miércoles, 30 de abril de 2008

Thank You, Margaret

Since this journey has followed a circuitous path from the very beginning (flying to Spain to get to South America?), it is only fitting that it should end with a road trip from Miami to Massachusetts. It was mostly a question of cost. I found a one-way ticket from Santiago to Miami for $514. For comparison, the cheapest flights from Santiago to JFK exceeded $1000, and $1300 to Logan or Bradley. That information made me at least curious about the possibility of flying to Miami and renting a car. When I visited Budget's website, the sign there would not have been more clear if it had addressed me by name, "Special Offer: One-way rentals from Florida, starting at $4.99 a day!" For the first time in my life, an auto rental agency website gave me goosebumps. Too weird to be a coincidence, right? There's a perfectly logical explanation, of course. I imagine that between college students and old folks, a disproportionate percentage of Budget's rental fleet ends up in Florida in the springtime. $4.99 a day is a great price (it rose to $76 for six days after taxes and fees and small print), but I'm still paying them to do the favor of driving one of their cars back north. Everyone wins. Even including the cost of gas, I still save a bunch of money over the price of airfare, and I get to see the south in early May. I'll visit Florida, Georgia, and the Smokies for the first time (I know the coast of the Carolinas but not the western parts). It also seems only fitting that after four months spent exploring parts international, I should return home and discover with new appreciation the endless beauty that one can see without a passport. After I've returned the rental car in Philadelphia, my friends and Machu Picchu companions, Doug and Dave, will pick me up and accompany me on the very final leg of my trip.

The nearness of the end has me thinking about the things that I will most miss. Consistently writing for readers is something that I will miss. The positive feedback of friends, family, and complete strangers has been truly wonderful. I appreciate it. In addition to supporting and encouraging me, your comments have also helped to illuminate a shadow aspect of myself that had been invisible to me. When a particular entry garnered little, if any, praise, a self-deprecating voice was only too quick and happy to offer explanations. See? That entry sucked. Nobody liked it. It was too preachy, too personal, too impersonal. Nobody would even read your blog if they weren't being paid to sit at computers all day. Wait. How could it have been both too personal and too impersonal? Good question. That's quite an accomplishment, isn't it? You have to be a really bad writer to be simultaneously too personal and too impersonal. You did it, though. That's why only one person - out of some combination of politeness and pity - commented on that crap. After so many years of writing for grades, it's not surprising that my confidence as a writer is so dependent on external approval. And, of course, the ego is thirsty for recognition. In part because of my ego and in part because it gives me another reason to write, I'd like to maintain "el gringo andante" even when I'm no longer "andante". We'll see what happens when I have to deal with daily distractions like earning a living. Whether I continue the blog or not, I have to admit that it was a good idea and thank my mother for convincing me, with unrelenting reminders, to create it. I am grateful to her for being both the genesis of this project and such a consistent, loving voice of support.

I expect the next three days will be quite full, and so, this is likely it - my last blog entry from abroad. I'd like to take these final paragraphs to give credit where credit is due. (If I've already told this story, I apologize. It's gotten to the point now where I've written so much that I've forgotten what I've told you and what I haven't.) The inspiration for this trip came from an unexpected source - my life coach. Yes, you read that right, my life coach. If you are as skeptical of the term "life coach" as I was initially, you might be having a reaction similar to this one: "hahahahahahahahahahahaha!" I can't blame you. As part of the Semester Intensive curriculum, each student was required to work with a life coach for four hours over the course of the semester. When I discovered that the sessions had already been purchased with my tuition money, I visited my life coach's website to find out exactly how much of my money had been wasted in this way. And it was a lot of money. Then I made two decisions. First, I would make the best possible use of all four hours. Second, I would find out what it takes to become a life coach. The first time I called Margaret, my voice couldn't have contained any more skepticism if I had called Miss Cleo. I expected a conversation; instead, she assigned me an exercise, "If you had an infinite number of clones, each of whom could do whatever they wanted without worrying about making a living, what would they do? An infinite number! Think big! Go wild! Call me back. Click."

After four or five such exercises, my fingers had lost patience with the constant redialing - Sprint's 1-800 number, then 1 for English, then 1 to place a call within the United States, then my eight to ten digit PIN, then the area code and number I wished to call. "Wished to call" were Sprint's words, not mine; what I wished for was a full refund and a hand massage for my poor fingers. The exercises weren't going anywhere; each was the same as the one before it with a minor variation. Then I realized what she was up to. Margaret wanted me to think "outside of the box". My answers were all far too conservative, too safe, too boring. We would play this game of infinite clones forever or until I satisfied her with a sufficiently creative answer or until the hour was up. Pretty sure that my index finger would require amputation if the redialing went on much longer, I hatched a plan that would shock Margaret into speaking to me. I would tell her that I'd really like to travel, travel without an itinerary or agenda (how spontaneous!), from Santiago, Chile to San Francisco, California (how bold!), without flying (how adventurous!). That's exactly what I told her. She got so excited that she honked. She didn't seem to care about my idea one way or the other; what provoked her goose-like outburst was the excitement she heard in my voice. As badly as I wanted to write her off as a fraud, I had to admit it: I was excited. I actually liked the idea. I really wanted to travel, and not only so I could escape Margaret's tedious exercises. The rest of the hour flew by as we discussed the logistics of a plan that no longer seemed impossibly crazy.

By the time I hung up the phone for good, Margaret had fanned my spark of excitement into a raging bonfire of unlimited possibility. Needing either to jump on furniture or share the wonderful news with someone else, I called another Margaret, my mother. To protect my fragile infant, I gave her specific instructions, "Mom, I know this is going to sound like a crazy idea. What I don't need to hear right now are your doubts, fears, and concerns. Believe me; I have them too. I'm really excited about this, though, and I'm just looking for someone to share my excitement, ok?" I explained my "plan", and mom did her best to mask her initial reaction and support my enthusiasm. Of course, the only part of the conversation that I remember precisely, word for word, is the one sentence of reservation that escaped my mother's mouth just before she could catch it. "It sounds like another experience for the sake of experience," she said. The tone of voice left no doubt that experiences "for the sake of experience" aren't nearly as good as experiences for the sake of love, money, or professional development. Another year of experiences for the sake of money passed (honestly, I hope they weren't really experiences for the sake of money because there was precious little money involved) and in October of 2007, I decided to buy my one-way ticket to adventure. In the end, my trip bore little resemblance to the one I invented to satisfy my life coach's desire for irrational schemes and traveling clones. But I wouldn't be here without her, and I can just hear her honking with joy at the thought of flying to Miami to get to Massachusetts.

To see all my photos of Peru and northern Chile, click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elgringoandante/

lunes, 28 de abril de 2008

Michael's Secret

Odysseus's Secret (Stephen Dunn)

At first he thought of home, and Penelope.
But after a few years, like anyone on his own,
he couldn't separate what he'd chosen
from what had chosen him.
Calypso, the lotus eaters, Circe;
a man could forget where he lived.
He had a gift for getting in and out of trouble,
a prodigious, human gift. To survive Cyclops
and withstand the Sirens' song -
just those words survive, withstand
in his mind became a music
he moved to and lived by.
How could govern, even love, compete?
They belonged to a different part of a man,
the untested part, which always spoke like a citizen.
The larger the man, though, the more he needed to be reminded
he was a man. Lightning, high winds,
for every excess a punishment.
Penelope was dear to him,
full of character and fine in bed.
But by the middle years this other life
had become his life - that was Odysseus's secret,
kept even from himself, when he talked about return
he thought he meant what he said
Twenty years to get home?
A man finds his shipwrecks,
tells himself the necessary stories.
Whatever gods are - our own fearful voices
or imitations from the unseen order
of things, the gods finally released him,
cleared the way.
Odysseus boarded that Phoenician ship, suddenly tired
of the road's dangerous enchantments,
and sailed through storm and wild sea
as if his beloved were all that ever mattered.


Yes, it's true: Odysseus is the alter-ego of my fantasies. Twenty years... four months? Sirens... yellow polo shirt guy? Cyclops... bed bugs? Pretty much the same story, right? If only I wrote my blog in iambic pentameter, it would probably be required reading in freshman English. In my first journal entry of the trip, I literally compared myself to Odysseus, which proves that - at the very least - I have the requisite arrogance of a Homeric hero. Here are those words, written on the flight from Logan to JFK, "I expect this trip to bend me and push me into dark rooms where I will grope the walls in panic for the light switch until I realize that the point is to sit in the darkness. At times, the trip will feel like something to be endured - a test of my mettle. At times, I feel like the point of this trip is to be done with it, to say I did it, to return home triumphantly like Odysseus." Something to be endured, or - in the words of Dunn - survive, withstand. In the words of a character from "Love in the Time of Cholera", Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can because these things don't last your whole life.

I doubt that Dunn, García Márquez, or I had bus rides with Air Bud in mind when we wrote those words. In the end, though, surviving the buses was not nearly the ordeal I expected it to be. A twelve hour bus ride can seem delightful when you’ve psychologically prepared yourself for the worst experience of your life, and after "Air Bud", "Rocky Balboa" looked Oscar-worthy on the ride from Arica to San Pedro de Atacama. On the twenty-four hour voyage from San Pedro to Santiago, I was spared a Sandra Bullock movie marathon thanks to the use of headphones instead of speakers. Tur Bus even served three meals. The first two were identical - a churrasco sandwich and a snack size soda. A churrasco is essentially a steak-ums. Remember school lunch steak-ums? mmm... I loved steak-ums day because they taste exactly like school lunch hamburgers, but the line was always much shorter than on hamburger day because - this is just my best guess - steak-ums isn't a name that inspires a whole lot of confidence. It's not nearly as frightening as "American Chop Suey", but that's not saying much. A churrasco is thinly sliced beef in a hamburger bun, served with some combination of cheese, tomato, avocado, mayonnaise, and ketchup. The Tur Bus churrasco is one slice of cold beef-ish meat, served in a vaguely damp, spongy bun, and vacuum sealed in plastic. Now that is a sandwich worthy of the name "steak-ums". I washed it down with an orange Crush at lunch and a Canada Dry lemon soda at dinner. The distinction of "worst meal of the trip", though, has to go to breakfast, which earned the honor with a Nescafé instant coffee-esque beverage and an individually packaged chocolate chip cookie. Aside from hunger, it also left me with a question. What would it take to complete this breakfast? (You know how cereals always claim to be "part of this complete breakfast"...)

In the Colca Canyon in Peru, I met an Australian man named Ian, who had also been traveling alone since early January. A gregarious and likeable man with bright eyes and a self-effacing sense of humor, he entertained me with stories of his current travels in South and Central America as well as memories of his adventures in Europe fifteen years ago. In 1993, Ian was a twenty-one year old in love and away from home for the first time. He smiled as he recalled the nearly-archaic romance of the handwritten letter. "They’re at home in a box," he told me. "I haven't looked at them in a while, but I still have every one of them. I think that she might have burned mine when we broke up, though." It was not the rambling, wistful reminiscing of a man who had been alone for too long. Without judgment or desire, he compared travel today to travel fifteen years ago, and decided that the biggest change has been communication. "Then I called home once a fortnight," he remembered. "Now it's two or three e-mails a week." I tried to imagine this. No internet. Not even slow internet. Not even internet with a sticky keyboard and an overly-sensitive mouse. In 1993, travelers took photos with cameras that used rolls of film and wrote letters home. In February of 2008, when Isabel asked what my home is like, I sent Mom an e-mail requesting that she take pictures of the house, my room, Greenfield, and then e-mail them to me. The very next day I received an e-mail with an attachment of digital photos which I downloaded onto my pen drive. On Isabel's laptop, we watched the slideshow, and I saw exactly how much snow had buried my Subaru the day before. Who could have imagined that fifteen years ago? Maybe Al Gore, but not Ian.

My conversation with Ian prompted me to imagine what travel might be like fifteen years from now. In 2023, what incredible stories will I share with a future generation of travelers? The actual forms of transportation themselves will be radically different. Teleportation will have replaced the twenty-four hour bus ride and pretty much everything else. Buses and planes will still exist, of course - like ships and trains today - as quaint, nostalgia-inducing alternatives for tourists who aren't in a hurry (this will be a small market) and want to see the landscape (mostly desert obviously). This probably isn't radical enough because this vision is based on the huge assumption that there will be reason to travel in 2023. Given that television/internet (it will be the same thing) will be fully interactive by then, and given that "there" won't be very different from "here" (no matter where "there" and "here" are), the desire to travel will be limited to the young, who - lacking any other form of initiation - will go out in search of suffering in the hope that they might find something to survive, something to withstand. And, in that sense, they might not be so different from me, or Ian, or Odysseus.

domingo, 27 de abril de 2008

What I've Learned


My trip is not over yet, and already I've been asked more than once, "What did you learn?" One friend even added the stipulation that I answer in one word or less. Surprisingly, I found the constraint quite helpful. With a question as open-ended as "What did you learn?" it’s hard to know where to begin. "I prefer diarrhea to constipation" might be too flippant a starting point, while "all you need is love" borders on too earnest. An answer of one word or less simplifies things significantly; I can craft a pretty convincing response with grunts, groans, moans, sighs, and a well-placed chuckle or two. I figure this is a question I will continue to hear in one form or another for a few months, so I am going to pre-emptively answer it here and now. Then I can do my best Tony Snow (is he still the press secretary? That position doesn't have great job security, does it?) impression and say, "For our official stance on that issue, I refer you to the website. Next question please." In answering, I will attempt to strike a balance between the flippant and the earnest so that, if I accomplish my goal, you will be convinced that I have, in fact, learned a few things, and that - right at the top of the list - a sense of humor complements almost any situation. I've learned that...

  • Boots and flip flops do not meet all of my footwear needs. I need a shoe I can dance in. Once, at a club in Madrid, I tried to dance in my hiking boots. It was awkward.

  • Airports are the best for yoga - lots of floor space (often carpeted), high ceilings, and people way too stressed about _______ to care that I'm on the floor gyrating. You know how airports have those glass rooms for smoking? How about yoga rooms with props and teachers and drop-in classes?

  • Short hair is so easy. And it’s not only easier physically (washing it, grooming it, etc.). It’s a lot easier mentally too. Now I never waste mental energy worrying about whether or not I’m having a good hair day, wondering what is my hair doing now? It's doing the same thing it did yesterday and the day before yesterday; it’s just sitting there, looking dark brown (and in a few places gray).

  • Teddy has a long-lost brother in Arequipa, Peru (see first photo above). Teddy is the creepy, old wheelchair in the Bishopswood Health Hut that helps patients to regain their health by motivating them to leave as quickly as possible. I had assumed that Teddy was a one-of-a-kind relic until I visited St. Catherine's Monastery in Arequipa, where I met Francisco. This discovery sheds some light on Teddy's past, which had previously been shrouded in mystery. Since we know that the Incas did not have wheel technology before the arrival of the Spaniards, it seems likely that Francisco, and hence Teddy (short for Teodoro?), was born in Spain sometime in the first half of the sixteenth century. This theory does nothing to explain how Teddy came to be in mid-coast Maine, but one can imagine that he was captured by English pirates who brought him to their colonies in North America. In that era he may have been drawn by horses as a chariot of sorts.

  • Being waited on hand and foot makes me feel useless and guilty. In Isabel's house, I am not allowed to contribute to the preparing, serving, or cleaning up of meals because I am a man and a guest. The guest part I understand, but doesn't guest status wear off after a month or two? She says that her goal is that I feel at home in her house and then she treats me as if I were in a restaurant. As a man, I am supposed to sit at the table and read the newspaper or watch the television while I wait to be served. This makes me uncomfortable, but (Isabel and I have had this conversation more than once) if I try to help it makes her uncomfortable, and since it's her house...

    On the bus ride to Ausangate, it began to rain. The thirty passenger vehicle had struggled with the uneven dirt road before it got slippery. When the rain started, the dirt turned to clay, and the wheels slipped like fingers through hair. It was harrowing. The road, always slanted to one side (generally the left because of the gorge - an immediate and abyss-like drop-off), caused the bus to list at such an angle that my crude understanding of physics couldn't make sense of the situation; by what force did the bus remain upright? Looking down the window (rather than out), I saw that the road was narrowed by a natural drainage ditch, at least three feet deep, which would swallow the bus whole if/when its wheels slipped. Eventually, we encountered a bog of clay that covered the entire road. On an uphill. Over and over, Willy - the valiant bus driver - backed the bus up to charge the hill with momentum, and each time, amid spinning wheels and thick clouds of diesel smoke, the hill turned us away. Soon, the entire surrounding population (a small town that has had electricity for less than two years) arrived to see the bus full of gringos stuck in the mud, which is to say the best show since electricity. With pickaxes, our Peruvian guides worked with the locals to remove the top layer of the road - that troublesome clay. Wearing over $300 in waterproof gear (a Marmot raincoat, EMS rainpants, and waterproof Vasque boots), I watched from the bus as men in jeans, sweaters, and sandals worked through the downpour to build us a new road. In spite of their heroic efforts, the bus still could advance no further so we were forced to set up camp there in the rain in somebody's field. (Later a woman arrived yelling and pointing at the tents; a few bills placed in her palm sedated her in a hurry.) As we the tourists continued to sit on the bus in our expensive raingear, our porters set up the tents. Then they helped us down from the bus and hurried us into the meal tent as if we were celebrities trying to avoid the flashes of paparazzi cameras (see second photo above for an idea of the chaos). Water ran from the sides of the tent downhill toward the middle where we were huddled, wet and cold and singing for warmth and distraction. "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Yellow Submarine" were at least as obnoxious as they usually are, but the Peruvian children peering through the tent windows seemed amused by the unusual spectacle. Then the hot tea and soup arrived (how they accomplished this so quickly in the inconvenient conditions is beyond my comprehension), and the children watched us the way that house pets hopefully attend dinner preparation. How can I look at these children and feel cold? How can I look at these children and feel hungry? And why do I get the raingear and the soup? What did I do for all of this? I've had a lot of opportunities to look at privilege and think about what it means to be a young white man from an upper-middle class American family. I still don't know what it means, but I do know that I want to grow in gratitude, not guilt. Gratitude gives back; guilt takes away. Gratitude is life; guilt is death.

  • Hugs make people happy. We were performing a ceremony at a huaca (pronounced “waca”) - a large rock formation, sacred and powerful in the Andean cosmology. This particular huaca has a trough carved into it in the form of a serpent with the spout as its head. Waiting for my baptism, I squatted against the cold rock like doing a wall-sit and closed my eyes. The five shamans pushed against my body, held me there, pushed my head, my heart, and my belly with force, almost hitting me with their sacred stones while muttering an eerie mix of Spanish and Quechua. Red wine poured out of the serpent’s mouth, over my head, and down my back to the sounds of a rattle, someone blowing into a glass bottle, someone else into a wooden flute that only plays two notes, and then the arms - so many arms - helped me to stand. I stumbled to a spot of grass where I sat to meditate, as instructed. It was an "easy" meditation; my mind got out of the way almost immediately and I just sat. Soon - I have no idea really whether it was sooner or later - I began to hear soft voices and laughter. Children? Yes, I heard the unmistakable whisper of children. It sounded like a dozen or more. And yet there had been not one child in sight at the start of the ceremony. I suspected they might be spirits, like in the episode of the X-files where Mulder finally finds his sister and he walks with her and the other spirits of children rescued by the stars, while a Moby tune enhances the other-worldly atmosphere of the scene. Wow, this is some meditation! I thought. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see the physical bodies of many actual children, laughing and hugging the members of my group, who smiled like I had not yet seen them smile. What other possible response is there to hugs from beautiful, laughing, innocent children? Some adults giggled like children themselves as they knelt down to be closer to the youngsters, none of whom appeared older than five. Others scooped the little bundles of joy into their arms and swung them around. Everywhere was the warmth of laughter and human touch. Again and again the children ran to us for more hugs. They were inexhaustible and delightfully unaware of the prevailing social norm that people tend to hug once per occasion. Still smiling and giddy, we boarded the bus, and, as we did, the kids came over for final hugs and tips. "¿Propina? ¿Propina?" came the hopeful chorus from so many little mouths. Hugs make people happy. Money keeps them alive.

  • "Heart-centered in the world" would make a nice slogan for t-shirts and coffee mugs. To actually live this way continues to be difficult for me. It requires patience and practice (read: plenty of experience of what it's not.) The trick, of course, is that I cannot get out of my head by thinking about it, nor by willpower. I continue to get closer, though. The image of my friends' pendulum serves as my metaphor for growth. The pendulum, when set in motion, swings freely across 360 degrees and traces ovals in the sand pit below. Initially, the pendulum swings far from center in all directions, drawing large, sloppy ovals. Over time, air resistance and the force of gravity slow the movement and the pendulum strays less and less from the center. The pendulum is constantly pulled toward center, toward stillness, but it is the motion itself, the straying, that brings it back. And it is precisely in the moment when the pendulum finds itself furthest from home that it feels the greatest pull to return.

viernes, 25 de abril de 2008

Another Entry About Death

Back in Santiago, I have begun the process of paring down my belongings in preparation for packing (!!!), and I can’t help but count the dollars "wasted" on unused items. Of course, it isn’t really wasted money because so many of these things are far better left unused. As I increasingly look at my trip in hindsight, rather than foresight, I realize that I have many reasons to feel grateful, and chief among those is this pile of "worst-case scenario" stuff. Still, I can’t help but feel a little taken by the commerce of fear. How much money did I give to EMS so that scarier people in other countries couldn’t take it from me instead? Pick-pockets have nothing on shopping. Shopping to the power of pop music and the fear of pick-pockets. When I think back on my mentality as I boarded Delta flight 5513 in Boston on January 10th, a line from a classic piece of children’s literature, "Tacky the Penguin", plays over and over in my mind, “The hunters came with maps and traps and rocks and locks, and they were rough and tough.”

That was me. Ready for anything. You wanna mess with me, Spain? Just try. Am I supposed to be scared of that hair-do? You think you look tough? I laugh at you and your homemade mullet. What about you, malaria-carrying mosquitoes, you want a piece of this? I didn´t think so. You guys kinda make me giggle. You know why? Because you´re small and I’ve got REPEL Permanone in my utility belt. It’s so bad-ass it says "do not apply to skin" because it would even mess me up. The world is scary, so many things to survive out there. And the airport really reinforces that idea, doesn’t it? I can’t take my toothpaste on the plane because my toothpaste could be a bomb. I have to take off my shoes because my shoe could be a bomb. I can’t have a real knife with my dinner because a real knife could turn the plane into a huge, flying bomb. And I don’t even blink at all of this. Of course, all of this is necessary because the world is fucking scary. Even my metal butter knife could turn against me. So imagine my shock when, on the flight from Santiago to Lima, dinner was served (first of all that dinner was even served on a five hour flight departing at 9:30 pm) with a full set of metal cutlery. Then I laughed because the presence of a metal knife with dinner should not cause shock, and it occurred to me how adaptable we humans are. We can get used to pretty damn near anything, can’t we? If the Department of Homeland Security were to decree that - for our own safety and national security - it is necessary that all airline meals be pureed and served with a straw, the Daily Show would make a few jokes, and within three months we wouldn’t remember solid airline food.

So it’s no surprise, really, that as a consumer preparing for major world travels, I imagined the worst. When I look at the items I purchased, and the amount of money I spent on them, it appears that I expected this journey to be routinely life-threatening. Perhaps this is why it has been so difficult to adjust to daily life in Santiago, where the greatest challenge - constant television - is far from life-threatening (some might argue me here). The ways in which my life was threatened on this trip tended to be unexpected and beyond my control, and they usually involved some form of transportation. Actually, the most dangerous activity I engaged in was surely walking. On the Camino Primitivo in Spain, I was constantly one misstep away from being stranded alone in the elements. I don’t know how soon other hikers would have passed, but I do know from the log books in the albergues that the only hikers ahead of me on the trail were three days ahead. Without further ado, here is the list of objects that I am happy to report went unused:

  • "You Can Survive" - This can, the size of two tuna fish cans stacked, somehow contains a folding wing stove, hexamine fuel tabs, tea bags, candy, sugar packets, poly water bag, energy drink, survival instructions, damp-proof matches, aluminium foil, and instant broth packets.
  • REPEL Permanone Clothing & Gear Insect Repellent - This aerosol spray "repels and kills ticks and mosquitoes" when applied to clothing, hats, tents, and sleeping bags (note: "Do not treat inside of sleeping bag. Spray exterior surfaces of tent only.") I purchased this item when my travel plan included high-risk areas for malaria and yellow fever. I am thrilled to have not used a product which "if partly filled" suggests that you "call your local solid waste agency or 1-800-CLEANUP for disposal instructions." I wonder whom I have to call if it’s all the way filled…
  • Mefloquine (Lariam) - One 250 mg tablet per week will prevent malaria°. It’s important that the pill be taken on a fixed schedule, the same day each week. My doctor suggested "malaria Mondays". To be effective, the medication must be taken two-three weeks before entering the "malaria area" and for four weeks after leaving the "malaria area". I like the term "malaria area". The rhyme makes it sound kind of cute and kid-friendly, like a ball pit at Chucky Cheese’s maybe.
    ° Fine print: "If this medication is being used for prevention of malaria, it is important to understand that it is still possible to contract the disease." Whaaa?!? So without the medication I might get malaria and with the medication I might get malaria? But with the medication I get a bonus: the wackiest, freakiest, most vividly horrifying dreams of my whole life. My doctor did not even attempt to downplay this. She stopped short of saying that the nightmares would be worse than malaria, but I was concerned enough to read the fine print: "The most frequently reported side effects with Lariam, such as nausea, difficulty sleeping, and bad dreams are usually mild and do not cause people to stop taking the medicine. However, people taking Lariam occasionally experience severe anxiety, feelings that people are against them, hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not there, for example I’d like to interject here that I believe that is the definition of "hallucinations", not an example), depression, unusual behavior, or feeling disoriented. There have been reports (uh oh, passive voice, this is going to be bad...) that in some patients these side effects continue after Lariam is stopped. Some patients taking Lariam think about killing themselves, and there have been rare reports of suicides. It is not known whether Lariam was responsible for these suicides."
    On a related note, I decided not to visit any "malaria areas". It strikes me as curious that Lariam is legal and marijuana (medicinal and otherwise) is illegal. If there is logic behind this, it must be that the intended effect and side effects (can death be considered a side effect?) of Lariam are deemed better than malaria, while the intended effect and side effects of marijuana are deemed worse than chronic pain.
  • Ben’s 30% DEET Wilderness Formula - Another weapon against those mosquitoes. And another product that will require a call to the local solid waste agency. I think that my backpack is a fuse short of being a bomb. But let’s keep checking those shoes.
  • Eagle Creek money pouch - This flesh-colored, silk, fanny pack looks and feels so natural, if a pick-pocket happens to lift up your shirt, s/he might ask you where you got the cute "Eagle Creek" tattoo. This is an absurd item. I paid about five dollars more for the silk version because still think that more=better even though I know that I think that. I wore it for a few days in Spain before realizing that the constant lifting of my shirt, fiddling with the pouch zipper, and fumbling around for the right bill was A) really annoying and B) like screaming "Hey, hey! Look over here, please. I'm a tourist. Yes, I look like a kangaroo, but I swear I’m a tourist. Does anyone know how this zipper works? Gosh, this is tricky. Let’s see here, this bill is too big. This one too. Darn, another fifty. Where the heck did I put that one ten I had?" Also, after I had seen five or six tourists with identical Eagle Creek money pouches, I started to wonder where I need to be more careful with my money: foreign countries or American malls.
  • Atwater Carey First Aid kit - I’m grateful to have only needed this once so far. I used a band-aid after cutting my finger on the refrigerator in Santiago. Have I mentioned that I’ve been eating like a maniac since my stomach started working again? Well, I have been. Apparently I’ve been so voracious that I approach the refrigerator as if it were prey. And it bites back sometimes.
  • 2nd Skin Dressing Kit - This is remarkable. I hiked for thirteen days in new boots with 30ish pounds on my back, and did not get one blister. I am lucky, those are damn good boots, and the sock liners were a good idea.
  • Bicycle lock - This was my last - and worst - purchase before leaving the U.S. The bike lock weighed a few pounds and stayed in Spain. I wanted something to lock up my backpack (my life!) and didn't feel like spending $75 on the PacSafe - a metal netting of sorts that encloses the entire pack, secures it to something, and then silently announces "Really valuable things here! Get your really valuable things here!" So I spent $20 on a really heavy bike lock which I figured would provide a similar false sense of security for a fraction of the cost. It wasn’t nearly worth its weight.
  • Assorted other locks - Padlocks with combinations, padlocks with keys, padlocks with keys approved by the TSA (so they can search your bags without cutting your locks). I didn´t use any of them, especially the TSA-approved locks, which I later realized would do nothing to protect my backpack because the pack's zippers are not entirely made of metal. Only the part that opens and closes the teeth is metal, the part you pull is a cord, which could easily be cut with scissors thus rendering the lock useless.

Aside from walking, what was the greatest danger I faced? Probably the sun, especially high in the mountains of Peru. What kind of fancy, expensive equipment did I use to protect myself from the deadly rays? First, plenty of sunscreen. And second, a Burger King hat that Carmen Luz (my Chilean sister and former Burger King employee) gave me. I particularly enjoyed wearing the tribute to American fast food on the shamanic journey. I didn´t look the least bit spiritual or shamanic or Peruvian - no wide-brimmed, brown "shaman hat" (think Indiana Jones), no alpaca wool hat, no handcrafted poncho. Just me: a gringo in a Burger King hat. Appearance is not important. If only. My ego gave it importance, something like Look at me in this Burger King hat. I’m not putting on any airs here. I’m just a regular, normal guy, wearing whatever I happen to have. Yes, a friend gave this to me. Why would I waste my money on a special hat? I don’t need to "look spiritual". I’m so spiritual on the inside I don’t need to wear it on the outside. The voices in my head turned the Burger King hat into a statement, but first and foremost it was a necessity that did far more to save my hide (literally) than any of the aforementioned items. Still, you know what they say: better safe than sorry.

domingo, 13 de abril de 2008

Ways to Go




There are a lot of ways to travel, methods of getting from here to there. On this trip I´ve had the opportunity to try many of them - including ones I didn´t even know existed. Most memorable, so far, was the Machu Picchu adventure with the tarp-covered truck full of human beings and the metal box on a zip line river crossing. Those two are captured in the above photos, and it´s worth clicking on the river-crossing photo to enlarge it. The expression on my face is saying something beyond language, not quite expressible in words, but a rough translation might be, "Oh my God! I´m alive. How is this possible? Shouldn´t I be dead?" If I had died there, I wouldn´t be writing this now, but at least it would have been the kind of death that brings posthumous fame, the kind of death that produces books and films "based on the shocking true story". If I should die on one of these endless bus rides, it will be by my own hand. And it will be the fault of the on-board "entertainment". Where do airlines and bus lines get their movies? I think there must be a form of release called "direct to travel entertainment" for movies not quite good enough for "direct to video/DVD". "Films" released in this format self-destruct after one viewing.

Today I saw and heard the sequel to "Air Bud" - "Air Bud Strikes Back". That´s true. Against all odds, "Air Bud Strikes Back" exists. Bud, by the way, is a supernaturally gifted golden retriever who can do everything but speak, though I suspect he simply chooses not to because his agent read the script and advised him that a speaking role in this movie might ruin his career. "Air Bud Strikes Back" rocked my world, radically altered my cosmology; previously I had believed in a benevolent universe. On an airplane, it is possible to ignore the movie because you don´t have to listen to it. Without my iPod (which I left in Santiago), I have nothing to protect me from the bus speakers. On the plus side, though, I did discover an important mathematical formula today which I´ve dubbed the "Air Bud Theory". This formula calculates precisely how good a movie is (no more imprecision of two thumbs up or three stars or a palm d´or) on a scale from 1-100, with 100 being the top score. Quality of film = 100 - (% of the movie that is a montage set to bad music). "Air Bud Strikes Back" scores a 35. In my favorite scene (I don´t want to ruin the movie for you, but... hahahaha), the two robbers (who also happen to be plumbers... Home Alone?) have captured a talking parrot named Polly who they are using as bait to lure the heroic golden retriever into an ill-fated rescue attempt so that they can use Air Bud to steal a valuable diamond which is protected by laser sensors that only he can dodge. Anyway, the robbers are driving around town looking for Bud, while Polly - caged in the back of the truck - drives them crazy by singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" over and over. At first, I was annoyed because a parrot singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is really obnoxious, but when I realized the similarity of our situations (the robbers stuck in their truck with Polly and me stuck on the bus with Air Bud) I burst out laughing, which was embarrassing because my neighbor probably assumed that I was enjoying the movie, but I needed that laugh.

I´m grateful to that bus for bringing me back to Chile, which - though in the opposite direction geographically - feels closer to home. I smiled and nodded at the now familiar white on black street signs, listened - mesmerized - to the distinct, metallic song of Chilean coins in my pocket, and chuckled to myself "oh Chile" every time I saw or heard or smelled something that makes this country Chile and not Peru. Not that there´s anything wrong with Peru, but familiarity is very appealing right now (so appealing that I´ve been eating Oreos this week because they taste like America) and Chile is familiar. Arica has beautiful beaches which my bare feet will rejoice on tomorrow, yet I am almost as excited by the Santa Isabel - an actual supermarket with aisles and high, warehouse ceilings and harsh, fluorescent lights and products that shouldn´t be available in this part of the world or at this time of year. And I love it. As horrifying and unnatural as it is, I love the supermarket. I plan to go there again tomorrow to wander and gaze in awe and wonder. It´s like a free amusement park or a museum of life in the early 21st century. In a few decades you might have to buy an entrance ticket and be led up and down the aisles by a guide who will explain the staggering assortment of food - how many natural resources were squandered shipping it around the world, how much of it went to waste, how much of it was poison, how hard it was to choose between all the different options, and all the time that was wasted purchasing and preparing food before the complete nutrient pill was perfected. (Yes, I re-read "Brave New World" last week.) In the meantime, I´m going to enjoy some "completos" - a hot dog topped with mayonnaise, ketchup, avocado, tomatoes, and sometimes onions and mustard - because even that would be a better way to go than Air Bud-induced suicide.

UPDATE: Make sure you read my brother´s "comentario". He knows a lot about Air Bud and caught a pretty embarrassing error in this entry.

sábado, 12 de abril de 2008

Meanwhile, Back Home...

Disclaimer: The following is a fictional account. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.

It is some evening in early April in a rust-colored house in Greenfield, Massachusetts. After a delicious dinner of Thai-style mussels, Kelvin and Margie sip tea and discuss with restrained excitement the fading light, "It´s not quite dark yet." "Nope, the days are definitely getting longer." Kelvin enjoys his decaf Earl Grey with no English air, drinking it in gulps out of a brown mug - large even by American standards - imprinted with a stoically imposing bison. The mug was made for Earl Grey as surely as the Marlboro Man smokes Dunhills. Margie groans at the terrible pun printed on the tag of her decaf Lipton, which she drinks out of a shapely, gray ceramic mug with blue, flowery adornment. One white, tapered candle, set on the table between the diners, adds a touch of everyday formality. Soon the phone rings and interrupts the conversation on sunset times. Kelvin suggests they let the machine answer because it´s still "the dinner hour", but Margie suspects the caller will be one of their sons, whose calls are rare enough to warrant an interruption of the post-dinner ritual. So Margie answers the phone while Kelvin moves to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Between talking on the phone and washing the dishes, it´s a toss-up for which he detests the most, and he reasons that the dishes will have to be done sooner or later, while Margie can quickly summarize the content of the telephone conversation later.

LATER...

KELVIN: Which one was it?
MARGIE: Mickey.
KELVIN: Again? How is it that we hear more from him in Chile than from Jay in Williamstown?
MARGIE: He´s not in Chile actually. He skipped his flight back to Santiago and stayed in Peru.
KELVIN: What do you think those shamans did to him?
MARGIE: What do you mean?
KELVIN: He skipped his flight? That doesn´t sound like him at all. Did he give any reason?
MARGIE: Well, he did half-joke that maybe the shamans hit him too hard on the head with their sacred stones while they were blessing him.
KELVIN: Oh brother...
MARGIE: He sounded in good spirits though.
KELVIN: Well I hope he´s in his right mind too. What would possess him to spend more time in a country where he´s lost lots of money and been moderately or violently ill most of the time?
MARGIE: Maybe he did it just to shock us.
KELVIN: Hmmm...
MARGIE: I was mostly kidding.
KELVIN: That would explain a lot if that´s how he makes all of his decisions... like moving to a city he´s never seen to study trans-whatever-it´s-called psychology.
MARGIE: He said he met some cool people in Cusco and is really enjoying the continuity of company for a change.
KELVIN: How will he get back to Santiago?
MARGIE: He said he´ll take buses, though probably not the sixty hour direct bus from Lima to Santiago. I think his exact words were, "that sounds like one of the rings of hell."
KELVIN: That´s an understatement. Why didn´t he change the date of the return flight?
MARGIE: Apparently the ticket was non-transferable, non-refundable, show up or lose it basically.
KELVIN: And what about that park he wanted to visit in southern Chile?
MARGIE: Torres del Paine. He said he´ll have to save that for next time, which seems like a good decision. It doesn´t sound like he has the energy or desire right now to spend a week hiking alone and camping in the cold.
KELVIN: I don´t blame him. I can´t imagine ever having the energy or desire to do that.
MARGIE: He sounded more upbeat than the last time we talked to him.
KELVIN: Well he hasn´t started the bus rides yet. That oughta be fun...
MARGIE: Yeah, I´m sure that will be hard.
KELVIN: On the positive side, he´ll never have been so glad to be in Santiago.
MARGIE: That´s true. Maybe he´ll even have a new appreciation for the sound of the TV in the next room.
KELVIN: Speaking of... the Daily Show is on in two minutes. Let´s move into the living room.

SCENE

miércoles, 2 de abril de 2008

Machu Picchu, Bob

The seed of the Machu Picchu trip was planted fourteen years ago when Doug and I were students in Mr. Richardson`s (affectionately called Mr. Rich) sixth grade social studies class. Mr. Rich was a short, roundish man with large, boxy glasses, and straight, dark hair - always immaculately parted. In spite of his average appearance and professional dress, Mr. Rich was a delightfully odd man. He referred to all of his male students as "Bob" and all of his female students as "Bobbie Sue", and when the classroom telephone rang, he would answer, "Hello, Domino`s Pizza." Then one day we read about Machu Picchu in the Scholastic News Reader and saw stunning images in the accompanying Scholastic News Reel. That word of Hiram Bingham`s 1911 "discovery" of Machu Picchu didn`t reach Greenfield Middle School until 1994 may seem baffling, but the news came as a welcome update to our textbook, whose world map showed a large sea creature with the words "Here Be Monsters" in the place of South America. Anyway, after our discovery of Machu Picchu, sixth grade was never the same again. Because Machu Picchu is a lot of fun to say, Mr. Rich added it to his vocabulary in place of "hello", "good morning", and "good afternoon". From then on, he greeted students exclusively with "Machu Picchu, Bob" (masculine) and "Machu Picchu, Bobbie Sue" (feminine). It caught on, and in my group of friends, we continued to use the greeting (which in Quechua means "old peak") into seventh and eighth grade.

I won`t even try to write words about Machu Picchu itself because it is too impressive for words. I will say that we had perfect "ruins weather" for our visit - gray and misty with a light rain. It felt very mysterious. Gray and misty with a light rain also happens to be ideal photography weather so Doug and Dave took hundreds of stunning photos. I forgot my camera. I went to Machu Picchu without a camera. That`s like going to the beach without a bathing suit (or, if you`re my Dad, a book). The leaving in a hurry at 4 am (more on this later) might have had something to do with forgetting the camera, but I didn´t forget anything else. So I wonder if leaving it behind was my subconscious rebellion against being a "tourist". As incredible as Machu Picchu was, I couldn´t ignore the part of me that felt more obligated to be there than excited to be there. The journey was certainly exciting though. In fact, the adventures that we survived to spend two and a half hours exploring the actual ruins give new meaning to the old truism that it`s about the journey, not the destination. The most popular - and expensive - way to get to Machu Picchu is by train, but if you`re not in a hurry and don`t mind "roads" whose loose gravel clings to the side of mountains only because it`s scared-to-death of the sheer drop-off too, then there are other options. The first leg of the trip was a nearly four hour ride in minivan from Cusco to Santa Maria. The roads were winding (miles of switchbacks up and down a mountain), two-way only because vehicles drive in both directions, and often rough enough to shake fillings out of teeth. From Santa Maria, we hired a taxi - a Toyota Corolla wagon - to drive us to Santa Teresa. These roads were worse. No one in the States would even consider braving these unpaved paths (if you´ve ever hiked a ridge, that`s a pretty good reference point) in a vehicle without four-wheel drive. In fact, it was the kind of driving you see on commercials for SUVs and, if you`re like me, scoff and mutter to yourself that roads like that don`t even exist. The irony, of course, is that we (I`m using the royal we here) drive our Hummers and Landrovers on beautifully paved highways, while in Peru they use Toyota Corollas to perform the kind of stunt driving that the fine print on the bottom of the screen warns you not to try at home ("Professional Driver on a Closed Course", right?) Well, Perú is one big closed course, and pretty much everyone who owns a automobile is a professional (read: taxi driver).

We slept the night in Santa Teresa. If you ever have the pleasure of spending the night in this small town in the shadow of Machu Picchu, watch out for Angel. He seems so kind and helpful - which he is to an extent - but he was born to be a middle man. On the first night, Doug and I wanted a cold Gatorade-type drink to refresh ourselves after a long day of bouncing and breathing diesel exhaust (imagine the exhaust system of a Corolla that drives over mountains daily). Angel keeps an entire refrigerator stocked with cold beverages to sell to his thirsty guests, but the only electrolyte drinks were at room temperature. Doug and I declined the warm fruit-esque drinks and began to walk across the street to the convenient store, located literally across the street. Angel politely asked us to wait and ran across the street to buy the drinks for us so that he could make approximately thirty cents on the transaction. I find that this is not unusual behavior in Perú. We spent the night in Santa Teresa and woke at 3:30 the next morning to continue our journey. After an exciting forty-five minute taxi ride - it had rained overnight, and in one place the "road" had washed down the side of the mountain so much that the driver asked us to get out so that he could risk crossing it without our lives in the car too - we arrived at a hydroelectric plant where we began our two hour walk along train tracks to the base of Machu Picchu. Walking the tracks was especially difficult in the darkness, but rewarding. The morning was warm and the wet air so intensely floral that it smelled almost as though God had sprayed everything with Glade in anticipation of our arrival. It didn`t give me a headache though, so it must have been the real deal. Especially beautiful and terrifying was the railroad bridge which crossed a rushing river. We crossed not on the tracks, but the thing next to the tracks, which - still wet from the rain - could only be described as a greased cookie sheet with a flimsy handrail.

The trip back to Santa Teresa from Machu Picchu is worthy of an entire chapter in the book of my travels, but I`ll condense it to a paragraph here because I`m hungry. Because we were tired and Doug wasn`t feeling well, we took the train back to the hydroelectric station instead of walking. At the station, dozens or hundreds of people (mostly Peruvian) descended from the train, and somehow squeezed into four or five cars and vans. There was no special, cushy tourist escape vehicle waiting for me, Doug, and Dave. We waited. And waited. Eventually, Angel signalled for us to board an enormous human cargo transport. That`s what I call the enormous pickup truck whose bed we stood in with twenty-five other people under a blue tarp ceiling. We held on to the metal bars that formed a canopy over the bed as if riding a subway car - a subway car that drove on the side of a mountain, and even drove right over the washed out spot that had scared the morning driver in the much smaller vehicle. I would have died from the mere sight of the river hundreds of feet below us, but the blue tarp saved my life by obscuring the view. Later, surprised to be alive, I stumbled down the metal ladder and out of the human cargo transport only to find that we still had to cross the river back to Santa Teresa. And while men worked on the foundation of a bridge nearby, the current method of crossing appeared to be a metal box on a zip line. Two at a time, we crouched in the box and used the rope to pull ourselves across the raging rapids far below. (You can see great photos of Doug and Dave performing this craziness in the Machu Picchu album here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elgringoandante/)

We survived. And I no longer find it so surprising that Machu Picchu wasn`t "discovered" until 1911. It`s not the kind of place you just end up by accident.