Go Beyond

Gotta escape that zone of sameness and bland expectation, where your complacent everyday self knows exactly what it will do (nothing) and who it will see (noone). Break the cycle of doldrum limbo stagnancy and force yourself into a situation wherein you know you will be uncomfortable and scared to go, cuz in that place of strange alien modish pressure you will be taken beyond what you can control, and you will be forced to be exactly what you are in that exact moment of place-time circumstance. In all of your imperfect, half-formed glory. Go, no matter your status, your age, your defined self in-context: go to places that you have never seen, go to people you have never met, stick yourself into sketchiness, fear, gray dim areas of uncertainty, where you don’t speak the language, and you have to gesture to make yourself understood, and people are tattoed and pierced and confused and full of life. Do this, and you will never despair. Do this, and your fear will lessen. So that you are not scared to live. So that you are not scared to die. Because the two are one and the same. So go go go go go. The tether that holds you to yourself cannot be broken by anyone except yourself.  Be yourself and go to places where you do not belong.

Vuelo back home

Sitting in the aeropuerto to vamoose back to The City. WTF happened to free wi-fi? Should be like water.

I had fun in the city, and must admit to feeling some pangs of regret that I don’t live in a place where I can walk down the street to a supermarket where they have absolutely everything you could ever hunger for, including 25 types of dark chocolate and the freshest bread basket produce ever. It’s been sunny as hell here, which I s’pose I cain’t really complain about, excepting that it has burnt my skin to a reddened crisp.

The nuptial ceremony was great fun, and I consumed so much red wine that I think I turned French overnight. The reading went well, although I got kind of nervous beforehand since the microphone didn’t work so I had to belt it out sans amplification.

I got to see and catch up with folks I hadn’t seen in years, which was nice. I couldn’t have asked for a better trip. Thanks for the carpet and good times, Willie, thanks for the sweet breakfast and recording, Seth and Shelley, thanks for the conversation and conviviality, Anna, and sorry I didn’t have more time for nargilah, James and Jenny and Ashley. And congrats again to Matt and Sue!

So long for now, San Francisco.

In Area of Bay

It’s funny how different different cities can be. As soon as you walk off the plane, there is a new vibe in the air that is particular to that particular city. Shit, even before you get off of the plane; the inhabitants on their way home set an intangible, introductory tone. San Francisco, with its REI wear hipsters, its segregated sidestreets of the strung out, its hippie bums who sometimes look relatively content. If I were a bum, I would live in San Francisco.

People in general look healthier, more wholesome in some sun-kissed way. Clothing is varied and colorful. The streets are wide, people wait patiently at stop lights. It is simultaneously liberal and yuppie at the same time in a sometimes contradictory but sometimes harmonious way. People bike through the city with their baskets full of Trader Joe’s tote bags. In the un-yuppified neighborhoods, if you don’t belong there then you stick out like a sore thumb.

A down-and-out man followed me across the street at one intersection, then good naturedly told me that he knew that I was loco. I thought he was telling me that I was a local at first. But then I got that he was saying that I was loco. “The way you walkin’, the clothes you wearin’. I can tell.” I took this as a compliment. If I appear loco, then that means that I won’t be fucked with. And I’m alright with that.

Summation of the Road Trip

Lacking an internet connection most of the rest of the way, I’ll just highlight excerpts of Days 4-7 on our wondrous Truck ride through the American south up to NYC.

Day 4: OK City to Memphis, TN

Billboards advertising God. It makes one pause to contemplate why an everlasting all-powerful omniscient Creator would require billboards notifying interstate drivers of His existence. Apparently God also has hotlines, as well as graffiti, working in His name. I haven’t investigated this yet, but I have a suspicion that He may have set Himself up with a MySpace page as well by now.

We just missed a storm (by minutes) in Arkansas apparently, as we passed by recently flooded fields, a minivan stuck in the mud in the grassy median, and a semi rolled onto its side down an embankment.

I was tuckered out on this day, and Vincent, the little green one (aka ‘chicken’, ‘worm’, ‘penguin’, ‘pigeon’, ‘duckling’, ‘dinosaur’, ‘gargoyle’, ‘turd burglar’, amongst many others, all with the interchangeable preface of ‘baby’ and/or ‘little’) was also looking a bit beat, so we stopped in Memphis for the night, one of the first real cities we’d seen since. . . well, since San Diego, and I don’t even know if you can call San Diego much of a city, for that matter. Phoenix, similarly, is a sprawled tesselation of suburbs in the middle of nowhere in the desert, dotted with retirement communities that are like Disneyland for the old and complacent. OK City isn’t much of anything to look at—in fact, I tried not to look at it at all. Memphis is set on the banks of the Mississippi, and one can tell immediately you’re in what has been a booming port town for ages. We stayed in a hotel which we found through it’s coupon which advertised it’s pet-friendly policies and high speed internet. A sign was posted in the lobby stating “no pets”, so we smuggled in the parrot surreptitiously, and no internet in the nearby airwaves was to be found.

Day 5: Memphis, TN to Abingdon, VA

Vincent seemed to be adjusting to the truck ride. He stayed fairly quiet all day, closing his eyes as he rocked in the sway of the highway through the corridors of trees just awakening into bud. We’ve been waking up at 6 am (local time) on the dot each day on our trip, so we’ve adjusted ourselves to the time changes we’ve been undergoing along the way as we fight against ebbing time.

As we drive along rolling green fields and trees and winding rivers, I envision the Civil War, which is furthered by all the museums and battlefields commemorating it along the way.

We’ve been eating mostly Subway and other assorted types of junk on our trip, and I can feel my ass losing its firm mold and spreading outwards across the seat like jelly as the journey progresses. For our dinner in Abingdon, we ate sandwiches which consisted mostly of mayonnaise and cheese. Our cheap motel smelled like a mixture of cigarettes, semen, perfume, and scented spray sprayed to in a hopeless attempt to mask the other smells. We had to listen to the forced bovine moans of a not-so-classy couple next door through a separating door between our rooms which was nailed closed with a strip of siding, as it rained bucketloads and we worried about our stuff inside the truck and wondered if the truck was waterproof. On a side note, all of the cheap hotels we’ve stayed at between New Mexico to Virginia have been operated by what appears to be Bangladeshi or Pakistani folk. I comment on this because it’s strange when you arrive in what seems to be a rural town set out in the Appalachian hills, and the motel is run by an Indian family.

Day 6: Abingdon, VA to Waynesboro, VA

This day was a truncated day, because we were stopping to stay with my girlfriend’s friend in Waynesboro. So we slept in for the first time and then wended our way through the hills there, and spent the best night of our trip there drinking wine, beer, and whiskey, and eating a homecooked meal and telling stories. Vincent also seemed very happy to be there, and gorged himself ravenously on seed, clucking happily and preening himself with delight at his own beauty. He was very upset in the morning when we had to leave, even though we reassured him that this was to be our last and final day.

Day 7: Waynesboro, VA to NYC

A week on the road with an Amazon parrot in a 10 foot Budget truck is exhausting. We were extremely, extremely thrilled to have this be our last day. The roads through Pennsylvania and New Jersey are terrible. I thought the wheels of the truck were going to fly off. Vincent had started off the day very upset, screeching in unhappiness, but by the end of the day when he had settled down, he was even singing and talking, as if he knew the trip was almost over for him.

As we crossed over the George Washington Bridge on a Monday afternoon, and the city loomed across the river, I felt exhilarated and also just plain tired. New York City once had a glimmer of ‘bright lights big city’ to me when I was younger, but right now it’s just another city, another place to live and struggle in.

We unloaded most of our stuff, once again, into long-term storage, not knowing when my drums, books, and hookah will ever see the light of day. It’s been 5-months since we’ve been living out of our travel bags, and it will most likely be 5-months more. We unloaded the parrot and got him situated in his new temporary home, and he began straightaway cracking open seeds, a new travel-experienced bird.

In NYC, you can’t park a commercial truck on the city streets overnight. So we had to turn in our truck. The place we were returning the truck to was down on 35th and 10th, and we are on the very northern tip of Manhattan, so it wasn’t a journey we were looking forward to, especially in rush hour traffic. So we drove all the way down there, since on-line it said the place was open til 11. It was a crazy journey, akin to driving in Colombia, rocketing over deep sewer covers and cutting around taxis in a truck.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way on our road trip, I’d lost the contract papers for the truck. I figured that it wasn’t a big deal, since we’re on the computer. Problem is, we got down there, and the only guy there was a security guard, and without the papers, he wouldn’t take the truck, and the office was closed so no one could look up the information. Panic began to set in as we realized that we had nowhere to park this truck, we had just filled it up with gas to return the tank full, and we didn’t want to drive it all the way back to NJ to park it at my girlfriend’s aunt’s house. We called Budget and negotiated another drop-off location, this one way over up on the east-side. Evening was beginning to descend. All we wanted to do was shower, eat, and go to sleep. But the trip was still not over.

Afterwards, I discovered that I actually kind of enjoyed getting a little scenic tour of the Manhattan streets in a Budget truck, discovering first-hand the craziness of New York drivers, and gunning the truck through narrow passages where I wasn’t even sure if I would scrape or not, but didn’t care anymore one way or the other. I figured that if someone hit me, then that was their problem. The New York City streets are ridiculous. Just like in Colombia, lanes don’t really seem to signify much, at least not to taxi drivers. Also, there’s no ‘green arrow’ when you’re trying to turn here. Good luck. But all said and done, it was like Toad’s Wild Ride through Manhattan. Since I wasn’t driving my own car, I happily gunned the engine and bounced over the deep depressions in the street at full speed, no longer concerned about whether the wheels fell off or not, and no longer burdened by a sensitive and terrified parrot.

We filled up the gas, again, and finally dropped off the damn truck, once and for all, after having put over 3,000 miles on her in the course of a week, and pumped probably over 800 dollars worth of gasoline into her belly. Fittingly, the guy who checked our truck in was Colombian. It seemed fitting because in a way, Colombia was the first step on the journey that led us to NYC. And after all that crazy Colombian-like traffic, it was the final book-end that closed that chapter on the road-trip. We then took a ‘gypsy cab’ back.

So here I am, at my place of destination, a bit frazzled and fattened but otherwise OK, with my stuff intact and my bird sitting contentedly out of reach of the crazy old dog that resides here. The job hunt now begins in earnest, and my new life here unfolds.

Day 3: Oklahoma City

A long day through flatlands, with stops only for gas at Love’s, a sammich at Subway, and some hotel coupons at the OK visitor center. We’re smack-dab in the center of our journey, and the weariness is beginning to set in. I can’t say I’m very impressed with OK City from what I’ve seen, which is admittedly just the highway + cheap hotel + Cracker Barrel. The highway, as soon as you enter the city, is literally fragmented into shards. I thought the wheels were going to fall off of the truck. I’m sure Vincent the parrot felt like the world was finally ending. Tomorrow we shoot for Jackson, TN, another 540 something miles. I wish we could cut our days shorter for the green lad, but the journey must go on. One can see by looking into his wide brown eyes as he huddles down on his perch within the cab of the truck, dazed and in shock, that he is immersed in a world of torment and utter bewilderment. I wish I could explain it to him so that he could understand, but the truth is that I feel pretty much the same way. It seems that after a long period of doldrum lull, I have entered into the streaming vortex, with no turning back. My life henceforth with be propelled headfirst out of a weeklong haul in a truck into a world strange, wired, and unwelcoming. This whirlwind initiation into new realms is entirely self-willed, fortunately. But it’s still a little overwhelming, stressful, scary. A storm advances just ahead of our trajectory, flash flood watches posted akimbo. Across the nation we advance, into the unknown, further away from my past, closer to something beyond what I have previously used to define my understanding.

Day 2: Albuquerque

The bird has adapted, sort of. He kind of goes into a daze while in the car, where his eyes stare at nothing in general and he crouches on his perch and hangs on for dear life. Then when there’s a bump or something disturbs him, like hunger, he begins pacing back and forth and then climbing around the cage. But in general, he’s fairly calm, and sometimes now doesn’t even react to small bumps in the road. Once we stopped at our destination, today Albuquerque, and got him settled into our cheap but actually quite pleasant motel, he was back to his usual self, munching away on his seed, checking himself out in the mirror, grooming, making pleased little sounds, and showing off his pretty feathers.

Driving interstate is interesting, because we’re supposed to stop at all the weigh stations now, as if we were truckers. They just wave us through once they note that we’re hauling just a bunch of mostly worthless personal shit. Also, on the trucker side of things, I feel more in tune with the semis that are everywhere on the roads. They all mostly respect the rules of the road, and they pass and maintain speeds just the way anyone who has driven a lot should do. It’s all those other idiots on the road that don’t get how to drive on a highway. They speed up, they slow down, they pass on the right, they ride your ass, which is a dumb thing to do when it’s a truck they’re riding. See, when a truck is cutting into your lane, it’s because they can’t just slow down easily. They’re hauling lots of weight. So when they know they are going to be passing another truck, which is all done with respect and is simply noting that “hey, you’re cruising at 70, I’m cruising at 75: I’m going to pass”, they will simply move into the next lane, and you had better let them do so, instead of speeding up and trying to box them in. They can’t get up to speed or brake very quickly, so they have to maneuver around things. Seems simple enough, but cars zip around trucks and try to cut them off constantly.

We’re driving with a Budget truck rental, which was nice and cheap, comparatively, especially with a discount, but I’ve realized since then what the difference between a Budget truck and a U-haul truck is besides the price: a V-8 engine. The U-haul truck dribbles like butter up mountain roads at 75 -80 with nary a shudder. The Budget truck lets you know when you’ve gotten above 70 by spasming like an epileptic choking. But whatever, as long as it gets us there.

Today we tried buffering Vinnie’s cage with a bunch of pillows so that he doesn’t slide around and is cushioned from all the bouncing. It seemed to help a bit, though he doesn’t ever get used to it. Poor thing is exhausted now after gorging on seeds: he’s sitting with his little foot curled into his feathers, all puffed up and falling asleep.

Well, it’s off to dinner now, and then some Top Chef watching. Tomorrow we’re shooting for OK City, but it’s a longer haul then today, and it looks like there’s some major storms a-brewing around them parts, so we may just cut off for the nearest motel whenever things get hairy. The nice thing about these one-way truck rentals is that they give you plenty of time: we’ve got 10 days to do what should be a 6-day trek. So if needs be, we can rest our laurels and ride out a tornado or flash flood. But another day is another dollar that could have been another meal in New York whilst unemployed and destitute. . .

Synopsis of Day 1

The parrot did not like being in a car—he was freaking out pretty bad for the first couple of hours, and we were extremely concerned that we had made a bad decision. Thankfully, he calmed down after a while, and he only got riled up again whenever we went over a bump in the road, which unfortunately was pretty often. We also learned that in order to eat, we have to stop the truck so he feels stable again—then he runs over to his food dish and starts cracking open the seeds. So apparently this trip will be a little slower then planned, so that we can take frequent rest stops for the traumatized parrot. C’mon, lil guy, you can make it! By the end of the trip, he’ll be a veteran of the bumps and sways of the road.

So here I am in Phoenix, Sun City, an interesting mix of a retirement community, Disneyland, and Jesus Camp. I’m going to hit the hay now at 8:30; this old man is beat.

On the Road to NYC

The Budget truck is all packed up and I’m ready to move. We were awoken at 7:30 in the morning to the sound of pavement being pummeled and jackhammered outside on the street. Looks like the city might actually be fixing some pavement! Amazing. Of course, right as I leave. The weather is also abnormally cold and drizzly here in San Diego, as if letting us know that it is indeed time to go. No more sunny days and long walks.

And it really is time to go. I feel like I’ve been undergoing some deep sea changes as of late, and the surface manifestations are just beginning to ripple. Finally, belatedly, almost at 30, I am almost an adult. I’ve spent most of my life coasting along with the way the wind takes me, and settling down into stagnancy when nothing moves, and now, after many tentative forays and excursions, I’m stepping out on my own, with absolutely nothing in sight but what I make mine. I foresee that for a time things will be pretty difficult in certain terms, such as still living under someone else’s roof, and it’s going to take time to find a new job, and it’s going to take time to get used to a completely new world, etc. But all that just seems exciting to me, because at least it’s a challenge to work that much harder to find my place, as opposed to simply waiting for things to come my way.

Also auspicious for this date of departure is that I had a dream last night that Rihanna had a crush on me. Which is funny given that I don’t even know what she looks like. But it’s still a nice feeling to wake up and know that someone out there who can sing so well about umbrellas might cherish me in an alternate universe.

So on the itinerary for hoy: out the I-8 to Phoenix, wherein my Aunt Ruth dwells. For breakfast we’re consuming the remnants of the excellent spicy Indian dinner from last night (thanks Karen!). That should provide for some later entertainment on the road in the cab with Vinnie the parrot wedged in between our seats, most likely freaking out and getting traumatized.

Off the agenda for tomorrow is the Grand Canyon, alas. We realized that leaving the parrot in the car when it’s 90+ degrees outside, even for just a minute to take a peep, probably isn’t a nice thing to do. So it’s pretty much just directamente out the I-40, heralding spring and new becomings along the way.

Colombia Wrap-Up

As promised, here’s the Colombia wrap-up post (finally! I’m glad to be done with it). After 2 months down there, it feels good to be back in the States. I’ve gained a new-found appreciation for American cities: they seem suddenly so clean, spacious, and organized—and the skyscrapers in downtown LA have never looked so beautiful to me before. And the people—they are so diverse! And weird!

I wanted to start this post off with this map, in order to give the non-geographically inclined amongst you an idea of what kind of topography it consists of, and where I have traveled within it. As you can see from my crude, multi-colored route-lines, I’ve only traversed a 1/3 of the country at most. Yet this is about the most that the typical traveler will see of this country, including most Colombians themselves.

The Jungle

The reason for this is that almost 1/2 of the country is immersed in Amazonian jungle, south-east from the Cordillera Oriental range of the Andes wherein Bogotá is nestled. And this is your first clue to the deep, dark, complicated and mysterious heart of Colombia. Even when you’ve traveled across most of the main sightseeing circuit as I have, you are left with some kind of sense of having missed something, that there’s something you didn’t quite grasp about the country and its people. Especially when you consider the on-going civil war and drug trafficking that is so strangely invisible, yet so widely publicized.

And that’s because few travelers (for good reason) venture deep into the jungle, wherein the natives dwell still in their traditional manner, and the birds, insect, and animal life is some of the most diverse on the planet. The jungle that harbors also the rebels and terrorists and drug traffickers.

The Driving

Take a look at that map again, and note that the majority of the populated areas are located within the three Andean ranges that sprawl upward towards the coast. This means that traveling by land is always a harrowing, at times breath-takingly vivid experience. And the few roads that connect the towns and cities are rarely more than two lanes, which means that you’ve got trucks, buses, cars, bicyclists, horses, cows, and people on foot all vying for the same limited stretches of tar. This explains, in part, some of the loco driving in Colombia, because if you don’t drive aggressively and pass at any and every given opportunity, you’re gonna get stuck behind an over-sized truck hauling some industrial machinery.
However, at a certain point, my understanding of the crazy driving ends, and I just think that many drivers in Colombia are just plain horrendous. For example, they don’t have any concept of a middle-ground; it’s either full-speed ahead, or slamming on the brakes. What’s especially ridiculous about that is when they are driving on small city streets with stop lights up ahead, yet they will still achieve full speed before reaching the stop sign, thus assuring the hardest possible braking. This can’t be good for the life of their cars. And yet, oddly enough, all the drivers exhibit the utmost of care and caution when approaching potholes or bumps in the road. They will slow to a crawl and inch over the holes, obviously concerned for the welfare of their vehicle. And then once over it, immediately hit the gas and blast full-speed ahead, until encountering an obstacle, whereupon they slam on the brakes again.

As a pedestrian in Colombia, it is your responsibility to yourself to get the hell out of the way of any approaching vehicles. As in, you will be killed or maimed if you don’t, because the cars will not look out for you. Even the dogs in Colombia understand this, and you will be amazed at the dexterity with which dogs will look both ways and cross the street in high-speed traffic. It makes you realize that American dogs must really be coddled, that they haven’t yet evolved this awareness of the danger of automobiles.

I’m quite thrilled to be done with fearing for my life while walking on the streets. Even when on the sidewalks in Colombia, you still have to be on the look-out for rogue motorcyclists, who will jump the curb at full-speed to circumvent traffic and barrel directly towards you, either skirting you by inches, or forcing you to leap out of the way. This doesn’t occur frequently, but it does happen. Look out.

Sometimes I wonder if the reason everyone is so lackadaisical there in regards to human life and frailty might be due to the great health-care coverage that they enjoy as Colombian citizens. It’s like, hey, no big deal, I just fractured my skull and broke some ribs. I’m covered!

Another thing to mention about the vehicles in Colombia is that they mostly run off of diesel, except for the propane powered engines. You’ll witness buses and trucks belching dense thickets of sun-blocking diesel fumes into the air as they chug up the Cordilleras.

The People

I have read frequently about how clear and well annunciated Colombian Spanish is. Now, some Colombian Spanish is clear and well annunciated. But on the whole, and in general, most Colombian Spanish I heard was most decidedly unclear, nor well annunciated. I don’t know to whom everyone else has been speaking to. It’s been consistently difficult for me to understand anything that people have been saying to me in Colombia, because it’s either been too soft, too fast, or some combination of both. It also doesn’t help that they’ve only been speaking directly to my girlfriend, rather than to me, and she understands even less than I do. Even when I would lean forward and try to enter into the conversation, demonstrating my little tidbit of Spanish-speaking ability, they would continue to ignore me and speak to her. After a while, I just stopped even trying, and let her negotiate the speedy barrage of unknown words on her own.

I have also read many gushing statements on how friendly the Colombian people are. I don’t know that I can be quite so effusive. Now, my extended Colombian family was extremely hospitable—beyond hospitable. But the strangers on the street, the workers in restaurants, hotels, etc, were, on the whole, and in general, more on the rude side of the things.

This isn’t to say that you won’t meet some very nice Colombians in bars and clubs and otherwise. But rather to note that in the many daily transactions (just as in most places in the world, of course), you may be subject to being shoved out of the way, ignored, or having small children yelling in your ear.

Also, there are absolutely no bars on blatant staring down there. I know that I’m freakishly blonde, but I still don’t appreciate being stared at for a half-hour when I’m just trying to eat my breakfast. After a while, both my girlfriend and I would just glare back at people until they got the notion to look somewhere else.

Random thought: could it be that an overabundance of red meat in the Colombian diet contributes to machismo and aggression? Maybe a few more vegetables on their plate, aside from the little sliced tomato and shredded lettuce, might do a body good.

The Food

Waaaay too much fried food, lads, and not even usually fresh nor hot when served, unless you’re in a nicer (i.e. not on the street) joint. Anyone know the stats on the rate of heart failure in Colombia?

I don’t mind eating too much meat for a little while. I just wish the dishes could have been spiced up a tad more. Just a bit more variety. Something that would go slightly above and beyond meat, french fries, beans, rice, and patacones.

But at least, of course, there were the juices. I will truly and dearly miss my jugos de níspero, maracuyá, lulo, and guanábana. And coffee. My favs were the períco—or pintado depending where you be—which is coffee with milk. As opposed to café con leche, which is milk with coffee. There’s a difference. Of course, there’s always just the straight-up cups of tintos, if you want to old-school it, and get with the peops on the streets.

The Sex

Sex seems to be a non-familial issue in Colombia. Colombians are comfortable with their sexuality. So on a long-distance bus ride, for example, the family film for the trip might be “American Pie: Beta House,” Wherein there is a naked sex scene within the first five minutes, continuing with boobies unabated from thereon. Or in a hotel, you might be flipping through the channels and go straight from CNN to GIANT VARICOSE PEEPEE THRUSTING IN VAGINA. This is a hotel where families were staying. Also, sex shops abound in Medellín and Bogotá, with 30 different types of dildos. I didn’t know that many types of dildos existed.
I also am convinced that Colombians watch way too many novelas on television, because they get a little too caught up in moments of passion in public areas. They will not hesitate to stick their tongues down each other’s throats and dry hump in public areas such as in front of museums, or in parks, or next to you in a bar or restaurant, or on street corners. It can be a little gross sometimes.
Colombians furthermore don’t stigmitize plastic surgery nor excessive make-up. You’ll see a number of surgically enhanced boobies, even on men, especially in Cali and Medellín.
There are also a lot of “love hotels” everywhere in Colombia. Make sure you don’t actually stay in one.

The Phones

There ain’t no public telephones nowhere in Colombia, so when you want to make a call, you either go into a place with telephone cabinas, or you pick up a cell-phone from a dude standing on the street with a placard around his neck that says “minutos.” He will have 2 or 3 different cell-phones, one for each different type of carrier, which is made evident by the first 3 digits of the cell-phone number.

If you’ve ever despaired at the general lack of cell-phone etiquette in the United States, then fear not—Colombians are ten times worse. They all have cell-phones with annoying ringtones, and they will happily chat away at full volume in public places. Your bus driver will be chatting on his cell-phone as he whips around a dead-man’s curve in the Cordillera Central at 80 kph. Entire families seated together at a restaurant will be chatting into all their respective cell-phones.

The Businesses

I was amazed at the general lack of business ethics and acumen in Colombia. Overall, most Colombians running their restaurants, internet stores, cafés, and tiendas didn’t really seem all that concerned about making money. I say this because at the time I traveled in Colombia, it just so happened to be concurrent with the time of the year that most Colombians go on vacation, December 15th – January 15th. This meant that many places were just completely closed that entire time, such as restaurants listed in my guidebook. Now, I’m not one to begrudge someone for taking a vacation—however, when you are running a business, I imagine that you are probably trying to make some cash. But most places just go ahead and shut their doors on Sundays, festivos, siesta time, or just whenever they dang feel like it, apparently. It’s rare to find a shop with hours posted on it, but even when you do, don’t expect them to adhere to those hours. It’s just a bit perplexing, because I don’t understand why you would intentionally give up tons of business. On Sundays, for example, there are loads of people walking around in the streets. But little is open. See the market potential there?

A Summation of the Country as a Tourist Destination

It’s a beautiful tropical country. If you are into hiking, cycling, that sort of outdoorsy thing, then there’s plenty for you in Colombia. If you are into drinking a lot of aguardiente or rum, or dancing, or hitting on Latino men or women (or being hit on), then there’s plenty for you in Colombia as well. I sometimes feel like since I didn’t party very much in Colombia, I kind of missed out on one of the defining national past-times.

However, if you are looking for a relaxing, stress-free vacation, most definitely do not come to Colombia, unless you’re set on shelling out the big bucks.

My recommendations for quintessentially Colombian souvenirs: hand-woven Arhuaca mochilas; tropical fruit jams; emeralds—but only if you’ve got some money to spend and an ability to distinguish quality; and finally—of course—a few bags of good coffee.

And Finally

This post is getting a bit over-long, so I’m just going to end it with a brief list of my best and worst times in Colombia.

The Best of Times: gorging on juicy red beef at Andres’ Carne de Res outside of Bogotá on Thanksgiving; chilaxing on my cousin’s finca in Armenia; gorging myself on strange fried meats (such as smoked cow lung) on a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city in Cali; walking back from the Parque Nacional del Café in the pouring rain; dancing and drinking with my cousin and friends in Armenia; trekking through the jungle to Ciudad Perdida for my birthday (I know, I made it sound like a nightmare—but I love that kind of shit); drinking fresh níspero juice on the waterfront in Santa Marta; eating a three course meal in Cartagena, accompanied by 2 bottles of Chilean wine, for Christmas dinner; frolicking in warm mud with the consistency of chocolate cream in a mud volcano, and then getting bathed like a newborn babe by an old woman in a lagoon; walking along the river in Medellín at night admiring all the Christmas lights; eating pasteles in La Candelaria; walking around the amazing rose garden at the Botanical Gardens in Bogotá.

The Worst of Times: the infamous 31 hours in an orange truck from Armenia to Santa Marta (the more I think on it, the more skeptical I get on why a truck would deliver oranges all that way, given the price of oil, and the fact that oranges grow rampantly and well on the Caribbean coast; some questions, perhaps, are better left unasked); getting scammed in a restaurant in Santa Marta; getting sick in Parque Tayrona; the Islas del Rosario “tour” in Cartagena; going to a Botanical Garden in Medellín in which there were no flowers—in fact, just going anywhere in Colombia only to find it was in the process of renovation, or just plain closed; getting soaked to the bone by nasty street water in downtown Bogotá; and finally, the plane ride home.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my escapades in Colombia as much as I’ve enjoyed writing about them, and thanks for keeping up, or reading a few posts, or reading just this post. This blog will now cease as a journal of my daily mundane existence, excepting for the scattered updates of my physical whereabouts, as I am now engaged in the act of trying to decide, in an as thoroughly researched and thought-through process as possible, where the hell in the United States I wish to settle down in for the next foreseeable chunk of my future. Tally ho!

Luggage Update

So my luggage has been returned, after 3 hellacious days consisting of phonecalls that led nowhere, listless employees that wouldn’t help me until I got pissy with them, a COPA airlines desk that had no phone-number, and when I finally went all the way back to LAX to talk to them in person, I found out that they also don’t even work at their desk until 8 or 9 at night, depending on who you ask. It was a successive series of tragic/comedic errors, culminating in the final punch-line of opening up my long-lost luggage only to find that it had been pilfered by a strangely selective thief. They stole: my Colombian hammock, my REI quick-dry T-shirt that was given to me as a gift by my sister, my Spanish-English dictionary, my Lonely Planet guidebook, my Tom’s of Maine deodorant (!), and my few remaining multivitamins (!). Weird. I’m really mostly pissed about the hammock and the T-shirt. But at least I got the majority of my clothes and luggage back, right? I also had purchased travel insurance before I left, and it should (supposedly) cover missing baggage items. Although I will never be able to replace that hammock. While that hammock was only $14 down there, it would probably fetch anywhere between $50-100 in the States. Damn.
But they DID NOT take, thank god, the two tropical jams that I had obtained right before I left, my mermeladas de lulo y uchuva. I’m pretty excited to give those suckers a spread on some fresh bread.

Luggage Lost and Dreams Deferred

—Sorry, I just re-read this piece after having posted it first thing this morning, whilst still fuming in exasperation. I just realized how absolutely pissy the whole thing sounds, so I apologize. I will leave it posted, however, in the hope that you find some humor in it, and also because I think it still stands as a necessary rant to get it all of my chest—

It was almost like Colombia couldn’t let us escape that easily—we had to be put through the fire of inefficiency, rudeness, and utter chaos and confusion before we could leave its dastardly clutches. Yes, I am now safe and sound in Los Angeles; but minus a piece of luggage. If it were that simple, of course, I would not be elaborating. Alas, the whole truth is not quite so pleasant to remember. . .
It began in Bogota, although at the time, we hadn’t realized that it had begun. It began with our interaction with the Aerorepublica (the carrier for the Copa airlines ticket we had orignally gotten through Orbitz.com) representative who gave us our tickets. As the first leg of our flight was simply from Bogota to Medellin, we were checked in domestically, even though our final destination was international. I tried to clarifiy this with the Aerorepublica chica, and that we only had a mere hour in between flights. Oh, no problem, she reassured us. I double checked. We still had to go through customs, get screened, pay the airport tax, etc, and I was worried that we wouldn’t have time to do that. And what about picking up our luggage, and then re-checking it in? Nothing to worry about, she said flippantly, just ask when you get there, it’s easy. At least, that’s the jist of what I understood she was saying, as she was, of course, speaking in rapid Spanish.
So we arrived in Medellin, and retrieved our luggage. There were no clear signs anywhere to be seen that would give us a clue on where to go next. We asked an official where we should go for our connecting international flight. He pointed us vaguely towards some stairs, and up we went, hurrying because we only had 20 minutes until boarding time for our next flight. We arrived at what looked to be the international gate, which we determined from the sign that said, “international departures.” But it also said Avianca. We approached the gate, skirting around a cluster of a family who were simply standing there talking to each other. Suddenly, the lady in the red coat at the gate snarled at my girlfriend (people in Colombia always speak to my girlfriend, not to me, because she is Latina looking, even though I technically speak better Spanish) and told her that there was a line. We looked around. Apparently, those people who were just standing there were in the line, although they weren’t making any effort to move towards the gate. So we dutifully stepped behind them until they ended whatever involved discussion they were having and moved. Waiting and waiting, getting frantic because we were running short on time. When we finally got up the lady in the red coat, she looked at our tickets and said, “oh, this gate is for other destinations. For Panama City, you have to go up there,” and she pointed up some more stairs. Well, thanks for making us wait in a non-existent line without checking if that was where we should be, biatch. So, we trucked up the stairs, still carrying our luggage, because we had so far seen no such thing as an airline counter. We then arrived at customs. We then dealt with 3 different officials, NONE of whom gave the slightest indication that we shouldn’t have been going through with all of our luggage on us. They passed us on through to the military checkpoint, wherein they go through every inch of your bags, rifling through each page of your books. As I have been to Israel before, this didn’t perturb me that much, as I expected them to be pretty thorough, given that their country is in a civil war and plagued by drug trafficking. What I wasn’t so thrilled about was that they really took their sweet time, and my plane had been boarding for a while now. The soldier going carefully through my shit was actually a nice young lad, and was trying to make conversation with me. I think he was complimenting me on trying to learn Spanish and telling me that I could speak well. Which was funny, because I didn’t understand a damn thing he was telling me, for the reason that he was looking down the entire time and speaking down into my luggage very softly in rapid Spanish. OK, so I finished with that, and then waited, and waited and waited as my girlfriend was being checked. She was obviously having some kind of problem, and as she speaks even less Spanish than I do, I tried to go over to assist her, but of course the soldiers wouldn’t let me. When she finally got through, she was in tears of frustration, because the soldier had taken some items from her. That was when we found out that all of the luggage we had on us was considered to be carry-on items. Where were we supposed to have checked them in?
We arrived at our flight gate, the final passengers to board. The lady took our tickets, and then looked at our luggage. “You can’t take those on,” she told us. Well, what were we supposed to do? We also hadn’t yet paid our airport tax. Now, let me remind you here that we had just been dutifully following the directions given to us this entire time. If anyone had told us, hey, you need to go to the airline counter (wherever that may have been) and check your bags in, then we would have done so. No one told us this at any step durning the time-consuming customs and security process. No one said, hey, you can’t carry on all those big items. NADA.
So anyway, after the lady freaked out, and we freaked out, she frantically took our airport tax (which fortunately we already had the money ready, as we knew about the tax) on the spot, and they took our luggage and gave us little hand-written slips.
Great, so now we were headed to Panama City, and who knew where the hell our bags would end up. And my girlfriend had items taken from her (one of them given to her by her grandmother) that she would never get back, all because 1) the stupid lady at Aerorepublica in Bogota happy-go-luckily just sent us all straight on into doom; then 2) the offical in the luggage pick-up area who send us straight on towards customs; then 3) the Avianca bitch who held us up and then misdirected us (it looked like there were other airline carrier counters behind her, but who knows what those were); and finally, 4) the string of officials we went through at customs who didn’t even blink an eye at the obvious amounts of non-carry on items we were trucking around.
We had been summarily fucked by the whole Colombian airline system (as well as by my retarded tickets, which were the cheapest by far I could find, but which decided to route me through 2 different stops, one of them domestic, before I could head towards the States). Thanks guys!
Well, it would be nice if I could end this tale of tragedy and woe right there. But no.
We switched to our flight to LAX in Panama City, minus our luggage this time, which we could only hope would find their way. However, in my point of view, things were going about as smoothly—minus the hassle in Medellin—as one could hope, given that all of our flights were on time, and we were able to make our connections without delay. We were now on the plane towards what I could only conceive as HOME (i.e. toilets with lids, hot water, vegetables . . .), and though we were still worried about our luggage, at least we knew that we would make it, without having to spend hours stranded in an airport in Panama city.
After the 6 1/2 hours of flight time, which oddly felt like way longer, even though we’d recently been on 14 hour and 10 hour bus rides that felt way shorter. Maybe it has something to do with the strange timelessness of high altitude flight. Or the everpresent smell of air conditioned poo. Anyway, so we arrived in LA at 11 in the evening, as sheduled. My sister’s husband had already kindly agreed (in fact, insisted; a kind soul indeed) that he would pick us up, so we were glad that everything was going as planned. We were taken outside and then shoved into a bus which shuttled us over to the luggage area. People were shoving and running as if they were going to get anywhere fast. I think we were all just thrilled to be on our feet and going somewhere. We were all thinking of hot showers, non-airplane food, and giant, peaceful, toilet-seated dumps. We went through the initial customs screening, and then waited diligently by our alloted luggage carousel. And waited. And waited. Now, let me first get into the scene here at this carousel, which is pretty much repeated in every carousel around the world.
Why is it that human beings are so self-absorbed and greedy that they have to shove to the very front of the luggage pick-up with their little hand-carts, as if their luggage is going to be the first to come around? Why can’t we all just hang back and wait patiently, so that everyone can see the carousel, and then simply step forward and grab our luggage as it comes around? Why is this dream so difficult to realize? Everyone was pushing, shoving, shouldering, elbowing, bumping their little carts into your shins, until you couldn’t even see the carousel at all. And it hadn’t even started yet.
And another word on these f’ing little luggage carts. Why does it have to be right next to the carousel? You can’t haul your stupid luggage 2 feet?
So everyone had their carts all lined up side-by-side like racecars along the carousel. And then . . . the luggage began to thunk down and circle about the carousel! A fight broke out between two large men. A squat lady in heels frantically leapt at her oversized luggage, and fell back with it as she ripped it from off the carousel and into the throng of people, swinging it into my leg and shoving me back into one of those stupid little carts, almost knocking me backwards over it.
People kept doing this—frantically lunging at their luggage when they spotted it, desperately fumbling at the handle as it passed them by and hanging on for dear life because it was too heavy for them, until some kindly large man would gallantly pick it up off the carousel for them, whereupon they would grasp at it and swing it out against all surrounding bystanders. It’s like what, you don’t think your luggage is going to come back around on the fucking carousel 2 minutes later?
One lady stood in front of me lined up in the front-line of the carousel, with her foot propped up on her cart behind her, shoving it back into my shin continuously whenever she would crane forward to see the luggage as it passed. When I saw my girlfriend’s luggage pass by, I shoved between people and grabbed it, taking pleasure in manhandling this lady’s cart and shoving it out of the way, as I had been anointed with the blessing of a luggage in hand.
Good, I thought, there is hope. My girlfriend’s bag is here, so mine must be here too. We waited, until the luggage train petered out, and it wasn’t to be seen. I looked everywhere for the supposed Copa airlines official who should have been there so that I could alert them to my missing luggage. Of course, none to be found. I talked to another airline’s official, and asked them where I could find the Copa representative, or file a missing baggage claim. She looked around wildly and shrugged. Do you know who I could ask who would know? I asked. She shrugged. I walked around the chaotic luggage area, looking for anyone somewhat official who could help me. The most I could wrest from them was that I should go to the airline counter for Copa.
It had now been 2 hours since we had landed. We then got in line for the final little customs crap, and were shunted out into the night. Luckily, my sister’s husband had not given up on us yet, even though our Copa flight was mysteriously completely missing from the list of arrivals, and he had been beginning to think that he had mistaken the day of our flight.
We then followed the signs at the terminal which said that Copa airlines should be at Terminal 6. We passed by it, seeing no Copa counter. And furthermore, it being the middle of the night, all counters were closed anyway. So we went back to my sister’s apartment.
This morning, I tried to call Copa to file my claim. The lady I talked to told me I was talking to Copa in Panama City (even thought it was a US 800 number), so she couldn’t do anything for me. She gave me the number for the LAX airport. I called it and found the number for Copa: the exact same number I had just called. I called the lady I had just talked to back, and she said she didn’t have any number for the Copa at LAX, but she could give me an email address. Great.
So right now I’m just waiting until tonight, when I can get driven back to the airport, where hopefully I can find the Copa desk, as well as an English speaking Copa representative, and where I can then hopefully locate my luggage, or file a claim, or something, whatever shit it is you do for these kinds of fuckups.
The good news is, I’m back in the States. The good news is, I expected to lose my luggage, so my most valuable possessions I have on me. The good news is, I was able to spend some time on a toilet with a seat on it! And I could throw the paper into the toilet! I keep worrying that I’m going to clog the plumbing by doing that. The good news is, I have now taken 2 hot showers—totally hot, and it doesn’t start running out 2 minutes into the shower! This is fucking paradise.
I’ve had a couple cups of the Juan Valdez guajira coffee I’d gotten in Colombia this morning, and now I’m just enjoying being back. I just wanted to get that whole nightmare that was yesterday off my back. Colombia, I made it. I have escaped your clutches intact, with most of my stuff. HA!
Stay tuned for a Colombian wrap-up post, and an update on my luggage. I know you’ll be hanging on the edges of your seats. Sit tight. Drink some coffee.
—Mr. Peeves

Esperando para Los Vuelos a Casa (eventualmente)

I’m sitting here at the airport El Dorado in Bogotá, awaiting my flight to Medellín, where I must then do all the customs crap within the hour before the next flight to Panama City departs, whereupon I then change flights, yet again, for the final long last leg to Los Angeles.

There’s pretty much everything you could desire here at the airport, including donuts de maracuyá at good ol’ Dunkin’ Donuts, artisan stuff, Juan Valdez, and internet (as you can see). I also just got my haircut here at the airport, and it was a damn good haircut! My hair was starting to get pretty ridiculous after 55 days here (i.e. outgrowths and tufts of hair projecting out of my neck and over mine ears), and I had been meaning to get a haircut for a while, but never seemed to find a place open (how typical here in Colombia). It was a hell of a lot better, and cheaper, than the Supercuts haircut I would have received at home.

If you’ve popped over here from Poor But Happy (I just noticed a connecting link to my page was added, thanks to whomever that was!), welcome and please peruse through my various rants and mundane adventures from my trip in Colombia and see if any of my (mis) adventures bear any relation to your own trip, or trip-in-the-making. If you want to ask me any questions or want my opinionated advice, I’m more than happy to share, and thanks for visiting!

If and when I make it back to Los Estados, I’ll post a lil wrap-up and summation of the trip entire. Until then comrades, hasta luego, piiiiigs iiiiiin spaaaaace . . . . .

The Last Days in Bogotá

 

I don’t really have much to post on about my current activities in Bogotá, as I haven’t been doing much other than eating, attempting to sleep, and drinking hot beverages and imbibing pasteles, but I wanted to post a few pictures. About the most exciting thing in our day is when our neighbor comes back to the hostal at 5:30 in the morning, obviously drunk and probably high, stumbles about his room, falling into the walls, slamming things, shuffling through plastic bags, and then turns on the most obnoxious possible techno music ever made on some tiny, tinny little speakers (which is then left playing throughout the rest of the day), stumbles into the bathroom, which is shared by our entire floor and which we are lucky enough to be located directly next to, and then commences to hurl chunks into the sink and the floor, whereupon he stumbles back into his room, slamming all the doors along the way and leaving the hall light on, and then summarily pukes into his trashcan. We can also hear him talking to himself. He’s obviously an example of what one would politely term a “douche-bag.” I’ve bestowed him also with the nickname of “Techno mouse” because we always hear him scrambling through his plastic bags in the wee hours of the morning, endlessly, as if he’s looking for some stray crumbs somewhere in the dregs (this is what convinces me that he’s on some drugs as well), while blasting his retarded techno, of which we mostly just hear the endless pulse of the 4/4 beat.

Bogotá does have some nice art museums, which we’ve been attending. The Museo Botero is a good one—there’s some world famous paintings in there from artists such as Picasso, Chagall, Monet, Matisse, etc, as well as, of course, a hardy selection of gordos from Mr. Botero. Another good museum is the Museo Nacional, which has some lame colonial crap, but also some great ancient pottery, as well as some nice contemporary Colombian paintings. There’s some Botero in there, as well, but some of his older works, before he’d formulated his infamous fat stylistics, and I actually like those better.

Another place we’ve attended that I would recommend visiting is the Jardin Botánico, which I was a little hesitant to visit after the experience in Medellín, but luckily, these gardens are world-class. The most noteworthy sections are the excellent rose gardens, as well as the tropical greenhouses.

Just 2 more days and then we outtie.

A Summation and List of Colombian Fruits

If you’ve been bored enough to browse through my travels in Colombia, then you’ve most likely noticed that I’m infatuated with the cheap and plentiful jugos on tap most everywhere around here. I figured that it might be a fun and perhaps useful exercise to detail the various frutas that abound, both in jugo and non-jugo form, here in Colombia:

Guayaba – Ah yes, guayaba. Known as ‘guava’ to us estadounidenses, generally the only form we regularly find it in is a canned juice. Down here, they’ve got guayaba pie, various forms of guayaba pasteles, guayaba doughnuts, and guayaba paste. And of course, jugo de guayaba. The quintessential sabor tropicál.

Guanábana – If you live near some Latin American neighborhoods, you may come across this fruit, at least in juice form. It’s a giant green thing with little spikes on it, and it’s exterior is as soft as dough. On the inside is this slimy, white custardy fruit filled with medium-sized black seeds. The taste is pretty unique, sometimes a little bit weird depending on the state of ripeness. It’s probably best in juice form, but I can tell you from personal experience that picking out all the damn seeds from the fruit is a time-consuming and quite messy endeavor. The juice is reputedly very nutritious, so if you come across the stuff and are malnourished, go ahead and treat yourself.

Piñas – The lovely pineapple, these are pretty much everywhere in Colombia in juice form or sold in carts by street vendors, but for some reason not many of the folk have caught onto using it in their cookery. Gourmands most Colombians are not—but if you stray into a higher-end restaurant somewhere in Cartagena, you may find some entrada with a piña based sauce, such as salchicha en salsa de piña (sausage in pineapple sauce: interesting and tasty, if a bit strange).

Chirimoya – This fruit is the more delicious and voluptuous cousin of the guanábana. It has the same custardy, white interior dotted with thick black seeds, but the taste is much closer to that of a postre than that of a medicine. I fell in love with this fruit in Perú, but unfortunately have not seen too much of it in Colombia. If you ever spot one of these babies, rip it open and commence slurping.

Curuba – You’ll find this in juice form all over the place here. In leche, it tastes kind of like strawberry/banana, but there’s some other strange flavor floating around in it that complicates it, and a grittiness to it sometimes as well. I don’t really like this one very much myself, as that “other flavor” reminds me too much of the wet, muddy smell in the jungle.

Níspero – You’ll find this juice more commonly up around the Costa Caribe. Try this shit in leche. It tastes remarkably like a chocolate malt. No shit. It’s good. One of my favorite jugo treats. It still tastes reminiscent of chocolate en agua tambien. There’s a chalkiness to it that can be disconcerting, perhaps, at first, but just think of it like a malt and concentrate on it’s sweet caramel undertones.

Zapote – This seems to be a favorite up on the coast as well, also common in Medellín, usually mixed with milk. It’s got a subtle berryish flavor, but its taste seems to differ a bit depending where you get it. To me, it kind of has a strange taste that reminds me of the smell of new plastic toys, and so it’s not one I usually order. It’s definitely worth a try, however, as the locals certainly seem to dig it.

Lulo – Ah, lulo. This is another one of my favorites in juice form, and you will pretty much find it everywhere. I generally like it mixed with water, as it has a unique taste that doesn’t require sweetening, and it foams up quite nicely. It has a kind of citrusy, limey kind of taste, with some tropical tartness thrown in that makes it unique and tasty. You’ll also find a beverage made from lulo in the Valle de Cauca region called lulada, and I recommend giving that a try as well; it’s got whole fruit chunks in it, and you get to spoon them out and eat them in-between slurping up its seedy juicy goodness out of a straw.

Maracuyá – This is another favorite, and a regular on the scene in Colombian fruit circles, much like the guayaba. We know maracuyá as passionfruit here in the States. You will regularly find maracuyá jam, maracuyá doughnuts, maracuyá ice cream, etc—and of course, the delicious juice, mixed in water. You can also eat the fruit directly out of the rind with a spoon and some sugar, as it is rather tart. Make sure you try this requisite tropical treat. The taste kinda of reminds me of one of those Big Stick popsicles, which I suppose means that there must be hints of cherry and pineapple in there.

Tomate de Árbol – This fruit has an interesting taste that is reminiscent, as the name suggests, of tomato, but is wilder and tarter. You can scoop the fruit out with a spoon and eat it with some sugar sprinkled on it, or in juice form. I’m not a huge fan of the juice myself, but it’s not bad.

Granadilla – This is a close cousin of the maracuyá, and looks the same, with the same gloopy clump of seeds on the inside. This is another fruit that I’d fallen in love with in Peru. I definitely recommend giving this one a try, just for the experience of eating it alone. You won’t find this one in juice form, but it is plenty sweet all on its lonesome straight out the shell.

Pitahaya – This little weird yellow, spiky football-shaped fruit is a tasty little snack. As I mentioned earlier, it tastes pretty much like a watermelon, but it has a completely different type of fruit—it has this clear, white tinted fleshy fruit with little black seeds in it. I think it is supposedly a diarrhetic as well, so restrain yourself from consuming too many at one time.

Borojó – This is an interesting little fruit. Supposedly it’s got some viagra-like properties when mixed up properly. Otherwise, it’s a zesty and strange little juice that is packed with nutritious vitamins and what not. Try it both in agua and leche and see which you like best. There’s an interesting spiciness underlying its berry flavors that comes to the fore in water, but the berriness come out more in the milk.

Feijoa – Another interesting juice, if you can find it. It’s pretty weird tasting; about the closest way I can describe the juice is that if you took a bunch of the green, leafy tops of strawberries and blended them up together, then you would have a taste similar to feijoa. It’s a kind of tart, woody, grassy flavor.

Limonada, naranja, mandarina, manzana (apple), fresa (strawberry) – These are all pretty self-explanatory, but just a quick word on the jugo de naranja—it’s not the type of oranges that we’re accustomed to in the states (or it may just be that they use them when they are green, I’m not quite sure). Here the juice is much more tart, but I think it’s kind of refreshing in the morning to have that little wake up punch in the mouth.

Papaya, Banano, and Mango – I won’t even bother going into these fruits, as we are already quite familiar with them in the States. Suffice to say that they are everywhere, in the form of fruit, juice, and otherwise.

Coco – Coconut. On the Caribbean coast, you can buy them from street vendors, who will chop off the top and stick a straw into it and viola! You’ve got yerself some fresh coco juice. Nice refreshing snack on a hot day. Also ubiquitous in candies and cakes and such, as it should be. You will also find it mixed in with rice on the Caribbean coast, which is one of the few little tasty variations that the typical cuisine will indulge in.

Fruits which I did not get to try, because I either did not spot them anywhere, or were out of season or something, because the juice places would never have them even though they were listed on the menu (¡Que triste!) – mamuncillo, chontaduro, piñuela, uchuva, caimon, trombolo, and some “p”-word fruit that I can’t recall the name of.

Thoughts On Colombia as a Whole

If you came to Colombia without paying attention to the news, or if you hadn’t told anyone where you were going and listened to them freak out about it, then you would have no idea that there was an ongoing civil war. Colombians themselves don’t seem too keen on discussing it. I’m quite certain that many of them would rather just ignore it, and remain just as blissfully unaware as many of us Americans are of the increasing divide between rich and poor in our country. There’s also a certain kind of hardened exterior that Colombians have in general, due to the fact that over half their population lives in poverty. Life here is certainly never easy. The cities never seem to sleep, and everyone is running on caffeine or maybe a little aguardiente. Everyone is just trying to get their little piece of the action, whether it be selling tintos, shining shoes, or standing still and pretending to be a statue on the street corner. Many people’s occupation (including children), apparently, is just to walk the streets all day long and beg for money. These beggars are shameless, approaching you with the hand outstretched, the begging face on, the pleading voice, and most of them will immediately curse you out loudly when you deny them money, which doesn’t make you any more inclined to give them any.

You can tell that the economy, at least for a certain selection of the populace, is booming. Just look at how many high-rises are still being added to the already condensed, busy skyline of Bocagrande in Cartagena. But this growing economy is young and uncertain, and is overshadowed both by the United States on one side, with its questionable infusions of ‘drug war’ money, and Venezuela on the other, with Chavez’ seemingly psychotic manipulations of markets. And the ongoing civil war further increases this shredding and upset from two completely different angles: the right-wing paramilitario on one side, and the rebel guerillas on the other, with the Colombian government somewhere in the middle trying to quell the violence, stablilize the economy, and somehow eradicate (or at least make a show of eradicating) the cocaine trade, which is complicated by the fact that cocaine is largely grown and trafficked by both the rebels and the paramilitary. And now that I’ve seen a cocaine manufacturing plant and realized just how easy it is to make the paste, and considering just how easy it is to grow the plant itself, as it grows like a weed, it seems like a pretty hopeless task to continue to attempt to just eliminate the crops. The fact is, as long as rich Americans continue to stuff that shit up their noses and continue to pay high prices for the stuff—even though it’s easy to grow, easy to make, and is cut endlessly with crap (like flour) before it reaches those high-end nostrils—then it will continue to be grown and traded, because it makes some people with guns and connections a lot of money.

So with an awareness of what’s going on here, somewhere, in Colombia, it makes it all the more remarkable just how invisible it all is. As a tourist, you are in absolutely no danger, unless you go into the lesser visited outlying rural regions where the paramilitary and/or rebels are in control. And even then, simply if you act like an idiot and put yourself into dangerous situations. (As they say here, “No dar papaya“, which is a saying that means, “Don’t put yourself in dangerous situations.) Colombia is safer to visit, I would venture to say, then most major cities in the United States. At least here in Colombia, you don’t have to worry as much about some random unhappy Joe with the inability to socialize mowing you down with a semi-automatic. There’s enough official-type dudes with guns standing idly about here to prevent such occurrences. If you’re gonna get shot, it’s probably gonna occur somewhere out in the jungle, not in the middle of a city street. About the most danger you feel as a tourist is that a taxi driver (or a restaurant in Santa Marta!) will rip you off because you don’t know the appropriate price. Or that someone will steal your wallet or I-pod when you’re sleeping on a bus. That kind of thing. I’d worry about that on a Greyhound in the States, too. And in the States, I’d also be worrying about getting an unwanted reach-around in the bathroom at the bus station (maybe even from a US Senator!), whereas here in Colombia, you have to pay to use the bathroom, so it’s not a concern. Which as my girlfriend observed, may be annoying at first, but then you realize that charging to use a public bathroom is actually a good thing, because the bathrooms are cleaner, and more importantly, because there aren’t random sketchy people in there shooting up or trying to hump you as you urinate.

It’s been hard for me to get a handle on any deeper sense of the situation here in Colombia as I haven’t had any deep political discussions with anyone, and because it’s not, as I’ve said, visible in any immediate sense. I do know that the Colombian military isn’t exactly the most scrupulous in the world, as the military boys out in the jungle on the Ciudad Perdida tour sold and smoked pot with some other trekkers that I’d talked to in Parque Tayrona. And considering also that we were told to hide our valuables from them when we were staying in their camp. Not the most disciplined of soldiers, which makes you question as well just where the boundaries between the paramilitary and the military lie. But these are questions I can’t possibly get any insight on myself without some research from other sources. Boundaries are never quite clear here in any sense, and sometimes one wonders if there really are many observed laws at all, especially when there’s money involved. It’s like the Wild West out here in many ways, and not only in regards to the traffic.

At the moment of this writing, Colombia is making a visible attempt to broaden its tourism industry and to beautify its cities and fix up its roads. This means that for me, a lot of Colombia has been closed or in a state of active renovation, which has been highly annoying, but I can tell you that if you came here in a few years, it would probably be much nicer. For example, the Museo del Oro in Bogotá is being renovated, and I really wanted to see it. They have a little throw-away exhibit at another site, but it’s nothing much to look at. On all the major roads, the road is actively being worked on, which has meant a lot of bumpiness and one-way controlled traffic. In Santa Marta and in Bogota, many sidewalks are half-complete, and you have to step around people working on carefully placing colored bricks into patterns. The whole waterfront walk in Santa Marta was being worked on. It looked like it would be nice someday, but while we were there, it was just one big obstacle course. The Botanical Gardens in Medellín were being renovated, and there was absolutely nothing there to look at when I went. I’m sure they will be very nice in a few years. I’m still a little bitter that I had to pay 2 bucks to go into a park where there were no plants to be seen. And on and on. There’s a lot of public projects being done here, which further reflects the rising economy.

So that’s my thoughts and impressions of Colombia as a whole, in addition to the other lists I’ve made of the little details and quirks. I’ll add more thoughts as they arise.

Meanderings in Bogotá

For our last week in Bogotá, we’re just taking it easy, doing one little touristy activity a day and drinking coffees and wandering about looking for places to eat, which can be harder than it sounds when it seems like every day is a holiday around here. But Bogotá really does have some great places to chill out in and grab a bite to eat at. And none of it has to be typical Colombian fare, which is a godsend.

The other night we even went out for a drink, as there was nothing else to do really, and drank 375 ml of Ron Vieja de Caldas, which is quite a bit tastier than Ron Medellín.

Today we went up to a lookout (always a mirador somewhere here) on a building, and on the walk back, we wandered past a park with a statue of George Washington. What in god’s name is ol’ George doing smack-dab in the middle of downtown Bogotá? Your guess is as good as mine.

Much like the reversal in perspectives I had on Lima whilst in Perú, so too Bogotá now has redeemed its image from the original distaste I had at the beginning of the trip. There are some things, however, that continue to annoy. As mentioned before, Colombians in general are not the most courteous nor empathetic people in the world when it comes to accomodating others on the street. Given how crowded it is, it never fails to amaze me at how much space people will take up on the sidewalks. Couples stroll idly hand-in-hand, never failing to end up moving directly in front of you as you try to bypass them. When we come upon such obstacles, I call them “walls”. Even more annoying, entire families will create “walls”, taking up the entire width of the sidewalk, blissfully unaware of the hordes of people trying to avoid falling into the everpresent holes or get hit by a passing taxi. And they are all holding hands, so it’s impossible to just pass through them, unless you are willing to play a little Red Rover. And let me further elaborate on these aforementioned “holes” in the sidewalks—they are everywhere, and they are deep enough to break your ankle should you be unaware enough to step into one. Apparently, there must be some kind of underground market in water main covers, because they are all missing. These little holes thus turn into subterranean trash receptacles.

We are now stocking up on our Colombian goods while we have the chance. We just obtained a nice Colombian flag-colored hamaca for $14. I’ve got a plethora of hand-woven mochilas, even a little mini-one for the cell-phone. A sack of Juan Valdéz café. And other assorted gifts for the fam. Now that I’ve learned the rules, somewhat, of bargaining, I feel more comfortable browsing the goods. Generally, the more expensive the item, the more you can hope to knock off the initial price, maybe 10 mil pesos or even 20. But for the smaller items, just shoot for 2 or 3 mil off the asking price. I’m sure if you’re a hard bargainer you could do much better. At a certain point, for me, it’s more just a matter of doing it because you’re expected to, rather than trying to save money, as everything is already half the price, or more, than it would be in the States.

Essentially, we’re just enjoying the activities of reading in a café, walking about the historic sections of town, and imbibing pasteles and coffee. Those are in fact the most enjoyable aspects of this trip. These are activities I could just as well do at home, but would not because of the price tag. And there’s just something about doing it in a completely foreign land that makes such experiences enhanced.

Travel Story

Traveling is an experience that always compels a re-evaluation of your own habits and customs, and throws you continuously into new situations that further impel you to critique your own perceptions, your own self-image. During my trip to Perú, I had found myself going through a lot of introspection, for I was traveling alone and often had little else to do but contemplate and turn inward. I also had been dealing with the death of a friend and co-worker, and overall, the whole trip became rather spiritual in nature due to this thought and self-exploration. I was learning self-reliancy, confidence in new and challenging situations, and the ability to allow the universe to manifest some of its boundless potential.

As in any trip, therefore, my trip to Colombia has a sub-context, a narrative that extends throughout, present beneath all of the surface-level passings of circumstance and activity. The whole trip has not been anything at all like what I experienced alone in Perú, and the reason is quite simple: I am traveling with my girlfriend. And thus the underlying story of this trip has been one of our relationship. I had foreseen this before we’d left, knowing that travel is always stressful for relationships, whether between friends, family, or lovers. And it has indeed been a rocky road. All of my experiences on the trip have been filtered through the window of our togetherness.

At first, I found myself frustrated with the lack of freedom. While traveling alone is often lonely, it also gives you the ability to freely associate with strangers in ways that you are buffered against while traveling with other people. You tend to drift into random conversations with people in bars, on the street. You speak only in Spanish because you don’t have any other option, other than just hanging out with other gringo backpackers. You are more open to being placed into potentially sketchy situations, because you have only yourself to worry about.

Traveling with someone changes all of that instantaneously. You have someone to conversate with at all times in English, so thus anywhere you venture into, you always have a buffer of safety with you, wherein you can speak your own language and avoid contact with strangers. And traveling with your girlfriend, you feel much more protective, and less willing to be placed in potentially sketchy situations. You are more secure, and thus more unwilling to take risks.

So I had to contend with these differences and realize that this trip was not going to be the trip that I had envisioned before coming to Colombia. I was not going to go out dancing all the time, I was not going to meet and hang-out with many locals, and I was not going to speak much Spanish beyond the interaction of commerce and transport. Thus, other than the time spent with my extended Colombian family, I have had little insider insight into the culture, and have rather been stuck on the outside, and somewhat bitter about it, I suppose. This has resulted in some squabbles between my girlfriend and I until I came somewhat to terms with the trip as it is and will be.

And on the other side of this has been the self-questioning I’ve been undergoing about our relationship in general. Basically, I was getting something like cold feet, because I was thinking too much about the future, and could only envision the looming mirage of marriage, kids, etc, and this only made me frightened. When all of this internal torment finally came out and I laid it on the table, my girlfriend made me understand that I can’t think that far ahead into the future. I was thinking so much about some distant, uncertain future that I couldn’t allow myself to enjoy what I have right now, which is all that really matters anyway.

When you spend every waking and sleeping minute with another person, all of the bad sides of yourself can’t be shuttered up or given the space needed to be released without inflicting suffering on the other person. I’m the type of person that doesn’t know what he feels immediately, and I need some time to process and work through things before I understand where I’m at. So sometimes, before I know what’s happening, I’ll just start to be mean, because I’m trying to work through something and I don’t know it yet, and I’m trying to get space.

So this journey in Colombia has been a learning experience in ways that go beyond the bus trips and hostal stays and excursions and forays and food and cafés. I’m learning that I’m not always the person I want to be, neither for myself, nor for my girlfriend. I’m learning that I need to learn how to lead, and not just hesitate and wait for things to happen. I’m learning that I can be a difficult person to get along with. I’m learning what it is to be loved in all of my daily and eternal imperfection, and I’m learning how to try and give that love back, unconditionally.

So where my trip to Perú was about introspection and self-questioning, this trip in Colombia has been about my relationship, and about going beyond myself. I think it is somewhat fitting in some ways, given that Colombian culture in general is more fast-paced and based on the fleeting moments of the everyday, with its coke and its plastic surgeries and its ongoing warfare. On another post, I will attempt to grapple some more with what impressions I’ve gotten of Colombia as a whole, as that is a whole ‘nother beast to tackle. Til then.

El Peñol

Yesterday we ventured out into the surrounding countryside outside Medellín to visit El Peñol, a giant monolith plopped down into a lush valley spotted with lakes. The road out there, of course, is intermittent, hole-filled, and packed with diesel spewing trucks and buses. The rock itself is massive, and they’ve built these crazy concrete stairs up the side of it, and on top, crowned it with this crazy looking castle-like lookout (that last sentence was cool). You haul yourself up these tiny, spiralling concrete stairs, shouldering through the hordes of Latin American tourists and their kids, and after 649 steps, you’re up on top, with a gift shop and snack place! There are some spectacular views of the surrounding valley, if you can make some elbow room to take a picture.

We trekked on back down to a nearby resort/hotel to grab a bite to eat, and it was there that I realized that I am sick to death of Colombian food. I don’t really like criticizing a whole country’s national cuisine, but the fact is that it is really pretty uninspiring. It’s meat, rice, arepas, and platanos—with the platanos being the best thing on the dish. I kind of like the bean soup they have, but that gets old pretty quick as well. This isn’t to say that there aren’t good restaurants and food here—it’s just overall, the typical dishes you end up eating most days are just not anything to write home about. I comfort myself with the everpresent jugos naturales. If it weren’t for the jugos, I’d be up a tree for sure. Speaking of which, I tried another new fruit juice, called feijoa. It tasted like a really tart strawberry. I really will miss the juices. I will miss the juices, the hot chocolate, and the tintos.

Anyway, so then we had to wait around on the side of the road for 40 minutes until a bus passed that wasn’t completely full to the brim with passengers. But don’t get me wrong—the bus that we got on was full, and then got fuller. We were in the bus drivers compartment up front, and I was shoved in directly behind the driver’s seat, such that whenever he reached back to push the lever to open the doors, he had to shove past my leg. My girlfriend and I were sitting on this little seat with our asses hanging over half of it, and my leg was shoved against some level panel, and my shoulder against some window switch, and we were both squeezed in by an overweight lady who took up most of the little seat with her ass. It was a highly uncomfortable bumpy and windy 2 hour trip back to Medellín, to say the least, and not to mention the fumes that were gassing up our lungs. I am glad that there are very few buses remaining in my Colombian future. Just the 9 hour one tomorrow down the Cordillera Central and up the Cordillera Oriental. . . Ack!

Medellín

¡Vale! so here’s my summation of my thoughts and experiences in regards to Medellín so far. Posts have been latent here because apparently internet cafés have to be closed when it would be most convenient to use them. Pretty much everything has been closed of late due to New Year’s, or because it’s Sunday, or because . . . who knows. Highly annoying, considering we’re in a big city. . . but no more complaining on that topic.

Medellín is a large, mostly brick built city inhabiting a lush valley in la Cordillera Central. Its buildings spill upwards all around into the adjoining hills, and views overlooking the city are always nice. On the whole, it is the most organized, clean, and spaciously designed city we have seen in Colombia. They even have trash cans everywhere, which may not sound jaw-dropping, but when the norm everywhere else is to simply toss your trash onto the ground, it’s a nice change. People still toss their trash everywhere, of course, but there’s a slight percentage less of trash on the ground here than elsewhere, at least. Another great aspect of this city is that they have an efficient, cheap, and clean Metro system which covers the center of the city. It gets pretty damn crowded sometimes, though, and you can get packed as if you were in the front row of a U2 concert, held up by your shoulders and unable to move anything except your pipi.

People are also the friendliest here we’ve encountered in Colombia, and this has been especially refreshing after Cartagena, where people seemed to make it a practice to be as rude as possible. It may be that this is due to the temperate climate. The weather is warm and generally mild, with a lot of rain but a lot of sunshine. There are some interesting traits about the people here, though. For example, the young men have these terrible hair styles. It’s kind of like a punk-mullet/faux-mohawk type thing, highly gelled and spiked. It makes them all look like punks—but not the cool, rebellious kind of punk—like the asshole, idiotic kind of punk. And whatever aspect of rebelliousness such a style may have ever portrayed is completely subverted by the fact that tons of them all share it. It’s an unfortunate thing that hopefully the city as a culture will evolve beyond at a later date.

Another thing that is strange here is that the taxis really don’t seem to be that bothered about getting your business. We’ve never had this much trouble hailing taxis anywhere in Colombia, but for some reason in Medellín, the taxi drivers seem to have better things to do. Which is weird, considering they are ostensibly driving taxis around to earn their living. I also have been yelled at a couple times here for slamming their door too hard when I get in. As in, the driver will stop the car, turn around and glare at me and yell at me about slamming it. I’m a little confused by this, as in, since when do they show any concern for their own vehicles when they are driving?

Our hotel is in a kind of shitty area, the type of area that all downtowns of all cities seem to be like. What makes this particular shitty area unique, however, is that we always see transvestites walking around here. Even ones with surgically created boobs. It kind of weirds me out, because from a distance, I’ll just see this skimpy outfit, and then when I get up close, I’ll realize that this chick has got some biceps and shoulders on her, and her waist is a bit thin, and her cheekbones a bit big. . . It’s kind of disappointing, you know? That said, however, there are enough real women with big fake boobs around here to make up for that. . .

We’ve just been slowly taking in the city. We visited the Museo de Antioquia, which exhibits enough Botero artwork to make you sick of him. If you’ve seen one Botero piece, you’ve seen ‘em all. That said, however, I actually really enjoy his work. He obviously makes an effort to be accessible, in contrast to the majority of modern art which is just too abstract and inaccessible to ordinary folk. Botero is all about accessibility—his portraits of gordos are always slightly tongue in cheek, fun and ironic and simple, and always fat. He loves the rotundity thing, Botero. There are a bunch of his sculptures out in the plaza, as well.

We also have gone to Pueblito Paisa, a miniature replica of a traditional village up on an overlooking hillside in the middle of the city, a couple of times. We went during the day, and then up again during the night on New Year’s, to catch the nighttime and daytime cityscape scenery.

We have also hung out a couple of times at the posh Parque Lleras, which of course sports a huge Juan Valdez café, and which is pretty much like Parque de la 93 in Bogotá. This park doesn’t have any open container laws, so it’s kind of the”in” thing for young Colombians to be sitting around drinking these giant cups of mixed drinks around the tree across from the liquor store. There’s also this little dessert place there, Le Bon Café, where you can enjoy some nice desserts and a cup of cappucino, and they’ve got some pretty good breakfast items as well.

We’re leaving tomorrow morning, bright and early, for Bogotá, where we will spend our last week in Colombia. Medellín is nice, but we just haven’t really found our little pocket of nice restaurant, nice café, etc, where we want to pass the rest of our time here. We’re over the bandejas thing, we’re kind of over Colombian typical food in general, to be honest, and the good thing about Bogotá is that there are some nice cafés, and a lot of good non-Colombian food options. And our time in Medellín has been tempered by the fact that everything we try to do, everything is always closed.

Today we’re going over to the Botanical Garden, and then some cemetary that is supposed to be interesting, and then it’s packing time. Hasta luego.

Some More General Observations on Colombia

Before I delve into the city that is Medellín, I first have a few more things to clarify about Colombia and it’s inhabitants and add to the list of things that are unique, different, or annoying aquí:

—The internet places here in Colombia all close by 7 every day, and none are open on Sundays. It’s like, how I am supposed to post insomniac creative scribblings in the middle of the night? And what’s up with Sundays, anyway? Is it ungodly to surf the net? C’mon, the boot store is open on Sunday! It really makes me miss Perú, where there was always a late night cheap internet place on every corner—even in the middle of the fucking Amazon jungle! You could only get there by boat or by plane, and yet you could duck into an internet spot around the main plaza in the middle of the night after dancing to cumbia and getting your drink on! And yet in a major fucking city you can’t find anywhere to do a late night post! And in smaller cities like Santa Marta they even close for fucking siesta time! . . . . Ahem.

—Just a side note on Cartagena: if you are ever there, do yourself a favor and desayunar at Mila. It’s this fancy little yuppie pastry place (right next to El Bistro) that serves heavenly hot chocolates and cappucinos, and they also serve the best damn pancakes you may ever eat. These ain’t your mama’s pancakes, neither—I don’t know what the hell they are, but they are served up hot with cream and blackberry jam and syrup, and you will never have a better breakfast anywhere else in Colombia.

—The tinto dudes. These guys are great. They walk around everywhere (especially in Cartagena) slinging carafes of tinto, chocolate, and café con leche. They hop on the buses and proffer their goods, sometimes with homemade sanduches (sandwiches). All you need to do is shout out tinto, and one will appear out of thin air and pour out the hot liquid into a miniature plastic cup for a few pesitos. Even at 5 in the morning, when we were on a taxi on our way to the bus station, we saw these tinto guys walking about everywhere. People really need their little shots of tinto here.

—Arepas. Arepas are these pancake looking things made out of maíze dough and fried with some butter. They are everywhere in Colombia, and they aren’t good. I’m sorry Colombianos, but these little wafers are just pretty damn bland and tasteless, and I have trouble understanding why they are served with every friggin’ meal. I mean, I know that Colombianos love them their white bread and all, but let’s move on from the arepa thing, huh? Let’s try us some wheat breads, maybe, something with raisins, perhaps, or nuts, or something other than bland tasteless dry fried shit!

—Which leads me to my next one: fried shit. Fried snacks are a way of life here. Which means that it segways quite naturally into the acceptance in general of the ubiquitous comidas rapidas (which god forbid if you actually advertised them as such in the States). Here they proudly advertise their presentation of nutritionally deficient foods on their restaurant sign.

—The ATMs, or cajero automaticos, ask you for donations to some children’s charity everytime you withdraw money. It kind of takes you aback at first, and then you just get used to it.

—One last thing on Cartagena before I’m done with it: another aspect of our lovely mildew infested room there was that the ceiling fan was located directly above our head. As in, if you stretched up your arms, your hands would get promptly chopped off. This provided a source of worry and stress in the comfort of my own room, as I had to constantly be aware of not standing on the bed, or putting my arms up when I pulled my shirt over my head, etc. This was further compounded by the fact that these fans are terrifying in general in these old run-down hostals, as they squeak menacingly from side-to-side at high speeds and appear to be ready to fly down directly towards you once they’ve freed themselves from their temporary loose installments.

—There are two places that you are guaranteed to find in any well-to-do neighborhood in Colombia, in any city: 1) a Juan Valdez café, generally situated around the nicest, most expensive plaza (think Starbucks of Colombia); 2) a Crepes and Waffles restaurant. Guaranteed. I’m not complaining, by the way, as we have spent many a happy afternoon beating the heat in the air conditioned cool of a Juan Valdez café. I’ve done at least half of my Life Divine reading there. Thank god for yuppie franchises!

—One last thing: we’re both learning the concept of restraint and sharing when it comes to ordering food. It’s occurred all too often now that we each order a dish and are unable to finish even a 1/3 of what we’re given, and thus made to feel like fat, wasteful Americans. We now share many dishes, and all deserts. I am hoping that we will continue this practice upon our return to the States. Instead of taking shit home in a doggie bag, we’ll finish a whole plate between the two of us, for half the price.

Estamos en Medellín

After a long, long bus ride (around 14 hours)—though not as long as the orange truck, thank god—we are now situated in Medellín, which is a large metropolitan city in the Cordillera Central. Once the cocaine mafia headquarters of Colombia, now I guess it’s more known for its clothing production.

On the bus, we were treated to hours of little children trying to usurp each other in the volume and piercingness of their yelling, and I spent a number of hours uncomfortably thinking that my bladder was going to explode. I have this problem, see—when I’m in a situation where there is any kind of pressure, I just cannot get the bladder to function. The pressure, in this case, being that I was in a small bathroom on a Colombian bus (meaning that it is driving extremely fast, passing other cars right and left on windy roads, braking suddenly, and nearly tipping over on sharp turns), and then the toilet seat lid didn’t stay up on it’s own, so you had to try to hold it up with one hand while somehow staying upright in the midst of the movement and jerking of the bus, and then one time I even fell backward into the door and the door swung open, as I stood there with my dick hanging out my pants. Long story short, I ventured into the little smelly dungeon of the bathroom 3 times and attempted to squeeze something out of my burgeoning bladder, and no doing. Fortunately, we stopped somewhere for lunch, where I was able to disembark and calmy urinate in a non-moving and quiet situation.

After that, I remained dehydrated for the rest of the time and just listened to my mp3 player to drown out the screaming children (the mothers never seem to be the slightest bit perturbed) and the movies they elected to put on for the ride. The movies they choose to play are unbelievable. On our bus to Armenia, they had played Dr. Doolittle 3, dubbed into Spanish. On this ride, the first movie of choice was American Pie: Beta House. If you haven’t heard of this movie, it’s not surprising, because it sucks and was never released in theaters for a good reason. What made it especially interesting as a choice for a movie on a bus ride in Colombia was that it wasn’t dubbed into Spanish, and the subtitles in Spanish weren’t formatted for the TV screen, so you couldn’t even read the subtitles. So basically, you have these Colombian familys sitting there watching all these gratiutous sex scenes and boob shots. It was kind of strange, and a little embarrassing, if Beta House is the impression they are getting of America. It was made yet stranger by the fact that the movie kept stopping in mid-play, and then the driver’s assistant would keep re-starting the fucking movie, which begins with an especially gratiutous and disgusting sex scene.

The second movie they chose was Wrong Turn, yet another Hollywood gem, this is a scary movie depicting an in-bred mountain man in West Virginia who murders pretty lost young people. At least this movie was dubbed into Spanish.

Well, that nightmare is over at least, and here we are in Medellín. When we left Cartagena, I had been afraid that I would never have a fresh tropical juice again, and I frantically overloaded on juices the night before we left. I’m happy to report that fresh juice places abound here in the city center, and that in fact it is even easier to find fresh juice here than it was in Cartagena. Phew! I will dutifully report on further activities and impressions of the city as this data comes in. Hasta luego.

Islas del Rosario

 

We elected to venture to the Islas del Rosario on our last day on the Caribbean coast. I figured, what the hell, why not, might as well punch out all the little touristy things to do so that we can say we did it and won’t feel like we might have missed something. Big mistake. I had thought that it would be a nice leisurely boat ride out to the islands, where you would see some neat coral reefs and get some nice pictures of the blue-green warm tropical sea. Then off to Playa Blanca, the nicest beach in the area supposedly, where you get to lounge about for a few hours before heading back.  Sounds like a nice spend of day, right?

Let me clarify for you what this tour is about, so that if you are ever thinking of embarking upon this “tour”, then you know what it is about: it is not a tour. It is a shuttle. A very very long shuttle. That takes you first to the aquarium out on one of the islands. Then takes you to the Playa Blanca. Then back. That’s it. There’s no touring. There’s no seeing, other than a lot of open water. What there is a lot of are other Latin tourists, all crammed into the boat like sardines.

We got there bright and early, but some people were already there, and all the seats right next to the side were taken. We began to get a premonition that maybe this wasn’t the kind of trip we wanted to be on when the boat began filling up, then was full, and then was packed, and yet still we were all just sitting there, waiting to go. An hour and half later, the boat finally revved its engines and departed. A pretty young lass in tight clothing handed out flyers to everyone telling us to use our life-vests, right as a voice came on over the loud-speaker telling us not to throw any trash into the sea. Let’s see where all those fucking flyers go.

The voice on the loud-speaker was loud. He spoke directly into the microphone, and seemed to spit his consonants out as forcefully as possible, so that the speakers shook and crackled. My girlfriend broke out her earplugs, and I stuffed my fingers in my ears everytime he made an announcement. Yet remarkably, none of the other Latin American tourists seemed perturbed by it, thus illustrating one observation I’ve made of Colombians and Latin Americans in general: I think their eardrums have all been slightly damaged. No one seems to mind when car horns are bleated right into their faces. No one seems to mind when a child screams the whole bus ride long right into their own mother’s face. No one seems to notice when the music is too loud. And everyone shouts at each other when they talk.

Anyway, so what was especially interesting was that all the other tourists dutifully put their little orange life-vests on. My girlfriend and I looked around and didn’t understand why we would be putting life-vests on when we were seated in a quite sizeable boat that you can stand up and walk around on. What I also didn’t understand was, here we are in a country where they drive like bats out of hell without rules or regulation on city streets dotted with pot-holes the depth of caves, and they never put on seat belts (except when passing a police outpost) and think nothing of it—and yet they all dutifully put on their life-vests while on a giant boat. It was just kind of strange. Needless to say, midway through the trip, most life-vests began to turn into seat cushions, as families listlessly fell asleep in the aisle-ways. By the end, absolutely no one had a life vest on, and in fact, all the life-vests were hung-up and put away.

We motored out to the Islas del Rosario, where we didn’t see anything of the coral reefs, and the only option to see aquatic life was to pay some more money to go into the aquarium, which we elected not to do. We sat and dunked our feet in the clear blue water instead and ate galletas. Then we got onto the boat again early and snagged some seats next to the side, so that we could get a little breeze on our faces at least while sitting crammed into the boat for the next few hours.

The next—and only other—stop was Playa Blanca, the beach renowned for its beachiness. The boat couldn’t dock on the shore, so we had these little mini-shuttle boats come out to unload all the passengers and bring us to shore. The minute you step down off the shuttle and into the surf and slosh onto shore, you are bombarded by the locals vending something, anything. Before I even knew what was happening, still trying to keep my balance in the waves, some guy with a bucket full of shells crammed one into my hand and said, “souvenir.” I looked down at this shell in my hand, and then tried to hand it back. “¡No! Es para ti. Un souvenir. Tranquilo. Tranquilo.” I shoved it back into his bucket, then waved off the succession of coconut pasteles, bracelets, earrings, massages, etc. We found a restaurant and ate some overpriced fried chicken and patácones and coconut rice, which seems to be the one dish you will get everywhere in Cartagena. I really liked patácones (mashed fried platano) when I first came to Colombia, but now I am sick to death of the things. They give me heart-burn.

We then found us a little somewhat-quiet spot in the shade, and we enjoyed a little dunkage in the hot Caribbean water. The beach is quite nice—if only you weren’t being hassled every single minute. It would have been a lot of nicer if we had come on a boat directly to the damn beach, instead of wasting all those hours boating out to the Islas just to go sit outside an aquarium.

I gave in and got a massage—I figured, what the hell, if I’m going to be a lazy tourist on the beach, might as well enjoy it. The girl had some strong fingers, and she worked both hard and fast, and it actually hurt far more then it relaxed or felt good. She kept telling me, this is a good massage, huh? To which I would cringingly reply, yeah, sure, as she banged away at my shoulder blades. My girlfriend snapped a picture.

We were given 2 hours to enjoy the tourist ridden beach (there were at least 5-10 other tours on various sized boats, all on the same itinerary, and all crammed onto the beach for the same time), and so when the time came for us to leave, my girlfriend and I were keeping watch on the little boat shuttles like hawks, so that we could fetch our good seats again from the hordes. Other tourists had the same idea. People could be seen trotting after the shuttle as it approached, and it almost looked like an organized line was forming. An organized line, in Colombia? Of course not! It revealed its true nature once the ramp came down. People began shoving right and left, cutting in front of you, stepping on your toes. It was chaos, but we forced and headbutted our way onto it.  Then, once the shuttle came alongside the boat, the frenzy resumed. It was like a pack of mothers trying to purchase the last few trendy available toys in a store before Christmas. There is no such thing as politeness in South America, my friends, when it comes to getting onto a boat where there are few choice seats. It was like rush hour in Bogotá. You only get somewhere by being aggressive and willing to die. My girlfriend told me to go on ahead of her and just get the seats. I pushed my way into the throng, leaving her to fend her own way out of a pack of overweight tourists, and grimly cut and ankle-bit like all the rest to fight my way onto the boat. I obtained our seats, and we sighed and then enjoyed the breeze the few hours more back to Cartagena.

Let me be clear about something here: this “tour” sucks. I don’t understand why it is recommended by the guidebooks at all. If you want to go to Playa Blanca, then go to Playa Blanca, don’t waste your time and money on the extensive boat trip out to an aquarium first. Unless you really like being stuffed onto a boat with a bunch of other tourists and sitting there all day long on hard seats. And having someone yell at you in Spanish over a loudspeaker.

El Volcán de Lodo El Totumo

We piled into our bus early in the morning and then rounded up the other tourists from their ritzy high-rises in Bocagrande: some Italians, an Ecuadorian family, and another family from Venezuela. No one showed any interest in anyone else. Then we drove out to the mud volcano, yes literally a volcano that bubbles forth mud reputed for its skin enhancing properties.

You change into your swim trunks, kick off your sandals, then ascend the makeshift stairs up to the top, whereupon you hand off your camera to one of the many locals who have established an efficient little system for getting tourists muddy and happy. This dude stands there with 15 or so cameras strapped about his arm, and he seems to remember to whom each belongs to, and must have experience with every digital camera under the sun, as he snaps pictures of all of you individually having your wonderous bathing experience.

You climb down a little wooden ladder and step down into the liqueous mud, which has the consistency of chocolate cream, and suddenly, you are immersed in a pool of mud. It’s somewhat tricky to maneuver in at first. Some local dudes are sitting in the pool and will then grab you and attempt to begin rubbing you down, which is a little weird in my opinion, so we declined the rub-downand sidled over to the wall to enjoy our mud bath in peace. It’s really quite remarkable. I fantasized that I was bathing in chocolate cream, except that this fantasy was shattered rudely every time a large sulpherous bubble erupted out of the pool like a giant farting in a bathtub. You kind of just sit there floating in this mud-cream, and dunk your hair in it, slather it all over your face, swim a little bit, and just laugh at the sheer joy and ridiculousness of it all.

This is an experience not to be missed, I assure you. How often does one get to bathe in a creamy pool of warm mud? Some of the tourists that came with us elected, strangely enough, not to go in, and just dabbed bits of mud on their faces. I couldn’t understand this. Why drive out all the way out to this damn anomaly just to dip your toes in? Dunk into that shit, motherfuckers! While I may not have enjoyed slipping and sliding in the terra cotta-like clay in the jungle, this volcanic mud was different stuff. I don’t know about the beneficial properties of the mud, nor care—it’s just sweet to swim around in.

Then once you’ve had your fill of mud immersion, you walk out to the lagoon a few yards away, and you are then given a strange baptismal experience, as some old local women lead you out into the shallows, sit you down, and then begin to bathe the mud off of you. They have you remove your trunks, and then rinse and wring them out for you. You just sit there in the water trying to breathe as they splash water all over your head, and it’s almost as enjoyable as the mud bath. How often does one get bathed like a babe in the shallows of a lagoon?

At the end, before you hop back onto your bus with the other unfriendly tourists, you then tip the locals for their services; my guide told me that 2 mil pesos each was appropriate. That’s peanuts.

So my advice to you if you ever venture to Cartagena de Indias—definitely make the little side excursion out to El Totumo.

Feliz Navidad

Here’s wishing you a Feliz Navidad from Cartagena, where it’s 88 degrees, but feels like 100 due to the humidity. Not much is open on Christmas day except some restaurants, so we’re just kicking back and sweating, reading, and waiting for the cool of the night to venture out to treat ourselves to a fancy Caribbean Christmas dinner, with wine and shrimp cocktails.

We also decided to treat ourselves last night as well, and ventured into this cool looking Chinese restaurant we’d passed before. Though the interior is one of the nicest we’ve seen, really decked out with lamps and lacquered wood and what not, the experience as a whole was dampened by the fact that out of a giant menu of Colombian-style Chinese food (much heavier on the Colombian side of things), my girlfriend somehow managed to pick fried chicken and french fries. It didn’t look like that on the menu, by the way. She was highly disappointed. We were both somewhat disappointed by the experience, as we’d both ordered dishes, which turned out to be gigantic, and we could only eat a third of each. Meanwhile, another Colombian couple came in (the only other people in the massive joint, and of course seated right next to us) and shared a plate, as we should have done. Another interesting facet of this dining experience was the music, which was a continuously looped 2-minute song that was obviously the only and closest thing to Asian that they could find. This loop consisted of one of those Chinese sounding string instruments playing, then a little light snare and organ action comes in and makes it kind of funky and modern in a tasteful and conservative fashion. Can you tell that I was really listening to it? Couldn’t really help it. I can say that there was one redeeming feature of this dinner, however: we were given cool little pens and a calendar along with our (too expensive) check.

Tomorrow we are off to visit the Volcán de Totumo, which is essentially a huge mound of warm mud. Yes, because we did not get enough mud in the jungle. Now we are going to slather ourselves with it completely, dunk into it, immerse ourselves in it. It’s supposed to have beneficial properties for the skin. Basically, I just realized that if we didn’t visit this thing when we were this close in Cartagena, we would regret it the rest of our lives. How often can you take a dip in a volcano of mud? It’s just one of those things one has got to do, given the chance. More later, with pictures.

¡A la orden!

Yesterday we embarked upon a chiva (a colorful wooden bus) tour of the city, visiting the scenic convent on the hill and the tunnels of the fortress of San Felipe. The tourists, most of whom were Colombian, took pictures of everything—sometimes clampering over each other to fight for a picture of themselves in front of something . They were like the paparazzi of tourism. Some had video cameras, others even had tape recorders and would hold it up to the guide as he gave his speeches. The most annoying facet of the tour, however, was that there was an official videocamera recording the whole thing, so that they could try to sell you the tape at the end for some outrageous fee. The guy with the camera would always be there, as we came up the stairs or out of a tunnel, blinking in the light, waving at us with the videocamera in our face calling, “hey gringos! hey Ingles!” I would try and ignore him, or just glare at the camera. For those putzes who actually purchased the video, I’m sure they’ll enjoy making fun of the awkward, impolite gringos.

 

It being Sunday, absolutely nothing is open except a few restaurants. It’s somewhat unnerving to walk down the city streets and be the only ones there, aside from pigeons. One wonders where they all disappear to. Don’t people need to waste their time and money on Sundays too? I suppose all the tourists hole away in their Bocagrande section of town, where all the giant expensive hotels are (and I’m sure a number of crepes places as well).

Other than that, the other interesting tidbit for the day was that I found a place that sold jugo de borojo. Not having seen that fruit before, of course I had to try it. It was pretty tasty, kind of a berry type of flavor. I then later found out it is considered to have aphrodesiacal properties. Great. That seems to be a theme for me in South America. . .

Let’s see, que más. . . Ah, here’s another thing to love and be miffed at by Cartagena about: the whole “a la orden” thing. It literally means something akin to “at your service,” except that vendors use it here like a catchphrase. It’s basically the set response to anything from someone selling you something, whether in a restaurant, in a store, or on the street. They also say it to you as you pass by them as an attempt to lure you into buying their wares. The funny thing is, though, that no one says it in a “customer service” oriented fashion at all. It’s just the thing to say. “A la orden” they unenthusiastically mumble when you enter their restaurant. “A la orden,” they say when you’ve made your food order. “A la orden”, they say when you say gracias as they place your food on the table. And so on and so forth, throughout the entire process. It’s like alright already, I get it, you’re at my service. Thanks. How about trying out some other service oriented phrases for a change, eh?

The Mean Streets of Cartagena de Indias

 

They say that Cartagena is a city for lovers—and yet the streets are so narrow and filled with both pedestrian, equestrian, and vehicular traffic that there is no way you could ever walk side-by-side holding hands, except along the quieter outskirts. The streets here are indeed fraught with everpresent danger, and you’ve got to be constantly on guard, even when just sitting on a park bench in one of the plazas in the shade of a giant tree trying to escape the heat—because a pigeon very well may shit on you (we were shat on a total of 3 times in the space of a half hour the other day). Even the native Cartageños will sometimes nearly be clipped by a speeding taxi or SUV, and that makes us gringo tourists feel slightly better about ourselves (we’re not just inept tourists!) as we dance frenziedly about the multitudinous gaping holes in the sidewalk, or the deep puddles alongside the curb.

Another thing that can grate on one’s nerves whilst traversing these obstacle-ridden narrow fort-city paths is that Colombian pedestrians aren’t at all in the habit of practicing common courtesy. As in, you will be approaching, single-file, a couple walking side-by-side and taking up the whole entire miniscule slab of concrete that passes here for a sidewalk, and a line of taxis will be blazing past, and as we skirt to the right side to pass the couple, neither will bat an eye, nor move a shoulder, thus either forcing you to dip into the street with your ankle a mere centimeter away from a passing car or horse-drawn carriage, or to simply charge forward with your shoulder forward like a battering ram, and brusquely bang the offending pedestrian aside like a ping-pong ball. People just do not move aside here, nor alter their trajectories unless they absolutely have to. It’s like a constant game of chicken. People also will halt and stand chatting away on their cell-phones in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing you either to push them aside or feint sideways like a prize fighter.

No, common courtesy is not something common here. People who look rather well-dressed for beggars will come up to you while you are eating and beg you for pesitos and tell you that they are hungry. When you try to continue with the conversation they butted into (they always seem to come up right when you are in the midst of a deep conversation), or wave them away, they continue standing right next to you, detailing all the reasons why you should give them money, begging, pleading, batting their eyes at you. Then when you say “no” for the 20th time, plainly annoyed, they will finally turn swiftly away, cursing you loudly. Today while walking along the ramparts at sunset, one guy actually came up to me, put his hand against my chest, and told me to give him money so that he could drink. I was incredulous. He then grabbed my girlfriend’s arm and asked her for money. They are just outright rude, it’s like they demand and expect you to give them money.

Yes, the perils of tourism, I know.

Anyway, all of that said, it’s quite a pleasant little Caribbean hub of tourism on the whole. We discovered our breakfast place this morning, wherein we can have our fresh jugos de maracuyá and eat hot empanadas filled with gooey cheese and ham and corn. Then we also discovered a quiet little bookstore/café tucked away in the ritzy San Diego section of town, where we drank cappucinos (served with little mini-cookies on the side, I love it when they do that shit) and I studied my Spanish and purchased a Pablo Neruda book.

I am now outfitted with my Arhuaca man-purse, and loving it. They really are handy and fashionable little things. I’ll sport it back in the States and be the envy of all you trendy metrosexuals! I assuage my manliness through the knowledge that these handbags were originally worn only by the native men (they traditionally wore 3—one big one for their personal items, another one for work things or whatever, and a third little mini-one to carry their coca leaves for dipping into throughout the day so that they didn’t have to waste precious time eating).

The Navy Lads

Yesterday the stomach dragons officially disapparated out to neverland, and so thus in celebration we assayed forth into the walled city to eat food. Not feeling particularly adventurous just yet, we elected to pop into the gringoesque Pizza and Pasta. On the way there, we saw a group of gringos striding past speaking American, and they all looked kind of like frat boys. It was a little strange. Then, seated in the restaurant next to us were a group of estadounidense guys, 2 of whom we were quite certain were our convivial midnight neighbors from the pleasant night we spent in Hotel Las Vegas. These kids were ghetto. My girlfriend and I debated how some kids from the ghetto ended up wandering the streets of Cartagena. After sipping on some zapote and maracuyá juices, we elected to order a medium pizza—I know, in direct contradiction to Andrea’s sage advice on what not to eat after a stomach dragon visit—which turned out to be not only gigantic, but also doubly greasy due to the addition of bastante butter. We ate as much as we could (2 slices each) without vomiting immediately, and there was still half of the pizza left. Not wanting to let all of that grease and fat go to waste, my girlfriend charitably offered it to another table of gringo men seated behind us, who somewhat hesitantly agreed to take it into their stomachs. She first unsettled them by asking them loudly, “¿Habla Ingles?” (even though she knew they were gringos), and they looked at her strangely until they caught onto the word “Ingles”, and then they eagerly nodded yes. They didn’t speak a lick of Spanish. She asked them where they were from, and one lad was from Florida, another from New Jersey, and one from Georgia. Something suddenly clicked in my mind, especially when we saw the ghetto kids attempting to pay their bill with American dollars. These were military brats! Suddenly it all made sense—the frat-type guys we saw on the way there, the prostitutes, the ghetto youth, the boys from random parts of the United States all seated together in a Pizza and Pasta place . . . They were docked in Cartagena, couldn’t speak any Spanish, didn’t even have Colombian pesos, and were just out to get some ass and pizza and get drunk. Good ol´Navy lads. My girlfriend was proud to have fed some of the boys some grease-laden pizza.

Juxtapositions

One thing that a trip does is to juxtapose your own cultural values and customs with those of another. As I am now over halfway through the trip, I’d like to take a moment to pause and examine some of these differences.

Some of the things that I now more fully appreciate about the United States is:

—although we still have a long way to go, there is a definite growing awareness in the US of waste and the treatment of our environment

—white bread and other processed foods, though still popular with kids, are not a nationwide snack

—people don’t stare blatantly at you

—you don’t have to barter for every single thing

—people don’t come up to you when you are sitting in a restaurant and try to sell you kitchen towels or pens with flashlights

—personal space is generally respected

—noise pollution is not usually acceptable

The things that I appreciate in Colombia that is lacking in the States are:

—a great public health infrastructure

—public tranport is cheap and very accomodating: a bus will stop and wait for someone to go into a store and obtain their groceries

—people get onto buses and sell juices and tintos

—fresh cheap juice! fresh cheap juice!

—need your shoes shined? go to the plaza and sit down on a bench.

—small stores and restaurants on every single block

Cartagena

 

Cartagena is pretty much what we’ve been looking for this whole trip: good pasteles everywhere, an abundance of fried goodness, juices (supposedly; I’m still looking for them, I know they’re here), nice cafés and restaurants, small colorful colonial streets that you could wander aimlessly in all day if you can stand the heat. Unfortunately, we can’t eat anything much because our stomachs are still caught in the vise-grip talons of our stomach dragons. The good news is, they have these great little bakeries scattered about that vend fresh pan de queso, which as it’s name implies, consists of bread melted with cheese, some of them with some mermelada de maracuyá spread inside as well. So at least we can munch on those while waiting to recover, and drink chocolate caliente. We are in full vacation relax mode now, with my main objectives in the next week simply being to find a good juice stall, a good café for chillaxing in, and once able to eat, a nice cheap restaurant. That’s all that’s on the agenda, really, besides celebrating Christmas Caribbean style.

Hotel Las Vegas

Ah, Hotel Las Vegas. How I’ll miss your bleach scrubbed tiles, and how they so forcefully reverberate every single noise throughout your entire structure: every child’s frequent scream, every ounce of television in the room next door, every conversation yelled in Spanish in the lobby, every prostitute adventure taking place in a room down the hall rented for an hour in the early morning. How I’ll miss your overpriced rates—more than a Motel 6 back in the states! How I’ll miss your toilet that doesn’t quite flush, which gets interesting when you have two sick people all night long. And finally, how could I forget the sweet smell of fresh cigarrette smoke wafting through your air conditioner ducts?

I don’t quite understand why this hotel is even mentioned in the guidebooks. We arrived yesterday in the old historic section of the city, sick and tired, and we stumbled about with our luggage through these weird Cartagenian streets with their different names for every damn block trying to find the two hotels listed as cheap in our guidebook (we have grown accustomed to the logical numerical address codes of everywhere else in Colombia). They weren’t cheap; in fact, they were the most expensive of any of this trip thus far, due to the fact that rich Colombians are now on vacation and are flocking to Cartagena. We finally just gave in and booked a room for 2 nights, to recover from our sickness and then find some cheaper accomodations in the less savory parts of town. After one night at Hotel Las Vegas, however, we had to say chau chau.

Fortunately, we went to bed very early because we were exhausted, and thus got in some much needed sleep before the really loud noises transpired. But there was constant noise. You could hear the conversations and televisions of people next door, which was enhanced by the fact that the Colombian couple next door had to shout out every single thing they said. Then there was the ubiquitous child that shouted out every few seconds somewhere down the hall. There always has to be a shouting child here, somewhere. They all shout, high-pitched, angled just perfectly to annoy all non-Colombian ears. Then the two employees in the lobby constantly talked all night long, and someone would enter and walk up and down the halls, yelling another conversation to them, and all of this would echo into our room perfectly due to the entire structure being tiled by some genius.

The pinnacle of the night, however, was when we were awoken in the early morning to the sound of some other Estadounidenses talking out in the halls. As we could hear everything perfectly, I can give a fairly good account of what transpired: they didn’t speak any Spanish, and had apparently been led to this hotel by an English speaking Colombian guy, who probably gets a small kickback for it (we were led to this hotel by the same guy, as a matter of fact, and only accepted because it was one of the ones in our guidebook we were trying to get to). These Americans had picked themselves up some pootang in some bar or club somewhere, or perhaps even on the street. So, they each rented out a room, apparently for an hour, and at the end of the hour, the receptionist came down the hall and banged on the door telling them to “check-out”. One of the guys came down from his room and talked to his friend out in the hallway, telling him to hurry up (“Hurry up, motherfucker! I don’t want to wait out here any longer, motherfucker!”). Then we listened to him talking to his ho about getting her e-mail address (translated between them by the Colombian guy), etc, so that she could write what she had been telling him earlier so that he could look it up. These were not conversations that we were straining to hear, nor wanted to. They were right down the hall, speaking at high volume, as apparently every one in this hotel must speak. The one guy kept telling his friend to hurry up. Apparently the other guy was going for 6 times with his ho.

At 5:30, someone then put on their TV at a volume so high that it was unbelievable.

Anyway, so my advice to you is not to stay in the Hotel Las Vegas when you come to Cartagena, unless you really enjoy listening into the lives and times of other travelers. We’re moving down to the Getsemaní neighborhood, where rates are half that of the old city, even though it’s a mere few blocks away. Our new hostal has a nice big courtyard with plants, and hopefully no prostitute visits in the middle of the night.

On Santa Marta

We are here in Cartagena de las Indias, having finally kissed Santa Marta good-bye. There really is nothing in Santa Marta to do as a gringo tourist, and despite having spent yet another sleepless night journeying to and from the bathroom, we had to leave—had to leave, even though I was justifiably terrified of being that gringo tourist on the bus who shits and vomits all over his seat. Fortunately, the pain of journeying was somewhat eased when we discovered that we could take a small, air-conditioned shuttle bus directly from our hostal. Granted, slightly pricier, but given that under normal circumstances we would have had to carry our bags until we found a taxi—which wasn’t easy in our weakened state—over to the bus terminal outside of town, and then haggle with bus companies over a price, and then wait for the next bus to leave, and then sit and watch our baggage like hawks, it seemed like a pretty good idea. It wasn’t really that much pricier than the normal bus, in fact, and aside from making many excursions through side-streets to pick up other travelers, it was speedy and comfortable.

Another word on Santa Marta, before I’m done with it: there’s literally nothing to do there, unless you happen to be vending fruits or hand-bags. (Rich) Colombian tourists flock to the beach at El Rodadero, but that’s all there is there: beach. In the Centro area, where the gringos stay, there’s sort of a beach. We only found one restaurant that was decent—decent not because of it’s food, which is always the typical comida corriente of meat, rice, beans, and platano—but because of it’s exceptional juices. They served large, tasty juices in a soda glass, and it was one of our few daily activities in Santa Marta, to seat ourselves at its tables located along the waterfront and sip at our níspero, maracuyá, or zapote juices while people watching—or, more frequently, being watched ourselves. If you ever end up in Santa Marta for some reason, then pop in, it’s called Punta Betín and is located just past the Plaza Bolivar along the waterfront (Cra 1C), next to a shop selling mochilas. But not the one right next to the shop selling mochilas: that’s the bad one that tried to scam us.

The only reason gringos do end up in Santa Marta is simply to pass on through to la Ciudad Perdida or Parque Tayrona. We had hoped that Santa Marta would kind of be like a miniature Cartagena, where we could escape the high prices and crowds that Cartagena attracts in its “high” season. But no. No cafés strung about, few pleasant restaurants, and a hell of a time trying to find a damn internet place where you can upload your pictures onto. I suppose there’s dancing and drinking going on during the weekends, but that kind of scene is officially off of our itinerary.

About the most exciting thing that happened in Santa Marta was that the electricty went out all night long (second time this happened, actually) across two blocks the night before we left for Parque Tayrona. Of course, our hostal happened to be on one of these blocks. The residents began crowding into the darkened street, and started a fire in the street down near the waterfront and began protesting. It was somewhat of a half-hearted protest, due to the heat, but a protest nonetheless. We sat on the rooftop of our hostal until it was time to attempt to sleep, which of course was not to occur because there was absolutely no breeze, so no air was coming into the room, and I had to keep getting up and walking over to the window to stick my head out in order to get some fresh breaths of air.

Anyway, so that’s Santa Marta. Oh, but it is good for one thing: the Arhuaca mochilas which are sold in many stores. These are handmade by some of the natives in the mountainous jungle nearby, and are very handy, as well as nice-looking. You will see everyone, guys and gals, sporting these things all around Colombia—even the trendily fashionable chicas in Bogotá.

More on Cartagena, along with pictures, to come. I need to get these stomach dragons quelled somewhat first. . .

Parque Tayrona

 

We’ve just returned from the beaches of Parque Tayrona, which is the requisite post-Ciudad Perdida-trek stop on the traveler’s circuit. We had envisioned ourselves swaddled in hammocks, supping on fresh tropical juices, relaxing on the beach, swimming in lukewarm Caribbean water, and watching the sunset. But I am sorry to say, this trip to Parque Tayrona—one of the number one tourist destinations for Colombianos on holiday as well—was just slightly disappointing. A list of some of the intervening factors: 1) A long, muddy hike into the site, all too clearly reminiscent of the 6-day trek to Ciudad Perdida; 2) you can’t even really swim at these beaches, because of the strong currents—there’s only about 2 slightly dippable bays; 3) you have to walk far to get to these somewhat swimmable bays, except if you’re staying at Cabo, which I’ll get into in a moment; 4) some non-mosquito insect bites the living shit out of you; 5) not many juices at all, and none at Cabo; 6) everything is overpriced, of course; 7) no refrigeration + tropical heat = stomach problems; and 8 ) the hammocks are either not comfortable at all, or it is too crowded and no space, or some people decide to stay up late right next to you and chat away at full volume all night long.

The first night we were there, we stayed at the 1st place you see in Arrecifes. The hammocks sucked (though they look nice enough), but they provided mosquito nets, and the showers and bathrooms are better than any of the hostals we’ve stayed at thus far. And there’s actually toilet paper in there!

Once we had settled our stuff into our nice little wooden lockers and put some food into our stomachs, we went off to dip into the water. After all, the whole point of being in Parque Tayrona is it’s beaches, right? We walked down from our thatched palm structure down to the water, which was a mere few strides away. To find that the sand stretched all about was empty. No one sunbathing, no one frolicking in the surf. And then we noted the no swimming signs, and the fact that the waves were bearing down on the weary shore like taxi drivers on a pedestrian in Bogotá. So, no swimming there. OK. We followed some people who were walking on ahead, and we walked, and we walked, fainting in the sun, until we arrived at a sort-of-bay. It looked plausibly dippable. They sold orange juice at a stand there. We plunked our weary haunches down on a fallen coconut tree and my girlfriend tested the waters, only to be swept up in a strong backward current and plunked down into the sand on her bottom. Not this one, then. We walked on, through dense thickets of jungle foliage and mud, and finally, arrived at La Piscina. There were people there! Sunbathers, popsicle vendors, children in water! We gratefully jumped into the sea. Only to find that you can’t really go too far out, because even in this sheltered bay the waves are strong. You can only really just frolick like children in the first few feet of surf. And then lay in the sun. Or sit in the shade and read a philosophical treatise, as I did. That’s it.

We walked the long haul back, showered in the ritzy showers, ate dinner, and hunkered into our hammocks to sleep. But other people in our sleeping area obviously weren’t ready to sleep, even though there was little lighting. One set of teenagers smoked pot on the steps, a mom smoked a cigarette down the way, and a family conversated loudly in Spanish right next to us. Plus, the hammocks were hung too loose, and I could never get comfortable. Plus, it got cold at night after it rained, and even with my sweater and socks on, I found myself wishing for a blanket. So, no sleep that night.

We decided the next day to hike all the way to El Cabo, which is apparently the spot where most backpackers/gringos end up. It’s a beautiful cape, with its own little mini somewhat-swimmable bay. But the accomodations are a different matter. First of all, it’s crowded. A line of hammocks were strung up side-by-side alongside the restaurant, so close that whenever I would get up to pee in the night, I would bump my ass into the face of the girl sleeping next to me. Second of all, it wasn’t any significantly cheaper than the much nicer 1st place. Third of all, there’s no juice out there. That’s right—no juice.

To compound matters, my girlfriend decided to come down with a fever that morning, and spent the entire rest of the day laid out in her hammock, listless and incapable of movement. Not being much of a beach person in the first place, I didn’t feel very compelled to lay about by myself on a somewhat swimmable bay. So instead, I went off on yet another trek through the jungle, out to another set of ruins called Pueblito, which is essentially identical to la Ciudad Perdida (i.e. bunch of ruins of rocks in terraces where huts once stood), except that rather than trekking 6 days through the jungle for, you only have to hike over an hour’s worth out of El Cabo. It’s actually a fairly strenuous hike, mostly uphill on the way out, with these boulderous semi-steps leading most of the way. Unburdened of my non-hiking girlfriend, I happily mountain-goated my way about, losing the trail at one point and getting lost in thick foliage and sliding my way down a mountain. When I got to Pueblito, about the most interesting thing I can comment on seeing is the baby parrot sitting on an opened coconut and happily munching away while surrounded by a papparazi of Aussies snapping pictures and video. I gave in and took a picture as well, because he was damn cute.

I turned around and headed back, going too fast and slipping and falling a number of times as I sweat buckets. Upon returning to the boring but beautiful El Cabo, I joined my girlfriend in laying about in the hammock, and tried to read as well as I could without straining my neck.

That night, I met up with some trekkers I had seen on the way back from Ciudad Perdida, and shared some of their rum with them and drank some beers. I went to bed at a fairly reasonably late hour, I thought, considering that it gets dark at 5:00, but another group of people stayed up much later conversating right next to the line of people strung up in hammocks, laughing their asses off at things that weren’t even funny and annoying the shit out of me. Apparently, not many people stop to consider that the 30 other people strung up quietly in the night like larvae are actually trying to sleep.

Also, they do not provide you with mosquito nets at this luxurious Cabo location, and I was getting bit the shit out of by some unknown insect whose bites have welled up double the size of normal bites.

Also, I had to keep getting up to piss, because I’m not accustomed to drinking anymore. Which involved a stumbling about in the dark and bumping my ass into the face of the girl next to me, waking up my girlfriend to get her headlamp from her, and then stumbling out and peeing somewhere nearby and then trying to locate which hammock was mine out of the line of 50 other hammocks without shining the headlamp into everyones´faces, and then bumping a few more times into the girl next to me.

Also, I could begin to feel my stomach acting strangely, and could tell that I had some unpleasant bathroom time approaching first thing in the morning.

Also, I couldn’t move or stretch my legs sideways too much in the hammock and get comfortable without fear of swinging into the girl next to me.

Long story short, I slept even less than the 1st night. We had planned on staying three nights at Parque Tayrona, but now having witnessed the scene that is the somewhat-swimmable bays, non-refrigerated overpriced foods, and lack of various fresh juices on-hand, we decided to book it.

So we stumbled in the morning heat back through the jungle, back past the beach, waded through the water, and then had breakfast on the way out. We then tramped slowly back the long way out from Arrecifes through the windy muddy path all too reminiscent of the Ciudad Perdida christening, both my girlfriend and I growing increasingly weak and dizzy.

It was not over yet. The jungle wished to extract every ounce of pleasure and goodwill from our bodies. From the entrance of Arrecifes, it’s another long hour or so walk back to the entrance of the park. We had taken a jeep on the way in, but no transport was to be found on the way out. So we walked, and we walked, the approaching noon heat beating down. This walk down the road, in any other clime or time, would actually be quite pleasant: overhanging shade of dense green trees, a lack of frequent bypassing vehicles, and a slight breeze against the skin. But today, it was a hellish last haul, as my girlfriend stopped to vomit up the dregs of her morning ensalada de frutas, and my stomach burbled away dangerously. We stomped slowly by the remains of giant (giant) grasshoppers slewn by motorized vehicles. And finally, we made it to the entrance, where we just had time to buy a Gatorade before hopping on the bus that drives the hour back into Santa Marta.

And of course, our bus had to be the one stopped by the police and searched. We all had to disembark and watch as the police went through every compartment of our bags. The commanding officer was actually quite pleasant, and conversed with us about where we were from while another policemen shuffled through my backpack.

Anyway, so the synopsis of all of this is: our 3 days at Parque Tayrona was most definitely not relaxing. And yes, the park is beautiful. But the beaches ain’t really for just living it up and swimming, unless you just stay in your hammock all day long. We are more exhausted now then we were before we left, when we were just trying to relax after the long trek. And to top it off, now we’re ill. So my advice to you if you are planning on this requisite trip to Parque Tayrona: be aware of what you’re getting yourself into. Hawaii it may look like, but Hawaii it ain’t.

Books and pictures

Scroll down to some of the earlier posts and check out some of the photos I just finally got posted!

 

As you can see from this picture, I made a slight miscalculation in the size and quantity of books that I lugged along for the trip. I know, The Life Divine probably wasn’t the best pick for light travel reading material. But my thinking on that one was “how else and at what other time will I actually slug through this damn book?” And I have been reading it much more in Santa Marta, now that the only thing to do during the heat of the day is to find a shady nook near the Juan Valdez café. The Spanish-English Dictionary, well, yes, I could’ve brought a smaller one. The Footprint South American Handbook I am going to leave behind, as it is from 2005. And my Spanish books, sadly, have been largely neglected, and my Spanish speaking ability seems to decline each day that I am here.

The trek to the Lost City

 

We are alive, tired, and resting after the trek to Ciudad Perdida. Here’s a synopsis of the 6 day hike into the jungle: uphill, downhill, mud, more mud, lots of mud, slipping in the mud, falling in the mud, getting stuck in the mud, sweating, sweating profusely, getting bit by mosquitoes, getting bit by ticks, getting bit by bedbugs, wading through the river, wading through the river again, slipping on rocks while wading through the river for the 8th time, climbing up and down a thousand tiny steep steps, sleeping in hammocks, sleeping on ratty old mattresses. That’s pretty much the trip in a nutshell. For the nitty gritty day-by-day details, continue on, intrepid reader:

Day 1

After breakfast crepes and tintos, we bundled into the jeep that would take us over the river and through the woods to the little town wherein we would commence our journey. In the jeep we met the other 3 members of our group: an English couple and a lone Englishman, all of whom were already world-travelers, bent on conquering the globe for the next year or two . Other travelers we met along the way also fit this mold: traveling for 5 months to 2 years, traveling all over South America or over the entire known universe. I myself can’t even fathom being away for that long. 2 months or 3 months seems quite substantial enough to me. I think this difference, which can be delineated between the European and American travel norms, is that in the US we pay so much to go to college that the only recourse we have is to immediately embed ourselves in the neverending indentured servitude of a career, whereas in other modern countries, they pay less for the university and it is expected for them to go backpacking and experience the world before settling down to pints in the local pub. Whatever the case, one meets loads of Israelis, English, Aussie, and Kiwi everywhere in South America, all traveling for insanely long amounts of time and with no apparent lack of cash for the journey.

Anyway, to continue with the topic at hand: the jeep ride down the unpaved mountainous road to the small town where we would disembark was a mini-adventure in and of itself, bumping, swinging, and jostling as the driver sung to himself or told vulgar jokes to the guide. We nearly got stuck in the mud at one point, but managed to swerve out of it as chunks of mud spattered across our faces. My girlfriend was visibly pondering what she had gotten herself into.

We finally arrived and we stopped to eat some bologne sandwiches on the ubiquitous white bread which Colombians seem to relish. The journey by foot then began.

Now let me stop to clarify something: when I say that this trek was muddy, I am not speaking of little puddles of mud that you can step daintily around and avoid. When I speak of mud, I speak of the kind of mud that you can only ultimately accept as a part of yourself, the kind of mud you must become one with, the kind of mud you must slog ankle-deep through, the kind of mud that slurps into your sandals and cakes itself to your legs and clothes, the kind of mud you cannot escape.

The first day of the trek was muddy. The lone Englishman had purchased Wellington boots (or “wellis”) specifically for the trip, and he took a certain relish in tramping directly through the muddy bits while the rest of us slipped and slid about. My girlfriend and I only had our Chacos and our Keen sandals, respectively, and these were definitely not the proper footwear for excessive mud. I nearly lost one Keen within the first 20 minutes, when I got my foot completely sucked in by mud and couldn’t remove it. I had to pull my foot out of the sandal and then extricate the sandal by hand by pulling with all my force. I then had to walk barefoot until we reached a river where I could wash them out.

It rained quite a bit that first day as well, rendering what would only have been a strenuous hike into a humid, hot, wet, muddy nightmare. My girlfriend now was appalled at what she had gotten herself into, and I was starting to have some doubts myself. She fell head over heels in the mud. I slipped and did some kind of funky split and pulled a muscle in my leg severely and I thought for a moment that I was through. It was exhausting.

5 hours later, we finally arrived at the little house where we would spend the night. We met a group of fellow travelers there who were passing the night on the way back in from the city. We ate a substantial dinner of eggs, rice, potato, onions, tomatoes, and tinto. We slept in hammocks with mosquito nets, and it took me a while to get comfortable in it, and even longer to fall sleep, because a little child at the house kept waking up and wailing all night long.

Day 2

One of the extracurricular options for the morning was to venture to a nearby cocaine factory, if the group all decided they wished to go and would pay a little extra for it. We decided we would go. It wasn’t a real cocaine factory; it was more a cocaine factory exhibit, set up specifically for the gringos coming through. They took us through the process, from leaf to paste, and showed us what solutions were used at every step. It was highly educational. Among other things, gasoline and sulphuric acid are used in extracting the cocaine from the leaves. Doesn’t really compel you to put it up your nose. It’s a quite simple process, however, and extremely cheap. Considering that it is cut up to 20 times before it even reaches the market in places like LA or New York, it makes you realize that someone out there is making a hell of a lot of money. We were allowed to try the paste at the end, and it made my mouth really numb.

Then off we went for our second day out. This was supposed to be an easier and shorter day. It wasn’t. However, the good news was that it didn’t rain during the hike, so not quite as much slip n’ slide.

Along the way, we passed through an indigenous village.  Called Kogui, they wear robes of white and have long hair and carry little sacks (mochilas) slung over their shoulders. The mochilas are woven from a cactus-like plant called Maguey, which is related (but not the same) to the agave plant in Mexico that they use for tequila. The men also carry poporos, which are little gourds carrying a lime solution that they use in conjunction with chewing coca leaves. They are not necessarily unfriendly, but they are obviously not thrilled by the sight of hundreds of gringos tramping through their village and forest. They will usually say hello to you when you pass by them if you initiate the goodwill, but otherwise remain aloof. I can’t say that I blame them. Our guide wouldn’t even give them a name when I kept asking him what they were called. He just said, “los indigenos” every time I would ask. This probably reflects a general attitude towards the native peoples.

I had asked our “guide”, who is a just a 19 year old local boy, about cacao earlier, and along the path today we passed a cacao tree, and he cut down the fruit for us to try. I was pretty excited, because as anyone who knows me is aware, I eat dark chocolate on a constant basis. The cacao fruit is a large yellow-orange fruit the size of a football, and when you open it up, it has white custardy sectional pieces inside that look rather like garlic cloves. The fruit tastes like a cross between guanábana and banana. They prepare the cacao for chocolate by drying out its seeds just like coffee. On the way back through the village on the 5th day, we saw the seeds being prepared out on a tarp. I have to say, I am quite happy to say that I have eaten of the fruit of cacao.

After a massive neverending downhill section, we arrived at our camp site, which just happens to be shared with the Colombian army. In Colombia, service in the army is a mostly compulsory 2 years for men, and the young lads out in the jungle were quite obviously bored. They pass their days playing cards, jumping off rocks into the nearby river, and ogling the trekking gringo women. It was indeed a bit strange, to be sitting there eating your soup while the soldiers sat there with their semi-automatic weapons and stared at you. They were for the most part quite friendly, however, and one came up to me and started a very awkward conversation with me, the awkwardness further compounded by the fact that I could barely understand his rapid clipped Spanish and had to keep saying, “¿Como?”

Before we went to our hammocks, the guide told us that we should keep our cameras and money in the hammock with us. During the night, some animal—I think a pig—was rooting about our stuff, and I thought at first it was a thief, and I pulled my backpack up into my hammock for a while, until I realized it was just an animal.

Day 3

My girlfriend’s feet were cut up and she was having a very hard time. She isn’t the hiking type to begin with, and while for me hiking through the mountainous jungle is an adventure, for her it is a nightmare. Had I known just how difficult this hike was to have been, I would never have made her do it. This day was a long and difficult day, with over 7 river crossings. By river crossings, I don’t mean stepping across rocks. I mean wading through the river. We finally arrived at the foot of the stairs to climb into the city in the early afternoon. Fortunately, it had not yet rained, so the stairs weren’t slippery. Every other traveler we had seen on the way had told us the stairs were hell. But in fact, the stairs are the easiest part of the trek. They are at least solid and straightforward, if tiny and steep. Apparently the Taironas that built them were the size of midget elves.

After the 1,200 something little mini-stairs up, we were in la Ciudad Perdida, and we had it all to our little group of 5 for that night. As it was my birthday the following day, I broke out the bottle of aguardiente I had hauled along for this express purpose, and we drank a little bit after dinner (mostly just me). At one point in the evening (before I started drinking), I walked over to the bathroom in the dusk and began to urinate. Halfway through, alerted by the sound, I suddenly realized that I had been pissing all over a closed toilet lid! The group had a good chuckle over that one.

Our evening entertainment, aside from relaxed conversation, was in watching the multitudinous bugs come out of the encroaching darkness to fly into the flame of the candle on the table. This was surprisingly good entertainment—better than television.

Our accomodations in the city were ratty old mattresses. We fell asleep to the rain, and awoke to the sound of a waterfall, as well as the moquitoes clamoring outside of the mosquito net to get in.

Day 4

My birthday. Birthdays seem to mean less and less to me the older I get. I also don’t seem to be having any crises about getting to the cusp of leaving my twenties either. What better way to spend one’s birthday? I was out in a historical site in the middle of the Colombian jungle!

The Ciudad Perdida is quite large, although most of it is hidden from sight by the jungle. It consists mostly of stairs and the terraced remains of where family huts once stood. The city is said to have housed between 2000 to 4000 people at one point, before being vacated by the diseases and other tribulations brought on by the Spanish conquest. The Taironas left behind many gold pieces, which were looted in the 70s upon its discovery by a family of looters. Some of the pieces were preserved and can be seen in the Museo del Oro in Bogotá and Santa Marta, and are quite exquisite. They are very small and intricate, some depicting frogs or cats or snakes.

All of us boys took a dip in a little swimming hole in the city which is said to bestow youth. It definitely took some years off my life—but only on the other end. That water was cold. On the way to it, I slipped on the stairs and cut myself up a bit. I was beginning to feel a bit embittered by all of the falling. As someone who prides themself on possessing an exquisite sense of balance and rarely falling, two big falls were more than enough. My girlfriend logged in something like 3 falls a day.

That afternoon, another group arrived at the city with another tour agency, ruining our peaceful personal enjoyment. This group was huge—28 people—and my girlfriend and I had almost ended up in it, because we had been considering delaying our trip by a day. The guide had lied to us and a number of other people, saying that there were only 8 people in the group. In the group were an older English couple and an older German man. The couple looked exhausted, and later that night the old man twisted his ankle, and then later fainted. I hope he made it back alright. The German man (on a trek with his daughter—good sport) had fallen on the rocks in the river and had a big gash in his forehead. Luckily, he happened to have a large bandage for it. That’s one thing to realize about this trek—it’s dangerous, and the guides don’t appear to be equipped with any medical supplies. Our guides (teenage brothers) didn’t even have headlamps, and kept borrowing them from the English couple in our group.

At the cabaña of what seemed to be the site’s caretaker was a little puppy named Shakira whom my girlfriend grew enamoured with instantaneously. I think for my girlfriend, the pinnacle of the trip was not the ruins of an ancient city, it was in holding this little 6 week old puppy.

Day 5

During the night, I kept feeling something biting me, and thought that it was mosquitoes that had gotten into the net. In the morning, I realized that I had been eaten by bedbugs in the ratty old mattress I was sleeping on. So my advice to you if you are going on this trek is: cover up those mattresses before you lay down on them with anything you can.

In the morning, after eating our tuna empanadas splattered with generous doses of ají, we managed to get our guides to actually depart early (something that was difficult to do), because on this day we had to complete in one day what had been days 2 and 3. We had to go back down the trecherous midgit stairs, wade through the river 7-10 more times (the guides said 7; I counted 10), and then after lunch at the army camp, trek back up the giant neverending mountain that we had descended before.  It was a long day.

On the way to the army camp, my guide remembered that I was interested in the Kogui mochilas, and he obtained two from some huts (the guide said something about one of them being a shaman) we passed for me to buy. I was pleased to have obtained a handmade item from the middle of the jungle.

When we got to the army camp, we ate lunch and took a dip in the nearby river and watched the soldiers diving and belly flopping off giant rocks nearby. For the afternoon, we rented a mule for my girlfriend to take, as her feet were cut up and bleeding. The rest of us began the long upward journey, sweating like pigs in the over 100 degree heat and humidity. We finally made it to our desination after an 8 hour long hiking day (which was quick). We were fortunate, again, not to be rained on.

My girlfriend obtained 3 ticks from her mule and had to rip them out with tweezers, presenting yet another facet of the trek for her to be delighted with.

Day 6

The last leg back down to the village. Tired, sun-beaten, feet swollen and cut, little pebbles in my Keens shredding up my ankles. The hellacious tunnels of mud and more mud. But we made it, and then it was just a matter of enduring the 3 hour long Jeep ride back to Santa Marta, with the driver blaring ranchero music. I made the mistake of telling him that I liked the music, whereupon he turned it up and we listened to the same damn 3 songs over and over again. When we finally arrived back at the coast, we stumbled into our hostal and took showers. Then lo and behold, out went the electricity. We spent a very hot and airless night, but I slept like a baby anyway.

So that was the trek. What would normally have been simply a very strenuous hike was made extremely difficult by the extreme heat and humidity, and the excess muddiness and slipperiness. This is not an easy hike, and the trail is nothing more than a river of mud in various states of wetness (except during the months of Jan-March, when it gets extremely dry). So my advice to any future trekkers is: bring some “wellis”, or at least a good change of footwear for the muddy sections, and bring a sweater, because it gets cold at night, and bring something to sleep in that can keep you from the bedbugs. And bring soap, because there’s actually showers at every campsite.

Our guides were little more than teenage boys cooking for us and walking along with us through the jungle. So take your time before you embark and find a guide who you like beforehand, and make sure you are going with a small group. We definitely got lucky with our group, and we in fact realized last night that we rather miss them now that the hike is over. The English couple was particularly nice, and neither my girlfriend nor myself could have made it without their generous donations of foot tape.

As for repellent, well, I used my all-natural Burt’s Bees and I seemed to fare no better but no worse than my companions who were slathering DEET over their bodies. The fact is that you are going to get bit. Just like the mud, it’s something you’ve got to accept and become one with.

As for my girlfriend (read her much more humorous account at her blog), she is not very happy to have done it, but I think perhaps it was a good experience for her to have been pushed well beyond her normal boundaries and capabilities. Her feet hurt, she’s got bites all over, but I think maybe she came away with something more positive than just having held a cute little puppy named Shakira. I know I did. This trek was more like a rite of passage.

Treks and Crooks

 

I hadn’t expected to go on any hiking treks in Colombia due to my girlfriend’s disinclination to venturing into sweaty, mosquito-ridden, trecherous jungle areas. But today—perhaps due to the 100 plus degrees of heat and excess of caffeine, or perhaps due to excess of boredom wrought by days spent sitting at a table drinking strange juices—for some reason she caved in and ventured the idea that we might go into the jungle on a 6 day strenuous hike to la Ciudad Perdida. I, of course, leapt upon the opportunity to be eaten alive by mosquitoes and we booked our trip and we set off . . . tomorrow morning!

First, a little background: the Ciudad Perdida is, as it’s name suggests, an ancient city discovered by looters and later excavated by the government and opened for visits by tourists such as myself—although it’s been an area of paramilitary activity for some time and was too dangerous to visit until very recently. It’s somewhat like the Maccu Picchu of Colombia, except much less touristy and established. It’s set deep in the jungle, so this is our time to see some real wildlife—much better than the zoo, that’s for damn sure. We’ll see how my sunscreen repels on this one. I have the feeling that I’ll get bit the shit out of no matter what I do. But I’m really excited about it, as I love the jungle, and this is a great chance to get a unique perspective on it.

My girlfriend and I just had our first terrible rip-off scam experience here in Colombia, and I am still quite angry and sickened by it. We were walking along the waterfront, where there are a lot of little restaurants and bars, looking for a place to eat. Some guy swept us in, and the dish of the day sounded alright, so down we sat, ordered some beers, and waited, for a long time, for some meat that turned out to be harder than beef jerky. Seriously, it was nearly impossible to sever, let alone chew. But like the good sports we are, we ate as much as physically possible, and then I asked for the check. One of the guys came up and told me it was 76,000 pesos. In US dollars, that’s about $38. And this is when normally you can get a huge, delicious meal anywhere for less than $6. And this is when the food was just outright bad. Obviously, this was unacceptable. I then spent the next 15 minutes using the best of my little Spanish telling them that this was unacceptable. Some other guy came into the scene, who may have been an innocent passerby, or may have been part of the scam, who tried to play the intervener. At the end, I ended up paying 30,000 pesos and walking away. I had thought to yell at a passing policeman, but at the time, the last thing I thought I needed was more confusion, and with the police here, who knows what’s gonna happen. On hindsight, that’s what I should have done. So we got fucked, basically, and we both felt sickened by it. I didn’t even think that such a thing would happen in a restaurant. A taxi, a street vendor, etc, yes, but a restaurant? So from now on, we’re going to be a lot more careful about where we eat. It just sucks when a few crooks end up putting a big dent in your perception of a place, when you know that most people are not out to get you.

Anyway, cie la vie. Off to la selva, where the worst that can happen is just being kidnapped by a rogue soldier or eaten alive by a giant insect or snake!

Stomach Dragon Update! and other topical news

 

Now, finally, to answer the question that I know has been in the back of all of your minds this whole time: my stomach has been just dandy all throughout the trip thus far. I’ve had some spots of unsettledness here and there, but otherwise have been just great. Whether this is due simply to the anti-biotics or whether the probiotic pills are really making the difference is a question that is best left up to scientific research. The first week that I was here, my stomach did make some interesting noises and burble about quite a bit, but nothing came of it. Also, I haven’t been eating anything too sketchy, except for that street vendor-concocted shrimp cocktail last night on the beach, which was delicious and which I highly recommend trying if you are ever in Santa Marta. This old dude plopped down his bags, pulled out a plastic cup, filled it partway with camarones, then some onion salsa type thing, then squirts of mayonese and ketchup, a couple squeezes of fresh lime, and mixed it all up and handed it to me with a spoon, crackers, and a napkin. It was a great sunset watching snack, that’s for damn sure. I’ve also been rinsing my mouth with the tap water after brushing my teeth since I’ve got here as well, and that hasn’t been a problema.

In other news, I fucked up my beloved pair of travel pants (see link above) when I placed a pen in my pocket and it leaked out, forming two large, undying black spots right on the outside of the pocket area. I’m heart-broken, and have been trying to cope by drinking lots of tintos and jugos naturales.

As for Santa Marta, it’s fucking hot. The sun in mid-day heat is no joke. You have to dodge it from shadow to shadow in the city streets like a civilian from snipers. About the best thing that can be said about it is that your clothes dry extremely fast after washing them in the sink.

As for insect bites, the first day here my ankle swelled up so much that you couldn’t even see the bone. What’s especially perturbing about the whole thing is that these mosquitoes, or whatever it is that are biting, are completely invisible and soundless. You don’t hear or see anything. Suddenly you are just aware of this palpatating itch coming from your ankle, or elbow, or neck, and you’ve got to exercise Zen-like restraint to prevent yourself from scratching at it.  Although I suppose in the long run it’s actually a good thing that you don’t have to be further tormented by listening to the little buggers buzzing at you all day long.

However, I seem to have found a repellent that works! No, it was not the all-natural Burt’s Bees which I had expressly brought along for that very purpose. And no, you sceptical nay-sayers, it is not simply that all-natural things do not work. My girlfriend has been applying her supposedly effective DEET based formula and still getting bit up the ying-yang as well. What I observed is that I was not getting bit on the areas of my body to which I had been applying my suncreen. So I’ve been slathering it all over my ankles and hands and arms and neck as well, and it seems to be doing the trick. What is this wonder repellent? Why, it is my all-natural Badger 30 SPF sunscreen! This stuff is not your everyday kind of sunscreen: when you first apply it, it makes you look like a ghost due to the whiteness of it. You’ve got to really work it into your skin, massage it in, and then it disapparates into your pores and does it’s duty quite efficiently, as well as moisturizing and making your skin smell herbal-y. I think the repellent qualities may be due to all the essential oils in it, blocking the pores or something, who knows. But it works! ¡Sweet!

Cosas Diferente Aquí (Colombian version)

 In the tradition of past travel journals, here’s a list of some things that are different or unique here in Colombia:

1) There are great pastries everywhere. You may not know what they are called, but go ahead and point at them and eat them anyway. Trufas, galletas, palitos, pies, brownies, whatever. They’re all good. Especially with some hot chocolate.

2) Helados are also good. As trendy as Crepes and Waffles is, I have to say that their menu of ice cream desserts is overwhelmingly decadent and creative, such that you salivate just by flipping through it.

3) Water can come in little plastic pouches. You just bite off a corner of the top and squeeze.

4) Mayonesa and ketchup also come in little plastic pouches, except with screw tops on them.

5) Colombians will call each other names quite literally descriptive of what they look like. Such as by saying, “Hey black!” or “Hey brown!” to people dependent on their skin tone. They also have television programs that tell you immediately by their titles that their main character is either an “ugly” girl or an overweight person.

6) People certainly don’t mind staring openly at you. Sometimes it’s mild curiosity or boredom, sometimes open flirtation, and other times just blatantly rude and invasive. Not being someone prone to staring myself, it makes me uncomfortable—except when it’s from a cute girl.

7) Every coffee shop sells various coffee drinks with liquor in them.

8 ) For Christmas, people are very into decorating their cities with lights. There is a competition between the major cities, and there is a decision made in favor of the city with the most creative and beautiful presentation and design. In Cali, they had commissioned 7 different artists to decorate the city.

9) Urinals are little cups that are situated quite higher up than in the States. It is just perfect for the altitude of my particular peepee, but I always wonder how shorter people fare here. They must have to go into the stalls to orinar.

10) Lots of bicycles everywhere. Sometimes there’s even bike paths, but usually the bikers are just right alongside the road, nearly sideswiped by the buses and trucks roaring by. Sometimes a whole family will be on one bike: momma, poppa, and the little baby squeezed in between. Ditto with the ubiquitous motos.

11) In the smaller towns, such as Santa Marta, nearly everything shuts down between 12 and 2. Siesta time. And after 8 or 9 on a weekday night, ain’t no food except the little fried food carts. We learned that one the hard way last night. Plenty of beer, though.

En Cali

The drive to Cali was around 3-4 hours from the finca, a lush verdantly green drive (as is apparently all of Colombia, come to think of it) with zaman trees all along the road through the Valle del Cauca, listening to Thievery Corporation and Shakira. Cali is one of the three major cities in Colombia (Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali), and like Bogotá, when you get into the nice parts of town, suddenly you realize just how modern Colombia is. The leaders in Lasik and plastic surgeries reside here (Lasik costs less than $1000; I was tempted), and the plastic surgery can indeed be seen projecting quite visibly from the chests of many women on the streets in Cali. It is also not uncommon to spot some folks (both guys and gals) walking about with tape on their faces from their recent facial enhancements. The breast augmentation is so common, in fact, that there is a term for women who may lack personality, but possess large bamboombas: it is said of such a woman that she has pechonalidad, a mixture of pecho (chest/breasts) and personalidad (personality).

The evening we got to Cali, we met up with my cousin’s extended family at Chipi Chapi, a ginormous brick mall converted from old train warehouses that puts any North American mall to shame. Chip Chapi is not only a mall—it is the place that the well-to-do meet up in, hang out at, have a drink, eat some food, people-watch, plastic surgery assess, etc. We seemed to start all of our excursions here. Chipi Chapi, by the way, is the name of a native tribe that used to reside in the area of Cali, and who have now been honorably immortalized as a gigantic shopping center.

While driving into Cali, we were slowed down by a mass of people on horseback in the streets. This event is called cabalgata, and seems to be some kind of fiesta/horse competition. The horses do this weird kind of high-step/quick trot and demonstrate their prowess. People drink aguardiente. Fun for the whole family.

Once we met up with the exended fam, they took us out to a restaurant in the San Antonio neighborhood, which is the old historic section of town, kind of like La Candelaria in Bogotá, except that people actually live there in Cali. The restaurant, El Zaquán de San Antonio, served comida tipica, which seemed to consist solely (of course) of various forms of fried meat. I gorged myself on empanadas, puerquitos (platano mashed with chicharrón), chicharrón, bofe (smoked cow lung), and costillos (rib). I ate most all of it myself, out of the 10 other people there, and yet somehow did not get ill. I was told that I have the stomach of a Latino, as I kept grabbing at the bofe.

I had a great time showing the family my list of Colombian fruits that I intended to try, and was pleased to see that they got as excited by it as I do. They kept telling me new fruits that I’d never heard of that I needed to try, and when they spotted a níspero tree nearby, two of them got sap all over their clothes trying to grab a fruit for me. So on my list still to try: curubas, badeas, caimones, chontaduros, guamas, mamuncillos, mairoños, grocellas, piñuelos, zapotes, and nísperos. Phew!

The next day we had a large breakfast with the requisite doses of coffee, and I tried pan de yuca, a bread particular to Cali, which is best eaten dipped in coffee or lathered in butter. Then we took the niños out to the zoo. My cousin drove us there, taking a hump on one of the streets at 80 mph and getting a few feet of air, much to the delight of the unbuckled children, and much to my pain and discontent, because I came down right on my tailbone and bruised it.

The zoo was listed in my guidebook and sounded like it would be interesting. It had been a while since I’d been to a zoo, and I’d forgotten that essentially a zoo is just a bunch of cages with miserable animals inside of them. If miserable, dislocated animals is your thing, then definitely go to the zoo in Cali. There you can watch people banging against the windows trying to get a rise out of the monkeys, and see potato chip bags littered all over the floor of animal’s cages. At the Cali zoo, you get very close to the animals, such as in the aviary, where birds will walk along the bath browsing amongst the humans. I felt a little saddened especially by the grizzly bear and the camel at this zoo, both of whom looked to be wondering about why they were in a climate completely foreign to their biology (kind of what I’m wondering right now, as a matter of fact). In any case, I was happy to see a lot of guacamayos and other types of cousins of my amazonian parrot Vinnie.

We ate at the Crepes and Waffles at Chipi Chapi (which seems to be quite the trendy place to be), and then drove back in the night, my cousin’s Toyota landcruiser taking turns at the highest possible speed without turning over.

It is extremely expensive to travel long distance here in Colombia, as there are toll booths located seemingly every several miles or so. We spent almost 30 dollars just on the way to Cali alone. And gasoline is expensive here as well—which is why you will see cars that run on both gasoline and natural gas, such as my cousin’s Landcruiser. Natural gas is less expensive than gasoline, but it also doesn’t get you as far. I imagine it must be somewhat more dangerous as well.

Fiestas en Armenia

We are waiting at an office in Armenia right now for the truck that will take us to la costa Caribe to swing by. We left the finca on a tractor, sitting in the windows and hanging out the sides.

In Cali, I didn’t get the chance to make it to a salsateca, but the night before we had a night on the town in Armenia. It began with some aguardiente drinking at the finca. Aguardiente pretty much just tastes like anise, so if you don’t like that flavor, you wouldn’t like it straight, but otherwise it’s quite smooth and strong.

We then picked up a guy called German who worked in a coffee vending shop, and who had already been drinking some aguardiente himself. He offered me a shot and I obliged. We then drove out to a club in the outskirts of town called “Mint,” with German pontificating loudly about coffee speculation, which of course I didn’t understand any of anyways.

Simply because it was the 1st of December it is a time to party in Colombia, apparently, and on the way there was traffic stopped in places because people on motos were swinging flour (I think that’s what it was) at each other in the streets. Once we arrived at the club, we promptly began swigging another bottle of aguardiente. In Colombia, when you order liquor in a bar, it’s generally by the bottle rather than by the glass. They know how to party.

We danced a little to some salsa and merengue, when suddenly the music when into hardcore techno crap mode. Even the Colombians who brought us to the club realized that it was a bad music night, and we took off. My cousin has a penchant for driving over curbs and islands on the street, and promptly began doing so in earnest. We ended up in front of a bar after one of these displays of car-damaging machismo and we heard live music, so we went on in. It was an old-school bar, with two guys playing traditional Andino music on two guitars. We had a round of beers and while the rest of the group had fun taking pictures and making fun of German—who was passing out in-between rubbing my head and telling me something about “todo el mundo”—I had a great time listening to the music, which was especially refreshing after the stuff in the club.

On the way back to the finca, hordes—literally hordes—of people on motos were crowded everywhere on the streets, faces white with flour. Sometimes 3 adults were packed onto one moto (these are Chinese motorcycles: tiny, cheap, and dangerous).

The next day we drove down to Cali, and I’ll fill you in on the details later (such as a visit to the Zoologíca), because right now I’ve got to go hop on that truck to the costa Caribe. ¡Hasta luego!

Fincas y el Futuro

 

Yesterday I accompanied my cousin out to another finca to observe the harvesting of platanos, as well as the general operations of organic platano growing in Colombia. They actually cut down the platano tree in order to cut off the platanos, and another tree grows alongside of it in it’s stead, while the former tree is hacked apart and placed around the new tree as a mulch, along with compost. My cousin would lift up the pieces of former tree and show me all of the little bugs and various critters living underneath. You can tell immediately whether the platano farm is organic or not because the ground between the platano trees is completely covered with greenery at an organic farm, while a non-organic farm has only dirt in-between.

While at the finca, I drank three tintos (small cup of black coffee) and was wired, as even though I’ve begun drinking my daily cup or two of café con leche, I still am not accustomed to strong coffee. Literally shaking. We went to my cousin’s aunt’s apartment in Armenia for lunch and I was a little embarrassed by the trembling of the fork in my fingers.

Today I was shown the composting operations at my cousin’s farm, but mainly I just sat around most of the day until I finally had a cup of coffee. Apparently I have now joined the worldwide league of coffee addicts.

Tomorrow, we plan to go to Cali for the weekend (not a cien porciento sure yet)—the capital of salsa. I am hoping to venture into a salsateca and see whether I’ve still got some swerve in these gringo hips of mine. We’ll see.

After that, we are planning on heading straight up to Santa Marta en la costa Caribe on one of my cousin’s trucks delivering oranges. Yes, so we shall see first-hand whether riding with oranges will be crazier or more tranquil than riding on a bus. It may be that oranges are more valued than people, so it may be a smooth ride. Stay tuned for more pictures (they will come!).

Parque Nacional del Café

On the 28th, we journeyed to the nearby Parque del Café, which is a themepark—with rides and shows—for the coffee bean, by hopping on a bus and promptly going the opposite direction, thus effectively extending the trip by an hour. I comforted myself by reminding myself that I do that even in my own country (once in Brooklyn en lieu of an interview, and not familiar with the city at all, I jumped on the subway and ended up in the orthodox Russian Jewish section somewhere in the opposite direction (Brighton Beach?), instead of Manhattan).

The Parque del Café is fairly large, with a little introductory sterile museum section devoted to the history of coffee and its methods of consumption and production, and then a large food court, some rides, and a large walking section of the park where you can look at flowers, coffee, bamboo, and other more natural attractions. Apparently the Colombians mainly enjoy only the food and ride sections, as we only saw maybe 2 other people on the walk around the natural areas. It had been drizzling lightly during the walk, and we were treated to a beautiful arco iris (rainbow), as well as a squadron of squawking wild parrots flapping about the sky (apparently parrots have to squawk constantly whilst flying). And then suddenly, at the end of the day, as we were wading through packs of schoolchildren on an outing back to the teleférico (cable car, which took you from the entrance down into the food court/rides area), it began raining heavily. By “raining heavily”, I mean a torrential monsoon downpour. We stood in the middle of the teleférico in a puddle of water trying to keep under the tiny roof, and the side of each of us that faced outwards got completely soaked through. We were also apparently the only people in the park who actually brought an umbrella, so we weren’t as soaked as everyone else. It’s a strange thing here—it rains nearly every day (though not quite as heavily as it did that day), yet no one carries an umbrella. When it begins raining, most people can be found standing along the sides of the street in doorways and restaurants, waiting for the rain to pass (if it passes).

We managed to hop on a bus back to Pueblo Tapao, the little town near the finca, but still had to walk the long road back in thunderous rain from the street out to the finca, and got completely soaked through by the time we made it back. It was also getting dark, and as we were trotting back trying to avoid deep puddles of mud, I thought I was tripping out when I saw a brief light flashing in the bushes out of the corner of my eye. Turns out that it was a luciérnaga (firefly).

Salento

 

On  the 27th, we went to Salento, which is a little town located up in the mountains an half an hour or so from Armenia, which doesn’t really have much to observe except for its stairs with the 14 stations of the cross alongside up to a viewpoint of the valle de cocora. Apparently, the point is to empathize with Christ carrying a cross by comparing it to the burning in your calves as you plod directly upwards. Other than that, the only other requisite thing to do there is to eat some freshly prepared trucha (trout), which we obligingly did as well. It was quite tasty, with pink flesh. A little gato mewed pleadingly underneath our table as we devoured it.

We had meant to journey from there to the Valle de Cocora to see the palmas aceras (giant wax palms that grow in the cloud forest), but unfortunately did not realize that you could only catch jeeps to get there at 8:30, 11:30, and 4:30 throughout the day, and we had just missed the 11:30 jeep. Oh well.

My Spanish has been getting a little bit better, as my cousin speaks English even worse than I can speak Spanish, so I am forced to attempt to conversate with him as much as possible in Spanish. I seem to speak better the more relaxed that I am. Poco a poco.

Traffic and Fearlessness

It would seem that there is much less fear in general in Colombia: fear of death, fear of strangers, fear of sickness, etc. This translates often into brazen displays of recklessness, such as absolutely insane feats by buses and taxis, but it also seems to produce a greater social cohesiveness—it’s like every man for himself, but everyone accommodating each other in getting everything for themselves. This is seen most visibly in the manner that cars and buses and trucks nearly seamlessly merge and wend around each other in dense forests of flowing traffic, all without any concern for lanes or signals. The vehicles get literally within centimeters of each other and pedestrians, often while flying along at 80 mph on a residential road. Accidents certainly do happen here, but they don’t seem to happen any more frequently than in the States—if anything, the frequency of hearing the sirens of an ambulance wafting across the night air seems to be much less. Thus, much more attention is paid to your surroundings and the people around you, because it is recognized that your life may depend on it.

So it would appear at a glance that life is devalued by this apparent lack of concern for safety, but this is not so. Clearly, people here enjoy themselves and don’t seem incredibly stressed by fear or worry, even if many of them live well below modern “living standards”. This closeness with death rather translates into a relaxed enjoyment of fleeting pleasures. Dancing, music, sitting in the sun, etc. So perhaps it is a superficiality that is similar and contrary to the superficality of modern materialism in its way. In the United States, everyone is frightened of each other, frightened of death, frightened of cancer, etc. And I don’t know that we enjoy ourselves any more as a result of our worry and stress, even though we garner higher standards of living. I also don’t know that our traffic moves any more efficiently or safely as a result of our wider streets, multitudinous traffic laws, and giant SUVs. Maybe we need to just relax and enjoy ourselves a little more, and accept death a little bit closer into our daily existence as the inevitable reality that it is . . .

Frutas and Such

Ah, frutas. This morning we ate maracuyá, granadilla, tomate de arbol, and a pitahaya. I’d already eaten a granadilla before in Perú, but was more than happy to eat another one (and will happily eat an infinite amount more). In the same passion fruit family as the granadilla is also the maracuyá, which looks the same and has the same seedy, mucousy interior. However, it is a little more bitter, and is best in juice. The tomate de arbol looks somewhat like a roma tomato with more coloration, but tastes more like a pomegranate, and needs sugar added to it, like the maracuyá. The pitahaya is a crazy looking football-like yellow-orange thing with spikes on it, and inside it has a clear-white flesh with many small seeds. I kept trying to place the taste of it, and finally figured it out: it tastes and has texture quite similar to a watermelon. Not bad.

As for the finca, it is a little paradise. We are pretty much just relaxing and enjoying eating homecooked meals and fresh juice on a dining table out on an open porch, listening to the brahman cows bellowing, the chickens screeching, the insects whirring, and the multitude of birds whistling their various calls. We are situated in a dense thicket of platano trees in a house made of guadua (bamboo). There is no internet there and we have to get into town to use it, so my posts will be scattered for the next week, but stay tuned for more info on this paradise in the mountainous jungle soon, as well as more pictures.

Oh, and one more thing: not only have I now eaten a guava pie, but now also a guava doughnut! Yes! At Dunkin´Donuts no less, in the terminal de buses in Bogotá. I was quite happy to have a tropical fruit doughnut. The meeting of northern and southern Americas in one fried piece of dough. . .

Bus Trip to Armenia and General Observations

¡Vale! so we’re now located on my cousin’s beautiful finca (farm) outside of Armenia in the Quindío district in La Cordillera Central. It’s very lush, green, and tropical out here, and you can bet that I’m gorging myself on exotic fruits. But before I delve any deeper into the sweaty scene here, let me first describe the bus journey to get here, and a few more things I wanted to say about Bogotá before I’m done wid it.

First of all, you know that you’re in trouble when you arrive at the terminal de buses (bus station)—which is a very large, clean, and organized station as far as such things go—and there is a large sign situated outside of the entrance listing all of the different bus companies and their number of accidentes (accidents) and muertos (deaths) for the year. Yes, so apparently the way that one keeps track of the quality of service down here is not by cleanliness, customer service, or food options, but rather by the death tally.

Why this is so becomes apparent once one is locked into the bus, swinging from side to side sucking down fumes as the bus whips down the windiest, narrowest road descending 6,000 ft going 70 mph around hair-pin turns on the wrong side of the road passing horse-drawn carts and families sunning themselves on the side of the road and men lounging in all manner of distraction, and women in tropical wear (read: scantily clad) strutting along in heels. The scenery itself is beautiful, lush, and Hawaii/Amazon/South East Asian in greenness and density of flowers and trees. The views from the mountainsides are breathtaking, but fortunately (and I’ll get to why it is a fortune in a minute), I pretty much nodded off the entire time, happily tossing gently in my soft reclining seat like a potato in a nest. It was fortunate that I was pretty much asleep the entire time, because if I had been awake, I probably would have been pissing in mis pantalones when I saw the kinds of manuevers that my bus driver was making. As it was, I was for the most part blissfully unaware, until the latter part of the trip when I woke back up and watched the bus plummeting seemingly brakeless around a 75 degree turn with no separation between myself and a cliff-drop to oblivion.

What’s interesting about all of this, of course, is that this method of driving (i.e. without any apparent concern for safety) is completely 100 porciente normal here.

So that was the trip. Now to finish with some observations on Bogotá: on Sundays, they close off some of the main streets to cars, and runners, dog-walkers, bikers, and rollerskaters come out in force, for what is perhaps the one day of exercise for many of them. It’s a beatiful thing, seeing them all arrayed along the road in various states of enjoyment or exhaustion, women in sweats swiveling their hips and stretching, men with short-shorts running heavily along, dogs that normally never leave the house suddenly stretched along their leashes and barking joyously, children in spandex uniforms and helmets rollerskating . . . which leads me to my next point:

The uniforms. As in Perú, people here are really into clarifying their roles. Whether you are pumping gas, a policeman, someone cleaning up trash, or a worker on the side of the road, you’ve got some kind of colorful uniform on to denote your function. It seems to even be inherent in the language itself when it comes to delineating the distinctions between masculine and feminine—and thus, women and men themselves seem to have a kind of standard uniform to denote their gender: the women wear tight pants, and the men wear collared shirts (a broad generalization, but when you walk around the streets, this is the kind of stratification you’ll observe). In other words, despite the chaos that is the pedestrian and vehicular traffic, things are still very formal in many other ways.

One other thing: there are security guards everywhere. Standing next to cafés, in parking lots, in every room in museums, in malls, etc. Everywhere. In addition to the police and military standing about everywhere as well. It’s somewhat disconcerting, especially when a security guard comes up to you when you are just taking a picture of a mannequin in a storefront window outside of a mall and tells you not to take any pictures. I asked my cousin about all the seguridad privada and he laughed and said they were there to protect la policía. I guess that makes sense when you consider the broader situation in Colombia.

Movin’ On to Armenia

The last few days we’ve essentially just walked around a bit and drank some coffee and hot chocolate. We’ve been downgraded to hostal status now that my parents have fled back to the states. This translates into an old, hard mattress covered in plastic with a wall that doesn’t quite separate the room from the outer environment, and thus is freezing at all times of day, as well as a shared shower which is located directly alongside of the toilet. Used toilet paper must be placed into a bin, wherein it proceeds to stink up the joint. Towels that are essentially thin pieces of fabric more suited to be used as rags than as moisture absorbants. Rowdy Englishman and Australians and subdued Chilean backpackers. You know the scene.

We’re in La Candelaria section of town now, which is kind of like the old-style, narrow-streets, old-colorful-buildings section of town. It also is known for its “bohemian” atmosphere, which really just means a few scattered Colombians with dreads or weird hats and some bars with swing seats instead of stools and some cafes where you sit on pillows on the ground. That kind of thing. We had been staying in the business district of downtown before, which was fairly unexciting, so it’s nice to be in a more colorful part of town in any case.

One thing that’s strange about Bogotá is that there’s a lot of crepe places around here. Like, crepes seem to be quite the “in” thing. Also, there seems to be a certain trendiness imbued to Mexican eateries here as well, which was unexpected. I expected the McDonald’s and T.G.I. Friday’s and what not . . . but crepes? And “burros”?

We ventured into the Colombian yuppie part of town today, Parque de la 93 and the Zona Rosa, which was bumping on a Saturday eve. There’s some malls around there to rival New Jersey, and people wearing the kind of designer clothing that would get them second looks in Beverly Hills. We popped into a Juan Valdez café and I had me the standard café con leche and we people watched for a bit. Like a mix of the Upper Westside of NYC and the San Vicente of Brentwood.

Tomorrow morning we are about to embark on some new adventures: we are meeting up with my cousin and his new wife (just fresh from a honeymoon in Aruba) and taking a bus out to Armenia, to see his finca and hang-out with the extended fam. I can’t say that I’ll feel any great sorrow in saying goodbye to Bogotá for now. I just haven’t gotten that fresh experience or new connections here yet that makes me want to stay. Part of this is due, no doubt, to the fact that I have been unable to explore any of the live music, bar scene, or go out dancing at all—the only reasons one would really want to be in a large, crowded, dirty city—which I blame fully upon my girlfriend and her disinclination to venture into lively situations. I’m going to get her out one of these nights, though.

To Armenia it is then. Hasta pronto.

El Día de Gracias

¡Feliz día de gracias! We celebrated Thanksgiving Day by eating lunch/dinner at Andres Carne de Res, which was over an hour’s drive outside of the city, but well worth it. This is the place in Bogotá to go and get your beef, drink, and dance on, replete with funky decorations, a full selection of every kind of form of beef or chicken you could desire in extreme moments of bestiality, as well as full of a drink list as you could wish for (whether Colombian or otherwise), a group of entertainers/musicians roving about bestowing customers with crowns, kerchiefs, and necklaces and handing them sparklers and commencing to play impromptu songs, and a giant dance floor to boot. The meat is excellent, served on a sizzling platter along with a bib to protect your formalwear from splatter. I had 2 beers and an aguardiente, and I was quite drunk, due to the altitude. The servers did an excellent job attempting to speak English and accomodate our faltering gringo contingent, and my parents thoroughly enjoyed themselves. My father claimed that it was the best hamburger he’d ever laid chomp to. Not a bad way to pass a Thanksgiving day.

Speaking of food and drink, if you ever come to South America, definitely get yourself some hot chocolate. It’s a way of life down here. One of the typical presentations of such is chocolate santafereño, hot chocolate served with cheese and bread, which I imbibed today as a snack.

Yesterday, I ate (or tried to) a giant serving of sancocho de gallína, which was a hearty stew served with a giant piece of chicken sizzling in a broth with yuca, papa, choclo (corn on the cob), and platano. I also ate a couple of arepas as an appetizer, which is another typical little Colombian snack, a kind of glorified pancake topped with cheese and some salsa.

I also had a piece of guava pie, or pie de guayaba, which was tasty and exotic. I’d never thought to have guava outside of a juice drink before. I definitely hope to eat some more of the tropical fruits that I’ve enjoyed down here before, such as maracuya, guanábana, and granadilla.

Another day in Bogotá

I have to say, the café here in Colombia is indeed quite tasty. I’m not a coffee drinker at heart, I’m really more of a tea drinker. But I’ve decided that drinking coffee is one of those things that I’ve got to succumb to whilst here, in the same way that I pretend that driving 50 mph in the thick of dense city traffic without seat-belts is my normal mode-of-existence. So even as a normally non-coffee drinker, having a black cup of joe here is unlike any other coffee drinking experience I’ve had before (which is of course not many, however). I can drink it straight and it barely even tastes bitter at all. It’s really quite tasty, and I think I can get into the pleasant habit of a cup in the morning and a cup after a large lunch to aid in the digestive processes.

Today we had two adventures with my parents: 1) we went to Monserrate, a spot located on top of an overlooking mountaintop above the city, which you get to either by hiking up 3,000 feet and killing yourself, or by taking the teleférico—a cable car. The views, such as can be seen on the top photo from my last post, were very nice, and hopefully we’ll get a chance to see it again with a sunset, hopefully by hiking up to it (fat chance, says my girlfriend), and 2) we actually got to stumble lost and confused through the city streets all afternoon, looking for the Museo del Oro, which was doubly confusing because the exhibit had moved to another museum due to construction. By the end of the few hours it took to straighten out where the hell we were and where the hell this museum was, we had finally understood how streets are labeled, which is fairly logical once you grasp it. At first, however, you feel like you are in a directionless maze, getting pointed in one direction by one local and then another by the next, all speaking such rapid Spanish that you just nod your head as if you understand and then walk away vaguely towards where their finger pointed. There are no street signs, of course, and we learned to read the street numbers on storefronts.

It was good to get out in the streets and feel a little more comfortable meandering about and getting a sense of understanding formed from chaos. More shiznizzle to come soon—my girlfriend has got to pee and my hour is almost up. Hasta luego.

En Bogotá

After a long day of traversing the upper atmosphere, I have finally arrived at my long awaited destination. Here’s the nitty gritty on how it all went down:

11-20: 6 hours of extreme heat and smelliness on the airplane to Panama City, leaving LAX at 1:15 in the morning. I was seated in the middle of a row, squished by a man who should have, in an ideal world, had two seats—hell, give the fucker a whole damn row—to himself. His gargantuan legs couldn’t fit in the small space normally allocated to the average sized human being, and thus were pressed against mine the entire time, compounded further by his annoying tendency to commence waving them from side to side. Another pleasurable trait which this man possessed was that he farted continuously throughout the flight, and due to the aforementioned air-conditioniong problems with the plane, I could smell it quite clearly as soon as he had cut it. To add to this general bombardment of the senses, the blanket which I was given for the flight also smelled extremely rank.

Anyway, so long story short, I didn’t get a wink of sleep on this night flight. Switched to another smaller, functioning-air-conditioner plane in Panama City for the next hour to Bogotá. There at the airport, I was met by my parents, who were already in the city for my Colombian cousin’s wedding. (“There was a lot of salsa dancing!” said they about the wedding.) Exhausted and jet lagged, my girlfriend and I were then led into great exhibition, by my parents, of How To Be The Most Gringo Tourist On The Planet. I don’t really care to get into all the gruesome details of the ensuing nightmare that was the debacle of my parents attempting to sort-of speak Spanish and hail a taxi. Suffice to say that they got ripped off a good solid 3 times before we even made it to the hotel.

However, the hotel is quite plush (in comparison to where we will be staying when we are on our own) with a great view of the hills and overlooking Monserrate. I’m trying to enjoy the space and privacy while I can, and endure the overbearing gringoism of my parents with as much grace and gritted teeth as I can. The benefits are that we get some free meals at some upscale restaurants that we would never have attended otherwise.

First impressions of Bogotá: much like Lima, except with lush greenery and better architecture. Although it is dirty and gas-fume-permeated like any other large Latin American city, it has a sense of cleanliness to it, which I think is due to the large amounts of rain, which washes some of the pollution away from immediate visibility. There also seems to be less obvious examples of extreme poverty in the main parts of the city. Like Lima, the women are tightly clad in jeans or pantalones, such that you wonder how the ass cheeks managed to be squeezed through the top of the pants so that they could be encased so perfectly. Also like Lima, the traffic is noisy and death defying, and Colombianos are packed like sardines into Korean mini-buses that skirt like racecars around corners.

As soon as we arrived at our hotel, we showered off the accumulated oils and farts from our skin and slept until 9 (Colombian time—only three hours ahead of West Coast time). We awoke hungry, but were still slightly trepidatious about venturing out into the darkened alien streets in our jetlagged and hapless state. We also knew that we were in the banking, business district, and that most restaurants were closed by 9. We walked out anyway, past the ubiquitous semi-automatic machine gun armed soldiers standing on the corners, and stumbled into a happy coincidence: Argentina and Colombia had a futbol match, and all self-respecting Colombianos were watching any TV available (we had passed by a congregation of people on the street watching a small TV next to a bus stop). So we found a cafe-hole-in-the-wall a block away that was still open due to the game, in which Colombianos were drinking beer and affixed avidly to 2 TV screens, which were color-warped and hazy from time and chicken cooking fumes. We ordered 2 arroz con pollo dishes, which turned out to be massive, and enjoyed our first cheap comida criolla, eating only a 1/4th of a dish each. When Colombia scored the goal over Argentina, the place went crazy. One man in a suit stood up and pumped his arms up and down at the TV and shouted effusively in short, barking spurts for a good couple of minutes. We then stumbled satiated like blood-fattened mosquitoes back to our hotel and fell asleep for the rest of the night.

Some More Time-Killing and Thoughts Before the Trip

Now that I’m all packed up for the trip and ready to jet and have some free time to ponder and pontificate, I figured that I might as well take a moment to reflect on where it is that I am going and why it is that I am going there, and what my expectations are for the trip, as well as more existential concerns.

I am going to Colombia for some very simple reasons, which I have already detailed elsewhere, but will very quickly enumerate again in a cursory manner: 1) I had a great time in Peru two winters ago, and fell in love with South America in general, and knew that I had to go back down to explore some more; 2) My cousin, who just got married in Bogota 3 days ago (we’d already bought our tickets before the marriage was announced; I really wish I could have gone), lives in Armenia and grows platanos, cafe, and raises cattle; 3) a dollar still goes far in Colombia; and 4) what other reason do I need? Colombia is beautiful!

I always try to reduce my expectations for any event in life as much as possible in order to allow for the unknown, but I know that I still hold certain notions in the back of my skull about what I want to occur. For instance, I am very hopeful that the bag I am checking in will not be lost either on the way to or on the way back from Colombia. This is a somewhat dubious hope, considering that on the way back from Colombia, we swap 3 different planes. It’s something I guess I’d just rather not consider, because there’s nothing I can do about it one way or another. The bag must be checked, so I must remain hopeful.

I also have certain expectations based on my last trip to South America. I have the expectation that I will be able to waltz into any town and find cheap accommodation. I expect that the women will be beautiful and will wear very tight-fitting jeans. I expect that there will be the highly visible scourge of poverty everywhere I go. I expect to be seen as a gringo and have some con-artistry attempted to be performed upon me frequently.

But I realize that even as I have these expectations, that Colombia is also a completely different country than Peru. Different ideologies, different histories, different everything. Many cultural aspects, of course, will be comparable. But I want to give the country the chance to speak for itself before I relegate it to the vast gringo conception of “South America.”

What I want to occur on my trip is: I want to experience the people and the culture as it is, not as it is boxed up and presented to a tourist to strip him/her of their money. Such manners of accumulating experience are: talking to everyday people in their contextual environments and in their language i.e. on the street, in bars, in their homes, etc; experiencing daily life in as close a manner as to the locals in each location i.e. using the same transport methods, drinking the local drinks, eating the local food, dancing to the local music. In other words, I’d like to experience Colombia in as an ungringo-like manner as possible. This is impossible completely, but not completely impossible, you know what I’m saying? It’s mostly achieved by not only being adventurous and somewhat willing to take some risks, but furthermore by befriending and hanging out with locals as opposed to backpacking foreigners.

Traveling is also an interesting dilemma when viewed from an environmental and social conservationist conception. To travel by plane is to create a large carbon footprint. To exchange one’s money into another currency wherein it is stretched out multiple times its value is a possibly unscrupulous enterprise. To simply have the express freedom to even travel at all includes you in the percentage of a limited aristocracy in comparison to the vast multitudes that can’t ever leave their country, let alone travel far from their place of birth.

So I do not want to take this trip—nor any trip—lightly, and this is why I even bother to sit and inscribe these inarticulate sentences into my blog right now. I am fully aware of just how fortunate I am to be able to travel for so long (55 days, to be exact), and just to be able to travel at all. This is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to become enriched with life experience, to gain more understanding and insight into a language and a people and a differing perception of the world. So I do not see this as a “vacation,” especially given that I don’t even have any work nor home of my own to come back to. This is a form of schooling. This is an exercise in understanding, a training in dealing with alternate universes. And I am extremely excited to be doing this!

The next post will thus successfully convert this blog into a full TravelBlog for the space of the 55 days that I will be there. So it will become even yet more mundane, even yet more trivial, then my normal meandering abstract posts of yore. But hopefully, also more grounded in reality, more palpable to the touch, and more fruitful in vicarious excitation. Til then, hasta luego.

Itinerary

Today: Pack all our shit, clean up the house as much as possible. Amtrak to Los Angeles. Dinner with sister and nephew.

Tomorrow: Stumble around in the sun most of the day in LA. Lunch with friend. Dinner with another friend. Fly out of LAX at 1 in the morning. Arrive in Bogota at 1:30 in the afternoon. Stay with parents, who are on their way out after attending my cousin’s wedding, for 3 nights. Next 2 nights stay in hostal in La Candelaria. Meet up with cousin and his new wife, drive to Armenia.

And then . . . wide open unknown

Do I sound stressed? I might be a little stressed. Only an hour more and then it’s go time, we’re on the road and on the move from here on out. All my bags are packed. I’m waiting for this stupid laptop battery to drain down to 40%, which is supposedly the ideal amount of juice to leave lithium ion batteries at for storage.

Next post from me I will most likely be in Colombia, unless I get really bored in LA and find a computer to scribble on. Tally ho!

Preparations for the Trip

Last trip to South America, I was nearly constantly beset with intestinal problems due to the influx of bacteria from the food and water. This time around, I’m comin’ prepared. I’ll be taking along some Culturelle, which contains the clinically researched bacterium Lactobacillus GG, a probiotic which has been proven to make its way intact through stomach bile and colonize the intestinal tract with “good” bacteria (as opposed to the bad bacteria which tend to gain the upper hand whilst traveling). Also, the malaria prophylaxis which I will be taking, Doxycycline, will of course be killing all the bacteria in my stomach indiscriminately like a pesticide kills all insects, both good and bad, so the Culturelle will doubly serve to re-populate the bacteria down there to keep everything functioning as it should.

I also have discovered another product called Florastor, which is a type of probiotic made from a strain of yeast, which will serve pretty much the same function as Culturelle, although it is also more specifically oriented towards battling the sorts of yeast problems which can afflict women when taking antibiotics. But I figure I’ll take it too, because it will also help battle the introduced bacteria from water and food. It certainly can’t hurt having an influx of the good bugs in there since there’s about to be a daily influx of the bad ones.

Furthermore, I also found some info on berberine, such as Oregon Grape, barberry, or tree tumeric, which can also serve as herbal antibiotic assaults on all that diarrhea inducing bacteria. So I might pick up a bottle of one of them as well, in the case of any cataclysmic outbreaks of vomit/diarrhea such as occurred on my birthday the last time I was in South America. So I’m being proactive this time around. As much as I enjoy losing all of my excess fat within a few days, I would really rather not spend my time engaged in a cyclical traversing back and forth to the john all day long.

Other items I’ve obtained for este viaje:

1) A new, phatty Jansport daypack with 10 million different compartments, as well as a reinforced laptop carrying pouch so that its function will switch right back into an urban laptop transporter once I’ve returned from the trip. I also found this particular bag for 1/2 off, somehow. I asked one of the REI workers to make sure I was seeing it right. Once confirmed, I hung onto this find with both hands through the check-out line. Thanks for the gift certificate to REI, camp!

2) A new pair of lightweight travel pants with a sweet little zippered pouch at the bottom of the leg. I wanted a pair of pants that would be easy to care for and able to breathe well for the tropical weather and even be used for possible trekking adventures, but also look good enough to ostensibly serve as going-out pants. These are pretty much what I was looking for, other than for the weird little plastic snap buttons for rolling them up. Which I guess will be fine for the Caribbean coast beach strolling, in any case.

3) A new Moleskine notebook for recording thoughts and observations, as well as for jotting down new words and placenames.  A friend of mine (thanks Vince!) had generously gifted me one of these for my Peru trip, and it had been just exactly the right size for capturing the journey, sliding neatly into my pocket and easily accessible for quick reference when I was trying to remember that one word I had just learned the other day, or for love poems in Spanish from pretty local girls, or for inscribing complex addresses of recommended discoteques. So I had to get me another one for Colombia (along with an extra fine point pen, because I can only write neatly when I have a finepoint pen, for some reason).

4) A new pair of earbuds for my Creative Zen Touch mp3 player (I highly recommend this mp3 player, by the way; I’ve had it for over 3 years now with nary a problem). The ones that came with it hurt my ears so much as to nearly be unusable, and so I decided that it was high time I got something that wouldn’t feel like a continuous raping of my ear canals. I found this pair at Brookstone, and I’m pleasantly surprised. The sound quality is much better than the ones I used to use, and they fit very comfortably on top of my ears without inducing any discomfort. Perfect for long bus rides.

Other than that, it’s just listening to my Spanish CDs and trying to read my grammar book. So far, the Spanish studying hasn’t been going too well. I’m being lazy. In any case, though, I’ll be speaking it one way or another once I get there.

In Portland

I’m currently in the city of Portland, which doesn’t necessarily translate into the Land of Port, although perhaps it could, as there are a surprising number of wine shops around here, and a just as surprisingly small number of liquor shops. At least in the area I’m in.
The last time I was in Port-land—for a day—it was springtime and sunny and flowers were a-bloomin and all that kind of jazz, so it appeared the vision of an idyllic city of cleanliness and orderly environmental goodness. But now that I’m here again, of course, I’m seeing it for what it typically is: overcast, hazy, drizzly, dark. Which isn’t really that bad, except when you’re from southern California and have never lived anywhere where it’s gray or rainy for more than a day, and even then everyone starts getting crabby and rear-ending each other on the freeway.
Portland often comes up as a possible place to inhabit in my near and uncertain future, because it fits very well some stipulations which I have for wherever I’m going to move to next, post-Colombia. And that is: an adequate public transportation infrastructure, bike friendliness, good live music scene, and a reasonable proximity to bodies of water and masses of trees.
But I just don’t know about this whole lack of sunlight thing. I think I would have to sit under a bright lamp half the day or else I would bite someone’s head off.
Nowhere’s perfect, of course. I’m just sick of living in places where you HAVE to own an expensive luxury item in order to have a social life. I’m also sick of living in places where the greatest sense of community you can find is by going into a coffee-shop and getting on the internet. I’m an idealist, of course, but at least I know what I need to feel good about being alive.
Anyway, if you know of some idyllic dream place in which to live in that has not been completely Californicated, drop me a line. This particular Californian ain’t lookin to fuck up anywhere else with yuppyism, tract housing, and franchised homogeneity.
It’s pretty hard just to decide, out of all the endless possibilities, on some particular place to settle down in. I also feel like where I go to next just kind of needs to fall into place, and that’s what I’m hoping will happen soon, because I have no idea about where I’m going or what I’m doing, and I ain’t going to fret myself sick about it neither. I don’t like pretending that I have complete control over my life and what I’m doing. My direction is happenstance and driven by something greater than myself. I often feel that it is simply a matter of allowing that force to sweep me up in its divine wind, and not fighting it; maybe stepping over the edge of the cliff in order to allow it to work it’s ways. So, I’ll see where that takes me, anyway. And I’m sure I’ll get a little bit of say-so in the matter, but I don’t want to completely overrule chance, as chance (or a necessary happenstance) is what has given me the best things in my life.

Why Travel? Why Live?

Why travel, and spend money that could otherwise be spent solidifying a home base? Especially, why travel to places remote from what you know and place yourself in potentially uncomfortable and destabilizing situations, where you don’t know the language well and where there aren’t established tourist traps and familiar corporate franchises and resorts to squirrel away into?

I’m speaking of course about going to Colombia, a destination that makes most Americans express dismay and shock that you would even think of venturing to (thanks to our sensationalist and terrorist driven media). I’m writing this not only to remind myself of why I want to go there, and why I love to travel, but also for my beleaguered girlfriend, who is perhaps not sure why she is accompanying me other than for the reason of making sure that I don’t run away with some random colombiana.

The reasons why I love to travel are really quite simple: I love to dance to different music, drink different drinks, eat different food, see different environments, and meet different people. So when you travel with me, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing: enjoying a new and different culture. I’m not very interested in seeing monuments or ruins or museums. I’m not very interested in snapping photos of myself standing in front of panoramic viewpoints. Essentially, I travel because I want to know what it is to live. And part of how I gain that understanding is by exploring how other people are living: what makes them alive, what brings them joy, what makes them them.

I don’t know where my life is going. I don’t know what career I can fit my attributes into. I don’t know where I want to settle down. I don’t know any of that, but I do know that I want live my life as fully as possible, and explore myself as deeply as possible. So to me, traveling to Colombia is a form of determining my future. This is just as viable to me as studying for the GRE and applying for grad schools. I don’t know where it will take me, but I do know that it will change me, and that that change will determine where I will go next.

Colombia, despite what the scars of narcoterrorism and political corruption have wreaked, contains a beautiful and passionate people that I want to get to know. It contains a land so varied and beautiful that it seems impossible to fit into one small country. It contains salsa, vallenato, and cumbia musics. It contains some of the best coffee in the world, and Carribbean, Andean, and Amazonian cuisines. The people arguably speak some of the most well annunciated and easily understood Spanish in South American, which means that I can bone up more on my slim amount of Spanish speaking capability. Furthermore, the one cousin I have in this world is a native colombiano, growing plátanos y café orgánicos.

In these strange times many of us feel displaced, without history or tradition or identity. So we must seek whatever connections we can find that will tie us into a true sense of family, sense of community, and sense of time. I go to Colombia to know these connections, to rediscover humanity. My girlfriend comes with me because we are family. Together we go because we don’t know one another nor ourselves completely. We go to find our place in this disconnected, fragmented world. Sometimes one must travel far from home in order to understand just what home really is; far from normality to know what normality really is; far from self to know what self really is.

We travel far so that we can come closer to where we are truly from.

Colombia-Ho

I’ve been contemplating my future direction for some time now, and I still have yet to determine a trajectory in terms of how to make my money in a manner that I might be alright with over the long-term. (Considering either grad school for Public Policy, or opening up a wine/fine liquor bar/used bookstore/hookah bar/whole foods restaurant/dance club). But for this year at least, I’ve made certain decisions about my immediate future: for example, I’ve decided that I must journey to Colombia, and I’m pretty excited about this. This will occur at the end of the year, and I’m still trying to determine the exact length of time to be down there, but I’m hoping for at least 2 months, if not more.

Why Colombia? Well, for starters, my cousin is a Colombian organic farmer (go figure, considering I’m mainly Swedish in heritage), growing platanos and café, and as I haven’t seen him since I was a kid, I figured that now’s about the time, given that I am getting into permaculture and planting concepts. Furthermore, given that I had a wonderful journey into Perú last year and picked up a little bit of Castellano, it only seems natural to continue exploring the wonders and beauty of South America. And also, of course, it is extremely cheap down there as well.

Different this time around will be that my girlfriend plans on accompanying me, which will change the experience of travel in many ways. She’s terrified of being in a foreign country and of dealing with strangers in another language. Especially a country that has the cloud of narcotic traffic terrorism hanging over it. When I am by myself, I never feel very threatened, both because I am secretly a ninja, and also because I can be very accepting of people when I need to, even when they appear threatening. But with her by my side, I may feel more of a protective urge and not be as inclined to place myself in potentially sketchy situations that could also lead to interesting adventures. But at the same time, I also think that I will be more adventurous in other ways, such as when I want to go check out a local bar playing criollo music, I won’t hesitate to go out since I will have a companion. Many times last winter when I wanted to check out some local joint and I hadn’t made any local friends yet, I was a little bit nervous because I was alone, blonde, and didn’t speak very good Spanish, so I didn’t feel comfortable just busting into some bar and dancing merengue, even though I really wanted to. I’m not sure how it will be exactly, but I know that it will be a whole new experience unto itself.

I’m excited already, I love to travel and explore foreign cultures, where sometimes I feel more at home, and also feel more self-explorative then when in my native environment. I feel like the juxtaposition of being in a strange and foreign environment challenges you to appreciate difference, and open yourself to wholly new perspectives that you wouldn’t normally consider nor accept.

Acceptance of Less Than Ideal Locales

As I get older and a little less ornery, shedding some of the idealistic righteous anger developed during adolescence and young adulthood, I discover that my perspectives on things I once abhorred or disdained are shifting, ever so slightly, towards tolerance. For example, I have suddenly found, to my surprise, that I no longer am harboring hatred towards Los Angeles or San Diego (sentiments which could be gathered in my last post before I left for these destinations). Maybe it’s just because the weather is summertime hot and sunny, the flowers are blooming, and women are scantily clad. Or maybe it’s just because I’m so grateful to be on vacation and no longer in a winter enshrouded location. Whatever the case, I even felt a kind of rekindling of love in my heart for Southern Cali, which once only aroused my ire. Sure, the traffic is still horrendous and the Bel Air inhabitants still superficial. Sure the cities are still ever sprawling and politically mismanaged. Sure, water is still wasted by the gallons daily on manicured lawnscapes and fruitless shrubberies. But for the first time in Los Angeles, I felt a real sense of community, whereas before I only felt detachment and isolation. The Mexican communities, the Korean communities, etc, are all thriving and bustling and filled with life and interconnectiveness. It’s akin to the perspectival paradigm shift that I felt in Perú, in regards to Lima–at first it was just a big dirty crowded city, but by the end, I saw it as colorful, vibrant, and beautiful. I suppose it is really simply a matter of the places that one sees, and the viewpoint that one gets from that particular position. When I lived there before, I lived in an overly expensive, disconnected-from-reality area, and that tainted all of my experiences, because I didn’t own a car and thus rarely ventured far from that established viewpoint. This time in LA, we acted more as tourists–we went to the tarpits (did you know that there were native camels in the LA basin?), we went to Olvera St and ate some excellent comida Mexicana. I also visited my friend’s ecovillage in the heart of Koreatown and ate salad greens picked fresh from his garden. We went out to see live cumbia in a bar smaller than an armpit (definitely not up to firecode) where there were no signs except for a little piece of cardboard telling you to go around back, where it was so crowded you could only kind of stand there and sway and jump up and down, but it still was good.

In San Diego, the 80 degree weather is maybe just slightly too hot, but it’s still a welcome change from snow embankments and icy walkways. Walking along the beach, smelling the flower laden air, running along the boardwalk . . .suddenly San Diego doesn’t seem so shitty. Sure, the city is corrupt and the traffic is getting just as bad as LA’s (give it 5 more years). Sure, the music scene is still dead and the sense of community is often missing. But it’s a place to live, and there’s always the everpresence of the ocean, primal, impervious to human pettiness.

There are certain overarching tendencies in any given city, which lends its force and inertia to the general vibe and flow of lifestyle and commerce. But within these dominant trends there are also eddies and subcurrents of wholly different and unique peoples and mindsets and musics. Let’s be honest, Los Angeles really does typify many of the stereotypes that it is branded with: there’s a lot of really superficial, boob-jobbed MILFs and shiny luxury cars and actor wannabes living on credit and sheer appearance. It’s Hollywood, it’s Beverly Hills, it’s Bel Air, it’s Westwood. But then there’s East LA. There’s Watts. There’s Compton. There’s Skid Row. There’s concrete fortress towers of luxury condos and then there’s rows of cardboard box houses right along outside. There’s the appearance and then there’s the reality. There’s the movie and then there’s the living life coming to the block near you.

And really, of course, ultimately, what it really comes down to–in any place where you might happen to reside in–is you, and what you choose to do with what is available. Is you, creating new perceptions or simply going along with whatever the latest herd fashion fed to you on the billboards, the radio, the TVs, the clubs. Is you, fighting to find what makes you alive, fighting for friendships that give you strength, fighting for love that gives you wisdom, fighting for space that allows you to grow. This can happen anywhere, in any city, at any time. Guess it just took me a while to grow up and learn to stop blaming everything around me for keeping me down, when all I really had to blame was myself for not reaching out.

Vacation Time

It’s time for a vacation. We’re renting a car and driving down mountainous forested passes and through the flatland desert and into skyscrapered Babylon and scantily brained beaches. Granted that all I’m doing is going back to the sunny nether regions of California to visit the fam, wherein I was calved and raised, not going to the Bahamas or some Himalayan retreat, but even this little week-and-a-half long respite will be enough to give me some fresh air to breathe, some sun to imbibe, a new perspective to be formed. Sometimes ya just gotta get the fuck outta Dodge, youknowwhatimsayin?

It’s kinda fun to return to a place–where once you struggled and took the bus to work and drank excessive amounts of alcohol–and to re-view that place in the less attached perspective of a person just passing through. LA-LA land put me through hell and back, and while I’ve never felt much of an affinity to the place, I do have a fondness for it in the way that one has a fondness for memories of a brother who beat the shit out of you when you were younger and nearly killed you a couple of times, but you survived. So, I survived, and I revisit it and fondly remember nights of binge drinking and using empty cups as ashtrays in trendy bars where women were fashionably unapproachable, vacuously self-aware; I fondly remember getting anxiety attacks on the hours long bus ride going down Wilshire on the way home from work, crammed between strangers like mayonnaise on a po’ boy; I fondly hark back upon the loneliness and the hunger, the electricity of the city and the gaps between synapses, the this and the that and the wherefore and the then.

And then it’s down to the border beach town of San Diego, where the malaise of sun and misdirected money hovers over the wide traffic strewn interstates in the salty desert air. This is the place where I was reared, where I ran 800’s, where I hauled my giant djembe down cliffside goat trails to attend full moon drum circles, where I first loved, where I first peed (into the nurse’s face), which I still call Home as a reflex, given that the majority of the years of my life thus far still have been spent therein.

Given that now my family is actively extending itself–i.e. my sisters have each now beared children, and my niece and nephew are the cutest little kids I’ve ever made the acquaintance of–so of course being their uncle I want to see them as they grow (way too fast) as much as I can, which generally translates solely into a couple times a year. This extension of life and family compels me to spend my precious vacation time visiting them rather then trekking through exotic foreign lands–but perhaps such is as it should be.

24 Hours Back Home

OK, so somehow I find myself back home in the woods after a 24 hour long day of travel and stress. Things that went wrong: 1) turns out my girlfriend is dyslexic and mistook “American Airlines” for “United” on our itinerary, so we missed our flight after waiting in a United line for an hour and a half; 2) the flight we finally got onto later was delayed;  and 3), the clincher, my car broke down on the middle of the freeway on our way back from San Francisco. So we were awake exactly 24 hours, because we’d woken up at 1 o’clock to catch our flight at JFK, and we arrived back in Tahoe at 1 o’clock. Needless to say, I was pretty cracked out, and I’m quite thankful simply to be alive and here at all.

Of course, any travel day is subject to delays and problems, and if anything, the day made me grateful more than miffed. Grateful that I didn’t get in an accident when my car stopped running in the midst of fast-paced traffic and I was attempting to coast over to the side and nearly caused a major collision involving two other cars (who of course were just trying to pass me as quickly as possible and trying to get around my right, where I was attempting to move the damn car before it lost all acceleration). Grateful that I have a friend who was willing to drive out from the city and install a new alternator for me. Grateful that it was only a shot alternator and nothing major. Grateful that I was able to drive back all the way even though I was exhausted (we did have to stop in some boondock church parking lot so we could take a power nap). Grateful that all the problems that arose during the day were quickly overcome.

Happy Family Holidays from NYC

Here’s another thing that I find interesting about New Yorkan lexicon: when they join a line of people waiting for something, they say that they are getting “on line,” as opposed to what I am accustomed to, which is saying that I am getting “in line.” Also–and this may just be my girlfriend’s family and not symptomatic of the tri-state region itself–I have heard people referring to “turning off” candles, as if they were electrical appliances. And of course, you gotta love the accents, like how “orange” is pronounced as “aah-range” as opposed to the West Coaster’s “ohrange,” or how “god” is pronounced “gaad.” I even find myself slipping into a Bronxian accent at times, as I have a tendency to imitate the speech of others.

I just saw a weird ass Chinese movie, The Curse of the Golden Flower. It’s an orgy of nobility, incest, and death, like Shakespeare mixed with Oedipus Rex and opera. One thing I’ve noticed about this line of Chinese martial art/visual ballet movies (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon/ Hero) is that the women characters, when evincing overly dramatic passion and pain, must mouth breathe at highly audible levels, as if they put a microphone right up to the actresses’ mouth to capture it (probably dubbed in by some industry gimp whose specific role is to mouth breathe the actresses in all of the top Hong Kong hits). The queen in this movie, Gong Li (who has got quite a bosom on her), mouth breathes such that the theater literally quakes with it basically throughout the entire film (there’s a lot of dramatic passion going on here). There’s also a plethora of quivering bosoms in this movie, and it’s kind of a sub-plot delight, to observe the various bouncing bosoms in different lighting and horse riding and ninja battling scenes. So if you’re into copious amounts of heavy mouth breathing and jostling Chinese bosoms, this movie is for you.

New York has been treating me well, I’ve been eating mass amounts of good food and spent a Puerto Rican New Yorker family Christmas, replete with gigantic presents and pernil and rice and beans and a bunch of people shouting at each other to converse. It helped remind me why I no longer care to “celebrate” Christmas, i.e. buy a bunch of junk for my own family members that they don’t need. C’mon people, if you are really into the holiday season, then realize that it’s all about spending time with your family, not spending money. Cut out the whole giving of presents (except to the kids, who of course need to be indoctrinated into our capitalistic consumer culture) and just hang out with your family, share a nice meal, talk, drink spiced wine. Remember when there was that whole Pentagon ad campaign a few winters ago, where they equated buying consumer products with fighting terrorism? It’s ironic, given that we are actually encouraging terrorism (desperate poor people fighting to be heard and empowered) by contributing to mindless products made in “third-world” countries for the profit of corporations.

Anyway, hope you had a good time with your family, as human beings rather than consumers.

Bagels n Jazz

Some more New Yorkian tidbits: when people talk about “crossing over” here, they ain’t talkin about a psychic who can tell you the name of your dead loved one, but rather about going across town, as opposed to up town, or down town. And when they talk about places in the city, it’s always in terms of cross streets. It’s “20th and 1st,” etc. Which makes sense, of course, given the grid system, it’s just not something I’m accustomed to hearing when discussing regional areas of one’s city. In South Lake Tahoe, we just say that it’s either “near the casinos,” or it’s “far from the casinos.”

Went out last night and scoped some avant-garde jazz in a club the size of an armpit. I can always appreciate experimental music, and raw kind of hard-hitting meandering free stuff, but ultimately, if there’s no solid rhythm to it I tend to get a little bored with it, because it just sounds like chaos to me. Which apparently some people are pretty into, given the swirling head-thrashing movements of some of the avant-gardian audience’s heads. It just seemed mostly noisy and pretentious to me, but hey, whatever frees your soul. I was sweating like a pig, and felt a little embarrassed everytime I burped, because we had just consumed mass amounts of Ethiopian food and the spices were bubbling up my mouth throughout the entire show in dense thickets of furnace gas. If you’ve never had Ethiopian cuisine before, it basically consists in shoveling piles of meat and curried sauces into your mouth with your bare hands with some thin spongey bread. Good stuff.

I also went to a couple of bars as well, both of which specialized exclusively in Belgian beers. Which leads me to another I like about this city, which is that there is apparently a niche for everything here. So if you wanted to eat pancakes with alfredo sauce and listen to happy harcore techno while drinking bean curd martinis, then there’s probably a hole-in-the-wall restaurant here somewhere for you.

For breakfast, I ate two fresh bagels with cream cheese and white fish salad. And as I was stuffing my face with this goodness, I was like, why the hell can we not have good bagels on the west coast? My friend told me it be the New York tap water that makes them good. Well, ship that shit out to California, then.

Mas Aventuras en Nueva York

Went out last night to a Spanish tapas bar in Chelsea, and I have to say that tapas may be the future of fine cuisine. Small portions of gourmet shit that you can share with other people and get stuffed on, and sample tons of different foods. It’s like what I love about going out for Chinese and Indian food with amigos–you alway order different shit and then share it. You could do Indian tapas, Mexican tapas, California cuisine tapas, and so forth, and it would be perfect cuz you could just sample tons of different shit instead of having to limit yourself to one dish. Good New York fancy schmancy eating experience, all trendy and shit, with a good wine selection and a militantly fashionable and attractive staff. For dessert, even though we were stuffed, I just had to try the flan de naranja, simply because I love any dessert item coupled with orange. Now, a word firstly on flan. Let’s be honest, flan is generally never that good. You always eat it and then are like, ok, that wasn’t amazing. But there’s always something about it that makes you order again later on down the road. Like, there’s this potentiality in flan to be amazing, it just never quite measures up. But last night, this orange flan was some good shit, I mean, that potentiality of amazingness in flan came to the fore and smacked you in the gizzard. I was stoked that I had made the choice to order it. And I was by that point into my second glass of vino tinto, which for me these days is enough to get me feeling warm, fuzzy, and conversationally inclined.

Then we went to a some random bar to get out of the rain. I had a Glenlivet on the rocks, and we ended up playing pool with a big black dude named Charles who was apparently on a combination of drugs mixed with his alcohol–as in, the dude would try to say something to you, but it would mostly end up coming out as sputtered, laughing nonsense, as if he had taken ecstacy and then snorted cocaine and then drank way too much, and his verbalization abilities were somehow getting shortcircuited. It seemed like he had good intent, so I would just nod my head and smile, and we were all equally horrible at pool, so it made for an interesting pass of time, if weird and somewhat disturbing. When we made our hurried exit, he was trying to get our phone number, but we cheerfully informed him that it would be pointless for us to give him our number because we were only visiting and lived far, far away. “Israel?” he slurred sputteringly. We nodded and ran back out into the rain. Might as well be Mars, given where good ol’ Charles was currently at in headspace. The dude was strangely fashionably attired, though, given his state of fucked-upness. He had a Jets sweatshirt paired with intent to jeans with designer silver spraypaint.

We then made our way to a restaurant that had a bar that served drinks in ginormous goblets, guaranteed to fuck you up to high heaven. I got a strawberry margarita, and every suck you took of this adult slurpee contained enough alcohol to kill a small child, not to mention that there was an extra shot nonchalantly placed into the goblet in a plastic shot tube, like a cinammon stick in a hot chocolate. At the bar, I briefly conversed with one of those dudes who sit at bars by themselves and order drinks and look about them, waiting for the chance conversation or single woman to come by (I have myself been that dude many a time, especially in foreign countries). He was sippin’ on a long island ice tea, and he informed me that it would fuck up a rhinocerous for your money. Having been a student in LA, and thus having learned what drinks to get in expensive bars to maximize fucked-upness with coverage of alcohol taste for less money, I then gave this dude the advice to either try an Adios Motherfucker, which is yet stronger than a Long Island Iced Tea, or for an even stronger drink that is still yet drinkable, a Zombie, which is probably one of the strongest mixed drinks you can get. Have one, and you’re drunk. Have two, and you’re fucked up. Have three, and good luck, unless you’re an elephant.

Then we went to an improv show, the Stepfathers at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. It was only the second improv show that I’ve been to thus far in my existence, and it was pretty funny, especially given that I was quite sauced as this point. It was different then the other improv I’ve seen, in that the comedian-audience interaction was pretty minimal, and I was a little disappointed by that, because what has always interested me about improv was that connection where the comedians are feeding off of audience feedback. But it was still pretty funny and creative nonetheless. I think the lack of audience interaction was mainly due to the audience itself, anyway–the people who spoke up for the word from which the comedians were going to act out scenes based on could only come up with “plane,” and “Fred.”

I have another thing to add to my list of what I like so far about New Yorkers: they all wear dark colors. You don’t see any pinks, yellows, any of that kind of pastel colored crap that Americans have an embarassing tendency to wear.

The Californian Esta In NYC

Yours truly is currently on assignment in the city of all cities, NYC, for the Christmas (read: CHRIST-used-as-excuse-to-aMASs-consumer-goods) season. This was after a 7 to 11 traveling day to get here via train, plane, y carro. 3 ½ hours in my old Subarita to San Francisco, wherein we abandoned her to the mercy of the streets, hoping that she won’t be broken into and peed inside of during our absence, and then we hopped onto the BART for an hour’s ride into the airport, commencing thence onto the final 5 hour leg of our journey via sky.

So I’m now here in an apartment in Manhattan, listening at this very moment to cars outside of the window bleeping their horns assertively—if there is one thing that NYC is about, it’s assertiveness—and trying not to itch my eyes because an old smelly dog in this apartment is apparently activating allergies in me I didn’t even know I had. I can’t say that I know much of New York, having only been here 2 times before, but I do admit to feeling a certain affection for it, mainly due to its immediate contrast to Los Angeles, where I lived for 4 years. After LA, the aggression of New Yorkers seems positively loving. They engage with each other. They verbalize their thoughts. This is refreshing to me.

I’ll try to take field notes on this fast-paced alien American world and see if I have anything new to say about it.

Political Visions

I have seen the light. Estadounidenses need more vacations. I am currently on vacation in sunny southern California, and I feel like a bear has climbed down from off my back. (Back in the days when I used to run track, we would say that someone had “the bear on their back” when you could see them struggling around the last corner of the homestretch and slowing down.) I needed a break from the daily grind, a break from the habits and normality of my sort-of settled cabin mountain life. No wonder most Americans are so close-minded and one-dimensional. We are so occupied with work and then subsequent TV and habitual existence that it is nearly impossible for us to envisage situations outside of our immediate and limited scopes. We need vacations to see the other side of things now and then, to break from the same-old and remember who we are outside of the people and circumstances that surround us everyday. It is so easy to get stuck in the mire of other people’s perceptions and gossip.

That said, I wanted to talk a little bit about some political stuff. What started the train of thought was reading an excellent article on the atrocities in Darfur, describing the rogue janjaweeds employed by the Sudanese government to perform “ethnic cleansing” (do we really have to use the word ‘cleansing’? Couldn’t we just call it what it is–mass murder?). The United States has actually been fairly active in providing aid and attempting to garner international action, which unfortunately has proved ineffective due to the loss of respect by the rest of the world for our dishonorable actions in Iraq and our hostile behavior to the UN, and Europe in general. Although of course our actions have still not been enough to save lives, but at the very least we have been more active than in the case of Rwanda, in which we did absolutely zilch.

Anyway, to get to the crux of my discussion: I used to consider myself an anarchist, more for lack of attachment to any political ideology or group than actual adherence to anarchic values. (By the way, if you think anarchy is about molotov cocktails and chaos, then you need to read some Emma Goldman or other real anarchic literature. It’s some of the most intelligent and humanist political writing in the world.) I distrusted the US government for the secret and public crimes it committed and continues to commit against its own constituents and against the world. I distrusted the idea of government en total, for large systems of beauracracy and money seem to lead only to corruption and atrocity.

The book that began leading me to a more balanced and integrated view of centralized governing systems actually was on public health (Betrayal of Trust by Laurie Garrett), in which the reporter meticulously disects the causes and effects of the current despicable state of public health in the US and the World Health Organization. I suddenly realized, through this book, that centralized governing systems are essential for the preservance of human life–we need a centralized public health system, we need clean water, clean air, safe homes. The problem is not the idea of government itself–the problem is that most governments, as they are, fail to perform their basic function and purpose–which is serving and protecting their people.

I never fail to be amazed that the Republican party can make “national security” one of its cornerstone issues, when their xenophobic cowboy war games have jeapordized our nation for years to come, and their slashing of social supportive programs and funding have devastated the heart of their own people.

But let me not go off on a rant lambasting Republicans or conservatives, because that isn’t my target right now. They are too easy to bag on, actually. I could go off just as easily on Democrats, for that matter. Politicans, in general, are easy to pigeonhole, because they almost universally only have one thing on their mind–election time. Which leads me to my main topic. Our political and cultural and economic system is seriously screwed up and needs some jerryriggin’.

I’m not against capitalism, per se. But our current form of capitalism (capitalism in the sense of profit as the goal of the economy) ain’t working. It CAN work. See, the problem is that currently our politics and economy is ruled by short term profit and very large corporations. And these corporations are cut-throat, greedy, and extremely short sighted. They can barely look past one season, let alone one year, in terms of their profit margin. But if they took their head out of their asses, and looked a little closer at the bigger picture, at the wide horizon of the future–then they would notice that in the long run, their current actions in pursuance of solely short term profits are unsustainable. Let me rephrase that in terms of money: they will not continue to make money if they continue to function the way most of them currently do. They’ve got to restructure and re-envision themselves and their functions in society and the economy. If they want long term, steady profit, than they will have to become sustainable operations–sustainable in the sense of taking responsibility for their effects on their society and environment, and making subsequent amendments and changes.

Another way to put that last paragraph is that based on our current economic, political, and cultural trajectory, we are destroying the future of our children and grandchildren. Our current way of life is unsustainable. Plain and simple. So if we want to make changes, REAL changes, then we must look ahead, even as far as 30-50 years down the road, to a time when we will no longer be able to be reliant on hydrocarbons as a source of energy.

As to how all of this got started by an article on Darfur: we live in a time in which the globe is quite obviously deeply interconnected, sometimes forcibly so, by commerce, politics, and lifestyle choices. One earth, all that kind of thing. And it is becoming more and more apparent that we need a world governing body that is effective and able to stabilize volatile situations. The UN was a good attempt, but it’s quite obviously not very effective, especially when it’s so easily dominated by the politics and weaponry of a rogue superpower like the US. We need an effective world public health system, again, something able to distance itself from politics and commerce, which the WHO has unfortunately been unable to do. The time of the United States pretending to play policeman and peacemaker to the rest of the world is long gone. There has to be an international force and body, composed of people unattached to partisan interests, which has the capability both of being an effective peacekeeping force, as well as a strong policing force. Because in situations like Darfur, that is what is needed.

More on this topic will probably be forthcoming: any input would be useful.

An Unscheduled Wine Tasting Pit Stop

It was hot and I was getting a bit testy after more than 3 hours in the car and still not even close to Sacramento, and we were supposed to be driving to San Francisco, normally a 3 1/2 hour long drive from South Lake Tahoe. The traffic had been horrible before even getting out of town. Galen said, “hey, we can go this other route and avoid the traffic.” I was down, it was a nice day, and I was ready to cruise. Little did I realize just how far out of the way this back-route was to be. It was also quite a bit more mountainous than I would have liked to have put my 16 year old car through. After 3 hours and headed towards Stockton rather than Sacramento, the heat pulsing through the car windows, we decided that we needed a wine tasting break, being as it were that we were passing through the southern tip of Lodi. I definitely needed to relax a bit, and I’m always down to do a little wine tasting. We pulled off at the first winery that we spotted in time enough not to have to slam on the brakes in order to turn into it.
We stepped out of the steaming heat of mid-day in the flatlands into the air-conditioned cool of the wine-tasting room. The server, a man on the cusp of youth and middle age, was polite and professionally circumspect in his questions and answers, yet at the same time an obvious roustabout by his manner, inclined just as much to drinking the wine himself as to serving it. His father was an immigrant from Greece who had worked hard and via hard-headedness, will-power, and ambition had eventually run his own restaurant in Lodi. He then grew bored with the restaurant business and moved into wine-making. His two sons assisted him in the endeavor, and after one year, they already had a thriving business. I was unimpressed, frankly, by the wines, although the scent they gave off was nice. The merlot had a strong strawberry scent, while the cabernet sauvignon had an undercurrent of molasses, like sniffing shisha. We were served a tasting round of all of their different wines, Galen sighing and saying how great all of them were. I just nodded and swirled it around and then put it down the hatch. At that point, all I really cared about was getting some alcohol in me, which this wine could adequately serve the function of.
A very large and loud couple then came into the tasting room. The man declared, upon tasting the sauvignon blanc, that it tasted as though an angel had come and pissed on his tongue. His name was Hubie, he had a Germanic accent, and he had served as a rescue worker in New Orleans 5 years before Katrina, where he met this woman, Adell, when he pulled her from the river. They were a well paired match, it seemed, Hubie saying off-the-wall comments designed to be funny–although they were mainly just strange and kind of awkward–and Adell would guffaw loudly at them and look around at us to verify that Hubie was indeed the funniest man in the world. I pretended to be immersed in the wondrous odors of the cabernet.
The tasting server–his brother and father safely out the door–then decided charitably to take us all on a tour of the back area, where wine was mixed and stored in giant steel vats. I think he was simply taking advantage of his father and brother’s absence in order to sample some of the other goods. He took us from vat to vat, pouring a sample directly from the spout, as we gulped half glasses of red wine, growing increasingly drunker. I felt like I was in Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. Hubie made weird comments and Adell burbled about how this was the best tour she had ever been on. The wine server had never explored the back aisle of vats, and led us down them, exclaiming at the mystery of the unlabeled vats and then pouring us glasses from them. It seemed he was really using this opportunity to explore his father’s heretofore unexplored domain. My tongue was dry and sticking to the roof of my mouth. We wandered back to the tasting room, where Galen purchased a bottle of cabernet, and another couple came in right as we entered. Seeing that we had come from the back room, the wife exclaimed, “Well, now since we know you’re giving tours, you’re gonna have to give us one, too!” to the server, who was probably much drunker than us. Galen and I left to hit the road once again, in much greater spirits.

Thoughts in San Diego

Back in the land of San Diego, a sprawled sunny place streamlined with polished sport cars and gleaming SUVs, a desert beach implanted with flowers and shrubberies from all around the world. The people, too, seem to shine surfacely with some transplanted synthetic reflectant.

I always gain a sense in suburbed cities such as this that the freeways and wide-stretched streets don’t really lead anywhere, that indeed the traffic itself is the most cohesive expression of the cities’ collectivity, the only place where it’s people are somewhat gathered together and united for a brief space of time before separated and off-ramped into some outlying distant gated immunity. In the traffic there is danger, there are fatalities and accidents and fender benders, well-dressed anguished people on their cell-phones standing displayed on the side of the freeway in their full humanity, looking over the destruction of their crunched and dented vehicles as everyone slows down alongside to ogle, wondering perhaps if they too could ever be un-horsed in such a manner.

Swaths of empty pavement seem to best express the landscape of such a city, capped with a vast blue desert sky, the hint of an ocean somewhere in the breeze.

There is of course something captivating in its beaches lined with drugged out remnants of failed marriages and bronzed bodies rollerblading untouchably taunting along the boardwalks. There is some kind of laid-back but primal energy expressed in the waves on the shore that is sometimes glimpsed in the spaces between the reversed baseball caps and baggy shorted uniforms of the wannabe frat boys of Pacific Beach, a kind of stoic and vacant beauty pictured in the frame behind the halter tops and the designer purses of the moneyed sun-glassed mamas of La Jolla.

Everything is spread out and nothing is contained.

Of course what overtly plagues this city plagues every American city, and San Diego alone shouldn’t be castigated or targeted alone as completely unique, although it is certainly representative. Every American city suffers from some congealed homogenized mass of middle and upper classes. Once known as yuppies, although the term, like that of hippies, seems to have lost its force and meaning in the face of cross-pop-cultural fertilization. My understanding of the term is that it referred to the nouveau rich and their love of trendy gleaming franchises. But now it seems like all Americans–except those who can’t afford them of course–love their trendy sterilized franchises. Or maybe love isn’t the correct term, more like non-critically accepted. And who can really differentiate these days between the rich and those who simply live and spend as if they were rich? Everyone of course is simply mimicking Ol Uncle Sam in being good citizens and patriots and living in the glorious happy credit land of endless horizons, where if we all just keep on spending then everything will be ok. This is all tied in with suburbanization and sprawl and SUVs and strip-malls and Starbucks and Pizza Huts and all the other symptoms of decay erupting daily across the face of America.

Because these people, these so-called “yuppies,” are representatives of the fulfilment and end-game of the “American dream.” They are “successful,” they work kind of hard and commute to work sometimes 2 hours both ways stuck in traffic and they drive their beef-hormone and McDonald’s trans-fatty filled children to their football games in these gigantic gas guzzling machines that seem to serve more as symbols of unnecessary waste and possession of space than as functional cars. And these multi-ethnic, one-dimensional Horatios are scattered throughout the suburbs of America, J Crewed, equipped with cellphones and Ipods, and largely uninformed outside of the nightly news propaganda. And they are the hordes of the blinded cradled lifestyles that will be thrown into the cold when our nation hits the wall of economic and spiritual destitution to which it is speeding forward to so recklessly. And as I sit and type this out on my laptop in a Starbucks in La Jolla, yes, I am fully aware that I am included in this prognostication.

Travel and Everyday Life

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.”

–Freya Stark

Home

Well, I’m back in my mountains, where it’s cold and there’s snow–although not very much this winter. I’m sick as a dog right now, inevitable I suppose after the multiple shocks to my system of the flight back, the dancing all night and drinking too much in San Francisco, and terminating my malaria anti-biotics.
It is strange to be back at work, but I don’t feel any kind of “culture shock,” at least, not yet. It’s hard to say what I feel right now, which perhaps is due to aforementioned shock. The trip already feels very distant, almost like a dream. It’s amazing how quickly the self that I was there faded into the self that I am here. It seems to have something to do with not being able to speak in Spanish any longer–my mind has quickly reverted to it’s standard English thinking state. I’ve been writing emails in Spanish at least.
As I was driving down the 50 back from San Francisco, and ascending into thickets of pine and rocky passes, I realized how fucking beautiful it is here. Everytime I come back from somewhere else, I am always amazed. This is a truly gorgeous place and I am lucky to live here. As much as my hearts yearns for city life, I don’t know how I could ever say goodbye to the crisp blue skyline punctuated by pines.

Esperando para mi vuelo

Wouldn’t you know it, my flight was cancelled, so I’ve got another day to kill, and then I leave at 2 in the morning. If you ever make plans to fly down to South America with Lan Peru, be aware if you buy your tickets in advance that Lan Peru changes their flights constantly (my flight to Perù was also changed), and you might not find out because they don’t apparently maintain much contact with travel agencies or other international airlines. Annoying as hell, it’s a good thing I planned my return with a bit of leeway before I need to get back to cleaning toilets.
So I’ve returned to Miraflores to kill some time and enjoy some more Peruvian food before I leave for good.

Coming Home

Tonight’s my last night in Perú. I’m trying to get the few people I know here in Lima together for one last meal at Pardo’s Chicken. I’m sure as hell gonna miss the food here, not to mention the beautiful women, the discotecas, the exchange rate, the fruit, the jugos frescos, the warm weather, the cold showers, the pisco sours, the ever-present cheap taxis, the drivers with a death wish. . .Well, the latter one I won’t miss so much.
However, I do admit to looking forward to going back to the culture I know so well and usually dislike. I’m looking forward to eating a phatty burrito and throwing some hot sauce on that shit. I’m looking forward to not having diarrhea for an extended period of time. I’m looking forward to a dark, heavy, bittersweet microbrew. I’m looking forward to articulating myself in English using big, complicated words. I’m looking forward to being able to throw my toilet paper into the toilet. Yes, all of these things. But most importantly, I am looking forward to seeing YOU–my family and my friends–again and sharing what I have been through with you and seeing your beautiful faces again and drinking some wine, or whisky, or Chartreuse with you. Oh, and yes, I have tons of pictures that I am going to make you suffer through as I describe each and every one in excruciating detail. Look forward to seeing you soon.

Jungle Bites

I was just on Google looking to see if I could find out what kind of insect bite I’ve got on my arm–it itches like beejesus and trails down the length of my arm, ending in a sizeable bite that seems to be steadily increasing in size. I didn’t find anything on the web about it, but I did find this cool BBC site with lots of interesting facts about the jungle.

Summation

I’m back in Lima once again, four more days until I’m home, this is the homestretch. I ate my last bit of home-cooked jungle food, cecina, platanos fritos, arroz and ensalada de cebolla, palta, y tomate, con jugo de papaya, with Rosa and then hopped onto my plane, saying goodbye for now to humidity, charapitas, and mosquitos. Iquitos was like a kind of wonderful summation of my trip to Perú–love, food, exotic drinks, and dancing. The night before I left Rosa’s sister took me around the town on her moto. The wind in my face, gripping the back handles, half-assedly trying to understand the things she was saying, I felt a kind of peace settle over me as I thought about my experiences here. This trip has turned into everything that I would have wanted it to be had I scripted it out. The fact that I didn’t at all makes it all the better. Without any kind of direction, it has evolved into a very balanced and full experience–I spent a good chunk of time in three very distinct and different places in Perú, representative of the 3 main types of climates here: the mountains (las sierras), the coast (la costa), and the jungle (la selva). I met incredibly hospitable people and tried all kinds of different foods typical of each region. I danced frequently and drank little (comparative to my normal alcohol intake). I gained a functional ability in the usage of Castellano. And ten million other little things that make up the stars in the sky. Because these memories will light up whatever darkness of solitude I may suffer in the year to come. Did I say memories? It doesn’t seem like the right term. Memories are something in the past. I feel like there are things on this journey that I picked up that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, that will grow inside of my heart because they dug out a little space for themselves there. Anyone who can burrow their way into love will stay there forever if this is where they would like to be. The doors are open and here wine is served 24 hours. Why go home again when you can be drunk all the time with the friend?

Salsa de Cocona

I think I’m starting to get the hang of the salsa beat, a little bit at least. You’ve got to get one cheek of the buttock swinging forward on the cusp of that double conga swat as you move the foot up, then conversely step back and hit the next conga swat with the other buttock. Of course, I might be totally wrong on that one, but it felt a lot better for me, as if my ass was finally starting to make it’s first forays into a fuller understanding of the rhythm. I just went out for what may prove to be my last dancing stint in Iquitos, I’m really going to miss these damn discotecas here with their live orchestral groups. I’m so fond of the local music, in fact, that I’m going to see about getting me a disco compacto of some of that shit. Once you’ve got you’re ass shaking to it, you forgive a lot of whatever aspects of cheesiness there may be to it’s little jumpy synthesizer licks.
I discovered that cocona not only refers to the fruit, which is delicious, but also to a certain female body part. When I was in the jungle, the 70 year old cook (who made some great basic typical foods (always with the required side dish of platanos fritos of course)) was asking me if I liked cocona, when I had said that I had tried jugo de cocona, and I didn’t understand why they all started laughing when I avidly replied “¡sì, mucho!”
I also learned from my guide the meaning of rompecalzon, one of the tragos (local drinks mixed with aguardiente that double as aphrodesiacs). It refers to the forceful removal of underwear, suggesting that to drink of this potent elixir is to be infused with sudden and intense sexual energy. I don’t know about that, it is possible it has that effect, although I just thought it was the hot women and the extreme humidity. I just kind of like the taste. It’s funny though because I’d been ordering this drink for a while here without knowing the meaning. Now I feel a little weird when I order it, like I’m asking for a viagra or something.
Just one more night and day to enjoy this little slice of jungle life and then it’s back to the big city.

The Promise

Laying in my hammock in the jungle, listening to the gallìnas crow and the insects whirring and feeling my blood slowly draining through the continuous multiple straw sucks of the mosquitoes, I began to think of my journeys in Perù and of how these experiences have changed me. I really do not feel like the same person that I was when I came here. The windows opened to the vistas of a new world have shed light onto another person dwelling inside of me–there all along, of course. Once I return to the habits and customs of my nation of birth, I wonder how long these changes can persist. But that is perhaps not so important. What is important is that I have seen these new horizons at all and that I know now that they can exist.
I have been so blessed on these travels, given so much by so many people, that it would be impossible for me not to be changed. When one’s life has been filled with blessings, there is nothing to do but try to find some way to fufill the promise and opportunity these blessings have bestowed. Because I know that there has to be some kind of karmic payment for all of this wonderfulness. Maybe some of this debt has already been payed and this is the reward, I don’t really know, but what I do know is that I am humbled in the face of gifts that are beyond anything that I could have expected. All I can do is try to find a way to give this love back to other people and spread the light around.

Back in the Rubber Boom Town

In the jungle, during the night (well, all the time, actually, but it’s more prominent in the night-time) the insects weave patterns and textures of sound so sinuous, repetitive, and geometric that it’s almost visible to the eye, these frequencies crafted of the wing. The air is so dank it’s hard to breathe, and you feel as if you are in the midst of a dream as you walk through the dense growth of neon green trees ripe with bananas, anonas, pijuayos. Apparently I have sangre dulce (sweet blood), because I was needled into by so many mosquitos that my feet look like they’ve broken out in hives and my arms look like the tracked up veins of a junkie. Of course, this is what occurs when you are not from the jungle and you do not slobber on repellent. Yes, I elected to forgo the repellent, mainly because the one time I did try putting it on it had no effect whatsoever, probably because I sweat it right back off. I figured that I needed to put these anti-malarial pills to work anyway, and the bites aren’t so terrible as long as you don’t scratch them (impossible, unfortunately, with the feet, which are rubbed constantly by my sandals as I walk). So at the lodge I stayed at, I basically laid around in my hammock sweating and eating different jungle fruits while watching mosquitos draw pints from my blood like it was happy hour.
Some new vocab for ya: Caimito–a yellow/green fruit with very sweet, refreshing, and extremely sticky fruit. After you eat it, your fingers and your lips almost stick together. Mamey–actually a pomerosa, but called Mamey anyway, this tree bears these shockingly pink spinal flores that scatter in a heap beneath it, providing a stark and beautiful contrast with its green surroundings. Maracuya–another fruit, somewhat like my beloved granadilla–I tried some of its juice, very refreshing on a hot sunny day en la selva. Anona–green in appearance until it is ripe, when it turns slightly yellow, this fruit looks exotic with little tendril hooks curling from its rubber-like surface, and it tastes like pudding. In fact, the taste and texture and seeds of the fruit of the anona is very similar to that of the chirimoya, another of my favorites. I ate like 10 of these things while at the albergue. It’s like dessert. Mata-mata–a prehistoric jungle turtle, it’s head looks like a hammerhead shark and it’s got a very long neck. Pijuayo–a tree growing in the jungle that bears two wonderful gifts–chonta–the heart of its trunk–is delicious and served commonly in salads with limòn and salt, and it’s fruits–also called pijuayos–are like little tiny sweet potatoes ready to eat–you pry them open and then dab a little cocona salsa on them. Tasty.
Like I said, this place is paradise as far as I’m concerned. Now that I’ve made a few friends I’m going to stick it out for another 5 days, giving me only 3 days more in Lima before I head back home.

Un Otro dìa en Paraiso

Another day in paradise. Today I met up with my friend Rosa and she and her friend Judy cooked me up some pescado with aji and arroz, with cocona salsa and platanos fritos, served with some jugo de cocona as a refresco. There’s nothing quite like getting comida tipica cooked fresh for you by beautiful women. Then Rosa took me to Lake Quistacocha, a beautiful laguna a little ways outside of town, where they’ve got all sorts of various jungle animals such as pumas and monkeys stuffed into tiny little cages. I felt sorry for the animals, but it was nice to see them since it’s pretty rare to see much in the jungle unless you spend over a week venturing deep into the heart of it. So tomorrow I’m off to la selva–you won’t hear from me in four days.
The jungle term for hot peppers is charapitas. This term could also be used to denote the Iquiteñas. It also refers to small turtles.
Last night again I went out to dance, apparently in Iquitos there are a couple of big orchestral groups that play mostly the same songs, and they’ve got their own large dancehalls as well. The first group I saw was called Kaliente; last night the group was Explosiòn. Both groups have a trio of dancers up on stage wearing next to nothing and swinging their asses as if they’ve got prehensile buttocks. Last night I was too tired to really shake anything too much, however. I was feeling heavy and 100% gringo as I feebly tried to step in the appropriate time signature to salsa music.

Letting yourself go makes everyone happy

Wow, tonight has to have been one of the most interesting booty shaking experiences I’ve had in Perù thus far, mainly due to the fact that in the midst of a crowd of Iquiteños I was the only gringo in sight, and I was dancing my little white ass off. This girl Lorena and her little sister took me out to a local joint where there was a local group playing live cumbía, merengue, salsa, chincha, etc. I love it when Peruvians look kind of dumbfounded when they realize that I can shake my hips like there’s no tomorrow to musica latina.
I’m impressed with the people in general here in Iquitos, they are amazingly laid-back and accepting. In other places that I’ve been to sometimes I get the “what’s the gringo doing here?” kind of vibe (to other places’ credit, not very much of this) but in Iquitos, I just get hot eyes from a few of the chicas and smiles and maybe just a little bit of query in some looks but not in an unfriendly way. People here don’t seem to have many hang-ups other than driving their mototaxis like they think they’re in Ben-Hur. It’s got to be the year-round heat that makes people so laid back. Iquitos really is another world apart from the rest of Peru, which is not all that surprising I guess since it’s only accessible by boat or by airplane. And did I mention that the women are phenomenally beautiful here? It’s almost obscene. It’s somewhat perturbing because many of these Iquiteñas seem to be deliberately looking to bag themselves a gringo husband. There seems to be a kind of expat Texan scene for that kind of thing–you know, get yourself a hot young Amazonian wife and buy a restaurant and drink cervezas all day.
So it’s 1:30 in the morning now and I guess about time for me to head back to the hostal. Man, I love shaking the booty, I always feel so damn good afterwards, like I just wrote a cohesive thesis on the half-lives of diaphanous insects or something. It’s just one of those pure expressions of being, of being alive, of being filled with the light, of passing and sharing this light with everyone around you. What I love most about it is how you can almost visually watch the dynamic of the whole crowd change with the influx of positive vibes from an individual dancer who is letting loose. Letting yourself go makes everyone happy.

Booze, Aphrodesiacs, and Intellectual Conversation

Yesterday I took a boat out to a butterfly farm, where they also had a bunch of rescued jungle animals such as a jaguar, giant rats, a tapir, a manitee, an anteater, and several monkeys–one of whom, Tommy, kept jumping onto our shoulders and licking the sweat off our necks. I met some guys from New York at the farm, they work in the independent film industry. We ended up running into each other again later at a bar, where I was trying all the different types of jungle concoctions that double both as alcholic beverages and aphrodesiacs. There´s uño de gato, rompecalzones, uva-chado, 7 raices, 21 raices, and chuchuhuasi, all rather medicinal but interesting tasting drinks that consist of aguardiente, a potent rum made from sugarcane, mixed with different types of roots or bark or whatever, depending on the drink. It definitely gave me a little heat on the inside, coupled with my already sun reddened face. Unfortunately my malaria pills make me even more sensitive to the sun than my pale skin of scandinavian heritage already curses me with, and it’s basically pointless to use sunscreen because I’ll just sweat it off within 5 minutes.
Anyway, so we met up with a friend of the New Yorkers who has been living in Iquitos for 6 months and doing medical work, and we made our way over to another bar that he knew about that was right over the water in a little jungle shack kind of structure–perfect for boozing it up in the midst of shirt drenching humidity. I think it was last night when it really began to dawn on me that I may be in some kind of paradise here.
Of course, being with New Yorkers, we had to have involved conversations about things like David Bowie, films, relationships and DP, and other random tidbits of intellectual cultural topics, the sort of which I hadn’t had in quite some time–let alone any extended conversations in English. We got pretty good and smashed. We ended up returning to the first bar where I talked until 1 in the morning with the bartendress. You know, I had been thinking that my spanish was getting fairly good, just moving past the ‘hablo un poco’ level, but now that I’m in a new place, my ability again has gone back to the ‘hablo muy poquito’ level because they speak differently here–much faster without anunciation, usually while some kind of radio music is blasting in the background.
I just scheduled this morning to stay for 4 days in a lodge in the Amazon. I’m going to head out on Sunday, I wanted to give myself the weekend to go out and shake the booty.

Jungle Juice

Iquitos is definitely a different world than the Perù that I’ve seen thus far. It is much more laid-back here, and the tourist feeding industry is not quite as rampant and savage as it was in Qosqo, maybe because it is a dead season for tourism here right now. The only other English speaking tourist that I’ve seen thus far was a girl from Wales who cornered me when I got off the plane to take a taxi with her into town. I accompanied her to her backpackers hostal to see if I wanted to stay there too, took one look at the room, and peaced out. Why would you pay 17 soles per night for a room with ten other people when you can pay 20 soles per night for a room and a bathroom to yourself?
People warned me about the women in Iquitos before I came here. Yeah, they are kind of aggressive. I go to eat lunch and the waitresses will linger next to my table making small talk and then try to set appointments to meet later on. I don’t mind the attention though.
These malaria pills are kind of zoning me out when mixed with cervezas. I’m contemplating terminating the pills, because there’s not really any mosquitos in Iquitos. I suppose it will come in handy when I venture into the jungle. I was just talking to a lady (who seemed to be quite honest because I talked with her for an hour) about staying in her lodge in the Amazon for 20 dollars a night. Seems like a pretty good price to me.
The interesting thing about Iquitos is that it still kind of retains that feeling of the rubber boom era, I feel like I’m in a Joseph Conrad book when I walk around here, other than for the everpresent roar of motorcycles and mototaxis through the streets.
I just went walking around looking for a bar to sit and quaff a few at, and found a little joint playing some of that sad kind of romantic music that Cesaria Evora sings. I ordered me a siete raices, an alcoholic beverage made with 7 roots that I believe also serves as an aphrodesiac, and that tastes like the wilder, stronger cousin of a bloody mary. Some older ladies came and sat at my table. This one lady kept saying slurred things to me in Spanish that I couldn’t understand, and then she was trying to get me to dance with her. Did I say the women are aggressive here? This old fat lady with missing teeth was tugging on my arm, not to be denied. But I had to turn her down, even with the siete raices coursing through my system.

En la Selva

So I am now stationed in Iquitos, the gateway to Peru´s northern Amazon. It´s 80 degrees and motorbikes and motortaxis zip about like bionic fireflies through the humid evening streets. I didn’t purchase a return flight, so I have as much time or as little as I desire here.
I am feeling the looming date of my departure to the states approaching, and to be perfectly honest, I am right now just about ready to leave. I think this is due in no small part to the fact that I am drained right now after 4 or so days of having the little food that I eat run straight through me with the swiftness that I used to forget a lecture as an undergrad.
It´s amazing to me the amount of travellers that I meet who are in South America for something like 8 months. Where the hell do they get the money for that kind of trip? Of course from their parents, considering that these people are usually in their early twenties. I don’t know if I could handle travelling for that long without some kind of a job to keep me occupied and a place to call my home. I’m pretty bored frequently, I’m used to working, and now with all this free time to do whatever I want–I don’t know what to do with myself, so why, I babble my inane world outlooks onto this blog, of course.
I had been considering working on an organic farm for a spell on my trip, but the fact is that there really aren’t many in Perù–I would had to have gone to Bolivia or Chile. So perhaps in the future.
Sorry, I´m going to whine a bit here for a minute, ignore this paragraph of weakness if you will: I am still increasingly feeling homesick. For what exactly I am missing it would be hard for me to define, all I know is that I feel a kind of weariness with being a constant foreigner and with being continuously reliant on either the beneficence of strangers or dios to draw me into commonality beyond appearances and circumstances. Yes, so I am missing the habits and comforts of what I am trained to be accustomed to, yes.

Movimiento adelante

It’s interesting how one’s perspectives shift. Originally Lima had been for me a large dirty noisy city. As time passes and it feels more like home, things that before seemed disorderly or dirty now appear full of life. The buildings are colorful and everywhere is bustling with the daily haphazard fiesta of movement. I stroll across 6 lanes of busy traffic like frogger without a thought.
What is most interesting is that it has become strange for me to speak solely in English, as I realized last night when I went out with some nice folks from my hostal and spoke in English all night. We went to Calle de las Pizzas in Miraflores and drank a bunch of cervezas. The goal had originally been to go out dancing, but we somehow ended up in a karaoke bar first, and when we finally made it to a little joint with some musica latina, right at the very moment when I stood up to commence shaking my booty, they lowered the volume severely because at 2 o’clock pizza street shuts itself down volume-wise.
I found myself tending to speak very simple English, with a Spanish accent. This is probably something I would snap out of after a few days of speaking English again, but I thought it was kind of weird.
Miriam, a gal from the Netherlands, and I ended up having a wonderful profound discussion regarding life, travels, gifts, tragedies, and blessings until 4 in the morning. Miriam and Frank, my guide for my trek in Huaraz, went out to get more beers but it turns out the stores stop selling them in the wee morning hours–which is probably for the best given the feeling I’ve got in mi cabeza right now. The stomach dragons have been tearing a hole in my stomach with their restlessness, you can hear the rapid liquid fire burbling of my stomach like it’s a hollow sink drain.
Anyway, so I’m off to Iquitos tomorrow. I’ll start taking my anti-malarial pills today.

Aventuras con Religión

Hot and sunny in Lima todos los días. Day before yesterday I wandered around the sun-baked streets of Miraflores until I found Huaca Pucllana, a very large pre-Incan mound. That’s really all it is, a mound, but it was nice to have found it anyway without consulting anything except my confidence that I would run into it through the grace of dios. Speaking of the latter, I had an interesting adventure yesterday with religion. A friend of a friend of mine, Roxanna, who I had chatted with most of the night a few nights ago, took me 2 hours outside of the city today, to Ventanilla, to her church to get me converted. Now, let me tell you first of all that I had no idea where she and her friend Manuel were taking me. We had agreed to meet up this morning, and I had some vague idea that we were going to go out dancing somewhere eventually. We get on this old reconverted school bus and drive through the heat of the early afternoon out to where the sand dunes are. We finally get off the bus and step into a church. I’m thinking, ok, I’m going into a church, this is kind of weird, I thought we were going to the beach or something. Some biblical looking Peruanos in white button down shirts led me upstairs and sat me down at a table in a room filled with ladies in nun-outfits. Then another biblical looking dude in a beige tunic sat down and began speaking to me, solely in rapid-fire Spanish of course (translated at times by Roxanna in slightly less rapid-fire Spanish (it was rather touching to see that she thought this might help)), about his beliefs in God. Thus commenced an hour-long kind-of dialogue in Spanish regarding his beliefs and mine.
It was actually quite intriguing, he was telling me about how his church believes that the Incans knew of the Ten Commandments before the conquistadores ever trampled Incan turf bearing the ‘good news’ and greed for gold, that in fact in Isaiah 2 there is a reference to Macchu Piccu. Which couples with another interesting facet of religion here in general: the Catholicism is mixed overtly with the native religion of the Incas, and there is not seen to be a contradiction in this, which is refreshing.
Anyway, so we had a pretty deep talk about God and stuff while I ate some good lomo saltado cooked by a matronly looking lady in a nun outfit and drank Inca Kola. I told the biblical looking dude in the beige tunic that I believe that god is in everyone and to know of this god is ultimately a solitary internal affair, a matter of cultivating consciousness so to speak, beyond laws and language and logical comprehension. We agreed pretty much on matters of the spirit, but then it always came down to their ten laws that they have based on the old testament (including maintenance of the Sabbath on Saturday), and how it was only through following these commandments that one could be one with santos. I was given a copy of said commandments and told that I held promise as a minister or prophet of “el señor.” Then we went downstairs to the church which was now in session. I was introduced in front of the congregation, and then they played some Andino music about Jesus, which was actually quite beautiful, and some ladies in nun outfits danced around with the spirit.
Yes, I call the kind of tourism that I undergo the tourism of the happenstance. Events sprung from the unknown are what I have come to see.

Ceramica Erotica

Yesterday I went to a couple of museos and looked at some more ceramicas and earrings and rocks and stuff. At the Museo Larco (the museum from whose collection was drawn my favorite museo en Qosqo, el Museo Pre-Colombino there is a collection of erotic ceramics; it was quite delightful I must say, they’ve got water carriers with people, skeletons, and animals going at it in all positions. They’ve even got some with people with venereal diseases putting medicine on their diseased parts. Makes you realize just how important a form of expression these water carriers and pots and cups were for ancient peoples. Which isn’t all that surprising considering that water is the substance prior to gold which held the most value, and will probably be the premier substance in the end after gold and oil have lost their value over human life again.
The stomach dragons have re-emerged from their slumber after a long period of inactivity. It’s going to be one of those days.

Adventures in Affluency

Last night Karina and her friend Monica took me to Jockey Plaza , yes, el centro comercial más grande del Perú. It is basically exactly the same as a mall in the US, including about 75% of the stores, such as Ecco, Tommy Hilfiger, Starbucks, etc. What’s amusing to me is the transmutation that some of the US restaurants have undergone in their transplantation aquì–por ejemplo, Pizza Hut here is a luxurious dining experience, 50 wooden tables with cloth napkins, and the pizza actually looked kind of good. McDonald´s, as another example, are not the tiny little freeway stop-offs that we’ve all gained a few extra pounds from on roadtrips–they are gigantic 3-story edifices here. Although junk food is junk food by any other appearance.
After eating some Italian food, we decided to go to el cine, the favorite past-time of young Limeños. We watched La Mujer De Mi Hermano which was of course entirely in Spanish, meaning that I understood nothing except what I could gather from the on-screen visuals. It basically was a slow-moving plot about this hot chick who is married to a gay man, and has an affair with his brother to break the boredom of her marriage. This is what I gathered from what I could see. It made me realize how far I am from being anywhere near conversant in Spanish. Karina would ask me if I understood, and I would of course say no, and then she would proceed to tell me what was going on in Spanish, which didn’t really help me all that much. Oftentimes Peruvians, once they have established that I can speak rudimentary Spanish, will proceed to talk to me as if I am a native speaker, which is flattering, but then I am forced to pretend that I understand everything they say and inevitably feel a bit embarassed when I have to remind them that I didn’t really understand much of their extensive monologue directed at me.

He vuelto a Lima

After another 20 hour bus ride, I am back in Lima. It was a bit harder this time around because the bus had some kind of problem so the driver kept stopping and getting out. There were also random rocks scattered about on the road due to mudslides from the heavy rains. After 20 hours of sitting in recycled air you want to scream, especially because a little girl puked a bunch of times in the very beginning so you could smell the acrid puke smell the whole time mixed in with the inevitable multitudinous farts (pedos) and the greasy recycled-air-smell of packed-in human beings. Luckily I had the seat next to me unused, although later in the journey a cute chica moved to sit there, which was fine by me.
It is now officially summer in Lima, and it feels great to be back here after the constant rain and cold in Qosqo. It feels a bit like coming home, I’m back in the same hostal that I was in before, and I just ate some tasty pescado in my favorite little restaurant in Miraflores.
Yesterday I got my first major dose of home-sickness, I think mainly because I was talking with Danitza about my favorite liquors such as Chartreuse or a good Scotch or Rye, and I began thinking about imbibing said liquors in my cabina with some amigos and listening to some sweet R&B on my Bose system. I miss the pine trees, I miss my drums. Well, only a little less than 1 month left here, and then I will return home so that I can begin getting Peru-sickness and wishing that I was back here.
I met back up today with Karina, a girl I had met in a disco in Huaraz earlier in my journeys in Peru. Ella conoce muchos lugares buenos en Lima. So I will probably hang out here for another week or so with her and Natalia and get some good booty shaking in some more discos, and then probably voy a Iquitos, because I want to see la selva before I leave.

Details of the Journey

It all began at 5 o’clock. We met at the shop and then took a taxi up into the hills. El maestro led us into the ruins and into a cave, where he set up some seats. He then gave us our prepared concoctions. We were also given some wooden staffs which seemed to serve some kind of protective purpose. The San Pedro was thick and almost gelatinous in texture, and the taste wasn’t all that great, but I didn’t think it was very bad either. Almost a bitter kind of green tea-herby kind of flavor. Paloma had a hard time getting it down, however, nearly retching after every sip. We then sat for a time and watched a small fire of sacred wood burning. El maestro then began to shake a rattle, and eventually he started up on a little song, beginning with whistling and then moving onto lyrics. After a while of this he led us through the cave and outside and around, and when we got back into the cave he had us dance for a time. Once this first hour had passed, it was time to separate from each other outside of the cave and enter into our own personal journeys. It is difficult to recount all that passed in my mind during this time, because many things I couldn’t fully understand, and much of the time I was preoccupied with my thoughts and with being extremely cold. When I sat for a while with my eyes closed I began to see lights, and I sensed that these lights were the energy of my fellow travelers. However, the maestro also said that I could have been seeing the residual energies of the ancients who most likely practiced much the same kind of rites on the same grounds in those same caves. In any case, that was when I began to see glimpses of another world using my ‘clairvoyant‘ senses. At this point I became aware of a specific entity of light which apparently was attempting to show me things. At first this entity seemed to be a kind of feminine gentle energy, and I thought that maybe I was sensing the anima of the San Pedro. Later this entity seemed to morph into the white bull creature with many eyes. The maestro told me today that the bull creature was in fact myself, which didn’t actually surprise me, because I sensed that at some point in the journey. However, it was a different me, a spirit me in another time and world. The bull was playful, I remember thinking of the word ‘payaso’ (clown) frequently in conjunction with its image. It seemed to be trying to lead me certain places and show me certain things, many of which I couldn’t understand or didn’t have the concentration to follow. The things which I did understand were: that in the context of this kind of journey, perceiving things through a veil of religious or preconceived spiritual philosophies would be detrimental to learning, because many of the things seen would appear to be daemonic or even evil. But none of those things, including my frightening bull self, were evil at all, simply forms of another world which possibly contain much power. I also understood that there are capabilities within our minds for much more sentience than we allow ourselves to believe, and that we very frequently receive input from these faculties and deny or ignore them. I also learned that to give energy to another is almost always something from which you will expand, and that the only thing that really sucks out your energy is the attempt to hold onto things. There are other things I think I learned but it is hard to separate much in my recollection. We sat in the ruins until around 11, and then we took off for the road. A taxi was supposed to meet us there but it didn’t show up, so we ended up walking in hard rain for a half hour. Then I headed back to my hostal and spent the night and morning tossing and turning with the lasting effects. There’s a kind of vibration that the cactus gives you, my muscles would oscillate sometimes with it, and towards the end of the morning it turned into kind of tremors, as if my body was attempting to shake it off. I am still feeling the effects right now, mainly because I’m kind of fried with lack of sleep. But don’t think for a second that that will prevent me from going out tonight and shaking my booty all night long and getting tanked.

Aventuras De San Pedro

Wow, I don’t quite know how to put into words exactly what occurred last night. Suffice to say that it was indeed an adventure. The ceremony took place amongst the upper ruins of Sacsayhuaman, a place filled with fog shrouded tunnels still retaining the spiritual imprint of the priests of the Incan times. The dogs throughout all of the hills in Qosqo were yapping frenziedly at the spirits wandering in the full moon. San Pedro apparently opens up the mind to pyschic dimensions, where you can sense things using your 6th sense so to speak. I had a little creature that was trying to show me things, he/she was some kind of white bull, minotaur-like creature with multiple eyes, it looked like something out of a Picasso painting. It taught me, first and foremost, that the things that I am frightened of, things within the spirit world that would seem to be daemonic, are simply pieces of the light just like everything else, that in fact everything is of the light and that there is nothing to fear. The creature itself would normally have been an object of fear, an archetypal Incan incarnation of San Pedro perhaps, but he was for me playful, continually trying to show me things, such as how they put the rocks together in Sacsayhuaman, which I couldn’t understand of course. It was very hard for me to concentrate, my thoughts kept getting in the way, and it was extremely cold as well. But I never felt fear, it felt really good, although at times this morning it was difficult (San Pedro lasts a long time, roughly 10-20 hours). I’m still feeling quite funny right now and I am very sensitive to the light. What is interesting about San Pedro is that while it is of course quite intense and transports you to the threshold of other dimensions, you can open your eyes and walk around (albeit rather clumsily) and feel quite normal. It is only when you close your eyes that the effects really begin to make themselves known. I could sense the psychic manifestations of the rest of the group–Mike, a Brazileno who imbibed Ayahuasca that night, Juan Vargas, the shaman, and Paloma, a pretty Argentinan who was trying San Pedro for the magazine that she writes for in Argentina. We were all off by ourselves, but I found Paloma again later because she was frightened and was not having a positive experience. We stayed together for the rest of the night and this morning, and in some ways I felt like it limited my ability to fully immerse myself in the San Pedro, but in other ways it was wonderful because I felt like we were creating the ultimate light of all–love–and the ultimate point of any spiritual journey is thus.
It is hard to recount all of what transpired within my journey last night, many things that I just couldn’t fully understand, although I could sense that I was being taught many things, or at the very least, the creature was trying it’s best to guide me. I apologized to it for my turbulent obstructive mind, but it had much patience. It seemed quite frankly happy to have someone to play with and show around the ruins.
Ok, this is the fuzz brained morning after account, I’ll transcribe some more perspectives of the night mas tarde. At 4 this afternoon I’m returning to the shaman to discuss the things I saw and to have him explain some of these things.

Revving the Engines

Today I ate tons of food, not exactly purposefully, the chicas took me to probar adobo and I didn’t realize it would be a whole nother meal after I already had lunch, and then I got hungry again later at a disco, so today I have eaten a total of 4 phatty meals, but I suppose that it is for the best since I will eat nothing mañana. I learned some great phrases from my spanish teacher today, such as “¡andate a la mierda!” (fuck off–or more literally, walk yourself to the shit), and “tetas” (titties). I took a salsa lesson today, it was pretty basic but how much can you learn in an hour anyway? The chicas took me to a nice disco with mostly latina musica, and I will most likely return there after this message for some musica de salsa en vivo and to practice my few little basic steps. I don’t feel all that bad about my dancing abilities because a lot of Peruvians also don’t know much more than I do when it comes to fancy salsa moves. It’s perfectly acceptable to dance by yourself and just shake your ass around to it. It’s really damn hard not being able to drink anything. Saturday, despues my spiritual adventures tomorrow, will be the grand fiesta para mi, I will drink and dance my ass off, and most likely head my ass straight on back to Lima on Sunday. The time has definitively come for me to leave, as much as I love the rain every single damn day. I’ve got to get my ass into some new places before I get settled down and have kids.

Travel

You go there because there is nothing there to remind you of yourself. Who are you here? There are no predefinitions of what you are supposed to be, no established perceptions limiting the scope of your ability to change like the wind over the grass. The only thing that you are is what you yourself have held onto and retained imprinted throughout your thoughts and subsequently, your actions. You hold over your own head your limitations now, no one else can see anything but what you give to them. And you find that you are the same person that you always were, when you suckled on the back of your hand all day long, when you fell on the rocks and scraped up your legs, when you experimented with being self-destructive, when you first opened up your heart to another–what is it that has changed? What has changed and what will continue to change are the new worlds that you can perceive within yourself. The world sees what you have seen within yourself, even the dim lit crevices you pushed away in fear. What you have embraced the world must embrace in turn, because every portal opened within an individual is the creation of a new world upon the world that we thought we once knew. And we all must grapple together with what each person’s tormential beauty has unleashed upon us.

Cusco Living

Today I found a real shaman off the beaten path in a little tiny shop and sat with him for a few hours listening to him talk with a lady from California about the differences in philosophies between real shamans and other forms of mystical understanding. He was saying that there are four levels of shamans, and only 7 in the whole world are on the first level. Of course he was one of them. I don’t know about any of that, but he does seem to be a legitimate ceremonial guide as compared to the other expensive gringo ´esoteric tours´ that lead thousand dollar ayahuasca journeys in jungle lodges. He was also talking about the restriction that philosophies have on the paths of many spiritual seekers, limiting their ability to expand their minds into other universes; also he was saying that he doesn’t agree with many “gurus” who lock themselves away on a mountaintop and don’t pass their teachings on to anyone. He saw no problem in utilizing modern technology such as internet and cell-phones. I’m going to try San Pedro, a type of cactus that, when imbibed in a prepared concoction, allows a bit of spiritual dimensional traversal, on Friday. He recommended that I try San Pedro first as opposed to ayahuasca, because ayahuasca is extremely potent and requires some amount of spiritual, physical, and mental preparation. On Friday I will not eat anything and only drink water until 3 hours before the ceremony. I also can’t drink any liquor before then. Should be interesting.
Tomorrow I am going to take some salsa lessons as well. I really need to get out of Qosqo but it’s proving to be difficult. I’m shooting for the 15th right now, but who knows. I’ve got slightly less than a month left now in Perù. Everyone keeps asking me if I’m going to other countries and this and that, and I’m starting to feel bad for being in one place for so long. Yes, I would love to see all of South America, I want to see Venezuela, I want to visit my cousin David in Colombia, I want to see Bolivia, I want to see Uruguay (my Uruguayan friends got me hyped to see this lesser-visited country), I want to dance to samba in Brazil, I want to drink wine and dance all night in Argentina and eat good beef, I want to drink wine in Chile and see Patagonia. But this trip I am concentrating upon one country. There is much to see here, let alone in all of South America. My next trip–and yes, there will have to be another one because I love it down here–I will be better prepared with a greater understanding of castellano under my belt, and perhaps then I will visit some more countries in one go.
But I do like getting to feel like I am at home here. I have a few friends and I know where to go to eat and I know where the good places to dance are. Not to say that I really know it any better than any other gringo might, everyone will have their own unique personal experience in this crazy place.
I’m a gringo, no getting around that one here. As soon as I show my pale face in the Plaza de Armas the shoeshine kids scramble to bid for a chance at scrubbing my 6 year old dancing shoes, the cigarrillo sellers wave packs in my face(their strong selling point apparently is that they have “Che Guevara” cigarrettes–whenever you shake your head the first time, they pull out the pack of Che’s and say, “Che cigarros,” as if that’s suddenly going to invest you with the desire to pollute your lungs with the vestiges of whatever revolutionary spirit the name invokes in you), the old women on the side of the curb angle their weathered palms into my path, little girls waggle finger puppets at me, the taxi drivers honk as they wheel speedily past, cute Cuzqueñas press flyers for massages or free pisco sours at the latest disco into my hand, and at night, seedy looking men standing next to the pillars along the square murmur “amigo, you like cocaine, marijuana, amigo?” out the sides of their mouths as I stride by. Ah yes, Babilonia.

Hyper Latent

You may or may not have noticed that I am attempting to interject more hyperlinks in my posts (I have retroactively scattered links throughout my former posts, many of them referencing past writings, because I often have reoccurring themes). I realized that I might as well utilize this cyberspatial interstitial forum and expand beyond the simple postance of escritura. Maybe I should start thinking about creating a whole Manderson themed on-line universe, replete with ads for logo´d undies and bubble bath sud friendly action figures. I could design hoodies, cars, tattoos with those weird alien faces that I like to draw. Ah yes, the possibilities are endless. Veniendo pronto a una pagina de web cerca de ti!
I have been reading 100 Years of Solitude, Cien Años de Soledad, in both English and Spanish. When I first tried reading it in Spanish a month ago, I could understand maybe a few words per page. It’s extremely satisfying as throughout the learning process I recognize a little bit more each time I try. Now I recognize different past tense conjugations, more words, and more of the connecting pieces like “como,” “le, lo, la, se” “èl mismo,” etc. It still takes me a half hour to slug through a page, but I’m beginning to get that feeling like when I used to try to read “Green Eggs and Ham,” and it was always impossible, until one day I picked it up and read it aloud to mi tìa and it was easy! It will be a while ’til I get anywhere near the “easy” point with Cien Años de Soledad, however.

In Limbo

I got up today and went and got a massage for my tired limbs. Less than 20 bucks. They cost like 70 or 80 bucks in the states. I am trying to decide today where to go next. Either La Paz, or the jungle near Cuzco–Manu, Puerto Maldonado–or back to Lima and then to Iquitos. We’ll see. I’m going to give myself a few days to put my finger in the air and test which way the wind is blowing. I’m a bit tired of the Qosqo scene, the constant stranger on the street’s “amigo” this, “amigo” that, but I do know that I would miss what I do have here. I’m going to take some more private classes for Español, except this time it is the much more reasonable 10 soles per hour instead of 8 dollars like it was last time, and the lady will come to my hostal for my lessons. I went into some “shaman” shop today to find out about imbibing ayahuasca, but they quoted me 60 bucks for a ceremony. I know that for locals it’s something like less than 10 soles, so I peaced out on that one. I guess I’ll have to do without hallucinogenic substances for this journey.
This afternoon I met up with Danitza and Julie and they took me out to Saylla where we were going to visit Tipon, but it began dumping rain, so we ducked into a chicharronería instead, where they serve chicharròn de cerdo, a dish very typical of Cusco. Chicharròn de cerdo is basically fried pork, but as is always with the meat dishes here, the taste is different than in the states (almost always better, truth be told). One thing about Peruvìan food that is interesting is that a lot of their dishes are without any kind of sauce, except for dishes like Ajì de Gallìna or Papa a la Huancaìna. This always kinds of disconcerts me, because I’m definitely a sauce kind of man, I like to have something to dip my greasy food items into, I like to hold a bottle of something in my hand and splatter it all over my food as I am eating. I guess it makes me feel like I’ve got my own personal input into my food. I love hot sauce, let it be known, I put that shit all over all of my food. I feel like I’m making it better, enhancing the food. This is why I hold a special place in my heart for burritos, because after every bite you are given the chance to dunk into it some more hot sauce and salsa. Here I can’t really enjoy that kind of eating experience often. They have a kind of sauce made from ajì, Peruvian chiles, but it really isn’t that spicy, and the sauce is generally kind of weird tasting and detracts from the food rather than adding to it, although I still of course continue to dunk each papa frita into it as a matter of course.
I also tried some pasteles tonight after we returned. I tried conito (a cone shaped pastry with chocolate filling), lengua de suegra (which means “tongue of mother-in-law”, so called I think not because of it’s sweetness but because of it’s length), alfajo (like a giant cookie with sweetness in the middle), and a pye de manzana (apple pie). I have to say I’m not so impressed with these pasteles. Seth, you could kick all of these pastries’ asses with your hands tied behind your back. They’re for the most part just kind of flaky things that get your hands and pants all messy. Tomorrow wait for the update on the tortas, I’ll get my hands on a few different cakes and give them a test run.
Anteayer with Danitza and the Uruguaynos, Nacho and Mary, I tried a few new fruits, as well as enjoyed some more granadillas. We tried tumbos, which are these little football shaped fruits that contain tons of orange colored seeds that you suckle upon and taste kind of like mandarinas. We couldn’t find any more chirimoyas, since it is not their season, but we found something similar, albeit much larger, called Guanabana, which unlike its much tastier counterpart was chewy and kind of weird tasting, although it was kind of interesting. Yo probè un Pomelo, cual es igual de “grapefruit,” yo pienso. Also a Pepino, which is a kind of melon except lacking in any kind of flavor. Capulis were pretty good, they looked like cherries but didn’t have that kind of sharp cherry taste. Today I also tried ciruelos, which are like little miniature plums, which of course I liked because I love me my plums, yo.

The Blessing (Finding Measures of Peace)

The night before I left for el camino del Inca I had a dream in which Toby appeared. He was just the way I knew him, he was alive, he was smiling in that gruff yet child-like manner that he had, and I woke up because I realized in the dream that he really was gone. When I woke up his spirit was there with me, just like the first time when I dreamed of him a while ago, except this time he was close and I was not afraid. I was not afraid because I knew I was not imagining things. It was very real and very powerful and I went back to sleep almost immediately afterwards, at peace. For those of you who do not believe in spirits, wait until you are visited by the spirit of one whose death was close enough to you that you cannot push them away. I realized at that moment in the night that I had been visited before, because I knew the feeling well. But this time I was finally without fear for the first time. It felt like a blessing, and in fact throughout el camino del Inca I felt like I was carrying him with me.
A feeling I have had throughout this journey is that many things happening to me, the people I have met and the experiences that I have had, have been meant to happen. This is a feeling I’ve felt before my travels, but it’s an awareness that’s intensified in this kind of setting, where my spacial dynamics and language and social environment are constantly shifting. I feel like the more that I open myself to what is meant to happen, the fuller and more meaningful these experiences are when they occur. Por ejemplo, when I meet someone new, if I am in the kind of mindset where I am willing to suspend my expectations and am not delimiting who they can potentially be in my mind, then they open up in the immediate future with life affirming gifts of knowledge and love for me. And it is then that I sense that this person was meant to be there in that path in time just as I was meant to be. Gifts invisible at every turn, just when you gave it all away. I don’t mean any of that in the sense of predetermination. I mean that there is a potentiality in everyone for god. And when you catch a glimmer in someone else you catch a glimmer in yourself, and it is then that you know and you believe and you are strong, for an instant, for a moment, and there is nothing but one blood flowing through the limbs of one tree. Then you disintegrate back into yourself and them and you move on into tomorrow with one more piece of the light shot through you.

En Qosqo Una Vez Màs

 

I’m back in Qosqo! La noche antes de irme para camino Inca, estaba caminando en la lluvìa demasiado tiempo, y estuve demasiado mojado, y despues, por supuesto, yo me resfriè. Por todo el camino estaba lloviendo y entonces yo estuve mojado y constantemente frìo. El resfriado estuvo dentro de mis pulmones, finalmente. Ahora todovia tengo mucha congestiòn en mi nariz y mis pulmones. ¡Puta madre! Me molesta mucho. Pero, a pesar de la lluvìa y enfermedad, tuve un muy buen tiempo en el camino Inca. El grupo para la caminata fue muy interesante con muchos diferentes tipos de personas–hubo una pareja de Suecia, hubo una pareja de Uruguay, una pareja de Canada, y cinco muchachos de Argentina. Nostros tuvimos muchos conversacciònes muy interesantes.
It rained the whole time on the Inca trail of course, although luckily it was perfect for the last day at Machu Picchu. The trail was harder than I expected, given the sheer volume of tourists that traverse it each day of the year except Febrero, when it’s closed for maintenance. I was doing great on the trail until the third day, which was mostly all downhill on these extremely steep steps, during which an old injury in my knee reappeared, and I limped like a dog hit by a car for the rest of the way. But other than being sick for the whole time and the constant everpresent rain, it was actually a wonderful experience. I was surprised, actually, because after the first day I thought it was some easy gringo bullshit with tiendas all along the way selling Snickers and Gatorade. It is still some gringo bullshit, let’s be honest, you get to eat phatty meals all along the way and most of your shit is carried by porters, but it is quite a difficult trail if you are attacking it without taking breaks every five minutes. My group was a wonderful mix of nationalities, work experiences, and personalities. There was a couple from Uruguay, a couple from Sweden, a group of rugby player chicos from Argentina, and a couple from Quebec. We had some great conversations sitting around in the food tent drinking coca tea. One of the Argentinos worked in Lake Tahoe and has family from my hometown of La Jolla. Un poco mundo.
Spanish speakers are extremely supportive of my attempts to learn and speak Español, I am constantly receiving the compliment that my Spanish is really good, although I don’t understand how this can be so when I am expressing myself on the level of a kindergartner. I think they are simply happy to see the stray foreigner making an attempt to learn the language out of the hordes of foreigners that come through speaking nada–in any case, it’s certainly nice to receive constant encouragement.
There is much to tell from the trek that is all kind of jumbled up in my brain right now. I think more will become extricated as I unwind in Qosqo. I took tons of pictures of steps made from rocks and of clouds. Muchas ruinas, por supuesto. The more I learn of the Incan culture, the more impressed I am by their organizational coherence and governmental oversight. They achieved remarkable heights of culture, art, and architecture, they manifested herculuean feats of organized manuel labor, and they did not use slaves, and they respected la Pachamama in everything they did. There is a habit of the Andinos passed down from the Incas in which whenever they drink chicha or chew coca, they give a little piece of it back to la tierra. The Incas molded their towns to the landscapes in which they harmonized their lives. Their structures carved patiently from stone still stand in the cloud forest although their lives are long gone, their legacy decimated by the conquistadores. In our culture ahora we take and we take and what do we give back to that from which we are taking?
More mundane details of the journey to come!

Viajando a Machu Picchu

Getting ready to go to Machu Picchu mañana, I hope all that cigarette smoking won’t kill me on the passes. So it will be four days until you hear from me again. Feel free to leave comments. They make me feel read and loved. Leave more of em, dammit. Or post a link to your favorite website or your favorite topless picture of Britney Spears. Speaking of which, the other night I went to a local disco called Muki’s where it was 90% Peruanos, which is the way I like it, and they played merengue, salsa, and, of course, a little reggaeton. What was funny, though, was that on a big video screen alongside the dance floor was projected some VH1 special on Britney Spears. So while you’re dancing to salsa you look over and see Britney doing choreographed dances with that everpresent entourage of dancers lined up behind her doing a much better job of dancing. It’s kind of funny, those dancers, because you know that they’ve worked their asses off trying to make a career out of dancing and their big come-up is being one of those pieces of fleshy music video scenery that you don’t even really notice except as a backdrop behind Britney Spears. Have you noticed how intent those dancers always look? It’s like that must be part of how you get to be in that prime of a position as a dancer–by looking really really intense as you dance. Then maybe you get a five second window of you dancing from behind Britney Spear’s ass. You’re lucky if your face gets shown on the video at all.
Anyway, that was kind of a tangent. My damn right ear is really hurting from that fucking pyrotecnico that went off right in front of me the other night.
I’m beginning to get sick, just in time for Machu Picchu, great. I walked around in the rain for too long yesterday. The sleeping bag that my Inca Trail agency gave me is like a summer sleeping bag. So if you don’t hear from me in five days I’m probably frozen to death somewhere in the mountains.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

¡Feliz año nuevo todo el mundo! Yo esperanzo un prospero año para todos mis amigos. I hope everyone had a great time for your New Year’s celebration, wherever you happened to be. New Year’s in the Plaza de Armas was a raucous affair, of course involving thousands of sparklers, bottlerockets, and m-80s as every fiesta here seems to do. My ears are still hurting because an m-80 went off 2 feet in front of me. It’s a little bit dangerous, actually. Some of those bottlerockets nearly took out a few ojos.
I finally met back up with my french amigos. We drank Anis and cervezas at their hostal before heading out and had some great conversations in mixed Spanish, French, and English.
Unfortunately a good portion of my night was spent attempting to meet with some of my Peruvian friends. From what I’ve gathered so far, Peruvians are not very punctual; in fact, they seem to tend to be kind of flaky. Add to that a plaza filled to the brim with revelers and explosions and it’s kind of hard to organize things or find people. Once I finally got done with trying to meet various people at various times I finally got some ass shaking in there until 3 or 4 in the morning, I think it must have been late because I didn’t get out of bed until 1:30 this afternoon.
All in all, Qosqo is a pretty fun place to be for New Year’s.

Another year has come upon us. What does a new year signify, exactly? At it’s most elemental level, it represents the cyclical, spiralling nature of the seasons, the regress and return of things that have passed into new, yet familiar forms. It represents the continuance of the dance of life and death. We celebrate because we are still living and because we have hope that in the coming spiral of this next year that we will live yet better, yet deeper, yet fuller than ever before. That the unknown will manifest itself in a blessing. We celebrate too the things that have passed in the years before, the relationships that have sustained us to this point, the loves that have opened our hearts into the awareness of our beauty. We celebrate because we do not know what is to come and because what we have known has given us hope. It is a celebration edged of course with elements of despair and darkness and excessive drunkenness, because not all of what came before was good, and we are not sure that what is to come will be any better. But we celebrate, yes, even out of desperation, because we need to believe, we need to hope, we need to release our fears and dance without self-consciousness and enjoy this moment that we have right now. Because whatever is to come, at the very least we will be able to say that we have enjoyed what we had.

Las Frutas de Vida

It’s going to be a good new year, I can feel it in me bones, which are ready for some jaggling.
To chew and spit the coca leaves is referred to as chacchar in Quechua. Alternatively, there’s a darker substance made with maìze and coca called llicta that is also chewed and that is referred to as picchar, although the two chewing terms are interchangeable. I have taken a liking to chacchar, it does give you a little bit of a kick and kind of tingles the tongue.
I tried two new frutas today, granadilla and chirimoya. The granadilla was pretty trippy. It looks like an orange but when you crack open the outer peel contained therein is some kind of seedy gloop that looks and feels like alien sex nectar. I was chewing it and my Peruvian friend was laughing at me. Apparently you are supposed to swallow the gloop whole, seeds and all. It was actually kind of a sensual experience because you either slurp it up with your tongue or suck it out of the rind.
The chirimoya was also good. It is green and kind of misshapen, and the treasure within is a kind of custardy white filling dotted with large black seeds. ¡Que rico!

Mundanity

As you can see, I post here pretty frequently. When I get bored I hop into an internet joint and pop out whatever happens to be on my mind, sorry if it tends to be randomized drivel. I’ve been taking some private spanish classes for the mornings, they definitely help out a little bit, and en la tarde I’ve been meeting up with Danitza and her friends, where once again I am speaking in castellano–although mostly just listening, let’s be honest. Every single day the past 5 days it has rained quite heavily for most of the afternoon. I have a traditional woven red poncho, although I always feel kind of funny wearing it because no one except the Andinos wear those kinds of ponchos, everyone else is wearing jackets or the plastic ponchos, and here I am with mi pelo rubio and a beautiful traditional poncho. The guidebooks were not lying when they called this the rainy season in the sierras. I’m hoping it’s not going to do that the whole time I’m on el camino del Incas. The French lads arrived today, so I’ll have some more people to hang out with in Qosqo. Last night I got some musica tipica to bring back with me to the states. CD venders on the street sell copies of CDs for 3 soles each. I bought 4 for 10 soles. I need to buy a new bag to carry all the damn regalos I’ve purchased.
La familìas Peruana are pretty conservative. The Cusqueñas that I’ve talked to are in their mid-twenties, but their mothers have a stranglehold on their lives. They have curfews, they talk to their mothers every single day when they are out of the city, and of course they live with their parents and aunts and uncles. In Perù the structura de familìa is definitely different, comprared to what I am used to anyway. Singles live with their family until they are married, which can be into their thirties. Families are much closer, of course. I was laughing at the idea of having a curfew, I couldn’t even imagine such a thing anymore, not at 27.

The Rain Falls On Every One

Mucha mucha mucha lluvìa. I’m starting to regret only bringing a pair of sandalìas and zapatos de bailar. My poncho and baby alpaca chompa keep me fairly warm otherwise though.
I ate alpaca meat today for lunch. It was tough and gamey but kind of tasty. I found this restaurant that’s a real gem. It’s a fairly reasonably priced 8 soles for el menù ejecutivo, considering it’s right near the plaza de armas, nestled amongst very expensive tourist trap eateries. You get a pisco sour as an aperitif, un sopa o ensalada, el plato principal, y un postre. And the quality of the food is the best for comida tipica I’ve had so far for that price. And even better, there’s never anyone there, so I can sit and study whilst engorging myself.

Who are you and why are you here?
I do not feel as though I do not belong. What is necessary is the faith that one is here for a reason, a purpose, an underlying meaning which gives context and strength to one’s actions. I am beginning to feel that I am approaching the reason why I ever came here in the first place. I came here to find myself. I find myself in the Andinos en el campo. I find myself in the children selling finger puppets. I find myself in the disco dancing to reggaeton. I find myself in the mountains tearing through the everpresent clouds. I find myself in all of the locals who are patient enough to converse with me on what for them must be the level of a 5 year old. I find myself in the differences that lie between what I know and what I feel. I find myself in the ties that lie between thou and I. I find myself so that I can know what it is that I must give away. I find myself so that I can feel what is this gem that I hold deep within me, never to be polished. I find myself, my friends, so that I can find you, so that I can find the world and know firmly, simply,
that there is nowhere else that I need to go.

I’m going to go know and meet up with a friend. Hasta pronto.

Mas fotos

I have once again posthumously cargè mis fotos aquì, so go ahead and scroll downwards a ver los nuevos fotos.

Qosqo is growing on me, I think mainly because now I’ve got local people (aka bonitas chicas) to hang out with and show me around. I am going to take algunos clases de español privado starting tomorrow until I leave for Macchu Pichu on the 3rd of enero. Then regreso aça and study some more and maybe take some salsa classes. I think I could get into living a while here. Esta mejor que Lima, esto es verdad.

Mis amigos de Francia llegando mañana. Para el año nuevo . . .no se, quìzas saliamos para Urabamba, esta un pueblo cerca de Qosqo.

Stuff

If you happen to be a dwarf, you probably wish that you lived in ancient Egypt. Turns out they were very accepting–even revering–of dwarves. Click here for the full story.

Yesterday I took a tour of Sacsayhuaman with my personal guìa. The name is amusing because when you say it aloud, it sounds exactly like “sexy woman” en ingles. Apparently the name means “satisfied falcon” or something. Other people have told me the name signifies the head of the puma, since Qosqo is supposed to have been shaped in the form of a puma, and Sacsayhuaman stands at where the head should be. The architecture of the Incas is quite structurally sound, they formed all of their windows and doors in a trapezoidal shape, which have proved to be extremely resistant to terremotos, or earthquakes.

It can be quite frustrating for me when conversing in spanish because of my lack of vocabulary. When I am listening to someone talk to me, I can pick up a few words here and there, and I might think that I understand, but usually I’m forming my own story based on selected words. Progress is slow, but I am progressing I think, considering I spent most of the day yesterday only speaking in spanish with Danitza, the cute cuzqueña I met in the disco. I’m considering taking some more spanish classes while in Qosqo, because I’m getting frustrated with not being able to express myself or to converse much beyond the level of “¿Te gusta . . .?”, “Me gusta . .”
There are some things about spanish which are growing on me. Por ejemplo, I like the way the language distinguishes very specifically between masculino y feminino and between subjects. The conjugations of the verbs make it very clear about when and whom you are referencing. English is general and abstract in comparison.

Christina, if you’re reading this, you will be happy to know that I’ve shown almost everyone in Perù pictures of Bjorn, mi sobrino. ¡Que lindo!, they respond. Èl es muy grande, no?, I say.

Anybody know of a good way to prevent sandals from being stinky? Mis sandalias uele muy mal. I try spraying deodorant on em but to no avail. I can smell the odor wafting up at this very moment.

Shaking the Touchous

Last night I went out to some discos and shook the touchous gloriously. The same Marco Roberto that you thought you once knew was up on stage freaking chicas. The same Robertito who disavows any and all freaking for all time was cutting loose. I don’t know what got into me, if twas the altitudo or cause it was Christmas, but I shook it into the wee hours de la madruga. I danced most of the night with a cute cuzqueña who I will be meeting up with again later today. I took her and her friend back to my hostal at 4 in the morning for an informative conversation in Castellano regarding the politics in Qosqo and Perù. Yes, it was a good night. There was only one catch. As soon as I saw the chicas out the door my ass exploded once again. Yes, the stomach dragons have awoken from their temporary slumber with the wrath of divine vengeance. I think it was that damn jugo de naranja I indulged in at one of the ruinas from a street vendor. Or if it was the stringent meat I ate for almuerzo. No se. Oh well, I need to lose some more kilos anyway. Hasta pronto.

Feliz Navidad

I was a tourist today through and through. I got onto a big bus that stopped off at local markets where I bought items and stopped at Incan ruins where I took pictures. Ah yes, to be one with cattle. However, something much more important beyond the commercialism of my soul took place today. I met a beautiful woman and had some great conversations. Last night I had been feeling lonely–as you can see from the prior entry–but feeling the ultimate necessity for integrity and personal space. Last night I went to sleep with a good feeling in my belly. Today this feeling was validated. What was validated was the fact that the more centered within myself I am, the more receptive I am to the confluence of beneficial occurences. Not even to say that I am creating them, because I rarely go out of my way to make things happen, more to say that they have more of a tendency to occur.
At lunch the bus stopped off at some place where they were charging 15 soles for almuerzo. First of all, I was beginning to get spiteful about being part of a herd of cattle; second of all, I didn’t want to be forced to pay 15 soles for the meal. So I went across the street to where it was the more civilized 6 soles for a full meal (for the record, by the way, you can get a full meal in local food joints off the beaten path for 2 soles. That’s about 59 cents in US dolares folks.) I was sitting at my table and drinking my Inca Kola, and I was actually thinking that it would have been nice if I had made an attempt to talk to this woman, because I had noticed her earlier at the ruins. But true to my nature, I did nothing. And then she walks in and ends up sitting down at my table. And we have a little small talk and change seats to sit next to each other when we get back on the bus to talk more. During the next set of ruins we visited, it began pouring rain (it’s the rainy season in the mountains right now) and so we went into a local restaurant to get out the rain, wherein we drank a couple of Cusqueñas and talked about Sufiism. To me this was a much more satisfying than looking at broken rocks.
And of course, as is always the case whenever I meet a cool person, she left for Bolivia tonight. But what is most important to me is that I met her at all, and not just that I met her–that I know that I was meant to meet her. And I don’t mean that in the sense of stars aligning, etc. I mean that as in I needed to meet her today for myself, I needed the space within me reconfirmed, because sometimes when you get lonely you begin to question yourself and what you believe in. The reconfirmation of what I believe and know to be true is what occurred for me today. I may never see her again. But that´s ok. There are connections much deeper that are formed in the spirit even in chance one time encounters. Because ultimately, we are all the same person, no? And getting that momentary glimpse of the window to the divine in another and seeing yourself . . . This is what it is to live. This is why I am here.

El espacio de soledad

I am sitting in yet another Irish pub, drinking chilcano con pisco (way too sour for me) and feeling the space of solitude about me. It is something that I have grown accustomed to and even grown to cherish in a certain way, even though it can be difficult at times. Something about my pride prevents me from sucking it up and forcing myself to befriend all of the Irish and Kiwis, etc, that surround me in these kinds of gringo hang-outs. It is linked in some way to my distaste for being an outright tourist. It is too easy, perhaps, to give in and just converse with other similar young travelers on the circuit and get wasted. This space of solitude, for me, is equated in my mind with the maintanence of integrity. If someone is capable and willing to traverse the space required to get close to my heart, then I know for certain that they are true. And I will be true to them for life in return.

El mercado y la chicha de jora

Hoy estuve un dìa interesante. The plaza de armas was packed with people selling textiles, pipes, food, you name it. It’s really annoying because as soon as you whip out your camera, some of the Andean families will approach you and try to get money from you to take their picture. Since when is there a charge to take a photograph of people? I refused to pay, mainly because I didn’t have any money at the time. Later the little girl found me anyway and I gave her 10 centimos.
Last night when walking along the street one of the restaurant hawkers, Alex, engaged me in conversation, and he offered me free mate de coca, so we chatted a bit and we agreed to meet up again today so he could lead me to some chicha de jora, a beer made from fermented maìze. We went down some side streets and into a little hole in the wall picantería, replete with old locals sitting there alone getting tanked. Chicha de jora posseses an interesting taste, not for the faint of bladder. According to Alex, it’s good for your prostrate. I’m feeling kind of funny right now and my saliva is kind of thick.
Anoche yo fuì a un disco. Some locals put on a little salsa demonstration before the reggaeton and North American booty music came on. They were amazingly good. Afterwards, I demonstrated my own skills to the Black Eyed Peas.
I’ve been smoking way too many cigarros. It’s just one of those things that seems appropriate to do here, like eating tons of red meat and not wearing seatbelts.
Today I booked my Inca trail trek, it was pretty damn cheap. I’m going to go despues el año nuevo. I’m kind of itching to get out of Qosqo right now, but I want to stick it out for the new year, because the french dudes and some other amigos will be here, and I figure I’d rather spend it getting tanked with friends.
Para la navidad yo ire a la valle sagrado.

The gathering of the light to fall in streaks

I think I’m about all museumed out for the rest of my trip after today. I saw enough paintings of spiritual figures in various states of supplication and/or bloody duress to last me a lifetime. Man, Catholicism is kind of depressing. Today I attempted to come to terms with the fact that yes, ok, the Christian religion was stuffed down the throats of the Incas and the indigenous tribes, but whether for better or for worse, it became an intrical part of their culture and belief systems and still continues to exert powerful influence over the whole country to this day. So I was trying to view stuff today in the light of that it was just a much a part of Peruvian history as the Incan and Chavín and Chimú eras and not to hate it. I saw some contemporary art today at least, weird trippy political stuff, and nativity scenes where the characters are indigenous for example, and that was refreshing to see some distinctly Amerindian faces after a day of walking past paintings of pasty double-chinned white folk.
Qosqo is beginning to grow on me, I had two of the best meals I’ve had in a while today. For lunch I had a Pisco Sour followed by an amazing ensalada–which I generally shy away from–and then the traditional dish of Lomo Saltado, which was the best form of it I’ve had as of yet. It’s amazing how much better papas fritas are here. For cena I went to a pub and ate an Indian curry. It was damn good curry too, better than a lot that I’ve had in the states. Now I’m bumming around and waiting until it gets later so that I can go shake my booty in some disco. People don’t really go out until 11 or so in Peru, which is kind of annoying to me because I start getting tired at 10. But I need to get some ass shaking in there tonight because I’m starting to get lonely and a little bit bored.
Tomorrow is Santuranticuy, a festival in the Plaza de Armaz, the central square in Qosqo (aka Gringoland), in which the people of the Sacred Valley tender their Christmas wares. I’m sure I’ll find a couple of good cheap regalos mañana. Already the streets are closed off and the Andean folk are gathering, it’s pretty crowded. It was erie walking around there tonight because there was a bunch of lightning in the sky but no rain, as of yet anyway.

Here in this place of history and historias–
the stones of another age and time still perfectly wed
along the narrow cobblestoned streets–
the travelers come with their hunger to escape themselves
and lose nothing.
The people’s lives here have changed irrevocably to accomodate
needs that they can not understand.
And I am searching for a form of myself
that can be known anywhere, anytime,
but most critically,
here and now.

Descanso en Qosqo

It was really getting to me today all of the people that come up to you to try to get the spare sol from you, for chicle, for postales–I even had a lady try to get money from me for taking a picture of her goddam llama. I pretended that I didn’t understand what she was saying. In Qosqo you have to be on your toes as a tourist, because along with the influx of tourism here has arisen the culture of feeding off of the tourists’ spare soles. You will be sitting in a restaurant eating your cena and these guys selling I don’t what the hell what will pop in the door and whistle and dice “amigo, amigo.”
At night you have to be a bit more aware of your surroundings because there is the occasional “strangle mugging.” At every moment I’m ready to start pulling some Bruce Lee matrix shit out if needed. Of course what the rateros specialize in is getting you when one guy has your attention focused and some one else grabs your stuff.
Today I walked pretty far away from the plaza de armas to where I was the only gringo in sight. Conversely, I actually felt more comfortable in that kind of area, because when people stare at you it’s generally out of curiosity rather than how-can-I-sucker-this-bitch kind of thing. I was trying to find this pizza place I’d heard of, which turned out to be ridiculously far, and then when I finally found it, the damn thing was cerrado anyways. Walked back and took a siesta. I went to some museums and iglesias today. I’ve decided that I have no interest in colonial iglesias. The elaborate gold work and sculpture of the altars struck me as wasteful and indulgent, not as spiritual.
I also went and saw some traditional dancing tonight, which was kind of weirdly sensual in a vague and traditional kind of way. Probably because the girls wore these skirts that would swing out completely horizontally each time they swung their hips. The native costumes of Peru really make use of cool hats.

Ceramic Arts

I just drank algunas Cusqueñas maltas and ate a club sandwich (yeah, I’m getting a little less adventurous these days with my eating habits) and watched some futbol in an Irish pub. Yes, an Irish pub. Then I went to look for another bar and got a little lost, so I swung into an internet place instead. I’m definitely feeling the altitude a bit, it really tires you out until you acclimate. Today I went to a museum of Pre-Columbian art, pots and bowls and stuff, it was actually a very intelligent exhibit providing interesting insight into space and meaning as denoted by inscriptions on ancient water carriers. Some of the pottery is pretty intricate and trippy, there’s this one that looks like the maker was on san pedro or ayahuasca, there’s all these kind of contorted half-formed faces and animals bubbling out of it. It was funny because the rooms progressed in terms of chronology, and after the Incan room there was a last little footnote of a room with Spanish paintings from the following era of colonization, all of them depressing depictions of Christ. There were no insightful labels next to these paintings. In a way, it very distinctly said, “and look at what the conquistador fuckers did to our art with their tasteless religious crap.” Here they were making these beautifully intricate bowls and cups and gigantic earrings, and then suddenly. . . pictures of a pale half-naked white man dying. Gold and silver lost their symbolic stature and became mere coinage, items used solely in commerce and no longer in rituals and ceremonies. The imposition of monetary value on things which once held much deeper signification.

Llego en Qosqo

Yo estoy en Qosqo ahora, despues veinte horas en el bus. The bus stopped twice the whole time and you’d run out to pee and the bus would be pulling away as you were waggling your peni. I listened to my Creative Zen the whole time, I’m glad I brought the thing. Qosqo is very pretty and much more affluent than what I’ve seen in Peru thus far due to the fervent tourism. Yes, there are gringos everywhere. Which means there’s vegetarian restaurants everywhere, an anamoly elsewhere in Peru. I just ate some estofado de soya, it was pretty disgusting. I’m going to stick to the traditional comida Peruana now that I’ve warmed my ass up to it. There’s a lot of museo type stuff to see around here, catedrals, inca oro, etc, so I’ll probably go do a little bit of that for the afternoon. I haven’t actually popped my head into a museum yet in Peru. In the night there’s tons of live music so I’ll go tipple a bit tonight perhaps to help myself acclimitize to the altitude. I’m quite confident that anywhere I go here there will be a contingent of brazen Kiwis or French backpackers already there getting tanked. There’s an Irish bar right next to my hospedaje.

More weird nights in Lima

Anteanoche yo fuì a un bar de Jazz. There was a bassist, pianist, and a vocalist that sounded like a cross between Willie Nelson and Neil Young. Some chicks came up to sing as well with strange hats on and they covered such hits as Georgia On My Mind and Hit The Road Jack. I drank Frangelico and tried to look like how I would imagine Miles Davis would look if he were sitting in a Jazz bar in Peru listening to Somewhere Over the Rainbow and drinking Frangelico. I saw the French chicos off yesterday, and will meet back up with them in Cuzco shortly for una fiesta grande. Speaking of French, there’s really quite a bit of French people traveling in Peru. There’s a mix of everyone, of course (except estadounidenses), but the majority lately have been French. I’m beginning to realize that I will have to explain my position re: US politics very frequently.
Last night I met up with Alicia and her boyfriend and extended family. We ate anticuchos (I had mollejitas, very tasty. I don’t even try to avoid red meat here. I’m going native, when in Rome. . .) and walked around Barranco a little bit and then played pool and drank muchas cervezas and some wine which apparently this guy Santini had fermenting in his bathtub. They brought some of it out early for me. It tasted like sparkling grape juice. They did some karaoke and I beatboxed a little bit. Santini’s apartment was in La Victoria, far from Miraflores, so I got to see quite a bit of Lima as we drove through it. It’s an interesting city. The overt commercialism combined with obvious and apparent poverty provides constant contrast. In the parts of the city closer to Centro de Lima, the very architecture is basic and often incomplete–brick or concrete block buildings erected hastily without even an attempt at craftsmanship. The buildings are very utilitarian. You don’t see ‘modern’ looking structures until approaching richer areas.

Fotos

As you can see I finally posted a few photographs. If you go back to the earlier posts you will see some more.
I am planning on leaving Lima soon for Cuzco, where I will spend la Navidad y el año nuevo. It’s something like a 20 hour bus ride, I believe. I decided to forgo swinging through Chincha and Ica and Arequipa for right now because of the proximity to Christmas. Yes, indeed, I am heading to the Gringo Capital of Peru! But the allure of all the things it has to offer was just too great for me to resist. The main draw was that some of the friends I’ve met recently will be there for Christmas. The other thing is that I want more and more to explore the jungle, and the Manu Biosphere Reserve and other areas are nearby. And of course, the requisite trek to Macchu Piccu.

Anoche

Went out to a hip disco in San Isidro with the French guys and some chicas. We got in free and the drinks were gratis tambien. Shook the toucous hasta tres en la madruga. What is interesting about Peruvian discos is the mix of music they play. There’s merengue, a tidbit of salsa, some reggaeton, and then the rest of the night straight 80s music. Dancing to Guns n Roses and INXS with a bunch of Peruvians was fun, they really get down to esa mierda. What is also interesting is that it seems that at the popular discos there is always some kind of promotional thing going on–for example, this night happened to be “Nokia night”, so there was a demonstration of a new waterproof Nokia phone and some hot girls in tight nokia outfits handed out keychains in the shape of a Nokia cellular phone. Yes, this was capitalism at its finest my friends. This disco was kind of like going out in LA except that people didn’t seem to have the I’m-totally-not-interested-in-you-because-you’re-not-famous attitude thing down yet.
Having a lower body to fat ratio now is kind of good in a way, all I have to do is drink a cerveza and I’m tanked. Good times.

Meandering Message

It would appear that the dragons in mi anos are getting slayed.
Jovenes aquí love the internet. There’s these lugares called cabinas de internet on every block. It’s always full of youths chatting or playing video games. Chatting on the internet seems to be the thing to do. There’s also a lot of television watching going on. As to why I can’t fathom, because all that is ever on are soap operas, and they are horrible. They do have some pretty steamy love scenes though.
All I’ve eaten today is an anti-biotic, a multi-vitamin, and a piece of bread.
I am going to out to a Peña later tonight and will hopefully not drink more than 2 cervezas and dance some salsa.
I’ve figured out that there is indeed a USB connection I can use on the computer at my hostal, so a few pictures will be probably be forthcoming in a day or two.
I’m a little bit scared to eat because I think that as soon as I eat the dragons will return. So this time when I do eat, I will not consume the 2 cosas that I did before: 1) foul-smelling mariscos o 2) pizza. I will eat sopa and bread. I swear. I think I’ve learned my lesson. It’s unfortunate, because I think from now on I will be hesitant to try anything new ever again after smelling comida Peruana coming out of my ass for 2 weeks. All I want to eat now are familiar things, safe things. Things like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Jello. Bottled fruit juice. Maybe some dark chocolate . . .
I apologize for my negative statements ayer. It’s just kind of depressing how dirty things are here and how hopelessly corrupt the government is. The Peruanos themselves don’t generally speak of the government, but when they do there’s a kind of patient sadness in their acknowledgment of its negligence. It’s a way of life, these are people who not so long ago were oppressed by dictatorship, I believe, and there’s perhaps at least a kind of freedom to be found in the laxity of authority ahora.
I guess the trade off for the tourist who complains of filth and corruption is that it is cheap, no? If I wanted picturesque harmony of people and governing systems then I should have gone to Finland. If I wanted mindless hand-led tourism I should have gone to . . .I don’t know, Disneyland in Tokyo or something. I am here and my purpose is not to cast judgement on the way things or people are here. My purpose is to discover the purpose and meaning which the people give to their lives here and to share my own with them. Ok!

The Stomach Dragon Rant

I think maybe I have giardiasis, because I remember someone telling me you have a bunch of sulpherous belches with giardia, and I’ve been venting these swampy, fermented foul smelling burps all day. Yep, still fighting the stomach dragons. I’ve been really stupid with what I’ve been eating, I know I should be eating sopa and bland foods, and of course hoy I go and eat pizza for almuerzo. My body is starting to really get run down, so I finally gave in and began taking anti-biotics today and then slept most of the day. If I do have giardiasis, then it probably won’t help anyway. So I’m in a really bad mood today and I feel like right now I hate this city. It’s filthy and hopeless and depressing, let’s be honest. And while I’m talking about dirty, let me tell you about the mountains in Peru. Yeah, they are big and ominous and gorgeous and all that. They are also scattered everywhere with shit and garbage. Hiking in these mountains was the first time that I felt homesick, because at least there is some semblance of “leave no trace” ethics in my beloved Desolation Wildreness. People in Peru don’t even understand the concept of garbage, I don’t think. It seems that they think plastics will simply become one with the foliage and earth. It’s depressing. Alright, sorry I am being negative, just had to vent a little. I can’t wait to get out of this city. I am right now trying to decide whether I should go to northern Peru or southern. To the north lies the beaches of Mancora wherein two of mi amigos de los estados unidos reside, and which is furthermore cerca de Colombia, wherein lives my cousin, the platanos and cafè farmer. To the south lies all of the new friends I’ve encountered along the way, and una fiesta por la Navidad en Cuzco. So I’ve got to make my decision at the end of this week and then hop on another bus. Did I say that I hate buses? The bus drivers here drive a doubledecker bus as if it were a sportster, you can feel the top of the bus careening to the side as they take turns at maximum speed . . . You know, the whole disregard for human life thing. . .

Back from the Trek

Hola amigos, I’m waiting on the 7 hour bus ride back to Lima. I returned from the trek in the Cordillera Blancas yesterday, hung out with the girls that I hiked with and some French dudes that were also trekking in the same direction and ate some cuy (guinea pig) which seemed to me not worth the trouble for the little meat there was on it. We went out and drank some coca sours and cervezas, and then I could feel mi estomago burbling and I went to the bathroom and projectile shat all over the servicio higìenico. I subsequently spent one of the worst nights of my life shitting and vomiting all night long, not even able to hold down agua. The reason for this was that we were drinking el agua de los rios en las montañas, which are full of vaca mierda.
I’m doing a little better this morning, hopefully I will not shit all over the bus on the way back to Lima.
The trek was great, at one point at Punto Union we were at around 15,000 feet. Acclimitizing to the altitude was difficult but not too bad. I was hiking with Franck and Carlos, the trek guides, and two Peruvian girls, Patti and Sandra, and a girl from Quebec, Katri. There was a lot of French and Español spoken.
For my birthday, the girls and the French guys sang happy birthday in French and Spanish to me. I was embarassed and very pleased.
The French guys, who I originally disliked, have proved to be some of those irreplaceable beneficiaries in my life. Last night when I was sick they took me back to their hostal and gave me medicine and advice (banana and a Coca Cola with the gas removed). Their kindness in that kind of situation was invaluable to me, and I will be sure to return the favor when I see them in Lima or Cuzco. One of them, Mattieu, is really into hip-hop, so he will share his French hip-hop with me and I will share my American hip-hop. I also had a great political conversation in broken English and Spanish and French with Alejandro y I don’t remember his name because it was too French, in which I set the record straight about America not being led by George Bush in thinking that France sucks and that we need to call French Fries Freedom Fries.
The night before I went on the trek I went out to a disco and had a great night drinking coca sours, chewing coca leaves, and dancing salsa y merengue. I met a nice girl from Huaraz, Karina, and hopefully I will see her again in Lima. She teaches children with disabilities. I also met a dude from Spain and a dude from Brazil and we will probably meet up again en la futura. Making these random friends who you can barely even communicate with is really fulfilling. It’s like you’re realizing a basis of rapport beyond language. My spanish is getting better but mi vocabulario es muy poquito. I am returning to Lima for una semana mas of studying and then I will begin the real journey.
Alright, it’s time for me to go to the bus station and get out of this wonderful pueblo and return to la ciudad grande y sucía. Thank you to all of you for wishing me a Happy Birthday, and I wish everyone I knew was here. Hasta luego!

Huaraz

Ok, I just finally figured out after my internet session closed on me the last two times after I’d already typed a whole friggin message that this particular internet place has a filter on it which does not allow you to type in the word “c.o.c.k.” As in the fowl. Ok, so I’ll retype this for the third time now and try to remember not to type anything about fowl, which I should have called by it’s Spanish name anyway, gallína.
I arrived this morning in Huaraz after a 8 hour bus ride that ascended something like 10,000 feet. Huaraz is nestled in between the Cordillera Blancas y Negras, and it is very beautiful. I took el combi up to the mountainside today and looked at some stone ruins that weren’t very exciting and then walked around the countryside, which would have reminded me of Italy if I had ever been there. It is extremely refreshing to get out of Lima, and now that I am out I am hesitant to go back, although I kind of have to to finish up my Spanish classes. The people here are friendly and colorful and they wear cool hats. There are pigs and . . .gallínas and cows and sheep and little dogs wandering about and tons of eucalyptus trees for some reason.
Tomorrow I will begin a four day trekking trip. I don’t think it’s going to be very difficult, but it should provide some good scenery. It is my birthday on Sunday, and I will be out camping by a fire somewhere around 5,000 metres above sea level drinking chicha de jora, a beer made from fermented maíze, so think of me and send me some good drunken thoughts. Next time you hear from me I will be back in Lima. Hasta luego

Hoy

10: The water here is different. I don’t mean just in like the way you can’t drink it from the tap. Like the water feels different when you take a shower, it doesn’t run off of your body, it kind of sticks to it, which makes soaping up difficult because you never seem to have enough water. It just doesn’t flow like the water I’m accustomed to. It has a kind of grittiness and substance to it.
11: When you greet a woman, you kiss her on her right cheek.

Tonight I am taking a bus to Huaraz, and from there I will take a four day trekking journey through the Cordillera Blanca. I decided to suspend my Spanish classes for this week to go on this trip, and then renew them again next week. I am going with my friend Frank who works at my hostal and a group of Peruvian and Canadian chicas. Muy bueno. I will hopefully get some good pictures finally of some mountains and such. I haven’t been taking very many pictures in Lima because it’s just cars and buildings and I don’t like looking like a tourist in the middle of a city. I haven’t been able to upload any of my pictures yet, you may have to wait until I return to los Estados Unidos, lo siento!

Dammit, the diarrhea has come again. It never really left, to be honest, but now it’s come back in full vengeance. I really need to be more careful with the water or what I eat or something.

Vida

What is life? What is it to live? We travel to lands where even the sky speaks in different languages, we look into plated museum displays of ancient mystery–mysterious because of its ultimate uknowability. What is to be found beyond the established habitual confines of what is daily taken for granted? Only new forms to be learned, new boundaries, new vistas, new habits. But this shock of the new also jolts us into wonder. Wonder that we are alive, wonder that such temporal forms exist. Life is here, within us, even when the world has changed all around us, we are still what we were–an accumulation of things that could not be taken away or let go, the residual impressions of the river of life passing through us, the endless movement of fragments yearning for their source. Whether molded to cookie-cutter standards or strangled to the point of suffocation or wild like horses on the plains, it is life. Life flows ever onward beyond the grasp of conscious perception. We can get used to anything.

Money stuff

I’m learning the value in pretending that I understand when people are spitting out machine gun syllabic Spanish at me–there is a lot to be understood simply by letting people talk. You just nod your head and smile and then you usually can figure out what they mean by the signifying gestures of their body and hands and eyes. It helps if they are animated speakers. If you can figure out when to express laughter, or when to look mysterious and profound, you can fare quite well on a drunken night with only Spanish speakers.
I’ve met some extremely hospìtable and generous Peruanos, and I met a few of the other kind last night, the kind who expect you to pay for their beers because you are a tourist. I guess that’s what they are thinking, I don’t really get it. At the end of the night I was kind of pissed about it, but then I realized that the whole night I´d spent what in the equilavent in US dollars is around 15 dollars for the whole night, which translated into several rounds of Cusquéñas. I’m so used to thinking in terms of neuvos soles now that when I spend 50 soles in a night I think its muy caro. The one big meal I have each day is generally around 6 or 7 soles, which is like 2 bucks. Yeah, guess I can’t really complain, huh?

I thought of another quirk of Lima to add to my list:

9: No stores or restaurants other than tourist based or higher end carry mucho dinero, so if you’ve got bills larger than 20 soles, you’re gonna have trouble buying stuff. You’ve got to break down your 50 or 100 sole bills at banks or when you make a large purchase (even banks seem to have trouble breaking down 100 sole bills sometimes!) so that you can carry around the 1, 2, or 5 sole coins which will get you all of your daily needs.

I’m a bit hung-over today, I think ahora tomo una siesta. Chao!

Cosas diferente aquí

1: You don’t put TP in the toilet. You put it in the trash. The TP has some kind of perfumey stuff on it so it doesn’t really smell too bad, it just smells like perfumey stuff. I have to flush the toilet and close the lid before I wipe so that I don’t toss it in there without thinking.
2: The waiters don’t bring the bill until you call for it.
3: Taxis are literally everywhere, I think because unemployment is high, so anyone with a car looking to get some cash puts a sign on it and it’s a taxi. Thus, there’s also no meter. So basically, at any moment on almost any street, if you step out and wave your hand, a taxi is there. Then you tell them where you want to go and ask how much it costs. If you don’t like the price, then you walk a few steps away and there’s another taxi. There will be a whole line of taxis waiting for your business. They also honk at you when they drive by to let you know they are there.
4: Which leads me to my next one, which is that cars honk like birds chirp. They honk not only to express the urge to keep traffic moving, but also when crossing intersections to let oncoming traffic know they are coming, since no one stops except at stop lights. Basically, there’s a lot of honking going on. It’s so ubiquitious that you don’t really notice it, it’s like people talking in a cafe, a necessary ambient noise. It makes me laugh to think of how people would react in the United States if you honked like that. I’ve observed many drivers in the US who won’t even honk when a car has cut them off because they are afraid of expressing themselves in the form of such a loud noise.
5: When telling people where you are from, you do not say, “Soy Americano.” As mi Profesora politely reminded me, people from Latin America also live in America. You say “Soy estadosunidense” (Los Estados Unidos is the United States).
6: The Peruanos are very proud of their culture. When you tell them that the food they cooked for you is very good, they will say something like “You will miss Peruvian food a lot when you return home, won’t you?” not knowing the multiplicity of fine dining that the metropolitan United States can provide outside of fast food. Tell them that their food is the best food in the world. And yes, I will miss it.
7: The chicas all wear form fitting jeans. Which is a wonderful thing.
8: Smoking prolifically and drinking and driving are apparently not something that culture or parents here consider to be a bad thing. I do not know if this is because people are just more comfortable with the idea of death here or what. There are a lot of people in this city.

There’s a lot more things that I can’t think of right now; I’ll update as they come to me.

Solo Marco

I think that I feel a certain kind of shame in being a tourist–a shame that comes from things beyond my control, such as the differences in exchange rates, the millions of families living in poverty due in no small part to my own country´s overconsumption of the world´s resources, the undeniable privilige I have to be white, oblivious to this country´s language and heritage, that I am able to be here at all, snapping pictures and eating food. All of these things, and everything that accompanies them, gives me this feeling of nakedness, a sense of original sin, a shame for things that at some level I realize are not my fault. I try to atone for these things by attempting to learn the language and customs and not being a conspicuously asinine tourist. Really, it is kind of ridiculous to have these feelings, considering that I should be getting ridiculously drunk every night instead of being stressed out about being foreign. I think some of these feelings extend beyond simply Peru, I think some of it comes from ingrained inclinations to avoid relying on the kindness or similarity of others.
That said, I´ve settled into a semblance of daily life in Miraflores. I get up and go to mi escuela de español, which happens to be right next door to my hostal, then I walk around and find a nice cheap little Peruvian food joint to eat my lunch–they always have a kind of menú de el día, which consists of an entrada, un plato principál, refresco, y un postre. Despues tomo una siesta (I take a nap), and then the rest of la tarde y la noche is open for whatever, which lately hasn´t been too very much, I´ve done a few touristy things like gone to Centro de Lima and a giant marketplace and read some of Cien Años de Soledad and been studying my spanish, and then usualmente I am muy cansado a la 10 en la noche and I go to bed.
I went to a salsa class this afternoon and it´s weird how salsa always seems to be different each time, the salsa that the masses dance apparently is much more informal than what I learned in the US, the man and woman just kind of hold hands–instead of the ballroom type holding. It´s still kind of hard to perform for this gringo. I kind of like the meringue though, you can do pretty much anything.
I realized today that I shouldn´t have judged Peruano dancing ability by the one bar that I went to that played mainly western booty drivel and Latin pop mierda–there´s apparently an abundance of these places called Peñas where they dance only to Criollo (local) music and do the salsa y merengue all night. I´m a little scared to go by myself but hopefully I can dig up somebody to accompany me.
Nothing too exciting in my travels as of yet unfortunately, I´m kind of buckling down right now and trying to string some kind of castellano ability together. I don´t know how much one can really get from 2 weeks, but I do feel like every day I gain a little bit more knowledge of the language, which is of course at an extremely elementary level, like learning to say,¨there are 4 chairs in the room,¨or ¨my butt hurts¨. Got to start somewhere though.

Fed up with the tourist train

I was feeling a bit lonely last night. My friends have finals for the next few days so I was feeling the full weight of being alone in a foreign city. I went to the muy touristico Calle de Pizza en Parque Kennedy for pizza, hoping to calm my troubled estomago con queso. There’s lots of pretty chicas circumambulating around that area, but I’m sick of hustlers coming up to me and acting like they are mi amigo simply because yo soy de Estadaounidense. These guys always happen to be from East LA or Nueva York and they’ve got kids to feed and they work at a tattoo parlor and they can get you some weed or cocaine, and it’s like I’m supposed to be all thrilled because they hablas ingles? I’ve been avoiding other foreigners like the plague. I deliberately took un hostal lejos de Parque Kennedy because that’s where all the backpackers congregate en Miraflores. This hostal is only 7 dollars a day–can’t really argue with that–I am staying en la dormatario, but there is no one else here. El único problema is that there are no towels, so I have to use mis pantalones to dry myself off despues uso la ducha.

Enfermo en Lima

So all yesterday afternoon and last night I paid for the excess of comida Peruana that I ate. Man, when the shit hits you like that, it´s just like vomiting out your ass. My stomach is still burbling as I write this. I slept most of the afternoon yesterday and then watched Touching the Void, which is a pretty crazy flick about the worst possible shit that could happen to you climbing, I recommend it if you haven´t seen it or read it. It takes place in the Andes in Peru.
The way people drive in Lima is interesting, it´s pretty much lawless as far as I can tell, yet everything seems to flow pretty well, people seem much more skillful in their driving ability than people in the US, who freeze up if their car comes closer than several inches to an object. You have to drive super aggressive if you want to get anywhere here–basically do what you need to do to get where you want, even if that means crossing over two lanes in front of other speeding cars–and disregard the horns of the cars around you. Because traffic here will not stop for you unless you force it to. No one will slow down and give you a nice little space to back into.
My friends here in Peru and their families have shown me incredible hospitality. I don´t think I would do anything here at all if I didn´t know them. So far, Miraflores is pretty damn boring, I still haven´t gone anywhere to do touristy things yet. I admit that I´m not very driven to go to museums. The weather here is very sunny and warm during the day, then it gets colder at night due to the moisture in the air. Where I am is very similar to La Jolla in many ways.
The traces of money here is immediately evident, like a streambed crafted from water. The houses are all surrounded by iron gates, so before you can enter the courtyard you need to enter the gate. Security guards stand before most apartment complexes and nice houses. The people living in poverty in Peru is something like 50 to 60 percent of the population. Lima is surrounded everywhere by settlements of squatters.
Alright, now I need to go get a Spanish dictionary and do my homework.

Tranqui con La Policia

I spent all day yesterday drinking Pisco Sours y Algarobilla y Cristal y Cusqueñas at a club for La Policia. My friend Reynato´s padre es en La Policia. He is the head of his graduating class, the group we were hanging out with, and also the captain of his futbol team, which has been in the top of their league in Lima for the past 5 years. These people know how to drink and hang out. I sat with them and drank and ate ceviche y mariscos and listened to them talk en Castellano all night. I also smoked enough cigarrettes that day to last me a lifetime. They just sat there drinking and smoking and telling funny stories. Then we went out to a disco, where I came to the sorry realization that Peruvian people can´t really dance any better than Americans, at least not at the place I was at last night. There was some good merengue music at first, and then all of a sudden the DJ started playing these Latin pop hits that everyone in the club knew every single word to and sang along with at the top of their lungs. They would cut the music every couple of seconds and people would sing the rest of the chorus. It kind of weirded me out. Then the DJ started spinning your typical American club booty music, as well as that reggae-ton stuff.
Today I ate some home-made ceviche that Reynato`s padre made. Es muy buena comida. I ate so much the food is almost coming out of my ears. Then we drank some more Pisco Sours and watched futbol. Now I’m extremely tired.
Tomorrow my Spanish classes begin, which is good because my Spanish really sucks. The conversations I have with people who can’t speak any English, as you can imagine, are rather limited, although I can understand some things by listening and by context.

Another day, another sol

So the guys hanging out the sides of buses shouting and gesticulating wildly are in fact employees of the bus–they are like conductors in a way. I took a bus home last night after visiting mi amiga Natalia y ella mama. It was interesting talking to her mom, who spoke no Ingles, because I would say something and then Natalia would translate, and then her mom would say something and Natalia would translate. Natalia can´t speak great Ingles either, which made it yet more interesante. Her mom gave me a shot of Pisco, which reminded me somewhat of grappa and brandy–it was very strong. Taking the bus is kind of how I imagine Toad´s Wild Ride would be from the Wind in the Willows. The bus careens wildly through the streets, stopping for noone except those who stand on a corner and hail it desperately. There´s the conductor dude, who stands holding the door of the bus (more accurately, a tiny minivan) by a string, shouting out the stops and negotiating whether a person standing on the corner wishes to be picked up or not. I remember thinking that this is the way a bus should be. It is only 1 sol to take the bus, as compared to 4 or 5 soles for the taxi. Unfortunately I got lost afterward for a while trying to find my way back to my hotel.
Anyway, so it´s kinda weird being here, and mi muy poquito Castellano seems to get yet smaller with each day. I´m enrolling in 2 weeks of intensive Spanish courses, so I´m going to stick it out in Lima for a while longer and see what the nightlife is all about.
I saw my Peruvian ex-girlfriend last night also. I hadn´t expected to see her, and I´m not quite sure what she´s thinking, she would only speak in Spanish to me. I think she was mad at me because I didn´t express enough joy and delight upon seeing her and Natalia, which is due more to my natural reticence than any lack of joy.
I just ate a dish of ceviche, which was good, quite strong on the lemon however, but with the onions it seemed to balance out nicely. I´m in the process of getting my laundry done and finding a place to stay where I can come in late at night if I´ve been out shaking mi culo, because I just found out the place I got right now doesn´t let you come in past 11. No bueno.
I haven´t really taken any pictures yet, so hopefully some will be forthcoming. I´m not quite sure yet if I can upload them to these computers, but I´m sure I can find one where I can if I put some effort into it, considering that there´s an internet cafe on every street.

Helo from the Southern Hemisphere

Ive arrived in Lima, which thus far appears to be a strange blend of Las Vegas, Tijuana, and La Jolla. My minimal amount of Spanish is coming into good use. The car drivers here apparently do not stop for pedestrians, as I just learned the hard way. I went ahead and splurged on a nice hotel room for my first two nights in order to get settled in and figure a few things out. I get the feeling that this is an off season for tourism, due to lowered prices.
Simply being on a plane with mainly Peruano and Argentinean passengers already kind of inducted me into the feeling of being an alien. They seem mildly curious in a friendly but reserved kind of way, which is fine with me.
The little buses that rip around here always have a man hanging out of the side window and gesticulating and shouting things to passerbys, especially girls. I think this is some form of accepted bus behavioral pasttime.
My city experience has fortunately prepared me well to walk around here and pretend to fit right in even though my albino shaved head sticks out like a sore thumb.
Alright, Im going to go find a nice little food joint to have lunch in. More to come.

Further thoughts on the purpose of travel

Some more thoughts re: expectations of journey. I wish to travel in a manner beyond visiting beautific sites and snapping pictures in order to show that I was there. I wish to become somewhat immersed in the lifestyle there, to gain a new perspective on life as a greater whole by being able to place myself into another self there and seeing everything new again from that perspective. To access, in other words, new areas yet untravelled within myself. To be snapped out of habitual expectation and brought into fresh vision through the induction of cultural and social alienation. There are many things to see there, and to be sure, I wish to see these things, such as Machu Piccu. But what I am most looking forward to meeting are the people who live in these places.

Getting Ready

Who are we and why do we live there? Always gathered into journeyed pools of light, the human being falls down stream to find itself already defined. I’m learning the value in preparing oneself for the unknown. It seems there are constantly arising these complete voids between now and then, and if you don’t have some kind of a map or a gameplan, then there is nothing but anxiety. I’m not talking about itineraries and erecting barriers of scheduled safety necessarily, more along the lines of developing a purpose and direction in my drifting. What exactly is it that I wish to gain from visiting this foreign country for an extended period of time? I will tell you, in brief, my goals: to drink beer made from maize, to hear some live local music, to dance Peruano style, to learn the language as best I can, and to eat some good seafood.
I’ve spent the last week shaking my booty in San Francisco, and now that I’ve warmed it up a little, I’m ready to get out of this country and shake it somewhere else. Two more days, and I’m there.

hesitant thought flows in the spider-house in Austin

I
the minute of sentence is to speak this essence of what i see, what i seek, in the connection of infinite possibility that lies in the loss of what cannot be held anyway, to fly, as it were, into a space of play within the elements of what are, to sail with a given wind in a given direction ever always beyond my control; there are times in my life when the current eddies into a swirl of whirlpool stasis, when it seems that i cannot even feel, let alone express, the emotions which bestir the depths of my conciousness. and i act in ways that would appear to me to be counter to everything in which i thought i believed. but here is this spark, catching, fanning the flame of my fingers against the keys of a language that at times is like scratching against a wall, inert, cold, laden with rhetorical adjectives. . .
II
where is this deep place of integrity within you that lies so unknowably beyond language? in the flurry of drunken information that passes so swiftly in the form of money, you wake up into tomorrow half-way spilling over into endless gaps of a nameless suffering, like batter on a waffle-iron, burnt into a patterned shape molded for consumption. it is from the depths that emotions rise, filtered, bubbled eventually into expression, displaced, floating like the plastic piece inscribed with words in a fortune-telling 8-ball, the writing on the wall on the backs of your eyeballs twisted into your mind into an image that platters out of your tongue to be served into a wind of breath and sound into the space of the world. you project an image of yourself onto a plane of endlessly successive images, in the hope that somewhere out there in the darkness there is someone who can pick you out and understand you, and look into themselves and discover a language of themselves in which they can craft a response back to you, into you, to build a platform of a new perspective out of all of the emptiness that surrounds. . .
III
what i am trying to say is that i’m fumbling like an idiot in the darkness with a pen, trying to write myself into everything i come up against. but there are these feelings that i have in myself that i haven’t learned yet how to define. and i come stumbling across these vast new fields of perception in other people, and i suddenly no longer know who i am again, and i am like a child, struggling to place my flurrying emotions into articulation. where am i? who am i? my tongue flutters in my mouth like tree leaves in the breeze–ultimately untranslatable, more of a momentary feeling that passes into the next block as you drive by on your way to your destination.
and yet. and yet. there is definitely this light in my gut that i can feel emanate out my eyes, despite the endlessly blind progression of passerbys: i find it in the dive bar smoke stippled scene, in the live wire plunge of practiced instruments attuned to my attention, listening to the formations of what i have never before heard, i find a sense of redemption in the patterns of loving, brave people who have left their societally defined selves behind, who stand before us weaving strange new threads of wonder, a multi-colored universe in which we are fully embraced if we choose to be, if we can let go of our fear and plunge forward into motion: a place in which there is no judgment, there is no holding back, there is no dissociation of beauty from that which is all around and here and now. i strive to reach this place with my haphazard happenstance words, with my frantic urgent need to connect to you across this physical distance, to reach that within me which is most true, most beautiful, and most worth sharing with you.

Road Trip Chronicle Installment II

becoming an alien visitor to new worlds is a matter of learning acceptance–if one is to do more than the prescribed touristy activity calculated for maximum drainage of your pocketbook. acceptance of standards of living and ways of perceiving people that are outside of the box of what you are accustomed to. eventually, the habits and customs of your history dissipate into the constant adaptation that is required to meet the demands of an unknown and spontaneous universe. anything can and will happen, for there are no ways of sustaining reductive expectations in the face of what you cannot prepare for. yes, in the heartland of America, it is easy to pigeon-hole the people into Wal-Mart herds of banality, to hold up their strip-malled, colon-clogging comfort food overeating ways as representative of everything which is wrong and thus, to be immediately dismissed. but when you are in the midst of that which you would from a distance define, you find yourself talking and relating to people–no matter their appearance–as what they truly are–sentient and intelligent beings struggling to live and find their own winding paths to the light. it no longer becomes a matter of relating to people based on things such as political views and consumerist habits–it becomes a matter of relating to people based on how they actually live, and taking into account the whole context and environment of their situation, including all the problems so evident on the surface. this is not to say that all criticism must be suspended–rather, to say that one has to take into account how a people view themselves and their world. for if someone can find beauty and ways of existence in a world that i would perish in, than i want to try to understand what it is that they find in it that allows them to sustain themselves, and i want to try to relate to them based on how they relate to each other. there is indeed a lot of shit out here that is pretty fucked up. but i haven’t found anything here that is fucked up in a way that isn’t just as fucked up in a different way where i’m from. and so i am discovering new perspectives on myself and what i have become accustomed to, as well. for what we often use as judgment of other people are things which those people take for granted, and do not even think about, so ingrained in their culture it is. so really, learning my way to an understanding of other people is a way of learning my way to an understanding of myself.

Road Trip Chronicle Installment I

in the accumulation of mileage there is, for a while, a sense of loss of self; distinct formations of place and circumstance become washed under by a flash flood of constantly shifting information; there are squatting hulks of red desert rock; then there are trees, pines, aspen, fire-charred, green, yellow, barren; there are haphazard stones piled on stone like giant rock piles against the rain pregnant sky; there are giant windowed edifices of neon built up out of the promise of money; then there is just road, curving endlessly to some point known to some strange people simply as home. where is your place in this? you stop to gather pictures to study and make sense of this wonder later, or perhaps simply to share with others, to point at what you have seen and give it name, as if it were something you have known. but there is really only one wordless moment of perception, where the thing in passing becomes defined in your mind, before you could ever capture it, or claim it, or settle into its city limits–and this moment exists only in juxtaposition and knife-edge balance with the cosmic extremes of non-existance and eternity. how could you hold onto a stream of water? i stood at the ramparts of the Hoover Dam and looked down at the massive construction of concrete to which so many underpaid workers had given their lives–and i did not feel overwhelmed by the ingenuity and brute power of money and technology. no, for water can perhaps be dammed, and re-directed, and bottled. but it is in the end the water which controls us.
so it is that the journey defines us. we craft our narratives and drive our vehicles out through the vast stretches of mountain and desert, passing like flies through the stationary lives of small towns, through the electrified grids of cities, through the barren rock strewn remnants of sea-beds, through the winding snow dusted mountain passes, through the on-going daily struggles of life and death and movement.
who i am is a constantly shedding piece of everything. i am a window, sometimes reflecting the sun of the world outside of myself, and sometimes, in the night, you can look inside and see the sun in my lampshade, where i am studying myself here to learn my way into now.

I Still Clear

are we gonna step up and dance, or are we gonna watch ourselves stumble into despair? the beat is there, you can feel it in your lips when words form like waterdroplets to fall into meaning. why should we be frightened of what might come out when we release our body to a greater rhythm than our mind? how good do you have to be to move? is freedom learned?
no. freedom is earned by letting go of all the bullshit accumulated by years of bullying, freedom is there for those who choose to not police themselves, who choose not to fear each other, who choose to love, love, love everything that touches their heart, and leave behind everything for that moment of connection, for that spark of rapture in the glowing eyes of their beloved.
the only thing that is learned is how to better hide ourselves from suffering. but this suffering is the only thing that leads us to feel, to free ourselves of inattention, to focus on what truly matters. freedom is not necessarily happiness. but it provides the ability to gain happiness, to reach across seemingly insurmountable boundaries, to talk to that beautiful queen whose eyes met yours and flashed with the future, to vault your insecurity and touch what you know is there even if you can’t believe it, to press your lips to her honeyed sweetness and taste ecstasy. what could have prepared you for this?
we have everything we need. we have eyes to see, ears to hear, mouths to breathe. everything else is a shroud hiding us from each other.

Trip

Point to point, what is in-between?
People are gathered in grids of energy
like thickets to crevices of stream,
crowding dense to catch a trickle
of light filtering from shafts in the towering
trees down to their spread desire,
vulnerable as baby birds
waiting for god to fulfill her duty.
What is outside of their wordless yearning?
What is uncovered by names?
What is the space, what the invisible, where will they never go–
only pass through on their way back
home?