N.B.

Hey there, at this point I've spoken to some folks about these essays, and it seems like the biggest complaint is the lack of chronology. Each one is dated in the title, and I chose to write them out of order so that I could grab more breadth instead of writing about Ecuador for 3 months before moving on to a different environment. Also, it's more fun that way, so suck it up.

Additionally--thank you for reading! Now please tell me that you're reading, and comment at the site with your thoughts and post the links if you care to, as I am but a introverted shy writer sitting at home wondering if I am screaming into the void and there is nothing introverted shy writers like better than knowing that people are reading their work. I tried to set up a site meter but I am internet retarded and all I get is a weekly email saying NOBODY LOOKS AT THIS EVER EVER EVER.

Paragliding in Manali, India (Aug 2008)

Finally, a clear morning.

I’ve been stalking the adventure sports outfits in Manali for two days, waiting for a morning without monsoon rains so that I can jump off a mountain with a sheet tied around my neck. I’ve never been paragliding before, and I’m not sure it would have ever occurred to me as a thing to do until I read in my guidebook that Manali was a major center for paragliding. My guidebook wasn’t entirely sure that it still would be, as the operation was shut down for a few years after a few tourists jumped off mountains with sheets tied around their necks and failed to fly, instead dropping into the valley below in a distinctly non-superhero fashion. My luck is in, though, or out depending on your perspective, and the industry for dumbass tourists to leap to their probable deaths is back up and running. Of course, it’s pouring buckets of rain all day every day, and on the only clear morning we’ve had so far the jump shops were all closed for some reason. I’m leaving today, already booked my bus ticket on to McLeod Ganj for this evening, and I was afraid I’d wake up to rain again, no reason to expect otherwise. But fortune has smiled—or frowned, again depends on your perspective—and I am hovering outside the jump shop up the street from my hostel in Old Manali for an hour before someone finally shows up.

While I’m waiting, hunched on a slight stoop and trying to keep my feet out of the way of the motorcycle traffic occasionally roaring up this narrow alley, I am joined by others, waiting for who knows what, this is a country where people wait, especially tourists who can’t let go of that idea that things will actually happen when they are supposed to. We don’t talk, at least not to each other although the Israeli kids who came up here to party for the full moon are exuberant as they tease each other about being afraid of the snake guy. Said snake guy has pulled up a section of dirty stoop right next to me and spread out his baskets and bags of reptiles, and take a break from caressing his cobra to offer it to the Israelis, look ma I played with deadly snakes in India. He’s offered it to me as well, I didn’t jump away, I’m not scared of snakes and I know this one doesn’t have venom anymore but I have no interest in holding a cobra while someone takes the obligatory picture. The snake guy is impressed by my nonchalance, and when the larger snake slithers off his arm for a moment to explore the gal sitting next to him he is even more impressed when I absently stroke it’s satiny scales and then hand it back. He asks for a cigarette and I give it to him, then turn away slightly, I’m really not in the mood to gesture through a conversation right now I just want the dude running the jump shop to show the fuck up.

Only half an hour later he shows up, that ain’t too bad for India. I follow him in eagerly as he raises the metal curtain over the windows, “I want to jump today.” He looks around at the clearing skies and offers me a few price options, the cheapest jump isn’t going to end up so cheap for me since I’m going alone and I’d need to take a cab to the jump site, if it’s a few people going the company springs for it but not for just one. We talk about the high jump, it’s a little more expensive but he says he’ll include transportation for that one so it works out and I am going to jump from high over the valley, flight time should be around 20 minutes.

He has to call the pilot, and I have to check out of my hotel since I won’t be back before checkout, at least not reliably as we’ve learned nothing is reliable here. I throw my pack together and leave it in the hostel office pending my return, I’ll need to change clothes when I get back before my night bus ride. Back to the office and my pilot is waiting, he’s a little shorter than me and very fit, we don’t talk much as he leads me away from the office to our ride in a nearby parking lot, and by parking lot I mean abandoned corner of concrete somehow wedged into the alley.

It’s a motorcycle, the ubiquitous Enfield Bullet, and I am grinning on the inside while maintaining a solemn demeanor, I wish Gina and Maarten hadn’t left this morning so I could share the joke with them. These old British bikes are the transit of choice for machismo’d out locals and tourists alike, and the day before we’d seen a flyer advertising a Bullet for sale, touting amongst it’s many virtues the bike’s capacity as a “Babe Magnet.” This in turn led to a spirited discussion of how the magnet might function, if the babes were only magnetized when they were on the bike and thus the owner would be required to remain on the bike at all times, rendering some difficulties in reaping the benefits of said magnetic effects. Was the bike calibrated to a specific kind of babe, and if not would such calibration be possible or would the owner be saddled with magnetic babes of all stripes despite his personal babe inclinations?

I climb astride the Babe Magnet, and I must admit I do feel a little magnetized. We’re now part of that roaring motorcycle traffic and tourists leap out of the way to preserve their toes for another day, heading down the steep slope from Old Manali to the new town. Naturally there are no helmets, these roads are shit and my driver along with all the others drives like a madman, I’d hate to crack my skull open on the road, I’d like to save my skull-cracking for the mountain.

Through the old town and then turn up the road to the pass, I have no idea where we’re going but it’s a beautiful day and the wind is in my hair and I’m gawking around at the glorious beauty of this Himalayan valley with the sun on my face and a huge grin stretching my cheeks, what my dad would call a bug-catcher grin. We roar along passing the occasional TATA truck, and WOW what was that I give a brief shout of delight, off to our right in a roadside ditch a young boy is rinsing off a weary-looking elephant with a hose, it’s my first elephant sighting in India I wish I had my camera out but we are already going past, I am craning my neck backwards but its gone already, my pilot is aware that I am reacting to something and he smiles a little when he realizes what, silly tourist but I don’t care I finally saw an elephant. This ride is worth it already, I’d much rather be going up the mountain to my probable death riding pillion on a Babe Magnet and nearly falling off when I see an elephant than crammed into the back of a cab with three other people.

We pull over at turnout, we are waiting for something but I don’t know what. My pilot points to a knob of rock far above us, that is where we will jump from. We hover in the sunlight, I’m smoking nervously and then another car pulls up and disgorges four other guys, I guess this is what we’ve been waiting for, the parachute. There is some discussion amongst them and then he gestures me back to the bike, they will follow us or meet us there or I’m not sure exactly what the plan is but apparently there is a plan. Back we go up the twisty road, climbing back up towards the Rohtang Pass. I came over that pass three days ago in blinding rain, the name of the pass literally translates to “Piles of Dead Bodies,” which was naturally immensely comforting, especially when we stopped because a bulldozer had to squeeze alongside us on the narrow road to make repairs before we went over it. Today is clear so far, but the clouds are moving back in and it will probably rain before the day is out and I would like to not be on this road on a motorcycle when that happens, I tested my luck quite enough when I survived it the first time.

This, of course, from a woman who is heading up for the specific purpose of jumping off the mountain.

Up, and onwards, up the switchbacks and then we pull over at a roadside chai stand, we are waiting again, we beat the guys with the parachutes. My pilot buys me a chai, we make a little small talk but I’m not really in the mood and he’s not either. There are a few other people up here for the same reason and I have a chance to watch them jump, they fly over my head and into the valley with whoops of delight. Soon that will be me, and I am comforted by seeing them not-die, not-plummet-like-a-rock-to-their-inevitable-and-painful-death.

The other group has cleared the jump site now, and our chute has shown up, it’s my turn. We cross the road and climb up a steep hill for a few minutes, the track is muddy and slick. I’m carrying my day bag, containing everything I wasn’t comfortable leaving in the hostel office, like my passport, money, guidebook, and it looks like I threw a spare sweater in there too. Said day bag wasn’t designed for this purpose, it’s actually a handbag I picked up at a street fair in Brooklyn earlier this summer, and it slides off my shoulder, unsettling my precarious balance. I stumble and slide sideways in the mud, this is awesome. My only task was to walk ten meters up the hill, most people who come out here do multi-day treks and I am falling down already. My pilot comes back and picks me up, takes my bag in addition to the giant parachute-containing backpack he is also carrying. I am glad I am not with a group, there is noone to witness this particular iteration of clumsy incompetence except the pilot and his friend and I am sure they expected it anyway.

They spread out the chute on the mountainside, it’s blue. My guy takes my bag and shoves it into the back of the harness, suits me up with a helmet. He explains that after he gets in the harness I will strap on in front of him, when he says “go” we will run in tandem down the mountain for a minute or two and then jump as the parachute lifts into the thermals. He takes my camera and attaches the lanyard to the harness, and we buckle in.

I’m nervous, and scared, and excited—I don’t have a fear of heights but I do have a fear of falling, with good reason as I manage to fall down on a regular basis, and now I am going to fall on purpose. He gives me the signal and here we go, run run run and slip on the mud and I fall down sure enough, but its too soon to fall down he is urging me back up we still need to run so up and run run run and

Im flying over the chai stand and the highway and woosh to my left a huge bird wingspan must be three feet at least and we are sharing the same air the same thermal he cruising along just as we are and its so quiet up here no sounds just the softest of ssssh sounds from the wind and Im looking down between my boots at the valley below us carved by the silver ribbon of the river and tilt we are angling over to the cliff face and whoosh back over the valley on the other side and the wind is still making that ssssh sound and I am making little sounds of ecstasy Im flying now flying look up at the blue canopy darker than the blue of the sky beyond the bird is gone flew off somewhere else from where we are flying I am flying dropping gently through the air swaying slightly from side to side as we ride the winds down around the shoulders of the hills I am reaching out to try and touch the clouds the way a baby clumsily grasps for a bright toy I want to feel the clouds we are flying and down gently down slowly down and whoosh and rocking side to side as my pilot zeros in on our landing zone I want to stay up here forever and down the rocky expanse hes chosen for us getting ever closer hes explained that he will just set up gently down butts on the ground and we will slide to a stop I don’t want this to stop ever ground getting closer and close and bumping down on the ground sliding gently to a stop and I am still making those little noises but they are sad now because its over.

Go Slow, Caye Caulker, Belize (Aug 2007)

At last, we have achieved island paradise. It’s been a long, uncomfortable slog across Guatemala and Belize, and yesterday afternoon we were finally able to catch the ferry from Belize City to Caye Caulker. It is already working, within an hour of stepping off the ferry we’ve found an apartment for a few days and suddenly all the tension is draining out of my shoulders, maybe now it can just be a vacation, a pleasant interlude like normal people do instead of battling my way across Central America trying not to get killed, with only marginal success.

Still gotta move, though, the boat leaves at 9am and I’m going to make damned sure I’m on it. After learning that we can’t go to the Blue Hole (apparently it’s a tech dive that requires weeks of training in order to experience, who knew? And we don’t have weeks), the next best thing was a snorkel trip around the reef. It’s 8:45 and I’m walking up the main, and only, street. Not that it’s paved or anything, I’m barefoot on the sand. Debi and I split up and will meet at the boat, she wanted to stop at the bank and I didn’t want to wait, this trip has been such a challenge with Murphy’s Law in full effect and I just know that if I give the cosmos any opportunities I will end up missing this boat.

One of the locals wandering about in the street tries to stop me, to talk to me, and I brush him off, smile a little bit to take the bite out of my rebuff but I don’t slow down. He is offended, this may be the same guy that tried to talk to me yesterday right when we got off the ferry, calls after me, “Slow down, mon! Where are you from, New York? You’re on the island now!”

I call back over my shoulder as I pull further away from him, not breaking stride at all, “Actually, yeah. And this is slow for me.”

I get to the dock at 8:55am, everyone is assembled except Debi and while I don’t want her to miss the boat I am going to feel awfully smug if she does. I sit down and chat with an American couple, they’re living in El Salvador for a year and have just come over to Belize for a few days on vacation. They’re nice, but there’s an air of wholesomeness about them, they are not terribly specific about what they’re doing in El Salvador but I am pretty sure they are saving the world one country at a time, do-gooders who don’t curse or sin. You meet a lot of those folks in Central America, and I end up feeling slightly defensive about my purely hedonistic travel plans, designed solely to satisfy my own desires and passing by the poverty and desolation, it’s not on my itinerary. It’s worse because they’re so gosh-darned nice, all of them, they’ll help you with your bags, share their water, give up a seat on the bus, it’s hard to resent a candidate for sainthood but I manage it just fine.

It’s 9:15 now, and we’re still sitting at the dock. Debi strolls up, she is a better person than I am and there is no smugness about how she was right and I was wrong, there was really no need to rush after all. We are about to leave now though, and this boat is going to be more crowded than I thought, there’s a tour group joining us of twenty-something Americans. Debi and I talk mostly to each other on the boat, there are insular groups here, the Americans, the do-gooders, another random couple. The staff on the boat passes out our fins and masks, and lectures us very sternly that We Must Not Touch the Coral Under Any Circumstances. Then they relax a little bit, they’re flirting with us the way that locals flirt with pretty tourists in bikinis who are leaving tomorrow.

There’s a lot of us, and we all splash into the water for our first stop, I’ve never actually done this before but it can’t be too hard. We’ll follow the guide, he’ll point at things and we will look at them with no comprehension, and above all we Will Not Touch the Coral. Face down in the water and breathing through the snorkel tube, we swim along with small leg kicks, the fins are doing most of the work. The reef is quite shallow here, it’s right beneath us and there are schools of brightly colored fish swirling within inches of me. The guide points at this fish, or that one, we are all bumping and jostling for position. I’m having trouble with my mask, it’s leaking water, and every now and then I get a gulp of saltwater instead of air through my snorkel. I want to turn myself vertical, get my head out of the water and see if I can fix it but I’m right over coral and it’s challenging enough to keep the current from sweeping me into a hundred-year old, delicate, endangered organism and destroying it with a stray fin kick.

It doesn’t help that the bitch in the blue bikini keeps on crashing into me, every time I get my mask fixed and am able to concentrate on the snorkeling bit, ooh cool fish pretty reef, within moments this same girl will swim right into me, her fins will kick my mask or her shoulder bump into mine and knock my snorkel back into the water and then sucking saltwater again and choking, turning on my back to try and fix it maybe since I can’t put my head up out of the water.

Back on the boat and we’re sailing off to our next snorkel site. People are spreading out a bit more on the boat, I’m glaring at the blue bikini girl but she is oblivious. She looks Mediterranean or something, and now that I’m observing her I realize she’s a trophy wife, or girlfriend, slim young thing with a tight, perfect body and draping herself all over a grizzled man at least twenty years her senior, and she is immune to my glare, she is totally focused on her sugar daddy and couldn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks.

Before we get back in the water, one of the staff stops us, starts throwing chum in the water. Nurse sharks start swarming right next to the boat snapping up the boat, and he bellows, “Everyone get your cameras!” and the whole pack rushes over to the side, pushing for a better angle or a better shot. I’m stepping back a bit, my camera is down below and I’d rather take a long look at the sharks than rush to get it and then shove for a spot on the rail. I’m a little disenchanted with this whole process anyway, the photo op creation and the rush to capture an artificial moment, look ma I swam with sharks. The bait is gone and everyone got a picture, except me, and back in the water we go. I’m a little nervous because well, those sharks are still pretty close to the boat, but I guess they just ate so it’s ok.

Following our guide again, and look there’s an eel and that bitch in the blue bikini kicks my mask again, saltwater in my nose and I can’t see and I’m flailing. The guide sees that I’m having trouble and swims over to me, “You’re over coral, you’re kicking coral,” and I am a horrible tourist destroying a delicate ecosystem and I’ll feel bad about that once I’m not drowning. He tows me over to deeper water, I’m coughing and feeling sick, the saltwater burning my throat. This is not exactly an idyllic experience. He tries to help me adjust my mask, figure out why I keep getting water in my snorkel, and finally trades masks with me, his is way better than the shop stuff they give to day-trippers. It’s better, it’s an improvement, but I’m still feeling queasy as we climb back aboard the boat. Sunbathing on the deck as we sail on, Debi and I start chatting with the American group, or more specifically with their tour leader. The icebreaker is of course the giant bruise that is still adorning my left thigh, I’ve named it Margarita Bruz, I’ve spent three weeks traveling with it, it deserves a name. I tell him my bus crash story, and we talk about travel through Central and South America. He asks me if I’m looking for work, thinks I’d be a good tour guide and their company always needs good people. I laugh it off but I’m flattered, maybe I am pretty decent at this whole traveling thing, all that battling has paid off.

The last snorkel stop goes much more smoothly, as in I actually enjoy it despite Blue Bikini Bitch. I can’t believe she’s not aware that she’s jostling me every single time, she can’t be that oblivious, but somehow I get the feeling that punching one’s fellow tourist would be frowned upon.

As we’re sailing back into the harbor, the reggae starts blasting and we’re served fresh ceviche, raw shrimp cured in lime juice and salsa. It’s delicious and tangy, the rum punch washes it down nicely and I am going slower now for sure. The captain rings the bell, “Dolphins off the bow! Dolphins off the bow!” They’re escorting us back in, there’s the rush for cameras again but again I don’t bother, just teetering my way along the side of the boat to the front, one hand for me and one for the boat but the hand for me is holding a cup of rum punch, I am lucky that I don’t end up in the water with the dolphins.

There are two of them, and they splash and play in the water rilling back from the bow for quite a while, I probably had time to get my camera after all and I think about going back for it but really I’d rather just watch these sleek mammals with their permanent smiles as the sun sinks into the water, blasting a palette of reds and oranges across the clouds and glittering off the waves.

Border Crossing, Ecuador to Peru (Aug 2006)

Cuenca is just as beautiful as everyone told me it would be. It also happens to be really boring, an intensely Catholic city that rolls up the streets at dusk. Oh, it’s lovely to wander about during the day, gawking at architecture and wandering through the museums, but there’s no way it has enough to hold my interest for the next three days before I head back to Quito to fly home.

After three weeks in the Andes, wearing sweaters and demanding extra blankets in July, I am ready for something different, it is summer and I am in South America and I want a beach. Problem is, the closest beach in Ecuador involves almost two days on a bus to get there. Mancora, on the other hand, is ironically much closer—it just means I have to cross the border into Peru.

I’m nervous about this. Somehow, magically, I’ve managed to bump along here in the third world, all by myself and not understanding any Spanish. Ecuador’s good for that, prices are generally fixed, people are generally nice, and it’s generally safe. None of that holds true for Peru, as I’ve heard from travelers coming up north from Macchu Picchu. To compound the matter, I don’t have a guidebook for Peru—I’ve been clutching to my Ecuador Rough Guide as if it is the Alpha and Omega of my trip, it’s filled with notes and color-coded shiny stars and sticky pieces of paper, this has been my Bible for the past three weeks and I can’t imagine venturing into a new place without it.

But it is really boring in Cuenca.

The first thing I have to check is the immunization information—I didn’t need a yellow fever shot to come to Ecuador, and I don’t need one to enter Peru from Ecuador, but I might well need one to re-enter Ecuador from Peru, internet information is a little fuzzy on this and I don’t want to get stuck there when I have a plane to pick up in Quito. The woman at the tourist information booth on Cuenca’s main square assures me that I will be fine. I question her again, she’s not a guidebook but she seems convinced, even though she hesitated at first. If I get stuck in Peru I am going to blame her.

I met some German girls who had come up from Peru a week before, and I borrow their Lonely Planet, wishing all the time it was a Rough Guide, I trust those guides more than the LP. Their guide has two pages on Mancora and how to get there, so I take a few notes on the bus transfers required and write down a couple of hostel names. There are a couple of ways to manage this border crossing, everything seems to indicate that I should go through Huaquillas and there are a couple of transit options. I am tempted to go the total shoestring route, local buses all the way with multiple transfers and a couple of combi taxis in the mix. Now that would be an adventure.

Ultimately though, I chicken out. I am tempting the gods quite enough by striking out from my Ecuadorian safe space, I will take the luxury bus. I have to come back to Cuenca anyway, and I don’t want to take the whole backpack with me across the border, I’m tired of carrying it and also the bigger the bag, the more vulnerable you are, so I buy a small duffel bag in the market and pack for a beach weekend, just a bathing suit, flip flops, towel, and a couple of tank tops. To the main Cuenca bus station and I’m off for the first leg, Cuenca to Machala.

Machala is still in Ecuador, so this is the easy part, we pull into the central bus station and I learn that I have an hour or so until the luxury bus leaves. I buy a quimbolita from a street vendor, I love these things it’s become my favorite bus snack, a dense cornbread wrapped in a banana leaf and sometimes filled with meat. There’s an internet café across from the bus station, so I go over to see if I can avoid backtracking this entire bus route on my way back, maybe there’s a hopper flight from Tumbes to Cuenca, no luck it seems I’d have to fly from Tumbes to Lima to Quito to Cuenca and that’s just ridiculous, maybe if I’d brought my pack with me but I didn’t so I am resigned to busing it all the way back after this little weekend adventure is over.

Time to board, and the luxury bus is really quite luxurious indeed, it’s a double decker with reclining seats and footrests, there are TVs playing movies and it’s comfortably air-conditioned. It’s about twice as expensive as the other options, but the bonus here is that the bus will take me all the way through to Peru, making the necessary border immigration stops, rather than getting dropped off on the Ecuador side and having to manage the crossing myself, then picking up transport on the Peru side. Huaqillas is supposed to be one of the easier border checkpoints but as at any border, you’re vulnerable and exposed and there’s a whole battalion of people hovering to take advantage of that.

We reach the border and the bus stops. I don’t really know what I need to do so I just follow the slightly impatient lady from the bus company, and trail off into the station after everyone else. I’m the only gringo and I get in the wrong line, everyone else is waiting in the line for Ecuadorian or Peruvian nationals and I am obviously neither. The immigration official hands me a piece of paper, it’s in Spanish and so are his instructions, he grimaces at me wearily and waves me off to fill it out after a few failed attempts to explain it to me. I step uncertainly to the side and try to puzzle this out, and while I’m all apuzzled a local guy rushes up to me and says, “I will explain you, I will help you.” He takes it away from me, I was already halfway there with my name and passport number but he insists and I don’t have the wherewithal to reject his insistence, I’ve heard about this happening, he’s next going to insist that I give him money for assisting me but I just won’t, that’s my solution, and I’m just too confused by this whole process to stop him. I wish I spoke more Spanish.

All the paperwork is filled out now and the guy leaves while I get my passport stamped, maybe he was just being nice after all. I leave the office and head back to where the bus is waiting, no such luck here’s my new friend or really jackal as he should be known, or coyote and he is demanding that I give him twenty dollars. I wave him off but he follows, I laugh at his twenty dollar request, it’s an absurd amount of money for this part of the world. He did help me, though, so I give him two dollars just as that slightly impatient lady from the bus approaches, she’s seen what’s going on and she chases him off, guides me back to the bus, stupid gringo.

I’m a little shaken, I thought I was tougher than that but I was wrong, see what happens when I don’t have my guidebook? Thank god I decided to take the luxury bus.

Now that we’ve passed immigration, we have to actually cross the border. We can’t do that on the bus, so they drop us off in the town and point in the direction of Peru; they’ll pick us up on the other side. The area around the bridge is frenetic, merchants and food vendor stalls crunched up on top of each other and sideways in this dusty, hot town with nothing to recommend it other than it’s fortuitous position between countries. I’m meaner than I need to be, probably, as I snarl at everyone who tries to talk to me, tries to sell me something. Over a simple footbridge and now I’m here, I’ve arrived in Peru. I follow my fellow busmates and we board the bus again, the next stop is Peruvian immigration and for the next few hundred meters I am not anywhere officially, I have left Ecuador but am not yet in Peru.

Peruvian customs is much easier, and we get back on the bus and go on to Tumbes. From there I need to find a bus to Mancora, but I also need to get some solas, the local currency, all I have is dollars from Ecuador. There’s a guy on the bus with me and he has already guessed I’m headed to Mancora, where else would I be going on this bus from Machala to Tumbes, if I wanted to go to Lima or Cuzco from Ecuador I wouldn’t chosen a different route, maybe through Villacamba. He speaks pretty decent English and he’s very patient with my non-existent Spanish, I ask him where I can go to get solas and he looks at me, the earnest and inexperienced, perhaps slightly dim tourist, and says that I should go to the money exchanges. This is not terribly helpful.

I disembark in Tumbes. I don’t have a map of this town, no friendly hints as to the best or safest places to change money, and worst of all there are no central bus stations in Peru, the bus companies are all spread out around the city. The city I don’t have a map of. I have no idea where I’ll find my next bus to Mancora.

There are tuk-tuk drivers swarming the bus as we get off, they drive auto-rickshaws around the city as a cab alternative for short distances. I’m overwhelmed and mostly I just start saying “No” over and over again, have to get clear of these parasites. My new bus acquaintance directs me to one tuk-tuk driver, I don’t trust him really but what else am I going to do? I’m at the mercy of these people, I just want to get to my next bus as fast as possible.

I tell my driver that I want to find a money exchange and the bus to Mancora. He drives us around for a while, everything I wanted was probably within walking distance of where I got off the bus but I don’t know that for sure and I don’t know what direction it’s in. He insists on talking to me in Spanish even though I’ve explained repeatedly that I don’t understand. I change some money and then he takes me around to a bus company, he says this is the next bus to Mancora and I really have no choice but to believe him. I made a mistake though, we didn’t agree on a price before I got in and now he’s telling me that I owe him 20 solas, I don’t know anything about this place but I know that the going rate for a tuk-tuk ride in town is about 2 solas. It’s too late now though, maybe if I’d taken him up on his offer to be my Peruvian husband I wouldn’t be getting ripped off now.

I snarl at him, letting him know that at least I’m aware I’m getting ripped off, I may be a clueless gringa but I know that much. He leaves, and now I just want to get out of this place, it’s dusty and dirty and hot and these people suck. I go into the bus station and they tell me the next bus will leave for Mancora in 6 hours. What the hell am I going to do in Tumbes for 6 hours??

I don’t know where anything is here, I could choose to just hover close to this miserable bus company office for the next six hours waiting for the bus that will take two hours to get to Mancora, or I could venture forth all defenseless into the teeming flocks of tourist vultures that nest in Tumbes and try to find another way.

I’m not a particularly patient woman, so I venture forth, keeping careful track of how many blocks I’m going and what turns I’m taking so that if nothing else at least I can backtrack to the six hour wait if I have to. I find a couple of other bus companies, but no one is going to Mancora any sooner than the one I just left. I’m about to give up when I hear a tout shouting, “Mancora, Mancora!” It’s a combi taxi, which means it’s a minivan with people crammed into it, he’s going to Mancora and leaving right now. I go over and ask how much, it’s 6 solas and I climb in. I think that I’m the last one in because it’s so full, but no another two people and their boxes and bags squeeze in, I’m hunched into a corner in enforced fetal position and really damned glad that I don’t have my backpack right now.

We leave a few minutes later, and it’s a uncomfortable two hour drive down the PanAmerican Highway. Pretty though, with the desert-ish scrub out the left window and occasional glimpses of the Pacific out the left. Out of Tumbes at least and now these people seem nicer, I manage to tell them where I’m trying to go and when we get to Mancora at last they make sure that I’m pointed in the right direction to find my hotel, the one whose name I scribbled down from the Lonely Planet guide a few days ago.

I walk in, the hostel is right on the beach. They do have a room available, and I just go ahead and book it for the next three nights, for better or worse I’m staying here. Traumatic enough to get here and I am not going to bother with shopping around for a better or different hostel tomorrow, this place is right on the beach and that’s all I wanted really. I drop my bags in the room and then walk out, sinking into soft sand almost immediately. The Pacific is right there in front of me, and the hostel beachside bar has tables stretching almost to the water’s edge. I sit down, light a cigarette, order a mojito from the waitress who swings by, and watch the sun set into the ocean in Mancora.

It Means Beautiful, Llubjana, Slovenia (Sep 2003)

We missed the bus to Croatia by about 10 minutes.

I’m in Trieste, a little city in the northeast corner of Italy’s Adriatic coast. I’ve been traveling with Steve for the past week, and for today we are joined by his colleague Maggie. They’re at a conference, I’m just along for the ride, and with a full day off we decided it was time to take a day trip out of Trieste, Trieste not being all that interesting. Given the opportunity I will always choose a border crossing, and Zagreb is just a few hours away by bus so we were headed for Croatia. Unfortunately, Maggie held us up and was 10 minutes late, and the next bus isn’t leaving for another six hours. If we did that we’d have to turn right back around once we got there.

I’m kind of pissed off about this, as far as I’m concerned she’s a tagalong and if there’s one thing a tagalong shouldn’t do it’s mess up the plan. I’m trying not to show it though, since she works with Steve and he’s the reason I ended up here in the first place. So I’m having this conversation in clipped tones, the way I talk when I’m angry but am still being polite. I do not want to get stuck in Trieste for another whole day, so we’re at the station examining bus and train schedules trying to figure out a destination within striking destination, just about anywhere will do.

There’s a train leaving in 10 minutes for Slovenia, but getting back may be an issue and I have to be back in Trieste tomorrow morning so I can pick up my train to Venice and on back to Milan to fly back. We have 10 minutes to figure this out, now down to 9. Catching the train back won’t work, but wait there’s bus that leaves Llubjana at 5am. If we get on the train right now and I mean now, we’ll be there by early afternoon and have at least half a day to explore, maybe we’ll find a room for the night or maybe we’ll just crash out in the bus station but we have to go right now if we’re going to do it.

The train pulls out of the station barely a minute after we’ve boarded. There are compartments on this train, so we find one that’s empty and spread out. Smoking is allowed out here on the edge of Western Europe so I light a cigarette, Maggie doesn’t like it and she’s conveying that quite clearly without speaking a word but I don’t care, she’s the tagalong and we’ve already rerouted once because of her and I will smoke if I damn well please.

A guard or train official opens the door to our compartment, starts yelling at us in a language we don’t understand. We figure out that he’s mad at us for putting our feet up on the empty seats, we think he wants us to pay for those seats as well but we use our magical powers of American ignorance to shrug our innocence as we take our feet down. He stamps our passports, his yelling has subsided to grumbling, and leaves. We share a shocked laugh, yes we have definitely just entered Eastern Europe.

We are watching the countryside slide by outside the window, and I can’t help but think about staying on this train and going further, another few hours after Llubjana and we’d be in Istanbul and then further still, this train goes all the way east. I have a plane from Milan tomorrow evening though, and Steve and Maggie have their conference, and we get off the train in Llubjana.

We don’t know anything about this place at all. Maggie has a guidebook that has a few pages on Slovenia but she hadn’t looked at it, we didn’t know we were coming here until we arrived. We exit the train station and look around, no idea where the town is from here or if we should take a bus or a cab and we don’t have local currency either, that’s the first problem. We thought there’d maybe be an ATM in the train station but no such luck. Wait, there’s a bank across the street. We cross and go visit the ATM, the currency here is the tolar as Maggie’s guidebook tells us and the denominations are bewildering, it’s one of those currencies where the exchange rate is something like 200 to 1 against the dollar and we don’t know how much things are going to cost here, don’t want to end up with fistfuls of useless tolars when we leave. We pull out some cash and hope that it will be enough but not too much, and then huddle around Maggie’s guidebook, theoretically we can walk to the city center from the train station so that’s what we do, headed up a busy road on the shoulder and just kind of hoping that we’re going in the right direction.

It takes about half an hour until we reach the compact spread of alleys that makes up the center of the city, and navigate until we find the tourist information booth. We’re lucky, people here seem to speak fluent English, their language is impossible I don’t even know how to pronounce it and I forget it immediately anytime someone tells me. The man behind the counter gives us tourist maps of the city and helps us book a room for the night. He calls around and makes the reservation for us, and then marks the location on our maps. We’re just hoping that when the time comes we can find it.

We walk out and head towards a restaurant he recommended for lunch. The weather is absolutely perfect, a warm fall day with brilliant Mediterranean sunshine still even though we’re now inland a bit, just a touch of a breeze to keep the temperature just right. There’s a central square with an al fresco café by the river, and we sit outside watching buskers and jugglers and the occasional itinerant musician. Service is slow here and we can’t understand the menu but fortunately end up with something like a plate of olives and proscuitto along with foccacia bread. It’s good even if its not very exciting, and after we’re done eating we wait for the check, we’re anxious to look around while we still have enough light to do so. We wait for a while and then finally go inside, spend another ten minutes trying to chase down a server or staff person of any kind, and then wait a little longer until they can finally present us with our check. Sometimes it’s hard to spend money, and we joke about just walking away without paying, clearly its more important to us than it is to them and its not like we’ll be in this city for long. It’s just a joke though, we want to be good American tourists.

Maggie wants to go up to the castle, and I don’t. She splits off to explore solo, and Steve and I go to find the dragon bridge. We agree to meet at our as yet unseen hotel at 6pm. None of our phones work here, so there’s no way to contact each other if plans go awry. Plans will simply have to be maintained, then, there’s no alternate options.

It’s truly a gorgeous day, almost magical. We’ve been told that as Prague was the new Paris in the 1990s, Llubjana is the new Prague, a beautiful European capital with a burgeoning boho community and as yet undiscovered by package tourists, a new frontier of the expat avant garde. It doesn’t look that undiscovered to us, everyone speaks English and there are tourists around but maybe its worse in Prague, I know its way worse in Paris that’s for sure.

We walk along the river road, following the sweeping curves back and forth through this picture-book town. The Dragon Bridge is the main sight to see in town, other than the castle. It’s just a bridge over the river, but on each side the bridge is flanked by two 8’ dragon sculptures. They’re beautiful, but I don’t know what they are supposed to mean or represent, these streaky green stone sculptures or maybe they’re made of iron. What were they supposed to guard against, who were they meant to protect? It doesn’t matter that much to me, I just want to play so I muck around until I figure out a way to climb up on the plinth, I am almost certainly not supposed to do this but how can I resist a chance to ride a dragon?

Once I get up there I see there’s not really any way to sit securely on this thing’s back, if I try I’m most likely going to end up in the river. I peek out from behind it’s wings though, whatever it was meant to protect right now it’s protecting me. From what I’m not sure, as far as I’m aware I don’t need much protecting at this exact moment in time but if I did this dragon would have my back.

The light is fading, it’s time to start navigating back to our hotel, we have to be on time. We leave the bridge and follow our sketched tourist map, cross the railroad tracks, there may be road signs but we can’t read them its all consonant soup, I should set up a business to import vowels to this country I’d make a killing. Looking from map and then up and around, trying to make sure we’re on the right heading, and look up there! There are hot air balloons floating over the city, three or four of them, its so unexpected and delightful that I’m jumping up and down with glee, pointing to show Steve the balloons. I haven’t seen anything like that since I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, where every spring the sky would fill with gas-filled colorful canvases, moving somehow solemnly and gravely across the sky in all of their inherent awkward absurdity.

I want to follow the balloons, but they’re already going out of sight and Steve reminds me that we need to meet up with Maggie. We keep on our heading, me turning back every few seconds to see if I can catch one last glimpse of my minor balloon miracle. Our tourist map leads us right to where we need to go, and at 7pm we walk into the hotel bar and find Maggie there waiting for us.

We compare notes, she had a nice time at the castle, there are great views over the city from the top it seems. I bet I wouldn’t trade my balloons and dragons for it, though. The hotel owner doesn’t speak much English, but we manage to muddle along through our business transaction just fine, we’re out of tolars but she’ll take Euros so it works out. She’s pleased that we like her city, the way locals often are when their hometown is validated by foreign visitors. “Llubjana means beautiful,” she tells us.

Hitchhiking in Rio Dulce, Guatemala (Jul 2007)

It’s hotter here than it was in the mountains. I’ve been laid up in San Pedro de Laguna for the past week, slowly recovering from bus crash injuries, and have only now emerged from my mountain fastness. I’m better, but I’m not all the way better, as the enormous livid bruise that covers my entire left thigh from hip to knee will testify. Debi’s here now though, I picked her up in Guatemala City yesterday and we’re headed north to Tikal.

Of course, this being Guatemala, the way to go north is to go almost due east first, and thus here we are breaking our journey in Rio Dulce. There’s supposed to be a cool waterfall here, and a boat trip up the river to Livingston that we can squeeze in before the next long haul bus. Our hostel is accessible by boat only, through narrow waterways overhung with mangroves, and our room is in a treehouse with a thatched roof. Already Debi has had to leap to my aid multiple times, as well-meaning bus drivers or the like try to guide me into a boat or hand me my backpack. I can say “Yo soy herida!,” but usually not fast enough, and Debi has been running interference.

We consult over a late seafood lunch, and determine that the boat trip is best saved for the following morning. We’ll go out to the waterfall this afternoon, water sounds like a fantastic idea in this oppressive, tropical heat. My book tells me that it’s a simple matter, there’s a bus from right here in town that goes right there. After lunch and a stroll around town, “Donde esta el station de bus?” It’s probably not correct but it’s close enough that people figure out what we’re looking for, and we’re directed to a dusty street corner to wait. “Cuando… tiempo… jusq’ua crap that’s French…” Ok, so we can’t figure out how long before the bus shows up but we know it will be here, and one or two other people seem to be waiting as well so that’s a good sign.

The bus pulls up just a few minutes later and we congratulate ourselves on having such perfect timing, while we are simultaneously eying the battered, garishly painted school bus with trepidation. Especially me, my history with buses in this country is not good and the “chicken buses,” as they’re known, are by far the worst. It is, however, the only bus going where we want to go, so we climb on; at least we’re here first and we’ll have seats, because as this bus fills up people will end up crammed into the center aisle or sitting on top.

We’re sitting in this mostly empty bus, the metal chassis concentrating the swampy heat of mid-afternoon even more than before. We are sweating in this still air, and it is about all we are doing because sweating this much takes a lot of energy. We are going to be sweating for a while, as the bus slowly fills up. A teenage girl sits across from us, with a no-shit real live chicken tucked beneath her arm. Debi and I share a look and smother our giggles, “You weren’t kidding when you said it was a chicken bus were you?”

Sweating, and already we are running low on water and we haven’t even started moving yet. We keep thinking about getting off the bus and going to resupply, but who knows when this thing will finally roar to life and how much warning we’ll have so we decide to sit tight, our faces turned up to the cracked plastic windows trying to catch any bit of breeze that may be wandering around on the streets out there. There’s not one, but we still try.

Finally! Half an hour later and we’re on the move. The road is paved for a while but that peters out quickly, and now we are jostling over rocks and rutted dirt tracks with encroaching weeds. We’re out of water, but there must be somewhere to buy water when we get there. There better be.

The air is moving a little more now with the bus’s motion, but we’re not going fast enough over this crappy road to get anything resembling a breeze going. We are the only two gringos on the bus, and we are attracting a lot of sideways looks and stolen glances. We also, of course, don’t know how far down this road we need to go, or how we’ll know when we get to where we’re going. Guidebook didn’t tell us that. Eventually, Debi is nominated to go forward and try to talk to the driver on the grounds that she is not sporting a giant bruise on her leg and is therefore better equipped to push through the crowded aisle as the bus rumbles and stutters over the stones and muddy puddles.

She comes back a few minutes later, the bus driver has assured her that he will tell us when we get to Finca el Paraiso. She also has a beer, apparently some guy up at the front of the bus has a cooler and is selling cervezas. No agua, though, but the moisture feels good anyway. We are basted to the dirty vinyl seats in a soup of sweat and we are still a ways away, as we’ve just learned.

Two hours after the bus wheezed to life and rolled out of Rio Dulce, I am almost in a daze, forehead leaned against the dirt-streaked window, too hot to think, and I see a small outpost, a roadside café looks like, and a sign about… wait, that’s it! “Alto!” I scream, starting up from my seat and then wincing, that was the wrong way to move and my left thigh is going to make sure I know about it, but the driver stops at least. If I hadn’t seen it we would’ve been on that bus all the way over to the next town, with no way to get back.

We clamber down the steps and stagger over to the café place, agua at last, and guzzle a liter each almost instantly. It’s mid-afternoon now, we’ve only got a few more hours of daylight, and we ask the guy staffing the café when the bus goes back in the other direction.

The last bus back to Rio Dulce will pass by in about 30 minutes.

“No. No. We have not even been up to the waterfall yet, I am not getting back on a bus in 30 minutes, I do not care.” Debi, quite reasonably, asks how we are going to get back. “There has to be a way, we will hitchhike if we have to, let’s go find that waterfall.” She doesn’t want to get back on a bus either after two hours in a slow-moving oven, so she shrugs and off we go up the trail.

A quick walk and then, has there ever been a more beautiful sight than a waterfall of crisp, clear water cascading into a deep pool on a sultry summer day in tropical climes?

We didn’t think so either. Debi checked her rush for the water to make sure that I could navigate the slippery river rocks successfully, and then we stripped down to our bathing suits and waded in. There are some other people here, looks like a tour group, and we greet each other in the water, they marveling at my enormous bruise. This waterfall, Finca el Paraiso, is a peculiar natural phenomenon; the pool below is cold river water welling up, but the cascade is from a thermal spring. We are swimming with our legs stretched down into cool depths, with sauna-warm water steaming around our heads and shoulders.

Of course, we still don’t know how we’re getting out of here.

I climb out of the water reluctantly, and sidle over to chat with the tour folks a little more. “How did you guys get here, anyway?” Trying to be a casual question. Ah, their guide had chartered a boat and they had come up the channel and then walked over across the road, one of the advantages of traveling with a group being that in exchange for overpaying you are spared hellish rides in a tin-can chicken bus. Their boat’s captain approaches me, asking if we are interested in riding back, he has room in his boat and he’ll charge us less than he’s charging the other people if we don’t tell them, this is gravy for everyone and if he had any idea how fucking stranded we are out here there wouldn’t be any deals cut, but one of the advantages of traveling without the group protection is that you can do whatever you want at any time, including hitch a ride back in a boat full of strangers.

As we leave with our new acquaintances, walking down the dirt road to the river access point, I strike up a conversation with one of the solo guys. He’s young, about our age, mid-twenties or so, and also from New York. He is sheepish about being with a group of retirees and families with young-ish children, “Well, I didn’t have anyone to travel with and I’d never been down here before, and I just thought it would be better to have some structure, but now that I’m here…” Now that he’s here, he sees how easy it is to travel independently through Central America with only a guidebook for company.

We skim down the river for an hour, wind in our faces, until we reach the main dock in Rio Dulce and catch yet another boat over to our hostel, Debi helping me with every step up and down in and out of the boats.

Mt. Fuji Does Not Exist, Fujiyoshida, Japan (Feb 2006)

I am not leaving Japan without seeing Mt. Fuji.

As my plane traced its trajectory from Chicago to Osaka, the pilot’s disembodied voice crackled over the speakers, “And if you look out the window to your right, you will see Fuji-san poking out from the clouds.” I’m on the left side of the plane, but I know I have 9 days ahead of me and at least one of those is fully devoted to Seeing Mt. Fuji so I don’t worry about it too much.

On the train from Kyoto to Tokyo a few days later, we are peering out the windows to the left, knowing from our guidebooks that Mt. Fuji should be visible from this particular track. We can see the mountain range, but the peak of Fuji-san is shrouded in mist and cloud, just that section. That’s fine, my Fuji day is coming soon.

And now, in Tokyo, the manager of our ryokan is very politely trying to dissuade us from our day trip. He suggests Nikko instead, a temple complex just outside of Tokyo. I am firm in my refusal, I will not be swayed from my mission despite his gentle warning that the weather is not good and it may be snowing, we may not be able to see anything. “I am not leaving Japan with seeing Mt. Fuji!” I declare with all of my touristy righteousness. “I did not travel 5000 miles to not see the mountain, we are going, I don’t care if it’s snowing I am going to Mt. Fuji.”

I’m traveling with two friends, but we’re not particularly friendly anymore at this point; relations are strained to say the least. Nonetheless they are following biddably, this has in fact been part of the problem as they blindly trust my notes and research. On the one hand, this means they don’t know when I screw up and get on the wrong train or get lost, they think I’m infallible. On the other hand, this means they can’t get us onto the right train or un-lost if I screw up, and I have slowly come to feel that I am a tour guide not a friend.

This tour guide has a dislike of buses, so I didn’t even tell them that there’s a direct bus from the Shinjuku station to the 5^th station on Mt. Fuji that is a little less expensive and an hour less travel time than the torturous train route I’ve mapped out. Before even leaving Tokyo we are already having trouble as friendly passerby try to help us decipher what train we need from the Shinjuku station, completely ignoring the itinerary that I have laboriously routed from the online train schedules. The bible of train schedules comes out, thick like a phone book and with the same thin paper, tiny print and smeared ink, except it’s all in kanji characters. This becomes a group conference, everyone wants to help the lost gaijin, and maybe too everyone wants to be the one who can.

We are firmly directed to a different platform than my itinerary indicated, told that this is really where we want to be. We follow instructions but once we get there and our smiling guide leaves us, I backtrack. This isn’t right and I know it’s not, but I don’t know what is. We go back to the man with the train bible, he’s surprised to see us again but amiably turns to help us. Again. We go over the plan again, we are going to Otsuki and then on to Fujiyoshida. “Otsuki!” He exclaims. “Not Atsikki?” or something like that. Turns out the transcription from kanji to roman characters is a little flexible, and we had indeed narrowly avoided going in exactly the wrong direction.

Now we’re on the right track, but it’s taken us almost an hour and we’re still in Tokyo. The first train is familiar, it’s a Shinkansen like the ones we’ve been on so far, the sleek bullet trains that are one of the modern icons of Japan. First transfer, and this train is a little grubbier and a lot slower, it’s more like a subway train than a commuter train, with dangling hoops for those who are standing rather than a seat assigned for each rider.

Next transfer, and we’re getting close. The air is thick and opaque out the window, a storm front moving in. We board the Fuji Express, and there’s nothing express about it; the ride is about 45 minutes and really we probably could have walked faster. I am castigating myself internally, but the other two haven’t caught on yet that I’ve made this way more difficult than it had to be. It’s easier to hide it, too, because we’re not really speaking to each other; I’m angry at them and they know it, and also know how dependent they are on me right now since they have no idea where they’re going and I do.

Staring out the window of this train that’s a joke really, not even a commuter train, it’s like a train in Dollywood or the monorail in Disney World. If we’d taken the bus from Shinjuku we would’ve been there an hour ago. I’m still keeping silent on that one.

Arrival at last, we pile out at the Fujiyoshida station. It’s cold here, about 20 degrees colder than in Tokyo. I turn around in a circle trying to orient myself, figure out which vector to travel down next, and finally see the tourist information booth. My friends are huddled together a few feet away from me, passively waiting for me to tell them where we’re going next. Up at the plexiglass window with a hole cut in it, I smile and ask the lady if she speaks English, knowing that she will. She confirms this, and my next question is,

“Where is the mountain?”

She points directly behind me. I turn, and see just that solid field of opaque air. “It’s snowing,” she explains.

I am not leaving Japan without seeing Mt. Fuji.

She helpfully hands me a sketched tourist map of the town, indicating that since we’re here we can at least go check out the shrine. We’re nearly shrined out from Kyoto, but she’s right about one thing—we’re here. And it’s in the same direction as the mountain, so off we go to the shrine.

Snowflakes are starting to swirl around us, we’re ill-garbed for this weather and shivering. We’re the only people on the sidewalk, or in the street; the town, we have learned, pretty much shutters up from October to April, it’s role as jumping off point for Fuji a moot point in the off season. Nobody comes here in the winter, nobody except this trio of particularly stubborn American tourists. No, that’s not true; it’s not three of us that are stubborn, it’s just me. I am not leaving without seeing Mt. Fuji.

All the way through town, and we find the shrine. The snow isn’t really coming down yet, it’s just thinking about it, a few flirty flakes that dissolve before they hit the ground. This temple is where the Fuji Fire Ceremony will start in the spring, and it’s all but abandoned now, just one young woman staffing the souvenir booth who seems as surprised to see us as everyone else has been, and limply gestures that we are free to look around as much as we like. It’s best to give crazy people their way as long as it doesn’t harm anyone.

Through the temple grounds and one of those iconic orange gates, that’s the trailhead. There are nine stations on the way to the summit, and I know we won’t get there for a few reasons, the snow but also the altitude, it’s too high for me and I won’t be able to breathe. I start up the trailhead anyway, I can’t see the mountain but at least I can stand on it. Up a slowly curving path, a rather mild ascent as such things go. I am pushing through this white air that wants to be snow but isn’t quite yet there. Trudging, and we pass a small shrine to the left, maybe that’s the first station? Or maybe the second, maybe the temple was the first, we didn’t ask and it doesn’t seem to matter that much. Another ten minutes and the ascent is steeper, and now I’m gasping for air, we’re not anywhere near the top yet but we’ve gone high enough that the altitude is starting to slow me down.

I stop and sit on a fence post. Debi and Chris join me, worried expressions creasing their faces, they knew this was going to happen, I warned them about it. They gently suggest that we turn back. Panting, my face flushed, I look up the path into that wall of snow, I can see the ground rising, going up to that peak I can’t see. They’re right, it’s time to turn back, we need to start our slow way back to Tokyo soon anyway. I stand up, swaying a little bit, and face away from that ascent, backtracking down past the shrine, up the deserted street, and back to the station to wait for that slow train that will take us to another slow train that will take us to another faster train that will take us to a subway train that will take us to another subway train that will take us back to our hotel.

When we leave Osaka, the pilot says, “And if you look out the window to your left, you’ll see Fuji-san coming out from behind the clouds.”

My seat is on the right.