Questions about my vacation:

Well I was going to launch into more ramblings on the three chairs in my house, er den, but then I was reminded by a loyal reader than I haven't talked much about my vacation. By way of explanation I should explain that I went through a few rough spots, to put it mildly, almost right after vacation, so I neglected my blog, hell I neglected everything, and when I started posting again I was a bit more inwardly looking rather than picking up where I left off.

At any rate, my loyal reader asks:
"But I'm dying to know what, exactly, (you) did in the Andes? What does a dragon take on vacation, other than a book? Does he pack? Take some of his horde? How were Andean dragons different from where Jack was from? Is dragon culture universal?

These are all quite good questions, and I will try to answer each as best I can. I was in the Andes for the better part of a week, hanging around the area where the Incan empire was once centered. I should note that we dragons love being around the odd bits left over from old cultures. Like humans, we too grow nostalgic, but given our longer life spans there is rarely anything outside our treasure troves that can help us bask in the glow of our nostalgia. But, in a place like the Andes, where the Incan culture thrived when we were much younger, there we can smell, taste and feel the days gone by. So what did I do in the Andes? For the most part I visited old familiar places I remembered from earlier days. It is always bittersweet to go back, but sometimes I can lay quietly amidst a particular ruin late at night when nobody is around, close my eyes and transport myself back to those earlier days. That's what I spent most of my time doing, that and looking for other dragons which are quite scare throughout the world these days.

I suppose I never stopped to think that dragons were so much different from humans when it came to vacations. After all a vacation is a way to get away from home and that we all have in common. That said, we dragons do not take sunscreen, bugspray, clothes and all manor of what you call toiletries with us on trips. Rather, we usually just take books (yes I like to read), and maybe something nostalgic from our treasure trove. I brought several books and a photo graph of myself and someone who was once a close friend. For the return trip I took a few extra bauble for my treasure trove, but nothing more. We dragons pack light.

Are Andean dragons different? Well quite honestly all dragons are unique in ways far beyond what humans consider unique. That said, we generally have a lot in common too. We our immense, brooding creatures who prefer solitude. This does make it difficult to find other dragons, but it takes a dragon to find a dragon and I managed to scrape up one or two in my trip to the the Andes. There is a bit of a culture amongst Andean dragons that might be hard to explain. Most of them lived throughout the Incan empire and experienced the history that lead us to the present day. They have a certain snobbery about how things were way back when and consider the current human 'civilization' to be ugly and distasteful. This tends to color all of their conversations and makes even another dragon tire of their company pretty quickly. They did have some very nice treasure troves though, some that even humans would appreciate.

I hope I answered most of the questions asked and not asked, but to anyone reading this, please feel free to question or comment all you want. One thing a dragon has is plenty of time.