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.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, November 23, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
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?
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?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Last Con of Peru
I left an important thing behind in my backpack. Feeling back in the tourist groove, I decided I didnt want or need my iPod with me while island hopping Lake Titicaca, and I certainly didn't need the weight of the full frame pack for one night. So I took my out of my pants pocket, and slipped it into the front pocket of my bag before giving the bag to the woman behind the desk to put in storage.
The storage, I didnt notice until later, had no lock.
Fast forward to the night after my Titicaca tour. I return to the hostel of the man who recruited me, pulled my bag out of storage, slapped away at the keyboard for an hour, ate dinner, went to my room, watched a little tv (oh yes, I had a tv), and went to sleep. Simple enough night.
Something woke me up from a sound sleep, and it wasnt a child-eating clown (I've been reading IT). It was a sudden feeling of loss, of longing. I jumped out of bed, ran to my bag, unzipped the frong pocket, and jammed my hand down the front. No iPod. I shuffled around in the completely unsecret secret pocket, no dice. Nor in any of the other pockets. My iPod was gone.
I felt violated, dirty, and stupid. How could I leave my most expensive possession unlocked? And I was angry; I'd been conned my first day in Peru, and I was not about to accept being robbed on my last.
Worse still, I was sure someone targeted it. My small wad of spare [counterfeit] 20s were left untouched, as was my spare camera. Someone knew where the iPod was and went for it. There was only one or two people who that could be. Hostel employees.
I grabbed my headlight and stormed downstairs. The lobby was dark and empty. I walked into the unlocked unguarded storeroom just to see if I hadnt dropped it. I hadnt, but someone else's innocent bag lay where mine once stood. Dark thoughts crossed my mind. I could easily ransack his bag and get a replacement. I bent down, studying it, inspecting it, considering it... but recoiled and tip-toed out of the storeroom, leaving the bag untouched.
Instead, I walked to the front door, and rang the bell. The sound was loud and jarring at any time, but especially at 2am. I rang it again and again until one of the hostel workers stumbled blearily downstairs, toddering dangerously as he went. He was small, and even standing on a stair I was taller than him. I blocked his decent, got within inches of his face, and shined my headlamp right in his eyes.
"I want back what you stole."
He seemed genuinely confused, though I couldnt tell whether that was just from lack of English. I knew how to say that in Spanish, but I wanted the intimidation. I repeated it again, quiet and cold, kissing distance from him, then repeated in Spanish to make sure he understood. The man balked. "No robo!"
He went on to defend himself in Spanish, but I couldnt understand his blathering, so he booted up the computer. Took a good 3 minutes to get the piece of shit up, but it was worth it for Google Translator. In hindsight, it must've been funny to see me threaten him via computer text, and him try to plead innocent while stumbling over his own sleepy fingers. In short, here's how it went down.
Me: You stole my iPod, I want it back now.
Him: I did not. Must've been another employee.
Me: They'll deny it. You were there.
Him: No, no one would get fired over an iPod?
Me: So they just expected I'd walk away without checking my bag?
Him: ... we'll give you your money back.
Me: The room cost 7 bucks. An iPod costs 200. Get me my iPod by 6am, or I'll trash this lobby until I've destroyed $193 worth of stuff.
Him: I'll get it by 5.
Afterwards, I returned upstairs to try and get some sleep. None would come. Could I really follow through with my promise to trash their hostel? Wont someone try to stop me, forcefully? I reached back into the burgled bag pocket, and produced my pocket knife. I peered at it more carefully than I ever had before, then hastily stuffed it in my pants pocket. I was going to keep my promise, and I swore I was going to defend myself if necessary, however I needed to. But would I? Could I?
I tried to get in a little sleep before the big confrontation at sunup, but it still didn't come. Tossing, turning, muted animal documentaries (because who wants to watch them dubbed?), nothing. Finally, I gave up, and at 5:15 crawled out of bed and put my knife-bearing pants on.
Before I could put on my shirt, a knock at my door. I opened it up, and the young man from last night, looking even more contrite than before, slipped his arm through the crack in the door. The outstretched arm held my iPod and headphones, no worse for wear.
I didn't ask him then or later who took it. I didn't ask how he convinced his coworkers - if he wasnt the thief himself - to give up the valuable stolen goods. I didn't ask him if my simultaneously-absurd-and-dangerous threat really made a difference. I simply went to sleep, easily. I'd taken enough of Peru's shit, and this time it blinked.
The storage, I didnt notice until later, had no lock.
Fast forward to the night after my Titicaca tour. I return to the hostel of the man who recruited me, pulled my bag out of storage, slapped away at the keyboard for an hour, ate dinner, went to my room, watched a little tv (oh yes, I had a tv), and went to sleep. Simple enough night.
Something woke me up from a sound sleep, and it wasnt a child-eating clown (I've been reading IT). It was a sudden feeling of loss, of longing. I jumped out of bed, ran to my bag, unzipped the frong pocket, and jammed my hand down the front. No iPod. I shuffled around in the completely unsecret secret pocket, no dice. Nor in any of the other pockets. My iPod was gone.
I felt violated, dirty, and stupid. How could I leave my most expensive possession unlocked? And I was angry; I'd been conned my first day in Peru, and I was not about to accept being robbed on my last.
Worse still, I was sure someone targeted it. My small wad of spare [counterfeit] 20s were left untouched, as was my spare camera. Someone knew where the iPod was and went for it. There was only one or two people who that could be. Hostel employees.
I grabbed my headlight and stormed downstairs. The lobby was dark and empty. I walked into the unlocked unguarded storeroom just to see if I hadnt dropped it. I hadnt, but someone else's innocent bag lay where mine once stood. Dark thoughts crossed my mind. I could easily ransack his bag and get a replacement. I bent down, studying it, inspecting it, considering it... but recoiled and tip-toed out of the storeroom, leaving the bag untouched.
Instead, I walked to the front door, and rang the bell. The sound was loud and jarring at any time, but especially at 2am. I rang it again and again until one of the hostel workers stumbled blearily downstairs, toddering dangerously as he went. He was small, and even standing on a stair I was taller than him. I blocked his decent, got within inches of his face, and shined my headlamp right in his eyes.
"I want back what you stole."
He seemed genuinely confused, though I couldnt tell whether that was just from lack of English. I knew how to say that in Spanish, but I wanted the intimidation. I repeated it again, quiet and cold, kissing distance from him, then repeated in Spanish to make sure he understood. The man balked. "No robo!"
He went on to defend himself in Spanish, but I couldnt understand his blathering, so he booted up the computer. Took a good 3 minutes to get the piece of shit up, but it was worth it for Google Translator. In hindsight, it must've been funny to see me threaten him via computer text, and him try to plead innocent while stumbling over his own sleepy fingers. In short, here's how it went down.
Me: You stole my iPod, I want it back now.
Him: I did not. Must've been another employee.
Me: They'll deny it. You were there.
Him: No, no one would get fired over an iPod?
Me: So they just expected I'd walk away without checking my bag?
Him: ... we'll give you your money back.
Me: The room cost 7 bucks. An iPod costs 200. Get me my iPod by 6am, or I'll trash this lobby until I've destroyed $193 worth of stuff.
Him: I'll get it by 5.
Afterwards, I returned upstairs to try and get some sleep. None would come. Could I really follow through with my promise to trash their hostel? Wont someone try to stop me, forcefully? I reached back into the burgled bag pocket, and produced my pocket knife. I peered at it more carefully than I ever had before, then hastily stuffed it in my pants pocket. I was going to keep my promise, and I swore I was going to defend myself if necessary, however I needed to. But would I? Could I?
I tried to get in a little sleep before the big confrontation at sunup, but it still didn't come. Tossing, turning, muted animal documentaries (because who wants to watch them dubbed?), nothing. Finally, I gave up, and at 5:15 crawled out of bed and put my knife-bearing pants on.
Before I could put on my shirt, a knock at my door. I opened it up, and the young man from last night, looking even more contrite than before, slipped his arm through the crack in the door. The outstretched arm held my iPod and headphones, no worse for wear.
I didn't ask him then or later who took it. I didn't ask how he convinced his coworkers - if he wasnt the thief himself - to give up the valuable stolen goods. I didn't ask him if my simultaneously-absurd-and-dangerous threat really made a difference. I simply went to sleep, easily. I'd taken enough of Peru's shit, and this time it blinked.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Keep your Titi away from my Caca
I meant to go to Titicaca by myself. That was the plan. But sometimes, you're just so vulnerable when you arrive in a new city before sunrise after a night or no sleep on a night bus. He told me he just wanted to give me information. Then he sold me a tour. Then a bus ticket. Then a night at the hostel he owns. I was powerless to resist.
Then again, the tour was fun, the hostel was nice (with a notable exception...), and the bus, well, 2 outta 3 aint bad.
The night bus arrived at 5am, and the tour bus arrived at 8am, giving me no nap time. Bording the bus, I noticed I was easily the youngest by 10 or 15 years. Ages ranged from 'young married couple' to 'Australian Grizzly Adams'. Meeting up with other vanloads at the boat brought the average age down, but I still easily held the title.
And yet, it was the grizzled old sea captain-looking man that I ultimately connected to the most. He had years and depth of experience that I could only begin to envy. He enjoyed sharing his quiet wisdom, and taking in my youthful bursts of what kids my age like to think is wisdom. Just the same, he quickly grew on me as a surrogate grandfather figure, and I came to really enjoy his pensive company. Australia may have been what we had in common, but Oz had nothing to do with his wizardly charm.
But that appreciation came later. First, the boat paid a visit to the floating reed islands of Uros. Originally a way for a small cultural group to isolate their gene pool, it was now a mixed-race tourist hell. I'll admit, islands made entirely of stacked rotting weeds is cool, if not moist and dank, but the sole occupation of the inhabitants was to sell woven shit and trinkets to the tourists. Perhaps some wares were homemade, but the scarfs stamped with the island's official logo screamed 'Made In China'.
The spiritual whoring didnt stop there. One woman charged tourists to take a photo holding her dark-skinned babies like some Brangelina wannabes. It's so ingrained in the culture that a little girl, still too young to talk, tried to sell me half-dead baitfish out of a bowl she began dismembering with her hands. As we left, they sang us off with a variety of Spanish and English minstrel songs, clapping and swaying, looking like the exploited clowns they were.
26 kilometers and 3 hours later, we arrived on the first big island, Amantani. We were to stay in the homes and hospitality of local families. 8 women met us at the dock, and began choosing who they wanted, like picking teams for middle school dodgeball. Like then, I was picked vitually last. I huddled next to the young(ish) Australian couple, hoping I could atleast stay in the company of people who spoke my language. Naturally, I was ripped with them and joined with a Spanish couple who spoke little English, and put in the house of a Quechuan family who spoke little Spanish.
At least we'd get the cultural experience of sharing meals with the local family? Nope. We got food in our rooms, and I was alone in mine. Just me and the child-murdering clown from the book I spent much of my time reading. The food was atleast cultural, all grown on the island. The dull vegetable soup, the small dry potatos, and the thick slice of hard tasteless cheese, possibly llama, that squeaked when you chew. Yep, pride of the island.
The house itself, up a particularly cruel cruel at this altitude, included such comfort features as a brick-soft bed, lightbulb (but no electricity to power it), a mudbrick flushless outhouse, and short doorways you inevitably crack your head on. Pillow optional.
The hike up to the ruins on top of the mountain was cold, with winds whipping us like renegade slaves. Sometimes it rained. Other times, just to shake things up, sleet crashed down. The ruins were short, though expansive, and very crude compared to the Incan forms I'd so recently been drinking in. The famed temple Pachatata was just a small square, abused by the elements, that we couldnt even enter.
Does this experience sound crap? Hardly. The rough sea. The dipping sun. The whipping wind. The ghastly ruins. I felt alive up there, more so than I had even on the Inca Trail. Lake Titicaca can work its magic even on a tried cynic like me.
Hell, I even enjoyed the nightcap Indiginous Costume Party for Gringos, complete with women leading in dances clearly stolen from Bar Mitzvahs. Even that was fun, in an "Oh what the fuck" kinda way.
Then again, the tour was fun, the hostel was nice (with a notable exception...), and the bus, well, 2 outta 3 aint bad.
The night bus arrived at 5am, and the tour bus arrived at 8am, giving me no nap time. Bording the bus, I noticed I was easily the youngest by 10 or 15 years. Ages ranged from 'young married couple' to 'Australian Grizzly Adams'. Meeting up with other vanloads at the boat brought the average age down, but I still easily held the title.
And yet, it was the grizzled old sea captain-looking man that I ultimately connected to the most. He had years and depth of experience that I could only begin to envy. He enjoyed sharing his quiet wisdom, and taking in my youthful bursts of what kids my age like to think is wisdom. Just the same, he quickly grew on me as a surrogate grandfather figure, and I came to really enjoy his pensive company. Australia may have been what we had in common, but Oz had nothing to do with his wizardly charm.
But that appreciation came later. First, the boat paid a visit to the floating reed islands of Uros. Originally a way for a small cultural group to isolate their gene pool, it was now a mixed-race tourist hell. I'll admit, islands made entirely of stacked rotting weeds is cool, if not moist and dank, but the sole occupation of the inhabitants was to sell woven shit and trinkets to the tourists. Perhaps some wares were homemade, but the scarfs stamped with the island's official logo screamed 'Made In China'.
The spiritual whoring didnt stop there. One woman charged tourists to take a photo holding her dark-skinned babies like some Brangelina wannabes. It's so ingrained in the culture that a little girl, still too young to talk, tried to sell me half-dead baitfish out of a bowl she began dismembering with her hands. As we left, they sang us off with a variety of Spanish and English minstrel songs, clapping and swaying, looking like the exploited clowns they were.
26 kilometers and 3 hours later, we arrived on the first big island, Amantani. We were to stay in the homes and hospitality of local families. 8 women met us at the dock, and began choosing who they wanted, like picking teams for middle school dodgeball. Like then, I was picked vitually last. I huddled next to the young(ish) Australian couple, hoping I could atleast stay in the company of people who spoke my language. Naturally, I was ripped with them and joined with a Spanish couple who spoke little English, and put in the house of a Quechuan family who spoke little Spanish.
At least we'd get the cultural experience of sharing meals with the local family? Nope. We got food in our rooms, and I was alone in mine. Just me and the child-murdering clown from the book I spent much of my time reading. The food was atleast cultural, all grown on the island. The dull vegetable soup, the small dry potatos, and the thick slice of hard tasteless cheese, possibly llama, that squeaked when you chew. Yep, pride of the island.
The house itself, up a particularly cruel cruel at this altitude, included such comfort features as a brick-soft bed, lightbulb (but no electricity to power it), a mudbrick flushless outhouse, and short doorways you inevitably crack your head on. Pillow optional.
The hike up to the ruins on top of the mountain was cold, with winds whipping us like renegade slaves. Sometimes it rained. Other times, just to shake things up, sleet crashed down. The ruins were short, though expansive, and very crude compared to the Incan forms I'd so recently been drinking in. The famed temple Pachatata was just a small square, abused by the elements, that we couldnt even enter.
Does this experience sound crap? Hardly. The rough sea. The dipping sun. The whipping wind. The ghastly ruins. I felt alive up there, more so than I had even on the Inca Trail. Lake Titicaca can work its magic even on a tried cynic like me.
Hell, I even enjoyed the nightcap Indiginous Costume Party for Gringos, complete with women leading in dances clearly stolen from Bar Mitzvahs. Even that was fun, in an "Oh what the fuck" kinda way.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Machu Picchu: Not the Grand Canyon
I'm going to invoke for you a bit of flashback. See, the 4 day trip down the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is not my first major trek since I've started traveling. No, the benchmark for all hikes is the Grand Canyon. Having survived Big Bend National Park no worse for wear, I figured a similar hike in the Grand Canyon would be just the same. Sure, it was deeper into summer, and sure, it was alot more uphill, but otherwise it was equivilent, right?
The hike to Machu Picchu is 45 kilometers, somewhere in the ballpark of 25 miles. We had 3 and a half days to do what could easily be done in 2. The Grand Canyon, to the bottom and back up, is around 18 miles, and it was done in under 24 hours.
The Inca Trail starts in montane desert, as does the Grand Canyon. The Inca Trail starts at around 7000 feet elevation, as does the Grand Canyon. However, the Inca Trail goes up.
I started walking down into the Grand Canyon at about 4 in the afternoon, far later than I'd intended. I slept in late at my Couchsurfer's in Phoenix, stopped to see the sights in Sedona, and dealt with the traffic surrounding Obama's poorly timed visit to the Canyon. On the upside, Obama had visited the trail I intended to go down, and had left only an hour before. This trail would normally be sparse late in the afternoon (no one is so stupid to start a descent that late), but the closure left it completely empty. I was the only one I could see for miles, perched precariously on the side of a cliff, huffing down thousands of steps to the bottom.
Allegedly, the Inca Trail has over 3000 steps down to the site, but most people's concern is the way up, the oxygen-thinned trek up to Dead Woman's Pass (named for the appearance of a face and a boob on top of the mountain) at almost 14,000 feet, a good 2000 feet higher than my previous record in Rocky Mountain National Park. I won't pretend it's the easiest thing I've done, but I still arrived at the pass 2 hours before the rest of my group, left to sit and ponder deep thoughts as all the groups I'd passed went and passed me right back.
I suspect the reason I was fast was because I'd packed light. A sleeping bag, a change of pants, two changes of shirts, two pairs of socks, sunscreen, bug spray, a hat, and two small bottles of water. The two slowest girls in our group were carrying full size frame packs. I'd brought one down with me into the Grand Canyon. Everything in my small pack, plus a water purification pump, a full tent, a big book, some food (not enough, I'd discover), and over a gallon of water (10 pounds itself). All for less than 24 hours.
My fast speed let me hike ahead of my group, and except when I sat bored at some pass or ruin, chatting with some of the 500 people allowed on the Inca Trail per day, I felt alone and it was good. I thought I was alone in the Grand Canyon, but it turns out there was one other. Another man from New York was puffing down behind me, and as he caught up to company he slowed down - or I sped up to stave off being alone - we became traveling buddies. Night fell on our aching ankles when we were only 2/3rds to the bottom, and we continued our epic trek at night.
Every night on the Inca Trail, we'd be the last group to arrive at camp. The porters, 12 of them for our group of 8, would have already set up our tents and began cooking. Huge amounts of food; platters of stewed meat, rice, pasta, bowls of pasta, fried trout, eggs, banana flambe, you name it. Food was gormet and in absurd abundance we could never finish. The porters carried it all on their bent backs.
Arriving at camp and leaving my new friend behind, I threw my heavy pack off my sagging back, and nibbled on my ritz crackers and peanut butter and craisins and bag of peanut M&Ms. I didn't bring much food because I only planned to need 2 small meals or so on the trail. I ate most of it before I went to bed, snug in my needlessly heavy tent, in my needlessly thick sleeping bag, blocking out the mosquitos that werent actually here. It was a restless, fitful sleep, punctuated occasionally by a pillaging of my camp. A Ringtail had learned to unzip my backpack and steal the remaining M&Ms from within. At first I was amazed to see such a new and strange animal, but by the third or fourth raid, I was ready to see them extinct.
As the Inca Trail went from desert to mountain to jungle, my wildlife sightings increased. I saw one, perhaps two speedy lizards the first night, but by the second night I was seeing spiders, bats, and even a fox. I also saw harvestmen eating a lizard, a disturbing inversion of the natural order. The third night, the one where we were supposed to wake up before 4am, found me romping all over the campsite complex finding dozens of species of moth, tarantulas, even a scorpion. Delayed sleep, missed my one chance of a shower on the trail, all to dig through garbage looking for things that want to hurt me. How typical.
The Trail was also a surprising botanical bonanza. Cactuses made way to eucalypt scrub to lush cloud forest. Dozens of species of wildflower I'd never seen but should've recognized - lupins, begonias, orchids. Our guide doubled as an amateur botanist, and we spent hours trading geek knowledge amicably while the rest of our group trudged slowly, unhappily behind us. I got back in touch with my plant roots, so to speak, and I enjoyed it more than I'd have guessed.
I was surprised to discover any plants at all exist in the Grand Canyon.
I started my way back up the Grand Canyon around 5am, shortly after sunrise. It wasnt hard to get up, since I'd never really slept during the night. At first it felt easy, despite the mother and young child effortlessly passing me by, but by 9am it already felt like I was inside a broiler, and I was nowhere near the top.
We were woken up the last morning by the porters at 3:30, breakfast by 4, packed up and ready to go by 5. It was only 6 kilometers or so to Machu Picchu, and there was plenty of time to go at a leisurely pace, if you didnt want a ticket to climb Waynu Picchu Mountain and get the stunning postcard view. I wanted it, so I ran. Well, power-walked. As opposed to the thousands of knee-crunching steps down from the day before, the road to the lost city was all uphill. I shoved my way past the groups in front of me, and quickly pulled ahead. I wanted to be the first through the famous Sun Gate, to watch the sun rise over the Sacred Valley. Challengers were close on my tail as I scrambled up the last steep 50 steps on my hands and knees, to crest the hill and pass through the gate...
... and was met by a dense, opaque fog. Sun Gate my ass. Still, I wanted a ticket, and continued speeding downhill. It had rained during the night, and the flat smooth rocks were trecherous. Every minute or two I seemed to skim across the surface of one, managing somehow to maintain my balance. Except the time I didn't. I fell, nearly cracking my elbow, but I succeeded in winching my pretty painted and carved walking stick into a gap in the rocks. The stick bent, then broke, but it gave me the time to put my hand out and catch myself. I carried on, walking slowly now, broken souvenir in hand, the rest of the way to Machu Picchu.
I was walking slowly uphill. Very slowly. Carrying an illegal walking stick I poached from a sotol plant I found on the trail; if the rangers noticed, they forgave it. The sun and the weight had sapped all my energy. The hike up the Grand Canyon was cool near the bottom, a hike up through geologic time. But now, midmorning, I was regretting ever coming down. The one blessing of the trail was the abundant piped water, so I drenched my body and clothes every chance I got. The water was cool and life saving, but didnt change the fact that I was wet and miserable. I found myself walking maybe 2 minutes, maybe less, before needing a break. A shelter with a roof was to be found every 2 miles, but walking between those shelters, up the endless, shadeless, unforgiving switchbacks, seeing just how little progress you've made, sapped my will to continue. I walked only so I may eventually stop walking.
Plus, I was out of food. Hunger only made things worse. I was honestly tempted to throw myself off the switchbacks, into some sharp ravine, if only so I could get helicoptered out. Thankfully, the further I went, the more people there were. Of course, none of these people had been or were going to the bottom, so they were still peppy and happy with their snacks and small packs. But they saw me, the human mule, the sad Eeyore, and had sympathy. Some talked with me and gave me encouragement. Others gave me food (a generous French family in particular who I never got to thank). At the end, when my foot was one giant blister, and I was honestly limping, one man stayed with me, stopping every few seconds with me, chatting with me to distract me from the pain, helping me find my car. I wont forget the cruelty of nature or the kindness of people in the Grand Canyon.
Machu Picchu was still foggy and rainy when I arrived, an hour after leaving camp and an hour before anyone else in my group. You couldnt see more than a few feet in front of you. Worse, tickets up Waynu Picchu had sold out when I was still at the Sun Gate, I'd never had a chance. Still, I was determined to make the most of it. Our tour was genuinely fascinating, and as the morning went on, the fog thinned, and Machu Picchu began to reveal its secrets slowly. The famous Lost City of the Incas, one of the 7 man-made wonders of the world, really did earn its reputation. It was stunning. Words wont cover it, and I wont try. However, great as Machu Picchu was, what I really enjoyed was the hike. Running through a misty cloud forest chasing sunrise, hoofing through moutains thrust out of the ground with no warning, standing at the top of the world looking out, standing at the bottom and seeing how far you'd come. Getting there was the real magic of Machu Picchu, and I felt sorry for the poor lazy slobs who took the train here. They'd missed the point.
When I reached the top of the Grand Canyon, still weezing and limping and in pain, I called my mother on the phone to tell her I'd made it. Turns out, she had no idea I was even headed for the Canyon.
"You hiked the Grand Canyon?" she asked with incredulousness. "I didnt know you exercised. I thought you were a computer nerd."
No mom, I'm a scientist. We do things like this. We do it the hard way. We learn from our experiences. No trek has ever been as hard as the Grand Canyon, since I'd learned what I really needed and learned how not to bitch at the mild tribulations. It wasnt fun, but I'm glad I did it. That was the difference between me and the rest of my group on the Inca Trail. I knew how to take it. I knew how to enjoy it. Like an Inca, bitches.
The hike to Machu Picchu is 45 kilometers, somewhere in the ballpark of 25 miles. We had 3 and a half days to do what could easily be done in 2. The Grand Canyon, to the bottom and back up, is around 18 miles, and it was done in under 24 hours.
The Inca Trail starts in montane desert, as does the Grand Canyon. The Inca Trail starts at around 7000 feet elevation, as does the Grand Canyon. However, the Inca Trail goes up.
I started walking down into the Grand Canyon at about 4 in the afternoon, far later than I'd intended. I slept in late at my Couchsurfer's in Phoenix, stopped to see the sights in Sedona, and dealt with the traffic surrounding Obama's poorly timed visit to the Canyon. On the upside, Obama had visited the trail I intended to go down, and had left only an hour before. This trail would normally be sparse late in the afternoon (no one is so stupid to start a descent that late), but the closure left it completely empty. I was the only one I could see for miles, perched precariously on the side of a cliff, huffing down thousands of steps to the bottom.
Allegedly, the Inca Trail has over 3000 steps down to the site, but most people's concern is the way up, the oxygen-thinned trek up to Dead Woman's Pass (named for the appearance of a face and a boob on top of the mountain) at almost 14,000 feet, a good 2000 feet higher than my previous record in Rocky Mountain National Park. I won't pretend it's the easiest thing I've done, but I still arrived at the pass 2 hours before the rest of my group, left to sit and ponder deep thoughts as all the groups I'd passed went and passed me right back.
I suspect the reason I was fast was because I'd packed light. A sleeping bag, a change of pants, two changes of shirts, two pairs of socks, sunscreen, bug spray, a hat, and two small bottles of water. The two slowest girls in our group were carrying full size frame packs. I'd brought one down with me into the Grand Canyon. Everything in my small pack, plus a water purification pump, a full tent, a big book, some food (not enough, I'd discover), and over a gallon of water (10 pounds itself). All for less than 24 hours.
My fast speed let me hike ahead of my group, and except when I sat bored at some pass or ruin, chatting with some of the 500 people allowed on the Inca Trail per day, I felt alone and it was good. I thought I was alone in the Grand Canyon, but it turns out there was one other. Another man from New York was puffing down behind me, and as he caught up to company he slowed down - or I sped up to stave off being alone - we became traveling buddies. Night fell on our aching ankles when we were only 2/3rds to the bottom, and we continued our epic trek at night.
Every night on the Inca Trail, we'd be the last group to arrive at camp. The porters, 12 of them for our group of 8, would have already set up our tents and began cooking. Huge amounts of food; platters of stewed meat, rice, pasta, bowls of pasta, fried trout, eggs, banana flambe, you name it. Food was gormet and in absurd abundance we could never finish. The porters carried it all on their bent backs.
Arriving at camp and leaving my new friend behind, I threw my heavy pack off my sagging back, and nibbled on my ritz crackers and peanut butter and craisins and bag of peanut M&Ms. I didn't bring much food because I only planned to need 2 small meals or so on the trail. I ate most of it before I went to bed, snug in my needlessly heavy tent, in my needlessly thick sleeping bag, blocking out the mosquitos that werent actually here. It was a restless, fitful sleep, punctuated occasionally by a pillaging of my camp. A Ringtail had learned to unzip my backpack and steal the remaining M&Ms from within. At first I was amazed to see such a new and strange animal, but by the third or fourth raid, I was ready to see them extinct.
As the Inca Trail went from desert to mountain to jungle, my wildlife sightings increased. I saw one, perhaps two speedy lizards the first night, but by the second night I was seeing spiders, bats, and even a fox. I also saw harvestmen eating a lizard, a disturbing inversion of the natural order. The third night, the one where we were supposed to wake up before 4am, found me romping all over the campsite complex finding dozens of species of moth, tarantulas, even a scorpion. Delayed sleep, missed my one chance of a shower on the trail, all to dig through garbage looking for things that want to hurt me. How typical.
The Trail was also a surprising botanical bonanza. Cactuses made way to eucalypt scrub to lush cloud forest. Dozens of species of wildflower I'd never seen but should've recognized - lupins, begonias, orchids. Our guide doubled as an amateur botanist, and we spent hours trading geek knowledge amicably while the rest of our group trudged slowly, unhappily behind us. I got back in touch with my plant roots, so to speak, and I enjoyed it more than I'd have guessed.
I was surprised to discover any plants at all exist in the Grand Canyon.
I started my way back up the Grand Canyon around 5am, shortly after sunrise. It wasnt hard to get up, since I'd never really slept during the night. At first it felt easy, despite the mother and young child effortlessly passing me by, but by 9am it already felt like I was inside a broiler, and I was nowhere near the top.
We were woken up the last morning by the porters at 3:30, breakfast by 4, packed up and ready to go by 5. It was only 6 kilometers or so to Machu Picchu, and there was plenty of time to go at a leisurely pace, if you didnt want a ticket to climb Waynu Picchu Mountain and get the stunning postcard view. I wanted it, so I ran. Well, power-walked. As opposed to the thousands of knee-crunching steps down from the day before, the road to the lost city was all uphill. I shoved my way past the groups in front of me, and quickly pulled ahead. I wanted to be the first through the famous Sun Gate, to watch the sun rise over the Sacred Valley. Challengers were close on my tail as I scrambled up the last steep 50 steps on my hands and knees, to crest the hill and pass through the gate...
... and was met by a dense, opaque fog. Sun Gate my ass. Still, I wanted a ticket, and continued speeding downhill. It had rained during the night, and the flat smooth rocks were trecherous. Every minute or two I seemed to skim across the surface of one, managing somehow to maintain my balance. Except the time I didn't. I fell, nearly cracking my elbow, but I succeeded in winching my pretty painted and carved walking stick into a gap in the rocks. The stick bent, then broke, but it gave me the time to put my hand out and catch myself. I carried on, walking slowly now, broken souvenir in hand, the rest of the way to Machu Picchu.
I was walking slowly uphill. Very slowly. Carrying an illegal walking stick I poached from a sotol plant I found on the trail; if the rangers noticed, they forgave it. The sun and the weight had sapped all my energy. The hike up the Grand Canyon was cool near the bottom, a hike up through geologic time. But now, midmorning, I was regretting ever coming down. The one blessing of the trail was the abundant piped water, so I drenched my body and clothes every chance I got. The water was cool and life saving, but didnt change the fact that I was wet and miserable. I found myself walking maybe 2 minutes, maybe less, before needing a break. A shelter with a roof was to be found every 2 miles, but walking between those shelters, up the endless, shadeless, unforgiving switchbacks, seeing just how little progress you've made, sapped my will to continue. I walked only so I may eventually stop walking.
Plus, I was out of food. Hunger only made things worse. I was honestly tempted to throw myself off the switchbacks, into some sharp ravine, if only so I could get helicoptered out. Thankfully, the further I went, the more people there were. Of course, none of these people had been or were going to the bottom, so they were still peppy and happy with their snacks and small packs. But they saw me, the human mule, the sad Eeyore, and had sympathy. Some talked with me and gave me encouragement. Others gave me food (a generous French family in particular who I never got to thank). At the end, when my foot was one giant blister, and I was honestly limping, one man stayed with me, stopping every few seconds with me, chatting with me to distract me from the pain, helping me find my car. I wont forget the cruelty of nature or the kindness of people in the Grand Canyon.
Machu Picchu was still foggy and rainy when I arrived, an hour after leaving camp and an hour before anyone else in my group. You couldnt see more than a few feet in front of you. Worse, tickets up Waynu Picchu had sold out when I was still at the Sun Gate, I'd never had a chance. Still, I was determined to make the most of it. Our tour was genuinely fascinating, and as the morning went on, the fog thinned, and Machu Picchu began to reveal its secrets slowly. The famous Lost City of the Incas, one of the 7 man-made wonders of the world, really did earn its reputation. It was stunning. Words wont cover it, and I wont try. However, great as Machu Picchu was, what I really enjoyed was the hike. Running through a misty cloud forest chasing sunrise, hoofing through moutains thrust out of the ground with no warning, standing at the top of the world looking out, standing at the bottom and seeing how far you'd come. Getting there was the real magic of Machu Picchu, and I felt sorry for the poor lazy slobs who took the train here. They'd missed the point.
When I reached the top of the Grand Canyon, still weezing and limping and in pain, I called my mother on the phone to tell her I'd made it. Turns out, she had no idea I was even headed for the Canyon.
"You hiked the Grand Canyon?" she asked with incredulousness. "I didnt know you exercised. I thought you were a computer nerd."
No mom, I'm a scientist. We do things like this. We do it the hard way. We learn from our experiences. No trek has ever been as hard as the Grand Canyon, since I'd learned what I really needed and learned how not to bitch at the mild tribulations. It wasnt fun, but I'm glad I did it. That was the difference between me and the rest of my group on the Inca Trail. I knew how to take it. I knew how to enjoy it. Like an Inca, bitches.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Australia
Ask any of my friends, Australia has haunted me. Ever since I returned from a semester abroad there two years ago, my life has always managed to tie back somehow to Australia. The experience was one of sublime liberation; I broke out of my awkward shell, broke new grounds with my sexuality, and learned to be a new person. A calmer, more confident, better socialized, more fun person. An arrogent, obsessive, shallow person with deep emotional disconnect. It took me two years to recover, to lose my obsession, to find a functional middle ground, to relearn basic life lessons, to patch the schism between my pre and post Australia self and become an emotionally, socially, internally complete person.
Then I applied to go to graduate school there.
Graduate school and I have bad history. I meant to apply early in my senior year, and balked in future panic. Then I intended to do it during the summer, and still couldnt force the motivation. Of the 20 or so schools I investigated, I only managed to apply to two during my American Roadtrip: the two Australian schools. Application due date, August 31st (when I was in Los Angeles), response date, "First week of November" (when I was scheduled to be in Cuzco, Peru).
The other schools I planned to apply to later in my roadtrip. Didn't happen. I bumped it to after my roadtrip. Didn't happen. I'd take care of it early, in Quito. Didn't happen. I pushed and pushed it back until I convinced myself I was too late to try at all, until I was already in Peru and Halloween was fast approaching. I would hedge all my bets on Australia and hope against hope for the best.
But I lacked faith. As the countdown to knowing commenced, I suddenly felt compelled to reach out to other schools. I'd felt guilted for weeks now on my failure to kickstart myself, but somehow, cruising down the endless coastal desert of Peru, I found my motivation.
I like deserts. I like spiders. I like evolution and the crazy diversity of the natural world. I like research. I want to do research. That's what I'm going to do.
In the meanwhile, I waited to hear back from the places I really wanted to go. The vague response date was torturous. I lost hours of sleep between insomnia over my results and slaving over the computer, seeking new avenues and backup plans. I played and replayed scenarios in my head about how I'd response to acceptance or rejection. I spent my free hours in Peru digging through college websites, eschewing tourism or socializing (with a few notable, often unpleasant exceptions). Wondering why I have generally so little to say about Peru? That's why.
Frankly, I didnt like Peru. Everyone from the money changers to the taxi drivers tried to rip me off. The people had an unpleasant streak of douchitude. Buses were longer and more hellish than before. Hostels were quieter and lonelier. My Spanish devolved in frustration, and I stopped trying to speak it. My only new friend I'd made in a week was a small puppy someone had brought on the bus to Cuzco, a welcome change from the typical pets on buses: crying babies. Also a welcome change from mangey flea-and-maggot-ridden strays.
Perhaps my foul opinion is influenced by multiple nights in a row of no sleep?
The bus to Cuzco, by the way, took 10 hours. It was supposed to take 6 according to the driver. We sat for an hour in the bus terminal before leaving, sat another hour in a rural town office of the bus company, and were never told why. These delays were typical, though they would only result in an 8 hour trip. This discrepency was due to simple driver lying, also typical. Crying babies, poorly dubbed movies, pushy food vendors and annoying untalented singers-for-coins were all typical. The shark-like taxi drivers in the bus terminal quoting absurdly high prices and attempting to drop you off at the wrong hostel to collect kickback from the hostel owner was nothing new. The projectile pink vomit of the girl behind me, and the puppy, were really the only atypical things that day.
By all accounts, I shouldve been grumpy in Cuzco. My last night in Arequipa, I decided to see just when Australia scholarships were being announced. I didn't find a date, but I found out Macquarie gets only 7, and UQ gets only 28, and all are only awarded to those in the top 10% of their graduating class, and only to those with published works. I was neither, and thus technically ineligable. For me to win an award, someone must not be doing their job.
And yet, this didnt upset me much. I felt like I had an answer, and even though it wasnt the one I wanted, it meant an end to my anxiety. I could sleep again. I had sent emails out to every professor I had intended to, and now was just awaiting responses. I was a free man.
In Cuzco, I chose what Lonely Planet called a 'party hostel', which translates to 'there's a huge bar right outside my bedroom, which I share with 8 British alcoholics (or am I repeating myself?)´. And yet, this is the best thing I couldve done. Who needs sleep when you have other people who speak English? Hell, half the people in this city are gringos. I celebrated with pizza and a marathon of Scrubs.
The next day was to be my tourist day. I started by going to the city center and the giant square, within which was a giant cathedral. Same as every other city, although this cathedral sported a painting of the Last Supper featuring roast guinea pig.
No, what really set this cathedral apart was the fact that I wasnt exploring it alone. An Australian named Christian (an ex-catholic, appropriately enough) entered right around when I did. He seemed friendly enough, and when he mentioned going to the market afterwards, I gladly volunteered to join him.
We combed the market, dodging pushy clothes vendors, dodging pushy cocaine vendors, sampling grimey chocolate, gawking at the assorted body parts in the meat section, and inventing new juice concoctions. When he asked me after "Where to next?", I smiled inwardly. My first new friend since Quilotoa.
What we did next didnt actually matter. We hiked up to the city's Requisite Giant Religious Statue On A Hill, past some ruins, and down for a beer in the square. Nevermind we got repeatedly lost, walked 3x more than we needed to, and probably shouldve been mugged in some of the places we were. Point is, I had company, with whom not only could I communicate with on a deeper level than "Where's the bathroom?", but actually had alot in common. We only hung out for a few hours, but in the traveler's world, that's akin to your childhood buddy.
As luck would have it, a celebration was going on. It was either a cultural holiday, a high school graduation, or or an attempt to ward off swine flu (as the giant pig float seemed to insinuate). Either way, big street dance party. Christian and I struck up chat with two local girls (though I still questioned his sexuality quietly), and between the two of us, could actually talk with them. When I'm not sick, tired, angry, anxious, or lonely, it turns out I can almost speak Spanish.
We met up with his friends for dinner in a surprisingly fancy restaurant. When dinner usually costs 4 or 5 bucks, dropping nearly 20 US is alot, but for alpaca steak, corn booze, and what might be flan, its worth it. When you're having a good day, you roll with it. You spend money and ride the wave as long as you can.
This was their last day in Cuzco; they were headed north and I was off to Macchu Pichu. You might be inclined to play up the old "Parting is such sweet sorrow" cliche, but that just wasnt true here. I wasnt sad at all, just content. They were like therapy to me. And they'd stick with me, in my big boat.
Australians really are ubiquitous in hostels around the world. Every previous time, I've left with a desperate craving to return to the country I love. This time, I was just glad I met some cool people, and that was the extent of it. I had a new lease on my trip: new plans, new strategies, a clean bill of health, a grip on grad school, and a renewed sense of optimism about what's ahead. I can lay my thanks for it all on the Australians, but instead, I'm just going to thank my new friends, passing as backpackers do like ships in the night.
I have yet to hear back from any school.
Then I applied to go to graduate school there.
Graduate school and I have bad history. I meant to apply early in my senior year, and balked in future panic. Then I intended to do it during the summer, and still couldnt force the motivation. Of the 20 or so schools I investigated, I only managed to apply to two during my American Roadtrip: the two Australian schools. Application due date, August 31st (when I was in Los Angeles), response date, "First week of November" (when I was scheduled to be in Cuzco, Peru).
The other schools I planned to apply to later in my roadtrip. Didn't happen. I bumped it to after my roadtrip. Didn't happen. I'd take care of it early, in Quito. Didn't happen. I pushed and pushed it back until I convinced myself I was too late to try at all, until I was already in Peru and Halloween was fast approaching. I would hedge all my bets on Australia and hope against hope for the best.
But I lacked faith. As the countdown to knowing commenced, I suddenly felt compelled to reach out to other schools. I'd felt guilted for weeks now on my failure to kickstart myself, but somehow, cruising down the endless coastal desert of Peru, I found my motivation.
I like deserts. I like spiders. I like evolution and the crazy diversity of the natural world. I like research. I want to do research. That's what I'm going to do.
In the meanwhile, I waited to hear back from the places I really wanted to go. The vague response date was torturous. I lost hours of sleep between insomnia over my results and slaving over the computer, seeking new avenues and backup plans. I played and replayed scenarios in my head about how I'd response to acceptance or rejection. I spent my free hours in Peru digging through college websites, eschewing tourism or socializing (with a few notable, often unpleasant exceptions). Wondering why I have generally so little to say about Peru? That's why.
Frankly, I didnt like Peru. Everyone from the money changers to the taxi drivers tried to rip me off. The people had an unpleasant streak of douchitude. Buses were longer and more hellish than before. Hostels were quieter and lonelier. My Spanish devolved in frustration, and I stopped trying to speak it. My only new friend I'd made in a week was a small puppy someone had brought on the bus to Cuzco, a welcome change from the typical pets on buses: crying babies. Also a welcome change from mangey flea-and-maggot-ridden strays.
Perhaps my foul opinion is influenced by multiple nights in a row of no sleep?
The bus to Cuzco, by the way, took 10 hours. It was supposed to take 6 according to the driver. We sat for an hour in the bus terminal before leaving, sat another hour in a rural town office of the bus company, and were never told why. These delays were typical, though they would only result in an 8 hour trip. This discrepency was due to simple driver lying, also typical. Crying babies, poorly dubbed movies, pushy food vendors and annoying untalented singers-for-coins were all typical. The shark-like taxi drivers in the bus terminal quoting absurdly high prices and attempting to drop you off at the wrong hostel to collect kickback from the hostel owner was nothing new. The projectile pink vomit of the girl behind me, and the puppy, were really the only atypical things that day.
By all accounts, I shouldve been grumpy in Cuzco. My last night in Arequipa, I decided to see just when Australia scholarships were being announced. I didn't find a date, but I found out Macquarie gets only 7, and UQ gets only 28, and all are only awarded to those in the top 10% of their graduating class, and only to those with published works. I was neither, and thus technically ineligable. For me to win an award, someone must not be doing their job.
And yet, this didnt upset me much. I felt like I had an answer, and even though it wasnt the one I wanted, it meant an end to my anxiety. I could sleep again. I had sent emails out to every professor I had intended to, and now was just awaiting responses. I was a free man.
In Cuzco, I chose what Lonely Planet called a 'party hostel', which translates to 'there's a huge bar right outside my bedroom, which I share with 8 British alcoholics (or am I repeating myself?)´. And yet, this is the best thing I couldve done. Who needs sleep when you have other people who speak English? Hell, half the people in this city are gringos. I celebrated with pizza and a marathon of Scrubs.
The next day was to be my tourist day. I started by going to the city center and the giant square, within which was a giant cathedral. Same as every other city, although this cathedral sported a painting of the Last Supper featuring roast guinea pig.
No, what really set this cathedral apart was the fact that I wasnt exploring it alone. An Australian named Christian (an ex-catholic, appropriately enough) entered right around when I did. He seemed friendly enough, and when he mentioned going to the market afterwards, I gladly volunteered to join him.
We combed the market, dodging pushy clothes vendors, dodging pushy cocaine vendors, sampling grimey chocolate, gawking at the assorted body parts in the meat section, and inventing new juice concoctions. When he asked me after "Where to next?", I smiled inwardly. My first new friend since Quilotoa.
What we did next didnt actually matter. We hiked up to the city's Requisite Giant Religious Statue On A Hill, past some ruins, and down for a beer in the square. Nevermind we got repeatedly lost, walked 3x more than we needed to, and probably shouldve been mugged in some of the places we were. Point is, I had company, with whom not only could I communicate with on a deeper level than "Where's the bathroom?", but actually had alot in common. We only hung out for a few hours, but in the traveler's world, that's akin to your childhood buddy.
As luck would have it, a celebration was going on. It was either a cultural holiday, a high school graduation, or or an attempt to ward off swine flu (as the giant pig float seemed to insinuate). Either way, big street dance party. Christian and I struck up chat with two local girls (though I still questioned his sexuality quietly), and between the two of us, could actually talk with them. When I'm not sick, tired, angry, anxious, or lonely, it turns out I can almost speak Spanish.
We met up with his friends for dinner in a surprisingly fancy restaurant. When dinner usually costs 4 or 5 bucks, dropping nearly 20 US is alot, but for alpaca steak, corn booze, and what might be flan, its worth it. When you're having a good day, you roll with it. You spend money and ride the wave as long as you can.
This was their last day in Cuzco; they were headed north and I was off to Macchu Pichu. You might be inclined to play up the old "Parting is such sweet sorrow" cliche, but that just wasnt true here. I wasnt sad at all, just content. They were like therapy to me. And they'd stick with me, in my big boat.
Australians really are ubiquitous in hostels around the world. Every previous time, I've left with a desperate craving to return to the country I love. This time, I was just glad I met some cool people, and that was the extent of it. I had a new lease on my trip: new plans, new strategies, a clean bill of health, a grip on grad school, and a renewed sense of optimism about what's ahead. I can lay my thanks for it all on the Australians, but instead, I'm just going to thank my new friends, passing as backpackers do like ships in the night.
I have yet to hear back from any school.
Monday, November 2, 2009
American Comforts
The greatest thing about cultural immersion is the temporary happiness you feel when you find touches of your own culture. In Lima, a city with a population comparable to New York, I found America many places I looked.
As blasphemous as it sounds, I took great pleasure in walking around an overpriced mall, watching a movie in English (District 9), eating American candy (Snickers), browsing English bookstores, perusing a supermarket for free samples, getting lost in the toy department of a Wal-mart clone, exploring the downtown with a pack of young Mormon missionaries I encountered (either they're ubiquitous or I'm a magnet), and yes, indulging in a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a Large Fries at McDonalds.
People travel to visit a different culture, but when you live in one, all you want to see is touches of home.
That said, I came to Lima with expectations of seeing a vibrant celebration of Day of the Dead. Not here. Maybe in some small village somewhere, but here it's all about commercialization. The holiday of choice is Halloween. For the first time in perhaps 3 years, I'd get one.
Local clubs all offered Halloween-themed parties to draw in the city's gringos, but I decided to reach out to them directly. Couchsurfing, a networking site for travelers, was something I'd used extensively in my domestic roadtrips to make connections and find free places to crash, but I had yet to use it down here. A quick post on their messageboard resulted in an innundation of emails, mostly unsolicited and unwanted, but one containing an invite to the Lima CS Halloween party, a costumed shindig promising atleast 50 people from all over the world.
Getting there wasnt going to be easy. I arranged to meet a caravan heading out from the local McDonalds, but I had nobody's number, and was dependant on someone noticing a lost gringo wandering around the hub of the traveler ghetto. Naturally, this failed and I didnt meet anyone. Next I tried to take a bus, but all the buses that said 'Callao' on the front werent actually going to Callao, since displaying their actual destination would be entirely too logical for the Peruvian bus system. Then I tried a taxi, but none were licensed to travel to Callao. I finally convinced one to go illegally for an exorbitant price, but he had no idea where he was going and had to stop and ask for directions 5 times.
Upon reaching my destination, paying the taxi, and paying to get into the party, I realized I'd either been pickpocketed or grossly misjudged my money this evening, since I just had enough for a beer, and not enough to get back to the hostel, where my ATM and credit cards are.
The party was what it promised to be, a large costumed houseparty full of CSers. Half the girls were witches, half the boys were girls, and barely a fraction spoke English. People mingled in tight circles in one part of the house, and boys grinded with girls in another. It was kinda like any party I've ever been to, which is to say I hated it almost immediately.
I chatted up a few English speakers, but became more tired and reclusive, and only an hour after arriving I was ready to go. Instead, I thought to go upstairs and lay down.
Me: "I'm not feeling well, can I lay down?"
Host: "Feeling sick? Would you like some cocaine?"
At first I thought he meant coca tea, a local remedy for an upset stomach. Cocaine is derived from coca much like heroin is derived from poppies. At first I thought he just spoke wrong, but with his friend motioning me to join him in the bathroom, I corrected my own false notion. And this was only one of maybe half a dozen times I was offered over the course of the night. Instead, I walked upstairs and passed out on the nearest bed.
Somehow I even managed to sleep. I would wake up sometimes, listen to the party, even steal a peak out the window at the festivities. It sounded fun. I was enjoying it from a distance. After a few hours, I felt reinvigorated and emboldened to rejoin the party. However, before I even reached the bottom of the stairs, a fight broke out on the floor. Edging past, I looked at people's eyes. Everyone was either drunk or fiending on coke. I felt even more isolated, and quickly retreated to the room until the end of the party at sunrise.
The host, to his credit, seemed neither drunk nor high, and seemed responsible and to genuinely care about my seeming ill health, offers of coke aside. He promised to take me to the bus when it started at sunrise, but instead passed me off to his friend, a big man in full pirate getup who spoke English with a ridiculous mocking accent, who was going the same way I was.
I expected the friend to take me on the bus, but instead he found two of his own friends and hailed a taxi for the 4 of us. They ignored us, likely because 3 of us were double-fisting handles of booze. One was nearly too drunk to stand, the other strung out on coke and could talk about about nothing else. Still, high and drunk as he was, the Pirate promised to get me home.
Our first stop was to drop off the addict. Next we went to drop off the drunkard, but the Pirate got out as well and beckoned me to follow. "Change of plans, we're going to hang out." I shot him an evil look.
At 7 in a morning, the two raided a gas station to buy a 12 pack and chips before stumbling to the drunkard's apartment. I declined beer and converstation, making my hostility as obvious as possible. I wasnt their friend, I was their hostage, but without money to get home I had no choice but to follow them until they felt the grace to give me the means to get back to the hostel.
And to his credit, the Pirate did get me home, against the adament protests of his drunkard friend who was too close to falling asleep to really put up a fight. And all I had to do for the free ride was endure 3 hours of their collective stupidity, a force strong enough to break down the culture and language barriers and make my life hell regardless of the tongue.
I arrived back in the hostel in time for lunch. Cheap Chinese food, an hour of American sitcoms, and an afternoon nap, all on the tail of an all-night unwanted unpleasant bender. Yeah, I definitely felt at home here.
As blasphemous as it sounds, I took great pleasure in walking around an overpriced mall, watching a movie in English (District 9), eating American candy (Snickers), browsing English bookstores, perusing a supermarket for free samples, getting lost in the toy department of a Wal-mart clone, exploring the downtown with a pack of young Mormon missionaries I encountered (either they're ubiquitous or I'm a magnet), and yes, indulging in a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a Large Fries at McDonalds.
People travel to visit a different culture, but when you live in one, all you want to see is touches of home.
That said, I came to Lima with expectations of seeing a vibrant celebration of Day of the Dead. Not here. Maybe in some small village somewhere, but here it's all about commercialization. The holiday of choice is Halloween. For the first time in perhaps 3 years, I'd get one.
Local clubs all offered Halloween-themed parties to draw in the city's gringos, but I decided to reach out to them directly. Couchsurfing, a networking site for travelers, was something I'd used extensively in my domestic roadtrips to make connections and find free places to crash, but I had yet to use it down here. A quick post on their messageboard resulted in an innundation of emails, mostly unsolicited and unwanted, but one containing an invite to the Lima CS Halloween party, a costumed shindig promising atleast 50 people from all over the world.
Getting there wasnt going to be easy. I arranged to meet a caravan heading out from the local McDonalds, but I had nobody's number, and was dependant on someone noticing a lost gringo wandering around the hub of the traveler ghetto. Naturally, this failed and I didnt meet anyone. Next I tried to take a bus, but all the buses that said 'Callao' on the front werent actually going to Callao, since displaying their actual destination would be entirely too logical for the Peruvian bus system. Then I tried a taxi, but none were licensed to travel to Callao. I finally convinced one to go illegally for an exorbitant price, but he had no idea where he was going and had to stop and ask for directions 5 times.
Upon reaching my destination, paying the taxi, and paying to get into the party, I realized I'd either been pickpocketed or grossly misjudged my money this evening, since I just had enough for a beer, and not enough to get back to the hostel, where my ATM and credit cards are.
The party was what it promised to be, a large costumed houseparty full of CSers. Half the girls were witches, half the boys were girls, and barely a fraction spoke English. People mingled in tight circles in one part of the house, and boys grinded with girls in another. It was kinda like any party I've ever been to, which is to say I hated it almost immediately.
I chatted up a few English speakers, but became more tired and reclusive, and only an hour after arriving I was ready to go. Instead, I thought to go upstairs and lay down.
Me: "I'm not feeling well, can I lay down?"
Host: "Feeling sick? Would you like some cocaine?"
At first I thought he meant coca tea, a local remedy for an upset stomach. Cocaine is derived from coca much like heroin is derived from poppies. At first I thought he just spoke wrong, but with his friend motioning me to join him in the bathroom, I corrected my own false notion. And this was only one of maybe half a dozen times I was offered over the course of the night. Instead, I walked upstairs and passed out on the nearest bed.
Somehow I even managed to sleep. I would wake up sometimes, listen to the party, even steal a peak out the window at the festivities. It sounded fun. I was enjoying it from a distance. After a few hours, I felt reinvigorated and emboldened to rejoin the party. However, before I even reached the bottom of the stairs, a fight broke out on the floor. Edging past, I looked at people's eyes. Everyone was either drunk or fiending on coke. I felt even more isolated, and quickly retreated to the room until the end of the party at sunrise.
The host, to his credit, seemed neither drunk nor high, and seemed responsible and to genuinely care about my seeming ill health, offers of coke aside. He promised to take me to the bus when it started at sunrise, but instead passed me off to his friend, a big man in full pirate getup who spoke English with a ridiculous mocking accent, who was going the same way I was.
I expected the friend to take me on the bus, but instead he found two of his own friends and hailed a taxi for the 4 of us. They ignored us, likely because 3 of us were double-fisting handles of booze. One was nearly too drunk to stand, the other strung out on coke and could talk about about nothing else. Still, high and drunk as he was, the Pirate promised to get me home.
Our first stop was to drop off the addict. Next we went to drop off the drunkard, but the Pirate got out as well and beckoned me to follow. "Change of plans, we're going to hang out." I shot him an evil look.
At 7 in a morning, the two raided a gas station to buy a 12 pack and chips before stumbling to the drunkard's apartment. I declined beer and converstation, making my hostility as obvious as possible. I wasnt their friend, I was their hostage, but without money to get home I had no choice but to follow them until they felt the grace to give me the means to get back to the hostel.
And to his credit, the Pirate did get me home, against the adament protests of his drunkard friend who was too close to falling asleep to really put up a fight. And all I had to do for the free ride was endure 3 hours of their collective stupidity, a force strong enough to break down the culture and language barriers and make my life hell regardless of the tongue.
I arrived back in the hostel in time for lunch. Cheap Chinese food, an hour of American sitcoms, and an afternoon nap, all on the tail of an all-night unwanted unpleasant bender. Yeah, I definitely felt at home here.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)