April 4,1996

Trips overseas end lots of the time in a pre-dawn scramble to transfer to the airport to meet the two-hour advance check-in requirement for international flights. Folks wanting to leave four hours ahead of schedule are paired with the ones willing to dawdle around until the plane is loading to check their last piece of luggage. The fast getaway set is easy to spot. They chug-a-lug scalding coffee and bolt down cold rolls, setting off a charge of gastric gases unknown outside the rooms of antacid labs. Their mates,(and the fact "the fast" marry "the slow" is an irrevocable law of unions) chat across the tables and invariably have to go back to the room at the last moment.

Foreign hotels serve early breakfast as a matter of course. Tour groups crowd the dining rooms, assured by their leaders all food and services are covered, unaware that breakfast comes in the price of the room. Drowsy waiters fumble for orders in a maze of lingual difficulties. Imperious travelers order three- minute eggs and receive cold toast; wiser heads slip a dollar bill by their plate and enjoy extra juice and the missing orders of soft cooked eggs.

To leave Peru from Cusco in February took a stopover in Lima to clear customs. Connections back to the States were close, so airline personnel helped filling in forms and photocopying the front pages of the passports for Immigration. Drug detection dogs, being harder to bribe than man, caused more delay going over the luggage. And to add to the confusion, the loudspeaker system blared commingled static and Spanish warnings of thieves and smugglers.

The main danger is crossing and recrossing the Andes, not pickpockets or drug smugglers on the ground. Slick fingered artists aren't made as threatening as riding a 727 into an Andean peak. The copilot on one flight told me the airlines weren't the only choice for domestic travel in Peru. The Air Force sells tickets on Russian-built planes he described as being "as ponderous as people's idea of a Cossack soldier." The planes ride on huge tires, he said, "and the pilot might swoop down and strafe a drug hideout on the way from city to city." Sounded like an excellent way to forget lost baggage claims and bad airline food. According to the copilot, no load limits were imposed and parachutes often served for extra seats.

Once in Miami, I kept watching in the customs check for the four ladies who controlled the souvenir market in Peru for the past 14 days. I was expecting to see a dog rear up on his hind legs and howl from the odor of a cocoa leaf tea bag, or an inspector to kick off the alarm over an eight-foot blow gun sheathed in a fishing rod case, or a wild boar's tusk fashioned into a candlestick holder or a watchfob. But the foursome moved through as smooth as is possible packing 400 pounds of luggage, plus the weight of a guilty conscience for cheating the government on the customs declaration.

Before the road hardened me, I used to care whether people purchased matching pairs of cannon balls bound by a rusty chain, or bought 10 sacks of potting soil 5000 miles away from home at a big bargain. But waiting on drafty busses, delayed by obsessed shoppers, became so boring that I started helping people select clocks mounted in sharks' mouths and armadillo shells made into baby bassinets.

If the rain forests and the atmosphere were endangered, I reasoned, then why not exhaust the inventories of the knickknack makers and curio shops in big sweeps of drawn Visa cards and fast-dry traveler's checks. I realized in our country garage sales recycle the world's treasures. Nevertheless, were the chain of yardside tables ever broken by a revival of good taste, a renaissance, so to speak, this major force in our economy might come to a standstill. In time, the fireplace mantles of America's homes would cease to be eyesores and our children would not mind inviting friends home after vacation time.

The customs officers waved people on and few bags were opened for inspection. The Immigration and Naturalization Service promises to soon have a new pass card for frequent travelers to verify identity by inserting your hand in a computerized scanner connected to a printer that issues entry documents. As bad a shape as people are coming home off vacations, the scanner will need to be a quiet machine, or it might set off a stampede the first time it buzzes by an old boy escorting his wife home from the biggest spending spree of her lifetime ...