We tried to leave today by boat: lugging our stuff to the port and being harrassed by a bunch of men who grabbed our stuff and offered (in yelling voices) to take us to their boat. They were all trying to get us to take their boat, but in the end, none of the boats left today because there were neither enough passengers, cargo, nor workers because today is Peru´s independence day....so we sat, and swat, and grew grumpy sitting in the boat and being strangulated by the oppressive jungle air. At last we decided to lug everything back to the hostel and wait until tomorrow, when there will definitely be boats.
We decided to go meet his mom´s friend, who she had only actually met a couple of times and who he had only met once when he was 6 years old, but he was sure she would want to see us...we arrived after asking several people if they knew her, and of course were greeted with kisses. We stayed for a couple hours and were force-fed lunch. Then with nothing else to do, we went to the plaza de armas, where there´s usually good people watching if nothing else. Unfortunately today, everyone was apparently melting inside their own homes.
I have never been one to be bored, but I found myself miserable with the heat--my mind couldn´t even will myself to think of something to do, as it was too full of thick thick air. The heat uncomfortably surrounding us like the men at the port, and with nothing open and nowhere to go, we again just sat and swat . Segundo kept me laughing though by saying ¨Rachel, I got 99 problems, but a bitch aint one.¨ Finally we crashed a nice hotel´s pool, which was the answer to all problems. Being surrounded and sustained in cold water...oh my, it made all the difference in the world. Then we drank 2 cremoladas (super yummy slushy with jungle fruits like aguaje)and a beer and life couldn´t have been better.
So tomorrow...tomorrow, hopefully we are off! Today was a good opportunity though to buy another shirt for $2, since I was already getting sick of my smell and we hadn´t even started the journey, and I bought a light blanket to sleep in the hammock with at night.
One final note, is that I really really love eating in the street...I think it´s great how you can go out at any time and find someone selling something yummy to eat, and enjoy it with random enevitably friendly people....here that usually entails some form of banana and or something wrapped in banana leaves like fish, rice, and-or chicken.
PS somos yurimaguinos means that we are people who live in yurimaguas, which we indeed feel like now
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
no hay problemas
I´m slowly making my way into the real jungle. Tarapoto didn´t do it for me...My skin was simply was not sticky enough and there were not enough bananas and things on sticks to eat. :) Now I´m in Yurimaguas which was a moderately pleasant (despite feeling a little nauseas from the curves) 3 hour collectivo ride from Tarapoto through lush mountainous jungle.
I met up with my friend, Segundo, who took the boat from Iquitos just to accompany me back to Iquitos. We speak spanglish and he calls me his princess and says he is my guardia espina (body guard). He always makes me laugh because he asks me questions like,¨what does the song by Jay Z mean: 99 problems but a bitch ain´t one¨? hahahaha. It´ll be a fun-filled 3 days, in which we will be cruising down the river and sleeping in hammocs and hopefully eating as many jungle fruits as possible. I immediately drank a maracuya cremolada (passion fruit iced smoothie drink) upon arriving, and have since had another one of camu camu (a jungle ¨super¨ fruit).
And now I am sitting at a huge internet cafe collectively sweating with about 30 other people and listening to festive jungle cumbia music. Heading out tomorrow morning on a boat called Edwardo VIII, which seems much more regal than it is.
hasta iquitos! R
I met up with my friend, Segundo, who took the boat from Iquitos just to accompany me back to Iquitos. We speak spanglish and he calls me his princess and says he is my guardia espina (body guard). He always makes me laugh because he asks me questions like,¨what does the song by Jay Z mean: 99 problems but a bitch ain´t one¨? hahahaha. It´ll be a fun-filled 3 days, in which we will be cruising down the river and sleeping in hammocs and hopefully eating as many jungle fruits as possible. I immediately drank a maracuya cremolada (passion fruit iced smoothie drink) upon arriving, and have since had another one of camu camu (a jungle ¨super¨ fruit).
And now I am sitting at a huge internet cafe collectively sweating with about 30 other people and listening to festive jungle cumbia music. Heading out tomorrow morning on a boat called Edwardo VIII, which seems much more regal than it is.
hasta iquitos! R
Monday, July 26, 2010
welcome to the jungle OR meditations on impermanence
I left Leyebamba at 7:30am yesterday and arrived in Tarapoto at 2am this morning after a combi (small van) to Yerba Buena, a collectivo van to Chachapoyas, a collectivo taxi to Pedro Ruiz and a bus to Tarapoto which had many long stops due to road work. The adventure was jam-packed with events and observations, which for simplicity purposes I will list below. The journey according the km should have only taken 7 or 8hrs, but in fact took about 18hrs.
- The door from the small combi van kept falling off, which I found exceedingly hillarious....God, I love bumping around in a tiny skeleton of a van (without seatbelts, padding, etc) with a bunch of villagers dressed in their finest recycled 80s clothes and sturdy white hats, listening to upbeat Andean music, swerving around giant rocks in the narrow one-lane road, and whipping around blind corners, blaring the horn to warn people on the other side of our impending existence. It´s one constant ongoing conscious moment--one cannot exist in it without being wildly awake--even with eyes closed because of lack of sleep from cold and the silly duration of the journey (or fear), which just keeps reminding me that the journey is life, that there is nothing else but the present moment.
- My favorite leg of the journey was the second one from Yerba Buena to Chacha, which was only about 50km, but took about 3 hours because we had to pick up and drop off various packages, drop people off at their homes, pick a dude up from a soccer game, go back for people in the road after we`d made room for them, etc. I also loved that a woman was nursing her 2 year old very openly on the packed and swerving van.
- In Yerba Buena, at the Sunday market, as I was drinking a juice at one of the many juice stalls, someone stole my camera out of my pocket, so no more pictures :( This happened early in the day, and as I continued to see picture-worthy sights, I had to return to my meditation of impermanence, knowing that all which arises passes away. I had many chances to meditate on this as I lost track of the hours and my day in the hours of waiting and being in transit, and later as I semi-feared for my life at the hostel I wound up at because of the late hour we arrived in town... I paid $5 for the room without a bathroom nor fan nor a great lock on the door, and with a window that faced the street and poured the air thick with humidity and polltion and the sound of passing mototaxis into my room all night. The bed was a thin mattress with a ripped and questionably clean sheet stretched across it, upon a cement platform. In the corner the wall had a stain on it that could only have been from vomit.
- The good news about my long journey was that I met a friend on the bus who was returning home to visit his family in Tarapoto for the national holiday (July 28th). We talked about globalization and other countries´companies coming in and stealing Peru´s resources and profits, destroying the environment and screwing over their economy. He helped me get safely to my hostel at 2am and then brought me to his house the next day to meet his family and have a great lunch of fish soup, rice, and fried bananas. Yummm.
- Another interesting interaction I had was with a taxista. When we were going up the hill to Chachapoyas, we saw other drivers coming down and giving hand signals to tip us off that the police were set up ahead. We continued (while others waited) and got stopped at the check-point, so everyone in the van had to show their IDs and the taxista had to show various papers. In the end some were hassled for not having their IDs and the taxista had to pay something for not having whatever form he was supposed to have. The whole car talked about how ineffecient and f´d up the police system is (worldwide)--how generally it serves to bother the innocent poor folk, while meanwhile real crime is happening in the markets (like cameras being stolen, drugs being sold, etc) and under the watchfull well-bribed eyes of officers...not that they are all are bad of course, but that the system as a whole is ineffecient at doing what it is built to do: serve and protect.
- A note from Leymebamba from the other day is that I got an email from my friend who lives in the UK but has land in Leyme saying that he wanted me to pass the voice to someone who lives in the village (¨near the cemetary, toward the museum¨is all I knew), so I got to go from house to house or villager to villager, asking if they knew this family. I finally found them, and gave them the message and was greeted with many kisses, which was a triumphant feeling!
Ok.......back out there!
besito! R
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Leyme'ohmygod´bamba
I am in my favorite place in the world. I came here and immediately felt at home, but at the same time find myself almost in tears at the strangness of the beauty here. The air is so fresh it cuts into you and makes you breathe deeply, stopping to smell the herbs and flowers and sunshine on the dirt path. And the all encompassing green in the hills which surround the pueblo is dizzying....you feel like you´re part of a story book.
The town is small and without many tourists yet, despite the number of impressive ruins that are accessible by foot from town, hidden under trees and brush. When you meet someone along the path, you always say good morning or good afternoon and people usually ask where are you going or where are you coming from or what are you carrying? I am generally greeted affectionately as Gringita!! (little white girl!) and people are always offering to give me a ride on their horse or donkey or moto and it takes some convincing that I am just enjoying a walk in their wonderful countryside. I have also had the experience many times of being kidnapped by locals to come see their homes or children, which has been very interesting. Last night I got to see a family baking bread in their huge hansel-and-gretel-esque oven. Then I returned to La Casona, the amazing colonial home in which I´m staying and dined with some great folk from Lima.
Today I went up the hill (3hrs) to see some ruins with some friends I had met the other day. There were no signs or arrows or anything to them, so we had to ask every villager along the way if they knew where La Congona was. After passing through a gate and over a fence and cutting through some foliage, we indeed found the incredible ruins of an old Chachapoyan town, which was settled perhaps 1200years ago.
My favorite site so far: seeing a baby (literally probably less than a year old) riding a horse by himself, propped up by sacks of potatoes and grain on either side, and being lead by his father. Shortly after I saw a couple small children--maybe 3 and 6 years old--riding together on a horse and unaccompanied by adults.
The town is small and without many tourists yet, despite the number of impressive ruins that are accessible by foot from town, hidden under trees and brush. When you meet someone along the path, you always say good morning or good afternoon and people usually ask where are you going or where are you coming from or what are you carrying? I am generally greeted affectionately as Gringita!! (little white girl!) and people are always offering to give me a ride on their horse or donkey or moto and it takes some convincing that I am just enjoying a walk in their wonderful countryside. I have also had the experience many times of being kidnapped by locals to come see their homes or children, which has been very interesting. Last night I got to see a family baking bread in their huge hansel-and-gretel-esque oven. Then I returned to La Casona, the amazing colonial home in which I´m staying and dined with some great folk from Lima.
Today I went up the hill (3hrs) to see some ruins with some friends I had met the other day. There were no signs or arrows or anything to them, so we had to ask every villager along the way if they knew where La Congona was. After passing through a gate and over a fence and cutting through some foliage, we indeed found the incredible ruins of an old Chachapoyan town, which was settled perhaps 1200years ago.
My favorite site so far: seeing a baby (literally probably less than a year old) riding a horse by himself, propped up by sacks of potatoes and grain on either side, and being lead by his father. Shortly after I saw a couple small children--maybe 3 and 6 years old--riding together on a horse and unaccompanied by adults.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
en Peru
al fin, he llegado! I am so happy to be back in Peru. It was a long journey to get here to Chachapoyas--left home at 9am on the 18th, flew from Albuquerque to Dallas to Miami to Lima, arriving after some delays at 6am the 19th. Then had a nap, ate one of those amazing Peruvian salads drenched in lime juice and some ceviche (I cannot resist the Peruvian ceviche), and boarded what was supposed to be a 23hr bus ride--turned 26hr bus ride--to Chachapoyas, where I am now.
On the bus ride, I was lucky to find myself sitting next to a doctor who works for the public health dept and goes into the native communities to care for the people. He told me all sorts of disturbing things, like that the native people lie to anthropologists to make themselves appear more ¨native¨and that there is a lot of rape of young girls and domestic abuse. We exchanged contact info so that next time I return, if I can sequester a few weeks, I can go into the jungle with them and do some medical work.
Yesterday was then my first legitimate day in Peru. I woke up at 530 to go to a sweet cave, full of great cave formations, remains of human sacrifices, and ancient pottery and sculptures. Then to see a couple different sites in the cliffsides, which were full of sarcophogi (structures built from earth in the shape of people and painted as such, to house dead bodies of important people). They are the only ones apparently in the americas, and are from the Chachapoyan people, who are pre-Inca. We also saw some Chachapoyan mummies, which were bound in the fetal position to facilitate their rebirth into the next life.
I arrived around dinner time after my day of excursions and was lucky to meet and share dinner with a Swiss couple who are riding their bicycles from Ecuador to Argentina, where they are then planning to surf for a couple months. I also met a dude from San Diego who rode his motorcycle from his home all the way through Central America (took a boat from Panama to Colombia with his bike), and has made it here to Northern Peru, destined for Patagonia, and will then potentially board a cargo ship to Africa with his bike. Ah! I am completely inspired by these folk and now am even more set on biking to Southern Mexico, which Justin and I have been talking about.... I asked the bicycle couple what they did to prepare and they said nothing. They didn´t train nor bring anything special, just some tire patches. When they´re tired they stop. They get stronger every day. They eat whatever they get on the road. They camp and stay in hostels when they are available. They talk to locals about routes and take it day by day. They encouraged me to just do it. That there is nothing holding anyone back but their own fear, because truely there´s no reason not to....
So that´s what´s on my mind now, as I head for Leymebamba, where I will be for a couple days.
Con mucho amor y cariño,
Rachel
On the bus ride, I was lucky to find myself sitting next to a doctor who works for the public health dept and goes into the native communities to care for the people. He told me all sorts of disturbing things, like that the native people lie to anthropologists to make themselves appear more ¨native¨and that there is a lot of rape of young girls and domestic abuse. We exchanged contact info so that next time I return, if I can sequester a few weeks, I can go into the jungle with them and do some medical work.
Yesterday was then my first legitimate day in Peru. I woke up at 530 to go to a sweet cave, full of great cave formations, remains of human sacrifices, and ancient pottery and sculptures. Then to see a couple different sites in the cliffsides, which were full of sarcophogi (structures built from earth in the shape of people and painted as such, to house dead bodies of important people). They are the only ones apparently in the americas, and are from the Chachapoyan people, who are pre-Inca. We also saw some Chachapoyan mummies, which were bound in the fetal position to facilitate their rebirth into the next life.
I arrived around dinner time after my day of excursions and was lucky to meet and share dinner with a Swiss couple who are riding their bicycles from Ecuador to Argentina, where they are then planning to surf for a couple months. I also met a dude from San Diego who rode his motorcycle from his home all the way through Central America (took a boat from Panama to Colombia with his bike), and has made it here to Northern Peru, destined for Patagonia, and will then potentially board a cargo ship to Africa with his bike. Ah! I am completely inspired by these folk and now am even more set on biking to Southern Mexico, which Justin and I have been talking about.... I asked the bicycle couple what they did to prepare and they said nothing. They didn´t train nor bring anything special, just some tire patches. When they´re tired they stop. They get stronger every day. They eat whatever they get on the road. They camp and stay in hostels when they are available. They talk to locals about routes and take it day by day. They encouraged me to just do it. That there is nothing holding anyone back but their own fear, because truely there´s no reason not to....
So that´s what´s on my mind now, as I head for Leymebamba, where I will be for a couple days.
Con mucho amor y cariño,
Rachel
Karajia sarcophogi
cliffside tombs
our sweet guide Friday, July 16, 2010
a Peru de nuevo
I'm heading back to Peru on Sunday, with a totally different mindset then in the two years past. This year I have a job that I have to return to, a boyfriend that I get to return to :), I'm only going for a month, and though I feel like a I have a good handle on Peru--I know the streets of Iquitos, Miraflores, and a couple other of the towns I'll be checking back in on, I've taken almost every bus company there is, I have family and friends there, and have a sort of comfort with the language and feel of Peru....I am prepared to be humbled by it again. I am also feeling nervous since it seems like so long since I've been there and my Spanish has been corrupted with New Mexican phrases like "hijole!" "pendeja" (my favorite, which means pubic hair and also idiot), and "guera" along with other words not used in SA...and truthfully, that's about all the Spanish I have been speaking since I got here, unlike in the year prior when I was living on the border and using it all the time.
I will arrive in Lima after a stupidly long journey at 430am on Monday. My dear friend Pamela is picking me up from the airport and then recuperating me at her house before my 23hr bus ride at 430pm to the northern town of Chachapoyas. There I will do some hikes to various lesser known ruins (in comparison to Machu Picchu) and to one of the tallest waterfalls in the world, and also just hang out in one of my favorite places in the world: Leymebamba, a small town south of Chacha, where I felt like I fell off the face of the earth--or rather into the center of the earth, and was filled with love and admiration for life and nature--almost 2 years ago. Ahh...I cannot wait!
Then I'm meeting my friend Segundo in Yurimaguas--that is I hope I am! Without the modern conveniences of cell phone service and reliable boat schedules, I'm not exactly sure how we'll be meeting up. The journey from Iquitos to Yuri takes 4-5 days by cargo boat. He is making that journey and then taking me back with him, acting as my bodyguard as he likes to call himself. I wanted to make my journey to Iquitos this year via water, as the only way to reach the jungle city is by boat or plane, and the appeal of sleeping in hammocks and eating fish right out of the river which takes us through a national preserve was just too irresistible. Then I will meet up with Patch Adams and the clowning crew in Iquitos for a 2 week session of loving and working and sweating...a lot. Yay!!!!
See: http://www.patchadams.org/belen-project for info on the project
mantenemos en contacto!
looooooove, Rachel
wedding in Kansas City over the 4th
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