The Day I Wished I had my Camera

Usually I have my camera on me at all times because there’s no telling when some kind of crazy shit is going to go down or when I’m going to run into something I’ve never seen before, which is pretty much all the time. When I was in Lima about a month ago for a meeting, I went cruising around with a few friends and for whatever reason I left my camera back at the hostel. On a lark, we decided to go to the Parque de Aguas, a park that has all kinds of water fountains. According to the brochure, it’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for the park that has the most fountains in the world. I’m not going to say that they were the most impressive fountains I’ve ever seen. Fontana di Trevi in Rome, Buckingham Fountain in Chicago, the fountains at the Bellagio in Vegas - all more spectacular, it’s just this park had a ton of them in the same place. It might have been pretty romantic had I not been with a bunch of dudes. Anyway, missed photo op # 1.

When we were at the park, a Peace Corps buddy of mine called and said he had an extra ticket to an art opening. I was kind of done with the water park and the museum was right across the street so I agreed to meet him there. Turns out, this was the event to be at. All the upper crust of Lima society was there. When we first arrived, there was a ton of security, men in suits with ear pieces in their ears and talking into their sleeves, just like in the movies. Sure enough, we got in and the President of Peru, Alan Garcia was there. I got to within maybe 20 feet of him and tried to snap a pic with a borrowed camera. Missed photo op #2. The closest I’ve ever been to a president was George Bush, the elder one not the retard. I saw him at a grocery store in Houston buying dog food and Blue Bell ice cream just after he lost the election to Bill Clinton. His hair was greasy and disheveled, he was sun burnt and his shoes looked god-awful. But I digress. President Garcia was there for the inauguration as was Kate Moss. I didn’t see her but was told by some of the Peruvians that did see her that she looked like she’d been rode hard and put up wet (though they didn’t use that exact colloquialism).

The event was the grand-reopening of the Museo de Arte de Lima or Mali. The Mali had been closed the past couple of years for remodeling, a project that apparently had gone well over-schedule. As I said, anyone who was anyone in Lima was there and it was open bar. Men dressed in suits with silver trays walked through the crowd carrying bottles of fine whiskey. The bars served Pisco sours, top shelf mixed drinks and beer. All the beautiful people of Lima were dressed to the nines (except for us Peace Corps Volunteers and some low, so-called artists). We didn’t actually see any of the art except for a large what I would call a diorama, for lack of a better word, of famous buildings in Lima. The artist handed out cans of spray paint and markers and encouraged the patrons to paint whatever they wanted to on the buildings. President Garcia spray painted a heart on the Presidential Palace (from my angle it looked like a big ass). Everyone else hopped in and did their thing. The ventilation wasn’t exactly good in this room and the vapors were pretty strong. Kids these days with their huffing and their shoes. Missed photo op 3.

All and all, a great evening but no f*cking pictures.