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