Some Photos!

South America

Follow the Olive Rabbit

Pavlo speaks. The illustrations are killer.

Follow the Olive Rabbit: Setting Precedence in Travel: "In the Pink Palace, our love for surfing, ocean, and adventure inspired a small movie night. Up in the north-west quarters of the house, a ..."

Follow the Olive Rabbit: The Quilotoa Loop: "Our spontaneous decision to go to Quilotoa was no longer an idea, but our new home for the night. Our scenic route to Quilotoa ventured into..."

Wiñay Wayna and the Inca Trail

I think you’d find Wiñay Wayna to be one of the most beautiful places. Walk twelve kilometers from Machu Picchu along The Inca Trail. Pass the Sun Gate. Look for the subtle left turn. It is here, set against the steep granite monoliths and tropical forest, with a vista of the high Andes and countless waterfalls - you’ll find a small Incan construction nestled on an impossibly steep cliff. A few terraces, simple stone houses, with eleven sacred cascading ceremonial fountains and a temple. Wiñay Wayna means Forever Young.

Off the normal tour, only a handful of our sizable group ventured to see it. We sit together on one of the highest terraces. In awe. Our expedition guide, Big Willie Saq’ra is wise and loves to teach us about his ancestor’s. Man, Incans are so cool! All they did was chip stones, get high on psychedelic flowers, wage war against themselves, and sacrifice animals to the sun. Jealous! I’m wasting my life.

It feels wrong when we leave Wiñay Wayna and return to camp. Jaymi naps and Willie prepares dinner with our army of porters. Soon, Pavlo and I wander off alone.

The sun slowly sets as we once again enter Wiñay Wayna. Just the two of us, we stand atop the ceremonial fountains and watch the sun set. We hear only the sound of the forest; then a train comes and goes. Pitch black, we play in the ceremonial chamber with a head torch for light. I sit in the priest’s chair and command Pavlo to dance for me. He dances in the circular arena with the head light as his partner. We attempt to make a horror film. We frolic. I wash my hands and imagine eleven members of Machu Picchu's nobility simultaneously bathing in these sacred stone fountains. Then, I sacrifice a llama using only my bare hands upon the granite alter. This last detail may or may not have actually happened.

I want to stay forever. I'm not hungry, but it’s time for dinner.

Leaving, we notice a thousand fireflies which have been here the whole time. We stay a little longer to watch them light the sky. And maybe we catch one.

Zmgs! Pavlo's Blogging!

http://olive-rabbit.blogspot.com/

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.