Thursday, June 9, 2011

Dispatch Number 92 -Errant Thoughts: Peru

This Dispatch is a break from the Two Years summary and pauses from that series after Panama, Dispatch Number 90. It will restart shortly with Colombia. In the meantime, here are some shorter pieces.

Don't Walk
The pedestrian has no rights in Latin America. Crossing streets safely involves running.


Ambulance
I wasn't there, but Scott was when she burned her face in a minor gas explosion. Calling an ambulance is a normal reaction. Not in Lima, Peru, a megalopolis of seven million people, to get an ambulance you must have connections or credit established with the service before they will even pick you up. The majority, hop in taxis to get the injured to a hospital. They are cash & carry societies, and most have very little of it.

Later, I had selfish visions of getting crashed-out on some road desperately needing an ambulance, when none would come.
Call a taxi!, I yelled. Unless I was knocked out, in that case, black-headed vultures would be circling soon.


Cities Begin to Repeat Themselves
After you have traveled a long time, places repeat themselves, they begin to look the same. Definition of a long time is never thinking you could quit the job and really leave it all behind. The beaches, plazas and stores are the same in every city. Pots and pans on offer are the same in each shop, and the once curious open-air markets become as predictable as the white-tiled meat counters that have more flies than customers. Restaurants become a dull drumbeat of repetition. It's when you notice your curiosity wane, the signs are there, its time to go home.

Local sights follow patterns, too. Such as a spot, near town that suffered flood or landslide, an act of nature portrayed as a religious event, another proof of Christs miracles, especially if there was a miraculous survivor. Most townships have these quasi-religious sites used to prove their relevance. Waterfalls dot much of the landscape in Latin America and most serve beer at the bottom. Or the miradors, lookouts that hold the viewer in repeated awe; without guard-railings or signs telling you what to do. Freedom. Eventually, these places begin to feel the same, no matter the country.

When you have a domestic life of routine, these places and activities are fresh and appealing. And now, after three years on the road, find myself on the other side: domestic life looks very appealing, the very domestic life that had me fleeing it's confinement a few years earlier. The wanderlust candle dims and loses some of its intensity. I need shelter to stoke its flame again. A routine of stable home and community looks good. I want things that I have gone without, normal things like the same bed, same people, same woman, same foods, same bicycle, same newsstand and a neighborhood I'm recognized in.

It matters little which side you stand on, the life of a domestic or the life of a nomad, everything we do and everywhere we go, repeats itself.


Are the Drivers Really That Bad?
Drivers in Peru are woefully in over their heads when they get on a autopista, freeway where speeds of 100km/h (60+ mph) are possible for long stretches. Speed kills Peruvians. In a single days drive covering 225kilometers (140 miles) I saw two roll-over accidents on an empty highway. Latin Americans, including Peruvians travel in groups, so most wrecks include family and friends.
This section of the Pan American Highway, south of Lima is first rate, free of interferences and built to European standards, well engineered with excellent visibility and wide shoulders. Yet, somehow, they manage to crash out all by themselves on this empty highway.


How to Break Inertia
It started two and half years ago with, Just see if you can get to Patagonia, the bottom of the world, in a 25 year old truck.

Last Word
It hit me today, after a conversation with a local man. I don't like hearing my own voice, I like hearing my own opinions!

Always

the important
thing
is
the obvious
thing
that
nobody
is
saying


-Charles Bukowski


Whistle While You Work
Small town Peru. These towns have men, junior police, who walk the streets at night to ward off intruders and would-be thieves by blowing athletic whistles throughout the night walking from neighborhood to neighborhood from sundown to dawn, peeping their whistles, every half-minute or so. No gun, no radio, no car, just a plastic whistle.

Fair to assume any half-brained thief would never get caught by a patrolman, cause they'd always hear them coming. When living in Huaraz, Peru I spent months trying to figure out why someone would blow a whistle all-night each time they passed my intersection.


Old Man
Central plaza. Tarma sits low in the saddle of a jagged valley high up in the Andes. It's a sunny Sunday morning and all the benches are occupied, an old man shuffles by, frail and stiff, he passes the plaza with steady steps scratching the concrete as he moves across the plaza. Slowly and patiently he passes. Back in his day, this walk was known as his constitutional.
He passes, and I ask myself, Where will I be doing that? Will I sit on the wall with the other old men watching the world go by, where dreams are already memories?

David
Avila Beach, California 

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Dispatch Number 91 - Drug Travelers

This Dispatch is a break from the Two Years summary and pauses from that series after Panama, Dispatch Number 90. It will restart shortly with Colombia. In the meantime, here are some shorter pieces.


Drug Travelers
Peru, one of the poorer countries, has some of the highest purity cocaine in the world. It is also one of the cheapest at $6-7 per gram and would rate as economical to a coke addict. In Peru, drug taking has become integrated with tourism. The North Americans who drop, come for spiritual enlightenment, dosing on natural psychotropic jungle drugs, like ayahuasca used to cope with a variety of neurosis' or the popular desire to find it again.

The Australians come for coke, typically a small group will park it in a beach town somewhere and consume industrial amounts of it, like Tony Montana in Scarface. Achieving dental-grade numbness in their nasal cavity for days on end. Once they are established the coke is delivered like pizza.



As for the Europeans, they tend to dabble in cocaine more than the psychotropics. The ayahuasca centers are filled with North Americans, who don't bat an eye at these over-priced retreats run by people masquerading as 'real' Shaman. These pretenders mix, or rather highjack 'ancient-medicine man-ways' with the latest New Age fads. These Plastic Shaman, as they are called by the real Shamans, add the necessary drama to make a person feel exotic and spiritual and is brought about by the Plastic Shaman impersonating traditions and combining them with New Age-speak, telling the seeker how beautiful and real they are, while emphasizing the importance of 'processing' the experience.


Maybe I caught too many in the 'processing' stage after leaving a retreat, when more than one told me they dosed on ayahuasca for two months straight, three to four times a week (local custom, if an individual practices, is 3-6 times a year); they seemed lost in general, telling me in some fashion or another that they weren't all there because they were in a cloud trying to understand it all. The fragmented mind was out in the open for all to see.

After seeing several in this state, one would conclude that, in all likelihood, little would change for them, even after they 'processed'. The way they use the word 'processing' comes off more as place to hide, than to sort anything out. It appeared to take them in the opposite direction than the reason they came in the first place. Lots of talk and a tendency to intellectualize the experience, rather than live it.
Like the time a European said to me, You Americans are so funny. You're always trying to improve yourselves.
She had a point. 

David
Cypress, California