Saturday 17 May 2008

The difference between men and women...well...men, women and geeks

As I dunked, what was probably the only spoon available in the village, into my large bowl of porridge I readied my taste buds for a taste sensation. Having walked, now 4 days through the Peruvian wilderness I was starting to really enjoy some of the slants on regular cooking and having stopped in a quaint little village, I really expected something special of this meal.

Lifting the hot silky broth to my lips the spoon quivered and then steadied and as it hit my lips. Gruel!...Actually that term is not entirely accurate. Gruel would be the the high class brand name of the meal I was attempting to eat. I`m pretty sure my would have had a similar font on the outside packaging but would have had a name like, Gruei or Cruel. Or perhaps simply ¨Clag¨. I'm pretty sure the primary school glue children so loved to eat from the age of 5, probably had 1 major fact in common with my meal, namely 97% of the total volume of both was flour and water.

I added enough sugar to make mud taste like honey, unfortunately this made sweet glue, in fact,it reminded me of the sugar soap used to clean walls before you repaint them. With the whole town (8 people) watching, I smiled rolled my eyes into the back of my head and tried to think of a better time...a better place.In the remembering, I took myself back to a place where food was a thing of myth...and that meant my own fantasy land.

(insert stereotypical camera affect for "memory scene" here)

Slowly wending our ways through the pampas in Bolivia, John and I decided to tackle one of the big questions in life. ¨Which endangered animal would be the most delicious¨*. After some 10 minutes of talking, all the girls on the boat were thoroughly disgusted whilst John and I were watering at the mouths. The two pommy lasses I had spent a week or so with went from friends to enemies and John´s girlfriend, almost disowned him. It was this point that we decided that some sensitivity was required, so we changed the question to ¨which animal,that you have seen whilst in the Pampas, would be the best to eat¨**...More fury. Replaying the thought of delectable Bolivian morsels in my mind, with the aim of conning my stomach into eating glue soup, I suddenly and unexpectedly identified one of the key differences between men and women. The ¨which animal is best to eat game¨ is generally not one approved of by the fairer sex.

Thinking back on the incident I wondered how the girls would have felt about my meal the previous night. Having discussed at length which animal would be most delicious it was quite apt that only a week or two later I would get the opportunity to eat one of my childhood pets. As a happy young 10, or so, year old I owned at last two guinnea pigs...5 1/2 at one stage (if you include the time when the mother gave birth to a large brood and the father half ate one).

Wandering into the same "glue soup village" the night before I was offered the opportunity to snack on one of my child hood friends and I took the opportunity eagerly. With the little critter boiled peeled rubbed down with local spices and deep fried in a pan I was convinced the KFC (Kentucky Fried Cuy***) would be a delectable morsel.. and in some ways I was right. The herbs were the perfect combination making a veritable party in mouth... the down fall was the Guinea pig itself. Whilst most of us would consider the little guys rather chubby, you note, after one has been gutted in front of you, that most of there weight is organs and little meat is left after the removal of these....none the less the smell of the meat cooking was intoxicating.

Having been give the GP, I looked at it for some time trying to asses how one was to eat such a meal. With the same 8 eager faces watching me, one of the ladies soon realised that I was a little confused without a knife and fork and thus produced a carving knife and the one fork of the village. Happily deciding to get a taste of this new culinary sensation I ran my knife across the flesh and noted something very peculiar...nothing. The flesh was completely unscathed.If the Peruvian army was ever to go to war, I would recommend the cover there vehicles and men with guinnea pig meat. I attempted to cut the animal a half a dozen more times and still I was unable to even scratch the surface. Eventually, frustration and animal instinct overcame my manners and I grabbed the GP with my hands and bit it. The immediate taste was quite deletable although removing my teeth I noted that they too had done little damage. I altered tactics and peeled off the vulcanised hide of the little critter. After all this work I hoped the meat would taste new and different, perhaps as fantastic as the sea turtle I ate in Northern Queensland....Nope! After all this hard work the meat tasted like, you guessed it, chicken.

I did, eventually, work out a method to consume the little guy but as I took my last mouthful of meat the guide turned to me and said "you do know you have to eat everything¨. I looked at the large A5 sheet of guinea pig skin. I considered asking if i could take it home to make a guinea pig skin rug or perhaps use it to craft the rubber for a spear gun or slingshot, but I knew I wasn't getting out of this one. After every mouthful I consumed one of my potatoes to stall the rubber band consumption. After 15 or so minutes one of the locals noticed how quickly I was eating the potatoes and thus assumed i must be enjoying them. He wandered over and asked in Quechuan (not even Spanish) if I would like some more. Having no idea what he said I politely smiled and said, unwittingly, "yes". Before I could choke down another slice of a substance which would have been more at home in a Goodyear factory, 12 more potatoes appeared. The challenge was now dizzying. To cut a long story short I managed to con one of the locals to share my potatoes and the guinea pig....well, I eventually choked it down...but I shan't say that it was with pleasure nor without any concern. Having consumed such a substance I wondered what the... um ..long term effects on the ..er... digestive system would be.

I shuddered a little at the memory and snapped back to reality. The bowl was now half empty and whilst the thought of delectable nedangered spcies had helped me somewhat, the memory of the last nights meal was more powerful and reminded that I could not be beaten. I slurped down the last of the glue and as I placed by spoon in the bowl the guide turned and a said "Next we have cooked you corn, potatos and carrots, you want more yes?". With a gut full of glue the concept was revolting...of course not wanting to offend I said "yes".

He spun around instantly and brought a bowl to me. To my distress it suddenly became evident that we had crossed our wires. What he meant to say was "you have potatoes, corns and carrots coming would you lie some more glue?". ...I was beaten. Finally the stomach had to take control and manners had to be thrown aside "I'm NOT eating any more". I passed the meal on and entered a trance like state to prepare my body for the incoming mass of boiled vegetables.

With the meal done, the mule loaded, I ,as usual, wandered off on my team and sucked up the surroundings. Walking through some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen I soon found myself assessing the environment, the fold lines, the faults, the fluvial processes....oh my god, I was applying the knowledge gained from my Geology and Geography degrees. I tried to shake off the feeling of being a nerd but then realised that in my down time I was also reading the lord of the rings trilogy. So having spent all day looking at old ruins (which is to say archaeological sites...oh I have a studied archaeology as well)and doing geomorphological, fluvial and geological assessments of the region I spent my time out reading fantasy novels. When the idea hit me, I sighed... and adjusted my prescription glasses (NERD!). I started to wonder if Frodo Baggins had the same issues on his mighty journey to Mordor but doubted that his meeting with the elves ever forced him to eat fried rodent(Geek!). I suddenly found myself alone in the wilderness with my own nerdy thoughts festering in my over sized head.

It was then I came to this realisation. Whilst the Hill Billy Jim-esque beard, the wanting to eat all animals in site with BBQ sauce and my general lack of hygene made me very unwomanly, I could hardly put myself in the category of "man" given my all too dorky ways.




*The correct answer as we soon decided was the Panda. An here are the major reasons.
1) It is quite big and thus not too fiddly to eat.
2) Have you seen it`s enormous and thus undoubtedly all too succulent rump that it only uses for sitting. If that isn´t as tender as Argentinian Prime grain fed steak I don´t know what is.
3) They only eat bamboo shoots...and you can´t tell me you don´t enjoy that little crunch every time you eat Chinese food.
4)It would almost certainly be prepared by the Chinese thus providing a multitude of options. Panda in a black bean sauce, Mongolian Panda and my favorite Peking Panada.

** At the time I think I had a convincing argument for Capybara spare ribs being the best possible meal, but given later developments I`m not sure I can back this up.

***Spanish for Guinea pig.

Friday 2 May 2008

Too much to say with too little time to write...

Looking back at my last post it would seem that almost 1 month has shot by and now the problem of recounting everything becomes quite the issue….so I´ll try in reverse order.

Meeting a couple of the lads (Gareth and Rick) from Lima, in La Paz we boarded a bus and headed for the salt flats with all the supplies necessary, namely fireworks, booze (most importantly tequila) and children´s figurines. As we would later find things like a torch may have been a good option but just didn´t seem all that important when holding 2 packets of Saturn sky rockets, a cone head and a box of Tongan Festivals, touted to shoot 25 flaming balls (¨warning: light and get away¨ were the only instructions to be found on the pack) into the night. AWESOME!!!!


Having boarded the car for the 4 day expedition, we instantly found our driver and the cook to be somewhat morose, despite the offer of coca leaves and banana cake, which they of course took without even a hint of a smile.

The all too expansive salt flats were truly amazing if not only for the chance to do tequila slammers using a 1m high pyramid of salt. We thought the driver may have laughed…he didn´t!

The rest of the trip, despite the staff, was a load of fun. Hiking a vertical distance of 2km up to 5600m (my new record) was quite a highlight especially given my last batch of altitude sickness at 5300m. Having spoken to a few doctors on a subsequent trip it would seem that me having ataxia and being sick for 4 days meant I was in a pretty bad place on that trip… This was made only too clear when one of the docs stated. ¨Did you have clear cerebral fluid coming out your nose, that would have been the next sign….(sigh) isn´t naivety a blessing.

Before the Salt flats I took a 3 day river trip down the river Benni (the least impressively named river in the world by my estimations) with 2 English lasses (Jo and Jen), I met in La Paz. The most notable part of this trip, although it was fun, was the 42 sand fly bites I found on the right side of my right ankle after only half a day of travel. It would seem the rest of me was totally unappetising aside from the 16cm2 region. Jo on the other hand was less lucky sporting a solid 160 something bites.

From the River cruise we jumped on another boat. We grabbed the first cheap, not so cheap that it was our own personal ¨little Israel¨ (come to South American to understand this phenomenon, I even know a few Israelis who are scared of the hoard) vessel and cruised the Pampas for 3 solid days. From 3 minutes into the trip we had seen an alligator and a pink dolphin…which to be fair aren´t that pink.

Well the little tykes may not be pink but they are quite playful and have a bit of a thing for fingers and toes. Swimming initially I was shocked to find out how rough they were…that was until I realised that that was the dolphins teeth and yes that sudden rapid increase in pressure was a bite, ¨you little bugger!¨. They then bit my hand and head butted my feet…well when I say ¨head butted my feet¨ it is probably fairer to say that I kicked it in the head…. Not on purpose mind you, I was treading water in a murky lake and couldn´t see them, well that´s my story anyway. Of course it was not the kick that made me feel the worse, it was more the eye gouge that gave me the guilts…I think I may be going to hell for that accidental little manoeuvre. Anywho enough about the pampas…not because it wasn´t great, but I´m yet to get to a bit of a favourite…and some of you may guess what that is.

Midgets! That´s right midgets! Touted as a true cultural experience in La Paz I went to some South American , WWE style, wrestling, and there was a midget. From all accounts so popular are the midgets in this cultural extravaganza that they include1in each match. In the previous weeks match I was told that the midget was actually picked up and used as a weapon, we weren´t quite that lucky but the act was still hilarious. One wrestler came out dressed as a giant cat man and as his side kick the little fella came out dressed as a little mouse. I´m not sure my video will do it justice but I´ll attempt to upload one in the next few days.

So what next, well I did fail to mention the cooperative silver mi e we visited in Potosi and my all too fast run through of Sucre. Unfortunately due to the many accounts (an talk of more little people) Columbia is calling. So I shoot to La Paz tonight for some shopping (I still need to find me Ma´ some bling) and then on to Cuzco for a jaunt around Machu Pichu. Given my disco photos on the salt plains it´s possible I may have to dress up for that one as well….hmm if only I was more mature.