The Retrospective Traveler: An Innocent in South America

I am a retrospective traveler, to be sure. I’m all anticipation before the event, sentimental after it all, but decidedly unimpressed when I actually have to participate. Maybe I’m getting old, but my senses seem to have become terribly brittle. Heat seems hotter, smell seems more pungent, and I bitterly resent having to share two washrooms on a plane with a hundred people.
Back in the ‘80ies, I decided to be vacant in South America for a month or two. I don’t know why, really; I don’t speak Spanish, and I hate spiders. But the poor thing seemed like it needed someone uninvolved to look at it for a change -someone not bent on cutting it up, or carting away wildlife. I have to admit that I do have some bamboo chairs and a teak-veneered bookcase, but I wasn’t planning on making that widely known down there. I wanted to be seen as neutral.