Unrelated

Perú is the world's biggest waterpark

St. Hacksaw Jim Duggan

A couple of days on the road and I'm pretty much soaked to the bone. I didn't count on my top of the line North Face clothing to be as permeable as a screen door when it comes to the weather down here. Because of this, I flew into Huancayo smelling like hot piss-urine and no one wanted to talk to me until I had stripped down to my skin tight hot pants, and even then, the only folks that approached me were leacherous old farts wanting to grab my legs. Why do they think I'm so easy?

Iglesia de la Compañia de Jesus

The Perù leg started off with a little bit of cheating, and would continue with more cheating further down the road. So, my journey in this country started in Cusco, one of the oldest cities in South America and pre-dating Oakland by a good millenia, give or take. It is a city quite literally built on the bones of ancients. Before Christians came to ruin everything in South America with their rock n roll and moist towellettes, and before the Incans got everyone addicted to coke, the Killke folks were the first to lay down stones in the mountain valley. Since then, Cusco's pretty much served as a preschool lego box, with every subsequent little snot bulldozing everything down and building up a new edifice as an afront to the previous caretakers. The Incans ripped down the walls of the Killke to make their Sun Temple. The tradition was carried on my those cooky Christians who simply had to bust down every last piece of heathen stone to make way for some fancy cathedrals that are probably not nearly as cool as the blood-soaked carcass-littered courtyards that graced the landscape of the city long before.

Incan blocks in Cuzco

The Superbowl was celebrated in two English pubs in Plaza de Armas, where we few Americans were thoroughly embarassed by the spectacle of white southern trash and military jingoism that we call an opening ceremony, and the reaction amongst our fellow bar patrons not of American blood can only be described as slightly amused horror, as if they were watching Hitler's Olympics. Why are we still celebrating failed military interventionism before every game and letting all these platinum blonde aryan country hicks stand up in front of a world wide audience as if to serve as ambassadors of American culture? And people wonder why one of the greatest inventions to come out of our great nation is not catching on in the rest of the world? Get those goddamn rednecks off the TV and let Project Pat MC the whole event, with Millions of Dead Cops singing the shat spackled banner. That's my America, and that's the America that the rest of the world can appreciate.

High in the clouds

The day after that fiasco, I was finally back up on the bike and diarrhea free, but the first day of travelling in a week was not without complications. The more I ascended, the harder and heavier the rain came. And of course the temperature at every peak has to take a dramatic nosedive towards wintery levels. To top it off, and as mentioned before, my supposed waterproof clothes were soaking in everything like a sponge and I had to keep moving and grinding hard in order to keep the ol body temperature up. This turned out to be a problem when it came to the hairpin descents that would soon define the first and last legs of each of my daily rides through Southern Peru thus far. The roads have been incredibly slick with mud, oil, and water, rendering my downhill portions alot slower and alot less fun then they should be. To top it off, by the time finally hit the lush, humid rainforests at every basin, I'm pretty much a human popsicle.

Above Abancay

If that wasn't enough, I also discovered that the only safe place for all of my electronics were my air-tight panniers. Double wrapping your camera in garbage bags and stuffing it in your "water-proof" waist bag is not enough in this wet environment. Everything is going to get soaked, and if you're not carefull with your fragile electric goods, your junk is going to get ruined. Somewhere between Limatambo and Abancay, my camera was rendered somewhat useless even though it was double bagged and safely stowed beneath my saddle. It was no use. The weather gets to everything out here in time.

And while my map assured the roads between Cusco and Ayacucho were navigable and safe, the constant rain was turning everything into a dangerous mudslick that threatened to swallow the steed each and every time I descended into the low lying valleys close to the rivers. Some of these roads near the rain-swollen rivers were turning into barely rideable creeks, especially on the roads right after Ayacucho. All these obstacles once again led to some cheating on my part, as I was compelled to hitch a ride 40 km's outside Ayacucho all the way to Huancayo. It would be my first voyage in a hauler that did not require an Ol' Fashion on my behalf.

Which brings me to my next point: the great folks of this magnificent land. Not since Argentina have I come across a group of folks so consistently amiable and willing to help with whatever questions or needs I may have. In Bolivia, folks were always telling me to get lost, deliberately giving me wrong directions, or trying to sell me their baby's shit wipe for 20 bolivars. While I'm still a gringo to a lot of people in Perú, the folks down here call me "young one'" (joven) more often than not, which is a really kind way of calling out to strangers in my opinion. Folks are once again opening up their doors to me at night and letting me crash in their living rooms or balconies as long as their five and ten year olds are allowed to kick my ass well into the night. Thanks to all this hospitality, my wet cloths are more or less dry by the morning and I'm good for another day in the rain and cold. If it wasn't for all this friendleness, I'd be at a loss as to how to survive this leg of the journey.

I was dropped off in Huancayo early on Saturday, and as soon as I enquire about a place to stay at the local firestation, the firefighters drag me half way across town to a paved soccer field to play some of the most hard hitting soccer since high-school. Now, when I was staying in Córdoba, I had to play with Germans and Argentinians, an international rivalry I didn´t think anyone could top in terms of competitiveness. Oh but how wrong I was. When these friendly, happy Peruvian folks start playing soccer against each other, they enter a state of mind that can only be described as an innate desire to murder each others families. Elbows were thrown, noses were bloodied, and at least one tooth was lost during the short sixty minutes of game time in which I participated. Upon witnessing the ferocity and fire in the eyes of my teammates, I was pretty much cowed to the goalie position, which was probably for the best seeing that I had no footwear save for sandles. When our game was over, their fiery tenacity instantly dissapated over some cold beers, and everyone went back to accusing each other of being gay or screwing old cholitas or whatever, but it was all in good fun. The last game of the day was for the really old guys, and watching these guys play was like watching sixteen Moe's and Curly's play surprisingly good but nevertheless slapstick soccer. Lot's of comical sliding around and running into eachother. Good times? Amazing times.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my camera started to work perfectly again as soon as I took a picture of this billboard. Science is god.

And here's Polly the lorro. He loves everyone.

Huancayo

The dreaded Ayacucho climb is complete...the biggest ascents of the journey are finally out of the way. I am addicted to coca leaves. Nothing can stop me now.

What a grand jam.

The States....

...I see I'm not missing much. I think I'll be back just in time to observe the horrible sham we call an election, and as always, I won't be participating. Dissolve the union.

¡Dios mio!

After a week plus break, maybe grinding hard from Cuzco to Abancay wasn´t the best idea. Yesterday, I think I climbed the equivalent of 2.5 Mt. Diablos on the way to Abancay and now my head is spinning.

Bad news: my camera has taken some water damage and needs a good fixin.Who knew ¨rainforest¨ was a term meant to be taken literally?

Good news: thanks to the folks back home, I have another satellite messenger so you people will be able to see where I´m at every night again.

I´m a lazy sick piece of crap.

I took another bus...this time all the way to Cusco. La Paz is a terrible place to be sick so I thought I might give another place a try. Still...bus riding is cheating, and I will pay dearly for it during the next month when I take on the punishing terrain of central and northern Perú.

Tales of the BowelCrusher

EAT MORE STREET-FOOD

The day after I shat my pants 74 clicks outside of Oruro, I woke up in the middle of a crowded curtain-draped hospital room  flanked on both sides by folks who look liked they´ve been shot out of a meat grinder. In comparison, I was the spitting image of picture perfect health, even though I still felt like shit. I was taking up precious space for more serious cases, so I called for the nurse and asked to be checked out. In ten minutes I was out of there, and found myself roaming the steep city streets of La Paz.

Vicuñas outside of Oruro

As I looked around for some affordable lodging, I began to mentally retrace my steps for the past couple of days. It hadn´t been so long since my stay in dreery old Challapata, where the head matron of the residencia I was staying at refused to let me use any of her many faucets to filter water, and if I had asked permission to use my own toilet,  I´m pretty sure she would  have said no. Challapata was quickly turning out to be the last straw in terms of my interactions with the locals of Bolivia. Not only was the head mistress of my residencia intent on destroying me via dehydration, but I quickly found that even the smallest amount of help was hard to find in this fair town. My simple quest to find a couple of black garbage bags at the local ferreterias were met by rude requests to get the fuck out, and it took at least five tries before someone finally told me how to get back onto ruta 1. There was something about my appearance that suggested to these folks that I was some kind of drug mule or worse...a gringo.

A couple of kilometers outside the most miserable town in Bolivia, I entered Pazña, the happiest town in Bolivia, for it was here that I came across some hotsprings. I spent half the day splashing around in the spiciest water I´ve encountered since Córdoba and slamming volleyballs into the faces of heedless Bolivian children. It´s ok, they were good sports, and they restored my faith in Bolivians albeit temporarily.

After my quick reprieve in the cozy waters of Pazña, I continued towards Oruro. However, the omens were not good. Some massive storm systems were developing to the east and the west, and as the city started to take over the horizon ahead of me, so too did these dark sky bubbles of death decide to merge and create a wall of lightning and hail that threatened to stop me dead if I dared approach any further. With the storm now heading directly for me, I had no choice but to break into one of the many abandoned mud brick houses on my route and take shelter for the night. The city was less than 7 km´s away.

My arrival in Orruro was a little anti-climactic. The city was effectively shut down due to a construction workers strike and with just a handfull of the stores open, there was no use sticking around except for a small snack of two salteñas (que ominous music). I asked around to see what everyone was up in arms about and found a lot of these folks were angry because the countless construction projects sponsored by the government had been brought to a halt, and now thousands of people were out of a job. As I entered and exited Oruro, I found the outskirts of the city surrounded by hundreds of finished and half-finished buildings and houses as far as thine eyes could see...all of which appeared to be completely vacant. I can only assume all this contruction was brought to a standstill because the government couldn´t find enough folks and businesses to pay for all these new buildings. So now there are plenty of places to stay for free outside the city.

So I continued on my way, and to make a long story incredibly short, I started throwing my guts up, crapped my pants, and found myself incapicitated on the side of the road with my limbs twitching like a fresh piece of road kill. It wasn´t long before a family in a pick-up realized I needed some help and lifted me into the flatbed for a quick hour and a half ride to La Paz. I wanted to talk to these folks, to thank them for all the help they were giving me, but I was having one of those days where I was just too damn sick to be translating words in my head. I hope they somehow find my blog and realize just how much I owe them for all their assistance. For all the bad folks I´ve run into in this country, there sure are a lot of people that go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to helping people.

Government Palace - La Paz

La Paz, like so many other Bolivian towns and cities (except Oruro) is surprising in all it´s colonial beauty and European sophistication in terms of architecture. The city-center lies at a shallow dip between two steep mountain valleys and is surrounded on all sides by what appears to be inversed limestone stalaktites exploding out of the tips of the mountains. While most of the towns and cities in Bolivia I´ve seen lie at the base of some vast mountain range, La Paz reaches a new level of ridiculouslness in terms of geography.

Great or greatest Imperial Guard?

Even though I´ve been here close to a week now, I haven´t had a lot of time to enjoy this city. With all this E. Coliciousness floating around in my guts, I tend to get winded pretty quick when I´m walking around and always have to be close to a bathroom. The only items I´ve been able to keep down in my stomach for the past couple of days have been rice, mangos, lettuce and sprite, so I haven´t had the chance to enjoy all the great goodies that line the streets every day. And like every other place in this country, the hail kicks in around three o´clock so you definitely don´t want to be caught outdoors when that happens.

It´s not a lot of fun being a gringo in La Paz either. The gringo toll is annoying, and when I refuse to pay twenty bolivianos for a bar of soap that has an eight boliviano price tag on it, these street venders will actually get pretty heated at me. Now that I think about it, this is the main reason I´m not really enjoying my stay here. I have to haggle for everything, right down to the last grain of rice, and even then I get stiffed.

One such incident got pretty bad yesterday. I got up early to snap some pictures of a few interesting sights and to avoid all the pedestrian traffic that clogs up the streets later in the day. As soon as the camera comes out, some creep sneaks up behind me and in his most seductive tone whispers into my ear "gringo, mira...hey gringo", and repeats this until I finally turn around. He has some busted up ancient trilobites that he´s trying to sell for twenty bolivianos a piece. As soon as he sees I´m not interested, he dramatically lowers the price to ten, but I still don´t want to buy that stupid shit so I tell him to leave me alone. He pretends that he doesn´t understand what I´m saying, so he continues with his sale pitch until I can´t take it anymore and head down another street. He follows me for a block before he wanders off to talk to some other dude.

I go back to taking pictures for five minutes before this cholo looking asshole rounds the corner and starts shouting at me in perfect Los Angelese, "Hey white boy, why aren´t you buying my man´s fossils?" I´m getting really pissed at this point what with all the diarrhea in my system and all these street creeps bugging me so I go right up to him and ask what´s his problem. He´s mugging me right back and saying that I disrespected his man by turning my back on him. I say to him I´m not here to buy that stupid shit. He says, "Why not? You´re rich. You can afford it". He keeps playing around with some junk in his pockets so I ask him if he´s going to do something about it if I don't buy something. He tries to get up in my face one more time but his stocky little legs can only bring him up so high before he says, "I better not see you here again, faggot", then immediately spins around and runs back to whatever troll cave he spotted me from.

Every city has assholes. It's an unavoidable reality of metroplitan life. But it's the troglodytes that make the empty threats that get on my nerves the most. I went back to the same street later that day to have some coffee and the troll was nowhere to be seen. I hate that guy. I hope one day someone spots him crying over the fact that he has no friends.

Cathedral de San Francisco - La Paz