Yarinacocha

This is my second try -- the computer shut down earlier. Our hotel has wireless and I left my eee in Lima. Silly me. Yarinacocha was a sleepy little jungle village 20 years ago and now it´s a little city. The buggy motos everywhere, drugstores, a hospital, swarms of Shipibo indians thrusting their beads in your face. I don´t think they´ve ever seen a beard like mine before. Giggle giggle.

So much has happened. I can´t even begin to describe all of it (but here I go anyway). We left Lima at 4:30am Monday after hanging out at the airport from midnight on. The Pucallpa airport used to be a wooden building surrounded by thatched roofed jungle eateries, but now it´s a modern concrete building. The eateries are gone. Just lots of cabs. Someone from the Hotel Mercedes awaited his clients, so we went along with them and got a room at 6am. The owner Teadoro Inversini is an old friend but he was home in Switzerland.

Pucallpa is a motorcycle track lined with funkey buildings and stands, slanting down into mud trails by the river lined with riverboats. I wanted to go to Iquitos on the river (3 days on the river, $15. No time for that.

We moed to Yarina Tuesday, and later I located Willi Shuple at El Alamo, a lush green restaurant. Willi is now 78 -- when I knew him he was 58 and had a 30 year old Peruvian companion. She has stuck with him, a gracious woman who wheeled him out to visit us. We sat and just looked into each others´eyes, tears rolling down our cheeks. I loe Willi. He too is Swiss, settled in Peru as a young man. Smart. Why did I ever leae this place? (Because they sent me home in disgrace.)

Today we went by the house I built in Yarina. It is still there doing well. I´ll post pictures when we get back to Lima. As we walked away a 50 something woman rn up and hugge me. TOMAS! So we sat an disited wih a former neighbor. Then on to the next neighbor, Armando. We´re going over there to visit in a little while.

But just now I realize I left my money and passport in the hotel, so I suppose I´d better go and fetch it.

I on´t ant to leae this place. Why, why did I ever go back to crazy land? JJ keeps saying it´s paradise here. I don´t know about that, but I keep saying that it doesn´t get any better than this and then it does.