Defining Zombification

Somehow I never noticed my short morning jaunt to Arequipa's Mercado San Camilo, my ritual Pie & Papaya Quest, is literally lined with belly-bulging prostitutes sporting far-from-form-flattering Skittle-colored Spandex.  "Ay, cariño!" Sultry faces, but no licking of the lips, a minor personal disappointment. "Uy, Papacito!" drawls one unconvincingly, as she extends an arm in my direction, so unenthusiastically that I'm unsure whether she's doing rotator-cuff rehabilitation or trying to grab a handful of my t-shirt.  Still, it's all the attention I'm lacking from gringo-magnet bricheras, thanks to my caramel complexion and decent handle on español.

Perusing the superlative travel blogs of a few Evanston universitarias, recently befriended over pocket-change cajitas de vino chileno, has at least momentarily reawakened the synapses between my inner-author and fingertips.  Ah, the familiar crunch of the keyboard, the furious and familiar pulse of the backspace, the conflict between my diminishing command of the English language and orthography.  And still it's a facade.  I've nothing to say.  Nothing to contribute.

Maybe volunteering is the answer, a month-long respite from the monotony of perpetual Saturday.  Zombification (n) 1. the framing of days around three meals, the height of mental stimulation waffling over which pastries will pave one's path to late-onset diabetes.

"I really think salsa's a bit like rape."

There's nothing like waking up hungover, slinking out of the hostel in search of market-vended, resaca-stifling morning pastries and empanadas, and catching a 10am proposition from a corner-lurking hooker, either working a double or monopolizing on the bust-a-quickie-on-the-way-to-work crowd: "Vamos al hotel?"  As they (should) say, the early puta gets the worm.

The last few weeks of my life have been perfectly, utterly unproductive, governed by nothing more than pastry and chifa cravings, and the drug-resistant bacterial menace raging in my intestines.  Which, I suppose, is a diagnosis better than pet belly worms, if less cute.

So I've compiled another impressive collection of pirated DVDs, worn all the tack off my $4 rubber basketball, and, immobilized by flojera -- not even Maya's likening of salsa dancing to rape has prodded this latent predator into prowling the discotecas -- made friends with the many cycling through my Lima and Arequipa, Peru hostels, accumulating amistades to house and entertain and guide me from Santiago to Buenos Aires.

Time to go scrub the cake and wine residue from my teeth. And see what a pocketful of jangling Peruvian soles might procure on the corner.

The War and Drugs and Amazonian Bugs (in my belly)

Lima is a pretty rad place, and not only because it's named after a bean.

Or maybe that's the other way around. Factually, it is. Fuck you joke ruining Wikipedia.

Man, a puff of haziness no more profound than a that's a finger in my ass-gasp-of-surprise really puddles my honeypot of a head.  I...don't want...can't...do...anything.  Even the usual nerdutainment challenge of trying to correct a Blogger-flagged, red-underlined misspell just gets copied-and-pasted into Dictionary.com.  It was something eggregious like entreprunureal.

Maybe not Locked Up Abroad roulette like walking a sack of weed from Belize into Guatemala, but still a fun round of Will You Please Empty My Wallet, Señor Policia?, I put in a good four hours of Lima driving a few weeks back, with a copy of an expired NC driver's license. Lima rush-hour, crunch-time driving. Ton-weight bumper cars at 80km/hr.  Lanes are suggestions. Stoplights yearlong Christmas decorations. And right in the middle of dodging weaving microbuses crammed with at least 15 certain dead, my 17-year-old hermanita Celeste gets through on-air to a major Lima radio station.  I can hear her coming out of the speakers.  Then there's a phone on my face, and I'm jabbering in English and Spanish across Lima, back to myself.  I should be getting laid for this. I'm definitely not. No, motherfuckers, I'm not Chilean. I'm not Argentinean.  Just a dark-featured Gringo who happens to spit a lil' castellano. I'll tack on a blond wig and baby powder this Greek-featured face if it turns you on.  I'd let you layer my eyeballs with lead-based-watercolors if Skinemax and stripclubs didn't exist.

But, shit, dude, leaning on that horn like every shrill burst is juicing up some glowing throbbing video game bar you have hovering somewhere in the upper corner of your lifescreen is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuun. Like doing your part in the war against overpopulation plowing indiscriminately through crosswalks. Laying down speedbumps to control all the maniacs chasing you with their blaring horns. Run The Gauntlet with pedestrians challenging your bumper instead of head-seeking strikes-from-the-laces.

Do you think considering staying in Lima an extra three weeks -- close to an NCAAairing Sports Bar -- just to guarantee I don't miss this year's first Duke-UNC contest is extreme? (Seriously, I'm impaired. I actually just clicked search on Dictionary.com because I couldn't figure out what was wrong with Extreem.) Oh, as to that question. Of course the answer is NO, all you pussy non-real-fans.

You don't support this post if you don't support weed. And I don't even really smoke, but that backpacker peer pressure to enhance the flavor of the liter of Lúcuma ice cream -- clenched between your thighs, cold condensation relief from the Lima sauna soaking your Dickies shorts -- is hard to resist.

...

Damn. I just did a reread. Probably shouldn't have wasted my "you don't support this if you don't support weed" plea to get paid by High Times.

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.