Just for fun

Huayno is a traditional Quechuan style of music and of dance in the Cusco area. The music has a lot of guitar and high-pitched singing, and the dance has a lot of foot-stamping and stiff-leggedness. This afternoon, Abram — who conducted a salsa lesson with us last Friday — taught us Amigos students this strange, difficult, and surprisingly tiring dance. Good bit of fun for a Friday afternoon, but it seems more like a stand-up comic routine than an actual, romantic folk dance.

In Australia, we have a tradition that when you reach the highest point in a hike through mountains, you acknowledge the occasion with a (shall we say) "special" kind of salute. Being the true blue Aussie that I am, I was obliged to salute my fellows atop Paso Salkantay, at 4,600m asl. But what I didn't expect was for the boys of the Belgian Front to join me in performing the salute. Great sports, those Belgians. And apparently quite capable of being as big a bunch of bogans as us Aussies.

Just for a bit of a laugh, an Irish guy at Loki walked down to the Plaza de Armas (main square of Cusco) with me this morning, to introduce me to the insane amount of tourist-hassling that goes on in this city. However, instead of letting these people get on my nerves, I decided to turn the tables a bit, and to get on their nerves, by playing an evil little game.

When I was at home back in Australia, I had a massive arsenal of clothing, and I generally wore things for quite a short time. However, since I've been on the road, I've had a much more modest arsenal at my disposal, and this has forced me to wear things for (even) longer than I usually would. The net result of this is that I end up washing my clothes at about the same frequency as I did previously. In my case, this is about once every 2-3 weeks. Hence, we have the core of what I shall now dub Jaza's law of washing: the amount of clothes and the time spent wearing them may vary, but the period between each wash remains constant.