The past few days (weeks?) have had so much going on that I would have to write pages and pages for each experience to do them proper justice. But... who would sit in front of a computer doing that when they´ve got Cuzco at their doorstep? As such, I have given up on doing proper justice and have now become an annotated lister.
The annotated list goes as follows.
1. Hatun Machai take 1: On impulse (i.e. I woke up at 6am and decided Today I Must Climb) I went to a place called Hatun Machai and fell in love instantly with the rock forest. I climbed a lot and decided I want to move to Huaraz for at least a few months.
2. Santa Cruz: While Justine was photographing the culture, I went and walked through the mountains on the Santa Cruz trek. I did not bring neosporin, which was a big mistake because it meant I could not help the man who lived in the mountains and had a badly infected hand from getting it mangled in machinery (it had swollen to no more than 5 times the size of his other hand). Instead I gave him all my remaining ibuprofin -- 4 pills. I later rebuilt my karma by helping a woman find her lost sheep. Then, I randomly ran into the same French people that we had camped with several weeks ago in Mancora (distance: 2 days busride). I camped with them on the trek. The Santa Cruz trek is a 4 day trek but I did it in 3 to be back for Justine´s birthday. The trip involved a lot of burros (although I did not have a burro)... I will later write a story about all the burros. I swam with iceburgs in a freezing alpine lake.
3. Justine´s Birthday: We went to a performance of some artists that Justine met earlier and then we went out dancing with them. Dancing with dancers is the best type of dancing. Also, we ate cake.
4. Vallunaraju: A big snowy mountain. Our new record is something over 5,700 meters! 2 day trip. At the summit, the colors of the sky are very different because the atmosphere is different. We were supposed to reach the summit at sunrise but because all of our watches magically stopped working in the night (what!?), we woke up late (2am instead of 12am) and got there around 7am. Of all the groups that set out for the summit that day, we were the only group that made it. Go us! And thank you to our gentle guide Rolando (aka "Mono" (translation: monkey)) for teaching us how to walk in those big mountaineering boots and how to put on crampons. Oh, and for guiding us to the summit.
5. Hatun Machai take 2: We went to Hatun Machai again because it was so amazing the first time. We were supposed to stay there Wednesday night and Thursday day, get back to Huaraz Thurs evening and take a bus to Lima Thursday night. Well, we had such an amazing time that we had a friend change our bus tickets and we didn´t take the bus to Lima until last night (Monday night). That friend was also supposed to email my family for me to let them know that I am out of contact with the world, but safe. I suspect that email might not have gone through (I blame it on all the vowels in our last name). One of our new friends has aerial fabrics and so we set them up from a climbing route and I did fabric. Justine climbed her first climbing route. I got on a 5.13!!! (but I didnt finish it). There was a bouldering competition... people came all the way from Lima to compete (Lima is far away). I won second place in the female category. I was basically climbing for 4 days straight and now the holes in my fingers also have holes in them. Tying my shoes hurts.
6. Huaraz to Cuzco: Before getting on a bus to Lima last night, we made the last minute decision to buy roundtrip plane tickets between Cuzco and Lima because we want to take full advantage of our few remaining days (we have what like 16 days left... not enough!!!) and because bus travel is fairly exhausting. Thus, we got off our bus in Lima, took a taxi to the airport, got on our plane, and are now happily in Cuzco.
Ciao!!
Ani
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Journal snippet
All right, here's a little something from Friday the 13th:
Wowza a lot to digest.
Literally, right now my stomach is incredibly full of yummy quinoa thai-curry plus mango-yogurt jugo. 38 soles yikes! But it's for my salud. I'm a skeleton right now, I must weigh (well, before this meal) about 115 or 110 pounds. I haven't been this thin since I started high school. NOT COOL. My butt bruises on the toilet seat, and my bones stick out from my cheeks and my hip joints are popping as I walk. But now that I'm not leaking out of both ends and I've got my apetite back, I can get some healthy meat on my frame. Ah but what I really meant by digestion is the processing of the whirlwind of smiles and colors and guts and fruits on my walk in the lower market area of Huaraz this morning and afternoon. That's right, I got out of the hotel on my own (Ana had gone on a short climbing excursion)without a deadline or schedule before 10am. This is an embarassing victory because it reveals my struggles with languishing away the mornings ¨getting ready,¨ but it is a victory nonetheless. I am, gradually, gaining more dexterity at managing my life. I took 4 rolls of pictures to document and guide my exploration of the morning market, but I think if I push a little some words will go a long way in developing the experience.
At first I was pretty nervous because people here have not been eager to be photographed and often tell me no when I ask if I can take their picture. As I walked down the sidewalk, I kept up a friendly internal banter about my ¨right¨ as a photographer to photograph whatever is in the public eye regardless of perople's explicit wishes to not be photographed. Despite the consensus in my photo classes, it is very clear to me that I am not entitled to anyone's image, especially not here since they have no reason to live under our laissez-faire media rules. That said, I felt like I might be able to convince people with a smile that the camera I'm wielding is an instrument and not a weapon. A local woman Sandy who we'd shared a crazy cab ride with encouraged me to keep trying to connect with the traditionally dressed women I found so fascinating even though they didn't seem naturally inclined to be very open. Her certainty that their reluctance to be photographed came from shyness and not coldness or a resentment of an invasion of their privacy urged me on even past a couple of failed overly-polite requests. I kept going feeling that if I was open enough about taking pictures then I could capture the beautiful public scenes without offending anyone. I took pictures straightforwardly, obviously putting the camera to my face, pointing down the sidewalk, focusing and setting the aperture and shutter speed in movements that have become delightfully instinctual, making sure that no one in the frame was freaking out, and then click. This was much more effective (and felt a hell of a lot better) than taking furtive pictures hoping the subjects wouldn't notice or than being too cautious and getting turned down. This way, if people really didn't want to be in the picture they had an opportunity to let me know (or jump out of the way), but mostly people just went about what they were doing, which is exactly what a photographer wants. I ended up finding people woh didn't mind having their photos taken and some who even liked it. One woman called to me from behind the row of plucked hanging chickens I was focusing on and invited me into the back room where two young men were killing, boiling, and pounding chickens on the table. Chicken goo ranging from watery liquid to feathers to entrails sloshed on the floor and I stepped around the thick river headed toward the drain to get a better angle (and maybe enough light) for the pictures. We'll see.
Actually the first opening I felt in the public of the Andean marketplace happened when I was sitting on the sidewalk reloading film. A young girl about 11 years old approached me while her mom was buying veggies from one of the many wrinkled old ladies selling on the street. The girl touched the feather in my hair and asked where I was from. Or maybe first my name. I'm glad she asked my name, it means she saw a person and not just a foreigner when she looked at me. Hers was Leslie. Anyway, her momma and also the elderly lady selling teh fruits and veggies came to see about the gringa and we talked about hats. My green felt fadora that I got in Quito and nearly daily express my adoration for (especially since a traditional Ecuadorian lady helped me put my feather in correctly) and the granny's tall, gray, ribboned hat both cost 30 soles we discovered after some quick math on Leslie's part. I'm surprised actually that she knew the 3:1 soles to dollar ratio off the top of her head. After she and her momma said adios, ciao gringa, the old woman sat down in her tiny red plastic chair and I let the two cats who stretched and preened in the sun between us give permission on her behalf for me to take photos. I left them a present of a flower with two little feathers tucked in among the petals as thanks.
...
I'll end the quotation from my journal there. I wrote that seated outside a restaurant having feasted on thai curry over quinoa. After returning to the hotel room for a half hour of quiet with the Isabel Allende book I'm reading, I again mustered my energy to break out of the comfort of the room. I spent the evening light walking up winding streets and paths until I found myself on top of a hill overlooking the city as the sunset colors bounced off of snow-topped mountains on all sides. In the twilight hours a group of kids congregated to play with spinning tops on the steps of the small chapel at the top of the hill and I joined them in translating words between quechua, spanish, and english and laughing at the sounds of their friends' names said with an american accent. I sang some songs with them as the moon sliver came up over the mountain, but realized almost all of the songs I know are sad, with the centerpiece being La Llorona. So I pulled on the depths of my musical knowledge and came up with ¨Chickity china, the chinese chicken, you have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin´...¨ That one went over pretty well until they asked for a translation. Anyway, at 6:55 they all split, running to get home before 7 so they wouldn't get in trouble with their mothers. I headed back toward the main plaza to make arrangements to meet up with Ana for rock climbing in the morning.
I won't get into the lentil-cooking-at-high-altitudes disaster that entailed the following afternoon, but I did finally get to try my hand at boulder scaling yesterday and despite my emaciated muscles I had a really great time pushing myself to reach for each next grasp, knowing that Ana and the crashpad were below to catch me when I couldn't go any further.
All in all, I'm on the recovery and am excited about the new ways in which I'm growing too :) A little shocked to discover that there's only a month left to this trip, but I'm beginning to get the point that you can't drag your feet against time.
Con mucho amor,
Justine
Wowza a lot to digest.
Literally, right now my stomach is incredibly full of yummy quinoa thai-curry plus mango-yogurt jugo. 38 soles yikes! But it's for my salud. I'm a skeleton right now, I must weigh (well, before this meal) about 115 or 110 pounds. I haven't been this thin since I started high school. NOT COOL. My butt bruises on the toilet seat, and my bones stick out from my cheeks and my hip joints are popping as I walk. But now that I'm not leaking out of both ends and I've got my apetite back, I can get some healthy meat on my frame. Ah but what I really meant by digestion is the processing of the whirlwind of smiles and colors and guts and fruits on my walk in the lower market area of Huaraz this morning and afternoon. That's right, I got out of the hotel on my own (Ana had gone on a short climbing excursion)without a deadline or schedule before 10am. This is an embarassing victory because it reveals my struggles with languishing away the mornings ¨getting ready,¨ but it is a victory nonetheless. I am, gradually, gaining more dexterity at managing my life. I took 4 rolls of pictures to document and guide my exploration of the morning market, but I think if I push a little some words will go a long way in developing the experience.
At first I was pretty nervous because people here have not been eager to be photographed and often tell me no when I ask if I can take their picture. As I walked down the sidewalk, I kept up a friendly internal banter about my ¨right¨ as a photographer to photograph whatever is in the public eye regardless of perople's explicit wishes to not be photographed. Despite the consensus in my photo classes, it is very clear to me that I am not entitled to anyone's image, especially not here since they have no reason to live under our laissez-faire media rules. That said, I felt like I might be able to convince people with a smile that the camera I'm wielding is an instrument and not a weapon. A local woman Sandy who we'd shared a crazy cab ride with encouraged me to keep trying to connect with the traditionally dressed women I found so fascinating even though they didn't seem naturally inclined to be very open. Her certainty that their reluctance to be photographed came from shyness and not coldness or a resentment of an invasion of their privacy urged me on even past a couple of failed overly-polite requests. I kept going feeling that if I was open enough about taking pictures then I could capture the beautiful public scenes without offending anyone. I took pictures straightforwardly, obviously putting the camera to my face, pointing down the sidewalk, focusing and setting the aperture and shutter speed in movements that have become delightfully instinctual, making sure that no one in the frame was freaking out, and then click. This was much more effective (and felt a hell of a lot better) than taking furtive pictures hoping the subjects wouldn't notice or than being too cautious and getting turned down. This way, if people really didn't want to be in the picture they had an opportunity to let me know (or jump out of the way), but mostly people just went about what they were doing, which is exactly what a photographer wants. I ended up finding people woh didn't mind having their photos taken and some who even liked it. One woman called to me from behind the row of plucked hanging chickens I was focusing on and invited me into the back room where two young men were killing, boiling, and pounding chickens on the table. Chicken goo ranging from watery liquid to feathers to entrails sloshed on the floor and I stepped around the thick river headed toward the drain to get a better angle (and maybe enough light) for the pictures. We'll see.
Actually the first opening I felt in the public of the Andean marketplace happened when I was sitting on the sidewalk reloading film. A young girl about 11 years old approached me while her mom was buying veggies from one of the many wrinkled old ladies selling on the street. The girl touched the feather in my hair and asked where I was from. Or maybe first my name. I'm glad she asked my name, it means she saw a person and not just a foreigner when she looked at me. Hers was Leslie. Anyway, her momma and also the elderly lady selling teh fruits and veggies came to see about the gringa and we talked about hats. My green felt fadora that I got in Quito and nearly daily express my adoration for (especially since a traditional Ecuadorian lady helped me put my feather in correctly) and the granny's tall, gray, ribboned hat both cost 30 soles we discovered after some quick math on Leslie's part. I'm surprised actually that she knew the 3:1 soles to dollar ratio off the top of her head. After she and her momma said adios, ciao gringa, the old woman sat down in her tiny red plastic chair and I let the two cats who stretched and preened in the sun between us give permission on her behalf for me to take photos. I left them a present of a flower with two little feathers tucked in among the petals as thanks.
...
I'll end the quotation from my journal there. I wrote that seated outside a restaurant having feasted on thai curry over quinoa. After returning to the hotel room for a half hour of quiet with the Isabel Allende book I'm reading, I again mustered my energy to break out of the comfort of the room. I spent the evening light walking up winding streets and paths until I found myself on top of a hill overlooking the city as the sunset colors bounced off of snow-topped mountains on all sides. In the twilight hours a group of kids congregated to play with spinning tops on the steps of the small chapel at the top of the hill and I joined them in translating words between quechua, spanish, and english and laughing at the sounds of their friends' names said with an american accent. I sang some songs with them as the moon sliver came up over the mountain, but realized almost all of the songs I know are sad, with the centerpiece being La Llorona. So I pulled on the depths of my musical knowledge and came up with ¨Chickity china, the chinese chicken, you have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin´...¨ That one went over pretty well until they asked for a translation. Anyway, at 6:55 they all split, running to get home before 7 so they wouldn't get in trouble with their mothers. I headed back toward the main plaza to make arrangements to meet up with Ana for rock climbing in the morning.
I won't get into the lentil-cooking-at-high-altitudes disaster that entailed the following afternoon, but I did finally get to try my hand at boulder scaling yesterday and despite my emaciated muscles I had a really great time pushing myself to reach for each next grasp, knowing that Ana and the crashpad were below to catch me when I couldn't go any further.
All in all, I'm on the recovery and am excited about the new ways in which I'm growing too :) A little shocked to discover that there's only a month left to this trip, but I'm beginning to get the point that you can't drag your feet against time.
Con mucho amor,
Justine
Lost in Translation
This blog post is devoted to small miscommunications and misunderstandings. Most of them have nothing to do with actual language barriers.
At a restaurant in Huaraz:
-I would like to order a yogurt with honey and cinammon.
-We don´t have that.
-Do you have yogurt?
-Yes.
-Do you have honey?
-Yes.
-Do you have cinnammon?
-Yes.
-I would like to order a yogurt with honey and cinammon.
-Ok, what size?
----
At the Hare Krishna place a while ago:
Him: Did you bring your monk garb?
Us: What?
Him: Did you bring your monk garb?
Us: Bring WHAT?
Him: Your MONK GARB.
Us: No, no we did not bring our monk garb.
----
After a really easy sport climb in Hatun Machay:
Me: What was that route rated?
Brazilian guy: 6a
Me: Oh, what does that mean in the other system, like 5.6, 5.7?
Brazilian guy: (spits out his tea, says to his friend) She just called that route a 4! (Then, to me). 6a is like 5.10.
Me: Oh, oops.
----
A story our new British friend Tom told me.
"In England no one is named Randy. I was in Las Vegas once getting a haircut. The barber introduced himself. He said "I´m Randy." I replied, "Oh, is that so? I´m not.""
p.s. Thanks Tom for letting me climb with you guys!
----
During a particularly bad collective taxi drive from Chavin to Huaraz, we felt that our taxi driver was going much too fast but we did not say anything at first because we thought we would just be imposing our gringa ideals about driving. Thankfully, the two local women in the car also thought we were going too fast and they spoke up first. During the rest of the two hour drive, we kept having to remind the driver to slow down, and by the end we were all basically in an argument with him, especially because he nearly crashed us into a bus. When we got out of the car and it was time to pay, we did not want to pay him the full cost because we did not feel he deserved it.
Me: Here is 35 soles for the two of us. We are not paying the rest because you scared us too much.
Him: You need to give me 10 soles more.
Me: No, we are only giving you 35 so you learn to respect your passengers.
We left before he had opportunity to regain his senses from the shock of being told what´s what by a girl. Justine later ran into one of the other women from the taxi ride. The woman told her that the taxi driver had a few things to say after we left.
At a restaurant in Huaraz:
-I would like to order a yogurt with honey and cinammon.
-We don´t have that.
-Do you have yogurt?
-Yes.
-Do you have honey?
-Yes.
-Do you have cinnammon?
-Yes.
-I would like to order a yogurt with honey and cinammon.
-Ok, what size?
----
At the Hare Krishna place a while ago:
Him: Did you bring your monk garb?
Us: What?
Him: Did you bring your monk garb?
Us: Bring WHAT?
Him: Your MONK GARB.
Us: No, no we did not bring our monk garb.
----
After a really easy sport climb in Hatun Machay:
Me: What was that route rated?
Brazilian guy: 6a
Me: Oh, what does that mean in the other system, like 5.6, 5.7?
Brazilian guy: (spits out his tea, says to his friend) She just called that route a 4! (Then, to me). 6a is like 5.10.
Me: Oh, oops.
----
A story our new British friend Tom told me.
"In England no one is named Randy. I was in Las Vegas once getting a haircut. The barber introduced himself. He said "I´m Randy." I replied, "Oh, is that so? I´m not.""
p.s. Thanks Tom for letting me climb with you guys!
----
During a particularly bad collective taxi drive from Chavin to Huaraz, we felt that our taxi driver was going much too fast but we did not say anything at first because we thought we would just be imposing our gringa ideals about driving. Thankfully, the two local women in the car also thought we were going too fast and they spoke up first. During the rest of the two hour drive, we kept having to remind the driver to slow down, and by the end we were all basically in an argument with him, especially because he nearly crashed us into a bus. When we got out of the car and it was time to pay, we did not want to pay him the full cost because we did not feel he deserved it.
Me: Here is 35 soles for the two of us. We are not paying the rest because you scared us too much.
Him: You need to give me 10 soles more.
Me: No, we are only giving you 35 so you learn to respect your passengers.
We left before he had opportunity to regain his senses from the shock of being told what´s what by a girl. Justine later ran into one of the other women from the taxi ride. The woman told her that the taxi driver had a few things to say after we left.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
does anyone remember those small squishy plastic cylinders filled with gel and little stars or marine creatures that you could slide on and off of your fingers and were fun just because they slipped around untrollably? was that just my family? well that's what my entire abdomen has been reduced to. ana covered pretty well our experiment with hiking with altitude sickness and while we are much recovered from that point, i'm a little afraid of the noises my insides make. still, we had a really nice time in huaraz after our graceful retreat off the mountain and are excited to get back there in a couple of days, after we get cured tomorrow by a woman rubbing us with live guinea pigs. i say it in a ridiculous way, but actually it's a tradition that stretches back ages--i'll find out how long tomorrow ;)--so i'm going to suspend my own incredulity as much as possible and see what sorts of wisdom may have slipped through the cracks of spanish conquest.
mostly i wanted to share a quick story about the trip back to chavin last night:
after lounging in yuppee goodness in the california cafe, we hopped in a shared taxi and prepared ourselves for the terror of latin american driving. we sat four in a row in the back seat and luckily the guys next to us were really nice, keeping the taxi driver in line and encouraging him to drive slowly and take the pot-holes easy (avoiding them is not an option, the road is like a hunk of swiss cheese). he kept saying, "we want them to take away good memories of peru" and taught us some words in quechua, the language the inca left in their wake. with minimal clutching of my seat and bracing against the car frame, i spent the carride singing and looking out the window deep into the milky way.
getting sick is no fun, but the gifts of adventuring sure make it seem worth it.
much love to all of you,
Justine
mostly i wanted to share a quick story about the trip back to chavin last night:
after lounging in yuppee goodness in the california cafe, we hopped in a shared taxi and prepared ourselves for the terror of latin american driving. we sat four in a row in the back seat and luckily the guys next to us were really nice, keeping the taxi driver in line and encouraging him to drive slowly and take the pot-holes easy (avoiding them is not an option, the road is like a hunk of swiss cheese). he kept saying, "we want them to take away good memories of peru" and taught us some words in quechua, the language the inca left in their wake. with minimal clutching of my seat and bracing against the car frame, i spent the carride singing and looking out the window deep into the milky way.
getting sick is no fun, but the gifts of adventuring sure make it seem worth it.
much love to all of you,
Justine
El Sorroche
Lying in bed at the Hotel Inca in Chavin, my thoughts slowly coagulated to alert me of the truth: don´t open your eyes or you´ll puke. Justine and I were both afflicted with the notorious sorroche--altitude sickness. We did not understand why, because Chavin is at 3200 meters and we spent more than a week in Quito which is at 3000 meters and we hiked up to 5000 meters when we visited Cotopaxi... why oh why do we feel sick here in Chavin? Surely, it is the curse of the disturbed graves at Chavin de Huantar, ancient pre-Inca ceremonial site...surely the spirits are angry. In that moment of nausea and delirium, I did not have the mental capacity to think about homesickness, or things that I missed, but if I had, I would have missed: hot water, cooking my own food, potable water, clean bathrooms, central heating, people who can give directions, toilets that flush, salad.
Flash forward several days to where Justine and I are sitting across from each other at the California Cafe in Huaraz, cradling our hot cups of fancy loose leaf tea prepared in mini french presses and flipping through National Geographics as we await the arrival of our yuppie vegetarian food. The California Cafe is half-cafe, half-library with good literature, most of which is in English. Next to the National Geographics there are climbing magazines. On the walls, autographed pictures of musicians I´ve never heard of (but would probably like, of course) are interspersed with climbing posters of places I will surely someday climb (when I climb 5.13c, of course). When I go to the bathroom, not only is it clean, and not only does the toilet flush, but there is soap! and hot water! and paper towels! We spend several hours in the California Cafe reading books, reading magazines, sipping soup, sipping tea, listening to Radiohead, listening to our stomachs´ feeble attempts at digestion.
In between lying sick in bed and portaling into creature comforts at the California Cafe, we decided it would be an excellent idea to join our new group of friends on a two-day 35km backpacking trip that starts in Huaraz, crosses a pass of about 5000 meters elevation, and finally drops down into Chavin. Chavin is where our advisor Prof. John Rick works, and our new friends are his vivacious young Stanford students that he brought along to help him excavate (he´s an archeologist). Therefore, the day after lying so sick in bed that opening our eyes was a mortal effort, we took a van to Huaraz with our new friends. The next day, we loaded up our packs with rented gear and trail mix and put our feet to the dirt. We hiked strong, keeping up fine despite the fact that we had only eaten one (small) meal in the past two and a half days. I marveled at my body´s ability to recover and gazed in awe at the jagged, snow capped mountains we were walking between. I felt like I was in search for a new favorite place, and maybe, just maybe I would find it on this weekend hike. The rocks on the path had surely started working their abrasive ways on my feet, but at this point I did not notice because I was floating and everything was perfect--
--then we ate lunch. Lunch was delicious, but soon after my stomach started aching, then it started stabbing, and then it felt like I had puppies growing inside of me and they were kicking and biting. And then it felt like I had an olympic gymnastics team inside me, and they were practicing very, very hard. Meanwhile, Justine´s stomach started hurting too. In our personal levels of pain, we trudged along, step by weary step, until we reached our campsite for the night. Our fun new friends made presumably tasty food on the camp stove, but we were cloistered in our tent ready for sleep to numb the pain long before food was ready. We wouldn´t have wanted any anyway.
The next morning, our stomachs were slightly better--for me, it was back to puppies. Anyway, we decided that puppies in our stomachs was no way to go about hiking, and since we were still closer to Huaraz than to Chavin, and since the second leg of the hike was supposed to be the steeper one, we decided to let our friends continue on and we would return (downhill!) to Huaraz at our own stomach-dictated pace. We got back to Huaraz that evening, had dinner, slept for 14 hours, woke up, looked for a place to eat brunch, and that´s how we found ourselves at the California Cafe, sipping on tea and reading National Geographic, while we awaited the arrival of our yuppie vegetarian food.
---
A shorter re-telling of the same story: Blast! After a month and a half of absolutely perfect health, we finally got sick! Fail!
(Now, we are back in Chavin, still not fully recovered, but with enough energy to be awake at this hour --8:30pm-- and interviewing some people for our research. We will go back up to Huaraz in a few days and we will rent a bouldering pad from Andean Sky Expeditions and go bouldering!!!!!)
Later, I will tell stories of cursed towns, guinea pigs, and bones. But for now, bastante.
Con mucho cariño,
Anita
Flash forward several days to where Justine and I are sitting across from each other at the California Cafe in Huaraz, cradling our hot cups of fancy loose leaf tea prepared in mini french presses and flipping through National Geographics as we await the arrival of our yuppie vegetarian food. The California Cafe is half-cafe, half-library with good literature, most of which is in English. Next to the National Geographics there are climbing magazines. On the walls, autographed pictures of musicians I´ve never heard of (but would probably like, of course) are interspersed with climbing posters of places I will surely someday climb (when I climb 5.13c, of course). When I go to the bathroom, not only is it clean, and not only does the toilet flush, but there is soap! and hot water! and paper towels! We spend several hours in the California Cafe reading books, reading magazines, sipping soup, sipping tea, listening to Radiohead, listening to our stomachs´ feeble attempts at digestion.
In between lying sick in bed and portaling into creature comforts at the California Cafe, we decided it would be an excellent idea to join our new group of friends on a two-day 35km backpacking trip that starts in Huaraz, crosses a pass of about 5000 meters elevation, and finally drops down into Chavin. Chavin is where our advisor Prof. John Rick works, and our new friends are his vivacious young Stanford students that he brought along to help him excavate (he´s an archeologist). Therefore, the day after lying so sick in bed that opening our eyes was a mortal effort, we took a van to Huaraz with our new friends. The next day, we loaded up our packs with rented gear and trail mix and put our feet to the dirt. We hiked strong, keeping up fine despite the fact that we had only eaten one (small) meal in the past two and a half days. I marveled at my body´s ability to recover and gazed in awe at the jagged, snow capped mountains we were walking between. I felt like I was in search for a new favorite place, and maybe, just maybe I would find it on this weekend hike. The rocks on the path had surely started working their abrasive ways on my feet, but at this point I did not notice because I was floating and everything was perfect--
--then we ate lunch. Lunch was delicious, but soon after my stomach started aching, then it started stabbing, and then it felt like I had puppies growing inside of me and they were kicking and biting. And then it felt like I had an olympic gymnastics team inside me, and they were practicing very, very hard. Meanwhile, Justine´s stomach started hurting too. In our personal levels of pain, we trudged along, step by weary step, until we reached our campsite for the night. Our fun new friends made presumably tasty food on the camp stove, but we were cloistered in our tent ready for sleep to numb the pain long before food was ready. We wouldn´t have wanted any anyway.
The next morning, our stomachs were slightly better--for me, it was back to puppies. Anyway, we decided that puppies in our stomachs was no way to go about hiking, and since we were still closer to Huaraz than to Chavin, and since the second leg of the hike was supposed to be the steeper one, we decided to let our friends continue on and we would return (downhill!) to Huaraz at our own stomach-dictated pace. We got back to Huaraz that evening, had dinner, slept for 14 hours, woke up, looked for a place to eat brunch, and that´s how we found ourselves at the California Cafe, sipping on tea and reading National Geographic, while we awaited the arrival of our yuppie vegetarian food.
---
A shorter re-telling of the same story: Blast! After a month and a half of absolutely perfect health, we finally got sick! Fail!
(Now, we are back in Chavin, still not fully recovered, but with enough energy to be awake at this hour --8:30pm-- and interviewing some people for our research. We will go back up to Huaraz in a few days and we will rent a bouldering pad from Andean Sky Expeditions and go bouldering!!!!!)
Later, I will tell stories of cursed towns, guinea pigs, and bones. But for now, bastante.
Con mucho cariño,
Anita
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Hueca, Huaca, Huaraz
so i've realized that my natural inclination is not toward blogging, but my mama has objected to my hiatus, so here's what i've got for now:
we've been traveling at a really quick pace since we left quito, staying 2 nights or less in each place. it's been chaotic but really fun. now we're in huaraz (mountain city), and we'll be between huaraz and chavin (small town 2 hours from huaraz where we'll meet up with Stanford professor/archeologist John Rick) for the next... month maybe. this place feels good, very good vibes. clean air, people selling fruit and veggies on the street, and CRAZY tall hats with wide rims and colorful patterned shawls. I'm going to take a million pictures--luckily i found some cheap film in Trujillo, which is a cool but strangely cursed town.... we were only there for one day but we had quite an adventure. first we met this strange girl who seemed really really out of it and was supposedly going to help us find a restaurant but ended up just taking us around the same blocks over and over, and when we were talking to her about the ruins Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol, I accidentally said Hueca and she stopped and said, "hueca? are you talking about me because i can't find a place to eat?" and explained that hueca meant someone who has a hole in their head and so their thoughts just escape right out. after she said that, ana and i could not stop thinking of her that way. there was something very odd about her. after ana and i got back from the huaca de la luna (ruins of the ceremonial place of the moche civilization where they used to perform human sacrifices--we think this might have something to do with the curse) we started feeling like we couldn't get a hold of our thoughts and that we were turning into huecas. luckily we chugged some water and snapped out of it in time to plunge into the marketplace. we bought some latin american poetry, tools to work with metal wire for our new artisan careers... doesn't really matter what we bought, it was just really exciting to be in the midst of so many people. it felt like we had broken through the tourist bubble. anyway, another night bus later and we've arrived in Huaraz and i'll leave it at that for now because we're going to go enjoy our new city :)
Much love, and i'll try to write more.
we've been traveling at a really quick pace since we left quito, staying 2 nights or less in each place. it's been chaotic but really fun. now we're in huaraz (mountain city), and we'll be between huaraz and chavin (small town 2 hours from huaraz where we'll meet up with Stanford professor/archeologist John Rick) for the next... month maybe. this place feels good, very good vibes. clean air, people selling fruit and veggies on the street, and CRAZY tall hats with wide rims and colorful patterned shawls. I'm going to take a million pictures--luckily i found some cheap film in Trujillo, which is a cool but strangely cursed town.... we were only there for one day but we had quite an adventure. first we met this strange girl who seemed really really out of it and was supposedly going to help us find a restaurant but ended up just taking us around the same blocks over and over, and when we were talking to her about the ruins Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol, I accidentally said Hueca and she stopped and said, "hueca? are you talking about me because i can't find a place to eat?" and explained that hueca meant someone who has a hole in their head and so their thoughts just escape right out. after she said that, ana and i could not stop thinking of her that way. there was something very odd about her. after ana and i got back from the huaca de la luna (ruins of the ceremonial place of the moche civilization where they used to perform human sacrifices--we think this might have something to do with the curse) we started feeling like we couldn't get a hold of our thoughts and that we were turning into huecas. luckily we chugged some water and snapped out of it in time to plunge into the marketplace. we bought some latin american poetry, tools to work with metal wire for our new artisan careers... doesn't really matter what we bought, it was just really exciting to be in the midst of so many people. it felt like we had broken through the tourist bubble. anyway, another night bus later and we've arrived in Huaraz and i'll leave it at that for now because we're going to go enjoy our new city :)
Much love, and i'll try to write more.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
News from your Feathered Friends
The past few days have been spent on the beach in Mancora: collecting shells, swimming in the ocean at night, learning to juggle, and drumming around the bonfire with our new traveling artisan friends. We now have feathers in our hair and are happy to begin our new life of jewelery making, performance art, and sleeping on the sand. Forget the rest of the world, we have what we want right here next to the ocean!
But actually, because we do want to keep on moving on, and because we are on a mission, and because I need to go find some rocks to climb, we did move on. We are now in Trujillo, where we plan to check out some archeological sites before taking our night bus to Huaraz. (YAY! HUARAZ! HUARAZ HAS ROCKS!). Huaraz is near Chavin de Huantar, where we will meet up with our beloved Prof. Rick, who is our advisor for this journey. Back in Peru now, we have to get ourselves back in research mindset. Yes, research.
Keep us updated about your lives on the home front!
Anita
But actually, because we do want to keep on moving on, and because we are on a mission, and because I need to go find some rocks to climb, we did move on. We are now in Trujillo, where we plan to check out some archeological sites before taking our night bus to Huaraz. (YAY! HUARAZ! HUARAZ HAS ROCKS!). Huaraz is near Chavin de Huantar, where we will meet up with our beloved Prof. Rick, who is our advisor for this journey. Back in Peru now, we have to get ourselves back in research mindset. Yes, research.
Keep us updated about your lives on the home front!
Anita
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