a turn of the snow globe

An interesting series of thoughts….paraphrased from my journal

Aug. 25 1:00 pm, Puno

We caught a night bus to Puno, arriving here at 6 am yesterday.  Well, now we’re waiting for our bus to La Paz.  It turns out Puno, on the edge of Lake Titicaca, is not much of a stimulating place for us at the moment…

What happened to my ability to explore and soak a new place up?  Or is this really just not a new place?  the buildings are almost all constructed of brick, giving an interesting old world look and the hills are decorated with more of the same.  But…beyond that…I feel like I could be anywhere, and when I lose myself in thought at night, I forget where I am.  

I think I need to rest in one place and let my curiosity brew again.  Or perhaps I need to find a place out in the countryside like Pisco Elqui, Chile and Santa Teresa, Peru.  Cities don’t stir me like those little gems did…

Aug. 25 3:00 pm, Puno

We were about to board our bus to La Paz when everything changed…

It began when the ticket collector saw we were “Americanos.”  He said this word to identify us, making a gesture with his hand to his forehead and his eyes rolled to the sky.  I could see he was annoyed at us already.  He knew English very well and explained with apparent frustration that we had to go to the ATM before leaving, because Bolivia’s visa-on-arrival costs $135 USD- cash only- and there would be no ATMs at the border.  He shued us off toward the ATM but I could see this had changed the enthusiasm Drew felt for Bolivia.  

We are at the end.  At the end of our ability to justify this or that spend.  At the end of having spry and enthusiastic flexibility for things getting turned upside down and perhaps even at the end of our energy at all.  

Finally Drew spoke up. “Then why go to Bolivia?”  he said.  We returned to the bus station to quick collect our thoughts.  Was it going to be worth $300 to see Bolivia?  At the end of 8 and a half months of international travel, $300 is nothing to brush off. Then again… our flight out of Peru exceeded our 30 day Visa allowance by 2 days…so we would need to visit SOMEWHERE.  Our bus was about to go and we needed to make a decision…

This is when Drew looked at me and said that thing you can’t un-say: the thing that won’t leave once you’ve freed it from your thoughts.  

“I kinda just want to go home.”

I can’t believe it, though I admit it makes sense.  The doctors have given Drew’s granny a few more days to live, and if we do this right, we’ll be able to go to her funeral.  

Nothing is planned yet…but I think we’re heading home…

Aug. 27

Well, we came up with a plan.  Saturday after making our spontaneous decision to go home, everything became exciting again.  It’s like somewhere along the road, things flip-flopped and the new places became old while old ones became new; like a snow-globe sitting upside-down so long that the snow stops stirring and settles to the ceiling.  We’re stirring it up again…flipping it around…

Drew hopped online to change our ticket, or see if he could, as soon as we got back from the bus station.  We found a hostel with internet and made a plan.  Here it is: Sunday morning bus from Puno to Arequipa (5 hours).  Monday morning fly from Arequipa to Lima.  Monday evening fly from Lima to Bogota.  Tuesday morning fly from Bogota to Miami, Miami to Houston.  Land in Houston at 5:05 pm, drive to Bay city and teach my art lesson at 9 pm.  

…

I had a fleeting thought in Arequipa that we could have stayed.  We could have killed time in Arequipa quite happily I think.  But… there’s something almost instinctive about this certainty that it’s time to go home, like the changing of seasons.  Unstoppable.  It’s just time.  Time for something new.  One day travel will be something new again.  In fact, I doubt it will be long before our minds turn outward to the wide open world again, but for now, the adventure is inward.  The snow-globe must be right-side up to stir again.

August 29, noon, Bay City TX

This return now feels providential.  We returned to TX in time for me to hop online and teach my art lesson while Drew went to visit Granny.  Just a few hours later Drew called to say that Granny had passed away.

It felt spooky in a meaningful kind of way.  We drove home from the nursing home in the warm, hazy moonlight with an air of peace and i marveled at how strange it was that our spontaneous decision to come home happened to land us in TX just hours before Dee’s death.  Each day for the last week or so the doctors have been saying “this could be her last.”  One of the nurses, not knowing we’d just flown in from Peru commented, “I think she was waiting for someone: hanging on for them.”  

How did we go from non-stop travel to the deathbed of Drew’s granny in mere days…hours?  Death is mysterious…but I’m beginning to think that life is too.

________________

I couldn’t be more grateful for this: for experiencing travel so long that it became my daily life and my “normal.”  I wanted that.  I wanted to see what it was like to be a vagabond and to wear that title so long that I really knew the rhythms and patterns of that lifestyle.  I didn’t just want a travel adventure;  I wanted the traveler’s life and now I’ve had it.  And Lord willing, I may have it again one day.

 

stay tuned for the next set of travels….

 

 

The most Peruvian experience I’ve had: bus ride back to Cusco

The bus ride back to Cusco from Santa Teresa was one of the most authentic feeling experiences I’ve ever had.  A bus ride.  Sounds simple, but it felt more like an adventure.

In Santa Maria, Drew and I along with two other tourists were hurried onto a bus by a woman with a little fanny-pack who seemed to be in charge of all Cusco-goers.  Once on the bus, a man pointed to the little front-cab seat usually reserved for the second bus-driver or ticket collector.  He gestured towards Drew and the other tourists toward a pile of blankets stuffed behind the driver’s seat, motioning for them to lay the blankets out on the flat surface covering whatever wires and parts connected to the gear shift.  I was the lucky one with a seat in this crowded front-cabin of a crowded bus.  it was clear that we were not ordinary passengers.  We were extras.  Add-ons to a bus that was already too full for ticketed passengers to have a seat in the passenger cabin.

The ride felt immediately wild.  The front cabin was just enough room for the driver, Drew and the other two tourists on blankets, the ticket collector and second driver standing in the doorway, and myself feeling guilty and awkward for taking up the one spare seat in the front cabin.

The second bus-driver was a funny little man with eager friendliness and a wild spark in his eyes.  He waited for his turn to drive by standing in the open doorway of the bus, sticking his leg out to feel the speed and make us nervous, dangling and singing out the door.  He was tickled to find out Drew and I were “Americanos” and even more tickled to find out we were married.  He used dramatic gestures to imply his approval of this, pounding his hand to his heart and shaking Drew’s hand.  He gave the french pair a similar response with a bit more of a devilish nudging and winking kind of reaction upon learning they were “just amigos.”  It was funny and I found myself laughing even when I didn’t know what he was saying.  He entertained us for quite some time, whistling his inhumanly loud whistle or calling out little sing-songy things as he dangled out the open door.  He chatted a bit as well, using the French traveller as his main translater.

At one point, a woman knocked on the door that connected the passenger area. Drew shuffled forward so the door could be opened. In tense Spanish, she complained that she had paid for a ticket and now didn’t even have a seat.  Again I felt guilty and offered that the bus-driver could give her my seat.  He brushed this off.  I felt both appreciative of his kindness and annoyed at his “special treatment.”  But my Spanish was only good enough to say “Te quiere?”  No takers.  Everyone was going to let the little American girl sit in a seat for the whole ride.  I felt a little better after the ticket-collector took our money for our “seats.”  I have no idea if we paid more or less than the poor women who didn’t have a seat for the first hour of her ride.

After a few hours, we made our first and only stop.  The bus drivers gave us a few instructions, translated by the french guy.  We were approaching a police check point.  The purpose of the check-point was to assure there was no coca on board, but the concern that involved us had to do with over-crowding a bus and illegally allowing passengers in the front cabin.  We were to get off of the bus immediately, acting as though we just needed to rush to the bathroom.  After us, many would follow and it would be impossible to tell that we’d come from anywhere other than the flow of passengers from the passenger cabin.  The ordeal was easy and felt like no more than a chance to stretch our legs, but I wondered how severe the penalty might have been if we had been caught riding up front in the driver’s cabin.  The driver was praying in his driver’s seat as we approached…

The craziness in the front cabin quieted down when bus-driver number two took his turn driving, and especially so because of all the coca leaves he crammed into both of his cheeks.  We left signs of towns and seemed deeply hidden in the brown-rock mountains.  The air was growing colder and I could see little spots of snow on the ground.  I felt as though we were far from civilization: far from anything inhabitable and yet, every now an then, I spotted a woman or child in traditional dress out among a flock of sheep or goats.  Then, I began to notice little stone structures, not so unlike the structures on Machu Piccu.  Some of them were just fences and others were more like shelters even with straw roofs.  They blended into the rough bouldered mountain environment.  I wondered what these peoples lives were like.  How often did they leve these mountains and what did they live off of?

Though we’d  seemed to randomly accept or deny people trying to hitch rides, each accepted one getting shuffled to the back and ticketed, there seemed to be an unquestionable acceptance for one particular woman, red-cheeked from the cold and dressed in traditional Peruvian garb from head to toe.  We came upon her in the middle of the mountains and as soon as she was in sight, our bus driver and his ticket-collector began wildly gesturing for her to cross the street to where the bus door was.  I immediately popped out of my seat so she could take it.  No one protested this time.  It was clear this woman was to be cared for.

She had wild eyes with an almost animal-like attentiveness to the world around her.  In her expression I envisioned a deer with it’s ears and tail up- aware of things I couldn’t even sense.  She wore a brightly colored, shin-length skirt that billowed out because of thick-fabric layers.  The fabric was course, almost like tapestry and decorated with flower images of pink, red, and navy-blue.  she wore a band of fabric around her chin that fastened an odd wollen bowl to the top of her head: a hat that served as a basket I guessed.  Around her shoulders and back, a big piece of fabric was folded and tied into a sort of back satchel.  I could only guess what was inside.  Some women carried babies, baby sheep or llamas, or little food items intended for sale in these pouches.  Our bus driver offered that she take some coca leaves and she took the little bunch from his fingers as though she was starving for it, stuffing it quickly into her cheeks and letting the juice drip down her lips like glossy oil.  Everything about this woman seemed mysterious… she was not a woman dressed- up for tourists.

She wasn’t in our cabin long and she wasn’t ticketed.  After just fifteen minutes or so, she hopped off the bus.  I looked around but couldn’t see anything that might have drawn her there: no apparent destination save for a different piece of nowhere.

A little further down the road our bus driver stopped the bus to chat with and collect something from one of the little stone and mud-brick houses.  Once he’d returned from the brief visit, he explained that this was his family.

The drive felt very long after this point. The drivers switched and the entertaining bus driver borrowed the french tourists place on the blanket to recline and fall asleep.  As we reached more villages, the bus’s stops became more frequent, either to let people off or let vendors on and off.  When at last we arrived in Cusco, the bus drivers gave us all hearty handshakes as if we’d all endured a great adventure together, and indeed it felt that way.

 

Machu Piccu and a surreal picnic

Machu Piccu itself is both incredible and hard to describe. It towers above a green landscape of mountains like a crown, nestled gently between peaks. It is perfectly isolated. Perhaps our long journey to get to Machu Piccu helped add to its feeling of utter…inaccessibility.
I imagine this far-away spot was picked out intentionally by the Incas nearly a thousand years ago when they carefully fitted rock against rock against mountain. They carved meticulously for a result that could even outshine modern stone masonry. Each piece fits perfectly against the other in the most important structures, and in the lesser ones, each wall fits cleverly against the bouldering slant of the mountain rock.
We wandered around the great stone estate, peering into rooms and looking out over vast open air above steep slopes below. We relaxed on the grassy terraces to picnic and to rest.
It was the most surreal picnic spot I think I’ll ever find. It feels worth mentioning somehow that I ate a banana on ancient Inca grounds high in the air and surrounded by an atmosphere of archaic mystery and grandeur.
Could I picnic at every wonder of the world before I die?
Perhaps one day I’ll compile a collage of banana-eating at the most impressive locations.
This is a tangent but I only mean to emphasize how mystical Machu Piccu felt…and how inappropriate and thrilling it felt to spend some time simply soaking it up…and being normal within that odd place. We took off our shoes. We laid in the grass. We were like kids between classes on a college campus.

There are places in this world that are not normal. They go far beyond normal and they simply cannot be minimized to “just a place,” in part because of all the history and mystery attached.
But sometimes the best way to soak that up is give up understanding the grandeur and just be there.
Eating a banana if you’d like.

…do you know what I mean?

The long road to Machu Piccu

Machu Piccu may be more accessibe than it was back in the days the Incas built it, but let me assure you it is still a difficult place to get to.  Even if you have the time and/or funds to make advance reservations for the PeruRail tourist train that goes all the way to the gateway town of Aguas Caliente from Cusco, you still have to make your way to Cusco (assuming you fly into Lima like most of us) which is either an extra flight from Lima or a 24 hour bus drive winding through the mountains.

We did not take this train.  We took the “budget back way” which has been around for awhile but has been made a bit more popular and convenient by a budget traveller’s best friend and worst enemy, Lonely Planet.  In this case, the publicity Lonely Planet brought to this alternative back way seems to be a good thing.  Now, instead of trying to find a bus that will take you all the way to a specific crossroads, and then finding a way to Santa maria, you can simply go to the bus station and allow a swarm of people commissioned by collectivo’s to collect passengers bombard you with their offers.

When we arrived at the bus station, I couldn’t even tell there was a bus station anywhere.  No sooner had the taxi driver pulled over then we were completely surrounded by people with offers shouting “Santa Maria!  Trente! Trente-sinco!  Santa Maria!”  I got out of the crowd as soon as possible, making it my husband’s job to get a good price from the shouting crowd.  Moments later he accepted a 25 soles price from a short and determined woman and the crowd immediately dispersed while she led us to the big white passenger van we were to share with a dozen others.

Initially, the van wouldn’t start.  A few strong-looking fellows out on the street gave us a push-start and from that moment on I don’t think the van was really turned off until we arrived in Santa Maria hours (and mountains) later.  This may be an exaggeration, but the driver was certainly determined to keep us going at a good pace.  The van was full but not necessarily uncomfortable.  At least not until our stomachs began to churn this way and that from the constant weaving in and out along steep mountain passes.  At last we were given a break a few hours in when the brakes began to smoke and we pulled over for the driver to let the brakes cool.

At last we arrived in Santa Maria just as the sun was beginning to set.  Santa maria is, as far as I could tell, made up of a few buildings but little else.  We were immediately confronted by a taxi driver who seemed to know better than we did what our next step should be.  So we hopped into his little car and tore down a mountain pass to Santa Teresa.  If I hadn’t already experienced a few hours of cliff-side driving that day, I think I may have been terrified by this drive.  Our taxi driver was a young, confident man who was clearly used to and maybe even bored of the mountain pass.  He honked his horn to warn of his arrival each time he tore around a cliff.  The road was only really big enough for one and a half vehicles at a time after all, or two vehicles paying very close attention to where their tires are in relation to the cliff edge.

In Santa Teresa we collapsed in our beds with plans to wake by 7 a.m. to catch a taxi to the hydro-electric water-plant where we’d heard you can follow the train-tracks to the hiking entrance of Machu Pichu.

The  next morning we got as far as the hydro-electric plant before a kind Spanish couple translated the train-station worker’s warning that you could NOT (as we had thought) buy tickets at the Machu Piccu entrance.  You could only buy them either back in Cusco or at Aguas Caliente.  Well, lucky for us a train was about to leave for Aguas Caliente: a cheap, half hour train ride not entirely intended for tourists, but accommodating all the same.

Unlucky for us, we showed up at the train depot just as it was pulling away.

Lucky for us, the train tracks ALSO lead to Aguas Caliente if you walk slightly past the point where we would have hiked up to Machu Piccu.

(Does this remind you of that kids book “that’s good! no that’s bad! ?)

So a walk along the train tracks was our option.  The walk was actually quite beautiful showing beautiful tropical scenes of the green mountains and even a few glimpses of green parrots chattering above us.  As we walked we picked out the legendary face that the Machu Piccu peaks seems to create.  We twisted around it on our easy two hour walk, glancing up to meet the face in a new piece of sky as we wound around the mountains.

At last we reached Aguas Caliente at about 10:30 in the morning and from there, it was just a brief bus ride up to Machu Piccu.

Of course, Machu Piccu itself deserves a post of its own…as does the journey back to Cusco…

Sunrise and stars on Easter Island

> I’m falling behind on blogging…but there is so much to share that I don’t want to skip.  So, here is a blog about Easter Island taken from my personal journal<
Upon [our travel mate] Vienna’s  suggestion, Day 3 (a beautiful day) began at 6:30 a.m. when we set off to catch the sunrise over the 15 moai that line the coast just beyond the quarry.  when we arrived, we all scattered to find the best spots to snap photos.  My camera fell back in Singapore, locking the zoom part of the lens into a very narrow zoom, so I headed straight for the back of the rocky field where I could catch all 15 moai.  This was a beautiful decision it turned out, not because of the pictures I came up with, but because of a moment of solitude, away from everyone.  I sat on a volcanic rock, one of many that was likely once a part of a village house.  From my perch I listened to this most peculiar and eerie landscape awake.  I could even imagine the statues waking.  Just before sunrise, as the darkness was tinting with blue I listened to the sound of crickets and the raspy screech of night hawks making their final catches of the night.  At that moment the island felt timeless…or perhaps crystallized in the past.  The light was still dim enough to blot out the others present at that field, accept of course the giants of stone.

The hawks began to quiet with the coming of color to the sky.  Orange and pink peaked in from behind a few clouds, foreshadowing the beautiful day it would be.  We lingered there with the moai and the sky until it was about time to return our rental car.

__

This was our last night, and at last a clear one, so we wrapped up the day with star-gazing.  We walked along a stretch of road in between our remote campsite and town, stopping at a bank that seemed most hidden from lights.  We laid there for awhile looking at the strange southern sky and its jewel: the Southern Cross.  An arm of the milky way jutted into the sky too, spilling across the canvas of stars like the spackling of spray-paint.  After awhile the boys went back to camp while us girls staid with Annie to give her more time to photograph the stars.

Our lives have changed so much since high school and we are different people than we were at 16, but as I stood in the cold, gazing at the stars while my sister turned a camera into her canvas, it might as well have been the summer years ago when Annie was testing out her new SLR camera. We had risen at 3 or 4 in the morning to catch the peak hours of a meteor shower.  After counting 500 or more, Annie began her work: her artistry, and I stood by as her assistant, holding the lens or propping the camera while she held down the shutter release.  I remember fighting impatience and cold and acknowledging how special the moment was.  I remember making myself understand how incredible the stars were, and even more so, how incredible it is to be a sister.

This was a different hemisphere now.  A different camera and a different stage of life, but it completed some kind of circle for me.  I added it to the bank of moments I’ll never forget.

Easter Island in a tent in the rain

When I first arrived on this eerie and peculiar little island with the sky so gray it made the horizon-line on the sea disappear in hazy mist, I decided that I had arrived at a place that was interesting…but perhaps only interesting. Beauty and the warmth of the  tropics were not going to be what this island was about.  The other islands i’ve visited have had dancers decorated with tropical flowers and tropical fruits sold my women at the side of the road.  They’ve had warm sunny evenings and sandy beaches.  On this island, I looked out on a coastline not too unlike the one I’d seen in Ireland: rocky and fierce, spitting a windy spray.  The sun was setting, thickly concealed in clouds and a drizzle wet our backs off and on as we trekked along the coast in search of an affordable place to stay.

Camping happens to be the most affordable option on Easter Island or, Rapa Nui as the locals call it.  At the edge of town, just before night fell, we happened upon a collection of little buildings that surrounded a tent-jungle: a lawn strewn with tents no more than a foot or two apart.  It was in such a tent where we made ourselves at home, sleeping to the sound of crashing waves across the street and the wind whipping about the thin shield of our tent walls.  I woke several times that night to the sound of rain.

Each night has been this way, and we feared each day would be too.  Our tent walls surged inward and outward, back and forth, threatening the little metal pins that held them down to the rocky ground.  During the first two days, this wind and rain followed us like an ancient anger, painting a mysterious mood to this already strange island.  As we gazed upon ancient moai faces carved in stone, it was against a gray and stormy background.  The hills were barren and rocky.  The seas rose and fell in huge choppy waves.  The whole island seemed to tell a story of ancient wars or ancient fear.  We let the weather decorate our curiosities and instill it with these images.

Our last day and a half on this island have been sunny ones.  They’ve given us new images to play with as we speculate about the curious statues of Easter Island.  Happier stories.

There’s really no knowing what the background of the islands stone faces are, but the mysteriousness is perhaps the most fun and fascinating thing I’ve encountered on an island.

More to come…
must run off to catch a plane off the island

 

Hiking the goat trails

In Pisco Elqui, a little villiage North of Santiago, Drew and I followed our friend Ben, (a fearless leader) literally up the side of a gravel mountain.  Rocks showered down from our feet as we tiptoed across narrow passages the goats had left to relieve us from making our own way through the impossible sand and dust.  This was, surprisingly enough, the first time I had ever found myself clinging to the steep edge of a mountain with nothing stable for my feet or hands, shoes filling with pebbles and rocks with every effort to gain height.   Nothing stable that is, except for the goat trails.  I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to come across a goat trail in the midst of a scramble I can only describe as determined and pathetic, straight up loose gravel and plant-less dust.

How do these little goats do it, and how fragile am I that I cannot on my own, without their little hoofed feet to make the way before me?

These little creatures have taken a desert mountain and made it their habitat, despite pumas, drought, and gravity.

And what else did we find on the side of this harshly demanding mountain?

Bunnies.

Who can master the toughest of desert mountain hikes?  The answer is this: goats and bunnies.

Chile

Drew and I spent two days getting to Chile.  Two days and five flights, and I must say, I was so very glad to have a bed last night instead of a hard airport floor, blasted with aggressive air-conditioning and the institutional sizzle of florescent lights.

After such a long series of flights, finalized by a wide-eyed, two-hour bus ride, it was dark when we finally arrived in Valpariso.  The sun had set behind the mountains long already, and the air was cool because of it.  We wound around steep, brick streets that slanted around stucco buildings and mural-ed walls and I began to grow excited for the morning, when I could soak these images in and teach myself the “feel” of Valpariso.
That’s on the agenda for today.

This face

America is normal.
America is my normal, anyway.

But it’s really a small place in reality, with just a puddle of people and an enormous foot-print, a loud booming voice, and eyes that are always shaded by the screen of something. HD. LCD. Cinema. Mirror.

Everywhere you go there’s a filter. Church. Street. Airport. Store.

But all I can think about, burning holes through that screen is this face.

This man greeted me in the middle of a dusty commotion of protesting in the streets of Nogombo Sri Lanka, and he did so with a grin so big and proud, gesturing that he wanted me to take his picture.

A big smile, dusty feet, clouded eyes and less to his name than I’ve ever had to mine.

Fireworks sparkle off the black of the sky and I see the word freedom shimmer through the cyber world.

Here, we are free.
What now can I do with my freedom, for the smiling man in Sri Lanka with a protest buzzing around him.
For anyone.

My hands are not tied by anything.
What now can I do?

This question is going to drive me mad one day.

Home

Airports feel like nowhere and everywhere, and spending 36+ hours confined to planes and airports felt like maneuvering through a purgatory: some world in between one real place and another.

We were nearly zombies, trying to fight our way through some kind of intentional schedule of staying awake at the airport and falling asleep on a plane.  Find a gate. Find a seat. wait. Repeat repeat repeat.

At last we exited the airport in Houston Texas and hopped into Drew’s dad’s truck.  As we drove along the highway I watched for signs that this place was new.  Signs that America isn’t what it was when I left… or signs that it was everything it had ever been but now under new light.

I know my eyes have changed.  Travel will not leave a person be, even when they stop moving.

As we drove the katie-dids were singing with their loud buzz in the trees, like the music of summer and a huge Texas full moon shone over them.  I smelled the cow pastures and and the fields and the smell of country-side.

So I resigned to the simple comfort of it, and turned all thought of observation off.  Everything is old and new, and I can think about all of this later.