After almost four years, I am once again in the City of Kings (Lima). It's good to see the folks that I know here. Though I never forgot how dirty, funky and empoverished the city is, it still shocks me. I went to the beach with Sara and some of her friends. Along the way we passed miles of crazy little shacks built directly onto dust dunes... maybe they're technically sand dunes, but there's a thik layer of dust all over everything everywhere. I can't imagine how these people live. There didn't appear to be any signs of plumbing or electricity, or even a decent pathway to ascend the giant dunes to one's home. It seems that there's no natural vegetation anywhere in the region. any place where people haven't planted grass or shrubs is just barren grey dust. This includes all the mountains surrounding the city, too. Every surface in the city is coated with a mix of naturally occuring dust and soot from all the cars, which have no sort of fume regulations. Almost anyone you see in the street is filthy, with exceptions for people who work in offices.
Today I took a walk after lunch to go see some ruins that I had noticed earlier a few blocks from the house (this place is covered in pre-colombian ruins). Some guy watering the flowers said that I couldn't get inside the fence because they weren't done with the excavation. I still got to check them out from a few meters away, though. A sign said that they were from around 1200 A.D. It's cool to see what folks were building here during the same era as notre dame in europe. Afterwords I started walking down an avenue that kept getting increasingly shady and industrial until it ended with wherehouses and little bars filled with filthy drunken people in terrible physical condition. The neighborhood was dominated by a big dusty hill covered in miserable dwellings with seemingly no access. I was already getting sketched out by being so notable as a tall, blonde white guy. People get all silent as a walk by. One crazy old drunkard stumbled out and tried to say something in english to me. As soon as I made the mistake of acknowledging him, a crowd started forming. Some people wanted to know if I was a journalist because they couldn't imagine what else I'd possibly be doing there. The bartender, after offering to introduce me to her daughter, pointed to the nearest direct street out of there and said that I should leave before I was assaulted. I quickly took her advice.
I met up with Ursala, who is from Lima and here visitng her dad. We went out with a couple of her friends in the little town in which she grew up outside of Lima. She and I will return to Santiago together via Bus. We are planning on it taking a little over a week.
A couple days ago I went to a birthday party of one of Edith's friends. True to the latin party spirit, after about an hour of polite conversation they all got up and tarted dancing to reggaeton, cumbia, merengue and salsa. An old lady there was telling me that I needed to practice dancing in order to meet lots of women. After talking with her a while I learned that she was born in the jungle region of peru in 1915. I said that I couldn't imagine how life must have been in the peruvian jungle early in the 20th century. Without thinking about it, she replied that it was 'comfortable.' She elaborated that the quality of life was better- especially the food.
Tomorrow I will go see the jungle for myself. I wanted to go by land, but a girl who's from the city that I want to go to, Iquique, said that it takes 5 or 6 days to get there, considering that one must go a lot of the way in boat. I found a cheap flight and a hostel that costs $5 a night. I have malaria pills and have been vaccinated for yellow fever, so I ought to be ok.

I put up a few new mixed photos of Brazil and Colombia. Come and see for yourself at:

http://s200.photobucket.com/albums/aa10/gusinchile/

Pirenopolis was fun. the crazy guys i was staying with took me all around in their 1970 volkswagon beetle, whose only mode of ignition was pushing, as its key had been lost of broken years before and its hot-wire cables relied on a battery that really didn't have the umph. nonetheless, once started, the car went anywhere. they took me to a swimming spot that required driving on roads through hills in the wilderness that didn't look fit for anything but a horse; yet that car only required our getting out and pushing once. I had the honor of driving it around at night on the colonial-era stone roads while its owner laughed and yelled 'é um tank de guerra, velho! te falei!'
today Mare and i met up with her friend who took us through a favela. she works as a nurse in a small hospital there and knows people inside, so we were ok to go in. i guess it was about what i expected of a brazilian favela. i got my hair cut there. afterwords they took me to meet Mare's great-grandmother who will complete 100 years in June. she was one of the coolest people i've met. she was much more awake and sharp than a lot of young people i know, telling stories, asking after members of her family, and telling me about her past. she came over from italy when she was 16 to work on a farm, got married at 17 and had her first baby when she was 18. On this trip I've gotten to meet a lot of interesting people inhabiting very different realities.
I went with Mare to her church last night... not catholic, however. I guess there's a large evangelical population here, despite brazil being the largest catholic country in the world. it was a new experience for me. the women and men enter at different doors and sit on different sides of the church, and the women must wear white veils on their heads. in the front, some men bring in instruments to play along with the hymns... i hate to be a music snob, but it was pretty out of hand. sometimes you cold pick up a melody. the service had a pretty tight program to stick to, but the parts were very interesting to see. one part, in which everyone was to pray aloud for about 15 minutes, was dominated by this guy sitting infront of me who started shouting praise to the lord and kept going for a much longer time than i thought possible, considering that it seemed like improv. finally old ladies started to stand up to see who it was. when he finally made a pause everyone shouted amen at once and the minister quickly continued to the next part of the program which was a finger-wagging/waving/pointing preacher. and the end the orchestra, comprised of a few saxophones, violins, valve trombone, and euphonium got another chance to play through all their rests.
são paulo is the largest of any city i've ever been to. one drives for miles and is still in the middle of skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. if i'm not mistaken, it's the third largest city in the americas behind mexico's federal district and new york city. I'm glad that I came back here, because there's a lot of culture to see, and Mare's family and friends are super nice.

I left Brasilia and arrived here in Pirenópolis after a 3 hour bus ride. I sort of wished the ride was longer because i was enjoying the landscape. It's a pretty little town built in the 1700's (by lots of poorly-treated slaves) during a gold rush here in the state of Goiás. Despite having spent a month in Brazil, I've only been in large cities, so it's nice to have a few rural days before going back to São Paulo. At my hostel the lady tried to get me to take a private room instead of the comunal one. I was looking forward to meeting some other people (and saving some $) so i turned her down... only to realize that I was the only one at the hostel, so it really made no difference. Fortunately she has two crazy sons who i've been hanging out with. There's hardly any tourists here right now because of a yellow fever outbreak in the area that's been all over the news in recent weeks. Not too many people have died, but it's enough to scare away lots of people. I've had my vaccination, so I'm not at risk... and malaria is only up north in the amazon region.
Brazilians love waterfalls... well, who doesn't like waterfalls, really? but no, they're all about waterfalls here. Any place you go to, they want you to see waterfalls. all the turist places all filthy with posters of waterfalls. the first thing they tell you about is their abundancy of waterfalls (after asking you if you've been vaccinated for yellow fever). i guess i'll take a hike later and see a few.

Said goodbye to chelsea yesterday at the bus terminal in são paulo. shes going to the northeast, so it wasn't really worth my while to go back to rio for two days. the bus took a full three hours to finally get onto the highway out of sao paulo. i guess that's to be expected in the third largest metropolitan region in the americas at rush hour. all told it took about 16 hours to get the the terminal in brasilia. despite the crying baby, foul bathroom an lack of air conditioning, the trip really wasn't that bad. i had a good book and even slept some. luiza said that the family car was occupied, so i' have to take a taxi to her house. i tried asking the smelly, but seemingly friendly old man next to me how much a taxi should cost to luiza's neighborhood, but we could barely understand eachother and gave up. i'm always wary of taxi drivers, so when i finally got to brasilia i asked a guy in the terminal if there was a bus that woul take me where i needed to go. it turned out he was a classical guitarist picking up a peruvian pianist an they were going to the same part of the city as i, so they offered to take me. his car had taken a beating- according to him it was the result of some sort of jealous girlfriend sitatuation. i was thankful for the ride, so i didn't mind brushing some broken glass off the seat. on the way we stopped at his work to pick something up, and he took me inside to meet his co workers. i guess he does autopsies for the police or something because there were a couple pretty grisley looking corpses laying around on operating beds inside that showed signs of untimely death... kind of startling early in the morning, but, once again, i was thankful for the ride.
luiza and her distractlingly beautiful friend showed me around brasilia today. it's one of the wildest looking cities i've seen. i guess back in the 50's they planned the whole thing out an just constructed it in the center of the country where there was nothing but wilderness. i'd seen pictures of some of the architecture before, but seeing it in person is really impressive. it's like a 50's idealised futuristic city in marble... but outside of the center it's just apartment buildings on roads with letters and numbers instead of names.
in a few days we'll go to ouro preto to celebrate carnaval. supposedly it's one of the best carnivals in brazil. the city looks pretty cool in photos... colonial and everything.
são paulo was really fun. chelsea's friends are complete badasses. the dialect down there was really clear. i had no problem conversing. here, however, it's back to not being able to unerstand a damn thing anyone's saying. it's frusterating, but i guess this is how one learns languages...
florianopolis was incredible as well. we met up with some locals and had wild times.
hope all is well in the US. i've barely gotten homesick my whole time away, but there's times when it sinks in... like last night the bus stopped at a rest area and while i was walking around i had a lonley moment when i considered that i was alone at 4 in the morning somewhere in the interior of brazil... but generally my time on the roa in south america has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. i've found myself in countless amazing situations... lamentably, they don't en up on the blog, but rest assured that they're happening.

my last few days in santiago were fun... i had a barbeque with a bunch of friends. and then went to jose luis's house. he's a composition major from mexico city. he showed me some of the stuff he's working on- super cool. I now have many invitations in the mexico city aread with food and tour guides.
I think juan and i leave medellin for girardot on sunday and from there go to bogota. colombia has been amazing. every time i'm in a car or bus i want to videotape out the window the whole time because it's such a trip seeing the quotidian goings-on.
We eat lots of meat all the time here... and everyone takes lots of showers... i can't convince juan that one shower a day and sometimes not changing pants is ok... he's trying to convert me to his latin ways. wearing cologne and tighter pants, maybe... but i draw the line at going to the 'hairdresser' and getting a pedicure. i'm still an hombre estadounidense!

I'm here in Medellin Colombia staying with Juan, who is a very good guide. Today we went with his mom to her work, which i think involves being the go-between for a big underwear company and people in super poor neighborhoods who sell it's products. it was amazing to see the neighborhood and meet some of the people there... i'll have to post photos and video of it, because it's hard to describe my impression of it. hm... i was excited to get back and write about my experience, but now i can't think of how to put it. I always like to think that i know about low standards of living in far-away countries and have a pretty accurate impression of it all, but every time i actually go to see this sort of thing first-hand it never ceases to leave a giant impression on me. A girl was walking me around her neighborhood while juan's mom was meeting with the girl's mom. I commented that there were a lot of huge vultures and she mentioned that a few years ago when there was a lot of gang violence there they'd come and eat the bodies of the murdered people left in the bushes. I was obviously shocked not only from this charming little anecdote, but also that it came so banally from a 15 year old. She also pointed at a ruined little shack directly behind us and said that the guy living there was tortured by a gang who then killed him and destroyed his house. Juan's mom's friend commented that all people from their class in medellin have had to witness a lot of heinous violence of this nature. She offhandedly mentioned some girl's body turning up in a bag by her house. Later, between chatting about today's soccer game, she told me about how her dad narrowly escaped being murdered by guerillas that killed her uncle and grandfather and how, when they first moved to medellin, her brother was murdered for refusing the join the neighborhood gang, who were later killed by police during a bank robbery. She said that she had almost met pablo escobar once because he was giving away houses to many empoverished people in the city. Juan's friend was telling me about how guerillas were trying to take her part of the city a few years back and helicopters came in the fight them... but she added that it wasn't really in her neighborhood, so it wasn't so bad.
During a few years in the late 80s early 90s, pablo escobar payed a huge sum to anyone who killed a police officer, and more money depending on his rank. For this reason, Juan's uncle, who has served many years as a high ranking officer, had to grow out his beard and go into hiding.
Right now the FARC is big in the news because one of their hostages, a lady who was kidnapped around 6 years ago during her presidential cadidacy, just turned in a video looking miserable, but alive in the jungle. Juan's cousin in Bogota told me that they have around 1,000 hostages out in the jungle. I was sort of surprised that the large figure, so he tried to reassure me, saying that, in comparison to colombia's population of 40 million, a thousand really isn't too many. I declined from replying that it's scary somebody would even consider the hostage population comparable to the entire population.
Everyone i talked to agreed that the new president, uribe, has been really hard on the guerillas and for this reason, it's possible for us to even enter neighborhoods like the one i visited today. Also, crime is supposedly down thanks to La Mano Negra, a sort of unofficial police force that kills criminals.
Nevertheless, the activites of the FARC and the reign of escobar don't hold a candle to the 'period of violence' of the 1940's and 50's, involving the right and left wing political parties having and all-out show-down. According to Juan's mom, there were so many dead that police would cut off the cadaver's heads and line them up in the park so friend's and family could come and see if their loved ones had turned up.
The city seems pretty safe now... i'm still cautious and everything, but everyone is super friendly and happy to meet me. They treat foreigners really well. Whereas in chile i'm sort of a rejected outsider, here it's not such a big deal that i'm from another country... sometimes people act sort of honored to meet me, which is weird... but generally i'm just treated like a family friend, rather than some sort of bizarre space alien.
Juan is a super good host. the first night i was here he took me out to a club and his girlfriend brought a friend to dance with me. Juan lends/forces upon me his clothes so that i conform to the latin style. He makes sure that i get to know the whole city... i've now hung out with various people from the social extremes.
I will write more later, but a friend's aunt just opened a restaurant and we're going to it's grand opening. hope all is well