Being With Others

I hope you all had a lovely New Year and that 2012 is getting off to a great start.
Here is a brief outline of what things have been like for the past month or so. I have continued to move around a lot, something I talked about in my last message. But one large and crucial difference is that I no longer did that moving around alone. Much of what has been going through my head in the last few weeks has been thoughts about the differences, the benefits and the disadvantages, of traveling with others, and in particular in this case, with my family. Then for the last week, I have been alone in Quito, which has been an interesting and challenging experience in a very different way.

Machu Picchu
Around mid-December, I was in Cuzco, a Peruvian city that sits up at 3,300 meters (about 10,800 ft.) and which was the Inca capital before the arrival of the conquistadors. After spending about a day there to acclimate and adjust, my sister, who had been studying abroad in Ecuador, and four of her friends from her program showed up. From that moment on I was not alone for about three weeks.

Walking around with four women a couple years younger than me, especially when I didn't know three of them at all, was an interesting and sometimes challenging experience. When it comes to making decisions about things that are not important to me, I generally have two modes: I either make the decisions, or I fall back and don't participate. I get really flustered having a long discussion about which restaurant we should go to or which street we should turn on to, when honestly I don't care at all, and I find myself less flustered if I just don't participate and watch. But also I am very wary of taking away decision making power from others, especially when I don't even really have a stake in the final outcome. This wariness is amplified in a situation where socially my voice tends to have more power, such as being the oldest in a group, or the only male in a group of females.

As a result, I simply didn't contribute very much to our decisions. I tried to stick to the back and follow wherever the group went. There was a certain easiness that came with not having to make any decisions after the onus had been on me to make all of my decisions for such a long time. But it also could get frustrating, because it seems that the desire not to impose an opinion on any one was strong with the others as well, meaning no one expressed a strong opinion one way or the other most of the time. Furthermore, some in the group (my sister being a prime example), were just really bad at making decisions, even if for themselves. As a result, a process of choosing a place to eat, which would usually take me 10-15 minutes, could easily take us an hour. Despite the long waits, there is something really nice about not eating alone.

I didn't stay with the group very long because early in the morning after they arrived, I took off with my sister, Na'ama, and one of her friends, Mieyko, to the Inca Trail. There are several ways to get to Machu Picchu. The easiest, cheapest, and I believe the most common, is to take a train to a town called Aguas Calientes, which lays right at the bottom of the mountain upon which Machu Picchu sits, and then either hike up or take a bus up. Otherwise, many people like to hike there from another destination, which can be a one night, three night, or six night hike. The most popular is the three night hike, which is the hike along the Inca trail.

There were a lot of amazing and a lot of weird things about he trip. First, the whole context of the backpacking was very unusual to me. My outdoor backpacking experience consists almost entirely of LandSea, the wilderness experiential education program offered to Kalamazoo College students as a pre-orientation trip, which I have led twice. This program focuses heavily on self-reliance, team work, decision making, and leadership. It emphasizes the freedom of being in the wilderness and away from the structures that usually govern our lives. Our trip however, was led by a guide. We didn't have a map, we couldn't decide what time to eat lunch or dinner, what time to wake up, or even how long we take breaks. Isay, our guide, did try to be flexible and make sure we were comfortable and that he wasn't pushing us, but if we sat around some place longer than he liked, he would begin to urge us to move. Perhaps the weirdest part was that we had six porters carrying some of our stuff along the path. This was a required minimum. We carried almost all personal gear (clothing, sleeping bag and pad, etc.) so when we first heard that there were six porters coming with us, we were baffled. As the trip progressed, we came to understand why. Although the hiking was hard, the trip was structured to be luxurious. There were three tents for the four of us (me, my sister and her friend, and the guide) and a giant floorless tent that served as a kitchen, dining room, and sleeping area for the porters. For each of our meals we had a table and chairs for the four of us. Meals were generally three or four courses, with separate plates, a full set of silverware, cups and mugs, etc. The food was not backpacking food, but rather some of the richest restaurant type food I've had in a long time. Almost everything was delicious, there is no question there, but the food was heavy, not calorie rich, and much of it required longer cooking, which is why they also carried giant gas containers, the multi gallon kind you hook up to a bbq, instead of having a liter bottled of fuel with a whisper light. I had a certain sense of unease with the luxury. I don't like luxurious things to begin with, and this was not only much fancier than I was used to for backpacking, this was much fancier than what I was used to for regular life in the front country. But that's what we had signed up for so I decided to try my hardest to accept it and enjoy it, especially considering the difficulty of the trail.

And the trail was difficult. I signed up for this trip knowing nothing about it. I've done most of my traveling thus far with little-to-no research, but for the part I was doing with family, I decided to put all of the onus of research on them and just tag along. I figured since a lot of people signed up for this trip, it had to be something more or less anyone could do, and that my experience with LandSea must have prepared me sufficiently so that it wouldn't be so hard. I knew I wasn't going to have to carry a canoe over my head for two kilometers twice in one day, and my pack was about half the weight it usually is when I'm backpacking, because I had no food or camp gear. I was completely wrong about the difficulty. That trail was without question the most difficult hiking I have done in my life. The first day was challenging, but fairly manageable, but the second day was the real killer. We had roughly a kilometer of straight uphill starting first thing in the morning. All of it was on uneven stone steps. The maximum altitude was 4,200 meters (13,800 ft.) which didn't help either. And for some reason still unclear to me, our guide insisted that the best way to do this was to get to our campsite before eating lunch, which meant climbing all that way, and then going down another 600 meters without real food or a sufficiently long break. This is in part due to the time estimate, about 7 hours for the whole thing, where as it took as closer to 9 or 10 hours, but I just don't understand the reason for that much exertion without a break or real food. Luckily I had a jar of peanut butter, left over from Boston, which we demolished at the top of the pass. It was a very interesting experience for me. Difficult physical exertion is one thing, and I experience it in different amount all the time. But somewhere about an hour before we got to the camp, while I was going down the steps, I hit a wall. What I mean by hitting a wall is reaching that point where I don't care about anything except for arriving anymore, and where I am stuck in a bad mood, and am unable to get out of it. After that point I was no longer able to enjoy the experience, the scenery, or anything else. I was no longer able to think of what was happening as a good learning experience, or something funny, or a good story to tell later. All I could think about was feeling miserable and wanting what was happening to end. I am usually pretty good at maintaining a positive attitude when I want one, so I don't hit walls very often, I can only think of one other instance where it happened to me while backpacking. When we got into camp we sat down to eat. I sat irritably not talking and wanting to lay down. Na'ama kept asking me if I was fine and I unconvincingly answered yes. I scarfed down my food and went to sleep for three hours until dinner time, when I felt like a real person again.

The third day was not easy either and we had a lot of climbing again, but it was interspersed with flat parts and downhills, so it was much more manageable. The more difficult part the third day was that it rained a lot of the time, and so a lot of our stuff got wet. That's one thing about going to Machu Picchu anytime, but especially at this time of year, it rains a lot. And if the third day was bad with rain, the fourth day, when we arrived at Machu Picchu was worse. It rained non-stop, with a lot of hard rain and not just drizzle, from three in the morning until about 1 pm. Everything smelled like mildew.

There is one nice thing about the rain, and that is the amazing views it created. There were occasions when we were up high somewhere and couldn't see anything because we were in a cloud, but more often than not there were amazing gorgeous views of the forested Andes, blanked by clouds or forming clouds from the fresh rain. These sights were breathtaking and stunning every time I stopped to admire them, and they were around me all the time for four days. For all the complaining I have done so far, the trip was overall amazing and most definitely worth it, more than anything because of those views. There were some cool archeological sites along the way (we were told not to call them ruins) and it was fun learning about some of the history, but nothing beat the continuous mystical view of those mountains.

Another great thing about the trip was getting to spend some quality time with my sister. We didn't get to chat all that much. On the trail we were mostly busy breathing. Meal times were generally awkward because our guide was pretty awkward and we never knew how appropriate it was to break out into a full English or Hebrew conversation in front of him. The most awkward meal by far was the last dinner when we were introduced to all of the porters (we were not introduced to them before and generally had no interaction with them except for one guy who was friendly and tried to strike up short conversations once or twice). That was all a show that ended with us giving them their tips. But there were times on the trail, during breaks, or at camp, when we got to hang out a bit. I have seen very little of my sister in the last two and a half years, so it was good to have some time to catch up and get a sense of where she was in life.

Then of course there is Machu Picchu itself. When we arrived we were all somewhat unimpressed. I think this had to do with the fact that we had just spent three days seeing amazing things, so seeing another archeological site, one that was just a lot bigger than the others, was not that exciting. Also, when we arrived it was really cloudy, so we couldn't see much. Also, we were exhausted in every sense of the word, soaking, cold, and somewhat broken. We reached the city and did the tour, and then proceeded to sit in the lunch area, where we didn't buy any food because the cheapest thing was an uninspiring veggie sandwich that cost more than seven dollars. Instead we feasted on remaining granola bars, almonds, and peanut butter that we had with us, and spent a lot of time trying to dry off and recuperate our energy. By the afternoon we decided to venture out again. Soon the weather changed and the sun came out. We were warm again, and sitting for such a long time did give us much of our energy back so we started having fun, spending hours trying to take as many strange, cliche photos as we could and just sitting enjoying the sun and looking out over the city and onto the amazing view that unfolded around it.

And that was the end of the Machu Picchu trip. We descended, ate some market food, and headed to a town called Ollantaytambo where we stayed in a hostel with impressively bad service, and walked around for half a day, not doing much because our bodies were still broken. We then headed back to Cuzco where we had another day before striking off to Lima. I spent much of this time following Na'ama and her friends around as they shopped at artisan markets or went on a search for an affordable pisco sour (a traditional drink in Peru). Before long we said goodbye to my sister's friends and boarded a flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador, where we met up with my family who had just come back from the Galapagos.

Traveling With The FamilyReuniting with my family was exciting. It was the first time that all five of us had been together in a year and a half, and the first time we were going to spend so much time together and really travel together since my brother left for college about seven years ago. That being said, there were also a lot of interesting challenges. My family has the same communication, stress, annoyance, and anger difficulties that I think most families do. I must say we behaved ourselves fairly well all things considered, but we know each other too well to not get upset with each other every once in a while. The other difficulty was in decision making. I adopt a similar attitude towards making decisions of things that are not that important to me that I outlined above with my family, except that with them it gets much more complicated. It was much more important for my parents to have my opinion as part of the decision making process. However, even more so than with people my age, there are almost no decisions I would make that fit with the way my parents travel. My parents like the rustic traveling on the cheap style, but they have also reached an age and income bracket where they don't see it nearly the same way I do. So there were many interactions where we would see a restaurant with entrees in the $5-$7 range, which I would not choose for myself, especially in a place like Ecuador. They would ask me what I think and I would say I don't care. If we waited until we found a restaurant that I would eat at were I paying for it, we would never find one. We were often in areas where there were no cheap options, so I would have left the area to find food, or scrounged something together from some vendors or a store. Usually it worked, but occasionally they insisted until I'd get annoyed. The other difficulty was being overly aware of others needs, something that is especially prominent in my mom. We'd try to make plans and I would ask "well what time are we thinking of eating lunch?" My mom would turn and ask me "are you hungry?" and I'd say no. Ten minutes later, we'd be walking around and my mom would say that we have to find a place to eat because I was hungry. I would repeat that I wasn't, or that I could wait, but the idea of a hungry son seemed more persistent than anything else. Overall though we managed alright, with few eruptions, and with a lot of family bonding opportunities.

A blessing and a curse of traveling with my family is that they don't see travel as a vacation. For them, travel is a mission, and the goal is to see as many things and go as many places as possible in the short time allotted for the trip. Therefore, in the time we had together, we went to the city of Cuenca, Cajas National Park, the city of Baños, the city of Puyo, a small village in the Amazon, Quito, and Otavalo. We usually had at least two or three activities per day, and to get to all these places we spent a total of about 25 hours in transit, not including our walking in and out of the Amazon which totaled about 13 hours or inner city transit. It was cool to be able to see and do so much in such a short time, something I am not so used to and can't currently afford. On the other hand, it was very much a change of pace from the way I have been living my life the past few months. My method in this trip is slow exploration and trying to really get under the surface of each place. With this travel we barely ever had a chance to figure out where our hostel was located before we moved on. And it was downright exhausting.

There were many interesting adventures along the way, but I'll only talk about our venture into the Amazon because It was by far the most unique and story worthy. My parents decided early on that if we were to travel to Ecuador, we had to visit in the Amazon. There are many ways to do such a trip, and the original one that my parents had planned would have been pretty standard and touristy, but they had many communication problems with the intended guide, and eventually they opted for a different option. My sister met someone at a univeristy in Puyo where she was working on a project, who offered to be our guide. He said we would hike for about three hours into the Amazon, stay in a remote Shuar village, and do day hikes from there. My sister asked him specifically several times if the terrain was easy enough that it would take us only three hours, including two parents in their fifties who are not in super athletic condition. He insisted it should be fine. It turns out that it takes the locals in that village about three hours to walk the trail, and they do it once a week. We were in a more mountainous part of the Amazon, which meant we didn't have suffocating humidity, but we did have a lot of up hills and down hills. Unavoidably though, there was mud that would come up almost as high as our knees in some parts, and at least up to our ankles for much of the way. So it took us almost seven hours to get there. We arrived exhausted an filthy, and after eating, some took naps until our welcoming ceremony. Sleeping on and off throughout the day was a regular thing while we were there.

We had to change our plans to do fewer hikes once we realized what they entailed. But sticking around the village, called Uwijint, was also a lot of fun. The village consisted of five family who I believe were all related. We spent most of our time with one, even though the grown daughters who lived in another house came over with their families a few times. The Shuar culture is an amazing old indigenous culture from the Amazon. We spent a lot of time learning about plants that are used for medicinal purposes, eating fruit off the trees, using natural dyes, and making jewelry from seeds. We also spent a lot of time sleeping, and just sitting around as the little kids crawled all over us. We had two hikes. The first was a night hike, which is always interesting because so many of the animals and insects of the Amazon are nocturnal. The night hike was after a day of heavy rain, and we had to cross the river to do it. We had to roll our pants up high because the water came up to our thighs, and get led along the way so as not to get swept away in the current. The day hike was to a waterfall. Along the way we got to learn and experience a few fun things. We learned how to weave a roof using a few types of palm leaves. We had our faces painted before entering the waterfall with traditional power animals of the forest. When we bathed in the waterfall we used a root that is commonly used as soap. And we saw Gustavo, the man of the household, chop down young palm trees with a machete so we could eat raw heart of palm. It's always amazing to see the machete used for virtually everything in so many cultures around the world.

The family was extremely warm and welcoming, and Gustavo always had a smile on his face. We didn't get to interact with the women very much. We were told that Shuar communities have strictly defined gender roles, and it seems the women kept to more private spaces. We did get to have some interaction with Gustavo's wife (we never learned her name) while making the jewelry, and two of his daughters helped us navigate the trail back. His four younger sons were adorable and they loved coming up and sitting on us, or pressing buttons on my watch. We had some fun moments of cultural exchange. The arrival and departure ceremony involved traditional dress, traditional dance, and traditional music. After watching for a bit, we were requested to join in with the dancing, which we did with much enthusiasm and little grace, and to the enjoyment of all. They claim these ceremonies are commonly done whenever any visitor arrives, but it seemed a bit more like a show for tourists. On our end, we celebrated Hannukah two of the three nights we were there, which could have very well been the only time Hannukah has ever been celebrated in Uwijint. The little kids enjoyed the candles and much of the rest of the family was interested in listening to us sing. Explaining that Hanukkah was not our way of celebrating Christmas was a little bit difficult, but in the end it is not so important what message got across, but rhather that we shared part of our tradition in exchange for all of the tradition they were sharing with us.

By the time we needed to leave, we were ready for some comforts of the city, such as not sleeping on a wooden floor, or eating something other than plantain and palm. Our walk back was a little bit easier because the family was able to arrange for my mom to go back on a horse, and she was the one who struggled most on the walk over. However, because it rained most of the time on the way back, there was significantly more uphill, and the rest of us are not athletic superstars ourselves, the walk still took us about six hours. But with all the exhaustion and discomforts, we all loved the trip. Aside from deceiving us about the length of the road, our guide, Robinson, was amazing. And the family was friendly and fascinating. Because of our exhaustion, where we were in the Amazon, and the amount of rain, we did not see as much of the flora and fauna as one usually does on an Amazon trip. But the cultural experience was far stronger than if we had stayed at a lodge or even in a village that was much easier to get to.

We had a few more days of exploring Ecuador after that. Some of us felt that as we were getting more and more worn out we should try taking it easy, and we did click down a notch, although I am still amazed at the amount of energy my sister and mom displayed whenever we reached an artisan market. Then at 3am on December 31st they all left, and I was back to being alone, trying to figure out what to do.

Adjusting to Quito
I spent most of the 31st and some of the days after laying around trying to recuperate. Because of some planning difficulties, I had five days at the hostel before I would start couch surfing. I tried with difficulty to arrange something for new years. I met up with Leah, a friend from college who also happened to be traveling in Ecuador, to check out the street festivals mid-day, but her boyfriend who was traveling with her, was sick, and they were staying in a house outside of the city, so they went back early. I tried coordinating with another friend who is here on study abroad, but those plans fell through, so finally around 11:40 pm I went down to the dining room where there were a bunch of people, almost all Argentinians, celebrating. I joined them and right before midnight we went outside, and the hostel owners burned two dolls. There is a tradition is Quito where families and business make dolls, mainly out of paper mache and newspapers, dressed up with real clothing. The dolls are of friends, family, famous people, fictional characters, or whoever you want. Then the dolls are brunt in celebration. We were told that the dolls are usually of people you like, even though it seems weird to me to burn in effigy someone that you like. But I think the idea is to burn away all of the last year and start fresh. There is another tradition of writing up wishes for people for the new year and burning that along with the dolls. In any case, we burnt the dolls, danced, some people drank, we counted down to midnight and everyone hugged everyone, and then I headed to the clubs with a group of Argentinians, an Ecuadorian who grew up in Switzerland, and two middle-aged Russians who teach physics in the US. It ended up being a pretty excellent New Years, considering that I didn't spend it with anyone I know.

The next few days I spent most of my time hanging around the hostel reading or messing around on the computer. I met up with friends once or twice and went to visit Leah far out of town, but I felt extremely drained. I had no desire to talk to the people in the hostel because most hostel visitors are travelers who are interested in hitting the streets and seeing the sites. I wanted to readjust to taking it slow and feeling like I actually live in this city, after a month and a half of being more of a classical type of traveler. I did go wonder around a few times. I went in search of a library, but discovered that there weren't many, and that most of the libraries did not allow you to browse the books. I also began searching for some things to do, and have started volunteering with an organization called Biciaccion which does bike promotion in Quito and in all of Ecuador. So far I haven't done anything very interesting there, mostly looking through youtube for videos they can upload to their website, but I'm hoping things will pick up in a bit. Also they hooked me up with a bike, and even though I've only done one short ride through town, I can't say it's that much scarier than riding through Boston.

My time here so far has not been exceptionally easy. It feels very difficult to figure anything out with the language barrier, lack of knowledge of how things function, and lack of connections. In Boston I knew a bunch of people, and knew for example that I could get free internet at the library or at MIT, or that I could find a bike on craigslist. I feel like I am starting from a much more basic level here, and though I've had some mild success, I think there are many more obstacles ahead of me.

I've also been feeling pretty lonely since my family left. In part it's that I was with people 24/7 for a few weeks and all of the sudden I have a lot more time to myself. In part it's that I don't have any close friends here, and it's my first time plopping myself down without close connections since study abroad. And then there is the difficulty of the language. I've been managing much better with Spanish than I expected, but conversations still leave me tired and don't flow as well, so even though I have met and talked with a lot of people, it doesn't feel like I've connected with them as much. And for what I am sure is a big mix of reasons, I don't feel particularly in place here. I don't feel sorry for myself with all of this. First, I realize it's part of a process. I've only been in Quito for ten days. I didn't feel particularly in place in Boston after ten days either. Also, even if Quito never really clicks, that is also part of the adventure. Just as this journey is about learning about community and integrating with community, it also includes the other side, learning about loneliness and learning to be ok with being just with myself.

I have at least another month, possibly two, that I'm going to spend in Quito. No matter which way things progress, I am sure I'll have a lot to take away from the experience.