Going to the USA for the fourth was like a John Melencampsong
Thrills
The Huayhuash in ten photos or one word: 예쁘다
The Huayhuash hike (pronounced why-wha-ash), located near Huaraz, Peru, attracts experienced hikers from all over the world and uh, also, me. The experience changed me forever, especially my appreciation of oxygen. Instead of boring you with thousands of words, I’ve selected ten photos to sum up the experience or one Korean word that I learned from one of my hiking […]
Mountain Turtle
Okay, so this humungo Huayhuash hike begins Friday morning, at 2 am when the van picks me up from the akilpo hotel and I take a seven hour journey to the trail head in Matacancha. (Thst is why I brought my butt donut). So what have I been doing while waiting? Two days of acclimating, wandering through cuy markets and […]
Butt donut, donkeys, and chutzpah.
What do you pack for an “You only Die Once” hike in the Andes?
Limathon
I hobbled over to the finish line near Lima’s Kennedy Parque on Sunday morning, where only one feline dared to be out. It was the Lima 2026 Marathon. This annual event brings throngs of people to the city. Some are serious athletes (like the winner below), but others go for the fun. The runners represented several countries as well as […]
Bucket list
I live as if you only die once. I can think of three vivid days when I thought I would die, of have that infamous kick- the-bucket day. Once in Vietnam, another in Thailand, the third, going inside an abandoned mine in Peru. There were countless defying death days in China, where I’d risk my life just by crossing the […]
Time Travel
A week has seven days, 168 hours or 10,080 minutes theoretically. But in Peru, you can cram in thousands of years. More than potatoes or ceviche stands or presidential candidates, this country has history. Start with sexy women…no, not those pious women but sexy women, the tourist-friendly pronunciation of Sacsayhuaman, the citadel on the northeorthen outskirts of Cusco, not Costco, […]
Cognitive Test for the Rest of Us
If you’re old enough that you still remember what a phone book and Facebook are, see if you can answer these questions: Where are your house keys? What’s the password to your Frequent Flyer account? What’s the 6 digit code the airline just sent to your email so you can access your account, but can only retrieve if you close […]
How not to get robbed in Chile
I sent a photo to the affordable tour guide in Valporaiso so he’d recognize me at the meeting place. His response? How about I meet you at the bus station? You look too Hollywood. You’ll get robbed by or scammed. That’s all it took for me to put personal safety over penny-pinching and sign up for a cram- in-a-can sardine […]
Lost Pérdida
The list was worthy of a world record. Umbrellas. Fountain pens. Three cell phones (actually two, as one was stolen), two favorite pair of sunglasses, one being retro Bausch Lomb scored for two dollars at an estate sale in Detroit, then left at a bus station in Vietnam, and another in a coffee shop in China, and a pair of […]