Sorry for the long absence

Sorry I havent updated my blog in a while, it has been a combination of me being busy and also letting it slip my mind. For starters I went to Ica this weekend which is this desert region about 4 hours south of Lima. From there I went to the islas ballestas and saw tons of sea lions and penguins and also went down to see the Nazca lines. The nazca lines are these lines that are engraved into the crust of the desert. They arent deep engravings of any sort but they create enough of a contrast to distinguish certain figures that have been there for thousands of years. Nazca is about two hours south of Ica and the lines exist there only because there is a microclimate there that makes it the driest place on earth. It hasnt rained there in hundreds of years and it also is shielded from extreme winds by the surrounding mountains. All in all it is a perfect place for these lines to exist for so long.

I left Friday morning at 6 and went with a varied group of people (3 swiss, 1 italian, 2 poles, and 1 peruvian). We were quite the international group and spent the day friday enjoying the islas ballestas where we took a 2 hour boat tour to see some of the wildlife. We arrived at Ica that same day and walked around the sand dunes in the afternoon and then rested before seeing Ica at night. The night ended at a discoteca where at one point in the night they had a drink deal where you could get 10 beers for 1 sol, by far the cheapest beer Ive ever seen. Unfortunately Nadia (our best bet since shes the token blond girl) couldnt even get in on the deal. Martin spent the day testing out his newly acquired Canon lens from Polvos Azules. This story deserves a paragraph to itself.

So martin, much like I is now obsessed with polvos azules. After purchasing what we firmly believe to be a stolen Suunto watch complete with altimeter and heart rate monitor for 50 dollars, he proceeds to buy a camera lens of questionable origin. I dont know that much about lenses, but from what little I do know, I know that 2.8 Aperture lenses are not cheap. He ended up paying 800 dollars for the lens which he inists was a steal (it very well my be stolen). Martin now has a very expensive camera setup and my hope is that it doesnt get stolen at any point during his journey through Peru.

Saturday was spent taking the trip to Nazca. I went with Mark (Swiss dude) and Margherita (Italian girl). We took the bus down at 7am, got there by 10 and were in the air at 12 30 to see the lines. This plane ride was absolutely one of teh most nauseating things I have ever done. The entire trip consisted of sitting in this plane for 30 minutes where for every figure, the plane would turn 90 degrees and put you parallel to the ground and then proceed to do it quickly again for those on the other side of the plane (much easier to explain with your hands). After the trip we headed back to Ica and were back around 5 where we had a late lunch at a local winery and then did some rushed wine and pisco tasting. That night we went out to eat a small dinner around 8 and then headed out to teh discoteca at 11. Now the night went great and we were joined by one of Suzanna's (peruvian) friends at the discoteca. We ended up leaving around 4 30 and got back just in time to climb up one of the sand dunes outside our hostel and see the sun rise. At one point I fell fast asleep but luckily I was woken up by Nadia in time to see the bulk of the sunrise.

Sunday saw us going to a much better vineyard even though it was out in the middle of nowhere. We took a tour, did some win/pisco tasting and I bought 3 bottles of Pisco which I intend to bring back and save for some special occasion. One of these days we are going to have to try to make some real pisco sours, the official drink of peru.

Got back home at around 1 30 am and went to work that morning at around 9 00, needless to say I was exhausted. These next two weeks I am going to be on the grind for real and next week I have a 30 min powerpoint presentation in spanish. After 3 months in Peru and especially now with no americans, my spanish is absolutely legit. Back in July with Team America I would only speak english but now my european comrades dont like to speak english and in fact some of them dont speak english (actually kind of surprising, I wonder how they read papers). Hell, some of them dont even speak spanish which makes communication tough.

On another note, somehow my battery does not qualify for a recall which is too bad because I was looking forward to getting a new battery, but alas it was not meant to be.


P.S. Pictures have been uploaded including those from this trip, my chanchamayo trip, and my cusco trip.

picasaweb.google.com/fluongo

Chanchamayo trip - a retrospective

So this weekend was spent in the area east of Lima known as Chancamayo. It is one of the hungle regions of Peru that produced amazing weather and great scenery. It was certainly very nice to finally get out of Lima not only because I took a full 2 day weekend but also because there was beautiful weather and I could walk around all day in shorts. I went with this polish friend named Martin who is staying at the same house as me. A self proclaimed "trekkker," he is the epitomy of the neo liberal off beat traveler. Dont get me wrong, he is a very nice person and a trusty travel partner but he wont let slip by an opportunity to either drop the name of some location hes been or drop knowledge about "trekking gear" that he owns.

So I headed out with Martin on Friday night from Lima on a Bus-Cama or basically a pretty comfortable bus. The bus ride was about 9 hours and was really great. The bus was very comfortable and the scenery was amazing. Imagine a 9 hour bus ride where you start 5 minutes from the coast, drive about an hour out of Lima seeing progressively sparse housing and the ascend through the mountains for the next 3-4 hours to about 13000 feet or so (it was snowing pretty heavily at about 3am) and then ascending into a 100% humidity rainforest region. The bus ride was worth the trip in itself.

The trip around the region saw us going to a waterfall, a botanical garden, and also seeing a native tribe (this was not nearly as cool as it sounds). All in all we spent the day saturday being driven around by our panson guide Arturo whose car looked like it had been hit in a drive by. Definitely the higlight of the day was swimming in this waterfall though no doubt at great risk of getting strongyloides. At night it was quickly determined that there is nothing to do in La Merced except go to the discoteca (this was pointed out to me on 5 seperate occasions, the first was the lady in Lima before we left, then Arturo, then the girl who gave us the tour of the coffee plantation, then the lady who runs the hotel where we stayed, and finally a group of germans who I met and ended up heading out to the discoteca with).

So the 3 germans Philip, Tine, and Till were relaly nice and we just spent the night having conversation at the discoteca. If you happen to read german you can check out their web blog at till.info . Anyways, the most interesting part of the whole encounter was all the stories that Philip would tell me about the brazilian national team. It turns out he works at the hotel where the brazilian team stayed during the world cup and told me all sorts of stories about how he would drive ronaldo and ronaldinho out to the club and how ronaldo would be drinking whiskey at 10 in the morning and also how they really are very nice dudes. It was fun to talk to him about that and other soccer stuff (He was a big Dortmund fan).

Oh, and another note, the next few weeks I will be eating alot of pineapple and banana. See, Chanchamayo is a region known for producing the vast majority of Peru and South America´s fruit. So basically in the region there was tons of coffee, bananas, pineapples, oranges, Tangelos, and many other fruits. This obviously means very cheap prices. I ended up buying a box of 12 pineapples for 3 soles and I bought an entire bushel of bananas (40 or so still attached to the trunk) for about 5 soles. Needless to say the cheapest fruit I will ever by. As soon as I can find a solid internet connection. Also, please write me with movie os TV series recommendations. Warmest of regards to all.

Maurice is a failure

I was just reading this article about maurice clarret that I will pass on to all of you..



Now, a few of the things that you should gather from this article..

1. Maurice Clarett is now the biggest failure in the history of modern sport
2. He was driving at 2:30am with a bullet proof vest, half full bottle of vodka, and four loaded guns (try to picture this in your head)
3. Its comical how he is calling the manager of the football team he wants to play for at 1 o clock in the morning and then again at 2 30.

Web Album

Ok, so I am going to start uploading pictures en masse at another website known as picasa web which is in beta testing right now but its great because it doesnt require any login information or anything like that. The website is



and I will upload at some point tomorrow when I finally bring my computer into work. Expect a nice mass email to go out at some point today regarding my new internet escapade.

I found Mac programs!!

So I apologize for not updating in a while I am not going to claim that I have been more busy than usual but frankly I have just forgotten to do it. So this weekend was when Team America (What all of the americans here are referred to) had a mass exodus. Emily left early last week and then Javier and Nina both left on sunday night. The goodbyes actually started on Friday night where dinner involved sandwiches and then sandwiches only an hour later. We had some butifarras in Parque Kennedy (So good) at about 8 and at 9 after a walk that seemed like it lasted forever, we had more sanwiches at Pascuales. We capped the night with milkshakes at the "Uber trendy" Urban Cafe. Thats one of the ways ot tell if a place is really trendy, is if the name is in english.

After the milkshakes, Nina and I headed to a bar in Barranco with the intention of finding a ride for the hash the next day. There was a gathering of the "drinking club with a running problem" and we finally found a ride with miguel. After securig transportation for the next day and listening to teh cover band playing 80s rock which everybody in Peru seems to be completely obsessed with, we headed home. The next day Nina and I did the hash in the afternoon and it was at this beautiful place called the laderas de California which is about 45 minutes outside of Lima. The run was nice as it sent you through a bunch of woods and then culminated with a beer stop atop this giant cerro. The view was amazing but the run down was treacherous to say the least. At one point I fell and scraped my knee but it felt fine though everyone thought I was really raw after that because I just kept running with it. After introductions, some mingling, some pisco, and some dinner, we headed out around 7 and made it back home by about 8. I have pictures to accompany every part of this story but Nina had them all and as you will soon find out she neglected to give them to me. If or when they get posted online somewhere, I will be sure to either post links or just download the pictures and post them to the blog. The night was once again pretty much the same as most nights as we just barhopped around Barranco and talked about all sorts of ridiculous topics including a long debate over whether this large group of guys were a bunch of high schoolers trying to get laid or whether they were gay (it turns out that they were celebrating one of their birthdays and contrary to popular belief only one of them spoke english which was another source of debate.

Sunday I went back to the Museo de la nacion and walked my way from there to downtown. I later found out that I am not supposed to do that walk because it is dangerous but luckily I am still alive. That is one thing about Lima that I will save for another day, but people here are completely paranoid. I would say that it is probably justified but some people to such complete extremes. A french couple was beaten last week just a few blocks from where I am staying but yet for some reason I usually feel safe. Maybe it is a result of 2 decades of actual and real terrorist threat unlike the sort of stuff that most people in Kansas are scared of.

On an interesting note, I found this bootleg computer market that had all sorts of programs and low and behold I found Mac programs. It was pretty amazing and they are in fact mac disk images as I tried them that night. I picked up a copy of Adobe CS2 and Final Cut Pro HD they had some other mac programs like QuarkXpress and tiger and a bunch of sound editing programs as well. I told my Gonzalo to call me if he could get his hand on Aperture so well see how that pans out. Apparently there is a mac only guy that is there only during the week so I may end up going back at some point this week to try and track him down. Though Im not gonna lie, the whole way the deals went down was kind of unsettling at times especially when guys are pulling you into these shady back rooms but thats the price you pay for doing business with the black market. I have my fair share of shady bootleg markets but this one definately takes the cake. The plan is to go somewhere in Peru this weekend and this time I genuinely mean it. I also bought about 25 movies this weekend so I will be watching those as well. If anybody wants any TV seasons, movies, or programs let me know and Ill see what I can do. This other place I found in Lima even has DVDs of seasons that arent even out yet. Case in point I have the first season of prison break but it is the DVDs with the downloaded episodes that have the little fox icon in the corner. When I get back Ill be sure to give it to Gu and Wilberforce so we can discuss how raw Michael Scofield is.

Fruity salad

One of the benefits of being near the rainforest is the insane amount of fruit that is available. Fruit here is not only cheap, but there are just so many different varieties of fruits that I had never tried before. Since coming to Peru I have a new found affinity for pineapple. I have also discovered Lucuma, which is coined "the fruit of the inkas" and it is very good. It has this taste that reminds you of pecans and is used in so many desert dishes. There are also tons of bananas and some of the juiciest tangelos I have ever had. Basically, I am in a fruit paradise. The other day I decided to make a fruit salad so I went out and bought a whoel pineapple, melon, honeydew melon, batch of strawberries, some lucumas, papaya, and some bananas de isla (they sell about 4 different types of bananas here). Cut it all up into nice pieces and ended up with a HUGE bowl of fruit. I had so much fruit and still have so much that I have no idea what to do with it. SO pretty much for the past 3 days, I have been eating nonstop fruit salad with vanilla yogurt, raisins, and granola sprinkled on top. This will likely be what I eat for the next few days so I can go through the insane amounts of fruit that I bought, but you wont see me complaining.

Sencillo wars

Sencillo in spanish means simple, or in Peru it means change. I have heard this word so many times since coming here and appropriately so as every day is a battle in what I call the sencillo war. The currency in Peru is el Nuevo Sol which comes in denominations of 1,5,10,20,50 centimo coins, 1,2,5 sol coins, and then 10,20,50,100,200 sol bills. Now as you can see, most all transactions can thus be done in coins, since you have a 5 sol coins, and a good meal here will only cost you 4 soles. The thing that makes my life a living hell is that everybody thinks they are entitled to hold on to their change and since ATMs only disperse 50s and 100s, I am always battling to hold on to my sencillo. Its such a strategic thing because even paying with a 20 sol bill for a 4 sol meal is sometimes considered out of line. I cant tell you the number of times that I have offered to pay for a meal with some bill only to get the response, "sencillo, senor" now imagine the way a 5 year old asks her daddy for some candy and thats the tone that this plea usually comes in. Hell, even in supermarkets where you would think it wouldnt be a problem I have been sencillo slapped. The other day I tried to pay with a 100 at Wong (the local supermarket) for about a 12 sol purchase and I was flat out rejected, she sent me to another register. Not to mention, dont even try to pay anything but exact change with a taxi because not only do they usually only manage to have 1 oe 2 soles on them, but also if they do manage to give you change it is very likely to be fake sencillo. Yes ladies and gentelman I have run into fake one sol coins, which as you may have figured is the equivalent of going through the trouble of making a fake quarter. Alas, I have gotten better at fighting the sencillo war and have learned to stockpile my sencillo like ammunition, because it is essentially priceless. I have also learned to do things like taxi drivers do to get change for my 100s, which is get the goods first and then pull out that staggering 100 bill. The other day I had a taxi driver buy 6 sol of gas and pay with my 100 so he could get change. The gast attendant, obviously not amused retaliated with a stern look and 96 sol in change in COINS. Its a bitter war that I and all other residents of Peru fight each and every day with no end in sight.