Dowbrigade

Last night, on a rainy Andean evening under a leaky awning in front of the Tienda Ortiz in Huaraz, Peru, we said goodby to our firstborn and out first grandchild, and headed to the MovilTours bus depot to catch the night sleeper bus down to the coast and the capital and then onward to Ecuador.
Joe […]

Sitting in the Plaza de Armas of Carhuaz, a small town of some 3,000
inhabitants, almost all Native Americans, one is struck by the contrasts
of cultures and world-views.  It is not quite a Clash of Civilizations,
[…]

One of the reasons that we love the city of Carhuaz, high in the Peruvian
Andes, is that is has changed so little over the years. The people look,
talk, dress and act just the same. The same stores sell the […]

We heard back from our trusted tech-tester that the Peru video we tried to post earlier this week “doesn’t decode correctly” which means no one can see it. Oh well, we can only plead difficulties of connectivity and lack of familiarity with the tools. Our original video, hot off Final Cut Express, weighed in […]

A scary episode night before last. Up here at almost
10,000 feet, at the very edge of access to Western medicine, we suddenly found we couldn’t
breath.
It woke us up in the middle of the night, the feeling that we […]

Although we are ostensibly on vacation, the mind never takes a vacation,
or rather the mind takes its vacations when distracted by sex or powerful
psychotropic substances, from whence it sends back no post cards. But
[…]

Time flows at a different pace at over 13,000 feet above sea level. We deep-sixed our wristwatch the day after arriving, and after a couple of days glancing at our naked wrist, we are back to solar time.
Most days, we take the dog, a Siberian husky named Wolfie, for a walk. He […]

Short pause, while the Dowbrigade relocates to southern climes. Hopefully, tonight we will be reporting from Lima Peru. The past few days have been hectic and portentious. The few days before any big trip is tense and significant, one can feel the mood and tenor of the trip forming in the air as […]

U.S.
Marine Pfc. Willis Tomblin, of Jackson, Ohio, reads mail from home
and then burns it to prevent insurgents from collecting personal information
about him, at his base […]

U.S.
Marine Pfc. Willis Tomblin, of Jackson, Ohio, reads mail from home
and then burns it to prevent insurgents from collecting personal information
about him, at his base […]

This
is very cool - a complete database of all 800 active satelites in orbit
around the earth, including military
and "secret" intelligence sats. Who knew that the US still […]

WASHINGTON
President Bush and Vice President Cheney are firing back at Democrats
who say the U.S.
should start pulling out of Iraq.
Bush has dismissed comments by Democratic National […]