So Long and Thanks for All the Microbes

Well, today was our last full day in the ´Ru, as it´s most commonly called here. I am both sad to leave the ´Ru and excited to return to my various homes in the states. I´m also shocked that 8 weeks in Peru just happened. Seems like just yesterday we were doing Spatula Updates. We may do a wrap-up post and include some pictures we haven´t yet, introduce you to Patty, and say some witty things. But that ain´t this post. Hasta luego, amigos y amigas.

Breakfast with Justin: A Retrospective

I´ve shared a goodly number of breakfasts with Justin in the past 7 weeks or so and I feel they have been worthy of comment.

Breakfast often finds Justin at his most raw. He can be at turns voracious, inquisitive, and practical, but in general, there is a certain optimism that he carries with him to the breakfast table that belies the indifference that breakfast zombies like most of us apply to our morning meal. Just take a look at this photo where he´s poised for this remorseless attack on his fruit salad.

The aforementioned optimism can sometimes lead him to do some over-ordering, but when that happens, he just assumes resposibility for his over-order and goes after it. Take the other day in Trujillo when he ordered scrambled eggs, juice, coffee, toast, and a pancake wih bananas--he could´ve balked when he saw the size of the banana-filled panqueque they brough him (pictured below), but instead he went straight after it. Like a proper existentialist, he accepts that ordering mistakes will be made, but he nonetheless builds meaning out of those decisions by assuming full responsibility for them. As Justin once said a few weeks ago "Morning is a terrible time to have to make decisions about breakfast", but that knowledge, far from paralyzing him, sends him charging into the maelstrom of desayuno with extra vim.

Birthdays, Jugos, Yogurt, Migraines, and Frogs

I went a little overboard yesterday. I don't usually eat much dairy, but armed with a little Lactaid pill, I tried consuming my body weight in this fruity drinkable yogurt stuff they have all over the place here. It was so delicious and fruity and probioticy.

Well, Kyle and I are walking around, looking for snacks, talking about stuff (including what to do that night for me birthdang), and I start getting this sensation that my left arm isn't attached, then weird spots in my field of vision, and an hour later it feels like someone's smashing a dozen knives into my eyeballs. 6 hours later, we do a little research and find that dairy can be a migraine trigger. Sigh.

Luckily, though, my recovery was (reasonably) swift, and by 11 Pm we were drinking drinks in the Cuban cafe, and managed to stay out until a birthday-worthy 3am after a relaxing night of mojitos and black russians.

Fast forward to early this afternoon. After donning my new shirt that Kyle got me for my birthday (Yo cuido el agua...Por eso no me bano) and dropping off my laundry with the good-natured laundry lady who couldn't believe that I didn't know my address, I went searching for the Phantom Jugueria. I was mostly interested in this particular jugueria because it reminded me of The Best Jugueria Ever, located in Arequipa. Well, not only did I find the Phantom

Jugueria (pretty good. not as good as TBJE in Arequipa), but I found some strawberry soy yogurt at the store. All within like 10 minutes. Like it's my birthday, everything's coming up Justin!

Also, we were wondering if the urine from a pregnant frog would make a human male ejaculate if injected into say, his arm. I figure, yeah.

Trip Up the Coast

Here are a few pictures from my trip up to Lima from Arequipa. More later.

So Long, Arequipa

Ah, Arequipa. The White City. The City of 3 Giant Mountains Looming Above. The City Whose Jugo Slays All Other City's Jugos. The City of Awesome Daily Friggin' Protests, Strikes, and Demonstrations. It has many names in Quechua.

I grew to love Arequipa as I spent most of the last month there. The city itself is beautiful, the landscape is ridiculous, the people passionate, the food awesome. Of course, a city with that many protests, strikes, and demonstrations is a city after my heart indeed. Well, Arequipa, mission accomplished.

But after unexpectedly staying in Arequipa for the better part of a month, my time there drew to a close. Our 2-month stay in Peru is down to 2 weeks, and since my birthday was coming up and I hadn't seen Kyle for almost 4 weeks, I planned my return to Lima.

Still, I would have stayed in Arequipa if I could. While we intentionally came to Peru with few concrete plans, I didn't anticipate deciding to part ways with Kyle for that long or staying somewhere for as long as I did, considering we had rented an apartment in Lima. Not that I would change any of it; nothing I ended up doing wasn't rewarding in some way- the spur-of-the-moment decision to hike to Machu Picchu with the Dutchman, returning to Arequipa to take Spanish classes for a week, buying those 2 giant manjar blanco cookie things and eating them waaaay too fast.

Now that I've returned to Lima, I'm dogged by a few questions that I wasn't able to resolve while I was there. One, why do so many dogs live on roofs (rooves?). Secondly, how do you manage to coordinate the National Police, Tourist Police, Transit Police, and City Security? They're ALL EVERYWHERE. Thirdly, WHY ARE YOU FEEDING THE PIGEONS!?!?!? SON RATAS CON ALAS!!!!

Salkantay to Machu Picchu Hike

Yo,

Sorry I´ve been mostly absent. Been pretty busy, tired, and in the mountains. Until I get inspired, I´ve started uploading pictures on Photobucket of the 5-day hike to Machu Picchu. . It´s amazing because you leave from a town about 8000 feet up in a dryish, grassy area, then up into the snowy-ass mountains to Salkantay Pass at 14,000 feet, then into the forest/jungley area at the valley floor. The Inka Trail doesn´t give you that variety.

http://s130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/jmaltry/

Colca Canyon Trek!

Hello, I´ve started uploading pictures to Flickr, if you want to check them out. What you don´t get from these pictures is the scale. The day I left for this trip, we drove, hiked past, or saw 11 mountains as big as or bigger than Rainier. Sorry that some are kind of dark. More later!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/screaminrat

Worst. Day. Ever.

When travelling with someone, it´s unavoidable that you´ll learn some things about them that you didn´t know before. Sometimes it will be their sleeping habits, or driving habits, or what they like to eat first thing in the morning. And sometimes when you share a room with someone, you learn what they are like when both of you get food poisoning. I don´t bring this up as some sort of hypothetical. No, after eating at this one restaurant whose name I forget, Kyle and I both decided to become quite ill. We´ve really been laying into the terlet (actually, maybe this is projecting onto the toilet. For all I know, being puked into is a nice change of pace). The 2 main things that we´ve learned from this experience are that 1) I come down with the sickness much sooner than Kyle, and 2) Kyle is a champion puker.

Here are some important statistics to note:

Incubation period:
Justin- 2 hrs
Kyle- 8 hrs

Total Times Puked:
Justin- 4
Kyle- 2

VLF (Vomiting Loudness Factor):
Justin- 7.1
Kyle- 9.2

Total Chunks Blown:
Justin- unknown
Kyle- unknown

As you can clearly see, we have learned that Kyle is a more effective puker. Don´t wager anything beyond a light snack in a puking contest with this guy.

My main concern at this point is that I can still eat potatoes after a night of spewing them into a terlet. One of Arequipa´s most well-known dishes is called Ocopa Arequipeña, which is similar to Papa ala Huancaina, which we described earlier in this blog. The big difference is that Ocopa has delicious peanuts in the sauce, and almost everyone who knows me knows how I feel about peanuts and their butter. And maybe are even aware of the extra pouch of peanut butter I keep around my midsection.

There are no pictures for this entry.

Pictures- Arequipa

Here are a couple of Arequipa. There are more, but they take forever to upload. One is of the Plaza de Armas and Cathedral, the other is of the 2 giant mountains from our room´s balcony.

Pictures- the Drive to Arequipa

Here are a few pictures from the trek down the coast. The one of the ocean is taken from the passenger side of the car down the cliff next to the road.

News and Notes from the Last Few Days

Kyle and I took it easy for a few days, poking around the city and going out for beers at night. The evenings have been relaxing; mostly we´ve been walking around, sitting in mellow bars, drinking beers and discussing how Insurgent Matt is the B.A. Baracus of the Insurgency (distinctive hair, burly build, ¨I ain´t getting on no plane, Hannibal!¨), family stuff, politics, Peru, Spanish. However, the days were not as relaxing. Horrible traffic, sickening fumes, and the noise led to me insisting that we head out on our first trip. Instead of flying, we decided to do what we said we´d never do just days ago- rent a car and drive in Peru and over 1000 kilometers to Arequipa.

So it was me, Kyle, a Toto CD, and a Fiat Fire (terrible name for a car, by the way. I guess they decided against calling it the Fiat Spontaneous Explosion. It reminds me of this company that makes a bike seat called the Stinger. The Stinger? Really? Why not the Assmangler? But I digress) we named Helpy Junior. Good ol´Helpy Junior. What a car. Solid as a cheap, Italian rock. We somehow made it through Lima and to the PanAmerican Highway, which, in Peru, runs the length of the Pacific coast. It´s full of pretty incredible juxtapositions. You have the desert, barren as can be, barely supporting some of the poorest communities. But just a few hundred yards away, there are beautiful beaches and extremely ostentatious beach houses for wealthyfolk. At points, you´re right at sea level, but you can look to your left and see the Andean foothills, which eventually you climb into.

Kyle drove the whole way, earning from me the nickname ¨Beef Ankles¨, or ¨B´Fankles¨for short. I´m not going to go into a lot of detail on the drive down since Kyle did. But it was a pretty brutal drive that I didn´t nap through nearly as much as I worried I would.

Arequipa is a beautiful little city in the desert, with 3 mountains as big or bigger than Mt. Rainier looming above. Much of the city is made of a whitish stone that formed from volcanic activity. It´s not so bustly as Lima, but it still has a lot of things to do and see. We will climb on some mountains, go see some canyons that are many hundreds of feet deeper than the Grand Canyon, and I´ll probly head to Puno to see Lake Titicaca.

Day 5: Chillout Day

Nothing happened today. Here's a picture of crab shells.

Day 4: Insurgency a la Huancaina

Day 4, also known as Spatula Day, was the first day we got to eat one of my favorite Peruvian foods, known as Papa ala Huancaina. Papa refers to potato, and Huancaina refers to Huancayo, the town where the dish originated. The sauce is a creamy, spicy sauce which is generously applied to the smoothest, tastiest potatos which I've ever been affiliated with. I'm not sure how they make potatos so smooth and suave. I imagine that anyone from Idaho who visits Peru and has these papas is rendered a little embarrassed and uncomfortable by the experience. In our excitement to devour them, we forgot to take a proper picture, but we found one on the internet to give you the idea.

Also, we bought a spatula.

Day 3: The Jugonauts Ride Again

Kyle says: Day 3 again began at La Favorita with some cafe and jugo. Then I bought some shit for my camera and Justin went for a walk along the coast without getting robbed...barely.

Meanwhile, back at the apartment, I did 4 sets of 10 reps on the old weight bench. All the while picturing the stunned look that will appear on Matt's face when we finally wrestle and he is stymied by my Peru-found power.

Sandwiches tend to figure large in our afternoons thus far and yesterday was no exception. We sandwiched up and then napped while the sun was coming through the windows nice and strong.

Come evening time, I wanted to go visit some peeps in Los Olivos, so we took a cab out there. Should be about a 30 minute trek, but due to road construction, we were in the cab for what seemed like and hour and a half. When we finally got there we walked down to Covida and I tapped on Oscar and Valentina's door with my key. They both came out and invited us in for bread and tea with honey. We talked shit for an hour or so. Oscar kept trying to pronounce Justin's name and then at one point, in the middle of our conversation, apropos of nothing, he yelled out "JUSTIN!" in near perfect pronunciation. Then he went back to talking about classic movies and Marlon Brando. All in all, pretty good times.

Los Olivos is one of my old hoods, so I took J around to show him some of the crazy. We had a couple of really really bad Cuba Libres at one place, and then a couple of really really strong ones at another place called the Tequendama. I kinda dig the place cause they play lots of 80s rock of the Cure et al variety. At about 1 am, a band came on and did some pretty damn competent versions of Doors and Depeche Mode songs. Sort of wonderful in their way. We eventually bounced and taxied back to Miraflores for 20 soles.

Justin says: Los Olivos was amazing. This was a place I never would have experienced in a thousand years, with really rad people I never would have met. It's not a tourist area by any means, and I love finding little corners of the planet that are so foreign to my normal life.

Much has been made of the avocado situation here. Many of you know me as a sandwich lover, and as such, the combination of my sandwich love and plentiful paltas (as avocados are called here) has been quite a match. Kyle and I have forged some spectacular sambwidges that are now a daily staple in our diet. In addition, it's brought me closer to realizing my dream, of which some of you are also familiar, involving myself, a plate of warm pita wedges, and a bathtub full of mashed up avocados.

Day 2: Miraflores Revisited, and How Peru is Like Kentucky

So Day 2 was again full of walking around Miraflores, recognizing all the places we went last time I was here, 5 years ago. Of course that's not true for Kyle, who knows the area like the back of his hand. We started the day with an americano at the cafe called La Favorita, which I recognized from the last time- we went there a lot. There was this table full of about half a dozen old fellers next to us, and we got the impression that they must come every morning, have coffee, and talk about the good ol' dias.

So funny thing about being a pedestrian in Lima: it's not that easy. All the little privately owned buses (combis), taxis, and cars scream through the streets, honking almost constantly, and braking only when the other possibility is slamming into the back of another vehicle. It's unbelievable. It's only slightly less frightening when you're in one. Pretty good for one sol, though. They'll get you around.

Well we pedestrianed to a different massage place and paid our soles, unsure of what to expect.

Kyle: First off, it was kind of bizarre that both people who gave us masajes were blind. Not a huge problem for the most part, but there was a certain point where the woman was pressing my foot into the metal table at an awkward angle and it didn't not cause the nerves involved to send messages to my brain telling me to do something to make it stop. Anyway, my masaje was just mostly not that good. Today, the day after, my shoulder feels weird and pinched and it felt fine when I walked in the place. We probably should have chosen the first handjob place. Morally hazardous, but probably less shoulder pain involved.

Yeah. But we did avoid the problem of what to do if we accidentally ordered a handjob. Anyway, my guy was also of limited skill. Worse, there was a point about halfway through where I was pretty sure he was pressing his boner intermittently against my arm. After a little consternation, though, I realized it was the bottle with the massage oil in it. I breathed a sigh of relief. Regardless, the consensus is that we're not going back.

Also, we went downtown again and saw some cool murals and graffiti, and the Plaza de Armas, but I can't write about those now because of the fumes that have invaded our apartment. Pictures and Day 3 later.

Oh, and How Peru is Like Kentucky: We didn't come up with much. Just chicken.

Day 1: Jugolorious!

Day one was mostly about jugo. Jugo in Peru is so goddamn good that when I think about it I don't know whether to wazzar (Spanish infinitive of wazz) or wind my watch. We woke up and fuimos down to this place called Sandwich.com, which is surprisingly not too bad considering that it's called "Sandwich.com". They gots good desayunos and supergood jugos. I got an orange jugo and Justin got this huge ass jugo surtido (mixed juice) that came with a little pitcher full of watermelon-pink jugo. According to Justin "it might have been the best juice I (he) ever had".

We then went to check out this massage place because Maltry's espalda was hurting cause it's a fucking mess. I remembered there was this joint off Arequipa Avenue that adverstised massages. We walked into the place a little timidly and asked about prices for massages. The girl behind the desk asked if we "just wanted a massage"... I looked at her blankly and said "umm yeah...How late are you open?" She informed me that they were open 24 hours. Sketchytown. We bounced...but we couldn't help but wonder what 30 soles really gets for a man at the 3200 block of Arequipa Ave.

We got back on the bus and I saw a sort of fight out the window. This old man threw a crazy backhanded closed-fist punch. After that, we went to find a llavero to copy some keys, and then walked down to this block full of music stores so I could buy a cheap guitar. I finally found a decent sounding one for about $50. We then realized that we hadn't jugoed up for about 4 hours, so we went across the street to the market and ordered 2 surtidos. This is backstreet, downtown Lima mind you, and we were probably the first whiteys to be in the Plaza Union market drinking surtidos for some time, but the hombre who attended our requests seemed to sense our respect for the jugo and gave us no guff.

After taking a cab back to our apartment, we considered what we should call our blog. The front-runner was "Sexo Total!" after a movie poster we saw outside an adult movie theater downtown. We decided that might send the wrong message. "Habla..Vas?" is what the destination caller guys on the combi buses yell at you if they sense you are waffling about getting on.

We went out later and ate a big pizza that our waiter tried to steal half of. Then we paid too much for a couple of cans of Heineken, then drank some pisco concoction that got me halfway knackered. Got home around 2am.

Decent first day.