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