I reread the email again thinking it was a mistake. WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT THE DEPARTUTRE DATE HAS BEEN DELAYED BY FOUR DAYS The trip being a four-day freight ferry excursion from Peurto Montt to Peurto Natales, Patagonia, where I’d be unplugged for ninety-six hours and float past the fjords of southern Chile. The trip being the linchpin […]
Patagonia by bus.
Chile Christmas
If Santa is going to gift you the stomach flu, Peurto Varas Chile is a great place to unwrap it. Yes, I’ve been sick, my ailments beginning in Santiago and following me all the way to the lake district, specifically, Peurto Varas, where I’ve been nestled under a thick down blanket for three days. Life is good….even when it’s not. […]
read leer
The news headlines are like a toilet that won’t flush. Here’s what I’ve been reading instead.,
Thanks Gracias
Sometime today, between the Lions game and second slice of pie and melting jello or dressing that isn’t as good as your mom’s, we say thanks. We pray for parking spots and good lab results and for lost dogs to be found and for wars to end and for willpower to lose the ten pounds we put on after the […]
Muerta
“Don’t take pictures of the birds!” my guide warned, waggling his finger at my phone. “You will carry home bad spirits.” So that explained a few things. I snapped away anyway, countless photos from Lima’s largest and oldest cemetery, the Presbitero Matias Maestro. Located in one of those neighborhoods in Lima that tourists seldom visit, the cemetery is full of […]
Church
Ok. I work at a Christian school. Along with grading papers, I am required to go to church– but not at the same time. For a while, I went to a bilingual church in Miraflores near the Malecon. It met in a four star hotel, lets call it Holiday Heaven, where I hoped to sneak in a buffet breakfast before […]
69 after 60
Am I too old for this,? I asked myself as I grappled for my morning pills and supplements in my travel pill case. I was about to venture Laguna 69, a hiking destination near Huaraz, Peru, and about half a mile in the sky. I checked my supplies: water, fiber-rich trail mix, several sole coins for toilet fees, my tried […]
Getting High
There’s a commercial for Puma shoes that plays a lot in Peru. It features a song about “getting high” one gets from the adrenaline rush of running. I don’t run, but I’m getting addicted to the thrill of hiking a huge mountain (metaphorically or physically) and the vibes felt afterwards. And in Peru, there’s a lot of getting high to […]
Yungay
It was a few days past my 9th birthday. I was probably eating the last of a Bill Knapp’s chocolate cake when it happened. A mudslide triggered by a massive earthquake wiped out the town of Yungay, Peru. May 31, 1970. Many children were spared due to a circus being in town that day. They received free tickets and we’re […]
The Fourth Time I thought I would die: Tarapoto
OK. When I think about different ways to die, there is one that sounds worse than all of them. Not an earthquake or being being bit by a shark, which only kills six people a year, whereas forty-three folks die each year taking a selfie. Don’t ask me how I know. What scares me? It’s dying of boredom at Suncrest […]