Hablo un pocito...

---

The train from Cusco to Machu Piccu is officially the most expensive public transport, per Km travelled, on the planet. The only way to get to M.P. is the train - no flights, boats, buses, cars; your only other option is a 4-day hike, booked out 8 months in advance. You COULD go cross-country with a stolen Llama, but if Cusco's anything to go by, you'd have to pry the reins out of the gnarled grip of one of the 100 year-old Peruvian ladies who shuffle around the tourist district extorting money for photos from travellers, who want to pat the funny little creature ('You choose, same price: the Llama or the Lady!').

I actually thought she was one of those irritating 'Living Statue' performance artists dressed as a pre-Incan mummy in traditional clothes until she started jawing animatedly to the Llama in Quechua and miming a camera at me. Actually, if she'd offered me a guided tour of Machu Piccu I would have leapt at the chance - it's nice when senior citizens can show you around the neighbourhood where they grew up.

We returned from M.P. suitably impressed, and feeling a much deeper understanding of the ancient Incans (we overheard a tour guide explaining that, to the Incans, gold and silver had no monetary value - and post-train ticket, WE TOO owned nothing of any monetary value). With 3 weeks, no cash to speak of and rapidly declining enthusiasm for rocks on hills, K and I decided to spend a week improving our (Spanish just in time to leave South America possibly never to return). Genius, I know.

One week on, I'm pleased to say I've improved substantially, and am in the process of formulating a system by which one's skills in a second language may be judged.

My personal skills timeline of these 6 months in South America runs roughly as follows.

Capitalizing on an intensive 9 days drinking beer and eating tapas in Granada over Easter 2006, my language skill ranking was at 'Foetus'. Basically, I had an inkling for when I was being spoken to or about, and was developed enought to yawn, kick, smile and urinate liberally in response. Ample for the party-scene in Buenos Aires, but knowing and doing a little more would help me get what I needed more often and take a little of the pressure off K as full-time interpreter.

The next step from Foetus was the infamous 'Terrible Twos' - My single minded goal of expressing what I wanted or needed was developing into 2 word 'sentences', but at the expense of seriously listening or understanding the answers I was getting. Still all basic survival needs: beer, steak, toilet paper, a non-inebriated bus driver, not being overcharged $50 at the laundromat. 'Long way to go yet,' I hear you thinking, and you're right.

A clean change of clothes, a good meal, and a hastily clarified situation involving the matriarch of our Hostel mistakenly thinking I'd propositioned her 13 year-old daughter (she wanted to see a bank statement and a photo of my family before she started planning the wedding) - I started making the outrageously cumbersome 'Complete English-Spanish Dictionary WITH Grammar' my bedtime reading.

And if 15 pages dedicated to the 'Use of the Indefinite Article "Lo"' isn't the hotline to the Sandman, the sheer weight of this bright-orange land-anchor makes it a handy tool for rendering oneself unconscious.

Osmotically or otherwise, some useful phrases began to become memorable, as well as handy, and my second language skills progressed to 'Street Vendor' and remained within this fairly generous category for the majority of our trip. Pleasantries, goods and services, numbers and time - the first two chapters of any good phrasebook - were permanent fixtures now (My brain made space for this new information by relegating my social skills to deep storage somewhere in my cerebral cortex. I prefer to think of the new me as 'embracing backpacker culture' but I'm probably just plain ignorant - if indeed a distinction can be drawn between the two).

In a distinctly Freudian regression, we left Spainish-speaking South America behind for two and a half months in (yes, Portuguese-speaking, Spanish-not-understanding) Brazil, where my communication skills returned to somewhere between Foetus and Terrible Twos - 'Point and Want' Communication.

Fortunately they're such a congenial bunch, they'll happily talk AT you in Portuguese (assuring you all the while that their Spanish is excellent) for hours. I imagine it's rather like the the kind of pleasure I feel when I drivel on mindlessly to someone's dog, encouraged by it's docile, contented expression and spasmodic tail-wag.

The Freudian oral fixation in all this regression, in my case, almost exclusively revolves around Cachaça (Brazilian sugarcane rum, used in the infamous 'Caipirhina' cocktail and the equally infamous 'Brazilian Space Exploration Programme') which not only convinces me that I speak FLUENT PORTUGUESE, but also orally fixates me the following morning (I become convinced that any food entering my mouth will result in an immediate down-the-line return of serve). The physical manifestations of regression 'under the influence' is a concept saturated with the basest of jokes, so I'll leave it well alone for now...

Before we arrived, K's Spanish (and indeed Portuguese) was already operating at 'Vox Pop' level - she could confidently walk through a crowded Shopping Mall asking complete strangers at random about the price of groceries, current politics and their sexual proclivities. Now that she's brushed up with a week of classes, she's at 'Current Affairs Reporter' - her superior grasp of the past tense (WAY too advanced for the likes of me) along with some well-loved and well-polished phrases making her a possible contender as Peru's answer to Mike Munroe.

And me? I'm pleased to report I've advanced a full level to 'Intermediate Show and Tell' - "This is my new Jumper. It's made of Alpaca. They don't kill the Alpaca to make it, just cut off all it's wool. K tells me it's just like getting my hair cut. I like it because it's blue and warm. It's not scratchy like my other jumper. K says I'm not allowed to wear it to dinner because it will get dirty. Alpacas are animakls like Llamas, but with more hair. They smell funny. Thank you. The End."

---