Ayacucho: Revisited

Back to my home away from home, although this time in a different house to accomodate our girth of 15 people. The work at the orphganage has been more like work, with all the kids back from break and going to school, we need to plan more educational activities and do a bunch of chores all the time. And this time around it´s really becoming apparent that most of the administration don´t give a hootinanny about the kids, so we´re on our own trying to get them to do homework, take showers, etc. Today I almost lost it when six kids and I wasted two and a half hours waiting for this pottery class that didn´t happen for the second time, due to the director having a certain part of his body stuck up another, if you catch my drift. Enough about that.

Most of the new crew, 12 gals, 3 guys. If you think that sounds nice, think again.

We´ve been doing the same things on the weekends as I did the first time, but there´s been a couple of new experiences. Getting bucked off a horse for example. We were taking horses to a waterfall nearby, and at one point I decided to open her up a bit and bring my steed to a gallop. That went fine, boosting my confidence to the point of getting a bigger faster horse and taking off like a gunshot. In was a mere ten seconds after this that I was going so fast that time slowed down, and my ´Whoa Nelly´s´ were lost to the wind. Jessie, if you´re reading this, I could really have used some pointers. I slid a bit sideways on the saddle, and knew I was doomed. Two more strides and my face was planted in thankfully well-maintained grass. A scrape on my arm, a nasty bruise on my hip, but I suppose it was all worth it for the marvelous first impression I made, right?

The first milder ride

Visiting the Wari ruins again.

A mountain donkey

Vinchos, the destination of a two hour hike

A girl and her sister at the trout farm we had lunch at

Another new thing we´re doing this time around is volunteering with Ayacucho´s association of disabled people every saturday in the mountains. I´ve only been once, but what we did was taxi up nearby this tiny town called yanama, to a gathering in a field of about a dozen squat mud buildings. Every weekend about a hundred disabled people and their families gather there and have meetings, play volleyball, etc. The disabled are really discriminated against in Peru, and organizations like this one and new and rare. Anyways, my job with two other girls was to prepare an english class, which we did containing a couple songs, diagrams, and games to teach about 15 kids their numbers, colors, and basic introductory english. It started slow, partly because of my poor spanish and partly because we were in the middle of a windy field, but the kids were eager and we got cookin near the end. Some of the other volunteers prepared an ecological course about littering (also a huge problem in peru) and general sanitation and health. It went extremely well, all the adults seemed to be really absorbed, and it all ended with us helping them clean up their field that was covered in a thin layer of trash. It was a success and a nice way to spend a Saturday morning. Too bad I forgot my camera.

Ica in eight hours

I was a completely free man at one o´clock today, so I pondered what to do over a $1 lunch of soup and chicken dish. Hmm, I thought, this chicken is kinda orange...maybe i´ll buy some shoes. But first I remembered this museum I read about so I was like VAMOS TAXIMAN! I burnt an hour in the Museo Regional de Ica (founded by Alfondo Bermudez Jenkins), checking out some wicked mummies and textiles. It´s funny when you can actually grasp how incredible it is to have a 3,000 year-old mummy sitting in a case in front of you. As a kid being dragged into these places, all I would think is Gee, that´s a dry-looking head. Anyways, they have all these morphed skulls and wigs and evidence of trepanning, which is basically prehistoric brain surgery with rocks. Gnarly!!

What kind of ancient culture has silly designs like this? That would be the Wari, whose ruins I also visited much earlier in Ayacucho.I know what you´re thinking -c´mon, I saw that in IKEA´s fall collection, 2004. That couldn´t have been woven thousands of years ago by some tribesman in a hut. Shya.

Stinkin hippies, can´t even go to a museum without seeing one.

Coneheads. How do they DO that?

So that was actually the best museum I´ve been to in a while, and afterwards I was definitely in a shoe buying mood. I´ve needed something in between my big hiking boots and my flimsy sandals, and I found some cool basic Walon sneakers at a store in the market in my size. Buying new shoes is cross-cultural fun! So then I walked around, bought some socks, and I don´t really know where the time went, I guess I´ve been at this internet joint a while. I´m pretty anxious to get to Ayacucho and have a little fun at the orphanage again. So I´ll catch you foolios on the flipside!

Yours truly, unimpressed with a loud and stinky Ica.

Days to Burn

My bus last night that was supposed to take me to Ayacucho got caught up in Lima as these Peruvian buses will, so I got an unexpected eight hours in Ica today after checking out at noon from Huacachina. But first, a little on Huacachina, our oasis paradise. As you know, we started our trip there, exactly 40 days before, and returning was sweet and relaxing. We had one whole day there, and some change, to do nothing but sit in hammocks, eat popsicles, swim in the pool, maybe have an ice-cold beer or three, walk around the desert, and play with this baby monkey in the front yard.

Meet Marwin the Monkey, 5 months old and orphaned, tiny and playful, here eating a leaf.

One of the better pictures of him rolling around on the ground. awww....

All you gotta do is walk up to his tree, and he´ll come bouncing over onto your head.

Trying to break into my camera pack, clever little curious george he was.

Catching a break in the shade

With his best friend Bobby the Turtle

A crazy shot of Bobby going for a fruit

When it seemed like he couldn´t stop moving, he found a cozy spot on my thigh and was out cold just like that.

I´m now positively buying a monkey once I can give it a good home, Marwin was so fun to hang out with, jumping all over the place, just being a mischievious little primate. We spent most of our down time sitting around his tree, chatting and playing. Huacachina has burrowed itself a wee nook in my heart and if you asked me to think of happiness right now, I´d close my eyes and see Marwin swingin in his tree, the dunes reaching for the deep blue sky in the background, feel the breeze dancing with the sunrays, and a cold Brahma in my hand. Never easy to leave a place like that.

Cam and I out for a walk and some popsizzles

The walkway into our hotel
The pond that makes this little paradise in the middle of nowhere possible

Our last stroll in the desert, footprints that will wash away...but last forever

And there you have it, people - HUACACHINA 2007

So after a heartbreaking goodbye to Marwin and the desert, we taxied into the clamorous neighboring Ica where Cameron was catching is bus at one. Another tough goodbye at the bus station, feeling and memories swirling all about. The last month wouldn´t have been what it was without Cameron to share it all with. But that´s getting into our beeswax, not yours.

Lake Titicaca and the Floating Islands

Today we slipped into another time and dimension where people work, sleep, and live completely on floating reed islands. Heck, they even eat the stuff. It was a short boat ride into the expansive and crystal-clear Lake Titicaca to the Islas de Uros where the 1,000 natives on more than 40 islands still speak Aymara, the language of pre-Inca Peru. We drifted from island to island on these amazing reed boats and had a magical little day. I´m pooped from the last entry, but I think Cameron wrote a more extensive report on his blog, which if you haven´t seen, is a stupendous second account on everything going on. check check it y´all: furtheradventuresof.blogspot.com
otherwise, feast your eyes on these snapshots
Tonight we´re bussin to Ica, to finish off our wondrous journey in the same place we started. Then I´m back in Ayacucho for some more volunteerin, and Cameron is blazing his own trail into Ecuador.

Colca Canyon

Sup peeps. Cameron lent me a little computer saavy(have you guys heard of this "copy and paste" function?), so the blogs from here on out should be a little prettier.


After the jungle, we flew to Lima, which I think I said already, but anyways, ended up in Arequipa. From Arequipa, we took a two day tour of the world´s deepest canyons, in the Colca Region. The first day of the tour we drove up through the highlands, passing herds of vicuñas, llama´s close cousin and reached the highest point in the tour. I don´t remember how high exactly, but I know that for a while there, it felt like I was breathing cotton balls.

A watery, grassy, llama-y terrain called pampas.

çWe later stopped in Chivay, a small town, even a townlet you might say. From there we visited some volcanic thermal baths which were merely lukewarm and filled with fat Peruvian señors, but surrounded by canyons and ridiculous rock formations. That night, Cameron and I broke off from the group and found a gourmet buffet followed by a private planetarium show for ten bucks. SWEEET. But the next day was the kicker.



Our little van clung to the side of a mountain, through tunnels and around herds of cows as we drove to the principal lookout point, or mirador. The beautiful scenery never left our side, and we stopped for a few photo-ops.

ooh-wee, put that in yer pipe and smoke it

Upon arrival to the mirador, there were enough gringos to really make you feel like a tourist, which I always hate. But nothing could stop that view. After a bit, there was an excited shout of "CONDOR!" and heads turned in unison. Indeed, far away over the peak behind us, was a dark shape that might as well have been a pigeon from that distance. But the giant birds eventually warmed up to their audience, and soon they were soaring back and forth above the infinite gorge, every once in a while close enough you could have spit on their nine-foot wingspan. They´re truly lucky to be so humongous and rare, because you´ve probably never seen a face so fleshy and grotesque. Imagine Freddy from a Nightmare on Elm Street - with a beak.

Wasn´t having much luck catching a good shot, until...

CONDOR ATTACK!!!My condor impression
This baby reaches depths twice that of the Grand Canyon

We hiked for a while, opening different viewing angles down to the river 3,500 feet below. After a few hours soaking it all in, we piled back into the van and made one last stop in a small church town where there was a man with a tame eagle available for pictures.

Who´s the bigger bird-brain?

Back to Arequipa then off to Puno the next day.

Into the Amazon: Part 2

Where were we? Ah yes, in the heart of the Amazon. Let me preface this entry with a reminder that my camera was apparently going through its time of the month, being very moody indeed, and these were the best images I could glean from it once it was fixed. They are also in no particular order, but my stupidity is to blame for that one. But back to our trip...

On the first night, there was only enough time to eat dinner, settle down and go for a short canoe ride. The darkness and animal calls teased us in anticipation of daytime the following day. I slept reasonably well, although I had to use earplugs and suffer the fact that my net was obviously not engineered for a 6´4" stringbean. Tasty jungle pancakes for breakfast and the first thing on the schedule was a leisurely stroll in the jungle. Haha, that´s a oxymoron if I´ve ever heard one. We slipped into our big gum boots and followed Jorge and his machete. One minute in, any sign of human inhabitation was erased and replaced with a million different greens, vines, flowers, plants of every imaginable shape and size, and mushy ground half covered in treacherous puddles. The air was thick and moist, and everything was absolutely teeming with life. It was basically how you´d imagine the Amazon to be, but still felt unreal standing there. Jorge heard the caw of a toucan, and we traced it to a tree, but only heard it whoosh through the canopy as it escaped our prying eyes. Jorge taught and showed us that everything you need is never more than a few hundred paces away. Hungry? Here, chop this seed in half and pull out the larvae that live there to suck down a juicy treat. That´s what in my mouth in the picture, although at the time, I was telling myself it was a Fruit Gusher. Thirsty? Just cut a two foot long section of this viny plant called Uña de Gato (Claw of Cat) and quick, stick your mouth under it as fresh jungle water streams out of it´s inner pores. Every few minutes along the walk, he would point to a tree and slice a piece of bark off, allowing the sap to drip onto our fingers. There was sap for stomach aches, malaria, bug bites(that particular sap also stains the skin, obvious from the orange dots still coveirng our chests), male potency, rheumatism - basically enough blow your local Bartell Drugs out of the friggin water. The saps ran red, green, creamy white, smelling and tasting equally strange. Another quirky trick, called jungle repellent, was to break off a piece of an ant nest attached to the side of a tree and stick your hand in, letting millions of tiny ants crawl up your arm before pulling out and squishing them across your itchy skin. Ahhh, slimy relief. Jorge, having grown up in the bountiful jungle, had never been to a doctor and was healthy as a horse.

On that specific walk, we didn´t see a lot of big wildlife, mainly spiders (although only the giant webs of the elusive tarantula), ants, butterflies and other bugs galore. For me, it was all about the plants, but another highlight was this giant tree that had vines hanging from it, and soon me hanging from it, swinging through the air like the king of the jungle. The mosquitoes got to us after a while, and even worse, we´d unwittingly walked through a fireant nest and I felt the sharp, howling pain of two bites right above my buttcrack. That spelled the end of that adventure, and we went tromping back to the camp, sweaty, muddy, and covered in sap.

Over lunch, we discovered the roomy netted outhouse that became our dining room and general haven for the next couple days.

I haven´t the energy to continue the play by play, so I´ll just cover the most interesting things from the rest of the trip. We spent a lot of time in the canoe, which was nice because the skeeters are less over the water, and we got to explore much of the area upriver. We fished for our meals, which was harder than I remember, but never reeled in a pirahna. There´s definitely plenty, but they´re sly little fishies, nibbling your bait till you´re left with a whole lotta nothing on your hook. Later in the trip, one of the more skillful fisherman cooks caught some pirahna and surprised us with a toothsome soup, that I slurped with a satisfying feeling of revenge. We were never short of food, and delicious food at that. Catfish spaghetti, fish and banana soup, fish wrapped in banana leaves and grilled in its own juices with onions, tomatoes, and garlic - every meal was new and outstanding.

One night we set out on a caiman search, which are basically mini-alligators, using our falshlights to find their beady little eyes gleaming like fire above the water. Didn´t take long after we found a quiet inlet for Jorge to silently float up and nab one, handing off the little sucker for us to ogle and hold. While I had him, I felt a mosquito sinking into my flesh, so a rested his tail on my knee just for a second to smack my neck, but the caiman was no dummy and took the opportunity to freak out and spasm in my lap. I yipped like a pansy and dropped him back into the dark water like a hot potato. Jorge laughed at me and we paddled away while I mumbled an excuse. The next night Jorge caught another, nearly twice as big, that I politely declined to hold.

At another point in the river during the daytime, we came upon the meeting of two rivers, one a thick, light almond/cream color and the other a much darker clearer brown/black. These two rivers flowed into each other, and the colors met in a whirl of cream and coffee, slowly blending into a single shade four hundred yards later. I named it Cappucino Junction.

It was the third day now, I think, and again I woke up in my cramped white box thinking it was all a dream and I was now in room of a loony bin. Still waiting for that to happen actually...

For our last full day, we packed a few things and paddled further than ever upriver to a group of lakes adjoining the river. It was here we set up a small camp to cook in and spent most of the day fishing, swimming and observing wildlife. The swim was wonderful, to feel cold water on my body for the first time in four or five days, as well as sardines and small pirahnas nip me all over. One especially strong bite from a pirahna that thought my nipple was a free-floating snack sent me scrambling back into the canoe. Later in the afternoon, we slipped by a field of floating plants into a huge lake with a beautiful mirror surface that reflected the lush green on the banks and the forever blue of the sky above.

On the way back to camp, we saw a clan of a dozen monkeys hopping from tree to tree, and a sloth in another, not doing much hopping at all. Some dolphins surfaced in what seemed to be too small of a river, and we continued to see colorful and squawking birds fly back and forth across the river. My favorite was a big old jungle falcon, usually perched, showing off his regal clay-brown, white, and black plume for all to see. Here´s a list of the animals we saw, without the long stories of how, where, and when: Birds, butterlfies (google image search the Blue Morpho), spiders, insects up the yin yang, monkeys, sloth, caiman, frogs, snakes, and crazy jungle men, Jorge included.

All in all, I found the jungle to be intersting for many reasons I hadn´t anticipated. It was much more calming than I expected, to be humbled by the immensity of life and to observe the grace and beauty of Mother Nature firsthand. It was, at most, a mere taste of what there is to see and learn, and I felt I was leaving so much undiscovered as we paddled back to civilization. It´s a completely different world to live in, needless to say, and something instinctive inside you finds its home amongst the pure wilderness and rich, open sky. Hopefully not my last time in the Amazon, but I´m certainly glad to have had my first.

Into the Amazon - Part 1

Technological difficulties continue to plague me, but I managed to upload a few pictures to start with. Our path to the jungle started in Iquitos, the largest city in the world unreachable by road. We took a bus to a town directly south of Iquitos, called Nauta, where we caught a banana boat with a basic outboard motor to take us down the Rio Marañon. There´s a picture of me teasing a half-smirk out of our jungle guide, Jorge, or more fully, Jorge of the Jungle. On the hour long ride, we spotted several river dolphins, their gray and pink fins glimmering momentarily in the sun. Trying to get a picture was like playing an impossible game of smash the weasel on the head, as they popped up whenever and wherever they pleased. Gather the family ´round and see who can find the dolphin in my attempt of a picture. At that time in the year, the river was near its lowest, and I took a photo of a bank to show the approx. 5 feet that the entire river will rise in the wetter months. Now I´m no mathmetician, but I would put my estimate for the change in aqueous volume somewhere in the range of a crapload and a half. Shyaa. Anyways, when the Marañon met up with the Yarapa, we got off in a small village and transferred to canoes. It was another hour-long paddle upriver and into the branching Cumaceba before our base camp turned into view. I had to snap a photo of little Romy, Jorge´s nephew, hitching a ride in the back of the cooks´ canoe behind the plaintains. It was impenetrable jungle on either side, occasionally broken by a winding tributary or an inlet completely covered in a field of pastel orange and green butterflies. The sounds of the jungle surround you, punctuated by the most bizzare birdcalls you could imagine. Predictably, my camera temporarily stopped working when we arrived, so I have no pictures of the camp. It was basically two largish huts on stilts, connected by a raised wooden walkway. Our hut consisted of a table and our ¨mosquiteros¨, or netted beds to sleep and take refuge in. We unloaded, smacking away at mosquitoes, and took a deep breath of jungle air before our adventures ahead.

Damn techonolgy

Just an update for those wondering where in carnation are the photos and recap of our fantastic jungle voyage...my camera broke for good on the last day, so I got pictures but now they are locked in this little metal box and it seems like i´ll need secret talismans or something to get it working again. But seriously, once we´re in Arequipa tomorrow, it will be an easy fix at an electronics store (godwilling) and everyone will be happy. Right now we´re in Lima, flew in this morning from Iquitos and traversed what would have taken 5 days via boat/bus in an hour and a half by plane. Amen to that. Other than that, nuuuthin new. Over and out

My apologies for the lull in entries, I guess you could say things have been a bit slow lately. We had a malaria scare with Cameron, my travel mate, but luckily they only diagnosed kidney infection. Phew! He´s doing good now though, so we plan to giddyup into the jungle at 7:30 tomorrow morning. Here´s a little summary of the pictures and generally what we´ve been doing. After Mancora and the beach, we bussed to Tarapoto where we caught a beaten down toyota truck to take to yurimaguas. The first picture was taken after I dropped my camera, that might be why it´s all off center, but we´re waiting in the bed for departure, which came an hour later and with about ten more people. Three of those people turned out to be thieves, and unlucky Cameron got 170 soles stolen, but that´s a long story. And the bad guys get away, so you probably don´t want to hear it. Once in Yurimaguas, it was all aboard the Eduardo III, sleeping in hammocks for two days on the Rio Marañon until we arrived in Iquitos, where we are now. The last three pictures are from today, we were planning on renting some mopeds to cruise around in, but we both missed the essential education of how to drive a manual moped, so we rented a canoe in the Belen market. Belen is a huge slum basically, and during the high tide season (which we missed by a few weeks), all the houses and stores are floating, like a poor man´s venice. So today, most of it was on stilts, but there were houses that float year round that we passed by on our way home. we decided to just paddle all the way home, so there´s me paddling upstream at the junction with the amazon. it started to rain, but the sunset still had a eerie coolness hidden behind clouds and trees. So as I said, I dropped my camera, and most pictures turn out a little blurry now, but Cameron broke his too, so we might just buy a new one to share, in which case you´ll be able to enjoy the wonders of the jungle in full enchanting clarity. Until then..