The Hustler

Didn´t do too much yesterday, just tried to get over the shock of realizing that I´m going to be away for 6 months...some would call it homesickness. Feels better today. I still can´t connect to the wifi at my hotel with my netbook, but for some reason I now can with the Kindle, so I can download the Globe and Mail and keep up on events. I haven´t looked for new digs though...I can get by with internet cafes I guess. There´s one that´s adjacent to the hotel even. And now that I´ve gotten them to bring me my juice at breakfast without banana added, things are truly looking up!

Yesterday I was sitting on the steps of the Convento San Francisco...known for its catacombs...when this young dude came over to talk to me. I´ve been around long enough to know that when strangers...particularly young men...are overly friendly there is usually some fiddle that they´re trying to play, usually involving one´s money. This is too bad because if someone is genuinely friendly you assume the worst of them too. Anyway this guy made out like he wanted to be some kind of tour guide, asking me what I liked about Lima, etc. Asked me if I had a girlfriend, and said I should try a Peruvian girl...perhaps this was a veiled attempt to act as procurer. Anyway when I finally got tired of this and got up to go to see the catacombs he asked if I wanted some cocaine. I think they guy was just an all round hustler...what´s called a jinotero in some countries.

If my punctuation seems a bit off in this posting, it´s because I´m using an English keyboard that has been configured to produce Spanish characters, so some of the regular keys aren´t doing what you´d expect...no brackets, dashes, colons for me today.