Dispatch Number 80 -The Guest

This August having spent the hottest part of the year in the Amazon basin I felt the urge to get out of that sticky oppressive part of Peru and clear my head in the Andes. In the foothills where grass meets granite the focus becomes the mountainous backdrop with Peruvian herders managing small flocks of sheep and cattle. The herders hiss and make guttural noises to manage the animals while tossing rocks and slapping them with thin branches. After long walks in the mountains I would take communal meals at the Inn where fellow travelers shared stories.

There was a colorful variety of guests staying at the Inn, Amy an American lawyer visiting Peru for two weeks who brought it all with her, not the work, but the weird energy of wound up America. She worked for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Environmental Division in Washington, D.C. who was a tense tightly wrapped person. When people said something she made a point to hear exactly the opposite. She had the knack of asking questions and ignoring the reply.

A person who had trouble accepting kindness like the time I gave her a tangerine as a simple food gift; eying my actions with suspicion, she struggled with a snotty "thanks" sounding like a college sorority girl who was worried her friends were watching. A person could not hold a conversation with her because she would parse one's words mercilessly derailing the "intent" of the conversation. She would search for fault and blemish in most everything, including herself.

The most colorful guests were friends of the owner, Alex a group of 2012 futurists that predicted impending doom in December 2012 that took a lot of natural jungle drugs to see through it all. It was such a colorful bunch I wrote a separate piece to be shared soon.

Two German women were among the guests at the Inn, who I suspected of being lovers (men always have to comment on this superficial bullshit) that complained of the local peasants doing their annual grass burn before seasonal rains. The confident one, Teresa worked for Airbus and described her world in extremes of 'the best and worst' despite common opinion. Germans tend to be some of the most inflexible and intolerant people I have met on my travels. The most offensive I met were two young German men teaching English in rural Ecuador who turned the motor off in my Land Cruiser as it warmed telling me as I watched from the balcony above they did not want to listen to it and authoritatively told me engines don't need to be warmed anymore. I was never asked to turn it off.

The women at the Inn were much more friendly, Teresa's unemployed girlfriend had a voracious appetite consuming anything left on the communal dining table, smothering it with hot sauce until she emptied the bottle.
The confident one went on, thick with pity about the burning hillside near the Inn, I wish someone would tell them to stop doing that.

The West always knows best. I tire of this type of traveler who accepts little of the places they visit, preferring high moral ground like fires, trash and toilet systems to bitch about. One needs to be cautious when moralizing against the countries they visit, because if everything was run to high standards like they are in the West, then these travelers would have no place to go. A principal reason to travel is to see different things and things done differently. I have found the Germans to be the most reluctant to accept this idea, they prefer the comfortable couch of criticism, railing against anything they set their attentions to. On a closing point, the practice of burning grass to set nutrients for the next crop has been an agricultural practice for over 11,000 years.

David
Lima, Peru