I'm back home. There are some pictures from the trip up. Go look. Here's a little tale about me walking around in Cusco one afternoon.

Every adventurer needs a goal for their quest. A McGuffin, as Hitchcock would put it. Being in Peru, I couldn't find many things I would easily be able to find at home. There were no Wal-Mart's or McDonald's, there weren't big corporate chains everywhere. How am I supposed to tell a story if I can't even find myself a McMuffin?

One thing I was unprepared for was that the air was so dry. After a week in the desert followed by a week in the Andes, in thin air, my lips got really chapped. Not just chapped, but flaming.

Now I had a goal, so I set out on a quest to find some chapstick. I went to two or three stores and came up empty handed. Now my Spanish isn't very good. I can handle most simple things, but a full fledged conversation is beyond my reach. My vocabulary is rather limited. In most cases this is okay, so when I don't know a word but I needed to say something I always end up resorting to gestures, and most of the time this worked out okay.

Well, I wanted chapstick. After going through my third store, unsucessfully. I decided that I would need to ask someone. I found a sales girl.

Me - "¿Dónde está el Chapstick?"
Salesgirl - "¿Qué?"
Me - "Chapstick."

As you can tell this was going nowhere.

So I pointed to my lips, puckered up and made a gesture. Suddenly the salesgirl got excited and nodded her head and led me off. She thought she knew what I was asking for. Now I know everyone sees what is coming, but at the time I didn't. I can be rather dim. Basically I got taken to the makeup section and was shown some lipstick.

Me - "Gracias."

The next store was the same type. A few blocks later, I came across a pharmacy. Surely, my luck was changing, and sure enough it did. After being shown some glittery, vanilla flavored, girl's lip gloss, the clerk revealed a beautiful tube of Blistex. I got excited.

Me - "¿Cuánto?"
Clerk - "Quince."
Me - "Sí."

Now in all honesty, I was a little too happy to have found my goal. I was also thinking a lot about having to speak in Spanish. So I didn't spend any time thinking about the exchange rate, until it was too late.

I paid five dollars for a single tube of chapstick, in a country where this same amount of money could have gotten me a room for the night.

That's the last time I give myself lip service.