"Feliz Cumpleaños a tí. Feliz Cumpleaños a tí. Sorry I don´t know the rest of the song." John sang softly, as the waiter lit the long white candle in a small bolivian pottery vase.
I clapped my hands, "That´s fun and unexpected!"
"They didn´t have any cake, so I had to get you a banana split for your birthday dessert."
That was just fine by me. In fact the whole day had been a nice, calm celebration of the day of my birth.
True, there had been no tin foil crown, toilet paper streamers and gold cuttlery at the breakfast table, my mom´s off key voice, singing the special birthday song to wake me up, "It´s your birthday. It´s Jenny´s birthday. It´s your birthday. Birthday, today. Oh yeah!"
But, John had remembered the song and told me that I got to pick any breakfast I wanted. After all, that was the Steiner tradition. And even though I couldn´t pick my dad´s chocolate chip pancakes or bulls eye eggs with a slice of cheese for a smile, the Bolivian style breakfast with fried plantains and eggs were quite tasty and set us up for the long walk through the Bolivian countryside to La Gruta del San Pedro.
There had not been twizzlers, peanut m&ms and silly decorations or gag gifts from Ross at Zeitgeist, but nevertheless, John and I made due celebrating on our own in Sorata, Bolivia with a visit to a local cave, complete with its own laguna and a celebratory bottle of Chilean wine for five whole American dollars! That´s right, we broke the bank for my birthday.
We even met a friend, a man from Galicia, Spain now living in this sleepy town at the base of la cordillera real. He joined us at the end of our birthday salad and pizza, chain smoking, sipping a beer and regaling us with strange stories of his torid youth. When he jumped up suddenly, claiming to need to get money to pay his bill, we thought nothing of it. But upon his return, he slipped me a birthday gift under the table in a small plastic bag. . . possiby something that might have been better suited for my brother. But as they say, it´s the thought that counts.
And the day had indeed been full of happy, fun, birthday thoughts.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Rides with strangers
Yesterday, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
I am not totally sure what exactly was going on, but everything just felt completely wrong. Physically, I was exhausted. It felt as if there was a large anvil resting on my chest, making normal breathing a virtual impossiblity. My head pounded, my glands hurt, my throat ached.
I chalked it up to all the traveling I had been doing. After all, I had just traveled from Copacabana, Bolivia 23 hours by bus to arrive in Lima and take an overnight flight to Miami, followed by a shorter flight to Philly to surprise my dad for his 60th surprise party. In the end, I just couldn´t miss it. Then after the party, I had rented a car, driven the three hours to Brooklyn to surprise my grandparents. I figured I might as well, seeing as how close I was. So after the three hour drive back, followed by the inquisition of American airport security and two flights to arrive back in Lima, I just couldn´t face another 23 hour bus ride back to Bolivia. Plus, John wouldn´t be back to Cuzco, Peru from his Machu Pichu treking till Friday night, which meant that we wouldn´t be seeing each other in Bolivia till at least Saturday night or Sunday morning at best. So I chose, (wisely, though not all that economically) to fly to Cusco, at least putting me closer to seeing John and saving myself 14 hours on a bus. After all time is money.
So the physical exhaustion I sort of understood. I was back at altitude. I had been living in the same clothes for over a week. I had taken buses, trains, planes, cars and foot all over the northern and southern hemisphere. I was beat. But that didn´t explain my emotional state. I sat there on the edge of the dorm room bed, looking around the room biting back my tears. I wasn´t alone and crying definitely would have attracted looks if not questions. And that I just couldn´t handle at 6:50 in the morning. The bed across from me was unmade and I wondered how early its occupant had risen to depart for his or her next destination. The bed next to it was also vacant, but a sleeping bag and small backpack told that he would be back later in the day. A girl with dark curly hair looked frantically through her bag as if she had misplaced something of extreme importance and in the other two beds, I could make out the tops of two sleeping head, a young man I had met the day before and a crop of white blonde hair that could have belonged to either a boy or a girl. They were all traveling alone, just like me. Only unlike me, they probably weren´t waiting to meet back up with their travel partner. I wasn´t really traveling alone. Not this time. And anyway, being alone could not be the reason I felt this sad. I just didn´t get lonely like that. It wasn´t in my "fiercely independent" nature. It had taken years to even consider myself part of a we.
So what was it? Was it the quick trip home, the disruption to this time abroad, far from credit cards and convenience stores and traffic lights? Was it the look on my father´s face when he saw my brother and I standing in the restaurant as we yelled, "Surprise!" His eyes filled up and he just stood there, dumbfounded, shaking his head. Or maybe it was having seen my grandparents in their varying states of fragility, overwhelmed with joy that I was there and immediately equally saddened that I wouldn´t be staying more than one night before heading back to places they were sure were more dangerous than their apartment in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I even speculated that it could have been this feeling that I have been having these last few weeks as I talk to my friends living and working or volunteering in communities around the world. This feeling that somehow this travel is self indulgent and egotisitical and that I would have been better off setting up camp in an underserved community, volunteering for the year rather than galavanting off to broaden my own horizons.
But none of it specifically felt like what was wrong and I wasn´t about to spend another day wallowing in my exhaustion and self pity, while John was off having the adventure of a lifetime. I was way too competitive for that. So I picked myself up, showered in the luke warm, electrically heated shower and wished for the third time that I hadn´t given all our soap to John. I donned my uniform for the week and headed out to see some of the ruins I hadn´t had time to see on my first visit to Cuzco three years earlier.
I had been told the day before that there were ruins to the south that were less touristy than the ones heading northeast to Machu Pichu, and since I had seen many of the must see attractions previously, that sounded just fine to me. So after a leisurely breakfast, a second coffee at an outdoor cafe, some internet time and reading half of my new novel set out to find the bus heading to los Urcos. In theory, that would allow me to head to the town of Tipon, famous for its cuy al horno (baked guinea pig), from where I would take a combi (Peru´s version of a guagua) and arrive at the archeological site of Tipón.
After walking for well over an hour and getting at least six sets of directions that got me no closer to the bus terminal for los Urcos, I finally arrived at a dusty parking lot with three small buses. They were obviously local buses as packages, lugage and large plastic and cloth wrapped sacks were being tied to the roof and about 40 Peruvians sat waiting patiently aboard the bus for the last remaining seats to be sold before departing. I boarded the bus and sat down next a man in his late forties. A baseball hat covered wavey hair and as I sat down next to him, he smiled a wide toothed smile that showed off the gold encircling many of his front teeth and deepened the smile lines around his eyes.
I sat on the bus, overheating in my tank top, wondering how so many people could be dressed in long pants or skirts and long sleeved wool sweaters, babies tied to young mothers´backs in brightly colored blankets. "How much does it cost to ride the bus?" I asked the man next to me, figuring it was better to have the price before the money collector attempted to collect from me the fare plus the local gringa tax.
"Where are you going?" he asked fiddling with two gold sol coins in his lap.
"To Tipón."
"I think it´s either 1.50 or 2 soles to Tipón. It´s 2 all the way to los Urcos, but I can´t be sure when the price goes down. You going to Pikillacta too? What about Andahuaylillas? Lots of nice birds there."
"Well, right now I had planned to go to Tipón. Do you think there´s time to go to all three?"
He shrugged and I nodded as the bus roared to life and we pulled out of the dusty parking lot onto la avenida de las culturas.
As it turned out, Sebastian was a wealth of knowledge and by the time we reached Tipón, I had learned a ton about the local region, the archeology, the Incan history and why I was better of getting off in Andahuaylillas with him and then working my way back to Pikillacta and Tipón. He seemed nice enough and when he told me that he collected kids for a living, that sealed the pact. He either collected them as prisoners in his basement for child slave labor, or the guy was ok. I decided to take the risk and as we got off the bus in the small cobblestone town of Andahuaylillas, I sent up a prayer to universe to protect me.
Of course, before getting these so called children, we had a must visit to the local catholic church, for which they are quite famous with the tourists. There we met two tour guides in training, who were only two happy to offer up a bit too much information on many of the patron saints, Mary and of course, the saint of tremors, who protects societies from earthquakes. (Too bad that saint doesn´t live in San Francisco. I would feel a whole lot safer then.)
Luckily for me, Sebastian really did have a job escorting children from school to their homes for 2 soles a day per child (not a bad job considering how hard it is to make a sol around here). As we approached a long white van, not unsimilar to the guaguas of Nicaragua, the colectivos of Bolivia and of course, the combis of Peru, I could see the kids already waiting around the van. They ranged in age from five to sixteen and all of them immediately decided I was their "profe" (teacher) and that on the ride down to Pikillacta, I could teach them something about the states, my life, my hair and of course American dollars.
We were old friends by the time we reached the ruins, children grabbing me by the hand to pull me this way and that, to show me the left over Incan houses, churches and schools. They had all been to the site a million times before, but never with a celebrity with hair like Shakira, a shiny nose ring and a digital camera. I was a hit, which of course, was just fine by me. Spending a few hours with eager children is right up my alley.
My sour mood long since forgotten, we took turns taking pictures among the ruins, first Sebastian with the kids, then me with the kids, then all of us with one of the kid snapping the picture. They found me yellow grasshoppers and small, black, slimy snails that I begged them not to smash on the rocks for fun. I was having such a good time that I completely forgot that they would have to go home to their houses. This was an unauthorized field trip by Sebastian, and there was no way he wanted to lose this job. So with exaggerated kisses, hugs and teary good-byes, they left me standing among the Incan ruins, blue skies spotted with billowy white clouds and long, thin cacti curling up toward the sky.
I smiled and sat down on a set of steps to eat a luna bar, thinking how fortunate I was and then realizing that it was after three, thought I should start my trip back to Cuzco. So much for Tipón and the laguna. Oh well, there was always next time and you never knew when that might be.
I reached the street and stood between the white line and a drainage ditch, poised to flag down the buses as they headed from Urcos back to Cuzco. I knew how to flag a bus, a wave with one finger and I was ready. When the first bus passed me by, full and waving back, I didn´t give it much thought. It was early and surely the next bus would stop to pick me up.
I think it was probably the fourth bus that passed me, all smiles and waves, when I finally decided to begin walking toward Cuzco. Moving in the direction of my final destination couldn´t hurt. As the fifth bus passed, my dark mood slowly returning, I realized I would have no choice but to hitchhike. So offering up yet another prayer to the universe, I began holding out my hand to buses, cars and trucks alike. Someone had to be heading to Cuzco and have room for little ole me. After all, people rode on the tops of trucks here and the sides of buses. Surely someone would push over to let me in their van.
Finally after 15 minutes and measured breathing, a truck with a tarp covering it´s cargo pulled over to the side. I ran to catch up with it as a young boy about 20 opened the door, "Where you headed?"
"Cuzco?" I pleaded as I began to climb the steps to the truck.
"Well, we´re headed to Manu," the driver said, "but we can drop you at the crossroads."
As the expression goes, beggars can´t be chooser, so I settled for the 5 kilometer ride to the intersection and hoped that someone else would be as nice on the next road. The two men, carrying thousands of kilos of coca leaves were headed to Manu to drop their shipment and offered to take me, that is if I was interested in changing my plans and spending a few days in the Jungle. They assured me they´d be back by Sunday, but didn´t seem to mind much when I politely declined.
At the intersection, a group of men standing by the side of the road, urged me not to wait with them as it made their chances of a bus stopping even slimmer and I was sure to get a ride from a truck or car passing by. "Everyone´s real nice round here," they said in a local accent eating the ends of their words. "You can go with jus bout anyone." They nodded and laughed and I continued on my way, wondering if they were laughing at me or with me, knowing full well what my father would say if he saw me here.
I walked slowly in the afternoon light, Tipón´s ruins on the far side of the corn fields, a weeping willow completing the scene. For some reason as I came across a field of wild purple flowers along side of the river, I felt a pressure in my chest I can only describe as sadness or melancholy. But not the bad kind, the kind that makes you feel that much more alive and I breathed the air in deeply as more cars and trucks passed me, with no intention of slowing, let alone stopping.
A bus passed me then, full and waving and as they went by, I thought for sure I saw the men who had urged me on. They were on their way home. But I guess they had worked all day and were tired, really what had I done that I couldn´t walk a little longer.
Finally, just as I was starting to wonder if it really was a four hour walk to Cuzco, a large blue truck pulled over into the shoulder, the passenger door swung open and I ran toward my ride. I would not arrive in Cuzco in the middle of the night, freezing, starving or possibly abducted.
The driver was one of those non descript ages. He could have been 30 or he could have been 60, with deep creases next to eyes and a big puffy winter jacket. The cab of the truck was decorated with hanging amulets, a Jesus, a Mary, maybe Saint Christopher, the protector of travelers. As I sat on the far side of the truck, backpack on my lap, hand on the doorhandle, Wilbur began to tell me his life story. A truck driver for more years than he cared to remember (that did nothing for my age calculation), he had done the trip from Arequipa to Cuzco, carrying water for the Coca Cola company so many times he could do it with his eyes closed (I hoped he wouldn´t).
We had the same conversations I always have with locals. What was I doing here? Where was I from? Why did I speak Spanish so well if I was from the U.S.? And of course, where was my husband. That question, one that normally offends me, as if a woman could never be traveling alone without someone there to protect her, for some reason in that moment, I answered, "Oh he´s back in Cuzco. Didn´t feel that well today after his trek to Machu Pichu." Strange as the guy had done nothing out of the ordinary but make small talk, and yet I knew for some reason, it was important for him to think I had a husband. Someone waiting on my safe return.
We drove in silence then, as we passed the signs for the famous guinea pigs baked to perfection, piles of batteries being sold roadside and stray dogs, sheep and cows that wandered out into the street at will.
After the better part of an hour, Wilbur remarked about his insatiable thirst and, we pulled onto a side street before I could think of a good reason why I could not stop for a chicha. I had had chicha before, a sweet corn and fruit drink that sometimes came with our menus of the day and so was at least relieved he hadn´t ordered a beer or pisco sour before continuing to drive me the rest of the way to Cuzco.
So you can imagine my surprise when an elderly, bent backed man set a glass of foamy yellow liquid before me, easily the size of two pints of beer. I pushed the glass to the middle of the table, waiting for our smaller glasses to come. Wilbur laughed, pushed it back toward me and told me he would have his own.
I sipped slowly, watching the women sipping the same foamy, yellow liquid, as they sat on the dirt ground by the fire. By now, Wilbur had had his shoes shined, finished half his chicha, ordered a second and was talking about a trip we could take before he had to head back to Arequipa with his empty truck. He suggested that we meet the next day at two at a plaza on the far side of town and I mentioned John again, swirled my 3/4 full drink and pretened to not understand when Wilbur encouraged me to drink up. With a luna bar for lunch, and breakfast a distant memory, I was in not hurry to drink this alcoholic version of chicha.
Finally, Wilbur stood up and motioned for me to follow. I suggested he go on with out me, but Wilbur, Peruvian "gentleman" that he was, would hear nothing of it, opened my door and as I climbed up, disappeared around the back of the truck. I sat in the cab, wondering what he could possibly doing for so long and fiddled with the seatbelt. I wouldn´t put it on this time, just in case I needed to make a quick escape.
We drove up the bumpy road, rounded a corner past a local market and avoided a bicycle cab, two fighting dogs and a truck full of orangeds as we headed back to the main road. It was mintues before I realized I was holding my breath, and as I let it out slowly, I realized that Wilbur was no longer talking.
Abruptly he pulled over to the side of the road, indicating a blue sign, "The bus will stop here and take you right to Cuzco center." I nodded and pushed the door open quickly before he could change his mind.
"Thanks! See you!" I cried the door already closing as I hit the pavement. He pulled away as a Combi pulled up yelling destinations I did not know. I smiled and squeezed myself into the van, my knees touching the woman facing me. I didn´t care where we were headed as I looked out onto the crowded street. I was safe, my dark mood a distant memory.
I am not totally sure what exactly was going on, but everything just felt completely wrong. Physically, I was exhausted. It felt as if there was a large anvil resting on my chest, making normal breathing a virtual impossiblity. My head pounded, my glands hurt, my throat ached.
I chalked it up to all the traveling I had been doing. After all, I had just traveled from Copacabana, Bolivia 23 hours by bus to arrive in Lima and take an overnight flight to Miami, followed by a shorter flight to Philly to surprise my dad for his 60th surprise party. In the end, I just couldn´t miss it. Then after the party, I had rented a car, driven the three hours to Brooklyn to surprise my grandparents. I figured I might as well, seeing as how close I was. So after the three hour drive back, followed by the inquisition of American airport security and two flights to arrive back in Lima, I just couldn´t face another 23 hour bus ride back to Bolivia. Plus, John wouldn´t be back to Cuzco, Peru from his Machu Pichu treking till Friday night, which meant that we wouldn´t be seeing each other in Bolivia till at least Saturday night or Sunday morning at best. So I chose, (wisely, though not all that economically) to fly to Cusco, at least putting me closer to seeing John and saving myself 14 hours on a bus. After all time is money.
So the physical exhaustion I sort of understood. I was back at altitude. I had been living in the same clothes for over a week. I had taken buses, trains, planes, cars and foot all over the northern and southern hemisphere. I was beat. But that didn´t explain my emotional state. I sat there on the edge of the dorm room bed, looking around the room biting back my tears. I wasn´t alone and crying definitely would have attracted looks if not questions. And that I just couldn´t handle at 6:50 in the morning. The bed across from me was unmade and I wondered how early its occupant had risen to depart for his or her next destination. The bed next to it was also vacant, but a sleeping bag and small backpack told that he would be back later in the day. A girl with dark curly hair looked frantically through her bag as if she had misplaced something of extreme importance and in the other two beds, I could make out the tops of two sleeping head, a young man I had met the day before and a crop of white blonde hair that could have belonged to either a boy or a girl. They were all traveling alone, just like me. Only unlike me, they probably weren´t waiting to meet back up with their travel partner. I wasn´t really traveling alone. Not this time. And anyway, being alone could not be the reason I felt this sad. I just didn´t get lonely like that. It wasn´t in my "fiercely independent" nature. It had taken years to even consider myself part of a we.
So what was it? Was it the quick trip home, the disruption to this time abroad, far from credit cards and convenience stores and traffic lights? Was it the look on my father´s face when he saw my brother and I standing in the restaurant as we yelled, "Surprise!" His eyes filled up and he just stood there, dumbfounded, shaking his head. Or maybe it was having seen my grandparents in their varying states of fragility, overwhelmed with joy that I was there and immediately equally saddened that I wouldn´t be staying more than one night before heading back to places they were sure were more dangerous than their apartment in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I even speculated that it could have been this feeling that I have been having these last few weeks as I talk to my friends living and working or volunteering in communities around the world. This feeling that somehow this travel is self indulgent and egotisitical and that I would have been better off setting up camp in an underserved community, volunteering for the year rather than galavanting off to broaden my own horizons.
But none of it specifically felt like what was wrong and I wasn´t about to spend another day wallowing in my exhaustion and self pity, while John was off having the adventure of a lifetime. I was way too competitive for that. So I picked myself up, showered in the luke warm, electrically heated shower and wished for the third time that I hadn´t given all our soap to John. I donned my uniform for the week and headed out to see some of the ruins I hadn´t had time to see on my first visit to Cuzco three years earlier.
I had been told the day before that there were ruins to the south that were less touristy than the ones heading northeast to Machu Pichu, and since I had seen many of the must see attractions previously, that sounded just fine to me. So after a leisurely breakfast, a second coffee at an outdoor cafe, some internet time and reading half of my new novel set out to find the bus heading to los Urcos. In theory, that would allow me to head to the town of Tipon, famous for its cuy al horno (baked guinea pig), from where I would take a combi (Peru´s version of a guagua) and arrive at the archeological site of Tipón.
After walking for well over an hour and getting at least six sets of directions that got me no closer to the bus terminal for los Urcos, I finally arrived at a dusty parking lot with three small buses. They were obviously local buses as packages, lugage and large plastic and cloth wrapped sacks were being tied to the roof and about 40 Peruvians sat waiting patiently aboard the bus for the last remaining seats to be sold before departing. I boarded the bus and sat down next a man in his late forties. A baseball hat covered wavey hair and as I sat down next to him, he smiled a wide toothed smile that showed off the gold encircling many of his front teeth and deepened the smile lines around his eyes.
I sat on the bus, overheating in my tank top, wondering how so many people could be dressed in long pants or skirts and long sleeved wool sweaters, babies tied to young mothers´backs in brightly colored blankets. "How much does it cost to ride the bus?" I asked the man next to me, figuring it was better to have the price before the money collector attempted to collect from me the fare plus the local gringa tax.
"Where are you going?" he asked fiddling with two gold sol coins in his lap.
"To Tipón."
"I think it´s either 1.50 or 2 soles to Tipón. It´s 2 all the way to los Urcos, but I can´t be sure when the price goes down. You going to Pikillacta too? What about Andahuaylillas? Lots of nice birds there."
"Well, right now I had planned to go to Tipón. Do you think there´s time to go to all three?"
He shrugged and I nodded as the bus roared to life and we pulled out of the dusty parking lot onto la avenida de las culturas.
As it turned out, Sebastian was a wealth of knowledge and by the time we reached Tipón, I had learned a ton about the local region, the archeology, the Incan history and why I was better of getting off in Andahuaylillas with him and then working my way back to Pikillacta and Tipón. He seemed nice enough and when he told me that he collected kids for a living, that sealed the pact. He either collected them as prisoners in his basement for child slave labor, or the guy was ok. I decided to take the risk and as we got off the bus in the small cobblestone town of Andahuaylillas, I sent up a prayer to universe to protect me.
Of course, before getting these so called children, we had a must visit to the local catholic church, for which they are quite famous with the tourists. There we met two tour guides in training, who were only two happy to offer up a bit too much information on many of the patron saints, Mary and of course, the saint of tremors, who protects societies from earthquakes. (Too bad that saint doesn´t live in San Francisco. I would feel a whole lot safer then.)
Luckily for me, Sebastian really did have a job escorting children from school to their homes for 2 soles a day per child (not a bad job considering how hard it is to make a sol around here). As we approached a long white van, not unsimilar to the guaguas of Nicaragua, the colectivos of Bolivia and of course, the combis of Peru, I could see the kids already waiting around the van. They ranged in age from five to sixteen and all of them immediately decided I was their "profe" (teacher) and that on the ride down to Pikillacta, I could teach them something about the states, my life, my hair and of course American dollars.
We were old friends by the time we reached the ruins, children grabbing me by the hand to pull me this way and that, to show me the left over Incan houses, churches and schools. They had all been to the site a million times before, but never with a celebrity with hair like Shakira, a shiny nose ring and a digital camera. I was a hit, which of course, was just fine by me. Spending a few hours with eager children is right up my alley.
My sour mood long since forgotten, we took turns taking pictures among the ruins, first Sebastian with the kids, then me with the kids, then all of us with one of the kid snapping the picture. They found me yellow grasshoppers and small, black, slimy snails that I begged them not to smash on the rocks for fun. I was having such a good time that I completely forgot that they would have to go home to their houses. This was an unauthorized field trip by Sebastian, and there was no way he wanted to lose this job. So with exaggerated kisses, hugs and teary good-byes, they left me standing among the Incan ruins, blue skies spotted with billowy white clouds and long, thin cacti curling up toward the sky.
I smiled and sat down on a set of steps to eat a luna bar, thinking how fortunate I was and then realizing that it was after three, thought I should start my trip back to Cuzco. So much for Tipón and the laguna. Oh well, there was always next time and you never knew when that might be.
I reached the street and stood between the white line and a drainage ditch, poised to flag down the buses as they headed from Urcos back to Cuzco. I knew how to flag a bus, a wave with one finger and I was ready. When the first bus passed me by, full and waving back, I didn´t give it much thought. It was early and surely the next bus would stop to pick me up.
I think it was probably the fourth bus that passed me, all smiles and waves, when I finally decided to begin walking toward Cuzco. Moving in the direction of my final destination couldn´t hurt. As the fifth bus passed, my dark mood slowly returning, I realized I would have no choice but to hitchhike. So offering up yet another prayer to the universe, I began holding out my hand to buses, cars and trucks alike. Someone had to be heading to Cuzco and have room for little ole me. After all, people rode on the tops of trucks here and the sides of buses. Surely someone would push over to let me in their van.
Finally after 15 minutes and measured breathing, a truck with a tarp covering it´s cargo pulled over to the side. I ran to catch up with it as a young boy about 20 opened the door, "Where you headed?"
"Cuzco?" I pleaded as I began to climb the steps to the truck.
"Well, we´re headed to Manu," the driver said, "but we can drop you at the crossroads."
As the expression goes, beggars can´t be chooser, so I settled for the 5 kilometer ride to the intersection and hoped that someone else would be as nice on the next road. The two men, carrying thousands of kilos of coca leaves were headed to Manu to drop their shipment and offered to take me, that is if I was interested in changing my plans and spending a few days in the Jungle. They assured me they´d be back by Sunday, but didn´t seem to mind much when I politely declined.
At the intersection, a group of men standing by the side of the road, urged me not to wait with them as it made their chances of a bus stopping even slimmer and I was sure to get a ride from a truck or car passing by. "Everyone´s real nice round here," they said in a local accent eating the ends of their words. "You can go with jus bout anyone." They nodded and laughed and I continued on my way, wondering if they were laughing at me or with me, knowing full well what my father would say if he saw me here.
I walked slowly in the afternoon light, Tipón´s ruins on the far side of the corn fields, a weeping willow completing the scene. For some reason as I came across a field of wild purple flowers along side of the river, I felt a pressure in my chest I can only describe as sadness or melancholy. But not the bad kind, the kind that makes you feel that much more alive and I breathed the air in deeply as more cars and trucks passed me, with no intention of slowing, let alone stopping.
A bus passed me then, full and waving and as they went by, I thought for sure I saw the men who had urged me on. They were on their way home. But I guess they had worked all day and were tired, really what had I done that I couldn´t walk a little longer.
Finally, just as I was starting to wonder if it really was a four hour walk to Cuzco, a large blue truck pulled over into the shoulder, the passenger door swung open and I ran toward my ride. I would not arrive in Cuzco in the middle of the night, freezing, starving or possibly abducted.
The driver was one of those non descript ages. He could have been 30 or he could have been 60, with deep creases next to eyes and a big puffy winter jacket. The cab of the truck was decorated with hanging amulets, a Jesus, a Mary, maybe Saint Christopher, the protector of travelers. As I sat on the far side of the truck, backpack on my lap, hand on the doorhandle, Wilbur began to tell me his life story. A truck driver for more years than he cared to remember (that did nothing for my age calculation), he had done the trip from Arequipa to Cuzco, carrying water for the Coca Cola company so many times he could do it with his eyes closed (I hoped he wouldn´t).
We had the same conversations I always have with locals. What was I doing here? Where was I from? Why did I speak Spanish so well if I was from the U.S.? And of course, where was my husband. That question, one that normally offends me, as if a woman could never be traveling alone without someone there to protect her, for some reason in that moment, I answered, "Oh he´s back in Cuzco. Didn´t feel that well today after his trek to Machu Pichu." Strange as the guy had done nothing out of the ordinary but make small talk, and yet I knew for some reason, it was important for him to think I had a husband. Someone waiting on my safe return.
We drove in silence then, as we passed the signs for the famous guinea pigs baked to perfection, piles of batteries being sold roadside and stray dogs, sheep and cows that wandered out into the street at will.
After the better part of an hour, Wilbur remarked about his insatiable thirst and, we pulled onto a side street before I could think of a good reason why I could not stop for a chicha. I had had chicha before, a sweet corn and fruit drink that sometimes came with our menus of the day and so was at least relieved he hadn´t ordered a beer or pisco sour before continuing to drive me the rest of the way to Cuzco.
So you can imagine my surprise when an elderly, bent backed man set a glass of foamy yellow liquid before me, easily the size of two pints of beer. I pushed the glass to the middle of the table, waiting for our smaller glasses to come. Wilbur laughed, pushed it back toward me and told me he would have his own.
I sipped slowly, watching the women sipping the same foamy, yellow liquid, as they sat on the dirt ground by the fire. By now, Wilbur had had his shoes shined, finished half his chicha, ordered a second and was talking about a trip we could take before he had to head back to Arequipa with his empty truck. He suggested that we meet the next day at two at a plaza on the far side of town and I mentioned John again, swirled my 3/4 full drink and pretened to not understand when Wilbur encouraged me to drink up. With a luna bar for lunch, and breakfast a distant memory, I was in not hurry to drink this alcoholic version of chicha.
Finally, Wilbur stood up and motioned for me to follow. I suggested he go on with out me, but Wilbur, Peruvian "gentleman" that he was, would hear nothing of it, opened my door and as I climbed up, disappeared around the back of the truck. I sat in the cab, wondering what he could possibly doing for so long and fiddled with the seatbelt. I wouldn´t put it on this time, just in case I needed to make a quick escape.
We drove up the bumpy road, rounded a corner past a local market and avoided a bicycle cab, two fighting dogs and a truck full of orangeds as we headed back to the main road. It was mintues before I realized I was holding my breath, and as I let it out slowly, I realized that Wilbur was no longer talking.
Abruptly he pulled over to the side of the road, indicating a blue sign, "The bus will stop here and take you right to Cuzco center." I nodded and pushed the door open quickly before he could change his mind.
"Thanks! See you!" I cried the door already closing as I hit the pavement. He pulled away as a Combi pulled up yelling destinations I did not know. I smiled and squeezed myself into the van, my knees touching the woman facing me. I didn´t care where we were headed as I looked out onto the crowded street. I was safe, my dark mood a distant memory.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Get involved
I know I haven´t posted an entry in a few weeks and I have a few in the works that should be up in a few days, but before I tell you any more about my self-indulgant travel, I need to plug some amazing people and the work they are doing.
Check out the following websites and see for yourself:
http://runforafrica.org/index.html
Peace,
Jen
Check out the following websites and see for yourself:
http://runforafrica.org/index.html
- this organization, set up by my good friends BJ and Emily outside of Asheville, NC is a running team who raises money to sustain life saving water programs in villages in Africa.
- if you are a runner or interested in becoming one, here is a training program that can help you while you help others.
- this organization, literally translated is let´s live better and is set up by a local bolivian woman and her columbian husband who live on the shores of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia
- their idea is to create recycling programs, sewage and drainage programs to stop the pollution of the lake, a national treasure and to create educational programs so that the next generation knows how to take care of the environment.
- they need donations of money, materials and volunteers to help in the schools and with the recycling.
- this is my friend Joanne´s website who has been living in Malawi, Africa for the last two years, where she volunteers as a midwife at a local hospital
- they always need donations, medical supplies etc.
- you can contact her through her blog or just read her amazing story
- this organization is the one that mentors Domincan schools and teachers to create sustainable educational programs for Domincan children
- my friend, Jen has been volunteering there this year (this is also where John and I helped out in September)
- they also always need donations, materials or volunteers
Peace,
Jen
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Moving on
There are moments in life when you just know that it is time to move on. It´s as if, things are moving along they way they should and then, "wham!" the realization hits you, you need to go. I think that´s what happened to John and I last week.
It was Friday, when we piled into Edwin´s blue Mazda pick-up, two mountain bikes and four 100 pound bags of compost and headed out of Ibarra. There were only two bikes and three of us, because apparently I would not need a bike, though the exact reason why eluded me. I speculated then that it might have been what was lacking between my legs in Edwin´s opinion, but that had yet to be confirmed. I mentioned, as we squeezed into the front of the cab, that I too would like to ride a bike, but Edwin just laughed and replied, "Let´s go," in an accented English, one of his fou English phrases (along with Please, Come on, I´m sorry and Thank you).
We were back in Ibarra somewhat anticlimactically as our volunteer job in La Chimba had been unexpectedly cancelled or postponed (which we weren´t sure), due to an impromptu training by the department of education. I couldn´t quite figure out why the training hadn´t come up as a problem before, but I imagine that part of the lack of success in the educational system in Ecuador might have something to do with this type of lack of communication. Call me crazy - it´s just a theory. Then again, I could have been just really disappointed about the possible cancellation of our volunteerism. . .
We had a few days free and Edwin, our bakery friend, insisted we stay with him and pay for our meals, which seemed just fine to us. Thursday, he had suggested that we head up to a small mountain village where he had grown up until age 13, when he had finshed school and had left home on a horse with, no money, no plan and nowhere to stay in Ibarra. Apparently his family lived on a tomato tree farm and that piqued our interest and we had the time, so we thought why not?
It was somewhere on that journey heading north out of Ibarra, as the asphalt turned first to a smooth octagonal type of cobblestone, then to a bumpier version of the same, the road seeming to be paved with any old rock or stone that had been found in the surrounding fields to finally dirt, the road strewn with rocks and debris, that I understood that it was essentially impossible to have anything but a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Of course, in the spirit of proving me wrong, not long after I had come to that conclusion, I saw the first of many buses winding their way deep into the valley on a road barely wide enough for it to pass. I wondered briefly how oncoming traffic fared in these situations, and then hoped I would never have to find that out.
The 46 kilometer ride from Ibarra, to where vehicles could no longer pass, due to a landslide that had obscured the road making it impossible to continue the last three kilometers up to the village, took us well over three hours, crossing bridges that had no business calling itself a bridge, and winding up and down mountain passes that made me glad I couldn´t see over the no-guard rail drop off from my seat in the middle of the cab.
After about two and a half hours, Edwin pulled the truck over, hopped out of the car, looked at me and asked, ¨You know how to drive?" I nodded not completely understanding why he needed to know. "Come on, John. Jenny can drive and we can bike." This was just too much. Not only was I not going to get to bike, but in addition, I had to drive these insane roads? I tried to protest, but Edwin pretended he hadn´t heard me and was already on the bike heading downhill, "Keep it in second," he shouted back at me, "otherwise you might careen off the side."
"Great, just fantastic." I mumbled, my heart beating in my throat. I definitely had to figure out a way to get out of driving tomorrow. Now I understood that this was just practice for the bike trip he had planned with John and two of his friends for Saturaday. No way in hell that I was going to spend the whole day in the car, while Edwin, John and his friends biked the whole way from Ibarra back up to this mountain village. Machismo or no, he was out of his mind. He didn´t know who he was messing with.
For the moment though, I drove. Slowly, much slower than John and Edwin, careening down the dirt roads, miles from medical services, helmets a precaution apparently not needed in this part of the country.
Somehow though, we made it intact, to where the road began to climb back up the hill and since Edwin was definitely not a biker, he called their trip quits before John could embarass him and threw his bike in the back of the truck, following it up there and sitting on the side of the bed. He motioned to John to follow and said something John clearly could not understand, ¨You keep driving Jenny, you´re not half bad.¨John, not totally understanding that I had just been insulted, shrugged and jumped in the back after Edwin. I put the car in first, put the idea out of my head to throw Edwin from the truck bed with a short stop, and continued driving, up the pass, back down the other side, over a few more ragged bridges, around tight corners, through a river and up the valley till we reached the slide.
"A truck will come down and meet us in a while. They know we´re coming." Edwin explained as we surveyed our surroundings. Mountains reached up on every side of us into a deep blue sky, dotted with white puffy clouds. Down below, the river raged over rocks in deep in a lush green valley. Flowers seemed to bloom in the most unlikely of places, yellow, purple and orange popping up out of rocks, dirt and trees alike.
"How long has the road been like this"? I wondered, thinking of how difficult the community´s life must be without any access to a town of any size.
"Maybe three months or so." Edwin shrugged, "Hope they get it fixed by the new year. Otherwise I´ll be stuck meeting my brother up here and loading up the truck with thousands and thousands of tomatoes to sell in town. I stared at the unmoving yellow crane on the far side of the slide, no one was working on the road. It looked like no one had worked on it in months. It was little more than a large pile of dirt obscuring one side from the other.
By then, Edwin´s half-brother, Julio had arrived in another pick up, dressed in knee high, black rubber boots, dirty jeans and a black t-shirt. We dragged the bikes and the four 100 pound bags of compost over the fallen road, past the motionless tractor to Julio´s red pick up (And by we, I mean John, Julio and Edwin, apparently that too was no job for a female).
At Edwin´s mother´s house, we ducked to enter the kitchen and sat on low, wooden stools at a small wooden table, pushed up against the far wall. The wall was barren with the exception of a calendar, the picture on this month´s page, a toddler in a raccoon suit. I surveyed my surroundings. Julio sat on a milk crate against the far wall, close to a door that led out to a small store. Edwin´s mother began serving us fresh tomato juice, fresh from their tomato trees, laden with tons of sugar and local water, followed by a quinoa and potato soup. We were assured that no hens had been sacrificed for our visit, but I felt uneasy, as I sipped the familiar broth. Edwin´s mother looked on as I searched my bowl, laughing as she sat on a bag of potatoes beside the oven, "Eat! It´s good for you." When I inquired if she would join us in eating, she laughed again, "Later I eat. After you young people."
Immediately following our meal of the psuedo chicken soup, rice, potatoes and salad fresh from their fields, we bid good bye to his mother, who immediately began, no not to eat, but to clean the dishes. I offered to clean the dishes myself, as a thank you for having fed us, but was laughed right out of the small concrete house, back out onto the dirt road and the hot, afternoon sun.
Edwin indicated to John that he follow on the bike and so John followed, apologizing to me with his eyes as he left me to walk down the steep side of the pasture to visit the tomato trees with Julio. I still didn´t get how a tomato could grow on a tree, but I had a feeling I was about to find out.
We climbed down the grassy hill to a grove of trees with large, floppy dark green leaves and a skinny trunk, similar to bamboo and there they were, hundreds of thousands of tomato trees.
We wandered through rows and rows of the lush trees, heavy with the unripe fruit. Edwin found two almost red ones, plucked them from the tree and handed them to John and me, "Tomatoes, fresh from the tree." On the far side of the field, where the trees were little more than two feet tall, a young man with a whip made of some sort of vine, followed a white horse in the rows between the baby plants. The horse, harnished with a makeshift plow, a curved wooden tree trunk with a carved wooden wedge, tilled the soil as they walked by us. This indeed was a different life. We stood there observing the fields for a few minutes and waved at the man working the field as he came by us on his way back down the row.
From tomato trees, to bean plants to fields of asparagus, each one worked by only one or two men, dressed alike in their knee high rubber boots, worn jeans and t-shirts, wide brim hats atop their dark hair to ward off the strong sun. "How long does it take to plow a field like this?" I inquired in Spanish after John asked me the same question in English.
"About four days to plow the two acres, harvest is a whole other story. Maybe two or three weeks if we´re fast and lucky."
"Problem is, there aren´t too many young people left here," explained Julio as we walked together, John and Edwin, mere specs of color on their bicycles. "We only have about 50 families to begin with and lots of times, once the kids finish school, at 12 or 13, they head to the city. See if they can´t find work, make money. You know?"
"Is there a school here in town?" I wondered aloud.
"Sure," he nodded, " Passed up by the house. ´Bout 30 kids go there from grades one through six, two teachers. One for kinder and one for the rest."
We walked in silence then. So much and yet nothing else to say. I had a million questions for Julio, but didn´t want to offend with my naive curiousity. Perhaps he has a million for me as well, but the same reasons stopped him.
We reached the makeshift fence at the far end of the field and I climbed between the top and bottom rung after Julio, then waited while he replaced the missing middle one. "It´s not a fancy gate, but it works." He said gesturing behind him at the gate we had just come through. I smiled and nodded, it sure did.
Luckily for Edwin, though not so much for John, John had a relapse of the stomach virus that had plagued him the week before in Bahía de Caraquez, and so Edwin was spared my "Don´t be a sexist asshole rant!" when I was sure to be refused a bicycle for the following day´s adventure.
As John lay suffering in bed, the La Chimba job now definitely cancelled, the Galapagos job postponed till January, the jungle job now the first week in February, we thought about what to do. Edwin was a stellar guy. He had given us his house, fed us, guided us all over the area, but he had a serious, machista blind spot. One that was making me, (and despite his illness, John) extremely uncomfortable.
So, we did what we had to do. We bid out good byes and moved on. Yes, we waited for John to recover, but the minute he did, we bid Edwin and his family good bye and began the trek southward toward Boliva.
Of course, as with all of the best laid plans of mice and men, our plans changed and we got waylayed in Peru, which is where we are now. Somehow, on the three bus rides totalling more than 50 hours from Quito to the Bolivian border, we made new Limeño friends, who had other ideas for us. So after a quick stop in Lima and a snack and shower at Oscar´s house (one of our newfound friends), we headed to the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, so that John could also partake in some of the beauty that Peru has to offer. I imagine Bolivia and Argentina are not going anywhere, even if our time is.
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