Happy New Year, Hong Kong

Ignorance is a state that yields mixed results for travelers. Sometimes, the reprecussions can be unpleasant, as in "who knew traveling in Chile was so expensive?" But at times, a certain sunny blankness of expectation can be just the clean canvas that invites unanticipated adventures.

Such was the case in Hong Kong. A simple Wikipedia search would have told me that Hong Kong is the world's most vertical city, and also has the highest rate of participation in public transportation. But despite the countless advantages available to us in this information age, Brianne and I arrived in Hong Kong without ever having cracked a guide book or run the simplest of internet searches. Luckily my more proactive aunt helped arrange a lunch date with a former coworker, Martin Tang, and we looked forward to the chance to ask for some insider's advice.

"What are your plans for Hong Kong?" he asked us. "Nada," we admitted. "Well then," he replied, "why don't you take my personal car and driver, make an itinerary with my assistant, and take a tour of Hong Kong island?" "Well..." we answered, "that's certainly better than anything we've come up with so far."

So thanks once again to the generosity of strangers, to my fabulous aunt, and to a rather incredible stroke of luck, we found our two days in Hong Kong packed with sights: kaleidoscope views of the city and harbor, chic sidewalk restaurants, surprisingly secluded beaches, and bustling urban temples. I've included a sample of our photography haul below:

View of Hong Kong harbor at night from the Peak

Across the harbor near our shoebox-sized hostel room

Street market near Soho

 

Repulse Bay



Incense burning outside a small temple in Stanley



After two busy days, our conclusion was: Hong Kong is pretty happening. As cosmopolitan and hip as London, it still has a flavor all its own and just the right energy to jump start our Asian adventure.

The Things You Carry With You

The process of packing for a long trip has something mythic and existential about it. You begin to feel that these clothes before you are not just a random assortment of quick-dry pants and non-cotton tops. Oh no. Not only have they been carefully selected for maximum utility across temperatures and dress codes, scrutinized for wrinkle-free packability, and weighed carefully on the scales of “added weight versus added happiness.” They will be the companions on every adventure, the splash of color (or more likely earth tones) in every photo. They will help set the mood and character of the days ahead.

And more imporant even than my rain jacket or pack towel are all the traveling companions I'm not even aware I've tucked in my backpack: preconceived notions, subconscious expectations and fears, hidden attachments to antoher time, place, or people - all of which will subtly alter the course of my experience. Perhaps a very accomplished guru would be able to cleanse her aura of all that extra baggage and walk forward with clear, open eyes. But yours truly has yet to find a way of not dragging it all along. The best I can do is try to be attentive, slow to form judgments, and eager to embrace the day rather than shape it to my own will.

As Brianne and I enter the second, arguably more culturally challenging Asia phase of the trip, an open mind and a present focus seem particularly important. I want to put my energy into inhabiting each beautiful, uncomfortable, tedious, heartbreaking moment. I'm taking for my mantra a Mary Oliver quote I often turn to: "Look, I want to love this world as if it's the last chance I have to be alive and know it." In what will perhaps be my last long wander for a great many years, I don't want to miss opportunities to be alive and be grateful for it.

So if you've made it this far, thank you for reading, and stay tuned for Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Nepal, and Dubai.

So Long, South America

With the sense of perspective gained from 30 hours of airport travel, I can now see how the end of my trip to South America serves as a microcosm for the experience as a whole: a large span of wandering improvisation, a healthy dose of adventure, and a touch of the unexpected. To start with the last, I am sorry to admit that my last weeks in South America included contracting a case of "don't eat the strawberries in a developing country, genius." Just when I was most ready to get out and savor the last days of mountains, warmth, and grammatically shaky Spanish, I found myself instead confined to our hostel bedroom, becoming intimately familiar with CSI spinoffs and past seasons of America's Next Top Model. However, I am happy to report that in that time I managed to (a) fill an REI.com shopping cart with gear I couldn't possibly afford, (b) compose a list of the best dance songs of 2011, and (c) get absolutely nothing of any importance accomplished.

It pleases me even more to say that after my recovery from Montezuma's Andean Cousin's Revenge, I was able to seize the day with a little bit more vigor and purpose. Brianne and I wrapped up our time at Seeds of Hope by teaching the children to make (somewhat freeform) friendship bracelets, and spent some time wandering Huaraz for last-minute alpaca purchases.

No, not that kind of alpaca purchase

Then we decided to say farewell to the Andes in true rustic style by attempting another day hike to Lake Churup, followed by a night at the Way Inn Lodge in the mountains. As has been true to form with our Peruvian treks, the climb to Lake Churup proved both beautiful and far more arduous than the phrase "day hike" seems to suggest. After taking a rural van packed with campasinos and papas to the "town" of Llupa, a herd of assorted farm animals led us past houses and fields to the Huascaran National Park. From there we huffed up a steep path, puffing for air at 14,000+ feet, and finally scrabbling to the finish by pulling ourselves up a rock face using steel cables. Needless to say, as the consistency of our legs approached that of overcooked noodles, we were a little humbled to find out that a 71-year-old man and his 65-year-old wife had done the hike the day before.

After that we spent a peaceful stay at the Way Inn, followed by our last overnight bus of South America, and concluding with a spell in Lima to re-acclimatize ourselves to sea-level oxygen and the presence of Starbucks.

The Way Inn Lodge

Plaza de Armas, Lima

Last sunset in South America

Now, back in Michigan for a three-week home-front leave, I find myself confronting the question of whether I got what I came for in South America. Unsurprisingly, the answer is a little of both. I got more than I expected, in mountain vistas and physical challenges, in sudden friendships and far too many heavy souvenirs. And also I got less than I expected: specifically, less unity of experience. In retrospect I realize how my time in New Zealand, during which four months was sufficient to canvas almost an entire country, contributed to my assumption that "going to South America" was even possible. As if visiting a few major cities and a handful of national parks was sufficient to have an impression of an entire continent. Whatever experience I'm actually taking home is quite a bit more fragmentary and elusive than that, and will take some time to catalog. When I think back on the past three months I see a scattering of bright moments, but so far cannot make out the connective, thematic lines that will eventually trace discrete experiences into a narrative constellation. But I look forward to the time to reflect, to the chance to miss alfahores and fresh mangoes, and to watching how the waves of memory smooth and round the past into something new.

Holding onto Huaraz

Our arrival in Huaraz, Peru not only began our longest stationary stint in South America, but also signalled the beginning of the end of our hispanophone adventures. The three weeks spent in this Andean trekking hotspot would be our last destination in the southern hemisphere, and our first (almost entirely) non-graduate-school-related travel experience of the trip. Despite the early onset of we're-almost-home syndrome, we wanted to make the last hurrah of South America count.

So...first things first, we wasted no time in confirming the existence of fine French press coffee in Huaraz. Cafe Andino - whose mismatched armchairs, tofu fajitas, and gorgeous mountain views put me in mind of Boulder, Colorado - quickly became a haven for us on rainy, homesick, or stressful days.



Stormy view of Huaraz from Cafe Andino

Next, we dove into our second volunteer experience of the trip: offering up our tutoring services to an organization called Seeds of Hope. As it turns out, the at-risk students Seeds supports would have been much better served had our intentions to learn Spanish progressed a little bit further. We had thought we might be giving English lessons or leading farm vocabulary games, but when presented with our first geography worksheet and asked to explain it to expectant middle-schoolers, we realized our linguistic (not to mention mathematical) preparation had been a little lacking. Give professora a second to remember how to find the lowest common denominator...and then give professora a moment to look up "common" and "denominator" in the English-Spanish dictionary. Luckily, our students are willing to teach as well, and between answering questions about my bicycle and what street Shakira lives on, tutoring has given us a chance to practice our basic conversation skills.


During this indescribably long day, we attempted an origami lesson. Approximately half the children mastered the paper crane in the first half hour and proceeded to produce, seemingly without fatigue, an alarmingly large flock of colored birds. The other half tacitly gave up on the "learning" part of the exercise and instead used an innocent-sounding "ayudame, profe" to recruit one of their gullible professors to manufacture cranes for them for the next two hours.

Finally, we enjoyed one of the best possible highlights of a long spell abroad: a visitor from home. My very own tocaya (name twin), Lauren Berka, used her Thanksgiving break from graduate school to come visit us in Huaraz and and thus gave us an excuse to treat ourselves to the best the city has to offer. In the series below (my apologies for the explosion of photos), you can see us sampling Andean brews, tackling the Laguna 69 trek, attempting a Peruvian Thanksgiving dinner, and wandering the mountains outside of town.

Laguna 69



Breaking my personal altitude record at 15,090 ft (plus two)



Approaching the Llanganuco Lakes

Thanksgiving dinner with Lauren and the other Seeds volunteers



The Cordrillera Blanca outside of Huaraz



It's always difficult to stave off the first tinges of itchy feet as you reach the end of a journey. But a visit from a good friend, gorgeous mountains, and a multitude of unknown Spanish verb tenses have helped anchor us in Huaraz. I hope that when I write to tell you how our trip wraps up, I will be able to say that I savoured my last tastes of Peru and South America.

Climbing to Cusco and the Cloud City

Making the trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu is Peru's gringo rite of passage. The postcard shot of the famous ruins backed by green, finger-like mountains is one of the most coveted photo opportunities in South America. An entire tourist industry has exploded into being to charge visitors a pretty penny to hike, train, raft, or bike their way to the mythic spot. And as much as my inner-Dutch self rebelled at the price tag of the journey, I had heard enough testimonies from past visitors (like Brianne) to know that I shouldn't miss the chance to see them for myself.

Luckily, Cusco's beauty has survived the crush of foreign tourists, and despite the prevalence of hawkers and five-dollar-a-photograph llamas, it's a charming and picturesque city. Brianne and I stayed in a quiet hostel on the hillside, which afforded us gorgeous views and literally breath-taking hikes up long stairs in the high-altitude thin air. We took a break from graduate applications to explore the city, try Peruvian Pisco, and become almost twice-a-day regulars at a tiny but delicious veggie cafe.

Veggie burger + falafel taco = dos gringas felices

But the real fun started when I got to planning my solo trip to Machu Picchu. I needed an entrance ticket, two train tickets, and two bus tickets to get there and back, and Cusco seemed to be conspiring with the tour companies to make an independent acquisition of those items as difficult as possible. After a half-day romp around the city looking for the suspiciously unmarked Instituto Nationale de Cultura so that I could buy my entrance ticket (literally you have to walk by the doorway three times looking confused and white before a security guard stops you and whispers "Machu Picchu?" like an underground code word), and a very frustrating evening trying to navigate PeruRail's website (which went something to the effect of: "We accept all credit cards. Except no, not yours. Here's your ticket, except that no the transaction didn't actually go through. Do you have a ticket? Maybe..."), I finally got all the pieces in place for my trip. I spent a semi-sleepless night waiting for my 6:30 AM taxi and then started the long, tiring, gorgeous, expensive, wonderful day at Machu Picchu.

The scene at the ruins is overwhelming in more ways than one. Sunburning tourists everywhere in khaki shorts, guides filling the air with historical tidbits in European languages, and a vista so unbelievable that no matter how many times you photograph it, you always seem to miss the essential element. It can be hard to share an experience that large-scale with so many other people. Even when I found a quiet spot to rest and take in the view, a French tour group would wander by, or a gang of eleven-year-old Peruvian schoolboys would want their photos taken with me (true story). Fortunately, being alone in a crowd has always held a certain appeal to me, and I enjoyed a day with my inner monologues and Ipod-compiled soundtracks. I did my best to carve out my own snapshots of a place both overexposed to tourists and stubbornly inaccessible to them. I like to think I walked away with a little something of my own.

Border crossings

Since I last found time to write, many of the foundations of our trip have shifted. October has turned to November, and counter-intuitively the weather has warmed from fleeces and wool socks to short sleeves and sandals. We've left Chile for Peru. And we have finally, at long last started handing in our graduate school applications. We might very well be on the verge of a whole new state of travel, but before it arrives I should back up and fill in the busy steps that led us here.

Our farewell to Chile was one of our trip's pleasant surprises. The Chilean chicas we met in Torres del Paine (Elaine, Pamela, and Manola) invited us to come visit them in Vina del Mar and Valparaiso. And we, being two people who will always follow up on a free bed in a beautiful city, accepted. Our friends, it turned out, were the daughters of some fairly important Chilean naval officers, and we spent four fabulous days being toured around, spoiled with free laundry, and stuffed with delicious food. Valparaiso's streets are kaleidoscopic and Vina's beaches are gorgeous, but the highlight of the stay was the chance to relax with friends, have a movie night, and eat so many chips and biscuits you might need a stomach pump.

Valparaiso

 

The beach at Quintay



Pamela, Me, Brianne, and Elaine

You may have noticed that our Chilean friends look every bit as gringa as we do. In fact, you may very well suspect us of bringing in German and Scottish ringers to make ourselves look more culturally engaged. But Valparaiso, like the United States, has a long history of European immigration, and many of the Chileans we met there could have passed for Swedes. As for our Chileans, they gave us a spectacular send-off by introducing us to Piscola and taking us dancing until 6:00 AM: the perfect preparation for a 30-hour bus ride leaving at 7:00 AM. We dozed easily in and out of the marathon ride from Santiago to Arica (in the north of Chile), waking only occasionally to take note of the expanse of desert outside and the terrible movie selection inside.

After a night of recovery in Arica, we took a packed taxi ride in a Ford Taurus across the border to Tacna, Peru. From there, yet another bus hauled our tired selves from Tacna to Arequipa, our first real stop in Peru. Finally we had a four-day stay to rest our fluid-swollen feet, power forward on our graduate school applications, and greet Peru by exploring a truly beautiful city.

Sunset from the roof of our hostel

And yes, Peru has brought us (finally) to the beginning of the end of graduate school applications. Unfortunately, hitting submit has so far brought less relief than a general sort of post-partem anxiety. Is this really all I have to show for months of agonized labor? Can I have it back for a second and try to sound smarter? What's more, applying to graduate school has evolved into something of an existential state for me. It's part of my identity. I live in hostels and apply to graduate school. What will I do with myself after it's done?

It's time to find out I suppose. We're in Peru, November spring flowers are blooming, and a whole new phase of the trip is beginning. Cross your fingers that next time you hear from me, I will be celebrating thirteen completed graduate school applications with a Pisco Sour and a Cusco sunset.