Happy Trails

I have finished my first full time week back at work.  It is hard to say goodbye to my sabbatical.  At this point, my Spanish is much improved.  It is funny though… I think I speak better than I listen.  Of course people who know me may think “that is no surprise”. 

When I talk I get to choose the words I use.  English similar words are popular for me.  I can simplify the grammar to break my thoughts down into more simple sentences than I would in English.  I can speak slowly.  However, I lose all that control when others talk.  Usually I can’t overhear a conversation and understand it.  I can typically get general points such as the idea that they were discussing a car and something that was expensive, but I typically couldn’t recount to someone what I have overheard. 

So, to develop my ear, I am watching a movie or two a week in Spanish with the subtitles or closed caption in English turned on.  Murray and I watched The Princess Bride in Spanish last night.  Murray cried at the end.  I am typing up this final entry on the same big screen TV I used to watch the movie.  I am telling myself that as long as I don’t attach cable or an antenna to the display, I am not violating my no TV policy.

Murray and I have a trip to Barcelona planned for April.  So the adventure isn’t fully over.  Perhaps I will get another shot at a sabbatical in the future.  If you get the chance, I would recommend it to anyone.

Happy Trails-

Isaac.

Convenience isn’t convenience

In the states, I think we sometimes have that attitude of “modern conveniences, yes they are nice to have aren’t they.”  Being in Latin America has changed my perspective on this.  Frequently these conveniences are actually my time:  The ability to get a drink of water without having to boil it first;  The ability to get a net connection regularly in your home and not have to walk to an internet café; the ability to just have a lock smith come over and change your lock without having to replace the whole system. 

There are other things that aren’t what we would think of conveniences which I miss.  Take for instance the gym I joined.  They had hours of 6-12, 3-9, on their brochure.  They crossed those out and had written in 7-12, 4-9.  I showed up and 4:10 one day and they were closed.  When I asked about that, I was instructed that I should come after 4:15. 

There were a whole string of events like this.  A cab driver who said he had change for a large bill and didn’t.  We drove all over Lima looking for a restaurant that would change my 100 soles ($38) bill.  There was the tour guide who said that Machu Picchu was designed in miniature in a stone model held at the Inca Museum, it wasn’t.  I went to a bank main office who said they couldn’t take AMEX, but their branch office down the street could, they couldn’t.  In the western world, for all the disinformation out there, we are still far more careful about what we tell people and what we appear to be confident of than in the Latin world.  I talked to other western travelers who also found this to be true.

Aside from the frustration, there are other things I want to do with my time.  Each of these events represents a small theft of the time that makes up my life.  I am a pretty patient person, in my own not so humble opinion.  If I lived in Latin America, I might have to rethink that policy.

Isaac with espanol instructor Jimmy above Cusco.  The red tiles remind me of the CU campus.

Isaac - Cusco

A playground area on the edge of Cusco, looks great, smells slimy

Kids

As great as the kids are, being around a 3 year old , and a 6 year old for a month  made me think, “gee not having kids around is nice.” This was even with a housekeeper and parents to watch after them.  The older kid is smart and rather willful.  She takes advantage of people where she can.  I am not used to 6 year olds that don’t quickly move into line when I use the “tough adult voice”.  The first time was when I was trying to figure out Spanish subtitles for DVDs.  For developing my ear, I wanted to buy a bunch of Spanish language DVD movies with English subtitles.  I put in a Spanish version of Lady and the tramp and couldn’t get the English subtitles going.  So I was going to try another movie, but the 6 year old had started watching and wouldn’t give me the remote.  I come from a background where outright fear of adult males is the norm so the situation was a bit baffling at first.  You can’t exactly use force on other people’s kids.   I suspect that her parent’s had use the “scary parent” voice so many times and not come through that she safely assumes adults are usually bluffing.  I had another incident where I was fixing the DVD player in the other room and she had climbed up on the armoire to manipulate the television.  When I tried to pull her off, she wouldn’t let go and was at risk of toppling a large, heavy, old style tube based TV down onto us.  Perplexing. 

I fear for Triny the new nanny.  She is 16 and from the sticks in Peru.  I get the sense she hasn’t experienced the full benefit of a high school education.  She is very nice, very naïve, and to be put up against this 6 year old (who is about to turn 7) for the next few years seems like a recipe for moose turd pie, if not a recipe for disaster. 

One thing in my favor is that the 6 year old was better at communicating with me than Triny- even though Triny spoke Spanish as a second language after Quechan.   The Quechan normally speak Spanish slower which makes it easier for me.  But the 6 year old quickly figured out where my vocabulary and grammatical abilities started and ended and liked to remind Triny that she needed to speak slowly for Isaac. 

At times I would talk to the 6 year old and you could forget she was 6, but later she would throw a tantrum or get hysterical over bouncing a ball in the house.  At Christmas eve, she was given a roman candle.  In Peru, roman candles are 5’ long and last for 5 minutes.  She would start to lose interest and the fireballs would start heading on lower trajectories, which made it more exciting for the rest of us as she was getting more bored holding up the long stick into the sky.

The fam 1

The fam 2

Is there a locksmith in the house?

This is hard for me to fathom, but I lost the house key to the host family’s place three times in two weeks.  The first two times were wrestling with change in my pocket for cab drivers.  In the second incident, I lost by wallet as well.  The third time is a complete mystery as I opened the door at ten that night and in the morning, between the front door and my room, I could not find my key.

Normally in the states, you would have a locksmith come out and change the pins in the cylinder and that would be that.  But in Peru, you can’t trust the locksmiths.  So the way you do it is you buy a new lock box, take the keys out and the locksmith never opens the tumblers so he can’t come back with a copy.  Only their security system, with intercom and phone and remote open button is a Chinese model that no one sells just the lock box for.  So I spent $300 replacing the entire system for them.

I could have tried to find two locksmiths, one to take the box in and out and one to change the tumblers at his shop so he wouldn’t know where to use a key copy if he made one.  But the logistics, time investment and logistical failure risk were high enough it wasn’t worth it. 

I managed to not beat myself up over this mental lapse for too long.  But it does make me wonder:  “Am I getting old?”  “Am I now completely reliant on my habits and systems to deal with day to day life details?”  It has been 20 years since I lost my wallet or keys.  I have put them through the laundry a few times, but the situation has been really frustrating.  And I pride myself on not falling into the frustration trap.  Traveling without ready access to cash is a real pain.  Even though only 2 out of every 100 merchants accepts AMEX in Peru, I must say AMEX has great customer service.  I don’t think our local credit union has much experience in dealing with foreign travel in their card department.

The funny thing is that the wallet I lost was an early Christmas gift from Murray’s sister before I left.  At least Murray doesn’t have to ask me what to get for a valentines day.

Going way back

A couple of things on this trip took me back to my youth.  Not a place I normally like to go, I am quite happy being and adult.  The first had to do with the beds.  Neither was very comfortable; they were worn and concave.  So I took one of the thin foam mattresses and put it on the floor.  This worked well, but I found that with the solid ground just below me I could easily cut off the circulation to my arm if the weight of my head or body were on it.  This time I just rolled over in the night.  This used to happen to me in a bunk bed I had that was too small.  When I was a teenager I would have a recurring nightmare that a boa constrictor was in my bed.  I would wake up in a panic only to go into a second panic to find out it was not a snake but my arm which had no feeling and would not move.  This always corrected itself in a few minutes, but it always took a while to get back to sleep after that.

The other even was trying the local delicacy, Cuy, which is fried Guiney pig.  It had an herb I didn’t like, but the meat, what little there was, was actually good.  It was much better than the squirrel I was forced to cook and eat after a friend and I made our first mammalian kill with a sling shot at a scout camp long ago. 

Cuy and Sarah, quiet the dish.

Not a lot of meat - I didn't realize you were supposed to eat the skin, like at KFC

surreality

Beach at Mirah Flores

So I had two surreal events on the trip home.  I had a 10 hour layover in Lima and headed for Mira Flores.  From a high shopping center you could look down on the beach, but I felt compelled to hike down and around to get the water.  One reason the beach was better from 100 meters up was you didn’t get the smell up there.  But the sunset was beautiful.  It was only interrupted by the sound of a dozen giggling and screaming catholic nuns.

I was sitting there in front of the changing yellow and orange colors when I heard what sounded like a group of school girls running toward the water, getting wet, screaming and running back up the bank.  They were throwing rocks out into the sea to see who could throw the farthest and laughing like it was the new Richard Prior stand up act.  I mean, I am glad that nuns can have such a good time now and then, but it was a strange intrusion into my zen sunset at the beach moment.

The next surreal experience came while I was cleaning up from 7 hours of urban hiking.  I was in a state of half undress in front of the sinks when a pudgy, indigenous guy asked if I worked out.  I admitted that I did, but not very often.  He said I had big arms.  I told him it was mostly genetics.  Then he asked if he could touch them.  I didn’t do the macho flex, so when he touched my arm, it was just a bag of liquid.  I didn’t get a “this is gay” vibe from him.  It was more “I wonder if I worked out a lot if my arms would look like that?”  Then he asked if I had 6 pack abs.  I said no and showed him the good.  He poked them with a tentative finger to see what was fat, and what was muscle. 

I am probably in better shape today than I have been in a while since I have had limited access to deserts other than those I baked for the family.  I do get to the gym more regularly while on these vacations.  Still, I NEVER get the “That guy is buff” response from people.  Perhaps it was the sleeveless under shirt which is a little tight now (my last clean one), or the paramilitary looking nylon “adventure pants” I got in Peru for my hiking trip.  But still, surreal, all in all.

The small "not scary" part of Lima with the American Chain Restaurants

Inca Trail and Machu Picchu Pics

I have been in some primitive showers at sleazebag hotels, but...




A cloudy day up top

 

My new friends Eduardo, Anna, Joe, Isaac, Hildagard, Anonymous German Spy, Marcelo, Marcel, Thomas

There is a waterfall and a 2000' drop behind me

Machu Picchu is cool, and by virtue of being next to it, I too am cool...

The path is hard, the path is beautiful

Machu Picchu

I leave at 6 in the morning tomorrow, Saturday.  If you don't see a wrap up for this Peru trip by the end of next week, look for my body below the slipper rainy slopes of the Inca Trail.  Hopefully the rain gods will allow a few pics I can post.  If I see a rainbow, I will try not to leave my mouth open as I take a pic.  The Incans believed it was harmful to your health, according to my tour guide.  This is the guide that showed us the temple outside Cusco where they did the animal and human sacrifice.  It seemed like it was OK somehow since it was just the noble class that got sacrificed and only during times of terrible weather, war or turbulence.  The common people were not sacrificed, or so she said.  They only used some babies of the noble families and virgins of high birth from the local women’s temple.  I expect nowadays only virginity is sacrificed on the platform in that little carved cave/shrine as opposed to virgins.

Sociological Observations in the Peruvian City of Cusco

I went into the local McDonalds new years eve and noticed that the name (SSID) for the local wifi advertised was “You fat beast McDs is bad for you”.  I had not seen SSIDs used as social advertising before.  The really funny part was that the network wouldn’t connect and I couldn’t check my email.  A Peru experience in more ways than one.

In other countries you experience crosswalk performers looking for spare change, jugglers and the like.  Here in Peru the phenomena has reached a new low.  And by that I mean height.  Three times this week I saw grade school kids doing cartwheels in front of the cars and then running by asking for spare change.  I suppose comfort with danger starts early in this place. 

The other thing I notice is the age of the cabs here.  By that I don’t mean the model years, they probably aren’t more than 6 years old.  This isn’t Cuba, but the phrase bucket of bolts comes to mind.  My dad always had an actual literal bucket of bolts around the garage for fixing random things.  Thirty pounds of random steel.  I acutely recall the sound it made when I would drag it over to where he was working and drop it down on the cement garage floor.  This bucket of bolts sound is the sound the 6 year old cabs (by Daihatsu and Kia) make as they tromp over the choppy Cusco streets.

There is also a different aesthetic expectation when eating.  I notice that many of the smaller kiosks, especially street kiosks, for food have toilet paper for napkins.  They actually work better than the wax paper they tend to give you in Argentina.  Some places even have  a little toilet paper holder built in to hold the TP/Napkins.  As long as they are two ply, I am good.  I guess that is why I never get asked for decorating tips…

Cocaine

People in S. America always want to know if you have a girlfriend, (novia), and for how long.  When I say 16 years, I get even more curiosity than in the states.  Today I talked to a friend who has been married for a couple of months.  When I asked him how the married life was treating him, he said “Its great; I should try it some time”. 

I suppose I think of marriage kind of like cocaine: I know many people enjoy it; I know it destroys many people; I suspect I have experienced something similar in a lower dose.  I know most people are hoping their marriage will be habit forming, There are probably other similarities, but it seems like I should move on to thinking about something else.

Pics From New Years and the Pisac Ruins



The Edge of the Market in Pisac



Ruins in Pisac.  I look like I ate a bug, but there are no bugs at this altitude.

Peach Cobbler Doesn't Have Great Aesthetic Appeal, but the locals dig it.  With a big spoon (cuchara)

It gets harder to make new friends as you get older, so I went and found some young people to hang with.