Awhile back, I’d posted an entire webpage on the site about my trip to Peru back in 1999. Since I just rediscovered it, and many of you have never seen it, I thought I’d repost it here. So, here you go…

On June 4th, 1999, I jumped on a plane and went to South America for six days. Strange place to visit, to be sure, but the experience was so packed with insight and unintended humor that I felt compelled to type the following thoughts and observations for you fine netizens either planning to take a trip to Nature’s Biological Testing Ground or for those just wanting to read funny anecdotes about a Spanish-speaking country that has a Japanese guy as their president…

I first flew out on one of those commuter flights from Burlington to Boston. Ever been on a commuter plane? Basically, it looks like they shrank the plane from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and gave it a paintjob. Believe me when I say that propeller planes are not encouraging. And since they are so small, they have the tendency to react to turbulence much like a nylon kite: every which way and in every direction. Roller coasters are more soothing. But, I survived as always (even though, like EVERY air travel trip I partake in, there was a major airline crash a few days before – don’t ask why, it’s just a weird pattern) and made my connecting flight in Boston.

Nothing of any importance happened in Boston.

Next stop, Miami! Is it me or did they give that airport’s decor direction to some flamboyantly gay interior decorator stuck in the mid-80s? I never saw so much pink and blue neon clashing with glass bricks since Miami Vice, which is probably the intention they had when they last decided to remodel. Since it was summertime, I was all too happy NOT to be outside in all of that disgusting humidity that, along with the occasional hurricanes, storms, and other natural disasters, make Florida the epicenter for meteorlogical Russian roulette. With that, it’s onto American Airlines flight whatever and an exit from all civilization.

The flight had a few minor gems. One was that one of the stewardesses (and, yes, I refuse to call them “flight attendants,” so deal with it) was a dead ringer for Sharon Tate! It was REALLY eerie. I actually played with the idea of telling her this, but gave up on this once I realized that she was probably too young to know anything detailed about the Manson Family murders, or simply wasn’t a true crime junkie like Yours Truly.

The plane started up and no sooner did that happen that the standard “lecture” began on plane safety. But, wait! The stewardesses weren’t the ones teaching me about the vast complexities of fastening a seat belt or the intricacies of that pesky tray-table in front of me… it was all on T.V. monitors! Was this part of their job too bothersome to do themselves anymore? They did have the presentation in two languages, though: English and that language that most of East L.A. speak. During the Spanish part, I distinctly saw the word “Metallica” in there. (Fly the damn airline and see for yourself.) Someone should tell them about this. Metallica, not the airlines.

One moment on the flight (which would repeat itself a bit throughout my visit to Peru) was when the stewardess confused me with being Hispanic. When handing out the Customs forms, she handed my blonde seat-neighbor one in English and gave me a Spanish one. I know I look a little Mediterranean, but I’m hardly Ricky Ricardo (or Ricky Martin, for you Gen Y folks). And, one utterance of my less-than-natural Spanish would have given me completely away. The stewardess was even Hispanic, for crying out loud!

The movie on the flight was “A Civil Action.” All I have to say is this: Can someone get a petition to ban John Travolta from Hollywood… FOREVER??!!! Okay, sure, he was good as a disco dancer, and even as a 50s greaser – but that’s it! Even L. Ron Hubbard would agree with me (even if he’s dead and has no recourse after my statement) that Barbarino needs to take a career dirt nap.

The Customs “search” coming into Peru was a joke (unlike leaving Peru… more later). They looked into none of my luggage or carry-on. (And ask me sometime about how practically invisible the “Peru” stamp on my passport is. Trust me, I went there.) They didn’t even give a glance at my vaccination card and I put up with more than one hypodermic needle shoved into my arm for that piece of paper. I could have all too easily brought hand grenades and typhoid into their country and they’d have no defense. I mentally entertained that last scene in “12 Monkeys” a little.

My first stop in Peru was Lima. I was there for approximately one hour (coming into Peru, that is) – and that’s one hour too many. Peru’s capital city is an industrial experiment gone horribly wrong. The pollution level makes Pittsburgh seems like Littleton, CO. (Oh, man — did I just slip in a TCM reference? Too late to go back now.) I thought it was fog. That’s a negative, Pachacutec! And the smell that rode side-saddle to this eye-sore was one of the few things in my 30 years that I actually felt near-vomitous over. The stench wouldn’t even stay outside, the airport was heavy with it. Since I had a 14 HOUR layover on the return set of flights (and more on that later) in this less-than-sanitary building, I had PLENTY of time to come up with smells that came closest to describing it. Imagine an intermingling of toejam, dead rotting animal, and stinky pussy and you have the endearing musk of Lima. Go ahead. Book a flight. See if I’m kidding about all of this.

From there, I boarded a plane for Cuzco on one of those “local” airlines: Aero Continente. Although, it wasn’t as bad as I strangely fantasized (read: no scary women with live chickens in boxes, go to Mexico to experience what I’m talking about), there was one item of note. The stewardesses were cute and weirdly dressed in these all-turquoise uniforms with matching scarves and their hair tied psychotically tight into ponytails. Mmm, kinky.

Before I got into Cuzco, a city of about 300,000 people, I expected a teeming metropolis. I was half right. The downtown area is extremely urban (though few buildings were over two stories for earthquake reasons) and crowded. Cuzco really didn’t have many street lights so crossing the street became a minor feat in agility, though, sadly, this wasn’t lowering the burgeoning population of this Peruvian city. The rest of Cuzco was a gigantic shantytown: clusters upon clusters of terraced shacks and houses that looked condemned, third-world conditions abound. A good 90 percent of Cuzco’s apparent population is living in abject poverty. Subsequently, I immediately expected the worst: that I was to get mugged and killed for my wallet.

Surprisingly, I didn’t. One of the major travel guides bemoaned the point that Peru was in the throes of a major violent crime wave and that it was common to be attacked. Peru even had terrorist organizations that were purported to snatch away American tourists and hold them hostage. I saw none of this. In fact, if you confine yourself to downtown, you’d never know that what lies outside of the perimeter is one heaping dollop of hopeless existence.

This may also explain the persistence of street vendors and beggars. Actually, persistence is a kinder, gentler word for it. If there, plan on having your space violated hundreds of times a day by folks pushing product in your face and having to say “no” a lot. The beggars (or “professional models” as they like to euphemize it) hang around the tourists attractions in full Andean regalia and their llamas waiting for people to take their picture. After which, the beggar hits up the photographer for his model fee. They can, on occasion, get a little cocky. At Sacsayhuaman, one youngster, when given three soles (about a dollar) from a tourist, assuredly replied “Not enough!” It probably works on the easily intimidated.

One growing appearance in Cuzco (and Lima as well) is the Internet cafe. I counted a good half-dozen of them in the downtown Cuzco area, though connect speeds are low.

One thing you’ll see ample presence of is Inca Kola. This is the most ubiquitous soda in Peru and is sold everywhere, including by street vendors. Inca Kola is gold in color and, although doesn’t taste a thing like cola, is a cross between vanilla cream and bubble gum, though it smells like the latter. A bit sweet (like many drinks in Peru – they like sugar there) but after a couple, I became instantly addicted and managed to bring some home, which I’m currently rationing.

And, while I’m thinking about it, coca leaf tea is nothing like cocaine. This strange-smelling concoction is good for folks needing to get used to the high altitude and it calms down your appetite (except for mine – I was perpetually hungry in Peru), but it doesn’t give you a brain-revving buzz. Sorry.

The main attraction in Peru is the Inca ruins. There are many sites to visit, some are purely Inca and some, in many of the cases, are Inca ruins that the Spanish conquerors of centuries past built their colonial structures over. The amusing part is that during major earthquakes, many Spanish colonial buildings fall while the Inca structures remain. This is because the Inca had superior archetectural skills, most notably, their use of bottom-heavy trapezoidal design. And trapezoids are everywhere in Inca ruins. Yes, I’m already writing the essay in case you’re in-the-know and were wondering.

One of the now well-known Inca ruin sites is Machu Picchu, a half-hour flight from Cuzco proper. I spent almost two days and three nights both there and at Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of the mountain. The ruins are astounding, as is the view of mountains whose peaks rise high above the clouds. Needless to say, half of my video footage I shot on this trip is exclusively on Machu Picchu.

Took a helicopter ride back to Cuzco, which is a highly recommended trip from Yours Truly. The helicopter itself is one of those retired Russian military copters from the end of the Soviet Union, and still has all of the original Russian scrawled here and there on it. An amazing ride and view.

My near-week in Peru flew by and I left with many souvenirs (including additions to my shotglass and mask collections) on an early Thursday morning. The morning flight was uneventful, but Lima has a few notes worth mentioning.

As stated previously, I spent a whopping 14 hours in the Lima airport. From what I could see and find, this airport was piss boring and absolutely no form of entertainment in sight, save for watching the intermittent horde of cabbies screaming for tourists in a cacophany of Spanish and English. I got there at 10:30am and the airline check-in desk didn’t open until 8pm (and my flight was bumped from 11:15pm to 12:45am on top of that). It was not fun. I ate, people watched, ate, walked around, people watched, ate, and re-read my Peru travel book.

After check-in (and I would find out that I’d have to go through three security checkpoints), I was approached by a Customs officer dressed quite impressively in black paramilitary gear, plucked from the crowd and led to a locked room with my luggage. Guess I looked the suspicious type. After thoroughly going through my belongings (and I mean thoroughly! – the man opened up and sniffed my toothpaste) as well as frisking me, he let me go. I found out later that there was an expected export of cocaine due out that night.

As background info: Previous to this interrogation, I’d left my baggage with a “baggage babysitting” section of the airport. As the Customs officer was going through my bags, I thought in true terror that someone who watched my bags had planted heroin in them, in order to discard what they may have thought they’d get caught with. When drugs did not turn up was when I finally let out a gasp of relief. Somehow, Peruvian incarceration, whether or not I deserved it (and I didn’t) was a bit of an unsettling concept.

When that was done, I wandered through the security checks and entered a “passengers only” section of the airport. It was like night and day. The airport I’d seen in the last ten hours was dismal, filthy, and crowded. As I turned the corner into a section of the airport I never would have known existed, I was assaulted by stores, _real_ restaurants, an internet cafe, and cleanliness! Where was this when my struggle with boredom was taking place? Out of my reach, obviously.

It took forever to board the flight from Lima to Dallas (yes, Dallas – the Miami flight never showed). It also took forever to board every other flight from there to Burlington. I was supposed to be home at 12:40 in the afternoon but with all of the delays, I actually got home around 7:30pm. Took an hour nap and went straight to work on writing and layout. Am I a champ or what?

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Every summer, I start up one or more personal projects to keep my brain stimulated during a seasonal period I’d rather avoid for its heat, humidity, crowds, sun, noise, etc. The first project started and completed is the case mod I did on my G4 iBook, giving it a much more suitable external appearance than the blank white void it ships with. And, although I’m not in the market to give out each and every detail to total strangers on the Internet regarding how to do something like this, I’ll go through some select elements of the process and provide some incomplete pics as well, merely to give a decent idea of what was involved in doing all of this…

The pics are located here. I suggest that you view them one at a time, starting with the first, so you can get a more chronological view of the steps.

The first pic might need the most explanation. Those are sheets of Plexiglass that I experimented on to see how the paint would react as well as what kind of tape I would need to mask the image area. (Absurd trivia fact: If you look at the left pane carefully, you’ll see a small speck near the lower-right end of the star. That’s a bug caught in the paint.)

One rather dissuading reality many who want to cosmetically mod their laptops run into is that their paintjobs might chip or wear off over time. I don’t have to worry about that, but it took some research and some creativity to overstep the possibility. See, the G4 top lid is actually opaque white, but the lids of G3s up to a certain megahertz range are not — the latter are what Apple calls “translucent white,” or clear construction with paint on the interior side. So, once that paint was stripped, I then painted the inside, mounted it, and never have to worry about image degradation at all.

I also used gloss paint for both the black and white areas. This resulted in a near-mirror finish that you can literally see yourself in. I like the effect. Then again, I also like seeing myself.

The name “FrankenBook” came from an episode name of a podcast called For Mac Eyes Only. Host Michael Potter read a letter I’d sent when I was in the early stages of research for this project, looking for extra tips. He no doubt saw the oblique similarities between what I was doing and the plot of the Mary Shelley novel — in my case, compiling at least one part of a dead iBook to bring another “to life.” As alluded to previously, that painted lid isn’t the original lid of my laptop. I have that neatly tucked away in the rare event that I wish to swap back. Taking a look at the pics, I’m sure you could assume that swapping back isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

And, the URL stamped on all of the pics, albeit annoying, is my way of saying that this mod is mine, and to make it more difficult for thieves to delete the well-placed URLs and take credit for this project. So, that’s why those are there.

So, I violated my warranty on this iBook. But, check those results! I’m especially pleased with the consistency and gloss of the paint, the clean lines in the design, and the fact that it’s well protected by being on the inside. And the red glowing apple contrasted inside the black star is definitely a winning combination.

If you’re wanting to do something like this, I would recommend that you do your research thoroughly, and then figure that some trial and error will come into play regardless of preparation. This isn’t as easy as it looks, and I purposely omitted photos and details to avoid total disclosure. I’m a real stinker like that.

Oh, yeah, and try to come up with your OWN design!

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