And One For My Fallen Homie

Tonight´s blog is unlike any other, and I feel it must begin with a libation. For all you honkies who don´t know what that is, let me hit you with some knowledge. A libation is the ritualistic pouring of liquor for one´s fallen homies. Now before you get too concerned, nobody has died on Darom America 07. Yet. However, our trip will be suffering the loss of a member. But to hear the beginning, youré gonna havta wait till the end, Memento style. That´s right, as a perveryor of words I´m choosing to mess with chronology. Sue me.
We left you with a tale of Jed´s ineptitude, and the similarity between the usefulness of Jed and Avi´s "international" phone. So, we pick up the story at roughly 8:59:59 last night, where we find Avi Nimmer, floating adrift in a sea of doubt as to the outcome of his future, and in need of some relief. And so, we took to the streets (completely ignoring the compelling pull of Snatch being viewed at the hostel) in search of a hooka cafe that had been vaguely referred to on Wikipedia. After about an hour or two of searching, we came to the realization that A) Not knowing spanish is a major obstacle in the hunt for a foreign substance and B) Jed trying to convey what we meant by hooka through pantomime was more than slightly homo-erotic. We felt a moment of hope when a friendly Peruvian standing outside a bar stopped trying to get us to come in for happy hour and picked up on the word Sheesha. With recognition in his eyes, he informed us that we could find "Cheecha" about a block away from where we had given up our quest. Delighted, we followed his directions, and then the directions of at least 10 more Peruvians, until we were standing outside a dark archway that lead into an alleyway of some sort. Undaunted, we entered into this dangerous cliche´and asked the woman in the strange bar/restaurant if she was in fact a proprietor of this so called "Cheecha". Our happiness at her nod of understanding was short lived, as she procceeded to dip a pitcher into what appeared to be a trash can and lifted out a strange, pinkish slop of some sort. Luckily, our amusement at the miscommunication outwieghed our shattered hopes and we left in high spirits.
The next morning, we awoke at 8 am (that´s right, I said am) and prepared for a day of mountain biking (that´s right, I said mountain biking). We spent most of the day speeding along dirt paths through unbelievably gorgeous scenery, from mountains to lakes to rivers to villages. At one point on this glorious tour the guide and I stopped and looked behind us, and saw that Avi and Jed were nowhere to be found. When they arrived about ten minutes later they told us that one of the many friendly villagers along our path had invited them to try some Cheecha. As curious as I´m sure you all are, I asked them what it tasted like and what it was made out of. Turns out the accidental object of our star-crossed quest was a liquid form of fermented corn, and, according to Avi, "tastes like donkey piss". For those of you who are wondering why Avi knows what donkey piss tastes like, you´ll havta ask him yourselves, since I decided that´s a detail of Avi´s life I´d prefer not to know.
And now to the meat of the issue. Our epic mountain biking ride produced more than just epic views and epicly friendly villagers. It also produced some epic injuries. Namely the potential breaking of Avi´s wrist. Now I saw potential because there´s no way to be sure exactly what a Peruvian doctor means when he starts mumbling in spanish after you ask him, using improvised sign language of course, whether or not the bone had actually snapped. To give "The Doc" as we came to know him by some credit, he seemed to be the only professional in the hospital, and dealing with three idiotic American tourists who can´t speak a word of his native language in his native country cannot be easy. And so, with Avi reduced to invalid status we were faced with a major dilemma. After having already booked our 3 day white-water rafting trip and with Avi incapable of cutting his chicken or even spreading deodorant under his left armpit (both tasks that fell to Jedoune and myself respectively), we had to decide what we were going to do with the rest of the trip. After much deliberation (and by this I´m referring to Avi´s personal battle with the voices inside his head-namely, David and Marcia, pronounced Mar-see-ah in Peruvian), we decided that Avi would make a solo return journey to Los Angeles after hiking Macchu Picchu. And so, one for me, and one for my fallen homie.
P.S. If you were amazed at our 8 am wake-up, you´ll be sadistically pleased to hear that tomorrow we need to drag our gringo bums out of bed at a whopping 5 am to catch our ride at 5:30. *Fill this gap in with some ululating cry of agony and frustration at being forced to actually witness this ungodly hour*