When I write these blog posts, it's typically from my phone after a long day, or at a computer where there is a time limit and a line of people waiting behind me. I don't always have time to reread them and proofread them before either succumbing to my exhaustion and/or being kicked off the computer by the person waiting behind me. Though I wish I had the time to make each post perfect, the reality is that I don't. After rereading my last post, I was almost embarrassed by how many errors there were. So please cut me some slack and don't completely judge my writing based on the errors you see! Eventually I do try and go back and fix them. Same goes for formatting.
Additionally, my blog reached 1,000+ hits last week (all time total, not last week alone,) and I'm pretty sure that a few of them might have even come from people that are not my Mom and Dad. So, to whoever is reading this, thank you! Please feel free to leave me comments and let me know who you are and what you think. I've only had two comments ever (thank you Madeleine and Morgan!) but they make me smile, so I'm hoping for more!
Lastly, I hope all my friends and family are safe on the East Coast. Drop me an email, Facebook message, comment, Gchat, or What's App message and let me know you're okay!
Raphael and I are leaving Colombia today and headed to Peru. I definitely didn't spend enough time here, so I'll have to come back one day!
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
La Ciudad Perdida
Last Monday Raphael and I headed to the jungle to trek to La Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City. We spent 5 days in the jungle as part of a group of nine. While I didn't have internet during the trek, I wrote in my journal every day. Below are some excerpts from each day...
Day 1
Today we started the trek to the Lost City. We were picked up by the tour group and heralded into the back of an old Land Rover. Our bags were strapped onto the top of the vehicle and we climbed in through the back and sat on opposite sides of the two benches lining the the car. We drove along the road for an hour and then turned off road and drove through the jungle for another hour. The views were gorgeous, just mountain after mountain of lush green forests. We stopped for lunch at the start of the tour, it was a build your own sandwich tray. By home standards, the meat was questionable and I've never before put tartar sauce on a sandwich, but I've learned not to question these things on the road.
We started the hike. I looked at my watch a half an hour into it and thought "I can do this." I was still one of the first in the group. An hour in, I felt the same way. By two hours in, I wanted to die.
There are times every single day that I think "I can do this forever. Maybe I' ll stay more than 5 months," but there are also times every single day when I think "what the the hell did I get myself into? I'm not cut out for this shit." It doesn't matter which comes first, it varies every day.
After our first uphill, I was thinking the latter. The climb seemed endless. Every turn ahead brought hope that we had reached the end, but with every new switchback as I turned the bend the road just continued up. Eventually, we hit the top. Our guides rewarded us with oranges, watermelon, or bananas at the top of the hills.
Today we hiked for a total of 5 hours, but there were plenty of stops in between for snacks and one swimming hole. We were told it would be wet here but we literally didn't make it 150 meters into the jungle before it started raining. We were soaking wet from head to toe. You could have rung out any article of clothing from my body - from the bandanna on my head to my socks. The terrain is incredibly slippery red clay, and our feet dig in inches as we take each step. People are falling all over the place.
We made it to camp and took freezing cold showers, not that I expected any different. showers alone are a luxury up here. Tonight we' re sleeping under a metal roof in hammocks with mosquito nets.
No matter how many times I feel like I got myself in over my head or even how many times I feel like I could do this forever, there's one more recurring feeling I have - the one where I realize that I'm living my dream. And as I lie in my hammock at the end of my first day on the Lost City trek with a mosquito net covering my body, a headlamp on my head, listening to the sounds of the jungle, I feel it. I'm only a few thousand miles from home, but I feel like I'm worlds away. And though I could never have imagined this very moment, it's what I have wanted for 4 years.
Day 2
I counted 40 bug bites this morning. When we woke, everything was just as wet as when we hung it last night. Nothing dries in the jungle. We all put our wet clothes back on, no reason to ruin the dry clothes we have, they'll just be wet in minutes. Within the first hour of the hike I wanted to die, it was pretty much straight uphill. At the top we were rewarded with oranges and the promise that the worst of the day was over. It was.
My muscles were tired today and I fell a bunch of times. Yesterday when I began to slip, my muscles would go into survival mode and catch me before I fell. Today, they were tired and when I slipped, they weren't as fast to catch me. I cut both my legs and my finger today. I lived up to Chris's nickname as the dirty kid, somehow managing to end every day dirtier (and more beat up) than everyone else.
Raphael is a saint. He spent the summer as a camp counselor with a group of 21 fifteen and sixteen year old boys. I think they may have prepared him to deal with me. Today he gave me his hiking stick and stuck with me when I had trouble with the harder parts.
During free time and meal times at the campsites, everyone trades stories of where they've been and horror stories of robbings and insects. Apparently there's a bug that plants maggots inside you when it bites you that requires minor surgery with local anesthesia to remove them. There's also a mosquito that plants bacteria inside of you that can cause sores that look like bullet holes to pop up anywhere on your body. The sores scar forever, but you can get rid of the bacteria with antibiotics. At the camp we stayed at last night, one of the boys from another group woke up with bed bug bites all over his back. If any of those things happen to me, I'm immediately hopping on a flight back to the US.
Day 3
Half way done! I counted 72 bug bites this morning. Again today the first hour was the worst. I completely forgot to bring my inhalers on this trip and I'm having a really tough time breathing on the uphills, and even on the downhills and flat parts it can be difficult to catch my breath. I'm thankful that I haven't smoked a cigarette in the past week, but cursing myself for every one I have ever smoked. I keep telling myself that any time in the future that I want one, I should think of this hike. I honestly don't want to smoke one ever again.
We finish hiking before one every day and have a lot of down time. We spend the entire afternoon reading, napping, playing card games and literally counting down the minutes until 8:30 when we allow ourselves to go to bed.
Day 4
102 bug bites today. We all chose to sleep in the hammocks at the campsite last night. Even though we knew we'd be cold and uncomfortable, we're all paranoid about bed bugs. Today we woke up even earlier, 5:30 and actually reached La Ciudad Perdida. The trek from the camp wasn't very far, but we had to ford a river with a rapid current and once we got there, there were 1200 VERY slippery steps to climb.
The city itself is huge - much bigger than I expected and much too big to explore in one day, let alone the few hours we had.
The ruins are impressive, but not really my thing. I couldn't fully understand what everything was because our guide explained everything in Spanish. The views of the mountains from the top of the city were amazing, though.
Military troops line the city and there's a base on top. In 2003, 8 hikers got kidnapped, so the Colombian government sent in troops to enforce the area. We asked to take pictures of some of the soldiers and they wanted to take ours in return- they don't see many people with blond hair or skin as white as mine.
The way back down the 1200 stairs was terrifying. I slipped a few times before the guide, Juan Carlos, decided he would hold my hand the whole way down. I cried the entire way. My fear of heights coupled with the fear of FALLING OFF the side of the mountain made me dizzy and made my legs shake. I couldn't even force myself to look past my next step the majority of the time.
I've faced a lot of my fears on this hike. We spent so much time walking on the cliffs of mountains with paths no more than two feet wide. If you trip, which I did many times, and fall the wrong way, you could fall right off the moutain - sometimes 30 ft, sometimes hundreds - most ending up in the rushing river.
The river is lined with massive boulders - some so big they wouldn't even fit in my apartment. The trees are so old - some as wide as cars - with roots that can come out of the ground and look like boulders. They remind me of the movie Jumanji when the roots grow so big they engulf the house.
I finally put on new clothes today, but it didn't matter. We crossed two rivers and went swimming in two more. My clothes smell terrible. Everything smells damp and gross. The only good thing is that everyone else smells just as bad.
Day 5
We're done! We started hiking at about 6:30 this morning and finished around 1. Last night I was so tired I couldn't even wait until 8:30 to go to sleep. I slept with scrunchies around my ankles tying the ends of my pants down so that the bugs couldn't bite me, but somehow those little fuckers managed to get me. This mornings bug bite tally, 174, every single one on my legs. I also have at least one cut or bruise from each day in the jungle, my battle wounds as I've been calling them.
Today was tough. By 9:30 we had hiked all of what we hiked on day 2. We had two serious uphills, both through muddy clay. One was an hour, the other 40 minutes. The only thing that kept me going was knowing I was getting out of the jungle today. At our last swimming hole, we put on our "clean" clothes. And by clean, I mean the clothes we've been wearing the past 4 nights. The clothes that are more clean and more dry than anything else.
Today is really sunny and as we were coming out of the jungle, shade was rare. We did a massive amount of downhills today which made me realize how hard the first day must have been. I remember it being hard, but I don't think that I would have the energy to climb that amount on day 5 - especially with the heat and the sun from today, we were lucky to do it in the rain.
Everything hurts. Every pain distracts from a different one. My shoulders are rubbed raw from my pack, but the infection on my finger helps me forget. The bruises on both knees help me forget about how much my bug bites itch, which I forget about when I think about how much my feet hurt, which seems insignificant when I concentrate on the blister on my foot that's about 7 layers deep.
But finally, we made it. Seven of us from the trek are all checking into Casa Benjamin in Taganga tonight, and all nine of us are going out to celebrate and meeting up with the four people from the other Lost City group. Time to party. We deserve it.
Photos:
#1 My nasty bug bitten legs
#2 My shoes after the first day of the trek
#3 Our camp the first night
#4 Group photo
#5 Me in front of a waterfall at campsite #3
#6 Raph and I looking down at La Ciudad Perdida
#7 The beginning of the 1200 steps to the Lost City
#8 Me posing at campsite #2
#9 Jungle scenery
Day 1
Today we started the trek to the Lost City. We were picked up by the tour group and heralded into the back of an old Land Rover. Our bags were strapped onto the top of the vehicle and we climbed in through the back and sat on opposite sides of the two benches lining the the car. We drove along the road for an hour and then turned off road and drove through the jungle for another hour. The views were gorgeous, just mountain after mountain of lush green forests. We stopped for lunch at the start of the tour, it was a build your own sandwich tray. By home standards, the meat was questionable and I've never before put tartar sauce on a sandwich, but I've learned not to question these things on the road.
We started the hike. I looked at my watch a half an hour into it and thought "I can do this." I was still one of the first in the group. An hour in, I felt the same way. By two hours in, I wanted to die.
There are times every single day that I think "I can do this forever. Maybe I' ll stay more than 5 months," but there are also times every single day when I think "what the the hell did I get myself into? I'm not cut out for this shit." It doesn't matter which comes first, it varies every day.
After our first uphill, I was thinking the latter. The climb seemed endless. Every turn ahead brought hope that we had reached the end, but with every new switchback as I turned the bend the road just continued up. Eventually, we hit the top. Our guides rewarded us with oranges, watermelon, or bananas at the top of the hills.
Today we hiked for a total of 5 hours, but there were plenty of stops in between for snacks and one swimming hole. We were told it would be wet here but we literally didn't make it 150 meters into the jungle before it started raining. We were soaking wet from head to toe. You could have rung out any article of clothing from my body - from the bandanna on my head to my socks. The terrain is incredibly slippery red clay, and our feet dig in inches as we take each step. People are falling all over the place.
We made it to camp and took freezing cold showers, not that I expected any different. showers alone are a luxury up here. Tonight we' re sleeping under a metal roof in hammocks with mosquito nets.
No matter how many times I feel like I got myself in over my head or even how many times I feel like I could do this forever, there's one more recurring feeling I have - the one where I realize that I'm living my dream. And as I lie in my hammock at the end of my first day on the Lost City trek with a mosquito net covering my body, a headlamp on my head, listening to the sounds of the jungle, I feel it. I'm only a few thousand miles from home, but I feel like I'm worlds away. And though I could never have imagined this very moment, it's what I have wanted for 4 years.
Day 2
I counted 40 bug bites this morning. When we woke, everything was just as wet as when we hung it last night. Nothing dries in the jungle. We all put our wet clothes back on, no reason to ruin the dry clothes we have, they'll just be wet in minutes. Within the first hour of the hike I wanted to die, it was pretty much straight uphill. At the top we were rewarded with oranges and the promise that the worst of the day was over. It was.
My muscles were tired today and I fell a bunch of times. Yesterday when I began to slip, my muscles would go into survival mode and catch me before I fell. Today, they were tired and when I slipped, they weren't as fast to catch me. I cut both my legs and my finger today. I lived up to Chris's nickname as the dirty kid, somehow managing to end every day dirtier (and more beat up) than everyone else.
Raphael is a saint. He spent the summer as a camp counselor with a group of 21 fifteen and sixteen year old boys. I think they may have prepared him to deal with me. Today he gave me his hiking stick and stuck with me when I had trouble with the harder parts.
During free time and meal times at the campsites, everyone trades stories of where they've been and horror stories of robbings and insects. Apparently there's a bug that plants maggots inside you when it bites you that requires minor surgery with local anesthesia to remove them. There's also a mosquito that plants bacteria inside of you that can cause sores that look like bullet holes to pop up anywhere on your body. The sores scar forever, but you can get rid of the bacteria with antibiotics. At the camp we stayed at last night, one of the boys from another group woke up with bed bug bites all over his back. If any of those things happen to me, I'm immediately hopping on a flight back to the US.
Day 3
Half way done! I counted 72 bug bites this morning. Again today the first hour was the worst. I completely forgot to bring my inhalers on this trip and I'm having a really tough time breathing on the uphills, and even on the downhills and flat parts it can be difficult to catch my breath. I'm thankful that I haven't smoked a cigarette in the past week, but cursing myself for every one I have ever smoked. I keep telling myself that any time in the future that I want one, I should think of this hike. I honestly don't want to smoke one ever again.
We finish hiking before one every day and have a lot of down time. We spend the entire afternoon reading, napping, playing card games and literally counting down the minutes until 8:30 when we allow ourselves to go to bed.
Day 4
102 bug bites today. We all chose to sleep in the hammocks at the campsite last night. Even though we knew we'd be cold and uncomfortable, we're all paranoid about bed bugs. Today we woke up even earlier, 5:30 and actually reached La Ciudad Perdida. The trek from the camp wasn't very far, but we had to ford a river with a rapid current and once we got there, there were 1200 VERY slippery steps to climb.
The city itself is huge - much bigger than I expected and much too big to explore in one day, let alone the few hours we had.
The ruins are impressive, but not really my thing. I couldn't fully understand what everything was because our guide explained everything in Spanish. The views of the mountains from the top of the city were amazing, though.
Military troops line the city and there's a base on top. In 2003, 8 hikers got kidnapped, so the Colombian government sent in troops to enforce the area. We asked to take pictures of some of the soldiers and they wanted to take ours in return- they don't see many people with blond hair or skin as white as mine.
The way back down the 1200 stairs was terrifying. I slipped a few times before the guide, Juan Carlos, decided he would hold my hand the whole way down. I cried the entire way. My fear of heights coupled with the fear of FALLING OFF the side of the mountain made me dizzy and made my legs shake. I couldn't even force myself to look past my next step the majority of the time.
I've faced a lot of my fears on this hike. We spent so much time walking on the cliffs of mountains with paths no more than two feet wide. If you trip, which I did many times, and fall the wrong way, you could fall right off the moutain - sometimes 30 ft, sometimes hundreds - most ending up in the rushing river.
The river is lined with massive boulders - some so big they wouldn't even fit in my apartment. The trees are so old - some as wide as cars - with roots that can come out of the ground and look like boulders. They remind me of the movie Jumanji when the roots grow so big they engulf the house.
I finally put on new clothes today, but it didn't matter. We crossed two rivers and went swimming in two more. My clothes smell terrible. Everything smells damp and gross. The only good thing is that everyone else smells just as bad.
Day 5
We're done! We started hiking at about 6:30 this morning and finished around 1. Last night I was so tired I couldn't even wait until 8:30 to go to sleep. I slept with scrunchies around my ankles tying the ends of my pants down so that the bugs couldn't bite me, but somehow those little fuckers managed to get me. This mornings bug bite tally, 174, every single one on my legs. I also have at least one cut or bruise from each day in the jungle, my battle wounds as I've been calling them.
Today was tough. By 9:30 we had hiked all of what we hiked on day 2. We had two serious uphills, both through muddy clay. One was an hour, the other 40 minutes. The only thing that kept me going was knowing I was getting out of the jungle today. At our last swimming hole, we put on our "clean" clothes. And by clean, I mean the clothes we've been wearing the past 4 nights. The clothes that are more clean and more dry than anything else.
Today is really sunny and as we were coming out of the jungle, shade was rare. We did a massive amount of downhills today which made me realize how hard the first day must have been. I remember it being hard, but I don't think that I would have the energy to climb that amount on day 5 - especially with the heat and the sun from today, we were lucky to do it in the rain.
Everything hurts. Every pain distracts from a different one. My shoulders are rubbed raw from my pack, but the infection on my finger helps me forget. The bruises on both knees help me forget about how much my bug bites itch, which I forget about when I think about how much my feet hurt, which seems insignificant when I concentrate on the blister on my foot that's about 7 layers deep.
But finally, we made it. Seven of us from the trek are all checking into Casa Benjamin in Taganga tonight, and all nine of us are going out to celebrate and meeting up with the four people from the other Lost City group. Time to party. We deserve it.
Photos:
#1 My nasty bug bitten legs
#2 My shoes after the first day of the trek
#3 Our camp the first night
#4 Group photo
#5 Me in front of a waterfall at campsite #3
#6 Raph and I looking down at La Ciudad Perdida
#7 The beginning of the 1200 steps to the Lost City
#8 Me posing at campsite #2
#9 Jungle scenery
Sunday, October 21, 2012
A Day In The Life
Life in South America is going well. Yesterday we went Playa Palomino, the only beach in the world where you can see a snow covered mountain (or so they told us, but I think I should probably confirm it online.) Also, they neglected to7u tell us that in order to see so-called snow covered mountain, you have to be on the beach before dawn. So while I can say that I've been to this beach, I can't exactly say I've seen the snow covered mountain. Bucket list item: check?
We met another group of Israelis and two of them came with us to Playa Palomino. We spent the entire time in the water and struck up a game of frisbee with some local kids. In order to get to the beach, we had to walk through the jungle for about 20 minutes. The beach and the jungle literally border each other and it's incredibly beautiful. There are also beautiful mountains in the distance. The ride to Palomino alone was unbelievable with giant green mountains, beautiful landscapes and cliffs that dive directly into the ocean.
Colombia is the greenest place I've ever seen, but the reason for it is because it rains every day. We're in the rainy season now, and it's pretty much guaranteed to rain every afternoon.
To give you an idea of my life at this point, I'm currently sharing a room with ten people. There are five bunks beds and each person gets a locker to keep important things like passports, money, electronics, etc. There's a fan but no AC. It's really hot a humid in the days here, but the rainy afternoons help to cool things down a bit in the evenings. We pay 18,000 pesos, or $9, a night. We cook for ourselves most of the time. I've been to the Exito, Colombia's version of a super Target, more times than I can count at this point. Today Raph and I went and bought food for today's lunch and dinner and tomorrow's breakfast. We spent a total of $5 each. So far, Raph has cooked every meal for me. He says he likes to cook, but I think he might just be scared of my cooking. I clean the dishes afterward. A typical breakfast is eggs or cereal, for lunch either the previous dinner's leftovers or cheese sandwiches, and dinner is usually white rice with some sort of vegetable medley, beans, packaged soup, or pasta. Raph is a vegetarian, so when we cook we cook that way. There's also the biggest avocados I've ever seen (heaven), delicious tomatoes, and you can buy an entire pineapple for about $0.90. Raphael loves ice cream too, so we make sure to eat it at least once a day. We've been able to drink the water everywhere we've been so far. At dinner, we set the table nicely, sit together, and cheers to our trip.
People here, especially the kids, look at me a bit funny. They stare a few seconds too long or take second, third, and fourth glances. I'm pretty sure I'm the whitest person they've ever seen.
Colombia has been an interesting place to start. I feel very safe in the areas I've been in, but very few locals speak English (unlike most of the other countries,) so I have had a hard time communicating with them.
Tomorrow Raphael and I head off to Tayrona National Park to trek to Ciudad Perdido, the Lost City. It's a five day trek and it leads you to ruins built in 700AD, two hundred+ years before Machu Picchu. Even more amazing, is that these ruins were just found in the 70's. The guide book says that trekkers can come back with hundreds of mosquito bites. I thought that was a joke, but I've now seen the legs of people at my hostel who have done the trek, and it is no lie. "But didn't you wear bug spray?" I asked one of my new friends. "Of course I did," he laughed. "It doesn't matter though, they love it. It's like an appetizer to them." It's also supposed to downpour during at least half the hiking. We stay in hammocks a couple nights and beds the rest. One of the girls I met here told me she found a scorpion in her bed one night. Sounds fun, right?
BUT everyone who comes back swears that the ruins and incredible jungle scenery make it worth it. I still can't help but think about what one girl said to me, though, when she was talking about her own friend's testimonies. "I can't tell if they really think it's worth it, or if they just want me to suffer the same way they did."
I won't have access to the internet while on my trek, so you won't hear from me again until next weekend, but I'd love comments, emails,.and Facebook posts to come back to!
Pictures below:
1) Through my eyes: the Dreamer hostel at night. Raph is on the left in a yellow shirt cooking dinner, some people hanging out, the pool table, the bar and the pool
2) Dinner is served, rice, scrambled eggs, and Aguilla Light, Colombia's equivalent to Bud Light
We met another group of Israelis and two of them came with us to Playa Palomino. We spent the entire time in the water and struck up a game of frisbee with some local kids. In order to get to the beach, we had to walk through the jungle for about 20 minutes. The beach and the jungle literally border each other and it's incredibly beautiful. There are also beautiful mountains in the distance. The ride to Palomino alone was unbelievable with giant green mountains, beautiful landscapes and cliffs that dive directly into the ocean.
Colombia is the greenest place I've ever seen, but the reason for it is because it rains every day. We're in the rainy season now, and it's pretty much guaranteed to rain every afternoon.
To give you an idea of my life at this point, I'm currently sharing a room with ten people. There are five bunks beds and each person gets a locker to keep important things like passports, money, electronics, etc. There's a fan but no AC. It's really hot a humid in the days here, but the rainy afternoons help to cool things down a bit in the evenings. We pay 18,000 pesos, or $9, a night. We cook for ourselves most of the time. I've been to the Exito, Colombia's version of a super Target, more times than I can count at this point. Today Raph and I went and bought food for today's lunch and dinner and tomorrow's breakfast. We spent a total of $5 each. So far, Raph has cooked every meal for me. He says he likes to cook, but I think he might just be scared of my cooking. I clean the dishes afterward. A typical breakfast is eggs or cereal, for lunch either the previous dinner's leftovers or cheese sandwiches, and dinner is usually white rice with some sort of vegetable medley, beans, packaged soup, or pasta. Raph is a vegetarian, so when we cook we cook that way. There's also the biggest avocados I've ever seen (heaven), delicious tomatoes, and you can buy an entire pineapple for about $0.90. Raphael loves ice cream too, so we make sure to eat it at least once a day. We've been able to drink the water everywhere we've been so far. At dinner, we set the table nicely, sit together, and cheers to our trip.
People here, especially the kids, look at me a bit funny. They stare a few seconds too long or take second, third, and fourth glances. I'm pretty sure I'm the whitest person they've ever seen.
Colombia has been an interesting place to start. I feel very safe in the areas I've been in, but very few locals speak English (unlike most of the other countries,) so I have had a hard time communicating with them.
Tomorrow Raphael and I head off to Tayrona National Park to trek to Ciudad Perdido, the Lost City. It's a five day trek and it leads you to ruins built in 700AD, two hundred+ years before Machu Picchu. Even more amazing, is that these ruins were just found in the 70's. The guide book says that trekkers can come back with hundreds of mosquito bites. I thought that was a joke, but I've now seen the legs of people at my hostel who have done the trek, and it is no lie. "But didn't you wear bug spray?" I asked one of my new friends. "Of course I did," he laughed. "It doesn't matter though, they love it. It's like an appetizer to them." It's also supposed to downpour during at least half the hiking. We stay in hammocks a couple nights and beds the rest. One of the girls I met here told me she found a scorpion in her bed one night. Sounds fun, right?
BUT everyone who comes back swears that the ruins and incredible jungle scenery make it worth it. I still can't help but think about what one girl said to me, though, when she was talking about her own friend's testimonies. "I can't tell if they really think it's worth it, or if they just want me to suffer the same way they did."
I won't have access to the internet while on my trek, so you won't hear from me again until next weekend, but I'd love comments, emails,.and Facebook posts to come back to!
Pictures below:
1) Through my eyes: the Dreamer hostel at night. Raph is on the left in a yellow shirt cooking dinner, some people hanging out, the pool table, the bar and the pool
2) Dinner is served, rice, scrambled eggs, and Aguilla Light, Colombia's equivalent to Bud Light
Friday, October 19, 2012
The First Few Days
Just a quick note to say I've made it. Raphael was at the airport in Cartagena yesterday to pick me up. I was so excited and thankful to see him that I cried. (There's been a lot of that the last few days.) We have taken it pretty easy the past two days. Our hostel in Cartagena, The Chill House, was located in the Old City. Raph gave me a quick tour yesterday and took me for ice cream and some local food that resembled a giant fried donut hole. I thought I would lose weight here, but so far its been all carbs and ice cream. You may win again, Max... BUT I haven't started hiking yet, so I'm holding out hope. We spent the majority of the day today on a bus to Santa Marta and checked into a hostel called The Dreamer for two nights. It's a fun hostel with about 30 people from all over the world. So far we've met Germans, Israelis, Australians, and Californians and we've only been here a few hours. I made my first friend who will put up with my almost non existent Spanish and even try and help me learn a few new words. She may or may not have had her fourth birthday yet... I would have asked if I knew how.
And since apparently people don't like the antisocial American girl writing blog posts on her phone, I'll leave you with a few of my first observations and learnings from South America:
- Hot showers and privacy are a thing of the past
- In South America toilet paper does not actually go IN the toilet
- Bathrooms are just that, one room... There is no division between the toilet and the shower, except sometimes a shower curtain
- In South America milk comes in bags
- Bus drivers can stop whenever and wherever they want...most of the time at sketchy roadside stops so their friends can get on and hassle you to buy candy/ sandwiches/ DVDs/ whatever
- Hand soap in bathrooms is pretty much non existent
- Mannequins have triple E boobs
I'm already extremely grateful for bringing my ear plugs, eye mask and combination locks... All have proven extremely necessary. The boys are REALLY proud of how small my pack is. (One million thanks to Calder who went through my pack/ put up with me for HOURS on Wednesday and convinced me to take out unnecessary items and taught me how to organize properly.) I have about half the amount of mass that they do.
I have had and likely will continue to have internet at all my hostels. The best ways to get in touch are Skype (rachaelmottleylevine) and Whats App, a phone app that allows you to text internationally for free. I also have email and Facebook.
Pictures below:
1) Tomer and Raph leaving The Chill House
2) View from the balcony of our hostel, Old City, Cartagena at dusk
3) Raph on a bus with his gear
4) Me at BWI airport heading off on my journey at 5am
And since apparently people don't like the antisocial American girl writing blog posts on her phone, I'll leave you with a few of my first observations and learnings from South America:
- Hot showers and privacy are a thing of the past
- In South America toilet paper does not actually go IN the toilet
- Bathrooms are just that, one room... There is no division between the toilet and the shower, except sometimes a shower curtain
- In South America milk comes in bags
- Bus drivers can stop whenever and wherever they want...most of the time at sketchy roadside stops so their friends can get on and hassle you to buy candy/ sandwiches/ DVDs/ whatever
- Hand soap in bathrooms is pretty much non existent
- Mannequins have triple E boobs
I'm already extremely grateful for bringing my ear plugs, eye mask and combination locks... All have proven extremely necessary. The boys are REALLY proud of how small my pack is. (One million thanks to Calder who went through my pack/ put up with me for HOURS on Wednesday and convinced me to take out unnecessary items and taught me how to organize properly.) I have about half the amount of mass that they do.
I have had and likely will continue to have internet at all my hostels. The best ways to get in touch are Skype (rachaelmottleylevine) and Whats App, a phone app that allows you to text internationally for free. I also have email and Facebook.
Pictures below:
1) Tomer and Raph leaving The Chill House
2) View from the balcony of our hostel, Old City, Cartagena at dusk
3) Raph on a bus with his gear
4) Me at BWI airport heading off on my journey at 5am
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Fear of the Unknown
"He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Four and a half years ago, I picked up my entire life an moved to DC. At the time, I had no way of knowing that it would be the best decision I ever made. Four and a half years later, I've made a life for myself here. In those years, I've fallen in love and had broken hearts. I've made friends who have stuck by me for both. I earned my Masters degree. I was lucky enough to score a job at the best public relations firm in the world and work with some of the most amazing people I've ever known. I've made a million memories and laughed a countless number of times. And through all of these experiences, I've grown as a person, gained confidence, and learned about myself.
A few nights ago, I woke up at 3:30am to drive a good friend to the Supreme Court so that he could wait on line to see the historic affirmative action case Fisher v. The University of Texas. When I got to the court there was a line of people, some who had been there since 8pm that evening. And though I originally thought my friend was a little bit crazy for wanting to wait on line for hours, the people in that line, many who were curled up in sleeping bags on the sidewalk, reminded me something. DC is a city with passion. Thousands of people move to this city every year for the same reason I am going to South America: to fulfill a dream.
Driving through the empty streets, I couldn't help but think that the next time I would be awake at that hour it would be to leave for the airport. Exactly one week and one day from that moment I will be on my way to Baltimore Washington International to board my flight for Cartagena.
And as I drove home with tired eyes, I was reminded just how much I love this city. While the initial novelty of seeing historic buildings like the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol has been worn down by familiarity, sometimes, in the right moment, I see the buildings that I look at every day and they invigorate new excitement. Each of the monuments tells a story- a story about someone who fought for something they knew was right. A story about someone who did something that many others were too scared to do.
As excited as I am about my impending journey, I'm also terrified. I have no idea what to expect. In four days, I will literally change every single aspect of my life at once. I will go to a foreign continent, with foreign people, who speak a foreign language that I do not yet speak or understand. And I will do all of this without seeing a single friend or family member, a network of people who have always been my backbone. But as intimidating as it all is, my greatest fear is the fear of regret. Though I have no idea what to expect, I'd rather spend the next few months fearing the unknown rather than knowing exactly what each day will bring.
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