Dear friends and family,
I wanted to start this entry with “As our trip comes to an end…” or perhaps “As our journey winds down…” Maybe if I was feeling especially poetic, I might begin: “As the curtain falls on our Latin American adventure…” BUT how can I truthfully write about the end when all the faces and laughs and peanut butter memories keep playing through my head. We’ve been truly blessed with a sense of family to lean on during the past three months, and it was there to support us because we put it there. We worked on it. And slowly we learned to trust each other, to realize how terribly precious our time is together. Something like this does n0t just end because we wake up one morning and find we’re no longer surrounded by our 13 brothers and sisters. It can’t. So, instead I want to make a toast…
To all the late night conversations,
Passions and imagination.
To splittin up per diem cash
Pucara-s dance bash
Eddie’s sweet stache
Hey! t.p. goes in the trash,
Don-t put it in the toilet.
You wanna drink that water?
You better boil it.
Fill that glass with chicha morada,
Juga de pina, de mango, de mora,
Fill it with Nescafe, with buen dia,
Te de coca, te de manzanilla.
Hell I don’t care,
Fill it with Cusco lightning and hail,
Fill it with Salkantay rain,
With monkey brains.
Take your glass and lift it high,
This one’s to us, to familia, mafia
To eating so many llapingachos that they’re taking photos.
To desert campfire smoke
and Mom’s spaghetti jokes.
Wait, how many cokes was that Mamma Cusco?
Here’s to Juan Carlos and Marcelo and Lorena,
To Tio, and the finca
Match sticks and cuarenta
To platanos and rice
Yolanda, roll tha dice.
Haikus for Robin
Planting trees, blazin hot sun
Dirty hands, what fun!
For hearts and ERS
For jungle siesta chess.
Let’s toast that lomo saltado
That alpaca al ajo
Queso helado.
Pass me the java, I’m spittin hot lava.
Wait, oh no – this internet’s getting slow.
Why won’t Google chrome run?
It’t time. This poem’s done.
Yo straight off tha dome son!
Much love,
all of us