The Dominican Republic

 

 

Playa Bonita, Las Terrenas

People & Place
Going from a South American capital city to a Caribbean one involves a shift. Like Lima, Santo Domingo has blocky colonial buildings and pre-victorian homes with graceful balconies, but the differences are significant. The colonial buildings are made of blocks of coral and fossilized sediment such that you can find shells in the walls. The balconies in Lima are wood, carved in a Moorish-influenced Spanish style, while Santo Domingo has balconies of wrought-iron much like the French Quarter in New Orleans. No surprise when you consider their neighbor, Haiti, and that the Spanish and French influences literally split the island. In Santo Domingo's colonial zone you can see that Spanish-slave-French influences have been mixing for 500 years. Indigenous influence is missing here in the DR, having been immediately exterminated whereas in Perú natives were "merely" subjugated. So Peruvian indigenous culture has persisted, particularly in the Andes and the jungles, along with black Peruvian culture (slaves) and Peruvian creole (coastal mulatto)…it's just not quite as fully blended as it is in the DR, the only officially mulatto country in the world. It's not taboo to talk about skin color in the DR; glancing at the 6 siblings we are visiting reveals a spectrum running from very fair to caramel to dark black.

Our first day, Yudi and Francisco suggested getting a guide to tour the Zona Colonial, something new to them. The old town sits behind walls with canons pointing out towards the sea and deep river. It holds the New World's first permanent fort, chapel, stone house, hospital, etc. It is easy to picture the conquistadores (and their wives) walking the cobbled streets, recreating Spain as best they could, carving a foothold in the coral and palms. A large part of this work was done by slaves brought over by Columbus on his 2nd voyage, the natives being too weak or sick with old world viruses. Santo Domingo is the funnel through which much of the New World's problematic history came. Indeed, it was way-station for Pizarro (Perú), Cortez (Mexico), Ponce de Leon (Puerto Rico, Florida). If you know the ride Pirates of the Caribbean, then you have a good picture of Santo Domingo. Indeed, the pirate Sir Frances Drake famously pillaged here. The tour was great and we sat afterwards having supper at outside tables on the main colonial plaza, Yudi singing along exuberantly with the strolling musicians that approached us. Driving home, we wound through streets made even narrower by the domino tables and groups of people sitting in the street outside the corner markets.

Food & Drink
Japan has it's tea ceremony, Ethiopia has it's coffee ceremony…the Dominican equivalent is much less formal: Presidente beer served in little plastic cups. Whenever possible, we stop and refresh ourselves with a few bottles and, if the bottle is well-frosted, everyone will murmur 'bien fria" (nice n' cold). We wrap the bottle in a paper napkin and keep each other's beer cold by refilling every 5 minutes or so. In Constanza, our family's hometown in the highlands, there is actually a guy who sells his own craft beer by the plaza, with funky art on the wall. But the Presidente ritual seems unshakeable.

seafood mamajuana

I am a fan of rum: good, cheap and plentiful in the DR. So I was pleased to enter a shop specializing in Mamajuana, the Dominican tincture of dark rum, wine and honey. Bottles are filled with a variety of barks and leaves, anise and cinnamon among them, and then topped off with the liquid. A well-seasoned bottle can be enjoyed fully, then refilled with rum and 24hrs later enjoyed again. There's a variation known to be particularly good for the libido: mamajuana with mariscos (seafood) instead of bark. I tried a shot taken from a bottle full of tentacles and wrinkled mollusks. It was surprisingly pleasing.

Like eskimos who have 30 words for snow, Dominicans have uncountable phrases describing the various ways you can eat beans and rice. Their stews are rich with meats and yams and yucca, and plantains come in many forms (my favorites being "tostones", where slices are fried fresh like chips, and "mofongo", a mash with onion and bacon). Chicken abounds, but we also enjoyed a platter of steak, grilled pork chops with chimichurri, and fine blood sausage. At the beach, we got fresh fish that we BBQ'd with lime. Fresh coconut water is sold on the roads, expertly opened with a few good whacks of the machete. If you pull up at certain roadside stands, men will come up offering you sizzling samples of chicharrón balanced on the end of their over-sized machetes. If you are convinced, they will throw a skillet over the wood fire and hack off portions from the roasted pig, heating the cracklings and serving them to you with yucca. Different areas seem to specialize in different things; on our way to the beach, we stopped and sampled cheese hanging in balls from the rafters; on the way down from the mountains, we stopped and sampled Dominican arepas (cooked corn meal…unlike the Central American version or Mexican polenta, it was very smooth, sweet or salty versions, cooked into giant loaves the size of your bed pillow).

Music
Within minutes of arrival in the DR, one seems to be surrounded by bachata music (the endemic Dominican "country" music) and, very possibly, dancing. The whole world of Latin music is popular, but bachata seems to be born into their blood with danceable rhythm, rolling and tinkling guitar work, and romantic lyrics of love and betrayal. Our friends and family there will take any opportunity to dance, switching partners happily, even leading us gringos through the basics (uno-dos-tres-pause).

Basi sings mariachi

One night, we joined the other adults at a place that hosts a mariachi sing-along with a live band. The family's dad, Kino, still lives up in the mountain village of Las Auyamas, and is famous for his love of Mexican mariachi. The kids all have strong memories growing up, Sundays with Kino drinking and blasting the mariachi until morning. So at the sing-along, Yudi and her brother, Basi, get up and sing and dance, calling Kino and holding up their cel phones so it can be heard back in Las Auyamas. On a side note, mariachi is not just in the DR…Jen has come across people in Perú with a deep affection for mariachi and by the end of the evening I found myself wondering how I could grow up surrounded by it in Los Angeles and not have paid it any notice.

Santo Domingo
We stayed with Yudi and Francisco, me sweltering in the heat, waiting for late afternoon when going outside starts to make sense. It did not take long for Carter to be running around with the other kids, no doubt aided by his Spanish. He got along particularly well with Basi's son, Marcos, one year older than him. Carter liked the cannons at the Zona Colonial and the next day when we went to a kid's museum, situated in a 500-year old mansion, with displays about energy, dinosaurs, recycling, the human body, Dominican culture and local history. A frozen yogurt afterwards at an American-style chain was much appreciated by all. Another night we went to a new family park featuring all sorts of stuff, even a couple endangered Dominican iguanas. Santo Domingo, like Lima, seems to be working towards more and better public spaces. We passed an area along the ocean cliffs of the malecon packed with people doing a giant outdoor zumba class or using public exercise equipment.

Las Terrenas
Our departure for the beach was delayed when it turned out that the grocery we were at apparently has a fraud rating so bad that the Visa rep on the phone had never seen so low. Even with me verifying my identity on the phone, the rep informed me that any further attempt at that store would result in the cancellation of my card. Finally, loaded with groceries and luggage, we caravanned out of the capital, cutting north on the new toll-road that cuts what used to be a 4hr trip in half. Our route cut through palm-oil plantations and a verdant set of hills before dropping us into an area of long, flat rice paddies with flocks of white egrets and cows. We stopped to wait for another carload coming from the west and for gas, which meant we could refresh with beer and, since the music was good, a quick dance in the parking lot. A cheer heralded the arrival of the rest of the clan and we drove up over the hills to our beach town. The house we rented was a hot, 15-minute walk from the beach…but with a pool and a view out over the palms and ocean, it was great. The pool was almost permanently occupied, except during a couple outings to the beach. The beach is postcard perfect. A narrow strip of sand, with shady palms leaning over, and water so clear you can count your toes. We spent 3 days like that, with the stereo blasting bachata nonstop. Carter pointed out that the coconut was a new experience for him, and he counted other firsts: a chameleon changing colors in front of his eyes, a shooting star, huge bats, piggy-backing on a motorcycle in true DR style (3 people at once), a midnight lightning storm, and touching a bug with two bioluminescent spot glowing in the dark like bright green alien eyes.

Las Auyamas
We loaded up and cut west across the island, making for the highlands where the family originated. After some starts and stops, we left the main highway and proceeded to climb up the winding hillside. 15 years ago, when I first made this trip, the road was still a death-trap of gravel ruts and drop-offs. Now paved, the road allows beautiful vistas and the environment changes from lowland jungle palms and creepers to grassy hills and aromatic pines. Las Auyamas sits in a wooded green bowl, walking distance to the town of Constanza. Homes are mostly modest cinderblock boxes, though on the low end there are still shacks of corrugated tin held down by stones and on the high end there are now vacation cottages not too far away. When Jen lived here in her 20s it was decidedly more rural, the family home still had a dirt floor and an outhouse. Over the years, things have changed, but not all that much. The house is tiled, there's an indoor bathroom and, while we were just there, crews were actually installing street lights and grading the dirt roads to be paved. Still, the grading equipment would occasionally have to shoo a cow off the road. Sipping coffee one morning at the little house some of us visitors had rented, Jen and I watched a man taking his horse and hand plow to his fields (hint: put the blade of your hand plow into an old tire…this makes it much easier for the horse to drag it along until you get to your field).

Carter went feral, running of with Marcos and another cousin, Alex. The sword fights seemed to go on for days and they were up in the trees for hours at a time. It's the first time Jen and I have experienced Carter not wanting to be with us; he even rode in Marcos' car whenever possible. I'm sure we'll resent it eventually, but at that moment it was nice to have a little freedom. Las Auyamas is so small, really just a couple of crossing dirt roads, and everybody knows everybody…perfect for young boys. I swear, once I simply wondered out loud about Carter's whereabouts and the next thing I know, word of mouth has spread and the boy comes rolling up on the back of someone's motorcycle.

We spent a day running errands around Constanza, preparing for a big mariachi/taco party at the house. We still found time to go up to the valley viewpoint, or stop for some beers. In the end, the "big" party was all the same family members, the mariachi karaoke we'd planned never materialized, and tacos weren't served until midnight. But the ladies were dolled-up and the bachata was infectious and we danced late into the night. Actually, Jen and I went to bed at 3am, but several people stayed up dancing. I am not exaggerating: the party only ended at 10am when the power went out and killed the music. When I wandered back to the family house late morning, I was served a breakfast of tomato slice on bread by one of the ladies still wearing her outfit from the party.



We departed Las Auyamas by way of a longer, scenic route that rode atop the spine of high hills, heading north. Views were wonderful, though Jennifer was feeling the effects of the party and not thrilled to be on a winding road. I noticed several blonde mulatto families, even some redheads, and Yudi told me that the area was so long isolated that it was known to harbor some very old genetic rarities. We dropped down into the vacation town of Jarabacoa ("Always Springtime!"), where several rivers come together. At a riverside hotel down a back road, we sat and had fresh fruit smoothies and lunch to the sound of rushing water, while Carter and Marcos took their sword fight to the bridge or out on the rocks. 

The next (and last) day back in Santo Domingo, we found we had little time (or energy) to do very much before our scheduled flight. Yudi went out and while standing in line at the market, decided to call around for massage appointments for her and Jen. Nothing was available, but a freelance massage therapist overheard her, carrying her cremes and oils no less. Next thing you know, they show up in the apartment and Yudi and Jen are getting great massages and exfoliating sugar scrubs for $15 each. That, and Darlene's fabulous stew at Basi's house, sent us on our way back to Lima, relaxed, and with full stomachs.

4th of July

July: Scene Change

The main change of scene is that July is Winter Break for Carter and the transition from 2nd to 3rd grade. Not only is he pleased with this, Jen and I are relieved to have a month of school vacation in which he takes a bus to morning camp, traffic is light and we get an extra hour sleep. The "llovizna" is back...the low mist that blankets Lima for much of the winter here. This is also the time of year when turnover happens at the embassy, a whole contingent picks up and moves on to new assignments. This means less to Jen and I than for others; still, friends of Carter's are going, people I play soccer with, etc.

Meanwhile, our 4th of July also reflected two very different scenes. The first happened the night before the 4th; we attended an open-air celebration at the ambassador's residence, a manor house in the middle of the city. It's was a formal affair, so after navigating the pitted back streets and traffic that I have become familiar with, we parked and went through security, with the metal detector seeming like a magic portal from the clamor outside to the manicured lawns and tea lights inside. This annual event is pretty much obligatory, we all arrive early enough to be there when all the various Peruvian VIPs show up, and the bar does not open until they arrive. For all that, it's very pleasant…a deluxe spread of sushi, servers circling with good beer and wine, and a Peruvian swing/jazz band doing really great renditions of the classics my grandmother used to dance to.

For the 4th itself, Jennifer and I headed out for a rare chance to see the kids at the Hogar on a weekday. These last 2 weeks have seen a couple of large groups of American teens visiting, learning, helping out where they can. We brought some apple pies, and the Hogar kids gathered outside on the patio for little lesson on the 4th of July and to wish us all a happy day. It was a fun day, though not without some sobering points. I was trying to fix some of the disintegrating bikes out back while Bruno, a 10yr old burn victim, had his physical therapy which means the therapist stretches his hand to keep the affected skin from healing up too tightly and crippling him. For Bruno it seems to mean he screams for 5 minutes straight, exiting afterwards for all the world trying to pretend he was tough. More profoundly sad are the test results that show Julia's leukemia is back with a vengeance, so much so that people seem to assume the worst. A pre-teen girl, as nice as can be, she seems to assume the worst too. At the playground, with all the kids, she sat alone on top of a play structure with peeling paint when I asked her what she was doing. "Just taking the sun," she said and, sure enough, there was a final lick of sunlight that she had found there. What could I do but join her up there for a bit, too stupid to say anything? Then some of the kids wanted to steer our car while on my lap, and Lisbeth peed her pants and Kiara threw a sulk-tantrum with Jennifer and we took them all back to the home.

But forget about that! What about the World Cup?!

I hear from folks back in the States that the World Cup is getting more attention than ever before. That's good, because Carter and I have caught World Cup fever. Perú did not qualify to go, but even so the streets are empty during games and TVs in supermarkets are like man-traps, snaring groups of men, transfixing them. Without their own team, most Peruvians have a detailed set of priorities to determine who they root for. For example, they want the Cup to stay in South America EXCEPT not in Chile (The Saltpetre War 1880). Not so much Ecuador (small wars and border disputes). And they tend to root for underdogs…so the U.S. got a lot of support, and when Costa Rica upset Chile…well, the cheer might have been heard in Brazil. For the record, this is the first time Carter has really felt the emotions of being a sports spectator. For better or worse, he's a fan now! A couple of other spouses like me, JoJo the Paraguayan and Aquiles the Ecuadorian, have been watching.


The pickup soccer games continue to be fun, though for a while there during the Cup no one was showing up hardly at all. I've improved somewhat, even scoring a couple of "real" goals (in which I actually did something, rather than just being in the right place at the right time to tap a ball into the goal). Of course, my age and sedentary proclivities mean my joints complain for 24hrs after every game. Worse, during one game a tendon in my knee actually made an audible POP and I have a distinct memory of the expression of horror on the opposing player's face when he heard the sound and I buckled to the ground. But I soldier on!

I've been taking Spanish classes almost every weekday for 3 months now, and it's finally starting to show. I am able to have more comfortable conversations with people now, and it's almost to the point where my Spanish is as good as JoJo's English and certainly better than Aquiles. I've been going to classes at the Agrarian University, right near our home, at a language center tucked among trees, rutted roads, and forestry classrooms. [trivia: just prior to winning the Presidency of Perú, Alberto Fujimori ran the Agraria. He's now in jail, convicted of crimes during the Shining Path years] Anyway, Rosario, my teacher, is very patient and the people at the language center are very nice, even gathering for my birthday to share cake and Inca Kola. Now, being Winter Vacation, Rosario is tutoring Carter 2hrs per day at home. We leave in a week for the Dominican Republic; I'm looking forward to being able to converse with the many in that family who speak no English. I've spent many evenings there drinking rum with the guys there, all in good fellowship, but not saying much.

Lake Titicaca

A Giant Lake, Very High Up
 Jen, Carter, Mariza and I spent the long weekend up at Lake Titicaca, the biggest lake in South America and certainly the highest BIG lake in the world. At 12,500ft, the simple act of climbing stairs was exhausting and Mariza was sick until back at sea level in Lima. Carter and I felt the altitude but managed it with ibuprofen and coca tea. The air is clear, the water is deeply blue and the sky reaches forever. Being so close to the sun, it is often t-shirt weather though within minutes of sundown, it gets very cold very fast. Within an hour, it is time to put on your parka, your gloves, your chuyo (Peruvian knit cap).

Cheese, quinoa, chuño

Puno
The trip started on a stressful note: we arrived at the Lima airport only to have Mariza realize she had forgotten her ID. At the last minute, we were informed that an emergency passport office existed in the airport and for a small "tip" the agent there printed out a copy of her ID and punched it with a very official stamp. An hour flight later, we landed on the bumpy runway in the airport town of Juliaca…the kind of dusty armpit of a place where fires burn inexplicably in the road and trash lines the river edge. Thankfully, we quickly got ourselves on the van for the 45min ride to the shores of Titicaca and the town of Puno, the jumping off point for much the region's tourism. Not a particularly quaint place, it nevertheless hums with an authentic spirit, populated by hearty outgoing people, reminding me for some reason of a frontier town in an old cowboy movie. A Peace Corps ex-volunteer lives there in a hostel, working at development through micro-loans, so we stayed the first night there with him and his very maternal landlady. Jen and I accompanied Alex to the 2nd story of a local bar for a nightcap before bed, though Alex says he does not go out a lot anymore because the intensity of how people drink there is too much for him. Indeed, people down high-proof pisco drinks by the pitcher, and the man I sat next to was swaying, spitting and pouring out the dregs of his glasses on the floor even though the bar below was clearly visible through the gaps in the slats. But all was convivial; I ordered a thoroughly pleasing hot drink, though I think it was just a steaming mug of pisco and Fanta. That, a fabulous garlic cheese bread, and the landlady's having warmed our beds with hot water bottles, put me to bed warm and content. In the morning, the landlady had coca tea ready for us, and proudly showed us some of the Andean ingredients in her kitchen: squeaky cheese, purple potatoes (from her own field outside of town), chuño (an Andean staple, potatoes freeze-dried in the permafrost and sun-blanched, with a shelf-life of many years), and flaked quinoa (eaten like oatmeal).

We set out in the morning to soak in a little of Puno's atmosphere and, luckily, it was market day. We walked towards the harbor, navigating busy streets alive with taxis and motorcycle taxis and pedaled taxis. For many blocks, the streets were filled with tarp-covered stalls and shoppers. The local ladies mostly wear bowlers with two little dingles that hang down, though some wear something more like a straw Easter hat. There are plenty of stalls selling cheap Chinese goods, so it's not quite the romanticized rural market one might imagine, but there are plenty of vendors who are selling piles of colorful potatoes, skinned goat heads and hooves (for the local hoof soup delicacy), fresh mountain herbs, and piles of quinoa and rice and corn. Then suddenly, we stumbled upon a crowd gathered around a true-to-life snake oil salesman. At his feet were several large boa snakes and a large turtle, apparently embalmed, cut open to show their viscera. The man spoke in the universal cadence of salesmen everywhere, like an infomercial, extolling the medical efficacy of his oil and the sad state of pill-popping modernity. He had a big tub at his feet, supposedly filled with the oil of the snakes, and he ladled it into little bottles, passing one around for people to rub on their hands. Sun-blasted locals clamored forward to get a sample on their skin; one, upon being asked, let Jen take a whiff and it smelled to her of menthol.

The Ride to the Other Side of the Lake
We realized we hadn't left ourselves very much time to get where we needed to be on the other side of the lake, so we got in a local taxi and surprised him by negotiating a fare all the way to the dock where we were to meet the boat to our hotel for the next two nights. Our destination was a good hour beyond the farthest point he'd ever been and he seemed excited and nervous, double-checking the tires and asking in every pueblo for directions. It was about 3 hours of rolling brown grasslands, taking us through flood plains with triangles of stacked wheat drying in the sun and cows anchored to pegs in the ground. Little cubist adobe houses dot the landscape, with little adobe ziggurats for storage, and many walls are painted with large election ads. Because much of the population can not read, the campaign signs are all marked with an identifying pictograph that will appear on the ballot: vote for the "orange", the "sandal", the "little house" or even the "coca leaf". We traversed a large marshy area populated by ducks and wading birds, and a forest of the reeds that are used in the famous floating reed villages out on the lake. [Which, by the way, we had heard were very touristy and skipped…we regret it now, touristy or no, a floating reed village has got to be something amazing] We drove on, getting farther off the beaten track, watching the lakeside hills crinkle up and rocks jut up looking like the spines of some giant buried stegosaurus. Villages sit in the creases, the adobe turns more red, and many of the houses are roofed with thatch instead of corrugate. I saw 3 separate pairs of caracaras, like large hawks but with striking black and white plumage and sharp red beaks. It all felt picturesque, though we got doses of clarity when a man was too drunk to give coherent directions or when we had to stop because some little hoodlums had blocked the road with a large branch and demanded a tip prior to moving it.

Then we unexpectedly came upon a local celebration and our driver asked if we wanted to stop. We walked into the colorful swirl of the fiesta, with multiple bands and several dance circles underway. We were clearly space aliens, yet were received with happy shouts and questions. A group of men, sitting and drinking, were hugely pleased when I called "Salud!" to them. Some proudly hollered "Perú!" and others yelled out "Estados Unidos" to make sure we felt welcome. A couple of suspicious boys let me take their picture; I love it not only because the one is wearing his celebration attire, but also they are holding toy guns, scowling, eating candy, and in the background you can see the stands where we ordered chicharones (deep fried nuggets, pork in this case) with Andean corn and purple potatoes.

There was a blue-coated brass band on one side of the grassy expanse, a red-coated brass band on the other side, and in the middle a elegantly black-suited band including traditional instruments like the huge standing Andean harp. The next thing we know, a gentleman in a black suit and hat dragged Jennifer out into the middle of the dance circle. Distracted, I did not see the old lady in full regalia until she had me, gripping my hands with surprising strength, and I had no choice but to dance my best approximation of the Andean huayno. It seems a simple, stomping kind of dance, yet there seems to include an arhythmic stomp and I'm afraid I was a big laughable gringo. Which, of course, made everyone very happy. I yelled out to the onlookers, did my best, and gave my partner a kiss on the cheek before Jen and I extracted ourselves. Our path back to the taxi was a gauntlet, people calling out for us to stay and drink until nightfall, us giving our regrets.

Isla Suasi

 
Isla Suasi
Finally, the taxi dropped us with our bags on the side of the road by a sign for our hotel, situated on a private island. We went downhill to the little pier and eventually a Zodiac motored up and took us to the island. A narrow strip, only about 3/4s of a mile long, patrolled by cormorants, Isla Suasi has the small eco-lodge on one end and a small promontory on the other that rises up to just over 13,000ft in altitude. The landlady of the island has made the place a natural showpiece to reflect local flora and fauna. We stayed there two nights and saw many birds (including the freakishly big Giant Hummingbird), vizcacha (looking for all the world like squirrel-rabbits or "squabbits") who could run up the face of a cliff, and cousins of the llama (the domesticated alpaca and the endangered wild vicuña).

Grilled alpaca. Jen is opening her trout.

Stargazing

Upon arrival, I enjoyed chilcano (pisco/ginger ale) but made with a pisco-infusion of muña, a pungent mint-oregeno relative that grows all over the island. Meals also highlighted local ingredients, with tasty grilled alpaca, grilled trout, or an amazing tartare salad of smoked trout, avocado and chili. Lunch there is particularly nice: dining outside in the sun, in a garden of flowers and passion fruit, looking out to a horizon filled with deep blue water and dotted with brown islands. We had gotten a good rate by way of Groupon and, when we asked, the lodge gave us it's matrimonial casita for very little extra. So we went to bed that night to the sound of waves lapping at our doorstep and woke up to the sound of coots in the reeds. The only downside was the steep stairway back up to the lodge…it's a pretty short stairway, but believe me when I say that at 12,500ft it's best to stop and rest halfway up. There were never more than 8 guests at the hotel, of which we comprised 50%, and only 4 or 5 employees full time. 

There's not a whole lot to do, yet somehow I never even opened the book I brought. Pretty much you can wander the island, you can take a canoe out, or you can stargaze. The stargazing was particularly amazing; it has been a long time since I've seen the Milky Way so clearly and I found myself strangely emotional to see the Southern Cross for the first time. My particular favorite, Scorpio, was high in the sky. At one point, Jupiter was low in the sky and yet somehow powerful enough to create a long rippling reflection in the lake. Jennifer and I took a flashlight and made our way up to the promontory on the second night as the breeze died off, allowing us to take off our gloves, stare into the starry abyss with binoculars, and reflect. Then Jen farted. That seems to be another side effect of altitude. Carter really liked one little spot, the Playa de Piedras (Beach of Stones) because, of course, there was ample opportunity to find the perfect skipping rock. He's good, but I was able to hold on to the record. Jen and Carter went out a couple of extra times in the canoe, discovering a beautiful local duck (puna teal) with bright blue beaks.

Finally, it was time to leave. We returned to the sobering ugliness of Juliaca for our flight, but we had a little trouble getting Mariza through security because this time it was me who had lost the "original" printout of the temporary ID. Luckily, they eventually let us through and this time without having to "tip" anybody.

vizcacha (squabbit)

Giant Hummingbird, biggest there is