Peru for the Win

Well, it's been a while since I wrote... once again. I think almost 2 weeks this time. That's certainly a long time. I guess that I'm more interested in enjoying the last bit of time that I have left and I'm not thinking so much about my blogging legacy. Still, I don't want this to be the final post. I'll leave that wrap up piece for when I get home (or am flying home) and I can think more about what this year has meant to me. It'll be a long piece I'm sure.

I think that I finished the last post with a trip up to lake Titicaca. Like I mentioned before, I had a nasty cold and I spent the majority of my time there napping in the hotel room while Jowen went to the island without me for a day trip. I went there years ago with my family though I don't have a clear memory of what was there. I don't remember it being a must see site. The other thing in the area is the famous floating islands made of bundled reeds that some locals live on in a traditional manner. They're pretty touristy nowadays and Jowen didn't want to bother so we just went on to Arequipa, 10 hours away by bus, at the first chance.

Part of my lethargy to do the next blog post has to be the miserable week that I had since the last post. In contrast the following week was great but that doesn't change my lingering and now forgotten resentment over how bad the first week was. I got pretty sick in Arequipa. Well, I guess that some stuff happened before that so I'll cover it. Jowen and I met a Belgian guy whose name we have since forgotten and a couple from Reno. That couple was a little odd... both vegetarians and very fond of something called the Master Cleanse where you drink a mixture of maple syrup, pepper, and lemon juice for a week. They claim it helps with something or other.

So the group of us left the comfortable hostel in Arequipa to go out walking and we eventually found a ceviche restaurant that looked clean and popular enough. The food was good... I mostly ate the octopus and sea cucumber ceviche but we had a fish one too that was really good and went well with the fried squid rings we ordered. You can see the kind of corn they have here in this picture... they call it 'choclo' I think and it's got huge kernels... just 8 of them go all the way around the circumference.

Afterward, the Belgian continued around town with Jowen and I since we hadn't get seen the town square. It was nice as expected... all the large central buildings in town are carved from a kind of white ash stone and look... niceish.. We followed that up with the famous Monesterio Santa Catalina, a huge convent in the center of town. I it was founded in 1580 by a wealthy widow and housed not only a few dozen nuns but also provided education to wealthy women who could afford it. I don't think it was cheap to stay there, but they did provide free education to girls under the age of 14. The older nuns all had huge private apartments that make any of my apartments look pretty shabby in comparison. We got a tour from a professional guide to make it all interesting, but it was a very pretty a quite little village of a convent and was certainly the most interesting thing in Arequipa to our disappointment.

The main sightseeing goal of this city, the second largest in Peru, was to visit the nearby Colca Canyon which is said to be good for hiking and is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. looked at pictures of it online and it doesn't look so nice as the descriptions might merit but worth a closer look. The idea was to find 2 more people to share the cost of a rental car for a couple days to village visits and then to come back to Arequipa. The alternative was to pay to join a hike into the canyon but I had a nasty cold for the previous few days and I think that we were both pretty burnt out from the La Paz mountain hike and just didn't want to hike. Well, we never found the other 2 people to join us so that just never happened.

The morning after our monastery tour, I was barely able to eat breakfast from some new nausea and after throwing up most of the morning and developing a fever, Jowen went to the hospital with me to see what's up. The doctor said that I had an intestinal infection, probably from bad ceviche, and a stool sample confirmed it. It also confirmed that I've miraculously avoided any intestinal parasites over the last year of promiscuous dining. So, that's nice. The nurses pumped a liter of sugar water and antibiotics into my arm and though things got unpleasant at the hospital I felt a little better before bed. The next day I felt fine but unable to do anything interesting and certainly unable to drink any alcohol because of the antibiotics. Awful.

Unable to do much more than sit around and shiver, Jowen and I enjoyed the facilities of our hostel for a day. The Arequipa hostel had a PS3 and Jowen played Uncharted while stuck to the classic Quest for Glory 2 on my netbook. I had that game on my PC when I was 10 in 1991. Maybe longer ago than that. The overnight bus ride to Cuzco wasn't so bad for me, but I later found out that the food poisoning had hit the Reno couple during their overnight bus ride the day before. Good thing these buses have toilets.

Cuzco really was a refreshing change from Arequipa. While the outskirts of Arequipa really looked like a scene from Fallout 3 (I know many won't get the reference... it's a post apocalyptic wasteland I mean) and the interior was not much better, the decor of Cuzco is classic and well maintained in uniformity downtown. Most of the buildings downtown follow a similar pattern that's found throughout this region of Peru. Thick stone foundations for the walls serve as the base for smooth whitewashed walls with a wooden and tile roof on top. It's really quite attractive and very much different than the buildings of any other region. I guess it's because Cuzco is a region so thick with history that it has many legacy buildings.

Legend tells that the city was founded in the 12th century by the first Inca and was later developed into a major city. It's early planners formed the city into the shape of a panther and carved the city walls into teeth. Rivers were even diverted by the indians to continue the city's growth. When the Spanish took it over, it became the scene of several struggles with the locals but eventually it was mostly left to grow on its own as Spanish attention shifted to coastal Lima.

Many fine temples were found in Cuzco, which I think was the capitol of the Inca empire, and of course they were all looted of their gold and their stones used to build churches. Of course, some of these buildings have been unearthed and can be seen after paying far too much for a ticket. Anyhow, Jowen and I checked into a cool hostel with free wifi and set about lazing it up. I was still sick and grumpy since I couldn't drink or eat properly and I think that Jowen reflected some of my negative attitude.

I think that we stayed 3 nights in Cuzco and got a few things done but not so much. Mostly we'd eat at the big market hall nearby the hostel for one or two meals a day. You could buy a huge meal with soup, meat, rice, beans, and salad for about $1.50. I couldn't ever manage to finish anything. We also get fresh juice smoothies for desert. I needed extra vitamins after all. We also explored the downtown and saw many churches, market streets, and whatever. The city was a lot bigger than I remember. Oh, Jowen and I got to eat a special meal here too... the guinea pig. It's one of the 3 animals ever domesticated in South America so naturally it's a local delicacy. I didn't really care for it, but the presentation value was great.

Of course we also tried to go to some ruins one day but got turned around by the price. A lot of the ruins in the area have consolidated to be accessible only if you have a 'tourist ticket' purchased for about $50. That's a lot of money down here and of course it doesn't include Machu Picchu. Well, we skipped the site and swore that we'd only buy it if forced by something even better. It never happened.

After a few days of eating, drinking loads of water, taking my pills,and playing a lot of videogames, we were ready to move on to the next place. Who knew that one could be tired of relaxing? I'd met a traveler that raved about Ollantaytambo so we took a local bus out and got there a couple hours later. This place was a real gem. It's a tiny village of about 2000 people set in a steep valley along the train tracks to Machu Picchu. Most people stop there as a day trip on the way to Machu Picchu but we liked it and decided to stay.

The hostel was small and run by a sassy Peruvian girl names Katti who spoke great English. She'd been running the place with her brother for like 7 years but she's the face of the operation. I wish that i had a picture with Katti. She used to be a bartender and she taught us how to make good pisco sours. They're a shot of pisco (like grappa), two small limes, some sugar syrup, and ice blended together. Then, you add in 1/4 of an egg white per drink and blend that up more to add a creamy head to the drink. A few drops of bitters or cinnamon finished up the poured glass. It's the national drink of Peru and Chile and I love them.

The obsession led Jowen and I to a small bar in town where we struck up a small friendship with the owner, a young guy named Guillermo. He's a pretty sketchy but funny guy and made the best pisco sours of the trip. I think the secret is that he makes them bigger and puts more booze in for the money yet they still taste good. On our first night in town Jowen and I met Jim and Cat at this bar. They're a couple from Toronto that's been traveling for just as long as us and seem to be really easy going and interested mostly in drinking, living cheap, playing cards, and engaging in pointless debates with us. These days, those are our favorite pursuits as well. We loved them and traveled with them for the next couple weeks more or less. I think that they both work in television back home.

The lot of us started hanging out and the next day we hiked out to some ruins outside of town. It turned out that they were pretty far away so we just stopped after 45 minutes of hiking, rested on the side of the road for an hour swapping stories and chatting with more ardent hikers going past before going home for pisco sours. The day before, Jowen and I had hiked up the side of a mountain to some ruins that overlooked the town. It wasn't so far away or spectacular but they were free and overlooked the ruins on the other side of town that we didn't want to pay for. When you think that the hotel room is $5 and most meals are less, then $50 for the tourist ticket starts to sound like a lot of money.

In the late afternoon we took the Perurail train to the town of Aguas Calientes (AC) at the base of Machu Picchu. The train is a total rip off... it's an hour and half ride from Ollantaytambo to the AC and costs $30 one way. Some people ride it from slightly further away and pay double that. The train follows a narrow canyon route with no road so they don't have to compete with buses. There is an alternative route that involves 8 hours of winding roads through the mountains and a couple long walks with your pack. It sounded so awful that we paid for the train ticket, cheap as we are.

Upon arrival in AC, we haggled our way into a very cheap hostel and set about buying tickets for the next day (for the bus and Machu Picchu) and sampling a variety of pisco sours around town. It's low season and there's not so many tourists now so we could haggle over our drinks along with everything else. I think that we tried out 4 different pisco sours at different places. Some tasted soapy, some too weak, some too sour... none were as good as back in good old Ollantaytambo. Too bad. Aguas Calientes is a particularly ugly little tourists trap of a town built in a deep canyon next to a raging river and purposed only with serving the gringos who stay overnight in order to get an early start on the ruins. It's a lucrative business I'm sure and touts were everywhere.

We agreed to get up at 5 in the morning so that we could catch the first bus up to Machu Picchu but that didn't really happen. I think that the alarm went off a couple times but Jowen and I slept in until Cat started pounding on the door at 6:30. Jim had left a couple hour earlier to hike up the mountain to save $8 which is a good plan but too much work for me. I know how silly steep that hill is to get to the site. Late on Jim said that he was hiking in the pitch black and was afraid for his life and too nervous to ask anyone for directions if he spotted them through the gloom. Eventually the rest of us made our way up the mountain and spotted Jim across the ruins. We waved and signaled to meet us near Wayna Picchu.

It's a steep peak at one end of Machu Picchu. Wayna Picchu is one of those places that everyone feels instinctively drawn to and looks like it'd provide an excellent view of the ruins. I think it's about 360 meters tall from the start of the trail and goes pretty much straight up. I remember the last time that I came here 10 years ago with my family, I climbed it with Erika and I recall being extremely sweaty and winded at the top. Well, I climbed it with a lot more ease this time and we got some pictures from the crowded top boulders and on some ruins part way down. It was a nice view and I'm glad that we did it early to avoid being swamped with tourists. They limit Wayna to just 400 visitors a day so we basically ran over to it.

After Wayna we wandered around the ruins a bit trying to find shade (Jowen used my umbrella as a parasol) and ran into the vegetarian couple from Reno. They'd been having a good time of things but were going home in a couple days and felt rushed about everything. They didn't stick with us for the rest of the day but rushed to see it all before their afternoon train. It was nice to see them for a bit at least so that I could hear how the ceviche negatively affected them. I suggested that they go to see the Inca bridge before thy left, and that's just what we did next as well. It was a short cliff side hike around the other end of the ruins and ended when the trail crept along a cliff face and across a small wooden bridge from ancient times. The trail didn't go more than 20 more meters before ending at an even worse cliff that hasn't been traversed in centuries I'd bet. What a drop off the side of it... one of the highest cliffs I'd ever seen.

Back in the main ruins, or a bit above it on a terrace rather, we stopped to eat whatever we had bought in the market the day before. I had a bar of honeyed birdseed (a poor mans granola bar), some passion fruit, cherimoya fruit, bell pepper, and melon. All this fruit attracted the attention of the nearby llamas that I'd been hassling earlier. They don't seem to mind being petted or even hugged, but when I tried to get one to spit by pushing him around a bit and annoying him he wouldn't react with more than a hiss. Too bad. Anyhow, the llamas crowded us and I fed them bananas. It was fun. I think that they're much friendlier animals than goats, cows, or sheep and seem to have friendly personalities. I'd get one if I had the land, except that they don't really taste so great in my opinion so what's the point? I'll get a sheep and raise it for a year and then eat it. That's natural living.

I still had a little bit more energy so when we passed by the trail head for the Sun Gate, I insisted that we hike up to it and some of the group didn't hate the idea. The trail was pretty steep and Jowen gave up after 15 minutes (we were all tired) and Cat after another 15 minutes. It was then that Jim and I met a group coming down who told us that we had the wrong trail for the Sun Gate and that we were going up to the mountain peak instead. Also, they said that it was a straight 45 degree slope of stairs for the rest of the way. We went for it and it took another hour of climbing before we got there exhausted. Actually I felt really good and could have kept climbing. Machu Picchu and even Wayna Picchu looked tiny from the top and I felt pretty proud that I made it.

That was enough for the day, and my feet hurt by now, so it was time to go. We met Cat near the entrance to the ruins and took a bus down with her to meet Jowen back at the hostel. It was just enough time for a little bit of food before we met our train at 7pm back to Ollantaytambo. I was happy to see Katti again back at our familiar hostel and we went to Guillermos for more of his great pisco sours. Ah, that's a nice town... but we had a plan for the next one. We heard from someone, I forget who, that the nearby town of Pisac was the home of many traditional Peruvian shaman that lead 'journeys'. It's a sort of popular stop for all the hippies that pass through the area and sounds kind of fun. Basically you sit around, talk philosophy, and drink hallucinogenic cactus juice. I read that it's harmless in the long run, so why not?

Katti knew an American woman in the nearby town of Urubamba so we agreed to meet her for dinner. A recommended shaman is always better than a stranger shaman I think. It turns out that she's in her early 50s and has been living in Peru for 20 years. Also, she's been doing these journeys for 15 years and has a local shaman boyfriend. Actually she wouldn't be there with us at all for the journey since she was headed into the jungle for a week to buy more ayahuasca. That's a different drug called the 'death vine' that's supposed to give strong hallucinations and violent vomits. Not my cup of tea. Anyhow, she seemed generally with it and she's got a nice home with a garden for us so we agreed to go there the next day to take the journey.

We all managed to oversleep and were a little late in getting there after a trip to the market but we made it there at 11 in the morning. Oh, I forgot to mention that we were instructed to eat only veggies the day before and to not eat anything in the morning. I guess it works better on an empty stomach. The shaman was out in the garden on a blanket when we got there. He introduced himself as Ezekiel and he seemed like a friendly guy. Ezekiel is in his late 60s but looks at least 20 years younger than that. He says that it's the 'healing' properties of the cactus that keeps him young. I think it's the fasting. He leads these journeys rather frequently and it involves a lot of fasting. Also, I think that he's often just too high to make a decent meal.

Yea, so Ezekiel and his girlfriend work with a lot of different people that pass through, but some stay longer with them for some kind of 'advanced' treatment. One German girl was living at the house and said hello a couple times, but there's also a Dutch girl there who is doing something pretty extreme. She's not talking for a month, doing some fasting, and taking San Pedro (the cactus juice) and ayahuasca daily. I don't know what that will do to a person, but it can't be good. She seemd to be in good spirits though despite not talking. I guess that she spends a lot of time reading and writing. She still communicates with people through gestures so that kind of defeats the exercise in my opinion but hey, I'm not the shaman.

So, we drank the cactus juice after the shaman cleansed our hands and feet with holy smoke. It tasted very bitter... almost like stomach bile, but we didn't make a big deal of it. From there we mostly just sat around on the blanket chatting amongst ourselves and also got some doses of the shaman's philosophy. He believes that the 'Gergorian calendar is a lie' and that people should observe holiday and birthdays and such based on the phases of the moon. He offerent to calculate our lunar birthdays so that we could celebrate on the correct days, but I don't think that we ever got to it. He also had a lot to say about the spirit of the eartch, the chakras of our bodies, and about the upcoming computer free post apocalyptic world that will raise Peru to the level of being a desirable place to live. I doubt that very much.

After an hour or two, Jowen claimed to be feeling 'something' but I just felt a little fatigued. The administered a second cup of 'medicine' to each of us and said that we should smoke some weed with him as a 'kicker'. I don't think that's a medical term but he's the expert. I still wasn't impressed so after another hour or two he gave me a third cup and my world started to melt. The San Pedro is an interesting drug. We felt totally lucid and could converse normaly, but we lost some minor motor skills and had some messed up visuals. Everything seemed to be moving slightly and colors were more saturated. Most strikingly, depth and distance was dificult to gague and everythign appeared closer than it should be. Apart from some mild nausea and severe hunger, it was a very pleasent state of being. The shaman gave us all ponchos to wear and drums to beat as we wandered through the garden watchign the pear trees dance. That was pretty great, but so cliche.

After dark we abandoned the garden and it's many bright and oversized flowers and made our way inside to relax. The shaman gave us some mango, the first food of the day, and we savagely devoured it. I produced my ipod and played some Rolling Stones while preparing guacamole (it was difficult) and served it with toasted bread since corn chips are unavailable in South America. Jowen had been looking at cooking books all day (it was torture to see the pictures when you haven't eaten a thing) and set to work making honey glazed chicken and ratatouille. I all came out well and the shaman said that it was the best meal that he'd eaten in years. Jowen was a professional chef in a former career. After all that, we slept on the floor on top of thick mats in front of a warm fire.

When we got up the shaman met us with big cups of coca tea and after promising that we would return some day (we won't) we set off to get home to Ollantaytambo. My laundry that I left with Katti wasn't dry so we decided to stay another night and get to Guillermo's for pisco sours and card games. It's good to be done with the fast.

The next day, Katti cooked us lunch, something called Aji de Galliena and it was delicious. Of course we all took a van after that to get back to Cuzco and on to new things. Jim and Cat were tired and wanted to spend the night but Jowen and I were running out of time so we took the overnight bus to Nazca so that we could hopefully see the famous lines in the desert. The bus was fine, but in the morning at the new hostel we found out that plane tickets doubled in price up to $120 after some safety issues (someone died) and government regulations were now in effect. Bummer, but we had a cheaper option.

The hostel had a pool (very rare) so after a quick swim and a little rest we explored town a bit. It's a dustly little town in the middle of nowhere that has a little bit of water for being the lowest point in the land, but otherwise the area is as dry as it comes. There are no bushes or grass in the land that the lines inhabit and I guess that's why they've lasted for so long. Jowen and I rode a local bus 20 miles for $0.60 and got off at a lonesome outpost in the desert. The outpost had 4 locals selling tourist junk under umbrellas and a steel viewing tower about 3 stories tall. We paid another $0.60 to climb the tower and got to see a few of the Nazca Lines that were within sight.

The lines were made by local indians a long time ago but I'm not sure when. It's said that they were a form of communication with their god(s) and they form the shapes of monkeys, birds, people, and other geometric patterns. I thought they'd be a lot bigger, but the two figures that I saw couldn't have been more than 50 meters wide and the lines were a little less than a foot thick. More impressive were the geometric lines that criss crossed the landscape and some of those were a couple meters wide and stretched perfectly straight far into the distance. They don't come out so well in my pictures and I don't think that they were worth coming all the way out to Nazca to see but it was interesting anyways. At least the town had a fun and cheap ferris wheel that night.

We spent the night there in Nazca but the next morning we took a bus for a few hours to the small settlement of Juacachina. It's really a palm tree oasis on the edge of a set of huge sand dunes. It was originally developed as a high end resort around the sand and water but in recent years has become the playground of international tourists of late. They come for the nice view of palm trees, water, and sand but mostly for the sandboarding and dune buggies. Sandboarding it just like snowboarding but slower. The dunes were just huge so at least it wasn't a super short ride.

We actually got there kind of late in the day and were pretty tired from the heat so we just relaxed through the afternoon and tried to find pisco sours. A presidential election was taking place that weekend so it was illegal to sell any alcohol in Peru for 2 days but we did find a place that would let us drink a beer in the back room. The next morning, we were ready to hit the dunes so we haggled at a few shops and found one that would give us a private tour of the desert for around $20 each. That's like half price. I think that the series of dunes stretched about 10 miles in circumference and had very fine yellow sand. So fine in fact that some got into my camera's lense and killed it for good. I guess that it lasted a year from when I bought it in Syria so that's not bad. It was full of dust already; you can tell by the white tint in all of my photos.

At least Jowen got some pictures. Normally sandboarding is a huge pain in the ass because you've got to walk up the dunes (very fatiguing) but we had a powerful dune buggy to carry us back up so I'd say that we probably rode down a dozen huge dunes. I strapped the board to my feet and rode down most of the dunes like I know how from snowboarding but it's pretty different. It's so much slower from the soft sand that I'd lose all my speed when carving and start to sink which made it harder to balance. I fell a lot but the buide said that I was still better than most anyone who comes out to try it. Jowen took the easy way out and went down with the booard on his belly. That's a lot faster so I did that some of the time too. On the way home we ran out of gas amongst the dunes and had to wait half an hour for another buggy to come along and loan us some fuel.

I only had a couple days left so, after a much needed shower, we got onto another bus and rode 4 hours to Lima where I would fly out of. Jim and Cat had sent us a message telling us to meet them at some particular hostel so we got a cab over there and met up for an evening of chinese food and cocktails. I'm miss all those cocktails now that I'm home.

The next day we didn't really do much... went to the beach; it's not nice. It's really a rocky shore. Also, we wandered around our neighborhood which was one of the nicest in town. All the homes looked pretty nice, but had high walls with electrified cables for defense. From there on we pretty much just had some beers and hung out with people from the hostel. We did the exact same thing the next day and then I went out to the airport in the evening to make my way home to California. I think that through all of my talk of going home, Jowen got inspired to throw in the towel and he bought a plane ticket for a week later. I guess I can't blame him. I' was pretty anxious for something new and I know that he feels the same. No more long bus rides for me.

Let's finish up with one last inappropriate picture of me feeding a banana to a llama. No pun intended. I was going to do a wrapup in a different post, but it took me so long to finish this one that I'm afraid that I'll never do another. I guess that my spirit for blogging is long since depleated. Now that I'm home I should ask myself what I learned, what I'd do differently, will I do it again, and because everyone asks... where is the best place?

First off, there isn't a best place. I loved some of them, sure, like Syria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Holland, Thailand, and Bolivia but that's because I thought that they were just great places with nice people. Others I loved because I had a great time there... like New Zealand. I'd definitely reccomend people visit all the places that I just listed (except NZ; too expensive) but for me a more useful measurement would be where I'd return. I want to return to Hungary, Thailand, Holland, and the Czech republic. I feel like there's more that I want to see there and people that I want to visit. Maybe that makes them the best places for me since there's plenty of places that I'd be happy never seeing again. Where then didn't I like? Well... I'm pretty good at seeing the best side of places but I thought that the Balkans, Argentina, and Malaysia weren't that great. There weren't so many great activities there and I thought that my time could better be spent elsewhere. Granted, I didn't see everything in those places (far from it) but from what I've gathered from other experience traveler I don't think that I'd care to go fill in the blanks there. I've got better things to do.

What would I do differently? Well, I'd start off the trip with less stuff certainly. I had to send stuff home with my sister both times she came out. I guess it's hard to tell what's going to be important. Also, I'd bring more photos of my home and family to show people that I met. Finally, I'd not blog about the whole trip. It was a HUGE investment of time and while I'm sure that it will hold some lingering value in my life (or be a source of blackmail and anguish?) I don't think that I'd do it again. It forced me to carry a laptop and I don't think that I'd do that again either. An iPod touch is plenty for answering an email and listening to a song... the laptop just drags you down into the mainstream media. It may be healthy for me to take a year off from the unending information and to focus on what's in front of me. I guess that it's not such a bad thing to carry though. The movies on it make long bus rides a lot more tolerable.

Will I do this again? I guess that I would like to do it again, though I don't have a specific plan about how or when I'd make that happen. Frankly, right now I'm pretty tired of traveling, uninterested in new towns and sights, and I'm really just loving home. I've only vaguely pondered wheer I'd go next time, and I guess my route would cover Northern Thailand, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, and whatever is safe and practical to do past that. Central Asia? I'm not going to think of it any more... I'm sick and tired of traveling and just want to work again. Heh, I never thought I'd say that but it's very satisfying that it did happen eventually. Maybe I'll have a different life and goals before I do the next trip... like what if I met a girl that I wanted to take with me? That would be grand. Maybe instead I'll be a home owner and my availability and finances will be different.

Ok, last of all: what did I learn? I guess I learned that everywhere in the world people are friendly to travelers. Well, everywhere that I went. I guess that I already knew that however. It's funny how I think that the Middle East had the friendliest people yet they're so mislabeled back home. I definitely learned to be less hesitent about talking and being open with strangers. I mean, for the last year everyone was a stranger and I learned to just start talking and assume that people will want to be associated with me. I like it... I guess that you could say that I'm more forward and open with people that I've never met before. I've never been more confident in myself and that can only be good. I've also learned how the be a better haggler, some new recipes and cocktails, better dancer, better at ukulele, my knowledge of geography has improved even more, learned to scuba dive, and I learned to live with less. Also, I now know endless inane details about different cultures around the world.

I guess that in the end, this trip was about me growing up and learning about myself as I was introduced to thousands of people and defined myself in their eyes as well as my own... over and over again. I learned as much about them as I did about me and I hope that I keep forever the lessons that I've taken away from this year. Thanks for reading my journal! A year is a long time to watch me losing myself and if you made it to the end, you're tough as nails. The plan is to format it into a coffee table book and print off a few copies for myself and some family. Let's see how long it takes me to do that. Bye!