Buzzards

Fun Fact No. 45: Tow or push? If you run out of gas on your motorcycle, or if it just doesn´t work, you can choose to have it towed by a motorkar (motorcycle with rickshaw thing behind it) OR you can do the most common thing: have a friend push you. You steer your motorcycle, your friend on his or her motorcycle puts his or her right foot on one of the the footrests and literally pushes you. Now, it seems to me like this would be a recipe for disaster, and I´m sure it often is. But I have yet to crash as a result of this method, and I have had to use it on more than one occasion. Very unique.

So you know motorcross? Motorcycles zipping around obstacle courses? Iquitos is like a big obstacle course and driving on unpaved roads (80% of all the roads in the city are unpaved) is like a game of chess or checkers: you really have to think about your next move and how that one will affect the rest of them. It´s great for a person like me who likes puzzles, but a little dangerous because my balance has not always been great. But I have yet to crash or fall, so there you go. On a really muddy road it´s a fun challenge to determine the best route. Often I have to stop altogether and analyze my choices: mud or puddle? Sand or rocks? The puddle might be deep, but the mud might be sticky. The sand always pulls your tires the wrong way, but the rocks could puncture your tires. It´s actually really great problem solving and it gets my mind off of other things.

So there are no flights into Iquitos between 9am and 4pm. Why, you ask? The buzzards over the dump. Yup, the dump is right next to the airport and there are so many vultures over the dump between those hours that the plane will crash. Ever seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? When Sean Connery waved his umbrella at the pigeons on the beach and they all flew up into one of the Nazi bombers? Kind of like that, except they´re huge passenger planes and huge vultures. There´s a plan, though, and they´re hoping to be able to open the airport during the day within two months. They have yet to share the plan with Iquitos, but everyone is excited about it. Blow up the vultures? Blow up the dump? Move the dump? Who knows, but if it involves Iquitos ingenuity, I´m sure it´ll be great.

Speaking of Iquitos ingenuity, despite several glaring inefficiencies in this city, there are many clever solutions.

GARLIC. Don´t chop it. Use the back of a spoon to basically shave it close. Quick, easy, and no danger of cutting yourself.

TIRES. Don´t buy a new innertube for your motorcylce or bike. Use an iron and some tar to patch up those nasty holes. It saves a good amount of cash and time. And to find the holes, inflate the tube and then submerge it in water. Bubbles appear where the holes are.

DIRT. Don´t bust out bleach and whatnot to clean nasty grime. Grab some sand from the street and scrub.

FLIES. Don´t just smack them with the fly swatter. Because the fly swatters here come with big plastic tweezers in the handles to pick up that nasty fly and throw it in the trash.

LEMONADE. Don´t settle for just plain ole squeezed lemons and sugar water. Put it all in a blender with the skins of one or two lemons. It makes a frothy, tasty yumminess.

There´s lots more, but these are just things that I could think of off the top of my head. In our next edition, folks, I´ll be sharing a general critique of fuzzy and non-fuzzy animals as part of daily cuisine a la Michael O´Brien and Julia McReynolds´ clever and informative analysis of Argentine meat. My tales will include turtle, rabbit, armadillo, and other of our fauna friends.