If you’re obese, don’t go to Peru.

Well The Jaunt has been neglected for about two weeks now, and it’s time to bring it back to working order.

First order of business: I’m back in Argentina, living in Buenos Aires, where a miraculous shelter scenario has fallen into my hands.  Ï’ll be staying, for at least a month, in my own house outside the city center.  It’s a fairly large house, with beautiful a terrace above it and an asado fire oven for Argentinean grill-outs, and it is a perfect refuge away from the downtown hustle where I can study Spanish and read most of the day.  For the most part, I had been enjoying having the whole place to myself, until early this morning.  Earlier the previous night I had heard some slightly bizarre moaning coming from above my room and had assumed I was hearing sounds from someone’s bedroom, perhaps with Argentinean nuances or something.  I was awoken around 4 AM to boisterous wailing directly outside my door, on the patio, and was shaken up enough to instinctively yell “HEY!”.  I hear a loud rapping on the door and jump out of bed, realizing that whatever is making that noise probably isn’t human, or I’d have some serious problems on my hands.  Slowly sliding back the curtains, I can make out some action going on near the bushes. Turns out to be two stray cats having intercourse.  I didn’t end up sleeping well after that.

Anyway, aside from that, things have gone really well here so far.  I stayed in an minimal artistic Palermo “hollywood” apartment of a friend, a filmmaker here, for the first few days before moving into the current setup. I’ve gotten to see most of my Argentinean friends and have been able to practice my Spanish a fair amount. I’m starting intensive Spanish courses 20 hours per week on Monday, and I think I’ll be studying pretty much full time the next few months.

Secondly, I caught this article today, about human fat traffickers in Peru.  Apparently this gang lures people — people involved in the drug trade, and not tourists hopefully — to remote areas and kills them, drains their fat, and sells it for about $60,000 on the black market in Lima.  Read the article if you want the groteque details, but I found this pretty shocking, especially given that there is no shortage of fat as inputs for cosmetics, etc., making it puzzling as to why there seems to be latent demand for human body fat on the black market.

Lastly, Diego Maradona has again gotten himself into trouble with his “tell it like it is attitude”.  He’ll be sidelined from any football-related activity for a few months, to the dismay of my adopted countrymen.  An overview of what happened, from the NYT:

He was sanctioned after an expletive-filled rant when interviewed on the touchline and produced another outburst in the post-match media conference, which was broadcast live on several television networks. Maradona told the media to “suck it and keep on sucking.”

Always taking the Argentine attitude to the next level.