The South American Diaries by John Hopkins

Author:John Hopkins [Hopkins, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Travel, Travelogue
ISBN: 9780932274687
Google: QJIhAQAAIAAJ
Amazon: 0932274684
Publisher: Arcadia
Published: 2005-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Hotel Bolivar, Lima.

Expensive, but after a series of Amazonian flea-bags I needed a bit of luxury and comfort.

Memories of Lima

Dating from my first jaunt with college friends through South America in 1958, and from the more prolonged and focussed adventures with Joe McPhillips, in 1959, ’60–’61 and ’64, I began to keep this diary, and, at his insistence, to read and therefore to think seriously about writing for the first time in my life. During the long walks and the long talks, when we ate and enjoyed the Peruvian food and drank (mainly pisco), we felt not only at home but an affection bordering on passion for the streets of Lima. We travelled by bus, truck and train over the Andes, and by balsa raft and steamboat (vapor) down the waterways of the upper Amazon. It was here in Peru, I realize now, that I learned the meaning of my youth and my freedom, and felt the powerful creative forces contained within.

Yes, and dating from those days which were perhaps freer than any others, I have always relished an encounter with Hispanic culture. From Tangier I often cross the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain, to sample the mariscos, flamenco, tapas, the tiny coffees and the rough brandies of Andalucia, And now I’m back in South America, for the first time on my own, imbibing the lonely atmosphere of the Indian bars, where the language-spirit of drinking and talking is Spanish, the language of adventure which I have always associated with my original taste of freedom. The sound of it still propels me to put down on paper what these places do to me …

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