Returning to my new home

Returning places is always filled with a sense of wonder.

Quito was a quick maze of government buildings as I sought to register my visa and go to el senso. Neither of these things was I aware of before arriving to Ecuador. En la frontera I was informed, and had to navigate my way through LatinoAmericano bureaucracy in order to take care of these things before arriving in Bahia. Fortunately my friend met me in Quito, knew the city, and helped me both with making my way through the city, and with understanding what people were trying to tell me. You have to be a bit pushy and pleady here in order to take care of things. At the senso, I was actually given an Ecuadorian ID! Cool!

We went to Guayaquil so he could vote, and apparently the elections were a big deal this year. President Correa posed 10 questions which would make amendments ranging from banning bullfighting and cockfighting to not allowing the media to have interests in non-media corporations, to restructuring the judicial system. All of the questions passed in the pre-count, though most of them narrowly and with a good bit of heated conversation. Hopefully things don't become agitated in this country while I'm here!

Guayaquil: caliente, caliente, caliente!
Stepping off the bus was stepping into a mass of muggy air. Each day leaving the hotel room (which was air-conditioned) I immediately wanted another shower. I was a bit worried that Bahia (also on the coast, and even closer to the equator) would have this terrible heat. Though the port city does not have the best reputation, and certainly does not have the colonial beauty like Quito, we had a nice walk on the boardwalk, played around on a sailboat that was open to tour, and climbed to a tower in the old part of the city. You'd see pics, but I forgot to put a fresh battery in the camera.

Bahia: cultura diferente...
Its hard in some ways to describe how things are different here, but they very much are. In Quito, and in Colombia in the cities where I was, things seemed to have less of a distinct difference, but I'm on the coast now, which means coastal time. Coastal time here is a bit like island time, like when I'd go to the San Juan Islands in Washington. There are chickens running all around, a donkey brays, kids are playing in the dirt roads. Motos are common forms of transportation. Everyone knows each other. You take a break in the middle of the day because it's hot. Everyone eats together, even if there is just barely enough. You eat most things with a spoon. Fish and rice are common. The buildings are made of bamboo and wood (and a bit of cement) and the structure is shoddy but everyone has a computer and there's a projector on the wall and 15-year-olds have Blackberries. All work is done manually instead of using machinery and people just seem to do it. People are mining sand form the beaches to use in construction and so the beach is left with less sand and the hills are eroding. The papaya tree is loaded with fruit.

I know my writing is a bit disorganized but I wanted to share a little bit and in many ways its quite overwhelming to be back in this place. Peace and happiness to all who may read this and I do miss friends and family much so let me know how you are doing!

First Solitary Hike in the Southern Hemisphere: Valle de Cocora

My first solitary hike in South America: I arise at 5:30 in the morning, and leave just as the sun begins to highlight the cloud formations and cast its rays to illuminate the brilliant green hillsides. Even in this touristy (and incredibly beautiful) town of Salento, I am early enough to be sitting in the back of a jeep with only locals. It winds on twisted roads, arrives in Cocora, at the beginning of my hike.


I'd skipped breakfast, banking on the fact that one can get food just about anywhere in Latin America at just about any time, if you are willing to compromise quality. Not so here, now. I settle on chips and a sweet coconut snack, hoping it will hold me for the four hour hike.

Rain, lots of rain the night before. (actually, this year Colombia has received more rain than in anyone's memory) Lots of rain makes lots of mud. Through the first part of the walk it was hard to enjoy the incredible landscape around me as I tried to not to sink over the tops of my shoes in muddy horse tracks. But the wax palm landscape (tallest palm and tallest monocot in the world!) was intoxicating in the morning light. Clinging to barbed wire fence to keep myself from sinking into el lodo, I kept on, until reaching the cloud forest.


The day before, a fairly adventurous girl had told me she was glad she'd gone with other people because on this part of the hike there were several river crossings that involved downed logs and bridges of poor integrity. Anticipating this, I was a bit nervous, and decided that I'm experienced enough to know my limits and that if I encounter something I'm not comfortable with, I'll stop, wait, turn around, or make some sort of intelligent decision. However, none compared to the bridges I crossed in El Bolson or the downed log crossings in Chile last year. Thank goodness!

At the far point in the loop one reaches a reserve, which reputedly serves hot chocolate (or other drinks) and a bit of queso for a small price. My lack of breakfast and snacks left me looking quite forward to this. It also was said to have a number of hummingbirds.


Well, the hummingbirds were there, but not a person to be found. I spent an hour taking photos, resting, waiting, changing lenses and taking more photos. Because of this I could not take the hike any further (there's a spur off the loop that heads into paramo), and instead turned around, to have a lunch of trout in a garlic and mushroom sauce (trout is a specialty of the region).

New beginnings in Bogota

Returning to our southern sister continent has been surprisingly easy, in large part due to my hosts Enrique and Mariella, los padres of a friend who I met last year in Bolivia. Settling in has felt quite easy, the language is beginning to come back, and the city does not feel intimidating (though Bogota is large – 9 million people).

After arriving, Enrique and Mariella treated me to a tasty lunch at home; then I slept most of the day away. Today we went to Monserrate, which you can reach via teleferico to the top, where there is a church. Being that it is Semana Santa (Holy Week) there were many people attending the service.

Mossy cross.

View downwards towards the city from the teleferico.

The streets around Monserrate.

Next we went to the home of Simon Bolivar, liberator of many Latin American countries. There was a garden around it: it included some plants signifying peace between countries (including los Estados Unidos), the coat of arms of the countries which Bolivar helped to attain freedom from Spain’s rule (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama), a huerta with a number of culinary and medicinal plants, and other themed areas.

One of the coat of arms.

Enrique and Mariella, at la Quinta de Simon Bolivar.

We strolled the Candelaria district, which is quite old and historic, and saw the main church, the home of the president, and several other notable buildings.

The next day, I chilled out at the Botanical Garden, which is one of the better ones I’ve been to internationally. It includes a mariposario, where I saw many butterflies! Went a bit photo-crazy, and in the mariposario, my lenses steamed up with all the humidity which was creating a false jungle environment. Had to do some photo editing to salvage some of these, but it was worth it. Later, a bit of a walk in Parque Simon Bolivar, a tasty helado, and navigating myself back to the house.

Tomorrow I’m off to Pereira, a la zona cafetera, on an 8-hour bus ride.

Field Guide Project: A bit about the work I'm hoping to accomplish this year

Yep, its work I want to do here. When Jameson and I were in South America several months ago, we were always on the lookout for resources to help us understand more about the flora and fauna we were experiencing. When traveling to new places, some people collect shot glasses, others collect t-shirts or mugs. I collect field guides. I love them. Some are insightful, others are mediocre, but they are my way of staying in touch with a place.

Throughout our travels it became increasingly evident how difficult these are to find, and progressively more so as we ventured into ever more biodiverse areas. This makes complete sense, in a way: there are so many things to describe, and discoveries of new species in these areas are not surprising, either. With this in mind, I decided to follow an ambitious dream to develop locally-to-regionally based guidebooks, starting with the most recent place I spent time volunteering: Reserva Cerro Seco, on the Ecuadorian coast, in the ‘eco-ciudad’ of Bahia de Caraquez, 1 degree south of the Equator in dry tropical forest.

I chose this area for several reasons a) there is a huge amount of deforestation going on in the region and I believe that generating energy and stimulating education around biodiversity and the importance of the forest as a living entity will be one way to help counter that, b) the rate of endemic species is something like 23%, c) though there is a high number of species it is less than something in the rainforest, therefore more manageable, d) I made friends there who are excited to have me and want to support this project, e) I’ll be helping them with other projects such as reforestation, environmental ed, and bringing other volunteers to work with them, f) the ocean will be a 10 minute walk from my home and warm enough to swim in.

There will be a number of opportunities for me to get involved with on-the-ground work and play an integral role in what is going on to build sustainability and conservation programs in the area. After volunteering for month-long stints last year, I'm hoping that this extended stay will provide me with the chance to do some more meaningful work in protecting an area that is subject to a number of human threats (especially deforestation), contribute to the body of scientific knowledge, and connect people more strongly to the land.

Several months ago I began to solicit contacts and initiate some background work on this endeavor; however, I was a bit too busy experiencing life in all of its wondrous glory as I explored the vast West while I conducted fieldwork, and I had to set aside some of my intentions for preparation temporarily in order to properly take advantage of the present. I’m now throwing myself full-heartedly into this work (ok, after 2 weeks in Colombia!), and ready as I’ll ever be. Whatever happens, i.e., whether or not the project is successful, I hope and believe that something will come out of it and I will learn a lot through the process.

New Journey Awaits, and Notes on Loving Life

The sun sets behind me illuminating a haze of clouds on the horizon as my plane jets eastward to Florida. I passed over the beautiful aridity and canyonlands of Nevada, Utah, and the gorgeous topography of Colorado, and now I’m over some farming state I can no longer identify. It grows dark as we escape the sun.

If I’ve not told you personally or you haven’t picked up on it via Facebook or something, I’m headed back to South America, solita, to do some work in the dry tropical forest at Reserva Cerro Seco, an eco-reserve on the coast. The main thing I’d like to tackle is developing a field guide to the plants of the area, though my other work will include volunteer coordination, sustainability and reforestation projects. Since everyone asks, no I’m not getting paid, yes I’m self-funded from strict and regimented saving during a couple stints of botany work I had over the last few months in the States, yes I would love to make further connections down there and learn about grant and other work opportunities, and no, I don’t have a return ticket.

The last few days and weeks have brought me a whirlwind of unexpected emotion as I prepare to leave and live in Ecuador. Not all of them have been pleasant. I’ve come to love my country more and appreciate all the wonderful luxuries we enjoy. I’ve been surrounded everywhere I go with an abundance of love from family, friends, and strangers. I’ve experienced exquisite beauty in forgotten desert landscapes that beckons tears from my eyes: the call of an unidentified bird in the sunset glow of the Sonoran desert; ochre buttes and elk herds in the Wyoming wilderness; granite outcrops punctuating pine forest in the Sierra Nevadas; Joshua Tree’s jumbled rocks. I’ve spent more time with my family in these past few months than in any other years of my adult life, and I love them.

The last few months I have been living life quite fully and have appreciated each and every day: its splendor and its sadness. I wish for everyone to live and love life as completely as is possible for them in whatever situation they find themselves able to do so.

Overdue notes on Arizona

Oh, Arizona.

Desolate beauty.

Saguaro cacti piercing vast open sky.

Saguaros, so twisted, contorted.

So much like people, with unique, different, morphing shapes, stately arms, most reaching towards the heavens, some grasping for the earth, weighted by their own selves, some curving around, like arms of a ballet dancer circling her waist as she twists.

Some appear like faces, with funny noses protruding.

In the daylight: green, fully exposing their multiple uses by many species for habitat, their skins carved, eaten, becoming woody with age. Hosting nests of large birds in their elbows and shoulders.

In the evening: as the light falls, colors fade and the spines catch the dimming light, appearing to glow at their tops where their spines come together.

In the dusk: silhouetted against the sunset, the sunrise, the moonrise: giants, anthropomorphized towering statues, reaching for the stars.

Saguaros occurring singly amidst vast creosote seas.

Saguaros in dense forests of their own.

And a little horny toad scuttles from a hole underneath an ocotillo to the shade of a creosote bush.

Ohhh, co tillo. Mesmerizing in your spidery, upward reaching legs, arms, spines.

And you can walk for miles and not see a trace but then there are traces in the strangest places. Old rusted cans. For sale signs, selling land, selling hope (ha, is this what’s going to happen to Obama’s sale of hope to the American people?), selling the illusion of profit, the idea of a life.

And in the background, there is the gnawing knowledge of immigrants crossing this bleak landscape, often in scorching sun. They are desperate. In border areas you see abandoned clothing, and other remnants of human passing. They hide in the cool shade of the washes in the day, waiting to rebegin their fateful journey in the evening. And I can only wonder at what it is that drives them to undertake such an arduous crossing. Even after several months of being confronted with this reality, I am still overwhelmed when thinking about it.

There are drug smugglers, too. That is a whole other story, and one I am lucky I didn’t encounter, but merely heard about. Many things occur on these open lands that are myths, and realities of what is still the wild west.

We drove down an old road at the edge of a nothing town to find a plot. And at the end of it, at the very end of this very remote road in this out of the way place, we came to a gate guarding a house, and on the gate, was a sign, and the sign told us: GO AWAY. When you are out there, that far out there, you don’t want anyone here. What is it like to be ‘out there’? Surrounded by silence, surrounded by stunning, sometimes deafening silence, by all encompassing sky, and desert pavement that extends into the distance.

And you can walk for miles through creosote, its leaves yellow-green, always surviving this arid scorching ground. Creosote bush: ultimate survivor, oldest living plant species, the only thing growing in the most abandoned, forgotten places; when it is dying you know that the last fertility that the land could offer is gone. And you wonder what could have happened there to have robbed the soil of its soul.

We see a bighorn sheep in the canyon. It stares us down, calmly, coolly. It doesn’t mind we are there, in awe of him. He has a presence that renders us close to speechless, we can only whisper our most immediate observations. He moves surely, and almost silent except for the occasional rock that tumbles under his weight as he meanders towards the next bite of food.

And the agricultural land, green and lush and productive, using stolen water to manufacture life and livelihood.

And the cattle, grazing on nothing, their tracks and long-dried up piles of pies leaving legacy to their visit. You walk, and wonder how they survive.

We came upon 6 dead cattle; fresh enough to let off an odor so rank and forceful as to cause us to turn around, old enough to be so emaciated as to reveal rib and pelvic bones protruding. They are clustered. What is the mystery of their deaths? Were they shot? Put out of they misery of their hunger? We can only ponder, solemnly. A tear falls down Susan’s face.

Nightly, we sleep under the stars, in the elements, feeling the peace of the night as it settles in slowly. I become more and more comfortable living houseless, cooking on our makeshift stove setups, closing down myself with the coming of darkness and awakening before the light. I become more and more drawn to the sunrise, and fall more in love with it every day.

We slept next to a gas compressor plant, which sounded like an ancient truck trying to start up constantly; nearby was Poison Well, and the horizon was decorated by the steam of a nuclear power plant and a water reclamation plant in the distance. In the morning we arose early, eager to leave and were greeted with the most fascinating sight.

The sliver of a new moon fell slowly into the dawn, and was illuminated by the rising sun into a blood red as it dropped.

And the rocks are so dominant in the landscape. Piles of rocks, exposed by weather, the only thing with enough stamina to withstand the blazing sun, the absence of water.

And yet the topography is so completely shaped by water: the undulating surface of the land is defined by washes. Unseen during these spring months were those deluges of water, but in the landscape you could read its presence. A road seems it will traverse endless flat land, while there actually is a great deal of hidden topography, allowing our rented vehicles to go only so far.

I climb a rock to its top and perch. I gaze over the vast landscape before me and it is a seascape in reverse: green basin, blue mountains in the distance. I take it in and close my eyes and imagine it in reverse, thousands of years ago, when these mountains perhaps emerged, green from blue ocean, covered in vegetation. I always saw this ocean in my mind’s eye.

And the mountains in Arizona are of every color. They can be of red or orange or brown rock of any shade; covered with yellow lichen, or green vegetation; in twilight in the distance they take on several hues of blue and purple, until they become a black silhouette against the starry night sky. The rainbow on the earth is mirrored by the multihued sunsets: as starkly beautiful when cloudless as they are dynamic and beautiful with morphing clouds overhead.

The desert will enchant you. It will steal your heart.

The desert will eat you. It will eat your shoes.

And the cholla will bite you, and they will not apologize.

Interlude I

The Wyoming chapter has closed, for now.
A brief interlude now in the southwestern Sierra Nevadas, and then on to the Arizona borderlands, to experience desert wildflowers.

Wyoming Fall was magnificent but I left being romanced by the beginning of winter.

Good-bye to the snow-covered buttes, duotone shading of wintering sagebrush and sepia grasses, farewell to frozen ponds, frozen time, and sub-zero temperatures. Imprinted in my memory are the golden eagles swooping low by the roadsides, competing with flocks of ravens and outnumbered by myriads of magpie as they dive in for their share of the pronghorn roadkill on its back on the road's shoulder. When I close my eyes I can see the sunrise: a bright, huge ball, magnified in intensity and size by the frozen cold of the atmosphere, light consuming half of the sky, the rest of it clouds glowing pink and blue and green and everything in between, while the soft cotton sides of the buttes end in of slivers of rose or gold.

Lo extrañará (I will miss) the openness, the ability to see for miles and miles: long dirt roads now hidden in snow, two-tracks serve as snowshoe or ski paths for hours of solitary contemplation as I stare into shades of whiteness. Venturing off-path, even in a snowstorm, is possible with caution because everything is so visible: here, landmarks have taken on different relevancies.

The roads are a constant grey or white. A new element is added to driving. Years of being told what to do when a car slides becomes reality and you learn to guide your vehicle to dance with differing substrates underneath its wheels. My little 2wd Tercel is getting a workout. I begin to realize its limitations when it briefly gets stuck in a snowdrift. I further realize its near its capacity when it cannot take on the hill to a friends house, and begins to slips backwards and into a curb.

I walk in the snow: each day it changes, and becomes its own snow: slushy or fluffy, powdery or crunchy, dry or moist. When it falls it arrives differently; I am becoming acquainted with snow here like I began to know rain in western Washington, or the fog in California's Central Valley. Even the cold temperatures can be appreciated: on particularly cold mornings a person can feel their nosehairs freezing as they breathe in.

Southwest Wyoming will always hold a place in my heart.
It embodies the wild that I love.
It is free and independent and true to itself.
It has not fallen victim to the modernities that have so completely consumed much of our country.

People say that some have come to Kemmerer, for a job, and just turned their car around and left, calling in to say that there is no way in hell they can live there. I say, thank god they do. Because a place like this wouldn't exist if they'd stayed.

Falling in Love with the Middle of Nowhere

The sun goes down with a perfect halo of golds and ambers, brilliance lighting up the hillside, illuminating the dried grasses that sway in the hillside on Oyster Ridge. I walk up to a view of the city, a view of the trains that make their way through the city, several times daily, freighters only, carrying coal, or pipe, or other hidden industrial materials within hard-sided train cars, brown and rusted and dark.

I can walk for miles here and not see a soul; I see more animals than people when I walk alone. Today, a jack rabbit, pouncing away in a criss-crossety jig-jag through three different types of sagebrush and wheat grass, and hiding in the boughs of an old and twisted juniper tree; a golden eagle, soaring and diving; vultures circling, hawks darting. Daily, herds of antelope, growing in numbers as the night-time lows drop below freezing, their populations peaking just before hunting season starts, their white behinds bouncing bright flashes in the hillside shadows at sunset. Sometimes a handful of mule deer, their ears long and slender, freezing for a moment to assess your movements, the males’ heads so adorned with antlers that it seems unnatural for them to balance.

In any direction one can escape the two-lane highways and amble by car or foot or horseback on dirt or two-track roads, into utter desolation, marked with an occasional home or abandoned wood cabin from the pioneer days, the ghost towns of decrepit buildings marking a resource boom at some time in the past, a few grazing black cows or wandering sheep, perhaps a strip of green indicating a riparian zone, but be just as likely not to see another human as to see one. The hills are painted in minerals and erosion, and shaded with vegetation fading into fall. The sky’s deep high-altitude blue plays host to magnificent cloud formations that catch the sun’s fading light at dusk in a myriad of ways.

Being in a small town, one can take one’s time, move slowly, wade through the days and appreciate drawn-out time. This, I believe, is accentuated by the fact that the last time I had a schedule and worked, I was also working on my masters degree, so in that perspective, I feel like I have all the time in the world. My days at work consist mainly of driving onto open sagebrush steppe and identifying plant populations and collecting seeds; on those days I don’t even feel like I’m working. There are so many spectacular places to go on the weekends that offer a botanically- or ecologically- or photography-minded person (like me!) a wealth of recreation. The days are warm and beautiful, with a strong high desert sun; the nights dipped into freezing at the end of August, and we could see our first dusting of snow any day (my car has already been frosty some mornings).

I can’t say I don’t miss culture, and seeing music in the evenings, or having tasty restaurants or microbrews to sample, and feeling that I can wear something funky when I’m feeling that way without getting stared at. I miss my good friends who I can relate to, and the spark and fizz of a progressive city or alternatively-minded college town. But here is the opportunity to know myself, to know the land, to immerse myself in the big open sky and undulating landscape, to develop friendships with people that I wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to know, and to stare down the cows from the safety of my big work truck while blasting Billy Jean as they turn their head to follow me, bored, chewing their cuds.

Wyyoooooming

In some ways Wyoming reminds me of the Bolivian altiplano: it is desolate and open. Though the inhabitants are not poverty-stricken peasants, they are a rural crowd with a different way of living than those in the big cities. The people who live here are rugged and strong and love their land. Hardly anything grows here due to the short growing season, and it brings me back to when we went to the Tuni Condoriri glacier, and saw the campesinos struggling to nurture even the hardiest crops, and relying instead on sheep, llamas and alpacas. Here, though I have seen a handful of llamas and alpacas, there are mainly sheep and cattle. There are mines in both places, albeit for different materials. The clouds are remniscent of both places: high elevation, puffy and white against a vibrant blue sky; and the sun is strong against my face even when the temperature is cool. The temperature varies 50 degrees in a day, with beautiful warm sunny afternoons and frigid, almost-frosty nights.

When I chose the name 'Diversidad de Vida' for our travels, it was because I knew it was a new beginning into exploring the diversity life has to offer: culturally, biologically, spiritually; experiencing this on a new continent with another language, getting to know the unknown.

Now that we are back, we have opportunities to continue exploring on our tierra nativa (native land). With the lack of attachment to place after such a dramatic uprooting, we find ourselves migrating to different parts of the North American continent. Jameson just accepted a job working as a research assistant in wetlands in southern Georgia, and I am working in the high desert in Wyoming, watching the thunderstorms roll through while drinking in the scent of sagebrush.

Wyoming is the land of the cowboy, and this tradition still lives on quite evidently. There are oil men and cowboy hats and cowboy boots, big trucks and western accents. Every day I see antelope; since being here I've tried antelope jerky and elk meat, both of which were offered to me by the people who hunted and killed the animal. I saw a moose in a town park, there are cottontails outside my window on lazy Sundays, and the magpies are a delightful replacement to the niche a crow fills in a city. The people here are incredibly kind and I am settling into being in a small town quite nicely. I could do away with the conservative talk radio, but see it as a chance to bite my lip and listen to the other side after I've lived in liberal Seattle and Olympia for 10 years.

It is possible to find true solitude here: one of my first days I headed up a lonely dirt road, guitar and camera in tow, found a place to park that overlooked a basin and some colorful sagebrush-dotted mesas in the distance, and made music as passionately as one can only do when entertaining a crowd of the wind, swaying golden grasses, and magnificent open sky. It is a place for soul-searching, to learn how to be lonely and then how to package that aloneness into something that makes one stronger; it is a place for self-reflection and growth; it is Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire in the 21st century.

How the time has passed...

After our 8 months abroad, we boarded a plane from Quito, Ecuador, touching down briefly in Atlanta (and getting to see Jameson's dad, granny and granddaddy, making the 5 hour layover pass all too quickly), and ending ultimately in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We're readjusting to having technology and modern conveniences at our fingertips, for better or worse. It's pretty nice having toilet seats on all the toilets. It was strange speaking only English the first couple of days, disappointing that one needs a car to get anywhere, and has been incredibly comfortable relaxing here (thanks, guys!).

The last two months volunteering provided us with insights into Ecuador: its people, its floristic diversity, its conservation practices; we made some good friends, learned about orchid morphology and pollination, and about tropical dry tropical forest ecosystems. We ate more verdes (green plantains) and arroz (rice) than you can imagine, lived in a little bamboo hut, and ventured into the jungle. We spoke only Spanish for a month and gained an appreciation for Ecuadorian pop music and musica liquida.

Now it's time to figure out the next steps in life. After an adventure like we shared, we return with more photographs than we can count, new ideas about the world and ways of living, and a clean slate for moving forward. Our minds our full but lucid as we begin to process the reality of our experiences. As we recount them to family and friends they at the same time become more real and more abstract, in some ways fantastical - did those things really happen? Did we really collect a rare plant in Bolivia? Did we really walk from Argentina to Chile? How did we travel so far using only public transportation through the wild and remote places that we now know? As we review and show our photos we see how the photos and the stories are not the same thing: the hallucinogenic landscapes of the Uyuni Salt Flats have a story, but it is not embedded in the photos; and we have few images of the places which were most extreme because we were living them.

We fell off the bandwagon of recounting stories towards the end of the trip, and have caught some slack from that. I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this - if you are and you want to read more let us know, there is lots more to tell; and as we begin to incorporate these experiences into our frame of knowledge back here, I think there will be new layers of meaning in the things that we were immersed in while traveling. But I don't want to write to an absent audience.

For the first time, literally, in months, I come to a place with decent computers, and with the ability to access them frequently enough that internet 'homework' can be taken care of, family can be spoken with, and, all that finished, blog can be written in. Maybe I can even catch up on some of the adventures that we've had earlier, adventures that were beautiful and that took us to places and introduced us to people who we will remember always. Maybe I can add pictures to some of the previous entries that I scribbled (e-scribbled?) while in Bolivia, with computers that only half-functioned. My internet 'cafe' is in a papeleria (place that sells paper and office products), my computer has a flat screen, and when there are not wailing children and ATVs in the street outside, it is a calm enough place to be. It is in Puyo, Ecuador, where for now, I'm working at an orchid garden, with a myriad of orchids flourishing in the midst of a total of some 1150 plant species on 7 hectares.

Orchid at the reserve

We left the beautiful city of Chachapoyas, in the northern highlands of Peru, heading north to enter Ecuador. I'd like to add a separate segment about Chachas, a wonderful place with gracious people, pre-Incan ruins, quaint villages, and lovely countryside.

We left Chachapoyas, heading north, having chosen the border crossing of La Balsa-Zumba, the most remote but real border crossing between the two countries. I enjoy the extremely out-of-the-way places one can experience with a few more painful hours of travel; they are vale la pena worth the pain) in rewards of solitude and authenticity, of scenery and opportunities to speak with people less accustomed to turistas.

Mototaxis: photo from San Ignacio, but rode on one in Jaen.

It was a day of quick transitions: a 3 hour bus to Bagua Grande, a one hour hop in a collectivo (shared taxi) to Jaen, and another 2.5 hour collectivo to San Ignacio, the largest town close to the border. Along the way, the scenery sank from dramatic drop-offs in the mountains near Chacas to rolling, carpeted, sunken hills near the low elevation San Ignacio. We saw flooded rice fields filled with the grain in about every stage of growth, we melted in the heat of the midday in cars with no aire acondicionado and strong, equatorial sun, we saw mototaxis (think 3-wheeled rickshaws of Asia) decorated with streamers, multicolored lights (headlights that changed colors -- really!), plastered with posters de modo, and blasting local music. We saw a papaya as big as a watermelon, and I don't mean one of those little trendy small watermelons, but a big, hunkin'15¨ long watermelon. We passed hundreds of coffee and cocoa plantations, saw coffee beans in various stages of secando (drying) on blankets, on cement pads, with people raking them, turning them, gathering them. We walked the streets in San Ignacio, and when we tried to buy a final bottle of pisco (traditional Peruvian hard liquor), we were instead talked into sampling, and then purchasing (of course) a few sips of the local liquers de cocoa y café. Delicious!

San Ignacio is the city of bosques y cafe, as their town welcome sign proclaims. Indeed there were gorgeous forests and mountains extending in every direction, in this very undeveloped area of the country. It is fascinating how far one can go on dirt roads...

In the morning, we had a 3 hour ride to the border, in another collectivo, on an entirely dirt road, this time in a station wagon with a full trunk, and four adults in the back seat, three in the front, quite uncomfortable on the bumpy ride. Here, we saw coffee, coffee, coffee, if only we could get a decent cup that was not NesCafé! The remoteness of the villages we passed astounded me, little groups of coffee growers, clustered together, like coffee beans at the end of a raeceme, in a wilderness of leaves.

La Balsa, on the border, was about 10 houses, a restaurant, and a casa de cambio (money-changing place). Ecuador is on the US dollar, so we didn't need to do that. Because we were advised to leave very early to make it to our destination, Vilcabamba, by a San Ignacian local, we woke at the crack of dawn and were at the border by shortly after 9am. Unfortunately, there was no transportation to the nearest town on the other end until 12:30, and though our guidebook indicates this town is 10 km, this did not seem to be the case. (Thanks, Lonely Planet, for forgetting this crucial info in your writeup.)

So we waited. In our hammocks.


The truck arrived. It was similar to a camion, or cargo truck style, but the back was opened up, had a roof to provide shade, and hard wooden benches. Luxury, I tell you! It creeped, it crawled, it slithered slowly, it sank into potholes and climbed up the other sides, it grumbled and griped ascending hills, it maneuvered hairpin turns skillfully, it moved like a snail but more slowly. We bumped and bounced about (no seatbelts here!), clinging to the bench in front of us, we breathed in the aire puro, felt the breeze, and the sun, felt the branches of the encroaching vegetation as we moved through this labyrinth of forest and mountain. I likened it to paying $30 to enter an amusement park, I think some people enjoy bodily self-torture in that way, as well. It took an hour and a half, and though our bums were a bit sore, it was one of my favorite rides.

Our truck.

A bus was about to pull out to Vilcabamba and we jumped off to board it. We stayed two days in this pueblo of longevity, as it is known, with its influx of ex-pats (where we did find real coffee), perfect climate, and moved on up to begin our volunteering positions.

Jameson and I parted in Loja. We booked buses to different places that departed at the same time. We embraced at the terminal, with wishes for our independent journeys. After 6 months of traveling together, of experiencing together, of growing together, we chose to learn about life on this continent solito for a little while. It was something we had dabbeled in with thoughts and conversations, but realizing separation was difficult, as we wanted to make sure we would be safe. Having a partner to travel with is not only enjoyable, but provides a thousand conveniences (most importantly, having someone watch your bag in the bus terminal when you have to pee). We have two volunteer opportunities in Ecuador in which we will alternate: one at the orchid garden (where I am now), and the other at a dry tropical forest on the coast (where he is now). We thought that this would provide us safety, companionship, purpose, and a place to lay a few roots, while growing and experiencing South America on our own.

Twenty-five men, all with brown faces, in twenty-five hats, sun protection. All of them sitting on the side of a dirt road, surrounded by maize, brown, slain, baking in the sun from the morning's work. All of them grinning, and calling out, 'Hola, chica, chicha? Como estan, amigos? Fueran a Choquequirao? Quieran chicha, un vaso?'

The two of us, tired, sweating, hungry, arriving back to the pueblito of Cachora around lunchtime after 4 days of trekking in the steep, mountainous terrain of the eastern Andes in Peru to a complex of ruins that is said to match the importance of Macchu Pichu, but was only (relatively) recently discovered, and is still being excavated. We encountered the group of campesinos in a corn field that had been high as an elephant's eye when we departed for the trip.

We accepted a glass of chicha, which is a fermented corn drink. Jameson had not tried it before, and it would be almost rude not to take it. It was being poured from an old gas can container.

They were all in good spirits. 'Where are you from?' 'Estados Unidos.' 'Do you have a muleta?' 'No, we probably should have gotten one, we have our heavy packs...' 'Next time find me, I will take your goods with my mule. When are you coming back to Cachora? Tell your friends to come!'

The banter continued, and we enjoyed the respite of the company and the beverage, and the knowledge that the town was so close. Then, things got better: they invited us to take part in almuerzo (lunch) with them. It was a delicious and wholesome meal of fava beans, a squash soup, salad, a piece of pork, cancha (a usually toasted, but on this occassion boiled, corn kernel snack). These were being served up by a group of 4 women, in traditional clothing, from huge buckets. Despite the bulk nature of the food, it was delicious. We sat on the side of the road with them, next to huge bags of corn, beautiful corn, deep reds, flecked kernels of orange, maroon, and blue, small and large. This was a bad corn year due to the rain, they are usually larger. They would consume much of it but also sell a good portion to Lima. We continued talking with them until it was apparent that it was time for them to get back to work.

It is hard to describe just how welcoming, authentic, and treasured this experience was, and how it will remain in our memories for a very long time.

Choquequirao was an intense and rewarding journey. From the offset, we met a French guy who suggested we get a mule to carry our bags. Though he seemed in shape (equivalent to us, anyhow), we didn't pursue this. The first day was fairly easy. We had camp in a perfect place to hang hammocks, under huge trees that bear a fruit quite similar to chiramoya (though I can't remember the name right now). We slept wonderfully, and the second day were quite ambitious. We descended another 600 meters, and then ascended 1700 meters to reach the archaeological site, and then back down another 900 meters to reach our camp, hiking a total of about 26 km in this day. The switchbacks were grueling, cruel, never-ending, the mountainside steep, descending into the river canyon of the Rio Apurimac and back up to cloud forest, where the civilization was centered. Que pena!

However, it was worth the difficulty. Though probably not as magnificent as the world-renowned MP, it is an extensive archaeological site, with excavations stretching over the hillside: the main plaza, a lookout area, a housing collection, and farming terraces on hillsides so steep one could only imagine. And between some areas lay unbroken tracts of forest, so that one could only imagine what other surprises are hidden underneath the dense vegetation. The site was relatively quiet, and we saw only a few other people while we wandered the ancient rocks. We could only marvel at the civilization that lived here, close our eyes and try to imagine what life was, and also how it evolved from that into the tiny villages we passed along the way (inhabited by about 10-20 people each, in these rugged, remote lands without cars or any real type of modern convenience, however, complete with coca-cola!)

Cachora, the main pueblo which is the access point, was in almost every way the complete opposite of Cuzco. Not much English spoken here (where there were signs, guides, etc in English everywhere in Cuzco), little tourist infrastrucutre but a brand new tourist office (open about 7 months) that was happy to give us a little map and enough information to DIY (whereas in Cuzco there were plenty of places advertising tourist information but it was hard to get info on how to just DO something without a guide or tour), about 4 restaurants in the entire town all serving a 'menu del dia' but not much else (no sweet specialties like the amazing diversity one can find in Cuzco). It was a welcome change after we had soaked up enough of being spoiled in the big city.

From there we headed straight to Lima on a 16 hour bus, stayed a day in the city enjoying ceviche, pisco sours, and the city sights in the centre, and caught a 22 hour bus to Chachapoyas, in the northern highlands of Peru. What a long stretch of travel, but I don't think we'll have to do that again, thank goodness!

Now we are enjoying Chachas, which hosts pre-Incan ruins, most notably in Kuelap, in hazy cloud forest, remnants of a group of people who were not conquered by the Incas until about the 1400s. We'll be heading to the main site tomorrow.

Nos reunimos en Cuzco

In a rickety old bus, we entered Peru, with what felt like a thousand other tourists from Copacabana, Bolivia. We'd spent a few days on the spectacular salt flats (sorry, never got a chance to write about those, probably will post pics on FB), in the spectacular Sur Yungas where coca grows climbing on steep terraces and fills warehouses in bags all the way to the ceiling, the smell drifting out and encircling you as you walk by. After resting in a cush hostel in La Paz, cuddling up with a DVD player in our room and the nicest kitchen we've used since the farm, we headed to the border town of Copacabana, which straddles Lake Titicaca, famous for being 'the highest navigable lake in the world', though evidently this is disputed.

From Copacabana, we visited Isla del Sol, a spectacular island on the lake, and in Aymara culture, it is considered to be the birth of all life. You deserve to see photos of this too, the high open altiplano, the crops in pre-Incan terraces, the deep blue of the water. You'll have to wait as I've had a few hard drive issues (got a virus, lost a whole bunch of data, and am only giving supreme thanks that my photos from the trip were not in the mega-file that got erased), and it was hard to take care of them in Bolivia; just finally catching up on photo/memory card transfers.

Now we are in the capital of Inca territory, in the spectacular city of Cuzco, where many buildings rest upon ancient stone walls, where there are as many gringos as Peruanos, and the architecture is spectacular. Street vendors are more aggressive, approaching everyone with their artesanal goods. A woman sat next to me as I was journaling, trying to sell me a belt, weaving a new one to convince me. With the floods in Macchu Picchu and Aguas Calientes, residents here have suffered from the lack of tourism and therefore greater difficulty in attaining income. From what I heard much of the international media focused upon the plight of the tourists here, but the people have been much affected: some bridges have been rebuilt only recently, the competition in restaurants and accomodations was fierce, and the Peruvian government evidently did not handle the situation very well.

We've had the good fortune to reunite with friends and family here. Jameson's padre y hermano are here for a few days, and we've been having a great time catching up and sharing about our lives, over a few Pisco Sours, cuy (guinea pig), and alpaca. However, we passed on trying the goat's head (available in the market, as a whole head, or they will cut it in half for you). To give the Honeycutt clan a bit of bonding time during the days, Natalie enrolled in language school for a week and is enjoying improving her Spanish, thrilled at the increase in overall comprehension. Friends from Evergreen are also here, and we've been enjoying our time with them as well.

We watched a film called 'Mi Chacra' last night. It was about a campesino man, who also works as a porter on the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu. He had worked on the farm all his life; he tried to go to school but had to leave when he was 16 when his father got quite ill, and soon passed away. At this point he stayed with his family and assumed the work on the land. This is hard work: all by hand, without machinery, at high altitude. Upon raising his own son, he went in search for work so that he could try to provide more so that his son could obtain an education. Since he could not read or speak well, his options were limited. His work on the Inca Trail as a porter showed some pretty powerful differences between the native people and the tourists. The tourists carried light, half-full day packs and cameras while the porters' backpacks extended a couple of feet above their heads; he wore campesino sandals over the rough landscape; they served coffee and tea 'in tents'... at one point in the narrative he said something to the effect of, 'I am not like these people, they are educated, I have only my strength...' It was pretty powerful, especially as the end scenes depicting the harvest showed the donkeys with heavy loads, contrasting these animals as load-bearers with the workers on the trail. It was in Quechua, with Spanish subtitles, and produced by an American. The peruanos had some interesting comments afterwards, too.

We're not sure how long we'll be here, or where we are going next. Maybe Chachapoyas. If I get my photo thing figured out maybe I'll catch y'all up on some Bolivian adventures.

Bofedales in Bolivia

After weeks of waiting and uncertainty, we set out on a trip with a group from the University in La Paz to collect data in the bofadeles (peat bogs) of the sierras, north of the city, in the Cordilleria Real. The glacier on Tuni Condoriri is retreating, which is of great concern, particularly as it provides much of the water to the capitol city. The University is conducting several studies on it, and this one is examining the unique bofedal ecosystems. We accompanied 6 students and the project lead, Teresa, as they took measurements of vegetation, tested water pH and chemistry in the pozas (ponds, which they also called 'ojas de agua': eyes of water), collected macroinvertebrates and soil samples, and recorded the influence of the stream on the surrounding landscape.

We arose before 6 am, and climbed into a jeep: 10 of us in total, with all of our bags, food, and science equipment piled up on top. The jeep snaked through the streets of La Paz, and then El Alto, until we were on the carretera (highway), surrounded by altiplano. The mountaints in the distance grew closer, and Heber (one of the students) started pointing them out: Huayna Potosi, Tuni Condoriri, Illampu. Eventually the jeep turned off onto a small dirt road, and we passed by small adobe brick huts, punctuating the open grasses of the vast landscape; we saw occassional campesinos in traditional dress: women with a baby on their backs wrapped in colorful blankets, men on bicycles traversing the long stretch of road.

Eventually we arrived at a building which would be our shelter for the duration of the stay. We were thankful as the weather was colder than we were prepared for, and the clouds were ominous. Before this, we'd been told we would be camping, and we don't have the right equipment or clothing to brave the weather at 4300 meters. The accomodations were basic: two small rooms, no heat, no water, no electricity; simple shelter.

After unloading and organizing, we headed out for the first site. It was not far, but as we approached, it began to snow. In true scientific passion, this did not stop anyone from heading out and collecting data. Patricia lent me some mittens, thankfully, and I protected Monika's camera from the precipitation as best I could. Jameson set up a seco/humedo thermometer reading, and we braved the weather as best we could. When it finally cleared up, we walked up the side of the mountain a ways, searching for plants, finding interesting species in rocks, and came to a beautiful lake. It was magnificent, and the climb got our heart rates up a bit.

Still, we never got warm, and returning to the cabaña, even with all of our clothing on, we were huddled, first in one room all together as we cooked on the portable gas stove. Then, the seven girls retreated to one room, arranging ourselves to take advantage of our collective body heat. The three guys remained in the kitchen, sleeping in three separate corners. Pobrecita Jameson didn't even have a sleeping pad the first night. It was wicked cold and the wind blew outside.

The next day was a relative heaven: the sun was out, the landscape as beautiful as any I knew, and after walking for about 15 minutes Teresa pointed out a few plants and let me loose to collect and photograph. She is working on a field guide and said that many of the plants included they do not have pictures of. It was lovely work, just me and the rocky alpine plants, miniature, but quite diverse, varied, hiding. Jameson found me for lunch, having helped the girls with miscellaneous things throughout the morning.

Throughout the entire time, very little English was spoken, and we communicated in Spanish. It was a rewarding, though at times difficult, experience. It was comfortable to be with a group of students who share our same interests but hail from a completely different culture. When they spoke with each other, we listened and tried to understand as much as possible; this differed depending on context and complication. The Spanish immersion in this manner helps us to improve by leaps and bounds, as the 'travel Spanish' that we do otherwise has actually become relatively simple, and we use too much English when it is only us together. In any case, the group was very accepting and welcoming, and we had a lot of laughs as we braved the sun and the snow and collected data. In many ways it was similar to our field experiences in classes and seasonal jobs in Oly.

The next day Jameson was sick... a very unpleasant experience. He did his best to do his work in the field but we ended up retreating early. A couple of girls did reiki for him back at the cabaña, and they allowed him to sleep next to me, huddled in our room, warmer due to the body heat. Despite this, I found myself with bone-chilling shudders waking me throughout the night, and odd recurring dreams.

On el dia final, we hiked further to an absolutely gorgeous mountain lake, situated at the base of the Condoriri glaciar formation. We were told how the glaciers at one time reached much further down towards the lake. It was warm and everyone soaked in the sun, and they invited us to a dinner back in La Paz. Field work commenced late, and our 2 p.m. arrival time back in the city was pushed back to about 7. Ahh, Bolivian time. I continued with the photography and plant collection, Jameson recorded temperature and took it easy in the sun. We enjoyed our last moments in this fragile, phenomenal, difficult-to-access ecosystem.

In our departure of the desert town of Arica, CH, we set out on an old beat up bus that would take us on a 12hr ride through the high, dry Andes into the verid hills of Bolivia. At first the landscape was desolate with hardly a hint of life in the vast, clear desert terrian. As the old bus creeped up the mountains, you began to see an occasional cactus the resembled a tree with an umbrella like top. Once nearing the top of the mountain, small streems began to flow and soft open beds of meadow opened up with llamas and alpacas feasting. When passing the isolated ponds, one could get a brief glimpse of flamingos in the distance. We soon reached the Bolivian border and antcipated a bit of struggle considering the copious amounts of preparation we had geting all of our documents in line. To our surprise it was a breeze, and within a few short moments we were in and on our way. The countryside turned into rolling hills with the occasional thatched-roof dwelling and fields of potatos and grains. The clouds were piling up and growing darker, letting us know that the rainy season had not fully passed.

We dozed off for a few only to awake to piling congestion of cars and people. We had reached El Alto, the neighboring city of La Paz just to the east. Traffic was at a stand-still, and it seemed to take ages just to go a few meters. Finally we began to move on and almost instantlly, the magnificent city of La Paz opened up beath us. Never have I witnessed such a city with so many contrasts resting within such a dramatic landscape. The city itself resembeles a shattered terracota pot against sharp, jagged Andean hills. When reaching the center, the air was thick with exhaust and people flooded the streets, selling whatever handful of random goods that made up their livlihood. Most of the center is essentailly one big open steeet market, with each block concentrated with like items ( Calle de Cocinar, Camino de Comer, and other randoms like light-bulbs or shoes). All the women dress in a very traditional manner with big, round skirts on the lower, and layered blouses and shaws above. Each wears a small, round top hat that never seems to fall. On their backs, they all carry whaterver precious goods they might have in a colorful cloth resembling a large blanket that is wrapped and tied around their shoulders and back.

The city itself does not offer alot as far as tourist attractions, but is perpetually entertaining with its street vendors. On the second day, all the bus drivers had gone on a two-day strike because they were upset over a new law prohibiting drinking and driving. Este es Bolivia. By the end of the week the buses were running again, and we were able to get to one of our main destinations, the UMSA Herbario and the Jardin Botanico. We talked to the director of the herbario and were able set up future dates for vegetation sampling using a novel method (GLORIA) that asses the impacts of climate change on alpine peaks. Delighted with the prospect, we wrapped up our time in La Paz and headed for the deep tropical jungle.

Un Gran Terremoto!

After a few days of kicking back and partying Chilean-style with a group from Santiago, we prepared to leave Viña del Mar/Valparaiso on Friday, February 26. Unfortunately, all tickets to the north were completely booked up until the next day at 2:30 pm. Until this point, we had been able to pretty much get tickets same day, but this time, we were stuck.

Sebastian made a quick phone call and arranged a place to stay for us in Viña del Mar with his friend Ricardo, who we had met a couple of nights before that. We were thankful to not have to pay another night in a hostel, as things in Chile have been seeming increasingly expensive to our modest budget. We took our things up to the apartment (on the 17th floor), and then went out to explore the town of Valparaiso a bit more, finding some good music, a tasty pisco sour, and returning to the place around 2:30.

We were alone, as Ricardo was working the night shift, and sleeping lightly, to await his knock on the door when he was to arrive home. Instead of a knock, we were woken with the shaking of the tiny twin bed we were sharing. It was so intense that we were afraid we were going to fall off. Out of a dream world, it took a few moments to realize why the bed was shaking (terremoto), and then remember that we were on the 17th floor of a building whose infrastracture I didn´t know whether I could trust or not. It seemed to go on forever and I just wanted the swaying and shaking to stop. We began to hear crashing and shattering of who knows what, both inside the apartment and elsewhere.

When it finally ceased, car alarms, emergency vehicle alarms, and ruidos of all sorts began. I've never heard as many sirens at one time as I did in the succeeding hours of the early morning. In the dark of the night (it was about 3:30) the haunting glimmers of flashlights and the red lights of police and fire tricks flitted through the windows, and we confirmed the power was out. What to do? There we were, stranded, alone, in the apartment, not knowing if it would be better to stay or to go. Jameson assessed the damage with a headlamp: the computer desk had fallen over, toppling over the computer and everything associated with it, a few empty bottles had fallen in the kitchen, but other than that, everything seemed intact.

Then the aftershocks began. This is the third large earthquake I have experienced in my life (also San Francisco 1989 and Seattle 2001), but I have never been so close to the epicenter, nor have I known so many replicas (aftershocks). They shook right up all twenty-something stories of that building and right through my bones. At some points they were almost constant tremors, low and rumbling, and occassionally, sharp and threatening to turn into a large quake again.

About an hour later, the phone began to ring. It was loud and jarring. Ricardo still was not home. At first we ignored it, but then we thought it might be him and answered it. A series of close friends and family members were calling to see if he was okay. In Spanish, we explained that he was not home and we were amigos de un amigo sleeping at his house for a night. Makes for a great story, on both our parts. Unfortunately I could not give them any good news about his safety, only that the building was intact and that a few things had fallen.

We tried again to get some rest, through the replicas, the alarms, the eerie flashlights, and knotted feelings in our stomachs. I was most worried that a strong aftershock might damage the already potentially compromised building, and it was hard to sleep. Ricardo came home; he had to climb 17 flights of stairs in the dark, as the emergency lights in the stairwell had expired, and of course the elevators didn't work. He gave us his account of working in his restaurant, with broken plates and glasses and beer bottles, and chaos in the streets. After sharing stories for a while, we slept a few hours.

Upon arising the next morning, we didn't even know if our bus would go out. The power was still out, and now the water, too. We still heard the sounds of sirens in the background. Anyways, we packed up our bags and walked downtown, seeing the evidence of destruction along the ways. In the stairwell, tiles and small pieces of wall littered the floor. There were cracks in some of the walls. We were glad to leave. In other buildings, windows were blown out, pieces of wall were collapsed, roofs and ceilings had fallen in.

Good news: our bus would still leave today. It would likely have been a different story heading south, but since we were heading away from the destruction, we were in luck. We had no food for our 20 hour bus journey. Upon searching for some, we found that all supermarkets and almost all other little markets were closed. The only things that were open were a couple of fruit and vegetable markets, carnicerias (meat vendors), and a pet food store (strange - there was even a line out of this). There were long lines everywhere. Unfortunately meat would do us no good so we filled up on fruit and veggies. There was only one place we found where we could buy water for the trip. Some of the small market stores had their doors open but with a cardboard sign saying Cerrado (closed), and you could see the entire place littered with the contents which once adorned the shelves.

Apon arriving in Antofagasta, we tried as quickly as possible to find a ticket out of here. The first place we checked had not availability until tomorrow, and the second, with a good price, didn't accept credit cards. Here we found out that the Bank of Chile, based in Santiago, was down, and all ATMs no funciona. With sad faces and bad Spanish begging, we convinced the ticket vendor to accept American dollars (we tried Argentine pesos, too, but he wasn't into that) for one of our tickets. And then we sat in the bus terminal for 4 hours, without even enough cash to go to the bathroom, until we convinced a Chilean/Australian couple sitting next to us to change 10 bucks for some Chilean pesos, to get us through the day.

Probably the strangest thing of all is being right in the center of chaos but not really knowing anything about what was happening. It is not until we reached Antofagasta that we were able to see a TV and internet, and learn about where the quake was centered, and that it was of such a strong magnitude. We didn´t see the damage and destruction except for the blown up windows and falling facades in Viña del Mar. It was evident that this was a huge event, but in the center of it we were surrounded with such immediate chaos and curiosity and uncertainty, and with communications cut off there was no way to find out what was really going on. Upon watching a TV in the bus station here, my heart really goes out to the families who are in some of the other coastal towns that are truly devastated. While we are thankful to make it out of here, and thankful for our health and safety, many of these places are going to require months and years to heal the wounds that were inflicted over the past couple of days. Currently in Concepcion and other towns there is looting caused by hunger and lack of access to water and electricity. Just like with Haiti and in New Orleans, the true devastation and lasting impacts are not necessarily what happen in the moment of the catastrophe, but what happens in the days and months ahead, while people work to solve their lasting problems and rebuild their cities and their lives.

Terremotos and Completos

The last few weeks have made us a bit road weary, every night or two we've been in different places, every day experiencing new things. While the excitement has been fairly unsurpassed, we've become a bit tired. We headed to Santiago, to meet up with Sebastian, who we met along with his friends in the backwoods near Segundo Corral when we were drenched and crossing the border from Argentina.



It was a welcome relief to be picked up from the bus station after a cramped 10 hour ride. We got a last minute discount when we purchased the tickets but forgot to ask if they were cama, and our legs were hurting a great deal from the lack of movement. At his home they welcomed us with breakfast, and just a couple hours later, a huge and delicious Sunday lunch. We talked for a while with his parents (most youth live with their padres until they are either married or finished with college), and got an interesting insight into Chilean culture and their views on the change in the country under various administrations. There seems to be quite the controversy in views on the Pinochet administration: evidently he advanced the country to be the first which is pretty much considered 'First World' in Latin America, in many ways by mimicking the United States, but this came at the expense of the disappearances of approximately 20,000 people. It is interesting because many people don't seem to talk about things as openly or overtly, whereas in Argentina everyone had a strong opinion about their tumultous history. It seems as though people want to forget about the disappearances in order to maintain their path towards abundance, but there are still the families of those that disappeared, maintaining reminders of how the Pinochet administration achieved its goals. People from the administration are still under trial for their actions during that time. Indeed, in Santiago, it feels quite a bit like being in the US as far as the luxuries that are abundantly available and flaunted. Whereas I felt like we could begin to grasp the complexities of the influences of Argentina's recent history, Chile's still seems masked and difficult to understand.



Santiago is not the huge crazy conglomeration of busyness and thrill that Buenos Aires presents; instead, it is clean and relatively mellow, considering its 5 million inhabitants. Here, you are not constantly bumping up against someone else, and fighting for space on the sidewalk, and can breathe the air with a bit more ease (though the water is terrible after leaving the glacial melt of patagonia that we have been spoiled with for the past two months).



Its been so nice to just relax and be shown around, and take care of homework (like getting our Bolivian visas, which we accomplished today). We drank terremotos (a drink consisting of cheap white wine, ice cream, and a splash of Fernet, translating to earthquakes, because 'it makes you feel like the ground is shaking when you get finished'), ate sushi, and ate Italiano completos (a hot dog smothered with tomatoes, avocado, and mayo). We visited the General Cemetery, remniscent of Recoleta in Buenos Aires with its mansionesque mausoleums, though this included contrasting apartment-style high rises of slots containing people and families and histories of Santiago.

Adventura Araucaria

La adventura in Chile continues...

Upon recommendations from some Chilenos we met camping, and my utmost desire to see a forest of wild Araucaria trees (monkey puzzle), we ventured to the Parque Nacional Conguillio, east of the city of Temuco. Pulling into Temuco, we were not greeted with the sweet hospedaje ladies who populated the smaller bus terminals of the Lakes District, and in this larger city, were somewhat unsure of what to do-where to go-etc. We ended up getting ripped off by a cabbie (spending the equivalent of almost $14 on what should have been a $4 trip) to be dropped off in front of the address listed in our guidebook where there should have been a nice little hostel, which didn't exist. Tired, we checked into a dumpy place across the street.

The next morning we took a bus to Curcautín, where the guidebook said there would be a shuttle to the park. It didn't exist. Not this year. At la officina tourisma, she informed us that tourism was low and that they were not running the shuttle this year. How do we get to the park, 42 km south of the city? ¨Taxi, or al dedo.¨ Al dedo, literally, 'the finger', means to hitchhike. The lady at the tourism office, straight faced, was telling us we'd have to hitchhike to our destination.

We walked out of town... getting discouraged after 45 minutes of waiting. Finally, a man in a truck picked us up, and then proceeded to pick up a half dozen other hitchhikers in the back. He pointed to a hillside and said, 'This is my work, silvicultura (forestry)'. I told him we were students in botany and ecology, and he began to tell us of different medicinal plants, and about the recent eruption by Volcan Llaima (the centerpiece of the park), and how it had affected the plant communities around. Evidently an eruption in January 2008 had caused the river to jump course, and had laid black fields of sediment clearing entire swaths of landscapes. He showed us how you can differentiate between the different eruptions in the types of rock, and about how the different heats and cooling times, as well as the chemical composition of the lava, affected the outomes of the resulting rock formations.

Us with Madre Araucaria, reputedly 1800 years old.

As we approached the parque, we began to see the Araucaria-Nothofagus forests. Though we got another ride all the way in, we still arrived much later than anticipated, and at first had difficulty finding a campsite. We wandered around Laguna Captren, taking in the sights, and the sounds of a half dozen species of ducks. Later in the evening, the clouds cleared, and for the first time we got a glimpse of the impressive and looming, very active, volcano, at which we were camped at the base of.

Old growth monkey puzzle trees rising above the coigue.

In the cool of the next morning, we packed up and wandered through the old growth. The trees here are so huge and majestic. To see the Araucarias in their natural habitat was stunning and so rewarding and hard to describe. They are the most important species to the Mapuche Indians of this area, particularly for their pine nuts, and I think are regarded with as much care and sacredness as the Western Red Cedar of the Pacific Northwest to the native tribes of that area. I'd like to put some into the forest garden I worked on at Evergreen, as I saw a bunch of sweet little cute ones growing in full shade cover.

To leave the park ended up being a bit more of a challenge than arriving. We watched car after car pass us by, and we were concerned about catching the bus back to Temuco so we could catch a night bus to Santiago, as we had planned. Such a long and desolate 42 km, in the midst of open sky and lava fields... it took us three rides to go that short distance, the last in a small car already full with three kids, their parents, and a dog. As soon as we pulled up to the bus station we saw an express bus back to Temuco, which paused for us, and we relaxed, amazed at what the last 36 hours had brought.

Al dedo, with Volcon Llaima in the background.