The Quest

19 Nov

(In January through March of 2011, I went to Peru to teach as a volunteer.  This is the blog I wrote about that experience.)

To give me something to do besides just eat and play, and inevitably get lost, I’ve created this blog and given the Beast 3 threads.

  • Adventure: The Basic Travelogue. If I had the talent, this thread would read like Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in LasVegas (without the drugs), Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, and Che Guevera’s Motorcycle Diaries.    Of course, it will probably turn out to have more in common with Where’s Waldo, but, well, there it is.
  • Philanthropy: The ostensible reason I’m going to Peru is to teach English to kids living in poverty conditions, and who don’t have access to English language teachers.  In Cuzco, one of my destinations, a tour guide can earn three times as much money if they speak some English, as opposed to speaking only Spanish.  So this thread will be my take on what solutions work best on the ground for locals trying to support themselves and their families with dignity.
  • Dave 3.0: I’m 52, single, an empty nester, and between careers.  This is a PERFECT time for me to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life.  And this is the thread I’ll be using to do that.  Dave 1.0 was before marriage/kids.  Dave 2.0 was husband/dad.  Dave 3.0 is……who knows?  :-)

Amazon – Part 1

20 Mar

(For more pictures of my Amazon trip, see http://picasaweb.google.com/dkm6266 )

My last adventure of this trip was a 4 day visit to the Amazon River.  I persuaded Jorge, a friend of a very old friend of mine from Michigan (VERY old, Craig), to join me as sort of emissary.  While my Spanish was getting pretty good, and my understanding of urban Peruvian culture sufficient enough to be safe, I thought having a local advocate with me as I ventured into the jungle was…prudent.   Jorge grew up in one part of the jungle, upriver from Iquitos, so he knew the Amazon world and that, in my book, was a Good Thing.  The bonus was that he really wanted to explore like I did, and has a great sense of humor.

Welcome to Iquitos!

So, off we go to Iquitos, Peru, arriving at just the right time to participate in a Peruvian National Moment of Earthquake Preparedness.  Evidently, at 8:00pm, February 26, the entire country held a drill.  As we were waiting for our bags, it hit and alarms went off, fire engines raced about, official people stood around looking…official.  And we arriving passengers were ushered back out onto the tarmac, while all the people waiting on the other side of the security fence were ushered out the other way.  They cleared the ENTIRE airport terminal!  True, the Iquitos terminal is small, but it still was a wonder to see an entirely empty airport.

Jorge, in back on left

Drill concluded, we got our bags, and went out to meet Jose, our Tahuampa Lodge rep and guide for our trek.  I quickly decided that I liked Jose;  he was happy, clearly competent, and spoke good English.  He hailed a mototaxi, a 3 wheeled motorcycle with a covered bench in the back for riders, we got in and sped off into the hot humid Iquitos night.  Iquitos was largely founded when the rubber barons came through last century, and has a lot of interesting architecture, including a metal building designed and constructed by the same goomer who designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Take THAT You Man Eating Beast!

After getting registered into Hotel Florentina (no hot water, minimal amenities, but clean and safe – $25/night, no tax) we raced off in another mototaxi – with the usual laissez faire approach to traffic laws – to the Parrilladas El Zorrito  (Little Fox Barbeque) restaurant.  Us gringos had been warned against eating food cooked on the street because our immune systems are WIMPS compared to the locals’, yet I quickly found myself sitting at table, 3 cold beers in front of me, and an eager server waiting for my order.   I had no choice.  I decided, finally, that my stomach was just going to have to ADAPT, or kill me.  Either way, I was going to eat food cooked on a barbeque on the streets of Peru.   Worry turned to delight as I saw, on the menu, my Bucket List esque opportunity and, unable to deny the irony, I ordered piranha.

 

Our Point of Departure

The next day, we had another Peruvian Moment, when things that seem to be going in one direction suddenly and without advance warning, go another way.  When we woke up for our trip 40km into the Amazon, trusting totally in those who were hosting us, Jose informed us that he would actually not be able to join us, but had arranged for another guide, Timo, to take us to what was beginning to look like our little version of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  My first gringo reaction was “uh-oh”, but then more Peruvian sensibilities took over and I thought, “why not?”  I mean, we had just met Jose the night before, and dinner notwithstanding…maybe Timo would be a better guide anyway.

 

The B.F. Alex Francisco

So off we went, with more high pitched mototaxis, ignoring more traffic laws, to meet Timo at the dock.  He was there, smiling in the boat, the B.F. Alex Francisco, a 40 foot long wooden thing that looked mostly seaworthy.  At least as floatable as any of the other boats tied alongside.  Plus, if we DID take on water, it was a RIVER,  right?  Land was only half a piranha-infested kilometer away on either side.  No worries.

My First View of the Amazon River

We set off on a beautiful late morning, hot, humid on land, but cool and breezy on the river.  The biggest surprise of the Amazon was how WIDE it was.  About 1km from shore to shore, filled with churning brown water, huge chunks of bushes, that seemed like miniature islands, carried along by the fast moving current.  The sky was huge (see a sample of cloud formations here) and the shoreline filled with deeply green vegetation.  We stuck to the middle of the river on the downriver trip.   Of all the places in Peru, the mountains of Machu Picchu and the Amazon River excited me the most.   I learned that a tour boat from Iquitos to the Brazilian border takes about 12 hours downriver.  I didn’t learn how long it takes from there to the Atlantic Ocean, but that trip – like the Trans-Siberian Railroad – has been added to my Bucket List.  (anyone want to go?).

The Ruby Songo - Crack Vessel To The World

Along the way, we came across the Ruby Songo, a big ship that seemed completely out of place in the river next to all the long wooden boats and canoes.  It was moored in the middle of the river, just sitting there.   Turns out that the Ruby Songo had recently been impounded for carrying 500 kilos of cocaine, and wasn’t going anywhere soon.   Made me remember, again, how much cocaine is produced in Peru.  Coca leaves are completely legal, and are traditionally chewed like chewing tobacco.   I was offered little Ziploc bags of coca leaves several times, mostly in Cusco, but never felt compelled to try them.  Should have.  Evidently, locals have been using them as a medicine for thousands of years.  The Ruby Songo was evidence that the trade is alive and well here.

End of Part 1

In Part 2 we meet the Tahuampa Lodge, take a loooooonng walk through the Amazon Jungle, and meet the Yaguas people.  Bonus:  Dave gets a speculative offer of a bride!

 

The Amazon – Swam In It…CHECK!

14 Mar

I’ve been home for about a week, yet haven’t had the time to post my Amazonia experiences yet.  The re-entry into the US of A life has been jarring  (more on that next).  However, it’s Important for me to provide evidence of my having knocked “Swimming in the Amazon” off my Bucket List.  So here it is.

Piranha Bait, Floating In Amazon

So, like, there.  I did it.  No piranha nibbles.  No alligator attacks.  No Anaconda constrictions.  No evil unseen bacteria acquired.  And I saw absolutely NO evidence of the dreaded Candiru fish.  I was so confident that nothing would happen, that I didn’t even  bother with the tight Kevlar speedos.  The only danger that I felt was the current – very strong, and relentless and I had to swim pretty hard against it to avoid being swept into Brazil.  Nevertheless, a Good Time was had by all.

 

 

 

Raging Urubamba

23 Feb

Well!  Looks like I got lucky.  The day after we returned from Machu Picchu and Aguas Caliente, the persistent rain caused a landslide that covered the railroad tracks, cutting off all travel to and from Machu Picchu.   A landslide can be cleared off relatively quickly, in a matter of days.  More importantly, the Urubamba River is going nuts, and threatens to erode the ground all along the tracks.  If you’re coming to Cusco to see Machu Picchu soon, don’t.  You won’t get there.

I thought the Urubamba was looking pretty angry, but I didn’t suspect it would have such impact.  Here are a few pictures I took on the day before they closed the train down.

Urubamba South of Machu Picchu

Near Aguas Caliente

Urubamba, From My Train Seat

Urubamba

Machu Picchu

21 Feb

(Check out a smattering of my Machu Picchu  photos here.)

4:30.  In the morning.  When it’s still dark, and of course cool and raining hard in Cusco.  That was the time we had to rise up out of a warm bed to meet the taxi, to get to the PeruRail “bus”, to take us to the train station 2 hours way in Ollantaytambo, to catch our train for Aguas Caliente, to catch the bus to Machu Picchu the next day.   As dubious as I was, it all worked quite nicely.  A bonus feature of the rain was that all the bus windows fogged up immediately, including the driver’s, so we didn’t have to see how close to the road’s edge we got as we dodged car, taxi, pedestrian, dog, pothole and other real or imagined obstacles.  A bonus, because as we crested the mountain out of Cusco, and began our speedy descent into Chinchero and the Sacred Valley, one foot past the unbarriered road’s edge was a drop of – eh, maybe a few hundred feet.   Certainly negotiable by a veteran Peruvian on foot, or even on a mototaxi, but my bet was that our VW mini bus with 25 people crammed inside wouldn’t end up in quite the same space.  I was convinced WE would end up in the same place, because – as previously mentioned – vehicles in Peru are NOT designed for anyone over 5’8”.   I was crammed into my seat firmly, no seat belt required.  Once inserted, I was going to need the jaws of life to get me out.

Off to Machu Picchu!

We made it to Ollantaytambo in good time, and found a beautiful little train station that reminded me of rural train stations in Switzerland.  Neat outside tables, an efficient café, colorful trains, and on all sides, close in, towering mountains capped in low hanging clouds.   PeruRail had, for $71, provided us reserved seating in the Vistadome carriages, which were very nicely appointed and had skylights running throughout.  The ONLY downside was, again, my stature.  The headrests designed to support the reclining heads of the typical 5’8” person, hit directly on my shoulderblades, causing me to lean forward and appear much more interested in the stranger from Calgary sitting directly across from me than I actually was.  Nevertheless, the slow gentle 2 hour ride from

Urubamba Rio

Ollantaytambo to Aqua Caliente, along the Urubambo river was beautiful and relaxing.  The Urubambo this time of year, is especially full and was, at points, raging.  One veteran of Class 5 rafting trips said it was more powerful and violent than any he’d seen.  Brown, roiling, frothy, incessant, the Urubamba waters eventually end up in the Amazon a thousand or so miles to the east, in Brazil.

We arrived in Aguas Caliente on time, which surprised me due to the general lack of interest in anything in Peru being “on time”, and were met at the station gate by a man with a sign with our names, representing our hotel.  He asked us if we were going to Machu Pichu that day (it was about 11am) or tomorrow.  When we replied “tomorrow,” he reached behind and deep into the crowd of greeters and pulled out a little boy to the front, about 8 years old, wearing a red shirt and a shy look, and barked amidst the noise of the train station, “This is Ricardo, he’ll lead you to your hotel!”  And with that Ricardo shot off across the bridge and into the labyrinthine streets of Aguas Caliente.  We began the chase and after about 10 minutes of climbing wet streets and ducking store awnings (again, 5’8” is the key design heuristic in this country), he turned into the lobby of our hotel, stopped at the desk, and finally looked at us.  Still didn’t say a word, but what was there to talk about?  Once he was convinced we knew what he knew, that we were home, he took off.  I was able to snag him and slip a tip in his hand, and he smiled for the first time.  Whether or not he was going to tell his dad (I presume) about this “propina” or not, I have no idea.  Probably.  Families, here, work hard together to make ends meet.

Our hotel was fine.  Nothing terribly fancy, but clean, warm and safe.  They even had a spa offering massages, which I indulged in ($25 for an “Incan Massage”).  We…wait a minute…I haven’t introduced my travel companions.

Anne Katherine and Peter On Train

Peter is a retired engineer from Chicago, taking some time to enjoy Peru as a volunteer.  He also didn’t read the part in the travel book about height, is about the same as me, and so also has cramped knees, and a damaged head.  Ann Katherine, (“AK”) is from Tennessee who managed to graduate from Univ Georgia a semester early and is spending a bit of her “earned time off for good behavior” volunteering here in Peru.   She’s less than 5’8” and so didn’t suffer as much as we did.  An interesting trio we made, but it worked and I’m fortunate to have met them.

(An aside: traveling the world alone as a volunteer means you WILL meet lots of new people from different parts of the world.  There are many things we all share in common, being a self selected group, but a key ingredient is that we all want to explore with friends.  And new friends are easy to make as a volunteer.  I highly recommend it.)

The day we arrived in Aguas Caliente was Peter’s birthday, so after unpacking we headed out into the downpour, and found a wonderful restaurant, randomly, for lunch and a little cumpleaños celebration.  We were early, at 12 noon, and had the whole place to ourselves, except for the live band that serenaded us with traditional Andes music.  I’m not sure if amplifiers are traditional, but they had a couple anyway.  I had alpaca for lunch.  Peter got a nice rendition of Happy Birthday from the staff, and we left a happy bunch.  Back out into the deluge.

Aguas Caliente

The rest of the day we just sort of hung around.  We COULD have soaked in the thermal hot springs, but reports of the hottest of the springs being about 75 degrees and the color being somewhat…..brown, caused that activity to drop down the rankings, replaced by the Inca Massage and more eating.  Which we did.  And then we went to sleep early.

5:30am, At The Bus

The next morning, another 4:30am wake up call.  It was dark.  It was early.  It was raining harder on the metal roof of the hotel than I can recall ever hearing.  And yet…we wanted to climb up Wayna Picchu, the tall mountain overlooking Machu Pichhu.  Here’s the problem.  The park service only allows 400 people per day to climb Wayna Picchu, and they start stamping tickets at 6:00am.  To be assured of an opportunity to climb W.P. you need to get up early.  Some people will get up at 3:00am and walk to the park to arrive by 5:00am.  We elected NOT to do that and take our chances on the next approach – a 5:30am bus ride that would get us there by 6:00am.   We took a risk that coming during the off season, when it was cold and raining, would give us an edge.  But we didn’t know how close we were cutting it.  After considering the options, (“can we leave later?”, “is it really worth it to climb this blasted mountain?”, “won’t it be slippery and treacherous if we go?”), at 5:00am in the hotel lobby, we decide to go for it.  Washington, our guide, didn’t look terribly enthusiastic, but he fulfilled his professional obligation and we all four headed out in the dark, rain immediately soaking us and our ponchos (for reasons only fate can describe, I ended up representing the New York Mets with my poncho that day).  We hurried down the eerily lit slippery empty streets of Aguas Caliente and arrived to find a long line of similarly deluded tourists, waiting for the buses to fill up and take off.  We felt good about our decision, we were wet, but we had committed and we were in line at a good time to make it in the Top 400.  We were going to do it!

But as with many things that seem to be going so well, they were, in fact, not. Washington: “So everyone has their tickets to Machu Picchu, yes?”

Peter: “Yep!”

AK: “Yep!”

Dave: “uh, tickets?”

The looks on their faces, in the pitch black, drenched and getting more drenched, with recent memories of a warm bed fresh in their mind, and the only reason for getting up so early slipping from their grasp because of me, was indeed a Kodak moment.  I didn’t have time to take their pictures, as I shoved my bag over to Washington and RAN, yes friends and family Dave RAN the half mile uphill back to the hotel where I had left my ticket in my checked luggage (a yellow plastic “Mega” bag).  And then I RAN back, sliding half the way on smooth wet stones – but without really falling down…much – and pulled up to the gang breathing hard like a fat man running after an ice cream truck (?).    We boarded and I sat in my seat, heart pounding, sweat soaking me as wet underneath as the rain soaked me on top. I was…..awake, as awake as I can recall ever being.  And my friends were cautiously compassionate.  It was possible we could still get on the list.

The Classic View

The 29 minute bus ride up the mountain was uneventful, other than the occasional game of chicken our driver would play with other return bus drivers coming down the mountain on the narrow road, but we arrived without incident.  And we GOT the magic stamp to climb Huayan Picchu!!!!   And then, we were IN Machu Picchu.

I’m pretty sure every superlative has been used about Machu Picchu by the National Geographic and IMAX people, and I don’t want to be hackneyed, but seeing it for the first time was simply breathtaking.   I’m going to describe, in another blog entry, my experience of Machu Picchu and Wayna Picchu, but I will say here that it was WAY more astonishing than I had expected.

Our Guide, Washington

Washington took us 3 around, explained what we were looking at, and gave us a little history too.  Our ponchos blew around, we got wet, and we didn’t care.  I had brought wine as an offering to Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) on the advice of Ezekiel, the local spiritual advisor from last weekend’s San Pedro Ceremony, and Washington, I think, was moved that we gringos had gone to the trouble.  He took us to a place called the “Wishing Place”, a stone inside a cave under the Temple of the Sun, where we each poured a portion of wine on the stone, offering it to Pacha Mama, and made a wish.  After each made a wish, we drank from the bottle to share with Pacha Mama.    I say I “think” he appreciated the gesture, because he paused a moment in reflection before his wish, and gave me a quiet nod, which was different enough from his normal raffish demeanor, that I took to mean gratitude.   (The other option for an offering, besides wine, was the blood of a goat or llama.  I had neither, so I went for the wine.)

Agricultural Terraces

As we wandered through M.P. the sheer sophistication of the place overwhelmed me.  500 or more years ago this was built, and the Incans were knowledgeable about and skilled in such diverse areas as agriculture, hydraulics, geology, construction, urban planning, masonry, transportation and logistics, animal husbandry, astronomy, physics, geology, time and seasons, textiles and weaving…the list goes on.  While they didn’t, as a rule, write much down, as a business professor I can’t help but marvel at the leadership, management, specialization, organizational learning, communication, coordination, bricolage….just everything needed to build and sustain a community over decades, if not longer.   Again, I don’t want to be clichéd, and be TOO naïve, but the brilliance that the Incans demonstrated in building Machu Picchu just astonishes me.   They designed and built stone walls, with no modern simulation tools, that have survived the many earthquakes that have hit this region over the past 500 years.  We STILL build buildings that fall down. [water troughs)]

My Meditation Spot

Oh, and then go ahead and toss into that a deep appreciation for real estate.  The geography around Machu Picchu is easily the most beautiful and awesome that I have ever seen. The Swiss Alps are up there too, but the density of the beauty at Machu Picchu is what gets me.  Everywhere I looked, there was a view that could stand on its own as magical.

Well.  Words are insufficient to describe Machu Picchu.  But I CAN use words to describe what I did after marveling at M.P.

Next up…My Ascent of Wayna Picchu!

San Pedro Ceremony

16 Feb

The people of the Andes have been using local plants for thousands of years as medicines, and the use of local plans for medicine is still quite popular.   For example, coca leaves (from which cocaine is derived artificially) is used naturally in teas, as chew, and in other medicinal ways.

Tops of San Pedro cactus, Used to Make The Drink

Two other plants are the ayahuasca vine and San Pedro cactus.  Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic, producing visions for those searching for insight.  The San Pedro is sometimes called a psychotropic, like ayahuasca, but tends to produce “heightened sensation” rather than hallucinations.   Another way of saying it, though pretty darn superficial and ignorant, is that ayahuasca enables seekers an intense 5-6 hour ride through dark visions (which I think is kind of like Jung’s Shadow) while San Pedro enables seekers through a gentler 12 hour ride through light visions.  I have no doubt I’m misrepresenting these two ceremonies, but that’s how I understand them now.

Nick and Dave, Heading To Victoria's in Urubamba

Anyway, this last weekend I did the San Pedro ceremony.  A new friend of mine had visited a shaman the week before to check her out, and after I heard what she had learned, decided it was one of those things I had to try on this journey.  I did what research I could, learned what I could, and felt it was safe and had potential for learning insight.  So on Sunday morning, the three of us left Cusco for the hour long taxi ride to Urubamba (just $2.50 each!) and made our way to the home of the shaman, a woman from Michigan, of all places, named Victoria.  Her friend, Ezekial, a local man steeped in numerology and Andean spirituality, joined us.

Nick, Stacey and Dave - Ready to Go

Victoria and Ezekial, Where We Began

It was a beautiful day – sunny, warm, sweet smelling in her front yard filled with flowers, fruit trees and other verdant and aromatic plants. We spread out a quilt in the grass, sat down, and she told us about the ceremony, the plant, what to expect and answered our questions.  When I did my research I had learned that San Pedro is a form of mescaline, but she explained that she had cooked the mescaline out of the batch we would be drinking.  She explained it like this.  The San Pedro plant is an intense cleanser, that cleanses the liver, which in turn cleanses the blood, which in turn feeds the brain and all of our cells with purer energy and more oxygen.  All four systems in our bodies – physical, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional – benefit from this cleansing.   For those who know about such things, San Pedro works directly on the heart shakra.  I asked what to expect and she replied, “don’t expect anything.  Just see what you notice.”    I did know that it would take about an hour or so for the San Pedro to “kick in” and that the ride would last about 12 hours.

Prior to coming to the ceremony, we three also fasted from a list Victoria gave us – no meat, fat, flour, caffeine, dairy, citrus or spicy foods.  Oh, and no sex, which was the easiest to comply with here.

Jug o' San Pedro

Once we had all of our questions answered, we each drank about 2 cups of a warm amber liquid that looked and tasted like gourd tea.  I found it pleasant enough, but others found it bitter.  No one hurled though, at least at the first cup.

Then we sat back and talked and waited.  I have never taken any drug stronger than weed back in my youth, and one reason was that I never trusted that any supplier would care enough about me to give me something safe.  But I decided to trust Victoria after hearing her story.  It did help some knowing that her medicine had no mescaline in it, but still….I’m in the Peruvian Andes, around 10,000 feet, on the outskirts of a town named Urubamba, drinking a liquid that is supposed to elicit visions, brewed from a cactus with the name San Pedro.   Plus, I’m in the Sacred Valley, full of ancient spiritual power, near the place known as the “navel of the world”.  And I’m downing this tea like it was chamomile.  So I drink and sit back…and wait.

Bottoms Up!

After about an hour, I DID feel something.  Colors were clearer, my vision was sharper, and I became fascinated with how the plants looked.  Not hallucinations or visions, but just able to notice more of what was naturally around me.   We also did a lot of talking, and I noticed that I was speaking faster than normal, or at least it seemed that way.  I also noticed that I didn’t use complete sentences as much as I usually do.  Then I noticed that I was vibrating a lot, yet when I held my hand out it was steady as ever.  Victoria explained that because of the cleansing my body was able to move energy faster and with less effort and what I was feeling was that energy vibrating faster than usual.  My friend, a nurse, took her pulse and saw that it was normal.  It sort of felt like you do when you have too much caffeine, but when I have too much caffeine I can’t focus very well – I get all ADHD-ish.  With the San Pedro, I was able to focus deeper and longer than normal.

This was all about the 2-3 hour mark, when we took another gulp of the San Pedro.  I was feeling pretty good, yet wanted to see if a bit more would enhance what I was experiencing.

Front Porch, Great For Sitting and Noticing

Sometime around the 4-5 hour mark, I (in reflection) shifted to another place that was very mellow, not feeling the need to speak but sometimes doing it.   I felt my creativity come out, and we 5 talked about a WIDE range of topics – personal histories, numerology, Andes religion and history, how modern society separates humans from nature, the ability of the world to absorb pollution, the balance and integration of yin/yang (left/right brain, masculine/feminine, heart/mind), lunar calendar vs. GrecoRoman calendar, worshipping Pacha Mamma (mother earth), how a gringo like me can show respect to Pacha Mamma when I visit Machu Picchu next week (make a sacrifice of good wine and show proper reverence and intention for the visit), the disintegration of the family, how we Westerners misinterpret “poverty”.

(Quick aside on this last point:  Ezekial, who is from both Peru and the US told a story of a friend of his who sent his daughter to a “poor” community to learn to appreciate what she had.  The daughter came back with an entirely opposite view.  She came back saying, “They have 3 dogs, I only have one.  They have rabbits, goats and chickens, and I don’t have those at all.  They live with their entire family all day, I only see you and Mom at night at dinner, sometimes.  They have lots of cousins to play with and aunts, uncles and grandparents to talk to.  My cousins live far away, and I hardly know them.  They sing songs and tell stories around a fire every night.  We watch TV or work on the computer and don’t talk.  They use free plants to stay healthy and recover from sickness.  We have to go to expensive hospitals.  They laugh a lot, and we don’t.”  I paraphrased this a bit, because I did NOT take my iPod recorder with me, but most of this is what Ezekial told me and it’s all in the spirit of what he was saying.)

The Fireplace, I'm Sorry I Didn't Take A Picture When It Was Burning

After dark, we moved inside and Victoria and Ezekial lit a fire in the fireplace that blazed for the next 8 hours, making the room comfortably warm.  As we all laid back on mattresses wrapped in locally made wool blankets, we got even mellower.  However, we also laughed A LOT.  Mostly it was because my other friend was just a funny guy.  Ezekial, a self avowed left brainer, after a few hours, claimed that he had never laughed so much during a San Pedro ceremony, and that his liver hurt.  Which I presume was a good thing.

Time seemed to float by and it was soon midnight, when Ezekial brought out cookies and cheese to break our fast, followed an hour later by a really delicious soup.

We eventually fell asleep around 2:30am, and woke up around 10am the next morning, with no effects other than a little soreness from sleeping on the floor.

So, what did I “get” from my San Pedro ceremony?  I’m still thinking about it.  I didn’t see visions of who Dave 3.0 could be.  There was no epiphany.  There were no hallucinations, or terrifying trips through the Dark side.  It was really very pleasant.  Throughout the evening, I got a lot of affirming feedback from the group that my opinion and perspective on and questions about all those topics (above) were, at least, shared by them.  Victoria, as the shaman, says that she usually has to sing out mean spirits that attach themselves to her “clients”.  However, late in the night she looked at Ezekial and announced that none of us three HAD any mean spirits attached to us.  She claimed we were all healthy. When I asked why we didn’t have mean spirits when it seemed that all her other clients did, she just said that we three have lived pure lives and hadn’t created any weaknesses or ports for mean spirits to get into us, even though they are around us.

So I got THAT going for me.  Which is nice.

At the very least, my San Pedro ceremony provided a beautifully relaxing 12 hours with really special people.   I envision a time when just hanging around with friends for 12 hours talking, relaxing, laughing, reflecting, without trying to prove anything, project anything, gain anything, in a totally natural environment fed by natural foods, breathing pure air, drinking pure water from a mountain stream – when that kind of experience was normal and frequent.  When did I last have that?  When did I last hang around with friends or family where there was no alcohol, caffeine, high fructose syrup, TV, artificial light, noisy traffic, people not listening to each other, or busy schedules requiring an abrupt departure?   I honestly can’t remember.  Maybe when I was a Boy Scout and we were camping?

If nothing else, my San Pedro ceremony showed me that such an experience is something I want to create in my Dave 3.0 life.  I don’t need San Pedro to do it, but my San Pedro ceremony showed me, or perhaps reminded me, that I have been going through life somewhat blind to what is surrounding me.  And that whatever I HAVE been doing, as good and healthy as it was, isn’t the same as the scene I just described.  I want more of that.  I want to experience the kind of connection with my family and friends as I had this weekend with 4 other people I didn’t even know 10 days ago.   So there’s another feature of Dave 3.0!

And that is what I learned from my San Pedro ceremony.

Walking Home in Urubamba

Cuy!

11 Feb

Betty, Dave, Peter, Stacey, Nick - Ready to Feast on Cuy!

It was inevitable, of course.  When you come to Cusco, unless you’re a “dyed in the..uh..cotton” vegan, you’re going to have to try cuy (pronounced, “cooie”).  Cuy is a regional favorite, and so much so that Incan art includes cuy in its art.   Other than rabbit, this was my first rodent to sup upon.  Five us us piled into two cabs, each the size of a downsized Mini Cooper, gave the drivers the name “Sol Moqueguano” and off we went.  Sol Moqueguano is THE place to go for cuy, no fewer than 4 locals told me that.  The place is up on the western hills of Cusco and has no sign.  We show up at 4pm, because it closes at 6pm.  We order 5 Cuy Chactado’s, and 5 big beers.  Naturally, this being Peru, we also got potatoes along with the dish.  Did I mention earlier that Peru boasts over 3,000 varieties of potatoes?  Well, I’m steadily working my way through them all.  This night we had slightly yellow type with a shape of a Snickers bar…sort of.

Tasty!

After 10 minutes, our Man comes out with 5 identical dishes of cuy and we began the adventure.  It tastes, sorta, like rabbit.  Of course, as my new friend Jamie in Lima says, anything that’s fried and salted is going to taste good.  And it did.  It tasted fine, actually.  At least what I could get from it.  A LOT of nonmeat parts, and the meat that was there put up a darn good fight.   We debated, for about 3 minutes, whether it was appropriate to eat cuy with one’s fingers, but the anatomy rendered that debate moot as attacking it with knife and fork was an exercise in futility.  We ate, and ate, and ate….but I’m not sure any of us were all that full when we left.

All in all, I have to report that cuy tastes pretty good, but the presentation of Full Animal was a little disconcerting, and the scarcity of meat barely compensated for the energy expended in getting at it.  Would I have it again?  Only with friends and beer.  Would I order it alone, nah.   And there it is.

Incan Stone

10 Feb

I’ve been doing a lot of touring so far, and if you want to see lotso photos, go over to http://picasa.google.com/dkm6266.    What I want to do here is focus on just a few features of Incan  and Colonial influences that I see around Cusco.  This first one is about Incan stone walls.

Incans built lots of temples, villages, monuments, and fortresses in the area around Cusco.  Cusco, in Incan lore, was where the first Incan, Manco Capac, after being born in Lake Titicaca with his wife-sister, drove a golden rod into the ground.  Because the rod disappeared into the earth, Manco realized this was the navel of the world (qosq’o).  Thus, Cusco became the capital of the Incan world.

The Incans built these…uh…buildings to honor and worship various gods, goddesses and beliefs of their spiritual tradition.  These buildings, terraces and walls exist today because they were made of stones cut so well that mortar was not needed.  They were also designed and built to withstand the many frequent earthquakes that still hit the Andes today.  So all of the following walls you see are about 500 years old.

Inca Stones Close Up

Royalty: The first design was for buildings either to be used by royalty, or to honor royalty.   This was the ultimate design and took the most skill and labor to create.  Huge stones, many weighing several tons, were cut from quarries, and shaped to fit with neighboring stones.   The seams of the stones were designed to match the contours of the nearby terrain.

500 Year Old Wall, Still Used Today

These walls are so sturdy, that the Spaniards expanded with second floors on top of them, and today, modern buildings still use the original walls as foundations.

Fortresses: The second design was for fortress walls, and tended to use much bigger stones.  Some brought from quarries miles away.  And “miles away” here does NOT mean a friendly flat plain – it means grueling paths cut into and around very steep and tall mountains.  Notice that the stones and lines are not nearly as uniform as the stones used for royal buildings.  But, still, a lot of effort went into these stones.

Zig Zag Walls Meant For Defense Against Spaniards

Irbe, My Tour Guide

Holes Cut In Stone Were For Logs to Push The Stone Into Place

The cuts in the stone above were made to enable logs to push the stone into place.  Again, for a fortress this aesthetic was fine.  For royalty, such visible “tools” were not made.

Mummies Were Placed In Notches

Memorials: Incan religion believed that when you die, you get reincarnated.  This meant several things had to happen. First, to keep your body in as decent condition as possible, your family mummified you.  This was a pretty simple affair.   After you died, your gut was removed, you were cleaned, and then you got a concoction of leaves, herbs, and other botanicals put into where your gut used to be.  Then you were folded into the fetal position and placed in a notch in some memorial wall or graveyard.  The fetal position was chosen because that’s how you were going to be reborn, so to make it as easy as possible for the rebirth, you were stored in the “ready” position.

Me as Mummy In Fetal Position

Second, you had to be ceremonially fed, watered and generally looked after.  If you were lucky enough to be royalty, you were stored in a big temple with lots of attention.  As you moved down the social ladder, you got less and less attention, and were stored in more modest notches.   When you reached the level of farmer, or laborer, you were most likely put into a hole in a cliff wall, and didn’t get so much attention.

Mummies Filled The Side of This Hill

Depending on the level of the mummies, different memorials got different kinds of stone work.  For the first photo above, it was pretty good.  It’s own enclosed wall, stones that fit well, but not nearly as nicely engineered as for royalty.

Pisac House

Homes: Again depending on who was living in the home, you got different kinds of stonework.   This example is where a lesser royalty, like a regional governor, would live.  Notice that they used some mortar.  (parts of this picture are renovation, I think).  Stones are still carefully and permanently placed, but they didn’t do much carving or shaping of the stone, just mostly used what shape the stone came in.  Still, pretty impressive for a region with lots of earthquakes.

Agricultural Terraces: These had the least sophisticated stonework but are still pretty amazing given that these terraces are looking good after 500 years of earthquakes and lots of rain.

Terraces of Pisac

Incan Terraces

Stepladders from One Terrace to Another

Colonial Church On Top Of Incan Walls

The Spaniards: As part of their conquest policy, the Spaniards destroyed all the Incan buildings they could find.  However, they were no dummies; even though they destroyed a structure, they often kept the Incan walls and simply built their own buildings on top of them.

Temple of the Sun is BiG

Temples: Stonework at temples was of the highest quality because it represented their worship of their gods.    For example, the Temple of the Sun at Ollantaytambo, planned to use 6 huge slabs, with carvings made once installed.

To make these stones fit perfectly, they used a sort of tongue and groove technique, with a male tab cut into one stone, and a female groove cut into another.

Notch Cut In Rock For Tight Fit

These particular rocks were brought from a quarry 5 miles away, across at least 2 different mountains.   It’s not clear how exactly they did it, but Marcel my tour guide said that the best bet , which has actually been tested in scale, was that they put each multi ton slab on logs, and upwards of 150 men pulled the rock over specially made paths that had slight inclines.

Unfortunately for the Temple of the Sun at  Ollantaytambo, the Spaniards were on the way and the Incans abandoned work on it before they could finish the carvings.

Unfinished Sun Temple at Ollayamtambo

Cusco: Today in Cusco you can still see different kinds of walls built by the Incans 500 years ago.  Pretty darn amazing.

Informal Wall on Left, Royalty Wall On Right.

Concept of Home

10 Feb

I’ve now been in Peru for about a month, with one more to go. The transition to Dave 3.0 is, well, I don’t know, actually. I read James Hollis’ “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife” (read my summary notes here), as a way to stimulate some thinking. And so that’s where I’ll start, with some reactions to those ideas.

I came here open to learning and experiencing whatever I experience, trying to let go of the habits of mind and body that I had back home, and discover or uncover or remember what opportunities I have for this life. I didn’t expect any thunder clap, but I have been open to small insights. Here is the first: Concept of Home.

For all my adult life my concept of home has been what my parents have created – a single comfortable house, where the entire nuclear family gathers happily for vacations, dinners, celebrations. My boys know it as “grandma and papas house”. I know it as the house I grew up in. My parent’s house, which they’ve lived in for 40 years, serves as a touchstone for me that has been critically important as I moved around from Indiana to Michigan to California to North Carolina back to California back to Michigan to Arizona and back to California. The constant has been my parents home.

I haven’t been able to create that for my sons, which makes me sad because I’ve held tight to the story that creating such a welcoming, familiar, happy home as a constant, is a Primary Role of being a dad. Instead, I’ve moved them from Michigan to Arizona. Then the divorce happened, then my ex moved out to Maui, leaving just the boys and I as “family”, then Chris (now Troy) moved out to Maui, leaving just Scott and me as “family”. Then I moved Scott to California, uprooting him from his Arizona ties. My “family” was spread all over and now there isn’t any family home.

Nor did I have the family that I envisioned. I have Scott, and we tried, and I love him more than he’d like me to say here, but both his necessary path of individuation and my sorta subconscious desire to be a great dad to overcompensate for the lack of keeping the family together, made it difficult. With Troy, who I also love more than he may want me to publicly announce, it was difficult because of the small annoying fact of the Pacific Ocean being between us. So what I wanted to create – a happy family living in the family home – didn’t happen. In fact, I think I created a rather lonely existence, at least for me.

The cathartic moment for me this past year was when Scott moved away to college, and I came home after dropping him off, to our house in Los Gatos. Alone, I looked around. The house had everything a family house should have – enough room, nicely decorated, big family dining room table, nice kitchen, art, pictures of the kids, sports equipment piled up in the back. But I realized then that it was a façade. There was no “family” living there. Just me. I think I cried as cathartically as I ever have that first hour back.

Okay, so that was a sad moment, but my point isn’t to elicit sympathy, but rather to notice that my concept of “home” didn’t happen. I DID create a place for Scott that I think he likes. I DID create a space for Troy if he ever wanted to come live with us. But the rest of it didn’t happen.

A line from Hollis’ book helps me here. “One of the most powerful shocks of the Middle Passage is the collapse of our tacit contract with the universe – the assumption that if we act correctly, if we are of good heart and intentions, things will work out. Painfully, in the Middle Passage, we realize that there is no such contract.”

I tried to create a Home. And I hope I created something good for my sons, as best as I could. But it wasn’t what I intended, it wasn’t what I envisioned, and so there’s some sadness there.

What’s next? If Home for me isn’t going to look like what I have with my parents’ house, then what concept of Home is possible from now on? And that’s a pretty darn exciting opportunity that presents lots of interesting questions that I’m starting to explore.

  • What ingredients go into home when the standard ingredients aren’t available?
  • Who do I want to include as my chosen family in this new Home?   I always want to have a space where my sons can hang out, live if they need to.   And who else after that? I know I don’t want to live alone. I suck at it. I’d like to have at least one or two more people living with me. Maybe more. Since I don’t have a partner at the moment, there are different options I can create.
  • What kinds of activities, new traditions, celebrations, day to day living do I want to create in this Home? I know I want to always have fun, growth-oriented people to talk with, bump into, share meals with. I’d like there to be music, engaging conversations in the kitchen or outside around a fire pit, projects that we work on together. I want other friends to come and go regularly, likely weekly dinners.
  • What kind of people do I want to live with? I want to live with people who will help me not slack off, to keep growing and exploring. Friends who will always call me on my lies and stories to myself. If I get a wife/girlfriend type, then that would be enough, but until then, maybe a bigger home? How can I attract the “right” people who also want a chosen family. By “chosen family”, I’m just putting a label I’ve heard on a small group of people (or maybe even just one) who I can have a close connection with. “Chosen family” in addition to “birth family”.
  • What kind of space do I want to be in? San Francisco loft? Berkeley garden house? Richardson Bay houseboat?
  • How do I want to balance my desire for social interaction, and privacy/quiet time?

So that’s what the first part of Dave 3.0 is going to be: creating a new Concept of Home. What other questions could I muse on? What possibilities do you see for me in this?

Brief, and Probably Wrong, History of The Inca

8 Feb

I’m using the Lonely Planet Peru guidebook, and am not going to repeat what they say about Cusco, just my own reflections about it.  However, I do want to set the historical stage for what today’s and tomorrow’s tours are all about.

This place is STEEPED in ancient history, with people still living and venerating the way Andeans have lived for centuries.   VERY briefly, a history.

Pachacutec

At the time of Pizarro’s foray into South America with 175 conquistadores, there were upwards of 11 million locals here, up and down the Andes from Ecuador to Chile.  Around 1100-1200, the Incans gained power over other tribes in the region, by conquest of their own.  In the mid 15th century the ninth Incan King, Pachacutec, began a period of unneighborly conquest and expansion, and built Cusco, Machu Pichhu and other jaw-dropping future tourist stops.  With every new conquest he gained a new labor force.  It wasn’t slave labor, but more like subsistence labor.  Incan leaders would “offer” conquested tribes food, shelter, clothing for their families in return for labor building the Incan infrastructure.   I haven’t yet been able to get out of anyone what happened to those declining the offer, but evidently most accepted it.  Life was hard, and maybe the promise of regular food for the family was worth the tradeoff.   At one point, 100,000 Incans held sway over almost 10 million non-Incans.

(Note to the cynics, ITSJs, and Enneagram 1’s out there…no, I don’t have proof.  No one does.  This is based on speculation because Incans didn’t write things down.  ¡Lo siento!.  Live with it.)

Francisco Pizarro

Pachacutec died, others took over, two brothers of one fought for the Top Dog spot….other things happened.   Then Pizarro and his 175 soldiers showed up finding a native population decimated by European diseases brought earlier, and a civil war between the brothers.  He exploited the situation, and with just 175 soldiers managed to conquer the 11 million.  I’m not sure what the over/under spread was, but if you were on the Spaniard side, you made bank.  More things happened -slaughter, starvation, disease, civil war – and within a century, only 600,000 of the original 11 million were still alive.

To conquer the people, The King’s Man In Peru stripped them of their culture and tore down any Incan temple he could find and replaced all the gods, icons, etc. in the name of his brand of Catholicism and the Colonial project of rebuilding everything proceeded apace (even after Pizarro was killed by grumpy locals in 1541).   Machu Picchu survived because it had largely been forgotten about by everyone involved by the time the Spaniards kicked in their destruction and rebuilding projects.  So they didn’t know it existed.

So what we have around Cusco, archeologically speaking, is a lot of 500 year old ruins, but we also have lots of existing walls and foundations on top of which the Spaniards built Colonial structures.  You can walk around Cusco and see 500 year old stone walls.  Which I talk about in my next post!

Currency Curiosities

8 Feb

So, look at these two bills very carefully.  One is accepted very happily from any merchant in Peru.  The other is rejected out of hand, with a sneer.   Which is the “good” one, and which is the “unacceptable”?   Note that both are perfectly fine in the U.S.  You’ll have to click on the picture to get a higher resolution to notice something special.

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