Hi. Today is my birthday. It´s not a great reason to post, but it´s not a horrible one either. I don´t know how my birthday will go. It´s an hour old. So far, it´s involved me eating two bananas and microwaved heart-of-palm pizza while watching a Cowboys-Giants (American) Football Game. Dubbed in Portuguese. Which is interesting, because words like ´´fumble´´ and ´´tight end´´ and ´´Tony Romo´´ are spoken in English, and they´re pronounced with Southern twang . . . just barely detectable in the small time it takes to pronounce them. Were these announcers originally Paulistas (people from São Paulo) who were dragged to the Wild West just after achieving proficiency in their mother tongue? And, more importantly, is this observation gifted just to me, as one of the five people in Brazil who care enough about American Football to watch it? And isn´t this an auspicious way to start my 23rd year of life, or what?
I haven´t really talked to anyone since I turned 23, to be honest. So this is a new experience for both of us. I guess I should tell you about Brazil, about this huge sleek sprawling cosmopolitan city I´ve been sludging in the past few weeks. The most I can say is that São Paulo feels like a City of the World -- a huge throbbing mixture of people from disparate cultures colliding off one another. (It´s home to biggest population of Japanese people of any city outside Japan.) The office buildings are towering, the subways are clean and efficient, museums world-class (I went to one that had a massive exhibit dedicated to Brazil´s resident football god, Pelé, that seemed at times to want to mimic the sanctity of a Hindu temple). Yet behind it all . . . you still see construction workers laughing with each other on the streets as they eat their dust-tainted lunches, you see people in line having casual conversations with one another, you see the chain-store phone company salesman give a high-five to a returning customer. You don´t see strangers meeting and hanging out as they pass each other on the streets -- and my cousin Aldo is quick to say that there are plenty of nasty folk in the city, if you stay here long enough to find them --but São Paulo hasn´t gotten to where New York is, where most people think of the greater public strictly in transactional terms: Can I help you? What can I do for you? Please move along, thank you. No no no, there´s a value for human interaction I´ve found here, it´s valued enough that people seek it out and are open to it in situations that are surprising to me. It´s not something I saw in Buenos Aires, or in Lima, or in Quito . . . so I´m hesitant to say it´s South America. It must be Brazilian, then. Whatever it is, it is lovely to see.
And I can only see it, because I can´t speak Portuguese. I can tell my baby cousin Lucca to come here, and ask if everything is OK, and say the equivalent of ´´cool´´. The rest is me speaking Spanish while trying to fit in some ´´OW`` and ´´AI´´ sounds, with every other vowel going through my nose. The way it sounds, though (when spoken correctly), is beautiful . . . it´s impossible not to speak even a little bit without singing it somewhat, as well as (for me) putting a little bit of swagger behind it. According to a CouchSurfing friend and his companions, my examples of this approximate how people speak in Rio de Janerio (which is where I´m headed later today to tick down my final days in South America). I can fake an awareness of how Spanish differs across the continent, but the truth is that Brazil is a whole different animal . . . and my desire to understand it is strongly undercut by my lack of time.
Do I want to come back here and learn Portuguese and burn off a nice chunk of my youth with these fabulous, gorgeous, open-minded and open-hearted people? Yes. Do I want to go back to a small city and teach English and push my Spanish up to fluency? Totally. Do I want to travel around alone, somewhere else in the world, like I did in Argentina? Have to. I don´t know, I think dreaming of doing something again, while you´re still in the act of doing it, can be poisonous . . . because the dream becomes a reason to ´´take it easy´´, to know that next time around it´ll be just right. And so you sleepwalk through the days, make checklists of what will be different come The Return . . . I think that the more vivid a dreamer is with what he does, the greater of a curse it can be on his physical course. Unless he can dream without attachment, dream independently of pride and gratification, dream for something greater than himself . . . dream so wildly that the possibility of reality actually paralleling it becomes funny, in the same way a baby laughs when he´s tickled without having the words or the experience to know why he´s laughing . . .
You know? Okay. Stories fade for me behind this curtain of feeling I´m twisted up in. I´m about to see my family again, love them intensely, then fall into that mild insanity that I know and love so well. I´ll sweat Jewishly. Then head north to the United Kingdom for a month in the middle of January, to make a close friend for the first time again. And somewhere in there I hope I´ll think upon my time on this continent, smile a bit, and give my experience a little bit of credit . . . before New York City demands my aggressive output of Something.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Good Good Good Good Good Good
November came, and I was out of money. My debit card was eaten by a machine in Huaraz, Peru, because I took a few seconds longer than I should have in putting my newly-collected money away; my final Soles were spent in Trujillo, buying a High School Musical III movie ticket and subsequent fast-food dinner for a professional salsa dancer with two-feet-long eyelashes. And so I crossed the Peruvian border into Ecuador in a strange state of temporary poverty, toting a loaf of bread and jar of pineapple jam that would serve as my next two meals, hoping that I would not have to break into my emergency fifty-dollar bill until I got to Vilcabamba -- where I would be working on an organic farm and thus be devoid of expenses for a time, as well where I would be meeting back up again with Nate and the gang and and perhaps borrowing enough money to keep going afterwards.
As it happened, the $50 needed to be pulled out sooner than I thought. I arrived in the nighttime in Loja (the biggest city in the province containing Vilcabamba) bus station and had just enough to check my e-mail, get the number of my CouchSurfer for the night, and give him a call. Well . . . actually, I had ten cents less than what I needed, and the phonebooth cashier wasn´t about to break my fifty for a seventy-cent chat. So I gave my first IOU in Loja, Ecuador, just minutes after I arrived. And it was not my last. My next challenge was to find a taxi driver who would take me to meet my CouchSurfer (a man named John that had an immensely heavy accent I could barely understand over the phone) at an English school where he teaches; the first three cabs turned me down out-of-hand, but the third let me in for long enough to beg. And that´s what I did. He said it was a counterfeit bill; I told him No, It´s From The Freaking United States Of America, My Mother Gave It To Me And My Mother Is A Good Woman And I Have Absolutely No Money To My Name Except For This, So Please God Believe Me And Just Break It. He then told me there is a tax for breaking large bills at the bank, so I told him I´d pay six dollars for the ride even though I know it only costs three (I found out later that a buck was pretty standard). I was against the wall. I was scared senseless and exhilarated, I had to make this sale. I begged him to trust me. And, egged on by a fat tip, he eventually did.
And that´s how my relationship with Loja, Ecuador, began. It turns out John´s accent was Nigerian, and John turned out to be the first of a long string of kind and invigorating people I met in that little city that made me not want to leave. So . . . I didn´t. I was introduced to a man named Diego, who owns an English school called the Canadian House Center, and the day after I arrived in Loja I was offered a job teaching English until the end of the month. Partially out of desire, partially out of necessity, I had been handed the opportunity to feel what it is like to live in a South American city, and to earn my keep at the same time.
What followed was a bizarre and beautiful month, educational in all of the traditional as well as in all the esoteric kind of ways, full of machismo and libido and Spanish slang and subtle Gringo fetishizations. And a new way of thinking about travel, for me . . . namely, that traveling for the sake of Staying can be infinitely more complex and gratifying than the compacted vista-collecting of the traditional backpacker trails. I felt the rush of teaching, of having a classful of people nodding in a way that you know they actually understand . . . I made a new close friend, a true friend, one who says things like ´´I´m gonna take the Mick out of you´´ and ´´You should flog that´´ and will freestyle British-style one moment and talk with me about cultural discrepencies and White Guys Thinking Too Much the next . . . I started singing along to the more popular Ecuadorian dance numbers, even if their choruses didn´t have more than five or six different words in them . . . I felt like I made a life for myself, with all of the necessary friends and interests and activities attached.
Then I had to leave, of course. I gave the phonebooth cashier at the bus station fifty cents on my way out (interest included), donned my backpack awkwardly once again, and went up to Quito to spend a final three days with Nate. It was my swan song with the Spanish language (f0r now), and a month of lessons had made my companion a capable conversationalist. My Adios For Now came after we watched a long movie about the whole world going blind, which made my contacts very dry and thus made me thing more optimistically about the benefits of such a thing happening.
Things are different now. I feel at home, but in a different home, with a different language and with family I have never had the opportunity to really know beforehand. I´m in Brazil -- São Paulo for now, Rio de Janeiro later -- until the middle of the month. Things changed drastically, again, predictably and with varying degrees of sadness and interestingness. The distinctness of this place deserves more words than I can give it right now . . . for my mind is still back in my little South American hometown, sweet tiny Loja, and my memories mimic my students as they mimic my own kneejerk response to a correctly-answered question in class: Good Good Good Good Good Good (et al)
Snippets of tales to come. A picture of my Loja boys to leave on: John on the left, James (my freestyling British companion) on the right . . .
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Brief Pictoral Recap
Hey Everybody-
We still haven`t gotten most of the Machu Picchu pictures up yet, but luckily for me my travelling companions have digital cameras and haven`t been afraid to use them. So here we go. (With a few older photos I haven`t put up yet, for good measure.)
. . . this collection of young men. (From left to right) Nate, Andy, Mario, and Joe in the background trying to start "YMCA". Mario is from Lima and is Andy`s friend via their joint participation in the online computer game World of Warcraft, which I suppose is a step up from CouchSurfing because at least you have a background of mutual strategizing, which comes in handy for planning trips and whatnot. We recently went back through Lima (from Puno, a city on Lake Titicaca, which I`m getting to) and stayed at Mario`s for three days. We watched movies and went dancing and stuffed our faces on Chifa (Chinese-Peruvian food, which is fabulous) via the benevolence of Mario and his older sister. Their house was beautiful and adorned with keepsakes from Japan that their grandfather had brought back decades ago. There was a mall just down the street. It was three days of my old U. S. of A. lifestyle . . . but without you. I miss you.
We still haven`t gotten most of the Machu Picchu pictures up yet, but luckily for me my travelling companions have digital cameras and haven`t been afraid to use them. So here we go. (With a few older photos I haven`t put up yet, for good measure.)
A little flashback here.
This is me with my CouchSurfing host in Salta, Argentina - Gabriella. Just before I took a bus northwards (which, Andrew Marker, was quite comfortable - reclining seats, dulce de leche to spread on your rolls, and cheesy dubbed action flicks . . . although most colectivos I have taken smell like they`ve been inhabited for long periods of time by sweating immobile people, not surprisingly) to San Salvador de Jujuy, hoping to head onwards to Chile. But I had to return . . .
. . . which was great because I stayed at this funky hostal owned by an expat German and played a fiesty match of ping-pong with the man to my right there (he was a techie for a Buenos Aires rock band on tour). The girl on the right is Leah, who is a University of Denver student and sent me back to a world from the distant past . . . one of Chipotles, saxophone lessons at the DU music building, and English. I just about completely lost my voice around the point we started talking about Adam Sandler`s performance in Spanglish. I consider the timing to be a form of linguistic justice.
This is the Argentinean-Chilean border. My thumb is also involved. I noticed that coca-leaf tea was on sale here for the first time, which has since become my staple Peruvian beverage. Pleasant and mild, with a physiological effect that`s pretty similar to yerba mate. The first time I tried it (in Cuzco) I drank five cups, however, and upon meeting up with my companions I was told I seemed a bit excited. You supposedly need pounds of coca leaves to make the substance we all associate the plant with -- for me, dropping in a few with hot water is just fine thanks.
This is the only picture I took in Chile - in the city of Calama. It seems to be a llama fountain. (I should mention here that llamas are ubiquitous and wonderful in Peru. They were grazing inside Machu Picchu, and they are led down Peruvian sidewalks by colorfully-dressed Quechuan women. And I have such affection for them. The way they hold their long necks and head is like they`re mock-royalty, but their body is oblong and their legs short and spindly and their fur coat is spiky and unruly. Pure adoration.)
My first city in Peru was Arequipa, and like I said earlier it was Tourism Weekend, which meant parade, which meant a lot of colorful skirts moved around in various circular patterns. Most of the tourists there were NOT international, they were from other parts of Peru. Which makes logical sense, but for some reason had not occured to me. I had a great regional dish here - roccoto relleno - which was this hot red pepper stuffed with beef stew and drizzled with cheese, potatoes on the side. Other than that I was waiting, biding my time, for . . .
. . . this collection of young men. (From left to right) Nate, Andy, Mario, and Joe in the background trying to start "YMCA". Mario is from Lima and is Andy`s friend via their joint participation in the online computer game World of Warcraft, which I suppose is a step up from CouchSurfing because at least you have a background of mutual strategizing, which comes in handy for planning trips and whatnot. We recently went back through Lima (from Puno, a city on Lake Titicaca, which I`m getting to) and stayed at Mario`s for three days. We watched movies and went dancing and stuffed our faces on Chifa (Chinese-Peruvian food, which is fabulous) via the benevolence of Mario and his older sister. Their house was beautiful and adorned with keepsakes from Japan that their grandfather had brought back decades ago. There was a mall just down the street. It was three days of my old U. S. of A. lifestyle . . . but without you. I miss you.
This was on the way to Machu Picchu from Cuzco. We took a van to a train which took us to a little overpriced over-touristy town named Aguas Calientes, where we slept for a few hours before hiking up to Machu Picchu itself for (supposedly) sunrise. The hike is pretty much entirely a winding steep stone staircase - which, combined with the altitude (somewhere around 10,000 feet), made me regret all those Argentinean steak sandwiches of the past. I did not make it up in time for sunrise, needless to say, but I did make it up. And I`ll describe it more once my friend uploads the photos he took for me.
After Machu Picchu I stayed for a while longer in Cuzco, then met back up with the gang in Puno, where we went out to an island in Lake Titicaca for a one-night homestay. It was awe-inspiring . . . there`s something so private about islands that really appeals to me. We were surrounded on all sides by deep-blue water, glimmering extravagently from the strength of the sun at our altitude (Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world), leading out towards snow-capped peaks scattered in the distance. This picture is from the summit of the hilly island we slept on, where subsistence farming was common and tiny little sweet potatoes were served with lunch. Andy and Joe and Nate talked about Chinese foreign policy on our walk back down to the boat that took us back to Puno, and the sun made an intense yellow streak upon the water that seemingly pointed directly towards me, like a road.
Now I`m in Huaraz, just north of Lima, and we are heading to Trujillo (beach town!) on an overnight bus tonight. My three other companions went on a four-day trek through the section of the Andes that surrounds the city, but I decided to stay back and indulge in a little (self-defined) Argentinean Time: reading, writing, studying some Spanish, hoping to stumble upon a few conversations. It`s been wonderful, and a nice big deep breath for me amidst the recent flurry of activites and TOURISM I have been engaging in with the gang. My pocketbook tells me I have another organic farm close on the horizon, somewhere in Ecuador and sometime within the next week. Then it`s Brazil about a month from now, until the middle of December and another section of the world calls . . .
I hope all of you are doing well, and thanks for looking over this. And . . . if you read this and know cool people in Brazil, I would love to meet them! And I will probably be calling you soon about it.
Monday, October 20, 2008
America
What is America? A week ago, it was an answer filled with switchbacks of doubt and elation. Now more than three months removed from my native soil -- a three months that coincide with perhaps the weightiest period of US change and deliberation in my lifetime -- I would have expressed deep pride in the wealth and individualistic empowerment within my culture that has allowed me to explore my world and my thoughts like it has. I would have expressed profound doubt about the ideological rifts that are part and parcel of such a nation filled with empowered people, people who are entitled to their beliefs and their possessions and their religious convictions but who I think should be considering the future of their children first and foremost. I would have told you that I am traveling right now with three brilliant young men, two of them who have studied political science at top American universities, and even after listening to their even-handed considerations and anaylses I still think that one politician running for President has the potential to be someone I can look up to and admire and be proud of, while the other one seemingly does not. I would have told you that I`m happy that American politics has not interfered that much with my life, anyway, but that I couldn`t say that for all the people in the world, no way. I would have told you I loved barbacue (the Peruvian barbacue I had a few days ago had some good shish kabobs and green garlic-y stuff but is otherwise worlds apart) and that jazz (pronounced ``yazz`` in these parts) is the kind of free-flowing individual-showcasing wildly-exploratory music that draws a perfect metaphor for what America potentially offers its people. Southern accents are hilarious. Love them. New York is the best city in the world and I am prepared to be incredibly presumptive in saying so. The Rocky Mountains are not the Andes (blanketed in forest, wreathed with clouds, families of behemoths) but doggone it you can ski on them like you wouldn`t believe. And such babble, on and on . . . I mean, it`s AMERICA, how can you make that concise?
Well, a week has passed. And I am proud to say that all the obliqueness has disappeared. I know America. I can describe America. I can say with confidence that America came to help me in my time of need, came to rejuvenate me and put a smile on my face and restore faith in my world. And the greatest gift of all was that America understood me, too.
I met America in Cuzco. At a juice shop named Yajùù!, its logo a blatant rip-off of the Internet company. America gave me a chicken-avocado-and-cheese sandwich for seven soles and smiled at me. I smiled back. Has America ever been interested in me before? Would I have been aware if America had been? Certainly America had never been about five foot six, dark brown ringlets down to below the shoulders, slender and straightforward, eyes so full of interest and excitement that her whole face elongates when she opens them wide. And America certainly does not speak English, God no, that`s a myth if any myths have ever been told. America speaks Spanish and I didn`t know the word for ``busy`` but somewhere in the distance Simon and Garfunkel were humming and singing a certain tune and combined with my friend Andy`s little melody entitled ``You`d Be Stupid If You Didn`t Talk To Her`` I started thinking that maybe America is not something to study or ponder or expostulate but rather someone to talk to. In broken language and eye contact. Which all seemed simple enough.
I guess I was taught as a kid that America was named after some Italian mapmaker and that United States-ians (there is no word for this in English like there is in Spanish, estadounidense) are as much American per se as Central Americans or South Americans. But this is false, ridiculous, preposterous and brainwashing, because I looked out from a concrete plaza over the entire city of Cuzco with America and I can say with total confidence that there is but one American alive on this planet. North, south, east, west, up or down. And the land around us was distinction-less, no labels or signs in sight, beyond America`s ability to describe its landmarks to me (as America is studying tourism at university) and the smiles that passed across her lips as she gazed silently over her home city. From Incas to Spaniards to starlight, no textbook has ever taught so thoroughly. No election necessary.
America dances salsa, America warms your hands when sitting in cold Incas ruins dwarfed by eucalyptus forest, America helps you take your luggage out of sardine-packed buses, America tells you you can trust her, America makes you eat every last french fry because you haven`t had a good meal yet that day, America says good-bye forever. And now you know.
Well, a week has passed. And I am proud to say that all the obliqueness has disappeared. I know America. I can describe America. I can say with confidence that America came to help me in my time of need, came to rejuvenate me and put a smile on my face and restore faith in my world. And the greatest gift of all was that America understood me, too.
I met America in Cuzco. At a juice shop named Yajùù!, its logo a blatant rip-off of the Internet company. America gave me a chicken-avocado-and-cheese sandwich for seven soles and smiled at me. I smiled back. Has America ever been interested in me before? Would I have been aware if America had been? Certainly America had never been about five foot six, dark brown ringlets down to below the shoulders, slender and straightforward, eyes so full of interest and excitement that her whole face elongates when she opens them wide. And America certainly does not speak English, God no, that`s a myth if any myths have ever been told. America speaks Spanish and I didn`t know the word for ``busy`` but somewhere in the distance Simon and Garfunkel were humming and singing a certain tune and combined with my friend Andy`s little melody entitled ``You`d Be Stupid If You Didn`t Talk To Her`` I started thinking that maybe America is not something to study or ponder or expostulate but rather someone to talk to. In broken language and eye contact. Which all seemed simple enough.
I guess I was taught as a kid that America was named after some Italian mapmaker and that United States-ians (there is no word for this in English like there is in Spanish, estadounidense) are as much American per se as Central Americans or South Americans. But this is false, ridiculous, preposterous and brainwashing, because I looked out from a concrete plaza over the entire city of Cuzco with America and I can say with total confidence that there is but one American alive on this planet. North, south, east, west, up or down. And the land around us was distinction-less, no labels or signs in sight, beyond America`s ability to describe its landmarks to me (as America is studying tourism at university) and the smiles that passed across her lips as she gazed silently over her home city. From Incas to Spaniards to starlight, no textbook has ever taught so thoroughly. No election necessary.
America dances salsa, America warms your hands when sitting in cold Incas ruins dwarfed by eucalyptus forest, America helps you take your luggage out of sardine-packed buses, America tells you you can trust her, America makes you eat every last french fry because you haven`t had a good meal yet that day, America says good-bye forever. And now you know.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Communists Make Me Hungry
APPETIZER
The gang and I spent some five days in Lima, and the equivalent of two-and-a-half days wondering what we should do in Lima (and surfing the internet). It is interesting how each person has such a different conception of what travel means . . . is it relaxation? Contemplation? The tourist route? Trekking and physical activities? Put four intelligent, independent, college-educated young men together and you`ll see right away that there is no real answer. (Not that there would be for four unintelligent, dependent, elementary-school-educated people either.) So between Lima and Lunahuana (a little tourist town just outside the capital) we patched a bit of everything together -- cardgames at a restaurant overlooking Limeñan Chinatown; watching the Vice Presidential debates in a hostal sideroom with a slightly-psychotic expat improvisational dancer; dodging tamales filled with pigskin (hairs still on the skin) before getting stuck on a bunch of rocks in a river while attempting to raft; fratboy-style jokes a dime a dozen, disgustingly freed by the language barrier; philosophical conversation with one of my best friends as we look out over a massive McDonald`s across the street; and a Tashlich ceremony I will never forget: tossing breadcrumbs that represent my shortcomings over the past year into the Pacific Ocean, watching the waves claim each one with a dull roar, as Lima`s nearly-perpetual fogginess distorted the line between sea and sky.
THINKING THAT THE WAITER IS BRINGING YOUR MAIN COURSE TO YOU, BUT THEN SEEING THAT IT`S ACTUALLY FOR THE PERSON SITTING AT THE TABLE NEXT TO YOURS, WHO GOT THERE AFTER YOU DID AND SEEMS TO REALLY REALLY ENJOY THAT FIRST BITE
I went to Machu Picchu yesterday. I`m not going to write about it just yet.
MAIN COURSE
We took a bus that was supposed to take sixteen hours from a city just outside Lima to Cuzco, which is the traditional jumping-off point for Machu Picchu and a host of other archaeological curiosities. We found one that cost seventy soles (about $25), by far the best deal in the land. So we hopped the Wari -- I had a feeling that this company`s name automatically evoked the anger of some ancient god, and as a matter of fact it is the name of a pre-Incan empire that lived here in Peru -- and proceeded to sleep very, very little. Most of it was because each bump in the road felt like a jackhammer, but there was also one point in the night where a loud noise and a dramatic swerve woke me with a start. Well, the next morning we discovered that the right headlight had been replaced with a . . . hole. Via basic translating skills (the word ``burro`` being said by the locals over and over again) we deduced that we ran into a late-night donkey. A donkey in the headlights. A slow donkey in the headlights, because I imagine he must have saw us coming.
And the show had just begun at that point. The four of us were discussing some conjugation of some irregular Spanish verb when the bus came to a stop. This is not unusual (in my experience) on Latin American bus trips -- just as my not knowing the reason for stopping is not unusual -- so we paid little heed. For the first half and hour. Then we heard a collective yell from a little further down the road, and Joe craned his neck out the window to see what the matter was. He reported that there were trees in the road, so we all automatically assumed that some had fallen over the course of the night and that some teamwork was being employed to lift them out of the way. Furthermore, Joe is 6 foot 8 (quite a bit taller than the average Peruvian) and we imagined him lifting the tree off the road with his bare hands, saving the day for the long line of buses and creating a legend of the Tall Man that would be perpetuated in this lush Andean valley for centuries to come.
Well, it was actually a Communist Revolution that was stopping us. And no, they would not let us through just because none of us had eaten breakfast (someone asked). We were to wait for two hours and listen to a long line of stump speeches, with varied levels of anger and intellectual sophistication, while a highly-apparent subgroup of the rural farmers wielded machetes or poles with sharp wooden fragments coming out of them. I obviously understood very little, but I did catch that they are very low on water and that the government needs to change because it is not working for the People. Which, from what I learned in my Latin American Politics lecture from Junior Year, sounds juuuuust about right. You could tell who was a part of it by who applauded after each speech (they scattered around the group for the sake of coverage) and who looked confused and a little bored. I found myself vacilating between two feelings: a strange sense of disappointment that these people were not inflamed by the Cause (``No history, no Castro is being created here, bud``) and an occasional freak-out because the kid standing behind me was a little restless and rustled his feet around in the brush every so often. After looking at some people further down the road sitting on some jagged boulders (also part of the Communist Traffic Block) the feeling that this Revolution was making me hungry began to build. So I returned to the bus and waited. If it wasn`t for the women selling maize and little cheeses about a half-hour before we started up again, the Revolution would have surely put me to sleep. But then I felt better, and we saw the Communists on the left as we passed them and Nate exchange a little wave good-bye with a few of them. Thank You For Participating! We were back on the road.
And then the Second Communist Revolution came, which was pretty much just obnoxious. This one involved a few logs burning in the middle of the road, right next to a little local foodmart that experienced a sudden surge in business. (Interesting how the Revolution increased revenues, huh?) The group of us got a bottle of Coca-Cola (soda is drank like air is breathed in Peru) just at the point when the Second Revolution let us all through again. So we chugged and ran down the line to find our bus, which was when we realized that there very well might be more than one Wari bus and we had no idea which one was ours. Which led to me bolting down the road, chasing a bus that had three people hanging out of it motioning to me that I had the wrong one. But who could we trust? What was their Cause? And one of them was attractive, wasn`t she? Anyway the right bus was just behind and we boarded without issue. And at around 7 PM -- some 24 hours after the first boarding -- we arrived safely in Cuzco, freshly constrained by
political turmoil yet freshly rejuvenated by our mutual first cups of coca-leaf tea.
DESSERT
``Drew`` is hard to say in Spanish/Castillian, and when I introduce myself I find it easier to say that my full name is Andrew, which is like Andrès in English. The man whose couch I am surfing here has simply taken up Andrès as a name for me, which is about the third or fourth time this has happened. Which means you all might have to update your contact entry for me, real soon. Because this Andrès is something of a maverick, and he is on a team of mavericks, so you can expect him to you know disagree and also be appealing if you like that kind of thing.
The gang and I spent some five days in Lima, and the equivalent of two-and-a-half days wondering what we should do in Lima (and surfing the internet). It is interesting how each person has such a different conception of what travel means . . . is it relaxation? Contemplation? The tourist route? Trekking and physical activities? Put four intelligent, independent, college-educated young men together and you`ll see right away that there is no real answer. (Not that there would be for four unintelligent, dependent, elementary-school-educated people either.) So between Lima and Lunahuana (a little tourist town just outside the capital) we patched a bit of everything together -- cardgames at a restaurant overlooking Limeñan Chinatown; watching the Vice Presidential debates in a hostal sideroom with a slightly-psychotic expat improvisational dancer; dodging tamales filled with pigskin (hairs still on the skin) before getting stuck on a bunch of rocks in a river while attempting to raft; fratboy-style jokes a dime a dozen, disgustingly freed by the language barrier; philosophical conversation with one of my best friends as we look out over a massive McDonald`s across the street; and a Tashlich ceremony I will never forget: tossing breadcrumbs that represent my shortcomings over the past year into the Pacific Ocean, watching the waves claim each one with a dull roar, as Lima`s nearly-perpetual fogginess distorted the line between sea and sky.
THINKING THAT THE WAITER IS BRINGING YOUR MAIN COURSE TO YOU, BUT THEN SEEING THAT IT`S ACTUALLY FOR THE PERSON SITTING AT THE TABLE NEXT TO YOURS, WHO GOT THERE AFTER YOU DID AND SEEMS TO REALLY REALLY ENJOY THAT FIRST BITE
I went to Machu Picchu yesterday. I`m not going to write about it just yet.
MAIN COURSE
We took a bus that was supposed to take sixteen hours from a city just outside Lima to Cuzco, which is the traditional jumping-off point for Machu Picchu and a host of other archaeological curiosities. We found one that cost seventy soles (about $25), by far the best deal in the land. So we hopped the Wari -- I had a feeling that this company`s name automatically evoked the anger of some ancient god, and as a matter of fact it is the name of a pre-Incan empire that lived here in Peru -- and proceeded to sleep very, very little. Most of it was because each bump in the road felt like a jackhammer, but there was also one point in the night where a loud noise and a dramatic swerve woke me with a start. Well, the next morning we discovered that the right headlight had been replaced with a . . . hole. Via basic translating skills (the word ``burro`` being said by the locals over and over again) we deduced that we ran into a late-night donkey. A donkey in the headlights. A slow donkey in the headlights, because I imagine he must have saw us coming.
And the show had just begun at that point. The four of us were discussing some conjugation of some irregular Spanish verb when the bus came to a stop. This is not unusual (in my experience) on Latin American bus trips -- just as my not knowing the reason for stopping is not unusual -- so we paid little heed. For the first half and hour. Then we heard a collective yell from a little further down the road, and Joe craned his neck out the window to see what the matter was. He reported that there were trees in the road, so we all automatically assumed that some had fallen over the course of the night and that some teamwork was being employed to lift them out of the way. Furthermore, Joe is 6 foot 8 (quite a bit taller than the average Peruvian) and we imagined him lifting the tree off the road with his bare hands, saving the day for the long line of buses and creating a legend of the Tall Man that would be perpetuated in this lush Andean valley for centuries to come.
Well, it was actually a Communist Revolution that was stopping us. And no, they would not let us through just because none of us had eaten breakfast (someone asked). We were to wait for two hours and listen to a long line of stump speeches, with varied levels of anger and intellectual sophistication, while a highly-apparent subgroup of the rural farmers wielded machetes or poles with sharp wooden fragments coming out of them. I obviously understood very little, but I did catch that they are very low on water and that the government needs to change because it is not working for the People. Which, from what I learned in my Latin American Politics lecture from Junior Year, sounds juuuuust about right. You could tell who was a part of it by who applauded after each speech (they scattered around the group for the sake of coverage) and who looked confused and a little bored. I found myself vacilating between two feelings: a strange sense of disappointment that these people were not inflamed by the Cause (``No history, no Castro is being created here, bud``) and an occasional freak-out because the kid standing behind me was a little restless and rustled his feet around in the brush every so often. After looking at some people further down the road sitting on some jagged boulders (also part of the Communist Traffic Block) the feeling that this Revolution was making me hungry began to build. So I returned to the bus and waited. If it wasn`t for the women selling maize and little cheeses about a half-hour before we started up again, the Revolution would have surely put me to sleep. But then I felt better, and we saw the Communists on the left as we passed them and Nate exchange a little wave good-bye with a few of them. Thank You For Participating! We were back on the road.
And then the Second Communist Revolution came, which was pretty much just obnoxious. This one involved a few logs burning in the middle of the road, right next to a little local foodmart that experienced a sudden surge in business. (Interesting how the Revolution increased revenues, huh?) The group of us got a bottle of Coca-Cola (soda is drank like air is breathed in Peru) just at the point when the Second Revolution let us all through again. So we chugged and ran down the line to find our bus, which was when we realized that there very well might be more than one Wari bus and we had no idea which one was ours. Which led to me bolting down the road, chasing a bus that had three people hanging out of it motioning to me that I had the wrong one. But who could we trust? What was their Cause? And one of them was attractive, wasn`t she? Anyway the right bus was just behind and we boarded without issue. And at around 7 PM -- some 24 hours after the first boarding -- we arrived safely in Cuzco, freshly constrained by
political turmoil yet freshly rejuvenated by our mutual first cups of coca-leaf tea.
DESSERT
``Drew`` is hard to say in Spanish/Castillian, and when I introduce myself I find it easier to say that my full name is Andrew, which is like Andrès in English. The man whose couch I am surfing here has simply taken up Andrès as a name for me, which is about the third or fourth time this has happened. Which means you all might have to update your contact entry for me, real soon. Because this Andrès is something of a maverick, and he is on a team of mavericks, so you can expect him to you know disagree and also be appealing if you like that kind of thing.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Connecting Some Oddly-Shaped Dots
I left Tilcara relaxedly but with a desperation: I wanted to return to a solitude that I had grown to love and hate in just the right ways, and I realized that being around people you can´t communicate with correctly is really what loneliness is. Then I tried to take a bus into Chile from a scruffy city named San Salvador de Jujuy, but the next border-crossing trip wasn´t for another two days, and so I dragged myself back (tail between the legs) into Salta and checked into a hostal. I had CouchSurfed for a while there before, and the city showed an entirely new side of itself to me: I met a rock band from Buenos Aires which was on-tour, along with a University of Denver student studying-abroad in Argentina named Leah, and we all shared dinner and slang between our languages for two lovely nights. I learned a traditional folk-dance with a French girl and one of the hostal workers played me folk music from five or six different cities in Northern Argentina . . . each with its own speed and style and intonations. My last night in Argentina saw me speak more English than I had for the entire five or so weeks before, talking with Leah over empanadas. The next day I arrived in Chile, and I had no voice. I was in Chile for two-and-a-half days and I did not have my voice for any of it. I drove through the only real touristy destination I could have gone to for the sake of moving. Every person I had a real conversation with was either Peruvian or going to Peru. I was on a quest to reach Lima on the 28th of September, to meet my good friend Nate Allen and start a new chapter to my trip. As a result, Chile felt like a sort of comfortable pit, a satin-lined one, that I fell into and clawed my way out of rapidly. The city I stayed in was Calama, and it was comfortable and clean even though it was not huge and mostly an industrial town. After a night-bus and an early-morning border crossing followed by another seven-hour bus I found myself in Arequipa, Peru, and my voice returned to me. Only to need it for denying a before-unseen group of beggars and goods-hawkers setting their sights on me . . . I am more obviously a foreigner here than I had been at any other point before. It was two days of ceviche (a sort of delicious cold shrimp dish) and watching confusing Peruvian Tourism Weekend parades before I hit Lima right on the dot -- arriving early-morning on the 28th -- and checked into a dusty hostal filled with old oil pantings and crumbling busts right across from a Franciscan monastery and there I waited.
The past week in Lima has been different. I feel relaxed and natural, and enjoyment is always on the tip of my tongue with my three new companions. But I am not contemplative. I enter the world we have created and have a hell of a time, but the difficult confusing chaos outside of us has started to become more and more distant from me. And that chaos is something I crave, it is something I want to toy with and something I want to hurt me and it is the very thing I have left my life behind for. It is all yet another billboard telling me that yes, it´s true, I really do not have the constitution for being comfortable. These people are my friends, for sure -- one of them is one of my best friends in the world -- but returning to the world of my mother tongue left incomplete some mission I didn´t know I had. My Spanish was beginning to blossom, my sight was more piercing, I had a wingspan like an Andean condor . . . and the English language was a little secret I tucked away at every moment, only to reveal it to myself delightedly when I could. That has all fallen away.
But kickin around with these brahs, we have done some hard hard chillin for real. Throwin round soles like Benjamins and dissin my loud snorin and speakin like Sarah Palin. Dontcha know. When you start laughin, the little details and parts of stuff that some dorks think about you know it all dont mean nothin to me. You talk chill, you think chill, just chillin out. Vacation. Relax, man. Tranquilo. ´´Travelling is as much about being away from where you were as it is about being where you are.´´ Right on man. Thats the sermon, and this guy right heres the son of the preacher man. The guy youre listenin to. Now lets be goin to catch ourselves a good time cuz we dont have forever now. Hop on board and blow your whistle and chugchugchugchugging along now and we dont stop and hop, hop on, hop on, for the love of God man hop on Im waitin for you. We´re all waitin for you here we dont got all day and you know you dont wanna be left behind. Nobody wants to be left behind here, hell no. I know you wanna go, I won´t listen to you sayin you dont wanna go. This is the party of a lifetime. Nobodys gonna wanna be stranded.
The past week in Lima has been different. I feel relaxed and natural, and enjoyment is always on the tip of my tongue with my three new companions. But I am not contemplative. I enter the world we have created and have a hell of a time, but the difficult confusing chaos outside of us has started to become more and more distant from me. And that chaos is something I crave, it is something I want to toy with and something I want to hurt me and it is the very thing I have left my life behind for. It is all yet another billboard telling me that yes, it´s true, I really do not have the constitution for being comfortable. These people are my friends, for sure -- one of them is one of my best friends in the world -- but returning to the world of my mother tongue left incomplete some mission I didn´t know I had. My Spanish was beginning to blossom, my sight was more piercing, I had a wingspan like an Andean condor . . . and the English language was a little secret I tucked away at every moment, only to reveal it to myself delightedly when I could. That has all fallen away.
But kickin around with these brahs, we have done some hard hard chillin for real. Throwin round soles like Benjamins and dissin my loud snorin and speakin like Sarah Palin. Dontcha know. When you start laughin, the little details and parts of stuff that some dorks think about you know it all dont mean nothin to me. You talk chill, you think chill, just chillin out. Vacation. Relax, man. Tranquilo. ´´Travelling is as much about being away from where you were as it is about being where you are.´´ Right on man. Thats the sermon, and this guy right heres the son of the preacher man. The guy youre listenin to. Now lets be goin to catch ourselves a good time cuz we dont have forever now. Hop on board and blow your whistle and chugchugchugchugging along now and we dont stop and hop, hop on, hop on, for the love of God man hop on Im waitin for you. We´re all waitin for you here we dont got all day and you know you dont wanna be left behind. Nobody wants to be left behind here, hell no. I know you wanna go, I won´t listen to you sayin you dont wanna go. This is the party of a lifetime. Nobodys gonna wanna be stranded.
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