So it took me hours but finally some pictures are up! check em:  http://picasaweb.google.com/tobydalrymple/SouthAmericaVol1LimaTrujillosCuzco#

Now just getting ready for Machu Picchu (leave tomorrow a.m.) and a bus to Copacabana, Bolivia, when I get back!

love T

Cuzco

Altitude sickness, sure I've got it, but it beats living in Ottawa.

I think.

Cuzco is way high up in the Andes and is a colonial style city. All the streets are cobble stone. The buildings adobe and ceramic-tiled. In the main centre there's some astoundingly rich and imposing cathedrals. Spectacular mountains of the Andes are visible in ever direction.

I do hate blogging, if only because I know for a fact I wouldn't read my own blog, especially if I wasn't me. Maybe if I could figure out how to find time to upload pics you guys would be happier to waste your time with me.

In Sunday I leave for Machu Pichu. Its a five day hike on foot to the sacred and lost city of the Inkas. Going to pick up a bag of coca leaves on the way to keep the spirit and teh body in good shape for the even steeper climes (about 3,500 km above sea at some points...)

Coca tea (Mate de coca): drink it constantly to stay fresh and feeling well. When ever my breath begins to shorten  and I feel as if I was hungover - the sickness - I hop into a little cafe and grab a cup for about s/1. 50 (40 cents). 

Vendors on the street sell you grocery bag sized packages for less. And you chew it. You can even buy San Pedro, in cactus form, or in pure, mescalin powder, at some of the markets for about 2 bucks US. I haven't tried it, and not sure if I want to cope with the psychadelics..but you can do a spirit journey here and its a guided trip.

Beer here costs  s/. 2.50 (90 cents). There's a chinese restaurant every ten feet in parts. There ex-president was Japonese. Going to an afro-reggae dance club later.

(want to get out of) Lima , Feb, 24

I woke up Sunday needing to get out of Lima. Not sure why I had the feeling, but real fed up with the hostel, some of the hostelers, the bustle and noise of Miraflores, etc... Spoke with a good dude here, and he told me to go to Trujillos for a day.

So I planned my trip a bit with him, had a few pints with some of the hsotelers and hopped on a 8 hour night bus to the city, about 500 km North of Lima.

(had the strangest sleep and dreams in my life...)

Lots of ruins there to see, from Chimu and Moche civilizations. Really amazing stuff actually. WIll post pics up on Picassa or Flickr, soon hopefully (once I find my charger for the laptop).

Came back the same night by night bus and now have my last day here in Lima before headed to cuzco.

I think i might go to Larco mar today and swim in the pacific. I havent yet, and might not have the chance for a while.

From CUZCO after MACHU PICHU I think I am headed to Copcabana and La Paz, in Bolivia, and hopefully down to see the mines at Potosi.

Then I will bus all the way down Argentina and perhaps slice through some parts of Chile to get to Buenos Aires. I really am very excited to get to BA ..... I want a city to live in for a while, and find a job. Order, and expats.

Lima Day 3

Much to write about, but not like this. Not sure if I really want to be a blogger.

I have a lot of pictures, and will post them or a link soon.

Note: North America has money and order. Peru has happiness and chaos.

Arrival - Lima, Peru. Thursday Feb. 19, 2009.

I am here at the Loki Hostel in Lima, Peru. There is a bar stocked with Peruvian beer and Pisco, a stone roof-top patio and a view of La Parque Kennedy, on the busiest intersection in the Miraflores backpackers district.

The air is thick, the beer is cheap.

Last time this week, I was in Penetang, Ontario, racing by snowmobile at one-hundred miles and hour on a frozen lake, blanketed with slush and water. That was my goodbye to the small town where I spent most my youth. I could barely breath as I latched on to the sides of myfriend taking me over the lake at such crazy speeds.

There are two interesting things I can tell you about Lima so far. One is a personal story, and the other is very large, and journalistic, and I don't think I can quiet explain it yet. So let me start with the small story first, and maybe after I will try with the other more daunting story to etch.

I arrived at Lima airport about an hour before midnight. Lima has no buildings higher than two-stories, for the most part - but it is a vast and expansive city and houses about 8 million habitantes. The magic of this squat city reveals itself from the air: stretched out over the miles and miles of space are what appear to millions of yellow Christmas lights, all part of some gigantic, magic christian web.

The dark mountains - there are three big ones forming a triangle in the area and hundreds of smaller ones, are visible in the sky at night only from their pure blackness that juts them apart from the twinkling lights.

Jesus, I don't really have the energy to go into all of this. But let me at least try and get the basics down:

I was greeted at the airport by a friend of a friend's back in Ottawa. His name is Mario, and he is an architect and professor here in the city. He was wearing a red cape and denim hat and we walked about 15 minutes to get into his old Volkswagon hatchback.

Driving to his place in San Isidro, a relatively wealthy and residential enclave, Mario keeps his hand above the horn - a ceaseless background noise here - and the Volks in the middle of both lanes, so that he is cruising with the yellow line dividing the car in two.

We get to his little pad on Pezet, where I drop off my bags in a small room with ceramic tile, this is where I am too sleep for the next ten days. Or at least thats what I was told. This morning I woke up and decided Id rather live in the relative comfort of a hostel and have lots of people around me, so while Mario was at work I packed my bags up again, left him $20 and headed to the Loki. I feel bad, since he was very kind, but the immortal - immoral - words of Miller ultimately assured me I had made the right choice: "I am alive. Morally I am free." 

My comfort over the world's feelings, that will be my first rule.

And that is sort of it for the first item. I coudl tell you more, but I doubt it makes much difference at this point: we are just getting to know eachother, and me this blog, and I will save you all some of the details.

Finallly: the broad sketch of what I see as perhaps a dispatch from Peru:

There are Casinos at almost every corner here in Miraflores, filled with the emphysemic and gansters. There are babies selling cigarettes and 10 year old boys shining shoes. No public transportation, and thousands of taxis. I haven't seen one old man driving the cabs, nearly all of them are my age or perhaps ten years older.

That is not so much an idea but a spalsh of details that I think will all fit in, somehow, to something more tangible, one day.