Pic of the Day - Like Sex

"Double entendre" really is one of the coolest phrases in the English language, both in sound and in meaning.

I've hit a temporary yet two-pronged speed bump in my blog posts and the progress of my manuscript (so, really, it's a double-sided two-pronged speed bump). I know, I know - excuses, excuses. And yet, explaining myself seems to alleviate a bit of the guilt (is that the Catholic heritage talking?). Anyways - work is crazy, and quite successfully impinging on My Life, paired with the fact that my beloved laptop is in the hands of techie-fixer-uppers for the next couple of weeks or so. Alas, I am dismayed. And so, the Pic of the Day phenomenon continues, until I can once again seclude myself in the comfort of my wonderful little studio and tap tap tap out the travel stories that are constantly occupying some space of my brain....like sex. Haven't you ever heard about those studies that claim people think of sex every five seconds or something? They're usually referring to just men, but that's simply an oversight...big time. So, full-circle-style - that's how these travel stories are for me - every five seconds or so. Like sex.

My original idea with the "Pic of the Day" (temporarily en lieu of riveting travel journal entries) was that I would post photos in chronological sequence of the actual camera shutter. But considering the tone of the Stream of Consciousness delivered above, I must now skip ahead in the timeline....to Argentina. Yes, my Darlings, it's like sex - the sensations are different, and the situations and circumstances and course of events are different - but the AMBIANCE....the ambiance of Argentina is very, extremely sexy. And if you don't see it or feel it, you just need to hang out for a minute. It's there.

Consider the meal in this photo for a moment - it's just bits of meat and cheese and olives and berries, and it's just a glass of wine, and it's just a little cafe somewhere outside of Mendoza. But it's so much MORE. If only I could communicate via this blog the sound of the music on the patio and bicycles on the street, and the melodic lull of people chatting softly in Spanish all around us, and the way the waiter kept winking at me when Jax wasn't looking, and the way women's skirts flowed in the evening breeze that cooled our sweaty skin...

Pic of the Day - Pissy Pussy

I met this little kid while exploring one of the floating villages on Lake Titicaca. He was so excited to show me his kitten...the photo really speaks for itself. MRAWR!

Pic of the Day - my perch over Chicama

This is still one of my favorite concrete benches in all of South America - and yes, there are other concrete benches that made a mark on my memory, but this one it particularly unique. Perched high above the left-hand break at Chicama, it offers beautiful ocean views, right next to views of the enourmous high desert of central Peru. Even better, it's only steps away from El Hombre's cold cerveza and Senora's delicious cooking!

...can you see the wind turbines in the background, on the cliff above the waves? Pretty neat - especially up close!

I am addicted.....

....to my laptop!!! I hate to admit that my Electronic Leash is so strong, but it's making me CRAZY that I can't access anything on my computer - no files, no photos, no future award-winning manuscript. They're all still there (hopefully)....but not presently available for the purposes of instant gratification. Instead, I'm trying to conjure up some creativity in the office, which is proving to be an effort that - sans comfortable couch, yoga pants, glass of full-bodied wine, and no work-related distractions - is monumental. RAWR.

Pic of the Day - Cusco on a rainy afternoon....

I just realized that the "new travel pic" I posted yesterday isn't exactly new to this blog. Oh well - it's still one of my favorite! Today's pics were taken in Cusco, Peru, while wandering around the city on rainy afternoon. I love all the cobblestone streets and old buildings...

I found this cool alleyway during a brief moment of sunshine :)

View of the city from the ledge of an elementary school

Pic of the Day - one of my favorites!

This year at Bonnaroo, my friend Sam learned that a blog will generate more traffic if posts are made at least once per day. The good friend that she is, Sam imparted this tasty little morsel of cyber-world wisdom upon me, and I subsequently came to realize that I should make an effort to post more regularly than I presently do. Posting a new and interesting travel story every single day seems like a highly ambitious first step in this new endeavor, so instead I've decided to shoot for posting a new and interesting travel photo every single day...after all, I have thousands of pics, just waiting to be shared with the world! Of course I will also continue to post my travel emails from South America, along with acccompanying stories and images - the random photo posts in the meantime are just to tide you over. ;)

This photo was taken in Cabanaconde, Peru. I love this little cowboy's expression - he's not really afraid of us, but he's also not too sure...

11/08/06 - Passport Stamp Numero DOS!

[I prepared this post last week, but my home computer hit the skids while I was uploading photos. I'm borrowing a computer now and don't have access to my travel pics at the moment, but I'll post more photos to go along with the email/story below, just as soon as my computer get out of the techy hospital!]

Tonight I’m sitting at my computer again, reading through emails sent out by yours truly nearly three (GASP!) years ago. Damn, time really flies.

Focus...Use your words...

The last travel email I posted on this blog (not counting the non-travel-related June 9th and 16th posts) was about the Colco Canyon trek that Jax and I did from Arequipa. The next travel email I sent out from South America was dated almost two weeks later, and by then Jax and I had made our way to Bolivia, via Lake Titicaca.

This email is a long one and so, rather than write a long intro (as previously promised), I think I’ll post more photos than usual – the images really do speak for themselves. As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Passport Stamp Numero DOS!
Date Nov 8, 2006 12:52 PM

Hello all,

We've been traveling around quite a bit over the past week or so and I haven't had a chance to get to the computer, so this is going to be a long one! Since Halloween, we've visited Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca (Puno(, and entered Bolivia. I may have to compartamentalize my thoughts here...

CUSCO

Halloween in Cusco was a BLAST! Everyone dressed up and went out together. The manager of our hostel - Ben - even brought out a birthday cake for me! Our costumes were a succuss - before we left, Ben stapled them to a wall in the hostel bar and had us autograph the wall with a sharpie. Fun fun! The weather in Cusco has been pretty cold and rainy. One day when we were walking around, it started to hale out of nowhere! Good thing there was an Irish pub nearby...

One of the popular dishes in Peru - and apparently throughout South America - is Cuy, or guinnea pig. A couple of days after Halloween, Jax and I ventured out to a little village near Cusco with our friends Steve, Clare, and Will, for some authentic Peruvian cuy. Well, I have to admit, when it came right down to it I had to go with the vegetarian plate. The cuy is cooked in a brick oven - just like pizza - and is served WHOLE, with the stomach on the side, stuffed with herbs. Wow! It was a true experience! Everyone seemed to enjoy it...although not everyone said they would try it again.

We left Cusco to visit Machu Picchu for a few days - see below - and when we returned on November 5th, there was a huge party in the works at the hostel. The English residents at our hostel organized a huge bonfire and fireworks show in the backyard, in honor of Guy Faulkes day - they even burned a Guy Faulks manequin in the fire, as per tradition. I believe the story is that Guy Faulks is this dude who tried to blow up Parliament one November 5th long, long ago. Now, every November 5th, there are bonfires all over England, complete with Guy Faulkis dolls, to celebrate the valiant historic effort! I think.

MACHU PICCHU AND WAYNAPICCHU

here are lots of ways to get to Machu Picchu from Cusco - we opted for a bus/train/bus/walk option. From Cusco, we took a bus to this little town called Ollyontantambo and stayed the night there. In the morning we took a train into the rainforest, to Aguas Caliente - the closest town to Machu Picchu. We spent the (rainy( day exploring this little mountain town, which is very toursity due to its location right next to Machu Picchu. In the morning, we headed out early and caught the first bus up the mountain to the ruins. What luck! We had great weather and not too many crowds for the first few hours. The photos really speak for themselves - I'm uploading them now. In the middle of the main city ruins, there's a huge open space, believed to have been used as a marketplace. Now it is occupied by a family of llamas, who keep the grass well groomed.

*Note to self> if I were a llama, I would totally live at Machu Picchu.

If you are standing at the 'main city door', looking down onto the city ruins, you will see the profile of a face in the mountains behind the city. The mountain which makes up the nose is called Waynapicchu, and you can actually climb to the top of it and look DOWN onto Machu Picchu. Jax and I decided to do the hike - the weather was nice, and we had taken the easy road up to the ruins anyways. So we set out on this little path. OH MY GAWD. This was seriously the steepest thing I have ever climbed in my life, and it was SO exhillerating! The pathway is actually very well maintained and there are even steel guide-ropes installed in some places. And yes - you NEED the guide ropes! At the top, there are several places where you have to climb up Inca-built staircases, where each stair is about the size of a standard red brick, and everything on either side of the staircase has fallen away (I had to talk myself through that one(!

One of the really cool things about this hike is that occasionally we would pass other hikers, and there were people up there of ALL different ages and abilities. Very cool. The skies opened up and dumped cold rain on us on the way down - we were very grateful to have gotten clear photos from the top!

On our way back through Machu Picchu, after the Waynapicchu excursion, we passed BUSloads of people just arriving, in the middle of the rain. Ha ha! The bus down the mountain follows a steep switchback pattern, which you can see in the photos from the top of Waynapicchu. There are local kids who run straight down the mountain, beating the bus at each switchback turn! If we hadn't done the Waynapicchu hike I would have felt like such a lazy lump, after watching those kids!

LAKE TITICACA - Puno and Copacabana

After one night back in Cusco (for the Guy Faulks bonfire( we boarded a train headed for Puno, on Lake Titicaca. We opted to take the train rather than the bus so we could see the scenery along the way. Good thing the scenery was incredible, because the train took 10 hours, compared to the bus' six! My favorite part of the train ride was coming through mountain passes, where we could see snow and ice on the ground but the local folks were still out in the fields, taking care of their crops and livestock. Farmers don't have fencelines here, so they tie their livestock to stakes in the field - I think it looks like they tie up the male animals and, for the most part, leave the females and babies free to roam. Late in the afternoon, we passes through a HUGE lightning storm - it was all around us, in the hills! We arrived in Puno in the evening - it was FREEZING! I bought a hat a bum gloves from a lady on the street. Ahh.

The next morning, we got on a boat in Lake Titicaca and took a tour out to the floating reed islands. There are dozens of floating islands in this part of the lake - they literally have to anchor to the lake floor to keep from floating away! There are usually 5 - 8 families living on each island. And hey, if you don't like your neighbor, you can cut off a piece of the island and float away, or jsut move your little hut to a new island! We rode on a traditional little reed boat in between a couple of the islands - Jax made friends with the captain and got to paddle for a bit. The people who live on these islands actually use solar panels, provided by the government, to generate electricity.

After the floating island tour, we hopped on a bus to Copacabanna, in BOLIVIA! The trip was only a few hours and followed the lake for most of the way, with spectacular views! At the border, we changed money, got Peru exit stamps, Bolivia entrance stamps, and walked about 200 yards across the border before we could re-board the bus. Hooray! Passport stamp numero DOS.

Now we are in Copacabana, on the Bolivia side of Lake Titicaca. We'll probably stay here another day, then head southeast to La Paz. We will probably move quickly over the next few weeks, so I'm not sure when I'll have this much time at the computer again, but I'll send more updates when I can! Take care, everyone!

Hasta luego,

Aubrey

Date with Opossum at 10:22 p.m.

Do you ever promise yourself multiple nights in a row that you’ll do some particular thing (for instance, work on a new blog post or try to find a literary agent) but then get so busy with Stuff that all of a sudden it’s nearly midnight and you collapse into a chair on the patio with a glass of wine and kick your feet up for the first time in hours and mentally calculate how many hours you’ll be able to sleep before it’s time to get up and get dressed and be somewhere annoyingly “professional” and ironically, you just can’t seem to think of exactly what has kept you so busy that you haven’t been able to keep that original promise to yourself?

I’m nipping this cycle in the bud, right here and now at 10:16 p.m…just far enough ahead of “nearly midnight” that I haven’t started thinking about how much sleep I’ll get tonight. Except that I have. But it doesn’t matter. However much it is, it’s enough. It is what it is. Maybe this is the difference between 10:16 and 11:59. Oh…woops…it’s 10:22.

My dearest Kiddos, Krazies, Kamikazees, Kippers, Skippers, Dippers, and Trippers, et al...et alii, et alibi, et cetera, y esto perpetua - es verdad - I'm back! Anyone been playing with online thesauri lately? Not I, said the blind man (as he picked up his hammer and saw). Heh heh. This is what happens when I get "too busy" to keep up with my writing. It bottles up and I ignore it and pressurize it and mull on it and consider it (but still mostly ignore it) until one random day, evening, and/or Time Warp Moment, it all bubbles out and jumbles my brain into a (beautifully abstract?) stream of words that explode through my fingertips and, in this case, make their mark on the World Wide Interweb.

As you know by now, the emails I’m posting on this blog are worded exactly as they were when I sent them out from the road, while Jax and I were traveling through South America together. The next email that’s waiting in the wings to be posted here was originally sent out on November 8th of 2006, and it’s a long one…which means that my blog-post intro will likely be a long one as well. I just can’t help myself sometimes. :)

…so now it’s nearly 1:00 a.m….I had every intention of posting another travel story tonight, but a (very random) opossum spent the better part of this evening past 10:22 p.m. makin

g quiet little I-might-be-a-burglar noises on my patio and so, after discovering the offending animal, I spent the better part of this evening past 10:23 p.m. shopping for Mace and Maglights on Amazon. That’s right, Nasty Opossum. I’m prepared now. Or at least…I will be prepared in 3 – 5 business days.

I will also post my next South American travel story within the next day or so. I promise.

crazy world.....

Once again I'm diverging from the travel-themed posts of the past and future of this blog.....mostly because right now, I have an overwhelming urge to write Something yet am presently too exhausted to trick my brain into stringing words together in any formation besides that in which they appear when they...well...appear.

See what I mean?

Exercise in Creativity [slash] Stream of Consciousness [slash] Other Clever Title to Describe the Following Words to Follow. Slash.

Wore a killer green dress to an awesome wedding. Felt like Hot Stuff because people kept complimenting the dress and I caught The Ex checking out The Cleavage. Tried to snuggle with The Ex and ended up not. Lack of Amorousness. Oh dear. Bottles of champagne opening. Champagne flowing. Taxi arriving. People piling in. Slumber party on floor. Empty bottle of champagne. Full cup of coffee. Conveniently-timed text message followed by fucking incredible Bloody Marys at the Rudder Room, followed by surprise fishing trip, followed by sunny sunny sunny day with alas no fish on the line, but that's okay because lots of Mackeral (really) are in the bait tank and apparently if you bite the head off one it won't kill you.

Eh hem.

Commercial Break. Cigarette Break. Sanity Break. Break in Sanity. Welcome to Reality. Hello, Reality. So nice to meet you. I think. Except for the part about this red burning skin. It hurts and itches and is making me feel like a Whiney Little Bitch. Is it peeling yet? The skin, that is. My skin, I think. I'm not sure about this Reality. What about Sanity? Anyone have a Cigarette? Commercials are over. Fuck. Oh yeah. Sunburnt Reality and Fish Juice.

Eh hem.

Wore a bra to work but took it off in the car because my skin was screaming at me. Compromises need to be made sometimes. Thank Karma for those band-aids in the first aid kit.

Rescued the BIGGEST teddy bear I have ever seen named him Mister Ball Face and brought him home to Rufus. Decided that Mister Ball Face makes me smile (if not laugh) on a regular basis whereas Kitchen Table has never done a damn thing besides provide a surface for stacking unpaid bills and require dusting every now and again. Thereby justified replacing Kitchen Table with Mister Ball Face. Considered for a moment whether a grown woman (who, Me? dammit where's that Commercial Break when you need it?) should rearrange her furniture to accommodate an impressively over-sized and second-hand stuffed animal that has definite potential for scaring off Potential Dance Partners.

Consideration Commercial. Still not sure about Mister Ball Face, but have arrived at a satisfactory conclusion.

Drum Roll.

Potential Dance Partner MUST be down with Mister Ball Face in order to even potentially qualify for Dance Card Consideration. It's not about Mister Ball Face, on a personal level. It's the Principle. Mister Ball Face will actually have a new home soon because every time I look at him I think about how much a kid - you know, one of those small humans who would never consider Kitchen Table versus Mister Ball Face because OF COURSE Mister Ball Face is the one and only - would be a better home for Mister Ball Face.

It's a matter of Principle because I refuse to be judged by Potential Dance Partner as severely as I judge myself. It's a matter of Principle because ONLY the true Potential Dance Partner wouldn't see the whole Mister Ball Face situation as ridiculous. It's a matter of Principle because I still feel undecided. And the Un part of the Decided part is all mine.

Eh hem.

Commercial break.