the baby on the bus goes gua gua gua

so i missed (the rains down on) toto. sorry (the rains down on) anna. sorry.

however, the bjork concert reignited my inner pixie like a personal invite from moonface to tour through the land of take what you want. Her crouching and accompanying ¨will my eyes be closed or open¨fist motions during hyperballad was the best. Aaron of Radio One´s flash not so new breakfast show was kind enough to let me review it , though I thought it came off as more of an add for the big day out. oh welly welly welly. there should still be a copy (legally speaking) floating in the ether for the next three weeks should you dare to request one, for broadcasting standards breaches only, naturally. Tomorrow is the soda stereo concert. The Cure of Latino America. Rumour has it they´ll play three hours. It´s in Parque Simon Bolivar, which is a huge fish pan shaped structure built upon an older indigenous market/ meeting site, as many other ¨successful¨conquistador developments were... see Mexico City. The three day free metal hardcore and a splashing of wussy crap festival Rock el Parque was recently held there, bruising my neck and back in an aguadiente fulled haze of angsty moshing. I thinking it should be renamed washing here, as everyone dances fairly considerately in a giant human spin cycle. Great from an aerial perspective.

Today I celebrate a year travelling. The idea was to enjoy the long bus ride from Medellin (the first place I´ve felt really, genuinely excited for in terms of local government initiatives (that is, resources used rather than drained) for example, the biblioteca españa (not only an architectural masterpiece, but a massive library with 70 or so internet connected computers in one of the poorest and formally most dangerous neighbourhoods). Such projects appear specifically aimed at leveling out class boundaries, which are devistatingly rigid, to the poin that they´re categorised on a scale of 1 to 6. The numbers help decide how much the inhabitants need to pay for amenities such as water and gas, but they carry much more cultural weight. Museums in Medellin let stratas 1 2 and 3 in gratis (or free), while malls in Cali specify their strata 5 and 6 clientele specifically). I know, I know, too many brackets, not enough editors.

And there I was, sitting in my discounted, please I´m backpacking, bus seat reading my book, not getting uptight about all the traffic delays due to maintenance- I´m happy to wait for road maintenance, having travelled along the privatised roads from the coast to the jungle of Peru, formerly unpaved in their pre-privatised form, now days they´re a pitted squalor left with no other option but to bite resentfully at car tyres and watch the toll booth dollars sail off shore. Let´s road maintenance out corruption eh? Yeah, egalitarianism. Thing was, well, not exactly sure what the thing was... possibly a stop go man that got it wrong, a too-wide turn around a sharp bend, an over enthusiastic passing truck (there is a whole OTHER system of headlight signals and faith when it comes to passing on blind corners in this part of the world. You can fit three legal passes into the rugby field the road code says you should leave between you and the oncomer here. two if they´re oil tankers) but there was a krunchy bang, a lot of wobbling, and we were hurtled into the trees on the side of the road, coming to a halt with no more than 5 meters between us and the approaching yellow truck cabby.

I remember thinking, man, this is just how I dreamed a bus crash would be, like an inescapable tin can, crashing through a moist wilderness of shrubs which shreek like polystyrene against the windows, unsure whether to prepare for the sides crumpling in, or the rolling of the bus down the bank and into the path of the oncoming truck. My seat neighbour held me by the waist as apparently I stood up to complete some affirmative action either way. Our driver swerved the bus into a tree, mashing his leg, but stopping the bus in it´s tracks and saving the passengers from injury.

It´s 5am, I´m tired and not explaining the ordeal particularly well, save to say that boy oh boy am i glad to be here to relay the story, and how rich it was to dance like a maniac to a Colombian new wave covers band verde 3 that ripped out ´material girl´and ´love will tear us apart´ just a few hours earlier. oooh, and the upstairs dj popped on Trans Am: the robot sounding vocoder and accompanying jogging-on-the-spot-dancing may save globalisation from it´s sleazy corporate cesspool yet.

There may be photos to come. The camera I was using battled on, still coughing up a photo or two throughout the recent crowning of Miss Colombia, the accompanying street parades or gyrating primary school kids, flour bombs and colourless crackers called buscapie or looks for feet, which are lit and hurled into the crowd across the street, producing deafening bangs. (Worst case scenario, there´s alway´s wet toilet paper to protect your precious aural investments. The look didn´t catch on.) However, it no longer posesses the reliability i require for such snap-a-ramas. Following the crash I gave my email to a man taking photos. Little did I know the airbag inflated in the crushed black cube behind us had recently received his face, but his responding expression got me up to speed in a jiff. Don´t hold out on those photos.

I had to spend another 8 hours on a smaller bus to get back to bogotá in time for the concert. I took a cab not to my friend´s house, where i´m staying, but to the supermarket for Cabernet Savingnon, dark chocolate, wasabi peas, pistachios, olives, grapes and fresh orange juice.. a selection of flavoursome bits and bobs that remind me just how precious it is that I´m living through this strange adventure, and that you, dear friend, are out there, where ever there is, sharing this short time with me.

Arohanui. xxx Emma

Locombia

Well, it´s been a while. Colombia is confusing, so I´ve taken an Aristotelian approach to it all: let each event be a pair of spectacles, for which I have only one head, at any one time. That is to say, let the pacific brews, and not the threats of violence, blur our festivities.

Well, all in all, to begin to get to grips with Colombian living I need more specs than there were in my entire vintage collection, including all the pairs I left in the P section of the central library. So I´m just going to make a fairly poorly constructed list of bits and pieces from my bit over two months here as they come to me.

There are an abundance of horrid Miami style malls all over the place in various states of construction. They, along with apparently all the gyms, clean money lie new. A friend thinks their architectural style is one of the most dreadful outcomes of the drug trade.

In southern Colombia they sell the most excellent bagged, protein rich snack, the chontaduro. Resembling the tree tomato, and with a taste and texture that colours the grey area between pumpkin and bean, they are boiled, peeled and sold in mil peso bags in the street with salt and honey (which I´m guiltily eating here because the tropical flowers are so flavoursome).

Oooooooh QUE RICO!

Underneath the pit´s shell, should you be able to crack it off discretely and not get too much stuck in your teeth, is a sweet crunchy coconutty inner. utterly marvelous! And more than a little addictive. Strangely, though they´re from the Pacific coast, and have a reputation for sustaining the local population (there are gorgeous marimba numbers about living on chontaduros and marijuana alone) I was unable to scout any out while I was there. I´ve found the odd bag in Bogotá, but they´re double the price and, like last year´s apples, refrigerated, and a bit floury.

I spent a week on the Pacific coast, the area that following Peru´s earthquake (and during the Antonio Alvarez music festival when many of the costeñas were in Cali) was due for a tidal wave. The inhabitants of Juanchaco took the contents of their wooden beach side homes to marginally higher ground, about 30m above sea level to wait for the wave that, thankfully, never came. Lines of wave worn sandbags remain a constant reminder of such past threats.

From Buenaventura, a major port and consequently an area highly contested by all the influential sectors this country has to offer, it´s a forty minute boat ride to Juanchaco, where you can take a short walk or tractor pulled cart to neighbouring Ladrilleros, or, at low tide, a much longer walk to La Barra. Less than a month before I arrived at the coast, a man and young girl were killed in an explosion aboard one of those carts. The media linked it to guerrilla activity, but according to the costeñas that touched upon the subject, the man had a lot of bad debts in the area, and the death of the little girl was a tragic aside to a long period of loan scandals. I´m sounding less and less affected aren´t I?

The pacific beaches are long, wide, tree trimmed, mosquito possessed, and more than a little polluted by junk from boats and toiletry bottles. It rains buckets nightly in great rumbling storms that purple the sky. I found myself the butt of many jokes based on my fire building ability. Pretty much everything there is cooked on open fire bbqs lit with plastic, which is more plentiful and effective than paper. My poor paper based fire starting and a few toxic gas factoids was all the protest I could muster without sounding like a missionary. It´s a lot easier to convince people to not throw shit out of the bus window AFTER they´ve eaten the contents.

How glad I am that my Spanish is sufficient to ham together the local stories, advisories and television game shows. The superlative example, that seems to tie all the strange crimes and prejudices together ´Nada Más Que La Verdad´ (nothing more than the truth) is a distant relative of the´Who Wants To Be A Millionaire´format of answering questions to reach increasing booty brackets while sustained synth stabs colour in the silences. The twist, however, is that contestants are seated in front of three family members and close friends, and hooked up to a lie detector, forced to reveal the answers to a fairly representative spread of their most personal secrets. At least one contestant seems to have participated purely to shame those in the front row. Juice-y.

The last episode I watched featured a woman who admitted to having an affair, and child with her uncle, and working as a prepago for a drug cartel (a woman who is done some sort of favour by the mafia, perhaps in the form of a loan or television break, which is paid back through on call sexual service), but lost after denying she was uncertain about her sexuality. As such, she walked away with NOTHING but a lot of explaining to do . I hope you´re wincing right now. A couple of weeks back they pushed a food vendor to admit he dressed stinky old meat up as today´s and thinks his sister is fea (ugly) while the first 100 million peso winner admitted to investing his wife´s savings in an apartment for his gay lover. She left him seconds later, hopefully with half his winnings.

How they research the questions, which about 90% of the time require a ¨verdad¨ (true) response, I have no idea, but exploiting the darkest secrets out of the population for a little infamy and no prize money has illustrated some facets of this confusing culture rather colourfully.

The show has since come to rest, despite recruiting a good chunk of the telenovela audience (think ´Days of Our Lives´ with more sex, eyeliner and often strange historically themed locations and wardrobe) following the admission by one 50 million peso winner (about $NZ 30 000) that she had hired an assassin to take care of her husband. If you want a look-sy, all the videos are up on the show website in the VIDEO SALA. You don´t need to worry about the Spanish with all that synth working for you.

All Sundays and public holidays the main routes throughout the city of Bogotá are turned into ´ciclovias´, or cycleways, filled with families of bikes, skates, motorised trolleys, fresh fruit and juice vendors and cycle pit stops.
The truly scary traffic comes back at two sharp, so the last quarter hour can be a bit hairy if you´re on latino time.

You can have the price of any credit card purchase you make divided over as many months as your doctor advises. They call this system cuotas. I´m yet to really test it out.

People are super protective of their personal information here. Friends won´t be involved in supermarket flybuys´ style point schemes in case their membership card falls into the hands of someone, perhaps working at the supermarket, involved in any of the number of organisations that would want to threaten their families and extort money from them. They call this extortion a ´vacuna´, or vaccination, an oft increasing monthly payment that keeps your family, farm, transport business, fruit company union workers, from coming to any harm.

The local Blockbuster Video was recently reminded to keep their balance in the black by a parking lot bomb. Stories of parents disappeared by paramilitary and guerrillas after being unable to keep up the payments are as numbingly commonplace as the farmers and small scale land owners disappeared during CONVIVIR.

There´s a saying here, other than ´todo es posible, nada es seguro´(everything´s possible but nothing is certain, the most popular quote of taxi drivers going ´contraflujo´, or the wrong way down a one way street), that says, at this time in Colombia, it´s hard to know if it´s worse to have a lot or have little, as both present an equal threat to your life equally. Pushed to choose, I´d take more, give a bit, and keep my membership cards to a minimum.

A friend of mine has another approach to keeping capital from the various mafias. As well as being particularly careful with his personal information, he´s involved in a pot growing collective with his mates. Better living everyone.

More so than any other country I´ve visited, Colombia is festival HQ. Thus far I´ve been privy to festivals of theatre, books, music, cinema, kites, dancing, and art in more variations and intricacies than you have the patience to read. There is always, always something to marvel at. And the street art is poderoso, that is to say, really powerful.

This one comes from the Universitario del Valle in Cali, and was taken during the manifestation to mark the birthday of Katherine Soto, a young student who presented a threat to police by crossing a seldom used bridge in the early morning to see the sunrise. She was gunned down at the scene. It reads " All species evolve except rights. The police kill students".

It was the first of two manifestations that I´ve seen so far, which seem to start with the students calling up the police to come to the University, and them subsequently responding with tanks and riot gear at which to throw big bomb-noise rocks and molitovs, while leaping along the rooftops, identities hidden in pillow padding. I personally don´t understand why the police insist on responding to such call-outs, because there really wouldn´t be much to aim at if they stood them up. Maybe it just looks good on the CV? I hear Coca Cola needs more union workers.

Bueno. Not an entirely balanced account of Colombia thus far, but some of the more interesting findings for someone whose Spanish is finally allowing her to get a grip on well disguised local currents. That said, the people here are the warmest, most welcoming and least likely to whistle obscenities at me, the coffee is the best, the rumbas are the loudest, longest and most inclusive, and all the things I was warned about, namely bus travel, is yet to cause the slightest anxious furrow. Plus, Bjork, Soda Stereo and Toto are all playing Bogotá within the month. Wohoo!

This final snap was taken in San Agustín, the birth place of Colombia´s three great rivers and as such, a location of great spiritual importance to many. You best believe I don´t have photoshop access here.

How the west was wubbled

I trust you´ve seen at least a few images of the earthquake affected areas in Peru´s south. The reporting here has been incredibly Lima centric, largely ignoring the fact that much of the southern pueblos are built of mud (adobe brick), ON sand, and as they´ve just started reporting now, areas such as Pisco are 85% destroyed. ¡Increíble! And a little bit sensationalist ....of course, not everywhere has access to the same pixt-in-a-news-story technology of upmarket Miraflores.

The photo on the left is from the third story, well, the roof, of the hostel in which I spent almost a week in Pisco. It might help to aid your imagination when viewing further footage.

Right now I´m happy in Cali, Colombia, and looking at the state of the roads from Lima, not rushing south any time soom to use the remaining months of my Argentinian working visa. Besides, there´s a Pacific music festival going on right now and I´m too busy representing the south side. Much love and marimba madness.

Toxic Shock Syndrome

Phew.


I don´t know quite what I was expecting when I decided to head up to Lago Agrio for a closer look at petroleum production. The idea was, ¨well, we all use petrol, it´s not really something that can be avoided like sweat shop shoes or eggs from battery hens or any number of the screeds of things my heavy conscience has eliminated from my life. I´ve been witness to some beautiful treasures rambling around Amazonia, the butterflies, the bears, and now it´s time to get real and discover some of the horrible truths the well organised collection of regional tourist pamphlets have left off their suggested itineries.¨ Or something like that. I was also particularly inspired by the May-June issue of Ecuadorian magazine ¨Terra Incognita¨, an Amazonia themed issue to commemorate 40 years of petrol drilling which included this incredible map, detailing the extent to which Amazonia is riddled with all manner of petroleum production.


If you can´t read Spanish, just pretend you can, the words are pretty similar. As you can see, the whole eastern side is thoroughly owned by petroleum exploration. Right, thought I, time for this jaded traveller to get some perspective and a bit of a kick in the guts to motivate my save the world streak. Off to Lago Agrio I go, home of the Ecuador´s first drilling site.

Hands down, the scenes I saw and the stories I heard yesterday made for the most horrific day of my life. I cried all the way back to Quito. I´m close to tears now.

The orange and yellow lines that follow from Esmeraldas to Lago Agrio (on the map silly) are giant pipe lines or oleoductos. They´re utterly enormous, rusty, high pressure worms (think ´Beetleguise´) that carry crude from the fields to the coast. Another smaller silver pipe transports gas in a similar fashion. They weave all over the landscape, through farm pastures, alongside people´s houses, around water ways, through national parks. They also have a habit of showering their ´black gold´ though farm pastures, alongside people´s houses, around water ways, through national parks. The way in which these ugly tubes have been integrated into people’s lives is quite remarkable. Many houses and small bars whose entrance from the road has been blocked by these dangerous eyesores have built sties in order to pass over them. It took me a long time to remember the word sty. I was aided by a nursery rhyme.

These pipe lines connect a huge number of processing and storage facilities that litter the landscape with giant hypodermic towers and concrete barrels, and blacken the air with plumes of diesel smoke.

The town of Lago Agrio itself was, in essence, created by Texaco. After the discovery of oil, the hauling in of the pipe lines, the displacement of jungle nationalities and the creation of roads needed to transport the machinery and personal, Ecuadorians flocked to the fields to make their fortunes. But for one reason or another, possibly the huge discrepancy in pay between locals and foreigners, there just wasn´t enough whiskey and Levis to go around.

I was warned on more than one occasion of the dangers of such crushed dreams small town poverty, by locals that is, not hysterical travel agents. Though the neighbouring town of Shushufundi is home to only 15 thousand inhabitants, its crime statistics in terms of murder and kidnapping rival those of Quito, home to 2 million. More horrific details on this and background on the current case against Texaco can be found in the May edition of Vanity Fair.

I personally found Lago to be a fairly friendly little town. I had a wander around the giant oil tanks and refinery at the end of the main street, and found that the security guard at Petroecuador had a rather non-threatening, almost chivalrous way of telling me my photos were considered stealing in the eyes of the company. Of course, I didn´t understand, my Spanish is Just Terrible, and thanked him kindly for warning of the threat of my camera being stolen.

It was pretty apparent that I wasn´t going to get too far, even with my biggest smiles, feigned misunderstandings and Nancy Drew detective skills, so I hired the help of Cesar, a local guide who had worked in the petroleum biz almost twenty years, transporting personnel and thousands of meters of piping around the area. Our first stop was the site where it all began, Lago Agrio station Numero uno.

There´s still oil down there, but the site is currently dormant, as it´s being repaired at present.

Nearly 2 kilometres of thumb thin piping are needed to suck the oil up from the well below. Open pools of crude and water are found to the back of the photo, under the trees. The rivers that surround this drilling site are rusty brown and haven´t supported any life in the last twenty years at least.


Once a well is dried up, the area is abandoned, leaving Olympic swimming pool sized pits where little but grass will grow. Now´s not a bad time to revise that map of drilling sites above. On more than one occasion Cesar pointed out houses actually built upon former pit sites. If such areas will only support grass, some fairly big questions can and should be raised about their suitability for human inhabitants.

The photo to the left is from a site a little further up the hill from Lago Agrio Numero Uno. Most of the fields I saw were incapable of supporting so much growth, so one can only conclude that there must be something utterly delicious in that water, hmm?



The next stop was Selva Viva, an environmental organisation, where I was given 20 minutes to talk to Emergildo Criollo, of the nationality Cofan, an indigenous peoples of Amazonia, a key member of FEINCE (Federacion Indigena de la Nacionalidad Cofan de Ecuador), and a man heavily involved in the case against Texaco. For Emergildo, the biggest problem is the contamination of the rivers, the ground and the medio ambiente, or general environment (air, animals, plant life).

He talked of the illnesses that came with petroleum, the wrenching stomach and head pains, blistering skins, widespread cancer that, for the first time in the histories of their people, could not be cured by their Shamans.


What an utter blow to the lifestyle for these people, to their culture, their traditions and their identities. Puff the Magic Dragon skulked back to his cave to morn the pile of scales at his feet.


At no point did ANYONE inform them of the dangers of continuing their relationship with their water ways as they always had. No one suggested the stop bathing in, washing in, or drinking their former life streams that were rapidly becoming contaminated with dangerous petro-chemicals. Somehow it never occurred to anyone to mention to this nation of fishermen not to consider the dead fish they found along the river banks a blessing. All the while their people were dying of cancer 8 hours and unimaginable sums of money away from the nearest hospitals (particularly difficult for a people whose livestock and lively hoods were fleeing with the fish) and their women were giving birth to children with yams where two fingers should be.


Two of Emergildo´s children died as a direct result of the contamination. One of terminal birth defects, and the other in fits of blood vomiting after swallowing river water while swimming.


All this, and the demands the Cofan people seem, to me at least, fairly reasonable. They want the toxic sludge removed from the pools of crude, instead of just covering it with dirt to leach into the soil and waterways, to clean up the trails of petrol sediment, and to compensate for the contaminated waterways and air supply by building a hospital for their sick and dying closer than Quito.


And what say Texaco lawyers? Apparently cancer is caused by the people´s lack of hygiene, and chromium from a local sweet factory. They have considered 10 thousand parts per million to be a safe level of toxins and carcinogens for humans, twice that stated in their contracts, 10 times greater than that stated in Ecuadorian law, and 100 times greater than United States recommendations. Furthermore the discrepancies between the levels of toxic and carcinogenic particles per million in the waterways recorded by Texaco in 1998 and the court measurements in 2006 are huge. Lago 02 for example was considered to contain less than 5000 parts per million by Texaco estimates, but was recently found to have 325 000 parts per million in 2006 by a judicial investigation. The results of further such investigations and more images can be found here.


Of course, Texaco is only the first step for groups such as FEINCE, set to fight the oil companies. Once the rulings for the Texaco case are through, due somewhat optimistically in 2008, these groups will set to work avenging the all the contamination affected lives battling all the other oil companies working in the area. Texaco was the first to drill, and, assuming the court ruling demands compensation for these people, these groups will have an easier time battle other petrol giants such as Petroecuador, considered by everyone I talked to have less concern for the wellbeing of the jungle dwellers and river users than Texaco. And to your right, river users, in Rio Aguarico, the main river that runs by Lago Agrio, connecting all the toxic streams in the area. And look- a family taking a break from the oppressive 35 degree heat.


This absolute denial on the part of the oil companies that there is any relationship between their work and the sudden onslaught of terminal diseases, including rates of cancer in drilling town San Carlos 150% higher than the national average, and the utterly despicable neglect to inform anyone of the potential dangers of carrying on jungle life as usual was the biggest ´swindle´ of all for Jose Farjardo, president of FDA (Frento Defenso de la Amazonia), a collective of organisations that work to school the inhabitants of Amazonia on defending their rights. They work on the case, but also have a ´school of leaders´, which teaches, essentially, self defence skills against bullies invading your turf. Proactive. I really like that.


His office was a wealth of information, including an incredibly moving series of photographs taken by Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak on the Chevron ´legacy´. Sadly the online version doesn´t include the personal testimonies of the people, all of which seem to include how utterly unwittingly they exposed themselves to the quimicos. He also gave me a really good grilling about who I was and what I was doing, should I be working for the defence to exterminate his efforts, and possibly him.


Apparently the environmental damage around Lago Agrio is nothing compared to that of the surrounding national parks and Coca, a little further south. Sadly I only had a day to investigate, but nevertheless, Estación Guanta proved to be fairly good case study in environmental horrors. It involved a bit of sneaky detective work to get to these places, pretending my guide was my boyfriend (HIS idea, and a trick I hadn´t pulled since I saw someone I´ve rapidly forgotten in DEKA with some girl in a Queens uniform).




A petrol spill can look like this. There is a house less than a kilometre to the left.




This is one of the only active drills in the area. The tubes are apparently 6 inches in diameter, and the oil is at such a pressure that it just spurts right out of the ground on its own accord. That plume of diesel to the right occurs at 10 second intervals.


This is a where they let the excess gas out. Funny that word excess, as there are gas shortages in Quito.

These containers store petroleum and are literally on the main street of Lago Agrio, just across from the refinery at which I´d been reprimanded for snooping. Cesar referred to them as time bombs, though the use of such terms, to me, seems to mock the degree to which this entire area is contaminated.


So what´s the message here? I really don´t know. I have never wanted to believe that we are helpless to change the evil ways of the world, but how can positive change come from all this horror?


In the least I want you to have a good think about YOUR petrol usage. At present there aren´t too many viable options for family transport, and certainly not for air travel, but there´s definitely room for you to lessen your involvement in the massive human cost of petroleum exploration by minimising your petroleum wastage. Perhaps even more importantly, I hope my horrible, horrible day will inspire you to talk about these injustices and provide you with some links to share with those who don´t have the opportunity to see all this first hand.

It´s very real. It´s very sad. It needs to be addressed by all of us.

Maybe it´s stockholm syndrome, but...

I´m trapped in Baños. Which is fine with me, really. I have some sort of flu, which thankfully isn´t High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, when the pressure on your lungs inflates them with fluid (an American chap I met in Cuenca found himself swimming in his own succulent juices while in Peru, gag) as i´m only at 1820m above sea level. There is a woman at the market who makes fresh bean ´menestras´ for me everyday, despite the fact it´s a costal specialty (i still have trouble with such regional culinary divides coming from ram whatever in the one pot land), there is a gorgeous spice shop with wasabi powder and crystallised ginger, the papers have cleo style quizzes and features on second life and of course, as the name suggests, there is an abundance of thermal baths. Heavenly.

I managed to take this photo on the way in. More rain has sent further igneous boulders tumbling onto what remains of the highway, and it´s now totally impassable, even on foot. I haven´t seen a highway in such a state since one almost buried Lois in Superman I. Thankfully their volcanic home remains relatively dormant.

If you look closely at the person in blue on the very left, you can see that they´re standing pretty much on the prime meridian, that jaggedy out bit. Further to the left of this photo a great river rages.

despues de un mes

And in the end I forgot to unpack my cocoa leaf powder, and nobody cared.

I stayed a night in Loja, which takes on a strange queenstown-ish sort of vibe with all its fresh mountain air, and headed to the valle sagrado that is vilcabamba. My first couple of nights were spent in a hostel opposite the pig slaughtering place, a large concrete area sort of resembling one of those wooden toy gas station/fix it shops with the painted on mobil signs that everyone´s brother seemed to have. They assured me that they only cut them up on Sundays, but they must have been doing some training on my last night as long decaying squeals kept me from sleeping sweetly. so much chancho here. i found some in my popcorn the other day.
Having heard more than enough of the nature trail tourist muggings, conspiracy theories about various missing and suicided locals, and other musings on ´the UFO people´of the valley, (is there a small town without all these stiffling qualities?), I heaved my bongos and a few other bits upon Pasito, a hard working but somewhat deaf (to my commands at least) donkey that took them up to Sacred Sueños, a fairly new organic farm about 2 hours up the hill toward Podocarpus national park. Since people have been tied to certain plots of land, ´owning´them, something strange has become of traditional slash and burn methods of farming. While once the land was given a bit of recovery time between harvests, as campesinos would rotate through the fields they sewed, land privatisation has led to the same fields being burnt year after year, resulting in terrible soil quality, the subsequent ´reliance´on chemical means to build it back up and greater difficulties growing basic staples to sell to American and European markets that bar the trade of anything other than the raw products from South America so that the eventual ´value added´ goods can count towards their own GDP. You´d think there´d be some pretty sweet chocolate in all these cocoa growing nations. nope. check the label, even the fair trade chocolate is processed in Belgium. ANYWAY... so I took to the soil of a three year old organic farm, trying to help rebuild what has been depleted over the years of misunderstanding through mulching, making use of the water resources through swails and grey water systems, carrying buckets of ´human ore´to the giant pit of human shit that will one day fertilize a small forest (one day far far in the future), and other environmentally friendly practices, like making ´cobb´bricks out of clay and plastic rubbish and giving the finger to tetra pak by learning how to make soy milk (leave it a few days and you get ´value added´soy cheese, but don´t tell the EU). It was just fantastic to be surrounded by a fairly dedicated group of permaculture activists, doing their bit to put some sort of salve on the world´s rancid wounds. One guy had spent a summer travelling around Canada in a bus that ran on vegie oil, stopped in one town by something like 5 cops who all just wanted to ¨check this crazy thing out¨ and pick up a copy of the accompanying zine. Another was a trained member of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army that put on subversive acts of theatre around England. A gorgeous German friend of mine described the sensation of being tear gassed at a G8 protest, while a gringa whose volunteer visa was on the brink of running out told me of the horrendous difficulty of maintaining a reading programme in the local schools, initially financed entirely out of her own pocket, as the mayor would close the library so that the only librarian could take over at the tourist office while the tourist officer went on holiday. Though the mayor´s son frequently attended the holiday programme she had set up, it just seemed more convenient to pocket the extra salary saved through such flexible job descriptions than to keep regular library hours during term time. Neither the schools nor the library can complain, they´ll lose their funding. The gringos fear being ousted from the community if they speak up. Of course, outsiders can always write to the mayor of Loja (the superior of the Vilcabamba mayor), Jorge Bailón Abad (alcaldel@municipiodeloja.gov.ec.) , asking for regular library hours. It´s not not a cause to make the pages of amnesty international, but think about it... you´re reading now. Hypocrite.

I then took to the national park of Podocarpus, on the Zamora, or more jungley side to check out some wild life. I always find the point at which you say, okay, I´ve done my three hours into this walk, time to sit and have some lunch , and ready myself to turn back and not get any more lost difficult, as it´s so arbitrary. Walking to an attraction is so much more satisfying, a waterfall, a wobbly mirador, is much more exciting than a mandarine and a squashy banana. So here I am, sitting in the middle of a path, having a banana, contemplating the attractions 5 minutes too far from the sensible rules my outdoor badge bestowed upon me, when who should come meandering down the path towards me but a mother oso de anteojos and her two baby cubs. That´s right (or a little more clear in a moment if you were unable to translate oso), bears. Suddenly 3 unaccompanied hours into Amazonian forest is an eternity. They looked friendly enough, and would have squeezed in nicely behind the duck had Prokofiev thought to include a bottle blowing how-down in´Peter and The Wolf´, but still, bears, protective mother bears (I assumed, casting all sorts of maternal ideologies upon the no doubt well educated third waver), who knows how much they´re out for a shredding? I reached into my bag for the only peace pipe I had to offer, a second squashed banana. Much more appetising than me after a couple of days alone in the forest and almost a month of farm work. But I could only find the granadilla! Not to worry, at the rustle of plastic they scampered into the bush. I put the banana in my pocket for further encounters, quickly collected my coat and bag, and walked calmly and purposefully towards my refujio. Not running. Not feeding the bears. Better than a waterfall, and no doubt much less dangerous than this incredible creature I met on my first day.

There are so many more stories to tell: my first scorpion, the spider that chased and threatened to bite the four year old on the neck, the frog that just turned up in my bed but I was too afraid to kiss, all the wonderful new forms of maize and sugar I keep coming across, the secret world of plants, but this internet connection is super slow, and it´s time to explore the picturesque city of Cuenca where I currently reside. What I´ve seen so far has been a delightful blend of cobblestone, red brick and fat churches with jewelled cream puff turrets. ¡Que bonito!

Frontier Living Everybody

It´s always a strange conversation when people talk about the difficulties of travelling to New Zealand to me, and, for now, we´ll exclude all those that claim their uncle lives there and subsequently try and pinch a 20 from my purse, and just the relative island-ness of New Zealand´s geography. It´s only now that my spanish is reasonable enough to be dropped into a conversation or hear a crooning cumbia beat on the radio and at least have some idea what they´re talking about, that the differences and rivalries between these neatly packed countries are really becoming apparent. Big sentiments for someone who´s still in Peru, I know, but I´m really thrilled to be crossing over. It hit me in the supermarket today, while going to buy a bag of ´digestive´ herbs, following a terrible diagnosis about the state of my intestines from a ´curer´ near Trujillo. The total absence of food labelling regulations here (there are daily percentages if you´re lucky but they´re little help without serving sizes, and ingredient breakdowns are a rarity) could have me importing cocoa products unknowingly, which is sort of funny in a way, as some tea containing ´wolf berries´ i brought back from Melbourne is probably still sitting in the fumigation tank in concord. What was I thinking. I´m sure fumigation out ways any benefits. And so, probably, will heading to Ecuador. My first stop, is Vilcabamba, where people are rumoured to live for 100 years. I´m sure I can sneak some of their secrets from them.

Or at least take a spa in less of an iron lung setting...

I´ve just taken a roam around the streets of Piura, which, at 10 o´clock on a Saturday (I DID look for live music!), are strangely alive with keke stalls, emoliente stands, plastic buckets of fruity refrescos and tables and tables of bubbling aluminum pots with lids of milkshake machine metalic blues and reds. I feel like such a sucker for chowing down before heading out, although I´m yet to set eyes on my favourite maizy treat- choclo, giant meaty corn, fished from a tank of boiling water which collects in the bottom of the plastic serving bag to dribble all over your hands and top later. Generally it comes with your choice of two bicky jars of aji, red or green, which is less firey, mixed with some sort of parsley-ish shavings. I´m sure it´s terrible manners, but i always go back for more as it´s just so difficult to navigate, being somehow more round than regular corn. Of course the bag water becomes fire water, great for paper cuts and I´m sure if the police weren´t always fully armed to the teeth anyway, subduing quasi violent unarmed criminals. Like unknowing cocoa leaf smugglers?

Bit out of shape on the old improvisation there, but I did catch some ´professional´tom foolery while in the last week of my Lima excursion. One of the judges was the Latin American Steve Buscemi. The biggest thrill of the night. Good to know that audiences around the world will always pull out ´aeroplane toilet´ and ´proctologist´ when asked for input, teams will generally ignore story or song title ask fors, the strange spinning doo dooing action one performs to signify a flashback is universal, and one can never know all the rules to pass the clap. So while I was in Lima a GRAND amount of time, I was certainly treated to a fine assortment of interesting arty bits and pieces. It was quite a strain to leave- I´m presently missing ´art week´ all over the city, and the comic book themed month at centro cultura de españa. They´re showing pre Christopher Reeve superman, his costume looks like static stuck undies to his tights in the dryer, actually, most parts of the man can be rather sincerely described as ´sagging´, AND the original batman movie, where penguin somehow removes his iris pattern to avoid identification, if that´s who that waddling gentleman at the wharf REALLY was.

Though all is not lost. I did stay in Lima long enough to attend the ´very first official´ zine fest, and it was utterly brilliant! Zine of course comes from ´magazine´, and is generally describes publications of a self published if not made-by-hand nature. They´re an excellent resource for written versions of spoken Spanish, and a minefield for getting a grip on a music scene which generally goes on in people´s living rooms. I got mix tapes of local indie and punk, met my first Peruvian vegan, and met Eliana and her most excellent pin up. It´s Baudrillard.

Thinking that I might write it up for anyone interested, I interviewed a dozen or so of the attendees, writers, organisers, hangers on. They were so accommodating of my Spanish and unknowingly culturally weighted questions- for example, in Peru you don´t need to be a fan of anything other than your own opinions to have a fanzine. It´s a nice counterweight to the amount of tribute nights hogging all the venues, though I almost had my arm twisted to see the Oasis one for a giggle, and I unwittingly wound up at a My Chemical Romance tribute, but didn´t realise until after I left. I´ll compile the photos and stories for something... just as soon as i´ve got through the material.

The last few days I´ve been camping about 20 mins out of Trujillo, a little up from Huanchaco beach. It was mostly lovely and warm, though the pacific current stopped me from taking up a free surf lesson. The local fisher people have giant winkle picker shaped reed rafts that they take out into the waves and sort of surf/paddle back on with their catch. They´re a magnificent site lined up along the beach wall.

I´ve just noticed a sign above my head which reads ´prohibida la musica satanica´. Odd, considering the utterly vial high pitched sawing of ill corroborated electrical equipment sirening out of who knows where. Nevertheless, I think it´s a clue to potential nightlife here and a hint to get moving.

Just a final travel tip before I go. Should you need to change STA Blue tickets, you can´t just go to an STA ticket counter. No no no. It´s not that easy, well, it´s not that well publicised or logical (they´re no longer ticket counters when you want that sort of assistance, they´re ´help desks´). You have to ring their American hot line on 140805920870. Don´t call on a Saturday or Monday, or you´ll be waiting half an hour (thank goodness I´ve got my head around skype, even if it does sound like i´m being sucked into the ocean). BEFORE you call to change anything, you´ve got to email them a copy of your ticket, or they can´t really help. That email address is blueticket@statravel.com. You can also fax it to 4805920877. Make sure you make the call within two days of sending your ticket details, or they´ll just deny any knowledge of it.

And to FINISH finish, here´s a turtle from the garden in Huanchaco. I missed feeding time sadly.

foreshadowing

One of my favourite teachers in high school, a wishbone of a [woman] (to borrow a line from one of the many K.M. stories we learnt to appreciate year after year), with a bob of thick grey straw, a girlish giggle, a plastering of red lipstick and original cork sandals had a fabulous inflection when... no actually, it was another teacher altogether... same subject though, English. And still on the subject of short stories. Goodness, what a muddle, but a rather nice description. Moving on. The other one, a very neat woman, in the orderly sense, neat used enthusiastically will always be naff... the other one, the second one... had a really memorable way of picking out points throughout these stories to store and put together later. She would read the line of note, pause, and labour the word ´foreshadowing´ in the manner of a dramatic foghorn. Oh she was a baritone when she wanted to be. Consider my last post to be footnoted in this manner.

I´m still waiting for my package to arrive. Unfortunately, DHL can´t help me as the new invoice, the one I should have refused, remember, has the wrong tracking code. That is to say, my parcel is lost, and they don´t know exactly what to yell to bring it back. Not the name or address of me or Mum, apparently. Oh boy, another week in Lima. Don´t send things to Peru.

Another week in Lima isn´t such a terrible prospect actually. I´m discovering new cultural ´centres´every day, and they seem to be moving closer and closer to my ´department´ (probably better known to most as ´apartment´). I caught the end of a Jean Luc Godard festival a couple of nights ago. Speedy subtitles certainly makes for an authentic counter cinema experience. I found a great cinema in central lima where I can catch up on all the missing pieces of the aforementioned festival, should it be required. The kid that kept asking me questions throughout the last film I saw there El Dia De La Besta, worth a peep for an odd introduction to Spanish situational comedy, turned out to be a communications/journalism major with brilliant Lima by night tours of all the drunk watching hotspots. So there´s this Saturday tied up nicely.

A sort of friend of mine (the strangest latin american double of me ol´ mate Brendon Philip one could hope to meet)´s cousin died yesterday after falling down a flight of stairs. The catch is, what a terrible use of words that was, they weren´t even a meter off the ground. yughik! Tread carefully petals! The mother of the ´tripper´ is the only one left, having lost a daughter to cancer and her husband to a heart attack shortly after. Yup, another week in Lima doesn´t sound bad at all.

In fact, it sounds sort of like Depeche Mode.

And looks a bit like Elvis graffiti.

spectral days

oh good. It´s nice to be inspired to write again. it´s been rather sluggish with an abundance of routine.

I´ve just dropped into an Internet cafe, a scene set by the cranberries, winded ¨ough¨ sounds from a multi player dark ages simulation and a pull out desk that is literally coming apart in chunks. the chap that runs the place was nice enough to wipe my pile of them (chips) away though. So hospitable here.

I was on my way to a “Recital depresivo acústico” whatever that means (not literally of course, you can figure that out eh, nice one), but realised, moments after contemplating how late i was going to be, that i had left the address of the place with Jorge, Marco´s uncle, no doubt still trying to remember the name of that other decent English speaking band of today, apart from Queen. As all my dark chocolate fell over the pavement I had a good laugh, and gave a square of what remained to the closet hired help, a security guard. Phew. There´s some sort of electro concert later tonight in Barranco, and i´ve been promised both costumes, and breakdancing. There are space invaders on the flyers, and my hopes are pretty inflated.

I´m not too worried about the chocolate. The cocoa content in the run of the mill supermarket stuff here is so low your checks collapse trying to suck out the good stuff. Sort of ironic really, considering the amount of other cocoa based products said to be doing the rounds here. I sprinkle cocoa leaf powder on my kiwicha in the mornings. It´s bright green and said to have more iron, calcium and protein than any other of the example foods they cared to list on the back of the bag. It also gives me a bit of an anxious tummy and makes my mouth go a little numb. All the better to get my mouth around Spanish lessons though, right?

The classes i´ve been taking are an hours walk away from my ´department´, and, thankfully, are coming to an end this monday. I definitely feel more confident speaking, but years of unwillingly sponging knowledge of second language learning theory through the compulsory papers of the the Otago linguistics money making wing (take ESOL, you can work in Korea!) have made me a rather prickly pear to teach languages to. To start with I thought it was a ploy to fire me up and in the process, as I´d learn to speak more passionately through arguing. There´s some Latin American reasoning for you. Well, today I definitely didn´t win the battle, and received my fifth lesson on the difference between ser and estar (two forms of the English ´to be´, which are differentiated with ´un monton´ of exceptions based on the ´permanence´ of the subject). I felt like such a delinquent staring out the window and snapping back answer today. Childish I know, but I had already expressed my desire to go over points I was actually struggling with, and I was missing a workshop from on creating electronic sound spaces from two Polish sculptors at the centre of Spanish culture. I checked out their work the other night, the highlight being when the older guy without the Atari t shirt strung two cables around his ears, popped another in his mouth, shone a torch in his face and shook his head spasmodically. That is to say, it wasn´t great. So this morning´s loss didn´t cut too deeply.

I´m out of here next week, I mean it this time. My family sent me a package in the mail, which is finally in Lima. When I´ve got my Whitaker´s dark, fishless omega supplements and applicator free tampons in hand I´m out of here! Exactly when that will be... well... the moral of the story is, don´t send gifts to Peru, but most of all, make sure people don´t send them to you. There are some handy taxes in place should you forget, roughly around the value of the gift in question. What a helpful reminder. I had a good long chat to a woman at DHL today. Essentially it breaks down to them needing to check the goods, give them a value three times what the original packing slip says, and base the level of tax on it. Looking at the break down, one finds nearly half of it is labour costs, themselves valued at what a house keeper gets in 2 days. I´m kicking myself most over accepting a new packing slip which, as the printer ´wasn´t printing´, was hand written and devoid of any of the incriminating break down details for further follow up. Thieves! All my years in unions and I still let the paperwork fall through my fingers. tut. tut. tut.

Well, that´s me just about ready to head home for a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc and some super spicy pumpkin soup. Time to head, the cranberries just became Brian Adams, and it´s not even the Spanish version. Oh but that doesn´t stop them singing along in Spanish. Sweet.

A little the art around the place for you.

This is from the grand shop Pulga on Berlin. I thoroughly recommend you check it out. The women there have kept me on the tip of what´s on here, and have finally address the question plaguing mankind for the last decade. What happens when you cross Radiohead and Pikachu. I won´t refer to any sort of sum of its parts for fear of hurting its feelings.

There was also a radiochu suit. But I´ve seen plenty to rival that already... this Autumn collection from Tarapoto.
This is more of a ´happening´. HEAPS of the buses here are poorly modified trucks.

Some gag about which one´s the dummy. This is from a wonderful exhibition of Alberto Quintanilla at Alliance Française. I hope this is some sort of translation mishap. I´ve gone for the long shot, sorry. The word above life is placenta.But in the best translation mishap, coincidence, or maybe great linguistic discovery (save my paper being accepted for a world languages conference in Toulouse!!!) .... the name of the coal oven used in a few indigenous dishes around here is umu. Actually, doing a double take on it... the spanish word for smoke is humo, so maybe it´s not such a great find after all. Good to reanalyse where we´ve been from time to time though eh? Here´s a visual aid to spruce up the sentiment.

an iceburg´s tipple

ha. phew. okay. I'm still in Lima. I only really intended to stay here
a couple of days, but my oracles seemed to think otherwise. I spent a
great deal of time wandering around Paracas. It's super peaceful,
especially during the week when the line of luxury pool flanked pads
are empty, and a great deal of interesting dead things get washed up along the shore, so I was snapping happily.

During the last of my
jolly wanderings, about an hour before I was to bust off to Ica, a
young cool-accountant looking guy yelled something about meeting his
boat from his pool flanked pad. I was with a young French Canadian
girl i'd met half an hour before, and having just been to the
Ballista’s islands that morning, knew what a wonder cure being whipped
about in the sea breeze was for my hangover, "sweet, sure, we'll meet your boat". Turns out he'd said "boss", though not to worry, it was just a ploy to get us to come over to the deck and have a wine, another fairly solid wonder cure. Juan Pablo and Gonzalo, nice dudes,
both from Chincha. They invited us to Juan Pablo's brother's beach
house near Chincha to catch the last night of the Verano Negro
festival. Okay. And this time there was actually something where it
suggested it might be. Really driving African rhythms with carton,
quickly becoming my favourite percussive piece. It's a large, as you
may have guessed, wooden carton, which is placed between the legs and
played all over with sticks. It has a huge hollow resonance which can
be manipulated by lifting one's heels into a tiptoe position, thus
opening up the 'sound hole' at the bottom, for want of better musical
terminology. The centre piece of these parties is a tree filled with
balloons, which everyone dances around, hacking into the trunk with a
machete whenever the mood takes them. When it finally falls, the crowd
leaps on it to claim their own goody filled balloon, or more if
they're crafty. I went to another such party last weekend, in another
blocked off dead end street with a tree in the middle. Just how they
manage to grow trees quickly enough for the succession of parties is a
mystery I never want to solve.

Back to the beach house... it turns out Juan Pablo's brother was on
exchange for a year in Te Kuiti, good luck for me in a loan of a beach
house sort of a way. sweet.
The beach houses there have all been built in the last 5 year, under
the antithesis of central otago's district plan. Nestled below the
grand dunes lie the most gaudy red, yellow and blue boxes. But it's a
private beach, so no one else has to look at them right? And neither do
you, but the sunset's rather pretty.

Went back to Lima for a party which I subsequently defaulted on with
Juan Pablo that weekend, and met a bunch of people, including Marco,
who has a lovely big apartment in San Isidro, which he welcomed me to
stay at, an offer gratefully accepted. He works in the fishing industry, doing something with anchovies which I´m too afraid to ask about should it be bottom trawling. Isn´t that terrible of me? He took me down to the port to check out one of his boats, currently under construction.

It´s pretty interesting to see how the apartment holding around here make their money. Marco´s father has a huge battery hen farm at his house in Chincha, but what can I do, let them free? Documenting the poor creatures and being vocally vegan is all i´ve come up with. There were some battery pigs too. They keep them from moving so that the crackling is just right. mmm.

I got around to interviewing Vasco from the Institute of Legal Defense for an article in last
week's critic. I'm still here, but he's moved apartments since, so I got to help choose the kitchen.

We also seem to go to a new destination every weekend, a practice i
hope keeps getting practiced, as i hear we're off to the jungle for
Easter. A fortnight ago we were in Ica, home of HUGE sand dunes, which
we dunebuggied our way down at rollercoaster like speeds, a little
more terrifying without the rollers...

I also attempted to sand board with Marco and two lovely lady friends Claudia and Rosela
but I don't think the board had enough wax to work properly.

In a similar vein last weekend was spent not really surfing at all.

I've started a Spanish school and am quite content for the moment. I
have a dozen more galleries to see, and the counterfeit DVD people
have all sorts of interesting and yet to be released titles to keep my
cinema and subtitulo requirements well satiated.
Once I'm done here, I'm heading north along the coast to Ecuador, but
in the meantime it's all Peruvian zines and photos of graffiti for me. And a few odd pics for you.


If you ever wondered how they put ships in bottles... this fruit was placed in the wine bottles when it was much younger, and, according to my drunk host, grows in the alcohol. I bet it´s the bottom of bucket punch to the power of keg stand. oooweeee!

This is from the old zoo in Barranco, Lima´s grungy interesting arts bit. The zoo doesn´t exist anymore, but this happy creature still entertains the kids. Maybe I should put a series of swings where the hen farm used to be? And, to finish, probably my proudest photo to date. The police throughout Central and South Amercia are SO interesting, and REALLY well dressed, but it´s WAY to risky to photograph them doing anything. But luckily, a student protest (against belief based discrimination at a local university) walked right by my window. I joined in and got this one, and got out of the way before too much rock throwing got underway.

oh yeah, and Roberto (nephew of mongo) was released straight away

Tonight I spend in Pisco, a, I don´t know, town? about 3 hours south of Lima. This place takes its name from a brandy like distilled grape drink (or perhaps it´s the other way round, much like my appostrophies which this samsung magic station just doesn´t want to treat me to). The plan was to come here in a couple more days, as there´s supposidley a festival of pisco and other grapish delights of an alcoholic nature next week, but from my luck, or perhaps other´s lack (of organisation in the festival department) who can say, really. The last three days were spent chasing the verano negro festival, I find it very difficult to type that, which is a yearly festival said to eclipse Chincha and neighbouring El Carmen in the rhythm and wonder of the Afro Peruvian population . Despite a town plastered in posters, and an information, or perhaps more appropriately, T Shirt stand, every event I tried to attend had been dissapeared. No music, no dancing, no banners, and strangely, no others looking expectantly. So bizzare! 3 days and 5 events.... gone! It became a festival of taxis that knew just where it was and hotels with prices doubled in festival season. ¡Que raro! Perhaps I´ll go back for the 'grand parade' that everybody is 'practising for' on Sunday.
I popped over to Paracas for the afternoon, and saw my first flock of pelicans. There's a grand national park on the coast with flamingos and no doubt all sorts of other surprises all ready for tomorrow.
Peru itself I'm not really sure about. First destination in SOUTH america, and the big noticable difference for me was a distinct lack of toothy whistling sounds accompanied by ¨hey baby¨ and ¨guapa¨ that I'm still having a great deal of trouble keeping my middle finger in my pocket about. The reason, I've discovered, isn't a great deal more respect for the only blonde on the block, rather, camera phones. It's stressful enough thinking about the cleanliness of the rather viscous pool water I was working my way through this morning, without groups of hombres making phonecalls a meter away from their ears in my direction. My Spanish was a little overloaded in said situation, so I took to swearing at them in English. The most frustrating part is that as a tourist I'm generally über careful that I recieve the permission of anyone I would like to take a photo of. In the Chiapas region of Mexico for example, many people believe that the photograph takes a part of your soul, and is totally taboo. But me in the pool, the street, a bar, the art museum, no no, there's another low quality blur for the collection. Ugh!
I stayed with a fellow couchsurfer in Lima, which was just brilliant. Lima sprawls further than even someone from Christchurch can imagine, and is South America's number one crime destination as voted by travellers I've met so far. Thanks to Vasco, I stayed in an extremely safe, well patrolled and McDonalded part of town close to expansive book shops and a supermarket with all the tropical fruits and grains of my wildest dreams. Yummo!
Vasco's an interesting chap. He just finished law school, and is working for an NGO which, at the moment, involves digging up dirt on corrupt judges trying to make their way into the supreme court. Of the 12 vying for a place, he has leads of the 2 million dollar bribe variety on 10 of them. There's most certainly an interview in that one should I head back to Lima.
Heading into Lima, on another note, is quite a sight. It's incredibly dry in parts, and likewise, incredibly poor. These two elements have bred an incredible maze of mud brick slims? suburbs? which, from the air, appear as a giant sepia coloured tetris. You can tell they're occupied if they have a roof.
What a hard time my brain is having putting all this together.

Sometimes the news is accompanied by dramatic music and explosive sound effects

I´m back in Babylon, as the ´rainbow´ crew so delightfully called any place where one may fall prey to a cheap watch or pair of counterfeit sunglasses. And somehow I got my timing wrong for my flight to Lima, a day early too, rather than the usual 2 hours late. I blame the Miercoles Martes combo. Two ´M´days in a row gets confusing when reading single letter weekdays from a business card calender.

The past week I´ve been at Rainbow, miraculously washing Cuba right out of my hair, without washing my hair at all. Rainbows are sort of pop up communes that last for a month. I caught the tail end of this one, after spending just over a week in Panama City. The rules are, there are no rules, but sadly, no one had any sort of knives hidden in the wheels of their dragster. Actually no Grease mega mixes anywhere, another odd universal, but plenty of sing songs to pacha mama around the fire, walks to meet the gorgeous views and hilarious, generous people that make the sweaty trip more times in a week than the fat cats that pressed your gym membership want you to know about.

The creatures were, well, there. Half a minute after refusing to momentarily house a fingernail sized spider, a translucent fleshy hermit crab looking thing with great red eyes, a TARANTULA crawled onto and was subsequently kicked from my jandeled foot. I think ¨Jesus Fuck¨ was the term I used, jumping 2 meters up and back with the greatest hacky foot flick of my short career. Whether it was the Universe or the Spiders trying to communicate with me is as yet undecided, but the spiders are ahead 3 to 2. Seriously. I´ll have to check my 13 moon calender. ¨How are such festivals different to Girl Guide camps?¨ I seemed to keep asking myself. Well, firstly, no one was assured not to be scared of the lady who takes her hair off at night. And I realised the importance of a slip knot this time. At three in the morning. Wrapped in a ball of hammock. Being thankful for the gifts of mother earth is also taken much more seriously, which I whole heartedly agree with, hard not to when chilling on the cusp of a Panamanian jungle. However, there reaches a point where you decide to strongly avoid a person that wants to give everything to her as a sacrife. Flowers, down the river. Grasshoppers, into the fire. Whatever was lost in translation I guess I´ll never know.

So, back in Panama city, a day to spare. I´m going to catch one of their air brushed buses to a national park 15 minutes out of the city for a 5 or so hour walk tomorrow, then head to the Smithsonian Institute of Tropical Research for their Tuesday lecture and after match drinks. I caught a talk on their 5 year plan, which ended up being on the mangroves (as I imagine the topic often turns to) but felt rather foolish kicking around afterwards, and politely split. It´s no inagrial professorial lecture after all, though there was deep fried geometry (mini samosas). Another strange universal. Or is it a synchronicity? What is geometry, or fried things, trying to tell me?

And now, some photos.

Here´s one of those air brushed buses, with Bruce Willis on the back. Other popular designs include wrestling heroes and Jesus.

Here´s Alexx checking Melanie for tics. I had a few myself (totally overshadowed by the TARANTULA). I may still have some, there are places I didn´t feel comfortable getting others to check for me. And Alexx! Hilariously, any time anything vaguely out of sorts happened to the food (water was poured in too soon, someone decided to soak the pasta- that was me actually, we made chipatis out of it), he reasured us not to worry, as we were feeding hippies. Those are my bongos in the background.

Here I am with Oriana, authentically grinding maiz into something less bulbous.

Here´s a little something I picked up along the path. a photo i touched, as my terrible spanish would haplessly try and explain.

Here´s possibly my favourite street sign. Check out the bum on that guy! It´s a trend that follows right through to the shop maniquins. Fabulous!

And this could almost be the town belt. But how about his hams?