After a scrumptrilescent final Law-type Xmas party, during which J. Duckles proved himself to be more than just a pretty name, I did a spectacularly hungover job of throwing things into the Ninety Seven Litre bag (This was likely the worst packing job I´ve ever pieced together, which is saying a lot... Seriously, in what state of mind was it a good idea to bring the same number of pairs of sunglasses as shorts (two) when moving to Africa, which is apparently hot. And furthermore, to think it a good idea to bring seventeen (!) books along). The ratio of minutes spent packing to months away sat at about an even 1:1 (9, by the way).

From there it was to Flo Rida for an impossibly cute Finley family Xmas vacation featuring 3 ridiculously, ridiculously rad nieces who refer to me as Uncle Dude (no big deal). From there it was to the Bible belt of the U-Nited States to visit Cousin Nick in Chahlotte, North Car-ah-lahna. Sadly, much like Taiwan, Charlotte is very likely not featured in ¨1000 Places to See Before You Die¨. That is unless you are a big fan of (and this is only slightly hyperbolic) pink churches the size of football stadiums. We saw one that had six (!) separate driveways leading to the church. God Bless America.

From Carolina, apparently the cheapest way to get to Peru is to first fly to Newark, and since I love Newark, I decided to stay on for a few extra days. Actually though, I´ve never been to Newark (unlike Dave Levin, who can ably tell you that Newark Penn Station is not in New York City) and sadly had to stay in Newark´s ugly, backwards cousin, New York City. FML.

I guess NYC is an OK place to spend a few days though (I´m not going to claim this is an original thought, but I think we can all agree that it´s time the internet gods (Heintzman I´m looking in your direction) created a sarcasm font). In what other city would Sam the Vegetarian Dosa Street Vendor Man give me his card, which includes such useful pieces of information as a map of NYC, his email address, phone number and fax number? Only in New York does it seem possible that I would fax a street vendor to get myself Indian street food. Progress!

I went on a bit sports binge on my trip through the States, catching the Penguins-Lightning game in Tampa Bay (I was able to sneak down to the first row, close enough to the action that I was able to hear Sidney Crosby tell Stephane Veilleux to (earmuffs) ¨go fuck yourself, bitch¨ after the latter knocked his helmet off), the Saints-Panthers game in Charlotte (This was supposed to be for 16-0, but instead was just a terrible game... Who dat!) and the Rangers-Stars game at Madison Square Garden (Can you epitomize NYC any better than with the abuse Mike Ribeiro took from the fans after delaying the play for lying on the ice after being slashed in the throat? ¨Get off the ice pusssssaaaaayyyy!¨I Heart New York. Amazing arena by the way, and we were in the 4th row. Thanks again Vicky, you rule, stay cool)

I arrived in Lima, Peru at midnight with no knowledge of the city beyond what my stalwart brother Christian had relayed to me from his time there (And I quote, ¨I remember it smelled bad, I was slightly terrified and that I didn´t sleep because the people in the bed next to me were having sex¨.. thanks bra!) or of the language spoken in it (Spanish, I´m told) beyond what I retained from my month in Ecuador in 2005... In order of impressiveness, the numbers up to 30 (although I can´t stop saying 5 twice because my first foray into Spanish was from ¨Pretty Fly for a White Guy¨ by Offspring), ¨voya regressa¨meaning ¨I will return¨, and ¨muy chachaqui¨meaning ¨Very hungover¨. Other than a tour of San Francisco church, which features the library I will one day build with my bare hands in my own home, seen here: http://www.tomisimo.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/monastary-library-lima.jpg, I regret to report that Lima sort of sucks.

Fortunately for Peruvians, however, the Incas (which means ¨Kings¨, by the by) once resided in their fine land, and things pick up hugely after one leaves Lima. I went on a few overnight buses (the terrifyingness of which was shown by the bus drivers who frequently cross themselves, but the terrifyingess of which is dulled because the busrides feature games of bingo! with the prize of free bus trips. Infinitely fun) on my way to get to Cusco, stopping in Huacachina and in Arequipa.

Huacachina is a very cool little town sitting beside some surprisingly amazing sand dunes and a little oasis. It is here that one can pay a deranged Peruvian with a death wish to strap you into a dune buggy, constantly stop the dune buggy to check if the tires are still on the dune buggy and thus terrify the bejesus out of you, and then to hurtle with reckless abandon off sand cliffs while laughing and screaming Spanish words you don´t understand at you. Needless to say, it was pretty rad. They also brought you to the top of the massive dunes and gave you a piece of driftwood with velcro on it to use to sandboard to the bottom. Amazingly fun. I have some great pictures of the dunes and of sandboarding, but I appear to have accidentally deleted them so I will post them later. In fact, I have no idea how to operate this computer or this blogspot, and am slowly coming to grips with the fact that I´m just not a natural liveblogger. So, the pictures below are in reverse order, my sincere apologies.

Arequipa is a cool little town that exhibits, what I´m told, some genuine Peruvian culture. I only spent a day here and thought the architecture, food, etc.. (whatever it is that makes up a culture) were all fantastic and thus I guess I like Peruvian culture. But what I liked even more than the culture was the garbage truck innovation that I witnessed. In Arequipa, the garbage truck plays Beethoven over a loudspeaker. How awesome is that? City planners should have to travel the world so they can steal great ideas like this. Whatever city commits to playing Jann Arden, seen in all her sultry glory here: http://www.onlineseats.com/upload/concerts/830_con_jann.jpg, over a loudspeaker while picking up my garbage can expect to have a loyal, tax-paying citizen in me. This is despite the fact that Jann has now, insensitively, rejected my facebook friendship request not once, not twice, but thrice!

From there it was to Cusco, which is a gorgeous city in Southern Peru that serves as the hub for treks and trips into the Andes and to see Incan ruins such as Machu Picchu. The British couple I was with, Tim and Georgia, and I had a slightly inauspicious start to our stay in Cusco, as the British hostel owner was a bit off. After shaking Tim´s hand, but refusing to shake mine because of ¨the half English, half French, Canadian bullshit¨ he regaled us with his life story, and how his Peruvian Baby´s Momma had recently dumped him, was suing him for all his money and had sent three goons to beat him up the night before. While it was unclear whether they had come to that same hostel to beat him up on the previous night and thus whether I should have been terrified, what was clear was the fresh ink on his arm that attempted to cover up his devotion to ¨Maria¨. Either he couldn´t afford a better cover-up, or he´s already met a girl named ¨Marla¨, but let´s just say this guy was pretty special. It was at this point that Georgia burst into tears.

Cusco quickly got a lot better, a very fun town that I wish I had been able to spend more time in. However, I really wanted to hike in the Andes and booked a 5-day trip that ultimately brought me to Machu Picchu. This hike wasn´t the actual ¨Inca Trail¨ directly to Machu Picchu, but did travel along some of the 27 000km (that´s not an exaggeration) of Inca trails near Cusco in the Andes. It was called the Lares (which literally means ¨In the middle of nowhere¨) Trek, and I am told it has far better views than the actual Inca Trail. Furthermore, whereas 500 people start the Inca Trail each day, we didn´t see a single other group of hikers the entire 5 days, so I was in great spirits.

There were 9 of us on the hike, with two guides, one of whom was the incomparable philosopher Jose Luis. With gems such as ¨The reever, eet ees like the massage for the brain¨, ¨Thee headache and thee nosebleed, don´t worry, eet ees normal¨ and ¨You look very like gaylord in that peecture!¨, there is nobody else I would want leading me over mountains at 17000 feet.

Hiking in the Andes far exceeded my expectations. It is the rainy season, so we had some cold, wet hikes and some of the views were obscured, but there is nothing like being surrounded by huge mountains and sheer cliffs that have banks of clouds at their peaks. I absolutely loved it.

Machu Picchu itself... wow. We got pretty unlucky with the weather (A Japanese tour guide to me: Of my 40 trips to Machu Picchu, this is 40th best), but it cleared up enough in the afternoon to bask in its amazingness. In fact, it was the perfect measure for my ¨Eet ees so facking beauty-ful mehn¨ scale. Allow me to introduce.

There is a half-OK movie called ¨The Beach¨ you probably have heard of starring Leo DiCaprio as a backpacker who happens upon a hidden paradise in the Thai islands. I´ve duped myself into watching it many times, wanting to watch this movie about the traveler´s dream of finding an unspoiled paradise that nobody else knows about, and then I´m inevitably disappointed when Leo turns himself into a video game and I remember how much the second half of the movie sucks. But for some reason, this one line from the movie has involuntarily stuck with me. When they first find ¨the beach¨, the French guy Leo travels with runs and does a somersault into the sand before breathlessly saying in his smarmy accent ¨Eet ees so facking beauty-ful mehn!¨ For some reason, whenever I see something incredible now, my mind adopts a terrible French accident and I mutter that to myself. I can´t say I´m happy about this, it just happens. I´ve also found that the more time I am spellbound by a place or a sight, the more times I mutter it. And while it has been pointed out to me that this is likely an indication that I have OCD, I think it´s a pretty good indication of how amazing a place is. Well, Machu Picchu, despite the rain, got about 3 ¨Eet ees so facking beauty-ful mehn¨s. Trust me, that is a very good score. If you haven´t been to MP, you really should. Pictures don´t do it justice.


But, just in case it does do it justice, here are a few pictures, in reverse order whoops...

Standard MP shot

Woooow
Mailmanning Old Tavern Whiskey in front of MP, just like the ancients would have wanted
Some other Inca ruins in Ollantaytambo, also amazing
The town of Ollantaytambo
Ollantaytambo
The Lares Trek
Lares
Lares
Lares
Llamas destroying our campsite
Llamas On A Waterfall - Picture Caption and/or my Band´s name

Lares

Inca Ruins at Pisac

View of Cusco from the batshit fuckin loco British guy´s hostel

A typical sight in Lima

I am awesome

Report on Bolivia will be next

Cecil Barrington out, boop.

Hey Everyone, Come Look at How Much Fun I´m Having

Years and Years ago (OK, three and a half) I embarked on a misguided attempt to chronicle my spoiled year of travels to parts of Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia on an impossibly cute travel blog known as Boy Meets World. And while to the unwashed masses Boy Meets World will always be about the Thank Goodness Its Friday travails of a puberty-ridden youngster played by Ben Savage (younger brother of Fred!) as he attempts to navigate his adolescent years with a delectable girlfriend by the name of Topanga, to approximately four people it´s a name that only brings about memories of following the admittedly self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing, and probably selfish travails of a youngster named Dunc while he attempts to navigate his post-adolescent years without accidentally lighting himself on fire while dancing with Kenyans around a fire in the African brush or while craashing hot-air balloons.

I still think about that year all the time, obsess over the memories, think about the lessons learned and name-drop the hell out of all the rugged, unique places I went no big deal. For (double) example, I learned about the peaks and valleys of traveling alone while I was in Greece, about the magic of Africa, about the bizarre and definitely not recommended job of teaching Engrish in Taiwan, about one of the most oppressed populations in the world while traveling in Burma, about the hedonistic joys of Thailand and the addiction of scuba diving... I could go on and on. And if you don´t think I will, then you don´t know me well enough.

There was also learning about how I can never extensively travel for a long period of time with someone who doesn´t know Seinfeld (I´m sorry Dave, but it´s true, you have no idea how many hilarious coincidenes we missed out on laughing at because of your arbitrary and capricious lack of Seinfeld knowledge), about the joys of spending a long time in one place in Thailand and the frustration with not spending nearly enough time in many places in Vietnam, and about how incredibly (and downright awkwardly) much I cherish my friends and family while I was alone in Greece and then throughout the rest of the year, to the point where FOMO now basically runs my life.

Boy Meets World helped me realize and retain a lot of those lessons, so I figure that, other than severely embarrassing myself or irreparably harming my career opportunities in the future, which are distinct possibilities, there isn´t much to lose in continuing BMW (I never noticed those were the initials... I would have preferred VOLVO, but preferring Volvos to BMWs is a family curse, right up there with clammy hands and admiration for the Boney M Christmas CD). And hey, I´m sure it will be a pretty differing blogging experience... a lot has changed since 2007! For example, my Dad knows how to turn off our house alarm AND how to use an ATM; I learned what the word ¨scrump¨ means; Sebi Goodfellow was diagnosed with Asperger´s; and we said goodbye to George W. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/royaltech/3214948026/)

Hopefully it will be fun for me to look back on in the future and fun for the four people who have committed to reading it, or what I like to call, ¨critical mass¨. The 4 include the 350 pound Peruvian woman in the concrete hut internet cafe I´m currently sitting in who keeps speaking rapid Spanish and using ¨I Love You¨ sign language, Mama Fin, Papa Fin (we will know my Dad is one of the readers if any of the comments include short and to the point messages written in all capital letters. I turned on his Capslock 6 years ago and he either can´t figure out how to turn it off, hasn´t noticed it´s on or simply enjoys the command it gives him in conversations. DEAR DUNC, COME HOME AND HELP ME MOVE THE COUCH, CALL YOUR MOTHER, LOVE DAD.... there are just so many reasons to love my father), and the waitress/caterer at my sister´s wedding who told me after my speech that she would totally follow me on Twitter if I ever twatted.

So yes, I´ve gone away. I´m doing my last semester of law school at the University of Cape town in South Africa. Luckily though, it doesn´t start until februrary, so I had the opportunity to come down here to South America before heading over. I chose South America merely because I was randomly typing in flights on the most incredible website known to man, other than someecards.com of course, which is kayak.com (this website scans all the cheap flgiht websites. IT is a gift to you from me. You deserve it if you have made it this far without lighting yourself on fire) and came across a $400 flight that was $1000 cheaper than the next cheapest flight. Hoenstly, I still get incredible joy out of finding that flight. Imagine the look on Paige´s face if she came across a barrel full of sugar packets, or of Rich Lib´s if he walked into a room of mirrors, or of Matt Jet Jewell´s if he was electronically sent a perfectly detailed, airtight itinerary of plans. That was the look on my face.

After South America, Africa will feature some trips to Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana and hopefully up Mt Kilimanjaro, and who knows what else. Feel free to join, I´m done school in late May.

Anyways, I will get into some reasonably hilarious stories soon, but I am woefully underprepared for a 5-day jaunt that starts tomorrow in the mountains to get to Machu Picchu (no biggie). So now I must go locate shoes.

With a love that will ring throughout the ages,
D. Charles George