Sunday, March 29, 2009

Frozen in carbonite


This is my last day as a solo traveller. Tomorrow I meet two friends at our new apartment in Palermo Soho.

Time has flown by. I remember in Lima having some slight anxieties about the long stretch of weeks that laid before me. Actually, those anxieties, they weren't slight, not slight at all. I was damn worried, depressed even, and I kept asking myself: What have I got myself into? What the hell am I going to do here, in this crazy country, for the next 3 months?

But I can hardly believe that was me at all now. I miss Peru, I miss the people and the food. I never got to try the Guinea Pig roast, ha; there are many other cities I would have liked to see. And it seems I just flew right through Bolivia - what happened to Potosi? to Santiago? (the San Pedro prison tour...) The memory of these places flicker through me. Sparkle, fade, etc, etc...

As I said before - getting off the bus from Bolivia, into Chile — I felt like I left some stupefying circus, writhing and happy and dirt cheap. Like some kid terrified of a roller coaster, which he is persuaded to ride, and getting off, wishes the twisting, twirling steel-and-wood tracks would never come to their inevitable, terrible finish. I miss the roller coaster, although I hate it. Although it is reckless, dirty and cheap.

The essence of my trip is about to gain an entirely new flavour and formula; this writing is the nostalgia I am having for the first part - all things ineffable, I am trying to capture something about a brief part of my life which is all but over already. So brief and liquid it's hard to believe it happened at all - it is impossible to even really know what it is I am missing: but let's try to stick a few pegs around it.

I was alone and the people I met did not know me. Strangers all of them, and that made me a stranger too. There was no plan and no need to stay anywhere, or do anything. I spent days, too many, in Lima, not speaking a word of English. At least one third of the nights up there were in night busses, watching stars and finding constellations that don't exists in the skies back home; being the last one - every time - with the reading light on. Waking up too early, or too late, eating alone. My heart stopping almost every hour for the first two weeks from fear. Fear! That's the word.
The wonderful, horrible fear that existed for this first month and half, that is fading, is evaporating. What is left is the pulp, the idea of it: night bus to Trujillos; the cab driver who cursed me at the Huaca de Luna, only minutes after he drove off the road down a dirt path, through a twisting alley way of concrete , full of pariah dogs and chikens — scarred chicken missing feathers — he is trying to rob me— he says he is only taking an alternate route, and that the main one is closed. I grab on tight to my rucksack and ready myself to jump out of the yellow, rusted cab... wait, we have arrived. He tells me the cost is doubled and I tell him I am no estupido.... he spits on the ground at my feet and tells me I will regret it all. (Later, I see him waiting in the parking lot for me...I take the dirt path past the Huaca de Sol - a still buried temple - and get onto the collectivo mini bus. I ride back to town with farmers missing teeth, Peruvian wives and girls, and two perros sin pelo (dogs with no fur, sick black muts with tuffs of vomit coloured, wirey hair sparsely occuring on the muzzles and backs).

This alley way on Chile St., here in Buenos Aires, which I can't even explain or entirely remember.... I am with three Swedish boys, and we are looking for a bar party, and the American at the hostel has given us the wrong directions. It is three a.m. and a woman with her two toddlers playing in the shadows behind her - a normal sight here to see small kids on the street, playing with the stray dogs or eachother, at any hour - tells us that we are looking for this place, right there across the street. Foolishly the Swedes thank her, and offer her two pesos for the help - she inexplicably refuses the cash, perhaps because of the two police cars parked down the street, officers eye's trained on the gringos....the swedes foolish as always and very young meander into the dark building... inside a dark alley way...inside is not inside, but it is a roofless shanty court yard, a large wooden desk with a glass shield and a leading to this reception area is a line up of ten or twenty homeless, young and old, men. They lambast us all for our cigarettes and some spare change (monedas). This is not the party we are looking for, the Swedish boys are exhilirated and want to stay. They are buying drugs.... Watched the yolk -or pudding - sun come up over the Avenida de Mayo later that morning - this, after breaking into the rooftop terrace of a neighbouring hostel, and smashing the light sensor on the brick wall...

fear, destruction, discovery, some moments of absolute joy: this is life. And moments of absolutely loathing too. This is life?

I realize I have been very negative about the journey. Don't take it the wrong way. I am happy to be here, I think that I am generally a cynic with all things: anyway, I am just being honest. Traveling isn't all peaches and pancakes. It's difficult, it is scary (for me at least), but it is wonderful!

I am glad that this thing is over, this solo adventure, but that I want it to go on. It is better to leave something wanting more, then begging for it to be over. I'd rather be dragged out than dig my way out.


UPDATES:

- been searching for video camera person via craigslist because I start to work with SPIN Magazine this next week. Have at least 3 or 4 meetings set up with local boys and girls this week to meet a good partner. This is a good way to meet likeminded people.

- My laptop is working, it turned on for me, that little tease....

- book report to come this week on Miller's BLACK SPRING. Damn good, so good. Look our for it!

- if you haven't yet subscribed as a FOLLOWER to this blog, please do so now!

Thanks,


xot

Sunday, March 22, 2009

jo y bos

Mendoza. et puis et puis....

Helping a French woman with a script she has written. She studies cinema and is interested in documenting the radical changes taking place in France in the late 60s and the simultaneuous dictatorship reining at the time in Brazil. I told her I´m interested in these kind of things and we have been talking alot about it. Maybe she will need a researcher or extra writer. She says so, anyway. et puis et puis... shes assembled a neat narrative which follows a French journalist with Brazilian familly back into the jungle to rescue an old friend. Contexts are colourful and the climax et denouement occurs within Carnivale... I imagine.

I am in Mendoza, reading Henry M., and will be for a few days. Having fun and perhaps too much fun. Bike tour of wine country on Tuesday.

00000

List of bad stuff that has happebnned this week




- Yerba Mate. I bought a Mate, the gourd carved device used for drinking the Yerba, and a bombijja (the metal strainer and straw) but whilst I was being taught how to cure the receptacle, I noticed it was roto, broken, and so now it slowly leaks, cries. (see note on Yerba, at bottom).

- iBook G4. People said bringing a laptop with me was risky. It would get stolen or I would get mugged. Jesus. Well I was doing fine until yesterday or the day before... getting of the bus from Salta I hastily threw my waer bottle in the bag wuith the laptop. The lid wasnt snug, and the water entered expensive electronic exposing holes and now the screen hums and wont turn on. I hope the files, pictures, et al.. are secure and alive. (meanign no more picture uploads, for now, and likely much more difficult to work and write)

- vintage 1950s Raybans; stolen or lost at Salta hostel.

- sleeping bag; riding in trunk of some angry Bolivian cab driver. It fell off my bag and he took off, quick time.

- green sleeves. my cold has still not died.

- power. need yet another set of power adaptors, for Argentina has differnet plugs. Meanign I have no camera for a bit.

Good stuff;

- discovered Pancho V... hotdogs. Which are footlongs that are made with your choice from millions of salsa and sauces, and topped with mini french fries. Price; priceless.

- Arrived in Mendoza. Met locals and some guys from Miami who work here and hung out at their apartment in a posh neighbourhood.

- have been in touh with Spin Magazine and will likely start filing stories for them as soon as I am settled and find a cameraman in B.aires. makign my user profile tmro



AGENDA AND OTHER LISTS

- buy tailored wool suit in market for cheap , and buy new sun glasses

- grapple with my desire for a shaved beard vs. the coolness of having a huge beard and the naggign thought that this is THE best time to grow face hair

- if shave is a yes, find a barber that will do a wet shave. (and maybe get a trim too)

- spend no money on Monday (new day; no money mondays)

- read more write lots more


YERBA; you probably dont know about Mate and the huge ritual Argentines have for it. It is tea time with a bunch of friends who sit around with thermos full of hot water and they pass around the Mate pot in a circle. Its an herbal tea. It tastes rather bitter but some people add sugar, and other spices to make it sweeter. Everyone has their own die hard rituals and it takes 24 hours to get the MAte ready for use for the first time - to cure it - which is what I am doing right now. Needless to say Yerba is a good way to make friends if you are a lonely traveler in Argentina, or Uruguay.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Salta'd

Last night a few friends and I went grocery shopping, here in Salta, a city at the northern end of vast Argentina. We bought four nice sized steaks and three bottles of red wine for under 10 dollars. Then we walked into the Plaza market and somehow got sucked into a casino; it took about half an hour to learn how to play the poker game, and about an hour to lose our 20 pesos each. Salta is fast and beautiful; I've probably had too much of the street meat, but it is all so good.

Not sure the plan yet, but might be headed to Mendoza tomorrow before finally arriving in Buenos Aires. But it's not exactly on the way: it's a 20 hour bus ride from Salta, and then once I leave Mendoza, it would be another 20 hours to BA. Yeah wine country and al of that, sounds good, but haven't really decided if its better to go solo and see all the other citites in between; Che is born in Rosario, Cordoba sounds exciting and uni-town-ish, etc...: these British friends of mine are going and I'm trying to figure out the plan.

Sad to have left behind the relative 3rd worldness of Bolivia and Peru now that it's gone. Trite to say it, but I am chastened from not having bought enough cheap Al Paca sweaters (only one, which I don't like much now) and cool leather goods. I didn't realize how different, and much more expensive this world would be. Getting into Chile felt like leaving the circus. All a sudden the roads are paved and the waiters expect tip.

Last week (I think), I travelled through the salt desert in Bolivia. At times, the vast white vista would reflect the sky (a thin layer of rain) and there would be nothing to tell you you weren't floating in heaven, except for the ground under your feet or the magic, enormous horizon of dead volcanoes. After a day of that you get into Salvador Dali territory (literaly, you see some places that he used as background for his work)... giant stone trees, smooth valleys and plateaux of brown sand desert, ornamented with stone obelisks and snow peaked volcano. (No hundred foot tall elephant nor gigantic eggs, however...)

Slept in salt hotel on outskirts of this tiny, beautiful city in the desert, where we bought wine (of course) and played cards with the other tourists, after taking in the sun set.... At night the skies twinkled as in Disney movies. The stars on and off like millions of beacons... bright... Orion the only one I can recognize (I think actually, someone told me, that the Southern Hemi stars are completely different...all except Orion and his bright, definitive Beetlejuice.. maybe his dogs - Cerebus...?....) The southern cross, what looks like teh big dipper upside down. I remember the second night walking 20 metres away from the camp and being completely lost in the sky for about 20 minutes. Later when the moon was out it was easier to walk...

I even met a Basque photo journalist, working freelance in San Pedro de Atacama (the entrance, beautiful, city ion Chile from the Bolivia border..I stayed one night...). He was a doc filmmaker in this town once and now was back to take some pictures, of all things, of the stars from Atacama observatory. Good life, good job, makes me wonder...

Have been trying to figure out the plan for summer. It was my One Month anniversary for taking off a few days ago (St Pats day I think...) Go sailing the Baltic? Live and learn on some boat which I have no idea how to work, but defintely would love to learn how... or get a job writing or something in Canada...(I am waiting on an offer, I hope, from the Montreal english daily.) Anyway: anyway: anyway: it's taking up a lot of thought.

BOOK REPORT:

just finished Lowry's UNDER THE VOLCANO. It is the most beautifully written, and yet awfully depressing, book I have read. A masterpiece work for its narrative - the plot takes place in one day, the day of the dead, in a small Mexican town, in the life of an ex-British consul...but it occupies a Shakespearian sort of eternity. I think it is mostly a Adam and Eve type story (the woman's name is Yvonne...) an attempt to sneak back in the garden. Or a lament of the fallen state of things (love, his own life). But what is lost is lost.

Lowry is either a Canadian or a Brit, depending who you ask. Canada in the book occupies the role of New Eden. The Mexico is hell (or not Mexico, but the self imposed vision, mythology, of the Mexico, is... I do it too, I have been doing it, mythologizing the difference of the people here... my hell. My heaven.)

The fact that 300 pages are here weaved and the plot lasts only hours, and stays stressful, interesting, tense, till the end, is wonderful, impressive. When traveling you are supposed to give up your books once read...but I love the verse so much I might read again. Or I might retype the parts I really loved to learn the poetry of them, to realize maybe how to do it... (a trick picked up from Hunter S Thompson, who used to retype Melville. And Melville probably did for Shakespeare...and so on... "you can see where the great tide has finally receded"...)

TODAY: gondola ride up Salta's volcano, bus station, laundry, and relax and write.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

La Peace

Safe in Uyuni, and 1 hour away from embarking on a 3 day tour of the salt flats, via hired Jeep.

See you soon

T

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Going, good



Going to Bolivia tonight via Puno; maybe I will meet some of Che's assassins. Lots of news coming from Bolivia, especially with the new president and the naturalizing of the country's many resources, including the giant salt flats and gas reserves. (Bolivia is probably the most resource rich country in South America, but is definitely the poorest as far as the people go.)

Enough of this. Will write back once I have something to write about.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Last days in Cuzco - I think

Well, last night was an OK little party here at the hostal,met some nice people and a good time, but it's just the same bunch of rowdy Australians everywhere I go, so I think it's packing up time once again.

I want to leave to Puno tomorrow or tonight and somehow hop on another bus from there to Copacabana, which is Bolivia. Both towns are located on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the world's highest "navigable" lake, and where the first Incas were created, as the myth goes.

Anyway: initially I was going to be traveling with a Argentine friend (is name is either Diego or Martin, depending on what time of day you ask him, and if you are a woman or not), but I think we fought last night (I say "think" because its impossible to understand Argentine spanish, especially Cordovan, and all I remember is him grimacing at me as he went to his hostal room and shut off the lights. Anyway, he is asking me to lend him cash and also to wait until wednesday to leave. Both requests are not appealing, and not doing either.

However, neither does going solo to La Paz, a city of much turbulence and kidnappings, sound very good. Well, I may just end up waiting for him at Copa and go from there. We are supposed to head through Bolivia and to the north of Argentina to his home. Solo's not the worst and I definitely won't be partying solo when I get anywhere. (Maybe I just won't go out..get a nice hotel with a desk and a view). I'll just have to make new friends. Easy.

---

It is 9:45 am and Frances, the Cusquenan who works the desk here at the hostal, just bought me a giant beer. I started by saying no thanks, but... "When in Rome," I guess...

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Hot water

I am here at the Presidente in Agua Calientes, a village at the base of a network of old and new mountains, including Machu Pichu, that surround it. The town is divided in three by a set of train tracks and the great brown river Urubamba. The prices are jacked and the rum is very expensive; I am surrounded by about a thousand other trekkers who just saw the hidden city too.

When the blue Peru Rail trains arent passing by, the train tracks become pedestrian - children play tug of war on opposite tracks with sticks, the indian workers haul heavy cables and cement mix up and down. It was sunny today and it rained heavily for about an hour at 2. I ate pizza and got sick from the lemonade.

My last four days were hard and my knees are killing me. But I have spent the last few hours exploring the town and sitting on my hotel patio overlooking the river with my new friend Pete, who is 70 years old and who walked the trail with me for four days straight - amazingly, really, since I almost died myself, it felt like.

Today I saw Machu Pichu. We woke at 4 am and ate oatmeal and drank coca leaf tea before setting off to teh check point, which opened at 5:30. I raced down the old Inca trail of slippery stones and terrifying cliff to make it to the sun gate by about 8 ish. I enjoyed the historic and post card vista for a while, on my own for a bit, but my knees were so destroyed from the days before that the climb down to the old complex of Machu Pichu took longer than it did for the peach faced and white haired tourists who had come for just the day by bus or train -- arguing about the altitude as they rub sun tan lotion over their pug faces. Oh well.

Day two was absolutelty the most challenging. From the camp, it is about 1100 metres up to reach the first pass.. which is well over 4100 metres above sea level. A steep up, where I amused myself by speaking to the mountains. For the most part I was all alone and chewed coca leaf. The problem was I didnt drink any water, and as the day was over, I was drenched by the Andes rain and well dehydrated. Once you get to the top, it is all down for two more hours, and you havent even eaten lunch yet. The down is the hardest, they say. But the climb up was mystical and tortuous, like something from Dante or some bad routine of Naked Lunch.

Peter is a good man. He wanted to get a good picture of the Urumbamba before getting on his train. But I knew he liked rum and decided it would be better to first settle on the patio of my hostel and have a few before exploring.

"Theres this poem, and in it, the man wants to learn all there is to know. So he buys a complete set of the Encycolpedia Britannica and reads it from A to Z," Pete is telling as the river rushes past. "Except the only thing is, once he finishes he dies, --- ´and the only ones who feasted upon his knowledge were the worms"

Here is a man who admits hes got tonnes of books in him. But given that hes an engineer and, once retired was diagnosed a dislexic, he admits he cant write adamn word. Now, I tell "well thats why Im here... I guess. I can write, or at least, I WANT to. But I dont have a book in me."

I bought these four screaming happy kids ice cream and let them play with my camera after Pete and I watched them play tug of war on the tracks for a bit. Immediately I felt a tidal wave, sort of, shift between me and this city.

Pete sailed across the Atlantic on his own. He is trading in his London house to buy a nice new sail boat and is going to sail the Baltic in May and then in September go somewhere very south from Liverpool, his home. Im not sure, but he firmly shook my hand and said Im welcome as crew, for definite, if I wanted.

My friends, although this trip has been more work than play so far, I am glad to be here. Experience is life.

"I dont care if if I die tomorrow, but I plan on using life as much as I can until I do." Peter Marksman, 70. I hope you live, but if you dont, I hope you die in yer boots.