Sexy Woman

Ya, this got pretty long. I’ve confined myself to my room due to the effects of street food and drinking tap water… so I’ve been writing. Having only taken private spanish lessons (group starts next week) so far and made no effort to be social, I’ve spent the last 3 days mostly alone. As such, I am making an effort to develop an inner dialogue to keep myself entertained.. It might pop up occasionally (I JUST WANT TO BE LIKE ABED).4 days in, what’s the weirdest thing that's happened to me? I came home today to find that my room had been cleaned and my laptop had been turned off. Initially, this seemed only slightly odd. It’s not until I turned it on that things got weird. First of all, my desktop picture had been changed to one of the standard mac ones. Second, all my torrents had been paused. Finally… I get a portuguese error message whenever I try to load any facebook page followed by ChromeSetup.exe downloading itself. The chances that it’s a Trojan virus are somewhere around 100%. I just… I don’t even know. Am I going insane already? I thought I had at least another month before I started losing it. Oooh, also, anyone want a purse? These things are like 5 bucks… complete with pockets and everything. Really, anything knitted could be yours for next to nothing. I got an alpaca toque, hoodie and pajamas for about $22 (and probably got ripped off at that). 

As far as food goes, people ask me (I mean… I supposed they don’t really), “Torin, whats so great about a 7 soles lunch?”. Well, first of all, it’s 3 courses with juice for less than $3. But (arguably) more important, its an adventure! Knowing basically no words on the menu means I get to choose 1 of 3 mystery foods (it’s a set menu). Yesterday’s surprise appetizer was chicken foot soup. I was half way done the soup before I even noticed the feet..

Now, for those of you who decide to go travelling, you’re going to find people selling kebabs on the streets at night. Yes, they’re delicious, juicy and probably the best kebabs you’ll ever eat. Sure, they cost less than 30 cents. DO NOT EAT THEM. It’s not worth it. Well, actually, maybe it is? You’re going to get sick regardless, might as well enjoy the food while you can. I mean, you’ve just gotta build up a tolerance to the bacteria, right? I want that incorporated into my obituary.


Anyway, I spent the last 2 afternoons “birding”. This involved sitting with binoculars on a street overlooking someones rather wild looking backyard and becoming increasingly overwhelmed. Have you seen birds of Peru? Probably not, because none of you care in the slightest about birds. Its big though, 1800 bird species big. Finding a bird in it is like playing where’s waldo in a 640 page book, except that multiple people in the book look exactly like waldo but aren’t. Why? Just because (actually habitat, elevation, foraging strategies, location etc.). Oh, also, the picture of waldo isn’t what he actually looks like.

If you’re feeling adventurous, look up Black-throated flowerpiercer, Band-Tailed Seedeater (above), Chestnut-Breasted Mountain-Finch (an endemic – Woot!), Rufous-Breasted Chat-Tyrant, Golden-Billed Saltator, Rufous-Collared Sparrow and White-Browed Chat-Tyrant. Notice anything? Ya.. they all have the same color scheme. They were also all in this persons backyard. Actually pretty damn cool if you think about it in an evolutionary/ecological perspective (but I’ll move on). Here’s my birding spot, where I was joined by a dog for a while. Nice guy… hates cars.

As all the birds seemed to be flying into the hill/mountain behind me I decided to climb it. After skirting some gnarly barbed wire I found a tiny trail. Very cool place (forgot to take pictures)… but no new species. The top of the trail finally broke into a narrow clearing facing a series of rock walls. It turns out that my birding trail is actually used to avoid the entrance to the ruins of Sacsayhuaman (pronounced by white folk as “sexy woman”, hence the title). I guess it only took me 3 days to start breaking into places. With the entrance fee still in my wallet I spent a little time wandering the ruins. The view more than made up for the lack of birds on my treck up. Gotta say, I’m a big fan of being at the same level as the clouds.

The internet is undecided on the role of Sacsayhuaman in Incan history but it seems to have been both a temple and a fortress. At the least, it was the scene of one of the last big stand against the spanish by the Incas. Someone who knows history (Tegan), tell me about it please? 

The walls are made up of intricately placed boulders… and when I say boulders, I dont just mean big rocks. Some of these things are triple the height of a person yet perfectly fitted. Nobody really knows how they were built. Unfortunately, there isn’t much left of Sacsayhuaman as the Spanish tore down most of what they could move for their own buildings. For perspective:

Whats even better than crazy ruins, you ask? You guessed it, birds! I came for the Andean Lapwings (below) but stayed for an American Kestrel that perched 20 feet from me. Unfortunately, I managed to butcher essentially every shot. (Photography rant, please ignore).

What I can’t understand is people who swear by Manual mode regardless of the situation. For wildlife, it just doesn’t make sense. When you’re taking some artsy picture of a building, by all means, you’ve got the time to fiddle with every single option. But with something that is constantly moving in changing lighting, aperture priority seems to be the most reasonable way to go. Cameras these days are sophisticated enough that you should be able to trust them with setting 1 component of your photo. And if not, there’s exposure compensation and a whole bunch more. I say this only because I forgot that my Camera was on Manual from some stupid ruins and didn’t realize I was under/over exposing every shot until the lapwings flew away.

Also, I found an old manual 19mm lens back home that can almost always be counted on to produce a ton of lens flare. How much do hipsters pay to get that effect on their iphones?