Encounters

Yesterday when we were looking for a simple and cheap place to eat we stumpled over a chinese restaurant offering all kinds of soups, rice dishes and "aeropuerto". According to the Spanish-English dictionary an "aeropuerto" of course is an airport. But how does it end up on a menu? We suspected it to be a roasted flight attendents butt in a cerosene sauce or something the like - not very yummy, by all means! If somebody knows what it is - please enlight us!

Apart from the aeropuerto there have been so many funny and strange encounters during the last two weeks - Alberto is writing hours and hours everyday in his notebook not to forget any of these. But it seems that he can´t keep up his writing - every night he stays up later to fill page upon page of his (3rd!) notebook. It´s a pity he writes in Italian - I would love to copy some of his accounts - I guess they must be hilarious!

One of the cutest encounters was definately meeting Pablo and his Mum in Lima. On our last night in Lima we were looking for a bus going to Miraflores and asked a young Mum for help. She happened to go to the same direction and as we had to wait quite some time for the next bus she asked us about our experience in Lima and recommended us many museums and places to visit. Her little son Pablo, 4 years old, a bit chubby but very cute, wearing a jeans overall and a red cap just looked us with big brown eyes. When his Mum told us about a theater in downtown Lima he said "I like theaters". That was the only sentence he said - so it must have been very important to him! Alberto gave him a red clown´s nose and Pablo kept it on all the way. A very serious little guy - but very cute!

An encounter of a very different kind was meeting Paul, an 40-50is tall and blond American living in Medellin. Alberto had met him in one of the - or I guess it was in THE bar in Pisco, as there is just one, after our tour to the Ballestas and Paracas. He must already have had a couple of piscos and cervezas and by the time he got to our hotel to pick us up to go out at night he was "bien mareado", as the lovely gentleman who runs the hostel put it. Unfortunately he immediately took a liking to me and told everybody about a hundred times that he thought "the German girl" was the best, the hottest and whatever. Our host got really worried about Paul and suggested us to call one of his friends who has a taxi and send him back to his hostel which happened to be in another village, 10km from Pisco. Thank God Paul had his key with him - he himself had no idea where he was staying! And Pisco being infamous for its crime rate we didn´t think it to be a good idea to leave him to himself. When we walked to the city center together the fresh air and exercise sobered him up a bit and he told us of his Colombian wife who was in his words a "f... nut" due to hormonal imbalance and refusing to take any medication. He also told us about his work and guess what - he had been a controller and auditor before moving to Colombia 4 years ago. Thank God I gave up being a controller - who knows, I might have ended up like Paul, drinking my way through South America and telling everybody about the greatness of "that German girl" and the nutritional value of German beer! Anyhow, after telling us some funny stories about living in Colombia and some more beer he fell asleep on the table, snoring, and we decided to call the taxista our host had recommended to ship him home. The next day everybody at the hostel told us that this was the right thing to do as any other taxista for sure would have dumped him somewhere and left with his camera and money. So meeting Paul was definately one of the "encounters" Alberto spend sleepless nights over writing it down!

And then there was Pepe. Pepe and his Heart. But thats a story for tomorrow, otherwise I´ll end up like Alberto, spending sleepless nights writing down "encounters" ;-)