Trip Wrap-Up

Hey all,

Well, I´m back safe and sound in the Colca Canyon and just got done partying down for Chivay´s town fiesta. I may write on that a bit later, but there isn´t anything particularly different from last year´s post on the same party. What I haven´t written about up to now, though, is the end of my trip in Chile.
I was on a bus for nearly two days before I got to Santiago de Chile, so I probably would have loved anywhere, but I seriously appreciated that city. It doesn´t have a whole lot going for it as far as vistas or beautiful architecture goes, but it is a really chill city with, thanks to Pablo Neruda, a poetic soul. They do have a cable car to the top of a hill with a nice view of the city that was worth checking out, but the highlight had to have been Neruda´s house, La Chascana. Neruda was a bit of an architect in addition to a poet, and built or redesigned each of his three houses. He also was an avid collector of a lot of randomness, which gives his houses a kind of House on the Rock feel, the most interesting collection of which was the various awards he won over his lifetime, including an Order of Lenin and the ultimate accomplishment of the Nobel Prize. Oh, and another thing for Chile... fantastic empanadas (though not sure if they beat Argentina´s or not, but certainly Peru´s) and a novel approach to hotdogs that covers them in more sauce than hotdog, the most recognizable of which is avocado.
After Santiago I wandered over to the Chilean coast to Valparaiso, which is the polar opposite to Santiago as far as views go. The city is built on a series of hills descending to a wide bay of the Pacific, and, although quite steep, the climbs are worth it to see the city and the vast blue ocean spread out before you. Neruda also had a house here, which is probably more interesting than La Chascana. He used a ship motif for the building, reflecting his obsession with all things maritime. Climbing up the five stories is like ascending through the decks of the ship, with a spectacular view of the city on the captain´s quarters-like fourth floor and a small masthead lookout-type room that he used to write on the fifth and final floor. Outside of Neruda´s house I just spent my time wandering through the city appreciating the hundreds of views popping out around every turn.
My last stop in Chile was Arica, where I spent a few hours before crossing back into Peru and heading for home. Arica was actually a Peruvian city up until the Peru-Bolivia vs. Chile war (War of the Pacific) that ended up shortening Peru´s coastline and completely eliminating Bolivia´s to the gain of Chile. It still has a Peruvian colonial feel a bit like Arequipa, with similar gorgeous weather. The other attraction would be the iron church prefabricated in France by Gustav Eiffel and assembled in the plaza. It is a very unique little church that doesn´t have a likeness to anything I´ve seen in Europe or South America, with internal arches and naves reminding me of a decorative iron garden chair.
Well, that´s it for traveling for awhile. The next couple of months will be spent with various town parties and an effort to finally finish up the town library I´ve been working on. Oh, and the rain is a-comin´...

Patagonia and Southwards

Well, time to put down some words on all of this southern Argentina I´ve been seeing lately. Outside of being on the bus a ton, I have gotten to see the Perito Moreno glacier in El Calafate and world´s end, Ushuaia, the world´s southernmost city.
I´d never seen a glacier before, so Perito Moreno was going to be pretty special however it went. Still, I was as or more blown away by the surrounding scenery than the glacier itself. I saw some pretty awesome glacial lake and valley action when I went to Ancash awhile back, but this was Ancash twice over. The mountains were not as large, but everything was covered in snow and the glacial lakes were massive and completely ringed by the forested peaks. There were several, and they all had that powdery turquoise color to them common to most glacial lakes.
The glacier itself was a crazy shade of blue, almost like something out of a kool-aid packet, and massive. I was intrigued by how jagged it was... I was expecting something more flat and ice-cube like I guess. The real reason glaciers are so cool, though, is the periodic shearing off of large chunks of it, which fall into the water with enormous splashes. I didn´t see anything incredibly dramatic, but I did see some car-sized pieces break off with the sound of a cannon firing and plunge into the lake below.
Afterwards I headed towards Ushuaia, where I´m at now. This is a port town on the tip of Tierra del Fuego and as I mentioned before, about as far south as you can get conventionally without going all the way to Antartica (someday...) The setting is pretty spectacular, with the town surrounded on three sides by snow-capped mountains and the Beagle Channel and its port providing the fourth. When I got it it was honest-to-god snowing, the first time I´ve seen that in just about two years, and it was beautiful. I´m those at home won´t be all that impressed, but I was smiling like a six year old and thoroughly enjoying it. Today I did a nice hike along the coast to a beach and ate some spam sandwiches while staring across the channel at an archipelago of islands... the last land left before hitting the seventh continent. Tomorrow I´m heading off for what will be a pretty crazy stretch in bus before seeing Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile and heading on back to the canyon just in time for the big parties... should be great...

Iguazu

Well, I´m off on bus for the next fifty-odd hours, all the way to the end of the inhabited world, so I wanted to throw down some thoughts on Iguazu falls.
Iguazu falls are close to 100 feet taller and four times higher than Niagara falls, its closest comparison. Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly said upon first seeing them, ¨Poor Niagara Falls...¨ Still, none of this really makes sense until you first approach the Garganta del Diablo (Devil´s Throat) outlook. You first notice the brown water accelerate and rush towards a common point, and then you turn a corner and see the full spectacle, tons and tons of water plunging headlong off of cliffs hundreds of feet high in a giant horseshoe formation. It´s hard to put together that much movement in your head and the effect is kind of mesmerizing, particularly as you just watch the water cascading and sending up clouds of mist from far below. I´ve certainly never seen something like it...
After Garganta del Diablo you can take several smaller trails to see the dozens of other waterfalls that make up the entire Iguazu Falls. Some of these vistas are as or more spectacular than the Garganta, simply because mist isn´t obscuring the bottom. All around you is a panoply of jungle life and you need to take care not to step on a lizard or bump into a coati (one of these- link to follow). And yes, Dan, I do want one... not sure whether it or Mitzi would win a snaggle-tooth competition. There also are hundreds of different types of butterflies, covering the entire color spectrum, including some sweet little numbers with markings that look like the number 88 on their wings. All-in-all, it was a sick afternoon and if I don´t come down with yellow fever, one of the absolute highlights of the last couple of years...

Rio

Well, I´m in Argentina now, just having crossed the border this afternoon. Rio was excellent, one of three cities I would most like to live in at some point along with Barcelona and Miami. Unfortunately, two of them suffer from oppressive heat, so it looks like Barcelona will always stay ahead.
I will have to get back to Rio at some point, though, if only to relax on its beaches and get some photos. My camera batteries (freshly changed) crapped out at the top of Sugar Loaf, the iconic ridge with the James Bond cable cars. The only known use for Panasonic batteries is putting them in a sock and beating a Panasonic executive about the face with it. I´ll just have to get some generic online ones and throw them up to let y´all know what the view was like... because it was spectacular. The green mountains pretty much just tumble into the ocean, with a few peaks masquerading as islands further out. Rio is built up and around these hundreds of peaks, which is why the favelas (super-ghettos) are in such close proximity to the nicer areas. Favelas are built up the mountain sides and the businesses and nicer residences are built in the flat parts surrounding them, ironically giving the poor the better view, perhaps the only place in the world that can say that.
Where the mountains meet the ocean there is invariably a beach, including the famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches along with dozens of others. Across the harbor Niteroi could be clearly seen, and most famous of all the giant Chris statue on Corvocado peak stretches its arms over the entire city. It was quite a view and bears much more exploring, which I¨ll hopefully have time for in the future...

Brasil!

Well, time for some quick travel blogging. I will get pics up there later, but for now just some description on what I am up to at the moment. I flew into Sâo Paulo early this morning and explored it for awhile before deciding on heading to Rio a night early.
Sao Paulo is a massive city of around 18 million inhabitants, and it looks it. There is not a whole lot there for the tourist, but it does offer a look at the staggering disparity between the rich and poor in Brazil. There are homeless people in literally every doorway and arch in the center of town, in numbers that I had never seen the like of. I thought that Lima was fairly impoverished, but it holds no candles to the staggering amount of homelessness in just the small part I saw of Sao Paulo. I also had a fun episode with a dude high on something who came up to me and tried to see how close to my face he could swing without actually hitting me. After three haymakers he discovered that he was not going to get any reaction out of me except for a blank stare and wandered off in search of god knows what...
After my charming first encounter with Sao Paulo, I decided not to waste any more time there and took a day bus to Rio de Janeiro, arriving in the evening. I went down to the famous Copacabana beach and watched the sun sink beneath the waves. Since I am not capable of doing everything right at once, I of course forgot to change out my camera batteries and will not be having pictures of that, although I will do more beach wandering and get up to the famous Sugar Loaf mountain tomorrow before heading to Iguazu falls. I will put up more Rio commentary the next time I post, but suffice it to say that it is a beautiful city and one that I should have probably planned more time with. I will not miss the staggering heat, though, so I probably planned just right...

Solutions

Wow, that last post has been hanging up there for awhile. I promised a more optimistic blog this time out, and here it is. Things really haven’t changed in site, but I’ve got a couple of interesting new projects to hope after and something may even come of one of them. First off, we have a new environmental plan in place that may get some of the projects I had proposed off to a start. I also finally tracked down some seeds courtesy of another volunteer in the canyon to start a garden with the health post for the old folks club. Lastly, Salvador and I, another canyon volunteer, may get to do a business video project that would entail some traveling and fancy camerawork.
So, on to the broader strokes. For one, I don’t want the last post to be interpreted that what the Peace Corps does is ineffectual or unnecessary. There are at least six NGOs working in the Canyon from three different countries and I am convinced that Peace Corps has a better development philosophy than any of them. The core of the difference is that PC volunteers actually live in the towns where they try to make a difference. Most NGOs come to town, give a talk about a subject, and head on out. Some turn this talk into a series and even start organizations that are supposed to do a particular task, such as make artisan goods or promote tourism. The problem is that there is little to no follow-up and not living in the town means that the NGOs have a tough time diagnosing what the problem is if something goes wrong. By living for two years in the same town PC has a lot better chance at producing truly sustainable projects.
The second problem with most NGOs is the way they hand out money and resources. The simple action of giving to people isn’t bad in itself, but do it enough and you produce a culture of expectation. One of the first questions I got when I got to site was what I was going to give people. My answer of two years of my time didn’t seem to impress them much. I recently had a conversation with a teacher at my high school where I mentioned the saying where you can either give a man a fish to sustain him for a day or teach him to fish to sustain him for a lifetime. The teacher said that most Peruvians would just take the fish, and I think that would be true of people most anywhere, especially if they’re used to being given handouts. Sounds almost Republican, I know, except that I’m not sure they’re particularly interested in the teaching to fish part either.
So, I have no idea how to solve the world’s problems, but I think that we could do a lot worse than the PC approach. I’m certain that the common philosophy of just giving handouts isn’t working and won’t work. Ways need to be found to change people’s basic outlook. The most probable methods to find success would be to change basic circumstances through universal access to education and improving basic living standards with basic infrastructure projects (3 “basics” in one sentence… and I want to write for a living…). If we stopped giving billions to third world despots or wasting them through projects that treat the symptoms instead of the disease, we might even be able to do it.

Ancash pics and new design

Hey all,

You may have noticed the new design, which was a long time coming. I finally figured out how to spice things up with pictures and such (it really wasn´t that hard). Also, after the dour tone of the last post I will be rolling out a solutions themed essay whenever I get around to writing it. Enjoy the pictures, and here´s a link to the newest from my vacation to Ancash-

http://picasaweb.google.com/zijerem/Ancash#

Rant

I’m going to rant about work here, just this once. For a young idealist, development work seems just about perfect. You’re helping change the world a little at the time, travel, and experience new cultures. In reality, the travel and culture are certainties, but the changing the world is anything but.
Let me demonstrate with a small, seemingly inconsequential episode. A Peruvian NGO approached me earlier this week about helping set up a workshop they had planned. They had all the details of the workshop planned out on their end, but needed me to recruit interested young people to take part and make sure they got to the regional capital for the event. Just about every expense was covered and the information looked good with potential to spark some change on important issues. They just forgot one little detail, and one little detail is all that it takes to tank a development project.
That small detail was the lack of funds to cover transportation to the regional capital. We’re only talking 8 soles roundtrip, or a little less than 3 bucks. The young folks that were interested in the workshop weren’t interested enough to pay to go, and the NGO was too dumb or stubborn to provide the funds themselves. I wasn’t too surprised, so I asked the municipality for the funds, which was truly small change for them. Unfortunately, they had to sign it off with the mayor, and since he’s never in town… I had to go to the municipality every night of the week to get the runaround I knew was coming, and, of course, nobody went to the workshop.
It really was no big deal, but it demonstrates the fundamental problems with each of the major players of the development game: the NGOs, the local government, and the people themselves. NGOs just offer workshop after workshop, with little to no follow-up. They never get to know the people enough to cover the small details that sink projects, and their hand-out attitude often spoils the people for anybody that is really interested in affecting change.
The local government, like all politicians, has its sights set on first staying in power and only secondly accomplishing things. That’s the bane of democracy; elected officials always have to look over their backs and that can get in the way of performance. This automatically puts the focus on the short-term win over any long-term project which limits the effect you can have.
Finally, you have the people. Since the default setting for people anywhere is complacency, getting them moving towards anything is a Herculean task. Not that there aren’t motivated individuals in town, there just aren’t enough, and eventually they fall under the influence of the others or cut loose from a sinking ship and seek their own fortunes in bigger ponds. You can’t give them an excuse to not try (like not paying for their ride into town) or they just won’t.
So, I’ll probably walk out of here after two years without having anything concrete to point to as an accomplishment, or even a tiny footstep towards that “changing the world”. And that’s development work… beating your head against the wall and hoping that there’s not just more brick on the other side. I have some time yet, but I can tell you now that I won’t regret my time here. The last two goals of Peace Corps, learning something from other cultures and teaching them that Americans don’t eat babies, will be accomplished, and I will have gained great relationships and stories from these two years. I will certainly continue to make project plans with the few folks that are interested in change, and maybe that mythical successful project will come down the pipe, but I’m not holding my breath.

Ancash and comings and goings

Back from vacation finally. Not me that is, but the schools. Vacation was extended another week on account of the pig flu making its way around and it’s just this week that I’ve had anything to do. The environment project was on the skids until the students got back (some were I the capital doing odd jobs), and it’s almost like starting from square one again, but we’ll get it going again.
As for my vacation, Ancash was beautiful. While the elevation isn’t as intense as where I live in Arequipa, there are many, many more snow-capped mountains. I finally felt like I was in the Andes there. I spent two nights in the city of Huaraz, which wasn’t terribly impressive, and two nights camping by a beautiful glacier lake up in the Huascaran National Park, named after the tallest tropical mountain in the world, which is also pretty impressive. Well, I don’t feel like waxing poetic at the moment, but trust me, Ancash is well worth the visit and pictures will be a-comin’.
The last item of interest these last few weeks is the come and go of volunteers in Arequipa. Training class #9 is on their way out, and #13 is coming in. We will be getting four new volunteers who we’ve already met and seem pretty cool. We’re also getting a transfer from my training class, Sal, who was one of my best buds in training. It’s sad to be losing some good friends who I’ve spent the last year with, but it looks like we’ll have a pretty good group as well for the next year and should both have plenty of fun and get some quality work done.

Work and stuff

Well, this last week or so has been especially fruitful from a work standpoint. I’ve been talking for awhile with several groups about possible environment projects, but this last week everything has started to fall together.
The first project that showed promise was a grant the high school wanted me to help with to make a plant nursery for trees to combat erosion and a grass crop called tara that has commercial value for a number of reasons. After that, I finally got a youth group interested in doing a recycling business going. One kid, Ivan, has a lot of ideas and determination and will be going somewhere in life. After that, I finally got started with a nurse interested in doing environmental projects from the Health Post. With the Environment Committee of the municipality getting interested we now have the opportunity to do something really special.
As of now the idea is to educate the populace on environmental themes. Then, if we can get an ordinance requiring the separation of organic and non-organic materials passed, the kids’ recycling business will receive the non-organic materials and the organic will go to a related composting project. The kids will receive the proceeds of recycling in the town minus a choclatada (holiday party with hot chocolate and sweetbreads) for the populace and the cut that the “recycling association” needs to sell the non-organic materials to the nearest big town and after that the capital. It should be a good youth, business, and environment project all rolled into one.
Of course, the likelihood of us coming out of this with nothing is pretty high considering all of the other projects I’ve tried and seen wither. There should be a stat for projects attempted in the tri-annual reports we do. This is simply the most promising project I’ve seen to date and with the most interested and dedicated people to see it through.
So, besides trying to marshal the forces I’ve been working with the nurse and some of the youth in sorting through the local throw-away spot. You can’t really call it a landfill because it’s pretty much just a cliff that people throw their trash off of. We’ve got a pretty good quantity of metal, plastic, and paper to sell already, which will be a nice start to the project as a whole. I also worked with some folks making the famous Incan-style andenes, or farming terraces. It’s some hard menial labor that I’m not getting enough of these days.
Another interesting factoid from this week is that I weighed myself at the health post and came out at 82 kilos, which is about 185 pounds. Considering I came to Peru at around 230, that’s pretty crazy. I’m not sure if I believe it, but I’ll get the official stats at our one-year medical checkups in September.
The only other news to report is that I’m looking forward to going to do some nice hiking in the mountains in Ancash, one of the more spectacular hiking destinations in the world. I’ll be there in about a week and can’t wait.

Volcano climbing

Well, I have really falling down on my blog duties lately. Been awhile. There´s not really a whole lot to report in the world of work and play. I´m starting the steps necessary to build a library in town, but that will take awhile. Still teaching an unhealthy amount of English, and looking forward to my next vacation possibility at the end of this month. I´m thinking of going to Ancash, one of the great hiking destinations in the world, but after my recent climbing experience, mayhap I should have second thoughts (I don´t).
I recently attempted the climb Misti, the iconic volcano that overlooks my capital city of Arequipa. It is 5800 meters tall, making it taller than any mountain in the contiguous United States and taller than the tallest mountains in Antartica, Europe, or Australia, and darn close to Africa´s tallest as well. It´s a two day hike, starting at around 10 a.m. the first day. You hike to base camp, which takes until around 4 p.m., set up camp, and settle in for a cold, cold night. At midnight everyone gets up and sets out for the summit, to get there in time for the sunrise at 6 a.m.
Unfortunately, that was not to be for me. An hour into the hike I vomited, and afterwards I was so fatigued putting one foot in front of the other was a huge chore. I gave it a shot anyways and hiked on for another two hours, but when I started feeling nauseous enough to puke again it was obvious that I was suffering from altitude sickness and there was no more point in going on. I went back with one of our guides, who had seen suspicious lights around our campsite. The way back down was for a change kind of fun. Misti has vast slopes of black volcanic sand stretching from the summit almost all the way down, and you can slide down on your feet in a kind of snowboarding sort of way and get some pretty good speed going. Doing this in the dark with only your headlamp is a bit of a rush.
When I got back to the camp I settled in until the sunrise, which was still not bad from my vantage point at around 4000 meters. One beautiful facet of it all that I forgot to mention is the city itself. It´s set out like a giant glittering Maltese cross in the night and this view just about made the other depredations worth it. In the end, I got to 5300 meters, as high as I´ve been and still quite a bit higher than any mountain in the U.S. outside of Alaska. With some training I think I´ll try and tackle Misti´s taller partner, Chachani, which is apparently the easiest mountain over 6000 meters to climb in the world. Still, this body was not made for mountain climbing, but I won´t let that stop me just yet.

Pictures!

Hey all,

Nothing much to report here except that I finally got the chance to upload all the pictures from the last few posts- including those of Holy Week in Ayacucho, my vacation to Macchu Picchu and Lake Titicaca, and my brief foray as a bullfighter. All of those can be found here-

http://picasaweb.google.com/zijerem/AyacuchoCuscoPunoAndBullfighting#

Enjoy!

Bullfighting

Well, I did something a little dumb but exhilarating this week. I bullfought, toreador style, in the next town over.
We´ve been celebrating the festival of San Isidro this weekend, which seems to revolve round bulls more than anything. The people of the town brought their yuntas, or plowing pair of bulls, to the church to get them blessed on Friday, followed by the usual marching around with a band and dancing that all festivals here seem to feature. On Saturday, the next town over, Lari, had a bullfight. I had heard that they would let whoever felt like it enter, and had been mulling it over, because as experiences go it would be one of the more unique I´d likely have to boast of in my lifetime.
It turned out that indeed amateurs were allowed in the ring. I decided to check out the first bull and see how that went. One guy got knocked out and as I was taking a picture of that the bull turned and threw another one about five feet up and out. These two were drunk, as were the majority of the amateur talent out there. After that a real toreador showed up, in costume and all, and I figured that that was the end of amateur night, but as it turned out a few folks jumped in anyways. In one of the less thought out decisions I´ve made I hopped right in as well.
At first I just intended on using my coat as a kind of makeshift cape, but the mayordomo, or the guy financing the festival, took off a decorative cape he was wearing and let me use it. The first bull I tried was a pretty mad one (or maybe it was a cow- as it turns out they get just as pissed off when goaded and their horns are just as sharp, so there were a few mixed in with the bulls) I soft-stepped up to it and got it to paw the earth at me, but I was a bit surprised (I have no idea why) when it actually charged. I was able to misdirect it with the cape and hightail it to one of the board set up for toreadors to duck behind when a bull is right on their tail. The next few I was more daring on and I even faced off a group of three who in the end didn´t do a whole lot. All-in-all I fought four bulls (not including that lame group of three) with increasing confidence and walked out of the ring without a scratch and a lot of enthused drunk folks (who had a habit of falling of the wall surrounding the ring and having to be helped up in the middle of fights) yelling for the gringo toreador.
So, I´ll get those pictures up this next Friday when I´m in the capital and the internet can handle it. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries half way through so I only have pictures of the first couple of bulls and the group of three, but you´ll get the idea. And mayhap I´ll try it again at my town´s bullfight in July...

Trips and such

Well, it’s certainly been awhile since I’ve written, which seems to be becoming a habit lately. I’ve been on the road lately, going to the sierra cities of Ayacucho, Cusco, and Puno over the last month.
First off I went to Ayacucho for Semana Santa, or holy week. Ayacucho boasts the second biggest celebration of this week in the world, after Sevilla, Spain. The big highlight of the week is the large number of parades and processions carrying saints and icons during all hours of the day and night. However, my favorite part was the jalatoro, or, literally, bull-pull. I originally understood this to be a legit running of the bulls like in Pamplona, Spain, but I should have paid attention to the name. Instead of running free and wrecking havoc along the way, the bulls were pulled one at a time by horses and riders and frankly looked more scared than the crowds running with them. I went ahead and ran alongside a couple of them, but actually got closer to a goring working in the chacras several months back, which in retrospect should half been enough bull-related danger for a lifetime.
Also during this week I got to wander up to the battlefield of Ayacucho where the final Spanish army of any size in South America was defeated by an army made up of nationals of several South American countries, sealing the independence of virtually the entire continent. Oh, and the day before we went to a state fair-type event and ate tons of samples of fresh cheeses and exotic fruits from Ayacucho’s more tropical lowland regions. There was also a competition for caballos de paso- trained horses that walk in a very distinct and uncomfortable looking manner.
After a week back in site taking care of business and preparing the test that the majority of my students are failing this week (really need to work with them on study habits, or simply just paying attention in class- feel like I’m back in the good ‘ol hometown school system) I was off to Cusco and Puno. These two cities are the most touristed in Peru, due to the nearby attractions of Macchu Picchu and Lake Titicaca.
I only stayed in the city of Cusco for one day, and found it much too touristy. For one thing, all prices were extremely inflated and when you are a volunteer you need things as cheap as you can get them. I was lucky enough to get Peruvian prices for many of the attractions due to my residence card, but even then they were priced to the point that it’s literally impossible for the majority of Peruvians to visit these important pieces of their patrimony. I’m trying to increase tourism in my site, but like the highly controversial mines, one has to serious think about the costs before counting the benefits. On the plus side, the ruins around Cusco, particularly the huge fortress of Sacsayhuaman, are spectacular. The ability of the Incas to fit together huge stones so precisely is stunning, especially compared to the nearby Spanish stonework, which is good enough to have lasted for hundreds of years but is obviously not even in the same class of craftsmanship.
After Cusco I headed down into the Sacred Valley of the Incas, stopping first at the ruins of Pisac and Ollantaytambo. Pisac is a bit overrated, but the views of the river valley are quite nice. Ollantaytambo is very impressive, but also claimed my Ipod, likely by a little crapper that worked at the place I had watch my baggage. I hope he goes hiking with it, trips and breaks his leg, and the battery runs out two minutes into the four hour ordeal, which is likely because he was too dumb to also steal the charging cord. It was on its last legs anyway, and if one of my trips goes completely right (got really sunburned in Ayacucho) it means that I’m due a bus or plane crash at the end of it. Still, the ruins are worth the look.
And then there was Macchu Picchu. I’m not sure I can write anything that hasn’t already been said and said again, but there is a reason why it is a consensus wonder of the world. Almost as impressive is the drive up, through tropical mountains shrouded in mist. I hadn’t realized how tropical the area was. Everything is a lush green that I have yet to run into (although I intend on getting to the Amazon at some point here). I’ve got some pictures forthcoming that hopefully do it a bit of justice, but I’m not sure that is possible. I also made sure to get there early enough to be one of the four hundred allowed to climb Wayna Picchu, the spear-like mountain you see in most pictures of the area. It was a really, really difficult climb, but worth it. From there you could see the condor shape of the ruins as described, as well as a great view of the area as a whole.
After Macchu Picchu my friend and I made a quick run to Puno. The town itself is nothing to write home about, so we stayed the night on one of the islands dotting Lake Titicaca. Before doing that we visited one of the isles de totorra, or reed islands. These islands are made completely of reeds by their inhabitants, who also make houses, mattresses, and even boats out of them (which I got to ride as well). The pulpy center of the reed is also eaten, which tasted a bit like sugar cane meets fresh coconut to me. After a brief visit we went to the island of Amantani, where we stayed with a local family. It was possibly the quietest night of my life, and I live in a secuestered town in Colca Canyon and have slept in Amish homes. We ate and read by candlelight there being no electricity and just enjoyed the calm and clear night sky.
The next day we stopped by the neighboring island of Taquile on our way back. This island was also beautiful, and had developed a cooperative to share the tourist profits coming in. Still, the prices were only what Americans or Europeans would find acceptable, and not being paid like them I decided to subsist on crackers until I could get back to 2.50 (about 90 cent) menus on the mainland. The customs of the island are very unique, with the dress being the most noticeable. Everything is woven and embroidered, and the number and type of women’s skirts and the positioning of the men’s hats communicated all the social information you would want to know.
Well, I had better sign off. Tests are to be given in the morning and as I wrap up a giant brown recluse-lookin spider is crawling around behind my computer. I hesitate to kill him because he might eat the fleas that the stupid chickens bring in my room, but he’s big enough that I think I’ll grab him and take him outside where he can wander around without making me paranoid. So, off to that…

It´s been awhile...

Hey all,

I just realized it´s been roughly a month since my last post. That´s pretty lazy of me, I guess, and I´ll try and make it a little more frequent. The good news is I should have some interesting things to report. I´m heading up to Ayacucho for the world´s craziest Semana Santa (holy week) celebrations and should have some pretty cool cultural stuff to report from that. I also plan on getting to Cuzco and Macchu Picchu this month if I´m approved to do it, and that should be highly describable as well.
As for what I¨ve been up to the last month- work. That is a very, very good thing, because it means that people are waking up again in my town and starting to do some things I can help with. I¨m still teaching English in all the schools and working with some community groups with their computer skills. However, bigger fish to fry are starting to hit the pan, like an environmental committee within the municipality that is warming up to a landfill project and the high school starting to make a reforestation project to combat erosion. The health post is starting a garden project with the old folks and some high school students are looking into working with them to make a recycling small business. Also, some people interested in tourism development are starting to pop up again and I¨ll be working with them to make project plans and see if we can get some of them moving. All-in-all it´s an exciting time to be around because things are actually getting done...
Other things of interest I guess would be that even as high as we are we´re not safe from mosquitos. My system doesn´t take to them all that well, so I get some pretty impressive swelling once in awhile. Benadril is my third most prevalent food group at them moment. I also got a q-tip end stuck in my ear recently, due to some shoddy local q-tips. It wasn´t that big of a deal but I had to jaunt down to the capital to get it out so I was half-deaf for a week. I definitely appreciate people with reduced hearing and their plight a lot more now. Felt like I was living in a swimming pool. So, that´s the update. Take care all and watch some baseball for me.

Photos!

Hey all,

Here´s the photos I got from the disastrous Argentina trip as well as some I took at a ceremony held at our Incan fortress in the valley, giving a pretty good idea of what it looks like where I´m living now. Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.es/zijerem/ArgentinaAndColcaInSpring#

I¨m back! and such

Hey all,

Well, it´s been awhile since the last, fairly depressing post, but it´s all good. The vacation was a complete disaster but it won´t stop me from seeing what I want to of this continent- it just means that I¨ll have to put off the northern portion until my trip home.
The last few weeks have been pretty stale. I planned this trip in the first place to cover the dead period of the rainy season, when everyone is either away or partying (which I´ve done enough of the last few months) but most certainly not working. Since I had to be back I´ve pretty much just sat around and watched movies on the laptop and planned for when stuff started happening again, which should be this week. The last party of the season is raging around me right now and today is the last day. Also, school starts again tomorrow. I´ve heard that most people aren´t back for the first week, so I´ll pretty much just be setting my schedule and trying to re-open dormant projects.
I did take part in the last party, carnivales, over the last week since I was in town anyway for my final week of Quechua classes. I´m still processing all the info I got this week, but I think I can get along in the language o.k. and with studying can even get fairly proficient at it.
As for carnivales, the holiday has been more or less going on all month as a lead-up to Lent. Mardi Gras is the peak of the holiday in Brazil and New Orleans, but we wrap up a little earlier here. It´s characterized by people chasing around with water balloons, squirt guns, and spray foam going after the opposite sex. Bands also roam in the early hours picking up the solteras, or single girls, from their houses and dancing into the morning. Another custom is that all single males have flutes and try to ¨rob¨ solteras with them, playing to them I guess to win them over. I missed out on that part. For the most part it all devolves into drinking and dancing like most parties here.
Oh, a final interesting touch is that they ¨plant¨ trees in the town square. These are laden with presents and balloons and danced around. Periodically someone takes a chop at it with an axe until finally it falls, provoking a frenzied rush to grab the stuff that was in the branches. The catch for the chopper is that if you are the successful one you have to pay for the tree in the next year´s festival, so everyone takes little chops and it usually takes all night.
Well, that´s all for now. I should have some work stuff to report next time as well as a different topic than town parties to expound upon...

Yep

Yeah, that was 1 p.m. in the last post. Gettin sloppy...

Anyway, there comes a time when one has to look at the signs and follow the message they are coming together to create, which in my case was ¨go home or die¨. Home of course, being Madrigal, Peru for the moment.
I lost my debit cards- both of them- thanks to a handy little carrying case that was supposed to help one keep from losing one of them. I´ve been all over to no avail, and being that I deliberately kept it in the opposite pocket than my money to keep from accidently slipping out when I went for it and because it was a heavy enough little contraption that I should of felt it fall out and because I hadn´t used the cards for two days I´m pretty much flabbergasted by how it got lost, and how all this stuff has been happening to me in the first place. Let´s recap.

1. Get stopped at the Chilean border because passport I´m carrying makes me look like an illegal immigrant into Peru- have to go back and retrieve the right one.

2. Buy a plane ticket to Buenos Aires that thanks to taxes (30 $ airport tax?)is more expensive that it should have been and find out that Peru doesn´t have automatic debit. Need to run from bus to bank to deposit cash into the airline account, after the deadline, but still get the ticket.

3. Said airline loses my luggage (it ended up not getting on the plane at all in Lima). I find this out during my stopover in Santiago, neatly killing the thrill of being in Chile for a brief moment.

4. Day one is sitting in limbo for said luggage, but still seeing all the Buenos sites I was interested in. Oh, and getting from the airport to downtown is hell, because it´ll either cost money or earn you a nose in the air for trying to buy something to get coins. You see, for some reason this country has a coin shortage, but most everything public is run on coins. Only in South America... Oh, and I get woken up in the middle of the night by an angry never-heard-that-accent-before dude who claims I´m in his bed. Turns out the hostel overbooked our room, and dude´s idea of saving a place was pulling back the covers and leaving a piece of scrap-paper on the bed. Apparently that is the way they do things in Unidentifiable Accentlandia.

5. Day two- email says the luggage is coming in the morning! Unchecked joy becomes listlessness and then outright anger because luggage does not come in the morning and said airline apparently doesn´t answer phone calls or emails until halfway through their regularly scheduled hours. Finally give up and go see a movie, and when I get back there´s the luggage!

6. Hey, we´re off to destinations different! Goin´ to Iguazu and finally gettin´ this trip started! Bought a ticket and just have to wait, which is cool. Rifle through my pockets and what´s this? No debit card? Well, fuck me. A frantic retracing of steps brings me not a thing, as one might expect and I go to get my ticket refunded (losing 30% in the process- but what´s money to a guy who just lost all access to it?). I then go to the international portion of the terminal and find that the only bus going to Peru leaves in three days... and passes through Bolivia. And yes, I would need a visa. When throwing my bag against a wall and then punching it until blood comes yields neither visa or VISA, I look around to find children staring at me with their jaws dropped. Nice. I decide then and there to stop giving a shit. Life is too long and horrid to try and while away the time like this.

Well, I ended up finding out that a company that inexplicably wasn´t located in the international portion of the terminal has tickets to Peru tomorrow. And since I was carrying around some Hamiltons to pay for Chilean entry fees down the road, I luckily had just enough to get the ticket. So I´m going home before I get a limb taken from me, because that is the loud and clear message I´m getting... go home or die. Should be there in three days and can´t wait.

´Nother Update

Well, my baggage ¨showing up¨ ended up being a backhanded blessing. I got the email and was extremely happy up until about 1 a.m., when ¨morning¨ was officially over. During the next several hours I tried calling LAN and emailing a few times to see what the hell was going on, but apparently ¨we´re open from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m.¨ comes with the caveat of ¨but we won´t be answering our phones or email or doing any work at all really until 7 p.m.¨ Also, their definition of in the morning apparently stretches to 9 p.m., one of the more liberal definitions out there.
So, after being pissed off most of the day I finally decided to go do something because the time had passed where I could get my luggage and hop on a bus to Iguazu. I ended up wondering up Avenidas Lavalle and Corrientes, kind of their nighttime shopping and eating district in El Centro. I ate a traditional Argentine parillada, which is a ton of meat on a plate- chicken milanesa, a meh cut of steak, ribs, a pork sausage, and , my first shot at this, a blood sausage. I had heard some pretty disgusting things about blood sausage, but after trying it I kinda liked it. It tastes like Thanksgiving stuffing a bit, probably because it has the same throw-away parts of the animal that stuffing does. After that I did the traveling sin of going to a movie to cheer me up. There are tons of theaters along this strip, all unfortunately showing the same mainstream stuff, so I caught Jim Carrey´s Yes Man and was presently surprised. Didn´t expect much but there was some pretty good writing in there and Carrey does his thing. Zooey Deschanel´s presence certainly helped things out as well.
Now I´m about to head off to the bus station to discover what other misfortunes can befall me. If all goes well today, which would a record streak at this juncture, I´ll be off on the first bus to Iguazu and have all day to explore it tomorrow.

Quick Update

Well this morning has been a mixed bag already. Last night I got woke up by a dude claiming I was sleeping in his bed. Apparently the hostel overbooked our dorm and his idea of reserving a place was pulling back the covers and leaving a piece of scrap paper on the bed. Not exactly the international way to communicate that, but we got it sorted out and I still got some much-needed bed rest.
I also didn´t get to go to Uruguay as planned. Having done the ferry thing across the Aegean, I expected that a river crossing would have stuff available day-of, but I underestimated the huge number of people that do this crossing every day. It was sold out, of course, but when I got to the internet I discovered that my luggage was found and should have gotten in last night. I´m waiting at the hostel right now for it to show up as they said they would be sending it this morning and then I´m heading straight to Iguazu. It sucks to have lost Uruguay but I gain a day this way and avoid a hostel expense, so provided my luggage actually does show up (with my current luck a less-than-certain proposition) I will have made out alright in the end. Oh, and rereading my last post I realize it is less than coherent in places (was pretty all-around pissed off at that point) and that I put thousands of years down where hundreds is much, much more correct...

Buenos Aires

Hey all,

Well things have certainly been going poorly the first few days of the trip. First off I went to the Chilean border and was stopped for having the wrong passport. I brought my original American one, not thinking that it would make me an illegal immigrant as it doesn´t have any record of me entering Peru- the Peace Corps one does. I´m lucky they let me go back for it, but I still lost a day of the trip. I then decided to buy a flight to Buenos Aires and try the trip from the opposite angle, but Peru apparently doesn´t have automatic debit so I was running until the last minute to get the ticket paid and ended up having to deposit the cash into the company´s bank account at the last minute before I would have lost the ticket.
Even then I wasn´t sure I had it until I got to Lima the next morning to fly out of there and checked my email for the confirmation. A lone speck of good luck so far was getting to spend a few hours with my host family in Lima, share a good meal and get caught up before heading off to the airport. My flight was on time and everything, but, of course, they lost my luggage. I´m beating myself up over this because I may have been able to carry it on, being a backpack and all, albeit a large one. Still don´t know how that one will turn out, but as it stands I only lost clothes, that stupid original passport, and my keys. If I don´t get the pack back I´ll need to reapply for that passport again and it´ll cost me more money I don´t have, and because of the keys I´ll have to find somebody with boltcutters in the valley to get me into my room and who knows how long that´ll take. Those are the prinipal headaches, and the need to buy a more shirts and socks for the trip and carry them in the small carry-on bag I had as well as the toiletries...
To top it all off I´m doing some final trip-planning and finding out that all those blogs are liars or idiots. Timetables they describe don´t appear to be possible and I¨ll need to cut out some stuff in Patagonia if not nearly the whole bit. I don´t even care anymore. All of this has sucked the joy right out of traveling, and this is on top of some drama before I left that I don´t even feel like remembering. I´m not all that happy with just the whole concept of life right now, and even though the one thing I´ve learned about myself by now is that I can take punches like a champ, I´ll be hard-pressed not to put a pen in the eye of the next bearer of bad news.
So, as for Buenos Aires. It does have a European flair to it with its avenues reminding me a lot of Paris. It still has its South American style, though, which doesn´t translate well really. There is inelegant, but efficient use of space everywhere, making the avenues uglier than they should be. It also is pretty dirty and traffic is a killer, giving the impression of a much more cramped city than it actually is. It has a lot of cultural opportunities from all over the world- a real melting pot- but not a whole lot of history to boast of in the form of places to see. Churches are churches after awhile, and there aren´t many buildings or sites with specific character here. One that was pretty cool was its cemetary of El Recolete. This is where the rich and famous have been buried for thousands of years and all of the mausoleums and monuments give a New Orleans vibe.
I haven´t tried the food yet, and may wait til later in the trip for the famous parillada, or smorgasbord of grilled meats. The people in general are more European-featured than in Peru, with some pretty American looking girls surprising with the Argentine-accented Spanish, which is very different from pretty much everywhere else and hard to understand at first. Well, I´ll throw down other stuff as it occurs to me. I´m off to Uruguay for a brief trip tomorrow and after that Iguazu Falls. After that, unfortunately, is the Heart of Darkness. Hopefully I won´t get stuck down there because I have few vacation days to spare as is...

Quechua Week

Hey all,

Been awhile. There hasn´t been much to report in site- just counting down the days until vacation. Nobody did show up to the English classes, which is pretty consistent for rainy season. Pretty much everything but the occasional party is suspended. But I did have an interesting week this past one with quechua classes.
Quechua is the indigenous language here, as well as the language of the Incan empire. Although it´s more like quechpañol now, with all of the spanish influence. It´s a different languge, with Germanic grammar- all the suffixes as well as sentence order, etc, and several sounds we don´t have in English, some of them arabic sounding or like an african language with bit-off consonants producing clicking noises.
We had class twice a day for about 5 hours total. Our teacher, Dario, came to Chivay to teach and brought his guitar, which was cool. It was kind of like primary school in some ways- learn by singing, but it did the trick. I need to sit down and study some to firm it all up in my head, but I think I can get along a bit now. We´ll have another week of classes to polish up our knowledge the last week of February, or right when I return from my big trip.
As for the big trip I´m leaving the 5th, so not too much more time to waste and the Superbowl tonight, if we find a place it´s on, will help with that. I unfortunately missed a town party due to class, but caught the end of it yesterday. I was just stopping in to grab something I forgot, but still ran the drink gauntlet to get to my house. Transportation was out of commision due to excess partying as well so I ended up going back on the back of a beer truck, which was cold but an interesting experience.
Outside of that, nothing else to report. Keep tuned for travel blogs, as I may do it during or a big one after...

More parties!

Well, the parties don´t cease in the canyon this time of year, so my only interesting news centers on the party in the next town over that I am still recovering from. On a less interesting note, I was deserving of some relaxation after cranking out close to 100 pages of English curriculum for the next year over 3 days. I still have to polish it a bit but it looks like something worth the effort. Ít´ll get its real trial by fire in March when the new school year starts.
As for the party, it began with an all-day soccer tournament that my town participated in and lost, although they did get past the first round. After that we milled around the square for a few hours and socialized before the Castillo, or fireworks tower, got lit off. I´ve never seen the like before, probably because it´s a ridiculous safety hazard, but it´s pretty awesome. They build a tower out of bamboo with four ropes leading off in the cardinal directions, all surfaces completely covered in various types of fireworks. They light them in sequence and the effect is pretty spectacular, especially since there is no minimum distance to respect, meaning you crowd in and get showered by sparks while admiring the display. My bud Ryan (it was his town)has some pictures I´ll steal and post before too long.
After that we got an extra, even more dangerous, fireworks treat. That is the Toro Loco, which is an apparatus resembling a bull that a guy carries over his head like a Chinese New Year dragon and runs after people as it shoots fireworks in all directions. I got a pretty direct hit last night but I guess it´s not as bad as it seems because I escaped without a burn of any sort. After that it was live music and dancing in the town meeting hall until the wee hours of the morning, which is why I´m a bit out of sorts now- I´m getting used to rising and setting with the sun more or less so my college weekend norm 2-3 hours of sleep is pure torture now. Still, I´ll survive to work on that curriculum some more and perhaps do some summer vacation teaching as well- provided anyone shows up of course.

New Year´s

Hey all,

Well, the holidays are finally over- at least the world-wide ones. We still have a slate of holidays down here in the Colca Canyon- the wititiadas. I’ve described the wititi dance when talking about the town festival in Chivay. That town festival was a kick-off for the wititiadas that travel around the canyon, town-by-town. They are little carbon copies of the festivals, with dancing that lasts two days and plenty of good food and company. Madrigal’s is one of the last- January 27th, and until then I’ll keep working on my curriculum and giving some summer school English lessons if I can drum up the interest.
New Year’s also just went down, obviously. Not a whole lot happened in site, but in the city apparently some interesting customs take place in the cities. It is apparently good luck to wear yellow, the most popular choice being underwear, which is why you see so much of it on the streets being sold right around this time. At midnight you eat 12 grapes quickly- also for good luck, especially if you can do it in a minute. If you want to travel in the new year, you run around the block with your luggage at midnight, and to cleanse all the bad of the previous year an effigy is burned. Other than these customs, the normal western-style New Year’s party reigns supreme.
Well, this next month will be full of the aforementioned wititi parties, summer school, and English curriculum as well as preparations for my 15 day trip down south to Chile and Argentina, which will be from February 5th to the 20th. In there somewhere I’ll try to catch the Superbowl somewhere and watch as many Oscar-nominated films from this year as I can grab. Oh, and I’ll have a week of Quechua classes to try and get as fluent as my compatriot Chris and his Quechua pocketbook he carries around…