South America 2005
Stories Under the Southern Sky
Wednesday, April 13 2005
The Rescue Diver class has started, and it is going well, though we are going to get into the think of things tomorrow-- it builds largely off of my EMT training, and is a pretty natural step. Though it is sad that I am not a better swimmer. I have been lazy and not taking pictures, but I think being lazy is part of what being here is all about. Here is a view from my window out into the bay. Also, here is a crazy tropical beach, and a small boat in town. It is so chill here, and the food is amazing. I have gotten too much sun, but otherwise the giardia has cleared up and I'm feeling great. I think this afternoon I'll find a boat and go cruise around the bay for a bit... maybe do some snorkling as the evening starts to cool the air. Peace.
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Monday, April 11 2005
The last few days have been intense: lots of diving. I have worked out a great rate to become a PADI certified Rescue Diver and get unlimited free diving for the rest of my time here in Panama and have been logging water time quickly. I have wanted to dive ever since I was little-- it is amazing, though I still have lots to learn. I have to get under water 11 more times this week to finish my training, and then it's off to Costa Rica to meet Jeremy and Ben for some solid surfing. I have met great folks here, and in many ways it is remaniscent of long summer evenings on the marsh in Charleston... it will be hard to leave when the time comes. I now have a better understanding of phrases that I have have heard like "Island life." Things just seem to move slower here. People, locals and visitors alike, are just happy. It is a great vibe, and such a contrast to the speed and complexity of urban life in the States.
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Thursday, April 7 2005
Holy Bird. So the medicines devestated most of the living things within my organism, and I have made a record recovery. This morning I jumped into dive instruction amid, as usual, torrential downpur. After taking a few tests to prove that I had done my reading, they put me in a boat and sent me out to sea with a few other classmates. Within minutes we were warm in a silent undersea kaleidoscope of coral and tropical fish as it stormed above the surface.
It was incredible. Rob and Nata, our instructors, along with Steven and Caroline the other students along with myself, had two excellent dives today-- our first day in the water. By tomorrow we should be complete with certification. We have descended to 40ft below the surface to swim through forests of orange, purple, green, and red coral, and to pester lobsters as they pester other creatures smaller than themselves, which are usually perstering plankton, which have no rights anyway. The water is rich in snapper, trumpetfish, anglefish, parrotfish, and lizardfish-- and from my unscientific eye, still appears to be a healthy and flourishing marine ecosystem. As we squatted in the sand five meters below the gentle waves irridescent blue fish with yellow fins and tails swim through our circle to investigate. We practiced a number of situational drills and then went exploring, mindful not to come into contact with the delicate coral formations. I want to get one of those disposable cameras to take down-- not that you really need to see any more of "so-and-so's crappy vacation dive pictures" (which I assure you they will be)-- but it will make me feel special. Weatherdotcom shows a snarling pack of storms cutting their way up through the Brazilian coast like buzz saws, headed straight for Central America, but I'm thankful. I have found a wonderful place to escape the rain...
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Tuesday, April 5 2005
A word to the wise, and to my friends too. Don't get Giardia-- it takes no prisioners. I am doing pretty good now, but for the past three days I have been more or less confined to my room in Bocas admiring the beautiful ocean from my window (Maybe it was that cow milk I drank in Peru? They all told me I would get wicked sick). Actually, it is a good place to be sick in, though being sick is never fun. I went to the local Ministerio de Salud and they provided me with prompt care, informing me that I had a 'tropical disease' and provided a potent cocktail of mysterious medicines. So though not yet 100%, I'm feeling better by the day, and hope to be roaming the jungle and scuba diving by next week.
I did make it to the water for a bit yesterday, and it was as nice as I had imagined-- 85 degress and crystal clear blue. There are not many fish, unfortunately, as they have all been caught, but the coral is supposed to be beautiful. Hopefully I will know next week. The culture on the island is very Caribbean-- exceptionally laid-back and friendly. Multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, colorful and friendly. Nothing moves very fast, but there is nowhere that anyone really has to be it seems, so things kind of roll on. I have a really nice room in a local place, and though I am starting to tire of traveling alone, I am excited about the upcoming week of intensive diving. Pictures soon, I promise chicos.
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Wednesday, March 30 2005
Finally, check out photos from the goodbye party in Chile here.
After six days of travelling light of the Andean highlands and riding in rumbling farm trucks down mountain roads that I prefer not to think about, I have arrived safe in Huanuco, Peru at the margin of the Amazon and the Andes. Thanks to all who were patient and trusted in my judgement to get through the trip safely. The last week has been incredible- both fun and enlightening. I hope to write more about it, but it would be pages long, so for now here are a few highlights.
I set off for the Huayhuash range of the Central Andes on a Thursday morning, arriving in the small town of Chiquian, which borders the mountains and the Puno, the high grassy plateau. I was surprised to learn that the road had finally been completed and it was possible to drive to the town of Pallon. This is good news for all who live in the more remote villages beyond, as it means easier access to medical care, services, development, and the outside world in general.
I rode on a farm truck with a couple of friendly folks and stayed in Pallon, the town that Fritz, Steve and I had passed through four years ago. I brought copies of several photos to people I had met in 2001. It was moving seeing the same people and their experience as they gazed at their children and grandchildren from a few years ago. I took some more photos with my 35mm camera—I am hoping they will be worth returning as well.
The next day I began hiking. Pallon sits on a cliff at about 12,000 feet, and my destination that day was a lake at the foot of the mountains at about 14,500 feet. My pack was light and I felt great. Though by 14,000 feet I was struggling. That night, rather than sleeping out as the rain fell I stayed with a family, at their own request, in their stone home in the high valley. They were very generous with the little food and possessions they had, and I did my best to compensate them for their time and care.
The next day I was feeling strong and prepared. I had two 16,000-foot passes to cross close to the mountain of Rondoy, and about 25 kilometers to make it to the next encampment. The day got off to a great start, but I found myself at 5pm at 15,000 having just ascended the wrong pass. I prepared my camp and settled in for a rainy night. The feeling of smallness is extreme when you are up there alone, wrapped in a hypo-wrap as the rain falls in the darkness around you. I am getting better and better at keeping my focus and piece of mind in those situations, and actually passed a fairly comfortable night.
The next day I crossed the correct pass and descended the long trek into Queropalca, the first town on the East side. I drank fresh milk still warm from the cow and chatted with Andres Silva and his family—incredibly warm and sincere people. The East side gets very few tourists, and I was drawing attention everywhere I went. Sometimes it can be fun, but it is also tiring. I dropped into Queropalca that night, and came to meet the Italian missionary priest, Padre Juiseppe, who serves the area. We shared coffee in the town of Banos, further down the valley the next morning, and shared pretty frank and enlightening discussion about development and culture in the region
As I set off from Banos, day five, I was feeling great. The mountains were long behind me, and I had a short 20k trek over the Puno to the district seat of Jesus. I travelled the original Inca Trail for a few kilometres—It is great shape, and it’s incredible thinking that I could have easily continued to walk it all the way to Cuzco. I climbed a hill, found some ancient sea fossils in the rocks, browsed some pre-Incan ruins, and chatted with some local farmers as I entered Jesus. The next day I rode into Hunauco with the mayor and teacher from Queropalca, who had come on official business about builging a new road. Though my Spanish was struggling, we had some really interesting discussions about development and tourism in the area.
I spent today in bustling Huanuco, and will be returning to Lima tonight. I am working on setting up a week-and-a-half of scuba diving (including an advanced course in rescue diving/dive medic!) and general beach bumming in Bocas Del Toro, Panama. Dig it!
If you are reading this I am probably thinking of you too, so write to me.
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Tuesday, March 22 2005
Last weekend was great. Poli's family was so warm and welcoming-- we went to the family house on the coast and barbequed on Saturday, and on Sunday basically just chilled out. We ate lunch with the whole family, and then took a tour of the Concepcion region. Here is a photo of Poli's brother Gonzalo, his wife Carolina, Poli, Macarena, and her boyfriend Jorge. Here's one with me and the dog Bronco(sauro) too. Sunday eveing we watched Constantine and caught the return bus which rumbled northward through the night. We arrived in Santiago on Monday morning tired but in high spirits. (At least I was... I didn't have to work the whole day).
I left Chile Tuesday morning after a bittersweet noir blanche of packing and partying with Herman, Slyvana, Sven, Lauren, and Poli. There are some really funny pictures which I will post when I get a chance. We grilled steak and sausages and drank a selection of fine Chilean wines until one by one people started to fade out. After saying goodbye to everyone I finished packing just in time to meet my 4am ride to the airport. Leaving Chile and arriving in Peru is still a sleepy blur, but somehow everything worked out, and I am now in Lima waiting another five hours until Bus Oremeno carries me through the night to the famed mountain town of Huaraz. My bags safely stored in airport baggage holding, I have only a few shirts and pairs of socks and a camera. ...feels like college.
Being back here is powerful. The last time I was here everything was so new and exciting and scary. When I arrived in Santiago a month ago I was struck by how orderly and focused it was compared to my memory. If anything, Lima has been the opposite. The city is chaotic, filled with throngs smoky cars and busses, informal business, and if possible, air that would deem Santiago ecological in comparison. Yet, the city is thriving, and after spending my morning with a genuinely congenial yet shrewd taxi driver named Juan, in his forties and a father of two, I have everythng I need and am ready to go. Juan and I reminisced over the beaucolic hill towns and valleys of the Huayhuash region, but one thing is for sure, there will be some long wet days ahead. This is probably going to be my last post until I emerge in Huanuco, but I will post again, hopefully with photos as soon as I reach connectivity on the other end. For me details on my intended route, check out the Climbs page.
Till then take care friends, and enjoy the final days of winter up there.
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Thursday, March 18 2005
Today was the last day of the language school for me. At the end of each week we have a barbeque outside and say goodbye to the students who are leaving. Here you can see me with two of my professors, Rodrigo and Veronica. Rodrigo and I struggled through hours of medical terminology and patient assessment every day. I am grateful to them and to the other students for their patience and enthusiasm. These are several of my friends, including Sylvia, Gigante, Astrid, Yasmin, Martin, Scott and Amanda. Thanks ECELA staff and enjoy the rest of your studies yanks.
Poli and I are taking off tonight to go to Concepcion and visit her family. It is the second largest city in Chile, though I have never been there. It’s a seven-hour overnight bus ride: we’ll arrive Saturday morning and take off Sunday night. After returning to Santiago I will pack up and get ready to head to Peru. It will be nice to get a break from language classes—I think that my brain is full for the time being.
Last night we went to a pretty hype club in “Alto Las Condes,” a nice neighborhood in upper Santiago. The music was great, and though everyone talks about dancing, no one ever seems to. … Fomé. I still have not found a traveling companion for the Huayhush trek, but I am looking forward to it. Everyone here says that it is very “aperrado,” which is one of my favorite words ever. Literally in English it means “dog-like,” but the closest thing we have to the word I think would be “rugged.” There are a few other fun Chilean words below:
Also, check out Herman putting the dogs into the bathtub while Sven is taking a shower.
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Tuesday, March 15 2005
Woo Hoo! I got into Denver Graduate School of International Studies and Georgetown Program in Development Management in Buenas Aires. This is really exciting and unexpected. Now I have to make a decision in the next few weeks for reals about how to spend the the next few years. Ack.
Life is good. I can't believe it is already time to leave Santiago... I have made great friends here and have learned so much. Next up will be a 10-14 day trek through the highlands of Peru. It will be fun for sure, but let me know if you know anyone who may be interested in coming along. For real... it will be amazing, but I would love company. Don't worry, it will be completely relajado. No climbing or anything extreme involved. Seriously. It will mostly be travling day by day between small mountain villages. I will post route info on the Climbs page.
When you get a chance, also check out Sven's web page here. Most of it is in Flemmish, but it has some English and some great photos. More to come later...
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Thursday, March 10 2005
Leaving SF was exciting, and hectic. Nathan, Shane, Eric, Pete and I met up with a crew the night before I left and shared drinks and stories. Leaving good friends is never easy.
Santiago has been great fun, and when not in classes I have been having adventures with several new friends. Without divulging too many incriminating details, below is a quick lineup of the key villains:
Herman and Silvana own the student apartment that I live in. They are good friends, and we stay up talking into the early hours far too frequently, which invariably makes the next day at class a struggle. In the following file footage you will see Herman and Sylvana with friends Patrick and Paulina doing the Macarena at 5am at Herman’s birthday party. It was ridiculous.
This is Sven (aka “The Train”). He is from Belgium and works in Santiago. He runs very fast, and speaks very slowly in Flemmish, French, English, and Spanish, and is hilarious.
This is Poli. She is a good friend of Herman’s, and lots of fun. She also likes sushi, dancing, and sweets. She lives and works in Santiago, and speaks English on par with my Spanish.
Here are some more photos from Herman’s party. (Files are large, takes a while to load)
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Tuesday, March 8 2005
I was walking home from an entertaining dinner with a friend earlier this week—dinner having finished, not unusually, at 1:30 in the morning—when I heard a sudden and unmistakable sound of crunching steel and plastic. Like everyone in the nearly limitless network of avenues and apartment blocks that makes up Santiago, I had quickly become unconscious of the sound of speeding traffic and roaring buses. But somewhere in my subconscious I had secretly been listening all along for that inevitable rough scrape of locked tires across pavement and crunch of car against ________.
I turned around and saw that one hundred meters behind me there had sure enough been some kind of accident. I couldn’t tell how many vehicles were involved, but it was clear from the sound that the crash had happened at a respectable speed. It is strange feeling to realize that you may able to be useful when typically peaceful surroundings suddenly turn confusing and dangerous—sort of like being pinched and waking from a snooze. Other cars were in the area, but I was likely the most highly-trained responder nearby. I turned and started walking toward the intersection, running through possible scenarios that I might find: rear-ending, possible C-spine complications, head-on collision with head injuries, etc. I had no protective equipment, but that fact had not yet occurred to me.
Within two minutes I found that a compact sedan had careened through an intersection at speed and side-swiped a smallish tree. The car was remarkably broken—both axles were snapped cleanly in two and the rear windshield was smashed out, while the front was shattered in place. Judging from the car, things did not look good. The driver’s side door was open and no one was inside. I quickly determined that the anxious young man, uninjured and talking on a cell phone, was the driver. What concerned me more was that two middle-aged men were carrying the passenger, another man no older than myself, from the passenger side. The passenger was semi-conscious, and the people assisting clearly were working on instinct, but had no training in emergency care.
This was a little surreal. Here I was, in Chile ostensibly to study emergency medicine in Spanish. And for the first time in my life, completely by chance, I was responding to an actual field medical emergency still uncertain of my communication skills. No matter how much I train, the context always comes as a surprise. It took me a moment to jump in. We were safely removed from the intersection and the men were lowering the patient onto the sidewalk, paying no attention to his neck or back. I tried to maintain stabilization and lower him smoothly. I gently but immediately removed the headrest that one had put under him. I realized already that my system of assessment was a complete mess, but hoped that at least that I would remember the most important elements and stabilize any potentially life-threatening injuries. In reality, he did not appear to be hurt very badly at all—he was breathing sufficiently, and becoming fully conscious quickly. There were no wounds or visible fractures, just an apparent knock to the left forehead, but I felt no fractures and observed no signs of potential nervous damage. I surprised myself by rattling off the standard level-of-consciousness questions to him, and got back thorough answers. He would be fine, at least until he got to a hospital where an MD could examine him for complications that might result from internal bleeding. Still unsure about my role, being a foreigner with weak command of the language, I felt awkward going through the entire assessment process. Nevertheless, that was the thing to do, I knew. Just at that moment I was relieved; the fire department arrived. Prompt and professional, just as I was used to. They quickly took control of the scene, and clearly had no interest in me or what we had done for the patient. That was fine. After another moment of hesitation, I turned and started home.
I had not done a thing, and it is not certain that I could have if he had needed care—thankfully that was not the case. But it is so strange how life can converge in such unexpected ways. I was not nervous or overly concerned coming away from the accident, the guy would have a big headache the next day, literally and figuratively, but should be alright. The event did not really clarify whether or not I “should” pursue a career in medicine, as I have been considering. But it does reaffirm that responding is a personal instinct. And the more training that I accrue, the more it is also a responsibility.
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Friday, March 4 2005
Queridos amigos, I have arrived safely in South America, and the adventures finally begin. In what follows you will find hair-raising tales of insouciance in the face of certain death, side-splitting sidekick hilarity (in the face of certain death), and long, rather awkward pauses (i.t.f.o.c.d). So maybe it’s not that interesting, but has been fun. Send me an email to say hello or comment on my tonterias here.
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Episode 3: NYC
After the whirlwind of Washington I touched down in SF and took off again for New York the next day. My friend Chris Solarz has an apartment on the West Side of Central Park in Manhattan that was ground zero for the entire trip, though much of what happened those five days remains unclear. Somewhere in there was a limousine and some Canadian girls, Grand Central Station, and a quick meeting at Columbia University. I talked with a professor in the International Economics department about their graduate IR program. Little surprise, it was very impressive—so far NYC was looking pretty sweet. By fortunate coincidence, my parents were also in the area for the weekend. We met for dinner at Owen’s cousin’s house. Characteristic of our family gatherings, the dinner quickly grew into heated debate about social ethics, and was as always, basically inconclusive but lots of fun. The following day, Saturday, we all joined my uncle John and aunt Bernadette. It was great seeing everyone a final time-- in four short days I would be in South America. Here Owen, Ellen, and John can be seen navigating their way from the kitchen into the living room (the Northeastern topography is particularly confusing for out-of-towners). After a final dinner together, we said goodbye and from that small town in New Jersey I began the long trek that would eventually lead to Santiago, Chile. |
Episode 2: Washington, DC
Just about everyone I know who graduated college within the last five years lives in one of three places: San Francisco, New York City, or Washington, DC. Fortunately, my friends’ choices of location are as convenient as they are unoriginal. When February arrived Jeremy Coerper and I took to the air to visit friends and family in Washington.
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Episode 1: The Preparation
Everyone over the age of 35 told me to take time and travel now because after some time in the future that no one managed to mention exactly I would be “tied down” with a home, a family, and “life” (?). As I commenced in wrapping up my responsibilities at Google and prepared for an extended trip to South America to study I soon found that the over thirty-fivers were right. There was a lot to do—this was no longer college where I toss my life into a overnight bag and be off for six months. But in between setting up insurance plans, going toe-to-toe with cellular providers over service plans, and submitting graduate school applications to places like this and this, I was able to participate in the snow safety and avalanche rescue training with the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit.
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