Really. With a whole mess of drunks, prostitutes, and drug dealers mere minutes from my apartment building, good potential for all manner of interesting observation abounds.

As usual, there’s a set of the latest pictures on Filckr here.

Teeth cleaning? For you? Special price!

The benefits of befriending a dentist whilst traveling continue. I got my teeth cleaned yesterday by none other than Senorita Gaby. She used an ultrasonic cleaner that was new to me. While it seems to have done a good job, it made a sound like slowly murdering puppies or mice in my ear, depending on which tooth she was cleaning.

She also did a cleaning and a couple fillings on her aunt. While I waited for her aunt’s visit to be finished, I sat in the office and thumbed through a library of books in Spanish on orthodontics and dentistry from the late 1960′s. There were some good pictures (see left).

A Case Study in Unnecessary Horn-Honking

I have previously written that, here in Peru, car horns are for using. I’m at a point now where I hardly notice the aural onslaught that emanates from the streets here.

However, here is some video evidence from one combi ride to prove the point. This guy honks at nothing and everything. He honks before pushing the accelerator. He honks when the traffic is stopped. He honks when he passes people on the sidewalk. This is quite normal. Throw a few thousand vehicles on the road all doing the same thing and the chorus of car horns gets loud and constant. As a bonus, this combi even has one of the extra obnoxious horns that plays multiple, rapid tones instead of just one constant sound. The video does not do justice to how loud this horn actually is. Enjoy:

Lima Combi: Unnecessary Horn Honking Case Study from Nathan Shipley on Vimeo.

Punk Kids the Same World ‘Round!

While on my morning run, I discovered an impressive public skate park next to the cliff by the ocean. It’s fun to go watch the skaters.

I also enjoyed watching some kids get busted for drawing a giant ejaculating penis with Sharpie on the concrete. Both their attention to detail in drawing and brazenness to the cop was impressive. The penis-drawer actually tried for at least a minute to defend his graffiti by pointing out all the other graffiti. In the end, the Sharpie was put away and the penis remained unfinished.

More Peruvian Gastronomical Glory

Peru is worth visiting just for the food alone. Really. And I say this as someone who generally eats just to not be hungry and usually doesn’t get very excited about food. Almost everything I’ve tried is consistently good. I’ve already written about some of my favorites, but at the behest of a couple loyal readers, here are some new additions to the delicious and cheap smorgasbord that is Peruvian Cuisine.

Ceviche (pictured above and to the right)

This is a citrus-marinated raw fish salad. I like it better than sushi, and I love good sushi. Served with thinly sliced onions and tiny bits of hot rocoto peppers, it’s an absolutely delicious mix of hot and sour and now qualifies as my favorite food in Peru.

Empanadas con Carne

My second-favorite food in Peru. This particular variant is a pastry stuffed with meat. We eat them with some lime juice squeezed in. Delicious. There are all sorts of other kinds as well.

“Lima? What the hell do you want to stay in Lima for so long?”

I commonly heard this (or a more subtle variant of it) in hostels. Lima seems to be little more than the place most people fly in to in Peru before they catch a bus to something else. Most people stay for two or three nights before moving on to something “better.” In hostels, travelers’ initial reaction when I told them I was planning on staying in Lima for a month was, “Why? Why Lima? It’s a giant, cloudy, chilly, and polluted city of 12 million people. Why not go somewhere else and do something cooler?”

I even got an email from an online acquaintance I was potentially going to meet up with in Peru who arrived in Lima before me that said, “Actually, Lima is pretty boring. There’s nothing to do here.” …Really? Boring? I decided then and there that I had no interest in spending time with someone who says that there is “nothing to do” in a city of 12 million people. I haven’t had any contact with the person after reading this email.

It all depends on your outlook. I am traveling because I want to experience and learn more about other cultures. I could sit here and complain that Lima is foggy, polluted, and noisy, but those thoughts rarely even cross my mind, much less actually bother me. Life in Lima is about as “Peruvian” as you can get and I’m glad to soak it up.

I have consistently said that I’d rather spend more time in less places than a bunch of short periods of time in many places. I am able to experience more depth in a culture, actually have time to develop real friendships with people, and I save money on the most expensive part of traveling: getting from Point A to Point B. There’s a quote from 1955 by Claude Levi-Strauss that says “Exploration is not so much a covering of surface distance as a study in depth.” Word. Thanks for the jeans, too, buddy.

Bogota in a Week: “As Innocent as a Nun Farming Cucumbers”

After spending almost two months in Peru, I will fly from Lima to Bogota on Friday, August 8th. That’s one more week here in Lima before moving on to Colombia. I am already looking in to a house I might stay in in Bogota for a month or so.

I’m really excited about Colombia. The general consensus from anyone I’ve spoken with that’s spent time there has been, “Stop what you’re doing right now and go to Colombia.”

My two favorite things I’ve read online about Colombia have been Christopher K’s blog and an article about a guy who fell in love with a female assassin for the FARC (pictured on right).

Christopher’s hilarious blog, which is the source of the nun quote above, caught my attention with the first entry titles I read: “Hunting Cuntbuckets” and “Two-fisted Tales of Douchebaggery.” It’s worth your time to read. I actually read everything he’s written in one sitting. A randomly-chosen quote from one entry:

“But really, fuck’s sake, I need to drink a lot more in a big hurry if I’m going to shut down the proper judgment centers to continue with this. I’m trying to weigh how sexy she is versus how crazy, and how likely she is to stab me in my sleep, and if you want to have an interesting life, you don’t want to make this sort of calculation sober.”

The female assassin love story bit (full article here):

They met on a train and fell in love. Then Jason P Howe discovered that his girlfriend Marylin was leading a secret double life – as an assassin for right-wing death squads in Colombia’s brutal civil war. With their story set to become a major Hollywood film, he recalls an extraordinary, doomed romance…

Sitting naked on the edge of the bed in a cheap, sweltering hotel room in the heart of a war-torn, drug-producing region of Colombia, I lit a cigarette and listened as the girl I had just made love with told me a secret dark enough to shake anyone from their postcoital bliss.

Bring it, Colombia.

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