The Brit told me about a school with a large field marked by large circles. The word 'muertos' is written large in one of the circles. The school is in a town frequented by mudslides and quakes, and afterwards the survivors need a place to pile the less fortunate. They use the large circle drawn in the school's field where the children play. What does everyone think of that? If you can't make up your mind about it, then I'm with you.
The final school was up a final mountain. Mark and I ran into the schools director on our way up. She didn't stop talking, which usually doesn't impress me, but when I'm hiking up my morning mountain talk is less then comfortable as nearly all my air is busy keeping my blood oxygenized and my brain un-passed out. She was a firecracker. The school is efficient, fun, even clean. The computer room has a little hand wash station with bars of soap. The teachers are greedy for help. They're building a garden behind the school to teach the kids nutrition and math and anything else. A little ambition goes a long way and it was a good ending to my time in the Andes.
Matt gave us that tour of the Chavin ruins. Its more or less a man made cavern of rocks and stones, carved by hand and 3000 years standing. In its day the priests of the temple drugged out their congregation and whatever visiting royalty and blew their minds with conch trumpet blowing and incredible sculptures of their maddening gods. Thats how they gained control of the Peruvian region without lifting a spear. Something like that. No one's really sure. But they left behind some cool stuff. The pic is of a statue of their major god, a grinning feline carved into a flat slab of stone and hidden in the temples labyrinth.
Then there's the trip back to Lima. I might have taken the long way. Perhaps I passed Lima on the way to Arequipa, hung around with Europeans, watching the World Cup final and drinking. Then I could have gone white water rafting before hitting up Cusco to enjoy the food and debauched atmosphere of hostel bars. Maybe I ran into a swiss lumberjack and ... holy hell, is that Richie? It just might be. And maybe we hung out with some rockers that night and passed around a strat and smoke and such. And its quite possible that I took a long ride in the front of a bus up the pan-american highway between ocean and desert and mountains. The fog zones are hypothetically killer, at 70 mph passing oil trucks on a cliff edge. And maybe, just maybe, I chill out in a dessert oasis and go sand boarding with a lovely German woman and a cadre of beautiful internationals and we all faded off into the evening on pisco sours. It could just have been a string of phantoms, but either way here are some pics.
In Lima we do an hour of paperwork in about 12 hours - bure-fucking-aucracy - and wave the ministry farewell. Goodbye Ministry. May you get over your bullshit. I like that. And I coast on through the remainder of my Peruvian days with a pair of Taiwanese women, drinking and eating and perusing piles of skulls in the Catholic as all hell monasteries. One of the ladies suggests a buffet joint called Embrujos. The food was homely and plentiful and I looked forward to my parents fridge. My last day was oddly fog-less as I watch Kathy and Yvon, the Taiwanese, parasail over the cliffs and beaches, and with my last night the Brit and I recorded stupid songs we made up and smoked his cigarettes.
The tough times were left in the distance behind me as I transformed into a tourist. I loved it. Those kids in the mountains are on my mind. I did not learn enough. Its when I close my eyes and drift through the images that I get a clue. It was sweet and heavy. But I can't keep it in line or make up my mind about it. One more post coming.
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