Journal: Day 32

I'm going home tomorrow. "Home" of course being a highly subjective reference, since 2 days after getting 'home' I'll be going home to another 'home.'

We're in Chile - San Pedro de Atacama to be exact, in a hostel set amidst the driest desert on the planet. The land around here gives off a very alien impression, and the complete and absolute absence of life from the terrain shapes an atmosphere resemblent of another world. Not one single blade of grass penetrates the sand, and the rocks and canyons exemplify the planet shaped through pure geological forces - the real whim of the Earth.

Anyway, we rented bikes today and make a 36 km loop through the valley of the moon (el valle de la luna), down a more or less paved path that runs between terra cotta cliffs, towering stand-alone sand dunes, salt flats, and colorful odd anomalies in rock structure that make you wonder if some divine creator once ate some of that cactus that grows around here.

(Realization: biking through desert sand is an unpleasant task)

Chipping raw salt

We hit the end of the road, ventured down a dirt road so poorly maintained that bike travel was nearly impossible, until we found a abandoned salt mine, where massive (and we're talking near 100 kilos) salt crystals and blobs were visible in the side of the cliff. I knocked off a handfull with a rock to bring home.

Our days in Chile have been few, but its certainly been a change in pace and surroundings from the highland markets and cobble stone streets in which I'd set a lifetime record for 'most dead chickens seen.' Instead we found pedestrian malls, mediocre clothing boutiques, and other wonders of the western world.

Upon arriving in Arica, our first Chilean destination, we, of course, hit up the tallest place around - an ocean-side overlook on some cliffs a good 100 meters above the town. From there, we spent our valuable time sitting and waiting for hours in the early morning until the groggy clouds moved out to sea and left us with a sunny, although cool and breezy, air around us.

The rest of our day we spent sitting on the beach, witnessing 90 degrees of the suns daily path. When it got kind of cold in the breeze, I carved out an inlet in the sand band large enough for me to lay inside and take a nice warm nap. It was pleasant. While George played in the sand, I made adventure out of trying to run quickly to large rocks exposed occasionally by receding waves, then stand on them and get hopelessly wet as the next current rolls in.

We spent our next night on bus (a bus on which we found our self by fluke put in the down stairs first class seats), and arrived early this morning to San Pedro.

Its night time now. Tomorrow morning we'll cross the mountains at the Paso de Jama - one of the highest navigable roads in the world, and get in by night to Salta, Argentina - a city I've learned to navigate in my four previous visits to the gateway to the north.

The stars in the desert are unlike anything I'd ever imagined seeing. In the driest place on Earth, free of humidity, and in most cases, human settlement, the stars spout out brightly, even as the last traces of the blue sky linger after sunset, in a psychedelic fusion of day and night. Then, in the dark night, the milky twinkle of the sky reaches down to the horizon all around, and the silhouettes of colossal mountains dominate the skyline.

Tonight, on the last night of what I've come to see as a life style, I made delicious hot chocolate to share with my hostel mates on a sub-zero (C) desert night. 

Journal: Day 13

"Pyramids"

Lima turned out to just be so awfully ugly that we shortened out stay in the city to a reasonably modest hour-long meal in a chinese restaurant in one of the various bus terminals before modifying our itinerary significantly and heading north to a town called Chiclayo, Peru. We got in around 05:00, and, as we've grown accustomed to doing, waited for the sun to rise before venturing out, then took a stinky little jam-packed van about 45 minutes north to see the famous "pyramids." As it turns out, though they may have been pyramids 500 years ago, what remains may not necessarily warrant the title, and we found ourselves looking ponderously and massive heaps of very geometric crumbling mud. Yet, not even they failed to attract a crowd of senior British tourists.

So we took another van to the next significant archeological site down the road, but fairly quickly gave ourselves up as lost, flagged down another van to Lambayaque, where we headed for the museum of the Senor de Sipan. The museum, it turns out, was surprisingly legitimate, but it did some nasty work with the San Pedro I had eaten hours before. Thus, I entered a bleak and empty, yet largely expansive world, and the very dark museum with spot-lighted golden relics spread throughout transformed into a vacuum space through which I was floating from one myseteriously lit golden sculpture to another. Not to mention, a whole posse of tiny golden and ceramic, jewel-adorned figured, built as guardians of the dead, all had a story of their experiences as a tomb guard to mumble to me. Relearning the physical bounds of this new limitless world just became too shocking, so I ended up vomiting outside.

Our pier

Coming back to Chiclayo, we caught a bus to the ocean (a surprisingly hard vehicle to track down...  we literally met several people who could not tell us where the ocean was), and walked out onto an old train pier, marking our first steps together over the Pacific ocean (even though we'd seen if fromt he bus window the entire day before.

Climbing over the railing, I sat on a timber that jut out, an expected result of such imperfect construction, over the ocean as the sun set, and a truly indescribable peace came over me. I can't recall ever having felt that way before, and I don't ever want to forget how it was, because I can't imagine that all people alive get lucky enough to feel as I did some time or another in their lives. Maybe it was the act of getting to the sea, or realizing that we'd crossed an entire continent, coast-to-coast. Maybe it was just sensing the reality of watching the solemn sun set over the Pacific at a Peruvian that was real in a very modest way. Or maybe, it was just taking the time to realize what it is that I've been doing these past days, and how far I'd come to arrive to the rickety pier on which I was perched above the sea.


Either way, the feeling I got hinted that everything in the world was just the way it's supposed to be, and that I'd found the perfect point on the global scale to sit my tiny body down and bring balance to it all. I could have died on that spot and had nothing to be ashamed of or sorry for. That's how I'd like to be remembered, in a living, breathing photograph of me in that spot, feeling the world around me.


If they were to make a movie of my life, the very last scene before it fades to black would be that 18-year-old unshaven dirty kid with a bandana in his long hair, hanging off the edge of a broken pier, set before the fading sun over the sea.

I know, I'll chase the feeling 10 months and and a thousand miles if I have to, but when I get to the edge of the world and that indescribable feeling transcends the body, its more than worth it. I hope I never forget that sensation or those two long hours on the pier for the rest of my life. This is freedom. Bring it on, world.

Journal: Day 11

So I've missed a few days of writing, particularly due to a few busy days in Cusco dealing with Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley. We also saw Lake Titicaca. I'll touch on that later.

Yesterday, we left Cusco at 16:00 on a bus said to arrive in Lima at 11:00 the next day. We just happened to share that bus with the world's most unpleasant baby, who cried and screamed for hours and hours straight without any caretaker addressing the problem in any way. Hours so continuous wailing is a clear sign that a baby needs something.

On top of the baby, as we made the full pass over the Andes mountains in the middle of the night, the windows began to ice over on the inside of the bus. That means that it was clearly too cold. I found myself in the fetal position, head and arms pulled inside two wool jackets (and a third covering my legs), a bandana over my mouth to keep the dry mountain air from ravishing my throat, wearing two hats, and two pairs of pants. For as little as it did yo keep the cold out, it wasn't even a possible position to maintain, because as our driver zoomed through sharp switchback curves, a body not well-braced would be thrown off the seat. It was a long, long night, and I ended up doing most of my sleeping as we passed by morning along Peru's southern Pacific coast, some of the least attractive landscape I've ever encountered.

Now, allow me to backtrack substantially, and recall some of what we've experienced in the undocumented days before today. We spent an entire day in La Paz out and about to see such the spectacular city. As it turns out, in passing conversation with a taxi driver we had hailed from the bus terminal upon arrival, he offered to take us the next day on a tour of the major sites of the city for 40 Bolivianos - just a big more than 5 US dollars. We made the deal and sure enough, there he was the very next day, waiting at 9 am out the front door of out hostel. He was a short man of feeble stature (and who's name escapes me), fluent in Spanish, Quecheua, and Aymara, two major indigenous tongues of the Americas.

So with our driver we passed through a richest neighborhoods that fill the lowest basin of the bowl shape of La Paz, then went up to all the highest points of the crest around to find all the most spectacular views of the massively expansive, surprisingly modern city scape built on such an impossible mountain grade, seemingly a still photograph and an entire metropolis just poured, cascading down the sides of the mountain and collecting in a fine shamble of tall and colored glass buildings, set in front of complimentary rugged, rough, dangerous, and unconquerable mountain-scapes towering behind. 

La Paz

He even took us on a quick 20 minute jolt from the city center to the Valley of the Moon national park, a preserved landscape of eroded mud fenced of in the plain center of a residential area.

Dried baby llama

So our 3 hour voyage ended back at the hostel, where we spend time exploring the witches' market that lay outside out door. Common fare includes, but is not limited to, dried llama, frog, and bird carcasses, carved amulets meant to remedy any ailment, a smorgasbord of dried herbs, ripe to be smoked, brewed, or rubbed on the skin, and various forms of preparation of certain psychedelic cacti. 

The next morning we found ourselves on an early bus out of La Paz to Copacabana, the Bolivian border town on Lake Titicaca. We ferried to cross a skinny outcropping of the lake, and traveled on a bus atop a rickety metal flat boat, floating amongst wooden fishing ships and sailboats. Upon arrival in Copacabana, we bought bus tickets several hours in advance for a trip to the Peruvian border, and headed up several hundred meters to a stone monument and lookout over the lake. For an hour we climbed an impossibly steep slope with no real marked trail, wondering how many people could commonly visit this place, only to find, upon reaching the top, a massive stone staircase pouring down the other sided.

The view of the lake, needless to say, was spectacular. With such dry, clean, clear air at such a high altitude, the water reflects brilliantly the color of the sky, creating the illusion of no distinction between the two. Except, of course, for the mountains on the horizon. Although, the horizon seemed for some reason to fade away around its intersection with the water, leaving only visible floating mountain peaks, fading up out of the horizon and into the sky. Quite spectacular, indeed.

Lake Titicaca and on to the horizon.

 

Cusco's tourist center. 'Rainbow' is the official color.

Then from Bolivia onto Cusco, Peru, and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Cusco is an odd city, being both the Americas' oldest continuously inhabited city and a major destination of international tourism, there is a visible dichotomy. In the tourist center, the same dish available for 17 USD is sold literally two blocks away in a place where travelers don't often wander, the same thing is sold for a dollar. Cusco has Disney tours as well. You can book a trip with Disney and go to Cusco and Machu Picchu. I found that striking.

Then we also went through the sacred valley and up to Machu Picchu.