The front page of today's The New York Times: Peace Corps Volunteers Speak Out on Rape

This issue is of great personal importance to me not just as a female Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, but as a woman who suffered daily sexual harassment while on the job. As many of you may know, I was attacked once in a banana field. That was not the only incident. Thank God nothing more serious happened to me. Many of my fellow volunteers in Paraguay and other countries were not as lucky.

Please take a few minutes to sign the following petition asking that Peace Corps protect its volunteers and calling for anti-sexual violence legislation. Consider signing up for updates from the First Response Action blog to hear about other women who have suffered while serving as Peace Corps Volunteers abroad.

If you could take just two minutes from your day and sign the petition, me and hundreds of other women would be infinitely grateful.

Thank you.

Today a colleague of mine, Professor Miles Davis, invited me to appear on his monthly radio show about business social entrepreneurship. The topic for today was "Economic Development in the Peace Corps."

Check out the podcast of the radio interview (save the file and use any music software such as Winamp or iTunes to listen):

"Business" Today Live from Hilton Garden Inn with Miles Davis, professor at Shenandoah Universityhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

“Mom, I’m just saying hi. I can’t talk now. I’m going to fly.” “Fly? Pooja, you know you’re flight is on Monday...” “No, I’m going to FLY. I’m going to hang glide. Talk to you later!”

So started my hang gliding adventures. To be honest, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I fell in love with paragliding after floating over mountain tops in Merida, Venezuela and was determined to “fly” again in Brazil. A friend suggested that I paraglide in Rio de Janeiro. I thought, “What better way to end my trip than by by floating over one of my favorite cities?” I headed to a travel agent and requested parapente schedules. “Parapente?” the travel agent repeated snidely. I thought that was the word...that’s what it is in Spanish...and I even used the correct Portuguese pronunciation of “chi” for the last syllable. “What you want is Asa Delta,” he told me. “Whatever.”

The scheduled date arrived. After a week of rain, a morning of sunshine appeared on the horizon. I headed to São Conrado, a beautiful beach next to Leblon, the richest neighborhood in Brazil. The guests at the Sheraton Hotel share the beach with the neighboring favela (slum) dwellers (next to every rich area and famous beach in Rio, there is a slum). From the beach, my pilot and his assistant drove us to our point of take-off, the peak of mountain Pedro Bonita. Suddenly I realized what was the difference between parapente and Asa Delta. I would be hang gliding, not paragliding. It may not seem like a huge difference from the ground, but from the air it involves one crucial, nerve-wracking fact. When I paraglided, a strong gust of wind lifted my pilot and I off the ground and up into the air. When it came time to hang glide, my pilot asked me if I was ready to jump. “Jump? Jump where?” I asked fearfully. “There,” he said as he pointed to a wooden ramp that looked like it was going to collapse any moment. I thought it might be too late to mention to him that I have, had, a fear of falling from heights. We practiced running before getting into position. “Ready?” he asked. I shut my eyes tight and did not open them until I was already hanging in the air. As I cannot describe the incredible feeling of flying in the air, I will have to show you.

As much as we don’t want to admit it, we all form impressions of certain people based on ethnic or cultural stereotypes. In less than a week, my 50+ year-old Japanese-Brazilian Couchsurfer in Curitiba successfully shattered several of my illusions. When I first perused her profile, I thought that she seemed animated. Upon meeting her, my first impression proved true. The woman did not just have energy, she had spunk! I could hardly keep up with her as she ran around her apartment performing one task after another, the whole while talking about one thing or another. She did not fit in at all with my cultural expectations of elder Japanese woman as quiet, reserved, and traditional.

She took me to watch the pre-Carnaval bloco of the samba school Garibaldis and Sacis. A bloco typically consists of musicians from a samba school performing samba marchinha – the fast-paced samba that is played during Carnaval – on the streets. Often, members of the crowd will join in the festivities by bringing their tambourines and drums from home and playing along with the band. One word usually defines the dress code, “ridiculous.” The men are dressed in what I like to call “their skivvies,” sungas or Brazilian speedos, along with masks and accessories. The women have pieces of flare that enliven even the most mundane clothing. At the head of the bloco is a truck carrying the main singers and directors of the samba school. Around the truck is a throng of people hopping, skipping, and dancing frenetically. As the truck drives through the streets at a record-breaking speed of 5 MPH, the crowd follows, pushing each other to keep up the pace while avoiding actually leaving the frenzied mass of people that is constantly in danger of being run over by the 18-wheeler behind them.

In the midst of this excitement where was my Couchsurfer? She was dancing in the middle of the bloco. One hand held a beer can while the other held the hand of the Brazilian man with whom she was dancing. She finished her beer, threw the can off to the side of the street, and pulled me into the fray with her now free hand. She twirled me and had me dancing in no town! The many times I dreamed about Brazil, I never pictured a Brazilian as a 50 year-old Japanese woman chugging a beer while shaking to samba.

Here’s the great thing about Brazil: everyone can be Brazilian. Brazil is like the United States of South America, it has people of all different colors, origins, and ancestries. When South Americans look at me, they don’t see an American, they see an Indian. I have to explain to them that after three years in South America, I feel more latina than Indian. I joke, “I’m a useless Indian, but I’m a great latina. I don’t speak Hindi, I don’t dance Indian dances well, but I speak Spanish, Portuguese, and even Guaraní, and I’m a terrific salsa and samba dancer!” I guess it’s the same with my Couchsurfer. When I looked at her, I saw a Japanese woman, but in her heart (and her samba-dancing hips) she was a Brazilian.

The bloco truck

Our friend joining in the musicians

Skivvies

The woman on my left was my Couchsurfer

I recently had an experience that shattered all preconceptions I had about the differences between men and women. Two of my girl friends and I accompanied our two guy friends in Salvador to go shopping for sungas, a.k.a. the mankini that men use in Brazil. A sunga isn’t quite a Speedo, but it’s definitely in the same family. Our male friends were a little nervous, yet excited to be purchasing their first sungas. At the first store, they stood rooted to the ground, perplexed, while the store assistant showed them the models. “Are they supposed to be that small? Pooja, can you ask him if they have any bigger models?” James said to me, clearly frightened by the prospect of putting on the tiny bathing suits. We girls helped out the best we could, picking out suits that would complement the boys skin colors and figures, but the boys didn’t seem happy. “Let’s go to another store,” my friend suggested.

Several stores later, the guys were starting to get into the whole shopping experience. Jason ran over to James’s dressing room so that they could look at each other in their sungas. “Oh boys,” we girls sighed. We were getting tired of being dragged around from store to store. When Jason asked for help at this store, my friend begrudgingly grabbed a suit and threw it into the changing room. “Are you ready yet?” we asked impatiently. “We’re still not sure. Let’s go back to the first store and double check the sungas there.” What, men comparing clothes at different stores?

We returned to the first store where Jason picked the sunga of his dreams. “Do you like it?” he asked, stepping out of the dressing room to the model it for us. “Whatever. Get whatever you like,” we replied. Meanwhile, James decided that he liked the swimsuit at the last store better. While he ran back upstairs, we girls left the store to get some a snack. When he returned, Jia complained, “Are you happy? Can we get some food now?” She was cranky from hunger and from having to wait for the boys to finish their shopping.

As we walked out of the mall, the boys walked with an extra spring in their steps. They had every reason to be proud of themselves, they had just bought sungas. I couldn’t help commenting, “All the differences that I thought existed between men and women were imaginary. This is definitely a case of gender reversal.” The boys acted like female stereotypes that day. They tried on different outfits, assessed each other in them, discussed how tight some models were and how uncomfortable others made them feel, browsed items at different stores, and probed us for our honest opinions. All the while, we acted like the “typical man,” impatient and bored of the opposite sex’s prolonged shopping expedition.

The next day the boys had a sunga model shoot. While one walked around the beach, the other took photos of him from every angle. A guy model shoot? Is that ok? I mean, Jia and I take photos of each other in bikinis all the time, but that’s expected of women. The guys even took pictures of themselves posing and skipping along the rocks near the beach. We girls couldn’t help snickering that they looked like the shots that husbands usually take of their wives during their honeymoons. My favorite was a picture of Jason posed sideways like Superman with the wind running through his hair. While they did this, we women sat on the couch and stared at the TV. So how different are men and women really?

Brazilians refer to São Paulo as babilônia, meaning a metropolis with all of the problems of a large city: pollution, traffic, crowds, filth, etc. Now I know why. I took the bus from Curitiba on Wednesday as I had a dinner with a friend from the U.S. that night. I arrived early, at 2:30 PM, in order to have time to shower and get ready before my dinner. I went straight to my CouchSurfer’s apartment building, but encountered neither him nor the keys to the house there. I waited there until 7 PM and finally called my friend explaining to him my situation and telling him that I’d be late. He offered me the shower in the hotel. I figured that it’d take me an hour to reach the hotel, but the doorman told me that because of the traffic it would take two. Shit! I had gathered all my stuff together and was headed out the door when my CouchSurfer showed up. By the time he had shown me around the apartment and I had gotten ready, it was already 8 PM. My host had told me that it would be better to meet my friend closer to home, as my friend had a car and driver available.

I arrived at the metro station ten minutes late, stressed about having kept my friend waiting. I called the cellphone number he had given me and his driver responded, they were stuck in traffic. An hour later I called again, they were still stuck in traffic. I waited for what seemed like an eternity in the metro station, all the while cursing myself for not having left earlier and my CS host for showing up four hours late. It took my friend two hours to traverse a distance of less than 10 km! São Paulo, babilonia.

The house of the CouchSurfers I stayed with for two weeks in Floripa resided on a street called “Servidão do Valagão.” When I first arrived there, my host told me to “fica a vontade” (“make yourself at home”). I sure did. The next day, I wanted to heat up food but the house had run out of gas. The guys told me to walk up the street to the house of “os meninos” (“the boys,” a.k.a. the neighbors) and use the stove there. I knocked on the door but no one was there. Regardless, I let myself into the unlocked house, heated up my food, did the dishes, and left. When my hosts asked if there was anyone at home and I replied that there wasn’t, they were impressed. “You told me to ‘fica a vontade’!” I exclaimed. They couldn’t stop laughing at how quickly I had adopted the customs of their neighborhood.

I loved staying on Servidão do Valagão because the neighborhood functioned as a community. One house had a cook, one house had gas, and one house had a laundry machine. Usually, the guys prepared food at one house and everyone ate there. My hosts always left the doors wide open. Even when they weren’t at home, neighbors would come over to hang out. I remember one night when I wanted to go to bed early but two of the neighbors were over. We landed up talking until past 1 AM.

Life on Valagão was truly bohemian. Even though everyone was either employed or a student, I couldn’t help but mock them (all in good fun) for being a community of musicians, yoga instructors and practitioners, and beach bums. When one day I commented to one of my hosts, “This is a house of vagabundos” (vagabonds, nomads), he replied, “You primarily!” True, I was the principal vagabond of the houe.

When the guys were together, they would have jam sessions. The sessions would usually commence with one guitar and one singer. As more neighbors entered the house, they would grab an instrument and join in the music. One night, they played for five hours!

Having one friend on Valagão meant making a group of friends. It made cultural integration EASY. On a phone call with my parents, they grilled me, “Aren’t you going to take a Portuguese course there? Can’t you take a three hour-long break from the beach everyday to study Portuguese? Didn’t you tell us that your goal for Brazil was to learn Portuguese?” I guess I did say that. The truth is that even when I’m on the beach, I’m learning. I’ve made friends on my way to beach and spent afternoons chatting with them in Portuguese. Even when it rains and I’m stuck inside the mall, if I go with a Brazilian it is a chance to learn new vocabulary and practice my Portuguese. I had several lessons in “colloquial” (slang, curse words, and words to use while shooting the shit) at the house on Valagão. My friends commented, “You speak fast in Portuguese! You speak Portuguese perfectly, except for your accent.” This was the night that I learned how to say “cheesy pick-up line” and “Where the hell is my f***ing _______?” As my girl friend gave me word after word to describe Brazilian men, the guys couldn’t stop groaning. “Iso é uma conversa de meninas!” (“This is girl talk!”) we exclaimed and resumed our conversation. She was explaining a phrase to me in English, when my host entered and as usual shouted in English, “We don’t speak English in this f***ing house!” I yelled back in Portuguese, “Somente falamos em português em esa porra da casa!” (“We only speak Portuguese in this f***ing house!”). That had him rolling on the floor, laughing. When I headed off to bed later in the night, I bid the group goodnight, “Oi galera, boa noite.” The minute I closed the door my host burst out, “She’s sooooooo Brazilian!” Score, life goal fulfilled!!!

I was walking through the centrinho of Lagoa da Conceição when I heard a whistle behind me. It was my Colombian friend and samba buddy, Juan Carlos. “Oi menina. Que tá fazendo?” (“Hey girl? What are you up to?”) I replied, “Vou para a praia. Vai para samba amanhã?” (“I’m headed to the beach. You’ll be at samba tomorrow?”). He looked at me quizzically and then realized that the next day was Tuesday, which meant samba at Varandas. “Oh amanhã é terca-feira. Eu vou” (“Oh, tomorrow’s Tuesday. I’ll be there). Leave it to me to never forget a samba.

Minutes before, I had run into another friend from Varandas. We had exchanged the same series of questions and answers, ending our conversation with a “I’ll see you at samba tomorrow night.” As my friend waved goodbye he yelled, “Chaú querida” (“Bye, dear one”). I love how in Brazil it’s ok for guys who dress like American hip-hop artists to address their girl friends as “dear ones” and say “Beijos” (“kisses”) over the phone.

That day my cellphone had me preoccupied. In order to purchase a Brazilian SIM, you need a CPF, i.e. proof of Brazilian residency. I had managed to buy a chip without a CPF, but I could only text, not make phone calls. That would have been fine if I didn’t need to make a phone call in order to recharge the credit on my cell. I planned on begging Marcio, one of the boys whose house I was staying at, to “lend” me his CPF number. In the meantime, I wandered around Lagoa and searched for a cellphone store. After finally locating one, I entered and ran into (guess who) Marcio! “What are you doing here?” “I work here,” he responded. What a small world! I explained my phone situation to him. Without even needing to ask him, he turned to his boss and said, “Just register her phone with my CPF.” Thank God for amazing Brazilian hospitality!

Floripa is a city, but one that feels like a small town. Imagine living in a place as a foreigner and scarcely two weeks later, running into three friends on the same day. I love Floripa!

I was walking through the centrinho of Lagoa da Conceição when I heard a whistle behind me. It was my Colombian friend and samba buddy, Juan Carlos. “Oi menina. Que tá fazendo?” (“Hey girl? What are you up to?”) I replied, “Vou para a praia. Vai para samba amanhã?” (“I’m headed to the beach. You’ll be at samba tomorrow?”). He looked at me quizzically and then realized that the next day was Tuesday, which meant samba at Varandas. “Oh amanhã é terca-feira. Eu vou” (“Oh, tomorrow’s Tuesday. I’ll be there). Leave it to me to never forget a samba.

Minutes before, I had run into another friend from Varandas. We had exchanged the same series of questions and answers, ending our conversation with a “I’ll see you at samba tomorrow night.” As my friend waved goodbye he yelled, “Chaú querida” (“Bye, dear one”). I love how in Brazil it’s ok for guys who dress like American hip-hop artists to address their girl friends as “dear ones” and say “Beijos” (“kisses”) over the phone.

That day my cellphone had me preoccupied. In order to purchase a Brazilian SIM, you need a CPF, i.e. proof of Brazilian residency. I had managed to buy a chip without a CPF, but I could only text, not make phone calls. That would have been fine if I didn’t need to make a phone call in order to recharge the credit on my cell. I planned on begging Marcio, one of the boys whose house I was staying at, to “lend” me his CPF number. In the meantime, I wandered around Lagoa and searched for a cellphone store. After finally locating one, I entered and ran into (guess who) Marcio! “What are you doing here?” “I work here,” he responded. What a small world! I explained my phone situation to him. Without even needing to ask him, he turned to his boss and said, “Just register her phone with my CPF.” Thank God for amazing Brazilian hospitality!

Floripa is a city, but one that feels like a small town. Imagine living in a place as a foreigner and scarcely two weeks later, running into three friends on the same day. I love Floripa!

Above all other things, above the beach and the bikinis and the beach bodies, Brazil has come to mean music to me. Brazil has an incredible variety of different styles of music and I love it all: samba, samba rock, funk, sertanejo, axé, forró, pagoda, MPB. Thursday night I attended a live performance of a samba/ samba rock band. Dancing with my Colombian friend was helpful because he knew how to transform salsa steps into samba steps. Every time I moved my hips he said, “That’s salsa,” and next demonstrated “This is samba.”

After the samba rock band, a samba school performed. Rio de Janeiro made samba schools famous with its Sambodromo, the stadium where it holds Carnaval every year. Other cities, like Floripa, have copied it with their own samba schools and local Carnavals. Carnaval samba and “normal” samba, the samba that people dance in samba clubs, have little in common other than the basic footwork. Carnaval samba is characterized by the batukada, its frenzy of percussion that makes everyone listening want to dance, even if they don’t know how. As the drums beat an intense rhythm, my friend and I furiously moved our feet and the director jumped like a man possessed. The Carnaval beat is impossible to resist, your body moves without your volition.

The following night I met my friend at my favorite samba club, Varandas. A local band performs samba de raizes (“roots samba”) there twice a week. This time I finally started to get the basic steps down. I was pleased when a friend of mine told me that I was dancing well.

Saturday I attended a concert of Jorge Bens, samba rock legend. Most of his songs are from the 1960s and ’70s, but he’s still incredibly popular. My CouchSurfing hosts decided it was their duty to educate me the morning of the concert, and had me listen to several of his songs. The Brazilians I got a ride with continued my music education. By the time I saw Jorge Bens up on stage, I was singing along with the rest of the crowd, “Moro…no país tropical.” Now, every time my CouchSurfing host breaks out his guitar, I request songs by Jorge Bens.

The next day was a free concert at the beach by Zelía Duncan, a MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) singer. My friend described her as an artist of “doubtable quality.” Once I heard her songs, I had to agree. Still, I could feel the energy of the Brazilians in attendance who sang along with her songs.

On the way back home, we stopped by the main square of town to listen to the local samba school perform. It was the same group as Thursday night, but Sunday night the area was packed with people and Carnaval fever was in the air! I sang along like any local to their song, which tells the story of the Cuban Revolution. The fact that I knew the words surprised my friends. I explained that whenever I forgot a word I simply yelled out “Liberação,” “revolução,” or “igualdade” (liberation, revolution, and equality). They explained that, truth be told, regardless of their them, samba schools always used those same words (well, not revolution): “liberação,” “o povo,” “meu coração” (liberation, the people, and my heart). At that, they burst into a rousing reprisal of last year’s Carnaval song by the same samba school. I was astonished; they used almost the same words last year as this year.

On Tuesday, I returned to Varandas with my CS host and friends from his neighborhood. I greeted several people I had met during previous samba events around town. My integration into the local samba scene, far above and beyond anything my friends had achieved, astounded them. I danced with several of my friends that night and did surprisingly well. I finally felt like I could hold my own amongst the Floripa samba crowd. When my friend said flabbergasted, “I never though that a gringa could dance samba,” I retorted, “I’m not a gringa.” He corrected himself, “That’s right, you’re Brazilian.”

Finally, there was Wednesday night five-hour jam session of my CS hosts and the neighborhood boys. The guys sing everything from samba rock and MPB to American alternative music and rock to Brazilian funk and hip hop. I can’t decide whether my favorite moment of the night was them singing the samba classic by Jorge Bens “Mais de Nada” or my CS host crooning Britney Spear’s “Hit Me Baby One More Time.”

It was beyond a doubt, a fantastic week of music, music, and music. A majority of my cultural learning takes the form of music appreciation. For me, whenever I reminisce about Floripa, the music is what will come to my mind.

Summary: I had my ass handed to me by the waves (and just when I thought I was getting to be a deecent surfer), was stung on my ankle and butt by jellyfish, burned my leg on a motorcycle when my friend off-roaded and we fell, took the wrong bus turning my 1.5-hour commute to the beach into a 3-hour commute, lost my cellphone, waited an hour for another bus, and returned to the bus station and found my cellphone loooooong gone.

Details: The American guy I had met at the Creamfields concert over the weekend invited me to go on a hike with him on Monday. He picked me up early in the morning on his friend’s motorbike. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how inexperienced he was at driving a motorcycle until I was already sitting on back of the bike. Despite his limited knowledge of Florianopolis and my inexistent direction sense, we managed to find our way to the trailhead. The problem was that to reach it we had to drive through a neighborhood marked by hill after hill after hill. Hills are scary, to say the least, when the driver doesn’t know what he is doing. We reached the end of the neighborhood and turned onto a dirt road. As we continued on, the road consisted of less dirt and more rocks. Just when I was at the point of telling my friend that I would get off and walk, we hit a rock and the bike, he, and I all went tumbling down. As my bare leg hit the exhaust pipe, I felt a sensation that is regrettably all too familiar, the feeling of burning flesh.

With my leg burning and my hand bleeding, I limped behind my friend most of the trail. The trail wasn’t so much a trail as a path of slippery rocks which we had to scramble over to reach our destination, Costa da Lagoa. Costa is located on the far side of the Lagoa da Conceiçao and is known for its overpriced seafood restaurants and nice views. It is only accessible by two modes of transportation, a two-hour trail and a boat. My friend had not properly calculated the time it would take us to reach Costa, thinking it would take 45 minutes maximum. I have never seen anyone rip off their clothes that fast before. My friend sprinted to the end of the dock and jumped into the water. I followed suit. As he had to catch a flight later that day, we barely had time to go for a dip, eat, and catch the boat back to the trailhead. I joked with my friend that only an East Coaster could manage to transform a relaxed day outing into a rushed adventure. I opted to take the boat all the way back to town. There was no way I was getting back on that bike!

After my morning mishap, I decided to hit the waves at Praia Mole. I didn’t realize that Praia Mole is where the professional surfers go. I was knocked down by wave after wave. I could hardly keep my board above the jagged water. I struggled to hang on but the waves threw my board in one direction while pushing me under the water. The only thing I managed to accomplish in an hour was swallow a gallon of sea water.

The next day I decided to return to the beginners’ beach, Barra da Lagoa. Little did I know that because of the rain, Barra was not going to be a picnic that day. The waves were similar to those at Praia Mole the day before. I managed to stand up on the board a couple of times but rapidly lost my balance on the bumpy water. Meanwhile, the freezing cold water had attracted jellyfish. I thrashed wildly as I felt my ankle burning. To add to that, the rain had filled the water with debris that pricked my skin like thousands of splinters. After an hour in the water, I felt awful.

I accidentally boarded the wrong bus on the way home. I had already taken the wrong bus that morning, doubling the time of my commute to the beach. I was exhausted and the only thing I wanted to do was go home. I got off the bus and realized that I didn’t have my cellphone. I had to wait for an hour for another bus. By the time I reached the bus station, my cellphone was long gone. It was a definitely a día de azar (day of bad luck). I’m still glad to be in Floripa though, because in spite of everything, I still got to spend two days at the beach sitting on the sand and staring at the waves.

I didn’t realize how spoiled I was until I left my first CouchSurfer’s house. Everything in Florianopolis is a ten-minute drive by car, that is, if you have a car. If you are unfortunate enough not to have your own transportation, you must hitch a ride or rely on city buses which take forever. It took me 1.5 hours to reach the beach!

I decided that Floripa would be the place to learn samba and surfing. I went in search of an instructor at Barra da Lagoa, the novice surfers’ beach, and found André, a blond-hair, blue-eyed Brazilian who tossed out terms he had learned while surfing in Hawaii. He gave my Argentine classmate instructions in portunhol and me instructions in Portuguese with the occasional “Hang loose” thrown in there. He would position me on a wave and yell, “Rema, rema, rema! Sobe!” (“Paddle, paddle, paddle! Stand up!”). Unlike during my Peruvian surfing experience, this time I stood up several times on the board. It was an amazing feeling being able to ride the waves.

I returned home exhausted but exhilarated. I was proud of my success on the waves. Even though I was ready to hit the sack, I had to first spend some time with new CouchSurfer. Honestly, I was a bit weirded out by her. She had a thick carioca (Rio de Janeiro) accent, which made it difficult for me to understand her Portuguese. Worse, she didn’t understand a single word in either English or Spanish. We mostly just stared at each other during dinner.

A couple of days later, I was on a bus to Barra when I spotted a boy with purple hear with a cloth bag that said, “Seu consumo muda o mundo” (“Your consumption transforms the world”). He was busy chatting with an Argentine hippie with juggling pins in her backpack. I nudged myself into their conversation by asking the guy about his bag. The three of us had an interesting multilingual conversation, with the purple-haired guy trying to speak Spanish, the Argentine hippie trying to speak Portuguese, and me switching back and forth between the two languages. My head was about to explode from the effort!

We separated when we reached the beach. André, my surf instructor, taught me how to ride the waves in both directions. He would yell in his American surfer’s accent, “Front side!” and “Back side!” As I rode the waves to the shore I would whoop with delight. As I was doing so well, André let me have a chance surfing “sozinha” (“going solo”). I caught two waves by myself. Of course, when he left the water and gave me time to free surf, I didn’t pegar a single onda (catch a single wave). Surfing is much more difficult when you have to paddle for yourself.

As I was leaving the beach, I ran into Vinicius, the boy from the bus. Instead of waiting for the bus, he wanted to walk back to town. We started walking back together when we ran into Marisol, the Argentine hippie. This time all three of us spoke in Portuguese. For me, the fact that two Spanish-speakers were communicating with each other in Portuguese because neither of us could remember our Spanish amused me.

Friday, my CouchSurfer had planned on going for a boat-ride to Costa da Lagoa as she only had to work a half-day. Unfortunately, it started pouring that morning. She whined, “At least you got to go to the beach every day. I’ve been waiting all week to go to the beach!” Not having anything better to do, we went to the mall with the CouchSurfer I had met for lunch. That’s the downside of life in paradise; the only thing to do when it rains is go to the mall. I didn’t mind though, as I’ve spent little time during the past two years in malls (apart from the movie theaters and food courts in the Asunción malls). It was a typical girls’ outing at the mall. My new CS friend phrased it the best way, “We’re going SHOPPING!” Why is that you put a group of women together and eventually they will go clothes shopping?

Guess who I ran into in the mall? My new friend from the beach, Vinicius. He’s hard to miss with the purple hair. I said, “Isn’t this funny, running into each other at the mall?” “Not really,” he replied, “when he rains, everyone in Floripa goes to the mall.” True.

Sunday night, my CouchSurfer and I went out for a late-night pizza after a day at the beach. Over dinner, my CouchSurfer and I not only managed to communicate, but we had a decent conversation. After several days of staying in her house, my Portuguese had improved significantly to the point where I could now respond with complete sentences and even paragraphs.

Brazilian pizza is known for its weird toppings, like bananas and cinnamon, chocolate and strawberries, etc. My friend sweetly let me pick the flavors. We order a half-banana pizza, a half-who-knows-what pizza. The savory half reminded me of the Brazilian hot dog I had eaten, while the sweet side completely blew my mind. Sweet pizza, what an incredible idea! And what a great end to my first full week in paradise.

I awoke feeling like I was in a Hindu household. The Ganesh tapestry on the wall, the incense “altar,” it reminded me of home. India is popular in Latin America, especially Brazil. One of Brazil’s latest big budget soap operas was “Caminho da India” (“The Path from India”). My first morning in Brazil I breakfasted on fresh fruit and granola prepared by my Couchsurfing host.

After showing me around Lagoa da Conçeica, a popular area on the eastern side of the island, we ate lunch at ShivaVeg. We ate an organic spinach salad, organic cabbage salad with fruits and raisins, brown rice, and a vegetable curry with shitake mushrooms and drank watermelon juice with coconut water. After I finished one of the most delectable meals I’d ever eaten in South America, the waitress asked if I wanted more. My friend explained that if I wanted more of anything, she would serve it to me for free. I almost cried out of joy.

As my friend had to meet her parents, she left me to wander around Lagoa. I, of course, had to cross of the first item on my agenda, “Buy a Brazilian bikini.” That was easier said than done. In Brazil, a bikini is more than an item of clothing to be used during the yearly summer beach trip. Brazil is replete with world-class bikini designers, rendering a person like me who has lived away from the beach for 12 years, confused and clueless. Luckily, my Brazilian friend was able to resolve my dilemma. Brazilians know their bikinis.

Shopping for a bikini was a fun language and cultural learning exercise my second day in Brazil. I had to speak in Portuguese to all the shopkeepers. I loved the fact that they considered me a fellow countrywoman; in Brazil, I’m Brazilian until I open my mouth. I learned lots of useful vocabulary as well, including causa (bikini bottom), tanga (bikini bottom), and bojo (bikini top), which are important words to know in Brazil!

In the cool of the evening, we walked the five minutes from my friend’s house to Praia Campeche. Living five minutes from the beach must be heaven! I went for a run, stretched, and did yoga because Floripa seems like a great place to get back in shape. I swam while my friend bodysurfed. Every Brazilian we passed on the way back to the house asked about the waves. My friend responded “As ondas sâo massa!” “Altos ondas!” and “Sâo legal!” (the waves were awesome, awesome, and awesome!). A community of surfers that use more than ten words for cool, was I in Brazil or Hawaii?

After the beach we showered and dressed up for samba. We went to a place called Varandas where every Friday night a group performs samba live. My friend explained to me the differences among samba, samba rock, and chorinho and taught me the choruses to the songs. I sang along in my beginning Portuguese attempting to be like any other Brazilian. As the night wore on, my tipsy friend grabbed me and started dancing samba with me. She scolded me repeatedly for shaking my hips. When I dance salsa I’m told that I don’t move my hips enough, but when I dance samba I’m told that I dance like a salsa dancer! I was surprised by how closely couples dance samba. Americans believe that latinos dance salsa too closely. They`ve never seen Brazilians dance samba before. After my friend instructed me several times, “Mais juntos” (“closer together”), I finally screamed, half-joking, “There’s no room for the Holy Ghost!”

The night ended at the barracinha de cachorros quentes (hotdog stand). After my friend had told me about the vegetarian hotdogs available in Floripa, I had bugged her all day that I wanted to eat them. She had replied, “Later, later. We’ll eat them at 2 AM.” Around 2 AM I told her, “Cara, tou vesga de fome! Tou morrendo de fome!” (“Dude, I’m so hungry I can’t see straight! I’m dying of hunger!). Brazilians put weird toppings on their hotdogs. In addition to the regular condiments, they add peas, potato sticks, mashed potatoes, and a whole host of other ingredients I can’t remember. After 15 years of not eating a hotdog, I dug into my bread covered with toppings. My friend was right about eating the hotdogs at that time of the morning. I had no clue what I was eating, I just knew that it was 2 AM and it was gooood.

The sand dunes of Praia Joaquina

Lagoa da Conceicao (which I am now living next to)

Hot dog toppings

My first hot dog after 15 years!

I had hardly arrived in Florianópolis when my Couchsurfer started speaking to me in Portuguese. She took me to eat and then to her house. I thought I was going to have a chance to rest. Not at all. I didn’t even have a chance to lay down before she asked, “Que vamos fazer? Vamos andar de bicicleta uma hora para a Lagoa do Peri o vamos a praia? Mas vamos sambar amanha de noite então é melhor ir para a Lagoa hoje.” (“What are we going to do? Are we going to ride bikes for one hour to the lagoon or are we going to the beach? But we’re going to samba tomorrow night so it’s better to go to the lagoon today”). “The lagoon I guess…” I responded, not really having a choice in the matter. We rode for half-an-hour and relaxed at a viewpoint of two beaches, Morro das Pedras and Praia da Armaçao. They looked like the same beach to me, but my friend explained that even though beaches may be connected, in Floripa they receive different names depending on their characteristics. Floripa has 42 beaches! Although it would be impossible attempting to visit all of them, it is worth getting to know several of them. “Why? A beach is a beach,” you might think. Brazilians are with beaches what Alaskans are to snow (Alaskans have more than 50 words for different types of snow). As my friend explained, every beach has a different personality, like a human being. And every day, it’s different. Sometimes it’s calm, sometimes it’s angry, and sometimes it’s on its period.

We rode down a backstreet and entered the woods. It reminded me of my jungle expeditions to the local swimming hole in Paraguay. My friend told me that we were going to a part of the lagoon that only locals knew about. After a swim she took me to Nutri Lanches, a restaurant which in her opinion had the best açai in the world. Açai is a berry found in the Amazon which Brazilians eat in the form of juice or açai na tigela – frozen like icecream with fruits and granola. I was surprised to see empanadas integrais on the menu, empanadas with integral flour filled with vegetables instead of meat and baked instead of fried. They also had vegetarian sandwiches. All of their dishes are natural and organic. Healthy, organic, natural food in South America? Wow! My friend told me that Floripa is a vegetarian haven.

I expected to pass out the minute we arrived home. Instead, we stayed up chatting until late about Brazil, life in Paraguay, English, Portuguese, everything. My friend took one look at my itinerary and said, “Forget Lonely Planet, here’s where you need to go.” She planned out my entire trip for me.

When we had to restart Word and look for my document, I told her to open the one marked “Auto-recuperado.” At that moment, I knew I had officially left the Spanish-speaking world and arrived in Brazil, as I pronounced it auto-hecuperado. 24 hours before, I would have pronounced the r an r and not an h like in Portuguese.

By the time we finished, it was already 2 AM. She told me that if I was looking for one place to live in Brazil, Floripa would be it. I’m beginning to think that wouldn’t be a bad idea…

10 REASONS WHY I’M MOVING TO FLORIANÓPOLIS:

1. There are 42 beaches!

2. They speak Portuguese. Hence, I can practice Portuguese.

3. Florianopólis is a haven for vegetarians. Chappatis and ghee are a common food.

4. There is samba four times a week (and I’ve already been three times).

5. You can buy vegetarian hot dogs at 4 in the morning (after leaving the samba).

6. Floripolitanos love outdoor sports. Floripa is a great place to swim, kayak, surf, bodyboard, kitesurf, bike, trek, and hike. Floripolitanos also are into yoga and Pilates.

7. The beaches are great for surfing (and there are lots of place to learn how to surf).

8. Even though it’s a city, you can hitchhike campo-style (even at 3 in the morning).

9. There are monkeys (That means that I can have a pet monkey and I don’t even have to train or keep it in the house. I just have to leave food outside)!

10. You never have to wear real clothes. T-shirts, shorts, summer dresses, sarongs, flip-flops, and swimsuits all year-round!

Everyone told me not to go to Venezuela. Backpackers told me: “Skip it, it’s not worth it. Caracas is the worst city in the world. Go to Merida instead,” I went to Merida, a tourist town near the border with Colombia and wasn’t impressed. Colombians exclaimed: “Why would you want to go to Venezuela? Say ‘hi’ to Hugo Chavéz for me.” To tell you the truth, I wanted to go to Caracas and because of that exact reason, to find out about Hugo Chavéz. During college, I took a class called “Media Power in Latin America.” While learning about Venezuela’s forms of media communication, our teacher asked us to read a book which was slightly chavista (pro-Chavéz) to balance out the blatantly anti-Chavéz American media. The result? My friends and I became huge fans. Here was this radically left president criticizing Bush, calling out the U.S. for its erroneous foreign policy, supposedly redistributing oil wealth from the rich to the poor, and sending military out to educate the illiterate inhabitants in the countryside. How could a liberal not support him? Yet, liberals all over Latin America constantly criticize him. I took this class in 2007. I know things have changed since then. During the past few years I’ve been dying of curiosity about: a. what Venezuelans think of Chavéz b. the truth about Chavéz. By no means do I understand the complexity of Venezuelan politics after a mere week in Venezuela, but I did learn a great deal. Here is the other side of Venezuelan politics:

Politically speaking, the U.S. and Venezuela appear to sit on opposite sides of the spectrum. American politics are middle-right while Venezuelan ones are extreme left. The U.S. declares itself a capitalist nation while Venezuela deems itself a socialist one. Barack Obama is a democratic president while Hugo Chávez is a populist one. The more time I spent in Venezuela however, the more I became convinced that Venezuela is a mini-America. As my friends from Caracas put it, “Venezuela is America without rules.”

Let me clear up some myths. Venezuela is not a communist country nor is it a 100% socialist country. It is socialist in the sense that since Chávez became president in 1998, the economy has been moving in the direction of state control. The federal government initially expropriated the petroleum industry. Since then, it has taken control of several other industries including comestibles and banking. On the up side, the government’s actions redistributed the country’s oil wealth, which was controlled by 2-3% of the population. However, my friends explained to me that it had the nasty side effect of creating a new class, the nouveau riche, i.e. the government employees in control of the oil.

Venezuela is not a socialist country, although it has been moving increasingly in that direction. It has substantial capitalist activities. Nonetheless, signs all over the country champion the benefits of socialism stating productivity gains supposedly achieved by socialist means and featuring pictures of hearts with the words, “Hecho en socialismo” (“Made in socialism”). They appeared to me as blatant efforts to inculcate the people into a political doctrine. Even in China I never saw a sign declaring, “Communism is the way to go” (of course, if it existed I wouldn’t have been able to read it).

My friends view socialism as a myth. During the past eight years, despite the government’s claims of helping the poor, the low-income class has widened. One reason is the sky high rate of inflation. Officially, it is 27% per year! Unofficially, it could be much closer to 150%! I felt the impact of inflation on my wallet the one week I was in Venezuela as the official exchange rate of the bolívar fuerte to the dollar is 4.5 to 1 while the black market exchange rate is 8 to 1. As I had no cash with me, I was forced to take out money from the ATM at the official rate. The problem is that throughout the country prices are based on the black market rate. How the average Venezuelan could afford food confounded me. My friend explained that liquidity, the cash flow, is high. An enormous quantity of cash flows through the hands of Venezuelans. A large percentage of the money derives from black market activities.

That brings us to reason number two for the worsening economic situation of the population. While the government has created a number of programs targeting poverty, it has done little to ensure that the poor are recipients of these programs. One example is the creation of socialist stores that sell staples at lower prices. There are no restrictions on who can shop at these stores. A middle-class Venezuelan could buy goods there and then could resell them for 300% more in another location. Venezuelans constantly earn and spend large amounts of cash while retaining hardly any earnings as savings. In order to consider a business profitable in Venezuela, it must have a 100% profit margin, minimum!

My friend conjectured that were it not for the country’s oil wealth, Venezuela would have the same boat as Haiti. Five years ago, the bolívar was worth three times the Colombian peso. Now the situation is the reverse. While Colombia has progressed in the last ten years, because of investments in infrastructure, investments in health and education, expansions of security forces, and increases in economic production, in Venezuela things have worsened. Colombia’s coffee industry and tourism industry generate large economic gains. Venezuela, in contrast, produces absolutely nothing because the focus is entirely on oil extraction. The third largest income-generating industry in the world is the arms industry of which the U.S. is the number one producer. The first two income-generating industries are the petroleum industry and badly-administrated petroleum industry. These statistics imply that more money flows into Venezuela annually than the U.S.!

Accordingly, middle-class Venezuelans can afford to travel to other countries and buy luxury goods such as personal computers and specialized cameras. Being in Venezuela reminded me constantly of life in the U.S. Food products in the supermarkets were American, the clothes people wore were American, and the attitudes of the people seemed to me American. The restrictions on traveling to certain countries that Venezuelans are now starting to face reminded me of the obligatory visas for Americans and Canadians only that arose during Bush’s presidency. Unlike other countries in South America where motorcycles are the norm, the streets of Caracas are flooded with cars. I haven’t seen traffic like that since leaving the U.S. It’s easy for even a low-income person to own a car in Venezuela when gas is only 0.10 bolívares ($0.05) per liter. That’s $0.20 for a gallon of gas! A person can fill the eight-cylinder tank of their sports car or Hummer for less money than it costs to buy a 600-mL bottle of water. Presidents can only raise the price of gas at the cost of their presidency. I remember that until five years ago, gas used to be cheap in the U.S. as well because of government subsidies.

Venezuela at the end of the day, despite the socialist propaganda, appears to me a reflection of the U.S. The U.S. gets rich off of wars and selling arms, Venezuela makes money from oil. American politicians act in the name of spreading democracy and freedom throughout the world; Venezuelan politicians take steps to advance the cause of socialism and equality throughout the world. Middle-class Venezuelans have their own laptops, drive their own cars everywhere, eat at Wendy’s, travel, and grab bags of Doritos from the 24-hour pharmacy at 2 AM in the morning. So do middle-class Americans. How different really are Venezuelans and Americans?

23% increase in production of Café Fama since the government took control of the company. In the heart it says "Made in socialism"

Diana Industries, monthly record of tons produced

Socialist arepas

Milk made in socialism

I had the opportunity to visit Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB), the university my friends in Caracas, Venezuela attend. Entering the university campus, I felt like I was leaving Caracas and entering California. The campus was an oasis of palm trees, green spaces, and well-constructed buildings. The university received a grant with the stipulation that it must always take care of the environment, a fact that was clearly noted walking around the campus. One grassy area was covered with a living art installation, foliage that changes colors with the seasons.

My friend showed me the cafeteria where students can eat for dirt cheap. True, there wasn’t a fantastic selection of food – a tuna fish sandwich, orange juice, and watermelon – but who can say that they genuinely enjoyed their college cafeteria’s food? Plus, the meals there are infinitely cheaper than the $10 meals they serve at American universities.

My friend explicated that USB is one of the best universities in the country. For many years, it contained the largest Internet center in the entire country. I was surprised that a school was the first place to embrace such a costly technological advance. My friend commented, “Isn’t that how a university should be, a center of learning and achievement?” I had to agree. The university set a precedent in Venezuela with its principles of academic integrity and honesty. My friend explained that unlike students in other schools in the country where students assist just to have fun, students at USB spend most of their time studying. Many of the students in fact receive job offers from other countries because of the reputation of their school. The university is truly a beacon of academic achievement and political freedom.

The cost of education at USB is only 55 bolivares fuertes. That’s $12 per year! For $30, a student can attend classes, eat, and use the ample physical fitness facilities. As I admired this haven within a city often described as hell, my friend proposed that I send my kids there: “It’s cheap and the education is good. All you need to do is pay to become a Venezuelan citizen.” Hey, that’s not a bad idea…

I was sitting on the Caracas metro during rush hour and it was packed. I had my luggage with me, a giant backpack and a smaller backpack, as I was on the way to the airport. There was no place to sit and people were pressed against each other. A woman and her daughter boarded the train. This girl was absolutely adorable, an eight year-old Venezuelan version of an American Girls Scout. The woman I was sitting next to sat the girl on her lap. A complete stranger. I had asked that same woman where my stop was located. Every stop she told me, “Don’t worry, we’re not there yet.” She made sure that I reached my destination safely.

The night before, I was taking a bus to my friends’ house and I was unsure of where to get down. The woman next to me started talking to me. I was thrilled because she actually thought I was Venezuelan for a few minutes. She asked me where I was traveling and suggested places I should visit within the city. She also ensured that I got down at the correct stop.

I honestly think that Latin Americans are the nicest people in the world. Complete strangers will strike up a conversation at the drop of a hat. Everyone wants to know your story and help you out. And it’s not just the poor people or the students; it is something that traverses economic and social class. I’ve had rich people, farmers, slum dwellers, old men, young girls, strangers on the street, and even the host of a sex talk show equally ready to help a hand to a foreigner. That’s why I love Latin Americans.

The last time I was strapped to a parachute I remember my friend commenting, “We’re just hanging out, having a conversation in the air.” Other than the initial part where the boat propelled us into the air, parasailing was smooth sailing. Paragliding yesterday (#7? on the list of adventures that haven’t yet killed me) was a much more exciting experience. I was still hanging out in the air, but this time I was hovering hundreds of feet above mountains and buildings, not just 50 feet above the ocean.

The idea of jumping off a cliff had my stomach in a knot. Luckily, as soon as my pilot strapped our harnesses together, a strong wind lifted us into the air. We floated out over the mountains carried by the powerful afternoon currents. We flew several miles away to a nearby town. I thought we were going to land in the town, but the pilot looped the parachute back around towards the mountains. Using the warm air currents coming off the rocks, we slowly rose higher and higher into the air. Finally, after about thirty minutes, we landed on the mountain from which we had taken off.

The ride was surprisingly calm and I had no fear of falling. I only experienced one brief moment of doubt and that occurred early in the flight when my pilot answered his cell phone midair: “Hello? I’m flying right now.”

When you’re an American living in the U.S., the only things you hear about Colombia is narcotrafficking and the war against drugs. But Colombia is much more than that. It’s the country of Caribbean coasts, Cali, and cocaine; it’s the country of salsa, Pablo Escobar, plastic surgery.

Cartagena, la ciudad amurallada (the walled city), astounded me with its colonial architecture and Caribbean beaches. Walking along the fortress wall that surrounds the old town, with the orange and yellow buildings and view of the beach, reminded me of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The white-sand beaches with crystal-clear water rival those of Hawaii. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see behind the façade of the beachside resorts and visit the town where the locals lived on one of the commercial islands. I even witnessed a Caribbean wedding on the beach with the whole wedding crowd immaculately dressed in white.

Then there’s Medellín, formerly the capital of the Cartel de Medellín, Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel, now the capital of fashion and plastic surgery. In Medellín, everyone dresses to impress. Watching the women walk by with their greatly enhanced breasts and butts is like watching fashion show meets freak show. Despite the obsession with fashion, Medellín was my favorite Colombian city. Its rare beauty, a combination of beauty colonial churches, modern government buildings, and high-rises against a background of mountains, had a certain charm to it that captivated me. It is definitely a city that I would like to get more in-depth.

Huila Palermo is a small town six hours south of Bogotá. It offered me a glimpse into small-town Colombian life and a view of the Colombian countryside. To reach the so-called “tourist” sites, we had to leave the beaten paths and discover them for ourselves. My friend described our adventures there in terms of those of Indiana Jones in search of hidden treasures. Even though I wasn’t with my family, celebrating Christmas there I felt like I was among close friends.

Let’s not forget Cali, salsa capital of the world (after New York)! There I attended the Fería de Cali, a weeklong festival where the highlights are performances by the dozens of salsa schools, parades, concerts (including Choc Quib Town, the Colombian group that won a Grammy), rodeos, and the Ciudad Salsa, a liquor factory that is converted into Salsa City for a week. The performances blew me away because of the dancers’ rapid movement of their feet, acrobats, and salsa on point. As I walked through Salsa City, I was overwhelmed by the caleñas passion for salsa. They sang and danced along to old videotapings of salsa performances, cheered on the Cuban salsa singers performing live, and marked out the clave (beat) with bells or their hands as they danced.

Finally, there’s Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. To me, it is a typical Latin American city with a bleak commercial center and a colorful historic center. The nice thing about Bogotá is that every Sunday they turn one of their major avenues into a ciclovía (bicycle path). As my Colombian friend and I rode through town yesterday, she pointed out the impressive architecture of the colonial churches and government buildings, and the quirky green dwarves that sit on terraces around town.

Colombia is not what I expected at all. I’ve realized that a month is way too little to cover this immense, varied, and beautiful country. I’m definitely coming back!

This year finds me celebrating my third Christmas and third New Year’s in South America. After two scorching Decembers in Paraguay, Christmas in Colombia was a relief. It was far from a white Christmas, but at least I celebrated it in a country that takes Christmas, i.e. Christmas commercialism, as seriously as the U.S. Every street in this country is covered by Christmas lights and decorations, even in the middle of the Amazon. Those are the reminders of Christmas that I miss from the U.S. The town that outdoes all the rest in its celebration of Christmas is Medellín. It’s famous for the 3 km stretch along the river with light installations in every shape and form: nutcrackers, gingerbread houses, candy canes, the Rat King, Christmas trees, elves, etc. Walking through this grand spectacle, I was like a little kid in a candy shop. I even took a picture with a Santa!

I spent Christmas Eve and Day with friends of a friend (= my new friends!) in the small town of Huila Palermo. While its lights did not rival those of Medellín, its novena (9-day Christmas show) did. We spent the days hiking, walking the Camino Real (the famous trail Simon Bolívar used to travel to Ecuador), discovering non-touristy touristic sites, visiting a farm, and riding on the back of a pickup truck, not to mention dancing until 4 AM.

I went to Cali for New Year’s as I wanted to bring in the New Year dancing. During the week in Cali celebrated (its fair) the Fería de Cali, aka the biggest salsa festival in the world in the salsa capital of the world. Although the week was filled with performances, concerts, and revelry, New Year’s Eve itself was much more tranquilo.

I spent New Year’s with Andrés, the Colombian whose house I’d been Couchsurfing at and his girlfriend. We set out around 11 AM for a nearby neighborhood. Andrés told me we had to pay toll. Toll for what? We walked through an alley and then right through a house, pausing for a moment to hand the house owner change. He was serious about the toll! “Whyy didn’t we go around the house?” I asked. He explained that the entrance to the neighborhood was a good distance away so the majority of people used the same shortcut. Charging 100 pesos (5¢) per person, he said the house owners make up to 60,000 pesos ($33) a day!

After the “tollbooth,” Andrés’s girlfriend took off for her parents’ house and Andrés and I went to his cousins’ house. We hung out on the balcony of the house where there was a giant speaker blaring the radio countdown over the whole neighborhood. As I looked out onto the lights-covered street, all the neighbors were doing the same thing. There was a family grilling meat and children exploding fireworks. It was like a neighborhood block party for the Fourth of July. A few minutes before 12, we toasted and hugged each other. I could tell that it was an intimate annual ceremony reaffirming the bond between brothers in a family where the parents are no longer around. As I stared out over the balcony awaiting midnight, I realized I was content; not exuberant or depressed, simply content to be spending my New Year’s Eve with new friends and grateful to still be in Latin America.

This New Year finds me still on the road, still traveling. Last year I spent four months traveling through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. This year I’ll be traveling to Venezuela and Brazil. I know the question on many of your minds is, “Pooja, when are you coming home?” The truth is, I don’t know, but I can promise it will be this year! Happy New Year’s everyone!

Pictures of Colombia!

"For his dissertation he and a partner had registered all of the higher plants found in a hectare of jungle. The number was enormous. But what was most interesting to me was that for many of the plants there was only one example in that hectare. That, to me, explained the frailty of the Amazon more than anything else could. If, for instance, we had to walk nearly an hour to reach a Banisteriopsis caapi - ayahuasca - vine, then it was probably the only example of that vine for a couple of miles in any direction. Imagine if instead of an ayahuasca vine, that was a particular type of fruit-bearing tree whose fruit was the food of a particular species of monkey. If someone cut that tree down, that monkey would have no reason to enter those several square miles any longer, and would change its feeding route. In turn, the insects that fed on the waste produced by that monkey would no longer be found there, nor would the animals that depended on those insects for food. And if that particular tree only occurred any three miles for some reason, and if each were cut down over a 20-mile area, there would probably be no seeds dropped by those monkeys to ever propagate that tree in that area again. So the ants that fed off its bark, the monkey that its fruit, the insects that ate the droppings, the animal that ate the insects, and so forth, would all be seriously affected." (Peter Gorman, Ayahuasca in My Blood, 160-161)

I tried to get high in the Amazon jungle. More specifically, I tried to acid trip on

ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, or “soul vine,” is a medicine used by the people of the

Amazonia. Its main ingredient is the ayahuasca vine, but it also consists of the barks of several other trees including capirona (firewood tree), catahua, lupuna (kapok tree), uchú sanango, and the leaves of chacruna. Amazonian people believe that illnesses are caused by negative energy in the spirit world such as el mal ojo (“the evil eye”) and brujería (witchcraft or spells). Ayahuasca is not your typical Western medicine. People visit a curandero (healer) who prepares and then administers the medicine during a special night ceremony. Often they ask him to find the causes of illnesses while under the influence of the drug. Everyone drinks the pungent brew. It causes la purga (“the purge”), a physical cleansing, in other words, vomiting and often diarrhea. Then they start hallucinating and seeing visions. They see psychadelic colors, the kind that you associate with the ’70s and LSD. Many people use ayahuasca for the visions, to discover truths about themselves. They see past lives and replay sins committed in their current lives. They travel with animals, visit distant friends and relatives, and hear voices. I wanted to drink ayahuasca. I wanted visions.

First, my guide had to find a shaman. He came back with his 21 year-old neighbor.

Great, I was going to have a kid as my shaman. I was reassured when I learned that he

was the grandson of the great Julio Jerena, a renowned ayahuasca healer. The morning

of the ceremony, we went on a mission to collect the ingredients for the ayahuasca.

We used a machete to cut the bark from a capirona and other trees. My shaman looked

like the strong man at the circus as he scaled the thick ayahuasca vine with a machete in his mouth, searching for a good piece to cut. Once back the campsite, he put the ingredients in a large pot along with several gallons of water and placed them over the fire. As he worked, he sopla-d (blew) the mixture with mapacho (hand-rolled cigarette) smoke to ward off bad spirits and cleanse the pot of negative energy. After several hours, he strained the mixture using an old shirt. Then he set it back on the fire and let it boil again. Several hour later he repeated the procedure. At 4 PM, eight hours after he started, the mixture was ready. Out of 20 liters of water, only half a liter was left.

The ceremony began at 8 PM. The shaman chanted icaros (songs composed for the ceremony) over the ayahuasca and then passed us each ¼ cup. I only remember some of the words: “Buena medicina, buena medicina/ Legitima medicina/ Legitimo doctorcito…Dominando la ciencia oculta…Llamando a los espíritus/ Llamando a los demonios/ Mágica blanca, mágica verde, mágica roja, mágica negra” (“Good medicine, good medicine/ Legitimate medicine/ Legitimate little doctor…Dominating the occult science…Calling the spirits/ Calling the demons/ White magic, green magic, red magic, black magic.” He sure invited everyone to join in the ceremony! The man next to me drank and then gagged from the foul taste. I, on the other hand, had little trouble swallowing my portion. The shaman drank, turned off the lights, and we waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. No lights, no colors, just pitch black.

As I stared into the darkness, I began to imagine that the lighter spaces where the sky showed in between the trees were a jaguar’s eyes staring at me. They began to spin. They turned into three diamonds and spun back and forth like a screensaver. I knew it wasn’t the ayahuasca, it was just my mind playing tricks on me out of the pure boredom of staring into blackness for too long. I kept on closing my eyes, hoping that when I opened them my world would explode into bright colors. I hoped for yellows and greens, maybe oranges and reds.

Two hours passed by. My world remained black other the occasional shooting star or exploding light. The shaman continued to sing his icaros and shake his shacapa (leaf-rattle). “Cristhian,” I whispered, “no veo nada” (“I don’t see anything”). “What is your name?” he asked me. “Pooja.” “Come here,” he said, beckoning me to the space in front of his feet. He shook his shacapa over my head and prayed for the spirits to give me clear visions, “Buena mariación/ Claros visions…” I returned to my seat and waited another 30 minutes. “Would you like to drink more?” he finally asked. Hell yeah. I wasn’t leaving until I saw something.

The second cup was much more vile than the first. I could barely keep it down. The urge to vomit came upon me so suddenly that I didn’t even make it off the porch. Reaching the railing, I threw up a second and third time. Of course, most of what I threw up was water because I hadn’t been allowed to touch food since breakfast. In my daze, I imagined that my bile was bright yellow, yellow like the salsa of papa a la huancaina. I lay back down. The world remained black.

At 11:30, the shaman lit a candle thus ending the ceremony. The man next to me, who had also drank, was pleasantly high. He was singing. I was not a little disappointed. As I stumbled off the porch and to my room, I felt drunk (at least what I can imagine being drunk feels like). I walked as if I’d put on the beer goggles from my tenth-grade drivers’ education class. I continued to feel sick to my stomach and visualized brief explosions of light, it took me an hour to fall asleep.

Neither the shaman nor my guide’s parents spoke over breakfast the next morning, I assumed because they didn’t want to mention the previous night’s failure. I was only too happy to shovel beans and rice, fried plantains, avocado salad, oatmeal, and fruit salad into my mouth. No one said anything until my guide walked in, sat down, and commented, “Pooja es muy fuerte” (“Pooja is very strong”). He told me that he didn’t drink because “You didn’t last for five minutes with the sapo. I thought, ‘This [the ayahuasca] is going to get her good.” His father cut in saying that on some people, who are far and few between, ayahuasca has no effect. However, some of those people, the sapo nearly kills them. “Tienes un espiritú raro,” (“You have a rare spirit”) he remarked. It could’ve also been because it was first time. The second time could be different. I don’t know whether I’ll ever have the chance to try ayahuasca again, but I honestly would like to. I want to see yellows and greens.

The ayahuasca vine

The shaman preparing the brew

Ayahuasca cooking

The shaman tackling the ayahuasca vine

What people see when they're on ayahuasca

What people see when they're on ayahuasca

When I first heard about el sapo I thought, “What kind of crazy person would try that?” Now I know, me. Sapo is a medicine used by the Matses tribe in the Peruvian Amazon. It supposedly sharpens the senses and increase stamina making the Matses people who use it better hunters. Sapo is the sweat of the giant monkey tree frog, which the Matses people collect by catching a frog, tying its legs to four posts, making it nervous, and then scraping off its sweat before releasing the unharmed, but no doubt petrified, animal (unfortunately, I did not get to see this part as my guide had a pre-collected sample available on a stick).* I wanted to try sapo because I thought that it would help me “see” the animals in the jungle better.

The morning of my introduction to sapo, I was terrified. I had been forewarned by my guide that sapo was “Fuerte, muy fuerte. Pero pasa después de 30-40 minutos,” (“strong, very strong. But it passes after 30, 40 minutes”). What was I doing here? Here I was, a vegetarian from Virginia, being inducted into an age-old medicine used by Amazonian hunters for centuries. What was I expected to do, become the frog? I sat anxiously in the kitchen watching my guide eat breakfast (I wasn’t allowed to eat anything as sapo would mostly likely force me to throw it up) and whittle a stick with a machete. I grew more nervous watching his father walk around me with a smoldering log, while my guide “prepared” the sapo (he spat on the stick and then vigorously rubbed the resin and substance into a paste). He then stuck a small stick into the faggot, setting it on fire before burning me with it three times. After scraping away the skin, he applied the paste. My skin already stung from the burns, but the moment the “medicine” touched my body, my heart started to race. I felt it beating hard in my chest as a current raced through my body. All of a sudden, I found myself lying on the floor without knowing how I got there. I felt my hosts place a cold towel on my forehead and lemon halves on my temples. I sat up and proceeded to throw up, twice. My entire body convulsed and I repeated, “Oh god, oh god.” My guide poured a pitcher of water over my head and had me lie down. Twenty minutes later, I felt well enough to stand and eat.

Later in the day, during our jungle walk, we spotted hoatzin, horned screamers, monkeys, a three-toed sloth, and alligator, tapir, capybara, and jaguar tracks. My guide’s father told me that I saw many animals because sapo brings luck. I don’t know about that, but I know that I sweated loads more than my companions. I also felt more alert to the sights and sounds of the jungle than I did previously. I felt the presence of the monkeys way before my guide spotted them. I didn’t try hunting, but I successfully stabbed a fish with a spear. We cut the fish up into small pieces with a machete and then used it as bait to catch piranhas. How’s that for the power of the sapo? Excuse me, I have to go, I feel a croak coming on.

*In his book Ayahuasca in My Blood, Peter Gorman says, “In large doses, the intense sweating it causes could make a Matses hunter ‘invisible’ to poor-sighted but acute-smelling jungle animals by temporarily eliminating the human odor. In studies by the University of Rome, sapo would found to have bio-active proteins, meaning that the body believes it has produced them and reacts accordingly.

El sapo

Nervous but excited

I'm smiling because I thought the burning was going to be the worst part

My guide applying the paste

In pain

It got pretty intense

As a lifelong traveler (I've been traveling since I was in the womb), I've come to associate different places with smells, noises, feelings. India is one of the places with the strongest associations for me. When my grandmother returns from India and opens her suitcases, I inhale deeply and think, "It smells like India." I can't describe the smell, some sort of sweet perfume particular to India. Other smells often remind me of India, including dust, urine, and jasmine.

I was thinking about this recently when in Taropoto and Yurimaguas, entrances to the Peruvian jungle. Everything reminded me of India. Every morning I awoke to motorcycle traffic, noise, and intense heat. It even smelled like India. And I was filled with a desire to visit India, despite the fact that I recently visited it in July. I crave India.

Do you associate smells or other sensations with countries?

As I lay on a hammock on a boat floating up Río Mañon, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is this normal?” On the one hand, this is something I’ve dreamed of my whole life. On the other, it’s a crazy premise: “Let’s go on a three-day boat ride in a shitty boat and try to have a good time.” You might think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. This was no luxury ship, folks. The lancha, or ship, had two decks, both of which were chock-full of hammocks. Swinging side-to-side in my hammock, I would bump into my neighbor. There were too few bathrooms for the approximately 200 passengers and it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that they made my latrine in Paraguay look nice. I was particularly worried as my stomach hadn’t been doing so well (probably a combination of eating at markets and 5-sole-menu places where I drank the juices).

The upper deck was unenclosed but thankfully had a roof to protect us from the intense sun, allowing breeze from the river to fan us. Of course, there’s not much breeze when your boat only moves at 10 MPH. From our hammocks, we could watch the jungle banks passing by. A few times, we heard squawking and spotted a flock of parrots flying up from the tree tops.

The second day passed much as the first, full of reading and amacar-ing (“to hammock oneself,” yes, Spanish has a verb for that). The grand adventure of the day occurred when the boat stopped at the town of Santa Rita. The Argentine hippies, having devoted the whole day to weaving bracelets and smoking weed, decided to divert themselves by practicing juggling. Unfortunatley, one ball rolled off the upper deck of the boat and into the water. The Argentine luckily was sober enough to ignore his friend’s cries of “!Tirate!” (“Throw yourself in!”). Seeing this, one boy from Santa Rita ran down to the water and jumped into a boat. He didn’t even have an oar; he had to paddle with his feet. As the whole town looked on from the shore, a second boat, this one with a motor, joined the search-and-rescue mission. To the delight of the crowd of passengers on the boat and on-lookers onshore, the second boat returned triumphantly with the pink ball captured. The Argentine thanked the boat driver with a bracelet and then proceeded to drop the ball…Don’t worry, he caught it this time.

In the evening, the colors of the setting sun were intensified by the immense gray clouds. The wind picked up, threatening to throw our things overboard, and it started to pour. We ran for shelter, forgetting that we were on a boat. The only protection it could offer us was a plastic curtain and a leaky roof. I lay in my hammock journaling, as water dripped on me. The storm quickly picked up strength and speed and transformed from a welcome source of cooling air into a freezing, terrorizing rain. Large drops of water rolled down from the ceiling, soaking me. I hid inside my hammock, but it did little to protect me. A fellow Peruvian passenger had a br4illiant solution to stop the leaks: he placed life jackets over the holes in the roof to absorb the rain. I passed the night alternatively sweating from the heat and humidity and shivering from the waves of cold washing over me.

Around 4 Am the third day, we passed by Nauta, a town which marks the beginning of the Río Amazonas. Other than that, the third day was marked by a desperate urge to off the boat. I was not the only one who felt that way. As we neared shore, a bull broke through the wooden fence that contained it and swam toward freedom. I was tempted to do the same. It had been three days since I’d last showered and my supply of bottled water was nearly out. The brown sewage that surrounded the boat (aka the Amazon River) wasn’t an appealing option to bathe in. The phrase “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,” came to my mind.

We finally arrived at Iquitos, the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by land. It is only accessible by boat and plane. When we arrived, I spotted “cruise” ships (the South American version in any case) anchored at the port with air conditioning and individual cabins. “Psshaah,”I thought to myself. “They missed a true Amazonian river adventure!”

A lancha similar to the one I rode on:

The bottom deck, a storage deck for beverages, bananas, and bulls:

Relaxing in my hammock:

The lower deck was much more crowded:

Vendors entered the boat at every port:

Boats on the river:

The pink ball rescued!

A crowd of onlookers watches:

I just did the sixth stupid thing on my list of adventures that can potentially kill me (driving a motorcycle, climbing a 6,000 meter mountain, biking down Death Road, rafting in level 4 rapids, and surfing). But before we get to that, let you me tell you about Huacachina. Huacachina is known as “the oasis” because although the town is in the middle of the desert, in its center is a gorgeous lagoon. Enormous sand dunes surround the town, lending an imposing presence to Huacachina and making one feel like she is in the Sahara Desert.

Nearby is the town of Paracas, famous for the Islas Ballestas. After waking up early at 6 AM, I was driven to Paracas and then placed on a motor boat. What is impressive about the small islands is how many thousands of birds they are home to. The stony islands are covered with all sorts of marine life, including pelicans, Humboldt penguins, and seals. Pelicans are truly extraordinary birds to observe. They are giant (2-3 feet tall) with huge beaks that can swallow fish whole. When they fly, they hover a foot above the water for minutes before soaring high into the air. It appears as if they are racing boats when they do that.

In the evening, I went sandboarding. To reach the peaks of the dunes, you have to take a dune buggy. The setting is surreal, as if Dali painted it. One believes that the sinuous curves carved by an imaginative god. Of course, it is also reminiscent of everyone’s favorite childhood Disney movie Aladdin.

Riding on a dune buggy is like being on a rollercoaster with no railings. The vehicle can move in every direction, up, down, sideways, over hills, and down into valleys of sand. We screamed with terror as our buggy whipped around jagged peaks or rolled down large dunes. Finally we reached a point where we could practice sandboarding. I ski, but sandboarding is completely different. Looking down at steep drop-offs while other novice sandboarders plummet into the sand, can be a little intimidating. As the guide grabbed my board to get me started I shrieked, “Not now!” “When?” he asked. “Más tarde” (“Later”), I responded. Actually, going down wasn’t that bad. The hard part was learning how to balance on the board. Unlike snow, sand is a) not as slippery and b) a lot heavier when it piles up on your board, making forward movement impossible.

When we reached the “black diamonds” of sandboarding, most of us went down on our stomachs. It was hilarious listening to the initial screams ensuing from both the males and females and the pause five seconds later as they realized that they were not in fact going to die. Our attempts to board down these dunes resulted in spills, wipe outs, and cries by our friends of “Ohhh!!! Did you see that? That must have hurt!”

The scariest part of the day was actually the return trip to Huacachina. By then, the sun had set and we couldn’t see anything. Our nocturnal adventure was intensified by all the bumps that the driver had managed to avoid during the day. We felt every one I don’t think our driver had heard the term “whiplash”). At the same time, the buggy tested its horsepower against the height of the dunes and unfortunately, it didn’t always win. Rolling backwards down hills you can’t see is a bit nerve-wracking, to say the least. While the others encouraged the buggy onward (“Go, go, go!”), I muttered my own form of encouragement (“Please go forward, please go forward”). We eventually made it out of the pitch black desert and back to Huacachina, in spite of our driver trying to scale the asphalt roads at the bottom as if they were sand dunes. What a day! It’s good to know that I don’t have to exercise to get my heart rate up!

I just did another thing to add to my list of stupid things, I surfed. You would think that growing up on an island, I´d already have surfing down pat. The truth is that I never had the chance to try it.

This morning, I arrived in Trujillo, a town along the northern coastline of Peru that is famous for its waves. After donning our wetsuits, our guide had me and an Australian guy practice on the sand. We had two positions and then "Up!" at which point we had to jump up and assume surfing position. It was a bit like doing push ups, the up-down-up-down motion.

Surfing is hard work. First you have to paddle yourself and our board far from shore and out into the water, all the while swimming against the force of the incoming current. Jumping onto the board also takes a good deal of arm strength and leaves you sore (and me with a bruise) from where you repeatedly hit your chest with the board.

The first hour-and-a-half was rough. I got whacked by my board, swallowed nearly a gallon of salt water, and neardly had someone land on me with their board. To combat my exhaustion, my instructor cheerfully encouraged me, "¡Sí, se puede!" ("Yes, you can!"). It took several tries to get me off my knees and onto my feet, but even then I wouldn't let go of the board with my hands. When I finally stood up and started surfing, it was exhilerating. It felt like flying. I can't wait to give it another go tomorrow!

Nazca = super disappointing

UNESCO, please stop declaring every place a World Heritage Site. Pretty soon it´s going to be like receiving "two thumbs up" from Ebert.

The ninth and most famous Incan king (Inca actually means “king”) was named Pachacuti (1438-71). Legend has it that he met a girl in the Urubamba Valley and spent one amorous sunset with her. The girl’s mother was a seer and predicted that Pachacuti would rule the Incans. Her daughter was worried that Pachacuti would never return as although kings could have many concubines, they could only have one wife and that wife would be queen. “Besides,” she told him, “your people and mine might be enemies one day.” Pachacuti assured her that would never happen and promised to build her a palace in the place where they spent the sunset.

Sure enough, Pachucuti became king as the seer has foretold. He sent his soldiers out in the four cardinal directions to conquer different regions and expand the Incan empire. As custom demanded, he married a girl from the upper class (Incans usually married a half-sibling to maintain the blood line). In the meantime, he returned to the Urubamba Valley and secretly married his lover.

At the time, fighting between the Incas and the Kollas in Bolivias was splitting the empire in two. Pachucuti had to return to Cusco, the capital of the Incan empire, leaving behind his lover. Unbeknownst to him, she was pregnant at the time. She had the child and named him Ollantay. His grandmother predicted that he would either take over the kingdom or die. His mother sent him to Pachucuti, asking that he serve as a soldier in the king’s army. She never told the king that the young man was his son.

Ollantay became good friends with one Tupac Yanqui, one of Pachucuti’s sons and his half-brother. At the time, there was a campaign of 100 battles. Because of his faithful service to the king, Pachucuti named him general. When a rebellion took place in the town of Tumpas, the king therefore sent Ollantay to quell it. He succeeded and the town was renamed Ollantaytambo (now one of the three famous towns to visit in the Sacred Valley).

Meanwhile, Ollantay had falled in love with K (don’t remember her name). K was Pachucuti’s favorite daughter and her father didn’t want her to marry anyone. When he found out that Ollantay was in love with her, he asked Tupac Yanqui to send the upstart on the Incan expedition to Micronesia and Polynesia. As Tupac was good friends with him, he didn’t but told his father that he had. Ollantay used the opportunity to seek out the daughter, secretly marry her, and have a child with her.

Pachucuti had by then started construction of Macchu Picchu, supposedly as a palace for his love. He promised a reward to anyone who could bring water to the site. No one could. Ollantay was incredibly intelligent. Looking to the surroundings he saw the grandiose glacier Apu Salkantay. He decided to construct a canal from the glacier to Macchu Picchu. As a reward, he asked for K’s hand in marriage. Pachucuti refused. Ollantay decided to attack the king and wrest power from him in order to marry his daughter. He did not have the chance to carry out his plan, as his grandmother told him of the prophecy made long ago. She said that he had two options, he could kill his father or he could immolate himself – sacrifice himself on Salkantay so that his spirit would embody the mountain forever. Ollantay decided to do the latter.

Meanwhile, someone went running to Pachucuti and informed him of his son’s plan. Pachucuti was very sad. Yet, he decided that he could not give up his kingdom. He allowed Ollantay to proceed with his plan of sacrificing himself. For the next several decades, he told his children and grandchildren to look towards Salkantay and worship it because the glacier contained the spirit of Ollantay and the water running toward Macchu Picchu was Ollantay’s blood. Pachucuti lived to be 120 years old and died alone.

Last week I set off on the five day Salkantay trek from Cusco to Macchu Picchu. Our group consisted of two Canadians, three South Africans, three Spanish, three French, one Argentine, and two Americans. Our guide was a crazy Peruvian named Eduardo. He rambled on about how he used to smoke marijuana but stopped three years ago. “Cactus juice is much stronger,” he said with a wink.

The nine hours we walked from Mollepata (2,900 meters, 9,500+ feet above sea level) took us past the Salkantay glacier, snow-capped mountains, and the Río Apurimac. The most beautiful view, however, was that of the Umantay glacier. That night we set up camp in the Soraypampa village (3,850 meters, 12,600+ feet).

The second day we walked another nine hours from Soraypampa to Challway. We hiked through a place called Pampas Salkantay and climbed up to 4,600 meters (15,100 feet)! That same day, we hiked down to 2,920 meters (9,600 feet). The walk up Umantay was strenuous, to say the least. The higher we climbed, the thinner the air became. I struggled to breathe. We finally reached the second-highest point in the Cusco region and were greeted by snow. I danced around excitedly like a five year-old child, eagerly trying to catch snowflakes on my tongue. I hadn’t seen snow in more than two years! After a while though, the snow wasn’t as fun. It turned to hail and soaked us to the bone. We ran down the slippery mountain slope, desperate to reach the bottom and escape the pouring rain. As I battled a combination of weak knees and mud, I slipped and hit my left-side against a rock. No harm done though, well, not too much. As I limped along, my guide helped me with my backpack and walked slowly beside me, recounting the story of Macchu Picchu. I finally made it to Challway where we camped for the night.

The third day consisted of a six-hour hike to Playa Sahuayaco, during which we passed by the town of Collpabamba. Collpabamba is in the middle of a cloud forest and is surrounded by waterfalls, thermal hot springs, and exotic flora and birds. While the jungle setting bored the others in the group, I enthusiastically ran around snapping pictures of flowers and plants. “Ooh, fern!” I guess all that time in Paraguay has turned me into a keen observer of nature and a lover of everything jungle. That night we made camp near the hot springs of Santa Teresa.

Speed-walking four hours from Santa Teresa to Llactapata to Hidroelectrica sucked. We paid little attention to the coffee plantations, beautiful landscapes, and diverse flora and fauna along the route, as the heat and dust from the road we walked on made us miserable. We completed 8.5 km in less than two hours before embarking on an additional 11 km along the railway tracks to the town of Aguas Calientes. In my fatigued haze I wished we could just take the train instead of walking. Nonetheless, the flora and fauna were gorgeous, especially the recently planted plantains (we all know me and my obsession with bananas!).

The morning sky on the last day did not bode well. We left our hostel at 4 AM, dressed in ponchos to protect us from the rain, and walked to Macchu Picchu. We could feel the impact of every kilometer during the past four days as we dragged our sore bodies up the 2,700 steps to Macchu Picchu. The view was incredible! I cannot put into words the feeling of first gazing upon Macchu Picchu. It was worth every moment of the four days of pain and struggle. The sheer scale of it, the Incans’ technology, the surrounding mountain peaks, the cloudy mists that envelop it, all make it appear like an image from a dream.

After a tour of the ruins, we decided to climb up Huayna Picchu (when you look at a picture of Macchu Picchu, it is the taller of the two mountains). It was a steep walk with indentations where steps should be. While I cursed the Incans for construction all their cities on mountains and those “lazy bastards who took the train to Macchu Picchu,” the Spaniards led the group in a cheer of “¡Vamos a tomar un Pilsen! Grupo Pilsen!” (“We’re going to drink a Pilsen [beer]. Team Pilsen!”). Finding little motivating about a beer, I eagerly added, “¡Y una pizza!” (“And a pizza”). From the top of Huayna Picchu, you get a bird’s-eye view of the ruins.

Even though I could hardly move my feet, I continued to explore the ruins. Each wall, each building was more impressive than the last. I ended my tour at the guard’s house, the spot from where you get the postcard view of Macchu Picchu. I thought the ruins were incredible enough when I entered the place, but at that moment I thought I would never see anything more incredible in my life. The mountains and the ruins is enough to make you misty.

Our five day trek took us through excruciating altitudes, snow, hail, rain, scorching sun, snow-capped mountains, and jungle. We walked close to 80 km in four days. It was all worth it though, to finally see Macchu Picchu at the end.

For more pictures of the Salkantay Trek and Macchu Picchu, click the links

I thought that biking the Death Road was the most dangerous and stupidest thing I’d ever done until I attempted to climb Huayna Potosi (HP). HP is one of the mountains in the Cordillera Real mountain-range that surrounds La Paz. Its height is 6,088 meters (for all you metrically challenged people that is 19974 feet!).

When I heard about the Cordillera Real I thought, “I like mountains. Maybe I should try climbing one.” HP is, after all, the most accessible 6,000 meter peak in the world. Then again, that’s not saying much. That’s the height of the Mt. Everest basecamp! One of the guys in my group exclaimed with disbelief, “You’ve never trekked before and you decided to climb a 6,000 meter mountain!” Yup!

I spent several days in La Paz acclimatizing to the altitude (3,700 meters). I figured that after those days added onto the four weeks I’ve spent traveling through various high-altitude cities in Bolivia (Salares – 5,000 meters, Potosi – 4,060 meters), I’d be fine. In Potosi, I struggled to reach the third floor of my hostel. I would arrive winded and panting. Whereas in La Paz, I’ve been able to run up and down staircases without a problem.

We set out on Monday and reached the basecamp around noon. After lunch, we hiked 40 minutes and then suited up. We had to put on snow boots, crampons, helmets, and harnesses, and carry an ice pick in one hand. We weren’t just mountain climbing, we were climbing a glacier! That day our guides taught us how to climb ice. The trick is to hammer your axe into the ice and trust that your crampons will hold your weight.

The next morning, we hiked 2.5 hours with the weight of our mountaineering equipment on our backs. Even though we were only ascending from 4,700 meters to 5,100 meters, we could feel the change in altitude. Only 20 minutes into our trek, I was having trouble breathing. I couldn’t catch my breath because of the lack of oxygen molecules in the air. We all took a long siesta once we reached the high camp.

Despite the fact that we woke up at 4 PM, we were back in bed by 7 to prepare ourselves for the next day’s climb before dawn. I didn’t sleep a wink I was so nervous. We woke up at midnight, suited up, and left at 1 AM. My four person group was broken into two pairs of two climbers each with a guide. We used our headlamps to navigate across rocks until we reached ice. Then we began our slow ascent.

Imagine climbing up an incredibly steep climb. Feel the pain as you place one foot above the other. Now imagine that you are walking on ice. Mountain climbing is like that, slow and painful. It’s similar to running a marathon. You know that those 4-5 hours of pain are only temporary, they’ll be over soon, but in that moment, the only thing you can think about is the pain.

The worst part, even more than the leg pain, was the altitude sickness. Altitude is a funny thing. It can give you headaches, nausea, and even kill you. I’m prone to headaches at high altitudes. Fortunately, the altitude sickness pill I took n the morning warded off head pains. Unfortunately, my stomach felt like it was going to explode. I had to pop a squat at 5,500 meters!

In spite of the pain, we walked onwards. We climbed from 1 AM to 4:30 AM, by which time we reached 5,700 meters. By then, the nausea, dizziness, and lack of energy overwhelmed me. We had to turn back. Out of our group of four, only one person summited.

No harm done. Sure, my body feels like a wreck and my stomach still wants to explode, but I made it to 5,700 meters! For a first timer, that’s great! I also managed to catch some amazing views of the sunrise on the way down the mountain. Besides, I have glory, and that lasts forever.

It wouldn't be Bolivia without the llamas!

Mountaineers who died trying to climb Huayna Potosi

Beautiful sunrise

In the clouds

I never thought I’d attend a wrestling match ever, let alone in Bolivia of all places. But that’s exactly how I passed a Sunday afternoon in La Paz. I attended “Cholitas Wrestling,” a wrestling event infamous for its cholita fighters. Cholitas are women dressed in traditional Bolivian clothing. We knew it would be ridiculous, but we didn’t realize just how ridiculous.

Like WWF wrestling, the fighting was a farce (well, other than that part when a man split a chair over a woman’s head). The fighters delivered well-timed blows and kicks and reacted with screams and groans of pain. Instead of arbitrating the fights, the referees often aided one player. There were men fighters dressed in typical wrestling costumes, but there were also women fighters. You can imagine the spectacle that posed, a man in a Mexican wrestling mask fight a woman in a long skirt and bowler hat. We, of course, cheered for the women, especially the plump one who repeatedly blew air kisses to our friend. One fighter, who was dressed like Spiderman, acted like a true comic-book hero. My favorite character was the clown who came running out singing and skipping with a group of little children before he beat up another fighter.

I don’t know if I learned anything from witnessing my first wrestling match. It was certainly very random. And at the end of the day I can say that I saw Bolivian señoras beating each other up.

Enjoying jello at the match

A cholita

Getting pinned

A cholita rousing the crowd

Even the baby got into it!

I just did one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. It was also one of the most amazingly stupid things I’ve ever done. I biked down the Camino del Muerte (Death Road). The Death Road begins in La Cumbre and ends in Coroico, Bolivia, about three hours from La Paz. It runs downhill for 63 kilometers. That is 63 km of unpaved, windy mountainous roads overlooking a sheer drop of 5,000 meters. The Death Road is also known as “The Most Dangerous Road in the World” because of the number of people killed driving down in. In addition to the odd car that goes over the edge every so often, there was the truck that toppled killing 100 people. The Death Road has become a popular location for bike tours offered to adrenaline junkie gringos. Since the bicycle tours began in 1998, 18 people have died from England, Ireland, Holland, etc. In fact, the agency I went with, though reliable, had a picture of an English boy taken 5 minutes before he went tumbling over a cliff. Maybe it was an effort to fit in with other gringos or it was because I like challenges or it was the fact that I’m an idiot, but when I heard about the Death Road bike tours I thought, “Sign me up!”

Now you’ve heard about my adventures biking in Paraguay and you know how my bike and I didn’t exactly get along. I’m the type of person who doesn’t like going at full speed because I’m afraid of losing control. In fact, I’d often hurtle down hills in my Paraguayan village screaming “Sai Ram” and hoping not to die. So why would I willingly subject myself to that feeling for 63 km?

In the end it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We had several guides riding with us throughout the journey. Don’t get me wrong, I was scared shitless. I even flipped over my bike, although I survived with hardly a scratch thanks to my helmet, elbow pads, and knee pads (safety is cool kids!). I never had that type of safety gear in Paraguay.

So what now? “Pooja, you just survived the Death Road. What are you going to do next?” I’m going to run a triathlon!

Ho hum, another crocodile. Is there anything else interesting to see? That’s what the Pampas experience in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia is like. As you float down the river in a canoe, you are surrounded by alligators, capybaras, cranes, herons, a wide variety of birds, and the occasional caiman crocodile. If you’re lucky, you might also spot monkeys, piranhas, buceo dolphins, and even an anaconda. At first the experience of spotting a like alligator less than ten feet away from you is terrifying. They look like wooden statues with glass eyes that stare into your soul. After a while though, you get used to it. The Pampas is truly a phenomenal place.

The problem is the environmental and ethical destruction being wrought on the Pampas. Most tour agencies allow you to fish for piranhas, swim with the dolphins, hold monkeys, and catch anacondas. Let’s just say that these practices are not the best for the animals. I chose one of the few companies that do not condone these practices. The problem is that few tourists would do the same either because of the thrill of playing with/hunting animals or the added costs of an ecologically-sound tour package.

The other problem does not derive from the tourists’ presence, but rather the farmers’. Unlike Parque Nacional Madidi, the jungle, most of the Pampas is unprotected, privately-owned land. In the jungle, farmers rely on organic methods, such as the recycling of crop wastes as compost and animal feed, instead of chemicals pesticides to cultivate their crops. Their plantains, corn, sugarcane, etc. grow well because of the climate and fertile soil. In spite of these same natural advantages, the majority of farmers in the Pampas practice scorch-and-burn agriculture. That means that the Pampas is burning. Every year farmers set fire to the grass they use to aliment their cows, in hopes that they can destroy weeds and encourage better plant growth, despite the fact that burning grass destroys soil fertility over time. This year, the fires have gone out of control. Not only grass, but animals are burning.

It’s hard for the government to exert control since the Pampas are privately-owned. The private ownership of the Pampas derives from the colonial era. Most of the owners have latifundios, defined by Wikipedia as ‘an agrarian exploitation of large dimensions, characterized by an inefficient use of available resources.’ Even though the law only allows for maximum ownership by an individual of 20,000 hectares, some of these farmers own up to 30,000 hectares; this in an area where the majority of farmers only own up to 5 or 6 hectares.

I think it’s time for the government to step in. The ecological balance of the Pampas is at risk. It would be a shame for the government to let political concerns lead to the destruction of such a wonderful and unique environmental gem like they have in the Paraguayan Bosque Atlántico de Alto Parana and the Brazilian Amazon.

It was a Saturday night in Bolivia and some local friends took me dancing. We were wandering around the streets looking for a place to go when I witnessed a truck full of army soldiers roll up to the club, out of which poured more than a dozen soldiers. Several marched directly into the club, while the rest blockaded the entrance. 20 minutes later, soldiers left the establishment escorting a number of teenage males. “What’s going on?” I asked my friends. They replied that those teenagers were minors and the army was taking them to jail for the night. That seemed ironic given that the soldiers themselves only looked to be around 18-19-years old. “The army? Isn’t that a bit extreme?” They explained that military service in Bolivia is obligatory from the age of 18 onwards. 16- and 17-year olds are mandated to join the pre-military, but many don’t because of the high cost of enlisting. “What will happen to them?” “They’ll stay in prison for the night and in the morning their parents will be notified.” Wow. If I was a 16-year old boy and a dozen soldiers yanked me out of a club, I’d be scared shitless. I’d never drink again until I was of age. Extreme or appropriate solution?

The night I slept in the jungle I had an interesting dream. Not so much a dream, it was more of a nightmare for me. My travel buddy and I were driving around Paraguay. Well, in my dream we were in Paraguay, but it looked like my neighborhood in the U.S. I was angry with him because he scratched the front of my Toyota Avalon. “Look, my insurance is going to go up and my parents are going to be mad at me,” I told him. He told me not to worry, as he knew what he was doing. That part of the dream must have been related to our motorcycle incident.

We entered my house and I had to put in the alarm code. I was getting ready to move and I was going to leave all the stuff in my house behind. Looking around my friend said, “It’s a beautiful house. Why would you leave all this behind?” “I’m not coming back to Paraguay. I’m leaving,” I repeated frantically.

Finally, I remember having applied to five graduate schools and being rejected by three. I was worried that if I wasn’t accepted, I would have no future. Only I would have a nightmare about graduate schools while I was in the middle of the Amazonian jungle, surrounded by wild animals.

I spent my birthday this year in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon. After days of harrowing bus rides (Normal People Fly), my friend and I finally arrived in Rurrenabaque. The next day we set out on a jungle tour with Mashaquipe, an eco-friendly, community-based tour agency. Its staff and guides are from the jungle itself.

Our first stop was a farm which cultivated caña dulce (sugarcane). I’ve seen plenty of sugarcane grown in Paraguay, but I’ve never seen it processed before. This family processed the plant from scratch, using trapiches (horse-drawn yokes connected to presses) to extract the juice from the sugarcane and giant iron pots set over a wood fire to turn the juice into honey and sugar. The families in Rurrenabaque that don’t work with tourists live off of agricultural activities, especially the growing of sugarcane, plantains, and corn. They are fortunate to have a weekly farmers’ market in Rurre where they can sell their products. Even in the middle of the jungle, there is agriculture!

We continued our journey in a motorized canoe to Mashaquipe’s lodge in the middle of the jungle. Although the accommodations were basic, I was thrilled by the running water and electricity. Our guide took us on a walk through the jungle. Along the way he explained the names and purposes of different trees and plants. We had to follow him closely as the path was blocked by underbrush, which he had to clear with a machete. Besides, we wanted to be as quiet as possible to avoid scaring the animals. Even though the dense vegetation made it difficult to see, we were lucky to spot a cluster of squirrel monkeys swinging and jumping from trees.

The next day, we set off on an 8 kilometer trek through the jungle. This area was much less dense than the one from the previous day and the trees were shorter, as they weren’t competing for sunlight. In the middle of our walk, the sky opened up and it started to pour. Everyone had told us that we were in the middle of the drought. I guess they don’t call it the rainforest for nothing! Our guide sprinted through the forest and we tried our best to follow, trying not to trip while scrambling over tree branches and up hills. The sound of the pouring rain drowned the noise of our approach, allowing us to spot a capuchin monkey. We finally reached our campsite, absolutely drenched (well I didn’t get too wet thanks to the pack cover and pancho my parents bought me), and lay out our stuff to dry.

After drying ourselves, we re-wet ourselves in the Río Tuichi where we went for a long swim. Afterward, our guide asked us if we could help him collect firewood. By this point I was feeling so confident that I took his machete and sprinted through the jungle. I was able to use the machete skills I acquired in Paraguay to chop down trees for our cooking fire. When we returned to our campsite, our guide immediately signaled us to be quiet. We crept to the kitchen and silently sat down, while wild pigs went rummaging through the forest around us. After 20 minutes or so, either their curiosity or their courage got the better of them and they began to approach us. We saw, all in all, about 60 wild pigs!

In the night, our guide took us for a walk to see if we could glimpse any nocturnal animals. Mostly we just saw night spiders. We threw bugs into their webs and watched them entangle their prey in thread. It was fascinating to watch them weave their webs. I felt like a third grade squashing bugs and cutting worms in half just to see what would happen. We were incredibly fortunate to catch sight of a tapir. A tapir looks like a giant rat. It’s huge and can weight up to 250 kilos! Ours was with its baby, also a sizable animal. It’s incredibly rare to see a tapir. Last year, only 20 tourists spotted a tapir with the Mashaquipe guides.

The next morning, we set off bright and early, 6 AM, to the viewpoint of the guacamayos (parrots/macaws). The entire area was surrounded by thick clouds. We waited for hours for the mist to clear. When it finally did, we saw hundreds of red, blue, and green macaws flying back and forth. Where we went is the only place in the jungle where they congregate because there they lay their eggs in the wall.

We returned to our campsite via boats, specifically rafts. The Tacana people, the indigenous group that Mashaquipe is part of, traditionally traveled up and down the river and transported all their goods by way of wooden rafts. We did the same, but luckily we didn’t have to worry about wetting our stuff as all we took with us were our swimsuits. Our guide let me take the helm and steer our raft down the river. It became a bit of a free-for-all when my friend tried shaking the boat and then pushed our guide into the water. I hit him with the oar, only to lose my balance and fall in myself!

I only spent three days in the jungle, but they were absolutely amazing.

I recently experienced the ride from hell. My friend and I arrived at the bus terminal in Trinidad at 7:15 AM for our 8 AM bus. The bus staff told us that our bus would leave early. Instead, it didn’t start moving until 10 AM. The ride was hot and dirty from all the dirt flying in through the windows. The woman next to us had a parrot and the girl in front of us had two chickens. With all the birds on board, the floor was littered with rice grains.

Around 4:30 in the afternoon, we had to change buses. We waited an hour before we were packed into a minibus with 12 other people! There was hardly any room to stretch and it was hot as hell. Every 15 minutes the bus driver stopped the van and all 14 of us had to get out. Then we had to pile back in again. We were supposed to be in the van for only 3 hours, but we were stuck in it for 5, during which we got three flat tires. Three! By the time we arrived in Rurrenabaque, it was 12 PM. We had left home at 7 AM. Our trip took us 17 hours! We went to the fanciest hostel we could find with hot showers and nice beds. What an adventure! Normal people take planes…

We arrived in Trinidad, Bolivia en route to Rurrenabaque from Santa Cruz. A word to the wise, never go to Trinidad! It’s a, pardon my French, shit hole. Despite this fact, we made the most of our day here, we rented motos.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Pooja, after what happened last time should you really be driving a motorbike?” Well, you know what they say, “Practice makes perfect.”

Jesse and I drove to the ugliest swimming hole I’ve ever seen and then, not having anything better to do, we drove to another village. We had to drive 16 km over gravel and sand roads to reach Sochojere. We expected a tourist town or some sort of attraction to justify the place’s appearance on Trinidad’s attractions map. Instead, it was pure campo. My friend looked around blankly and complained, “I’m bored.” “Awww, it’s just like Paraguay,” I sighed fondly. My friend sat down grumpily under the shade of a tree, while I struck up a conversation with a señora named Francisca. Ten minutes later Jesse was still grumpy, but I had a bag of fresh tamarind, which the señora had told me to eat and then plant in Paraguay.

We set off on our long haul back to town. We finally had reached asphalt when Jesse’s back tire was punctured. “Go get help,” he told me. “You’re sure you don’t want to come?” I asked, nervous about voyaging solo. “You’ll be faster by yourself.”

Off I went, confident because I had a mission: I had to go get help. The adrenaline that coursed through me led me to a great discovery, the throttle. I zoomed down the highway thinking all the while, “Must get help! Must save Jesse!”

I made it to the plaza in one piece and explained the situation to the man in charge of the rentals. By the time I returned to the scene of the accident, his brother was halfway done fixing my friend’s bike. I bet Jesse sure is glad that he taught me how to drive a geared bike!

Me on the rescue scooter!

A hand-washing station, just like the one I had in Paraguay!

Sochojere

Sochojere

Bored in Trinidad

Rrrrrrrrr…bang. Rrrrrrrrr…bang. “Use the throttle. More gas.” Rrrrrrrrr…bang. “No! Slowly. Use the clutch.” What the heck is a clutch?

Above is a snapshot of my most recent adventure. My friend, Jesse, and I spent a few days in Samaipata, the relaxed hill resort town near Santa Cruz, Bolivia. After visiting the town’s main tourist attraction, the pre-Colombian ruins of El Fuerte (the fortress), we decided to visit its natural attractions by way of motorbike. We rented a bike from our hostel owner. The fact that she couldn’t even turn the vehicle on should have been warning enough. Luckily, my friend used to own a Vespa and was able to figure out how to start the motorbike. Off we went on our great motorcycle adventure!

Two blocks later, the bike died. Just like that, died. We pushed it uphill 3 blocks to the nearest mechanic, but he was unable to fix it. We had to push it back over a series of hills to our hostel. We arrived drenched in sweat and demanded our money back.

Cash in hand, we headed to another motorcycle rental place. This time my friend test-drove the bike while I waited outside the store. He later told me that he used those 5 minutes to learn how to ride a geared bike, as his Vespa was automatic. Oh great.

After driving through the beautiful hills surrounding Samaipata, we reached waterfalls in the town of Cueva. We swam in the refreshingly cool water before heading back. This time it was my turn to drive. The3 problem was that not only had I never driven a geared bike (sneaking out of the house and driving around the block a couple of times with my cousins in India doesn’t really count), but I had never driven a manual vehicle in my life. After driving around the grassy parking lot for a bit, I got the hang of it, more or less. I still had trouble with certain things though, like changing gears and braking.

At one point I steered into the path of oncoming traffic, while conveniently forgetting how to brake. Oops. I veered to the right and off the road in the nick of time! After that I drove us safely back home with no more problems. My friend swears he’ll never get onto the back of a motorcycle with me driving again. Hey, it was my first time!

I wonder if Ché had this problem when he set out on his motorcycle diaries…

I’ve always been attracted to precious stones and minerals. As a child, I

spent hours in museums staring at them. Their different shapes, colors, and

textures intrigued me. I loved the sharp edges of pyrite and the smooth

feel of polished quartz. Nevertheless, there was little pleasurable about

my experience with minerals today.

I traveled from Uyuni to Potosi in Bolivia solely for its reputation as a

mining city. When Ernesto “Che” Guevara saw the miners slogging away in

Potosi during his “Motorcycle Diaries,” the experience made him conscious of

the plight of poor peoples throughout Latin America. Potosi surprised me. I

expected an industrial town, but a walk around the city reminded me more of

a hillside town in southern France than the steel-based town of

Philadelphia. Facades of buildings, the interiors of cathedrals, and the

views of the town were gorgeous. Then again, the steps scaling up the

mountains to hillside towns looked awfully like Brazilian *favelas *(slums).

Looming in the background of the Spanish colonial architecture were the

signs of extreme poverty.

This morning I took a tour of the mines. We started the tour in the

refinery. The minute we entered the building I thought, “This must be what

hell smells like.” The room was engulfed in noxious fumes. Everywhere you

turned there were whirring machines ready to chop a limb off. This tour

would definitely be illegal in the U.S.

From the refinery, we proceeded into the mines armed with boots, overalls,

headlamps, and helmets. The moment we entered the mine I heard “Move! Run

now!” We ran back towards the entrance and narrowly avoided being run over

by a mine cart. We reentered the mine, more cautiously this time, and

proceeded slowly through the dark tunnels. At the sound of a cart barreling

down the tracks, the five of us clung to a wall. My friends’ arms holding

on to me were the only things that kept me from falling off the narrow ledge

and directly into danger’s path.

At the end of the tunnel the guide pointed toward an abrupt decline and

cheerfully said, “Here’s our path!” Ok, you’ve got to be kidding me. We

slid down on our butts, grabbing onto electrical wire to keep us from losing

our grips. At the last moment of descent, my guide took hold of my foot and

stopped my freefall towards the bottom of the mine.

From there, our passage consisted of crawling on our hands and knees over

the rocky ground and crouching below the low roofs. It wasn’t so much the

pressure on my knees and the sharp pain in my back as the dust that killed.

Despite the bandana around my mouth and nose, the toxic dust continued to

enter my lungs. Out of breath and dizzy from the heat and altitude (more

than 4,000 meters), I kept on ripping of my bandana and painting for air.

As we ventured further and further into the mines, we encountered miners

hard at work. We were warned that conditions down in the mines were

miserable, but seeing the reality was quite different from hearing about it.

The miners looked straight out of Dante's *Inferno. *Their bodies dripped

with sweat while their mouths bulged with coca leaves (the leaves used to

make cocaine. Around 500 kilos of coca leaves are needed to produce 1 kilo

of cocaine. In small quantities, the leaves keep one awake, suppress

appetite, and reduce altitude sickness). Trapped underground for anywhere

between 8 and 24 hours a day with no food or water, they stuff their mouths

with baseball size clumps of leaves in order to numb themselves into

oblivion. We were told to bring gifts for the miners, a concept I didn't

understand until I saw them desperate for a drink of water or more coca. They

were like the shadows in Plato's metaphor of the cave, deprived of fresh air

and sunlight for too many years.

Mining earns well. Miners earn around 1.5 times Bolivian minimum wage. In

spite of that, their lifespans are short. They often die within 10 years of

entering the mines because of the toxins given off by the minerals or

gastritis caused by the excessive chewing of coca.

When we finally emerged from the caves, I thanked god for getting out of

there. I was grateful for the sunlight and the fresh, breathable air.

In the afternoon, I visited the *Casa de Moneda *(House of Currency), where

currency was produced for hundreds of years. Bolivia was the center of

South America and the center of wealth for the Spanish empire because of its

immense deposits of minerals, in particular gold and silver. The museum

detailed the history of coin-making in Bolivia. It showed African slaves

exhausting their bodies keeping fires lit to melt the silver. 8 million

Africans and Bolivians died in the mines. The Africans died especially

quickly because they couldn't adjust to the altitude. One exhibit which

stood out was a room with a man and four mules tied to a yoke. The mules

would walk in a circle, powering a machine which pressed the silver down to

the width of a coin. Because of the fatiguing work, the mules only lived

till 2 or 3 months old. Bolivia had to import 3 to 4 mules per week from

Buenos Aires in Argentina. I couldn't help but think, all that for a coin?

We ended our tour with a showcase of precious stones and minerals, typical

of any museum around the world, as well as candle holders, crowns, and other

objects made out of gold and silver. It contrasted starkly with my

experience earlier in the day down in the mines. It makes you wonder, why

are coins so important? Why not another system of barter or exchange? Coin-making

powered the Bolivian economy and the Spanish empire, but during the past 40

years has become so expensive for the Bolivian government that it now relies

on Chile and France to mint its currency. Ironic, no? Even though I

showered for 30 minutes after the mine tour, I still can't get the smell of

coal off my hands. It'll be hard to ever think of coins the same way again;

something so expendable yet so significant for the lives of millions of

people in Bolivia and around the world. Makes you think doesn't it?

Last week I had a fiesta de despedida (goodbye party) in Ña Justina’s, my neighbor, house. The Señora told me that she wanted to have a dinner for me. I ajahu-ed (bathed), ambochuka-ed (dressed up), and aha-ed (went) over to her house. Her and her daughters had prepared pasta with a red sauce, pasta with a cream sauce, ensalada de arroz (rice salad), and vegetarian empanadas with cabbage, peas, and eggs. We ended the meal with a what they called a tortita (little cake), but was actually a giant frosting-covered lemon cake. It truly was a vegetarian feast!

I appreciated the communal creation of the food, using lettuce from my garden, lemons from my tree, and crema de leche (cream) from my cupboard, to create a delicious meal. That’s something I’ll miss about Paraguay, how it takes a community to create a meal.

This lovely evening exemplies the unparalleled experience of being a Peace Corps Volunteer. Throughout the last two years, I’ve repeatedly had the same experience of people whom I’ve only known for a short period of time, with whom I don’t share the same language or culture, inviting me into their homes and preparing a meal for me. This meal was made even more special because it was entirely vegetarian in a country where every fiesta invovles asado (grilled meat) and little else. It was held by my the first family I had lived with in my community, including the mother who had taught me word after word in Guaraní, the father who had me taught how to pray after meals, and the daughter who had taught me how to prepare empanadas. They threw me a party because even though they don’t know my favorite color or my brother’s name or what I like to do on weekends, they will me and I will miss them and Paraguay.

Answer: an apartment complex in Bangalore, India

All my life, going to India has meant roughing it: bucket baths, dust and dirt, foul smells, and Asian (squat) toilets. I’ve learned to deal with it, reassured by the fact that it’s only for a couple of weeks every couple of years. That was before Peace Corps.

This trip to India, I stepped in the shower in the Puttaparthi ashram and was pleasantly surprised. It was a cold shower, as expected, but it was a shower with water pressure. On previous trips, I avoided showering. That first spasm as the frigid water hit my back always made me reluctant to take more than a quick cowboy shower once a day. This time, I was so happy to have a nice shower in the sweat-inducing humidity of Indian summers that I gladly hopped into the bath, two, three times a day.

The next thing to watch out for in India is diarrhea. Every time I visit, I face several grueling bouts with the D-monster. This time, nothing. You can bet that I sure as hell bragged about it the stomach of steel that Paraguay has given me. Besides, “After two years of diarrhea, I’ve suffered enough!”

Then there are the mosquitoes. Normally they can’t get enough of me and my sweet foreign blood. But this time, they took hardly a bite; a few nibbles yes, but nothing major. I think the Paraguayan mosquitoes have already sucked me dry.

The last source of discomfort is the roads. I’ve always hated Indian roads. Road markings are a recent innovation of the past 5 years in India. When I was a kid, cars would interweave in and out across the width of the road, while herders crossed with their goats and cows. Add to that poor road conditions, and it made for one bumpy ride! This time, I couldn’t help but admire the expansion of the road from Bangalore to Puttaparthi. Now it’s paved with asphalt. Not only that, but unlike in the U.S., it’s being laid by hand. In Paraguay, they set cobblestone roads without machines, but they do it badly. The roads in Bangalore were smooth. In fact, they were the nicest I’ve ever seen in India. I exclaimed to my mother, “Mom, that was the smoothest ride I’ve gone on in the past two years!” Never in my life did I think that India would be a step up from anything. But after Paraguay, it sure was!

Back to development though, it’s not just that I’ve changed over the past two years, it’s that India has changed. I stopped by a new grocery store outside of the ashram and was overwhelmed by the variety of foods. There were crackers and juice boxes, olives and pasta, organic rice and whole-wheat bread. I kept on hearing that you can now get everything in India, that it is no longer the place of limited international fare that it was while I was growing up, but I didn’t believe it until I saw it. Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Where are they getting all this food from? I know they don’t produce Barrilla pasta locally.”

I didn’t know whether to be delighted or frightened. An increase in packaged, processed foods is a boon to the customer providing more variety in consumption and more convenience for the ever-growing members of the working middle-class. However, it also carries the risk of undermining a food culture based on hot, home-cooked food and local ingredients. A quarter of the world’s farmers are Indian. However, as India has begun the shift to mechanized farming, fewer and fewer Indians farm in lieu of earning higher incomes from blue-collar jobs. The sad fact is that many former farmers continue to work for the food industry, but in the service of country-wide food distribution. They spend the majority of the year, away from their families, away from the villages where they grew up, working long hours driving trucks. Because they spend so much of their time away from their wives, they frequent prostitutes. Hence, the “development” of the food industry has not only dramatically increased energy costs, it has also increased the incidence of STDs, including HIV/AIDS.

In the documentary Food Inc., Indian seed-activist Vandana Shiva discusses her struggle with the American corporation Monsanto. Monsanto sued Indian farmers for copyright infringement. If Monsanto won, they would essentially be forbidding farmers from saving their seeds (to replant the following year) as they had done for generations, because the farmers would have no choice but to buy their terminator seeds (cannot reproduce and hence the farmer has to buy new ones each year) instead. Shiva organized the farmers and won the court case in favor of the farmers.

After Puttaparthi, we visited my cousin in Bangalore. He and his wife both work as computer specialists in Whitefield, one of the many emerging Silicon Valleys in India. When we arrived at his place, I was astounded. Looking out his window, I forgot that we were in India. The apartment complex looked like any found in Northern Virginia (another Silicon Valley filled with Indian computer programmers), complete with Indian women wearing salwar kameez going for an evening stroll with their husbands. As my cousin showed us the community pool, the club house with ping pong and pool tables, the gym, the playground, and the central plaza, my amazement grew. “Are we really in India?” The apartment complex represented luxuries before unheard of in India.

The apartment itself was spacious, more spacious than the typical, one-floor, two to three-bedroom apartment found in India, the kind where my mom and her entire twenty-plus-person extended family was raised. There could not have been contrast between that and this two-floor, three-bedroom apartment for four-and-a-half people (my 5-year-old cousin included). The décor was a vast improvement over the flats of my mom’s generation and my childhood. “How can people in India live like people in the U.S.?” I wondered. It made sense though, as Bangalore is filled with young, educated Indian men and women joining the ranks of the middle-class by workings at American IT companies located in Whitefield.

Again, however, I had misgivings. My first thought looking at the beautiful wooden cabinets and dressers was “Oh God, where are they getting all the wood to furnish these apartments?” Logging, especially illegal logging, has all but demolished the Amazon and the Bosque Atlántico de Alto Paraná to furnish houses in Brazil, Argentina, and the U.S. And we’re talking 500-700 million people, total. Imagine supplying wooden furniture to the 1 billion residents of India. That’s a lot of wood.

Is this development or are countries simply inheriting our sins? In no way am I negating the economic progress India has made over the past decade or advocating that it deny its citizens luxuries and commodities enjoyed by the rest of the development world, i.e. rich countries, including the U.S. I just that hope India takes care to ensure that their new development is green and embraces their culture. I believe that the reason India is thriving while the U.S. is flailing is because it is using its cultural advantages, its well-educated citizens, its world-class technical and engineering institutes, and its peoples’ work ethic to shape its development. I hope that India succeeds where the U.S., Europe, and so many other countries have failed, finite development that relies on limited fossil fuels and scarce natural resources and is driven my homogeneity. India is anything but homogenous, being a country characterized, above all, by its incredible amount of diversity. In the battle between newer technologies and culturally-appropriate ones, between American corporations and Indian farmers, between McDonalds and MTR, I hope that India succeeds in carving a path of sustainable development for itself that makes use of its rich, cultural heritage, while at the same time elevating it.

Pictures of my cousin's apartment complex:

My uncle's farm:

Small-scale Indian farms:

I took practically the same picture in Paraguay!

The picture from Paraguay:

Narmada Ghats:

More photos from India

I used to think the Superbowl was a big deal. That was until I moved to Latin America. The buildup, the commercials, the halftime show, they’re nothing compared to the World Cup, or the Mundial as we call it in Paraguay. During the first game of the World Cup, I was in Ciudad del Este, shopping with a friend. My friend wanted to shop; all I wanted to do was watch the game. No worries. Every shop we visited had a TV showing the game. The stalls on the sides of the streets didn’t have TVs, but they had radios. Everywhere we went, my friend stopped to haggle and I stood still, my eyes affixed to the television screen. I had been infected by Mundial fever.

Mundial fever has only grown since then. The lyrics of the Shakira and K’naan songs are on everyone’s lips. During my weekly visits to friends around town, the conversation inevitably turns to the Mundial. “Did you see the Paraguay game? Did you see the Brazil game yesterday? Increíble. Who’s playing today?” When it’s game time, everyone has their TVs on. If they don’t, they are more than willing to oblige. And oh, the Albirroja (the red and white, Paraguay’s jersey colors). A few weeks ago, my friend made the comment, “I don’t suppose all the Paraguayan flags that are on sale are to commemorate the anniversary of the Chaco War.” “Of course not,” I replied. “Who cares about the anniversary of some long-ago war when it’s football season?” We’re going nuts over Paraguay’s victories. I find myself constantly wearing my Paraguayan jersey. When Paraguay is playing, even school is cancelled.

In a way, my entire two years in Paraguay have been shaped by the Mundial. A few months after I became a volunteer, I attended the Paraguay vs. Peru qualifying match. I went in the red and white. A group of volunteers and I bought up the entire stock of Paraguayan jerseys off of a street stall. I don’t remember much of the actual game other than the screaming, the jumping up and down, and the obscene cheers we yelled at the opposing team. I remember how afterwards the rich and the poor alike, we Americans, absolutely everyone celebrated outside of the Panteón de los Heroes, in front of the famous Lido Bar. We danced for hours to the crazy beat of samba drums because even though the score was only 1-0, Paraguay had won!

A year later, I had gotten hold of the most precious commodity on the market, tickets to the Paraguay vs. Argentina match (Paraguay and Argentina are fierce rivals. I’m also a huge fan of the Argentina football team). I had gone to the ticket office on two separate occasions and had no luck in buying tickets. After calling friends constantly to see who was going to Asunción, I finally got a hold of tickets. Sure, they were probably scalped, but who cares? The day before the match, I was all ready to leave for Asunción, when it started pouring. That meant, of course, that the bus didn’t leave my site. I decided to postpone my trip by a day. The next morning, the day of the match, I tried again. I woke up early to catch the one bus out of site at 6 AM, but it was still raining. That meant that again the bus didn’t run. I decided to wait out the rain. An hour went by, but the wind continued to blow and the rain continued to fall. Another hour passed by, and it was still going. Meanwhile, I was getting more antsy by the moment. I texted my friend angrily, “I have tickets to the biggest game of the season and I’m stuck in my house!” She replied, “Just walk it.”

By 9 AM, the rain had calmed down and I was finally able to leave my house. Barely 10 minutes into my walk, it started pouring. Turning my face upwards, I shook my fist at the overcast sky and screamed “Are you kidding me God?” I made it to the lake, but then I had to await the barge. The boat drivers were scared to leave because of the high winds. Indeed, the trip across was terrifying. The winds swayed the giant metal barge back and forth and soaked us to the bone. I cowered under the shelter of the motorized tug boat running alongside the barge. I arrived at the bus terminal, a ten-kilometer walk from my house (not including the journey across the lake), completely drenched. Thinking that I was only gone to be gone for a quick two-day trip, I had forgotten an extra pair of socks. When I stopped at the nearby supermarket to buy a few pairs of dry socks, they took pity on me and let me use the restroom to change into my only other pair of clean clothes.

After a six-hour-long bus journey, I finally arrived in Asunción. It was already past 5 PM. I barely had enough time to drop off my stuff in my friend’s house and head to the stadium, reaching only 15 minutes before the start of the game. I had traveled on foot and bus, over water and land, through mud and rain, just to see the football game. Mundial fever, once you’re in its grip, there’s no telling what you’ll do for a football game!

A lot of you have asked me and my parents, when exactly I was planning on returning to the U.S. The truth is that for the longest time I didn't know. This week I finally decided. Next week I will be leaving for India/South Africa (after the World Cup unfortunately) and return to Paraguay at the end of July. My official leave date from Paraguay is Aug. 23rd. Then I plan to aprovechar (take advantage of) the fact that I'm already down here in South America and travel around the region. Over the course of 3 months I will be traveling from Paraguay to Northern Argentina to Bolivia to Peru to Brazil.

If you ever thought to yourself, ¨Wouldn't it be fun to visit Pooja in Latin America?¨ here's your chance! You don't even have to come all the way to Paraguay, you have your choice of several other lovely places in the South American continent. I will spend roughly 3 weeks in Bolivia until mid-end of September, 3 weeks in Peru, until mid-October, and a month in Brazil, until mid-end of November. I would love to have travel buddies, so if you're craving mountain climbing, hiking, world-class beaches, beautiful people, Spanish, the biggest rodents in the world, waterfalls, or just crazy adventures, you´re more than welcome to come join me!

A contrasting view of the benefits of technology to my article Technology is Beautiful?. Any comments? Do you agree or disagree?

Diplomatic Efforts Get Tech Support

Around the world, people are praising the Internet as a great force for social change. They say that it decentralizes power, taking it away from its traditional enforcers (governments, corporations, international organizations, etc.) by empowering people with information. Internet links people from all corners of the globe through e-mail and social networks, including our favorite network Facebook, and allows them to campaign for social justice, equality, political freedoms, and the abomination of the Facebook newsfeed (because doesn’t it just suck?). Internet puts information at the tip of your fingertips. The open source movement is an excellent example. Open source software that can be modified and improved by any user defies the power of technology monopolies, such as Microsoft and Apple. These companies force users to pay high prices for newer versions of software that offer limited improvements, are loaded with bugs, and are incompatible with previous versions. People cite the all-powerful Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that provides millions of articles in hundreds of languages, each of which can be edited by readers, as an example of levelling the information playing-field. They also mention blogs and online news sources. Internet, the Great Equalizer.

What we too often gloss over is giant disparities in Internet usage. 26.6% of the world’s people have access to Internet. (“Internet Usage Statistics”) That means that 73.4%, or three-fourths of the world’s population, does not. Even within the U.S., they are wide gaps between the upper/middle classes and lower classes. 78% of schools in affluent communities have access to Internet as contrasted to 50% of schools low-income areas. (Kennard, William E., “Equality in the Information Age”) As many as three-fourths of Black high school and college students do not have computers. (Kennard) Those privileged few of us who use the Internet on a daily basis forget that the most impoverished people in the world, those most in need in Internet, do not have access to Internet.

The sad thing is that despite limited access across the world, high-skilled, well-paid jobs everywhere demand knowledge of computers and telecommunications. Take Paraguay for example. Many of my town’s youth travel an hour away, spending large quantities of money on transportation out of town, to take computer classes. It it rains, they’re stuck and they miss their weekly class. The classes themselves are over-priced and poorly taught. After a year of paying expensive monthly tuitions, most of the students still have no clue how to use Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, let alone more complicated electronic applications. At the same time, they insist on attending classes because they can ask for salary raises or find higher-paid employment.

One thing that drives me up the wall is the school teachers’ obsession with Internet. A teacher once proposed her “brilliant” idea to me: all students should pay a 5 mil additional monthly fee so that the teachers could pay for Internet. What??? Why did she want Internet I asked. “With Internet we can do research and better teach the students,” she responded. I had several problems with this. One, she was not proposing building a center equipped with Internet-enabled computers where all the students could work; she wanted Internet for one computer only, the teachers’ computer. Two, in a country where parents already complain about the school fees (which are abysmally low by American standards by the way, but education not being value, that’s another story), she wanted to increase them. Three, if the teachers didn’t know how to use the computers, how did they plan to do “research?” If they didn’t know what e-mail or a search engine is, how could they utilize the billions of resources available on the Internet. I was not about to spend my time assisting a project that would guarantee the teachers a constant source of porn downloads (which is what the majority of Paraguayans, like Americans, use the Internet for). Four, the amount of information available on different subjects depends on the number of users that are interested in those topics. In a country where only 1.7% of the 6 million people have access to Internet, there is a dearth of articles about Paraguay. (“Telecommunications in Paraguay”) Finally, if the students didn’t know how to use computers, how could they complete Internet-based research projects? Despite the numerous warnings I gave them, the teachers are assigning more and more homework that necessitates the Internet, leaving the students in a giant rut.

My initial project was working with a community radio, the members of whom were convinced by the previous volunteer that Internet would solve my town’s problems of limited access to news. By accessing alternative online media via the Internet, they could broadcast social justice news stories to the whole town. The intentions were noble and I respected them, yet the practice would have been flawed. For one thing, no one knew how to use a computer or the Internet. As the volunteer in town, I could have helped capacitate the members. The second problem, however, was that the radio was in serious debt. To that debt they wanted to add sky-high monthly fees for Internet services. And no matter how many times I said “let us look over your finances and do a feasibility study,” they did not have the least inclination to do so, let alone raise the money necessary to sustain the project over the next couple of years. Not to mention the fact that in my town, we have no landlines. My cellphone signal is practically nonexistent (a huge problem whenever Mom tries calling me).

This is not just the case in Paraguay, here’s a parallel example from Africa:

Many reports you read will sing the praises of the mobile networks and how the leapfrogging of landlines has helped Africa. That’s true, and I’m one of those people. However, it comes with a catch, and that catch is that the lack of landlines in Africa means that it’s a lot harder to get fixed-line broadband penetration, whether ADSL or otherwise. This keeps prices high and primarily availability is only in urban areas. (“Internet & Mobile Stats: Africa Grows Fastest in the World”)

In South Africa in fact, an IT company did an experiment to test the connection speed. It was a 60-mile data transmission race between a carrying pigeon with a 4GB USB drive attached to its leg and the ADSL service from the country’s biggest web firm. Winston, the pigeon, took two hours to carry the data 60 miles, during which the ADSL had managed to send 4% of the data. (“In South Africa, carrier pigeon faster than broadband”)

The Peace Corps derives its philosophy of action from the book Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, in which the author proposes the application of “intermediate technologies” in developing countries. International banks and the U.S. government promote large-scale development projects that depend on the latest technology. As developing countries don’t have the technical expertise to construct these facilities, they have to contract U.S. companies. If parts break in the future, as they inevitably will, they will not know how to fix them. Therefore, after construction, they have to keep these companies around for maintenance. Schumacher instead advocates the adoption of an intermediate technology more suitable – and therefore more likely to be effectively utilized – in developing countries. In my town, where hardly anyone knows how to use a computer, do they need the most advanced, most expensive model on the market? They could save tons of money by acquiring a donated, “outdated” model from the U.S. (where even if it functions, if it’s more than a few years old it’s got to go). In fact, the most successful projects I have undertaken have involved outdated, no-name computers without Internet connections and the most basic computer programs.

For more information about Internet usage in Paraguay, check out “Internet Access? What About Just a Telephone?”