Peru - Where is the colon on this keyboard?

After more than six years, I have returned to Latin America. The original jaunt through Nicaragua and Costa Rica in 2004 was the first real taste of my only true addiction - travel. A relatively sober period (discounting the camera addiction) in Edmonton led to falling off the wagon and a six month bender through the US and UK in 2010. But now I'm back to my travel roots - espanol, cafe con leche, and delicious, delicious carbohydrates. Bread with your rice? Yes, please.

Peru has been an interesting excursion so far, presenting the usual challenges associated with travel in a developing nation - rumbling guts, infrequent access to suitable restroom facilities, cold showers, saggy beds, street noise; the list goes on. But it has also been more pleasant than many similar countries. The food is really excellent nearly everywhere I go. Chicharron sandwiches make me beg for mercy. Tres leches cake is a soggy slice of delight. Also, the people here seem to be preoccupied with their own lives, so when a pasty white guy walks in demanding pork, no heads turn. I'm still obviously a tourist, but no one is running up to me with buckets of fish yelling amigo, amigo!

The thing that unifies this country with the other developing nations I've visited is the smell. Something about the combination of exhaust, fresh and drying fish, open sewers, humid air, and probably a lot of other free radicals takes me back to the day I stepped off the plane in Managua years ago. They say smell is the most primal and long-lasting sense; I believe it.

One thing that's new is the internet. Developed by Al Gore in the 1990s, the Information Superhighway, or ISH, in concert with widely available Wireless Fidelity (wifi), allows backpackers to book tours and accommodation before arriving in a given location. This is, unfortunately, super duper sucky. The days of showing up in a town half-asleep after an 18-hour bus ride and staying at the first hospedaje with a flushing toilet are more or less over here. Hostelworld.com is making a killing. All the popular places are jammed and everyone else is left to clean up the scraps. It also reduces the improvisational nature of a trip like this. But I'm still clinging to the free association backpack trip - we haven't booked a place for tomorrow night. Risky.

Anyway, we have only been to Lima and Mancora so far. Next stop is Trujillo, then Huaraz for some hiking. This all involves multiple overnight bus rides. This country is much larger than it appears.