Gap Year - A World Rocked

“So, how was your year abroad?”

It’s a loaded question, and one that I still – three months after landing back in New Orleans – struggle to answer adequately.  I haven’t given up, though; whenever it comes up, I sing the year’s praises as loudly as possible. “It was absolutely phenomenal.  I’d recommend it to anyone.  Complete game-changer.  The greatest year of my life.” 

But really - how do you describe an experience like this?  How do you describe the size of the universe?  Sometimes I’ll gesticulate wildly, throwing hands everywhere to drive my lofty statements home; I’ll spend awkward seconds searching for high-magnitude words, and, in certain moments, invoke profanity.  People get it – “Sounds awesome,” they say, nodding - but I can tell it’s still falling a little short. No matter how [darn] incredible I say this year was, it’ll always mean more to me than I can actually get across.

What to do with such an inexpressibly positive experience?  I can’t just sit on it – the gap year's the type of experience that changes every life it touches – but, at the same time, it’s not an easy idea to sell.  Although "world travel" does hold a certain element of mass appeal, the gap year is inherently a risk.  It's nonessential.  It’s different.  Gap years are often expensive, sometimes dangerous, and always time-consuming.  It’s costly and uncomfortable, and we Americans tend to be both comfortable and cost-averse.  The result is usually a quick dismissal of the idea.

                                                                               

So I’m not, at this point in time, attempting to persuade the masses to consider the gap year.  That’s a pretty grand endeavor.  But in the next few hundred words, I'd like to explain what I actually got - what I'm getting - from the whole experience.

Telling people about the journey, to the point that they really understand it, is difficult.  (That’s one reason it’s taken me three months to get around to finishing this blog.)  I can’t just place people on the clay footpath in the village of Igoda, inviting them into another riotous game of street football as the sun sets below the Tanzanian foothills.  I can’t bring everyone beneath the cosmic sky of the otherworldly Peruvian highlands, where the light spots outnumber the dark and the campesinos’ alpaca shift and sputter in their stables.  What does it feel like to sit in the Swing at the Edge of the World?  “Awesome?” “Incredible?” Yes – indescribably so.  You have to go to the Arequipa Food Festival to taste the culture, the music, the empanadas and morocho, and so on.  You can’t just hear about it.  It’s that exclusivity that makes memories so valuable.

South America Group Semester takes Machu Picchu

Cruz del Condor, Cañón del Colca, Peru

But in the end, this wasn’t a trip about "memories".  Great memories can be made anywhere.  I told a friend a few days ago that, all these weeks later, the impact of this journey is just beginning to become apparent to me – long after the scenic views have been taken in and the bucket list entries have been checked off. 

It’s the intangible side of the adventure that sticks: the broadened perspective, the personal clarity, the happy-go-anywhere confidence of a traveler.  When you travel (not just “visit”, but travel – there’s a difference), the mundane becomes magical. Watch a Tanzanian woman weave a basket.  It’ll blow your mind, and you’ll discover new appreciation for materials, for culture, and for the individual struggles of a billion Third World families.  It stays with you.  In such a profoundly new space, simple stuff can become challenging– try making your way across Peru by bus – even as the world’s complications and complexities seem to dissolve before your eyes.  What if we all appreciated life as much as Mufindi’s villagers, who mostly live without electricity, running water, healthcare access, or more than a few dollars a day, but still find the time to laugh, play, and love each other?  What if our priorities could be more like theirs?  I believe that everyone should, at some point, attend a Lutheran church service in Swahili. Everyone could benefit from a morning bucket shower in a cornfield. (Ask me how much I appreciate hot water now.) It's all about perspective.  Perspective.  Perspective.  If more people would just go – go to a strange land, simply to do strange things, in strange ways, with complete strangers – the world would become more content, more productive, and more understanding.

Women of Mufindi, Tanzania | Credit goes to my friend Aimi Duong, Photographers Without Borders

After Igoda Children's Village "Spring Break Camp"

I was truly fortunate to get my first taste of the world at large before going off to college.  The benefits of the post-high school gap year are limitless.  Academic burnout is a distant memory.  I’m more self-aware than ever before.  I became fluent in a second language while abroad, and am well on my way to learning a third.  I learned what it feels like to (attempt to) teach kids English, to administer life-saving medical treatment, and to sit a the head of a traditional Kihehe farewell ceremony.  I’ve made friends from across the country (amazing, adventurous American travellers who I’m beyond blessed to call close friends) and from across the world (host families, language teachers, doctors, dentists, nonprofit leaders, villages full of kids, and fellow explorers). Priorities have evolved.  I’ve progressed in my relationships with family, friends, career, and routine.  And at this point I’d feel comfortable living in nearly any city or country in the world - which is fortunate, since they’re pretty much all on my list.

My mom wouldn't allow a final blog post without baby Noelle. Contact me if you're interested in adopting!

Mufindi's HIV prevalence rate is around 35%.  It's not all rainbows and butterflies

Cusco, Peru, by night

If the year itself was incredible, its long-term impact is utterly astonishing.  The trip was a force multiplier, a yearlong dose of unadulterated perspective that will shape every event of the rest of my life.  I'm seeing things differently.  I'm doing things differently.  Everything is different - and, truthfully, that can be painful at times.  But in the vast majority of situations the difference is overwhelmingly positive. This was among the greatest opportunities I've ever been given and is definitely, to date, the greatest decision I've made.

According to Saint Augustine, "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page." I'm only a couple of chapters in, but it's definitely a really, really good book.

Long exposure / Tena, Ecuador / No edit necessary

Gap year data and benefits: http://www.americangap.org/data-benefits.php

Accredited list of gap year organizations: http://www.americangap.org/gap-year-programs.php

Carpe Diem Education: http://www.carpediemeducation.org/
Financial Aid: https://www.carpediemeducation.org/financial-aid/

Foxes' NGO - Mufindi

Five incredible weeks at Foxes’ NGO, and I’m still not sure exactly what label to give the organization where I’m working – besides "NGO".  It’s non-governmental, sure, but it’s a lot of other things, too.  And all of them are worth writing about.                                              

What is this place? An orphanage?  Yeah, kind of – though we don’t use that term, since it tends to paint a sad, Western, “institutional” picture – but more on that later.  We have a school, too: a Montessori Kindergarten.  And a nursery.  There’s also a vocational sewing school, with an accompanying English class available to students out to advance their careers.  And don’t forget the NGO’s health branch.  The small clinic on-site features dentistry and pediatrics, but the scope of its operation is dwarfed by that of the NGO’s massive Home-Based Care program, which pretty much reaches the entire 16-village Mufindi district.  

That’s the Clif’s Notes of the organization; my role in it is ever changing and somewhat difficult to define.  I spend a lot of time with the Home-Based Care program, filing papers in the clinic, fixing syringes, following the doctors (transplants from Finland, Sweden, and the US) around on their door-to-door life saving routine, from which I’ve gained a tremendous amount of perspective and for which I believe the Vatican should consider canonizing them; I’ve helped teach a few English classes, which are organized and led by a brilliant and TOEFL-certified teacher from the UK; I do a little bit of media coordination, hang out with the guys from the Children’s Village (which is the aforementioned not-orphanage), and generally do whatever else the NGO may need on the side.  I’m essentially a gopher. 

An NGOpher. 

                       

Dr. Leena at work on Home-Based Care

So, why here?  What brings such an incredible group of happy, hardworking individuals as this NGO's staff out to rural Africa, where some of them are raising families and live full-time?  Mufindi district has an HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 35%.  For pregnant women, it’s 45%.  Polygamy is common and socially accepted.  And an average farmer here (nine out of ten village men are farmers by trade) lives on $20 a month, which makes medication and treatment prohibitively expensive as well as distant.  Education on the whole is extremely sub-par; it’s practically nonexistent for pre-primary kids and extremely difficult for high schoolers.  University is a notion entertained only by the gifted, the wealthy, and the extremely determined.  You pretty much have to be two of those three to have a chance.

English with the Sewing School students

It’s a rough world, but not a dark one.  My village, Igoda – about half an hour’s walk from the NGO, uphill, both ways – has shown me that the people around here are some of the friendliest you’ll meet, even in the face of their overwhelming life circumstances.  People are extremely accommodating, just like they were in Morogoro; kids will want high-fives or a football match, and adults will always greet you on the road.  I have begun to wonder, though, whether people will ever stop staring at me in the village.  Granted, I am Igoda’s only white resident.  But everyone stares.  Everyone.  Still.  And there are other wazungu passing through occasionally – right? I’m not the only pale-skinned person they’ve ever seen…am I?  Not the only one, not in the vast majority of cases.  Anywho, I’ve gotten used to it.  The key is to perceive it not as unfriendliness, but as blunt unacquaintedness.  They have no idea that staring is rude in Western culture.  Plus, it can be kinda flattering sometimes.

My host-dad, Baba Isaya, is employed as an administrator at the NGO and is always willing to practice his English.  His house is solid concrete, with a tin roof – which is pretty luxurious, by local standards – and even has a satellite dish attached to the temperamental electrical supply.  Water, however, is a job for the river and the frequent, often torrential, rain.

Mufindi, by the way, is absolutely gorgeous.  I don’t really know what I was expecting of the terrain here – endless golden savannah, maybe, or whatever Simba’s Pride Lands are – but I definitely didn’t anticipate this: Hills upon hills upon hills, endless, green, undeveloped, and elevated enough (around 5,500 feet) to deter humidity and mosquitoes.  (If you’re from South Louisiana, where the latter two are constant and topography is a myth, this is an unbeatable combination.)  Some areas are blanketed with verdant tea plantations, and others are streaked with government-owned hardwood groves, but mostly it’s that typical Nursery Rhyme vista: The round, monochrome hills and, sometimes, the single dirt path that rides up and down the sides as it disappears into the sunset.  It really is incredible.  I’m only just getting used to waking up inside a fairy tale every morning.  I only wish my house weren’t perched atop one of the hills.

Mufindi mornings.  This is literally my backyard.

What else, for the overview?  Food.  Hm.  There isn’t a general overabundance of it around here, but we at the NGO are sustained by the on-site farm, which feeds the entire Children’s Village and the NGO staff each day – a total of around 100 people.  A typical day includes a breakfast of bread and chai; a lunch of beans and ugali (pronounced like ‘Ooh! Golly!’, but always with significantly less enthusiasm; I’ve taken to calling it “corn pudding” in an effort to   it sound more appetizing); and, for dinner, lunch again.  An atypical day includes a hardboiled egg for breakfast, or maybe, as a substitute for the corn pudding, rice.  But not both egg and rice.  That would be ridiculous.

Yeah, that might do it for the overview.  Days here are full to bursting, and I fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow every night.  It's nearly impossible to do it all justice in writing, but it's certainly not for lack of subject matter.

House 3 Squad + Luke

Sijambo - Morogoro

Four hours inland from the sweltering coastal sprawl of Dar Es Salaam sits Morogoro, significantly smaller and appreciably cooler.  It’s still really big, though.  And it’s very, very far from cold.


Coolly enough, though, Morogoro is surrounded by a few hundred kilometers of unspoiled African countryside, complete with wildebeest herds, irregular mountains, and those distinctive umbrella-like acacia trees in The Lion King.  The westward drive from Dar was in itself a safari.  Hamadi the Driver, seeing our openmouthed gawks and hearing our Naaaaa Temenyaaaaa’s, taught us some introductory Swahili (Simba means “lion”, would you believe it) and regaled us with advice about local wildlife (hippos are more aggressive than lions, blubber notwithstanding; contact is strongly discouraged).


Hamadi pulled the van off the highway a few kilometers short of Morogoro to follow a short dirt track into the brush.  At the end was ELCT Language School, our destination for the week, where we were set to enroll in a Swahili crash course and weather the anticipated culture shock before heading on to our permanent destinations.


ELCT (The “L” is for “Lutheran,” I’m almost positive) is a sizable secondary school and junior seminary with a few hundred Tanzanian boarding students and a few dozen resident faculty.  It’s unmistakably Western in look and feel – Tanzania follows the British school system – and it doubles as a Swahili school for immigrants temporary and permanent, perhaps in part because it’s an ideal place for a Westerner to make a smooth transition into the region.  We were to live on-grounds with teachers’ families for the week, sharing the verdant campus with missionaries from Minnesota and Australia, researchers from the Netherlands, translators from Ohio, and students from South Korea in addition to the full-time locals.  All of the above had committed to numerous months of study at ELCT.  Luke, Colleen and I didn’t have that kind of time.  Our stay spanned only seven nights and six days (two of them off for the weekend); we had just four full days of class, three students to our one teacher, and, uh, zero prior knowledge.


The days went by quickly, though, and we absorbed all the Swahili we could in the time given.  This was not jaw-droppingly much: mostly greetings, animals, food items and body parts, with the occasional adjective and a versatile swear word for seasoning.  A solid foundation, but Swahili remains a work in progress.
 

And as for culture shock: There was next to none of it, really.  My theory is that East African culture is simply too calm to be shocking.  It's legitimately incredible how relaxed, open and friendly everybody is.  There’s just this abiding atmosphere of easy friendliness that makes the transition a breeze, even to a white kid in Chacos who can’t speak the language and holds a Disney cartoon as his chief cultural reference.  People are more than happy to throw the Frisbee, kick the foot(soccer)ball, compare music (local favorites include Kendrick, MJ, and…Chris Brown?) or even help with laundry, which is a sizable job with such limited water supply. Everyone’s eager to please, to play, to practice some English, to know – What brings you to Africa? Do you like it here? Is America this hot? And always: Do you like Obama? (They’re huge fans.)


For further proof of Tanzanians’ carefree nature, take these common Swahili courtesies:

 “Hujambo?” (Literally: Do you have any worries?)

 -“Sijambo!” (I have no worries!)

I love it.  This is standard, as ubiquitous as “How are you?” in many areas.  It gets better, though: According to Elly, our teacher, it’s customary to reply with “Sijambo” even if you do, in fact, have a concern or two. For example, if somebody sends a “Hujambo” your way while your house is burning down:

-“Sijambo - except, you know, my house is burning down.” 

               “That sounds like a problem.”

                 -“Hakuna Matata, man.”

Squad

Round Two - Dar Es Salaam

Round Two officially began upon our arrival at Dar Es Salaam, when the airplane door opened to admit a friendly blast of African heat into the cabin.  Luke, Colleen and I had been in the air for a solid 21 hours since Portland; our trip, including the layovers in Amsterdam-Schipol and Kilimanjaro International, rounded out to a full day altogether.  This plane to Dar was, magnificently, our last. 

After baggage claim (everything accounted for, thank God) and a longish screening process (Yes, we’re here as “tourists”) we received our visas.  Good for 90 days of legal residence, we noted appreciatively that they’re also significantly cooler looking than regular passport stamps.  High-fives all around. Out to the terminal: open-air and approximately 104 Fahrenheit.  We met Hamadi - driver, translator, Carpe Diem confidante – and then, without further ado, we were off.

Hamadi whisked us through the dusty streets of Dar to the gates of the hostel where we were to stay the night.  The drive (which, surprisingly for me, was on the left side of the road) brought us rumbling back into the third world, reintroducing the roadside shanties, bustling marketplaces, barefoot peddlers, and terrifying traffic that we’d all seen so often in the Fall.  Even by night, it was abundantly clear that we were nowhere near Kansas anymore.

                                          

The sensation of genuine cultural immersion is one of many things I’ll for which I’ll forever be grateful to Carpe Diem.  Our recent semesters with Carpe (mine in South America, Luke and Colleen’s in India) had effectively warmed us to this kind of living.  In a way, we’d come to miss the vagabond lifestyle - the discomfort, the unknown, the flagrant unfamiliarity of everything.  It felt oddly refreshing to change pace and add half a day to our watches, to pay an innkeep who spoke no English and fall asleep jet-lagged under a mosquito net again.                                                           

The three of us are here in sunny East Africa on the second semester of Carpe Diem Education’s Latitudes Year program.  The Year is comprised of a group semester (usually in the fall; mine was in South America, Luke and Colleen’s in India) and a Focused Volunteer Placement (FVP) the following term.

This FVP is dropping us into a terrifically new part of the world, giving us ultimate freedom to discover its culture, language, people, and way of life, and it is put-a-stamp-on-it guaranteed to rock our perspectives to the core. Without a doubt it’ll be difficult, weird, and beautiful by turns, and that’s exactly what we’re looking for.  There’s nothing like it.  I don’t know exactly what’s ahead, and I don’t know when or where I’m gonna be able to upload this, but for now I know we’re all incredibly happy to be here.

From the balcony

Best For Last - Baltimoré, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu

For better or for worse, I completely dropped the ball on my last few weeks' worth of South America blogging.  I won't make excuses, but I will point out that combing second-world cities for reliable Internet cafes is one of the lamer ways to spend free time abroad.  If I were to blame anyone other than myself, I'd point the finger at the group helado runs and semi-legal archaeological expeditions that came to occupy our off-periods toward the end.   

Still, I wish I would’ve found the time to finish the job. The end of this trip was something incredibly special, and the three weeks I neglected to write about were probably the richest, most memorable, and most ridiculous of the twelve.   In the days following the Sacred Valley retreat the group became thicker than thieves, rambling through a jungle, a mountain range, and two ancient cities with hilarious, brotherly abandon.  Here’s the short of it.


CAMINO VERDE


The first week after the yoga retreat was our last in the Peruvian Amazon.  We volunteered at Camino Verde, a sustainable agriculture NGO in the deep-woods district of Baltimoré, for seven sweltering and enjoyable days. 


This place was actually in the middle of nowhere. From the already-remote town of Porto Maldonado (10 hours from Cusco by bus), the jaw-dropping remoteness of our destination necessitated a bumpy, off-road hour in a taxi, followed by four more on a river skiff. Without a single road to be found in the area, our daily commutes to the NGO from the hostel were also by water.  Our six-room, family-owned jungle lodge, El Gato, was the closest thing to a town that we came across.  Local wildlife included, but was not limited to: macaws, caimans, piranhas, stingrays, bullet ants, anaconda, spiders (everywhere), and candiru.  Look that last one up if you’re feeling brave.


Our work at Camino dealt mainly with the maintenance and study of the many onsite permaculture populations, which ranged from hardwood groves to coffee bushes to wild forest whose growth is as yet unchecked.  The idea of permaculture is to support endangered plant species by cultivating them in their native conditions - in carefully maintained ecosystems that mime the optimal, natural milieu of the organism.  We were working to maintain this semi-artificial jungle environment while performing routine maintenance and care on some of the endemic target species.  It was hard, hot work - most of my time was spent sawing nonessential branches off hardwoods - but there's no denying the positivity of the experience. The jungle offers many a rustic pleasure: hacking open a coconut and downing the milk after a hot day, picking starfruit off a tree in the back yard, swimming in a tributary of the Amazon, and braving the Southwestern Hemisphere's hottest pepper after lunch (and surviving to tell about it) are just a few. But there was a also a hidden, long-term benefit: After that week, living conditions nearly everywhere seem utterly luxurious. (Nights were no cooler than 90 degrees, with no less than 98% humidity; ventilation was stifled by the essential mosquito net; no air conditioning; no electricity; no ice.) 

Although we had a good run in the jungle, I’d say our departure was slightly more sweet than bitter.  We sailed back upriver in high spirits, looking forward to spending a night or two in the relative luxury of Cusco’s Inti Tambo Hostel - now only one overnight bus ride away – and then heading on to our next destination, which turned out to be my favorite of the trip. 

OLLANTAYTAMBO

Ollantaytambo is a former Incan city in the heart of the Sacred Valley that remains so true to its ancient heritage that it looks and feels almost like an exhibit.  It’s located along the route to the city of Machu Picchu and home to what was once a prominent Incan citadel.  Despite a recent tourism surge (and a consequent uptick in government exploitation), Ollantaytambo remains authentically Incan: The city’s architecture, planning, and infrastructure are all straight out of the 15^th Century, or from the period of Spanish occupation immediately afterward.  At first, it doesn’t feel completely legitimate.  Movie set? Archaeological excavation? Theme park? Nope, it’s all real – just another little town in the Sacred Valley going unflappably about its business as droves of incredulous tourists look on.  

Our group’s official business in Ollantaytambo was a last round of Spanish classes and a short volunteer session at a local elementary school.  Translation: We had a nice amount of time for shenanigans.  In addition to our duties, a typical day in Ollanta included ice cream, a stop by the market, a foray into the surrounding network of mountain trails, and a stroll through some ancient structure or another.  Of these structures, the highlight was undoubtedly the massive mountainside temple-fortress that dominates the town from above.  TJ’s and my Ollantan Spanish teacher showed us a way to sneak in without paying a toll, since the entire $23 entry charge is pocketed by crooked politicians; we later showed the rest of the group the way, but were caught and shooed off after an attempt at bribing the guards.  Oh well. 

I also spent afternoons wandering aimlessly through the town with a camera, shooting the same streets that had been walked by several centuries of Inca and conquistadores.  Getting a bad picture there required considerable effort.  

On Thanksgiving Morning, our fourth or fifth morning in Ollantaytambo, we reported to the Kuska Elementary School with picks and shovels in hand.  We were going to be digging a trench. 

Morale was not at its highest.  On this most American of days, we had consigned ourselves to hard labor in rural Peru – a country with little food, no family (of ours), and the wrong kind of football.  Was this the right decision?  Was nothing sacred? We’d signed up for this program ourselves, sure, but the timing of the occasion felt somehow blasphemous.  I imagined Uncle Sam frowning disapprovingly from above. 

The morning turned out to be absolutely beautiful.  The Kuska School is situated ten minutes’ stroll from the town, on a terraced landing in a narrow part of the Valley where verdant mountains and a winding river seemed just further than a stone’s throw away.  Thanks to the boom box, the breeze, and the relatively diggable soil, morale picked up quickly, and the morning passed before we knew it – and then it was lunchtime.  

I’ll never forget it.  It turned out that the Kuska kids were spending the day learning about the great American celebration of Thanksgiving.  And their teachers had endeavored, in the spirit of education, to whip up a fresh and accurate rendition of the meal.  And we - the Settlers - were invited to attend. 

Even for a Thanksgiving feast, the result was exceptional.  Turkey, being unavailable, was swapped with some of the most flavorful, succulent, perfectly prepared chicken I’ve ever laid taste buds on; everything else was spot-on, in textbook compliance with our great American rules and regulations.  Take note, we told the kids as we buried our faces in food.  

We chowed down for a good while, and then wandered out to a gazebo in the schoolyard, where the students treated us to a concert.  It was insane.  They all played instruments – all of them – and sang these amazing international songs, in respectable harmony and several languages.  I’ll never forget how ridiculous and awesome it all was, how out of the clear blue sky it seemed, how incredible the whole Thanksgiving turned out.  I wanted to dig them another trench.  Definitely a Thanksgiving for the books.

When our week was up we kissed our host families goodbye and returned to Cusco – which, for the first time, was facing some real competition for the title of “South America’s Coolest City”.  Our stay was supposed to last three days; a transportation strike kept us for one more.  But we needed the rest.  There was a hike ahead.

MACHU PICCHU

The moment we’d all been waiting for – the lost city in the heart of the Sacred Valley, the crown jewel of monumental South America, the ultimate remainder of the Incan Empire.  Ahh, we could see it already.  

Now, to get there.

The vaunted Inca Trail had seemed like the go-to option – “That’s the trail everyone does, right?” – but we ended up steering clear because, after all, that’s the trail that everyone does.  It’s supposedly overpopulated, polluted, and, if I remember correctly, lower-altitude (meaning more bugs and more novice hikers).  Didn’t sound like our cup of coca tea.

The Salkantay Trail, on the other hand, has got it all.  It’s lesser-known and lesser-travelled, crests a 14,000–foot peak, passes by an abandoned temple (which the Inca had outfitted with sunbeam alignment technology, á la Indiana Jones), and generally tends toward higher elevation.  We went with the Salkantay, and I regret not one of the 37 miles.  

Carpe Diem knew what they were doing in saving this hike for last.  The four days on the trail were of that certain final quality that comes at the end of a long and crazy companionship.  Stories, jokes, debates, discussions, songs, rap battles, you name it – it was there, somewhere.  Rain, snow, mist, and sleet were all present in equal proportion, but they all gave way to sunshine and overall great weather.  And, man, the landscape. It looked and felt at times like the Lord of the Rings, at others like Avatar, and occasionally like a video game (I remember looking over one misty cliff, into a hard white void, and realizing that it looked just as if the graphic designers had simply stopped rendering the world beyond that point) but it never felt quite like reality.  Our amazing agency, Apu Andino, took great care of us; while it would’ve made for some serious bragging rights, I’m glad we didn’t have to carry our tents and food all four days. 

The Lost City was as spectacular as I’d hoped, albeit a little more touristy.  After our four days on the trail, where we hadn’t seen a single other hiker, I found the overwhelming number of other travellers at Machu Picchu a little unfortunate.  We persevered.  Most of us spent the earlier part of the morning skirting the city, traversing a network of roads and their adjoining temples on a quest for the perfect view of the city itself.  

In many ways, the entire complex at Machu Picchu is similar to Ollantaytambo (with the notable exception of having been lost to the world for hundreds of years).  It feels off - like a dream, almost, or a steel-and-resin Universal recreation of a fictional world like J.K. Rowling’s. It’s hard to believe that it is, a part of the real world and a relatively recent fixture of history.  

(pictures coming soon)

Mind, Body, Soul - Sacred Valley

It's pretty easy to see how the Sacred Valley got its name. The Urubamba river winds steadily between two terraced mountain ridges that have a palpable yet hard-to-describe energy, similar to the kind that you might feel in old churches or at ancient ruins. The Valley is notable for many reasons - its surpassing beauty, Incan heritage, and crown jewel Machu Picchu, for starters - but it's also a powerfully calming place. 

We spent five days at a yogic retreat in the Valley, under the tutelage of a Peruvian yogi named Chitanya. Needless to say, it was an absolutely incredible experience.  At the moment, though, I'm too exhausted to describe it all in words. For the sake of continuity of the blog, I'm gonna turn it over to my boy Jimmy Friedman, who has given our week a much more comprehensive rundown than I could've.

From Jimmy's entry on the Carpe Diem Blog site: https://www.carpediemeducation.org/2015/11/sacred-valley-ecoyoga-retreat/

“Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.”
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

On November 8th, the Sacred Valley, near Cusco, greeted us with an overcast sky, a calm river, and enormous, cultivated mountains on either side of the main road. Uphill, dorms, a cafeteria, and a meditation center (all made of a deep, brown adobe). Boulders and stone pathways decorated the large, open space between the students’ home and the eating area. The air of peace and balance was a significant energetic change from the hustle of Cusco. People came there to work on themselves and to do that alone; we were no exception. We knew upon arrival that the change in lifestyle would yield new wisdom and health.

Our contact at this EcoYoga center was a Peruvian yogi named Chaitanya. He walked up to us with a baseball cap, cargo pants, a hoodie, and a smile indicating profound contentment and a drive to teach. He showed us to our cozy living quarters and told us to “make ourselves ready.” That same evening, we began our humbling yoga regimen.

Each day we woke up at 7:10 to prepare for 45 minutes of meditation and/or chanting, often guided by centering words from Chaitanya and dulcet tones from a Tibetan singing bowl or the poignant breath of a harmonium, a small hand pumped reed organ used in small chapels. After meditation, we carried our yoga mats down the hill, to a spacious, circular practice building that, itself, took the form of a mandala. The classes were lead by Chaitanya half the time and by a disciple of his for the other half. During this time, we enjoyed an hour and a half of arduous poses, including stretches, head stands, and strenuous holds in difficult positions. Some of our favorite classes were the AcroYoga classes (simply translated, acrobatic yoga). These consisted of having one or two partners to achieve an end pose of, for example, balancing your body only on the feet of your supporting partner. Other times, one would be sitting upright with their legs wrapped around the calves of their partner laying on the ground with their legs straight up, giving way to miraculous feelings of lightness and flight. Overall, a mind-expanding experience.

After breathing our way through the early morning, we ate a vegetarian breakfast, followed by an hour of Seva. Seva, the Sanskrit word for service, included picking up trash by the river, cleaning the dining area, helping with dishes, or simply moving boulders to more desirable locations, making the space more beautiful. After Seva, there were two hours of workshop. During this time, Chaitanya taught us about either Vedic Astrology, Yogic philosophy, Pranayama (use and control of the breath), or Chakras (energy centers in the body). All of these subjects intrigued us hugely because it was so far outside of our normal, Western educational paradigm. Each workshop featured not only understanding, but moments in which we would experience exactly what Chaitanya was dictating. For example, the pranayama workshop was principally a breathing exercise to show us how to control the mind with our breath. After said exercise, we all agreed that we shared a pervading peace and calmness from the lesson. We were refreshed to know that we were gaining skills that could be used for years to come.

At 1:00pm, a seated, vegetarian lunch followed the workshop, a time for mindful eating and thankful gestures like washing dishes and cleaning the tables. 2:00 until 2:30 was resting time, followed by another workshop, leading into 4:30 yoga for a total of three hours of physical yoga each day.

Mind clear and body calm, we relished a light dinner prepared with love and great vibes. Next was the nightly Kirtan (a call and response chanting with tablas, a harmonium, and other drums). Weary from a day of spiritual practice, we went to bed around 8:30 each night.

On the 11th, Chaitanya lead us in a departing ceremony in the meditation room. Seated closely in a circle, we chanted in sanskrit around a pot of burning paper and cow chips. Previous to the ceremony, we had written down on peaces of paper one thing we want to take from the retreat, and one thing we wanted to leave behind to be shed from our pre-yoga selves. We symbolically threw the papers in the fire separately and watched them incinerate, giving us a luminous warmth.

In retrospect, I believe we did gain what we wanted to, and shed what we needed to. The 5 days were tough, but gave us new dimensions to live and grow in. Shout out to our homeboy Chaitanya for being an exemplary role model and an inspiration to live a more conscious life. From the Inti group in Cusco, Namaste.

Exploratory Chilling - Southern Highlands

Our week in Arequipa sold us on Peru pretty easily.  Aside from Jimmy, Ryan and TJ, whose inconvenient location necessitated a 45-minute commute to and from the Spanish school, the majority of us took a quick liking to the new country - 5000-meter snow-covered warts and all. 

This was especially good news because our next week was libre: We had six days to plan and follow our own schedule, operating within a given budget and landing us in the city of Cusco by the end. Within those parameters, we were free to discuss and decide our own week and our own fate. Yes.

The money, of course, proved to be our most limiting factor.  Seventy bucks can get a person a long way in South America, but it wasn't quite enough to realize some of our wilder fantisies. For example, it discounted the possibility of a quick jaunt to the Galápagos - believe me, we tried like hell to make that one work - and then anything further away (like Patagonia or the Caribbean) just  kind of fizzled away by default. But we were more than happy to hang out in Peru, and Arequipa's location in the Southern Highlands gave us tons of options that were relatively close at hand.

So on Sunday morning Lucas and I hit the Festivál de Comida one more time, met up with the rest of the Carpe Gentlemen's Club, and piled into a bus that had at one time been bright purple but was now faded and patched with duct tape. Economy is key. Though the bus squirmed in protest all the while, the three-hour drive was a cool experience for most of us; we traversed a painted desert, between twelve and fifteen thousand feet above sea level, and witnessed an alien landscape and an evening sky that probably don't have equals anywhere else on this planet.  I just wish the windows would have been clearer.

We arrived in the town of Chivay as the evening fell and the cold rolled in, like it always does when it gets dark and you're three miles above the flipping ocean. I still can't get over that.

Chivay is a charming, historical place where the indigenous culture has blended uncompromisingly with 21st-century tourism.  Women walk to and fro in enormous, brightly-colored hats and dresses, running an energetic open-air market and bumping elbows with adventurous gringos.  Most of Chivay's visitors are out to see the nearby Cañon del Colca, and we were no exception; the Cañon is the second-deepest in the world, bested only by a smaller and less-magnificent neighbor (the Cotahuasi)  to the north, and it's twice as deep as the Grand Canyon at it's deepest.  We spent a day hanging out in Chivay's cobblestone streets and exploring the Incan ruins to the East, and then decided that the canyon would be better explored from a different town, Cabanaconde, a quick 30 minute drive down the rim. 

After arriving in Cabanaconde on the morning of Day 3, we packed our bags and prepared for one of South America's most insane hikes.  Our descent - about a mile, vertically, I think - wound down an arduous series of dusty switchbacks, finally concluding at a weird little settlement known as The Oasis. An incongruous gem of palm trees and swimming pools located on the floor of this plunging, jagged, dusty crevasse, it's wholly unique (albeit a little touristy) and it's equal parts attractive and absurd. There's a restaurant at the bottom, with accompanying cabins; all supplies (and some visitors) are hauled down by mule. Lindsay actually had to enlist one for the evening ascent, which was doubly difficult on account of the plunging temperatures and the lack of ambient oxygen.

The next morning, Morning 4, our stay in Cabanaconde was brought to a close by another long bus ride - less bumpy this time, but just as scenic - to the city of Puno. We had read that our destination is a sprawling dump full of smog and illicit activity; we justified our visit on account of it's neighbor, Lake Titikaka, which is officially the world's most fun-to-say geographical feature.  It's also Earth's highest navigable body of water, and, according to legend, the birthplace of the sun. 

We spent all of Day 5 on the water, hopping from island to island in a rented boat and reveling in the novelty of it all.  Lake Titikaka? The one we've all been making jokes about since fourth grade? It was almost too much.  The Islas de Uros, manmade islands which are composed entirely of lake-borne reeds and have been maintained by their indigenous inhabitants for centuries? No way. Taquile, a Mediterranean isle with Mediterranean scenery that looks like it was picked up and plopped down on a different continent? Come on. The fact all of this is perched around two miles above sea level - that my house is located something like 35 football fields straight down? Ridiculous.

We bedded down on a night bus and woke up in Cusco, our final destination, with little to do other than recharge and explore.  Cusco is a big, beautiful, Spanish Colonial tourist haven situated on the edge of the Sacred Valley, and it's probably one of my favorite stops on the trip thus far.

Maybe. I don't know. It's pretty hard to pick favorites.

(None of these pictures are mine. I can't find a computer that'll cooperate with my camera.)

Oasis

From the bus windows

Uros