Well then.
If you read this blog and you've read my life updates you know that my life for the past year has been leading to a journey in South America.
That journey has been completed.
Hell yeah.
I mean really it hasn't been a journey since the past year; more directly it could be said for the past two years since June 2011 when I had the revelation that I no longer wanted to work in theatre and wanted to spend my twenties doing other stuff ie travelling.
Shit this journey could've started when I was 10 or 11 or 12 and thought so much about the world, dedicating myself at the time to geography and history (I got in the geography bowl in the 7th grade). So much of my life was dreaming about leaving the country and going on an excursion. In high school it was going to Germany or France and in university it was about going to Japan, China, and the Spanish speaking world.
To have been able to go abroad...feels nice. Once you're atop Machu Picchu it's a glorious feeling not only because Machu Picchu is a badass place to be but also because it means you did it. You had a dream and instead of letting it fester you actually worked toward making it a reality. You saw the pictures and postcards of Machu Picchu and the city between the mountains and decided to see it in person and you saw it in person and holy shit it's awesome (being grammatically correct isn't appropriate for my enthusiasm).
If this post seems like a ramble that's because it is. As this week progresses I intend to chronicle my experience in each country I went to in separate posts, but right now I'm in free-thought.
I thought about blogging about the whole trip everyday--treating this like a diary. Many of the friends I met on this trip kept diaries either on blogs or full on writing them with a pen. I did chronicle a bit of my trip through poetry but I kept steadfast at taking pictures. I've been never a diary keeper--which is a terrible confession for a writer. I keep journals in the midst of working on substantial but I broadly reflect more than daily reflect--not something I readily endorse. I think my artistic works were always my diaries, though. My poetry is a chronicle of how I was and just like we look back at our diaries from youth and cringe at the type of person we were--with the wisdom of our (relative) older age--I cringe at my old works. Hell I cringe at stuff I wrote last week.
In my poems I chronicled what I suppose I truly learned on this trip. They were about the people at "Retiro," a train and bus station in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had one poem about the ugly ass national library in Recoleta. As poets we aim to improve the blank piece of paper--a quote from Chilean poet Nicanor Parra--so writing a poem about Machu Picchu is difficult because a) others have already written poems about Machu Picchu (including Pablo Neruda) and b) you cannot improve the blank piece of paper writing about Machu Picchu because language cannot barely capture its magnificence.
I should note that I will write a poem around an experience in Machu Picchu, however marginal it shall be.
Yet, I shall also work on a poem that I completed in Valparaiso, about stairs left incomplete. It deserves a poem too.
South America was truly a poets' paradise.
...
It was hard for me in May or April to know if this trip was going to be worth it. This past year was unusually rigorous as I've chronicled, if briefly, in my other "Life Updates." The rejection from the MFA schools, my mom's breast cancer, my grandfather's death were the big life events that felt heavy and made 2012-2013 the worse year I've had since sixth grade when I went through puberty. Each of them had their own webs of difficulties such as the uncertainty of what I would do when I got back from this trip via the MFA rejections, or living at home per my mother's request and dealing with my family issues, or the disintegration of my extended family via my grandfather's death. Those big three loomed but there were others, particularly concerning relationships.
The trip seemed far away to be tangible except in an email from Delta that I had a trip I was going on in June and I was returning in July.
It was necessary to do this, however. At any point I may have said "maybe this trip should wait" but I didn't. I don't know why but instinctively I knew I had to do this trip. I knew that if I didn't do it now then I would just keep saying "eventually" but not "now." I have thought over things in the past too much when I should have just did something. I needed to have this experience, to become more whole or self aware, to know more about the world than what is on the internet or books. I needed to give something to my 10 year old dreamer self.
Before I went on this trip I read "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson, a one volume history of the U.S. Civil War. In this book, McPherson discusses the mechanics and personality of Ulysses S. Grant and how whenever he went into battle he rarely planned for how the enemy my counter in a specific scenario--he just did it. This of course meant he would have some egregious losses, but instead of saying "no" we should wait he'd just do something and keep plowing. This isn't the smartest idea but for Grant at the time it worked because he took advantage of the Confederacy's relative cautiousness and lack of resources while living off the land.
I think in university I developed this mentality of just doing stuff. Realistically I shouldn't have gone on this trip because of what was going on around me and because of my precarious financial situation. Now that I'm back my job situation is odd enough. I had/have no backups; my dad even told me before I went that if something were to happen he couldn't bring me back because he didn't have the finances.
Meh. I decided it was now or not soon enough or never.
Ulysses S. Grant became my hero, a heretical confession by a Southerner.
...
The thing about travelling is that it is a bug, an illness like a sinus infection. Once you do a substantial amount of above ordinary travelling you catch this bug and you want to do more.
I would like to think I caught the bug going to Chicago, but I think now that was just a sinus infection. I have pneumonia now.
I wish other US citizens were there but not because I wanted to be closer to the US citizens. There aren't enough of us travelling outside the country into places not exactly in our comfort level. When I backpacked there were mainly Europeans, Australians, and New Zealanders, but rarely ever US folk. Most Americans (sorry Monalisa, Meliza, and others who don't like me using Americans exclusively for US citizens but it's just easier than saying United Statesians and I'm not saying yankees because that is a baseball team I hate) don't travel to South America because it isn't safe. I kept getting warnings about going to this continent with my mom showing me a news story about a couple who went missing in Peru or other coworkers in the schools and other places telling me about things they heard. I had one particular coworker who said "ooh what does your mother think" and "why are you going here" in a pejorative way. A Chicagoan I met at an airport was saying the same thing with her coworkers telling her that she was going to be kidnapped.
First off, that couple in Peru went off the grid on purpose. They were having fun, mom.
Secondly, I was never kidnapped, but this anxiety certainly permeated with me. There was a point where I was asked by a friend why Americans were all afraid and I didn't know but he was right. There's something about us that's afraid to travel outside anywhere other than Europe or Australia (which are fine places in their own right) that needs to stop. The only Americans going to Peru or South America were people going on mission trips but I would like to see more going to South America because this continent makes your life better by making everything wrong in your life seem miniature. I don't mean that in just a crime and problems scenario a la Brazil or Chile riots, etc. I mean next to something like Aconcagua or Cerro La Campana your problems aren't much.
The problems I was supposed to have, I didn't have. I wasn't kidnapped, mugged, or have my life threatened. Nothing of mine was stolen. The only close call was when I was on a combi and heard gun shots outside because of three kids trying to steal something but that's my own fault for being on a combi and being cheap. For the most part I was travelling solo and rarely in a group on my trip and I never had any issues. That being said, if you go to rural Peru or travel in hostels you will have to sit on toilets without lids, you will see stray dogs and feral cats, and you will get cold showers but you deal with it because that isn't a huge deal. If that kind of stuff makes you uncomfortable enough to where you cannot enjoy the beauty of the rest of the country you're an ass.
A perspective that I shall elaborate upon in a later post was when I was went on Machu Picchu mountain. Machu Picchu mountain is gargantuan in its steepness. I had paid for it with my ticket already but after hiking in the morning I had second thoughts and doubts. I decided to try it since I already paid for it...and didn't make it to the top. My water had run out and I was exhausted. So I went down, disappointed. Perhaps this is cognitive dissonance but I decided this wasn't the proper perspective. Sure, I didn't make it but I made it halfway. I got views few people get to see and trying to make it halfway a steep ass mountain in the Andes is a shit ton better than finishing a tv show on netflix on my ass at home. That's all I'm saying. There's no reason to exclude South America out of being too afraid. It's worth more than what you have.
...
That being said there was one hitch on this trip for me: the loneliness.
And I don't mean just not having friends. I was sharing my experience with others via my photos on facebook or emails but it was easy to feel alone.
In Santiago, in Mendoza, having no one to enjoy my big ass sandwich with left me with a bit of melancholy. Seriously.
Granted, being solo in my travels forced me to step out of my timidity in order to have company; I learned that just asking could get me a couple of people to eat out with in Valparaiso and Lima. I definitely had some good company, particularly in Buenos Aires and Cusco; those were bonds I intend to work to hold on to.
That being said, on my next travels I want to be able to share my experience with someone. It's difficult to describe this loneliness because it's easy to get into sentimentality and because of how intangible it is. I aim to never travel alone again though.
That's also why it's good to get on tours and treks. I did that for Machu Picchu and I'm glad I did.
Never travel in a group with just the guide and you, however, especially if that guide is a douche.
...
Over the next week I intend to go more in depth in the countries I visited but I wanted to write something to start this off with, an appetizer. Consider this post your mozzarella sticks.
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