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Articles Tagged ‘Vilcabamba’

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Photo A Go Go

Thursday, February 8th, 2007



Cathedral and Cross

Originally uploaded by mebrown06.

Come to Vilcabamba for a day, and stay for three. (Or, like the aforementioned Canadian, come for a week, stay for over a month, and relentlessly judge people). We’ve played our hearts out these past few days: life-sized chess, ping pong, pool, swimming pool games like “handstands” and “swim-through-my-legs” and “guess-what-I’m-saying-underwater.” It’s been great. We’re gearing up for a nightbus to Piura, Peru, leaving at 10:30. We hope to make it to Chiclayo tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, you can click on the picture to view recently uploaded photos. Unfortunately, we’ve run into quite a lot of camera trouble lately: 1) the screen of the new camera we bought for our trip cracked and rendered the camera nearly useless 2) the old camera we brought as a backup is very persnickety. Currently, the new memory chip that we bought to replace the 16 MB chip is not allowing us to put pictures up online. We can take photos just fine and see the photos on the camera, but for some reason when we use our USB camera chip plug in thing, we can’t put the photos onto the computer. Anybody have any advice? I’m thinking that the photos are stored on the chip and there must be a way to get them off, but have no idea what that way might be. All this to say, there are about 200 odd pictures that we can see and you can’t. Ha.

No really, all advice appreciated. We wouldn’t want these pictures to be resigned to a horrible limbo in which they exist only on a 2×4 inch screen. They need to have the chance to live a full, happy life.

-Megan (with help from Sarah)

Posted in Ecuador, Peru, Photography, Preparations, Travel | No Comments »

In Which Sarah and Megan Judge Other Travellers (Unabashedly)

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Although we have both learned a lot about Central and South America, about history, about ecology, about politics, about cultures… we may have learned more about white travellers from “developed” countries. There’s a lot of them about.

And mostly they’re nice and chatty and interesting and fun. But sometimes they’re everything that they’re expected to be: judgemental, snobby, pampered, entitled, and smelling of patchouli. Today we met a Canadian. He wore a braid down his back and a peasant shirt tucked in to linen pants. He had stayed in the (GORGEOUS) hotel that we’re staying in now (in Vilcabamba, Ecuador) for about a month. And he had very strong opinions. Mostly about Carnaval (which he has yet to experience), and Peru (which he has yet to visit).

Carnaval in a “Third World” country, you see, is not the same as Carnaval in a “Normal” country: they drink cane liquor here, and throw water balloons at tourists (“Which could break your arm! Or knock out two teeth! And it’s just fun to them!”). At this point, we were both aching to blurt out: “it’s Carnaval man, it’s a party, loosen up!” But it definitely wasn’t the first time we’d come across this type of attitude. Generally, even if they’ve worked hard at home to save up the money for their travels, white travellers (ourselves included) are on a big long vacation/party and are using up a lot of disposable income. Yet, according to many of them, the people in the countries they’re visiting shouldn’t be “wasting” their money on a party. Especially if, during this party, they don’t welcome said rich, white travellers with open arms, thanking them profusing for deigning to visit their country. You don`t know how many times we’ve heard people going on about how local folks only make $90 a month and yet still spend money on beer. I mean, if I only made $90 a month I’d want a beer from time to time. Jeez!

And don’t get our Canadian friend started on Peru… “on this side of the border, people are nice; you smile at them and they smile back. On that side of the border, you smile at someone and they punch you.” It is important to note that he has never been to Peru, but since he’s been in the same swanky hotel for a month, he’s heard some things and thought he’d warn us. Oh, yeah, and did you know that native people here and in the jungles of Africa and the Carribbean (no joke) are telepathic? I didn’t. I mean, that’s a lot of people in this world who can read each other’s minds. How have they kept it quiet for so long? Amazing!

Another, off-topic, but related thing that we’ve noticed is that there is a lot of anti-Israeli sentiment amongst travellers. Apparently as soon as goyish Americans leave the country they feel entitled to start spouting off about how universally stingy Israelis are. I know, I know, Israeli is not the same as Jewish… but COME ON… give me a break, since when is it cool to gossip about how everyone of a certain nationality shares one specific negative trait (and we’re not counting Spaniards and their mullets… because mullets are cool), especially when that nationality is closely tied to a historically oppressed religion (that, miraculously, shares the same stereotypes)?

And another thing! (I know, I know, what a rant). When people aren’t asserting that native fill-in-the-blanks are drunk, violent, and hateful towards tourists, they’re saying things like “they live so simply, life is so much slower here.” From what we’ve seen, life for people who actually live here a lot of the time includes dawn ’til dusk work. For example, I don’t know how many times I saw our Guatemalan host-mom Irma literally running from the market to her home to fix us lunch or prepare the empanadas she was going to sell the next day on the street. Also, when would you ever see people running to hop onto a moving public bus in the U.S.? Life is only slower here for travellers because we’re on vacation and we don’t have jobs to get to. When you’ve got nothing to do all day but take a hike and read a book, then yeah, life is gonna seem a little slower.

To be fair, this type of prejudiced thinking is by no means universal. Most people we’ve met realize that the vast majority of Peruvians won’t punch you if you smile at them. But the few that cling to totally out-there beliefs like these tend to drive us both batty. As you may have noticed.

-Las Dos

Posted in American Identity, Ecuador, Travel | 4 Comments »