December 01, 2003

I Love Boobies

DAY 41: Birgit and I were so used to the early morning wake-ups on the ship that we were both lying in bed awake at 6:30. Birgit had developed a fever, so I lent her some of my medicine. La Gripe was back.

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MID-MORNING CAME AROUND and I hung out with Sonya in the backyard to do a handwash. While my conversion pants and underwear dried out, I got my disposable underwater camera film developed and wandered the souvenir shops while waiting around. A popular t-shirt was the "I Love Boobies" shirt (picture above), which of course, made me snicker like a fourth grader.

Afterwards, I locked myself in my room with my computer to catch up with my blog entries, flicking little bed bugs away from around me. (Hope you appreciate it.)

Navid came to visit -- he was staying back at a nicer hotel -- and grabbed me for a final dinner in Puerto Ayora. Surprisingly, most of the businesses on the main street were boarded on that fine Saturday night, with signs on them stating that they had been shut down for a week as a penalty for tax evasion. If I had a business in town, I probably would have done the same thing -- why pay taxes when you can just shut down for a week during the low season?

We managed to find a place with burgers, fries and fancy beers and finished off with ice cream treats. Then, determined to catch up, I went back to my room to be a computer nerd again. Birgit was passed out sick on the bed.


AROUND 10:30 I WENT OUT TO UPLOAD my stories and pictures (for all you BlogFans out there). After that I was pretty tired and was going to call it a night, but I ran into James the Kiwi and Steve and Gwen the Scots at Limon y Cafe. The place was packed with locals, dancing and drinking to the salsa music, and I decided to put my notebook down on the table and sit in for a while. Midnight came, marking Gwen's birthday, and we toasted another round in her honor.

The night continued into early morning, and it was then I met an English girl who was at the bar alone having sporadic conversations with local guys. I invited her over to the table and she told us how she had been an English teacher on the island for quite some time. In fact, she left Wales fourteen years ago at the age of 18 to go work and travel and hadn't gone home since. She actually worked for food and board at the ultra luxurious -- and very secluded -- Royal Palm Millenium resort in the highlands, and was in town for her occasional night on the town.

The bar closed around 2 a.m., after of which everyone -- including Jorge and Gustavo -- went across the street to Panga, the after hours discotech club. James and the Scots called it a night, but I continued my last night in the Galapagos with the British girl, still with my notebook in hand. The club was full of locals, including Mauricio and his girlfriend, who I discovered, owns the Free Enterprise.

The British girl introduced me to some of the locals she worked with who were all pouring her beers. One of them eventually got her on the dance floor until she got tired of him. Then she pulled me on to do a little salsa dancing. The other guy started getting jealous and held her hand as the music winded down so the place could close. She kept secrets from him by talking to me in English, a nice change from people speaking Spanish to keep secrets from me.

"Look at this guy, he thinks he's going to take me home," she said. Landing a gringa is sort of a trophy to the locals and he wouldn't let go. "I'm trashed. I'm gonna brush this guy off. Would you like to come up to the resort with me tonight?"

This of course triggered two possible answers in my mind: yes and yes. (What can I say? I love boobies.)

She reverted to her fluent Spanish and told the guy sternly but politely she had to go, and took me outside to hail a taxi -- which on the island is actually a pickup truck. She negotiated a cheap fare in her drunken stupor and got us a ride through the wee hours to the Royal Palm resort, a far 20 km away in the secluded highlands. It was about 4:30 when we arrived there. She flashed her badge at the security gate, and the driver drove us the additional 2 km to the actual resort, situated in the middle of nowhere. She took me to her private villa with its fireplace and jacuzzi, amongst other luxurious amenities, where I spent the night.

Regardless of getting much sleep, it wasn't a bad way to spend a final night in the Galapagos at all...and I didn't even have to inflate my scrotum either.

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Escape from Paradise

DAY 42: I had a 9:30 airport shuttle to catch back in Puerto Ayora in the morning, which would have been an easy thing if I was there. I woke up with the sun as always around 6:30 wondering how the hell I was going to get out of the Middle of Nowhere. I laid in bed next to the girl I had only known for a couple of hours, figuring I'd wait til at least 7:00 to make any moves.

At 7:00 I got out of bed and wandered around the house. I contemplated just leaving, but the resort had asshole-protection -- security cameras and guard dogs at the gate. I remembered that I wasn't exactly an announced registered guest and realized that I was stuck.

I flipped through some books and rediscovered that the British girl's name was Menna -- I had forgotten it the moment she told me the night before. I was hoping she would wake up so I could try to get back into town, but she was still out cold. Another ten minutes I thought. I killed time by taking a dump.

It was 7:15 and nudged Menna around to see if it would wake her. She stood up and mumbled something in Welsh I think.

"Um, yeah...so like, how do I get out of here?" I asked, trying not to sound too much like a jerk. But Menna just passed out in her pillow and went back to sleep. Okay, another ten minutes perhaps.

I killed more time by worrying. Puerto Ayora was a good 20 minutes away by car and I still had to get there before the shuttle departure to pack and grab my laundry. I contemplated walking the whole way, but I remembered the dogs at the gate again.

A nudge at 7:30 finally woke Menna up. "Yeah...so...um...I need to go..." I said.

"Oh right, I forgot." She assured me there was a 7:30 shuttle to town and called reception on the phone to confirm. I overheard half of the conversation:

"Right...Oh...ten o'clock, huh? I forgot it's Sunday...okay...okay...well, let me ask him and then call you back."

I was shit out of luck and stranded at the resort miles away from anywhere. The only option was to call a cab to come all the way out from Puerto Ayora to bring me back into town for the "whopping" cab fare of seven dollars, which I was gladly willing to pay. Menna had reception call me a taxi from town, which would take 30-40 minutes to arrive. In the meantime, she got dressed and gave me a quick tour of the resort.

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We were in the highlands so clouds were everywhere that morning, and the little villas stood out like Smurf houses. Menna showed me the extravagant main dining hall (picture above), the tennis courts and the pool, and the path that led to the super secret Presidential House where I think Al and Tipper Gore stayed out a little while before. It being the low season, we were the only two people staying there and with the island mist it was sort of creepy. It didn't help that all the early morning staff was giving me weird looks.

Luckily the pickup truck taxi came around the rotunda to pick me up. I thanked and kissed Menna goodbye and rode the half hour through the highlands back to Puerto Ayora with the friendly driver who liked to discuss the prices of pickup trucks. I got back to my hostel room by 8:30. Birgit was still lying in bed, feeling a little bit better.

I managed to shower, get my laundry, and pack my backpacks in record time. Birgit and I ran into Sean and Sonya playing chess out in the common room and bid them farewell. We picked up Navid at his hotel and managed to hail the only Sunday morning shuttle bus down from the road as it already started its hour-long route to the airport.


FAMILIAR FACES WERE AMONG US in the waiting room as it was relatively small tourist community and there was only one flight to Guayaquil and then Quito. No one sat next to their partners, not even the couple of Hamburgers (from the city Hamburg, silly). I caught up on some reading and writing and took a nap.

Upon arrival back on the continent, a time zone ahead, Navid tried to get a flight to Lima right away so he didn't have to waste another day in Guayaquil. I waited for him in the cafe to see what he could get, but in the end, he decided to prolong his parallel journey with me yet another day in hopes of getting a cheaper domestic fare within Peru. We split a cab and checked into a the only hostel recommended in the Lonely Planet book in the quieter suburbs of Guayaquil, which was reminiscent of Los Angeles.

I had a huge craving for chinese food for some reason, and we found a fancy restaurant with some kick ass chicken with broccoli and spare ribs.

Sometimes "paradise" can come with a fortune cookie.

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December 02, 2003

Adventures in Border Crossing

DAY 43: Navid and I were out of the hostel in the Guayaquil suburbs before eight and caught a city bus to the main bus terminal. A fake Christmas tree stood in the center of the main hall and for the first time, it was beginning to look a little like Christmas.

We got tickets for a bus bound for Machala, the major city closest to the Ecuadorean border with Peru. It was a nice -- and very secure -- bus ride, complete with baggage claim tickets, a carry-on bag search and a body frisk.

The female conductor put on Money Train -- starring Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes and Jennifer Lopez (before she was j.lo and was the designated target for big ass jokes) -- on the monitor to kill time. I have to admit that seeing New York city on the screen -- particularly New York during Christmas time -- got me a little homesick.

Thoughts of white Christmases blew away when we arrived at Machala. As soon as we arrived at a random spot on the city map, we were displaced eight blocks from any kind of bus station. We eventually found our way and got another bus for the one-hour ride to Huaquillas, the border town that when pronounced by a local, sounds like "Guayaquil." Navid used his GPS device to make sure we were on the right track.

As soon as we got off the bus, we were hounded by guys offering us rides to the border. We avoided them by going out for lunch.

Navid found a money changer on the street where we exchanged just ten bucks into Peruvian soles for the meantime. A taxi driver drove us to the border bridge on the other side of time, where there was no official customs office -- just a bunch of street stands. We looked around aimlessly as dozens of taxi drivers followed us, offering us rides to back to an immigration office back on the other end of town. One of them led me to a tourist information office where the woman confirmed that we did have to go back the two miles after all.

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The guy who brought us to the office -- a Peruvian taxi driver by the name of Ricardo who was only allowed to drive on the Peruvian side -- wouldn't leave us alone and escorted us to a taxi back on the Ecuadorean side of the bridge. I swear he stuck to us like a fly on two turds. He even hopped in the cab with us as the other driver brought us to the immigration office. Sure enough, we got our exit stamps and got back in the taxi which took us back to the unofficial-looking border bridge.

Ricardo led us to his cab through a crowded maze of street vendors in the Peruvian town of Aguas Verdes. We were wary of walking into a trap, but Ricardo's car existed after all. We hopped in his Toyota and he drove us to the other side of town to the Peruvian immigration office. Why the two immigration offices are five miles apart, I just don't get.

Navid and I were going to catch a bus from there, but there was none. Ricardo -- who was still swarming like a fly on turds -- offered us a ride to the next town of Tumbes for seven US dollars or twenty Peruvian soles, which we had no choice but to accept. (Well, the other option was to deal with the other four guys trying to get a fare from us, but I figured we should just stick with the same guy.) Ricardo and I talked a bit during the ride, and he told me about his three kids who were all in university in Lima.

En route to town, there was group of policemen on the side of the barren highway that pulled us over. Ricardo told me it was normal, but that some police were very corrupt. We exited the car and the cops looked over our passports and searched our bags -- I had to admit having three cameras and a laptop -- but they let us go without asking for any money.

Ricardo drove us to an ATM in Tumbes where I got some more cash, and then to a hostel he recommended. I gave him a twenty soles note that I got in Huaquillas but he wouldn't take it.

"Es falso," he said. ("It's fake.") He told me how counterfeiting caused a lot of problems in Peru. He showed me the difference between a fake bill and a real one and it was really hard to distinguish between the two.

"[You got it in Ecuador, huh?]" the hostel clerk interjected. He looked at the note. "Falso."

Ricardo pleaded us to pay in more reliable US bills but raised his $7 for the two of us price to $7 each. Navid wouldn't budge.

"[You said seven dollars or twenty soles!]" Navid and I argued.

"[But your soles are bad.]"

In the argument, Ricardo seemed to raise the twenty soles price to twenty five, justifying it by saying he drove us to and around town as well -- which I guessed was justifiable. Besides, there was no other way to get rid of him. I gave him a (real) 50 sole note that I got out of the ATM and he gave me change in what I hoped was real money.

"[Give me your fake twenty,]" Ricardo said. "[It's not good if you get caught with it. You'll be put in prison.]"

I kept the note though, thinking "then why would he want it?" (Pepe, the Dutchman I met in Riobamba, told me that it is sometimes possible to pass a fake bill.)

"[How about some money for a Coke?" Ricardo asked me. "[Come on, be a friend.]"

There was no getting rid of him, so I gave him an Ecuadorean fifty cent piece.

"[That's all you have?]"

"Sí. No mas."

I tried to keep the other coins in my pocket from jiggling.


NAVID GOT A PLANE TICKET for Cuzco at the nearby Aero Continente office, since he had limited time and planned on skipping out on northern Peru. I sat in our new hostel room, writing while watching TV. The 1999 American version of Godzilla came on, and although it takes place in New York, it didn't get me homesick at all -- just sick of cheesy modern B-films. Afterwards, I wandered around town near the main plaza -- with its cathedral on one side and mosaic bandshell on the other -- where a parade was taking place. Parents drove large groups of four-year olds in motorized tricycles decorated with ballons, all dressed up in costumes like it was Halloween. I had no idea what it was for.


MY PORTUGUESE MAN OF WAR JELLYFISH STING started to get irritated, so Navid helped me get some ointment at a local farmacia -- one of the advantages of traveling with an ER doctor. The gel was made by the American company Novartis -- where my friend Lizle works -- so I trusted it would help me.

For possibly our last dinner together, Navid and I went out to a sidewalk table of a "pricey" restaurant (according to Lonely Planet) on the Plaza das Armas, which wasn't too pricey with the exchange rate. We tried the special Peruvian ceviche, which unlike the Ecuadorean kind, is served with big toasted corn kernals and hot peppers. It was a rather pleasant night in town, despite the peddlers, shoe shine boys and vendors that kept on approaching us with goods and services every ten minutes -- something that never really happened in Ecuador. It was clear that Peruvians -- like the ceviche -- were far more "spicier" than the Ecuadoreans; I supposed it was time to "kick it up a notch."

And thus began Chapter Two: Peru. In the immortal words of TV chef Emeril Lagasse, "BAM!"

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December 03, 2003

On the Road Again

DAY 44: I bid a fond farewell to Navid when we left the hostel before eight in the morning. He hopped on a mototaxi which brought him to the airport for his flights to Cuzco. For the first time since I touched down in South America, I was alone again.

I ran into Ricardo again; he pulled up in his cab, trying to get a fare out of me, but I just politely told him no and ignored him. I walked around the streets looking for a place to get breakfast, passing the stores with signs clearly stating they won't accept counterfeit bills. I thought that would go without say, but then again, do you think employees would really wash their hands at a fast food restaurant unless there was a sign to do so?

Across the street from my restaurant was a bus company office with buses to Chiclayo, two major cities south, after Piura. I tried to get a ticket for a morning bus, but there wasn't one until 2:30 in the afternoon. With an eight hour ride, that would have put me at 10:30 at night, which I didn't want to do.

A shady guy off the street saw my confusion and told me about another bus company down the block with a bus leaving at 9:30 in the morning. He escorted me to the desk and argued to the clerk to give me the fare for 15 soles, instead of the usual 20. As the clerk wrote the ticket, he asked if I was Japanese, Chinese or Korean, and my hopes of trying to blend in as a Latino sunk again.

For his effort, Shady Man asked me for a sole "[for a Coke]" which I reluctantly gave -- but it was the only way to get rid of him.


I WAITED IN THE SMALL WAITING ROOM for the bus to come, just staring at the chairs. I swear that hour was the longest hour of my life, but perhaps it wouldn't have done well on Fox's 24 show.

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Things picked up once the bus came and picked me and another guy up. We rode out of town, passing by small beach towns to pick up more passengers. The scenery changed dramtically along the way, from scenic ocean roads, to tropical fields with palm trees to barren deserts (picture above). At one point I saw a shepard with his flock of sheep.

The ride wasn't all postcard scenery. The Peruvian police were also a part of the ride. In less than an hour of departure from Tumbus, some cops pulled us over and searched the bus for contraband -- but let us go. Then, at a border crossing station between departments (states), everyone had to get off the bus and wait while a team of cops did a more thorough search of the bus, again to look for contraband. The cops hailed us over two other times along the way, but nothing really happened thankfully. The only real action came from the two Jean Claude Van Damme movies that the conductor played on tape, taped off of TV.


WE ARRIVED IN CHICLAYO BY FIVE in the afternoon. The thing about the buses in Peru so far is that they don't necessarily go to a designated station, and you are often just put in a random place on the map. I asked the guy across the aisle for some help, and he gladly showed me where to get off and pointed me in the right direction. I found the hostel I was looking for in no time and checked into a simple room with just a bed. I was hoping there would be some other travelers in a common area to meet up with like I had when I arrived in Quito -- which seems like ages ago -- but there were none, and I was still all alone.


I SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY exploring Chiclayo, including its main Plaza das Armes where there was an exhibition of kids' drawings called "Mi Amigo, El Policia." Hundreds of drawings were hung with kids' depěctions of cops directing traffic, arresting bad guys and standing under suns with smiley faces. There was not one drawing of a cop searching a bus for contraband. If the kids only knew.

I got lost in the city and always used the sanctuary of a church to catch my breath and pull out my map without drawing tourist attention to myself. If there's anything about South America, you can always find a church to help you out. I saw no gringos around, and it was clear that I was one of the few people exploring Northern Peru -- most people, including Navid and Pepe, skip northern Peru and fly straight for Lima and Machu Picchu.


I HAD A BIG HALF A CHICKEN that I couldn't finish and then vegged out in an internet cafe, looking up causes for the big rash and skin ulcers that had developed on the entire back on my right hand. I discovered that the jellyfish sting I had could have some long-lasting irritations and that my scar of the stinger might be permanent.

The computer lab attendant helped me out when I was trying to connect my Memory Stick adapter to the computer. With my confused looks and broken Spanish, she thought I was Brazilian with Portuguese as my first language -- perhaps it had something to do with that Portuguese Man of War.


Funny how itineraries can change... from the way things look, I am going to catch an early bus to Yurimaguas -- get a map! -- so I can start a really off-the-beaten-path trek to the city of Iquitos, deep in the Amazon. No roads go to Iquitos, it is only accessible overland via cargo boats on Amazon tributaries. I hope to survive it...and yes, I HAVE been taking my malaria pills!

This might possibly put me in a N.I.Z. for 4-5 days... You've been warned.

If I can get internet access before Iquitos, I'll be back tomorrow with the crazy story of what transpired today in "Tomb Raider"...

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December 08, 2003

Tomb Raider

DAY 45: In 1987, when most people were discovering the idea of boiling rabbits in Fatal Attraction, a group of archaeologists discovered new ruins just 30 km southeast of Chiclayo, Peru. This find contained the tombs of Sipan, an ancient city of the Moche civilization, a people who pre-date the more widely-known Incas. The reason for their decreased popularity is due to the fact that they didn't leave any written records -- which is sad because we will never know if boiling rabbits ever appealed to them.

Moche (mo'-cheh) refers to an archaelogical site, an ancient language, an art style, a people and a culture. The Moche culture flourished on the dry deserts of the North Coast of Peru between 200 B.C. to 700 A.D. and the people of the city of Sipan lived under the rule of a warrior king who never wrote his name down and is therefore only now known simply as "Señor de Sipan." His pyramids and tomb were found in the summer of 1987 -- something surprisingly never mentioned in VH1's I Love the 80s -- and the archeological excavation still continues today.

I caught a minibus (a little bigger than a minivan) out of Chiclayo that took me to Sipan. As we rode down a long stretch of the Peruvian greenscape, a street performer hopped on and played a traditional guitar and panflute at the same time. We stopped in little villages along the way to pick up those who needed a lift and in no time I was one of many people jammed into a small bus.

Sipan is not only an excavation site but a village with residents, so I still had to find the actual tombs. I asked a woman next to me and she told me she'd tell me where to get off.

"[You are traveling alone?]" she asked.

"Si."

"[You look too young to be traveling alone. It's dangerous.]"

"[I look 18, but I'm 29,]" I said. It seems that not only are people confused as where I come from, but my age as well.

"[Are you a student?]"

"[Yes, I study archaeology.]" This was funny to me because -- like many of you -- my only qualifications as an archaeologist comes from watching the Indiana Jones movies.


I GOT OFF AT THE EXCAVATION SITE, clearly marked with a big sign about 1 km from the village of Sipan. I thought I was the only one getting off, but a young woman got off the bus as well.

"[You work here?]" I asked.

"Si," she said, and went off to work.

I wandered around the entrance gate for a guy to come. I bought a ticket from Ricardo -- whom I later found out was one of the working archaeologists of the site. He pointed out where the excavation and museum was and left me to go on my way.

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THE MOCHES, like the Egyptians, believed in the afterlife and made sure they had enough stuff with them in their tombs to party after death. A lot of the food and drink were put in ceramic pots, placed in the corners of burial chambers. There were six chambers excavated thus far, of different people of royalty. They were all found in good condition, with some skeletons almost completely intact. One looked like it died passed out drunk at a party. That must have been one helluva night.

I explored the tomb sites of the royalty and eventually found the tomb of Señor de Sipan himself. He was buried with an entourage and I figured he was one popular guy, or just had a really good publicist.

In the museum were some artifacts recovered from the excavation, including gold necklaces that would put Mr. T to shame. There were paintings of artists' interpretations of the burials, plus a scale model on the floor reminiscent of the Map Room in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was sort of confused with the pictures and the scale model because there wasn't exactly a pyramid outside -- just a big rocky mountain that looked nothing like a pyramid.

I sat in the shade and striked a conversation with the girl who worked there, who wasn't doing much work at all.

"[What town are you from?]" she asked me.

"Que?" (Peruvians speak really fast so I usually respond with "What?")

"[In Peru...where are you from?]"

"[No, I'm from the United States.]"

"So you speak English?" she said in broken English.

"Yes."

Her name was Liliana and she worked as a freelance tour guide by day and went to English school at night. She asked me if I saw the pyramids and pointed towards the big mountain. Suddenly it made sense; the pyramids were covered in adobe.

"[There's a trail?]" I asked.

"[Yes, want to go?]"

"Si"

Instead of money, she asked that I merely translate what she said in Spanish so she could hear the English. She led me along the unmarked trail up the pyramids, the tallest being 365 meters high. At that height I could finally visualize the big picture of what I saw in the "Map Room."

Liliana and I sat in the shade to escape from a very hot day. She was waiting for a minibus to come in hopes of a prospective client -- buses only came every hour or so. In the meantime, I helped her with her English homework. A big minibus came loaded with an entire school class from the city of Cajamarca, but they didn't want to pay for a guide nor lacked the English skills to do a trade.

"[Do you want to come to my house for lunch?]" she asked, seeing that she had a whole hour before another bus came.

"Si."

On our way to town, Liliana told me that Ricardo the archeologist was her boyfriend and I knew that I was going to her house for nothing else but lunch -- which was fine because I was pretty hungry.


WE WALKED ON A LOG over a stream and walked the dirt road to the village of Sipan where she often stayed at her sister's or brother's house. Sipan wasn't so much developed at all -- all the roads were dirt, electricity was scarce and there was only one phone in the entire town. If anyone tried to call someone else in town, they'd get a busy signal.

What Sipan village lacked in technology it made up for in its abundance of fruit and friendly people. Liliana knew everyone in town and introduced her new friend to all the passersby. One guy let us pick a mango from his tree.


"ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN," a little boy said to me at the house on the other side of town. It was Liliana's ten-year-old nephew showing off the little English he knew to me. He and his brother were home for lunch from school.

The house was really big -- you could fit about six Manhattan apartments inside -- but had no lighting or plumbing. I had to wash my hands with a bar of soap and fetched water from a basin. Liliana's sister only prepared one plate of food -- her daily routine -- which was shared with me. I ate the chicken and rice and salad while asking the kids about school.

On the way back to the excavation site, we stopped by the house of Liliana's brother, a purse maker and sugar cane farmer. Some guys nearby were playing cards, and they offered me some of their fermented fruit drink thing, which was pretty good.

When we arrived back at the site, a bus to Chiclayo had arrived and rather than wait around, I bid my new friend goodbye and hopped aboard.


THE MINIBUS WAS CRUISING DOWN the long stretch of road when suddenly I heard a loud thud followed by the gasps of women -- the right side of the bus dropped from what I thought was a flat tire. We had some pretty good speed and might have tipped over, so everyone had to lean on the left side of the bus like they did in the movie Speed. The conductor tried to calm things down by repeating "tranquilo, tranquilo" until we came to a stop.

Everyone got off the minibus and discovered that we didn't get a flat -- the axle bent or the shocks blew and it was evident that repairs would take way longer than a ten-minute tire change. This wasn't good because the twenty of us were far away from anywhere and stranded under the hot afternoon sun. We waited for a solution; occasionally another bus would come by, but it was always too full for all us -- only three or four at a time could fit, and it usually went to women and small children first. A third bus came and I tried to get on but there was no room -- until I heard "Ey, chico." Someone had scootched over and made room for one more. I packed in like an extra sardine.

The new bus didn't necessarily go back to the terminal -- just the town limits -- so I got off there and tried to figure my way back to the region of the Lonely Planet map. I only had my memory to remember familiar streets or buildings -- which was sort of hard since most everything looked the same. It took me half an hour to find my way and after everything that had happened I just wanted an ice cold Coke.


"FALSO," the woman at a store said when I tried to pay for a drink. It turns out they counterfeit coins in Peru too. I gave her another coin which was real and she gave me the Coke -- a warm one, but it had to do. I walked down the street for about two blocks when the woman can running after me. Apparently, when Cokes come in glass bottles, they aren't "to go" because you have to give the bottle back.

I looked confused enough and she smiled and walked me back to her store. "[Sorry, I've only been in Peru for three days,]" I explained. I asked her to explain the difference between a real and counterfeit coin and she showed me that the fake ones don't have straight lines where they should be. So far, Peru definitely has a higher learning curve than Ecuador.

It was only 4 p.m. and I already had had an exhausting day. I spent an hour in an air-conditioned supermarket and bought supplies for an upcoming unpredictable river trek to the Amazon, and did some internet work. I had a chicken sandwich and paid for it with my fake coins since the guy didn't have any change for a five. Ha, that's what they get for not having change.


THE SUN WENT DOWN and the lights went on in the Plaza das Armas. Salsa and Christmas music played on a nearby speaker system and it was a nice relaxing change from such a hectic day. I ran into Liliana in town on my way to buying a bus ticket -- she had just gotten out of class -- and I tried to get her to go out for a drink, but she just wanted to go home.

I slept for four hours and got up for an early morning bus due east towards the jungle.


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Eastward Ho!

DAY 46: Since no roads go to the Amazonian jungle city of Iquitos, there are only two ways to get there: by plane or -- if you have time to kill like me -- via a cargo boat up the Rio Marañon, one of the main tributaries that make up the mighty Amazon River. The closest river port for these cargo ships is in the city of Yurimaguas which involves -- as Lonely Planet describes -- "a tiring road trip from the coast."

My tiring road trip was already tiring before I even got on the bus. I checked out of my hostel at 4:30 a.m. and walked the streets of Chiclayo -- which had a waiting cab driver outside each of the many small casinos in town -- about 1 km to the bus station of a bus company that could take me to Yurimaguas by 2 p.m. -- much sooner than Lonely Planet had mentioned. When I arrived at the station, it was locked but soon a janitor let me in to wait. There was a man with his wife and kid waiting there as well. He already had a ticket to the city of Tarapoto, the city before Yurimaguas, on the same bus.

Five o'clock came and I had no ticket, but that didn't matter because the bus wasn't there yet. I discovered that another difference between Ecuador and Peru is that the Peruvians don't necessarily follow fixed schedules. Soon the desk manager I spoke to the day before came in to start his day. I asked him for a ticket to Yurimaguas for the 5 a.m. bus as stated on the board:

Chiclayo - Yurimaguas: 5 a/m 2 p/m

With his hard-to-understand Spanish, he tried to explain to me that the 5 a.m. bus only went as far as Tarapoto and the 2 p/m bus went all the way to Yurimaguas. (Funny, up until that point, I thought "2 p/m" was the arrival time in Yurimaguas.) He told me that I should probably wait for the 2 p.m. bus which would arrive by 6 a.m. the next day. I didn't know what to do and was really confused with his speech. It was trying to have a conversation with Ozzy Osbourne.

Luckily the man waiting in the room came over to help me out and told us that I could save time by going to Tarapoto on the 5 a.m. bus and getting a car to Yurimaguas at 3 a.m. -- which is what he was going to do. I trusted him for some reason -- you get some sort of trust from a guy if he's traveling with his wife and kid -- and decided to take his advice; the thought of waiting in the dark room for nine more hours didn't bode well with me.

For his help, I helped the man with all his bags to the bag check-in. His name was Miguel and I explained to him why I was so bad at Spanish. I bet to the bus manager, I sounded like Ozzy Osbourne.

The 5 a.m. bus came late because it actually originated in Lima the day before and was running a little behind. It came around 6:30, dropped off some people and picked us up. I made sure my bag got on board.


ON A LONG PLANE, TRAIN OR BUS RIDE, there's always some guy who is really talkative and just points everything out the window with a comment and tries to make small talk with everyone. It was just my luck that this guy had the seat next to me and I entertained him with some short answers no longer than four words each. I thought that maybe I was annoyed with him because of the language barrier, but the other passengers he tried to talk to gave him similar short answers too. I ignored him by putting my hat over my eyes and going to sleep.

The bus made its way away from the coast and into the Andes en route to the Amazon Basin. We made a food and bathroom stop in the mountains for an hour. Goats and dogs hid under the bus for the shade. After the break, the Talkaholic moved to the seat ahead of me and talked the ear off some woman. She tried to ignore him by going to sleep.

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The bus driver drove on a winding road through the Andes. Hours went by, two of which were killed with a Spanish-dubbed screening of the movie Vertical Limit. The bus ride was more or less smooth. It stopped in small towns along the way to drop off and pick up passengers. Unlike the economy buses I had been on so far where vendors constantly came on and off the bus to sell goods, the tactic for a special service bus was to sell goods through the window with bowls attached to sticks (picture above).


MORE HOURS WENT BY. I slept and stared out the window. It never got too boring because the beautiful lush green scenery kept on changing as we left the Andes and entered the Amazon Basin on a road that hugged the Rio Marañon. The bus rolled over small streams, paved roads and dirt roads.

Another movie came on, Collateral Damage, staring Governor Schwarzenegger, about a fireman-turned-renegade CIA agent on a quest to avenge his family's deaths by Colombian guerillas, by singlehandedly backpacking to Colombia by himself. The film was both silly and scary -- scary, in that I was near the Colombian border and the movie showed (Hollywood's version of) how the guerrillas kidnapped foreigners, killed villagers and stuffed a poisonous coral snake down a guy's throat(!); silly in that, yeah right, like people on a South American bus can conveniently switch to English whenever you can't understand something.

Day turned to night and we stopped in stations in small towns. I was on the look out for Miguel and his family to see if he was getting off or not because none of the stations really said what town they were in, and what made it more difficult was a lot of businesses and streets were named after other towns. I kept a watch on the bay that my bag was in underneath but had no problems.


AFTER THE FIFTEEN HOUR BUS RIDE -- my longest to date -- we finally arrived at the end of the line in Tarapoto, a city which my abridged Lonely Planet guide only had half a page dedicated to it, and no map. I was dead tired and just wanted to crash for the night. A mototaxi -- a motorcyle rickshaw thing -- took me to a hostel about eight blocks away. It was a great choice because the attendant Ricardo was a nice guy -- he was going to university studying tourism and practiced his English with me -- and the room had a private bath, much needed A/C and cable TV. MTV videos came on in English and Spanish, The Simpsons came on in Spanish, Saturday Night Live reruns came on in English, and movies came on in the international language of porn.

After a long, long day, it was nice to feel at home again.

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A Fresh Young Boy

DAY 47: The sun came up over Tarapoto and broke through the morning mist, revealing a pretty town surrounded by mountains. I got dressed and sorted out and went looking for a place for breakfast -- there was one on the fourth floor with a view of the city, and it was included in my fee.

"Hello Meester," Ricardo said. He was forever addressing me as "meester" since the night before, which translates to señor, which also translates back into "sir." Ricardo made me an egg sandwich -- "the American breakfast" -- juice, coffee and sat with me to practice his English. He was yet another person that couldn't believe I was 29 -- I look 20 tops. I asked him about the journey to Yurimaguas and to Iquitos and he told me what to do. He was a good guy -- good enough for two girlfriends he told me.

"Goodbye Meester," he said as he put me in a mototaxi. He told the driver to take me to the autoport for the normal price of 1 1/2 soles -- making me realized I'd been ripped off the night before when I paid five.


AS SOON AS WE ENTERED THE DIRT ROAD on the edge of town where all the car and truck service companies were located, the mototaxi was attacked by about ten different guys trying to get me to go with their car -- some even jumped in the rickshaw and tried to take my bag with them to their trunk. The driver asked me what to do and I just chose the company closest to me; I really had no choice because the guy there had already taken my bag and put it in the trunk.

The driver of the car -- a different guy from the guy who took my bag -- was a nicer guy. His name was Carlos and he kept the radio on for me while we waited for other passengers. I thought it was funny how Phil Collins came on singing, "You can't hurry, love...you'll just have to wait..."

And wait I did. Cars don't leave unless they are full and there were three empty spaces to be filled. It took an entire hour for the next passenger, a portly woman, got on.

Luckily, it only took half an hour after that when a man and wife got in the backseat with me. It took about four guys to jump on the trunk to jam it shut with all of our cargo and baggage.

Carlos drove the four of us on an unpaved road which Lonely Planet describes as "definitely off the gringo trail." The dirt road went through twists and turns, over rocks and bumps, and sometimes through small streams. The woman up front was on lookout for snakes. It was the perfect road to film a commercial to sell SUVs to Americans who'd only use them on asphalt highways -- we did it in an old beat-up Totoya Corona. Carlos was a master at the wheel, honking ahead at blind spots and keeping the car from spinning out off the cliff. The road led to a series of small tropical villages, some of which had mandatory police checkpoints and trunk searches. We never had any problems as none of us looked suspicious -- I blended in like an Amazonian Peruvian boy. (A lot of the villagers out the window had more Asian-looking eyes like I did.)


YURIMAGUAS WAS JUST AS RICARDO EXPLAINED -- a small town with nothing to do. It was more or less just a port town, so I had Carlos take me straight to the boats. The woman in front said that she was also getting a boat, but it wouldn't leave until the next morning.

I checked out one boat that someone had led me to with a sign that said it was leaving "[For Iquitos Today at 5 p.m. Without Mistake.]" I checked out the cargo boat -- which could also hold 300 passengers -- and it was decent. It was better than the boat next door that was full of chickens anyway. I had the option of staying in a hammock in the big room in "economy" on the second floor where there were no lights; staying in a hammock in the big room in "first class" or getting a small "first class" cabin. Seeing that I didn't have a hammock (they weren't included and one cost 20 soles), I took the cabin, which included meals. I bought a ticket from the manager who was surprised that a Peruvian boy like me could afford the 100 soles (about $28) for the 2 1/2 day journey in "first class."

I put "first class" in quotes because it wasn't "first class" in the Titanic sort of way where you could, in the event of an imminent death, ask for a brandy. "First class" only meant you had a place to lock your things instead of being out in the open, you had access to the room on the third floor which had a TV, and you could shower. And if you think I was all uppity for taking "first class," take a look at the toilet. (No, this isn't another diarrhea picture, this is what it looked like after a flush of muddy river water. Notice the lack of a seat as well. Ladies, I feel your pain.)

The biggest plus to taking "first class" was that you had food prepared for you and served on a table. I met the chef on deck as we were waiting to leave port. His name was Jun, and he an effeminate-looking guy with two earrings and very gay vibe about him -- not that there's anything wrong with it. However, in our introductory handshake, he held my hand daintily and wasted no time in telling me that I was "bonito."

DSC01939cargoload.JPG

I waited and waited all afternoon as people loaded the ship with goods (picture above), trying to beat the 5 p.m. deadline. A truck full of oranges poured out fruit into sacks at a time as guys came back and forth to load them on the ship. "Peki Peki" boats -- long wooden boats with little motors -- came back and forth with passengers from local villages.

A shady man came aboard selling hammocks and flashed a shady-looking tour guide badge that an eight-year-old with an iMac and a printer could have made. He tried to sell me on a tour of the National Park Reserve en route to Iquitos. Apparently two Japanese tourists he took the week before loved it, which prompted me to believe he thought I was Japanese as well. He told me about the snakes and birds and dolphins we'd see, but I told him I wasn't interested and was just going to Iquitos to "meet a friend."

"[The boat doesn't leave until tomorrow,]" Shady Tour Man said. "[Come drinking with me and I'll get you a woman for sex.]" Perhaps he thought that, being Japanese, I couldn't read the Spanish sign that said we were leaving at five.

"[No thank you,]" I said. Shady Tour Man left the boat after that.


FIVE O'CLOCK CAME and nothing changed. Loading still continued. A passenger complained, "[It's already passed five, perhaps we won't leave until the morning.]"

As the sun set, I stood and watched the cargo men load the ship in anxiety; I was really reaching my threshold for just waiting around. You may have spent hours in an airport and know the same feeling. The difference is that most airports are air-conditioned and this boat was as humid Andre Agassi's armpits after a day at Wimbeldon.

"[Oh, are you sad?]" Jun the Ambiguously Gay Chef said as he approached me. Coming from New York City, I was no stranger to gay come-ons and recognized this guy's intent immediately -- not that there's anything wrong with it. But a gay man stuck on a ship of heteroes suddenly had a fresh young boy (from New York City of all places) to pursue. And I thought avoiding the spiders sliding down webs from the ceiling was enough.

"[Would you like a drink?]"

"[No, I'm not thirsty.]"

He went away to his kitchen duty.


THE SUN WENT DOWN and we still hadn't left port. There were a couple of times the boat moved a bit, but it was just to position the boat for fuel or make room for another ship full of livestock. Whenever the boat would move positions I always got my hopes up, but I'd see them hammer a new stake into the ground to tie the boat to. "No, no no...don't do that!" I said in my head. "Let's just GO already." No one was loading anymore, we had gas and there was no reason to stay.

My "first class" money paid off because in the waiting period, I watched a Spanish-dubbed Air Force One with the crew and two guys from "economy" who had snuck up to the TV room. I noticed them before taking pictures near the one dining table, probably to show off to their friends. During a commercial break, there was a commercial for the M/F Eduardo IV, the ship we were on, and it made it look all glamorous and fun -- they never showed footage of the toilet.


IT WAS EIGHT O'CLOCK and still no motion. I looked into the darkness of the river downstream on the back of the ship, where I ran into Jun the Ambiguously Gay Chef's cabin, secluded from the other crew cabins. He asked me something in Spanish with the words comida (food) and bajo (under/lower) and I assumed he was asking if I wanted my included food since the kitchen was on the lower level.

"Si."

Jun got really excited. Soon I realized he was asking for something that involved food and his lower bunk. He said he'd get me something if I waited alone in his bed.

"Nononononono....no quiero," I said. I got out of there fast, still hungry.

Great, I thought, the only way I would probably get food on the ship was to risk a potential ass raping. I mean, I'm all for new experiences, but ass rape isn't exactly on my To Do List. In fact, on My Top Ten List of Things I Don't Want, "Ass Rape" is listed about six times. Luckily I had bought provisions in Chiclayo and wouldn't go hungry. Tuna on a Ritz and cereal bars would have to do.


TO MY SURPRISE, I was the only one in "first class," making me, Jun and some crew the only people on the third floor. The crew went about their businesses, leaving me alone with Jun and his shady ways, which prompted me to just go in my room and lock the door.

I lay in bed and hoped we would embark sometime in the night. Suddenly, that chicken boat didn't look too bad.


Posted by Erik at 10:06 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

A New Shipmate

DAY 48: The sun broke through the river fog to reveal what I didn't want to see: through my "first class" "window," I saw that we still hadn't left the port in Yurimaguas.

DSC01961stillinport.JPG

A man on deck said we'd probably leave in the afternoon. I then realized that -- although written in chaulk -- the departure sign always said it was leaving "[For Iquitos Today at 5 p.m. Without Mistake.]"

I went back to bed feeling depressed: What did I get myself into? How can these people just wait like this? An entire day? Don't you have places to go, things to do? I felt like Tom Hanks' character in Castaway, a guy so used to schedules suddenly put in a situation where schedules don't exist.

Realizing that I probably didn't have enough water to last me an extended stay on the ship, I used my extra time and went out to buy some since my water purifier got lost or stolen in the Galapagos. I ignored the touts of "Hey chino!" ("Hey, Chinese guy!") as I walked by. I got my drinks and got back on the boat where Shady Tour Man had boarded. I ignored him as well.


HOURS WENT BY. I kept my sanity with a book and a soccer game on TV, US vs. Korea. Things started picking up after noon, when more people got on board, including two young female backpackers together -- one of which looked like the Swiss girl I met in Quito on Day 2. I tried to start a conversation with them, but they brushed me off like I was a Shady Tour Man. The Swiss Miss spoke perfect Spanish and said she was from Tarapoto. I thought perhaps she was local after all. They stayed in "economy."

The boat started moving again around 1:30 and I thought it was another false alarm -- until Yurimaguas' port got farther and farther away. We were finally on the Rio Huallaga en route to the Rio Marañon, en route to the Rio Amazonas. We departed just 20 1/2 hours late, or 3 1/2 hours early, depending on your definition of "today." Coincidentally, the 80's pop hit "Jungle Boy" came on the radio.


WE CRUISED DOWNSTREAM with nothing but Amazonian jungle surrounding us, except for the occasional collection of huts near the back or a group of people riding in a canoe. The air got more humid, but the breeze caused by the ship's forward motion helped keep cool.

There was another young man who looked confused in the "first class" room. he name was Jean-Pierre, and he was a theology student from Lima, traveling to Iquitos to visit some friends. He was patient enough to understand my broken Spanish and we talked on deck about this and that.

I took a nap, but was awaken by the sounds of rumbling outside. We were nearing a storm which we saw in the distance coming towards us like a swarm of bees. Suddenly we were caught in the downpour -- putting the "rain" in "rainforest" -- complete with thunder and lightning. Everyone took cover inside; everyone but the cargo guys who tried to keep the tarps from flying away.

Jean-Pierre and I played cards in the big room until I was called in for my included dinner by Armando the waiter of "first class" (and not Jun.) Later I learned that Armando was the father of Jean-Pierre, whose mother was a French missionary, which explained why Jean-Pierre was in "first class" without a meal.

I ate in the dining room with Manuela, the only other person who had paid for included meals, a middle-aged woman with four children (three daughters) who lived in Iquitos. I tried to start a friendly conversation with her.

"[You are going to Iquitos to look for a woman,]" she said off the bat.

"[It's possible.]"

"["There are many beautiful girls in Iquitos, very poor. They'll see you are a tourist and...]" Then she made a sound and motion with her hands to signify that I could be hitched faster than it takes to send an instant message on the internet. She started getting all shady, with this look in her eye and gold in her tooth that said, "take my daughters so I can get out of here," and asked me if I wanted a woman in Iquitos. I just played the confused gringo bit, which only prompted her to criticize me for not knowing enough Spanish.

A bad bootleg DVD movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme played on the TV -- "bad" refers to "DVD movie," not "bootleg" -- which really entertained the locals. So far I've learned that the Peruvians really like their Muscles from Brussels. After that, Armando kicked out the ten people from "economy" who had snuck up for some entertainment, leaving me, Manuela and Jean-Pierre in the room. I started talking with Jean-Pierre again, but Manuela rudely interjected "[It's no use, he won't understand you.]" I mentally gave her the finger thinking "Understand this, bitch."

Jean-Pierre and I played some more cards, including a game called Casinos, similar to the Ecuadorean Cuarenta. We stopped to join in on another DVD screening, this time a bad bootleg DVD movie of Steven Seagal. It put me to sleep.

On my way back to my cabin, I noticed people with a searchlight out front, scanning the river for big trees or rocks to avoid collision. After waiting so long to disembark, it would have been a shame to be stuck on something for a while.


Posted by Erik at 10:13 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

December 09, 2003

Tally Me Banana

DAY 49: The sun was already up when our cargo ship stopped in Maripoto, a tiny village on the riverbank where the Rio Huallaga meets the Rio Marañon. It was the first of many stops along the way where we picked up bunches and bunches of bananas.

At breakfast, Armando the waiter sat down with Manuela and I, and served as a sort of moderator. He explained to Manuela that I could in fact understand Spanish more or less, just not as quickly since I am not -- as people on the ship assumed -- Peruvian. Manuela couldn't comprehend why anyone would want to come to Peru -- everyone she knew wanted to get out. Armando had to explain to her that extranjeros (foreigners) -- a word I've heard a lot -- come to see the jungle because there is no jungle where they come from. It still seemed like a foreign concept to Manuela, being from a jungle city, but she came to understand it. During coffee, she still tried to sell me on her daughters.

Armando showed us a log book he had of all the extranjeros who had been on the ship. Out of the 42 foreigners who had made the river trek from Yurimaguas to Iquitos -- most of the French -- I discovered that I was only the second American to make the trek on that cargo ship. (The other guy was from California.)

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The M/F Eduardo IV continued its way north up the Rio Marañon, making frequent stops at the villages to pick up bananas. To the villagers, a visit from the big cargo ship was a big event; everyone in town it seemed came to the riverbank to watch all the excitement. The cargo men loaded the ship with bunches and bunches of bananas until the village had no more to give.


THE TWO FEMALE BACKPACKERS I tried to talk to the day before were sitting up on the 3rd floor deck to watch the excitement of villagers watching us back. The latina-looking one started a conversation with me, seeing that I was just a tourist with a camera and not a Shady Tour Man.

"[Are you a student?]" she asked.

"[No, I work. I'm here on vacation.]"

"[I thought you were Peruvian, but a different kind of Peruvian,]" she said, whatever that meant.

"[Really? The others think I'm Japanese, Chinese or Korean.]"

"[I can see that. How old are you?]"

"[Twenty nine. I look 18 or 19, no?]"

"[Yes.]"

Her name was Marita and she was from Lima, and had done some archaelogical work at the site of Kuelap. "[Are you a student?]" I asked. She looked about college age.

"[No, it's my profession. I'm 28.]"


JEAN-PIERRE, MARITA AND HER FRIEND MADALON (Spanish for Madeleine) and I watched the river go by, on look out for the occasional pink river dolphin that would jump out of the water briefly. Madalon broke the news to me that she actually spoke English (she was Dutch), and it was good to hear a familiar language for a short while. She empathized with me since she was clueless to Spanish when she arrived in South America. Her fluency in Spanish came from 5 years of working there.


SOME KIDS FROM A VILLAGE hopped on board to sell frozen aguaca fruit treats, made by crushing the aguaca fruit into a paste, putting it in plastic bags and freezing it. The ship left their village before they disembarked and they all looked pretty confused that they were being kidnapped. "[We'll just sell them in Iquitos,]" the captain said. Eventually, their parents came up to our ship in a motorboat and the kids transferred boats while both were in motion -- and without any stunt doubles.

It was a shame the kids had to go so soon because the frozen treats looked pretty good, especially on a hot day. However, Madalon told me about the myth that aguaca gives women their beauty, and men who eat it are labeled homosexuals. That wouldn't have boded well if Jun was around -- not that there's anything wrong with it.


THE AFTERNOON WAS ROUTINE -- village after village we'd pick up more bananas. Marita, Madalon and I killed time with a portable Chinese Checkers-type of game. Along the way, we heard the roar of the boat motor during slow currents, and the calming sounds of splashing water when the engine was cut to let the faster currents push us along naturally.

"Miras, el sol," Armando said as I was finishing up my dinner. At the stern of the ship lay a beautiful Amazonian sunset with light shimmering in the ripples of the water. As the sun lowered itself below the horizon, the sky grew an intense pink aura so wild that it made the portside of the ship look like it was making the jump to lightspeed. The pink hues of the sky reflected in the smooth ripples of the river, like pink velvet blowing in the wind.

The magical moment was tarnished when the crew put on the same Jean-Claude Van Damme bad bootleg DVD movie and the same Steven Segal bad bootleg DVD movie. (How's that for "first class?") Instead of watching the movies, I watched the river go by with Marita and Jean-Pierre. The ship stopped by a couple of villages at night to pick up more bananas. The cargo men, as the famous Harry Belafonte song goes, "stocked bananas 'til the morning come."

Daylight came and we didn't wan' go home...we had arrived finally arrived in Iquitos by sunrise.


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Houses On Stilts

DAY 50: You would think that Amazonian city of Iquitos, the largest city in the world without any connecting roads, would be reminiscent of a lost Shangri-La or an ancient city out of a Tarzan set. The fact is, Iquitos, the Amazon River's first port during the rubber industry boom, now has over 500,000 residents and is a bustling modern city -- it was evident as soon as we arrived at the port.

With a ship full of bananas, vendors scrambled to buy them at 5 soles a bunch to sell on the street for higher prices. Some people were so adamant at getting the first bunches, they boarded an adjacent ship and jumped through windows to get to our stash. It was like a Walmart on the "Black Friday" after Thanksgiving in the States.

Marita, Madalon and I split a mototaxi into town where we got rooms at a hostal that Marita recommended. They helped me bargain down the price from 35 soles to 30 soles (about $9), which was a steal because the room was very nice -- one of the nicest I've had so far -- with a nice big bed, bathroom, fan and cable TV. There was no hot water, but in the past fifty days, I've learned to live with cold showers.

Marita got a recommendation from a friend for a tour guide we could trust that could take us around the city. He was Richard, a young, short man who lived in Iquitos -- more specifically, in the poor neighborhood of Belen, which looked much more like the image of an Amazonian jungle city. Richard led the three of us through a crowded market full of vendors selling everything from fruits to cooking oils in little baggies to meats to caterpillars to special potions made from plants and roots in the jungle for various ailments.

The Iquitosian people looked very Filipino to me, and I blended in pretty well, even though I could only make out about 20% of what they said. Madalon on the other hand, understood everything but stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't know which was worse.

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THE SHANTYTOWN OF BELEN is district of Iquitos almost completely on stilts for when the river's high water season came in. I say "almost completely" because some of the houses were actually built on rafts that could float and rise with the river tide (picture above) -- sort of like dry Cheerios before you pour milk in the bowl. It being the low river season, we were able to walk on what was usually the riverbed as houses on stilts towered above our heads and villagers looked down on us.

Richard negotiated a canoe for us, and the oarsman rowed us down the river to see the houses in the lower waters. Kids swam in the cool waters of the river while big condor-like birds soared above our heads. Huge lilypads -- able to support the weight of a baby according to Richard -- floated near us in the water. I wondered how many bottles of beer I could get on those suckers for a pool party.

Back in town, Richard brought us to his friend, a potion maker, who let us sample some of his goods. Potions, as magical as they sound, more or less taste like rum -- a rum that can mess you up really fast after just one shot; I already started to feel its effects with just a sip. Afterwards, I was introduced to a recommended an adventure tour company that could take me on a jungle expedition, which was good because my abridged Lonely Planet book didn't have any good advice.

After a first but final lunch with the girls -- they were leaving for Lima the next day and only journeyed to Iquitos to experience the cargo boat ride -- I walked around town a little bit, seeing the more-odern-than-colonial Plaza das Armas and the riverfront area overlooking the Amazon River itself. Most of the places in town were closed for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception holiday and the streets were essentially empty -- except for the occasional mototaxi driving by. The inactivity of the city was fine by me because I had been more or less in transit for eight consecutive days and just wanted to rest. I had a lot of catching up to do on The Blog anyway.


THE SUN SET OVER THE AMAZON with another picturesque pink sky, just before a big lightning storm came in with its lightning bolts so fast I couldn't take a picture of them. Indoors and out of the rain, I worked on The Blog until the wee hours of the morning while flipping through the channels on cable TV.

It was weird to see a documentary on Discovery Channel about the jungle villages of South America, knowing that some of them were just down the river, not too far away.


Posted by Erik at 02:36 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Urban Jungle

DAY 51: Like Tarzan swinging from vine to vine in the jungle, I swung from person-I-could-possibly-trust to person-I-could-possibly-trust. With the girls off on a flight back to Lima, I only had Richard to turn to for advice -- which was a good thing in an urban jungle crawling with Shady Tour Men trying to make a quick buck. Knowing a local also came in handy when I noticed the massive army that came marching into town in full attack gear with crossbows, missile launchers and machine guns.

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Luckily, they were just marching in for an honorary ceremony in the main plaza.


I SWUNG FROM RICHARD to his friend Andres, a nice soft-spoken middle aged man who knew English. Andres owned the adventure tour company Amazon Wilderness Expeditions that led hiking, canoeing and camping trips out of a base camp in the jungle -- an experience I wanted to have instead of the touristy jungle lodge experience. Andres cut me a deal for five-days/four-nights from the stated price and signed me up to leave the next morning to the base camp 185 km away from the city, deep in the Amazon jungle. He told me about the tourism bureau's suggestion of giving the address of his company to people so that loved ones could have a way to try and track me down should I get lost -- like the two Americans who went into the jungle recently that no one has heard from since.

With that said, the address is Jr. Putumayo No. 163 - Altos 202, Iquitos Peru. The phone number is (51-065) 23 4565 in the event that you don't hear from me in a week -- in which case you should call the White House immediately to ask for some U.S. troops to be pulled out of Iraq to come search for me. If they are too busy, I'll settle for one of the Animal Planet hosts.


WITH THE THREE-DAY WEEKEND OVER, Iquitos was back to its usual busy self with people doing business in modern stores and getting around by mototaxi instead of by car -- a rarity in Iquitos. After breakfast, I had Richard take me to a couple of museums, the first being the municipal museum, about the wartime history of Peru during its conflicts with Ecuador and Columbia. In addition to its exhibits about the generals and kamikaze pilots of wartime Peru, there were life-like statues of indigenous men and women, sculpted by a western artist who had live in villages for quite some time. The statues were actual size, making it easy to pose with a boy on the rail.


THE ECOLOGICAL MUSEUMON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN showcased a preview of things to come. Big diorama displays of taxidermed animals showed wildlife in its natural way -- well, as natural as you can get being dead, soaked in chemicals, stuffed and molded into action positions like a G.I.Joe figure. There were displays of snake skins -- the largest being of the massive anaconda -- actual skulls of small mammals and the jaws of a caiman that I hope never to encounter in real life. The most interesting display for me -- other than the little monkey in a big cage -- was a lifesized model of a piracuru fish, a massive carnivorous fish ten-feet long, weighing up to 400 pounds. They are common in the Amazon River and have been known to jump out to catch small prey on the surface. Richard said they are caught via spearfishing and taste very good. At 400 pounds, that's one helluva Filet-O-Fish sandwich. I can't even imagine the amount of tartar sauce needed.

There was a middle-aged couple touring the museum as well, and seeing Richard acting as my guide, they asked him some quesitons as well -- particularly "Where is that guy from that he needs a guide?" The man spoke a little English, and so I explained -- yet again -- that I was American of Filipino parents and that Spanish wasn't my native language. He said he knew almost immediately that I was American because of my tiny camera.


SO FAR ON THIS TRIP I've been pretty discreet about taking photos, particularly in public. I've heard many stories of cameras being stolen, and so not to attract attention to myself, I usually pretend I'm a spy -- or rather, a six-year-old pretending to be a spy -- by quickly whipping out my spycam Sony DSC-U30, taking a quickie and hiding it when I'm in crowded public places. In "tourist" zones, like a museum, I am a little more open about taking photos -- but this was the second time that day the camera "broke my cover" so to speak. Earlier that morning I was videotaping the Amazon river from the riverwalk esplanade, and a guy who ignored me before suddenly had all these questions for me about getting a visa to the States.


ALTHOUGH HE NEVER ASKED, I paid Richard for his time and went about my day. I checked out the church of San Juan Baptista, paintings by the locally famous impressionist-influenced Grippa, and Ari's Burger, the well-known burger joint for locals and gringos alike, in the stylings of an American 50s diner complete with waitresses in period clothing.

Even in the jungle they have Happy Days.


AT NIGHT I CHECKED OUT the riverfront esplanade bar scene, which was pretty relaxed due to the fact it was a weekday. The most action there was avoiding the dozens of boys trying to sell foreigners cigarettes or gum. One boy was really aggressive and sat down at my table for a whole 15 minutes trying to sell me a box of Chiclets like a used car salesman. (He never bothered me until he saw me take out my tiny camera.)

On the internet, I looked up some of the animals I might encounter on my five-day trek in the wild Amazon jungle, the scariest being the candiru fish, a small, transparent skinny fish with spines that is known to swim up people's urethras if they pee in the river.

If you don't hear from me in a week, you have the tour company's number, but I'm sure you'll hear my screams whereever you are should I have an unfortunate incident with a candiru.

Here I go again...N.I.Z. for five days. I hope survive the Amazon and be back in town by Monday sometime, hopefully without a scratch and all my limbs attached!

In the meantime, you can catch up with blog entries you may have missed. If you're all caught up, you might be interested in reading my old journal from when I did the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in 2001 with my friend Johnny. (I'm skipping it this time around.) The full-color 56 MB PDF file is here, and the much smaller, text-only PDF is here.


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December 15, 2003

Welcome to the Jungle

DAY 52: I bid farewell to the hostel desk attendant -- who, hearing that I was from New York, assumed I was Puerto Rican -- and rode with Andres to the docks. He put me in a motorboat taxi for the three hour ride upstream on the Amazon.

We traveled into the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, the second largest protected area in the Amazon Basin -- the largest in Peru. The driver took me to a fisherman's house near where the Amazon met the Rio Yanayacu, a small tributary. There I was picked up in a motorized canoe by my guide Juan Carlos, three tourists -- and a suicidal barracuda that had jumped into the boat. I rode the extra forty minutes up the Yanayacu as two more suicidal fish jumped into the boat -- including a catfish with stinger fins. Along the way, we were surrounded by the sounds of croaks, ribbits, whoops, honks and various bird calls coming from every direction. Butterflies, macaws and vultures flew above our heads as we made our way upstream, and they all obviously had something to live for because they never landed up dead in our boat.

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EMERALD FOREST BASE CAMP (picture above), a group of three hunts on stilts connected by footbridges was where I formally made introduction to my new compadres: Sue from Wales, Simion from south of London and his traveling French friend Axel. Simion and Axel had met on the road and had been traveling together for a while, constantly making jokes about each other's country, and each other's stench. Despite Axel sharing his name with the lead singer to Guns N Roses, it was Sue who actually said to me, "Welcome to the jungle!"

Also welcoming me to the jungle were monkeys who were lounging around the two rumored-to-be-lesbian German tourists. Curious creatures, one of them followed me to the toilet when I took a dump and watched me.


JUAN CARLOS LED Simion, Axel and I on a hike through the jungle, clearing a path with his big machete. Right away it was clear that I didn't have enough mosquito repellent on -- mosquitos swarmed me like I was the new keg of beer at a frat party. I mean, I've seen groups of mosquitos before, but this group was so big and so mean that if I had asked for directions -- and we were living in a cartoon -- the swarm would candidly form an arrow, which would point me up, down and sideways so fast that my head would spin around dizzily like a Three Stooges routine, causing me to fall down, after of which the swarm would then form a hand giving me the middle finger and then disband and continue to bite me. I tightly closed myself in my rain poncho, which only helped a little; those bastards can bite through anything.

The 27-year-old son of a village shaman (and someday an offical shaman himself), Juan Carlos explained to us the different plants that could be used to treat various ailments. A great guide, he pointed out the poisonous plants and trees to avoid contact with -- some of which had symbiotic relationships with fire ants that could swell up your entire arm in minutes with a mere touch. With his big machete, he chopped down roots, leaves and tree bark to get samples of natural medicine for us -- always tasting a piece of a tree that had not yet been tampered with.

"I have a belief that all things on earth have a purpose. Without purpose they have no reason of existing," he said. I thought he was quoting lines from The Matrix until he continued, "I believe trees were meant to serve Man, but that doesn't mean I don't have to respect them."

He tasted the bark of a hug palm tree as a form of respect and after shaving some wood into our hands, he patched up the tree's wound with clay and dirt to camouflage it so that monkeys wouldn't abuse it.

With the knowledge of the son of a shaman, we sampled the sweet water out of the root of a yellow cat's claw tree, the blood red liquid out of a hug palm (used for diarrhea as it dries you right out the second it hits your tongue), and the sap of a medicinal fig tree, which tasted like aspirin. (It is actually imported by Japanese pharmaceutical companies to make pain relief tablets.) Juan Carlos told us about the "doctor tree" with sap that could be used for many medicinal purposes, including a vaginal douche.

"So, there are a lot of plants out there," I said. "How did they know to stick this particular one up their vagina?"

"Knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation, shaman to shaman over many years," he said in all seriousness. "Over these many years, many people died trying to find out the purposes of the plants." With 60% of the plants in the Amazon rainforest still unknown, Simion said, "That's a whole lot of vaginas still needed to experiment with."


THE MOSQUITOS GOT WORSE AND WORSE, biting me all over my face -- the only exposed area of skin I had other than my hands -- but what was worse was when we walked over a log with a colony of black ants on it. I stopped a while to shoot some video of it with no problem, but about a minute after, I suddenly felt sharp stings on my stomach -- a couple of ants had gotten under my shirt. Juan Carlos and the others started laughing at me until, during their laughter, they suddenly had the pains under their shirts too -- Juan Carlos even took his shirt off to shake any ants off. Out in the Amazon, even the son of a shaman was vulnerable.


UNDER THE FULL MOONLIGHT, we took a canoe out after dinner to look for caimans, a cousin to the alligator. Up and down the creek, we searched with flashlight as the mosquitos continued to get a hold of me -- one even bit me on my upper lip and it started swelling up to Mick Jaggar size. Bats flew around us from above as firefly larvae sparkled below on the lilypads on the river. We witnessed the rare sighting of a fist-sized snail laying eggs, and a poisonous toad. After canoeing an hour, we finally found a big ten-foot caiman just under the water, which submerged as we got closer. Needless to say, we paddled really quietly passed.

Back in camp, my lip was super-sizing itself. Juan Carlos took a look and told me that, under the cover of darkness, I had actually been stung by a wasp. There wasn't any real pain; my lips just went numb -- which still wasn't a good thing -- but Juan Carlos said I'd be fine by morning.

I sat in my bed with a mosquito net around me, listening to the relaxing sounds of the jungle, wondering if the mosquito net also prevented ants and wasps from getting in too. If this was my welcome to the jungle, I didn't know what to expect the next day.


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Monkey Business

DAY 53: My lip had swollen down about half way from the night before, and sensation was coming back, which was a good thing being mistletoe season -- not that there was any mistletoe around. In the steamy jungle, it was the exact opposite of "looking a lot like Christmas."

Some monkeys came to base camp after breakfast hoping to get scraps, but seeing that there weren't any, they just went to Sue's backpack, unzipped the pocket and stole her mini battery-powered fan.

"Uh, remember that fan Sue?" Simion said. "You know, that fan you used to have?"

There was nothing she could do; they had already ran off with it and taken it out to the jungle. I don't blame them, it can get pretty hot out there.


JUAN CARLOS LED Simion, Sue, Axel and myself on a morning piranha fishing trip at a nearby lake. Our canoe cruised through the sea of small green lilypads as "Jesus Christ" birds walked on the surface tension of the water in search of food. Using sticks, fishing line, hooks and pieces of beef, we attempted to catch the fish made famous by cheesy B-film Hollywood horror movies. What we discovered is that piranha are smart little critters; they know how to snatch the bait in half a second and run away before even feeling a tug. Piranha fishing is a common jungle tour activity, so they probably had plenty of practice.

We tried fishing for hours, trying out different locations of the lake, feeling out each area for activity. Over and over, I'd cast my baited hook in and come back with nothing. After a while, it got pretty frustrating.

I did manage to catch two fish -- two sardines -- which Juan Carlos said were a part of the piranha family. I think he said it just to build my self-esteem in piranha fishing. Using my sardines for bait, Simion managed to catch a red-bellied piranha, and put it in a bucket for a while. I tried catching a piranha by casting my lure in the bucket, but the swimming piranha still didn't go for it. My self-esteem in piranha fishing sank right back down.

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THUS FAR, I was merely "tagging" along to Simion, Axel and Sue's group with Juan Carlos as their guide. Since they were all going back to Iquitos in the afternoon (as well as the rumored-to-be-lesbian couple), Juan Carlos went back with them since he was only a freelance guide. All of them left after lunch -- but not after a group photo -- leaving me alone again, the sole tourist in a camp with the cook, my new guide Juan, a squirrel monkey (picture above) and three brown cappuchin monkeys. (The monkeys all left after stealing some bananas in the pantry area.)

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF THE EXISTANCE of remote tribal villages in the Amazon or in Africa where, upon the visit of Western tourists, everyone hides their radios and denim jeans to give outsiders an "authentic" tribal experience. Andres told me in Iquitos that he didn't believe in the fake "shows" that some of the villages do for the lodges closer to the city, and that upon visiting a remote Amazonian village, I'd see the real authencity.

For an afternoon excursion with my new guide Juan -- coincidentally Andres' 34-year-old younger brother -- we canoed downstream, passed local fisherman, to the village of San Juan de Yanayacu, a small village of about a hundred people. We walked the path of the village, passed the houses, the church, the school and the local bar (of course) and sure enough, there was a radio playing techno dance music and people walking around in jean shorts and t-shirts. Upon a visit to the local shaman -- who was also just wearing shorts and a button-down shirt instead of the stereotypical body paint and a big headdress -- I drank a sweet health potion concocted of banana honey and several elements from the jungle, conveniently mixed up and poured from an empty soda bottle.

"[You want to play?]" a little eight-year-old boy named Christopher asked me. He and his friends were about to play of soccer. I put my bag down and joined the boys in a game -- which was hard to do since most of them were less concerned in scoring and more concerned in staring at me. Soon the village girls came and we divided the teams into boys vs. girls, not that it mattered because no one kept score. A lot of times, the ball would go out of bounds and into the river and the kids would dare others to go out and get it, the way I used to growing up in the suburbs when the ball went off into a neighbor's yard.

Some of the boys kept on staring at me, wondering how an obvious gringo could look a lot like them. "[Do you know Michael?]" one of them asked me.

"[Who is Michael?]" I replied.

"[He is a gringo from New York too. He has a hat like you do,]" he said, pointing to my New York Yankees cap. Perhaps he thought New York, like San Juan de Yanayacu, only had a hundred people too and everyone knew everyone.

Other curious boys snickered amongst each other before asking me other questions like "[What team do you like?]" I said Peru, which seemed to be the "correct" answer, but some of the boys yearned to play for other countries.

"[I play for Brazil!]" one said before kicking the ball. It fell into the river again and someone had to go get it.


WE WENT BACK UPSTREAM back to base camp, as the sun was setting under the horizon. There had been an apparent raid by monkeys in the main hut because the bottle of lotion I left out had been bitten into with lotion squeezed out everywhere. And when I picked up my bottle of water, the monkeys had somehow managed to bite in the bottom but keep the water there until I picked it up and embarrasingly spilled it all over my pants. It was clear that the novelty of cute little monkeys had already worn off, but I'm sure the monkeys got a good laugh out of that prank.

Juan took me out on a night hike to look for tarantulas. We walked through the darkness with flashlights and headlamps as butterflies and flying cockroaches kept flying into my head. Walking in the dark of the Amazon jungle, my intrinsic fear of the dark crept its way back in my consciousness, but I kept sane knowing that I was walking in a world with more natural medicine than a CVS pharmacy. (There are even "rubber" trees.) But I had to wonder: what if Juan got bitten by a snake? I'd have no idea what to do and probably go chopping down a tree with a whole bunch of fire ants in it.

"There are different species, tarantulas and lobo spiders and they eat the birds," Juan told me. We found a several crawling on massive fig trees, waiting for prey, hiding from light when we shined it directly on them. Despite the fact that these spiders can kill and eat entire birds, I knew that I had nothing to fear since they are more likely more afraid of us than we are of them.

"The big webs we see from the river, what spiders are they from?" I asked.

"There are different species, tarantulas and lobo spiders and they eat the birds," Juan said. It was obvious that Juan wasn't nearly as informative or good in English as Juan Carlos was, but a nice guy nonetheless. He was much more trustworthy than those damn monkeys anyway.


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In Deeper With A Really Big Knife

DAY 54: Alone in my hut in my mosquito net tent, I heard rustling outside, followed by the sounds of small footsteps of monkeys. Suddenly one of them landed on the roof of my mosquito net and so I grabbed my things and ran off to the main hut -- not for fear of monkey bites, but that they'd steal my stuff. When I got into the main hut, I saw that a monkey had gotten in and taken a scoop of rice before running off.

Juan took me in a canoe down the reflective black waters of the Yanayacu to go bird watching. We saw hawks, eagles, turkey vultures, Amazonian ducks, kingfishers, toucans, parrots and other tropical birds you might have seen in a pet store. Juan, who wasn't nearly as proficient in English as my previous guide, simply pointed out birds and told me "It's fishing." Well, I supposed that was true.

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AFTER LUNCH IN BASE CAMP, where an iguana had stopped in for a while, I asked Juan to take me deeper into the jungle to go camping for a night away from base camp. The cook rowed us ten minutes upstream and dropped us off on the other side of the river. As we walked under the jungle canopy which filtered out a lot of the sun, we walked passed ferns, big 300-year-old eucalyptus trees, palm trees, many kinds of ficus trees and cannonball fruit trees (with fruits like cannonballs that monkeys smash against trees). Juan turned out to be a much better guide than he was that morning, as long as he conducted it in Spanish -- which I more or less understood.

I was on lookout for snakes, which was a maddening task since most of the roots in the jungle just look like snakes. I have a phobia of snakes and I just cringe when they slither. I don't know what it is about them; I think it's the absence of legs that makes me squirm -- the way a person scared of heights does when atop a skyscraper observation deck. The difference between tall buildings and snakes is that snakes can bite you, sometimes fatally. I kept my guard up, but felt a little relieved with the thought that Juan Carlos, out of his ten years of guiding, had only been bitten twice.


JUAN STOPPED EVERY FIVE MINUTES OR SO to listen and look around at the surroundings. At one point we heard the crashing of leaves, tree to tree -- big black capuchin monkeys were nearby. We ventured off the trail a bit to follow the sounds, but they just got farther and farther away until they were gone.

The best part of Juan being my guide was that he let me use the machete as we walked. I soon discovered that holding a machete shot up to my Top Ten Things to Do of All Time. Previous machetes had already cleared a path for the trail we were on, but I couldn't resist but wave around the big knife like a pirate and have a little fun by lopping off plants -- even if they weren't in the way.

Watch out, coming through, Guy With A Machete coming through. Did you just look at me funny Fern? Chhhting! Off with your stem! What did you say about my mama? Nothing? Chhhting! Off with your leaves anyway. Watch out, coming through, Guy With A Machete coming through...


WE WALKED TWO HOURS DEEPER into the jungle to a campsite near a lily-pad filled lagoon and a big ficus tree. We put down our things and went climbing up the tree. Juan went first, which was a good thing because out of nowhere, he pulled out an anaconda from one of the branches, holding the head to keep it from biting. In defense, the snake wrapped its body around Juan's arm, trying to constrict it, but Juan just pulled it off and straighten it out to show me.

"Look, a baby," he said. At about six feet long, that baby really made me flinch back with a big "Whoooa." After I felt the serpent's skin, Juan let it go carefully, after of which it immediately swam into the river for fear of its life.

Perhaps it knew there was a Guy With A Machete in town.


WE SET UP HAMMOCKS WITH MOSQUITO NETS around them, and had a dinner of mangos and crackers. Juan led me on a night hike on trails shielded from the moonlight with the jungle canopy. It was pitch black without our headlamps, aside from the one-inch fireflies that glowed orange-red, appearing as glowing red eyes following us with a loud buzzing noise.

Aside from the tarantulas and scorpion spiders, I noticed a poisonous bullfrog in the path before Juan almost accidentally walked on it.

As I lay back to my hammock, I listened to the loud sounds of the lagoon, a chaotic symphony of ribbits, croaks, chirps, buzzes, wooshes, whistles and growls coming from all directions. I wondered if the baby anaconda might have called its 30-foot-long mother to come back to us for revenge.

At least the machete was nearby.


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Slimy Yet Satisfying

DAY 55: Juan and I woke at dawn and left our things in camp to go on a morning hike. We walked along a trail, on logs, through creeks, looking at the different medicinal plants. Juan showed me a coconut tree with small coconuts the size of a fist, which he cut open with his machete. Inside were butterfly larvae that had hatched from eggs their mother had injected inside, to use the fruit and protection of the coconut to nurse them.

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Juan took the grubs out of different coconuts and placed them on a leaf for, what I soon discovered, a pre-breakfast treat. "[The people eat these, sometimes fried, sometimes in a soup. Or just like this.]" He popped one in his mouth like it was popcorn. He would have been a sure winner on NBC's Fear Factor show.

I picked up a grub and figured, what the hell, it won't kill me. I popped it my mouth and swallowed, and what can I say, it was as they said in The Lion King, "slimy yet satisfying." And no, it didn't taste like chicken -- it was more like fresh tomato with a hint of coconut.


IT STARTED TO RAIN and we were only protected by the jungle canopy for a while until it really started coming down. We hiked back to camp to cover our things and waited out the storm. In the interim, I drank some water so my little butterfly larvae friend would have something to swim around in inside me while waiting. The rain let up after an hour and we hiked a different trail by the lagoon, passed shedding rubioso trees, big mahi trees with their intricate root systems, millipedes, and pygmy marmosets. Despite the fact that we went in the direction of a distant toucan, when we arrived at base camp, we had fried dough pancakes and not Froot Loops.


MONKEYS ARE SMART CREATURES -- almost too smart -- for they know how to open zippers and doors. I'm pretty sure they are far better at currency conversion than I am. They also work in teams. The group near base camp had the custom of coming everyday at about the same time to peek in, sneak in and raid the scraps bucket in the main hut, where I was sitting that morning by myself writing. There are four doors into the main hut and the monkeys managed to distract me at one door while one ran to another door to sneak in. One brown capuchin monkey made away some bananas, which he shared with his monkey friends.


"[CAN I HAVE A MACHETE TOO?]" I asked Juan as we were gearing up for an afternoon hike.

"[Big or small?]"

"[Big. It's more fun,]" I said.

He handed me a small sword about two feet long. "[This one's for a jaguar.]"

We hiked down another trail -- each with a machete in hand -- passing by more jungle vegetation and massive tree roots. I can't stress enough what a great feeling it is to walk around and just slice things with a sword. One minute a plant is minding its own business, the next it goes the way of John Wayne Bobbitt. Machetes must be one of the greatest inventions in the world, as they could be used for many purposes:

- cutting plants
- slicing fruit
- chopping tree roots for a drink of water
- shaving
- chopping vegetables
- making cool sccchting! sounds
- re-enacting scenes from Crocodile Dundee
- turning pages of a book
- looking tough in general

We encountered some monkeys and snakes during our afternoon hike, but whenever we got near, they would just run away -- probably in fear of our big machetes.

Snake: Jesus, that hairless monkey with the baseball cap has one big enough to kill a jaguar!

Monkey: Oooo oooh aaah aaaah eeee eeeee!

But not all the animals ran away at the sight of our swords; we managed to see some red howler monkeys, a baby turtle and a family of night owl monkeys in a tree. The only time I really put down the machete was when I swung on a vine like Tarzan -- and let's face it, swinging with machetes is just as dangerous as running with scissors.

The only thing that didn't fear the machete were the mosquitos, and once the repellent sweated off, the jungle struck back.


AT NIGHT we took the canoes (and machetes) out to search for more nocturnal wildlife along the river. I kept a keen eye out for things as I heard the tiny splashes of fish jumping in and out of the water quickly. Fishing bats flew nearby in search of food, as a caiman popped its eye above the surface -- they are easy to spot from far away as their eyes glow red in reflection of flashlights. While caimans are generally shy, the green tree frogs are not; one of them jumped on my camera for a close-up.

We canoed into a small creek, carefully passed electric eels near the surface of the water. In the darkness, Juan spotted a poisonous fer-de-lance snake swimming nearby. Juan, who had a habit or wanting to catch snakes, tried to catch the river snake with a stick, but it quickly swam away -- in the direction of base camp.

As I lay in my bed that night, I wondered if I would encounter any poisonous things while sleeping. Call it anxiety or nervousness, but perhaps it was just the butterflies in my stomach.


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Survivor: The Amazon

DAY 56: I woke up around three in the morning to the sound of a distant static. Gradually the white noise got closer and closer until it started pouring rain in camp. The wind blew out all the mosquito candles, leaving base camp completely dark. Perhaps it was best this way because it hid the fact that, when I woke up in the morning, I found a tarantula in my bed frame.

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Juan and I were already out on the river by 6:30, a prime time for bird watching. I saw parakeets, kingfishers, turkey vultures, hummingbirds, herons and other birds either too far or too fast for my camera. After a while I gave up on trying to shoot wildlife -- an task that require too much patience on my part -- and just enjoyed the serenity of the beautiful Yanayacu (picture above) and its awe-inspiring trees that looked like works of art. A lot of times the serenrity was interrupted by the loud buzzing of huge walnut-sized bees that circled around the boat like Indy 500 racecars.


THE MONKEYS CAME BACK into camp when we arrived and I defended the fort while the crew radioed back to the boats to schedule my pick-up. Once a transport had been arranged, Juan suggested that I perform the final test of jungle survival: go out with the canoe without him.

"[Good luck. Be careful for anacondas,]" he said as he pushed me off the dock. It sounded like famous last words to me.

I paddled around the river and the creek, looking for anything I hadn't seen before. I saw birds and some harmless spiders, but other than that the trip was pretty uneventful. The excitement came when I got back to base camp and a monkey came towards me with a phillips head screwdriver -- until he dropped it and looked confused.


THE BOAT TRANSPORT CAME, dropping off six new clients, one of which was the only gringo among them, an Aussie. I told him what to expect and which bed had the tarantula in it, and he gave me the news that the U.S. Army had finally caught Saddam Hussein.

Juan and I took the motortaxi for the three hour trip back to Iquitos. Once back on the Amazon River, we were clear of the jungle canopy and saw that it was a bright sunny day. I reeked of the jungle; I hadn't showered in five days, and I smelled of vinegar-flavored yogurt gone bad if you can imagine that. If you want to get even more specific, add the smells of corn chips, rum, tea, coffee, Coke, bug spray, suntan lotion and salt to taste. Add a little piss too because I got a little on my pants when I peed off the back of the speeding boat. (When you gotta go, you gotta go.)

Needless to say, I needed a shower.


ONCE BACK IN IQUITOS Juan and I shared a mototaxi back to the office where I got my big bag back from Andres. While there, a 45-year-old Californian guy named David was trying to get information, and I highly recommended the place to him. He was glad to hear it from another tourist instead of a guide -- my looks may have initially fooled him, but my accent instilled some trust.

"Buy you a beer?" he offered, which I of course accepted. Don't you just love it when you go into the jungle and come back to have a beer waiting for you?

Later that night, I met up with him at Fitzcarraldo, the famous bar of which the 1982 movie of the same name was filmed. We sat over dinner and rounds of beer, talking about philosophies of travel and women. It was great to hear an American accent again and he felt likewise.


AT MY HOSTEL, I showered to get the stench off my skin, and then I showered again. While I was settling in, a guy knocked on my door to tell me to report to the desk. A mototaxi driver had followed me from the tour office and was trying to convince the desk attendant that he had recommended the hostel to me, trying to get a commission off of me. I explained that I had walked to the hostel from the office and that I already knew the place from the week before. He went away after we showed him my receipt.

I may have been back in the city, but it sure was a jungle out there.


Posted by Erik at 11:10 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

December 16, 2003

Amazon Dot Com

DAY 57: I was off to drop my laundry off in Iquitos to wash out the stench of vinegar-flavored yogurt and bug spray, when I ran into Richard on the street again. It was weird, because the run-in didn't feel random -- it was like he was waiting for me to come out so he could ask if I wanted him to guide me to the zoo that he mentioned to me the week before.

I don't know if it was out of boredom, but Richard followed me to the laundromat and to a travel agent he recommended so I could get a flight out of Iquitos the next day. I told him I was too tired to go to the zoo -- I had seen enough animals in their natural habitat anyway -- and just wanted to do e-mail. He left me alone after that.

I haven't seen him since, but the way things are going, I'm bound to run into another Richard or Ricardo soon enough.

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I HAVE DEVELOPED A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP with The Blog; somedays I really don't want to do it, some days it is my only companion on the road. I always end up doing it -- even if it's late -- as I know as soon as I start slacking off, my enthusiasm to do it will decline and eventually, I'll lose focus -- which isn't very good for a travel writer looking to progress. David the Californian told me over beers that blog writing is tough -- particularly a daily one that strives to be a bit interesting. He compared it to committing to marathon training -- miss one day, and you start to slip and you can't let that happen.

In Chiclayo, I even had a sort of fight with The Blog. "Blog" wanted me to stay in town for half a day more to work and post an entry instead of catching that early bus to Tarapoto. I actually had to compromise with it and cut a deal: "Okay, how about if I upload the photos tonight and at least just do the writing by hand? I can transcribe it tomorrow if there is internet access. Good enough? Can we catch this bus in the morning or what?"

Call me crazy, but this is my reality of traveling solo during the low season. Pretty soon I'll be drawing a face on my notepad and start talking to it out loud in front of people. Then I really won't be blending in.


WITH FIVE DAYS worth of blog writing and over 500 pictures of the jungle to sort through, it took me pretty much all day to work on my iBook in my hostel room. I had the TV on and caught up with the latest MTV videos (Madonna and Britney?) and even Cartoon Network's new Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon -- in Spanish of course.

At night there were torrential downpours, putting a damper on the sidewalk cafe scene, so I spent the night in an internet cafe uploading all the text and pictures from my trip to the jungle.

Although uneventful, it was an exhausting day with all the work, and I went to bed watching a Spanish-dubbed Sexo y La Ciudad on Cosmo, wondering if the readers out there who don't post comments actually enjoy what I'm doing.


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December 17, 2003

Looking for Christmas in Lima

DAY 58: Call me old-fashioned, but during the holiday season, I like it to feel a little bit like Christmas -- you know, with the trees and decorations and people following shoppers leaving the mall to snatch their parking space, only to find out they were just dropping off bags in the trunk. Being in the jungle city of Iquitos, I was far away from anything remotely resembling a stereotypical Christmas, and so it was time to move on.

No roads go into Iquitos, so no roads go out. I got a flight bound for Lima, Peru's capital, on the southern coast. At about $70, it cost about the same as if I traveled via boat, bus and hostel over days -- all in just 90 minutes.


LIMA IS YET ANOTHER BIG CITY that the Lonely Planet guide suggests to people to avoid, but I had been there before in 2001 and knew it wasn't that bad. Lima is one of the major stops on the backpacker trail, and I figured I'd bump into other travelers in the same predicament as me -- away from home on the holidays.

Once in Lima, I got a shuttle bus ticket for half the price of a taxi -- the catch was I had to wait for other passengers before departure. It took half an hour for the next passenger to come, and unlike the week before, I really didn't mind just sitting around -- perhaps I'm just getting used to it. My busmate was an ecologist named Aura, a friendly, English-speaking native of Iquitos, who was stopping over in Lima for a couple of days en route home from a work trip in the southern jungle city of Puerto Maldonado. Rather than try to sell me on one of her daughters, she kindly pointed out the different things in Lima along the way, until we dropped her off at her hotel.


MY PLAN FOR MY ARRIVAL in Lima was to take the suggestion of South American Explorers -- the American organization I joined in Quito -- and go directly to their office from the airport. I thought it might be a good idea to be greeted somewhere with open arms -- and members-only hostel discounts. I wanted to ask them where the best place was to be for the holidays, if not right there in their cozy office.

Using the Lonely Planet map and the detailed directions to the Lima clubhouse given to me in Quito, I gave the bus driver directions since he got lost. He dropped me off at the address and drove off, only for me to find myself next to a sign that told me that South American Explorers had moved out of Lima and into the suburb Miraflores. It was late in the afternoon and there was no time to get there before their office closing time.

SAE suddenly went from my "nice" list to my "naughty" one.

This wasn't the first time SAE disappointed me; so far I didn't get any substantial discounts by flashing my card and I never got a free night in a hotel in the Galapagos like they said I would. I really started regretting the $40 membership fee I paid, although I will say that the money did pay off that one time I was lost in Quito with an explosive case of diarrhea, and used their bathroom because I was far away from anywhere familiar.


I LUGGED MY BAGS around central Lima, a metropolis with the usual traffic, buildings and guys passing out flyers you would expect from any big city. I got lost but asked for directions at the restaurant where I stopped in for a fried ceviche lunch. I eventually made it to a family-run hostel recommended in the Lonely Planet guide -- I figured a family-run hostel would be a little more Christmassy than a crowded backpacker hostel.

The "family" of the "family-run" hostel was just one woman alone in a big apartment, who cautiously unlocked four locks on two doors to let me in. There were no other travelers there, and I had the entire dorm room to myself. It was sort of lonely, but at least there was a terrace and a Christmas tree in the living room. I'm a sucker for a good old-fashioned Christmas tree.

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I HAD BEEN IN CENTRAL LIMA before, and everything came back to me as I walked down the Jiron de la Union pedestrian mall which led to the main plaza. The mall was crowded with people shopping for gifts, and it was beginning to look a lot like Navidad. The fountain at the Plaza Mayor -- formerly known as the Plaza das Armas -- was just as I remembered it, only with Christmas trees around (picture above). It was finally nice to see the decorations of the holidays -- until a shady man ruined it by hassling me once he saw me start taking pictures.

And so, to find the holiday spirit I went to the movies and saw Will Ferrell in Elf (El Duende). Although I'm sure a lot was missing from the dubbed translation in Spanish, but it was still pretty hilarious. Will Ferrell is funny in any language.

The movie only cost me three soles, which breaks down to about 86 US cents -- a 91.4% discount from what I would have paid to see it in a theater in New York City.

Eighty-six cents for a first run movie, can you believe that? It's like Christmas!

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December 18, 2003

Across Lima and into Mordor

DAY 59: The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a phenomenon in many countries around the globe, Peru included. Tolkien's world is very much a part of Peruvian pop culture as it is in the States, and with the worldwide December 17th release of the third film, Peruvian nerds, like their North American and European counterparts, lined up in hordes to see El Retorno del Rey. In fact, a front page article in the national newspaper El Comercio had a picture of the hundreds of Peruvian nerds who sat in theaters for ten hours straight watching all three movies back to back to back.


AS NICE AS IT WAS TO BE in a house with a Christmas tree, it was sort of depressing being there alone; the woman of the house kept to herself unless she had to make me my complimentary breakfast. Plus, it was annoying that I always had to ring the doorbell for her to unlock the two doors whenever I wanted to get inside.

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I packed my bags and trekked like a hobbit the one mile to the other side of central Lima to the Hotel Espańa, a "favorite of budget gringo travelers" according to Lonely Planet. Immediately I saw why: situated in a huge four-story colonial house, it included sculptures, a cafeteria/bar, in-house internet and a rooftop garden with a view of the nearby Franciscan monastery (picture above) -- and all for just $3/night for a dorm bed. Not only that, but they kept a few pets, including a parrot that could say "Hola" -- as you can imagine, the novelty wore off after about the 20th time -- a cute little kitten and a bunny rabbit that lounged near my dorm's door. I don't know about you, but I think it might have been the kitten and bunny that warranted the popularity of the place.

Above all, there were actually other people at the hostel, which was a welcome change. Over the course of the day and night, over snacks, beers and card games, I met a Canadian girl from Ottawa, a British girl from one of the small British Isles, a guy from Scotland and two Americans from Colorado. All of them had either just arrived in Lima or were about to head home for the holidays. I also met -- unavoidably -- the older, portly and very drunk eastern European(?) guy in the cafe who, assuming that I was Peruvian and therefore a waiter, kept on asking me for more beer.


BEING MY SECOND TIME IN LIMA, I wandered away from the main plaza to see some sights I hadn't yet seen. I walked through the Plaza San Martin to the scenic Parque de la Exposition, followed by the Parque Italiano -- flanked by the architecturally impressive Palace of Justice -- and the Plaza Francia. I saw with my own eyes, that central Lima didn't really feel as unsafe as Lonely Planet suggested.

I took the suggestion of the Canadian girl to visit the the nearby Franciscan monastery. The ticket cashier saw my appearance and automatically put me in a Spanish-only tour group. As the guide took us to the church, the library, and the catacombs, I just nod my head and pretended to care what she was saying -- which I probably would have done if it were in English anyway.


BEING ON THE INTERNET PRACTICALLY EVERYDAY to do The Blog, you might have guess that I am a borderline nerd. (Wait, did I say "borderline?" I meant "borderline crossing.") And so, like the rest of the nerds, I went on one of the many long lines to see the third El Seńor de los Anillos film -- it was playing twice every hour between the two theaters across from each other in the main pedestrian mall. Fortunately for me it was in English with Spanish subtitles, although I'm sure the ambiguously gay tendancies of hobbits translate in any language.

Allow me to digress for a moment because I must say that the film totally kicked ass -- the best of all three -- possibly because it finally ended instead of leaving you hanging. Legolas kicked ass, Gandalf kicked ass, Samwise -- they all kicked ass. The only time the film didn't "kick ass" was when the projectionist -- probably dozing off after watching the 3 1/2 hour movie for the sixth time of the day already -- forgot to swap reels when one ended.

This prompted the audience to angrily whistle profusely. Whistling, unlike in the U.S., is a form of detest. The late swapping of the reels happened at least four times over the course of the movie, causing the nerds to whistle over and over.

I would have hated to be the projectionist. From my experience -- and viewing of certain movies of the 1980s -- you don't want to upset nerds; they get their revenge sooner or later.


Special Thanks to Alice Mao for her holiday donation to The Global Trip 2004 Pledge Drive! You rock! More postcards to come...

This holiday season, remember TGT2004 gear, WhatEXIT.net apparel and the book Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why make great stocking stuffers! (Please excuse the gratuitous plug.)


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December 19, 2003

The Taxis of Miraflores

DAY 60: Just south of Lima is the affluent oceanside suburb of Miraflores, a place that despite its fancy retaurants and hotels, is suggested as "the better place to stay for budget travelers" according to Lonely Planet. Perhaps this is why the South American Explorers moved their clubhouse there, so it warranted a visit.

I MET UP WITH LARA, the girl from the British Island Guernsey that I met the day before, who was also on her way to the 'burb. We shared a taxi for the twenty minute ride down the Expressway. As with most major cities, traffic is inevitable and we were caught in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam, which wasn't exactly that annoying -- until our taxi was about to run out of gas.

"Uh oh," Lara said.

She noticed the driver shifting gears and trying to juice the engine with more gas. But it was no use and suddenly we were stranded in the fast lane of the highway. The driver pushed the car onto the grassy divider island in the middle and tried to mess around under the hood. It didn't look good.

Lara and I tried to hail a taxi on the highway but most of them were already on route somewhere with a passenger. Luckily a random guy flagged us over to the middle lane and we ran through the sea of slow moving vehicles to his car. He gave us a lift to the center of Miraflores and asked us for five soles, which seemed reasonable.


LIKE SOUTH AMERICAN EXPLORERS, American Express had moved offices to Miraflores, and without an address published anywhere. Lara only had travelers checks in sterling and needed AmEx to change them to at least travelers checks in US dollars so any of the other banks would at least touch them. As independent travel is just a series of tasks and goals, the task at hand was to find the office -- with the help of South American Explorers, since it was our only lead. I was hoping that perhaps my $40 membership fee would come in handy after all.

The clubhouse was very similar to the one in Quito, with a living room, book exchange, map room and guides. But that's where the conveniences stopped. You would think being an organization specifically created to help travelers around South America that they would be able to tell you where the American Express office is, but they drew complete blanks.

What SAE lacked in off-the-top-of-their-head knowledge, they made up in effort. An American guy there used guidebooks, phonebooks and maps to track it down -- it took almost an hour to get us all sorted out, in a visit I thought would be just two minutes.

Before I left, I asked the guy where he would suggest I might want to be for Christmas. Dumbfounded, he simply said, "You should go...wherever you end up."

Gee, thanks pal. Bah humbug.

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LARA AND I WALKED ACROSS TOWN to the AmEx office near the Gutierrez Oval rotunda, which I referred to as "Plaza America" (picture above) because it was one concentrated cluster of American chain restaurants: Chili's, T.G.I.Friday's and -- what I call the "American embassy" -- McDonald's. She changed her pounds into dollars after signing her signature over a hundred times, after of which she need a pick me up. Being "Plaza America," in no time we were inside a Starbucks.

The familiar decor and ambient jazz music transported me back to the States, and we sat and talked for a couple of hours over iced mocha frappuchinos.

We took a leisurely walk to the waterfront, where there was park after park after park along the edge of the cliff that overlooked the Pacific. We shot the breeze as the ocean breeze gently shot by us on a gloomy overcast day -- but at least it wasn't raining we thought. We walked by familiar places I had been to before with my friend Johnny in 2001 -- the Parque del Amor and Punta Sal's cevicheria -- and took a photo in the same spot I took one with my cab driver two years prior. Lara realized that she wasn't getting hassled as often as she usually is because she was with me. In fact, I had to pose as her boyfriend when a Shady Shoe Shine Guy started harrassing her.


BLOG READER "MOMAN" SENT ME A TIP that his Australian friends Gabrielle and Marni were flying into Lima after their stint in New York -- where they had just gone on his soon-to-be-popular tour of the Bronx. I had contacted Gabrielle via email and we planned to meet up at her hostel in a quiet residential area of Miraflores.

Lara took a cab back to the city while I journeyed off the Lonely Planet map to the Aussies' hostel. I waited in the lounge area for a while, eavesdropping the conversation of a girl on the phone who had just gotten her camera stolen out of her locked room.

After waiting patiently for an hour and a half, I left a note on the girls' door and was about to leave, but fortunately I went to the bathroom long enough that I finally bumped into them on their way in. They had been stuck in a taxi for two hours with a clueless driver that didn't know where anything was, and was too much of a man to ask for directions. I don't know what it is about the taxis of Miraflores.

Gabrielle, Marni and I all had had a crazy day, which warranted a nice night of dinner and drinks. We walked to Larcomar, Miraflores' new oceanfront shopping and entertainment mall. We laughed at the tourism bureau's write-up of it in their latest monthly tour brochure: "You probably won't find anything that you haven't encountered in other destinations..."

This was nothing short of the truth -- it was a modern mall with restaurants, shops, arcades and a movie theater -- even singing nuns doing Christmas carols. We went to a fancy restaurant which overlooked the nightlights of the bay, where I introduced them to ceviche and the regional cocktail pisco sour. I used this rare dining occasion to eat something other than something South American: beef stroganoff.

The three of us strolled down the oceanfront parks at night until I bid them farewell around 10:30 since they had to wake early for a morning bus headed north to Huaraz. I hopped in a taxi back to central Lima.

In the fast lane, two plastic buckets had fallen into the road, and my driver hit them head on thinking they would just go past -- but one got stuck under the car near the tire and got dragged the entire run down the expressway. The driver wouldn't stop on the shoulder to get rid of it; instead he just put the blinkers on and drove slower the whole way.

Perhaps it was just bad luck, but I'll take a taxi in New York City over one in Miraflores any day.


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December 21, 2003

A Pair of Turtles

DAY 61: I was writing a rough draft in the rooftop cafe of the Lima hostel early in the morning when two new pet animals, a pair of turtles, wandered in and walked under the tables and chairs. It took sometime for the turtles to get anywhere.


AS TRAVELING IN PAIRS is often beneficial, Lara and I traveled together for the day. Like the turtles, we traveled with big heavy packs on our backs.

We went out for breakfast at a corner cafe and discussed our individual itineraries over non-corporate iced moccachinos. While Lara was set on going the eight hours straight to Nazca, I debated on whether I should go the three hours to Pisco, namesake of the famous regional white grape brandy and tourism base of the marine life-rich Paracas National Reserve; or Ica, a city one hour farther surrounded by massive sand dunes and pisco brandy vineyards. As any seasoned traveller knows, you must realize that the world is just too big and you can't see everything with time and money constraints, and you have to choose one and sacrifice the other. Having done the Galapagos already, I opted for Ica -- which meant I could continue to travel with Lara since Ica was her bus' first major stop anyway.

We checked out of the Hotel España and got a cab to take us to the TEPSA terminal. (Unlike Ecuador, in Peru there is no central bus terminal and each company operates out of their own building.) Our taxi driver was Reynald, an out-of-work engineer that drove the taxi to make a living. Initially he thought I was from Argentina.

I sat in front and struck up a conversation with him. He was impressed at: the fact that I could learn so much Spanish is such a short period of time; and the fact that I guy like me was traveling with a chica like Lara. Reynald was a nice guy and we had no car problems, probably because we never got on the highway to Miraflores.


"THE BRITISH ARE KNOWN TO BE notoriously bad at learning new languages," Lara once told me. In her years of travelling to other countries, she had more or less just gotten by with English and hand gestures. Using my two-month acquired Spanish, I bought tickets for the both of us while Lara observed and learned. In the waiting room there was a menu of a restaurant and Lara tried to decipher any familiar words.

"Pollo. Chicken. I know that one," she said. That was the only one. Luckily for her, someone had given her a book as a going away gift with just pictures of useful things, so she could just open it up and point.


IT WAS ONLY US TWO and a nice Woman In A Blue Shirt on the bus when we left the station thirty minutes late. Half an hour wasn't too bad until we stopped at other TEPSA stations in the greater Lima area to either get more passengers or just wait around for no apparent reason. Waiting around does different things to different people. For me, I just got sleepy while Lara had a craving for beans. The Woman In The Blue Shirt was too hot in the bus and asked me to watch her things while she waited outside, which I did.

It wasn't until about four in the afternoon that we got back on the road, three hours later than we had anticipated. Like the pair of turtles, it took a while to get anywhere.

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THE BUS CRUISED DOWN the PanAmerican highway, hugging the Andes at times, hugging the coast at others. Scenery switched from mountains to sand dunes (picture above) to lush farmlands. The bus stopped occasionally to drop off or pick up people in seemingly random places in the middle of nowhere. Groups of men would board and stand in the aisle and stare at Lara.

"They all stare at the crazy white girl," she told me.

"Oh just you wait until I get off at Ica. One will probably sit here next to you."

Her strategy was to just lose herself in her headphones.


IT WAS NIGHTTIME by the time we arrived at Ica city limits, but we wouldn't go into town without a mandatory meal stop at a rest area. Lara and I had skipped lunch and were starving. We looked for something on the menu that wasn't fried. I taught her a new word, chaufa (Chinese fried rice) which she got excited about and wrote down in her book. "Chaufa... de... pollo... Chicken... fried... rice..."

It took about 25 minutes for our food to arrive, which wasn't a good thing since we were only to be at the rest area for half an hour. The only person we recognized from our bus was The Woman In The Blue Shirt, and we took turns keeping an eye on her motions since the bus was out of sight. We thought that we might have been okay on time until The Woman In The Blue Shirt came running in, waving to us that the bus was about to leave. We ran to her and smile, thanking her for getting us. Without her, we might have been stranded without our bags. Ah, the drama and excitement of independent travel.

"When you're alone, you sort of have to keep an eye on everything," Lara said with experience. "But when you are with someone, you look out for each other and..."

"...wait for The Woman In The Blue Shirt to come get you," I interjected.


BY NINE O'CLOCK we were in central Ica, and I bid my mate Lara goodbye -- hopefully only for the time being -- leaving an empty seat for any of the twenty or so people boarding the bus. I got my bag and walked around for a hostel near the main plaza. Most people were less interested in the new guy in town with his big nylon "turtle shell" because they were all too fixated on the big soccer game on all the TVs. (Later I found out that the Peruvian team Cienciano del Cusco had won the 2003 South America Cup. Instead of parties in the streets, there was just a lot of annoying car honking.)


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Sweet, Sour and Sandy

DAY 62: Ica, capital city of the department of the same name, is known for two things: its massive and dramatic surrounding sand dunes (picture below), and its pisco brandy and wine-producing vineyards. The easiest way to see them both is with a city tour. At just ten dollars, the tour wasn't a bad deal considering the amount of free booze samples you get. And what's not to like about free booze?

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My tour guide Fernando picked me up in an unmarked sedan. He was a nice fortysomething man who didn't speak any English -- the majority of tourists were Peruvian anyway. We picked up the three other tourists at their hotels: Luis, a Peruvian living and working in Mexico City, and Elena and Mauricio, a young couple from Cuzco. Fernando took us around the highlights of the city, first to the church of Señor de Luren with its classical architecture and moreno-toned Christ. Despite the fact that Luis was native to Peru, he must have been excited to be back because he was taking pictures left and right, many of which I took for him so he could be in it.

Fernando took us to two nearby vineyards, El Catedor and the Italian-founded Vista Alegre. Both had displays of old-fashioned grape presses which were replaced by modern equipment. Juices of grapes were fermented in ceramic pots or oak barrels to produce a number of fine red and white wines, many of which were very sweet, like desert wines. In addition to the various wines, they also produced cognacs, vermouth and the famous regional white grape brandy, pisco. Pisco is often mixed with sour mix to make the ever-popular "pisco sour" cocktail.

Needless to say, the wine and pisco tastings were the best -- and blurriest -- parts of the two tours.


THE LAST STOP OF THE CITY TOUR was Huaca China, a natural oasis-turned-resort in the middle of the surrounding desert. Huaca China used to be the vacation destination for heads of state and men of power, but over the years it felt into despair -- only to be overridden by backpackers and sandboard bums. I was surprised to see the number of gringos there because Huaca China -- nor sandboarding for that matter -- was mentioned in my Lonely Planet "Shoestring" guide.

Luis and I wandered around the lake, watching the paddleboats and swimmers inside. Massive sand dunes the size of mountains surrounded us and with the presence of desert palms, I felt I might have been in the Sahara.

Fernando's city tour ended there, but rather than go back with the rest, I hung around for a bit of sandboarding.


I HAVE BEEN AN AVID SNOWBOARDER for the past five years, and having been away from snow in the summer of the southern hemisphere, this was where I'd get my fix. While most of the sandboard bums just rented a board for five bucks and hiked up the dunes for an hour only to come down in a minute, I paid the twenty bucks for a sand buggy to pick me up and bring me to the top after every run.

People who drive sand buggies aren't called "drivers" in Huaca China. They are called "pilots." I didn't understand this until my pilot Mitchell, a Chilean living in Peru, got behind the wheel. With just miles upon miles of sand with nothing to crash into, Mitchell took the buggy about 60 miles per hour up and down the massive dunes. Like a rally sport driver, he swerved around deep ditches and floored it down jaw-dropping hills that must have been 75°, if not more. To describe the experience as a "roller coaster" would be both cliché and an understatement. A snappy metaphor doesn't come to mind, but I suppose it was like being in a NASA training simulator -- not that I've ever been -- where they spin you and contort your body really fast just to see what the limits of human endurance are. There should have been a warning sign that read "Do not go on this ride if you have heart conditions, are pregnant or have a will to live." I was strapped in with a shoulder belt, which was absolutely necessary since I might have flown up and out of the car when it caught a little air.

And if driving ridiculously fast up and down a sea of sand wasn't enough of a heartstopper, Mitchell would race up a dune and stop short right at the edge of a peak.

"[You sandboard?]" I asked him.

"[No, that's for crazy people.]"

Riight.


ACCOMPANYING ME ON THE SLOPES was Andres, a Colombian on vacation from his job in San Antonio, Texas. He wasn't as experienced in boarding as I was, so we did a couple of practice runs on a "bunny slope" -- which was about as gentle the bunny boiling in Fatal Attraction. Mitchell picked us up and brought up to the top each time, and over time, Andres got the hang of it.

Sandboarding is similar to snowboarding in that you have to have a certain amount of lunacy to do it. Sandboards are similar in design to snowboards, except the bindings are made of velcro straps that hug your boots. Sand, although more forgiving on impact, doesn't pack or move like snow does, making it difficult to carve left and right -- doing so would only make you lose momentum and stop. With this said, sandboarding is a major balancing act where you must balance your body with your will to live -- or rather, the will not to ingest sand.

Mitchell (center) drove us through his big play sandbox to bigger and bigger dunes to surf down, each time meeting us at the bottom for a convenient lift back up. I shot down like a rocket on each mound, happy that being away from home didn't prevent me from going riding. Andres wiped out a couple of times, and had to stop once to empty all the sand that had filled his pockets.

Our pilot drove us to a peak so we could watch the sunset. The sun glowed a creamy orange and transformed the sky into other colors of the rainbow sherbert spectrum. As we blazed a dusty trail back into town, I felt the whole experience ranked in one of the top things I've done in South American thus far.


BACK IN HUACA CHINA, Andres and I bought Mitchell a beer at the nearby outdoor bar, adjacent to a popular hostel. There I met two Brits, Matt and Ellen, who had just arrived in Ica that day and had heard nothing but raves about the sand buggy/boarding experience. I added to that hype.

Until I got a taxi back into the city, I drank and chatted with the Brits and the local bartender Lalo, who made us various drinks with pisco in them -- one of which was called the "Huaca fucking China." Although it wasn't free like the taste samples that morning, it was the perfect drink after a great fucking day.


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December 22, 2003

NAZCAR

DAY 63: Nights in pisco country are great, but the mornings after aren't so much. With the absence of my usual greasy Hangover Helpers in New York -- Union Square's McDonald's, Flatiron District's Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop or Chinatown's Wo Hop -- I turned to the regional breakfast specialty, the Tamale Iqueńo, a corn dough treat stuffed with pork, olives, beans and spices. It might not have been greasy enough to make a sheet of paper transparent, but it did the trick.

The reason for my early morning awakening was because I was trying to get an early bus to Nazca, in hopes of catching up with Lara. After my Peruvian Hangover Helper, I went looking for a bus, but it being a Sunday, the only one I found available didn't leave until two in the afternoon. I killed time sitting in the Plaza das Armas and working on The Blog. Unlike the night before, I finally found access to computers with camera hook ups.


IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER ONE O'CLOCK when I went to the bus station with all my bags. I went to the ticket counter and asked for a ticket. One woman there told me to have a seat, the bus will leave at two. I sat for a while, next to the potato sacks on the floor with a live chicken in each one, until another woman casually announced that the 2 p.m. bus wasn't going to leave anymore. No one gave her a phone call, no one came over with news -- it seemed that just as she was eating her lunch with the other woman, she decided "Hey, you know that bus that leaves at two? Nah, I don't think we should have it anymore. Could you pass the salt?"

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The thought of waiting in the bus station with the bags of chickens didn't bode well with me, so I followed the Lonely Planet map and went around the corner to get a collectivo, a car or minibus that goes to a specific destination once it has been filled. Like my car ride from Tarapoto to Yurimaguas, I was the first passenger to sign on and had to wait an hour or so for other passengers.

I sat on a bench in the garage as I heard the repetitive monophonic electronic chime music of Kaoma's familiar Lambada song playing over and over from inside the house. You know the song:

Daaa da da da do di dum, doo di da da doo di dumm...
Daaa da da da do di dum, doo di da da doo di dumm...
Daaa da di daa, do da dee do di dum, do di da da de duh duh di do deedadumm...
Daaa da di daa, do da dee do di dum, do di da da de duh duh di do deedadumm...
Duh...
(repeat here)

Needless to say, after an hour of listening to it over and over and over, it got as annoying as a squirt of lemon juice into a papercut. I noticed that the song might have ended if it weren't for that one duh note which bridges the ending with the beginning flawlessly, in attempts to make it sound like one neverending song. After a while, I really began to hate that one note.

By 2:40 p.m., we had enough passengers to warrant the drive to Nazca, and the eight of us squeezed in tightly into a big black Chevrolet (picture above). Jose the driver was a nice guy and seemed to know everyone on the highway, always waving hello -- even the cops, which was probably why we never got stopped at a checkpoint.

The Big Black Chevy raced through the southern desert, along vast flatlands, followed by zig zags through the lower mountains. We made it to the finish line in Nazca in just over two hours, way before the bus in Ica even started.


NAZCA IS A SMALL TOWN that wouldn't have any business in tourism if not for the nearby Nazca lines, the famed and mysterious drawings discovered in the early 20th century that originated from one of a few different theories. While it is generally accepted that they were created by the Nazca and Paracas civilizations from 900 B.C. to 600 A.D., the reasons for doing so remains unclear -- some believe they were created to make contact with extraterrestrials.

Since the lines can only really be seen from the air, I booked a tour with a prop plane for the following day and then wandered around the main plazas. Townspeople were just lounging around on a lazy Sunday afternoon while a street performer with marionettes had a small audience at the Plaza das Armas. Three blocks away at the Plaza Bolognesi, there was a small carnival with mini carnival kiddie rides.

I finally got my greasy fix with a Chinese food dinner and then did some internet work. I got an email from Lara telling me there wasn't much to do in Nazca and that she had already set off for Cuzco. She wasn't kidding because after walking around, the sleepy town really didn't have much of a night scene -- mainly because it was low season. So I just vegged in my small room in my hostal.

I went to bed, still with that damn Lambada tune stuck in my head. Rather than be the tune for "The Forbidden Dance," I think it should just be "The Forbidden Song."

Duh...


Don't know Kaoma's Lambada song and can't decipher my musical hums? I was subjected to a monophonic electronic chime version that repeated the first stanza over and over, but here is a MIDI music file of the full song -- its a more complete version with percussion. Make sure you play it over and over and over and over for the full effect.


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December 24, 2003

Where They Drew The Line

DAY 64: I was lying in bed in the darkness of my room with no windows when there was a knock on the door. It was my driver for my transport to the airport -- an hour and a half early. Lizet, the girl I booked the Nazca lines air tour with the day before, must have mixed something up, because I was suddenly on an 8 a.m. flight instead of a 9. Groggily, I put on my clothes and hopped in the car. It was the first time things in Peru actually ran ahead of schedule.

My driver Ernesto -- who surprisingly spoke very good English -- proved once again how small the world is when he told me he had lived and worked in Union City, NJ (across the Hudson River from New York City) for twenty years before retiring back in Peru. With our metro New York City connection, he suggested that if I was going to leave Nazca that night, I should get a bus ticket early, so we went to the CIVA office and snagged one of the few remaining seats.

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By 8 a.m. I was already in the co-pilot seat of a prop plane, taking off high above the desert mountains. The pilot let go of the controls every so often to point out the different pictographs that had been drawn in the earth. The Nazca civilization drew many lines and pictures in the desert, including a whale (picture above), a spider, a hummingbird and a guy that looks like an astronaut.

Since the Nazcas predated the Incas and left no written records of why the lines and pictures were drawn, they remain a mystery to this day. Several theories exist, including that of UFO contact, but many believe that they were drawn as a sort of astronomical calendar -- each picture represents a zodiac sign. Famed German scientist Maria Reiche believed they had agricultural purposes.

If you ask me, I think that perhaps they were just drawn for art's sake, or perhaps some sort of commercial purpose. Comedian Robin Williams once pointed out a Disney office building with statues of the seven dwarfs and said that in thousands of years, people will probably think the Floridian civilization worshipped guys like Dopey.

Although the prop plane flight was very smooth, the lack of equilibrium got me a little motion sick, so it was good it only lasted about 40 minutes. Having airsickness is similar to being hungover, so I had one of those Hangover Helper pork-filled breakfast tamales again.


"ERIK," A VOICE CALLED from across the street as I finished my meal. It was my new guide who was looking for me for my land tour. His name was Jesus, a kind man who always addressed me by my first name everytime he started a new sentence. I hopped in his car and he drove me to the archaelogical sites around town. Passed cotton fields, we saw the ancient underground Nazca aqueducts with their air vents to keep the flow of water going from the mountains to the dry desert. A mathematical marvel, the aqueducts have withstood the many earthquakes in the region's history.

Jesus took me to the"Needles", a nearby Nazca line site theorized to be used for irrigation, followed by the ancient Incan ruins of Parecones, a trading center between the Nazca region and the Incan capital Cuzco.


AFTER A MIDDAY SIESTA, I circumvented possible mix-ups of Lizet the tour operator and hired Jesus directly for a tour of the ancient cemetary, 30 minutes south of town in the middle of the vast desert. On the drive down, Jesus told me about his philosophies on life and his sons, how he believed electrical jobs were the future, and that he wishes he could turn the clock back twenty years to start a water plant.

"Erik, [I tell my son who is finishing university, leave Peru and get a good job in electrical fields. Work for fifteen years and come back and make a plant here. Marry a woman, as long as she is not Peruvian. The problem with Peruvian women is that they think with their heart, not their head,]" he told me, all fatherly like. Perhaps it was in observation of his daughters that gave up their prosperous careers to just be housewives.


DESERT WINDS BLEW SAND into my hair as Jesus pointed out the different tombs of the cemetary. In fact, the entire region was one big cemetary -- there were human bone remains and scraps of clothing scattered all over -- and it is common for gravediggers to come out and try and dig for hidden gold buried with the dead. The mummies were all in fetal positions -- a position to be reborn in the afterlife -- some still with their hair intact. It looked like something out of a Grateful Dead festival.

After the mummies, Jesus took me to a handmade ceramics factory and to a local former miner's house who sang me a gold extraction demonstration. I killed time until my 9 p.m. bus by walking around town afterwards, when I ran into Lizet who wanted me to go to some party. Heeding the advice of Jesus and knowing how she mixed things up before, I just told her that I was leaving for Cuzco, which was the truth anyway.

At the bus station, the bus came 90 minutes late, but I managed to get on. Even with a reservation, it's hard to get a seat because the buses stop in towns and pick up random people anyway. Two American guys luckily got on the bus as well, and we rode through the darkness into the Andes. A Steven Segal movie put me to sleep.


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December 25, 2003

On the Trail of Lara Croft

DAY 65: In 1996, the adventure video game Tomb Raider was born, starring the full-lipped, big-breasted virtual heroine Lara Croft. The gun-toting Lara adventured around the world in search of artifacts like a modern, female Indiana Jones. The popularity of the Tomb Raider video game spawned two movies in which the full-lipped, big-breasted virtual Lara Croft took the human form of Angelina Jolie.

Like the way the name "Indiana Jones" has become synonymous with adventurous men venturing around the world -- some people call me by this name -- "Lara Croft" has become synonymous with females doing the same sort of adventures on the independent travel circuit. This is especially true when your given first name is "Lara" to begin with.


ORIGINALLY I HAD THE IDEA of spending Christmas in Arequipa, known as the "White City" due to its white buildings made of the white stone sillar, in order to have a "White Christmas." But the thought of having to "start over" with trying to find new friends in a new city in time for a decent Christmas seemed daunting. Luckily Lara -- whose email name is "Lara Croft" -- sent me an email stating, "I'll be in Cusco for Christmas and you are more than welcome to join me if you don't fancy being on your own." Although I had already been in Cusco and was skeptical in seeing it again, the poetic alliteration "Christmas in Cusco" just had a nice ring to it. And besides, what's more poetic than saying I was "on the trail of Lara Croft"?


MY BUS RIDE TO CUSCO didn't leave Nazca until about 11 p.m. the night before, and by sunrise we were only about half way there. Around nine o'clock we stopped at a rest area on the outskirts of Abancay for a breakfast break, but half the people made a fuss because they were going to Abancay anyway and just wanted to get going. The driver heeded their requests and pulled out to head for town. There was construction on the main road and we took the designated detour -- right into a deep patch of mud. The bus tilted over so much that it might have tipped over, so everyone got off the bus. The passengers to Abancay simply got taxis into the town center, leaving a small group of us to wait for a resolution -- including me and the two Americans, originally from Ohio, that had luckily boarded the night before: Tony the consultant and Adam the law student at Georgetown University.

"Even if we survived a tip over, we would have been covered in shit," Tony pointed out. (The two of them had the back seats next to the bus' smelly lavatory.)

The conductor, driver and some local guys attempted to dig out the bus, but we were in too deep and it wouldn't budge. Luckily a bulldozer from the construction site came to the rescue. Using a steel cable, they tried to tow the bus out of the slop, but the cable fastener kept coming undone. We waited and waited as they tried new nuts and bolts for the fasteners, but again and again it would just come undone. After the third attempt, it was clear that third time wasn't the charm in this case.

Finally they switched to good old fashioned rope -- but then the bulldozer ran out of gas. A guy went out to fetch a bucket of gasoline, which they siphoned into the tank. Everything was all set to go, but then a herd of cow and goats walked by -- leaving a lone baby goat hiding under the bulldozer for shade.

"Baaaaa."

The bulldozer almost ran over it until people signaled the driver that it was there. The men were annoyed that they had gotten this far only to have a little goat get in the way, but all Tony, Adam and I could say is "Wow, that's awesome."

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The bulldozer eventually pulled the bus out of the mud and we drove the two minutes into town for the designated stop. Having missed our breakfast opportunity, Tony and I went out in Abancay for provisions, which we ate on the bus ride continuing onto Cusco. The bus ascended into the mountains through off and on rain (picture above) as the TV monitors played a salsa concert that seemed to go on forever.


AFTER A SIXTEEN AND A HALF HOUR BUS JOURNEY -- my longest to date -- we were in Cusco, the former-Incan-capital-turned-popular-traveler-stop-in-South-America. The Americans and I split a taxi into the main square and as we rode through the streets, everything came back to me. And with the colder weather due to Cusco's high altitude (almost 11,000 ft above sea level), I felt like I was "coming home" to something -- a perfect feeling for the holidays.

Tony and Adam had been in transit for two days straight and decided to splurge on a nice hotel right on the Plaza das Armas. I checked my email and tracked down Lara Croft at a hostel two blocks away. I got a room there and asked around for her, but she was nowhere to be found.


IN ALL MY TRAVELS AROUND THE GLOBE prior to this big trip, people have asked me what my favorite city was -- the answer was always "Cusco, Peru." Walking through the Plaza das Armas, it was evident again why I said this. A beautiful, red-roofed filled city in the valley of the mountains, Cusco had the perfect blend of Andean people and travelers that gave it an energetic pulse not found in other places. Spanish colonial architecture flanked the main plaza with the cathedral and Iglesia de La Compańia and I took it all in again, breathing in the thin air. It was then that the "tomb raider" had found me instead of the other way around. "I thought I saw you there," she said.

Lara and I caught up on our adventures. Her bus to Cusco didn't get stuck in mud, but she had to deflect the questions and come ons of a young Peruvian lad who, we later found out that night, had already emailed her twice asking for a kiss. I'm still not sure who had the more arduous journey -- baby goat vs. annoying guy, tough call.

We went out for dinner at a nice restaurant with a Christmas tree and -- more importantly -- complimentary pisco sour cocktails. Lara filled me in on the travelers of Cusco she had encountered thus far, including the guys determined to have a "White Christmas" with lots of cocaine and the "stuffy English girls" who didn't even attempt to try to speak Spanish. Determined not to be one of these girls, Lara had studied her Spanish all afternoon, picking up more phrases here and there. She ordered her meal in Spanish.

Afterwards, Lara and I went bar hopping in Cusco's formidable nightlife scene, first to the popular bar Norton Rat's where we sat on the balcony overlooking the plaza with a bottle of wine, watching the villagers set up for a big Christmas Eve market for the next day. The Plaza das Armas lit up with figures of reindeer and wisemen as people scrambled around for the Christmas rush.

As the night progressed, we checked out the street performers by the cathedral, played a couple roads of pool and had a lot more booze. Although it wouldn't be a "White Christmas," I was surely glad that I had made the decision to have "Christmas in Cusco."


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December 26, 2003

Horses for Hangovers

DAY 66: It's one thing to be hungover after a night of boozing, but it's another to be hungover when you haven't yet acclimatized to the thin oxygen 11,000 ft. above sea level. I woke up feeling just awful (but with no regrets) and laid in bed questioning why I was alive -- Lara felt the same way. We weren't sure if it was the pisco or the altitude, but perhaps it was a little from Column A and a little from Column B.

At noon we knew just why we were alive: to go horseback riding through the Andean countryside. I met up with Lara in a nearby travel agency and in less than ten minutes we hired a couple of horses and a guide for the afternoon to take us to the nearby Incan ruins just outside of Cusco. A taxi took us up the mountain to the first site Saqsaywaman -- when pronounced, sounds like "sexy woman" -- where we wandered around the walls and boulders that overlooked the city before catching our horses at the ranch next door.

I mounted Apanico, a fairly docile white horse that kept on leaning down for a bite of grass every so often. Lara got on the back of Apache, a black, somewhat fiestier horse that laughed after it farted. With our horse guide Ronald walking alongside, Apanico and Apache took us up the road to the Incan ruins of Q'enqo, where ceremonies were performed in a cave. A loitering local guy tried to sell me on a lecture of the site, while another local guy tried to take a photo of Lara. Both were denied.


THE ONE THING WE DISCOVERED about horseback riding is that, contrary to what you may think, it actually alleviates the nausea of a hangover. Riding the horses was a bouncy experience, but for some reason, it kept our stomachs sane -- whenever we dismounted and started walking around again, we'd start to feel sick with waves of nausea. "That's it, when I go home, instead of buying a car, I'm getting a horse," I said.

The horses walked, trotted and gallopped -- sometimes unexpectedly -- through the countryside, along trails up and down the hills and valleys where sheep grazed. The bouncing of our bodies with our backpacks behind made us, as Lara put it, "constantly giggle like twelve-year-old schoolchildren." I had to hold onto the saddle and keep seated in tightly to keep my testicles from smacking down on every bounce -- otherwise I would giggle like a twelve-year-old schoolboy permanently, if you know what I mean.

Apache and Apanico, smart horses with keen senses of direction, brought us to the Temple of the Moon, the site of lunar Incan ceremonies, and then up the mountain to the ruins of Pukapukara, a former Incan fort overlooking the valley, and Tambomachay, which was used by the Incas for ceremonial baths -- the water coming from the mountains still flows through it today. We discovered that Tambomachay is a popular nearby site for tourists, because it gave people the opportunity to pose in the four window frames on the upper tier. Inspired by the others, Lara and I posed in the two middle frames, wishing we had two other people with us so we could spell out "YMCA."

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THE DAY WAS COMING TO AN END, so we mounted our horses (picture above) and head over the hills and through a forest back to the ranch. In the distance we saw a storm brewing, but our trail made a turn for the better -- instead of riding into the storm, we rode off into the sunset. "I can't get this grin off my face," Lara said, it being her first time horseback riding. "We're riding horses, in Peru, and on Christmas Eve."

Sometimes you just have to say it out loud for it to sink in.


AFTER A COUPLE OF GREASY CHICKEN BURGERS from a street stand and a short siesta, Lara and I were back for a night on the town, despite the fact that we were still feeling pretty crummy from the night before, without the help of the horses. The Plaza das Armas came alive with people, particularly with local kids setting off Christmas firecrackers left and right -- sometimes throwing them at the gringos -- making it somewhat of a warzone. The Christmas Eve markets were in full-swing, filling the streets near the plaza with vendors selling chotskies, cakes, wine and more firecrackers to arm the little bastards in the plaza. On every sidewalk surrounding the vendor stands were hundreds poor peasants from the villages, hoping to get any spare change from buyers.

Lara and I escaped the crowded chaos in an Italian restaurant, where Lara couldn't help by eavesdrop on other people's conversations to try and figure out their situations. We ordered two big plates of pasta, but with our quesy stomachs and exhaustion, we couldn't finish it. Whenever I am in this situation, I usually feel bad and swirl my food around into a pile to make it look like I at least made an attempt. The waitress took the food back, and we hoped she would give it to any of the poor hungry kids staring inside through the window instead of throwing it out.


ALTHOUGH WE WERE BOTH EITHER SICK or exhausted from "the altitude" (our constant scapegoat), we went out for a drink in the spirit of Christmas Eve. En route to our usual bar Cross Keys, we bumped into the Americans Tony and Adam who joined us for a round. We sat and talked about travel and old Commodore 64 games -- two of my favorite topics when drinking in a bar in the middle of the Andes -- until the early last call at 11 p.m. The staff closed earlier than usual to be home at the stroke of Christmas, leaving us with a easy night -- no need for horseriding the following morning, which was great news for my testicles.


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Christmas in Cusco

DAY 67: I woke up to the sound of firecrackers in the streets early in the morning -- the kids had been setting them off all night. For me, the sounds of Christmas morning sounded more like the sounds of the Fourth of July.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS," Lara greeted me in our hostel. She surprised me with a gift, a Quechan carved pen with the figure of a head on it. "It was absolutely the ugliest one I could find," she said with a smile. My first Christmas away from family was turning alright.

The Plaza das Armas was completely different on Christmas morning -- all the vendors and chaotic crowds had disappeared overnight, and the streets were spotless. This was probably to clear the way for the parade that came out of the cathedral, went around the plaza and down the main street to the other side of town.

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We followed the traditional Andean dancers along with all the other camera-toting tourists, taking far more pictures than probably needed. Singers chanted as a guy strung a guitar. People in masks of all ages jumped up and down to the rhythm, some holding up baby dolls, which I assumed signified the baby Jesus. Some wore ski masks, some wore the masks of animal heads, but they all had spinning noisemakers that they would use after every dance (picture above) before moving on to the next block.

Some dancers got really into it, howling and yelping, while others -- particularly the younger children -- looked as if they had just been forced into it, the way I'd been forced to do Christmas pageants as a kid. I figured at least none of them had to be Joseph; boys make fun of the guy who plays Joseph because, for Christ's sake, he has to stand next to "eww, that girl who's playing Mary."


LARA'S BROTHER HAD BEEN IN CUSCO before, and being a building surveyor, a lot of his photos were of the interesting trivial bits about buildings that most others couldn't care less about. Lara remembed that one of these photos was that of an Incan wall in the city with massive blocks so big that he had to get his wife to pose next to it -- unenthusiastically -- to show the scale of things. Despite this look, Lara's brother raved about the wall and told Lara to make a point to check it out.

Seeing as we had all day to kill, we went off on a mission to find the wall using the Lonely Planet map and the occasional "You Are Here" maps in the city. We searched a while under the warming sun, passed other Incan walls with small stones -- none with the "people-sized" blocks that Lara had remembered. A hotel concierge directed us to the wall enquestioned, and seeing how it didn't live up to all the hype, it was clear why Lara's sister-in-law had such a bored look on her face.


AFTER DOING SOME BLOG DUTIES, I met up with Lara at our usual pub for a pre-dinner cocktail before heading over to Norton Rat's pub to meet Adam and Tony for an early Christmas dinner. We were sitting at a table on the balcony overlooking the plaza when I noticed a familiar face nearby. "Hey, I know you from the jungle," I said. It was Simion from my Amazon trip, alongside Axel and Sue who had also decided to have Christmas in Cusco, probably for the same poetic alliteration. It was great that a place like Cusco could bring old friends together for the holidays.

Before dinner was served, I gave Christmas gifts to my dinner companions. To Lara I gave a cheesy woven water bottle holder for her trek on the Inca trail -- we had joked about their cheesiness before and I figured it would be a nice kitschy gift. I gave Tony and Adam a bag of goodies, which caught them off guard because they had nothing to reciprocate. "It's okay, it's just your emergency salami," I told them. I also threw in a deck of cards.

Our "Christmas feast" consisted of a plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing and for everyone except Lara, mixed vegetables. "I don't do green," she said. She had specifically asked the waitress not to give her any vegetables, something that I might consider for subsequent meals.

"Wow, you have the diet I wish I had," Adam said.

Again, in front of starving people we couldn't finish our meals and had them sent away -- I did my trick of swirling my food around again, hiding my leftover stuffing under my leftover mashed potatoes. Of course, there was always room for dessert, especially when it was ice cream over cake. We had dessert and talked about topics from White Castle hamburgers to Tarantino movies to the strange hidden laws in our respective homes. For example, in a small island of the coast of Guernsey, it is legal to beat your wife -- but only between 6 and 7 in the morning.


ADAM AND TONY WENT OFF to their hotel room for their ultimate Christmas treat: vegging out with Oreos and watching The Matrix on cable. Lara and I went back to Cross Keys to make friends, and soon we befriended Simon and Rich, a couple from the U.K. who were travelling in the "short" limited time of just three weeks (you working-class Americans can cry now), splurging on every moment of it with expensive hotels and fancy restaurants (you can cry again now).

"We skip right to the 'high end' listings in the guidebook," Rich said. Not a bad way to live, if you can afford it I thought. (No wait, I'm crying now.)

Despite being on the other end of the price spectrum, Simon and Rich were down-to-earth guys who were just as bad at pool as we were, making them great company. Lara and Simon reminisced about their travels in Cambodia while I told Rich around places to go at night for his upcoming trip to New York.

Lara started feeling sick -- we blamed the altitude again -- and called it a night, leaving Simon, Rich and I to make even more friends. We met another young couple, Georgie from London and Dustin from Boston. The two of them were in a four-month overland tour of South America, traveling in a group of about a dozen people who were all at Mama America, a disco club across the plaza. Rich and Simon had to call it a night to wake for their early train to Machu Picchu, so I joined my newest friends to meet their group.

MAMA AMERICA WAS PACKED with locals and tourists away from home for the holidays. The DJ spun familiar "generic" American club standards, from Dr. Dre to J.Lo, as people danced and drank the night away. Dustin, who I gathered had only just graduated high school, was glad to chat it up with a fellow American for a change since everyone in his group was British. Sometimes it's good to travel independently, sometimes with a group -- especially when your guide is in good with the bartender and can get free drinks for everyone. Dustin and I talked over these free drinks about travel and how amazing it is to speak Spanish when you finally can.

As if being in the company of new friends wasn't good enough, I bumped into old friends -- Sue and Simion from the Amazon trip -- which was a great thing being away from my family on Christmas. I partied the night away with my surrogate South American family of backpackers until Christmas Night became The Day After Christmas.

"Silent Night" it was not, but "oh what fun" it was.


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December 27, 2003

Catch Him If You Can

DAY 68: Some people would say that the best invention since sliced bread is the "snooze" button. You know it and its contribution to Mankind -- why wake up and face reality when all you have to do is simply push a button and stay in dream land another ten minutes?

The one flaw in the snooze button is that is must be pushed for it to function and without doing so, the alarm just goes on and on until you wake up. Pushing the button is an easy enough task -- unless the alarm is coming from the room next door and you can't do anything about it. This is why I was up at some God forsaken hour after a late Christmas night out.

After a quick breakfast, I went for a morning stroll near the Plaza Regocijo to escape the Evil Alarm Clock. The weather was pleasant and nice for a stroll, but all I wanted to do was go back and sleep. I bought a new notebook and head back to the hostel -- luckily when I got there the Evil Alarm Clock had shut up and I went back to dream land for a couple more hours.


I VEGGED IN MY ROOM all afternoon with my notebook catching up on Blog duties, and then vegged in an internet cafe for four hours typing and uploading everything. Lara had been sick ever since the night of billiards before -- so sick that she had to drag a bucket to her bedside -- and we thought that maybe it was neither from the altitude or the alcohol. She took it easy by watching Bad Boys II in the DVD theater upstairs from the hostel while I went out with bad boys too: Tony and Adam from Ohio.


TONY SENT ME AN EMAIL saying that there was a rumor that Leonardo DiCaprio -- star of James Cameron's Titanic and Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can -- was in town, because he and Adam had stumbled upon a group of teenage girls out to stalk him outside his fancy hotel. I met The Ohio Boys at their hotel and we decided to see if maybe Leo would turn up at Fallen Angel, an ultra trendy lounge bar that I had heard about from a Canadian guy at my hostel. Fallen Angel wasn't in our books and we figured it was one of those places too cool to be widely known. Luckily Tony remembered seeing a flyer four blocks away from the plaza on some store's icebox.

Finding the hidden cool bar wasn't much of a challenge -- it was right across the Plazoleta de las Nazarenas from the fancy hotel where Leo was rumored to be in. Walking into Fallen Angel was like walking into a trendy bar in New York or Berlin, complete with the candles, downtempo music and gay waiters with a lot of attitude. Most of the tables were made out of old fashioned bathtubs with slabs of glass over them to show off the tropical fish swimming inside.

"Oh yeah. This is definitely Leo's scene," Adam said.

Apparently we weren't cool enough for one of the fish tables and settled for a plain one in the corner. Tony (whose last name is Alexander) ordered an "Alexander," which he smirked and described as "sweet and robust...like another Alexander I know." The only thing my tri-level red, yellow and green-colored "Machu Picchu" girly drink said about me was that perhaps I enjoyed Froot Loops in the morning, or that I might actually be the sixth guy on Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.

Over our trendy ambiguously gay drinks, we chatted and joked about this and that, and like Dustin felt the night before, it was nice to chat it up with fellow Americans for a change -- especially when they too appreciated the comic value of The Daily Show, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and the time when Saturday Night Live Weekend Update co-anchor Tina Fey quoted Bobby Brown telling Whitney Houston, "Damn woman, you can't be disrespecting a man's sandwich like that!" True, you can't have these kind of conversations with anyone but fellow Americans.

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After a round we called it an early night -- The Ohio Boys were to leave for Machu Picchu at five the next morning -- and left the gay waiter with the attitude and the mostly German clientelle to walk back to the Plaza das Armas, lit up at night once again (picture above). "Every time I see this plaza, I just think what a cool city this is," Adam commented. I shared his sentiment.


I BID THE OHIO BOYS goodbye at their hotel and in less than thirty seconds I ran into Simon and Rich, who had just gotten back from their day train trip to Machu Picchu.

"Are you going to the pub?"

I had no plans. "Sure."

I chat it up with the gay couple at Cross Keys on their last night in Cusco. I primed them on what to expect in their next destination Iquitos, where they would continue to stay in the most expensive hotels and eat in the priciest places. Incidentally, they had been staying in the posh hotel that Leo supposedly just arrived in and had also checked out the "gay friendly" scene at Fallen Angel. One step in and Rich said that with the attitude, perhaps it might be even a little too gay for them. The three of us chatted over rounds about soccer, cell phones and WiFi internet security until last call, and then went our separate ways.

I never did catch Leonardo DiCaprio that night -- well, we barely made the effort -- proving that what my "Machu Picchu" cocktail said about me was that I might be more into Froot Loops than that other thing it implied (not that there's anything wrong with that.)

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December 28, 2003

Two Women, A Llama and The Bird

DAY 69: I was having breakfast at the cafe across the street from the hostel when I noticed the same two women I had noticed at various places in town almost everyday. They were two local women who dressed in traditional Andean clothes that walked around with a llama, asking tourists if they wanted to take their picture for a small fee. The Ecuadorean group in the cafe ran out to pose with them, while I stayed inside and finished my yogurt, fruit and granola bowl.

ON THE STEPS OF THE CATHEDRAL, I bumped into Lara again -- another one of our seemingly regular, but totally random run-ins. She was feeling a little better and together we booked a non-random rendezvous for a bus tour of the Sacred Valley the next day.

Lara's stomach was slowly returning to normal and she just wanted some chaufa de pollo (Chinese chicken fried rice). I brought her to a Chinese place I noticed a block away from the main plaza. The food only helped a little, so she went back to the hostel to chill out.


IT WAS ALREADY MY FIFTH DAY back in Cusco and thus far, I had only really explored its world-renowned party scene. I figured it was time to see more of the city and explore its world-renowned history scene.

Cusco, former capital of the Incan empire conquered by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, still retains artifacts and buildings from both historical eras. Using the Lonely Planet map, I gave myself a walking tour of the sites in the city, starting with the ruins of Qoricancha, with its museum showing how it used to be an Incan fort until the Spanish built a church on it. I walked down the main road and decided to look for the South American Explorers office near a park fountain, but again they showed me their disorganization; they had moved offices to the other side of town.

No matter, I walked crosstown, stopping at the Plaza San Blas along the way. It was near there that I noticed the two dressed-up women with the llama again, looking for a tourist to give them money for a photo opp. The way I figured, if you're going to ask me for money to pose for a picture, you might as well do something for me. So when they approached me, I told them I'd snap a photo of them if they flipped me the bird (just like many of the later drunken photos from my bon voyage party).

Explaining to The Women With The Llama that I wanted them to pose with their middle finger up was a bit of a challenge.

"[Yes, but you must do like this,]" I said, showing them my middle finger. One woman was clueless while the other pointed up her index finger, hesistantly.

"[No, the other. Like this.]" I flipped her the bird again. She switched fingers without a clue as to what was going on. The other woman just stood there with a look on her face that said, "Dammit Shirl, you just had to pick this guy didn't you."

"[Your finger. Like this,]" I continued. I was really determined at this point. Not only were they looking at me funny, but so were the other tourists walking by. Slowly the other woman raised her middle finger.

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"[Yes, that's it!]" I felt like I found the cure for cancer or something. I snapped the shot of them (photo above), middle fingers up as they gritted their teeth in a manner to say, "Shirl, this guy better pay up." I did, at the great tip of five soles each.


I WENT ON MY WAY to the new South American Explorers office and lo and behold, they failed to impressed me with their third and final office on the backpacker trail -- they were closed for the holidays. I did a book exchange a local coffee shop instead and continued my self-guided walking tour, to the Plaza del Tricentenario and the Plazoleta de las Nazarenas -- where The Women With The Llama were and stared at The Guy Who Had An Weird Fixation With Fingers. I huffed and puffed up stairs to the Iglesia de San Cristobal, which overlooked the city. It was there that I met Brian, an Ernst & Young employee on vacation from his home in Dallas, Texas, when he asked me to take a photo of him and the city. I asked him to take a similar photo of me -- alongside other dressed-up people, flipping the bird of course.

It was Brian's first trip to South America, but he was just doing a Corporate American quickie trip for one week -- the same way I did two years prior: fly to Lima, then Cusco, stay a day, hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu for four days and three nights, ride back to Cusco, fly to Lima, then home, get back to work. I had encountered him on his one acclimitization day before his Inca trek, and he joined me along the rest of my walking city tour. We walked to the south end of Cusco, visiting the Iglesia de Santa Teresa with its Virgin Mary and child with Andean features, the Municipal building, Plaza Kosipata, Plaza San Francisco, Iglesia de San Pedro and the central market. I told him about my travels thus far and travels to come and he was jealous of me -- the same way I was at another traveler when I was in his shoes two years before. The table had finally turned for me -- dreams can come true.

We walked through an indoor market, which led into an outdoor one that sold anything and everything, including sandals made from old tires and fan belts. Brian was glad to be in an area away from the tourist-ridden Plaza das Armas, and took photos of people just leading their regular lives in Cusco.

Brian and I had a drink at the backpacker pub Mama Africa back in the main plaza, before he went off to his group orientation. I gave him information about The Blog so that he too could travel vicariously back at this Ernst & Young desk in Dallas.


EVER SINCE I MENTIONED THE VILLAGE PEOPLE'S SONG "Y.M.C.A." to Lara at the Tambomachay Incan ceremonial bath site three days before -- when we thought it might be funny if people posed in the letters in the four distinct window frames on the upper tier -- I had this notion that perhaps I would try and get a traditional Andean band to play the disco hit with their pan flutes, drums and churangos. It became my on-going joke with Lara, and then The Ohio Boys, but there never seemed to be a band when we needed one.

I was eating by myself at a restaurant on the Procuradores pedestrian mall near my hostel when I noticed that a trio was going to perform for the patrons. As the group set up, I asked Roy, the drummer and churango player that didn't speak much English, if they knew other non-traditional songs.

"[Do you know 'Y.M.C.A.'?]"

"The Village People?" he said, followed by singing the first two letters.

"[Can you play it?]"

"[No,]" he answered, thinking I was just playing around.


AFTER THE TRADITIONAL ANDEAN TRIO PLAYED a half an hour set, I tipped them two bucks and asked again, "[Do you know 'Y.M.C.A.'?]" Carlos the guitarist sang the first three letters and even did the "Y" pose.

"[Can you play it?]" I asked.

"[Tomorrow,]" Marcos the pan flautist butt in.

"[Seriously, tomorrow,]" I said. "[I will bring many friends. I will pay.]"

"[Yes, tomorrow.]"

"[Seriously? What time?]"

Carlos the guitarist checked with the manager. "[8:30.]"

As the trio left to do another gig at another place, I heard Marcos the flautist starting to try and figure out the notes for the chorus. Roy the drummer and churango player had the same look on his face at The Two Women With The Llama gave me earlier in the day.

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December 29, 2003

The (Andean) Village People

DAY 70: "Guess what," I asked Lara at an early morning breakfast before our day trip to the Sacred Valley. "I got a traditional Andean band to play 'Y.M.C.A.' tonight at 8:30."

"Excellent," she said. We were both looking forward to it. I even sent out an e-mail to The Ohio Boys about it in case they got back from Machu Picchu in time.


BEFORE LISTENING TO TUNES FROM THE VILLAGE PEOPLE of North America, we hopped on our "budget" tour bus to see the village people of South America. I label our tour bus "budget" because although it was decent, it wasn't as fancy as every other tour bus we saw -- that and the fact that in just twenty minutes of leaving the city, it broke down going up the mountain. Everyone had to get off the bus so that the driver could try and get it going again without it rolling backwards down the hill. He eventually got the bus rolling upward, but then went back to town for gas or something. The rest of us had to hike the short way up to Sacsaywaman, where the bus eventually picked all of us up -- plus some new guy that looked like a younger, blonde Russell Crowe.

Back on track, we rode on the road through the Sacred Valley of the Incas with our tour guide Rudy at the bus' microphone. She had us all introduce ourselves with our countries of origin -- our bus was full of tourists from Bolivia, the U.S.A., Chile, Australia and Peru. Lara and I thought it would be cool to sit in the back of the bus -- cool kids always sit in the back of the bus -- but we ended up sitting behind this young Peruvian couple that wouldn't stop making out. Sure it's fine if you kiss in public, but these guys were like twelve-year-olds learning to kiss for the first time -- no open mouth -- just constantly annoying little pecks over and over.

"Yuck, get a room you two," Lara complained to me. She was ready to slap one on the back of the head.

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OUR FIRST STOP WAS THE VILLAGE OF PISAQ, home of busy Sunday markets (picture above) and quiet little side streets. The Andean village people set up vending stands all over the main strip to attract the hundreds of tourists out for a bargain on ponchos, hats, stuffed llama dolls, pan flutes and other various souvenirs. Lara went looking for a hat to wear on her upcoming trek on the Inca Trail, while I only ended up just getting a pack of gum at a little store.

A drive up the Chongo Valley brought us to the Parque Arqueologico de Pisaq, an old Incan site known for its agricultural terraces and its ruins of Intihuatana, linked together by an undulating path full of hundreds of tourists, some more rude than the other. Lara and I played the game of trying to figure out where everyone was from without asking them -- more fun that way. We wondered about The New Guy that got on the bus after the breakdown in the morning. Lara reckoned he was English, but he wasn't very good at speaking the language.

We hiked from the ruins of Intihuatana back on a path to the bus, and it was a short but exhausting hike -- good practice for Lara's four-day Inca trek. I bought a bottle of water for us, and we shared it with The New Guy. I initiated a conversation with him in Spanish and he replied fluently back. He was Oscar from Spain, working in Arequipa with his fiancee, on holiday in Cusco for a while. We got to talking in Spanish about working in Peru and so forth, and for a minute I thought to myself how amazing it was that I had come to South America totally clueless in Spanish, and had gradually come to the level where I could have a conversation with a guy from Spain -- or ask someone to learn "Y.M.C.A." for me for that matter.


AFTER A LUNCH STOP at a buffet restaurant in the town of Urubamba, we rode over to Ollantaytambo, a former Incan fortress with agricultural terraces that made you wish you had a really big Slinky. Rudy continued to lead our group, stopping off at the points of interests in Spanish and English to explain the history of the site, and its significance with the sun and Southern Cross -- particular points on the site lit up at the exact minute of the summer and winter soltices. When Rudy did the Spanish explanation to the majority of the group, the Australians, Lara and I just admired the mountains around the valley.

One particularly amazing thing at Ollantaytambo was this fountain that channeled mountain water through underground channels into rock basins. This particular fountain was designed in a way that, if you swept your hand with the current, the water would flow very hard, but if you swiped your finger across the stream, it would turn off like magic. The Incan belief was that anyone who could turn the "faucet" on and off was a virgin, and in the end, we found out that according to the Incas, we all were -- except for possibly the smooching Peruvian couple. They hadn't left the bus, had closed the curtains and had their hair disheveled when we got back on.


THE LAST STOP OF OUR SACRED VALLEY TOUR was sacred not to the Incas, but the Christians: the colonial village of Chinchero with its famous adobe church. Lara and I lost our group but followed Oscar up the streets of vendors to the church grounds. The sun was setting fast, so we head back to the parking area, where I snacked on a barbecued stick of mystery meat I bought from one of the village people. I told Oscar that if he had nothing to do, to come to Chez Maggy at 8:30 because I had gotten a band to learn and play "Y.M.C.A."


BECAUSE OF THE BREAKDOWN IN THE MORNING, we were running late by about 90 minutes. It was nighttime by the time we got back to Cusco, and I still needed to run some errands before the performance. Lara and I got off the bus and split up to do our things. I told her to "meet me at Chez Maggy at 8:30," which sounds simple enough -- until you walk down the pedestrian mall and realize there are four Chez Maggy's. Maggy, whoever she was, probably took the strategy of Starbucks and put multiple locations within a two block radius of each other.

I went to "my" Chez Maggy to check out the scene and ran into Carlos the guitarist. "[Ready?]" I asked him.

"Si."

"[You learned it?]"

"Si."

I couldn't wait.

He asked me about my friends, and I told them that I simply said "Chez Maggy" not realizing there were multiple ones. I scoped out all three on the same street, waiting for Lara, Oscar or The Ohio Boys -- they could have gone to any of them. The waitress of "my" Chez Maggy gave me a stool to sit on out on the stoop, which is where Lara found me before accidentally going into the wrong one.

The Ohio Boys and Oscar either went to the wrong Chez Maggy or never showed up, so it was just me and Lara in one of the smaller Chez Maggy's, more intimate for a live performance. There was a group of four seemingly Australians on the other side of the room that pretty much kept to themselves. "Those guys don't know what they're in for," I said.

Finally, Marcos, Carlos and Roy came in with their instruments in hand, smiles on faces. "[You learned it?]" I asked Roy.

"[Yes, but it won't be perfect.]"

"[That's fine.]"

The three of them performed their standard Andean tunes, "Sariri" and "El Condor Pasa," the song that Simon and Garfunkel completely ripped off and brought to the Western World. Roy and Marcos took turns playing drum and flute, while Carlos strummed his guitar and made additional percussion sounds with his voice. Lara and I had a blast watching them, but the snobby Australians paid no attention to the performance and behaved like it was more of a nuisance than entertainment. Carlos and Roy even danced and sang towards the four, but they completely ignored them -- they wouldn't even clap after each song.

"That's just rude," I told Lara. No matter, it was like Lara and I had a private serenade on our last night together in Peru.

Finally the moment of truth came. Marcos switched to drums, Roy got on a pan flute and Carlos held his guitar. There was four drumstick taps and then, all of a sudden, they were actually playing the disco classic "Y.M.C.A." live with their instruments (1.7 MB WAVe file). I wasn't sure what to expect from them, whether they'd tried to sing it or just do the chorus, but Roy's pan flute melody actually started off with the notes for "young men..." It exceeded all of my expectations.

"[I'm sorry it's not so good, I only listened to it once,]" Roy apologized, thinking that they'd failed my request.

"[No, no, it was] perfecto!" Lara and I gave them a standing ovation. We each bought a CD from them, and I gave them an extra fifteen soles for their efforts.


FOR MY FINAL DINNER WITH LARA in Peru, she had some burritos while I ordered items from the traditional Andean food menu: sopa de la criolla, a delicious noodle soup with beef, egg and noodles; broiled alpaca (an small animal similar to the llama); maté de coca, tea made with coca leaves; and of course, another pisco sour. It was a great night out after a long and tiring day -- a perfect last night in Cusco for me.

Even in a city like Cusco in the middle of the Andes mountains, you can get yourself clean... you can have a good meal... you can hang out with all the boys...



ATTENTION USERS SINCE DECEMBER 14, 2003: We are experiencing technical difficulties with the links to the other sections of TheGlobalTrip.com. It's not just supposed to go to the home page with my portrait -- there's plenty more, including this "Would You" slideshow that everyone raves about. Stay tuned and sorry for the inconvenience!!!

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December 30, 2003

The Redemption Cookie

DAY 71: I was up by seven o'clock in the morning to see Lara off before she left with her transport to her 4-day/3-night trek to Machu Picchu -- a trek I had already done in 2001. It was her goal to ring in 2004 by entering the "lost" city of the Incas on the morning of New Year's Day. She left the hostel by 8 a.m. with her new fleece, the cheesy water bottle holder I got her for Christmas and rations of Twix bars and Oreos.


ALONE AGAIN, I spent my last day in Cusco running errands before leaving on a night bus to Arequipa. I did my laundry and settled my hostel tab and stocked up on the most important thing on the backpacker trail, toilet paper -- known simply by The Ohio Boys and campers worldwide as "T.P."

Since I had checked out of my hostel, I needed a place to crash for the day, so I decided to give South American Explorers one last chance to impress me.


SOUTH AMERICAN EXPLORERS, founded not in South America but Ithaca, NY, USA, was established to help travellers in South America with suggestions, tips and member ratings on routes and tour companies. I had joined SAE in Quito, Ecuador thinking it was a good idea, but ever since then it didn't seem to be worth the $40 membership fee.

In the Galapagos, my membership card didn't give me the discounts and free hotel stays I had anticipated. In Lima -- after switching addresses on me to a completely different town -- they were clueless when I asked for simple directions. In their third and final office in Cusco, they were closed when I initially tried to visit. In fact, the only time SAE really helped me out was when I was lost in Quito with an explosive case of diarrhea and used their nearby toilet before I made a really nasty brown Pollack painting on the sidewalk.

Personally, I found SAE's strategy to have members look up their provided information very similar to -- if not exactly the same as -- just looking up information in a guide book. Without much of their help thus far, I had just discovered things on my own -- the essence of adventure travel in the first place.

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SOUTH AMERICAN EXPLORERS' Cusco office was down the block from where I had the Two Women With The Llama flip me the bird two days before. I rang the bell and they buzzed me in through the door, revealing their beautiful multi-level house with a courtyard, lounge area, kitchen, office, map room, library, roof terrace (photo above) -- even a sign that stated the known truth, "Germans Love David Hasselhof."

They didn't have to do much more -- they had me at "Hasselhof."

SAE workers Debbie from the UK and Ross from the USA led me around the house tour and asked if I needed anything specific.

"No, I just need a place to crash for the day and work on my laptop," I said.

"Wow, you're one of the easy members," Ross said. I already knew what to expect out of my membership.


ROSS SET ME UP at a desk overlooking the red rooftops of Cusco and I plugged in my iBook and hooked up my digital video camera and still camera -- I felt like I was in some sort of digital lifestyle ad for Sony and Apple. Although there are high-speed internet cafes with internal memory card readers, microphones and headsets on nearly every block in Cusco, I wanted to use my own equipment to extract that rendition of "Y.M.C.A" I had a traditional Andean band learn and play for me -- my hostel had no electrical outlets. I spent the afternoon in the room as a light rain sprinkled over the city.

Over the course of the afternoon, new and old SAE members came and went, including a girl from Holland looking up recommendations and two college boys from New York City needing a place to hang out in their five-week stay in Cusco. I met another British couple in the lounge room who turned me onto a possible cool place to be for New Year's, as the smell of fresh baked cookies filled the room. Someone was baking fresh chocolate cookies for the members and I couldn't resist but partake in one.

Although not worth the $40 in my mind, SAE redeemed itself with my first bite. That and the fact that I got to use their toilet to take a dump yet again.


TO KILL TIME BEFORE MY BUS, I did my blog duties in an internet cafe as the Incan rain gods brought forth torrential downpours all over the city -- not that the locals in the cafe playing StarCraft with headsets ever noticed. I took the suggestion of Blog Reader Sara and checked out Los Perros, a fancy lounge bar with couches and candles, yet another one of Cusco's establishments to cater to the modern and hip sectors of the Western World. It was pretty early for any sort of "scene" and hardly anyone was around, so I just got a beer and went out for dinner. I got my bags, hopped in a taxi and then my bus, which took me through the mountains under the night sky.

All the friends I had made in Cusco -- Lara the Tomb Raider; Tony and Adam, The Ohio Boys; the fabulous Simon and Rich; the young'uns Dustin and Georgie; Brian the Texan; Sue, Axel and Simion from the jungle -- had all moved on, and it was time for me to move on myself, to discover new things and meet new people.



ATTENTION USERS SINCE DECEMBER 14, 2003: We are experiencing technical difficulties with the links to the other sections of TheGlobalTrip.com. It's not just supposed to go to the home page with my portrait -- there's plenty more, including this "Would You" slideshow that everyone raves about. Stay tuned and sorry for the inconvenience!!!

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