I reread all my previous journal entries for the first time. What struck me is the change from the first few to the last ones. A profound personal change has taken place and is visible in the writing style and content. But it´s an illusion, it doesnt represent how I truely feel and in some ways, writing up my travels with the advantage of hindsight is a dishonest way to communicate them. So here I provide stories of the real travels, straight from my journal. I will share a small selection of these pages of truth, unedited, unimproved, unself-conciously and untainted...
Thursday, July 8th, between Leticia and Iquitos
I boarded the green and rust coloured boat, the George Raul in the evening on Tuesday and will arrive into Iquitos friday morning. Mornings began early, before sunrise, gradually woken by people talking and the insect bites begining to itch. The sunrise filled both the river and the sky with a full pallete of colours. Indigos and purples, steely greys through to flaming coppers and golds as the sun hit the top of the rippling water. The distance between the banks was mostly constant at about 500m, except when small islands rose up in the center. Along the way were many small fishing and farming communities with wooden and palm thatched houses built on stilts.
There wasn´t much to do on the boat except lounge in the hammock, eat the friuts and foods sold in the communtiies along the way and, when the boat stopped to pick up or drop off passengers and cargo, fish from the top deck. In Leticia I´d bought some nylon and hook and with the young peruvian who had the hammock next to mine, had good success catching small fish using insects and beetles that had died on the deck as bait. We had a good laugh swinging the fish into cabins and dangling them above peoples heads on the lower decks, and into the open kitchen window at high speed. The cook didn´t seem to want them.
The food was suprisingly good seeing as it was included in the ticket price of 70 Soles, around NZ $40. Breakfast was 4 buns of stale bread and a sour broth of cooking bananas and lunch and dinner a typical plate of spicy beans, rice, bannana and boiled chicken. If the sun was out at midday the heat was intense and the brow perpetually soaked with sweat, but nights and morning where mild and pleasant and apart from a few extremely heavy but short spells of rain the weather was good. It was easy to sleep at night provided you covered your body and face under a blanket at sunset when clouds of mosquitos invaded the boat. Unfortunately the bastards still managed to bite me through the hammock, resulting in about 50 bites on my back and shoulders.
By now I was well past the half way mark and had 80 days left of my trip before I would be back in Nelson, speaking Enlgish and searching for work. I would be completly broke, but this really didn´t matter.
Saturday, July 17th, returning by cargo boat from the Yurimaguas, robbed of money, shoes, hammock, toothbrush and razor.
Wake, (observation is a philosophy)
The rooster is moaning as the sun brushes the edges of the sky,
Wake, there is no time but the present,
Pull yourself from restless dreams into this restless storm of experience
There is no time like now.
Observation is a philosophy,
To see but not to judge,
To hear all sounds as music,
To wander with an open mind that bears no grudge,
To be the sea through which all things pass.
The return home was grey and cold.
Days spent hunched over wrapped in blanket and nights spent hunched over wrapped in blankets. Gone where the flaming skies at dusk and dawn and the hot clinging air of the jungles mid-day. It felt like a warning, an omen of doom, this wintery weather in the heart of the tropics.
I could have made a beautifully gritty photo essay of the boat ride home, moody shots of the river from the ragged edges of the toilet´s time corroded porthole, a black and white image of the the artisan working with crystal fragments that glittered in the light, the silhoutes of the onlookers crowded around. The net-like tangle of hammocks lit by two angry staring light bulbs. The cloud of steam from the chicken being freshly plucked. I could have, but didnt, because my camera was in Iquitos.
The boredom of the journey is evident. As I write this I have two people peering over my shoulder at what I write and another 3 people on the bench opposite with their unblinking gaze latched upon me... The Amazon river boats are floating prisons, slow, cramped, uncomfortable and lovable...
South America shows humanity in the raw, a purer life than the gladwrapped politically ¨correct¨ reality of developed nations like NZ. The chickens for lunch are kept on the boat and killed an hour before, privacy and personal space are unheard of, we sleep in hammocks that touch and on the floor between these hammocks. I am visciously elbowed by old women in markets, senses submerged in the dirt, the stink, the disemboweled tortouises and pigs heads on the pavements, the kind smiles, the curious eyes, a hatefully spat out ¨Gringo!¨. The scrape, scrape of a knife sharpened on the curb, mothers openly breast feeding with no hint of embarrasment, the penetrating sing song calls from the vendors, Manzanas un sol manzanas un sol manzanas manzanas... Mani Mani Mani Mani Cincuenta Mani Mani Mani... Squealing breaks and thick black fumes, Policemen´s whistles, Clanging chruch bells, ¨Hello friend what is your name, where are you from, You want Tour? Marijuana? Some Sniff? Beautiful woman? What are you searching for?¨ Raw red meat hanging by hooks, twisted leg beggars with no look of hope, wrinkled faces and chestnut skin, clouded eyes and faltering limbs. The music, each song the same, Mi Amor, Mi Corazon, reducing love to a tired cliche, a horse whipped to death. Windowless rooms, buses, boats, words, faces, landscapes, unforgettable people and unforgettable places. I don´t try and switch off with an Ipod or a book. I can´t, I don´t know what joy I will be missing out on.
Wednesday, July 28th (The final boat ride from Iquitos to Pulcalpa)
The joys of learning and growing everyday, positive attitude attracts positive experiences, challenging and testing myself and my preconceptions (I am my preconceptions), pushing the comfort zone and seeing beauty in everything. Coincidence. Relishing the senses, questioning. Playing with the past and future while living in the present.
Meditation/Contemplation/Realisation.
Do not bury negative emotions.
You have to go through the worries and insecurities, the fears and the pains.
It is hard but embrace them, explore the sensation, You will come out stronger.
Challenge yourself.
Question your preconceptions, ask ¨Why?¨, push your boundaries and discard the things
you find security in. Confront solititude, for we are all alone, linked by feeble bridges.
Rise above the ego.
You do not need to be a monk or a hermit, deny yourself all pleasures.
Experience all you can, indulge your senses. Walk the middle path, hold hedonism and detatchment in the open palms of both hands.
Explore all levels, ¨reality¨ is only your perception of it.
Embrace pain, darkness, joy, love. Intergrate all experience and knowlegde.
This is all you are.
Accept the child within, the animal within, accept your primitive primal urges,
think rationally, irrational, creativly, methodically. Balance come froms unifying
all aspects of the self.
Its never to late to change, only YOU control the way you think, everyone and everything
has a valuable lesson to teach, if only you are open to it.
Change yourself not others, be patient but aware that some people drain energy and will use you and others will heal and help you grow.
Science and spirituality are not exclusive.
Youth is fleeting, use your body while you can and contemplate death when you feel most alive.
Think for yourself, Don´t believe all this hippy bullshit.
Sunday, 8th August, Ayacucho
I was roused at 6 this morning by the church cannons firing, the weak daylight through my window and some men outside talking and laughing loudly (a common Latino traight no matter the time or location). I dressed quickly and walked up to the hotel roof that afforded a good view of the city, the hills behind peppered with houses and small farms, and the Andes, a jagged silhoutte stretching across horizon.
The sun was still a weak glow behind the mountains and I was waiting for sunrise. To my right near the markets a hundred discordant voices of roosters welcomed the coming day, the few cars and mototaxis were already honking thier horns and cannon shots where firing from the oposite hill, puffs of smoke and noise to honour the Saints. It was becoming lighter, a red glow appeared on the hills behind me and slowly, so slowly, began to creep down. The church bells started slow and regular. One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, and then continued to pick up speed. To the ignorant observer it would seem all these bangs, gongs, honks and calls were praising the coming day, the rebirth of the sun as the Incans once did. But no, the horns where aimed only at other cars, the chickens where responding to biological stimuli and the heavy stone churches were calling the masses towards scraps of gold and plastic statues of Jesus and Mary. The sun still rose, without asking for praise, the sun would not send forth bolts of lightning to smite the unworthy, it continued to burn, observed or unobserved, just as the earth rotated before humans were able to acknowledge the fact. Except to some Shamans and people with a pagan streak like me, it was no longer Inti, but just something to mark the start of another day, to grow the crops to later sell, and to tan or mar the skin.
Tuesday, 10th August, bus ride to Anduhauylas
Landscape like Ecuador, a tourtoises back, a crumpled sheet of rusting roofing iron. Stopping for a piss stop, (Oh what relief!) seeing the people working in the field, pick axes and shovels in the heat. All that hard work for a sack of potatoes that earns a few dollars at the market. And the land, the time, the sun, the immense energy being harnessed and converted by the plant, the agonisingly slow process of cell division developed over billions of years. How thankless and unappreciate we are of lunch.
I have been born into the time of immense challenge, but also of immense possibility and promise.
Thursday, 12th August, Anduhauylas
Buy papaya, garlic and carrot. They are good wormers.
Saturday, 14th August, Pisac plaza.
With the Incans sacred ruins above and below me,
And sitting by this ancient tree,
The day a canvas to paint and shape,
To be rushed or calm or cool or rash
Its the inside that changes the out.
Sitting and watching and waiting for nothing,
A little something as time it rolls by,
A lock set to open, a trap set to spring,
Let it flow on there´s no need to cling
To the feel of the wind on your skin,
The energy without and within,
The lights the darks the highs the lows,
Accept them all that´s the way these things go.
Monday, 16th August, The hills between Pisac and Cuzco.
It was a day like a faded colour photo from the 70´s
Monday, 23rd August, The lake behind the ruins above Pisac
At the lake above Pisac with Ceci, Evelyn, Syama and Si Di. 4 hours walking through the dried up land of traditional clothes, donkeys and adobe brick walls to reach the lake. Feel really alive, the possibilites are infinite. If I become paranoid, blinded, obsessed, addicted, open, balanced. If I trip and break my ankle, or fall to my death off the path. My memories are an illusion of the past, my images of the future are insubstantial fantasies, all I have, all we have, is the present before we make a judgement of it. So many subtle connections between everything. Why is it so hard to let something be without assesing it? Life is fucking trippy.
Tuesday, 24th August, The night bus between Cuzco and La Paz.
Tired. Going to La Paz. Still got writing to do, read over blogs, they seem so childish and insecure, saying things that I dont really believe but are somehow expected by myself. Priorities and values were so different and lacking then, being led around by people and experience. Chasing blindly. Now what is driving me? Not really sure aye bro. But something is.
Even though I moan about them, I really enjoy the discomfort of night buses. You think about alot on them.
Avoid deciet, deliberate lies and idle talk that lacks purpose of depth. Good advice that was. The coca leaf is a great conversation starter and social tool, a thing to share. First with the old lady, then the venuzualans, then the bus driver.
Thursday, 26th August, The hostal in La Paz.
Had a good sleep of almost 14 hours, the dormitory is empty save for me and it is still resonably dark and quiet. Had a big shit, no more problems with the stomach. What is the root purpose of economics?
Saturday, 28th August, The government plaza in La Paz.
Beautiful and painful,
I began to cry silent tears while sitting on the shop step,
In the main plaza of the city of La Paz in Bolivia,
Beside the white haired and bearded blind man,
And his wife with eyes obscured by the brim of her hat.
The sound of her voice and his guitar didn´t carry far,
but it cut right through to the core.
So beautiful and painful, oh, so beautiful and painful,
Like my travels, like the song they played,
Like this Whole Goddamned World.
Beautiful and painful.
Now I sit against the stone walls of the catherdral,
Pen in hand, book on lap,
My shoes are second hand, my socks a present from a girl in Peru,
My trousers ripped and torn and sewn, a fellow Kiwi gave me my top,
That is worn above a hand painted tshirt, not a tortured artist but a tortured mind,
Topped off by a brown felt hat bought in the highlands,
Clothing this young body, expressing this timeless soul.
No real desire, just some pained confusion.
I can barely look at them it hurts so much,
This old man and his old wife, between them lies the songs,
Near death, bodies failing, still creating,
True Love for those who are looking, few are,
Worth more than all the other music blasted out day in day out,
A thin facade, empty words for hollow heads,
And then these two, ragged clothes and unseeing eyes,
Beauty for those who look.
The quiet tears still flow.
Learn some Spanish songs on the Accordion when I get home.
I have a full stomach, a bag of coca leaves, a hat, a book and a pen,
and most importantly, the illusion of time.
Maybe I should study English and Ecology?
NOW
So there you go, a few shared pages, not the whole truth, but nothing but the truth. Enjoy.
