John Muir Part II: Sleeping With Strangers

Continued from Part I: God's Country...

I had intended to make this a 3-part series, following logically from the three stretches between resupply points, originally planned as 3 weeks. However, this one day was so memorable, that I decided it should get its own post.

Standing on top of Muir Hut following the most memorable night of my trip.

Day 7: Dusy Basin to Muir Pass

11.9 miles
Dusy Basin (10800')
Low Point: Le Conte Canyon (8750')
End/High Point: Muir Pass (11955')

I gave my guardian angel food-delivering-across-a-huge-mountain-pass-sister a big squeeze goodbye, leaving her in the questionable hands of a frazzled hippie (or more accurately leaving him in hers), and wandered back down to Le Conte Canyon wearing fresh clothes she had picked up for me and with my pack full of resupplied food, bandaids, toilet paper, and a new SD card. Partway down the trail, the cold rain started back up, although it wasn't heavy...yet. I hurried down the hill, hoping to catch the Boy Scouts before they packed up camp and left, leaving the stuff I had stashed with them unprotected against marauding hikers and marmots. I found them steps from where I had left them huddled around a fire, getting a reluctant start to their morning as the rain dripped down through the trees.

Waving goodbye to Jeannie on my way back to the trail
after her successful resupply mission.

I had a second breakfast of oatmeal from the scouts' extra food, a rare hot breakfast and a real treat. Two guys showed up from the south, the first Northbounders any of us had seen except ourselves (me and the Boy Scouts), and hungrily eyed the fire while pretending to look over a map with shivering hands until it got awkward and we called them over to warm up. A fire is a welcome thing on a wet, frozen day. After some shared oatmeal and a brief chat, they took off, and their departure reminded me that I still had over 3000' and 8 miles to go to get up Muir Pass, and then several miles more down the other side before I'd get to the next spot where I could camp. Anxious to get moving despite, or rather because of the cold and the rain (I wasn't going to get less wet standing around getting dripped on, I figured...little did I know), I packed up and told the Boy Scouts--the closest things I had to friends on that trail--that I'd save them a campsite in the Evolution Basin on the other side of the pass if they didn't catch me well before then.

The drizzle turned into a heavy rain, the wind picked up, and the day got progressively colder. Little did I know, having not had access to a phone signal or The Everpresent Internets since I started my hike 7 days earlier, a massive storm was moving across California, and rangers were closing off access trails to the JMT because of the danger of extremely cold weather, flash floods, and all manner of not-goodness. All I knew was that it was raining, and that I felt very cold.

I hiked as fast as I could to try to keep myself warm, although I never did warm up that day. I hiked for miles and miles without breaking pace or stopping to rest or pausing to have a snack because stopping meant freezing. I climbed slowly up toward the pass and the wind got stronger and the temperature continued to drop, and I shivered as I walked, I couldn't feel my face or hands, but I couldn't stop. There was no warm sheltered place, stopping meant freezing. It was cold enough, and I was wet enough, and tired enough, and my stuff was soggy enough, that I was scared that stopping could mean freezing to death.

The whole time I prayed that my sister had made it over her pass before the storm that was drenching and freezing me hit her, "Hit me with whatever you've got, weather, but give Jeannie sun!" I yelled at the Asshole Sky at one point. I found out later that she had been suffering through it too, and by the time she finally made it out to her car with the old hippie, both of them were in tears.

Rock Monster on the trail. My last chance for shelter on the hike to Muir Pass.

I knew I had to make it to the top of the pass, because that was the first place where there was shelter to be found, the famous Muir Hut. I had no idea what to expect from the Muir Hut was, but it was mentioned in my guidebook and the handful of wet, frozen hikers coming down off of the pass assured me that if I could just make it to the hut, it would be dry. But 8 miles is interminable in miserable conditions. I'd ask hikers coming down, "How much farther?" and they'd look at me with pity and reply, "Not close. Sorry." For hour after wet, windy, frozen hour. My brand-new sister-delivered poncho refused to stay on me in the wind, no matter how I tried to tie or duct tape it to myself. Protecting my backpack from the rain proved an impossible task, and I only hoped that my sleeping bag was staying dry (or rather not getting more damp) inside its garbage sack inside. At one point, the poncho blew up and tangled itself around my neck and, unable to muster the energy to curse, I started to cry angry, scared, cold, tired tears. I fought the urge to rip it off (and likely strangle myself in the process) and somehow managed to untangle myself despite my completely numb hands and shaking limbs.

And I kept walking.

Dripping trail on the way to Muir Pass

And walking.
And walking, counting my steps to distract myself from how horrible I felt.
And walking.
And walking, making bets with myself how many more steps it would be until I got to the hut. It was always more steps than I guessed.
And walking.
And walking.
Because stopping meant death, I was fairly sure.

Maybe it didn't mean death. Maybe I could have wriggled my sleeping bag and bivvy out and crawled inside before it got totally drenched. Maybe an exposed night in the freezing rain wouldn't have killed me, even if it would have been the scariest, most miserable night of my life. Maybe someone hiking down would have helped me back down the mountain to the more sheltered canyon and a campfire. Maybe.

But I kept walking, because maybe wasn't an option. I knew that no matter how hard the wind blew or how cold I got, I'd make it to that damned hut. And after five stumbling, shivering, nonstop hours, I saw the hut. 500 steps, I told myself, you can make 500 steps. It was a lot more than 500 steps. But I made it. Staggered up to the door. Pushed my way inside.

Muir Hut: the tiny little pimple in the middle of that pass.

Inside, the round stone hut was cold, damp, and dripping. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw two guys sitting together in a corner, steam boiling off of them. The Northbounders. After first eying me like the unwanted houseguest I was, they quickly felt sorry for a fellow frozen miserable hiker and helped me out of my soaked outerwear (I was too numb and shaking too hard to even get my backpack off), helped me get my dry change of clothes and sleeping bag out of my completely saturated pack, and made me a hot mug of coffee to help warm me up. The hot coffee changed everything, and I slowly started to feel my hands again, and slowly started to calm down, and the relief of being safe and with other people had me silly with exhausted gratitude.

They had decided to stay the night and wait out the storm, as had a Southbounder who was sitting quietly in the dark corner of the hut who I hadn't noticed at first. It was illegal to camp in Muir Hut, but we decided our circumstances were exceptional enough that John Muir would forgive us. I, for one, was done for the day. Or at least done until the storm stopped for long enough to let me dry out and get to a real camp. And sun and balmy Summer-in-California temperatures did not appear to be anywhere on the grey and dripping horizon. And I was glad I'd have company in that dark, dripping, isolated, cave-like hut.

Setting up camp inside Muir Hut

Once I warmed enough to function, I set to work trying to set up a means of protecting my sleeping bag from the vigorously dripping hut interior. Water was leaking in through the roof, running in streams down the sides and dripping at every stone step, and the humidity inside from the drippiness plus four soggy humans was approximately that of a Turkish bath. Damp + down are a bad combination in the cold, and I worried about the saturation state of my sleeping bag, and worried about staying warm through the night. The hut was drier and warmer than the outside, but still neither dry nor warm.

We cursed the blocked-off fireplace, not that there was anything around to burn. We napped, me curled up inside my bivvy sack with my poncho over my face to protect at least my top half from drips. We told stories and laughed. We helped dress each other's blisters and patch each other's torn gear. We made what hot food we could and drank hot tea, hot coffee, hot water, and when a Southbounder with a platypus full of bourbon stopped through, we drank that, too. There were some impressive people who trickled through as the afternoon progressed, but only a hardy handful. It seemed most people had decided to hunker down and try to wait out the storm. The Boy Scouts never showed up. I'd never see them again (I'm sure they survived the day, probably by staying put where I had left them, but I hope they made it through eventually!).

My attempt to make a dry space inside the hut.
When I woke up from my nap, everything was soaked.

By the time darkness fell, we were a group of five. The Northbounders, brothers Mike and Ash, had managed to suspend one of their tent flies from the interior walls of the hut such that we had a sort of indoor tarp protecting us from the drips, at least at the hut's center. We all made dinner, sharing goodies around (including my large bag of organic kale which my sister had left me with; this became a running joke and to this day kale reminds my hut friends of our night together). Khai, the Southbounder, set up his tent on a bench on one end of the hut. Mike, a special forces badass visibly antsy from the delay in his hiking plans, found the hut too dank and had a good winter tent, so opted to set up outside in the rain, which had let up slightly.

The rest of us slapped our Thermarests and sleeping bags down on a tarp in the center of the hut floor underneath the drip-protecting tent fly. As the night got colder and colder, and Khai's snoring and the howling wind got louder and louder and the water dripping from the tent fly edges crept ever inward, we all scooted closer and closer together. Which meant that I quickly became sandwiched between two strange men.

The tent fly that kept us sort of dry that night.

Under any other circumstance, being trapped in a cold, dark hut in the middle of nowhere with a group of strange men would have been uncomfortable and weird to say the least. On other backpacking trips, I've gone out of my way to avoid crossing paths with strangers. But that night I was enormously glad they were there. It never occurred to me to be uncomfortable. I was glad to be the person in the middle benefiting from body heat on both sides. It's okay to spoon with strangers when it's all in the name of surviving the night. Exhausted from the day, comforted by the warm human bodies around me, oddly soothed by the arrhythmic dripping and resonant snoring, I fell into a deep and much-needed sleep.

It's kind of astounding how the boundaries between complete strangers break down in situations like that, how everyone is stripped to being part of the same human family. For the 12 hours or so we were in the hut, all any of us cared about was staying warm and surviving the night. Once we were all convinced of our own survival, our second concern became making sure all of the other humans around us stayed warm and fed and hydrated and comfortable and happy. Except the brothers, none of us had met before that day. None of us had any reason to give half a shit about anyone else in that hut. Yet without discussion, without question, we shared what we had--our food, our cookware, our medical supplies, our limited water, our shelter-making gear, etc.--and worked together to make a cold, leaking, drippy hut a somewhat pleasant home for the night. We entered the hut unwelcome strangers, and left it a close-knit family. It was a miserable day followed by one of the most lovely and memorable human experiences of my life.

Four of five of the Muir Hut Family the following morning.

Continued in Part III: The Social Animal

Like the photos? There are more in the Photo Gallery, and more will be added every day as I sift through them all...there are a lot!

To stay, or not to stay, in Peru

Cusco

I love traveling. I love adventure. I love going places.

I hate planning things. Once I have a general plan, I'm really good at getting the details worked out. I could be a travel agent: "Oh, you want to do this trip? On that budget? Give me fifteen minutes, I'll have your whole month booked." But the planning part turns me into a solid brick of "I don't wanna".

It's the whole Paradox of Choice thing: the more options you have, the more you second-guess whether or not you made The Right Choice.

I've had one hell of a trip, but it's winding to a close. By late April/early May I need to be back in California. I have less than a month left in South America. Two of the remaining weeks will be spent in Cusco and the region, and then I'm back in Lima on April 12th to drop my Aunt--who just arrived in Cusco to join me in hiking to Macchu Picchu--off at the airport.

There's a horrible little part of me that is considering flying home then. And by "home" I mean going to Portland, saying hi to my parents, picking up my car, and making a beeline to the mountains. Maybe the Sierras. Maybe stopping on the way to go play on some of the Cascade's volcanoes.

Why? Why when I have two whole weeks to enjoy exploring Peru would I do that?

Because the mugging in Lima (sorry, still haven't posted that story but I will eventually, this was urgent) freaked me out. It reminded me that, while most of the people I've interacted with during these almost 7 months have been really nice, there are those out there who see me as a walking flea market (the mugger) or as an exotic blonde girl they want to screw (the policemen), or as someone made of money who should be hit up aggressively for every last penny in exchange for things I don't want (over half of the people I have interacted with in Peru).

The latter is annoying, but understandable. Although I don't want more things, I have handed out Nuevo Soles for more things than I usually would (like hiking, tours, beautiful handwoven alpaca stuff, little souvenirs, food prepared by others, etc.) because I feel obligated here to not be the cheapskate backpacker I usually am but to instead support the people in whose country I am traveling. But the former two are scary. And I keep hearing nightmare stories from other travelers, like friends who were also mugged in Lima, the woman who was driven off by a taxi driver and barely escaped an attempted rape, stories of women hiking alone who were followed and killed, presumably for whatever money they happened to have on them. And the woman I sat next to on the plane who said that only her police training saved her from a brutal situation just weeks earlier in Ecuador when, she said, "I beat him up pretty bad. Maybe he's dead now. I don't care." I couldn't tell if she was bullshitting or not, but she looked like she could kill a person.

I've heard similar horror stories everywhere I've traveled. I'm used to smiling and shrugging off, "Young lady, you shouldn't be traveling alone." But until now, the warnings and stories have always been vague "I read this/ saw this on the news" sort of warnings, easy to dismiss as sensationalist journalism and "How many years ago did that happen? And how many car accidents have happened since then in the same area? What's the real danger here?" realism.

But here, everyone I meet has a story. Including myself.

Killer woman (and several others I have since met, all tanned brunettes) told me that I needed to look less like a tourist. To which I laughed. "Really? I'm blonde. Very fair-skinned. I'm carrying a giant backpack because there's a tent and sleeping bag inside because that's what I do. There is no hiding who I am here." She looked me over and reluctantly agreed. Every time I leave my room, I leave it with full awareness that I am a giant glowing target. It's an experience that has made me much more sensitive to what some of my friends face back home, in the land of a white, blonde majority that isn't always friendly to people who aren't that.

I have been an obvious "you're not from around here" this entire time, but elsewhere it made me, as I have written about before, a "target" for kindness.

Is it different here? I don't want to believe it is, but I also don't want to be dumb.

My experience thus far has been that stepping outside my comfort zone has rewarded me a million times over in amazing life experiences. Until I got mugged in Lima and spent the next three hours getting sexually harassed by the police who were supposed to be protecting me.

Normal Carie: "Don't let one bad experience make you jaded when you've had so many good ones."
Paranoid Carie: "It's different here."
Normal Carie: "The majority of people everywhere are kind and helpful and good. There are bad apples, but they are the exception, not the rule."
Paranoid Carie: "It's different here."
Normal Carie: "It'll be fun! You'll come out on the other side really glad you did this, like you always do."
Paranoid Carie: "You're gonna get yourself raped and killed."
Normal Carie: "I hate you, Paranoid Carie."

So here's what I'm debating: do I:

(A) Give South America an epic farewell by heading up to the Cordillera Blanca and going on the longest solo trek I have time for. Upsides: It looks spec-freaking-tacular, I know that in the absence of human danger, it would probably be my favorite thing I've ever done. Downsides: There are people. And there are stories about muggings at trailheads, potential for stalking, etc. It's remote and beautiful and awesome! But people.

or

(B) Fly home earlier rather than later, call Macchu Picchu my Last Hurrah in South America, and spend that time enjoying mountains where I know I'll feel safe back home. Maybe leave the Cordillera Blanca for an Epic Trek with a future Partner in Fun and Life.

Just one of many mountains in the Cordillera Blanca. You can see why I would want to go. (photo: Wikipedia)

 Sure, there are other options. I could hop on a bus and sightsee. But I'm sick of sightseeing. It's not my thing, and never really has been. I'm here for the mountains. It's either mountains here, or mountains back home. Or I could do the Cordillera Blanca trek with a guided group. That's fine, but it's not what I want right now. I want to be alone. It's how I experience things best. I like having the mountains to myself. I need some mountain time by myself. Given the choice of go on a guided or group trek there or go home, I prefer to go home.

So, my wonderful, supportive, loving friends: what do you think? Has anyone been to that area before? Are the safety warnings overblown (general mountain safety issues aside)? Anyone confident in hand-to-hand combat willing to come down here for a week and be my bodyguard (I'll feed you) while I hike just far enough ahead that I can pretend like I'm alone? Haha.

PS- For all that, Cusco has been awesome. The scenery is incredible, the food awesome, and the people...the nice ones are really nice and the not-nice ones are reasonably easy to avoid. It's a great place.

The Long Road North Part VI: Lima

Cool cliffside restaurant near where I stayed with Kathleen in Lima that Kathleen took me to see during an awesome impromptu walking Geology of Lima tour. That bridge? The gap there was formed because there was a dike made of a more easily-erodible material that we could trace up into the beach and up the cliffs on the other side of the road. Neato!

Lima Part I: a not-so-warm welcome

I arrived in Lima after over two weeks of travel, of which over one hundred hours were spent on long-haul buses, all the way from the southern toe of the continent in Ushuaia, Argentina (or, if you're really counting, from the Antarctic Peninsula following a two-day crossing of the Drake Passage by ship). I was exhausted. But I had booked it north in order to arrive in Lima in time to meet up with my friend from grad school, Kathleen, who was in town for two weeks teaching an Earth History course at the university. After all that travel I was very excited to see a familiar face again.

After gathering my bags from the hold of the bus that had just taken me the 49 hours across the Antiplano from Argentina to arrive there in Lima, I asked the woman at the information desk (who, in contrast to every information desk person in the whole of Argentina, was very friendly and helpful) how to get a bus to where my friend Kathleen was staying in the Lima neighborhood of Chorillos. She directed me to a bus station across the street from the main terminal, which served a brand-spanking-new Metropolitano bus line, saying it was very clean and safe. Sure enough, it was equivalent to a nice light rail line in some of the finer public transit systems of the U.S. I was beginning to think that all of the safety warnings for Lima were grossly exaggerated, or maybe relics from a wilder time past.

Lima. Looks like L.A.

The only problem was that “Chorillos” was not one of the stops on the train map, so I asked a businessman standing across from me if he knew which stop I should get off at. I showed him Kathleen’s instructions, and he lit up when he saw the name of the restaurant she said she was near: Los Hornos. Sure enough, after 20 some minutes, the bus pulled up at a station across the street from a Los Hornos restaurant, so I got off. Except it didn't seem right. I sat down inside the train stop to get my bearings and was surprised that the train stations had free public wifi, so I pulled out my phone, got a GPS signal, and got thoroughly confused. My phone couldn't find the address she had given me and insisted that the restaurant across the street was the only Los Hornos in Lima, but I knew I was not in Chorillos. I asked a passerby who confirmed that I was still several stops away from Chorillos, the end of the line station. So I hopped back on the train to the end of the line and tried again. This time my phone was able to bring up Kathleen’s address, and it looked like I had overshot the jump-off-point by two stations. Back on the bus, back off, and I checked my phone map one last time to make a mental map of where I needed to go. Five blocks down one street, jog one block left, then right and two blocks down.

I couldn't wait to get to food like this: famous Peruvian ceviche (I did get some later).

I started walking. The sun was shining and I felt optimistic and excited: excited to be in a new country, in a busy big city, excited that I’d be seeing a friend soon. I was all smiles as I walked. Kathleen had said the neighborhood was swanky, and I wondered at her definition of swanky. It looked like a seedier version of the seedier parts of East L.A., but hey, I’m in Peru! I grinned and laughed out loud as I walked past my fifth market stall with stripped, freshly-killed chickens hanging on hooks from ropes across the front. I scouted out the little stalls selling food, making mental notes of the gloriously inexpensive prices for the Menu del Días, intending to come back for lunch after dropping my stuff off at Kathleen’s place. I wondered if it had been five blocks yet, the busy market stalls made it hard to judge where streets actually were. I kept walking, and started to feel like I had gone too far, I didn't recognize the names of what street signs I could see. I decided to quickly pull out my phone and consult the GPS.

I had had my phone in my hand for less than two seconds when I felt the shove in the back and the hand grabbing at my phone. I stumbled, clenched my hand tighter, holding onto my phone like it was a lifeline, and spun around to face my attacker. It was a skinny guy in a white shirt, not much taller than me, yanking hard at my phone. I yelled at him. He grabbed my arm. I grabbed his arm with my free hand and started to claw at him, still yelling. I wanted to kick, but I couldn't, I was too weighed down and off-balance with stuff. Then he pushed me hard and I fell sideways to the pavement, and in the split second that my grip loosened as I started to fall, he yanked the phone out of my hand and sprinted away. I looked up, pinned on the sidewalk by my heavy backpack, and saw him run off. I yelled for help: there were people all around, but nobody did anything until he had run off.

Post-mugging: a little scuffed up, but fine (pretty sure the guy lost more skin in the scuffle than I did).

Two women slowly walked up to me as I tried to pick myself up. One helped me to my feet. She asked me what I was doing there, “It’s not safe here,” she said. No shit, I thought. They took me around the corner to a police officer, who chewed me out for being in the neighborhood. “This is the most dangerous street in Chorillos,” she said, “What are you doing here?” I tried to explain that I was trying to get to my friend’s house, but now I didn't have the address and I was too shaken to remember it. I was sure I was within a few blocks, but didn't know where. She pointed me down the road to the police station.

One of the women walked with me to the police station and explained to the officer at the front desk what had happened, then disappeared, leaving me there to fend for myself. The officer told me to wait in the back office for someone to come take my statement and file a report.

About half an hour later, another officer showed up. He introduced himself as the captain, smiling broadly. He asked what happened and I explained. He repeated the street officer’s chiding about how I should not be in this neighborhood. It’s dangerous, he said. When I explained that I didn't know that, I thought it was supposed to be safe, I was trying to get to my friend’s house, he asked for the address. I remembered bits of it, and when I mentioned part of the street name he got furious and demanded to know the name of my friend.

“It’s a center for narcotics, half of the drug deals in Chorillos happen on that street. Are you crazy? You can’t go there.”

Great, I thought.

He must have seen the look of, “well fuck, now what” on my face because he softened.

“Smile, pretty girl, it’s going to be okay,” then he reached out to stroke my back, “You’re safe now. You’re safe with me,” he said, and winked.

That did not make me feel better.

“Do I give my statement to you?” I asked, as I pushed myself away from him.
 “You want to give a statement?” the captain asked, surprised. Why the hell else would I be here? I thought. “Okay, I guess.” And he called in another officer.

After another wait while the other officer got his computer booted up, which apparently was a half hour long process, I was called over to give my statement.

Name.

“Carie? Like the song? Caaaaaaaaaa-rie, Caaaaaaaaaaaaa-rie,” the captain started to sing behind me.

Age.

“30? So young?”

Marital status.

“I’m single, too,” with another wink.

After I had given the statement and asked for a copy, the captain told me to sit down with him at his desk and excused the other officer. He then started to go through a slideshow of his photos, hikes to a waterfall, him with his shirt off in the waterfall, 

“Oh, have you ever seen a cock fight?” I was slightly relieved that he meant chickens, but the images were still disturbing. “How long are you in Peru?” he asked.
“Three weeks. I am visiting my friend,” I replied.
“My gringa, Peru is wonderful, you will see. Please don’t think it is all like this today. Peru is beautiful. I want to show you Peru.”

I thought he meant photos and I smiled politely.

“You come with me, and I will show you Peru. He grabbed my hand and pulled me to him. I mentally freaked out but didn’t know what to do. I was in a police station surrounded by police officers all of whom had guns in their pockets. I was lost. I needed help to get to Kathleen’s place. But this guy is a creep.
He whispered in my ear, “Come with me, I will show you many things.”

I jerked back and exclaimed that I thought I knew a way to track down the thief: my phone has anti-theft software installed and with a computer, we should be able track the phone. I figured that would get him to think about something other than seducing me, would maybe get me access to the internet to look up Kathleen’s address or somehow contact her and ask her to come rescue me, and maybe actually track the phone.

Pretty view from a bar in Lima at night, looking out towards Chorillos.

The ploy worked, and the captain called in the station’s tech guy. We spent the next hour and a half trying to figure out how to get my pone-tracking app to work to no avail, all the while the captain would come by periodically and put his hands on my shoulders and rub my back and check in. When he wasn’t looking, I tried to signal to the tech guy that I was seriously uncomfortable, help, but he gave me a clear, “dude’s the captain, ain’t nothing I can do about it” look in response. I was able to get to my email, though, and shot a “PLEASE COME GET ME!” email to Kathleen, and looked up her address.

I told the officers Kathleen’s address and said I needed to get there, but they ignored me. The captain was determined to keep me there as long as possible. He had more slideshows that I needed to see.

“You come with me. I will show you Peru. You will be safe with me. I am a police captain. Nobody will mess with you if you are with me. I have guns.” He pointed to the gun at his hip, then winked.
“My friend has waiting for me for hours. She is probably really worried. Please, I need to go to my friend,” I pleaded.
“I will take you to your friend, but only if you will visit me. VISIT ME.” He demanded. Right, because hanging out with you in the police station is exactly how I want to spend my time in Lima?
“Here?” I asked, trying to show just how little desire I had to come back to the police station ever again.
“Yes, you will visit me here. And then I will take you to see Peru. You will be safe.” He paused for dramatic effect, put his hands on my shoulders, and winked again. “El único que no será segura es tu corazón." (the only thing that won’t be safe is your heart) I looked it up later just to make sure I hadn't mistaken the unbelievably corny line. How he managed to get that one out with a straight face I will never know.
 “I need to go to my friend.” Maybe tears will work, I thought. They weren’t hard to conjure up, stressed as I was. My eyes started to water.
“VISIT ME!” he demanded, shaking me. I nodded, and the first tear fell.
 “Good. Nonono, don’t cry, wait here, I will get a car.”

I was terrified and thought about bolting, but didn’t know where to go. I had Kathleen’s address now, but I didn’t know where I was or how to get there. And running from a police station seemed like a good way to get arrested. But I also did not want to get in a vehicle with Creepy Captain. I was frozen, not knowing what to do. I hoped that he would at least get me to Kathleen’s place and that I’d be safe once I was there.

He returned, “20 minutes, there will be a car,” followed by more photo show-and-tell and stories about how Peru is unsafe but I would be Safe With Him, and I was starting to wonder after 20 mins had passed if there was a car or if I’d be stuck there forever with him when a new officer walked in.

Much to my relief, he had been assigned to drive me to Kathleen’s place. The captain escorted me, hand on my back to the door, demanding, “Visitarme! Visitarme! VISITARME!” He blocked my way out the door.

It reminded me of my bus nightmare, and I had a flashback to the movie scene with the creepy guy yelling at the girl he had locked in his basement: “Obedéceme! Obedéceme! OBEDECAME!”

But I was almost a free woman, so I smiled and said, “Si,” and he let me pass, giving instructions to the driver that if a blonde girl (Kathleen) didn’t answer the door at the address he was not to let me out of the car, and was to return me to the police station. I worried about that, because I wasn’t sure Kathleen would be home, she had left instructions that one of the kids or housekeepers would be there to let me in, but decided not to explain that point until I was in the car and on the road.

The officer drove me the three minutes to Kathleen’s door, who happened to have just gotten back from her work at the university and was standing just inside the gate outside of the house when I arrived. I was insanely relieved. The police officer briefly questioned her and Marta, the housekeeper and, satisfied that I wasn’t being dropped off at a drug den, excused himself politely and left.

Wow, was I glad to see this person (and needed that beer)!

Lima Part II: Let's try this again...

Needless to say, I didn’t go back to the police station. Marta, however, later said that she saw police cars driving past the house several times that day, which was unusual, and she thought it was hilarious.

I was determined not to let the mugging get to me. Later that evening, Kathleen and I went out with the kids of the house to go check out some of the nicer parts of Lima: Barrancos, a funky and pretty little artsy (the kids said “hipster”) part of town, and we watched the sun set over the beach and got ceviche, which I was pumped about because I love ceviche and Peruvian ceviche is awesome. The next day we went to the beach (bringing nothing with us but our swimsuits and towels so that there was nothing to steal), which was one of Kathleen’s first escapes from what she called the “Princess Palace”. Turns out that the reason she thought the neighborhood was swanky and safe was that she never left the safety of the beautiful gated home surrounded by tall walls that she was staying in except under the escort of the family chauffeur. Our beach trip was a glorious dash for freedom. We had a few more unescorted adventures, including a trip out for some lunchtime exploring, another for evening beers, and a fascinating adventure when I tried to buy a plane ticket to Cusco and it involved taking questionable taxis around town trying to find a certain bank and then handing over a fat wad of cash at the bank to a series of mysterious numbers that had been dictated over the phone and that I had copied down on a scrap of paper, hoping all the while that I wasn’t just wiring money to some gangster and would actually get a ticket (I did).

Adventures in Peruvian banking. Pretty fancy system, pretty weird way to buy a plane ticket.

But the highlight of my few days visiting Kathleen in Lima was when she asked if I’d be willing to talk about microbial evolution in the earth science course she was teaching at the university. Would I be willing? To talk to a captive audience about, like, my very favorite thing? Ummmm, let me think for half a second… We laughed at each other one night when, although we had planned to “go out” and “have fun” that night, we instead stayed in and ate bland spaghetti while feverishly working on our talks for the morning, the funny part being that we wanted to be doing that, that that was more fun for us than “going out”, because SCIENCE! We nerd partied until the wee hours of morning.

I hadn’t gotten to talk about microbes in what felt like a really long time (almost a year), my thesis having morphed to be about stromatolites = rocks, and my South America Talk Tour being all about stromatolites. But although as my friend Vicky says it’s a terrible abusive relationship, my heart belongs to the microbes. Prepping my talk was an excellent excuse to read back through way too many fascinating papers about photosynthesis and microbial evolution, and it was wonderful.

Teaching microbial evolution in Kathleen's Earth Science class

Class the next morning was fun (for me at least, not sure about the students), we ate lunch, hung out and worked in her temporary office at the university, went out for a final beer, and the next morning after a stroll down the coast we were driven to the airport together. And the driver got in a car accident right under the exit sign for the airport. Luckily we were able to get another taxi from there, but it was one of those moments. We had lunch together at the airport before saying goodbye, Kathleen flying back to her shiny new job in Chicago, me off to Cusco.

Sign on the way to the airport. Kraps crackers! Can't stop eating Krap! Oh, and watch out, prematurely balding kid, there's a pedophilic cephalopod right behind you.

Our taxi got in a car accident right under the sign for the airport. Nice.

Kathleen, thanks for letting me visit, it was great to see you!

The Long Road North Part V: Crossing the Antiplano on the Bus to Lima

Video of the journey

Day 1: The Creeps

I woke up early to be at the bus terminal in Jujuy before 7am. I was groggy, having spent the night on the wiggly top of three bunks in an overcrowded and poorly-ventilated hostel dorm room with Argentine and German party animal roommates who kept me up most of the night. I had my 6am revenge, but it didn't feel as sweet as sleeping would have.

My bus was not at the terminal when I arrived, but I was early enough to not be concerned. My bus wasn't supposed to leave until 7:50, but the woman who had sold me the ticket had insisted that it was important for me to be there by 7am, so 7am was when I was there, although it wasn't clear why it was necessary to be an hour early for a bus that, no doubt, was going to show up 2 minutes before departure like every other bus in Argentina ever. When 15 minutes later the bus still wasn't there I got concerned enough to ask at the ticket window, where they told me that I needed to go to another bus station a 10 minute walk away. Why the hell hadn't they put that on the bus ticket?? But I walked over, sweating hard with my giant backpack through a not-particularly-appealing neighborhood. I had been warned about rampant theft in the area and felt helpless with all of my stuff. Fifteen minutes of walking later and there was still no sign of a bus station. I asked the one guy who happened to be out on the street, who pointed further down the road. Cursing under my breath I kept walking, and found nothing. Another guy pointed me back in the direction I had just come from. There had been no buses, no terminals, nothing. But back I walked until, sure enough, I spotted a building with the name of my bus company painted on it, but it was boarded up. There was no bus, were no people, no signs of life…this can’t be right, I thought.

Waiting for the bus

I hailed a taxi back to the main bus terminal and asked again. The guy swore that the boarded-up building was where I was supposed to go. I made him promise twice that if I waited there, my bus would come and get me. He insisted that I was going to miss the bus if I didn't hurry, so I got another taxi back and sat down to wait, sitting alone on the sidewalk in front of the abandoned building on the sketchy street that was empty except for a few men occasionally staggering by reeking of piss and alcohol and making lewd comments as they passed me.

The 7:50 bus departure came and went. So did 8:00, 8:15, 8:30… I started to think that I should go back and give the guy who had promised me I needed to wait there hell for making me wait in a weird place and miss my bus, or make him call the bus and insist that they pick me up at the main terminal where I felt much safer waiting. The whole situation made me really uncomfortable.

I was about to leave when a vehicle drove slowly by, stopped, and started to back up. I wondered if it was maybe a company representative come to inform me that my bus had exploded and wouldn't be coming or something…that or life was about to get unpleasant. I discreetly pulled my Swiss Army knife out of my purse and unfolded a blade. I wasn't sure just what I planned to do with it, it was handy enough for slicing avocados but not exactly a knife-fight worthy blade, but figured a knife was better than nothing on that street. The van pulled up to where I was sitting, and a man leaned out the window.

“Hoooola,” he drawled.
“Hola.”
“Como estas?” 

I wasn’t smiling and was wondering how I’d be able to get proof that the guy was from the bus company, and decided that I wasn’t going to get in a vehicle with anyone I didn’t recognize, and I didn’t recognize this guy.

“Que necesitas?” I asked. What do you want?
“Are you sleeping here?” He asked me in Spanish. Oh great, he thinks I’m a streetwalker.
“No. I’m waiting for my bus. It’s coming soon.”
“No, honey, your bus is late! I will drive you where you are going.” To Lima? I thought. Right.
“No, gracias. I will wait for my bus.”
“Do you want a cigarette?”
“No.”
“Coffee?”
“No.”
“Oh come on pretty girl, come get a coffee with me.”
“No.”
“Just a coffee, come on honey, I’ll take care of you.”

I turned and looked him straight in the eye and said evenly,

“Déjame en paz. Leave me alone.”

He laughed, put his head back in his window, and started to inch the van forward, then stopped again and stuck his head back out the window and made kissing noises at me.

I stood up, knife in hand, and yelled,

“Fuck you, get the hell out of here. Go!”

He left.

Angry and shaken I was gathering my stuff to hail a taxi after an hour of waiting on the street, when suddenly I saw my bus come down the road. It didn't look like it was going to stop, so I walked out into the road and blocked it from passing. Sure enough, after the driver yelled at me and I yelled back and showed him my ticket, it was my bus, and the driver pulled over, threw my bags in the hold, and let me on. I was in a sour, sour mood but I’d be spending the next two days on this bus with this driver, so I figured I should at least try to be nice.

My bus ticket

The bus was full, which was disappointing. After all that time being the only one waiting for it I had hoped it would be a quiet ride, but apparently everyone had gotten on somewhere earlier down the road. There was a guy who had sprawled out across my seat, and I politely asked him to vacate my spot. He was my seatmate and I would spend the next two days smelling his BO, but he ended up being a sleeper, and I was grateful at least for that. Be it plane rides or bus rides or car rides or any rides, I like seatmates best who don’t talk. Ideally ones who don’t smell either, but I’ll take smelly over chatty. I settled into my seat for the two-day journey, then got up to make myself some oatmeal that I had cleverly thought to pack myself, since I hadn’t had breakfast yet. I got back to my seat and realized that, although I had paid for a good seat, my seat was broken and didn’t recline. At all. This was going to be a long 2-day ride.

The drive was scenic, but I had been on the first three hours of it already, so I pulled out a book and read, a book on the history of the Inca Empire.

It looked pretty much like this for 49 hours, except when it was dark.

Usually on these long bus rides I alternate between my Kindle and my laptop and snapping photos with my camera, but after that morning and all the warnings I had heard about thieves in the region, I didn’t trust anyone, and didn’t want to advertise that I had valuable stuff with me. I did shoot some videos with my GoPro, but I kept it strapped to my wrist at all times, and figured if anyone touched it, I’d punch them and scream bloody murder. A tougher target than someone knifing open one of my bags to pull out my camera or laptop. I chided myself for being so paranoid, for behaving differently than I would have in the south. In the south, passengers on the buses were usually European or Israeli tourists. It’s not that tourists don’t steal stuff, but there I was always one target among many. On this bus, I was the only non-Spanish speaker, the only person who didn’t look like they could be Peruvian, and I stood out. On other buses, people smiled at each other and shared snacks. On this bus, I got on as the last person on a full bus, a white girl with fair hair in a sea of dark faces who looked at me not with the warmth and friendliness of the south, but with frowning and suspicious, “what is she doing here?” looks. I’d smile at people, and they’d glare back at me. When I’d turn around to look behind me, there’d always be half a dozen eyes on me, the whole trip, night and day. It was creepy.

Late afternoon rolled around and we had not been fed. I wondered when they were going to bring something to eat or stop for us to get food, since I hadn't brought anything to eat other than my one packet of breakfast oatmeal. The multiple border crossings make having a food bag on the bus impossible as any food would be confiscated. Besides, my ticket read “con servicios” which means “we will feed you on the bus”, and I figured that would be good enough. At around 3pm we stopped at the Chilean border. In the three hours that we were stuck waiting to get our papers processed I could easily have walked to the nearby gas station and bought something to eat, but we were sternly told to not leave the line, and I assumed bus food would eventually come, as it always had in the past.

My giant green backpack on the border securty scanner.

My chariot for the long, long trip.

No bus food came. After being loaded back onto the bus, a woman selling egg and cheese sandwiches—i.e. everything I’m allergic to—was mobbed by the passengers and I asked the driver if we’d be eating soon. “This is your last chance until tomorrow,” he replied. WHAT?? I asked him again to be sure, explained that I was allergic to the only thing she was selling, and she had just sold out of sandwiches anyhow, that I had no food with me, that my ticket said “con servicios”, that I had nothing to eat. He was unsympathetic. I asked if I could walk to the gas station to buy something. He said no. Low Blood Sugar Carie muttered something obscene as tears welled up, and I skulked back onto the bus, slumped down into my chair, and resigned myself to a night of trying hard not to slice the arm off of my seatmate to grill for dinner.

Luckily there were some distractions from my growling stomach. Movies, as usual. Unusual was that most of the movies were not horror movies, which I was grateful for. My creepily staring busmates were scary enough. Ronan, some heist movie that I didn’t watch, Hangover III, Fast and Furious 7 (Really? There have been 7?), Rocky 7 (Grudge Match), Lone Ranger, a surprisingly not-completely-terrible movie by Sylvester Stallone about an undercover narcotics cop hiding out with is daughter in Louisiana, some terrible-looking movie with Vince Vaughn, and then a disturbing movie based loosely on the even more disturbing true story of an Austrian girl who had been locked up as a sex slave in some creep’s basement. In the movie, the guy was a stranger who had kidnapped her as a child, he waited until she came of age to start raping her, and kept her locked in the basement—except when he chained her to his bed—for 10 years before she escaped. In the real life story, the rapist was the girl’s own father who started raping her when she was 12 and kept her locked up in the basement with her seven children/half-siblings for 24 years before she escaped. That night I had nightmares about the bus driver yelling, "Obedéceme! OBEDECAME!!" (obey me) while I was locked up in the luggage hold.

And I dreamed of food.

Day 2: Welcome to Peru

I woke up dizzy the next morning, having not eaten in a full day. Breakfast didn't come. Neither did lunch, making 30 hours with no food. I slept a lot. We crossed the border to Peru, there was no food at that border crossing. I looked. I did make some friends, though, after one middle-aged woman approached me while we were waiting in line and asked if I understood what was going on. Thinking she was trying to help me, I smiled and thanked her and said I did. She thrust her papers upside down in my hand and asked if I could help her fill them out. At first I was confused. She spoke Spanish, I didn't, and the forms were in Spanish, why did she want my help? Then she started pointing to the lines as if trying to read them, but they were upside-down, and it dawned on me that she couldn't read. So I sat down with her and went through and filled out her forms for her, and just when I had finished, there were three other women waiting. I helped all of them with their forms and waited with them in the customs lines to make sure everything was okay. From then on I had people on the bus who smiled at me. Apparently the people on the bus had decided that the gringa wasn't so bad after all.

Welcome to Peru! After 7 months in Argentina and Chile, I finally made it to another country!

Finally in the mid-afternoon we stopped at a weird mud-gated building that looked like an abandoned warehouse from the outside but was a sort of restaurant on the inside. I elbowed my way to a spot in the line (one thing I had learned after two border crossings with these people was that an unwillingness to use elbows will get you left behind and unfed) and gratefully accepted the blocker-elbowings of a few of my new woman friends to keep my spot, and when I got up to the cashier I asked the women to help me order Lots of Food because I was really hungry. They were happy to hook me up with the best of hearty Peruvian Fare, and when the meal came it felt like the best meal I’d ever had. It helped that, having been starved of spice for the past 7 months, Peruvian food was legitimately flavorful. It also helped that I was famished. The women sat and ate with me, and made it clear that I was now in their protection. I was grateful for it.

Later that evening, we stopped for dinner, and I felt like my whole world was Food. It was glorious. I was in Peru. And I had food. Life was good.

Finally! A meal! Also, Pincapple and Orang.

Back on the bus, people smiled now. Maybe they had been hungry and grumpy, too. It was like being on a bus in Chile, only whereas in Chile people are warm and kind and welcoming immediately, my Peruvian busmates had taken significantly longer to warm up to me. Now that they had though they were all smiles and jokes and curiosity and advice and niceness.

I slept much better that night.

Bus rest stop bathrooms

Day 3: Arrival in Lima

The bus arrived in Lima six hours late. Six hours. Nobody seemed surprised. I didn't mind, since that meant a daylight versus a 4am arrival, giving me more time for bus sleeping, which I had now been at long enough to have worked out the optimal arrangement of baggage to produce a sleeping nest that sort of passed as comfortable. The Lima bus terminal, once we did arrive, was beautiful—an airy, glass-encased building with security guards posted at the entrances checking bus tickets, which seemed like a good sign at the time, but in reality belied the chaos outside.

My morning in Lima quickly got quite exciting. Continued in The Long Road North Part VI: Lima

I ran away to Chile and got a temp job at an Ecolodge

After I said goodbye to my family when they went home after Christmas, I had a month and a half to kill before I needed to be back in Ushuaia for…something really awesome (more about that in a future episode). What to do? As nice a home base as Bariloche had been, I was anxious to move on, and besides, there were no affordable beds left anywhere in the city beyond the few days I had booked back at the Green House Hostel. So where to go? The two remaining things on my South America bucket list were 1. Go to the Atacama Desert, see the endoliths and 2. Work for a while at some sort of sustainable/natural farm or tourist outfit.

Spotted on my bus ride out of Bariloche. WHAT IS THAT?? Borg cube crashed into an otherwise nice-looking volcano? Cerro Pantoja at the Argentinian/Chilean border.

#1 – The Atacama – was to satisfy Science Carie, the Atacama (driest hot desert on Earth—some weather stations have never recorded rain—ever!) has been the top of her World bucket list (and #3 on the Universe bucket list after Mars and the moon) ever since I read about the photosynthetic microorganisms that live inside rocks there—some seriously badass bugs.

#2 – Spend time working at a Green Nature Organic Hippie Rainbow Farm Lodge – was to satisfy Treehugger Carie who had dreamed of building an Eco Camp somewhere lovely and mountainous and running a sort of sustainable building and alternative energy demonstration center and laboratory / natural science and green engineering camp for kids. More on that in the post that follows this.

Stuff like this was pulling me back to Chile

Being indecisive by nature, I sent out emails to people involved in Atacama research asking when they were going and if there was any chance of me tagging along. At the same time, I researched Green Nature Organic Hippie Rainbow Farm Lodges in Chile and Argentina advertising a need for help, bookmarked a few that looked interesting (i.e., in a pretty location with people who worked at something more interesting than smoking pot all day and who would feed me), and sent out a few emails, including one to one particular Ecocamp in a spot in Chile I had wanted to visit at some point anyway.

I didn’t hear from anyone for a few days, so I tried to book a hostel room in nearby, but less citified, El Bolson. Still no beds available. Fine, screw you Argentina, so I found a place on the other side of the border in Puerto Varas.

Church in Puerto Varas

And then I got sick. Deathly, wheezy, coughing in a scary rattly way, fever and chills, shit-I-think-I’m-dying-of-pneumonia sick. It had started with a phlegmy cough on New Year’s Eve and wasn’t helped by hiking up a mountain for hours through the rain and freezing cold, then partying until the wee hours of morning, then hiking for hours through the rain and freezing cold back down a mountain. I woke up in the hostel on January 2^nd unable to talk and with a horrible-sounding cough, quickly developed a fever, and it was all downhill from there. But that didn’t change the no-beds-in-Argentina situation so I loaded my deathy, wheezy, coughing in a scary rattly way, fever and chills, shit-I-think-I’m-dying-of-pneumonia self onto a bus and wheezed and coughed (trying to be as good as possible about coughing into tissues and wiping my hands down with sanitizer ever few minutes to protect my innocent fellow passengers) my way into Chile. It was another 6 hour trip, which would once have seemed long, but after my 36-hour bus ride to Ushuaia seemed short and I entertained myself by, wheezing and coughing, staring out the window at the stunning views of volcanoes, and wheezing and coughing some more.

Mountains from the bus. That beige triangle is a giant mound of ash on the side of the road from a recent volcanic eruption.

More ash.

I probably should have flagged down a taxi, but being now thoroughly used to being a cheap-ass backpacker the thought never crossed my mind after I arrived in Puerto Varas and then had a few miles to hike with all of my stuff to my hostel. Lots of wheezing, coughing, breath-catching stops, and I arrived dripping sweat and completely exhausted. The upside was that I looked so miserable (and potentially dangerous to others) that a single room was found for me in the hostel attic. It was the cutest room ever, and I quickly set to work napping.

Inside the Cutest Room Ever at the Hostel Margouya in Puerto Varas

Cutest Room Ever would not have been complete without a wood etching of Che Guevara

It was another miserable, feverish night, but I was waiting for a response from my travel insurance company about coverage before I checked myself into the hospital (which would have meant the emergency room, it being a Sunday, and I’m always reluctant to call anything short of profuse blood gushing an emergency), and never got that response so never went and checked myself in. Instead I laid in bed and watched movies that my friends had generously sent to me when I went begging for brainless entertainment on Facebook (I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick I feel like my skull is full of mucus, and my brain stops working) and ate from-scratch chicken soup I made from some chicken parts and veggies I bought at a market a block from the hostel.

That did the trick, and after a few days of that (including another hostel move when I got booted out of the original one), I was feeling better enough to move on.

Bacon Avocado? 

Inside my second quarantine room at another hostel in Puerto Varas

And right about then, I got a response from Amory, the female half of the team at the Chilean Ecocamp I had hoped to work at saying that I could come and see the place and talk about what I might be able to do there. And two days later, I was back on a bus, this time to the legendary Island of Chiloé.

It was a miserable bus ride, and I was two kinds of sick, still plugged up from my dying-of-pneumonia-turned-bad-cold, and also brutally hungover. Yeah, I’m an idiot. It started when I decided to celebrate my last night in Puerto Varas and my feeling significantly better by, rather than eating chicken soup for the 5^th night in a row (my kidneys were starting to complain about the sodium strain), going out to the restaurant next door and treating myself to some of the area’s legendary seafood. On my way out, one of the other hostel dwellers told me that I could get $1000 peso beer or wine there with a special hostel card, and although I was at first hesitant to drink anything while still somewhat under the weather, I figured a beer would be good. So I sat down, at the bar because there was no table room (my first mistake), ordered my beer and a ceviche, and started chatting up the locals around me.

Puerto Varas has a large lake and a huge volcano. Making it officially awesome.

There were some great stories and conversations and when one guy insisted that he buy me a wine I didn’t refuse and then another insisted that I try the bar’s pisco sour because they are reallyreallygood, and then the bartender got involved and started having me try things, and…next thing I knew I was god-knows-how-many wines and piscos and whiskeys and and and down and in another bar scrawling my name in magic marker on the arm of a stupidly cute guy from Texas while being gently pushed out by the bar owner because it was 3:30 am and he wanted to go home.

I’m starting to develop a habit of going out for an innocent beer only to stay up all night drinking with gregarious locals. I also only seem to do this when already sick (although, admittedly, my sample size is n=2 at this point). The gregarious locals part is a blast, but the drinking while sick part needs to stop.

My downfall: I took this sign too seriously.

Despite my questionable mental state, I made it back to the hostel without incident (which was conveniently right across the street from the bar, so literally within rolling distance), but was in pretty bad shape the next morning. And I showed up at my stunningly beautiful, peaceful, healthy site of potential temporarily employment—on one of the three buses per week that head out the long dirt road to Chepu from the town of Ancud on Chiloé Island—exhausted, grumpy, still somewhat inebriated, head throbbing, stomach uneasy, having horrible menstrual cramps, wheezy, sniffly, disheveled, and reeking of alcohol. Classy.

And when Fernando, the male half of the Ecolodge team, came out to meet me as I walked down his driveway and said, “Sorry, you can’t stay here, we have no water,” I momentarily considered puking  right there to express how I felt about that news. I didn’t, instead managing to get out a semi-coherent explanation out about how his wife had said I could come, etc. Given the shape I was in, I’m surprised he didn’t throw me out. But he let me stay—for two nights until I could catch the next bus back from whence I came.

Home sweet home in the Ecolodge Dormi

Laundryline in the Dormi

So I checked into the little “dormi” (essentially a non-mountain refugio room) which consisted of a bare room with two sets of bunk beds with naked mattresses), pulled out my sleeping bag, crawled inside it, and slept for a few hours. I woke up feeling significantly, if not quite 100%, better. Then, after dinner with two lovely couples from England and Germany, I went back to sleep. In the morning I was still sick with a cold and still suffering from cramps, but otherwise better. I went for a walk to the dunes at the beach a few miles away, enjoying the quiet, pastoral landscape, the river views, and the birds, and when I came back decided to talk to the owners again about working with them for a while. It was a nice, quiet place, and I needed a nice, quiet place to relax and finally get some writing work done.

View of Chepu Adventures ecolodge from the Río Punta

And guess what? They let me stay!

Two weeks later, I’ve done a little bit of everything:

• Woken up at 4am to prepare the lodge and get guests suited up and sent off on kayaks for the Ecolodge’s Kayak at Dawn activity, then pulled them back out when they were done
• Manned the safety radio from 4:45 – 8:30 am
• Made breakfasts
• Washed dishes
• Cleaned bathrooms
• Ripped the floor out of a rotting bathroom, re-framed it, and rebuilt it
• Redid their website
• Made dinner
• Stripped beds
• Entertained guests from Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, England, Canada, and the U.S.
• Folded laundry
• Done translations
• Given kayak safety orientations
• Served coffee

Guests enjoying the sunrise during Kayak at Dawn

Arranging fruit plates for guests' breakfast

Re-building a rotten bathroom floor. Step 1: Rip up cracked tiles. Step 2: rip up moldy, rotten pressboard floor; Step 3: build a new frame to support a stronger floor. Step 3: install new frame. Step 4: put down new floor on top and secure to new frame. Step 5: clean. Step 6: prettify (in progress).

Current and upcoming projects include

• Making a promotional video featuring their sustainability efforts
• Programming their beer fridge to keep track of guests’ beverage consumption
• Installing solar panels on the lodge roof

I’ve also had a lot of fun and some pretty incredible experiences

• Watching the sun rise over the Río Punta and the Sunken Forest
• Saw a pudu (world’s smallest deer) drinking from the river while kayaking
• Watched a Kingfisher fish while out on a run
• Swam with a river otter, the huilin (an endangered species), when it came up to me while I was swimming and chatted with me for 10 minutes

Sunrise over the Río Punta

Kayaks at Chepu Adventures

Bird! Diana? Helpwhatisit!

Sand dunes at the Chepu beach

It’s been great, a lot of fun, interesting, and peaceful. It’s lovely here.

So glad it worked out.