Bad Days and Good Days

Wednesday was one of those days where nothing bad really happens, yet you just seem to have trouble enjoying the day.  One of those days where your hair is in a frizz, your clothes don't seem to match, and you wonder why one earth you can't get yourself to do even a couple of push-ups or sit-ups on a daily basis.  You get your normal amount of email, but aren't excited about it.  The weather is nothing to complain about.  You realize at lunch that your morning coffee has made you jittery and anxious and you have trouble focusing on anything.  For me, I felt like I couldn't control my feet in my salsa lesson and when the bus got stuck in interminable traffic coming back downtown, I was feeling a little blue.

The nice thing about days like that, where nothing really bad happens, is that little things can pick you right up.  For me on Wednesday it was a nice IM from my sister-in-law Karin.  Momentum shifted, and suddenly I was on a path to having a very pleasant Thursday.

Thursday was everything that Wednesday wasn't.  On the bus up to my lesson, I had brought along my mp3 player, listening to and visualizing salsa the entire hour long journey to the school.  I did my steps with confidence and made it back to the hostel afterward in record time.  The evening was spent with friends made here in Colombia.  First was dinner with my Costa Rican friend Alejandra.  Alejandra has spent months in Bogotá and other cities doing research for her PhD thesis.  Back in January, when Abe was here, we had all become friends, so it was nice to have a send off dinner.  We returned to the hostel in time to see that the Celtics were playing a tight game against the Cavaliers and she turned to getting the remainder of her items packed.  Meanwhile I went out to have a beer with a German couple I had met at the Spanish school.  Patrick and Frederika are two incredibly nice people, and seeing their apartment and five-inch thick binder of visa's and legal documents did make me a bit wistful for my own documents not coming together.  We had a lovely time and will undoubtedly be seeing one another again before I depart.  In fact, I may go with Patrick next Saturday to see where he is teaching German to children.

Today could not live up to yesterday, but it has had its pluses.  With Alejandra gone, I have moved up to her room, up a steep ladder above the rest of the dormitory beds.  I will post pictures of this soon.  For now, I am drinking yerba mate from a gourd and getting down to the business of doing some computer programming.  I will leave you with two pictures I took on the way home, with the sun shining through a mist coming down from the clouds.

Back in Colombia

Hello.  Well clearly I have some catching up to do here.  But let's jump to the present for now and work on the past later.

In January (I know, but I'm seriously about to jump to the present) I came to Colombia hoping to volunteer with an organization here in Bogota.  One of the byproducts of that almost but not quite happening is that I left a bunch of stuff in the hostel for safe keeping.  So if for no other reason than to pick up my stuff, I needed to return.  As I began to be at peace with the delays in my plans to volunteer, I thought I might as well make the best of the situation.  Since a tourist visa gives you thirty days in the country, I figured why not spend four weeks learning how to dance salsa?  I have a little experience with the basic steps and a ten hour a week job, so certainly I can spend some time on a life skill like that.

I signed up with the AfroLatinaSalsaShow people.  Well, I didn't exactly signed up.  I emailed them and said I'd like to learn salsa.  They emailed back and said great!  I emailed and said, "Can we work out a schedule and how much does it cost?"  They emailed me back and said to just show up and we'd figure it out.

So the morning after I arrived in Bogota, I walked ten minutes down to the nearby TransMilenio stop (Museo de Oro) and hopped on a bus heading for 142nd street.  This would be one of two times I would get on in the week when there would actually be a seat.  1.6 million people ride the TransMilenio daily, mostly jammed in next their fellow rider.  The plus side of the jamming in is that when the driver brings the bus to a screeching at an all too predictable red light, you get a nice little buffer, particularly if you are in the back of the bus.  Since the buses don't have great acceleration nor do they suffer from the back-of-the-bus-launch school buses face when hitting potholes, the back of the bus is definitely the place to be.  I would like to say that the bus makes for good people watching, but in general it looks like a lot of people stuck on a bus trying to get across town.  You do occasionally get to observe people talking into cell phones as if they were walkie talkies, rotating the phone in front of their mouths when they are talking then quickly rotating it back to their ears when it's the other persons turn.  I don't recall seeing this before arriving here.

An interesting thing about the Calle 142 stop is that it stops on Calle 145.  The next stop is called Calle 146 and, as I did not see another stop a block up the road, I'll have to report back to you on that one.  This particular line is a bit like the light rail in L.A. and drops you off in the middle of the small freeway.  Fortunately they had the foresight to build pedestrian bridges for many of the stops.  I am staying on Calle 9 in the historic heart of the city.  Where I am is full of older Spanish-style houses and there is a mix of tourists and students during the day.  At Calle 142/5 you enter an upper middle class neighborhood, a mix of condos and single family houses with lawns and large defensive fences.  There are lovely well-maintained parks and higher-end restaurants and retail stores.  There is also a dance studio.  Or at least there was until this weekend.

No worries there -- they are just moving to a new location ten blocks north.  For my first week I had two one hour and one two hour dance lesson.  My instructor is Andres, perhaps the most professional sixteen year old I have ever met.  We spent the first class going over the basics, the second working on a 26 measure sequence and the third practicing it and adding on a few bits here and there.  Andres pointed out that one of the keys to looking like you know what you are doing is to constantly be stringing together moves and only very occasionally doing the basic step.  Even though I only have a few moves under my belt at this point, it has been fun just practicing constantly switching between them.  It has been a bit challenging as the floors in the hostel are extremely slippery, but I dance around with my headphones on all the same.

Classes resume Monday, so tomorrow will be spent catching up on a bit of work and finally going to see some of the museums.  I may start with the aforementioned Museo de Oro as it is one of the most prestigious in the city.

Signing off for now, but hoping to get caught up in the coming days!

Massachusetts

I flew from Miami to Newark in late January, going immediately to my brother Mark's house in Chelsea, spending a couple of days with him, his wife Karin, and my newest niece, Teigan.  Such visits are always a wonderful time and usually involve staying up late drinking wine and discussing politics, music, and pop culture.  This visit did not disappoint!  A couple of days later I was on a bus up to Boston (I am now a devoted fan of the Bolt Bus -- $15 gets you a seat and your wifi!) for what was intended to be a week long trip.  Two months later, I returned to New York and embarked on the latest adventure, the one involving New Orleans, Seattle, and England.  Rather than attempt a chronological reconstruction, I will try to cull out a few episode from my time with my wonderful hosts.

Atticus and Lara hosted me, off an on, in their living room for a good chunk of this time.  Atticus and I went to high school together and have been friends ever since.  He and Lara are self employed, creating iPhone (and now iPad) applications.  Their success is such that they have had more contract work than they can accept and had their own app, "MassTransit," featured on an official iPhone commercial.  As much as I admire their enterprising spirits, I admire more that they allowed me to log forty hours of playing "Battlefield 1943" on their XBox without intimating in the least that this pathological compulsion of mine was in any way irritating.

I stayed a good bit of time in Davis Square with my good friend Joanne.  I am eternally grateful for her to introducing me to the dorkiest yet most useful of travel accessories -- the neck-brace pillow.  As I do not generally travel first class, these pillows are a godsend to seat sleepers, allowing one to avoid days of neck and shoulder pain after a long flight.  I also discovered that they make handy regular pillows for side sleepers who need to sleep with an earplug in because they are staying a noisy hostel.  In addition to being just generally awesome, Joanne also is the announcer for a radio show, and I had the pleasure of traveling with her up to Burlington, Vermont to catch the taping of a show at the Flynn Theater, then chitchatting with her and the crew at a nearby restaurant.  Overall, I would say that Burlington is a nice little city with a shocking lack of parking and ample vegan dining options.  That trip, complete with a detour through Western Massachusetts to see my sister Cathy and brother Peter (and family), was a highlight of my spring.

The other gracious hosts on this leg of my journey were Kiera and Katie, friends who share an apartment in Cambridge and were good enough to lend me their rooms while they themselves went on far flung adventures to the various extremities of the U.S.  They were very welcoming, as is their nature.  Perhaps the highlight of my stay was a trip with Kiera to Revere Beach to go to the famous Kelly's Roast Beef.  We got out to Revere about an hour before sunset, and parked about half a mile from Kelly's so as to get a bit of a stroll in before sitting down to our meal.  As Kelly's, we discovered, has no seating, we took our (delicious) sandwiches across the street and ate them on a bench overlooking the water.  When we were finished, we packed up some uneaten french fries and walked back to the car.  This tale would be unremarkable had it not been eighteen degrees (Fahrenheit) out and blowing a steady ten knots.

The week that turned into two months had its highs and lows.  Eventually the anticipation of eminent return to Colombia and ATG lab work subsided.  At last I decided that it would best to give these things their own time to work themselves out and to take the immediate opportunity of a month or so, with no real plans, to travel.  The details of those travels are forthcoming.

Not Even in the Western Hemisphere

Actually, I vaguely remember getting into an argument about whether the western parts of Europe were in the Western Hemisphere -- to my mind the west / east demarcation should be the prime meridian.  And that is precisely where I am, slightly west of the prime meridian, in the north of England.  This all came about through a series of non-events that turned my February into live-in Beckett play.  Since last I wrote I have been in New York twice, Boston, New Orleans, Seattle, and now Milnthorpe, UK.


View of Arnside from Arnside KnottI should give the previous cities some justice by writing them up in individual blog entries, something I have been entirely remiss at doing lately.  But for now, the present.  England is having a late-unfolding spring, but strong hints of it were in the air today.  I took a stroll this morning from my parents' house across hills and farm fields to the neighboring town of Arnside.  Arnside sits at the side the wide expanse of a shallow river; when the tide is out, as it was when I arrived, a broad mudflat is revealed.  The result is impressive views in nearly all directions, from the wooded hills directly across the water to the long brick train viaduct to the snow capped mountains in the distance.  The snow on the tops is busily melting and each sheep in the fields seemed to have two young lambs scurrying behind it as I passed by them on my way.  In all, England was a picture of serenity today.

The gist of my situation is that obtaining the visa for Colombia fell through and a number of tentative opportunities have put me into a bit of a holding cycle, though I expect to return to Colombia as a tourist, if nothing else, in May, unless something else come un-held.  Details of the past two months to follow.

Miami Beach

Can it be a coincidence that Heidi Montag's "Superficial" is on repeat play in the hostel here in Miami Beach?  Honestly, this place does not seem that bad.  I am staying in the Deco Walk Hostel, in the Art Deco section of Miami Beach.  Speaking from three hours of experience, the area seems defined by Ocean Drive, running north to south with a park and beach on one side and a series of art deco buildings lining the other.  Most if not all of these buildings are restaurants, hotels, or both.  My building is both.  Walking down the sidewalk, you pass through a sea of tables on either side of you, hostesses gleefully pointing you at menus, and any number of people walking through.  It has perhaps the most diverse mix of white, Latino, and black people I have ever seen.  A hip-hop troupe call "The Gingerbread Men" dropped by the table next to me to chat the folks up and promote their new album, "Bread Making 101."  White men walk by in polo shirts with sweaters tied around their chests.  Other sport baseball caps at jaunty angles.  A group of businessmen at dinner at the next table, chatting away in Spanish.  Now I'm back in the main room of the hostel, listening to "Superficial" for, seriously, the tenth time in a row.  It might be catchy if it weren't so awful.  To top it off three young women are milling about preparing to hit the clubs and Grumpier Old Men is playing on a large screen TV behind the bar where I bought a flat Yuengling for three dollars.

So back at sea level in warm humid air, everything is quite different than it was eleven hours ago when I was crossing Bogota in a cab, chatting away rather successfully with my driver.  I have had a few good Spanish experiences, not least listening to the folks at Un Techo Para Mi Pais talk away at full speed and pretty much understanding what they were saying.  Hopefully I will not lose it all over the next few weeks as I work on obtaining the needed visa.  Feel free to give me a call and talk to me in Spnaish -- I'll try to stammer out a response.

Tomorrow I'm going to check out the beach itself.  Unfortunately, my cell phone slipped out of my pocket at the hostel (they found it, thankfully!) so I'm still on Skype-only mode until I figure out what to do next.  That said my phone number forwards to Skype, so you'd hardly know the difference except that I only answer when I'm in a wifi zone.  In any event, perhaps I'll have more to report tomorrow, or perhaps nothing until I fly back into the cold of New York on Saturday.

Cast of Characters

My hostel, Anadamayi, is located in the Candelaria neighborhood of Bogota.  As with most Latin American cities situated near mountains or hills, the Candelaria neighborhood gets gradually dicier as you ascend toward the mountains which flank Bogota to the east.  My hostel is several block below the diciness, but high enough up that when you walk out the door you get a rather lovely view of the city stretching out below you.

Anandamayi takes its name from the Bengal mystic Sri Anandamayi Ma, and in doing so makes every attempt to create a tranquil environment for its guests.  When you arrive you are offered a cup of tea, poured from a large metal pitcher that sits on a wood fired cooking range.  During the evenings, this stove provides the only heat in the hostel not caused by one's own shivering.  This is one of the odd aspects of Bogota, that it is constructed as if the temperature never descended below sixty when in fact it gets close to forty every night.  For example, the bathrooms in the hostel are all permanently exposed to the elements, with large open windows high on the walls near the ceiling.  Many houses have interior patios exposed to the elements.  But nowhere is there heat.  While this is clearly environmentally sound, sometimes I wish that I did not have to wait until morning to thaw out my hands.

The hospitality at Anandamayi extends beyond the initial cup of tea -- the staff are very friendly and helpful.  Even the contractor who is constantly repairing one thing or another is a great guy.  The hostel has three large patios, each expertly gardened with an array of fuchsias, bonsai trees, roses, and other like plants, pleasingly arranged in a variety of stone and plastic pots.  Many mornings, a CD of droning monks and recorder is played softly.  This I could live without.

Because the hostel is so welcoming, many of its visitors stay around for a good while.  Two French university students are here studying -- they initially thought they would find an apartment, but liked the hostel so much that they have stayed.  The aforementioned Alejandra had been staying in the cupola of the dormitory building, doing research for her PhD, until her mother arrived and they left to do some sightseeing.  An older American named Jerry was here few a few days, a loud talker and nice fellow who liked to tell you things.  On the day I met him I was heading out the door to get some lunch with Abe when he hailed me.

"Is this your first day here?" he asked with a look of concern.  "No, I've been here for two weeks," I replied.  He paused and looked as though he was processing the information.  "Well, I wouldn't walk down Calle 9 -- it doesn't look safe," he said.  Calle 9 is the street the hostel is located on.  The staff advises people not to walk down it at night, although if you do you end up walking by other hostels, which suggests it is not the worst of affairs.  "Yes," I responded, smiling, "I've been here two weeks."

Two nights later I had the odd experience of watching Jerry listen to music, or should I say listening to Jerry listen to music.  He was sitting in the kitchen, plugged into his iPod touch.  I sat down at my computer and put some music on myself.  Before long, though, I began to notice a very strange noise.  "aaaaaaa-uuhhhhhh-nnnnnnnngh-*SNORT* ... uuhhhhh-NNNNNNNNN-aaaaaaaaa-*SNORT*"  Jerry appeared to be humming along to the music in the most tuneless manner I have ever heard, punctuating each phrase with an awkward intake of air usually confined to back sleepers with a stuffed up nose.  This went on for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES.  I do not usually use all capital letters, but I feel this warranted it.

Jerry was far from the biggest character at the hostel.  That honor could fall on no one else but William.  William was born in Minnesota, lived there until age sixteen or so, then moved to Berlin.  He stands about six feet tall, wears a black beret on his shaved head, and inexplicably speaks English like a Belgian beatnik.  He makes grand entrances into rooms, with big movements, his eyes darting around to see if you are paying attention to him.  He gets endless enjoyment out of a joke where he pretends to confuse the Spanish word for plantain with that for placenta to people who are either too patient or too obtuse to realize they are being put on.  He addresses everyone as "fish," as in, "Alo, feesh! Hwat ar eyou doin toodayuh?"  He is generally quite friendly and, as you could imagine, great with kids.

Today we are short those characters and, more significantly, short my traveling companion Abe who has returned to Los Angeles and his life teaching and researching social psychology.  Abe traveled with me on my first trip to Central America and together we have explored Costa Rica, Guatemala, England, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and now Colombia.  In past trips there were moments when I would get quite frustrated with Abe, and never more than when we would play Gin Rummy, which inevitably would happen.  You see, I am a decent card player.  I can remember cards that were played and recount the good and bad plays that led to the game's outcome.  Leaning heavily on the sage experience of my father, he and I managed to come in on top in a duplicate bridge tournament in my parents' home town.  After a hand of some trick-based game, my ex would look at me as if I had two heads when I would rattle off my thoughts on how the hand played out, thoughts such as, "I knew you were holding the queen of diamonds, so I should have tried to duck it with the five since I figured my partner had the ace."  By comparison, Gin should be a relatively simple game.  You merely arrange your hand of ten cards into runs or sets of at least three cards each by picking up and discarding one card each play.  If your opponent picks up the eight of clubs, you can assume he is either collecting eights or has a club run through the eight.  I generally know when I am being forced to discard a card Abe needs.  I generally know when he is holding a card that I need.  So I leave it to you to explain how the last victory I can remember against him occurred in 2001.  A generally calm and placid individual, one of the few things in life that could throw me into an absolute rage was losing in games.  This was not the hit-your-opponent-over-the-head-with-a-folding-chair kind of rage, the dark thunderclouds always gathered around my personal frustration for not pulling through.  Happy am I to report, then, that I now seem able to lose with abandon with only a gentle spring mist gathering in place of the storms of the past.  Perhaps at thirty-two I am starting to grow up.

Tomorrow I leave for the United States where I must visit with the Colombian consulate in order to pick up the visa I need for volunteering.  Unfortunately, the organization switching lawyers, meaning that they cannot sign any of the documents I need to obtain said visa.  So rather than my popping into the consulate on Monday, it seems as though I will need to get the materials in the mail.  As Seattle does not have a Colombian consulate, I will be staying with friends and family in the northeast.  If the process stretches out, perhaps I will head down and visit with my IR/PS friends in Washington -- we'll see.  For now, I have two days on Miami Beach lined up before going to face the harshness of winter in New York, but I am looking forward to all of it.

Andrés Carne de Res

Having completed our Spanish lessons and with Abe's day of departure fast approaching, we thought it might be enjoyable to check out one of Bogota's fanciest restaurants, Andrés Carne de Res.  As many other upscale establishments, this restaurant is located in a district called the Zona Rosa.  In general, the further north you travel in Bogota, the nicer the neighborhoods get.  Abe and I are staying in the central, in a historical district called the Candelaria, dotted with Spanish-style homes and government buildings.

As with just about everything we have tried to find in Bogota, finding Andrés' restaurant was no easy matter.  His establishment was particularly well hidden, found by entering an upscale shopping mall, exiting it through the back onto a small exposed courtyard, entering a second building and talking to a woman who tells you take a an elevator to the fourth floor and ask for "Paula."

The restaurant is an extraordinary place, spanning at least three floors with balconies, gangways, and large tables that could easily seat twenty.  From the middle of our table sprouted a large iron candle holder, with a large candle burning away in it.  After a minute or two our first waiter came over and introduced himself, handing us large bound menus that were essentially tabloid newspapers.  A minute later our second waiter came by, taking our drink order and suggesting the house special cocktails.  These cocktails were outrageously expensive and outrageously strong.  The effects helped us enjoy a troupe of masked performers who stopped by mid-meal to give us bandannas and serenade us with cumbia played on the trombone.

We ate heartily at the restaurant, stopped one more time by the casino where Abe played a few more hands of poker while I wandered about taking in the scene, primarily college-aged kids spilling out of any number of small clubs lining the streets in that area.  I stopped in an Irish bar and had an overpriced draft can of Guinness, met up with Abe, then took a taxi home.

Unfortunately, while we arrived home safely, my previous observation of a lack of accidents found a tragic counterexample, as we drove by what appeared to have been a fatal accident involving a cab and a pedestrian.  If, I should say when, you visit me in Bogota, be very careful crossing the streets.  Do not trust signs, signals, or lights.  In fact, you will be safest if you imagine that some evil villain is actively trying to run you down.  If you approach street crossing with this attitude, you should be OK.

Hopefully within a few weeks I should have an apartment and be able to follow through on this invitation.  I looked at one this weekend, but it was on a rather busy street, and I think the constant passing of microbuses could grate.  Fortunately there are some lovely apartments within my price range, and I hope to see some of them shortly.

Errands and Classes

This past week has been a busy one.  Abe is here until Monday, and we had previously decided that we would take a week's worth of Spanish language classes at a nearby Spanish school.  Because Monday was a holiday, we ended up with a somewhat unusual schedule where I had four days of five hour classes, and he five days of four hour classes.  Four hours is a long time to be in class.  Five hours is a very long time to be in class.

None of this prevented either of us from going on a number of excursions, some necessary, some not.  I had written before about Abe's winning experience at the Rockefeller Poker Room.  On the strength of his first experience, he decided to back and enter into a tournament taking place on Tueday night, beginning at seven-thirty PM.  I traveled up town with him, bought him a beer at the Bogota Beer Company, wished him well, and headed home.  Working in our hostel room that night, about every half hour a car would pull up in front and I would expect Abe to be ringing the bell and coming in to tell me how it went.  When I fell asleep, around midnight, this had not happened.

Fortunately, when I awoke in the morning, there was Abe in the room.  "How did it go?" I asked.  "About as well as it could have," he replied, unable to contain the broad smile that flashed across his face.  Having entered a tournament with thirty others, he had made it to the final four, who after a few hands had decided to split the prize pool evenly.  His wallet was overstuffed with Colombian bills totaling in the vicinity of four hundred US dollars.  Now and again Abe asks me why I do not play poker with him.  I think the answer is quite clear.

As the poker room is uptown and we are just south of midtown, going back and forth involves a good bit of public transportation.  There are three basic options: the micro-bus, the TransMilenio, and the taxi.  Micro-buses here ply the streets in extraordinary numbers, particularly on tenth avenue where they sit back to back, two lanes each direction, for as far as the eye can see, slowly inching their way north or south.  Those that meander through the smaller streets do so at the maximum velocity possible, all the while spewing black exhaust into the air.  Each has a placard in the front window with roughly ten words written in a variety of colors, sizes, and typefaces.  Theoretically, these tell you where the bus is going.  Usually it takes me about ten seconds after they have zoomed by to realize that I should have hailed them.

Because of this, the TransMilenio is, so far, much more appealing to me.  The TransMilenio is basically a subway system built above ground and utilizing buses in a series of dedicated lanes.  One enters the TransMilenio in dedicated self contained stops, much like one would enter a subway.  There is an intricate system of express and local buses which change names depending on the time of day, the day of the week, and the direction they are traveling.  Despite this, the system makes some sense, and the buses make good time traveling down the avenues in their special lanes.  A secondary benefit to this system is the availability of these lanes to emergency vehicles, which can zoom through the city even when it is gridlocked with rush hour traffic.

The final option, and the only realistic one late at night, is the taxi.  During the day, one generally hails a taxi on the street, but at night, for extra security, they are generally hailed by phone.  The dispatcher gives you the number of the cab and a special two digit key that you present the driver.  The driver then speeds you along on a nighttime adventure through the city in which very few red lights are stopped for.  During the day, these same red lights at least warrant a slowing-down and a honk.  This is one of two reason that people in Bogota use their car horns.  They do not use them if they get cut off, in fact cutting others off is a true art form in Bogota's streets.  Basically, if you can squeeze in front any part of another car, they will yield and let you in, but without any of the cursing or finger raising that one might find in a city like Boston.  No, the other reason for honking is that the vehicle in front of you has stopped for any reason other than a red light at a major intersection.  If you stop to, say, let someone off your bus, to not plow into another car, or to allow a kindly old gentleman with a cane finish crossing the street unflattened, you will surely elicit a good horn sounding from the two or three cars behind you.  They will then attempt the previously described cutoff maneuver, regardless of the size of the street.  Despite all the chaos, I've yet to see any signs of accidents occurring -- neither banged up cars nor glass strewn about in the street.

My adventures included apartment hunting, obtaining information about getting a visa, and meeting with NGO I'll be volunteering for, but this entry is getting long, so I'll leave these thrilling tales for the next installment.

Jungle Time, part III

Of all the things pointed out by Leo on our walk in the jungle, perhaps the most interesting and frightening was a small community of very large ants.  These ants are immense, ugly, smell terrible, live in small groups and have a bite that is absolutely overwhelmingly painful and lasts for a good twenty-four hours.  In fact, they do not just bite but have a hornet-like stinging on their tail end.  Leo said being stung by those ants was the second most painful thing he had ever experienced, the first being the stitching of an accidental self-inflicted machete wound on his left forearm that was done without any anesthetic.  He said that some tribes that live in the jungle use the ants as part of a wedding ceremony.  In order to win the approval of the potential bride to be, the man must put his hand into a container of these ants and leave it there for as long as possible.  The idea is that if you can withstand multiple stings from the world's most painful ant, you can put up with the ups and downs of marriage, which seems both reasonable and terrifying.  The entire lecture made me all the more uncomfortable with my decision to wear flip-flops on the excursion.

After lunch we took a boat a short ways up river and did another walk, this time starting at a small farm where the jungle had recently been cleared by the very slash-and-burn methods that are gradually diminishing the entire forest.  The ash of former trees lay on top of sandy and rather infertile soil.  Various starchy plants would soon be grown until the soil was depleted, in a couple of years.  Antonio's jungle lodge itself was built upon a failed farm.  Once the land can no longer produce, it is abandoned and the jungle creeps back in.  These tiny farms were certainly drops in the bucket in comparison to the wide-scale deforestation going on in the region, but it was hard for me to step over the charred remains of trees without being a bit troubled.

As the day drew to a close, Carl, the Swede, and I were the only remaining guests at the lodge.  Antonio and his fiance, a Dutch woman, arrived in the late afternoon and let the staff go to be with their families.  On Leo's suggestion we climbed to the top of the lodge's tallest structure and looked out at the sun as it set over the jungle.  Carl and I remained in the tower chatting about economics and astronomy as Antonio and his fiance headed down to make dinner.

When we came down from the tower, a brilliant full moon was again making its way up in the east from behind some trees.  The kitchen area was warmly illuminated by eight or ten candles arranged on the tables.  Dinner was not yet fully ready, but our hosts brought out some garlic bread and red wine, and Carl and I sat at a table and resumed a game of dominoes that we had left earlier.  Leo had left to visit his girlfriend in the village down river, but another guide, Francisco, would join us for the evening.  When dinner arrived it was roast pig with a considerable amount of fat, but cooked perfectly and absolutely delicious.  After dinner we talked some more, played a few more rounds of dominoes, and when midnight approached, filled glasses with champagne Carl had brought and toasted the new year.  When the wine was gone I strolled back the shelter where my hammock was hanging, everything clear in the brilliant moonlight.  The night was warmer and for the first time in three nights, I slept soundly until morning, dreaming peacefully.

New Years Day was a day of leaving the jungle and returning to the city.  For our last hurrah, we went on a walk, this time on an abandoned rubber farming road.  We walked through a large field of Africanized bees that hummed in an unsettling manner around our ankles.  At the edge of the field, a pair of monkeys took notice of us and dashed off into the undergrowth.  After making our way some distance up the overgrown pathway we stopped, sat down, and just peered into the trees in silence.  A small group of jungle hens crossed onto and off of the road in the distance.  Various insects and frogs chirped away, but not loudly -- an evening in a New England forest is much louder affair.  We spent half an hour in this position, just looking about, then made our way back and gathered our belongings.  After a final lunch, we hopped in a boat and were soon speeding down the river, and not long after that we were aboard a freezing-cold bus rumbling back to Manaus.

Email Notifications

Hello.  Just some housekeeping.  I created a Google group to let people receive email updates when the blog is updated.  Personally I'm terrible at reading blogs unless I am reminded too.  So feel free to join!

http://groups.google.com/group/bengoessouth

- Ben

You Look Like You Slept Well

The other morning I trundled into the hostel kitchen, my hair wildly pillowified, in my pajamas.  Abe, who arrived here a few days ago, tends to wake up with the sun.  I hold out for a bit to see if it is really coming up or just pretending to.  So it was about eight in the morning when I wandered in.  Abe was typing away at his laptop, and a fellow long-term hosteler Alejandra was typing away at hers.  She is here doing research on indigenous people and heads out most days to sort through some sort of archives located nearby.  "Good morning," I said.  "Good morning," they answered, with Alejandra further volunteering "You look like you slept well."  I am fairly certain this was a compliment, though I have been going back and forth on it for some time.

I realize that I have not finished the jungle tale, and here I am almost a week into my stay in Bogota, Colombia.  This is not, I'm afraid to say, because I have spent my days poring through museums and climbing up mountains.  Instead, I spent two days searching for a FedEx office, and another visiting immigration offices that either could not help me or were closed.  I did visit the Matt Maher recommended Cafe Don Pedro which has the finest cup of coffee I have had in some time.  Today I had the pleasure of enjoying an iced coffee -- a first for my time in Latin America.  I've always thought that a world-leading region for coffee production sitting largely in the tropics should be practically swimming in iced coffee, but have found, until that moment, nothing but the hot variety.

Iced coffee is not the only progressive aspect of Bogota.  Restaurants prohibit smoking inside.  The city has miles and miles of bike lanes and bike paths.  Public parks are clean and good looking.  The public transportation system makes a great deal of sense and runs well.  The people at the tourist information booths are overwhelmingly nice.  Five or ten years ago, you could not have paid me to visit Bogota.  Stories of violence, kidnappings, and crime were about all that filtered into the US press.  From all I have read and what I have seen so far, life here has changed very much for the better.

Tonight Abe wanted to try his hand, so to speak, at poker, so we headed to the Zona Rosa where one finds upscale restaurants, bars, and casinos.  We started the evening with dinner at a Mexican restaurant.  I ordered quesadillas and a Peroni and Abe ordered some sauteed meat dish and a Negra Modelo.  I was somewhat surprised when a plastic bottle of orange soda was placed in front of me.  Before the waiter had a chance to pour me a cup of "Premio" our original waiter corrected him and a minor crisis was averted.  Our second waiter returned with a Peroni, then promptly walked directly into a glass door, causing an extraordinary thudding sound.  It was not his night.

The casino was called "The Rockerfeller" and had a small entrance on a busy street filled with young folks walking in between the local bars.  We were patted down by security upon entering and passed through a white cement hallway and up a flight of stairs to a small gaming room with three empty blackjack tables.  Confused, we spoke to a staff member who directed us up another flight of stairs.  Here we found a single poker table with about eight people seated around it.  For you poker fans, this was no-limit Texas Hold'em with one / two dollar blinds and a hundred dollar maximum buy-in.  Abe got a little coaching on how the game was conducted by a staff member and took a seat.  I was given a beer and offered a seat where I could divide my attention between the game and the Dallas - Philadelphia playoff game on the TV (sorry Philadelphia fans, that was a complete train wreck).

Everyone playing the game was on the young side, and about half were either outrageously drunk or doing their best to get there.  The mood was jovial, though two of the Colombians with multiple sheets to the wind kept up a steady stream of racist comments directed at the only Asian player at the table who was relatively staid about the whole situation, most likely because he was pounding down beers at an extraordinary rate and, somehow, winning his share of hands.  In the midst of this, Abe was playing extremely tightly -- in fact in the several hours we were there, I only watched him play two hands, though he apparently played a third when I slipped off to the restroom.  Since he was not doing a lot of playing, he struck up a conversation with the man on his right, an American named Dan, now a five-year resident of Bogota.  Surprisingly, Dan, at age thirty, was the owner of the casino, and perhaps more surprisingly given the sort of preconceptions one might have about a casino owner, seemed a legitimately nice guy.  I chatted with him myself a bit between hands, and he was very encouraging of my spending time in Bogota volunteering.  He said he lived nearby and it was safe, but a bit boring.  While I did not say this at the time, I made a mental note to check out places nearby.  Safe and boring sounds OK to me -- adjusting to life in another country should be adventure enough.

By the end of the evening Abe had won enough money to at least get us back to our hostel and was kicking himself about a round that would have led to all kinds of riches should he have stayed in.  He really enjoyed himself and I had a good time watching the game.

Tomorrow we are heading back to the Zona Rosa to watch the Patriots in their first playoff game.  Beyond that, not much is on the docket, and we expect most stores and museums to be closed tomorrow and Monday, a holiday.  On Tuesday I head back to the closed government ministry which should then be open, then start a week of intensive Spanish classes.  On Wednesday I hope to meet with the volunteer organization and with any luck I will be able to collect the necessary materials and have a visa in the beginning of February.  Here's hoping for some smooth sailing through some Latin American bureaucracy.  In the meantime, I hope to write up more of my experiences, but for now it is late and time for me to go to bed.

Rapid Ticket Buying

Brief interlude here.

My ridiculously inefficient flight plan to get back to Bogota had me taking a three and a half hour flight at eleven thirty PM to Sao Paolo where I would then wait six hours before boarding a plane to Bogota.  This process would be fraught from the get-go.

I called a cab driver named Harley to pick me up at the hostel.  Harley speaks some English and was friendly, so I'd been giving him a call whenever my feet or the local bus system could not get me where I wanted to go.  I called him at seven forty-five PM and asked him to pick me up in one hour, at eight forty-five.  I then ate some leftover pizza, changed into my travel clothes, brushed my teeth, moved some stuff around in my suitcase, and prepare to wait outside.  As I was leaving, the hostel receptionist, who happened to be the same guitar playing man who factored into my sub-par sleeping night before I went on the jungle tour, told me to wait one moment.  He disappeared down a hallway and a minute later emerged with my pillow!  I was very grateful and felt glad I had not complained of his nocturnal musical expressions as I stuffed it into my suitcase.

At eight fifty-five there was no Harley, so I gave him a call that went something like this:

BEN: Hello, Harley?  It's Benjamin from Hostel Manaus.
HARLEY: Benjamin!  Hello!
BEN: Are you on your way to the hostel?
HARLEY: Yes in one hour.
BEN: Um, can you come right now?
HARLEY: What time is your flight?
BEN: Eleven-thirty.
HARLEY: One o'clock?
BEN: Eleven-thirty.
HARLEY: Eleven!
BEN: Yes, can you come here now?
HARLEY: One moment. [pause]  I'll come in thirty minutes.
BEN: Can you come here sooner?  Now, perhaps?
HARLEY: In thirty minutes I will come.  What time is it now?
BEN: Nine.
HARLEY: I will come at nine thirty.

And, in fact, he did show up at nine-thirty, and we made rapid progress to the airport.  He apologized for the confusion.  We chatted a bit on the way and he told me he was training to be a missionary with the baptist church.  He hoped to go to Africa with his wife in a few years.  Apparently, he is currently a pastor.  This did not prevent him from overcharging me, which left me with a bit of a sour feeling.

In the Manaus airport you do not proceed directly to a check-in desk.  Instead, you wait for your flight to be called on a monitor then proceed through a tinted glass doorway to wait in line.  I made my way to the front of the line in about half an hour, handed over my Irish passport, and placed the first of my bags on the belt.

The first bit of confusion I overheard in Portuguese and put together that they were trying to figure out how an American had an Irish passport.  I offered that I had two passports.  They asked for the American one and began to look through both.  They flipped back and forth through the pages several times.  Then they asked me if I had an onward ticket for leaving Colombia.

The onward ticket is not checked if you arrive from the United States, but I had heard it was enforceable, and apparently if you are departing from Brazil, you need one.  It was now ten forty-five.  I offered to buy one right there, pulled out my laptop and discovered that the airport's wireless network was down.  They suggested I go to a window and buy a ticket, and walked me over.  I quickly established that the only ticket I could buy at that counter was one back to Brazil which would be expensive and only compound my problems.  So I exited the check-in area and went to the information desk where they directed me to a small internet cafe.

There was a free machine in the cafe, and I sat down at ten fifty and began furiously typing.  As a fan of kayak.com, I went there and began zipping through itineraries for one-way tickets.  Washington D.C.: seven hundred dollars.  New York City: six hundred fifty dollars.  Miami: two hundred sixty dollars.  I had a winner -- I was going to Miami.

As I plodded through the LAN Airlines purchasing process, the price of the ticket went up about thirty dollars, but I was all set to press "buy" when the web site informed my that to use a MasterCard on their site, it needed to be registered as a "SecureMasterCard".  If you live in the U.S., try calling your credit card issuer and tell them you would like to sign up for this.  I suspect you will talk to at least five people who have no idea what you are talking about and eventually try to sign you up for a new card that may or may not have it.  I know because I tried in August.

Ten fifty-seven.  Back on kayak, now clicking on the Expedia link instead of the LAN Airlines one in the hopes of actually being able to buy the ticket.  The search comes back with a price of one thousand nine hundred dollars.  This has me concerned until I notice that the date is off by a day.  I switch days and the two hundred sixty dollar ticket appears.  Expedia's purchase process is more expeditious and soon I had a printed confirmation of my flight to Miami on January 21st (I am pretty sure I will need a visa to volunteer, so I had been thinking of spending the following week in the U.S. for a little while now -- I will probably fly from there to either New York or D.C. -- cast your vote!)

Five past eleven.  Looking harried and saying my flight number in broken Portuguese I get back into the check-in area, where the line has dwindled to about three people.  A clerk comes by, looks at my ticket, and moves me to second in line.  I end up with a different staff member checking me in, who starts the process but just as we are trying to communicate about where my bags are (I had left them with other checker-inner) said in-checker comes over to the counter and rescues me.  She writes down my onward flight information, and hands me a boarding pass.

After making my way through a rather relaxed security detail, I proceed downstairs and onto a bus which starts moving the moment I sit down.  I sit down in the plane at eleven-thirty, they close the doors, and I'm off to Sao Paolo.  Though exhausted, I am happy to report that I am in the Sao Paolo airport.  With a touch of luck, I will have luggage when I arrive in Bogota -- I would hate to go zero for two.

Jungle Time, part II

Today is my last day in Manaus, and I finally did something decidedly touristy and had lunch in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Holiday Inn around the corner.  This restaurant is on the thirteenth floor and is quite small.  You walk up a narrow carpeted spiral staircase and emerge in a circular room with enough space for one four person table between the windows and the central staircase.  There were perhaps twelve tables.  When I arrived at one PM I was the only person in the restaurant, which remained the case until I left.  The restaurant slowly rumbles in a circle, and from that height you have a clear view of the river to the south, the jungle beyond it, and the city stretching virtually as far as the eye can see in every other direction.  Manaus is primarily comprised of two or three story buildings, with the occasional ten to twenty story building here and there, mostly residential.  Concrete is the medium of choice and designs are generally boxy.  There are almost no gardens, but a large number of trees.  At street level, sidewalks are uneven but not dangerously so.  In the center, wheelchair access ramps have been built into the street corners.  Most streets have vendors operating carts selling anything from food and soft ice cream to underwear to video games to sunglasses.  Trash is cleaned regularly.  Open storefronts blast air conditioned air onto the street.  When the rains come, all the vendors adjust the umbrellas above their carts, switching them to protect from rain instead of sun.  The simultaneity of the action looks dance-like.  Here the women wear high heels or sandals, shorts are common on both sexes.  Shade is sought out when the sun breaks through, as it is very intense.

Back to the jungle story, when we returned from our hike, we had lunch in the dining area.  The buildings of the lodge were built of local wood, the extraction of which was performed after obtaining permission from the government.  Roofs were constructed of palm thatch and only the individual rooms for guests, a shed, and the kitchen had walls.  After lunch Jungle James excused himself, he would be City James for the next few days and our new guide would be Leo.  I took another nap in a hammock and when I woke up the plan was to go piranha fishing.  A young Swedish couple had arrived and with Leo at the helm we set out on the river in a long wooden boat with a small outboard motor.  After maybe half an hour we pulled into a small shallow stream and Leo killed the engine.  We took out wooden paddles and silently proceeded up the stream, dodging any number of small trees the grew directly from the water.  Leo performed an impressive series of whistles to call local wildlife, but all was quiet.  When we had proceeded to a point where vegetation obstructed our movement we waited a few minutes, then Leo fired up the motor and we were off again.

Leaving the stream, we soon pulled onto a sandy point where we would fish for piranha.  We used small pieces of uncooked chicken for bait.  I could try to explain how fishing for piranha works, but while we as a group caught twelve or so, all I managed to do was feed them.  The piranha is and ugly and downright frightening looking fish.  The ones we were fishing could give you a nasty cut, but were not the black piranha, found in the Amazon River itself, which can easily remove a digit.

The other activity for the night, after dinner, was looking for alligators.  We took the same boat out, with the moon so bright we did not need lights and in fact you could see your shadow clearly in the moonlight.  We pulled into another stream and panned back and forth with our flashlights.  Seeing nothing, we pulled to the side and Leo hopped out.  About three minutes later he returned holding an alligator of about eighteen inches.  We looked at it, pet it, then put it back.

That night I dressed more warmly for the coolness of the night, but still found myself cold.  Apparently, the cold gives me bad dreams.  The first night I had the classic "didn't attend class or do the homework" dream.  The second night, in one extraordinary dream sequence the following series of events occurred: I was late for choir when I realized I had also forgotten my music.  My ex-girlfriend, who was giving me a ride, then broke up with me again.  Finding myself in my old car, I promptly got into a car accident and when I got home some guy berated me about something on my front lawn.  After that series of events, I was hesitant to go back to sleep.

The next morning we awoke at five AM and took a boat out onto the river to watch the sunrise.  After a short while, we headed back to shore and Leo, who was not feeling well, went back to sleep.  The Swedes and I waited for breakfast -- eggs, bread, fresh watermelon, fresh pineapple, and strong bitter coffee.  Carl offered Leo some medication for his headache which he accepted and before long we were off on another hike, this time discussing the medicinal properties of plants in the forest.  We swung on one type of vine and drank water from inside another.  We observed the white sap of three different trees which are used either to figk ht asthma, aid in digestion, or make rubber.  It is important to get your trees correct in the jungle.  Leo also told us a bit more about himself -- also born of Amerindian parents, his from the northeast, he grew up in the jungle along with his six brothers and six sisters.  He spoke nostalgically of nights spent fishing with his father in the jungle, of stringing hammocks across the water and listening to the sounds of the frogs and the birds.  He had ten years of experience as a guide and still seemed to be enjoying his work.

Back to the current moment, my plane for Sao Paolo leaves in a few hours on a dreadful schedule that puts me in Sao Paolo's airport at three-thirty AM Manaus time where I must wait seven hours for my connection.  It should be miserable, but I set myself up for it.  I can sleep to my heart's content in Bogota where I will soon be joined by my friend Abe.  So for now, I'm signing off again.

to be continued...

Jungle Time, part I

Having been in Manaus for fourteen days, I had yet to see any of the vast jungle that surrounds it for hundreds and hundreds of miles.  With the wedding over, the suit returned, and my camera sought for (unsuccessfully), it was time see what it was all about.  As it happens, Amazon Antonio's Tours operates directly out of Hostel Manaus and had been recommended by fellow hostelizers over the course of my stay, so I walked all of ten feet handed over a small wad of cash and signed a few documents and was ready for three nights of jungle living.

The night before leaving I had moved rooms once again, this time at the tragic cost of the loss of my pillow.  You see, hostels have terrible pillows.  In fact the every aspect of hostel bedding could be considered the absolute bottom for bedding that is not entirely improvised or intentionally intended as punishment.  As a side sleeper by trade, the pillow is perhaps the most important sleeping-oriented condiment.  Knowing I would be staying at the hostel for at least fourteen days, I made an executive decision and on day two went into a store and bought a lovely foam cushion pillow, on which I slept like a dream but which today someone else is dreaming on.

The same night was also punctuated by the hostel receptionist playing the guitar and singing in the lobby well past the hostel's on designate curfew, then by the dramatic entrance and repeated re-entrances of two gentlemen in the three to four AM time frame.  To get to the jungle lodge, I had to be in a taxi at seven AM, so to say the least I was groggy.  From the taxi they put me on a bus heading east and asked the driver to notify me when to disembark as it would not be clear.

While the outside air temperature was eighty-eight degrees, the interior of the bus is maintained like a walk-in refrigerator.  Everyone huddles under blankets.  Short of collusion between the blanket mongers and the bus companies, I cannot see why this would be the case.  The bus made good time along a well paved two-lane highway and about two and a half hours later, I was dropped off in a small village.  A gentleman was waiting right outside the bus to greet me and we walked down a dirt road, stopping briefly at house on the way, to a small aluminum boat.

The next hour was spent speeding up a wide tributary of the Amazon.  Low trees lined both sides of the river and the ground here was very sandy.  At last we pulled into Antonio's lodge where we walked up a steep hill to lodge's buildings.  The rivers of the Amazon watershed have huge seasonal fluctuations and at my arrival, at the very beginning of the rainy season, the water level was some thirty feet below what it would reach in June.

After a delicious lunch that included freshly caught bass and piranha, I was introduced to my guide, Jungle James.  Jungle James asked me if I would like to join a group departing in a few hours to spend the night in a shelter in the jungle.  Having no plans for the evening, I accepted.  After a short but satisfying nap, I put together the few things I thought I would need for the evening, included a slightly damp hammock I had been handed, and prepared for my two hour walk.  On my way to meet the group I was asked to add a sack of potatoes to my bag, which I easily accommodated.  What was a bit less satisfying was, at the very moment we started walking to be handed an aluminum cauldron with a wire holder stuffed to the brim with, of all things, bananas and eggs.  One of the joys of hiking, to my mind, is carefully arranging your belongings so everything is secure and well balanced before you begin your trek.  Being handed a pot full of bananas takes a bit of the edge off of this joy.  Nonetheless, I tied it on to my bag and, using my hand to keep it from swinging into my leg, set off.

The hike began in the sort of low trees and sandy soil I had seen from the boat.  Walking through it, it was not hard to imagine myself in Cape Cod rather the Amazon rain forest.  After half an hour or so, this vegetation gave way to second-growth forest, taller and with thick undergrowth.  At about this point it began to rain in true tropical fashion and I put on my raincoat largely in attempt to prevent water from being added to the bananas and eggs in the pot.  The hike in fact lasted about three and half hours when, at dusk, we arrived at our camp, a blue tarp suspended over a frame of about eight posts.  We strung our hammocks between the posts and I went with James to gather some firewood.  This consisted of James identifying suitable pieces, hacking them with an enormous machete, and the two of us lugging them back to a clear area near the tarp.

Jungle James at our exclusive resort

Soon a fire was billowing, half chickens were arranged around it on skewers, and a mix of potatoes and rices was boiling furiously above.  As we waited, Carl, a Swede of about seventy years, a talker with a dry wit, procured a small amount of what he called "Brazilian Wine" but which is generally marketed as bottom shelf cachaca.  We all had a few sips and learned, through friendly interrogation, a bit of James' history.  James had been born in the far north of Brazil, near the border with Venezuela, to an Amerindian family.  As an infant he moved with his family to Manaus, where the language of his parents was entirely unhelpful.  When he turned ten he was handed over to relatives in Manaus and his parents returned to their village in the north.  James learned Portuguese and after completing school, began driving boats up and down the river for tour guides.  From the guides he learned English, and once he had developed a mastery of that he managed to pick up a fair amount of Spanish and German as well.  This put him in good position to be a guide himself, and it was thus that Jungle James came o work for Antonio.

The roasted chicken was possibly the best I have ever had.  When we were done eating, the fire was adjusted to keep at a smolder through the night, and we retreated to our hammocks.  A light rain was falling as I drifted off to sleep.  I awoke a few hours later to an incredible sight.  The moon, near full, had emerged from behind the clouds and was shining with such radiance that the jungle around us had turned incredible shades of silver.  The temperature had also dropped considerably and I found myself surprising cold given my latitude and altitude.  I managed to get fitful sleep until dawn when we had breakfast, broke up camp, and headed back.

On the way back we paused at a small hole in the ground that, James explained, was the home of a spider.  James then produced a short thin stick and within a few second had managed to get a softball size tarantula to come scurrying out.  The tarantula was so large and fuzzy as to almost be cute, rather like an eight legged chipmunk.  After we gawked a bit, James pushed it back into its home with the flat of his machete.

The other noteworthy event occurring on the hike back was a demonstration of an Indian bug repellent technique.  Basically, you find an ant's nest on the side of tree, give the tree a good thwack, and put your hand on the nest as all of the ants come scurrying out.  When a sufficient number have checked out your hand, you remove it from the nest, and smush the ants over whatever part of your body you would like protected.  The startling bit of the experience is just how many ants manage to start crawling on you in such a short period of time, and it feels a bit like sticking your hand into a box of styrofoam balls.

to be continued...