The Do-Over

February 4, 2017 JG Leave a comment

I’m back in a place that pulls the rug out from under me while simultaneously tugging at my heartstrings.

The last time I was here, I was terrified, overwhelmed by the known unknown. The mental space to contemplate the unknown unknown came later. I’d landed in Bogota with bad Spanish, a 6 year old copy of South America on a Shoestring, a 4-night reservation in a hostel, and two weeks to get to Bolivia.

It sounds like the beginning of a great adventure, and it was. It was also the start of a 4-day panic attack that I mistook for altitude sickness: difficulty breathing, upset stomach, lack of appetite. I was frozen by fear of the vast openness of my life. I had no commitments, save a few meet ups, for months. I had no place to be. There were endless details to be addressed – where to sleep, to eat, to go, and how to get there (and what language was spoken or currency used once I did) – but no requirements, other than those I created for myself.

And then there was the city. Nestled into a lovely colonial, though basic, hostel in la Candelaria, I was surrounded by colorful two-story buildings with tile roofs and travelers. I could walk easily to many museums and the funicular, to the transmillenio to explore farther. But Bogota is as imposing as it is welcoming, and the security admonitions abounded.

My feet were cemented by my fear. Each day, I set a new target – a museum or sight just a tiny bit beyond my comfort zone (a relative statement, since cities have never been my thing) and eventually I found my way. It took more than one town, more than that first week, but I was soon able to balance unfettered glee with rational fear, for months on end.

Back in Bogota just over three years since I first arrived, and with only a day to play before moving on, I was nostalgically endeared to my poor, terrified self from that October. It’s a huge city, and exploring a new part of it with Spanish that seems to have completely escaped me, the challenges are real and many – language, altitude, safety. Aside from the arrivals hall in the airport, nothing is recognizable, and that fear comes back. When I set out to explore, the sky intermittently dumping water on my plans, air chocked by exhaust, there is much to be reckoned with. So I think back to what it is that tempers the fear: a manageable, bit-sized goal. Find just this one church, if there is time add just this one museum, and get back before dark. Sticking to that plan, the fear is gone.

It turns out the church isn’t so amazing, and I give up on the museum, as it is farther than I thought, and not walkable, and the altitude had given me a headache. But I have, once again, found my travel legs, my giddy love of the ridiculous impediments chance throws in our path and the encounters we greet in surmounting them. They are all little chips off this giant gem of life that gleams before us, and one by one we collect them, piece them together and make our own valuable stone.

Europe, Life Skills, South America, Traveling

Nadie Te Quita Lo Bailado

June 4, 2014 JG 1 Comment

I never realized how much I shop while traveling until I found myself in the sweet little village of Villa de Lleyva, in the Colombian hills. It is a busy weekend destination from Bogota, and I was there during the week, trying to shed The Terror. The shopping was drool-inducing, but my hands were tied: I had an over-full pack, and six months to go before home.

I love giving presents. Though I am famous in my family for hiding one last Christmas present until long after everyone else has finished opening their loot, I’m also known for going a little overboard on the present-giving. It’s not just Christmas. It’s anytime I find something someone I know will like, or has been longing for, or even better will adore even though s/he doesn’t know it’s out there. It’s such a little thing, and the exchange may be material, but the gift is the joy that it brings the recipient, not the object itself.

In the past, I have returned from journeys abroad with presents for my family from the trip, and then gifted them again for their birthdays or holidays with items also bought abroad, socked away until the proper occasion. At some point, I realized I could buy them each just one present on my trip, and gift it at the appropriate occasion, reducing my expenditures and the weight of my pack. My sisters took notice, but a raised eyebrow ended their protest.

Those cobblestone walkways in Villa de Lleyva come back to me now in Sevilla, wanting again to buy a piece of a country and take it home with me. In Colombia, native textiles combined with leather into the most fantastic purses I’d ever seen. Thick, soft wool had been knit into cowl-necked sweaters that could cuddle my sisters through the most vicious of winters. And the jewelry….But it had to be left behind.

When you can’t shop, what are you taking home with you? Memories. What happens when those memories get confused, and begin to fade? Where was I when I kept getting turned around and winding up in the same marketplace block, with heat bearing down on the smell of the wet market, over and over again? I had to think on this one for 30 minutes to recall it was Cartagena.

In what town did I stay briefly where they had a daily market that I kept failing to make it to, only to happen upon its afternoon remnants on my last afternoon in town? I’ve been thinking about it for two days now, and I can’t remember. But I can still see the empty stalls being broken down on a dusty street, cars again pushing through as they cleared.

Where is the fancy Italian paper store that I am so dead -set on finding again here in Sevilla? I was sure it was on Calle Serpientes, but I’ve walked it four times now to no avail. I don’t even need paper; I just loved that place so much, I wanted to go back.

I took 47 planes, six trains, nine boats, four buses, a couple scary 4WD trips and countless bike, subway, taxi and tram rides on my way round the world in 180 days. I was so alert that each of them has a memory attached to it, but the further I get from each, the more I dip into ‘normal’ life (let’s be honest, this life I’m living now is far from normal), the blurrier the memories get. Misty water-colored memories indeed. If I’m not buying things, and the memories get blurred as time goes by, what do I have left of this marvel of a life I’ve adventured through?

It’s a sentiment. It’s a sensation. It’s a sense memory that lingers in body, muscle, mind and heart, the feeling of it all being new, unknown, still ahead. It’s the knowledge of having done it (for the first time, differently than I will do it the next time). It’s the thrill that comes back, if just for a moment, when I remember climbing to the top of the monastery in Petra and looking out over the valley, or biking through rice paddies in Vietnam, or standing at the base of a glacier in Patagonia. Like muscles, the memory must be exercised to remain strong , so I recall it occasionally, with a glimpse at a picture, a pause of breath, a closure of eyes, to pull myself back to that moment that no one can take away. It is just what a friend said to me before I left, when I worried what would happen when I came back. “Nadie te quita lo bailado.” Nobody takes away from you what you’ve danced.

On top of the monastery in Petra

Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Preparing, South America, Tourist, Traveling, United States

Money Matters: the new New Math

May 4, 2014 JG 3 Comments

For the last six months, with the exception of one week in March, I have moved every three to four days. I haven’t slept in the same bed for more than a week since last September. While I didn’t change countries every time I moved, I did manage to make it to 17 of them, only three of which use the same currency. So while everyone thinks I’ve been off on vacation, I’ve in fact been doing some rather intense money math.

Money math should be easy, but it takes quite a bit of preparation. The longer you do it, the quicker the preparation gets, but the harder the math becomes to perform on the fly, an essential skill for effective bargaining –itself an essential skill in almost every country in South America, Asia, Africa, and the Near East. Here’s how it works:

Crisp, clean US dollars

Carry some crisp, new, $100 US bills, and try never to use (or lose) them. (Even if you are from the Euro zone, you should carry US dollars. Your money may be worth more than ours, but people don’t actually want it more.)
Before arriving in a country, go online and determine how many ‘whatevers’ there are to the US dollar.
Remember this rate. If you are bored, practice multiplying and dividing by it so you are acclimated before you arrive at your next destination.
Avoid currency exchange windows, especially at the airport. Instead, make withdrawals from a cash machine in amounts sizeable enough that your improved exchange rate and lack of service fee offset whatever your bank may charge you for daring to make it interact with a foreign country. Careful not to withdraw so much money as to be left with unused bills upon your departure. The rate to sell these back will invariably screw you.
Because the ATM will undoubtedly give you bills of a denomination large enough to render them useless, go directly to the nearest bank or large, busy establishment (or sometimes your hotel desk) and break large bills for ones that won’t encourage the average taxi driver to pull the “I don’t have change” routine.
Rinse, repeat.

It seems simple. But do it three times in a month. I guarantee that at least once, you’ll forget to check the exchange rate before you land somewhere, and find yourself negotiating for a taxi without knowing whether you are arguing over 100 dollars or 100 cents. By time four or five, you will likely forget to take one of your prior currencies out of your wallet, and will find yourself attempting to pay for your pad thai with pho money. Somewhere in this timeframe, you will also realize it’s started to seem completely normal to carry three currencies simultaneously: dollars, currency of current country, and remnants of a country you’re still too close to to miss.

Colombian Pesos

Bolivian Bolivianos

Chilean Pesos – note the pretty window in some of the bills

Suppress the temptation to buy one of those lovely leather travel folios that fit your tickets and passport and itinerary, unless you are on the kind of trip where someone else is creating the lovely itinerary for you and handling most of your logistics. Opt instead for something plastic or vinyl, because at some point, you will find yourself in a country with the dirtiest, moldiest, wimpiest, most ripped bills you have ever seen, and you will likely have a lot of them. For me, this country was Myanmar. For you, this will also likely be the country in which you pull out your precious clean US dollars to exchange them on the black market for a rate up to 100 times that you would receive at a bank. If they aren’t pristine, they will be discounted to only 95 times the bank rate – or less.

The fake Burberry pouch I bought to be my moldy Myanmese kyat wallet

Due to the exchange rate, I bought this plastic pouch to carry the the hundreds of notes that make up $100 USD

Until I found this wallet in Cambodia, which I am still using. It has the added benefits of water resistance and multiple currency pockets.

If you have chosen to skip step (1), above, you will find yourself doing things like going to a bank machine in Bangkok to pull out baht and take them to the exchange window to buy dollars, just so that you can carry them (new, unbent, untorn) to Myanmar to buy flimsy, delicate kyat. In other words, even your lovely new dollar bills will be double-discounted by your own disregard for the international exchange scheme of tourism.

By the time you’ve been through this rigmarole four times, the preparation part becomes old hat. You are much less likely to forget to look up the exchange rate and land someplace unprepared. (Don’t bother with cash in any country where you’re laying over in the airport. Just use a credit card, or you’ll be left with 30 random Australian dollars and nothing to show for them.)

Australian dollars – for the 15 hours I spent in the Sydney airport

Note to self: when you find yourself taking money out of the ATM in the Colombo airport at 3 a.m., chances are you don't need it, and you should find an empty chair and go to sleep.

Note to self: chances are you don’t need those rupees you’re taking out of the ATM in the Colombo airport at 3 a.m. Resist the temptation, find the nearest prayer room, and go to sleep.

What becomes more difficult as time goes on is adjusting to the mental money math that accompanies these exchanges. In one week, you may transition from dividing all prices in kyat by 971 to figure out actual cost, to dividing by 3,954 riel to dividing by 21,097 dong. Give or take some zeros depending on how recently a country has revalued its own currency, or whether it has recalled its former currency from circulation and bothered to print up something new. In addition to a language barrier, you are now facing an economic translation grey zone in which you and your provider may be using two different bases on which to settle your accounts, and they differ by a factor of 100.

I shared a cab with a woman in Santiago. She took out bills completely unfamiliar to me, despite my having been in the country for almost two weeks. I asked her where they were from, and she looked at me oddly and said, “here.”

Now start bargaining. You aren’t used to that in your home country? That’s a shame, because it’s fun. It’s friendly, and vigorous, and slightly different everywhere you go. The whole process will start to seem like a game, in part because the money feels fake: it’s a different color, or size, or weight than you are used to. It has unfamiliar pictures and in some cases doesn’t even use European numerals, so you can’t be sure what numbers you are looking at when you at last agree on a price and pull out your Monopoly bills to pay for things. It will make you long for expensive Europe, where you will be astounded at what it costs to buy coffee but are willing to pay anything just to multiply by 1.4 instead of dividing by 758. Money Matters: the new New Math.

Dear Jordan: I love your country, and I can’t for my life tell how much money this is.

For the fun of it, more pictures of some foreign currency are below. They are mangled and messy in real life so the pictures aren’t the clearest, but you’ll get an idea of what it’s like to have carried about 15 currencies in six months:

the beloved Ataturk

Vietnam apparently wants you to know how productive they are.

Very few currencies have women on any denominations.

The elusive 5000 kyat note. Makes exchanging a $100 USD note much more efficient.

At 980 kyat to the USD, it’s hard to say why this 5 kyat note even exists.

Crisp, clean US dollars

Australian dollars – for the 15 hours I spent in the Sydney airport

Chilean Pesos – note the pretty window in some of the bills

Note to self: when you find yourself taking money out of the ATM in the Colombo airport at 3 a.m., chances are you don’t need it, and you should find an empty chair and go to sleep.

Dear Jordan: I love your country, and I can’t for my life tell how much money this is.

Colombian Pesos

South America, Tourist, Traveling

Fun and Guns for Everyone

November 4, 2013 JG 2 Comments

Day two in Bogota, I took a long look at the map in my guidebook, then ditched it and went in search of two things: the tourist kiosk in Plaza Bolivar, and the Museo de la Policia Nacional. The first was rumored to have the best maps of the city (important in a place where, in the last two years, some – but not all – of the street names have been changed. Now, instead of 12^th-16^th streets, there are streets 12a, 12b, 12c, 12d and 12 (formerly 16^th) street). The second has a basement exhibition on the hunt for Pablo Escobar. Anyone who knows me knows that, as much as a good diorama, I’m a sucker for a crime story with a drug lord.

Just southeast of the Plaza Bolivar I ran into a cache of guns. Still overwhelmed by altitude, and by the fact that I had just, with very little planning, left the country for six months (though it’s difficult to say which of these caused more trouble with my breathing), I overshot the tourist mark. Guns were everywhere. Soldiers protected each building en masse. (I later learned these were the presidential residence, presidential offices, the presidential guard battalion, that national archives, and the national observatory where the Colombian constitution was devised – all gun-worthy locations.) Cadets in camo walked in twos and threes; policia in their neon yellow pinnies monitored street corners. Federales with semi-automatics stood at the gates and driveways of sandstone buildings. A map would have been helpful here.

I turned north, hoping to head closer to the Plaza, or a tourist zone. Both sides of the street were lined with stores geared for soldiers – or their like minded family members. Booth-sized entrances were filled with military gear for the whole family: boots, badges, and pins for the already camo-clad dad. A stylish desert camo ¾ length overcoat to get the supportive wife through the cold season.

and Camo fashion for the moms

Surely junior wants in on the action – we have camo of all shapes and sizes for your little ones.

Back to school outfits for the kiddos

And while you’re at it, get them a shelf full of military dolls to remind them what their future occupational options may be! It’s a family even a revolutionary could be proud of.

Police are fun!

Colombia has made a concerted effort to improve the reputation of its military, and it seems to be working. The police presence is everywhere, more as information posts and beat cops than mini dictators. Bus stations, street corners, your sidewalk taco stand – all of them are monitored by pairs of policia who are more than happy to try to answer your questions.

No where are they happier to do this than in the Museo de la Policia Nacional. Here, polyglots serve military service as tour guides, and mine, whose name was Oscar, did not disappoint. For almost two hours, he toured me through rooms with thesis projects put to use as drones and bomb detecting devices; the history of Colombian police structure and the efforts to devise a public relations – and culture – strategy to reduce the ‘dirty cop,’ reputation of the industry; the development of forensic science; a wide-ranging sample of weapons and ammo. And at last, to the hunt and capture of Pablo Escobar and other cartel leaders.

It was worth every minute. The displays were thorough but not laborious, Oscar’s English (part of which he learned in school and most of which, he told me when asked, was “empiric,”) was so close to excellent that it was an entertainment for us both when he forgot a word and we would work to discover what he was trying to say. Along the way, other English-speaking cadets would join us for a time, add their two cents, and then move on.

This being only day two, I wasn’t settled in my solitary traveler status, which now feels like a lovely bubble I can pop whenever I want out , but which I can wear as protection when need be. I couldn’t help but think of everything I saw through the eyes of family I wouldn’t see for quite some time.

For my dad, there were homemade guns, marked by their creators or decorated to suit the discerning owner.

Homemade crafts

For my niece and nephews, there were models of helicopters, trucks and airplanes, displays of badges from police around the world, and uniforms that would make for days of good dress-up.

My nephew’s xmas present…

For the architects (my family has two), models and plans of houses, towns, and even a prison that drug lords built for themselves, and the Spanish roof tile on which Escobar landed after he was shot and fell out the second-floor window. For my motorcycle-loving brother in law, Escobar’s illegally imported Harley embellished with gold and silver décor.

An embellishment on Escobar’s illegal Harley

There was even a horse-drawn paddy wagon occasionally converted to an ambulance when need be. It was a blissfully honest, entertaining, military mess, and I loved every bit of it.

And it was just the beginning of my second day.

For more pictures of camo and ammo, as well as the rest of my pics from Colombia, click here

South America, Tourist, Traveling, Uncategorized

Parque Tayrona

October 30, 2013 JG 1 Comment

There is nothing but the heat: heavy heat, drenching you with sweat you didn’t think was left in you. Sweat so thick it covers you with a sheen, a sheet, that stretches your clothes. It explains why, even to church, women wear tight-fit synthetic clothing – cotton is for tourists and the ignorant. The blessing of even a slight breeze that licks the water from your skin like a fan, if just for the briefest of moments.

In the jungle of Parque Tayrona, on the NE coast of Colombia, the heat is the same, but the air fresher. In the shade, noises you don’t know move like large animals lurking in dry leaves, then turn out not to be large animals but little lizards or iguanas or chameleons. Winter is just ending – the choice is mud or muddier, or, after a couple kilometers, the exposure of the hiking on the sand – hot, and glaring, no protection from sun and giving beneath your feet so that every step you take takes back a half. I choose the shade.

If you’re looking for dry ground, follow the red ants. They are larger than any you’ve ever seen, carrying mac trucks of foliage on their backs down the insect super highway, defying gravity and other rules of physics. Watch out for tree roots that spread across the jungle floor and up its rocky walks like giant snakes, reminding you of what you hope not to see. Butterflies the size of your head, in pantones that would make LG engineers cry with envy, wrestle and settle on occasion. In the distance, you can hear the crash of the ocean you hope soon to see.

You can’t help but think about Vietnam. You’re dripping wet with sweat and effort for only a day, with the promise of a picnic and a swim in the near future, but what was it like for those boys? To be 18, 19, from someplace in the middle, someplace like Montana, where heat doesn’t sift through your skin and boil your insides, and be sent to a blanket of weather like this, humping a pack half again your weight, things you can see the least of your terrors. That’s some thing we did. To those boys.

At the entry, where you pay the exorbitant $37.500 COL ($20USD) entrance fee – the price of being an extranjero) – you leave an emergency phone number with the guard. “In case something happens,” he says, and then gives you a ‘tour’ of the park map, carved in wood on the side of an entrance hut, and some admonishments. “Only on a marked path….Only Sendero Arrecifes” he tells me, because that’s where I’ve said I’m going. Only since he tells you you can’t swim there, you’re going to La Piscina, a bit farther down the way. The guard seems doubtful you can do this and make it back in a day.

Wherever the trail leads to the beach, large signs warn you not to swim. More than 100 people have been lost in the surf, they tell you. At Arrecifes, where you can rent a horse for the trip back, or spend the night, buy a drink, or a bag, or an ice-cream pop, the trail dead ends into a soup of mud and there is no choice but to hike along the beach. The path to the sand sports a sign that says 200 people have been lost at this beach. It is not suitable for swimming. And then this:

Your fearometer tells you that this says there have been caimans spotted in the lagoon, and not to swim in it. When the path actually turns to beach, there is another sign: 100 people have been lost here. You start to wonder if the caimans were responsible for 100 between the mud and the sand.

At La Piscina, the water is so warm it barely rinses off the sweat, and yet such sweet relief. First there is no one but you, and then, by twos, by fives, some hikers, a tour group, a family. The tide is coming in; you place your things on a high rock so as not to lose them. The jungle comes right down to the ocean here – the sand is being swallowed by the sea in this cove. Waves are full of bark bits and no one cares – you just want the pretense of cooling off.

On the way home, everyone walks the other way. They are coming to spend the night in a hammock between the jungle and the sea. One night, three nights. Couples looking for a private moment, backpackers on a cheap adventure, families who want to experience this national treasure. You can’t help but wonder if their kids will be whining from heat or boredom before night falls. You walk against this tide, think you could have spent the night with a group – but not alone. Not alerting to every sound – in the jungle, that makes for a long, long night. But to sleep by the sound of the sea, the occasional smell of salt in the air– it sounds sweet, it sounds like home. Next time, you think, already planning the return.

The ants go marching….

Worth Packing In

the little truth of traveling

Colombia