Today is another one of those spectacularly, beautiful sunny days in Lima; that is above 2,000 feet – the FOG is again thick today, aarrgh…  So I was pondering this fine afternoon which of our latest dude adventures to write about.

Above Lima’s fog bank.

Do I write about our visit to downtown Lima to see the changing of the presidential guard (at Pizarro’s palace), or the Transformer street performer in Miraflores, or put together something on candid street photography?  All great subjects; maybe I could even throw in something on Peruvian ceviche for good measure.

Peruvian Presidential Guard.

Lima Transformer.

Lima banana street vendor.

Okay, in the meantime Samster (Little Big Man) the budding NASA rocket scientist/astronaut comes by and asks: “Daddy, can we build a rocket when we go to Grandma’s house?”  This get’s me thinking.  Yes, there is hope; grey matter remains in the old noggin even after a week of writing briefing memorandum for not just one but two front offices and for good measure for headquarters back in Washington.

So Little Big Man and I break out that trusty reliquary of St. Jobs of Apple, yes the MacBook and start searching the Internet for the Estes V2 semi-scale model rocket (black and yellow paint pattern) that we decided on last week to build with Pop-Pop (i.e., Grandpa) during our upcoming R&R in Florida (going home for Christmas for the first time in four years – yippie).

YouTube comes to the rescue and we download a couple of the videos – really cool stuff you have to check out.  At the same time we come across also some videos of Steve Eves’s Saturn V 1:10 scale model rocket launch and of a homemade Blackbird SR-71 scale model with real working jet turbines.  These got a couple of “this is so awesome daddy” from my four year-old.

Although we have a big field in the back of U.S. Embassy Lima, not sure if they will let us shoot rockets off or attempt to fly jet turbine model airplanes despite the coolness factor.  I can just imagine what the neighbors would say of our pursuit to find blue skies.  Guess it would not meet the front page of Washington Post test either, so let’s pass and wait for a Florida launch.

So tomorrow we are off to Cieneguilla, in pursuit of some feet on the ground sort of altitude that will let us see blue skies.  Maybe we will stop at the itty bitty piggy restaurant along the way for a bite of spectacular spit roast suckling pig.  Let’s breakout the Nikon and go exploring!

Mountain pass outside of Cieneguilla.

Itty bitty piggy on a stick!