Lima, Peru: Jorge Chavez Aeropuerto Internacional
I´ve just arrived from BA and have been sitting here at the gate for 30 minutes, with over 3 hours remaining until my flight to Arequipa...and I´m bored out of my mind. Thank God for the annoying little boy who´s playing on the floor and rolling coins into my feet, like a 1-pin bowling alley. We´re both having fun with it.
I have the kind of dull headache one expects in the afternoon when running on 5 hours of sleep and having travelled since 7am that morning, combined with various delays, two doses of airline food, and recurring diarrhea. I´m dying to read something, but every time I begin, I feel slightly nausiated or completely distracted, pretty much like anyone playing defense for the Lakers right now.
Excuse me...potty break....
(10 min later)
Well that´s something fun to do every 5 hours. It may have been precipitated by the weird sandwhich I just ate but its mostly likely from yesterday´s adventure with 5-day-old homemade clam chowder. I made it for the family I teach with here, and it was absolutely buttkickin´. It was really exotic for them but they loved it: The had looks of suprise on their face as they tried it and actually liked it. They probably were a little scared of my cooking ability too.
Well that was 5 days ago...so learn my lesson: Don´t take risks with 5-day-old seafood and dairy products.
So more about my first impressons of Peru from the airport here. They have Dunkin Donuts here so it can´t be all bad. And Doritos & Pringles. That being said, so far its conforming to all my negative prejudices. The weather is absolutely miserable...perfect visibility for 50 yards, then just a wall of white fog everywhere. Its like living in a cloud...and if you thought that would be cool, its not. Its like this over half the year here.
The domestic terminal here, all 8 gates of it, smells like dirty butchershop or slaughterhouse. It especially smells like old dead chicken. I´ve switched seats 3 times trying to escape the odor, finally settling here next to a group of 4 college-girls in college sweatshirts, who are even more casually annoying and tomboyish than I remember. Maybe I´m just a macho asshole now. Sometimes its fun to try and guess whether groups of American-looking&sounding people are Canadian or not, but since their backpacks are in plain view (sans maple-leaf patches) its not even a challenge. (Its required by law in Canada that backpacks come with a prominently-placed Canadian Flag patch)
So this being my first day in Peru, Im a little apprehensive about getting altitude sickness. The symptoms sound like what I felt like 30 minutes ago, except altitude sickness can also kill you, or just make you want to stay in bed all day. Sounds like a bad hangover minus the bar tab, good times, and the 3:30am call to your ex-girlfriend that you dont find out you made until a Christmas party 3 months later.
The plus side is that I have a legit reason to injest cocaine, by chewing coca leaves, as it is a known remedy for altitude sickness. (And if I have any loyal readers at the DEA: it takes 2 kilos of coca leaves to equal the high from 1 gram of the white lady, so dont waste your time with me.) Incidentally, the other 2 legit reasons are, A) If I was ever in the presence of a Scarface-sized mountain of yayo, or B) Peer pressure.
Now I´m heading to Arequipa as my first destination in Peru, as its only 8000 ft, so being there some days will help me aclimate before heading to Cusco at 11000 ft. From there I´ll do a 2-day tour of the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, before heading to Cusco, stopping for one night in Lake Titicaca along the way. And no, you perverts, that name is not Spanish for one of those weird sex moves you read about on the internet.
...
Just talked to a Peruvian guy who´s in the specialty lumber business (read "rainforest") and does deals with America and Europe. He says he works with a group of 33 local producers in the Amazon that are now working with the WWF for a stamp of approval on operations. Its good to see the WWF taking a realistic approach and working with a business group that actually wants to adapt to more earth-friendly (and lets face it, ultimately business-friendly) practices, instead of pouting and holding out for stone-age level of environmental perfection. The guy was cool: He talked about how conservation was in their interests, but the poor people who live there also have the right to have the forest be their lifeblood.
I told the guy I´m from Oregon and he gave me all his contact information, in case I know someone who want´s to do business. Weird.
