Just wanted to share my loveliest invitation from my dear friend Chiahui in Taiwan. She has been one of my most loyal blog readers and Taiwan is top of my list for future trips...how could it not be with an invitation like this?

"When do you come to Taiwan? I look forward to the day.I will raise a sign to have your name on it to welcome you in the airport. I have hot water for you to take a shower for 24 hours. In Taiwan, you will not be sick. I will support you many big towels when you finish the swimming, then you will not sleep in your wet clothes. So please come!
Have a good time in London and take care!" -Chiahui

Larissa came to London

You may (or may not) remember Larissa from my August 2nd blog. She's Australian, and meeting her was the highlight of what was my first good day in Peru. She's such a lovely person that when she wrote me that she was heading home but had to stop in London first "Bloody round the world tickets!" I immediately invited her to stop in.

As it turns out, aside from being a lovely person, she's also rather intelligent with a passion for history that rivals Mark's and my own. We happily discussed Incan politics, the fall of Troy and medieval history while traipsing through London's major sights. She now has an open invitation to wherever I am.

One of the best aspects of the visit for me having someone who KNEW what I had experienced by living in Cusco. She was lucky and didn't have the hospital visits that I did, but wowed Mark with her tales of her two night stay in a Peruvian prison. She was in a car with three other guys, and one of them unbeknownst to the others had a bit of cocaine on him. Unfortunately the law states that they can hold you on suspicion charges for up to 15 days. That would be suspicion by association. It doesn't matter if you have no drugs, or have never used drugs in your life. If someone standing near you has something...you can be nabbed too unless you have the proper bribes on your person. They did not. Luckily she was able to alert someone to her predicament and they had lawyer contacts. Oddly, this was not the first time she was arrested....words of advice...never get caught kissing in the same plaza as a church. This is a much smaller offence and takes about a $6 bribe for them to agree not to put you in jail. (You can check the by-laws...don't think this is actually against the law, but probably the cops just needed some cash and are allowed to hold you in jail with no phone call or rights if you don't have money to pay them to let you go.)

Unfortunately, the only thing that really talks in Peru is money. Nothing else is listened to.

There were also many small things...habits that one develops living in Peru that show up when you leave...
1. always carrying rolls of toilet paper: even when you don't carry it cause you know that England is civilised and clean and will have toilet paper, you are constantly AMAZED every time you see it and further more wonder at the softness of it all and WOW!!! There's soap TOO!!!!
2. quiet amazment at the market: there are NO campesino women sitting on boxes behind the vegetables, and everything is in neat packages and....wow. there's just so MUCH!!!!!
3. being clean: I know, this one seems like an obvious thing in life, but it's very difficult to stay clean in Cusco. She said it's easier some how in Lima. Don't know why. It IS a glorius thing to finally be able to take showers everyday with water that isn't frigid and carrying nasty diseases.
4. sweater wrapped around the waist: in the Andes Mountains as soon as the sun disappears it goes from a lovely day to deathly cold. You learn to ALWAYS carry a sweater if there is the smallest possibility that you'll be out after dusk, even if you're really hot during the day

It was a fetish thing....
I discovered that aside from the red tube of lipstick and the epilator, the British Airways thief also took my tweezers...

Something's missing...
I'm in London. After a few days here I thoroughly emptied my bag and discovered that a couple of things were missing. The top pocket arrived to London slightly open, which I checked quickly at the time but didn't notice anything and wanted to get out of the airport before they realised I was smuggling half the desert cleverly hidden in the fibers of my unwashed jackets. Upon closer examination, I realised that the pocket had been rifled through, my epilator (a little machine like an electric razor to remove hair in the most painful possible way) was gone, and then the thief continued to browse, eventually opening up a sealed ziplock bag and removing a tube of lipstick before resealing the bag and leaving the pocket half-open as if the things fell out of their own accord.

My phone had been snagged at an earlier date by someone who had REALLY gone through my bag. The joke's on them though. One, they forgot the power supply and have a chip that only works in New Zealand. They'll have to buy a new chip and power supply to find out that, two, the phone is rather moody and has a mind of its own. It sometimes doesn't like to talk and so it won't ring, and other times forgets to give you your messages for a couple of days.

As for the stuff snagged by airline personnel...luckily I don't feel violated. I mean, if someone needed lipstick so badly that they took a stranger's used tube, they're welcome to it. The epilator...well, I'm bummed about that...however, they forgot the power supply.

Unfortunately for me, my travel insurance requires that you have the original receipt of purchase, warranty cards, manuals...name of the inventor, their mother's maiden name...pictures of you using the thing, the name of the person who sold it to you...name of their pet goldfish...
well, you get the picture. Impossible to claim really.

Wine with Maria's parents...

Last night I finally had the pleasure of meeting my friend Maria's parents. Maria, I know from New Zealand. She's studying english at Aspect, the school that I taught at. We met one weekend when a large group of us drove down to Taupo for a latin dance festival and I have adored her ever since...so, I have happy to meet her parents.

I was invited for wine around 7:30 in the evening- the invitation was in english, written by Polina, an American student staying at their house.

As it happens, they live about 7 blocks from Sergio (where I'm staying) so it was easy to find. When the door opened, I saw Maria -only older. I would have known Maria's mother on the street, they are so alike in looks and manner- just a difference of years (which means that Maria will be as lovely in a few years as she is now).

They live in a large and lovely apartment in a nice neighborhood in the city. All of the comforts that one hopes to have in a home are to be found there and Marta was a gracious hostess. She had prepared a number of fingerfoods to accompany the promised wine. It was a relaxing and lovely evening with good company. Truly, Maria's parents are charming people.

Her father Roberto makes his own lemoncella, a liquor popular in the north of Italy. It's VERY strong, and normally drunk in a very small glass after dinner (1 ounce serving) to help with the digestion. I had tried this in Italy- they were giving out samples on the street in hopes of getting you to buy a bottle. I choked and made such a horrible face that the man giving out samples laughed for a good five minutes, and didn't try to sell me any. I'm not used to drinking strong alcohol these days. I'm a wine drinker. Plain and simple. I sometimes branch out and drink beer or cider- but that's as far as I go. While living in Peru, I didn't drink at all- so I now I have very little resistence to alcohol....anyway, back to the lemoncella.

Roberto explained to me all about the process of making it, which takes just over a month. Fifteen days for the first bit, a liter of pure alcohol, a kilo of sugar, and a liter of boiled water, another fifteen days and something else for the final three days. It was all very interesting. He then brought it out, with 4 ounce glasses. I looked at the glasses and knew I was in trouble. He and I were the only ones to take any- everyone else disappeared when he was serving. For lemoncella, it was very nice. Sweet, but not too sweet with a very nice flavor but also very strong alcohol. I finished the first glass and was fine, but knew I didn't need or want more- it IS a very strong alcohol and I don't have much resistence right now.

After a time, he asked if I would like another glass and I politely refused, thanking him for the offer. Maria's brother was there at this time. Roberto asked his son if he would like some. The son refused, and then Roberto suggested that the son pour just a little more for me. The son got a wicked gleam in his eye and poured me another FULL glass. So mischievous that boy...so wicked for doing that. Once it's in the glass, you're rather obligated to drink it. In this glass, I started mixing up my words in spanish. I had to concentrate very hard to keep the language straight. I blamed Maria's brother. He did that on purpose.

At around 11pm, I said goodnight and made my way home. I remember passing a policeman with a very large gun (the kind you use in wars) and stopping and going back to ask him why his gun was so big. Was the neighborhood that dangerous? and, why was he hiding behind that sign? I don't remember his answer very well. Fortunately, he seemed rather amused by the question - which was very fortunate because all of the other military types that I've asked stupid questions of have demanded my documents as a response, and I didn't even have a photocopy of my passport on me last night.

Sergio was very fatherly when I came in, laughing at me and lecturing me on how I was out being wild at all hours of the night....to which I responded, "Yeah, that's me- crazy parties where old people get me drunk." after which I curled up on his bed to watch tv and wait for the room to stop spinning.

Buenos Aires
As cities go, Buenos Aires is in the top ten. Plaza de Mayo is full of VERY impressive buildings which I hope to photograph if it stops raining. The first few days were beautiful but I didn't bring my camera. Buenos Aires is reminiscent of Boston and Paris. It's a modern city with some older architecture and its fair share of grandeur. There are very large parks and one wildlife reserve.

I arrived on Monday via collectivo (cheap bus for locals- NOT tourists) from Jujuy. the trip was roughly 22 hours and my calculations based on a 20 hour day put my arrival time at roughly 8am. Right, yeah, I know... I figured out later (well, someone told me) that days are in fact 24 hours and that put our arrival at 4am. bugger.

So, I arrived at 4am in a plaza no where near a bus station. I looked around for a 24-hour cafe -again, no where in sight. Hmm. Less than savory characters on the street eyeing my lovely guitar and backpack...
There was a well-lit newstand on the corner, so I bought a map, tied my stuff together and sat on it with my back against the building one meter and a half from the newstand so that I was sandwiched between the stand and the wall. I then proceeded to make friends with Claudio- the guy who worked the stand. We chatted for 3 and 1/2 hours as I waited for a more appropriate time to call my friend Sergio.

Claudio was dear. Truly a sweet guy. He was very concerned for my safety (apparently it was a very dangerous square at 4 in the morning). Three guys on the corner were eyeing me and waiting for me to leave the newstand. They waited for an hour and a half and finally left after daybreak. I'm no fool. I have no desire to be robbed in the safest country in South America after not being robbed in my two months in Peru and Bolivia where EVERYONE gets robbed once or twice. Claudio bought me two cups of coffee in the night. He was VERY kind, and generally a great person to chat with for a few hours. He was in the final hours of a 24 hour shift at the newstand. I'm sure the company was welcome.

Thank you Claudio. You will always be my first memory of Buenos Aires- and thankfully.

The MUSEUM

The Museum is a club in Buenos Aires designed by the same architect that designed the eiffel tower in Paris. Inside it's amazing. The first floor is wide open with some very posh looking tables with chairs draped in white fabric looking very chic at the far end (all reserved) and bars to the left and the right. The ceiling is three stories high, with two more levels lining the sides so that people can look down on the crowds. From the center of the high ceiling at either end are two large chandeliers of soft lights with lots of drapey material, one large disco ball between them and some soft hanging white Christmas icicle type lights to provide extra atmosphere. Someone said that without the tables it can fit up to 5000 people, but with them about 1500 people was about average. Imagine being in a club out of cool movies with about 1500 beautiful chic young executives and generally beautiful people. You could fall in love 100 times over in one night. In every direction there are more beautiful people drinking and having fun (and looking beautiful watching the other beautiful people). After a year in New Zealand, and three months in Peru, Bolivia and the desert in the north of Argentina...it was like landing on a different planet.