Estuve Enfermo

After a long weekend and a beautiful run on Sunday afternoon, I woke Monday morning with a pretty good fever and a really achy body. I think with the full on one week rage in Thailand combined with the trek down south to the winter climate combined with non-stop action once I arrived (that I hadn’t planned for) my body finally told me that I needed a rest. So a rest I took, to the tune of 14 straight hours of sleep. Much needed, I feel great today and am ready for what is quickly feeling like the last leg of my trip. From here I have about another week in Bariloche and then onto Buenos Aires and Rio. All signs point to Buenos Aires being a pretty great time and Rio, well, its Rio.

This has been a really nice trip so far and I feel very distant from my first days in Managua. In some ways it has been hard to grasp all that has occurred this summer and all that I have experienced. From kicking around Managua with myself to getting chased by a man with a machete in Chaing Mai to cooking huge lunches with new (and old) friends in Bariloche; this has been all that I bargained for and more in many ways.

The addition of an old friend has suddenly placed Bariloche in a much different context; almost instantly more familiar. Mikel Bova and I met on separate ladders on the side of a house one day and I would say we have been friends since that day. We ended up living together in Colorado and had some real fun skiing together from late October powder days in Wolf Creek to late June avalanches in the Colorado backcountry. Now the possibility exists to hit up a few runs south of the equator in late July; something I would say has somewhat caught both of us by surprise, I think all we are missing is the month of August and we’ll have it all racked up, luckily that’s right around the corner.

Today we cooked a monster feast at our friend Kim’s house – a man with a positive attitude almost as big as his appetite. It was a great thing in itself to sit and have a fantastic meal with people from all over the US and the world yet made even better by the fact that Mikel was there to join.

A storm has finally rolled in that appears promising as I write this; I might even skip a day of school if it is true. I moved up to a new level this week and it is proving to be a little tougher, but not much. I would say that my Spanish has improved a decent amount, but even after just a few hours of constant English speaking I feel myself losing a little bit of my speaking abilities. I suspect that this is what will go first when I return, but hopefully I will retain my ability to read and write in Spanish.

Time has seemingly picked up speed and I am in the “enjoy every moment you’ll be in Connecticut soon” mode. I look forward to my return and even to the daily routine of life. I needed an extended break from that for many reasons and I am confident that I will return to CT stronger and more content that when I left.

P.S. It rained all day today on the mountain and to top it off a cable broke on one of the main lifts, so its completely closed for the next few days. Old equipment and Latin America don't make for a high degree of efficiency. Oh well...

Villa la Angostura

Had a bit of a long night to my day yesterday. Made it home by 4 am only to rise a few hours later, still a bit on the better side of drunk, to go to school and take my exam to pass onto the next level. Fought off throwing up on my test on three separate occasions and managed to pass with flying colors. Now, if I could only speak Spanish…

The school organized a trip to the historical museum in Bariloche that covers both natural and cultural histories of Patagonia. Totally engrossed in it all when Ann arrived to retrieve me for the big road trip we had apparently planned last night during our night – which started at about 4 pm.

Dom (Brit), Ann (American), and Kim (Swiss) are three really great people that I have been spending most of my days with. Yesterday Kim and I cooked a really great meal at his guest house; it was fantastic to cook and not have to eat at a restaurant again – its now become a plan for a few days next week as well. Anyways, they are all three very cool people and generally enjoy having fun together. So the plan for the day was to rent a car and drive north along the lake to the town of Villa la Angostura, about 1 hour from Bariloche and just about 30 kilometers from the Chilean border.This was easily one of the most beautiful, and fun, drives I have ever been on. The mountains here are jagged like I have never seen before, not all of them are this way, but there are many that are quite beautiful like that. We drove and stopped and drove and stopped all along the way. Grabbed a parradilla (a grilled assortment of meats) and then kicked around the town and lake for a bit before heading back.

It has snowed a bit on the mountains and there is more in the forecast, but the Chilean volcano has blown again, so that could completely change the weather pattern and leave us wet, but with temps too high for the needed snow accumulation. Mikel Bova Esq. is due to arrive at the middle or so of next week, hopefully he’ll bring Url along with him.

Bariloche, Che, Che, Che…

I thought that I hit the ground running in Thailand, but this has been an altogether different story! After 36 hours of travel to arrive here, I got in at about 10:30 Sunday night – which accounting for the jet lag, was actually Monday night for me, but who’s counting? Aerolinas Argentinas is the culprit for my extraneous travel time, they just seem to cancel or delay at a moments notice. Today was the first time I found myself alone and able to process my thoughts – certainly a welcome opportunity.

It’s a fairly odd experience to go from the tropics during the rainy season to the Southern hemisphere’s winter within a few days of each other. I can’t say it is Chicago February cold here, but there is certainly a deep chill in the air. The colors of summer have disappeared from my sight, instead replaced by the grays and browns of winter. Luckily there is the bluest lake I have ever seen set in front of an amazing range of snow capped peaks. There has not been much snow to date, in fact more rain than anything else, but today a pretty decent snowstorm rolled in and dropped a fresh blanket. Good things to come for sure!

The city of Bariloche is set against the lake with the mountains forming the other half of the border. Tons of Brazilians and Argentines are here on their winter/spring (?) break, so its fairly crowded most of the day. Three or four main streets form the center and there are myriad places to eat and drink as well as buy chocolate. It’s a cool town that feels like it would be even more inviting in the summer when it’s less crowded and the fishing season is open.

My host has been great. She is in her 50’s and has two daughters that live elsewhere so she takes in students from the two main Spanish schools in town for company. She is really sweet and a pretty good cook too. I’ve got a separate room and there are two girls from Holland that are here now as well. It’s a nice quiet break from all the rush outside, I’m glad I made this choice to do a home-stay as opposed to a big dorm type stay.

Class is cool and I feel like I am improving my Spanish fairly well, even after just a few days. We meet from 9 until 1 and then it has been off to the pub until dinner the past few days. Can’t keep that up, and I was feeling like I hadn’t done enough since being here, so I escaped the crowd today and went with a few people to Cerro Leones (Lion Mountain).

Cerro Leones is a really old volcano situated 8 or 9 kilometers outside of Bariloche and the views from the trail are the best I have experienced to date. A small group of us were led around by Guillermo, who was constantly called “che” by his amigos, in and out of small caverns and caves. The last cave involved us crawling through a very small passageway, too small for me and my pack at the same time and for some of the bigger people along with us. The passage led to much bigger opening with an amazingly clear lake down below.

So far that has been the best activity of this trip, but the good news is that more snow is in the forecast and that has got me extremely excited for things to come. There have been lots of reports of rocks and ice all over the mountain, so with a few more days of snow things should be just right. I really like this picture from the mouth of one of the caves, looking out into Lake Nahuel Huapi:
A quick note about the Argentinian lifestyle: it is ridiculous. Rarely would I say that some culture is wrong or crazy with some aspect of how they live, but this is just too hard for me to grasp, or maybe I am jealous of their ability to accomplish this particular element. No one is in the bars until 4 or sometimes 5 in the morning. Let me rephrase that in case it does not seem incredulous enough: people don’t even leave their homes to go out with everyone else until 4 or 5 in the morning, and they are out until 8 or even 9 am and then they go to work! Why does everyone wait so long? I have not been able to make it happen yet; I am going to need a running start for this one.

Ok, chow para ahora! (This is what I woke to this morning, tough to beat)

Last day in MHS

Slept at Friend House, got coffee morning and then headed to the market for some hot noodle soup breakfast. Noodles, basil, lemon, bean sprouts and a sweet and salty tomato chicken broth, add some dried chillies and it’s a great start to the morning. Everything gets moving from there on out.

The plan was to ride out to a waterfall and then head to Roc Tai village. Roc Tai is a Chinese village that has many delicious teas, and I guess I will have to get there next time through Thailand. The waterfall on the other hand was amazing; pretty big and flowing at a good pace. There is a big pool in the foreground that is filled with a type of carp, or maybe koi. We broke some rules and headed in for a little rock jumping into the pools below the falls. It was a fantastic time after a little hesitance on my part; really glad to end my time here like that, back to nature.

When I was in Managua I had walked past a cock fighting ring and had mentioned this to Emmett a few days ago; so what do we do? Pull into village and walk up to some old women, who were certainly laughing at us a bit, and asked if they would have their roosters spar a bit. No roosters were injured in the filming of this movie.

Emmett, Koz and I stopped for a lunch and beer and then I was off to grab my ride to the airport. Lunch was really good, Kaw soi, curried bean curd northern style, and curried chicken of the same ilk. Awesome flavors were always at hand throughout this trip, it was really what I was hoping for and I leave fulfilled in that department.

This was a really short trip, too short by everyone’s estimation, but I have got to be movin' on. Awesome to get to hang out with Max, Jason and Morgan for a few days and then with Roy and Koz for the last couple of days. Thailand is a very cool place, the people are as friendly as I have ever encountered and extremely welcoming. I was continually blow away by the respect and thoughtfulness of the students at Nai Soi, they really know how to show their appreciation for their teachers.

Roy-man, keep up the good work, its nothing but positive.

Coffee and Foot Baths

When in Thailand…get foot baths and coffee enemas right? Ok, maybe not right, but that’s what happened anyways. Our second day in Chaing Mai Jason mentioned that last time he was in town he got an iodine foot bath and a few other things at a health spa nearby. The foot bath supposedly pulls many of the toxins and heavy metals out of your body, mainly from the kidneys, liver and your joints.

The women at the spa were really funny, and remembered Jason well from his last visit. So Roy and I sat down and were hooked up to an electrode machine by way of two heat belts that wrapped around our abdomens and sent weak electric signals into our organs. Our feet were placed into two bowls along with two ionizers; the water was totally clear to start, this was just a few minutes in:

In about 30 minutes it looked like this:

Supposedly, the bubbly stuff in the middle is the heavy metals like mercury that are caused by pollution or from things like eating lots of fish such as tuna. Other things "pulled out" were yeast, and things that give high cholesterol. I don't know how the feet can expell all that but thats what happened; both of ours generally looked the same, so I don't know. They say you are supposed to continue the treatment for 14 foot baths to fully remove everything, but I have to wonder if thats a good idea or not. The body develops some sort of balance, right? So would removing all the toxins be a good thing or would it cause some sort of imbalance?

We were chatting about all the other services that are offered at the spa and they mentioned the coffee enema they give. Disclaimer: I have always been interested in the purging of bad toxins and chemicals from the body, and had previously read about the effects that a coffee enema have on the intestines, so I knew a little before agreeing to do this.

The woman who was going to administer it to me told me that she would be “my first boyfriend: and then made jokes at how big the tube was; ha ha very funny. I won’t go into to many more details here, but I am sure I’ll be asked about it in person by a few people, I’ll tell you all about it. 1 Liter of coffee held for fifteen minutes, its not easy, but in the end I think it was worth it. I felt a little off afterwards, but the next few days my joints did feel better, cracking my knuckles was much harder to do, and my back had very little pain – which it often does; so maybe this stuff worked or maybe Roy and I just got worked.

Hi teacher, how are you?

Now that things have settled a bit, a more detailed recap is in order, there are a few things of special note that I wasn't able to give the right attention.

A bit more about Nai Soi. There are three levels of classes given here for a school year that runs from May to April. Class sizes are a very manageable 10 to 15 and they are given in English, Thai, Japanese and for the next few days Morgan has developed a HIV/AIDS health class. The students come from all over the area, some are refugees and others are "undepriviledged" in the words of the director of the school, Joe.

Here are Emmett and Jason giving some Burmese History and English lessons, respectively:

The school has three main classrooms that are built of mud bricks and tin roofs, and there is electricity and internet from a satellite dish. Bathrooms have manual flush toilets, where you pour water into them for the flush and the showers are buckets. Fill up the bucket and dump it on yourself. The bathroom is just a wet room that is sloped towards a drain. Its an interesting experience the first time, and definitely a little cold in the morning, but it does the trick and uses very little water.

Bucket on the left:

The first night we stayed in Mae Hong Son, which is about a 30 minute motorbike ride from Nai Soi. There are many, many Wots in the towns that we have been too. They're really beautiful and ornate, this is the main one in Mae Hong Son:

We got up in the morning and headed to the central market, which was awesome. The markets are always the best way to see what is going on in a town, its the lifeblood and heart of any society and I love to see what is going on there:

In their standard awesomeness the school decided to have a party for Jason, Max and Morgan as they were all leaving within the next week. There was dancing, singing, a great shoe giveaway and tons of laughter and smiles:

We went on a great hike up the ridge of a mountain after the party with 20 or so of the students. Like I said before, this was probably one of the most fun hikes I have ever been on; it was beautiful scenery and the students continued to amaze me with their compassion and happiness.

Dinner at the directors house followed our game of teachers vs. students volleyball game. Korean style BBQ, a first for me, was really fun. We were all pretty beat after the fun filled day, so it was an early night.

Special Buckets

Its been a whirlwind tour since arrving. A motobike pic-up from Mea Hong Son Airport, a quick Burmese history lesson, a judge's football game, dinner at Judge Rays house, a hard night out in MHS, a party for Jason, Morgan and Max, a hike up the mountain in the rain, teachers vs. students volleyball, korean bar-b-que, bucket showers, judging the regional English speaking contest 2008, a 5 hour bus ride to Chaing Mai, bucket drinks on arrival, losing Max only to find out that he fell in the river and was found by Niels (who was responsible for the bucket drinks inthe first place), someone stole my shoes, and now motobikes in Chaing Mai.

Thailand is pretty damn awesome! Obviously is has been a lot of fun so far, I am lamenting how sort my time is, but it has been packed with fun.

Nai Soi school is in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It is surrounded by rice paddies and misty mountains. The kids are beautiful and full of smiles and laughter. They are all very warm and welcoming; it doesn't take long to feel like you are part of their lives. The hike up the mountain was with 25 of them and it was one of the most fun hikes I have ever been on. Everyone was singing and laughing, slipping and sliding. It started to rain and with hardly a thought they had made hats out of the huge leaves that are everywhere. Its an amazing connection to nature that so many of us have lost, or rather maybe never had in the first place.

Mea Hong Son is a very cool little town with a couple of Wots (Buddhist Temples). Emmett is something like a celebrity, saying hello to nearly everyone we pass, I can see why this place would be so hard to ever leave. Chaing Mai is cool, its the second largest city in Thailand after Bangkok, and there are lots of Americans and Europeans (no doubt the reason my shoes were stolen - there are just some things that you don't do, and if the custom is to take your shoes off in buildings, THEN YOU DON'T STEAL SOMEONES SHOES!!!!!!). Its fun, but the authenticity is lost somewhere in all that madness.

So much has happened in such a short time that its hard to remember and process it all, but I've been taking notes and when I get a better opportunity, there will be more details about all the stuff above.

I think we are going to go get iodine foot baths that pull all the toxins out of your body - should be interesting to see what comes out.

“If it ain’t King James, it ain’t no Bible.”

A parting bumper sticker gift from some overly zealous, or possibly hilariously ironic, Chicago-land driver on my way to the airport Monday; I would say yesterday, but I am still in transit and its actually Wednesday. For some of you, this will be a look into the future. It will be a little hot and muggy for you tomorrow, with some clouds and intermittent rain. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; take an umbrella.

Wow, that was a serious leg of travel. I left Chicago at 1 pm on Monday and landed in Tokyo at 4 pm on Tuesday, then flew to Bangkok by 10:30 Tuesday and now I am sitting in the Chaing Mai airport after my 8 am flight this morning as I wait for the last plane of the in journey at 12:50 to Mae Hong Son. I’ll be picked up there by a friend of Emmett’s and led to a motobike rental station for the last leg to Nai Soi. I’m tired from just writing all that.

My strategy was to stay awake the whole time to Japan and then crash on the way to Thailand. It worked I think, I am dealing well with the all time changing and back to the futuring.

This is a very different feeling trip overall. A huge part of it is that I’ll be seeing Roy, Jason, Morgan, Kozue and more which I am very excited for. Another big part is that I know so very little about Thailand so I don’t approach it with the same level of curiosity and inquiry as I do in Latin America; that’s not to say I am disinterested, just less so that in LA. I feel much more like a tourist here, and less as a participant in some sort of venture. Language might be part of it; I don’t understand a word here, not a one.

I had some sushi in Japan and some very delicious Pho in Thailand this morning for breakfast. That combined with some good espresso has me very charged for this final stretch. There is some sort of English judging that Roy and I will do, lots of laughing for sure, drinking of Singhas and eating of hot foods. All that combined with finally realizing our moto-bike riding ambitions; Emmett and I had once planned to ride from Holland to Belgium on moto-bikes to eat Belgian Waffles, but I think something distracted us. Not this time!

This is a big month on travel, the most I have ever done in any length of time. Here until the 17th, then to Arlington Race track outside Chicago on the 18th and then 4 planes down to Bariloche, Argentina for two weeks, followed by Buenos Aires and Rio before heading back to the states mid- August. I feel exponentially more comfortable traveling alone now than I did just a few weeks ago. Nicaragua was pretty tough at first, but as it went I became more and more comfortable. It feels very natural now, and by the end, well I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

Re-entry

Got into Chicago midday on the 3rd and headed to Skokie to get a car and then down to Wrigleyville to get Lucy. Stopped off and had a beer and dinner with cousin Tom and his girlfriend Krista and watched up to the 7th inning of the Cubs Giants game. Grabbed the dog, had a shot of Flor de Cana and hit the road. Compared to the weather in Leon, Chicago felt like they had the air-conditioner on. Maybe Mayor Daley has a deal with some air conditioning magnet to keep Chicago attractive in the summertime; you never know with that dude.

I have to admit I was a little nervous at how I would feel coming home, thinking of the reverse culture shock I would encounter. This country is sooo clean, or at least Chicago is exceptionally so. Some facet of newness always strikes me on the return, be it the ridiculous newness of cars or buildings, it always seems to be something of the ability of us all to live in such cleanliness and freshness. The clean streets and lawns of Chicago were a long stretch from the dirt and shacks of Goyena. It all feels a bit silly sometimes.

It was a nice time in Galena with my parents and Lucy. Did some fishing, played golf and ate some good food. My body is pretty unsure of what is being digested these days, but it will just have to deal. Almost shot in the 80’s on a very hard course, so I was pretty happy with the golf game; more to come in August after I get back from Brazil. It felt a little hypocritical to be living in such convenience and luxury after Nicaragua; I don’t quite know how to handle that all yet.

Nicaragua was a great experience as it begins to settle in my mind. It seems overly distant as I sit in a Thai café at the Chaing Mai airport waiting for my next flight to Mae Hong Son (more on this in the next entry). I want to go back many times and for longer stretches for sure. It was just beginning to grow on me, and I look forward with great anticipation to my next jaunt there.

Goyena

Today was a really wonderful and thought provoking way to close out my time in Nicaragua. Goyena is a collection of small villages to the west of Leon and I had an opportunity to visit one of them for a few hours this afternoon; I´ve been trying to debrief ever since.

I got a ride out in a four door pick-up that at various times had between 2 and 12 people in or on it as we made our way through the campo. Cows were at various times blocking the road, horse drawn carts took their turns as well. The passengers were campesinos (farm workers), Leon street vendors, kids coming with to the afterschool program and a few of the teachers that would conduct the classes.

The children are beautiful and innocent and full of love, and almost equally curious about the pretty sweaty white guy who got out of the truck. I hung out with the school program for an hour or so and was struck by how so very similar that classroom was to my own in terms of student behavior and needs. The program runs from 3 to 5 each day; today was working on words that start with capital and lowercase D.

The school house has beautiful murals on the outside walls, one side gives the rights of children like right to edcuation, health, family, food. This one is a wonderful depcition of life in the community.
The flash went off with this one after I had very quitely and nonchalantly snuck into the doorway so as not to disturb the lesson. Unsuccessful. I´ll be paid back for that during a lesson of my own someday soon.

A large majority of the campesinos work for the San Antonio sugar mill which mainly produces Flor de Cana, a deliciouly sweet rum. For many years a great deal of workers from this mill and many other associated with sugar production have developed Chronic Renal Failure. Its an extremely serious, but difficult to pin down, issue for the community. There is progress being made, but this is an issue tied all the way to the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation. And, as I was told today, no hay mucho trabajo cerca de aquí.

I spoke with a brilliant 19 year old woman that is in charge of the next phase of Goyena´s Literacy Campaign from 1980 under then and now President Ortega. It was a national crusade in 1980 with nearly 500,000 brigadistas sent out into the country to irradicate illiteracy. Today the program is a shell of its former self, but the effort is being made and with people like the woman I spoke with behind it, some that cannot will surely be able to read and write soon.

I took a walk after our talk before a storm rolled in and we would have to leave. Dirt, pigs, chickens, horses, no shoes, tin shacks, milky white water everywhere and more smiles that I have encountered anywhere I have been in Nicaragua. The animals roam free unless their owners are wealthy enough to be able to feed them and then they stay in the fenced yard. Status takes on a very different meaning in this setting, a fence, a door, a car, none of these are taken for granted because not all can afford these seeminlgy simple conveneinces.

The poverty was serious and impressive in the sense that everywhere one looks there is something that is striking. A large sow walked out of the house in the first picture as I made my way back to the schoolhouse before the storm. The boys in the second pic were playing what seemed to be volleyball out there in that field. And as can be seen from the last pic, the road had more footprints in it that shoeprints.

Everyone smiles. How? For what? It all begs the question of why people would live there in these conditions, but its so obvious that no one lives this way out of choice. It is directly lack of choices that results in these conditions. It makes so abundantly clear why a community such as this, and to be sure there are more than one often cares to think about, is so ripe when the conditions for revolution come about. I have great hope that these beautiful people can muster the strength for another and that one day corporations and governments realize the grandiose notions they all pretend to subscribe to.

Ghana, the answer is always Ghana

Finally figured out how to get pictures up, these mangroves were pretty sick:

They are right along the Pacific and are only seperated from the relentless ocean by a small island.
You get one guess which boat was going to be for me
It was a hollowed out tree that was just wide enough to sit in, and the coolest boat I´ve been in yet. The mangroves were filled with all sorts of cool noises and birds flying all over. The sound of the motor scared most off before we could ever get close enough to get a picture of them. The swamp was teeming with life, fish were darting everywhere in front of the boat, crabs were all over the trees and there were a few iguanas perched on trees in the distance.
When we got out of the boat these crabs were in the bushes and running away very quickly, this dude was the most photogenic of them all.

The other side of the island:

This is a really beautiful country with a beautiful people. The land is spotted with volcanoes, some very new, but all beautiful. Before the building of the Panama Canal, the plan was to cut one through Nicaragua, using Lake Managua as the major passageway. Some American business interests had designs on Panama though, and they orchestrated a campaign to disuade the building of it in Nicaragua. Their major public relations campaign used these volcanoes as a scare tactic, and well Jimmy Carter ...Played trivia last night with a bunch of travelers at a bar; always choose Ghana.