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Lima-ism #1: The Daily Commute

     This is the first of many "Lima-ism" posts I will write to explain some of the differences I have noticed here. My posts so far have been about how surprised I am to feel so little impact from the move, and in a general sense I maintain that this is true, but now I would like to get into the details a little bit and give you some examples of what IS different. 

                        - A typical "combi"(pronounced comb-bee) at my usual stop in Miraflores

     Pictured above is what may appear to be a peaceful, even hippy-ish love van, but it most definitely is not. It is a fierce and reckless animal. It cares for nothing, and no one other than itself, make no mistake. Combis are one of the major forms of "public transportation" aside from taxis, and are an ever-present attack on the major streets and distracts of Lima. They are a fast, crazy, loud(both in color and noise), scary, dangerous, crowded, dirty, cheap, and oddly efficient. 

     So prevalent and such a force are these small busses, that some Peruvians refer to the "Combi Culture". In that sense, it seems that they embody the overall climate of Lima quite well. Here in Lima you have a little more than 9 million people frantically trying to catch ahold of the economic growth from foreign investment, development, and mining. These combis are the transportation equivalent. Cutting each other off, weaving in and out of cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians as though they were bicycles, not busses. All the while yelling, cursing, and honking constantly. Even talking on the phone or reading the newspaper while doing so aren't uncommon! Speed limits? That would imply that the drivers know, or care how fast they are going. It is a constant race between them to reach the next stop first and grab up more passengers. You really have to experience this form of transportation to understand it.

     Despite their hectic nature, combis are my primary and preferred method of transportation. First off they are cheap. I can get to work for about 60 cents versus $3.50 for a taxi. And, despite having no formal schedule, they are remarkably efficient. This they accomplish by numbers. On any major street you can expect to wait less than 30seconds for a combi to arrive and often they come in packs of three to five. 

     Painted on the sides of each combi are some of the major streets and areas on their route, but you don't have to read them because every Cobrador(fare collector) that regulates the boarding and getting off of passengers is an expert auctioneer. They rattle off their major stops with incredible speed, and much like the stereotypical auctioneer they have a specific "Cobrador voice". Also painted on the front or back of most combis is a small prayer, or religious saying. "Jesus please guide me" is a common and very appropriate message for anyone sharing the road with them. The insides can be quite amusing as well, probably the funniest decoration I've seen is a sticker that, translated, read something like, "Driving is a difficult job, please don't distract your driver."next to a picture of a a combi driver turning around to ogle what appeared to be a prostitute wearing a miniskirt with her boobs popping out. Clearly attractive women in small clothing are the greatest danger to our safety!

     For my students, nearly all of whom drive, they consider combis to be an impediment to progress, that they should be eliminated and replaced with regular, orderly public transportation. From a driver's standpoint I wouldn't argue with them. But for me, I'm glad to have them and fully enjoy the ride.

The Journey Home

      

    When you have a destination front of you, it can capture your focus and attention completely. It isn't very often that you put much thought into getting back home other than the logistics, but every once in a while you get a little bonus adventure for your oversight. Coming back from Hatun Machay was one of those times.

      After the second day of pushing ourselves, Tree decided it was time to go for him. He had a lot on his mind with his first baby coming soon, so it was definitely understandable.(His daughter Soleil was born yesterday, congratulations to him and his courageous wife Stevie) Unfortunately, nearly the entire group staying in the refuge decided they wanted to leave also. This posed a bit of a problem as there is only one shuttle(large van) and two taxis that are willing to make the trip up there; all the seats were taken but one. I told Tree to take it no problem, I didn't have to be back for another day so I would catch it the next night. "I can take the shuttle tomorrow night right?" I asked the owner. "Yes no problem, it leaves every night at 5:30.", he replied.

      Fast forward 22 hours: "So there's a bit of a problem, the shuttle isn't coming tonight.", the refuge host informed me." Haha of course not...

     It was now Saturday night and I needed to catch the overnight bus in order to be back in Lima before work on Monday. So I asked the host what my options were. He gave me two: 1) you can hike up to the top of one of the nearby peaks and call one of the taxis(costs 120 soles), the peaks aren't terrible but climbing another 1,000ft when you're already above 13,000 sucks just to make a phone call for an expensive taxi. 2) hike down to the main road between Huaraz and Lima, hitchhike to the nearby town, Catac, then take a bus to Huaraz. As I thought about my options he asked, "You have a cellphone right?". Mine was dead. Well at least I didn't have to make any decions, strike two...

     The hike wasn't bad, only a little over an hour and almost entirely downhill no cause for concern. What did concern me a little was the fact that it was starting to hail and I didn't have a rainshell with a hood, it was approaching night time, I was relying on hitchhiking for 100km, and I'm still working on that whole speaking Spanish thing. I've become pretty comfortable with myself in uncertain circumstances, so I headed out without too much worry in my mind. Turned out to be a great decision.

     I'm an incredibly social person but spending time alone in nature is one of the best feelings there is. It's completely, well, natural. There are no unnecessary distractions, no people, no cars honking, no houses, no need to think of conversation, just fresh air and beautiful landscape. It felt really good to just walk and take a few pictures. I didn't think profound thoughts, I didn't "discover myself", I didn't have any epiphanies other than that I needed this from time to time. It was great, but as I started down the valley toward my hitchhiking destination I could see the road stretch out for about two kilometers in front of me, and over the next thirty minutes I only saw one car pass by going the wrong direction. Then, with about 200 yards to go, I saw a car coming in the distance. I ran down the mountain startling the grazing livestock as I passed, and reached the road just in time to run across and flag down the car. Thankfully it stopped, and without a single word the driver opened the back and reached out for my bag. I looked inside to do a quick safety check; the car was full. One in the front seat, and three Andean dressed women in the back seat. I wasn't sure what he had in mind for me to fit, but as I looked down the road and saw nothing but the growing darkness I handed over my bag and said, "Yo tambien?", offering to get in the back of the station wagon. The man shook his head and said there was room in the back. I opened the door and without hesitation the women scooted together so there was just enough room for me to squish in with them. Gotta love the lack of hesitation in helping out a stranger!

     The next 100km riding in the packed car were really entertaining. They were full of questions about the U.S and why exactly I was hitchhiking out there in the dark. The cultural exchange was nothing short of hilarious. It felt really good to communicate in Spanish with them and I was relieved to find out that I could communicate everything I wanted to say. Sure it wasn't pretty but they understood. We covered just about everything from food to whether or not I would take the woman's daughter back to the states with me! Seriously, she asked, making me laugh until the blank stare on her face(and her daughter's) made me think she might not be kidding. Oddly enough I was more caught off guard when the asked me who I thought should win the election. I can't picture too many people in tiny mountain towns in the U.S being interested in Peru's presidential elections. To top it off the guy in the front seat was named Willard! What are the odds? They dropped me off in Catac where I could catch my bus to Huaraz, and even where to find the same quality bus back to Lima at half the price(which turned out to be a blessing and a curse). I thanked them sincerely, and a few hours later I was sitting in the gravel lot with a bus ticket for Lima in my pocket, my second beer in my hand, and feeling pretty darn good about myself.

    "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai came on in my earbuds and my second beer was getting low in my hand when a couple things came to my attention. First, it was strange that this didn't really feel strange. I had just hiked through some hail, hitchiked in a packed car, had a hilarious cultural exchange, caught a bus, and found a ticket home at half the price--and it just felt pretty normal. This strangeness soon faded as the lit up sign on the front of my bus, reading "LIMA" in big block letters, reminded me that Lima is a GIGANTIC city. The bus station I left in Lima was pretty close to my house, but now that I was taking an independent bus I had no idea where it would stop! After asking three of the bus employees and getting three different answers I gathered that I was going to stop near the center of Lima, not a great neighborhood to be arriving in at 4am, and not close to my house. I guess first before a fall comes pride haha. Another lesson learned.

     (Before we left, the check-in girl left her baby sister next to me to "guard" the clipboard, eat her pudding cup, and watch the horror movie they were playing. Priceless!)

     I got off the bus in a dirt lot behind some buildings at 4:15am, I couldn't see any street signs or any familiar buildings lit up in the skyline. Not my ideal situation. I could either take one of the cabs waiting for bus passengers or walk the street to a better area. I estimated that with the huge tourist flag I was carrying(my backpacking bag) that walking the street was the lesser of the two options. I asked one of the bus employees to help me out, he pointed to one of the drivers with a quick gesture that didn't make me confident he had put much attention into his selection. I eyed the driver and did my best to assess him. I feel like I've developed a decent judge of character, but I wasn't overly confident given what I've heard about taxis in Lima. Everything went fine, he dropped me off in front of my door. I climbed the stairs as fast as my weary and aching legs could carry me, showered for the first time in four days, and climbed into bed. It was now 5am. Aside from the few hours I was able to sleep on the bus, I had been awake and on my guard since 6am the day before. I relaxed, happy, exhausted, home with Daloma at last :)

     

Escape from the City

Hatun Machay

“A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage..." -Edward Abbey

     I've always lived in smaller towns, or in the case of my first year of life, a microscopic dot in the middle of nowhere. Google "Barrow, Alaska" and you will find that at the time my family lived there the population was a whopping 200 and dropped to to 152 by 1990. I'm not talking thousands, two-zero-zero. This means that when we left, my family, of four,  accounted for 8% of the decrease in population over that decade! Fast forward 24 years and now I am 6,500 miles away in a city of around 9 million. A lot can change.    

     To be honest I hadn't really felt the impact of moving to this large metropolis. Sure its different, but it doesn't feel strange. Maybe its the fact that I mainly stick to a few districts that aren't so hectic, or maybe I'm a serious chameleon and can adapt. I hadn't realized how different it feels to live in the city, that is, until I was completely removed from it. It hit me when I was hiking down the Cordillera Negra range by myself, watching a hailstorm come in across the valley that separates two of Peru's most dramatic mountain ranges. I'm not much of a poet so I'm not going to try to paint you a picture but it really was one of those amazing moments where you're completely calm but you have that tingly sensation. Bottom line, Mother Nature has it right. I don't mind living in the city, but now I know it's absolutely necessary to get out from time to time. Lesson learned.
     I have to give my friend Tree credit for getting me out. I had met him right after he came back from a trip to Hatun Machay, and he was buzzing about it. "It's unreal! I'm going back in two weeks, you have to come!" he asked.  Awesome, count me in.
     I took advantage of the flexibility in my schedule, pleaded with my students to change things around a bit, and we were off late on a Thursday night with a couple packs and a ton of excitement. There was a lot for me to be excited about: 
1)I have been climbing in the gym for about two years now but my experience outdoors is very limited. 
2) We would be sport climbing. Even in the gym, I had only bouldered(climbing very difficult but short boulders without a rope) and top-roped( climbing while attached to a rope anchored above the climb) When sport climbing, you must clip in to the face of the rock as you climb and it is very different because you don't see a rope in front of you which gives it a very "exposed" feel. 
3) I would be learning the PROPER techniques from serious and experienced climber. I don't like risk, I can accept a certain degree of it, but I don't pass up opportunities to eliminate it where I can.
4) All this new climbing would take place above 13,000 feet, in the middle of Peru's raw and dramatic Andean landscape.

     An overnight bus ride put us in Huaraz at 7am, only leaving a 1.5 hour shuttle up to the climbers refuge we would be staying in. That, and the taxi ride from the bus station to the departure point for the shuttle. Tourism is a major in-flow of money to most of Peru and especially to small towns like Huaraz. You find out very quickly that the people here are really good at taking advantage of what money comes in. At the terminal a taxi driver struck up conversation, and wouldn't you know it he worked with the company that would be taking us up the mountain. Turns out he took us to "a" company that "could" take us up for twice the price. This was a small and benign detour, the guy was probably getting some commission to bring climbers to a different company, but it just shows you what you're up against.

    A van, with a passenger list that would make you think it was heading for a U.N gathering, bounced us up another 3,000 feet to the climbers refuge and the amazing rock forest(pictured above) I would be climbing in for the next three days. It's very convenient that English is more or less the international language, although in the climbing community you might be as well off speaking German. There were climbers from the U.S, Germany, Austria, France, the U.K, Argentina, and Canada. Pretty cool crowd, and the breeding grounds for some interesting discussions. I couldn't help but notice that the Britt and I were outgunned when it came to being multi-lingual, I really wish we would take a more multi-lingual approach in our education system. The amount of opportunities that open up when a country encourages its people to be multi-lingual is huge. I think a serious multi-lingual education would significantly impact our economy, our politics, our desire to travel rather than just vacation, and our general understanding and interest in the world. 
   
The climber's refugio was perfect: bunk beds with warm sleeping bags and thick wool blankets, a huge common area with a wood burning stove, a large fully equipped kitchen, and flushing toilets. The land is actually owned by a collective of Andean herders. Their brush-huts could be seen here and there around the rock forest, and their herds wandered around you as you hiked from climb to climb. Half of the fee to stay in the refugio goes directly to the local collective in return for letting climbers use the area.

Another bonus that Hatun Machay offers is its abundance of cave carvings and paintings. In Quechua "Hatun Machay" means large cave. There are several large caves that must have been providing shelter to the people since the cave paintings first appeared as long as 10,000 years ago.

    From the paintings and carvings it seems that not much has changed for the people inhabiting this area. Many drawings of herds (possibly sheep?) can be seen in the main caves. Makes you wonder why some places in the world have managed to stay the same for so long. The herders that live there now know of the modern world, they sell their wool and other things in Huaraz. It's not that they are simply isolated. What keeps them content when so many of us are drawn to fancy electronics, cars, running water, television, etc? I didn't ask, so maybe they aren't content...who knows?

     The journey home was just as adventurous but I will leave that for another post. Here are a few more pictures from the trip:

    

Bienvenidos a mi Blog

Welcome!
     Let me start by saying that blogging is a longshot for me. I have no idea how long I will keep this up and am still not quite sure why I'm starting to begin with. Most of my writing has been essays, summaries, arguments, etc. I've never considered myself much of a writer in the general sense. We'll see how this one plays out...
     My best guesses for inspiration are that I thought this would be a good way to have a chronological record of my experiences abroad(thanks Foto), to let those friends and family I left back in the States know what is happening in my life, and to help me think about the significance of my experiences here in Peru. I'm sure as I get more and more settled into life here in Lima that my free time will start to disappear, and by direct correlation my posts on this blog will follow suit. Hopefully not, but in the meantime I will do my best to kill time productively! When one of my best friends moved to Norway for graduate school I motivated her to keep up a blog by telling her she wouldn't last more than a month. Turns out she lasted over a year, maybe I need the same motivation?

What am I doing here?
     I'm sure my sudden move may have come as a shock to many people but really when the time is right things can happen rather quickly. The truth is I put myself on a track to pursue psychology at UCSC and I saw it as far as it would take me. I'm not abandoning psychology, far from it, I think of it nearly every day. But really it was a realization that I had nowhere further to go in Santa Cruz. Sure I could have stayed closer but I figured if I'm going to move away I might as well REALLY move away.       I haven't had the, "What the hell am I doing here moment?!" but several people have told me its only a matter of time. To be honest, it all seems really normal. I thought at first this was because I was so focused on finding a place to live and getting a job, but now that those two things are out of the way I feel the same. Maybe its a sign that I'm not immersed enough, that living with my girlfriend and having a lot of American friends here shelters me from the reality that I am in a different country, not just another place in the U.S. Who knows, I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

South of the "Border"?
     The word "border" can have many meanings, for some it can be as benign as an addition to their front walkway to add curb appeal to their home, to others the only thing stopping them from having a brighter future for their children, and in the case of Palestinians a war waged across centuries for the right to live.  In American politics it typically refers to the U.S-Mexico border and carries with it the serious issues of immigration, discrimination, history, the economy, hate, and family. Issues that divide us politically. These are all very different situations but in every one the word "border" implies a separation. Why do we separate some things and not others? On what basis are these separations justified? Can it ever be truly fair if the separation is created by only one side of the final line? My mind is always interested in different points of view or perspectives, I don't like to make decisions, choose sides, or have an opinion without finding out studying the different sides of the issue. As I am focusing more and more on my future and need to make big life decisions I have begun to cross the lines of what I know, and experience other lifestyles, opinions, languages, cultures, and career paths so that I can make "good" decisions about who I will be, what my opinions are, and what I want to do.

Borrowed this quote from a new friend's blog, thanks Tree(sprinterlife.com): 

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime - Mark Twain 


   In the literal sense I did travel south of our border to live in Lima, but thats not really why I chose to include "South" in the title.  The direction "South" can be interchanged in many situations with "below". I have been studying Psychology, and love scientific process in general, because it lets you examine what lies below what we do, what we think, and what we feel. As, what I think, are the worst Primary and Presidential election campaigns I have experienced in my life continue on, I can't help but think of them when I express my desire to understand what lies below the surface. It has become increasingly necessary to think beyond what is presented to you in order to get through life. When deciding if a politician has spoken a single word of truth in their entire speech, when deciding if a product is really as good as it says it is, and when judging the face of a cab driver that could quite easily drive around the corner and rob you at gunpoint, you need to descend below what is being presented to make the correct decision. I'm learning, but thankfully no guns, literally or figuratively, have presented themselves haha

What to expect...
If you don't expect much, you'll have a much better time reading my posts. If you're interested in what I am doing and thinking about down here in Peru I'll try to keep you entertained! If nothing else I'll be putting up some good pictures, I take my camera with me on all my adventures :)