Just a few problems with this scenario. One, Bolivia charges Americans a $135 entrance fee (visa), which I wasn’t excited about paying twice. Two, I hate crossing borders. Gee, maybe it’s my bad history of having things stolen or being personally violated, but border crossings just creep me out. So I’d prefer to minimize the amount of them I have to do. Three, the more I read about Carnival in Oruro, the more it sounds like a real pain in the ass. Fun, to be sure – tons of dancing, parades, celebrating, live music – but also all the negatives that come with an overly-hyped event in a small town: prices skyrocket, hotels book out, thieves multiply. Sandra helped me by calling a number of hotels and what few had rooms left were outrageously priced. One poster on the message boards seriously told me that cardboard boxes on the street were selling for $5/night.

Then I found out that Puno, a town in southern Peru on the shores of Lake Titicaca, has a similar celebration a week before. It’s nearly identical – the same dances, same music, similar parades – but on a smaller scale.. less crazy, less expensive, and less hassle. And I wouldn’t need to leave the country. Done and done. The best part was that Sandra was able to take a long weekend and join me for the excursion! Fantastic.. events like that are so much more fun with a partner in crime.

We take the night bus from Cusco and arrive an hour early (!) at 4am. Wake up the hotel to let us in, settle into our room for a bit of sleep, and get woken up an hour later to marching bands tromping down the street. Uh-oh.. are we going to get any sleep this weekend?? Still, their passion is infectious. What possesses people to carry large heavy tubas down cold dark streets at all hours of the night blowing their lungs out? For three to eight days on end. 10 – 16 hours a day. How do their lips not fall off? Are they deaf by the end of the week? These people are dedicated.

And that’s just the musicians. The dancers are wearing hot, uncomfortable costumes – many in high heels or platform shoes, others in 2-foot thick layers of foam rubber and fake hair, sweating under the hot sun.. dancing for miles along different parade routes every day, from pre-dawn until well into the night. Day after day after day. They all deserve medals.

Actually, the way they reward each other is with alcohol. All along the parade route performers are fed booze to keep them on their feet (?). Musicians, being who they are, bear the largest share of the responsibility. By the end of the week they’re stumbling down the street barely able to walk a straight line, let alone keep their instrument in tune. And that’s at 9 in the morning.

From the amusing The Gringo Trail:

The bands sounded as if they assembled each year without rehearsal, hoping to remember the tune from the year before. They make it easier by playing only one tune all day, which consists of a few bars repeated interminably. Even that is a fair enough achievement, considering how drunk everyone seems.

We had a fantastic four days watching from various vantage points, wandering the streets, taking it all in. Unlike in Rio, Barranquilla, or Oruro, the events here are low-key enough that one is able to walk straight down the parade route – there are no barriers or guards keeping you from the action. And yet it wasn’t small by any means. 60,000 dancers and 20,000 musicians… The video below gives you a good sampling of what we witnessed. We even ran into a friend of Sandra’s who was marching in the parade – she’s the one in blue that I’m standing next to in the photo.

Last year Miss Perú caused a stir when she wore a costume from this celebration for the “traditional” segment of the Miss Universe pageant. Bolivia had a conniption fit, and claimed she was stealing from their culture. They went so far as to press their case with the U.N. and stage protests in front of the Peruvian embassy in Washington. From what I’ve learned, this is complete hogwash. As one local put it:

“La Diablada” is a dance from the Altiplano which includes the south of Peru, the west of Bolivia and the northern part of Chile. The Millenarian Aymara culture doesn’t belong to countries; rather, to THE PEOPLE, through our native language and origin. We should aim for brotherhood and not division. It is chauvinistic to say that [the dance and costumes] belong only to one country – which didn’t even exist 200 years ago! Even before the Viceroyalty, Bolivia was part of the ancient Tahuantinsuyu (Incan Empire). We have more similarities than differences. We share the same native languages (Aymara and Quechua), the same natural environment (the Altiplano and Lake Titicaca) and the same people (the Aymaras).

In other words – piss off, Bolivia! Peruvians have just as much right to wear the La Diablada costumes as Bolivians do! Nah! (tongue held straight out). We actually saw Miss Perú from afar one day at the stadium. She was swarmed by press – all you could see was her huge headpiece sticking up above the crowd!

I jot down notes throughout the day on interesting things I witness.. usually it’s easiest to type these into my Palm Treo smartphone.. but no longer, since it got stolen this weekend! I had just used it to take a note down. I put it back into my theft-proof security purse that I’ve raved about, and we pressed on through the crowd. 10 minutes later I went to check – and it was gone! Well.. it turns out that the fancy security purse isn’t so theft-proof if you don’t zip it closed, Josh! I had a bottle of water sticking out preventing the zipper from closing. Still, the flap was folded over and I was hugging it against myself. This thief must have been some kind of a magician to get through that. Lesson learned – forgo the water in favor of protecting the electronics. I wasn’t actually that upset about the phone itself since it was on it’s last legs, but rather about all the data I lost. Let this be a lesson to you – back up early, back up often. I had to spend hours changing all my logins and credentials at dozens of web sites since on the memory card was an unencrypted spreadsheet with all my passwords. Another lesson learned. I’m doing things differently with my new Nexus One – anything of importance gets synced with the cloud, and it’s all encrypted in case it falls into the Wrong Hands.

It’s great getting out of the weather of Cusco for a bit. It’s much warmer here.. blue skies, bright and sunny. And Lake Titicaca is beautiful. It’s one of the highest navigable lakes in the world, at 3810m / 12,500ft. It’s also huge – the largest lake in South America – and like the Great Lakes of North America, you can’t see across to land on the other side. One day we checked out the famous Uros floating reed islands, about a half hour by motor boat from Puno’s shore. The origin of these constructed islands? Hundreds of years ago the Uros were living on the shores of the lake when the Incas came a calling. “Subjugate to us or die!”, the Incas said. Or something like that. “No way, José, see ya later, alligator!” replied the Uros. And they cleverly fled to the middle of the lake, building their own islands as a safe refuge. Not only were they creating a moat between their enemies, their homes could also be moved at will. Simply towed to a new location should danger arise. Today there are 56 islands – all constructed by hand using dried reeds bundled together into layers. It takes one year to build an island about 100m x 50m – enough for a family or two to live on. They anchor the islands to the shallow bottom or to other islands to keep them from floating away into the lake.

The residents also build reed boats. Ingeniously, they’ve incorporated plastic bottles into the construction of these boats – serving the dual purpose of using up some of the endless litter of bottles, and taking advantage of their natural buoyancy. The small boats you see in the photos take 1 month to build and incorporate 2,000 bottles. The large boats use 4,500 bottles and take four months to build. But they only last two years before needing to be rebuilt. The islands are the same – the reeds decompose so rapidly that they’re constantly having to replace and repair them. It’s amazing what these tiny islands can support – some have solar panels generating electricity for televisions, others have a cow or two grazing. The tortora reeds are not only used to build with, they’re also eaten. Each island has a 5m high lookout tower (built out of reeds and bamboo) to facilitate communication with other islands. Wouldn’t cell phones be easier?

It’s pretty surreal walking on a floating reed island. It’s spongy, and occasionally the water pushes up through where you step. It would be strange to live on, stranger to grow up on. Although the kids only live there until they finish primary school, at which point they move to the mainland to continue their education. We found the people to be overwhelmingly friendly and gentle. I thought I heard them speaking Aymara to each other, although historically their native tongue was Uro. It’s a bit hard to tell the difference, don’t you think? The Uros have established a mutually beneficial society whereby resources are shared and everything is done for the communal good. For example, they rotate which island (family) hosts tourists each day.. thereby sharing in the profits (and in the tranquility on days off). The “chief” (patriarch) of the island we visited told us not to give sweets or money to the kids – if we want to help, buy one of the crafts they make. How refreshing. There was no sales push, nor asking for tips. It was all very civilized and organized.

If you do make it to Puno, make sure to take a walk up to the Kuntur Wasi lookout – it’s just a half-hour walk from downtown, and offers stunning views out over the city and lake. But wear sunscreen! I fried the back of my neck in just an hour with no sunscreen.

If you go to the Festival de la Candelaria, I recommend skipping the stadium. That’s the only part that costs money, and it’s not worth it. Even the expensive seats put you too far away to see much. It’s far more interesting being in the streets, mere inches away from the celebrants.. even if that means occasionally being subjected to the odd water balloon or spray foam. Such is the price we pay for authenticity.

Every February, Puno becomes the capital of the folklore because of the celebration of Virgen de la Candelaria. Fifty thousand dancers honor her with interminable dance groups that make the city happy without end.

The celebration starts on February second, and a night before they burn fire castles, dancers practice, they drink and drink and drink again, and tourists laugh. People will pretend to go bed around 3am but we (Josh & Sandra) are tired. Tomorrow will be another day. We didn’t see anything yet but we console ourselves lying in bed listening to the sound of the trombone and the bass drum.

Sunday, competition day and the confraternity (brotherhood) Morenada Santa Rosa is ready to dance 10 non-stop hours with their colorful and elegant skirts. They are not afraid of the task, they believe la Virgen de la Candelaria will keep their legs moving. It is a superstition.. all the dancers believe that she helps them; they dance for her and she helps them to keep going.

It was a sunny day, it wasn’t raining and in the stadium people sell umbrellas to protect from the sun. There are also firemen making rain when the heat gets unbearable. The competition starts at 7am with the Association Sicuris Intercontinetales Aymaras de Huancané. The rules are always the same: 8 minutes to dance, one second more and they will be disqualified. There is a man, the executioner, using a chronometer and a red flag.

Not even in the time of terrorism [Shining Path] was the celebration canceled. During the war with Ecuador, dancers held the Peruvian flag.

This year there were 73 associations, 50 thousand dancers and 365 bands (official information). In the 1980’s there were only 40 groups. All puneños (Puno residents) are proud of their folklore. Each dance has a specific costume and story: the Morenada, Diablada, Waca Waca, Caporales, Saya, Llamerada, Sicuris… it is better to see it with your own eyes.

Around 5:30 in the afternoon the competition ended, it passed ten hours.

In the streets the “chinas”, the girls that dance saya with short skirts, are common. They are usually young so they can withstand the jumps of the dance and they are coquettish and sexy. The female devil and the angels have a sin being sensual. The masks are another thing, they hypnotize, spark and make you want to know who is behind. The male devils are mysterious, seducers and skillful, they are the devil.

The shaking colorful skirts are unusual, with light color. Dark colors are not allowed, only light fuchsia, turquoise, purple, orange, green lemon. To rent a costume costs around 100 dollars and usually are brand new. To this you have to add hairdresser, make up, fancy jewelry, sprinkle creams….the dancers spend around 1000 soles ($350) to get ready.

Monday, parade day. Five km to go, 3 hours dancing with no stops (for me worse than a marathon). The puneños are in the stands in the sides of the street (it is possible to rent a good seat for 20 soles) offering the dancers glasses of beer to help them continue. All the dancers practice many months before from 7 till 11 pm, this celebration is not a joke, and if they want to be synchronized they must practice. Along the way the dancers salute to the Virgen del Candelaria that is strolling around the city. At the end of the parade route, friends, neighbors and families wait for the dancers with five beer boxes to calm down the thirst.

On the way back to the square, we try, but it is impossible to be free of all the foam that people spray to anybody that is walking. Each can costs 5 soles.

People clapped, they were not tired, they wanted to see more, they wanted to see the group Asociacion Diablada Bellavista with 1200 contestants, 870 dancers and 330 musicians. The parade went for 17 hours with no stops. We went to have lunch and nap but there wasn’t a problem – the parade kept going.

There are two main ways of getting to Machu Picchu and one lesser-used route. Most people take the train to Aguas Calientes, the tourist town that serves as the base for the site. No roads exist to Aguas Calientes, which makes it a somewhat unique town. The only vehicles in town are the buses that shuttle tourists between the town and the site itself, up a series of switchback roads. People say Aguas Calientes is a terribly ugly town of unplanned construction, but I actually found it pleasant – with no cars, two rivers running through it, and nestled in a valley between misty mountains, it’s quite romantic.

The other main way of getting to Machu Picchu is by hiking the famous Inca Trail. It takes between two to five days, depending on where you start the trek. Although the scenery sounds spectacular, I was put off from doing the trek for other reasons. One, I’m a wimp – and all reports say that it’s freezing cold and frequently pouring rain this time of year. No fun. Secondly, it’s absurdly expensive and crowded. Because it’s one of the most popular treks in the world, authorities have restricted it to 500 people per day (including guides and porters). In the high tourist season (June – Aug), you have to book six months in advance! Although I love hiking, this is not my idea of communing with nature.

The third and hardly known method of getting to Machu Picchu is by taking a series of local buses until one finally ends up in Santa Teresa, a tiny town downriver from Aguas Calientes. It sounds arduous and trying, and there are hardly any tourist services in Santa Teresa. But that’s all about to change – with the flooding wiping out the train line to Aguas Calientes and a prediction of three months to repair it (which really means at least four months), Santa Teresa is about to get a boom in tourism.. just as soon as those roads are repaired and the tourist companies readjust to offer direct service from Cusco to Santa Teresa instead of the crazy series of connections one currently has to make.

I chose to take the cheap but convenient route: going by bus as far as I could into the Sacred Valley to the town of Ollantaytambo, where the road ends, then take the train the remaining distance to Aguas Calientes. The rail company is owned and run by the same folks who run the Orient Express; so the service is excellent, safe, and reliable, but unfortunately the prices are equivalently high. It’s cheapest to take the train the least distance necessary, rather than all the way from Cusco.

Many people breeze right through Ollantaytambo, but I elected to spend the night and explore the ruins there. I was really glad I did, and highly recommend a night or even two. I tried alpaca meat for the first time. Unfortunately it’s just as tough as the beef in Peru. The Incan ruins at Ollantaytambo are not set in as dramatic a location as those in Machu Picchu, but they’re otherwise every bit as impressive. The admissions office kindly let me pay the local’s price instead of the expensive 4-sites-in-1-ticket that foreigners usually have to buy. Go in the morning before the tour groups arrive when the morning sun lights up the stones at a low angle. Gorgeous. In the late afternoon while all the tourists are at the official ruins, you can hike the mountain directly opposite for free where there are a series of storehouse ruins offering commanding views of the town below and terraces opposite. A lovely hike for sunset.

The town itself was laid out and built by the Incas, and today’s residents still live in the same solidly constructed stone houses – some of the oldest continuously occupied dwellings in all of South America. A series of lovely pedestrian lanes (the Incans didn’t have horses nor carts) bisected by intricately carved water channels. Land inside the terraces is protected from the wind by lateral walls which also absorb solar radiation during the day and release it at night; this creates a microclimate zone 2 to 3°C warmer than the ground above it. These conditions allowed the Incas to grow species of plants native to lower altitudes that otherwise could not have flourished at this site.

It’s commonly thought that the Incans accomplished so much through the use of slave labor, but this isn’t true. While they certainly conquered other cultures and “strongly encouraged” assimilation into their way of life, they never practised slavery. Slaves can be forced to work, but not to do good work. The intricate architecture we see today was the result of people who took pride in their work.  As one historian put it, “the  ‘secret’ to the production of fine Inca masonry… was the social organization necessary to maintain the great numbers of people creating such energy-consuming monuments.”

Before moving on to our main attraction of Machu Picchu, a brief mention of Moray – a site I didn’t visit, but is worth a few sentences nonetheless. As a further example of Incan ingenuity, the site was designed to take advantage of natural depressions below the level plain and to model Andean, jungle and semi-tropical environments for the growth of different plant varieties. An agricultural laboratory / test-bed for experimenting with different strains grown in differing environments. Pollen studies indicate that soils from each of the regions were imported by the Incas to each of the large circular basins. In the largest of the depressions (150m deep) a serious of water channels can be seen finding their way to the bottom. Studies have found temperature variations up to 15 degrees Celsius.

The train (reserve ahead online) from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes takes just a couple of hours to meander alongside the mighty Urubamba river. Arriving in the afternoon, I recommend stretching your legs and lungs by hiking up Putucusi. It’s a steep (and free) trail that begins just outside of town along the train tracks. The trail is so steep in places that dozens of wooden ladders, some so high that they disappear into the fog, are utilized. The views are breathtaking. Looking thousands of feet down at Aguas Calientes below, and, when you finally reach the top, you are awarded a commanding view across the valley to Machu Picchu itself. It’s a good introduction to the site – seeing it from afar makes you appreciate the length the builders went to in constructing this city perched on a mountain ridge in the middle of nowhere.

You need to buy your entrance ticket ($45!) to Machu Picchu in town (typically the day before) before heading up to the site. Now – every travel guide, website, and fellow tourist will tell you that the best way to see Machu Picchu is to beat the crowds by getting up in the middle of the night, leaving your hotel no later than 4:30am for the hour and a half trek up to the site in order to be one of the first through the gate which opens at 6:00am. The shuttle buses don’t start running until 7am, which is how most people arrive.

My advice if visiting this time of year (rainy season)? Sleep in! Don’t listen to those crazy early-birders! I woke up at 4:30, saw that it was dark, cold, and absolutely pouring down rain, and went back to sleep. Got up at 7:00am when the rain had let up a bit, and elected to take a shuttle bus up ($7 – more outrageous price gouging) rather than begin the day with a slog up mountains of mud in the rain. I spent the next four hours exploring the entire site in the cold, dark rain.. until finally when I was exhausted and ready to leave, it started clearing up! By late afternoon it had turned into a beautiful day and I was kicking myself for not starting much later in the day. This weather pattern seems to be typical this time of year.

When Yale historian Hiram Bingham rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911 (after the site being abandoned for 400 years) while searching for the legendary and elusive lost city of Vilacabamba, he remarked:

“I know of no place in the world which can compare with it. Not only had it great snow peaks looming above the clouds more than two miles overhead; gigantic precipices of many-coloured granite rising sheer for thousands of feet above the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids, it has also, in striking contrast, orchids and tree ferns, the delectable beauty of luxurious vegetation and the mysterious witchery of the jungle. One is drawn irresistibly onwards by ever-recurring surprises through a deep, winding gorge, turning and twisting past overhanging cliffs of incredible height.”

We’ve all been slightly jaded by seeing famous images from the site; which, when combined with crowds of tourists slightly dampens one’s initial awe. It’s still impressive, but as I said before, other Incan ruins such as Ollataytambo should not be dismissed.

After an initial stroll through the lower part of the site, I headed over to Huayna Picchu – the mountain overlooking Machu Picchu. It’s a popular hike, which is why it’s limited to 400 persons per day. The first 200 tickets are handed out beginning at 7am, and the other 200 starting at 10am. Again, standard advice is to get there by 6:30am in order to beat the crowds; but this time of year, that’s actually bad advice due to the crappy weather the first half of the day.. and the fact that far less people are competing for those tickets than in the high season. I was around number 70 when I entered at 8am, and by the time I exited at 10ish, they were only up to 160 or so.

Huayna Picchu (also spelled Waynupicchu) is a recommended hike due to the superlative views over Machu Picchu. After slogging through the rain and mud and climbing slippery steps and treacherous ladders, I finally made it to the top and was greeted by the magnificent view of.. white clouds. Nothing but fog. Couldn’t see further than 30′. Oh well, on to the Temple of the Moon – a cave that frankly isn’t that impressive. Returning to the main site, I explored other highlights. I found the Inca Bridge to be most impressive – the trail is a narrow ledge cut into the rock in the midst of a sheer cliff that falls thousands of feet down. How the hell they cut this is beyond me, and don’t attempt to see it if you’re afraid of heights – it’s terrifying. The bridge itself is a gap in the ledge where trees are laid across but can be quickly withdrawn should invaders approach.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – the Incans were an amazing culture. “Brilliantly Crazy”, they’ve been called. Incredibly clever and efficient – nothing was wasted, everything had a purpose. The Incan moral code is an example of their work ethic — ama suwa, ama llulla, ama quella (do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy) — offenders were punishable by death. Harsh punishment, but there are innumerable benefits to such a strict society. Theirs was also a collective society – nobody owned property, all was done for the common good. In less than 100 years the Incas managed to establish and extend their empire 4,000 km – from present-day southern Chile all the way up to southern Colombia. They built a remarkable system of roads which enabled fast communication and transport. They were accomplished astronomers, as evidenced by their monuments which “capture” the sun perfectly on the solstice. But perhaps their greatest accomplishment was their architecture. In Machu Picchu alone they built hundreds of buildings, dozens of canals, and 16 fountains. With no beasts of burden, iron tools, nor even using the wheel, how did they accomplish so much? (It’s often misstated that the Incans never invented the wheel. In fact, they did – their children’s toys used wheels – but perhaps they didn’t prove useful in such mountainous terrain, for the same reason Himalayan cultures never used the wheel.)

Archaeologists surmise the Incans were able to move 20-ton stones by the same method the Egyptians used – with horizontal ladders laid upon wooden beam sleds, moved using fulcrums and rope. They used harder stones to slowly chisel the larger ones into shape until they fitted perfectly together. And they’ve held for 500 years with no cement or mortar – just endless sanding for a perfect fit. It’s interesting to note that their construction technique paid as much attention to the inherent shape of the materials as much to the design itself – allowing the contours of the rock to dictate it’s final shape. It’s for this reason that as orderly as the stones look, there are no right angles nor duplicating shapes. This holistic design motif extends to the macro scale as well, in the design and placement of their sites as a whole. The Incans worked with nature instead of against it, as was the European tradition.

Incan architecture was also extremely resilient to earthquakes, which this region is quite prone to. From Wikipedia:

The walls of Incan buildings were slightly inclined towards the inside and the corners were rounded. This, in combination with masonry thoroughness, led Incan buildings to have a peerless seismic resistance thanks to high static and dynamic steadiness, absence of resonant frequencies and stress concentration points. During an earthquake with a small or moderate magnitude, masonry was stable, and during a strong earthquake stone blocks were “ dancing ” near their normal positions and lay down exactly in right order afterwards.

At a site that receives 200cm of rain per year, water management is an important consideration – particularly when building on the side of a steep mountain. Terracing was the solution the Incans came up with. Fully 60% of Machu Picchu is underground – big stones on the bottom, graduating to small stones and finally gravel on top. This served to filter the rain water, forcing it to slowly percolate to the river below and preventing soil erosion.

So ironically, while the recent rains have washed out modern houses, roads, and train lines, the site of Machu Picchu itself is absolutely fine. The flooding this month has caused an estimated $1 billion in damage, not to mention the devastation of the local economy. Machu Picchu is the most-visited site in South America, with 900,000 visiting in 2008. Compare that figure to only 10,000 tourists just 10 years ago. Some studies suggest that Machu Picchu is slowly sinking due to the accumulated weight of all the people!

I’m thankful I didn’t end up being one of the 2,000 tourists stranded in Aguas Calientes when the rail line washed out. It took many days and many helicopters to rescue everyone. In the meantime, chaos ensued. Prices shot up at hotels and restaurants, food and water ran scarce, and people behaved the way they do in natural emergencies – some banded together by nationality, some pitched in to help the community, while others behaved selfishly, hoarding supplies. Evacuation was meant to be in order of need, but naturally, officials took bribes from the rich to be rescued first. A number of countries sent help including the U.S. embassy which sent several helicopters – and restricted their use to only rescuing U.S. citizens. Shameful! The embassy later apologized, admitting this was not appropriate behavior.

Awful stories surfaced of those who died along the Inca Trail while trying to safely make it to Aguas Calientes. I met a colleague of the guide who died in a mudslide after he had just made sure all his guests had gotten to safety. Unfortunately, this is not as uncommon as one might think – in 2004, four tourists died in a mudslide. Lots of videos and tons of details about the current crises here.

In better news, I just learned that my mother is coming down to visit me next month! We haven’t seen each other since I left the States nearly a year and a half ago, so it will be a great reunion.

I’m sure you’re dying to hear about my new girlfriend, Sandra. As I left off in the last post:
A few days before Christmas, I met a lovely woman named Sandra through Couchsurfing. We spent a few days getting to know each other as friends before the romance bloomed. And a week later, we moved in together! Unlike most Peruvians who live with their parents until they have a family of their own (and even then, often all live together in the same house), Sandra has her own apartment. A lovely one-bedroom with lots of light, plasma TV, and a kitchen.. something I’ve sorely missed having.

Sandra grew up in Cusco, then spent a year and half living in the States as an au pair to a wonderful American family that took her on vacations. She perfected her English while living in the States, which is great for me since my Spanish is still not conversational. After returning to Peru, Sandra spent nine years living in Lima. She prefers the opportunities of the larger city, but moved back to Cusco when her company transfered her. Moving quickly up the corporate ladder, she is now the front desk manager of a large, fancy four-star hotel here in Cusco. I’m really impressed with the company and the way they treat their staff and run things – the management style is exactly the opposite of the company and boss that I left.

Sandra has high aspirations and a strong drive. Although she’s quickly being promoted and will probably become general manager soon or be given her own hotel to run, she wants to move overseas – perhaps Asia – and gain experience in larger and even more luxurious hotel chains.

It’s wonderful visiting her at work. Although I used to stay in places like this when I was touring, I’ve spent the last year and a half staying in cheap dives.. so it feels deliciously decadent to sit and have a cocktail in the well-appointed bar with the roaring fireplace and attentive staff. Peru recently celebrated Pisco Week, and the hotel bar obliged by creating some wonderfully inventive cocktails, such as pisco infused with eucalyptus. Yum.

Sandra’s parents own and run a small hotel and travel agency here in Cusco, so she grew up around tourists and the ilk. Her family is middle-class by American standards, which is upper middle-class by Peruvian standards. I’ve had lunches with her parents and brothers several times now, and they’re all very sweet. Her family has a maid, which is normal for middle-class families in Latin America, but is something I would have difficulty getting used to. I prefer to clean up my own messes. And while it’s nice having somebody cook for you, I’m not comfortable with the inherent inequalities – the maid eats at the kitchen counter while we eat at the dining room table, for example. I know she’s being paid a fair wage, is not an indentured servant, but still, it feels odd to me.

One of Sandra’s brothers is a dentist, while the other one works for their parents in the travel agency. I took the opportunity to have my teeth checked and a cavity filled by the dentist brother. Cost? $3.50. That’s not a typo. I also had my teeth whitened, a procedure that costs several hundred dollars in the States, and here was $100. Yes, the office was sterile with all the modern equipment you see in more developed countries. Although there were a few differences.. no dental assistant, he did everything himself.. and the entire time, his friend sat repairing cell phones at the desk next to the exam chair. Funny.

One day Sandra’s other brother accompanied me to the market to buy new hiking shoes. It was nice of him to point out which vendors sold real articles and which sold fakes. He also pointed out a guy he knows that I should keep a bit of distance from since he’s a pickpocket! I ended up getting a pair of Merrells with Vibram soles for $80 that would be at least twice that in the States.

“Brichera” is the word here for locals who prey on foreigners in order to gain something – whether it be drinks, gifts, or a ticket out of here – usually in exchange for companionship and/or sex. There are both females and males (bricheros) who employ this strategy. One learns to watch out for these types when meeting local women. Fortunately, Sandra is the complete opposite of a brichera. She always insists on paying her half of things. She’s fiercely independent and strong-willed – two qualities I value in a partner. Yet she is also loving, attentive, and kind. She has the eyes of Eva Longoria, the smile of Julia Roberts, lips of Angelina Jolie, and cheekbones of Salma Hayek. Her look is more intoxicating than a double Long Island Iced Tea on an empty stomach.

Another thing I like about Sandra is that she’s an adventurer – she was a girl scout, loves cockfights, and, get this, is a paragliding pilot!
I feel one can tell a lot about a person by who they choose as their friends. Just as my best friend is female, Sandra’s best friend is male. And he’s super cool. He flirts with everyone – male, female, young, old. You know the type – great to have on your side in any situation. Strong ego, doesn’t let boorish people get him down the way I let them affect me. We’ve hung out a number of times along with her other friends, and I like them all. My only problem is the language barrier – I always end up feeling like the retarded cousin tagging along, smiling dumbly in the corner but unable to really participate in the conversation. Since I can’t understand what’s being said, I always feel behind, not knowing what’s going on or where we’re going next. It’s incredibly frustrating. Is this why I like being alone and often shy away from people, since I know I won’t be able to communicate? If so, it’s a self-fulfilling trait. Not good.
Why do I have such a block with this language? Am I afraid of feeling stupid?
I find Sandra’s pronunciation understandable, as is my teacher’s, but not most people I meet. What’s the difference – higher education?

An analogy for my past year and half: like living inside of a foreign film without the benefit of subtitles. Understanding the gist of things, while missing all the subtle details.

New Year’s Eve

During the five evenings leading up to New Year’s Eve, the city put on a spectacular in the main square. (This is the first year of it, which is why you won’t find reference to it in the guidebooks). They erected an impressive sound, video, and lighting concert system in front of the cathedral and each night staged a different presentation. The first night was the best – but unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me! It was a mix of neo-pagan fire twirling, acrobatic breakdancing, historic reenactment, overly dramatic interpretive dance, drumming fiesta, and Bread & Puppet theatre utilizing literally hundreds of performers in elaborate costume. I was extremely impressed with the production values – and remember that since I work in the biz, I’m highly critical. The entire thing was well-rehearsed, and interestingly, presented in Quechua, but translated into Spanish. Much of the presentation was organized by a local theatre company which puts on similar shows throughout the year, albeit on a smaller scale.

My favorite part was watching the enormous torches of real flames burning just inches from the large fabric backdrop. The “fire marshals” were two boys with little pails of water. Nice try. I could never get away with that in any country I’ve toured to!
The second night was comedy, mimes, and traditional dances. Less impressive, but a good effort nonetheless.

Although these productions were new this year, the actual New Year’s Eve celebrations are as old as dirt. They involve: collecting as much gunpowder / fireworks / dynamite / bombs as you can, then as much booze as you can carry, and go hang out with your friends along with the entire rest of the entire city all crammed into the main square. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, I forgot that you have to put on yellow underwear (over your jeans) and run around with a suitcase at the stroke of midnight. The yellow signifies good luck, and the running with a suitcase ensures that you’ll travel this year. Whatever you do at midnight on New Year’s Eve is what you’ll be doing the rest of the year. Me, I was just trying to breathe. Clouds hang over the city the next day – only they’re not clouds, they’re all the smoke from the night before. All the fireworks going off in close proximity was pretty scary. I don’t know how many people sustained serious injuries.

Escaping from the war zone, we made our way to a discotheque where crazy kids were dancing on the bar. Good fun. Finally around 4am as we were headed home, we ran into some other friends who dragged us back out to a reggae bar. A couple of hours and drinks later (after witnessing Sandra dance some fierce salsa), I look out the window to the light of day.

Daily Life in Cusco

Much of the last six weeks I’ve spent as a house husband. Cooking (which I’ve discovered a passion for), fixing things up, etc. I installed dichroic track lighting in the kitchen since I couldn’t stand the single fluorescent bulb. That was an adventure in itself – sourcing all the parts, learning how things are done differently down here. Wire nuts, for example, don’t exist. In the States, you can’t not use wire nuts when doing anything electrical. Basically the entire country of Peru is in violation of modern electrical codes in developed nations. But projects like that are fun to sink my teeth into after aimlessly wandering for so long with no job nor hobbies.

I came across a scale the other day and weighed myself for the first time in over a year. Surprisingly, I actually weigh less than when I started this trip. This is weird, since I feel like I’ve been eating non-stop. With all the time in the world, especially here in Cusco where there is yummy gringo food, I’ve been pigging out. And not exercising. It must be the altitude – apparently it causes weight loss all by itself.

A couple of occasions Sandra and I rented a motorcycle for day trips out of town. Once to the Sacred Valley of the Incas stopping in at all the little towns and markets along the way, and once south of Cusco, to other little towns known for their gastronomic specialties:
Sailla is the capital of chicharron (fried pork); Lucre is known for their duck and deserts made by nuns; Tipon is the home of restaurants specializing in guinea pig, as well as the site of a beautiful Incan site; and Oropesa is an entire town devoted to bread bakeries. This town is interesting to wander through – our noses led us to a bakery that is run by the great-great-grandson of the founder, whose skull is prominently displayed above the doorway. The enormous wood-fired oven is nearly 200 years old. Each bakery stamps their family symbol into the top of each loaf before being sent to Cusco for consumption. But it’s actually difficult to find much open during the day – the town is eerily quiet, as bakers sleep during the day! It’s a whole different story at night, when everything comes alive.

In the motorcycle video below you can see us pass a group of campesinos working on reparing a water pipe next to their dirt road. Inspriring – it looked like the entire village was in on the repairs, from the old men to the children.

The sun was setting on one of our rides as we were coming back into town and suddenly got stopped in a traffic jam. Being on a bike we maneuvered our way around the vehicles until lo and behold, we found ourselves in the middle of a crazy religious parade! Replete with costumed dancers, brass bands, grills of meat, and drunken bystanders. Being in Peru, it was no problem driving a motorcycle straight through the whole affair. I love those moments.

One day we went shopping for furniture for Sandra’s apartment. Sandra has great taste, a modern aesthetic, similar to mine. But despite hitting every home furnishings store in town plus all the markets, we couldn’t find a thing. It’s all tacky, cheap-looking stuff – what would be described back home as “white trash”. I empathize with her living in a city where the common aesthetic is far below you.

For some strange reason, dance remixes of songs from the musical Grease are really popular in the clubs here. This is weird for me, since everytime I hear one of them it takes me back to the time I worked on a gender-bending version of the show for a gay & lesbian theatre company.

Contrary to what I learned elsewhere, Sandra taught me that it’s better to just get in a taxi without negotiating the fare beforehand (provided you know what the fare should be). Along these lines, I usually carry exact change so there can be no argument. Well, one night I didn’t ask the fare, and I didn’t have change. At the end of the ride I hand over a 10 Sole note for what should have been a 2 Sole ride. The driver handed me back 2 Soles. Whereupon we proceed to have a 15-minute argument. I was quite proud of myself – carrying out the entire thing in Spanish.. starting politely yet firmly, explaining that I knew what the fare should be, and that he was to give me my remaining change. Every five minutes of arguing he would hand over another 1 Sole coin, and I would raise my temper yet higher. I made it clear I wasn’t leaving his cab (and he was losing business) until he handed me the rest of my change. It ended with me yelling that he was a thief, that I was calling the police, and that I’m not a stupid gringo that he can take advantage of. I got all my change in the end.

I just learned why the back of my neck turns beet red after only an hour walking around town without sunscreen on. A few years ago, Cusco was found to be the spot on Earth with the highest ultraviolet light level. Yikes!

One day I went for a run with a couple of Sandra’s friends. It ended up being a grand adventure – bouldering over Incan ruins, jumping rivers, and getting doused with water balloons by local teen girls. At one point as we were taking a break by a farmhouse, the resident campesina noticed Gino lifting rocks as weights. She goes into her house and comes back with “special” rocks – supposedly extra heavy, extra strong, used by the Incans to break bigger rocks. After several minutes of joking around, Gino says, “thanks very much”, and we move to leave. “Wait”, she says, “you haven’t paid me for those!” These people never miss an opportunity for a sale.

Sandra’s grandpappy used to say, “Never trust a dog’s limp, a woman’s tears, or the sky in the mountains.” How true, how true. Particularly the last one. You can leave the house in the morning thinking, “oh, it’s sunny and beautiful out, I don’t need my umbrella.” Only to discover two hours later that the temperature has dropped twenty degrees and the road has turned into a river.

Speaking of, I thought it was either me or Cusco itself that was cursed with the Charlie Brown syndrome, but it turns out that this entire region has received more rain in the first half of January than it typically does in the entire month. Which has sadly led to some terrible flooding, including wiping out the train tracks leading to Machu Picchu. I feel fortunate that I had just seen the ruins the week before (details and photos in the next post). But for a lot of tourists, Machu Picchu was the main reason for their trip to South America – so we have a lot of unhappy campers and cancelled reservations as a result. Hotel occupancy has plummeted, staff are being furloughed, the entire economy is affected because of it. Not to mention all those who lost their homes or farmland. Sandra and I took some day trips out of town to see the damage first-hand, and it’s heart-wrenching. 25,000 homes destroyed, key bridges swept away, dozens dead, thousands of tourists stranded for three days, the entire valley is ravaged.

It’s interesting to see how wrong the international media gets it – from the nationalities of those killed to the names of the towns to the locations of things. Makes you realize how the media is just like the rest of us – playing the game of telephone without checking facts and sources.
Here in Cusco itself, there is little evidence of the disaster. We had no water for two days which was annoying, but nothing compared to what others were going through.

Ironically, the disaster will be a boon to other less well-known sites. We saw buses of tourists pull up at historic churches and Incan sites in little towns that normally never see tourists. The tour operators are scrambling, given that their main draw is off-limits now for many months to come.

Another Christmas gift that appeared out of the blue was a care package from my dear friend Abi. She just spent a year on a Fulbright in Australia, during which time we occasionally commiserated about missing our home culture. Since she completely understood what I’ve been going through, she sent me a wonderful box full of things unavailable down here – chips from home, fine chocolate, nuts that are insanely expensive down here so I never buy them, a book that I’ve been meaning to read for years, and most valued – new music! Also on the discs of tunes is an audio book, which you know I love, and it’s one I’ve been wanting to read – The Audacity of Hope – read by the author himself, Barack Obama.

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Videos:

Standing in the Plaza de Armas, central square of Cusco, during New Year’s Eve. Thousands of fireworks being set off all around, everyone drinking heavily, pandemonium and revelry despite the rain:

Riding a dirt bike up and down mountain roads, passing campesinos and farm animals, while exploring the Sacred Valley:

Photos:

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I figured Cusco would be a good place to hole up for a few weeks during the holidays. My idea was that by taking Spanish classes, I would integrate into a family and a community and thereby not be alone for Christmas. Things turned out rather well..

Introduction to the city

Wandering around lost after walking from the bus station (since I eschew taxis), I ran into a young American couple that I hung out with in Vilcabamba (Ecuador) many months ago. Grace and Cody – they were the ones who stayed so long there because they were making more money from the poker games than they were spending on daily living. Amazing that we should bump into each other here after so long. We were only able to hang out a couple of nights together as they had to finally get back to the States. But they recommended a Spanish school for me to attend here – FairPlay. Back to that in a minute.

I’m glad it was a sunny and warm day when I pulled into town otherwise I might never have stayed so long. The weather this time of year is generally rainy and cold, particularly chilling to the bones owing to the fact that none of the buildings have insulated windows nor heat. I would have difficulty living here if only for that reason. The beds have heavy wool blankets which means that you’re warm by the morning, but it’s freezing until your body heats up the bed. Large, strong hail is surprisingly common here. And yet, the climate is surprisingly dry for the amount that it rains. I suppose it’s due to the thin atmosphere at this high altitude – there just isn’t anything there to hold the moisture. When the sun does come out, things dry out incredibly quickly.

A couple of other odd things about the altitude (3,600m/11,800′) – fires don’t burn very well, due to the lack of oxygen. The matches are huge in an effort to stay lit. On the plus side, that means forest fires are never a problem. On the flip side, if you’re trying to start a fire or keep one going (for a BBQ, say, or in a fireplace), they require contant tending and blowing. Also: since water boils at a far lower temperature up here (88° C vs. 100° C at sea level), there is some debate as to whether boiling water actually purifies it enough to drink. Oh well, I haven’t gotten sick yet.

It only takes a few hours of walking around in the warm sun to fall in love with Cusco. I finally understand why it’s such a tourist destination (nearly a million tourists a year!) – stunning architecture abounds at every corner you turn; romantic views from every hill; and surprisingly gentle and kind residents, uncommon for such a touristed place. Even the touts are not as aggressive or ornery as elsewhere. The central area is refreshingly clean and free of stray dogs – a welcome respite.

This will sound odd, but Cusco reminds me a bit of Istanbul. Built long before cars, many of the streets are just narrow alleyways and pedestrian-friendly plazas and passages. Far more approachable and livable than modern cities with their traffic-clogged avenues designed solely for vehicles, not for people.

The buildings are a sight to behold with their red tiled roofs and foundations dating back to when Cusco was the capital of the Incan empire. The Spaniards came and did their damndest to erase the existing culture, but a lot of it survived. In a classic case of empiralism, the Spanish built Catholic churches on top of Incan houses of worship in an effort to wipe out the existing religion. You can see this all over Europe as well – in some cases, three or four layers/cultures/religions built one on top of each other.

The matching red tiled roofs and uniform height of the buildings here are no accident – it’s the law. A welcome change from the usual hodge-podge, haphazard, and function over form of most buildings in Latin America.

Those Incans certainly had a way with masonry – enormous stones weighing hundreds of pounds chiseled so finely and fitted so tightly together that in many cases you can’t even fit a knife edge in between the blocks. And they were built to last. All the walls tilt inward as part of their strategy against earthquakes. Whenever an earthquake knocks down modern buildings (fairly common around here), the Incan walls are found to still be standing. Reminds me of Perpignan, a town in southern France with a modern steel bridge just down river from an ancient Roman bridge. A few years ago a flood swept the modern bridge away – but the 2,000-year old Roman bridge was left standing. You’d think we would have improved our engineering abilities over the millenia, not gone backwards.

Interestingly, there appear to be more arts here than in the far-larger city of Lima. I compare it to Guatemala, where Antigua is the artistic refuge from the workaday Guatemala City.

One of my first nights in town (12/16) I found myself in one of the British ex-pat pubs with 40 other gringos playing a pub quiz. Good fun and a great way to meet people. One of the many activities organized by South American Explorers.

It turns out that Salima, the yoga-teaching, fellow long-term traveling friend I made during my last couple of days in Vilcabamba is in town. I love meeting up with fellow friends/travelers in various cities on our respective journeys.

Took a walk through the main market in town. Besides the usual fruits and vegetables, there are seamstresses bent over sewing machines in the dim light where you can have your zipper replaced for $1.. stands of vendors selling fresh medicinal herbs for any kind of ailment.. row upon row of juice stands where you can get a huge pitcher of fresh juice for $2.. or the house specialty, made from black beer, fruits, raw eggs, milk, almonds, and honey. Then there is the meat section. Whole pig carcasses laid out for your perusal.. cow’s heads sitting on counters, every part of the animal available. Intestine, stomach, tongue, cheeks, feet, all are available. Huge ribbons of fat are popular. Llama fetus.. frog’s legs.. quail eggs.. baby chicks.. unknown animal brains.. Anthony Bourdain, eat your heart out (oh yes, that’s available too)!

Spanish School and my Home Stay

Back to FairPlay, my Spanish school. One of the reasons I like them is that it’s a socially-conscious organization. Founded and run by a Belgian and his Peruvian wife, it trains and employs single mothers who would otherwise only be able to get a low-end job. The teachers spend 10 months getting trained and many are let go during the grueling process. John, the Belgian director of the school, is a savvy businessman with a heart who left a good life in Europe to do something more productive. His now-wife was working as a teacher trainer in public schools and looking to start her own language school. They make a great team.

In talking with John, I learned a bit about what it takes to start and run a successful NGO, as so many times they fail to get off the ground. For one thing, people here in Peru are mistrustful of non-profit organizations for a variety of reasons. In the 1980’s, a lot of money was given by foreign governments for large splashy projects that promised a lot but didn’t deliver much for the common person. Then in the early 90’s, then-president Fujimori ordered all the doctors in the country to sterilize any campesiña (poor rural farmer / peasant woman) who came in, no questions asked or explanations given. It’s hard to believe someone who has taken the hippocratic oath would do something so horrid, but in fact it’s the professional class here (doctors, lawyers, administrators) that are the most corrupt. The upshot is that the people who need the most help no longer trust outsiders to give it to them.

John and Fanny first tried to start up a 4-star hotel in the valley that was to be owned and run by locals, with all profits going back into the community. Total disaster – the representatives from each of the communities never reported back to their constituents after business meetings; they couldn’t even get enough people together for a vote on anything to move forward; the entire thing fell apart after more than a year of organizing by John and Fanny. It breaks my heart to see so much time, money, and energy put into a project for people who so desperately need it, yet can’t get it together to accept the help. There’s very little thinking of the future. People live completely hand to mouth.. if they happen to make a lot of money in a given month, they’ll immediately spend it rather than saving it for a rainy day. Then they come crying to John for a loan when their child is sick. People get greedy, even those who have been lifted out of poverty by these samaritans. It would frustrate the hell out of me, but it doesn’t seem to bother John. He just carries on.

John shared with me three rules about starting NGO’s that he learned from an older, wiser foreigner living here:

1. Do something you like. Because ultimately, you’re not going to stick with it if it’s solely for the benefit of others. In John’s case, he’s doing this for the intellectual challenge – helping people is a side benefit, but he’s clear that it’s not strictly charity.
2. Don’t expect anyone to thank you. This one breaks my heart.
3. Don’t count on funding from abroad – make it self-sufficient. The reality is that while the school pays for itself (barely), John solicits (and receives) a lot of money from friends and associates in Belgium for training and extracurricular or capital projects – if the school needs a new computer or a renovation to the kitchen, he will ask for specific help for things like that. He’s a great fund-raiser.

So why did John leave the fantastic life he had in Holland replete with fancy parties, pretty people, a great apartment, a well-paying job and good challenges? Because there were too many rules. He couldn’t have started anything like this back there, what with all of the permits and regulations and laws and restrictions. Here, there is complete freedom to whatever you want to do. I find this ironic, because it’s only recognized as freedom for those of us who come from such cultures that are able to recognize that freedom. People from here don’t think they have freedom. When you come from seven generations of destitute farmers, of course you’re not going to think, “I could be rich” – you don’t have the context or the tools to make that happen. This is one of the things I like about American culture – we are raised with the belief that no matter what class you’re born into, you have a fighting chance to become an astronaut, president, or CEO. A marked contrast from the way most cultures raise their children.

I’ve learned a lot in chatting with John. He doesn’t care about material things. He doesn’t care whether people like him or not, which makes him a great boss. He knows he’ll never fit in here, as locals think all gringos are rich and therefore they have ulterior motives beyond friendship. John lives his life completely honestly – something I’m intrigued by but find difficult to implement. I’m constantly telling little white lies to ease the conversation – how long I’m traveling for (so people don’t assume I’m rich), my lack of religion (to avoid conflict), etc. But life would certainly be much easier if I didn’t have to remember who I’ve told what to, and could just speak the truth in every moment. Something to strive for.

The school is run on a bare bones budget in order to get as much of the money into the hands of the teachers. As part of the financial transparency, you pay the teachers directly for the classes and the school a separate fee for administration. Then another fee to your host family for your room and board. It’s all very complicated, but the intention behind it is nice. The classes are not the absolute cheapest in town, but they’re quite affordable – $6.50/hour. The housing, however, is certainly the cheapest I’ve ever seen. A private room with bathroom and three meals a day for $85/week. Zowie! Way to save money on hotels and restaurants.

Every Wednesday evening the school hosts a cooking class / dinner – a nice social time to get to know fellow students and other teachers. Every Saturday morning they organize a volleyball game for the students and teachers. I have yet to make it to one of these, although it sounds fun.

The host family I chose to live with turned out to be John and Fanny’s, since their house has the nicest rooms. It’s several miles outside of downtown, so the commute gets to be a pain (combis – the minivan buses – are invariably stuffed with people, and are not made for North American-sized bodies), but otherwise things are pretty good. Manche is the grandmother / cook of the house. Sweet lady, doesn’t speak a lick of English, always ribbing me about something in her loud obnoxious voice. She and her husband speak Quechua to each other. It’s a strange sounding language. (Did you know that Google has a search page in Quechua? Strange for a largely oral and dying language). Manche’s husband (Grandpa) has a good job as head of maintenance at the local hospital, but he still farms a plot up on the hill as he likes the work. Imagine, at his age. Perhaps it’s also an excuse to stay out of the house!

Living with a local family has been interesting as one would expect, and gives cultural insight into a world I don’t usually see as a tourist. In the house besides the grandparents (Fanny’s parents) are John and Fanny, their 5 year old twin boys, two or more sisters of Fanny’s, one of whom has a teenage son, and possibly other people. You would think I would have it down who’s living in my house, but I get confused by all the people coming and going – is she another sister? Or just a friend over for lunch?

Manche is a prime example of how much of the culture is stuck in their ways of the past. John bought her a nice modern oven, but she refuses to use it – choosing instead to do her baking in the shared wood-fired oven down the street that the entire neighborhood uses. After watching the sisters scrub their clothes by hand for the third day in a row in the same manner as campesiños do in the rivers, I noticed a washing machine sitting in the corner. “Why don’t you use that instead of all the manual labor?”, I asked them. The only reply was a shrug of the shoulders.

I have a nice room with a queen-sized bed, dresser, desk, and windows on three sides with a great view. The only downsides are the electric shower (which never really gets warm, at least if you want any kind of pressure), lack of WiFi, and the freezing cold! I’m constantly wearing my long-johns and four other layers and still shivering. The food is generally good, if a bit bland. Typical day: wake up at 6:30 (unheard of for me), quick shower to shock me awake, then downstairs for breakfast with Manche and the other student in the house. Walk a few blocks to the bus stop, cram into a tiny combi with 20 other commuters for the 30-minute ride to school. Classes start at 8am (although after three weeks I changed this to 9am, since I’m useless at that hour). Bang my head against grammar for a few hours while freezing my butt off and trying desperately to stay awake.

Most students do two hours of grammar with one teacher, then two hours of practice with another teacher. In theory, this would be great since you walk around town during the practical session – stretch the legs, do some sightseeing. But I found I wasn’t really learning anything during these later two hours since it wasn’t practical to write down words I was learning, and my retention is crap without pen and paper. But I love my grammar teacher – so I asked to change to four hours continuous classroom time with her.

School is frustrating as all hell. I spent the first week reviewing what I learned in Guatemala a year ago but didn’t retain. Now we’re on to other verb tenses, several of the pasts and one of the future, and my poor little brain is hurting. I know all of this is necessary if I hope to live in Latin America, but it just seems like at this rate it will be several years before I’m fluent.

One minor thing I’m bumping into is that vocabulary I learned in other countries is wrong here – for example, aguacate (avocado) is called palta here. An interesting thing I’m learning is that Spanish is in many ways a more specific, descriptive language than English. For example, there are verbs specifically for “to go to bed”, “to put on one’s clothes”, etc. Things that take several words to describe in English have one specific word in Spanish.

At 12pm, we knock off and I catch a bus back to the house for lunch. Then I either collapse for a nap or head back into town to use the internet or do a bit of sightseeing. I’ll often stay in town for dinner, partly to have gringo-friendly food, and partly since it’s such a pain commuting back and forth. My first day out of the house I took photos every 100′ as a bread-crumb trail so I’d be able to find my way back! [Love that about digital cameras - using them for temporary visual notes. Frequently I'll take photos of maps on walls of hotels if they don't have any to hand out. You can then zoom in and pan around on the map on your camera's screen when you're out in the field. Almost as good as the real thing.]

My homework has increased from about two to three hours each day. And I’d forgotten how taxing mental work can be – I get as exhausted and famished as if I were doing physical labor.

Like most of Latin America, lunch is the big meal of the day, not dinner, and it can turn into a raucus affair with people shouting over each other, laughing, swapping stories, and teasing. The other day I received a 30-minute tretease from the 30-something sisters on how different animal parts are good for you to eat depending on what state you’re in. If you’re a woman ovulating, for example, you should eat penis (of a cow, I think). Eyes are good for this, tongue for that. These are middle-class, university-educated women telling me this. I’m just saying.

John never comes home for lunch, nor for most holidays for that matter. By his own admission, he’s a workaholic, spending most of his time at the school. I suspect the reason has more to do with the fact that his step-mother and he don’t get along rather than there being that much work to do at school. Manche and John have a lot of differences. For example, when one of the infants had a fever, she said it was an evil wind, and the solution was to drape him in a black sheet. He insisted on going to hospital, and sure enough it was an infection; they gave medication, and it cleared up. Duh. How many thousands of kids are suffering because of misguided beliefs such as this?

People marry for all kinds of reasons, but I couldn’t do what John has done. Living with in-laws I don’t get along with in a house that isn’t really mine – no, thank you.

Christmas

A few days before Christmas I met lovely woman named Sandra through Couchsurfing. We spent a few days getting to know each other as friends before the romance bloomed. I’ll come back to all the juicy details about her and our adventures together in the next post. In the meantime, I’ll wrap things up by describing what Christmas was like around here.

Although I’m happy to have made a few friends and integrated into a family, I am sad to be alone for Christmas. Alone as in away from my close friends, family, and culture. I think I’m one of the few people who still enjoys the traditions although for me it’s essentially a secular holiday. The songs, food, traditions, and sense of belonging are what make it special to me, not the fact that some dude 2,000 years ago may or may not have died on this day. In contrast to North America, Christmas here is quite muted. Which is actually refreshing if you’re sick of all the over-hyped marketing surrounding Christmas. For example, although the city put twinkly lights up around the square, they only went up a week before Christmas – not two months before as in the States.

A few days before Christmas we had a special cooking class / Christmas party at the school. The teachers had amassed boxes of canned and dry food that they unceremoniously gave each other as presents, which I found a bit odd considering it was the exact same stuff being exchanged. Presents aren’t really done here, normally just a few small things for the kids. A number of the fancy hotels and businesses give away hundreds of toys to poor kids who line up for hours in lines snaking around the block.

December 24th sees the main plaza taken over by an enormous market where you can buy all the gifts, handicrafts, models, dolls and grasses for your nativity scene.. and, of course, fireworks for that night. It’s a wonderful market, full of fantastic sights and sounds. Peasants from the countryside who only leave their village once a year spend days walking to Cusco (and sleep in the square) just to sell bits of moss and grass that people buy to line the floor of their nativity scenes. I only wonder why the market doesn’t exist for more than a single day – I’m thinking of the wonderful Christmas markets in France that exist in every town and city for weeks ahead of time. Marvelous little wooden huts where you buy delicious cheeses and hot mulled wine to sip as you stroll around viewing all the offerings. But I digress.

As in the rest of Latin America, most of the Christmas celebrations actually happen on Christmas Eve. I spent the day with Sandra buying a few presents for the kids in my family and fireworks for that night. That evening I gathered with my host family into the cold concrete fluorescent-lit living room of the house. Wearing all our layers, we lit incence and candles of different colors signifying luck in love, money, etc. Nearly smoking ourselves out, we sat waiting for the stroke of midnight as I admired the nativity scene they had constructed over the previous week. The sisters asked me and the other student why we weren’t getting emotional as they were. At the appointed hour, along with millions of other Latinos, we placed the baby Jesus doll into the nativity scene. It’s such a foreign concept to me, all these grown adults playing with their religious dolls. People even take their dolls to church to get baptised. This year two got left behind, and the priest said he was going to have to adopt them.

After hugs and toasts with sickly-sweet champagne, we headed out into the street and spent the next hour exploding enormous fireworks that would have surely brought SWAT teams running were we in the States. It was crazy – one “firework” (bomb) was easily half a stick of dynamite – I was deaf for several minutes afterwards. When I say “we” set these off, I actually mean the others – I was up against the wall 30′ away, cowering for my life. Our street is quite narrow, so occasionally a car would approach and drive right over the unexploded fireworks. The neighbors started setting off their fireworks inside their garage. Which had a car parked in it. With a full tank of gas. You can imagine my anxiety imagining all the ways we might have died that night. And it wasn’t just us – the skies looked like Beirut during the war.

When we’d burned the last of the bunch, we headed inside and sat down for dinner. Yes, at 1:30 in the morning. It’s tradition. You start with hot chocolate and panetone, a stale fruit bread that’s so popular in Peru there are entire stores that sell only this stuff. Somehow mine slipped under the table to find it’s way into the dog’s mouth. Next comes a soup featuring a potato that was dug up and reburied for three months to ferment. It tastes like you’d expect. Hard as a rock, too. Again, somehow mine got lost in the shuffle.

The actual day of Christmas was a bit anti-climactic. No ceremonious opening of presents like we do back home. My host family prepared the traditional Christmas dinner (lunch), featuring a whole pig. Grandpa took the head back to his room, presumably to gorge on the best parts for himself. Sandra and I spent the day lounging around her apartment watching movies in bed, a tradition I much prefer.

Next post: crazy New Year’s Eve celebrations, motorcycling through the Sacred Valley, and living as a local.

My first connection is in Pisco, just an hour or so north of Ica. Not being a morning person, I miss the early bus.. and I don’t like traveling at night, particularly when the scenery is so spectacular. So, I figure a night in Pisco couldn’t hurt. Listen, fellow traveler: do as I say, not as I do. Pisco is an abomination of a town. Had I landed here a year ago with less experience under my belt, I probably would have burst into tears. Ugly, ugly, ugly. People trying to rip you off at every turn. Even the hotel, which normally takes the side of their guests, tries to tell me as I’m leaving that the taxi fare to the Pan-American highway is in fact twice what I had paid the night before – and even that was a rip-off. In moments like these you simply turn your back on the hustlers and walk away with your middle finger held high.

It’s funny that some places don’t realize that travelers do in fact talk to each other, and that ripping people off will only lead to less business in the long run. But then, many people I interact with don’t think in the long term – only what will make them a buck today.

The ugliness of Pisco isn’t really their fault. Just two years ago, an 8.0 earthquake struck this area killing 519 people, injuring 1,366, and destroying 58,500 homes – fully half of the buildings in town. Rebuilding is dragging. The entire place is a construction zone. Hot, dusty, and dirty. No reason to come. Move along now, nothing to see here.

Just off the coast, however, are some islands covered in guano (another Quechua word – along with pisco, coca, condor, jerky, llama, puma, quinine, and quinoa – that’s made it into the English language.) During Peru’s guano rush of 1850-1870, 10 million tons of the stuff was carted away. This had the effect of lowering the islands’ height by 30 metres and almost destroying the bird population – which includes the Humboldt penguin (Arthur!), flamingo, pelican, and of course, boobies! Guano rush?!
[An historical aside - the U.S. Congress passed a law allowing U.S. citizens to take possesion of any island containing guano deposit (providing it's not already owned by another nation). It also empowers the President to direct the military to protect such interests. Who knew?]

After waiting by the side of the road for a while (why did I get up so early??), the bus eventually rambles up only an hour or so late. Once I’m settled in, the stewardess inexplicably picks me to go downstairs into the first class section. Woo-hoo! Really plush, huge comfy seats that recline all the way. Further along in the journey she takes a bit of trash from a passenger, opens the window, and throws it out. Did I mention that we’re in the middle of pristine wilderness. How do you begin changing behavior like that which is so ingrained? The scenery is spectacular, I’m glad I waited to take the day bus. We’re traveling over puna, that alpine-like terrain that looks so beautifully desolate.

My first stop along this less-traveled route is the mountain town of Ayacucho. Less-traveled indeed: just 500 foreigners visit Ayacucho monthly, as opposed to the 45,000 that visit Cusco. [You can see why I'm kind of dreading Cusco!] Ayacucho is a pleasant town with lots of churches, hills with lovely views, and artisans. But the town is best known as the birthplace of the Shining Path, the Maoist guerrilla group that fought an 11-year civil war which claimed the lives of 69,000 people in the 1980’s and early 90’s. Much of the fighting between the Army and the guerrillas occurred around here, terrorizing local villages and causing widespread migration to the cities. The guidebooks and tourist websites will tell you that’s all over with. But in fact, the Shining Path has become a Peruvian version of the FARC – political in name only, but in reality they are shrewd businesspeople reaping huge profits from the cocaine trade. Moreover, pockets of rebels still wreck havoc in parts of the country occasionally. Just a few months ago an Air Force helicopter was shot down by rebels near here. It’s not the kind of thing tourists should worry about, but it’s always nice to find out what’s really going on, as opposed to just hearing the party line. Full credit again goes to Wikipedia for exposing these facts.

The oldest evidence of human presence in all of South America was also discovered near here. The Pikimachay Cave sheltered a series of nomadic groups during the last ice age, around 15,000 B.C. The cave’s inhabitants were hunter-gatherers, hunting now-extinct animals such as mastodons, giant sloths, saber-toothed tigers, and miniature horses. Cool!

Apparently the Easter celebrations in Ayacucho are second to none, if you happen to find yourself around these parts then.
I’m experiencing my first taste of the rainy season – after a pleasant spring-like morning, the skies opened up and the street turned into a river for about an hour. But then it stopped and birds were singing again. Gotta love the tropics.

I’m not sure I’d recommend this route unless you have a lot of time and love the mountains. One can see equally interesting indigenous highland culture in Cajamarca for far less schlepping and unlike Cajamarca, there’s not much to see within striking distance of Ayacucho.

The altitude always does a number on me. I know my body will adapt in a few days, but for now I’ve got headaches, wooziness, shortness of breath, and I keep tripping. One can only drink so much coca tea.
My UV water purifier that I always rave about broke! It only dropped 2 feet, from the bed to the carpeted floor Damn… well, I can still purify water by boiling it in the kettle; this just means no more cold water nor instantly. I never really used it away from the hotel room anyway. Although if I do go on one of the Incan trail treks, it would have come in really useful then. Technology hates me this month.

Speaking of drinking, at 7pm tonight as I’m in the restaurant picking up my pizza to go, I notice two guys passed out cold. Face down on the table. Their buddy is wearing a chef’s hat and drunkenly trying to engage me in conversation. I wonder what the occasion is.

The supermarket here has a sign explaining the significance of the different colors of candles. Blue for love, red for money, etc. Handy, because I can never remember which color to buy. The nuns in the monastery down the street sell sweets and marmalade made from a recipe given to them by God.

UPDATE from a week after I left – mudslides came streaming down the main streets, sweeping away cars and killing nine!

After a couple of nights in Ayacucho I continue my journey on the dirt road heading up and over the high treeless páramo. I catch my first glimpse of vicuña – the wild ancestor of the alpaca – whose wool the Incas valued higher than gold. We stop for lunch at 11am in the tiny Quechua town of Chumbes where I partake in some fried dough while wandering the rural market. It’s really peaceful here and the air is so fresh. And thin – I think I’m getting sunburnt from just a half hour outside with no hat on. I can see why the indigenous wear those wonderful large hats with the big brims. The kids slung on mama’s backs are adorable with their little hats, too.

Another couple of hours on the bus finds us descending into the Pampa Valley, a cobalt-blue river meandering through subtropic desert. It’s about at this time that we come to a stop at a roadblock and I get out to see what all the fuss is about. There’s been a landslide! Last night’s rains loosened up all that dry dirt on the hillside and completely blocked the road. It looks like road crews have been working on it all morning, but now I understand that the largest backhoe has locked up and they can’t get it moving again. This massive machine is right in the middle of things. To make matters worse, they can’t simply clear a path around it since the edge of the road is a cliff hanging over the river. Well, this is going to be interesting! We could be here all day.

One of the things I love about Latin America is when people rush to the scene of excitement, even if it’s dangerous. And nobody stops them. Thus, myself and about 50 other people are clustered around the scene of these large earth-moving machines which are throwing boulders around while perched on the side of a cliff and nobody’s concerned about liability. Actually for a while it looked like nothing was happening. I thought I was back in Italy, what with everyone standing around arguing about what should be done and no one actually doing anything. An enormous neighborhood pig then wanders through the scene. Finally someone has the idea to knock down a concrete wall and create a route around the obstacle that way. He jumps in his front-end loader and just knocks the wall right into the river. A swarm of guys standing around (just bystanders, not road crew) pounces on the remaining rebar and clears the site. I’m impressed with this can-do spirit. Back in the States, they would have sent all traffic back for days while the site was methodically repaired. Probably would have needed to get the right permits first.

Now to send the first bus across this dicey route. [By this point a line of about 20 trucks and buses had backed up. Fortunately mine was not first in line.] I had my doubts – when I walked the path, my feet sank about 6″ into the soft dirt. Fine for the huge treads on a front-loader, but for a large cruising bus? Yikes. So naturally they empty the bus of passengers first, just in case it does go toppling over the edge, right? Um, that would be no. I’ve got to hand it to the drivers – they’re incredibly brave (or incredibly stupid). The top-heavy bus took a couple of gasp-inducing shifts leaning towards the river as it negotiated the rough path, and then.. sure enough, got stuck in the soft sand. Long story short, they eventually got it out and with each subsequent vehicle, the path became easier to drive. I elected to get back on only once the bus was well clear of the danger. Of course, then we had to contend with the traffic that was now backed up on the other side coming our way. Lots of honking and shouting and negotiating later, we’re finally on our way again.

Amazingly we only lost a couple of hours, and our crazy skilled driver was able to make up lost time. This guy knows the exact length of his wheelbase down to the centimetre. He’s able to take corners to the point where the front of the bus is hanging well over the edge of the road (it’s only about a thousand-foot drop down) but the wheels are still clinging on. Did I mention it’s a dirt road? We’re climbing a series of switchbacks and each one has stunning views of the rugged mountains. It’s classic South American scenery up here, everything you imagine and have seen in photographs. We pass tiny remote Andean villages, rarely if ever visited by occidentals.

At last we reach Andahuaylas, a pleasant town with friendly people. I’m remembering an important lesson of traveling – that the further one gets from big cities and touristed areas, the friendlier and more open people are. Generally. The folks here rarely see tourists and perhaps as a result, they’re curious and chatty and pleasantly free from that awful scammy attitude. It always takes me a bit to readjust if I’ve recently had my guard up. Oh right, that person trying to “help” me really is trying to help – with no ulterior motive! Ok, don’t brush him off, instead let’s engage.

I’m also pleased to find a nice hotel with WiFi for a very reasonable price (30 Soles, about $10). The next morning as I’m having breakfast I observe indigenous farmers wander into the restaurant trying to sell their bit of produce to the proprietor. Big bags of maté, carrots, quail eggs, limes, etc. To my surprise the owner buys everything offered. I guess that’s how she gets her ingredients – no need to go to the market, let it come to you!

Luckily I’m in town on a Sunday. I didn’t know it (the guidebooks and the ‘net hardly mention it), but Andahuaylas has easily one of the largest and most colorful markets that I’ve yet seen on this trip. Enormous, it goes on for maybe 1/2 km. And varied – every kind of fruit, vegetable, and grain imaginable; clothing, shoes, DVDs, crappy electronics; and the first large animal market I’ve yet seen. Rabbits, guinea pigs, cocks, horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, cats.. all being traded and sold by beautiful Quechua people wearing their colorful traditional garb. A photographer’s dream (unfortunately my battery ran out, so I can’t back that claim up). I recommend a trip up here just for this market if nothing else. A few stands are selling snake oil remedies for anything that ails you. These hawkers display large gruesome photos of various diseases and conditions, claiming their products will cure all. Including cancer!

40 minutes outside of town is the beautiful and tranquil Lake Pacucha. Overlooking the lake by a couple of km lies the ruined Chanca fortress of Sondor. Not incredibly impressive as ruins go, but it’s set amidst dramatic mountains and valleys and is a lovely place to spend the afternoon peacefully picnicing with the resident sheep herder. The last foreigner in the logbook was over a week ago. Nice. If one were to rent a 4×4 or motorcycle and drive part of Peru, this would be the place to do it. Spreading out in all directions are enticing dirt roads leading far into the countryside through fantastic scenery. I could picture spending a week or more driving these back roads, camping, meeting the local farmers, some of whom have probably never met a foreigner in their lives.

From Moon Travel Handbooks:
If you come at the end of July you can witness the Festival of Blood. Men from the village head into the high sierra and capture several condors, using horsemeat as bait. During the festival, the condors are tied one by one onto the back of a bull. Anthropologists theorize that the ensuing struggle may represent a symbolic confrontation between the Incas (condor) and the Spanish (bull). The contest ends before either animal is killed and the condors are always released back into the wild.

After the ruins I decide to walk around the lake. A girl of about 8 years old walks with me for a while not saying much. I stop by a large group of people all standing outside what I later realize is a church. Ah, this is a wake. The men who were shooting the breeze as I approached enthusiastically greet me and keep insisting I drink more of their “soda”. I believe them – it tastes like soda after all, but of course I finally realize this has a fair amount of alcohol in it. Times like these I wish I had a camera in my eye sockets. These guys are perfectly iconic. Most of their teeth are missing (a couple have gold stars on the remaining ones), wonderfully expressive weatherbeaten faces, as old as the earth. Probably my age in reality, but it’s the tough living conditions out here. And such great spirit – they’re good-naturedly teasing me and joking around, without a hint of scamming or asking for anything in return. As I’m leaving I hear one of the grandmothers say under her breath while looking at me, “you’re drunk”. It wasn’t true, but the remaining walk around the lake did become much longer than it otherwise would have been. Hot sun, no water, local firewater. Great combination.

Remembering how that American couple found me on the coast by simply doing a Twitter search for the name of the town we were in, I decided to try the same thing here to see if any other gringos were around to hang out with. Whoa, this opened a Pandora’s box – the search revealed all sorts of dramatic events that have been going on over the last few weeks here. Apparently there have been a number of strikes, roadblocks, and confrontations with the police. Two farmers were killed and 87 injured. Again, the power of Twitter demonstrated – this is the sort of news one wouldn’t have been able to learn about just a few years ago. Too small to make international press, and I’m not in the habit of picking up local papers that I can’t read anyway. It’s a good thing I hung out in Andahuaylas a couple of extra days before heading out – I wouldn’t have made it, due to the road being blocked by the protesters.

Usually when a backpacker walks into a bus station all the touts and representatives of the various companies come running up, frantically trying to get your business. It happens similarly here in Andahuaylas but on a much more relaxed scale. It was actually fun pitting the reps against each other, laughing with them all the way, because it was obvious that they all know each other from way back and it’s not cutthroat here as it is in the big cities.

From Andahuaylas, it’s 10 hours to Cusco. But I’m having such a nice time here in these highland towns that I’ve decided to stop in one more before facing Cusco. So I take a minivan 5 hours to Abancay. It’s meant to be a 3 1/2 hour trip, but we ran into another landslide (this one much less dramatic) as well as getting a flat tire. The driver jacked the car up while we were still sitting in it. Huh. Again, fantastically breathtaking scenery. Between the two cities is only 50km as the crow flies, but one look at the map and you’ll see why it takes so long. The road looks like crumpled-up string squished into a thimble – one continuous series of switchbacks and hairpin turns. The driver leans on the horn before every turn in case of traffic coming the other way. You can see Abancay laid out in the valley far below long before you actually arrive. Again, the road is all packed dirt, no asphalt/tarmac.

I found a great room here in Abancay with an enormous picture window overlooking the park and the mountains rising up from the edge of town beyond. The hotel has a fast internet connection at an affordable price. No reason to leave! I expected to see more indigenous culture here – the book says most residents speak Quechua – but I’ve actually seen less than in Andahuaylas. Why do all three towns I’ve stayed in over the past week start with the letter ‘A’? It’s confusing my poor little brain. Abancay is a pretty lively town for just 50,000 people – even on a Monday night the streets are alive quite late. Probably due to the universities here. The weather is pleasant – a bit of rain, but it’s that soft misty rain that smells nice and is not too cold. Actually, I’ve been surprised at how warm this whole region is for as high altitude as we are. Maybe I’m far enough south now that I’m starting to feel the effects of summer, rather than the same year-round temperatures you get close to the equator.

I was anxious to see what kind of national police and military presence there would be here since this town is the epicenter of the recent conflict. But despite a state of emergency being declared for this region, you hardly notice anything unusual. There’s no curfew as I thought there might be. Groups of soldiers are on every third corner standing around in full battle gear with machine guns, but nobody seems to pay them any mind and they look relaxed as they flirt with the local girls. It’s like being back in Colombia!

I did see some signs of the recent demonstrations, though. There are a lot of boulders and rocks strewn (placed) in the roads above town. This is the technique protesters use in Peru to block traffic. Although this is such a sleepy little city, I’m not sure what traffic they were blocking! During my jog tonight I also came upon a large football field being used by the police to practice their motorcycle skills. They had traffic cones and rocks set up in various formations as a dozen cops slowly weaved around the obstacles and a supervisor took notes on a clipboard. Beautiful choreography, if unintended as such. I walked back through rustic little neighborhoods at twilight. Old people sitting on their front stoop watching the world go by. Kids playing in the street, so cute. Occasional woman selling a bit of meat from a grill she has set up on the corner.

Every day this week a different funeral procession has marched (ok, ambled) down main street. They’re small, simple affairs – led in front by a half dozen people holding large flower arrangements on stands; next come the pallbearers, a half-dozen guys in suits with the casket held aloft. Immediately behind the casket are the grieving family members. Taking up the rear is the band – bass drum, snare, and a couple of horns. I think it’s been the same band during every procession. Their sheet music is clothes-pinned to the jacket of the person in front of them. Although I don’t know why they need it, since they’re playing the same few tunes every day:

Two attractions near Abancay are the Ampay National Sanctuary with what look to be beautiful high alpine lagoons, if I can figure out how to get there – and the Saywite monolith, a large boulder onto which the Incans carved a scale map of their entire empire. Yawn. I’ll probably just hang around here, for there is great hiking just 5 minutes outside my door. The foothills rise improbably (and steeply) right from the edge of town, and within 20 minutes you feel completely transported.

Videos:

This first one is a combination of two markets. We begin in Chumbes, that tiny village where buses stop for lunch. The first lady is hawking some snake oil and I love how she’s using her VW Bug’s battery to power her P.A. Then we cut to a lady making fried dough rings. She could probably form those in her sleep with her other hand tied behind her back. The liquid she pours on at the end is a watered-down honey as near as I can tell. Whatever it is, it’s delicious. Then we jump to the animal market in Andahuaylas where we wander around taking in all the animals on offer:

This other video is one of the many funeral processions I’ve witnessed this week. It’s surprising how few people attend these things – just 20 or 30 people at the most. I can’t get enough of the music:

Hundreds of bodegas (the other use of the word – not the corner store where you buy your cigs, but rather a winemaking hacienda), from big industrial affairs to small traditional rustic operations, produce the famous pisco white grape brandy as well as a variety of ports and wines. I took a tour that went to one of each operation. As you might expect, the small family producer was much more interesting. Each March during harvest, the grapes are hand mashed. Actually, foot-mashed. I’d love to come back during this time, it sounds like quite a party. We saw photos of the pretty “grape queens” dancing away with dozens of other revelers in the vats – surely the strangest disco that exists. After the grapes are crushed underfoot, they are further squeezed by lowering an enormous 150-year old tree trunk onto the mess. The liquid is then siphoned off for fermentation. The remaining skin and seeds are spread on the ground (basically thrown away) – it’s what you walk on around the grounds. Originally the wine was aged in cylindrical clay containers leftover by pre-Incan cultures who made them for fermenting chicha, but nowadays it’s aged in oak barrels.

Pisco is distilled from wine that has been fermented for 45 days. Whereas in the modern wineries where gas jets and refrigerant are used, the artisanal wineries still distill the old-fashioned way. A large wood fire is kept going under the enormous tank of wine; the resulting vapor is collected in a copper tube which spirals down through a vat of cool water, and the condensed liquid drips out into a clay pot. After all that work, only a percentage of the final product can be sold for consumption. There are three parts to the resulting liquid. The first part out of the distillery, or the “head”, is almost pure ethanol and is sold for industrial cleaning operations. The second part, or the “body” (and here’s where it takes an expert to tell when to change the tap), is sold as pisco for drinking. The third part, or the “tail” or “legs”, is again no good for imbibing, and is used for different industrial uses.

Chile is also known for it’s long tradition of pisco production, and there has been long-standing rivalry and disputes between the two countries over this issue.

After being given a tour at each winery comes the best part – the sampling! I found the different types of pisco to be pleasant, particularly when chilled. They also make a Bailey’s-type liquor from pisco, milk, sugar, and figs which is yummy. But the wine is not particularly agreeable to my palate – it’s all sweet or semi-sweet (owing to the grapes grown around here), and I prefer my wine on the dry side.

But the real reason I came down this way was to see Lake Huacachina, a magical and incongruous oasis surrounded on all sides by huge sand dunes. [If you're in Peru, pull out a 50 Sole note and look on the back. That's this place.] Total population: 115. I met an English woman who’s been living here for five years. Wow. With just a handful of restaurants and hotels grouped around the tiny oasis, it’s an ideal spot to relax for a few days. (Or a few years, I guess.) Sunset walks on the dunes.. sunbathing by the pool.. or adventure sports! A number of operators offer inexpensive dune buggy tours combined with sandboarding at sunset. Good fun.

Dune buggy riding is like being on a roller coaster without a track – the drivers take perverse pleasure in gunning the powerful machines up the steep inclines until you can’t see what’s over the crest. Your stomach then drops away as you plunge down 50° slopes at up to 80 km/hr. Apparently they’ve calmed things down somewhat since a couple of tourists died last year. It’s always nice to find these things out AFTER you’ve returned and are safely sitting at the bar.

The two-hour dune buggy tour includes many opportunities for sandboarding. Normally they recommend sitting or lying down on the boards, as that’s safer. Naturally, I insisted on standing up. I’m not sure why, but you actually end up going faster sitting or lying down. And the soft sand won’t cut you the way volcanic rock does when I went volcano surfing in Nicaragua. So I’m not sure why he kept warning me, saying “danger!” over and over.

Luckily we only had to hike up a couple of dunes – for the most part, the buggies drive around to pick you up at the bottom. After we were all worn out and ready to return back to town, all strapped in and ready to go, the driver turned the ignition key, and… nothing. The engine wouldn’t even roll over. Dead battery! Luckily one other buggy was still around, so we weren’t completely trapped out there miles away from civilization with no hope. [Later we asked the driver how he would have described his location had he needed to call for help. Apparently these guys know this dune world so well that he says he would have only needed to describe the bowl we were sitting in and they would have known how to get there. Incredible. Later I even saw some driving at night which is crazy if you ask me, since many of the dunes are too steep to drive up or down and how can you tell in the darkness? I'd end up rolling over or wrecking. But I guess that's why they have that job and I don't!]

So myself and the four other guys in the car get out and start pushing (while yes, the two ladies stayed sitting in the buggy). You can probably imagine what trying to push a car in deep sand is like. Fortunately we were on an incline, so we were actually able to get it moving and he crash-started it. Of course, now he had to get out of this bowl he was in. He would take long starts to build up speed, curving this way and that, but could never quite make it up to the crest. Finally the other driver yanked him out and showed him out it’s done – zoomed right up to where we were standing, and.. shut the engine off. Doh! Back to square one. This time it was on level ground, so there was no way just four of us were going to get it moving. They tried backing the other dune buggy up against it and ramming it forward. That didn’t work. Finally everyone from the other buggy and ours gave it our all and got it moving. Hilarious.

The great thing about tours is that you end up bonding with the people you’ve just had this adventure with, which leads to fun dinner and drinking partners that night. It’s a nice way to meet people. Being Saturday night, we ended up at the (only) disco, full of fun people and a bon fire out back, my favorite. Unfortunately the happy hour specials at dinner caught up with me and I had to excuse myself to return to my room and pray to the porcelain god. Geez, haven’t done that in years. I spent the next day recovering at the quaint little library where the friendly librarian kept bringing me picture books to idly thumb through while sitting on their old-fashioned porch overlooking the lake.

The lake itself is green, sulphuric, and meant to have curative properties. On weekends this place really comes alive with locals visiting from Ica and elsewhere to swim and boat. Myself, I wouldn’t touch the lake with a 10-foot pole. With no entrance or exit, it’s stagnant water. And sadly, even in this tiny oasis, people discard their garbage everywhere. What’s that phrase – don’t shit where you eat? Clearly they have a different value system than I have, and it’s unfair for me to impose my standards on their way of life. Still, I find it troubling that they’re not bothered by the trash in such a beautiful spot.

The topology around here is stunningly surreal. On my last night in town I went for a hike up one of the dunes that rises improbably right from the edge of the houses and ended up getting quite a workout. I learned afterward that you don’t climb sand dunes up their face or you just end up sliding backwards for every step you take upward. Instead it’s best to climb the ridgeline, which is both harder packed and often has other footprints you can walk in. I never made sunrise as I had hoped to, but sunset too provides beautiful shadows stacking up on each subsequent ridge. The nearly full moon rose over the city lights bathing the dunes in a soft glow. I sat there for a long time, quietly contemplative and tranquil. I know I’ll be finding sand in the strangest places for months to come. Kind of like when your theatre does a production of the Nutcracker and you keep finding that damn paper snow in every corner well into the next summer.

I almost didn’t make it here – the first time I tried leaving Lima, none of the buses (which normally leave every 8 minutes!) were running, owing to demonstrations blocking the roads around here. I think it was workers striking. Apparently this has been going on all over southern Peru this month – people are reporting on the message boards that Arequipa was locked up a few weeks ago.

I didn’t visit it, but I’m told that the archaeological museum in Ica is pretty cool. They have displays of trepanned skulls and other oddities. Besides trepanning, apparently these ancient cultures would wrap infants’ heads to make them develop conically – foreshadowing SNL’s Coneheads by 1,000 years.

If you come to Huacachina: there are a wide range of prices and options for hotels. The popular Hostal Salvatierra is cheap, friendly, and has a great pool – but the rooms are crap and the beds are worse. Try to negotiate a good price with one of the other hotels and you’ll be happier. The winery tours are not worth it – cheaper and easy to do on your own by negotiating directly with a taxi driver. The dune buggy / sandboarding tours are totally worth it at 30 Soles.

Two hours south of Ica lies the perfectly flat San José desert, famous for it’s cryptic Nazca Lines and the highest sand dune in the world at 2,078m. Not fully appreciated until airplanes were invented a millenia after they were carved, more than 70 giant plant, animal, and geometric figures etched into the desert floor stretch for over 500 square km. Some say the lines were made either by or for extraterrestrials. The consensus among experts, however, is that the lines were symbols used in water ceremonies. [And no, the lines didn't require advanced technology to be carved. They were made the same way we were taught in Stagecraft 101 to paint a large backdrop that you only have room to work on a section at a time - you pencil a grid onto a small version of the work, then use a grid of the same proportions but n times larger to transfer the work to the large scale.] Interestingly, the lines were created over a very long period of time and by several cultures, from 400 B.C. to 1000 A.D.

I’ve decided to skip seeing this attraction. Although the hair-raising tiny airplane ride would be fun, it’s pricey and a one-trick pony. So I’m headed back into the Andes on a road that will eventually land me in Cusco.

Here’s a video I shot to give you a taste of the dune buggy riding and sandboarding:

There are other ones on YouTube. Here’s a long one that includes tours around Ica, dune buggy riding, and sandboarding.
And here’s one that shows more of the standing-up boarding than I was able to capture.

I must admit that one of the reasons I’ve viewed Lima in a negative light is that I’ve been in a funk the last couple of weeks. I think it’s a combination of things – leaving Kathy, concerned about money, questioning what I’m really doing here at all…

I’m having a classic ex-pat existentialist moment. I left my country for specific reasons and don’t want to return (other than to visit you family and friends!), yet I clearly don’t fit in here either. So where is my home? Where are my people? I trust that when I finally do land, I will find (or form) that group; but in the meantime I’m struggling.

Allowing negativity to get the best of me, I’m constantly annoyed by the smallest things – employees that follow me around stores like I’m about to shoplift; the fact that one can buy 20 kinds of potato chips yet not a single bag of corn chips. I know, it sounds ridiculous.. and is clearly a manifestation of larger issues.
I’ve become jaded to things that used to excite me, and the amount of things that continue to grab my interest is waning. I blindly follow the guidebook suggestions without really knowing why, and just end up seeing the hundredth church / ruin / mountain.

I’ve been holing up in my room aimlessly surfing the web instead of going out and interacting with people, which would probably be good for my spirits. But good god, how many times can I have the same introductory conversation? Where are you from, what do you do, where are you traveling, for how long, ad nauseum.

And then I get mad at myself for wasting time and money spinning my wheels like this and not pushing forward (physically – “you should be exercising every day! Yoga! Get moving South!” as well as mentally – “why aren’t you studying those Spanish books you’ve been toting around for the past year?!”). Clearly I need structure – a routine – and yet can’t seem to summon the discipline to provide it for myself. In the face of ultimate freedom, it turns out all I do is wander around aimlessly. I need direction and purpose.

In theory, I still enjoy traveling – seeing new things, having new experiences, opening my horizons – but I’ve grown so weary of the endless buses, the grind of finding a decent hotel room and palatable food in each new location, etc.

The Christmas decorations going up aren’t making it any easier, knowing that I’ll be alone for Christmas this year.

I need to remember to reach out more when I get like this – I just had really nice conversations with Marissa and Chloe back home, and they both gave me good pep talks.

I do like traveling solo for the freedom it gives me, and I value my alone time. But the downside is that I spend too much time in my own head, drowning in my insecurities. Without external forces to check them, my self-doubts bubble to the surface and I start to question things I shouldn’t be questioning. Why are those people looking at me and laughing? Why did that shopkeeper glare at me?

I wonder if this trip has actually been worse for my development rather than bettered it, as one would have hoped. In the face of challenges I find myself retreating into old behavior patterns rather than taking a risk and opening myself up. Staying within my comfort zone.. for example, I would rather figure out where something is on my own than ask directions even if it ultimately takes longer – since talking to people is uncomfortable and I end up feeling stupid because I can’t understand them.
I used to be outgoing and gregarious, but that was when I was in a comfortable space – in my job, with friends, in situations I felt secure in. I admire and aspire to be like Arnie or Australians who are so comfortable with themselves that they can walk into a room full of strangers and immediately disarm any awkwardness, instantly making friends. How does one develop this skill?

I know I’ve said this before, but I’m getting clearer on the fact that we can only help ourselves by helping others. Or, we can only make ourselves happy by making others happy. I’m going to look into volunteer programs more seriously now.

I’ve also realized that I may at last be ready to get married and have a child. It’s shocking to hear myself say that – for so many years I was dead set against such a future. I’m not sure what changed, but I’m feeling the pull. One of my reasons for resistance was that I didn’t want to take on such responsibility until I was complete and whole myself. But the fact is, we’re never ready for parenting or marriage – “marriage makes us ready for marriage”, to quote the famous book. We grow (only) in the context of such challenges.

I had thought that I would end up making more friends on the road, even end up traveling with people for periods of time. But that hasn’t turned out to be the case. Partly it’s my own doing – I would rather stay in a locally-owned hotel (better value) with my own private room than in a backpacker hostel where it would be easier to meet people. But then again, those aren’t the people I really want to meet. The fact is that most people budget traveling are 15 years younger than me – in their gap year or just out of university. I have nothing against them, but we’re at such different places in our lives that we don’t have much in common. Besides, I’m traveling to meet people from different cultures, not my own. Still, it would be nice to meet people older than 30 that speak my own language.. which is one of the reasons I stayed in Vilcabamba so long.

I’ve also found that when I have gone out on a limb and approached people, locals have been more receptive than fellow gringos. Ironically, I’ve felt most lonely on this trip when amongst people from my own culture. Perhaps other gringos also feel insecure and therefore act defensively. Perhaps it’s that I am picking up on their cliques (all too common in the younger age bracket); whereas with locals, I am blissfully unaware of the social mores.
Amongst my peers, I want (therefore experience anxiety) to be accepted, whereas with locals I know I’m an outsider and have no hope (therefore no anxiety) of being accepted.

At other times, the disconnect is due to my being on a year-long odyssey and the people I meet being on a quick vacation. We’re naturally interested in doing different things.. they would rather be pampered in a spa than meander through the market.. or get drunk at the bar than follow the parade down the street (two real-life occurrances from this trip).

Enough wallowing in self-pity. I promise with the next post to return to fun travel dispatches!

Like any metropolis of it’s size, there are many Limas.. and some of them certainly are attractive. The central plaza is a beautifully landscaped park surrounded by handsomely restored colonial palaces and other grand buildings. Over on the other side of town, the aptly-named Parque Amor makes for a romantic stroll along the cliffs overlooking the Pacific ocean, past finely manicured lawns and Gaudiesque mosaic benches. But the vast majority of the city is a sprawling wasteland of grimy industry and depressing slums. The smog is so thick that visibility is often reduced to just a few hundred yards (although to be fair, I find the exhaust to be no worse than that of Panama City, Managua, or some of the other ugly capitals I’ve seen on this trip.) The honking is incessant, made worse by the untimely death of my noise isolating in-ear headphones which until now facilitated my escape from the din.

The weather has been pleasant with warm, spring-like temperatures, and although the skies are constantly gray, rain in Lima is about as common as snow in San Francisco. The streets don’t have storm drains and many homes have roofs that aren’t designed with the rain in mind. Many Lima residents have never used an umbrella in their lives.

My hotel room is across the alley from a casino that leaves it’s back door open all night. I lie in bed falling asleep to the incessant cartoonish songs of the slot machines. When the announcements join in, I think I’m inside a Jim Jarmusch film.

I’ve changed hotels three times since arriving in Lima. Never quite satisfied with the value, or discovering annoyances not noticed at first viewing, and of course eternally searching for that elusive WiFi. It’s slowly dawning on me that my hotels may in fact be discrete love dens for amorous affairs and not simply undiscovered gems off the tourist circuit. Come to think of it, they’ve been located in unusual places for a hotel. And I can’t think of any other reason the cleaning staff would be making rooms up at all hours of the night. Usually I pick up on the signs at first entrance, like the multitude of hotels that quote their rates in 12-hour blocks – but these places are more subtle. No matter, it doesn’t bother me.

Most visitors to Lima stay in Miraflores, the upscale neighborhood full of all the traveler delights – malls, fine restaurants and gringo food, internet cafes, travel agencies, outdoor equipment shops (although surprisingly for a country famous for it’s outdoor sports, there are only three quite small gear stores). I am not like most visitors; I have been staying exclusively in working-class neighborhoods. Queens, as opposed to Manhattan, for you New Yorkers. Safe, but (and) not another tourist around for 50 blocks. Oh, I long for the smart cafes and crave the comfort food available in Miraflores; but I’m not willing to pay the ridiculous prices that they ream the tourists for these pleasures.

My one exception to this rule is when it comes to coffee, which as you know I take very seriously. One of the only places to get a real cup of coffee around here is at Starbucks, and fortunately there are a handful scattered around the upmarket neighborhoods. A small coffee at Starbucks costs as much as a complete meal at any of the typical neighborhood eateries. I’ve been partaking in both. My typical day begins with breakfast in my hotel room made from supermarket groceries as I leisurely check email and browse the news on the net. I then hike to one of the far-flung Starbucks’ while listening to podcasts or language tapes along the way and taking in different neighborhoods. There I savor over the hard-won cup of joe while I write. After a couple of hours, I’ll wander back through a different neighborhood and have a late lunch at whatever hole in the wall is hopping with locals. I’ve been averaging about 80 blocks a day – walking being the best way to see a city, in my opinion.

I sure miss my iPhone, with it’s GPS and Google Maps. The guidebooks and tourist office only have maps of downtown and Miraflores, which does no good for my kind of exploring. So after a couple of days of getting hopelessly lost, I finally realized that I could load Google Maps on my netbook in the hotel, take screenshots of where I would be walking that day, and transfer those image files to my Treo. Kludgy, and doesn’t give me GPS, but at least it gives me a map in my pocket.

The address and street layout of Lima is exasperating. Streets change names about every 20 blocks, and of course there are the old and the new names. So while the guidebook or a listing will use the new street name, people on the street and bus conductors use the old names, leaving you thoroughly flummoxed.

Before arriving in town I’d read that the taxis are corrupt – not licensed (any car can call itself a taxi), no meters, ripping you off, robberies and worse. This is actually a blessing in disguise, since avoiding taxis forces me to either walk or learn the local bus system. Easier said than done – the buses in Lima are among the most inscrutable and confusing I’ve ever come across. There seems to be no organization or hierarchy to them. Each bus has numbers and colors and destinations written on their fronts, but they don’t seem to mean anything. The guidebook conflicts with people’s advice (which conflict with each other) as to which bus to take to a given destination. Even one of the guys with clipboards who stand at major stops timing arriving buses had to ask each passing bus if they were bound my way. I guess since they’re all independently owned and operated, they can freely vary from whatever set route at will. [Wikipedia says there are 652 transit routes in Lima run by an unregulated 464 private companies. You do the math.] Amount of payment seems to be arbitrary too – prices are posted, but after watching locals pay less, I did too. Which works until you take the same journey on a different bus, subjected to the whims of a different conductor.

It’s unfathomable to me how a city of eight million people can exist in 2009 without a modern transportation system. No subway, no light rail, nor even the efficient express bus system that Colombian cities have. It’s a marked demonstration of the dangers of unchecked capitalism and lack of municipal planning (which so many libertarians and right-wingers claim that “market forces” will provide for – FAIL). To be fair, Lima is in process of building a simple bus-based mass transit system. And they proudly have photos up around town showing before and after shots of various infrastructure projects that have improved neighborhoods. But it all seems too little too late.

It’s not just infrastructure – where is the opera house? Symphony hall? Ballet? Modern art museum? There are only a handful of (small) theatres, no concert halls nor a single modern art museum, and the number of contemporary art galleries can be counted on one hand. For the 18th-most populous city in the world..  I’m just sayin’.
There are, however, half a dozen sports stadiums – which gives us a clue as to priorities around here. Bullfights and cockfights are popular spectator sports in addition to the ever-present soccer matches.

Clearly it wasn’t always this way. Walking the grand boulevards evocative of European capitals lined with enormous stately baroque, neoclassical, and republican architecture, one gets a sense of what things must have been like in Lima’s heyday. The term “faded glory” keeps coming to mind – these stunning historical buildings that would go for millions if they were in North America or Europe are just rotting away down here with no one caring for them.
Strangely, there are few parks – certainly none in the grand tradition of old-world cities that Lima was modeled on. What parks there are are fenced off or even charge admission. For the above reasons and more, Lima feels more like a Central American capital than a South American one.

It’s fashionable to decry the widening gap between the rich and poor in North America, but those problems can’t hold a candle to the stratification of society down here. As in many parts of the world, the upper class of Lima have abandoned the former heart of the city, preferring instead to construct a separate world for themselves isolated from the fray. The neighborhoods of Miraflores, Barranco, and San Isidro is where you’ll find the bourgeois living behind high walls, automated gates and electrified fences, patrolled by private security armed to the hilt. I shudder to imagine how one’s development is affected growing up in that environment while a mile down the road the rest of the city lives in shantytown shacks with dirt floors and no running water.

On the upside, Barranco has some beautiful views out over the ocean and a few lovely blocks of cafes and outdoor restaurants. It’s also peacefully quiet, for when you need to escape Lima’s insane traffic.

But enough bitching – now with a few pleasant stories.

One day as I was changing hotels I became frustrated at how long it was taking since I was trying to make a 2pm dance performance I had seen advertised. Well, sometimes “Peruvian time” works in your favor – although I didn’t make it to the theatre until 3:30pm, the show was just beginning! It turned out to be a creole waltz competition. An excellent live band played off stage while couples of all ages danced in front of the five judges at the back of the stage. The couples competed against one other two at a time on each half of the stage, slowly being eliminated. After a while I wandered out to eat supper. Out of curiosity I came back several hours later… and they were still going!

Another day as I was wandering around I heard music coming from a high school and a lot of excited parents milling about. Having learned ages ago that there’s no propriety down here with strangers (particularly white people) wandering into a semi-private function, I did just that. It seemed to be some sort of traditional (not indigenous) dance demonstration going on – successive groups of kids performing in traditional dress for their teachers and parents.

My first day in town I came upon a paraglider landing in the beautiful central square while official bands played. Don’t know if it was a commemoration, national holiday, or what. A few blocks away, mimes, jugglers, and buskers were plying their trade while the crowd moseyed by carny food booths. In a museum down the street, a painting dating from 1656 depicts the Last Supper with the disciples eating guinea pig and drinking from gold Inca cups.

My last day in town I jumped on a cheap bus tour that took us through poor barrios which nonetheless had the fronts of every house painted a different pastel color, such that when you view the neighborhood from downtown it’s a kaleidoscope of color. I wonder how the city enticed the residents into doing this. We ended up at a look-out point that would have been spectacular given that it was sunset – but the smog was so thick it felt like being in a smoky club.

Apparently Sunday is gay day. My hotel proprietor warned me not to walk through the very safe and well-trafficked square nearby because on Sundays gay hustlers hang out there, “you’ll end up going with one, and then they’ll ask you for money afterwards.” This from a married family man.

Here’s a brief snippet from the creole waltz competition:

And here is a longer video of the high school traditional dance demonstration:

Being on the second floor of a luxury bus (just $5 above economy class), my seat reclines nearly all the way – meaning I actually got some sleep through the night. It was $15 for the 9-hour trip, and comes complete with a hostess who hands out drinks, snacks, and blankets. I could get used to this. They fingerprinted and videotaped each of us as we got on the bus which I guess reassures me? Oh, and wove a metal detector cursorily over our bags, putting the TSA to shame at it’s own game of security theater. I’m finding that overnight buses are often the only option for covering long distances, and while it’s efficient and saves the cost of a hotel room, I’m pretty much wiped out the following day. Plus I miss watching the scenery rolling by. I have a front-row seat on a large picture window, but being nighttime, can’t see a durn thing.

We pull into Huaraz a bit past 7am and I leave my bag at the station to walk around and find a hotel. Being such a touristed town, there are a ton of cheap hotels and not-so-cheap gringo restaurants and coffee shops. Really nice comfortable groovy places that look like they’re straight out of Berkeley, Madison, or Asheville. WiFi abounds as does good coffee, and I even found a microbrewery! Real beer at last – made solely with hops, yeast, water, barley, and in a local twist, coca leaves. The George Clooney look-alike proprietor took a liking to me and kept feeding me tastes of brews he was working on. A jet-black porter. A pilsener which I usually don’t go for, but this one tasted so fresh, and got even more interesting when he muddled it with yerba buena (an herb similar to mint). I highly recommend this bar (13 Buhos) if you find yourself in Huaraz. The owner invokes such a fun, happy spirit in his guests that you can’t help getting swept up. One night, the traditional Alcatraz dance broke out – a sensual dance in which the woman has a tissue or napkin tucked into her waistband hanging down between the cheeks of her ass, while a man circles around with a candle trying to light it. She sways her hips and dances in circles trying to get away from him and his candle. Full of innuendo and metaphor.

This particular stretch of the Andes is called the Cordillera Blanca, and it’s the highest mountain range in the world outside of the Himalayas. Crazies Climbers from the world over come here to test their mettle on 34 peaks over 6,000 meters (20,000′). The first successful ascents were made by an intrepid American woman named Annie Smith Peck who was over fifty years old at the time. After a teaching career in classical studies she became fascinated by mountain climbing while traveling through Europe in 1885. That year she became the third woman to climb the Matterhorn, and the first to climb it wearing long pants instead of a dress! A truly inspiring woman, she continued to travel right up until the time of her death in 1935 at the age of 85.

Speaking of climbing, I saw a film called Touching the Void that one of the bars here occasionally screens. It’s an excellent documentary/reenactment of a tragic and now-famous climbing expedition that took place here in 1985 by two young but experienced climbers. Simon and Joe were trying to summit a new peak. On the second day the conditions were so rough that it took them six hours just to climb 200′. Then they ran out of fuel for the stove, which meant no more drinking water. Still, they reached the top and thought the descent would be easy. But then Joe fell and broke his leg. Apparently it’s standard procedure in these situations to leave that person behind for dead so the others can get out alive. But Simon instead lowered Joe 300′ feet at a time (which was all the rope they had) until unbeknownst to either of them, Simon went over a crevice and ended up dangling in mid air with no way up or down. With high winds, way below freezing temperatures, sunburnt and dehydrated, there was nothing either of them could do. So Simon cut the rope, plunging Joe 150′ into an ice canyon. Simon eventually made it back to base camp and took a couple of days healing his wounds and dealing with the emotions of surely having just killed his friend. But Joe was alive! He had miraculously survived the fall, and now found himself in an eerie world of ice caves. He tried for two days to climb out, finally giving up and lowering himself further down which unexpectedly led to a way out. He then spent two days crawling over boulders with a shattered leg and no food (ending up losing 1/3 of his body weight) or water until eventually making it back to camp. This film was their first return to the site and it’s incredibly moving and inspiring.

Is it any wonder I’m not going climbing? For those who don’t want to brave said conditions, many companies offer trekking tours. But even these sound a bit too much – typically it’s from 5 – 15 days of high altitude hiking and sleeping in tents at night. I’m not good with high altitude, and did I mention how cold it gets up there at night? It all sounds nice in theory, but I’m just not feeling up to it. Plus I’m running out of money. So no trekking for me, at least not here. I’m still presuming I’ll do the famous Inca Trail trek to Machu Picchu, although even that one I’m having doubts about – mostly due to the cost and massive crowds.

After the film screening I had a nice conversation with the American ex-pat who organized it. He’s been living here for nine years and married a Peruvian woman. Turns out we have a lot in common – we both lived in Seattle at the same time; music and audio engineering; and politics. One topic we delved into was the “toolkits” that cultures develop. For example, Americans are very good at innovation and pushing into new directions without hindrance of tradition – something that Peruvians lack. On the other hand, there are many stifling traits in American culture that others are free from. One of the interesting concepts in Americans’ toolkit is the idea of justness and fairness. For example, we don’t kill the families of suicide bombers (even though that would be easy to do and would almost certainly end suicide bombing) because “it’s beneath us.” [Yet we bomb entire villages indiscriminately. But I digress..]

I lucked out with the weather again. It’s the off-season here which gives me the benefit of lower prices and less crowds, but usually means dreary cold rain. Apparently it has been raining for the past month and probably will again soon – but this week has been nothing but glorious sunshine, warm and spring-like. It makes such a difference – I’d probably wonder why anybody came to Huaraz if I only saw it in that weather.

The main streets were blocked off this morning for a big parade consisting of several marching bands, officials speaking, and kids of all ages dressed in their finest. Turns out it was to commemorate the founding of the university. Can you imagine NYU organizing a parade down Broadway to commemorate their founding??

This region is known for being the birthplace of the first advanced culture of the Andes some 10,000 years ago. One day I took a combi (minivan bus) about a half-hour outside of town to Willcahuain, a ruin dating from 900 B.C. – part of the Wari or possibly Chavín culture.
I’ve decided that combis are blessed with the same magical power as clown cars. Just when you think it’s really and truly full, they always manage to squeeze another few kids / animals / bags of produce inside. Why would anyone take a taxi when the bus is so much more colorful?

I can’t get over the elegant hats and wardrobes of the indigenous people. They have so little – living in dirt-floored houses, coming to town to sell a few vegetables for pennies a day – yet always manage to look so becoming. Other than the kids. The kids are invariably in need of a good bath. Their faces, in particular, are always covered in food remnants. The women carry their kids in slings on their backs until they’re quite large. I’ll bet a chiropractic who spoke Quechua would do a brisk business in these communities.

Again, loving the off-season – nobody was at this ruin, not even the guards meant to take my admission fee. The neighbor just waved me in. Down the road is another much more impressive funereal complex that the guidebooks hardly mention. Again, I had it to myself. This one featured stone buildings with tiny passageways, like it was build for gnomes. Hmm. Fun crawling through the doorways in the dark, not knowing where I’d end up. Leaving this, I had a wonderful walk back to town along an old Incan road passing picturesque farms and villages. There are a dozen such day hikes one can do around here.

Although multi-day treks aren’t in the cards for me, I did take an inexpensive ($10) and lovely one-day tour of some far-flung sites. I usually eschew tours, but sometimes they’re the most efficient way to reach outlying towns and sights. The highlight this day was a beautifully iridescent green-blue high alpine lake. On the tour with me were a dozen other people, all Peruvian, including a woman named Kathy that I hit it off with. It’s hard to explain exactly why we connected so quickly with each other; I can only surmise pheromones. Looking at it externally, there is no other reason that within hours of meeting each other we would be acting like we’d been dating for months. Kathy and I spent the next four days together hanging out, shopping (she became convinced that I would look smashing in a pink polo shirt, so that became our mission), dancing, going to hot springs, chilling. One night she regaled the bar with card tricks. Who knew?

Did I mention that she doesn’t speak a lick of English? Furthermore since she’s from the coast, her Spanish is terrible – as I’ve said before, coastal people, no matter what country, slur and speak so fast that I am hopeless at keeping up. Whereas with most people I can comprehend maybe 50% of what they’re saying (if speaking slowly) thus at least giving me a clue, with Kathy it’s about 10%. I can see how dating someone from another culture is the fastest way to improve one’s language skills. It certainly challenged mine.. by the third day I was almost in tears at my inability to communicate simple concepts. We used Google Translate for the complicated conversations. During the day we’d have pleasant semi-superficial conversations, but when something complex came up we’d say, “save it for the hotel.” Whereupon we’d whip out the computer, type out long paragraphs to each other in our native tongues, hit Translate! and turn the screen to the other person to read what we’d been trying to explain. Good fun.

Kathy is endlessly patient with me, down to earth, intelligent, trusting, loving, and has a wonderful laugh. Needless to say, it was difficult to extricate myself from her. Did I mention that she’s 22? She jokingly calls me “grandpappy”. Honestly, I was the one with an issue about the age – she wasn’t bothered by it. There is something enchanting about the optimism and lack of jadedness of youth. Yet you also get the maturity that comes from growing up in a developing country where maturity happens at a younger age. She invited me to a non-touristed part of the Amazon where her grandparents live and to spend Christmas with her family on the coast. I got a glimpse into what a wonderful life it could be marrying a local and raising a family. This is an evolution for me – it’s only in the last few years, and particularly on this trip, that I’ve revised my position on marriage and children.

One reason I couldn’t sustain the relationship, and I should have directly confronted her about this, is that I ended up paying for everything. She’s definitely not a gold-digger as is the stereotype of many Latin American women (“gringo hunters”), but in this culture it’s simply assumed that the man / gringo pays for everything. Objectively it makes sense, for we do generally have far more money than they do – an unfortunate economic reality. And I wish I could sweep her off her feet and play the role of sugar daddy, but my current situation simply doesn’t allow for that.

Back to that day tour – on the way up to the lake we came upon a motorcyclist who had wiped out in the middle of the road. His leg was bent at the unnatural angle indicative of a bad break. Ouch. It was interesting to watch how the people in our van, and others who came upon the scene, helped this poor guy who was just lying there moaning in agony. Someone ran into the woods and came back with a broken branch which was used as a splint, securing it around his leg with his belt. He was on the phone the whole time trying to raise money from family for the hospital visit. We laid flat the seats of a passing taxi and gently all picked him up and settled him in for the long ride.

Lake Llanganuco, with Huascarán National Park surrounding it, is stunning. I’m glad I at least got a taste of one of the hundreds of pristing alpine lakes around here. I wish we could have spent all day there strolling and lounging, but alas we only had an hour before jumping back into the van for the return journey.

The largest bromeliad in the world, a cousin to the pineapple, grows here. It evolved a fantastic adaptation in order to cast its seeds as far as possible. Just once in its 100-year life, the low shrub shoots up a 12m (40′) stalk which then erupts into 20,000 flowers that disperse six million seeds. Having spent its last gasp shooting its seeds, the plant promptly dies.

Along the way to the lake we paid our respects at Yungay, a town that was completely destroyed 40 years ago. Alluviones, or mudslides caused by retreating glaciers, have caused incredible destruction in this region. In 1970, the largest earthquake in the recorded history of the Western hemisphere (7.8-Richter) killed over 70,000 people here. Most of those killed were from a 10-meter-high wall of mud and boulders that came tearing down the mountain at 100 miles per hour when a high mountain lake gave way – the entire town of Yungay was buried alive. Within minutes, the only thing left of the town were the tops of a few palm trees sticking above the mud.

Global warming is raising the risk of more such disasters. It’s predicted that 80% of South America’s glaciers will disappear within the next 15 years; many of Peru’s glaciers are retreating uphill as fast as 35 yards per year. The loss of these glaciers is affecting everything from hydroelectric power production to irrigation of farms along the coast, which supply a big chunk of the country’s gross domestic product. The future doesn’t look bright.

Mountain biking is another popular sport around here. I didn’t end up going biking since I met Kathy and by the end of the week the rains had returned. But I just wanted to share this quote with you, since it’s a great description of the similar trip I took in Ecuador:

“Hey you guys, watch out for the pig when you come around this corner,” Julio said, looking back up at us from around the tight switchback we were about to dive into. “He’s right here in the middle of the trail. And make sure you don’t ride over his leash. You should never ride over a pig’s leash.”

It was our first day of riding in the Andes outside Huaraz, and as if we needed any reminders, things were a bit different than biking back home. The first thing you learn about riding in Peru is that you never know what to expect around the next bend. Whether it’s a fully-loaded bus peeling around a hairpin corner on a one-lane mountain pass, a pack of angry dogs snarling at your heels, a group of brightly-dressed campesina women leading a train of donkeys into the hills, or a ragged marching band with a religious procession winding its way through the dirt streets of town, your fingers are always at the ready while screaming down the never-ending selection of trails that braid the Andean slopes. And that’s just one reason why mountain biking here is so damn fun! [...]

Many of the routes follow trails dating to pre-Inca times, winding through farms and villages where Quechua families herd sheep, tend their gardens and watch puzzled as a band of strangely-clad gringos on bikes go flying past, hooting, hollering, and shouting “buenos dias” on their way by. [...]

Leaving the alpine, we were then faced with hours of ripping down dirt roads that traverse lush, terraced hillsides and pass villages that are like the setting of a Tolkien novel.

-Grady Semmens

It’s been a week of technological failures. First, my kick-ass Etymotic in-ear headphones died. I brought a backup pair of Shure headphones (good but not as good), but those are starting to fail too! Next, my trusty old iPod finally gave up the ghost. Fortunately I was able to save most of the music off of it onto my new netbook, but now I don’t have a portable device to play the music on. MP3 players are stupidly expensive down here, so I’m not sure what to do. Fortunately my old Palm Treo is limping along, so I can at least listen to podcasts and language tapes. That is, as soon as I can find decent replacement earphones. Finally, the immersion water heater I used to make tea and cup-a-noodles with died. It says it’s rated for the 220v here in Peru, but I suspect that’s what burned it out. A nice hot cup of Earl Grey makes everything all right after a long difficult day on the road, so I was very sad until I found a cheap kettle in the shops. It’s about 50x larger than the immersion one, but I’ll make room in the pack – it’s that important!

I’ve only been in Peru a few weeks and already I’ve witnessed several demonstrations and parades. There must be a rich tradition of protest here. One particularly grueling incident occurred in 1932 when angry union strikers attacked and killed 10 army soldiers. In retaliation the government rounded up 1,000 union members and summarily executed them by firing squad.

The demonstrations I’ve witnessed have varied from schoolchildren protesting energy reduction (?) to workers striking. The parades have varied from schools celebrating their founding to religious (Catholic) endeavors. Lots of these. One night as I was wandering around I heard the sound of a marching band. Like a moth drawn to the flame, I sought the source. Imagine if you will several hundred people dressed in black solemnly walking the streets. Leading the charge were about 20 dancers in ordered rows wearing costumes made from burlap bags and in blackface. Next came a drum line in the same outfits and makeup. Then came the devout women. Many holding crosses, worry beads, or photos of saints. A couple dozen of them held aloft an effigy of Mary, carrying it the way pallbearers carry a casket. She was life-sized, standing on a large elaborate rostrum, and surrounded by hundreds of roses neatly arranged. Since this was at night, she was lit by a halo of dozens of compact fluorescent bulbs surrounding her.

Next came the men. They were holding aloft an effigy as well – this one was of Judas. Arcing over his head was a halo of neon lights spelling out “San Judas Tadea”. The electrical cord for his neon and flood lights strung back to several people holding it aloft with sticks, and eventually back to a pickup truck with a generator in the back. A kid was playing the role of cable puller.

Between the two effigies was the priest in all his garbous robes, talking on a megaphone, and surrounded by a small cadre of incense swingers.
Bringing up the rear was the band – only about a half-dozen players, all middle-aged men, they were fantastic. Clarinet, horns, snare, bass drum. All wearing matching black suits but not marching in formation, just strolling along casually to the beat. And what a beat it was! Happy, catchy, in the New Orleans second-line style (to my ears. I’d love to know what they call it here).
I loved it! This is not the sort of thing that’s listed in any guidebooks or websites, yet happens all the time. It’s probably the special day of the patron saint for that particular congregation – not notable enough to make the news or guides, yet wonderful for a tourist to come upon.

After a couple of nights in Trujillo I escaped to the mellow beach town of Huanchaco, just a half-hour away. I ostensibly came here to pick up the travel speakers that my friends Jessica and James had left for me. A funny saga – back in January, I bought travel speakers online and had them shipped to Arnie in New York, who was kind enough to include them in a care package she and Rissie sent to me in Bogota. Which I eventually picked up in May. The speakers turned out to be a lemon; I had a fun time trying to get them fixed in southern Colombia, but to no avail. The company agreed to send a replacement set anywhere in the U.S. Jessica and James had a gig down here and it looked like we were going to meet up, so I had them shipped to their home in Colorado. Unfortunately I was too slow in traveling to meet up with them when they were here in late June, so they left the speakers at a hotel with word that I would be along in a few weeks to get them.

Ha! A few weeks turned into a few months. I thought for sure the proprietor would have sold or given away the speakers by now, but nope – there they were, safe and sound. What a sweet, honest woman. You can be sure I tipped her for that. They really are amazing little speakers – they put out great sound, way more bass than their size should be able to produce. So kudos to the company for their help in getting me a replacement set. It’s so nice to have music without having to wear my headphones. And only 11 months since I bought them!

I’m really digging Huanchaco. There are a plethora of nice and cheap hotels – I found a clean, modern, large room with queen sized bed, cable tv, small fridge, WiFi, and balcony – just a block from the beach, and with use of the kitchen and rooftop deck – for $12/night. Yes!
As I’m checking into a new hotel I always ask where the dangerous areas of town are. Trujillo, for example, has many. But here in Huanchaco was the first response I’ve gotten like this: “You can walk anywhere, at anytime of day or night, and be safe.” Great news for someone who loves to just walk for hours exploring neighborhoods.

It’s the off-season here, partly because the weather is not terribly sunny or warm, and partly because the bulk of the tourists come during North American summer vacations. Which suits me fine – I’m not such a lay-out-on-the-beach kinda guy anyway. I actually prefer beach towns in the off-season, when it’s relaxed and you can get to know the long-term residents. Coney Island in autumn, for example.

Surfers, however, are here year-round. Apparently this whole stretch of northern Peru is legendary for it’s surf breaks.. and I don’t even know what that means. I should try it sometime, it looks fun. But I just can’t be bothered. They’re all wearing wet suits – which means cold water – and I’m a wimp! Besides which, I’ve had a cold for the past week and don’t feel very well. Somehow I think getting cold and wet probably wouldn’t do much to heal me.

As you know, I’m not a big fan of museums or of visiting crumbling historical sites – I prefer interacting with the here-and-now. But there are dozens of important ones around here, so I relented and visited one such archaeological site: Chan Chan. For being the largest pre-Columbian city in South America (dating from 850 AD), it’s surprisingly neglected. Archaeologists have uncovered and preserved a small portion of it, which is stunning, but the vast majority of the site sits unguarded and unprotected out in the elements and is slowly being destroyed by El Niño rains, grave robbers, and general entropy. One can’t help but thinking that if this major historical site were in Europe it would be protected and preserved with much care and funding. But this is a developing nation that doesn’t have the resources to take care of the basic needs of it’s current citizens, let alone preserve ruins from the past.

I observed some archaeologists working, and frankly can hardly imagine a more daunting, arduous task. Spending years in one small area, having to take all your encouragement to keep sifting and carefully scraping away each day from a minute bone fragment you might find only once every few months. No thank you.

The citadel that has been preserved is an impressive complex. It’s enormous, yet is only maybe 5% of the entire city of Chan Chan. The walls are now only 4′ – 6′ high and look artistically sculpted on the top. But that’s all due to weathering. Originally the outer walls were an imposing 50′ – 60′ high! The inner walls were a bit lower and are decorated with reliefs of sea otters and squirrels, which interestingly were a fertility symbol at the time. Even now with the walls so low, the ocean is impossible to hear despite it being just a few hundred meters away. It’s really calm and tranquil inside the warren. On the day that I visited a stage was being set up for a concert. What an impressive place to play – like Pink Floyd’s film at Pompeii.

The pre-Columbian civilizations around here certainly had none of the moral qualms of Europe at the time. Archaeologists have unearthed ceramic art graphically depicting every conceivable form of sexual practice, from necrophilia to anal intercourse. They were also known for their human sacrifices; many of the granite carvings show decapitated heads hanging from the bodies of their defeated conquests. Interestingly, the dead (including rulers) were laid to rest in a flexed position, sometimes sitting or crouching. This is typical of this entire epoch, from 1130 B.C to 1240 A.D.

Besides the recent surfer phenomenon, Huanchaco is known for the reed boats of it’s fishermen. The boats are called “little reed horses” because of the way the fisherman straddles the boat while collecting fish in the inner cavity. This style of boat goes back 3,000 years, although called by a different name then (since horses didn’t exist in South America until the Spaniards introduced them). Some say this constitutes the first form of surfing, due to the way the boats ride the large waves. I love the confluence of modern and ancient, like the fisherman in the photo below wearing an Adidas shirt but using a fishing technique handed down to him through hundreds of generations.

The reeds these boats are made from grow on the beach just north of town. You can stroll past large tracts of them and along the way pass an unfinished neighborhood that looks like a modern-day Chan Chan. A a large complex of a hundred or so dwellings that were just never completed. The strange thing is there’s all kinds of different construction techniques (concrete, rammed earth, adobe, etc), but they’re all in the same state of ruin/uncompletion. Rather than finishing one house or one section then moving on to the next, it looks like they were all started at the same time, but when the walls were around 5′ high, the entire thing was abandoned. I’m really curious what the story is with this place. Sometimes there is a guard at a shack along the sandy dirt road that leads there. What he’s guarding, I can’t imagine. Buses and taxis pass through the ghost town to who knows where – there doesn’t appear to be another town as far as the eye can see in that direction. When it’s misty and dark and you can hear the waves crashing just a few dozen yards away, the whole thing feels very Twilight Zone.

In a clever use of Twitter, an American couple (travel bloggers – the man is the photographer and woman is the writer – just like Jessica and James and the other multimedia friends I met in Guatemala, Alex and Sarah) that are volunteering here saw that I was in town and reached out to me – simply by doing a saved search for “Huanchaco” on Twitter. Very cool, I’ll have to try that in the future as a way to meet people.
In another instance of social media stalking, I was propositioned (sight unseen!) by a Couchsurfer in Trujillo. Weird. Although I will eventually get on Facebook, I’m not looking forward to that being one more major crack in my privacy.

Next up: back to the mountains!

First, about getting out of Ecuador – leaving the hotel at 4:40am having not slept in a couple of days, I made the 5 o’clock bus to Loja. But the 7am bus from Loja to the border never showed, so I had six hours to wait until the next one. I spent the time wandering around trying to stay awake – sleep deprivation can be pretty trippy – in that dreamlike state, not totally sure what’s real and what’s imagined. Who needs drugs?
I’ve added a few more photos to the Loja post from that morning that you may find amusing.

It took three hours to reach the border and I’m glad I paid my fine ahead of time, since I wouldn’t have wanted to hang around Macará any more than needed. It felt sketchy and transient, like most border towns. As it was, the Ecuadorian police didn’t even look at my $200 receipt – but I guess it was in the computer. Crossing the river into Perú, there was nary a computer in sight! Hmm, interesting first sign of what’s in store. In a very simple structure, a kid barely old enough to shave and sans uniform wrote my details in a log. Perhaps they later copy the logbook into a computer, who knows. Then across the street to have the police do the same thing. No bag search, no questions, nada. One of the easiest border crossings I’ve had on this trip. Hallelujah!

Bus pulled into Piura about 9:30 at night. Took me a while to find a decent hotel room, there seems to be a gap between cheap/grungy hotels and fancy/expensive places. Finally found a room with a window (a surprising number of hotel rooms in Latin America don’t have windows out to the street, which makes me feel like I’m in prison). Piura is a small city, decent enough, didn’t feel dangerous at all even at night. But not that attractive, either. Although I love cities, I’m experiencing culture shock being back in one after 2 ½ months in Vilcabamba. All the honking and chaos is a bit overwhelming after so long in tranquility.

After not nearly enough sleep, I headed out the next day for points further south. There seems to be an amazing range of high quality long distance bus companies. All the buses I’ve seen are quite comfortable which bodes well for those long distances I have coming up. And there is good security even on the economy lines – checked baggage, for instance. I’m finally learning that nobody sits in their assigned seats – it ends up being first come, first dibs on the best seats.

I caught one for Chiclayo, three hours south and closer to the coast. The journey took us across the Sechura desert – dry, flat sand as far as the eye can see, punctuated only by occasional low shrubs. Markedly different from the Andean highlands I’ve mostly been in for the last six months. Arrived in Chiclayo about 5pm, much preferable than arriving after nightfall. There’s a better range of inexpensive hotels here than in Piura, although so far I’m noticing the prices of things in Perú are a bit more than in Ecuador. Uh-oh.
I’m happy that the weather is no different than what I’ve had for the last few months – warm and sunny, spring-like. I know I have to, but I’m dreading heading south – for the further I go from the equator, the less this will be true.

I’m back in a country that communicates through honks – drivers are constantly tooting their horns, even when no obstacle is ahead. It’s a curious (and annoying) form of communication. Things generally seem brasher and louder (touts and beggars are more insistent, for example) than in Ecuador, although I realize it’s impossible to judge an entire country based solely on a couple of days spent in these random towns. I’m sad to have left the pedestrian-friendly confines of Vilcabamba – here, as in most of the rest of the world, the automobile is valued higher than human life. I’ve also returned to a land of casinos – as in Colombia, there is one on every corner.

I usually forget to bargain down the price of hotel rooms, but here I remembered – and the guy immediately dropped the price. Amazing when that works! Trying to cut back on the carbs, I bought a bottle of wine instead of beer. I asked the proprietor why the Argentinian wine was so cheap when it was the best wine in the shop, and I think he told me the local equivalent of, “it fell off the back of a truck” (i.e., he paid no taxes).

Turned on the TV tonight to discover Project Runway – in English! Oh, I’m in heaven. You just can’t dub Tim Gunn and keep his flamboyant charm.
Both Chiclayo and Piura have tons of those three-wheeled motorcycle-taxis running around in addition to the normal yellow cabs. I wonder why some places (small towns in Panama & Guatemala, coast of Ecuador) have them while other places (Colombia, rest of Ecuador and Central America) don’t.
Perú is meant to have the best cuisine in all of Latin America. I’ve already had some deliciously cheap seafood, and there is a string of cevicherias on one street that I intend on trying tomorrow.

I wandered into a modern shopping mall today, and there… there, on it’s own… away from everything else… with the light of heaven seemingly shining down upon it… was a Starbucks. Never thought I’d be so happy to see one. I used to be the kind of person that made fun of people who sought them out – they’re emblematic of everything I dislike about corporate culture. And yet… when everything in a 1,000 mile radius is weak, crappy, instant coffee – and you’re a coffee snob as I am – you bow down. I haven’t seen one since Panama, I think – at least nine months ago.

Somehow I left Ecuador with more U.S. currency than I want to keep for an emergency, so I sought out an exchange house. The banks weren’t giving a good rate, so I tried my luck with one of the dozens of money changers on the street. I can hear your concern already. It’s true, one has to be vigilant in these situations. Not of outright robbery, but of scams – checking each bill carefully for counterfeits, counting the money yourself (I was shortchanged in Bali once by a very clever money changer who counted the bills repeatedly in front of me, but still somehow managed palm a few in the end).

The process was fascinating as would be expected. One guy I approached turned out to have a crooked calculator. He keyed in the correct exchange rate, multiplied by the amount of dollars I was selling, and it read out a figure a bit less than it should have been. It’s not that I’m a math wizard, it’s just that I had already done the arithmetic ahead of time on my phone – so I knew what the result should have been. He did the calculation again, and again it came out about 5% in his favor. Amazing. Where do you buy such a thing – riggedcalculators.com? And how is it done? Does it just display a certain percentage less in every calculation? Can you program it for specific scams? Is there a switch to restore it to normal functioning? The next guy I approached had a real calculator. But now came the bickering. As in most bargaining situations, we lied through our teeth to each other. Me, claiming that banks down the street would give a better rate than he was offering. Him, claiming that my old and worn bills wouldn’t be accepted by any bank and therefore he couldn’t give me as good of a rate (yet he could still accept them?!)

Chiclayo is known for it’s witch’s market. Mistaking the purpose of the market, I inquired as to how much a witch cost. They responded by placing a hex on me. You can buy all manner of potions and amulets, shark jaws, deer legs, snakeskins – everything a modern witch needs in his or her pantry. It’s one enormous testament to the power of the placebo effect.
The rest of the market has the usual fruits, vegetables, animal parts (for eating), trinkets, housewares, shoes, et al. I found a place to get my shoes re-stitched ($1.50) and headphones re-soldered with a new connector (80¢ including parts & labor!) Love it. Try that in North America!

This province is known for dozens of pre-Incan ruins, some dating as far back as 100 A.D. (the Moche civilization). A royal tomb uncovered in 1987 revealed a cache of gold objects of exquisite craftsmanship and in quantities exceeding that of King Tut’s tomb. When in this region, one also normally tours the dozens of enormous (one is 700m long!) adobe pyramid complexes of the Sican culture. I’m not doing any of this. Call me crazy, but I’m a (post-) modernist – all this old stuff just leaves me sleepy. I don’t generally enjoy most museums, and I’ve seen enough pyramids on this trip that just look like muddy hills to last me a lifetime.

[A few days later...]
Made my way up to Cajamarca, in the highlands. The journey was a bit of a pain.. what should have been a six hour journey turned into 7½ on account of washed-out roads. So I arrived after dark to a gritty, ugly town. Oh, and it was raining. Then it took a while to find a decent hotel room. But I need to keep in mind not to judge a town based on the neighborhood the bus station is in – it’s that way in my own country, for gosh sakes. Morning came, and I discovered that central Cajamarca is actually quite beautiful – restored colonial houses and an enormous central plaza/square where the Incan empire was brought down in 1532 (see my rambling video below for more on all of this). It’s also not as chilly as I thought it would be at this altitude, thank gawd.

They say Cajamarca is what Cusco was like before the tourist boom. There are a fair amount of indigenous people about who wear enormous hats and mix with a well-off middle and upper class, judging by the shops and clubs which are a definite step above those in Piura and Chiclayo. I’m guessing a lot of this money comes from the nearby gold mine – a source of corruption and environmental controversy as you would expect, but it’s also produced over $7 billion to date. This region is also known for it’s dairy products. You can wander in to any of a dozen shops and sample a wide range of delicious cheeses and ice creams (some made with fruits I’ve never even heard of!)

Back to that night I arrived in Cajamarca – after the stressful and exhausting travel day, my night turned completely around. I found a lovely hotel room with WiFi and a view onto the square, then went out for dinner to a place called OM Gri. It’s one of those wonderful little hole in the walls with only four tables where the owner/chef greets you and the only other staff is the woman who serves you drinks. The affable owner claims to spend 8 hours making his pasta sauce, and it shows. I struck up a conversation with a gregarious local man in his 50’s (who lived in the States for a while, and luckily wanted to practice his English). I was exhausted and was intending to simply go to bed after supper, but he convinced me to go out clubbing! Although it was a hip & happening club, I was encouraged to see that we weren’t the only ones over the age of 30. There were even several teens and pre-teens which was nice to see too. Well this guy sure could spot ‘em, and led the way over to a couple of attractive young women in need of male attention. We spent hours dancing and hanging out, one thing leading to another…

[cut to two days later]
Today I almost walked 20km to Cumbemayo to see the 3,000 year-old carved aqueducts – the oldest man-made construction in South America. But I only made it about 2km, ha! The altitude and my run last night are sapping my energy. Stray dogs are getting on my nerves too -  you never know when they’re going to turn aggressive for no reason.

Dozens of archaeological riches abound in this region built by cultures pre-dating the Incans by several hundred, or in some cases, several thousand years. Unfortunately, getting to them sounds like a real pain in the tuckus – so I’ll probably just head back to the coast after Cajamarca.

[next day]
Had a nice afternoon. First I took a bus half an hour to Ventanillas de Otuzco, a series of hundreds of burial chambers dug into the rock face dating back to 500 B.C. The cavities don’t look big enough for bodies! It’s said that when the Incans came along 2,000 years later, they used the chambers for grain storage. Really not much to see for more than 10 minutes, but interesting nonetheless.

Thanks to a post on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree, I learned that I could walk from the Ventanillas all the way to Baños del Inca, a modern renovation of the hot springs the Incan leader was relaxing in with his concubines whence the Spaniards rolled into town. No concubines in sight, but I did have a very nice bath. I highly recommend this spot to anyone finding themselves in this neck of the world – for about $2, you get your own private room with a bath big enough for 10 people that you fill yourself with a mixture of boiling (naturally-occuring) mineral water and cold water. It fills surprisingly fast, and the tubs are so huge you can wallow in all those lovely medicinal properties. Then on to the next building for your massage or hydrotherapy.

The walk to the baths took me through some lovely countryside along canals and rivers, past farms and homesteads. Real salt-of-the-earth people, I’ll bet most of them have never traveled beyond 20km of their house. One of them that I stopped to ask for directions asked if I was from Spain. My Spanish is terrible and my accent is nothing like Spain’s, so my only explanation is that due to lack of education, she might have thought, “if he speaks funny Spanish, he’s not from around here – therefore he must be from Spain.” Seriously, I don’t know how much news these folks get about the rest of the world.

Speaking of poor education, I continue to be surprised at the lack of simple arithmetic skills of many shopkeepers. These are people who do the same transactions (say, 3 items at S|1.50 plus 1 item at S|2.00) hundreds of times a day, yet have to use pencil and paper or a calculator to get the result that I did in my head in about 2 seconds. And I am faaaar from a math whiz, as any of my exes or friends will attest to. This morning I was trying to pay my hotel bill which came to S|185. I gave her S|200. She pulled a S|20 note out of her drawer and said it was all she had, wait right here and I’ll go get change. To which I replied, don’t bother – here’s S|5 extra, now give me the S|20. She didn’t get it. It took me five minutes of explanation, finally resorting to pencil and paper, for her to understand that by my giving her five extra soles she could just give me the 20-sole note. What’s the sound of wind whistling between somone’s ears?

Overall I like Cajamarca. It feels alive and vibrant (even on a Sunday evening everyone is out strolling about), and there is an interesting mix of indigenous and mestizos. Having said that, outside of the central area it quickly becomes dilapitated houses, stray dogs, and trash-strewn streets. I’ve been surprised at how in this way Perú feels like a return to Central America – outside of the cities, it’s all that same crappy construction of unfinished concrete and sloppily laid brick. I don’t know that Perú is less developed than Ecuador or Colombia, but it feels like it might be. But I need to reserve judgment – I have a lot left to see, and most of the focus of the country (population and tourism) is in the south.

I’m trying another video diary. In this one, I wander around Cajamarca’s central square while rambling on about the dramatic events that took place in this very spot 477 years ago. I realize my video production skills have lots of room for improvement. My only defense is that I kept getting distracted by things off-camera – kids, beggars, vendors, people staring.

• I highly recommend Ecuador to you North Americans looking for a quick (2-3 week) vacation. It’s a small country, so it’s quick and easy to get around, yet offers a ton of variety. Beautiful tropical beaches, interesting indigenous people, great mountain hiking and biking, volcanoes and Amazonian jungle – which I didn’t even see (I’m saving that for Bolivia). There is a well-developed tourist infrastructure (good food, U.S. dollars, internet, lots of affordable hotels and transportation), quite safe for the most part, and the people are friendly. Ecuador reminds me of Guatemala (probably my favorite Central American country) in many of these ways.
• Ecuador sees far more tourists than Colombia or many other Latin American countries and probably for this reason, fewer of them speak Spanish.
• Every town has an independence day celebration commemorating the day that town was liberated.  There must also be several other specific festivals throughout the year, because it seems like I encountered parades and fireworks in half the towns I visited.
• The country is taking H1N1 quite seriously – you see signs up all over towns instructing the residents to wash their hands and how to avoid infection.
• Eloisa says that Colombia is more developed than Ecuador, but I think it depends on how you measure it. The markets in Ecuador are much cleaner and more modern than in Colombia. And the country is far more wired – every tiny town has many internet shops with LCD screens and reasonably fast connections; many parks, restaurants, bars, and hotels have WiFi.
• The current president, Rafael Correa, has imposed very high duties on imported products, while locally produced goods remain quite cheap. Which accounts for some strange prices – a small bottle of olive oil, for example, is 10x the price of a large bottle of beer.
• Ecuadorians have different notions of interpersonal communication than I’m used to. For example, on three separate occasions I’ve had people text or call me with: “What’s the address of your hotel? I’ll be there in 5 minutes”. Or, “I’m downstairs.” Without having made plans beforehand! To me, that’s rude. But I guess to them, last-minute dropping by is normal.
• Another cultural difference: Where you were born is where you’re from – even if you grew up and lived your entire life somewhere else. I met a girl whom others call Colombian, even though she only lived there the first month of her life!
• A trait shared with Colombia: people don’t leave messages on machines. I’m one who doesn’t answer the phone unless I know who it is, so it’s really annoying to get dozens of calls, none of whom leave a message.
• Kids born out of wedlock and unmarried pregnant women don’t carry the same stigma here as they do elsewhere in the world. There are a LOT of single mothers around.
• Kids seem both happier and more well-behaved here than in North America. I love watching them spend hours playing by themselves with nothing, making up games in the park or on the street corners.
• Life is shorter, and therefore lived earlier, than in North America or Western Europe. [At least in the countryside; these examples apply less to upper-class well-educated people in the cities.] For example, girls start looking for husbands around age 14 and might have three kids by the age of 17. An unmarried 21-year old girl is hopeless. Kids take on responsibilities much earlier than where I come from, which is nice to see. People age faster, too – the other day I met a woman who I thought was in her late 40’s only to find out she’s 35. This is not unusual.
• New species are constantly being discovered in Ecuador. In the last month alone 13 new creatures were discovered, including a remarkably ugly bug-eyed salamander and a tiny but beautiful poison arrow frog.
• Rottweilers and pitbulls are both banned in Ecuador.
• Ecuador is the world’s foremost exporter of bananas, accounting for 50% of the world market and 1/3 of Ecuador’s trade market. Shrimp is the next biggest product for export, led by the company with the wonderful name Exporklore. There’s a joke in there somewhere.
• Shops never have change. Sometimes they even have trouble changing a $5 note, for Pete’s sake. It’s not difficult – part of running a business is going to the bank each day to get change for your cash drawer. The gringo shopkeeper does it, but nobody else. So I have little sympathy when I pay with a $20 and they act so put out.
• Speaking of change, it’s hard to change people’s ways down here, even when shown a better way. For example, I got some locals to taste pasta al dente instead of al mushy, and they agreed it’s better. But they keep on cooking it the way they always have.
• I have found the bus attendants (the employee who collects money and deals with luggage on buses) to be honest and earnest without fail. Somehow, out of a bus of 50 people all getting on and off at different places and times, they seem to always remember who is owed change and exactly how much.

• I recently read an article about the effect of missionaries in the indigenous jungle communities. It makes my blood boil. Interestingly, the Catholic church, for all of their reprehensible actions over the centuries, has actually adapted in the last 40 years and now fits in more gracefully. For example, one can attend Catholic mass given in Shuar (the indigenous language of these Amazonian people). The Church has even incorporated elements of indigenous mythology into the services – which facilitates conversion, since it allows the indigenous to remain grounded in their traditional beliefs while still serving the larger purpose of the Church (which is, I am told, to save souls).
  Contrast this measured (yet still shameful) approach with the Evangelical Christians, who will not be happy until every last indigenous person speaks Spanish, goes to church on Sunday, abolishes shamanism, and dresses in Western clothes. The indigenous never heard that they should be self-conscious of their bodies and cover up until these weasels came along. Can you imagine the opposite – shamans descending on Paris or Rome or Peoria with loads of cash and trinkets, swarming the elementary schools, pushing their way of life? How long would we tolerate this? The Evangelicals are also busy buying up huge tracts of the jungle. As one Shuar shaman put it, “Why are they here? To speak about Jesus, or to become the biggest landowner?”
  Another crucial problem is that evangelized indigenous people are no longer interested in the traditional use of medicinal plants. This leaves the population defenseless in the face of a wide variety of illnesses, most brought on by the colonizers and evangelicals themselves. The Amazon basin is one of the world’s greatest natural pharmacies; Western pills are a poor and incomplete substitute for what has already proven it’s value and efficacy for thousands of years. Furthermore, the relentless preaching of love and forgiveness has led to a confused response by peoples who are now both morally and physically disarmed in the face of widespread devastation of their ancestral homelands by the oil companies, loggers, gold prospectors and others. The churches have brought guilt to the Amazon. They have paved the way for exploitation in a way that few armies ever could have.
  Much of the above paraphrased from the excellent article in the Ecuador Reporter.

A bit about the political situation in the region: despite graduating from the days of Banana Republics, we still have instability and fighting and a hell of a lot of hypocrisy down here. I grew up thinking of the world in black and white – partly as a result of the cold war, but also raised in a liberal, progressive community, one tends to believe that any leftist is for peace, equality and justice. So years ago when I first heard of Hugo Chávez, I was of course all in favor of his socialist policies to help the poor. However I’ve since become severely disillusioned. First of all, he acts like a 5 year old when he doesn’t get his cake (which seems to be every day), not at all the diplomatic way that heads of states should behave. And despite how much he decries the American Imperialists, if anyone is a war-monger around here, it’s Chávez – he is constantly provoking and taunting other nations and leaders.

It’s not only Chávez – while I resoundly condemn the coup d’état in Honduras, Manuel Zelaya (the ousted president) shares many of Chávez’s traits – as do some of the other leaders in this region. Namely, they prefer direct subsidies – which generate quick political returns and look good in photo ops – to creating jobs, expanding education, and improving health care. They mock the very ideals they came to power supporting. The lack of transparency and extreme restrictions on the press are especially galling. They are presidents who were fairly elected yet who are now proceeding to gut democracy from within and govern autocratically instead. Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not an apologist for the U.S. The policies of the IMF and the World Bank in strong-arming developing countries into insupportable debt (to benefit multi-nationals based in the U.S.) makes me sick. But I’ve experienced an evolution in my beliefs since seeing first-hand how hollow the rhetoric of  some of these supposedly “people’s presidents” are.

Despite Chávez’s dream of a united South America, none of these countries seem to be able to get along. Venezuela withdrew their ambassador from Colombia and threatened to halt Colombian imports after Colombia signed agreements allowing the U.S. use of seven air bases in the country. Nevermind the fact that it will only expand the U.S. military presence in Colombia from 300 to 800 soldiers.. hardly a figure to worry about, yet Chávez (and other South American presidents) fear this is a threat by the U.S. to invade their countries. Please. I decry U.S. foreign policy, but that’s just out-and-out paranoia. It’s all a lot of blustering by Chávez to cover up the fact that his financial, logistical, and military support of the FARC in Colombia is coming to light. Swedish-made anti-tank missles, sold to Venezuela under a contract stipulating they not leave the country, were found in the hands of the FARC a couple of months ago. Further, last year a computer was found at a FARC encampment with encrypted information detailing transactions and communications with Venezuela.

Back here in Ecuador, the FARC frequently take refuge on this side of the border to hide out from Colombia’s military. Ecuador seems to explicitly support this – it was recently revealed that the FARC contributed funds to president Rafael Correa’s re-election campaign in 2006. Ecuador withdrew it’s ambassador from Colombia in March of last year after the Colombian military entered Ecuadorian territory in pursuit of the FARC. That raid ended up killing 24 people, including the FARC’s second-in-command Raul Reyes.

Meanwhile, Colombia’s war with the FARC is causing tens of thousands of displaced Colombians to flee across the border into Ecuador. It’s estimated that 50,000 Colombians seek refuge in Ecuador each year due to the war.

The reason Washington sought new base agreements with Colombia is partly due to them being kicked out of Ecuador, which refused to renew a decade-old lease thereby evicting U.S. troops from the country. [The official U.S. explanation for having military in the region is that it's strictly to fight drug trafficking, but many are suspicious of ulterior motives.]

Many thanks to Wikipedia for the wealth of information, much of which I’ve paraphrased below. As this post is simply a rumination and not an academic paper, I haven’t bothered to exhaustively credit or footnote all of the sources.

Note that this discussion only represents theories (which locals take as fact) that I’ve heard discussed around here in Vilcabamba. There are many wonderfully more outlandish theories. Here is the full list, and here is a sampling from A to Z.

The seminal reference book General Psychopathology defines three main criteria for a belief to be considered delusional:

• certainty (held with absolute conviction)
• incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
• impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)

Many, if not most, of the expats living here in Vilcabamba exhibit the classic indicators of delusion.

New World Order

Illuminati

One theory holds that the Illuminati is behind the so-called “New World Order“. This is ironic, since the organization was originally set up by freethinkers, secularists, liberals, pro-feminists, etc who were bent on overthrowing the existing oppressive ruling class of the 18th Century. Of course, some believe that the Illuminati have been operational for thousands of years. Others believe that Skull and Bones and other modern secret societies are today’s continuation of the Bavarian Illuminati. By the way, the Wizard of Oz was an Illuminati mind control project funded by the CIA. Where does it stop?

Masons

Then there are the Freemasons. This conspiracy theorizes that the founding fathers of the United States interwove Masonic symbolism and sacred geometry into the Great Seal of the United States (on the one-dollar bill – the words “Novus Ordo Seclorum” means “New World Order”… well, actually, it doesn’t, but wouldn’t it be creepy if it did? It makes you think, doesn’t it?), the National Mall, and even the street layout of Washington, D.C. All as part of a great plan “to mystically bind their vision of a government in conformity with the Luciferian plan of the Great Architect of the Universe who has tasked the United States with the eventual establishment of an hermetic ‘Kingdom of God on Earth’ and the building of the Third Temple in New Jerusalem as its holiest site.”

“The Pentagram connected to ‘The White House’ is geographically up-side down. A classic, or rather the classic logo of Satanism! Also important to point out is the fact that ‘The Pentagon’ is angled at thirty-three degrees (as in the thirty-three degrees of Freemasonry) and that at this angle appears as an another upside-down pentagram!” Notice how the large pentagram on the left is completely arbitrary – any geometric symbol could have been laid on top of the street layout.

Jewish conspiracy

Didn’t expect religion to enter the fray this early, did you? In point of fact, many of the conspiracy theorists are anti-semites who believe that the Jews are behind it all. One variation of this gathers together the Jews, Masons, and Communists as world dominators! As it is patently obvious that the world is not being run for the benefit of Jews, identification of the Jews as the Secret Rulers of the World is often associated with Holocaust denial. Also since most positions of wealth, power, and influence are in fact held by Gentiles, a favorite occupation of conspiracy theorists is identifying Gentiles as Secret Jews to make up the deficit.

Which brings us to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic canard published in 1903 which propagandized the idea of of Jews taking over the world. Despite the fact that the book has been widely proven to be a hoax, it is still often quoted in contemporary conspiracy literature. On the other side of the spectrum is the belief that the “Fourth Reich” have been working behind the scenes since the end of World War II to enact at least some of the principles of Nazism (militarism, fascism, conquest, widespread spying on citizens, use of corporations and propaganda to control national interests and ideas) into culture, government, and business worldwide, but primarily in the United States.

U.S. Government entities

Many conspiracy theorists believe that the Council on Foreign Relations is a front organization for the Round Table as a tool of the “Anglo-American Establishment”, which they believe has been plotting from 1900 on to rule the world. David Rockefeller was chairman of the board for 25 years, which fuels the fear that the Council is in fact an international banking cabal bent on subverting national sovereignty in favor of a central private bank which will control all the world’s nations from private hands. The Trilateral Commission (also founded by Rockefeller!!!) is widely viewed as a co-conspirator organization. [Which the Straight Dope has this to say: "you might at least try to be paranoid about something reasonably up-to-date. The TLC-as-world-conspiracy theory peaked during the early 80s, and has now pretty much gone the way of the hula hoop."] The United States Federal Reserve Bank is often implicated for starting or sustaining wars purely for economic gain. Sustained conflict forces the U.S. government to borrow money from the bank, allegedly increasing the profits of the “international bankers”. The Federal Reserve is also claimed to have engineered the Great Depression in order to steal wealth from the American people.

The Project For A New American Century is a (now defunct) group of right-wing American politicians and pundits who argued for a stronger military and a more interventionist approach to foreign policy, in particular the invasion of Iraq. As some of the founders of PNAC included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, the PNAC may be said to have failed at the sine qua non of secretly running the world, which is to do it secretly, rather than publishing your agenda on the Internet and then using legitimate means to openly gain positions of power.

Besides the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, Skull and Bones, Bohemian Club, and Club of Rome, a handful of similar organizations are also said to pull the strings – including selecting presidents and prime ministers, starting wars, and orchestrating the media. Apparently the entire planet is run by a mere 7,000 people (who are all “in on it”).

Dynasties

The Bilderberg Group is often cited as being one of the major ruling synarchists behind the New World Order. The most remarkable thing about the Bilderberg Group is that its ideologically diverse members manage to achieve consensus on their agenda for the entire world in a conference that lasts for a mere three days per year. This hasty approach to global domination may possibly explain why the world is in a bit of a mess. The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Phipps’, DuPonts, Vanderbilts, and Bush family are one of about 13 dynastic bloodlines presented as the real rulers or would-be rulers of the world. During WWII, Ezra Pound openly named the Rothschilds as the masters of a clique of banking houses that caused the World Wars in order to profit from them and get countries in debt to the lending central banks, which Pound claimed the Rothschild interests owned and thereby exercised control of a nation’s policy by having the power to issue the nation’s money.

Former President Bush secretly makes the well-known secret sign of secret Satanism in a secret public place.
As is well known, all the people who rule the world participate in secret Satanist rituals for which there is no evidence because they’re secret. Nonetheless, we know that this is true because YOU’VE JUST GOT TO CONNECT THE DOTS, PEOPLE!!! WAKE UP!!!

9/11

The 9/11 conspiracy is a fascinating one to investigate, seeing as how it ties together many other conspiracies. This post is already too long as it is, but if you want to read an excellent rebuttal to the “truthers” point by point, I recommend the Popular Mechanics investigation. They spent months chasing down each refutation which resulted in a compelling and well-sourced report. It begins:

The 9/11 Truth Movement invariably describes the mainstream account of 9/11 as the “government version” or “the official version.” In fact, the generally accepted account of 9/11 is made up of a multitude of sources: thousands of newspaper, TV, and radio reports produced by journalists from all over the world; investigations conducted by independent organizations and institutions, including the American Society of Civil Engineers, Purdue University, Northwestern University, Columbia University, the National Fire Protection Association, and Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.; eyewitness testimony from literally thousands of people; recordings and transcripts of phone calls, air traffic control transmissions, and other communications; thousands of photographs; thousands of feet of video footage; and, let’s not forget the words of Osama bin Laden, who discussed the operation in detail on more than one occasion… The mainstream view of 9/11 is, in other words, a vast consensus. By presenting it instead as the product of a small coterie of insiders, conspiracists are able to ignore facts they find inconvenient and demonize people with whom they disagree. [...] One of the chilling things about 9/11 denial is how blithely its adherents are able to accuse their fellow citizens of complicity in evil.

Since many of these same people who believe that the September 11 attacks were a false flag operation carried out by the United States intelligence community as part of a strategy of tension to justify political repression at home and preemptive war abroad, some of them have become convinced that a more catastrophic terrorist incident will be responsible for triggering the process needed to complete the transition to a police state.

Mass Surveillance

Speaking of police states, there is a great deal of fear surrounding “Big Brother“. As a privacy advocate, I do find the increased use of Social Security Numbers to track citizens in the U.S. troubling. And putting RFID chips into U.S. passports in 2006 was really dumb – I recommend anyone owning one of these new passports keep it in a shielded sleeve (against petty identity thieves more than against Big Brother). But the idea that we’re being tracked via UPC bar codes? Please. I’ve even heard talk that “they” can track your phone even when the battery is removed! I do what I can to inject healthy doses of science and reality into such discussions. The facts are pretty scary, though – reading about the UK’s vast Orwellian system of surveillance does make me question whether I really want to live in London someday.

One World Government

Many folks here believe that the New World Order will be implemented by martial law after a dramatic coup d’état by a “secret team” (using black helicopters) to bring about a new world government, possibly controlled by the United Nations and enforced by U.N. peacekeepers. Nevermind the countless logistical problems with this scenario, do you really believe that UN peacekeepers would turn on their own people? And haven’t the conspiracy theorists noticed the almost complete powerlessness of the U.N. and the unwillingness of even moderates within the American Establishment to give it anything but a limited role?

Fears of a North American currency union are stoked by newsmen as mainstream as CNN’s Lou Dobbs (who is also a “birther“, further calling into question his sanity). Despite the concept of uniting Canada, the U.S. and Mexico into one  economy being so far-fetched, it garnered no less than 43 congressional signatures when a resolution denouncing such action was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives in early 2007. The theory is pushed by Swiftboaters, Minutemen, and anti-immigration Representatives as a scare-mongering tactic. As one skeptic put it, “this is simply another in a long line of conspiracy theories embraced by a lot of extremely naïve people. ‘Naïve’ because for anything remotely reassembling this to occur would mean several countries enacting changes against their own best interests. And ‘naïve’ because the sort of structural and political changes needed would require a rather large investment in time, resources and political work – much of it occurring by necessity in public view.”

Many of the organizations that I hold dear and that I feel can (and have) bettered the world (NASA, CDC, UN, WHO, EU) and others I hold not so dear and agree are destructive (IMF, World Bank, WTO) are held to be part of the strategy of implementation for this “New World Order”.

Skepticism of the NWO

There is no doubt in my mind that the plutocrats are busy conniving global capitalism (at the expense of Marxism, socialism, or any other proletariat government) through government/military interventionism to protect the interests of transnational corporations (“Inverted Totalitarianism“). But the idea that this superclass is conspiring together for united world domination just doesn’t ring true in my opinion. As my sole fellow skeptic in town is fond of saying, “We wish governments were that well organized! But the fact is that they’re simply inept and bad at keeping secrets – else how would we know about Abu Ghraib or Mai Lai.”

My reaction to these NWO conspiracy theories are summed up by G. William Domhoff in a March 2005 essay entitled There Are No Conspiracies:

There are several problems with a conspiratorial view that don’t fit with what we know about power structures. First, it assumes that a small handful of wealthy and highly educated people somehow develop an extreme psychological desire for power that leads them to do things that don’t fit with the roles they seem to have. For example, that rich capitalists are no longer out to make a profit, but to create a one-world government. Or that elected officials are trying to get the constitution suspended so they can assume dictatorial powers. These kinds of claims go back many decades now, and it is always said that it is really going to happen this time, but it never does. Since these claims have proved wrong dozens of times by now, it makes more sense to assume that leaders act for their usual reasons, such as profit-seeking motives and institutionalized roles as elected officials. Of course they want to make as much money as they can, and be elected by huge margins every time, and that can lead them to do many unsavory things – but nothing in the ballpark of creating a one-world government or suspending the constitution.

Besides, if world affairs really were run by a central controlling group, then there would be no need to spend billions of dollars a year on surveillance of foreign governments, right? I mean, the “rulers” would already know what was going on in other nations if they were controlling things in the first place. The fact is, we’ve heard this all of this before – (and more history of conspiracism here) – in the mid-20th century, the conspirators were usually said to be crypto-communist sympathizers who were intent upon bringing the United States under a common world government with the Soviet Union; but the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 undercut that theory.

Mark Partridge wrote last year in Diplomatic Courier:

I am skeptical that “global governance” could come much sooner than 200 years. For one thing, nationalism – the natural counterpoint to global government – is rising. Leaders and peoples around the world have resented Washington’s chiding and hubris over the past two decades of American unipolarity. Russia has been re-establishing itself as a “great power”; few could miss the national pride on display when China hosted the Beijing Olympics last summer; while Hugo Chavez and his ilk have stoked the national flames with their anti-American rhetoric. The departing of the Bush Administration could cause this nationalism to abate, but economic uncertainty usually has the opposite effect.
Another point is that attempts at global government and global agreements have been categorical failures. The WTO’s Doha Round is dead in the water, Kyoto excluded many of the leading polluters and a conference to establish a deal was a failure, and there is a race to the bottom in terms of corporate taxes – rather than an existing global framework. And, where supranational governance structures exist, they are noted for their bureaucracy and inefficiency: The UN has been unable to stop an American-led invasion of Iraq, genocide in Darfur, the slow collapse of Zimbabwe, or Iran’s continued uranium enrichment. That is not to belittle the structure, as I deem it essential, but the system’s flaws are there for all to see.

I’ve got sobering news for CT’s: nobody is in control. I view conspiracy theories in the same light as religion: an easy way to explain away the random complexities of life. But the fact is, all you see is all there is – there is no higher power orchestrating our minuscule, meaningless lives, just as there is no secret cabal directing human affairs or controlling us. It’s entirely up to us to give meaning, purpose, and direction to our lives. And that’s a very freeing thought, in my opinion – but it comes with a responsibility that CT’s don’t want to face.

Mind Control

Mind control is a central theme in many of these theories, naturally. Everything from subliminal advertising to brainwashed sleeper agents (Project MKULTRA) to hi-tech psychological warfare (Silent Sound Spread Spectrum). The government and mainstream media are often accused of not only being involved in the manufacture of a national consensus but a culture of fear due to the potential for increased social control that a mistrustful and mutually fearing population offers to those in power.

Historical Context

The seeds of these mind-control claims are well-established facts, in fact many of them have been officially admitted to by various agencies such as the GAO. It’s well known that at the conclusion of WWII, the U.S. and other governments recruited former Nazi scientists. Some of these scientists studied torture and brainwashing, several of whom had just been identified and prosecuted as war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials. Many secret U.S. government projects grew out of this program (see Project CHATTER and Project ARTICHOKE). Their purpose was to study mind control, interrogation, and behavior modification through the use of chemical, biological, and psychological means on mostly unwitting subjects, such as hospital patients. Throughout the 1950’s and 60’s, 44 universities, 15 research foundations, and 12 hospitals collaborated with the CIA, although sometimes unknowingly. Research was carried out in pursuing the holy grail of a truth serum for interrogating Soviet spies, as well as on techniques for manipulating foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro. Some go so far as to say that creating a “Manchurian Candidate” subject through mind control techniques was a goal of MK-ULTRA and related CIA projects.

Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber) was one of the subjects of these experiments at Harvard University from 1959 to 1962. One can only imagine what that did to his psyche, leading to his eventual murder spree. On a more positive note, Merry Prankster Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, volunteered for MK-ULTRA experiments while he was a student at Stanford University. Kesey’s ingestion of LSD during these experiments led directly to his widespread promotion of the drug and the subsequent development of hippie culture. Interestingly, the major outcome of the government’s famous LSD experiments were the subject’s absolute and utter certainty that they were able to withstand any form of interrogation attempt, even physical torture. Useful for our boys, but not as a truth serum!

It wasn’t only the U.S. government committing these morally reprehensible non-consensual experiments – the Canadian and U.K. governments also got into the act. In fact, the main Canadian researcher (Donald Cameron) became the president of both the American and Canadian Psychiatric Associations – how twisted is that? To push the irony even further, Cameron had also been a member of the Nuremberg Medical Tribunal which investigated Nazi crimes of the very same nature that he later commited. Although the government at times has tried to cover up this sordid history, it has also issued public retributions and apologies from top brass, including President Ford to CIA Director Colby. The U.S. Government has also settled out of court to the tune of millions of dollars to families of some of the thousands of victims.

Here is the full list of mind control and “organized stalking” conspiracies. It’s fascinating reading. Especially for a shrink about to commit this woman. Kidding. Sort-of.

Population Control

Fluoridation of water is often given as a method by which the government is controlling (or poisoning) the population. This one is particularly galling- I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if the CT’s die from abscessed teeth, but let our children grow up healthy, OK? Besides, this conspiracy theory is as old as the hills. To whit: “[Fluoridating water is] better THAN USING THE ATOM BOMB because the atom bomb has to be made, has to be transported to the place it is to be set off while POISONOUS FLUORINE has been placed right beside the water supplies by the Americans themselves ready to be dumped into the water mains whenever a Communist desires!” [emphasis as in original]
I was just copied on a group email from a new arrival to town:

Friends, believed it or not, a big part of the reason i left the States is because i got fed up with being poisoned by fluoride every time i took a shower.  Well, i guess the joke’s on me.  I recently found out that ALL of the salt in Ecuador has fluoride added!  The Global Pathocrats (GPC) can’t easily add fluoride to the drinking water here, so they simply make sure that everyone gets their daily dose of this dreadful bioaccumulative toxin which kills your pineal gland and turns people into compliant sheep by putting it in ALL of the salt. What a wonderful world we live in.  The average person is so brainwashed that they actually believe the GPC propaganda that fluoride is an essential ingredient to dental health.

Suffice it to say that this is complete poppycock.

Many nutcases people believe that AIDS was created by the U.S. Government as a method of population control or outright genocide. Several prominent black activists believe that AIDS was created as a weapon against black people.

A lot of people around here are worried about chemtrails – those white linear cloud-like formations that occur behind high-altitude aircraft. People swear there has been a rise in the amount of these (which couldn’t have anything to do with an increase in flight routes nor increased observation of the skies), and that these “chemtrails” are part of a nefarious plan by the government to control the population through mind-control, pacification, or simply genocide. Huh. Now we’re meant to fear clouds. I shot down a lot of the chemtrail conspiracy in my last post, but suffice it to say that if there were a campaign to introduce foreign chemicals to the population, it would be simpler and far more effective to put them into the water or food supply; or, if inhalation were really necessary, to release them from ground-based vehicles. Maybe that’s a new conspiracy we can spread!

Concentration Camps

I’ve heard a lot about how supposed FEMA camps will be used for the internment of suspected subversives, making little effort to distinguish true threats from ideological dissidents. “Contemporary concentration camps” they call them. “They’re building them by the thousands! I saw it on YouTube!” We’ve seen this before – back during the Kennedy administration the federal government expanded mental health services, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened to right-wing radio programs in the country (hosted by a former FBI agent) had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union. Of course isn’t any more true now than it was then.

Forced Inoculations

People here are really worried about the “forced” vaccinations being rolled out in the U.S. this month for the H1N1 virus. Depending on who you talk to, the vaccines are actually slow-acting poisons or nanobots to be activated at a later date (presumably to turn us all into zombies?!) Those who refuse the vaccine will be arrested and taken to the FEMA internment camps. I’m tempted to hang around Vilcabamba another few weeks just to say “I told you so” when nothing of the sort happens.
The New York Times put it perfectly in a recent article: “As soon as swine flu vaccinations start next month, some people getting them will drop dead of heart attacks or strokes, some children will have seizures and some pregnant women will miscarry. But those events will not necessarily have anything to do with the vaccine.” These things occur with regularity no matter what – a coincidence of occurrence does not equal causal effect. Really, Statistics 101 and Critical Thinking should be required courses before one becomes a conspiracy theorist.

Anti-Science

In a related story, actress and model Jenny McCarthy won a Pigasus award last year for her activism in publicly encouraging parents not to vaccinate their children against measles, mumps, diptheria, etc – because she bought into the bunk that vaccines cause autism (which has been thoroughly debunked). This is a serious public health problem – outbreaks are on the rise because of the antivaxxers. Many of the antivaxxers are simply snake oil salesmen peddling their wares using fear-mongering as marketing. As one doctor put it, “Children have died because they haven’t been vaccinated. And when a large enough segment of the population doesn’t get vaccinated, we lose our herd immunity, and more people die. This type of antiscience thinking is getting people killed.” It’s been found that the risk of contracting a given disease is lower if you are completely unvaccinated yet living in a highly vaccinated community than if you are completely vaccinated and living in a relatively unvaccinated community. Why? Because vaccines don’t always take. What does that mean? You can’t minimize your individual risk unless your herd – your friends and neighbors – also buy in.

Speaking of anti-science, I’m sick of it. A lot of the ex-pats around here actually look down on using logic and the scientific method to explain the world. They pretend to use science, but it’s pseudo-science in actuality. Not only are many people here anti-science, they’re also anti-intellectual. It’s like a return to the Bush years or the middle ages. They claim we’re in the Age of Aquarius – which is meant to be an evolvement to Enlightenment – but all I see is heads buried in the sand.

[Another example of people not using their noggin: NASA is about to "bomb" the moon to find water. Leaving aside the PR blunder of NASA in using the term 'bomb', people around here are freaking out - it's going to throw the moon off course! Hellooooooo, that's like saying, "don't talk too loud, or the people in China will here you." Their sense of scale is all whacked. Really people, try using your head once in a while.]

Truly Cuckoo

By the way, if somebody tells you that the Apollo moon landings were faked, just punch them in the face as Buzz Aldrin did! Really, I’m not often proud of my country, but this particular conspiracy theory is appallingly disgraceful to the extraordinary men and women who accomplished that Herculean task. One of the groups perpetuating this “theory” is the Flat Earth Society. Yes, Wilbur, they still exist in this day and age of satellite imagery and such. Check out this profile of one of their main proponents or this forum if you’re in need of a laugh. Apparently the sun and moon are only 32 miles above us and the “cosmos” is a mere 3100 miles away (oh and it’s flat too, you know.)

This handsome wall chart of global tyranny will be the envy of all your paranoid friends.

Aliens

Now to the really juicy stuff: alien conspiracy theory! From Wikipedia: “The common theme in such conspiracy theories is that aliens have been among us for decades, centuries or millennia, but a government cover-up has protected the public from knowledge of an alien invasion. Motivated by speciesism, these aliens have been and are secretly manipulating developments and changes in human society in order to more efficiently control and exploit it. In some theories, alien infiltrators have taken human form and move freely throughout human society, even to the point of taking control of command positions. A mythical covert government agency of the United States code-named Majestic 12 is often cited as being the shadow government which collaborates with the alien occupation in exchange for assistance in the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems for the militarization of space to achieve full-spectrum dominance.”

Government Cover-Up

Like so much else in life, it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction. The U.S. Government has investigated UFO’s over the years, mostly doing a bad job of it. PCT’s (paranoid conspiracy theorists) would point to this as a cover-up. I call it bureaucratic ineptitude. Parsing the Wikipedia entry for MJ-12, it appears that much of the supporting evidence for such a group have been fakeries and hoaxes. However, this doesn’t deny government involvement. On the contrary, it’s been widely demonstrated that the Air Force committed a complex disinformation campaign against UFO researchers in order to distract them from the secret military testing going on in locations such as Area 51.

Alien-Government Bases

One of the main Ufologists to be fed disinformation was Paul Bennewitz, who was convinced he had uncovered proof of alien activity at Dulce Base, New Mexico. Bennewitz created a communication system that he believed enabled him to electronically communicate with what he was convinced were ET piloted ships flying to and from the base. Furthermore, he began to track the electronic frequencies ET’s used to control individuals who had been abducted and implanted with miniature electronic devices. The stories (here and here) are irresistible:

“Thomas alleges that there were over 18,000 of the short ‘greys’ at the Dulce Facility. He has also seen reptilian humanoids. One of us came face-to-face with a 6-foot tall Reptoid which had materialized in the house. The Reptoid showed interest in research maps of New Mexico and Colorado which were on my wall. The maps were full of colored push-pins and markers to indicate sites of animal mutilations, caverns, the locations of high UFO activity, repeated flight paths, abduction sites, ancient ruins, and suspected alien underground bases.
“…The security level goes up as one descends to the lower levels. Thomas had an ULTRA-7 clearance. He knew of seven sub-levels, but there MAY have been more. Most of the aliens are on levels 5, 6, and 7. Alien housing is on level 5. The only sign in English was one over a tube shuttle station hallway which read ‘to Los Alamos.’ Connections go from Dulce to the Page, Arizona facility, then to an underground base below Area 51 in Nevada. There is a vast network of tube shuttle connections under the U.S. which extends into a global system of tunnels and sub-cities. “

And on and on… zombies, alien-human hybrids, vats of humanoid bat-like creatures (“Mothmen“) – it’s as good a read as any sci-fi (because it’s REAL!!!)
Of course if you compare the detailed reports from the two stories linked above, there are significant critical differences in their descriptions of the alleged facilities.

Military Time-Travel

The Montauk Project is a similarly outlandish tale. Word has it that on a military base on Long Island in 1983, The Government was able to open a portal in spacetime back to 1943 in order to connect with the ill-fated Philadelphia Experiment. The funding for all this came from a large cache of Nazi gold found in a train by U.S. soldiers near the Swiss border in France. Of course it did – can’t leave out the Nazis or it wouldn’t be a good conspiracy theory. Oh, and they used the “time tunnel” at Montauk to travel to Mars. One woman even says she was raped by a reptilian alien at Montauk. Sounds like a lot of therapy is in her future.

Alien Abductions, Creation Myths and Reptilians, oh my!

Ferne and I met a woman the other day who says she was abducted by aliens as a girl. She was experimented on through her nose and belly button, and something was planted in her abdomen. She believes she may have “birthed” an alien baby, but was then returned to the same moment in time from which she was taken (i.e., she didn’t experience “missing time“.) It’s fascinating because if you were to meet this woman, she would seem completely sane to you. She works at a high level in IT, has a husband and child, hobbies, friends, etc. No outward signs of schizophrenia or psychotic delusions. Many years later (after recalling and processing these memories through various techniques) she went to the doctor to have an (alien) implant removed from behind her ear. She says the doctor described it as approximately the size of a bullet. But did she have the object examined? This part of the story she glossed over, which made the entire episode suspect in my mind. She went on to tell us there are many different kinds of aliens “living in the matrix” all around us – Greys, Reptilians, Light Beings..

At the beginning of time, she explained, everything was love and unity. Somehow fear entered this dimension and fractured the whole, creating the sun, moon, stars, and other entities, hence creating the matrix. The matrix is created and endorsed through fear; the reptilians live in between dimensions (see an episode of the new Doctor Who for more info!) and only come out where there is fear. She said that the matrix will change in 2012 (see below for more on this end-date). This change may be a reversal in the magnetic poles on Earth, or it could be a new consciousness. She actually said that “the matrix will be rebooted”. The matrix consists of a number of programs that keep us humans in order – not thinking, and foremost, not challenging authority. For example, there is the religious program, the work program, the get-married-and-buy-a-house program, etc. (see the movie “The Matrix” for more information! Really, most of this stuff is lifted directly from science fiction but taken as fact).
Naturally, the Illuminati are behind it all – but in this telling, they are a race of reptilian humanoids known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and many prominent figures are reptilian, including both Bushes, Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie! Alien abductions tend to run in the family, so this woman’s goal is to protect her daughter to keep that from happening. Of course it goes without saying that she should purchase alien abduction insurance.

The book she recommended we read above all else is David Icke’s The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World. In it, he explains that most world leaders — including quite a few U.S. presidents — are actually shape-shifting reptilian beings from a different planet who start wars and are responsible for horrific events like 9/11 in order to promote fear and hatred, which gives them strength. Oh, and they’re seven feet tall and suck human blood. I am not making this up. Icke proposes that “Ordinary people are being massively duped into believing that the ordinary course of world events are the consequence of known political forces and random, uncontrollable events. However, the course of humanity is being manipulated at every level. The Global Elite arrange for incidents to occur around the world, which then elicit a response from the public (’something must be done’), and in turn allows those in power to do whatever they had planned to do in the first place.” This “pyramid of manipulation” is orchestrated through hierarchical structures involving banking, business, the military, education, the media, religion, drug companies, intelligence agencies, and organized crime. “The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, the British royal family, and the ruling political and economic families of the U.S. and the rest of the world come from these SAME [alien] bloodlines. It is not because of snobbery, it is to hold as best they can a genetic structure – the reptilian-mammalian DNA combination which allows them to ’shape-shift’.” David Icke, by the way, draws crowds by the thousands wherever he speaks, and his books sell quite briskly in dozens of countries.

Breaking News: Balloon Boy Just Wanted to Warn Us about the Lizard People!

Contactees vs. Abductees

“Contactees” are differentiated from “abductees” by their narrative, which are more benign than in abduction scenarios. Contactees report visitations from spiritual “Space Brothers” who are disturbed by the violence, crime and wars that infest the earth. However, despite their global concerns, the Brothers never land their flying saucers in front of the United Nations building, the White House or the Kremlin to spread their message. Instead, they invariably select obscure people (dishwashers, road crew members, assembly-line workers, sign-painters and taxi-drivers), whom often have a long prior history of involvement with mystical sects. Almost every contactee asserts that the urgent message of the Space Brothers is religious rather than technical; extraterrestrial religions as reported by the contactees are generally difficult to distinguish from a blend of Christianity and Theosophy.

Types of Aliens

Regarding the various types of aliens, one study found that “In North America large-headed gray aliens predominate, while in Britain abduction aliens are usually described as being tall, blond, and Nordic, while South America tends toward more bizarre creatures, including hairy monsters.” Another researcher notes that the critical difference between Brazilian reports of “spiritual space surgeons” and “typical” alien abductions is that Brazilians perceive the phenomenon as “pleasant and spiritual” while abductees report “terror.” I find this interesting, for it highlights the cultural biases of different human societies in the myths we create. Presumably real alien abductors would not discriminate based on national borders – unless the various alien races have worked out a sharing plan with each other!
Perhaps aliens are actually fairies.

Ancient Astronauts

Ancient astronaut theory posits that aliens have visited Earth many times through the ages and that this contact is linked to the origins or development of human cultures, technologies, and/or religions (i.e., “Jesus was an alien”). Some even believe this explains the so-called “missing link” between apes and humans – that aliens gave DNA in order to propel our evolution. Proponents point to what they perceive as gaps in evolutionary and archaeological records, and to what they see as absent or incomplete explanations of such data. They further point to archaeological artifacts that they argue are anachronistic or beyond the presumed technical capabilities of the historical cultures with which they are associated (so-called “out-of-place artifacts” such as Stonehenge, the Moai of Easter Island, and the Giza pyramids) and artwork and legends which are interpreted as depicting extraterrestrial contact or technologies. Scientists maintain that gaps in contemporary knowledge of the past do not demonstrate that such speculative ancient astronaut ideas are a necessary, or even plausible, conclusion to draw. Regarding supposed out-of-place artifacts, archaeologists generally dismiss these claims as extreme cultural centrism (the belief that a particular culture couldn’t have created an artifact or technology due to a lack of knowledge or materials). The fact is, many experiments have taken place to demonstrate how these massive structures could have been built using only the technology and materials available at the time, and all have been successful.

Planet X

Zecharia Sitchen is another oft-quoted proponent of ancient astronaut theories. According to Sitchin’s interpretation of Babylonian religious texts, which contravenes every conclusion reached by credited scholars on the subject, a giant planet named Nibiru with a 3600-year orbit occasionally passes by Earth and allows its sentient inhabitants to interact with humanity. These beings, which Sitchin identifies with the Annunaki of Sumerian myth, were humanity’s first gods. A quote from Sitchen:

“[The Nibiru] gave Mankind civilization. These details dovetail with Sumerian texts according to which Ea [the Sumerian god also knowns as Enki] was the leader of the first group of astronauts from Nibiru who splashed down in the Persian Gulf and waded ashore, dressed as Fishmen (Fig. C)… The locations for the search for the ‘Enki Connection’ have been indicated by Lucyna Lobos, a Polish seer, who in a keynote address at the symposium asserted that the god Enki had left at those sites instructions how to create an Earth Shield to protect our planet from the catastrophic effects of the looming proximity of the returning planet Nibiru, alias Planet X. She warned that efforts must be accelerated to find this data and create the shield before 2012.”

Why did the Nibiru come to Earth in the first place? For the gold. You see, Nibiru was dying from being so cold (as it is usually far from the sun) – so they decided to build an atmospheric shell to trap the  planet’s heat. So they came came to Earth to mine our natural resources, but with their small numbers they soon tired of the task and set out to genetically engineer laborers to work the mines. After much trial and error they eventually created homo sapiens: the “Adapa” (model man), or Adam of later mythology.
I don’t mean to make fun, but it sure feels like he’s in on the joke.

Collision Course with Earth

Many of Sitchen’s followers (but not Sitchen himself) believe that Nibiru is on a collision course with Earth. Originally this was meant to occur in 2003, but when that failed to occur, the main proponent revised the date to 2012. Reading the details you’ll see that none of the physics matches our current understanding of reality, yet NASA receives hundreds of emails a week about it. “Planetary scientists are being driven to distraction by Nibiru,” notes science writer Govert Schilling, “And it is not surprising; you devote so much time, energy and creativity to fascinating scientific research, find yourself on the tracks of the most amazing and interesting things, and all the public at large is concerned about is some crackpot theory about clay tablets, god-astronauts and a planet that doesn’t exist.”

Skepticism of Alien Conspiracy

Of course, the atheist in me insists on pointing out that belief in any of the above is no more bizarre than belief in God, angels, spirits, immortality, etc. The only difference is that “God” is a culturally accepted delusion, while aliens are less so. But it’s frankly unimaginative – the universe is far more complex and beautiful than we can possibly imagine. Furthermore, it strikes me as incredibly self-centered and egotistical to think that out of the impossibly huge universe, aliens select these few people as “chosen ones”. As Richard Dawkins said, “The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudo-scientific charlatans.” In times gone by, lighting, rainbows, and magnetism were thought to be of supernatural origin until they were understood by science. Can’t the same be said today of unexplained phenomenon? Further, the fact that myself and others who believe in science (or to put it another way, don’t believe in the occult) have never experienced an unexplainable phenomenon would suggest that such experiences are at least partly brought on by the subconscious minds of those who do believe.

Neurologist Dr. Michael Persinger reports that “Nearly every basic element of mystical, religious, and visitor experience has been evoked with electrical stimulation” of test subjects’ brains. Dismissing the idea that alleged abductees are simply cranks, Persinger goes on: “Most people who report these experiences [alien abduction] display average to above average intelligence, are not ‘crazy’ and are very aware of the social and personal consequences of their experiences upon their families, friends and vocational opportunities.” His research points to psychosocial explanations, including hallucination (surprisingly common in the sane), temporary schizophrenia, epileptic seizures and parasomnia — near-sleep mental states (hypnogogic states, night terrors and sleep paralysis).

The desire to transcend this life, to move to a higher plane, to leave this body, to be selected by a higher being for some special task….each of these can be seen in the desire to be abducted by aliens as easily as in the desire to be one with God or to have an out-of-body experience. Researcher Goodrick-Clarke puts forward a thesis on the driving force behind occultism: Behind its many varied forms lies a uniform function, “a strong desire to reconcile the findings of modern natural science with a religious view that could restore man to a position of centrality and dignity in the universe.”

According to theories of anxiety relief and control, people turn to magical beliefs when there exists a sense of uncertainty and potential danger and little to do about it. Magic is used to restore a sense of control. In support of this theory, research indicates that superstitious behavior is invoked more often in high stress situations, especially by people with a greater desire for control.

In The Demon-Haunted World astronomer Carl Sagan pointed out that the alien abduction experience is remarkably similar to tales of demon abduction common throughout history:

“…most of the central elements of the alien abduction account are present, including sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically, and perform breeding experiments on the human species. Unless we believe that demons really exist, how can we understand so strange a belief system, embraced by the whole Western world (including those considered the wisest among us), reinforced by personal experience in every generation, and taught by Church and State? Is there any real alternative besides a shared delusion based on common brain wiring and chemistry?”

Of course, the occultists reply that what used to be interpreted as demons were actually aliens all along.

Therapist Gwen Dean noted 44 parallels between alien abduction and satanic ritual abuse (SRA). Both emerged as widespread phenomena in the late 1970s and early 1980s, both often use hypnosis to recover supposed lost or suppressed memory. Furthermore, the scenarios and narratives offered by abductees and SRA victims feature many similar elements: both are typically said to begin when the experiencer is in their youth; both are said to involve entire families and to occur generationally; the alien examination table is similar to the satanic altar; both phenomena focus on genitals, rape, sexuality and breeding; witnesses often report that the events happen when they are in altered states of consciousness; both phenomena feature episodes of “missing time” when the events are said to occur, but of which the victim has no conscious memory.

Interestingly, some abductees experience the sensation of being both human and alien at the same time, a phenomenon called “dual reference.” Dual reference emerges in hypnotic regression sessions wherein the subject reports pre-birth or pre-life existence as one of the same species that later abducts them. Which implies that at least some “humans” (perhaps even those you think you know and love) are part alien!

Ultimately, the lack of any credible evidence seems to be the most damning thing to alien conspiracy theory. When the PBS investigative program Nova put out an offer to have scientists analyze and evaluate any alleged implants of abductees, they did not get a single person willing to have their so-called implants tested or verified. So all we have to go on is abductee’s beliefs that it happened and the account they give of it.

From the Skeptic’s Dictionary:

Abductees are very much analogous not only to mystics, but to medieval nuns who believed they’d been seduced by devils, to ancient Greek women who thought they’d had sex with animals, and to women who believed they were witches. The abductees’ counselors and hypnotherapists are like the priests of old who do not challenge delusional beliefs, but encourage and nurture them. They do everything in their power to establish their stories as orthodox. It would be very difficult to find an abductee who has not been heavily influenced in their belief by reading stories of aliens or by seeing movies featuring aliens. Given a great deal of encouragement by a believing community, and reinforced by the high priests of the alien abduction cult, it is not difficult to understand why there are so many people today who believe they have been abducted by aliens.

Further, if there are beings clever enough to travel around the universe today, there were undoubtedly equally intelligent beings who could have done so in our ancient or medieval times. Yet the delusions of the ancients and the medievals are not couched in terms of aliens and spacecraft because these are our century’s creations. We can laugh at the idea of gods taking on the form of swans to seduce beautiful women, or of devils impregnating nuns, because they do not fit with our cultural prejudices and delusions. The ancients and medievals probably would have laughed at anyone who would have claimed to have been picked up by aliens from another planet for sex or reproductive surgery. The only reason anyone takes the abductees seriously today is that their delusions do not blatantly conflict with our cultural beliefs that intergalactic space travel is a real possibility and that it is highly probable that we are not the only inhabited planet in the universe. In other times, no one would have been able to take these claims seriously. [...]

Some of these aliens are destroying crops around the globe in an effort to impress us with their artistic abilities or to communicate to us in strange symbols just how much they like our planet’s cattle. Of course, inquiring minds want to know why beings with the intelligence and power to travel billions of miles to our planet would spend their time mutilating cows, experimenting on otherwise unremarkable people, or carving up wheat fields.

I have a difficult time accepting the commonly held belief that the U.S. (and perhaps other governments) are covering up alien activities on Earth and liaising with them in order to obtain technology in exchange for knowledge and testing on human biology. I keep coming back to the difficulty involved in such a massive cover-up – wouldn’t someone involved tell their spouse/child/brother? Yet there is scant evidence for this. Cover-ups on such a scale seem to push the limits of plausibility in my opinion.

More Cuckoo

Here’s a good one: I heard the other day that Nazis continued their space effort after the war from their base in Antarctica. Germans landed on the moon (this seems to be directly lifted from the sci-fi show Alternative 3) as early as 1942 and established an underground base there. Some believe that the Antarctic base is an entrance to the hollow earth.  There is even a Gnostic religion that believes an enormous space fleet is on its way to Earth which, when it arrives, will join forces with the Nazi Flying Saucers from Antarctica to establish the Western Imperium. I’m not making this up!

Space is Big (the facts)

Astrobiologists generally agree it is probable there is life elsewhere in the universe and that some of that life is intelligent. However, people have a difficult time grokking the incredibly vast distances of deep space. The nearest star to us (Alpha Centauri) is some 24 trillion miles away. Even traveling at a million miles an hour, it would take more than 2,500 years to get here from there (unless, of course, our alien visitors have been right next to us all along, simply in another dimension).

Most star systems are much further away than Alpha Centauri by many orders of magnitude. But even before seeking out in a given direction, there is the question of locating intelligent beings. A signal from any planet in the universe broadcast in any direction is extremely unlikely to be in the path of another inhabited planet – space is so vast that planets make up an infinitesimally small portion of it. Due to the distances involved, waiting for a signal might require waiting longer than any life on any planet might last. Finally, if one does get a signal, the waves carrying that signal would have left thousands (if not millions) of years earlier and by the time it’s source is tracked down, the sending planet may no longer be habitable or even exist.

When we look out into the night sky (say, for other civilizations) we’re looking back hundreds of thousands of years in time – possibly long before or long after sentient life existed in that region. Furthermore, we live on the edge of our galaxy (10 million light years in diameter), our galaxy is not in the center of our galaxy cluster, which is itself not in the center of the universe (93 billion light years in diameter).

So the problem of distance is compounded by the fact that timescales affording a “window of opportunity” for detection or contact might be quite small. Advanced civilizations may periodically arise and fall throughout our galaxy or others, but this may be such a rare event, relatively speaking, that the odds of two or more such civilizations existing at the same time are actually quite low.

You can see there are a number of difficult challenges to overcome in potential aliens even finding Earth (let alone identifying our leaders and communicating with them without the general populace becoming aware!) The failure of the SETI program to detect anything resembling an intelligent radio signal after four decades of effort appears equally damning to the evidence of extraterrestrial life nearby. Perhaps we really are alone in the universe.

See the Fermi Paradox for an interesting discussion of the question of life elsewhere in the universe. Or see John Hodgman’s TED Talk for a humourous take.

More Doubts

Astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek presents several more reasons to doubt alien visitation:

• Despite worldwide radar systems and Earth-orbiting satellites, UFOs are alleged to flit in and out of the atmosphere, leaving little to no evidence (unless, of course, every government, observatory, radar operator, and amateur astronomer are “in on it”). On the other hand, there have been occasional incidences of exactly this, such as the mass sightings of large, silent, low-flying black triangles in 1989 and 1990 over Belgium, tracked by multiple NATO radar and jet interceptors and investigated by Belgium’s military. The sheer number of reliable sightings does make one wonder.
• Space aliens are alleged to be overwhelmingly humanoid, and are allegedly able to exist on Earth without difficulty (lacking “space suits”, despite the fact that extra-solar planets would likely have different atmospheres, biospheres, gravity and other factors, and extraterrestrial life would likely be very different from Earthly life.) For this reason, I would be more inclined to believe in the “praying mantis-like” aliens than in humanoid ones like the Greys. After all, why would an alien race look anything like us, including being bipedal or even carbon based? The fact that so many supposed alien encounters are with beings that look vaguely human only reinforces the notion that these sightings could in fact be hallucinations or false memories.
• Reported UFOs are often far too small to support a crew traveling through space, and their reported flight behavior is often not representative of a craft under intelligent control (erratic flight patterns, sudden course changes). I’ll give you an example of a prosaic explanation for such a UFO sighting here in Vilcabamba – the other night, Roger saw two UFO’s bobbing and weaving up, over, and in front of the mountain in front of him. The characteristics matched what other people around here have seen. He finally realized, however, that the “UFO’s” were simply fireflies six feet in front of him. He had been fooled by the perspective.

My Surprising Conclusion

After spending the past month researching this subject, I’m surprisingly finding myself conducive to the idea that some UFO’s may in fact be alien craft. One only has to look up the unexplained phenomena surrounding cattle mutilations to start to wonder. Certainly the vast majority of UFO sightings have plausible explanations. There have, however, been a number of well-documented observations of UFO’s by large groups of people, reliable witnesses including military pilots (and here) and engineers, going back to the 1940’s and the first widely publicized abduction, in 1961. Many people around here have seen UFO’s, and I’ve had a difficult time thinking of a plausible explanation for some of the stories when dozens of people saw the same thing from many different perspectives all over town. There does seem to be something there.

Paranoia

Many military and government studies have been conducted over the years into UFO’s, most of which conclude that the technology for these objects cannot be found here on earth. While I find it a stretch to think that government(s) have been secretly colluding with aliens (although they have been sued for this), there is evidence that information has been suppressed in order to avoid large-scale panic (on the order of the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast) since we have no defense if such an invasion were to take place. Some go so far as to believe that the Strategic Defense Initiative (America’s satellite-based laser defense system built by Reagan, nicknamed “Star Wars”) was not built as a defense against the U.S.S.R., but rather against a potential alien invasion – although I find that dubious.

I know what you’re thinking: let’s buy Josh that tin-foil hat for Xmas!

On the other hand, maybe they’ve already surveyed us and simply went away when they saw we are made of meat.

Endword on UFO’s

The first CIA Director, Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, stated in a signed statement to Congress, reported in the New York Times on February 28, 1960, “It is time for the truth to be brought out… Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. However, through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense…” In 1962, in his letter of resignation from NICAP, he said, “I know the UFOs are not U.S. or Soviet devices. All we can do now is wait for some actions by the UFOs.”

The problem of course preventing serious scientific study of UFO’s is crackpots like Sitchen and Icke giving the entire subject a laughable name. In a 1969 lecture U.S. astrophysicist Carl Sagan said: “The idea of benign or hostile space aliens from other planets visiting the earth [is clearly] an emotional idea. There are two sorts of self-deception here: either accepting the idea of extraterrestrial visitation by space aliens in the face of very meager evidence because we want it to be true; or rejecting such an idea out of hand, in the absence of sufficient evidence, because we don’t want it to be true. Each of these extremes is a serious impediment to the study of UFOs.” In other words, it’s difficult to avoid the certainty trap.

2012

Most of the above conspiracy theories tie neatly together into the 2012 end-date phenomenon. These theories are predicated on the interpretation of the Mayan calendar ending on December 21, 2012. For starters, even Mayan scholars do not all agree on that specific date. Secondly, as I learned when I lived in a Mayan town back in Guatemala, they do not consider the date to be apocalyptic in the least – on the contrary, it is “a cause for celebration and the cycle will continue uninterrupted by any cataclysmic event.” Further, I question why we would give any more credence to the mythological predictions of a civilization from the recent past than to any other “seer”. Do the Mayans (or the Sumerians, or Nostradamus) have some magical purchase on world events that today’s scholars cannot access? Why place more trust in ancient neolithic traditions than in the observations of modern science? There’s nothing wrong with studying and respecting our predecessors’ history for what it was, but turning things over and believing that scientific knowledge of the natural world has only decreased over time just seems crazy to me.

Folks around here cite as proof the quasi-scientific belief that the earth will soon experience a geomagnetic reversal (usually incorrectly referred to as a polar shift). The inconvenient facts: the Earth is indeed overdue for a geomagnetic reversal and has been for a long time (even since the time of the Mayans), because the last reversal was 780,000 years ago. However, geomagnetic reversals take up to 5,000 years to complete, and do not start on any particular date.

Again, I point to history and the countless doomsday predictions we’ve seen before. Y2K was another direly predicted date that ultimately became a non-event. A lot of people came down here and built bunkers preparing for the end of the world. 6/6/06 was meant to be another one, as was the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, remember that one? The convergence was purported to have “corresponded with a great shift in the earth’s energy from warlike to peaceful.” I don’t remember much of anything special happening that year, and if anything the world has gotten less peaceful, not more. On May 27, 2003 Planet X was supposed to collide with Earth. Glad I didn’t take shelter for that one. James Randi lists 44 distinct end of the world predictions that all came and went unfulfilled. Dare I say it that 2012 will suffer the same fate?

Analysis and Criticism of Conspiracy Theories

Having explored many of the contemporary conspiracy theories, I’d like to wrap things up by breaking down where these memes originate and what makes them so compelling that people not only subscribe to them but go out of their way to embrace and embellish them.

We begin with a nice chart contrasting the rational thinker with the paranoid:

Cognitive Bias and Patterning

Psychology Today notes:

Cognitive biases distort our judgments and allow us to maintain beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Some of these biases include the tendency to see patterns where none exist, and to interpret new information and recall old information in ways that confirm our expectations and beliefs. Most of the time we’re unaware of these biases and overly confident that our perceptions represent the objective truth.

Richard Dawkins says that “The human mind is a wanton storyteller and even more, a profligate seeker after pattern. We see faces in clouds and tortillas, fortunes in tea leaves and planetary movements. It is quite difficult to prove a real pattern as distinct from a superficial illusion.”

Look at the Face on Mars for a perfect example – when the photos from the 1976 Viking orbiter were published, our brains, which have been hard-wired by evolution to see faces in random patterns, indeed saw a face in the clumps of rock and sand. People went crazy. But when one views the higher-resolution photographs of subsequent missions, this pattern disappears. There are thousands more examples, from seeing the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich to hearing Satanic messages when playing rock music backwards to anthropomorphizing random groups of stars into constellations.

The Controlling “Other”

In analyzing the 9/11 conspiracy theories, Time magazine comments on the public’s reason for embracement: “the idea that there is a malevolent controlling force orchestrating global events is, in a perverse way, comforting.” It concludes that “conspiracy theories are part of the process by which Americans deal with traumatic public events” and constitute “an American form of national mourning.”

Check out this quote from a famous conspiracy theorist:

“How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. . . .What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence. . . .”

Sounds like someone railing against the “New World Order” of Cheney and his cronies, right? In fact, the quote is from Senator Joe McCarthy, speaking in 1951 about the vast army of Communists he claimed had infiltrated the U.S. government.

Psychological Basis

Skeptics argue that the paranoia behind a conspiracy theorist’s obsession with mind control, occultism, surveillance abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and globalization arises from a combination of two factors, when he or she: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks a sense of control. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual’s right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government). But combine this with a sense of powerlessness in one’s own life, and one gets what some psychologists call “agency panic”, intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators. When fervent individualists feel that they cannot exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces are to blame for usurping this freedom.

Michael Barkun, author of A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, contends that conspiracism attracts people because conspiracy theorists “claim to explain what others can’t. They appear to make sense out of a world that is otherwise confusing.” There is an appealing simplicity in dividing the world sharply into good and bad and tracing “all evil back to a single source, the conspirators and their agents”. Barkun notes that “conspiracy theories are often presented as special, secret knowledge unknown or unappreciated by others”. For conspiracists, “the masses are a brainwashed herd, while the conspiracists in the know can congratulate themselves on penetrating the plotters’ deceptions”.

Tim Boucher, in his Integral Approach to Conspiracy Theory, makes the point that

“the main way that people understand things is through creating and telling stories. Stories place disconnected events and characters into a coherent framework that allow us to intuitively understand the motivations and effects of actions. Some stories are rooted in reality but become distorted through transmission, while others are changed on purpose. Still other stories are invented almost out of thin air. Part of being a good conspiracy theory investigator is being able to track down the origins of stories. Where and from whom did they originate? Under what circumstances? What might have been the motivations of the people who were telling the story?”

In the bit of research I’ve done, I’ve noticed how several of the stories I’ve heard can be traced back to a single source which was obviously a fabrication. But it got repeated so many times that, like the children’s game of telephone, it took on a life of it’s own.

Crank Science

Scientific American’s chief skeptic Michael Shermer makes an important observation about the conspiracist method: “The mistaken belief that a handful of unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking (as well as creationism, Holocaust denial and the various crank theories of physics). All the ‘evidence’ for a 9/11 conspiracy falls under the rubric of this fallacy.” A successful scientific theory organizes masses of information into a coherent, well-tested narrative. When a theory has managed to explain the real world accurately enough for long enough, it becomes accepted as fact. Conspiracy theorists, Shermer points out, generally ignore the mass of evidence that supports the mainstream view and focus strictly on tiny anomalies. But in a complex and messy world, the fact that there might be a few details we don’t yet understand should not be surprising.
Thomas W. Eagar, an engineering professor at MIT, notes that conspiracy theorists “use the ‘reverse scientific method’. They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn’t fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion.”

Hypocrisy

While I understand the motivations and psychology behind conspiracism, I’m still flabbergasted by the hypocrisy. CT’s claim to be free thinkers, yet they can’t deal with actual dialog and debate. Any criticism or presentation of other theories or explanations is shut down if it doesn’t fit into their pre-existing world view. I’m all for questioning the government, but shouldn’t we be equally questioning of other conspiracy theorists? It’s this lack of critical thinking that gets me fed up with these conversations.

To be clear, many conspiracy theorists are smart people. I’m not belittling them or “making them wrong.” For example, I’ve met several scientists and engineers here in Vilcabamba who have done complex “experiments” and have “proof” they believe to be true that “water has a memory”, for example. But you have to ask yourself in all of these examples – if this revelatory finding is indeed true, why hasn’t it been published in peer-reviewed journals? How can this one obscure person be the sole keeper of such ground-breaking work when there are thousands of labs around the world doing pure research in this area? As Michael Schermer said, “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”

Depressing Worldview

I further believe that conspiracy theories result from a rather pessimistic view of the world and it’s people. The interpretation of world events as necessarily sinister, what some call “furtive fallacy“. Why assume the worst? Personally, I choose to live in a world where people generally have good intentions.. certainly, power corrupts and greed causes people to do some terrible things.. but not all the time, and not by everybody. Take Bill Gates as an example – the conspiracy theorists would say he’s stinking rich, therefore he much be “in on it” somehow, screwing it to the rest of us. But a quick reading of the facts reveals that in just 10 years Gates has done far more to help the poor and downtrodden of the world than Mother Teresa did in her entire lifetime.

Tim Boucher also points out there is a victimization complex at work: “if you decide at the beginning of the game that some other player has more power than you and did you wrong, then you’re going to act like that for the rest of the game, even when you may not really need to.” Robert Anton Wilson also cautions against handing others all your power: “Paranoia is a Loser script; it defines somebody else as being in charge around here except me. I prefer to define myself and my friends as the architects of the future.”

Personal Responsibility

The whole thing feels like an abdication of responsibility. If everything is preordained by the NWO / aliens / 2012 / what have you, then that relieves us the responsibility as individuals to make the world a better place. It also sets up an easy scapegoat for any and all of our problems, by assigning a “them” who is against “us”. I much prefer the more difficult but ultimately more productive world view that we’re all in this together, and it’s up to us as individuals to change the world (by changing ourselves). By bridging the divides.. by communication and understanding of our fellow man, by breaking down the walls that divide us – not by erecting yet more walls and barriers. [I'm thinking of MLK and Ghandi here. Surely the PCT's would admit in those cases that one person was able to change the world?]
I have the same problem with anyone who blames the Big Bad Government for their problems. Who is the government? Us! If you don’t like what the government is doing, then get up off your lazy ass and change it! These people should feel privileged that they live in a society where they can make a change – a far different position to be in compared to most of human history.

Last Word

Naomi Wolf gives us her take:

Usually, conspiracy theories surface where people are poorly educated and a rigorous independent press is lacking. So why are such theories gaining adherents in the US and other affluent democracies nowadays? Today’s explosion of conspiracy theories has been stoked by the same conditions that drove their acceptance in the past: rapid social change and profound economic uncertainty. A clearly designated “enemy” with an unmistakable “plan” is psychologically more comforting than the chaotic evolution of social norms and the workings – or failures – of unfettered capitalism. And, while conspiracy theories are often patently irrational, the questions they address are often healthy, even if the answers are frequently unsourced or just plain wrong.

In seeking answers, these citizens are reacting rationally to irrational realities. Many citizens believe, rightly, that their mass media are failing to investigate and document abuses. Newspapers in most advanced countries are struggling or folding, and investigative reporting is often the first thing they cut. Concentration of media ownership and control further fuels popular mistrust, setting the stage for citizen investigation to enter the vacuum. Likewise, in an age when corporate lobbyists have a free hand in shaping – if not drafting – public policies, many people believe, again rightly, that their elected officials no longer represent them. Hence their impulse to believe in unseen forces.

Finally, even rational people have become more receptive to certain conspiracy theories because, in the last eight years, we actually have seen some sophisticated conspiracies. The Bush administration conspired to lead Americans and others into an illegal war, using fabricated evidence to do so. Is it any wonder, then, that so many rational people are trying to make sense of a political reality that really has become unusually opaque? [...]

The real problem with this frantic conspiracy theorizing is that it leaves citizens emotionally agitated but without a solid ground of evidence upon which to base their worldview, and without constructive directions in which to turn their emotions. This is why so many threads of discussion turn from potentially interesting citizen speculation to hate speech and paranoia. In a fevered environment, without good editorial validation or tools for sourcing, citizens can be preyed upon and whipped up by demagogues [...]

We need to change the flow of information in the Internet age. Citizens should be able to more easily to leak information, pitch stories, and send leads to mainstream investigative reporters. They should organize new online entities in which they pay a fee for direct investigative reporting, unmediated by corporate pressures. And citizen investigators should be trained in basic journalism: finding good data, confirming stories with two independent sources, using quotes responsibly, and eschewing anonymity – that is, standing by their own bylines, as conventional reporters do.

The History Channel and the Fox network, among others, continually produce programs capitalizing on people’s fears about all this stuff. The programs are full of hearsay and shoddy facts and are only made because they sell, but people take them as gospel and quote them as sources of proof. The author of one book that was quoted on one of these programs said that it was “45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism”. Many of these programs are written by science fiction authors yet presented as established scientific theory.

Speaking of, I heard that L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, was a science fiction writer and founded the religion as a joke with a friend to see how far they could take it!

I look forward to your comments.

8/14:
Got into an argument with a Canadian anarcho-capitalist about political systems. He honestly believes that the world would be a better place if all governments were eliminated and every public service became privatized – schools, roads, hospitals, police, everything. [Here is a great chart of what America would look like under that system.] He makes a point that the state uses violence and coercion to enforce laws – but I’m not sure those would go away under a private system. Every time an industry has been deregulated in the U.S. it has proven worse for the consumer. An anarcho-capitalist society would be a wonderful place for those with money, that’s clear – and the rest of us would become more and more destitute! The question is, would you rather be poor in a capitalist country or in a socialist one? Because in my view, “the strongest nation is the one that takes care of it’s weakest members”. The answer is obvious to me – Cuba (for example) treats their poor far better than the United States does – free, excellent health care and education for all. The one thing we agreed on is that the U.S. does not currently have a capitalist economy – it’s corporatist – with limited liability preventing true capitalism from operating. He argues that in a true capitalist society, market forces would eliminate practices we currently label as evils of capitalism. For example, without the safety net of limited liability, the repercussions following an Exxon Valdez-type environmental disaster would put the company out of business rather than being protected by a legal framework that favor corporate interests above all else.

A great band played at the corner bar tonight and all the South American hippies that camp in the hills surrounding came out to dance.
I keep hearing about questionable murders and suicides of people who “knew too much”… I think it all revolves around the town rapist and his powerful family. There are apparently just three families that own most of the property and businesses (at least, pre-gringo influx).

8/16:
This town is so small that if you want to go to visit a friend, all you have to say to the taxi driver is “Blair’s house, please” – and they know where to go. There are about a dozen or so taxis which are actually 4×4 pickup trucks in order to get around on the rough dirt roads.

I keep taking hikes in the late afternoon and ending up in the middle of nowhere after dark. The first time I got a bit nervous since I was on the side of a ridge full of brambles, miles and many valleys away from town. But I calmed myself down and simply backtracked the way I’d come, although it was a bit of a challenge in the dark. [I often subconsciously put myself in challenging situations simply to overcome them.] Returning to town from these night walks I’ve often accidentally come upon young couples courting on the edge of town. Sorry, guys!
The hiking here is superb – almost any direction you go, there is a different type of terrain just minutes from town. It’s great not having to organize a tour or take transport to begin a hike.

8/20:
Met a guy tonight from Silicon Valley who retired at 44 with multiple degrees and who it turns out is a paranoid conspiracy theorist. He runs one of the most popular 9/11 “truth” web sites, and believes that Wikipedia is “being controlled” because they still label it the “9/11 conspiracy theory”, despite the “overwhelming” evidence to the contrary. “Truthers” believe that the government/mass media/scientific explanation is the conspiracy, not the other way round. Leaving aside whether 9/11 was an inside job or not, I tried to explain the meaning of “theory” – as in, the theory of relativity is still a theory even though it’s the accepted truth of modern science. Regarding Wikipedia being “controlled”, I know for a fact this is not true – the stewards of Wikimedia take any kind of undue influence, governmental or otherwise, very seriously and have numerous safeguards against such intrusion.

This guy proceeds to explain to me that AIDS was created by the U.S. Government at Fort Dixon, that the “mandatory” inoculations for H1N1 are actually nanobots or chips that will later be activated, and that the Rothschilds run everything, start wars, choose presidents and prime ministers and pit countries against each other for profit. I asked how people like Noam Chomsky, who is so well-read and informed, could not know of all this going on. He says that Chomsky and others like him are “gatekeepers” – someone who is allowed to satisfy the rebels, but whom they know won’t go too far (and if he does, he’ll be eliminated).

Did you know that fluoridated water calcifies our pineal gland , thus breaking down our resistance to authority? [The pineal gland, of course, is the third eye, sixth chakra, and correlates to the location of the Great Pyramid in the center of the physical planet. When "awakened", it acts as a "stargate" that "sees beyond Space-Time into Time-Space". Just gotta raise your frequency, baby!] He developed this theory when he noticed that country people raised on well water (like him) are more enlightened, while city folk (raised on fluoridated water) are “sheeple“. Actually, I’d say it’s the other way round – urban populations tend to be better educated, thus better equipped to reason and analyze. But then, I’m probably being controlled to say that.
OK – I just looked up fluoridation, and it turns out it’s naturally occurring in water, especially in mountainous regions. Municipalities often have to de-fluorinate water, which shoots down his entire premise. Jeezus.
Other subjects we breezed over: the “Greys” (an alien race), “hermeneutic vibrations”, “thought planes“, the fact that Obamba’s cabinet are Mossad agents, and other fascinating theories truths. When I jokingly called him crazy at one point he got angry and defensive, explaining that his brother tried to have him committed.

I’m intrigued to hear all this stuff and try to approach everything with an open mind, but cannot stand it when the person I’m talking to refuses to do the same. These people claim they’re free thinkers, yet they can’t deal with actual dialog and debate. Any criticism or presentation of other theories or explanations is shut down if it doesn’t fit into their pre-existing world view. I’m all for questioning the government, but shouldn’t we be equally questioning of other conspiracy theorists? It’s this lack of critical thinking that gets me fed up with these conversations. That and the fact that they’re all men over 50 who only talk AT you, rather than WITH you.

8/22:
Met a different Canadian who has been here about a decade. He gave me a brief tour of the houses he’s built, each time using different construction techniques. We had a nice chat that went from the afternoon into the night. I’m working on a much longer blog post about all the marvelous conspiracy theories I keep hearing about, but I’ll just mention one more as a teaser. This man introduced me to the concept of chemtrails – the idea that regular contrails (the vapor trail occasionally left by jets in the sky) are not so benign after all. Apparently in recent years there has been an uptick in the number of contrails being noticed (that couldn’t possibly have any other explanation, like say, new flight routes, or simply more people looking for them). The fear is that the government is spraying chemicals (or nanobots) on the populace, slowly poisoning us. Nevermind questioning why they would do it in broad daylight instead of under cover of darkness. Or the fact that spraying from 30,000 feet would be ineffective due to wind dispersal (aerial spraying has to be done between 30′-150′ to be effective). Or the fact that ultraviolet light from the sun would render any biological agent inert. Despite common sense, the laws of physics, and Occam’s Razor , folks here believe the government is engaging in population control. Which is one reason they left North America.

There is a sense of humor and fun missing from these people, and that makes me sad. It’s a very dismal view of the world. Call me Pollyanna, but I prefer to live in a world where people are generally good-hearted and look out for one another, as we have for thousands of years.
Another thing bothering me about the CT’s around here is their strong anti-intellectualist bent. They actually look down on you the more education you have.. as if the universities of the world are somehow indoctrinating people into complicity, rather than teaching one how to think and reason.

Many people here are worried that we’re only seeing the beginning of the economic crisis – that the world’s economies will crash soon, and crash so hard that only those prepared will survive. Most of these folks keep their wealth in the form of gold or precious stones (although I’m fond of pointing out that gold is just as illusory as currency – if everyone decides tomorrow that gold is worth a nickel, then it’s only worth a nickel. For instance, the Incans valued vicuña wool higher than gold. Much more useful up in the Andes.) A number of survivalists living in the mountains around here are stockpiling food, water, and possibly weapons – although they don’t seem to be of the violent sort that you find in North America.

It’s funny – back home in the States, I was considered fairly radical / anti-establishment. Here, I’m considered conservative / mainstream. This is also the first and only place on my trip I’ve encountered right-wingers. I used to think they didn’t travel – just stayed home with their “guns and religion” as our president so succinctly put it. But for whatever reason, they’re attracted to Vilcabamba.

Tonight I met an older American woman who lives up in the mountains, only coming into town once a week to sell bread and granola that she makes. Through her I met a young American woman who lives four hours (by horse) up the mountain, only coming down every couple of weeks to resupply. Wow, talk about getting away from it all.

Many of these expats I’ve met at a gringo hangout called Charlito’s, run by a friendly Alabamban/Virginian named Charlie. Charlie has led an interesting life all over the world.. we’re both men of the theatre, so we initially bonded over that. He is the perfect barman – there to listen or offer a bit of advice when needed or chiming in with a funny anecdote if a particular table becomes too sullen.

8/23:
The last two weeks of August is the procession of the Virgin of Cisne, a statue of the V.M. which is carried 70 km by foot to hang out in another church for two weeks before being carried back. They’ve been doing this for nearly 500 years. I decided not to participate in the walk, but I did go to the neighboring town of Malacatos for the party. It wasn’t too thrilling, just the usual crafts, bands, and junk food for the kids.

I promise to stop dwelling on these, but I just heard another juicy conspiracy theory – that the reason the U.S. switched from analog to digital television was to install cameras in the new equipment with which to spy on the populace. Why else would you need a converter box? Really, people – any six year old with a screwdriver can prove this one wrong. Not to mention the lack of upstream capability available over cable lines. It’s getting more and more difficult not to burst out laughing every time I hear a new one.

8/25:
Rode my first horse today! Loved it. I also met a lovely and slightly crazy (in a good way!) Australian woman named Ferne that I would end up spending the following three weeks with. A rather intense time, the days just slipped by. Ferne works in environmentalism, anthropology, food systems, and related subjects. She just came over from Venezuela where she was part of a delegation studying all that stuff. It was interesting hearing her pro-Chavez take on Venezuela.
In the following few weeks I went on two other horse trips. I’ve combined all these horse adventures into one blog post.

8/26:
It’s amazing the range of people who believe in conspiracy theories. Tonight Ferne and I hung out with a smart, savvy Australian realtor who despite his intelligent demeanor explained that Obama is being threatened by the powers that be into doing their will. Not mind control as some PCT’s have it, but old-fashioned coercion. This was in response to my proclamation that Obamba came out of left field, that his election was surely demonstration that democracy is alive and working. Not true, say the PCT’s (paranoid conspiracy theorists) – Obama was “chosen” back when he gave the DNC speech in 2004. Just look at his background for proof – Harvard educated (hmm, suspicious indeed), and wife Michelle has some connection to the Council on Foreign Relations. Proof indeed!

One of the CT’s I haven’t met yet is a former astronaut (well, he never actually went into space, but he was in the space program). He believes in “free energy” which the powers that be have been keeping suppressed for the profit motive.

Although I love the hotel I’ve been staying in ($12/night for a simple but nice private room including a great breakfast), I’ve decided to rent an apartment and stay in Vilcabamba another couple of weeks. Get caught up on the blog, study Spanish, and other things I keep putting off. [None of which I ended up doing!] I found a studio apartment (half of a duplex) for $150/month or $40/week that has a decent kitchen (although no oven), simple furnishings, bathroom, hammock. Only a couple of drawbacks I’ve found – due to the simple construction, there is no soundproofing between the neighbor’s and my apartment. You can hear every squeak and fart. I suppose we’ll just both pretend. The other drawback is again, due to the lack of sealing, all kinds of interesting critters make their way in. I keep finding rather large spiders, insects, and evidence of mice. Ah well, I guess I have my work cut out for me. But it’s wonderful having a kitchen again after a year on the road eating out. I can make a salad just the way I like it, burritos, pasta, omelets, juices, yes! Also fried green plantains, just the way George’s family taught me how in El Salvador.
The front yard has mandarin and lime trees, cool. I continue to be impressed by the aqueducts criss-crossing the town and surrounding hills. When you want to water your lawn, you simply go down to the gutter running alongside the street and stick a big rock into it to divert the water into the culvert running towards your house. No need to use tap water.

8/27:
Went into Loja today for supplies. Loja is the closest city, about an hour away. It’s funny how people around here are afraid of a city even of that tiny size. They think nothing of hiking for miles up in the mountains, yet tell me to take a cab 10 blocks in Loja. While shopping for housewares for the new apartment, I thought maybe I could pick up a cheap toaster or even a microwave oven. One gets deceived by prices down here – locally produced goods (like food) are incredibly cheap – but anything imported has huge duties imposed. The cheapest toaster oven was $50, the cheapest microwave $150. An iPhone is $699. Yikes. I’m not sure why the government would impose such enormous taxes that prevent most residents from being able to afford even simple appliances.

Speaking of prices and wages, guess what the average daily wage is here? $10-$12. Per day, not per hour. This is actually a living wage. Want a full-time cook? Gardener? Nanny? Construction crew for your new house? $12/day per person. Geez, no wonder so many gringos are moving here in droves.

Fed up with all the time and money spent in frustration at internet cafes (getting viruses on my camera cards, for ex.), I’ve decided to buy a netbook (small, cheap laptop). I went all over Loja comparing prices and models, but they’re all the same – I picked up an Acer AspireOne for $450. A bit frustrating, since this same computer goes for $300 in the States. That’s a couple less weeks of traveling I’ll be able to afford, but it’s worth it just to have something to write on anytime day or night.
<Begin tech rant> I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that most of the world uses Windows, and even some of the reasons for that. But I still hate it. It’s just so kludgy, it fights me at every turn. Constantly popping up error messages and annoying reminders, making me jump through hoops to do any simple task. But what I really don’t understand is why so many people still use Internet Explorer when it’s the slowest and most virus-prone browser out there – and the alternatives are free! My first order of business when I sit down at a computer is to download and install the latest version of Firefox and change all the privacy settings to maximum. People are so sloppy with public computers, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen other people’s mail simply because they didn’t quit the browser.  Anyway, this netbook not only came with Windows pre-installed, but the Latin American version – so I can’t even read it! First order of business? Wipe the disk clean and install Linux (specifically, Ubuntu netbook remix). I’ve been intrigued by Linux for years, so this is a good opportunity for me to learn it. So far it works fine, although it’s nowhere near as elegant as Mac OS X. <end tech rant>

8/28:
I’ve been looking to rent a bicycle for the time that I’m here and finally found one. The one bike shop in town wanted $30/week, which is absurd – for $90, I could buy a brand new mountain bike at the hardware store. But someone suggested I talk to a proprietor’s son who is going back to school. After a few tries, we settled on $15/week. The bike is a bit small for me, but will do fine for getting around town, running errands, and taking short trips into the surrounding hills.

During a walk around “the loop” (the paved road that circles the village) I came across these amazing birds:

8/29:
Had a housewarming party tonight for the new apartment. Not a lot of people showed up, but Ferne and I had a great time preparing hors d’œuvres and cocktails. Couldn’t find any twinkle lights in town, so I put dozens of candles around the perimeter which helped the dismal lighting situation.
My neighbor is an odd older German-Canadian fellow with just a few teeth left who is still suffering from the war. He’ll talk your ear off about all his health problems and yes, you guessed it, conspiracy theories.

9/3:
Ferne and I have been editing Gavin’s (the Kiwi cowboy I talked about in the last couple of posts) new book. This one is poetry – difficult to edit for content, but he definitely needed our help with the grammar, spelling and punctuation. He gave us a discount on a horse trip in exchange for all the work. I think it will come out well, I like a lot of the poems. I plan on recording Gavin reading them too, since his voice is so distinctive.

Another thing I love about this town: often I’ll find myself standing in the middle of the street chatting with someone (usually Gavin) and we don’t even bother moving to the sidewalk to get out of the way of approaching cars – they simply go around us. Finally I’ve found a place where pedestrians are more highly valued than automobiles!

Time is completely different here. Back in the rat race I inhabited a year ago, every hour of the day and every day of the week was planned and filled to the brim. I was busy, busy, busy. Here I might have one big thing I have to accomplish each day – whether it be laundry, groceries, or what have you. But never more than one. The rest of the day is filled with strolling, chatting, reading, and hanging out. Those of you who know my busy mind might think this would drive me crazy, but I find I get enough stimulus from the conversations and reading.
I had to laugh the other day – Ferne and I had three things planned in the coming week – I think it was two parties to attend and an errand to run at a specific time – and I got stressed. “This is why I left New York, so I wouldn’t have things on my calendar anymore! So I could have free time and not be committed to things!” That’s right, getting stressed over three appointments over the course of a week. Two of which were parties. It’s amazing how quickly one gets used to this lifestyle. I frequently forget what day it is, and am always shocked when a new month turns over.

9/5:
An Italian chef who lives in London but spends half the year here always throws a big pizza party for friends and neighbors just before returning to the UK. Ferne and I were invited along. It was fun seeing all the kids running about. A small group of them lit a rather large fire in the front yard until an adult nonchalantly told them to put it out, which they did by beating it with brushes. This supports my belief that kids should play with knives and fire so they learn how to manage these things rather than being taught that they’re scary and thereby won’t acquire the necessary skills they’ll need later in life. The pizza was sublime – best I’ve had in a long time. The guy has a real pizza oven in his kitchen and was cranking them out all night long.

For the past few weeks there has been a lot of drama surrounding Gavin’s English-language book about the history of gringos in Vilcabamba. He self-published the book (called Vilcaflor: Valley of the Rare Fruits) last year and it sat under the radar until he stirred up trouble by running the hotel rapist out of town (see my first post). The rapist’s family is very powerful, so in July they retaliated by badly translating sections of the book out of context (sections where he mentions prostitution and drug use in the town history) and anonymously posting these flyers around town. The local populace (including the all-powerful priest and his church) believe what the flyers say, and now they’re all mad at Gavin for giving the town a bad name. It all came to a head today when an article in the national newspaper La Hora trashed Gavin, smearing him with lies and innuendo. The article didn’t include a byline, quoted no sources, oh and guess which family owns the newspaper? They say they’re going to deport him, and G is afraid of going into Loja for fear he’ll be arrested and put in jail. I guess Ecuador doesn’t have the same lawful protections I’m used to like habeus corpus, free speech, and being innocent until proven guilty. The whole affair strikes at my sense of fairness – for all of Gavin’s faults (terrible drunk, belligerent, bad businessman, can’t organize his life to save his own skin), he’s got a good heart and has done great things for this town. Besides his horse tours that have won rave reviews in every guidebook for decades (thus attracting tourists, not driving them away as these scare-mongers say), he’s raised four local children, godfather to many more, volunteers fighting forest fires, and is clearly generally a good member of the community. We were all a bit worried how he was going to defend himself until an angel dropped out of nowhere – a lawyer that his publisher recommended has agreed to take on this case pro bono and is already crafting a nasty letter to the newspaper that quotes the constitution and demands a retraction.

9/6:
I’ve accidentally overstayed my visa. Crap. I had the date of September 8 in my head, since I entered the country on June 8 and it’s a 3-month visa. I was going to go to Cuenca tomorrow, spend the night, and get it renewed on the 8th (you have to do it the day it expires). But I just looked in my passport, and the stamp expired yesterday. I’m not too worried, though, as Gavin tells me that you can stay as long as you like and just pay a $200 fine on the way out. I’m bummed about losing that $200, but it could be worse I suppose.

9/8:
Went to a lovely yoga class today at the community center. $3 for a 2-hour class! All gringos, about 8 of us in total. I got emotional at one point and almost started crying. Don’t know what about, it wasn’t associated with any thoughts or imagery. They say emotions can be stored physically, so I must have hit a nerve thereby releasing something. Anyway, it felt so good to honor my body for once instead of abusing it or taking it for granted as I usually do.
The yoga teacher invited me back for the worldwide consciousness-raising meditation tomorrow at 9am on 9/9/09. In related news, 9/9/09 turned out to be the day that Steve Jobs made his first public appearance in six months since recovering from a liver transplant. COINCIDENCE? I think not!

I love the cheap prices around here – $10 for a good one-hour massage. 80￠for a 32-oz. beer. $2.50 for a decent haircut. A bag of 50 oranges for $2.

9/10:
This area is historically known for the spiritual/medicinal/entheogenic San Pedro cactus which I tried yesterday (purely in the interest of research, mom!). This plant is similar to peyote in that it contains mescaline, which you’re probably familiar with from the writings of Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castaneda, and Hunter S. Thompson. I plan to write a detailed trip report about how exactly I prepared it and the details of the experience which I will post to the Vaults of Erowid forums. But in brief – while it wasn’t exactly fun (one normally vomits and I did), the overall the experience was generally positive. The reason traditional healers use this plant, Ayahuasca, and others is because it has the ability to “show you what you need to work on at this moment, even if it’s not necessarily what you want to work on” as one shaman put it to me.
All psychedelics lift the veil and reveal our subconscious allowing us to gain insight into relationships, ego, and so on – but mescaline seems to be more about this and less “hallucinogenic” than psilocybin or LSD. Err, or so I’m told!
Having said this, I did have a lot of very fast, overlapping visions of an interesting sort – Terry Gilliam meets Gerald Scarfe-type animations. According to Wikipedia, one unusual but unique characteristic of mescaline is the “geometricization” of three-dimensional objects – objects can appear flattened and distorted, similar to the presentation of a Cubist painting. Interestingly, these intricate geometric patterns show up in a variety of contexts (independent of mind-altering substances) in every culture, going back tens of thousands of years. It seems to be fundamental to our visual cortex.  Neurologist Oliver Sacks has done a lot of work in hallucinations of the sane (which are surprisingly common) and notes:

Geometric hallucinations [in mescal] are identical to those found in a variety of conditions: migraine, sensory deprivation, low blood sugar, fever, delirium, or the hypnopompic and hypnagogic states that come immediately before and after sleep… these hallucinations reflect the minute anatomical organization, the cytoarchitecture, of the primary visual cortex, including its columnar structure — and the ways in which the activity of millions of nerve cells organizes itself to produce complex and ever-changing patterns. We can actually see, through such hallucinations, something of the dynamics of a large population of living nerve cells and, in particular, the role of what mathematicians term deterministic chaos in allowing complex patterns of activity to emerge throughout the visual cortex. This activity operates at a basic cellular level, far beneath the level of personal experience. They are archetypes, in a way, universals of human experience.

Anyway, I didn’t have any great revelations of things I need to work on, which I took as a sign that I’m mentally and emotionally stable and in a good place in my life. I had a nice insight/confirmation that I am, and always have been, my own best friend/guide/teacher.

9/11:
My 38th birthday! Ferne cooked a lovely pancake breakfast, followed by more lazing around watching movies and reading conspiracy theories to each other from the web. It turns out today is also the birthday of Vilcabamba. This kicks off two weeks of partying around the central square – bands, skits, dancing, fireworks. My favorite part of all this is the “vaca loca” (“crazy cow”) – a cardboard/chicken wire/papier-mâché cow with dozens of fireworks, streamers, sparklers, bottle rockets, and roman candles attached to the outside of it going off at various angles. The cow is worn by a “vacadero” who after lighting the fireworks proceeds to charge through the crowd! People scream with delight as they run for their lives, narrowly avoiding being set on fire or burned. Wow. Wouldn’t find this in any industrialized nation!

Sometime this week Ferne and I went for a lovely bike ride ending up at a gated community built by and for gringos. Ugh. It’s having some trouble at the moment – apparently a lot of the lots were effectively double-sold. Since a bicycle has only two wheels, tell me how I managed to get four flat tyres this day?! This is in addition to the flat I got when I rented a bike my first week in town! Vicious spiky bramble plants grow around here that just love to rumble with passing inner tubes.

There have been a lot of wildfires this month in the hills surrounding Vilcabamba since it’s been so dry. Farmers usually light them on purpose to clear their fields. They somehow think the fire will go out on it’s own, or it will rain, or won’t spread. But it does, and a brush fire ensues. Lacking a fire department, it’s up to whomever to organize people to go fight it. Neighbors usually band together for the grueling effort that often takes all night.

WWOOFers are common around here, a lot of the organic farms rely on them for help. A variety of other volunteer organizations abound as well.

9/15:
Saw a flyer today for a meditation workshop centering around the “Violet Flame of Transmutation“. With a name like that, I just had to look it up. Turns out the Violet Flame is the 7th Ray of Divine Love and measures upward of 12 million bovis units! (I’m afraid to say that you and I probably only measure around 10,000 bovis units). Humans amaze me – even (especially) in spiritual aspects, we have the need to create hierarchies and scales with which to divide one another. Isn’t that a bit like marching in formation to watch the sunset?

My apartment is a veritable National Geographic – I keep finding different types of spiders and beetles and flying oddities I’ve never seen in my life. It would be neat to learn more about them.

I grew up thinking roosters only crowed at dawn. Not true – the ones around here crow all night long. You have to keep your windows closed just to get some sleep. I’ve also been hearing rustling at night out my back window. Hmm, is a peeping Tom creeping around? Nope – I look out the window to come face to face with an enormous cow. Huh. That’s a new one. It’s not like I’m living on a farm, but I guess that’s what you get in Latin America anywhere outside a large city – people keep livestock in their backyards.

9/17:
Just ran into my crazy neighbor and couldn’t escape the bullshit for 20 minutes. He’s all worried because the end is imminent – on Oct 15, the U.S. will begin “forced” inoculations. Those refusing will be arrested and put into “concentration camps”. Then “they” will begin the economic changes. What exactly this means was hard to get out of him – as if he hadn’t gotten to that part of the movie yet. His answers were very vague and rambling, but basically any money you have in a bank or in currency notes is not safe – we all need to invest our money into material goods – NOW.
Good grief. It’s no use trying to talk sense into these people, their world view is just so removed from reality. If you do try, they just look at you in pity with a smirk of superiority. Another day this same guy told me that President Eisenhower signed a contract with aliens that they later reneged on. I wonder which law firm the aliens engaged, they really ought to be disbarred.

9/19:
Happy one-year anniversary to me! One year ago I left the United States and my old life behind to begin this Latin American backpacking adventure. Seven countries, hundreds of hotel rooms and countless rich experiences later, I’m still going strong. Looking forward to seeing what the next year holds in store. I’m working on a contemplative blog post detailing why I left and how I did it.. look for that within the next few weeks.

9/20:
Today is Gavin’s 12-year old daughter’s birthday, and I’ve been invited to a BBQ party to celebrate. Mom (separated from Gavin) lives next to Johnny Lovewisedom’s old church (in which Gavin’s 22-year old daughter was born). I spent the first part of the day helping mom prep the food, idly chatting in Spanish. Whew, it’s been a long time! I am seriously rusty, pretty much only speaking English for the last six weeks. We all piled in the back of a pickup and rode up to the house. It’s a beautiful spot, nestled by a river with hundreds of fruit trees surrounding – mango, pineapple, rose apples, tropical plums, passion fruit, bananas, figs, tree tomatoes, avocados.. it’s still such a revelation to me that one can eat from the tree in the front yard rather than going to the supermarket. I spent a lot of the afternoon playing uncle to all the kids.. most of whom were girls, for some reason. They had a couple of trapezes hanging from trees that the girls liked to show off on.
I learned an Ecuadorian tradition when the time came to cut the cake: as the birthday girl (or boy) is blowing out the candles, those surrounding her push her face into the cake – getting frosting all over her face (and resulting in uproarious laughter by everyone)! I couldn’t figure out why she was so hesitant to blow out the candles. One of the gringo girls had just gotten a new puppy that she treats like a baby making all the adults roll their eyes. Even if it’s overboard coddling, it’s better than the abusive treatment dogs owned by the locals receive, most of whom look like emaciated street dogs even though do they have homes. Our favorite (because she’s chill and follows you around town) Roger nicknamed “Diamond Dog”, since she has differently colored eyes, just like David Bowie (who has an album of the same name on which he appears looking like a god dog).

A French family recently passed through town in an enormous fully-outfitted truck designed to get them through any terrain.. like if the Army or Hummer designed an RV/Winnebago. They’ve been on the road for almost two years now, going from Canada all the way down to Tierra del Fuego. What a cool way for the kids to grow up.

9/23:
Last night I had my second experience with the San Pedro cactus, this time with a shaman in a “sacred medicine journey” ceremony. Not strictly traditional since the shaman is an Austrian woman, but she’s been leading these ceremonies for over a decade here and is quite earnest and empathic. Although I had expected this experience to be stronger than the one I did on my own during the daytime, it actually turned out to be milder. I experienced a bit of synesthesia, but no real hallucinations (other than the fire toad I spent a while mentally conversing with!) The whole thing is a bit like lucid dreaming except that you’re clearly able to function and recognize what is internal and what is external. I spent most of the night lying on the ground staring into the fire (eight of us surrounded a big fire pit) thinking of archetypes, family, and all my good friends over the years. Again, good confirmation of the life I’ve led and the people I’ve known. Also good reminders of stuff I learned at Landmark – letting go of the idea that “something is wrong here” – I am exactly where I need to be at this moment.  The ceremony included a number of “cleansing” rituals including drums and shakers and offerings to Mother Earth which usually make me gag, but it wasn’t too bad. Dawn was equally as spectacular as the sunsets around here – I’m convinced it must be the quality of the clouds. Again, I’ll write up a detailed report in a few weeks to the Erowid forums.

While walking out the door of my apartment in order to head over to this shaman’s property, I stopped, turned, and had one of those “way station” moments where you think, “the next time I see this apartment I will be a different person.” I used to take this moment every time I would leave my Brooklyn apartment to go on tour – stop to think of all the experiences yet to come, how I would be a bit wiser and more experienced the next time I returned home.

10/1:
I’ve spent the last few nights waging a losing war with the rats in my apartment. Fortunately they confine themselves to the concrete and steel beams about 8′ overhead. I’ve stuffed wire mesh in most of the openings but they still find a way in. I’m not sure why they keep coming around, since they don’t venture down to rob my food.. no signs of that. I’ve been sitting here on alert until all odd hours scaring them away every time they venture into view.. until I realized they’ve been coming in to munch on the rat poison I sprinkled around. OK, good – I’ll let them do that. Only it doesn’t seem to be effective – they come back for more the next night!

Ecology in action: it’s been raining recently, bringing out the midges. The swallows emerge to eat the bugs. Then you see eagles and condors circling in the sky, feasting on the swallows.

Most of the Ecuadorians (i.e., non ex-pats) have a private garden in their backyard in which they grow much of what they eat. This can include a wide variety of fruit, coffee, cassava (yuca), sugar cane, corn, grain, beans, lentils, as well as the usual vegetables.

10/2:
There’s a new group of South American hippies / artisanos in town. A big one, about 10 people or so. Fascinating.. typically they’re from Chile and Argentina, wear natural clothes, dreads, and barefeet. Guitars and bongos abound and weaving of bracelets and other jewelry. People accuse them of being “gypsies” – not in the ethnic sense, but in petty theft of food or simple things that have been left out. I doubt they consider it theft. One cool characteristic is that they live communally – if one of them gets food or money, it gets distributed for the entire group. I wonder what it would be like to live that way – I’m intrigued by their lifestyle.

10/3:
Today is Gavin’s 55th birthday. Unfortunately he was drunk by noon and it only got worse. The plan was for a few of us and his daughters to go over to a friend’s house for a lunch gathering. I ended up organizing all the food which was annoying since there were several other responsible adults there. Occasionally G would come stumbling into the kitchen and cause havoc – telling his daughters that they weren’t doing it right, yelling at me not to make a mess, etc. Typical alcoholic behaviour. I almost lost my cool and walked out, but carried on. Eventually he settled down and stayed out of my way, and I had a lovely evening making chocolate chip cookies with his six-year old – who had never made cookies before! Ecuadorians bake cakes, but that’s the extent of it. It was a bit frustrating sourcing the ingredients since they don’t have certain things down here (like baking powder and brown sugar – panela is close, but what is the correct proportion?) But the cookies came out alright in the end despite a lot of improvising. This daughter is delightful and we became further enamored with each other that evening. I love kids that age. His 12-year old is great too, but at that age that she’s too cool to talk to adults much. It was great to bake again after so long.. my apartment here doesn’t have an oven, which is not uncommon.

Spending time with Gavin’s kids and watching all the delightful local children playing in the streets has been tugging on my paternal instincts.. perhaps I do want kids after all. But can I get them only from age 2 to 10?

10/4:
Although it’s extremely safe here (no muggings or petty theft that I’ve heard of except on Mandango), occasionally the town is rocked by a violent encounter. When I first arrived, a taxi driver was shot and killed in the next town over. And just yesterday, the son of one of the restaurant owners was knifed and killed in Loja.. some say it was related to him being gay, but others dispute that since there are open gays here (although I haven’t seen any). Actually, he was more than knifed – his tongue was cut out of his throat, penis and testicles cut off and shoved down his throat. Lovely image. Similar to mournings I saw in Central America, hundreds of people come and sit with the family for 24 hours or longer. I happened to walk down their street last night and came upon row upon row of chairs, cars, and people quietly sitting or standing outside.

10/5:
I finally climbed the geologically odd mountain of Mandango that looms over the town. I had been putting it off because, well, it’s tall (7,500′) and daunting, plus there have been robberies there – people recommend not to bring any valuables – but you know me, I have to document! So I took a risk and brought my camera. But I took Roger’s advice to start early in the morning – both to avoid the heat of the day but also because thieves don’t like to get up early. All the same, I brought along my can of pepper spray.
Leaving the house at 6 am (yes, that six o’clock – the one I normally never see), I had a pleasant walk through town. Shops were open already! Crazy people. The full moon was setting in the west just as the sun was rising in the east. I managed to slice my hand open while jumping over the fence to get to the trailhead, thereby leaving a trail of blood should I need to return the way I came. The route passed through varied terrain, all quite dry and Mediterranean feeling. I reached the cross on the summit by the time I’m normally waking up. The low-angled light passing through the clouds was spectacular. So glad a brought my camera – selected photos below. The mountain is really odd looking – apparently it was an island when this entire valley was underwater thousands of years ago – which I suppose explains the unusually sharp erosion. The trail then followed the ridge line for several kilometers, affording spectacular 360° views. Scary bits at points where you have to gingerly ease over rocks along the 2′ wide trail which falls off quite steeply on either side hundreds of feet down. Wouldn’t want to do it in high winds or the rain. Didn’t see another person the entire way, sublime. Eventually made it to a semi-abandoned farm and followed the dry creek bed down back to the main road. Five hours, all told. I’m sunburnt, parched and cut up, but glowingly happy.

10/7: My lease was up today, so I moved out of my apartment and back into the hotel I started in. Although I’ve only been in this apartment for six weeks, I’ve nevertheless managed to acquire a bunch of housewares that I’ll need to get rid of in order to condense everything back down to one backpack again. It’s going to be nice going back to the hotel life, actually – those rats were really getting to me – and having somebody else worry about cleaning, restocking, etc.

I’ve made friends with a born-again Christian right-winger who treats the Bible as literal fact. But I’m pleased with myself – although we live at opposite ends of the spectrum, I’ve been able to see through that and appreciate him for the things we agree on and the parts of his personality that I do connect with.

10/8: Vilcabamba is really hard to leave! The living is just so easy here – the friends I’ve made, the beauty of the surroundings, the tranquility. Tonight I met a wonderful new person that I’ve connected with – a 31-year old Canadian Aussie-Indian with interesting, varied background and passions. You would think this would not be unusual, but most of the people one meets on the road are quite young – in their gap year, or just out of university – of whom I don’t have much in common with. Occasionally I meet older retirees, but there seems to be a gap between the two. So I think I’ll stay in town just a few days longer in order to have more deep intellectual conversations and get to know this person more. One can’t walk away from such opportunities.

ADDENDUM 10/17:
I’m still here!! Good grief. I keep putting off leaving. Even bought a bus ticket a few days ago, which I ended up changing. It’s partly because I don’t have any real reason to push on quickly, since my visa is already expired and the living is cheap here. I’ve also been having great discussions with the person I mentioned above. But mostly it’s because I’ve been working on a massive treatise all about conspiracy theory, plus another blog post summarizing Ecuador. These posts are taking longer than I thought, and I want to get all this stuff out of my head so I can start visiting Peru with a clean slate.

ADDENDUM 10/20:
I’m finally leaving. Found great advice on the Lonely Planet message boards saying that I shouldn’t try to bribe my way across the border. So I bit the bullet and paid the $200 fine in Loja today, giving me 48 hours to get out of the country. I feel relieved to have that resolved.
Emotional farewell to Gavin and the other friends I’ve made here. Don’t know when I’ll be back, if ever. It’s a magical place, and I’ve had experiences of a lifetime.

Thanks to Ferne for the first three photos.