Viva Peru

I am in Lake Huacachina, Peru. I wish I had time on the computer to upload pictures, because it´s a tiny little village that surrounds a lagoon, with giant sand dunes all around. The main activity in Huacachina is to take a snowboard and ¨sandboard¨ down the dunes. I am still cleaning sand out of my ears, nose, and other places less mentionable.

I ran into a guy at the hostel here who graduated from UVA a couple years after I did. He is in the internet cafe with me right now and just got upset because the stock that he owns in his former employer has gone down. That seems to be a theme here, as almost all of the Americans I´ve met in Peru have been recently laid off from their jobs. Or have quit.

I spent four days in Lunahuana at the orphanage where Wynn works. The kids were awesome. Much of the time spent with them consisted of me trying to figure out how exactly they were making fun of me. One of the best experiences was washing my clothes by hand. I thought I was performing admirably, until three of the girls volunteered to help me as they laughed. Wynn translated for me: "Poor Ricardo, he doesn´t even know how to wash his clothes." When they asked me how I washed my clothes at home, I sputtered out some combination of "Not like this" and "I don´t." That was probably one of the least embarrassing statements I made in Spanish while visiting there.

We played an expectedly fun and rousing game of soccer one afternoon. I was lucky enough to be the goalie for most of it, and tried to get the kids to teach me fun things to yell at the opponents. The kids respected the dorky, pale, mosquito-bitten gringo shouting "I AM THE WALL!!!" as the ball zip passed me into the goal. Those guys were not messing around, but I managed to make a couple saves.

And now I think I must go. I don´t think I have any Peruvian coins left, and the signs here (and the grumpy Peruvian man) have repeatedly mentioned that payment must be in coins. Which makes sense, except for the fact that there is only one ATM in the town and it spits out bills in denominations of 20, 50, and 100. And people always ask for small bills. And the ATM is not working currently. If no one ever hears from me again, I am in Lake Huacachina, Peru, and I am trying to work off a debt of 16 American cents.