La Universidad de Buenos Aires
My new school is beyond description (funny how that phrase is invariably followed by a description...) the building is an old cigarette factory, and sometimes you think it never changed over - there are ashtrays in all the hallways and EVERYONE smokes. It's definitely not the most modern or well-maintained building, but that's ok because the innumerable posters cover the peeling paint. I have never seen a campus so politically active. Everywhere you turn there are signs and posters for the Workers Party or the Evita Party or "Say No to Paying the Foreign Debt" (a hot topic in politics right now). The walls are literally covered floor to ceiling in every room, and the first floor is devoted to tables for each of the political parties to hand out literature. It is so ACTIVE! There's stuff going on in every corner and everywhere you look is another sign to join in a protest or come to a party...The student body is also entertaining. I have never seen so many hippies in one place in my life.
Dreads, long skirts, bicycles in the city, long, loose hair (on guys and girls), baggy cotton pants - it's all there. I feel positively preppy here.
Monedas (change)
At home, everybody hates change. You know, having it jingling in your pocket, weighing you down? Life is better with bills. Not so here. 1 peso pieces are worth their weight in gold and 50 ct pieces aren't far behind. The reason? There's a huge change shortage in the country, and buses will take nothing but change. So everyone is continually buying cheap candy to make change. It facilitates a thriving culture of kiosks - small stores that sell snacks and candy - on literally every corner, and makes one develop a very conniving business strategy ("if I buy something that's 2.50 with a 5$, I'll only get 50 cts, but if I give him 4$, he'll HAVE to give me a 1 peso piece!") I get a little thrill every time someone hands me change - hooray! another bus fare!
Medialunas
The preferred breakfast in BA is "Cafe con Medialunas" - a pastry derived from the croissant but subtly different. They're smaller, for one, and often skinny and very curved, more like a waning crescent moon than the half moon they're named after. The thicker ones look more like croissants, but are very sweet and generally smaller. And porteños (people from BA) say that nothing in the world tastes exactly like a medialuna, which I guess is a good reason to stay here - sipping coffee and watching this beautiful city go about its day.
Child Culture
the other day I saw a father and his young son walking down the street, and as I passed, the boy cried, "don't step on the cracks, papa!" so his father dutifully obeyed. Some things never change, no matter where you go in the world...
Tango Shoes
I spent the last 2 weeks on an intensive hunt for tango shoes. There are many little stores to buy from, all of whom make the shoes by hand and have their own distinct style. My favorite store was Comme Il Faut, the established queen of tango shoe stores, so much so that they never show more than a thumbnail of their shoes on the website for fear that someone will steal their designs. They make new designs daily, and they say you can tell when exactly a woman visited BA by which Comme Il Faut shoes she has on. When you ring the bell at the almost-unmarked door, the ladies of the store let you in and sit you down on a velvet sofa in what could be someone's sitting room, there is so little evidence of it being a shoe store. They then proceed to bring out boxes and boxes of shoes for you to try on. They say that the women only bring out the best shoes for the customers they really like, so I was a little nervous going in. But we got along well and they were very chatty and laughed when I asked for any and all blue shoes they had "we could have known that - it's obvious you like blue!" The shoes were gorgeous, and I felt gorgeous in them, but, after days of looking in every store I could find, I ended up buying shoes slightly more stable (3" instead of 4" stiletto), more my style, and 2/3 the price. Now I have shoes, I'm ready to dance the night away in as many tango bars as I can find - which is quite a few. Wish me luck!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Friday, April 02, 2010
Notes from Tango Town
I'm going to do this blog a little differently now.
Instead of narrating it as a story (I got to Buenos Aires, got familiar with the apartment, street, city, etc, went to school...) I'm compiling a set of musings on this city, so each blog will be shorter and more varied. Enjoy :)
There's something about this city that I just love. Maybe it's the architecture, a bizarre mix of gleeming skyscrapers and art nouveau - all curves and cupolas - and those cute little cottages all squished together like in Lima. Or maybe it's the parks that pop up wherever you turn, with playgrounds and tree-lined paths for walking the innumerable dogs of the city. Or perhaps how incredibly European it feels, stirring memories of Florence and Vienna, and yet with it has its own unique southern charm. Whatever it is, it's now my favorite city in the world.
I find this a little sad: La Florida, a street in the center of town, used to be Buenos Aires’ cultural center, where all the Parisian-taught modernist painters and writers and intellectuals used to hang out and discuss how to break society’s conventions like rhyme and realism. Now it is just a long street of shops, a huge outdoor mall, entirely run by convention.
Everyone says that below the equator toilets flush backwards (though I still haven't officially checked) but I never knew that locks were backwards too! It's taken me a while to get used to unlocking the doors to the right, but I have high hopes I'll get it before the end.
The subways have open windows. I’ve never seen open windows on subways before. It’s good, because it gives you a life-saving breeze when it’s crowded and stuffy, but it makes you wonder…what if someone threw a bottle out the window? Would the entire train derail and we’d all die, just because of litter?
I have to say my favorite subway line is A – it’s the oldest line, made in the early 20th century and still has the original cars with wooden benches and swinging flower-shaped lights. It gets equally crowded at rush hour, but somehow you feel better about being human sardines – remembering all those 1920’s era business men in their funny hats doing exactly the same thing almost 100 years ago...
Instead of narrating it as a story (I got to Buenos Aires, got familiar with the apartment, street, city, etc, went to school...) I'm compiling a set of musings on this city, so each blog will be shorter and more varied. Enjoy :)
There's something about this city that I just love. Maybe it's the architecture, a bizarre mix of gleeming skyscrapers and art nouveau - all curves and cupolas - and those cute little cottages all squished together like in Lima. Or maybe it's the parks that pop up wherever you turn, with playgrounds and tree-lined paths for walking the innumerable dogs of the city. Or perhaps how incredibly European it feels, stirring memories of Florence and Vienna, and yet with it has its own unique southern charm. Whatever it is, it's now my favorite city in the world.
I find this a little sad: La Florida, a street in the center of town, used to be Buenos Aires’ cultural center, where all the Parisian-taught modernist painters and writers and intellectuals used to hang out and discuss how to break society’s conventions like rhyme and realism. Now it is just a long street of shops, a huge outdoor mall, entirely run by convention.
Everyone says that below the equator toilets flush backwards (though I still haven't officially checked) but I never knew that locks were backwards too! It's taken me a while to get used to unlocking the doors to the right, but I have high hopes I'll get it before the end.
The subways have open windows. I’ve never seen open windows on subways before. It’s good, because it gives you a life-saving breeze when it’s crowded and stuffy, but it makes you wonder…what if someone threw a bottle out the window? Would the entire train derail and we’d all die, just because of litter?
I have to say my favorite subway line is A – it’s the oldest line, made in the early 20th century and still has the original cars with wooden benches and swinging flower-shaped lights. It gets equally crowded at rush hour, but somehow you feel better about being human sardines – remembering all those 1920’s era business men in their funny hats doing exactly the same thing almost 100 years ago...
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Peruvian Adventure Part 2
Back to blogging. Now, where was I? Oh yes, Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We left for the islands early in the morning (well, we left for the boat early in the morning…due to boatish delays I didn’t entirely understand we didn’t actually get out on the lake till 10 am, but in the meantime I beat Tim at chess ;) ) and spent the day on the Floating Islands of Los Uros, a truly amazing sight that seemed straight out of a fantasy book. These islands are made of buoyant reeds lashed together to create decent-sized floating islands that shine gold in the sunlight of the highest lake in the world. Each family has 10 square meters of reeds that they tie together to make a community, and, as our guide joked, “if you don’t like your neighbor, you just untie his island in the night and ‘chao!’” The people began constructing these islands when the invading Incas made it too dangerous to live on shore, so they were able to maintain their culture despite the invading Incas and the Spaniards. Now they have yielded to the invading tourists, but in a really cheering form of cultural tourism, showing their lives and letting people experience a day and a night on the island with them, which is what we did.
After Titicaca we returned to the desert coast and the beautiful city of Arequipa, where I had spent Christmas. We visited the Santa Catalina Monastery, justly renowned for its amazing architecture and vibrant primary colors. (see facebook) My favorites were the blue arched courtyards with red flowers placed to make the color that much more striking. Apparently in its heyday the nunnery was quite the place – rich women from Spain would come here with up to 4 slaves and countless luxuries (even discrete baby disposal services – not much of a cloister!) until the archbishop got wind of it and imposed stricter rules. Oh well.
We made our way up the coast to Nazca, famous for a group of designs in the desert only visible from the air. They’re amazing, a monkey, a spider, a tree with intricate roots, a guy waving with huge eyes… The Nazca people made them thousands of years ago and it’s a mystery why – messages to the gods? Communications with aliens? Sacred paths to walk praying for rain? – but to me the greater mystery is how they lasted so long unknown and unblemished. If no one knew about them until the 1920s, why didn’t anyone build a house on them, or a road? In fact, one design is partially broken by a highway, but out of almost 500, that’s pretty darn good. Tim and I flew over the lines in a tiny 5-seater biplane that tilted and turned to see each design clearly which was great…except it turned my stomach quite thoroughly as well. Oh well, I guess there’s a price to pay for seeing what was meant only for the gods.
From Nazca we bussed north to Ica, an oasis in the sandy desert, and Tim felt right at home in the tall dunes – just like Egypt, where he spent the past semester. We went sandboarding on the dunes, or rather, sandsledding for those of us who weren’t experienced snowboarders (oh, wait – that was all of us, I think Tim and I were the only ones in the group who’d ever seen snow and we don’t board) but it was really fun, especially since the dune buggy came to pick us up at the bottom of each hill and drive us to the top again :D The buggy then took us on the wildest ride I’ve ever experienced – it was as close to a roller coaster as you can get while still on the ground, and those of you who know how much I hate roller coasters will be surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
In Ica we also took an entertaining tour of the vineyards with a Swiss-Australian couple and a hilarious taxi driver guide who blasted 80’s rock in the car between vineyards. Tim tried a lot of wine and by the last stop the group was downing shot glass after shot glass of wine from huge clay pots and learning drinking cheers like, “Arriba! Abajo! Al centro! Adentro!” (up, down, to the center, inside!) or, even better, the Swiss cheer which went, “To the nipple, to the balls, to the middle, to the stomach”. Tim wasn’t staggering that much when we got back into the taxi…
We wanted to go to Paracas to see the famous Islas Ballestas, home of everything from sea lions to flamingos to penguins, but apparently the ocean was acting up and the waves were too high and stormy for anyone to visit the islands, so we skipped that and went straight to Lima, where we finally went to the center of the city and saw the Plaza de Armas and the yellow cathedral and the catacombs of San Francisco (awesome. Rooms full of skulls and passageways lined with femur bones…creeeepy!).
And the next day we were gone! Off into the air, back to America for a month-long winter vacation at home before returning to South America and my study abroad in Buenos Ayres.
After Titicaca we returned to the desert coast and the beautiful city of Arequipa, where I had spent Christmas. We visited the Santa Catalina Monastery, justly renowned for its amazing architecture and vibrant primary colors. (see facebook) My favorites were the blue arched courtyards with red flowers placed to make the color that much more striking. Apparently in its heyday the nunnery was quite the place – rich women from Spain would come here with up to 4 slaves and countless luxuries (even discrete baby disposal services – not much of a cloister!) until the archbishop got wind of it and imposed stricter rules. Oh well.
We made our way up the coast to Nazca, famous for a group of designs in the desert only visible from the air. They’re amazing, a monkey, a spider, a tree with intricate roots, a guy waving with huge eyes… The Nazca people made them thousands of years ago and it’s a mystery why – messages to the gods? Communications with aliens? Sacred paths to walk praying for rain? – but to me the greater mystery is how they lasted so long unknown and unblemished. If no one knew about them until the 1920s, why didn’t anyone build a house on them, or a road? In fact, one design is partially broken by a highway, but out of almost 500, that’s pretty darn good. Tim and I flew over the lines in a tiny 5-seater biplane that tilted and turned to see each design clearly which was great…except it turned my stomach quite thoroughly as well. Oh well, I guess there’s a price to pay for seeing what was meant only for the gods.
From Nazca we bussed north to Ica, an oasis in the sandy desert, and Tim felt right at home in the tall dunes – just like Egypt, where he spent the past semester. We went sandboarding on the dunes, or rather, sandsledding for those of us who weren’t experienced snowboarders (oh, wait – that was all of us, I think Tim and I were the only ones in the group who’d ever seen snow and we don’t board) but it was really fun, especially since the dune buggy came to pick us up at the bottom of each hill and drive us to the top again :D The buggy then took us on the wildest ride I’ve ever experienced – it was as close to a roller coaster as you can get while still on the ground, and those of you who know how much I hate roller coasters will be surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
In Ica we also took an entertaining tour of the vineyards with a Swiss-Australian couple and a hilarious taxi driver guide who blasted 80’s rock in the car between vineyards. Tim tried a lot of wine and by the last stop the group was downing shot glass after shot glass of wine from huge clay pots and learning drinking cheers like, “Arriba! Abajo! Al centro! Adentro!” (up, down, to the center, inside!) or, even better, the Swiss cheer which went, “To the nipple, to the balls, to the middle, to the stomach”. Tim wasn’t staggering that much when we got back into the taxi…
We wanted to go to Paracas to see the famous Islas Ballestas, home of everything from sea lions to flamingos to penguins, but apparently the ocean was acting up and the waves were too high and stormy for anyone to visit the islands, so we skipped that and went straight to Lima, where we finally went to the center of the city and saw the Plaza de Armas and the yellow cathedral and the catacombs of San Francisco (awesome. Rooms full of skulls and passageways lined with femur bones…creeeepy!).
And the next day we were gone! Off into the air, back to America for a month-long winter vacation at home before returning to South America and my study abroad in Buenos Ayres.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Touring Peru
I haven’t written in a while, I’m sorry. Somehow, with my boyfriend here, the things that used to take up my day – like reading Dostoevsky and writing my blog – have slipped through the cracks of my suddenly much busier days. So I’ll try to give a relatively brief account of what those days have been busy with.
I met Tim in the airport in Lima (complete with the classic slow motion running scene and sharing an ice cream in the airport) and we spent a few days in Lima, exploring the city. I’ve decided that if I ever live in a city, I want to live in Lima. The houses are so cute! Each one in its own special way – some look like little stone castles, some like mountain chalets, some like brightly colored boxes covered in flowers, some like Greek temples – and all tiny and nestled in right next to each other.
We spent our first weekend and anniversary in a lodge in the Corodillera Blanca (the White Range), one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Our cabin looked out on a glacier and craggy peaks in one direction and on a sloping valley and more, distant mountains in the other, dotted with potato fields and tiny red-roofed houses. The couple that runs the lodge was really cool; the husband works as an environmental consultant all over Peru and the wife – when she’s not running the lodge or taking guests on horse rides – is working on all sorts of community development projects, from a mothers group focusing on early nutrition and childhood development, to a community center to facilitate tourism in the area, to an afterschool program to develop children’s critical thinking and creativity. The day we arrived, Diana saw our violins and asked if we could come play for the children that afternoon, to introduce them to a new instrument and culture. We agreed happily, and went to play duets for the wide-eyed children who asked, when we told them that our bows were made of horse hair, if they could make a bow out of the tails of Diana’s horses.
On Monday we were off again, this time to Cuzco, the navel of the world…or at least of South American tourism.
Everyone wants to do the Inca Trail – the sacred road that leads to Machu Picchu – but it’s crowded and expensive, even during low season. So we found a local guide who took us around the back way to Machu Picchu, on a lesser used but still authentic Incan trail. We passed by (and spent a few hours at) hot springs on day 1, then followed the train tracks to Machu Picchu Town on day 2, and on day 3 climbed to Machu Picchu itself.
The hike to Machu Picchu was grueling. We woke up at 3:30 AM to start hiking at 4 in the pre-dawn rain, and by the time we got to the base of the 2,000 steps our ponchos were soaked through. Every stone step became a waterfall as we heaved our altitude-sore legs up and up and up. We finally arrived at the gate at 5:30 only to find it locked and with a 200-person line leading to it. Why the line? For tickets to Wayna Picchu, the sacred mountain overlooking MP, to which 400 tickets are given out each day to reduce traffic. The result: only the most hardcore tourists – willing to wake up long before dawn and climb to MP before the first bus – get the privilege of hiking for another hour of impossibly steep steps on already exhausted legs. That’s us! (Since that day, Tim has had a phobia of stone steps, even if they just lead to the entrance of a cathedral. )
When we finally entered MP, the rain had stopped, and the ruins were playing hide and seek with the flitting clouds. Seeing ancient ruins emerge from the mist as if for the first time was worth all the rain of the hike up (at least in hindsight). It was magical. Even better, by the time we climbed Wayna Picchu the sun had come out and we saw MP spread out in all its glory behind us.
MP, said our guide, was a place of knowledge, where priests and nobles came from all 4 corners of the Incan empire to learn astronomy, religion, history and the arts. It was also the home of the Chosen Women, sacred virgins who wove the cloth for the Inca’s robes and rooms and led the rituals worshiping the moon, the second most important deity of the Incas after the sun. I’ve got to say, if the archeologists are right, this must have been the most awesome university ever. And I thought Midd had a beautiful location. Our hills and corn fields can’t compare to those huge jungle-covered mountains rising from the mist like so many grasping fingers.
We took the bus down from MP, too tired to take another step, and slept the rest of the afternoon until our train left. Next Stop: Urubamba, a little town in the Sacred Valley near Cuzco.
We only spent one day in Urubamba, but it was enough – it was Tim’s 21st birthday, and to celebrate it, I took him paragliding over the Andes. Every spectacular view I see eclipses all the previous wonders: the cloud forest in Ecuador was amazing until I saw the mountains and farmland of Intag, which paled in comparison to a sunset over the mighty Amazon, which was buried in my memory by the majestic mountains and glaciers of the Corodillera Blanca, which were obscured by the vision of MP in the mist, which in turn disappeared before the mountains and lakes and golden-green fields of the Sacred Valley, seen from thousands of feet in the air. I can’t even describe why this place was so much more beautiful. Perhaps it was the colors –red earth, green fields, yellow flowers, blue mountains – perhaps it was the light – bright and sunny where we were but with dark rain clouds over the mountains which gave the day an eerie brightness that accentuated every shadow – perhaps it was nothing more than one of the most beautiful places on earth. Anyway, the important thing is, Tim enjoyed his birthday.
Then we went to Cuzco and spent a few days being accosted by cute children in traditional clothes asking us to take photos of them and their little alpacas (for a price, of course) and street vendors selling hats and paintings and silver necklaces. We also saw some impressive Incan ruins and Spanish cathedrals (often at the same time – the Spaniards had a habit of building churches on top of important Incan temples. Did they have the convenience of future tourists in mind?)
I have to say, this part of my trip is very different from anything I’ve done so far. First of all, I’m traveling with someone else, which is a welcome relief. But we’re also walking the “Gringo Trail” and stopping at all the tourist destinations of the country, which changes me from a traveler (as I was in Ecuador and my first month of Peru) to a tourist, plain and simple. It changes my associates, too. As a traveler, my friends (and they were all my friends, even if I didn’t ever get their names) were the adventurous backpackers traveling all South America in a year or the people with round-the-world airplane tickets coming from Malaysia or Namibia with exotic stories to share. Now, half the people I see are middle-aged Argentineans here on tours for their summer vacation. It changes my impression of myself. I’m not sure I like this new identity, but I can’t spend 2 months in Peru and not see MP, right? So I grit my teeth and try to remember that I probably know more about coffee farming in the highlands and banana transportation in the Amazon than these people will ever learn. And then I ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ with the rest of them at the ingenuity of Inca ruins and the colorful clothing of the indigenous women.
I met Tim in the airport in Lima (complete with the classic slow motion running scene and sharing an ice cream in the airport) and we spent a few days in Lima, exploring the city. I’ve decided that if I ever live in a city, I want to live in Lima. The houses are so cute! Each one in its own special way – some look like little stone castles, some like mountain chalets, some like brightly colored boxes covered in flowers, some like Greek temples – and all tiny and nestled in right next to each other.
We spent our first weekend and anniversary in a lodge in the Corodillera Blanca (the White Range), one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Our cabin looked out on a glacier and craggy peaks in one direction and on a sloping valley and more, distant mountains in the other, dotted with potato fields and tiny red-roofed houses. The couple that runs the lodge was really cool; the husband works as an environmental consultant all over Peru and the wife – when she’s not running the lodge or taking guests on horse rides – is working on all sorts of community development projects, from a mothers group focusing on early nutrition and childhood development, to a community center to facilitate tourism in the area, to an afterschool program to develop children’s critical thinking and creativity. The day we arrived, Diana saw our violins and asked if we could come play for the children that afternoon, to introduce them to a new instrument and culture. We agreed happily, and went to play duets for the wide-eyed children who asked, when we told them that our bows were made of horse hair, if they could make a bow out of the tails of Diana’s horses.
On Monday we were off again, this time to Cuzco, the navel of the world…or at least of South American tourism.
Everyone wants to do the Inca Trail – the sacred road that leads to Machu Picchu – but it’s crowded and expensive, even during low season. So we found a local guide who took us around the back way to Machu Picchu, on a lesser used but still authentic Incan trail. We passed by (and spent a few hours at) hot springs on day 1, then followed the train tracks to Machu Picchu Town on day 2, and on day 3 climbed to Machu Picchu itself.
The hike to Machu Picchu was grueling. We woke up at 3:30 AM to start hiking at 4 in the pre-dawn rain, and by the time we got to the base of the 2,000 steps our ponchos were soaked through. Every stone step became a waterfall as we heaved our altitude-sore legs up and up and up. We finally arrived at the gate at 5:30 only to find it locked and with a 200-person line leading to it. Why the line? For tickets to Wayna Picchu, the sacred mountain overlooking MP, to which 400 tickets are given out each day to reduce traffic. The result: only the most hardcore tourists – willing to wake up long before dawn and climb to MP before the first bus – get the privilege of hiking for another hour of impossibly steep steps on already exhausted legs. That’s us! (Since that day, Tim has had a phobia of stone steps, even if they just lead to the entrance of a cathedral. )
When we finally entered MP, the rain had stopped, and the ruins were playing hide and seek with the flitting clouds. Seeing ancient ruins emerge from the mist as if for the first time was worth all the rain of the hike up (at least in hindsight). It was magical. Even better, by the time we climbed Wayna Picchu the sun had come out and we saw MP spread out in all its glory behind us.
MP, said our guide, was a place of knowledge, where priests and nobles came from all 4 corners of the Incan empire to learn astronomy, religion, history and the arts. It was also the home of the Chosen Women, sacred virgins who wove the cloth for the Inca’s robes and rooms and led the rituals worshiping the moon, the second most important deity of the Incas after the sun. I’ve got to say, if the archeologists are right, this must have been the most awesome university ever. And I thought Midd had a beautiful location. Our hills and corn fields can’t compare to those huge jungle-covered mountains rising from the mist like so many grasping fingers.
We took the bus down from MP, too tired to take another step, and slept the rest of the afternoon until our train left. Next Stop: Urubamba, a little town in the Sacred Valley near Cuzco.
We only spent one day in Urubamba, but it was enough – it was Tim’s 21st birthday, and to celebrate it, I took him paragliding over the Andes. Every spectacular view I see eclipses all the previous wonders: the cloud forest in Ecuador was amazing until I saw the mountains and farmland of Intag, which paled in comparison to a sunset over the mighty Amazon, which was buried in my memory by the majestic mountains and glaciers of the Corodillera Blanca, which were obscured by the vision of MP in the mist, which in turn disappeared before the mountains and lakes and golden-green fields of the Sacred Valley, seen from thousands of feet in the air. I can’t even describe why this place was so much more beautiful. Perhaps it was the colors –red earth, green fields, yellow flowers, blue mountains – perhaps it was the light – bright and sunny where we were but with dark rain clouds over the mountains which gave the day an eerie brightness that accentuated every shadow – perhaps it was nothing more than one of the most beautiful places on earth. Anyway, the important thing is, Tim enjoyed his birthday.
Then we went to Cuzco and spent a few days being accosted by cute children in traditional clothes asking us to take photos of them and their little alpacas (for a price, of course) and street vendors selling hats and paintings and silver necklaces. We also saw some impressive Incan ruins and Spanish cathedrals (often at the same time – the Spaniards had a habit of building churches on top of important Incan temples. Did they have the convenience of future tourists in mind?)
I have to say, this part of my trip is very different from anything I’ve done so far. First of all, I’m traveling with someone else, which is a welcome relief. But we’re also walking the “Gringo Trail” and stopping at all the tourist destinations of the country, which changes me from a traveler (as I was in Ecuador and my first month of Peru) to a tourist, plain and simple. It changes my associates, too. As a traveler, my friends (and they were all my friends, even if I didn’t ever get their names) were the adventurous backpackers traveling all South America in a year or the people with round-the-world airplane tickets coming from Malaysia or Namibia with exotic stories to share. Now, half the people I see are middle-aged Argentineans here on tours for their summer vacation. It changes my impression of myself. I’m not sure I like this new identity, but I can’t spend 2 months in Peru and not see MP, right? So I grit my teeth and try to remember that I probably know more about coffee farming in the highlands and banana transportation in the Amazon than these people will ever learn. And then I ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ with the rest of them at the ingenuity of Inca ruins and the colorful clothing of the indigenous women.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
The last journey of 2009
I left Iquitos with a week to go before Christmas. The fact that it took me the whole week to get to Arequipa (where I spent Christmas and New Years with my friend Joaquin) still astonishes me. My concept of time in relation to travel is changed forever. When it takes 3 days to go from Iquitos to the nearest road, journeys counted in hours become mere trifles. 18 hours from Lima to Arequipa on a bus? Easy. And I wonder how the 4-hour drive to Boston could ever have seemed long.
The boat trip was enjoyable, though. I made friends with my neighbors – fellow travelers from Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia – and had wonderful long conversations about everything from 80s music to sex slaves in Mexico. When we finally stepped onto dry land again, I found myself suddenly sad – I’d been in the Amazon a whole month, gotten used to the heat, the rain, sleeping in a hammock, grown to love the awe-inspiring clouds and the smell of bananas, begun to expect to see river dolphins every afternoon, and here I was leaving…who knows when I’ll ever return?
The bus ride from Yurimaguas to Tarapoto was 2 hours of windy roads up into the mountains. How windy, you ask? Well, the first thing the bus attendant did when we set off was give everyone a little black plastic bag – not for trash, as I thought, but to be sick in, should the road affect you too much – and almost every single one got used by the time we arrived. I have never seen so many sick people in my life. Not the most pleasant experience.
From Tarapoto, my new friend Mayo (a jazz singer from Chile, living in Colombia) and I took the night bus to Trujillo, on the coast. I went to sleep in a jungle and woke to a desert – what a shock! For the girl used to relying on rainwater to wash her dishes every evening, used to the constant sounds of birds and insects from the forest, most of all used to being constantly surrounded by things green and growing, a dry and barren desert was hard to take.
I spent a day in Trujillo, going on a tour of Chan Chan, the largest pre-Columbian city in South America, and largest adobe city in the world. Some of the temples were amazingly well preserved, either because they were buried in sand until recent excavation or because the Chimor people themselves buried their temples inside newer temples, so underneath crumbling mud-brick walls you can find perfectly preserved paintings of gods and snakes and human sacrifices. It was fascinating. I have to say, though, if I were to choose an ancient Peruvian city to live in, I’d prefer Machu Picchu – true, the Chimor had great beaches, but I’ll take mountains and (especially) trees over that any day.
From Trujillo I went on down the coast, past Lima (and by ‘past’ I mean I spent 3 days wandering around the city) to Arequipa, where Joaquin lives. Joaquin was one of my best friends at UWC but I haven’t seen him since we graduated, so I was really excited to get here. And I was not disappointed. His whole family is super cool, and I passed a wonderful Christmas and New Years being entertained by silly jokes and intellectual conversations and lots and lots of illegal fireworks. Wow. I have never seen so many fireworks at one time. For both Christmas (or rather, midnight on Christmas Eve) and New Years, every single roof sets off fireworks, and in a city of almost 1million people, that’s insane. For about an hour after midnight, there were magnificent displays in every direction I looked. It was very much fun.
Some of the New Years traditions around here: 1. Wear yellow underwear for the New Year…apparently it’s good luck. So for the week between Christmas and New Year, all the streets were decked out little shops selling yellow underwear, yellow boxers, even lacy yellow thongs. It was crazy. 2. At the stroke of midnight, drink 12 shots of champagne, one per minute, each with a raisin in it. Why a raisin? I don’t know. It’s supposed to bring money in the coming year. I just ate the raisins. 3. If you plan on traveling, run around the block dragging your suitcase to ensure safe travels. I didn’t have my backpack with me, but I ran around with my shoulder bag and camera…that’s got to count for something.
Now I’m off to Lima again (on another short 18-hour bus ride) to pick up my darling Tim and start off on a wild tour of Peru’s greatest attractions. I’m so excited!
The boat trip was enjoyable, though. I made friends with my neighbors – fellow travelers from Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia – and had wonderful long conversations about everything from 80s music to sex slaves in Mexico. When we finally stepped onto dry land again, I found myself suddenly sad – I’d been in the Amazon a whole month, gotten used to the heat, the rain, sleeping in a hammock, grown to love the awe-inspiring clouds and the smell of bananas, begun to expect to see river dolphins every afternoon, and here I was leaving…who knows when I’ll ever return?
The bus ride from Yurimaguas to Tarapoto was 2 hours of windy roads up into the mountains. How windy, you ask? Well, the first thing the bus attendant did when we set off was give everyone a little black plastic bag – not for trash, as I thought, but to be sick in, should the road affect you too much – and almost every single one got used by the time we arrived. I have never seen so many sick people in my life. Not the most pleasant experience.
From Tarapoto, my new friend Mayo (a jazz singer from Chile, living in Colombia) and I took the night bus to Trujillo, on the coast. I went to sleep in a jungle and woke to a desert – what a shock! For the girl used to relying on rainwater to wash her dishes every evening, used to the constant sounds of birds and insects from the forest, most of all used to being constantly surrounded by things green and growing, a dry and barren desert was hard to take.
I spent a day in Trujillo, going on a tour of Chan Chan, the largest pre-Columbian city in South America, and largest adobe city in the world. Some of the temples were amazingly well preserved, either because they were buried in sand until recent excavation or because the Chimor people themselves buried their temples inside newer temples, so underneath crumbling mud-brick walls you can find perfectly preserved paintings of gods and snakes and human sacrifices. It was fascinating. I have to say, though, if I were to choose an ancient Peruvian city to live in, I’d prefer Machu Picchu – true, the Chimor had great beaches, but I’ll take mountains and (especially) trees over that any day.
From Trujillo I went on down the coast, past Lima (and by ‘past’ I mean I spent 3 days wandering around the city) to Arequipa, where Joaquin lives. Joaquin was one of my best friends at UWC but I haven’t seen him since we graduated, so I was really excited to get here. And I was not disappointed. His whole family is super cool, and I passed a wonderful Christmas and New Years being entertained by silly jokes and intellectual conversations and lots and lots of illegal fireworks. Wow. I have never seen so many fireworks at one time. For both Christmas (or rather, midnight on Christmas Eve) and New Years, every single roof sets off fireworks, and in a city of almost 1million people, that’s insane. For about an hour after midnight, there were magnificent displays in every direction I looked. It was very much fun.
Some of the New Years traditions around here: 1. Wear yellow underwear for the New Year…apparently it’s good luck. So for the week between Christmas and New Year, all the streets were decked out little shops selling yellow underwear, yellow boxers, even lacy yellow thongs. It was crazy. 2. At the stroke of midnight, drink 12 shots of champagne, one per minute, each with a raisin in it. Why a raisin? I don’t know. It’s supposed to bring money in the coming year. I just ate the raisins. 3. If you plan on traveling, run around the block dragging your suitcase to ensure safe travels. I didn’t have my backpack with me, but I ran around with my shoulder bag and camera…that’s got to count for something.
Now I’m off to Lima again (on another short 18-hour bus ride) to pick up my darling Tim and start off on a wild tour of Peru’s greatest attractions. I’m so excited!
Sunday, December 13, 2009
a Shaman in the Amazon
12-12-09
These past two weeks have been very different from any of my previous travelings. On my first day in Iquitos I found an Ayahuascero – a shaman who cures people with medicinal plants and ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic vine that is so common in these parts – and arranged to spend 2 weeks living with him and learning his practice. Needless to say, it has been a very interesting two weeks.
Jorge, the shaman, works mainly with a mixture of garlic, alcamfor, and sugar cane alcohol, into which he whistles one of over 150 songs of power and healing to give it specific properties, and then rubs or sprays it onto the body to heal his client. He then gives whatever remedy is needed and finally strengthens and protects the healing with tobacco smoke. This is the procedure for minor healings, but for anything major, he turns to the ayahuasca.
Ayahuasca is a vine that grows in the jungle which, combined with the leaves of the chacruna tree, is highly hallucinogenic, and is used for healings all throughout the Western Amazon. Jorge drinks ayahuasca twice a week at midnight, and in that altered state is able to see and cure what ails the people who come to him, anything from lost love to bad luck finding a job to cancer. He’s highly respected in the city, and says he has never been unable to cure his patients, who often come to him in desperation after the hospitals have tried and failed to help them.
He took me to the market on my first day, to get to know the medicinal plants you could buy there (did you know that cinnamon is good for nausea and tobacco is a powerful form of protection?) and later we went into the jungle to collect and learn about the plants you could only find in the forest.
One day he was asked to come to a jungle lodge to do an ayahuasca ceremony for a group of tourists, and, as his “student”, I tagged along. It was great – I got an almost-official jungle tour for free, complete with canoe trips looking for sloths (too quick for us, unfortunately, we didn’t see any), a night walk to see tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, and spiders (I have never been so very aware of the myriad ways to die in the jungle), and an ayahuasca ceremony. I decided to take the ayahuasca to see how the shaman does his work and what he meant by “seeing the illness”, so that night we skipped dinner and all went out to a tiny cabin and one by one drank a shot glass of thick, brown, foul-tasting liquid. I have to say, it was not the most pleasant experience. For someone who has never even been drunk, hallucinating for 4 hours was pretty intense, especially as it was accompanied by vomiting and violent shaking. I was disappointed that I didn’t have any fantastic spiritual revelations, but maybe my expectations were set too high. Anyway, I didn’t do that again, though I continued to study with Jorge for another week.
Now I’m off down the river again, this time towards the coast of Peru. I’m officially traveling to Arequipa to spend Christmas with Joaquin, a good friend from UWC, but I’m making a couple detours to check out pre-Incan ruins and sunny beaches. More on that when I get there.
These past two weeks have been very different from any of my previous travelings. On my first day in Iquitos I found an Ayahuascero – a shaman who cures people with medicinal plants and ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic vine that is so common in these parts – and arranged to spend 2 weeks living with him and learning his practice. Needless to say, it has been a very interesting two weeks.
Jorge, the shaman, works mainly with a mixture of garlic, alcamfor, and sugar cane alcohol, into which he whistles one of over 150 songs of power and healing to give it specific properties, and then rubs or sprays it onto the body to heal his client. He then gives whatever remedy is needed and finally strengthens and protects the healing with tobacco smoke. This is the procedure for minor healings, but for anything major, he turns to the ayahuasca.
Ayahuasca is a vine that grows in the jungle which, combined with the leaves of the chacruna tree, is highly hallucinogenic, and is used for healings all throughout the Western Amazon. Jorge drinks ayahuasca twice a week at midnight, and in that altered state is able to see and cure what ails the people who come to him, anything from lost love to bad luck finding a job to cancer. He’s highly respected in the city, and says he has never been unable to cure his patients, who often come to him in desperation after the hospitals have tried and failed to help them.
He took me to the market on my first day, to get to know the medicinal plants you could buy there (did you know that cinnamon is good for nausea and tobacco is a powerful form of protection?) and later we went into the jungle to collect and learn about the plants you could only find in the forest.
One day he was asked to come to a jungle lodge to do an ayahuasca ceremony for a group of tourists, and, as his “student”, I tagged along. It was great – I got an almost-official jungle tour for free, complete with canoe trips looking for sloths (too quick for us, unfortunately, we didn’t see any), a night walk to see tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, and spiders (I have never been so very aware of the myriad ways to die in the jungle), and an ayahuasca ceremony. I decided to take the ayahuasca to see how the shaman does his work and what he meant by “seeing the illness”, so that night we skipped dinner and all went out to a tiny cabin and one by one drank a shot glass of thick, brown, foul-tasting liquid. I have to say, it was not the most pleasant experience. For someone who has never even been drunk, hallucinating for 4 hours was pretty intense, especially as it was accompanied by vomiting and violent shaking. I was disappointed that I didn’t have any fantastic spiritual revelations, but maybe my expectations were set too high. Anyway, I didn’t do that again, though I continued to study with Jorge for another week.
Now I’m off down the river again, this time towards the coast of Peru. I’m officially traveling to Arequipa to spend Christmas with Joaquin, a good friend from UWC, but I’m making a couple detours to check out pre-Incan ruins and sunny beaches. More on that when I get there.
Friday, December 04, 2009
The Banana Boat
After five days in Pantoja, the cargo boat finally pushed off. We were all very excited to be going at last, but instead of going downriver towards Iquitos, the boat went upriver for most of the afternoon, picking up bananas and chickens from tiny communities on tributaries of the Napo. And that was how the first three days went – we’d move for about 20 minutes and stop for an hour, loading cargo from everyone who could wave at us from the shore. One afternoon we found ourselves passing a house we recognized as where we’d woken up that morning – we’d spent almost the whole day going up and down a tributary and were only just then starting downriver for the day. But none of us had any pressing business to attend to, so we shrugged at the delay and continued our card game.
Cards were indispensable for the trip. We spent a couple hours every day playing cards, as well as creating a backgammon board out of masking tape and seeds for pieces, and playing chess on my little handmade Incas vs. Conquistadores set. And reading. Lots of swinging in hammocks and reading. And watching the river go by or (as was more often the case in the first days) watching them load the boat. PETA would have a fit, watching this boat get loaded. Pigs were dragged to the boat by their hind legs, their noses making tracks in the dirt, and then thrown onto the metal floor to be confined below deck in a dark and increasingly stinky hold. Bulls, too, were manhandled onto the boat (though it took a lot of men – about 10/bull, pulling on ropes attached to his horns and legs) and then tied up in a tiny pen which at least was in the open air. And chickens in woven baskets kept flooding the boat, going everywhere, under peoples’ hammocks, on the roof, next to the bananas…did I mention the bananas? They were everywhere – they filled the hold (except the part that had chickens and pigs) and then the open part at the front of the boat in stacks 8 ft. high, and then finally up on the top deck with the passengers. Robin, the Dutch guy, calculated that there must have been at least 10,000 bunches of bananas on the boat.
We kept a weather eye out for river dolphins, and on the second day were rewarded by a spectacular show. We were stopped to pick up – you guessed it – bananas, at a junction of two rivers, and looked out to see five or six little grey dolphins and a pink dolphin splashing around in the current. It was a rare sight – normally grey dolphins are solitary, or so I hear, but here were a half dozen obviously playing together. For once we were glad the stop was especially long, because it gave us a long time to watch the dolphins.
After three days, we arrived in Santa Clotilde, a town about halfway to Iquitos. It was quite a shock – after three days of boat and another week before then of a tiny border town, Santa Clotilde was like a metropolis. They had roads – well, sidewalks, I guess – complete with the occasional motorcycle, and shops, and restaurants, and streetlights…it was overwhelming. We disembarked to walk around and restock on crackers and yogurt, and enjoy the fresh air, free of the smell of bananas and chickens.
We were halfway to Iquitos by map, but to our surprise, the trip was almost over. We had filled the boat to the gills, and so could make no more stops and the rest of the trip just flew by. The next thing we knew, we were entering the Amazon (exactly like the Napo except bigger) and the next evening we docked in Iquitos. We decided to spend one last night in our hammocks and save on hostel money – bad decision. At 4:30 the crew tramped up the stairs and began unloading the bananas and chickens from our deck and between the crowing roosters and the shouting men, none of us could get back to sleep. By 6 am we gave up and tramped off the boat for the last time, looking forward to exploring this legendary city.