Booger bombs and other details you don't wanna read.

Here in the Internet I just unglued a tumor-sized, sneeze-launched boogerbomb from my wrist. All of a sudden I'm being overwhelmed by oxygen.

Fast forward all the gooey, meaty meal details, pastries and rocoto relleno and queso helado, Halloween in Arequipa was quite the spectacle. Masses, costumed and not, overwhelmed roadways for kilometers radiating from city center by 5pm, ambling families passing thousands of logjammed taxis like Flash past the Blob. Nightfall transformed central Arequipa's streets into the practically inpenetrable liquor-numbed and unhurried human traffic jam that so excites pickpockets. Hanging out with the excellent crew of international and Arequipeño friends I've had the good fortune to amass, the rhyme and reason of alcoholic consumption was dictated not by any health-preserving riddles but what next found it's way into greedy fingers. Four hours of sleep was all the prospect of Sunday morning adobo afforded pitiful Pat, but that ruddy-broth-engulfed pork chop, with its boiled onions and hot peppers and pancito to soak up any spoon-escaping juice with its appetizing toplayer oil-spill sheen, was all glory, all the way to and through the messy, stomach-infuriating aftermath. (And walking through the more-than-usual urine-crusted streets this sunbaked morning, I realized that I'll have to rub all my future hardcopy photos in urine to impart them the "essence" of Latin America, for something more accurately approximating that full-sensory experience.)

Today was the important Latin celebration Día de los Muertos, which fills Latin cemetaries with thousands paying respects to those deceased, celebrating spirits with spirits, song, dance and picnics. Thousands of graves freshly cleaned, decorated with flowers and wreaths, the rampant jubilation, the myriad colors. The public intoxication. All unforgettable. (Though, as an afterthought, you should probably never visit a cemetary, much less on Day of the Dead, with a goth couple. For the gloomy and black-fishnetted, expressionless photoshoots in front of acceptably dreary graves and tombs never lose their novelty.)