Dad-isms

Waiting at the arrival gate of the Medford Airport,I can hardly keep my feet on the ground. I’m 6 years old, 8 years old, 10 years old and 12 years old.  Through the years time and time again, the exhilaration of greeting my dad upon his return from business trips, does not fade.  Yes, I’m excited to see him, to have his physical presence back in the family. But, to live vicariously through his stories in the places and with the people that are so mysterious, intriguing and currently inaccessible to me are the real reason my knees are doing a jig.  

He would push through the exhaustion of weeks of travel to tell me stories of his business meetings, which to my young mind were the most amazing of adventures in distant lands. I was enraptured with every foreign item that emerged from his suitcase. The duty-free perfume gift boxes he would bring back for my mother were the most luxurious items that this girl from the boondocks had ever seen.  And the gifts he brought back for me were unrivaled: the airline-sponsored free magazine, a small Asian fan, airline peanuts, a skirt from Mexico, the plastic-ware from the on-board meal, and my number one favorite, the United Airlines issued barf-bags. 

My father tried his best to encourage my enthusiasm regarding travel while adding a twist of the pragmatic.  One of his many dad phrases that I remember with clarity said with the sarcasm that experience affords: Travel is So Glamorous. 

And after years of rolling my eyes at his corny and trite statements, I have now come to the point in my life where I heard my father’s words though my own mouth.  I even turned my head to look when the statement Travel is So Glamorous hit my ear drums. But my dad isn’t even in the same hemisphere through which I’m currently traveling…hmmm, and the pitch; it was much too high.  Oh, right that was my voice.  

Well, he was right. I felt nothing akin glamor as I stood at the Bolivian/Peruvian boarder, smelly, tired, but so excited to be on my way home when I realized the bus driver was telling me in his rapid and slightly unintelligible Spanish that Peru’s boarders were closed.  I caught a few phrases here and there: miners strike, roadblocks up, no one knows how long it will last, not possible to cross the bridge.  After spending the whole first half of the day traveling it was time to turn around head back to La Paz. 

That is when it hit. The dad-ism.  Travel is So Glamorous. 

I recoiled,  did I just say that?  Then it is true: as one ages, they resemble their parents more and more.  Then I realized, that maybe it wasn't so bad.  I have made it a goal to incorporate into my own life the best qualities that I observe in the people that admire, and while it is so easy to find fault with those that are closest to you, my dad sure does have a number of admirable qualities.  Sarcastic humor in times of stress being one, And well, sarcastic humor in a time where I may just miss an international flight worth $1700 might be the healthiest reaction possible.

But, never fear.  To save you inordinate amounts of stress and worry let me tell you dear readers, your intrepid traveler friend has now successfully reached her destination, although in a much more expensive and less glamorous fashion than originally planned. 

 For your reading pleasure here is my cost/benefit analysis of my itinerary changes.  

-futile bus tickets from la paz to cusco:               120B

-extra night and day in la paz:                            400B

-unused plane tickets from cusco to lima:           $133usd

-last minute plane tickets from la paz to lima:     $290usd

-extra cost of a night in Lima:                            S./100

-3 shots of whiskey on the LAN flight to lima:      Free

-going through Peru immigration and customs totally snockered: priceless.

While flying may seem more glamorous than riding a bus, I managed to loose my extra glamor points when I was relegated to wiggling my way under the bathroom stall door after it jammed, with me and my luggage inside (and I assure you at that particular time, I was as sober as could be).  

Once I gather my wits and have a chance to sit down and compose my thoughts in an intelligible manner, I will post the glamorous stories of the bugs, snakes and blisters (and much more amazing things as well) that Jen and I encountered in the Yungas. 

Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend

Developing an appreciation of the desert has been a long process for me.  As a pedigree Pacific Northwest girl, I have associated the green terrain with beauty.  Full, evergreen filled, misty forests with dense underbrush, teeming with wildlife are my version of paradise.  Deposit me in an open landscape and I feel vulnerable, alone and struggle to see past the barren, dry and dead backdrop to the actual beauty and life that exists in spite of the harsh conditions.  In high school I discovered Barbra Kingsolver; High Tide in Tuscon and The Bean Trees began to reform my thinking.  If such an amazing author could see beauty in a venue where I see vast nothingness, maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough.  Fast forward and I began to visit the desert in small quantities and make friends with people who are passionate and love such landscapes.  I even moved to Colorado and enjoyed climbing trips to various dry environs. 

But my love for trees continues, and I find very little about the desert to be superior to a water-logged old-growth forest.  On day two of our three-day Salar de Uyuni tour (Bolivian, salt-flats and desert), I began to feel that I had seen enough of the desert.  My day consisted of a view of snow-capped mountains surrounding vast plains of sand and rock after rock after gravel pile after brightly colored, alien looking pool: green and then red and then blue, then flamingos and dust with a layer of dust on top.  I can’t really complain, it is beautiful and some parts are like nothing I have every seen before, but alongside the sand in the eyeballs, biting cold, sunburn, windburn, dehydration and hours upon hours spent in a small jeep, I’m ready for some trees and rain and an long trail. 

Then, after dinner, I discover the true beauty of the desert.  The one thing, in my humble opinion that the desert does better than any forest: nighttime.  Nothing stands in the way.  It is pitch black.  The smell of santo incense burning in the fireplace of our hostel waft alongside the tranquil breeze.

I look up in awe at the stars of the southern hemisphere.  Brilliant and overpowering compared to the ground on which I’m standing.  There is nothing between me and the heavens.  Even the mountains seem to be deferential to the all encompassing strength of the Milky Way.  I know that in comparison to the millions of light years that separate me and the stars, the 16,500 feet closer that I stand to the heaves tonight is respectively insignificant.  It must just be the placebo effect, but tonight my interaction with the stars is much more intimate. 

They truly sparkle; glimmer then fade and then shimmer again.  They are singing to me their song, their story, in the only language they know, light.  Luis and Francesca join me out in the cold and give me a lesson in southern hemisphere constellations.  I walk out farther into the desert, away from everyone and past the reach of the lights that stream from our hostel.  I relish the combined sensations of isolation, vulnerability and the silent commune with something bigger than myself.  Truly, these seemingly little, twinkling stars are just like diamonds in the sky. 

The next morning our crew wakes at 4:45.  The sun is still hidden and I notice instantly the change in the earth’s location in relation to my newfound ethereal comrades.  Our whole crew gazes up, with bleary eyes as we pack the jeep in preparation for the day.  We watch the sun come up over the steam from thermal geysers and then warm ourselves before breakfast in the hot springs. It is our last day of our Salar de Uyuni tour and I guess I’m ready for a little more desert. 

Photos of our Salar de Uyuni tour can be found on my on my facebook page.  

Travel and Communication

The day before Jen arrived in Peru I went to the Cusco bus station to pre-purchase our Cusco to La Paz bus tickets.  The experience of an overnight bus can be pleasant or unbearable depending on seat choice, road conditions, driver quality etc.  I wanted to explore our options and purchase the best tickets within our price range so that Jen’s first overnight bus experience would be positive. 

I was quite proud of myself for communicating so well with the friendly salesperson of San Luis bus line.  I confirmed three times that we would not have to change busses.  The only stops on our journey were to be an hour break in Puno to give the passengers a chance to purchase breakfast and then again at the Peru/Bolivia crossing, where the bus driver would walk us through the boarder formalities.  We were to leave Cusco at 10 pm and arrive in La Paz at 1pm the following day. 

As the bus’ motor revved at 10:15, I turned to Jen and commented that she must be a good luck charm.  Everything was going so smoothly, all of our modes of transportation up to that point had been so simple to find and was always on time, much different than all of my other experiences.  I forgot to knock on wood. 

We arrived in La Paz at 5:30 pm the following day after transferring between three different busses, a janky combi, and a boat.  The boarder crossing, which took over an hour was anything but straightforward and required that we hike across the boarder while our bus driver tossed our checked bags onto the pavement and then drove off leaving us in a state of confusion about which of the three immigration offices we should check in with first. 

That adventure wasn’t quite enough for us.  We decided to book a second overnight bus to Uyuni that left 2 hours after we arrived in La Paz.  We wanted to be as efficient as possible and just make it to our destination, we could sleep next week.

After much more bus-ride booking mis-communication we arrived in Uyuni at 7 am after 33 hours on the road.  Within an hour we had our tickets booked for a Salar de Uyuni tour and at 10 am piled in the jeep that we called home for the following 3 days. More on that trip later, but in the meantime check out the pictures I have posted