### 5 Months in Numbers ###

# of months on the road : 5

# of countries traveled: 9

# of hostels slept: 33

# of cities and villages seen: 64

# of buses ridden: 39

# of hours on said buses: 224 (approximately 1/10 of  

   total travel time)

# of dollars spent: 3,300

# of times transported in the back of a pick-up: 6

# of host families: 5

# of llamas eaten: 1

# of days spent living off crackers or ham/cheese

   sandwiches: 21

# hammocks swung in: 14

# of fights with my travel companion: 1

# of fights resolved by pretty fireworks: 1

# of times I've felt homesick: 3

# of times I've been sick (103 fever or more): 3

# of times I (or Megan Rae) convinced myself I  had a deadly disease: 4

            * rabies: 1

            *typhoid: 1

            *malaria:1

            *giardia: 1

# of times Bech has taken me to the hospital for afore mentioned deathscares: 2

# of times I've actually had any type of disease: 0

# of girls who were nice to us: 13

# of girls who I wanted to throw my show at: 537

# of boys who were nice to us: 537

# of boys who I wanted to throw my shoe at: 13

Number of times I'v been completely overwhelmed:

            * by people : 7

            * by poverty: 13

            * by fear: 4

            * by beauty: 33

            * by happiness: At least once a day (152 +++)

Here's to another 2 months of living with our lives on our backs....

From the Top

The clock strikes four and the climb begins

Through gutted rain and Andean winds

From painted bridge we burst and turn

And for the top each light does yearn

To walk the trail of Incans past

To ascend gray stairs with lungs that last

With the sun we slowly rise

heavy hearts and bleary eyes

Few will reach the stone clad gates

For oxygen outweighed their haste

 I enter now with a soggy soul

Trembling limbs, rain takes its toll

We weave through houses steeped in stone

Cracked sun dials which stand alone

The toil of those 10,000 men

Whose city was just taken when

The Spanish came with bullet arms

As Chonkas lead them to Incan farms

It was not long before the city fell

Covered in mud and earthen hell

The ruins remained hidden, 400 years

Unbenounced to Spanish ears

Who sought to find what they were told

Was a city clad in silver and gold

But they never uncovered the Incan truth

Of sacred terraced mountain youth

Until a scheming American came

And took from that mountain his bid to fame

Without remorse he looted it

Sending artifacts home for his benefit

Now In an ivy tower they do lay

And without redemption they shall stay.

I am but one among the mass

I climbed the WaynaPicchu pass

And from my stone carved in the earth

I look at Macchu with dismal mirth

For had the Spanish had hearts or souls

They might have felt these grassy knolls

The hundreds of terraces born from scratch

Each engineering feet and hydraulic hatch

The 2 ton stones moved by sheets of lumber

The tombs of old where young kings slumber

The sacred realms where a child’s blood

Was offered to God in cups of mud

A civilization ended far too soon

Where clumsy travelers climb and swoon.

I curse the Spanish for what they’ve done

and descend now with the setting sun.

Carnival Warfare

Who needs Carnival Bolivia when you have Carnival Cuzco? For is not one day of getting assaulted with shaving cream and water balloons enough?

While Carnival has gained massive popularity here in South America it is believed to have been derived from the Italian Carnivale, most fabulously associated with those sparkly porcelain masks of awesome one cannot leave Venice without purchasing. The name Carnival itself, comes from the term “Carrus Navalis” the Roman festival of Isis where the image of the goddess was carried to the coast to bless the start of sailing season.

Today the festival is more closely associated with the beginning of the Lent season, a type of last Hoorah before the religious folk enter the meatless days of Christ. In Cuzco, I learned firsthand that this farewell to meat, booze and all things happy is also marked above all else by citywide water balloon-shaving cream warfare.

Children and adults alike are armed and dangerous. The adults commence primarily in drive bys, pelting rock hard water balloons as they navigate their buggies around the cobblestone streets, while the children double fist cans of shaving cream and without mercy cover innocent passersby from head to toe in frothy multicolored shaving cream. But far and away, the worst militants are the teens, who cowardly crouch from hidden apartment balcony’s armed with massive buckets of water. You can imagine the type of damage caused by such guerilla warfare, for buckets of water poured from lofty terrace barracks comprise a type of ammunition for which silly string and water balloons are simply no match.

 Four hours later, I can accurately report that while I fought about 27 children with a single can of lime green silly string, I was intern hit square on the ass with 12 water balloons, covered head to toe with 32 separate shaving cream attacks, and just when I thought it was over, was fully annihilated by a rooftop bucket ambush.  2 points: Manda, 2000 points: Carnival, Peru…. Next time I will come armed with super soakers…. Game on.

Happpy Peruvian Birthday....TO ME

Have you ever stood barefoot on top of a Peruvian hostel bar in pajamas as 200 strangers sing happy birthday to you in 20 some odd languages…? The following is the story of the 24 hours of my 24^th birthday celebration… a story which both begins and ends with a cracker. 

They say things happen for a reason, traveling South America has proven this to me time and time again; my recent bout of sickness in Pisco, Peru is no exception. The week long fury of Pisco belly and 103 fevers lasted just long enough to foil our plans of celebrating my birthday with the rest of South America at the infamous Carnival festival in Bolivia. Instead Aer and I reverted back to our original plan, boarding a bus to Cuzco, home of Macchu Picchu, a mountain we have dreamed about conquering since day one of our journey. Still feeling the waves of sickness we got on the bus armed with sleeves of saltine crackers, and eighteen hours later arrived in Cuzco.

Exhausted and weak (no I had not eaten anything other than saltines in six days) we crawled to the nearest hostel, (Loki Hostel, a lonely planet rec.) threw our book bags on the cold wooden floor of a 15 person dorm room and without thoughts of hygiene or vanity we parked ourselves on one of the crimson benches of the hostel’s apparently very popular bar. Yes it was my birthday eve, yes I looked and smelled like a foot, but somehow within five minutes we had made ten new friends and deemed it appropriate to at least celebrate the eve of my birth with a bottle of cab sauv.

Low and behold, that bottle turned into few beers, which turned into a few shots of tequila and then Loki Bar karaoke night was upon us. It didn’t take much for Aer and I to grab the microphone and regale Peru with our very own  rendition of Madonna’s "Like a Prayer", and as I took to my knees in a literal interpretation of the pop queen’s lyrics, Aer slyly let the bartender know that I would in fact be turning 24 in ten minutes time.

Naturally, ten minutes later I was summoned to the bar…rather I was summoned ON the bar where as the clock struck midnight the 200 some-od backpackers counted down and serenaded me with a heinous version of Happy Birthday that can only be created when 200 people from all over the world speaking 20 different languages attempt to sing one song in unison. It was beautiful….I, however, WAS NOT. 

I mentioned before that I had crawled off an 18 hour bus ride and made straight for the bar. So this means that at this moment I am standing on top of a bar in the middle of Peru, I have not showered in two days so my hair is pulled back in the greasiest of buns, but I also happen to be donning black spandex with gray legwarmers, a tattered black travel dress that has not been washed in maybe 6 weeks who’s pockets are still bursting with bus tickets, tissues, and hand sanitizer… all of this under an oversized Loci hostel T-shirt that had been gifted to me by the bartender as I mounted said bar top.

Aer, I might add, was looking equally radiant in a pair of 3-sizes-too-big-for-her brown cargo pants from the used clothes bin of PSF which are being held up by a shoelace, and a gray tank top that, like my dress, had not been washed in about six weeks.  We are, if nothing else, the definition of disasters, but that my friends is the beauty of travel… everyone is a dirty disaster at all times, and it is almost unacceptable to be seen in any other state.

From here the tabletop dancing ensues for another hour or so until at around 2 the entire hostel takes to the streets of Cuzco to begin an epic dance party at another bar called Momma Africa. My chosen dancer partner, a fabulously entertaining British chap named Ben, and I refuse to do anything but the most retarded mockeries of dance moves ranging from the shopping cart, to the running man and some type of British car washing choreography that I still can’t quite rap my head around. At sunrise we all stumble back to Loki, where Momma Aer stuffs me full of saltines and water and tucks me in like the fabulous mom that she is.

I woke up the next morning to a lovely birthday serenade from four of my new favorite British boys, who as they stood over my bed proclaimed, “Where we come from you don’t start your birthday day without a song”. I made my out into the hostel courtyard amazed to find that EVERYONE still remembered my name AND the fact that it was my birthday. Aer was waiting for me with breakfast, coffee and a beautiful white Peruvian sweater that she had somehow bought in the last 12 hours (saucy little minx that Aer is).  

We spent the day frolicking around the city of Cuzco, planning our upcoming Inca Trail Trek and ultimately spending two hours with nothing but our journals, a banana split and  REAL coffee in a terrace café on Plaza de Armas. We retunred  to the hostel to find our army of new friends waiting to repeat the entire evening all over again. And repeat we did…from tequila, bar top sing-along’s and Momma Africa dance offs to the inevitable saltine water tuck in..It was perhaps the most epic 24 hour birthday celebration I could have wished for. 

But the purest and most beautiful part of it all is that not an ounce of it was planned. From the second I crawled off the bus to the second I crawled into my hostel bed, every event unfolded naturally of its own accord powered only by the spirits and energies of my fellow travelers and of course by THE fellow traveler, my one and only Aer.  Serendipitous as the day was I owe so much of it to that saucy Bech for it was she who covertly alerted the bartender (and everyone else in a 2 mile radius) that my birthday was approaching and it was she who begrudgingly agreed to belt out Madonna with me. It was Aer who woke up early to procure the perfect birthday gift, and it is only Aer who truly appreciates what an afternoon of terrace café writing and coffee can do for the weary traveling soul. 

So, goodbye 23, hello 24, Thank you Loki Hostel for providing the flawless impromptu venue, Thank you 6 dollar bottle of red for kicking the night off right, Thank you dirty travelers for embracing the hot mess that was I, Thank you Peru, you fabulous country of AWESOME you, and above all, Thank you Aer, my beacon, my bech, my one and only TC for reminding me that all we can do is go with the flow and trust that the universe will take care of us, providing infinite friends, bar tops…and saltines. 

A Strange Juxtaposition

What do you get when you combine rubble and devastation with rum and coke? PSF: Pisco Sin Fronteras, a non-profit organization based in Pisco, Peru. 

It has been a little over two weeks in this rubble ridden Peruvian city and I am no less confused by the poverty-party combination than I was on day one when I instinctively likened the situation to MTV’s The Real World. I am living in a compound with 75 other volunteers from all over the world. By day we work to rebuild the city that is still in utter disarray after being annihilated by an 8.0 earthquake. The quake left over 500 dead, 200 of which were trapped and killed in the city's main cathedral (only the priest survived).

By night we gather round a fire to drink the poverty away. The weekends are marked by rowdy endeavors to local beach campouts and sand dune oasis’s where the70 person crew inevitably lets loose even farther, feeling the adrenaline of being away from Pisco for a longer poverty reprieve.

How is it possible that the forces of service and inebriation can coexist in such a perfect harmony? I have no idea but the entire operation has renewed my faith in people. The volunteers here, mostly in their early 20’s, have not on a single day ceased to amaze me. They stumble through each night, double fisting Pisco and Pilsen, yet are awake at 6 am to dig trenches and construct modulars.

I have seen grown Peruvian men shed tears because our volunteers have built them a bathroom. I have been given a 30 minute sermon from a single mother about how much God loves me because I gave her a roof. I have watched two young volunteers who have no money to give, fund a new project because the poverty of one family moved them so deeply.  And I have sat in a gas station at 2 am with Aer as she broke down over the chaos of a shantytown called Molina. There, the Peruvian government gave hundreds of residents 48 hours to move their homes 12 feet to the right so that they could widen the road.  Through all of this, I was attending toga parties and bonfires, watching naked Sundays unfold as people streak thought the streets, engaging in water balloon warfare,  nursing a beer while a compass was permanently inked on my wrist by a local artist, and racing headfirst down the slopes of Peruvian sand dunes.

Maybe the reason why so many non-profits have not found sustainability is because, quite simply, poverty is hard. It is jarring and thought provoking and more often than not overwhelming. The human spirit can only handle so much, so should we be faulted for softening the blow with a few good friends and a bottle of rum?

Lessons in construction work from a scrawny white chick

 

Step 1: Elect a leader. THIS is Wizard. He has no teeth, he has no experience and he is NEVER right. But God the man does love to smile, and so you will forgive him his frequent shortcomings and follow his bliss. 

Step 2: Dig a 9-foot poo Hole...then climb down and pose inside of it. Then and only then can you begin tackling the foundation. 

Step 3: Find a 40 pound avil and pound a plot of dirt approximately 507 times. When your arms are numb you may take a ten second break.

Step 4. Water Rocks...aka  make it look like you're doing work so you don't have to pound earth with the anvil again.

. 

Step 5: Haul 15 bags of concrete once you have properly watered your rocks, and then stab the bags with your rusty shovel and begin dispersing. 

Step 6. Sometimes there are no rocks to water so you must just stand, stare, and accept the fact that everyone knows you're not doing work... and that's OK b/c most likely Wizard has just made a very large mistake that the others will now puzzle over for a solid 46 minutes.

Step 7: Concrete Mixin...the rocks are watered, the concrete is spread, tiz time to bend over and mix with all your might until the rocky mess becomes a cement stew

Step 8: Shovel allll the mixed concrete into one red wheel barrel...(there were two at one point, but naturally one now lies broken), then take turns barreling the concrete to the wizard.

Step 9: After accidentally pouring half of the first barrel over the edge, Wizard will begin smoothing the concrete into place (he will inevitably come up very very short, for as I mentioned, he is ALWAYS wrong, but you are now and expert concrete layer, so this is not a problem).

 

Step 10: You have in 7 hours accomplished what most "Northern" construction companies would in about thirty minutes. Pat yourself on the back, chug some communal Coca-cola and call it good.Tomorrow is another day.

Perhaps my favorite element of Latin American lounging….

It took me about two weeks to fall in love with the concept of a bed without gravity. As I swayed back and forth feeling both elevated and safe, I knew instantly that hammocks would be a vital source of tranquility and contentment throughout my time in Latin America. Three months later, I have managed to fall even deeper for this swinging source of Peace.

One always remembers their first love. Mine was born in La Camarka, and indigenous village of dark-skinned Ngöbe people and the self made hut of a rugged Peace Corps volunteer. In his one room abode, swung a hammock of faded red and yellow, tied to the rafters on muddy string. This hammock was never clean but neither was I. It was rainy season and I seemed to take red mountain clay with me wherever I went including into that glorious Panamanian hammock. We were fast friends as I sought refuge from the rain and respite from my own exhaustion; he supported my every need and welcomed my muddy toes without question. When the bats swooped too close to me in the night, he rocked me into a gentle slumber and with his perfect position beneath the wooden window; he woke me naturally with morning light.

Then there was Mal Pais where the Aer and I quickly learned that there were indeed hammocks made for two. Whether we were swinging with each other and our literary loves or with…let’s call them our new Costa Rican friends…it seemed that a hammock made for two was simply superior to the original. We languished in the refreshing realization that we could have both a hammock and a companion at the same time. From there we found the sturdy school-side hammocks of Nicaragua where we sat vigorously taking in our favorite language from the lips of the Nicaraguencies, and of course, the hidden hammocks of Honduras. These we had to seek out with stead-fast determination in Copan Ruinas for the sake of our own sanity as we therapeutically poured our hearts onto paper after surviving the nightmare that was Tegucigalpa, Honduras.


And this, my friends, brings me to my current swinging seat of awesome…a port side hammock in peaceful Puerto el Morro. In a small fisherman’s village in Eastern Ecuador it is incredibly appropriate that my hammock here is woven from black fishing net, which despite the mental image is incredibly comfortable. From here I can see the village in all of its glory. The way the small wooden canoes glide seamlessly across the glassy green water of the estuary. The cranes which sit frozen as if posing for a stoic oil painting in the mangroves. The pigs and goats that scamper like strays through the rocky sand.

I can hear the conk-shell call of the town crier alerting the village women that the men have returned from their last voyage with plenty of fresh fish to sell. The passing rain as it strikes the tin roofs of before spilling over onto the dirt roads for its inevitable muddy afternoon concoction. And when the sun makes its daily debut, I inevitably look out onto the main pier. The sun now beats down without relent and the kids break into a sprint from the street, never hesitating as the b-line head first into the cool water.

At night the tweens come to this same dock displaying that universal summer angst. The girls on one side and the boys on the other, the scene unfolds as if Coca-cola had scripted it. With vintage glass bottles of soda they all exchange looks before finally meeting each other in the middle and mumbling words of timid flirtation. The girls twirl their jet black hair between delicate fingers and the boys clumsily shove one hand in their pockets while the other takes a big bubbly sip of the 25 cent Western beverage.

Yes, this Puerto hammock has perhaps served me better than any of the others due to its prime viewing location. Integrating into the community is of course crucial and I have done so by working eight hours each day teaching English in the village schools and hauling buckets of dirt to build a new secondary school. I have eaten alongside volunteers, shared beer with the community’s president, and learned to cook ceviche with the owner of the largest restaurant in town.


But from gentle swaying cocoon, I have been granted the opportunity to be the silent observer. And in this way I have internalized more of the customs of this 1500 person pueblo than any amount of construction or teaching could possibly permit. Yes, my netted nook has served me quite well, a portal to Puerto, a swinging seat to slowly contemplate the intricate mechanisms of an entire village.