Epilogue

Ruined

After we got back to Cuzco, we booked tickets to Puno, starting our way back to Chile.  By this time, Ezra and I were all that remained of our original foursome- a pickpocket and a family emergency split our other companions off to their own obligations.  We decompressed on the tranquil, six hour ride- the same ride that took 24 hours in the other direction.

In Puno, we caught a few sights on Lake Titicaca before moving on to Tacna for the border crossing.

The Yavari, Peru's English-made gunship, 

150 years old and originally fueled by llama dung

(you can't make this stuff up)

Yavari to aft

A recipe for disaster

After Puno we caught a very luxurious overnight to Tacna for the border crossing.  Everything's cheap in Peru- just before the bus left, we got tea, bowls of soup, and plates of rice and chicken for all of 50 cents, U.S.  Our bus tickets were about the same price we were used to, so we were surprised when we climbed onboard to find huge, leather chairs with footrests which reclined almost flat.  Nice work if you can get it.

In Tacna we caught up with our bad luck: now the cabbies were striking, and the scab who eagerly sought us out to take us to the border got an earful from his compadres, and a few (hopefully) playful whacks on the side of his car as we pulled away from the picket lines.  Still, we made it to and through the border without trouble, and caught a Chilean cab from customs to Arica.

Arica is touted as an unknown hotspot for warm beaches in Chile- the Humbolt current which flows up the coast from Antarctica keeps most of Chile's shores too chilly for swimming, but it's supposed to veer off into the Pacific before reaching the northern sands.  Ezra and I didn't find this to be true, but we did have a pretty fun day kicking around the city.  Arica has a huge hill, El Morro de Arica, at the water's edge which was the site of a decisive battle of the War of the Pacific with Peru (another prideful museum boasts the country's victories).  Just getting back from hauling our weary bones all over Machu Picchu and Waynapicchu, I found it ironic that one of the first things I did was climb to the top, but the view was formidable.

Arica's harbor from the top of El Morro

The next morning we caught a cheap flight back to Santiago, making the longest-distance trip of our spring vacation the shortest in duration.  It had been tumultuous, terrifying, and sometimes agonizingly boring on all those buses, and one of the most exciting experiences of my life.

A few highlights from my notebook over that week:

Copies of Tiwanaku art from the Padre Le Paige Archaeological Museum:

A prestigious culture from modern-day Bolivia, the Tiwanaku established heavily-used trade routes south.  They were peacefully incorporated into the Inca empire.

"Carved and burnt drawing in a wooden beam"

"Tiwanaku influenced textile"

Rubbing of the brass plaque on the captain's chair in the Yavari

Rubbing of the fabrication plate on the Yavari's engine casing

Machu Picchu's agricultural sections from Intipunku, the "Sun Gate" to the south-east

Machu Picchu's agricultural sections from Waynapicchu

And the quirkier moments on Machu Picchu:

Making friends with the locals

Photos courtesy of Ezra Riley and Joe Neiman.

Part 4: Machu Picchu

Outside the bus terminal, we asked a taxista the fare to the Plaza de Armas, which he inattentively gave as three soles, but taking a better look at us fumbled it up to four.  Through the narrow, Inca-walled pedestrian streets drug dealers eagerly offered their wares in whispered staccato bursts, "weedcharliecokepills..." and restaurant employees agressively pursued patronage from the tourists passing by.  We found a hostel in a colonial building run by a sad-faced man who seemed perpetually exhausted, and reveled in the warm showers and clean sheets.

In the morning we set off in a search for passage to Aguas Calientes, the tourist town at the base of Machu Picchu.  Having only a few days, we ruled out hiking the Inca trail, which left us with the train.  We booked tickets for the following morning and spent the rest of the day exploring Cuzco.

Credited as being the oldest continually inhabited city on the continent, Cuzco radiates a dignified antiquity.  The cobblestone streets are asymmetrically laid out and lined with heavily-columned colonial buildings.  Near the Plaza de Armas are a succession of town squares connected by narrow pedestrian alleyways.  The Incan walls are composed of colossal stones which would inspire claustrophobia if you weren't so busy being awestruck.  In an effort, perhaps, to outdo the Incans, the Spanish architecture in the city is similarly impressive.  On the camino Santa Clara there remains a large gateway which frames the hills beyond it, and two large churches dominate the Plaza de Armas.

Incan walls, 500 years young

Santa Clara arch

Iglesia La Compañia, Plaza de Armas

La Cathedral, Plaza de Armas

Cuzco's infastructure far surpasses those of the cities we passed through, maintaining a confident and sturdy atmosphere.  However, it is abundantly clear that this atmosphere exists for the benefit of tourism.  The influence of tourist dollars can be seen on every block, and it is difficult to find the honest and un-contrived Peruvian culture underneath.  Still, the city is a remarkable destination.  I met two nurses from Colorado who had been dispensing medicine on the Amazon.  They shared their trail mix with me, remarking that Cuzco and Machu Picchu would be their recommendation to those having to choose a single destination in Peru.

The following day we rose too early for our hostel breakfast and purchased fruit and bread from Cuzco's central market.  We wove through the throngs of travelers in the train station across the street and boarded with our provisions.  The train rattled out of the station and crawled up the hills on switchbacks east of the city.  Slowly, the track evened out into a gradual, winding path, and eventually straightened to an easterly heading.  I struck up a conversation with a Dutch couple sitting across from me who were less enthusiastic about the early hour, and shared small bananas with a Japanese man in the next seat.

It took four hours to get to Aguas Calientes where hosteliers competed viciously for our business.  We settled on a room costing one third that of ours in Cuzco, left our bags behind and sought out the bus to the ruins.  A 20 minute trip up the mountainside left us at the entry gate to the city.  I played the theme to "Indiana Jones" on my iPod as the ancient ruins came into view and my eyes teared up with excitement.  We presented our passports at the gate, receiving this stamp:

On several plaques within the site North American professor Hiram Bingham is credited with discovering Machu Picchu, but many knew of its existence before him.  It was Bingham's enthusiasm for Incan culture which brought about public knowledge of the ruins- his second expedition to the city was supported by the National Geographic Society.  The ensuing fervor for the attraction has caused, some claim, catastrophic erosion on the mountain.  On Waynapicchu, the peak just north of the large site, only 400 visitors are allowed per day to combat the gradual degradation.  Rules are laid out at the entrance and appear strict and rigid.  No food, no large backpacks, no smoking, no garbage.  No walking sticks except for the elderly.  Do not climb the walls nor write on the floor.  Inside, sentries stand on peaks and scan the crowds, but can only blow whistles at infractions too distant to address.

A path to Intipunku, the sun gate, leads south-east away from the ruins and up a gradual slope.  From the path's terminus the agricultural fields of Machu Picchu allign with the view and the site seems to stretch out toward Waynapicchu.  From Waynapicchu the elements of the city are laid out as though a diagram, and visitors would stop and sit at length to dissect its intrigues and digest them to their satisfaction.  The Incan empire, a flash in the pan, spanned a great deal of would become Peru, Northern Chile and Western Bolivia, but lasted only a hundred years.  The function or purpose of the city remains under speculation.

Machu Picchu from Waynapicchu

The western and eastern urban centers, from L to R

The urban centers with Waynapicchu beyond

A closer look at Waynapicchu's ruins

(click on picture for a slight enlargement)

We marched up and down the ruins for two days before returning to Cuzco filthy, aching and exhausted.

Photos courtesy of Ezra Riley

Part 3: Northward into Peru by Bus

"Cuzco or bust," I replied to the gringos, and they laughed at our casual ambitiousness. We had met two Estadounidense at the bus station in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, northward bound like us. One read The Economist in the seat ahead, the other chatted with me about the Steinbeck book I´d brought. "It´s a shame I never read him in high school, I wish I´d paid more attention," I said, pondering the strange things you find yourself regretting. "Imagine what you´ll regret ten years from now," he replied, and I began calculating how much class I could stand to miss in the coming week.

"No, sit down, please; sit down!" Two days later, the Peruanas on the bus were desperately worried that the protesters would see us. Four white tourists onboard would not make a sympathetic case. Though we certainly wouldn't refer to ourselves as such, to the mob outside we were undeniably wealthier in material goods, and a direct affront to their cause. Days later we would reunite with a pair of European tourists, a woman with impossibly straight hair and a less memorable man who had been on the bus ahead of us that day- the bus which, unlike ours, had been allowed through the roadblock. The woman did all the talking: They achieved the feat by hiding under blankets while protesters examined the elderly and the weeping babies onboard. Had we only exercised such cunning discretion, ours might have been an equally short drive from Puno to Cuzco, one-time capital of the Incan empire.  

In a happy accident, studying abroad in Chile for the "American" fall semester means you effectively get two spring breaks in one year. Three of my fellow students and I took advantage of our week off to have a go at Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. Already in San Pedro, a desert oasis half-way between our Santiago school and the northern border of Peru, we could think of no more opportune time. We boarded a series of buses ferrying us to Arica in the North, where a taxi hauled us through customs and up into Tacna, where the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" played on the radio. We exchanged pesos for soles and began inquiring with bus companies how to get to Cuzco, the oldest continually inhabited city in South America and staging area for all visitors to Machu Picchu.  

"No es possible," was the reply. Ezra, the closest thing we had to an interpreter, could get no more information than this: roadblocks in Moquegua were blocking all traffic north. Either Ezra´s Spanish was faulty, or, what seems more likely, the company representative was unwilling to say. So the nature of these roadblocks, be they natural or man-made, civilian or government-imposed, went unrevealed. A man approached us as we milled disenchantedly through the bustling terminal, and with a smile of rotten peanuts where his teeth should have been, he said hopefully, "Arequipa…?"  

In a national park there, "andean condors regularly swoop low above pedestrians´ heads," reads the Arequipa section of Lonely Planet´s South America on a Shoestring. The price was right and the bus was leaving shortly. Peanut-Teeth arranged our tickets and departure tax and hurried us on to the clean, professional-looking double decker coach for a meager tip of one sol (about 33 cents, U.S.), and we set off northward. Sure enough, on a bridge in Moquegua, a battalion of riot-gear-clad police stood in a phalanx, swiftly separating to let us pass. Whether this was a government roadblock or a government's response to a civilian roadblock we could not tell, but we went on to Arequipa without another sign of trouble.  

From Arequipa to Puno the scenery changed drastically. Jagged and unaccommodating Peruvian desert gave way to rolling, yellow-brown hills. More and more frequently, our driver would honk at vicuñas in and beside the road. Into Puno's Terminal Terrestrial after dark, we heard a familiar report. several companies announced with nonchalance that service to Cuzco was interrupted indefinitely. Our spirits fell with the news, and our nerves frayed under the oppressively shrill calls from ticketers hawking the final seats on their coaches, "ArequipaarequipaarequipaarequipaaaaaAHHH!"  

It was here we first met the European woman with impossibly straight hair and her unimpressive counterpart. They were carrying their bags with a determination which inclined us to ask where they were headed; "Cuzco" was their reply. We followed them to a ticket counter in a far corner of the terminal which would have done little to inspire confidence but for the crowd of patrons assembled nearby.  

Peruanos, it would seem, employ bus travel for all means of cargo transport, and it is not uncommon to witness large sacks of seed or produce being dollied, hauled, or otherwise dragged into stowage compartments under the coaches. There was a memorable instance where I witnessed a small, splintery, wire-bound wooden crate containing an indeterminable but very alive creature on a woman's luggage in a terminal. In Puno that night, humans comprised the only live cargo our bus would haul, but the sacks and blanket-wrapped parcels in piles by the counter gave the very real impression that our foursome could be in Cuzco by the following morning.  

"She says it'll take twelve hours instead of six," Ezra reported. We conferred, agreeing that to depart immediately on a 12-hour bus seemed more prudent than waiting indefinitely for a six-hour trip. The bus departed not from the terminal, but from a low-lit side street a block away. The night had grown drizzly and obscure. We were the only gringos among seats of Peruanos, mostly heavyset, blanket-clad women, faces creased with endurance. With a shudder, the aged and fraying coach rumbled off indeterminably; northward, we could only hope.  

I awoke chilled by a draft coming through the window and rose to gather extra shirts and coats from my bag. The bus stopped at the side of the road and we debarked to relieve ourselves. Women walked a few feet off the pavement to hold their skirts up in bunches. Setting off again, we slept until dawn, when the coach stopped abruptly in a small village. There was a buzz of rumor.  

Debarking, we met the straight haired European coming from the bus ahead. She expressed offense at the piles of rocks in the road impeding our travel. "The government wants to build a hydroelectric dam, and the people don't want it because it will stop their water," she explained with distress. Villagers wrote their politics on the windows of our buses with chalk and soap. "I don't know what they're doing. What does this have to do with us?" she said, furrowing her brow. A man from our bus who the other travelers referred to as "Professor" discussed the situation with men from the village. He returned with a leafelet and we were allowed to pass.  

We encountered another roadblock near Laguna Pomacanchi at noon. Flamingos stood on their heads in the shallows nearby coaxing brine shrimp from the sand, and crowds of chanting villagers filled the narrow street, rolling enormous boulders onto the asphalt. It was here I stood to better view the situation outside, distressing the other passengers. Our Professor had abandoned us for the bus which had been allowed through, and our remaining negotiators surrendered to the impermeable fervor of the mob. We reversed the length of the waterfront.  

South of the laguna, we turned onto a road which led up a mountain on the Western edge of the water. Again we encountered boulders in the road, these having originated in a rockslide. The four of us and a young Dane helped workers clear the obstructions. Beyond the rocks, villagers were clearing the mountainside below of firewood, and had been stacking their bounty on the road all morning. We continued to march ahead, pushing felled trunks and split wood as close to the mountainside as possible, while the bus puttered behind, sometimes with less than ten inches between the edge of the road. Some of the tree cutters aided us, some continued their work, and one held out his hat for soles. Beyond the mountain the road was paved and level. We passed through a few small towns, clearing away piles of smaller rocks presumably left behind by the protesters converged at Pomacanchi. One barricade consisted of logs bundled together with wire, which I helped our navigator displace. After the bus passed through, she waved me over to return it to its original condition.  

Further north, we reentered the perilous Andean roads, our driver deftly engaging the switchbacks, climbs and descents. Our speed never exceeded 25 miles per hour; no faster would the rough-hewn dirt road allow. On two occasions did we meet vehicles coming from the other direction. One was a dump truck far too wide to pass us, and we had to reverse a quarter of a mile to allow it to pass. The other was an ambulance which took fifteen minutes to navigate the outside edge of the road around us. The children of the mountainside towns we passed through would run alongside the bus, smiling and shouting, and occasionally wearing a look of bewilderment. More than once did the passengers debark to cross, single file, a bridge of questionable integrity. The bus would then line up with the structure and shoot across in a burst of speed. Darkness fell as we passed through Rondocán, and it was near midnight when we emerged from the mountains into Cuzco.

Part 2: San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

DAY ONE, OCTOBER 24

At 4:00 a.m. the USAC students muster before a grocery store downtown and board a bus to the airport.  An hour later, inside the security checkpoint and awaiting our 7:00 flight, we ransack free samples of chocolate and coffee in the overpriced airport shop.  At nine minutes to seven, we're taxiing south to the runway.  I'm in the window seat, facing the black Andes and the dark-blue dawn rising behind them.  Without warning, I recall the verse to "50 Ways to Leave your Lover."

At the airport in Calama we debark onto the tarmac.  Inside the one-building airport, the other students wait for their baggage.  I borrow Murphy's skateboard and take it back out to the runway for over 45 seconds before an attendant politely tells me to stop.  We take more busses.

San Pedro and environs

At a ridge we stop to examine San Pedro from a distance.  180 degrees from north to south are mountains and one active volcano, and everything on the ground is sand except the wet-green oasis, our destination.  San Pedro is longer than it is wide, and vegetation which isn't trees is scrub brush.  Dry irrigation ditches sport rusting sluice gates and sheep herds bleat irately at passers-by.  People flourishing here before tourism arrived with enough money to be worth the trouble is not easy to picture.

At the hotel keys are doled out for shared rooms, ours lodging six.  We shed our luggage and clothes, donning swimming trunks and rallying at the pool.  After an abbreviated dip, we're back in our civvies and exploring the town.  I book an 8:30 reservation in a stargazing group, arrange my scarf into a kaffiyeh and set off on a walk to find the boundaries of San Pedro.  I stop where the road leaves the oasis and cuts into the desert for a while, then make my way in the other direction.  The back road follows scrubby expanses I would hesitate to call "pasture," but wool fluff in the brush indicates that this is indeed where the sheep graze.  I spend a while sitting in the shade in one of these, play my harmonica to myself and hope I'm not trespassing.  After some time I return to the group, again congregated at the pool, and we wait for dinner.

Brenda makes the rounds with a cautionary announcement: "Only if you are very brave should you go out tonight and drink... a Fanta."  Ours would be an early start in the morning, and San Pedro's altitude could adversely affect the imprudent, particularly in the neighborhood of hangovers.  From Brenda and Luis's concern, we assume this had caused problems with groups previous.  

They seat us at two long tables and bring out the meal in courses, bread, soup, lasagna, desert.  As they finish, students break off for evening activities of their own organization.  Finding my trip cancelled on account of clouds (San Pedro claims 330 clear nights a year), I resign myself to another walk.

At the edge of town, I can barely make out the stars, but on the way back I pass a low-ceilinged adobe building with smoke pouring from the chimney, radiating the considerable volume of a good time inside.  A man lets me through the latched gate and I slide in the side entrance to order a beer.  I choose a can over a bottle, for there is no tap, and the bartender looks at me sideways when I ask for a glass.  I find the only unobtrusive spot I can, against the ochre-painted wall, and watch the band.

The frontman appears to be the one playing the 12-stringed ukulele, but it's difficult to tell who exactly is leading the 9-piece group: also present are pan pipes, a flute, a floor-tom drum with cymbal, a larger conga-looking instrument, a six-string acoustic guitar, an electric bass, and others with unidentifiable hand-percussion.  Their current tune attracts a good deal of singing-along, and the song rises to a crescendo then falls, carried by the flute's melody.

Above our heads is a woven ceiling from which paper lanterns conceal hanging bulbs.  On the picnic tables are plates of simple-looking food piled high, and flames roar in a clay fireplace in the center of the room.  With the beginning of the next song, a rush of enthusiasm washes through the crowd and many leave the benches to dance in front of the band, swaying imprecisely, still singing.  A small dog takes one of the now-vacant seats and watches the spectacle.  After another number I ramble home to bed.

DAY TWO, OCTOBER 25

We begin the day with a visit to the Padre le Paige Archaeological Museum, a repository of Atacaman and Incan artifacts.  After an hour or two of unattended milling about we visit Pucará de Quitor, a pre-Incan fort near the city.  Built on a formidable hillside, the climb is arduous under the heavy desert sun, but the view from the top is considerable.

The imposing Pucará de Quitor

From there we see the Valle de la Luna and witness the effects of the climate on the geography: wide-cut swaths of canyon into which we march like ants.  At one stop, appropriately monikered the "Amphitheater," our guide elicits a solid minute of silence during which we listen to the cracking of the minerals in the canyon wall.  Sitting at the bottom of the imposing rock face, closed in by the surrounding canyon, I imagine standing in a giant garage below the grill of a skyscraper-sized Buick, listening to the radiator clicking as it cools off.

The ever-clicking Amphitheater

Roommates

We end the day with a slow march to a high ridge to watch the sunset, and file back to our tour buses for a sleepy ride home.  Dinner is an unimposing pork chop with canned strawberries for dessert.  Later, a number of us assemble blankets from our rooms and hike to the edge of town for amateur stargazing and a bit of group-singing.

Sunset at la Valle de la Luna

DAY THREE, OCTOBER 26

Our buses take us to the Chaxa Lagoon and National Flamingo Reserve, a large and rusty puddle in the middle of the salt flats.  The flamingos mill about and pay us little attention.  A bumpy and long ride further out into the nothingness culminates with a spectacular and surprising view as we come over a hill.  Miscanti and Miñiques lagoons, high up in the altiplano shine a bright gem-blue among surrounded by the tan sand.  We sit and gaze in awe, and Vicuña gallop far down at the water's edge.  On the way home we are treated to lunch by USAC, stopping in a wide-open one-room community building where students are drafted to ferry plates of hot food and bus dirty dishes back and forth from the kitchen.

One of the two high-altitude lagunas

Altiplano fauna: the flighty Vicuña

We return to the hotel for more pool-lounging.  Dinner is a chicken breast, dessert, jello.  We scatter and again congregate at the edge of town for more stargazing, this time with a bag of communal chocolate passed around, and all agree that life could hardly be better.

It is this afternoon that David, one of my roommates, tells me of Ezra's plan to bus north to Machu Picchu the following day.

DAY FOUR, OCTOBER 27

We rise for yet another simple and fulfilling breakfast and pay a visit to a nearby home where a local explains the habits and idiosyncrasies of Atacaman life.  That afternoon, David, Ezra, another classmate named Joe and I set off for the San Pedro bus station and caught the two o'clock to Calama, beginning our journey north into Peru and, eventually, Machu Picchu.

Photos courtesy of Vigdis A. Qvale and Lauren Richmond.

Part 1: Mendoza, Argentina

The first action I took upon reaching Argentina was to pee on it.

The border crossing between Chile and its beef-loving neighbor is high in the Andes.  A lower atmospheric pressure, combined with mandatory tipping in the customs building restroom compelled me to skitter outside and dash to the edge of a mountain to piss.  My foot sank seven inches into a snowbank on the otherwise dusty-red peak.

Murphy and I returned to customs after hucking a few obligatory snowballs at each other.  There the rest of us were shoving oranges, bananas and apples into each other's mouths, unable to carry them into Argentina.  Shortly, we were back on the bus, speeding through the country, not making heads or tails of a Pelé documentary playing on the TV monitors.

At the terminal in Mendoza a fat young man with a mullet elucidated the many delights of his boss's hostel, convincing us with the offer of free transit there and all the wine we could drink.  The boss arrived in a shiny grey van and hauled us in two trips to a clean and homely building with a ping pong table and swimming pool.  Present was a boy of eight or nine who referred to the owner by his first name but appeared in all other mannerisms to be his son.  Other notable mannerisms included whistling at the girls in our group, cursing proficiently and flipping us the bird whenever leaving the room.  On occasion, he would pass such offensive gas as to make us concerned for his health.

The wine flowed from large glass jugs with plastic handles, and wasn't so bad that you couldn't drink until it tasted good.  We set off in search of dinner, my head dancing with rumors of Argentine steak.  Arriving at Las Tinajas, a buffet recommended by fellow hostel patrons, and finding it packed, the gang surrendered to a Chinese buffet a block away.  Murph and I, ensnared by the siren call of the asado, remained behind, and were admitted within ten minutes to a table for two.  The "tenedor libre" style restaurant entailed paying a fixed price for as many plates of whatever we liked.  The layout was a single open room, ceilinged two stories above, full of tables, people, and livelihood.  We marched off to retrieve plates, and I dutifully reported to the asado.

Argentina, unlike Chile, is fat and flat.  The fruitful plains sustain beef of unimaginable quality, and the locals have expertly harnessed Prometheus's gift of fire to take full advantage of their superior steer.  The Argentine asado employs not flames, but embers to cook meats with a patient and even heat.  Beside the grill is a separate area where specifically-chosen firewood burns recklessly into glowing orange nuggets which are then shoveled out underneath the meats nearby.  The chefs tend this arrangement with an unyielding hand, constantly adjusting the heat and the height of the meat above.  I watch with the primal reverence of a neanderthal to his chief.

"Bif de chorizo?" I ask hopefully.  The chef shakes his head.  "Que es rico?" I substitute, and he turns silently to the grill, removes a large cut and slaps it on the counter before me.  With a deft hand, he chops off a few ounces, slides them onto his knife and then my plate.  I smile gleefully and restrain myself from running all the way back to my table to begin.

Most astonishing is not the texture, though the cow led a placid life on perfectly flat ground, nor the moisture, though the epochs over a gentle, caressing heat have facilitated more juice retention than a glass pitcher.  It is simply the flavor that defines the meat.  The fat is rich but not salty.  The beef is simple, natural, and inescapably... beefy.  It tastes like an animal should, and satisfies a primal yearning that has never before been entirely fulfilled.

After four plates, I settled in to the only line I'd waited in that night- the crepe station.  Bananas and sorbet, flambeed with rum.  I returned to the table with my caramelized bounty to find an envoy from the Chinese buffet group rushing Murph along: they were ready to continue on to the bars.  After much urging and crepe-sampling thwarted by a persistent wait staff, I threw my napkin to the table and settled the bill, knowing I would return.

At the bar I nursed a single glass of beer, reveling in my gastronomical satisfaction.  The night ended early and the sleep was deep.

I spent the following day on my own wandering through Mendoza's many plazas and tree-lined streets, sampling a bif de chorizo vastly inferior to anything Las Tinajas had offered me.  That night, we did our best to make the "all the wine you can drink" offer un-cost-effective.  Guy, unable to palate any more, pleaded with Murph to skate to the gas station with him to buy beer, and I announced that I wanted to come.

"You don't know how to skate, Ben," Guy argued concisely.

"I'll show you who doesn't know how to skate," I replied obscurely.  I made it all of the ten blocks there and back and didn't fall once.  Thus ignited a passion in yet another "-boarding" activity which has endured into my sobriety (interestingly, my balance has not).  Also purchased from the gas station were all the Kinder Eggs on display.  Kinder Eggs are candies of German construction which contain delightful toys which our hosteler's son tried unsuccessfully to steal.

Our final day in Mendoza consisted of a three-hour horseback riding trip into the Andean foothills where I discovered myself to possess what I suppose is an innate TeRondean affinity toward the equine.   Our gaucho guide wore a seasoned and sweaty leather hat, and a wide leather belt with a knife stuck diagonally in the back.  He saddled a white and brown piebald and motioned me toward it.  "Sabes?" he asked, and I lied to the affirmative, uncharacteristically confident in my hypothetical knowledge.  "Es un poco loco," the gaucho warned, and I shrugged it off, swinging myself into the saddle.  As he saddled the rest of us, I familiarized myself with my equipment, and shortly after we hit the trail, found myself leading the group.

We took it slow through the scrub, single file on narrow paths.  We climbed gradual ridges and descended through the infrequent gully, breathtaking views abounding.  Shortly we reached the cabin of a friend of our gaucho.  He invited us in and we shared mates and were impressed with the gaucho's story of killing a puma.  "Men use the knife and the dog; only the women use the rifle," he explained, and we were humbled further.  Outside, we met the dog, Achilles.

Back in the saddle, we headed down a wider road back to the ranch.  The gaucho and our guides were entertained greatly with the sport of trying to keep the gringos behind them, and eventually gave up and we took great galloping strides toward home.  The gaucho told me I hollered like a cowboy.

We embarked on an overnight bus back to Santiago that night and got home with time enough to shower before class.

NEXT

PART 2: SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA, CHILE

World-weary

FORTHCOMING:

Recollections of two weeks and three countries of South-American travel.  An adventure of odyssean proportions, presented in four parts.

SOON.