Miraflores. Youthful and bustling. Loving Lima?

In my notes from last night I have written:
"Good choices:
This hostal
Playing pool
Starting up beer pong (jumping the gun to predict)
Buying this extra pen
Buying a bit of weed (though shady and scary as hell)
Knowing Spanish
Coming to Miraflores though mas carro
Learning Krav (though not superlatively happy yet--we´ll see)(Israelis)"

But now I´m a bit leery. It first struck me while people-watching on the balcony how fabulously perfect this place, Miraflores, is. Starting with the row of cars below, including an old white Volkswaggon Beetle, all parked halfway over the line as if by consensus. The streetlights sparkled on the roofs like studio lights. Everything is so brightly and cleanly illuminated, replete with a park full of kids playing, watched over by gossipy guardians--am I on a movie set?
A pisco-sour in hand, I can´t help but enjoy this, relaxing for the first time since...oh, since Cali! Regrouping in Lima--in this moment, I am happy.
But another deja vu strikes me, and another. Here I hear stories of dealers luring innocents to pseudo-police encounters, but with longer-term setups including gradually increasing amounts. Doubly scary because I just this afternoon tempted fate and bought some from a brother/sister duo who promised a good time in the club and a phone number in case of increasing interest. Very pushy and suspicious: I wanted out! Ready to run at a moment´s notice, notwithstanding anything.
After a jaunt on the roof with some Israelis and a McGuiver bong, I released a fair chunk of tension. Later, after absorbing everything a bit, I began to wonder what angle I wasn´t seeing, letting paranoia enter the fray. How can I not be suspicious when everything lately has been so mediocre or downright horrible? It feels like a setup.
Then Hsan enters the scene. A partial owner or manager of the hostel, he´s a suave cat who reminds me of Maxim, making all sorts of outrageous claims along the lines of owning an island on the Amazon, talking about setting up a hostel there on his 358 acres with horseback tours (led, of course, by me)...
We chill up in a room on the roof that resembles a dorm room with unmade bed, Bob Marley posters, disheveled clothes, Men´s Health (in Spanish), which he says is occupied by his brother who helps run the hostel.
He adjusts his cap--Royal Carribean logo now more visible--and I wonder how this can be, this guy who earlier promised to get me a job on a cruise ship. Who now claims to own tons of land.
Then a horrible thought strikes me: am I in a dream?
This is all so absurdly perfect, appealing to your deepest heartstrings, it must come from within, no?
Will I wake up tomorrow in a dark alley, crunching broken glass as I groan in pain? Gradually piecing together moments from reality? Spiked beer in the restaurant: Dealers take all...
Hsan introduces me to his brother, who tries to get me to bet money on pool. An obvious shark attempt. I never play for money. He ends up beating me, but I´m confident he intentionally blew some shots to set me up. Sometimes it all just lines up too perfectly.
Am I dreaming a new reality to compensate for the last few days of savage loathing? What if I can´t get out? Would I start dream-dreaming of reality, how I think it should be?
There is no way I believe any of what these folk are saying. My trust has been used up, I think. Am I just paranoid?
This place gives me the willies...or maybe that´s just the lifesized statues lurking in every corner. It´s just all too perfect. Strange and lulling.
So tonight--what dreams? Horror of stolen articles and exploitation? Get back to the comfortable reality? Finding comfort in similarity, not essence. Familiarity breeds love...along with contempt.
So what happens if I get stuck back again in the blood-drained and discouraged dreamscape, forced to imagine again something different...?
My phases of being/desire alive/to be waver in and out of different levels of reality. <--is the previous a successful representation of simultaneous thoughts? If I am dreaming, can´t I make it so, whether you like it or not? Again, stuck in a dream in a dream in a book, vascillating between, in narrative confusion. Unreliably unreliable.
Near the embassy, this place became my mecca after much exhausted hesitation. The promised pool table might´ve sealed the deal. It took me some time to find it, dodging traffic after an arduous embassy-block tour. But I arrive, grab a cue, and start chatting with the bar tender.
Lima is a beautiful ocean-front city. The conquistadors were smart, mourns the owner of a ceviche restaurant, though hated. He urges me to tell all my friends his place is the best ceviche spot in Miraflores. Easy conversations in Spanish. Things are looking up.
But my mindstream from last night brings up a complicated question: What is real?

My life on a bus. A sour turn. Arrival in Lima

27-05-09
The thing i hate about this place and these people is that they immediately try to exploit anything breathing. No word of welcome; no time to think; no buffer.
The border crossing between Ecuador and Peru is essentially SET UP to fuck travelers. The exit office in Ecuador is a taxi ride from the border where you take another taxi to the entrance office where money changers swarm. Potential robbery everywhere in this sordid no-man´s-land.
And no cash machines near where the bastard took me to an exhorbitantly overpriced bus station which doesn´t even offer night rides to Lima. Where´s the central terminal? Nonextant.
FUCK YOU ALL you fucking savage bloodsucking leeches. Do you really wonder why your countries and your people are looked down upon and shat upon? Maybe grow some decency and hold off on the exploitation and lying to people just because they´re foreigners and might have money. How can you expect to come up in the world constantly dwelling on the bottom sucking scum at every opportunity?
Latin Logic means every man for himself NO MATTER the cost to others nearby or to dignity. That is the reason you shit-swallowing catfish will never make it into the first world. It´s not your skin color, it´s your savage and uncontrollable urge to make a penny at the cost of a dollar.
Fuck Peru. Why would I ever want to stay here and spend my money with a welcome like that?
Shortsighted little fleas. No wonder.
A border crossing in a civilized country is set up thusly:
A bus terminal. An exit office. The border. An entrance office. A bus terminal. Cash machines on both sides, no fucking taxis in between: instead a short walk of 300m MAXIMUM.
That increases security, improves welcome, keeps the maggots out, and overall benefits everyone (except the maggots).
What are they thinking?
They aren´t. Latin Logic, remember?
I never thought I´d long for the Canadian border crossing.

28-05-09
And then to top the motherfucker off, someone swiped my backpack from the cargo hold of the bus after I boarded.
Seriously. These fucking leeches. I want to watch them squirm in salt. I want to believe in hell just so I can imagine them rotting forever, tortured for eternity. I want to bomb this place to oblivion. I want to go home.
Alas, the bastard will probably profit immensely by hawking my poor goods because in this world, the truth is that crime does pay.
At least now I can travel light! And I have a slight financial cushion from the bribe paid me by the luggage handlers to keep from killing them. I should have taken far more than 600 soles ($200) but I didn´t have the heart. After all, I´m still much better off in the world than they are. Stuff can be replaced.
It´s just bewildering the things people are willing to do to each other, as if they can´t realize that we´re all human. How can they be devoid enough of sympathy to steal my stuff when I am obviously out travelling with my life on my back? What kind of twisted mind makes someone willing to take someone´s life--representative as it may be?

Mindflow in Latacunga 21/5/09

Loud kids playing in the huallway in the morning inspires grumpy grumbling, but I have to get up soon anyway--and who can blame kids for playing? Surely not I, of all people. Not the kind of hypocrite I want to be.
So I smile instead of frown; listen instead of hug a pillow to my ears, and just like that--my attitude is happier, my morning brighter.
Deep mental control is a funny thing. Like learning to laugh when a toe is stubbed. Such things happen, so why let them be bothersome?
I should again reread Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence. And I should somehow obtain a motorcycle. And I should let my writing continue for a bit, free of formula. Stream of consciousness as it were.
I´m reminded of a question I had while discussing s.o.c. writing (s.o.c. like Socrates!) with Spencer: how much would what I write control my thought train, and how much would my thought train control what I write?
A balance. Libra.
Damn, but my pen can´t really keep up with my thoughts. Do we think in words? or rather concepts/ideas? How does thought work? I know the awareness of the idea springs well before my mind forms words around it. How to mesh the two?
Like stepping through my shadow of self--Carl Jung (must read more of hiw writing on aenima and conscious).
How do these indigenous folk think? What exactly is Latin Logic? Do they really think so differently in terms of analytical thought processes? Or is their system just so deeply rooted and convoluted (damn! but I would have loved to quick-think a rhyme word with deeply) that it guides their mores and behavior?
What a fucking trip all these folk gathering from all points to sell sell sell their wares--most everything a duplicate, true originality (everywhere) pretty well lacking. A rarity.
Like the people on the bus. Every stop, some vendors with fruit or chips or juice/water or candy, and one person with the heart-throb story about crippled children or blindness or government cruelty or other misfortune, passing out candy or gum or packets of vitamins, hoping to guilt-trip people into handing back bills instead of the item. Memorized speeches, practiced piety (whoops, took a full split second to think of that one), carefully crafted exdpressions of sorrow and pain...
Spare me.
I really ought to practice this straight stream of conscious--perhaps i can learn something of myself.
More cocoa? Or save the cash? What time is it? How much of my thought is questions? How much of a question rut do I get stuck in?
Okay, time to go.
Cotopaxi beckons.

Caressing the moon´s neck

I finally decided to go ahead and drop $200 on a guided hike up Volcan Cotopaxi. Though a substantial hunk of my travel funds, to hell with it! No more hemming and hawing. This is big. Buy the ticket; take the ride.
At 5897m (19,347ft), Cotopaxi (meaning Moon´s neck in Quechua) is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. Apparently its most recent eruption was in 1940.
At the tour office, after watching my stack of 20s disappear into a cashbox, we sort through rental gear, trying on boots, jackets, crampons, snowpants, et cetera mountain gear.
I´m joined by a couple from Holland and two guides, Joaquin and Juan Carlos. We hop in a rickety gas-reeking truck and head out north from Latacunga.
The park is a protected area, but mining companies have gotten around that pretty easily, as Joaquin points out. The soil is dark brown--almost black--and nourishes a thick variegated green carpet--except where more companies have planted pine trees for export to Chinese paper factories. What a world.
Other than the pines, we see cacti, agave, spiky grasses, and hundreds of other plants whose names are unknown to me. Not much fauna, though. Supposedly a few endangered condors make their home here, but we see none.
The road cuts through the volcanic sediment, which is very pretty. Lucky, because clouds obscure the cone, so at least we have something to look at over the rough road.
We get to the main park office to pay. I catch a glimpse of some indigenous women selling clothes. I hop out. How could I resist the opportunity to haggle for an alpaca-wool zip-up hoodie?
The truck labors up to the parking area from where we´ll hike a steep 200 meters to the refuge where we´ll eat, sleep, and then begin the true ascent.
A biting wind souses us with sleet in the parking lot as we struggle into the rest of our gear. Welcome to alpine activity!
Heavy boots with crampon tabs bang the shins and try to gobble socks. Gaiters protect pantlegs from snow. Tucked into the boots, thermal pants under waterproof snowpants. Three shirts (thermal, fleece, alpaca) stuff my pink jacket--hombres ciertos llevan la rosa!--whose pockets hold liner gloves and heavy-duty mittens. My already overheated head is hidden under a hat and two hoods. Hanging over my chest, a pair of sturdy sunglasses. The real gear, crampons and an ice axe, are strapped to my pack along with my sleeping bag and water bottle.
Geared up and good to go.
The ground rises up, heavy sandy gravel. Walking on it reminds me of the dunes back home: walk three steps, slide back two. At some point while watching my feet plodding along left right left right, I pass the cloud into the sun. Blood pounds in my ears, lungs wonder why I´ve given them such thin material to work with.
I stop now and then to take photos and check my progress (but really to catch my breath).
This is a strange landform. It´s more or less flat all around, and then BAM a volcano. None of the gradually ascending foothills I´m used to in continental-rift mountain ranges. The valley below is a deep mottled green. Beautiful.
Plodding, trudging, side-stepping, v-stepping. Ragged breath from my lowland lungs.
Juan Carlos trots past me, and of course, I try to pick up my pace--but to no avail. My blood is languid and sluggish. He soon disappears into the refuge--a yellow-roofed building with smiling windows and a welcoming patio.
Just a few more meters!
Plodding, trudging, side-stepping, v-stepping.
Finally inside. Warmth, rest. Foggy breath and people in winter garb playing cards and telling stories in several languages. Guides in the kitchen preparing food. Homey wooden tables, and a scuffed floor of pine planks. Bright windows and dozens of bunkbeds upstairs.
Outside on the patio, a beautiful view--when not obscured by cloudbanks--of the valley below and the snowcapped cone above. Doesn´t look too hard from here...
Atop the world, and not even there yet.
Back inside for the sweet relief of hot tea, crackers, and spinach soup. My body starts to get used to the altitude as the Dutch couple and I discuss higher education.
After lunch I move around the cabin snapping pictures and feeling very much the tourist--but fuck it: we´re all tourists here.
Naptime.
Can´t sleep.
A spaghetti dinner at six and some instructions in mixed English/Spanish from our guides. The gist: always listen to the guides, and the summit is not the most important aspect of this trip (bullshit!). I nod in agreement and ask very specific questions in spanish.
The sun heads toward retirement, silhouetting enormous purple anvil clouds in the west.
Naptime.
Too excited to sleep!
Eleven p.m. wakeup comes all too soon.
Out of the cozy sleeping bag and into the rented gear! Time to go.
The stars overhead are glorious, swaddled by the MilkyWay. I´ve already seen a shooting star. Not as cold as expected, but I´m grateful for the new alpaca.
Crampons and ice axes in hand, we start up the path toward the snow. Slow going--I long for the bite of crampons in ice.
Finally, the real fun begins. By headlamplight, we strap on our bootblades and scurry up the mountain. Lovely going--fresh legs; delighted demeanor. The snow sparkles like the sugar I scooped into my insta-coffee.
A quick lesson on self-arrest techniques before tying in, I with Juan Carlos, and the Dutch couple with Joaquin. The snow crunches; the stars twinkle. Mars watches our progress over the peak which is visible only as a space devoid of stars.
I´m loving every step.
This is dangerous--not because it´s unsafe, but because I´m quickly realizing that I could be enamored of mountaineering.
JC and I take the lead, stopping (and resting!) every so often to let the others catch up.
I prefer to hike sans headlight, but when JC notices, he scolds me and makes me turn it on. The stars vanish.
A storm rolls over us, blowing sharp snow and coating us with rime. We hunker in a hole and the guides bring up the possibility of turning back due to weather.
NO!
"My vote," I calmly announce, "would be to continue on, but you guys are the experts, and we´ll defer to your judgement."
But goddamnit I didn´t spend a tenth of my budget to almost summit Cotopaxi!
After a solid rest, we climb out and brave the blustery winds, ice axes at the ready and crampons kicking firm.
Turns out we have chosen wisely: the storm blows over, revealing the stars once again.
Oh my god is that...? Is it...? Really...? Yes.
When you see the Southern Cross for the first time...!
Then it´s driven from my mind by the steepest section yet. By this time I´m getting tired. Juan Carlos takes my ice axe as we wait for the others, and pounds it into the snow up to the hilt. Then he hooks me to it with an anchor and begins climbing a vertical section of about 30 meters of frozen snow.
I sit and rest, banging my hands together to get the blood flowing again. Everyone else ascends the fixed line between JC´s anchor above and mine below, and I´m left alone to watch the stars. Down below, the distant lights of Quito look like a lake of lava.
Then it´s my turn.
I expect a tight belay as I hack my way up the face, truly ice climbing! but the rope is a slack loop below me. I´m essentially free climbing ice...
Sweet!
At the top, warm and exhilarated, I hear Juan Carlos say in English, "Twenty meters more."
"Mentiras!" I scold. There must be more than that.
We slog up the final slope as the eastern horizon glows with the rosy promise of dawn. It´s a strenuous twenty meters (more like sixty--crosslingual numbers are difficult) but finally!
We´ve made it.
Hugs all around once the others reach us, and we greet the sun while keeping a weather eye on an approaching cloudbank.
No time to rest atop the world: gotta get down before the snow blows in earnest.
An uneventful and horribly exhausting descent, and home for hot showers and soft hostel beds.
Vale la pena? Claro!



for pictures see: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=48930043&id=2205691#/album.php?aid=2579641&id=2205691

Having escaped the bloodsucking rotten soulless stereotype-fullfilling evil savages in Cali (what is one to do when the very force hired and endowed to protect people is out helping con-men scam terrified travelers out of their precious and dwindling funds?) I found myself in Popoyán with my friend Spencer.
Popoyán is a pretty little town in the southwest quadrant of Colombia where all the white Spanish-style buildings look much the same, which makes orienteering difficult.
We took a room in a hostel with nice dark wood floors, spacious quarters ancient furniture, and (of course) no toilet seats.
The landlady lacked enthusiasm, however.
In the evening, waiting for some friends to show up in a taxi, some Germans who were also staying at the hostel came up nd we all started talking.
An extremely drunk indigo ambled up and mumbled nonsense sounds as though trying to reproduce our English. he babbled and giggled and swayed while we ignored him.
Suddenly someone noticed a growing puddle of dark liquid at his feet, soaking his left shoe as he stood there.
What the hell? What kind of gross...wine? oil? urine? Oh Jesus--blood!
We crowded toward the door, initially hoping to escape without getting infected or attacked, but the German girl insisted we help the guy. She fetched a first-aid kit (replete with gloves) and we cleaned and bandaged a nasty knife wound across the middle two fingers of his left hand. He groaned and yammered in pain when I sprayed disinfectant on the cut, but kept asking for more--he knew what it was for.
He refused a visit to the doctor (drugs and money issues) so we bandaged the poor bloke as best we could.
As the tape was wrapping around his fingers, the taxi showed up with our friends.
They said, once we finished and got in, that most locals (including them) would not have helped the guy and he was lucky to have stumbled upon us. They said it was strange that we were so willing to help.
It´s a weird discrepancy between people here minding strictly their own business yet within an elevated level of community.
A couple days later I saw a bus full of strangers come together to confirm for the police that a boy was old enough to be on the bus without sitting on his mother´s lap.
Latin Logic is a funny thing.

Wax palms, a taste of the jungle, and windsurfing behind a jeep

In the town square, we caught a jeep up to Cocora. All the seats were full, so we stood on the rear runningboard holding onto the roof rack.
What a trip!
Driving through the winding roads reminded me of windsurfing, how balance must be fluid and anticipatory as the jeep whipped through curves and sped over broken bits of road.
The road passed through the rolling valley, with Jurrasic Park fields, mountains, and vegetation all around us.
Tall trees lined the road like fenceposts--in fact, barbed wire was strung between the trunks to keep the cows off the road. Majestic wax palms rose up 150 feet and more, the tallest palms in the world.
More thickets of trees in the couloirs, and more cow-terraced slopes.
Dramatic cumulonimbus clouds swept overhead, dropping mists between the peaks.
I expected a stampede of little dinosaurs at any moment.
Before leaving town, women and children approached the busdriver with bags of food--lunch for their loved ones working up in Cocora. He declined payment. Heartwarming and culturally odd to see how community-oriented these folk are.
What a better ride we had than the folk stuffed in the sweaty enclosed interior of the jeep! THe rolling hills were so lush and lovely--so much green grows here.

In Cocora, we dismounted and proceeded on foot toward Acaime. For almost 5km, we walked through the valley floor, mostly through ranchland with fat cows grazing and horse-sign all over the path. THe path itself is likely a rushing creek in the wet season.
At some point, a German Shepard joined our journey. He behaved like our own dog, dashing ahead and returning to the pack, sometimes leading; sometimes following. A quick attachment of loyalty to guard our way.
After about two hours, we entered the jungle, walking along the shallow Rio Quindio through vines and ferns, slippery rocks and mud, waterfalls and stone steps. Cut logs crossed the river as bridges, though the remnants of an old suspension bridge caught my attention.
Farther along, an intact suspension bridge with split-log slats of various size and moorage crossed the river. Moss and lichens decorated every surface, giving it an ancient look despite the concrete pilings.
We left the path for a bit to explor a waterfall. The water was fresh and so sweet, but the rocks were dangerously slippery, and we were on a slight time crunch--last bus back to Salento at 5--so we climbed back to the path and continued up.
I wish I knew all the names of all the flora. Description fails me of the primeval plants and trees. Surprisingly few bugs bothered us.
The path crossed the river over logs several more times before we came upon Acaime. For 3,00 pesos (just over one dollar) travellers can enter the spread of a couple who keep hummingbird feeders and bell-shaped flowers all over their garden. Tiny birds whirred by our heads as we sat at a picnic table and the couple served us a hunk of hard white salty cheese dipped in hot chocolate. Much better than it sounds! especially after the 2.5-hour hike.
The dog waited for us outside the "hidden"mountain home where the couple thrives on the tourist trap.
But the whole was worthwhile, and in the evening, we returned to ride the jeep back into town, sitting on the roof this time, jouncing and jolting and clinging to finger-stiffening roof-rack handles, as twilight settled over the valley.
We picked up several pedestrians on the way--more community thinking--which would never happen in the States where one person sits alone in an SUV with windows up and doors locked.
What a place.
At the entrance to town, we had to get off the roof so as not to attract police attention. I guess cops are more or less the same everywhere.

Coffee plantation domecile, cont.

Darkness falls. The buzz of nocturnal creatures hums over our headphone-blasting speaker setup. Food smells good. Conversation floats hither and thither as the lights of Armenia begin to twinkle and shimmer in the gloom. How far away?
Thirty minutes by bus--twisting and turning up mountain roads past military checkpoints--but maybe five miles or less as the crow flies.

Raw beans, we find out, take approximately ages to cook in chicken-and-mushroom soup broth.
But who's in any kind of hurry?
This is exactly where and when we belong.
What a crazy trip.
Turns out raw coffee beans, when plucked red ripe from the tree, are remarkably sweet and fruity...as long as you don't crunch ém too hard.

Cooking beans and vegetables straight in the can--I'm lovin' it.

We wake up the next morning to COCKADOODLEDOO! repeated several times until the rising sun streams through my eyelids. Fresh mountain air and the smell of woodsmoke from the plantation workers' cooking fire downstairs blend to stir the growling beast in my belly.
A tinge of envy--Spencer and I have four eggs between us to scramble in a tin cup over a little butane burner. With some hotsauce for flavor.
Clouds sit over the mountain, leaking down into the valley, cutting visibility. The breeze rustles the wide banana leaves as the dogs chase chickens around the yard.
The eggs are good, but we'll need some more sustenance before hiring a jeep to Cocora and then hiking a couple hours to see the wax palms.
Juan, the long-haired fellow who first met us here, ascended the stairs as we tied our shoes and adjusted our hats for the hike.
"Tienen cuadros?"
Our experience heretofore has taught us that this means paper. As in rolling paper.
My supply is dwindling, so I hesitate to give him a precious square for his cigarette--but i get a funny feeling, and dig through my stuff to pull one out.
He pokes and digs at his palm for a moment, and just as I realize what he's doing, out pops the fattest one-paper joint I've ever seen.
He sparks it and we sit next to the tent wreathed in smoke, rapping in rapid-fire and slang-filled Spanish about politics, the coming of the trout into the valley, the pros and cons of tourism in the village, Presidente Uribe, colombianas guapas, food, coffee-plantation work...and a hundred other topics which have slipped past me.
How many temporary and instantaneous friends have been made through the simple tradition of burning herbs? Que locura...

Coffee Plantation domecile

A corrugated aluminum roof protects us from the spattering rain. To the west, thunder rumbles and lightning flashes into the mountain peaks.
So green and lush--trees grow in the couloirs along the slopes which are covered in grass. So different from the naked red rock of Colorado or the grey granite of Yosemite. Side-stepping cows have grazed de facto terraces into the slopes, which catch the shadows and seem to sing a sad song of almost-nature taken over by people.
A light breeze blows through the bamboo supports of the roof. We have pitched a tent on a raised platform of wood overlooking a coffee plantation owned by a jolly British fellow with a Homer Simpson Valdez T-shirt and a floppy brown felt hat.
After arriving in Salento from Armenia from Bogota, Spencer and I stepped off the bus into the town square. The Lonely Planet Guidebook suggested The Plantation House Hostel--but we planned to find a spot to camp. Cheaper that way.
The owner described two options: a campground down the hill by the river (for only a few pesos less than the hostel) or asking at a farm miles down the road if we could borrow some land.
We slogged our way downhill through a muddy rut full of tree trimmings and horse droppings. At a farm we stopped and asked, but the kid pointed us farther downhill.
By this time, we were hot and sweaty carrying our laden bags in the muggy heat. I just wanted some cool water and perhaps a dip in the river.
We considered just scouting a spot along the river and squatting--but decided against what would likely (in this day and age) be trespassing.
Another few hundred meters down the hill, we came upon another gate in the barbed-wire fence strung along the road.
"Buenas!"we called, entering. "Quien duena?
A tall young guy with long hair and dirty pants tucked into muddy rainboots led us around the corner.
A rotund middle-aged fellow with a short grey beard climbed awkwardly down some steps, blonde hijita in tow.
"Como esta?" we asked.
"Bien, bien."
"Buscamos un sitio para camping." We explained that the hostel owner had sent us down toward the river, but we wanted to make sure before hiking all the way down.
"Ustedes son de francia?"
"Oye no no! Estados Unidos."
"Oh!" he chuckled, gratefully switching to English. "So you guys are looking for a spot to pitch a tent, yes? Hm. Hm. Okay."
We nodded.
With his pleasant British accent, he explained that there wasn't much in the way of flat space--but we'd be welcome to stay up on a platform overlooking the slopes.
His little daughter of about three watched our interaction, now and then chiming in with a charming bit of garbled Spanglish.
"Just have to clear it with my wife first. Um. Hm. Okay. Yes." He scooped up the girl and went inside, leaving us to scope the platform.
A space of about 12'x12' made of 2x6 planks bordered by a railing of bamboo (which grew in a thicket farther down the slope). Like a lookout tower--in fact, we can see for miles in the space between the peaks toward another town (Armenia) in the valley.
Below, banana trees shade and sustain the coffe plants which grow out of the hillside. The main house below us is made of solid brick and plaster with a patio and a big cooking fire.
A machine for separating coffee beans from husks sits on the concrete slab. Crickets and birds chirp as the sun heads for the hills.
This spot is perfect.
A couple of collies trot over to investigate. Tim--the limey--has given us the greenlight. We'll negotiate cost later (not much, hm hm, he says)--and we're left to our own devices. Turns out Tim lives up at the Plantation House (which he also owns with his pretty little colombiana wife).
This spot is not in the guidebook. I am immensely glad we've stumbled upon it. This is the kind of adventure I have looked forward to--crashing in random spots of hospitality. This is the kind of place I'd like to spend time in, but alas--settlement is not on the schedule. Tomorrow we'll hike around looking for the tallest palm trees in the world, and after that--onward to Cali.

Steve is almost forty. So I gather from his numb-lip mumbling. Stifling a sigh, I close my book around my index finger and grace him with my attention.
Apparently he´s been in the navy. Benn in the hostel about 30 days. Or so. Or almost.
A grim blond stubble decorates his soft chin, and when the breeze in the courtyard is just right, I catch a whiff of stale booze.
He sparks a Marlboro Rojo.
I ask what he is doing here, hoping to swing the conversation to a quick close.
"Here investing. Spread some money around. Six-fifty a month from the government."
I nod. Steve smokes.
"And free dentist visits. Hundred dollars for groceries. Yeah, it´s pretty great."
The way he smokes, I´d almost call it greedy.
This is not a GI-bill cat. Probably couldn´t even fake a high-school diploma. In a funny sort of way, he looks like Rudy from the movie. Camouflage cargo shorts above greasy black socks protruding from hiking boots.
Hasn´t bothered to learn a lick of Spanish.
Suddenly he starts talking about firewood. How his mind made the connection, I´ll never know.
"Five thousand pesos for all you can carry."
I don´t want to carry anything.
"But only in one trip. So let´s grab a bunch!"
No, goddamnit, I´m trying to read.
"Yeah, alright. I´ll help."
His eyes light up, pleased to have a friend. Turns out we´re from the same town.
In the rare moments when he is not talking, Steve´s lower lip is tucked in in a sad sort of reverse pout. His ruddy cheeks stand in lovely contrast to the hay-colored whiskers.
"I´ve already talked to Germán. He might let me put some money in."
Germán is the hostel owner. I decide not to tell Steve he´s already invested in the hostel. He wouldn´t get it.
"You ever been to Tucson?" Steve´s mumble has an odd breathless quality.
At least he´s animated.
"I haven´t been. I´d like to though..." This last slips out before I can bite my tongue.
"Tucson´s great, man. I can get you acid by the sheet."
Ah ha. Thus explained the mysterious electron-sporatic connections Steve´s mind makes. Psychonautic exploration is fun and healthy--in distinct moderation.
Steve might not know the word.
Outside the clopclop of a horse or mule and the unintelligable babble of Spanish via megaphone.
No one is listening, che. Lo siento.
"Yeah, so how old are you?"
"Twenty-two."
"Yeah, when I was your age I was out in New Mexico searching for peyote."
For the whole year?
"Never found it though. I got a whole book on hallucinogenic plants. Really cool, man."
This is the sort of dude who gives Nixon and his cronies the nearest thing to justification they ever could have had.
From what I´ve heard from some Choctaw friends, peyote buttons reveal themselves only to the worthy.
Sorry, Steve.
At the carpentero´s next door, Steve asks How much for the place.
I translate.
"Tres ciento millones." Por todo? Si, por todo.
A large courtyard full of scraps and unfinished projects. Solid wood and plaster construction. Even concrete floor. Sturdy lumber supports. Unbroken roof tiles. A mahogony table stands drying, waiting for a second coat of varnish. This man, Hernan, is a craftsman.
"That´s outta my price range," grunts Steve.
The courtyard is surrounded by several rooms. A good-sized bit of property.
12,000 U.S. If you can´t afford that, what the hell are you doing here investing? I don´t bother to ask.
Maybe I´ll try to assemble some capital. The place has potential--maybe a restaurant/cantina and some guest rooms.
Dangerous thoughts.
Finally Steve is satisfied, and we return to the hostel where I manage to slip away on some pretext. As I leave, he hunkers in front of the brazier to organize the scraps of fuel. Harmless and happy in his own little world.

In the Museo de Oro in Bogota, there are an unimaginable number of ancient pieces of hand-crafted goldwork.  The history is very interesting, including videos reproducing techniques for casting gold. 

Apparently they used beeswax to design the piece, encapsulated it in soft clay which hardened in the fire (also melting out the wax) and then poured in the molten gold.

We wandered around the museum looking at all the pieces and talking about value and perception and antiquity.

On the third floor, the arrangement is slightly more pointed (and less linear!) talking about the indios cosmology and worldview.  I was pleased to discover that they believed the universe consisted of multiple layers coexisting and interacting.  

This led us into conversation about how our current (western) ideas are really rather backwards.  Though we are technologically advanced, our worldview is quite infantile in that we believe everything we see is everything there is.  In fact there are infinite dimensions, and we merely perceive three (though some people think they understand time to be the fourth).

This naturally led to discussions about psychedelics and trances and other transcendental mental processes--the museum also had a couple interesting displays of yopo and yage and coca.  

Such mind-bending chemicals enable people to dip deep into our imaginations to see a bit beyond the mundane (even gravel is intensely beautiful with some psilocybic nudging), but the Establishment has always been fearful of such substances (hence Nixon and his drug czars rabidly pursuing LSD and other such substances that actually make people think differently about the world, but more or less ignoring the dangerous drugs that destroy people) because of the threat they pose to people's subservient and sheepish worldview.

Anyway, we wandered around the museum and into a circular room with a low ceiling.  Suddenly the lights went out and the automatic doors slithered shut.

Encased in total darkness, we were a bit nervous, but a shamanistic chant emanated from hidden speakers, and a dim glow illuminated (and silhouetted) innumerable gold pieces from behind.  

The lights cycled and moved, almost in a slow strobe.   Some of the pieces looked like a flock of birds.  Others were large discs.  Some were arranged in spiral (a la the indigenous view of time).  

I quickly lost my awareness of space, entranced as I was by the moving light and low rhythmic murmuring.

When the lights came on again, I felt somewhat dazed, though very calm and content.

I must, I once again resolved, develop some meditation/trance skills.  

folks, i welcome all comments...however, pretty please take credit.  anonymity I do not dig.

The sun slipped free of the horizon, chasing the darkness and illuminating a small figure seated cross-legged in the dirt in front of a wall of granite. A modest fire flickered shadows across his face as he peered closely at a bit of shiny metal held lightly in dirt-caked fingers.
Hunched as he was, the smoke from a clay jar between his feet billowed in his nostrils and streamed around his ears. Fragrance. Vision. Transa.
Screened off from the world.
His spirit soared with the smoke and he breathed deeply.
Overhead, beyond human sight, an eagle soared on thermals.
In the distance, muted by a thick grove of trees, the village bustled and hummed.
But the sage and yopo filled his ears.
He flipped the ingot in the air and deftly caught it in his teeth. A flat polished stone sat next to his hip and he shifted his weight so he could lean over it.
With the rhythm of the wind, he began pounding the ingot, spreading it like clay. After a while he gripped it between two clay rods and thrust it into the fire. When it was hot, he pulled it out, dipped it in water, and found his rhythm, rocking and pounding and pounding and rocking. Muscles rippled on his shoulders, and tendons stood out on his arms like vines in the trees.
Again he heated the gold and annealed it.
And again.
Until it was thin as a coca leaf.
He added another coal to the herbs in the clay pot, and squinted at the yellow disc. The sun was a full handswidth above the horizon now, and he held the gold up to compare.
As the thick white smoke filled his senses with fragrance and calm, he picked up a long sharp stone. The tip of his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he scratched a design into the gold.
He positioned the sharp stone and tapped it with a rock.
tik tik tik
tik tik tik
tik tik tik
The sound echoed off the granite, mingling with the crackling fire and the hush of the wind. Briefly he closed his eyes and enjoyed the song. tik tik
A spiral emerged on the disc. He narrowed his eyes and rode the rhythm of the spiral until it joined with the eye and beak of an eagle.
He stopped tapping and glanced skyward. Somewhere, eagle was watching, searching.
When he could not see the bird, he returned to the gold disc.
tik tik
tik
tik
More gently, carefully now. Details. A feather. A nostril.
tik
He raised the disc to the sun again and smiled.
The smoke filled him with calm and soothing heaviness.
His feet had long since fallen asleep, and as he shifted, they were filled with a tingling pain. Momentarily worried, he glanced back at the sun. Angry? Had he made a mistake?
Suddenly the screech of the eagle tore through the stillness and all was well. He punched a hole through the disc, and rubbed the whole with sand til it shone with a splendor of life-giving brotherhood with the sun.
He lay back, stretched his legs, and absorbed the warmth like a lizard.

5/1/09
almost 4:20 am

Oh my god.
So many memories. Unbelievable in scope and complexity!
Homie, I've had to pull into the old cemetary to have a good cry, man. My eyes brim up, obscuring my vision and making driving impossible.
Goddamn.
Some crazy times, man, from high-school friendly fencing up into an indellible development freshman year and stoop-smoking roommate-meeting before we barely knew each other.
I can't even fathom that I just said goodbye for possibly the last time ever. I hope not, but if there's one thing we've taught and lived by, it's that anything's possible.
Even now, my sorrow overwhelms me. You have been there for me through everything; through triumphs and tribulations, through ups and downs, summits and nadirs, girlfriends and lovers, arrests and graduations, fifths and forties and eighths and pints and quarts and grams and gallons and pussy and passion and sun and sorry and truth and lies and...and...
...everything.
I mean, for Christ's sake, we have traded personalities!
And women.
And bottles.
And clothes.
And loves, hates, cares, victories, defeats.
Man, I cannot believe it might be two years or more until I see feel hear smell sense you again.
Who knows what the future might bring?
We, who know that there is only present and everything else is made up and imagined.
We, who know that nothing is as important, as meaningful, as everything!
We, who have traded souls.
We who have endured both heaven and hell together.
We who have cried together, laughed together, slept together, ate together, fought together--LIVED together.
We.
Remarkable we.
Incomparable we.
Closer that either of us would ever admit.
Shed tears together.
As I am now...alone.
As I imagine you are as well.
Through everything; bros. Homies. Friends. Counterweights. Harmonizing jazz-riffing charm-smiling lady-killing pot-smoking song-singing life-living self-loving world-saving book-reading bar-drinking cavorting goddamn scoundrels!
And then, of course, there's all the crazy shit between all the lines.
My god, chum, we've been inside of the same woman!
Who could ask for more?
I could, dude. I could ask for a hundred--a thousand--more college-chillin' days like the ones we have loved and loathed, prized and passed, imagined and ignored, anticipated and forgotten.
Inseperable to the end.
I can't even remember not being best friends with you. What a weird concept.
Here I am with Dispatch playing in the background many minutes after we reminisced about that miraculous summer long ago when they asked if you'd mind going out on trip with your homeboy.
Oh my god.
They didn't even know.
Dude, it's getting late, and I haven't even begun to describe what you have been for me.
Crying again.
Nothing I could ever put on paper can come close to capturing this string of moments. This crazy trip.
I'm dying, dogg. I have no idea how to lock this shit in my memory. My perception changes so much, how can I keep you close?
Goddamn but I'm getting sentimental.
I hate long goodbyes. I don't do well with them. I need to just get gone, man, disappear. Vanish into the mists for a while.
We both know what I mean.
Listen, there's a whole lot more I'd like to say, but I have to get to sleep before my journey tomorrow.
Peace be the way.
Not all who wander are lost.

Yours in brotherly love,

Paul

I´m here. Utterly unbelievable.
I felt very much the gringo in the airport, and I lacked the confidence to speak in spanish to anyone (especially because even when anyone addressed me, it was in english) and I began to worry about the future. Cold feet, as it were.
However, after sleeping fitfully through the three.5 hour flight, I stepped down the stairs onto the tarmac into a bus to the terminal and began to worry about finding an ATM.
I tried some spanish with the customs agents, but they grew frustrated and switched to english. It was especially difficult because they all wore surgical masks to protect them from the swine flu menace. I cannot believe people´s capacity to surrender to fear mongering. Probably more than a third of the pasajeros on the airplane wore the masks (I´ve been surprised to see several pedestrians on the bogota streets also wearing masks. how horrible to live under such paranoic conditions).
Having cleared customs, I stood in line to change money and I heard a New Zealander (could tell by his flight-of-the-conchords accent) flailing to communicate about ATMs. I stepped in with him and we walked toward where the vague directions pointed. We talked for a while and then I acted the translator when we had to find taxis to our respective hostels. Suddenly my confianza was back. Though my spanish is still not quite up to par, I´ve been finding that I have more than many of my fellow travelers, and this is quite a relief.