One Month Down

Today marks exactly one month since I left home.  I've been gone four weeks and four days, 32 days in total. 

In that time, I've been on four planes, slept in 21 different beds, and spent 71 hours on buses. 

I've traveled from the jungle to the desert to the ocean to the mountains.  I've been to big cities, colonial towns, and indigenous villages. 

I've gone swimming in the ocean, the sea and rivers.  I've hiked mountains and boarded down sans dunes. 

I've gone from sea level to elevations higher than 11,000 feet. 

I've met brilliant people and seen beautiful places that I never knew existed.

I've seen the sun rise from the beach in Taganga, Colombia and the sunset over the sand dunes in Huacachina, Peru. 

Technically, I've been traveling on my own since day 18 when I was sick and left Huaraz to head back to Lima. Though it made me a bit nervous, I actually enjoy it more.  And though I don't have an official travel partner, I'm never actually alone. 

While the backpacker circuit in South America is huge, most people take similar routes.  I'm on the North to South route which typically includes some variation of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. 

I randomly run into people I've met in other places all the time and arrange to meet others by keeping in touch over Facebook.  Currently I'm in Cuzco, a city I've already fallen in love with, with an Irish girl, Sinead, who I met while doing the Lost City trek in Colombia.  We're going to do an adventure tour to Machu Picchu on Tuesday and likely travel to Arequipa and through parts of Bolivia together. 

I'm not going to lie and say that everything about this trip has been fun or easy, it took some time to adjust to the routine.  There were definitely times I thought I had made a mistake...that there was no way I'd be able to stay four months. 

But now, I'm in love.  I'm in love with traveling.  I'm in love with exploring new cities and discovering new cultures and meeting new people.  I'm in love with the freedom that comes along with being on the road.  I'm in love with the possibility that each day brings.  Every day I see something I've never seen.  Every day I meet someone new. Every day is new adventure. 

I'm a quarter of the way done, and I already feel that the time is passing too quickly. 

Below:
Picture 1: View from our balcony in Cusco
Picture 2: Church at Plaza.de Sense in Ayacucho
Picture 3: View from the apartment I stayed at in Ayacucho
Picture 4: Artesenal market in Quinua
Picture 5: Stuffed pancake with apples, bananas, and pineapples in Huacachina

Hogar San Fransisco de Asis

I spent the better part of my week at the Hogar San Francisco de Asis.  The Hogar is a home for physically disabled children in Chacaclayo, a suburb about 30 minutes outside of Lima. 

For the last 30 or so years, Dr. Tony Lazzara has opened the doors of the Hogar to children in need of medical care and rehabilitation.  The children's medical issues range from cerebral palsy to tuberculosis to cleft pallets to heart and/or lung conditions to blindness to deafness to severe burns to a detached esophagous to deformed or loss of limbs and more.  Many kids are on crutches and many in wheelchairs.  There is one boy who has no arms and uses one of his feet to write and use utensils to feed himself. 

The Hogar is run by the doctor, who, from what I've heard, runs a tight ship.  Unfortunately, the Dr. was traveling while I was there and I didn't get to meet him.  (I think things were probably a bit more chaotic because of that too.) Then there are the Mamacitas, the women who cook the meals for the children.  They know the children very well.  They know who is allowed to get more food, who needs to be watched closely and who has special diets.  There are teachers who teach the older children in classrooms that adjoin the main building, and a social worker.  There are also the volunteers, which is what I was.  Many volunteers come and stay at the Hogar for months at a time, and some come for shorter periods of time.  While I was there there were three German girls, an Irish girl, a girl from Portland with her Texan grandfather, and a boy from New York.  All of them were staying between 2 and 6 months. 

To be honest I had a bit of a hard time connecting with the children.  Because the doctor wasn't there, I didn't know the children's stories.  I didn't know how they came to be at the Hogar or what their specific disabilities were (beyond what I could see.) It's difficult to be imaginative, because there are not many toys and in order to create a make believe game, I'd need to be able to communicate with them more.  But I tried to give them attention and affection. 

"Those kids need lots of hugs, Rach," my Mom told me.  And that is what I tried to do.  Many of the kids just want hugs or to hold your hand.   One little girl asked me to read her a book.  It was Alice and Wonderland, in Spanish, but there were only two pages.  She giggled the whole time, I'm sure due to the fact that I probablg mispronounced every other word.  As my brother Scott told me when I told him the language barrier was a bit difficult, "laughter is a universal language."  Truer words have never been spoken.

On a typical day at the Hogar the children begin waking up around 4:30am.  Breakfast is at 7 and volunteers should be downstairs around 6:45 to help carry the children who can't go down the stairs on their own.  The children say their prayers and eat.  Volunteers help them wash their hands before a meal, brush their teeth after, get refills and/or seconds and clean and wash the plates after.  The older kids are expected to clean their own plates from the table and help dry the dishes after they are washed.

From 9-11 it is baby hour when the volunteers are allowed to take the babies out of their cribs.  If its nice you can take the babies on a walk or out to the concrete courtyard that is the Hogar's play area.  There is a box of toys for the babies to play with.    During baby hour I just try and hold them and talk to them and give them as much love as I can.  I can't stand the thought that they spend so much time in their cribs, I just want them to feel love and human contact.   

Lunch is at noon, there's another baby hour from 3 to 4, and dinner is at 5.  Bedtime usually begins around 8.  In between those times volunteers are pretty free to do whatever they want, the kids play or go to school, and the Mamacitas are are almost constantly cooking.  On certain days volunteers and nurses take children to the hospital in Lima for various therapies.

I loved baby hour.  There was Eric, who had recently had his cleft pallet operation, Amyara a beautiful baby girl who looked about 5 months old, but was 1 year and had a heart condition and very weak lungs, Dayana, the sweetest little girl who was deaf, and Percy, a toddler with tons of energy.  Apparently Percy came to the orphanage emaciated because of a detached esophagous.  Francois, another toddler who is hard to keep up with, has tuberculosis of the spine.  Francois was living with his two uncles who also had tuberculosis and his drug addict grandmother before the Hogar.  Many of the kids go through rehabilitation and get treatment or their surgeries and go home, but some stay for a very long time, and some, like Percy and Francois are wards of the state, so when they are done at the Hogar, they go to an orphanage. 

One of the most difficult things at the Hogar is that there is no elevator, only stairs to get from the first level with the play area, school, and dining room.  Nurses and volunteers have to carry many of the children, even the older ones, upstairs which can be difficult and very painful for the kids.  One night I spotted one of the older girls as she made her way upstairs for the night.  It probably took her 15 minutes for what you or I could do in thirty seconds, but it was awe inspiring.  Instead of getting carried up, she raised herself from her wheelchair and made the slow, and what looked like, very painful journey upstairs... But she did it all on her own.  It's humbling to watch these kids accomplish physical achievements that I take for granted on a daily basis and makes me appreciate how simple my life is in comparison. 

There are 53 children at the Hogar and only three bedrooms and a nursery.  The kids sleep 2, 3, 4 to a bed.  If they're small enough, they sleep perpendicular on the bed to fit more.  Some sleep on mattresses on the floor and others on couches. 

As hard as it sounds, for many of the children it's all that they know, and all of them are lucky to be there.  Without the Hogar, they likely wouldn't be able to get the treatment they need. 

The kids at the Hogar are happy.  They have friends here.  They don't see each other as different, because everyone here is different.  One of the Hogar's mottos is that "it's what makes you different that makes you beautiful." With the exception of disabilities that inhibit them in various ways, the children of the Hogar play together and make up games and run around like every other kid.

The children eat meals and pray together.  They are, like many, an unconventional family.  There are the nurses, the Mamacitas, the volunteers and the Doctor.  Together they make one, ever-changing family unit.  I'm sad I didn't get to meet the Doctor, because I'm sure he is the patriarch, the glue that holds everything together.

But there is one thing that is very evident at the Hogar, there's a whole lot of love.  And though these kids may not have the best toys, or new clothes, or their own beds, or the most updated medical equipment, I am - and always have been - a firm believer that the most important component of raising a child is love, and that is one thing the Hogar excels at.

Below - photos of the children from the Hogar

Estoy Inferma - My first South American sickness

After my overnight bus to Huaraz I was feeling pretty drained.  Even though I had slept about 8 hours on the bus, I was exhausted.  I didn't really think much of it since I hadn't slept much the night before and I figured my sleep on the bus wasn't the most restful. 

However as the day went on, I started to feel sick as well.  I was achy all over, had a massive headache (though most of it was probably altitude sickness from being at an elevation of 10k feet,) a sore throat, and I was freezing. 

As I mentioned, Huaraz was very cold at night and our hostel didn't have heat, but if you had seen me you would have thought I was dressed to go camping in the arctic.  I was walking (and by walking I mean dragging myself at a glacial pace) around the hostel in Smartwool socks, with a pair of my new aforementioned alpaca socks on top of them, my Smartwool base layer pants and shirt, my North Face fleece, a knit hat, my Turtle Fur fleece neckwarmer, and gloves and I was still FREEZING.  I went to sleep that night wearing all of those clothes, inside of my silk sleep sack, between two layers of thick flannel sheets and a heavy blanket.  I was miserable.  I woke up in the middle of the night DYING for water.  I was clearly dehydrated from the altitude, but didn't have the energy to climb down off the top bunk and get my water bottle.  After about two hours of literally having constant dreams about being extremely thirsty or drinking copious amounts of water I convinced myself to climb down and get my water bottle.  I was weak from being sick alone, but the altitude exacerbated everything and even simple tasks were made much more difficult.

With the exception of Raphael forcing me out of bed to eat the lunch that he graciously trekked to the supermarket and cooked for me, I stayed in bed and slept until 5pm.  At that point my fever broke and I woke up sweating. 

I still didn't feel well though, and was determined not to spend another night in that town.  While Huaraz is an amazing town during peak season with plenty to do, beautiful weather and great restaurants, it is completely dead in the off season.  Raphael was planning to do Laguna 69 the next day, and though it's just a day hike, its fairly difficult. 

Because you start at 10k feet, many hikers get serious altitude sickness and have to turn around.  I could feel that I wasn't fully adjusted to the altitude yet, the ideal time is five days, and we'd only been there two, and I knew that if I attempted the hike when I wasn't feeling 100% there was no way I'd make it.

So, against Raphael's wishes, ("I have an obligation to your mother," he kept telling me,) I got back on another overnight bus and headed to Lima.  My fever came back on the bus and the ride was pretty miserable. 

I arrived in Lima at 5:30 in the morning.  My first time alone since I'd been in South America.  I knew my friend Jamie from the Ciudad Perdida trek was in Lima and he'd Facebooked me the name of his hostel.  I tried to call the number from the bus terminal, but no one answered so I took a leap of faith and asked the cab to take me to the address.  Unlike the hostel I had stayed at in Lima earlier in the week, this was further from the center of town.  It was on a quiet street in an affluent neighborhood and must have been an old mansion. 

When I arrived, I knocked on the door.  No one answered.  Feeling defeated, and miserably sick, I began to put my bags back in the cab to head to another hostel.  Just as I was doing that, the door opened, and it was Jamie, still awake from the night before, coming outside for a cigarette... Pure coincidence and perfect timing.  I couldn't have been happier to see him.

After tracking down hostel staff, I checked into a room.  Though they couldn't give me a single, which I had requested only so that I could sleep uninterrupted, they gave me an 8 person dorm with a private bathroom all to myself.  After deciding it was time to start antibiotics, it was my third day with a sore throat that continued to get worse, and taking two Advil, I climbed into bed dressed in my arctic wear. 

When I woke back up, it was 6pm.  I forced myself to walk the four blocks to the super market, mainly because I knew I was dehydrated, I had ran out of water, and you can't drink the tap water in Peru.  I stocked up on soup, yogurt, granola bars, some apples, orange juice, water and gatorade, figuring it would be the only time I'd leave the hostel for the next few days. 

When I got back, I had the people at the hostal take my temperature.  As they checked the thermometer, they started to look really worried.  "Oh wow," they told me. "It's at 40!"

40?!? What is 40? I knew it was high by the looks on their faces but whoever created the god damned celcius to farenheit conversion really screwed the rest of us with that complicated formula.

"You see, its supposed to be at 36," they told me, "but you're at forty." With that still meaning nothing to me, I took out my phone and Googled "40 degrees celcius to farenheit." 104 degrees. 

Knowing that was high for an adult, I was a little bit more worried, but decided I didn't feel terrible enough to warrant my first trip to a South American clinic.  Praying that the antibiotics would kick in by the morning, I promised the hostel staff that I would visit a clinic if I still had the fever in the morning.  One of the owners was a mom and spoke English and promised me that I could wake her up in the middle of the night if I needed to go to the clinic or anything else. 

The next morning, I woke up around 9am, sleeped out from basically doing nothing but sleeping for the past two days.  As I made my way down for breakfast, I felt a bit better but not 100%.  I met some guys at breakfast who mentioned they were going to go see a movie, which was pretty much the only thing I was up for. 

I went up to take a shower - a monumental occasion in itself - my first in four days.  I was so cold when I was sick that I literally couldn't imagine taking off any clothing to take a shower. 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, hot showers in South America are incredibly rare and I was ecstatic when I learned we had them at the hostel.  This shower, however, was SCALDING.  Be careful what you wish for, I guess.  Usually when I shower, I get wet and then stand out if the water to soap up, stepping back in for as little time as possible to avoid water so cold it takes your breath away.  In this shower I had to stand out of the water to avoid second degree burns.  Nonetheless, after the shower I felt like a million bucks and went back downstairs ready to conquer the day.  Antibiotics are truly a miracle.

* I would also like to thank my parents and brothers for constantly checking up on me, and some amazing friends back home, Anj, Stephen, Chris, and Chad for Googling travel clinics, safety tips in Lima, daily check ins and never ending messages of support and reminders to stay hydrated.  Being sick away from home sucks, but you guys made it just a little better and made me feel loved from thousands of miles away.

Taganga - Santa Marta - Tayrona - Lima - Huaraz

Checking in to give a quick update on the past week.  Raphael and I have taken it pretty easy and have spent a bunch of time traveling.

When I last wrote, we had just returned from La Ciudad Perdida and were ready to celebrate.  All nine of us from the trek and four others from an adjoining trek spent the night partying in a town called Taganga.  While all of the details don't need to be on the internet, I will say we spent the night at Miraval, the only bar/nightclub in Taganga standing around in a circle dancing and looking like the gringos that we are.  Unlike the past 5 nights, we managed to stay up way later than our 8:30 bed time and watched the sun rise over the mountains and the fishermen head out for the day. 

I didn't love Taganga.  It's a tiny fishing town that somehow became a major backpacker attraction.  It's supposedly known for scuba diving, but I didn't hear great things.  Other than that, its really just a place to party.  To me it just felt dirty.  We spent two days and two nights and I couldn't wait to leave.

We headed back to the beloved dreamer hostel in Santa Marta and continued to spend time with six of the people from our trek for the next two days.

We spent one day at Tayrona National park, a gorgeous park lined by the Caribbean Sea with many of the most gorgeous beaches I've ever seen.  We walked through the jungle about 45 minutes and then from beach to beach for an hour and a half each way.  After 4.5 hours of climbing rocks and walking barefoot my feet were killing.  I was in bed again by 8:30 that night. 

Tuesday was a travel day.  We left Colombia and headed to Peru.  We checked into our hostel, Hostel Kokopelli, in Lima just in time to see the end of a pumpkin carving contest. It was nice that they were celebrating Halloween, a little piece of home.   The hostel was a bit different from what I had been used to, but it was a city hostel instead of one in a smaller town.  It had a bar, common room, and fusbol table on the top floor and an overall great vibe.

We were a bit taken aback when we walked in our room, however.  There were half full cups, a dirty pot with remains of soup and 8 bottles of something that looked like Pedialyte lining the floor.  The last thing we wanted was to share a bedroom with someone who had a stomach flu. 

We soon met the culprit.  Dan, a Canadian, who assured us that while he was trying to rehydrate, his virus was not contagious.  He didn't know exactly what he had, but his symptoms were loss of feelings in all of his limbs, weakness, and a fever that only lasted a day.  The hostel arranged for a doctor to come see him daily and while she didn't have a name for what he had, she had seen it before and believed it came from swimming in, and accidentally swallowing, some type of contaminated water.  On our second day, Dan managed to walk two floors up to the common room, the farthest he had gone in five days. 

In Lima we stayed in a neighborhood called Miraflores that I loved.  There's not a ton to do, but I loved the energy of being back in a big city.  There's also a lot of American chains there too, so it felt a bit like home.  There was McDonalds, Starbucks, FedEx, even a Pinkberry.

We spent our first day at two markets.  The first was for locals, and the biggest market I've ever seen.  You could buy anything from food to clothing to metal scraps to toilettries to live chickens, pigs, ducks, and guinnea pigs.  It also was lined with hundreds of police officers, which made me a bit uncomfortable though we never found out why. 

The second market was much smaller, but exactly what we were looking for, and both Raph and I are now the owners of way more alpaca clothing than can fit in our packs.  I'll be sending a package with gifts home as soon as I find a post office. 

Kokopelli had a big Halloween party.and everyone dressed up, which was unexpected.  I didn't want to spend money on, nor buy something I'd have to carry around, so one of the Canadians from our room and I put on our new alpaca sweaters and went as twins.  Raph wore his red beach sheet and went as Jesus which he pulls off really well. 

I started the night with a two for one happy hour Pisco Sour special.  Pisco Sour is the most famous Peruvian drink.  I had eucalyptus flavor, but agreed to the drinks BEFORE knowing that there were raw egg whites in the recipe.  Not sure I'll be ordering it again.

Last night we took an overnight bus to a town called Huaraz.  The buses here are great... Nicer than American airplanes.  We were served dinner and our seats reclined and had foot rests.  I slept the whole way.  It's off season in Huaraz, and there's NO ONE around.  Some of the best hikes in the world are supposed to be located here, but it looks like it might be difficult to find a group big enough to convince a guide to take us out.  We also have to adjust to the altitude, the city is 10,000 feet high. 

Tomorrow we're going to go to some hot springs with a South American couple who both made aaliyah a few years ago and now live in Israel.  Hopefully the following day we'll be able to do a day hike called Laguna 69 and maybe even some longer treks after.  If not soon though, I may go stir crazy.  It's freezing here and I'm pretty sure our hostel doesn't have heat.  The alpaca clothing is already coming in handy. 

Pictures:
#1 Jesus and Caesar
#2 Raphael at the market
#3 Halloween at Kokopelli
#4 Sunrise in Taganga
#5 Watching the paragliders in Lima
#6 Halloween in Lima
#7 Tayrona National Park