…Have a whole parade of them! Seriously of all the things I was expecting to see during my trip to Peru, cows wasn’t one of them. I figured I’d see lots of llamas, not even sure why Peruvians loves their llamas, but the highlight in Lima this year was cows. Cows scattered all over the city in weird artistic interpretations/poses/whatever you want to call it, either way its still COWS!

Kind hearted Brazilians, a drunken Englishman and a girl named Death in the twist and turns of my visit to Shenanigans Irish Pub located near the beaches of Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro.

This is not the type of story you might often hear about in travel tales, because who wants to admit to going to a touristy spot where nearly everyone speaks English and it’s almost indistinguishable from some place back home, minus the collage of accents. Truth be told I didn’t mind this place when I wanted a stout beer or just didn’t want to struggle so much to communicate with whoever filled the bar stool next to me. I was never homesick during my 4 months in Rio but I was communication sick- that is sick of communicating with the same people all the time because they were the only English speakers, well fluent ones. If you have traveled along side someone, you probably have had this moment where it isn’t that you are tired of the person but need a different type of conversation, perhaps a different perspective.  So let me tell you a monkey’s tale of three very different experiences, all of which helped shaped my outlook on Rio’s Cariocas.

After reading through an article on Yahoo, Reining in Rio: Not Everything Goes at Carnival thanks to The Trip Chicks on twitter I was amazed at the changes to the Rio I once knew. Granted this little monkey only spent 4 months living there but that is long enough to call a place home. What I read from the article makes me question what my former home will look like once I return to visit. As Marcus Paulo Reis was quoted in the article saying, “They’re trying to get rid of the grit that gives Rio its flavor.” The grittiness that get’s in your shorts when swimming is not a good thing, but this is a different kind of grit that they don’t show on the postcards of Rio.

In the USA identity plays an important role in the lives of many. It is who they interact with, date and even influence things like where they live or what religion they follow. Identity often is so interlocked with ethnicity that they become indistinguishable. Think of it this way e-harmony boast that it matches you on a kajillion levels of compatibility yet somehow you still manage to end up with someone of the same ethnicity. So what happens when you were born in Peru, Spanish is your first language, you live in the USA but you’re of Japanese descent? Well then my friend, you are Perusian.

Sure it seems like a novel concept but it makes sense and works, besides that it’s kind of catchy and pretty accurate. This self identifying term also flies if you are of Chinese or any other Asian background living in Peru just in case you couldn’t figure that out on yourself.

Photo is the property of Matador Change

If there ever was a clear distinction between a traveler and a tourist I think the movement started by the Metador Network is a perfect example. Less than 24 hours ago (2/12/10 – 9:45 PM EST), an earthquake that registered a 7.0 hit Haiti, to put this into perspective the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was an 8 and the West Java earthquake was also a 7 on the Richter scale. The latter “killed at least 79 people, injured over 1,250, and displaced over 210,000,” according to Wikipedia.