Cusco Got Her Groove Back

Cusco (or Cuzco) Peru is the first place that feels like we're in the heart of South America. It's a place unlike anything I've seen on this trip. The people are kind and full of their ancient culture. Every road is cobblestone and the architecture is beautiful in it's Spanish and native design.

Interesting things about Cusco:

1) It's the city that the movie "The Emperor's New Groove" was set in. Haven't seen it personally, so I can't really add anything to.

2) Here in Cusco it's ok to pee where ever you want. This is a great policy for anyone with a weak bladder. The only downside is that the streets smell like piss and genitalia is waved around with wild abandon.

3) Women carry their babies around on their backs. It looks like they have psychedelic, backwards baby björns. Also, men are never carrying children. So my assumption is that Peruvian ladies are just stronger.

In other news, while I haven't been posting songs on here, I have still been purchasing instruments in every place I visit. In Peru I met a wonderful street musician who sold me a Charango which he handcrafted himself.

Now spending time in Peru, you see a lot of Charangos. They have mariachi bands that play in 75% of the restaurants, and there's always someone playing one. So I've seen a Charango or two and most of them have the personality of Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom- short, spunky and loud. Mine however reminds me more of Natalie Portman in The Professional- short, calm and cute, so I named her Mathilda.



I'm still going through my Cusco pictures and I'll post some of them soon.

Machu. Picchu.

Sit, my friends and listen to my pearls of wisdom: With every action there is an equal and opposing reaction. Also, when life hands you lemons you must make lemonade, or lemon creme cookies, mmmm mmmm MMMM!

To wit, as soon as I finally got Photoshop installed on my computer, my wonderful companion and friend Nikon D50 (second closest companion next to Taurus, my 80 gig video ipod) has caught some sort of virus and is now coughing forth photo phlegm. In layman's terms, my camera is busted.

Awww, poor me. If everyone has caught their breath and finished crying over Nikon we can move on to the pictures I did manage to get.




Holy ancient ruins Batman! Machu Picchu is the shiz.biz! It's the bees knees! And of course, I had to ruin (get it?! hahaa..) some perfectly good scenery.



The whole experience is one I won't forget. The train ride, to the bus ride up the switchbacks, to our tiny tour guide Gladys, to just sitting there and watching birds fly around these gargantuan mountains.



Incans were pretty dang amazing in their ingenuity and probably their work ethic. I think if it'd been me, I'd have said "screw these stones, let's just build a couple bungalows." Thankfully, I wasn't a part of the Machu Picchu architectural committee.



The mystery behind these ruins is unparalleled. When it was discovered in 1911 there were mass graves found and by all calculations, something happened to drive the Incans to make a mass exodus from Machu Picchu. You can tell in certain areas that there are structures which weren't completed. It's an amazing place to theorize and imagine what could have happened.

Personally, I think it was either ninjas or dinosaurs that invaded, but that's just me.



My ultimate goal on this trip was also realized. I wanted to make sure I got a chance to be in some amazing place and play my melodica. I brought the dang thing specifically for that purpose and then subsequently got on my mission of purchasing an instrument in each city I visited (more on that later...). In fact the edit team has taken to calling me the Pied Piper. It was actually the best place to play, because the sound echoed throughout the ruins. So if you were at Machu Picchu the other day and you heard the piano notes for "Squalor Victoria" on a melodica- that was me.




It's just an incredible place. There's not much more I can say about it. I've dreamed of going there for years and years. I even want to come back some day and do the whole 4 day Inca Trail hike and soak in the entire experience of what it must have been like to live in that magical, mysterious world.

Here's a final shot of me overseeing the haps in the 'Picchu.



For more pictures check out my Flickr account. Link to the left, ya'll...

Bad Daniel, no cookie

I have slacked tremendously on blogging, I know. The worst part is that I'm in Peru and I've having to retro-blog on Santiago, when all I want to tell you about it where I'm at and what I've been doing. All in good time my friends...

So Santiago was one of the kindest cities I've been in yet. People there are just awesome. The weather was the real bummer. It rained all but 2 days that we were there and the nicest of those days I was stuck inside working all day long.

Oh well, I guess you can't win them all. I did go out to some bars with members of the cast and crew which was a lot of fun. And my hotel room was tres elegant. Which brings me to the brunt of this blog post:

An ongoing list of my new friends (and subsequently my new enemies)

1) My new friend, Roomservice. He's great when you're feeling down. Or bored. Or hungry. I suppose it's a lot like getting delivery, but it's in a hotel and you don't have to clean anything up.

2) My new friend, The Gym. So I'll confess, I haven't really worked out in years. I'll rock a yoga class every now and then, but weights? Treadmills? Ellipsis machines? Give me a break, I didn't even know what an ellipsis machine was. Well, the rub of the Sheraton is that you have to pay $5 to use the gym and the swimming pool is a part of the gym, so I figured I better get my money's worth. And actually I really enjoyed it and have wild notions of making exercise a more prominent part of my life. The downside is...

3) My new enemy, Sore Arms. Wow, don't bite off more than you can chew when you start going to the gym for the first time in years. I felt like my shoulders cans of silly string, shooting forth pink a green streams of pliable chemicals, which are good for nothing except annoying your friends with.

Well, I didn't take any pictures that I was crazy about, but I posted 60 from Santiago on my Flickr page, in an effort to start getting that guy back up to date.
Check them out here.

Oh and the title of this entry is completely untrue- I've been eating tons of cookies.

Chilly

Admittedly, I am a huge cornball. Corny to the max. It's mostly my dad's fault. But I can't help it- it's actually cold in Chile!

I had a great first day in Santiago. Walked around Plaza De Armas, took some pictures, bought a hat and took the subway (they were playing "Friday I'm in Love" by the Cure in one of the stations!). Then met up with Maura, one of the producer's sisters who is a travel writer for the New York Times, and we went on a tour of Pablo Neruda's house. Excellent stuff. Definitely learned a lot about him and it inspired me to buy his autobiography, which in English is just called "Memoirs" (boring) but in Spanish it's called "I Confess, I Have Lived" (cool!).

Then we took a "Funicular" which is like a trolley of sorts up to Cerro San Cristobal and saw the huge virgin Mary statue, then took these crazy 60's sci-fi cable cars back down. It was a lot of fun.

I'm going to post pictures, but I mainly wanted to give myself an excuse in this post. We traveled a day early this week, leaving Rio crazy early Saturday morning and arriving in Chile (after many delays and a layover in the worst airport in the world, San Paulo Brazil) in the late afternoon. Now during the flight somehow my new instrument, the mini-harp, became un-tuned and so the new song that I had composed in Rio will have to wait until I can get a wrench and retune.

Bum out. So instead I have a picture of me sitting by my windowsill in Rio looking longingly towards the sea with my mini-harp, and that will have to do for now.

Up, Up and Away

Hello. How are you? What did you do today? Oh yeah? That's great.

Oh what did I do today? Oh not much. You know, the usuge for Brazil. Sandwiches on the beach. Drinking out of coconuts... Hang gliding.






Yep. That's all I really have to say about that.

She Dances On The Sand

Yeah. The title was a little obvious, sorry.

Rio De Janerio. Possibly the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life. The city is intensely amazing. From my window I can see mountains and oceans, mountains in the ocean and behind my hotel are oceans tucked in betwixt mountains. Aerial views of the city are breathtaking and the beaches are golden. Today I watched the waves crash against rocks for a solid hour. Like this one;



Another perk to this job, for some reason my position requires that I have a common space for the crew to drop of tapes and equipment. This basically means that I get a suite(sweet) in every city. Here in Rio I have the most amazing room with a sick view, two television sets, a couch, a table with 4 chairs, two bathrooms, one with a jacuzzi and a king sized bed. I have no idea how I scored all this, but I'm not complaining. Check out the view;



And at night;



And I just think this is cool;



Despite all these pros, there is a strange sense of a con in Rio. I haven't been able to put my finger on it exactly, but what I've seen so far there is a weird negative vibe here. Admittedly, I haven't seen a whole lot yet, but just what I've seen of the people there is an attitude of what I like to call "tough guy superiority." I don't know if I'm off-base, but this is what I feel.

UPDATE!! I just spent the afternoon in Ipanema and it kinda changed my opinion of this city. Really cool laid back area with interesting people. Maybe "Cariocas" aren't as tough as they seem...
/UPDATE

Regardless, it's still gorgeous. Here's two shots of Ipanema;




Then here's me and our old pal, Jesus;



Random thoughts:

I missed New York for the first time today. Got emails and chatted with friends online and do miss the city a little. Sounds like everyone is having a good time, so just know I'm thinking about all of you.

I have been without a mobile phone for almost 3 weeks now. I love it. Might start leaving my phone at home sometimes when I get back.

I have been drinking aqua com gas (water with bubbles or seltzer) with apricot juice and it owns my face (© Copyright 2006 Ben Helfen).

Lost forums are amazing. There are folks out there with IDEAS, people.

My friend on the crew Fleur and I have been planning out a sloth farm. Proposed specifications are as follows:

- Lots of sloths
- Monkeys
- A garden
- A jacuzzi
- A greenhouse
- One baby tiger

Location for sloth farm yet to be determined.

So far there are two Mom's (that I know about) reading my blog. Can I just say that Mom's are awesome?

Finally, I still can't stop listening to Menomena.

Love and nunchucks.

Pools of Infinity

Hey, the first episode of 5Takes is tonight! If anyone watches, let me know what you think. And in other news from the states, I hear The National played great shows in NYC. Everyone should make a point to pick up their new album 'Boxer.'

So I'm leaving Manaus in about 4 hours, headed for Rio De Janerio. Why we have a 3:30am flight is beyond me. I didn't even know people scheduled flights for 3:30am. But hey, why would I know anything about the airline industry? Oh wait...

Today was the most relaxing day. I ate a lot and about 75% of my day was spent at the Infinity Pool. Now I don't know if anyone else is privy to these new fangled "infinity pools" but they are pretty awesome.



Get it? Pretty sweet, right? Especially since it's on the Amazon. It's also hard to take a bad looking photo around it.



I was relax to the max.



Then I finally got a (semi)descent photo of a dolphin.



As the sun was setting I finished my second book of the trip, "The Old Man and the Sea." What an awesome book. I read it years and years ago back in homeschool and remembered it having a profound effect on me back then and now I feel like it'll be one of those books that pops up sporadically throughout my life. Since it was such a great setting to finish a book about being on the water, I took some more pictures.




Walking back to our hotel, we saw a sloth! I dubbed him "Chewy" in honor of his great wookie ancestor.




And as promised here is my collection of instruments so far.



I'd post pictures of the hotel, but they aren't really that interesting comparatively.

Jack Kodiak asked for a poem about the Amazon, but I like haikus better, so here we go:

Rivers of life and rain
Glad the gator didn't eat me
Thank you for the tan

Now it's time to pack up and say farewell to the Amazon. See you in Rio!

Amazonas

Perhaps it's the sun or perhaps it's the malaria pills, but for some reason this week I've been really tired. At night I've barely had enough energy to get my work done much less for blogging. And there have been a lot of nighttime activities. So I've just been beat.

I am staying in the most amazing hotel I've ever seen. It's like a huge expansive of long wide hallways with beautiful mahogany doors and gigantic, ornate, hanging street lamps. There are pools and restaurants everywhere. I will take pictures before I leave, but for the time being, let's check out some photos.

First off- The Amazon River is in my backyard. The first day we were here we took a boat tour down the river and saw the Pointe de Negro, which is where the Yellow River and Black River (Rio Solomoes and Rio Negro) meet. It's incredible. Two completely different colors butt up beside each other, but don't mix. There's science behind it which I don't remember how to explain.



Here's a freighter from the Yellow River, then from the Black River




On the Amazon there are lots of people who live right on the water either in floating houses or houses on stilts. It's pretty awesome and I love that they wave at you if you start taking their pictures.






So then we got off at this floating restaurant/market and walked down this dock through the flooded forest. Now there is tons of animal life all over the place and yes, I did get a few pictures, but what I didn't get were the monkeys which were too far away to get a good shot of (why oh why didn't I get that long lens?!) and the fresh water dolphins which were too quick for me. Well, I got a fin, but that's it and not worth posting.






Maybe you notice the alligator in that last one, hmm? And here's the crew in the boat.



Needless to say, it was an amazing experience. Now I hate that I didn't separate these into different posts, but since I was a slacker this week, you'll have to just pause for a second, maybe go pour another cup of coffee, then keep on for the second part...

Near our hotel is the Pointe De Negro and right now there is a big festival going on with a open market full of bead necklaces and silly shirts. We walked through it yesterday before it was open while they were still setting up the stage and found this little pier and started taking pictures. A handful of local boys came up and started diving into the water and petitioning us to take their pictures as they leap in. It was really surreal and also really hilarious. I got a couple shots that I am really proud of.






Pretty cool, eh?

And finally I made another song, which I'm not sure if I like as much, but it's longer and has the same vibe as the first. I have purchased two new instruments which I haven't taken pictures of, but I will and they'll be included with the hotel pictures. Scouts honor.

MP3 - Manaus (#6)

Whew, ok mammoth post I know. Next stop Rio de Janerio!