jacob's bladder

Its the Final COUNTDOWNS

2007-06-29T09:55:00.000-04:00

so with 4 days left here in Santiago (and only 1 with internet acess) I figured nows the time to wrap this thing up, and what better way than with countdowns...if it works for vh1 when theyve got nothing else to show (namely, all the time) ¿why not here? most of these things have previous entries and photos if you go back through the blog...

top 5: cities

honorable mentions: Valparaiso, Chile- too much dog poo to crack the top 5, but a cool city nonetheless; Cuenca, Ecuador- pretty little city but i sort of raced through it...nice hats

5. Lima, Peru: a surprise entry, after tons of people made me expect it to be a crapfest, I only spent 1 day there, but it seemed lively enough and people were jumping off cliffs on hanggliders.

4. Santiago, Chile: Pretty good, pretty pretty good. not too much to say about it, a bustling city with some cool streets/neighborhoods, not the most interesting place, but immenently liveable

3. Quito, Ecuador: where this whole crazy trip started - stuck up in a valley with a beautiful historical center, lots to see and do, and unlike everywhere else, really close to the rest of the country

2. La Paz, Bolivia: now, i only spent a couple days here, but this city was CRAZY, if there is one word to describe it its syncrotism: in the shadow of glass skyscrapers, a witches markey selling pickled or dried llama fetuses (feti?). say no more

1. Cusco, Peru: Those Incas really knew a thing or 2 about city planning. Designed in the shape of a puma with the impressive Sacsayhuman temple at the top, Cusco is all old stone buildings, plazas, windy streets, and shortness of breath - the most beautiful and culturally interesting city I've seen this trip.

top 5: the great outdoors

5. Salar Uyuni (& environs), Bolivia: this part of SW Bolivia has a dried up former inland sea (the Salar), volcanos, mineral laden lakes, hot springs that stink of sulfur, odd rock formations and geysers, essentially, the land before time

4. Galapagos, Ecuador: Just a few little volcanos jutting out of the pacific with some wierd animals on them, whats the big deal? Darwin, Evolution, blahblahblah...

3. Amazon, Ecuador: I barely got into the Jungle (really just beyond the bottom of the andes) but from what I did see, WHOA.

2. Perito Moreno, Argentina: here my taste for winter over summer becomes evident, but this, the largest glacier in South America, is a truely awesome sight.

1. Torres del Paine NP, Chile: Chile's all star attraction, this national park has to be one of the most stunning places on the planet- special mention to the french valley, with forests, glaciers, mountains, a river, lakes, and an amazing view down over the park.

top 5: swimmin' holes

one of the things i've missed most about VA is the swiming - but there are a couple not to shabby swimmin' holes down South America way...

5. Piscina Tupahue, Santiago: ok, ok, its a pool, but still, theres a huge bolder sticking up out of it. cool & popular pool with a view over the city

4. Hot Spring, Salar Uyuni: the highest elevation swim, bublling hot water inside freezing 5am altiplano air outside, needless to say, i didnt want to get out

3. Anakena Beach, Easter Island: do beaches count as swimmin' holes? whatever. this is the archetypal polynesian beach: white sand, palm trees, ancient Moais in the background...water was a bit chilly, but even so, a spectacular swim.

2. Snorkeling, Galapagos: seeing sharks and all sorts of fish was a bonus, but the swiming alone in some parts the Galapagos was tight...beaches, rocky coves, sea lions, warm water...mmmmm

1. Random waterfall, Rio Napo, Ecuadorian Amazon: the only traditional swimmin' hole, but probably the best one in the world. a slow water fall leads into a natural depression that has filled up making a 8ft deep pool. rocks on the side to jump from, the upper part of the fall can be used as a slide, the lower half continues down into the rio Napo, amazing butterflies and humming birds in the trees above. shame its sort of out the way.

top 5: walks

5. Pichincha, Quito: the volcano that you can see from pretty much anywhere in Quito - a gondola takes you up to near the peak at from there you can just wander around with a huge view of the city sprawling out below

4. Colca Canyon, Peru: a walk I did along this canyon in southern Peru - changing scenery, cactus in the forground, glaciers on the peaks on the other side, a nice, if bone dry little walk

3. Quilatoa loop, Ecuador: got soaked the day before walking down to the shore of lake Quilatoa - in the basin of a volcano, but the walk around the rim was spectacular what with the sierra on one side, the flatlands down to the coast on the other, and the patchwork of the small farms on every peice of non vertical land.

2. Inca Trail, Peru: some hard work on this one: the second day up and up and up to 4200m above sea level at Dead Woman's Pass then almost harder, down and down and down...but with amazing views, tons of history, and the Machu Picchu as the final destination, this was an amazing 4 day stroll.

1. The 'W', Torres del Paine: we got really lucky with the weather on this one, and hardly any rain on this 4 day walk through what ive already called one of the most amazing national parks on earth - the pictures hardly do it justice,words (well, mine at least) certainly wont

top 5: bike rides

the combination of the altitude and distances in the andes make riding uphill a nightmare, so most of these rides reflect the, catch a bus to the top and ride back down approach

5. Cotopaxi, Ecuador: terrifying. a bumpy hairpin gravel road down the side of this picturesque volcano that ended with a much calmer ride out through the grassland surrounding it.

4. Baños > Puyo, Ecuador: probably the fastest ive ever moved, the paved road drops down fron the town of Baños way up in the mountains, to Puyo, just on the edge of the Amazon, the change in scenery is only matched by...

3. the Death Road, Bolivia: hyped up as ¡THE MOST DANGEROUS THING EVER! this has become one of the 'must do's' of South America...the ride drops from La Cumbre, above La Paz (where there are llamas, a frozen lake, snow etc) down 3600m in 64km (with sheer drops on one side and loose gravel on the road) to Corico, a small town in the Yungas, the part of Bolivia between the Sierra and the Jungle, where all the Coca(ine) comes from....

2. Cordillera Blanca, Peru: this was the only ride that didnt involve taking a bus, basically I rode out from the town of Huaraz up and up and up to the where the cordillera starts to get properly steep, through farms, villages, and dog attacks and then back down around into town...an exhausting ride

1. Sacred Valley, Peru: a 2 day trip through some of the Andes' most amazing scenery - wow.

top 5: food

this reflects how being vegetarian & travelling in South America prooved too dificult - an omlette a day (the only veggie alternative), would not keep the doctor away - so, i got to try some of the regional "specialties"

5. Cui/Guinea Pig: the official food of the andes, turns out its not actually that good, just the shock value of seeing a fried guinea pig with eyes and paws in front of you is a strange culinary experience.

4. Ecuadorian Shrimp Curry: the coastal food in ecuador was amazing, tons of fish with a significant carribean/african influence to it...the coconut shrimp curry down there was delicious.

3. Puerto Natales Mussles: enormous mussles fresh from the market/ocean in a tasty white wine sauce made by the amazing cook in the small little hotel we stayed in Patagonia...all you can eat too!

2. Empanadas: the official snack of chile - most often meat, but also cheese (but really could be anything) wrapped in pastry and backed...tasty, convenient, and omnipresent.

1. Ceviche: who knew raw fish was so good? (the Japanese, thats who) Ecuador, Peru, & Chile all have their own variations on this dish (all good) but basically the idea is fish (or shrimp or oysters)marinated in lime juice and onion with a bit of cilantro. SO GOOD! If i die in the first few days im home its from food poisoning trying to make this at home.

top 5: drinks

5. Escudo: Chile's cheap crappy beer. Omnipresent like the empanda, an old standbye.

4. Cola Morada: hot blackberry juice - an Ecuadorian specialty that is the traditional drink of the day of the dead...nice on a cold sierra evening

3. Pisco Sour: Peruvians and Chileans argue about who invented this drink, but its basically pisco (grape brandy) with lime juice & egg whites...sound wierd? it is, but its pretty good.

2. Coconut Juice: sold by 100s of people walking up and down the beach in Ecuador, possibly the most refreshing thing ever?

1. Carmenere: a sort of red wine that Chile specializes in, lovely stuff.

top 5: books by south americans i read while in south america

5. 20 love poems and a song of despair - Pablo Neruda: People wouldnt shut up about this guy in Chile, so I gave it a go...really though, spanish above my level, and even though i dont know what it all means, it certainly sounds nice

4. The Tunel - Ernesto Sabado: Argentina´s answer to Sartre's No Exit - funny, manic, and a brilliant character study.

3. House of Spirits - Isabel Allende: Much better than it was when i read it in high school...

2. Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges: I love the premise of these short stories: writting books is cumbersome, better to just pretend they've been written and write fake reviews of them - not really doing it justice, but these are some great stories

1. 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: without a doubt my favorite book. if you haven't read it, get the hell of the internet and get some culture!!!!

top 5: overall

last one i promise, i'll keep it brief (click links for more...)

5. Easter Island: what a wierd place

4. Amazon: In the jungle

3. Inca Trail: getting my walk on

2. Patagonia: HOT DAMN!

1. Galapagos: look! a tortoise!

Now all thats left is to pack my bags, sell my bike, and head home for the shock to my system that will be the 4th of July. ARGH

Adios!

Street Art part 3: Santiago

2007-06-28T13:23:00.000-04:00

I'll just jump right in with this one...

Animal Liberation - Human Liberation

Because we're from the people, we're children of rebellion

destroy capitalism

thats enough praying

and this one is not so much street art as art for sale in the street. and hilarious art at that:

street art part 2: valparaiso

2007-06-22T13:04:00.000-04:00

its a rare wall in valparaiso that isnt covered with stencils, slogans, or murals. the city has the most, and the best street art ive seen including stuff like paper stencils glued onto walls, and even sculpture. generally less political than its quito and santiago equivalents, its like a gallery that has spilled out onto the street. check it out:

josh, this ones for you

make more schools and less prisons

monster!!

political prisoners in a hunger strike for their freedom since dec 12 2004

birth

yesterday against the dictatorship, today against social injustices

the little prince: the essential is invisible to the eyes

with hate and no fear, attacking nazis

turn off the tv, live your life

socialist youth

next up, santiago - ive just realized that most of the stuff i here see everyday i havent actually taken a picture of yet, so thats the plan for the weekend. hasta la pasta

street art part 1: quito

2007-06-20T14:03:00.000-04:00

Quito's graffiti/street art was dominated by scrawled sloganeering - with the (then) upcoming elections for president and the proposed free trade treaty with the US, political issues dominated the walls, but, I did find a few others. I'll do my best to translate and contextualize, but cant promise accuracy, here goes:

I'm not going to stop

KILL THE HUMANS

(on the ground in a park)

Vote blank for the [sake of the] country

with bikes, to take [over] the streets

classifies: the country's dignity for sale signed - correa [election winner]

self government

gay with pride

acrossitic poem based on NOBOA - a rightwing presidential candiate, the acrostic logic, like bill murray, gets lost in translation:
Our Own Bush Another Murderer

another acrostic, this one for Bush:
Beast Outraging Human Beings - makes more sense in spanish

i love you bush, signed alvaro naboa (previously mentioned rightwing candidate)

the TLC was the proposed free trade treaty with the US (Tratado de Libre Commercio), there were tons of acrostics based on this:

Time of Criminal Leaders

ive got/am wearing a black shirt (the name of a very popular song by Juanes - refers to mourning a girlfriend)

time to cry farmers

ecuador yes, TLC no

ive seen this one in santiago too

does your cell phone give you love?

keep your rosaries out of our ovaries -written on a church wall

you can cut down one of 1000, but you cant stop the spring

sex when i want it, pregnant when i decide

rebel against apathy - women's front

deep throat - this one was EVERYWHERE in quito

lesbians against capital

liberty, my right! to be free, my conquest!

and thats that for quito. next the very different street art of valparaiso and the stencil-heavy santiago

singing and the rain

2007-06-15T14:47:00.000-04:00

It rained for the last 3 days, which has 3 main effects in Santiago: 1) huge puddles everywhere, and lots of comedy car spraying of pedestrians 2) a fresh blanket of snow on the cordillera and 3) clears the smog out of the air, so that you can actually remember that the cordillera is there:

Today the air was cool and crisp; for the first time cold and crisp enough to hold steam when breathing. It was the first morning in weeks that ive been able to see the Cerro San Cristobal on my way to work: keep in mind that this hill is only 15 or so blocks from my apartment!

So, despite a few days of soggy pants and damp feet, the rain has done some good.

Last Saturday the Jose Gonzales brought his particular brand of sweedish singer songwriterness to Santiago; more precisely to the jam packed Cine Normandie, an old 1970s designed movie theatre. Señor Gonzales first came to my attention because of his sweet cover of Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', but I have to admit his entire catalogue has really been growing on me lately, especially 'Heartbeats' and 'Teardrop'. Jah bless NPR, you can hear an entire Jose Gonzales concert here. Anywho, the show was good, if a bit impersonal because of sitting in the backrow of a surprisingly big movie theatre. He played a setlist similar to the one on NPR, so not too many surprises there, but he had a lot of magnetism for a dude sitting there with a classical guitar. Opening for him was a guy from Argentina who played some pretty electronic ambient stuff that was recieved surprisingly well.

In older news, a couple of weekends ago was my tri monthly border run. This time I made it in just one day, taking a bus trip up the hills, across the border into Argentina, and to the foot of Mt Aconcagua: the highest mountain in South America. Where we (a friend, a peruvian lunatic woman, a flirtatious spanish man, a quite mexican lady, and our argentine guide) wandered about in the snow for a couple hours before heading back downhill to santiago (via super snobby and not very exciting looking ski resort portillo). The ride from the border to the city would be awesome on a bike, all curves and essentially one long downhill. If only there were a couple less trucks.

Portillo

Proof of Noah's flood!!!!! marine fossils at 4000m above sea level!!!!!

Aconcagua

Around Aconcagua

Things at work are going along at their regular pace: helping set up meetings with ministers in relation to the Human Rights Agenda for the Bicentenial, and designing pamphlets and posters for it; reading the ecuadorian news every morning; doing bits and bops of design for other teams - my specialty has become webbuttons for the website like these:

My last big project is putting the finishing touches and final details on an exhibit of photos by Brasilian photographer Genna Naccache that are going on show at a big cultural center in Santiago to raise awareness about poverty and violence in the Favelas around Rio, a few examples:

And thats that. Finally, I found this pretty interesting 10 minute documentary about resitance to a propsed mining project in Intag, norther Ecuador the other day - interesting film, and representative of a pretty widespread movement in Ecuador at the moment demanding more responasability on the part of the international mining companies that are winning contracts across the country, and to a lesser extent in Chile.

The Curse of Copper

And to conclude, I'll spill the beans on what will probably be the last few posts on this blog, for anyone that cares: first, a series of posts compiling my pictures of street art, graffiti, and stenciling in Quito, Valparaiso, and Santiago, and then an Adios to South America retrospective.

the earth moved

2007-04-22T12:06:00.000-04:00

I woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking a bus had crashed into the offices downstairs. Luckily i was wrong and it was a just a 6.2 strength 'sismo' that shook the city for a couple of minutes. It's the first earthquake I've felt since the really random one at Mary Washington whenever that was...which is sort of surprising since I've been in a pretty active tectonic regions since september...

easter island

2007-04-08T12:08:00.000-04:00

is a long way from anywhere.

rock and roll and border runs

2007-03-25T19:37:00.000-04:00

Thursday night The Evens played in Barrio Brasil in Santiago; I only found out about the show from seeing a poster at a random cafe on the other side of town, but luckily that I did see that, because The Evens are fucking good. Anyway, the opening band was also a guitar and drum duo, they played some dirty bluesy stuff with lots of slide guitar. Blues in spanish is kind of funny.

After a bit, the main event came on. They played most of the songs from their 2 albums, had some interesting banter (in english though) about the effect of bars/commerce in music venues, noise, and music not being a joke. Ian said a couple things about Victor Jara (the club was named after him), and how important music really can be in social change and community. Only one asshole yelled for fugazi songs, which i think is less than wouldve happened in DC, but who knows. Anyway, good set, really glad i got to see them, sort of wierd seeing a hometown band so far from home though.

Friday afternoon I caught a bus over the Andes into Argentina where I spent the weekend in Mendoza with some friends from amnesty. Its a wine growing region and apparently has a lot to do around it, unfortunatley, we only had one full day so couldnt get out too far, and it was a national holiday, so all the wineries were closed. boo! it did mean that the city was full of music commemorating the coup in 1976 with folk singers singing about disapearances and the dirty war. The city was all 1970s style buildings but had a couple of nice enough parks...overall, not that big of a deal though...hopefully Buenos Aires will leave me with a better taste of Argentina when I go over there...

the road up to the border crossing

this bus was on its way to buenos aires, from LIMA, peru. they'd been riding for 3 days, and had 1 left! crazy

the road went up past Portillo, one of chile's main ski resorts, i cant really see how they turn this pile of rock into a ski slope though, snow i guess

main avenue through the park in mendoza

To the Bottom of the America and Back

2007-03-21T17:40:00.000-04:00

Well, its been over a week since I got back to Santiago, but better late than never right? So a couple of fridays ago my dad and I headed down to Punta Arenas, basically the last city on the South American continent. Tierra del Fuego is further south, but its an island; because of time constraints we didnt make it all the way down there to get the end of the world stamps in our passports, but seeing as thats about all there is down there, I'd say we didn't miss to much. So, here's what we did do:

We arrived in Punta Arenas ridiculously early in the morning, and spent saturday checking it out. There's not that much to see really, its a port town that absorbs a lot of tourists who, like we were, more interested in heading to Torres del Paine. We had a warm-up hike in the hills behind the town that are part of national forest reserve. You can tell its a harsh climate because all the trees were 5 feet tall and bent over. From the top we could see over the town, across the Straight of Magellen, and a bit of Tierra del Fuego; basically it was stripe of brown, stipe of dark grey, stripe of brown, stripe of light grey.

In the afternoon we got on a bus that took us out to the penguin colony on Isla Magallena in the Straight of Magellen (creative naming in that part of the world). We spent a couple hours out there looking at the penguins and then headed back to town.

The next day we started our trip up to Torres Del Paine National Park. An early bus up to Puerto Natales, couple of hour layover, then on to the park, after a long day travelling we started hiking up to the first campsite with about 2 hours of daylight left. The drive up into the park was pretty rough, on a bouncy gravel road with terrible latin balads blasting on the stereo. At least it was nice outside the window. One of the amazing things about the scenery in Patagonia was that it kept changing between things I felt I'd seen before. On the drive in we passed through a mountain valley with a wide flat bottom, tall yellow grass, and short but wide green trees that looked like stereotypical pictures of the Rift Valley, inside the park we'd come down a valley with a Rocky Mountain feel to it out onto a more open plain of rolling hills just like the North Yorkshire Moores, through forest like the temporal Rainforests in Washington State and up to Alaska/Norway-esque glaciers and lakes. After 2 hours hiking up we set up camp at Los Chilenos Campsite where we spent the (cold wet) night.

One of the valleys we drove through on the way to the park

The valley leading up to Los Chilenos campsite

The next morning (monday I think) we left camp and headed up to Mirrador los Torres at the bottom of the torres from which the park gets its name. Contrary to popular (well, my) belief, Torres del Paine is not named after Towers of Pain, which I assumed was a hugely popular Chilean metal band. After scrambling up a rockslide for an hour we got to the mirrador; the towers were sort of breaking through a low cloud so we didn't really get a good view of them, but looking back down the valley was pretty amazing.

Los Torres

We headed back down the way we came, out of the valley, and around the foot of a mountain towards the Los Cuernos refuge where we spent the second night. From up on the hill we had a spectacular vista over a series of differently colored lakes and a wide wide valley with some snowy peaks on the otherside. EEEEEEIIS NIIIIICE!

As we approached the refuge the sun was setting behind what turned out to be Los Cuernos, alternating between blinding and beautiful.

Tuesday we made for the French Valley which sits between Los Cuernos and a peak with a Glacier. Walking up through the forest and over the creeks with a river next to us the whole was really peaceful, the quite broken only by the pant pant of other hikers and the sound of avalances coming down the peak next to us. Every so often we'd reach a clearing or a small peak to see Los Cuernos towering over us and the valleys spread out below us.

Los Cuernos

The French Valley glacier

looking back down the French Valley

Unfortunately at this point my camera decided to jump into a stream. It stopped working for a couple days, then started talking in Chinese, and now it works again. Luckily my dad had his own camera, so we weren't without. After coming back down the valley we had a long hike across to the Lago Pehoe Campsite where we spent the night. This part of the hike was pretty windy, but walking along beautiful lakes for a few hours I didnt notice it too much.

Thursday we left camp and headed to Glacier Grey. Past more lakes, through more forests, next to waterfalls, and finally up to Lake Grey and the Glacier itself. The whole day it felt like we were researching scenery to put on water bottle labels.

See what I mean? Once we got back to the glacier we turned around and covered our tracks back to the Refuge at Lago Pehoe where we spent the night. By the time we got back we'd walked about 9 hours a day for 3 days plus 2 hours the first evening, a total of about 80km, about half of it with our backpacks on (beacause of the shape of the trail and the backtracking, it was possible to leave the bags for long secions like the french valley, the hike up to Mirador Los Torres, and the entire last day). Thursday morning we caught a boat across Lago Pehoe that dropped us at the administration building where we got the bus back to Puerto Natales. On the way out the clouds were higher, and we got some nice views of the Cuernos, as well as finally seeing the Torres. Overall, we'd had a bit of wind, one night/evening of rain, one freezing cold night in tents, but had been really lucky with the weather: 3 days of pretty much solid sun is rare in Patagonia, and thats essentially what we got.

Los Torres (in the middle)

We left Puerto Natales early on Friday morning for a day trip into Argentina to check out the Perito Moreno glacier. Chileans say its not the biggest glacier in South America, but everyone else seems to think it is. After a long bus ride across the Patagonian Pampas we made it to Calafate, Argentina's answer to Jackson WY in terms of wild west style architecture and tourist development. We spent a few hours checking out the glacier, and taking a boat trip right up to it on the lake. I've never had the urge to throw someone of a boat as much as when I heard some loud (more proof for my theory) American voices saying "man, global warming eh? thats crazy! look at all this ice! thats just some political shit from Al Gore and the Democrates!"...the fact that we were literally watching huge chunks of ice fall of the glacier obviously didn't register. Whats wrong with these type of people? In whose benefit is politicizing an issue that clearly poses so much of a threat to life on this planet? ARGH!

the glacier and part of the lake it feeds

from up close

from afar

the pampas on the bus ride home.

Saturday we wandered around Puerto Natales. Down on the docks we found an entire fleet of old wooden fishing boats ashore, some of which had a few men working away trying to get them ready for the ocean; i think you could make one of those motivational posters for 'hope' (or a parody one of 'futility') with a picture of them. In the afternoon we headed over to the cave of the milodon where theyve found remains of the milodon, an extinct friend of the saber tooth tiger.

the harborside

WHEN MILADONS ATTACK!!!

that was Patagonia then. Sunday I came back to Santiago and have been here since. Tmrw night The Evens are playing in town, and I'm heading into Argentina again this weekend.

Que Pasa?

2007-02-07T16:14:00.000-05:00

Things are going smoothly here in Santiago. Its nice to have a routine again after 7 weeks travelling and to feel mildly productive. There are about 10 interns at the Amnesty Office, we come from various parts (England, France, Hungary, Poland, the US) and generally get on pretty well. We're all working on seperate 'teams' doing different types of work. I'm on the Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) team focusing on businesses and Human Rights aspects. At the moment I'm working on a blog about corporate social responsability that is an out growth of the Amnesty site. I'm also managing the news part of the Amnesty Ecuador website, which basically entails looking through the daily Ecuadorian newspapers and posting any relevant storys on Amnesty's site. Another project I'm involved with is the Bicentenary Human Rights Agenda, a document submitted to the Chilean government last month outlining AI's goals and concerns for Human Rights; its meant as a bench mark to see how much the government can accomplish before the 200th anniversary of independence in 2011. Apart from those 3 'teams' I´m also keeping tabs on the news from Bolivia (where there isnt a central amnesty office) as well as news about Pascua Lama (a mining project that threatens the water supply in a few valleys in northern chile) as well as managing the Amnesty library. Sounds like a lot, but its not really, at least at the moment...Febuary is vaccation month in Chile and they say the quietest time of the year for NGOs. Last week we presented the Chilean premier of 'Blood Diamond' to raise awareness about the international arms trade and the role of the diamond trade in conflict, we filled the movie theatre, but I think a few people missed the point based on some racist comments I heard coming out. I thought the movie itself was alright but a bit too 'hollywood'...

Outside of work Santiago is a pretty good city, although I'm looking forward to exploring the rest of the country more (especially now my trip down to Patagonia is booked for March). Apart from my trip down from the north and 2 visits to Valparaiso I havent seen too much of Chile yet; I'm planning on getting out of Santiago for the next couple of weekends though. The city is small ennough to walk around pretty easily although the combination of the traffic and the heat means I take advantage of the busses quite frequently. I've made friends with a group of Chilean guys whose asado (bbq) I went to a couple of weekends ago. They're all pretty funny but really stereotypically machista manly men...one of them loves giving me unsolicited advice on how to 'conquer' Chilean women. His latest tip: come on really strong, then ignore them, then come on strong, then ignore them, repeat...I met them because one of them (Fenya, short for Fernando) called my friend's roomate, he wasnt home, Fenya invited my friend the asado instead, and she asked me to come along with her. They all have pretty good nicknames: Felix is 'el gato' the cat, one goes by Guilof (dont ask me why) and the others include Pepe and Tito.

The football season is just starting up (in ended the day I arrived in Santiago, all of 6 weeks ago...they just cant live without it) and there are 4 or 5 big teams to choose from here in Santiago. Mine looks like it will be Universidad de Chile, mostly because I've been told you have the least chance of getting robbed at their games. Colo Colo is the other big Chilean team, and they've got upcoming games against River Plate of Argentina and my adopted Ecuadorian team Liga de Quito...so im going to try to head to the stadium (about 15 minutes south of my house) for those. Surprisingly people dont really play all that much football here, way less than the other South American countries I've seen. Perhaps thats why the Chilean national team isnt all that good?

All in all, things are going well, settling into a routine, enjoying the company of the people at work and some random dudes...and trying not to think to much about what happens after this...fingers crossed for grad school is much as i've thought of for post Chile living....

Viva La Musica

2007-01-20T12:34:00.000-05:00

Summer in Santiago is the time for music, and this week was the Providencia Jazz Festival. Taking place on both sides of the river running through town (more of a open drain really) in the Parque de la Esculptura, the festival was 3 nights of latino and internacional jazz. Wednesday night was Al DiMeola playing the kind of extruciating stuff that just makes me nervous more than anything, I couldnt take it for more than 30 minutes and left, good thing I got the free seats on the law. Friday night was Tube Factory from Finland (it felt like being in an airport for an hour) followed by John Scofield, who actually knows whatsgoing on. He played a nice set with his guitar led trio, picking up the energylevels after the somnolent opening act. Its a bit funny to think I saw Scofield for the first time here in Chile, since he's played at festivals I've been to a few times in the US and comes through DC often enough. Some kinds of music are condusive to large scale concerts in the park, jazz I'm afraid, does not count among them. Perhaps it would've been a better idea to go see the Guns n Roses coverband playing way out of town instead.

Feliz Nuevo Año from the Pearl of the Pacific

2007-01-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

Perhaps no city in the world has as much spite for the Panama Canal as Valparaíso, Chile´s 2nd biggest, but most important (historically, culturally) port. Before the canal was built it was a major stopping point for ships heading from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans (and the other way around) taking the southern (the only) route around the Straits of Magellen. The canal cut Valparaíso out of the loop and dealt a devestating blow to its economy, but it continues to be an important cultural and shipping center for Chile. It boasts the 2nd largest population in Chile, and is listed as a UNESCO heritage site. It also makes a big deal out of new year´s eve, throwing the 5th largest fireworks show in the world, the largest in South America, stretching along 23 miles of coast line. I watched the show from halfway up one of the city´s dozens of hills; the main show were the fireworks being set of from the port below us, but over the hills to either side we could see the sky lighting up from the continuation of the fireworks going on in Viña del Mar to the North as well as towards the south. Viña is an overbuilt beach town with thousands of skyscrapers and all the charm of an English beach resort (I suppse Viña gets a bit of sun at least). While Reston VA has a zonig code limiting house colors to 4 colors (at least 3 of which are shades of brown) Valparaíso heads in the opposite direction, with neighbor´s seemingly engaged in a contest to have the brightest house on the block (the current leader has a hot pink house, with even hotter pink trim). The city was also home (at least sometimes) to Chile´s 2nd most famous export, Pablo Neruda...He built an amazing ship themed house up on the hills and the stuffed it full of all sorts of stuff; for a commie, he certainly loved collecting luxury items.

fireworks

Viña del Mar

Neruda´s house

Valparaíso houses

19th century hotel

hotel and ascensor...the precursor to the escalator

the city´s raison d´etre, the port

its got a basket, a bell, lots of things to make it look good

2006-12-27T18:34:00.000-05:00

Riding around Santiago on my sweet new ride is a delight. The city is almost perfect for biking (a tad too much traffic, but even they are pretty considerate) moslty flat, smooth roads, lots of other bikes around, and bright clear weather...So far settling in has been going pretty well, I managed to get an apartmentin 2 days, in a nice enough area close to the main drag of the providencia neighborhood living with a 50something chilean man and a french engineering student. Santiago has a lot to offer, and the city seems really happening, a pleasant mix of New York Paris and Richmond. Although its more expensive than any other South American city (that I´ve visited) its still pretty afordable coming from the US, with $2 sandwiches and $1 coffee. Chilean spanish is a bit tricky though, faster, less articulated, with a thick accent and lots of slang, a week or so more and I´ll be able to understand a bit better hopefully...

my bike

my room

the kitchen

the kitchen

the adress:
nestor aracena 615
providencia, santiago
chile

look how bare theose walls are! send me some shit to cover them up!

you might as well be walking on the moon

2006-12-24T16:55:00.001-05:00

Tucked away in the southwest corner of Bolivia is some of the strangest scenery you'll see...a huge salt flat where a sea used to be before the Andes rose up and dried it out, volcanos, geyers, mineral filled volcanic lakes that end up in all sorts of colors , deserts with crazy shaped rocks, 'islands' covered with cactus...all sorts of crazy stuff. If Hunter S Thompson thought Las Vegas was a bit strange on a carload of drugs, good thing he didnt bring his show this far south.
My trip started in Uyuni, I arrived at about 2am on a bus from Potosi, slept for a bit and then got up and booked a place in a Land Cruiser leaving that day. Uyuni used to be an important train stop for trainsfull of Bolivian minerals heading to Chile for export, but since the decline of the mining industy, tourism has taken over as its main economic lifeblood. And running 4x4s through the salt flats and across the deserts is the main attraction: sustainable? hardly, but there's no real alternative to see this crazy part of the world, somehow riding a bike across it doesnt appeal. The first day we drove through the salt flats to Isla Pescado, stopping for lunch and to take some silly perspective photos. Because there is nothing in the background its easy to manipulate the perpective and make it look like someone is standing on someone else's hand, being stepped on, or in my case, being smoked (i'm waiting for this photo to arrive via email still) making big stuff look small, or alternatley, small stuff look big (see below). We spent the night at a tiny community called Bellavista on a hill overlooking the Salar; at sunrise the next morning the town definatley lived up to its name.
The second day of the tour we pased a series of lakes, all full of minerals and funny colors and flamingos, eventually passing through the Siloli desert (and its 'petrified tree') to the Laguna Colorada, or red lake, which strangely enough, is bright red in the middle. The third day we got up really early to catch the sunrise over some geysers (not worth it) and then spent an hour or so in a natural thermal bath on the edge of another lake (worth it, although it was freezing getting out and dry afterwards, still about 6am). After that we passed through the Dali Dessert to the Laguna Verde (green lake) where the reflextion of the volcano in the lake was amazing. The volcano as it happened marks the border with Chile, and about 30 minutes on from the lake we reached the line in the sand (literally) where a small shack and a burned out bus marked the frontier. Borders are pretty silly in general, and this one seemed particularly so, especially because at one point a war was fought between Chile and Bolivia over this bit of land (and the coastline) that is pretty much desolate...Chile just needed a couple more beaches I imagine.

salar uyuni: not the place for a game of i spy

huge bolders or pebbles?

Bellavista sunrise

laguna colorada

thermal bath

laguna verde

it´s all downhill from here

2006-12-19T07:40:00.000-05:00

At 4000m above sea level, Potosí is the world´s highest city, but its real claim to fame, and raison d´etre, is the little hill called El Cerro Rico that sits just above the town. When the Spanish stumbled across a Quechua mining operation on the hill extracting huge amounts of silver they set up camp and turned Potosí, a middle of nowhere town too high for anything to grow, into the largest and most important city in South America. In its prime, it was bigger than London, Paris, or Madrid; producing 50% of the world´s silver it was the classic boomtown. The wealth came at a cost: about 6 million Indians died in the mines during the colonial area. Forced to work 48 hour shifts the miners´ life expectancy was the mid 30s. Coca leaves, initially outlawed by the church were relegalized when it was realized that miners didn´t need food or breaks during their marathon shifts if they were allowed to chew the leaves. A hybrid set of beliefs emerged in the mines, combining Quechua mythology and Catholicism; the two primary figures in this belief system are the Patchamama (mother earth) and El Tio (the devil). Miners make offerings of alchol (96proof sugarcane liquor is the standard), coca leaves, and cigarettes to the deities. While Patchamama is rarely personified, the entrance to each mine contains a statue of El Tio, complete with horns, cigarette in mouth, and huge erect penis. (for a fascinating analysis of all this see the second half of Michael Taussig´s The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America). Today the mountain is owned by the Bolvian State, although the state mine closed in the 80s. 37 Miners´ collectives work in the mountain, each rents a mine from the government and has the rights to anything it extracts, the profits from which is shared out between all the miners of the collective. Although the ownership is a bit more progressive than it was under the spanish and later the state, working conditions are still pretty medieval. Miners´ are responsible for their own safety, and the philosphy is dont take risks otherwise the mine will collapse. There is no formal training, new miners (aged 14-16) are taken under the wing of older ones who supervise them and show them the ropes. Work is specialized, so that one miner will spend an entire day (or even and entire working life) performing the same task. Helath precautions are limited to helmets and bandanas worn over the mouth, the life expectancy today is 55, retirement starts at 65. Silver is no longer the main mineral extracted, tin and zinc are more important, although there is still some silver production going on. The tour I took was run by one of the collectives, and the guides were exminers, money from tourism is helping to support the collectives and the community health center that sees a lot of action. What the miners must have thought seeing a bunch of gringos walking around a place they´d probably rather never go in is beyond me.

El Cerro Rico

El Tio

El Tio

Mining

On a lighter Note: Daddy Yankee vs. The Poo Machine

Last night I had the pleasure of taking the night bus from Potosí to Uyuni. Crammed in the back corner (I waited too long to buy my ticket) for the ride along the bouncy rocky road I was thrilled to discover the driver in front in the baby in the back had arranged a decibel competition. Although Daddy Yankee had the edge in sheer volume, the baby´s edge in shrillness, piercingness, and startlingness won him the competition in the end. I realize that in the grand scheme of crimes against humanity, being a baby ought to be fairly forgivable, but last night that was a hard thought to entertain. ¡ME GUSTA LA GASOLINA! ¡DAME MAS GASOLINA!

¡the most superlative filled post ever!

2006-12-17T16:18:00.000-05:00

¡The World´s Highest Navegable Lake! -> Lake Titicaca

Early last wednesday morning I set sail with my new Swiss friend from the port of Puno (¡Peru´s ugliest city!) for the floating islands of the Uros. Built of reeds and mud, and tied together, these 45 or so islands float around Puno Bay attracting tourists. They were build during the Inca empire by the Uros, who wanted the empire to leave them alone. Today they are more or less floating souvenire stalls, as tourism is the only viable way of earning the cashmoney the people need to buy rice and potatoes from the mainland. Beacuse the reeds rot, everythign on the islands is rebuilt every 2 or 3 years, so it all looked really new, adding a bit to the disneyesque atmosphere. After a an hour or so around there we set off for the open lake and Isla Amantaní where we stayed with a local family and hiked up to the temple to the Pachamama (mother nature - ¡the most venerated deity in the andes!) to watch the sun go down. Island life seemed quite difficult; the fields where they said they grew potatos and quinua looked like quarries more than fields, and waiting for the rain was a perfectly acceptable way for the head of the family Nicolas to spend the day. There were almost no young people opn the island as as soon as they finish highschool (at 16-18 years old) most people hightail it to Lima or Arequipa to look for work, returning when they´re ready to settle down and start farming on the island. The same was true on Taquilla island which we visited the next day. The only source of income there being selling woven goods (the people there are recognized as ¡the world´s best weavers! by unicef) which are sold in a community run coop in the main plaza. The highlight of the trip was watching a party on Amantaní given in honor of the new mayor, where ¡the most drunk band in world! played musica del pueblo to about 200 people who held hands and ran around in a huge circle on the town´s basketabll court. wierd.

floating island, note the solar energy panel

farms on amantaní

isla taquilla

banda del peublo

¡The World´s Highest Capitol City! -> La Paz, Bolivia

Like Sydney and Toronto, La Paz isnt technically the capitol city although everyone thinks it is. Unlike the other 2 though, most of Bolivia´s government has upped and moved to La Paz making it ¡the most de-facto capitol in the world! It´s a crazy busy place overflowing with markets and barley fitting into the valley it sits in. It doesnt actually fit anymore, and on the ridge above La Paz is El Alto, one of Latin America´s famous Barrios Jovenes full of recent (and almost all indigenous) immigrants to the city from the countryside. There are some pretty plaza spread around the city and since there is much less hassle directed toward tourists than in Peru, its easy to sit and enjoy them. On the way into the city from Lake Titicaca the bus passed over miles and miles of the high Altiplano, where all the wall were covered with propaganda for Evo Morales and his Movimiento Al Socialismo party. He enjoys huge popularity in this part of the country, and while Santa Cruz in the south was having a protest against his government looking for political and economic autonomy, La Paz held a counterprotest supporting Morales and his plan to rewrite the constitution.

La Paz

¡the best named chinese resturant ever!

¡The World´s Most Dangerous Road! -> La Paz to Coroico

The road from La Paz to Coroico (and onto the Yungas valleys ¡the most coca producing part of the world!) is about 1 car wide, gravel and mud, and perched on an erroding ledge with sheer drops off to one side). It descends over 4000meters from a peak above La Paz (complete with snow) down into the steamy semi-jungle valleys around Coroico. Until a new road was built to replace it, it was the only way between the two cities, and buses, trucks, and cars would ride up and down it, passing on blind corners, getting stuck in traffic jams, and falling of the edge at a terrifying rate; hence the title as the world´s most dangerous road. Today there isnt much traffic as the new road is paved and wide and has guardrails, so its pretty much safe for downhill bike riding. From La Cumbre the group of us descended down a paved road, out of the snowy peaks, through a high alpinestyle valley, and over a ridge to the start of the ¡¡death road!! itself. Tour agencies definatley play up the death danger doom angle, but even so, the ride down the gravel road was a crazy rush. Down and down and down (around 70km in total) with a cliff on one side and a cliff on the other. Knowing my tendancy to fall of bikes, maybe i´m quite lucky to be posting this, but it never felt that scary. Once we got to Coroico we rode up to hotel esmerlda to take ¡the world´s most refreshing shower! After a lunch, we got in a van and drove back up the new road to La Paz, it took about as long to get up in the car as it had to get down by bike.

the start, la cumbre

our guide and the road

waterfall

from the road of death toward las yungas

hotel esmeralda, bling bling!

cloudy mountains on the way back up

these boots were made for walking...

2006-12-11T21:56:00.000-05:00

...and thats just what they did.

El Camino Inca to Machu Picchu

Day 1.
From Cusco, a bus took us down into the Sacred Valley, through Ollantaytambo, and on to km82 of the Inca Trail where the 4 day walk begins. There were four of us gringos, a guide, and 5 porters, who carried the tents, kitchen, and food. The first day´s hike was pretty gentle, a slow rise of 600m spread over 4 hours walking. We walked past Llaqtapata, a ruin discovered after Machu Picchu on the bank of the Urubamba river, and once we got to Wayllabamba we settled in for the evening. This was were I got the first impression of how amazing the porters were; as we ambled (the pace of the walk was never very quick) along the trail chatting, they ran, carrying huge bags upto 40 pounds, and some of them (from other groups) wearing only thin leather sandals on their feet. By the time we got to the campsite, the tents had already been set up, and they were hanging out listening to their radio and eating popcorn. It felt strange having people basically carry my shit for me, but without it, the whole trek would be impossible, or at least not very enjoyable. Juan Carlos, one of the porters told me that they usually do the trail 3 or 4 times a month to make some cash and spend the rest of their time working on the farms in their community (they were all from the same small town south of the sacred valley).

the start of the trail

llaqtapata

Day 2.
The second day included the hardest climb of the trek: up to the Dead Woman's Pass at 4200m above sea level. From the campsite it was about 2-3 hours up the increasingly steep trail/staircase. As the altitiude increased, we moved out of the subtropical cloud forest up into high andean grasslands. Occaisonally, with breaks in the clouds and fog, snowy peaks from the neighboring ranges poked through, making the climb more dramatic. After the pass, there was a long stairway down the other side following a small river/waterfall down to the second campsite. Coming into the trek, I'd heard that this was the most demanding and draining section, the long steep climb followed by the almost as difficuly descent. I felt ok at the top of the pass, maybe just a bit out of breath a sweaty, but my heart wasnt pounding too hard and my legs werent trembling. Maybe the mouthfuls of coca leaves helped afterall? People in the andes chew coca leaves to help deal with the altitude; the plant also helps to stave off hunger and settles the stomach. During the Inca empire it was crucial for the functioning of the network of chaskis or messengers who would carrry messages (encoded in tied strings called quipus) along the breadth of the Inca empire, at its peak stretcing from central Chile to southern Columbia. The messangers would run 50-60kms a day, carrying the messages they couldnt understand. Last year, in a race between the porters, a new record was set on the Inca trail when one ran the 42km (a marathon length) up and down the mountains to Machu Picchu in 3h45m, the walk that I did in 3.5 days or so.

the valley leading up to the dead woman's pass

looking down from dead woman's pass

Day 3.
Normally the third day of the trek is the most beautiful, as the trail passes through 2 more high passes and along the side of a series of mountains, giving views of the spectacular valleys and ranges all around. Unfortunately, it was foggy all morning, and poured from 12 onwards, so this was the least pleasant section. Early in the day we passed the egg shaped ruin of runquracay, a resting place for chaskis and pilgrims heading to Machu Picchu. After a long wet hike up and down the 2 passes, we reached the campsite, and a few minutes later the skies cleared showing us what we'd been missing all day. By nighttime it was perfectly clear, and the nightsky was lit up by thousands of stars...a few of the shooting. But we couldnt stay up too late stargazing, since the next day was a 4am wake up call for the final leg through the sun gate into Machhu Picchu itself.

runkuraqay

mountains in the mist, from the campsite in the early evening

Day 4.
A bright and early start got us to Intipunku, or the sun gate, at about 6am. This was the principal enterance to Machu Pichu for pilgrims, commercial traffic followed the river along the bottom of the valley. The high route, that we took, was the one used by pilgrims who saw the Inca trail as a path to spiritual improvement. Many of the ruins along the trail feature fountains where the pilgrims would take purifiying showers. From the sungate, Machu Picchu is sprawled out below. A 40 minute descent later, we arrived and wandered around the site learning about its temples, its class based spacial divisions, and its importance as a ceremonial center for the Incas. Afterwards, we rode a bus down the valley floor, and rode the train back into Cusco, the return trip abour 3hours for the 4 days of walking to get there. But, despite the rainy sunday, it was definatley worthwhile...the views, the sites, and the feeling of accomplishment more than made up for being a bit soggy.

machu picchu from the sungate

machu picchu and huayna pichu

from macchu pichu towards the sun gate (on the 1st ridge), high on the 2nd ridge is one of the passes from the 3rd day.

machu pichu

More Pictures Here

location, location, location!

2006-12-06T15:02:00.000-05:00

If the Incas knew one thing, and it seems like they knew a great deal, they knew the fundamentals of real-estate. The Sacred Valley of the Incas must be one of the most amazingly breathtaking places on earth, and its not just the altitude. The 19th century historian of the Incas, Sir Clements Markham wrote that "the wide world might be searched without finding a rival, in enchanting beauty, to the Sacred Valley of the Incas" and he could be right...in any case its a search I'd willingly take up if anyone is hiring for that sort of thing.

After an extensive searched, I came across what could be the only road bike in southern Peru: a foxy old red Bianchi track bike...that was a tad small for me. So, after 2 days in the saddle alternately racing and crawling through the Sacred Valley, my shoulders are a bit on the sore side. From Cusco, its about 13km uphill to Tambomachay, an Incan ruin on the ridge of the hills that form the Valley of Cusco. Once I got to the ridge, I didnt have to peddle again for 18km all the way down to Pisaq. The descent from Tambomachay to Pisaq has to be the most beautiful, surprising, and terrifying ride I've ever done. The temptation to look at the view was tempered by the hairpin turns and the potholes, not all that many, but big enough to contain their own Inca ruins. At everyturn a new set of hills showed themselves, and at each of 3 towns I thought this must be it, time to peddle again, but the hill kept going and going.

Once I got to Pisaq I stopped to look around the small market in the town square and get some breakfast: bananas and water. From Pisaq, I followed the floor of the valley alongside the Vilcanota River. A slow and steady descent to the town of Urubamba. On my right, green hills rose up and then turned steep, leading up to rocky peaks, behind them, in the breaks in the clouds I could occaisonally see the snow capped mountains of the ridge behind, that form the walls of the Valley de Lares. On my left, fields, the river, more fields, and then sheer cliffs up to the plateau between the peaks on that side and the valley below. Behind and in front of me, the road, used to herd sheep, llamas, pigs and donkeys from pasture to pasture, leading eventually to Machu Picchu. I caught a bus up the left hand side of the valley from Urubamba to Chinchero, where I spent the night. Chincero is named after a palace built there as a retirement home by one of the first Incas...beats Florida for damn sure.

The next day, I headed back down towards Urubamba, enjoying the rolling hills of the high plateau. Before I got to the steep windy descent to the valley floor I veered of the left to the towns of Maras and Moray where there are (surprise!) more Incan ruins. After looking around there, I headed back to Cusco, which involved climbing back up the backside of the ridge to get into the Valley of Cusco. Eventually I crossed the last ridge and saw Cusco laid out below me, Sacsayhuaman and the White Christ Statue of to my left, the Plaza de Armas just underneath me. The ride down through the hillside suburbs was like a video game; I was faster than the slow trucks and buses riding their brakes down the hill, and I had to pick the oportune moments to swing past them and get back over to the right. After about 13 switchbacks I got down to the colonial city, where the road turns to cobblestone and I was forced to dismount and walk my way back through town to where I returned the bike.

Most importantly, I learned two techniques for preventing dog attacks:
1. going downhill => as a dog runs onto the road toward you slow down. It alters its route and comes right at you from the side (they're usually coming from in front and to the side of you), once the dog gets within a bodylength of you, let go of the breaks, and peddle like crazy. The dog can't change its route quick enough, and usually falls over, by the time it figures out whats up, you're flying down the hill, long gone...
2. going flat or uphill => in this case, dogs can approach from all sides, but the technique works the same...get over to the side of the road, and dismount. keep the bike between you and the dog. stop and look at it. it will stop running at you at least. If it keeps barking, or wont go away, swoop down to pick up a rock (even if there arent any rocks, pretend: to dog doesnt know the difference, and recognizes the swoop as a signal that a rock is about to get thrown at it). if they dont stop, throw the rock. repeat.
both techniques worked and kept this ride rabies free.

my bike, the sacred valley

the valley from tambomachay to pisaq

the sacred valley from above

from the bottom

part of the chinchero ruin

the plateau around chinchero

for more pcitures, click the purty pictures link on the left.

notes from el sendero gringo: ecuador -> arequipa

2006-12-02T15:40:00.000-05:00

the north coast
Crossing the border into Peru was the most stressful happening so far. Shifty 'guides', agressive moneychangers, and lying taxi drivers made the trip from Cuenca to Tumbes a hassle. But since then, Peru has offered mostly smooth sailing. The northern cities of Chiclayo and Trujillo are surrounded by desert, and pre-Incan ruins. For most of the journey, the ground was beige, but this was broken at intervals by patches of green rice paddies with knee deep water. The amount of irrigation involved in this project must be pretty intense. The craziest thing about the pre-Inca ruins (evidence of large scale civilizations and cities) is that the region has been producing food for centuries, and its not just modern technology that has rendered it fertile. The 2 sites I visited near Chiclayo have suffered a lot from the passing time and most closely resemble giant eroding termite hills. Archeaologists did find an impressive burial suit at one tomb, (of a high priest, soldier called Senor Sipan)...Huaca de la Luna (outside Trujillo - itself more impressive) was much better preserved, partly because of the custom of building one temple on top of the old one every 100 years, so the murals on the oldest temples have been protected by new walls. The temple was ransaked by Spaniards looking for gold, and so there is a huge cut through the middle of it.

Senor Sipan's tomb

Mural at Huaca de la Luna

Trujillo Plaza de Armas

Chiclayo Plaza de Armas

la cordilera blanca
The town of Huaraz sits in a glacial valley just below Peru's most spectacular set of mountains: the Cordilera Blanca, a range of snow capped peaks shooting up to 6000+meters, including Peru's highest peak (the 2nd tallest in South America). At one end of the valley lies the (rapidly shrinking) glacier Pastoruri. The road up from Huaraz to the glacier passes through grasslands in the bottom of the valley inhabited by sheep, alpacas, and a wierd flower species that waits 35 years to flower then grows up 10m tall (sorry for the all metric, its whats they use here, and I cant convert). From the top of glacier (a slippery hike up) there were views of snowy mountains in all directions, but the afternoon clouds and rain were closing in, so I beat a hasty retreat. The next day I rented a bike and headed uphill. A very pleasant three hour ride up towards the cordilera blanca, through small rocky fields, indigenous communities, eucaliptus forests and eventually through high altitude pastures (4100m) ended abruptly when a dog ran out of a field barking, chasing, and eventually, biting. Nothing serious said the ladies at the clinic in Huaraz, not deep enough to give me rabies at least...deep enough to make me lose inhibitions about throwing rocks at dogs though. From the base of the mountians (where they start getting seriously steep) there was a long ride back down along a little gravel road with plenty of hairpins back to Huaraz. Before taking the night bus to Lima the next day, I tried something new: rock climbing. The rocky outcroppings around Huaraz offer good climbs for all levels, and I tried my luck on the easiest. Its a difficult sport, especially for the muscles in my arms that I dont think I'd ever used before...but it felt pretty good getting up a near vertical rock face...the instructor embarassed everyone afterwards by practically running up the climb to gather the chords and equipment.

Pastoruri glacier

wierd flower

grasslands in the valley

view from the glacier

small farms from my bike ride

this is where i was when the dog bit...the gap in the mountains leads to a 12km trail to the cordilera proper

rock climbing

Lima
Lima gets a bad reputation, especially in Quito, but its mostly unfounded I think. Perhaps Quitenos are a tad jealous of the larger, hipper, oceanside city, and so spread stories of its out of control crime to keep people from visiting it, but besides from being pretty hectic, and having a bit more street hassle, Lima didn't feel vastly different from any other big South American city I've been to so far (and it was so much better than Guayaquil that to compare them would be silly). I only spent a day and half there, but it left me with a good taste in my mouth...there wasnt a whole lot 'to do' but it (especially the young lively miraflores neighborhood) like a very livable place with a lot 'going on'. The colonial center was pretty extensive, about 10 blocks by 5 blocks and had the usual cathedral, plaza de armas, and miriad churches...Miraflores is where Lima really sets itself apart. Perched on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, this neighborhood, a 30 minute bus trip from the center, is home to most of Lima's 'high culture' theatres, galleries, movies etc...the buildings arent nice like in the center, but the street life is very energentic, with cafes sprawling practically all the way across the sidewalks into the street, parks, and quiter residential streets tucked in behind. pretty good.

the south coast
South of Lima the desert continues. For hours. I got off the bus at the small oasis/resort town of Huacachina and spent the night. I got up early before the sun heated up the giant sand dunes flanking the town and tried my hand at sandboarding. Unlike a snowboard, a sandboard doesnt turn. Unlike snow, sand is hard. So after 1 run, I swtiched to sandsledding, much better. Deserts are crazy looking, especially with huge sand dunes. Next stop on the whirlwind tour of the south coast was Nasca home of the Nasca Lines...ancient doodles in the desert, (explained in my last post)...after a fly over the lines in a 4 seater plane (shotgun!) I spent the afternoon in Nasca's main plaza where most of Nasca seemed to be hanging out too. The town's planetarium had a lecture on explaining the lines (unconvincing) and after we got to look at the moon through a telescope. Sometimes when I say outloud or write what I've been doing in the last few weeks it sounds totally ridiculous...this is certainly an example.

dunes

oasis

Nasca Lines hummingbird

plane

the moon

arequipa and the colca canyon
The Colca Canyon is the world's deepest, or so they say in these parts. Its pretty spectacular either way. Yesterday I caught the local bus at 6am to the lookout point Cruz del Condor where you're supposed to be able to see condors floating on the morning thermals coming out of the canyon. I saw one condor, and it cruized out of there pretty quick, whatever. After I walked along the canyon (its not a vertical drop like the grand canyon, its like 2 mountain ranges who're just next to each other, and the bottom pars of the mountains is the steepest, with a small plain about 2 thirds of the way up) to the village of Cabanaconde...it was really clear and sun was super intense, but it wasnt too hot...the walk was along the road for about 5 miles (3 cars passed total) and then along a small trail used as shortcut by herders from the village. I caught the bus back to Chivay (where i was staying) and nearly fell asleep over my dinner...the last few days had finally caught up, so I got an early night's sleep and slept in (until 8!!). The bus back to Arequipa (Peru's 2nd biggest city) passed through more desert and grassland where the South American Camel makes its home. The jagged rocky mountains on both sides made for a pretty trip, even if the equally rocky road made it a bouncy one. Arequipa has some of the nicest colonial style architecture in Peru and perhaps its most exquisite exemplar is the Santa Caralina Convent founded in the 16th century and going strong today. Its like a little city within the city, walled in in an entire city blocks, it has its own streets, courtyards, and churches...the walls are all painted bright red and blue...not a bad place to be a nun i'd say.

Colca Canyon

Arequipa Plaza de Armas

Santa Catalina Convent

Arequipa - Saturday Night

the truth behind the nazca lines

2006-11-30T19:23:00.000-05:00

In the year 5632 scientists at New Jersey's Princeton University made two great discoveries that combined would forever shape the past. The first, by five weeks, was the fruit of the womb of that university's physics department - the backward forward time machine. In its earliest manifestation, the forward only machine, by 5632 some 3000 years old, allowed its users to gain several years by means of long space journeys at high velocity. Because of the the trips took so long, the machine never really caught on, except with the excessively vain. Backward time travel, invented in the late 2700s was equally lacking in popularity, since it stranded its users in the past, which would have been bad enough if the past of 5632 was the same as that of 5361, which it wasn't, since it had yet to benefit from the second great discovery of that prolific year: the practical joke.

The practical joke was discovered one afternoon in the laboratories of Princeton University's chemistry department when a careless researcher by the name of Tanya Rette slipped, shattering the test tubes she was carrying. Gasping for air, she inhaled the vapors of the mixture of chemicals on the floor. Minutes later, she was inspired to make the first practical joke in the history of the world of 5362. She laid out a banana skin from her uneaten lunch in the middle of the laboratory and waited for her coworker Olive Cola to walk in. Which she did. And she slipped on the carefully placed banana peel, much to the delight of Tanya Rette. Olive, at first, couldn't understand what had happened, and when she saw her friend of 17 years was laughing uncontrollably she was furious. She remained so until a few minutes after Tanya Rette had convinced her to breathe in the spilled mess on the floor, when she became only the second person in history to get a practical joke.

Meanwhile, in Princeton University's archeology department, nothing was happening. Nine of the world's most highly educated people were sitting in their offices, simply waiting. Since people had lived, up until 5362, such simple, uncomplicated lives governed only by rationality, very much the same way they did in 5632 in fact, there was very little for archaeologists to do. The mysteries of ancient people simply did not exit. The discipline had been invented by bored historians hoping that if they looked underground, something would emerge to challenge their capacity to explain. Nothing did. The archaeologists at Princeton still had jobs because the university thought it would keep them around, just in case. They didn't teach, research, or write; they just waited. The same was true of the history, sociology, anthropology, economics, and psychology departments; all the social scientists, in fact, were simply on hold.

This situation greatly irritated the university's scientists, who taught, researched, and wrote, as much as 16 hours a day. Olive and and Tanya were certainly no exceptions. With their new found sense of humor, they went straight to the abandoned part of campus reserve red for the idle social scientists. They spent the remainder of the day inventing a series of practical jokes that are considered the classics today. They pulled fire alarms when there was no fire, they knocked on doors and ran away, they tied shoelaces together, and glued pens to desks, they balanced buckets of water on door frames, and so on. By nightfall they were exhausted.

Soon enough, they conceived of a plan that would finally give the archaeologists something to do, and would, in the process, forever change the past. They soaked a towel in the chemical spill and broke into the physics department, heading straight for the time machine. They set the controls for the pacific coast of South America for exactly 5000 years earlier, the year 362. When they arrived, they found the Nazca people, living quite, orderly, and completely rational lives, just as the archaeologists had described. Seeing the giant rocky desert at the feet of the equally rocky hills Tanya and Olive realized that they could use the land as a canvas to create a completely meaningless pattern that would baffle researchers for centuries to come. Taking their towel to the first house they came to, they explained their plan to the people living there. At first, they were unenthusiastic: "why would we do that" they asked, "we are perfectly happy as we are." The Nazca people remained obstinate until a few minutes after Olive convinced them to inhale the scent on their towel, at which point they became the first people in the chronological history of the world to get a practical joke.

After a few days, enough people had been convinced to start work. Three weeks later, the desert floor was covered with an incomprehensible web of lines, shapes, and doodles representing animals, symbols, and anachronisms, like the famous Nazca Astronaut. Thrilled by the work, Olive and Tanya traveled all over the prehistoric world, convincing people to build and build, just for the sake of confusing future archaeologists. The direct products of their trip include Stonehenge, the pyramids of Mexico and Egypt, Great Zimbabwe, and so on. No part of the world escaped their mischief. They were so successful, that once they left each place the people continued playing pranks of the future social scientists. This initial fervour saw the creation of the family, the great world religions, government, art, sports, and cities. After a few generations however, people forgot all about the future archaeologists, but they never lost their habit of pulling large scale practical jokes. In the following era, known today as the pre-academic era, people invented all sorts of inexplicables, simply out of habit: clothing, inequality, fiction, violence, slavery, and so on.

The pre-academic era ended in the mid 1800s with the creation (another unknowing practical joke) of the social sciences. First came the historians, dedicated to finding out what had already happened. Soon, some though it would be easier to to find out what was actually going on, thus sociology, political science, anthropology and all the rest came to be. Finally, there was a group who thought the answers could be found by examining the oldest stuff around, the archaeologists. By the 22nd century they had all become quite good at what they did, and knew the 'whos' 'whats' 'wheres' 'whens' and 'hows' of almost everything. But the 'why' always eluded them. They trained an enormous group of people, called journalists, to write down everything that happened, this time for the benefit of future historians. But by then it was too late. The practice of doing things because of the habit of pracital jokes (on whom, no one would ever remember) was out of control. By the year 2000 for instance, people had invented all sorts of absurdities: weapons powerful enough to destroy the planet (more than once!), abstract art, music no one actually liked...people submitted themselves to the will of people of one particular skin tone, they walked about on the moon, they killed and died for all sorts of mythologies, they made products just to throw them away and so on.

So, by the year 5633, the social scientists were overwhelmed. Just one year after Olive and Tanya's great journey, they were the jealous ones, suffering from the unanswerable question 'why'. Those in the chemistry, physics, and engineering departments meanwhile dealt with 'hows'. How to build a taller building, how to make more powerful explosions, how to grow healthier foods, and so on, themselves having forgotten all they were doing was making more practical jokes for the future's archaeologists.

dear andean dogs,

2006-11-25T13:35:00.000-05:00

take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

ok? thanks.

why can't you be more like your highland neighbor the noble donkey, who is happy to eat grass and lean against things all day.

jacob

and we sailed, the 7 seas

2006-11-21T11:50:00.000-05:00

in a boat called el poseidon:

stopping at 12 or so of the craziest looking islands on earth, las islas galapagos:

we went ashore to look for animals, and our naturalist guide john explained all sorts of facts about them, it felt like living on the discovery channel. we spent a lot of time snorkelling also, my new 4th favorite sport...

coruna del diablo, really strong currents, but tons of fish for snortkeling

shark!!!

sting ray!!!

fact: sea turtles sleep underwater, they can stay under for 6 hours without air

fact: giant tortoises never stop growing up

fact: when a giant tortoise egg is hatched the sex isnt predetermined, it is based on hormones released as it develops, in the cold more female hormones are released and more male ones in the hot...so, all the boy giant tortoises have their birthday parties in the summer, and the girls in the winter, or something.

doin it and doin it and doin it wow

fact: boobies lay 2 eggs per season, but usually on one survives. if the chick leaves the nest the mother no longer feeds it, so the two chicks start doing some sumo type wrestling and usually the stronger one pushes the weaker one out, so it starves to death. good think we're not boobies, huh josh?

fact: an albatross wil fly all the way to peru like its no big deal

fact: marine iguanas eat seaweed, but they cant digest it, so they sit on the rocks using their bodies as little ovens to heat up the food and then they can digest it

fact: frigate birds dont fish, they just steal from the boobies. males inflate the red pouch on their necks to attract females during mating season...the males with the best nesting positions win.

fact: blue footed boobies are super proud of their blue feet (duh) so they do a little dance before mating to show them off.

MORE PHOTOS HERE

so, galapagos is pretty crazy, luckily it seems like its being well preserved. the majority of the islands are out of bounds to all but scientists (who have to dress up like charles darwin to get in)...hopefully it doesnt become a caribean style cruise destination...as all those trampeling human feet wouldnt be the best thing ever. i recomend kurt vonnegut's guide to the galapagos for 1) basic factual information about animals and 2) more factual observations about the mayhem being caused by humans and our big brains.

Da beach is dat way---->

2006-11-06T16:42:00.000-05:00

Atacames is where the Ecuadorian working class goes for long beach weekends. This weekend (2 days holiday for all saints day/day of the dead) was no exception, and the town was packed with national tourists hanging out, drinking, dancing, fighting, swiming, tanning etc. The beach was pretty, a slow bay with hills and cliffs to either side, and crowded. From 7am (i arrived at 6 on a nightbus from quito) on it was filled with football games, people laying around, and vendors. The vendors walked up and down the beach selling all sorts of stuff: coconut juice, horrible art, pants, fruit salads, towels, mats, coconut oil for tanning (the inevitably afroecuadorian salesmen invetiably made the joke that it would turn my skin as dark as theirs - somehow the spanish word for unlikely failed me all weekend). The water was a good temperature and the waves were ok for bodysurfing. As well as the vendors, the beach was full of mobile seafood restaurants (cevicherias) built on converted bike. Basically, a bikes front wheel was removed, preplaced with 2 set about a yard apart, with a table, shelf, counter, and overhang built onto it that served as the kitchen and table for the resaurant (see picture below). The food all over town was mostly seafood and damn good. Shrimps with rice, in cebivice (a kind of lime soup in which the acidity of lime 'cooks' the shrimp), and in a delicous coconut sauce that was like a mild creamy thai curry, aparently a dish thats part of the afroecuadorian tradition. The coast is where most of Ecuador's african population lives, and its a culture that gets little attention in the national scheme of things but seems pretty interesting (i picked up a book in one of quito's nerdy bookshops to see what its all about). The nightlife was coctails and salsa, but it was a scene that martin parr would have relished; tacky and overthe top were the adjectives that came to mind. So, while i normally prefer quiter beaches (or mountains) this was an interesting weekend from a least a sociological perspective; if goethe's notion that people at leisure are at their most authentic holds water, then the Quiteno and Guayaquileno vaccacioners in Atacames need a good deal of analysis.

there was a big canopy in which about 20 small ceviceria's were located, these are 2 of them.

one of the mobile beach cevicheria's: cevicheria jose

ice cream man/boogie board rentals

beach football

this man walked around town singing songs (a lot like trindidadian calypso) that were really good, he had a voice like leadbelly and walter ferguson combined

5pm

¿why is it impossible to get a decent cup of coffee in a region that produces some of the world's best?

2006-10-30T17:48:00.000-05:00

Like the vast majority of countries in the global south, Ecuador's is an export oriented economy. Since the Spanish conquest, it's resources have beeen extracted, at great expense to local populations and environments, and sent abroad. First it was gold, mined and lifted from the rivers, sent to spain, ultimately funding the industrialization of Europe and the emergence of capitalism. Because of it's great natural diversity Ecuador has produced, at one point or other, almost all of history's great cash crops: rubber, coffee, cocoa, coca, oil, bananas, flowers...

Things today aren't vastly different than they were during the mercanitle, ecomienda, or hacienda eras. Because of power inequalities reinforced by the terms of international trade, countries in the global south are forced to export raw materials (at the lowest possible price) and import finished goods (at great expense). IMF/World Bank loans and the consequent structural adjustment policies (SAPs) stipulate that countries must eliminate protective tariffs and agricultural subsidies so that a worldwide level plaving field is created. The trouble is that rich coutnries aren't dependent on loans from the global financial institutions and so aren't subject to SAPs; their protective tariffs and subsidies are left intact. So, while small farmers in the south are 'competing' for global markets with corporate agroindustry, rich states, and each other, their local markets are flooded with imported goods at prices they can't match. And so, as farming becomes a decreasingly viable option, people leave the country for the city, for other countires - the rural exodus intensifying processes of urbanization and emmigration. Wide open and unused rural spaces here indicate a region's poverty and the disutlity of organizing the world on concepts of relative advantage and global markets.

Two example from further afield are plainly illustrative. For the last few years, under pressure from the usual internatinal institutions, the government of Mali has been reducing, with the ulimate aim of eliminating, subsidies for cotton farmers. Although cotton is a relatively low capital intense crop, farmers still have to buy seed, fertilizer, transport, and for planting and harvesting equipment; for most Malian farmers this requires taking out loans. For US cotton producers on the hand, these costs are paid for by government subsidies, meaning they can sell their cotton at any price and make a profit. To compete with these prices in the global market, Malian farmers have to sell at barely above (or even blow) their cost of production, their labor left valueless, because of the loans they enter a cycle of endebtedness. This precarious existence is marginal at best and season to season survival is questionable; a dry year, locusts, or any number of factors leaving farmers with all the debt and none of the product of a 'good' year.
On the other side of Mali's southern border lies the Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa produce and exporter; despite that, you'd be hard pressed to find an Ivorian bar of chocolate. Because cocoa doesnt grow in Switzerland, Belgium, France etc, the chocolatiers in these countries (mom and pop outfits like Nestle and Lindt) need to import all their cocoa. To facilitate this, these countries' governments keep taxes low on the import of raw or semi-processed materials. Conversely, tariffs on finished goods (like bars of chocolate) are kept high to protect 'local' industry. The result is that even if the Ivory Coast produced chocolate (which would require capital for factories, and, if it were to compete globally, a world wide advertising campaign) there'd be nowhere to sell it. And at the same time, because SAPs keep the country's tariffs on imports low, the European giants are able to sell as much of their product (not just chocolate, but powdered milk - with its own set of problems) on local markets as possible.

So finally, to coffee. While Columbia Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia (not to mention their Central American counterparts) produce some of the best coffee in the world (take a look at the fancy coffee section in a fancy grocery store) the morning cup here in Latin America is always Nescafe: imported from Columbia with all the revenue going to Switzerland. The same structures that affecting the cotton and cocoa trades shape the coffee trade, so all the good stuff is sent abroad and mass produced substitutes are imported. The same is true for virtually every commodity traded on 'the global level playing field' of neoliberal freetrade. This, I think, is part of the answer to the question I come face to face with every morning over my (nes)cafe-con-leche.

The Fair Trade movement ostensibly adresses some of these problems, but, it leaves the basic structure of inequality intact in doing so. So whole empowering rural communities, protecting human rights and the environment, and advocating a living wage are obviously laudable goals, it is less clear if that gourmet coffee and chocolate (as tasty as they may be) are viable means of achieving them. Fair trade placed the burden of change of individual consumers (clearing corporations of responsability) the vast majority of whom simply cannot pay gourmet prices. Ultimately fair trade functions more effectively in easing the consiences of left leaning bourgeois than in changin the nature of global trade. Even with fair trade, the global south is territorializes as a net exporter of consumer goods and placed at an overall disadvantage in power relations with the north.

and if all that's not messed up enough, they guy next to me in the cyber cafe has been singing linkin park loud for 30 minutes. urgh. globalization: pretty much sucks right now.

in the jungle, the mighty jungle

2006-10-27T18:40:00.000-04:00

lions, as a matter of fact, don´t live in the jungle, they live exclusively in the plains...

I met Gustavo (my spanish teacher and travel partner for the week) early on sunday morning at Quito´s main bus station. We were the first on the bus heading south and east to Tena, on of the main cities of Ecudor´s eastern region, and the gateway to the Amazon. as it left the station there were only a few other riders on the bus, but within 100 yards of leaving the station gates, the bus was packed, standing room only, without actually coming to a stop. Because there is a .50$ tax on tickets purchased at the station proper, people congregate just outside to hop onto the slowly rolling busses. 5 hours, and 2 Schwazenegger masterpeices later we arrived in Tena. The ride had been pretty spectacular, riding east through the Sierra and eventually down through the cloud forest, where the drizzle actually made things more dramatic, and eventually into the amazon basin. We left Tena itself pretty quickly, onto the Shangrila cabins, built like a peterpan/swiss family robinson tree house on the top of a cliff looking back west over the rio anzu and a strectch of secondary (aka once a rubber plantation) forest to the mountains.

In the mornings we had steamy sessions with that most impenetrable, confounding, and doubt ridden of subjects, el subjuntivo...our first afternoon we went to explore the canyons with Jose, who told us about the medicinal plants we passed along the way (one is to repel snakes). The canyons were two very narropw gorges formed over time by two tiny trickles of water, that I assume are a bit bigger after some rain. We climbed down into the first, walked down it until it met the second, then walked upstream as that canyon narrowed and narrowed until we eventually had to shimey up and out of it. The next day we caught a ride up river and tubed back down, stopping on the way to visit a small (80 person, 2 family, 2 soccer field) community on the river. After three nights at Shangrila we headed off to our second base, the Amarongatchi Cabins. We caught an early ride back through Tena in Mauricio´s pickup; to get to these second cabins we drove to the end of the paved road out of Tena (about 10 miles) and then along the unpaved section for another 6 or so...we rode over a rickety ´temporary´ bridge that had been there since a huge storm in march washed out the real one; ´they told us they´d replace it by august´ said Mauricio, ´but i suppose its not technically lying since they didn´t say august of which year´.

Later that morning we hiked through the primary (meaning only native plants) forest to a small river which we followed upstream for 2 hours until we reached a series of 3 huge waterfalls. Jose scrambled up first, tied a rope around boulders, then dropped it down to us so we could walk up the falls. The second of the three had a perfect little swimin´hole at the bottom so we stopped for 20 minutes to cool off. The next afternoon we hiked to the end of the road, where a less dramatic (less long/steep) waterfall dropped into the Rio Grande. About two thirds of the way down the falls was a pool, about 10 yards square and 10 feet deep, the best swimin´hole ever (sorry rappahanock)...Gustavo, Jose, Eduardo, and I spent about an hour hangin out on the rocks on the edge, jumping into the pool, and using the falls as a waterslide. When we finshed we hoped into the tubes we´d brought with us and floated down the river back to the cabins. That night it rained. From about 6 to 10, and again, for good measure, from 2-4 as hard as possible. The four of sheltered in the dinning room playing round after round of cuarenta (Ecuador´s most popular cardgame) by candlelight. The next morning Gustavo and I were due to leave, and we waited at the edge of the road for our ride. and waited, and waited. eventually a boy rode by on a bike and told us the news: last night´s storm washed out the bridge, no trucks were getting past. So we walked, and walked, and walked. A few hours later we arrived at the paved road and bus (luckily one had been caught on our side of the bridge) was idling. We sprinted to it (idling is a rare state for Ecuadorian buses, they dont sit still for long) and hoped on for a ride the last few miles to bridge. We clambered over the remains to the otherside where Mauricio was waiting for us. Back in tena we drank a tall glass of pinapple juice and caught the nxt bus to Quito, 5 hours and a Big Moma´s House marathon (¿they made a sequel?) later we arrived, exhausted.

the welcoming party at shangrila

view from the cabin, not too shabby

swimin hole!

the fourposter bed of the tropics

this bird couldnt even talk

gustavo playing cards

on the bus ride home

in which i conquer my fear of volcanoes

2006-10-21T23:22:00.000-04:00

when i was about 7 or 8, i went to see a documentary at the air and space museum´s fancy 3-d surround sight&soound movie theater. the name of the movie was RING OF FIRE or something very similar. it was about all the volcanoes on the pacific rim and the pacific islands and had tons and tons of footage of volcanoes blowing up and lava flowing out and shit getting fucked up. i.was.terrified. for the next few nights i worried about what would happen when (not if, when) a volcano would blow up and fuck everything i knew up. i created plans of what stuff i would grab as i fled my house (my giant world map, and my rabbit) to who knows where. it didnt really bother me that the closest volcano to reston virginia is in washington state...all i knew was that lava was fucking scary and would probably get at me no matter what...since then i´ve come in contact with a few volcanos with minimal flashbacks, but ecuador is the land of the volcano. i live in the shadow of one (pichincha) and everywhere i go there´re new ones, waiting. so in the last few weeks i´ve done a lot to finally put to bed my first phobia. (photos at the end)
stage 1 - Cubilche

this was a pretty easy first step, given that Cubilche is long extinct and poses no threat to anyone...excepts idiots like me and the few others from spanish school that decide to walk up it. we left quito on friday afternoon, heading north to the small village of la esperanza at the base of Cubilche and the active Imbabura...saturday morning bright and early we met up with our guide (during the week a constrcution worker in nearby Ibarra, afterwork a marathon runner, and mountain treker) who lead us up the country road to where the assent really started. it took about 3 breathless hours to get to the top, where there was a pretty little lake...on the way down and around, we got a pretty sweet view of Cayambe, another volcano, this one snow capped...long day, but a good start

stage 2 - pichincha

this is quito´s volcano. there is a gondola that runs up to about 4100m above sea level (you figure it out) and from there you can walk up and up to the sumit. Pichincha is still active, in 1999 it spewed loads of smoke and crap ove quito, its a few years overdue for a major eruption too, so watch it. after the ride up, i had a wander round, admired the views over all of quito, wondered what the hell a horse was doing up there, and rode back down...in the gondola with me was a friendly guy called jorge, we chatted about all sorts of things (mountians predictably, music he was a huge pink floyd and ¿thunderwing? fan, and then he asked me if i believed in aliens...at first i thought he was talking about god because he kept pointing at the sky, so i was honest and said no...as soon as he started talking about green things and flying plates i realized my mistake and quickly changed my answer to ´who knows, there´s a lot of space out there´)

stage 3 - cotopaxi

cotopaxi is ecuador´s most picturesque volcano, its about an hour´s drive south of quito. its active, and due to blow up big time in the next 15 years or so...it has already destroyed the city of Latacunga three times, and will do it again (or so says the guide). for this one i took a trip`with a mountain biking outfit that sends people up mountains in jeeps, and then lets them fly down on bikes...(i was sold withing 2 seconds). we arrived at the gravelly parking lot on the volcano´s south slope at about 8am, then camilo (a guy from quito doing the same trip) and i walked uphill for about 45 minutes to the climber´s refuge. climbers usually spend the night here to get aclimatized to the altitude before waking up early to takle to glaciers on the way up to the summit...once we got back down to the jeep we picked our bikes off the roof and started down. the road is unpaved and a bit rough, at times it felt like riding over a kiddy sand pit (full of kids) or a giant ashtray after a truck full of bricks had crashed...after about an hour of racing down hill we got to a little lake, where we had lunch, then we rode around the volcano for another 2 hours to the park exit and got back in the jeep...

so thats that...and here´s the evidence-

stage 1

looking down culbilce from about a third of the way up

moutain lake...looked a bit cold for a swim

there had been a fire at the sumit, it looked like the moon

cayambe on the way down

stage 2

some douchebag blocking my view of pichincha

how the fuck did this horse get up here? the gondola?

old town quito from pichincha...that statue is of a giant virgin

new town quito...mountain in the background is Cayambe

this is the area i live in

stage 3

cotopaxi

glaciers at the peak

riding down

lake...i forgot the name of the mountains in the back, but they are inbetween the highway and cotopaxi...they look mighty like a bird with spread wings

the road out of the park

todo va bien

2006-10-06T13:58:00.000-04:00

well, quito.

surrounded by the andes it sprawls north to south for ever and ever. but some neighborhoods are prettier than others...claro.

Guapulo is among the nicest. on the backside of one of the mountains, this is the "bohemian" neighborhood. because it´s so steep, no houses are actually next to each other, and people have gone to extreme lengths to build houses that reject the hill. but the inequality in the city is as evident here as in most other neighborhoods

the skyscrapers in the background are apartments in one of Quito´s swankiest neighborhoods...houses like the one in the foreground are squeezed inbetween. the neighborhood i live in is not the prettiest, but there is a lot of life in streets...garages are turned into convenience stores, cafes, tailors, and shops turning what was originally planned as a residencial area into a mixed use one with storefronts on the streets and apartements in the buildings behind. The neighborhood is in the center of the valley, and if you walk up the hills in either direction you find universities...la universidad central (the only public university in quito) on one side, and the universidad catolica on the other. the result is a fairly lively neighborhood inbetween.

way in the north of the city is the stadium where Liga de Quito play their home games.

Last sunday they played out a 3-3 tie with their rivals Barcelona de Guayquil...the stadium was full and everyone was singing and jumping for the whole game...guyaquil fans in the tier above ours took things pretty seriously, throwing dirty water and peices of shit down onthe the quito fans below when Liga scored the equalizer...

im hesitant to say it but maybe somethings have universal significance...

quito, ecuador--->

timbuktu, mali--->

besides wu-tang, the graffiti is mainly political, and mostly anarchist, with lots of references ot the upcoming elections and the TLC (free trade ageement)..."don´t vote, disobey" is a popular tag as is "la policia nacional, la policia criminal".

here i go again on my own...

2006-08-29T12:41:00.001-04:00

so here's my plan:
on sept 29th i'm flying to Quito, Ecuador for 6 weeks taking classes at the vida verde spanish center. Hopefully my spanish will be good enough for me to make may way through Peru, Bolivia, and nothern Chile without too much adoo. When i get to Santiago, I have an internship with amnesty international's office in there starting in january; i'm not entirely sure what i'll be doing on a day to day basis, but right now i'm hoping i can do something involving documentary photography. So, i'll be in Chile till june/july, and after that, who knows?...email me your address if i don't already have it and i'll send a postcard or if you want a penpal...i won't have a permanent adress to recieve mail at until january but i can recieve keyboard-mail and reply in pen-format.