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...
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