in the pines

Today we saw a group of people in these pine trees as we walked by. One leaned against a trunk with their back to us. The figure sat very still and we couldn't see the face to tell if it was a man or a woman. In front of that person, two more were lying on the ground. It was a public park, so whatever. We looked away. Then... we looked back. The two figures on the ground were children, lying face-down and motionless in the cold, wet pine needles. We stopped. We stood there craning our necks, wondering what the hell. Immediately a loud, long shrieking sound came from the group of people. It was like the cawing of a crow, but coming from an adult who was trying to get our attention. We turned and ran. Ten minutes later we came back. We walked all through the trees. They were gone. Then off in the distance we heard the shrieking again.

Parque Cerro Philippi
Puerto Varas, Chile

La Vida Eterna, an exhibit by Guillermo Lorca

In June, I went to Santiago's Museo Nacional de Belles Artes and saw a very exciting exhibit of contemporary painting: La Vida Eterna (Etenernal Life) by Guillermo Lorca.

I don't know if Lorca's recognition represents any kind of trend in the world of art. If it does, then we are returning to an appreciation of staggering technical achievement.

His paintings are unabashedly baroque, with the photorealism of a virtuoso. These 20-odd, massive, master-level canvases were pumped out in the period of one year.

Lorca brings to mind Vermeer with his base ingredients: fair-faced girls in shadowy rooms, light streaming through windows, exquisitely-detailed household objects.

But that is where Lorca departs. From the calmness of these motifs erupts a gorgeous, nightmarish surrealism. In the centerpieces of the exhibit, we follow a girl named Laura, Lorca's red- or blue-haired Alice, down a rabbit-hole. Into a mad world of no adults and a menagerie of beasts. Wildfires and dinner parties hosted by the likes of Heironeous Boscsh.

Dogs of so many breeds bring to mind the riotous, good-natured curs roaming the streets of Latin American cities. They exult in the chaos of these works, but their violence never seems to be directed at Laura. Indoors or out, Lorca also obsesses over the birds of the air, an ornithologist par excellence.

Stepping outside into a world of perlescent-grey skies, the brooding skies of Chile, Lorca's paintings approach an apocalypse that's rooted in the elemental. The violence of these scenes, the only ones which don't feature a girl, refuses to be forthright. The occasional animal carcass suggests that the sloughs of red on the fringes of these works is gore, but upon closer inspection, it's strawberry jam. And where a horde of strays is devouring a cow, a cascade of milk in the place of blood.

In a different pair of landscapes, a child ventures forth, even more vulerable than before, still serene. In the distance, Eden is burning, perhaps a quiet nod to the ecological alarm bells ringing across the planet.

In his more restrained works, girls lounge in the billowy white sheets of massive beds. The outlandishness is limited to the presence of a calm animal or two. More tension comes from a child's beauty and vulnerability, on the verge of indecent, from serenity in a situation that feel threatening for some reason you can't put your finger on. Lorca manages to make furniture scary.  

In the title-piece of the exhibition, La Vida Eterna, is my favorite. The composition is impeccable. It's as atmospheric as the rest, but spares us the sinister undertones. It relishes in the fantasy world that nature represents to the child, as Laura hangs from the bough of an old tree, accompanied by dogs and at least 11 different species of birds. For a moment, all living things are silent compatriots, nonchalantly observing this bizarrely beautiful place called Eternal Life.  

Quilmes Ruins

On our last day in Cafayate, we visited the ruins of the oldest-known Pre-Columbian human settlement in Argentina. The Quilmes Ruins date back to 850 AD and were inhabited over the course of a thousand years. The Quilmes were a subgroup of the Las Diaguitas cultures found throughout Northeast Argentina, who emerged as nomadic hunter-gatherers and agro-pastoralists. The ruins represent their only known attempt at a city-like structure.

To get to the ruins, you take a 45-minute bus south from Cafayate (towards Tucumán). Flechabus has one that leaves around 12:30. Take it and ask to be dropped at Quilmes; the ticket shouldn't be more than 30 pesos. You'll be dropped off on the side of the highway; from there it's a five kilometer walk to the ruins. There are enough tourists in cars on this road to hitch a ride the rest of the way, which is what we did.




We arrived in mid-afternoon, with the sun shining right in the face of anyone looking at the ruins. It took a few minutes to realize what an incredible thing we were seeing. A V-shaped mountain stretches out symmetrical-ish arms to the right and left. Before you. A labyrinth of stone structures moves back into the mountain's shadow. It rises, in terraces, up the slope. Running through middle of the terraces is an escarpment of boulders; the signs say they were used as astronomical observatories and holy sites. Up on the arms of the mountain, more stone structures run along the ridges, looking like watchtowers.

You pay 20 pesos to enter the site. The fee entitles you to a free tour (which will only be in Spanish). Two guides were on duty, sitting in a bench in the shae. One of them got up and escorted us about 20 feet inside. She rushed through a three-minute schpiel that I barely understood, asked if we had any questions, and, before I could think of anything, rushed back to her bench in the shade. We meandered about for a while until the other guide (a little older) began a tour and invited us to join him. His Spanish was slow and clear and his tour lasted half an hour. The arbitrary outcomes of service in Argentina is truly a crap-shoot.

The second guide walked us further into the ruins. He explained how its thick walls were actually platforms (or elevated hallways) which the inhabitants used to walk between living spaces. Rooms were dug into the ground and housed multiple family units. They were open-air, partially covered by roofs of cactus wood. Circular structures with mortar-and-pestles found in them suggest spaces where food was prepared.

The Quilmes ruins have been partially restored, and usually this takes something away from the experience for me, but not at Quilmes. The restoration was done sparingly. The restored part is what you see clearly on the site (on the mountain and directly in front of it) but that only represents something like 10 percent of the original settlement. Outside of this, there are less-visible ruins that spread far and wide out into the surrounding desert (more about this later). Also, according to our guide, the Valley wasn't a desert at the time. Climatic events have changed it since the time of the Quilmes, he said. It was much more lush and condusive to agriculture at the time.

Toward the end of the tour, he gave a decent exposition on the history of the Quilmes people. If I hadn't done research beforehand or asked him for some literature, I would not have retained the following information (my Spanish just isn't that good). Allow me to nerd out for the next several paragraphs.

With a little imagination, Quilmes looks like something out of a fantasy novel. It's a mountain stronghold, a location chosen for it's easy defendability. In fantasy and in history, these niches are always associated with free people, with rebels. It couldn't be more apt for the history of the Quilmes.

What a coincidence it is that in the century leading up to the Conquest, an empire was already spreading over South America, conquering in the name of civilization. The Incas arrived in the Calchaquí Valley around 1400 AD. Their interaction with the Quilmes was hegemonic but complicated. Many sources portray the Quilmes as having resisted the Incan invasion. Our guide described it as a "cultural invasion," as opposed to one of outright force; the Incas brought changes in architecture and other customs, replaced the local Kakan tongue with Quechua, and set up officials in the valley to collect tribute for the empire.

The fall of that empire to the Spaniards in 1535 freed the Quilmes from the Incan yoke. The Calchaquí Valley was too far outside of Perú for the Spaniards to usurp authority there, further indicating that the Inca's rule had been tenuous.

Statue of resistence leader

Cacique Juan Chalimín

With the exit of the Incas, communities up and down the valley (not just the inhabitants of the ruins) formed a confederation and, for the next 130 years, they successfully resisted the spread of the Spanish Empire into their lands. I imagine that the Quilmes Ruins had to be the seat of leadership in this confederation. This was not a period of continual war but rather of sustained resistance. It was marked by three uprisings against encroachment: in 1562, led by the cacique named Calchaquí; in 1630, led by a cacique named Chelemin or Chalemin; and in 1656, led by "the false Inca" Pedro Borquez.

In 1665, the Spanish subdued the Quilmes. For their resistance, these rebels were punished severely. Most fled in a diaspora. Our guide told us of a single family who managed to hide in hills near the ruins and whose descendents have kept a shred of Quilmes culture alive to this day.

After their fall to the Spaniards, 2,000 Quilmes were marched across the country to a reducción (reservation) outside of Buenos Aires. The majority died along the way, on this Argentine trail of tears, with only a few hundred reaching the end alive. Within a few generations, the Quilmes were merely a memory in the area surrounding the reduccion.



Here the history of the Quilmes takes another sad and fascinating turn. Their historical presence was enough to impart the name Quilmes to a town which, today, stands near the site of the reduccion. At some point, a local beer company branded the name. Once again, white men showed their penchant for keeping the ghosts of AmerIndians at hand, particularly in the form of mass-produced goods. Today Quilmes is the biggest brand of beer in Argentina. It has been for over a century.

Argentina's treatment of Amerindian people was particularly genocidal (the so-called "Wars of Extermination" culminated in an 1880 military campaign to Patagonia whose stated purpose completely of Indians). Like most genocides, this one was followed by widespread, enforced amnesia as to what happened, even in the academy. Imagine: during decades when not even intellectuals wanted to talk about what happened to the Indians, millions sat down every night and shared liter-sized bottles of beer with the name of an exterminated people on the label. A perfect analogy for the legacy of colonialism: endlessly and obliviously drinking the blood of the conquered and exploited.

After our guide finished, we went up the terraces and into the shadow of the mountain, away from the scorching afternoon sun. The restored ruins slowly taper off as you move up past the astronomical observatory, but the higher you go, you still see traces of stone walls everwhere above you. The entire mountain surely must have been covered with these structures (there's nothing keeping you from scaling the whole thing, other than self-regard). Up there I imagined priests and caciques and nobles looking down on the rest of the city. What a bitch it must have been coming home.

There are many trails you can take up to the left and right arms of the mountain. There are way more structures along these ridges than you'd expect from what you can see from the ground. Or course, they are many amazing vantage points. Up there, you are the guard who sees the dust-clouds of Spanish cavalry 20 miles away and rushes to alert the cacique.

The other reason for climbing up the mountain (which surprisingly few visitors do) is that only here can you see the rest of the ruins, the unrestored parts outside the site, faintly visible amid the cactii and the scrub. It lets you appreciate how far out this settlement sprawled.

 

We ended our day-trip like champs. Sitting on stone walls on the right-hand ridge of the mountain, we opened a bottle of Mistela (wine from Cafayate, a new favorite), complimented by nuts and some leftover empanadas. For an hour we drank the sweet strong wine and watched the mountain's shadow reach out over the valley as the sun set behind us. Listened to donkeys hee-haw at each other from unseen farms. Not a soul came up the ridge to bother us the entire time.

That was probably because the park was about to close. We looked down at the parking lot and saw that it was nearly empty and that there were only a few other people here, walking to their cars. I think the park closes at 7, but if you come by bus, you can't wait that long. The last bus back to Cafayate passes at "cuarto de siete" (does that mean 6:45 or 7:15?). But you have a 5KM walk back to the highway. You'll want to hitch a ride, but if everyone is already gone, and you can't.

We downed the last of the wine and scrambled down the mountain. We found one last couple leaving the park and got a ride back to the highway. They were pretty groovy, an Argentina man and woman, platonic friends, traveling the country together. We got to chattin' and they took us all the way to Cafayate. They agreed that the Quilmes Ruins, this quiet and little-celebrated destination, was a pretty awesome way to spend the day.

The Delights of Cafayate

We're making our way down south from Salta to San Juan. Our first stop--and what has turned out to be the best one so far--was the charming town of Cafayate. Surrounded by vineyards, full of friendly people and delicious things, Cafayate is a true oasis in the Valle Calchaquí. At night, the plaza de armas is atmospheric as hell.

Our first night there, right after we got off the bus, we met a guy named Carlos in the street. He invited us to come see his hostal, the Hostal Benjamin. Since it was late, he offered us an amazing rate on a room for the next two nights. I don't even feel comfortable telling you how cheap we got this room for.

Some people just have good energy. Carlos is always running around the hostal doing something, but no matter how busy he is, he will accommodate you. He helped us rent bikes and catch buses. He even bought us a bottle of Malbec when we left Cafayate. (Unfortunately the bottle was dropped and shattered at the bus station, by a party who will remain unnamed).

There´s a reason why Carlos runs his establishment with the tenacity of an athlete. For something like 16 years he was a featherweight-class fighter who won titles in Argentina and Canada and probably other places. Just a few years ago he gave it up in order to run the Hostel Benjamin with his family. I asked him if he'd ever fight again (he's only in his mid-thirties). ''Who knows,'' he said, and threw up his dukes.

The big thing to see near Cafayate is the Quebrada de Las Conchas. It's an epic gorge of red sandstone named for all of its fossilized shells. Through the gorge flows a creamy orange river with beaches of white sand and strips of clumpy green vegetation. The road from Salta winds more or less downhill through the gorge, but, strangely, the river alongside the road flows in the opposite direction.

The eons have carved out some pretty groovy cavities, windows, pillars and walls in the sandstone. Most people take a guided bus-tour through the Quebrada that lasts all day. If you do that, it should cost about 150 pesos a person.

There are lots of amazing canyons in this part of the world, and lots of tours you can take. Most of these tours, in my experience, seem to consist of things like, "If you look closely at this column of stone, you can see the form of a monk." So instead of that, we rented bikes and took a bus to the Garganta del Diablo (where most tours of the gorge begin). From there, we biked 55 kilometers back to Cafayate.

It was hands-down one of the best choices we made on our trip. For most of the time we were the only people in sight. Originally we had the impression that we'd be leisurely coasting downhill. Hah! There were hills, flat stretches, and some strong winds ablowin. It turned out to be an awesome and a much-needed work-out.

Including all the breaks we took to inspect the geology, the bike trip was six hours total. The last stretch was about 12 flat KM past vineyards and sand dunes, which was the hardest part (Ginny kicked it into gear and beasted me). I highly recommend this as a day trip.

The next day we were tired but not as sore as we thought we´d be. There's always that inner struggle when you're traveling between seeing as much as possible or just giving in to your tiredness and taking it easy. It was MayDay, El Primero de Mayo, International Worker's Day... so not a damn thing was open. It happens a lot in Argentina. We couldn't have even left Cafayate if we wanted to. So we just walked around town aimlessly for a while, and that, let´s be honest, is one of the most sensuous pleasures known to man. That´s how we came across this building, which should be in the guidebooks:

 

A man and a woman were working in the junkyard out back. I got the man's attention. He came to the fence and quietly answered my questions for a few minutes. His name is Manuel. He's a ceramist. He used to do something before this but it's been many years that he's done only this. Sometimes his sons help him.

This building is his workshop. He started work on it thirty years ago; it's been many years since he's touched it, so for him, he supposes, it's finished. He incorporated forms from the region, the Valle Calchaquí, in order to celebrate "nuestra raza." He graciously took us inside the workshop for a minute. That building you see is one large room inside, full to the brim with ceramics (he asked that we not take any photos). Tables and walls covered in plates, bowls, masks, paintbrushes, tools... Full of natural light from so many windows. It's a very lovely and well-used workshop.

After that we went through the artisan's market. Cafayate has an abundance of small vendors selling artisenal wine, and I really like that. The town is best known for a white wine called Torrontes. We had some good dry versions of that one.

Cafayate was the first place I ever heard of or tried a wine called Mistela. This wine on the left is actually a white wine. I don't know how they make it but my guess is that they put it in whiskey barrels for a while, because Mistela has the color and a faint flavor of brown liquor. 15% abv. Syrupy sweet with a kick at the end.  I usually hate sweet wines, but this stuff is awesome. We bought some.

Back at the Hostal Benjamin, Carlos had been cooking locro on an open fire since 8am, to celebrate MayDay with his friends and family. He offered us some for lunch. Locro is a beef stew, and Carlos was adament that his is way more authentic than what you normally find. He puts in beef and pork and some bonus animal parts, like intestine and chicken skin. Also: pumpkin, corn, garbanzo beans, and green onions sprinkled on top. We sat on the patio with Carlos' family, eating locro and drinking mistela and growing drowsy in the autumn sun. Then we retired to our quarters to pass our second day in Cafayate in utter idleness, like a good worker should.

Wwoofing in Jujuy, Argentina

In April, my girlfriend and I spent a little under two weeks living and working on a farm in northwestern Argentina. It was my first experience with Wwoofing, and it was fascinating. We lived with a family who farmed strictly for sustenance, bartered with neighbors, and occasionally dabbled in tourism. You could describe them as campesinos. They instructed me not to use the word "indio" but this was how the father always referred to himself.

There was no technology on the farm, aside from a radio, a small black-and-white television, and a chainsaw. The workload was intense. At times I felt like a character out of Tolstoy novel, an urbanite learning the joy of sweating for my food, performing work that was truly useful and satisfying. These were tasks that humans have been performing for thousands of years: cutting alfalfa, harvesting potatoes, milking goats, taking them to pasture, caring for bulls, making bread, making cheese, and the never-ending burden of gathering firewood. Eight hours of work a day, sometimes more, on a diet of mostly carbohydrates. It was challenging. For me, the farm represented the return to basics that would be necessary for a sustainable future.

Of course, it gwas less idyllic than it initially seemed. Nagging questions of reciprocity and unspoken cultural tensions simmered below the surface the entire time, never letting us forget just how far removed our ways of life were from each other. Uglier legacies of patriarchy began to peak out from behind closed doors. Soon we began to question the intentions of our hosts in regards to our presence at the farm.

Finally a strange outburst of machismo of behalf of the father led to us leaving abruptly. It was unfortunate, but we were in total agreement that he had crossed the line and we really didn't have to put up with his shit. Was it an unbridgeable cultural divide? Or just the short-comings of one man, whose hardships I would never be able to understand? It's tempting to chalk up the breakdown solely to human pettiness. But it's hard to come to so severe a judgment. These were incredibly hard-working, self-reliant, contented people, and I admire them. I don't know if we could have had a more authentic, and indeed more raw, cultural exchange than we had. For that I am grateful.

I might write more about the nitty-gritty of life on the farm at some point. Right now I just wanted to share the general outline of my first experience with wwoofing (as far as I can tell, from conversations with other wwoofers and farmers, it was atypical). In a couple days we will head down to a farm outside of San Juan. I look forward to giving it another shot.

Studying the Southern Skies in Jujuy

I thought I heard crickets. Then I listened more closely and realized I was imagining them. It was silent enough in the desert for the brain to create it's own white noise.

You didn't have to go too far from the farm-house to be totally free of artificial light. This was my favorite thing to do in the hours of relaxation, between tea-time and dinner: walk out along the hillside, sit on a boulder, turn off the headlamp, and let my eyes bounce around the alien constellations of the southern skies for an hour.

High altitude, remoteness and clear desert skies. Possibly the most stars I'd ever seen. The silhouettes of massive cardón cactii loomed above me, reaching like worshippers, and against them I swear I could detect the swirling of the sky.

Up and down the valley, dogs began to bark at one another, miles apart. With every bark there was a distorted echo that rang back from the other end of the quebrada. It was hard telling the echoes from the responses of other dogs.

On one end of the horizon, there was a faint pall of light from the nearest town, probably Humahuaca. Red-and-green waves flowing upward and dissolving into the sky. I immediately had the sensation that this light was the reflection of computer screens on the window of a craft that was floating through space. That's how well-defined the field of the stars was: it revealed that it was three-dimensional.

The Las Diaguitas petroglyphs I had seen earlier that day, at El Pintado, began to take shape in my eyes as imagined constellations. I saw the Jesuit missionary, with arms outstretched, coming in peace. There was the hunter with his lance, of course. There was the "tumi" symbol, which respented a weapon and looked something like this: (-). Largest of all, I saw the butterfly-like symbol for shaman/chief, right down the middle of the Milky Way.  The symmetry of these new constellations began to disturb me.

More than once I saw a star blink brightly and then disappear from view. I saw others (had to be satellites) no different from those around them, moving in a slow, straight voyages, swimming across the sea of stars.

As I got up to go inside, I saw the rays of the moonrise reaching over the mountains, like the heralds of an advancing conqueror. The full moon would soon dim the beauty of the stars and illuminate the landscape like it was still dusk. A bat fluttered past my face. Then I heard it, just barely audible in this oppressive ocean of silence: the chirp of one solitary cricket, out in the desert.

Día de la Memoria

Yesterday was a national holiday in Argentina. It was the 38th anniversary of the military coup in 1976 which created a six-year dictatorship. The holiday is in memoriam of the 30,000 men and women who were disappeared, tortured, and killed by the right-wing military junta during this time. They were largely students, trade unionists, artists and intellectuals. Many were targeted for their politics; others were murdered indiscriminately, often implicated in the confession of someone under torture. These unspeakable attocities were committed in the name of defending capitalism.

This dictatorship was supported by the United States. Declassified documents show that as early as 1976, State Department officials (such as Henry Kissinger) were aware of the gruesome extent of the junta's abuses yet explicitly condoned them in meetings with Argentine diplomates. Tacit support for the junta continued in various forms over the course of three presidential administrations.

Yesterday we went to a massive remembrance rally in the Plaza de Mayo. It was a beautiful day, families out together, the smell of roasting meat everywhere. Countless people carried photos of their disappeared loved ones. They held their heads high, stoically, occasionally laughing among themselves, applauding the legacy of their fallen comrades.

The air was dominated by the sound of drum corps, as large left-wing youth organizations marched around the plaza for hours. The mood was reverent, militant, resolute. On a stage, an MC read off names of the disappeared. Signs and banners called for Justicia y Castigo for the members of military who still have not been prosecuted for what they did. There were reminders that the dictatorship was arm-in-arm with banks and corporations. And of course there were political campaigns attempting to capitalize on the emotion of the event.

In the middle of the plaza was a wall where messages and art were posted, addressed to the disappeared. These messages of love and hope were the most devastating part of the whole experience. So much love. So much hope.

I would like to congratulate my Argentine brothers and sisters on 30 years of democracy and human rights, and for not allowing the horror to take away their love of life.

Nunca más. Never again.

Uyuni Carnaval

(Photo credit: Khanh Gia)

One night we had to spend several hours in Uyuni, just waiting for a train. Nowhere to go and nothing to do, yet the spirits of the night came together and intervened, plucked ripe fruit off the vine of Carnaval and handed it to us, juice dripping down their wrist.

***

We'd long-since resigned ourselves to being completely at Grover's mercy. After three days on the road with our driver, we knew he was not the accommodating type. So no one put up much of a fight when he ditched us outside the tour company's office, all of our luggage locked inside, as the sun went down--with no explanation of when we'd get our things. Grover drove away in that Landcruiser that was the color of the dusty road, and we stood there in silence. Me, Ginny, Brendan, a French couple whose names we could never remember, and Khanh. Khanh was a Danish guy our age who'd been traveling through Latin America by himself for months. We had meshed well during our three-day trip together. Now we were all tired and dirty and nervous about being stranded in Uyuni, a small dusty town on the edge of nowhere.

At the time I was hellbent on us getting to the next leg of our trip: Oruro. We needed to be there the next day, the final Friday of Carnaval, said to be unmissable. We had planned to take a train that night.

Our three-day trip through the Salar involved cramming seven people in one mid-sized SUV, so we'd all had to leave luggage behind, to make room. Now we were wondering if we'd get it back in time to make the train.

Finally someone finally came by to let us get our things. We said goodbye to the French couple and to Khanh, and then went to an American-owned restaurant on the edge of town called Minuteman Pizza. It was our most satisfying meal in days.  There were hardly any other patrons and they were all tourists. The owners had no problem with us just being there until closing time and let us use the facilities to freshen. We drank beer and played several games of Gao, a Chinese card game that Khanh had taught us.

At around 8, I heard music coming from street. I took my recorder and went out by myself and meandered for a few blocks looking for some Carnaval festivities. The street was full of kiosks, vendors packing up their wares for the night. The music I'd heard was just a TV in a kiosk playing a DVD.

I looked up from the recorder and there was Khanh. He'd ended up buying a ticket for the same train we were on. Then he'd used one of the public showers farther up the road, which you have to pay for. "Oh man. Was that disgusting?" I asked. "No," he said. "It was actually amazing."

I brought Khanh back with me to Minuteman Pizza. The other two amigos cheered upon his entrance. We played more rounds of Gao, with Khanh dominating of course. At ten, the restaurant closed. We said goodbye to the sweet old lady running the kitchen, put on our packs and jackets, and went out. We walked back up the main street toward the train station. We still had several hours to kill, so  looked for somewhere to get a drink.

We got to the plaza (basically a park) right across the street from the train station. We put our bags down on a bench. There were a lot of people out. The loudest were the hordes of Chilean and Argentine backpackers, drinking on benches, on the ground, and in a gazebo. There were little clusters of them revolving around dudes with instruments.

There were young Bolivians out, too; a total contrast to the backpackers. They had gleaming hair and clean-shaven faces. Their outfits were sleeker, darker, and tighter-fitting. They stood aloof from the backpackers and did not smile, even as they talked to one another.

There were a few bars on the edges of the plaza but we opted to stay out in the plaza. Everyone was feeling pretty mellow and open to whatever.

Khanh and I went to a little liquor store nearby and bought a small bottle of rum called Abuelo. He  paid for it and I was going to pay him back, which, while writing this, I realize I never did. And he never brought it up. So Khanh, if you're out there, I owe you a drink.

We returned to the park bench. The rum was sweet and good. After a long silence, Khanh said four beautiful words: "I have some weed." We did not feel as brave as the Chileans and the Argentines around us smoking spliffs out in the open. So Khanh and I walked to the empty parking lot of the train station. Then we realized it wasn't that empty, s we walked a few blocks further down the main street, away from the plaza, where soon the road was almost totally dead. We sat down on some stairs at the entrance of a darkened office building. Khanh didn't have much, just enough to pack my little stone pipe from Copacabana two times. We smoked quickly, passing it back and forth. We could barely see what we were doing in the dark.

We heard drum beats echo from behind the buildings across the street.

"It sounds like someone's having a party over there," I said. "Maybe we should check it out."

Then the music got closer. After a minute or so, I got up and looked down the street and saw a crowd of people marching toward us, appearing under the street-lights then disappearing into shadows. It was a carnaval parade. We watched the crowd get closer, trying to finish smoking before they reached us. Then we packed up the pipe with green still in it.

The parade was led by two columns of young men and women doing traditional dances. Andean folk dancing, I think, is really fun to watch. There's a lot of swaggering and sashaying, hopping and stomping. The moves have this very light-hearted, jolly feel. The dancers were also singing at the top of their lungs, loud enough to be heard over the drums and pipes. On the margins were other folks doing sloppier, drunken versions of this dance. Following that was a small band of flutes and percussion. Bringing up the rear were the staggering town drunks.

It was a moment I'll never forget, watching that first parade go by right after we smoked. The melody was joyful-- cascading and infectious and repeated over and over again. I  started making recordings. Khanh took hundreds of pictures with his massive camera. We would walk ahead, let the whole procession pass, then walk ahead of them again, and record them again. Some old guy came out of the parade, shook my hand, and yelled "Welcome to Uyuni!" in English. 

The parade circled back to the plaza, where Ginny and Brendan were waiting with our packs. They handed them off to us and we agreed to meet up later at the train station.

Khanh and I kept following the parade for probably 10 blocks. Soon we lagged behind the procession until it was quiet enough to hear each other talk. We took some swigs from the bottle. Then we heard another parade, coming from the other side of town. It sounded different. It had a similar drumline, a brass section and they were playing a different tune.

We followed these shifting far-off sounds down deserted streets. We made a jagged diagonal line through the town. As we made a zig-zagging diagonal line to the other side of town, Khanh told me  he used to run a hip-hop blog in Denmark.

What?

It had a strange name that no one could pronounce. They interviewed Naz, Wif Kalifa, Drake, and so on. It was like Nardwar: extremely well-researched interview questions that no one else had asked these rappers before. What a fascinating guy Khanh was. A Danish-Vietnamese hipster, traveling through Bolivia alone, not speaking a word of Spanish, with a woman's black and gold-laced handkerchief wrapped around his head. When I wrote this in 2014, I said that I never would have imagined he a heavily-trafficked hip-hop blog.

Finally we found the other parad. It was bigger. It had a massive brass section and a huge entourage of people. The melody they played over and over again was even more addictive. There were wasted old ladies twirling through the crowd with bottles of liquor in hand, pouring cups for people at random. We followed that one for a long time. I lost track of time. We wound through the streets with a vague sense of heading back towards the plaza and the train station. I made half a dozen recordings.

Eventually we found ourselves back at the plaza, where we met up with Brendan and Ginny. "Do you realize," Khanh said, "that we've been chasing these people for an hour, carrying all of our shit on our backs the entire time?" We were suddenly very tired. Brendan and Ginny led us to a spot in the plaza where we threw our bags down and sat in a circle of several dozen Chileans.

People immediately offered us swigs wine and beer, drags on cigarettes. More than one guy was strumming the guitar and people were singing along softly. A handsome Chilean with a Babylonian-style beard started talking to us; I wish I could have understood more of what he said. We should have soaked up more of that mellow vibe... but then another parade came by the plaza, the largest one yet, so thick with people that it choked up the entire boulevard. I don't know which of us led the way, but we all pulled on our packs and moved out. There were a ton people dancing.

The spirit of Carnaval is very free and spontaneous. At the same time, the parades are about culture that has been preserved, learned, and rehearsed for this occasion. There were these two white guys (they had to be Americans) who decided not only to dance in the street, but to get front and center of the parade, where everyone could see them. So alongside Bolivians performing traditional dances were two clean-cut gringos, freakishly tall, with absurd, clownish smiles, doing those horrible self-deprecating dance moves that white people should save for their own private parties, where they can only make themselves feel ashamed. Nevertheless, people were gracious to them. I thought it was pretty embarrassing.

The four of us continued to follow the parade around the town. Khanh and I passed the rum bottle back and forth until it was empty. I was so happy to be right where I was. It was amazing to see young people working hard to keep traditions alive, and hilarious to see old people getting shit-faced.

We kept following this raucous spectacle. We rounded a corner, heading back once more to the station.

And that was when I realized that I'd lost my ATM card.

I had not thought about that ATM card for four days. And yet, in that moment, right as I reached pinnacle of my drunken euphoria, all at once I saw the entirety of the event that had led to the loss of the card. I had gotten off the overnight bus from La Paz. I was in a daze of sleep deprivation. We'd been arguing. I went to get money from the ATM and left it in the machine.

I told Ginny what happened. She stood there quietly while I searched my bag, my moneybelt, all of the plastic bags and envelopes in my bag. It was almost midnight. The train was leaving soon. The parade music drifted away.

"It'll be alright," I said to her. She nodded. If she was panicking, it didn't show. I thought I saw her choke up for a split-second. She impressed me with how fast she put the setback behind her, this knowledge that I had introduced a serious complication into our trip.

Brendan found us standing there. "Is it possible that you're just really high right now, and don't remember where you put your card?" He said. Sure, I said. Why not? I didn't really believe this, and it turned out not be true, but it was a good effortt on Brendan's end to curb our impending panic. We resolved to not jump to any conclusions. When we got to Uyuni, we would search my bag. It would probably show up. And if it didn't, my brother and girlfriend would loan me money until my bank mailed me a new one. I also had a back-up credit card for just such an occasion.

Idiot. Another crucial item lost.

You know what? I told myself. It was worth it. If I had to come to Uyuni and lose my debit card in order to experience what I've experienced, then it was worth it. And I'm pretty sure I believed that. I know I do now.

We met up with Khanh and walked to the station to catch our train. "I don't know what I would do if I lost my debit card on this trip," he said, which did not comfort me. The station was full of people, most whom were sleeping on the floor. Everyone found a place to wait in the crowded station. 

I couldn't wait until Oruro. I had to know now if my card was truly lost. Under the fluorescent lights of the front entrance, I sat down on the curb and rummaged through my entire bag.

As I did, a woman in a black sweatsuit with rhinestones on it stood near the curb with her hands in the pockets. She was a little over 5', with a nice figure and pretty face. She could have been 17 or 35, there was no telling. In the corner of my eye I saw her pace back and forth.

She kept glancing in my direction. I did not look up from my bag. Slowly, casually, she moved toward me. She was trying hard to be inconspicuous. What was going on?

Now I couldn't help but look up at her as she approached me. I expected her to say something. She didn't. She walked past me and over to the brick wall directly behind me. Then she squatted and took a piss. She was an arms-length away and I heard it trickle on to the cement. Then she pulled up her pants and went back to the spot where she'd been standing. A man exited the station and put his arm around her, and they walked into town together. That was the most Bolivian thing I have ever seen, I thought.

I never found my debit card. I went into the station and found my people waiting on the platform. There were multiple tracks, but a freight train stood alongside the platform. For half an hour, we watched this decrepit old beast lumber back and forth.

As 2am approached, men, women, and children stood up at the edge of the platform with their bags in hand. Finally the freight train cleared out, revealing the passenger train on the far end of the station. As a mass, we all jumped down and walked over the tracks to board the train.

I swear the conductors wore uniforms that said, in Spanish, "We can do better! We need to do better! We have to do better!"

I thought Carnaval in Uyuni had been pretty wild. I had no idea what was coming my way.

Khanh's (former?) hip-hop blog: http://drozdailysteezin.dk

Night Bus from La Paz to Uyuni

If there's one thing worth doing in Bolivia, it's going to the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat. It's an incredible place, surrounded by a wide array of desert landscapes and wildlife.

All bus rides from La Paz to Uyuni are overnight. If you ever go, do yourself a favor: fly to Uyuni. Otherwise, it's a 16-hour bus ride on an unpaved road. We did this. It was a major mistake. Flying down a rocky desert lane, the entire cabin lurching right and left, registering every bump and every pot-hole, for 16 hours. You will not sleep, and it will be pitch-black, so you won't see any scenery. If you're the kind of person who thinks that sounds romantic, you deserve what happens to you.

Other aspects of Andean bus travel: both Bolivians and Peruvians have a completely different understanding of the purpose of the car-horn. To them, the car-horn exists to alert all other drivers and pedestrians of one's presence, at all times. Like, if you think that there's anyone neaby who doesn't see you--even if there's no chance of danger--you beep your horn. To let them know you exist. So cities like Lima and La Paz drone with horns, to the point where governments have launched psa campaigns ("No Tocas La Vocina!") to try to curb this behavior. No one is heeding their call.

Also, whenever possible, drivers in this part of the world will straddle both lanes of any road or highway.

What does all this amount to? You're on a bus, in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the night. If you're foolish enough to look out the front windshield, you see the headlights of an oncoming bus or semi on the horizon. Both drivers continue to straddle both lanes until the very last possible second, when they will swerve into their respective lanes and lay on their horns. It's like one driver is saying "Marco!", the other is saying "Polo!", and your unconscious is screaming "ARE WE DEAD?"

I tried to have a good attitude early on in the night. I managed to get some reading done, until they turned the lights off at 8pm. There were inexplicable stops along the way when people would have to start complaining for the driver to get moving again. I listened to some Mark Maron podcasts and did an inventory of all the recordings I'd made. A few times in the night I dozed off, until our bus inevitably hit a bump and went airborne, and my bobbing head would come down hard on some hard plastic surface.

On a bus ride like that, there is no sleep and no rest for a person like me. I arrived to Uyuni in a foul humor. I wasted much of the day being pissed off and arguing Ginny and Brendan. In addition to being exhausted, I was freaking out because I realized we had doomed ourselves to at least 2 more bus rides just like that.

But we ended up having an amazing odyssey in the Salt Flats. I can't believe we almost did a one-day tour. The three-day tour is a must. There are so many strange, otherworldy things to be seen in that desert. It's like being on another planet. Visiting from Chile and coming through the Atacama desert may be the ideal way to see the Salar.

We did have several more miserable overnight bus rides in Bolivia. Some were even worse than the one I've described above. They pushed me, showed me how delicate and particular I am. And they made me a little better at staying positive despite discomfort and inconvenience. You're in situations where humanity is right in your face, with its dirty diapers, its snoring, its drunkenness, its obnoxious shouting into a cell phone at 3am... You're probably in danger, but there's nothing you can do about it at this point. You just have to sit back and think about how life is suffering, and how every human is just suffering all around you, and how your boredom and sleeplessness and anxiety are just the forms that your human suffering if going to take on for the next few hours...

So in a way it's good for you. But I wouldn't recommend it.

Run-in with Wayra

Four years ago, I drank ayahuasca with a shaman named Wayra, in an apartment in Arequipa. I'd had a very positive experience with ayahuasca just a week earlier in Iquitos, so I was overconfident. I wasn't adequately prepared. I hadn't followed the prescribed diet. On the contrary, I was coming off a week of debauchery. Also, earlier that night I'd witnessed a woman get robbed and chased the thief on foot for several blocks before I lost him. It was a dark apartment full of strangers. I was on edge.

No surprise that it turned out to be one of the most terrifying nights of my life. Ayahuasca is kind of a garbage-in, garbage-out experience. I was reduced to a sobbing, whimpering, vomitting mess. Through the night, Wayra chanted tuneless, aboriginal sounds that disturbed me deeply. I begged him to shut the fuck up (fortunately he spoke no English). He blew smoke and fanned it over me with a condor feather and tried to bring me down from the emotional extremes I was reaching.

With the rising of the sun, my horror gave way to peace. I stared out the window and wiped tears from my eyes and smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Wayra continued to sing, and by now my body seemed to sway uncontrollably to his sweet, light-hearted melodies. My Spanish came back to me. Wayra and I both concluded that "the earth was full of beauty." I spent the following day getting to know the family who had loaned out the apartment for the session. I found out that we were across the street from a mental hospital.

Important detail: Wayra was the brother of a woman whom I had dated. Things became complicated between me and her family. For this and for my experience with him, I never intended to see Wayra ever again.

***

Four years later, on my ninth night back in Perú, I walked into a restaurant in Cuzco, hundreds of miles from Arequipa. There were only two customers--a couple having dinner in the corner. One of them was Wayra.

Ginny, Brendan and I sat at a booth on the other side of the restaurant. They  perused the menu; I sat transfixed in my seat, staring at the menu and seeing nothing. They asked me what was wrong. I told them Wayra was here. They stole glances over their shoulders. They were doubtful. The man had severe Andean features, a prototypical Native American handsomeness. They were right; he looked like a lot of people. No, that's him, I told them. I'm positive.

I walked over to their table. "Excuse me," I said in Spanish. They turned to me. I addressed the man. "Do we know each other?"

He looked at me calmly, quizzically.

"Are you Wayra?" I said. The man and the woman looked at each other. He confirmed that that was his name. I told him my name. I told him we had taken ayahuasca together in Arequipa. Finally a spark of recognition came into his eyes.

"El amigo de Livia!" he said. That's the name of his sister, my ex-girlfriend, and that's how I know for sure that this was the same man that I'd spent one evening with, four years ago.

I told him about the trip we were on, through South America. He smiled warmly and said "Que bueno." I introduced myself to his companion, a European who did not speak a word of Spanish. Wayra greeted my brother and girlfriend from across the room. I told Wayra how good and how strange it was to see him here, and then I quickly let him get back to his dinner. I returned to my seat and ordered at random from the menu, still not able to focus on food.

It was a long hour before either party in the restaurant finished their meal. I kept Wayra in my peripheral vision. I couldn't let him leave without saying one last thing.  

Finally they stood up from their table. Wayra graciously came over and shook our hands, told us mucho gusto with a tranquil smile on his face. As the couple moved toward the door, still looking in our direction, I asked Wayra to please say hello to his family for me. To his parents, to Tony, to Livia. To please tell them I said thank you for everything. He nodded, said adios, and walked out the door.

Maybe that was why I got to see him again, so I could send this message to his family. They were so generous to me when I was here, and in return, I was kind of a disgrace, a wreckless child. I've always assumed that they never wanted to see me again. 

I guess the strangeness of the coincidence is mitigated by the fact that the encounter happened in a vegetarian restaurant. Ayahuasceros are urged to eat vegetarian in the days preceding and following use of ayahuasca.

But I can't get over the fact that I ran into Wayra almost immediately after I returned to Perú. And stranger still: I encountered my ayahuasca shaman the day after my first experience with the other grand Andean psychadelic: San Pedro.

Notes on Crossing the Bolivian Border

Somehow I always manage to screw this up.

2010

I get to a town called Desaguadero and learn that the $135 fee for the Bolivian visa would only be accepted in cash. I'll find an ATM. Nope. No ATMs in Desaguadero. The nearest ATM? Puno, a five-hour cab ride up the Peruvian shoreline of Lake Titicaca.

It's getting dark. I find a driver and wait an hour for him to fill his car with emough passengers to merit the trip to Puno. It's bitterly cold and the cab driver refuses to roll up the windows or turn down his blasting chicha music the entire way there. We get to Puno, which is a shit-hole, and the driver just drops me off at some random corner, refusing to show me where the hotels were. I haul my bags around until I found the Plaza de Armas. I correctly assume would that here I will find the most luxurious, prestigious hotel within a hundred square miles. I bargain my way down to an incredible deal for this prestigious place - something like $50 for the night. Not in my budget but not going to to break the bank either. It was a room I would never be able to afford anywhere else.

I dine alone in hotel's large, fancy restaurant, eating a llama steak with a pisco sour on the house (part of the deal). I take the hot shower of a lifetime, and on my massive bed, wearing a warm, fresh hotel bathrobe, I watch a John Lennon documentary. What played out  as a terrible day turns out to be one of the most delicious memories of my trip.

The next morning is bright and warm. I withdraw the cash I need and check out of the hotel. I find a bus heading back to the border. Waiting to leave, I pull out a pocket copy of the Dhammapata. "Your brother is like you. He wants to be happy." I realize how much frustration I have built up inside, how much ridiculous anger I have towards South Americans for their differences, for the difficulties of my trip (most of which were self-inflicted.) Still sitting there in the sun, the Buddha's words bring me to tears. The bus ride around Lake Titicaca is nice. Near Yunguyo, I get off and board a smaller bus, which will make random stops in the middle of nowhere. I look around and see campesino women bounding down hills to catch the minibus. In the bus, they chatter in Quechua.

2014

Before we left, I had to renew my passport. I made sure to bring the old, expired passport with me, as it contained my Bolivian Visa, that vise I'd purchased with the cash from Puno, which would be valid for another year and a half.

Ginny, Brendan, and I took an all-night bus from Cusco to Puno, where we transferred to a bus that would cross the border and arrive in Copacabana. Ginny and I were drifting off to sleep by the window, looking out at the lush pastureland that rolls down the hills and reaches right up to the blue waters of Lake Titicaca. It was a beautiful blue-grey morning. It felt kind of like Ireland.

Then a man came and asked us to either have our visa in hand or the money to buy a new one. I searched my bag. I searched it again. Couldn't find my old passport. I begged the driver to prematurely open the luggage doors so I could check my main bag. Still nothing. So I'd have to buy a new visa. But...I didn't have cash. Again. And there's no ATM at the border.

I have no idea what happened to that old passport. I know that I packed it and had it in Perú. I lost it somewhere. I have lost several important things on this trip. It's one of my biggest shortcomings, this absentmindedness. I've inconvenieced us in many ways. I feel like maybe by sharing this fault of mine with you all, I get some kind of redemption for it.

In the bus, we were silently panicking. What if I couldn't enter? The three of us would be forced to split up, in two different countries, in the middle of nowhere. I managed to barely scrape together $135 from Ginny, Brenny, and my leftover Peruvian money. It literally came down to dollar bills that the Bolivians were trying to reject because they had creases in them. But eventually they relented. Then they even brought it to my attention that I had overpaid them by a small amount.

In Copacabana, we flopped down in a dingy hotel room, heaved sighs of reliefe, and I searched my pack one more time for the passport that was still gone. Not being able to find it was relieving in a way. It sucks to pay $135 for something you've already purchased, at such an effort, then and now.

I felt pretty shitty about the stress I'd put everyone through, but we ended up having a pretty amazing time in Copacabana. It's almost like a rough-shod New England fishing village, populated mosty by backpackers and a small amount of campesinos. .

We took a nap and woke up to a gorgeous sunset over the lake. Outside our window I heard music and followed it. I found an old man just playing a mandolin for a group of children by the docks. He allowed me record four songs, dedicating them to the whole world. I'll be posting those recordings soon.

In Copacabana, it only made sense to eat lake trout at every meal. We went to a bar called Nemo's run by some chaps who had it on point with the drinks, the ambience, and the music, and doing it obviously on a shoestring. Awesome Chilean guitar-and-cajón duo,  playing renditions of Django Rinehart, Lou Reed, and old numbers from all over South America. We drank chuflays, the national drink of Bolivia (white brandy called Singani, with ginger ale). I had an amazing high-gravity beer called Judas, from La Paz. I also bought some overpriced weed from a girl whose kid started wrestling with me in the street.

Ginny and Brenny went to sleep and I went down to the docks. Imagine this: a mob of young Chileans and Argentines, with a few guitars, cajóns, an accordion, and a guira. A raucus group sing-along that flowed seamlessly from folk to pop to oldies to communist anthems (all in Spanish).

There was distant lightning out on the lake. I was offered a guitar and made an aborted attempt to play a song. Mostly I just made chit-chat, recorded songs, and traded weed for swigs of wine and cigarrettes. It was pretty awful weed, full of seeds and not very potent. After a few hours I got tired a listening to songs I'd never heard of and couldn't follow, and I headed to bed.

The cool spontaneous things that happen when you're backpacking. Bolivia is always a hassle, but I do believe it's worth crossing that fucking border.

Buying vinyl in Lima, Perú

 
A lot of great records came out of South America in the mid-20th century. World music fans pay a lot of attention to 60s-70s Brazil. But Perú also was churning out countless records during this time, and digging into them can really blow your mind. You can divide Peruvian folk music up into three main categories: Huayno (an indigenous folk music from the Andes), Criolla (more Spanish-influenced  music from the coast, with classical guitars and cajons, similar to Colombian boleros), and AfroPeruvian music, which overlaps with some of the elements of Criolla, but with overwhelmingly more percussion and group harmonies.

There's a ton of vinyl in this country which you won´t find anywhere else. But finding it can be a challenge.    

Online, the only information I could understand about buying records in Lima was on one message board. Someone posted a link to a youtube video where the guys from Secret Stash Records went  record-hunting in Lima. A guide took them to a vinyl vendor(s) in Callao, on a street called Quilca that was right near the airport.

Callao is the most dangerous neighborhood in Lima. The guide made the Secret Stash guys promise to leave all valuables behind except the cash for their purchases. And supposedly they got a great haul, with pictures to prove it. I believe this place is called Galería Musical.

I asked several Limeños about this vinyl El Dorado in Callao, and none of them had ever  heard of it. My gringo friend Matteo said that there was no way I could go snooping around in Callao by myself and that he would go with me when he got off work on Friday. Friday came and Matt's schedule changed and we had to reschedule for Saturday. This was cutting it close, as I was catching a night bus out of Lima at 5:30pm.

But then Friday night I unexpectedly met up with an old friend, Pepe. He offered to take me record hunting and explained that there might be some confusion involved; there's a Quilca in Callao and also a Jiron Quilca in El Centro (downtown Lima) which is lined with thrift-shops and junk vendors. It was a much better idea to look for records in El Centro. It's loud and chaotic, but it's safer.

Trying to provide directions in a cluster-fuck city like Lima is impossible if you're not a local. It's what happens when a third of the country moves to the capital and yet the government never invests in urban planning or public transit. My friend Pepe drove me from San Miguel to El Centro, and it still took an hour. Lima is a beast that will devour your time and energy if you try to navigate it as a newcomer.

All I can say is that we parked in a garage on a narrow section of Jr. Quilca, or "Calle Quilca" in El Centro. Walking down this street and eventually making a left, we hit three or four thrift shops that had stacks of records collecting dust in corners. Many of these only cost 1 Sol (something like 40 cents). At first, I was buying some random stuff, like a record of Soviet military songs and the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (come on, it was 1 Sol!).

Pepe helped me spot some good criolla LPs and compilations. Aside from that, the best finds in these little shops was a Sergio Mendes LP, and a record of songs by Zenobio Dagha, a famous fiddler/ folk hero from Huancayo, Perú.

Then we hit the motherload. Heading about 2 or 3 blocks south from Jr. Quilca (or perhaps we were on Quilca), we came to a 5-way intersection. On one of the corners we found a small shop that only sold vinyl. This store is run by a man named Vincente. Vincente knows his shit.

Whenever I asked him what he had in a certain genre -- Huayno, AfroPeruvian, Brazilian/Bossa Nova-- he would quickly produce a stack of records that were in excellent condition. If I was deliberating between two or three records by one artist, he would recommend the best.  

Whenever Vincente saw me looking at something, he would take out the disc, clean it with a solution of water, alcohol, and shampoo, and play it on good speakers, loud enough drown out the roar of traffic outside. 

For all this, Vincente knows he can charge 20 Soles for any record in his store. (He also had plenty of older cumbia and rock records, if that's your thing). I ended up finding a lot of stuff that I had to have, like LPs by Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Jão Gilberto, and Zambo Carvelo. And equally desirable for me: several pristine, diverse huayno compilations from different regions of Perú. I also got a Brazilian compilation from the 70's, with Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Jorge Ben, and Gal Costa.

My favorite thing that I found though, was a brand-new-looking LP of the Andean singer-songwriter Manuel Silva. Silva plays a melancholy classical guitar, sings in a breathy mix of Spanish and Quechua, and writes gorgeous, mournful ballads about heavy topics (think the violence Perú's civil conflict with the Shining Path).

The clock was ticking and it was with great difficulty that I narrowed my selections down to 10 records. Pepe told me to bargain with him. Ten used records for 200 soles (about $80). I offered him 150. With a smile on his face, Vincente waved me away, "Lleva! Lleva!" Take 'em.

I think that this might have been the Calle Quilca in Lima where the Secret Stash guys actually went-- not in Callao. But I might be wrong. All I'm saying is that before you venture out into Callao, which has an extremely high crime rate, check out El Centro first. There is a ton of good stuff here and it's not dangerous at all.

If you're interested in visiting Vincente's store (and need actual directions), you can reach him by phone at (+51)951019504.

Pepe and I finished our errand in 3 hours which flew by. We raced back to San Miguel. Brenny, Ginny and I scrambled to pack and get to an overnight bus to Cusco. As the bus pulled out of Lima, I realized that I had forgotten to eat, all day.

So...Why would you buy a small collection of records when you are about to backpack across South America? It's rare stuff and I got it at a deal. And I guess it was just one of those things I wanted to do. Pepe promised to hold on to the records for me until I passed through Lima again--hopefully with a plane ticket home in hand. Or maybe the two of us will sit down, drink some beers, and give 'em a spin.

Catch-up

LECTORES ESTIMADOS

I've written plenty about our trip on my tablet, but poor wifi connections and limited timing have not allowed me to post as consistently as I intended. Here's a quick rundown so far, with a look toward our itinerary ahead. I will be posting a few more in-depth posts about these past two weeks soon.

We spent a week in Lima, seeing the city by day and hanging out with Matt and Perla by night. Brenny flew in from Quito on the 9th, and the five of us had two more nights of merriment, during which I was fortunate enough to meet up with my old Peruvian friend Pepe.

On Saturday, I went record-hunting with Pepe, before Ginny, Brendan and I boarded an overnight bus to Cusco, which wasn't that bad. The region around Cusco blew my mind with it's fertile beauty. We stayed at Casa de La Gringa and the following day I went up to Lesley Myburg's gorgeous garden with her son Simon. I drank San Pedro and had one groovy day looking at mountains, reflecting on my life, and hiking around Templo de le Luna with my fellow vision-questers. In Cusco, G and B and I had some great meals and pleasant evenings walking around Cusco, but we avoided other touristy stuff.

The last day was spent struggling with a combination of altitude sickness and some kind digestive infection that I inevitably pick up when in Latin America, despite every precaution I can think of. That night we hopped a miserable overnight bus from Cusco to Puno, where we transferred to a bus to Copacabana.

Getting into Bolivia was an ordeal, of which I will post about soon. But we had an excellent night in Copacabana.

From here on:
La Paz (3 days)
Cochabamba (3 days)
Oruro (3 days - Carnaval!)
Uyuni (1 day to see the Salt Flats)
Then onward to Argentina:
Humahuaca de Quebrada
Jujuy
Salta
And then we're going to plot some kind of route to Iguazù Falls that cirumvents the costly and ill-regarded Paraguay.
Then we will make our way down to Buenos Aires, where Brenny will show us his favorite haunts before getting on a plane for EEUU.
Ginny and I will then take a tour of Uruguay and perhaps visit our friend Paula in Rio de Janeiro, before heading back to Northern Argentina to spend the winter months Wwoofing around Salta.

DÍA BONITO

And after a three-year hiatus, Notes from the Canopy is back online! The public's anticipation was palpable. And no sooner than my first day back in South America since 2010.

It is a beautiful morning in Lima. I'm sitting by a floor-to-ceiling window in a 14th-floor apartment which looks out on the Costa Verde. Ginny and I just wrapped up breakfast - coffee, cheese and papaya. It's dry, warm and fairly clear, and you  can see several miles out on to the Pacific. Barren rocky isles in the haze. Right outside the window a few vultures hover at eye-level, riding that ocean breeze. Below is a skate park with a statue of John Lennon and a couple that has been making out for hours.

The place belongs to our friends Matteo and Perla, who are at work. They are rad people and amazing friends (Perla also helped me get my last job), and we are so stoked to hang out with them for a week. Brenny gets here on Friday! I also managed to get in touch with this guy Pepe who took me to that insane wedding reception last time. It's funny -- Lima is massive but this is the same neighborhood I stayed in when I first arrived here in 2010.

Some of you have asked me to post my itinerary, so I'll be doing that soon. That's it for now!