those days

so i booked a direct overnight bus from cuzco to copacabana, bolivia. alex alex alex, you should know by now that direct and bus are oxymorons in latin america. silly girl.


first, it decided to pour rain, and that hostel that we were staying in that gave such magnificent city views posed a slight problem. it was only reachable by steep winding stairs, slippery and difficult normally but a death wish in flip-flops, my two backpacks and torrents of water. needless to say, things did not go well, and i have the bruises to prove it.


then at the bus station, i was told that there was a border strike or my bus had crashed, i wasn´t too sure, but either way, my direct bus was dunzo and everyone had to be redirected. i found myself on a rusty puno-bound bus at 11:30 pm next to a woman and her puking child, was dumped unceremoniously at 4 am at the bus terminal and tried to keep myself from freezing during the 3 hours i had to wait until the borded bus decided to show.


another four hours and then bolivian immigration, oh joy. forking over the $135 for the visa was painful enough, but then they demanded passport photos, itinerary, a letter of welcome (what?!?) and tickets out of the country, of which i had none. after some wheeling and dealing, downright begging, they finally let me in. not the warmest welcome.


icing on the cake? i realized that at some point during all those joyous hours of traveling, some evil-doer nabbed my camera. arghhhhhhhhhhhhh. exhausted, sleep-deprived and just frustrated, i dropped into the nearest hostel in copacabana and was done. just done.


everybody has those days while travelling. the days when you are just tired--tired of living out of a backpack, tired of constantly being misunderstood, tired of nothing ever working as it should, tired of nothing running on time, tired of everyone staring, tired of never knowing what you are eating and then finding two grizzly chicken feet in your soup, tired of ice cold showers in freezing mountain towns, tired of everyone constantly telling you to be careful, tired of being starving and everything being closed because it sunday and this is catholic country. tired of being tired. you have a moment of feeling bad for yourself. you want to go home. but then, you´re in a new town, a new city, a new country, something fun and different and you get to explore and see beautiful things from all corners of the world and lose your center over and over again, and you feel bohemian and free and independent and liberated and really really really lucky. and i think i can live out of this backpack forever. siempre adelante. always onward.

inca cola

as the once-glorious inca capital, cuzco had alot to live up too, and in my eyes it did pretty well. despite being tourist-ready: think gringos on every turn, tour agencies outnumbering the peruvians themselves, indigenous women in full garb--wide colorful skirts, dark plaited braids and bowler hats--posing with alpacas on the street, the city managed to hold on to it´s ancient charm. narrow cobblestone streets wove through the town, slippery stone steps climbing to breath-taking views (literally and otherwise--the altitude strikes again!) of the adobe cityscape and surrounding verdant green hills of the sacred valley.

i was out of commission for the first couple of days, battling a particularly fearsome trifecta of exhaustion from long bumpy bus rides, altitude sickness and a stubborn parasite that just wouldn´t quit. but nothing good old fashioned sleep, copious amounts of mate de coca (coca leaf tea) and 8 cloves of raw garlic couldn´t fix (it´s a natural anti-bacterial, don´t ya know).

mmmm coca

cuzco is a tourist´s dream city, but jeanette and i managed to find a few diamonds in the rough to keep us grounded. dining on three course meals with food that actually has FLAVOR (quite the rare find) for under two bucks, chatting with the market ladies while eating river fish ceviche, chasing with a shot of leche de tigre. by the way, there is no milk or tiger in the leche de tigre, just like there is no cheese in queso helado. it´s actually the marinade from the fish, sometimes mixed with vodka. cheers! i somehow found a way to insult an entire table of locals when i casually commented that, in my humble opinion, i thought arequipeña beer was better than cuzqueña beer (nearly every big city in peru brews their own beer and are fiercely proud of it). once, we got sent a plate of chicharrones--that would be pork deep fried in pig fat, the specialty of the bar we were at, as it was called ¨bar chicharrones.¨only in latin america would guys send you a plate of fried meat as a ¨hey, i´m looking at you¨gesture. ¨dang it, why wasn´t the place called ¨bar pisco sour?¨

aw, you shouldn´t have. no really, you shouldn´t have!

and then there was machu picchu. our trek didn´t work out as planned, so jeanette and i decided to DIY and forge our own way. one microbus, one highjacked tour bus (to clarify, we did the highjacking, not the other way around. you never know) in ollantaytambo, and one severly overpriced train ride brought us to aguas calientas, the town at the base of the ruins. we bypassed the van that shuttles tourists up through the mountain and hoofed it instead--a mini mini mini-me version of the inca trail. steps, steps, steps that i thought would never end straight up the mountainside. as we gained alitude and the thunderous roar of the rushing vilcanota river became more and more faint, the stupifying views were testament to the incredible feat it was to build a mountain-top citadel. go incas. how did they do it?

incredible

and then, there she was, tucked away in the andes, in all her glory. words can´t really express. i was seeing something i´d wanted to see for my whole life, and it was even more __________ (insert adjective here, i´m out of them) that i could have ever expected. magical even. you could practically feel the spirit and energy of the incas. the clouds ebbed and flowed, sometimes shrouding the ruins in wispy capes and sometimes parting so that the sun shined brillantly on the stone. as i was too cheap to get a guide, we followed behind other tours to get snippets of info, but most of my time there was spent wandering aimlessly through the century old ruins, wondering who lived there, what they did, what they were like, where they went. pretty incredible, and probably the best way to end my stint in peru.

a couple of days later, jeanette and i parted ways, her back to canada and me to bolivia, and after a series of somewhat unfortunate events, make it to copacobana on lake titicaca. until next time, amigos!

sunday funday

or: the peruvian pour and the art of drinking.

or: yo no se manana.

or: i fell in love with a country named peru.

all possible names for this post. but i´m sticking with sunday funday because those have been, hands down, my most favorite days ever in peru.

basically, sundays are when all the peruvians let loose. saturday nights are for going out, yes, but sundays are for hanging out all day long. the day for rest, the day for families, the day for friends. most of the time, celebrated by drinking cervezas outside. and this brings in the peruvian pour and the art of drinking, because in this country, it truly is an art and to confess, takes a little bit of time to pick up. but in a nutshell...

no matter how many people, be it 2 or 12, there is always only one beer and one glass at all times. i am handed the beer, i pour myself a small shot-sized glass, i pass the bottle to the next. after tossing back the drink in a couple gulps, proper etiquette is to fling (trust a now-seasoned expert, it´s all in the wrist flick) the backwash of the beer out (on the pavement, in the sand, wherever said sunday funday is occuring) and pass the glass. and so on, ´round the circle it goes. once the bottle runs out, another magically appears. and on sunday funday (or any other day, for that matter), they don´t stop coming. that is the only way to drink as the peruvians do, and it took us a while to get in the loop. in the beginning, we would be invited to a group, only to be given our own glass. ouch, such a peruvian faux paux (but now that i think about it, probably a bit more hygenic, ha). talk about being out of the circle. jeanette and i began to get offended when we would order a drink and the bartender would bring us two glasses. excuse me sir, we´ve been in peru two months now, we know how things go down. one vasito will suffice, thank you very much.

so where have i been since? after huanchinca, we headed to the white city of arequipa. talk about style, this town was class class class. a beautiful plaza de armas, colonial buildings that nearly sparkled in the sun, and the most laid-back market i´ve ever visited, where we would stand and eat the most delicious salteña empanadas with the business men and teenages, fighing over the bowl of chili sauce. the plan was to base here, then head to colca canyon for a couple days trekking into one of the worlds deepest canyon. but when we showed up at the bus terminal, bright and early with all of our packs at 9am, found that the next bus didn´t leave until 3. hemmm what to do, what to do? we remembered an artisan friend told us he was from mollendo, discovered a bus headed there in the next ten minutes, bid a very cold, very deep canyon chau, and headed to the coast.

we were the ony gringas, and that´s the way we liked it. during the weekend, the beach would be flooded with latin tourists--and seriously, NOTHING is more entertaining than latins on holidays-- but on the weekdays quiet and laid-back. people seemed a bit shocked that we hung around as long as we did--even peruvians only stay the weekend, and we kicked it for almost two weeks. by the end, we knew practically everyone in mollendo, or at least, everyone knew us. the guys who worked the beach would get us our umbrella every day, we would share cervezas with the lifeguards (yes, we made friends with latin baywatch) and our new amigo rafael, the old ice-cream man with one tooth would play ¨here comes the bride¨ on his harmonica whenever he say me. the town was so small that when word got around that i looooved the song ÿo no se manaña¨(see below), the guy at our usual tienda presented me with a CD. no, i´d never really talked to him before in my life. i loved it. something about small towns are just so addicting.

after mollendo, a night bus to cuzco, and that is another post for another time.

i´m leaving peru tonight for bolivia, and trying to peg the reasons i love this country so much is like trying to describe why i love indiana jones to those weird people who haven´t watched it 500 times. maybe it´s because i love the song yo no se manana and so does the rest of peru. maybe it´s because all the peruvians give each other nicknames (they called me gatita, little cat, because of my green eyes). maybe it´s because i love the aji sauce, the spicer the better, and every hole-in-the-wall restaurant has their own special blend. maybe it´s because they love love love inca cola here instead of coca cola, despite it´s chemical-yellow color. maybe it´s because this whole country--from broken down buses to cargo boats to sandduning to exploring ancient ruins--has been an adventure. maybe it´s because i finally saw machu picchu. maybe it´s because each city, each village, each town, is so unique--from chaotic iquitios to chilled out huanchaco--yet so distinctly peruvian at the same time. maybe it´s because this is the first country where i´ve really gotten to know locals. maybe it´s because i just fell in love--with the people, the places, the smells, the music, the food, the slang, the driving, the attitude, the confidence, the shyness, the openess, the history, the mystery, the very essence of this country.

sand in my pants

after the jungle, i took my first flight to lima. the journey to iquitos consisted of 5 days, 3 towns, 2 buses, 5 tuk tuks and 1 cargo boat. the journey back--a hour and a half plane ride, and included a snack. but truly, half the fun is getting there. the one good thing about the flight was that i got to see the amazon basin from above, muddy rivers snaking through massive expanses of green, and at once realized how deep in the middle of nowhere i had been for the last week and a half.

i stayed in the upscale area of miraflores in lima, and if it weren´t for the spanish being spoken around me, i could have been in any big city in the u.s. whole foods-esque grocery stores, manicured gardens and parks (where i found out sitting on the grass is a no-no), even a starbucks. and even though my head said no, my heart said yes, and i treated myself to a grande vanilla latte (what? don´t judge me. some people get mcdonald´s when they travel, i get my espresso fix. sometimes nescafe just doesn´t cut it). i wandered into central lima for the day to check out the catacombs lurking in the depths underneath the iglesia san francisco. wow, alot of bones. the weird thing was that they were all categorized and artistically arranged. i couldn´t get over the fact that someone had to arrange all the human skulls and femur bones so that they look aesthecially pleasing. odd.

in an attempt to get to pisco for the annual wine festical, i somehow managed to end up in huacachina instead, a couple hours south. oops, overshot that one by just a little bit! but when i woke up the next morning and found myself in a mirage, or more specifically, a lush lagoon oasis smack dab in the middle of yellow-gold sand dunes, decided i´ve definitely made worse city mistakes on this trip.

huacachina from above

¿a mirage?

i´ve been out of the desert for about 4 days now, and am STILL finding sand in my shoes, in my purse, in my backpack, in my ears. why? because well, i was in the middle of the desert, and the main thing to do in the oasis (as we started calling it) is sandboarding and sand-duning.

us and the terminator

there were three drivers to choose from, and one looked exactly like terminator. two seats left in his car, right in the front, done and done! best. choice. EVER. he was absolutely insane, driving straight up the face of massive sand dunes, ripping back down, flying over bumps, catching air, nearly rolling far too many times to count, absolutely loving the screams from his all-chicaentourage. he would always pull up last, showing off to the other drivers, screeching to a halt and kicking up a massive dust storm.

we drove around to different dunes, getting out to strap ourselves to boards and ride down. they say ¨sand boarding,¨but because the boards are really just pieces of wood with no edges, you can´t really carve or turn like in snow. so for the last couple of runs down really REALLY big dunes, we slid down on our stomachs. i thought volcano boarding was an adrenaline rush. it ain´t got nothing on sandboarding. down the first dune i went the fastest and the furthest, the canadian guy who came in second stopped right after me. in an attempt to save face, he challenged me to a race down the biggest and baddest dune of all. we rubbed down our boards with extra wax, tres, dos, uno VAMOS, and took off, straight down a solid wall of sand. he was a bit ahead when he hit a rivet, flipped, and rolled, engulfing us both in a massive sand cloud. when i finally got down, he was still rolling, rolling rolling. EPIC bail. he was fine, sand in the eyes, but lived to tell the tale.

victory is mine!

terminator took the ride home slowly during the sunset, casually smoking a cigarette, the orange embers catching wind and floating off in the horizon. but once the sun set, he was off, not bothering to turn on lights, scoping out the untouched dunes, even once screaming himself. he owned those dunes. el rey de la arena, we called him. the king of the sand.

one dusky night we climbed all the way up a massive dune for sunset, our bare feet sinking deep into the sun-drenched sand, up to the ridge. the wind picked up. a massive sand storm, blowing tiny grains into every orfice, left me feeling so small in the midst of something so powerful. the wind swept across the sand, making the dune come alive, moving silently as the day turned to night.

until next time...

la selva

cut to a week later, when i´m washing the last of amazonian mud of my ankles and and picking the stray bits of leaves out of my tangled mane of hair. i gave up on counting my bevy of bites when i reached the mid-50´s. those buggers are RUTHLESS. literally, out for blood. my blood. my blanco sangre. they had a bellagio buffet on the backs of my legs, bottomless mimosas included. what is the purpose of a mosquito, anyway? to simply be the bane of my entire existence? and the only option is to spray myself down with napalm-strength repellent? so that i literally repell nature? who wants to repell nature? but i digress.

after the boat, i set myself up in iquitos for a couple of days to recoup. truth be told, i wanted to shower in something that didn't have the clarity of a muddy brown puddle. you know, those showers that actually make you feel clean?

iquitos itself is a beguiling, unique, chaotic whirlwind of a jungle city. and it all but crawls to a complete standstill between 12 and 4, where people seek refuge from the tropical heat in the form of a siesta, a cerveza, or sometimes both. a necessary tradition i was all too happy to indulge in. when in rome...

we decided to check out the floating shantytown of belen and the accompanying markets. hailing a canoe, juan and marlon motored us down the river, passing thatched houses, restaurants, even a discoteca (because amazonians like to party too) that were either built on stilts or affixed onto large logs. the water level ebbs and flows with the seasons, and the annual rains swell the river. taking a liking to us, marlon took us on a tour through his village, walking through a town that would be completely submerge in a mouth, taking us up the steps to his house with only a second floor, calling it "the venice of the amazon." close. but with less gelato and more mosquitoes. a crazy and fascinating way to live.

snapping turtles and their eggs, caimain, armadillo, completely dismembered chickens, long lines of cow intestines, monkey brains, live grubs, piranhas so fresh their gills were still desperately searching for water. small mounds of cumin and canela heaped on the spice isles, tables lined with exotic fruits that don't have english translations, tarps spread with piles of jungle tobacco. marlon pointed this and that out, "jungle fruit, jungle pig, jungle spaghetti, jungle tobacco, live tree grubs-you want to try?" a medicine aisles with cures for everything, peruvians bargaining and wheeling and dealing, refueling with fresh-squeezed juices and plates of ceviche, dodging tuk-tuks squeezing through the mix of people and products. chaotic and yet everything had a well-practiced aire about it. a far cry from the santa monica farmers market.

by chance, we met javier, a local shaman and medicine man. the girl i'd been traveling with for the past month is really interested in traditional and natural medicines, so aside from learning a ton about alternative remedies, i've gotten to tag along on some off-the-track adventures. like with javier. he grew up in the jungle, and for the last 3 days he's taken us into la selva, where we trekked to find various medicinal plants. as my knowledge is minimal, i was moreso there for comic relief, trying fruits and leaves i couldn't pronounce and using my broken spanish to crack jokes. with wellington boots and machetes we trudged along, forging our own trail, cutting through brush and vines, stopping for javier to explain this bark or that flower. it was amazing. it's like the plants talk to him.

some of his family invited us to stay with them at their hut, and one night participated in an ayahuasca ceremony, a plant known for its incredible medicinal and hallugenogenic properties. deep in the jungle. javier donned the traditional costume and headdress, draping himself with layers of necklaces and beads, chanting and music in the indigenous tongue of quechua. the amazon responded, opening it's skies with the infamous rain, so quickly we barely had time to take cover in the hut. lighting cracked, thunder reverberated throughout the trees, and the rainforest lived up to it's name. crawling under our mosquito nets, we fell asleep as the jungle came alive. i don't think you can get more authentic.

so i didn't do the traditional jungle tour, but i did get to stay in a local village, participate in a ceremony, eat lots of plants and meet a family of beautiful people. and that's pretty cool.

cargo boating

so i decided to go to the amazon.

first step: get as far east as possible.

this is easier when your bus doesn't break down. four times. turning a nice little 18 hour trip into a 30 hour one. complimented by a rapidly clogged bathroom, crying children (i wanted to cry too) and a continuous stream of blasting cumbia with 80's music videos as a special bonus. lets just say we had more than a couple beers at 7am during a 3 hour “rest stop” (aka breakdown numero 4). we finally made it tarapoto, sweaty, tired, and we weren't even in the jungle. a couple necessary days to recover, a hilarious sunday funday with some rowdy tarapoto locals (read: old drunk peruvian men) and we were shuttled to the port town of yurimagua.

then: become human cargo.

ships carrying anything and everything from cattle to corn ply the mighty amazon and her tributaries, and for the bargain deal of 50 soles, you can string up a hammock and come along for the ride. for four days, i was human cargo. the eduardo pulled away from the dock on a hot march afternoon, and a ramshackle jungle of hammocks, humans and goods slowly made their way to iquitos.


(home for 4 days!)

the second and third floors were for passengers and stuffed to the gills, forcing one to weave through the cacophony of colored fabrics and a maze of human cocoons. entire families swung side by side, sometimes one on top of the other. most days were spent hammock swinging, lazily watching the riverbanks of the amazon basin slowly slide by, flanked by foliage so lush its as though green gas oozed from the leaves, rising into the air and sticking to my already sweaty skin.


(a rainbow in the rainforest)

i longed for a cooling swim, but the muddy brown water of the churning river looked less than inviting. speaking of river water, that was the liquid used for cooking, cleaning, washing, etc etc etc. showers left you feeling a bit scummier than when you started. and i could have sworn a brown “soup” we were served for breakfast one morning was straight from the river. surprisingly, i didn't get sick. must have a stomach of steal!

i queued with the passengers for meals announced by clanging bell, clutching my own bowl and spoon, a greasy peruvian chef ladling a questionable stew from a large vat, picking my way through a mess of river water, rice and unidentifiable floating objects. a saving grace were the opportunistic children who would hop on board during quick cargo stops, flinging fresh mangos and banana leave wrapped-goodies into the mouths of hungry travelers.


(what i woke up to one morning. he took a liking to my hammock)

such cargo loadings also provided constant entertainment. every couple of hours the boat would dock on some small town, thatched huts emerging from the dense jungle, and the whole community would gather to watch the hauling process. cattle, bulls, plantains, yucca, roosters, pigs, sacks of corn, lumber, everything under the sun to be traded in iquitos was packed onto the first floor of the eduardo. no machines, no cranes, just men, muscle, sweat and what looked like back-breaking work.

as dusk approached, we were greeted by the most flamboyant, breath-taking, this-is-why-i-travel sunsets. an orchestra of colors painted the sky, dusty pink and fiery red, ever-changing as the sun dipped beyond the horizon. the indigo sky reflected onto the muddy waters of the amazon, giving it an incredible iridescent sheen for one captured moment, a vista no camera could ever truly record. and as if planned, on the last sunset two pink river dolphins surfaced, a rare species unique to this region of the world.


after 4 days though, i was done. stuck in a cycle of sleep, eat, read, sleep, eat, read, lather, rinse, repeat, i was never really tired and never really awake. sudden stops by the boat would send my hammock crashing into the person next to me. on one midnight stop, a large peruvian women decided to squeeze her hammock right close next to mine. and she had eaten one to many beans in her lifetime. oh, flatulence. i yearned to shower in something other than amazon water. you can only eat some many crackers. i began to despise my hammock. i think my muscles atrophied from lack of use. then i looked around, at the families packed with all their belongings, and remember that while i'm doing this for fun, for the experience, everyone else was just living. doing what they had to do. and that shut me up. everyone was ecstatic though, when iquitos, the largest city in the world not accessible by road, finally came into view. we arrived. i survived. welcome to the jungle.

next up: the floating markets of belen and a trip with a local medicine man into the AMAZON

cevichetarian

after crossing into peru, the bus dropped us in the busy transport hub of piura. i fell asleep in the idylic oasis of vilcabamba and woke up in india. i know i´ve never been, but with the traffic of mototaxis and tuk-tuks kicking up swirls of dusty clouds, markets busting with the days catch, smells of sweets and spices and everything in between wafting through the air, begging children following at my heels and the hot hot sun--seems like india, no? or maybe northern peru.

finding the city too overwhelming for an introduction, we randomly picked a nearby town, chiclayo, and hoped for something a little smaller. no such luck. the traffic was even worse. peruvian drivers are absolutely mad. no stoplights, no order, just chaotic cars playing a crazed form of chicken. i felt like ¨frogger¨ everytime i crossed the street, dodging my way through too many near-misses.

hello, huanchanco, such a welcome relief for big-city sore eyes. surrounded by rolling sand dunes and ruins of the ancient city of chan chan, the tiny fishing village is nestled right where the desert stops and the ocean begins. and underneath the arid sun of northern peru, there is only one way to cool down proper. the two c´s. cerveza and ceviche.

a good rule of thumb is to go where the locals go, and with the help of said locals we found the best place in town. fisherman in long reed boats, the same used 200 years ago, ply the waters of the pacific for the freshest catch of the day. cheersing with a frosty beer, i took my first bite of ceviche and waited. omigosh. smooth white hunks of fleshy corvina, marinated and ¨cooked¨ with lime, garnished with aji amarillo and thinly sliced onions, melted in my mouth. so simple and yet bursting with limey briny flavor. the acidity of the lime sings in perfect harmony with the heat of the chilis. omigosh. so good. clean, cooling, completely refreshing. the starchy staples of corn and sweet potato give the dish some sustenence. i think i´m in love. ceviche ceviche, where have you been all my life?



so it seems for the time being, i´m now a pescetarian. or, as i like to say, a cevichetarian.