Marrrrrrrrriiica!

The man seated beside me smalls like a full platter of Anntony's Caribbean Chicken, loaded heavy with calypso rice and collard greens and a half chicken in Anntony's signature sauce.  And while I appreciate him transporting me home for a few moments, I really hope he doesn't read English.  I'm really glad I haven't indulged in any cactus-derived hallucinogens, or this might've gotten really awkward.  I really hope we stop for food soon...

I'm a few hours deep into another 22 hour bus marathon, this time the return trip from Cuzco to Lima, again assured a night sans sueño, playing pendulum in my seat as we whip around mountain passes.  There's really no reason to be in Peru any longer, doing laps on the dispersed friend circuit.  But, boy, do I have great Peruvian friends.  Not to mention a tackless $4 basketball worn gripless on gnarly Peruvian pavement, slowly deflating in a friend's Lima closet, and one can endure only so many And1 highlight reels on the iPod Touch before antsiness has him ghost-dribbling pedestrians down crowded city calles.  Have you ever heard of a bus running a 20+ hour route without a bathroom? Neither had I.

Fuck.

Among other repeat ruins, I explored Machu Picchu for the second time, accompanying mi querida Caleña Kely and newly-forged parce Francisco from Trujillo to Cuzco, now back to Lima, happily playing tour-guide to Cali-come-to-me. Man, I'm gonna miss mis parceros.  All that Cali slang.  That sing-song speech. "Ay, parrrrrcee, qué chimba!"

Ringed binders really bother me.  So I'm left-handed and writing from the back forward, flipping my notebook at each page turn.

Monday's 4am ascent to Machu Picchu in steady rain revealed that my rain-jacket isn't impermeable.  In fact, it's much closer to 100% permeable. Temporarily resistant like a single-ply napkin to a juicy tongue's thrust. (A confusing analogy pulled from the high-school lunch table.)  By the time we arrived at the cloud-enshrouded Hauyna Picchu, I quivered to the rhythm of hypothermal-onset.  There were three hours sheltered in the entranceway of the plush Machu Picchu Sanctuary resort, crouched and shivering over a spread-poncho picnic of white bread, canned tuna, and bruised fruit, three disheveled figures being reprimanded by the hotel staff for playing homeless on the steps as we tried to take advantage of the heat emanating from the hotel doors opened by the nonbackpacking crowd.

Figuring I'd already done Machu Picchu, and on a perfect November day with my brother and Franco-Peruvian friend Blanca, I procured a large, impermeable garbage bag a good six hours late -- from a worker whose perverted fashion sense prompted him to ask me which color I preferred -- and started hiking back down toward Aguas Calientes and una ducha recaliente. But a few hundred meters later I reversed path, unable to pass up the opportunity to stuff my memory card with hundreds more identical photos.  And this time obscured by clouds and mist!  But the sun graced us with it's presence at last, and now I have more great photos with more great friends, and at least 50 photos and 6 minutes of video of heavy llama fornication.

I probably should be dead of some cold-and-wet provoked complication.  Instead, I just have to pee while I set legs jammed into Francisco's back, lamenting the extinction of my trail mix.

Upping my creeper status

Seven weeks of fantasy life stateside revived my travel bug, which is not a reference to the hosts of travel bugs thriving in my gut.  My gracious ex-boss rehired me as a part-time contractor, my relaxed office hours enabling me to booze with friends most nights of the week, then bumble into my cubicle at an hour by which the head-fog had subsided.  My paychecks enabled me to pay all my bar-tabs, procure a few new toys (like the mochilero-essential 64gb iPod Touch), and left me enough leftover change I was uncharacteristically unconcered I might've tipped fifty-Bell's-Two-Hearted-Ale-bucks on a $20 tab.  To an in-no-way deserving waitress.  Which is to say not only was she far from exemplary at her job, she wasn't even cute.

I feasted frequently, my checklist of foods to eat back home mostly satisfied, fifteen newly added pounds of hip-swelling flavor pocket reserves accompanying me back to the lands of ever-crowing city roosters and taxi-kidnappings. (Keep in mind, the chunkification of Patrick merely transforms him from gaunt to lean.)

I find myself unable to purge or even suppress thoughts of and longings for that which I've just fled again -- my back-friendly pallet on my parents' hardwood floor; throat massaging microbrews with the "pint pounders" and rounds of shots with my friends from the trenches and vicinity; bleeding beets and the procession of vegetables that color mom's home-cooked comforts; the company of family from chilly Kakalak to snow-consumed Michigan; a beautiful young woman -- as if memories and desires can no more easily be flushed than my starch-stuffed bowels.

Lima is growing on me again, the intimidating metropolis, behemoth no less, that actually offers more than the dense, guidebook-imbued foreboding.  It also doesn't hurt one's perception to depart sub-zero, sun-deficient days and disembark in full summer swing.  The women are as brown -- if not browner -- and as beautiful as ever, and intoxicated with Vitamin D I almost violated the camper-counselor code of conduct -- which is what happens when girls become women and you're in a land where age differences are more readily and legally disregarded.

Hey, look at this cute, light-skinned girl. Waving at me, no less. Wait, why is she asking me about Davidson Soccer Camp in perfect English.  You used to call me PB&J, eh? And you're from Chapel Hill?  Oh, shit.

"Wait, you're Austyn, aren't you?"

And so I've reencountered one of my favorite ex-campers, from one of my best groups ever, a continent away, after never having encountered anew in North Carolina.  Now we need to have a beer, just so I can up my creeper status a bit by saying I've had a beer with a camper.

The Hangover

Time in NC has become synonymous with dreary headfunk, the vise-like constriction of mind and motivation that a few six-packs too many of Bell's Two Hearted Ales tends to enforce indisciminately.  Those high gravity calories coupled with reckless feasting are slowly returning my Latin American-wandering lost poundage, little pockets of stored dessert puffing just above hip level.  My probably parasitic intestinal condition -- contracted from that high-class, apparently highly infested batch of ceviche -- is thriving, mind over matter failing miserably.  And I'm in a cubicle again, thanks to my old boss hiring me back for the year-end crunch.  (So you know, that thanks is sincere.)

I've turned twenty-six and used that newfound maturity to charm younger ladies.  (Well, that and the fact that I can legally buy beer.  They aren't so impressed that I'm old enough to vote.) My hair remains untouched, uncombed, unless I throw on a creeper's combover.  I find myself mumbling phrases in Spanish, mostly the filler word "pues" and sexually explicit commands, and dreaming latino on occasion, though I've avoided dumping any just-swiped toilet paper in the garbage can.

This vacation-within-a-vacation has provided ample opportunity to spend time with my family and friends, the world's only flock of folks fun enough to divorce me from Dad's in-house cinema, digital cable's assortment of boobies On Demand (in HD)!  In between social beer-bouts I struggle to whittle my mammoth collection of digital media down to 64 measly gigabytes of entertainment for the next year -- considering all the kids I let play with my gadgets, respect for preserved innocence is keeping my iPod Touch porn-free.

The same ol' P.

Make 'em say Ugggghhhhh

Probably a lot of things have happened since I last settled into an internet cafe to inform my tiny -- sounds better to say exclusive -- universe of readers. Hello again.

My final month in Peru found me switching back to checklist-traveler mode, ever-weary from an excess of night-bus cityhopping and Cuzco barhopping. Kibblets joined my great friend Blanca and me in Cuzco to complete an international supertrio of awesomeness. In 10 days we visited Machu Picchu and El Lago de Titicaca, nightstalked Cuzco's party strips exploiting our gringoness for pocketfuls of slips redeemable for "tragos gratis." We admired terrain and architecture. I passed on my addiction to Lomo Saltado. Images and moments were branded into memory.

• A traditionally-dressed middle-aged woman statued in the middle of a busy park, her colorful, ankle-length cloth-wrap nearly kissing the concrete, her punishable-in-public crime camouflaged by the section of sidewalk still darkened from a recent washing.
• A young girl defecating in a shallow gutter just outside a market entrance, a gutter that separates two ever-busy lanes of foot-traffic.
• Geometrically-challenged travelers on long-distance buses straining to stuff impossibly large packages and boxes and bags into already-overstuffed, to-the-eye obviously too-tiny spaces.
• The Juliaca, Peru mecca of cultured citizens: Licoreria Marihuana
• A lomo saltado dinner with a sides of "Why can't I look away?" and "This is a little uncomfortable," thanks to the mother in a family with whom Kerry and I were sharing a table at our packed-to-capacity Chifa joint.  "Hey, that's a big plate of Lomo.  And, whoa, one huge fuckin' titty."  Um, gross.

Especially memorable were a few actual meals.  First at the gringo-infrequented Cuzco eatery La Chamba, where hunks of animal that h'or d'oeuvre the portions you'd confront in any 60oz Texas Steakhouse Challenge run for less than $5.  The lechon, a juicy, fully-chicharróned baby pig accompanied by two papas del horno and one humita, was a portion that could feed two of me.  In other words, you and your extended family.   My blood-grease content hovered at triple-bypass for a few days after devouring my deliciously butchered piglet, thanks to slabs of fat as thick as thumbs that I couldn't leave on the plate.  Departing I a glance into the kitchen turned into a gaze, arrested by the pink and white kaleidoscope of muscle and fat.   Half-animal slabs were hung from hooks or spread across surfaces under the glistening blades of diligently hacking women.

I returned to Arequipa para despedirme a mis amigos.  And Blanca's family treated me to an essential traditional meal I'd theretofore avoided, Cuy.  Guinea pig.  Pet.  There's nothing like sitting down at a table and finding a dehaired pet stretched across your plate, oven-crisped legs in rigor mortis, long-teeth frozen in "Oh, shit.  They just snapped my neck!" paralysis.  And all I thought at every nibble: Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.  Picking bits of meat and tendon from my teeth hours later, I couldn't stop thinking, "I've never liked pets.  But maybe I wouldn't mind porking up a few fat dogs or cats..."

Lima was fun again, spending my days with Cuzco-encountered friends Lizabel y Karla.  We ate chifa and perfectly-sculpted pay de limón, and consumed a season of Grey's Anatomy.

Yeah, I know.

Now I've been home for a few weeks.  Thanksgiving brought me home a month earlier than I'd originally planned, and now I'm billions of brain-cells nearer to constant gape-faced drooling.  As if Bell's Two Hearted Ale isn't self-murder motivation on its own, I hang with a crew of alcoholics.  Though I can't say chancing upon a Facebook message I'd mailed the late-night prior in a blackout haze wasn't hilarious reward enough to help me overlook the pulsing, pincushion's-worth of inner-skull needles and juicy stomach that characterized yesterday's 24 hours of hangover.

Well, let's say 12 -- it was probably noon before I sobered up.

(And you want photos, eh?  Then click here.)

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.)

Gotta stop writing and find a bathroom. So this entry doesn't really flow.

I'm still doing my best Jabba the Hut impersonation in Arequipa, feeling almost guilty for my utter lack of productivity, camped in front of the TV with a kilo of fruit and bag of pastries, while indigenous cleaning ladies teeter past, yanked side-to-side by sloshing buckets and vacuum cleaners, mops and brooms wedged in armpit crevices, short ladies smashed smushed further groundward by shoulder stacked linens; while rag-clothed chicle-vending kids swirl around me, mumbling pleas to fund a dinner of bread rolls or rice with downcast eyes, while I whistle the tune of post-rocoto relleno satiation, a sack of pastries swinging from fingertips. This accumulation of guilt demands that I bury myself in cakes and ceviches and platos tipicos Arequipeños, like queso helado, a thick and velvety custardish ice cream, and the aforementioned rocoto relleno, a steak, raisin and olive stuffed, cheese-covered red pepper accompanied by pastel de papa, cheesy potatoes.

My friend Manuel and I toured El Cañon de Colca, deeper than the Grand Canyon but mostly impressive for the giant Condors that soar up from the depths, enjoying the whole catered-to, high-class-tourist routine, all the while rabidly snapping hundreds of ultimately indistinguishable photos of deep crevices and climbing peaks.

Betrayed by overconfidence in my time- and non-use- deteriorated handle, I misdribbled the first $4 basketball I'd bought off a bridge into traffic before I'd ever had a chance to use it, this while crossing-over a ghost with all my tongue-wagging, shoulder-swiveling-swagger. Ball #2 is sticking closer and crushing all international ballers who challenge the gringo to games of 1v1. But chunks of rubber sole are tearing off my worn running shoes, so impending is a broken ankle or reliance on jump shots, in which case gracias por my gringo gigantism.

Yesterday I was called "respetuoso" by a cute Arequipeña I've been hanging out with the last few days. Obviously I'm doing something wrong. Though that gentleman will probably disappear tonight, Halloween, ushered into "borrar cinta" by tragos of Pisco and liters of watery lager.

Bringing Back the Devil.

Blah blah blah

It's become progressively more difficult to summon both the motivation and coherent and clever sentences to fill this journal. I imagine my boredom has sucked any previously existing entertainment value from my words as surely and thoroughly as my daily cake-train absorbs all the liquid in my guts.

This blog has devolved into a showcase of dessert-exploits. Yesterday I managed to squeeze in dessert after every meal. Each of the three, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. How fucking exciting. How cultural I've become, my view of Latin America two to three layers of bread and icing.

Trujillo boasts an impressive parks-per-square-kilometer ratio, plus it's inexpensive with good ceviche. Lima is one of the world's mega-metropolises that crawls out and over everything, from valley bottom to mountain top, like the God's of City Construction haphazardly flung fistfuls of city-sprouting gel from the heavens and let it splatter and sprout. Um, intelligent design? The tour of la Iglesia de San Francisco was the most fun I've ever had in church, the art and architecture and ancient library all spellbinding, but the thousands upon thousands of human bones held in the dreary catacombs beneath made the lasting impression: Circles of skulls stacked upon spiraling arrangements of femurs. You know you're on a good tour when you see a human skeleton and the guide says nonchalantely, over the group's oohing and ahhhing, "No es nada impresionanate. Vamos a ver muchos más huesos."

Arequipa is nice, and I've had the good fortune to make some American friends who love beer, burgers, and Appalachian accents. The homestay I was so anticipating proved underwhelming, and the "problem" with the cable -- HBO and Cinemax disppearing into fuzz both evenings of my stay despite crystal clear reception during the day -- suggested I might've settled with a family a godloaf too wholesome. When I presented to the family father my plan to leave the house for city center, he was alarmed by my choice of lodging, protesting my prospective residence on a street overrun by "prostitutas, delincuentes, y, Dios mío, ¡homosexuales!"

Thereby unwittingly solidifying my selection.

Contrary to popular belief, maybe desire, ceviche hasn't killed me...yet.

Presumably talent and motivation -- or, concerning the latter, at least being able to fake it and pound out paragraphs regularly -- are prerequisites for any writing career. How unfortunate for me.

So I can look back on this trip when my memory is as withered as my wheelchair-bound body, so I can try to distract my gathered grandchildren from the overwhelming scent of old sunk into all the furniture, emanating from my decaying corpse on wheels, it's prudent I document, let's say outline, the last few weeks of my life.

Laughing with Ryan. A lot. Stopping her a few times on every city block in every outing of city exploration to investigate this and that pastelería and panadería. Spotting and snapping grainy photos of the ever-elusive Indigenous Leprechaun. Drinking watery half-liter-and-larger latin lagers. Fantasizing about American microbrews. Eating ceviche. Appreciating las delanteras poderosas flaunted by latinas and, particularly, latina manequins.

The trip from Baños to Cuenca, Peru was memorable in the I-can't-believe-we-made-it sort of way. Indigenous Ecuatorianos decided they wanted to "strike," selecting some inequality from the litany. So they had, what appeared to everyone trying to travel that day -- and 90% of transport companies that traverse the middle and main artery of the country simply ceased to run that day, a worker's holiday too -- a huge indigenous street-blocking party. Spilling boulders out of the mountains across the roads. Piling truckloads of rocky debris, entire trees, and other assorted obstacles across highways up and down the corridor. Cold nights at elevation gave way to town-attended bonfires, giddy families dragging dead trees and shrubs past our detained bus, little kids rolling tires twice their size, feeding everything into frenzied fires that devoured those trees like twigs, just kindling. After a four hour delay we were able to pass, though the motivated men of the bus had to disembark at least once every 800m for the next ten miles to clear accumulations of debris strewn over the road. My lack of motivation has already been documented. But really I was more overcome by intellectuality than idleness, busy dissecting the evening's film, the Mexican "classic" Perros de Dios, which included lots of maniacal supplication toward the heavens and two scenes of badass if inexplicable throat disassembly by hand. Even still, I can't recommend it.

Cuenca was pretty boring, Loja was better, mostly because there was a lady who sold delicious choclo which, upon being ordered, she would arbitrarily assign a price between $0.70 and $1. A questionable business practice summarily forgotten as globs of mayonaise-bonded-cheese were painted up and down the sides of the cob. Pretty university girls also populate the city, and the running was good.

After a few quick weeks in Ecuador we crossed into Peru, pausing a night in Piura, which merits mention only for a heavily-iced, three-layer chocolate cake hacked into and served in ogre satiating-sized wedges. Ryan and I managed to secure cheap, clean lodgings in Máncora, a dusty beachfront outpost somewhere across the desert. We even managed to procure the owner's DVD player, from which point I ventured into the sun only to run and eat, the daily routine of fruit followed by ceviche followed by the delicious beef-and-french-fry stirfry lomo saltado, topped off by American-stereotype-confirming cake raids at the nextdoor pastry spot. Ryan left and I laughed a lot less, tried to remember how to speak Spanish, then distracted myself with another DVD marathon and half-cake's worth of individual slices.

Back to Piura for a night. Continuing to Chiclayo would've been more sensible, but I needed more layer cake. The next morning, lugging two hunks in my stomach and another in a box, I moved to Chiclayo. More dust, desert and dessert. I checked out the Bruning Museum in nearby Lambeyeque, and ate lomo saltado on some street corner; I caught Steph Curry impressing on cable, and ate an apple pie for dessert. There is no word missing in the previous sentence.

Here I sit in Trujillo, the greenest city in the Peruvian dust, notable for its abundance of well-maintained public parks and bored and cheery cerdos -- whoops, police -- quick to taxi a wandering tourist about the city. My juicy stomach is no match for the impulse to gorge, giant cakes and skewers of anticuchos (corazón de res)...fuck it, it's lemon merengue time.

Putting things where they don't belong

It took prearranged plans to pry me from caluroso Cali, but vecina Ryan's arrival propelled me from the heat-and-pastry induced laze that tied me to Cali for a full thirty five days. Thirty five memorable days. Memorable even for the hamster-brained like me because I need remember only a handful of variations of the same day, a few different time-fillers wedged between the papaya wakeup and the arepa, aborrajado y aguardiente nightcap.

I circled the city clasping hands and kissing cheeks, sneaking final groping handfuls of stacked streetside mannequins, promising the salsa rhythms permeating and pulsing the streets I'll return to conquer the confusion of my feet. Bags packed, Ryan and I moved to Salento, a pueblito nestled in Colombia's rolling eje cafetero (coffee zone). Besides hiking through El Valle de Cocora, snapping hundreds of ultimately identical looking shots of the mighty waxpalms (palma de cera), highland palms that grow sixty meters high, giraffed-versions of their beachland cousins, Salento was good for, well, sleeping. Going to bed early. And learning. So frequently alternating Spanish and English with our Swiss friend Michelle if often took me a sentence or two to register the tongue of the moment, I mistook "Pamela Anderson tiene hepatitis" for "Pamela Anderson has hippo-titties." In fact, both are true.

Toward Ecuador we passed through Popayán, La Ciudad Blanca, where defying Southern-bred expectations we encountered nary a Confederate flag, though the imported Budweiser was curious. An overnight bus to the border at Ipiales landed us at one of the world's most architecturally distinct churches, El Santuario de Las Lajas, built into a mountain wall buried between cliffs, atop a bridge constructed above a gorge-bottom river.

Quito was our first stop in Ecuador, a high-elevation metropolis longer than wide running between and halfway up bordering mountains. The old city's colonial charm distracts from the third-world seediness, but you're never more than a urine-stenched alley away from bootleg DVDs and dim and dingy, nameless kitchens fronted by tables stacked with ubiquitous silver pots and cualdrons, an accumulation from behind which a woman busily fanning flies squawks indecipherable advertisements at every passerby. One afternoon we ascended to a 4000m high mirador via tourist-priced cable car, dressed in beachwear, appearing every bit unprepared gringos on a casual country-hopping jaunt fighting gusting winds and shivering bodies to steady our cameras amongst wool-layer mummified Ecuatorianos. (Recalling scenarios to insulate from reality, namely youth soccer games played on rainy winter days, spawned this gem of a qoute: "It really sucks getting hit in the balls by a face. Or, wait, it really sucks getting hit in the face by a ball. I guess the other one doesn't really suck at all!") We visited the ecuator sans sunscreen, because in Latin America skin cancer is less expensive than sunscreen, which is to say the price per squirt means treatment is less expensive than a lifetime of prevention.

At our family-run hostel I drank 1.5L of murky tapwater based on assurances of citywide purification according to one son. The next time I neared the tap his mom caught me and cocked her head, disbelieving I couldn't solve the riddle of the giant container of purified water at the kitchen door. I think the son wanted to ensure we'd choose the more expensive private bath option...

Quitting Quito we came to Quilotoa, where we'd have to endure 4000m conditions for the length of our stay. So two or three planned nights quickly became a wind-whipped one, Ryan and I reasoning the views from any point on the crater rim above La Laguna de Quilotoa would be as arresting as those at any other point, thus precluding the need for any rim-traversing escapade. So we came to Baños, a clean and tamed touristic fantasyland, a sparkling unreality like Guatemala's Antigua. Surrounded by volcanos, lush green mountains spilling waterfalls, outskirts of the Amazon a bikeride away, it's an immediately pleasing gringo magnet that reminds you shortly why you needed to escape.

When life gives you ham...throw it at Shane Hopkins

The last week has been one of those blissful vacuums of time that would drive the accomplishment-minded, like the terminally-disease-stricken, to despair; my week wasted either sweating over the stove in the shared hostel slice-of-a-kitchen, sized and ventilated like a coffin, or splayed across cushions absorbed in pirated DVDs, disproving the popular pothead rumination that a body left undisturbed on a sofa for sufficient time will interweave fibers, creating the ultimate creature of comfort, curiously neglected in Greek mythology: PillowBoy. Well entrenched in a lazy routine, I've eaten two arepas con queso and two cheese-overloaded aborrajados, sometimes with a side of frijoles, for five nights and running. My belly and tastebuds concur that there's no way to tire of plantains and cheese, nor arepas slathered in more oiliness than Spring Breaking sorority sluts from midwestern universities. (However, if you're not entirely fluent in Spanish, for safety's sake you should avoid all baby blather in the kitchen. It creates a rather awkward first impression when you confuse, for example, the words "conocer" and "cocinar" when talking to the latina mother of an adorable infant: "¿Cuando vayas a traer la nena otra vez? ¡Me gustaría cocinarla mejor!")

Cali seems to me a rather progressive city, with myriad thriving alternative communities. The most surprising, considering the Latin reputation for machismo, is the wide-open gay community. (But if you meet a gay guy who informs you his last name's "Mora," try to consider your words a bit more carefully than I did, asking with a giggle, "¿Cómo la fruta?" And remember guys: falling for a lesbian -- no matter that she's in all other aspects your dream girl realized -- is essentially, well, cockblocking yourself.) Hostel-mates Chris, Mike, Blanca, Leidy and I encountered a confluence of counter-cultures at an alcohol, drug, and manic electronic music fueled, rented-house rave -- Trashy Party -- put on by several Caleño friends. Chris turned into a walking highlight, screaming "MIKE!" up and down the streets; talking to Danielle, "mi amiga hormiga," before a savage turn in demeanor or drunken forgetfulness ended in her being squashed; answering the question-threat, "Has anyone ever cut your hair when you've been asleep?", with "No, I take my shoes off."; and providing the Koreanness necessary to prompt a random passerby to say, mid-stride and without context, "Chang." At which point, as much for the confused look on Chris' face as the comment itself -- which turns out to be much tamer, reportedly, than the strings of "Chinese" gibberish unleashed by teenage Paisas at the sight of Chris -- we melted into hysterics.

Colombians, well-versed in futból, play the first sane form of basketball I've encountered in Latin America. It helps that Colombians grow to full-size, with proportionate limbs as well, but they also play with a patience that avoids the video-game quality of, say, Guatemalan hoops. Gone is the head-down sprinting toward the arbitrarily-located, invisible-to-gringo-launch-pads that manage to convert Central American concrete courts into minefields, tiny explosions underfoot constantly launching the man with the ball into the air. Present is control -- something I might lose if people keep calling fouls for boxing out.