Trip the Light Mingtastic: September 2011

Lighter.

This makes me feel exponentially better. Confession: I have been blasting this song and dancing in my skivvies to this all summer. Who needs prozac when Ryan Tedder is readily available?!

Dear Father,

A fifteen year old girl watched that horrific day from the safety of a living room a continent away and still had nightmares for months. Ten years later, I still don't understand. I don't understand why. I hate it. I still have trouble sleeping at night if I think about it too much. I just don't see it.

But someday I will. Someday I will see the big picture and see the Greater Plan. Until then,

I will cry.
   My heart will ache.
   I will pray.

   I will try to live my life like it's being stolen.

and I will watch this:

..... and cry some more.

Someday!

Love Love Love.

Compliment.

He may not know this, but my friend sent me the best message after seeing the pic of machu picchu I posted a few weeks ago:

"So I saw your picture and have to ask, what are you doing with your life? Not asking in a concerned way, like a sibling toeing the line between recreational user and addict. Asking more from an interested perspective. Seems like you are always climbing something...."

Ah! A woman can still maintain her mystery in this day and age! And be interesting without being a train wreck! And the angels are singing!

Insult.

So I've gotten three of these left on my doorstep in the last few months. I'm assuming that the wonderful makers of these items now know that they are useless in the physical sense; nobody actually uses a phonebook anymore. So thus, I am forced to assume that someone is making quite blatant short jokes directed toward me. Hardy har har.

breathing.

Well wasn't this just the summer of love?

I think I set a wedding-attending record this year (and its still not over! what up josh and nicole?!). It seems that, this year, everyone apparently decided maturity is upon us. My friends and I are all in our late twenties, and soooo.... that means life changes. Weddings. Babies. Mortgages. All of those tax deductions that all present themselves as evidence that welp, we got our big kid undies on for reals.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! But why?!

You can send my PBJ to the treefort.

Es-cah-pay.

Aww see? We fancy ourselves as just plain hilarious.

As much as the next patriot, I think that I am fairly aware of the vastness of our great nation. It boasts most every kind of climate found on the planet, is home to most every different kind of person, and is a mash up of so many cultures, accents, etc etc. We have a lot. Despite all of this, I still maintain that every American, as able, should make it of utmost priority to get the HELL OUT OF THE STATES at least once a year. Here are ten reasons why:

1. You have to get out of the States in order to do all of the things that you can't do in the States. The boys and I giggled every time we were led across a rickety drawbridge, traversed across skinny ledges on the edge of a cliff, biked downhill through construction sites etc etc, laughing that "this S**t would never fly in the US!" Keeps you alive, taking risks and learning how to choose your own steps.

2. You have to build your immunity somehow. In the United Sterility of America, you will rarely have to wash your hands in muddy water or eat from dishes rinsed with a hose. Buck up, fussies. Yes, I did spend the bulk of my trip quite ill, but sometimes that's good for you. Misery breeds character.

3. In the States, you pretty much only meet other Americans, and people think that's cross cultural. Im sorry, but I don't think it's interesting to talk to someone from South Carolina. "You have PinkBerry?! WE HAVE PinkBerry!" Please. In contrast, while in Peru, we met and made friends with people from the UK, France, Tunisia, Belgium, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands, just to name a few! Now isn't that just so much more fun?!

4. Deficit or no, we are rich. We should spend our money contributing to those less rich. Buy their food, ride their cabs, invest in their children. It's simple, and so rewarding for both parties.

5. Along with the former, traveling to other countries teaches us about money. No matter where you go, a huge part of the culture of a place is tied in its financial habits. How much people earn, how they spend their money, how it's exchanged.

6. Geography. Along with math, science, reading and writing, US schools are also quite lacking in this subject. In my opinion, they best way to counter this is to fly away, read a lot of maps, and explore. I admit to knowing quite nothing about South America before embarking, and now know a little. Progress.

7. We have GOT to do something about the American stereotypes. When chatting with the friends from places mentioned above, we loved asking them what they really thought about us Yankees. Most common answers? Fat. Loud. Overconfident. Irresponsible. Blurgh. If only they weren't all true. I like to think that the three of us tried our best to show another side to the gluttonous Yanks. You know, the giggly and outdoor loving side.

8. For three weeks, I got to ignore the budget crisis, didn't have to drive a car, and was blissfully ignorant to all of the media blitz that surrounds anytime the newest Hollywood starlet tweets about her shoes/hair/toileting habits. I feels cleansing to only worry about what's right in front of you.

9. I get inspired by other travelers. We met so many people with interesting stories, abilities, opinions. Everyone else we met spoke multiple languages, and had such seemingly profound understandings of the world. Doesn't it ever feel like Americans are completely ego-centric, like we are the only country/culture/economy that matter? While there may be a bit of truth to our nation's influence, I still feel like it means that its citizens don't learn as much. Bothersome.

10. IT"S FUN!! I like going places without answers, just the balls to try it out.

Move about the cabin! Take me with you! Love Love Love.

el Banditos.

So this is the kind of crap that makes backpacking so much more fun of a kind of trip:

At the first hostel we stayed in Lima, we made friends with one of the guys that worked the front desk: Jhony, pronounced 'Johnny'. Jhony is a guy around our age, whom has a degree in tourism and apparently was quite the expert on his fair city. One afternoon, he took us to his favorite ceviche restaurant and introduced is to his friends, two lovely European girls also backpacking through Peru. After a scale tipping meal and fun cross cultural conversation, we decided that we wanted to go to the Centro district of the city to see the underground crypts, under the Iglesia de San Pedro. It's a huge church just off the central square, right by the financial district in Lima. The church itself is, of course, beautifully ornate and historically significant. The draw, however, lays in what lies beneath. A while ago, archeologists discovered tens of thousands of skeletons and other remains of saints and other religious nobles. In fact, they now know that they have only unearthed one layer of the crypt, and they estimate thousands more skeletons are still entombed underneath the layer already opened. Fascinating huh?

Here's where it gets good:

So we are rushing through the city in order to get there before 1730, when the crypts close to the public. Despite our best efforts and fast paced nurse walking, we arrive about five minutes prior. Jhony tries to duck past them, but the security guard blocks him, and I immediately think our plans are foiled. But nope, Jhony turns around and instructs us to wait there, while he slipped inside. A few minutes later, he emerges through a crack in the gigantic door and motions for us to follow him inside, but discreetly! We scamper past the ticket counter and down into the catacombs. It's dark. The ceilings are low. There are gray brick enclosures everywhere... oh, and filled with human remains. Right, then. We run through the crypt, ducking under the freakishly low ceilings and peering into the vats of skulls, femurs, hand bones. Every so often, we hear activity above us, and Jhony points out that the church is right there, and audible through the floor grates. There is music and ceremony upstairs, and I finally ask Jhony "So, how did we get in here?" We were the only ones down there and it was quite apparent that there was something going on upstairs. Jhony then laughs and explains to me that, at this very moment, there was a priest who was being buried in the crypt. He gave the guards some sob story about us leaving Lima the next day, and they agreed to let us in as long as we went all the way into the crypt and didn't come out until after the burial was over.

Uh, what? Well, look at that. We peer past the brick columns and sure enough, song and incense are following a casket that is being placed into a wall inside the very crypt where we were trapped by a mob of priests blocking the entrance into the crypt. Aaron fell silent as his Catholic guilt erupted, and Nick and I tried to not gasp at the air of formality we were breathing in. Jhony obviously wasn't taking it so seriously. I accidentally catch the eye of one of the priests, and hope that he isn't too offended. They complete the ceremony and the priest waves at us to go before them out of the tomb. We oblige, and then are paraded through a crowd of priests, monks, nuns, and family, all staring at us as we tumble out of the tomb. There are no words for that kind of awkward, but I still felt oddly exhilarated having been witness to something I might never see again. Afterwards, Jhony sneaks us into the rest of the monastery, through the ancient libraries, cloisters and hallways. We literally hide from security guards as they march by, and Jhony somehow magically knew how to open all of those crazy doors.

We complete our haphazard tour, and just look at each other as we leave the church, amazed at what we had just seen. Undigestible at the time, but now brings feelings of both honor and embarrassment. A good story all the same.

The Name is Misleading.

How DARE he tell me no!

3 minutes later, I wasn't too broken up about it.

Standing on reeds on Lake Titicaca, playing with the locals and trying to not cry over the gorgeous views. Behold:

Note: name Titicaca is a mixture of indigenous languages of Peru and Bolivia, as the lake straddles the border between the two nations. It means "rock puma', because of its shape.

My Kind of Litterbox.

When I started reading about Peru (ahem, 2 weeks before we left?) in preparation for our trip, I was immediately enthused with the section on Huacachina. It's a tiny town of 300, built around an actual desert oasis. Ok, so it's a pond in the middle of miles and miles of humungous sand dunes. I have never seen anything like it. Sand dunes as high as mountains, farther than the eye can see. We paid the hostel owner's son to take us out on his dune buggy, so we could try our hand at sand boarding. First of all, you know you're in for it when you're in a foreign country and the driver insists that you wear your seatbelt. Seriously, thats a bad sign. :) This guy lit the engine, and bombed that four seater up and over those dunes like he understood wholly the concept of a fleeting life. We were all yelping and screeching as he caught air over the ridges, taking us to different spots to slide down, on our feet or belly up. I was struck by how fast the sand gave way, and how, depending on how the sun was hitting, one side of the dune would be blazing hot while the other was frigidly cold. Im grinning like an idiot as I type this; remembering how giddy I was to frolic in the sand, throwing it into the wind and watching it fall down the slopes. This is fun, people.

oh yeah, and then there's this:

Please notice the sand on my forehead. Please. It's so funny.

Doing as the Romans

During our wine tour (ahem, location 2, subpoint 3).... we were encouraged to sample the local liquor that the Peruvians are so proud of. It's called Pisco, named after the place it was created. It's allegedly a brandy, but to me, tastes like kerosene. The famous cocktail it's used in is called the Pisco Sour, which looks and tastes like a margarita.

Behold my first taste:

and the boys':

Not too appealing, eh? Well then, we went to another winery and, as Mary Poppins says, we added a spoonful of sugar. The manager of the winery had spent several years living and working in marketing in the States, and clearly understands what Americans like. He infused the pisco with lemon and gave us shots of it with honey. Did we like?

The accidental videos are always the best.

Viva la Peru!

To Paint a Picture.

It's confusing, trying to explain what we did and telling stories within the context of where we were in our trip. For you fellow organization enthusiasts, an outline:

1. Lima, three nights

exploring neighborhoods of Miraflores and the Centro
Bandit tour of crypts including burial ceremony
Saint Dominguez Priory Monastery, pink bell tower
Museo de nacion

2. Bus to Huacachina, three nights:

Paracas National Park
Sanddunes and sandboarding
wine tour of pisco country
flight over Nazca lines

3. Bus to Arequipa, three nights

Anniversary festival
Juanita, the frozen Incan princess
Santa Catalina Monastery

4. Bus to Puno, 2 nights

Lake Titicaca, floating Uros Islands

5. Bus to Cusco, 2 nights

bussed through Sacred Valley, with tons of stops
hike up to Jesus Blanco
museo de chocolate
local mercados

6. Adventure to MP

van, mountain bike, trek to Santa Maria for 1 night
whitewater raft, trek, hot springs to Santa Teresa for 1 night
trek trek trek to Aguas Calientes for 1 night
up at crack of dawn, up to MP, down to AC, train/car to Cusco for 1 night

7. flight back to Lima, 1 night

three weeks worth of shopping
the magic fountain park
exploring the coastline, the neighborhood of Barrancos, and having our last ceviche.

First Things First.

Y'all just want to hear about Machu Picchu, right? Seems like the first thing everybody has been asking about. After all, it's not every day I get to knock off a bucket list item. So please, read my story:

We got up super early, left our hostel, and started trekking in the dark up the trail to the Inca ruins. We had one headlamp with low batteries (nick's-I gave mine away at the bus accident scene), a cellphone flashlight (nick's) and one seriously runny nose (mine). I was still quite ill with whatever strep throat/sinus infection/ black plague I was suffering from since Lima. Aaron woke up with a case of the sissies and had decided it was okay to take the bus up to the top with the elderly, injured and rest of the tourists who had had too many papas fritas (disclaimer: he did end up getting up later and walking up, but he took the road, which was easier, so I'm still gonna call him out). Spirits were high, despite health being low, and we started climbing up the 2 mile, 1200 foot elevation gain (read:straight up!).

Actually, to be fair, Nick barely broke a sweat. I couldn't breathe through my nose and my throat was on fire so I was sucking wind and pouring sweat. Not to admit weakness, I stuck behind Nick as close as I could, moving slower than usual but only allowing myself two 10 second breaks. We started ducking in front of other hikers, one after another and I got amped knowing that we were making good time and were closer than all those clowns we passed behind. After 75 minutes, we emerged at the top, worn and triumphant, to be greeted by..... Four busses unloading tourists at the top of the hill. Quelle anticlimactic.

I was immediately enraged at the sight of all those freshly showered, powdered, pressed tourists happily snapping photos and chattering about their continental breakfast buffets while patiently waiting in line for admission. My ass got out of bed while deliriously ill, just to shlep up a peak in the Andes mountains in the DARK, and I gotta get in line behind these fools?! In ever American style, I started squawking to Nick that surely there HAD to be some kind of expedited line for the hikers. Isn't there SOME recognition for the actively motivated?! Indeed there is not. .... And in a moment of frightening maturity, I came to a realization. Even though I had yet to even lay eyes on that which I came for, I had to recognize that, just like so many cliches before me, the character and merit of my efforts lay in the journey, not in the destination. My reward had already come to me, in the camaraderie and experience of getting there. The meat of the trip would not be the actual ruins themselves, but everything I had and got to do in order to get there. I laughed and shrieked so many times while biking, hiking, rafting, running, dancing, scrambling, and shuffling through the Andes mountains those four days. Even if the destination was overcrowded and foggy, no freshly groomed and well rested cheesy tourist could ever take that from me.

So I shut up and got in line behind the four bus-fulls of people. And blew my nose into my sleeve.

The ruins themselves? They give you such a weird feeling. Have you been to the Grand Canyon? You know the feeling you got the very first time you leaned over to see exactly what all the fuss is about? That pleasant nausea associated with genuine awe and grandeur? Your stomach kind of drops out your butt, your throat closes, and your knees melt into your ankles. You blink through watery eyes and, when you calm down, you come to the realization that, the little human being that is you is so so small in comparison to the wide wide world? It's like that.

Of course, that's the candid stuff. But I gotta educate you, too.
Here we are, Top Ten Fun Facts:

10. the Inca ruins were built in the early 1400s and abandoned near 1532, when Peru was conquered by the Spanish. It remained undiscovered until 1911, when Yale prof Bingham stumbled upon it, hoping to find another lost Incan city. The only reason why we have it today is because the Spanish looked, but could never find it. Miracle, huh?

9. Machu Picchu was a palatial compound, inhabited only by the noble and royal Incans.

8. They used wood expanded in water to break stones. Crazy.

7. All of their structures have withstood multiple major earthquakes. No big deal. The ingredients in grout they used for some of their rustic structures remains a mystery. It has lasted hundreds of years, and appears to have not eroded much at all. No one knows whats in it and why it has lasted so long. Scientists tried to replicate it, and their version wore away in 4 years.

6. The Incans did not read or write. There is no documented record of MP. We don't even know what its real name was. MP is what Bingham named it after the term the locals used to refer to the mountain on which it stood, meaning "old mountain".

5. One toilet in the entire city. Used by the King only.

4. No dirt originally found on the mountain when they started building it. All of the dirt there was carried in from Cusco, 80 km away. By humans. Up the mountain. Insanity.

3. Incans paid their taxes in work. At any given time, there were 2000 non residents up there, working to build and maintain the city, paying their dues to their nation. Interesting concept, should be used in the fat America, I think.

2. They split their priority evenly between sacred and necessity; the city contains exactly 80 residential structures and 80 places of worship.

1. 100th anniversary of its discovery this year. What a fun surprise for us :) Make the trek, it's worth it just for the special stamp in your passport.