Ushi Hirosaki and Adele

Language gaps are funny enough to be mimicked:

Thanks to Heidi Glauser.

"Que Hora Es?" Video

For all the people out there who never got very far in Spanish and/or who have a sense of humor:





(Thanks to Elizabeth Pinborough for making us aware of this video.)

Republished: Mistaken in Peru

Still hiding from the sexy woman.

A few years back, some friends and I found cheap tickets to Peru and booked a night at Loki Hostel, a hostel with a wild reputation that isn’t unfounded. For four bucks a night, we were willing to put up with quite a bit. On the way to Loki, our cab driver asked us what we were going to be doing. We told him about the hike and the three unplanned days before it. “You want to see sexy woman?” he asked in his stilted English. Obviously he knew about Loki’s reputation and assumed we shared the promiscuous disposition of its usual boarders. Over our vigorous protests, he told us he’d get us tickets. “You see sexy woman. You see sexy woman," he said. A knot formed in my stomach. As it turned out, Sacsayhuamán—not “sexy woman”—is the ruin of a massive Incan temple just outside Cusco. The complex was the site of the last stand between Incan warriors and their European invaders in the 15th century. Guess we didn’t seem that wild after all.

-Stu Back

Originally published (in a lengthier form) by Stowaway Magazine