Return to CICRA

Armed with my map, the next day I set out on foot. I decided not to take any mototaxis so that I could learn my way around the town. This worked admirably, up until the trip home. I was within a block of my hotel when I walked through a group of kids playing. Just as I passed them, I felt something collide rather painfully with my backside. I turned around expecting to see a sheepish child with a knocked-over bicycle, but instead found myself face to face with a nondescript, black dog. Yep. A dog bit me. In the butt. I stared speechlessly at the little monster for a moment, and then, since I couldn’t think of anything better to do, I turned around and walked home. Thankfully, the bite didn’t break the skin so I wasn’t worried about rabies, but the next day’s 5-hour boat ride back to CICRA was, well, slightly less comfortable than usual. Also, you can imagine me trying to explain how I bruised my tush to the staff (who are all Peruvian men). It was pretty hilarious, especially since the only word I knew for that body region translates as “ass.” They really got a kick out of that one. And I got another vocabulary lesson.

My companions on the boat ride upriver were two ant researchers from the University of Wisconsin (they were studying fungus-farming, ground-nesting ant lineages, so their work was actually pretty different from mine), a Stanford undergraduate working on waste management practices at ecotourism lodges, and Graham, a recently retired Australian teacher-turned-photographer. For some reason, he reminded me a little bit of David Attenborough: great accent, great hat, great suspenders. Graham wanted to focus on photographing bats, so the next evening he set up mist nets and got to work catching them. Unfortunately, he was bitten by one of his subjects, and had to take the boat back to town the following morning to get a series of rabies boosters. They gave him a 7-day course of daily injections. It made me very, very grateful that I had no more than a bruise on my behind.

Otherwise, the past three weeks at CICRA have been relatively calm. I’ve been making regular checkups on my 52 mosquito-net-cloaked saplings in the forest, building a reference collection of the herbivores that eat our tree, and I just started a new experiment to test two theoretical models of mutualism. I also got to celebrate my birthday in the rainforest—it was awesome. The party started at 8 PM and lasted until 2 AM, and it only ended then because Sarah and I, the last two women standing, couldn’t dance anymore. (Peruvian dance parties are ridiculously fun because everyone knows how to dance! I’m slowly learning to stumble my way through lambata, regaeton, and a few other types.) I received the most wacky, hilarious, and yet appropriate set of birthday presents to date. It included: random leftover laboratory equipment from the Wisconsin ant team, such as sterile loops for fungal cultures and some water purification filters; a pack of ChocoSodas—a brand of chocolate-covered saltine crackers which are rare and highly coveted at the station; and a curled-up leaf that Claire found, which may (or may not) contain some sort of pupating insect. Everyone at the station has realized I how excited I get about anything that crawls, creeps, slithers, jumps or flies, so they bring me cool things like curled-up leaves, tiny snakes, and most recently, a tarantula. I couldn’t ask for anything better. :)

Megan’s former boss—so, in a way, my academic grandfather—arrived at CICRA on September 9th. Talking with him was fascinating because he’s been studying our ant-plant system for many years. Also fascinating: he hired two indigenous Matsigenka men to work with him as field assistants. They were amazingly skilled botanists; not only were they pros at finding our Cordia tree, but they also brought back natural dyes and medicinal herbs to show us. Claire and Luis both caught some sort of stomach infection while they were here, but the Matsigenkas gave them some leaves to chew and their infections disappeared within a day.

What else? Oh, Leslie and Daniel, guess what! A troupe of army ants marched through our kitchen and dinning room one day—it was pretty impressive. We were all really happy about it, actually, because they ate all the cockroaches and other bugs they could find. Though Pascual, our cook, warned me not to get too close to them in sandals, because 10 or 20 stings from them can give you a fever. Maybe there was a little seed of truth to Lenningham…

A couple nights ago Sarah found a tarantula in her bathroom. It was awesome. I caught it in a tupperware and we named it Fuzzy. Fuzzy lived on our dinner table for a couple days. We set him free today. It just so happens that a Peruvian film crew was here to do a piece on CICRA and the Amazon Conservation Association—they got a kick out of filming two gringa girls setting their pet tarantula free. It also happens that there are no principal investigators at the station right now—all of us are staff, field assistants, or (in Graham’s case) photographers. So I got interviewed about my project. It was a really strange feeling to be talked to as a “scientific expert.” I just hope I didn’t tell them anything incorrect by mistake!

Random cool link of the day

This is cool for everyone, but especially so for those of you who got roped into any part of my thesis. Orthopterans AND poetry AND Josquin des Prez on the same site! Can't beat that.

The NYC Cricket Crawl http://www.discoverlife.org/cricket/

Thoreau's Journal: 20-Aug-1851
“I hear a cricket in the Depot field, walk a rod or two, and find the note proceeds from near a rock. Partly under a rock, between it and the roots of the grass, he lies concealed,—for I pull away the withered grass with my hands,—uttering his night-like creak, with a vibratory motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is night, because he has shut out the day. He was a black fellow nearly an inch long, with two long, slender feelers. They plainly avoid the light and hide their heads in the grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening of the year. They are remarkably secret and unobserved, considering how much noise they make. Every milkman has heard them all his life; it is the sound that fills his ears as he drives along. But what one has ever got off his cart to go in search of one? I see smaller ones moving stealthily about, whose note I do not know. Whoever distinguished their various notes, which fill the crevices in each other’s song? It would be a curious ear indeed, that distinguished the species of the crickets which it heard, and traced even the earth-song home, each part to its particular performer. I am afraid to be so knowing. They are shy as birds, these little bodies. Those nearest me continually cease their song as I walk, so that the singers are always a rod distant, and I cannot easily detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly whence the sound proceeds. Perhaps this wariness is necessary to save them from insectivorous birds, which would otherwise speedily find out so loud a singer. They are somewhat protected by the universalness of the sound, each one’s song being merged and lost in the general concert, as if it were the creaking of earth’s axle."

In which Alison aquires some vocabulary and a map

Well, I’m still about 3 weeks behind in my blog posts, but I’m trying to catch up! My flights from Lima to Puerto Maldonado were uneventful, and after lunch in Puerto with Ysabel (one of Megan and Antonio’s friends), I went to my hotel, sat down on the bed, and noticed how strangely quiet and empty it seemed. I twiddled my thumbs for a bit and tried to find a map of the town so I could navigate the streets by myself, but was unsuccessful. This wasn’t a barrier to getting around; since motorcycle taxis are the main form of transportation in Puerto (see Gabe's photo), all you have to do is flag one down and tell the driver where you want to go. As a small, foreign female, I was rather uneasy with the idea of leaping onto the backs of motorcycles, telling the drivers—who are invariably male—the place I wanted to go, and speeding off with no idea whether we were actually headed there. But for the time being, there was nothing for it but to hail a mototaxi and whiz towards what I hoped was the right destination.

I had some chores to do. First I headed to the mercado (market) to shop for supplies. The mercado is a bit overwhelming the first few times you visit it. What seems like a countless number of stalls crammed with food, toiletries, hardware, dishes, shoes, toys, clothes, DVDs, or what-have-you is all jammed together into a single city block. I wandered the maze for a few hours trying to learn the logic behind the layout ...I made so many circuits that two Peruvians working behind the counter of a hardware stall began to wave and smile at me every time I passed.

I also took advantage of the public phones to call a bunch of you folks and say hi! This may not seem particularly newsworthy, but after living in the rainforest for a while, a telephone call feels like a special and slightly miraculous treat.

One afternoon I wandered into a grocery store, which also felt special and slightly miraculous. Among other things, I was searching for molasses. Why, you ask? Elementary, my dears—to make chocolate chip cookies! The first time I baked them at CICRA, the larder was sadly lacking in brown sugar. The result was still tasty, but I am determined to introduce my Peruvian friends to the deliciousness that is a real, authentic chocolate chip cookie. So, this was a culinary mission. After I’d browsed around for a while, an unsuspecting staffperson came up and asked if I needed assistance. I froze. I had, of course, forgotten the word for molasses. “I’m looking for a sweet [sudden pause… wait, what’s the word for brown???] …uh, a sweet liquid sort of like sugar, which is used in cooking” I said in Spanish. The man gave me a blank stare. “Um…” I continued, “How do you say the color of this?” I asked, pointing at the wooden shelves. “Rojo? Amarillo?” he asked, and began pointing to various sweet red and yellow liquids, including honey and ketchup. “No, no… what’s the color of wood?” I asked. “Amarillo? Rojo?” he repeated as he pulled some marmalade off the shelf and tried to hand it to me. I’ve been told that in Japan, they call the grass blue instead of green. Apparently in Peru, wood is not always brown. After some more pantomiming and circuitous questions, I got him to tell me the word. For the record, it’s “marrón.” “Okay! I’m looking for a sweet, brown liquid similar to sugar.” He led me straight to the molasses. For the record, that’s called “chancaca.”

You know those times when you see someone eating alone in a restaurant, and wonder how they came to such a sorry state? For several meals during my stay in Puerto, I was that person. For the most part, I didn’t mind at all. But when I walked into a restaurant one night and sat down to wait for a menu, I must have looked especially awkward. A man who looked to be in his 40s came over and said in remarkably correct English, “Hi. The waiters are already serving me… if you want, you can move to my table and get your food faster. I’m only going to eat a quick meal, so I won’t be there long.” He smiled and walked away. Now, normally I do not accept dinner invitations from strange men. But something about the way he asked seemed distinctly un-sketchy, so on the spur of the moment, I joined him.

His name was Daniel, and it turns out he was originally from Mexico City. He’d worked as a dive instructor for tourists for many years. (This explained his unusually good English, but per my request we spoke in Spanish.) He’d quit his job to become an artist; in fact, some of his work was hanging in the very restaurant in which we ate. Daniel’s lifelong dream was to eventually buy a small café where he could serve coffee and showcase his art, but he mentioned that work was very slow for him at the moment. I didn’t realize how slow until after the meal, when he went to ask for a discount because he couldn’t pay the full price of his dinner. (The meals there cost about $5.) Daniel was frustrated that so few people appreciate art. He argued that art is meaningful and necessary, and that it makes a greater difference in people’s lives than, for example, a lot of scientific research. I answered that this was precisely my problem; that I was thinking about going to graduate school, but worried that I wouldn’t accomplish anything constructive to improve the lives of others. But he suddenly became very insistent. “No, ¡hazlo! ¡Hazlo!” he urged. No, you must do it! “Do what you love; that’s all that matters. Anyone who follows their heart makes a difference.”

After the meal, Daniel helped me finally find a map of the town. As I stood on the curb, I told him I wanted to come visit his café someday. “Well,” he smiled, “it’s still a long way off.” We wished each other good night and good luck. I flagged down a motorcycle and hopped on. As I zipped down the dark streets with Daniel’s roadmap tucked away in my pocket, I still had no idea whether the driver was taking me where I expected to go. But this time, I felt that wherever we were headed, it was in the right direction.

Lima, “The Big Smoke”

After Cusco, there was one more brief week to tie up loose ends before my surrogate family left me to fend for myself. It was a busy week of tying up mosquito nets, taking measurements on the trees, and in my case, learning to do little maintenance things like how to hook up gas tanks to our (gas-powered) lab refrigerator without blowing up the lab. But, there was still free time for me to bake chocolate chip cookies, see a wild giant anteater on one of my runs (alas, I never run with my camera!), and meet Oso, the short-eared dog.


Oso was confiscated from a local’s illegal collection of wild animals and he’s now being studied at CICRA by Emeterio, the human in the photo. Short-eared dogs are a very rare species, so the chance to see and study one is an amazing opportunity. In October, they plan to fit Oso with a radio collar and video camera and release him.


Also, look at the sweeeeet caterpillar I found! :)
On August 19th, Megan, Antonio and Gabe said their final farewells to CICRA (and I said a temporary one) and we all traveled to Lima. I came along on the trip so that Megan could show me how to file the paperwork for our research permit and so I could visit the Museum of Natural History. That concluded my responsibilities, so Gabe, Ursula, Pedro and I got to meet up and go out for dinner! We ate at one of many restaurants owned by Peru’s most famous chef, Gaston Acurio. Advice: if you ever get a chance to go to one of his restaurants (a few are scheduled to open in the States soon!), GO. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, ever. On a related note, grilled octopus is yummy.

That night Megan and Gabe caught their planes home, abandoning me and Antonio in Lima. (Antonio has to stay in Peru until his visa is ready.) I had a free day in Lima before my flight back to Puerto, so the next day Antonio and I met up with Frank, a Peruvian ant researcher who is coming to CICRA in a couple weeks (!) and his girlfriend, Erica. They asked me whether I’d be interested in meeting up with a group of their friends and going… somewhere. I didn’t understand the Spanish term. Likewise, neither of them knew the English term. From their description, I thought they were asking me if I wanted to go for a ride on a ferris wheel. Sure, I thought, sounds like a great way to see the city! So I was very confused when we hopped out of the cab in front of a small amusement park, of the type that packs neatly into tractor trailers for easy travel. The main attraction seemed to be “El Tornado,” a ride with a single ring of seats arranged around a very tall metal shaft. As I watched, a cage descended over the riders and the ring of chairs started to spin. That doesn’t look bad, I thought. Then the shaft began to tilt and the ring of chairs rose up into the sky, slanting until the riders were suspended completely upside down high above the amusement park, spinning around in circles all the while. The ride cycled through several revolutions like this before it stopped. “I absolutely refuse to ride that thing,” I declared to Antonio. This was, of course, the only ride which the four of us ended up doing at the park.

I actually enjoyed it. And the view from the top turned out to be pretty good, after all. Lima isn’t exactly known for its scenery; even the locals agree that it’s a sprawling, ugly city that seldom sees blue sky. One of its nicknames is “The Big Smoke,” because due to a trick of the climate, clouds frequently (constantly, it would seem) blot out the sun. When my parents asked me whether Lima had a view of the Andes, I told them that yes, in a way it did… but I only saw it while I was twirling around upside down in midair, grinning happily and hanging on for dear life.

After that, our next stop was El Parque de las Aguas. This was another destination about which my expectations were somewhat hazy. What exactly would I find within a “Park of Water” in the middle of Lima? After El Tornado, I was a little dubious. But this surprise turned out to be a really good one. Its official name is El Parque de la Reserva. Two years ago, the city constructed 13 fountains within the park, and the result is beautiful! The fountains are lit with colored lights and some are synchronized to music. One of my favorites was called The Labyrinth. It had a maze of pathways laid out on the ground, and the maze was constantly changing as spurts of water suddenly sprung up or died down. In the first photo you can see a bunch of kids stuck in the middle of the maze. We got to the park in time to see a really cool show which featured colored lights, lasers, and music synchronized with one of the fountains. Antonio and I both lamented several times that Gabe wasn't there to take awesome pictures.



The next morning, Antonio dropped me off at the airport, and I was truly alone in Peru. The first thing I did on my own (once I got through security) was… buy a pile of chocolate. (Surprised?) I sat at the gate blissfully munching away as I waited for my plane home.

Fungi: 1, Alison’s belt: 0

Back at CICRA, the fungi welcomed me back to the rainforest with open… hyphae.

In which Victor and Alison have an adventure

Whoa, it’s been a long time. I can’t believe it’s September already! I’m long overdue for a blog post or three. Well, I’ll start where I left off…

On August 5th, Ursula, Gabe and I arrived in Cusco! After a month in the rainforest we were so very, very excited to see a city (and readily available food) that I think we visited four different restaurants that day. We managed this despite the fact that we arrived in the afternoon and we also took several-hour-long naps to fight off the effects of the altitude. Cusco is located high in the Andes (elevation: 3,300 meters), and it’s a beautiful city with cobbled streets and Spanish architecture. The Plaza de Armas, the main square, has a fountain and a cathedral. It’s a bit of a shock when you’re used to Puerto Maldonado’s baking, dusty red-dirt streets and CICRA’s cold streamwater showers and open-air wooden buildings.

The next morning Gabe and I decided to go exploring. On the spur of the moment, we ended up riding horses to an Incan ruin in the hills outside the city. Pretty good exploring for one morning, eh? (Lefthand photo brought to you by Gabe.)

Then it was time for me to sally forth on my own and pick up Victor at the airport. By that time my Peruvian friends had warned me about the hefty “gringo tax” levied on naïve tourists (taxi drivers and street salesmen often triple their prices) and about “bridgeros,” locals whose goal is to marry a foreigner in order to obtain citizenship in the States, England, etc. I was also already familiar enough with Cusco to understand that blond-haired, blue-eyed females are prime targets for every street vendor, taxi driver, and bridgero in the city. So, suffice it to say that as I was standing in the middle of the airport lobby, completely alone in Peru for my very first time, I was just a little bit wary. When I heard a male voice say from startlingly close behind me “¡Hola chica!” (which, with this intonation, definitely translated as “Why hello there, little lady!”), I turned my most gruff, don’t-you-dare-try-to-sell-me-something, no-I-don’t-want-to-marry-a-stranger, yes-I-speak-Spanish-well-enough-to-handle-the-likes-of-you facial expression on one very surprised and confused Victor. :) There we are in the Plaza de Armas! (Thanks for the photo, Gabe!)


After some plotting, we decided that Ausangate, while doable, probably wouldn’t be a very fun trip for me due to the elevation—hiking at 4500-5000 meters can give you a nasty headache if you’re not ready for it. Victor was already acclimated since he’d been hiking in the Andes for a week, but I’d just come up from the Amazon basin. Thus, Ausangate became my new, Peruvian Chocurua (sorry folks, HOC reference there) and it was time for a new plan! We went to the clubhouse of the South American Explorers Club, which is awesome: it’s like an HOC for all the outdoorsy folk of South America. I felt an involuntary urge to call a meeting to order and start typing minutes. We got some great (free!) advice and decided to do a three-day hike between two Andean villages called Urubamba and Lares, followed by two days of mountain biking.

Next, we went to procure some mountain bikes. It’s not hard to find outdoor guiding companies in Cusco (although we discovered that finding any specific company mentioned in the guidebook is nigh impossible), so a few hours later we had arranged for two mountain biking guides to meet us in the main square of Lares at 10 AM on Tuesday morning. We shopped for comestibles at a gringo-style supermarket (it was called MegaMart), returned to the hostel, and packed everything for the hike.

We began hiking on Saturday. We trekked up a valley for a few hours, following a lovely stream and passing a tiny mountain village.
Then we stopped in a ruin. It was only supposed to be a lunch break, but the threat of rain was enough to convince us to pitch our tent for the night. It was the kind of rain Peruvians call “miedo del perezoso”—terror of the lazy man—because the lazy workers run from the fields the moment they feel a spatter of rain. (On the subject of Victor’s and my laziness… no comment.) Peruvians from the lowland rainforests have many colorful and often mischievous nicknames for subtle gradations of rain quality; another good one is “orina del borracho”—drunkard’s piss—which is slightly stronger than miedo del perezoso, and comes in spurts.








Anyways… the next day Victor and I woke up, ate breakfast, and started climbing. And we kept climbing for a long, long time. Each time we reached to top of one beautiful valley, we found ourselves at the bottom of another. We passed several Quechua people traveling the road with their horses and burros; many were wearing traditional, brilliantly-colored alpaca-wool shawls.






After many gorgeous views, some snow, and some hellos from Quechua travelers, we reached the pass at last! (Elevation: 4800 meters.) It snowed pretty hard for a while as we began to descended the other side, enough to cover the trail (and ourselves) with a layer of fresh snow. Then, Victor and I reached the breathtaking top of the Lares Valley. Gorgeous, no? Shortly thereafter, the trail disappeared. It was getting late in the day and I was exhausted and feeling the altitude, so Victor led a daring bushwhacking expedition straight down a gully towards lower ground. We didn't make it all the way down, so we camped for the night above the village of Cuncani.
The next day we descended the rest of the way to the valley floor and hiked past small villages, farms, and herds of sheep and llamas (llamas! so many llamas!) to Lares, where we checked into a hostel for the night.







On Tuesday morning we arrived in the main square early to wait for our guides. Eventually they appeared, jumping off one of the public trucks (similar to the one in the photo). We were a bit surprised to see them leap out of the back along with our bikes and gear, but these trucks seem to be one of the main forms of transportation for locals in the area.


Jon, our biking guide, strapped our bikes to the top of a combi (public van) and we took it to the top of the Lares Pass. From there, we flew back down the valley along the road to Lares, passing streams, farms, more llamas (!), and beautiful views.

Our guides had arranged for us to stay in a hostel near Lares’ hot springs. Here, I must pause and describe the unique charm of our room. It was tiny, low-ceilinged, and completely filled by two beds… so much so that Victor and I didn’t realize the floor was made of dirt for some time. To block water and wind from the gaps between the wooden boards, the ceiling was lined with a tarp and the walls were wallpapered with an assortment of plastic sheets, which included tablecloths and even (my favorite) Fanta bottle labels. Needless to say, Victor and I were highly amused by the decor.

We dropped off our stuff and headed to the hot springs. The entrance fee was one of the best 10 soles I’ve yet spent in Peru—there was genuinely HOT water, and sooo much of it! I was in heaven. Victor (and the rest of the bathers) patiently endured my gleeful swimming and splashing around in the middle of the largest pool.

The next day, our guides drove us back to the top of the pass and we biked down in the opposite direction to the town of Calca. We got to ride off-road for about half of the trip, which was exhilarating and, for me, a bit terrifying. But let it be known that Victor has sweet mountain biking skillz—I walked down the gnarly bits, but he rode almost all of them.

We finished our ride in Calca, ate lunch in the main square, and then headed back to Cusco for one more night of cool mountain air, delicious city food and hot showers. Then it was time to say goodbye… for the moment. Next adventure: Patagonia?

(By the way, I shamelessly stole the format of this post’s title from Leslie and Daniel’s blog. What can I say? I couldn’t help but plagiarize some of their wittiness.)

Pre-hike update

¡Hola a todos! I’m writing a quick post before I take off early tomorrow morning for Victor's and my Ausangate hike! It’s going to be awesome. For a sweet preview of the hike, check out these folks’ trip report: http://www.gang-gang.net/nomad/andes/andes11a.htm It turns out that Gabe, Ursula and I are all flying together to Cusco. Yay!

Research is going well! All of our saplings are happy, mosquito-net covered, and the appropriate half of them have now been successfully colonized by ants. Last week we collected 26 wild ant colonies, chilled them, photographed them, counted them (poor Gabe got that exciting task), and transferred them to our saplings. Also, Patricia came back to the station for a few days to help us sort through our fungal cultures. She showed us our first successful endophyte culture! This photo might not look particularly exciting to you all, but it was the cause of much cheering and celebration when we saw this through our microscope. :)

photo: endophyte!

(Sorry you have to click the links to see the photos; I'm having a terrible time uploading them to the blog.)

Last Friday I took a half-day off from ant research to join Claire and the antbird team. We woke up at 5:30 in the morning (which was late for them and early for me), and I got to help them set up mist nets to catch antbirds. Claire is researching how habitat fragmentation affects different bird species, depending on whether the species are habitat generalists or whether they prefer specific habitats. We caught an antbird, took samples, and then attached a radio tracking beacon to the bird. The species we caught is a bamboo specialist, so we took it to a different patch of bamboo (outside of it’s territory) and released it. The goal is to track the path of the bird as it flies back to its own territory—Claire wants to see whether it will hesitate to cross patches of forest that don’t have any bamboo. I stayed with Claire’s field assistants, Luis and Randi, for a couple hours so they could show me how to radio track the bird. Now when Claire needs an extra assistant, I’ll get to help track her birds!

photo: tagged antbird

For the past few days I’ve also been collecting specimens of the little dewdrop spiders which we’ve found living along with Allomerus ants on many of the wild Cordia trees here. I’m going to do a side project on them and try to figure out whether they’re ant mutualists. We’re pretty excited about them at the moment because we think they come from a genus of spiders which normally parasitizes other spiders’ webs and steals their food. When Megan, Antonio and Gabe fly to Lima on the 20th, I’m coming with them (yay!) and Megan is going to take me to the museum in Lima to get the spiders identified.

Other random news…
Peru’s independence day was on July 28th! In the afternoon, almost everyone at the station took a few hours off and hopped on the boat to Boca Amigo, where we had a few beers to celebrate.

Megan and Gabe discovered that I don’t know any Aerosmith and have decided that my education is seriously lacking in the music and pop culture departments.* Never fear, I am getting music injections from Gabe’s vast collection. ;)

I found a HUGE caterpillar a few days ago! It was black with green stripes and a red head, and it was longer than my index finger and fatter than my thumb. I was very excited and brought it back to the station, but for some reason everyone else was mostly just creeped out by my gigantic caterpillar. Hah. :P It’s turned into a gigantic pupa now (see photo!), and we’re all waiting to see what hatches out of it.

photo: pupa

That’s all for now, folks! Tune in again in a week or two for stories and photos from Cusco and Mt. Ausangate!

*However, they did not know Golddigger. I played it for them... and sang along. Somewhere in a dorm room in Cambridge, Raquel is reading this and smiling.