Lessons in Navigation

There is more than one type of poverty and there is more than one type of tourism. The only way to navigate them both is by tattooing a compass on your wrist...

Yesterday marked eight months since the lovely Ms. Emig and I hopped on a one-way flight to Panama. Knowing very little about what the Latin American world held for us, we landed ourselves smack dab in the middle of rainy season with neither umbrellas nor rain jackets. We never looked back because being soaked and freezing was still far more appetizing than the lives we left behind in the global North. Eight months later, dry, warm, and cozy in my West New York abode, I can say I am happy to be home, but not a day goes by that I don't recall that first day in Panama or that last day in Egypt, and frequent daily texts to Aer rarely lack an inside joke about the 240 days in between. And so this photo blog serves as my futile attempt to sum up the most influential eight months of my life, the road through Latin America, with nothing more than a backpack and a sister. 

Panama

Lessons: Don't forget your umbrella, never fear the slow passing of time (it will pick up when you least expect it) and remember that the hospitality of those who have nothing is unparalleled. 

Klaus: Peace Corps volunteer, Ngobe Pro, and the best host we had in all of our eight months with little more than lemon grass oatmeal, a GREAT hammock, and of course some chicha fuerte form used gasoline containers. 

Costa Rica

Lessons: Let the road guide you because Pura Vida never dies. 

We came upon this place, Mal Pais, because two Americans had room in their jeep...ten days later we stayed ten days longer than planned. Pura Vida. 

Nicaragua

Lessons: The Frightening realization of my own ignorance as I get my first glimpse into how American Foreign Policy in Latin America has tainted an entire culture. 

Gollita: Our Nicaraguan Grandma never learned to read because of the halt in education brought on by the Sandinista War (funded by the US government). 

Honduras

Lessons: FEAR and CONFUSION and how to survive in the middle of a mining community with little more than chickens, cow hoofs, fire, and questions. 

Environmental Policy at its finest in Honduras

Life Lesson Number 12: Jehova's Witnesses are EVERYWHERE. Above, Aer brushes up on her doomsday theory while reading a pamphlet that a Jehova gave us in Algateca, Honduars (population 450) Seriously?

Guatemala

Lessons: The necessity and power of language and a few strong women are indisputable. 

The women of Mercado Global's Microfinance team in Comalapa, Guatemala. 

Hermanas getting stronger with each passing country. 

Ecuador

Lessons: Sometimes a little Quechua Root is all you need to put life in perspective...that and three weeks of digging cesspools for underprivileged children of course. 

Nixon: Our Quechua guide through the Ecuadorian Amazon would lead us in our first experience with the infamous Ayawaska. 

Puerto el Morro: Our first South American volunteer project, teaching English and building a new school. 

Peru

Lessons: There is more than one type of poverty and there is more than one type of tourism. The only way to navigate them both is by tattooing a compass on your wrist...

The people of Pisco, Peru are living in poverty because they lost everything they knew in a devastating earthquake in 2007. Maria looks on as we begin to rebuild her home. 

Bech and I after mounting Machu Piccu...hands down the most powerful touristic experience of our journey. 

Roughly 12 American dollars later in an unmarked room above a Peruvian pharmacy...I'll never get lost again.

Chile

Lessons:  When Aer and I go too long traveling without a project we tend to make our own challenges...like running marathons, geyser hopping on the Bolivian border, fasting for ten days, and camping in the Antarctic Straights of Magellan...in the middle of Chilean winter...you know... normal stuff. 

El Mitad Maraton en Santiago con 25, 000 de nuestra amigos. 

My 5 AM commentary while perched above pure magma. 

Aer picks out three bushels of lemons (which we will later drunkenly juice by hand) as I search for maple syrup. The following day we will begin the MASTER CLEANSE, a ten-day fast using only a lemon juice/maple syrup concoction. 

The Bottom of The World. 

Argentina

Lessons: The art of saying goodbye. There is no easy way to do it. Closing a chapter is heartbrakingly hard. Writing helps, Malbec helps, and having a sister helps but no one can do it for you. You have to get in the cab, you have to drive away, you have to cry. You have to know that when you arrive at the next destination you will be confused, lonely, and most likely jet-lagged but you will embrace it and like the last chapter it will ultimately shape who you are in some way. 

Egypt

Lesson: People fear most, that which they do not know....

The Men of Edfu Market

My Last Sunrise on the Red Sea

Tie-Dye Tranquility

The strobe lights stopped their frantic dance and for a moment came to rest on a silent blue hue which put the rock and roll stage into a tranquil trance. Tray Anastasio, as if feeling the pulse of the 10,000 people screaming his name simply stood still eyes closed, smiling, absorbing, breathing.

I take a second to do the same. To my left is Alissa, Brent’s little sister, I had watched her grow up from age seven. She now stands a beautiful confident woman, swaying to the soft rhythm of her own world. In front of me, Jaime, naturally wonderful and bubbly as can be, bouncing happily to the beat looking back intermittently to make sure we are doing the same. She is perhaps the most positive person I’ve ever known and her permanent smile tonight is not surprising.

And to my right, Em, best friends since age nine, she jabs my shoulder and points to her watch, “Pandz, 4:00! THAT is my new favorite.” I look at her watch and then realize which 4:00 she is talking about. Behind us to the right is a fabulous balding hippie covered in gray wisps and tie-dye, his bandana is secured by a bushel of glow sticks, and like Alissa the man is in a world of his own, frantically swaying with his eyes closed connected to everything and nothing at the same time.

Then Brent, relentlessly throwing his hands in the air or downward toward his air guitar laughing as if overcome by some kind of mad happiness. I should add that he also does this when riding rollercoasters, the purest form of unencumbered bliss. Over the years, I have come to learn that Brent only laughs manically when he’s truly happy and there’s just nothing like it.

Suddenly, the blue light has lifted from the stage, and chaos ensues as Tray begins his one-man trampoline show while still managing to pull off the most impressive guitar rifts I’ve ever heard. But I can’t pull myself out of the trance that that blue stage momentarily put me in. I look at the four of them, people I have grown with and loved for 15 years, people who, like Aer and our journey through Latin America, have inarguable made me who I am today.  I realized all at once, how much home holds. I may not have been surrounded by Amazon jungle or Andes mountains, but I felt equally lucky to be home, surrounded by four of the best people I’ve ever known and the tie-dye beats of Phish.