Christmas in Peru

I don´t really know how to talk about Christmas here.
A lot of magic and a lot of new and a lot of ordinary has happened.

A day spent urban surfing in Lima. A rendezvous with friend Jaymi in the Lima airport. Jaymi changes everything. Christmas Eve we saw a pigeon with cankels. Christmas day we flew to Cusco and Jaymi starts aclimatized to the elevation (read: lots of sleeping, eating, and cards). Boxing day we went for a walk in the morning that latest until after dark. Today we went white water rafting on the Urubamba River after several days of rain storms - great fast water.

I have large itchy things on my feet. Contending theories of causality range between poison ivy, bug bites, and athletes foot. I wishfully tell myself it is athelete´s foot. After years of athletic mediocrity, I feel like I finally made the team.

I suppose there is lots more to tell. I have at least five stories I want to go into. But blogging isn´t the same when you travel in a group. I don´t have the same deep longing for familiar social contact which I felt in Africa. I feel like the moments I´ve had here are being shared already - and the potential rewards for sharing them again by blog are therefore lessened. Sorry blog audience.

In three hours we head out on a four day trek along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. We will arrive on New Years eve and usher in 2011 in the ¨lost city¨. See you all in 2011!

Cordillera Blanca and the Laguna Parón

We booked it for the Amazon basin. After twenty hours on a bus, we were still on the coast. Spirits were low and we decided that we didn´t have time for the jungle.

On Dima´s advise, we headed to the Cordillera Blanca in the high Andes.  For the first fifty hours in bus transit, highlights included a fruit juice and calling home. Fruit juice on a bus: take an orange, cut a hole in the side, put your mouth up to the hole and squeeze. So funny to watch a bus full of people doing this. The last ten hours was in the Andes through the beautiful Cañón del Pato - a cavernous meeting of the lightly coloured Cordillera Blanca and the darker Cordilelra Negro. Thirty six hand-cut tunnels and some very steep edges. Pavlo watched anxiously out the side of the window.

In the city of Caraz, we settled in for a rest and staged for a trip into the Laguna Parón. It was a nice hike with more than twenty river crossings.

At one point, a waterfall rendered the path impassible. I went low and found a steep traverse (5.7) to get across. Pavlo went high and got well acquainted with some steep rock slopes.

Then a rainy night at 4200m elevation in one of the most epic camp sites I´ve ever found - at the end of a massive sand spit right on the water. The cloud cover was thick, but we could see each of the six > 6000 m peaks surrounding us one at a time.

In the morning we headed upward for the vista. Granite walls and perfect blue lagoons, we touched the glacier at 4500m and turned around.

After the four hour descent to the road, we walked 22 km before a truck finally picked us up. When you ride in the back of a cargo truck with holes in the floor and zero suspension, the world is a gun fight and every turn is on two wheels. But we hit home just as darkness falls and the rain picks up.

La Uña de la Grand Bestia

We met an Ecuadorian guy, Sebastien. Skinny, sun burned badly, he´s a lonely character. Has been mugged enough times, he´s afraid of everything now. He loved our stories of where we went in Ecuador. His synopses - ¨You guys have been to the worst possible places, but you seem to have the best time!¨ He comes to the beach town of Canoa every year since he was a boy. He produces movies, and comes here to get away from it all and revise screenplays. His laptop broke on his first day here, so now he mostly smokes and drinks.

We went out with him one night. Had a few rounds at the Surf Shack, a local gringo hangout. ¨Do you guys want a real local experience?¨ he asks. We say yes. He takes us down the beach to where there is a large boat in a high sand dune. The boat has been converted nicely into a bar. ¨The owner is a real character¨ he says and repeats himself several times before we arrive ¨a real character.¨ He explains that the coast is sort of the wild part of Ecuador. It´s where men once settled their differences with machetes on the beach. Things have changed, but some of the mentalities of justice live on through violent crime syndicates in the coastal cities. We passed through one such city en route to Canoa called Puertovejho - while we were there, we were told once to stay inside, once to move along, and once to run. Most of the surf towns along the coast suffer from gang crime. Except Canoa, a huge surf town. ¨It´s the best place in Ecuador,¨ says Sebastien.

We approach the ship and have a seat at the bar. Sebastien introduces us to Don Calisto - an old man with hard eyes and deep creases through his whole face. Sebastien is good friends with the Don. He made the Don´s bar famous. The Don is happy to see him.

Sebastien and the Don talk about old times in rapid Spanish. I can´t understand anything. Sebastien translates to English one sentence in ten. Basically, Sabastien helped publish the Don´s life story in a famous newspaper in Ecuador, which earned the Don and his bar national fame. The basic story is that the Don and his henchman ¨El Tractor¨ were hardcore junkies in Peurtovejho. Huge crack heads and the worst sort of criminals. A huge history of violent crime. Story after story about some guy who messed with some guy and then El Tractor goes and puts a gun to their heads. Sometimes he shoots, it seems. He´s named El Tractor because he only ever moves forward.

Eventually they got sick of this violent life. They moved to Canoa and set up shop in an abandoned ship where they could live out the rest of their lives in quiet peace on the beach. They still use their mafia influence, but they do so to keep the city quiet. A place for tourists to surf and drop money.

Sabastien tells us why we´re here. He tells us of how The Don and El Tractor dropped their crack habit. They make a special drink. A now infamous drink. Called ¨La Uña de la Grand Bestia¨ or The Claw of the Great Beast. It is a special homemade liquor of 100 proof alcohol aged for one year with a special mix which pickles in the alcohol - whole marijuana plans, whole coca plants, and the right combination of venomous scorpion and centipede remains. You can seem them all floating around in the 50 liter glass jars he has on the bar. Apparently, just do 20 shots of this a day and it will cure you of your crack addiction.

We have a shot each, which becomes two. The Don joins us. We buzz. We eat pizza and laugh. We leave the bar and when we come back, El Tractor greets us. Sebastien and El Tractor embrace. A few more shots. You can taste the scorpion as you chew the drink. The coca stays in your teeth. The centipedes spin round in your head. It´s pleasant after a few.

I stumble around in the morning. I´ve lost my glasses, lost my head lamp, lost my hat. I walk out barefoot into the city street. Mud everywhere. The Don passes me on a cell phone. I smile and try to make eye contact as he looks straight through me. The streets have so much more character now.

Surfing in Canoa

Alrighty! We´ve headed west to the coast and landed in Canoa a world class surf destination. The waves couldn´t be better! Canoa was loud and bumpin for the weekend, but things have calmed down nicely. We´ve found a perfect place to chill out for five or six days and we have rented long boards which now accompany us everywhere. We´ve surfed four days straight now. So nice to lose the wet suit.

Here´s some snaps from this morning.

Life is mostly surfing and reading, though there have been a few interesting nights. The Argentinian owner of Che´s Pizza attracted our attention with his rasta atmosphere, his Jamaican styled shanty, and his Spanish music evangelizing marijuana and calling for the revolution. We lay in his hammocks for hours feasting on pizzas from his rustic army stove.

Last night we went for a walk at dusk and ran into Lady, a Columbian traveler we had met at Che´s Pizza. We accompanied her to a Mexican friend´s birthday where we were a party of only six in the abandoned bar. Still, we filled the dance floor - Pavlo taking Columbian Salsa lessons from Lady, while I tossed Lady´s three year old daughter into repetative flips and spins.

View from our hostel

I´ve now headed solo by bus into the nearest town for a bank and Internet fascility. Pavlo is on the beach with Lady styling his hair. Pavlo owes me huge. I´m writing this post (and a few others) from a black and white monitor. I hope the photos look alright...

Quilotoa Loop, Central Highlands

We went for a walk and it was very nice. We tented on the shore of this crater lake, and then walked through the next couple towns from Quilotoa to Chunchilan.




A Half-Hearted Post from the Grave

We are sick as dogs. I think it´s the altitude. Pavlo thinks it was the Cotipaxi cheese. The power has been out for two days. I was up all night throwing up - Pavlo says to me ¨finally you´re the one with some issues.¨ At 4am I heard him vomiting too. I´m back on my feet now - he´s bedridden.

But the mountains are so beautiful - I can´t imagine a better place to be sick.

There is much to tell, but I´m simply not up for it. No pictures cause this computer sucks. Festivals in Quito. The most amazing bull fighting. A flat-bed into the mountains and two days of trekking. Crater lakes and so much beauty. I´m going back to bed.

Bull Running in Quito

Hemingway wrote that an artistically good bullfight requires “good bullfighters and good bulls; artistic bullfighters and poor bulls do not make interesting fights….” He is right and I wrote a story about it, and it made me cry one single tear, and then I deleted it, and now you´ll never see it, and I can´t seem to write it again no matter how hard I try, and it´s really quite a sad loss.

Needless to say, bull fighting is pretty cool and pretty brutal. I couldn´t believe the things I saw on this day.

Pavlo and I took bets as to which bull fighter who be killed. Pavlo bet Yellow, I bet classic Red. Pavlo won in the first fight. The man was stabbed against the ground many times by the bull. It didn´t kill him - but in the spirit of the bet, I give the win to Pavlo. The man later stood up and killed the bull dishonorably. The third fighter was really quite magnificent and he taught us what the sport is about. The fifth fighter shall not be spoken of until I can re-write the story mentioned above. The last fighter was booed out of the arena.

The crowd was amazing.

At one point, a man ran onto the field with his own cape and tried to fight the bull. This man tried very hard to taunt the bull with his cape. Another man tried very hard to tackle him as he did this. A group of men tried to distract the bull. The bull tried to kill everybody. Eventually the man go pinned against the side of the arena with the bull in pursuit. He brought his cape up in defense, but a man grabbed him and held the cape down. This man was punched in the face promptly and the bull was avoided. The police came from behind and grabbed the man by the neck dragged him backwards over the arena wall. All very amusing.

This man has the unfortunate job of having to stab the bull
over-top his horns and using both hands at once. The bull is not
wounded when he faces it, and the man has no cape to aid him.

I felt this man was under-appreciated by all.

Quito, Ecuador - Safe arrivals

We have landed in Quito, Ecuador. Just look how beautiful it is:

They speak spanish here. Like a lot.

The country´s largest festival is in full swing - we have tickets to the bull fights tomorrow.

Best moments have all been Pavlo. "The !#$ing toilet won´t flush and it !"#$ing has a terd in it."
Pavlo has eaten a napkin.

Pavlo has cried in public.

Pavlo is the best travel companion ever.