Another Thing That You Don't Want Happening in the Middle of the Night

Like most stories, this one starts before the event in focus actually occurs. It this case, it begins in a different country, Argentina. McHale, Tom, and I needed to cross into Bolivia on foot. The border was about a 20 minute walk from the center of town. McHale and I had no problems leaving, but it turned out that Tom hadn't gotten a entry stamp. That meant that he was in the country illegally. Which meant that he couldn't leave without paying a fine. A 50 peso fine (about $17). We had only 22 pesos between the three of us, since we spent down the local currency because we were leaving the country. They didn't have a currency exchange. They didn't accept dollars. And town was so far away.

But we were so close to the border.

McHale and I had to cross the border, enter Bolivia, change money, cross back to Argentina, ransom Tom and his passport, then return to Bolivia. Not a problem, we had plenty of time, like an hour and a half. Or did we? Once in Bolivia we learned about the time change. The border didn't close at 6PM Argentine time, but at 6PM Bolivian time, which was 5PM in Argentina. In half an hour.

But we made it across the border and rushed to the bus station to find a bus to Potosi. No luck. We had missed the bus by minutes (stupid border troubles). So we spent the night in the border town. There was a morning bus to Potosi, but we decided just to take morning bus to Tupiza and spend the day there and take the night bus to Potosi from there.

Tupiza was lovely. We spent a full day hiking. We saw goats.

Night bus to Potosi. It was supposed to leave at 9PM. It left at 10PM. The seats were full, as was the aisle (the luxury of Argentinian buses was a thing of the past). At the first police stop, some more women wanted to get on, but when they tried to squeeze their way on, there was an uproar from the other passengers. Apparently the driver makes extra money for himself by selling extra “tickets.” The women somehow made room for themselves.

All was well until about 2AM when I was woken up with a thud. Then the bus started to tip over. Shit, I thought, we're going to fall off a cliff. It managed to stop at a 45 degree angle. Everyone was yelling to go slowly, as not to upset the balance. We slowly exited the bus. Half of it was in a ditch, partially submerged.

It was the middle of the night, we were in the middle of nowhere, no food, freezing cold, and the bus driver left. He just left (which I have since learned is standard in Ecuador as well - if you are a professional driver who gets in an accident you run away). We were hours from any major town. Rumor was that they didn't have a spare bus to send, so we tried to fix it ourselves. Of course, since I was a gringa who didn't speak Spanish, I had no say in the matter, though I believe I was the only engineer there. We deforested a small area (not that there was much there to begin with) to make a fire to try stay warm.

Once the sun rose, my suggestion to drain the ditch finally worked its way up the ranks and we basically destroyed the road to drain the water. Imagine one pickaxe slowly creating a canal through the compacted dirt road. We tried the push the bus upright (we meaning me and all the able bodied men), but no luck. Around 8AM we got a ride in the back of a truck full of ore going to Potosi with about 10 Argentinian backpackers and a couple old women. It was less than 300km away, but it took over 9 hours. There was as rise of 1km, thus the truck had to go very slow. And we were stopped by mining protesters that had closed the road (which I wasn't used to at the time, but now it just seems like another day Latin America).

There were about a dozen of us in the truck, sitting on our luggage, which was much softer than truck full of rocks. Once in Potosi we went to the bus company to complain. Unfortunately the bus company only refunded 1/3 of the ticket price, despite the fact that we had essentially been left to fend for ourselves. Typical.

But we had made it to Potosi.

Mom was Wrong...So was Carlos

Sorry Mom. Sorry Carlos.

I've been having trouble sleeping and bad dreams for the past four or five months. I am convinced that it's because of the medication that I'm on for my thyroid, though my research on the meds has only turned up muscle fatigue as a common side effect, not nightmares. Both Mom and Carlos had suggested (repeatedly) that the only solution is to visit the curandera.

Yesterday I finally went to the curandera. A curandera is like a witch doctor. They are all female and trained by their mothers and grandmothers, etc. Mom and I had gone when she visited in July, so the photos of the process are going to be the ones that I took of her.

First, the curandera puts together a bouquet of flowers, herbs, leaves, and branches. Then she bruises and crushes them to release the aroma and shoves it in your face for you to inhale.


Then, she hits you with the bouquet for about five minutes while repeating "chuka, chuka, chuka..." to get rid of your evil spirits.


Next comes the egg, which is rubbed all over your body to see what is bothering you. This part can be dangerous. The day I went with Mom the curandera squeezed the egg a bit too hard while rubbing my back and I ended up with yolk in my pants.


But most of the time this does not happen and after being rubbed with the egg, it is broken into a plastic bag and is "read," i.e., checked to see if the bad energy has been absorbed.


Finally, the curandera spritzes you with some sort of holy water/alcohol and puts ash crosses on your forehead, stomach, and back to protect you against other evil spirits.


Now, the reason that Mom was wrong, and Carlos too, was that last night, after my visit to the curandera, I had one of the worst nightmares ever. I was almost crying when I woke up and had no idea what was real and what was a dream.

The thing that confuses me the most about Mom's and Carlos's unwavering belief in the curandera is that they are both scientists. I understand a holistic approach to medicine and the power of plants and herbs, but I really don't see how the "chuka, chuka, chucka..." repetitions and the ash cross will help me.

But then again, the meds I'm on now aren't really helping either.

What You Don't Want Happening in the Middle of the Night

McHale and I had gone south. Not quite to Ushuaia (the southernmost city), but to first to El Calafate, then El Chaltén. Of the two, El Calafate is the bigger town. From there you can arrange day trips to the glacier Perito Moreno. But this story is about El Chaltén. It is a tiny place about four hours north of El Calafate. I think the town had one phone. At the hostel that we camped at they communicated by radio. The town itself is technically within the limits of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, but we didn't know that at the time.

After spending the night at a hostel, we divided our bags, leaving some stuff at the hostel and only carrying what we needed to hike. Our plan was to spend four days and three nights in the wild. We went to the one shop in town and bought bread, cheese, and something that resembled orange Tang, plus a few empanadas to start us off. That was our food for the trip. We had no stove, no way to even make fire if we wanted to cook. And then we set off.

Keep in mind that even though this was December, the peak of summer, it's not very warm there. We are in the Andes, though only at about 4,000 ft (1300m), we are still in a place that has been named after its glaciers.

There was no real path to the park. Just a few barely visible signs. As we left town it was so windy that we seriously considered heading back. But we walk on. And on. It's cold. Freezing. We battled light rain, occasionally snow. We are wearing all our layers. We have socks on our hands since neither of us had gloves. We were probably the worst trekkers ever. But we had fun. The park is absolutely beautiful and pristine. We could drink the glacial water straight from the streams. Take that Evian.

After a few hours of walking, we found what looked like a place to camp. It was a clearing and there was signage nearby. We may have seen another tent there already, but I can't recall. We set up camp there, ate some bread and cheese, and went to bed.

It was dark when McHale woke me. At that time of year in that part of the world it is only dark from 10PM to 4AM. McHale woke me with a nudge and, “I felt something just crawl over me.” My response, "So did I." Some creature was in the tent with us. We found the flashlights and looked around. We spied a quarter size hole in the side of our tent. I felt a little better. Whatever was in the tent with us couldn't be that big. We heard some scurrying. A mouse. A cute little mouse had gotten into our bread. It took about half an hour to catch and rid it from our tent (thank you Mc) including discussion of how to do so (for it could have rabies).

We took a few photos for posterity and tossed it outside. We then covered the hole with some electrical tape.

But after that we couldn't quite sleep. We've both had quite a bit of camping experience before, but it didn't even cross our minds to leave our food outside. We didn't even contemplate that there could be animals around.

The next day we checked for more damages. There were droppings in McHale's book. And about half the bread was gone. Our three night trip would need to be reduced to only two to prevent starvation.

But the hikes were amazing, even though the weather was not. The glaciers are such an astonishing shade of blue that you become mesmerized. However, we continued to do slightly stupid things during the next two days, like plunge our hands into glacier fed pools to take photos in order to see what was under the surface (I had a waterproof camera).

And when we returned to town, no more bread and cheese for a while. We feasted on huge Argentine steaks.

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times...

I have tons of stories from my travels, not my experiences while living in Holland or Ecuador, but mainly from a trip I took about six years ago. So, now that I have actually written out a few of them, I am going to (try to) start posting some of them here.

Just after graduating from Duke, McHale (yes, that is her first name) and I somehow got a brilliant idea that after a few years of working we should quit our jobs and travel the world. And we actually did it. Most of the adventures that I will be sharing are from that trip back in the fall of 2003 and winter of 2004 and will be tagged "Tales."

The reason that I hadn't shared these before is not only because I didn't have photos with me, but also because it was really difficult to remember everything. During my visit home in August I found a few CDs with the pictures and my journals from this time, so now you can read a bit about what happened during the trip.

Mc, feel free to correct me if my memories don't exactly correspond with reality.

King Solomon

I have been fortunate enough to inherit my father's skin and metabolism. And hair. Apparently I have tons of gray hairs on the back of my head. I can't see them, but my in-laws, nieces, and nephews assure me that I do. But that's not the point.

Like Fight Club, this is about soap.

For the past 10 years or so I have been washing my face with a bar of Purpose. It's made by Johnson & Johnson, so that means it's available everywhere. Except Ecuador. So I try to conserve the soap by keeping it dry in a dish next to the shower. But daily, my soap seems to appear into the soap dish that is in the shower.

After a few weeks of telling Carlos how amazed I was that the soap always seemed to jump out of my soap dish, he tried to convince me that his soap dish was a better place for the soap! I wasn't buying that. I mean, I'm stubborn. And it's my soap.

So, I came up with a solution...

Burn Baby Burn

Yesterday, like most Sundays, Carlos and I went to Chaullabamba to spend the day with his family. We brought our bikes with, but somehow forgot the sunscreen. When we got there, no one else had sunscreen. We thought about going to one of the shops nearby to buy some, but neither of us had any money. So I figured, "just this once," "it's only a short time," "I don't burn that easily," I'll just go without.

Bad idea. Even though we rode for only about 45 minutes, I got burnt. Even though as soon as we were done riding I covered up with long pants and a jacket and sat in the shade, I got burnt. Even though we hadn't had strong sun in weeks and why should this day be any different, I got burnt.

Maybe, someday, I'll learn.

Rules of the Road

I still haven't driven in Cuenca. I will, eventually. I have my international driver's license and we have found a few places for me to practice (we have a 35 year old manual truck, that is a bit, um, heavy, to drive). The thing that has actually been holding me back the most is trying to understand the rules of the road here. A few examples...

No Turn on Red?
Here in Ecuador, you are not allowed to turn right on red (like in the US, the driver is on the left hand side of the car and the traffic drives on the right). However, it is quite common to see people turning left on red. It seems perfectly acceptable to turn left on red while the cross street is green, even if there are come cars coming.

Crossing the Street
Over the past year, the former mayor had installed new traffic lights and crossing signals in the center of town. All the streets there are one way. With these new lights I have observed something strange - people tend to cross the street when the traffic light and crossing signal is red, not green. It's like the people wait until the light turns red to cross the street. Maybe it's because drivers here believe they always have the right of way, thus do not slow down (while turning) for pedestrians on the crosswalk.

Green Means Go, Yellow Means Slow, and Red Means Stop
In our neighborhood there is a stoplight that doesn't have a yellow. It goes from green to red immediately. It was not always like this, I think while programming other lights over the past few weeks, someone made a mistake. But as dangerous as this seems, it really isn't, because people here tend to accelerate on the yellow, and going from green to red actually causes people to slow down and stop. But, that's not always the case, lots of drivers don't seem to want to break on yellow even when they are still a few hundred feet from the light, so they speed up then honk the horn to let other drivers know that they will be zooming through the red light.

And We're Back...

Yesterday, we finally got internet in our apartment. It took three months, which I don't know if that is quick or slow. Anyway, I can now once again connect with the world.

Back Again

After hours of delays, I'm finally back in Chicago with my family. I've spent most of the day chilling with my brother, since I'm exhausted. So what do we do? Watch Harry Potter previews in Spanish (from Spain) and make fun of the accent :)

Slept Through an Earthquake

Carlos and I are in Guayaquil. We just put Mom on the plane home. This morning, as I woke up, Carlos asked, "Did you feel the tremor?" "No, you were probably dreaming," was my response.

Moments later, Mom asked, "Did you feel the earthquake last night?"

I didn't think I was that deep of a sleeper...