Going the Opposite Direction in this Too-Big World

Well, fuck.  If I'm going to quote Jack Kerouac in the title of the post, I should probably attempt some kind of stream of consciousness and live with the results.  Live with, but maybe not publish.  See, he needed less discipline, having written on a roll of toilet paper, and backing up and editing being quite problematic.  He also likely needed more command of the English language, as I have already cheated and fixed more than one typo.  No matter.  The road is life, and so are your thoughts.  

I was anticipating recounting some of my latest adventures, which I will inevitably do, but this may be more of a drunken ramble than anything else.  Yes, drinking and writing go hand in hand more often than I've cared to admit.  So has writing and staying up too late on a work night.  Fine...so has drinking and writing and staying up too late on a work night.  

I've been thinking as I've been plotting my next entry that this blog has become a little too well-crafted.  Too much memoir and too little of what I'm thinking at a particular point in time.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but some balance may be in order.  

Stormy skies at the Kotor Fortress

I will paint the picture of myself at this moment.  It is 1:27 am as a type this sentence, and I am sitting in the bar in the common area of my hostel.  I am in Zagreb, Croatia.  Wiz Khalifa is playing.  It smells of...pine? There are 6 people still up with me, and they are smoking and drinking and seem for all intents and purposes to be good chums, supported by long, sordid histories.  But I'd be willing to bet any sum of money that none of them have known each other for more than a week.  As for myself, I am drinking a beer called Ozujsko, which I have repeatedly failed to pronounce correctly to the bartender, and have given to tilting an empty bottle in his direction with pregnant glances of longing whenever requesting another.

How did I get here?  Well, short version is that I hitchhiked from Tirana to Shkoder, then got a cab to Kotor, Montenegro, where I stayed for 2 nights.  From there, I bused to Dubrovnik, Croatia, where I stayed for 4 days before hopping up to Split for 2 days of rotting on a beach and watching movies, and now here I am in Zagreb. 

I'm 90 percent sure this was sunset...

*That brief version of events has skipped kayaking my way into a group of no-good Irish who were inappropriate at every turn, and stole my heart.  It missed skinny dipping in the full-moon shadows of Dubrovnik's ancient walls.  It missed cursing my way through Split's historic old town, barely registering the impressive remains of Diocletian's Palace because I was seriously concerned that the volume of back sweat I was generating would soak everything in my pack before I found my Airbnb.  It missed losing my bathing suit and towel at my hostel.  And my watch on Cwytch Beach.  And my sunglasses...somewhere.  And a raincoat.  

It missed getting caught in a thunderstorm, alone, inside Kotor's ancient fortress on the top of a mountain, and later that day hearing a complete stranger telling me that I was beautiful, and that at some point in the night she was going to kiss me.  I blame (and thank) translation and alcohol.  It also missed going our separate ways just after, and likely not seeing each other again.   And the cuts on my foot (see: Dubrovnik) that have been dogging me the whole way.  That at some point, after getting to know some really great people, we all started going the opposite direction in this too-big world.  

With a little CGI magic, this becomes the Red Keep!

Kayaking around Lokrum Island

Shane and Heather, a couple of the aforementioned Irish rascals.
See you back at Scum Bar?

There's no denying it...even with full summer crowds, Dubrovnik
is fucking cool.

It has also missed the fact that little to none of this outside of, "Hey, I should head to Montenegro and Croatia while I'm still in the Balkans this summer," was planned.  That it has been an exercise in letting go; in not managing all of the details.  

It never seems that way, though, once the ink has dried.  Of course you met these people, and of course you did those things.  With enough time, you'll even start thinking that you intended to do it all.  At the very least, others probably will.  To bring it back to Kerouac: 

"I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.” 

I don't find existence as hellish as old Jack, but I've sniffed the edges of that emptiness, and I can feel the distance between my actual nights and the nights that reside in memory.  In writing this blog the way that I have been, I've given an impression of things being planned, and somewhat orderly, and making sense at the time.  I wrote an entire post trying to make sense of my failure to summit Cotopaxi after five tries.  That's bullshit.  It didn't make a goddamn bit of sense when I was standing on that mountain, nauseous, weak, and questioning my resolve.  Five fucking tries!  You can attempt to make sense of it all later, but in the moment, you often have no clue what you are doing, or what the point of it all is.  Why am I in Croatia, not knowing a soul?  What am I doing here??  Is it to meet new people?  To experience the world?  To test myself?  To feel utterly lost amid a thousand languages?  The truth is, I don't know, but maybe I will.  Tomorrow, the next day...just as long as I don't start thinking that I did when I got here, I think I'll be alright.  

Entrance to Diocletian's Palace in Split

The narrow streets of old town Split

*Disclaimer: Okay, so the whole stream-of-consciousness thing was fun, but I had to go to sleep.  The rest of this is an uneven mixture of rough, drunk ideas I had scrawled at the bottom of the page and what's been written months later.  I wasn't actually going to publish any of it, but what the hell :)

Beautiful Bolivia

Me and a friend caught in a candid moment.  I'm much
more handsome in black and white.  Photo credit.

Bolivia.  It has tickled the fancies of everyone from Victorian "gentleman explorers" mapping the Amazon, to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fleeing the long arm of the law, to Che Guevara stirring up a revolution and severely pissing off the CIA.  And this is to say nothing of the Bolivianos themselves, who even within their own borders can find themselves in cities, jungles, mountains, and deserts of salt (sorry about the ocean, guys, but you'll have to take that up with Peru and Chile).

Presently, however, the massive and landlocked Bolivia is firmly on the Gringo Trail and finds itself hosting a smattering of Americans, much of Europe, and, more specifically, what has to be a third of London.  Seriously, there couldn't have been many people left living there this past July.  But I digress.  I found myself a happy member of this crew, and Bolivia stole my heart.  Seriously, just wow.  It also stole my breath...even coming from Quito, La Paz and Lake Titicaca are HIGH.  I spent a week there, and never adjusted to the 13,000 ft or so elevation of the region.
 But as my altitude issues have already been sadly documented on this blog, I will get on with it.

Entering La Paz

At over 21,000 ft/6,400 m, Illimani stands watch over
Nuestra Senora de la Paz

La Paz is a tough city to fly into, for pilots as well as for passengers.  The pilots have to land in El Alto, the town that lies above the rim of the valley that contains, as best as it can, the sprawling La Paz.  The elevation is about 13,300 ft, and so has predictably unpredictable weather.  When I left, for example, it was snowing.  I was then delayed on the runway for over 2 hours because fog had reduced visibility to about 10 feet.  Add wind shears to all of this and the fact that there isn't much around it in terms of backup plans, and you have an unsavory situation for anyone but the most experienced pilots.  So there's that.  For travelers, La Paz will either be hard on your wallet, or hard on your sleep habits.  Flights at reasonable times charge you your first-born child.  Reasonably-priced flights take you through 3 other layover cities in the middle of the night.  As I have no children to sell, I took the second option and arrived strangely alert and just in time for sunrise.

Loki Hostel

I stayed at Loki Hostel, which is a total shit show, but in the best of ways.  To call it a hostel is misleading; it is a hostel, a bar, a restaurant, and a tourist information center all packed into a renovated, seven-story mansion in downtown La Paz.  The bar, which is all of floor 7, has a great panoramic view of the city and is open all day, to the hazard and enjoyment of all.  Things really gets going around 9 or 10 pm and last until the bartenders decide that they are done.  When exactly that is, I can't say with certainty.  I made a good run at it one night, but 4 am found me turning in with the whole place still packed and going strong.  The main advantage of a staying at a place like this for a solo traveler is that it affords a lot of opportunities to meet up with others heading your way.  Many maps have been drunkenly stooped over, and many a friendship forged as people realize that they are going the same direction, or they hear about something interesting that they would like to jump in on.  Even if you stick to your plan and do your own thing, it can at least be fun to share stories, or to belt out karaoke in front of some likeable strangers and nightlong friends.

The busy and colorful streets of La Paz.  Get out of the
hostel, people!

On the negative side, these places can be dangerously self-contained.  A lot of people end up barely leaving the hostel.  To be fair, La Paz is a huge and confusing city, and if you don't speak Spanish, you are more or less going to be lost outside of tour companies.  But come on, you didn't come all this way without a sense of adventure, did you?  Are you really just going to sleep until afternoon and then get drunk at the bar again?  So you can hit on that Aussie guy/girl?  Oh, okay, it looks like you are.  Cheers.

In addition to the time-suck and the temptation of what's comfortable, these kinds of places can be anything but restful.  If you count yourself among those who like to sleep at night, this may be hard on you.  And there are no nights off.  "Sunday" has no real meaning for anyone who's been traveling for more than a week or two.  The bottom floors are okay if you're looking to get away from the noise.  I paid a little more for a room to myself on the 2nd floor rather than sharing a dorm with 10 others and a techno beat.  What can I say, I'm getting old.  In Bolivia, though, this isn't even much of a financial hit, as everything is absurdly cheap.

Around La Paz

Photo Credit 

Historic La Paz is quite beautiful, with large plazas, colonial-era Spanish buildings, and the Basilica de San Francisco.  You can spend a day among the crowds just walking around, popping into restaurants, and building your collection of alpaca-wool sweaters.  I have heard many, many horror stories about people getting sick in Bolivia, but if you are strong-stomached and/or have some antibiotics handy, you should try some of the street food as well.  Something you will also most likely notice in La Paz is the large number of shoeshine men and boys that are all wearing baseball hats and balaclavas to cover their faces.  I didn't know what to make of it at first, so I looked it up and found this article on BBC News that explains that they need to hide their identities to avoid discrimination.  It is a highly stigmatized profession due to class issues that still haunt Bolivia, as well as due to the reputation that the "lustrabotas" have as thieves and alcoholics.

Spiderman seems to have lost some confidence...

Starting out, with the Basilica de San Francisco in the
background

The most fun thing that I did in La Paz, however, was called Urban Rush.  There is a tall hotel building in the downtown area called Hotel Presidente.  This hotel rents out their top floor to a rappelling/abseiling company.  What they offer is the chance to repel down the side of a building in the middle of the city while wearing a superhero costume.  It is exactly as awesome and ridiculous as it sounds.  I tried really hard to squeeze into the Batman onesie, but it was a little too reminiscent of Chris Farley in Tommy Boy.  After donning the outfit of your alter ego (all that were left for me were orange jumpsuits, unfortunately), you have a brief tutorial before stepping out of a window on the 15th floor and walking down the wall.  For your descent, I recommend an emotional mixture of giggly and terrified, which is what I went with.  When you are 20 meters from the bottom, the people working the brakes on your rope (you use your own belay device, but there are 2 other people spotting you) ask you to let go of the rope, count to 3, and jump out away from the wall for a free fall.

Moments before the free fall.

Death Road

Did I mention that Bolivia is beautiful?

A more well-known attraction of Bolivia is the opportunity to bike down the road formerly known as "the most dangerous road in the world."  It was called this because until 2006, this narrow, winding road with sheer cliffs going up one side and down the other was heavily used by car, truck, and bus traffic.  Tragedy here was far too routine.  Ever since a new road has been opened, though, the death toll has gone down dramatically.  The old one has been renamed "Death Road," mostly as a promotional gimmick for bike trips.  Now, I don't want to downplay this: one side of the road is simply a void, and there are big consequences for ego on this road, so proceed with caution and go at a speed that is comfortable for you.  And please, no selfies.  But the Cliffs of Insanity aside, it is not an incredibly challenging road, and it is 4-5 hours of almost entirely downhill mountain biking.  I absolutely loved it.  The two best companies to go with are Gravity and Altitude.  I went with the latter for about $75 US.  You can certainly find cheaper, but really, do you want to?  I know people who haggled other companies down to $30, but think about what you're doing.  A shitty bike that hasn't been maintained makes for a rough day in the best of circumstances, and you don't want any surprises on this trip.  If you know more about bikes than I do and can do a more thorough self-inspection, by all means, go for it.  But don't get cute here.

Getting to Isla del Sol

After three days in and around La Paz, it was time to head onward to Lake Titicaca and to one of my

Our sure-footed Captain

favorite misadventures to date.  From La Paz to Copacabana is a pretty easy 3-4 hour bus ride.  You can either get a ticket at the main bus terminal, or you can book through a private company that will pick you up at your hostel.  Copacabana is the biggest Bolivian town on Titicaca, and if you are looking to catch the ferry out to Isla del Sol, then you will want to make sure you arrive before 1 pm when the last boat embarks.  Isla del Sol is the mythical homeland of the Inca; it is where their origin stories indicate their civilization began and their first king was born.  It is also an island in the middle of the world's highest navigable lake with no roads or vehicles, only hiking paths.  Because there are no roads, you can catch a ferry to either the south end of the island (closest to Copacabana) or to the north end of the island, 8 km away.  I had booked a hostel for 2 nights on the south of the island.  I bought a ticket for the south ferry, showed it to the man on the dock, and he directed me to the boat on the left.  As you may be surmising from my tone, this was not the south ferry.  I had mistakenly boarded the

I think I can live with this error...

north ferry, which is a full hour longer, and I was ultimately dropped off at 4 pm with a very large backpack and 3 hours of walking to do if I wanted to make it to my hostel.  So, that didn't happen.  Luckily, I had started playing cards with a few other travelers and by the time I realized my error, we were four games deep into Spite and Malice and it didn't seem all that important.  When I got off the boat, I had new friends in Mike from England and Josefien from Holland.  Like me, Mike had boarded the wrong boat, and Josefien had a hostel in mind that she had read about, so off we went.  All three of us had been traveling solo, but when you meet kindred spirits, you know it pretty quickly.

Three of a kind en La Ruta del Sol.

Bolivian Wedding Crashers

As it turns out, the north end of the island is really where I wanted to be, anyway.  Most people opt for the

Dancing their way into the party.

shorter ferry ride, so the south tends to be more crowded.  The north has only 2 restaurants that seem to observe no regular hours, and a few tiendas where you can pick up snacks.  There is a trail called the Ruta del Sol that runs the length of the island, offering elevated views of Lake Titicaca, which may as well have been an ocean from where we stood.  There were no lights in town, so you needed headlamps and flashlights to walk around after dark.  From our hostel, you could see every star in the sky, and we drank quite a few bottles of wine as we developed cricks in our upturned necks, listened to a storm across the water, and laughed giddily when it started snowing lightly around midnight.  Josefien and I made it our mission, no matter how cold it was, to go swimming in the lake before we left.  Mike quickly volunteered as photographer.  We also may have crashed a Bolivian wedding.  It began with curiosity, and we ended up being invited into a seated circle of Bolivian women in traditional dress and gold teeth to eat chalky potatoes and savory, savory pork.  We left after a little while, but when we heard it still going on after sunset, we had to make our way back to investigate the state of things.  What we saw was very clearly the after party, and we found ourselves among the more dedicated Bolivian party goers, dancing in the pitch black night with no lights to blaring salsa music.

The Roads not Taken

Like all travel stories, our magical time on Isla del Sol had to come to an end.  We took the same ferry back to Copacabana where we would part ways.  Mike and Josefien were both heading to Cuzco, Peru to see Machu Picchu and to do some jungle trekking.  I had already been there, years before, but I was a half a second away from abandoning my trip to Chile to keep our gang together a little longer.  Ultimately, I said so long, with vague and hopeful plans of meeting Josefien in Amsterdam, and Mike in Munich for Oktoberfest.  Sitting in the van on my way back to La Paz and a flight to Santiago, I couldn't help but feel that I had made the wrong decision.

We did it! I might lose some toes, but we did it!

And who knows what was waiting for me at the south end of Isla del Sol.  What would my trip have looked like without my two friends?  I would have hiked around, read my book, and met other people, and never have been the wiser.  Robert Frost very famously wrote about this phenomenon, and how way leads on to way, but there is something else this makes me think of even more: a very weird, very cool podcast I like to listen to called Welcome to Night Vale.  You should check it out, because it is nearly impossible to explain.  In one episode, the radio host is talking about nostalgia, and he points out that we don't actually feel nostalgia for the way things were, but rather for the way things weren't.  I could spend an eternity exploring all of the choices I didn't make.  Who the hell knows, maybe that's exactly what we do.  But not in this lifetime.  Here, we all just have to wonder how things might have gone differently, and to be both tortured and encouraged by the fact that all of it was our choice.  And to remember, of course, that there are many more choices to be made.

Coming soon: 

From Chile to Iceland

or 

Why the Hell Didn't I Choose Somewhere Warmer?

Getting the Travel Bug

In 2008, my then-girlfriend Lisa and I took a massive trip around the world.  It went something like this: Ireland, Scotland, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Tanzania, South Africa, Australia, and Fiji.  Discounting a trip to Niagara Falls, I had never before traveled outside of my home country (no offense, Canada; it was lovely, but not so very foreign).  Sixty-some days and 3 continents later, I returned home to Maryland with the experience of a lifetime.  More traveling and a plan to leave the US for a longer period ensued, and by 2010 I was living in Ecuador.  My traveling has become less intense and more localized to South America of late, but a recent three week trip to Hong Kong made me reflect once again on the highs and lows of large-scale international travel.  And, because it is never too early to rehash old material, I would like to share a few of my thoughts on traveling from 2008, as I stand by them now, almost six years later:

Hey Barcelona, see you again soon!

You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and are incredibly confused? You don't know where you are, how you got there, or what time of day it is? This is what happened to me the very first morning that I had returned from my trip around the world. For 2 months of traveling, I was fine; it took coming home and sleeping in my own bed to feel lost. This may have been because I didn't go to sleep until 3 AM and woke up at 7 AM to go to work. Or, it could have been because I was on Fiji time, and therefore the sun had inexplicably risen through the window at what was 11 PM on my body and mind. But I think the real reason was that for the first time all summer, I was able to let my guard down completely and not worry about my surroundings. That is one of the many true comforts of home. As a result, I awoke from the deepest sleep in months...to go directly to work. Oh well.

My sister, Ethel, met us along the way!

Traveling is equal parts motion and waiting. Whether we were waiting at the train station, airport, or hotel lobby, we found plenty of time on our hands, but only when we didn't need it and couldn't use it. Sometimes we were in motion and still waiting, such as waiting for the train to finally reach its destination. The point is that all of this idle time on my hands allowed for a wandering mind, and I would like to share some of these inner ramblings with you now. 

Anonymous train ride to somewhere

Apparently, the peaches in Rome are the best things on earth.

At any given point in time, the entire human race is mere hours away from starvation. Not deadly starvation, mind you, but certainly severe and crippling hanger. Food consumes a traveler's thoughts far more frequently a traveler actually gets to consume food. Because food can be expensive and because it is not always conveniently available, this at times becomes a very limiting nuisance. We were working inside of 5-6 hour windows to explore a city before having to worry about food again. In the course of 7-9 foodless hours, Lisa and I were reduced, on several occasions, to single-minded, zombie-like scavengers who stopped caring about cost, taste, and/or personal hygiene until we had something in our stomachs. Due to budgetary constraints and the ridiculous cost of living in Europe, we tried several tactics to combat our impulses. First, we tried to drink a lot of water to trick our stomachs into feeling full, but that only delayed things for an hour, tops. We then tried to gorge ourselves and eat as much as we possibly could in one sitting whenever we found a cheap restaurant or grocery store. The idea here was that we could store up on energy for a prolonged period of time, but the reality was more urgent and violent trips to the bathroom. Our final strategy before giving in to nature was to try to sleep late, miss breakfast, and eat only 2 meals a day. This was an act of pure desperation and resulted in really big, accidentally expensive lunches, not to mention the lost time. The only realistic thing that we could do was to ransack convenience stores for unsatisfying little snacks and buy spaghetti as often as we could because we got 2 meals out of one box. But even when we found food and were pleasantly full, there was still a little bug in the back of my head telling me, "Okay, you just bought yourself some time, but don't get cocky; in a few hours you'll be nothing more than a walking digestive system again." As a result, Lisa and I spent some of our airport waiting time assembling a detailed grocery list for when we got home. Aside from family and friends, the most exciting part of being back has been the refrigerator.

Datoga men in Tanzania

A self-reinforcing cycle of smiles in Tanzania

Comfort is a seductress. This was especially true in Cairo, Egypt when Lisa and I enjoyed the lovely home of our friends Jill and Terry after our hobo-like existence through Europe's hostels and train stations. After a month of longing for a hot shower and clean bed and often finding neither, we were flung into the unequaled luxury of a huge, fully stocked apartment. All of a sudden, we had our very own bedroom, kitchen, computer, laundry room, and living room complete with a big-screen TV and broad selection of DVDs. Our plans for all the places we wanted to see during our five-day stint in Cairo eroded into the 3 basics of the pyramids, the museum, and the Khan al Khalili marketplace. Even for the wonders of the world, it was a struggle to bring ourselves to leave the air-conditioned bliss for the smothering heat of Cairo's July sun. Every morning we stayed in bed just a little longer than planned. We hit the snooze button three, four, five times before giving up and resetting it for an hour later, letting the warm arms of sleep pull us back down under the covers. Every movie we started was a little too good to turn off or pause before the end, and the afternoons dissolved away. Every evening while eating our dinner delivered to our door by Chili's (don't judge us), we discussed how the next day we would get an early start and actually leave the apartment. We knew we were in Egypt and we knew that it would be a long time if we ever got back there, but after over a month of traveling, our most compelling desire was for a small dose of normalcy while it was for the taking. Just a little bit of comfort. We didn't know when we'd have it again, as we still had a month before returning home. Comfort can certainly be a trap if allowed to consistently decide one's actions, but sometimes it's as necessary as food (see previous paragraph).

Coast of Simonstown, South Africa

Traveling gives the peculiar sense of slipping through parallel universes. People and the basic rules that govern life are the same everywhere you go, but all of the little things change, as if the fabled butterfly had flapped its wings just a little differently. This is compounded by the fact that when traveling nowadays, people don't experience this shift gradually; they get into some kind of moving, mechanical apparatus, lock themselves in for a few hours, and when they get out, things are different. You get into an airplane and five hours later, people have accents (or perhaps more accurately you have one). You board a train and four hours later there's a different face on the money and some ludicrous number like 10,000 next to it that buys you a tube of toothpaste. Another airplane and a few hours and men wear skirts and women shave their heads. But in each place, the people remain essentially the same. A laugh is a laugh. People congregate around food, whether it's a restaurant, a marketplace, or a barbecue. They flirt.  They wheel, deal, and hustle. The differences are mainly in the how, not the what. What people do, say, want, and need, all remain the fundamentally the same.

Sunrise over False Bay, South Africa

Life is all about routine, even while traveling to places you've never been before. Our routine was to settle ourselves into our new surroundings and learn the new ways of saying hello, thank you, and goodbye. I must know that series of salutations in 8 languages now. We would check into our room, lock up our valuables, and consult either our map or the locals to get ourselves a good meal. We would then explore the town, city, or wilderness for what was left of the day and then return to our dwelling at nightfall. We would sleep. We would wake up, repack our bags that we had tried our best to keep intact, and then say goodbye to the place we had just met in whatever dialect we had just learned. Even as we moved on to the excitement of the next place, there was always a pang of sorrow as we took a last look around us, wondering if we would ever make it back. Some places we felt certain we would. Others became that much more beautiful in our last moments because we suspected we wouldn't. Routine. Done and on to the next one. We are back in the US and almost settled into our home routines, so for now we must say hello, thank you, and goodbye. Or in Tanzania, jambo, asanti sana, and kwaheri.