Little Miracles Happen During Travel

I'm staying in the same guest house as an old Bolivian-German artist who has paintings hanging in the Baltimore Museum of Art and who exhibited at a DC Museum in 2002. I ate lunch with him, when he gave me three very small paintings, each his own replicas of his larger works. Schmitz - Mr. Schmitz is his name.

Bolivia's landscape is pure beauty, but nearly forty percent of the population lives on less than $1 per day, all of which I've tried to give an intro to in my most recent Amizade blog update.

In other semi-Andean news, the Dogfish Head Ales Founder must be wondering if all press is indeed good press, after the New York Times coverage of his essentially failed attempt to make chicha, a corn beer used throughout the Incan Empire and common in Quechua regions to the present day. And Ollyantaytambo, an Incan fortress and population center, is topping off the Times travel section.