WayWorded

2011 Trips in Pics

2011-12-27T18:56:00.001-03:00

The sky is a soft drape of powder blue and white smoke cloud. Melt drips from the eaves above the window and dissolves a dull furrow in the two inches covering the lawn. Rifle reports reverberate from somewhere beyond treeline.

It's December 27th in rural Maine.

***

Like last year, I'm stealing a colleague's idea for my "wrapup" post. That colleague would be Eva Holland, former Matador editor and current senior ed at World Hum, who recently posted My Year in Travel: 7 Photos. Yes, I've even copied her on # of shots.

And like my last--I dunno--lots of posts, this one is photo based. Not a lot of creativity in the core reserve these days, and writing something of equal or greater value to these images would tap beyond what I've got.

So, in no particular order, here are most of the places I went and some of what I did there over the past year. I feel like it was a good one.

January, Colorado: On what's become sort of a family tradition, we were driving up to Monarch Mountain for some early-year skiing and happened to pass a full-on castle on the side of Highway 69, northwest of Walsenburg. This is Bishop's Castle, a 40+ year obsession of one eccentric dude. It's still under construction--Jim Bishop was milling a rather large beam during our visit. Admission is free, donation is suggested, and the castle is spectacular. Check google images for more.

September, Jordan: Thanks again to the Jordan Tourism Board, who hosted me on a freaking amazing 10-day trip through the country. This shot is of two tourists and their guide on a camel ride through Wadi Rum.

June, South Dakota: On a part anniversary, part "tour the four states I haven't been to" roadtrip, Carey and I drove through western SD's Black Hills and Badlands (the latter pictured above). We did not mtn bike--this dude was just standing there surveying.

August, Canada: A whirlwind "visit friends" roadtrip took us to Niagara Falls, Canada, where we got this view of the Canadian side of the falls.

July, Colorado: Another press trip had me in Winter Park for Crankworx Colorado. Many thanks to the Winter Park-Fraser Valley CoC and Winter Park Resort for a great time.

August, NYC: After Niagara, we continued to the city to stay with friends renting a place on the Upper West Side. This shot was taken from the High Line looking east down 23rd St.

November, Florida: At the end of October we picked up a new travel companion--Halah, our two-year-old blue heeler. She handled a week in the car like a champ during another sort of tradition--our pre-holiday roadtrip up to Maine. I think this pic was taken at a campground in Gulf Islands National Seashore, the rapidly eroding barrier island off Pensacola.

Jordan: Parting Shots

2011-10-15T18:38:00.001-03:00

Yeah, so, I was in Jordan.

I haven't written too much about the trip here because I figured my photos would do the job of conveying what an awesome time it was. Plus, I just published a feature article at Matador Trips called 7 things I didn't expect to find in Jordan. Check it out, and look for more next month.

My trip was organized and largely paid for by the good folks at the Jordan Tourism Board. Many thanks go out to them for the opportunity to get to a know a country that's pretty misunderstood by a lot of people. I know it surprised me.

This post is the last I'll publish here about Jordan. In parting, I'll share three more pics that demonstrate three very different experiences of the country:

The ruins of Qasr al Abd, a fortress built ~200 BC in the Iraq Al-Amir area just outside Amman. Apparently, Hyrcanus of Jerusalem got a little too cozy with the Ptolemy brass in Alexandria, and his noble Ammonite brothers decided to dispatch him. He built this fortress to fend them off, but didn't have time to finish it. They got him.

Sunset from Wadi Feynan. Behind me, the road leads to Feynan Ecolodge, my favorite of the many fine accommodations we enjoyed on the trip. Read more about it in 7 things I didn't expect to find in Jordan.

Dusk falls over the Dead Sea, as viewed from the infinity pool at the Mövenpick Resort & Spa Dead Sea. Directly after taking this picture, Carey and I sat down on some cushions and smoked watermelon-mint shisha. Luxury.

Wadi Rum: 7 Images

2011-10-03T00:02:00.002-03:00

View from the visitor center, noontime and toasty. Just to the left of this frame is TE Lawrence's "7 Pillars of Wisdom" rock formation.

Most tours of Wadi Rum are run in 4x. Cool kids get to ride in the bed.

Bedouin camps within Wadi Rum can arrange camel rides.

The sun sets quickly and dramatically in this desert.

Our hosts at Captain's private camp.

The next day's first light hits the high rock.

Early sun shadows.

Petra: 7 More Images

2011-09-28T20:33:00.001-03:00

Even the walk into Petra is gorgeous. You pass through the Siq, or Gorge, which is quite narrow at spots but opens up in others.

This tourist stepped in front of my camera while I was on the ground, turning what would have been just another low-angle shot of the Treasury into something unique.

Similarly, this random guy in a white thawb gives the Great Tomb

some much-needed scale.

Looking back past one of the many groups of riding camels towards the Great Tomb.

Standing before the Monastery, at the top of "900 steps" carved into the sandstone.

Carey and Smena 8M and tombs.

The Monastery. The city on the hill in the background is where the Bedouins, forced out of their Petra caves when the site achieved UNESCO status in 1985, relocated to.

Petra: First Look

2011-09-17T02:41:00.000-03:00

Taken after the final turn of the Siq, when the first sliver of the Treasury appears.

Liquid Sun in the Dead Sea

2011-09-12T18:28:00.001-03:00

And Jerusalem beyond. Taken from the Dead Sea Panoramic Complex.

How I Learned that Downhill/Freestyle Mountain Biking Is Cool

2011-08-08T19:59:00.003-03:00

Over the last weekend in July, I was hosted at Winter Park Resort through the Winter Park-Fraser Valley Chamber of Commerce. The visit coincided with the fifth-annual Crankworx Colorado, "one of the largest gravity-fueled mountain bike festivals in the United States." I camped out for a couple hours on a steep, sunny hill by the Slopestyle course and got the shots above and below.

Better yet, I got to strap on the body armor, throw a multi-thousand-dollar downhill rental onto the special bike-ready chairlift (which I failed at, by the way--they had to stop the lift--felt very "bunny slope"), and ride up for a 3-hour lesson with Winter Park lead instructor David Deveny.

The pic below was taken during our first run on a trail called Greenworld (bike trails being labeled by difficulty using roughly the same system as ski runs). On my second run, we were rolling down 10ft rock features and hucking off wedge jumps. I looked so dumb, yet I felt so cool.

Midwestern Landscapes

2011-06-28T11:31:00.000-03:00

Yesterday, Matador Nights published my scorecard for the breweries and bars Carey and I hit on our Midwestern road trip this month. But there was more to the drive than towns and cities and beers. Here are some different views:

Sunrise Point, Mt. Nebo State Park, AR. Nebo is a 1350ft tabletop with cooler temps and fewer mosquitoes than the Arkansas River valley below. The development of the state park was largely a CCC project. There's also a Sunset Point, but I liked this one better--no one else came out for the pre-6am sunrise.

Shore of Lake Michigan, Kohler-Andrae State Park, Sheboygan, WI. There's little difference in appearance between the Great Lakes and the ocean. They are massive.

Badlands National Park, SD. There was a moment on the road in Badlands--we had some cloud cover, the tan, orange, and ocher bands of eroded rock contrasting with the deep green of the prairie grass--when I thought this landscape was the most beautiful I've seen in America. This shot was taken on a trail just east of the visitors center.

Brownstone Falls, Copper Falls State Park, WI. We hiked the Doughboy's Trail (another CCC project), with views of two falls and two bridge crossings of the Bad River.

North Unit, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND. My new answer to anyone who talks shit about North Dakota. There are two units to the park, both contained within the much larger Little Missouri National Grassland and both protecting eroded-butte river valleys of the Little Missouri.

Buffalo Gap Campground, Little Missouri National Grassland, ND. Just down the Interstate from the town of Medora and the entrance to the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Highway 14A through Spearfish Canyon, Black Hills National Forest, SD. Regrettably, this shot was the best I got, as we really only drove through the Black Hills. Looking back, that was a big mistake.

Mountain biker in Badlands National Park. Another shot from the park, this one farther west and at higher elevation along the Loop Road.

Shore of Lake Superior, Ashland, WI. There wasn't much going on in Ashland, but sunset over Chequamegon Bay made up for it.

Notes from American Roads

2011-06-24T19:54:00.000-03:00

27, northern NE, midday, overcast, windy
There are no cars on Highway 27, from Pine Ridge into the Sand Hills. The road is thin and bobs with the hills. The only traveler on Highway 27 is a heavy cow. She has left the pasture and is walking, legally, down the oncoming shoulder. She swings her face toward us, an expression maybe of hesitance, apprehension in a human face, turns and continues south.

41, southwestern Arkansas, evening
I'm alone. I've been driving all day. I have listened to the news, listened to songs, kept singing the songs when the songs were done, sometimes just bass lines, guitar riffs. The sun has finally sunk far enough that there's only a daylit glow.

It's another song coming on that does it, probably Portishead, probably Roads, but I start thinking about death.

And I get that feeling like I usually do, that same feeling as when I close my eyes underwater and just float, a kind of pin-prick wave that washes through my face, every time I think, I mean think what it really means:

YOU WILL NOT SEE ANY OF THIS AGAIN

The Ouachita Mountains are gray forms building on the horizon to the north. I have an hour or two more of sun to find camp.

River Terrace Park, Monticello, MN, dusk
It is a spring and summer of floods. "Any site 'cept down by the river, ground's still too wet there to pitch a tent."

The old man's pickup is plastered with big letters: "Obama's plan for America is high taxes and socialism" or something. I hold myself awkwardly and feel very "city folk."

We pitch on wet grass by the playground, close enough to the Mississippi to see its flow. It's fast.

There's not much for kindling, but then we notice the drifts of tree pollen against the border of grass and pavement. It's dry, and we throw it on the fire and watch it spark and the light pick up like we'd flicked a switch.

146, East Cape Girardeau, IL, early afternoon, sun
The Mississippi runs inland for a mile or more on the IL side, covering the low ground, an elevation differential lost other times, but now clearly lined out by wet and dry, murky pools pushing at foundational rises of gas stations and barbershops. Sandbags, too. It feels like disaster tourism, but I keep looking and I'm glad I'm here.

Minot, ND, afternoon, partly cloudy
Minot is the Magic City. We drive by the zoo and it's closed, mounds of dead wood, leaves, and plastic marking the flood reach of the Souris River, probably not more than a week old. Later in the month, I'll wake up at home and hear that Minot is under 15 feet of water.

127, southern IL, getting on to evening, humid
Dips and rises in the highway, each dip a stream and a stand of trees, each stand of trees broadcasting the high-decibel screech of brood XIX cicadas. A noise that has made people insane. I cannot see their red eyes and wings, but I know there are millions.

I drive with the windows down b/c there's no AC and it's always better with the windows down, even though it lets the humidity in and my skin is buttered with oil and salt, and the western sun burns my arm hanging out the window. I drive with the windows down and the cicadas are almost loud enough to cover the radio.

2, western ND, early afternoon, hot
A ways past Minot, North Dakota farm country turns hilly, amassed green bumps topped with grayish-white weathered stones. It looks like Britain, without the sheep.

We listen to a podcast about psychedelics, about new scientific experiments. Terminal cancer patients were dosed with psilocybin. They listened to music, they cried. They went home and talked with their mothers and lovers and friends. They came back to debrief, said how it made them feel that EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY. Months later, they died.

We listen in silence.

155, E Texas, afternoon, bright
I am hours into my road trip. The sun is still high but starting to shift southwest. There's a farm on the right of the road, two horses halfway up a little slope. They're facing each other, standing shoulder to shoulder. Necks pigtailed together.

Food Revolts, Argentina

2011-06-15T19:12:00.001-03:00

I did not like the food in Argentina.

Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I was ill prepared.

I did not expect to find spice eschewed to the point that black pepper is unavailable at most restaurants. I did not realize the Italian heritage of Buenos Aires would manifest as freezer gnocchi and the worst pizza in the world. I did not think a country with a 5,000km coastline would neglect seafood, or that the steaks I ate would, rather than "blowing my mind," be indistinguishable from the meat I occasionally consume in the States (disclaimer: I am not the best judge of steak). I did not know most baked goods would be either sickly sweet or stuffed with deli ham.

Why was I ill prepared?

There is a hype on Argentine cuisine. It is prevalent among foreign travelers in South America. "The food is awesome." "The steak is amazing." This is repeated by backpackers both coming from and heading to Argentina. Within the tourist-trail culture of the continent, it is common knowledge.

I bought in. I was disappointed.

In one silly way, this disappointment made me feel superior. It was fun to imagine myself the minority, the underdog, the holder of on-the-ground, unadulterated TRUTH, standing with objectivity against a horde of hype and hyperbole.

But feeling superior also made me feel like an asshole. And my disappointment put me at odds with my friends. It made me question my tastes, worry that maybe I was, to quote a comment from one of my Matador articles, "some sort of nerd that just hates normal stuff." Worse, it made me question why I had come to Argentina at all, and whether I had any right to be there.

Over the last few weeks, I learned I am not the only normal-hating nerd out there. Andrea and John of inspiringtravellers.com and Ayngelina of Bacon is Magic recently rated Argentine food a "meh." This is the only negativity I have seen the travel blog world bestow on Argentine cuisine (with the exception of Tom Gates' pizza, of course).

Why are these posts appearing now? Is the hype thinning? Is there a food revolt sparking among travelers in Argentina? Are nerds multiplying?

I don't know.

When I read these posts, I say FINALLY out loud. But then I feel that same urge of dissent, that pride of the underdog, pulling me towards an about-face. Not a full 180...the truth is, though, I didn't hate 100% of the things I put in my stomach in Argentina.

So in the interest of honesty--and maybe a little guilt--after several paragraphs of cuisine-culture bashing, I've come to a very different focus with this post: what I enjoyed, food-wise, during my months in Buenos Aires. Some of it is even Argentine.

* medialunas and mate - Most afternoons, my wife and I would leave our 10th-floor apartment with a termo and a canister of mate, walk to the corner bakery and pick up a pair of medialunas, and continue to Bosque de Palermo where we'd eat and drink by the pond. The sweet glaze of the croissant was cut nicely by the bitterness of the unfiltered tea.
* Barrio Chino - Once I discovered you can buy Mexican salsa at the grocery stores in Chinatown, my outlook on BsAs started improving. Some of the Asian restaurants here are good too. There's also a Koreatown around Carabobo south of 25 de Mayo.
* animal guts - Americans are a world minority in that we forgo the non-flesh parts of our meat animals. The oily, acrid smell and taste of intestines is the only way in which the Argentine parrilla reminded me of the Korean 고깃집. Sweetbreads was a new favorite for me.
* random (non-buffet) veggie restaurants - There were a few: Bio comes to mind, as does Buenos Aires Verde.

Two Maps

2011-04-24T17:28:00.000-03:00

Will my summer road trip route look like this...

Distance: 3,546 miles; Driving time: 2d, 11h

...or something a little grander?

Distance: 6,240 miles; Driving time: 4d, 15h

4 Conversation Fragments Overheard at 2011 Austin Kite Festival + Analysis

2011-03-08T18:44:00.000-03:00

1. Tall and scruffy hippie dude w/ saucer eyes and patchwork pants, directed towards young female passing with leashed dog: "Is it all a dream, or what?"

Analysis: 50% chance failed pickup line, 50% chance genuine drug-induced wonderment.

2. Middle-aged, graying-haired, "normal"-looking female, accompanied by middle-aged, graying-haired, "normal"-looking husband / partner / brother / friend / accomplice, directed towards small leashed dog of two young prepped-out females w/ quickly progressing sunburns: "Ohhhhh!!!! Is your baby, a, a, baby!!! Or, a..."

Analysis: No conceivable estimation as to meaning of utterance can be reached.

3. One of aforementioned pair of young prepped-out females w/ quickly progressing sunburns and small leashed dog, directed to other, possibly in reference to C., standing at distance of approximately one meter: "Dude, I dare you to jack that chick."

Analysis: High likelihood subjects of analysis refer to partially exposed wallet protruding from rear pocket of C., unaware of wrath that execution of said "jacking" would unleash.

4. Unseen male, possibly late 30s, possessed of strong surfer accent, directed to second unseen male of indeterminate age / background: "Yeah...I can land a backflip."
Second male of indeterminate age / background, responding with strongly incredulous tone, almost to point of challenge: "Really?"

Analysis: Given recent meteorological warming trend in Austin area, and gender / age / inflection of interlocutors, determination is 60% chance said "backflip" refers to wakeboarding experience of previous day (Saturday), undertaken at Lake Travis. Also 22% chance topic of conversation is recent snowboarding trip to Colorado, Summit County. Percentage chance of alternative topics diminishes rapidly from this point, rendering further speculation unproductive.

Notes on the Jackhammer

2011-02-23T21:52:00.000-03:00

* I had an MRI today.

* The MRI lady had me lie down on the slidey bed and put my knee in some kind of brace. Then she closed the brace up tight and put a sandbag on my ankle to keep my leg still and said I couldn't move it at all, not even wiggle my toes. I didn't know if I'd be able to do it, especially now that all I was thinking about was wiggling my toes. She also put some headphones over my ears. "To protect your hearing," she said. "It's loud, like a jackhammer." She offered to pipe the radio through, and I said yes, but then I thought about it more and said no. I thought maybe I'd like to make this a dramatic experience, and background music would kill the mood.

* I thought about meditating. I was lying directly below a junction in the ceiling tiles, and looking up at it, the tile lines ran out to the four directions like a cross or medicine wheel or something. I tried to meditate on that, stare at the lines till they shimmered like stared at things do, but after a few seconds my throat started to clench up and make me swallow, like it always does when I'm trying to be self-aware. Like my own personal mara demon or something.

* But what I could see clearest of all--because I was only stuck in the MRI machine up to my waist, with my top half sticking out--was the big SIEMENS logo stamped on the front of the machine. I just lay there staring at it, wondering if it was some ingenious advertising tactic on Siemens' part, to have millions of people every day strapped in and staring, an audience captive and prostrate to their brand, or whether it was just an unintended consequence of rather straightforward product labeling.

* At first, the only noise I heard wasn't loud or like a jackhammer. It sounded like a pump, but like a cartoon version of a pump. Like the MRI machine was some steampunk contraption gone wrong or a forgotten prop from City of Lost Children. After listening a while I wanted to laugh at it, but there was no way I was going to risk jiggling my leg this soon into the game.

* When the imaging finally kicked in, it was loud, but it still didn't sound like a jackhammer. It was like that Flaming Lips song "Fight Test," where it says "The test begins...now-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow" with the word all chopped up and drawn out. I didn't think of the melodic part of the song, the bits Cat Stevens sued over, just that first part, and I lay there wondering what kind of drug makes the world sound like that.

* Further in the noise changed, faster now, and yeah, it sounded a little like a jackhammer. But more like a jackhammer effect on a synthesizer. And at one point I even heard a piano in there, like a three-note chord played high up on the keyboard, hitting on every fourth jackhammer beat or so. It was weird and musical, the way any patterned noise can be musical if you want to think about it that way.

* It reminded me of this guy from UVM, tall guy with a beard who sold mushrooms out of his dorm room. The guy who always called me "man" in an awkward way that made me pretty sure he didn't know my name. But I always remembered his name, because it was Pascal, and how am I going to forget that? One time it was like 3 in the morning, and someone had pulled the fire alarm again, and all us guys from the first floor and all the girls from the second were jammed into one of the stairwells in Chittenden. Just standing there, slumping on the stairs, no one talking, the alarm squawking, pounding echoes really loud in this hard, narrow space. And Pascal says, "dude, if this was a Phish show, we'd all be jamming to this shit," and a couple people laughed, and I thought he was right on.

* Thoughts I didn't have during the MRI but am having now: 1. I wonder if anyone has been in the MRI and been meditating on the ceiling tiles and slipped into some sort of shamanic state and been jackhammered straight past the four noble truths and ascetic suffering and directly to enlightenment. 2. I wonder if all the MRI machines in the world were going at once, if their jackhammering would synchronize into some kind of sonic wave deep in the earth, and this giant p-wave would explode out and wash over the whole world.

* When it was done, the slidey bed slid out and I felt pretty damn proud for not fidgeting or wiggling my toes and making the techs redo any of the imaging series, at least as far as I knew. I wanted to ask how often they had to redo stuff because of fidgeters, and I really wanted to ask how often someone just lost it in there, like big-time freaked. But they seemed pretty busy, so I just went into the dressing room and untied the gray hospital robe and tossed it in the dirty bin and put my street clothes back on.

* At the parking garage exit, I gave the ticket booth guy my validated parking ticket, and when he asked how I was doing and I said "fine how are you" he got happy and excited, more than he should have, I thought, and smiled real big. But I didn't say anything else. I looked away and waited for the gate to swing up, and then I drove away. I didn't remember that part of the day till right now.

Free Beer in Unexpected Places

2011-02-09T14:26:00.001-03:00

There's a phenomenon in Texas called Lone Star Beer.

The brand promotes itself as the state's "national beer." I know lots of states have their own homegrown Budweiser alternative, but given the population of Texas, Lone Star is probably the most-drunk. The "nationalist" label obviously appeals to die-hard locals, including those who advocate (with varying degrees of tongue-in-cheek) for secession.

But Lone Star also seems to be the brew of choice among the Austin hipster set. Walk into one of those consciously designed dive bars on E. 6th (Shangri-La, Rio Rita, etc.) and you'll see a whole lot of skinny jeans and whole lot of red and gold cans.

My take: Sure, Lone Star's cheap, but I don't care to drink it unless it's free. And there happen to be a couple places in East Austin where that's the case:

1. Birds Barbershop - This local chain (four locations, one on E. 6th) doesn't take appointments, so you typically wind up waiting when you get there. But it's cool, because Lone Star cans are on the house. (Haven't had cause to test this, but I'm assuming it's limit one per customer). Mohawks go for $15.

Note: Best to chug it if your number's almost up. Drinking while draped in that black sheet thingy is kinda awkward.

Photo: Design Crisis

2. I Luv Video - Another Austin chain, I Luv's Airport Blvd. location is probably the biggest video store I've ever been in. It's easy to spend half an hour wandering the two stories, searching for off-beat sci-fi movies I've never heard of. So it's pretty sweet that on Tuesday nights they give out free Lone Star--and at this place it's kegged.

Note: They ID everyone and are pretty serious about not taking beer outside. Brew flows till the keg floats.

Photo: Austin360

Taking the Online Offline in 2010

2011-01-04T16:49:00.000-03:00

I'm sick of "year-end wrapup" posts. And here it is January 4 and I'm writing one. I feel like a tool.

But I was inspired by one of the dozens I read over the past week, so much that I wanted to copy it. It's here: 11 Traveler Meetings in 2010, written by travel blogger Ekua who, incidentally, I met in 2010.

I like it because the travel blogging community is almost exclusively a virtual community. We email and gchat and skype and come to know these avatars of real people, which usually aren't 100% representations of those people. To actually meet them feels subversive, and very satisfying.

Here's how my year in the real world went.

February
A Matador intern in my hometown--small world? I met Cathey Franke at one of my all-time favorite hang-out-and-work coffeeshops, Madhatters in Southtown. It was a great start to a year of meetups.

March
It was cold in Austin towards the end of SXSW. I drove up from San Antonio in the gray rain to the Hyatt Regency, where then-Matador Nights editor Tom Gates was staying on an annual music-industry junket. Matador Sports intern Lindi Horton was there too, and Tom found us with a big smile and a big hug. Then he bought us breakfast while a bat flew around the massive 10-story lobby. It was awesome.

May
Early May was spent driving up to Maine the slow way, which included an overnight in Brooklyn and a long-overdue handshake with my partner in Matador Trips crime, Carlo Alcos. I got to crash at his place near Prospect Park, and as a super added bonus there was another way-delayed meetup with Julie Schwietert Collazo, her husband Francisco, and 7-month-old Mariel. A year and a half after staying in their Mexico City apartment for five weeks, we finally got a face to face.

Early July
Out West on an epic summer roadtrip. After a day on deserted central Nevadan highways without A/C, I pulled into Mammoth Lakes, where the amazing Trips intern Sarah Park overlooked my stink and generously put me up for the night. A beautiful welcome to the Golden State.

Middle July
Next was San Francisco, which is kinda like Matador headquarters--homebase for CEO Ross Borden. We met up in the Mission for tacos, and I got to hear some incredible stories from his trip to Madagascar. A few days later, there was an even grander Matador gathering at Bissap Baobab, attended by long-time Matador editor Juliane, talented contributors Valerie (check out Houston Har Gow and 5 Reasons Why I Want to Travel To Taiwan Right Now) and Lauren (check out My Hometown in 500 Words: Oakland, CA and 5 Views of a Lesser-Known Morocco), and Matador aficionados Naomi and Ekua. Huge!

Late July
The journey's northern terminus was Seattle, where MatadorTV captain Joshywashington hangs his hat. Meeting him and his awesome wife Bridget for a beer at the Garage was the perfect bookend to the trip.

December
Tim Patterson was my first editor at Trips. He's been all over the map in past years but is now landed in his home village of Craftsbury Commons, VT, an easy detour off the route from Maine to Burlington. I met him there and got an extensive tour of Sterling College, where he works, his under-construction home, which is going to have the sickest sunset view ever, and his parents' 100 acres. A couple nights later, we shared some craft brew at the Farmhouse and impromptu jams at Nectar's in Burlington.

2011, bring it on!

Woodstove

2010-12-02T19:17:00.001-03:00

The house is noticeably colder when we get in, though the digital thermometer reads 68.4. December rain means highs in the 40s, even 50--not cold enough to keep a 24-hour fire in the stove. Colors along the backroads were all green and red. Green of lawn grass, that faded ruddy brown of dying-back marsh grass and leafless beech limbs. Still waiting for the white to cover it all.

I crank open the side hatch of the stove and a little cloud of ash and campfire perfume whirls out. I take three pages of newspaper, crumple each into a loose sphere, and lay them in a row across the primary airflow vent. Then I step out onto the side porch and reach into the box of thin, splintery wood shingles. I break one of the shingles in half lengthwise, leave one half in the box and bring the other inside. I half it again and rest both pieces on top of the paper. Next, I take two quartered pine logs from the bag by the door and set them as gently as I can on either side of the newspaper-shingle architecture.

The box of matches has a home on an upper shelf of the hutch by the chimney. I remove a stick and hesitate a moment, anticipating the satisfyingly analog rasp of phosphorus on sandpaper. It flares when I strike it, and I quickly jab the stick under a protruding corner of paper before it settles down. The flame spills out onto the paper like maple syrup, and I shut the hatch and twist the handle to lock it.

My part is done. I spin the living room recliner around to face the stove and watch what happens. Usually, the superbly engineered design of the woodstove takes over now: a draft of just the right intensity carries the fire from newspaper ball to newspaper ball. The splintery shingles catch, popping, and within minutes the flames have wrapped around the logs, growing until the entire cube of stove is one big orangey-yellow kaleidoscope.

But it's been stubborn lately. A buildup of soot is clogging the metal flue, cutting airflow, or ash has blocked the vents. Anyway, my best fire-starting skills yield only a crapshoot.

I sit in the recliner and, through the glass panel on the front of the stove, watch the flame reluctantly crawl along the row of newspaper. There's a pop or two from the shingle. And then nothing. A flicker. Then nothing.

I see gray on the bottom of the glass, the hardened, chalky accumulation of ash from past days, weeks, winters. But beyond that is dark, as black as the black glossy paint covering the exterior of the stove. I wait for two minutes, still nothing. Nothing.

There's no fire in there.

Another flicker. Five seconds of black. Then another.

It's coming faster now, flashes of flame from the back of the stove, somewhere underneath the pine log. It looks like lightning in a night sky. Lightning in a black box.

Maybe it'll catch.

A Different (Better?) California Wine Valley

2010-11-05T17:52:00.000-03:00

Photo: PhliarShamim

It's 3:30, and I'm stuck on 29 between Napa and St. Helena, waiting for the several dozen vehicles ahead of me to get waved through the second stretch of construction in five miles. My car is black, and the A/C is broken. On the passenger seat, a tourist bureau map is folded open, showing the road I'm on and the 100 or whatever wineries/tasting rooms that line it. How the hell am I supposed to choose which 2 or 3 are worth my $5-$20 tasting fee this afternoon?

Napa Valley sucks.

But grapes grow elsewhere in California. Quite close, actually. Head north. Not to Sonoma--maybe it's better, but I've never been and it sounds like more of the same. No, keep going north till you hit the 128, another of those surprisingly mountainous and windy CA highways that cuts through the gold-grass-covered hills and scraggly trees. Keep driving till Boonville.

Now you're in Anderson Valley.

There's only about 20 wineries here, and not all are open to the public. I went to one last month, Foursight Wines, because it was the closest to town. I loved it. One of its four employees was too busy doing her twice-daily "punch-down" (thrusting a large blunt metal punch into a fermentation tank full of a juicy grape mixture to stir it) to give us a tasting right away, so she invited us back to watch her, and to have a sample of an aging white right out of the barrel.

"Laid back" is a good descriptor for Anderson Valley.

The General Store is where you go to eat, that bar on Main St. across from the hardware store to drink. There are multiple camping options right up the road (I stayed at Indian Creek, the closest), and if you keep going towards the coast, you'll come to Pacific Star Winery, one of my favorites anywhere.

Perhaps best of all, Anderson Valley Brewing is located in Boonville, with tasting room and 18-hole disc golf course. I mean, you can't drink only wine all day.

Photo: JoePhoto

Following the Matador Trail

2010-10-19T18:30:00.000-03:00

Editing Matador Trips is a constant source of travel inspiration. Within the last week, I've had the pleasure of uploading a budget guide to Helsinki, a surf guide to Fiji, a photo essay of portraits from Vietnam, and a rundown of adventure towns in the U.S.

I'm under no illusions of being able to visit every place featured on the site. But sometimes opportunities come unexpected.

Like last week, when I was in Northern California for a wedding. The ceremony was in Mendocino, on the beautifully cool and green grounds of the Standford Inn by the Sea, and we stayed up the road in Ft. Bragg. Which happens to be home to the glass beach, featured in Jason Wire's immensely popular 7 Beautifully Bizarre Beaches. In fact, it was a 5-minute drive from the hotel. Behold:

Now if I'd only noticed that photo #7 in that essay, Bowling Ball Beach, was in Mendocino. Damn.

Liquid Connoisseurship: Wine and Coffee in East Austin

2010-09-23T18:09:00.000-03:00

I don't know if it's a part of being settled or more about the lifestyle choices I make, but since moving to Austin I've been exposed to "connoisseurship" of many different sorts. And I like it. It's as I tweeted a few days back:

"Just put in a millwork order with http://austinlumber.com/. Somehow that feels special."

Why is it special? It feels more "human," I guess. The idea of individuals performing the act of creation. Apprenticeship. I can picture someone at Austin Lumber milling each board and focusing intently on what they're doing. Touched by human hands, rather than a Home Depot forklift.

Modern movements have been built around this principle. Slow food. Slow living. And of course slow travel. Which maybe is what I'm doing here, just a prolonged pit stop in the greater journey. Experimenting with place.

Wine


From the website

One place in Austin I visit a lot is called East End Wines. It's located in the little pocket of coolness that's blooming where Rosewood splits off from E. 11th (the shop is actually in a restored 1890s Victorian home right at that intersection, 1209 Rosewood Ave).

It's owned and managed by Matt Miller, who's worked hard to "bridge the gap between 'geeky wine-snob land' and everyday enthusiast." He's succeeded. My first time in the store, he brushed aside my anxious admissions that "I didn't know much" about wine and that "I probably couldn't afford any really good stuff." I've felt pretty comfortable there ever since. Plus, the purchase records he keeps for me have shown that my tastes trend towards "New World varietals" (makes sense, as I first really got into the stuff down in Mendoza).

The buyer at East End is Sam Hovland. I suspect he has a photographic memory, because he can quote vineyard stats and nose, flavor, and finish tones of most bottles in the shop. Even better, both he and Matt can listen to the characteristics I'm after (even if I just make them up on the spot) and pair me with a relevant bottle.

Prices seem reasonable. I usually spend $10-$15. My favorite so far has been the Postales Cabernet 2009 from Northern Patagonia. I'm also psyched to have gotten in on the "ground floor." The shop opened this past May.

They hold tastings at least once a week. Follow them on Twitter to find out when.

Coffee

Photo: sheeshoo

This is another acquired-taste beverage that I've found the purchasing of nearly as enjoyable as the drinking. That's thanks to Texas Coffee Traders, at 1400 E. 4th.

It took me awhile to stop in despite driving by often, because the warehouse-ish building gives off a strong wholesale vibe. But they do sell straight to consumers like me, and if you ask, they'll even give you a tour behind the scenes of their massive roasting operation, showing the differences between various beans and roasting times/temps.

TCT is committed to offering Fair Trade products from all over the world (though they also sell conventional beans). So far, I've sampled brew from Ethiopia, Bolivia, and Mexico. They also partner directly with the Fair Trade Cafe Monteverde project of the Santa Elena Cooperative in Costa Rica.

But the best part about shopping there is that, just like Matt and Sam and their wines, the folks at Texas Coffee Traders know their product. They can explain why Ethiopian beans tend to have a fruity, almost "gamy" taste, while those from neighboring Kenya are more traditionally flavored. And they let you "blind smell test" the beans before buying.

Prices are on the high end, from $11 to more than $15 per pound. This reflects both the fair prices they pay their suppliers and the generous salary/benefits packages their Austin-based workers get. Oh, and it smells really, really good in there.

Looking Local: New Blog Concept at WayWorded

2010-09-23T15:51:00.000-03:00

Living room paint color. Japanese-inspired bamboo blinds and noren curtains. Bathroom tile demo. Table saw and topsoil purchases. These are the things in my head on a daily basis. I've tried, but I either can't or don't want to twist them to fit a "travel" perspective fit for writing about here.

So I've decided to start a new series of posts instead, profiling points of interest around my new home: Austin, TX. The master plan is to compile writeups like these into some sort of "travel guide" to the city (or at least the East Side, where I live) down the road. For now, I'll see how it goes posting individual reviews here at WayWorded.

First trial coming shortly.

Roadtrip Photos, the Last Batch

2010-08-25T00:33:00.010-03:00

Been home for like 10 days, but I want to round out the trip with these puppies (for more on the journey, check out my Roadtrip Updates #1, #2, and #3, (#4 to be posted Thurs.)):

Crater Lake National Park, OR. Get there before 8:30AM and it's mirror-still.

Unexpected alpinism in Mt. Rainier National Park

Things get flat and scrubby dry around the Washington-Idaho border.
This was taken in Lewiston, ID, across the Snake-Clearwater confluence from Clarkston, WA.

Burned trees, Yellowstone National Park. These and many more were killed in the fires of 1988.
Which, coincidentally, was the last time I was at the park.

Lower Yellowstone Falls. Check the tiny peoples.

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone NP

Grand Tetons. Last noteworthy shot of the trip.

8 California Pictures, Mostly Trees

2010-07-29T14:52:00.011-03:00

Group dynamics, Monterey Bay Aquarium

Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

Self portrait, Muir Woods

Conzelman Rd., North Bay

Tasting, Black Stallion Winery, Napa

Needles and light, Humboldt

Backlit, Prairie Creek

Posing with a titan, Jedediah Smith

Photos Out West

2010-07-19T02:38:00.013-03:00

I've been on the road for a week+ now. For more details on that, click here. Below are 10 shots from the journey.

Sunset over Abiquiu Lake, NM

Monument Valley, UT

Navajo sandstone cliffs, Zion

Car and tent, Snow Canyon State Park, UT

Nevada's Highway 375--definitely a strange road

Big trees in Crane Flat Campground, Yosemite

Half Dome from behind, Yosemite

Cable route up Half Dome

Top of Half Dome

Vernal Falls, from Mist Trail, Yosemite

Heading West Again

2010-07-05T20:39:00.004-03:00

One of the first posts I wrote for WayWorded was a reminiscence on my winter/spring 2007 roadtrip through the West, running from Colorado ski mountains, through Arches NP, over to Las Vegas, and then down past the Grand Canyon to Tuscon and home to Texas on I-10.

It's time for a take 2...only now it'll be all the way to the Pacific coast. A family wedding in San Francisco is providing the perfect excuse, and I'm building on the experience of my Interstate-less Eastern roadtrip to get there. State highways and rural roads from Austin to SF.

And I won't be done after the wedding, either. In late July, I plan to shoot north, through redwood country, up into Oregon, and possibly as far as Seattle and Vancouver before turning around and cutting home through ID, WY, and CO.

Some things I'm particularly psyched about:

* National park camping/hiking in Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Yosemite. Maybe not all of those, but at least two.

* Driving American desolation, specifically central Nevada and eastern Oregon. Want to see what's there.

* Redwoods. I've been fixated on northern California's coastal rainforests since reading The Wild Trees. Now I get to explore in person.

* Meeting folks on the way. I put out a call for Matador members on my route to hit me up with their local travel secrets. Can't wait to map the Matador nation.

Downsides of Freelancing, or the 1-Day Weekend Experiment

2010-06-28T18:36:00.005-03:00

My ass hurts from sitting. I'm shocked that I don't have carpal tunnel like my sister, and that my glasses prescription hasn't changed in a few years, because there are times when the screen flickers and everything goes Gaussian blurry. When I'm profiling grocery store shelves, scrolling the product rows for baker's yeast, my left-hand pinky and index finger swipe the air instinctively. Ctrl+f. Find: Fleischmann's. I self-narrate events in blog post voice. In April, I stowed my computer in a closet for 48 hours to drive around Picos de Europa, and when I got back it was dead. I wasn't surprised.

Freelancing is cool. I can type an hour, read The Golden Spruce the next, then get back to work. I can play geography quizzes and read the NYTimes site during the middle of the day without intoning the phrase "time theft." I can spend a year traveling through five South American countries and still pull in a solid 30k.

What I can't do is stop. I don't work all day, but I do work every day, especially since joining the Matador team. The multi-project fluidity of my freelance lifestyle means there's always something to do. There is no downtime, only different manifestations of work. Research becomes writing becomes uploading becomes editing becomes publishing becomes promoting. And on.

But the part that freaks me out is the new habit I seem to have of turning even potential downtime into work time. When assignments from Korea have ebbed, and my Matador duties are crossed off (for the day), there's still more--planning a next book with Park Kyubyong, zeroing out my Google Reader, blogging here. Each minute, monetize. Not that I do all these things simply to make money, but the mindset is similar. Produce. Progress. Maximize.

On her blog Cuaderno Inedito, Julie Schwietert asks, "What if the Internet crashed today?" She uses the question to imagine pursuing projects in the "real" world, more closely, humanly connected with colleagues and communities than the Internet can ever allow. The prospect excites her. Right now, I'm taking the question in a different direction, but one equally exciting to me. If the Internet crashed today, I would...

I would go outside. Take mate to the park. Ride my bike to McKinney Falls. Fix my bike. Paint the living room "Balmy Seas." Go to a movie. Play frisbee golf at Bartholomew. Volunteer. Take a Spanish class. Work in the yard. Read an entire book. Locate the best draft beer bar in Austin.

Those things sound fun. So I've decided that every Sunday, my Internet will crash. I will shut off my computer Saturday night and won't touch it till Monday morning. It will not die--it will be fine without me. And vice versa.

This will be my 1-day freelancer's weekend. I will look forward to it all week, and then I will spend it frivolously.

Pictures of Some Flowers, and a Fencepost

2010-06-17T21:40:00.010-03:00

The Mazda was hot, like it's always hot. Black car in TX June sin A/C, you can't really help that. But once 290 got past Dripping Springs, out toward the turnoff for Pedernales Falls State Park, the Hill Country air was cool enough and the land de-paved enough that the open windows drafted something like A/C. I still sweat.

I didn't know until my tours around Mendoza last year that wine country is best when hot and dry. Everyone in Texas should grow grapes.

"The #2 Wine Destination in America" say the brochures in the dozen or so wineries along 290. A lot of them cluster in Stonewall, better known for its spring peaches. Then there are a handful in Fredericksburg, too.

Becker was nice. It wasn't a hard sell for the sommelier to get me into their "Wine Club"--lots of wine swag and "member privileges" in return for quarterly deliveries. Maybe their Malbec was what did it. A lot different from Mendoza's, better I thought. More earthy.

Torre di Pietra couldn't stack up after that, despite the cool name. Their stock was more "playful," I guess. i.e., weird flavors.

I walked out back after the tasting, through the covered "event space" and up to the cedar fence marking the start of the vines. The case with my Canon A630 over my shoulder. I've been proofing the MatadorU photography course, so pulling out the camera, I thought "f/stop" and "depth of field." I decided to finally start playing with my aperture. One of the major differences I've noticed between DSLR and point-and-shoot image quality is depth of field. Yes, getting a truly shallow DoF with a p&s is kinda impossible, but I dialed down the aperture to its lowest number (3.2 or something), jacked up the shutter speed and some other settings so it wouldn't overexpose too badly, and went for it.

This is the result--notice the blur in the background. Not exactly beautiful, but I got what I was going for.

Later, I found easier-to-shoot subjects at the Lyndon B. Johnson Natl. Historical Park, in a field of wildflowers. Can't go wrong. I played some more with exposure settings and the macro function and came back with the following images.

Flowers appreciate the hot and dry Hill Country as much as the grapes, I guess. I enjoy Texas in the spring, even if it's already pushing 95. Back at home, the crape myrtle in the front yard just exploded pink, another easy shot to make look good.

Syndication

2010-06-08T19:27:00.003-03:00

The simple habit of keeping a blog has drawn so many connections between me and random points on the Internet fractal that I would never have known existed otherwise.

Like Sweet, a literary journal of poetry and nonfiction with a lust for desserts. "Head chef" Ira Sukrungruang contacted me months ago to ask permission to reprint part of my post How People Live (in Bolivia). I said yes, thank you.

You can find the excerpt in their issue 2.3, announced today.

3 Years of Work, in My Hand

2010-06-02T21:49:00.007-03:00

On my front porch this morning was a slender brown padded envelope containing an advance copy of Korean for Beginners, a book I coauthored with my Korean colleague, Park Kyubyong. It hits shelves (and Amazon trucks) August 10.

That'll make more than three years of on-again, off-again work on this project. We put together the first 10 chapters back in 2007 and sent them off with query letters to several publishers. We heard nothing...for a very long time. It wasn't until the middle of my bicycle tour through Maritime Canada that an editor from Tuttle Publishing got in touch.

After that, getting a contract was comparatively easy, and we were then tasked with actually writing the book--going back and recrafting those 10 nearly forgotten chapters and creating 17 more. Only, it was now December of 2008 and I was a month away from starting a year in South America.

The words in this book have moved around as much as I have. Their inspiration was drawn from my two happy years in Seoul and the struggles I encountered studying the language. The bulk of them were written on my bed in room #1 of the Sustainable Bolivia house in Cochabamba, or in a cafe called Casablanca on Calle España. I can't remember, but revisions probably carried over to Cuzco. And that's where Carey began in earnest on the book's illustrations, work which followed us to a beach hostel in Arica, Barrio Bellavista in Santiago, a chalet-style guesthouse in Pucón, and our volunteer homestay in Esquel, Argentina. I recorded the audio tracks in our tenth-floor Palermo flat in Buenos Aires.

Now it's in my hand in Austin.

It's not a travel book, but it sure feels like one.

The Antithesis of Travel

2010-05-21T19:41:00.004-03:00

I watered my first lawn for the first time last night.

This wasn't something I thought about when buying a house. Watering a lawn sounds wasteful. But Ernest told me the grass would choke back the weeds with a little moisture. The hose was already there, a little Vigoro 5-setting hecho en china spray gun already attached. It felt good in my hand. I watered it all, the peach, pear, and crabapple trees, the two garden boxes, even the little nopal down by the curb.

Today, I battled the leaky toilet tank. It took some trial and error, but no more water in the drippy cup. I am the owner of a water-tight toilet.

This doesn't feel like travel.

American Nomenclature, Roadtrip Notes

2010-05-12T20:58:00.004-03:00

I just published some roadtrip highlights over at Matador Trips: 2,600 Miles through the Eastern Half.

Such a familiar drive, but long enough to mix it up fresh each time. And tomorrow we start heading back the other way.

But I haven't finished digesting the last leg yet. Below are some notes Carey and I took on the road. Lots of back roads, some interstate, all America:

central texas driving into the sun. elgin, hearne, franklin, jewett, oakwood, palestine, jacksonville. tail pipe rusted off. duct tape. highway 79 is long and it keeps going.
over the ar border to ashdown. cool name. camp at millwood state park. big dam, big lake, cold night.
tollette, saratoga, hot springs, pine bluff, back on 79. stuttgart, clarendon, marianna, onto the interstate in memphis.
lakeland, bolivar. coffee. pantry in an old bank vault. route 64. selmer, savannah, clifton, waynesboro, natchez trace parkway. i'd like to drive that.
lawrenceburg, davy crockett state park, pulaski, fayetteville, jack daniels. finally some mountains, sewanee, college town, chattanooga, beer.
scenic byway, ocoee river, been here before. into the curving and drooping mountains. long dusk. bryson city, smoky mountains, campsite, bears.
asheville, coffee shop, rosetta's kitchen, vegan restaurant. blue ridge parkway, sweet windy mountain views, slowing down, kinda lost.
linville, boone, independence. virginia border, galax. interstate surrender. claytor lake state park, camping, fire, no dew.
interstate driving, so fast. christiansburg, roanoke, harrisonburg, harper's ferry. civil war is heavy. frederick maryland, gettysburg pa. 30, past 83, lancaster, 222, reading, allentown. times square, nissan pathfinder, holiday inn fire alarm.
interstate morning, jersey, no toll (sweet), staten island, $8 toll (shit), verrazano narrows, atlantic ave, flatbush, park slope. big city, bsas, family, matador.
queens, kennedy bridge, bronx, 95. old hat from here.

Morocco Audio-Visual

2010-04-24T21:55:00.029-03:00

Here's what my four days in Marrakech and around sounded like (remix):

And here's what it looked like:

Typical Medina scene, Marrakech

Horse and monkey

Nighttime, Place Jemaa el Fna, Marrakech

Moroccan disco ball

On camels at dusk

Berber beat (drum track in the mix above)

Desert sunrise

And back out again

11 Images from a Trip through Spain

2010-04-18T01:15:00.013-03:00

1. Vaulted nave of the Gothic Cathedral, Barcelona

2. Cliff lookout of Ronda, Málaga

3. Big waves at Playa del Sardinero, Santander, Cantabria

4. Carving of the Palacio Nazaríes, Alhambra, Granada

5. Flamenco at Los Tarantos, Granada

6. Inside the Alcazaba, Alhambra, Granada

7. Sweet wines of Antigua Casa de Guardia, Málaga

8. Dusk in Potes, Picos de Europa

9. Door of the Passion Facade, Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

10. Bathhouse ceiling, Alhambra, Granada

11. Don Quijote's windmills, Consuegra, Castilla-La Mancha

My Tips for Renting a Car in Argentina

2010-03-26T16:26:00.007-03:00

This little blog is doing alright, numbers-wise. I'm under no fantasies that this has to do with anything other than all the link love coming my way from Matador, but hey, it still feels good.

One thing this means is I've started getting offers of "partnership opportunities" from other travel and non-travel sites out there. I got one yesterday from NileGuide and another today from a company called IZEA. Both I turned down.

But I didn't say no to CheapOair when they contacted me last December. They were interested in having me write a short piece for their blog and posting a little link text here at WayWorded. In return, theoretically, I (and Matador, it turns out), would benefit from their link love.

I didn't agree so much because it seemed like a good deal (it didn't, actually), but that I was into writing about the idea I came up with--lessons learned renting a car in western Argentina.

After much delay (backlog from other eager participants, I guess), my post went up on CheapOair today. Here it is: 10 Tips for Renting a Car in Argentina. Hop over and check it out if you'd like. Or don't. There's nothing in it for you.

And, to fulfill the second part of the bargain, here's the link text they asked me to post:

[Big Airline Tickets Sale Going On Now through CheapOair.com. Book & Save an Extra $15.]

Ah, the slightly disturbing inner workings of online advertising.

Sky Colors, Buenos Aires

2010-03-24T22:36:00.001-03:00

Virtual-->Personal

2010-03-21T18:13:00.003-03:00

Yesterday morning I upped my handshake count of Matador staffers to 5, in an all-too-brief Austin brunch with Matador Nights editor Tom Gates and Matador Sports intern Lindi Horton.

These faces to names were added to Kate Sedgwick (other half of the Nights duo) and Adam Roy (head man at Sports), both of whom I met last year in Buenos Aires, and new intern Cathey Franke, a San Antonio local who joined Carey and me for lunch at Madhatters, a shared favorite Southtown joint.

How many more to go? I'm not even sure. Maybe about 30 just counting the team, and like 12,000 when that opens up to the community at large. Better get started.

Groupsource My Travel: Spain and Morocco

2010-03-17T14:55:00.006-03:00

2003, Mediterranean coast

I may be deep into the homebuying process, but that doesn't mean I'm putting off an opportunity to hop on a plane and fly 5,000 miles across the ocean. We locked in our tickets back in December, anyway--before we knew whether the house dream was going to happen. So it's not total irresponsibility. But there's zero margin for missing our flight back--the scheduled closing date is three days after our return.

I've trained the upper half of Spain's Mediterranean coast a couple times, but this trip will be different. It starts in the north in Santander and Picos de Europa, stops in Barcelona for a day (Easter), and then settles in Málaga and Granada for a few before cruising back north to Madrid.

The final four days of overseasdom will roll out in Marrakech. This will be our first trip in 6 years sans-Lonely Planet. I've opted instead for Matador colleague Paul Sullivan's Hedonist's Guide to Marrakech. To be LP-free is liberating and disorienting. But I'm betting we survive.

That's the itinerary. Have you been to these places? If I were your puppet, where would you dangle me? Where to go, what to see. Groupsource me.

The History of a Rip

2010-03-07T20:20:00.019-03:00

March, 2010

The pants hang over the back of the chair, butt end up.

Six inches below the right rear pocket, a tear in the fabric runs vertically down the leg about two and a half inches. The way the pants are hanging makes the rip open into a puckered oval. A tongue of white fabric (the interior of the pocket) sticks out of it.

I worry that maybe I shouldn't wear these pants to any sort of "function." I'm going to the bank tomorrow to see about a loan. I shouldn't wear them tomorrow. People standing behind me can see my underwear through the rip.

I'm kind of upset about that. I like the pants.

October, 2009

Colonia is nice.

People say it's too touristy, and maybe they're right. Maybe I like touristy.

It's right on the Río de la Plata (I always have trouble calling it a río because it looks a lot more like an ocean or at least a gulf to me), a straight shot northeast from BA. It's really small, and the UNESCO area (the old Spanish colonial part that's been preserved) is even smaller. Just a few square blocks of narrow cobble streets, some plazas, bougainvillea, rusty cannons, and a lighthouse with a disappointing view.

But I don't know any of that yet. I just walked through the original city gate, a big stone arch with a pair of rusty cannons, followed the old wall east about a hundred feet where it drops into some terraced park space and then the water.

I'm sitting on a rough section of terrace wall. There are maybe six other tourist pairs and individuals, six tourist units, sharing the terrace space. We're all spaced pretty evenly. We've claimed our "spot." I'm looking out at the water and thinking it's too bad you can't see BA from here. It would look pretty cool, hazy sky and skyscrapers.

The rocks of the terrace wall are not mortared. Their edges are jagged, carved from 300 years of erosion maybe. It's kind of painful to sit on them. I do a little seated roll to get up, and I feel something catch on my pants, maybe six inches below my right rear pocket.

"Damn," I think. "I think I just ripped my pants."

March, 2009

I feel incredulous.

I'm incredulous that I've found what I'm looking for, in my size, in the first shop I checked, in what people like me like to call the largest open-air market in Latin America, in the middle of Bolivia.

The pants are pretty much an exact match for the ones I'm trying to replace, the ones I gave away a week earlier. They're made of the same synthetic, thin, almost parachutey material, with the same cargo pockets that I adore, the same color, with even the same fold in the fabric covering the zipper so that sometimes it lifts away from the zipper and makes it look like my fly is down.

I do an awkward probando dance in the back of the shop to verify the sizing of these secondhand pants who came from God knows where to be resold in this backstreet stall of the Cancha in Cochabamba. They fit nice.

I give the señora my 60 B's. She's overcharging me. I don't really care. I'll pay $9 for magic pants any day.

March, 2009
I go outside to the gate, thinking he's selling fruit.

His face is dark brown and leathery. His hair is dark black and matted. He's wearing a lot of clothes, and they're all dirty. He's not selling fruit.

I have a hard time following real Spanish conversations. It's extra hard when I'm talking to a homeless man who may or may not be fully coherent.

He says he's from Peru. I tell him my name is Enrique, and he tells me they have that name in Peru, but in Peru they often change it to "Renrique." I think that sounds odd.

He asks me for money, or food, or maybe he's just asking for anything. I'm living in a volunteer house, so I figure I should oblige. Then I get an idea. "Espera un momentito," and I run into my room, open the door of the wardrobe that smells like cat piss (just the door, not the inside), and grab the pants.

The pants are old. They have rips, but I can't remember their histories. There's one in the back, just beneath one of the pockets, and there's one big one under the left knee, like the pants are ready to convert to shorts. I've almost thrown them away a couple times now. It'd be a good way to lighten my suitcase.

I run back out and pass the pants through the iron bars of the gate to the man. I tell him I hope they're his tamaño. He looks pretty happy, and then he starts off down the sidewalk again, towards Plazuela Sucre.

Back inside, I sit on the bed and feel happy. Then, I feel sad.

May, 2005

I'm really happy.

My parents and sister flew into Seoul last night, and I have a lot to show them. But the first thing we've done is hop on the Green Line and subway over to Technomart. I need some pants.

Technomart is a great place to buy things in Seoul. It has that Korean shopping mall setup, with a tall, semicircular foyer and then escalators shooting up to about ten floors of kiosked shopping. It's called Technomart, but it's best known (to people I know) for it's clothing.

Towards the edge of the clothing sector, I look through a rack of pants and find a pair I like. They're brown, made out of a synthetic, thin, almost parachutey material that seems fast drying. It's got sweet cargo pockets.

I try them on in the tiny closet of a fitting room and they feel pretty good. "얼마예요?" The 아줌마 wants 12,000 for them, but it's pretty easy to get her down to the standard 만원. 10 bucks. I decide to wear them out the door.

My family and I find our way out of Technomart, through the hall and past the roasted nut vendors to get back to Gangbyeon station. We get on the subway. It's close to noon. It's time for their first Korean meal.

I'm sitting on the subway bench wearing brown, thin, synthetic pants. I'll take these pants with me when I leave Korea to bike through Southeast Asia. I'll wear them on the streets of Hue, at an "eco-resort" in Laos and a hostel in Phnom Penh. They'll be in my pannier in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Honolulu. I'll put them in my dresser, the one I had as a kid and stripped and refinished, in Portland, Maine. I'll wear them at campsites in Nova Scotia and on top of pyramids in Mexico. I'll pack them, rips and all, to take to South America. I'll wear them in Cuzco, in Copacabana, in Cochabamba. I will give them away to a strange Peruvian beggar on Calle Bolivar, and replace them with a pair I find in la Cancha. I will look at the replacement pair hanging on my desk chair in about five years, and they will inspire me to write a blog post.

But I don't know any of this. I'm just sitting in a subway car with my little sister and my parents. I'm about to introduce them to kimchi.

Trees

2010-02-24T21:34:00.011-03:00

Photo by H Dragon

In November of last year, I got an email from Ross Borden. He wanted the Matador Trips team to publish this article:

"Where to Find the Largest Redwoods on Earth"

and this photo essay:

"The Oldest, Most Massive Living Things on Our Planet -- Seeing the GIANT Redwoods"

I ran with the prompts and started research. I exchanged emails with Mario Vaden, a tree enthusiast and professional horticulturalist from Oregon, and did a lot of Internet digging. The pieces I later produced were the funnest I've written for Matador, and both got some decent pageviewage:

Guide to the Redwood Groves: Where to Find the Tallest Trees on Earth
Photo Essay: GIANT Redwoods, the Tallest Living Things on Our Planet

But that wasn't the end of the story. Or the beginning.

***

I've always been a climber. Rocks, walls, roofs, trees. I'm not sure what appealed to me more as a kid, the actual act of climbing or that feeling of getting to a place that lets you see things from unusual angles. Probably the second, since I also spent a lot of time squeezing through drainage grates. Suburban safari.

Sam and I used to walk the streets--Parklane, Stanford, Luther, Belvidere, El Prado--scoping for a good-looking magnolia or oak or pecan, hop the chainlink and start up it. The neighborhood wasn't a 1930s, upper-crust subdivision. It was a forest.

In high school, I remember being pretty fumed when Jon's neighbors butchered the limbs off their 65-year-old oak. I thought I might make them an unmixed tape that played only one song--Jefferson Airplane's "Eskimo Blue Day." The refrain is "doesn't mean shit to a tree." I guess I was a treehugger back then.

But I forgot about trees in New England. It's hard to climb trees up there. They're sappy and snowed on. I forgot how it felt to see things from unusual, secret angles.

***

In my digging for the Matador pieces, I found an NPR interview with Richard Preston, author of The Wild Trees. The interview was intense and interesting, and I used this quote in my article:

"…the truth of the matter is that redwood rainforest is exceedingly difficult to move through, physically. You get out in there, and it takes a physically fit person up to 12 hours to move two miles. You’re belly crawling, you’re crawling through thorns, your skin gets all bloody, you can’t see anything. It’s absolutely thick.
And then you come across these piles of redwood trunks that have fallen down like pick-up-sticks. These are trunks that are anywhere from eight to 12 feet in diameter piled up, and…you get a wall of wood that may be 30 feet tall. And as you climb over it, if you slip down into a crack, you can fall into the pile — 30 feet — and break your leg and never be heard from again."

My eyes didn't catch just on Preston's words, but also the familiar title of his book. My wife and I had bought it on Amazon a couple years earlier to give to her father for his birthday. The Wild Trees.

I also started to remember why my father-in-law had wanted that book. About his discovery of technical tree climbing, the skill set traditionally used by arborists to gain access to tall trees that had become something of an underground sport, with periodic competitions. Kinda like those lumberjack tournaments you see on ESPN2, only climbing trees instead of cutting them.

And then I remembered just last Christmas we'd set him up with a technical tree climbing course, run by the South Georgia Tree Climbing Association outside of Atlanta. I'd watched a video from them that covered the basics: how to hook a line over a limb using a weighted sack, how to belay a climber, like in rock climbing.

I thought it was a little weak. I thought climbing a tree with ropes wasn't really climbing a tree.

But things were coming together. The Matador stuff, the redwoods, the technical climbing. It felt like the right time to read Preston's book. I borrowed my father-in-law's birthday gift and dug in. I loved it.

***

We're going to a wedding in San Francisco in July. I'm psyched for the family time, to see the city, and to celebrate with the bride and groom. But as soon as I heard the location, I knew I'd be taking a week after the ceremony and heading north.

Up Highway 101 through that huge chunk of California that it's easy to forget about. Up about 5 hours to Humboldt Redwoods State Park and the Avenue of the Giants. Then farther, through Eureka and Arcata and into Redwood National Park and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Way up to Crescent City and Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

I don't want to belly crawl through thorns and poison oak, or fall through a pile of dead redwood pick-up-sticks. I don't want to search for Hyperion. I don't want to hang from a rope 30 stories off the ground. Not this trip anyway. I just want to see them.

Photo by briandrum

A Story of Two Photos

2010-02-11T23:48:00.009-03:00

The road out from Turco was unpaved, just like the road to Turco, but the ride went quickly, the white peaks of the Nevados de Quimsachata bulging bigger against the white sky.

Chachacomani is one of those pueblos that disappears into the mountains behind, so it wasn't till we got within half a km that I saw it, even with the line of sickly electrical poles running out of it, down the Altiplano and to the horizon.

I was pretty nervous. This was our first "site visit," the first time we'd left the Energética offices in Cochabamba and gone "into the campo" to see what it was this organization was up to. We'd been in the car for something like 12 of the last 24 hours, conversing with Don Fredy and trying not to expose just how shitty our Spanish was. After a night in an Oruro hotel, we'd driven on to Turco, dropped our stuff in a cold mud-brick room, and continued west on the road past Sajama to this tiny pueblo 5km from the Chilean border. I felt lost.

We were supposed to be "documenting." Doing photos and interviews about the energy situation in rural Bolivia. I don't think Don Fredy knew what to make of it. He didn't offer help. He was busy trying to collect the community leaders and get some feedback on how the new power lines were working and what their current needs looked like.

Care and I slid out of the Land Cruiser. We looked at our feet. Nothing seemed to be happening. We kind of zigzagged, in that time-killing kind of way, down a grass-covered lane. In about 100 meters the pueblito ended. Nothing by shrubs, garbage, and llamas out there. We photoed the llamas. They got nervous and jogged away, up the first slopes of the Nevados de Quimsachata.

Back at the "main plaza," people were gathering. There were some chicos with heavy metal t-shirts and nice-looking bikes, showboating, hopping curbs and big rocks. Some cholas were sitting on the curb in front of the church, each with a dozen skirts and a bowler cap. They were drop-spindling llama wool.

Non-Bolivians with cameras are drawn to cholas. I slipped over to them, trying to find an opening in their quiet Aymar-llano. I went for it, said hello, explained what the hell I was doing in their nice little village by the mountains. "Puedo sacar una foto de Uds.?" There was a short comprehension lag, and then a forceful shaking of heads. Nobody moved. One of the younger ones smiled because of the tension. The others waited for me to leave.

I walked back to the car. "That's a no," I said to Carey. I turned around and snapped a photo of the huddle, from the outside.

The whole thing, our project, looked like it was going to tank. Don Fredy had better things to do than give us a proper introduction. Everyone was ignoring us. We walked off in the other direction, thinking we'd better find some more llamas to photo.

Chachacomani was bigger down the hill. There was a school, a health clinic, a two-story brick building.

We got to the other end. There were no more llamas, just the flat, brownish Altiplano spilling out like a flood to the east. We kept walking along the "main road," the one we'd driven up to get into town. North of us, Sajama's pyramidal bulk hid behind a sheet of blowing snow.

By the road, an old man in a green sweatshirt was mortaring together a small cubic structure. He looked at us and smiled.

"I'm gonna try," I said. I went over and gave him my spiel. "Energética," "voluntario," energía," "entrevista." He kept smiling, then nodded his head.

His name was Pedro Apaza Mamani. He'd come to Chachacomani 3 years ago looking for work, and now he was stacking together this outhouse by the road. He answered all of my questions, speaking into the dinky Olympus digital recorder, while Carey stood back and photoed. When I played it back a week later in Cochabamba, his voice was almost washed out by the wind. He said he was thrilled to have electricity in his home, even if it only powered a 25-watt light bulb. That was our first interview.

When we got back to the plaza, the Land Cruiser was packing up. Time to go, on to Campo Grande as the sun set, which is where the picture in the previous post was taken. Campo Grande means Big Country.

How People Live (in Bolivia)

2010-01-25T20:30:00.002-03:00

Sometimes, the power goes out.

When I'm in San Antonio, it's the thunderstorms that do it. In Maine, ice brings down the lines. Korean electricity was pretty reliable, but we had a few outages. In Bolivia, the local juice was too much for the wiring in our old suburban house--the widowmaker showerhead would melt wires in the circuit box once a week.

Pulled back a century, I can never think of things to do when the power goes. "Okay, read a book," I start off. But it's nighttime, and there's no light. "If I can't read, I might as well watch TV. Oh. Shit. That's stupid." It continues. "Hey, I've got 4 hours of laptop battery. I'll post to the blog." But modems and routers run on electricity, too. Usually by the time I've realized I have nothing to do, the lights hum on again.

I used to hear or read about people who live without electricity. "That's terrible..." my mind kicked into its "tragedy" protocols, allowing acknowledgment of plight but locking down contemplation at the superficial level. I didn't want to peer too close. I might have even played with empathy--"Yeah, life sucks when the power goes out."

Then I went to Bolivia.

I spent 3 months with Energética. They work with thousands of people who live without electricity. People who don't live in suburban houses with melting wires and blown circuits and iced lines. They live in one-room chimney-less huts made from adobe bricks infested with Chagas mites on the 4,000m Altiplano beyond walking distance from the nearest low-voltage pole.

When you have no electricity, you spend your days out in the fields with the livestock, the llamas and alpacas. Maybe sheep, maybe cows. You get home at dusk and cook dinner in the fading light. The cooking fire gives off light, but also smoke, and when the wind blows right the smoke backs up in the ventilation hole and fills the room. You cough. You burn candles or oil lamps, and they make you cough, too. Sometimes they fall and burn you back. It's hard and expensive and risky to make light, so usually you don't. You sit in the dark. You sleep. You'd rather be using the time to dye yarn and weave textiles to sell to the tourists, to make jewelry, to weld or solder, to help your children with their homework, to find some way of supplementing the subsistence income of the ganadero lifestyle. But there's no electricity. You can't see, so you don't do anything.

When you have no electricity, you have no power.

Second Thoughts (Again)

2010-01-20T01:45:00.009-03:00

I know this is a tired topic. Most recently, it's been addressed by Brave New Traveler editor Christine Garvin in Are Long-Term Travelers Avoiding "Real" Life? That post, in turn, was inspired by a musing from Nomadic Matt, Everyone Says I'm Running Away.

The theme survives because of its foundational relevance to travelers, I guess. Or because there are no answers to the questions. But either way, sitting here in the bedroom I grew up in, I feel I've now come back to "real life." And real life is hard.

I want to buy a house, but I don't have much money. That means I'll be buying a small, rundown bungalow in an iffy neighborhood and spending lots of hours bringing it up to my vision of acceptability. I'll be meeting with loan officers, learning how to hang sheetrock, building furniture and running wires, figuring and following a sustainable budget. All this seems very hard.

Wouldn't it be easier to get lost again? Pick a new quadrant of Earth and go? There's more out there. And it doesn't involve table saws, pre-qual letters, going into debt for the first time in my life. Which baits the big questions--is travel running away? Avoiding responsibility? Postponing entry into "real" life?

I was so anxious to get back here. Ready for stability, I thought. What does this mean? Will I always feel restless wherever I am?

No answers. And I've gotta stop, because I feel like a major douche waxing existential when people in Haiti and thousands of other places that aren't in the news and never will be would kill for the luxury of waxing existential. But those are the questions I'm asking tonight.

The End of Travel...?

2010-01-04T16:55:00.001-03:00

Provocative title, yes?

Happy New Year, first of all. I got so wrapped up in posting year-in-review lists over at Matador Trips that the milestone came and went uncelebrated here at WayWorded. And I think I'm in the minority; if you're jonesing, here are several quality end-of-years to check out:

What's Around the Corner (Carlo Alcos on Matador Trips)
2009: Year in Review (Collazo Projects)
Closing 2009 (MusicTravelWrite)
Balcony View of 2010 (Geotraveler's Niche)
Doing Canada: Where I'm Going and Where I've Been (Candice Does the World)
Happy New Year! Now Read These Lists. (Eva Holland)

For me, the new decade marks a shift. I spent all of 2009 on the go, exploring the dialects, menus, volunteer opportunities, and cultural idiosyncrasies of southern South America. The experience brought me to some hard truths--the most significant of which is that I'm ready to start putting down roots.

As of next week, I'll be hanging up my suitcases (or more likely throwing them away--they were bought in a Santiago bargain store and are total crap) and scouring the homeland for a place to call home.

So what does this mean for a travel blog? Well, to kill the cliffhanger brought on by the title of this post, I'll say it DOESN'T mean the end of travel! After all, back when I started WayWorded at the intro of 2008 (wow, two years!), I was more-or-less stationary in Portland, Maine. In fact, it was being stationary that gave me the time and motivation to kick off a blog in the first place. It's that kind of creative potential that's driving me homeward.

And, if that's not convincing enough, I just purchased tickets for a 2-week trip to Spain in April. No, the travel is most decidedly not over. It's simply that 2010 will encompass much more.

Can't wait.

Argentina's Arizona

2009-12-12T16:50:00.002-03:00

The cathedral, Talampaya. Photo: Aya Padrón

Argentina is like North America upside down. At the bottom you have the glaciers and frozen, inaccessible winters of Alaska and northern Canada. A bit higher, near Esquel, snow caps rocky mountains, their pine-sided slopes reminiscent of Colorado, Wyoming. I've never been up to Salta and Jujuy provinces, but in my mind their stand-in is the Chihuahua Desert of West Texas/northern Mexico.

And last week, on a five-day rental car roadtrip out of Mendoza, I found Arizona. Flat, dusty desert stretches, unexpected ridge passes wound by caminos sinuosos, ancient-cut canyons, colored rock photogenically eroded. So...maybe Arizona+Utah.

The best, of course, lay within protected parks: La Rioja's Parque Nacional Talampaya, and, 80km down the highway in San Juan, Parque Provincial Ischigualasto. I hit both in one day, which, although leaving no time for the more attractive touring options of mountain biking or trekking, did allow me to see the major attractions. Scroll down and you can too.

Between the walls of Talampaya's canyon--the only Pre-Cambrian canyon in the world that...something or other. The tour was in Spanish and geology is complicated.

A view up The Chimney, a vertical concave scoop in the redstone wall that produces some trippy echoes when you yell in it.

Out of the canyon. The right-most formation is "El Monje" (The Monk). In the distance, the outline of a chain of 6,000m+ nevados that predate the Andes by a few hundred million years.

Ischigualasto (more commonly known as Valle de la Luna) was slightly underwhelming (could have been the 100-degree heat). But its contrasts with Talampaya, despite being so close, were fascinating.

"La Cancha de Bochas" (The Bocce Court)

The Valley of the Moon's two most notable features: eroded yellow pillars and the long, low redstone ridge that runs along the eastern border.

*Note: For more, keep your eyes on Matador Trips, where I hope to publish a guide on these two and one other western Argentinean park in the coming weeks.

Call It a Vow

2009-12-08T23:26:00.002-03:00

I will climb this peak.

Name: Cerro Aconcagua
Height: 6,962 meters (22,841 feet)--the tallest mountain outside of Asia
Location: Mendoza Province, Argentina, 15 miles from the Chilean border
Location of photo: Parque Provincial Aconcagua
Days till climb: Undetermined...

Getting Stuffed, Giving Thanks

2009-11-26T18:57:00.004-03:00

A quick note on this very fine Turkey Day.

In the spirit of bloated bellies, I published a photo essay on Matador Nights about a recent trip to a "meat market" in Montevideo, Uruguay. It is what it sounds like. Check it: A Case of the Meat Sweats in Montevideo.

I'm in Mendoza today. Therefore, I am thankful for good wine. Not just the diverse tastes, toned-down labels, and sleek green bottles, but for the creativity and dedication that go into its production--and the production of all the things we make not because we have to but because we want to.

Last year, I wrote about my thankfulness for travel. Obviously, I'm still feeling strong on that. But right now I'm also thankful that I'll be flying home in 20 days, back to drip coffee, unnecessarily creative vegan food, and a loving crew.

And hopefully to make a home--the other half of travel.

Peace and thanks out to you all.

I Don't Know What I'm Doing

2009-11-20T21:13:00.006-03:00

I move out of my Buenos Aires apartment in less than 3 days. Nothing's packed. I'm not even sure if everything will fit in my luggage, despite the new duffel I bought from the arcade on Avenida Santa Fe.

Should I be worried? I don't know.

I've done this so many times it shouldn't require thought. Planning, packing, leaving. I mean, take your pick:

Confessions of a Serial Packer
The Old One-Two
The Cycle
No Regrets
Farewell, Portland
Farewell, Cocha
Another Farewell: Cuzco
Rebirth

You'd think I'd have it figured out.

But I don't. I don't know where all my stuff is. I don't even know what stuff I have. In my mind, there are tiny, dusty possessions hiding in corners, under the couch, in the back of the cabinet that reeks of mothballs. I'll never find them all. Something will be forgotten, left here in this septuagenarian-painted 10th-floor one-bedroom, stuck in some mildewed crack, becoming mildew, until they tear the whole building down and cart away the rubble.

And I'll be somewhere else, a different person living a different life, and I won't even know it's gone.

6 Images of an Urban Escape

2009-11-09T09:41:00.013-03:00

In the late nineteenth century, the marshland sitting between the wide, muddy Río de la Plata and downtown Buenos Aires was commandeered and transformed into the city's new port. However, within a few decades cargo capacity had already been exceeded; another port was constructed to the north and the old one abandoned.

Just a decade or so ago, the inland portion of the old port was transformed again, this time into what might be Buenos Aires' swankiest barrio, Puerto Madero. Luxury apartments in renovated brick warehouse buildings line the stone walkways that parallel the old diques, where sailboats and yachts have replaced the freighters. Old cargo cranes have been preserved as monumental steel statues to the past.

But just east of here, where the land is too soft to support 50-story condominium towers, something different has been allowed to grow. The 360-hectare Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur is an unexpected expanse of green set adjacent to the ultra-modern Puerto Madero. Here and there where the grass isn't as thick, you can still see the ruts and concrete of old cargo offloading platforms, but for the most part nature has reclaimed it all.

More than 200 bird species are said to refuge in the reserve, but what's easier to see is the escape from the urban that it affords porteños. Pockets of land next to the river have been manicured with mowed grass and picnic tables for weekend asados, and couples blanket in the shade of short trees, looking out over the orange tinge of the river to the flocks of sailboats regatta-ing.

Cycling would seem to be the preferred way of getting around, though there are plenty of walkers. Loop trails range from 3.3 to 7.6km, and bikes can be rented outside both of the main entrances.

I've been impressed with the amount of green space in Buenos Aires, but the reserve is something different. Looking over the low sea of reedy marsh and scrawny trees to the line of half-finished skyscrapers and construction cranes, you can imagine inhabiting your own post-apocalyptic zombie horror flick. Only the zombies are all around you, grilling meat, pedaling bikes, and kicking soccer balls.

Cada Día

2009-11-02T11:08:00.001-03:00

Every morning my little white pocket alarm clock wakes me up. Not the trains. Their crash has long since flattened into the soundtrack of life on the 10th floor of Palermo Soho. I hit the snooze seven times.

Every day I give the doorman a "buen día" without really looking at him, and he unbuzzes the lock just as my hand touches the door handle to pull it open and push out into the heavy balm of Fray Justo Santamaría de Oro, entre Güemes y Charcas. Sometimes it's raining.

Every day I wash the dishes after Carey makes sushi or vietnamese spring rolls or chili or pad thai or steamed vegetables or chilaquiles or tofu scram and we eat it. Twice a day usually, lunch and dinner. And coffee in the morning in the french press.

Every night I drink Malbec from the bottle. I just found a good one for 5 pesos.

Every Sunday, la familia two buildings over throws a picnic on the roof. Long tables covered with bowls and platters, probably lots of meat, pasta, papas. They play the radio, the kids kick the soccer ball. They don't seem to mind the rain.

Cementerio de la Recoleta

2009-10-26T07:54:00.008-03:00

The cemetery in the upscale barrio of Recoleta is one of Buenos Aires' A-list tourist attractions. I'm not sure what this says about the city, since I visited a nearly identical complex in Valparaíso, Chile, that's much less hyped.

Regardless, the cemetery contains the mausoleums of many notable Argentines--the most famous being Eva Perón--including several presidents who's names I recognize from reading about how the government "dealt" with the Mapuche and other indigenous peoples towards the end of the 19th century.

The graveyard is laid out like its own mini-barrio, with tree-lined main streets and narrower connecting walkways. All this is presided over by an army of feral cats who live on the grounds and are fed by locals.

***

At this time last year, I was newly arrived in Mexico City, contemplating the differences--and increasing similarities--between Halloween and Día de los Muertos. In Argentina, neither holiday holds much sway. So I've taken it upon myself to "spooky" up my photos of the cemetery. Gotta celebrate the season somehow!

Creepy caretaker

Long shadows

Roads of the dead

Ghost, angel...or statue

Cemetery still life

Climate Change and a Bald Bolivian Mountain

2009-10-15T00:01:00.001-03:00

Today is Blog Action Day, "an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day...with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance."

The issue for 2009: Climate Change

I'm not going to spend any screen space arguing its existence. I find the "debate" tired and depressingly unconstructive. If you still harbor doubts (or inflammatory comments), I kindly direct you to the Pew Center. Instead, I'll talk about what I've seen with my two brown eyes.

The Chacaltaya glacier just outside La Paz, Bolivia, has virtually disappeared. It used to support the world's highest ski run, complete with t-bar, but now only gives up a couple turns to rich Bolivianos who feel like making the hour's drive up to 17,400 feet for a lark. I wrote about my tour of the glacier here.

Glaciers advance and glaciers retreat. Yes, it's a fact. But when it comes to tropical glaciers, there's only retreat. Smaller and less resilient than those at higher and lower latitudes, tropical glaciers serve an "early warning" function, as they're most quickly and dramatically affected by warming temperatures.

What's really scary is that millions of people in the Andes depend on glacial melt for drinking water.

What happens when the glaciers are gone? I haven't exactly done in-depth research, but I've never heard anyone even attempt to offer a solution to the problem, only acknowledge it.

Which brings me back to Chacaltaya. The 800,000 inhabitants of the valley of La Paz have other water sources trickling in. But those in El Alto--who number nearly as many if not more by now, up on the flat rim of the Altiplano, worlds apart both economically and culturally--my guide told me they have no other source. Chacaltaya's it. And by some definitions, Chacaltaya's gone.

A disused t-bar, a touch of snow, and 800,000 people in the distance

Los pobres dying of thirst. Just one consequence among countless others (for a decidedly unscientific list of potential negatives, go here) of climate change.

What can you do? These 10 solutions won't bring about salvation, but they're a start. And don't forget about 350, a different kind of day of action. Learn more here.

Also, got a blog? Write a post on the issue before the day is out. You can register with the rest of us here.

If you're in the mood to read more, the following content from Matador is definitely worth a look:

Wipe Out: World's Most Vulnerable Coastal Cities

9 Places to Experience Now Before They Literally Vanish

New Report: World Still Unprepared for Climate Change

Why the Road to Climate Catastrophe is Paved with Cheap Flights

What's in my head

2009-10-12T11:59:00.003-03:00

* I'm sitting at the 2'x2' wooden table in the comedor staring, as usual, at my too-big-to-be-practical laptop. My lower calves are tight from a run in the park this morning. I love that feeling. I'm drinking coffee too quickly out of the tall mug with the gold floral pattern, one of two coffee-appropriate vessels that came with this departamento amueblado. The floor-to-ceiling windows next to me look mainly onto another section of building, other apartment windows, but I can also see out over the train tracks, past the Classical square bulk of some government building and to the highrises just in front of the ocean.

* The idea of writing is burning an ulcerous cramp into my stomach. I look at the Times New Roman type of my "to do" list and immediately look away. That shit is not gonna happen today. I get reprieve after reprieve from my day-job work as projects are pushed back. I feel like I need to be accomplishing something with this time...impotence.

* I wonder what the Internet will look like for our grandchildren. Will they be able to access everything their grandparents wrote, all the trivial musings on blogs, all the Facebook status updates and tweets? Would they want to?

* This Internet connection is crap. It needs to be reset five times a day. Just went out again.

* I know what the problem is, because it's not new. Feeling "stuck" somewhere when there are other places to be. Maybe constant movement has conditioned me to always be thinking one place ahead. It's not the best way to live. The buddhas would be disappointed.

About the Buddhas

2009-10-11T14:35:00.007-03:00

A recent post featured what may be my favorite photo from my travels.

Rows of stone buddhas sit cross-legged, eyes closed, hands draped, ears sagging, hair knotted. In front of them, a row of stone basins, two painted yellow and red.

The shot was taken close to exactly three years ago on the grounds of Wat Sainyaphum in Savannakhet, Laos.

I went into detail about my hike through the region's protected forest and a visit to the holy stupa in my piece at TheExpeditioner, Slowing Down in Savannakhet.

But three years later, it's the city itself I remember most vividly:

* The sky was gray. No shadows. It rained.

* The hostel I'd booked faced the Mekong. The day I got there, the entire riverside was covered in festival. Longboats raced against the current, groups of kids with American death-metal t-shirts played carnival games, sweet egg bread fried on portable griddles.

* At night I drank big bottles of Beer Lao on the hostel roof. A caged bird screamed. Down on the street, people sorted through the festival garbage. I looked at the river current, and across it to the lights of a Thai city.

* The wats were quiet, the buddhas carefully arranged.

* There wasn't a lot to do. I didn't mind.

View

2009-10-03T19:23:00.002-03:00

Ever conscious of the needs of my readers, I'm publishing this picture as an addendum to the post below.

Yes, the scene I described was of morning, but I've chosen one on the other end of the day, because...well, it looks cool.

The view from my balcony:

Imprint

2009-10-01T12:21:00.004-03:00

My new apartment is on the 10th floor. The immediate view out its north-facing windows is low and green, thanks to the San Martín commuter line that cuts like a river valley between two banks of highrises, tall, white, and glass.

Each morning I shower, washing off the cold-air sweat of a run around Plaza Holanda and the paddleboat pond. Standing in the tub, I slide back the pane of the shoulder-high window to let the shower mist escape into the chill. Even without my glasses on, the difference between the outside world through fogged glass and through nothing is sharp and green.

A train. People get on, get off at the Palermo stop. It kicks up again, and soon the track clack and engine horn are whittled down into just another piece of the low roar of this motorized city.

No Words: Maté

2009-09-28T19:39:00.002-03:00

Vida Nueva

2009-09-24T15:39:00.003-03:00

Just as I'm hoping to reignite the creative fires of WayWorded, a much more literal creative act took place last night as Matador's managing editor Julie Collazo gave birth to daughter Mariel.

Long-time readers (holla!) may remember it was Julie who graciously offered up her vacant Mexico City apartment to me for five weeks last fall, making possible a truly memorable travel experience (and several WayWorded posts, to boot).

As soon as we heard the news, several of her editing colleagues put together a post of well-wishes on one of the sites Julie oversees, Matador Pulse. Check it out here.

Congratulations Julie, Francisco, Mariel, and family. To new life!

Missing Bolivia

2009-09-23T16:02:00.003-03:00

My South American volunteer year enters its fourth and final season (spring...I think--still get confused by that), and I reflect on the different places and micro-places my feet have touched in 2009. Many of the fondest are Bolivian.

"Home" in Cochabamba, busing to Oruro, exploring the Southwest Circuit, trekking La Paz on foot...maybe it's because these memories are the most distant, or perhaps I'm simply a sucker for the underdog. But I miss Bolivia.

Happily, I got in some extra reflection last week when writing 7 Facts of Expat Life in Bolivia for Matador Abroad, filling it with the little details I know will surface most poignantly next year, when I've left this hemisphere behind--another home left behind.

Re-Fire

2009-09-21T21:23:00.002-03:00

WayWorded's been dragging. I've been dragging.

For the past couple months, I haven't felt much inspiration to post here. Fatigue. Burnout.

Now, a turning point.

Work's slowing down. The weather's warming up. And I'm spending more time exposing myself to online content that inspires.

The link lists have been started--check them out in the lower righthand corner. For now, they're mostly Matador offshoots. But they'll grow with time.

WayWorded will continue to grow too. I'm ready to re-light the fire.

Buenos Aires Subte, Línea A

2009-09-12T17:35:00.004-03:00

* Photo by BuenosAiresPhotographer.com

The subway line that runs just north of my current apartment is the original. Built in 1913, it's the city's (and the Southern Hemisphere's) oldest. And it shows--in a good way.

Most of the cars threading Line A glow golden on the inside. This comes from the extensive use of wood paneling, which covers the walls, doors, window frames, even the seats. White metal poles rise from the tops of the benches to meet the ceiling in flowery column tops, and the light fixtures invoke gas lamps, not CFLs.

Today, on the now-familiar journey from Almagro to the Centro, a busking violinist played our car, bowing tango chords that the other passengers nodded along to. Two songs later, he passed the hat around and stepped out the sliding wooden doors--the ones you sometimes have to open by hand--leaving the rhythmic knock of the train as it entered the next low, coal-black tunnel.

* Photo by Joel Mann

Tied Up

2009-09-04T21:59:00.002-03:00

Silly me. For the last couple months, I was looking forward to September.

"The work will ease up," I told myself, "and I'll have nothing to do but explore Buenos Aires and enjoy myself."

Ha. The work keeps coming, and though my bank account thanks me, my sense of adventure does not.

And on top of everything else going on this month, I've accepted a temporary guest editor position at TheExpeditioner.com. I'll be contributing short posts to the site near-daily until the lead editor returns from a trip to Africa (talk about adventure). Anyone wondering where my typings are showing up this month, head over there.

In between writing assignments, here's what I'm dreaming about:

* Taking in the Argentina vs. Brazil World Cup qualifier tomorrow
* Moving to a more atmospheric BA neighborhood at the end of the month
* Busing to the wine country of Mendoza and cultural capital of Córdoba in October
* Eating juicy steaks with a couple of my Matador colleagues that live here
* Closing out a year in South America with an as-yet-to-be-determined trip, before flying north to lovely, snowy (hopefully) Maine for the holidays

Okay, I feel better now. Life is good. Peace.

The Secret Valley of Parque Nacional Los Alerces

2009-08-04T17:44:00.007-03:00

Last weekend was my fourth fin de semana in Northern Patagonia, but only the first time I managed to venture out of the little hamlet that is Esquel. I shouldn't have waited so long.

My destination was the surprisingly close Parque Nacional Los Alerces (alerce meaning "larch," a type of tree). Despite its proximity, I went with a rental car to get me there. This is the region's low season, and it shows. There's only one bus a day, five days a week, from Esquel to the park, and it drops you at the park headquarters, which is far removed from any of the real attractions.

Los Alerces is tucked away between two rows of snowy mountains, and entering it feels a bit like discovering your own secret valley--particularly in winter when you're the only car on the road. Adding to the mystique is a series of crystal glacial lakes, with water ranging from emerald to deep blue.

I did more driving than hiking, but the day, like the scenery, was gorgeous, and I finally felt like I was getting my "Patagonia experience." Here's a taste:

* * *

The perfect mix of mountains, lakes, and forest

A glacier fills the gap between two peaks.

This waterfall was surprisingly active given the dry winter the region's been having.

Almost a perfect reflection

Big sky

Skiing Upside Down

2009-07-23T13:27:00.009-03:00

As anyone who follows my writing closely knows, It's Always Snowing Somewhere.

At the moment, I'm typing away in a quaintly pink little restaurant here in Esquel, Northern Patagonia, Argentina. The large window at my back is radiating cold from the air outside. It doesn't often snow in town, but the surrounding mountains are usually wearing a fresh white coat when I step outside in the morning.

Last weekend, I decided to take advantage of the cold in what really is the best possible way--on a pair of skis (well, a snowboard in my case). So I headed up to nearby La Hoya, rented some gear, bought my ticket for the day ($30, not bad!), and hopped on the quad lift up the mountain.

Conditions weren't exactly as "Colorado" as I'm used to. Until fresh snow started falling around noon, the slopes were slabs of ice, punctuated by nasty black rocks. Though not crowded by any means, most everyone on the mountain was obviously a beginner and required a wide berth. Then there was the thick fog that occasionally wafted up the valley, making things downright dangerous.

But in the afternoon, with a soft blanket of new snow, patches of blue sky and characteristically awe-inspiring Patagonian clouds, I got my board-stride back after a year and a half of atrophy and had a fine time on the mountain.

Though I probably won't go back unless some serious snow falls, it's great to have skied in another hemisphere, and to feel the ache of those muscles I never know I have until I snowboard.

(Semi)Dream Trips, Vol. 5: Roadtripping Argentina

2009-07-12T21:54:00.009-03:00

Photo: advencap

The Dream

The modifier "semi" is stuck onto the title of this dream trip not because I'm only semi-dreaming about it. Rather, it's practically more in the realm of reality than dream. Yup, it's definitely got a foot in the door.

As I write this, I'm sitting in a pleasant gas-heated "projects" house in the city of Esquel, Argentina. A quick look at a country map and you'll see that's right on the edge of a true realm of dreams: Patagonia. (On the map to the right, Esquel is about 200km south of San Carlos de Bariloche.)

Jagged, snowy mountains ring the little pocket of valley where the town sits, imposing the power of this landscape on me wherever I look. Somehow, my gaze always falls south, where it appears as though it's perpetually snowing--the sky casting deep blue shadows on the peaks.

Esquel is the farthest south I've ever been, so that vista represents a frontier, one that I want desperately to explore.

What better way than on a roadtrip? It makes sense, after all, since public transport services can be sketchy at best at the southern tip of the world. Four-wheel drive will be a necessity, as much so as carrying spare water and fuel.

The Trip

The itinerary begins in Bueons Aires, naturally, where it should be easiest to procure a vehicle for the journey. From the capital, a coastal route meanders along the contours of the Atlantic. Puerto Madryn (on the bay due east from Esquel) is known for its wildlife, including endangered wright whales, and will be the first major stop.

From there, I'll just follow the road till it ends. A ferry is required to get to the true end of things in Ushuaia, which coincidentally is the jumping off point for Dream Trip Vol. 3 (hmm...).

Heading north again along the opposite border will take me through the spectacular Glaciers National Park (which actually features some glaciers, as opposed to Montana's version) and Chile's Torres del Paine National Park, whose unique mountain formations were recently featured in The World's Most Alien Landscapes, a photo essay I published on Matador Trips.

After that, a re-visit of provincial Esquel, some time in hippified El Bolsón, a chocolate shopping spree in European Bariloche, and then up to Mendoza for a bicycle tour through Argentina's premier wine country. Cap that off with an exploration of colonial Córdoba and the Andean villages around Salta, and I'll be ready to finish the journey at another of the country's premier attractions: Igauzú Falls.

Photo: Feffef

Considering I'm currently in Argentina and can gaze at some of the destinations of this dream trip daily, chances are I'll be writing about it from a different perspective before long.

More Holidays Abroad

2009-07-02T22:42:00.006-03:00

Photo: iChaz

Last November, I was in Mexico City for Thanksgiving.

This year, I've spent MLK Day, Inauguration Day, Valentine's Day (somewhat moot, as my wife is here with me!), Presidents Day, my parents' birthdays, Easter, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Father's Day, and my sister's birthday away from home.

Wow, that's a lot of forgone celebration.

Saturday, I'll tack another one onto the list. I don't often think much about the Fourth of July, but this week I've written two posts for Matador Trips about Independence Day events in the U.S. and abroad. And now I can't get summertime, fireworks, and barbecue sauce out of my head!

But no, I'll be spending my Saturday on yet another bus, eating mandarins and peanuts if I'm lucky, and very probably gazing at snow out the window.

Anyway, I suppose this is my way of saying happy Fourth, everybody. Wish i were there.

Photo: mborowick

Graffiti Done Right in Valparaiso

2009-06-24T10:44:00.012-03:00

Earlier this week, one of my Matador colleagues wrote a piece for the Traveler's Notebook entitled Florence Defaced by Graffiti, Declared Ugly and Depressing. It's a harsh, though humorous, indictment of the Italian city's ubiquitous displays of juvenile graffiti. The lead-in photo of the tag "Kid Crap" says it all.

In the post, Tom laments how people are capable of producing such garbage graffiti, when the potential of the medium is so much loftier. After spending a day in Valparaiso, Chile, I'm in total agreement.

Valpo, as the nickname- and slang-obsessed Chileans refer to it, is a coast city set on a series of cerros (hills) that roll down to the sea. It's famous for its acensores (elevated funiculars that ferry people up and down the steepest slopes), its artistic heritage (poet Pablo Neruda had a house here), and its graffiti.

In fact, exploring the streets, steps, and narrow pedestrian passageways of Cerro Bellavista or Cerro Alegre is like walking through an open-air museum. Every free space is covered with graffiti. But there are no Kid Craps here. Standards are high, and the imaginative and edgy images give entire neighborhoods a sense of purposeful expression. Here, see for yourself:

***

Sleeping among the watermelons

Flowers have been planted on this ex-street.

People perspectives and naughty dogs

This cat wasn't painted, but it almost could have been.

Eagle and flora

Andean flute girl

Yours truly, wishing I looked as cool as my friend on the wall

Machu Picchu: A Photo Essay

2009-06-14T12:06:00.012-03:00

Uh-huh, it's picture time again on WayWorded.

Why have I been falling back on my pictures so often recently? Three reasons, I think. First, I've been busy. One thing people sometimes don't realize about freelance work is that, at the same time you're enjoying the freedom and flexibility of not working a 9-to-5, there's also no one around to say, "Stop. You're day's over. Go home." So, while I certainly don't ever work continuous 8-hour blocks, I'm usually going at it right when I wake up and right before I bed back down. And lately there've been plenty of projects to keep me occupied. Which...yes, is a good thing.

Second, I've put together quite a few photo essays during the last month as co-editor over at Matador Trips. I enjoy writing, but through these assignments I've also come to appreciate how powerful photographs can be. Which leads into my third point: there are some subjects for which it's simply more economical and honest to work in images rather than words. Case in point, Machu Picchu.

For anyone with plans to visit this destination of destinations, I wrote a budget guide last week: Machu Picchu on the Cheap. For everyone else, here's a little taste, in 10 photos.

***

1. I woke up a 4:00am to start hiking from the town of Aguas Calientes up the hundreds of Inca stairs to the gates of Machu Picchu. This is necessary to be one of the first in line. The air was damp and cold, and for the entire morning, a thick mist clung to the mountain and ruins.

2. A small herd of llamas grazes in the grassy plazas of the ruins. They're the tamest llamas I've ever seen. They'll let you touch them if you move slow.

3. My early entry enabled me to secure one of the 400 daily tickets to climb Wayna Picchu, the steep, daggerlike peak rising sharply behind Machu Picchu. At 10:00 I began the ascent, sucking coca leaves for added strength, and by the time I reached the terraces and ruins at the summit, the fog below was finally beginning to break.

4. The rest of the day was relatively clear, and from 2:00 onward, I enjoyed the site in near isolation, as most of the tour groups had already left. I could have wandered for days more.

5. Late in the afternoon, I followed the path up out of the ruins towards the Inca Drawbridge--sheer cliffs, and a steep drop to the valley below.

6. The next day, I walked back to the base of the mountain. Looking up, a goodbye glimpse of the rim of the ruins before hopping the train back to Cuzco.

Death March to Choquequirao, Peru

2009-05-25T17:54:00.014-03:00

The treks offered by Cuzco-based tour agencies are numerous. Most involve a visit to Machu Picchu, but there are some featuring lesser-known destinations. I found myself on one of the latter last week--a four-day hike to the small Inca city of Choquequirao.

I made it back (barely) but I can safely say I've NEVER walked that much, through such difficult terrain, ever before. Part of the struggle was due to the fact that I opted to trek it all in three days instead of four, but there's simply no way around it--this tour is tough stuff.

Along with a tiny group, I traipsed a total of 74 kilometers (46 miles) in about 52 hours. Yes, that's an average of almost a mile an hour throughout the entire trip. But what really killed were the elevation changes.

To get to the ruins, you have to descend 1,800 meters (6,000 feet) to the floor of a valley...and then huff it up the same height on the other side! That's two gains of 6,000 feet in two days (one on the way in, one on the way out).

Like I said, death march. But...

...of course, it was worth it to spend three days in the Andes. The landscape? Incredible.

As I seem to be doing a lot lately, I'm going to let my photographs do the talking.

***

The mountains? Oh, the mountains. Sheer, massive, totally in control:

Our trail wound its way through the peaks, zigzagged its way up and down them, exacting every last calorie of energy from our legs and every last breath from our lungs:

Our camping spot on the second night looked out over terraces, over the valley bottom far below, through clouds, and across to the slopes opposite:

And the ruins. Nowhere near as impressive as I imagine Machu Picchu to be, but there were also only two other tourists there during our visit. Artful stonework, cradled between two shoulders of the mountain, in view of the snowy peaks above:

Sore muscles? Plenty.
Regrets? None.

The View

2009-05-08T18:05:00.003-03:00

The view from my $15/night hostel room in Cuzco. I'll be enjoying this for the next 4-5 weeks.

Life is good.

Bolivia's White City, in Photos

2009-05-04T22:18:00.011-03:00

I recently spent four nights in what Lonely Planet calls "Bolivia's most beautiful city," Sucre. They weren't far off. Instead of attempting a description of Sucre's alabaster colonial architecture, here's a selection of photos from the city. The first four were taken around town, the next five at the Convento San Felipe Neri. Enjoy.

Farewell, Cocha

2009-04-26T10:09:00.015-03:00

I love farewell pieces. They give the perfect opportunity to reflect on exactly what it is about a place that moves you, and somehow makes it easier for you to communicate this to others. A recent favorite that comes to mind is Julie Schwietert Collazo's tribute to her Mexico City apartment.

I won't attempt to write so eloquently, but in the spirit of goodbyes (I depart tomorrow), here are a few things I'll miss about Cochabamba:

1. Street calls

Mexico City has its iconic traveling tamale vendors, but the Cbba. isn't lacking in musical street sounds by any means. There's the lady who walks by on Sunday mornings (I just heard her) selling the local paper, Los Tiempos. "Tiempooooooooooos! Los Tiempoooooooos!" she cries.

And the guy with the fruit cart: "Mandarina, papaya, plátano, mandariiiiiina!" He never fails to incite a response from the pack of dogs living on our block. They howl after each nasal, megaphoned call. Sometimes, he'll mock them, howling back into the microphone. It's hilarious.

2. Whistle of the guards

Another frequent noise is the multi-pitched whistle of the street guard. His post is a little blue, outhouse-type shed at the end of the block. We're still not sure whether he uses the whistle to scare off would-be criminals, or simply to prove to the neighborhood (and himself) that he's not sleeping on the job.

3. The mountains

Every time I step out the door, every time, it hits me. The green mountains that rise bulkily to the north of the city are so soft, almost like a big mound of moss; the texture is so tactile. When clouds roll in and coat the hills in fog, I have to pop outside and look.

4. Las Islas

North of the river, where the houses get a little nicer and the clubs/bars/restaurants a little swankier, there's a half block of street food heaven known as Las Islas. I developed a routine over countless visits: taco, salchipapas (hot dog and french fries), anticuchos (skewers of grilled cow heart), and then maybe, if I'm feeling uppity, one more taco. Oh, I can smell the grill smoke now.

5. The taxi guys

Just down the block is a taxi stand. I'm not sure why or how it exists, because as far as I know it's the only one in the city, but that's where I catch a cab to work each morning. Two or three drivers have picked up on my schedule, and there's always at least one waiting for me.

The first is more talkative. He likes to tell me about the snow that falls on the mountains sometimes during the winter, random things about the city. The second only recently confided that he'd once crossed illegally into the U.S. Two weeks walking nine hours a day (or night) through the Sonoran Desert, only to get nabbed in Phoenix, jailed for four months, and deported. I told him Cochabamba was better, and meant it.

6. Rain on the roof

It rained frequently when I first arrived. At work, my desk is in a converted back alley, covered with a hard corrugated plastic roof. There's another over part of the kitchen in our house. These roofs amplify the fall of the smallest drop of rain...I don't know why I like the sound so much, but I do.

7. Coca wads

The legend of the coca leaf is powerful. An Incan leader, facing the imminent Spanish invasion, beseeched the sun deity for assistance. "Ask anything," the god told him. So the leader asked the god to send the Spanish away and save his people. "I lack the power to do what you ask," the god replied. "But I can give you this, the coca plant. By chewing its leaves, your people will find the strength to face the hardships to come."

Most people here chew coca. The characteristic cheek wad and strong, planty odor are commonly seen and smelled. Also common are discarded wads, mashes of moist green flung onto roads and sidewalks. Coca's link to the past, and its role in current international and social affairs, is fascinating.

8. The best chorizo sandwich in the world

Uh-huh, the best. And it's the best because I discovered it, at the little no-name restaurant on 16 de Julio, just north of Heroinas. Everything she makes there--empanadas, chola sandwiches--is delicious, but the chorizo...I'll dream about it for years to come.

The little brown sausages, stewing in oil juice in a big pot on the grill on the sidewalk, scooped into a bread roll, topped with a seasoned salad, and finished off with a picante mix...wow.

9. Cristo de la Concordia

To be honest, I don't usually notice the world's largest Christ statue standing watch atop the hill just east of the house. It's become a predictable element of the city background. But every once in a while I will. Maybe he's shining bright white in the mid-afternoon sun, or perhaps lit with what we like to call disco lights (they change color) at night.

In some subconscious, intangible fashion, he's the soul of Cochabamba.

I still don't feel as if I'm leaving--maybe because I haven't even started to pack. But tomorrow night I'll be gone, and realistically, it's doubtful I'll ever see this city again, my home for 98 days.

Farewell.

Licancabur

2009-04-11T10:41:00.023-03:00

The wind surges off the waves that pound Chile's north coast, whipping inland, rushing unchecked up the quick elevation gain of the western Andes, chilling as it rises, until, after 150 miles, it reaches the Bolivian border. This is where it found us, pounded us with the force of the sea and the cold of the mountain desert.

It was just before 5 in the morning, the stars still brilliant. Eleven of us, bent over from the cold, stood looking up at the wide, black silhouette in front of us, the shape of a mountain we couldn't really see. It was time to go. A few flashlights short, we climbed, slowly.

We were still creeping along the base when the first hints of a lightening crept up the sky over our shoulders. Quickly, the land spread out below us took shape. The shallow bowl with the two lagunas, the flat desert expanse stretching away, and the humps of dormant volcanoes ringing the horizon.

We were ready for the sun. It finally struck the false peak above us, pulling an orangey-golden filter down the whole of Licancabur.

Our guide (this would be his 400-and-something-th summitting trip) was knowingly taking it slow. Even though we were only a little above 5,000 meters, our bodies were resisting. Some were lagging, gasping and aching. At the big pink rock, we split into two. The rear guide took control of the second group, and though they continued at a slower pace, they wouldn't get much farther.

One deliberate step at a time, one deep, unsatisfying breath at a time, for the next three hours. Talking was out of the question. The fleeting head throbs started around 5,500 meters, the waves of dizziness shortly after. At each rest break, Laguna Verde and Laguna Blanca grew that much smaller, the spine of peaks in the distance fuller. We were now above the height of an adjacent mountain, nearly able to peer into its wide, crusty volcanic cone. The snow patches beneath our feet grew larger; icicles hung from the boulders we clambered over. Our heads seemed stuffed with cotton.

Finally, the peak. The false peak. But from its vantage point we could see our target: around the bend, up a snowfield, a pile of rocks. The summit.

We had to move fast now. Get up and get down. Otherwise, the altitude would sap our strength, leaving us helpless for the descent.

We were close, very close. "I quit. I'm done," someone said. We ignored him, stepping on. A trail of snow led up. Just a little more. "30 more seconds," I said. And then we were there.

True to his word, the guide didn't give us much chance to bask. And we didn't want it. We saw the skinny, deep depression with the frozen pond at the bottom--Licancabur's ancient fire spout. We looked west over Chile's Atacama Desert, gazing at the smoke belched from a distant active peak. We group photo-ed the hell out of the rock pile with the wood sticking out of it. We tried to express in simple sentences the oddity of standing on top of a Bolivian volcano, in the middle of a colored desert, at 19,400 feet. And then we left.

The descent was by a steeper route, slipping first down a wide snowfield and then slope after slope of volcanic sand.

Each meter drop energized us more than the coca leaves we'd been chewing all day. The oxygen was like food, or a blood infusion, pumping up our muscles and clearing our heads. We surfed down the sand and jogged the rest.

Volcán Licancabur, highest I've ever been, possibly will ever be (5,920m, 19,423ft).

Colors of the Desert

2009-04-05T13:29:00.013-03:00

I recently returned from a 5-day tour of what's known as Bolivia's "Southwest Circuit," a popular route that covers some of the most spectacular desert scenery I've ever seen. Our group opted to begin at a lesser-known starting point, taking us through a less-touristed region during the first half of the tour and really allowing us to experience the isolation of the land, as well as giving us a chance to summit the 19,400-foot Volcán Licancabur. You can look for details of that trip in the coming weeks over at Matador Trips, but for now, the best way I can think of to describe this journey is to let the images themselves do the talking. Enjoy.

For more photos of this incomprehensible landscape, check out Aya Padrón's recent post, "Campo Grande."

Shifting Gears

2009-03-23T11:19:00.009-03:00

As my two faithful readers will no doubt have noticed, it's been quiet here on WayWorded for a couple weeks. The main reason is that I've recently directed the bulk of my writing efforts elsewhere, having been given co-editorship of Matador Trips, one of the sites in the up-and-coming Matador Network of travel blogs.

I couldn't be more excited about the new opportunity. For an official introduction to this and other changes at Matador, check out Trips 2.0: For Trippers, By Trippers.

While my position will likely mean fewer WayWorded posts in the future, I certainly plan to keep this blog updated with my adventures from South America. Just this afternoon, I'm heading out to rural Oruro, in the far west of Bolivia, to undertake a volunteer project with local green-energy developer Energética. Then, if all goes to plan, it's off to the southwestern corner of the country for a 5-day tour of the salt flats. Rest assured you'll be reading all about it when I return.

Happy trails,

- Hal

Dream Trips, Vol. 4: Road Trip, Eastern European Style

2009-03-07T14:50:00.010-02:00

There's something about being settled for longer than a month that gets the creative dream juices flowing, and so I bring you the fourth installment in WayWorded's most imaginative series.

This dream trip was inspired not just by being settled but by who I'm settled with. Since I arrived at the Sustainable Bolivia house more than six weeks ago, volunteers have come and volunteers have gone; the only two constants have been a young pair from Poland. I've had many chances to discuss their homeland with them, through such interesting lenses as WWII history, the once-Polish stronghold of Chicago, and Polish cinema. The more I hear, the more I'd like to head to Krakow and toss back some pivos while getting to know this often-overlooked yet fascinating country.

But why stop there? "Often-overlooked yet fascinating" describes all of Eastern Europe, in my opinion, and I'd like nothing more than to give it the attention it deserves. I'm proposing the mother of all road trips to do just that.

Map from a Cornell University Library page

The starting point would be Tallinn, Estonia's almost-Scandinavian capital that's been getting rave reviews from travelers lately for its low-budget, high-class atmosphere. From there, a southbound route takes us through the rest of the Baltic states, to Minsk and "Europe's last dictatorship" of Belarus, and finally to Kiev, Ukraine.

Next begins a series of switchbacks as we cut west to visit the fount of inspiration itself, Poland. From there, the zigzags continue, heading south and then back east to take in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, and Bulgaria. After this, one final westward loop is necessary to swing through all six states of the former Yugoslavia (the map shown above is a bit behind the times and so is missing Montenegro), plus Albania. Finally, what better place to cap an epic road trip than a Greek island?

Twenty countries, more than 4,000 miles, up to six months on the road. Yes, being settled does fire up the imagination!

The lengthy duration dictates a start in the summer months to ride the temperate climate wave south. But the options are limitless in terms of where to stay, how long to stay there, and what various touristic, volunteer, and other activities to take on along the way.

Of course, I might need to purchase a carbon offset to ease my conscience regarding all the driving, too. But I'd be willing to do whatever it takes to realize this dream road trip.

Who's with me?

How to Enjoy Carnaval in Bolivia

2009-03-01T14:47:00.017-02:00

After countless weeks now spent experiencing the uninterrupted lunacy that is Bolivian Carnaval, I officially consider myself an expert. Here's what I've learned:

Step 1:
Arrive in Cochabamba having never spent a second considering that Carnaval, that prototypically Brazilian party-to-end-all-parties, might affect your new life in South America's poorest nation. Witness a few random water balloon fights on the Prado, and dodge a couple lobbed bombs yourself, before being told that Carnaval in this country is synonymous with getting very, very wet. Upon finding out, raise an eyebrow and let out a syllable of combined intrigue and apprehension: "Eh?"

Step 2:
Learn all of the Carnaval tunes, all of them, firsthand as they seep into your bedroom window every weeknight, fresh from the horns blaring in nearby Plaza Sucre. On several different occasions, wander out of the house cautiously to observe from afar the throngs of university students practicing their steps a solid month before the actual day to use them arrives. Once you've built up some courage, take your tripod and shoot a video one night for posterity's sake. Yes, you'll miss this craziness once it's over.

Step 3:
After weeks of waiting, during which the water balloon wars and dancing sessions increase to a fevered pitch, it's finally time for Carnaval to begin. If you have a sick predilection for exhuasting yourself, sign up for a guided tour and hop on an Oruro-bound bus at 4:00am the Saturday before Ash Wednesday. The four-hour journey from the floor of the Cochabamba valley up to the Altiplano is a tedious one, so you'll already be well on your way to fatigue once you arrive in the capital of Carnaval and take your shoddily constructed bleacher seat on the parade route. Sit right there for the next 12 hours while attempting fruitlessly to avoid water balloons and spray foam, projecting your own water balloons and spray foam in retaliation, trying desperately to protect your meals and open beer cans from water balloons and spray foam...oh yeah, and filming as much as you can of the endless parade of crazy costumed dancers going by not ten feet in front of you. Some snapshots will likely remain imprinted in your memory forever.

Once the sun drops, get together with a bunch of your fellow tourists and make an effort to convince the guides that leaving before midnight is a good idea. They'll pretend to agree with you, but the bus will leave at midnight anyway. Try as best you can to slumber on the return home, because it really does no good for you to see how close the driver cuts his passes on the narrow, winding, precipitous highway back down to the valley. Unfortunately, the windows don't close all the way, it's freezing on the Altiplano, and you can't stop shivering.

Step 4:
Stay inside for the next three days. Monday and Tuesday are national holidays, so every male between the ages of 8 and 30 is out in the streets of Cochabamba, just waiting to dump a bucket of water over the head of a naive foreigner. Besides, you need to save your strength, because Carnaval still has one last ace up its sleeve.

Step 5:
While the rest of the Catholic world enters the reflective, self-sacrificing 40 days of Lent on Ash Wednesday, Cochabamba just can't seem to let go of the fun. So the Saturday after Oruro it's time to take to the bleachers once again and clap, dance, drink, soak, and be soaked, against the backdrop of that same old Carnaval soundtrack. Aren't you glad you already know all the songs?

This time, though, the fight is on your turf. You know the streets, you have a shower and a bed close at hand, so there's nothing holding you back. Buy as many globos as you can and see how many unsuspecting revelers you can peg in the face. Hey, they'd do the same to you. The police efforts to ban water balloons and alcohol within the parade area are to no avail; the juggernaut of Carnaval mayhem refuses to be stopped. Just take comfort in the fact that today marks the end...

...or does it?

Torotoro

2009-02-18T16:50:00.030-02:00

The thunder of the cascading water rendered futile the act of giving voice to the question, "Do you think we're going to die here?" But it was this thought that flashed in the eyes of my five fellow volunteers. I know it was there in mine.

Rain had beat against the windows of our $6 hotel rooms all night, turning the earth wedged between the cobblestone streets of the pueblo, the red dirt of the road leading to the cave, and the soft, loose soil that rests atop Torotoro National Park to slush.

We finally arrived, jackets already soaked and shoes caked in mud, at the mouth of Umajalanta. And what we saw convinced us that all the water let loose by the thunderheads during the last 12 hours had ended up here, feeding the subterranean river that cut unperturbed into the pitch-black recesses below.

It was a 4km circuit through the sometimes flooded, sometimes sandy, sometimes skin-tight passages of the cave. As often happens, the obvious risk of the situation enhanced the experience all the more.

Our nimble guide, with 40 years of spelunking under his belt, leaped from one rock face to the next, stringing ropes for us to grasp with white knuckles and illuminating the dark with his kerosene-powered headlamp. Intricately sculpted rock pillars, the squeaks of vampire bats, and 15ft underground waterfalls met us as we slid and squirmed a loop through the hollow earth.

Knees shaking and shoes oozing, we emerged three hours later, chattering wildly about why we were still alive as we made our way back to Torotoro village for overflowing platters of chicken, rice, and potatoes, with Taquiña by the liter, at the dirty little restaurant adjacent to the hotel.

* * *

By next morning the rain had stopped, but thick clouds still hung low over the volcanic peaks, painting slivers of twisted rock on the horizon. Today's journey was decidedly above ground, tracing a flat-rock runoff bed laden with 70-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur tracks to a 400m-high canyon.

Here, Andean Condors and endangered red-fronted macaws soared at eye level above the lush riverine environment far below, and it was hard to believe the dinosaurs had ever left.

Little did we know our path would lead us down all 400 meters and then back up till our shirts and packs were damp with sweat. Our guide, the same from the day before, never panted as he rattled off geologic data and related stories from his sojourns into the 51 caves in the park, etching images in my mind of expansive subterranean lagoons still as glass and massive hallways of stone lit only by the flicker of a candle lamp.

* * *

A weekend in Torotoro is a blessing, but two days was far too little to explore a landscape lost in time.

This Is Home

2009-02-07T22:00:00.000-02:00

The bus's descent from the windswept Altiplano, down and around the treacherous twists of the mountain highway and into the Cochabamba Valley, was a long one. Yet, the sharp ridges and vertigo prevented any panoramic views of the city itself, and so it was only a few days ago, when I hopped in the cable car to the top of Cerro San Pedro, that I finally was able to drink in this sprawling city-home in its entirety.

Taller by centimeters than its world-famous counterpart in Rio, Cochabamba's Cristo de la Concordia gazes down from San Pedro over a flock of more than 600,000 souls (1 million+ if he factors in the metropolitan area). From this perch, it's possible to follow the flow of the city from its nexus in the center of the valley, south past the Laguna Alalay and into the hills, north and west into the high mountains of Parque Nacional Tunari, and east towards the horizon.

Cochabamba is Bolivia's third-largest city but home to its most favorable climate. Wedged between the high chill of La Paz and the sultry jungle of Santa Cruz, the city's temperatures are refreshingly mild, despite its elevation of 8,400 feet. Rain falls daily in the midst of summer, but a powerful sun dominates days the rest of the year. Known as the "City of Eternal Spring," its streets are lined with flowering trees, its parks verdant.

Its recent history, however, is not as tranquil as this atmosphere would suggest. Just nine years ago, Cochabamba was gripped by unrest during what is now known as the Water War. It began when the World Bank forced the city to sell its water utility to a multinational consortium inculding U.S. corporation Bechtel. The consortium's solution to the problems with Cochabamba's water system was to immediately hike rates to over $20 a month--ridiculous, considering most people here make only about $100 monthly.

Needless to say, city residents were upset, and the first four months of 2000 saw repeated mass demonstrations, road blockades, and violent clashes between police, protesters, and the military. Eventually, the consortium was forced out, leaving Cochabambinos with a sense of victory but a still-crippled water distribution network. Similar scenes played out over the next several years, this time over the privatization of Bolivia's natural gas reserves. Different players, same story.

Almost as tumultuous as this history is La Cancha, Cochabamba's sprawling market that, according to some, is the largest in South America. I could probably spend every day of my time here exploring La Cancha and still come away with an incomplete picture. I won't even bother devising a list of exotic and frightening things for sale--name anything and it's there. Not only that, but there are probably twenty stalls selling it.

I've only been to market once, as the effort required to get there, around, and back from my comfortable residential neighborhood near Universidad San Simón is demanding. And honestly, it's so easy to find everything I need within this little square mile, including the offices of my volunteer organization, that I seldom venture out. Even Cristo lives here. Most of the tiny scale-model city I spied from atop his hill--the posh neighborhoods of the north, imporverished adobe barrios of the south, and everything in between--remains unexplored...for now.

For this moment in time, this is home.

Dream Trips, Vol. 3: Antarctica

2009-02-01T13:34:00.014-02:00

Photo by westerlingh

It's been a while since I posted a dream trip here on WayWorded, but that doesn't mean I haven't been dreaming up wild travel schemes in the interim. A traveler's mind is never at rest; each glimpse of a world map, each syllable of a foreign language overheard, each tale of exploration and discovery encountered gets the blood pumping and the imagination conjuring.

One such tale was imparted to me shortly before my departure for the Southern Hemisphere. I have a relative who is an intrepid adventurer, his home peppered with photographs from his expeditions scaling the world's major mountain peaks. And when he heard I was planning to journey to southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, his first, enthusiastic recommendation was this: Antarctica.

To be honest, the thought of visiting the planet's wildest and most isolated landmass had never crossed my mind. In fact, I had no idea it was even possible. But my relative has braved the chill waves of the Southern Ocean and set foot on the frozen continent on multiple occasions, most notably on a trek to retrace the path of fabled explorer Ernest Shackleton on and around Elephant Island.

Photo by Tak from HK

His advice was to hightail it to Ushuaia, Argentina, from where passenger ships depart for tours of Antarctica. Apparently, in this depressed economic climate, it may be possible to late-book a ticket for a fraction of the asking price.

Scores of companies, most belonging to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, conduct these voyages, which run between the months of November and March and visit various locales both scenic and wildlife-laden. The number of Antarctica tourists increases each year and is predicted to top 80,000 by 2010.

Photo by Martha de Jong-Lantink

Two factors, however, keep this strictly in the dream-trip category. First off, I won't be anywhere near Ushuaia until next tour season (that's Southern Hemisphere summer), if at all, and by then any potential gains to be had from a weakened tourism industry may have been erased. Secondly, no matter how much of a discount is possible, we're still talking about a minimum of $1,000 for a relatively short excursion.

But the return on this investment? Incredible, as evidenced by the shots included throughout this post courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Antarctica is one of the last true wildernesses on Earth, a fact that draws undivided attention from the avid traveler. With land area of 5.4 million square miles, it's as large as a USA and a half, the vast majority of this covered by miles-thick sheets of ice. It's the largest desert in the world, has the highest average elevation of any continent, and, of course, is home to the planet's most inhospitable environment.

All of this makes a trip to Antarctica a dream that, though seemingly the remotest of possibilities, will be the subject of some serious research on my part during the coming year.

Photo by Martha de Jong-Lantink

***What are your dream trips?
Share your ideas on the world's ultimate excursions in the comments.***

8 Meditations on Cuzco, Perú

2009-01-24T14:42:00.012-02:00

Churches
Yes, like all Latin American cities, Cuzco is overflowing with churches. A half dozen grace the borders of the main plaza alone. San Francisco, Santa Teresa, San Antonio, Santo Domingo, San Blas...with their tall towers and crosses caught in silhouette against the midday sky, they serve as magnificent and austere landmarks.

Tourists
While the abundance of holy buildings suggests subservience to the Almighty, on the ground it's clear that the higher power is none other than the tourist dollar. You'll find them all here, from gap-year backpackers to elderly package-tour aficionados. As a rule, prices for everything steadily rise the closer you come to the central plaza.

The Inca Massage
"¿Masaje, amigo? Inca massage?" I must of heard this pitch 100 times in four days. Who knew the Inca left behind such a legacy of deep-tissue relief?

A Beautiful Plaza
Another Latin American icon, the Plaza de Armas is done in high style in Cuzco. Flanked by churches, colonial building blocks, and a cobblestone circle and containing a lovely variety of manicured vegetation and a terrific fountain, the plaza will turn anyone's impression of Cuzco towards the favorable.

Dogs
Competing for breathing room with tourist admirers in the center of the plaza are dozens of the city's canine residents. I noticed the dogs immediately on arriving, as in Lima they were conspicuously absent. Whether man's best friend is traditionally well represented in the Andes, or whether Cuzco's canines are an anomaly, I have no idea.

The Mountains
The Andes are starkly evident in the city, rising up on all sides of the valley in rough, green contours. They challenge the tourists newly arrived from lower locales, simultaneously throwing steep sets of stairs in their path and snatching away the oxygen they need to ascend them. At 3,325 meters (11,000 feet), Cuzco's narrow, rising streets refuse to be rushed along.

Socioeconomic Division
Of course, there are those who make their homes high above the city center, in small brick and adobe huts clinging to the steep grades. They are uniformly poorer up here, largely untouched by the rollicking sea of tourist dollars far below them. When the two worlds do meet, as when the train to Machu Picchu inches its way up and over the mountain pass, the result is no better.

City of Lights
This is the memory of Cuzco that will remain strongest in my imagination. At dusk, the entire valley comes alive with flickering pinpoints of soft yellow and blue light. From every mountainside they glimmer, and when viewed from beneath the amber glow of the lanterns in the Plaza de Armas, it's a sight not easily forgotten.

Where Am I?

2009-01-17T19:00:00.005-02:00

Colonial architecture and grand, imposing cathedrals dominate the cityscape, the calls of street vendors echo down narrow alleys, and Spanish rolls effortlessly off the tongues of those around me.

Where am I?

Throughout my brief stay in Peru's capital of 8 million, I had flashes of the Mexico City I came to know during a 5-week stay last autumn.

Historically speaking, it's natural that Lima should bear a likeness to the D.F. After all, these two metropolises were the centers of Spanish colonialism in the new world for centuries after the conquest, anchoring the viceroyalties of Perú and New Spain, respectively.

But the similarities transcend history. Both cities are surrounded by mountains, dark, hulking forms whose silhouettes can just be glimpsed through the haze and smog of the urban jungle.

And, as anyone who's researched these destinations can attest, both have been dubbed "dangerous" by guidebooks and popular opinion. Crime is indeed a problem in Lima; one has only to listen to the symphony of overly sensitive car alarms in the posh districts of San Isidro and Miraflores to grasp the locals' concern over the issue.

All this being said, however, Lima is a completely distinct locale in many respects. Take, for example, the carpets of deep green that coat city parks and boulevard medians. Here, in a region where it famously never rains, lies a city in which palms tower, mysterious tropical flowers bloom, and the air is always humid.

Mexico City had its share of green spaces as well, but, in the throes of the dry season, the shades there tended more towards a dusty olive, and the dry air/pollution cocktail sucked the moisture from my skin.

Lima owes its balminess to its coastal location, another feature setting it apart from Mexico's inland capital. Down in the ultra-swank, cliff-side shopping complex of LarcoMar, you have a 50/50 chance of stumbling into a surf shop or a beach-ware store. This imbues the city with something of a tropical party atmosphere (at least in the coastal sections of Miraflores) that cannot be found in Mexico City.

But the time for comparisons is over. I'm in South America now, and will be for some time. As I venture deep into the Andes highlands, I expect to encounter scenes that in no way resemble Mexico, or anywhere else I've been.

I can't wait.

Rebirth

2009-01-05T14:00:00.011-02:00

It's 45°F and misting--a typical winter day in San Antonio. Here, the seasons' cycle doesn't announce its progress in terms as blustery as other places I've called home. But a new year has begun just the same. Ready or not.

I don't feel ready.

Sure, I've written up a tidy list of New Year's travel resolutions, spent some quality holiday time with family, even given the blog a makeover. But what comes next is still shading my perspective with an uncertain ominousness.

Maybe it's only the usual pre-departure anxiety, that feeling of plunging into the unknown. Or maybe it's the fact that in three days I'll be arriving in the city where my family was robbed within the second hour of their visit. Or, most likely, I'm worried about trying something new--about volunteering.

2009 is my volunteer year. I start out in Cochabamba, Bolivia, working through Sustainable Bolivia in the area of green energy and economic development. Further plans are contingent on that experience, but I hope to move down to Patagonia sometime in the summer to participate in an indigenous language preservation project.

In many ways--most, perhaps--I don't know what I'm doing. I have no experience with nonprofits. I've never touched a solar panel. My Spanish is awkwardly passable, at best; my Quechua and Mapuche, nonexistent.

But it's a new year. A time to start over. A chance for rebirth and renewal--in my travels, my career, my life. I may not feel ready, but it's coming nonetheless.

Welcome to WayWorded, 2009.

Slow December

2008-12-27T14:42:00.009-02:00

Please pardon the mini-hiatus. Not much travel has been done this month, but I've been busy nonetheless. Book proposals, travel writing, trip preparation...December has been a stationary yet hectic season. Check out my growing list of bylines in the sidebar to see what I've been up to.

The closing of the year engenders thoughts of the future. As WayWorded's first anniversary is only a week away, I've been carefully pondering where to take it in its second year. But the possibilities are limitless, and I could use some help. So I've decided to ask you, the reader, for suggestions. What would you like to see next year on WayWorded? Should I keep it personal or refocus it on travel tips for others? Should its voice be narrative or informational?

Now, you might be saying, "Hal, why are you asking for reader input? You only have like 10 readers!" Well, that just means it's all the more important that each and every one of you let your voice be heard! Share your input in the comments.

New designs, new ambitions, new journeys...all this awaits in the new year. I hope you'll check in from time to time to watch it unfold.

Happy New Year,

- Hal

35 Days in Mexico City: 7 Pleasant Surprises

2008-12-01T20:39:00.027-02:00

35 days, zero rain!
Okay, I know it was the dry season, but come on…not a single drop!? I nearly forgot the meaning of the word "precipitation." Apart from the eye-drying aridity of the city air, the weather was absolutely gorgeous for the whole trip. Low 70s by day, mid-40s by night…and again, no rain!

Monumental architecture and colonial villages
As a San Antonian, what I learned in school about the history of Mexico dealt solely with the battle for Texas. But the country's historical ties to the Old World (as well as the New) are varied and intricate, and this is reflected in the architecture of the capital.

From the baroque magnificence of the Catedral and the neoclassical style of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, to the faded colonial grandeur of antique neighborhoods like San Ángel and Coyoacán, there are elements of edificed beauty everywhere that can take your breath away.

Green spaces
Pollution is definitely a problem in the city. But there are places you can go to breathe some moderately fresher air and get away from the puff and grumble of it all.

Bosque de Chapultepec, home to Mexico City's hilltop castle, is enormous and houses half a dozen world-class museums within its leafy confines. Farther south in Coyoacán, the Viveros tree nursery grows specimens to replenish and expand all of Mexico City's parks and makes a very pleasant setting for a jog or some afternoon tai chi.

As colorful as imagined
Whether it's the spicy reds and mouthwatering greens and yellows of the food or the jagged golds, oranges, and aquas of traditional textile designs, the Mexico of photographs is a colorful destination. And the real thing was no different. Just take a glance back through my blog posts from my time in Mexico City to see what I'm talking about.

Cheap transportation
"Gee, do I really want to pay $4.50MX to take the Metrobus for four stops?" I caught myself wondering one day. It only took a second to snap out of it. "4.50 pesos is 33 cents!" I reminded myself with a mental slap and continued crossing the street to the sleek glass and stone Metrobus terminal at Hamburgo.

After paying £.90, or roughly $1.50US, per bus ride in London just a month before, I was blown away by the bargain that is public transit in Mexico City. And the Metrobus was on the high end. Cost for a ride of unlimited duration on the subway? Two pesos.

English as a foreign language
Unlike in parts of Asia, where chatting up a foreigner for some English practice often seems like a national pastime, Defeños almost never engage in conversation outside of Spanish (unless they happen to be Korean). Whether due to a simple lack of English skills or an abundance of cultural pride on the part of city residents, it didn't matter to me. For someone trying in earnest to improve his Spanish, this was a godsend.

And surprise, surprise…I wasn't mugged, kidnapped, or murdered in cold blood
After all the lovely words of encouragement I received from friends and family before my departure (sarcasm, anyone?), I was understandably a little skittish during the first week or so. Suddenly finding yourself immersed in a new city, a new culture, a new home…that's bound to happen anyway, I suppose.

Well, I'm here to say that destinations cannot and should not be defined by the portraits painted of them in the U.S. news media. I never even felt uncomfortable, let alone had any trouble safety-wise. There's crime everywhere, but that shouldn't stop you from exploring your world. I couldn't be happier in having chosen to make Mexico City my home for five weeks. Julie Schwietert Collazo, managing editor of Matador and owner of the home I was generously allowed to sublet, agrees. Read her two cents here.

Enjoyed the list? Find its companion piece, 35 Days in Mexico City: 10 Quirks I May (or May Not) Miss, on my Matador blog.

Between the Mountains, a Pueblo Mágico

2008-11-27T21:33:00.031-02:00

Early last week, I got another chance to break free from Mexico City's sprawling clutches, hopping a bus up and over the rocky ridges that rim the southern border of the Valley of Mexico. Destination: the pueblo mágico of Tepoztlán. It's a designation that fits.

A cobblestoned main street stretches through the village, each end touching one of the mountainous mounds of stone that frame this little hamlet. It passes the zócalo, a square bustling with snack vendors and school kids and brightened by the sunflower-yellow stucco of the buildings surrounding it.

Local sorbet chain Tepoznieves operates several shops on the main drag, selling flavor upon flavor of refreshment-in-a-cup to sweating tourists. Church steeples break the horizon in pairs here and there, and a dry, mildly hazy heat hangs from the sky, putting a premium on the odd patch of shade.

Behind the zócalo spreads the market, covered stalls linked together in an endless chain of retail, stocked with everything from pottery and fabric to wrestling figurines. And just behind the market lie the grounds of the Ex-Convento Domínico de la Natividad.

Constructed in the 1500s, the convent complex is now open to visitors, free of charge. On display are its intricately muraled hallways, a profoundly picturesque and peaceful atrium complete with fountain and orange trees, and a number of terraces that afford the nicest views of the village and its spectacular backdrop of mountains you can find. Given the fact that I basically stumbled upon this made it all the more magical.

But there was magic at Tepoztlán well before the arrival of Christianity. According to legend, the cliff faces to the north are the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered-serpent creator deity of the Aztecs. The pre-Columbian link is still strong; in fact, Nahuatl is taught in the schools here.

A more visible reminder of the past, though, is the Aztec pyramid temple of Tepozteco, perched high above town on the mountain that gives it its name. You can see it from the zócalo, a tiny but transfixing white speck set atop the dark rock. This is what brings most of the tourists; indeed, it brought me. The promise of a centuries-old ruin combined with a taxing hike jumped off the guidebook pages and pulled me in.

"Taxing" is an adequate description of the steep, rocky trail that winds 2km up through the folds in the vertical cliffs. The sweat started flowing early, stinging my eyes with sunscreen. I took it slow, stopping frequently to gaze back on the village through the canopy. And I wasn't alone. There was plenty of panting, perspiring company on this Tuesday morning as the path climbed ever higher.

As I finally neared the little plateau on which the pyramid temple rests, I began to hear rustling all around me. Something was moving through the dry leaves that covered the steep rock faces on either side of the path. Suddenly, I spotted one. And then another. And another. They were coatí, I learned later, a cross between a raccoon and an aardvark. The archaeological site is guarded (or overrun) by a pack of at least 30.

Once I made it past the coatí, I was free to explore the grounds. The temple stands at the highest point, looking down on descending rows of terraces that once housed Aztec priests, and then over the cliffs to the long drop to Tepoztlán in the hazy distance. There was just enough visibility to hint at the outline of further mountains beyond the town, ridge after ridge stretching into nothingness.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T04:17:00.002-02:00

What am I thankful for? Find out here.

Dust and Stone

2008-11-22T14:19:00.021-02:00

Finally, after 25 days in Mexico City, I managed to escape.

Not that there's anything wrong with life in the district--it's just, due to a combination of overarching buildings and tangible smog, my gaze never penetrates the boundaries of the D.F. An indistinct, hazed outline of a distant mountain now and again, nothing more.

So when the school where I've been taking Spanish classes for the past three weeks announced a trip to the ancient city of Teotihuacán, I was first in line.

Getting there was its own adventure. Despite the fleet of first-class buses available, we chose a real clunker, which in turn chose the back-road route. And apparently, Mexican backroads are sprinkled liberally with speed bumps. Every 100 meters or so, we passengers were treated to a symphony of point and counterpoint: squealing brakes, revving engine, over and over.

But there was also music of another sort, which made the ride worthwhile. At one of many intermittent stops, on jumped a norteño-style trio: accordion, guitar, and electric bass. Though off a bit instrumentally (it can't be easy to play an accordion standing in the aisle of a moving bus), their three-way vocal harmonies were fantastic.

As the transmission cracked and groaned, we were serenaded. Three quick songs and off they hopped again, a few pesos richer for their trouble.

At last, we crested the final speed bump, and the bus shuddered to a halt. Beyond the wide parking lot, we could already see Teotihuacán's glory: the Pyramid of the Sun, third-largest pyramid in the world.

Much about Teotihuacán remains a mystery: who built it, what was its precise influence on contemporary Mesoamerican cultures, and what caused its spontaneous decline? Yet archaeologists are certain that construction began before Christ and that, at its height hundreds of years later, Teotihuacán was likely one of the largest cities in the world, 150,000 residents strong.

Today, there's dust and stone. Most structures flank the kilometers-long Calzada de los Muertos (Avenue of the Dead), with the Pyramid of the Moon, the smaller of the pair, marking its northern terminus. Foundations and wall fragments of residential complexes, marketplaces, temple buildings, and sacrificial altars fill out the site.

A number of strikingly well-preserved murals, dating back at least 1,500 years, are accessible to tourists. The bright greens and deep crimsons in which resplendent dieties and mythical animals are portrayed make it easy to imagine the awe the city must have struck in visitors and locals alike when every inch of stone was likewise covered in color.

For modern visitors, the majority of color originates from the wares of trinket vendors: stone masks, plumed arrows, wooden flutes, intricately woven blankets, embroidered sombreros. Armies of uniformed field trippers--baby blue, navy, and brown--march here and there, kicking up the grey dust that covers all and gasping for giggling breaths as they ascend the 264 stairs of the Sun Pyramid.

As late afternoon sinks in, things quiet down. The stepped stones, framed by spiky nopal and maguey, are bathed in the golden light of sunset.

Our faces raw and red from sun, wind, and dust, we cast a final look over our shoulders before boarding the bus home, just in time to see first the pyramids, then the entire city itself, fall into shadow.

Behind the Masks

2008-11-15T19:38:00.027-02:00

"¡Cervezas! ¡Refrescos!" call the men in the Corona-branded dress shirts, plying the aisles, pushing beverages, trinkets, and bizarre snacks I'm sure I'll never learn the names of. "¡Cervezas!"

The calls are drowned out by a sudden roar from the crowd. In the center of Arena México, a man has just jumped up on the ropes lining the small square ring. Spotlights glare. Sweat glistens on the bloated muscles of his chest. His arms are thrown out towards the crowd in a gesture of incitement, and his face is a patchwork of color extremes, glaring eyes, triangular nose, and three-inch fangs protruding wickedly from a black gape of a mouth.

Standing on the seats next to mine, a little old lady and her granddaughter are waving their fists and hurling every Spanish insult I've ever heard, and many I haven't, at the man on the ropes. Heavy metal blasts from speakers high up in the ceiling, and a half-naked model hip-walks down a runway parading a placard that reads "Primera Caída."

This is lucha libre.

The Mexican version of WWE, literally "free fight," or "fight without rules," is unarguably more entertaining than its American relative, despite being just as scripted. Luchadores are half wrestler, half acrobat. They sling their bodies around one another in intricate series of technical moves, fly from the ropes in impressive back flips and somersaults, and often dive (literally) from the ring to tackle an opponent who has retreated into the crowd.

But most significantly, the majority of luchadores are masked.

The tradition of the máscara dates back to the earliest era of lucha libre, in the opening decades of the twentieth century. A unique identity is bestowed upon the wearer, and great shame comes to a luchador who is unmasked. Evolving from simple color schemes, today's masks can be complex, containing various depictions--animals, mythological figures, indigenous symbols, even popular themes from other genres, like Spiderman--which speak to the character of the luchador.

And that character is important. Most bouts, whether between individuals, duos, trios, or foursomes, pit the good guys (técnicos) against the bad guys (rudos). The honorable, rule-abiding técnicos face an uphill battle against the double-crossing, underhanded rudos, but usually prevail in the end. Both sides have their fans, although the average spectator will probably be cheering for the técnicos, investing him or herself emotionally in this symbolic triumph of good over evil.

Which brings me back to the little old lady and her granddaughter. Lucha libre is, extraordinarily, a family event. Mexicans of all ages crowd the arena. Toddlers, set atop their parents' shoulders, line the runway leading to the ring, hoping for a kiss on the cheek or a pat on the head from their luchador heroes, and giving a wave of the fist to the villains. In the confines of Arena México, it is apparently acceptable to let the heat of the event envelop you, to cast modesty aside and let the obscenities fly.

Outside, after the fifth and final lucha has concluded, stall after stall hangs strands of masks, rows of masks, all colors, all designs, an almost irresistible purchase after the excitement of the fights. Fans, decked out in the masks of their favorite luchadores, rehash the matches over plates of tacos, guide their masked children through the late-night crowds, and hail cabs for the trip home.

Místico has defeated Mephisto tonight. But next week, the arena will be packed once more to see these two masked archetypes wage yet another epic battle in the ring. Tickets are yours for 30 pesos.

City-Village

2008-11-09T21:19:00.026-02:00

Saturdays bring the Bazar Sábado to the neighborhood of San Ángel, situated in the southwest of the D.F. Local artists set up rows of canvases throughout Plaza Carmen, craft vendors take over the streets and pathways surrounding Plazas San Jacinto and Tenanitla, and upscale jewelry and ceramics make for a visual feast inside the bazar building fronting the plaza on Calle Juárez. It's a shopper's paradise.

But exercising your credit card isn't the only reason to make a trip to San Ángel. Once you reach the Iglesia San Jacinto on the western side of the plaza, set behind a maze of pastel-hued walls and flanked by an oasis of garden calm, the calls of the vendors and car horns of busy Avendia Revolución dematerialize. Before you even realize it, you're transported to another era.

Colonially elegant mansions, blooming bougainvillea cascading over their brightly painted walls, line narrow streets of cobblestone. Far away are the hubcap shops, the jugo y licuado stands, the corner lavanderías, the exhaust perfume of Mexico City proper. In fact, aside from the occasional Mercedes quietly rumbling over the rugged stones, little exists here to persuade you that this secluded village has changed at all from time it was founded by the Dominicans in the 16th century.

Throw in a meal at Crêperie du Soleil and a half hour browsing around the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, where Rivera's festively decorated studio is on display, and a visit to San Ángel is the ideal Saturday getaway from the megametropolis.