drewd The Adventures of Carlos d'Avis

No trip to Bolivia would be complete without a visit to that lake so elevated, so wonderfully named: Titicaca. The name refers neither to anatomy nor excrement but rather means "Rock Puma," referring to its similarity in shape to a puma chasing a rabbit. The lake surface is at 12,500 feet. How big is Lake Titicaca? I don't know: it's friggin' huge.

Trina and I took an easy bus ride from La Paz to Copacabana, the primary city on the Bolivian side of the lake. The best bit of the ride is crossing a little strait at Ancoamaya. We got on one boat; the bus got on another.

Trina and I lunched in Copacabana—the trout there is amazing—but then immediately embarked for La Isla del Sol, the birthplace of Manco Capac, the first Inca. The island is quite rustic—it has electricity, but just barely, and certainly no internet. For three days, I did no work, tweeted not twits, checked no email. Shocking I know. Turns out the island is totally worth it.

We stayed at a lovely little hotel called Inti Kala, on the Peru-facing (western) side of the island. I loved it there—their bread was delicious—but the shower still electrocuted us when we requested hot water. All the same, we did our best to relax, despite requiring as well some hiking about old Incan mazes and ruins and rocks.

The island was surprisingly fertile—some of the best agriculture of Bolivia is produced on the old Incan terraced fields. At times, I felt I was in California with the eucalyptus trees or in the Mediterranean on an rocky cliff-side path with the blue water below. And the island was full of llamas, mules and drowsing pigs. I loved it!

Trina did her best impressions of the Great Cornholio.

I jumped in the lake, naturally.

We lived the dream: taste that Paceña. So good!

I will offer presently, and so so late, some recollections of my time with Trina in Bolivia. I must commit all I have done ever to this blog, carved into the perfectly permanent stone of the INTERNET!

I departed from Sucre on March 12th, to reunite with Trina in La Paz. I found her waiting (read: napping) in our hotel room. All hugs and smiles upon this union of friends from home, we turned quickly to an important pursuit: catching Trina up on the new LOST episodes since she had been traveling. My thanks, again, to Sarah for the LOST season pass on iTunes—I would not be maintaining sanity without it. Indeed, interspersing adventures and exploration with LOST became a bit of a theme of my two weeks with Trina.

Trina and I explored La Paz on foot, heading through the market neighborhoods and around downtown. La Paz is huge and just so full of people. I never felt particularly unsafe but I was rarely relaxed, at least during the busy hours of the day. I believe I am inheriting my, ahem, father's dislike of people walking very close to him. Moving on!

We marveled at the amazingly dressed cholitas and the wide array of goods for sale all over. I always particularly enjoyed the action figures arrayed on blankets on the sidewalk—this presentation somehow lends them more value.

We visited churches and squares. I introduced Trina to salteñas. Generally, we were not incredibly successful, I would say, in our dining in La Paz. Some of the restaurants recommended by guidebooks (or my mother) simply did not exist anymore. Furthermore, the area in which we stayed was a little tourist center, full of the same shop over and over again selling ponchos and blankets and place mats. I missed the Bolivian cuisine of Sucre and Cochabamba and regretted my inability to share it with Trina in La Paz.

Regardless, I enjoyed La Paz. I did not necessarily view it with the same wonder I held as an eight-year-old but the city was a wholly unique and unquestionably significant part of Bolivia, and my experience of the nation.

Trina and I spent one day venturing out with a tour group to Tiawanaku, the ruins of the center of a pre-Columbian, pre-Incan culture. This people maintained a nation stretching over Lake Titicaca, western Bolivia, and the coasts of Chile and Peru for some five hundred years. They were concerned greatly with astronomy and Tiawanaku was arranged in conjunction with the passage of the sun and constellations.

As previously mentioned, Trina and I spent another day in La Paz riding bikes down the World's Most Dangerous Road. I took no photographs during this tour—I was too concerned with not dying—and I have not yet posted the (low-quality) photographs provided by Gravity Bolivia. Here, all the same, are my notes on this day:

1. Gravity Bolivia is the shit, and by that I mean that they know what they're doing far better than the other tour companies. I cannot recommend them highly enough.
2. This ride is amazing, and I never felt particularly in danger. I tore down those 10,000 feet of elevation loss and it was AWESOME. If you are in Bolivia and enjoy fun and excitement, you have to do this ride.
3. You read me correctly: we started at 14,400 feet and descended to approximately 3700 feet, from cold high mountains into warm humid jungle. Bolivia is an incredible land.
4. Trina wrote a wonderful post describing the ride in more detail. I suggest you read her story of the World's Most Dangerous Road.

I am so thankful for this opportunity to adventure with Trina and I have much more to recount. She likes, I like fun, and we both speak English and Spanish. You understand, I hope, why this worked out well?

Up next, Titicaca!

In certain moments, gloomy moments, when I question this trip and lament this chosen solitude, I find peace in a Camera Obscura song and the words once written: Leaving Seattle and Looking South, from October 26th, 2009. The song is still haunting and the words are still heartening. I made the correct decision: this adventure is true and good.

What good use, this blog! And what good opportunity, now, to delight you with a more upbeat Camera Obscura offering!

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I think I will go home on June 12th. Thirty-seven days? That'll work. Triumphant return!

1. I declare Mendoza, perhaps unfairly, to be a dirty and ugly city, no matter its proximity to fertile land and fantastic bodegas. I do not love it.
2. I did love Buenos Aires as a place to settle and explore and work and receive visitors. There are wonderful people, a glorious array of fine restaurants, interesting neighborhoods, parks, art, public transit... and on and on and on. Still I do not love it, not with the depth required to make Buenos Aires a home.
3. I enjoyed a much-needed vegetarian lunch buffet at Azahares on Alem 46. I have to hope that avoiding enormous piles of steak will improve my health at least a little bit. Oh, and perhaps I should drink less wine.
4. I will not cut my hair until I return to Seattle. There, I said it. (Eric, look for a dirty hippie in Ecuador.)
5. I will return to Seattle between June 12th and 15th. I will be home in about six weeks.
6. No matter this trip and its stunning vistas, no matter my uncertain future and family location, I still think about Seattle as home. A week-long visit from Dave clarified this matter entirely.
   Home = Seattle
7. If I had to be alone in a city in South America, I wish that city were Sucre. Mendoza does not quite cut it. I think I will leave here after a week or so and spend some time in Chile.
8. I am now accepting applications for the privilege of my renting a room in your house.
   In Capitol Hill.
   With a puppy allowed.
9. If Claire's two-week-long visit clarified any matter it is my desire to have a dog posthaste. I think I am ready to plan the remains of 2010 around an adorable puppy. See also Fuck Yeah Dogs.
10. I feel like crap, and the internet here is not particularly speedy. Back to the hotel, I suppose?

What do I say here: please read The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Just so. This novel is heartbreaking and beautiful and—dare I say it—perfect. I offer my sincerest thanks to Claire for having carried the book from San Francisco and to Syd for having lent it to Claire.

I will offer little context or description for better that you discover its depths on your own. May the following suffice: I wept in its conclusion. No matter your reply—“Drew, you cry at everything! Evidence: An American Tail”—Hedgehog is truly poignant.

From Paloma:

But if, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven't yet become … will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears'?

From Renée:

This pause in time, within time … When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is possible only with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship …

Enjoy!

When do I engage the present? When do I embrace that which is happening right right now with its hand in my face and its stink all up in my snoz? Right. When in the history of humankind will I finish processing photographs from three weeks ago and declare fit for consumption some narrative so long stewed it no longer resembles more than mush?

Now.

Katie just stuck her head out onto the balcony and asked me if I want toast. I do not want toast. I want instead to drink this coffee and sit shivering on the morning balcony (despite the llama-patterned alpaca-wool socks on my feet and the puffy down Patagonia jacket on my, um, torso).

Katie is my lovely roommate in this here 5th floor Palermo apartment. Katie is the the sister of a longtime friend, a man some may know as Charlie and others as Chuck. Before that Thursday evening, April 1st, when we arrived to receive our keys for the month, Katie and I had never met. Faith! And well placed, because we're great and this apartment is great and wow, seriously, Buenos Aires!

That is a sunset. Now is morning. Now is when Claire Fisher Scott, my dear dear friend, sleeps still and dreams perhaps of a certain husband arriving in just a few hours. I hope my hands warm up by then so I can give Whit appropriately awesome high-fives.

Claire and I have been spending a relaxed week since she arrived to visit on Sunday. We have been eating much delicious and drinking much wine; we have been laying in the afternoon by the heated pool in my apartment courtyard. She has been putting up graciously with my need to bill hours. We met new friends from the States, saw a hippie drum show, visited a cross between Disneyland and Bourbon Street, and purchased and destroyed so many galletitas from the bakery around the corner.

Claire, Whit and I will travel tomorrow to Bariloche for three days in the lakes region, northern Patagonia. I will make good use of my Patagonia gear—thank you, Sarah—as it is already epically cold down there. And by that I mean 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

We will return to greet so joyously Dave! Zucker! Have I mentioned that I love my friends? Have I mentioned that I will have three particularly pleasing ones here in Argentina with me? Morning, life, how brightly you shine on this ugly hospital ventilation system on which my gaze rests from my balcony!

The leaves are falling in Buenos Aires. Autumn is sharply, crisply here and winter is coming. I will escape north ahead of the freeze to Mendoza and then Peru and then Ecuador. Eric and I will surf for a week—SURFING—in Ecuador. And then I might, you know, be flying back... home... to Seattle. What home, what city: only Buenos Aires for now. No one is even awake on the West Coast yet.

Buenos días, Buenos Aires. Good morning, all. Now, what was I doing again?

On Sunday January 3rd, I received a totally reasonable haircut from—get this—the Supercuts in North Beverly, across the street from Texaco and the 128 on-ramp. Oh, life!

On the morning of January 4th, I waited in the Miami airport and ate guava pastries. Brittney had arrived back in San Francisco that morning from Hawaii to find a package from me containing one DarkHorse Rainbow Pony fuzzy wristband. We exchanged photos of said wristbands, hers and mine, over airport wifi.

And then I flew to Costa Rica and then I took one hundred more morning photographs of my most important subject.

Sometimes I was not wearing a shirt. Frequently I had a cup of coffee. This was... is... Morning Carlos.

With changing light and backdrop, I would be hard pressed to measure my increasing and then declining tan. I forgot to flex my bicep in every single one so that's a bust, too. But my hair! Oh, my hair!

Go go go!

Oh, there it is.

Super Saiyan? Probably. Glorious? Definitely. Now, what to do with it... to cut or not to cut?

And, perhaps more importantly, when I finish this trip, to what song will I set the slideshow of all my portraits? Is there any song anyone knows, preferably a slow jam, called "I am so totally in love with myself (or maybe that's the coffee talking)?"

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Imagine me, please, singing this to myself.