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.
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