A Week Back in Copa

Life here is something like I would imagine living in Tuscany in the 1960s to be. Only there is a giant, epic and unendingly blue lake as the center piece of the whole experience. Everyone knows everyone (who's not a hippie, tourist or unseemly vagabond) the market is a staple of the social sphere, vendors chat with street artists whiling away the hours under a sky that appears to have forgotten what a cloud even is.

There is time to read and write and sit. There is time to chat and enjoy a long meal at midday. Working in the store, and officially taking the lead on it at this point, has already taught me a bit about business and aesthetic. Even if I don't have a blade of interest in retail I still find the bartering and endless interactions with tourists to be totally fulfilling. And Caitlin and I have even figured out how to cook with a little gusto up here. As if things couldn't be going well enough already.

The characters are developing. Dreamy Argentine coke heads who just can't seem to stay away from this place. Young mothers, conservative beyond their years, babys slung in colorful blankets across their backs. Brooding English bar owners, always with a cigarette in his mouth and scowl across his face. Not to mention his short, big nosed Bolivian wife. It's all quite intriguing and potentially the funniest thing of all time.

Long bike rides through eucalyptice forests, with that smell, as the Lake glares at you in the distance, make me realize that Caitlin and I are pretty lucky these days. We could be in an office building in a parking lot in Dallas staring at a screen for 10 hours a day. But no. We have the pleasure and challenge of life in the center of South America at 13,000 feet in the air. Damn.

Jaron