Misson for a Missionary

When I asked for a bus ticket to Bahia Blanca, they looked at me blankly. Surely I must've meant Buenos Aires, right? The bus continues on to BA after BB, so I must be wrong. I actually had to talk them into giving me a ticket.

While waiting on line, I asked the people going to Bahia Blanca what fun things I could do for a day. No one had an answer better than "Walk around the mall?"

Upon arrival, I went around to the side of the bus to get my backpack out from under. The driver wouldnt give me my bag. He was convinced I was in the wrong city, I had to show him my ticket to prove it. He still didn't want to get it, just because it was buried at the bottom of the Buenos Aires pile. He just assumed backpack meant BA.

Walking into the bus terminal, the extremely white and sterile-looking terminal, I began to look around to see if they have an internet kiosk so I could look up the address I came to find. A helpful employee came up to me and asked me if I was looking for the bus to BA.

Clearly, there's a theme. People come to Bahia Blanca to live (or die), but not to visit. The city is big and pretty and full of all the movie theaters and municipal parks and McDonalds one could want. I'm sure its a great place to live, but there really is absolutely nothing to do in this city. So why am I here?

To answer this question, I'm going to have to rewind back to September and my whirlwind tour of the Southwest US. After Burning Man and after seeing Dave in Boise but before hitting up the national parks in southern Utah, I passed through Salt Lake City. The biggest tourist draw here is Temple Square. Working with Kyra, lodging with Kyra's family, I'd learned alot about Mormonism, and was curious enough (though not in a conversion sense) to visit their Ground Zero. In Temple Square is their large central temple, the namesake tabernacle of the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir, an art museum, a family research library (to help baptize your dead ones... dont ask), a visitor's center, a missionary center (for doing God's Work), and lots and lots of office space (for doing God's Office Work).

Part of my reason to visit was curiosity. Partially it was to visit the family research library and see if I can trace my ancestors past Ellis Island (I could not). But in large part it was to fuck with the missionaries. To ask questions like "Why does God hate gay people?" and "If a guy gets a sex change to become a woman, then wants to marry a man, is that kosher?" (the answer to both: err, let me get back to you).

When I met the pretty young blonde servant of God, I didn't want to fuck with her. Well, not with anyway. Instead, I just struck up conversation. I told her about my travels in a bid to impress her. And that's where my misguided attempts to pick up a missionary fell flat.

"Oh, you're going to Argetina?! That's soo cool. My fiancee is serving a mission there!"

I was more confused than disappionted. "Wait, how old are you?" I asked. "Oh, I'm 19, but we've been dating since I was 14," she replied. "... and how old is he?" I followed up, afraid of what she'd say. But he was only 21, not 40-something.

I was prepared to move on, but she wasn't done. Instead, she reached into the folder she was holding, and pulled out a postcard-sized picture of the Temple at night, with some recruitment propoganda on the back. She pulled out a pen, and wrote on the back "Elder Drennan, Bahia Blanca. I <3 you".

"Can you give this to him?"

I stared at her for a few seconds, baffled. Was she serious? Where is Bahia Blanca? How big is Bahia Blanca? How am I going to find one starched-shirt white dude in a whole city? The request was so ridiculous, so absurd, what could she possibly expect me to say?

"Yeah, sure. No problem."

And really, it wasn't that hard. I know enough about the LDS structure that a brief internet search found the local stake, and the address for its mission office. After that, I just had to find the right time to go to Bahia Blanca. I could cut across after Mendoza, then bus down the east coast to Puerto Madryn to go whalewatching before getting to Ushuaia, or I could take a boat down the Chilean side, then bus up from Ushuaia through Puerto Madryn, too late to see whales, before stopping in BB on my way to BA. I made my fateful choice.

Fast forward to the Tuesday between Christmas and New Years. I took a taxi into town, walked to the square, into an internet cafe, and looked up the address. It was only 3 blocks from the square, a 5 minute walk. The office is on an upper floor of a pretty nondescript building. I ring the doorbell, with absolutely no expectation of what kind of reception awaits me. Will the man be excited to hear from the beau he hasn't seen in months? Or will he just think I'm a freak and shoo me off. If I were in his shoes, I'd probably pick the latter. I would meet myself and flee.

I was met with silence. No response. I rang again, but it was clear no one was inside. Perhaps they were out to lunch (at 10am?), so I sat in the doorway to wait for someone for return. Gave up on that after half an hour. Plan B.

Plan B was to return to the internet cafe, find the phone number for the mission, call them, and hope the doorbell was just broken, rather than the far more likely outcome of a voicemail.

To my surprise, someone picked up. It was a young American voice, clearly one of the missionaries. He explained to me the missionary office moved, to a place well out of walking distance. "Elder Drennan?" I asked hopefully. No, Elder Drennan has been moved to Mar del Plata, about 5 hours away.

Ok, time to move to Mar del Plata? It's on the way to BA... sort of. Its on the way in the same way that Chicago is on the way between St. Louis and New York. And I had no reason to go here except to deliver a postcard. Atleast Bahia Blanca had the excuse of being on the way. But I have a mission, and I went back to the bus station to find bus times to Mar del Plata.

As I found out, the bus to Mar del Plata was to leave in 10 minutes. I'd have to find Drennan today. I called the mission office back in a hurry, and gave them the excuse that I want to go scuba diving in Plata (a mediocre place to do it), and that I'll still be able to deliver my package in person. The missionary on the phone, who was skeptical when I first explained to him I had something to give Drennen, now sounded like he was ready to call the cops. I didn't blame him. He told me that they don't give out a missionary's address, and since Mar del Plata doesnt have a missionary office, I'd have to either find him on the street, or wait until Sunday and guess which chuch he'll attend.

So I did the only rational thing, and gave up. Got on the next bus to BA. I'm not going to bust my balls for a cute girl who isnt even single and her stranger fiancee. Instead, I wrote a very sweet and hokey letter about how far the postcard has come, and how I've persisted because her feelings were so radiant and genuine when I met her, and mailed it with the postcard to the missionary office. Frankly, I don't remember if she was radiant or genuine. I remember she was blonde and bubbly, but that's about it. I just wanted a cool story, and to see the completely flabbergasted look on the man's face.

I only got half.

End Of The World As I Know It

I arrived in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, with a goal. The city proudly proclaims itself on all tourist information as The Most Southerly City In The World, and I was going to finally accomplish my trip's biggest mission. Mitad del Mundo to El Fin del Mundo. Now all I had to do was figure out exactly what I had to do to claim the prize.

Pete, who was not coming to Ushuaia, collects stamps. Not to send a letter, but stamps in his passport book. He got one on the Equator, in the Galapagos, in Macchu Pichu, and now mandated that I get the famous End of the World stamp and show it to him so he can atleast live through my passport vicariously. Often a man of my word, I set about attempting to find this stamp.

I first tried the tourist office, an easy choice, and was delighted to learn they had the stamp. In fact, they had four. And the dock had one. And the post office had one. And apparently there's one in the nearby National Park. I chose one, the Lighthouse at the End of the World one, and considered it mission accomplished... but wait, not yet.

See, Ushuaia may be the most southerly city in the world, but its not the most southerly town. Across the Beagle Channel is Navarino Island and the Chilean town of Puerto Williams. I bet they have a stamp. I went down to the dock and attempted to find a ferry across.

Well, boats dont just go to Puerto Williams and back. You have to pay 100 dollars each way, go through the entire immigration process again, and you'd still be wasting your time, since it's mostly just a town for the families of the military base which takes up most of the island.

Ok, so I can't get to the world's most southerly settlement, but atleast I can get to the WMS lighthouse, the one in the stamp, right? Well, no. Only military transports from Navarino go out that far. But the boats will take you to A lighthouse at the end of the world. That's kinda the same, right?

Well, to be fair, it was a lovely boatride, and I did get to stand on a spit of land even further south than Ushuaia, and climb up on a hill to give me a distant, hazy view of Puerto Williams. I was hoping to see across the island and all the way to the start of the Southern Ocean. Nope. I was hoping to at least see down the Beagle Channel, to the clear line where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet. Nope. The view was fantastic, but nothing different than what I'd see on Ushuaia's frigid beach. The only difference is that this inconsequential rock is the most southerly point I'm likely to ever reach in my lifetiome.

I needed a different way to claim Mission Accomplished, and decided instead to reach the End of the Road. In Tierra del Fuego National Park is a sign at the end of Route 3, proclaiming to the proud drivers who have the chuzpah to drive down the entire excrutiating route just how far they've come (and how far they have to go back). I took a bus into the park, posed next to the sign, and considered it mission accomplished... but wait, not yet.

Route 3 is the road between Buenos Aires and Ushuaia. It's not the end of the Panamerica, which deadended somewhere in the middle of Chile. It's not WMS road, since that's between Puerto Williams and the military base. That road, like this road, is gravel. If you really wanted to celebrate something, you'd be taking pictures at the End of Paving, which is a completely uncelebrated, unmarked, and barely noticed transition point some miles outside the park.

So it was back to the stamps. I walked a few miles across the park, on a surprisingly underwhelming and dull trail considering its location, coming out next to a jetty into the Channel. At the end of the jetty was a small shack, the WMS Post Office. And it was locked. Post office closes at 5pm, I'd arrived at 5:15. No stamp for me.

But, I'm a persistant little fuck, and started looking for hinges or busted locks or other ways to covertly burglarize the post office. Except I was hardly covert at all, and the ranger drove up in his massive Land Rover to confront me.

Him: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Looking for a stamp."
Him: "We're closed."
Me: "When did you close?"
Him: "At 5."
Me: "Why?"
Him: "It's Christmas Eve."
Me: "Yes, it's almost Christmas. Did you close it?"
Him: "Yes I... fine, come on."
Mission accomplished. Of course I'd never intended to burglarize a building, especially so blatently. I just wanted him to come over so I could lure him into the Christmas Miracle Trap.

I got my stamp, a giant page-stealing seal of a stamp featuring a family of penguins, despite the lack of actual penguins in Ushuaia or the National Park. In fact, I got an entire page of stamps, the ranger's frustration and generosity mingling to completely horde an entire page of my precariously dwinding passport space. I hope Pete is happy.

But more importantly, I got a beer. People who trek all the way to the WMS post office dont just get free stamps, they get a free beer: Cape Horn Microbrew. A beer you will not find anywhere else on earth. I laid back on the cloudy, freezing beech and drank my prize. Perhaps this I can call mission accomplished.

As it turns out, the last bus was also at 5pm, and I was left stranded in the park. Thankfully though, a pair of Europeans gave me a lift back to town. As I sat in the back seat and quietly stewed in my own arrogent sense of achievement, the pair start comparing birds here to those in Alaska. I stop them; "Wait, you've come all the way from Alaska?" Oh yes, they came all the way down the Panamerica, over to Route 40, and finally to Route 3, to reach the end of the road, having began at the start of it. I had a nice slice of humble pie to go with my WMS beer.

And yet, none of these objective-based material Mission Accomplished matter compared to the real goal gained. While traipising around Tierra del Fuego, I got an email welcoming me, with full scholarship, to postgraduate studies in Australia. I was finally finished chasing, both pointless mission objectives and an uncertain future.

And above the computer terminals in the hostel is a map, an upside down map of the world with Ushuaia at the top. And on this crazy inverted map, a slogan: The End of the World, the Beginning of Everything.

Food List

Just a minor addendum, here's a list of everything I ate in 4 days in Torres del Paine National Park:

- 3 pasta dinners (tomato sause, sausage and mushroom, tuna bolognaise)
- the rest of the box of tuna
- 3 bowls of oatmeal with milk and jam
- 2 italian sausages
- 1 ham and cheese sandwich (cost $11)
- crackers with pork spread
- tube (12-15) of chocolate chip cookies
- tube of shortbread cookies
- tube of coconut cookies
- tube of vienna fingers
- 2 tubes of mediocre Oreo knockoffs
- bag of raisins
- bag of peanuts
- small box of chocolate covered peanuts
- 2 tubes of knockoff Pringles potato chips (lot more than 12-15)
- 4 bananas
- 6 hard boiled eggs
- 14 cereal bars
- 3 large chocolate bars (2 dark, 1 milk)
- an entire pound cake (eaten in under 4 minutes)
- partridge in a pear tree

My Pal Murphy

I dont travel alone. I have a close friend who follows me around everywhere I go. His name is Murphy. No, Murphy is not a puppy, though I sure wish he was. Not an animal of any kind. Nor is he a particularly weak-willed person. In fact, he's kind of a stubborn dick. Murphy is a law. A law that states if something can go wrong, it probably will. On my camping trip to Torres del Paine, the two of us became very well acquainted in a one-man tent.

On the first morning, I needed to catch the bus to the national park. I asked the woman who works the hostel where I can find the bus. She takes out a map and points out the bus terminal in town. The nonexistant bus terminal. I hail a taxi and ask him to take me there. The taxi driver is confused, but intelligent, and asks me to show him my ticket. He reads it, and instead of the nonexistant bus terminal, he takes me to the bus company's office, a 2 minute walk that costs the town's flat taxi rate of 5 bucks. There he drops me off and takes off before he sees if everything is alright.

It's not. The temperature early in the morning is flirting with freezing, and I'm locked outside a closed office. A locked door I pace in front of for over half an hour. A woman pulls up in her car, gets out, and asks me if the office is open. I point out the obvious fact that I'm shivering outside. She tells me she'll wait, then gets back in her car and waits, the loud music only partially muffled by the closed doors keeping out the cold. At no point does it occur to her to invite me in.

Finally, someone comes to the office to let me in. I go inside and warm up my rigid fingers, not noticing the time past until well past when the bus was supposed to show. It never did. Turns out the bus was supposed to pick me up at my hostel, and never comes to the bus office or the nonexistant bus station. It's already on its way to the park. The old man who owns the bus company, back hunched from years of stupid kids like me, calls the bus, and has them pull off on the side of the road. Then he takes me personally in his truck 20 minutes to catch up on the bus. The bus driver starts swearing at me when I finally get on the bus, and everyone is giving me dirty looks, except for relieved looks on the faces of the 4 people waiting for me.

Pete, Jan, Martin, and Martin's friend Kristoff are waiting for me. Ben has gone ahead to do the longer circuit, in less time than it takes us to do the short. 6 friends in total.

The bus takes us into the park, stops at the entrance fee station, and drops us off at the little ferry pier half an hour before its scheduled departure. The advice we were given by our respective hostels was to not be first on the boat, as your backpack would just be crushed on the bottom of the pile. So we dont hurry, and leisurely wait to be the last ones on board. Except, the captain tells us he's full, but he'll make a special second trip, so come back in an hour. We deliberate what to do with our newfound free time, and decide to hike to a nearby waterfall. We're starting to walk away and the boat is preparing to sail, when suddenly, the captain stops and calls back "No, we have a little more room. Last call, all aboard!" We barely hear him, and nearly miss the only boat of the day.

Lucky too since the views from the boat were glorious. Glacier-fed eerie blue lakes, multicolored sharp spires and pinnacles, blinding snowfields, you really get a great slice of the entire park. In other words, we could've just taken the boat roundtrip and left, sparing ourselves the ordeal to come.

The park has a famous trekking system known as the 'W', a transect of the park with 3 parallel day trips up into the mountains coming off of it in the beginning, middle, and end. !_!_! essentially.

The first leg of the first trip up to the edge of Glacier Gray was pretty easy and laid back. We're walking along the edge of the lake with te glacier not yet in sight, and as we approach the first glacier lookout, the wind starts to pick up. It only gets worse as we clear the ridge, and by the time we're standing on the rock jetty overhanging the lack, the winds have reached near-hurricane force winds. Standing on that ledge is near-impossible, and frankly-near fatal. I only have the will to do it for a few seconds. It's scary, almost enough to wet yourself.

In fact, as I leave the ledge, I realize I haven't pissed all day and I really gotta go. I try and find some kind of sheltered rock cove, away from eyes and wind. I find what appears to be a suitable spot, and pull it out. I start to piss, and immediately realize my mistake. This curved cove is just acting like a bouncing chamber for the wind. Air is blowing in every direction simultaneously, and takes my urine with it, splattering the wall, my shoes, and my pants. I cut off the stream in just seconds, but the damage is done. Luckily, it's started to rain gently, and if I stand downwind from the group, no one is the wiser.

The going gets tougher and steeper in the second half, and its humid outside with the drizzle. I'm wearing boxers, imagining the hike to be easy. It's not, and before too long, the friction builds, and I'm in red-hot agony. Only 2 hours slog until I get the next chance to unpack my bag out of the rain and fetch some reliable tighty whities.

The hike between this nut-saving refugio and the next campsite is only 4 kilometers, but it takes us forever. Well, most of the group does it in normal time, but Martin's knees are troubling him, and I patiently keep him company. Worse, this stretch is past the traditional tourist W path, a small piece of the longer circuit, but the differences are immediate. The trail is much crappier, much more poorly marked, and the little wooden foot bridges over streams are nowhere to be found. We find ourselves rock-hopping across. Streams 1 and 2 were easy, stream 3 got my right foot slightly damp, but stream 4 had me taking a nice swim from the knees down in the glacial meltwater. My shoes weren't dry until a full day later.

Arriving in camp, I get to work setting things up, but I find my rented tent nearly impossible to put up. I can't figure out how to get it in place. This is partially because I've never encountered this particular type of tent before, and partially because one of the crucial sockets for a tent pole is missing. Oh, and the tent comes with no stakes. We dig in the tent pole, shore it up with rocks, substitute wet twigs for stakes, and hope for the best.

Ben arrives in the same camground that night, but thanks to a lack of coordination, we discover we're going in opposite directions, and he understandably doesn't want to backtrack a full day. We're together that evening, but starting early the next morning, we're down to 5. Well, early morning for him, anyway. The rest of us set out clocks for 7 to be able to see him off, but all sleep through until 10. Oops.

I have trouble getting up because I'm always tired. Martin has his sore knees and Kristoff has been traveling. Jan was expecting Pete to wake her up. Pete doesnt walk up on time because, as he discovers when he finally does wake up, he's become violently sick. Vomiting, fever, chills, shakes, the works. We'd all been told the water in the park is safe to drink unfiltered, and the rest of us are fine, but the word we hear on the grapevine later is that there's exactly one place in the park you shouldnt drink the water, a spot near where the cows graze (and shit). That's where Pete filled up.

Regardless, the obvious fact facing us is that Pete cannot go on. He needs to leave the park, immediately, and we're unsure if he can even hike back. A boat sails on the glacial lake though, and perhaps that boat can get him back to the bus. I give Pete an antibiotic to start him off before rushing back to the refugio to find out. I dont fall in the water this time.

The refugio owner agrees to talk to the boat captain when he makes his daily landfall at 1pm. In the meanwhile, I start to hike back to carry Pete's bag for him. Turns out he's got a porter in the park to do it for him, but I dont mind, as I got to indulge in my secret hero complex while not actually having to carry extra weight. We walk back to the refugio together and wait an hour for the boat. When it arrives, while normal passengers are getting on and off, the owner chats casually with the captain. The captain then comes and tells us that Pete can ride back for free, but Jan, his wife, will need to pay. $70 bucks in cash, significantly more than she's carrying. Jan can't afford to go, and Pete, the loyal husband, refuses to be separated from her, and says he'll walk. Except, he can barely walk 10 minutes, let alone 4 hours. The captain shrugs, and starts to walk back to the boat. Suddenly angry, I chase after him, and start to rant impassioned at him for his cruelty. He shrugs again, and continues walking away. I turn and start to huff off, when the captain unexpectedly calls after me "Ok, both can come free".

Now my hero complex is really satisfied, but we're down to 3, and I dont even like Kristoff that much. He's too introverted, and the two of them spend most of their time talking in German.

We continue our hike, but after not too long break for lunch. My shoes are finally starting to dry, and I take the chance to unpack and change my socks, and put away my warm fleece. I start to eat lunch, when the fast winds push a rain squall into our midst. I dig back into my bag and pull out my raincoat to eat. 5 minutes later, the squall is blown away with the clouds, and the hot sun necessitates a long sleeve shirt to protect my arms. I end up changing 3 times at lunch. This is what Torres del Paine is like.

Thanks to illness and slowness, we dont get back to the end of the first leg until late on the second day, when we intended to walk to the middle spot campsite. We debate whether we want to keep walking past dinnertime, when the ranger interrupts us and removes our choice. The other campsite is full and we need to stay here. In other words, at the end of the second day, we're back where we started walking on day one.

To make up for lost time the next day, we decide to wake up even earlier than we intended to that morning. We sleep in even later this time. Almost immediately, my allergies started acting up, and I began sneezing violently every few seconds until I took an allergy pill. That made my symptoms quickly subside, until the side effects kicked in, and I started becoming drowsy on top of general hiking fatigue. It was a long morning.

Thankfully, I started feeling better by our lunch break when we reached the next camp, where we were able to drop our packs and tackle the next section carrying just a little water. Without the weight, I was spry and energized, bounding my way up. This part, the French Valley, was easily my favorite part. Boulder scrambles, mud pits, windswept barrens, and every other fun part of hiking. Across the river, a glacier hung off the side of the mountain, and every few minutes, a small avalanche fell. It sounded like thunder. Thanks to the river, we were in no danger, but it still startled me everytime; the experience on Villarrica was still fresh in my mind. Only in Patagonia would you be grateful that "Oh, its only an avalanche".

But the clouds were pouring in, and rain was starting to come down. The other hikers on my path started turning around and coming back, since the lookout on the end would be completely clogged up with nothing to see. I however perservered, simply enjoying the hike for the fun and technical challenge, the rain just adding to the authenticity of the experience. And lo and behold, when I finally did reach the lookout, the clouds parted for just a few minutes, and I was rewarded with an absolutely stunning 360 degree ampitheater view of all the mountains and glaciers from the center of the park. This made it worth it.

However, giddily bounding back down the mountain, I managed to re-fuck up the ankle I'd fucked up back in Villarrica. I'd also managed to get lost multiple times, starting at the very top of the lookout. The trail is only well-marked in one direction. I found myself repeatedly wandering around until I found my own muddy footprints, when I'd then trace back along their drunken jubilent paths until I found my way home again.

I managed to make it up and down to the top in 4 hours flat, when even the map suggests you need atleast 5 and a half. My compatriots on the other hand used almost that much and never even made it to the top. By the time they reached the bottom, they were fully exhausted and wanted to once again camp short. I had the option of staying with them or going ahead by myself. Having already gone from 6 to 3, I didn't want to whittle our numbers down any farther and be by myself, so I opted to stay, understanding this would make it extremely hard to reach the final site and the bus tomorrow evening. I stayed out of loyalty, to spend fleeting time with my friends. They passed out almost immediately after eating dinner, leaving me alone anyway.

Later that evening, I go to throw out my trash, and wander over to the ranger booth to ask him where the garbage can is. The ranger - young, undertrained, underpaid, lacking in english, and absolutely clueless - sees me with a garbage bag and threatens to call the police. The ranger has no idea how to respond to my indignant reply (in english), and gets his english-speaking boss. The boss immediately surmises what happens and chews out his employee. When I join in, the ranger sheepishly runs off with his tail between his legs and slams the door behind him like a child. Then the boss tries to be buddy-buddy with me, chummily and inanely asking my name and where I'm from, ect, pretending to be my friend so I dont complain to his boss. Frankly, I'd rather he just call the police.

As the sun drops and the light starts to go to sleep, I set up my broken tent. Except, I discover that the zipper has somehow become jammed, and the door wont open. Struggling with it, I manage to open the door, only to render it stranded open, and the wind is starting to pick up again. I manage to stitch the tent up with duct tape. Satisfied with my ad hoc job and too tired to care, I start to settle in for sleep, only to remember I'd left most of my stuff outside. Fuck it.

And then the allergy meds wear off. And thanks to the winds roaring both outside and from my nose, I couldnt sleep a wink.

We got up the next morning as a team, and ate breakfast as a team, but as I was finishing packing, the introverted and silently frustrated Kristoff suddenly announced "We're leaving, maybe you can catch up." I could not. We'd started as 6, and now I was down to myself, left alone with my pal Murphy. As predicted, I had neither the time nor the energy to do the last arm of the W, to see the namesake towers of Torres del Paine. Instead, I just made a straight line for the exit. My W trek looked more like a sideways F, for fail. Yet, failure was liberating. I was free to go slowly, at my own pace, to dawdle through forest and laze around on soft grass. It was some of the most fun I'd had in the park. Without goals, lacking hurry, things stopped going wrong. When I'd let go of everything, even Murphy left me alone.

Cruising

In any kind of linear fashion, this story is boring. I was on a boat. Huzzah. I rejected taking an unreliable bus for 2 days down an unpaved road for 140 dollars, and instead took a junky boat for 4 days through tight channels for 400 dollars.

This cruise, I mean ferry, I mean cargo ship, could not have been any more spartan. A bare cafeteria served its pretty tasty but highly repetitious meals only during tight and unflinching meal times, and there was no other food to be had. There was a bar, with predictably overpriced beer and awkwardly rigid chairs. On the back was a large open space with a giant chess board no one used. Entertainment consisted mostly of booze and cards, occasionally punctuated by an older man singing Frank Sinatra covers with an electric keyboard and bizare latino twist, and once by a bingo game followed by a 'Best of the 70s' dance party. It was almost always cloudy. Rain came surreptitiously, randomly, and often.

Yet, these seemingly bland days of transit were, collectively, one of the most memorable experiences in South America.

Now, here's the hard part. How can I possibly express the intangibles of this? Laying on my bed, chatting with my unseen roommate on the bunkbed above me, carefully articulating our arguments for over an hour about whether jello is a solid or a liquid, and if a liquid, whether it counts as a non-Newtonian fluid. It's a solid, under certain parameters. Ben and I spent countless otherwise-empty minutes and hours crossing swords over bizarre and seemingly inane aspects of physics and engineering, and loved every second. A British navy sailor getting a full ride to Cambridge, Ben was both tough and brilliant, and the two of us connected in strange ways cooped up in this metallic bubble from the world.

Ben was probably the most fun, but hardly the only one. Pete and Jan were a cross-Atlantic couple (Britain and New York) who were also drawn to our table. eager to pick up our knowledge on South America and possibly come with us. Mike and Tim were a pair of freshly-minted college grads coming from some obscure college in northern California, egging us on to try new treks (anyone wanna do the PCT with me?) and antsy to get their feet moving into Torres del Paine. Like some clump of cosmic gas, we drew more matter into us until we all squeezed and burst into nuclear fire. The cruise was not just about the foreign land outside our portholes, but random strangers linking together from the common bonds of being lost down here.

One wasnt a stranger. Martin had come down from Valparaiso, and had come to join me on this cruise and Paine hike after. I'll never really understand how I connect so well with a 40-something South African gay introspective accountant, but I do. Over a bottle of wine (bought by him, drank mostly by me), we could giggle like children well into the evening. As the booze flowed farther, Martin would make more and more sexually suggestive innuendos, though I cant figure out if he's just loosening up some or if he figures I'm loosening up more. I don't really mind, since I've never had a gay friend who hasn't made a pass at me at some point. It's worth smiling and taking it (the jokes, people) to keep it well lubricated (the friendship). These recurring faces give a sense of stability and do wonders to dampen my mental storms.

Also, I needed Martin's moral support. Ever since my rejection of Artie's advances (remember him?), I've remained happily celibate in South America. Sex never even crossed my mind during Ecuador or Peru, mostly because I was ill and depressed. In Bolivia, I was too damn busy. Nobody attractive in Atacama. The issue only first returned to mind in Mendoza, where the punkish American girl who encouraged me to get a tattoo made my mind bend in slightly prurient directions. We hit it off well, but she was entirely to caught up by the novelty of foreign men to consider a fellow Yankee. Still, the seed was planted. Pucon had its share of attractive women, but none who I met more than in passing. It wasnt until I got on the boat, that insular metal bubble, that things could come to a head.

Not that one could have sex on these boats. The beds were small, narrow, and uncomfortable. And they were bunkbeds, where any headboard banging would result in head smashing. The cabins were freezing during the day and broiling at night. Even if you could work out the logistics, sex was hardly possible with 3 roommates. And people in these cabins were the lucky ones; an equal number of beds were placed out in the open halls. I suspect the best place on this boat to try it would be down in the cargo hold, in between the cow trailers, in ankle-deep mystery fluid.

Anyway. This boat was confined quarters, a captive audience, a few days to ferment, and nothing to do. It didnt take long for me to meet Amelie, a French girl in her late 20s with an insistance that she was still as young and fun as me. She was beautiful, and a skilled tango dancer, which made her seeming interest in me inexplicable. We talked aimlessly; I waited for her to get bored and leave, but she only seemed to get more interested in what I had to say, and stayed planted in her seat until it was me who finally left. Not that I would've even known how to seal the deal with a woman like this anyway. I retreated, no sugar coating.

I found her the next day just as absorbed in conversation at the bar with another guy. Ben. Sure I was jealous, but how was I supposed to compete with a sailor and avowed world-trekker? Well, I couldn't. Nor could he compete the next day with a transplant from Spain who could match her tango for tango. Nor could he compete with some old dumpy dude coincidentally also from the same region of France. No, we quickly realized, she wasn't interested in any of us. Amelie was just a nice, pleasant girl who loved the attention of men without ever putting out. And god bless her for that. Everybody else on the boat thought she was a tease by the end, but I knew better. She was just enjoying herself in a different but fundamentally similar way as me. Plus, she taught me tango and helped me practice charming beautiful women, so I really cant resent her at all.

Martin too opened up his charm wallet, but had his eye set on one of the seemingly inordinate number of gay couples. Not as a home wrecker, you understand, but simply as a side dish. I've come to understand, if not entirely accept, that gay couples are a bit more fluid like that. Non-Newtonian. Either way, I decided to help him, partially out of the hope he would stop his innuendos, but mostly out of genuine friendship. I introduced him to the concept of wingmanship by striking up conversation with one, then bailing before they try and pull me into some warped fourgy. Sadly, he too found his interest only wanted friends without benefits.

Since Quito, I've retreated into some form of purified heterosexuality, not visiting gay bars or really talking to gay people, and have really only had eyes for attractive women (when I've had any eyes at all). Joining the hunt with Martin reminded me of the scent of a kill. Not every gay boy here was in his middle age, as Joe was 20, from St. Louis, and had unsettling resemblence to other gay boys I've known. He too shared Amelie's appearance of a blank cheque, but I know gay boys better. I went for him, hard. (stop finding innuendos that arent there) I likely could have too, if he didn't get ill on the last night. But the damage was done. This cruise had gotten me in touch with my baser core, propping up my hetero and jumpstarting my homo. What this means for Buenos Aires and a tawdry New Years remains to be seen.

This cruise didn't have any structured entertainment because it was meant to be introspective. We were meant to bond with our fellow passengers, in whatever strange ways we wanted. We were meant to sleep long hours, read long books, and take our sweet time in giant chess. We were meant to sit and stare as solemn peaks went by, their snowcapped heads in the clouds and their feet at the water's edge. This place was something special, the third time I've been bowled over by a place in the natural world this month. But I won't even try to express this in words. I tried, and naturally failed, to capture it with my camera lens. Just know that's how it was.

And yet, natural beauty and human sparks aside, the greatest moment occured when I was alone and couldn't see shit. It had been raining all day, and everyone retreated inside. Except me, I'd spent too much of the day cooped up in my bed. I donned my pants and a raincoat, grabbed my ipod, and ran outside. I stood on the bow for awhile, listening to my favorite songs, recreating a moment from the Great Barrier Reef, when I decided to take a walk. The boat wasn't big, and I made a lap in just a minute. So I moved onto another deck and went around again. And again. The boat lurched, and I lurched with it. I spread my arms to keep balance and moved faster. Puddles soaked my shoes through. No matter, go faster. I ran dangerously, swooped, dove, and flew. Singing and dancing in the rain, when was the last time I'd done that? Everyone watched me from through the portholes, confused but smiling and jealous. We were in Patagonia now. All rules suspended, all bets are off. The score reset. I was going to have fun any way I could, and I could only hope to lead by example. I did.

Changes Suddenly

Don't think I'm crapping out just because I'm not writing. Just the opposite, I've been very busy. After Valparaiso, I hopped over the High Andes pass to Mendoza, the most bizarrely European city I've ever seen (and I've been to Europe). Wide tree-lined avenues, limitless cafes, blah blah. Kinda boring really.

What sustained me was a proclivity for adventurous and stupid shit. I started Mendoza by paragliding (insisting on extra spins and flips, of course), and devolved into drunk biking. Mendoza is famous for its wineries, and biking between them while ever-increasingly sloshed is a regional pastime. Martin, Bart and I only managed to hit 2 before we got loose and goofy, getting lost on the return and requiring police escort back to town.

However, Mendoza just wasn't that exciting. I decided to up the ante by visiting Pucon, the alleged adventure capitol of Chile. Well, the trip there wasn't exciting, unless you count 4 hours stuck in customs as a thrillride. And the first day wasn't that exciting, as whitewater kayaking was booked and I had to settle on an unseaworthy plastic craft on the placid (but pretty) lake. I followed it the next day with a visit to the neigh-unpronounceable Huerquehue National Park. Nothing stops the heart more than 3 hours of running uphill because the shit bus schedule only gives you 4 hours in a giant park. I did see cool Monkeypuzzle trees though (google it).

However, this was all a warm-up. What I really came for was the perfect triangular snowcone of Villarrica Volcano. The monster smoulders over Pucon, threatening it regularly with death-by-mudslide, or worse. The town square actually has a volcanic traffic light system, where green means 'fine', yellow means 'get the fuck out', and red means 'if you are seeing this, your flesh is melting'. Handy system. The town also has evacuation route signs posted everywhere, pointing panicked people people towards the peninsula jutting out into the town's lake. Another clever system, as everybody knows the best place to be during an eruption is pinned between a pyroclastic flow and a large body of water.

Well, that's all well and good for the townspeople, but something like an active volcano is a beacon for me, a red lava flag encouraging me to charge. I booked with my hostel to climb the next day, barring of course foul weather. Weather.com said tomorrow was going to be sunny. Accuweather called for a clouds and a slight chance of rain. Weatherbug prophecized storms. Welcome to the Great Austral, ya?

I woke up at 6, ungodly early for me, and clawed my way to the window. Only the slightest whisp of mare's tail clouds hung in the air, perfect climbing weather. I threw on my clothes, tossed a few cookies down my gullet (breakfast of champions), and ran to the tour agency. They gave us a bag with snowpants, a windbreaker, hiking boots, crampons, a helmet, icepick strapped to the side, and a mysterious piece of synthetic fabric whose purpose I'd only learn about later. We were crammed in a bus, and before we were even woke up, off we went.

We were given an option. The real men could slog up the steep muddy side, through the thick slush of melting snow, and across the ankle-bending softpack to reach the start of the ice. Or we could pay a little extra and opt to take the skilift part of the way up the mountain. We unanimously voted to take the lift.

It was broken. We walked.

Distances are deceptive. What looked like a 20 minute trek just to the end of the chairlift became an hour and a half, and that's only a short way up the mountain. Looking back, it looked like we'd never moved at all. Then suddenly we looked back, and Pucon was just a tiny circle of prime real estate, the overpriced resorts and summer houses merely a blur against an otherwise unmarred landscape. We were high up. Tiny marshmellow cloudpuffs had started to form, but the view remained clear from here over the High Andes pass, over more postcard volcanos, well into Argentina.

Tony grabbed for his little videocam and started filming. I met him on this climb, a young man in the film industry, working as a cameraman for an indie Canadian documentary on Chile. Apparently he's also a music video producer, and occasional movieman. The resume he spouted off sounded improbable at best for a boy my age, but even if he were lying, the ease, complexity, and extravagence of his story (and business cards) would've placed him as a Hollywood man (or the Canadian equivilent) anyway.

We struck up a surprisingly easy friendship for two people so far apart in life. We do have something in common though, my amateur photography gives me a creative streak he could relate to. Believe it or not, my photos are good, and you should be looking at them (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2155265&id=3108199&l=568d870c69). Tony agreed, and wants to use my photos in the documentary. Stay tuned to discover if I make a sudden career choice to filmmaker.

Anyway. As we continued climbing, the view got increasingly less picturesque. Marshmellows made way for overcast, and soon enough we had no view at all. Ascending higher, we climbed into the overcast, and could barely see more than a few feet in front of our faces. Our icepicks functioned both as walking stick and white cane. A light snow starting falling, and a heavy wind started blowing. In these conditions, climbing could be dangerous. The guides had the option of turning us around, but decided since we were so close (more than an hour) from the top, we should just keep climbing, so we did.

The guides, it seemed, had a sixth sense for these things. As we finally mounted the final push, the clouds started clearing. We were treated at the top to a broken, but beautiful, view of the valley below, atleast 260° degrees in most directions. A touch of snow still came down, but something odd was mixed in...

"Wait," you might be thinking. "Why only 260°?" Well, a cookie for anyone who guessed correctly: There was a crater blocking our view. Our position, in hindsight, was a bit precarious. One side was a steep decent way, way down. The other side was a poison-spewing hole in the earth.

I of course chose the poison hole. Edging closer and closer towards the sharp drop in, I could just begin to make out the actual vent, the glowing gullet that leads deep underground and into the boiling magma beneath Pucon's feet. It belched and spat sulfurous smoke and carbon monoxide in our faces. We all coughed and gagged, slowly choking to death to get one more slightly-closer photograph. You should've been there.

Unfortunately, our time at the top was limited, partially by our slow uncomfortable asphixiations, but also because the weather was starting to turn again. The clouds were returning with a vengence. Now we learned what the mysterious piece of cloth was for. A vaguely-square piece with straps to wrap tight around our waist and legs -it was, for lack of a better term, a soft toboggan. We were meant to slide out way back down the mountain.

And that's exactly what we did. I took a running start, and kicked my feet out from under me. I landed hard on my back, squashing my backpack, slamming my helmet into my bed, feeling the wind slapped out of me. Then I started sliding. Faster. Faster. Vaguely out of control... and a stop. Into a snowbank.

We got up laughing and ran to the next slope. "Hey Tony, a race!" Dozens of sledders before us had carved tracks into the ice, and we each picked one and jumped. His was smoother, so he expected to go faster. Mine was full of cruel bumps the whole way down. I hit the first one and went flying into the air, crashing back at an awkward angle, momentum not slowed the slightest. Seconds later I hit the next one, then another. My body flopped around like a ragdoll, nearly turning me around head-first. Snow shot up my pants, down my shirt, into my face and filling my nose. I couldn't see where I was or where I was going or how fast I was doing it. All I know is that when I finally came to a stop, I was far, far lower down the mountain than I was before, and I'd won the race. The two of us were both soaked to the bone, but Tony later had to go to the hospital for severe frostbite. I won twice.

After this point, the mountain started to flatten out too much for sledding, try as we might, using our ice picks like canoe paddles. Doesn't work. We tried walking out, but when you try walking sideways on a slope through slush while gravity pulls you down in a different direction, you just end up stumbling like a drunk, threatening your ankles every step. Our legs and joints were starting to get very angry at us, and the sky replied in kind, getting darker by the minute, nearly black. A clear gust front developed, and the hard wind threatened to toss us over the side.

It wasn't long before the rain started, and the rain quickly turned to sleet. Then the sleet started becoming harder... no, this wasn't sleet. Hail was pouring down, getting bigger every minute. The hail itself wasn't too big, pea-sized at worst, but highway speed winds turned them into missles, pummeling our heads, necks, and arms. We started running. Helmets started sprouting from bags, but our necks were left vulnerable. I tried covering mine with my hand, but it only made my hand hurt. Instead, I found myself crouching, like a turtle into my own body, hoping my helmet could protect me everywhere. I hunched over and turned inward and suddenly wished I was somewhere else. Then the lightning came.

We'd been hearing rumbles in the distance, rumbles which evolved into sharp cracks. But this wasnt a crack. This was sub-audible, a shove, a slap. Something terrifying. The thunder wasn't near us, but above us, the sound was the shockwave strafing our heads. The lightning had hit the top of a skilift pole, mere meters from where I was standing. I instinctively huddled up, involuntarily releasing from my mouth some sad hybrid of a yell and a moan. I stopped running then, my survival instinct robbed from me. I just started walking, slowly, swinging my metal icepick near the ground. Lightning continued to strike ground around us, once even throwing half a dozen people to the ground with its force. I kept walking. Running was useless now, and all I could do is play the numbers game and hope lightning hit one of the dozens of others and not me.

As some of you might know, I have a history with lightning. I've been nearly hit more than my share of times (thanks Kyra). Lightning is a raw power that makes me feel my mortality more than anything else on Earth, more than standing on the precipice of a live volcano. Here I think I came closer to being hit than ever before.

But the lightning, somehow, never hit any of us. We made it back to the vans and headed back to town. By the time we arrived, the sun was shining again. The people in town had barely seen rain, and not a hint of hail. I was still shivering, soaked in icewater, but still unhinged. I was cold. And wet. Hurt. Scared. And damn did I feel alive.

Living On A Prayer

I've had plenty of time to think lately. A 24 hour bus to Santiago (surprisingly, one of my least painful bus experiences), wandering around the downtown, getting lost in the world's most maze-like city park (a multi-tiered wedding cake-esque monstrosity with more stairs than an Escher painting), and getting lost in the convoluted neighborhoods and backalleys of hilly Valparaiso. Yes, plenty of time to think back on the first half of this trip.

See, Santiago is the halfway point, in both distance and time. About 3000 to Quito, another 3000 to Ushuaia. Yes, plenty of buses, though the buses in Chile and Santiago actually have working lights, reclining seats, and don't break down daily. Until now, buses have been the bain of my existence, a cheap but painful regular mental flogging. Now, the buses are a painful existence to my wallet, but an almost pleasant jaunt through the high mountains or along the sea coast.

I've been homesick, friendsick, lovesick, but most of all travel sick. I first came ill in Baños, Ecuador. I'd had both the Amazon and Rural Andean Village trips behind me, so I suppose it came at a fortuitous time, but sitting awake on the toilet in Cuenca because you've got a fever and the brutal shits and the mutant roosters wont stop crowing, never comes at a fortuitous time. I got ill again in La Paz, not taking the advice to not eat the 2 Boliviano (30 cents) streetburgers, but street food is oh-so-delicious. I may have eaten at the priciest, swankiest restaurant in La Paz (an unheard of 12 dollars for a 3 course meal), but the best food I have is the pan-fried mystery meat (typically llama) they sell on the sketchiest of street corners. In my opinion, those who are too pussy to eat street food in South America fail to really experience the continent.

I've also been anxious. Deep, pervading, insomnia-inducing anxiety for days on end. I replay thoughts and emails over and over, preparing what I'll say for all possible outcomes. I pray, an act I don't truly believe in, from every deity from the Amazonian tree spirits to Tio, the protector god of miners in Potosi. It steals my time, my money, and even some of my enjoyment when I spend hours ruminating while hiking along the Inca Trail or speeding hazardously down the Death Road. This specter over my head is Graduate School. Australia promised me an answer in early November, and in early November Macquarie accepted me, but put me on a scholarship waitlist until early December. In the meanwhile, Arizona State, University of Texas, University of British Columbia, Eastern Michigan University, Eastern Carolina University, and Boise State have all expressed come-and-go interest in having me, and even less promise when it comes to funding. So I slowly hack away at various domestic applications while Australia haunts my dreams, on the occasion it lets me sleep. Reading Stephen King's 'IT' didn't get me nearly as bad.

I've seen my share of culture, from the Wonder of the World known as Machu Picchu to the disgusting facimile known as the Floating Uros Islands. I've also seen my fair share of bars, from the disconcertingly American gay bars of Quito, to the hostel bars of Loki, to the cokebinge Couchsurfer Halloween Party in Lima, to the pile of vomit on the floor next to my bed in Cuzco. However, I've come to realize I really need to triage if I want to see even a fraction of what I want to see. I'm a scientist, a biologist, and I'm best served seeing the myriad of ecosystems that set South America apart. One of the first things I did after arriving in Ecuador was hop on the first bus to an Amazonian lodge, and there I saw nearly every animal on my wishlist, from Goliath Bird-Eating Tarantula (on my shoulder) to Poison Dart Frogs, Bullet Ants, Morpho Butterflies, Piranas (in my stomach), to rowdy troops of Squirrel Monkeys. And I've continued to see the strange and wonderful, from foxes and bizarro wolf spiders on the Inca Trail to Vicuñas, Flamingos, and Rheas in the Salt Flats. Still ahead of me are the Arucaria forests and frozen Southern Coasts, replete with penguins, Elephant Seals, and perhaps even whales. And then there's the Galapagos, the biologist's version of a wet dream.

It's all been disturbingly expensive, far more than I budgeted for. I had maybe enough money to eat and sleep, but that'd make for pretty boring travel. If I want to ride the Devil's Nose Train in Alausi or visit the ancient pyramids in Trujillo or soar in the cloud forest canopy of Mindo, I need extra money. And ultimately, I had to do the thing I least wanted to do, short of selling my body to gross fat Peruvians: I had to come crawling back to my father and begging for money. Of course, he gave it willingly, happy to help me, but it didn't make me any less ashamed at having to admit I still can't take care of myself at 22 while traipising across the world.

No, ultimately I'm not independent. I'm not independent financially, and I'm hiking down the same Gringo Trail hundreds of others are and thousands have before me. I see some of the same faces from Cuzco pop up in La Paz. From Riobamba in Sucre. Everyone from Potosi in Uyuni. The further south I get, the more narrow the choices become, and the more likely I'll see the same faces again. However, this isnt an annoyance, it's something I look forward to. All those hours I spent in internet cafes, long conversations on Skype, uploading hundreds of photos, even updating this blog, they all exist to keep me from being independent, from floating free. I want to stay connected to my friends and family, they keep me sane in this insane continent, this crazy world. But most of my friends are thousands of miles away. Now I'm making friends here. Perhaps not the closest of friends, probably not even people I'll ever see again. Abigail, Nick, Christian, Eddie, Jessie, Tim, Andrew, Rose, and Martin: if nothing else, they're names I'll remember. Faces I'll see in my big boat.

I'll be honest though, months of solo traveling gets lonely, often. It's expensive, trying, and sometimes traumatizing. But I'm surviving. At this point, I'd even say I'm thriving. I'm adapting, I'm connecting, and I'm seeing both the larger world and my inner self in ways I never have before. And best of all, it's only half over.

Teamwork

The Atacama Desert. Never has so much nothing been such a big something. Only here can a small patch of scrubby spinegrass seem like an oasis. There's places alround the town of San Pedro rightfully called The Valley of Death and the Valley of the Moon. And yet, in this parched little spit of land, something sprouted.

It started with meat. Chile doesn't allow meat products to cross their borders, so the man next to me on the bus wanted me to help him finish off his beef jerky. His name was (is) Martin. He's from South Africa, backpacking like me before he goes back to school. Also like me, he's going down into Patagonia. Unlike me, he's 41. Slightly grizzled look aside, he's got enough youthful energy and geek chic charm that the two of us get along surprisingly well.

Traveling with him are Rose, another older-than-she-looks South African, a bit of an OCD planner but otherwise lovely. Rounding out the trio is Bart, a highly opinionated and vocal Polish lawyer, who's entirely too tall for any doorway in South America. They all met each other in Bolivia and formed a bloc. Quickly, wordlessly, I joined too. We found a hostel.

Our one day in San Pedro was a busy day. Breakfast, a trip to the Valley of the Moon, and a guided tour of the night sky after. The Valley of the Moon is a pretty spectacular place, where wind and sand have carved monoliths into rolling waves of rock. Paltry compared with the Salt Flats, but worth an afternoon. We scrambled through salt caves, up the waves, over the dunes, across the ridges, all to catch the sight of the setting sun.

This was one of my favorite daytrips, but not because of what we did. Stellar, sure, but what really set it apart was the laughter. The four of us, plus a French couple we met (the first French couple who's company I've really enjoyed), somehow really clicked, and the conversation flowed like cool water in the desert. We could've been on a dull night bus and had the same amount of fun between us. I felt connected in a way I hadn't since Cuzco.

After sunset, we bid the French couple a reluctant farewell, and prepared for our second trip of the day. Except, we only had 20 minutes between the two. I needed a bus ticket, Rose and Martin needed jackets, Bart needed to find his other friends, and we all needed dinner. No way we could pull this off, separately.

I recall the full menu of this pizza place I went to, and tell the others on the taxi ride back, before jumping out of the taxi early to run to the bus station. Rose takes all our orders and runs to the restaurant. Martin runs off to get jackets, and Bart goes to confirm our spot on the tour. I get my ticket to Santiago, cross into Martin on my way past the hostel. He gives me a message to pass off to Rose. I take a piss, get my own cout, and hurry off for the restaurant. Rose is there with our orders in, but she needs to get some water from the bodega. She tags me off to stay. Bart comes, tells me I need to pay for my tour. Just in time, Martin shows up the restaurant and tags me out. Bart shows me the way to the tour place before taking off to find his friends. I pay up, and head back the the restaurant. Martin needs to leave, but he's already paid up for all of us. Rose comes, just in time for the food to be ready. She's brought forks. The two of us grab the food and go to the company where Bart has just shown up with his two friends. Then Martin arrives with the tickets, just in time for the bus to show. We all eat in the back row of the bus, satisfied with ourselves for pulling off the impossible.

The 'tour' if you can call it that, is an odd one. An older French ex-pat, a bizarro, combatively atheistic, jingoistic, sexually harrassing astronomer, shows us famous constellations in the southern skies, and gives us tips how to use this knowledge to pick up women. Seriously. But he's funny and off-color, and we enjoy it in spite of ourselves. Then we get to play with his telescopes. The man spent thousands of his own dollars to built fantastic telescopes out of abandoned barrels and top-quality ground glass optics. For the first time, I could see star clusters and nebulas with my own eyes.

Some of the best features of the night sky were washed out by the nearly full moon, but this misfortune of timing turned out to be the best part. One of the telescopes was pointed at the shadow on the edge of the moon, and with a slight push, you strafe along the craters of the moon like Apollo 11 ready to land the Eagle. We all took closeup pictures through the lenses before we left, satisfied wtih ourselves for finding this off-beat gem of a 'tour'.

The three of them took off for Salta the next morning, promising to meet up with me in Mendoza a week later for drunk winery biking. My bus to Santiago was that afternoon, but the time between proved traumatic. Suddenly the desert was unbearably hot. Suddenly I kept getting lost in this little town we'd explored plenty together. Suddenly the food was awful and the water left me parched and I felt ill. It seems inexplicable, but at the time I understood.

I'd been slowly running out of stamina. Traveling by yourself drains you to your marrow. I'd been in a low place before, right before Cuzco. Then I'd been refreshed, and it held me aloft until Potosi, where I could fill up again. The desert is a harsh place, a place humans aren't really meant to be, and I ran empty fast.

However, I was headed for cooler, more humid, more southerly climates as I began to tackle the Great South and Patagonia. And I wasn't going to be alone. As you head into Patagonia, people all start headed the same way. And the South African bloc promised to meet me again in Puerto Montt for the start of Torres del Paine. I wasn't going to alone as I started the second half of my Austral adventure.

Moonscapes

As I've said, the Antiplano brings things back. The three Brits (well, two Brits and one crazy bitch Canadian who thinks radio waves are fucking with bees) I met on the bus to Potosi who went their own way were here on my bus to Uyuni, somewhere near the back. Next to me was a professor from Estonia. Despite no contact during the ride, they hooked up upon arrival, and I stayed on my own. And yet, forces conspired to prevent me from staying lone wolf.

I find them on the street the next morning, and a brief chat confirms we've booked our salt flat tours with two separate companies. We separate again, only until evening, when they come into the pizza place I'm eating. They check the prices and walk. Later, when I'm combing town to find a place I can use Skype, I accidentally wander into the pizza place they settled on. Only an hour later, I'm sitting in an internet cafe, and they come in. Turns out they cant burn a CD and leave. Turns out the owner is a douchebag and I leave. I go to a new internet cafe, and they find me 5 minutes later.

Nothing here too surprising, it's a small town after all. What gets me is when I find out the next morning that the company I booked with overbooked, and they booted me to a different company, one of the 60 other operating in town. The owner leads me to a jeep around the corner, and there they are, waiting for me.

First stop is the Cemetary of Trains outside of town, where old gutted locomotives ceremonially were left to rot and rust. Is it a museum? A rememberance of a steam-powered past? No, just a giant free-form tetnusy playground. Kids of all ages jumped and climbed and threatened to break their joints.

Oh, and I found one of the women from my hostel in Quito there, another tourist in the 20+ jeeps flooding the road.

Next was the Salt Museum... again, not a museum. See the world's largest llama!... made of carved salt! Keeping it company in a dingy shack was a salt bird, salt armadillo, and salt man on his hands and knees in a 'sodomize me!' position. This trip was getting surreal before the trippy part even started.

Finally, the salt flats. Miles of hard white crust blinding you for miles in every direction. It sears your eyes, and when you close them, all you can see is vivid green behind your lids. The dried lakebed is so vast, it takes 2 hours to drive across. Some parts are covered in a thin layer of rainwater, just inches thick, unable to soak or permiate the salt beneath. It turns the lake into a giant mirror, reflecting the ring of mountains surrounding the lake and the clouds above.

In the middle of this vast empty is the oddly, possibly ironically named Fish Island. This giant fossilzed coral reef is paradise. Huge ancient cactuses, dopplegangers of saguaros and organ pipes, most dotted with big white flowers, make the island look like a slice of the best of Arizona. From the top, you can soak in the giant mirror in 360 degrees while swallows and dragonflies strafe your head. It's a lush, barren, beautiful place. On the ground, people mingled, goofed around, played with perspective photography, and celebrated existence on the salt. It looked and felt alot like Burning Man, the massive desert festival who's scope still eludes my writing. No fuzzy hats pants here, or buses tricked out to look like pirate ship, or ubiquitous drug use, but the fundamental feeling of youthful exhuberance and simple joy at merely being here to be here was the same. This feeling, combined with the surreal, sharp, serene beauty, makes Fish Island one of my new favorite spots in the world.

Driving on, and off the salt, we found rare wild vicuñas (wild dwarf llamas, looking like a cross between deer and camels) and rheas (like ostrichs) on the way to Galaxy Cavern, a small cavity in the earth made from fossilized algae, leaving a fantastic delicate latticework of rock. Though it was more touristy and lacked the feeling, the glow from before was still with me.

We bunked for the night in a small village in the middle of the desert. Food, as is surprisingly par for all my tours so far in South America, was delicious. No tarantulas that night though, virtually no nightlife at all. The one black spot on an otherwise perfect day.

The second day of a tour typically lacks some of the spark of the first, not to say it wasnt exceptional. Bizarre rock formations, inexplicable monoliths, and and generally martian moonscapes lay sprawled at our feet. If you walk far enough away from the multitude of other jeeps and their loud obnoxious (usually British) tourists, you can still manage to find a niche of peace in the quiet.

Or, blazing through an endless diorama of mountains and deserts, blasting music in your ears, singing in your head (and maybe out loud) with your body leaning halfway out the window into the dry stinging wind, you can find peace there too.

The highlight of the second day was a series of lagoons and their hefty stock of flamingos. These birds continued to wade in their salty conductive water as thunderstorms approached. I was busy stalking vicuñas (with a camera) to notice to notice the coming squall, and found myself in a flat salty open when the lightning came. Sadly familiar territory to me, but I've learned how to not get hit. So far.

After the storm, a big lunch, more mountains and deserts. On, endlessly. Vistas blur. Thoughts drift. How many permutations of seating arrangements can we make? (720) How many words can you make from the letters in the word 'Toyota'? (No fucking clue). Why wont bee opsins permit vision of radio waves? Scenery drifts on. Drifts out. Off. Sleep.

The others wake me up in time to see Laguna Colorada, the last laguna of the day. I'm glad they do. The lake is reddened by blooms of algae and bacteria, ringed by a white borax crust. Combined with the blue of the sky, the yellow of dessicated desert vegetation, and teh brown of the omnipresent dirt, it makes a beautiful rainbow... of sorts.

I saw another rainbow that night, in the sky. Now, I dont believe in UFOs, but for a second, I almost did. Luckily it didnt fly, it just winked at me in every color imaginable simultaneously. It was a massive star, I think/hope. As twilight dimmed, more came out, sparkling absurdly, unnaturally. The alien sense this land sweated from its pores wasn't just in the odd rocks; it was in the ether itself.

Another day brings more Dali-esque fuckscapes. I'm certainly not bored of them, but they're hard to write about. Mercifully, this land gives me novel form of color orgy for your reading pleasure. Oxide red, sulfur yellow, mud brown, and thermophile bacteria yellow are just some in the palette of the geothermal fumeroles. The mud boiled and the smoke bellowed and the water boiled with dangerous heat, and the schmucks on tour fucked around the crumbling edges of the fatal cauldrons like they were just more rusty trains. I'll risk tetanus.

I walked around too, though at a less retarded distance, but once I ventured to peek my head over the lip of a strange cylindrical hole. I could just make out water frothing in the far depths. Suddenly, the hole rumbled. Cylindrical hole leading to angry water that periodically roars? Right, looking eyes-first into a geyser. My feet were making tracks before the computation even finished.

The last stop on the tour was Laguna Verde, a tranquil medatative place resembling a giant Japanese reflection pool, where I had the opportunity to sit and reflect on the trip as a whole. Instead, I spent my time thinking about grad school and the physics of Ninja Turtles. I'm about as deep as the great salt mirrors.

Finally, the closing ritual. A painless, if a bit tedious, crossing into Chile, and the long descent down out of the antiplano and into the barrens of the Atacama Desert, site of the last scene before intermission.

Getting High = Deja Vu

Things about the Bolivian Antiplano seem oddly reminiscent to earlier chapters in my adventures. The beautiful white city of Sucre looks just like the beautiful white city of Arequipa. The white faces of all the Presidents and Supreme Court Justices of Bolivia remind me of my visit to our own nation's capitol. Sucre's main park looks like a Mini-Me version of Sydney's Hyde Park, sans giant fruit bats. The abrupt jutting rock fins and mountains between Sucre and Potosi could've been stolen from Southern Utah. The fried rabbit I ate looked just like the fried guinea pig, small charred leg and drumstick included, and the stir-fried cow stomach I ate brought back echos of my intestinal battles in Cuenca.

People too came back. Friends I'd made (drunkards I'd chatted with) in Loki Cuzco came to Loki La Paz, and the black medical studentess from the Machu Picchu train arrived just in time to help treat my Death Ride wounds. But most notable was a gap-toothed European on my mine tour who looked vaguely familiar. I didn't remember him, but he remembered me, the guy throwing the shit-fit in the Riobamba train station. He recognized me there from talking with me briefly in Baños (I didn't remember). He also apparently saw me in both Cuenca and Cuzco, but didn't bother to say hi, preferring to scare me with his stalker tactics on a later date. Oh, and apparently we were in Lima at the same time, but he doesn't run in the same circles of coke-addled couchsurfers.

I refer visiting the Altiplano as 'getting high', because everything here is over 3000 meters. At just over 4000, Potosi is the highest city in the world. The Death Ride started at 4700, and the Salt Flats break 5000, though you'd never notice in the nearly-flat moonscape. The altitude can give you shortness of breath, nausia, and lightheadedness, much like drinking a bottle of cough syrup, and the stock solution for the people is the mass consumption of coca leaves.

Now, don't think Bolivia is a country of coke growers; it takes over 100 kilos of coca leaves to make a kilo of cocaine, and I doubt most people can afford that much land. However, what little land they have is often devoted to coca, and people will often forgo growing and eating food to grow and shove a wad of coca leaves in their drooling maws. Coca leaves are allegedly not addictive, but every single miner in Potosi seemed to crave it constantly and in bulk. The green oozey mouths made me cringe.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The reason I came to the highest city in the world was not for the gloating factor (which is the reason I'm trying to reach Ushuaia, the most southerly city in the world and the literal end of the road), but for the silver mines. I don't mean to strike it rich myself, but a visit into these harrowing regulation-free collective mines is considered one of the most eye-opening experiences in South America. Considering Bolivia also yields the Witches Market (tourist dreck and magic potions and mummified llama fetuses, oh my!), the Death Ride, and the upcoming Salt Flats, I'd be remiss to miss such a thing. My scant 10 days in Bolivia promises to be nearly as hectic and upside-down as my two weeks in New Zealand.

A mine tour starts with a visit to the warehouse where we borrow our miner gear. Complete with boots, pants, waterproof coat, helmet, and headlamp, the gringos once again don a full tourist costume. We then, in full regalia, pay a visit to the miner's market, where we are of course the only people dressed in such goofy getups. The actual miners, we discover later, are wearing nothing but shorts and shoes. At the miner's market, we're expected to buy gifts for the miners; I have no complaints, since if I were toiling in a suicidal back-breaking job for years on end, and a bunch of priviledged happy-go-lucky snot tourists playing dress-up wanted to invade my private suffering to snap a few 'Look Ma!' pics and move on with their blessed lives, I'd damn well want some coca leaves and a pack of smokes out of it. I buy a bag of coca leaves, a large bottle of Coca-Cola (the real stuff, not the knockoff shit they try and peddle), and some dynamite.

A stick of dynamite costs 20 Bolivianos in the miner's market. That's about 3 USD, including the fuse and small bag of ammonium nitrite fertilizer to add some bang for your buck, so to speak. We each bought some.

The next stop was the refinery, where extraction chemicals such as mercury and cyanide sloshed around in rusty old machines attached to hand-crunching tumblers and slushers, with some fraying electrical cords thrown in for good measure. We didn't stay long.

A typically steep, slow, windy path brought us to the mouth of the mine where we finally flicked our headlamps on and crawled into the belly of the earth. Well, to be honest, we didn't do much crawling. About 70% of the time I was walking while crouched awkwardly, with my neck tilted up at an unpleasant angle. Another 10% was actually crawling. Another 10% was sloshing through a mysterious gray stagnant liquid which reminded me alot of subway juice. Standing upright was a rare sweet treat.

The loudmouth English-speaking tour guide spent most of his excess energy making mildly off-color jokes, typically involving Japanese people or homosexuals, and sexually harassing the girls in the tour, just like every other South American tour guide I've met. The porter in back silently hauled our heavy gear with no complaint or recognition or fair compensation, just like every other tour.

There wasn't much to actually see on the tour. Passageways of variously impractical width, rusting cart tracks, broken ladders, clogged wooden chutes, rotting wooden support beams, dangling electrical cords; the 'sites' were really more like obsticles. No, this tour was a tantalizing of the senses. The smell of stale dynamite and mold growing on those rotting beams. The taste of rock dust clotting up your nose and throat. The sound of hissing... something. The soft touch of bacterial colonies dripping off the ceiling like the fetal-alcohol lovechildren of stalagmites and snot. And the strange green glint of your headlamp reflecting off seams of the mineral serpentine, better known as asbestos.

Most of all, it was the heat. Potosi is cold, until you get a few meters underground. Then it starts to get warmer. The air is stale and still, and your sweat clings to you, gathering the ambient dust. It gets hotter still as you go further down, complimented by a thickening cloud of aerosoled debris. Sweat drips, your shirt sticks, and water won't quench anymore. You can't breath, you feel faint, suddenly claustrophobic. Your only thoughts are escape, to have mother earth let you out of her hellish womb. And make no mistake, this truly is Hell, brimstone included. But you can't escape, because you have 8 hours of wailing futily on a wall with a pickaxe ahead of you, just as you had many behind you and many more ahead until you die of asbestos exposure or a tunnel collapse. Welcome to the mines.

We didn't meet many miners down there, and I was glad we didn't. A few hauling carts filled to the brim with boulders (their labor will earn them perhaps 5 or 10 dollars today), others hustling to get back to their stakes before someone steals their precious ore. Only once inside did we stop to interact with working miners, who slowed their pace to humor our questions and photos in exchange for my soda. The older man had been working the mine much of his adult life, and didn't know how much longer he'd have. The younger man - no, boy - was new, and had a lifetime of this to look forward to. The boy seemed young, but mature. His muscles were firm, even 'ripped', and his face showed premature wear beguiled by his youthful smile. 16, 17 perhaps? No, 13, he said. I tried, and failed, to hide my stunned reaction. Either the mine had robbed this boy of his youth, or the mine had robbed this boy of education enough to know his own age. Either way, it depressed me something horrible, and I wanted to leave right then. Luckily, that's just what we did.

However, that still entailed climbing back up the way we came. We slid down on our butts like a slide; now we had to climb back up those near-vertical chalky faces. Breathing was harder than ever, but I didn't even think about it. Just one hand over the other, anything to get out. The one thought my conscious brain managed to project over the animal instict was to think that this experience was unlike anything I'd ever done before...

... But then I remembered that wasn't true, was it? I've seen plenty of abject suffering, poverty, and brutal toil in South America, it just happened to all be above ground. Even clamoring up those steep slopes recalled trying to escape those lava tube caves we'd explored during ESA New Mexico, and here we didn't have to contend with lava rocks and volcanic glass. I suppose the old saying is true, there's nothing new under the sun, even in places the sun fears to go.

Oh, and then we got to blow up some of that dynamite we bought, just for shits and giggles.

Leaving Its Mark

There's surprisingly little to say about the capitol city of Bolivia, La Paz. The city is more or less one giant black market; walk down one street to find stall after stall of hot electronics, another to find shoes or suits or toys or knives or kitchen sinks, often right next to each other. More often, you have entire blocks devoted to clone-like entities all selling colored light bulbs or school supplies. Bizarre.

Nor do I have much to say about the nightlife. The most exciting thing I've done at night was charity pub trivia in my hostel. I arrived late, missing the first category, and joined a random team. Turns out I knew 3 answers to the first category questions, and our team lost by 1 point. Winner wins a whole handle of tequila. All we got was a paltry free shot each. Not that a whole handle of booze would've done me any good that night.

Nor do I have much to say about the food. I've eaten knockoff Thai, knockoff Welsh, even a knockoff McDonalds that I found somewhat superior (but still no In-N-Out Burger), but nothing really Bolivian, if such a cuisine exists outside Arroz con Pollo. I did however at at one of the fanciest, swankiest, most expensive restaurants in the city, just to see what it would feel like to eat like a king for under 15 bucks. Don't sneer; I couldve bought 5 or more normal dinners for that price.

A little money goes a long way in Bolivia. It takes 7 Bolivianos to equal just 1 American Dollar, and the average cost of a meal is 10 to 20 Bolivianos, ($1.50 to $3). Most restaurants, bars, and hostels wont have change for anything higher than a 20. So when I went to the ATM and took out 700 Bolivianos, I was a little bemused and a little horrified to see it come out as seven 100 Boliviano bills. I walk into the bank and ask if they can break some of it down into smaller, more manageable bills. The woman behind the counter takes my money with a smile, and comes back later holding my 700 Bolivianos, transmogrified into 10 Boliviano bills. Yes, she gave me a stack of 70 bills. My wallet suffers in silence.

What I can tell you about is a little bike ride I took. A short jaunt, only 68 kilometers (that's about 40 miles). Downhill, mostly. We started at an altitude of 4700 meters (that's nearly 16,000 feet, or about 3 miles above sea level, a new personal record), and ended at around 1500 meters (1 mile up, merely the elevation of Denver). The ride went down a little curvy road, half paved and half dirt, leading from outside La Paz to a small town and animal sanctuary on the border of the Amazon Basin.

Coincidentally, the road is known as the World's Most Dangerous Road, aka the Death Ride. It gained the reputation because the road is tight, winding, and wet, and sleep-deprived Bolivian bus drivers tended to tip off the edge and take the direct route to the bottom of the 600 foot cliffs. Bicycles are safer, according to our guide, because you can't be trapped inside a burning bike. That said, on average 15 cyclists die per year, and many more are injured. Don't worry, the guide assures us, he's trained in first aid and brought a rescue rope. The rope is only 100 meters.

Speaking of dropped threads, that's why the bottle of booze would've been useless at best and awful at worst. Drunk-seeming riders get breathalyzed and kicked off the trail. Even if I could fake it, that doesn't seem the ideal situation. And even if I could drunk-bike well (and I can, I've tried it), I'd end up drunk sleeping my way through the tour departure.

As is, I nearly did anyway. I forgot to set my alarm, and would've slept through, but was woken up at the typically-awful-but-today-perfect time of 6:30 by some drunk schmuck stumbling into the room drunk, making his way to the nearest trash bin, and rehashing his last few round of drinks. Oh sweet irony.

The ride starts at a cold mountain pass, and starts tearing its way down an easy paved road for the first third of the trip. We pedaled fast, faster, until the wheels were spinning faster than the pedals could keep up, flopping uselessly like dead fish. We soared down the road at immense speed...

... or, they did. I was no slouch, but I couldn't gain real speed no matter what I tried. I pedaled on the highest gear past the point of not catching, stood up, sat down, crouched over until I was nearly throwing my body over the handlebars prematurely. Nothing worked. Even the most timid girl in our group outpaced me easily. Maybe it was a problem dirty brakes, or a defective tire, both suspects in later problems, but to this we had no clue. The guide postulated that perhaps I have an atypical mass-to-weight ratio. In other words he suspected my light, thin, wide-torsoed body gave me little momentum and acted more or less like a giant windsail, retarding my speed and making me look retarded all the same.

Still, handicap aside, I was enjoying it. I was enjoying it even past the time the guide stopped us and said "Surprise! We have to go uphill for 10 kilometers". However, he gave us the option to get back in our transport bus and take the easy way up. Half of us immediately hopped on the bus. The other half decided to be masochistic, pounding uphill at absurd altitude. Any loyal readers should know what group I picked. After all, did I not volunteer to get whipped and flogged on stage for a newspaper article?

All things considered, I was doing well for myself. I stood up on the pedals, pulling my body down by with the handlebars, using both gravity and upper arm strength to aid my flagging legs. The slope itself wasnt too bad, but that's comparing this experience to biking as a kid (before my father unapologetically sold my bicycle), at sea level in New York. This was 3 miles higher, and I could barely catch my breath. One guy fell behind, another girl crapped out. A third managed to snap his chain with the effort. I pulled ahead, and was holding the lead. Then the road forked as I approached a steep hill. I stopped to consider which way to go, waiting for the guide (on the bus), watching cars make their choice. After a minute or two, I decided it wasnt a fork as much as a temporary road split, and right was the only way to go. I got back up on my bike to move, and immediately hopped off. I'd lost all my motivation.

I sat and waited, and the guide showed up before long, boy with a new chain in tow and crapped out girl in tow. The four of us walked our bikes up the hill, where the guide informed us we'd reached kilometer 8 of the uphill. We almost made it. Renewed competitive, we all got back on our bikes to kill off the last 2k. We biked 9.5 of the 10 kilometers, while every other tour group just got back on their bus. I felt proud of myself, but I also felt exhausted, dehydrated, and nausious. Ready for the Death Ride?

Asphalt, smoothly downill, continued on for a time, to lull us into a sense of security. But it came to a rather abrupt end, replaced by dirt and bumps and big rocks. I barrelled over the dividing line, nearly loosing my control with the change in medium. Acceptable speed on smooth asphalt is not acceptable speed on a bumpy dirt road. I bounced, skidded, jumped, and swirved, nearly crashing into the girl in front of me. I pulled hard on the brakes, the bike nearly throwing me over the front like a bucking horse. I held on and managed to ease myself into a comfortable speed, but the thought lurked in the back of my head that getting thrown was nearly a matter of inevitability for me.

After a short break, regroup, and pep talk from the guide, we resumed driving down the real Death Ride. I drove much slower now, but was no longer maxed out by my bike defects or disproportionte body type, so it felt more satisfying. The girls fell behind me, the guys drifted ahead, and we all came to an unspoken pecking order.

The ride was more difficult now: the road became steeper, the turns became tigher, constant bumps created a deep vibration in my bones, and abrupt fatal cliffs materialized on our left (the side of the road we were biking on). I had little mountain biking experience, and was taking the turns all wrong. I would break to half my speed (bucking horse...), turn the handlebars, waiver, hold the brake, skid through a turn. It felt unstable and unsafe, and likely was. The jarring ride would've been murder on my testicles if they hadn't already retreated into my body in abject terror.

However, it was the fishtail that did it. Somehow, I managed to lock my rear wheel up while breaking, and fishtailed wildly out of control, bike waving langoriously back and forth, mere feet from certain death on my left. Somehow I managed to maintain my balance (God bless momentum), and biked out of it like one drives out of a skid, and kept going at pace until the next rest stop. But the close call had its effect on me. I went from joyfully scared, like a rollercoaster, to deep life-threatened fear. The next two sections I felt like I was crawling along (I was, compared to the mother-curdling speeds from before), and every turn made my gut knot with dread. Ironically, this dread response and my slowed brake-controlled turns made me more likely to spin out again.

Worse, we were passing under waterfalls, and the slick rocks, wet and lubricated foot grips on the pedals, and water droplets obscuring my sunglasses, all did nothing to mitigate my rising fear. This wasnt fun anymore, and I was tempted to get back on the bus. Before I could make such a choice, I came up to one tight hairpin turn, wet by small cascade tumbling from above, and I had grossly miscalculated my speed. I tore into the turn, convinced I'd slam into the wall. My mind blanked in terror, and instinct took over. I leaned sharply into the turn, cutting through the wet sand and mud, veering away from the wall and mercifully, not into the cliff. I leveled myself out and kept traveling at speed, slowly regaining full awareness. I quickly realized what I'd done. By instinct, I learned how to make a proper turn, leaning like a motorcycle rather than slowing and turning the handlebars.

The new revelation quickly slaughtered much of my fear, and practice nearly eliminated it. A little remained, just enough to keep the ride fun. The cliff retreated from the very edge of the road, and the safety margin gave me extra daring. Within a few minutes, I was racing along like the other boys, pulling turns like an old pro (almost), and fear was dominated by exhilaration. Even another wild fishtail wasn't able to shake my confidence.

Until that one time I tried leaned just a little too hard. The curve was especially sharp, and I was especially cocky. I leaned, leaned, and suddenly became certain the wheel would slip. I knew to trust instinct by now, and let it take over. I balled myself up, lifting my arm, using my hand to cover my face, making sure to keep my elbow out of harm's way, unlike the guy from yesterday who fell and shattered his. I hit on my side, simultaneously taking the ground with my hip, thigh, and forearm, and slid out to a stop. The cliff remained nearby, not close enough to be an immediate threat, but if I'd slid with more momentum...

I quickly stood up and brushed myself off. My competitive streak didn't want to let the girls overtake me. I moved my arm around, making sure the elbow worked, and finding no pain I got back on and immediately took off. Surprisingly, I didn't revert to panicky coward mode. I continued to bike at my new slick pace all the way to the next rest point, and it wasn't until I noticed the blood running down my arm that I felt anything at all.

My forearm had been roadburned all the way up its length. At the base near the elbow were three long cuts. Next to them, a short gouge, and next to it, a small canyon in my flesh. It looked deep, though it didn't go through the dermis. The guide cleaned it out, and the wounds looked like I'd been attacked by a werewolf. Cool Scar Story! We hastily patched it, but the tape started peeling off before I even got back on my bike. Pain started now, a throb, a wince, a stiffness in the elbow, but nothing severe. The guide offered to let me ride the bus to the bottom, but I politely told him "fuck off". I was going to see this thing through to the end.

And I did. A little more cautiously, but I did. The brakes squealed something awful since the fall, and something must've been wrong with the gears or chain too, since it clicked and popped and randomly changed gears as I pushed the last few kilometers. I was the last to arrive at the animal sanctuary at the bottom, but I'd made it, little the worse for wear.

The sanctuary would be alot more fun if I didn't hate monkeys, since that's most of what they had. A coati cuddled on my lap... then decided to give me a hug, and drive its nails into my neck. I had to tear it off, nearly tearing my shirt open in the process. A pair of juvenile squirrel monkeys roughousing with each other decided it'd be more fun to pounce on me and start biting my hands and ears. A spider monkey smeared banana and possibly shit on me. God I hate monkeys.

We took the bus back up, winding our back up our own bike trails on the World's Most Dangerous Road. In this more passive form of transport, we finally had a chance to admire the view, since soaking in the vista before usually meant driving off the edge of a cliff. I saw the road as it was meant to be seen, rather than just seeing the rocks ahead of me and the fear on the edge of my periphery. I saw just how steep, how narrow, how trecherous. I saw just how many hairpin curves we sliced and skidded through. I saw just how many seeps and cascades we bounded over and under. And trudging slowly up the mountain in our little bus, I was able to read the names on all the little crosses that lined the roadside, the crosses I'd never before even noticed were there.

The Death Ride had left its mark all right, scars of abject fear and naive exhilaration and a renewed sense of my own mortality, gouged maybe forever in my arm and in my brain... thank god for helmets I suppose. How bout elbow pads?

More Fun With Borders

As loyal readers of this blog (all 2 of you) know, my least favorite place to be in South America is at an international border. They're dirty, crowded, and full of criminals and con-artists. At least Ecuador to Peru was, and I seriously was not looking forward to going from Peru into Bolivia.

Rather than take my chances by doing the border manually again, I decided to book an international bus. We'd stay on the bus, and all things would be taken care of quickly and professionally... yeah.

I had intended to go the direct southern route to La Paz, skipping the famous-yet-allegedly-shitty Copacabana (no, not that one). The man from the hostel, the one who sold me the Titicaca tour, was also the one who convinced me that the company that connects through Copacabana is cheaper and better. Cheaper, yes, but that rarely means better in any continent, let alone here. And yet, I relented. I was very tired that morning. Besides, a short layover and a bus switch is no big deal, and I may enjoy an hour or so in the little coastal town.

The bus doesnt actually reach Copacabana. No, it stops just shy of the Bolivian border and waits for passengers to come to it. Normally we could go through Copacobana, and on to La Paz, but an all-too-common worker's strike - this time by the ferry workers who cross the small water isthmus - leaves Copacabana an island unto itself.

So we waited in the small border zone between the countries, passing freely into Bolivia (well, about 50 feet). The border zone is shockingly nice, a pretty green area on the shore of the giant lake, an old arch and older church to mark the boundry, cheap food vendors and seemingly honest money changers. Best of all were the clothing booths; I and some people I'd met on the bus spent our time trying on all kinds of crazy hats. A cowboy hat with llamas, a traditional Andean cap in a lovely shade of puke green, a pink ski/Santa hat with big poof ball on the end, and the one I bought, an alpaca wool brimmed beanie, all the colors of the rainbow (with a special emphasis on pink). Only $1.30 US. It now supplants my cashmere scarf as the gayest item of clothing I own. And yet, I feel compelled to wear it for my duration in Bolivia. People keep giving me weird looks. Lets hope I dont get fag bashed.

We waited here for the people coming from Copacabana, we played with hats. We waited, we gorged ourselves on cheap junk food, chatted up the military guards, explored the frontier, anything we could. We waited, we waited, we wanted to kill ourselves and the driver. The border zone really was lovely, for half an hour. Not two and a half.

But finally, the Copacabana cohort came, and we're off to the southern border zone. Just a few miles south. Just a brief retreat from the lakeside... to a different country. The northern zone was open, clean, and friendly; the southern zone was dark, windy, trashy, decayed, full of predatory types, with more than a passing resemblance to its far northern cousin.

First stop is Peruvian exits. I'd long ago discarded my pointless-seeming entry card, and now needed a new one to leave. Five bucks for a copy, the man behind the counter says. He scrawls his copy, making up most of the information, in under 20 seconds.

Next stop is Bolivia. True to form, the bus driver lied; we need to walk across a little bridge (deja vu!) and take a new bus on the other side. I don't care much because I'm thinking about what's coming next: the visa. Everyone else on earth gets into Bolivia for cheap, or free. US citizens pay $135 dollars, retribution from the Bolivian government for some perceived wrong by the horrible capitalist evil empire. Ironically, its the hippy liberal leftist backpackers who pay for it.

My one fellow American and I get shuffled into a side room to fill out our visa application. The application asks a series of asinine questions that no one will ever read; I scratch out my answers illegibly and no one cares. All the border official keeps saying is "Where is the money?", smiling greedily with grotesque poorly-capped teeth. The other American had one of his $20s rejected for having a millimeter-sized tear; I wonder if he'd noticed if I used some of my souvenirs picked up from the last border.

Next step is to go to the main window and get an entry stamp. Again, us Americans are shuttered into a back room, where a breezy looking man, probably ranking military, quizzes us on our application form. So much for no one reading it. Then he stamps it. Stamps the entry form. Stamps the passport. Puts a big sticker on the application. Puts a bigger sticker in the passport. Signs it. Stamps it with a different stamp. Stamps the entry form again, and then the application one more time with yet a new stamp, just for good luck.

He then informs me I need photocopies of my passport photo and new Bolivian sticker. I shudder. The visa had drained the last of my cash, God knows how much they'll loot me for to make a photocopy.

Across the street. 1.5 Bolivianos, approximately 20 cents. Ok then.

Now we walk to the new bus. Mototaxis (motorized rickshaws, if you recall) offer to drive us the immense distance, for a fee. I walk the immense distance in 2 minutes. Our new bus is a bit smaller, a bit tighter, with most of the luggage tied on top. As our bus full of tourists prepares to leave, a local woman arrives with her luggage. 5 full heavy bags of grain, hoisted up slowly and laboriously to crush our bags.

After waiting what seemed like an eternity for her to load her wares, we're finally ready to leave the border zone. The bus begins to peel out... and stops. We're stuck in some traffic jam. We back up, twist a bit, and try again. No luck. The driver tries a new tactic, pulling into the mud, making the bus dangerously teeter on edge. Still stuck. Between the fat woman and her fat grain, and the subsequent gridlock, we sit on our already-numb asses for an extra half an hour.

Finally, finally, we start moving. Slowly at first, but then staying slow. The afternoon is quickly wearing away, helped along by the change in time zone. Road construction - and destruction - also lends its weight. A whole squadron of flies had joined our bus while waiting to escape the filthy border, and they showed no signs of leaving their new tenement. In fact, more flies join every time we have to stop our bus, file off, line up, let the military look at our passports, and let us back on the bus again, for no apparent reason than to show off their shiny new guns. The bulky woman with the bulky bags bribes her way through.

It's dark when we arrive in La Paz, the day squandered. A trip that was supposed to take 5 hours took nearly 11. No mudslide required. On the upside, no criminals or con-men. Except the ones in government uniform.