Sunday March 7, 1999
  Right now Andrew is laughing in the other room. This because, as he put it, it sounds like I have bullfrog in my asshole.

   We took a two-day jaunt to Ollantaytambo (oy-yon-tay-tombo) where we investigated more ruins. Then after that, bussed over to Pisac, where i found a terrific artists' market. It is at this market, where I gambled and allowed a kindly old lady in a shawl, with a dark and crooked smile, under a tent, serve me a bad Chile Relleno in a virus batter and noodles sautéed in bacteria.

   And now, thanks to that kindly old lady, I have a bullfrog in my asshole, and it's croaking every five minutes or so and I can't make it stop And I can't make Andrew's laughter stop.

  Monday, March 22, 1999
   I now believe that that Chile Relleno was possessed by Manco Capac (remember him, first Inca, and legendary son of The Sun). I believe that, in his constant efforts to avenge the destruction of his people at the hands of the Spaniards, he roams this area and plots his mischief. I think Manco Capac confused the Italian blood in me with Spanish. So through the Chile Relleno, he possessed me.

   For three days, I was in bed, coughing and groaning, fever swelling, sleeping, not eating, and powering through three novels (T.C. Boyle's "East is East," Kurt Vonnegut's "Bluebeard" and Hemmingway's "A Farewell to Arms"). Each of these books, accidentally, had something to do with my travels.

   On the fourth day, with the Dregs of Manco Capac still inside me, I emerged from the moldy stink of my apartment, for dinner. I saw Sarah, a South American, whose acquaintance I made the week before and who was pleasant, and intelligent, and right-minded. She said that she and her friend, a Los Angeles-ian named Nicole, were on their way to Lake Titicaca for a tour of the islands.

  Well I had been holed up with Capac for three days and was starting to feel guilty that I hadn't yet explored all the amazing places OUTSIDE of Cuzco. So I invited myself along. This is totally acceptable behavior in this crazy world of Backpackers and lifetime roamers, because a family exists. And friendships and bonds are begat at the simple utterance of the backpacker's universal first question: "So where are you from?"

  She readily agreed and we spoke in great lengths about how much fun we were going to have. I was particularly pleased because I had been waiting for Andrew to finish teaching before going on any far away and dangerous places. He speaks Spanish, I do not. I would be lost. So I jumped on board with these two woman, average looking if you must know, (one more average than the other) and took an eleven hour train to Puno.

  Lake Titicaca is reportedly (there is some dispute) the highest navigable lake in the world. It is enormous and owned by two countries: Peru and Bolivia. The borderline runs right through the lake. They have an ongoing argument. The Peruvians say that they have the "Titi" side of the lake and The Bolivians have the "Caca." The Bolivians contend it is the other way around. How quaint.

  My plan was to do the island tour with these gals, and try to hook up with another English/Spanish speaking traveler and move on to Bolivia. (Copacabana and La Paz). Mind you, Manco Capac is still hanging on. I've got the sneezes, and the wet cheese coughs and pale complexion.

   We took a train ride of eleven hours of Andes scenery. Admittedly, it became commonplace after about six hours, but friends, I'm telling you, it's like I was on another planet. Sideways lightning was scorching the sky. Ominous clouds cast mountain-sized shadows on the mountains. And at every small villa where we stopped , the locals all came out to greet the train, ask for pens, and sell bread and sweaters.

  We took a hotel in Puno, well known for being a shit-hole of a city, and got some rest for the island tour in the morning. The tour was two days. The first day, we visited Los Uros, the famous man-made floating islands. The first inhabitants made these islands from reeds and just float out there. When the reeds rot from the bottom, they replace them at the top. It's a very soggy existence. We plopped down on the reeds took some photos, mingled with the natives, and then left. It was a small island, about the size of an olympic swimming pool, (and nearly as damp) so it didn't take long to see the enire island.

   Then we sailed out to Isle de Armanti, a much larger and natural island. Here we were to spend the night. When the boat landed, all the women of the island arrived to greet us. The tour guide selected groups of two or three and matched us with the senoras. Sarah and Nicole and I were the last to be chosen and we followed our Senora, a grizzly old tanker, up the hills of the island and into her home. We were to sleep and live with these families until we left the next day. They cooked us breakfast, lunch and dinner, and escorted us to the different points of interest.

   It was here that I felt most like a world traveler. These people were the real thing. We slept in a hut; there was no electricity. We ate rice and potatoes and potato soup for every meal. A real carbohydrates diet. The only variety being the different ways they sliced the potatoes.

  That night, under the same lightning storm, we slinked away to the top of the hill and witnessed a "La Pena" which is the closest thing this world has to a nightclub. A folk band of full-garbed Peruvian boys played the non-tourist, traditional music (lots of flutes and bass drums and tiny guitars) and we swirled with the locals and I remember it to be very much like a dream.

   The next day over to the Isle de Taquille which featured a society which is probably the closest to true communism as anyof which I am aware . All the money they make, be it the restaurants, the museum, or the people on the street (both men and woman) knitting their appare, belongs to the whole society;of about 500 people. They have twelve leaders, and every year, purely by luck of the draw, they replace them with twelve new ones.

  As luck would have it, on the two-day island tour, one of the many people with whom I struck up a friendship was a New Yorker named Brett and his Japanese wife named Tokokoyamo. They said they would be happy if I tagged along with them on their trek to Bolivia the next day. However, his wife, was afflicted with altitude sickness and we might have to wait a day.

   A Note about altitude sickness: Living at these altitudes, for sea level dwellers such as you and me and most of the other travelers, is like a fish living out of water. We are a different biological species than the resident altitude dwellers who can run and jump and play up here. Gasping for air is part of the whole experience. And being a fish out of water can affect you in ways you are not capable of imagining. For example, in Puno and La Paz, at nearly 4000 meters, I could not sleep more than an hour at a time without being awakened by my own shortness of breath. It's quite frightening to wake up, as if you had been punched in the stomach, heart racing, and gulp down as much air as you can to return to your equilibrium. And in a place where we really need our wits and assets, and sleep, altitude is a relentless thorn in our palms.

  I said goodbye to my female traveling companions since they were going back to Cuzco. Then I double-checked with Nestor from the tour company to see if it would be OK if I took a bus back to Cuzco at a later date (the bus ride home was part of the package and I didn't want to pay for another one). Nestor said, "no problemos, no problemos."

   A note about Peruvians who deal in the tourist trade: They tell you anything you want to hear.

   That night was a blast. We danced all night long and drank beer and pisco sours and in the morning my head was aching. I went over to Brett's hotel and he said Toko was not going to make it. Apparently, it was more than altitude that got her, it was Manco Capac as well, and they were going to fly back to NY.

   And there you have it. Circumstances were such that my fears were realized. I was alone and without language. I had to make a decision. Put my tail between my thighs and yelp on home, or be a man and cross the border to Bolivia, where the horizon and the land don't meet in quite the same way, where simple pleasures like food and water are to be feared, if not despised, and a simple "hello" can result in your unconsciousness.

   I opted for manhood.

   As you might expect, I had a nightmare at the border. And to my aid, came a bloke from London whose Spanish was mediocre, but far better than mine. He told me why it was that the border agents were yelling at me and shaking their fingers. But that's another story.

   So this Londoner named Mark, and I became traveling partners.

   All the world Travelers agree; there is no approach like the approach to La Paz. The bus comes in on the top of the canyon. La Paz sits inside the crook of this canyon and rises up and out of it like branches reaching for the sun. When you come to the top of the canyon and look down at La Paz, the city reaches out for you. It's absolutely amazing.

   And then you start winding down, into the canyon, to the bottom (which is the heart of La Paz) like a toilet bowl flushing. Indeed the whole thing is very septic, as La Paz is very much like an enormous, twinkling, sewer.

   It didn't take long for me to realize that I couldn't stand this guy Mark from London. He pranced around barking orders at Bolivians and Peruvians and Acted as though the language barrier between him and the waiter was implicitly the waiter's fault. He routinely cursed them out right in English, hollering for service in eateries when it was not immediate and saying things like, "Yes, yes, and did you know you were an blithering idiot?" to a cab driver when the cabby couldn't understand his request. I know, nine times out of ten, they didn't understand what Mark was saying, but I lived in fear that the one guy who finally understood English, would punish us by dropping us off in the La Paz Witches' Market or something.

  On the first day in La Paz, we stumbled into a Canadian, also named Mark, whom I had met on the Puno Island tour. He was, Mr. World Traveler, and he really has been everywhere, but bored the shit out of you by constantly referring to his travel exploits. Like, you'd be saying, "I really love Tequila," and he would say, "Well yes, when I was backpacking barefoot in the Snake Pit Caves of Southern Mexico, where I broke bread with the Coalayaua's, creators of tequila, the Coalayaua chief, Driquistia, said to me. . . blah blah blah.

   BUT, I was overjoyed to see Canadian Mark because in an instant I knew that I could play them off each other. When I was tooling around with London Mark, I had to listen to his incessant berating and negativity about the places we visited, not to mention his overzealous travel stories (hmm, am I any different). I knew these two would talk to each other forever and I merely needed to linger back and catch their draft.

  And that's how I saw La Paz, on the draft of two, very traveled, very knowledgeable, Know-all-the-backpacker-tricks, morons.

   And now the story gets interesting. . .

  On the first night, we went to a Karaoke bar, very high tech, with moveable monitors, a huge split screen that hovered over a blinking dance floor, and a cordless mike to bring to whosoever's turn it was to sing. I sang "Seasons in the Sun," by Terry Jacks in my Johnny Cash voice. It went over well with the two Marks who laughed both "at" and "with" me, but the Bolivians looked at me as if I was from another continent, which I am.

   I struck a conversation with a Bolivian who was eyeing me. She sat at the table with another female and a guy. They invited themselves to our table and brought with them their liter of rum and bottle of coke that they bought at the bar. We six sat and stumbled over our conversation. Canada Mark, as you would expect, spoke excellent Spanish which he learned when he was backpacking inside an active volcano above the Hidden Temples of the Conquistadors and stumbled across, in Hieroglyphics?, the very first Spanish/English translation book. As I have said before, I only know a few words.

   But still, sitting amidst a swirl of conversation of which I was not a part, I knew something was very wrong here. Claudia, the girl who was eyeing me, was moving in for the kill; hand on my knee, lost look in her enormous brown eyes. She invited me to a party. All her amigas would be there, she said.

   "Eduardo, Eduardo," she cried out, whenever my attention was elsewhere, as if she were a child in need of constant attention from her mother. "Eduardo, Eduardo!" she proclaimed. Then, would say something in Spanish I didn't understand and we would spend the next ten minutes trying to decipher it with pantomime, inflection, and zest. Finally, we surrendered comprehension in favor of the more powerful forces of exhaustion and frustration.

   The other woman, whom earlier I noticed was hanging all over her male companion, Franco, in an overtly sexual manner, was now doing the same to Canada Mark. Mark looked at me, I at him. Something was very wrong. I remembered what the travel guide said -- and this is near verbatim: "Don't drink with Bolivians in the locals bars' unless you want to wake up an hour later with your money gone," (They spike the drinks) -- and wondered if this wasn't an elaborate set-up for our ambush.

   In the booth next to us were three well-dressed, young (early 20's) Bolivian men, with three trampy looking, vivacious, woman. Franco and London Mark were talking. Franco spoke a little English and I overheard London Mark asking him to get us some pot and Franco saying that those men in the table next to us were Bolivian Mafia and it was a dangerous topic.

  I was furious. London Mark, idiot that he is, did not see that there were strange goings on in this place and that trying to make a drug deal was definitely not in our best interest.

   I began to believe these women were hookers and Franco was their pimp and that we should be getting out of there as soon as possible and just then the waiter came over with our bill. It was 270 Bolivians for nine beers! Now, in American money, that weighs out to being about six or seven bucks for a Budweiser. That's a pretty high price even for an American nightclub, but in South America it's kin to paying, like ten bucks for a granule of salt. It was absolutely ridiculous. We asked Franco how much he paid for the bottle of rum and he said 30 Bolivians.

   No question, we garnered the gringo price. And we argued and we scowled , and they brought the manager, and Canada Mark and London Mark were spewing contempt, and a Bolivian was singing an AWFUL karaoke version of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," and Claudia was declaring "Eduardo, Eduardo!, and the Mafia guys had stopped pawing their hookers to watch what was happening with us, and it was all getting very, very ugly.

   "Let's pay this bill and get out of here," I said, and reached into my pocket to pull out only 50 Bolivianos, which, under normal circumstances would have been more than enough money for a whole night of boozing. But between us, we only had about 130 Bolivianos. Canada Mark tried to put it on his Visa card but they had no such service. Some more employees/managers came to the table and hovered over us and closed in and we all (I found out later) had claustrophobia and an imminent sense of danger. London Mark searched his wallet and remembered he had some hidden American money with him, and with much haggling over the exchange rate, we paid and got the fuck out of there.

   But. . .

   As we left the building, I heard Claudia shouting, "Eduardo, Eduardo," and the three of them followed us out. Let's go to "Love Planet" (Yes, that was the name of the bar) they said and tried very hard to convince us to continue drinking with them. (I suspect because they had not yet had the opportunity to slip the barbiturates in my beer) Claudia stepped away from the group and over to a telephone pole and called out to me like an small, annoying dog, yelping, yelping, "Eduardo, Eduardo - aqui, aqui," she said. I walked over.

   She said something in Spanish that I am nearly positive, by the way she drilled her brown eyes into me, that it was an invitation of the most intimate manner. I looked behind me to see Canada Mark receiving the same sort of attention from the other girl and London Mark talking to Franco. I hoped he wasn't still trying to buy pot. I knew we had to get out of there and so did Canada Mark. I told Claudia I was very tired (I was not) and that we were going home (we were not). I grabbed Canada Mark and we grabbed London Mark, and called for a cab.

   But the three of them blocked our way. Not in the "Holy Grail" "NONE SHALL PASS" kind of way. More like, "Please, please, don't leave us."

   "You idiot," I said to London Mark when we finally shoved through them and got into a cab, their fists lightly tapping on the windows, pleading looks in their eyes. "You were trying to buy pot in there? Do you know what kind of trouble we were in?

   "Not right away," he responded, "but once I did, I stopped trying."

   "What do we do now?" said Canada Mark.

   "I say we find a tourist bar and drink off this adrenaline," I said.

   And so it was agreed, and Canada Mark explained to the driver what we wanted which was a nice, safe, tourist bar, and he said "no problemos" which everyone says, whether or not it's a problem and they just worry about it later.

  London Mark, in his annoying and downgrading, voice said, "No puntas! No puntas!" I had already learned, that most of these cabbies are paid by the hooker bars to bring in the gringos. This happened to me in Puno where a cabby took me and a Dutch guy to a brothel. We stepped in and busted out laughing. We figured fuck it, we're on an adventure and strolled up to the bar and ordered two beers. A girl sitting in the couch behind me, and below the stool level, kept grabbing my ass for the duration of the beer. We left laughing.

   "No problemos," he said, "No puntas!"

   And we rode.

   And we rode.

   And the streets got darker.

   And still we rode

  And then he puled into an alley, leather black, and up to, what appeared to be a residence, unlit and stale, and started knocking on the door.

   "No, no , no , no, Amigo," shouted Canada Mark, "no no no no, we want discoteca!."

   "Si, si, si," says the cabby and continueed knocking. "Aqui," (here)

   "What the fuck is going on?" we complained to each other. "This is so weird," said somebody. All three of us shouted out to the cabby, "No no no no; not here. Nobody answered the door.

   He got in and we continued on. We went down another lifeless, dark street and once again he pulled over to a door that looked like a residence , completely unlit, and got out and started knocking.

   "Amigo, no no no." But he just turned and smiled and said, "Si, si , si."

   We were beginning to believe, as before, that this was some sort of setup for a robbery and started really working ourselves up over it and when the door finally did open we were terrified. I looked inside and saw a long corridor of a courtyard. And I did hear the steady "boom boom boom" of a disco room. But the corridor was lit only by a sliver of moon and I said to London Mark, "Let's you and I go in and leave Mark back here," and London Mark said, "Yeah, so he can listen to our screams when we get stabbed."

   So London Mark and I followed the proprietor through the courtyard corridor, to the left, up some stairs, and into the huge room. Yes, it was a disco. Yes, the music was pounding, the disco ball twirling, the light show glittering, the DJ grooving to his music behind the booth. But there was nobody else in there. As if it was a disco for ghosts.

  There was one bartender, one waitress, and one DJ - and that was it. It was strange. And there was a bit of bustling and excitement as we emerged into the room, like feeder mice being placed in a snake cage.

   So we left.

   The cabby wanted seven Bolivians and seven more to take us back home. We told him no way. He took us to these strange places and didn't listen to us when we said "Turisticas por favor," and he was part of this grand conspiracy that hides behind the smiles and the "Hola, amigos" that states that if you are a tourist you are born to be scammed.

   We were only giving him seven total. He said no, so we said fine and foolishly got out of the cab. He still wanted his initial seven , we said no way and he said, "Policia" and started knocking frantically on the front door of the disco again. "Policia" he kept saying.

   "Look guys, let's pay," I said, always the voice of reason.

  "NO way" said Canada Mark," he fucked us!"

   "Yeah, but when the cops come, it won't be very hard for them to find three lost drunk gringos. And when they come, who are they gonna back? Us, or the cabby? We're on another fucking continent man. They don't need probable cause"

   They both saw the intelligence behind my reasoning.

  The remaining three days in La Paz were exhilarating. I went out to the Valle de la Luna, which is so named, I think, because it's like the terrain on the moon. You get this eerie, Planet of the Apes feeling when you're walking through this terrain, as if a gorrilla on a horse would appear over the canyon at any moment. On the bus ride to the valley, Mark was eating an Espenada, these potato and chicken meat things packed inside a warm roll. The chicken is still on the bone and when I ate one the day earlier, dug into the bone with my teeth saying "What the fuck!"

   Well Mark was eating his and a kindly old man informed him that he was eating "Carne de Perro." Dogmeat. Mark's face became red as he coughed up what was in his mouth. It's very easy to believe, with the abundance of stray dogs in these parts, that these things sold on the streets were made from their stringy remains.

   I wanted out of La Paz after three days. I had become homesick for Cuzco and wanted to get back there. But it was over 20 hours away and I needed to get to Puno first. I arrived in Puno on Saturday afternoon, went to the internet cabina there, where, still under the heady spell of La Paz, wrote my cynical, yet hilarious, Travel Tips. It was in this Cabina where I made the acquaintance of an Australian woman/child (with the blood of Lebanese coursing through her follicles and retinas and pigment). We struck up a nice conversation and I invited her out that evening for cocktails and dancing.

   We went to the only disco in Puno and man we danced and we looked in each other's eyes and we got closer and a couple of times, in salsa fever, I put my hands on her waist.

  South Americans, as far as I have noticed, are quite open with their sexuality. PDA (Public Displays of Affection) is the norm here and in the bars and on the streets, couples have no qualms about mauling each other under the scrutiny of anyone within eyeshot. I have always been an anti-PDA guy. Maybe there's a hint of jealousy beneath that. It always seems to me that I notice the couples when I am single or lonely. Sometimes I am downright disgusted though, so I think maybe it's a combination of the two.

   But tonight, I was going to do in Rome what the Romans do. At the table we sat, resting from our vigorous dance. I put my hand on the back of her neck and started caressing here there. She responded favorably. I ran my fingertips across her cheek and to the area above her breasts and below her neck, which was not indecently exposed. She settled into her stool. Then I bent in and kissed her square and wet on the lips. She put her hands around my back and pulled me in. First I dug into her neck, biting a little, sucking a little.

   I felt liberated. I had never done this before. Never dug into a woman like this, unfettered, and in the public eye. I allowed myself to be completely aroused and when she burrowed into my neck, I opened my eyes and looked around. We had a small crowd, big grins, and wide eyes. I was not in the least bit embarrassed. I allowed my hands to twice "accidentally" brush against her breasts. She offered no signs of resistance.

   "Let's go to my room," I said.

   "OK," she said, and put on her coat. . .

   The next morning the tour company was to pick me up at 7:45am to bring me to the bus terminal en route to Cuzco. At 6am, Christina and I were awakened by the hotel staff. I put on pants and went to the lobby. Their, Nestor was waiting. The man to whom I had spoken about securing my bus to Cuzco. The man who said, "No problemos, no problemos," as is the custom here.

   "Senor," he said, "esta Problemos"

   It was all a scam. In what little I could make out of his bad English and my bad Spanish, HE didn't have a problem, but his boss did. And it was going to cost me 50 more dollars to get home.

   Asking for 50 American dollars for this bus ride is like asking for 50 dollars for a music CD with only one note on it. It was preposterous. He thought that maybe I didn't know the going rate.

   "No Amigo. This is already paid for, and you said, 'No problemos, I could come home later.'

   "Senor, esta problemos."

   Christina stepped out of the room now and offered lukewarm translations with her mediocre Spanish.

   They argued. I jumped in at times. I was furious. It was a scam, just like the cabby, just like the 270 Bolivians for nine beers. I was tiring of the onslaught.

  "Forget it!" I said, "I'll go down and book a bus elsewhere."

   "Ok," he said, "30 dollars!"

   "No!" I shouted, "Gratis! Gratis! It's already paid for!" Dejected, Christina, I return to my room.

   He peeped his head into the open door, "OK, ten dollars."

   "I thought it was 50!" I said, "First you say no problemos then you screw me out of the ride I paid for, and then you try to overbid me on the next one! I'm not giving you another dime amigo - fuck you!"

  He stood there, trying to decide something. I'm sure he only literaly understood a pittance of what I was saying, but he understood "fuck," and he understood my reddened face. "Ciao asshole" I barked and began packing my gear.

   I got a bus fare for 20 Soles (six dollars) and hung around Puno until 5pm when the bus arrived and took me home, arriving in Cuzco at three the following morning.

   I was very happy to be back in Cuzco.