northampton, ma

The thing that makes a good hostel is atmosphere. Atmosphere is that initial feeling when you walk into a room or a house or a building. You know atmosphere when you feel it, but describing it can be thing of difficulty. But a good writer can always describe mental feelings and emotions, so here's an attempt to describe what goes into making the "backpacker atmosphere" in a hostel.

In is a feeling of commune-ality. Not that you are in a real commune, but that you are in a place that is relaxed and accepting. Out are overt security measures, which counteract the feeling of communality. In are rooms painted with different themes, or furnished as such. Out is the color white, beige, or any other neutral wall color. Out also is cleanliness, too much cleanliness ruins a place's character. In is a little dirt in the corners. Bathrooms can be the one exception. In are young people running the show, meaning the workers at the hostel are twenty-something travelers like yourself who are just working there for a month and then continuing on. Out are old proprietors and managers, no matter how lovely or helpful. In is word-of-mouth to find such a place. Out are guidebook recommendations. Definitely out is a curfew. In is someone working at the hostel who can cook real breakfasts, out is the ubiquitos continental breakfast that after a month of travelling you come to detest. In are room names, out are room numbers. In are the availability of movies and beer, right there in the hostel so that you don't really need to go anywhere for a good time. In is a backyard, stoop, or big patio and the opportunity to sleep outside if desired. In also are sprawling, maze-like old buildings. New buildings with interior symmetry are out. In hostel bars can be both in and out, depending on music and style. In are pool and ping pong tables, but out are pool and ping pong tables which are not free.

All that being said, in all my travels I have only found such a place three times: Granada, Budapest, and Lima, Peru.

Imagine my pleasure as I arrive to Tacna's bus station, ready to hop on a bus to Arica, Chile, only to be told that the protests at the border, which were supposed to end yesterday, continued again today and that for the second straight day it is impossible to get into Chile. That is, unless I wanted to walk through the protestors and another 2 miles to the Chilean border. What a great option that sounds! So about 2 hours ago I was faced with a dilemma, stay another night in this quite boring border city Tacna, or catch a bus right back to Arequipa, and then tomorrow morning get a bus to Copacabana, Bolivia, on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

The backpacker's code is to never backtrack, but in this case the soothing blue waters of Titicaca sound a lot better than this nothing-to-do outpost in the Atacama desert. So I bought a ticket for Arequipa, arriving there at 4 am tomorrow morning, where I will get a 5 hour bus to Puno an another 2 hour bus to Copacabana, where I will be relaxing on magical shores by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Backtracking is a sin, but so is waiting here another day in the hope that the border will open up again. I would probably murder myself in frustration if I waited in this town another day, and the protestors decided that keeping people out of Chile again sounded like a fun idea.

So in a little bit I hop on a bus to go right back to where I came from. Running to stand still, as U2 would say? At the moment I am just happy to be going somewhere, after failing last night and this afternoon.

Initially I was to go straight from Cusco into Bolivia, but of course the near civil war they had cancelled that idea. So I went to Arequipa (from where I am still writing) with the intention of going into Chile instead. But two days ago the 7.9 earthquake in Chile caused a landslide which took out a part of the road that runs south of Arica, the Chilean border town. On top of that, the unrest in Bolivia has since ceased. So as of yesterday, it appeared I couldn't get into Chile due to the landslide, and I had to go to Bolivia instead. But today I read the Chilean road authority made quick work of the landslide and that the road (while sketchy) is open again to buses. So to Chile I go, again!

11,000 feet of elevation change in two days of hiking generally means you went somewhere pretty interesting. In my case it was the famous Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world (and over twice as deep as the Grand Canyon). Unlike the Grand Canyon, the Colca doesn't feature vertical walls and giant carved out spaces, but instead seems more like a river which is towered over by two giant mountain ridges. Incredibly, the entire canyon was forgotten by time until the early 1970s when the Peruvian road engineers explored the region for the first time as part of an effort to built a road through the region. To their shock, they found thousands of Andean condors (largest bird in the world), thousands of stone terraces burgeoning with agriculture, and a system of towns that had been incommunicado with the outside world for a long, long time. And, of course, the canyon. They did build a road into the region, which has led to the area being reconnected with Peruvian society and the world at large.

I had some very interesting experiences while I was there (on top of witnessing the above). Probably the most interesting was the taxation placed upon my body. On the first day we started in the town of Cabanaconde, at around 10,800 feet up on the canyon ridge. We then descended down to the river, which sits at a modest 6500 feet, and then climbed up to the village of Cosnihua is at 7800 feet. This first day wasn't so bad, although descending down over 4000 feet is really hard on the knees. Not to mention the danger aspect, given than most hiking accidents occur when going downhill. The trail was good for the most part, but there was a bit of slipping and sliding on loose rocks and steep trail. By the time I got to the canyon bottom my legs felt like jelly from the repeated stress put upon the knees. Downhill can be just as hard as uphill.

The second day, after a great night spent with a local family (more on this below) we set off and descended again to the river bottom, this time to the oasis town of Sangalle. There we rested for a few hours and then did the monster hike back up the canyon wall to Cabanconde. I am unsure which hike was more difficult, doing the 4000 feet going down to the canyon bottom, or hiking 4000 vertical feet back up to the top. We set off at 3 pm for the hike to the top and got there at around 7 pm, the last hour of hiking was done in the dark with flashlights. Sketchy, but beautiful to watch the sky and canyon steadily darken as we made our way up the mountainside. The canyon is so deep that sundown for the towns at the bottom is 3:30 in the afternoon.

The canyon is remarkable for its depth of course, but I think the most beautiful part of the experience was walking through the towns that sit on the canyon walls. Snow falls upon the mountain ridges there in the summer, and snowmelt creates rivers that race down the canyon walls to the Colca river below. The people who live in the canyon have engineered an impressive system of aqueducts for transporting this snowmelt all across the canyon walls, feeding giant terraces where they grow their crops. The terraces and water system dates back hundreds of years, to before even the Incas had arrived in the area. Seeing the giant terraces from the top of the canyon is mesmerizing, as they snake along the lower canyon wall in a seemingly endless belt. And hiking through these towns is equally cool, as you go down dirt paths lined with rocks and look upon terraces and fields planted with lime and avocado and cactus. Some of the areas made me feel like I was in the Shire from Lord of the Rings, in how verdant and sleepy and tranquil was the combination of fields and trees and little houses.

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The second night of the canyon trip, me and my fellow hikers Allison and Mario stayed at Hostal Don Anillo, in Cosnihua. It was more like staying at someone's house than a hostel. Magical. The entire canyon has no electricity, so we spent the night outdoors around candles and a bonfire, enjoying great food and the company of Don Anillo's family. He served up cuy (guinea pig) and alpaca (cousin to the llama) steaks, which made for a incredibly tasty dinner (funny what five hours of hiking does to the taste buds). Eating fresh (in that the animals they serve up for dinner are kept in the back yard) barbecue under a million stars in an impossibly gigantic natural setting - unforgettable.

Ahhh the joys of an impending civil war to offset one's travel plans. Bolivia, if you have not kept up with the news lately, is basically one inch from having a military crackdown on the protesting indigenous population. The Quechua and Aymara people in Bolivia have kept La Paz, and most of the country, on lockdown for the last month via road blockades and demonstrations. Essentially all road transportation in Bolivia has been halted, getting into the country from Peru is impossible.

Part of me wishes I could be in La Paz to witness the goings on, as a student of international politics. The demonstrators are fueled by a deep anti-globalization sentiment, and the situation in Bolivia is something I have studied thoroughly. So what is going on right now is of great interest to me. Tear gas and rubber bullets, however, are not, and there are plenty of pictures and reports of much of downtown La Paz being covered in both. I have read stories of travellers stuck in La Paz for two weeks now, daily dealing with tear gas leaking into their hostels. Not to mention a near complete lack of food since grocerers have no way to restock their shelves. Not really a pleasant situation, but an extremely interesting one from my political perspective.

One thing is a shame though. Many travellers are blaming the "damn Indians" for affecting their travel plans and keeping them out of Bolivia. That's horseshit ignorance at its finest. The "damn Indians" are protesting for very valid reasons: namely two decades of being continually screwed over by their government and Western corporations. It's sad to see ignorant Westerners comment on how big of an inconvenience the situation is causing them, not realizing their position of priviledge compared to that of the protestors, who are among the poorest and most taken advantage of people on earth.

So what this means for me is a bit of a reversal in travel planning. Instead of going to Bolivia from Cusco, I am now in Arequipa and am on my way to Chile and then Argentina. Hopefully in three weeks or so the Bolivia situation will have settled down enough for me to get into the country. It's an incredible place and missing out on seeing it would be disappointing.

For a geographic reference, here you can find the map with my original itinerary on it.

The Salinas, one of the most interesting places in the Sacred Valley. Getting there is a hot and sweaty 30 minute walk from the valley into the hillside, through territory that looks rather like Arizona, red walled canyons and the like. The Incas built the salinas, or salt pools, hundreds of years ago, like everything else in this area it seems. Essentially a salt water spring pops out of the mountain on the south side of the valley, and it is directed into a myriad of pools, where the trapped water evaporates and leaves behind its salt treasure. They are still in operation today, run by a collective of families in nearby towns. And today, Sunday, was no exception - there were at least 40 or 50 people at work, many fathers and children mounding salt into giant piles.

As I was walking down from the salt pools and back to town, I was overtaken on the trail by one of these father-son teams. They immediately launched into conversation with me, and I was overtaken with surprise at how cheerful these two people could be after working on a Sunday afternoon. It's funny how Western notions of success and happiness pervade one's thinking. If one is working on a Sunday, they must be poor and unhappy with their situation, right? And while this father-son duo probably was poor, they certainly were enjoying their day. And they happily added me to it. Everytime a situation like this occurs, where a local begins to chat me up for the hell of it (and not, like in Cusco, simply to get money out of my pocket), it really makes my day and answers the question, "why travel alone?". The answer is simple: conversations and experiences that you would not experience otherwise.

We had a very enjoyable 20 minute conversation, walking the trail as it snaked down the hillside, crossing over the Urubamba River via footbridge, and landing back in the valley in the tiny town of Tarabamba. There we waited on the main road for a bus or a taxi to come by so we could hop in for the ride back to Urubamba. As a taxi stopped to pick us up, two tour buses came from the opposite direction, slowing and turning down the dirt path we had just walked up, apparently going to the salt pools on a tour. I looked at these buses in great surprise as they turned past me, first thinking "what the heck are they doing here?" since I was the only tourist there all day, and second thinking "all these lazy tourists are going to be panting on the way up to the pools". I guess I mentally associate tour-group tourists with laziness and being out of shape. I guess we all stereotype.

But doing the reverse, placing myself in the shoes, or eyes, of one of the bus passengers, I would see a sweaty, worn-looking American kid chatting with two Peruvians, a father and son covered in salt stains and holding pick-axes on the shoulders. I would then see them chat and laugh and then flag down a taxi as my bus turned down the dirt road. I would keep staring at the strange American kid who was now in a taxi with three more Peruvians, as a mother and two kids ran up to the taxi and jumped in (making seven in the cab, including driver). I would see them take off and maybe stereotype to myself about the craziness of young travelling kids, or perhaps of the independent spirit of the traveller.

Placing myself back into my eyes, it was a moment of hilarity as the two buses turned past me, all the passengers on the window turning and looking at me as if I were an alien, or insane, as I jumped into the taxi with the miners and their axes, and the mother and her little children. Of course I am not an alien, nor crazy, I'm a product of white middle class, suburban America just like them. Yet in this situation I was clearly different, defined by these passerbys as something strange or to be envied. This is why I travel the way I do: by going independently and alone, I get to experience Peru with Peruvias.

And I got back to Urubamba, and took a nap.

Most people assume small towns are more quiet than their larger counterparts. As I was laying in bed last night, I took in the sounds of Urubamba. Instead of Cusco's grumbling car motors, honking, and shouting hawkers, Urubamba delivered to me the sounds of children playing, friends chatting, dogs barking, and the wind coming through my window. The scene was not necessarily quieter than Cusco's city-life, but it was certainly more tranquil. In fact, I am entirely happy to be out of Cusco and back here in the Inca's Sacred Valley, a place so beautiful you wonder whether calling it "sacred" is in fact redudant.

Cusco is beautiful too. But Cusco gave me a horrific stomach ache (followed by me having to retaste my pizza), gasping breaths at 11,500 feet, and the daily experience of having to deal with annoying hawkers and touts as they try to jockey you out of your money for this or that. I think it really was the latter that bothered me the most. My hostel was near Cusco's main plaza, meaning I had to cross this busy area at least twice per day. That generally meant having to deal with around 10 different hustlers everyday, each trying to get me into their restaurant, or movie theatre, or into their sunglasses or bag of marijuana. The first day in Cusco this was not so annoying. But yesterday, day 4 in the city, I simply got so sick of the situation, of being treated like a walking ATM machine, that I split and headed down into the valley below the city, to this Urubamba, and tranquility, and huge salt pools.

When one travels to Cusco, or La Paz, or other similarly high (11,000 feet plus) places in South America, you expect to get altitude sickness. This usually comprises of fatigue, headache, and naseau. The symptoms for some people can be rather severe, and for others they can be non-existant. So far I have luckily been in the latter group, no adverse effects to really speak of.

But there are some things you do not expect that come with altitude. Everyone knows you get short of breath (sometimes even just sitting down I have to take a couple deep breaths, it's crazy), but what you don't know is how the thin air affects your hydration. High altitude sucks all the moisture out of your body through your breath. The lower humidity and increased breathing rate at altitude cause you to lose more moisture with every exhalation than at sea level. Then add in any sort of physical exertion that leads to sweating and water loss (like climbing up Huayna Picchu) and you are at a serious loss for water. Oddly, it also seems to make me pee a lot more often than normal. In other words, getting dehydrated is really really easy to do. I will drink upwards of 1.5 litres of water here a day and still feel thirsty. Every morning at this elevation I wake up with a mouth that tastes like chalk and salt. It's not particularly fun, all the pissing and water guzzling.

Entirely too much to write about, so I'll keep to the highlights. Got out to Machu Picchu yesterday, and it was as magical as you would expect. The actual highlight of the trip was not Machu Picchu itself, but Huayna Picchu, the mountain that sits right next to it. Climbing to the top was 45 hot and sweaty minutes of clambering up steep, steep trail, but the view from the top was incredible and well worth the effort. As you sit on top of the jagged peak, you are ringed 360 degrees by vertical, serrated ridge lines with knife-like peaks, and auxillary ridges that tumble down from this ring into the river valley below. The entire mountain scene is filled by various shades of green, as the region is part of the cloud forest, or the high, steamy forest-jungle that lies just a bit higher in elevation than the actual jungle below. It was literally too big of a scene to mentally grasp - I spent about 3 hours up there just staring, as well as goofing off with the other hikers. It was picture paradise, as you look upon impossible scenery and Machu Picchu far down below.

Machu Picchu (MP) was not as crowded as I had expected. I purposefully went on a Tuesday, which is one of the three days during the week that Pisac (a town near Cusco in the Sacred Valley) has its huge handicrafts market. Most tour groups go to Pisac on these days and not to MP, meaning the crowds in MP were significantly down, and during the couple hours before closing I had large tracts of the site to myself. It was incredible. I think the best part about MP is not the sacred parts of the site, like the temples and whatnot, but the "commoner" area which is filled with tiny alleys and houses. And the llamas, of which about 10 hang out in MP, leading to much picture taking and petting.

The day before getting to MP I was hanging out in Ollantataytambo, one of the most quaint and beautiful villages I have ever seen. I was sipping on a beer with someone I had met up at the ruins above the village, when down the road walk Mark and Celene, the two Canadians with whom I spent a very fun 3 days in Lima and 2 days in Huacachina. I was just gazing out over the town when these two walk around a corner, and we almost immediately locked eyes and went (insert Keanu Reeves voice here) "Whoa". We had gone separate ways five days prior to this reunion, I hadn't expected to see them again since they were going straight to Cuzco while I was off for Ayacucho. Somehow the god's of fate crossed our paths again, and we ended up hanging out in Ollanta and at MP. It's freaky how luck and chance works out sometimes. Was great times. And if you two are reading this, I won't forget the pictures.

Talk about an adventurous two days on my way to Cusco, the famed city of the Incas and the jumping off point for Machu Picchu, and the city where I am currently typing this story. My last two days involved 27 hours sitting on a bus. Not exactly everyone's idea of a good time, but I swear the grueling trip was worth it.

My story begins two days ago in Ayacucho, as I sit at the bus station at 630 am, waiting for our bus to shove off. According to the bus office, the trip would be 10-11 hours total. We would end up in Andahuaylas, the town halfway to Cusco, between 5 and 6 pm. That seemed fine to me, it would be a long day on the bus but I could unwind in Andahuaylas that night and get refreshed prior to my bus to Cusco. It didn't quite work out that way.

We did take off from Ayacucho on time. I'll give the bus company that much. The problem was that one hour into the trip, our bus turns around and heads right back to Ayacucho. Needless to say the passengers were rather peeved at this reversal in fortune (pun intended). I was steamed myself, and asked a few people who worked for the company what the hell was going on. I got three answers.

Answer 1: There is something wrong with the bus so we had to return to the station and change buses. Answer 2: There weren't enough people on the bus for this particular (large) bus, so we had to turn around and get a smaller bus. Answer 3: The bus we were on was only supposed to do night trips, and since this was a day bus, we had to return and change to a day bus.

Ahh the joy of shameless inefficiency, and the utilization of lies in the face of an uncomfortable situation. The only thing in common with the responses was that we had to change buses, which we did. We went from a reasonably nice and plush bus to a horrible piece of shit that had just arrived in Ayacucho from a 12 hour trip. Given the state of the roads in the area you think they'd do a bit of maintenance and upkeep before sending a bus out on another 12 hour grind, but instead they simply loaded us onto this bus that probably made 1972 proud and off we went.

Of course I was pissed. But I managed to calm myself by repeating how this is Peru, these things happen in Peru, they will always happen in Peru, and there's nothing I can do about it. Pretty much the same thoughts I had to repeat in my head when I had to deal with Italian bureacracy there as a student. Sort of my own "Serenity Now."

We do get going again, and all is well for approximately the next 7 hours. We chugged along the single lane, bumpy as hell dirt road through incredible scenery and quaint Quechan towns. Once my bones got used to the rattling and jarring from the road, I slipped into a contented state of staring out my window at a landscape like no other. Jagged ridges descending thousands and thousands of feet into ravines and narrow river valleys. High desert plains filled with catcus and scrubbrush. A cobalt blue river and rickety, exciting bridges. Dizzying, thousand plus foot drops over the road's edge into the precipice. I of course sat on the "shit your pants" side of the bus, my nose pressed against the window looking down to certain death should our bus hit a bad bump or collide into an oncoming vehicle (lots, and lots of blind turns on this eye-of-the-needle wide road).

Then our bus broke down. Transmission, two hours sitting on the side of the road watching three men try to fix whatever had busted. Luckily we broke down right near a village, meaning decent scenery and a place to stay that night if we couldn't get to Andahuaylas.

Two things happened of interest while waiting for the bus to get fixed. The immobile bus crowded the left half of the road, with the bus passengers sitting off on the right side of the road. A van came through this scene with a complete sense of abandon, not slowing down one mph, and struck a three year old girl who was a passenger on board with her father. The side of the van clipped her, sending her flying five feet into the ditch, where she landed against the far bank. The sound of collision was horrible, followed by sounds of all the Peruvians shouting at the driver in obscenties and exclamations to God. Perhaps those exclamations worked, because the girl turned out to be fine, just some scrapes and two bruises on her face.

Prior to this incident I had been in a state of reverie. Since I have 3.5 months to travel, I am in no hurry to get to any particular place. Yes I realize on this morning I had been rather annoyed at the two hours wasted by the "let's change the bus" fiasco. But at that point in time I wanted to get somewhere new, and going back to Ayacucho did not qualify. When our bus broke down I was indeed somewhere new, not in a particular new place, but somewhere new. That's all I was looking for, and when our bus broke down outside this town, I had found it. I stared over the ridge our road was set on, down onto the valley and into the setting sun and the mountains it framed. Life was good. I read my novel, ate some oranges, lounged and relaxed in carefree freedom.

That inner glow and peace was shattered when the van struck the little girl, but not fatally so since the girl turned out to be alright. The tension in the group of passengers, who were annoyed greatly at the bus breakdown since, as locals, they indeed had a particular place to be, was spiked hugely by the accident. But they too calmed down over time and we all settled into a patient wait for something to happen.

The next thing to happen, for me, was a group of 5 kids who were walking home from school (it was now about 6 pm, or when we should have arrived in Andahuaylas). They spotted me, the gringo, and beelined it. I was reading, noticed a shadow develop, and looked up to find myself in a semi circle of these young Quechuan kids. They peppered me with questions, I taught them some English, they taught me some Quechua (which, as an indigenous language, is completely different from Spanish). It was good fun. They wanted me to take their picture, which I did, and for some reason this made them really happy. All in all, it was enjoyable and helped pass the time.

Finally the people trying to fix the bus gave up, and called a van to come pick us up. This van probably legally seats 10 people, and we managed to fit 17. Imagine me, the 6 foot tall gringo smashed in with 14 other people (3 were in the front bench seat). It was 2.5 hours of legcramp misery until we finally reached Andahuaylas, at approximately 9 pm or 3-4 hours late. I was a mess with fatigue, but happy that I had experienced a part of Peru (towns forgotten by time, landscapes built by time, and me not caring a whit about time) that 99.9% of tourists to Peru do not experience. If you travel to Peru and don't go through tiny indigenous villages, experience bus breakdowns, and encounter merry inefficiency, well then you haven't really been to Peru.

And all this was in day one of the two day trip to Cusco. The second day, yesterday, was more or less unexceptional, with the exception of a fire out the exhaust pipe that took 15 minutes to put out. Somehow after all this I arrived safe and sound in one of the highest cities on earth, a lofty 11,500 feet in elevation, or a height that makes our Mile High City look rather insignificant.