Arequipa and Portugal

While Dollar and Checkoway will be filling us in on the Inca Trail and Manu, I'll take a moment to capture the last days in Peru, 24 hours in Portugal and a day so far in Capetown.

After getting out of the jungle, we had the priviledge of a few hours in Cuzco to run some errands before boarding an 11 hour night bus to Arequipa. I slept uninterrupted on the bus, however Bills and Checkoway were subject to arousal (and not the desirable form).

We enjoyed the sunrise in a gorgeous colonial cobble-stoned plaza and were eating our breakfast on a terrace overlooking the central plaza when it began... Military squadrons began pouring into the square, automatic weapons at their side. Riot police with shields scurried through the middle of the plaza. And then, a parade begun. According to our waiter, this was a typical Sunday event in the square where the local militia puts on a show of force to remind all who is boss. This pomp and circumstance (replete with goosestepping national guardsman) was then followed by a counter protest that stole the thunder and lightning from the milita.

Different citizen groups began marching for their causes, flying banners and preceded with rag tag bands. Many groups carried coffins marked with the name of the current president! We enjoyed the show from several roof top terraces. We were joined by the proprietor of the last rooftop joint that provided us great introspective on the current political situation and history. He was also shamanistic in many ways and worked some intriguing energy flow movements on Checkoway's destroyed ankle and poured a special scalding hot herb tea on my Wormy scar. He referred some of our questions about life to his magical pendulum, which he kept in his pocket for such circumstances.

I elected for a beachside hotel in Cascais, Portugal for my 24 hour bout there. Focusing entirely on rest and relaxation by the pool.

And then to South Africa. Enjoyed a night out on the befabled Long Street with some newly found hostel buddies last night. Tomorrow, Jari will arrive on the scene and we'll begin our formal investigation of this land.

Best to all,
Adam

Peru to Lisbon

After four days in Cuzco, a four day hike up the Inca Trail to Macch Picchu, 8 days in the Peruvian Amazon reserve area of Manu...there has been little time to blog, but much to report! Thus, two of the three amigos (Los Tres YoYo´s), Checkoway and Kenton, will each write a guest blog on the Inca Trail and Manu (hint: many new animales spotted and a cat that could never be domesticated was added to the list) experiences. Look for it in a few days after they get back and settled in the US.

I now fly to Portugal for 24 hours of R&R at a beachside resort, prior to flying to Capetown where I will be soon greeted by Jari, and later in S. Africa by Wus.

After many fortuitous dreams over the course of my travels, I received excellent news that I will be able to accomplish a long-held aspiration. I was accepted into Thunderbird and offered a partial merit-based scholarship to obtain an MBA from the top global international business program. Thus, I´ll be moving to Glendale, Arizona this August. This affords new perspective and fresh energy to the trip, knowing where the next rung on the ladder lies, while enjoying simple breathing and natural exploration prior to this return to academia.

My best to all....
Adam

Taps for Wormy

Well, adagio for wormy can now be played. After a failure to respond to the vaseline asphyxiation method, a longstanding tenet of the Quito school of thought, Wormy was surgically extracted in Lima. Wormy looked nothing like the gruesome pictures displayed in the medical reference books of the Quito clinic. In fact, he (or she) was extremely benign looking, and a bit disappointing. Upon changing the dressing this morning, I found a more discernible part of Wormy that the local surgeon had left perhaps as a souveneir, but still nothing to blog home about. So ends the tale of Wormy and the beginning of the tale of a crew united in Cuzco, albeit removed of two key members, for whom we will set up a scavanger hunt in Cuzco for them to find relics of our trip.

Guest entries soon to come from Bills and Bernardo Checkoway, now stationed with me for a brief internet respite between dinner and dessert.
-Team NazCar Lines

Wormy

Today, I saw the doctor and learned that I´m carrying a child. Actually, I am pregnant with a three week old. The mother is some unknown black sand fly from Panama that impregnated my left wrist with its offspring. So, what appeared like a very strange and long-lasting mosquito bite, is actually the home of a pupae. I must draw out the larvae tonight via the following method of asphyxiation and extraction:
-Tape a small jar of vaseline over it´s home in my wrist.
-It will emerge from the wrist for air and die in the vaseline.
-The doctor with then grap it with some tweezers and spiral it out of my wrist tomorrow morning, hours before my flight to Peru.

And I thought I was traveling independentally...
More details to come upon induced worm labor, and tales of my hike to 16,000 feet today, partway up a large active volcanic glacier, Cotopaxi. Also, tales to come of several relaxing days spent at a hacienda in the Andes near Laguna Mojanda, site of a very convoluted trailess hike to 14,000 feet.

Ecuadorian Escapades

Buenos del Otavalo, Ecuador!

I´ve just arrived in this high Andean town at 8:30am this morning, after having left the Amazon yesterday. From our camp in the remote Cuyabeno Reserve, my journey back to a population center entailed a two hour motorized canoe ride, a four hour ride down a ¨road¨ (aka consecutive holes of varying sizes in dirt), an hour break for dinner in Lago Agrio (¨get in-get out¨ town that is the locus for oil excavation in the Ecuadorian Amazon), eight hours in another bus, transferring in Quito to another three hours bus to HERE. I´ll enjoy the next several days amongst 13000ft. plus Andean peaks, mountain lakes and volcanoes of varying levels of activity.

Highlights since the last blog:

-Scuba certification complete in Bocas del Toro, followed by a proper evening celebration with the British dive team and a crew of intriguing film producers staying at my place that had been scouting locations for their upcoming film about a senior in high school that decides to travel for the summer after graduation and keeps on traveling...for ten years. I promise I´ll come home...eventually. The evening ended at a place that could never exist from a liability standpoint in the US...a bar with a very narrow wooden walkway over the ocean encircling a shipwreck - sans guardrails. The wreck was lit up via underwater lights and many fish were on the scene. It was not uncommon for people trying to pass each other to accidentally fall into the ocean. And some climbed up on tall poles and dove right on in...Madness.

-A final night in Panama City under the fine tutelage of Annie McGrath and Company prior to having to depart my hotel at 4:15 am for an early morning flight to Quito.

-I had a couple very good days in Quito, investigating the Old City and surrounding evirons. If I had not known, I would not have suspected that a coup had taken place a week prior to my arrival - normalcy had returned. The city has a very vibrant nightlife which I enjoyed with new pals met at my place of lodging.

-A four day excursion to the Amazon has definitely been a trip highlight. I joined with two Poles and two French-Canadians to explore the Ecuadorian jungle, replete with an excellent guide-magician, canoe driver and chef. Our camp was on the River Napo - several small huts served with side of complimentary pets such as tarantulas, other large spiders and humongous cockroaches. I´ll post severaly shots of humongous tarantulas upon my next photo upload!

--Our guide was from one of the local Amazon communities and could literally weave baskets out of tree bark. He was a jungle AD that had us eating ¨lemon ants¨(yes, we all actually tasted these ants and they tasted like citrus), tasting natural Philip´s MOM - sap from a tree with anti-diarrheal properties, touching some other stinging nettle flower to warm our blood and remove cramps, etc. The indigenous communities of the Amazon have been tapping into their natural resources to heal ailments and promote wellness for an eternity; the drug companies are now starting to research and extract these elements for a coming wave of Amazon drugs.

-Luis, our guide, truly spared no personal expense to educate us, including allowing a humongous ant to continually bite his arm (the ant is known as the ¨anesthesiologist¨ of the Amazon, as the area it bites goes numb, and people will put these ants on an affected part of someone before cutting into it), letting a blue Amazon cicada fly inside his mouth, climbing a tree to wake a sleeping sloth, and on and on and on...Guide cum Magician.

-Bird, mammal, reptile and insect count continued to climb, adding such notables to the list as the big black ¨Sake Monkey¨, aforementioned spiders, caiman (alligator family - camp was crawling with them at night), macaw, pink freshwater river dolphins, WATSON (wait till you see this bird, Watson, it is surely a relative), various small species of frog grooving together in a cave with a small pic, pirranha (fished for them and enjoyed the catch for dinner one night), perfume ants (rubbed all over the body by Amazon hunters to change their smell so prey do not know they are approaching), and on and on.....

-Most back home will be pleased to know that I passed on consuming the extract of the huascaya vine. As Luis noted when presenting the opportunity, ¨The vine will help you see your future, past and lots of other things but you will likely lose control of your peeing and bowel and maybe puking lots...¨ Hmmm...I was in need of a laundry run and running low on underwear, so I could not spare a pair to see the future - this earned me a slight demotion to Sachawombra (Jungleboy in local tongue) from Sachamonga (Jungleman).

-It was excellent to be so far out that one could only use a canoe to travel from river island to river island. One could patent the sounds one falls asleep to beneath the mosquito net for the next Sharper Image Sound Machine version release - a mix of tree frogs, caiman splashing in the water, Amazon cicadas, an occasional pitter patter of tapir (large wild jungle boar) and night birds.

--And now, on to explore more of Otavalo in the pre-Saturday calm of one of the largest indigenous craft markets in South America.

Norteno Briefing

Nantoori (Ngobe greeting) from Bocas del Tor0-
One more day left (tomorrow) of scuba training and then I´ll be certified by tomorrow afternoon! Today we dove an old ship wreck. Plenty of coral and fine fish around for observation. All is going well - only points for improvement necessary are for my right ear to behave and better equalize similar to the left ear - and for those who know the Croan knees, this will come as a shock - instead of keeping them locked (as typical when standing or receiving adjustment), I want to now bend them while kicking. Figures....
I believe that I am currently the Offendor of this Internet Cafe, in bad need of a shower post-scuba and a bike ride along the coast, but for all the time I was offended - this is payback!

Here are some notes on Norteno (Ngobe community Peace Corps experience); (hmmm...no colon on this keyboard - only semi-colon - please bear through some lacking finer points of punctuation)--

-Upon taking the twin-prop to the nearest town, not only is the weight of your items required, but yours as well - it is a fine balance on this plane.
-Saw ´´ún gato de agua¨ on the way - appeared to be some kind of river otter - this mammal has now joined the list I´m updating to include: (found colon disguised on keyboard as a quotation mark...hmmm...) Geoffrey´s tamarind, white faced capuchin (another monkey-bringing the monkey total to 3 species), 3 toed sloth (joins the 2 toed sloth seen previously for total slothmania), a jungle hare and some red tailed squirrels.
-Although Annie and I had no idea what each other looked like (I was only given directions to get off the bus, follow the river upstream for 20 minutes, cross a bridge and ask at the store) - there was no need for ¨I have a goatee and brown hair and will be wearing orange¨ - recognition was instantaneous as neither of us had very dark-brown skin - thus it was easy amongst a community of 1000 to find each other!
-Upon walking together through ´´downtown Norteno´´ (the schoolhouse, field, and artesenia region) toward her thatch roof cabana on a hill, we were greeted by: dogs, cats, goats, pigs, chickens, roosters, hens, lizards and the friendly people always curiously questioning my identity and relation to Annie (some believed I was her father - indicative of the fact that they start popping them out young and I´m quite late in the game - people above 20 without kids are perceived as potentially infertile or who knows what else).
-I learned the importance of always examining crevices or other areas of the house prior to putting my hand there, and shaking out textiles to ensure I did not get stung by a scorpion. The mosquito net wrapped around my thermarest dangling from the ceiling at night protected against them and many other undesirable sleeping companions.
-Given my constant and copious water consumption, I must have drained a whole thunderstorm given the water supply came from a rain water collection tank that Annie assembled (local water from the aquaduct was not to be trusted as all villagers drinking it had worms and parasites of one type or another). Annie, an ingenious sustenance chef, served up fine corn flakes, cinnamon and raisins in the morning, replete with rainwater powdered milk - perfecto! As I left, the water supply was pretty kicked, the result of the neighboring family ¨borrowing¨ almost the entirety of her remaining stash. While it has not yet rained in Boca - I´m doing a rain dance for Norteno so your water supply will refill sans worms.
-Box wine is back! I was amazed to be served wine at dinner, another result of the fabulous chef, this litre box of ¨Clos¨ (dubbed ¨close¨ as in ¨close to real wine¨) was a surprisingly tasty Chilean Cab that paired very well with Tuna Madness - a unique Bocas Peace Corps recipe that allows one to mix in anything available to create - and if any ingredients are not available - it stands on its own without!
-Annie is doing fabulous work in this community and was truly revered by all I met. They´ll miss her tremendously when her tour of duty ends this Summer. Many cute kids - I´ll post pictures the next opportunity I have.
-Annie - I saw an article in the Bocas town English-language monthly newsletter about the composting latrine you and the Corps built behind your house and in the indigenous communities - there´s even a picture of one and I swear it is yours - looks like an older neighbor and young child posing in the shot!

That´s today´s report - Now off to become a non-Offendor and perhaps eat some more octopus or conch (has excellent grilled conch last night).

-Adan de Panama

Annie and Annie - Bocas Del Toro

Friends and family, I've now landed in Bocas del Toro, Panama, but only have 10 minutes to type as the internet cafe will soon close. However, I wanted to drop a brief note about what is to come and what has occurred. Coming: I begin a 3 day PADI scuba certification tomorrow in this gorgeous island archipelago - I'm very excited. Occurred: -Kevin and Vero - thank you for hooking me up with the fine Annie McGrath. Annie was most kind and invited me out to celebrate her 25th birthday with her and her friends on my one night in Panama City. As a result, they kept ME out until 5am. Crazy Panamanians!!! We first frequented the most bizarre Bennigan's I've ever seen, replete with a humongous bar and upstairs VIP room. Then on to a club, "NEXT," where we enjoyed a Panamanian trademark varietal mix of House, Merengue, Rock, Hits from the 50s, Salsa, Trance and I have no clue what else. After each song, it was a complete surprise what would be mixed in yet. -Bud and Helen - Thanks for hooking me up with Annie Sawner. The scavenger hunt to find this Peace Corps volunteer in the middle of a rainforest, in the middle of an indigenous community of Ngobe-Bugle "native Panamanians," in the middle of nowhere (great) with no electricity or water (we drank rainwater) - took me for an hour plane ride, a 10 minute cab ride, a two hour bus ride and a half-hour hike with all my crap into a very beautiful place. This was an amazing experience and well worth the 24 hours in another world. I'll need to create another blog entry on this as the cafe is now closing and there is much to report - so, check back in the next couple of days.