June 2010
27 posts
4 tags
San Francisco Church, Lima
06/27/10
Six months in…
Boxie-boo did her morning happy sway, mimicking the dance of the sugarplum ferry after 16 pictures of beer. Bingo bang bang was in full motion. Her smile gleamed like a well-oiled pair of buttocks. We were stoked!
As a result of catching up on sleep, I woke up in a good mood, feeling a presumptious happiness, like a dog when a doorbell rings and thinks the...
4 tags
The Huaca Pucllana Ruins, Lima
06/26/10
Taking off my shirt and dropping my pants (I see that I already have your full attention), I reached into my belly button and pulled a clump of lint the size of a small grape. I then thought of my readers and named the clump stalker McGee. Waiting for the shower to warm, I shivered enough that had I still be wearing pants, I would have been tempted to pee myself.
Our room was cold...
3 tags
Why Peru was the Last Stop?
06/25/10
On a flight back from Cusco to Lima, I decided to describe why I choose Peru to be our last stop on our around the world trip. In every single way, it was the perfect ending point for us.
Mesmerizing and mystifying, delicate and rash, spiritual and historical, Peru is one of the world’s most intriguing countries. At first thought, Peru conjured up an image of nightfall in the...
4 tags
Inti Raymi: The Festival of the Sun
06/24/10
Loudspeakers belted speeches in Spanish, as we walked towards the main square of Cusco, known in Inca times as Huacaypata - “The Warriors´ Square.” I later realized why. It was time for the packed crowds of Inti Raymi, the Inca celebration of the sun and the winter solstice.
The parade circled the square blocked off by police. Buildings were draped in massive Inca...
3 tags
After the Inca Trail
06/23/10
At 4:30 a.m., we entered the silent streets of Cusco, finally having returned from the Inca Trail. Sort of. We were hours late, a result of the train stalling twice and catching two buses. Again, Cusco Explorers did not live up to its contract. Instead of dropping each person off at their hostel/hotel, our driver booted a group of foreigners off the bus on a random street, in a town...
9 tags
Inca Trail: Day Four
06/22/10
They say it is the person with the shifty eyes you should watch out for. As a result of waking up at 3:30 a.m. after four nights without sleep, I resembled Mr. Potato Head high on speed, constantly changing my snap-on eyes, and therefore, I was afraid of my own reflection.
Looking in the mirror after another bathroom balancing act, the face was somehow familar, but I could not...
3 tags
Inca Trail: Day Three
06/21/10
For the purpose of this story, please avoid picturing me wearing your mother´s wedding dress. Thank you.
“My entire body is sore,” Boxie-boo said at 5:45 a.m., shivering as we took off our thermal underwear and sweaters, knowing mid-hike exercise would result in over heating. We scampered to the bathroom, where I was careful not to slip on the floor covered in slippery...
4 tags
Inca Trail: Day Two
06/20/10
In Canada, I am an average-sized dude, though my nostrils are different sizes, a beauty trend passed on from my mother - one side resembles the Africa continent, while the other could be the wrinkle line near a baby´s armpit. In Peru, I was a Yao Ming giant, which means I had knocked my head on multiple ceilings, including one leaving a bathroom, forcing me to walk out bent forward...
10 tags
Inca Trail: Day One
06/19/10
“Here we go again - back to pooping in holes,” Boxie-boo said, walking under the darkened, cobblestone streets of Cusco before the sun had risen. As a result of our room at Apu Wasi Hostel all night going from sauna hot to ski hill cold, I now know what it is like for a mountain goat to go through menopause. It was a ba´aaa´d night of sleep, further interrupted by someone...
6 tags
Cusco Festival and Pre-Inca Trail
06/18/10
The drums wailed and trumpets blasted, creating a wall of noise around us we leaned against in silence. With her back against a wall, the sun´s glow burnished Boxie-boo´s skin. She watched out wearing a smile on her face of permanent stone. In each direction, young children kicked off the Cusco Festival, sending goosebumps across my skin and waves of music through my veins. The...
3 tags
Arrival in Cusco
06/17/10
The plane dipped an aggressive left, cutting through mountains low to the ground towards Cusco. After landing, our plane did a 360-degree u-turn, before being pulled by what looked similiar to a tractor towards the airport. I was already excited, before even leaving the plane.
When we walked across the concrete runway, I found myself mesmerized by the setting: Cusco was exactly...
5 tags
Brazil to Peru
06/16/10
It was 3:15 a.m. and our hotel phone rang. Our taxi was 15 minutes early. Knowing about all the late night (or early morning) con-artists who take advantage of tourists, I asked Boxie-boo to check to see if the metre was running while I loaded the bags. Since I only had an opportunity for a couple hours of shut-eye, this made me unable sleep.
Outside it was as dark as it gets....
5 tags
World Cup Fever, Brazil
06/15/10
Warning: The following post might contain evidence that you are just so attractive.
Massive waves crashed across Copacabana´s shoreline with the sound of rising thunder, mixing in with the echoes of horns blasting through the air. Drummers pounded out samba rhythms by tables draped in yellow and green, overlooking a beach filled with soccer players in restaurants covered in...
3 tags
The Sugar Loaf, Rio de Janeiro
06/14/10
I do not want to freak anybody out, but I know you are reading this right now.
Alright, the above joke might be funnier if, like all jokes, after the punch line, you imagine a guy wearing a Speedo being hit in the nuts by a football. I thought about this, while Boxie-boo utilized her famous move to get me dancing in the morning by holding up the bathroom. While she sang in the...
4 tags
Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro
06/13/10
Rio’s public transit bus broke continuously with the sound of a pig mid-orgasm. Its body swayed back and forth, adding the sound of twisting latex, as if we were in a massive Durex condom battling a rival Trojan, maddening louder as the road turned to cobblestone. I was beginning to feel feverish. The sounds were getting to me. They managed to leave the bus and enter deep in my...
5 tags
Walking Around Gloria, Rio
06/12/10
I wore sunglasses to hide the fact that my eyeballs were naked and I had not slept in days. The shades had turned the shoreline into a shadow of blackness: a tree-covered landscape became a blanket of dark green and silver pinned by grand rocks lighted a golden brown, the mountains of constant summer. Smooth crests of rocks vanished under a shoreline of tree limbs as we walked, hand...
4 tags
Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro
06/11/10
Sometimes when you backpack, you have to spend some time taking care of some odds and ends. For us, we always felt it was a good idea to circle an entire neighbourhood, to get an idea of where the bargains were, find public transit, grocery stores, etc., while remembering to always smell terrific, which I learned how to do from my readers. Do not bother checking, your deodorant is...
4 tags
Tour of Rio, Brazil
06/10/10
I woke up and learned that yelling at a wall can be beneficial. It kept me from randomly walking up to a perfect stranger, saying good morning, then punching him in the face. Walking around the El Misti Hostel, I disliked everyone - except my readers, of course, because you are just so attractive - for their constant yelling that kept me up all night, before waking me up early. If...
5 tags
Argentina to Brazil
06/09/10
Walking onto the streets of Florencio Varela, homeless men and women huddled around a fire outside Teresa´s home. It was 3 a.m. Our taxi driver, the godfather of Juan´s daughter, was out front waiting, a friendly man who gave us a deal on the ride to the airport since we were family. Most of the poor and desperate people were not sleeping. It was a scene of mix sadness - Teresa´s...
4 tags
Florencio Varela to La Boca
06/08/10
We started our day in a packed line-up to enter the post office, jam full with a crowd all filling out the same form, which I was later told was for welfare. Once inside, we weren´t the only ones confused as locals kept coming up to us and asking us for help in Spanish. I continuously said, “Sordo” (deaf), while holding my hands over my ears, though I was also tempted to...
3 tags
BBQ at Juan´s, Buenos Aires
06/07/10
While writing this post, four of my fingers were down to help me, while my thumbs were opposed. Bad joke? Give me a break, I wrote this after only a couple hours of sleep after having my hair straightened for the first time in my life by Boxie-boo. Having little exercise, no weight lifting and glowing hair that would have been better suited for a golden retriever, this trip left me...
3 tags
Tour with Boxie-boo´s Family, Argentina
06/06/10
I woke up thinking I was wearing my Hammer pants and nobody could touch me. Opps. My mindset changed when I tried to climb a fence back into Teresa´s yard for you, my stalker friend, as I realized I forgot my notebook. My Hammer pants failed me. My attempt to jump the fence resulted in me hanging, mid-air, from the metal spear tip of the fence through the tongue of my left shoe, with...
3 tags
Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires
06/05/10
One of the best things about staying with Boxie-boo´s family was the opportunity to experience Argentina from a local´s perspective. Teresa lived in a community called Florencio Varela, which was about an hour bus ride outside of Buenos Aires City, at least three hours outside of Squamish.
It was a rough area, a tough community with frail edges, tattered at the seams. The streets...
3 tags
Downtown Buenos Aires
06/04/10
The dull ache of too much sleep pounded at the base of my neck and ran through my skull into my eyes. In view out the bus window, my first in-focus sight was a pack of dogs who had pinned down a rival canine, weeping on its back with its paws forward. Instead of distracting Boxie-boo, I made the mistake of telling her not to look. She of course, looked over, and I immediately turned...
3 tags
Brazilian Consulate, Argentina
06/03/10
In Juan´s Toyota truck, we passed a line-up a couple blocks long that ended across the street from Teresa´s home where the poor gathered to collect welfare cheques. Scanning the poor people, it was a mixed crowd with many young people, to my surprise, including young women with small children. Teresa later explained that 200 Pesos were given per month, per child. In these few minutes...
3 tags
Continent Jump - Africa to Argentina
06/02/10
I fought the numbness spreading through my limbs, the pleasant, achy yielding. My eyes fluttered in the taxi, closed then opened, my head rolling as I sat motionless. Sleep pulled at my body with compression, while my mind lulled like waves in and out of consciousness by the rhythm of my exhales. Tempting me to sleep, Capetown was a string of soft lights, black and yellow, thining...
3 tags
Great White Shark Diving
06/01/10
I felt my soul divide while my flesh still absorbed the cold water, yet this same chill part of me, tauntingly aloof, watched me float in a cage beside a three-metre Great White Shark. It was almost an out of body experience. I could not join myself. I watched my arms shiver, my hands gripping a cold metal railing as I held myself underwater in a cage.
The shark neared, knocking...
May 2010
31 posts
5 tags
Two Oceans Aquarium, Capetown
05/31/10
Sharks are just like people in every single way, except that we have little to nothing in common, though, I imagine, even sharks would not enjoy paying taxes. Watching them swim at Capetown´s Two Oceans Aquarium, both cocky and unafraid, I realized that they truely are the baddest mothertruckers on the planet. This being said, I could easily take one in a thumb wrestle, but likely...
3 tags
African Penguins
05/30/10
A single file line of reluctant bodies descended into the packed, public transit van as if into a cave. The driver´s assistant was a people wrangler, coaxing locals in by yelling, reaching over to honk the horn and advertised by whistling between his fingers. He continued packing the van at each intersection. For a moment, I felt the loss of movement and control. The beginnings of...
3 tags
Table Mountain Hike, Capetown
05/29/10
Tessa´s car leapt forward with the force of a mounting buffalo on an unsuspecting sheep (aka the love making moves of my friend Phil from New Zealand), followed by violent shudders. Then stalled. With my head slammed against the front seat, I looked over at Boxie-boo who held a firm grip on both front seats to avoid headbutting the gear shift. We were alongside a row of parked cars...
3 tags
Reload Night Club, Capetown
05/28/10
“Eeeiiiooo!” Boxie-boo yelped after taking a zip of her vodka soda. It was either really stiff or she was suffering from irritable vowel syndrome, or trying to communicate with an ewok. We were drinking inside the African Hearts Backpacker, after a rainy day spent boldly going nowhere. The booze and oversleeping made me so slow my own life seemed to pass me by. I was...
3 tags
Break from Traveling, Capetown
05/27/10
Five months in…
All night, my breathing fell into a drugged, unbroken rhythm, drifting the exhaustion of my body away. My mind absorbed the ghastly still night in slow motion: the clockwise spinning fan, the white square boxes on our hostel’s ceiling, and the soft moonlight, waving in from the hallway’s skylight through a small, high window into our room. Under...
2 tags
Saying Goodbye to Choppa-chaw
05/26/10
I drove us on the left-side of the road towards the international airport in Johannesburg at 6:30 a.m., another early morning. At traffic lights, black locals tried to sell us flags to hang on our cars in support of World Cup soccer teams, while in a majority of high-end cars around us, we only saw white faces.
I still could not get over the difference between white wealth and...
3 tags
The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg
05/25/10
There was a feeling of passion at the Apartheid museum that seemed to unhinge my soul, take me away from the colour of my skin and my western upbringing. History had its own heated blood, a life I could breathe in and exhale. On this day, I was no longer a Canadian, but a white oppressor in South Africa.
At the entrance to the museum, we were all given cards that outlined our...
3 tags
Homesickness and the African Market, Jo'burg
05/24/10
Boxie-boo said nothing was wrong.
It was a sight that needed no explanation, no words. There she was, my one and only Boxie-boo, laying on her side with her body wrapped in blankets, arms gripping a pillow, stomach vibrating from the release of emotion.
She awoke with that peculiar lump in her throat, the sense of wrong we all know, the feeling of drifting without connection,...
5 tags
Palapye, Botswana to Johannesburg, South Africa
05/23/10
We woke up damp and wet in our soggy tent that smelled of the scent frogs must release in heat, a mix of old hockey equipment and stinky shoes. Although our tent never received one droplet of rain, it was unpacked drenched the night prior. I was more upset than I was when Bambi’s mother was killed. But the Ribatron-don persevered. It was 5:45 a.m. and we took down the tent and...
6 tags
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe to Palapye, Botswana
05/22/10
He tried hard to read his novel many times, but the nearer he came to the conclusion of the story, the less he read. Most often, he had to put his reading aside to make time for other responsibilities that came first. Though he did not read as often as he liked, he managed to grasp the characters, knew them better than he gave himself credit for, yet was confused by the plot. One...
7 tags
Exploring the World's Biggest Falls
05/21/10
We could have entered a rainstorm walking in a darkened trail towards the thundering mist of Victoria Falls. The trees branches hanged low, seemingly weighed down with the constant battering of water. I could hear the falls lulling, its enormous bassy rhythm pounding, re-directing the wind in drumming boulders. Moving forward along the soaked trail, the mist thickened, bursting up...
5 tags
Relaxed Day in Victoria Falls
05/20/10
Victoria Falls was a quaint little town with small streets packed with restaurants and tourism companies. We each step in this community - regardless if we were down a gravel path, in a trail or along main roads - we were either being followed or watched by salesmen. My friend, my friend!…How much you pay…I give you good price…
A couple steps further and we were...
6 tags
Botswana to Zimbabwe
05/19/10
Inside an open-side truck, we bounced across sand roads at 5:45 a.m. in Chobe National Park. My hands felt drenched in cold water. The freezing wind penetrated my bones. Although I wore a sweater, jeans and long john underwear, nothing seemed to block the icy wind. I bent down, hoping to use the seats as cover, shivering as I stared at the corrogated metal floor painted army green.
...
5 tags
Chobe National Park, Botswana
05/18/10
Shivering in the middle of the night, I awakened from my own vibrations shaking the tent. In my claustrophobic eyes, I saw the world closing in and I felt the fabric of my sleeping bag enter my lungs. With fierce, uncontrolled movements, I searched for the flashlight near panicked, fighting this illogical enemy from within myself.
Boxie-boo woke up and immediately rubbed my back,...
3 tags
Safari Stopover at Elephant Sands Campsite
05/17/10
We let our eyes adjust to the nightfall. A thin, crescent moon shined across the pond. We scaned the water like an animal hunting in darkness as night fell, darkening the tips of trees from green limbs to grey bones.
We arrived back at Elephant Sands Campsite, again towed in after being stuck, for another stopover of camping before we continued onto Chobe National Park in a town...
5 tags
Out of the Delta and into the Air
05/16/10
We followed elephant footprints the size of medium pizzas, which were fingerprint detailed with curved lines. Moving under the orange sunrise glow, the only sound was our pants rubbing together and branches snapping passed. With the sliding grip of sand, we kicked our feet through the grasses, only stopping to use the cover of trees to spot animals before crossing the grasslands.
...
4 tags
Choppa-chaw's Botswana Birthday
05/15/10
I felt romance in my blood. My senses were reeling in the thickened morning darkness. The rising sun shimmered through the branches slowly, dancing around with leaf-shaped shadows by my feet. Boxie-boo and I, alone in this moment, were surrounded by flickering light. The sound of crunching leaves. Birds singing. As if in a lucid dream, I wondered whether I was awake. The 5:30 a.m....
3 tags
Okavango Delta, Botswana
05/14/10
At 5:45 a.m. I left my tent and my first sight was hungover Bob who resembled a lovesick yak. At about 1 a.m. he fumbled in his tent boozed-out cursing and screaming “Shush!” presumably to himself. I had lost one earplug slapping myself in the face in an attempt to kill our resident mosquito. This meant Bob’s bellows woke me up mid-sleep when I was having a kickass...
7 tags
Okavango Delta Bound
05/13/10
Our morning started with Boxie-boo and I using showers side-by-side separated by bamboo latches. My shower head sprouted in between tree limbs looking like a natural metal branch. The ground was covered in a thick film, egg yoke stretchy by the drain covered in dry leaves. My body shivered with coldness and enough body odour to brand a new cologne as I waited for the drizzling shower...
6 tags
Hartebeespoort to Nata, Botswana
05/12/10
For 13-and-a-half hours our van reared and bucked, from dodging giant potholes in South Africa to near slamming into jaywalking donkeys and cows in Botswana. Customs was lazy and easy both leaving South Africa and entering Botswana, where border staff were no more motivated than dairy cows.
Our van was filled with a formerly-dating German couple, and to my surprise, five...
8 tags
Kruger to Hartbeesproot and Lion Cubs
05/11/10
We found ourselves in a sincere silence listening to our driver Johann’s stories, cloaking the van in unseen shadows from his past. His words took us away to a time with no escape from racial segregation and a violence so cold his words turned into ice. As we passed corn and orange farms in front of wavy mountains, I watched his eyes in the rearview mirror, a pondering look...
3 tags
Day Two: Kruger National Park
05/10/10
Our 5 a.m. smooth pavement was replaced by latched, corrugated roads of exposed rock as we vibrated across Kruger Park towards Mozambique. The late morning air was warm and caramel smooth. Umbrella-shaped trees were unmoved by the gentle breezes. I scanned each passing branch and shadows in the brush, sniper concentrated in my vision in search of predators.
Our driver Andre was...
3 tags
Mother's Day in Kruger National Park
05/09/10
“When will the vacation begin?” Choppa-chaw joked, breaking the 5 a.m. silence on route to Kruger National Park. The drive was unusually quiet towards a red rising sun, expanding orange across the horizon.
Inside the park, we climbed into an open-sided truck painted military green. Morning dew coated the ceiling in small rivers that dripped downwards across our faces,...