Volume 7 - Vagabond

I realize as I write this that in my old age, I’m completely forgetting the meaning of the word “brevity.” I’ve never been a fan of word limits, time limits, country limits, etc. so it certainly doesn’t bother me. I just noticed as I was copying all my old journals from as far back as the epic Australia journal of 2003 that started it all 7 holy years ago, that this Vagabond entry is quite easily the longest yet. No worries, since it is the culmination of over a year’s worth of adventures I lumped together as one awesome life stage. The journal is now on Blogger, which I dislike because it has the word “blog” in it. All true bloggers hate the label, and yet deep down don’t we all want Julie & Julia to happen to us. You won’t find any advertisements on my page, however. It was tempting. They let you post ads selected by a computer that relate to your content and pay you for every reader who clicks on one. I could surely put that money to good use, but is it worth it to encourage consumerism in my readers? To expose friends who trust me and are interested in reading about and benefiting from my travels to messages telling them they are worthless without a product? Nope. I’m afraid not.
This is going to be a tricky piece of literature to churn out. The trouble with this whole backpacking/volunteering scheme is that it leaves no free time for long periods of rambling scribing. And when it does, the Internet costs $2 an hour. That’s lunch. So here I am at home, barely more than a week into my return to United States and less than 24 hours before leaving on the last leg of my Year of Living Spontaneously, Authentically, and Peacefully (I think the order of those changes every time I write it) in Israel. There were lots of thoughts in my head just after my last entry. Sloths do that to you. They’re so slow and ponderous and magical.

I was privileged enough to escape the clutches of muggers or would-be thieves for my entire stay in potentially-dangerous Latin America. Not everyone was so lucky. You may remember my new friends the animators from last time. We were headed to la playa with my South African pal and were all distracted by plantain (my new favorite food) goo stuffed inside some crusty turnover thing (don’t remember the name, but you can bet it ends in -ada) that we were oblivious to the GPS-jacking that took place in the rented Hyundai. One more reason I hate GPSs, but I felt horrible. As the experienced traveler, should I have not known enough to say, “hey your GPS might get jacked sitting in the locked glove compartment of your locked rental car at this idyllic beach?” Apparently not. It was a humbling experience. Thank goodness it was just a gadget. But what gal to break into a car in broad daylight at the beach. I wonder what would have happened if one of us had just happened to walk up while it was happening. What do you say? “Excuse me sir, your screwdriver seems to be in an inappropriate location right now.” Or if that’s too much Spanish…”No!”

While the Ticos (Costa Ricans) were getting in, the perezosos (sloths) were busy getting out. It’s true, I let a sloth escape. Not even the fast two-toed kind…nope these are the real slowpokes of the animal world. The three-toed sloth may be as fast as a snail and only slightly faster than a tortoise, but they’re good at setting picks to allow for easy escape. Once a sloth is out of its cage, it doesn’t like going back in. It just doesn’t realize that it can’t survive in the wild. So a ladder and a few embarrassing moments later, the big guy was back in his pen, never again to leave the blissful existence of three square leaves a day.

And then comes my major existential quandary of the Latin era of The Year of Living SAP. It was just me that morning. Me and the sloths. That does something to you. There is no man who can spend hours alone with 100 sloths and not come across some great philosophical revelation. It began because the night before I had declined an invitation to what by all appearances would have been a rave. Minus the E, raves have always seemed pretty appealing to me. The whole countercultural, no one can stop us from having fun vibe and the crazy techno music sounds like my kind of party, but for some reason I didn’t want to go. The language barrier was my crutch most of this trip when I thought ill of decisions I had made (no regrets though). It was a constant source of inner turmoil for me during the whole trip. 90% of the people I meet had little interest in conversation, exploration, or otherwise interacting in meaningful ways during the day, but come night time when the sun goes down and liquid confidence follows it, the story was different. There were many amazing exceptions, of course, but as someone who prefers a sunrise to a hangover this left me with the constant predicament of going out and potentially finding some inspiration or hanging out with a good book and getting the nickname “the guy in the bed.” And books can’t keep you warm at night. They lack the blood and sexy body necessary for that. Part of me wished I would have gone in a way because as much fun as reading can be, you’re not taking advantage of any opportunity by reading. It can inspire you the way a good movie can, but if you’re spending all your time getting inspired and no time doing what you’ve been inspired to do, then you’re a bit stuck in the mud. For every 10 nights of watching drunken antics, there’s one full of wonder and excitement but you never know when it’s going to come. Fun doesn’t happen in regular intervals, but if you’re too tired (or too busy reading) you can miss it. Plus raves cost money. That’s another battle altogether. Spontaneity and wise use of limited financial resources do not go hand in hand. I must learn to be spontaneously wise. Purposefully spontaneously wise. I’ve been doing alright with the peaceful and authentic side of my year’s mission. Spontaneity is the tough one for me. Even in “what’s it matter if I’ve got 10 girlfriends” Latin America, I’m still an obsessive planner. Spontaneous, alcohol-free, cost-conscious wisdom. That’s what we all need.

However, I do believe all things happen for a reason. This is tough sell to many people who truly believe we’re alone in the universe. But it all comes back around. By getting mad at myself for saying no, I was more encouraged to say yes the next time. And quite possibly the nest time will be that one in 11 experience that is awesome, while the old no would have been a bum deal. This is how the universe evens things out. Perhaps it’s all in my mind, but what does it matter? It keeps me relentlessly positive, frees me from the paralysis of guilt by allowing me to forgive myself, and encourages healthy introspection (more on that to come). The key is you have to really believe it. The reason I can “regret” a decision for a few hours and then be totally over it is because I really unabashedly and completely believe that good wins out in the end. And so that smile is real folks.

The sloths kept staring and sleeping and reaching and sleeping, and so I kept on cleaning and thinking. I had some thoughts on guide books. You know, travel guides. To the uninitiated, we’re talking about Lonely Planet here, the 1000 page guides to the history, culture, and logistics of world travel. It’s taking something you can’t put into words and trying to put it into words so people can all experience it together. The jury’s still out. I didn’t buy any for this trip, but I borrowed plenty, and while they are admittedly useful they’re also a crutch. A necessary evil, perhaps? Can there be such a thing? Is evil ever necessary? They helped me find some amazing discoveries, great restaurants, fantastic hostels, and saved me a ton of money I’m sure, but at the same time they limited my spontaneity, kept my head down instead of out, and elevated the plan above the experience. It’s the same issue I dealt with years ago during the Route 66 Map-Reading Argument of ’04. Follow the map or, “eh, we’ll get there!” The joy of discovery is much greater if it’s a surprise. In a way, I liken it to a GPS (which I may have mentioned will likely be the downfall of intelligent thought). When we live by a GPS or a guidebook, we are essentially giving up our right and ability to exercise free though, and submitting our existence and decision-making to someone else’s ideas. Instead of studying and deciding and problem-solving to get to a location, we let someone else tell us how to do it. Instead of talking to people to find out the history of a place or the best hostel, we read a foreigner’s recommendation. The art of problem solving, of decision making, is completely lost. We each have our own individual criteria for making decisions, and the problem with letting other people do it for us is that we lose our identity. That other person may have a completely different set of values than us, and yet we let them tell us what to do. The intentions may be benevolent, but it becomes a problem when it’s our goal to have everything done for us. This is why, though I know nothing about working on cars, when I one day have money again, I’m buying a vintage Vespa, the one you have to shift yourself. Why? Because I don’t know how to shift. I’ll need to learn. And that is how you keep your brain keen.

If you find yourself in need of a guidebook at any rate, there is one that doesn’t disgust me when I read it. They’re called Rough Guides, and this time the Brits got it spot on. The ubiquitous Lonely Planet, despite their “bigger than Jesus” boast about being the traveler’s bible, is generally full of all the info you could want about finding the best places to ensure a hangover and strange bedmate, meet lots of other Americans, and generally maintain chic disinterest in the surrounding culture. Every writer is different of course, but most LPs I’ve read are written with such a sarcastic tone that I leave the book not wanting to visit the place at all. Note to travel writers: it’s terribly important to have an appreciation for the place you write about if you want to inspire others to enjoy their time there. Part of the problem isn’t their fault. It’s the “National Park problem” – by telling people about a place and encouraging them to visit, you inherently ruin its authenticity. This happens with all guidebooks, but as the “bible,” LP has the most readers, so what they recommend will invariably be crowded and lacking in authenticity. Catch-22. Conversly, I’ve found Rough Guides to include all the necessary logistics but balance them with rich and deep history, culture, and the all-important context. There are of course tons of other guidebooks out there, so don’t take my word for it. Research it and pick the best one for you. Just don’t go for the market leader just because it’s the market leader. The underdog deserves a look.

Thinking about guidebooks got me thinking about travel. Why do I love travel? Why exactly did I decide to leave my enjoyable, stable job to work with sloths in Central America? In my head (and with the later addition of a pen and paper) I devised reasons why I travel. 1) The constant challenge of solving new problems. This is something we all long for. It’s why we’re not all drones. Problem solving is why we’ll never be replaced by robots. We need to challenge ourselves, to do things that push us to try something different, to step out of our comfort zone. Otherwise we become stagnant, we wallow in selfishness and mindless entertainment, and we lose our humanity. It really is that serious. 2) The variety of constant change. I always tell people how important variety is in my life. Some have taken this to mean I’ve adopted the Latin American “10 girlfriends” thing, but what I’m really talking about is the need to break from routine. Routine isn’t bad, but it can become a quick crutch to keep up stuck. I’m all about the peacefulness of being content where we are. This isn’t about always needing to improve for no reason other than to work your way up an endless ladder. This is about the thrill of new experiences. It’s about vitality. 3) The authenticity of experiences that can’t be had elsewhere. The bottom line is I simply can’t watch 100 men wearing purple robes carrying a giant wooden float with a weeping Jesus on top in the US. We’re too busy with the Easter Bunny. For many people, this is the biggest one. I love the US. But there is so much out there, so much variety to be experienced, and so much to be seen that simply can’t be done in one place. It’s not on TV or on a screen or on a page but surrounding and enveloping you. It’s powerful. 4) It opens my horizons to new perspectives and ways of interacting with the world. I may sound like a hippy here (more on that later) but no matter how enlightened we think we are, everyone has a certain worldview invariably influenced by the culture we live and/or were raised in. I am who I am largely because of circumstances outside my control. Travel allows me to meet people very different at the same time very similar to me, and appreciate their unique take on the game of life.

Here’s an example: ceviche. Ceviche is seafood served with lime juice…more or less. Let’s explore the 4 joys of travel as they relate to ceviche. 1) I must find out what ceviche is. Can I eat it? Am I allergic? Where do I get the best ceviche? The chepest? How much do you get with an order? All of these present a challenge to be solved. 2) I’ve never had ceviche before. If I eat it now, I can eat something else for dinner. I don’t have to eat fries every meal! Constant change. 3) Ceviche, in its natural state, is a Caribbean dish. This meal can only be had here. 4) Who makes ceviche? What is their story? How and why did they learn how to make it? By eating ceviche I am learning about a different way of eating that the one I’m used to. Isn’t this fun!

Now this may get a little didactic, but remember, 100 sloths…me. I then got to thinking about why exactly I’m thinking about this so much. That’s when you know you’re a bit different. When you start thinking about thinking. Why does it matter to me why I like traveling, or why I do anything for that matter? We all live by the motto, “to each his own,” right? It is inexplicably important for us as individuals and as cultures to be able to extrapolate, delineate, and verbalize the why of our beliefs. This cannot be emphasized enough. If we don’t know why we believe what we believe, we are in major trouble. We need to be able to separate ourselves from the constant barrage of outside messages and lay out in a meaningful way, what exactly is going on in our heads. Critical thinking skills are in danger. If there is one major casualty of modernity, this is it. Some would call this apathy, and it is indeed a malady of epic proportions. The lack of critical thinking creates a society that is easily manipulated and exploited. The government, corporations, advertisers, or even just other people surrounding us with messages that run counter to our best interests combined with apathy leads to individuals and groups of individuals who make poor decisions. This is how bad presidents get elected. This is why Great Recessions happen. This is why 40% of the world doesn’t have clean drinking water. It also keeps us living in fear of the unknown. If we have no experience making our own decisions, if we are so used to other people doing it for us, then we begin to fear that which is not controlled for us. We become unable to take risks, because risk involves the unknown and we’re not equipped to think about the unknown because there is so little unknown in our lives. We lack the confidence that comes from an examined life. More than one person has commented that I can be a bit stubborn. Agreed. But what many call stubbornness I simply think of as the confidence of a life well examined. Yes I have strong opinions about seemingly unimportant things like guidebooks, but they are the result of critical examination of all the relevant issues. Therefore, I have confidence in my decisions because I have thought them through thoroughly. The façade of confidence may be solid in our world, but people who truly believe in themselves are rare. Which of course leads to low self-esteem. If we can’t think for ourselves, if we believe all the advertisers telling us that we are worthless without their product, of course we’re not going to like ourselves very much. We don’t believe that we can do the things we want to do because we have no precedent for doing so. Need I continue? Okay! If everything is given to us in this manner, we are consequently robbed of the joy and richness of self-discovery, both within ourselves and of the world around us. Is it more satisfying to have someone tell you you’re beautiful or to discover it for yourself? To read about a gorgeous vista or to stumble on it? We need to be able to think if we want to discover anything. There is no thought involved in following orders, and with thought comes joy. We need a breadth of experience. We also need depth, and when we become accustomed to getting everything done and decided for us, we lose the attention span needed to explore issues in depth. This is why we have Fox News and why TV shows are shorter and full of more commercials and why we watch movies form 50 years ago and are bored out of our minds because the camera stays in one place so long. We need to understand that answers are not black and white, that real solutions, real understanding requires careful and deliberate deep exploration of issues. It requires critical thinking. Without it, 1984 can’t be far away.

And that’s my doomsday scenario for this journal ;) I keep all these thoughts written down in a little notebook that goes in my pocket with me everywhere I go. It pops out in the most random and inappropriate times when I have a thought that must be written down before it’s forgotten. I love it. Just started doing it for this trip. It gets some curious looks, but it’s been great for my memory. I think I’ll keep it going even after my traveling.

Short paragraphs this time, eh! Here’s another sloth story to lighten things up. They can indeed be dangerous. Normally they’re quite calm but one day one of them started flipping out. If I didn’t know that they can’t carry rabies, I’d say I saw rabies. She was foaming at the mouth, hissing, growling, chomping her teeth, and doing otherwise out of character things. It was so bad, I couldn’t feed her. But it was just one sloth and our one resident non-sloth, a kinkajou that kept howling and howling. We thought maybe this particular sloth was peeved at the kinkajou for all its howling, much like me and the Galapagos rooster. Or maybe he was scared of the buzzards nearby. Turns out he was likely just overheated. A sloth in the same area had almost died a few weeks before from overheating. Not sure what it is about that spot. Heat is crazy. Some like it hot. This guy didn’t. Those sloths in their better moments could be absolutely hilarious. One sloth sat with a carrot I had fed her hanging in her mouth like a cigar for about five minutes. She just couldn’t be bothered to chew or otherwise acknowledge its existence. Another one stuck his little head through the gate of his cage and couldn’t get it back. Parrots are considered a pretty smart animal, and when the same thing happened to a parrot in Guatemala, we had to free it cause it kept freaking out. The sloth slowly and consistently worked at the problem and freed himself before too long. Duly noted.

We also had pet dogs lavished on us at the volunteer house in Costa Rica. Note: giving two massive untrained puppies to a group of transient volunteers is not the best idea. They were wild and jumped a lot and barked at night, and none of us had the will or the time to train them. This is why you don’t give pets as surprise presents. Maybe they don’t want the pet, then it won’t be treated as well as it deserves and no one wins. I saw the dogs chasing what I thought was a ball after returning from work one day. My friend said, “they got it!” but “it” turned out to be a lizard. I watched this awful scene unfold. At first it seemed innocent enough. They were just trying to play, but for this poor lizard it was no game. I was coarse to it at first. I thought it was too late to step in and help, or I chalked it up to nature taking its course (too much work with animal people I think), or I was afraid of these beastly dogs or mysterious lizard, or I was tired and hungry after a long day. For whatever reason, I consciously chose not to step in and end the suffering of another living creature even though I had the power to do so. It’s scary when we realize what we’re capable of. I of course spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the consequences of this type of thinking, the type we are all guilty of. I think this “just nature” mentality can lead to a kind of social Darwinism, the strong praying on the weak without consequence. On the contrary, all life is valuable. God instills all life with inherent value and instructs us to be good stewards of the “garden” of this planet and all that dwells within it. Many of my brethren Christian seem to have trouble with this piece. The “it’s all going to burn anyway” attitude is quite the copout and so utterly ridiculous its barely worth spending any effort disproving, but many people still have trouble extending this stewardship principle to the part of creation that doesn’t directly affect us. In essence, we ought to keep our planet as Eden-like as possible. We’re charged with it. It’s not just a command though, but like all good rules, is in place because it benefits us. We benefit by a healthy ecosystem. I really should be a vegetarian. I want to be. It’s the one area of my life where under close examination I can say my actions fall short of my ideals. Few people get a thrill out of actively causing others to suffer, but how many of us think about the ways that we are passively responsible for others’ suffering? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a great Christian pacifist, really wrestled with this question during the Second World War when he ultimately decided to try to off Hitler. He concluded that while he was not actively hurting anyone, his lack of action to prevent the suffering of others made him as responsible as the great tyrant for the deaths of millions of people. What a powerful point. I am alright at ivory tower philosophizing, but this little lizard made me realize that all that thinking doesn’t do much good without accompanying action. I am a pacifist to the core, but how good am I at stepping up to challenge injustice when I see it? Being a pacifist is one thing, but being an active pacifist is another. I can try to rationalize it away all I want, but I should have helped that lizard. See how travel challenges you?

Here’s an aside (this is all terribly disorganized I know). Costa Rica provided me with English television, and some of it not too bad (never thought I’d say that). I was watching a program from the BBC (maybe that’s why) about the brain. It said that our brain cells (and all our cells) are always regenerating, that those cells are constantly being made new. It also said that because our cells are not at all constant, the oldest part of us is literally our earliest memory. From which the question was raised in my constantly-changing brain, where does that memory then reside? It can’t reside in our cells because our cells always change. Is it passed from one cell to another? If it outlives any physical part of our body where in space does that memory exist? And then the brain cells that existed in my head at that moment, and the ones that are there right now as I write this believed that perhaps we had stumbled upon some indirect proof for the soul.

So I left the sloths sadly behind and went to a place that I love more than just about anywhere…the mountains. I always thought I’d want to live in a little beach town or a little mountain town. Mountains are coming out the clear victor lately. Perhaps it’s the lower chance of sunburn or being offered pot in the mountains. I didn’t have either of them growing up, but there’s something about the green and white beauty of mountains that is captivating to me. Throw in a lake and I’m stuck. On the way there I passed a Church’s Chicken with a disco attached. That was weird. I found myself in the little town of Monteverde, founded by Alabama Quakers escaping persecution of their pacifism after that dang old Second World War. They moved to Costa Rica because our little southern neighbor had just completely abolished their armed forces (there’s a novel idea). They were thrown in jail in the US for refusing the draft and were welcomed into Costa Rica where they founded a cheese factory. The clerk at my hostel said I shouldn’t bother with the factory tour, but since I’m a good critical thinker I decided to go anyway and ended up loving it more than just about anything else I did. 95% of the waste from this factory is recycled. The cheesemaking process creates a lot of waste. Only 10% of what goes in comes out as cheese. The rest is whey (like Little Miss Muffet). There was no market for whey in Costa Rica, but instead of just throwing it away, these critical thinkers decided to feed it to pigs. And what do you do with all those pigs? Make them into meat! So now we have pig poo to worry about. Still some waste. So we feed the pig poo to the cows. This sounds gross, but apparently pigs don’t do a whole lot of chewing or digesting for that matter and their poo is mostly solid food. And cow poo makes good fertilizer. Thus we have eliminated waste. See what I would have missed if I didn’t go? (Okay, so there is some animal suffering in this story, but at least there’s no waste.) I later stayed at a hostel run by the Quakers that raises money for their peacemaking efforts, and there’s a lot of work to do down here. It was an amazing time. I had a cheap little pastry with a resident cat sitting on my lap. Quite a transcendent experience after working with so many animals who were off limits for petting. If more hostels had Martin Luther King quotes and less beer on tap, just think of what backpackers could do to change the world!

While I was there I had the amazing opportunity to fly through the forest on a zip line and almost crash into its pretty leaf-covered floor on a Tarzan swing, both of which were cool experiences. I also got to walk above it on some beautiful hanging bridges. Monteverde also had a place offering free meditation. These things can either be spot on or a little wacky, especially if they are free. This one, like most, was somewhere in the middle. I’d really enjoyed doing yoga before and found it very calming and not at all at odds with my Christian faith, and the same can be said for meditation. This particular meditation had us imagining ourselves in a desert, which I could do very well since I lived there for a few months. I think Eastern spirituality can and has been a real blessing. Now don’t get me wrong. I have not nor am I getting close to trading in Christianity for anything else. Neither am I embarking on the ever-popular “choose your own religion” spiritual path. What I believe is that there are some practices, such as meditation or yoga, and ways of interacting with the world that are fleshed out in Eastern spirituality in a way that can really enhance the spiritual direction of a Christian, or anyone else for that matter. Just this week at my church we were talking about how to “interact” with the Holy Spirit. This is pretty heady stuff, but somehow I think it seemed less otherworldy to me because I had experience with meditating. God can and does use all things for the ultimate good, and when approached from a position of security and openness, there is an Aladdin-esque whole new world of understanding out there (and I’m not talking about LSD). It has to be something genuine and meaningful for you though. Eastern spirituality has become dangerously trendy in a self-serving, self help kind of way that misses the point entirely. I feel like I’ve done a terribly inadequate job of explaining this, but like many things, the words just don’t quite grab hold of the concept yet.

In the beautiful cloud forest of Monteverde, there is also a coffee coop that makes what I’m told is some darn good coffee that like all other Latin American goods is shipped to the US. I can’t imagine what it does to the national psyche of a country to know that all the best stuff you produce is sent overseas. They actually stamp products like coffee and chocolate for which they have the raw materials as “export quality” like it’s too good for the unsophisticated palettes of the Latin Americans. What a blow. Not to mention every time an Ecuadorian look at their dollar bill they see George Washington. Not good for national pride. It makes me wonder if we do the same. Are all the best Fords going to Europe?

My next stop was the Galápagos Islands. They have an ethereal quality to most people, and they are indeed a very strange place. I am for some reason drawn to slow animals. Or maybe just misunderstood animals. Is it because I relate to them? It wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Sloths, tortoises, in Costa Rica I went to a bat museum, another amazing creature who has just suffered from bad PR. Without bats, the insect population would quickly become unmanageable, yet cave bats are dying at an alarming weight. If I ate as many insects as a bat my size I would need 40 gallon-size buckets of meat a day!

I met an awesome family on the plane to Ecuador. They were from Guayaquil and returning from a vacation in Florida (the only place other than LA or NY most non-Americans have ever been). I got chatting with them and they were so nice to take me to the bus station from the airport. In America, we generally don’t like to talk to strangers. We’re told not to as kids. If I hadn’t talked to strangers, how would I have made it to the bus station? Turns out maybe just maybe the entire world isn’t out to get us. What a freeing concept.

My host family in the Galápagos spoke only Spanish. People say Lancaster County, PA, residents leave out the inflection necessary to discern a question from a statement. I’d say the same is true of Spanish. “Talk talk talk talk talk” wait. Okay it must be a question I should say something. The tough thing was that I somehow convinced them I knew what I was doing so they assumed I was understanding what was going on. Ecuador was really beautiful though. The Andes surrounding Quito, which comprised my first international travel experience years ago as part of a college trip, are the most beautiful place I’d ever been. This time I went to the coast and while (as I said) beaches don’t do as much for me, I was amazed by the butterfly life I saw. What cool critters. And they used to be little caterpillars. There were also crabs galore. They’d feed near the edge of the water then run away runaway when a wave came in, only to return where the wave had just been to feed on whatever the tide had drug in. Hundreds and hundreds of them as far as the eye can see. There were some mud shingles along the beach too, you know the hard, sharp, dried out slabs of sun-baked goo. It was tough to walk on so I coated my feet with wet mud enough that I was essentially wearing a mud shoe. It reminded me of “Meet the Robinsons,” one of the great misunderstood Disney movies of the past few years. Of course I also got lost wandering around. “Lost” gives the wrong impression though. I knew where I was and kept following the path not knowing where it would lead and once I got there how I would know I was “there” and then how to get back from there. There are all kinds of metaphysical questions this situation raises about the nature of “home” and “arriving” at anything, but the thrill of the perceived danger was something amazing. I do this all the time, purposely put myself in situations that require me for my own well-being to keep mentally alert. Situations where I have nothing but my own cunning to rely on. That thrill of not knowing exactly where I am in the world is a great motivator. I’m always a bit let down when I realize I know where I am again. Adventure baby.

At one of the beach hostels I stayed at they were doing a sweat lodge. I’m pretty sure some cult out west was shut down not too long ago because a guy died at a sweat lodge, so I was a bit nervous about this. It turned out to be a good cultural experience to do once. It was strange to have a Native American ceremony done in Spanish in Ecuador, and some of the characters that turned out were expectedly hippy, but it was an experience. A sweat lodge is essentially an iwi or rounded tepee with a hole dug in the middle. They heat up rocks and pour water over the rocks about 4 times over the course of two hours. It’s sitting in a sauna for two hours. You “sweat out” your impurities. I sweat out something that’s for sure. You lay down on the ground every now and then because it’s cooler down there, so by the time you get out your sweat mixed with the dirt of the ground makes for a massive muddy mess. It’s kind of like a fast I guess, the purposeful experience of suffering to bring us closer to something greater than ourselves. Afterwards they offered some mystery drink. I declined. I have a strict policy against taking mystery drink from hippies.

Hippies are an interesting bunch. I’m not sure exactly what happened over the past 40 years to this peaceful, socially-aware bunch. The hippie movement as I understand it in the ‘60s was something beautiful and pure. Sure there were drugs and crazy sex, but the motives behind it were pure. They were really after something transcendent in a society they saw as stifling and legalistic. They were about freedom. And along with that came a form of peaceful pacifism that has been lost. Today many pacifists are just mean. They’re so angry and it’s all about politics. We’ve turned pacifism into Marxism. But those hippies in my romanticized vision were about the purity and beauty of creation. It led to amazing strides toward peace and even opened up more authentic Christian faith with the Jesus Movement, the precursor to modern experiential Christianity before Reagan co-opted it for right-wing extremism. The hippie name has been co-opted too by a bunch of dreadlock wearing deadbeat stoners. The stoners part isn’t new, of course, but I feel like now it’s all about escaping rather than freeing your mind to experience new insights that then help you impact the world in a positive way. Therein may lie the difference. Today’s hippies are just selfish. The same was that Hot Topic has made the punk counterculture into a restricting subculture, the same way that gay men are always depicted on TV as ridiculously flamboyant, so too has the hippie name become a fashion sense, a way of conforming to leaderless rebellion. They escape to little enclaves to drink themselves as silly as anyone else. When did peace and love become getting trashed? You may drink cocktails instead of Bud Light and you may not have showered for a while but if it’s all for you, if you’re not doing something, you’re missing the point of the movement. The hippie movement was a beautiful thing, and it’s become little more than an excuse. It is not longer “about” anything; it’s lost its purpose. Charles Darwin had something to say about this that I think can be broadened to include backpacking in general. Turns out he was quite the philosopher apart from all the evolution (which is as much as philosophy as anything else, no?) He said this: “If a person asked my advice, before undertaking long voyage, my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be advanced. No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils. It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good will be affected.” (A Naturalist’s Voyage, 1845)

One of these hippie meccas is Montanita. People flock there by the hundreds to stay up until 4am and drink. This is what hippies have become, late night booze-fests. Sounds a lot like a frat party to me. The town was cool though. One of the streets has been taken over by a little pond with grass growing. No paved roads of course. They sold bananas for 5 cents. They don’t even have a “cent” button on modern computers that’s so cheap. I ate many. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of bananas, so it makes sense. These they keep in-country. I stayed on a roof for $3.50 a night and ate a three-course meal for $1.50. I even had some more ceviche, this time made with pulpo…octopus. Cold lime juice, octopus, tomato, onion, mustard, parsley, and plantain chips. Welcome to the coast! Down the beach there was a really cool series of rocks that I was able to scramble over. I’m not as much a fan or rock “climbing.” That requires expensive equipment and has become so clicky and gentrified that it seems to be as much about showing off as experiencing the great outdoors (still an amazing experience though, and some genuinely cool people). I more like just climbing around smaller rocks without any equipment. I came to a chasm in the rocks and decided I couldn’t do it. It would require a leap of about 10 feet across and was potentially slippery. So I went back. But I couldn’t stay back. That drive inside me knew that the guy who travels because it’s challenging couldn’t turn away from something because it seemed hard or dangerous. So I went back and faced that demon and after maybe a half hour of thinking and psyching and studying, I leapt that leap. The line between adventurous and foolhardy is thin indeed. Two Venezuelans saw me on the other side and were inspired by my feat to do it themselves. How cool that not only do I conquer my own fears, but encourage others to do so as well. On the way back, the tide was coming in. It’s tough to verbally recreate this scene, but in order to get back up to the leap I had to make my across a long flat rock which was now right at sea level and getting completely covered with incoming waves at regular intervals of about 15 seconds. From that wave-covered rock, I had to pull myself up with my hands to a slated rock that was also wet and covered in crabs before I could leap back across. The line is thin folks. I spent forever trying to time it so I wouldn’t get wet, but guess what, after all that planning and studying and thinking and preparing to try to avoid getting wet…I got drenched. My shoes were soaked for a week. There’s a lesson here that illustrates how Eastern philosophy can grant meaningful perspective. That wave is a problem in life. We spend an inordinate amount of time in our lives trying to avoid problems. We think about them, we measure possible outcomes, we prepare and plan, all for the purpose of avoiding pain we don’t have any proof actually exists. I could have stayed put on that rock. But then I quite literally would have been stuck. There was no way to get back without stepping on that rock. Likewise, we can simply spend our lives avoiding problems. We can see a problem ahead of us and simply refuse to face it. The problem with this is that we never advance. If you don’t face your fears, you never go anywhere. You’re stuck. Or I could have tried to avoid that wave. I tried, and guess what, I couldn’t do it. But I realized after the fact that there was no way I could have avoided that wave. That wave was meant to hit me. It couldn’t not have hit me. It would have been physically impossible to avoid getting drenched. No matter how much our big brains try to avoid problems, they will happen. They can’t be avoided. Even if we can see it and asses it and plan around it, we’ll still have hardship. How then do we react to this? A strange thing happened as I was getting pummeled by that water. It was awesome. That wave, that wetness seeping into my socks, that thing that I had spent so long trying to avoid wasn’t bad at all, it was awesome. And that is how you conquer fear. That is how you deal with problems. You let them envelop you and you rob them of their power. I was quite literally enveloped by that wave, that big scary problem but I didn’t let it control me. I enjoyed it and reveled in it, and it had no power over me. I’d read about this concept before when reading some Buddhist literature, but it takes on a different light when you actually experience it. Fear, problems, hardships, are just names we give to feelings that we have. They are ways of expressing negative ideas about a situation. If we can take those emotions, recognize them as they’re happening, name them, and let them exist in us, they cease to become negative. Suddenly we can call everything something good, joy, understanding, freedom. It doesn’t take Buddha to figure this out. FDR said it too, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

So I bought street meat from a 7-year old kid doused in some gooey sauce that should have sent my stomach straight into my toilet because I had no fear. And I slept like a baby. The next day I flew to the Galápagos from the mainland and was upgraded to first class. That was cool. Same service, but big seat. I sat Indian style in an airplane! The Galápagos has people. Surprised me when I first found out. The Galápagos is probably the youngest land mass in the world and people first came for good in the 1940s. The very first person to see this moonscape was a bishop from Panama in 1535, and it’s just grown since then. I spent most of my time editing web content and designing brochures for a nonprofit there that works with education, health, and the environment. It was a great organization and they partner with a travel agency that books only through locally-owned tours. Of all the money spent on the Galápagos, only 20% stays on the island. That’s why Puerto Ayora is just like any Latin American town, half-built buildings, trash, rubble, and bad drinking water. 80% of hospital visits there could be prevented if they only had clean drinking water. Principal among the problems is bad architecture. I’ve been really really into architecture lately. It’s exciting to look back over your life and discover a passion that has always been present and finally have a name for it. Architecture. Latin America has infinite positive qualities. Architecture is not one of them. Bad architecture is one thing. That’s a judgment call. You can’t judge art. But here, there just isn’t architecture. Building design is related to economic stability it seems. If you don’t have enough money to feed your family, you’re not going to worry about how your house looks. You’re just going to throw some cinder blocks together and cover it with a piece of metal (but you’ll still have a TV). Art and design simply get left behind. But think of the negative consequences of the lack of art (of which architecture is a type)! It’s psychologically debilitating to see ugliness all around you, especially in contrast to the marked beauty of the natural surroundings. I’m a firm believer that the enlightened mind can find beauty in the most typically ugly places (as I’ve written about at length), and I still hold to that, but it’s not the lack of beauty that is distressing here. It’s the lack of a capacity to comprehend the power of beauty. It’s just not on their minds. Great architecture can inspire in so many ways. Just take the time to think about it. It’s the same reason we shouldn’t cut music from our schools. Art is not a frill, an icing on the cake, it’s a necessity to a life of meaning. We need to see and hear art that is ambivalent and interpret it. It’s how we create meaning and learn to comprehend the world around us.

It felt good to do “traditional” work again, which was surprising. I love being outside and moving around all the time and it was hard to sit in an office again, but working with animals, despite their cuteness, after a while got repetitive. It was simply the same cleaning and feeding every day. I liked the constant change of working on new projects every few days, even if it was in an office. There has to be a middle ground somewhere. Speaking of animals, there are some crazy critters on the Galápagos. I saw a rat the size of a cat, along the town pier at night there are sharks and sea lions and pelicans everywhere, and iguanas are everywhere. I had seen some of these animals before but it is a completely different experience seeing them in the wild. People have pet iguanas, but not masses of iguanas lumped together digesting their seaweed and spitting out salt water. That’s different. I swam with penguins, sharks, sea lions, and turtles, and saw dolphins feet away. Boobies, frigatebirds with their big red pouches, and 100-year-old tortoises that looked 100% like dinosaurs. Watching a tortoise move is indescribable. I can’t imagine seeing the very act or creation could be more fascinating. It’s a miracle. It was real cool. I even saw a chicken crossing the road. I can confirm that he didn’t appear to have any reason other than to the other side.

Food was good, though I miss the American ability to have on-demand pastries from a diner or market. Bread is harder to come by here. I figure I spent about $70 in my five months on snacks, all of which were locally made and not available in the US. US imports were there, but they were expensive and literally exactly the same thing we eat here. Boring. I even ate what by most accounts was a fertilized egg…a chicken embryo. I saw this thing in my soup and asked what it was. They kept saying egg, it’s egg, and I thought, you’re telling me 2+2 is 5 here. I know what egg is, and it’s physically impossible for an egg to be meat…unless it’s fertilized. I went to a local farmer’s market with my host mom too. I had been to a bunch of markets while traveling (they’re a great way to see the real culture) but never with a local. That’s a totally different experience. She made mincemeat out of that place. Rushing around, haggling for everything. It was quite the show. I even got my first foreign haircut, for a whopping $5. All in espanol.

Around this time I found myself filled with an overwhelming sense of joy. This is quite obviously an indescribable feeling, to just be completely filled with joy. I had discovered a public library that had great literature about the Galápagos (Melville, Vonnegut) as well as tons of English books about the ecology of the islands. I checked books out of a library outside the US for the first time. This experience was unbelievably joyous. I had just found an Ecuadorian flag to accompany the flags from all the other places I’ve lived in my house some day. I was excited about the future, having just met an unbelievably happy Japanese family who didn’t speak any English who got me thinking about going to Japan. Japanese tourists are always so engaged and happy and friendly. They don’t care a lick about stereotypes of snap-happy tourists; they’re just having fun. And I sat and watched tortoises for hours. Something about all of that filled me with an incomprehensible joy. The only constant in life is change though, and a few weeks later I felt very lonely. Thus is the cycle of life. In a way traveling along makes you stronger and more independent. You see the things you want to see and experience all the culture has to offer. You have no crutch, nothing to lean on, no one responsible for your situation except you. But it’s almost too much independence. You forget what it’s like to be responsible for someone else. It can make you selfish if you’re not careful. In the great search for culture and experience it is possible to lose sight of what’s ultimately more important – other people.

The most beautiful place on the islands was called Las Grietas, the cracks. It was an amazing long narrow pool of turquoise brackish water (mixture of salt and freshwater) filled with fish and held in my rock piles on the short ends and 30-foot sheer cliffs on the long ends. Water gets in from underneath. I’ve seen beaches before, but a swimming hole life this is a rare find. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The sun was hot though, being right on the Equator and all. My lips got sunburnt. My lips. I should have protected them by keeping them firmly planted on someone else’s moth more often. What better protection than another body? One thing my lips did not do well was kiss other people’s cheeks. This is the typical greeting in Latin America, and no matter how many times I did it I always managed to feel horrible awkward.

More awkward was the butt shots of antibiotics that resulted from my suddenly high fever a few weeks ago. Suddenly high fevers are the first sign you have malaria so I was naturally at the hospital about as fast as my feverish little body could get there. Turned out to be “too much bacteria in my gut” (that’s as specific as it gets) and the remedy was a removal of the pants and a needle into the cheeks. It’s an interesting experience, getting a butt shot. Especially when I didn’t really know what I was getting shot with. Made me feel like a military experiment. Later that week I found out Pacaya, the volcano I climbed and roasted marshmallows on a few months earlier in Guatemala, had just erupted. A volcano I was on blew up and blanketed Guatemala City in ash. Crazy.

My last stop was Guayaquil. It’s no Quito, but they do have IMAX for $4. They also have a place called Cerro Santa Ana, touted in all the tourist literature as the number one attraction. Used to be the most dangerous part of the city, they say, now restored into a beautiful street full of shops and restaurants. Almost. Cerro Santa Ana is indeed a nicely restored area on a hill in the oldest part of town and the only part of town with anything historic left. But there are bars more than restaurants, the whole place is patrolled by armed guards, and I was stopped no less than three times for getting too close to the edge of the “nice” area. Imagine a hill completely covered in houses. One narrow strip is completely renovated and gentrified and turned into a tourist attraction (lucky for those few residents, eh?). The entire rest of the hill is a slum. No slummier than any other South American slum, mind you, but apparently quite dangerous. The first lady to stop me from wandering through the open gate to the slum without any warning signs anywhere straight yelled at me, saying in no uncertain terms that if I were to continue it was quite unavoidable that I would be robbed, mugged, and possibly killed. Either this lady was paranoid, or the city lacks a bit of foresight to say the least. This is why we have Master’s programs in city planning. The first thing they teach you is not to build major tourist attractions surrounded by and with easy access to places so dangerous that your mere entrance into them during broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon will lead to your certain death.

And thus ends Latin America. One last thought. Traveling makes you think a lot (I’m stuck on this theme aren’t I?) about who you are. I have decided who I am and what I do. People always ask me what I do. I say I travel and volunteer. They ask what I will do when I get back. I say I don’t know when I’m going back. So what am I? I am a scholar, philosopher, adventurer, and humanitarian. This is what I aspire to. What higher calling or greater joy is there than to learn, think, do, and help? Take one out and you’re lost. Manage them all and you’re a saint. What could be better?

Wow. Thirteen pages single spaced. Can this be my dissertation?

Jeremy