Lima, Peru - Más Fotos

The Parque de Aguas LIMA, PERU 2009

The Parque de Aguas, different take. LIMA, PERU 2009

A night-time ride through the streets of Lima is, as they say, inolvidable... LIMA, PERU 2009

Un nuevo camino

More to come....

In A New York Minute...

Everything can change.

An unexpected twist. The serendipity of living in the moment. Chance. Fate. A jumble, a confluence. They all touch on the reality of my life in the past month. My plan was straightforward, as simple as getting on a plane and heading on a one-way journey (albeit with multiple stops) to the sunny lands of the south. What transpired was a different story entirely.

I visited the Brazilian consulate in San Francisco the third week of November to apply for a student visa. My intention was to minimize potential complications and ensure that the visa would be in processed in time for my departure to New York on December 4th. The woman that processed my paperwork assured me that visas take maximum 7-10 days to process, and with my express mail self-addressed stamped envelope there would be “no problem” receiving the visa in Seattle before I took off.

The 3rd of December came and went. No visa. I decided to fly to New York anyway, as my good friend Kylie was expecting me and I figured the visa would still show up in time for my flight to Lima, Peru on December 9th. I called the consulate to check in, and couldn’t get through to anyone. I figured no sweat, it’s Friday afternoon (the 5th), they’re probably all just busy and ready to go for the weekend. I passed the weekend in New York with Ky and we enjoyed a wonderful couple of days eating, drinking, and photographing our way through Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Cloisters (part of the MET). On Monday the 8th, my visa still hadn’t showed up in Seattle, and I couldn’t get any response from my phone or email inquiries to the Brazilian consulate. Needless to say, I was a little exasperated by the situation, as I had to cancel my flight to Lima. Luckily, I was thoroughly enjoying my time in the city, and I had a place to stay!

Meanwhile, fate decided to throw a few cards into play. I had the luck to meet one of Kylie’s good friends, Julia, and we spent enough time laughing and generally enjoying each others company that many of the stresses of the situation simply melted away. Given the uncertainty of my situation and my inability to exit the country (sans passport) I decided to head back to Seattle, and spend Christmas with the family in Oregon. The night before I left for Seattle, I sent the Brazilian consulate one final email, outlining in no uncertain terms my situation and my disappointment in their lack of communication. Lo and behold, the next morning I checked my inbox before I left for Newark, and what awaited me but a short message from the Brazilian Consulate:

Dear Mr. McCambridge, Your visa was processed and mailed today. Regards, The Consulate General of Brazil in San Francisco.

Cue drumroll…. Ba-dum-ching!

My visa showed up in Seattle the following morning, just in time for 8 inches of snowfall and a wonderful Christmas at home with the family. All in all, I feel very fortunate that everything worked out, and I’m back in New York for New Year’s eve to celebrate, then heading on to Peru/Brazil the first week of January.

Greyhound in the Sky

I have an uncanny magnetism when it comes to flying. In the buildup to boarding, I scan the crowd and inevitably find the least savory of flight-mates and briefly fixate on them, thinking to myself “wow, I really hope I don’t get stuck next to them (very large person, screaming child, etc)”. This judgment always comes at a certain cost, as I've learned the hard way.

Yesterday, facing the prospect of a 5.5hr journey from Seattle to Newark, I of course found my mark queuing for Alaska flight 8 at 8:55am. In this case, it was a woman dressed in Puyallup’s finest: extremely tapered light denim pants, oversized men's flannel shirt, looney tunes baseball cap (in pink and black). She smacked her gum and tap-tap-tapped her discman to the beat of some serious death metal. I channeled my thoughts to the travel gods- please don’t sit next to her, please don’t sit next to her… hummmmmm…..

As it was, I was at the back of the pack of passengers boarding the flight, and seat 23A was far from me when I hunched under the door frame to enter the plane. Scanning the numbers moving slowly back, I saw an empty window seat in the vicinity of row 23. Of course, the middle seat was occupied by the woman described above. Still bumping the death metal. Still tap-tap-tapping away. I signaled my ultimate destination, we shuffled around, and I settled into what was to be a very interesting flight.

Cornered up against the window, I pulled out my book, a collection of short stories and dispatches from Hemingway’s reporting career for the Toronto Star and Esquire. I tried to appear as engrossed as possible in my reading, especially when my row-mate was forced to turn off her music in preparation for takeoff. This is when the muttering began. “#$*(ing 6 days, I can’t %&^ing believe it”, she sputtered, followed by an oddly loud, exasperated sigh. When the plane took to the runway and the engines really got going prior to takeoff, she buried her head in her hands or nervously tapped on the armrest or her discman, mumbling curses all the while. When we hit 10,000ft I immediately put my headphones in and went back to my book. I thought I was safe from forced conversation until she jabbed me to ask whether or not there would be in flight food (at roughly 12,300ft). I told her that I figured they would have some food available for purchase once we reached cruising altitude. “What’cha reading?” she asked? “Hemingway” I replied. “Yeah, Hemingway, I kinda read that over your shoulder. I never really liked history or geography much, though My dad was a history major I get lost when I leave the grocery store, I can never find my vehicle when I go outside I guess they should make a gps for people like me” (Oh shit, I’m thinking to myself. Here we go). “Oh, I’m sorry, was I interrupting you? I didn’t realize you were listening to music, hahahahahaha”. At this point, I’m trying to figure out how to get out of this conversation, so I opened up my book again, and she opted to go to the bathroom once we reached 35,000ft. I breathed a sigh of relief and closed my eyes.

I woke up sometime later to the sound of high-pitched, off-key singing. It was a squawking death-metal sing-along that could barely be muted by my own music at full volume. As you might imagine, this garnered odd looks, then nasty stares, from the rest of the passengers in earshot as well as the flight attendants. At this point I just settled for “sleeping” for the rest of the flight. She did get up every 20-30 minutes to go use the restroom, which would be followed by bouts of intense scratching of her crotch. At one point I awoke to her hitting her crotch with sharp blows in rapid succession, as if a large insect was trapped in there, biting her. I didn't bother to inquire for details.

The final straw of oddity came when she reached into her carry-on bag and pulled out a can of Kodiak chewing tobacco and pinched herself a mouthful. This seemed to calm some of the twitching, but replaced it with spitting into her (now) empty Snapple bottle. Not long after, the captain let us know we’d be beginning the descent into Newark, and I breathed a hearty internal sigh of relief. To my great disappointment, we were immediately held up by the air traffic controller. After seemingly endless loops around the New Jersey countryside, we finally dropped into view of the New York skyline glowing on a clear December night. Once we hit the ground, the flight attendant in charge let us know that one of the passengers on board was ill and needed medical attention, so she requested that everyone remain seated until the woman could exit the plane. This added another 10-15 minutes (translates to: eternity) of time in an intimate, now sweaty, space with Puyallup woman. Finally, at long last, the cabin doors opened and everyone made their way off the plane. As I made my way down to the baggage claim and saw her slight figure retreating in the opposite direction, I felt relieved, and reminded myself to keep judgment in check for my next flight… Or just take the greyhound cross-country.

4 Generations, One Family

It's not often that I feel the need to wax philosophical about the meaning of life, the ties that bind, or the significance of family. However, today I was struck by the confluence of past, present, and future in my family when visiting my grandparents on Whidbey Island in Washington State. I traveled north from Seattle with my older sister Kelly and her beautiful son Patrick, aged 6 months. As we drove onto the ferry from Mukilteo headed towards Clinton, we took Patrick topside to see the view and experience the maritime breeze. He was fascinated by the array of sensory elements, and couldn't wipe a grin off his chubby, toothless face. After a short drive, we arrived at my Grandparent's home near Oak Harbor. We enjoyed a lovely lunch and dicussed the future and the past, and at some point on the drive home the gravity of the moment hit me. My grandparents represent a generation that won World War II, rebuilt Europe, and ushered America into the prominence that we enjoy today. And that generation is fading away rather quickly. Looking at my 6-month old nephew, I wonder... What is the world that he will inherit? While I have pondered this question many times before, looking at it with physical and emotional ties to that "next" generation adds unavoidable weight and urgency to finding the answer.

Grandpa Joe doing what he does best, storytelling. Grandma (wise woman that she is), pondering the significance of the story.


Kelly and the Paddy Mac taking in the wonders of the sea on the way to Whidbey, via Washington State Ferry.

In A Sentimental Mood

Abstract McKenzie

Ruled By Secrecy

Fallen

Fall's Finest