yu-en-me

oh baby, oh baby

yu-en-me — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:36:00 GMT

as most of you have accurately guessed, my recent silence is because i´ve had my hands full for the last couple of months. baby noah araya-cho was born on the 10th of june, and since then, i haven´t had more than 3 hours´ continuous sleep. (ok, i exaggerate, i once made it to 4 hours before he woke me up again, cranky and hungry.) in between all the breastfeeding, nappy-changing, and vomit-wiping, here are some of the random thoughts that have gone through my sleep-deprived mind.

things that perplex me about babies in general...

- why babies respond so well to sibilant noises like ´shhhh´ or ´sssss´. from the day he was born, if noah starts to stir in his sleep or makes a face like he´s about to cry, he can usually be calmed with a ´shhh´ or ´ssss´. i noticed the same with the other 3 mothers and their newborns who shared my hospital room. no other sound, not clucking, not vowels, not other consonants, seem to work quite as well as the sibilants.

- why, unlike most other species in the animal kingdom, human babies take so long before they can move about independently. i´m not even talking walking or running, but i would´ve thought that it would be natural for the human species to evolve with babies crawling within the first week or two of life.

- what do they dream about? with his little life experience so far, what could possibly be going on in noah´s head when he´s sleeping to make him smile occasionally, or cry out suddenly, or even to wake up instantly with a scream? even during the pregnancy, i wondered what fetuses could possibly be thinking about when they´re awake and kicking, or even if the expression ´thinking about´ was appropriate.

- why babies, especially the younger ones, need to be lulled to sleep. if they´re sleepy, why don´t they just sleep? no other baby animal that i´m aware of needs such coaxing, whereas if you leave most human babies alone, they´ll usually cry or fuss for quite a bit before falling asleep by themselves. or maybe we´re all mistaken here, and babies are just tricking us all into cuddling them?

... and noah specifically

- why he´s an angel when we go out, either sleeping beatifically or making cute gurgling noises, but cries at night and whenever we´re at home

- why he spits out his dummy, only to cry for it immediately. i´ve fallen asleep so many times with my finger holding the dummy against his mouth that i´m starting to consider sticky taping it there!

different cultural ideas about baby-raising that i find curious

the chinese believe that the first month after giving birth is an opportunity for the mother´s body to be renewed. if you look after the body in this period, previous ailments will be cured, and possible future ones will be prevented. ´looking after the body´ traditionally meant things such as not showering during the 30 days, especially not washing your hair, (since getting wet increases the risk of letting the cold/wind enter your body and bones); not venturing outside at all, preferably staying in bed for the whole time; not straining yourself in holding the baby too much, only when he/she needs a feed; not reading or straining your eyes too much with games or television; only consuming ´heaty´ substances which warm up the body such as ginger, and avoiding ´cooling´ stuffs such as tea; and other such DOs and DON´Ts. of course, each woman will take the confinement period as strictly or as laxly as she wants, but from what i understand, the main ´rules´ such as not showering, staying indoors, and following the heaty/cooling food indications, are still adhered to quite strictly by most traditional chinese women.

even more alien to me was the concept of a ´confinement lady´ to help the mother during ths period: a lady who is hired for the month to cook nutritious food for the mother, to change and wash nappies (in my parents´ time, it was almost always cloth nappies), and to feed the baby (also in my parents´ time, it was the norm for babies to drink formula milk instead of being breastfed, but i imagine that even for breastfed babies, the confinement lady would be responsible for bringing the baby to the mother to feed, and then take it away to be burped and put to sleep in another part of the house). during the first 30 days then, the mother is pretty much allowed to choose her ´working hours´ as a mother, even to the extent of not seeing her baby at all during that time, if she so wishes! from what my parents say, confinement ladies were much sought after, charging quite a high sum, and often requiring that you book their service with several months´ notice. i wonder if confinement ladies still offer their services today...

having noah in ecuador, where neither marcelo nor i have family members close by, meant that almost all the women around us started giving me advice. some of it made sense, but some just sounded funny. i´m not sure how much of the following ´works´, but where possible, i did try and heed most of it (except where there were contradictions, in which case, i just did whatever i felt like): i was only meant to drink hot liquids or at least tepid drinks, such as cooled tea (contrary to the chinese belief mentioned above); i wasn´t meant to bare my shoulders or back at all since this caused my milk to dry up (giving rise to marcelo´s first dad joke about my breasts giving powdered milk); i wasn´t meant to eat pork (and this had nothing to do with the swine flu)... and there were a whole range of ideas on how to look after noah - for instance, i was told in the first week that you´re meant to burp a baby stroking UP his back to help the bubbles up his throat, and in the second week, i was told to stroke DOWN his back to help settle the milk. the more people i talk to, and the more ´advice´ i hear, the more i think that, like most things in life, there´s no right or wrong way to do anything when it comes to babies (except the obvious ´don´t shake your baby´ advice). and so after trying to please everyone at the start, i´ve decided, bugger it, i´ll listen to everything and everyone, but í´ll just do what i feel is right.

despite the different ideas that have been thrown about in our presence, one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that you have to talk to the baby. this is a slight problem, since babytalk doesn´t come naturally to me. i´m quite happy talking to someone who gives some indication that he understands, but when i´m with noah, i´m at a loss for what to say. often, i´ll start talking to him (in a normal adult voice, not a baby voice) but then end up doing my own thing while he happily plays by himself, blowing spit bubbles and going cross-eyed trying to focus his eyes. and although everyone keeps telling me that i have to talk to him ´so he can recognise your voice, so he can start talking himself,´ i distinctly remember that when we were studying speech development in babies at uni, all ´normal´ babies learn to talk whether they are spoken to directly or not. indeed, there are certain cultures (specific names escape me now, i´m sorry to say) whose members don´t see the point in talking to babies, and will only start addressing infants once they´re past the babbling stage, and have started to utter coherent words. i´m not too worried about talking to noah directly since he hears the daily conversation between marcelo and myself, not to mention all the different voices he hears when we go out each day. but i do understand the need for him to recognise the sounds of the English language, instead of just Spanish, and so i read to him as i type or out loud when i´m reading books in english. (i´m hoping that he won´t adopt an australian accent though, since i´d much prefer him to have Fez´s accent (from That 70s Show), or that of antonio banderas.)

it (now) doesn´t surprise me that ...

it (now) doesn´t surprise me that without some form of support (medical attention, midwife, or just anyone who has assisted at a birth before), so many women die in childbirth. my experience of bringing noah into the world was supposedly an easy one: his position was ´normal´; i was only pushing for 45 minutes; and he was tiny at 2.23kg and 44cm long. yet even with all this in my favour, those 45 minutes were quite easily the most physically intense and traumatic that i´ve gone through. (for full details of the birth, go to the previous story: ´THE details´) if it weren´t for the fact that i had complete faith in the staff at the hospital, or the constant thought that ´others have done it, i´m sure i can do it too´, i would´ve been ready to give up at the 3rd push. some part of me which had detached itself from the process and was observing with horror at what my body was going through kept saying ´it would be so easy to let the pain overcome me, stop pushing, and just pass out´. of course, i didn´t do any of that. but i imagine that any woman who does, and doesn´t have immediate medical support, would die giving birth.

it (now) doesn´t surprise me that sleep deprivation has been used as a very effective form of torture, or that people who get little or irregular sleep (insomniacs, long-distance truck drivers, shift workers, parents of little babies....) start to go a little crazy.

it (now) doesn´t surprise me that in the past, (and even occasionally now,) there were so many cases of parents abandoning or killing their babies. if, after hearing such a story of baby abandonment or murder/manslaughter, someone were to now ask me ´what kind of mother would do that?´, i would reply ´the kind who has to look after the little one by herself, who has no one to tell her that ´you´re doing ok´, who has no conscious awareness of the hormonal. changes her body is going through and so can´t intellectualise why she feels so down, who has had little and irregular sleep, who has no means of getting a bit of respite whether it be through relatives, nurseries or daycare.´ it´s not hard to imagine that that´s the kind of parent who feels she has no choice but to leave the baby at a stranger´s doorstep, or who shakes/smacks the bub a little too hard out of frustration, or who´s so exhausted that she makes a fatal error such as falling asleep and rolling over the baby, or dropping it accidentally. (please, there´s no need to be concerned for noah´s welfare! i´m just saying that it doesn´t surprise me...)

it (now) doesn´t surprise me that often, having a baby either makes or breaks a couple. like in any challenging situation, you both start to show your best and your worst. either you focus on giving each other the support that you both need, and tough it out together, or you take out your frustrations on each other. they say that most separations occur in the 3rd or 4th year of marriage (or formal union) - isn´t that also around the time that most couples decide to have a baby? (again, there´s no need to be concerned, i´m just saying it doesn´t surprise me!)

it (now) doesn´t surprise me that dummies are called pacifiers. noah can be crying hysterically, throwing a tantrum with all of his little body, refusing all attempts at being calmed down, but then relaxes instantly as soon as he latches on to his dummy. it´s like a drug!

it (now) doesn´t surprise me that breastfeeding is encouraged to create a strong bond between mother and child. it doesn´t surprise me that in the days when wet nurses were used, the relationship between biological mother and child was cooler than that between the nurse and the baby. if you put so much effort into getting your sore teats out to be manhandled by a fussy baby every 3 hours, and look into his little face while he´s suckling contentedly, it´s inevitable that some sort of affectionate feeling is generated.

and finally, the cute stuff: how noah makes me smile

- the way he still sometimes scares himself with a loud burp or fart (the first time he farted in his sleep, he woke himself up)

- his look of concentration and scrunched-up face when he poos

- his wide-eyed look of utter amazement when he hears or sees something new

- his shortened breath and excited wiggles when he gets closer to the teat for a feed (much like a dog jumping up and down when he knows he´s going to be fed)

- the way he gasps at the cold when i clean his privates with a damp babywipe

- the way he likes to roll, no matter how many cushions we put on either side of him

that´s all for now, i´ve got a sleepy baby hanging off one arm and can´t type more. more photos are in the ´oh baby, oh baby´ gallery...

Gallery: oh baby, oh baby

yu-en-me — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:25:00 GMT

THE details

yu-en-me — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:32:00 GMT

written 5 weeks after giving birth, and still recovering from the experience:

so i guess the question on most people´s lips will be ´how was the birth?´ well, let´s just say that more than a month has passed, and i´m still getting over it. after a day of on-again-off-again contractions, and 5 hours of increasingly intense ones, i woke marcelo close to 5 in the morning to make the trip to the hospital. the admitting doctor and nurse were impressed by my zen-ness saying that some women were already complaining by 2cm dilation, whilst i was already at 7cm. they put me in bed B of the ´labour room´ - basically a waiting space for women in labour, who weren´t yet 10cm dilated, and where all the relevant medical staff met up to chat about the latest hospital gossip and bicker about whose turn it was to get coffee for the team. until i started to push at 10.15am, i passed the time by answering all the curious questions of the staff (how do you say your name, where are you from, why are you here in ecuador, etc), and concentrating on the woman next to me´s grimaces so that i could be distracted from my own pain. i was slightly alarmed by the incompetence shown when one doctor ordered an ultrasound for me, and they wheeled the other woman out instead, not realising their mistake until it was too late and i was already close to 10cm. but by that time, i was already surprised by so much of the standard procedure that i really shouldn´t have been worried. for example, marcelo wasn´t allowed in to keep me company, none of the staff introduced themselves to me, or explained what they were doing or what i was to expect, the preparatory enema was administered without explanation and so deftly that i didn´t quite understand what it was until i had to go to the toilet - thank god i was observing wide-eyed what they were doing to Bed A so i had a rough idea what i was meant to do.

a bit before they decided i was ripe and ready, the pain had already reached the level where i was asking what type of drugs were available. the nurse raised an eyebrow at me, and shook her head sympathetically: they don´t give any pain relief for natural births; ´it´s better for the baby´. screw the baby, i thought, i want the drugs! they got me pushing on the same bed (yes, with all the other staff still standing 2 metres away talking about their plans for the weekend), then standing up next to the bed, then on the bed again. all the while, the obstetrician kept sighing, rolling her eyes, and saying to no one in particular ´this one isn´t pushing right´. at the second or third push, i was already crying with the pain and effort, when she said (quite heartlessly, i thought), ´stop your complaining and just push´. if looks could kill, i swear i would have given her an experience to make the Saw movies seem like a stroll in the park. when i started screaming ´i can´t do this´, they made me walk about 10 metres (10 LONG metres) to a proper delivery room. i was the only woman giving birth at that moment, and the staff must´ve all been a bit bored because there were about 7 of them all standing there like they were at the movies, watching my bits. at one stage, when i was gasping throuh tearless cries, i told them i wanted a cesarian, (´just cut him out of me!´), making them all laugh. (unintentionally of course, i meant it in all seriousness.) when noah eventually popped out at 10.59am, i was so light-headed and floaty that the next 30 minutes of getting me cleaned up seemed like a dream.

even without being exhausted and slightly high from the delivery, you have to admit that there´s something quite surreal about having a total stranger with a needle between your legs, while the 6 or 7 other staff come in and out to have a look-see and comment on his stitches. it´s strange to think that i´d never seen a single one of them prior to entering the ward, and i´ll never see any of them again, yet they shared 45 of the most intense minutes of my life. i wish i could say that my histrionics were my tongue-in-cheek attempt to make fun of the birth scenes in movies, but the truth is, those 45 minutes of pushing were the most painful, traumatic thing that i´ve gone through. forget suffering a week-long fever alone in my tent, struggling up the Andes on my bike, or getting my hands burnt by sleety sub-zero winds... giving birth is one tough, and very humbling experience. when i got out of the hospital, one of the first thing i did was send an email to my aunts and my mum, saluting them for having gone through it, and i do the same here for every mother who reads this. it really doesn´t surprise me that without medical assistance, so many women die in childbirth, and if it weren´t for the fact that i had complete faith that ´if others can do it, so can i´, i would´ve been ready to give up after just a few pushes. as it is, so many tell me that i had ´an easy delivery´, or ´a short labour´, that i take my hat off to all the women who have had complications, long labours or large babies. noah was a slimy bundle of only 2.23kg and i found the process difficult - i don´t even want to imagine what giving birth to a 4kg baby would be like!

the next 24 hours left me even more bemused. since i was in a public hospital, and maternity care was free, i guess they just don´t have the personal attention that most would expect. i was only wheeled outside an hour after noah was born, meaning that marcelo had been waiting anxiously for almost 6 hours, not knowing what was going on, if our son had been born, or if i was ok. even in the post-natal ward, he was only allowed to stay for a short while until visiting hours were up, and then i had noah all to myself. afterwards, i learnt that in most hospitals (at least, in australia), they take the baby away to a nursery so that the mother can get some much-deserved rest, only bringing the bub to her when she asks for him/her, or when he/she needs a feed. but in this hospital, i had my tiny baby with me the whole time, with no guidance on what to do nor how to do it. i know it´s meant to be all basic and instinctual, but it´s still quite intimidating the first time you breastfeed, or when your baby starts crying and you don´t know why. the whole time, you´re exhausted and want to sleep, but are scared of accidentally squashing your baby if you do. i remember the first time i needed to go to the toilet and didn´t know if i should leave noah in the bed, or take him with me. or when i got out of bed to change his nappy for the first time, with blood from my stitches running down my legs. after a very long and almost sleepless night, i was then bombarded by a bunch of advice in rapid spanish concerning how to look after myself and noah when i got home, when i needed to go back for check-ups or vaccinations, and so on. too bloody exhausted from repeating ´spanish isn´t my first language, can you please speak slower?´, i eventually just nodded to everything, leaving it up to marcelo (the best partner and father i could ask for!) to ask for all the information when he went back to the hospital the next day. all i wanted when they eventually gave me the green light to go home, was a quick shower and a long, long sleep.

not that i got that luxury, with the little tyke asking for milk every few hours. ...

just a quick thank you then to jane, jac and 4yi for their invaluable support and advice in the first couple of weeks of noah´s little life. more photos in the ´oh baby, oh baby´ gallery...

the adventures of Mapuchino: the travelling fetus

yu-en-me — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:08:00 GMT

so ok, it´s been quite a while since i last wrote, but i´m going to unashamedly use my ´state´ as the excuse: i´m pregnant! and now that i´ve ruined all chances of building up the suspense, i guess i´ll just jump straight to the FAQs:

wtf! you´re not serious??? how far ´gone´ are you? and wait a minute, who´s the father?

Yes, i´m perfectly serious, i´m more than 6 months; the baby´s due mid-june. The father (and also, just in case you gossips are wondering, my true love, soulmate, life partner, or whatever other cliché you wish you apply) is chilean. His name´s marcelo and loves rockclimbing, being outside and cooking. Which is kinda perfect since i love travelling, being outside and eating.

but hang on, i thought you wanted to continue travelling the world for at least a few more (5, 10, 15...) years? isn´t a baby or a family going to put an end to that? and anyway, didn´t you always want to adopt?

Well no, not really. I´ve never believed that raising a family in the one spot is the only way to go. The importance of ´stability´ for a young family doesn´t refer to locational stability, but rather to the emotional and psychological. After all, let´s not forget that humans did start off as nomadic beings, and that such societies still exist today. If i´ve been travelling sola for so long, it´s not because i´m *against* the idea of forming a family with someone, but rather because i hadn´t met anyone who shared the same belief and strength for a travelling lifestyle to work even with kids. Not to mention someone who shared the same ideals and longterm plans, who both attracts and is attracted to me. (Lord, I´m sure some will agree that it´s hard enough to find that special someone in ´normal´ life!) To end all doubts, the baby *was* planned (with modern contraception, i´d feel a bit indignant if anyone thought me so irresponsible as to have an ´accident´!), and yes, we talked very extensively about how we want to raise it (and possibly others), what type of values we want to instil, alternative schooling methods, etc. Of course, a lot depends on the pup - dubbed ´the mapuchino´ following chile´s main indigenous tribe (mapuches) and my ´chino´ heritage. ´Home´-schooling is quite feasible for the primary years, and possibly even in the secondary, depending on how things go in terms of what he wants to do with his life, and so on. But one thing that we´re both agreed on: we feel that it´s much more important that he learn how to relate to the less fortunate as well as the wealthy, how to comfort someone who´s suffering, to know the difference between what´s ´right´ and ´wrong´ despite cultural or societal laws, and be sure of both his importance and insignificance in this big, big world of ours, than for him to get a triple master´s from Harvard.

Oh, and yes, i still want to adopt. But marcelo argued that it´s important to feel my own flesh and blood to realise the significance of adoption, and i think he´s got a point. The second will be an adoption, and I´ll love him/her as much as the first.

huh. and you don´t think it´s going to be a bit difficult, for example, economically? and what if there are health problems? isn´t it just a bit too dangerous?

ok, firstly the money issue: neither of us plan to buy a house any time soon, we have no interest in collecting the usual goods like cars, tvs, dvds, or paying monthly membership fees to gyms, clubs, etc. our main expense is the actual travelling (which is considerably reduced if you´re hitch-hiking or cycle-touring), accomodation (we don´t require 5-star hotels), and food (which we´re quite happy cooking ourselves, either in a public kitchen, say in a hostel, or on our very efficient camping stove). As we´ve both done individually before, we´re well aware of the need to work occasionally, and whenever we like a place, we´ll be thinking of stopping for a few months or a year, to save up some mula before heading on. it´s very possible, and very easy if you´re willing to give up certain luxuries.

now for health: babies are born all over the world, and most survive. The most concentrated parts of the world with high infant mortality rates are due to limited medical services, and/or because of the parents´ ignorance. I don´t consider marcelo and myself to be particularly ignorant, and that includes sussing out where we can and can´t safely go, where there are medical facilities, etc. For that very reason, we´ve been avoiding the malarial areas here in south america, and have been keeping a very close watch on the altitudes that i reach on our treks. To those who may confuse ´alternative´ with ´irresponsible´, and are wont to worry, I´d very firmly like to state that we are the LAST TWO PEOPLE who would put our child´s health at risk!

ok, ok, so you´ve thought it all out as much as ´planning´ is possible in life. but what was the rush?

There was no rush. It just seems like a rush because most of us are used to the idea of a few years of courtship, of saving up money to get a mortgage, of advancing far enough in our respective careers to feel secure, before being ´ready´ to have children. As i´ve already mentioned, we don´t plan on buying a mortgage, and although we both have tertiary education, there´s absolutely no interest in establishing ourselves in any ´career´. We both feel sure of ourselves as individuals, and that´s what lends strength to the relationship and makes us ´ready´ for a family. So in terms of a longer courtship: well, i know couples who break up after 20 years of blissful partnership, and couples where ´love at first sight´ actually is more than merely ´lust at first sight´. As a good friend once said to me ´in a couple, you´re NEVER sure how you´re going to feel about the other person in a year´s time´, and the thing is, that´s how i feel about life in general. So instead of asking ´what´s the rush?´, i guess we both just asked ourselves ´what are we waiting for?´ We´re both old enough to understand the meaning of dedication, commitment, and know that relationships need to be worked at. We realise that the affection that one feels for the other person after 1 year is different than after 5, or after 10. If a relationship doesn´t work, it´s got nothing to do with the length of courtship. But that´s irrelevant, since in our case, it´s going to work! ;)

ok, enough about the ´boring´ details - tell me more about what you´ve been doing since you last wrote about San Pedro! where´ve you been, and what´s the pregnancy been like so far?

wow, where can i start? it seems that the mapuchino inside of me has travelled more in his 26 weeks than i have in my whole life! A few people whom we´ve met along the way have expressed their surprise that we´re on the move, asking me if it isn´t a burden to travel pregnant. And while i´m not going to downplay the discomfort of morning sickness (which is SUCH a lie! it´s 24hour sickness!), or the nausea that i feel when we go along some of the bumpier roads of bolivia or peru, i can definitely say that with the support of marcelo, travelling pregnant is not as uncomfortable or limiting as one might imagine. I´ve been doing just as many several-day-hikes (if not more) than before, and despite the growing belly, am getting pretty ok at rockclimbing, if i do say so myself. I´ve reached my personal highest point so far at 5100 metres above sea level on a 5-day trek in peru, and we´ve lived through stormy nights with washed out campsites (one time, literally forced to take cover underneath a rock as the downpour washed a layer of loose silt and dirt over our entire tent!). We´ve trekked through the Colca Canyon, ~~arguably the deepest canyon on Earth~~ *(more than twice as deep as the States´ Grand Canyon, at over 3000m deep), have pitched our tent on a rockledge at 3000m.a.s.l. where it could be seen in a town 10km away, and will soon visit Chimborazo, whose summit is the furthest point from the Earth´s centre (ie, Earth´s closest point to the sun, 2300m further than the centre than Everest´s peak due Earth´s irregular shape). Sure i´m a bit slower than before, my compressed organs force me to go to the toilet every 15 minutes, and i´m nowhere near as fit as when i was cycle-touring, but taking it easy, and having my vegging out days when necessary mean that i´m enjoying this stage of my travels as much as ever.

*sorry, i stand corrected: there are far deeper canyons in the Tibet, Nepal, China areas. the Colca was considered the deepest in the Americas but i think on technicalities, the Cotohuasi beats it.

sounds like fun! so i guess we´ll see you in australia soon for the birth?

yep, it sure is fun, and nope, he´s almost definitely going to be south american. The initial idea was to keep travelling and have a natural birth by the roadside somewhere, with marcelo biting through the umbilical cord and all. Then we entertained the idea of giving birth while rockclimbing, so he can enter the world bungee-jumping with the cord. But our parents tut-tutted and have used their grandparental rights to persuade us to have him in a place with medical attention. The current toss-up is between ecuador and chile... but who knows, we still have 3 months to go, and we´re open to any suggestions for birthplaces and/or birthmethods!

(for more photos, see the pregnant travels gallery, or www.yuen82.myphotoalbum.com)

Gallery: pregnant travels

yu-en-me — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:33:00 GMT

Gallery: san pedro de atacama

yu-en-me — Fri, 5 Sep 2008 04:59:00 GMT

the jekyll-hyde syndrome of San Pedro de Atacama

yu-en-me — Fri, 5 Sep 2008 04:39:00 GMT

This entry will be more of interest to the people who have visited San Pedro de Atacama than anyone else, but i suspect that some of my observations would probably apply to a lot of touristy places. For those of you who don´t know the town (which, when i think about it, is the majority of my mailing list), you just need to google the name, and you´ll come up with a heap of sites offering excursions to the various places of interest around here. and there are quite a few of these places: el Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), el Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley), el Valle de los Dinosaurios (Valley of the Dinosaurs).... if you´re not such a fan of valleys (even with their spectacular rock, salt, and sand formations), you can always visit the Tatio Geysers at less than 100km from San Pedro, go sandboarding at the nearby dunes, practise a bit of rockclimbing and abseiling along the ravines 40km away, or go flamingo-watching at some of the high-altitude lagoons. And in the evening, after spending the whole day outdoors, you´re more than welcome to come visit me at Café Esquina where i´m working, for a refreshing juice or hot chocolate with pancakes. Or if you´re really buggered and i happen to have the evening off, you can ask about the relaxation massages that i´m offering at one of the hotels in the centre. With so many opportunities to go out exploring the surrounding areas, and close-to-perfect weather every day (blue skies, hardly a drop of rain), i was smitten. i arrived on a Sunday with the idea of spending only a few days visiting the main hotspots, but by Tuesday, i´d found myself a room, and on Wednesday, i´d already found a job to start paying the rent!

It all sounds just too perfect to be true, right? Well, in some ways, it is. The San Pedro that i´ve just described is the San Pedro that most tourists know and love after a few days absorbing the relaxing atmosphere of the town, and the spectacular scenery around. And this is the same San Pedro that very easily convinced me to leave my travels for a few months while saving some money before heading north. But within a couple of weeks, it soon became apparent that there´s another side to San Pedro that isn´t obvious to the passing tourist. At this point, it´s worth remembering that Chile is one of the most expensive countries in South America, and that San Pedro is easily the most expensive part of Chile (with maybe the exception of Torres del Paine National Park in the south). With the amount of tourists from Europe and the States, the town operates at seriously inflated rates. to give a quick example: you could get a decent 3-course meal in other parts of chile for 2,000 pesos, but the restaurants here average 5 to 6,000 pesos. it´s hardly surprising then that for many young chilenos, and not a few peruanos and bolivianos, this is the ideal place to earn some fast cash. But as the saying goes: easy come, easy goes.

With so many young people in such a tiny town (´young´ being early to late 20s, and ´tiny´ meaning that the town centre is really only one main street stretching over 500m), San Pedro has a reputation for being a party town. The young´uns don´t just come to work here; many come to forget personal problems, and the most common way to do this is to ´carretear´ (ie, to party). The local laws are such that licensed venues are only allowed to serve alcohol until 12.30am during the week, and until 2am on the weekends. Since the majority of the people who work here are in gastronomy or hospitality, this means that after finishing their shifts, everyone heads to the ´clandestinos´ (private parties). With pockets full of wages (most get paid in cash daily) and anxious to join the tourists who started their evenings much earlier, the drinking, smoking, snorting, and flirting is more intense here than in other places. Almost everyone smokes weed, and a large number powder their noses on a daily basis. Most will say that this is purely for recreational purposes, that they´re in control, but if this is the case, wow, I really need to revise my definition of ´control´. (yes, full-strength sarcasm is needed here.)

2 days ago, I moved house, mainly because I was finding it harder and harder to distance myself from the personal life of one of my roommates. His habits meant that even though he was earning the same amount as me, he owed several people money. Apart from that, he had pretty much done the tour of the town in terms of jobs – getting kicked out from several places because of his behaviour, and last I heard, he´d been kicked out not only from the place where we used to live, but also from the campground where he´d set up tent shortly after. For a short period a few weeks ago, my concern for him stressed me considerably (we did start off amicably as roommates after all), but eventually I opted for the tactic of blocking him completely from my emotional life. One friend is absolutely correct when she says: ´nothing´s going to stop him until he hits rock-bottom´. Ironically, my new roommate seems to be climbing up from his personal rock-bottom: a guy I used to work with when I first got here, who accompanied me to peru for pamela´s wedding (photos attached!), and who says that he´s trying to lead a tamer life over the last couple of months. Despite a few people cautioning me against living with him, I decided to follow my instincts. I figure that if he wants to sharehouse with someone like me, fully aware that the sex, drugs, and rock´n´roll lifestyle is not my thing, he really is making an effort to turn a new leaf, and deserves all the faith his friends can offer.

But I don´t want to sound negative; as I mentioned before, everything is more intensely felt here, possibly because the community is so small. Unlike my other pit-stops, where the local people are in their zone, the majority of people who come to work here are in a similar position to me in that they´re far from old friends and family. As a result, the contacts that are made here are that much more important. despite personal differences and our respective ups and downs, the affection between friends is, I believe, authentic. I´ve long given up the belief that true friendships are measured by the amount of time that the people have known each other, and depend more on the sincerity of wanting the best for the other person. I´ve been here for less than 3 months, but when I was ill a month ago, I was so touched by the surprise visits to my room to see if I needed anything, to keep me company for a short while, or to make me a hot honey and lemon tea. And when I recently had problems with a rental truck broken down in the mountains, I felt honoured to have so many people calling their contacts to see if they could help. I´m fully conscious of the fact that when I eventually leave this town, I´ll probably never see the majority of these people again, … and maybe it´s because of this that each day I have to remind myself to follow my intuition and make the most of every personal contact, and every day that i spend here. San Pedro is a town with an amazing amount of energy, and how one fares here is knowing (or in my case, learning) to harness this energy and make it work in positive ways.

(and if all of this sounds too airy-fairy for you, check out some of the photos in the san pedro gallery - this place is just too beautiful to be true...)

Gallery: a period of firsts

yu-en-me — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:51:00 GMT

a period of firsts

yu-en-me — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:01:00 GMT

The 2 months since leaving Santiago have been even more filled than normal. Never have i touched so many of my personal limits in such a short amount of time, nor been through so many new experiences. As a result, even though i say this with (boring) frequency, i´m quite happy to say it again: i´ve never felt so alive!

After exactly 4 weeks relaxing (read: being a complete bum) in santiago, catching up with old friends, and making new ones (amongst whom my first danish friends), it was with surpising relief that i left and could cycle daily again. I think the reason why i like travelling on my bike so much is that i´ve never been a very sporty person. I don´t come from a sporty family, i really *really* sucked at sports at school, and until a few years ago, if i did anything remotely physical, it was because i knew it was good for my health rather than genuinely enjoying it. But there´s something different about cycle-touring: when the sun´s shining, there´s little wind, and i´m surrounded by amazing scenery, the kilometres and hours fly by without my even realising it. When i think about the pitifully slow first few days in uruguay, i can´t help but smile at the effort it took to cover a few millimetres on my map. Now, i can look at the same map and actually see the progress i´ve made between towns (even despite the sections where i hitched or took a train)... – and all this with the simple repetition of pushing one pedal after the other! Amazing! Some days have been so perfect that i dare admit tearing up with happiness (but no tears were actually shed of course; i´m not that much of a pansy ;) ..

But i digress with the sentamentalism: i was talking about new experiences. I paraglided for the first time near Córdoba (the geographic heart of argentina), where the sierras are a dream for hangliders and paragliders alike. Talking to a few of them was an introduction to a completely unknown community to me until then. they´re all passionate about flying, and to see them anxiously watching the wind indicators before catching the perfect gust to take off, then watching as they spiralled around and played with the winds, was a real delight. One guy (retired) loves it so much that he now lives in a campervan at the take-off site, so that as soon as the winds are right, he can just fly off. And when the winds are right, they´re right: it´s apparently no big deal to be gliding in the air for several hours on end, and still be able to land at the same take-off site (ie, not losing altitude and landing at a site much further away, and having to walk back to his home). Although i prefer the intense adrenaline rush of other activities (such as bungee jumping, or hopefully one day, skydiving or parachuting), there´s definitely a certain peace in gliding that i can appreciate. When i took off (tandem), my instructor manoeuvred us so that we were playing with birds flying nearby, and in that moment, the expression ´free as a bird´ really summed it up!

Heading further north with the intention of spending more time in bolivia, i climbed to the highest point that i´ve reached on my bike – 3780masl. (Not that high compared to many cyclists whom i´ve met, but like i said, i´m not a sportsperson...) The thing that surprised me was how much i had to push my lungs. I´ve never been too badly affected by altitude, - perhaps a bit of shortness of breath when in bolivia last year, accompanied by lethargy (but i like bumming around so much anyway that i can´t really blame the laziness on altitude), - but there were a few short spans (uphill, dirt road, strong headwind,) when the thinness of the air really made itself felt. I can´t begin to explain how strange it was for me to be sucking as much air into my lungs as i could, and still feel as if i were suffocating... the only comparison i can draw (and i´m sure we´ve all had this) is the pining feeling you have when you desperately want someone´s affection, but they don´t feel the same way. The desperation and the sheer need for oxygen is almost too much: your diaphragm is crying out ´i´m trying as hard as i can!´, you feel like you´re dying, and you can´t do anything about it. After that first extreme bout of exertion, i made sure i took it easy, but even with care, i could feel my lungs straining the higher up i got.

And if that wasn´t enough for my body, there was my dramatic adventure as i crossed the andes again to the town of San Pedro de Atacama (where i am now), in Chile. The highest part of the pass commonly used is at roughly 4800masl, and boy, is it cold up there. especially when you´re hitching across and you get caught in a freak snowstorm, are consequently forced to turn back, and of course, since the truckdriver who picked you up is carrying a wide load, the truck almost turns over as he struggles for almost half an hour to do a u-turn, and then you get stuck in a snowdrift, unable to move... yeah, that´s when you realise that it really is cold up there. we were stuck for 3 days and 2 nights, with no cars passing by to at least alert the authorities since, we were later to find out, a paraguayan truck had crashed further up the road and the pass was closed. The 2nd night, the thermometer showed minus 22 degrees. Even though there were our 2 human bodies radiating heat in the small truck cabin, all the water we had we had froze during the night. and the next day, even though the snow had subsided enough for us to theoretically be able to come down off the pass, we woke to find the petrol tank completely frozen through. we spent more than 5 hours heating near-frozen water and pouring the result on the petrol tank, with very little effect. jogging my physics memory, i`m quite sure that with every 1000m rise in altitude, the boiling temperature of water decreases by 10 degrees, so admittedly the boiling water was not that hot at less than 60 degrees. (Until then, this had only been a mild pain in the arse (just an itchy bottom actually) when i´d been trying to cook onions up high – i think you could boil them for half an hour, and they´d still be crunchy.) we were close to running out of food the first day, but that wasn´t too drastic. then we ran out of water, and that was a little more serious, so i had to run about a kilometre to a nearby mountain stream to fill up. with the cold strong winds that day (easily surpassing 70kph), the water would freeze as it was being poured into the bottles, and even though i was easily buffeted towards the stream, it was a real struggle fighting against the current back towards the truck. Obviously, i felt the cold. But what really surprised me was what happened to my hands over the next few weeks (the only exposed part of me apart from my face): they turned completely black. During the first few days after we eventually got down from the mountain, i thought my skin was cracking and bleeding due to the aridity – the atacama desert is the driest in the world. But when the skin started to harden and turn black, I realised that the intensity of the cold was enough for the skin to be ´burnt´ off the back of my hands. However, since i was only exposed for a short time, the ´trauma´ was superficial enough, in the moment, for me not to experience traditional frostbite (where you lose sensation, and sometimes the digits or limbs themselves), for which i´m very grateful!

But getting back to our stuck-up-in-the-middle-of-nowhere ordeal: we then ran out of petrol for my stove, so we could no longer heat water to pour on the petrol tank. Relying on a lot of swearing and not a small amount of luck that the sun kept shining, enough of the petrol melted to be able to head back down the mountain late that afternoon. The argentine border police were nice enough to give us a hot shower (ahhhhh) and a hot meal (ohhhh), and the pass was clear enough the next day for us to finally cross over to chile. For the first time in my passport, there´s a period of 4 days where i´m in no man´s land – officially leaving argentine soil on the 11th of june, and only arriving in chile on the 15th of june.

So after such a full couple of months of new experiences and exciting adventure, i was ready to chill out for a while. ´for a while´ initially meant a few days, while i checked out the main hotspots around here. but i fell instantly in love with the scenery and setting of the town. Words like ´stunning´, ´spectacular´, and ´amazing´ don´t mean anything, and the photos that i´ll soon put up don´t do the area justice. Combine this with the amount of signs i saw up for work opportunities, and the thought that i would be heading north to countries where i would feel uncomfortable taking jobs from the locals (such as bolivia), ´for a while´ has now turned to at least a few months, and very possibly until march of next year. ...but that´s for another entry...

(more photos in ´period of firsts´ gallery)

creature comforts and female fussing

yu-en-me — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:59:00 GMT

this one is more for my girlfriends out there who´ll actually understand where i´m coming from, instead of rolling their eyes the way most of my guy friends would. i was meant to leave santiago today, but i´m still here, lounging on the sofa. La Ramona sits impatiently in the corner of the apartment, her tyres pumped to the full, her new rear brakes gleaming, just dying to get my backpack and paniers on her rack and hit the road. and even though i share her enthusiasm, there´s a certain level of can´t-be-arsedness to the way i´m approaching my departure.

once i actually get going, i know that i´m going to be excited by the little details of everyday life, but for now, i can´t help already missing some of the creature comforts of vivi´s very liveable house. these include (and i already feel like such a wuss thinking about how quickly these come to mind):

- having hot water with the turn of a tap. as much as i love washing in streams/lakes in summertime, it´s a pain in the arse feeling cold, tired, and dirty at the end of the day, and having to choose between having a cold dip, heating water specifically to wash, or just staying smelly.

- having a proper table to chop vegies without worrying that half of it is going to fall in the dirt, and that i´m going to have a slightly pebbly meal with earthy overtones.

- having a well-equipped kitchen and large stove where i can actually prepare the sauce separately from the pasta, have a different pot bubbling away with the starter soup, and a large bowl to toss a side salad. as opposed to chucking everything into the only pot i have and boiling the sh!t out of it (the tried-but-true technique that i´m assuming most of us learn in our early 20s, juggling assignments, 3 jobs, and a student social life)

- having a fridge or at least cool cupboard where you can keep perishables, instead of having to buy just half a carrot, one small capsicum, a teeny onion, and 4 string beans, and 1 bread roll, because i know that if i get any more, it´s just going to get squashed or go funky. (funky bad, not start whipping out john travolta moves in my backpack. although that´s an image that´ll keep me entertained for a while now...)

- washing the dishes with a sponge instead of relying on my bare fingers and/or dirt

- having enough clothes (again, vivi´s wonderful hospitality must be noted) to not have to wash every night if i want decent-smelling clothes to put on my back, so that i don´t scare people off when i go into the panadería to buy my one bread roll

most of these things are practical things, and not surprisingly to do with food (those who know and/or have lived with me will understand). but there´s another issue that occasionally wakes to bite me on the bum before i put it to sleep again: my feminity.

the thing is, i´m not a girly girl by nature. i´ve been accused by previous partners of having more testosterone than them - i´m guessing they meant personality, although the hairy chest, bulging adam´s apple, and deep voice may have thrown them, - and my (rather girly) mum has long ago given up on getting me to pay more attention to my beauty ´regime´. it´s true that i generally prefer to splash cold water on my face in the morning, tie up my usually knotted hair and get on with the business of enjoying the journey. but every now and then, i DO want to feel like a girl. for instance, i love using vivi´s nice big brush to do my hair here. the piddly one i´ve got gets points for size and waterproof-ity but jeez, does it lack in luxury. just once in a while on the road, i want to be able to toss my head like a Pantene model and have my ebony locks fall sensually around my shoulders. because even though i´m frequently encouraged by comments of ´wow, you´re so brave´, or ´it´s great what you´re doing´, it would be nice to be able to turn a fella´s head because i´m *purty*, and not because there´s a scruffy girl riding past with holes in her clothes, grease stains on her legs, and grass sticking out of her hair. ´what gives?´ some might think, is this really that important? well, no, in the whole scheme of things. but like i said at the start, this is one for the girls, because ANY girl will understand what i mean when i say that i´m going to miss feeling pretty.

*sigh* i feel so much better now. with that little bout of girly hysteria off my chest, i can now go back to packing my stuff, and getting excited about the stuff that really matters!

Gallery: heading to santiago

yu-en-me — Wed, 7 May 2008 05:35:00 GMT

crossing the andes, bridesmaiding a wedding, and disco-dancing the night away

yu-en-me — Wed, 7 May 2008 05:01:00 GMT

pride is a funny thing. a few weeks ago, i didn´t really care that many people had cycled across the andes before me, nor that many of these many people had done it at much higher altitudes than the crossing i chose. i didn´t care that there was a guy working at the top who lived at the bottom, who cycled the 81km-long 1300m climb every fortnight when he started his 7-for-7 shifts (7 days working for 7 days rest). i was quite happy ignoring the fact that the 3km tunnel that was inaugurated at the top in 1980 meant that technically i didn´t go *over* the mountains, but rather *through* them, and unless anyone phrased the question just so, i certainly didn´t dwell on the fact that i got off my bike and walked almost 3km when the wind turned on me. i was just so proud that i´d crossed THE andes using nothing more than the pumping of my little legs, - after all, 6 months ago, i would never have thought that i would be doing this.

but like i said, pride is a funny thing. i realise that my sense of achievement is quite superficial, and if i think about it, i never really pushed myself beyond my comfort zone. i admit that i was very grumpy when the wind turned on me, and close to tears at the thought of spending a night outside in minus-5-degree conditions after a long day of cycling, but in terms of testing my physical limits, i was woefully tame. i heard somewhere (probably on the ubiquitous Discovery Channel, which incidentally is what everyone seems to cite when they want to lend weight to their argument) that the human body is physically at its peak around 25 years old. initially i thought, wow, from now on it´s just downhill for me. but from a different angle, this also means that from now on, every new year, month, day is going to be the best time of my life to do stuff - and stuff that i can really be proud of.

ironically enough, the last few weeks here in santiago have been very lazy ones. to cut myself some slack though, this is exactly what i needed. after an extensive patch of mostly being by myself (occasionally meeting up with friends, or spending time with people met on the road, but generally travelling by myself), it´s good to be around people 24/7 again. my guard is constantly up while on my own, and it´s such a relief to be able to let that down with loved ones: talking shite late at night with vivi, having a drink with césar after work, meeting pamela´s ´family´ here in chile*. then there´s all the commonplace stuff that i hadn´t realised i´d missed: laughing until it hurts at really stupid stuff, that tingly feeling when you´re being wooed, coming home after a night out completely exhausted but utterly happy. so now with my batteries recharged, i´m ready to head north to my next stop: pame´s wedding in peru.

the honour of being asked to be one of her bridesmaids is accentuated by the fact that in the last few months, 5 friends have announced their engagement, and a couple-friends have given birth to a baby girl. i´m actually quite sad that i can´t be at the various celebrations, and that i haven´t been able to get to know (in some cases, meet) the fiancé(e)s/baby that my friends are going to be spending the rest of their lives with. so when something important comes up that i can actually be a part of, it means quite a lot to me, such as meeting peter*´s chilean girlfriend francisca a few weeks ago, or pamela´s lima wedding in july. i´m getting quite swept up with her excitement as she describes the plans, and my participation in it is most definitely dedicated to rene, wendy, keith, imogen+simon, nicole, and hervé+annabel. far from sight does *not* mean far from thoughts!

(*quick memory check: the 3 people with whom i bonded most while i was here in 2006 - vivi: ex-housemate, césar: ex-boss, pame: ex-workmate. and peter´s the dutch dude i went cycling with for 10 days in salta 2007)

so that´s the fairly boring update for now. to those who wanted exciting living-on-the-edge stories: i promise i´ll work on that over the next few weeks...

(a few more photos in ´heading to santiago´ gallery, and even more at www.yuen82.myphotoalbum.com)

fear and loathing in los viajes

yu-en-me — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:02:00 GMT

i know i´m not the only one who thinks that there´s something deliciously fun about playing with fear, but most of the things that have scared me until now have been quite trivial. for example, jumping off the high tower in my primary school playground, volunteering my opinion in a classroom debate at uni, or even something as non-threatening as starting kung fu lessons or getting a motorbike learners´ permit, - all these induced more panic in me than most would imagine. some may be surprised to hear this, since my anxiety doesn´t necessarily always show on the outside, but believe you me, if there´s one thing i´m good at, it´s faking confidence. i should add that i firmly believe that faking most sentiments enough will eventually lead to feeling then sincerely, so eventually, the confidence is as genuine as if i´d started out with it. in situations such as those described above, i actively remind myself that the only real reason to be scared is that i´m doing something new and don´t know how it´ll turn out.

i guess this is quite natural, this fear of the unfamiliar. whenever people ask me if i´m not scared about X, (let X be freedom camping, visiting a country with a certain reputation, etc,) it´s usually the case that they haven´t actually experienced anything remotely connected to X, and have allowed themselves to be influenced by their melodramatic imaginations. before setting off cycling, for instance, i was *ridiculously* scared of not having the physical strength, or of being stranded on a deserted road if something happened. fortunately, in most cases, the rational side of me takes charge when these types of thoughts stop being a mere nuisance, and actually start preventing me from doing what i want. if i lack the strength to continue, i get off the bike and walk, or i set up camp and have a rest day. if something happens to the bike (as it did 2 weeks ago, when my ignorance and a week of rain (imagine a whole lot of mud and loose stones on the road) combined to give me skewed gears, a misaligned wheel, and problems which i don´t even have the bike-vocabulary to describe), i hitch to the nearest town and get it fixed. it might be a pain in the arse, but it´s definitely not the end of the world. in fact, it´s usually a blessing in disguise, since i end up meeting people and experiencing things that i normally wouldn´t have. recently, however, i´ve found it particularly hard to overcome certain fears.

it would be statistically illogical to assume that i could spend so much time frolicking around having positive experiences 100% of the time, and it shouldn´t be a surprise to learn that i´ve had a few close calls and been in situations where i´ve felt out of my depth. until now, thank the powers above, i´ve felt sure enough of myself to be able get out of those situations, but a recent struggle has mentally(?emotionally?) disarmed me more than i´d like, and left me feeling more vulnerable than is comfortable for someone travelling alone. this bothers me a lot. as you all already know, one of the most important aspects of my wandering around is getting to know people from all walks of life. in order to do this, one obviously has to be open to striking up conversation with strangers, but unfortunately i´m finding this a lot harder to do now. if i´m in a group, it´s fine, but as soon as there´s one-on-one conversation, i get uncomfortably skittish. it´s strange how my mind registers the safety of these situations but can´t control my heart from pounding that little bit faster.

i regret to say that there´s no real point to this entry. i waited quite a while before finally deciding to write something today, thinking that maybe with time, some sort of magic solution would be delivered to my tentdoor. if we dig deep into the D&M-yin-yang-cosmic-balance-universal-energy tub, i guess i could say that i did find some sort of answer: they say that the best thing to do when you fall off a horse is to get right back on it, and that´s what i´ve tried/am trying to do. in the last 5 weeks, i´ve met so many amazing people that i´m starting to think that maybe the price of having incredible (in a good way) encounters is having the odd incredible (in a bad way) one too. in the meantime, i just have to concentrate on the thrills that i get knowing that in a month´s time, i´ll be attempting to cross the Andes on my bike! (yeah peter, i know you´ve been there, done that, but please, indulge me the excitement!)

(recent photos: see ´friends´ gallery)

something new from someone old

yu-en-me — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:41:00 GMT

there´s a scene in ´Owning Mahowny´, a more or less biopic movie released in 2003 about a gambling addict, which i´m constantly reminded of whenever i´m exceedingly happy. a psychologist is asking the title character about how he rates the thrill he got from gambling, on a scale of 1 to 100. ´100,´ says Mahowny.

´and what about the biggest thrill you´ve ever had outside of gambling?´

after a reluctant pause: ´20´.

it´s really hard to describe how high i get when i´m on the move, because it makes it sound like i´m unhappy when i´m in the one place, when this is not necessarily the case. but my level of contentment is usually on a comfortable 20, whereas when i´m drunk on sheer life (usually on the move), i´m hitting 100, and hitting it quite frequently!

upon arriving on south american turf after what seemed like ages, i bought myself a bicycle pronto, and set off cycling around uruguay. after more than 3 months with friends and family, i´m really enjoying having a bit of time to myself. (and again, i must stress that i really enjoyed time back ´home´ - but as i´m sure you´ll all agree, there´s nothing quite like having the freedom to do whatever you want, go wherever you want, whenever you want..) with nothing but the feeling of slicing through the air, cows mooing in the distance, and the occasional roadkill artwork, it´s absolute bliss to be in the roads for most of the day. i was mildly disappointed at the start to find that i was only averaging about 50km a day, but then i realised that initially, i´d been going through hilly terrain, with constant headwinds, and - more importantly, - suffering 42+degree days. when the minor heatwave passed, i settled into a more comfortable routine of pedalling 50km in the morning, having lunch and a siesta in the afternoon, and riding another 2 or 3 hours in the evening before setting up camp. i´m like those girls you see in tampon ads all over the world - so carefree and happy that you´re sure they´re on some sort of chemical mix!

i´m about to leave the town of Minas (population 35,000) a fairly large town by uruguayan standards (country population: 3.5million). locally, uruguay is best known for its golden beaches but even these don´t really put the country on the tourist map, what with brasil beckoning just next door. the tourism that does exist is generated by people from buenos aires hopping over the river Plata to the more accessible beaches over here. (from buenos aires, the closest argentine beach town is a few hundred kms away - or several hours in a bus, - whereas you could be on a beach in uruguay in less than an hour.) it´s considered pretty special to have visitors from montevideo, or from argentina, but people from overseas? forget about it! there aren´t even any youth hostels here, since most of the outsiders would either only come to Minas to visit family, or would only spend the day in town. when i first arrived, i asked a lady manning an ´alfajor´ stall (local delicacies filled with sugary goodness) if there was an area where i could set up my tent for the night, but after chatting for a bit, Ruth insisted that i come and stay at her place with her family.

even though the house is ´in town´ (as opposed to out in the country), there´s a small lot across the road where Horacio (Ruth´s partner) keeps his sheep, and a watching sheepdog. next door, the neighbour keeps his 4 racehorses, and from ´my´ room in the loft, i can hear them snorting and stamping as they settle down for the night, or in the morning when the chooks start their daily activity of clucking, pecking at the ground, and annoying the dogs. the other day, i spent the whole afternoon with Horacio´s 19-year-old twin girls, Leticia and Dahiana, and a couple of their friends: 21yo Paola, and 18yo Jimena and her 2yo daughter Sofía. by the standards that i´ve grown up with, here, the girls have their kids young. 16yo mothers are quite common, and if you´re pregnant for the first time at 25, you´re old. but make no mistake: this is not a picture of provincial ignorance. unlike some communities, where this could be seen as a sign of poverty, or a lack of education, having kids young is the preferred path for most of these independent women. marriage is also less and less common, since they´re more likely to have a job to look after themselves, and don´t need to depend financially on a guy.

having spent a few days being poked and prodded by the twins and their friends, and satisfying their curiosity about what exactly i´m doing, i quickly realised that my lifestyle is as strange for them as theirs is for me. i thought they were kidding when they asked me, ´but aren´t you scared of getting lost?´ because that´s exactly what makes this so addictive for me: getting to know the unknown. all those ´first times´ that i treasure and have yet to live! even though i can´t wait for the day when i reach my 10,000th kilometre and can feel more in control of my bike and how i´m going, i´m relishing the novelty of it for now. even when an experience is no longer new, it´s great to be able to share first times with others. for example, shortly before leaving new zealand last month, we all set off for a day trek to mt arthur (near nelson, south island), but the car broke down halfway up the mountain. despite the resultant hassle of having to get the car towed, etc, alex and hamish, 9 and 11yo respectively, were able to reflect on the day with youthful good humour, ticking off their fingers ´today, we rode in the back of a ute for the first time, we hitchhiked for the first time...!´ obviously, the older you get, the first times are less frequent, and further between , but that´s not to say that they don´t exist. last week, a random stranger saw me resting in a plaza with my bike, and started talking animatedly about a new inflatable camping mattress he´d just bought only minutes before. he´d never set off on a random trip, and was excited about the prospect of being able to do so with the new mattress. within the hour, we´d decided to meet up again in a couple of weeks for an impromptu weekend trip to Gualeguaychú (carnaval capital of argentina)! when i realised that the twins were asking me seriously if i wasn´t scared of losing my way, i had to reassure them that that´s exactly what i loved. ´that´s the whole point!´ i said with a huge grin. ´finding out what surprises lie around the corner! what new friends you´ll make, what new things you´ll discover!´

for more photos, see ´first times´ gallery (i´ll be adding more soon)

Gallery: first times

yu-en-me — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:32:00 GMT

'it's not you; it's me' (aka: the real reason why i'm leaving)

yu-en-me — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 15:15:00 GMT

On all of the previous occasions that I’ve left Melbourne to go travelling, it was always the lure of unknown places that motivated me. Never (and this is worth repeating: NEVER) have I left as a way to ‘escape’ or because I wanted to get away from something. If anything, that was one of the only downfalls to going away: missing home. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me after a couple of months that I was so desperate to leave again, and even more of a surprise was the reason: that I was no longer comfortable at home.

When I first got back, I felt incredibly guilty each time I went out. Spending AU$2.50 on a coffee was a great extravagance in itself, not to mention whole meals or tickets to see things. It was a real effort to try and enjoy simple things for what they were without the guilt of constantly thinking ‘this would be worth X in country Y’. Unfortunately for me, the ‘simple’ pleasures quickly led to higher expectations. On one of my last nights out before I left Melbourne, I was much happier having an interesting chat for a few hours on the footpath outside the Arts Centre, than during the show that we’d just been to see (and that’s not to say that the show wasn’t fantastic). After all, the only thing I really wanted was to spend quality time with my friends again. But it was during that late-night chat that I realised that my idea of ‘quality time’ was shifting. We’d just witnessed a minor drunken altercation on the road, and a good friend turned to me and said ‘I bet that’s why you can’t wait to get away’, not realising that our small tiff earlier on (when it seemed we might miss the show) was more the reason. The whole purpose of going out that night, in my mind, was to see her - with or without the show, - and I began wondering if maybe, with all the wonderful things on offer, I was starting to forget that.

I think if we stop to think about it, most of us would be quite happy to sit on the grass in the sun for a few hours with a friend, or lounge around at home with nothing more than a glass of water and great conversation. My problem was that I was getting used to how easy life is, and starting to take it for granted. Let’s face it: unless you were born with only two limbs, no opposable thumbs and a sensory impairment, life is good in most developed countries. In Melbourne, there are jobs everywhere if you’re not fussy, the healthcare is fantastic, and your rights are protected by almost every union or body imaginable. And then there’s all the *stuff* you can buy; go to any shopping centre or hop on the internet, and you’re pretty much guaranteed anything you could possibly need or want. Actually no, I’ll revise that last sentence, and take out the word ‘want’. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it, that the more you have, the more you want? And it’s mind-boggling how quickly what you want makes the leap to what you think you need!

Essentially, that’s why I was so happy to get out of Australia and am so eager to leave New Zealand (where I am now). Call me chicken or weak, but I suspect that I don’t have the strength to live by my principles in such an easy environment. I really admire a couple of my friends who can maintain vegan lifestyles, not get caught up in materialistic wants, and work in areas which they believe in and which benefit society. I feel like in the three months back in Australasia, I spent and consumed more than I did in one year away, when I was more conscious of what I was doing. Melbourne may be far from dangerous when it comes to economic strife, personal safety, or sticky political situations, but it’s a risky place for my personal values. Cowardly as it may seem, I sure as hell don’t want to test how far I could stray from my beliefs by staying longer in a place where temptations are everywhere. While I'm really glad to have had the opportunity to see friends and family again, I leave feeling even more convinced that I'm doing the right thing for me. If I'm in a place where I can’t get a great camera with fantastic functions, and where pretty headscarves aren’t on sale for $30 each, then I'm not going to waste time wondering if I want or need them, right? Out of sight really is out of mind!

Gallery: time off

yu-en-me — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:53:00 GMT

visiting home

homeward bound: Dorothy of Oz meets Avril of Angst

yu-en-me — Tue, 9 Oct 2007 17:35:00 GMT

back in may, when i first started revealing to close friends that i was going back to melbourne in november, i was so chuffed by the reciprocated enthusiasm: 'i can't wait to see you! we have so much to catch up on!' but as the months rolled by, i was surprised by the increasing amount of anxiety i felt about my return. in movieland, these few months would be compressed into 10 seconds: the ang lee of my life would have had me wandering in a random city, smiling dreamily at the ground thinking of everything i'd do back home, when suddenly i would stop and raise my face as the camera zooms in on me from above, highlighting the widening eyes indicating that reality had hit. 'can't wait to see you; so much to catch up on' - f#ck! that's a lot of pressure! would everyone expect me to be like speedy gonzales? would i be judged by not being up to date on the state of the property market in the south eastern suburbs?

such was the nature of my thoughts as i explored high altitude peruvian and bolivian towns, the lack of oxygen doing nothing but fuel my nervy state. i was slightly comforted by knowing that my worry was normal; lots of people seem to get stressed about reuniting with friends/family, and i've heard not a few 'what have i done?'-style laments when plane tickets are paid for and realisation sets in. slightly comforted, but not enough. my bandaid personality has always been in the quick-rip category rather than the slow-and-careful-peel, so halfway through yet another restless night of worrying (this time: 'what if i don't join facebook?, will i have no more friends in australia?'), i thought screw it, i'm not going to wait for the departure date to come to me, i'm going to go to it.

within a week, i'd left the shores of lake titicaca, was scammed crossing the bolivian/argentine border (including 20 minutes' worth of tv-like drama when 3 stern police officers got on the bus on a coke raid), waited 14 hours between flights in auckland's airport, 3 hours at sydney's airport, and arrived in melbourne at midnight a week after i'd made the mohammed/mountain-esque resolve.

it's nice being home. everything's so clean, familiar, safe, clean, convenient, new, clean, and user-friendly. and everyone's so clean, polite, friendly, clean, enthusiastic, clean, and willing to help. it's all just so nice, and i definitely understand why almost all visitors here, once they've been through melbourne, count it as one of their favourite places in australia. i regret that i can't rediscover melbourne's music scene with 24-hour-party-nico, that i couldn't take el colo-loco to any fringe festival shows, that i can't invite funky chicken patty to tour my favourite eating spots, nor trail my guachita vivita on a shopping spree down bridge road, - not to mention all the other people i've met along the way. yeah, miss dorothy was right; there really is no place like home. but i have to say that this time, i'm giving my vote to canadian philosopher, avril lavigne, when she says 'it's amazing what a couple of years can do'.

it would be hard to pinpoint specific changes in the essence of melbourne life, or any particular change in me, but somehow things have all mixed and reacted together, with the result being that not only have lots of things surprised me, but i've been surprised by the fact that i've been surprised. for example, - and there's no exaggerating here, - i was honestly thrown off by the fact that the toilets at auckland's airport were clean, well-supplied, and you could flush toilet paper down without clogging the pipes. i even took some extra toilet paper for my personal stash for future use, and only realised much later (when i got to sydney's airport, and stole more paper), that i could expect all public toilets from here on to be regularly cleaned and supplies topped up. and i wouldn't even have to make sure i had loose change to tip the person doing it.

other things wowing me include how much the men's health and beauty market has exploded, the intensity of the government campaign on crystal meth, the amount of support for the breast cancer foundation (although i only just realised that there was a designated breast cancer month), how new all the cars i see are, and also how many more cyclists there are on the roads. i'm still a bit bewildered about how self-conscious i feel surrounded by so many groomed, toned, and fragrant people, all with even teeth and smooth hands. it might sound like i'm blowing this out of proportion, but if you'd gone so long without plucking your eyebrows, used cooking oil as moisturiser, and washed only when the opportunity arose (far less frequent than you'd want), you'd also feel you were at a fancy-dress party when out and about looking 'presentable'.

i haven't really had much interest in going back to my former behaviour - buying music and clothes impulsively, for instance. And even though i'm sincerely happy for the friends who are settling down with mortgages, baby ideas, and few-week holiday plans for the future, i guess i'm reassured that the comfortable deal that i could have here in melbourne, as great as it is, isn't (yet? ever?) enough to pull me back. in a somewhat detached way, i'm quite curious to see how long these feelings will last, and whether my personal behaviour will change as 3 weeks 'back home' turn into 3 months. i guess that'll be for next time though; stay tuned.

ps. despite myself, i ended up joining facebook, too insecure to experiment with the consequences of non-membership. i wonder what that says about me and the way we communicate now...

pps. i'm now showering (almost) daily, and my legs are (kind of) smooth. just so my melbourne friends know that noseplugs and sunglasses won't be (technically) necessary when we catch up.

ppps. i've just realised that i hadn't given the full story of my temporary return. one of my cousins is getting married in malaysia, a great pretext to come back to this corner of the world to enjoy tim tams and kath & kim, preferably at the same time. after a fortnight in malaysia/thailand, i'll be back in australia mid-november, before using my one-way ticket out of the country 2 months from now. i'm going back to south america, because there're some unfinished dreams that i'd like to.. well, finish. but i can't say more on that because i'll jinx myself. so in the meantime, please be warned that i'll continue to send these long-winded emails at semi-regular intervals.

on debate: ´that moral outrage has a place in the world´

yu-en-me — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 17:39:00 GMT

i remember in year 8, when we were taught about female circumcision in some parts of africa, i started thinking for the first time about cultural differences, and where we should draw the line between ignorance and acceptance of respective social customs. although there´s much that i embrace in the cultures that i experience, there are of course occasional situations where i disagree. in such cases, when it comes to personal discomfort and/or safety, i´m quite happy to voice my opinion: on more than one occasion, i´ve now had to say to overeager men ´have you no shame!? would you be happy if someone tried that on your sister, or girlfriend, or mother?´ .. or even though i was initially indignant by how much some people try to take advantage of tourists, i´ve now learnt to laugh off preposterous suggestions. (for example, it´s not uncommon for tourists to be offered a taxi ride for 40soles, when the same route on a public bus costs only 2soles! woe to the unsuspecting, unexperienced, non-spanish-speaking traveller...). but there are other times, when i´m not so sure as to what i should do or say, - or even feel.

recently, i stayed a couple of days in the small town of Santa Teresa, in the restaurant of a newly made friend, Elena. the same age as me (24yo), she´d had her son at 19yo, and fully regrets her naivety at the time. now, even though she lives with the father of the child, they´re no longer together as a couple, but stay together in order to be able to provide for the boy. if she could go to another country to earn more money for him, she would, but she´s also apprehensive that the boy will grow up thinking ´my mum abandoned me´. each time she sees a young couple fooling around (sometimes as young as 13yo), she feels angry that they don´t realise the immensity of having children at such a tender age, and often tells them about her experience. i was happy at least that she´s using her story to better the lives of others, but it was eye-opening to hear some of the beliefs that she held on to. for example, she´d been recommended a remedy for her son, suffering from some kind of pulmonic problem: toasting crickets and making a tea for him to drink. or telling me that i shouldn´t be showering or bathing myself when i had my period: the body´s exposure to water in such a way would create internal buildup impeding bloodflow, and would give me cysts.. just like had happened to her cousin. feeling too surprised in the moment to do otherwise, i just nodded, um-ed and ah-ed at her advice. how convincing would i have been to tell her that such beliefs are old wives´ tales, and besides, would i have been doing the right thing to ´enlighten´ her (how condescending that sounds!) on current medical facts?

i´m still confused when i think that i almost gave up the chance to see machu picchu, all for the sake of an open-faced woman named julia. her story: 28 members of her family were killed in the terrorist attacks in 1989 in Ayacucho, leaving her with no blood relatives, so she came to Cuzco to form a new family. 2 years ago, her husband was killed in a bus accident, leaving her pregnant with her 6th child, and now, she sells paintings in Cuzco´s central Plaza de Armas in order to maintain her young family (youngest now 2yo, oldest 13yo). she pays 300soles a month (roughly AU$150) rent, and recently the municipality has demanded that all street vendors pay a 300soles permit per year to continue selling their wares. thinking that i could at least help her out with the payment of this permit, we arranged to meet the next day. this was no small decision for me - 300soles cover my budget for 2 weeks (to put things in perspective, when i worked in chile, i earnt about AU$12.50 a day, and recently in argentina, about AU$125 per week) - and i was seriously considering foregoing a visit to machu picchu in order to be able to help julia out. but before our arranged meeting, i went to the appropriate municipal offices and spoke to various police officers to verify the credibility of the permit story. and found she´d lied to me! when we met, and i mentioned my findings to her (that the permit doesn´t exist), she defensively told me that she wasn´t asking anything of me, that i´d offered to help her, that she was just an honest woman trying to maintain her family. when i repeated patiently that i was happy to help her, as long as what she told me was *true*, she preferred to leave me saying in an embarrassed tone, ´i won´t bother you anymore, señorita, it´s better that i try and sell my paintings by myself´. i don´t even know if what she told me about her personal story is real, or one whole fabricated sob-story... battling initial outrage as i watched her hurry away (ironically, the word for ´disappointment´ in spanish is ´decepción´), i took the time to calm down and think about her situation. regardless of whatever lies she fed me, there´s no doubt that she *does* need the money, and perhaps felt she needed to lie in order to obtain it. which made me wonder if i had the right to feel morally wronged. indeed, was *she* wrong for deceiving me, if it was for the sake of her family?

in Nazca one evening, i passed a closed-off courtyard with much music and apparent merriment coming out onto the streets. i paused, thinking that it was perhaps a weekend folkloric gathering, but when i asked, was surprised to find that it was a cockfight. being instinctively against such cruelty, but never having seen it live, i entered (women entered free - i never would have paid to endorse such activities), thinking that at least i could get an idea of what it was i was against. here´s a summarised account: 2 roosters held by their owners/´trainers´ in the fighting ring are ´introduced´ to each other, with a bit of pecking allowed to rile them up and prepare them for the fight ahead. a metal claw is then tied to each rooster´s right leg, while bookies go around the inside of the ring calling out for bets. the roosters are placed (at separate times) for a brief moment in the ring, to get them accustomed to the noise and smells of their surrounds. when each has been inspected by the referee, this latter places a plastic divider in the middle of the ring, and the roosters are placed on either side of this. the divider is lifted, the 2 trainers and referee quickly move to the outskirts of the ring, the roosters are left to go for each other. each ´round´ lasts until one of the roosters is triumphantly standing on the other´s body, or, in the event that nothing happens, (which is often the case; animals have better things to do than fight each other for no apparent reason, for crying out loud!) 15 seconds are allowed to pass, before the divider is reset, and the next round starts. the whole fight ends when one of the roosters dies. this process (of waiting until one dies) can take quite a while, since in normal circumstances, the dominant bird would have *no reason* to continue the fight once dominance is established (usually quite quickly and without bloodshed). no matter if one or both of the birds is already injured, eg, a broken wing or leg; the fight goes on regardless. the ´gentleman´ next to me (i´m loathe to call him that - how can anyone tolerate such mindless cruelty??) started chatting to me; i gleaned that this is a weekly event in Nazca, as in many bigger towns, gathering people from neighbouring villages and towns for their Sunday night entertainment. obviously, they don´t see the cruelty in this type of sport; roosters don´t have feelings, after all, right? how does someone who feels the way i do, make a change in social mentality when it comes to something like this, and how much right do i even have to mention that i think it´s unacceptable?

i don´t want to live close-mindedly, but sometimes it´s hard to let go of personal beliefs, especially when i think that i´m *right*. but maybe there isn´t a universal right or wrong, and that what´s wrong for me, may be right for others..? by the way, yes, i did visit machu picchu, and yes, it was beautiful. but if you wanted an impersonal reel of facts about this wonder of the world, you would´ve gone to wikipedia, instead of reading this, wouldn´t you?

(for more photos: 'nazca & cuzco' photo gallery)

Gallery: lima

yu-en-me — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 18:32:00 GMT