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Hitchhiking: Part I

     It's been a while. I'm currently sitting in Rio Grande, a small city on Tierra del Fuego; having just come from Ushuaia, I'm taking a couple days to relax, recover, and take advantage of some sweet, sweet internet time. I'd like to apologize for the lapse in updates: I've been keeping up with the writing, but it's been difficult to upload pictures on the road. This post won't cover everything up to the present date, but hopefully it will fill in some of the gaps and leave you with a decent enough sense of just what I've been up to.

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            After four months, twice the time I had originally planned but half of what felt sufficient, my time in Coyhaique had finally ended. Every day it felt like I learned twice as much as the day before it, and that the next day there was something new to be done. I became lost in the development of their projects, and time slipped away from me.

Planting carrots

But what exactly did we do on the farm? My last description was a bit incomplete. To call it a “farm” is a bit inaccurate; it was a form of subsistence farming, but even so, that seems to imply that they grow crops for survival. A better word would be “project,” a project in permaculture, and wasn’t just in the food. The entire idea behind it was to create a lifestyle with 100% organic self-dependency; that from the ground up, every aspect of their lives be organic, home grown, or hand-made; that they could remove themselves from industrialized food, tools, building materials…everything.

Made entirely from recycled and organic materials

             The project is a generation old: it was started by a group of people, among them Martín’s mother and father, who bought the land and planted the first trees, hundreds of them, resulting in a forest which now envelops the property on the fringe of town. Nowadays those first few have other work going on—when they were just starting out they couldn’t manage much without an income, and so are still “in the system”— but still live on the property in houses built, like all the structures there, with organic or recycled materials, and help out when they can. Martín and Paz are the real jewels of the project: with a field of pine trees, ample planting ground, and experts all around them, they’ve had an ideal space to cultivate the life they live now, and are constantly working to achieve that original goal of complete self-sustainability, always starting new projects and improving old ones.

            That work, for the most part, covers two main aspects of life: food and shelter. Though the food is a large, complicated process, the idea is to eliminate dependence on industrial production, and at this point the nearly all of their vegetables and many of their fruits are grown in their massive garden. At least five times the size of the house, it’s sown with seeds that were carefully cultivated over generations, traded with other organic farming projects, and fertilized with homemade mulch. That mulch is a compost made from their garden plants, their own discarded food scraps, and manure from their horse and her foal, constantly grazing lazily in the field, bought and cared for communally for just the purpose. Water comes from a stream uphill, run through a giant tube straight to their taps. All of this requires constant upkeep: the plants need careful, individualized care, from the first preparation of their beds to the harvesting of their fruit and seeds, and as diversity is key with so much depending on the season and climate, the work was never boring. As for shelter, every structure on the property is made from organic materials: the frames are constructed from the trunks of those original pine trees, the walls carefully molded with mud and recycled bottles and cans, and the roofs raised from grass lain on recycled plastic. In addition to their actual homes, other examples include a community hall used for meetings and classes, a tiny sauna, and a camp ground complete with showers, bathrooms, and a shelter for cooking. Between all these projects and day-to-day tasks such as caring for animals and fixing the odd broken fence, I was left with plenty to do.

Making mulch

Martín working outside the "community hall"

   Mingalegre, as I learned the project is called, is true to its namesake. Though I’ve struggled to find a direct definition or translation in English, the word “minga” in Spanish has to do with community effort: people coming together to do a job or project, saving time and energy and exchanging knowledge in the process. Martín and Paz embody this idea. Besides accepting volunteers (which is obviously the reason you’re reading about this), they were constantly teaching workshops and classes—both around the region and within their own garden—and organizing meetings and reunions with people from all over Patagonia in order to spread knowledge, sow the permacultural spirit, and establish and grow the network of like-minded people. By the end of my time there I got to know quite a few people who worked in permaculture, and in my travels I’m constantly surprised to find that people know of Mingalegre—sometimes by name, sometimes by description, and sometimes just by the people living there. More than once I’ve discussed the half-famous “hippies” (same in Spanish) living in mud houses on the edge of Coyhaique, and every so often I’ll find the odd picture in a magazine or news article.

Teaching a workshop

Mingalegre, fully functional

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            As difficult as it was to leave, while in Coyhaique I had contacted a man in Tierra del Fuego about volunteering on his sheep farm, and we agreed that the job was to start the first week of January. So, with that destination in mind, I packed my things and left Mingalegre, walking to the edge of town. There was a lot of road between me and Tierra del Fuego, and my only means of covering it was hitchhiking. Luckily, I was quickly picked up by a local construction worker, and from then on it was nothing but freedom.

            Villa Cerro Castillo was my first stop, named for the famous National Reserve whose hiking trail and titular peak are located nearby. I spent the night in town and set out the next day on my hike. The reserve was gorgeous. The trail cut through a forest of lenga set on a steady incline, and after a few hours I was surrounded by intimidating peaks, jagged rock encrusted with glacial ice. I spent two days there. Day one was a light, winding climb through the forest. It was magical. Day two I started the real ascent, during which the trail gave way to the steep, rocky, ambiguous scramble the reserve is famous for. Where the first day I was treated to a smooth, distinct dirt trail that snaked through the forest, the second was more of a scavenge, spent poking my way from one vague landmark to the next, each further, sketchier, and more difficult to spot than the last. By the time I had reached the top, the ground had changed from dirt and sand to a bed of loose, sharp rocks, and the wind often threatened to knock me over. The view from the top, though, was worth it. Cerro Castillo is a landmark, a jagged, spindly peak that supports a glacier, perched high above its very own glacial lake. I skirted the edge of the massive formation and headed back down, ending up in the village once again. From there, it was one more night of rest and hot food before I was back on the road.

            My next destination was Lago General Carrera, where I needed to cross the border at a town called Chile Chico; for that, I had to take a boat from Puerto Ibañez, so I set my sights for there. Hitchhiking is easy out here in the country, always interesting and often a treat. You never know who you’ll meet. As I waited for a ride from Villa Cerro Castillo, some workers stopped to talk with me, intrigued by my guitar.

            Puerto Ibañez proved to be a quiet, boring little town, as did Chile Chico and Los Antiguos after it, but the boat ride between them was fun, as was the walk between Chile Chico and Los Antiguos. After a quiet weekend of border hopping, I was in Chile Chico with a fresh visa, looking to head to Cochrane. Chile Chico is a bit off the beaten path, and the only route back to the main highway is a tiny gravel road, threaded through the hills that border the lake. After waiting hours by the side of the road in Chile Chico, I was finally picked up, along with a group of Israeli backpackers going the same way, by a firewood truck returning from a day’s worth of deliveries in Chile Chico. We piled into the bed of the now empty truck and soon were bouncing along the rough road, which wound around hills and through the spaces between them, rising and falling, the lake constantly in view. Across the marble blue waters glowed massive, snowy Andean peaks, pale blue in the waning sunlight and reflected vaguely in the water where the glare from the sun outshone them. We had front-row seats to one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen. The Israelis got much better pictures than I did, but that didn’t stop me from trying.

             Unfortunately, the leñador could only take us halfway, to a village between Chile Chico and the highway, so we were stuck for the night. The tiny town didn’t have much in the way of supplies and was devoid of hostels, so I spent the night camping by the side of the road with the Israelis, chatting about cultural differences, life goals, travel plans, and whatever else people talk about. The next morning we were up bright and early, and soon we were picked up by another friendly trucker who brought us to the crossing. The Israelis, heading north, were soon picked up by yet another supply truck, and with a wave and a shout were gone forever. Such is the road. I didn’t have such luck and had to wait a while longer, but a few hours later a bus passed me by headed for my destination: Cochrane.

            Yet another focal point along the winding Carretera Austral, Cochrane is a tiny city of less than 5000 inhabitants, nestled, like many other cities I’ve written about before it, among the Andes. From the town square one can see green hills and snowy peaks. Cochrane is especially quiet, and the people are extraordinarily friendly, down-to-earth, and peaceful. I enjoyed my stay there very much: that evening I checked into a campsite and found myself chatting with a German biker for hours. There are bikers everywhere along the Carretera. The next day I had a relaxing day hiking around the local reserve, which was set alongside a river of the purest, bluest water I’ve ever seen.

            Taking the advice of a friend from Coyhaique, the following day I decided to head to a bigger reserve in Valle Chacabuco. Preparing for a two-day hike, I bought some food (mostly cookies, bread, and avocado, the staples of my diet for…the entire month) and headed to the road, looking for a ride. I couldn’t have been luckier: within minutes I was picked up by the park owners, on their way back after a supply run. Not only did they give me a ride, a map, and some tips about the trail, but they also showed me around their fancy organic garden, gave me a place to store my guitar (thankfully), and gave me some chocolate for the road. Super nice guys. That night I set out for the trail, my load significantly lightened.

            The park turned out to be awesome. I spent three relaxing days wandering around and hiking at a cool pace. I slept in a forest and by the side of a lagoon. I spent a day off the beaten path, following tangled animal paths and scrambling up grassy hillsides towards a nearby hilltop. I took lots of bad pictures of guanacos, and I saw a Condor. Hiking alone is cool.

Lenga trees

Prime real estate

            From Cochrane my next destination was Caleta Tortél, and once again, hitchhiking made things far more interesting than I could have expected. As I walked to the edge of town, I passed a man waiting by the side of the road, with nothing but a small backpack and a massive bag of dog food. I sat with him for a few moments and we got to chatting; he told me he was from Tortél, that he had come north to buy food for his dogs—tremendous beasts, he showed me pictures—and that he was now on his way back. He didn’t own a vehicle, and didn’t see the point of paying for a bus when people would take you for free, so there he was. I sat with him for a bit, but soon felt I had to be on my way. The hitchhiker’s code dictates that you leave a traveler to his spot, and find your own. I wished him luck and continued down the road.

            It wasn’t long before a firewood truck offered to take me to the nearest intersection a few kilometers away, but from there I still had nearly 60 kilometers to go, and the sun was getting steadily lower in the sky, so I took out my guitar, hoping for a miracle. I hadn’t sat there for more than 5 minutes, however, when the man from the side of the road appeared and approached me, smiling. We sat together and chatted some more: he told me he had traveled the world for ten years as I was doing, with all his possessions on his back. I began to worry about the sinking sun, but just as I began considering the extra space in my tent a lonely little truck pulled up and offered us a ride. With our things in the back and the three of us piled in the cab, we set off. The truck was owned by a single driver, who used it for his own private business. We talked about the region, about work, about life and the universe. The usual. We passed lakes and mountains, and the gravel highway barreled through the ever-thickening foliage—we were truly entering deep Patagonia. It was a good drive.

            After a few hours of driving, we pulled over in the last minutes of the day’s sunlight. We had arrived at the man’s house; he offered to let us spend the night so we could try to catch a ride the next day in the morning. He was a wonderful host: he fed us and offered us beer. He asked us about our lives and ambitions, and told us of his. We had a great night, and just before retiring for bed the man from Tortél told me to find him when I got there. The next day, I woke up to the sound of passing cars, and found he had already gone. It wasn’t long before I was picked up by a couple of students from California who offered me a space in the bed of their pickup.

            Turns out being in the back of a truck is the way to travel. With my back to the window, I watched as the narrow gravel road snaked away behind me, disappearing behind towering cliff sides and thick vegetation: flourishing ferns, leafy bushes, pines, and the giant cypress that the region is famous for towering above it all. The road flowed through rivers and around lakes, and every so often we would pass a shelter with smoke billowing from the chimney, or a campesino with his herd of cows.

            Once we pulled into town, I walked with the couple who were nice enough to take me. They were ecology students, and told me that the climate in this area is technically high altitude rainforest. The only place in the world this type of climate exists is in Washington state. Pretty neat! As we walked, it became quickly apparent that what they said was true. Caleta Tortél is built on a series of wooden walkways which border the river, walkways which are constantly invaded by a diverse range of vegetation. It is a beautiful town.

The backend of Tortél's walkways, in the thick of the rainforest

            I searched for a while for somewhere to stay, but quickly remembered what the hitchhiker told me. I knew he worked with wood making figurines, trinkets, and other artisanal whatnots, I knew he had a shop in town, and I knew he was relatively well known by the name Chino. I set about asking people where to find him, and soon found myself at his house. It was nearly Christmas, so he and a friend were butchering a lamb as I arrived. He was truly Patagonian. We ate well that night. I spent the night on the floor of his workshop, with his giant dogs.

            Even though it was wet and rainy the next day, I spent the morning exploring the town, trying to get lost in the twisty network of walkways that climbed the hills surrounding the lake. That night Chino invited me to a friend’s place to share Christmas Eve dinner. It was a supremely nice gesture, and seeing as there are less than 700 people in the town in total, everyone knows everyone, so it was a pretty good party. Once again, we ate lamb.

            The next day I said my goodbyes and headed out for the road again. Someone gave me a ride to the intersection, again in the back of a pickup. The wind was blowing in my face as I watched the town shrink away. I spent Christmas waiting for a ride to the last stop on the Carretera: Villa O’Higgins. Christmas cheer was in short supply this year, apparently, as I didn’t get picked up until the next day. Hitchhiking is funny: if you spend one minute cursing humanity for ignoring you, you spend the next thanking it for being so kind and interesting. In the end, I made it to Villa O’Higgins just fine.

            Being the last stop on the Chilean side of the highway, my next job was to locate the ferry agency and buy passage across the lake, and then to wait until the fateful morning. Villa O’Higgins is tiny, tinier than any other town I had been to, and there wasn’t a lot going on, but I spent a couple days with a Swedish couple who were waiting for the same boat as I was. We chatted about travel and life and stuff. The boat ride itself was beautiful, three hours of choppy, icy blue glacial waters surrounded by pristine mountains, but I was too tired to take much notice.

            The landing was much more interesting than the voyage, however, because from here began my journey across the border: a 22 kilometer trek through forests, mountains, and muddy swamp. The first 15 km or so were on a lovely gravel road, surrounded by mountany forest, but in an instant the gravel abruptly ended and was replaced by a narrow, wet, muddy, bicycle tire marked foot trail. I followed the trail as best I could as it weaved between trees, crisscrossed rivers, cut through flooded meadows, and generally tried to throw me off as much as possible. After following what turned out to be an animal trail for nearly an hour, I gave up for the day and set up camp, but early the next day I awoke determined to find the end, and soon after I was greeted to the welcoming site of Fitz Roy looming in the distance. I was nearly there, and finally had a landmark to guide me.

24 km to go

In the middle of nowhere

A most tricky trail

A very, very welcome sight

Very tricky indeed

            After checking in to the country at the Army base, I took another boat across a different lake and caught a ride into town. The hike to Fitz Roy turned out to be more or less a day hike, but I took my time and enjoyed it all the same. Lenga forests had become par for the course at this point, but I was treated to some fresh views of valleys and a truly impressive peak.

            After El Chaltén was El Calafate; I got a ride from an airport taxi driver with a soft spot for hitchhikers. We got along great. El Calafate was pretty boring, but I was able to make a fire and cook some hamburgers, a welcome change after weeks of raw veggies and bread. From El Calafate the destination was Puerto Natales; a nearly fruitless day of standing beside the road eventually yielded a friendly van driver who took me the entire 300-something kilometers, including the border crossing, which is generally a no-no. We discussed all the usual topics, but it’s always nice to get a fresh take on things.

            Just as soon as it had started, I was back in Puerto Natales, almost exactly a year after I had been there last. It was as beautiful as ever, dark and windy despite it’s 16 hour days.  I spent a night there and booked a bus to Punta Arenas, where I would meet my next host and begin the next phase of my trip. As glad as I was to have a bed and homemade food, I was sad for the lost of freedom that only the open road can afford. But at last, my back was to take a rest, and for that I was thankful.

I sit now in picturesque Coyhaique, in the 11^th region of Chile—very nearly the bottom of the continent. For the past month, I’ve been living with a family here, helping them with building their homes and lives. I’m surrounded by mountains and (mostly) clean air. The people are kind, hard-working, and enjoy the simple things. Life is good. Although Coyhaique is the largest city along the Carretera Austral, an in-the-works highway that connects nearly the entire southern half of the country, it still measures in with a population of less than 50,000 citizens living in modest homes. I can see the entire stretch of the town from the window of the house I where I live and volunteer.

I found the position through WWOOF, the World-Wide Organization of Organic Farming, and things here are definitely organic. I live with Magdalena, a cello teacher at the local middle school (or Chilean equivalent), and her niece Daniela in a house she and her late husband built together from scratch years ago, and work with her son, Martín, who is currently building his own house just up the road in the same manner and living in the half-finished work with his girlfriend, Paz, and their two-year-old daughter. The homes are located in a field on a hill just above the tiny town co-owned by Magda, Martín, and some of the neighbors. Everyone here built their home from the ground up, but while Magdalena’s is a complete work with two stories, kitchen, living room, guest rooms, and huge wall-sized windows showing off the views of the mountains in the background, Martín’s one-room home has a grass roof and clay walls inset all over with recycled bottles. In the area around the house they grow medicinal herbs, fruit trees and bushes such as blueberry, root vegetables such as carrots and potatoes, and raise chickens chickens. They also co-own a horse and her foal with the neighbors. The trees that grow on the surrounding hills were all planted within the past thirty years by the people still here now. They plan to use the space to build a school when they have the resources.

My work with them is generally helping with things around the property. The first week we spent building a new chicken coop, and since then I’ve worked with Martín on various projects around the house including finishing some of the woodwork and laying a cement floor on his porch. I’ve spent a lot of time planting, moving, and maintaining plants. The shovel is my main tool. There’s a saying here in Patagonia: “he who hurries wastes time,” and it definitely sets the pace of the work. Things take as long as they take, and because of the lifestyle waiting is a big part of the work. We moved the chickens, for example, because they were being used to root up and clear the land where they were previously. Though I’m not sure their main source of income, as Martín is a mountain guide on the side and Paz makes and sells homemade soaps, it is definitely a form of subsistence farming: producing enough for yourself, just to keep the bills down, and expanding when you accumulate the space and resources. Right now they’re trying to develop a campsite for tourists, but it’s still in the works.

 Coyhaique is a quirky town, full of quirky people, but from the moment I got here everyone was welcoming, and even though at this point I feel fully assimilated and acclimated, their demeanor hasn’t changed. We eat lunch together nearly every day; sometimes the neighbors come to share. Everyone does their part, whether it be cooking, cleaning, or the work outside, and there’s no shortage of conversation and mate. People are not strangers to the concept of a volunteer, it seems, and are more than inviting. Martín’s mountain guide friends are polite and silly, and we’ve shared our fair share of nights drinking cheap beer and having asados. Last week they took me snowshoeing. It was beautiful. Magdalena does more than her fair share to make me feel at home. Between her job as a music teacher and her work doing historical research, she’s very involved in the cultural upkeep of the community, and is always willing to impart wisdom. Last week she took me to a University orchestral concert, and she loves listening to new music and is interested in hearing about different artistic pursuits. We have a lot of fun. The neighbors, too, are friendly and engaging, eager to share knowledge and cultural experiences.

Suffice it to say I’m doing just fine here. Working so close to the ground is refreshing and eye-opening. It’s going to be hard to leave it. I still have another month or so here, and will be sure to report on its happenings. And although I have to apologize for not having a camera, I’ll be sure to borrow one and get some pictures before I go. In the meantime, since my last writing I have taken a trip that defied my expectations and changed my worldview. I wrote a long and detailed account in the weeks immediately after the trip. It awaits below.

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If ever you’ve found yourself wondering, as Paul, Alex, and I did, whether time moves faster when you’re doing more or when you’re doing less, the surprising answer we found was  definitively more. Directly after my last entry, I got in a cab, went to the airport, two flights and 12 hours later I was landing in Lima, and it wasn’t long after that I met up with Paul and Alex. From that moment onward we were three, and as nice as it was to sink back into the old family inside jokes, I think at that moment we were all lost inside our own heads, thinking about how unique this trip would be as an experience in our lives, both individually and in terms of our relationships with one another. None of us had ever done anything like this, and the only times we had ever really hung out together were at family gatherings. In a month and a half we covered more distance—and perhaps did more activities—than I did in an entire year and a half living abroad, and even so it feels that the same amount of time passed during our trip as it did during my life in Santiago. By day two it already felt like a month had passed, and of course, it kept going: in our travels we visited ten cities in three countries and traveled a distance of over 5,000 kilometers. And now I bend to the impossible task of describing it all.

Our first stop was Lima. We had a full day until we had to be moving on, and we spent it exploring. It turns out Lima is charming. It’s a coastal city, so the air is thick and smells like salt and fish. The people keep to their own business and move at their own pace but are very friendly. The food was something else. We ate at two restaurants: for lunch we ate at a small spot in the market district, which served us hot soup and a heaping plate of amazing chicken and fresh juice for I think less than $3 USD. Then for dinner we went to the fanciest restaurant in town (“it’s our first night, fuck it”) and had mango-glazed ceviche and a bottle of fine Peruvian wine. It was still less than $30USD per person. This was a good sign of what was to come for all things food-related. From Lima, we had six days to arrive in Cusco for our tour of Machu Picchu, so instead of figuring it all out ourselves we decided to pay a travel company to do it for us. They took us along the southern coast of Peru and then up to Cusco.

Our first stop was Paracas, a small coastal town where we took a boat tour to an island national reserve. We saw penguins and seals and starfish and many other seabirds. And guano. I’d done a similar tour before, in La Serena in Chile, but it was still neat-o. Then, not even stopping a night, we drove to Huacachina, a small town built around a literal desert oasis. Picture a desert, sandy and hilly with dunes, with nothing in sight but fine sand and blue sky. Now picture an oasis, a small source of water with palm trees and grass growing around it. If you’re afraid it’s too classic an image, good. That’s what we found at Huacachina. In the afternoon we took a buggy ride across the dunes that felt like a rollercoaster, tossed the Frisbee across the arid expanse, and shredded sand with sandboards. At night the hostel had a barbeque and party and we stayed up all night doing all sorts of cousinly bonding.

Desert Oasis 

 

The next day we were already off to our next (and final) destination of Cuzco, in a hellish bus ride that would take 27 hours. We stopped at some locales and tourist spots, first of which were the famous Nazca lines, but we spent just a quick sunset there. They had an observation tower from which you could see a couple of the figures etched into the ground. The area was surreal, a roadside stop with one of the most famous ancient pieces of art in the world. From Nazca we stopped in at a gas station for more dinner, lomo saltado, the best gas station food that any of us had ever had. At this point I was thinking about our first day’s culinary prophecy.

If you’ve never spent 27 hours on a tour bus, let me tell you that after a while, you begin to get a little bored and stiff, and eventually your sanity ebbs from your conscious mind. We tried to read and watch the bad movies they played for us and slept a lot in the somewhat comfortable bus seats. We made friends with the other passengers—most of which we never say again but some of which we crossed paths with much later in our trip—by joking about the quality of the seats and in-drive movies. And we looked out the window, which in a country as diverse and as mountainous as Peru, is endlessly entertaining. I would stomach a 72 hour bus ride in the back of a chicken truck just to look out at the passing landscapes. We drove through farming villages nestled in valleys and through the streets where children played soccer in the dirt and women in traditional dress carried heavy bags of produce on their backs. We wound up roads that clung to the sides of mountains and looked down on the sprawling plains of the Andean highlands. We passed through Arequipa in the south, a beautiful little town built at the base of a volcano, which loomed in the distance, and bought empanadas. We spent two hours broken down, high up in the snowy plains of the upper Andes, and mostly slept through that. And finally, we arrived in Cusco.

 

Cusco

One of the things that I realize as I try to describe our trip is that for most of it, every location was significantly stranger and more unique than the last. Cusco fit this bill perfectly. The streets were tight and busy and the buildings flat and wide and multiple stories tall. There was bustle of life and urban-ness, but the city is beautifully composed of a pallet of earthy tones and gold, and everywhere you looked you could feel tradition and history. And, as it’s nestled in a valley high up in the Peruvian Andes, look down any street, any alley, and you’re treated to red and green mountains dotted with smaller surrounding villages and touched by the sun. We got there a couple days early, opting out of a night’s stay in Aerquipa (hence the unnatural bus ride), and it turned out to be the correct choice. As beautiful as Cusco is, it’s also way the fuck up high, so the air is thin and poor in oxygen. Being oxygen-deprived feels oddly like being hungover, so our first night we decided to do the responsible thing and get roaring drunk. The double whammy altitude-hangover headache the next day was earth-shattering, but even so we shook it off by exploring the town, walking among the hilly and always-alive streets to see cathedrals and markets and to heal ourselves with traditional, straight-from-the-vine hot coco and the by now well-known sweet and savory powers of Peruvian cuisine.

Cusco

One of the stops in our cusqueña itinerary was to check in with our Machu Picchu tour. At the tour agency office we were introduced to our guide and the sole pair of travelers who would be our companions, a couple of friends from Long Island traveling together during their annual time off. That night, we five met at the agency’s hotel for a “briefing” on the next five days’ itinerary: we’d be hiking into the sacred valley, up and around the Salkantay glacier, and descending through high-altitude jungle to Aguas Calientes, a town at the base of the peak where Machu Picchu was discovered and from which we would organize our tour of the actual ruin. And so, at 7am the next day, we grabbed our things and headed back to the office where a van waited to take us to the trailhead. The drive there was gorgeous, passing through more farming villages on winding valley roads, and out the window children in school uniforms passed by livestock of goats and sheep and alpaca as we realized that this was a normal winter’s Tuesday morning in the middle of the school year. Behind them down the road the valley dropped and was gorgeous and in the distance we could see the sharp peak of the snowy white, menacing-looking Salkantay glacier.

Salkantay, Day One

Arriving at the trail, we set out the six of us: we three, the two L.I. girls, and our guide, Julio Cesar. That first day of hiking was pretty easy, partly because we didn’t have to walk very far (all things considered, at least: by the end of it we had trekked nearly 50 miles), but mostly because Cesar kept stopping us to give us tasty factoids about our surrounds, the geography, the trek, Incan culture, Andean culture, contemporary Peruvian culture…the guy was a trove of information. And, thankfully, he took good care of us. We started at high altitude, nearly 4000 meters, and for the first two days we climbed uphill, so we were sucking air pretty quickly. He gave us cacao leaves to chew on and had us sniff a special concentrated alcohol made from fermented flowers to open our nasal passages. Day one we arrived at our campsite in the early afternoon and went to see a nearby lagoon. We ate very well that night and every other. Part of our entourage was a cooking crew—a chef and porters—and a few horses to carried the tents, food, and a good deal of what would otherwise have been on our own backs. For every meal, the porters were ahead of us, setting up the tent and cookfire, and by the time we arrived at each locale the crew was busy at work, allowing us to sit at the table, chat, and drink cacao tea. It was an invaluable service and I can’t imagine doing it without them. Well, I can. But it was way better with their help.

Mateo, our equestrian hero

As I mentioned, the first two days we ascended, Salkantay was still ahead of us. The first night we slept near a ranch in the valley, the hills surrounding our campsite dotted with horses, and the next morning we set out at sunrise for the toughest part of the trek. This was steep vertical until our final height of 4600 meters, and it was hard, but suddenly and finally we were there at the highest point of the entire trek, and the glacier was taking up the entire sky at our backs, looming over us. After an exchange of high-fives, Cesar explained to us that the Incans believed mountains were sacred, and glaciers especially so; for this reason, Machu Picchu was surrounded in four compass directions by sacred peaks, all equidistant from the city. Salkantay was one of these. He led us in an offering of cacao leaves that we buried beneath a rock sculpture as an offering to Salkantay and Pachamama, (“Mother Earth” in Quechua, a term we would get to know well). Then he threw confetti in our hair, and as soon as we had arrived we were off down the hill and into the valleys. We passed through more ranches and tiny settlements until slowly but surely the rocks and thin grass surrounding us began turning to trees and bushes and lush plants. We had entered the high altitude jungle, and would remain there for the rest of the trek. As we walked, Cesar pointed out different types of plants—spider bamboo, passion fruit, strawberries—and told us to keep an eye out for condors, pumas, and Andean spotted bears.

We hiked for a day and a half down through the jungle and into the valley. Night three we ended up near a hot spring and took much-desired showers, and day four we joined up with the actual Inca trail and hiked back up and over one of the hilly peaks into the sacred valley. We passed through even more villages, even as high up as we were, where they grew and brewed coffee straight from the tree. As we walked we passed livestock: chickens, pigs, horses, and plenty of dogs. We passed people working, tilling grass and laying out coffee beans by hand in the sun to dry. After a grueling ascent, a couple stops—at a mountaintop fruit vendor and a set of ruins from which Machu Picchu was just barely visible—and an even tougher descent, we finally arrived at, of all places, a train station, which took us into the freaky tourist town of Aguas Calientes. We slept in beds and ate restaurant food, and prepared for our tour of the sacred ruins the next morning.

Julio Cesar, layin' down knowledge

Sacred ruins at the top of a hill, Day 4. This doorway apparently lined up with the Temple of Fire in the Citadel at Machu Picchu, but it was too far away to even see.

Aguas Calientes

At 5am on the fifth day, we woke up and took a bus up the hill into the citadel at Machu Picchu. The ruins themselves were more crowded than I thought, and looked…just about as they did in all the pictures, and taking a bus wasn’t exactly my idea of roughing it, but despite all this the experience was just about as magical as I had heard. The citadel, whose name was lost centuries ago, is framed by two mountain peaks: Machu Picchu, “old mountain” in Quechua, and Huaynapicchu, “young mountain.” Huaynapicchu is tall and thin, has stairs built into the ascent and a temple on top, and is a huge tourist attraction, We waited in line to get in and booked it up the stairs—which were almost too steep to even warrant the name “stairs”—to relax at the top, the entire citadel nestled cozily below us and the surrounding valley entirely in view, the sun just peeking through a gap in the adjacent mountaintops, and we watched the line of shade cross over the ruins as the sun rose. It was easy to tell why the Incans chose this place. After our descent—which we took on hands and feet, carefully planning each step, a wall of rock on our left and a sheer drop into the valley below us on our right—we met back up with Cesar and the girls. Cesar led us around and explained to us exactly why the Incans chose this place, and it wasn’t just for the pretty sunrise—in addition to being surrounded by glaciers, the Incans built temples all throughout the valley which lined up perfectly with temples within the citadel. The sun passes through one such temple—the Sun Gate at the peak of Machu Picchu—crosses the valley, and enters the window of a temple in the citadel, every year on the summer solstice. The Incans used the Sun Gate to guage when to begin their harvest, or begin planting, or something like that. Temples like the one we had visited the day before were apparently scattered throughout the valley; the principle doorway of the one we passed lined up exactly with another temple’s window. The place was positively full of features like this, and every single aspect of its design was a piece of history; as I can’t possibly describe them all, I’d recommend finding a book on it. The place was fascinating.

 

As fascinating as it was, though, we eventually had to head back, and so that evening we got back on the train and took it all the way back to Cusco. The next couple days were spent eating at the restaurants we had missed, exploring the last hidden corners of Cusco, and, most of all, relaxing—we had just hiked 50 miles. And finally, after booking an overnight bus and exchanging the last of our cash, we were off for the Bolivian border, done with the Peruvian leg of our trip.

It took us nearly twelve hours and two buses to get to Copacabana, but we finally arrived at the lakeside town. As soon as we crossed the border—even as we approached it—it was apparent that Bolivia would be different than Peru. I have the following description of our first day in my travel notes:

First three impressions of Bolivia: 1) Almost getting hustled at the bus station for needing more documents than we had at the border, but then getting taken care of by an employee of the bus company; 2) hearing all about complicated border procedures, but then printing out and handing over a bunch of useless documents (that we were offered to fake) to the most apathetic border control officer I’ve ever met; and 3) buying bus tickets and a boat passage from an incredibly helpful woman in the tourist office, scrambling to find our boat at the docks, being informed—as we see other boats shipping off—that it was too dangerous to sail because of the weather, then having our money refunded at the tourist agency, at which point they called a cab and took us to a different part of the coast where we could boat across a much shorter distance. We made it to the island for what was supposed to be half after the refund but ended up being double.

So we had arrived in Bolivia. Everything we had encountered in Peru was taken to its extreme here: the infrastructure didn’t always make sense, the people were friendly but not always successful in their aims to help, problems appeared out of nowhere for no reason, and everything was dirt cheap.

Trying to make sense of it all

And everything was absolutely beautiful. From the moment we crossed the border we were greeted by golden hills upon golden hills. Soon we rolled into Copacabana on the banks of Lake Titicaca, whose waters glistened constantly. The lake is the highest navigable lake in the world—a fact which took us a while to wrap our heads around (“it’s the highest…big lake…no, it’s the biggest highest…body of water…this seems like a vague set of criteria”)—and the Inca believed it was the birthplace of the sun, which honestly, having seen it, makes a lot of sense. In the center is 15 kilometer long Isla del Sol. The island is an odd community of indigenous people— according to wikipedia, just 800 families. There are no paved roads or motor vehicles, and most of the economy is based around agriculture and tourism. We spent three very chill days hiking around, eating, and relaxing by the bejeweled lake.

Showdown!

 After we’d had our fill of beaches vibes we booked passage back to Copacabana and caught a bus to La Paz. Again, the Bolivian countryside didn’t disappoint. The looping mountain roads that led us out of Copacabana brought us up and out of the basin of the lake and across sun-kissed countryside covered in yellow grass. As we drove the land became slowly more urban, but when I say slowly, I mean it. At first, we saw maybe one small, brick building every five minutes, with a family working the land and sheep and alpaca grazing nearby. After an hour or so, it was more like five buildings a minute. Soon we were passing through ramshackle towns filled with two story buildings of cheap bricks (that’s not just a statement; I saw a sign advertising the reduced price) and tin roofing. The road turned to gravel and our bus slowed to a crawl. And then, just after we joined up with the new highway, we mounted a ridge and below us was La Paz, huge and crazy and beautiful and ugly all at once.

La Paz

La Paz, like Cusco, is built in a dip in the Andes range, with mountains surrounding it. But the former—the highest capital city in the world and higher than it’s Peruvian counterpart—is much bigger, and the bowl it’s built in is much more dramatic. Houses are etched all the way up to the rim, and in the background looms a massive volcano. It’s impressive, and incredibly unique. The entire city is composed of the two-and-a-half story, seemingly half-finished buildings that we came to know on the drive in. The streets are winding and dirty and the cars move at a pace only known in South America.

I’d like to note here two anecdotes on that final point. The first: Julio Cesar told us a story about a Peruvian man who lived in the U.S. who was in involved in a massive multi-car pileup an interstate highway. When the car that started the incident veered across the road, dozens of cars behind were caught up in the accident, but this man was able to weave through the danger and find a safe path to the empty stretch of highway beyond. When asked in a radio interview how he managed to escape, he simply said: “I grew up in Lima.” Well, the roads in La Paz were crazier, and their drivers more skilled. The second: At the end of our stay in the city, we found ourselves running late to the bus station (that happened to us a lot) during rush hour. When we finally hailed a cab and were on our way to the station, I asked the driver whether we would make it in time. He simply replied, “we’ll find out” kicked his little taxi into gear, weaved through two cars stopped in an intersection, and powered his way up a hill. He bobbed and cut people off and honked and threaded his way through traffic jams. We made it in time. He quickly won our title of “cab driver of the trip.”

As hectic as it is, there’s not much to do in La Paz, so we spent most of our time there secluded in our hostel nursing hangovers, but we did get into some interesting adventures. The first day we went exploring. Built as it is, to dig underground train tunnels would probably collapse the entire thing, and so instead the city opted to fund a gondola system, which seemed to be half tourist attraction and half public transport: especially during rush hour, most of the people we shared cars with had their business clothes on and earbuds in. We took the thing to the end of the line and had lunch in the ritzier part of town. The second day we made friends with some Australian guests and went to one of the most bizarre cultural displays I’ve ever seen.

Before I detail this part of the story, some cultural context is necessary. In Bolivia, there is a traditional garb for women, passed down through the generations from mother to daughter. Known as cholitas, these women with braided hair, multi-layered skirts and ill-fitting bowler hats walk the streets in abundance selling their hand-crafted textiles. The event our Aussie friends brought us to is known as “The Fighting Cholitas,” and it’s not far from what it sounds. We bought tickets to the event at the hostel and hopped on a bus which took us to what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse, with stadium-style seating set up on either side of makeshift wrestling ring. At first it was all men dressed in classic lucho libre fashion performing incredible flips and tackles, the refs handing in chairs and holding favored fighters down for a sucker punch, but eventually two cholitas walked out and began to have at it in the same fashion. Then two more, then two more…throughout the event, people were throwing popcorn and fruit, the Bolivians in the stands were going absolutely crazy (I have a distinct memory of one particularly invested older woman standing and shouting vulgarities), and one of the Australians tried to get into the ring. He didn’t succeed but did manage to slap the ref in the face.

Additional picture and video available upon request

Knowing we couldn’t top that event, but knowing that we had a full week before we had to be in Uyuni, we spent the next few days hanging about and organizing a side trip. We ended up running into a couple of friends from our bus ride from hell who clued us into their plans: a guided tour in the small nearby town of Rurrenabaque. We decided to join them and booked everything together from the hostel. It turned out to be a highlight of the trip. Go improvising. The girls we went with were a couple of British university students vacationing abroad. They were a lovely pair.

Due in part to the local geography and probably in larger part to the poor development of Bolivian road infrastructure, Rurrenabaque is twenty-one hours from La Paz by bus or fifty minutes by plane, so, once again five, we headed to the airport and hopped on the smallest airplane I have ever been on for our flight. Again owing to the geography, this flight took us nearer to the side of a mountain I have ever been without hiking and, I guess due to fluctuacting air pressure or something, had turbulence so bad you could feel your stomach drop. Alex and I had a lot of fun, as did one of the British girls; Paul and the other girl did not.  Soon, though, we were clear of the mountains and watching La Paz shrink and fade away through the clouds.

 

Months before this, during the planning phase of our trip when I still had a job in Chile, I sought advice from many friends who had taken a similar route through Peru and Bolivia. Not one of them had heard of Rurrenabaque, but as we descended back below the clouds into the deep green jungle forest, I knew we had made the right choice. The region is technically high-altitude jungle; despite its vibrant flora, it’s not quite in the Amazon basin, but rather at its rim. It would be more accurate to describe it as a river town: from the plane the most distinct feature was the snaking, brown water of the Beni river, and the tiny, twenty-square-block town borders one of its wide banks. We landed and exited through the airport—one dirt runway and a small adjacent building with a single desk and ten chairs—and headed into the town, which was nutty and beautiful and a refreshing change of pace. The first thing we noticed was the air, which was clean and dense and warm and smelled alive, a welcome treat from the sharp, thin, high-altitude, city-stained atmosphere of La Paz. After checking in at the tour office, picking up a sixth traveler, and finding a hostel, we set to exploring the streets, which were buzzing. For every car there were at least thirty motorcycles. We saw multiple families of four crammed onto one vehicle with their groceries slung over the handlebars. The town was crammed with quirkiness like this. At one point, we stopped into a small shop to look at clothes and a monkey popped out of a shirt on display. It climbed on the shopowner’s daughter’s shoulder and she crossed the street to buy ice cream. Before packing in for the night, we watched the sunset by the river bank.

Rurrenabaque

The next morning we were picked up in a jeep by a couple of friendly Bolivians who brought us on our way, one of which was our tour guide, Rosario. We spent a couple admittedly boring hours driving along dirt roads, jungle trees flashing by the windows. At one point we saw a cobra crossing the road, which Rosario said was good luck.  After stopping for lunch we arrived at the docks, where a jackknife boat that would be all but our home for the next three days bobbed in wait for us.

The docks were modest, a couple of posts nailed into the riverbank with no actual “dock” in sight, but the air was alive with birdcalls and everything was green. As we shuffled our gear from the van to the boat we noticed another tour group pulling in, presumably just ending their own tour. This group of maybe eight pale English youths stripped down in front of us, the sun glinting off their backs, and hopped right into the murky brown waters. And not a moment later, we saw the unmistakable plume of blowhole mist erupt from the water. As it submerged and flapped its tale we noticed two more dolphins breaching in the distance. We knew these dolphins were a principle highlight of the tour (our company was called “Dolphin Tours”) but to see them up close and in action was something else. The British crew splashed and frolicked and yelped as the dolphins nibbled at their toes. With our mouths thus agape, Rosario beckoned us to climb into the boat and push of, and not a moment later we disappeared into the watery brush.

We spent the next three days on that boat, sitting back under the sun as Rosario jetted us through the thickets with surgical precision, keeping our eyes out for watery fowl and other wildlife. The first day was surreal. We weren’t sure what we had gotten ourselves into, and couldn’t help but dip our hands into the water and stretch out under the sun. Relaxed doesn’t really begin to describe it: when we asked Rosario, after first shipping off on the first day, how long we’d be driving around, he just shook his head, smiled, and began whistling. That entire sleepy afternoon we wandered about the Pampas, stopping to look at wildlife.  It was an entire forest ecosystem built on a river 10 meters deep in places. We saw birds that walked on floating plants, toucans, herons, and others I don’t know the name of. We saw turtles relaxing on logs. Every once in a while, we would see a pair of dolphins breach and swim away. Rosario would always cut the engine and whistle a long, haunted tone to try to get them to come back; it almost seemed to work a few times. At one point we idled to a stop, he began making strange animal noises and drove us straight into a tree, and we were raided by a group of yellow-tailed monkeys. They climbed all over our boat (and our bodies) in search of treats. As Rosario warned us to watch our bags I caught one about to close his hands around my wallet.

"Relaxing"

Just as I began to think that Rosario had any idea where he was going, we pushed through a tight hole in the thickets and found what would be our actual home for the next three days, a cabin built on the water. There was an alligator relaxing in the shade just outside the showers, and we witnessed another group of monkeys swing by overhead. We spent our first evening watching the sunset at another river cabin with a bar and a deck; we relaxed with beers and full raingear, fearful that the yellow-fever-carrying mosquitoes would compromise our unvaccinated immune systems. At dusk on our ride back to the cabin we were passed by countless, huge fruit bats skimming along the surface of the water and passing our boat by inches. That night after dinner we headed back out into the water in the pitch black in search of alligators. Armed with only our headlamps, we cruised along silently looking for the red dots of their eyes reflecting back our own lights. It was creepy and exciting.

Neighbors...roommates?

The next day was a bit less eventful, starting with a (thankfully) fruitless wade through the mud in search of anacondas and ending with an afternoon of piranha fishing. The piranhas were small, about the size of a human hand, but fierce. Our gear was rudimentary at best: a hook, piece of twine, and some raw meat chunks, but every chunk of meat that hit the water was torn up in seconds. The idea was that we were fishing for our dinner, but between the six of us, we caught two fish. Rosario caught eleven.

Day three we set out in search of dolphins. Rosario explained to us that with all the snakes and alligators in the water, it wasn’t safe to swim in most areas. The dolphins, however, kept the other nasties at bay, so we headed for their breeding grounds and hoped to spot some. Sure enough, not long after getting there did we see a group of three breach and appear to get closer, along with two more. They’re hard to keep track of because the water is so murky, but Rosario gave the go-ahead and we plunged in. It’s oddly terrifying, being in the water with a giant mammal that you cannot see, knowing that they’re getting closer with every second but only having evidence of the fact every 40 seconds or so. It turns out that these dolphins are curious but cautious. One moment you notice them circling you, the next you feel a nibble at your toes, and the next you feel something rubbery brush up against your leg and see a tailfin sticking up in front of your face. They’re also fairly timid: soon the other boats arrived, making a circle around the watery clearing, and the dolphins all retreated to circle the perimeter, observing the humans but not daring to enter the fray. So we had a bit more fun splashing around, but eventually it was time to go. After a leisurely cruise through the pampas we were back at the docks, loading back up into the jeeps, and after that it was a sleepy ride back to Rurrenabaque.

Pool Party

Squad

After one last night in our hostel we were back at the airport, the mountain filling the window on our right, descending back into La Paz. The thin air was devastating, but luckily we didn’t stay long. One last night at our old Irish hostel and we were were already on a bus, this time to Uyuni. Our bus ride, in typical Bolivian fashion, was a mess: an overnight affair with a 2am pit stop to change busses for no apparent reason and a road that made sleep impossible. We arrived at 7am to the cold wind and dusty streets of Uyuni. It was a ghost town. Dogs and trash meandered the street and not a soul was in sight (to be fair, it was 7am). We found an open hostel and slept for the morning, checked in to our next tour, and prepared for our final leg of the trip.

Our tour of the Salt Flats of Uyuni started with a trip to a train cemetery, something 10 year old me would have lost his mind over and that 24 year old me still had a heavy appreciation for. Big hunks of rotting steel sat motionless, their wheels sunken under the sand, pieces and parts strewn about. We got to climb around, take pictures, and pretend we were pirates, or something. Soon after we headed out to the actual salt flat, and as ashamed as I am to admit it, it was saltier and flatter than I could have ever anticipated. Stretching 120 square kilometers, this ruin of an ancient salt lake was uniform white in every direction. It was hard to tell our jeep was moving, and as most of the tours leave at the same time, harder still to tell the jeeps in the distance were doing the same. We had lunch in a restaurant made of salt and slept in a salt hostel: walls, floor, tables, benches, everything but (thankfully) beds were made of giant bricks of salt.

 

Things quickly became silly

I’ve mentioned the principle that the further into our trip we got, the stranger everything became. Day two we headed further into the desert, and things became downright alien. We set out at 7am into sandy expanses filled with ancient fossilized coral and sulfur-spewing volcanoes in the distance. We passed green, purple, and orange lagoons that froze every night and thawed every day, with flamingoes bobbing happily in the distant center of each, and huge, wind-carved rock structures. We saw foxes and rabbits hiding in the rocky framework. Day three we woke up before sunrise and began our ascent to the highest point of the already-lofty desert to see the geysers. As we drove along the bumpy sand road and climbed to our destination, volcanoes dotting the horizon, the full moon lighting our way and slowly fading as the sky behind us turned from a sheet of black to one of deep red and coloring the pock-marked landscape before us, all I could think was that our jeep was a moon buggy. When we reached the summit we saw the cratered earth spewing sulfuric vapor and staining the landscape yellow. As we got out to peer into the bubbling grey muck the sun came up at our backs, turning the red mountains sandy orange. Afterwards we drove another ten minutes to a hot spring, where people previously wearing three layers of winter clothes stripped down to their breeches to soak in the Martian water. The tiny pool was built on a ledge, and below the drop-off sat a wide lagoon. We relaxed and watched as the flamingoes did their thing. Soon after it was time to head out; from there we drove to the most remote border office I have ever seen and hopped on a bus that would take us to Chile.

As soon as we crossed the border we knew we were in good hands. The roads were all paved and painted and the signage was...existent. The bus ride was a radical descent, an hour straight down with the volcanic mountain range at our backs, but as soon as it was over we were in sleepy touristy San Pedro de Atacama, eating chorrillanas and paying with Chilean pesos. After over a month in foreign territory, it was definitely good to be back.

We were in San Pedro for five days, including the afternoon after our morning geyser tour. Day two we rented bikes and rode into the heart of the Valley of the Moon, another alien world found on Earth. This one was unique for its picturesque salt deposits, which color the sand and jagged rocks with frosty white tips. After a month of junk food and bus ride, the ride was grueling, but so insanely worth it. We struggled uphill, coasted down into the heart of the valley, had lunch, and coasted back down into the town with the setting sun at our backs, the Andes painted red ahead of us. Day three we ran into our bus friends (again!) and visited one of those lagoons that has a higher salt content than usual so you can float without effort, like the Dead Sea in Israel. That was about as strange as it got. We spent a day relaxing after some of our half-hearted plans fell through, reading at the hostel and drinking coconut cocktails, and took a star tour--which, despite the full moon, was fascinating--at night. We grilled nearly every night, enjoying the fruits of cheap Chilean wine.

Valle de la Luna

When it came time to head to the airport, we had a hard time coming to terms. The Atacama desert is breathtaking from the sky. It looks like a marble cake with all its different swirling mineral deposits. We got to Santiago and Alex and Paul already felt like home. Perhaps the culmination of our time-weirdness principle, we spent the last week watching movies, speaking English, eating Americanized food, and hanging out at, of all places, the Costanera Mall, an absurd change of pace for us but a welcome one. 

As I mentioned in the beginning, the more you do, the longer it feels to take, but of course the inverse is just as true: doing less will make time pass more quickly. Hardly had we arrived in Santiago before it was time to say goodbye. It was strange. After being three for so long, within the span of a closing cab door I was once again one. I can only hope that in the future we'll be three once more, traipsing around some wilderness without a clue or care in the world. Here's to the squad, fellas. Thanks for an amazing trip.