I’d really appreciate it if you guys read this-

I’m in Puno, Peru. It’s one of the poorest cities in the nation. Yesterday, an older woman was nearly begging us to buy a hat from her, which was handmade from alpaca yarn for only S/7, or USD $2.80. We paid her 4USD and she was incredibly happy that we offered more than she had. We don’t need another hat, but it really made this old woman’s night, she was almost crying asking us to buy it.

I can tell when these things are a ruse or less-than-true, that’s not the case here. The same thing happened to me yesterday with a woman and her child trying to sell me a pack of gum. She only had about $2.50USD worth of candy in her tray–most other places people have a lot of merchandise, probably more like $30USD. It’s not a side job, or something to do during the day, trying to turn a dime profit on a piece of candy or selling a hat you spent hours knitting for less than $3USD is these people’s main source of income. And you could easily go days without selling anything in this saturated market. There’s hardly any tourists here.

If anyone is interested, you can send me money and I’ll go out into the city of Puno, buy something for you, and ensure that the money makes it to a person who really needs it. You win, because you’ll get a quality hat that’s worth far more than it costs, and it really does make these people’s days. Or if you want, I could take the hat and donate it to someone else who needs it down the line. Or I could look for something else, it’s really up to you.

This is as fair-trade as you could ever get–there is no middle man, the money goes directly into the hands of people who desperately need it. Contact me anyway you’d like to arrange something, or donate money via Paypal button on the side of my blog, or the bottom of my website.

Been a long time since my last post, so I’ll go over my travel log quickly first. We left Wichita and spent the night in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Then we spent the night in Oklahoma City. After that we stayed in Marietta, Oklahoma. Then to Dallas, where we stayed somewhere on the outskirts of the Metroplex. After that we spent two nights in Austin, then drove to San Antonio, spent the night, before spending the night in Poteet. From there we drove down to McAllen and spent the night there. The next morning we drove to Port Isabel and spent the night there which brings me up to this morning.

It’s kind of a lot to write about.

Guthrie was the capital of Oklahoma for several years in the early 1900s before it was moved to Oklahoma City. As a result, downtown Guthrie has a perfectly preserved Victorian downtown, and has (I believe) the largest urban historic district in the United States. That night we stayed behind a strip mall next to a hilariously dramatic McDonald’s. I actually sat in side for two hours just listening to the McDrama. The manager made all of the employees save one have a time out. Twice. When I first walked in, five people were standing around the fryer, and the manger was trying to mediate the conflict unsuccessfully while two of the people kept threatening to throw fries at each other . At some point earlier in the day, someone had hurled a three pound ketchup bag at someone else and it exploded all over the McKitchen.

The next day we drove into Oklahoma City. I was really surprised by the city. I wasn’t really expecting much, I just assumed it would be sort of like a bigger Des Moines. Instead, it was actually really nice. Downtown was very picturesque; it looked very stereotypically American, in a good way. We drove around the city quite a bit and saw most of the major attractions. I also wanted to look into Oklahoma City University, which had a beautiful campus.

We spent the night in Oklahoma City, then we drove south until we ended up camping at a truck stop in Marietta, Oklahoma. The next morning we drove into Dallas, and saw Dealey Plaza. We also went to the Steinway Piano Showroom, which was an incredible visit. We stayed that night in a Walmart on the outskirts of the Metroplex before driving into Austin the next day.

We went to Waco, then to Austin where we stayed for two nights to get ready for Central America. We got immunizations at the North Austin Medical Center, fixed our car stereo, and bought a few things before heading to San Antonio.

If it seems like I’m glossing over Texas, it’s because I’ve already been there, and I plan on dedicating an entire post to “Cities of Texas: Ranked from Best to Worst”. San Antonio was actually really nice. Aside from the sprawl, downtown seemed much nicer than the other cities in Texas, not even including the Riverwalk. While in San Antonio, we went to the Alamo. The Alamo, while being smaller than you thought it would be, is also a major international tourist attraction, and overblown, like most things in Texas. Most of the Alamo claims are unsubstantiated, they don’t even know if Davy Crocket died in the Alamo. But, continuing on, the Riverwalk is really nice as well. I had no idea. You can google pictures if you want, because I can’t come up with how to describe it.

We left San Antonio that night and camped in Poteet, Texas. The next morning we got up and drove through miles and miles of semi-arid scrubland filled with oil rigs and derelict little towns before we arrived in the sprawling suburbs known as “McAllen”. We stayed in a Home Depot parking lot, but were kicked out at 7:30am. We went to Walmart to buy a few more things, then headed through more South Texas, which at this point had turned into seemingly endless sprawl. We stopped at a thrift store, where I found a large jumping spider in a shirt, and a Bass Pro Shop, which I had no idea was more than just a store. We drove to Port Isabel, Texas, where we had stayed last time we were in the area, at an extremely nice RV park.

I’m leaving in a about five minutes for the beach, it’s 75 degrees out and sunny.