Her voice came through the satellite phone sounding strange. Like it held emotions so big that they couldn’t possibly fit through the small holes in the speaker.
“It’s so good to hear your voice,” we told each other. Then awkward silence. What do you say to someone who you’ve spent hours and hours searching for, while not expecting to find anything more than a body?
“I love you.”
The last thing I blogged about was Christmas. What’s left of the aspiring professional in me wants to catch up, but I’m not going to do that. That’s because I really don’t want to write about New Year’s Eve, which is a story I told to someone and heard “Wow, that’s almost Bukowski-level” in response. I also don’t want to write about the endless, anxiety-ridden weeks of waiting for the boat, Otra Vida, to arrive in and leave again from Puerto Montt, even if they did feature a few really good hikes. And I definitely don’t want to write about the tense hours spent passing a “talking stick” around a circle in the boat’s cabin, after which I became the only remaining sojourning crew member of Otra Vida.
What I do want to write about is the passage across Golfo de Corcovado. Read More »
When I travel, there are often times when I find myself really questioning my own sanity. When I decided to hitch hike the 1,600km from San Pedro de Atacama to Valparaíso— by myself, in a country where I can’t understand a thing anyone says to me— it was one of those times. Read More »
When I tried to google information about the bus to Rurrenabaque, the first page of results consisted exclusively of DO NOT TAKE THIS BUS, THIS IS THE WORST BUS IN THE WORLD and ACTUAL BUS? OR CHARIOT TO HELL?
To the average person, I suspect this would suggest that maybe they shouldn’t take this bus. But to me, it sounded a lot like “Take this bus… I dare you!”
I embarrassed myself all the way through the collectivo ride from the hostel to the bus station with my incompetence and confusion, narrowly escaped being sold a taxi ride for double the price of the bus, had someone ask me if I was Argentinian (not sure why, but I’m taking that as a good sign), bought my ticket, strategically did not ask for the estimated time of arrival, and got on board. The bus was only half an hour late to leave and the only empty seat was next to me. It was an excellent start, and I felt great, except for a sore throat and a runny nose.
I hadn’t had a solid bowel movement in weeks, so I was in a state of mind where I really couldn’t take the little uncomfortable things my body did that seriously, so I wasn’t thinking too much of those symptoms. However, 10 minutes into the ride, they exploded into a full-on feverish delirium. Still, it wasn’t too bad. I had plenty of water and it was easier to sleep than I think it would have been otherwise. As we drove north into the humid air, my sore throat felt a lot better than it had in the incredibly dry mountain air of La Paz.
The border at Desaguadero, between Peru and Bolivia, was the definition of insanity. At 7am, I was woken up by the driver of my overnight bus shouting “Caminar! Caminar a la aduana!”
I grabbed my passport and immigration documents, shoved my feet into my boots, and stumbled out into the middle of a marketplace. It wasn’t one of those clean(ish) tourist markets. It was a genuine chaotic cesspool of strange food, cheap plastic crap, and tiny cholitas with giant loads on their backs pushing you out of their ways. People were shouting at me to buy all sorts of things that I’m not sure why I should ever want, and my sense of smell boarded a tilt-a-whirl, suddenly taking up way more of my consciousness than I’m used to. This classic South American phenomenon is a sensory overload even if you’ve had time to chill and have a cup of coffee before actively deciding to put yourself in the situation.
There were a few people on my bus who didn’t seem to be weirded out by this, so I tried to follow them, but almost straight away, they disappeared into the sea of people. Plan B was to just walk, because it wasn’t like I was just going to miss customs. I walked and walked, right over a bridge with a man hocking jeggings in between Peruvian and Bolivian flags. I wandered into Bolivia with my passport in my hand, dodging the people driving bicycle carts who whistled and yelled “Move Gringo!” at me. Eventually the road turned from rough pavement with piles of empanadas everywhere to dirt with piles of more dirt everywhere. At that point, I figured that I had definitely missed customs, so I went back. Read More »
At Colonial Hostel, travel finally became what I expected it to be: exploring incredible places, eating delicious food, dancing all night, and meeting awesome people (you guys know who you were, thanks your for making the hostel feel like home). The place itself was fantastic: toilet seats, toilet paper, clean rooms, comfy couches in the many common areas, a communal kitchen, a kitten named Waiki, and a 12 year old named Franco to show you goofy Spanish youtube videos if you ever looked like you weren’t doing anything.
After a wonderful week of just going with the flow, I figured it was time to actually do some of the things that I’d been dreaming of for months. The first thing I did was book myself a tour to Rainbow Mountain. Yes, a tour. I was cringing hard as I listened to the agent explain the itinerary and handed over the money. I was really not excited to get herded around the mountain in a group of 20 bumbling tourists, but there wasn’t any other way to get there unless I wanted to spend ridiculous amounts of money on a taxi from the last town to the trailhead. Read More »
The best way to tell how nice your hostel is in Peru is to take a quick look at the bathrooms. Does the toilet flush? If yes, then you probably won’t get too sick just from staying there. Is there a toilet seat? If there is, then it’s a pretty swanky place. Is there toilet paper? If there is, then you’re at a literal palace, you fucking princess. Don’t even bother checking the hot water in the shower. The answer is either “no” or “sometimes”. It’s best not to know until you have your towel in-hand, or you’ll never convince yourself to take a shower.Read More »
