Hobo Drifters

the hobo drifters return (some of them, and some new ones)

South America. more specifically, peru. Drifting once again are Ashley and Josh. New to this tribe of vagrant travelers... Seth"Z" Jaramillo and some guy known only as Fernando (which may or may not be his real name). (ben and jason have taken a sabatical from the homeless world and are currently doing other things that i will allow them to account for). some technological lack-of advancements have so far disbanded any attempts to post pictures and videos... so for now... words. put together to make sentences (sort of). top to bottom left to right. you´ll get used to it. Also... pictures stolen, blatently, from the internet.

we arrived in peru on october 3rd (when i say we i mean ashley seth and I. fernando was currently unaccounted for, lost in limbo somewhere between the two Americas in an outrageous scheme to save 40 dollars.) Despite Z´s fluent spanish and the combined mental efforts of the three of us, we immediately got hustled out of 45 soles and took a dark cab ride into the oblivion of Lima. Hotel España. our home for the next couple days.

Lima. 8 million people. very dirty. but awesome in it´s own way. they have a chinatown (where I did not see any chinese people). lots of little peruvians though. lots and lots of little peruvians. nice people for the most part. What really impressed me was what they would try to sell. one lady was selling strictly knee braces. another, inflatable turtles. a couple times i saw people with bathroom scales trying to sell me how much i weigh. one that really stood out was the guy selling homemade marionettes. my attempt to describe such a scene will surely fall short but try to imagine... he probably had thirty of these things hanging. the bodies made from a single peice of cloth. heads from different toys (including barney and barbie and others) crudely sewed on. complete with strings attached to rings for your fingers. a small child staring in awe while the vendor lack-lusterly jiggled the strings as if to say "come on, buy me." I was impressed by the creative entreprenuership of the limeños.

Our visit to lima was not complete without a ride on a filthy city bus to miraflores. where we would begin our search for the long lost fernando. miraflores was obviosly the wealthy part of town. as we rode from our hotel in central lima we saw the scenery obviously change from shanty to much less shanty. At the lighthouse park near the beach we asked "ha visto una gringo alto, gigante" to no avail.

(to be continued)