The Last Hoorah

So this will be my last post from South America (although I think I will keep up the blog as I am seriously considering moving halfway across the country and away from everyone I know).
I have no idea what to say. I can´t think of any way to really sum up the past 6 months. I don´t think it would be possible. Instead I think I will just put in an excerpt from one of my journals. I was in a national park on the Caribbean coast in Colombia at the time, and although the entry is not meant to represent a summary or a conclusion of my trip, I do think it captures the feeling of living in a surreality that i´ve been harboring for about 6 months now.

My time in Tyrone was really like being inside of a piece of a Gabrielle Garcia Marquez story. His yellow butterflies were everywhere and as their yellow cream wings fluttered through the air, opening and closing like the eyelids of the surprised, I found myself wishing for a love that spawned butterflies....

The soft yellow of the butterflies was offset by the lush green of the ivy-like plants that crept along the sand towards the ocean. Their long tendrils looked like the fingers of the jungle that lay behind them, lazily unfurling as if to stealthily reclaim the few meters of sand that dared escape its clorophilic clutches. But even these greedy fingers were beautiful with their tiny purple flowers blossoming everywhere.

Laying on the beach and looking up, I watched the silhouettes of angular seabirds wheel through the sky like pterodactyls, looking for their next meal. The boulders next to me seemed to support this daydream, their giant masses and sharp edges suggesting they were not yet worn by time....

Mud Volcanos and the like

Speedo Update

I´ve decided that my Speedo is like God in a blue spandex sort of a manifestation: powerful yet flexible, all encompasing. I don´t know why they can´t make women´s bikini bottoms like this.
Also, I am a huge fan of Joe´s idea of cladding zombies in bikinis. The Incan Zombie Commune will wear Speedos when they give their educational talks to world leaders. Why? Because they can. And because nothing says F the man like wearing a neon colored Speedo, especially if your flesh is undead.

Pah Pah Paradise

Other than having to deal with one particularly pushy hotel owner, my week on Providence was wonderful. The island is tiny and populated with people who speak a very strange mix of Spanish and Jamacain style English. It is surrounded by coral reefs and the warm, calm water of the Caribbean. The buildings are brightly painted wooden structures covered with hammocks and disgarded nets and floats once used by fishermen. Some of the trees are covered with old anchor markers and styrofoam floaties which look like giant nautical christmas tree balls (one could envision the Dr. Seuss fish gathering around a christmas tree of this sort). There are mangrove swamps and lime trees abound. You catch giant land crabs at night which look disapprovingly at you with raised purple claws when you shine your flashlight at them. You can climb the mountain in the middle of the island, which is gaurded by hundreds of lizards, and when you sit on the top, looking out over the island and the sea, you feel like the Swiss Family Robinson in the scene where the family is sitting on their mountain lookout, quietly surveying the pirates invading their island, right before they start chucking coconut explosives everywhere. There are horse races on the beach on the weekends, and rope swings tied to coconut trees that dangle temptingly over the waves.
So yeah, it was pretty fucking fantastic. I spent my time getting my dive licence, zipping around the island on a moped, fending off men (detraction from general experience), working on my tan, watching alot of HBO at night, and eating as much fresh fish as possible. I saw manta rays, eels, giant lobsters, and tiny crabs with gangly legs that looked like spiders or like those weird wire head massagers. It was a great week.

Oh ps!! I´ve decided that the next time I want to freak out and run away, I am going to go adventure diving off of Malpelo island, another UNESCO world heritage site whose waters are home to schools of over 500 hammerhead sharks. Anyone want to get their dive licence and come with???

You might smell like vanilla, but you´re still a gorilla

Ways Not To "Get the Girl":
(yes, this is a mini vent session)


1. Propose to come visit her in her hotel while your wife and 8 year old child are in the room next door. If she points out the fact that you are married and have a child, DO NOT proceed to give her the speech about "living in the moment."

2. If you are a hotel owner, do not personally come into a woman´s room (unasked) at 3 in the morning to wake her up for her 4 am bus ride.

3. Do not lunge at a woman while having a conversation with her.

4. If a girl leaves the door to her room unlocked when she goes down the hall to the bathroom, do not enter her room univited expecting her to find you a pleasant surprise upon her return.

5. No hissing. Or whistling.

After a particularly difficult week of being the only single and only white female on a 2 mile stretch of island, I thought I should create some guidlines for the men of South America as to what is appropriate behavior when talking to western women. Or any women for that matter. I would also like to dedicate the song King Kong (Attack of the Egomanic) by Kudu to the egomaniacs of the world, and point out that while you might smell like vanilla, you can still be a gorilla.

She wore an itsy bitsy, teeny.....WEENIE BIKINI!!

Ahhhh!!!
So somehow I managed to loose my bathing suit bottoms. And as I have a ticket for a plane that leaves for island paradise tomorrow morning, I figured I needed to remedy this situation. After 5 hours of maniacal shopping for a bathing suit in a 3 story mall (scariness) and finding nothing but thongs, and grannie bottoms, I got desperate. There was a Speedo shop in said mall, and although that was the first place I went, I found nothing I would vaguely consider clading my body with there. But I was thinking inside the box. Four hours after my original attempt, I returned. And I went directly to the children´s section...specifically, the boy´s section. You see in Latin America the girls all wear thongs and the boys all wear speedos, otherwise known as weenie bikinis. But the weenie bikinis are exactly like the bikini bottoms that say a girl from the United States would be looking for. I plunged in, much to the distress of the salespeople. They tried explaining, in a very polite and perhaps slightly patronizing tone, that those bottoms were for children, male children. I just smiled, nodded, told them that, yes I was aware of that, and continued pulling lycra bottoms for the wall. They began to look seriously worried at this point. ANd started searching through the women´s section trying, in vain, to find something that was not a thong for me.
Sort of long story short, I triumphed and found the perfect weenie bikini. It´s just my size. The sales people were horrified and I was greatly pleased with my purchase. I also learned that ambiguity is not quite as cool here in Latin America as it is up north and even things like bathing suits have clear gender demarcations. Ah well. Just another day well spent as the crazy gringo. But now off to the beach!! Fishes beware!!

Zombies, Pineapple Explosion

Hmm so where was I? Oh yeah, I was sandboarding in Peru. Well since then I went to visit the national museum in Ica, home of several completely intact mummies. Ica´s dry desert climate had managed to preserve both their hair and skin. There was also a rehydrated hand from about 1100 A.D. (pictured) and a headress of dreadlocks that measured about 4 feet long. I arrived at the museum at about 6pm, an hour before closing, in hopes to avoid large groups of people. I suceeded, for about 10 min. After having the entire place to myself for said 10 minutes, a school group of about 40 twelve-year-olds invaded the museum. They were loud, they giggled, they took pictures with the flash on, they flirted with each other, they made me feel like a tight-lipped librarian that wore glasses on a chain. I wanted them to stop flirting, shut up, and show some respect. I started feeling really sorry for the mummies. I mean, these guys had been promised eternal life, power, and splendor. They were going to become gods. Instead they had been unearthed from their tombs of gold and silver and placed in a museum where they were housed in cheap glass cases, labeled with laminated index cards, and displayed before giggling kids with Mickey Mouse cameras. I started hoping that the mummies would become zombies, break out of their cases, and chase off the 12-year-olds. It would have been pretty awesome. Then I started fantasizing about the life of these zombie mummies. Highlights included:
1. Zombies setting up a zombie commune in the desert, which would subsequently become named a UNESCO World Heritage Site (as all the cool stuff in South America is). They would do things like make free zombie love with each other, perfect their children scaring techniques (to be used for child-correction purposes only), talk about the old days, and other stuff that zombies do when living in a zombie commune.
2. The zombies hosting a series of educational talks with the world´s most renown professors, archaeologists, historians, etc, in which they would clarify the cultural customs, mythologies, and everyday practises of the ancient Peruvians.
3. Zombies eating the brains of all corrupt leaders of the world. I think that could keep them satisfied for a while.

Anyway, after Ica, I headed back up to Lima so I could fly to COLOMBIA!!! which is where I am currently. This place is awesome. I am currently in the capital, Bogota. The streets here are filled with graffiti, posters for shows, life. There is a huge blackmarket of books, which takes up about 3 blocks, and everything is cheap. If you ignore the fact that everyone is slightly paranoid about getting mugged, it is pretty fucking awesome. I am investigating various places where I can get certified to dive, and I am looking forward to finally basking in sweet, sweet warmth. Fuck yeah. Viva Colombia.

Sandboarding

Look at meee!!!!!!!



(I promise I am actually sandboarding...it just looks like I am trying to salsa down a giant dune)

The Salar in Bolivia

So I am back in Peru. Bolivia was amazing, and I wish I had more time to spend there. The highlight of my trip was visiting the Salar de Uyuni, the worlds largest salt flat. It is approximately 4,085 square miles wide and is the remains of a prehistoric lake that dried up around 40,000 years ago.

There was an island in the middle of the salar that we went to visit filled with cacti and fossilized coral. I as i walked around I amused myself by envisioning that at night little iridescent, translucent ghost fish swim around the dead coral; sort of mimicking the way the humming birds swam through the air, hovering around the cacti during the day.

There is a small area of the salar that is still covered in water. It grows during the rainy season, but last week it was just the size of a small river. But living in this small salt river were about 50 flamingos. Don´t ask me how flamingos can live 4,000 meters in the air, in the freezing cold (it reaches 20 below in the winter nights), hundreds of miles from the ocean. But they are there.
After seeing the salar, we drove through the desert that inspired Dali`s paintings, saw a pink lake, and a forest of more fossilized coral.



I also found out (after I finished the tour) that the reason the tour companies can afford to buy the Land Cruisers that shuttle the tourists around the salar during the 4 day tour is that they double as cocaine couriers. The salar is in the South of Bolivia and sort of runs along the border of Chile. Many of the companies pack a bunch of cocaine into the cars and later give the packages to the families that we stay with at night so that they can take them across the border to Chile where the coke is sold a quadruple the price it would be in Bolivia. Hmm.


The other highlight of my time in Bolivia was my trip to the collective mines in Potosi. Our group bought a bunch of cigarettes, dynamite, and coca leaves (the leaves that are used to produce cocaine) for the miners and headed up. Potosi is the highest city in the world and so the miners, while underground, are all working at altitude. They work 8 to 13 hour days and don´t eat anything other than coca leaves while they are underground. The miners also carry out all the minerals under their own power. Some of them carry everything on their backs. Others have carts that they push along the tracks that run through the mountain. About every 20 minutes we would hear a distant rumble and our guides would start yelling at us to get off the tracks. Suddenly out of the pitch black two or three guys would apparatein front of us, running at full speed and pushing their mineral cart in front of them.

After crawling through the mines for a couple of hours, we gave an offering of coca leaves to Tio (spanish for uncle) and then sat around drinking with the miners who were getting off work. Tio is a lump of minerals formed roughly into the shape of the devil. The miners always give him cigarettes (he likes filtered best)and coca leaves as gifts. They believe that he governs the space under the mountain and that by giving him offerings they can ask for favors (i.e. safety or prosperity). Every time we took a drink of the 99 proof alcohol that the miners like (yes, we were still underground at his point) we first had to poor some of our drink on the ground for Tio. The next drink went for Pacha Mama, or mother earth. And so on...

So that was Bolivia. Ghost fish and lakes, devils under mountains, cocaine and coca.

Mary North Face

The other day, as I tottered across the Bolivian border at a surprisingly slow pace, I started wondering how on earth my backpack had gotten to weigh at least 35 pounds. So I did a mental inventory of my belongings and discovered that, in fact, I am much more like a travelling art store/library that can camp out in the wilderness for several days at a time (you know, so I can supply the llamas with crayons and reading material) than like a normal backpacker.
Here is a list of things found in my backpack that will startle, amaze, and suport my previous claim:
1. Can of spray paint of that mint green color that is found in older bathrooms
2. Manilla file folders for making stencils
3. a bag of 90 white plastic doves that normally belong on the tops of wedding cakes
4. a compass the kind for drawing circles, not the kind for finding your direction, although I have one of those too
5. several notebooks for journaling and general scribbling
6. exacto knife again for stencils
7. about six tiny tubes of super glue and one tube of something that i think construction workers use to glue pieces of buildings together when welding fails
8. eight books
a. a book of literary criticism that focuses on travel writing that I sort of stole from the DC public library
b. a spanish childrens book about Lorenzo the penguin, who totally kicks ass and is my travel hero
c. Peru guidebook
d. spanish dictionary
e. spanish coursebook
f. spanish verb book
g. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (hopefully not indicative of my social future)
h. guidebook that focuses on trekking

How do I fit all of this stuff, along with a tent, a camp stove, a sleeping pad, clothes, two bags of dried beans that I have had for at least a month now, and various other odds and ends, into one single backpack, you ask?? My only answer is that Mary Poppins and North Face must hace some sort of contract going on.

My Wannabe Hero

This is how the spirit of Joe Thornhill saved my life in Bolivia.
I met met Joe´s Australian double yesterday. He is dark, slightly hairy, has big eyes and long lashes, likes to drink, is quite jovial (unless incised, for example by corrupt police officers, at which point he beings to yell and make large arm motions like an out of control windmill), and he saved me at the Bolivian border checkpoint.
Let me explain. I didn´t have an entrance stamp for Bolivia (the Peruvians failed to give my passport to the Bolivians at the border crossing, resulting in a lack of official stamp). I, however, was unaware of this. About an hour past the border, everyone had to get out of the bus in order to make a ferry crossing. The bus was put on a barge, and everyone had to stand in line getting their passports checked before they too were ferried across the river. This was the point when it became obvious that I had no entrance stamp. I was detained. The border officials told me I had to pay $150 biolivianos to get the stamp. I became angry. Crossing the border is free. This was extortion. I was not giving into this intimidation and corruption. I was a tower of righteous strength. I also did not have any Bolivianos to pay them with, even if I wanted to, and there were no ATMs in this town, rendering me penniless. I argued some more with the police. At this point, I, the tower, started to crumble rapidly as I watched my bus floating down the river, further and further away from me, with my backpack on top of it. I started to become desperate. I pulled out my wallet, opened it up and dumped all my change on the desk. "I have nothing!!" I yelled. The police told me I could leave my passport with them, go to La Paz with my bus and come back the next day to pay and retrieve my passport. I laughed manically at them and told them my passport and I do not separate. At this point the bus had reached the other side of the river. I was ready to start crying.
And then I saw an angry Joeseph Thornhill flailing and yelling in an Australian accent. The same thing had happened to him, and together we took on the Bolivian Border Patrol. He did his windmill flail and yelled in English. I looked small and angry (as I often do) and interpreted everything in my totally kick ass Spanish (which consists of about 40 important nouns and unconjugated verbs). Eventually we gave in to the corruption and he paid my fee, saving me from having my passport confiscated.
Lessons learned?? Dont leave the border without first checking all stamps. Also, get to know Joe Thornhill and make him love you (just buy him a beer, a nice one). It will pay off when you are about to be deported from Bolivia and his spirit appears in an Australian body to save you.

Happy Makes Me a Modern Girl...Angry Makes Me A Modern Girl

So I have some anger problems. It´s true. I think it´s a result of having Irish-Italian blood.
But it´s what makes me a good barback and what propelled me through college even whilst wallowing in despair. It´s why I love punk music, even really bad punk music. (tangent coming) All those bodies writhing around feeding and bouncing off each other´s sweaty anger. It´s release and transformation. I fucking love these photos taken by Edward Clover. They show people flying, overcoming gravity. They show people ripping apart their bodies in attempt to release eveything inside. Punk wraps up all the gutteral and raw, blasts it through huge amps, and creates motion. To me punk is motion. And (for me) motion is freedom (thus my love of things like running, travel, and the bike). It moves people in the crowd to dance, break things, to want to do something. It propells. Sometimes it just propells people into a drug/alcohol induced blitz, but sometimes it does more. It is corporal and cerebral. Anyway, I greedily horde my anger (for when I need propulsion), and I love punk.

Most of my anger is self induced as well as self directed. I get indignant and sometimes enraged when I feel like I am being held back, not achieving things, wasting time, stagnating. Worse still is when I start dwelling on how I have no idea how to get what I want; I only have fledgling ideas that flail hungrily about in my mind. So anyway, the old fury was starting to flair up again. I was getting really fustrated with myself for not taking intiative and engaging in something that would make my trip more than just a escape from DC (albeit a total awesome one). I was not being creative, sponaneous, agressive enough. SO I started thinking of things that would make it more. I came up with the idea of collecting indegenous stories in hopes of publishing a trilingual book. Pipe dream, I know, but something to work for. So, I am working. Probably I am just doing a lot of work for nothing. But fuck it. Why not. It has made me a lot happier. It has been amazing to watch these people get excited when they understand what I am trying to do. They have sung for me, let me stay in their homes, watched me play games with their children, and allowed me to photograph them. So I might not get published, become famous in the literary world, and thus get to have hot art-fag sex on top of elephants while researching my next book in Nepal (although I am still hoping). At least I can know that I tried to push myself further and understand these people more than the average tourist. And for that I give myself two hells-yeahs.
Anyway, another thing that I thought would help to elevate my trip status to "totally kick-ass" would be making street art in all of the major South American cities I visited. But I am shit at drawing and I don´t really have access to photoshop to make cool stencils. What to do?? Well one day my love of the odd brought me into a strange little shop selling notebooks, hairspray, sequins, and plastic figures of things like fat angels, doves, and St. Francis. Doves...I bought a hundred tiny plastic doves meant for things like weddings, baptisms, ...and the streets of Cusco. To me they were perfect...hopeful, peaceful, beautiful. So last night, after hitting up the bars, I came back to my hostal drunk and ready. I set out with doves and super glue in my backpack. I had grand visions of a hundred doves flying along the wall that followed the street up to my hostel. I started glueing........my fingers together. ::Sigh:: The glue was completely liquid and slid off the plastic doves like water off a duck. Also, glue (even super glue) doesn´t work so well for attatching things to dirt walls. The dirt just absorbs it. Go figure. So I ran out of super glue after about 5 minutes and 10 doves. So yeah...I need some practice before I become the next Banksy. But it´s a start...and I still have 90 doves left.....

So recently I´ve been wandering the countryside asking people to tell me their traditional tales in their own language (Spanish, while the official language of Peru, is not the indigenous language of the country; Quechua, the language of the Incas is the native language, and it is slowly disappearing.) I think the highlights of my wanderings have been a slightly drunk old man telling me 3 wonderfully vocally animated stories, a 13 year old girl insisting on singing traditional Quechua songs for me (I think she was slightly tone deaf), and receiving about 30 handwritten stories from the 5th and 6th graders of the Chinchero primary school (complete with scribbles, loads of white-out, and color-pencil drawings of flowers). So, while my findings/recordings may not be the most professional, I think they are extremely representative of the people here: flawed, quiet but bursting to express, drunk from the headiness of the Westernisation in their land (and the resulting displacement of their own culture), subtly intricate, and beautiful.

(the pic is of a girl I saw standing in the street as I was walking back to Ollantaytambo to get the bus to Cusco)

And now off to Bolivia (before I get deported)!!!

Pipe Dreams of an Old Maid

I know, I know. How could a girl on a 5 month travelling binge possibly, for even a moment, be unhappy (reference 2 blogs ago). Ok, so I admit, I was being a bit of a weiner. But hear me out... Sometimes, even in the midst of amazing travels one can feel things other than pure bliss. Sometimes you get tired of always being singled out...or single. Sometimes, like during 30 hour bus trips, or while bedridden for days with a mysterious jungle fever, or while sleeping in the middle of the mountains without a tent, you start to think it might be nice to have someone to talk to (not to mention to help you ward off the encrouching death which you are sure is coming after you). But if you are picky about who you want to share certain spectacular experiences with and also have a rather active imagination, then being alone isn´t too bad. But then you get to Cusco. In Cusco everyone is beautiful, everyone has money, and everyone has a partner (who is also beautiful and loaded which means they get to eat at all the amazing looking restaraunts that serve things other than rice, potatoes, and eggs). And then you start to feel a little lonely. Perhaps a recent converstaion with the amazing Ms. Sullivan about two of my travel dreams will explain:

Dream 1
me: well wouldnt it be great to sneak into macchu picchu at night and have wild traveller sex with this amazing free spirited person that also has a tent and speaks spanish and has a great tan and bod from all his mountaineering?

Charlotte: wait please tell me you actually did that

me: and then you go tramping around together being unconquerable?
no this is my dream
i havent been to macchu picchu yet
...
Dream 2 (with reoccurring themes from Dream 1)
me: i want to collect indigenous fairy tales
and you know, publish a trilingual book of peruvian fairy tales
and then i will be a famed author
and then some hot writer man will find me and we will fly away to india and have wild nomad sex on top of the backs of elephants and in the himalayas

Charlotte: oh man nomad sex
i love your idea.
sounds like you'll need some ethereal photos/illustrations to go with the text.

me: yes mamam

Charlotte: then i'll be a legendary book designer and be having hot art fag sex on top of rolls royce cars.

me: lol
so thats my dream
of two
the other being hot nomad sex partner
i think my small freakout was that i wasnt finding said partner, and i felt like it was my fault for not being spontaneous or outgoing enough or something.
Like anyone else would have had found, seduced, and birthed like 8 nomad offspring by this time with this nomadic sex god.
......
So, yeah I know, I´m retarded for being unhappy b/c I haven´t found a NSG(nomadic sex god). But such retardation (also known as dreaming big and being rather uncompromising) also leads to things like running away to Peru and sleeping in guinea pig huts, so its not all bad. But in the mean time, if any of you out there happen to run across any NSGs, tell them you know this slightly crazed, slightly agressive, super amazing girl who also happens to be rather nomadic down in Peru. And give them my contact info, ok?

!!Photastic!!

I finally got a new memory card and thus went a little crazy today with the cam. Here are two photos I took today (from the market and ruins near Pisac--a small town near Cusco) and one of me holding a baby croc from my jungle excursion.

Hmm, so its been a while. OK, details:

1. I was working at Pilpintuwasi, the animal shelter/butterfly farm. The animals were really excellent. There were 8 monkeys that drove me crazy. They were thieving little bastards that stole my contacts, my headlamp, my toothbrush. I loved them. Florian was a monkey with a full body fro who, every morning, would lay on top of the mosquito netting that covered my bed and, sucking his thumb, would watch me wake up. Chavo was also a monkey with a full body fro which, while slightly less poof-tastic than Florians, was bright red. Chavo enjoyed grooming. As in both being groomed and grooming others. The little fucker had a death grip too. One minute you would be peacefully playing with one of the baby monkeys, the next you would have a bright red blob firmly attatched to your head pulling out imaginary bugs, hair clips, and perhaps small clumps of hair as well. When you finally detached him you would immediately have to begin to groom him in order to distract him from recommencing his hair plucking activities. This, however, was much more fun as he collapsed, purring his monkey purr, into your lap. There were other animals there too including taipirs, a jaguar, baby crocs, parrots, giant turtles, a giant anteater, and a hidden sloth which I didnt know existed for a week. My tasks there varied from cutting down giant plants and feeding the animals, to taking tourists around. While the owners and I did not get along, I think this was still probably one of the best experiences Ive had so far.

2. Jungle tour via canoe. I saw giant sloths, a giant otter, pink freshwater dolphins, a giant prehistoric looking fish that leap out of the water, snakes, crocs, and a flocks of macaws. There was a herd of about 300 wild boars that my guide and I snuck up on while they were eating. I felt like I was in the Lord of the Flies. I also went swimming in piranha infested waters which, much to my enjoyment, totally freaked out the lame American couple that ended up traveling with me for part of the way. The husband tried to out bad ass me, but after he got nipped he got out. He never made it in past his knees. HA.

3. Currently in Cusco being a lame ass. I should be booking my Macchu Picchu transport, but I am currently not feeling up to it. I am so sick of dealing with people running up to me on the street yelling, "gringa, gringa! tour good price!" that I am just ignoring them all and procrastinating. oh well. And I have finally contracted some sort of weird stomach something. I think I was feeling cocky and also starved for nutrients, and somehow I just started eating unwashed produce by the plateful. Its nothing bad, but I keep letting out these really foul smelling farts at inopportune times and theres also the mild stomach pain. I keep thinking about Meg and her story about how she disrupted an entire church congregation with her farts in Mali. It makes me smile and feel slightly less bad.

So yeah, thats me. Feeling farty and slightly crotchety. You should all feel very bad for me and send me lots of emails. adios...

Tight Beats

So I recovered from the fever of death.
my thoughts as to possible causes:

1. I was bitten by a massive mesquito loaded with malaria. Because he was riddled with virus and I had just started taking the malaria pills, I had a reaction.
2. phantom disease
3. Poisoned by pool water.

What is option 3 about, you ask? Ahhh, let me explain. Well it all started a while ago, now. I needed to get to Iquitos (were I am presently stationed). To get to Iquitos, I had to get to Yurimagus, where I would catch the boat to Iquitos (a three day journey). But to do that I had to go on the busride of hell. This bus ride started with the bus being 4 hours late. Once boarded, I realized that all the seats had been sold out towns ago, all seats, including mine. I was not the only person in this predicament. There were about 4 of us. The others were headed back towards the drivers cab. I sat in the aisle. Suddenly I was rushed by the other seatless. They pushed me back and started hissing at me while gesturing towards a seat with a small child in it. I realized they were all doubling up or hiding behind other seats. What was going on?? Then I heard someone else boarding the bus. There was more hissing in my direction, now by all the occupants of the bus. I squished in next to the children (there were 3 of them now, displaced from other surrounding seats). As soon as I did this, a policeman entered from the drivers cab. I understood now. Inspections. Ridiculously, we passed. For which, I, along with the rest of the crew, was incredibly grateful. No way was I waiting around another 12 hours for a less crowded bus. Once the policeman got off I, along with the other displaced, headed back towards the drivers cab. We all took seats by the driver or on the bus steps. These people were thrilled to have a gringa in their presence. They all started asking questions. Was was my name? Where was I from? What kind of music did I like? What about Guns n Roses? Did I like them? So, I spent the first 5 hours of that bus journey trying to sleep on the steps of the bus while it decended from the mountains via a series of hairpin turns. Oh and all the while "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Hotel California" where blasting at max volume. I think this was my bus¨s way of trying to make me feel at home.
By around 3am enough people had gotten off the bus so that I could have a seat. That bus journey lasted for a total of 48 hours. By the time I got off my body was a painful lump, limp from being squeezed, unmoving into small spaces for almost 2 days. I was also rather dirty and very hot. But this was insubstantial. I had read in my guidebook that there was a hotel with a small pool. This was what I needed. I pool with cool, sparkling waters with which to rejuvinate my body. I found the hotel; it did in fact have a very small pool. One with a thin layer of insect carcasses floating on top. But I cared not. I was going for a swim. I could not even be disuaded by the fact that I had no bathing suit. So I went swimming, in my underwear, for over a half hour, in a pool of dead bugs. And I loved it; it was great, and also the possible reason for my mysterious illness.
Anyway, I finally made it to Iquitos (my present station) and I should be at the butterfly farm by tonight.

Anyway as a parting gift, I am attempting to put up some links to SUPER DOPE BEATS!!! Check em out bammas!!

HOT!! Its like James Brown goes to Ethiopia. All the lyrics are in Amharic. By Alemayehu Eshete & Hirut Beqele.
temeles

A tight mashup of Ghostface Killah and Ghostland Observatory done by Car Stereo(Wars) called ghostface observatory.
car stereo

Another really good remix is one I def cannot get a link going for. But try to find it somewhere on the web. Its the Beyond the Wizards Sleeve remix of "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John, featuring Victoria Bergsman (the lead singer for The Concretes, who I am crazy about--her voice is soo good)

ok thats all for now folks!

Recent conversation with a nice old man who owned a bakery

me: can I have some cake, please?
old man: hello,what is your name?
me: Teresa
old man: And where are you from?
me: the united states
old man: you are pretty, but you have a bad president
me: (laugh) yes. I don´t like him. he is bad.
old man: something, something, cuba, something
me: mmm. yes Bush is a bad man.
old man: more somethings, cuba, somethings.
me: mmmmmmm. How much does that cake cost?
old man: one sole.($.30)What do you do?
me: I work at a bar
old man: you are not an artist?
me: umm, no. I like writing, but it´s very hard to get a job writing.
old man: by yourself, yes. You need a group, a union. Then it is possible.

I like old men. They sell me cake and make wise statements about how i need to join a union....aka a CRAZY ARTIST COLLECTIVE!!! Damn people. Even an 60 yr old Peruvian man gets it. In order to have orgies, be the zeitgeist, create an art revolution, stick it to the man, and other such activities, one must have a group. (mom and dad: don´t worry, I¨m not really into orgies, it just sounded good).

ok. Anyway, I have a fever of a million degrees and my whole body is in pain. So no more blogging for the day; my drugs are going to wear off very soon. Here are some more pics to make you happy, and hopefully my fever will break soon and I will be able to write you a witty, detailed account of the past two weeks so that you will stop sending me angry emails about how I am being a very irresponsible blogger who obviously does not care about the blogging needs of the people back home, how could I be so insensitive, damn it.


On the boat to Iquitos

From the window of the bus to Chachapoyas

So after riding buses for 26 hours straight, I am finally in the place I need to be...almost. Uggg. I missed the last taxi to the small village (Tingo) outside the big village that I am currently at (Chachapoyas), which is where I need to go to visit the ruins of Kuelap. I have already finished both the books I brought with me and so I am now wasting time on the internet to keep myself occupied. So I am just going to make a blog of randomness.
Randomness:

1. Yay for anime. Why this sudden love for Japan´s legacy to the rest of the world?? Because you can understand what´s going on, no matter what language it is in. For example, most conversations in anime cartoons go like this:

Charater 1: Oh my god!! Your hair looks so good spikey and purple!!
Character 2: I know!! And it looks even better when all those moving lines go through it!!
:::MOVING DIAGONAL LINES!!!!! ACTION AND EXCITEMENT!! WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE LINES STOP???::::
Character 1: Man those were some awesome ninja moves that you just did.
Character 2: I know. I never noticed you were part turtle.
Character 1: That is because you are stupid, despite being Japanese and having super sweet nija moves.
Character 2: Oh no!! Here comes the evil witch on her hover craft that is really just a circle (we don´t know how she does that)!!!
:::MORE ACTION AND MOVING DIAGONAL LINES!!!:::

And now you understand why anime is awesome (especially when you are bored and waiting for buses in Peru)

2. Yay for the Washington Post running an article about artist Mark Jenkins. The article is also posted, with pics, on wooster (but it takes some scrolling). DC ain´t got much in the way of an art scene, but it´s got Borf and Jenkins, and they are both pretty bad ass.


3. Yay for me getting to volunteer at Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm and Animal Orphanage! Apparently they just got a new baby tarpir which according to Gudrun, one of the directors of the farm, looks like a walking watermelon. Personally, I think tapir looks more like a watermelon crossed with Alph, but thats my opinion. Regardless, they are pretty damn cute and I get to play with one!

Other things I have found amusing/interesting in my wanderings of the net:

Succinct op-eds. by one of Clinton´s former senior advisor.

Ghost bikes.

Happy Trails

Highlights of the Inca Trail

1. After an 8 hour day of hiking away from everything and up a giant mountain figuring out that my fuel canister had no fuel in it, rendering half my food supply inedible (this is the first day)

2. Being taken in by a very kind, although very drunk, Andean man. I was given access to a fire pit and a place to sleep. Fortunatly, my designated sleep spot was indoors. Indoors on the ground with a horde of 10 very excited guinea pigs. One of which sounded more like a elephant with a nasal infection than a guinea pig.

3. Seeing birds that looked like they belonged in the ocean in a marsh on the top of a 4,400m mountain.

4. Sleeping in the middle of some ruins in a feeble attempt to shelter myself from the wind. Later getting up at 3:30 am to keep hiking because I was too cold to sleep and figured at least I´d be warmer that way.

5. Not getting bit by rabid dogs

6. Snickers, granola, and soy milk for at least 3 meals

7. Loosing feeling on my right hip from my backpacking rubbing against me

8. Sections of the trail being almost perfectly intact

9. The Andes (not the mint)

The Incredibl(y Retarded) Journey

As children, my sister and I were huge fans of the Disney Channel. Among the fantastic selection of movies that the Disney Channel aired (on loop) were some high quality adventure movies. Of course there was Goonies. But there were two others:
Homeward Bound: the Incredible Journey (my sisters favorite)
and
The Journey of Natty Gann (my favorite)

I feel like these preferences in movies are actually quite telling about both of our personalities. Maria chose the movie with the cute, furry, domestic animals that accidentally get lost by their owners and make a 9 kabillion mile journey home via the wilderness. They battle bears. They persevere despite their domestication.

I chose the movie about the abandoned child that decides to run away from her evil foster family (in my case D.C.) to find her father somewhere in Alaska (read: father=destiny, Alaska=Peru). Natty has a knife; Natty hops trains and befriends a wolf that attacks evil men; Natty is hard fucking core.

Now, knowing this integral piece of background information about my movie tastes will explain my following agenda.
I have decided to do this portion of Inca Trail without a partner and with no tent (ok, so I wanted the tent, but it was mildly expensive and really fucking heavy). Obviously, I, like Natty Gann, am hard fucking core. However, unfortunately, unlike Natty I do not have a wolf friend to eat evil men. Also, while I have a knife, it is not large and scary and good for stabbing rabbits with, like Natty¨s. Hmmmm.

Which brings me to the real reason for this blog....if there is not another blog entry within 10 days, can someone call the authorities? My trail runs from Huari to La Union in Northern Peru..... thanks!!!

Insane in the Membrane

So here´s The Deal yaaa´ll:

Past:
I just finished up a 3 day trek into the Cordillera Blanca mountain range in an attempt to summit a peak called Pisco. Well, Pisco kicked my little white ass. Or perhaps it was the three ginormous foreign men that I was trekking with. Or maybe it was the lack of oxygen. Anyway, between the three my ass was grass. On the last day of our trek, after waking up at 12 am and climbing until 4:30 am, I finally had to give up, turn around, and hike back 4 hours. This made me sad. But what made me happy was that I made it up 5,250 meters of the 5,752 meters that comprise Pisco. Other things that made me feel ok about not reaching the top?? 1. Everest base camp lies somewhere around 5,500 meters (this varies about 200 meters in either direction, depending on what internet source you check) so essentially I was only 300 meters away from making that, which I think is pretty incredible 2. I blew all the boys away when it came to ice climbing 3. I have over 4 months to remedy a failed summit attempt; bring it.
Present:
I am chilling in Huaraz and contemplating trying to create some sort of project based on what I see during my travels with "art as survival" as a possible theme (fuck! I am such a nerd!)

Future: I plan on heading out in a few days to follow a stretch of the Inca Trail, or Inka Naani in Quechuan. Apparently, the trail North of Huaraz is in fairly good condition and the countryside is amazing. Unfortunately, at this point in time I have no partner and no tent. So, I might be doing this alone(which I wouldn´t mind)and sleeping wrapped in a tarp(which, at altitude, I would mind a lot). Hmm. Well adventures i wanted.....

Huaraz

Me Ice climbing

Me on the way down from Pisco

Sunrise in the Mountains



Lima

So I was talking to some lady yesterday and she asked me where I came from. I said "Los Estados Unidos" and she got all excited and started bobbing her head enthusiastically and repeating, "Oosa! Ooosa!" After being rewarded by looks of general confusion on my part, she explained that instead of saying " U.S.A." that Peruvians run the letters together producing the mysterious "Ooosa." The phonetic associations I make with Oosa are as follows:

1. an Uzi (the gun)
2. oozie, as in an adjective for something that oozes

It somehow pleases me greatly to be a representation of a word that conjures both of these associations simultaneously. Perhaps because I start picturing myself with my deranged pigtails as a sort of swamp thing toting around an Uzi, and it makes me laugh.

Anyway, I am leaving Lima tomorrow for Huaraz, a town at the base of the Cordillera Blanca mnt range.

My plan is to be a yeti and gallop around at altitude in the mountains for a week before setting off for the jungle. We will see how that works out.

Poo Poo Peru!!

Well, hot damn here I am... in Peru. And what am I doing? Am I hiking Machu Picchu?? Am I sand boarding the dunes of the southern coast? Am I perfecting my Spanish while hanging off an ice cliff of the Cordillera Blanca?? NO!!! I am pissing off EVERYONE in my hostel by making mad mad love to the free internet here. Uh huh. mad love. I am really taking entirely too long. But it has not been in vain, because I have finally created the much anticipated blog!! yay!! So please come visit often...I promise to have tales of adventure, stupidity, and general Teresaness soon....