clueless...which most gringos are in these situations. After you get your shit done there, you get back on the bus and cross into Ecuador. There is not a system even resembling order in all of this, so what came next seemed odd, but apparently normal, for these guys and it ended up working. We had to get off the bus we were on which meant we were separated from our packs that were in the baggage hold beneath the bus. That made us uncomfortable, but only the gringos. This Peruvian chick that I was sitting with said that she crossed often and this was how it went. We got on another bus and then went about fifteen minutes to the immigration station of the Ecuadorian side. It took about 30 seconds to get a stamp and then we waited for about ten minutes while eating churros and then our original bus showed up again. I asked to see the bags and the driver showed them to us and then we hit the road. You have to get off the bus a couple more times to show your paseporte to some military types, but all in all, it isn't much more than that. The road in Guayas Province is rumored to be dangerous, but we had no problems. Keep your handbag close to you at all times and I would advise not keeping it beneath your seat. If you do, keep your leg through a loop in your bag so that it cannot be easily dragged off. These guys are good robbers though, often with knives to cut straps quickly, and if you doze off, you can easily be had that way too. I had a friend who crossed over and fell asleep with her bag beneath her seat and woke up without a lot of things she really liked. Just pay attention. Lots of people are getting on and off these buses, selling food and drinks and various other random shit, so just pay attention to your pockets and your bag. If this is helpful to even just one person, than I am happy. It sucks to get robbed, I know this, so whatever measures you can take to prevent it are worth it. Good luck.

Alright. So Jake lives in a huge house in the Miraflores neighborhood of Guayaquil...a house fitting of a...doctor? Yes, a doctor! And that is just what the wife of Jake is!! A doctor, so it's perfect. I have my own big room and bathroom, and the bathroom alone is bigger than most of the rooms I've stayed in in the last while! They have a great view over the city and I realize that Jake's 'view karma' must be good. In San Francisco too they have a terrific view out over the downtown and Bay Bridge. Yesterday we watched the afternoon deluge while drinking beers and in the evening we went to a seafood joint for a bite. The city is hot, but not as hot as it could be. It reminds me of South East Asia and I certainly don't need my Sierra clothes here...

There isn't a whole lotta time this afternoon...we are leaving for Galapagos on friday morning and if I don't get a chance to write again before then, then it will be a week later the next time I do...the 29th or 30th. I hope you are well, hablamos otra vez muy pronto...

Riversides, Setting Suns and Peruvian Cuisine Via Cuba Via China...

Things have been utterly crazy since I landed in Cusco...those amazing few days flew by in the blink of a butterfly's speeding bullet. I got here to Lima thursday afternoon and hit the ground running. I have been staying with my old family here and they are go-getters. ´Sleep when yer dead´ kind of go-getters. So...Mateo has not slept much for a long darn time now!! Ha ha! Kinda surreal!!! It has been a hell of a time though and after my day today, I would have to say that this has been one of the best weeks of my life. I am not going to go into great detail here, for lack of time...but for whatever reason, things are really clicking down here in this epoca.

Today we spent sunday up in the rocky Sierra...in the Andes...escaping the heat and humidity of the city. It was a great day spent by the side of a glaciar fed river that was really rushing with rain water from high up in the mountians. It is an interesting place where we were...Cerro Colorado in Cieneguilla...a bamboo forest with all sorts of greenery growing here and there; a complete oasis in the dry and arid mountain range that seems like another planet. It's a cool set up here. You show up and find a place to chill, the place has chairs and tables and these bamboo and grass huts...and you can bring your own food and drink, or they have a great kitchen and they will feed you. There are animals here and there and lots of stuff for kids to do. I sat on the rocks and put my feet in the river for an hour. Then wandered around the shores. In the afternoon there was a live folklorica band playing local mountain music. Good stuff. I nursed my hangover in the shade and drank water and the black milk of imperialism while eating chicken that they had roasted over the local scented brush that they use to make the fires. It was good. Life was smiling at me today.

Last night we went to There Will Be Blood before going out to dance in this bumping salsa club. That is a rad movie. I am very much out of the loop down here on the movie scene in the US and so I get to these flicks late. I realize this. You probably saw that son of a bitch three months ago!!! Ha ha! But I just saw it and it was a real movie. Quite a movie. I also saw No Country For Old Men on pirated DVD a little while back and that, too, was great. I know, ya saw it three months ago. I just saw it!! It underscored something that I try to explain to people here...that America is a fuckin' crazy country!! Una locura...those are the words I use to explain it here. Like some sort of a circus side show...only more violent...and often filled with things that ya just couldn't make up. That movie is heavy, and pretty violent...but it does a good job of underscoring the nature of our cultural insanity in its acceptance of the normality of such violence.

Yesterday I cooked the saturday meal for the family. That is sorta the thing here in Peru; on saturday you get together with your family, all the kids and uncles and cousins and grammas and talk and lay around and eat and then take a siesta...each person occupying a piece of furniture somewhere in the house. I was planning to do a parrilla, which is the word for barbeque. The Leones have a great grill built into their brick patio (they are wealthy) and I was ready to rock it when Ricardo showed me a cooking instrument that I had never used before. It is called a Cajachina...which translates to China Box. It was developed in Cuba, and Ricardo learned about it in a Cuban restaurant in Miami and bought one for himself. It is a box, with a grate in the bottom, and a catch tray below. You place the meat and corn and potatoes and whatever else on that and all the fat drips away so that the food is lean and clean. On the top is a metal tray where you place your coals and it heats from above. It is reflective of a local style of cooking in the mountains here in Peru called Pachamanca...or cooking underground using fire heated stones. It takes a few hours, so you gotta be patient, but it is worth it when the chorizo and choclo and chicken and plantains are all pulled out...just perfect after a slow roast. I also made a South America version of ratatouille which wowed them. ¿Funny no? They had never heard of ratatouille and thought that I was making up the word itself!! You should hear them try to pronounce it!! Funnier tha "Old Smuggler" (Argentinian brand of whiskey, they say it, "Ol Smooglare") or "Corn Flakes" (Pronounced Con Fake!) I know, it's mean to make fun of people's accents, but I'm neck deep in shit on that one!! Ha ha!! People probably make fun of mine all day!! Anyway, the Cajachina is cool. I skipped over siesta...lamentably...but most of these other cats cashed in on it and we all rocked the night away regardless. I will continue this blog with the other pictures in the next entry...

Fried Peruvian Dumplings, Mountian Music, and Shaking What Our Mama´s Gave Us...

The day before we spent in a place called La Punta. It is a strange sort of calmness that you find after many miles of Lima crazyness and gnar. I am tellin´ ya, Lima is a crazy bastard of a city. Not really that safe for a person of my skin tone. A lot of places aren´t safe for any skin tone! It is freakïng crazy. Lots of violence and robberies...third world style. So we drove through many, many sketchy neighborhoods before reaching the tranquility of La Punta. La Punta is called that because it is "the point" of land that enters the Pacific Ocean north of Callao, the barrio that the Lima International Airport is located in. You can´t drive any farther than La Punta. It is surrounded by the beaches and the boats of the wealthy and there are police everywhere so you feel safe in an unsteady kind of way. We walked all over the place and ate a local treat called Picarones. These are like beignets, a dough that is fried in a circle like a donut in hot oil, and served on a plate of honey. Man, the texture and flavor of those things are great. They are made with a type of local potato flour. They have an interesting orange color. I will someday try to reproduce them in a kitchen.

The night before that (I am working backwards here evidently) I got together with my ex school mates and we went to this rocking cultural dance called Las Brisas De Lago Titicaca. Each band that played had a dance group from the Sierra that was in full costume reproducing the traditional styles of dance and music culture. After each spectacle, all the people who were there to watch were welcome to come up onto the dance floor to dance to the music for about fifteen minutes. Then another band would come on. There were many, many bands and it went from eight in the evening til three in the morning! We danced the night away to some seriously sick cumbia (Ozzy would have been stoked with the amount of cowbell in the monitor!!) and a lot of merengue and samba. It was terrific. Drinking pitchers of Cusqueña and rocking the palmas...No sleep that night either.

I am out of time for now. Tomorrow I am flying up to a crazy border town called Tumbes...and tuesday the plan is to cross into Ecuador to see Jake and Rebecca. We shall see how things go. Peace and love...

The Rainy Sound, The Cold Contrast and The Better Feeling Of Cusco...

I made the right decision in coming back to Cusco. I have been thinking, yesterday and today as I have been walking the streets, that this really is one of my favorite places in the world. I remember quite liking Prague in the Czech Republic and Oporto in Portugal. I also loved Wellington in New Zealand and Livingstone in Zambia. Cusco is at the top of that list somewhere...impossible to compare, but up there for sure. Cusco has this feeling of calm that wells up from it. Even now with the rain falling and the skies gray, it feels like a good place to be. I woke up this morning, warm in my pile of woolen blankets, looking out my window across the valley of old houses and buidings. From my street up above the city, you can see the birds flying against the gray sky and the steeples of the vast old churches...built on the foundations of the Inca temples before them. They seem so sturdy and strong despite weathering such a climate at this elevation. The people in the streets bustle along, or better said, there is a bustle in the streets, but it doesn't have that same frantic aspect to it that other places down here do. You see so much color in these caminos and calles, old and young, modern and ancient, all juxtaposed. The air has the frequent aroma of woodsmoke and the plazas smell of flowers and cigars. There is a lot of water moving in Cusco...an element of life, the element of survival and flourishing. The streets are cobbled in a lot of the city, and the car tires make a slapping sound as they cross them at velocity. The air is chilly now, normal for this time of year. It feels good against the skin of my face and the rain isn't so cold yet. And I can't forget to mention that the food is great...

I realize coming back here that I like this place more and more. I realize too that my face gives me away as a foriegner, despite my inner feeling of closeness with the place and it's people. I still wear the mask of the conqueror...and that is a bummer. It bums me out at times. I feel good coming back here and want to talk to people in a way that implies familiarity, but it turns out that I am still just another gringo face. Oh well.

Then there is the idea of going back to a place. Gabe and I talked about this quite a bit. There is a feeling that one gets sometimes when coming back to a foriegn city or place...a feeling of let down. Maybe because it is familiar and doesn't inspire the same feeling of excitement that it did last time and maybe that you hoped it would have again. You can't reproduce old experiences in new circumstances. You can feel the memories, and those can trigger something in the present that may be similar, but it is a new time, and a new situation, and sometimes you feel let down by your expectations. That is not the case for me here. I was wondering how it would feel to be here again. Not going to see Macchu Picchu or great temples and ruins in the Sacred Valley. Just to be here again. I was happy to feel what I felt upon arriving: comfort. I see that the time will go faster than usual because I don't want to leave so quickly. Three days in a heartbeat. Three days in an eyeblink. Back to sea level and the other kind of bustle. They say that Cusco radiates energy out into the world; the Incas called it "The Belly Button Of The World". Maybe I have bought into the hype, or maybe I am just really tired, but I am certain that I feel that energy. Neruda says that it is vain to come back, but that often it is the thing that one needs to do. That may well be the case for old Mateo del Norte. I am contented to have come back, and now I can leave in a better way.

Yer Damn Right!!!

It does say Cienfuegos!! That is a street in Santiago named after me!! Ha ha! Not really, but it should be!! Ha ha again....not really again. But I like when I find that shit. There was a Cienfuegos pub in one of these places I visited but I had not my trusty camera with me at that moment. It does feel good to be on the same sign post as the Liberator of Chile!! Good Old Bernardo O'Higgins, who was a latino, don't let the Irish name fool ya. His parents were evidently from the old country. A Badass they tell me. A lot of these liberators where badasses. In a time before Nintendo, people liberated things.

So I am in the airport in Lima. I just got off a nice mellow nighttime flight from Santiago. It is midnight. I'm gonna sleep in the airport tonight because I have a connection to Cusco at 5 AM. Yeah, ouch. Not much sleep for this kiddo tonight. It'll be Mateo Del Snore-tay!! Ha ha, I kill me. No really, I am gonna strap my bag to my arm so I don't get robbed while I doze. This aeropuerto is nuts...full of people, it is like fanfare for each arriving flight. It is like the opening scene of Love Actually multiplied by a thousand and told in español. It is a thing to behold. There is a lot of love in Latin America. I've mentioned it before, but you see it in the street, you see it in the park, you hear it through the windows at night, and yes, you see it flourishing at the arrivals gate in the international airport. And would you believe it? I just watched Alvin and the Chipmunks on the flight! Strangely, my boy David Cross was the 'bad guy'. How does he go from telling jokes about abortion to that. I am not sure how, but he pulls it off! I always like airplane movies because I am a captive audience and I can catch up on movies I would rather be shot dead than see in a theater. Often I wouldn't even rent the things, but on a plane you can indulge them without guilt. I especially like flights to Sydney or Capetown where I can knock out 6 or 8 of these fuckers at once!! Just tape open my eyes and go for it. "Yes lady, you can bring me another red bull, I gotta watch the end of Titanic!" Maid In Manhattan, Pride And Prejudice, (I know that was literature, but the movie sorta blew, even with Kiera in it!) The Bad Luck Bears, any movie with Micheal Keaton in it... It is a great little treat, those plane movies. Nothing like eating ratty-ass packaged food while watching a ratty-ass packaged movie...and all at high altitude!! So as you can see I have time to kill here...

Ha ha! But yes, I am glad to be back in Peru. I can't wait to eat some good food again. I am not complaining, but the food in Chile was, to say the least, in need of some love. My Chilean mom cooked up some mean, if not simple, chow; but the rest of the scene was fairly bleak. I had heard that and it took a month for me to believe it for myself. Der. Here I am dying for a batch of Martha's Aji de Gallina!! That glistening, curry-yellow nest of shredded chicken and potatoes and peppers...steaming softly above a bed of pearly white rice. Or the Seco de Pollo from La Casita...with its red beans and rice and herbs, it's glowing orange aji sauce and pile of fresh onion slaw. All washed down with a what??? Yep, a coke! Everywhere in the goddamn world is doing it!! In Thailand, you can wash down Pat Thai with one, in Africa, you can choke down Mealy Pap with one, in Aussie, you can chase Curried Kangaroo fresh off the legendary barby with one! And here, even here, you can chase your chicken and potatoes that were cooked on hot rocks while buried underground for three hours...with a coke. Goddamnit. Doesn't that sorta chafe ya? I mean, Jesus should be exported like coke. He just needs a better marketing department. I'm not going to compare one of the major world religions with the glistening black milk of imperialism, but hey, the Pope might look into it!! You could baptize babies in it! You could turn water into it! You could part the red seas of...yes! coke!! That would be a different sort of bible though...if the apostles were wearing coke t-shirts and talking about those cute Polar Bears instead of Cane and Abel and Sodom And Gemorrah. The devil could meet Jesus in the desert and offer him a frosty coke, with that little wisp of smoke that rises when you open it, and goddamnit, I bet even Jesus would breakdown and have one. A different bible it would be. And now that I have offended everyone, I will move on.

The alternative to coke here in Peru is called Inca Kola. It is theoretically made by a small group of indigenous people here in Peru. They would be busy people if that was the case. All of the chifas (chinese restaurants) in Lima sell gallons of that by the hour. It is the drink of choice with eastern cuisine in these parts. It tastes like bubble gum in a yellow bottle, but at least it is a local thing.

One of the best parts of coming back to Peru, is that the people speak very clearly. They include all the written letters in their pronounciation, and they don't turn double ll's into sh's. They don't feel the need to lisp on z's and they don't mind anunciating a little bit. Gringos like me appreciate that. When I first got here in November, I almost picked the 'change your money' lady up and spun her around, so great was the difference from Argentina. I have since gotten used to Argentina and Chile, but trust me, it feels good to get back here.

Leaving Santiago today was alright. I was bummed, cause I like it there, but I wasn't as sad as some other places. The evening sang me a farewell tune by lighting up the smog and making the different tiers of the vast Andes mountain chain gold and yellow and red. Pulling up out of the city, I could see that Chile really is a place of true beauty, with a lot to be proud of. A small strip of land in between the mountains and the sea, with a world of language, music, food, agriculture, wine, terrain, grass, sun and water...all happening in such an interesting way. Goodbye Maria Los Angeles, it was nice almost knowing you.

Well it is one in the AM and I am going to go visit the ice cream joint across the way. Maybe I'll fall asleep and drool ice cream on their shiny clean table! Or maybe I'll pull a nuit blanche, as we used to say in France, and I just won't go to sleep at all! "So ha, you faeries of dreamland...I'm not coming tonight!" Or maybe I will go to sleep on some series of small-people benches and I'll wake up in these same clothes, all wrinkled, and curse the morning and stretch and mash my mop of hair into formation and then fly to Cusco...educated guess: that's what's gonna happen. Until next time, enjoy your beds.

Adventures With Wine, Cooking In The Short Bus Kitchen, And Taxi Cab Woes

It really is hard to know where to start on the story of Mendoza. It has been a while since I wrote and that whole thing went by so damn fast, but I realize that it has been almost two weeks. It is also a bit hard to write a whole lot about the days there because it was mostly about just spending quality time getting to know a place.

I left Chile on the old 'cross the huge mountains' bus. It was as amazing as ever and I got into Mendoza in the early evening and had a night to kill before my bro Gabe was set to roll in. I ate at a place that night that would go on to become a standard for us...I don't remember the official name of it, because I was always distracted by this giant cow that they had sitting out on the sidewalk, and the restaurant quickly became known amongst us as "The Cow Place". Yeah, how gringo, I know. But still, it rocked hard, and we ate there a lot. Particularly these huge paninis that they would put on the grill. They had chicken and vegetbles and great flavor, way better than average in Argentina. Later on during the week we realized that they had aji hot sauce and me and the Gabester put away just about a whole bottle between the two of us. They also had an interesting version of chimichurri that we destroyed too. The waitress was like a growing-old-gracefully version of Sophie Marceau and I was immediately in love with her. I told Gabe to tell her that after I was gone and I hope he did. That lady was something else!! (This is all joking around.) Actually almost everything that happened in Mendoza was funny. I haven't laughed that long and hard for a really long time.

We originally had grand plans to work the harvest and those sort of changed based on my desire to go to Galapagos with Jake and Rebecca. So we had some winery visits set up and other than that the usual amount of brotherly debauchery to create. During the week we had a lot of adventures, but one of the funniest was our journey to the winery called Catena Zapata. It is a very high end winery, one that I have liked for a long time, so I was excited to go. We had been up really late and when the alarm went off that morning I was hungover and not interested in wine or anything at all aside from sleep. I managed to get to my feet and then I showered and then it was ok. We wandered the city to find the enigmatic spot where the buses left from for the town of Maipu...finally found it and then struggled through the stand up busride to get up there...more or less an hour of jutting and jolting old-bus steering. I was out of fuel when we arrived and was dying to eat something so we went directly to the one restaurant they had and had a hilarious lunch. We had been having a tough time getting any good food and Gabe had been getting the short end of the deal most of the time. Like ordering what he thought was one thing and getting another. I had some raviolis the day before that were literally swimming in oil...things like that. So that day we were really hoping for something good. He ordered a chicken sandwich and got a huge chunk of cow meat between bread (technically a sandwich, but that's it) meanwhile I got a beautiful looking tostado, that turned out to be full, and I mean full, of mayo. We didn't even get one of the things we ordered, but we were hungover and didn't have the energy to do much about it, so despite being "chaffed" (that was the word) we paid and left. The main plaza there was as perfect as any I've seen and the water in the giant central fountian was dyed to look like wine. We needed to get a cab to get to the actual winery so we found a place and called it up. A guy showed up and quoted us 20 pesos to go out to the place...he said he thought he knew where it was. It turned out that he didn't and we watched the clock quickly march right on by the time of our appointment. The guy drove here and there and we asked people and he radio-ed for directions. We finally found it and where almost a half an hour late, which means we were going to miss the tour. We were getting out of the cab and the guy says that we owe him for the time we drove around lost and that chaffed us even more. So we had a classic parking-lot fare battle with the guy. It was bullshit and he knew it and we ended up getting the ride back for free. We ended up seeing part of the tour still, but did miss some stuff and the 'high class' wine chicks that worked there frowned down their noses at us. When we got back to the cab, the guy had pulled up the back seat and folded it so that we would have to sit on the frame of the car beneath where the seat usually sits. "You gotta be kidding me." Gabe and I chimed in unison. The guy was not, in fact, kidding us. He had to roll that way so that the meter wouldn't read that we were there. (That's how much they trust the drivers in Argentina.) It was about a half hour of riding side saddle on the back seat rail, trying not to touch anything, in order to not set off the sensor. At one point the guy had to stop the cab on the side of the highway and I thought, alright, here is where he pulls the old 'get rid of the gringo' move. We were ready to defend ourselves in a continuation of our battle, but it turned out that he had really left the hood open a crack. So it was no big deal. By the time we ate dinner that night we were just glad to still be able to eat! Not the best of days, but it was hilarious.

These days, for Mateo, it is just nice to have someone to talk to in English. Someone that I know and have similar history with. That is a thing that I take for granted in my normal life sometimes. It is really a great pleasure in life to sit in a cafe or park and just talk to someone about the things that happen in life. We drank a lot of coffee last week, and even more wine. The wine selection is huge in Mendoza. Given that it is all from there. You see no wine at all from Chili or USA or Europe. We drank malbec and tempranillo and syrah and bonarda. Many bottles. Long into the night we would drink and laugh and tell stories. We did a bit of cooking which was a lot of fun despite the small kitchen of the hostel. It had three burners and anyone who knows me when I cook, I can easily use a six burner. The cutting board was concave, which really didn't end up mattering because I was cutting things with a steak knife. Not well equipped. We did some nice food though, considering. A penne dish with caramelized onions, zucchini and corn, another pasta dish with a chorizo sauce and the last night we did roasted chicken breasts with reggianito mashed potates, brocoli, fresh tomato and a local sausage buerre rouge. The last night we had a Luigi Bosca Vineyard designated Malbec, which was hands down the best wine of the week. Another cool surprise was that Telly, Gabe and I's boss in the wine bar in SF, (he's more our homey than our boss) sent a half bottle of 2001 Cahors with Gabe for when he met up with me. Gabe had that little bottle tucked in his pack for two months before we finally drank it, and it was a real treat when we did. That Telly is a hell of a guy. A real high class son of a bitch. It was so nice to drink something from Europe, because with the exception of one bottle, it is the only thing I have had from there since I was harvesting in Walla Walla.

I am going to keep this one short so that there is something to write in the next one, I did two so that there would be room for photos. It is hard to capsulize that time in Mendoza, because really it was about hanging out with my bro. We didn't climb any mountains or jump off any bridges, but it was just as fun as if we had!! Read on.

Coincidences, Sweet Sounding Guitars, And The Great Swedish "About"...

There was a Swedish guy with his girlfriend staying in our room at the hostel. He was a snorer, but more importantly, he became known as "About". That is what we called him, because no matter where you were in the hostel, he would be sitting there or he would bustle past you with a determined look on his face. At first he was "about" only the hostel, but then we saw him around in the streets of Mendoza, always going somewhere, but seemingly already everywhere. I love shit like that. When he left the hostel we weren't sad, because we knew that he would still be "about"!

Mendoza is a city, big enough without being too big. I felt that this time was good for erasing, or at least easing, the sting of my first impression there. (That was my robbery incident.) It is a town full of green trees, similar in ways to Montevideo in Uruguay. There are a lot of restaurants and bars and cafes. We spent a couple days eating lunch in a cafe, and then drinking coffee and chatting until it was time for dinner. That is the way to go! I love that shit too. The coffee there is good and you can watch funny and interesting things go by you on the street. It was funny, knowing that the criminal element was there, I could totally watch it happening. Most people are oblivious to it going on, and that is why they get nailed. Walking around the nights of the Harvest Festival, you could see the gleam in the young ladrones eyes as they watched a cornucopia of tourists milling by.

The Harvest Festival is quite a thing. Everyone from far and wide comes to watch the crowning of the Harvest Queen and the events leading up to it. There is a lot of music and a lot of parade type stuff happening too. During the parade on friday night there were numerous floats filled with beautiful woman surrounding the Festival Queen candidate, that would roll by, each with their own decorated theme and music. The funny part of this was that instead of throwing candy or something little, they would zing apples, pears, bunches of grapes and the occasional melon!! Actually the melons were less zinged and more heaved. If you weren't watching, those bastards could break your noggin! I went to catch a pear at one point and it rocketed off my hand, onto the head of a short person in front of me...ouch. On friday night we ended up in this great spanish themed bar on the Plaza de España drinking a Pared Del Sur and eating olives and garlic and good bread. It was painted blood red and filled with incredible art. They were selling a lot of sausages in the street which was cool for Gabe since he is from Wisconsin originally. There were cool bands playing all night in the Plaza de Independencia across the moat-ish pool of water from the masses of Mendocinos. It was neat.

One of the best parts of that stay for me was the existence of guitars!! Gabe had a mini nylon string, and the hostel had a normal sized one, so we got to do a lot of playing. I miss it terribly. I miss my guitar and all my recording equipment. I can't wait to get home to it and this playing both made me want it more and tided me over for a while. I wrote three songs while there, all instrumentals. It makes me happy how fast it comes back after a while of being without it. I realize more and more the value of music, the closer you get to it, the more it means. One afternoon I was in the dining room talking to someone, when I heard the sounds of singing in the other room. I went in there and there was an older Chilean lady crooning out beautiful latina melodies and accompanying herself on the guitar. She was great. I couldn't believe she wasn't famous. She had a very dynamic and wavering voice and a great control of the emotion of her words. They were mostly songs of sadness, but they made me smile and I flopped down into a bean bag chair and closed me eyes and took off into the travel that her voice invoked. I love that kind of thing too. Music is the greatest thing ever.

We toured a bunch of vineyards and ate really well at them. There was one table full of charcuterie and cheese that may have been the most impressive one of those I have ever seen. They were free-pouring house syrah and Mateo was in seventh heaven. The last few days were a complete blur. After managing a few short hours of sleep my last night, I made it to the bus, to make my final Chilean/Argentinian Andes crossing at Libertadores. I had a strange thing happen that day too, made stranger by my hangover and lack of sleep. There are many many buses that cross from Santiago to Mendoza and vice versa. It is almost impossible to be on the same bus as someone else twice without planning it that way. I crossed on a random bus from Santiago, and I could not help but notice a very tall and attractive Chilean girl on the same bus. She must have been six foot two, and looked European. Hearing her speak said that she was from Chile, which seemed odd. I slept most of that ride too, and didn't talk to her, but when I got to the bus in Mendoza, days later, ready to cross back to Santiago, there was the same girl, getting onto the same bus as me. Coincidence? Sure. But strange. We ended up talking between naps and were both surprised by the oddness of it. Her parents are Germans and all of her family are tall. Her brother plays in a band that is similar to Iron Maiden. She lives in Puerto Montt and has one of the most rad names I have heard down here: Maria Los Angeles. Too end this entry, I will quote good old Bill Hicks once again: "Is life too fuckin' wierd or what?" Excuse the profanity. You get the jist.