From Peru, June 30, 2002
(The post below is from a group email I sent to my friends and family while traveling years ago. I include it in this blog as an archive to my travels. It remains in the the raw state that I originally sent it, foolishness of younger years intact, typos and sics untouched.)
it seems like its been two lifetimes since i`ve gotten around to emailing. all due a lack of energy and a clear state of mind.....
since i left you all last i had run away to the jungles of bolivia where i was all too often engaged in copious amounts of sweat, swatting countless species of bugs, pushing untold types of plants out of my path and constantly wiping spiderwebs from my face. then there was also the camping in the middle of nowhere, chasing a pack of wild boars, drinking the untreated, rusty jungle water, fishing, and spotting a puma, and handling a machete with reckless abandon.
afterwards i returned to la paz, and all to quickly had to run again (i wasn`t even close to ready to leave bolivia). this time to meet my friend in lima, peru. first a stop-off in cusco for a couple days, waiting out protests. met six travelling middle-aged encyclopedia salesmen from lima and got in with them. they called me `the bridge` to the gringas for them. all too vivid...
then off to lima to meet jeff the buttaman marlow. for all those who don`t know a close friend and teammate from university. accountant by day, rapper by night. it was his first time out of the country so i had to give him mad props!
we had crazy times in lima meeting lots of amiable locals and rarely returning to our hotel before the sun awoke. we saw quite a few parts of the city, but more insides of discotecas than anything. lima gave butta some time to adjust and get in his last bites of fast food before heading to cusco.
all told we spent a week and a half in cusco. not a night we didn`t party! butta got to meet some of the mates i`ve been travelling with. we went on a four day rafting trip through class four and five rapids (for those who don`t know...big ones!) the trip ended up being a bit of a catastrophe as three guides ended up getting injured (with butta and i acting as medics) and the equipment raft getting stuck on a rock and absolutely flooded. it was great nonetheless.
after rafting we returned for the inti raymi, the incan sun festival. quite interesting. hung out with some local friends here for the festival and they introduced us to a delicacy of theirs...the cui. supposedly its a guinea pig (but it looks more like a rat) which they pluck (most of) the fur from, pierce with a stick from mouth to anus and roast. doesn`t quite taste like chicken. parts of it kinda (and i use this word in the loosest sense of the term) taste like prosciutto. but the organs really disturbed me. i held it all down though...
today butta left though and i am solo again. he saw the machu picchu and we spent a day traversing the sacred valley and all the markets and ruins around its little pueblos. i think he really enjoyed it and it must have opened his eyes quite a bit to the world around us.
me, growing tired of constantly being on the move, i have decided to stay here in cusco a while. i got a job as a trainee to become a river rafting guide which means i`ll be an unpaid slave riding the rapids by day and sleeping under the stars on river side beaches at least a few days a week. i will find an apartment and maybe work at a discoteca bartending a few long nights a week making up to ten dollars a night! it shall be nice to settle down a while (but i have absolutely no idea how long... a month? six months?).
so if anyone is in need of a vacation, you know where i am. all the best to you all, drop me a line when you can. all my love,
j
