Las Islas Flotantes

(Pics: 1st, On the boat tour of Lake Titicaca. 2nd, One of the Floating Islands. 3rd, Getting a taste of lake reed. 4th, Islanders singing us a song in Quechua. 5th, Me in a reed hut. 6th, Ready for school--waiting at the boat stop.)

March 30, 2009...
The weekend after Machu Picchu was crowded with things to do: laundry, blogging, unpacking, cleaning, running errands, dancing salsa, calling home, checking email, booking bus tickets to Puno. Half of these things did not get done. But I did catch up on my salsa, talked to Mom, got my laundry done, booked those tickets, began to settle into the apartment. I saw Renato out dancing Saturday night. It had been far too long; really nice to see him. Sunday night, Tyler and I met Jodi and Terry at the Trattoria during dinner. They were the sweet couple in their 50’s sitting at the table next to us who are from Florida and treated us to a steak dinner out of pure kindness and told us to be safe and call our parents.
Tyler and I have to renew our visas by the 10^th of April. We left at 7:00am today to catch an eight-hour bus to Puno that should have only taken six. Upon arriving, we immediately booked an overnight tour of the Floating Islands on Lake Titicaca and now here we are, sleeping in a reed hut.
Titicaca means, in Quechua, Great Puma. The condor, the Puma, and the snake are the praised animals of Peru. They are believed to be the protectors of sky and land. And Lake Titicaca just so happens to resemble the shape of a puma catching a rabbit when looked at upside-down on a map.
We’re in the midst of an amazing culture. So different from anything I’ve ever seen. A different world. It’s hard to imagine life at home carrying on. People going to school and work, traffic on the freeway. The freeway. Here, the sky is black at night and the stars are specks of lightning. Here, they make land, boats, houses, everything, from lake reed. Here, three little children put on their uniforms in the morning and paddle themselves in a boat to school. Here, they catch fish in their backyard and anchor town at night because of the strong winds. Here, it smells like earth and water and you journal at night by the light of a candle because there is no electricity. Here, it is peaceful and silent and still.

A Powerful Journey to the Old Mountain

(Pics: 1st, Beginning of the trail. 2nd, Taking a break. 3rd, Oh, the mud! 4th, Lunchtime. 5th, The Salkantay Glacier. 6th, Campsite, night 1.)

March 23, 2009...
The following is straight from my journal, so please forgive the randomness or non-fluidity…

Day 1:
Awesome. We ascended 400 meters today. Tough hike with our packs, but worth every wearied step. The first two days are supposed to be the hardest and coldest, and yea, it’s pretty cold. We woke up at 4:00am to be picked up at 4:40am by the minibus. Rode two hours to where we’d have a breakfast of bread and jam and begin our trek by 9:00am. It was a three and a half hour walk, mostly through ankle-deep mud, until we reached the lunch place…behind a shack in the middle of nowhere, served at a table and benches made from piled stones and slats of wood, beneath a straw-grass roof. Surrounded by tall green mountains with the rain pouring down around us, it was a beautiful lunch.
We left the lunch place at 1:30pm and walked another four hours to where we would camp and eat dinner. It continued to rain sporadically the entire time, even when the sun was shining. I eventually stopped taking off my blue plastic poncho and just left it on…it kept me warm anyway. By the time we reached the campsite I was exhausted and ready to take off my awesome, eighteen-dollars-at-the-black-market hiking boots and relax. It was a tough day and tomorrow is supposed to be harder; steeper, higher, less air, a further distance. I’m a bit nervous about it, but I know I’ll make it. Even if I have to crawl.
Dinner inside a tiny, tin-roofed shack, beneath the most incredible starry sky was amazing and everyone else on the trail seems really cool. There are eleven others; five loud, boisterous guys from Argentina, two guys and a girl from Belgium, a guy and a girl from Saint Louis, Missouri, and a guy from Israel. And our guide, Darwin, from Peru. During the meal, all kinds of languages were flying around like balls on a tennis court. I felt like a spectator at Wimbledon. While fascinating, it also makes me feel discouraged. Tyler’s Spanish is so good so the Argentineans were mainly talking to him and ignoring me. I don’t know how I’m going to get better with him around. I sort of lean on his Spanish like a crutch. Gotta stop doing that. And hearing these people switching from Flemish to English to French to Spanish faster than I can spell Hola makes me feel so inadequate. It really makes me question my desire to go back to school. Would I rather get my M.A. or become TEFL certified and travel the world, teaching English and learning new languages and cultures? I don’t know. But I have a big decision to make since I know I could start at SFSU in September (I got accepted a few days ago). I have a lot to think about…well, we wake up early tomorrow for Day 2, so I better get some sleep…














(Pics: 1st, Starting out. 2nd, At the highest point of the trail! 3rd, Lunchtime. 4th, Campsite, night 2.)

Day 2:
Looking at pretty mountains is so much easier than climbing them. Ascended over 600 meters today. The “hardest day” was really hard. We woke at about 5:30am, breakfast of pancakes by about 6:30am, on the trail by about 7:30am. It was steep and cold and there weren’t many good hiding places to go pee. But it was incredibly beautiful. Salkantay, we learned today, means “Powerful” in Quechua. No one has ever climbed to its peak and lived to tell about it.
At the start, on your left is the rushing white river, descending thousands of feet to bubble past you. All around are reaching, green mountains and on your right is another, climbing, stretching toward a clouded sky. Before you, between the distant pointed gullet of two touching foothills, you can see a towering wall, glowing white between dramatic steaks of gray-black. It is the face of the Salkantay glacier. As we ascended, the air got thinner, therefore, my breath shorter. Two hours later we reached the tallest point of the climb…4,653 meters (over 15,000 feet) above sea level. At this point, I was baffled as to why it wasn’t snowing. However, there was a heavy mist that began to soak through me. This mist turned into a constant downpour over the next five and a half hours as we crossed over countless different landscapes. We descended down muddy slopes (the mud was just as obnoxious today as yesterday) and rocks, in between boulders the size of houses, over rivers and across waterfalls, through swampish flatlands and into tropic-like forest. By the end, though I feel immense love and appreciation for my eighteen-dollar hiking boots that I bought at Molino (because they are sturdy, comfortable, and stayed pretty dry considering the land and weather), my shoes, pants, and sleeves were totally drenched. Like, dripping-drenched. Though it would seem I followed a sudden and unwise compulsion to dip my extremities into the river, this was not why my shoes, pants, and sleeves were soaked. It was because a bright blue plastic poncho has its limits and can only cover so much.
We reached the campsite around 5:30pm and I washed the crusted layer of mud out of my socks and pants and hung them out to dry along with my jacket and sweatshirt. The campsite is adorable. It is so much less than a tiny village that I don’t even know what to call it. There are four tin-roofed shacks here, some chickens and pigs, and a wooden fence surrounding. Lunch and dinner today were both riquisimo; I really like our cook. And now, at approximately 9:00pm, I close this entry by saying that I am vastly thankful for clear night skies in the middle of nowhere.
























(Pics: 1st, Starting out. 2nd, Crossing a waterfall. 3rd, Part of the river. 4th, Quick little monkey! 5th, Campsite, day 3. 6th, Hot springs!!)

Day 3:
The landscape is indescribably, unfailingly beautiful. I wish you could be here to see it. Because words and photographs cannot do it justice. The rushing rivers, the waterfalls bubbling over red and gray stones, the rickety wooden bridges that you slightly fear might collapse while crossing. The endless green in thriving jungle and sprawling mountains. The variety of beauty contained within a ten-mile distance is beyond dreaming. I wish you could have hiked it with me. To witness God’s astounding work while yet whispering to him secretly that if he erased mud from existence you would still die happy. Same as Day 2, we woke up at 5:30am, breakfast of omelets by 6:30am, walking by 7:30am. We only walked five and a half hours today instead of the usual seven or eight. After lunch, we went by van to the campsite. It was a fun, fast, slightly frightening ride through the winding mountains, driven by Darwin. When we arrived at the site, a tiny, chirping monkey was there to greet us. He was a ham. He sprang up through an open window and into the van, jumping around from seat to seat with wide, hyper eyes. Once we had chosen our tents and put our stuff down, we changed and headed for the big treat of Day 3…hot springs!!! They were like a resort paradise. In the midst of more mountains and waterfalls, three large pools to relax in and soak up the heat while drinking a beer from the onsite tienda. My muscles needed that, so sore from days of walking. And today my left knee began to cry out in powerful objection. It was screaming for me to stop for the final two hours, even as I limped to lighten its load. Anyway, the springs felt great. I felt like a limp noodle afterward, ready for dinner and sleep. The bus from the hot springs back to the campsite was like a discotec. The Argentineans are some of the rowdiest, funniest, merriest bunch of boys I have ever met. Constantly clapping their hands and belting out sing-a-longs in Spanish. Hearing their laughter makes me smile, even though the clapping kind of hurts my ears. I am so ready to sleep. We get to sleep in until 8:00am tomorrow! Need a good sleep-in for sure.







(Pics: 1st, Scary bridge. 2nd, The high jungle--banana tree to the left. 3rd, Coffee beans. 4th, Lunchtime! 5th, Tyler and I found a giant centipede friend.)

Day 4:
Today we didn’t have to wake so early. We got to choose our rising time, so we collectively picked 8:00am. Breakfast at 8:30am. The Argentineans were lagging like always, but especially because they’d all (basically everyone but me and Tyler) stayed awake until about 2:00am drinking and dancing. So we finally got walking at around half past ten. It was a hot day, walking first on a rocky, desert-like terrain. My knee had started really hurting on Day 3; enough to make me unable to really walk on it. So by Day 4 it was quite painful. I limped my way up and down and over the boulders. Eventually we came to the high jungle. This was extraordinary. Along the way you could find avocado, passion fruit, and banana trees all growing wild. And you could find tiny wild strawberries and coffee beans everywhere. We hiked through the high jungle for a long time, until we at last came to our lunch place. And by that time, my knee was in such pain I couldn’t bend it at all. So Lionel, one of the Belgians, lent me his spare knee brace. It seemed to help, along with a couple doses of Advil. It took three hours to hike to where we had lunch; on the second, open-air floor of a cute little restaurant. We had palta (avocado) and veggies, which was delicious. Then we walked the last three hours, over train tracks scattered with really annoying rocks, to Aguas Calientes—the small tourist town at the foot of the Machu Picchu mountain. Here, we settled into our hostel, took our first showers of the week, Tyler and I used the internet, and we all met at 7:30pm for dinner. We ate at a local restaurant and it was like a Thanksgiving feast! With trout, rice, yuca, pasta salad, fried cauliflower, and veggies. Great final meal with a celebratory beer to top it off! Tyler and I are going to bed immediately. We’ll be waking tomorrow morning by about 4:00am to begin the final climb to Machu Picchu by 4:30am. Eeesh!!















(Pics 1st, Early morning hike up the mountain from Aguas Calientes. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, Machu Picchu!!!! 6th, The hillside of Waynapicchu. 7th, View of Machu Picchu from the top of Waynapicchu.)

Day 5:
Machu Picchu day! It was rough waking up, but well worth it. The climb up there was so steep. Over 2,500 steps total, but not quite as hard as I thought it would be. Especially with my objectionable knee. We made it up the mountain in about an hour and twenty minutes. Early enough to ensure entrance to Waynapicchu, the neighbouring mountain with the best view, on which they only allow 400 people per day (the number allowed into Machu Picchu each day is unlimited). It was raining when we got up there, and then it was clear and sunny for a bit, and a few hours later it really started raining again. But Machu Picchu was impossibly stunning.
The name, in Quechua, means “Old Mountian.” And while the ruins do look old, with ancient crop terraces and pathways carved out of the mountain and built into gray stone temples, houses, walls, stairwells…they still appear brilliant. New in the way that they make you marvel, command you to stand still and try—try—to take it all in. The vivid contrast of spring-green grass and wild orchids in a centuries-old ashen world is like a collision of what you know and what you couldn’t have ever imagined. Surrounding mountains point high and disappear at their peaks into the misted white sky. These same mountains, their yellows and browns and reds all melt together and cascade down in innumerable patterns, until finally dripping into the brown river below and rushing east.
It was a marvellous place. The view of it from Waynapicchu was astounding. I wished I could have taken a piece of it with me; more than pictures and more than what is left in my memory…due to fade. I wished I could bring it home and show you what they built; the unfathomable world they created on that Old Mountain.

Approximately 52 Hours on Buses

(Pics: 1st, A plaza in Lima. 2nd, Hanging out in the Naylamp Hostel. 3rd, Ready to go surfing. 4th, Emma and me in Huanchaco. 5th, Tyler, me, the beach and some reed boats. 6th, Ruins being excavated in Trujillo. 7th, Dinner overlooking the plaza in Arequipa. 8th, A view of Cañon del Colca. 9th, A condor in flight.)

March 15, 2009...
They start in the distance. I can see the gray-green mounting as it approaches, taller, swiftly taller, until it is curling over me, and then the white lip crashes down on top of my head. Just as I get past this one I am preparing myself for the next, and the next, and the next. I finally reach the instructor, out of breath from the battle, my eyes on fire, only for him to turn me around and shout “Rema! Rema! Rema!” So I paddle as hard and as fast as my weary arms will go as another cold crest mounts up and pushes me forward. After four calculated strokes, I press my hands against the board and rise clumsily to my feet, resembling something like climbing stairs in the dark, I’m sure. At last I stand up, feeling secure-ish and yet new-kid-on-the-first-day-of-school awkward.
I am surfing, and trying hard not to think the word sharks.
Tyler is several yards away, doing the same but better and with more consistency and probably without thinking the word sharks. It is so fun, though. I tire quickly and must have approximately 67 ounces of water ringing around inside my head, having entered through various orifices, but I am having such fun.
We arrived in Huanchaco this morning, Tyler and I, at about 7:00am on 10:00pm bus from Lima the previous night. The beaches at the north of Peru are rumoured to be the best, so here we are. We checked into the Naylamp Hostel, set down our backpacks, and ventured out into the adorable beach village we’d be enjoying for the next couple days. The beach is great, the ceviche is excellent, and we met a cool girl named Emma from England who joined us for our tours of the local pre-Inca ruins, The Temple of the Sun and the Moon and Chan-Chan.
Before this it was Lima. I flew in from Cusco at 4:00pm last Thursday and Tyler was waiting for me at the airport. It was good and surreal to see a face from home.
Lima can be described as a stuffier, stickier, dirtier, more dangerous, more coastal Los Angeles. If you step outside of the tourist-bed Miraflores, you find yourself in the South American version of Watts. We stuck close to Miraflores and various museums. The Museo de la Nacion was really interesting. It’s a converted prison, and the exhibition covering the terrorism that devastated Peru from 1980-2000 was unbelievable. We also visited the Monasterio de San Francisco, a gorgeous, still-functioning monastery with catacombs open for public tours. The bones were gross and stinky and really old.
Our next stop from here is Arequipa, about 25 hours south by bus. We leave tonight at 9:45pm…

March 23, 2009...
Arequipa was great. It boasts the prettiest plaza I’ve seen in Peru besides the Cusco plaza. Tyler and I hung out there and rested for a day (it’s amazing how tiring it can be to sit on a bus for what seems like endless hours). We walked around, ate at this nice rooftop restaurant, did some window shopping.
Our second and third days in Arequipa we spent on a bus tour (I know, another bus) of the Cañon del Colca, which is the second-deepest cañon in the world (the deepest is another in Peru, called the Cañon del Cotahuasi). We stopped for a lot of beautiful vistas and got to see wild condors in flight. This was astounding. Condors are black and white, with a fuzzy white collar and ancient-looking faces, and they have a wing span of 9 feet. As they soared over me, the mountains and cañon and sky disappeared and those condors in flight were all I could see.
The day we returned from the cañon tour, we caught a night bus to Cusco…our home for the next four months. But we would only be home for one night. Monday morning we would wake early to begin the Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu…

The Time In Between (Water, Paint, and Flouride)

(Pics: 1st, Me hiding from the enemy. 2nd, Captured. 3rd, The water wars. 4th, Painting. 5th, Volunteers sanding a wall to be painted. 6th, Some of the children waiting for their flouride. 7th, Me, a dental hygienist for a day. 8th, A happy little customer.)

February 20, 2009...
The Teacher Training course was officially over. I had until March 12 volunteering with Projects Abroad, living with the Valcarcel’s in Urubamba, eating amazing pizza for dinner, playing Set with Alejandra and Camila and braiding their hair, having conversaciones with Carla at the breakfast table.
My time in between the 20th and the 12th began that weekend…the weekend of the famed Carnavales, most notoriously and festively celebrated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I wasn’t in Rio, I was in Urubamba with my family. And I couldn’t have asked for better. That Sunday the entire family; brother, sisters, children, cousins, in-laws, gathered at my abuelitos house about seven blocks away from where I lived. I spent the morning playing games with the girls and then there was a lunch feast in the garden, followed by the traditional treachery for commemorating Carnavales…water wars. I hid beneath the dining room table for the first half hour or so. A few of them teamed up to try to capture me. They would pick up the table and move it to try to extricate me from safety, but I would crawl back and fourth like a quick little crab, keeping myself covered and unattainable. They gave up eventually, and so I watched the water wars from my safe place, people sneaking up on each other with full buckets of water, drenching each other under a generous sun (thank God it was generous that day or I’m certain we all would have come down with pneumonia).
My success at escaping said treachery was limited, of course. Eventually they came back for me and managed to drag me out into the garden, where a full kiddy pool awaited me. Two of the guys picked me up by an arm and a leg each and flung me into the water.
Now properly soaked, the rest of the day was spent running around the yard or in the street or at the faucet with a bucket, loading ammo to further drench an unwitting family member or innocent passer-by. We all threw water on anyone dry; friend, relative, stranger, or otherwise. The street and yard were a war zone. It was a beautifully fun day which ended with pizza and a movie and an early sleep.
Monday would begin a new volunteer project. Community work. We returned to the school we’d been teaching at for the past six weeks to paint the four classrooms we’d occupied. While painting, for me, is already enjoyable and therapeutic in the way that you get to work away and feel stiffness in your fingers and shoulders and then stand back with your hands on your hips and sigh with exhaustion and say to yourself, triumphantly, I did that, it was made extra neat by the fact that it was done in a place where I’d achieved another kind of work prior. It felt like a special sort of closure.
We spent three days doing this, and could walk away from that school leaving 16 sparkling fresh Tiffany-blue walls behind us.
The fourth day was our first dental campaign. At a school in Chincherro, a town whose main strip is the town itself, a line of 63 children began to form at the door. They were smiling tentatively, beaming and yet timid as if they were standing at the entrance to Disneyland for the first time. Some of them had most of their teeth, most of them had just some of their teeth. Some had holes where teeth should be, some had black stumps where teeth should be, and nearly all, regardless of the hygienic state of their mouths, had fresh food particles floating around in there. Needless to say, it was no glamorous campaign. What did we do with these dilapidated mouths? We took q-tips, dipped them in fluoride, slathered it around tooth by tooth while the kids drooled all over themselves and our hands (thank goodness for rubber gloves), told them to go spit, and handed them toothbrushes. Sixty-three of them. But between approximately eight or nine of us volunteers, it only took from about 10:00am to 1:00pm. The following weekend was everything you already know about…dancing as much as possible in Cusco, sleeping as much as possible after all the dancing. And the following week was also the same as the previous. More painting. Different school. Exterior instead of interior. A handful of local women boiled us some potatoes and served them to us with cheese on a blanket on the school lawn to show their gratitude. They were actually really good. I ate two.
That same week we had two more dental campaigns, both at different schools with new smiling children (there was one who looked like he was going to cry and I would have hugged him if it wasn’t for all that drool).
The next several days would be my last in Cusco for a little while. I did a bit of job searching, signed the contract for the apartment I would soon share with Tyler, met up with as many friends as I could to say goodbye for now or goodbye forever, reserved a trek for two via the Salkantay trail to Machu Picchu, received an encouraging phone call…
…It was one of my last mornings in Urubamba. I had no work that week because all of the other volunteers had begun their next placements and I wasn’t put in one since three days teaching a class would be pointless. So, naturally, I was sleeping. Until Carla, my host mom, knocked on my door and said the phone was for me. It was Irazema, a staff member with Projects Abroad. And the conversation went something like this:

ME (groggy voice): Alo?
IRAZEMA: Hola Alanna. Que tal? Did you come into the office yesterday morning?
ME (still groggy): No.
IRA: Porque no?
ME: I didn’t know I was supposed to.
IRA: Okay. Can you come to the office this morning? Tim, our director, wants to speak with you.
ME (alert panic voice): Oh, okay. Ummm, yeah. I’ll get dressed and be there in fifteen minutes…

I was freaked out, wondering if I had done something wrong. I brushed my teeth and made myself look presentable enough to face a director, then walked over to see him. He motioned me into his office and gestured for me to take a seat, so I did. And as I did so, he seated himself, ostentatiously closing a manila file with my name on it. “I’ve heard good things about you,” he said and cracked a smile. I expected neither of those things to happen just then. I was expecting him to say I was fired from my volunteer work, three days before my end date. But it got even better from there. He told me what high regard my name had come with from the staff and that, because of this, he wanted to offer me a paid position with the organization. I was so stoked. The only drawback was that the job was in Urubamba, just when I would be moving to Cusco…After this first meeting there was a lot more in between stuff, emailing back and forth and what-not, but to make a long story short I ended up accepting a temporary six-week position which would begin after my travels. How perfect. God is good.
And my travels…wasn’t long now. Only three days left until my flight to Lima. Saying goodbye to my family was easy, since I knew I would see them again soon. I told them I’d be back often to visit and eat pizza.