Working too hard.

I watched three movies on the way back from France. Chilling out for that long felt good. I'm going to go watch another with my mom today in lieu of hopping in the car on the way to the lake with my family.
I'm taking a few lessons from the travelers I met abroad.
I traveled solo to Chamonix, the ski town under Europe's highest peak Mount Blanc. Talking to other travelers taught me so many things.
I met a Portuguese physical education and outdoor adventure teacher who has traveled all over the world alone. He's seen all the South American countries, toured southern Asia, ridden across the United States and Russia by train. He works 35 hours a week and has 3 months off in the summer. He's in fantastic shape and loves life. He can't believe that the average American gets two weeks of vacation a year and doesn't always take it.
He recommended a hike for the next day and I took his advice as he'd just ridden mountain bikes around the mountains for four days and seemed like he had things pretty well figured out.
The hike took me to the end of the Auguille du Midi, the famous gondola that for the low price of 50 dollars takes people up the side of Mount Blanc. I decided I'd rather just walk up and save the money. I found the sign indicating it was a 3.5 hour hike, checked my watch and started booking it up the hill. If I was going to make it there, then on to the "must see" glacier and back down to catch my bus I was going to have to do better than the posted time estimates. I took quick stops to photograph glaciers and stunning views of the valley on the way to the top of the Auguille du Midi but still clocked in at 2 hours. After fishing out my yogurt with a banana on a rock, I started the 2.5 hour hike to the glacier de mer. The flat hike traversed the upper part of the mountains just before the snow. About 50 pardons, merci's and excusez mois later I'd made it to the end of that hike pleased with my time of 1.5 hours. I'd done the 6 hour hike in 3.5 and was feeling pretty fit. Of course, all the people I'd passed didn't know it was a race.

I ran down past a few more people deciding not to take the chairlift down the glacier, checked it out long enough to take a picture and decided against waiting in the long line for the man-made ice cave because I didn't want to pay 30 dollars to take the train back down to Chamonix.
As I passed people on the way down I tried to listen to their language and thank them for passing in French, Spanish or English depending on where I thought they were from. I heard English as I passed a group of three, said, "Thank you" and as I hurried down the hill heard them say in French, "She's American." I responded "C'est vrei" and they laughed. An Australian woman who was currently working in Paris was on a trip to visit the hometown of a French friend and his mother. She'd made it to 45 countries by her 28th birthday and spoke French and Spanish. We discussed that I'd seen so many more Aussies in my travels than Americans and she explained that it's part of their culture to travel for a year instead of the small 10-day trip most Americans find the time for.
I wondered where they got all the money for travel and she said she just saved well. I speculated aloud that perhaps Americans don't have enough money to travel because they spend it all on stuff. "I think we have more cars, i pods, jeans and stuff than you do." At first she reacted as if I were misinformed saying "we have all those things in Australia too." Then I went further explaining about the women who have 10 purses all over 200 dollars and 25 pairs of jeans, the men with thousands of dollars of electronics and huge credit card debts and we ended up agreeing.
I decided I would fit in better in Australia.

My tour de France

Fontvielle and Geneva are hundreds of miles apart according to googlemaps but that is if you take the highways instead of winding up and down small mountain roads connecting the dots with the most beautiful villages in France. Nine hours of cycling the first day, eight the second, six the third, then a three-hour rest day followed by another nine-hour day including a 3500 foot mountain. Then we chilled riding for only four hours for the next three days, a grand total of 47 hours in 8 days. Pushing the limits of the body has strange physical and emotional consequences. There are the obvious consequences like chafed skin, funny tan lines, sore muscles and fatigue. It was the emotional consequences of this grand experiment that were particularly interesting.
I’d met Galen a few months ago at a bike race and perhaps surprised him by taking him up on the offer to cycle across France with him in his 10 days off from his cycle tourism business. By the end of the trip he’d seen me more weak and vulnerable than I ever remember being and because of the charm of France and the bike-induced euphoria I hardly have a hold on my emotions. I’m drunk on cycling, mentally a little unstable and need some time, some rest and familiar faces to bring me back to the reality that I spend more of my life in.
The first day we decided to take a 25 K detour on an already long day to visit a French socialite we’d met while dining with actresses in Avingon. Because Galen’s French is much better, she offers him food and he declines. I think to myself that he must be crazy and can’t believe he didn’t see the watermelon on the way in. I should have taken it as a sign that I was actually upset with him for turning down food without consulting me but to be polite I say nothing and accept lemonade. Later she offers me food, describes something with chocolate in it and I’m immediately sold. She laughs knowingly at my enthusiasm. Woman of all cultures understand chocolate addiction, and the word for chocolate is more or less the same in all the languages I can think of. The small chocolate cake she serves us is gone much more quickly than my stomach hoped for.
We leave her house and Galen says “I feel great. The caffeine in the chocolate gave me so much energy.” I’m not excited to hear this as I struggle to keep up with him. I think that he’s suddenly decided to speed up and make me suffer so I push harder, not wanting to seem incapable on our first day of touring together.
The hill is long and hot and unexpected. I’m following without my own map. I ask for Gatorade, already digging into our emergency stores of cycling food. Galen has mentioned that the Cliff bars and Gatorade are for dire circumstances and that we should eat local fruit and nuts first. At the next town I tell him “I am eating a Cliff bar or we are stopping to eat real food. I can’t eat any more fruit.” I surprise myself with the irritated tone of my voice and the discovery of the end of what I thought was a bottomless pit for fruit. The Cliff bar makes me happier but Galen still politely asks if he can carry my bag for the rest of the day. Then he starts joking about the excess energy the chocolate gave him and pushes me up the hill. He’s quite diplomatic about it all but eventually I catch on and ask if I’m going slower than I was earlier since I feel like I’m putting out so much more effort yet keep getting dropped. He comes clean and we realize that I’m bonking at the base of a two hour climb up a gorge. I’m simply following Galen’s wheel and assume that we’ll keep seeing fountains to fill up water bottles. An hour later our bottles are drained and we have a lot of climbing left to do. Galen flags down a car and asks for water. They fill his bottle but only give me a little. Galen quickly drinks most of his water and he hasn’t noticed that I barely got any. I know I need it, so damning politeness I ask for the rest of his water. We contemplate flagging down another car but they pass quickly and we decide we’ll make it.

At the next town Galen sits me down on the side of the fountain and fills up my bottle, forces me to down it, then fills it again. The water improves my condition and we keep rolling to a Gite that never seems to come. Every town we pass through has been built on the top of a hill. Although I’m sure they built them like that for a reason, such as to defend in times of war or avoid flooding in times of rain I’m upset that they didn’t forsee the difficulty I was going to have with getting through just to ride down the hill on the other side. I’m not shamelessly accepting frequent pushing from Galen who seems to have endless strength despite carrying all of our bags. We arrive at the town we were headed for and Galen admits we are staying in a small village 3 K away. We arrive at the small village and discover that the Gite is on a farm another 3 K. Despite calling and asking for directions in fabulous French we get lost and are forced to turn and ride up a hill we just rode down. Galen loses it. I assure him that I’m going to make it, that I’ve been more tired before and that I’m just refusing to give everything I’ve got to be fast because I’ll have to do the same thing again tomorrow. He feels like a bad guide because we are lost, we ran out of water and I trusted him. “Our first failure as a team was not getting you a map.”
Galen’s called the Gite three times to push pack our arrival time and we finally roll in as the sun sets around 9:30 pm. Despite the day I find a little bit more to sprint with the white horses which gallop across the farm racing me to the farmhouse. Because Galen has called, there is still dinner. We sit down and they bring out a huge omelet filled with mushrooms harvested locally and a basket of bread. What appeared to be an incredible amount of food disappears in minutes. We worry that we’ll be stuck eating Cliff bars and Galen asks if they can possibly bring out something else. They cook assures us that she knows about cycling and that more is on the way but says it’s a surprise. Next she serves rabbit stewed with vegetables and gravy and a dish of bulgar wheat and carrots. Hunger is the best spice but we felt as if she could sense our nutritional needs and had counted the calories we’d expended that day. For dessert she mixed white cheese and chestnuts. The protein, the sugar, the carbohydrates soaked into our muscles. Our conversation revolved around how euphoric the food was. The cook laughed at us saying that Americans always react like this. “I serve them potatoes and they act like it is the most magnificent food they’ve ever tasted.” Life seems wonderful again.
We order seconds and thirds of hot chocolate made with whole milk for breakfast and feel no guilt for enjoying French butter which, due to a higher fat content, is much more delicious than butter in the states. We focus on water and food and the second day is easier if much less memorable. We arrive in time to eat dinner with the family we are staying with and I’m awake enough to focus on French stories. The owner describes each dish, jam and drink telling us the nearby French towns they come from. The third day seems practically easy clocking in at only 6 hours on the bike. We arrive in the mountain town of Rencurel and enjoy a nap before dinner.
Galen’s planned to stay for two nights in Rencurel since he’s friends with the hotel staff and the mountain setting is gorgeous. My body is ready for a rest, my legs are tired but there is something more. I’m fatigued by knowing that I have to cover a certain distance to get to my next bed. On the rest day I can ride in a loop exactly as big as I want and return back to my same flat bed. I journey to the caves alone, soft pedaling as much as possible, and almost turn back when I realize that I can’t soft pedal up the 15% grade to the mouth of the cave.
Stay tuned for more stories of hysterical crying due to bonking, French pastries, peeing on the side of the road, and rainbows.

Foie Gras, French Celebrities, 5000 theatre posters

This has been a summer full of incredibly varied experiences. I hoped on the train from nuclear reactors and caves in Geneva to travel to Provence where Galen's French family lives. His mom was an exchange student with the mother Marie Chantal and lived on a farm not far from where I am now. When Galen was in high school he lived in Lausanne for a year with Marie Chantal who is as close to him as an aunt.

We rolled up on our bicycles, packed for our tour and were greeted at the house by kisses and hugs. Three kisses from the Swiss, two from the French. The house matched the Mediterranean colors apparent everywhere, the shades were periwinkle to match the grey green leaves of the olive trees and the warm beige stones. The house seemed huge, large enough to fit the entourage that is staying here. Three French actresses who are performing in Avignon as part of the biggest theater festival in the world stroll around in their pajamas, hair down and make up removed. The daughter of one of the actresses is here with her four children including Kiera a little girl who loves to give stones as gifts, Keiren who loves his new sword and drawing Jedi knights, Keliana who wants to be a math teacher and Alana who dreamt about the same boy for 30 days in a row even though she detests him.

French is thrown around fast and furious but this is the most interesting kind of immersion. I learn the language as fast as I can so I can understand Serges' stories about the history of the towns we see, and the actresses' inside views on the festival. Of course I'm barely understanding enough to help with the dishes, my new favorite activity since it's something that at least makes sense to me in English. Galen's new name is mon petite babelfish since he translates for me whenever the topic of the conversation sounds too interesting to miss. For the most part I just listen and learn and everyone is exceptionally understanding about my inability to pronounce the French r, and my tendency to indicate the past tense by waving my hand behind my shoulder as if to say yesterday.
I also continually throw in pronouns and conjunctions from Spanish that may or not be intelligible but my good attitude about my own ineptitude seems to keep everyone from mocking me.

We traveled to the festival to meet the actresses after their show was over and rushed through the streets to a restaurant. I can barely keep up with the Parisians as I'm entranced by the posters plastering the beautiful old walls of the city. There are over 500 plays in the festival and attempts to grab the attention to fill an audience results in a city filled with posters and flyers. I joke that in Vegas they hand out stripper cards as aggressively as Marie Chantal is handing out cards for the women's play. I think I like France better.
The restaurant that we arrive at is everything Paris Las Vegas would like to be but just can't match with its stones and plants aged by paint instead of time. We walk into a brightly-lit patio, filled with trees, lights and waiters running from table to table. The lights are especially bright because they are filming a famous actress for TV as well as a man on an old bicycle who is weaving among the tables.
I have a hard time taking my eyes off the spectacle to read the very expensive and fancy three course French meal. The men order an entree and main dish. All the women get a main dish and dessert. Galen and I laugh since he earlier proposed that women use chocolate as a replacement for fulfillment in relationships.

We stare at each other wide eyed across the table. I'm confused by the menu, slightly embarrassed for ordering something only offered at lunch time, blown away by the price that would have fed me for a week in Morocco and wondering just how I ended up at a table filled with beautiful French actresses. Three more women join us. One has bright red curls, tied dramatically into a bun when she sits down. Her giant diamond ring flashes in the movie lights as she reaches for bread and wine. Another women sits down and Marie Chantal whispers in French that she is a very famous French singer well known in the 60s. They kiss our cheeks, I sheepishly say Enchante and laugh at how many beautiful women just kissed Galen who knows enough French to flirt with them.

The woman who we saw being filmed when we walk in comes over to say hello. I find out later from my babel fish that there is tension between the actresses because her show in Avignon is selling out even though she used to be less respected in Paris.
The loquacious red head tells Galen across the table that she is quite timid and even though I don't understand her French well I certainly don't agree. I'm the silent one, soaking it all in, giving Galen oh my god how did I get here looks.
I'm glad that at least I brought the Patagucci dress that my mom mom helped me fix up before we left and not my chaco sandals.
The food is amazing, the zucchini perhaps the best Ive ever tasted. Serge, Galen's French father, insists that we drink more wine as it is good for bringing people together. I don't drink in the states and drink the glass very slowly to avoid a obligatory refill that I know will make me even less capable of understanding what is going on.
Galen and I decide that the dinner, the experience, the lights, the cameras, the celebrities were worth our 90 dollar dinner without question.

The next day we travel to Avignon again and marvel at street theatre as we walk to the show of the three women. Singers and dancers surrounded by attentive crowds fill every little corner and makeshift stage in the town. Costumed performers wander the streets trying to convince the passers by to pass their evenings inside their theater.

The play we watch is about three women aging and is a series of short sketches. I resign myself to linguistic confusion and focus on the humor. The humor is very physical. In the play the women are 45, 50 and 60 but in real life they are 52, 55 and 65. They are still running around in military get ups, face masks, walkers and strollers singing and dancing with such life and energy that Galen and I can hardly believe their real ages. The women who were so calm at breakfast, talking to me slowly and simply with great patience are now performing at a mile a minute, 15 different characters each by the time the show is over. After the play we head to the Palace and descend to the basement of a fancy restaurant behind it into a large cellar area.
One of the three ladies has a father who is a famous French poet and playwrite. An Englishman informs me that her father just won the French equivalent of the Tony and that his works are so magnificent that he was inspired to move to Paris to act. I sheepishly explain that although Ive been living with her for four days did not understand that until he arrived to explain it in English.
She is singing songs composed with the lyrics of her fathers play. Although the words are hard for me her expressions, her comic timing, her rhythm emotion and voice are amazing. It hardly matters that I'm missing a few of the jokes because I can tell she has true talent. The pianist that accompanies her sings as well. I tell the pianist later that although I can't understand the words I could understand the music and that it was beautiful. Only later does someone inform me that she was the composer of all of the songs.

This reminds Galen of our experience earlier that day in an art gallery. He helped me translate the descriptions on the wall about how the artist cannot know exactly what their art holds and that it is up to the observer to add interpretation to the art. He starts talking to a woman about how much life is in the sketches and they banter about the art. I listen attentively and can tell just by the expression on his face when she tells him that she is the artist. She pulls out rolls of sketches and I think she is trying to sell one to Galen as I can understand that he is saying we are on bikes and cannot carry them even though they are beautiful. We leave and he is silent, thoughtful, like I haven't seen him before. I feel badly for interrupting my babelfish to see what was said. She has offered him a free picture because when she was young she had no money for art and loves it when the young are interested. She decided to become an artist because she had no money for art and had to create it herself.
I tell Galen that he is certainly cabable of carrying some art back to our house here and that it is a silly reason to refuse a genuine offer. We turn around, pick out a sketch of a womens back and carefully carry it home on our bikes.
Every day here is filled with jewels of experiences, with good friends, with laughter, with fresh produce from Provence and huge family meals. As everyone keeps saying, we have lots of time. It's vacation.

Taxis, Buses and Trains

Traveling in Morocco is an essential piece of the Moroccan experience. While we saw tourists on the beaches, in the restaurants and at the mosques I was always the only blonde on the bus.
Our journey to Tafraoute was particularly challenging requiring multiple taxis and trains that all required unnecessary amounts of haggling. Moroccans assume blondes are stupid and ready to be taken advantage of unless proven otherwise. In many ways this was true since I was only armed with my lonely planet that had prices printed before gas skyrocketed.
When trying to find a taxi or bus to Tafraoute we could hardly trust a word anyone was saying. Two men approached us in Asni first claiming to want only tea and then to be friends and help us find a ride. They insisted that there was a bus arriving shortly to Marrakesh and we decided to wait for it at a table with them. They used this opportunity, that they had probably created by inventing a bus, and tried to trade silver jewelry for American goods. After sitting around bartering ski team stickers for small jewelry boxes a man approached and in Arabic told them men that a car was headed for Tarodannt, the town we were really trying to reach. The price was higher than we'd anticipated but they insisted after a heated argument with the taxi driver that we were getting a good deal. We were just glad that they were doing the haggling for us. As our taxi drove away a man desperately tried to sell us a box that was also a bracelet. He was scary desperate, running along our open door, insisting that we buy his goods as he lowered his prices by hundreds of percent without the slightest interest on our part. We wondered what life event prompted his desperate clearance sale of his silver inventory. We urged the taxi driver to keep going since he was waiting to see if we were going to finish the deal.

The road wound out up and around mountains on a narrow one lane road. The cars were infrequent enough that everyone drove as if no one was ever coming in the other direction. Occasionally we'd pick up someone on the side of the road who would give the driver a few dirhams for a quick ride. They always squished into the front leaving us the entire back seat to ourselves.
Around one corner a yellow truck forced our driver to swerve onto the shoulder. There were no barricades preventing us from falling down the bank to the river hundreds of feet below. Without barricades I got a clear view of our tire only inches from the edge spinning us at 40 mph around the corner on loose gravel. I turned to Laura terrified. She did not want a description of how close we were to death but I was too shaken to remain quiet. "Laura, that is the most close to death I've been on this entire trip."
I compare it to climbing Toubkal, walking down dark alleys, trusting random Moroccans and it is no contest. I reflect on reading about the tourists who died on this road in 2005 an the lonely planet description of the road as "the most perilous in Morocco." I try to think of a time in my life that I have ever felt that close to death and I still can't come up with anything. I question my sanity for getting into the car but think that getting out in the middle of the mountains is not the appropriate solution. The decision has been made and before long we see the valley and begin the descent to flat desert.

We leave the taxi, find a bus, and take another taxi to Tiznit where we spend the night, too tired to push on to Tafraoute. The next day we take an old stationwagon over the mountains. It can only go around 25 mph uphill but we don't mind as it seems preferable to falling to our death as we speed around corners.

When trying to leave Tafraroute we inquire at our hotel about buses since we know it will be much cheaper than taxis and more comfortable than being mushed into the backseat four across. The hotel concierge(yes our hotel was that awesome) tells us that the bus leaves at 6. When we try to buy tickets the man insists that his company is the only one going to where we want and it leaves at 5. We decline buying tickets even though he tells us it might fill up(fat chance) and ask our concierge again. He's sure that it leaves at six and tells us that the green bus we refused to buy tickets for goes the wrong way. We we return to the correct bus and ask where it is going they say that we must take a taxi because there is no bus. We are confused and insist that we want to take the bus. When they tell us more conflicting information about the buses destination I hop on board and ask a few passengers where the bus is going. Satisfied that it is indeed going to Agadir I hop off and again ask to buy a ticket. They tell me it's going to Rabat, the capital which is hours away and has no bus service to Tafroute. Even if it did the bus would go through Agadir so I'm confused. We leave the men who are trying to get us in a taxi and decide that maybe buying the tickets at the bus ticket window will solve our problem. We are convinced that they are just trying to sell us tickets and the bus is really going where we want it to. At the ticket window the man tells us the bus goes to Marrakesh and that we must take a taxi. I know that the only way to get to Marrakesh is through Agadir or crossing mountains and desert with a 4 wheel drive vehicle. I ask them to point on my map the route and they invent a road that doesn't exist that bypasses Agadir. I'm horribly frustrated with my French at this point as I try and fail to explain that they are making up fake roads and the bus clearly goes to Agadir. I end up shouting in English, "I want to go wherever the bus is going!" A nice girl tells us we can buy tickets on the bus and we hop on, almost missing it after spending 20 minutes trying to convince them to sell us tickets. We decide that the man at the ticket window must get money from the taxi drivers for telling tourists that they can't take the bus.
The bus winds through pretty hills and villages up a mountain pass. We stop for snacks at the top of a huge hill and as we start rolling again a man comes around with plastic sacks. We recall Jane's stories about puking Moroccans and wonder what is about to happen as over half of the people accept bags. We decline and I hope that I'm not jinxing my stomach. In any case we don't eat our drinkable avocado yogurt despite being quite excited at buying food at the rest stop.
Only a few turns later we hear the first retching noises and turn to each other in amazement. The man in front of us looks back at our shocked faces and laughs. Next the kid behind Laura starts puking and I grab my bag off the floor and put my feet on the footrest afraid that he might not have made it all in the bag.
Later we speculate that Moroccans puke so frequently because taking cars is so unusual for them.
Our next few trips involved a lot more arguing as taxi drivers swarmed the blonde to rip me off. Eventually we arrive in Tahazout at 11:00 pm and a man whisks us off the street to stay in his house for a few days of relaxation by the calm cool seaside. We needed it!

God-Made Caves and Man-Made Caves

Spending a day almost entirely underground was a welcome relief for my maltreated skin that's been protecting me on all day outdoor adventures involving water, wind, sweat and sand. (Don't worry mom, I reapply, and have an empty sunblock to prove it.)

Jordan, Jamie and I drove to L'Orrebbe limestone caves created by the largest underground river in central Europe. I'd considered cycling the 73 K there because I was so interested in the caves but after ascending an 8 mile, 8% grade hill on the way there I was glad for the car and happily spent some money on gas( 7 dollars a gallon here, but about the same price per mile due to smaller cars.)

The cave was magnificent. The limestone structures that had taken thousands of years to form resembled ox bowed rivers, glacier flows, the Nile Delta, jellyfish and more. The patterns in nature repeat in all sizes underground in limestone.

Jordan is an avowed atheist working on his Ph.D in physics and he remarked in a mocking tone "Doesn't the beauty just make you believe God exists?"
We debated if the beautiful structures and our ability to appreciate them had perfectly reasonable scientific explanations like seeping groundwater that flows in the same patterns whether it is carrying dirt from a river, forming ice cycles on a roof, or limestone underground.

We didn't resolve the issue of the creation of the cave but we were all awestruck by its beauty.

After the cave that water or God created we visited CERN, arguably the most important scientific project in the world. The particle accelerator is housed in a tunnel 27 miles long hundreds of feet below the ground. The particle detector is housed in a huge man-made cavern underneath the corn fields of Saint Genis Pouilley.
Jordan used his card swipe to grant us access to the building where we put on helmets for our spelunking adventure to the depths of the experiment. As we passed his card through the turnstile three times he joked that his boss would ask him tomorrow why he entered three times in two minutes.
He asked us if we'd prefer the stairs or elevator. I usually choose stairs but he herded us into a huge industrial lift and when the door opened only seconds later and I looked up at 20 flights of stairs I realized he was only kidding.
The cavern was filled with hundreds of computers, huge rooms with people working just as if they were in an office on the surface. After pretending to scan our eyes in a retina detecting machine that wouldn't be in use until the experiment was turned on we entered the giant cavern where the detector was housed. The red, blues, yellows and silvers of the huge cylindrical detector were as amazing as the cave we'd seen earlier that day. These were clearly man-made in the pursuit of knowledge of the first few seconds after the big bang. Jordan explained his work and pointed to the parts he had helped wire. When the experiment is ready to turn on in the next year they will be searching for the Higgs particle in an attempt to simplify the mathematics necessary to create a universal equation that can explain all forces of nature. Jordan hopes to prove the existence of a new force.

We pass a Styrofoam sign labeled "on switch" next to a emergency shut off in case of a "black hole." At least the scientists have a sense of humor about the controversy created by a layman's fear that a black hole created by colliding particles would suck in the earth.

Experiencing the project as it was on the verge of turning on and possibly expanding our knowledge of the universe was an amazing opportunity worth the entire trip to Geneva. We giddily walked past the "no visitor" signs feeling very fortunate that we knew someone working on the project. There were certainly no tourist shops in sight.

My Tour de France

Last summer I watched almost the entire Tour de France, breaking personal records for hours spent in front of the television. This summer I'm on my own Tour de France and spending more time on the bike than I did in front of the television. Although the seat is a little less comfortable than my mom's couch, France is better in person.

On my first adventure I cycled between Saint-Genis Pouilley, France where my friend lives and Lausanne, Switzerland. The Swiss have amazing cycling maps with national and regional routes included elevation information and points of interest along the way. They have bike paths and lanes all over the country with signs at every turn that are color coded and numbered to correspond to the free cycling map. Paying for a guided tour of Switzerland is almost unnecessary, at least for cheapskates like me who don't mind sleeping in other people's filth in random hotels and carrying my own stuff.

The bike ride to Lausanne along Lac Leman(Lake Geneva) passed peach farms, wheat fields, castles, huge houses, sunflower farms, and quaint cobblestoned streets.

While exploring one of the towns along the way I heard a Swiss man playing songs I recognized on the guitar. He was playing "Nothing Else Matters" my favorite song my Metallica that I saw live in concert a few years ago and at one point attempted to play on the guitar. In butchered French I tried to express this to him, he seemed to understand and we had a fun conversation about music. We both knew the same band names and even though he knew about as much English as I knew French he did know the names of songs in English and had a lot of tabs with him. He alternated back and forth between playing French songs and singing them well and English songs and singing them with a great voice and a silly accent.
In high school I played the guitar for long enough to learn most of the chords and by watching his hands and the tabs I could figure out which part of the French song he was singing and practiced pronunciation by following along. If only language learning in school was as much fun as having a Swiss man sing to me in a park overlooking Lac Leman I think everyone would be at least trilingual. Although my voice is certainly not one of my highlights I decided that since I actually knew the songs and how to pronounce the words I would sing for this stranger and swallow my typical embarrassment. I was particularly amused while helping him with an Elvis Presley love song because he did not know what the words meant or that singing it with a girl in a park might be construed as romantic.

After my long lunch stop I continued to Lausanne and decided to take the train home so I could make it before dark. I didn't know if I had another 70 K in my legs and had really wanted to see the cathedral that Jamie had told me about so I hadn't turned around earlier. The trains had special bike rooms marked on the side of the train. I couldn't believe how easy cycling was. The only downside to the day was that my ticket home was 25 dollars and for my bike was 15. In Morocco one could get across the country for 40 dollars, not just home from a bike ride!

The next day I headed out on a route I found on http://www.bikely.com/ which is a really cool googlemaps supported website where people share routes all over the world. I searched for the cities I wanted to visit and found an amazing 75 mile route around the Jura mountains. I stopped at an old fort over looking the river gorge by Bellegarde and found maps galore of the region with every waterfall, church and information center carefully marked.
I followed the route around the back of the Jura passing pastures of cows, enjoying the sound of the cowbells. Before beginning the assent of the Jura to cross back over to the side where Jamie lived I stopped in the alpine village of Mijoux and ate the best apple tart of my life. I think the scenery, the long road behind me and the quaint French passterserie could have made anything seem good but the tarte was gorgeous and crisp and flaky and sweet and a bit sour and life was amazing.
I summited the Col de la Facucille at 1323 m and happily put on the coat I'd been carrying around all day for the 11 K decent at 8% grade. The views of Lac Leman and the alps were worth all of the climbing. There is nothing like a reward like apple tarts and world class panoramas to inspire me to pedal farther.

Bastille Day: French Fireworks outshine Uncle Sam's

Although I have pages in my journal about Morocco that were scrawled on random buses and in airport terminals those stories might have to wait for a later date.

I left a country filled with inexpensive hand crafted souvenirs and entered an airport filled with advertisements for extremely expensive watches modeled by very attractive and rich people.
Switzerland is sparkling clean. The roads are in mint condition, the buildings beautiful and the bathrooms scrubbed down, free and fully stocked with toilet paper.
It's been great staying at Jamie's apartment because I can cook for myself and do some dishes. I know I've been eating out too much that the calm meditation of cleaning was welcome. Jamie's husband Jordan has been commenting that he wishes all woman wanted to cook and clean so desperately.

My first day we went to a American couples house for dinner who worked with Jordan at the particle accelerator at CERN.
I learned that there is a 27 kilometer ring under the ground here about 80 feet down. They use giant magnets to accelerate particles at almost the speed of light and draw conclusions about the nature of the universe by observing what happens to them when they collide with such high energy. The vast underground caverns are so big that the arc de triumph would fit inside them. Scientists from over 100 countries work at the experiment that is groundbreaking in so many ways. The 27 K tube is in position accurate to 1 cm. Other pieces of the accelerator are placed by hand to an accuracy of less than a hairs width. The magnets create a field stronger than that of the earth. The equipment is so sensitive in places that dropping a pin would break it and it felt the earthquake that caused the Tsunami in Indonesia. The materials to build the superconductors have been collected from around the globe including the brass from old soviet weapons retired after the cold war.
Jordan is trying to procure special guest passes for us but since the experiment is starting to get going it might be tough to get special privileges. The underground tunnel is big enough to ride a bike in but he promised that he wasn't important enough to grant me the privilege of riding in the giant tunnel.

They laughed about a crazy local man who was suing because he feared that a high impact collision of subatomic particles might create a black hole and suck the world in, Geneva first. This is much less likely(10 to the negative 50 power) than winning a jackpot in Vegas but the publicity has created more attention for the scientists.

After dinner we walked to a lake and watched fireworks. They started the show with the 20th century fox theme song and included more American favorites such as Indiana Jones and the Pink Panther songs. The fireworks were amazing and definitely made up for being on the side of Toubkal for my countries independence day.

Today after trying 7 ATM machines I decided that no banks in France would take my card. They also wouldn't exchange my money from Morocco and so I rode my bike across the boarder and at least convinced the Swiss to change my money. I now have 82 dollars(minus 20 for groceries) and called my bank to tell them about my predicament. They informed me that for no apparent reason it was not possible to withdraw money from the ATM. They asked if I'd tried more than one and I responded that I'd actually ridden my bike to another country to withdraw money since I didn't even have small change for bus fare at the time. Then they asked me "do you have another bank?" Maybe I will soon! They really just said, sorry there is no way to get money until you return. Luckily I'm well fed and housed at Jamie's and I convinced them to take off the overdraft fees for cash advances from my Visa. Because I lost my ATM card shortly before coming here I looked up the pin for my visa that I never use. Thank god otherwise I'd be trying to live for three weeks on 82 dollars in a country where gas is 7 dollars a gallon and a cup of coffee is 4.

Luckily I did have a great day after a morning of bank nonsense. The best part was stumbling upon a Jardin de Maths. The garden was a huge exhibit about math in nature including an entire greenhouse dedicated to Fibonacci numbers and phylotaxi. Since I'd read books on the subject in English the French made some sense. It helped that the math was a universal language and that just looking at the formulas was enough for me to understand. The math made the French more clear, not the other way around.
I wished I could take my students somewhere so fabulous and thought about how I might make a mini math garden in my classroom next year.

Heat Exhaustion or just Seat Exhaustion

I drank 8 liters of water yesterday and only saw one cup of urine. It was definitely a hard day.
Laura decided to run and I took the tour guides suggestion of a long mountain bike ride which he had originally said was 60 k.
Laura and I assumed that kilometers on mountain bikes were equivalent but after factoring in the 20 K hill; the 110 degree heat; trying to find bottled water in a sparsley populated desert; asking directions from people who spoke french worse than i do; pedaling an old bike without clip pedals; and spending half an hour pumping up a flat on hot black asphalt with no shade I think the conversion wasnùt equivalent:

Not to mention that the ride was actually a metric century:

I began the day early and enjoyed breakfast in the shade of the enourmous rocks that were re,inicent of j tree, one of my favorite places to climb. I had two yogurts, two bananas and orange juice.

I then spent at least an hour pedaling uphill with three literes of water on my back and an extremly heavy bike. I figured it was good training for the week im planning to spend cycling in France with a bike racer.
At the top of the hill I was happy to see that someone had spraypainted the arabic road sign with western alphabet and i was able to use my map to find my way to the first oasis:
I knew it would be a hard day as i was on top of a dry mountain and assumed that there was no way I could find an oasis without descending a huge hill: I was right and as i went down the hill I did some calculations to see if I had enough water to make it back up as Iùd gone 30K without seeing anywhere with water.

As i decended into a canyon green plants with purple flowers appeared signallying a drastic change in landscape. I entered into a lush green oasis with shady palms, people smimming in the river and little houses. One house had a coco cola sign and I tried in vain to buy water there. I asked some villagers in French if there was a store with water and they brought me some in a cup from the stream. I explained that I wanted to buy bottled water and they appeared with a bottle and filled it up from the cup. I panomimed sickness and they showed me the hole where the water had come from. The spring looked safe, I could see the source and I decided to take the bottle in my camel back figuring that Id rather get sick later than pass out from dehydradion. I little ways further down the road I passed a stand selling fresh squeezed orange juice and tajines and stopped a moment. They spoke better French and told me I could buy water 15 K down the road. I realized i was already one giant hill and many miles from home but the landscape was changing so dramatically and every bend in the road revealed a new village, canyon or surprise that I didnt want to turn around. I resolved to turn back at Soua Hassad Issni if I couldnt refill again there and made note that the oasis had some bottled water piled in the floor of their shop.
On the way to the Soug I was slowed down behind a woman fully cloaked in black herding goats down the road. I tried excusi moi with the goats but apparently they didnt speak French. I wondered if she thought I was a heathen dressed in spandex and was glad when she smiled at me. Sattalite dishes looked like strange additions to their mud and brick abodes but I figured they had been exposed to worse on TV.

I found the town of Souq and and while waiting in a small store for water saw that they sold salted nuts. The little boy waiting for his father to finish looked at my red face, blonde hair, spandex and the tube extending from my mouth to my camel back and grabed his fathers hand in fear.
The shopkeeper did not know the French for almond or at least couldnt understand my interpretation of it so I ran the man down grabbed his bag and pointed to the nuts and asked for the arabic word. The salt was worth the effort.

I felt well stocked and ready to continue the journey. On a long barren strech of desert I stoped to take a picture of the mountains that had been folded into waves when a truck filled with bottled water, coke and fanta stoped to ask if I was okay. I was glad I did not have to beg him to upwrap his shipment for me.

On the turnoff to the town that marked the halfway point on the grand loop I saw a sign saying Tafroute 49 K and realized that I was at the point of no return. I was going to ride a metric century today or face the alternative of staying in an inhospitable desert.

I felt confidant that I had enough water to go back the way I came because I knew I could buy more and hoped that the next town on the map 25K down the road would have some because if it didnt id be forced to turn around and extend the trip. As I pedaled across the dry stream beds through a canyon I was alone and began to realize that no one was out here to rescue me. The strength of my legs and my mental toughness was all I had to keep me safe. I reminded myself of sufferfest in Las Vegas where Id ridden 113 miles in extreme heat and told myself I could do it. I rested under a tree, ate some cookies and felt strong.
As I rested by the tree I hoped in vain that someone would pass by as the sign in front of me was only written in arabic and a wrong turn would be hugely demoraling and potentially dangerous.

I faced another turn in the road and hoped that the kerin was placed by someone heading in the same direction that I was going. If I could not find my way around the loop and had to backtrack I was faced with over 100 K of riding.

I chose correctely and was overjoyed when an hour later I saw a man working outside and asked him the way to the next town on my map. Athough I still had water from the six liters Id had so far I bought another large bottle and rested in his store and ate more nuts. He told me that it was 40K to Tafroute and 3 hours by bike. I wondered how I would pay for the long downhill into the oasis. I decided to buy yogurt, another water cookies and juice. They were facinqted by the camel pack and I explained to the one who guided in the sahara that we called it a camel bag in french. I still had my wits about me well enough to remeber some vocabulary. I was surprised that no one seemed surprised at my journey. When he said I had three hours to go I thought he might be concerned. So far everyone had thought I could do it. I knew I could.

I paid for my long desent into the oasis with an unrelenting gradual hill in full sun through creekbeds. I made mini goals for myself and decided to rest when I saw shade. I was so tired I redefined shade as a prickly bush and pulled over and sat on the dirt to rest. I knew I was wearing out because I ignored the flies aroud my face and did not at all care what happened to the pretty white on my bike shorts.
I forced myself up knowing that I couldnt just sit all day and dehydrate on the side of the road.
I almost started crying when I saw the thorn in my tire. I cursed myself for not checking the flat repair kit because I knew better than trusting Morrocans for things like that. I pulled out a tube covered in patches and hoped that I wouldnt have to learn how to use a patch kit on the road alone at 113 degrees.

I wondered how long I would have to wait until a car passed that I could pay to drag me home.1000 pumps later I was still on the side of the road thinking that Id pay good money for a CO2 cartridge and wondering just how many pumps it takes a tiny awful handpump to fill up a mountain bike tire. When my PSI was probably around 40 I decided that my legs were stronger than my forearms and that maybe Id make it back the next 30K with a mushy front tire. Just as I got the wheel back on and figured out how to use mountain bike brakes a van loaded down with people passed with a wave probably thinking, incorrectly, that I knew what I was doing.

Moving again felt good and I felt somewhat accomplished for fixing the bike. I thanked God for sending some cloud cover and Sam for his very thourough tire changing lesson Id recieved years ago.

I made another goal. When I made it to the top of the first large hill and could see tafroute in the distance I would eat the cliff bar Id carried with me from Seattle and was saving for emergencies. I couldnt think of a time when a cliff bar would taste better. As I ate it looking over the valley I was very pleased that the next 22K were downhill. Of course downhill after 8 hours on the bike with a front tire with little pressure wasnt as easy as id hoped. After the longest decent of my life I returned home and chastised the bike shop for suggesting that ride. If I hadnt done sufferfest in Vegas Im not sure I would have made it. He didnt seem impressed until I told him it took 11 hours and 8 literes of water. His friend piped in, people dont ride that whole way; they drive to the top of the 22K hill and finish there as well. Good to know.

Laura of course was about to send a 4WD vehical after me and promtly took me to dinner. My endorphin high faded as we ate and walking home was a struggle.
I wont get into details but Id never felt the need to use so much antibiotic cream on my skin, or what was left of it after 9 hours in the saddle and 11 of chamois time.
I went to bed shortly before the sun set thinking that literally all that Id done all day was eat and ride bikes.

Seduced by Marrakech

Laura and I arrived at dusk to Marrakech, pleased that the heat we'd been hearing about every time we mentioned we were going, had subsided. We felt like we were back in Peru as a throng of taxi drivers approached us. "Speak English?" "Taxi?" they asked to polite replies of non-merci. We marveled that my knee was well enough and our bags light enough to walk to the main square. Laura, not sure which way it was to the main square, pointed in a random direction and said "the main square is that way right?"
After they corrected her we walked off in the correct direction and enjoyed a nice stroll of a mile or two along a fountain lined street to the medina.

All it takes in Marrakesh is a momentary look of confusion and the locals point one towards the main square, Femna de Ja(sp?) where much of the spectacle takes place. As we neared the square we could see the bright lights of the food stalls, hear the drums beating and the crowds of people. Our aqquantainces were correct when they told us that we mustn't miss Marrakech as there is no where else like it.
Although we were dazzled by the lights of the square we were hungry and carrying our bags and decided that finding the hotel first was boring but practical. As Laura pulled out the guidebook to find our hotel a local man saw his chance and led us down a winding narrow alley then hung around until we were annoyed enough to give him 10 dirhams.
The alley is so narrow that Laura and I press our stomachs to the wall at the sound of approaching motorcycles. Although cars are not allowed in the Medina it is filled with motorcycles obeying no clear rules. I'm used to looking right and left before I cross a street, but now I must look and listen all around before walking anywhere as they are not confined to any certain part of the squares.
We climbed three flights of stairs to a rooftop restaurant and marveled at the spectacle of the square. We watched mule drawn carts carry away buckets of orange rinds from stall after stall of people selling fresh squeezed juice.

After chicken tajine and local watermelons we made a circuit around the main square. Laura stopped for a moment to look at a woman selling henna and gave her enough reason to grab her hand and insist on giving her a "gift." A flower rapidly appeared on her hand and I took pictures, and thought that Laura was not asserting herself very well since we'd decided we wanted to get Henna at the end of the trip. We didn't want to be branded tourists right from the get go but thought it would be cool to have in another country.

Unfortunetely the lady saw me and decided to give me a gift as well. I insisted that I didn't want a gift but she grabbed my hand with such force that I would have had to use quite a bit of strength to get free. Since it was only 10 D that Laura had paid for her gift I let myself be seduced by the lady and now have a faint flower on my hand, likely made with diluted henna. She told me it would give me "good sex." I couldn't believe she'd said that.
Next a young Morrocan man asked us where we were from and convinced us to drink tea with him that was supposed to help the stomach. We accepted his offer figuring that my stomach had been quite upset and that we could practice more French.
Eventually he became insistent that we drink beer with him and we made our escape back to the hotel so that we'd be ready for a 6 am run. I haven't run that far since I had knee surgery and had the great pleasure of finding a man's bathroom at a bus stop mid-run because I've been having stomach issues. I felt very tenacious for even attempting to run so far with Laura despite sexual harrassment and stomach issues.

After our run we made our way to the Royal Palace and tagged along behind a French tour group. We discussed how much we would have to study French before we could respond with anything other than "un peue" (a little) when asked "parlez vous francais?" I can't even spell in French clearly. Almost nothing made sense in the French tour but Laura happened to hear Spanish coming from another group so we decided to switch.
Luckily the Spanish made sense and we realized how much farther we'd gone in that language.
The Morrocan leading the tour could tell we spoke English just like everyone else and inquired if we understood. It was nice to honestly say yes and feel like I wasn't wimping out by trying to only speak English.

On our way out a shopkeeper stopped us and told us his brother was from Seattle, where I live now.I wouldn't have been surprised if I had told him I was from Seattle but since I hadn't I thought it was quite a coincidence. He pulled us into his spice shop, showed us Saffron. In the United States, while shopping for spices for Morrocan Stew recipe I found on runners world I noticed that Saffron was 5000 dollars per pound. Here is is only 700 dollars per pound so we decided to buy 6 grams. He then offered us tea and we accepted not knowing what were were getting ourselves into.
He procededed to rub perfumes on our hands, lotions on our skin, massaged our foreheads with orange oil and showed us traditional Morrocan soaps. In the end we ended up with 6 or 7 Morrocan bathroom products and a bag of saffron and absolutely shocked we'd spent 45 dollars on bathroom supplies. Perhaps some of my readers can look forward to some Moroccan soap or rose scented lotion.

He pointed the way to the Morrocan art Museum where we attempted to read the French. A kind guide let us behind the roped off area in a deserted room and showed us that the walls were painted with saffron. We tried to ask him how much it cost to cover the walls in saffron but he didn't seem to understand. I'm motivated every day to improve my French by new questions and new needs.
Now I'm going back to the souqs, the market, filled with carpets, shining silver, walls of leather shoes, purses, rainbow pottery and more.
Then we are off to climb Toubkal, the highest mountain in North Africa and Mountain bike in the Amlen valley. I won't likely have interent for quite a few days. I have more posts in my journal, and more pictures on my camera but they might have to wait until internet is faster and cheaper.

Rabat

Life has been busy busy, not necessarily with what one might expect.

Jane got sick at the international music festival which i wrote about in my journal on the train but haven't posted yet. I spend a day in her friends gorgeous apartment in Casablanca making her fruit smoothies and taking care of her. We dragged ourselves on the train to Rabat and today she went to the doctor while I babysat. This consisted of watching spongebob and marveling at the ridiculously small waists of barbie dollars as I pretended to be one.

Today Laura arrived and I met her at the airport with personalized taxi service.

we decided to rough it a bit more and turned down Khalid's offer to drive us downtown and took the bus. It cost 4 dirhams instead of 250 which was nice. 7 D = 1 dollar by the way. We found the medina, bought cherries on the street on the way there and after a very pitiful attempt to wash them decided that they were probably fine.(sorry mom)

We bartered a bit, drank tea in a tiny room filled with moroccan treasure and traded English lessons for French lessons. Our french isn't great but it getting better.
I bought some cool Moroccan leather shoes for 10 dollars and will probably buy some more before I go since they are so cool.

It's late now, Jane is hanging out with her boyfriend, Laura is asleep and I'm trying to navigate the complicated world of swiss rail passes while talking to Jamie on instant messenger.
We are loving Morocco so far and excited to travel to Marakesh the main tourist destination. Unfortunately it's 50 degrees there, and I mean Celsius. 122 for those of those still thinking in Fahrenheit. We really want to ride camels but just aren't sure if it's a great idea to see the desert at these temperatures.

Hopefully there will be more later, when I'm not so tired, worn out and uncreative in writing.

email not working hope laura reads this

this isnt really a post, i just couldn't email laura and thought she would read this
laura


janes driver is the sa,e price as a taxi wont rip you off and know where you live and will give you a french lesson if you ask nicely probably:

im sending hi,m i have that your flight arrives at 130 air france 2958 from the email you sent earlier
i will send him according to this new info and if you are there at 130 then it wont be a long wait: i will call him today and check email before you come so let me know if you want to be picked up at 130:
he will cost 20 dollars i think:

i like the leather sandles here but i wouldnt walk 10 miles in them i want some though:


jane asked her family and you can stay on couch
bring teddy grahms if you have a chance as a thank you: she loves them


my phone here that we are borrwing is 011 212 15 20 30 96 from us

015 20 30 96 fro,maroc


love
cmmie

mom can you send this to lauras email valaasla@gmail.com if you get this soon since my email won't work.
someone just showed me how to change it to an English keyboard now that i've typed some really absurdly bad english.

love cammie

international music festival

IM at the international music festival in essoura attempting to tpye on an arabic keyboard for the first time. although i type very slowly trying to find lauras flight number in my email is taking even longer: so i might as well blog: i left the comfort of the embassy house and endured a sweltering train ride to essoariq: i prqcticed convering celcius to farenheit:
we are staying in a gorgeous but full apartment. It is filled with fulbright scholars; internationql journalist who previously worked in kuqit and dubqi she is 24 and gorgeous: all of the women are tall q,bitious and gorgeous and most are trilingual to some degree:
there is also a boy who one met on a train who showed up before she did and hqs been subjected to lots of girl chatter that probably offended his christian sentiments: jane forced him to order for us then laughed kindly at his arabic which was better than mine but not as good as hers:
the concert was fabulous: tons of morrocan rastqfarians dancing on the beach until 400 am
i hardly experienced jet lagm i just stay up until 300 am instead of 1000 like at home.

today i swam in the atlantic and practiced french with morrocan men in the sea they could not swim as far as me so i swam away after practicing as ,any words as i knew and getting bored

Rough Landing in Africa

I must have learned something from Laura and I's disastrous taxi ride around Lima at 3:00 am because my arrival into Africa has felt like a plush vacation.

I feel like Rachel from The Poisonwood Bible, the blond girl soaking up upper class life in the midst of a continent filled with poverty. Or so they say, I haven't actually witnessed any of this said poverty in the day I've spent secluded in the rich neighborhood of embassy officials and princesses with distant royal connections.

Instead of trying to find a cheap taxi from the airport, I arranged to have Jane give her driver 600 Dirhams(80 dollars) to stand with a sign waiting for me at the airport. He gave me bonus French lessons on the 75 minute drive between Casablanca and Rabat.

I arrived to Jane's boss's house where she works as a nannie and was greeted by a large very American looking refrigerator full of very American looking foods. I ate some pancake like crepes that the full-time housekeeper had cooked that day.

We enjoyed the chocolate chip cookies Annie baked for personal delivery across the Pacific on the porch of the very large beautiful house Jane lived in. The moonlight was enough to see the backyard filled with hibiscus and fountains.

The next day I had my choice of Chex, Cheerios or Frosted Mini Wheats and the housekeeper did the dishes that I very reluctantly left in the sink after asking if that was indeed acceptable behavior.

After falling back asleep we awoke to the sounds of workers redoing the kitchen. This necessitated that the driver Ashid take Jane and the two children to their choice of lunch. After fighting over going to the Mcdonalds at the Megamall or McDonalds with toys the youngest won by virtue of whining the loudest and we went to the McDonalds with toys. I considered ordering the McArab just to be different but ended up with a chicken sandwich at Jane's suggestion. One would think ordering at McDonald's would be easy but since the last time I went was while celebrating "American Day" when I studied abroad in Budapest I wasn't really sure if there was anything that I really wanted. The 800 calories and 39 grams of fat I probably consumed was not worth it's weight in chocolate. I would have much rather indulged in something sweet.

After lunch we made a quick stop a the grocery store and although we only had one item we ended up in line behind a group of young men buying multiple cases of cheap hard liquor. They handed the cashier so many small bills that she took at least five minutes to determine that they'd underpaid and needed to start sorting through a heavy coin purse to make up the difference. After two managers came to help count money we were finally on our way. I almost felt the need to offer my services as an expert counter but since I'm on vacation from teaching math I just sat back and wondered about the state of cashier's math educations everywhere.

After McDonalds I donned my swimsuit and headed to the French neighbors villa next door with the kids. Luckily my suit wasn't in my lost check baggage thanks to a world traveler mom with good advice about what to pack in carry on luggage.

I gave a lecture about skin cancer to the 8 year old girl Yasmine who didn't want to put sun screen on that was also straight from my mother's mouth and ended up lathering her up with 50 spf waterproof lotion that looked like it was straight from the United States. She decided that I looked like a "sea beast" and that riding me back and forth across the pool would be great fun. I agreed to keep up the routine lap after lap thinking that although I was tired and out of breath from diving to the bottom with her on my back it would be good training for hiking, running and surfing with the superstar athlete Laura who is about to join me and doesn't want to lose all her fitness while on vacation.

After swimming Jane's Moroccan boyfriend drove us to the park by the Hilton to run on a shady trail in his fancy car and we ended up getting home just in time for pasta with spaghetti sauce. The owner of Jane's house works for the United States Embassy in Rabat and we had a lively dinner discussion about if creating an Embassy facebook page could serve any sort of recruitement purposes. He also reassured me that "Moroccans are really friendly to American's despite the fact that we have awful policies...oops, did I just say that?!" We continued to talk about the International Music Festival I'm attending in Essoaira this weekend with Jane and he assured me that I wouldn't be arrested for the contact high I was about to receive because so many people would be smoking at the festival.

After dinner Yasmine convinced me to watch Harry Potter with her and thoughtfully offered to turn on French subtitles so I could practice my French. I guess she'd heard Jane poke fun at me over dinner. I'd given the chauffeur one of Annie's cookies and tried to explain that they were cooked in the US by our friend and he approached Jane with the cookie saying "you're friend just gave me this and I have no idea what she was trying to say."

After Harry Potter we were off with Jane's boyfriend to Palentino a brightly colored bar with American music blasting so loudly we could hardly talk. When the DJ stopped the music momentarily I was impressed with how well everyone sang along to the English lyrics. They didn't even seem to have accents.
Now I'm back trying to pick a movie to watch from a huge collection of classic American films. Maybe Casablanca will be a good end to my very American Moroccan day. They weren't kidding when they whined about globalization.

Waterproof Digital Cameras and other fancy stuff

Traveling is an excuse to buy fancy things with the justification that I need it to be lightweight durable and multi purpose.
For example I got a fabulous coral patagonia morning glory skirt which doubles as a strapless dress. Then I got my mom to attach straps so it can be a halter dress or a regular one and then she painted matching flowers onto my industrial strength mountain hardware button up hiking shirt.
I'm giving new meaning to Patagucci.

I also got a new digital camera complete with a case, 4 GB memory card, card reader, extra battery, charger and electrical outlet adapter. I'm glad that leaving the country to spend lots of money has inspired me to spend lots here. In fact most of the nicest things I own in life like my gregory backpack, my hiking boots, my fancy outdoor clothing were all purchased with a trip in mind. I like focusing on one small bags worth of things. How can I make this bag my house for 6 weeks. It's a good goal and when one returns you realize that most of life's objects are superfluous.

I took some pictures with Darren today to make sure I could work my camera and now I'm going to see if I can post them. He eats a bagel every morning for breakfast and climbs really hard core stuff. This first picture is titled "Bagels give me wings."

Packing Again!

The email exchanges are fast and furious with itineraries, packing lists, plane reservations, and more.
Laura and I are a little older, a little wiser and a little more prepared for our next adventure. Hopefully it won't mean that an account of the adventures is any less interesting but perhaps it might be a little less frightening for my mom, sitting at home editing my posts.

Over Spring Break I attended Laura's race in Squamish and brought her a book about Women traveling abroad. We started plotting our next adventure. After seriously considering hiking to the top of Roriama in Venezuela we decided due to the political situation and our desire to see a new continent to go to Morocco. We plan to ride camels across the Sahara, marvel at street theater, haggle for rugs, watch snake charmers from a safe distance, hike the Atlas Mountains, go to an international music festival and run and hike enough to keep Laura in top shape for her athletic dreams.

One of my best friends from high school has been living in Morocco for a year and is fluent in French and Arabic and it seemed the perfect time to visit her. My best friend from my time at Pomona College is currently living in Geneva and Morocco to Geneva is a quick flight.
Finally I developed a crush on Galen, a man I met over Spring Break and decided that I might as well agree to tour France on bike with him. Now that we have established that we are only friends I'm hoping that the attraction won't turn into French drama.


After gaining experience in our travels to Peru it seems like packing takes even longer. We are actually planning before we go, arranging for a driver to meet me at the airport, starting my blog with free internet in the comfort of my own home, buying the random things like sleeping pills that were so hard to find in random pharmacies abroad. I'm trying to learn French and Morocco history and thank god Galen knows his way around France so I don't have to figure out a good bike route between Geneva and the South of France where we are visiting his host family from his time living in Switzerland.

Check back for pictures, stories and more soon! I depart Seattle for Casablanca on Tuesday June 24th! Wow.

Bigger and better blogs!

I'm home in the states and missing blogging so I decided to write about my teaching experiences in Las Vegas. Today was already crazy. We met with the mayor who was an ex mob lawyer. He decided to run for mayor because he realized that he could be in charge of the movies and only give permits to film to directors who would include him in their movie. He also shot a playboy shoot. When asked by a group of grade schoolers what he would want with him if he could have one thing on a desert island he responded "a bottle of gin"
To keep my kids more anonymous I will start a new blog, change my name, and all of the students names.
Let me know if you want to know how to get there.

The Point of Entrance and Departure

I am back at the Point, the hostel in Lima where i spent the first two nights. It felt so familier and they even recognized us. Familier felt great after so much time on the road. It is not a feeling I get very often here.

I have been getting better at Taxis. For the first time our bus arrive really early. We had planned to arrive in Chiclayo at 5¨30 in the morning for our 10 am flight. We figured that really we would be there a little later and we would not have much time to wait in Chiclayo, and since we are on the equator almost the sun predictably comes up and down at six. Instead we got there at 3:40 am, in the dark, and were met with a sea of taxi drivers trying to scam tired passengers. Since I could not walk with my packback I agreed to be driven to the airport while Laura decided to wander and go to the big market. When I arrived at the airport it was dark and empty and the Taxi driver informed me that it would not open until seven adn that he should take me to a hotel. I was annoyed that he had not told me this earlier and thought it was suspicious. When he told me it was peligroso(dangerous) to wait I decided that he was trying to scam me. THe word Peligroso is the first sign of someone trying to take your money. I appproached the gate of teh airport and was let into the terminal immediately by the night watchman. I was glad to be inside because I did not want to be alone on the dark street without Laura and did nto want to have to check into a Hostel for three hours at four in the morning. I have never been in an airport so empty or dark. The chairs looked like some of teh most uncomfortable plastic retro shaped chairs I had seen in an airport and I tried to figure out a way to sleep. I realized i could sleep on top of them where the backs touched each other, which probably does not make much sense. Eventually I moved to the floor, spreading out my hammock, which has proved useful a million times. Eventually when people started arriving they told me I had to get off the hammock and out of my sleeping bag and I moved outside to the grass.
All in all I got a decent nights sleep.

When we arrived in the Lima airport we very politely told all the Taxi drivers that we did not need their help and would take a collectivo because it was only 2 soles. They told us it was Peligroso. We felt that we were much less likely to be scammed because we were in a van full of Peruvians who would complain if the car was driving in circles or doing something strange. We felt like we had learned so much since our first crazy night in Lima a month ago. We spent some time talking about what we had learned about traveling, life ourselves and what we would miss from here. We are both really excited for vegetables! We ended up arriving at the Hostel much faster and for only 5 soles each as opposed to 28 the first time after three hours of wandering and yelling in Spanish!

Jewerly for Peanuts

Laura and I arrived in Chiclayo early in the morning after one more all night bus trip. This time it really did have a bathroom! We had given up on asking and were pleasantly surprised to discover it.
We took a combi out to Piminetal where hte beach was and were disappointed to find and empty beach covered in hazy fog. It was not the beach bum time we had been expecting and after unsuccessfully trying to find a place to rent a surfboard we decided to hop onto another bus and ride 7 hours to the north, 7 hours closer to the equation and sunshine. Before leaving chiclayo we went to the amazing museum showing the real tomb of Sipan. The mummies and the beautiful gold things they were buried with made the museum one of the best I had ever been too. It helped relieve the disapointment at the grey beach.

We arrived at Mancora late at night, crawled into the first hostel we could find and fell asleep to the loud television. We decided we could pay a little more than 3 dollars a night and find a nicer hostel the next day.

The next morning after an excellent breakfast with fresh squeezed juice we found a place to rent surf boards and our next hostel. It had friendly people and some really nice guests. We got a surf lesson lined up with Manolo and made friends with a girl from Australia. We hit the beach almost immdiately and started playing in the waves. The waves here are huge, yesterday they were so big that we did not even play in them. It was quite a site to watch the surfers whip out in giant frothy white maddness taller than they were. When we do go out in the waves they catch us more than we catch them.
Today was a little better and we caught some more. Laura is doing amazingly well for her first real time surfing, body surfing and playing in large waves. She figured out how to dive under them really fast and is a really strong swimmer.
Today we bought jewerly from our surfing teacher Manolo in our Hotel. FOr 10 dollars we bought a neclace it took him 8 hours to make. It really was peanuts. Everything we need we find at the tips of our fingers. We{ve started talking about what we will miss and we know that when we return to the states we will not have everything we want when ever we want. today on the beach we were sold our lunch, great rolls with spinich and tomatoes in the middle. then a lady asked for some of our peanuts that we had been hauling around since Yurimaguas and slowly eating. We told her to take lots because we did not want to take them back to the states. She came back a little later to ask for more and we decided to give her the whole bag. She offered to trade us the jewerely she made for the bag and Laura got a braclet and Igot earrings. She told us that she loves peanuts but they do not sell them in Mancora. Laura and I were so excited that we finally got rid of the giant bag which we had bought for almost nothing and get some cool jewerely out of it. Everyone seemed pretty happy.

I am on my way home tonight, a night bus to CHiclayo, a morning flight to LIma, the next day a flight to Mexico, a day in Mexico city thanks to the airlines changing our flights, and then back to LAX then out to Vegas. Wow. I am going to be ready to sit still for ahwile!

Chachapoyos

I´m sitting in the internet Cafe in Chachapoyos, waiting for my bus to leave for Chicalyo and the beach. We just returned from three days of trekking(well kind of) to Kuelap on a pre Inca trail. Walking down the stone path which has been there for 1200 years towards a great ruined city seemed just like Macchu Pichu except that we were the only ones there. We did not see another tourist for the entire three day trek and when we wrote our names today in the guest book at Kuelap we confirmed that we were the only tourists on the site. But I suppose I should start at the beginning.
After spending a day relaxing in Chachapoyos(I guess it would have been more relaxing if someone had not stolen my credit card and I had not spent so many hours online thinking about it) we decided to get going again and booked a tour to walk from Lamud to Kuelap. We decided to go with a guide even though it is always more expensive when you have an all inclusive tour because we did not know if we would get lost on the trail. It turns out that two tourists went without a guide on the same trail and got lost in a giant cow pasture so I guess it was a good idea. We woke up at five in the morning to get started because we decided to do it in three days instead of four. Our first stop was sacophoguses high up on a cliff wall. Basically thse were upright coffins painted and shaped to look like persons. Insterestingly enough the Chachapoyans lived under the ground and buried their dead up high. I evaluated the cliff and decided that the rock was too crumbly to climb saftely so I accepted the guides theory that they lowered themsleves halfway down the cliff on ropes.
The path down to the Sarchophogi was wet and slippery and we hoped that the entire day would not be like this(it was).
Next we got back in the car and started down of the road the tour agency had told us that we could not rent taxis on(therefore needing their services). When they told us we were unconvinced that we could not pay someone to take us down the road, but they might have been right. Things were going fine, meaning the road was not worse than all the other horrible road we could not believe they took four door tin can cars on, until we reached a mud bog. The first bad sign was the giant six wheel truck, completely sunk in the mud on one half of the road, completely abandoned until the rains stopped. Laura and I figured our walk had begun but our guide and taxi driver were more determined. Did I mention that our guide was a precocious 17 year old who had already studied political science for two years at the University. Despite his book smarts and fancy job he was still a 17 year old boy who thought driving a small front wheel drive only car into a mud bog next to a giant truck was a good idea.
Laura and I just started laughing. Before driving in they did try to place a few stones and sticks on the path and drained a little of the water out. Nevertheless we were stuck as soon as we drove all the way in. Laura and I were not surprised. We wondered if they could understand that we were laughing at them even though we were speaking in English. Being macho they let us sit in the car for quite awhile while they tried to get the car out. We offered to leave to lessen the wait but they declined our assistance. Finally we had to go to the bathroom and they let us leave for that. When we returned(after sneakily taking a picture of the debacle) they were trying to push the car out. Without really asking we decided to take charge and go push with them. The car budged a little, and eventually with three pushers and one driver we were able to escape. We had no idea how the taxi driver was going to return once he dropped us off because there would be no one to push the car and he would be going uphill. We never found out what happened to him.

After driving a while more down the road we caught our fist glimse of the valley of Belen where a large river snaked across the green grass of the valley in a dramatic twisting fashion.
The Valley of Belen
We were glad to have the guide as we would have no idea were to start walking across the great green valley. It turns out that we definitely would not have gone the right was as we had to jump over numerous streams and finally ford a river barefoot to get to the start of the pre Inca trail we were going to follow. The rain kept starting and stopping so we alternated between carrying and wearing our ponchos.

As we started up the trail I had to ask our guide who put the stones there. He was like, oh yeah, i forgot to tell you that this road was built 800 years after Christ by the Chachapoyans. It seemed as if we were going to have to drag information out of him.
We stopped at a stunning view of a far off waterfall on our way up the mountain. We were occasionally passed by people and their mules weighed down with all sorts of things. One mule was carrying a large table strapped to his back. This was only the beginning of our experience with animal mistreatment. After 45 minutes or so of climbing up anchent crumbling steps and trails deep from years of horses and mules we started the descent which they had told us would last four hours but was not very steep. They made it sound like we would want to walk down hill for four hours as if it were easier. Given that the rain was now coming down more consistantly and that the rocks had been broken by mules I was not too excited about walking for four hourse. My knee with the help of some aleve seemed to be holding up fairly well though.
Carlos seemed to be driving a hard pace with little time for rest and after quite a few hours of walking through the cloud forest with rain I was starting to get tired.
I would drift of the back of the back as Laura and Carlos went on ahead. We had a few minutes to stop at our first Ruin which consisted of a number of circular houses overgrown with forest. They had once made up a city of thousands. Carlos presented us a piece of cake which we were delighted to eat at the ruins. After the ruins, as it continued to rain we discovered that our Ponchos were not actually waterproof and lamented that we had left our jackets at home because they had told us that they were providing ponchos. We should never trust the Peruvians! Matters got worse when I stepped down funny, my leg straighted all the way and my knee popped. It was only temporarily painful but it made me timid and eventually started to swell. My doctor had told me I could do anything as long as my knee did not swell so I faced the long steep descent in front of me with a fair amount of worry. As I limped down the trail, going twice as slow as my guide we were passed by a mother her son and three horses. I wished that I had them to ride but did not think it was possible on the path. To my surprise, she stopped and offered us a ride. I do not really believe in miracles but I thought this ladies kindness was a gift that would save my knee. I mounted the mule and started the very scary path down. The mule had to slide down slick mud, and jump down little staircases. I held on tight for the wild but breathtakingly beautiful descent to a small village. As we entered the village we walked past houses constructed of mud shelacked onto wodden walls. The little boy who was leading my mule threw rocks at an orange tree and ate them on the path. i was so impressed that this little boy of six or seven with leather sandles that slid of in the mud was doing a better job on the path than I was. We passed under trees with small red berry like fruits that Laura discovered were coffee beans. When we arrived everyone was gathered around a soccer field and our guide explained there was a grand fiesta going on. I gave the lady 20 soles in gratitude, or about a days salary for a teacher here. I wanted her to feel as lucky as I had when she offered me a horse. I knew if she had not let me ride I would still be slowly descending the mountain in the dark.

Over dinner I told our guide that I had a knee problem and would need a horse the next day. Horses were normally included in the tour but we had declined them thinking that we did not need to pay extra when we could walk. He had quite a time finding a horse, and loudly argued with various people about it in front of us. It was as if he forgot that we could understand Spanish when he started talking to other people in front of us. Laura reminded me frequently that he was only 17.

When the horse showed up the next day he took Laura´s backpack and put it in a saddle bag. I thought maybe we were getting two horses because the mule in front of me seemed much too small to carry me and the bags. There was no other horse. I easily mounted the mule and noticed that my feet almost touched the ground. I already felt guilty for riding it but I figured that most tourist choose this route so it isn´t a problem. The pequeno mula

The path started fairly well, with the guide pulling the rope tied around the mules head. Eventually he tired of pulling the mule along so he found a stick in the bushes gave me the rope and started whipping its back, yelling mula vamos mula. Even though he was not yelling at me it was consistant and always in my direction. My nerves were on edge and I felt bad for the horse. Every time he whipped it it jumped making it very hard to ride. Did I mention the stirrups were way to short so I could not really use them. Things were still going alright until we passed two other horses, a baby and her mom. Everyone got excited and my mule started chasing the other horeses around. If it really wanted to it could go fast, even though it was not willing to after being yelled at and whipped by Carlos. I did not really have any idea what to do but held on alright until it started running full speed under a low branch. I ducked just in time and got away with only scrapes on my back. If I had been a little less adept I would have been strung out to dry by my neck on that tree.
Laura eventually grabbed the rope attached to the horse and things were under control. Carlos did not seem quite as concerned about my physical saftey as the other guides who would not let me overexert myself.

We continuded down the trail which began with ups and downs. Things got really bad when we arrived at the climb. The mule continued to stop not wanding to go up steep stairs with a giant on its back. I felt incredibly guilty that it was being screamed at and whipped but knew that my knee was swollen and I would hurt myself to walk worse that the mule was. I could not imagine that tourists would do this if they did not have some medical problem keeping them from walking. I figured that they probably had a bigger horse, but later learned that my mule was typical even for men much larger than me. Every time it jumped up a step I feared the poorly attached saddle would fall of the back, luckily I would not have fallen very far off the animal. As it sunk into the mud I could often touch the ground with my feet. One time I feared I was stuck in a giant puddle when it sunk down to its belly in a large lake like puddle.

Once again I was having trouble with different cultures. I asked the guide if it was necessary to hit the mule and he said it was. Luckily after lunch another man joined us who spoke much more softly to the animal. It was worn out and often flat out refused to go up things. At these points I dismounted, climbed the stairs and remounted for the flats. This was not bad as I could go up on leg at a time, only using my good leg. Laura was way out ahead and I felt so bad for being a stupid tourist who got myself into something i could not handle. I had to remind myself that this was the first time my knee had been swollen the entire trip and that I had no way of knowing it would happen.

Finally we reached the top and in a few minutes a car came to pick us up. Did I mention that the entire path was breathtakingly beautiful? I tried to apprecaite it but felt more guilt.
Laura seemed to enjoy the trip and I was glad of that.
Laura stopping for lunch, the only time I was able to take a picture.
We drove to our hostel, were amazed to find it had hot showers. After showerig we feel asleep before dinner, woke up to eat, and then promptly went back to bed. I did notice the big dipper for the first time and was alarmed to see it upside down, pointing at the north star way below the horizon. It was strange to look at the stars and notice something was wrong and spend a minute or two figuring it out.
The next day we woke bright and early for Kuelap. We were literally the only people there except the workers who were working on restoration. The city was huge and facinating, well deseving of the advertisment slogan Macchu Pichu of the North. I could not beleive we were the only ones there.
Carlos gave us his speil as we walked around the fortress. The giant walled city was constructed to be extremely defensible and held Chachapoyans from 800 to 1500 when the Incas and Spanish took over in turn. Sadly, as in many places in Peru, the stones were stolen from many houses to build houses for the Spanish, but the remains were spectacular.
One of the houses of important people.

selva, agua del rio, mosquiteros, monos

I finally made to a place with no interent access. No phones, no bathrooms, no electricity, blankets and no TOURISTS(except me of course).

I wrote pages and pages about it with a good old pen and pencil in all the lazy hours I had by the side of the muddy jungle river. At some point I might type it all online, but for now probably not as I´ve just sent about a million emails, mostly to my parents concerning rent problems, someone stealing my credit card, transcripts for my job and all sorts of other life matters. I hate how life does not just go away when I leave. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to my parents. I do not know what I would do without them to look out for me. I owe all of them big time for managing my life, staying on the phone on hold forever with the retarded airlines, reading my mail, taking care of my money, delivering my flowers, helping me move out, coming to my graduation, paying for my life and college, supporting my wild trip to Peru, reading my blog, throwing me a graduation birthday party, and more. THANKS! I love you!

I should say a few words about the jungle here. Laura and I wandred along the banks of the river until we found a respectable looking ship to take us to Lagunas, the point of departure into the Pacima Shymara national park. Like usual there was a man more than willing to help the cute gringa girls. As we were eating lunch before departing Yurimaguaas for Lagunas we were approached by a man whose name was reccommended in our guidebook for Jungle tours. He had a book full of reccomendations, a man, and an official looking vest and we decided he was the first of many people we could trust and set up a tour with him. He tooks us to the store to buy hammocks and set us up on the boat, and even asked the nice girl in the restaurant if we could take pictures with her baby mono (monkey).

Laura and I set up hammocks in a huge deck full of hammocks, people and random goods of every kinds headed for Iquitos the great jungle port and the biggest city in the world not accessible by road.

After carefully counting our money we decided we had exactely enough for five days of jungle and the return tickets to Yurimaguas where we could find an ATM.

The boat was really exciting and surprisingly cool and pleasant. We had great views of flat expanses of green jungle all around us on the wide brown river. There were also about 25 crazy looking cows on the boat which were really fun to watch fight in their tiny little cage. We met a group of teachers from Lagunas who had taken the 12 hour boat ride to Yurimaguas to vote in the election. Voting is mandatory and there are stiff fines for failing to vote. They had to cancel school for three days to allow time for people to travel to Yurimaguas to vote. It seemed like they should have been able to send in a ballot by mail or something, it was such a huge hassle and expense for so many people. On the day of the ellection it was practically impossible to find cheap transportation as all of the trunks and vans were packed with people, closer than sardines all moving around to vote.(Alan Garcia won by the way, He was more a democratic and less millitant and favors lowering airline taxes to promote tourism)


We arrived at Lagunas at four in the morning and were met by a representative of the tour company and taken to his palm tree roof, dirt floor house to sleep. We got a bed, complete with a mosquitero(mosquito net). We slept for a few hours but were awakened before dawn by roosters and other various jungle noises.

After a breafast of eggs, plaintains and bread were were taken off in a moto taxi to the control station of the reserve. We had some trouble talking to them about food, trying to explain that we preferred not to have fried food. Everything is so complicated here, and just saying, ¨there is nothing actually wrong with fried food, and it tastes fine and i can eat it but I prefer baked or boiled food because it has less fat¨ seems like a a really hard concept to explain. As we discovered on the trip sometimes misunderstandings were more about cultural beliefs and what seemed normal to us or them based on how we had been raised. Even though I grew up on the banks of cottonwood creek, I had a hard time understanding and communicating with people who grew up on the banks of a huge river flowing into the Amazon.


When we first way our canoes we were a little surprised. They were carved out of a tree and when fully loaded only floated a few inches above the water. The guides were very concerned with us tipping them over and helped us get in and out every single time. They wanted us to lay in the bottom so that we would not tip them but we asked to paddle instead. We would learn that unless we asked to do something, absolutely everything was going to be done for us. After only a half our my guide asked if I was tired of paddling and told me to rest. Normally I would feel a little insulted that he thought I was so weak but given sleeping on a boat full of people, moving to a hut in the middle of the night for a few more hours, the extreme heat and the very heavy carved wooden paddle, I took him up on the offer and just laid back to relax and wait for him to point out animals for me. I have to note here that he was amazing at finding animals and I still have no idea how he noticed some of them.

Some of the first things we saw were monkeys playing in the tree and very pretty colorful birds. I really like the monkeys. There were always lots of them in a big pack and they were easy to find because they made lots of noise. They leaped between trees and slid down the trunks. It was like the zoo but better. Other animal highlights were a small anaconda and a black jungle cat and river otters.

At our first stop for lunch the guides put up our hammocks for us and cooked us lunch. If we wanted anything out of the canoes they got it for us and basically attended to our every need. I was shocked, I had been expecting the jungle to be difficult but I had two guides attending to my every need. Paddling for me, cooking for me, stringing up hammocks for me and insisting that I rest. It felt really weird after weeks of bare bones hostels and lots of work, but I decided that maybe I could accept it.

After a few days of being pampered we were starting to get a little bored. Our sleep debts had been paid off with day time naps and sleeping in while they caught and cooked breakfast for us. Breakfast was fish every day which sounds kind of weird but was actually pretty good. Lunch and dinner were also fish. We started to get a a little curious and Laura asked if we could help with the food and learn how to catch, clean and cook fish. He was using a net to catch fish and offered to take us with him in the canoe to set the net that night. We put a huge net accross the river and as we were doing it spotted the red eyes of a crocodile in the headlamp and spent an hour or so tryign to catch various crocociles unsuccessfully.
The next day Jose found some fish in the nets and showed us how to clean the fish. It was a little disturbing because the fish were still alive (more on that in a bit). We scraped the scales off of them, as their gills continued to flap, it was like being skinned alive. Then we slit open their stomachs to remove the intestines, gills, vital organs and such. One fish was split open with both sides laying face down on the dock and it was possible to see its heart beating still. I hope that it wasn´t actually conscious of what was going on. We learned that it was easier to just stick our hands in the fish to rip the guts out when our guide was able to clean fish three times as fast as us with our dainty knifes delicately removing innards without making a mess.

The next day we hiked through the jungle and learned all about medicinal plants. We learned about trees that could stop the pain of broken bones, cure hemmoroids, save people from deadly snakebites and more. We also learned about a bad spirt tree which avenges the death of murdered children. Just cut a hole in the tree, put the murdered child´s clothes inside and then murderer would be unable to go to the bathroom and swell up and die. The tree looked pregnant, with a big lump on one side, just like the bad man would. Our guide believed that trees enjoyed smoke and that it was good for them, so he smoked a cigarrette and blew the smoke on the trees. I believed that me breathing carbon dioxide on the trees was probably just as good, and that way I did not have to kill trees for the paper for the cigarettes. He seemed pretty convinced. I thougth a lot about culture, upbringing and beliefs on this trip.
The jungle was very wet and in many places our rubber boots sunk deep into the mud. We threw down small logs and carefully balenced on them to cross the mud bogs. At the end of this hot sweaty, but interesting trek we arrived at a small river teeming with fish. Jose explained that it was really warm water right now because there were not a lot of rain and the fish came to the top to try to be cooler. He pointed out a large fish that had no bones that he wanted to catch. This sounded exciting as I had been struggling to eat small fish, still complete with heads and all of their tiny bones.

He found a stick in the woods and attached a small hook and line that he had brought in his pocket. We asked if he had brough bait and he told us he was going to use a fish. We weren´t really sure where the fish was as it was not in the backpack of fruit we had brought. He surprised us by pulling a small bloody fish in a zip lock bag out of his pocket.

He caught a fish almost immediately, it seems that they are rather canibalistic.
Then he handed me the machete and asked me to kill it by wacking it over the head with the blunt end. This took me back for a few moments but I decided if I was willing to order fish at Creektown Cafe back in Walla Walla I probably should be willing to bludgeon the small animal flopping around in the jungle in front of me.
I tenatively whacked it with the machete and to my dismay it didn´t die. I whacked it again more forcefully and it was still alive. Four or five whacks later I figured that it was probably dead. Little did I know these fish are amazinly resiliant. Democrito, the other guide, strung a vine through it´s gills to carry it home and at this point I realized it was still breathing. The next time he pulled a fish out of the water it was Laura´s turn to whack it. She was equally unsuccessful at actually killing it. I whacked a few more fish and then Jose gave me the chance to try fishing. I think that my success was mainly due to the fact that the river was spilling over with fish, but within a few minutes I was flipping a fish out of the river over my head and almost onto Laura. Luckily she avoided it, and grabbed the pole to take her turn. Now I had to whack the fish I had caught, which the guides assured me had few bones and was very rico(delicious). I tried to whack it hard wanting to put it out of its misery, and when it flopped to one side I thought I had succeded. Laura caught a fish almost identical to mine and whacked it as well.
After stringing up the rest of the fish we began the two hour trek back to the control station where were were sleeping. THe guides tried to string up our hammocks for us but we insisted that we wanted to clean teh fish we had caught and bludgeoned. We got them on the dock of the control station and I dumped some water over them to rinse the dirt off. To my surprise the two little fish Laura and I had caught and whacked started moving after two hours of being strung through the gills and hauled through the jungle! We were a little disturbed and called Democrito over to show him. We thought that he did not believe the fish were still alive because he put them in the river to show us that they woudln´t swim away. We said we understood that they were done for but that they had been moving. Finally we figured out that he was trying to show us that they would move more if you put them in the river. They sadly flapped there side fins as other small manta ray looking fish started nibling their flesh. I tried whacking mine again because I didn´t want to skin another live fish. This didn´t work and as I began to scrape the scales off the gills were still moving. I was pretty disturbed by it all and asked Jose if he thought it was in pain. He answered yes, as if I was kind of dumb to wonder if it hurt to be whacked on the head, dragged aroudn the jungle with a vine strung through my respiratory system and skinned alive. He said that if I whacked them hard enough to kill them they wouldn´t be in pain any more. I felt guilty for not being a better bludgeoner.

Finally, as we sliced open the stomach and continued to whack the head the fish stopped moving. Though as I took a bite of it later, I did a quick check to make sure it was really dead.


Other point of major contention on this trip was water. When we had reached the small river where Laura and I caught the fish the guide went to wash the bananas in the river becuase they were mushed. The fruit was clearly exposed and it was obvious that we would injest river water. I inquired if this would be a problem as I have had to regretfully turn down all salads and washed fruit in Pere so far. He assured me the water was safe, but I´m not sure I believed him as I had been a bit sick the day before the trip started and had recieved a fair amount of mosquito bites trying to go to the bathroom frequently in the woods.
I ate the bananas because i figured there was not much we could do.

That night Laura was sick all night, sweating, making midnight bathroom runs from the control station, trying to avoid the giant spiders in the bathroom. The next day he served us the usual lunch time lemonade and when we finished it he refilled it with a bucket that did not seem to be filled with the bottled water we had been drinking. I asked, Is that water from the river? He said it was and I told him that Laura was at this very moment sick from river water and I couldn´t believe he was giving it to us. He told us it had lemons in it and I couldn´t figure out why I should care that he had put lemons in River water for us when we´d both been sick.
I tried to ask him about iodine, but I still didn´t know the word.
Later that day he asked us if we wanted him to boil bottled water for our usual nightly tea. We realized that he did not understand the difference between boiled and non boiled river water. We drank boiled river water to top of the river water lemonade. I thought I explained the difference between boiled and not boiled but the next day I realized I was wrong. He tried to serve us lemonade again, and I was a little confused, thinking that he should understand that we didn´t want to drink river water and increase the number of jungle bathroom trips which necessisated dodging spiders and getting at least three or four new mosquito bites per trip.

He said that it had lemon and explained that the lemon killed the bacteria. I looked skeptical. He said, do you understand what I´m saying. I said, yes I don´t understand but I don´t agree. So we didn´t drink the lemonade that day and I was left feeling frusterated with his belief the river water. I realized that it had a ton to do with beliefs. He has been drinking the water all of his life, just scooping it right out of the river with his hands. He thought Laura was sick from overexertion(considering that she almost made it to the Olympics I found that hard to believe). If someone told me the well on my farm was not safe I would not believe them either. The water issue was the only problem with the trip and I realized it was very much about cultural and linguistic misunderstandings and forgave the guides.


After we finsihed our river trip we made a mad dash to Chachapoyos. We took a River boat from Lagunas to Yurimaguas overnight, a pick up truck on the bumpy road from Yurimaguas to Tarapoto as the sun rose. There we restocked at an ATM and used the bathrrom in a restaurant to brush teeth and get more water.(WITH Iodine i might add).
We found a bus to Pedro Ruiz. We had learned about buses a little bit more and were a bit more savvy this time. We asked if there was a bathroom, the man told us yes, then we asked to get on the bus and look at it as the bus was right there. There was no bathroom and we asked him why he had lied to us. He told us no buses had bathrooms and so we asked him again why he would have told us that. I told him I wasn´t stupid just because i was blond and spoke Spanish badly. He told us the trip to Pedro Ruiz lasted six hours and left at noon. We told him we didn´t believe that either. After wandering around and realizing that this bus was the first one to leave we decided to take it despite the fact that he was clearly not telling us the truth. He offered us a 10 soles discount when we walked back, which seemed to annoy the ticket seller who wouldn´t believe the price we quoted. Of course the bus did not leave at noon. At a few minutes before noon I pointed out to him that no one was on the bus and that the driver had told me that the bus leaves at twelve thirty. He continued to insist that the bus would leave at 12 on the dot. At 12:03 I asked him what time it would leave, it still being empty and he insisted again that it would leave at 12. At this point we were looking at a clock. I asked him how many hours it really took to get there and asked if I could get a free ticket if it took longer. He promised me that I could. Of course it took a little more than 7 instead of the 6. I wasnt surprised but it did make it difficult to know when I needed to start paying attention to the stops. Luckily the lack of a bathroom was never a problem as the bus probably stopped every half an hour to pick up more people. In fact, if it saw people walkign down the road it honked and picked them up. In the beginnign Laura and I had the entire back to nap in but eventually they oversodl the bus and we were moved so that six people and a small chicken could have the five seats of the back. The chicken was making pleasant enough noises adn I did not really mind it. I was glad that they had removed the full grown chicken earlier that a different man had tried to smuggle on board against the posted no live animal rules.
Eventually the six people in five seats caused a problem and the bus stopped for half an hour to move people around and set up buckets in the aisle next too me for people to sit. I was starting to feel like it was time to pay 10 dollars for a bus instead of 7 to avoid all of this crazyness.
We watched some more bloody action movies typical of the buses, including predator with Arnold Swarznegger. People seem to really like him here and know that he is the new governer of California.

Finally we arrived in Pedro Ruiz and took a car on a road carved into the side of a cliff to Chachapoyos. I was really tired and was almost able to fall asleep in my cramped position.
Today we washed clothes and spent about four hours on the interent and tried to figure out a good way to go to some more ruins and the third highest waterfall in the world. We will be doing that for a few days. Hopefully there won´t be any more urgent credit card fraud emails in my inbox when I return! Man those are annoying.