The South, and then further south

I know, I know. It has been over a month since I last blogged. I may or may not have been distracted trying to get ready for the next step - Peru and Bolivia. I also have been busy with music stuff because THE ALBUM FINALLY CAME OUT. If you haven´t already, you can buy it from our website www.munnyandthecameraman.com.

I left you last in Jackson Hole, Wyoming where I had two very lovely hostesses. From there I drove back to Denver to chill out for a while, then I flew to Maine for Bowdoin´s homecoming, then back to Denver to retrieve Penelope and the rest of my belongings. I left Denver at some point in mid-October and drove back to Mississippi via a stopover in Kansas City, Missouri. I then went with my folks up to the cabin in North Carolina for a week of R&R before returning to the hospitality state to finish packing and head out for Peru on October 30th. I landed in Peru late on Saturday night and I´ve been kicking it in Lima the last couple of days. From here I´m heading to Ayacucho and then on to Cusco (or at least that is the plan). Below are some musings from the last month or so.

• Kansas is the worst state to drive across. It is nothing but wheat fields and oil wells. But I did learn from a billboard that Obama is a wanna be Marxist dictator and that Pornography hurts, Jesus saves.
• There is a town in Arkansas that is voting on whether or not to be dry, so all the churches (except the Catholic and Episcopalian ones) have signs out front saying ¨Vote Dry,¨ which I think is rather unfortunate for the guy running for Senate whose name is Boozeman.
• The people in Peru may be short, but we´re not in Vietnam any more, Toto. You can actually cross the street here without ducking behind eldery people. And, get this - they actually stop at traffic lights!
• Lima may be a fog-cloaked city perched on cliffs above the Pacific where you hear mostly spanish and you´re worried about earthquakes, but it´s similarities with San Francisco end about there. The main part of the city is actually flat, the rainbow flags don´t mean what you think they do, and the day after Halloween is far more important than trick-or-treating.
• I think there is a glitch on my transcript from Bowdoin. There is no way I took (and passed) spanish 101. I don´t even know how to say ¨What´s your name?¨ My default is just to add ¨o¨ after the english word. For example, ¨May I have-o a rum & Coke-o, please-o?¨Okay, not really - but I do sound pretty ridiculous. I am signed up for a spanish class for a month in Cusco and I think it´s probably a good idea. Of course, that means I have a week to get from Lima to Cusco overland speaking-o little-o spanish-o. Wish me luck.
• The world is small. I mean, really small. I was hanging out in the lobby of my hostel last night when I hear, ¨Munny?¨It was Rachel Rasby, who used to be my neighbor in DC. Not only are she and her brother staying at my hostel, we slept in the same room my first night and we didn´t even know it.

Alright, I´ll blog more regularly, I promise. But for now the task is to successfully and safely travel the 30 hours by bus to Cusco this week. I have a feeling this will give me some good writing material...