Becoming Jane Goodall

Getting to Gombe Stream is not for the faint of heart. To get here, you must do the following:

First, pretend that it is 1960 and your name is Jane Goodall and you are completely obsessed with chimpanzees. After all, they do share 98% of the genetic make up of humans.

You are so obsessed with these primates that you are willing to risk your own well being for the study of their living habits.

You set out in Dar e Salaam where your plane has landed and you embark on the first adventure: to procure public transit to Kigoma. You ask which dala dala to take but are repeatedly discouraged. You try to tell them you have been in these types of shared van situations before, but as the locals insist it will be extremely dangerous, you agree to go with Mr. Bakarti, the taxi driver who loiters near the entrance to your hotel, the Safari Inn, an out of the way establishment down a short alley behind a gate with a perpetually sleeping guard. His presence makes you feel extremely safe whenever you enter the building, his deep sleep undisturbed.
Mr. Bakarti escorts you to first a booking that attempts to convince you that in fact you want to leave Monday rather than Sunday. You insist that you do indeed want to leave Sunday and after a fruitless argument in broken Swahili and English, Mr. Bakarti, says, “Twende,” and you follow him to a second booking agent that agrees to sell you bus tickets for the following day.

Back at the hotel, you set an alarm for 4:45 am and the following morning, Mr. Bakarti is back to take you and your companion to the bus depot about 10 miles from the city center. You know you are close when traffic comes to a complete halt. You sit for 10 minutes in stopped traffic until Mr. Bakarti makes a joke about how one can often miss a bus waiting to make the right turn into the depot’s parking lot. You take the hint, pay too much for the taxicab ride and try not to get mad, knowing that taxis are notorious for overcharging tourists for their fares.

Finding the bus is an out of body experience with rows of busses ten deep and fifty across and sea of people traffic milling aimlessly around. Men at the front of each bus scream out names into the darkness of the early morning, none seem to be familiar. Now you understand why they tell you to arrive an hour before departure. You may miss this bus if you can’t find it in the chaos.

Every person you ask for help repeats the same set of questions, “Where are you going? Do you have a ticket? Let me see. Over there.” They invariably point you in the direction from which you have just come.

Finally with just minutes remaining until the 6 am departure time, night still heavy in the air, you locate your company, Adventure Connection. You sigh thinking now you can relax. But you are wrong. This is not Connecticut and you are not boarding a Greyhound bus bound for Westminster. This is Tanzania, Africa sweetheart and the adventure has barely begun. You wonder if you should have considered the name of the company, Adventure Connection as a sign of what to expect on the bus, but before you can spend much time thinking about it, someone shoves you up the stairs from behind.

To get to your seat, you must battle no fewer than three very well endowed women with babies strapped to their backs and large baskets on their heads, one man with a suitcase that definitely will not fit into the overhead and at least three toddlers standing smack dab in the middle of the aisle with absolutely no where to go. The man will succeed in shoving the oversized piece of luggage into the slot beneath the roof and as you duck underneath to find your seat, an elderly toothless man carrying 6-foot sugar cane sticks on his head narrowly misses smacking you in the face.

Then you must prepare yourself for the next thirty-six hours. You will stop no fewer than twenty times. There will be the expected stops at bus stations along the way to pick up passengers, ones to give the passengers a lunch or dinner break for no more than 15 minutes at a time and of course the ones where the whole bus empties to use the bathroom. Of course you might expect to find a bathroom or a set of portapotties at this juncture, but you would be mistaken. I remind you, you are not in Kansas anymore and there is nothing more rewarding than an African Bush toilet in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road along side of 50 of your newest best friends. It’s community building really.

You might not have expected, but probably should have anticipated the flat tire that needed to be jacked up and repaired mid trip, the money collector that fell from the moving bus (this one still escapes me) and the 6 hour stop at 8 pm since night time driving is illegal in Tanzania. Initially this is frustrating for you, but later you realize the law enforcement probably have good reason behind this law.

You resign yourself to trying to locate some edible food from the all night chicken and potato rotisserie outside the bus and watch in amusement as passengers begin to attempt to find a modicum of comfort on school bus type seat for the evening. Feet are pressed up against the windowpanes, necks crooked at dangerous angles.

After visiting the hole that serves as the public toilet for the bus toilet, you join your fellow passengers, consumer a warm beer in the warm night air and eat what an omelet made from unrefrigerated eggs, excessive salt and overcooked potatoes. Your companion attempts to eat something resembling friend chicken but gives up after five minutes of trying to rip the meat from the bone unsuccessfully. Your meal is clearly more edible.

The following day, you may not have anticipated the police interview with the man who had fallen from the vehicle or the quantity of trash, peanut shells and discarded wrappers that has ended up on the floor, but perhaps you need to recognize how very small your perspective really is on long distance travel.

By the time, you finally reach the town of Kigoma; your ankles with have swollen to the size of small tree trunks from 36 hours of bus travel. Your companion, who has twisted his own ankle on safari earlier that week, will suggest going to Kiribizi to catch the boat to Gombe stream via taxi.

Despite your aversion to taxis, you will reluctantly agree and take the ride down the bumpy dirt road the two km down to the shores of Kiribizi where you will be greeted with disappointing news. Kiribizi’s only hotel closes for the month of June and it’s back to Kigoma you will go. You will breathe deeply – inhaling and exhaling, glad that the 110 mph bus ride down unpaved, potholed road has not killed and realize that the 7000 shillings you will spend on the taxi in reality is a mere $5 and is nothing to fuss about.

You will settle in for the night after being told that the boat to Gombe Stream leaves either at 8 pm or 8 am or somewhere between 12 and 2 pm. Feeling confident that somehow the truth will surface, you set off into the night to procure a meal for the evening and possibly an adult beverage after such an harrowing bus journey. Surely the boat trip will be a piece of cake compared t what you have already endured. Of course you are dead wrong about this and later this will not surprise you in the least.

After realizing that you are the only English speaker in the entire town, you attempt to order a plate of vegetables and when served a plate of fish, you smile and nod and move the fish away from the cold, plain 5-day-old white rice that you will eat for dinner.

Later you find a place to have a warm beer. Your companion remarks, “I think I actually might like the warm beers now.” You nod and smile and know that he is also trying to convince himself of this fact. You hope that that chimps are worth the travel.

Out of nowhere appears a man who calls himself Peter. Peter speaks English and offers to cook you yet another potato omelet and you graciously accept full well knowing that this might be the only food you eat for your entire trip. It still trumps 5-day old cold, white rice and you are hungry.

Later, Peter will offer to make you all your meals for just 30,000 shillings for your trip to Gombe and this sounds easier than trying to navigate the grocery store system at night so you agree. He tells you the boat leaves from Kiribizi at 9 am. This is a new development but when he assures you that he can make you breakfast in the morning and accompany you to the port, you agree feeling somewhat more secure that you will actually arrive. In the back of your mind you feel this is probably too good to be true, but at this moment, you are too tired to argue. Later once in Gombe, you will realize he has given you six meals instead of the ten you have paid for, but as your companion likes to point out, it’s only a $10 loss and that is to be expected.

The next day, true to his word, Peter is there to make breakfast. He is running late making the meals but assures us not to worry that the boat actually leaves at 10 am not 9 am as originally planned.

Finally, you head out of the hostel, food in hand, accompanied by a well mannered, well dressed Peter who assures you that upon your return you will be welcome to stay a night in his house with his family.

You board the dala dala ride to Kiribizi and are surprised when nothing out of the ordinary happens. Your ride is more comfortable than most dala dala rides as only 14 passengers are aboard the van meant for 9. You know that easily there is “room” for at least 16 more and you hope that there won’t be a need for this.

Now a test of our patience begins. You first arrive at the beach to be told that actually the boat (originally 8 am, then 8 pm, then between 12 and 2, then at 9, no 10 am) is actually at 11 am. So you resign yourself to taking pictures with the local children and sitting on your backpack in the shade reading a book. At 11 am the departure port is empty and you walk around the beach looking for the man with the white paper that had taken your names.

You find him and point at the boat and then your wrist as if to say to him, “What’s going on with the boat departure?” The man laughs and points at your wrist as well. You shake your head and try again, “What time is the boat leaving,” you ask stretching each word out and pointing again at your arm and the boat moored off shore. The man shakes his head, nods and then laughs, pointing once again to your wrist. You realize this conversation is going nowhere fast and begin to walk around asking others that also seem to be waiting for the boat. You ask three other people about the boat’s departure time and are told no fewer than three times and with this you resign yourself to returning to your seat on your backpack along the shore. You’ll leave when you leave, hopefully sometime that day.

Finally somewhere around 1:30, the boar begins its boarding process. The boat is a 20-foot long, dilapidated, wooden boar with a small motor at the back and long wooden slats running widthwise across the length of the boat. You board and choose a seat close to the front of the boat and watch in awe as the interior fills with mattresses, cases of cola, large oil cans, mothers with feeding children, men, grandmothers, small children and ever type of package imaginable. Vendors hop on board from the boat moored to our left and begin to yell out their wares: plastic bags of water, bread, a ball that appears to be doughnut like, yellow liquid packaged in reused water bottles and raw sugar cane. Everyone aboard buys in frenzy as if they had all not just come from sure just moments earlier.

The boat fills to what seems like capacity, but like the dala dalas, the filling process continues far beyond what one would expect until every available square inch of the front, side and back, including the slats and the interior of the boat for what appears to be storage is a sea of humanity and cargo.

Now the fun truly begins. Some men thin you are a good subject for their camera phones, thought to be honest, their wives don’t seem to agree. Your companion is decidedly tense and the boar moves through he water under a mid day African sun at a snail’s pace. All around you chaos ensues. There is a man that plays both an antique version of a PSP or DS and music from his mobile phone simultaneously. Another man, seated three people away from him, also plays his music. A third man argues with his wife who is seated half way across the boat as they pass a small child back and forth between them via the other passengers.

A heated debate breaks out between what seems to be the boat’s captain and some of the passengers near the bow of the boat. He has for some reason decided to move some large pieces of cargo while we travel and while what he is saying contains none of the Swahili phrases you have learned, you gather from the debate that it is important that he move the mattress, cases of sprite bottles and oil canes to the left of where you are seated. When he finally succeeds in making a hole in the cargo, you understand why as he begins to bale out the foot and a half of water that has accumulated over the duration of the last two hours of the journey.

The drama continues to unfold as children rip off sections of sugar cane with their teeth, suck out the sugar and then spit them into the water. Mothers continue to feed their crying babies and your butt begins to feel as though it has literally gone to sleep for good. A man finishes his coke and that too goes directly into the ocean, along with two plastic bags and three straws. A few men share a newspaper up front while others just cover their head to protect themselves from the noonday sun and attempt to sleep.

Some stare blatantly across the boat at you, while others steal furtive glances. You take deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling to ward off the low-grade nausea that has inevitably set in as it does on all open water journeys.

Finally almost four hours later, the captain signals that you are almost there. It is then that you realize the dreadful mistake you made when boarding. You are toward the front of the boat. Unfortunately for you, but again, not surprising, you will off load at the back of the boat and you will the only passengers disembarking. And so it begins, the traverse across the sea of humanity, bags and mattresses. You gather your bag, the plastic bag with the thermos from Peter containing a liquid you will never consume and your backpack and balance on a slat of wood and then lower yourself down onto a case of Fanta and steady yourself on the captain. All eyes are now glued to you as you duck beneath each bar crossing the boat, your backpacking catching on each one. No one moves nor offers assistance. You avoid stepping on a child and his vomit as you near the far side of the boat. You are almost ashore. A clean, well-dressed man awaits your arrival.

“Karibu, Welcome to Gombe Stream.” He says beaming as your backpack is tossed ashore and you shakily descend down a rickety ladder into Lake Tanganyika, the largest navigable lake in the world. You feel like Jane Goodall must have in 1960, a rush washes over you. You have arrived.

You bask in this success momentarily until the man behind the desk at the Gombe National Park headquarters quietly informs you that only dollars are accepted for the park entrance. Of course you have none. Somehow you know that despite that fact that you have arrived on shore, the adventure is only just beginning.

Do Elephants Run?

For days now, we’ve been wondering if elephants run.

As you drive through the national parks throughout Tanzania, it is easy to see when an elephant has been there before you. The trees are strewn about haphazardly, the grass trampled; large indentures remain where their hoofs have landed. But our question still remained, do elephants ever run?

We reasoned the answer to be no. Elephants have all the benefits of being a herbivore – endless options for breakfast, lunch and dinner – trees, leaves and grass for the taking and at the same time, all the benefits of a carnivore – in fact the elephant is the only mammal that we had ever seen make a lion flee. It was the true king of the jungle. But until today, we didn’t know the answer to the question – if elephants ever ran. We figured they didn’t need to, so they didn’t.

But Roz kept mentioning words like stampede and charging. Words we have heard associated with elephants, so the doubt was there. Plus when you really thought about it, how did elephants wreak all that havoc just moseying along at the pace we had seen? Today, we got our answer.

It was just after lunch at a rest stop within the limits of Norongoro Crater on our third day of our safari. There we were, the cook, Chris; our guide, Kipara; Roz; Javi and I finishing up our ridiculously sweet mango, sugar juice and stale bread sandwiches as we looked out over a picturesque lake framed by large Baob trees when Kipara exclaimed, “Elephant!”

To be honest, our reaction was slow. After three days of seeing more wild animals in one sitting than we could have ever possibly have imagined previously, the elephant cry no longer provoked the shrieks of wonderment they had just days earlier. It’s funny how that happens. Just prior to our visit to Norongoro and Serengetti National Park, we had been elephant obsessed. We couldn’t stop asking each other, “Wako wapi tembo? Where are the elephants?”

In fact Javi had missed his flight in part just to see elephants in close range. He had said, “If I don’t see elephants in Serengetti, I don’t care how much it costs or how much time it takes, I’ll go back to that island and see them there. I am not leaving the continent without seeing an elephant!” And now here he was too tired to even take out his camera as the elephant sauntered past our car not more than three feet away.

I asked the question we had been asking all week, “Do elephants run?” And just then, as if it had heard me, the elephant began to move faster. A full out gallop I wouldn’t call it, but a fast trot it definitely was. Something had piqued its curiosity or angered it or something and faster than one of us could scream, “Look!” the elephant was across the street charging the tourists on the shore of the lake.

Now if you have ever seen a horror movie, you can picture the way the people scattered as they caught glimpse of the three tons of gray flesh charging across the road. Not a Nightmare on Elmstreet type, but rather the ones where Godzilla or King Kong comes through town squashing anything and everything in his way inevitably only to be trapped and killed by the unexpected hero in the shadows. From the viewpoint across the road, we heard screams erupt as the people fled in panic to avoid uncertain death by elephant . . .That is, all but one.

And right there before our eyes, we watched as one young man in a red shirt turned around and stared, trapped like a deer in the headlights. At this point, our car had dissolved into a myriad of shrieks of fear and amazement. Every tourist-filled jeep across the parking area, ours notwithstanding, was mesmerized by the possibility of the unsightly death of this slow moving tourist, entranced by the train wreck as it unfolded in front of our very eyes.

The man, now suddenly very aware of his impending doom, began to scramble frantically. He turned around and tried to run as the elephant, now close enough o pick the man up with his long trunk and eat him for lunch let our a roar that I have only ever heard on televised nature shows in my lifetime. The man froze as the elephants’ two front legs came off the ground, letting out a second cry of anger. We were about to witness something very tragic and bloody right before our eyes and yet, we were unable to turn away. Someone yelled to the man and he looked over his shoulder at the advice being given to him and then did something that I can only describe as shrug, resigning himself to the unknown outcome of his actions. He sunk slowly to the ground and pulled his feet to his chest covering his head and neck. Our breath caught in our throat. The elephant stopped in mid air and veered slightly to the left as if stunned by the man’s bizarre chain of decisions.

In the distance, a jeep roared to life and tore across the dusty road revving its engine. The elephant now completely spooked, did what I could call as close to running as I ever seen and made its way up the windy road and out of the picnic area, his big ears flapping in the wind behind him. The red-clad man jumped to his feet, wiped the dirt from his khaki shorts and sauntered over to the rest of his party at the first jeep in the row, as if this experience had been the most normal one in the world. I am sure he had to change his undergarments.

Kipara looked up at us from the driver’s seat and remarked, “Did you get pictures of that stupid man? In twenty-three years of being a guide, I have never seen anything like that. It was an adventure! ”

Once the dust had settled and we could all stop screaming about what we had just seen, the debate began again. “So elephants do run!” I said to no one particular.

Javi replied, “He wasn’t running! Haven’t you ever noticed that when you run, both feet come off the ground? That elephant did not have both feet off the ground. He was not running!”

Roz retorted, “He might not have had both feet off the ground, but that elephant was pissed about something and he would have left a bloody mess if he had run over that dude. He was definitely running.”

Javi shrugged in response, not entirely convinced.

So I leave it to you . . . . do elephants run?

There's a buzz in the air

There are certain things that, living in a major city in the U.S., you just take for granted. You literally don’t think twice about logging on to the internet, switching on the light, walking down the street after dark or taking a hot shower.

What’s great about international travel is that it opens our eyes as to just how egocentric and ethnocentric we really are as Americans.

You might expect roads not to be paved in small out of the way towns or villages and you imagine that internet might be intermittent in these rural locations as well, but in major cities or international tourist destinations, you pretty much expect what you find at home.

Well, prepare to be unprepared is the adage by which I like to live when exiting the comforts of home. It all becomes part of the larger adventure and memory set known as traveling off the beaten path.

This trip has been no exception. Electricity in Tanzania is a complete luxury. So much so that for the longest time, the government has been contemplating going to nuclear power sources to remediate the intermittent nature of its existence. In the time I have been here, there has been one consistent factor with regard to the electricity; do not expect consistency.

On any given day, you may wake up with electricity only to find out that there is no power by 8 am and have it never return until well after dark. On other days, electricity is on till 10 and again after 6 and on still other days, it seems to remain on the better part of the day only to suddenly shut off suddenly during dinner or a late night visit to an internet café. Of course my personal favorite are the days where it just never comes on.

There doesn’t appear to be a rule when it comes to electricity here except expect the unexpected, and locals have become accustomed to its scarce participation in their daily lives. They are resigned to using it when it’s around without becoming overly dependent on it for survival. They remember to not write long emails without saving; they don’t expect hot showers, as water is often heated electrically and know that they have to charge hand held or mobile devices when the opportunity arises.

The lack of consistent electricity also creates a sort of hum in the cities around the country. And no, I don’t mean an air of mystery. I literally mean a hum. A hum of the sound of generators. Thousands and thousands of generators buzzing from every street and shop to create a miniscule amount of light or electricity required to stay open for business hours.

Here, you quickly become accustomed to a merchant showing you his wares by the light of his cell phone or the knowing shrug from the internet café owner as you walk by his darkened doors, “no power,” they remark as they lounge on the car outside the doorway, waiting to find out if today they will be able to offer service or if their seven hour stay in the darkened shop will result shillingless for yet another day.

A lack of power doesn’t only making seeing merchandise, packing, showering and navigating your house more difficult, it also makes nighttime street walking an adventure that had previously been unimaginable to me prior to this trip.

To begin with, streets here in Tanzania are for the most part unpaved. In the rare instance where streets have been paved, the engineers prior to paving had apparently not had access to a level spot nor did the construction folks manage to even out the surface, making all street travel a bit more treacherous even during day time hours, let alone at night. Nighttime travel is something else entirely.

Throughout my time here, I have come to the conclusion that the Tanzanian people are a very agile group as evidenced by their ability to carry 15-20 lbs of bananas, wood or other loads on their head, travel on bikes that are too big or too small for them over large distances with 40 lbs of coal or cement on the back of the bike and finally by their ability to successfully navigate the sidewalks of any major city in the country.

The sidewalks are literally a trip here. They roll along with the rise and fall of the land, a mish mosh of paved and unpaved sections complete with potholes, cut off metal poles sticking up 10 inches from the ground and wide gaping holes and ditches. Some covered with metal gratings across part of the exposed opening, others left wide open the jagged edges waiting for an unsuspecting, unobservant street walker.

This is clearly a hazard even during daylight hours.

But if you are really up for a true adventure, try night time wanderings about town, without street lights, or even the ambient light from a neighboring business or residence as the power is typically out.

It is an absolutely thrilling experience. One unmatched to date.

Public Transit Preparation Steps

To prepare for public transit in Tanzania, please take the following precautionary preparation steps:

1. Practice getting up at 3:45 am and getting packed and dressed in the complete darkness since there will be no electricity until at least 6 am and your bus will invariably leave at 4:30 or 5 am.

2. Practice sitting with half of your ass on the edge of a chair and place a few rocks or sticks under you to feel the quality of the seat you will be using for the next 15 to 36 hours of your life.

3. Go mountain biking on a bike with no shocks on a very dusty, windy location with large crevices and ruts in the trail to experience how the ride will feel on the trip. As well as how much dirt will be caked on to your hair, your face and in every orifice of your body.

4. Go to a Chinese fish market in a major city or another area where you do not understand the language and people interpret the concept of personal space very differently than in the Western world. Practice getting much needed information about where your bus is located amongst the thousands as you improve your agility to avoid people that are trying to push past you with large bags and parcels.

5. Take a road trip with a very small bladder. That is how often you will stop as you make your way through the country on unpaved roads past mud huts, large stretches of forest and hundreds of people on bicycles carrying loads way to large for the size of the bike.

6. Find Mario Andretti or an equivalent type of driver to get the feel of how fast the bus will drive between these ridiculously frequent stops. Keep in mind that this will not be a race car but the equivalent to a dilapidated old school bus that should have been condemned in the 1960s and this is not the autobahn but an unpaved stretch of “highway” with more potholes than level surface.

7. Visit a drive through in a very tall vehicle such as a Mac truck or school bus to practice your skills of buying chips, bananas and warm juice and soda from the ambulatory vendors that will flock by the hundreds to the bus’s windows at every rest stop to sell their products like pigeons to bread crumbs.

8. Blast Swahili pop music as loud as you can for hours on end while sitting mostly upright on a hard surface. See if you can fall asleep. Not try to sleep through it.

9. Go to a zoo dressed as an animal and enter a cage. This may give you a similar sensation of how you will be relentlessly starred at that you will experience on every local mode of transportation.

10. Learn to say “Hakuna Matata” (no worries), try not to ask why and get a sense of humor. Without it you will not survive.

Hiatus

It's been a long time since I posted on this blog. . . this last trip though inspired me to begin to tell some stories once again. The trip this summer to Tanzania, while short in comparison to many of the trips I have made, held a multitude of stories, just begging to be told. Hope you enjoy them.

Hope and Possibility

It was an absolutely unbelievable morning as I walked along the trail in Iguazu: the sun shining, the sky an amazing shade of blue, a series of rainbows splayed haphazardally across the crashing cascade of the waterfalls; no words come to mind to describe their beauty, their power. . .

I was filled with an overwhelming sensation of something as I walked along, happiness maybe, though I can´t be sure exactly. As I walked along in the early morning, a coolness to the day that wouldn´t last much longer, I began to do what I often do when I am by myself, I write. Clearly not on paper, but when I find myself alone; especially if I am running or walking, all of a sudden, parts of stories, poems, letters, essays etc. begin to form in my head. I can´t help myself. So yesterday as I´m walking along, a story pops into my head about how I have fallen in love. It went something like this, "I think I´m in love. Her name is Possibility." Silly I know. But in the moment, that´s how I felt. So there I am walking along, my head filled with words, the path filled with trees, flowers, the sound of the waterfalls crashing in the background, and tons of butterflies. Hundreds of butterflies, big ones, small ones, and of every color imaginable. And all of a sudden, out of no where, this butterfly lands right on my chest. She´s there looking up at me, her bird like face seeming almost to smile, her green wings opening and closing with the beat of my heart.

"Possiblity?" I whispered and she crawled up my shirt to where the collar ended and my skin began, her antennae tickling my chest. I had stopped dead in my tracks when she landed on me afraid to disturb her, but now I began to make my way down the path, talking softly to her as I walked. "You don´t have to stay here," I explained smiling down at my new found friend. But Possibility didn`t seem to have any hurry to leave my salty chest as she continued poking around with her long, delicate, green antennae. Her wings fluttered as the wind picked up but she held tight and on we walked.

I stopped to take out my camera and took her picture, careful not to touch her wings, not to disturb her. And then just like that, she took off, joining the others. She flew a few feet down the path and landed on the ground next to an enormous black butterfly with bright purple wings.

I gasped. There she was, Hope. I took a step closer, camera still in hand, thinking I could photograph her too, but apparently she was in a hurry, and flitted off into the jungle leaving me alone on the path.

I stood there for a few minutes, the trees swaying softly in the morning breeze, shifting patterns of light playing on the trail. I watched as a monkey and her baby swung in the branches of the trees above me, an iguana made its way across the path followed by a family of coaties, their long noses and striped tails waggling as they crossed in front of me. I stood motionless in the jungle. Alone on the path once again, I slowly let out my breath and continued on to the next waterfall.

Birthday part 2; From Ross

This was the email I got from my brother Ross after he read the last entry, "Feliz Cumpleaños Momala." I thought it was worth sharing. . .

Now I have tears in my eyes too! I remember that day, I remember the run and hot sand, leaving mom and coming back to an empty blanket. I also remeber swimming (rather wading) with her and her screaming curse words at me when I tried to push her in and deeper. I also remeber trying to make her hold me afloat like a "T" and her not wanting to cause she was so mad I splashed her.

Nice poem Jen. I miss mom and you too.

Love Ross

p.s I will take Roxanne to the tree with beer and cake in hand with pictures of you and I.


For those of you who don´t know. . . every year my brother and I make a point of celebrating our mom on the anniversary of her birth. We always take her (in picture form) to dinner, get drinks, cake, a candle . . .the whole nine yards. I am sure the waiter thinks we have lost it, but oh well. Three years ago, Ross bought her a tree. Two years ago, we planted it (illegally in Stinson Beach) and last year for those of you who never read my "Coming Back" story, we went and found the tree in a hail storm. If after people die, they can really look down and see us, my mother is happy as a pig in you know what that we spend so much time celebrating her on her birthday.

Feliz Cumpleaños momala

Tomorrow is my mother’s 60th birthday. Or, I guess more accurately said, it would have been her 60th birthday if life had dealt her a different hand, or perhaps if she had known how to better play the one she had been dealt. But regardless of the semantics, tomorrow is the anniversary of the day she was born, 60 years ago.

The thing about my mother is that she absolutely loved birthdays. Everyone’s birthdays, it was never just limited to her own, though her own was no exception. Maybe it was her love of a good party, any reason to celebrate in her mind, a good reason. She, to date, is the only person I have ever known that consistently called in sick to work on her birthday. "Work on my birthday?" She would say, "What? I get Jesus´s birthday off, but not mine. Yeah, right." And that in a nutshell describes Roberta.

But like I was saying, my mother loved birthdays, and for as long as I can remember, our birthdays, the birthdays of our youth, were events. Starting with the special birthday song, to the toilet paper streamers strung along the banisters and the doorways leading to the kitchen, to the special gold cutlery used only on the specialist of occasions . . . to of course, the ridiculously forced rhyming, silly birthday poem, written by her with a mother’s love as a testament to our worth on the planet and her underlying fear of our inevitable growing up.

And my mother didn’t just celebrate the actual day of her birth. Nope. She was the kind of person that had a birth week, or even, if she could pull it off, a birth month. "Oh no Jennifah," she would smirk, "you can’t be mean to me. It’s my birth month." And since she was the only one of us not born in the month of November, somehow that logic worked. Maybe it was just because she was prone to saying things like that. Maybe it was, because despite everything that was hard to accept about her, you just knew she would have done just about anything for you. . . given you the shirt off her back, laid down across the mud puddle so your shoes wouldn’t get dirty . . . really, anything if it meant that my brother, Ross and I were happy. And not mad at her. She despised the idea of someone being mad at her. In fact, it was so extreme of an aversion that it was almost like a sickness. One that at times, I catch glimpses of in me.

"Roberta, sometimes, it’s better to be pissed off . . . than to be pissed on," my father had the habit of saying when my mother had asked one of us for the umpteenth time, after a disagreement, if we were mad at her, if we still loved her. But honestly, I don’t think she ever got the whole concept of accepting people’s anger, or her own anger and disappointment, the way my father did. At times, I catch glimpses of that in myself as well . . . I guess we really are a product of where we come from.

Today, I am at the beach. A fitting place to spend her birthday and celebrate her existence in the world. My mother loved the beach. She absolutely hated herself in a bathing suit, but she couldn’t get enough of the beach. "Come on, you skinny marink," she would say to me, "Take your beached whale of a mother of the beach. Let’s see if I float." And it was strange that she liked the beach so much. Especially since she was scared to death of the water. Not to say that she didn’t get in. Sure, she would wade around, in the break of the waves, up to her mid-thigh, her crazy curls flopping in the wind. But for as long as I can remember, if you even remotely tried to get her face or upper body in the water, or even splashed her midriff, you would be greeted by her extremely loud, unique shrieks of protest, heard from the Delaware shore down to the Keys in Florida. "AARGH! AGH! Help! No! Stop! Help you’re killing me! AARGH."

My last memory of my mother at a beach is from about five years ago, at the beaches between Brighton Beach and Coney Island. It was summer. One of those really hot days where you can barely move and we had spent the better part of the morning sweating to death in the insane asylum that was my grandparents´apartment on Nostrand Avenue in Sheepshead Bay; my grandmother’s non-stop nagging about anything and everything that was wrong with the world, specifically with Roberta making the day that much more intolerable.

"Let’s get the f*&@ out of here," she whispered, "Before I lose it and do something I regret . . . like kill her." I remember my bother and I laughed then, but between you and me, I think she might have actually been serious.

So we packed up the car, with all the necessary beach items, calmed my grandparents´many fears: yes, we would wear sun block, sit in the shade, not go too deep into the water, lock the car, stay together and finally, the three of us escaped. As we got to the parking lot below their typical Brooklyn apartment, we looked up and as expected, there they were on the second floor terrace, waving goodbye, still yelling advice in the same way they always had for over 50 years.

When we finally parked, fed the meter, got to the beach, and set up the chair, the blanket, the cooler and all the other ridiculous items my mother had insisted on bringing for the two hour excursion to the beach, I remember that Ross and I decided to leave her there alone so we could go for a jog on the boardwalk. It’s possible that I was as fed up and frustrated with her as she had been with my grandmother, though honestly that part is not as clear to me at this point as I think back on that day. It’s funny what you remember.

Anyway, we were gone an hour, maybe an hour and a half tops, but upon our return, as we scalded the bottoms of our feet making our way back to the blanket, mom was nowhere to be found. We looked up and down along the coast scanning the sea of humanity that was the beach in the summer, searched the concessions stands, the bar, the shade . . . the obvious places, but no Roberta. Suddenly, Ross doubled over in laughter, one hand up in the air waving down toward the shore. And, as I followed his pointing finger to the water’s edge, I too had to laugh. Because there in the ocean, bodysurfing the polluted waters of her youth was our mother, beached whale set free, glasses still hanging on, lopsided on her face, her ever present shrieks of fear and glee alerting the entire beach going population in Brooklyn of her presence.

"Momala! Momala!" Ross and I began to chant as we made our way to the water and splashed in after her. Yep, she was a character alright: a sweet, loving, funny, smart, eccentric good time Charley. Any excuse for a party. And at the same time . . . a sad, conflicted, unsure, lost soul. A paradox embodied. A child never quite making her way through the confusion of self exploration and acceptance.

Maybe it’s just the drizzle that was falling when I arrived last night that was making me sad today as I sit here writing and remembering birthdays and my mother. Maybe it is simply being at the beach, waves crashing endlessly on the shore, a reminder of how little control we have over our lives in the end. Maybe, even though really, in the end, it’s just another day without her, her birthday makes me that much more aware of how much I just miss my mommy. Here´s to you mom. . .

Ode to Momala on Her Would Be 60th Birthday
It was 60 years ago that you were born.
To laugh, to sing off key, in a voice forlorn.
Those people who called you a nut, a woman gone crazy,
Well they were just bores, their vision a bit hazy.
They didn’t get your uncanny wit,
Your vulgar sense of humor that never quite fit.
Your incredible highs and the really low, lows.
The way you always got food on your clothes.

Cause you were the one who taught me to be,
Taught me to live and how to be free.
Taught me to stand up and be true to my self.
Whether the other kids liked it, or called me a fro wearing elf.
You told me I was as pretty and smart and as cool as I thought I could be.

And with those few words, you set me free.
From a life of trying to fit into the group.
You showed me it was them that were out of the loop.
You taught me things you yourself could not live.
But you knew they were true and important lessons to give.

And so momala, on your special day, and in honor of you . . .
I will head to the sea to shout and sing till my face turns blue.
With your off key voice still ringing in my ears,
I will sing the birthday song of our youth with a couple of tears,
"It’s your birthday, it’s momala´s birthday. It’s your birthday,
Birthday today. Hey. Hey!"

Happy Birthday Mom. Not a day goes by that you are not with me . . . always.

Escuela 231 de Pichi Leufu

“Seño, Seño, ¿Qué hace Señorita? (Teach, teach, What are you doing teacher?)” I didn’t have to turn around to know who was at the door.

“Preparing English classes for next week Marcos.”

“Can I help Seño?” his high pitched voice now in my ear as he pulled on my shirt.

“I don’t think so Marcos. Not today anyway. Thanks for asking.”

Marcos always wanted to help, or hug, or kiss you or climb you as if you were a tree. Actually all the kindergarten students did, all four of them, and a few of the first graders too. Maybe it was because at five, being at a residential school, miles away from their parents, and any type of civilization for the matter, from early Monday morning till late Friday afternoon resulted a bit difficult for them to wrap their brains around. Frankly, it was hard for me and I am 32, not five.

By now Marcos had plopped himself down in the chair next to me, and I knew that there was no way I was getting rid of him till the dinner bell rang at 9:00 that night. I handed him a notebook and a pencil from my bag, and asked him if he wanted to practice his letters we had been working on in class, “Yuupeee!” he shouted grabbing the little green notebook and pencil from my hand.

“What should I draw Seño?” he looked up at me with his big brown eyes, a smile from ear to ear, dirt smudged across the bottom of his chin from an early outdoor game with the other kids. Sweet, sweet, sweet were the words that came to mind and yet I knew Marcos. He could be as sweet as sugar one minute and the incarnation of the devil himself the next. That was part of his charm.

I picked up the book and flipped to the last page written on, “What letter did you write here Marcos?” I asked pointing at the picture of the seal and the letter F.

“Foca, Foca. Fff, Fff, Fff” he chanted in a sing song voice.

“That’s right. The Fff from Foca. So what comes after Fff?”

Marcos jumped down from the chair, pushed his stained shirt sleeves back up over his hands and skipped across the hall to the primary classroom to look at the ABC chart I had pasted to his desk earlier that week. In seconds he was back, panting, “Gato seño. Es un gato, gato, Ggg, Ggg, Ggg.”

“That’s right Marcos. It’s the Gggg of Gato. So, go ahead and draw a picture of gato and then you can write the G.” But I didn’t really have to tell Marcos to draw the cat; he was way ahead of me, head down over his very own notebook.

For the last four weeks, since starting at the residential rural school in the province of Pichi Leufu, Argentina, I have had my eyes opened, not just by Marcos, but by every single one of the 30 students at Escuela 231 de Pichi Leufu.

Situated 65 kilometers from the town of Bariloche, down a bumpy, curvy, hilly, dirt road that becomes impassable in the winter months; the students of public school 231 travel distances and routes to get to school I had only heard about in stories from my grandparents or in rerun episodes of “Little House on the Prairie.” Aldana and her sister Fiorela walk an hour and a half every Monday (and back again on Friday) to meet the bus that picks them up at the “main” dirt road near their house. Niko drags five-year old Luciano down the dirt trails from his house in the mountains above the school, only 45 minutes on Mondays but the return on Friday back up the hill is more like two hours, that is if Luciano isn’t too tired. Rocio Belén travels three hours on horse back from her far flung house in the mountains to the only driveable road in the area, where she is then picked up by a bus and driven another hour to their haven of a school, the only place with electricity in miles around.

Here in this windy, unforgiving climate, there is no internet and no cell service. There isn’t even phone service and twice daily, families gather around the radio, at 8 am and 6 pm, to listen to the “socials”, radio broadcasts on the local public radio station, where they hear not only the local and national news but also any news from family and friends attempting to communicate they way you or I would use the phone or an email, “Maria Hernandez of Pilka would like to inform her sister that their mother is gravely ill. Please come home when you can.” “Sandro Coña of Comallo: please report to your brother in law’s stables tomorrow at 10 am for work.” “Damián Escudo would like to inform Sergio Valdez that Maria has begun her labor.” And on and on . . . Everyone’s personal business broadcasted on the local air waves . . . their only mode of communication between their far flung houses in the middle of no where.

Here, on my breaks between the regular academic classes from 8 to 1 and my English and Computer classes in the afternoon, I would head out of the school on my daily run and see no one, not a house, not a car for the entire hour and a half, just mountains, rocks, the river and the road, stretching out for miles in both directions. At times, I would come across a cow or two, a flock of geese, a herd of sheep or possibly someone on horseback, but even that was rare.

Here, in Damian´s 6th and 7th grade combination class, the six students, boys and girls alike would fight for whose turn it was to share a song with the class. Not a shred of the typical adolescent embarrassment evident as their sweet voices filled the room with music, their classmates accompanying them on the drums or the tambourine.

Here, in the kindergarten to 2nd grade classroom, the kindergartners would sit up just a little bit taller in their seats as I walked I after recess, handing them their green ABC notebooks, “Is it time to work with you Seño?” they would ask, their voices a miniature version of their older siblings, cousins and aunts and uncles in the school.

Here, in the continuing education adult classes that 3rd through 5th grade teacher Andrea taught in the afternoons, we hiked to houses with large holes in their tin roofs from the last big hail storm. No plumbing, no electricity, but a never-ending supply of mate to offer to their Seño and her visiting teacher friend from the United States. Their hospitality was palpable as we passed the hot, bitter drink around the circle, and they thanked us profusely for traversing the roads to come and help them learn.

Here, at the river a ten minute walk from the school, on a Thursday afternoon, the last hot summer day before the winter set in, 30 kids splashed in the water. Not more than half of them in actual bathing suits, their shorts or underwear soaked, their lips blue in the setting sun. They ran and dove and laughed and played and begged me to show them how I swam till I got in and froze my butt off too.

Here at the rural Olympic Games in the 300 inhabitant town of Comallo, we snuggled into our mattresses at night, two groups of students and teachers from two rural schools, asleep together on the floor of a gymnasium, preparing to play each other in Soccer, Chess and the 100 yard dash. We would win few medals the following day, but regardless of how much or little we won, the kids would give it their all, play their hardest, be the best sports they knew how to be.

I went to Pichi Leufu to help. To give the 30 students and 3 teachers some of what I had to offer. My expertise. My good will or something like that. And I am sure I did help. Every little bit helps in this world. But, now as I look back on the experience, I realize it wasn’t really me helping them. Because, what I got back in return was way more than I could have ever given them in 45 minute English or Computer classes, in daily reading or writing lessons.

It was them that taught me something about learning. In the dining room waiting for a small voice to bless our food or in the dorm rooms at night, tucking them in with a bedtime story, or on the recess yard, watching kids from aged 5 to 13 playing soccer together . . . it was not me who taught them, it was them who taught me. About love, about life and hardship and tenacity and togetherness.

Last Thursday after dinner, as I said my good byes in the dining hall, tears dangerously close to the edge of my eyes, one of the “tougher” 6th grade boys, Erik, raised his hand, “Seño?” he questioned, and I nodded for him to go one wondering what profane word he would ask me to translate into English. “Seño,” he said again, his voice almost a whisper, all eyes in the room on him, necks straining to see him as he spoke. “How do you say, ´Please don’t leave us?´ in English Seño?”

I shook my head, unable to respond, a small, sad smile on my face. I walked over to his table where all the 6th and 7th grade boys sat, and as the whole cafeteria erupted into applause, I reached down and hugged Erik, tears running down my cheeks, “Gracias Erik. Gracias, alumnos de 231. I´ll miss you too.”

The solo, not so solo backpacking trip

Truth be told, I didn’t want to go backpacking alone. Not just because I thought my father would verbally "kill me" if he found out, though that was definitely part of it. I could just hear him in the little voice in my head, “Jennifah, are you insane? A woman alone in the wilderness? Don’t be so naïve. The problem is you are too trusting! Do you want to give me a heart attack?” And on and on and on . . . that must be the Jewish father in him. But really, I didn’t want to go alone, because frankly, I was a bit scared. Sure, I know what you’re thinking, scared? After all that she’s done on her own, by herself? She’s scared? But it’s true, I was.

So, I went looking for the potential backpacking partners: Salvador a fellow traveller from Guatemala on break from his university in Brazil and Diego, a guy that works at the hostel I tend to stay at when in Bariloche for the weekend. Of course, Salvador was no longer anywhere to be found. He had moved on to the next town, as travellers have a tendency to do. And Diego, well Diego, was asleep when I called and had no intention of getting up any time soon.

Upon realization that I was on my own if I was going to go up into the mountains last weekend, I did what I do best, I procrastinated. First, I attempted to find a place to fix my now broken digital camera. That took up a few hours. I, then, had to look for some sort of picture taking device, given that I wasn’t going to go up into the mountains with no camera. That too took time. I had to food shop so that I would be well prepared up there all by myself. And of course, since Friday is my only week day in civilization since starting at the rural school, I had to go to the post office to mail yet another batch of postcards. By this time it was almost 4:00 and now it seemed late to start out. But as I sat there in the hostel trying to figure out what else I could do for the weekend, Gustavo, one of the hostel´s employees looked at me and said, “Go already, you’re driving me nuts. You’ll be fine. The route’s well marked. You have time before sunset. It’ll be fun. Just go.” So, I went.

It was after 5 when I got off the bus and headed down the dirt road alongside Lago Gutierrez to enter the Nahuel Haupi National Park, and almost 6 when I finally got the permit and the directions on how to find the trail head. The ranger assured me that it was nearly impossible to get lost and that I should have no problem making it to the camping area by 10 when the sun actually set. I must have asked him at least twenty times if I could get lost, until finally he looked at me as if to say, “Seriously, are you really that dumb or deaf or do you just not understand what I am saying in Spanish?” He didn’t say that of course. He just laughed pointed down the road and told me to go on and get started before I lost the daylight I had remaining. Clearly, I was still procrastinating.

In the end, the ranger and Gustavo were both right, the trail was well marked. I think even my mother wouldn’t have gotten lost on this trail and she could get lost in our house going from the kitchen to the bathroom. But no one, not the ranger, not Gustavo, not John, who had done the route a few weeks earlier, mentioned, “Oh yeah, by the way, it’s four hours UP hill.” So there I was sweating my catooties off with a backpack as heavy as I had ever carried it. This camping on your own made for a strenuous trip.

As the sun dipped behind the mountain, the refuge and camping area still over an hour away, I began the last long uphill stretch for the day. I walked bent over forward, taking miniscule steps, the backpack feeling like three thousand pounds instead of thirty. Behind me, I heard voices and turned around to see who would clearly now pass me as I moved turtle like up the mountain. There on the trail about 100 feet below me were two young boys hiking obviously much faster than I. They caught up to me, slowed their clip, and as we made our way up to the camping next to Refugio Frey, we began to chat.

That night under a moon so full it felt like daytime, the three of us sat eating rice primavera and talking about what people always talk about when they are traveling, how it is that you go to be in whatever place you are currently in. Martín and David were both university students in Buenos Aires on their summer vacation. They had been coming to this same mountain since they were twelve. For them, it was like coming home. For me, it was a group of people to camp near, not quite so alone in the wilderness afterall. Of course, it did cross my mind that these two teenaged boys, could indeed be murderers, rapists or thieves, but in lieu of foraging a place on my own in the dark, I decided to risk it.

In the end, I decided against putting the tent up since the boys were without a tent and the night was clear. Despite the brightness of the moon, a good number of stars shone above us, and as we climbed into our respective sleeping bags, a shooting star zipped across the night sky. I breathed in the clean mountain air; lay in my bag, glasses off, world a fuzzy blur, listening to the river rushing below and the howl of the wind in my ears. This was life. And to think I hadn’t wanted to come camping by myself.

It was either the sun or the large quantity of dust in my face that awoke me the next morning hours before either of my two "campsite mates." I tapped around on the ground searching for my glasses, covered in a film of light brown sand and wiped them and my face on the already dirty sleeve of my sweater. The morning was crisp and as I sat eating my cheese and tomato sandwich, writing in my journal, I thought maybe I would continue on to the next refuge, Jakob, instead of heading back down to Lago Gutierrez that day. David and Martín had sworn it was worth the five or six hour hike and that really it was just two big up hills and two descents. "No big deal," they assured me, "Piece of cake." Really, the next time some one tells me that the two up and down hills are no big deal, I will make sure to ask them to be a bit more descriptive before making a decision about whether or not to follow them up the mountain.

We set off as a group but within minutes I realized, there was no way I would keep pace with these young kids and told them to go ahead, which of course, they did. That’s not to say I never saw them again. They would wait to me at the top of the summit or the bottom of the descent before moving on for most of the day. So I was alone, but not completely.

I am not sure there are words to accurately depict what kind of day Saturday was, other than perhaps pure torture. If Friday’s ascent had been more up hill and more strenuous than I had imagined, well, Saturday’s hike made me long for the hours of late Friday afternoon heading toward Frey. The first section of the day, an hour climb to a glacier lake left me breathless but still in good spirits. There, David and Martín awaited me sprawled out on rocks and taking pictures of the scenery. The next segment continued up through the snow and onto a path entirely made out of large boulders that required you to quite literally lift your body up from one to the next, looking for a handhold while desperately holding on with one hand and your foot to the rock beneath you. I reached the top and took in my surroundings, Tronodor Mountain to my left, Nahuel Haupi Lake shining below fringed by snow capped peaks on every side. It was indeed breathtaking, that is, if the climb had left me with any breath to be taken.

What ensued from then on, I swear, can only be described as sheer masochism, or is it sadism? I always get those two confused. The descent to the river from the top was nothing short of sliding straight down a mountain, praying as you careened downward, that the landslide you were creating as you slid snowboard style down the hill was not being repeated by someone directly above you. By the time I got down to the ravine, my shoes were absolutely filled to the brim with dirt, rocks and probably a few flowers I destroyed on the way. I was beginning to question the decision made in the beauty of the morning light to continue to Jakob, but looking back up over my shoulder, I knew it was too late now.

After a quiet lunch by a waterfall, we set out toward the last up and down hill sections of the day. David warned me that what had come before paled in comparison to what we would encounter on the next two sections. At that moment, my ignorance was indeed bliss. I lost sight of the two boys immediately upon beginning the ascent up a rock strewn side of a mountain and for over an hour, sweat poured down my face into my eyes, my mouth and down my neck as I labored upwards toward the summit. As I struggled up, up, up, I scanned to rocks above me looking for the tell tale red dots marking my way. I promised myself not to stop for more water till I reached the next trail marker swatting dozens of Tabanas, the large black biting flies, as I walked.

Up ahead as my watch read 5:30 in the afternoon, I could make out Martín’s head, the sun blotting out the rest of his body. “Is that the top?” I cried out, praying for an affirmation.

“¡Sí!” came the much needed reply as I pulled myself up the last section and sank onto the hard earth.

“Thank god,” I breathed as I pulled out my water and finished the rest of the bottle. “I am dead.”

“Not so fast,” David pointed to the horizon, “That’s where we’re going.”

I looked across the valley and sure enough, there was a small house, el refugio San Martín and camping. But where was the trail? I continued searching to no avail and finally asked the question, dreading the inevitable answer, “And the trail?”

They exchanged wary looks that did not calm my spirit before David finally spoke, “Just take your time. It’s a bit steeper than the first descent and since it’s mostly rocks, it’s very slippery. Take your time. Take it slow and we’ll see you at the camping.”

“Take my time, take it slow. Take my time, take it slow. . . ” I breathed in and out as I stepped and then slipped and then fell on my butt, stepped and then slipped and then fell on my butt. My hands were scraped raw, the back of my leg bleeding from one of the many falling rocks, my heart raced, the tabana flies swarmed and the sun beat down mercilessly from above. This was NOT fun, in any way, shape, or form. What kind of masochist was I anyway? I must have been insane when I decided to go on this hike! I could hear my father’s laugh in my head as I relayed the story days later. That is if I didn’t fall to my death trying to get down the mountain. The boys long gone; my head pounding, visions of broken legs, cracked skulls and night fall began to race through my mind.

So, I began to do the only thing I could think of to help the situation. Obviously, I began to talk to the flies, “Please,” I implored, my voice a high pitched whine, “Please tabanas, please leave me alone. I just can’t handle you too.” Bam, I fell again and the tabanas swarmed around me.

When that didn’t work, I thought, maybe I would try the universe. Perhaps I was starting too low on the hierarchy, “Um, hello, Universe? Could you help me out here? I get you can’t make this go any faster. But could you at least get rid of these flies? I just can’t take it anymore.” I was defintitely losing my mind.

But of course, that too failed. Out of entities, insects and people to plead for help, I thought to even try my mom, figuring she might have some pull with someone up there, but no such luck.

Finally, fifteen falls on my you know what later, I reached flat ground. Turning around to look up behind me, the mountain loomed above me sneering sinisterly. I swear, the mountain was definitely laughing.

“Home free!” I thought. I would have skipped down the flat trail if I could have, but my legs were screaming and refused to do much more than a lopsided, slow stroll. In my head, I skipped toward the refuge on muddy trails, thinking, “I mean really, how hard could the last few kilometers be?”

“Glunk” was the sound I heard, as my left foot, followed by my whole left leg slipped down into the mud, just as if I had stepped in quick sand. I lurched forward quickly pulling my right foot with me. Luckily it came free. But the left one was completely stuck. I began to dig out my leg, mud flying everywhere, and as I dug, more mud sunk on top of my shoe and leg. Faster and faster I dug, alternately leaning forward to support myself on the muddy ground to try to pull my left leg out of the hole, but to no avail. I was stuck. I stood there, sunken into the ground, looking around the deserted trail. No one in front of me, no one behind me. I called out for help, no answer. My watch read 7:00 pm, three hours to sundown and getting colder. “I’m either going to start hysterically laughing or hysterically crying.” I said aloud to no one in particular, as I struggled once again against the cold mud around my leg. Laugh it was. Cracking up, I dug, pulled, dug, pulled, tried to take my shoe off, dug, pulled, till finally, POP! Out came my leg and BAM! I landed face first in the mud.

Scrambling to get out of there before I sunk again, I unfortunately, missed the trail marking flag telling me to cross the river at that exact spot and so oblivious and covered in mud, continued on my way to clean myself off. Not two minutes later, I reached the end of the trail, faced with an impassable point in the river. Clearly this was not the way. I turned around to see where I had gone wrong, and BOOM! Back down in the mud, this time on my right side. I shook my head as I stood up, “You have got to be kidding me.” I muttered as I headed back down to the river to clean myself off again. To the right I saw what looked like it might be a trail if you could get through the brush that had overgrown the beginning, so I headed up the hill to try it out, but no, it was merely another mud trap waiting for a cold, exhausted, fed up hiker. Yep, that would be me.

Now once again, covered in mud, I gave up trying to clean myself off and headed back the way I came. How the heck was I ever going to find my way to the campground? This was the unfortunate part of hiking alone with the sense of direction of a flea. So much for well marked.

Luckily for me, just as I was about to throw myself in the river and give up on life, a couple came down the muddy path and together the three of us, determined that the trail crossed the river back at my mud hole, with no bridge, three small rocks to step on and a steep drop off to the right. Clearly this was the way. However had I missed that?

And forty muddy minutes later, I dragged myself into camp to a bemused couple of boys, just about to send out the search party.

I know what you must be thinking. Sounds like fun, Jen. Lots of fun. And I admit, if the trip had ended then, it might very well have been my last solo backpacking trip ever. Fortunately for my future forays with Mother Nature, I settled into my muddy sleeping bag and slept like the dead under another amazing moon, and awoke the next day ready for my last stint on the trail before getting back to Bariloche.

By the time I had finagled a cup of coffee from the refuge, the boys had already headed out, so, I decided to put a little music to my hike. I broke out the ipod, donned the head phones and I was off.

What a hike home it was. I don’t know exactly what it was that made the hike back to Bariloche so completely rejuvenating. Maybe it was just the sense of self accomplishment for having gotten through something on my own that had scared me. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t fallen down the mountain or gotten stuck in the mud and frozen to death. Or perhaps it was the music that accompanied me as I literally ran down the trail past yellow, orange and purple flowers, through sunlit trees and across rivers with no bridges, a rope keeping me from falling down the waterfall below. I don’t know exactly what it was, but four short hours later when a dirty, muddy, smelly, sore version of Jen skipped the last few feet to the trailhead, I wasn’t the least bit bothered that I had just missed my bus back to the hostel in Bariloche . . .I knew I would find my way, just fine.

Clarification

I know the last entry confused some of you that talk to me more frequently so I thought I would clarify what´s going on. I am still volunteering at the rural school 65 km outside of Bariloche and staying there during the week. The "paria" entry was from the week before I began at the school, but I was behind in publishing due to my lack of contact with modern technology. I am currently working on an entry about the school, but may publish some other entries in the meantime that are already done. . .

Thanks for reading. . . çç
jen

El grupo paria

If I remember correctly, it was Lucas that I met first. He was lying in the top bunk when I came back from god only knows where, and as I entered the room, he sat up.

“Sorry to wake you,” I whispered as I sat down on my bed to organize my belongings.

“Nah, I was already awake.” He replied sitting up on one elbow, “Che, where are you from and why do you speak Spanish so well?”

I, of course, assumed he wanted what my mother told all men want, but I was in the mood to talk (when am I not?), so I laughed and asked him which version of the story he wanted, the abridged or unabridged one. He said he had time on his hands, so I told him the whole thing. I guess he didn´t really know what he was gettinghimself into when he first told me to go ahead and tell him the long version, but when I finished my life´s story, he nodded, climbed down off the bunk, told me he hoped to see me later and went into the bathroom to shower.

Later on that night, as I checked out my prospects for travel partners or potential friends for the week, I noticed there were two groups: the Israelis and the group from Buenos (Porteños). I saw Lucas among them, and thought about going over to sit with him and his Porteño friends. But they were all in the middle of making asado, which consists of grilling large quantities of meat, so you can imagine my hesitation. Plus, there was that voice in my head nagging me about Lucas´s intentions and anyway, I had to get up early the next day to go on the Tronador trip. So I called it an early night and hit the hay. That’s not to say that I was able to fall asleep when I went downstairs at midnight since the Porteños were just beginning to grill and it would be hours before dinner was actually ready. It had to have been 5 in the morning when they finally called it quits. So, when I got up the next day at 7:30 in the morning, sure, I tried to be quiet, but not that quiet. After all, what comes around goes around, right?

The next night as I waited for 11:30 to roll around, the obvious hour to get together with people for drinks, I saw Lucas and company once again. They had just come in from the balcony with pizzas and I stood by the doorway unsure about whether or not I should join them. After all, they were obviously life long friends and why would they want some silly Yankee at their table, just because she spoke Spanish.

Who exactly it was among them that told me to sit down and eat some pizza, I am not sure, but one of them finally spoke to me. I think they took pity on my pathetic expression, but whatever the reason, I wasn´t about to say no. Not even because I had eaten already. Of course, I told them that, but that didn’t matter in the least.

Seconds later, I had a slice of pizza and coca-cola and fernet, a liquorice flavored liquor very popular among Argentineans, and of course the group was dying to know where I was from and why I spoke Spanish so well.

Lucas held up his hand to me as if to say, “Let me do the talking.” And promptly launched into an abridged story of my life, Argentinean style. Once the collective laughter had died down, I figured it was my turn to question them, so I inquired about how they had all decided to come to Bariloche for their vacation.

“Somos parias,” explained Ricky, the others nodding their agreement.

“¿Parias?” I inquired, wracking the dictionary in my brain and coming up blank. This was a new word for me.

“Parias. Parias are people that don´t quite fit in. Actually, we all met yesterday here in the hostal. All of us ended up here in Bariloche alone and mostly unexpectedly, and found this group of misfits to spend some time with.”

“Yesterday?” I was incredulous. Just last night had been the night I watched them cooking up an asado as I headed for bed, as if they had been friends their whole lives.

“That’s how parias are,” Mariana explained, “Why don’t you join us tonight out for a beer? See if you might be a paria too.”

But, I couldn’t meet them out. I already had plans, so I wrote down my number and email in case we didn’t see each other and went out to find my new friends from the Tronador excursion earlier that day.

About mid way through the night, around 2 in the morning, I saw them saunter into Wilkenneys, a definite motley crew. There was Ricky, the business man in Bariloche because his work truck had broken down and stranded him there; Santi, the hippie, a chef who´s trip to Bariloche had been purchased last minute by a friend of his so he could go on vacation. Mariana, the teacher in the group on summer vacation, had come with a couple of colleagues that apparently didn´t see eye to eye. Ruben was the young, shy one in the group, in Bariloche a week earlier than his his friends with the look of a lost puppy. And then there was of course, Lucas, the one sure to pull a practical joke on you at some point in the evening, who had searched high and low in vain for someone to vacation with, but when no one was free, decided, "what the heck, I´m going anyway." They stopped by my table to say hello, but then went off to find a spot for themselves.

Later, on my way to the bathroom, there they were standing in a group cracking each other up. I never returned to my table.

Several Guinness and many hours later as we stood on the balcony of the Hostal Backpacker Nomad watching the sun come up over the lake, I thought to myself, “Here they are. I’ve found my travel group for the week . . . el grupo paria.”

I have to say that the rest of the week was a bit of a blur. After each late night, someone would usually remark, “Mañana arrancamos temprano.”

But perhaps, going out to dinner at midnight or Santi cooking fajitas at one in the morning prevented us from really getting up early to get to know the city of Bariloche and all it had to offer.

Yet, despite our late starts, we did manage to have a few daytime adventures as well. I believe the one most representative of them would have to be our trip to Campenario, one of the local mountains with some of the “best” views of Bariloche.

Of course, by the time we actually got to the mountain, it was already 6 p.m. and the cable car transporting people up to the top ran only to 6:30 so we had no other choice but to walk up. That was fine by me, since my preferred method of travel is usually the one involving a walk or a hike, but I had forgotten my hiking shoes and was in my flip flops. Come to think of it, so were Lucas and Santi. Ricky was the only one that had wear appropriate shoes. But since the park ranger told us it was only a 30 minute walk, we figured we could do it in flip flops and off we went to find the trail.

Lucas led us up the dusty, steep trail along side the cable car, and immediately I knew something was wrong. I tried to convince them as we slipped and slid and fell in the dust on the side of the mountain that there was no way that this was the trail, but to no avail. By then, Lucas had broken one of his flip flops and Santi and I were laughing so hard, we could barely pull ourselves any higher on the trail. We had been “hiking” a little over ten minutes and less than 50 meters when we heard from down below, “¡Chicos, esto NO es el sendero!”

Of course it wasn’t the trail. . . how could it have been a trail that takes only 30 minutes to reach the top, recommended for families and whoever decides not to take the cable car as a leisurly hike.

We nearly died laughing then, the other visitors and rangers down below, looking up at us in our complete stupidity, shaking their heads. But now that we knew that this wasn´t the trail, we had another, bigger, problem; how to get down. Santi immediately began to slide down the mountain, followed close behind by Richard, luckily stopping themselves on a tree in the middle of the “path.” Lucas, following their example, flip flops in hand, flew by me and nearly right by Santi and Ricky as well, at a velocity that could not have felt good on his poor bare feet. Luckily for him, Santi was quick with a hand out to stop him from breaking his neck.

I was another story. I was not about to break my leg, my face or even my flip flops getting down the mountain and despite Santi´s insistence that he could catch me as I ran down, I sat down on my butt and did the old "slip on down," kicking up clouds of dust as I slid.

So there we were, 30 minutes later, covered in dust, a broken flip flop and no closer to the top . . . complete parias.

After a few more false starts and three or four breaks to fix Lucas’s flip flops, take some silly picures and enjoy the scenery, we did finally make it to the vista point and it was well worth the effort as we stood up on the tower at the top of the mountain, looking out over dozens of lakes, islands and mountains that dotted the horizon.

We set the timer on Santi´s camera to capture the moment and as the camera went click, a desire to punch the air matrix style kicked in, and so in the spirit of the strangeness of the day, I did. And wouldn’t you know it, when we looked at the photo, there was Santi jumping high into the air, Ricky, in a karate pose and Lucas looking like Jackie Chan, definite paria style.

November´s photos: A little bit of Peru and Bolivia

I decided to change my mode of sharing photos to Yahoo photos. It seems a bit easier to manage with the captions and organization. Hopefully the link works. If it doesn´t, please let me know and I can send it to you via email. I believe you can view the photos without having a Yahoo account, but if you want to save them, you will need to sign in or sign up.


The photos are from November. Better late than never I guess. They are of the brief time we spent in Peru, John´s trek to Machu Pichu and the first few weeks in Bolivia. In case you are interested, we had about double the amount of photos as are in the album, but had a disk storage catastrophe and lost about 300 of them. So enjoy the 200 or so I posted and just imagine how long over 500 would have taken you to view (and me to post.)


http://new.photos.yahoo.com/album?c=jensteiner39&
aid=576460762386331035&pid=&wtok=zhss.y.jA2ANgrMHcNNu4g--&ts=1170032875&.src=ph#page1

I have two more disks of photos waiting to be uploaded. Maybe next weekend when I get back into civilization again as there is no internet, phone or cell service at the school where I am volunteering.

The Legend of Amancay*

The truth is, once I got to Bariloche, the urban center of Argentina’s Patagonia region, I was not so sure I wanted to continue exploring. I was having one of those moments that happen during extended travel when things just feel yucky. I missed my family and friends, the solo travel wasn’t all that fun yet and I just didn’t feel like going out there to meet new people, see new sights and expand my mind. Plus I was tired of answering, "Vos, de dónde sos y por qué hablàs tan bien el castellano? (Where are you from and why do you speak Spanish so well)"

But after a day or two of down time in the hostal and aimless wanderings around a town that reminded me a bit of a bigger version of South Lake Tahoe, with it’s blue lake and large snow capped mountains, I decided to get motivated and sign up to go with a group to see el Volcán Tronador. I figured this way I would see something, do a little hiking and maybe meet some new friends and get rid of the deep blue funk.

The next morning, we set off in the in yet another mini-van, filled with 8 Argentineans, a Peruvian, an Israeli, a German, an English girl, myself and our two Argentinean guides and before I knew it, we were all friends planning our adventures for later that night.

Throughout the day, we hiked, chatted and got to know one another in one of the most beautiful areas of Argentina. While the mountains are not as tall as Aconcagua, the diversity of plant life, the glaciers and the crystal blue of the lake come together to leave you feeling as though you stepped out of reality and into a nature show.

It was during the third mini-hike of the day that we came across the Amancay flowers, bright yellow, floppy petals with bits of red splattered on the inside.

“Do you know the legend of Amancay?” Our guide Martín inquired. But not one of us did and so, like a good guide, he began to tell us the tale . . .

“Once upon a time, in the frigid Patagonia region of Argentina, there lived a princess named Amancay. Amancay, the daughter of the Mapuche tribe´s cheif, was well loved and respected by the members of the tribe. She was known for her selfless nature, her kindness and her truthfulness. Amancay always kept her word.

Around the time of her 15th birthday, Amancay´s father became very ill. For weeks the local medicine men, witch doctors and anyone with any remote knowledge of how to cure rare illnesses, came to visit the chief to see if they could cure his ailment. But to no avail. It seemed, for all everyone tried, the chief was dying.

Amancay was devastated. She and her father were very close and at such a young age, she was not ready for him to leave her alone in the world. Tearfully, she went to see the medicine man and ask if there weren’t any more he could do for her father.

“Honestly, Amancay, your father is deathly ill. Unfortunately his sickness is so grave that the only thing that could save him is a special plant that grows in the upper most regions of the Tronador Volcano.”

“What?” shrieked Amancay, “There is something that I can do to save him? I must go at once!”

The medicine man shook his head slowly, “Sadly, I think that it will not be possible for you to obtain this special plant. It is virtually impossible to find not to mention the many dangers along the route.”

“Danger will not stop me, nor a challenging search. If there is something I can do to save my father´s life, I will do it. I must go and find this plant!” Amancay exclaimed and off she went to climb up Tronador Volcano and save her father´s life.

Amancay climbed for hours and hours, over ice and snow, lifting herself up from rock to rock, hand over hand, until blisters began to form on her finger tips. She was tired, hungry and she had barely reached the halfway mark to the summit. It was there that she encountered the condor.

“Stop right there little girl,” the condor shrieked in an evil voice akin to the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. “You may not pass by me. I will rip your heart from your chest.”

“Please condor, let me by,” implored Amancay, “I am on a mission to save my father, a very important chief of the Mapuche tribe. He is gravely ill and the only thing that can save him is a special plant that grows on the summit of Tronador.”

The condor, touched by her bravery and sense of selflessness decided to let her pass, under one condition. After bringing the plant to her father, she must return to sacrifice herself and her heart to the condor. Amancay agreed without hesitation and continued laboring up the mountain to find the plant that would save her dying father.

Days later, back at home, her father quickly began to recover with the help of this special plant and the community rejoiced. A party was made in Amancay´s honor and the entire tribe attended the ceremony. Amancay was gracious and clearly relieved to see her father´s health improve, but now she had something else she had to do.

She kissed her father good bye, and true to her word, returned to the condor to fulfil her promise to him for letting her continue her journey early that week.

As the legend goes, after ripping out Amancay´s heart, the condor flew all over the Patagonia region, the heart clutched in his claws, her blood falling like rain, staining the earth below. Which is why today, whenever you come across the yellow Amancay flower, drops of the Princess Amancay´s blood remain, forever a testament to her sacrifice and her honesty.”

The end

*disclaimer: I have been volunteering for the last week at a school and for the last two weeks have spoken very little English. . .I am thinking that it shows in the narration of this legend and will probably be apparent in the next few entries. Bear with me folks.