WAITING FOR THE REVOLUTION

Like him or loathe him, you got to hand it to Che Guevara - he left a cosy existance as a middle class student of medicine in Buenos Aires to go on an adventure through South America with his buddy, and rather than returning home, he started a socialist revolution and thereby became the poster boy of Marxist revolutionaries and disaffected youth the world over.I also have undertaken to journey through South America. Does the same fate await me? Or Lucinda? Or Vanessa? The parallels are few, the chances are slim, and quite frankly the will is not there. So it´s most unlikely. (Unless Vanessa returns convinced she can change the world through the transformative power of Bikram yoga.)

That said, I am expecting something vaguely interesting will happen to me on my journey South. I am hoping it´s not coincidental that when pepole say they `went on a journey´ they often mean more than that they managed to get from A to B (although I am expecting that merely getting from A to B in places like Bolivia will be somewhat illuminating.)

I think we´re too old and too allergic to cliches to be searching for enlightenment or our true selves, or any other such crap, but I do hope that we will come back a little changed and a little wiser. I am hoping its not too much to ask for this. Indeed, sitting on the cliffs in Lima looking out to the sea as the sun sets, its hard not to think of things a little more profound than where my next beer is coming from. Especially as there a sodding great cross made out of foglights on the promentary at the end of the bay which glows so bright at night it competes with the sun as it sets. Its hard not to be struck by the symbolism of the scene here in Peru: the Inca sun god Inti fighting a losing a nightly battle with an illuminated Cross. One religion being extinguished in the sea and another looking so silly and kitsch its hard to take seriously at that moment in time. You cant help but think what is that makes people want to believe in one thing and not another?

Nothing I or anybody can answer on a blog, but a theme that´s bound to return over the next few weeks. So, be sure to return for a little illumination, and find out where indeed its good to go for beers in Peru.