the bicycle wine tour began just behind schedule on tuesday morning. irish dave, keri and i strolled out of the hostel by at least 11:15, which is not so bad considering how much planning we had to do before the ride. we hopped on a bus to maipu–dave thought i was pulling his leg about the entire plan due to the comic nature of the english pronunciation of the town.  soon enough, we were at mr. hugo’s bikes and gearing up for an adventure!

mr. hugo specifically went to find a second bike with a basket for keri and i, because everyone knows that no respectable woman will ride a bicycle without a basket. and we were off!

we had a police escort before we even began as we rode all the way to the furthest vineyard, nearly an hour away. perhaps the excitement was causing us to wobble on the bikes…

at carnae, we tasted a rather uninspiring rose and young malbec, though the malbec cab that followed was bordering on good and the reserva malbec brought a smile to my face. the owners are foreign and have incorporated a whimsical celestial theme throughout their lines.

next we tasted olive oil at an olive vineyard named laur. you can bet i bought a bit. lovely sun-dried tomato and aubergine bruschetta pumped us up for the ride to familia di tommaso.

at tommaso, we tasted a young malbec, a 6 month oak-aged cab, a

drafts folder, dated 13 november 2009. laura sure brings things to completion! let’s see… erm, there was some more wine tasting, at one point we had both a motorcycle and police van escort, keri fell off her bike, i was attacked by a parrot while holding a kitten, we drank some more wine, and finally made it back safely to mr. hugo’s.

sometime around now, i found out that my antarctica trip was canceled due to an explosion on the ship. i postponed my onward journey and spent a few extra days in mendoza, drowning my sorrows. moving right along!

My dearest darlings,

After 457 days and 39 boats, seven trains, five bikes, four horses, one tractor, a donkey cart, a parachute, a pair of crampons and way more buses than I care to count, I finally reached the end of the world. There was even a rainbow.

There were moments when the enormity of the journey was so overwhelming that all I could do was collapse on a curb and cry. When I stepped over a body bag, when I rode by a bullet-riddled wind shield, when I heard a mother’s screams as she wheeled a pink tricycle down a highway. During the scariest moments of my life, your faces shone in my mind. Thank you for being my unwitting guardian angels.

When a wild puma clenched his jaws around my knee, I fancied you and I were drinking coffee and chatting about the Red Sox. While I was being chased by an adorable baby sea lion and his angry, enormous mother down a beach in Ecuador; when a firework came whizzing towards my left eye; as I barreled down the most dangerous road in the world; when I couldn’t find the strength to pull myself up the last foot of a 6,088m mountain; as I was led through a Colombian cocaine factory. When no habia nada y todo era roto, when I sat down to Thanksgiving dinner with strangers, when a travelling perfume salesman offered me a ride back from the end of the road in the Darien Gap. Through the good and the bad, the zany, exciting, exhausting, invigorating, terrifying, and awe-inspiring, I carried you with me.

No matter where we are, we always think of ourselves standing upright on top of the world, with everything else rotated around underneath us. (I didn’t want to say anything, but a lot of you have been standing upside down for the past few months). Here I am at the end, standing exactly as I was at the beginning, only the world has changed a bit under my feet.

To the travelers, thank you for sharing my journey. I hope you find roads that are scenic and tortuous and always lead you on exciting adventures. To the ones who prefer our glorious nation out of the wide expanse of the universe, I hope your roads are well-paved and traffic-free. As for me, it has been a long, long journey, and I am finally heading home.

Love, love, love from my end of the world to yours,
Laura

the adventures of ryan and dora 1 2

sailing to colombia

colombia 1 2

venezuela

ecuador 1 2

peru

amazon

iguazu and paraguay

we drove two hours out of la paz to the feet of huayna potosi. it’s considered one of  the easiest 6,000m peaks in the world because the ascent from base camp is only 1,400m. but “easy 6,000m peak” does not mean “easy.” we all realized that about halfway up the mountain.

the first day was spent in crampons and harnesses climbing up glacier walls with ice axes. by the end of the day, my guide told me that he was impressed with my improvement. “you’re not nearly as terrible as you were when we started this morning,” he said. “i honestly wasn’t sure if you were going to make it.” thanks for the confidence! let’s go climb a mountain.

so the next day we set off in the afternoon with big backpacks for high camp at 5,200m. we slept at 6pm and woke at 1am to gear up. plastic boots, snow pants, crampons, harnesses, ropes, axes, headlamps.  we went up in pairs with a guide. at 2:15am, christoph and i were roped to mario and our merry team set off.

the details are a little fuzzy, but i do remember drifting in and out of consciousness, singing “do your ears hang low” hour after hour. the altitude affected me so desperately that i could only take a few steps without stopping to catch my breath. i counted paces. first i made it to 500 without stopping. then i tried to do 100 at a time. then 20. when my mind cleared enough to form a coherent thought, it was always that i had never done anything as difficult in my entire life.

in the wee hours of the morning, a girl on another team had to turn back because of hypothermia. her partner jumped in with christoph and me. despite her extensive climbing experience, she slowed us to a crawl. one, two, three steps. breathe.

we reached the summit just after 7am. i was so tired that christoph had to pull me up the last ledge. from the top, we could see lake titicaca shimmering in the distance and the peaks of the cordillera real below us. the entire mountain glowed in the early morning sun. but to be perfectly honest, there was no rush of accomplishment. i was way too exhausted to care.

i stumbled down to high camp, barely retaining my faculties enough to clear the crevasses. i slipped and slid down the snow and literally fell into the bunk room when we finally arrived. by 5,000m, my mind started to come back and the sugar rush hit after i forced down a chocolate bar. at noon, we walked through the door at base camp and collapsed in our crampons.

the guides told us that summit should take between four and seven hours. we did it in five. mario was mad at us for taking so long and kept muttering that women are always slow and ruin things for men.

i still think it was the hardest thing i have ever done in my whole, entire life. i am not sure if i’ll try another mountain. but if i do, it will not be quite so tall. still, it was pretty neat to be so high.

work at the park began in november 2008. the land was purchased from the father of a volunteer. he paid millions of bolivianos to have the land burned so it could be developed, but the professional burning company accidentally burned down the house. jacj cuisi means land of dreams in the local indigenous language. when andres, the director, arrived last november, everything was still on fire.

now we have a casa with three walls, hole-in-the-ground toilets, the foundations of a kitchen, a health clinic. two pumas arrived in may and another is on the way as soon as the new cage has been constructed.

we took turns cooking and carrying water up from the river. we laundered by jumping in the river wearing our work clothes and did dished by putting dirty pots in the creek for the fish to clean. in the evenings, we ate by candlelight and watched the stars and sat around campfires strumming a guitar. we baked cakes by steaming them over bamboo and collected papayas and bananas in the jungle.

i slept on a mattress stuffed with hay. i found out i am allergic to hay. i slept in a hammock, on the thatched roof of the garage, in a tent. once i found a tarantula in my mosquito net.

since the cats like to lick and the creek is everything and the kitchen sink, no chemicals allowed. no soap, no insect repellent, no deodorant or lotion or sunscreen.  i didn’t wash my hair for three weeks. as tim said, we’re all dirty jungle people here.

most of my time was spent volunteering with a jungle puma named simba. his mother was killed and he was captured when he was just a few months old, so simba never learned how to hunt, how to identify the poisonous plants, or how to protect himself in the wild. as a result, he’ll never be able to be released back into the wild. even without his mum and jungle puma instincts, he managed to grow into 55kg of muscles and teeth. his human family decided that he was no longer a suitable pet, and simba came to inti wara yassi.

simba and i spent all day long in the jungle with another cat volunteer. he strolled along forest trails, splashed through rivers, ran down ravines, slept for hours, licked until he drew blood. i scrambled up cliffs, tripped over vines, fell on my arse. a lot.

simba liked to hide rotten meat in his bed and have private blankie time before we left for our walks. in addition to the jungle running, daily tasks included burying leftover dinner in a hole surrounded by bones and swatting bugs away from all bodily orifices. bees swarmed, ants crawled, little black flies liked to fly into your eyes and hair and ears and up your nose. if you smushed them, they released a chemical that attracted a billion more. how counter-evolutionary of them.

one day, simba was playing in the river and i was on his rope. andres threw simba’s fave toy, a plaid oxford attached to a string. simba ran. andres said i flew just like superman. but then i landed, and joder, was there a lot of blood. when the vet assistant patched me up, he said he could see the bone and that my knee was so massively destroyed he didn’t feel confident to do the stitches. by the time i emerged from the jungle, hitchhiking into town on a tractor, my knee was infected and inflamed and too far gone for stitches.

and that is how my time at jacj cuisi came to an end. i spent a few days playing house mommy, cleaning and painting and sawing. but the jungle is no place for a cripple.

more than two weeks later, my knee keeps changing a spectacular array of colors. red, green, yellow, orange, brown. i can’t really walk up stairs or down hills. i have spent more than $1.71 on hospital visits. i had prescriptions for antibiotics, anti-inflamatories, and a mysterious and magical bolivian pain killer. a google search for the drug brings up several unsuccessful inquiries by foreign doctors trying to ascertain its ingredients.

when my gash heals, it will be a perfect crescent moon and i will win every cool scar contest ever. but i’d rather be back in the jungle.

last choose laura’s adventure was between jane goodall and the world cup. the votes were unanimous for the footie match–perhaps because most of my pollees were of the male persuasion. if you want to play choose laura’s adventure, send me an email and i’ll add you to the list!

so i came back to la paz to cheer on bolivia in their inconsequential world cup qualifying match against brazil. brazil has already qualified; bolivia has already been cut. but the match must go on! we smeared our faces with paint and marched to the stadium.

a security guard told me that there was no section j and that my ticket was fake. so just sit wherever you want, he said. our entire section was filled with gringos in costume. we danced, we sang, we cheered on the mighty bolivian boys, who almost never win and when they do, it’s really only because of their high-altitude advantage. and then bolivia scored. then they scored again.

and all of a sudden, down ten bolivia had triumphed over world’s best brazil. revelry ensued, though the gringos were without question the most enthusiastic participants in the street parade. twenty-four hours later, i still had red paint on my face and in my hair and on my sheets and everywhere.

i’m sure jane goodall is really interesting and friendly. maybe next time.

• bumbled in a bus through a dry river bed in the middle of the night searching for a way around a campesino road block
• descended into a functioning silver mine to chew coca with a 14-year-old working a 24-hour shift in the worst conditions i have ever experienced or imagined
• rolled over cracking salt deserts, around dusty rose lakes and through flamingo colonies in the salar de uyuni
• marveled at the sun setting over (not) the world’s highest navigable body of water
• witnessed the weekly blessing of the automobiles amidst streamers, confetti and celebrating locals
• ridden a bicycle down the most dangerous road in the world
• perused llama fetuses at the local market
• climbed a 6,088m mountain with crampons and an ice ax
• spent an entire sunday afternoon watching father ted in an irish pub
• swam with pink river dolphins, piranhas and 3m crocodiles in an amazonian river
• ran through the jungle tied to a 55kg puma
• witnessed the miraculous occurrence of blind snakes mating
• hitchhiked on the back of a tractor and on a motorbike with three
• busted open my knee and visited two bolivian hospitals to receive treatment for a total of $1.42 in medical bills
• watched the southern stars far away from any source of light pollution
• shared my campsite with three llamas and a hundred geese
• wiped chicken pee off my fleece
• learned to build a fire in the rain, shimmy up a poll, french braid my hair, use a handsaw, and control a puma attack

so… what have you been up to lately?

just before traveling to southern brazil, i spent more than three weeks motoring down the entire length of the rio amazonas. there was no toilet paper, i showered and washed dishes and brushed teeth in brown river water, and i had to give money to men with big guns on two separate occasions. what an adventure! isn’t that why we’re here?

i left lima, peru at 1:30 on a tuesday afternoon. the bus broke down before we made it out of the city center. two hours later, we were officially on our way to the amazon. in the middle of the night, the driver pulled over and we were boarded by a man with a very large gun. he turned on all of the lights and started in on a loud and lengthy soliloquy about the dangers we faced along the road–jaguars, treacherous drop-offs, shining path rebels refusing to give up the cause–and how fortunate we all were that he had come to protect us from highway robbers. then he pointed his gun at the passengers and made us all give him money.

i arrived in pucallpa tired and thrilled to have survived the first stage of the journey. fuente soda tropitop watched my bags while i went shopping for supplies: hammock, rope, bowl, spoon, toilet paper, 7L water, passage on amazonian cargo ship. the boat was scheduled to leave that night, but some of the cargo hadn’t arrived so we stayed anchored in the port and i swung to sleep in my hammock up on deck between three frenchies and a peruvian family moving to iquitos. they put the entire contents of their house under my hammock.

the journey took four full days along a skinny stretch of the ucayali river. during the day, i watched the jungle float by, queued with my blue bowl for rice and beans and chicken from the steamy galley, chatted with my peruvian family, sprayed down with river water that left me dirtier than i started, and read anna karinena on my amazon kindle. in the amazon. get it?!

there were about a hundred peruvians and two foreigners other than my french friends: an argentinian girl and a portuguese guy who had met in bolivia and were traveling to the hippie-happy rainbow gathering in iquitos. they guy only had one pair of hippie backpacker pants and no underwear. i know because he liked to sit cross-legged on the boat roof and his pants had a hole in the crotch the size of a grapefruit.

one hot amazonian afternoon, we spread out towels on the roof and plugged my ipod into felipe’s speakers. tom kelly led us through a very spiritual yoga class, though i had to translate because no one else spoke english well enough to make out his soft voice over the ohms and gong clanging. hands to your heart center, be still and at peace. BANG! the night watchman fired his gun into the jungle from a hidden corner of the boat. so much for tranquility, but at least the river pirates know we have guns.

at night, we foreign folk lay up on the deck under billions of stars. the moon was nearing full but it preferred to hide below the horizon until twilight slinked away and we had gazed skyward for hours in nighttime darkness. the white wispy clouds of the milky way shined so brightly that stars behind looked like smudges in the sky.

we finally arrived to iquitos late sunday night. the next morning, i hung my hammock on the gran diego and set out for a brief (only two nights!) journey to the tri-border between peru, colombia and brazil. the new we–argentinian martin, australian ken, french marie, and me–were stuck there for three days with a hostile hostel owner and continuously thwarted plans for adventure.  we made it out on a little boat to cruise around the river then nearly got arrested for being in colombia illegally. once our visas were in order, martin and i set off again for manaus.

to be continued…