Elections, Crabs and Cocaine

December 5, 2006

Elections, Crabs and Cocaine


~~Lima writhes and bends under its own weight; bustling, bumping, wobbling, weaving, bucking, like a city trying to decide whether to consume itself completely, or reach way down low and pull itself up by its dirty-ass bootstraps. Hustlers, hoods and thieves circumnavigate the city center’s plazas and colonial buildings in search of their next mark, while stray dogs fuck and kill each other in the street. Contrast this with upscale, outer-urban areas like Miraflores, and Barranca and you get the feeling that the entirety of Lima resides on two different planes which, despite proximity, try to ignore the other’s existence. Granted, boutiqued and restauranted Miraflores, and bohemian Barranca have their share of criminals too, but the feeling is completely different and a hell of a lot less ominous.

~~I landed in Peru ready to be back in a city, but after pulling out of the airport and seeing what stretched beyond the gates, I wasn’t quite sure if I was ready to be in this city. Someone should put up a sign that says, “Now leaving Lima’s airport. Welcome to the Third World motherfucker!”

***Soccer field outside of Lima Airport***

~~The flight had been pretty mellow (I befriended the stewardesses and flirted my way into free beer) and afterwards, me, two Argentinean girls, and a Swedish kid named David, marveled at the differences between Costa Rica and Lima as we sat in a cab on our way to Miraflores. Compared to the massiveness of Lima, San Jose just seemed like a provincial town in a backwater country. Lima was a real fucking city, and after a week of being muy tranquilo, I was ready to party. Unfortunately we managed to arrive the day before election weekend, which meant that, beginning at midnight, no alcohol was to be sold...anywhere.

***The girls of Air Taca love Broke-Ass Stuart***

~~That’s some serious shit right? In the United States, where (it would seem) people have fairly direct access to their government, there are tons of people who don’t vote simply because they just can’t be bothered with it. Whereas, in Peru, where roughly 45% of the population is made up of indigenous peasants who have absolutely no realistic influence on national politics, the country goes dry for 3 days for fear of drunken riots. It’s actually mandatory for Peruvian citizens to vote, and if they don’t, they get fined some ridiculous amount of money. People get so into the elections that political slogans and candidate names get painted on walls all over the cities. If you didn’t know better you think Oscar Gutierrez was a prolific graffiti writer, not a guy running for mayor.

***Election Time***

~~Well if my liver thought it was gonna get a holiday because of the elections, it was totally wrong. Some random gay man who we met on the street and who spoke perfect English took the four of us to an Irish bar that apparently had no respect for Peru’s liquor laws and served booze all night long. In Costa Rica the local girls won’t even acknowledge you if you are a gringo, so it was strange that suddenly here in Peru, I was getting all kinds of attention from every girl in the bar. So much so that I actually thought that all the women were actually hookers and that the gay guy who brought us to the bar was their pimp. Even though that wasn’t the case, I still wasn’t interested because I was still totally hung up on Krista back in San Francisco.

~~The following day, I met up with L, a friend who lived in Lima and she and I went out to Barranca to meet up with a friend of hers for crab soup. When it comes to crab soup, people don’t fuck around in Lima; each bowl had at least four claws that were almost the size of my hand. Having now tried the crab soup, there was only one other thing I couldn’t leave Lima without trying (mom you may want to skip to the next paragraph), so we went back to L’s friends house and did a couple lines of blow. Now, I don’t do cocaine very often, in fact I’ve never really been much of a fan of the drug, but I figured that since this was my only chance to try really really good cocaine from a reliable source (there’s no fucking way I’d buy drugs on the street in Peru), there was no way I couldn’t try it. For the equivalent of seven American dollars you can buy a gram of some of the best shit on Earth, so I did, and then did two lines of it, and then remembered why I never liked coke much in the first place…it’s kinda lame.

***Crab Soup***

***Peru's national soda. It tastes like bubblegum flouride...in a good way***

~~Earlier in the day, before the crab and coke, David (the Swedish guy) and I went and bought our trips to Machu Pichu. I guess the lady who helped set it up kinda fancied me and invited the two of us to her friend’s 28th birthday party. Considering the whole damn country was dry, we of course obliged. I’ve always found that one of the best ways to get insight into another culture is to get yourself invited to a party at someone’s house. In this case there were a lot of differences from an American’s 28th birthday party. First of all, the hostess/birthday girl, set up all of her chairs in a circle and the inside of the circle became the dance floor. She also cooked food for everyone, but when she served it, all the men got served before any of the women received their food. They also shared all the drinks. If someone opened a big bottle of beer (it comes in huge bottles here, almost like 40 oz’s) everyone poured a little into their cup and then passed the bottle on. It was also interesting that the crowd ranged from 20 years old up to like 55, and if there was a couple, the man was always at least 15 years older than the woman.

***Fiesta Peruvian style***

***Salsa***

~~Overall it was a fun night and one in which I was made to dance meringue and salsa in circle of 30 Peruvians I’d never met before. But easily the best part of the evening was when I’d convinced everyone that David was a bullfighter from Sweden. A few people offered to help get him some fights, but he respectfully declined because he was on vacation. I was just surprised that he went along with my bullshit as long as he did. But I guess you are too if you’re still reading these blogs.

***Me and David the Swedish Bullfighter***

Strange and Creepy

Wednesday, November 22, 2006


Strange and Creepy

When you spend time on the road you gain insight into yourself, the places you visit, and you get, more or less, a greater knowledge of how world around you works. For example, my travels in Ireland made me realize that I belong in cities and not the countryside. That was an important bit of knowledge I gained about myself. It took me only about three days of traveling in Costa Rica to come another profound conclusion, this one about the world as a whole. It goes like this: generally speaking, old white men traveling by themselves are creepy as fuck. I mean, Jesus, what’s creepier than a balding guy with a ponytail, wearing Tevas and a Hawaiian shirt, coming all the way to Costa Rica to pay for sex? The answer is: a balding guy with a ponytail, wearing Tevas and a Hawaiian shirt, who comes all the way to Costa Rica to pay for sex with someone underage (This is actually such a serious problem that there are multiple signs between the airport and the bus station informing people that, yes, sex with minors is illegal in Costa Rica too). So while I managed to avoid getting murdered in Jaco, I did get the pleasure of seeing loads of old farts walking arm in arm back to their hotels with gorgeous, and likely underage, Tica (Costa Rican women) prostitutes.

***Main Road in Jaco***


Happy to be getting out of Jaco alive, Oliver, Ville and I headed back to San Jose where the next day they would get on a plane to Buenos Aires and I would catch a bus to the Caribbean Coast. What’s interesting is that I’ve noticed a tendency amongst back-packers towards the idea of, “When I get to Buenos Aires…” It’s as if some sort of Emerald City like mythology has developed around Buenos Aires, and everyone with a back-pack is on their way to see the Wizard. If that’s the case, I guess that makes Taca Airlines my Yellow Brick road and Costa Rica my Munchkin land (not because it’s full of drunk midgets, but because it’s my first stop, duh).

In San Jose we chose the Pangaea hostel because a flyer said that it had free internet, free phone calls, a swim up bar and a mechanical bull. Well, the bull was hibernating, the bar was not in use, the internet was tediously slow and the delay on the phone calls made it feel like you were a CNN correspondent out in the middle of Afghanistan. But it was actually a pretty cool place and at least there were no mosquitoes (I’m walking proof that the mosquitoes here have a Jew fetish). The next day me and the guys made plans to meet up in Buenos Aires and we went our separate ways.

Anyone acquainted with me knows that if I’m in a room with 99 other people, and a lunatic walks in, invariably, that person finds me; I’m like cat-nip for crazy people. So it’s only logical that, if I’m headed to the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica on a bus with 49 other people, and the only empty seat is right next to me, the one armed American veteran with no shirt on is gonna sit there. That type of shit doesn’t even surprise me anymore. Out of four hours on a bus, this motherfucker talked for at least three and a half and the only question he asked me was my name. Otherwise it was a fucking soliloquy. I can tell you anything you want to know about James, shit like, he didn’t lose his arm in war (he was too young for Vietnam) but actually in a motorcycle accident 15 years ago (he was more upset about wrecking the bike than losing his arm), or that he’s in Costa Rica looking for property (he already has some in California and Nevada but keeps some under his sister’s name for tax purposes and so she has something just in case he decides to ride a motorcycle again). After 30 minutes with this guy, I stopped being polite and just looked out the window, listening to my Ipod. He continued talking. The coolest thing about the bus ride though, was noticing that the drivers here act as porters as well. I mean this in the sense that they’ll bring goods from one town and a person will be waiting at a bus stop to pay for and pick up the goods in another town. It’s kinda like a third-world version of Pink Dot.

I ended up liking the Caribbean Coast more than the Pacific because all the Rastas seemed a lot less high strung then the folks on the other side of the country. The only minor harassment I got was the locals soliciting, “good smoke and cocaine, mon.”

***This guy sat in the tree all day, and tried to sell me drugs everytime I passed by. In this photo he's passed out***


When I first arrived in Puerto Viejo, I was depressed because I was once again alone, and I missed Krista (my girl in SF) like crazy. Everything changed though when she emailed me and told me that there was a 90% chance she was gonna meet me in Buenos Aires. I haven’t had a bad moment since then…but I have definitely had some strange ones.

***Random photos of Puerto Viejo***




In Puerto Viejo I was staying at a place called Rockin’ J’s, a cool hostel right on the beach where you can choose to sleep in a hammock, a tent or a dorm. Apparently J, in all his “rockin”-ness, is living out his pubescent fantasy of having a spot in tropical Costa Rica with a big-titted French girlfriend, 15 years his junior. That’s all well and good (we should all be so lucky), but the rub is that also living here is his severely maladjusted 13 year old son who may or may not be in school, spends all his time with 20-something year old backpackers (who score coke and weed from the Rastas), and who’s first words to me were, “I stabbed a dog today, do you think that’s wrong?” On top of all his Lord of the Flies bravado, I’m pretty sure the kid was hitting on me…seriously. Our conversation went like this:
The kid said, “I stabbed a dog today; do you think that’s wrong?”
“Umm what?” I said.
“Yeah I stabbed a dog today, I feel pretty bad about it”
“Why would you do that? That’s fucking awful!”
“The dog was attacking my dog so I grabbed my knife and ran up and stabbed it. Then they had to take the dog to the hospital. I feel so bad about it.” (I later got verification that the kid was not bullshitting me, that in fact he had stabbed a dog)
“Yeah kid that’s pretty fucked up…”
“Hey do you think it’s wrong to be gay”
“Umm…no not at all, in fact a lot of my friends and family are gay…”
“Really? You don’t think it’s wrong or gross?”
“Of course not. Do you?”
“Yeah I think it’s gross…but hey, wanna come and see my books?”
“What!? No thanks, I’m ok, I’m gonna hang here with my friends.”
Then a few minutes later he said to me, “Hey you wanna go sit on a hammock with me?”
“Um, no thanks kid. I gotta go. I’ll see you later.”
If getting hit on by a deranged 13 year old boy who had stabbed a dog earlier that day wasn’t frightening enough, the thought of what that kid is gonna be like as an adult was. Costa Rica is a strange and creepy place.

***Representing Broke-Ass Stuart at Rockin J's***


***Wish you were here***