Ok, now we´re getting a bit more recent.
7/11-7/21 - My first day in Iquitos was a lot of fun. I´m sure it was partly because I was off of the lancha, but still in my journal I was going on and on about it. I decided to explore Belen market as my first activity and was blown away by what I found: First of all, there are huge black vultures all over the market eating whatever meat by-products fall onto the ground. You can also find turtle eggs, turtle meat, wild jungle pig (all technically illegal), all kinds of amazing fish, and stand after stand full of products fresh from the jungle. Some of the meat stands were pretty gruesome, but interesting if you´re into public markets, which I am.
Belen is a district of Iquitos that used to be the slum where all of the workers in the rubber plants live. Although I was there during the dry season, for about nince months out of the year, the neighborhood is all floating or on stilts. Its affectionately known as the Venice of Peru. The market is fairly safe, but venturing deeper into Belen can be a bit dangerous without a guide. Guides are not hard to come by and I found one who would give me a half hour tour for about 3 bucks. He took me out on a boat so I could see the whole neighborhood. Its still very much a slum. There was lots of trash, people bathing, washing clothes, and using the river as a toilet. He explained to me that every morning there are ferries that go into the jungle so the people can hunt, fish, or gather their goods for the day and bring them back to the market. This all happens before the average tourist even wakes up. Its obvious the people in the jungle work incredibly hard to make their living.
I was staying at a really cheap with not many people around, but the following day a group arrived who was attending the shamanistic conference that was in town that week. It was the right week to be in town because the conference brings a pretty interesting group of gringos to Iquitos. Talking with them really brought me back to my sophomore year of college when my friend Doug introduced me to some good literature about different research on hallucinogenic substances. If anyone is interested in a great read, I recommend Food of the Gods by Terrence McKenna. He is a hero to many of the people at the conference, and although he is dead, his brother was speaking there. He writes about the co-evolution of plants and humans and the use of hallucinogenic plants that occurred in throughout history in countless cultures and why it is frowned upon in Occidental society. It was pretty interesting stuff for someone who likes psychology and the type of book you probably won´t find in your average college course. Since Iquitos, my reading has shifted away from the more political things I had been reading for the last year or so back to spiritual, philosophical books.
Anyway, I had some great conversations with the people at my hostel even though I think they are getting a bit ripped off by the conference promoters and the shamans who attend them. Shamanism and business aren´t supposed to go hand in hand, but thats kind of how it goes today. Many people who claim to be shamans are just people who know how to prepare San Pedro or Ayahuasca with no more heightened spiritual awareness than your average Joe.
Iquitos was also the jumping off point for my first WWOOF experience. WWOOF is an organization that helps volunteers find farms to work and live on. I won´t dwell on this for long, but it was basically a bunch of young guys trying to start a rainbow community. A great idea but they were executing really poorly. They didn´t have much food and I immediately had stomach problems from the water, food, or a combo of both and left after three days. Afterwards, I found out from a friend that there were also darker things brewing there as well that might have given me stomach problems. There just was not good energy there and I was really happy and much healthier after I left.
7/21-8/6 - I spent my last couple days in Iquitos with James, a Scottish/Canadian. He was one of the people for the conference and gave me some good book recommendations and was fun to hang out with. From Iquitos, I hopped on another cargo boat, this time to Yurimaguas, to make my way to the Ecuadorian border. After about 5 minutes I knew this would be a better boat ride. There was more space, it was cooler, and it actually took off on time! I quickly befriended a German girl who was also a psychology graduate looking for something else to do with her life. She is in South America to study medicinal plants and has traveled all over the world. It was fun to have someone my age and with a similar background to chat with on the boat ride. I could actually enjoy the view as we went down the river toward Yurimaguas. Food on the Eduardo II ended up being 10x better than the Henry too.
Well, it turned out that my German friend was headed toward the Ecuadorian border too, so we decided to travel together. I had read about a city called Huancabamba which was deep the mountains of northern Peru and off the beaten path. It would be a bit of a journey to get there, but like Iquitos, its also a center for medicical plants and shamanism. We were both up for the challenge and started toward Huancabamba traveling by camioneta (pick-up truck) and camión (big truck). I have to say, this is the way to travel. Its cheap and you´re just out in the open air with whatever cargo the truckers happen to be taking.
I have to talk a bit about Huarmaca. Its a tiny district south east of Huancabamba. Now, the 99% or more of tourists go to Huancabamba from Piura, a major city to the west, but we were coming from the east and it seemed more logical not to go all the way to Piura just to backtrack to Huancabamba, so we took the alternate route. 2nd example of distance meaning nothing in terms of time. After a couple hops on camionetas, we were somewhat stranded in Huarmaca.
Well, we were the talk of the town in Huarmaca. We were 2 of 5 gringos that had been through that town in the last 5 years or so and people were fascinated by us. My friend is tall, blue-eyed, with long blonde dreadlocks and I have a beard and my hair is getting long, so its not like we were going to hide anywhere. Whereever we went, a crowd followed us, whispering, snickering, and it was just bizarre how they acted toward us. I felt like an animal on display. They would watch us eat like they had never seen people eat before. She had it worse because people all wanted to touch her dreadlocks and I think they just generally gave me more space because I was a man. One kid even threw a rock at her and everywhere kids and adults shouted GRINGO! Its probably the most uncomfortable I have ever felt in a town.
Although it was very uncomfortable, I was introduced to the greatest drink ever in Huarmaca, so I will always have one positive memory there. EMOLIENTE. Oh man, emoliente is a kind of herbal tea made with flax seed, aloe vera, and all kinds of other healthy natural ingredients found all over Peru. Each person who has an emoliente cart makes it a bit differently, but its always delicious. I can´t believe it took me 3 months to find it. I think its kind of like platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter. You can´t see it until someone tells you about it, but now its the first thing I seek out in the morning I´m in a new city. They have it here in Ecuador too, but its called aguita de sabila (Aloe vera tea) and its generally not as good.
The next stop was Tunas where we stayed with an amazing Peruvian family. They were so generous toward us and everyone in this tiny town was polite, friendly, and intelligent. Mingas, the son of a farmer who had worked in the town since it was an hacienda owned by a Czech family cooked for us, took us on a hike, and let us stay in their house without asking anything from us. They also grow all natural coffee all over the region and I enjoyed the best cup of coffee I´ve ever had in my life there. I later visited him again in Piura where he works and goes to school.
After about 5 or 6 days and a marathon 7 hour ride on the back of a truck, we finally arrived in Huancabamba. It was well worth the wait. Beautiful scenery, friendly people, a beautiful market, and high quality emoliente. We also found a hostel for about 2 bucks a night. We were there 5 days and I ended up staying for free by trading a couple t shirts and my basketball shorts for my accommodation. It was a good way to make some space in my bag. I also bought my first real souvenier, a handmade wool poncho which I mainly use as a yoga mat. It hasn´t been cold enough yet to warrant a poncho. After that, she headed to the coast and I made my way to the border of Ecuador to avoid a big fine by overstaying my visa.
Well, I still haven´t covered my two weeks in Ecuador, but I´ll do that in a few days. I hope this isn´t too sloppy. I don´t really have time to edit it.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Catch-up Part 1: From Arequipa to Iquitos
Time to dust off the ol´blog for an update. Since I´m so far behind, I´m going to do this in 2-3 posts. Luckily I keep a detailed journal of my own so it should be pretty accurate. I´m currently in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
6/23-7/1 - After Arequipa, I made my way to Huaraz which is southern/central Peru. Its known for its picturesque mountain settings and great hiking. Basically everyone who came through the hostel I worked at recommended it, so I said my goodbyes to my Ariquipeñan crew and hit the road. My original plan was to do the Santa Cruz trek which is pretty touristy and not too challenging. Its about 3-4 days depending on how fast you want to go and I was feeling under the weather at the time, so it seemed like all I was up for on my own. Well, when you have no plans, they tend to change and Huaraz was no exception.
On my first full day in Huaraz, a Belgian (David) and another American (Cody) approached me at the hostel with an offer to go on a 9-day trek though the Huayhuash Cordillera. They were pretty cool guys. Both a bit older than me and turned out to be much better hikers. If you look for rankings of most beautiful hikes in the world, this is up there with the Himalayas. They had found an amazing deal to do the hike with a guide and an arriero (donkey man), but they needed a third person. I mulled it over for a bit and later that day told them I was in. I was sick, but it was one of those offers you can´t refuse.
We left the next day for a pueblito where the hike starts. The first day was a bit rocky because there had been a party the night before and all the arrieros in town were too hung over to work. We ended up leaving late and it cut a day off of our hike. For me, this hike had some of the most physically challenging days of my life. My month as a hostel bartender didn´t exactly leave me in the best shape and I didn´t give myself enough time to acclamate to the altitude so I was constantly the weak link. Plus, we were camping at such high altitudes that we woke up to ice on our tent every morning. On the 5th day, we hiked 22k and crossed two passes that were over 5,000 meters. The effort was all worth it when you got to the tops of the passes though. The
views even topped what I saw on the Inca trail.
Although being in the mountains for 8 days, away from civilization was visually stunning, physically rewarding, and mentally cleansing, it didn´t have the impact that on me that the hike to Machu Picchu did. Part of it was the lack of my friends being there, but Machu Picchu has a definite spiritual pull thats like nothing I´ve ever experienced. After the fresh air and physical activity I was ready for my journey Iquitos.
7/2-7/10 From Huaraz, I needed to get to Pucallpa, a small port city where you can catch a cargo boat to Iquitos (4-5 days). All the guide books suggest using Yurimaguas (3-4 days) en route to Iquitos. It is a shorter boat ride, but I was ¨closer¨ to Pucallpa so I decided I would go there. This was my first real experience with how little physical proximity and length of time it gets to get somewhere have to do with each other. I had to hop from small town to small town hoping to finally make it to Pucallpa. For the first time I was really off the gringo trail and got a lot of wide-eyed looks and ¨Whoa! Gringo!¨ from the campesinos. Finally I got to Pucallpa, bought a hammock which would be my bed for the next 6 days!
The boat ride ended up being somewhat of a nightmare. I got onto a boat on Sunday afternoon which was not scheduled to take off until Monday morning. The captain said I could sleep on the boat so I decided to save my spot, save money on a hostel, and get used to living on a boat and spent Sunday night on the Henry II. Well, the boat didn´t leave in the morning...or the afternoon...or at night. I spent my 4th of July on a boat with 100s of restless Peruvians and their crying babies sweating my ass off and thinking about why I didn´t listen to the guide book. Around 6 pm, they told us that there was contraband in the cargo which had suspended our departure for that day.
On Tuesday, we finally took off. The wind from the movement cooled it off a little, but when you´re packed into a cargo ship making your way in the Amazon its not too comfortable. When I say packed, I mean my knees were touching the guy next to me. Also, I can´t say enough about the crying babies and negligent parents. It was horrible.
It wasn´t all bad though. I made a couple buddies so my belongings were always safe and had ample time to read, write, and people watch. Out of maybe 200 people on the boat, I was the only one with a book! Literally, the only one. I talked about this with some of the older guys on the boat and they described to me the awful/non-existant state of the Peruvian public education system. Some of the responsibility of education has to fall on families though. Parents could use that time on the boat to read to their kids instead of letting them run wild. It really made me appreciate the teachers, family, and friends that always encouraged me to expand my mind through reading, travelling, turning off the TV, or whatever it takes to get your brain active. Yes, poor education can be blamed largely on economic/government problems, but I met people with much less money who were more educated than the people I came across on that boat ride and it was due to their family(I´ll get to them in part 2).
The craziest night on the boat was started when we ran aground. Since it was the dry season, the water was a bit low. It was about midnight and the boat lurched to a stop, people started screaming, and the lights came on. Everone had calmed down and when I heard, ¨PAPI!¨ from right behind me and a girl started having a seizure. Everyone gathered around and yelled advice like ¨Put keys in her mouth!¨ which sounded insane. Thankfully, there were no keys, but her family dealt with the situation and she was fine. After 45 minutes or so, the boat got moving again and we went to sleep.
Although the food that was included in the price of the ticket was pretty bad, there was a constant stream of people from each village that we would stop in that would come on board and sell their various products. Some of my favorites were:
Juanes - rice, egg, and chicken in a banana leaf
Humeda - really salty but delicious smoked fish
Aguaje - A fruit, but they take the juice and make it into a popsicle
Various homemade baked goods
Popcorn
After 6 grueling days on the boat, we arrived in Iquitos. I´ll pick up here tomorrow or maybe later today if I´m feeling ambitious.
6/23-7/1 - After Arequipa, I made my way to Huaraz which is southern/central Peru. Its known for its picturesque mountain settings and great hiking. Basically everyone who came through the hostel I worked at recommended it, so I said my goodbyes to my Ariquipeñan crew and hit the road. My original plan was to do the Santa Cruz trek which is pretty touristy and not too challenging. Its about 3-4 days depending on how fast you want to go and I was feeling under the weather at the time, so it seemed like all I was up for on my own. Well, when you have no plans, they tend to change and Huaraz was no exception.
On my first full day in Huaraz, a Belgian (David) and another American (Cody) approached me at the hostel with an offer to go on a 9-day trek though the Huayhuash Cordillera. They were pretty cool guys. Both a bit older than me and turned out to be much better hikers. If you look for rankings of most beautiful hikes in the world, this is up there with the Himalayas. They had found an amazing deal to do the hike with a guide and an arriero (donkey man), but they needed a third person. I mulled it over for a bit and later that day told them I was in. I was sick, but it was one of those offers you can´t refuse.
We left the next day for a pueblito where the hike starts. The first day was a bit rocky because there had been a party the night before and all the arrieros in town were too hung over to work. We ended up leaving late and it cut a day off of our hike. For me, this hike had some of the most physically challenging days of my life. My month as a hostel bartender didn´t exactly leave me in the best shape and I didn´t give myself enough time to acclamate to the altitude so I was constantly the weak link. Plus, we were camping at such high altitudes that we woke up to ice on our tent every morning. On the 5th day, we hiked 22k and crossed two passes that were over 5,000 meters. The effort was all worth it when you got to the tops of the passes though. The
views even topped what I saw on the Inca trail.
Although being in the mountains for 8 days, away from civilization was visually stunning, physically rewarding, and mentally cleansing, it didn´t have the impact that on me that the hike to Machu Picchu did. Part of it was the lack of my friends being there, but Machu Picchu has a definite spiritual pull thats like nothing I´ve ever experienced. After the fresh air and physical activity I was ready for my journey Iquitos.
7/2-7/10 From Huaraz, I needed to get to Pucallpa, a small port city where you can catch a cargo boat to Iquitos (4-5 days). All the guide books suggest using Yurimaguas (3-4 days) en route to Iquitos. It is a shorter boat ride, but I was ¨closer¨ to Pucallpa so I decided I would go there. This was my first real experience with how little physical proximity and length of time it gets to get somewhere have to do with each other. I had to hop from small town to small town hoping to finally make it to Pucallpa. For the first time I was really off the gringo trail and got a lot of wide-eyed looks and ¨Whoa! Gringo!¨ from the campesinos. Finally I got to Pucallpa, bought a hammock which would be my bed for the next 6 days!
The boat ride ended up being somewhat of a nightmare. I got onto a boat on Sunday afternoon which was not scheduled to take off until Monday morning. The captain said I could sleep on the boat so I decided to save my spot, save money on a hostel, and get used to living on a boat and spent Sunday night on the Henry II. Well, the boat didn´t leave in the morning...or the afternoon...or at night. I spent my 4th of July on a boat with 100s of restless Peruvians and their crying babies sweating my ass off and thinking about why I didn´t listen to the guide book. Around 6 pm, they told us that there was contraband in the cargo which had suspended our departure for that day.
On Tuesday, we finally took off. The wind from the movement cooled it off a little, but when you´re packed into a cargo ship making your way in the Amazon its not too comfortable. When I say packed, I mean my knees were touching the guy next to me. Also, I can´t say enough about the crying babies and negligent parents. It was horrible.
It wasn´t all bad though. I made a couple buddies so my belongings were always safe and had ample time to read, write, and people watch. Out of maybe 200 people on the boat, I was the only one with a book! Literally, the only one. I talked about this with some of the older guys on the boat and they described to me the awful/non-existant state of the Peruvian public education system. Some of the responsibility of education has to fall on families though. Parents could use that time on the boat to read to their kids instead of letting them run wild. It really made me appreciate the teachers, family, and friends that always encouraged me to expand my mind through reading, travelling, turning off the TV, or whatever it takes to get your brain active. Yes, poor education can be blamed largely on economic/government problems, but I met people with much less money who were more educated than the people I came across on that boat ride and it was due to their family(I´ll get to them in part 2).
The craziest night on the boat was started when we ran aground. Since it was the dry season, the water was a bit low. It was about midnight and the boat lurched to a stop, people started screaming, and the lights came on. Everone had calmed down and when I heard, ¨PAPI!¨ from right behind me and a girl started having a seizure. Everyone gathered around and yelled advice like ¨Put keys in her mouth!¨ which sounded insane. Thankfully, there were no keys, but her family dealt with the situation and she was fine. After 45 minutes or so, the boat got moving again and we went to sleep.
Although the food that was included in the price of the ticket was pretty bad, there was a constant stream of people from each village that we would stop in that would come on board and sell their various products. Some of my favorites were:
Juanes - rice, egg, and chicken in a banana leaf
Humeda - really salty but delicious smoked fish
Aguaje - A fruit, but they take the juice and make it into a popsicle
Various homemade baked goods
Popcorn
After 6 grueling days on the boat, we arrived in Iquitos. I´ll pick up here tomorrow or maybe later today if I´m feeling ambitious.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)