Are the French Really Rude? On the Gringo Trail

ARE THE FRENCH REALLY RUDE?

Just back from spending the summer in South America, for me, one of the first indulgences of coming home (besides marveling at flush toilets, potable tap water and raw fruits and vegetables), is to read the Sunday paper.

One title in This World section caught my eye. “Are the French Really Rude?” Foreign LA Times correspondent Stanley Meisler writes, “after five years in France, and American still has a puzzling time figuring out the French. Are they really rude?

I read that article with particular interest because I was going through the same dilemma after spending two months on the Gringo Trail with them. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, all those places we budget travelers have been beating a path to, made popular in the “60’s, is the Gringo Trail. Tropical beaches and ancient ruins are de riguer. Club Med is out.

One meets people from all over the world vagabonding on the Gringo Trail but these days the bulk of travelers are comprised of young Europeans. The trouble with the Gringo Trail is that the travelers tend to bring to bring a portmanteau of their country’s obnoxious habits with them. Friction develops.

Fellow tourists from other countries tend to get annoyed with each other. Being forced to ride 14 hours in the Pullman car or a first class bus with a group tour of rude Frenchmen is worse than water torture for some travelers. I suppose a tour of North Americans or Germans would be equally obnoxious— but one sees fewer North Americans on the road.

These reports are not isolated instances of psychopathic travelers who have it in for the French. For example, the journalist from Boston’s very first sentence to us was to commiserate how rude the French were.

It seems one Frenchman didn’t like the way she moved his suitcase in the overhead luggage rack above her seat to make room for hers. He jumped up frothing and shoved her suitcase back screaming if he wanted his suitcase moved, he would have done it himself.

Days later she’s still pissed off. The problem with the Gringo Trail, is that you keep running into each other in various ruins and cafes all over South America. Vendettas and quickie marriages are common.

There are times when I prefer a second class carriage with its chickens, pigs and robbers to traveling with the French. When the train stopped to wait for an oncoming train to pass, pity the poor traveler, unable to face a second class pissior, who jumped off the parked train to take a quick pee and lost his eyeglasses to a light-fingered Peruvian admirer in the process. He was pissed off. P.O’d. is a more polite abbreviated term.

Any tree in a public park is well guttered with piss. A seal rookery smells better than the local plaza. One rarely sees a Frenchman traveling second class. I didn’t always have this racist attitude toward an entire segment of fellow travelers. Being on the road with them too long did it.

When I first came face to face with blatantly rude French travelers was in Guatemala. It’s true they won’t give you the time of day. In Latin America, every one graciously and politely greets each other. A greeting is met with coldness by the French. Being in a restaurant with them can be embarrassing for fellow Gringos. If they wanted to eat at Maxim’s why on earth did they come here?

I though my normally liberal traveling companion’s bristling tirade against the very sight of the French was a bit of an overreaction— he’s logged many more miles than I have, with ten more years on the Gringo Trail than I— I figured that they just pushed his buttons and the incident was merely one of travelers crossing each other’s paths wrong.

That was until one Frenchman decided my bus window needed closing with my hand still in it. I wasn’t upset that he knowingly slammed it on my hand. He didn’t have the courtesy to ask to close it. As it turned out, I was carsick— about to lose my cookies as they say— because he smoked a cigar and I needed air. A minor brawl erupted. What thoughts go through their heads that they prefer to do violence to fellow travelers than to speak anything abut French?

Or the time one Frenchman took to shouting and laughing into the wee hours in the open air bathroom adjacent to our room in a minus three star hotel in the Galapagos. Minus star hotels generally don’t have glass in the windows or curtains for starters. I asked him to be quiet in the lengua de pais, Spanish, which he ignored. I tried both the formal usted and the familiar tu forms. I even tried French. No luck.

It’s amazing how much English they do understand when it’s delivered at top lung and peppered with stout anglo-saxon phrases. “Fuck” a guaranteed attention grabber will usually trick them into speaking English with you. Then they really hate you.

Next morning, he claimed innocence saying he didn’t understand Spanish because he was French— as if that in itself was an excuse— and proceeded to deliver insults like a schoolyard bully.

Lack of sleep does wonders for my Irish temper. He erred in his judgment as to how much abuse I would take. Spineless, I’m not. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. When he flicked his hand like a glove at my face like a man about to challenge another to a duel, he got one.

I avoid physical conflict, being on the short side of small. There was a time when I despaired that I would never reach five feet. That was like breaking the sound barrier. When I was in 8th grade, the school bully, a well developed “girl” named Tayde who outweighed me by100 pounds, and was a foot taller, had me cornered and tormented me one time too many.

I went in swinging expecting to be killed on the spot but I didn’t care any more. About the only place I could make contact was with her boobs. We always speculated they were fake balloons. Well, they weren’t and they didn’t pop. To my surprise, she laughed, and later became my friend.

I went for the Frenchman’s throat. I didn’t care that I was creating an international scandal. I was out for blood. My companion separated us and everyone thought he had pushed the Frenchman and jumped on him! Male chauvinism. He didn’t become my friend.

I am reminded of the curious fact that the French installed in their public buildings the placard, “no spitting and no Bretons allowed here.” They have little love for the Celt yet they call themselves Gallic— which is a Celt of course! The French, or the Franks of Charlemagne as they were called, took what is now called France from the Celts in the first place.

It took the Bretons, last of the European Celts to rescind the law concerning spitting and Celts. Llamas and Latin American men spit like crazy. A disgusting habit. At least llama spit is mostly hay.

The natives get jaded fast from all this hobnobbing with world travelers and demand money for everything from posing for photos to tourists loitering in public squares and churches. Gone are the National Geographic salad days of photographing the natives going about their business in quaint settings with llamas gamboling about.

Kids are the worst. Dame plata, dame sucre. Gimme money, gimme candy. And if you don’t give willingly to the cause, there are other methods. They’ll come up and hug you, their tiny starfish hands thoroughly frisking each pocket and wrist before you can say como te llamas.

They grow up to be razor artists who slash your daypacks and pants pockets so everything falls out. There’s a funny story of a razor artist so skilled that one unfortunate traveler’s pants fell off as he was walking down the street. Some are that skilled. It gives new meaning to the word embarrassed.

In South America, one has to register name, age, nationality and passport number at every tourist site and public transport. Each ticket taker demands this information and woe to the traveler who resists. I assume this precaution is in case there’s a coup so they’ll be able to identify the bodies after. This does not make me feel any more secure.

Half the time, we weren’t about to list our passport numbers namely because our passports were safely stashed inside a secret pocket in my traveling companion’s pants which meant exposing himself in public just to get the number and so we made up new ones on the spot.

Getting arrested for publicly unzipping and rummaging in one’s pants in a foreign country didn’t appeal to us when there were so many other more interesting things we could get arrested for— like false passport numbers. Ticket takers are almost as irrational as the French when crossed.

My traveling companion, at 46, took a perverse delight in noting he was usually the oldest person on the road. About the only time he was upstaged was at Lake Titicaca by a 60-year-old New Zealand grandmother who decided it was time to travel the world. So she left husband and kids to fend for themselves for a year. At 12,600 feet, she did better than we did in the thin air.

He said, admiringly, “I hope I’m in that good of shape at 60.” My traveling companion and I were an anomaly. North Americans, Californians— over twenty-three traveling with backpacks. Not many from our neck of the woods travel in strife-torn Central and South America these days. The declining dollar, the unofficial coin of the realm is keeping us home, but not the Europeans who are able to travel at bargain prices. The median age of all the world’s people is twenty-three.

The cliché that the French are rude as you’ve heard seems to be true in Latin America. It’s become one of the topics of conversation in coffee houses along the Gringo Trail. Latin Americans are complaining. Even other Europeans. I’m not about to write off the entire French population. I love French cooking. My aunt spent two years in Paris getting her Grand Diplome at the Cordon Bleu School of Cooking. I can’t imagine the world without the visions of Renoir, Cezanne or Debussy.

I also remember reading how the impressionist artists were barred from the Salon of Painting because they did something different than what was accepted as culture. According to my aunt the French come from a stiff, unbending world, blamed in part on their rigorous school system which focuses on rote learning rather than creativity.

“Shhhh! You Americans and French always at each other's throats! France is a middling power, arrogant and with an inferiority complex,” said a Limeño friend. It’s a pity so many take the national prejudices with them.

I’m sure I will meet many lovely French people traveling. I prefer the individual travelers to groups who may as well never have left their native soil to begin with. Nationalism belongs at home.

I read that the French president Mitterand is one of the few foreign leaders who stands up to the US and refuses to bow to its power and influence. They have banned “American” words like hamburger and computer from the French language, fearing the corruption of their language. Our language is enriched by the addition of French. I can’t see North Americans boycotting words like envelope, romance and intellectual because they’re French words.

I can imagine all the hate mail I’ll receive in French envelopes on this one. (Oops, French envelopes means something else again. Rubbers, galoshes).

One Peruvian said France is too unyielding. It’s unable to bend. That is why it is no longer a superpower. As Americans— let me digress. Calling ourselves Americans is considered an imperialist attitude. And rightly so. It was pointed out to me that North America also contained two other countries, Canada and Mexico. We are all North Americans. English, Spanish and French.

Central and South Americans don’t call themselves Latin Americans. They call themselves Americans! And they are also Americans. I’m sure Kennedy addressing the people, “my fellow Americans…” had no idea he was addressing two continents. Simón Bolívar’s dream was to unite South America and call it the United States of South America. How different things might have been if he’d succeeded.

As US citizens, we are often called on the carpet for our embarrassing policies on Central America. We travel as ambassadors of the American people who don’t necessarily support or agree with the political policies of our nation.

Reagan is a very dirty word. Reagan may shoot down passenger planes mistaking them for military planes in the Iranian Gulf but at least he doesn’t go around blowing up Greenpeace ships protesting nuclear testing in the South Pacific like the French did in Tahiti. That’s a very small consolation prize.

I take it back. The man’s senile and crazy. Referring to the destruction of Polynesia, Jacques Cousteau said, “small material things mask the vital problems in the destruction of a culture. He was referring to his own countrymen. Nationalist attitudes should stay at home with all the extra baggage you don’t need (like the outboard motor) while traveling in a foreign country.

Stanley Meiser cites a stifling school system and foolish posturing on the world stage as an excuse for their behavior. He writes, “all studies show that outsiders look on the French as the coldest and least welcoming people of Europe. They have no tolerance or time for spontaneity or weakness.”

One begins to wonder why a group of people who steadfastly refuse to learn the barest minimum of a foreign language would even want to travel. Simple words like excuse me, con permisso, or thank you, gracias would make all the difference in the world—well, not world but in the Americas at least. ”When in Rome, do as the Romans do” obviously hasn’t yet been translated into French.

The sad part is, aside from pissing everyone off, they miss so much of the culture. Americans both the Latin and Northern of the species— are gregarious and open. A Bolivian writer said, “Nowhere else in the world do people treat you like the French if you do not speak their language.”

Note Bene: I transcribed these journal entries in 1988 - 1990, hence the variable dates. (I'm moving them all to 1988, journal entry date, not transcription/revision date). We were in South America during the summer of 1988. I was trying to publish these stories, or at least find a home for them. I've a vague recollection of the Machu Picchu piece being published in The Paper. 

I was readying several of these Peru pieces pieces for an anthology, House on Via Gombito: Writing by North American Women Abroad. I also wrote Bill Truesdale, the editor for New RIvers Press, St. Paul, MN, a rather zany letter about my travels across the USSR. He took the letter, and not the stories. 

After an incredible journey through South America, John Oliver Simon broke up with me, left me for a young blonde former student of his, and it took me nearly a decade to recover from the horror of it all. Going to the USSR in 1989 was my salvation—and still John was trying to reel me back in. Or maybe he was doing the AA thing, in his case, the SA 12-step thing, atoning for his wrongdoings. By that point, I wouldn't even give him the time of day. Ironically, we managed to heal the gap nearly 35 years later. So it's fitting that these pieces finally get to see daylight, after languishing in darkness for so long.   —Maureen Hurley 2/26/2014

I've very few photos transcribed over to the electronic medium, another project. Here are three small albums.

Machu Picchu
Peru
Galapagos

Lima, portrait of a city

“When you no longer see any trees you will be in Peru.”
—Simón Bolîvar's boat pilot, 1823

From the air, the outskirts of Lima, even the multitudes of red and white Peruvian flags fluttering over the pueblos jovenes, the shanty settlements don’t hide the smoldering heaps of garbage lining the dry banks of the Rímac River. In Quechua, the Inca tongue, Rímac means talking, or singing river.

If the river could speak, it would not have much to commend during the 400 turbulent years of European settlement. Twelve degrees south of the equator, Lima, the capital of Peru, is situated on the great coastal desert, the driest in the world, where precious rain is measured in millimeters a year.

South America’s Gran Liberator, Simón Bolîvar described it in letters as “the land was almost impossible to believe. Along the coast it was not only dead— for dead implied having once lived— it was unlacing, desolate, without trees, grass, or even cactus. The air was chilled; a cold ocean current prevented the fall of rain, and transformed a thousand miles of coastline into an utter wasteland.”

Though the explorer Pizarro is credited with the founding of Lima in 1535, there are huacas, adobe pyramids that predate our current calendar (Año Domini) by 1000 years.

For 400 years Spain generously suckled riches from Peru’s golden breasts until there was nothing left. I imagine most of that melted gold still slumbers in the tombs of numbered Swiss vaults.

Some Peruvians claim the Incas, with subtle revenge in mind, suggested the site to Pizarro, because, unlike the rest of the coast, it was so gloomy and cold five months of the year. Perhaps the Inca’s best revenge is that Pizarro's mummified body is on permanent public display.

Because of the Arctic Humboldt current, Lima is blanketed with heavy fog, the garuá, which lets in little sun from June to October. In 1823, Liberator of Colombia, Simón Bolîvar described Lima— once considered the Paris of South America, “Lima had a down at the heel look. The avenues were filled with filth and the water which ran down the gutters in the centers of the streets was dammed with a concentration of litter.” Not much has changed.

Letter to Luis Kong, from the Necropolis, Paracas, poem

LETTER TO LUIS KONG FROM THE NECROPOLIS, PARACAS 8/21/88
(RETURNING FROM PARACAS)

In Paracas where it has never rained in living memory, literally nothing grows. You told me there was nothing here in this place of your birth. I didn't understand what you meant. This place I've waited a lifetime to visit.

The garúa or coastal fog, rolls back each morning to reveal distant purple mountains, the Andean foothills, contrasting with the eroded bright ochre and red coastline of sedimentary rock turning back into dust once again.

Dust with its airiness is the wrong word to use. I want to say mud or earth to imply something of the weight and adhesion of this "dust." What is left is heavier than dust.

From countless jailed lips, the word Paracas has escaped—an eager storm of Inca doves bursting into sky, or slender serpentine syllables seeking shelter, and like pigeons, the sound returns home to its toothy origin only to find the speaker gone; a skeletal utterance, the word itself meaning dust storm.

Heavy with silica, the drifting sand dunes march in crescent-hooved formation over hills and plateaus, swallowing cities of the living and the dead. Above the buried necropolis, fossilized shells raised above the surface of the matrix, escape from stone prisons.

Sun, wind and time erodes this place. Fragments of quartz, venial intrusion once separated two layers of mudrock; thick milk glass shards strewn across the surface; the parent rock long since scattered by the four winds.

I crumble silica crystals between my fingers as if it were made of sugar or fake windows of a Hollywood stage set. Lit by morning sun, translucent alabaster "fish" swim in the sky.

Strange, unbroken ridges fall at the angle of declination to the coastal plateau. Rusted metamorphic pebbles erratically eroded by alluvial action, not water, glaze the slopes like chocolate "fleas" on a cake.

I wander between large shell mounds, each separated by species, clams, purple scallops and snails; worn pawns in a gigantic game of chess. The Paracas Indians were the first to fall to the Incas, who in turn, fell to the Spaniards. And so on. From flamingo carcasses, crazy pink feathers tumble across the desert.

Peru Journal, Santa Rosa de Amantani, Lake Titicaca

8/20? no date: At the weaving co-op I tied friendship bracelets on to the slender wrists of the gaggle of young girls that clustered around us. The old woman dressed me in a vest and traditional hat. The hat, nearly flat with flowers embroidered on it, was an extraordinary affair. 

Too bad the vest was uneven, I might have bought it, but we already bought so many things yesterday I didn’t want to load up on more things that I really didn’t want. They greeted us like old friends after yesterday‘s purchases. The women taking interest in who buys what since this is a co-op.

Being on this island is like stepping back in time. No cars, no roads, just cobbled paths.

Sunset, a desert lake the size of an inland sea, but at 12,000 feet from sea level. With the setting sun comes the chill of being at 12,000 feet. The lake is an aqua gray, with its skin fluxed into patterns by the complex winds. I keep looking for seals, it looks so much like the ocean. 

Last night a surprise rain played on the galvanized roof. The adobes all sport new roofs, new economy comes to the island via the tourists. The separate kitchen still have the thatch reed roofs. Five girls dressed in full skirts of red and green, rush to the kitchen of the house where we are staying. 

Children playing fútbol, soccer in an empty field. A baby is crying, the mother exclaims in Quechua. A woman in a full red skirt and black mantilla borrows something from her neighbor. She hurries to the kitchen with a white bucket and the cuy, the guinea pigs whistle an alarm call, and scuttle to safety into their stone abodes beneath the hearth. Dinner cooks in earthenware pots, full round ollas, blackened from dung and charcoal fires. 

We spent the day hiking up to the ruins at the top of the paps, twin volcanos of Pachamama, which has both a pyramid and round amphitheater, and then we hike over to the crest of the next volcano, Pachatata with a square temple. Both have niches and little cuy houses under the hearths. Interesting little locked doors. There are shallow tunnels beneath these doors reinforced with hinges and padlocks. Wonder what is stored in them?

There is evidence of earlier fires. The multitudes of stone arches, like portals to other worlds, are dressed with dried flowers. Apparently we’ve just missed an important ceremony.

But for the most part, the Incas have abandoned the top of this island, especially Pachatata. The terraces below us yield bright gardens of maize, and wheat stubble. Harvest festival? At Pachamama, stone cutters still divide the stones with crowbars and hammers looking for a clear stone to hew. We learn the volcanic rocks don’t make good corners.

In the pueblo of Santa Rosa, close to the lake, life is lived in the same fashion it has been for thousands of years. Tiny misshapen two-story dark houses, often windowless, tiny beds. Generations have lived here.

It is said the sun god, the Inti was born on an island not far from here. The Incas claimed this place as their ancestral home. Either that, or an older culture was settled here and the Incas took over, or this place is the birth place of the builders of Machu Picchu.

Much of this was used in my article for The Paper. 

• Amantani, Lake Titicaca, Peru

Note bene: There was a round altar on one of the volcanoes, and on the other there was a square altar, and enclosure on Amantani. I asked one of the women and she said, as she padded both my breasts, PachaMama, y PachaTata! I was blessed in this way. 

Tara Edna Miller from Colorado who lives part time on Taquile, and imports weaving, said, Yes, Amantani has two high points with ceremonial sites. Taquile has more than one ceremonial enclosure, but Mulcina is the high point and makes a triad with PatchaTata on Amantani and Auki Karu on the Capachica peninsula.

PUNO/AREQUIPA Festival of Santa Rosa de Lima 8/23/88

The Puno train station along with the Arequipa train station is amongst the worst in Peru for thievery. Thieves especially favor the evening and early morning trains….but there aren’t many other scheduled trains to pickpocket, so it makes the thieves all the more dangerous and desperate.

As a successful thief deterrent, I’ve found the best result is to play “bopper car” with my backpack. If anyone comes too close to me, sidling up to slash my pockets, they get bashed by my swinging pack. This makes for a silly walk ambulating with a sideways drunken twisting motion—Monty Python style. The ladrinos keep clear of me—I'm an unpredictable gringa.

8/19  Today is one of the few days I actually know what day it is. I've had no sense of time. South of the equator, my internal clock and equilibrium are so thoroughly sprung by the extreme northern winter sun, I can't seem to find firm footing. At night I can't even get my bearings by the stars. Familiar constellations are canted too far to the north. The Southern Cross is my guide. Only the moon and the sun remain constant.

This is the year of Año Marina. The Year of Mary parade. Today, they bring Máría out from the church, they air her out at twilight. She's beautiful, this gilded lace Mary of Chiapi—she rides on an extraordinary throne flotilla of flowers— marigolds and roses and carnations. She's paraded clockwise around the Plaza de Armas at sunset amid much fanfare and drums. The air and light are translucent. Crepuscular. Máría arrives back from where she started at the steps of the Catedral de Arequipa. her luck and grace dispersed, her journey done.

Young boys march in battle formation hoisting banners of Santa Rosa with California written on them. It gives me a start to see Santa Rosa de Lima with California embroidered on the banners. We are so far from home from our Santa Rosa, California—Alta California norte. What is the likelihood of those two names appearing on a single flag in South America? Apparently we do not own the name.  And who in Northern California even knows that Santa Rosa is named after the first New World woman saint?

I've a sudden pang for natal ground. Homesickness. A strange coincidence. We ask, Why California? It's a district in Arequipa, the taxi man tells me. A plausible reason ordinary and mundane after all. A cardinal dressed in red stands at the front gate of the church to welcome Máría home. Dignitaries mount the steps looking grimly important. Respite during a time of war. Sendero Luminoso are on the move. The country is at unrest. But for a moment, the clocks have stopped to honor Máría, Pachamama in Catholic dress.

Perú journal, Amantani (a lot of this was used in an article)

The Puno train station along with Arequipa, is considered to be the most dangerous train station in Peru. For thievery, especially in the evening and early morning hours. I found the best result is to play bumper cars with my backpack. Anyone that comes to near to me gets bashed by my backpack, with a quick twist of my body. It makes for a  an interesting kind of walk, twisting and turning like that. Monty Pythonesque.

The boat to Puno was excruciatingly slow and all the tourists are on top of the curved roof so it rolls from side ato side as well threatening to capsize. One can see the huge snowcapped Cordillera Real of Bolivia from Taquile. The islands of the sun and the moon visible from the Bolivian border, are small dots on the horizon. It is said that the first Inca was born there, it is also the birthplace of the sun. 

*.         *.          *

On the island, our host asked us if we are ready to eat. He use the term papaer instead of comer which gave us a clue as to what to expect by way of cuisine. Wise papas, potatoes for lunch, and more potatoes for dinner with rice. One should bring cook technology to these islands. 

We were reduced to adding bleach to our coffee, which we had brought, luckily. The local maté, muña seems to be a type of pennyroyal. Villem brought us a handful at each meal and soon our table was covered with bushes. Not much in the way of plant life survives the appetites of merino sheep.

John found a sheep in the kitchen this morning when he went to check on the progress of our hot water. After finding black hairs in my mug I resorted to using bleach in my coffee, but a sheep in the kitchen was too much.

I keep thinking of the cultural connections between unrelated cultures. The hanging gardens of the Irish, the fir bolg who carried bags of soil, the Irish word sounding like Guatemala. All the terraces here are on 45° angle slopes. Though the pueblo of Santa Rosa de Amantani was founded 20 years ago, the Indians still live a similar lifestyle untouched by the coming of white man or Christianity. There is no electricity, no hot water. No windmills.They gather their water from the ditches—it’s a communal system. There was also no litter, none of the usual toilet paper and plastics of Perú

The modern touches include wooden boats with engines and a chainsaw. One could hear it from various parts of the island during our outings. We imagined it to be a communal chainsaw. One boy with a ghetto blaster playing Quechua music took us aback.

At the school John gave a little discurso, a speech to the fourth grade class on his school in California. We estimate that the number of kindergarten through sixth graders to be about 210 kids. There is also Colegio for 7th to 12th graders as well. Most kids probably don’t continue schooling after the sixth grade.

The teachers are from Puno and the kids attend school from Monday through Thursday, a four day school week. Imagine the teachers are quick to head back to Punahou for their three-day holiday. The school seems to be open year-round. There is no summer vacation on the equator apparently. The teachers use a lot of rote teaching methods. The children sing us a song in Quechua and we imagined it to be an anthem of sorts. They then sing a list of all the countries in south and central America. Goosebumps rays on my arms when they say Guatemala. One hears the sound Ari a lot in Quechua speech. Ari means yes, but in Aymara, it means peak. In Irish it means God. 

Villem takes us to the boat on a different path, the low road. People genuinely greet you with warm here. They tend to greet both of us individually, not as a couple, so there’s always a double buenos dias with an echo. Like the women of Yucatán these women here genuinely smile upon us, not like the hostility that greets us most places we go.

Señor Bernardo C., our host, says there are nearly 4000 people on the island between the two villages. I suppose it is possible. I would say it’s probably closer to 1500 each. Certainly there were more sheep than people on this island.

Diminutive merino sheep clogging the pads as their shepherdess is guide them to forage among the upper terraces. There is a commute rush-hour of sheep. One can’t help but touch the tiny babies as they trot by on delicate legs. The rams with their curled double horns that stick out like devil horns, are the size of a springer spaniels. The sheep must be genetically similar to the first sheep brought by the Spanish, being isolated for so long.

No more alpaca on this island, there is barely enough for the sheep to eat. They remind me of the Navajo sheep with their double horns, but the sheep are very docile. The short furry pigs intermingle and blend in with the sheep. I wonder if they know they’re a separate species? Evidence in the form of a litter suggest that they do know that they are indeed pigs, not sheep.

Amantani, Lake Titicaca, Peru (article)

AMANTANI, LAKE TITICACA, PERU     8/17/88              

In the heart of the Peruvian Andes, Lake Titicaca, a deep blue inland sea intersticed with umber and sienna, reflects the sky and desert hills surrounding Puno with a vengeance. Horizons shimmer with lapis lazuli luminescence—the refractive quality of light on the altiplano so different at this great height.

An Indian in our boat plays a thin, atonal melody over and over with his quena flute, a bamboo penny whistle. "No, he corrects me, "it’s a piruru.—carved from a condor’s wing feather shaft  My perception begins to waver as he repeats the simple notes over and over. Or maybe it’s the thin air above 12,500 feet that’s affecting me.  

A channel wends along a wall of reeds; miles and miles of reeds; serpentine hissing, like pines in a high wind. Small mats of vegetation, algae and lakeweed carpets undulate, and constellations of bubbles escape from the shallow floor.

Uros fisherman

As we approach the land of the Uros nation—floating reed islands—giant Andean coots honk and scuttle among fallen tortoras. Ripples divide an Andean gull’s reflection  into four parts, a broken mirror, the four corners of the earth. “Reeds tied together in a clump mark the edges of the channel,” says the old boatman in halting Spanish, as he polled the reed boat with slow measured movements. Tortoras—everything, even the floating islands are made from the tall reed. We debark onto a bowed wooden plank. The islands make a rollicking motion beneath our feet, like walking on a huge waterbed.  

An Uros fisherman, perhaps the village idiot, repeatedly shakes our hands, pats our shoulders and peels a reed for me to eat. He strips off the outer bark and hands it to me, “Para comer,” he says, with a decayed smile, “Eat.” And stares. I hesitate, hoping that the reed has filtered the raw sewage pouring from the open gutters of Puno—a desperate town if ever there was one. It tastes mallowy, of dank, white underbelly, like the insides of the river elder stem.

A tethered pig roots and squeals when I approach. Uros is a landless nation. Soon, the pig will root his way through the island and drown!  Grubby children sell replicas of reed boats. The women hawk crudely embroidered wall hangings. We buy nothing and feel saddened by the children begging, it’s much worse here than in Cuzco.

At least in Cuzco, home to more than 3,000 street children, there are more tourists to beg and steal from. We escape to the boat, it becomes a refuge from this poverty and bleakest of lives. We have no words in Aymara to say hello, goodbye or sorrow, for that matter.

I watch the young ones play at the water’s edge; they are like children anywhere. A rotting reed boat with someone’s bundled manta inside, plastic litter, a charcoal brazier—pathetic remnants of a way of life that’s no longer viable. Soon, they will be all gone.

The Uros language is all but lost. Most Uros islanders have intermarried with the Aymara Indians. Anthropologists speculate that like the Pomos of Northern California, where I'm from, the Uros are among the oldest native peoples in South America. Persecuted by the Incas and by the Colla Aymaras for centuries on end, they took to hiding in the reeds. This way of life among the reeds became their culture—like that of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq. 

We bear witness to the last breath of a dying nation that so vividly captured the 1950s imagination of my youth. The Lake Titicaca of my dreams held vast ornate cities and large floating islands—not these small barren straw bale outposts of civilization, if you could call it that  More like subsistence survival.  Where were the big-breasted women in grass skirts posing in reed boats I'd seen in back issues of National Geographic?

Santa Rosa de Amanti, the place where the falcon rests, Google maps.

We head for the island of Amantani because the boat happened to be going there to drop off the mail and supplies, our original destination was the more populous island of Taquile but there was no scheduled boat. It’s a grueling four-hour boat ride to Amantani and onto yet another culture. This is the seat of the Quechua Incas, the Inca conquerors who built the fabled stone cities we'd made pilgrimage to: Machu Picchu, P’isac, and Sajacmarca.

Lake Titicaca is a desert lake the size of an inland sea situated more than two miles above sea level. I keep looking for seals and test the air for the familiar salt tang. It smells more of the earth, dank cellars or moldy grain.

The barefoot men of Amantani wear thick black wool pants, white billowy shirts and vests, knitted hats with long tassels and earflaps. There is such rivalry between the island people of Amantani and Taquile, they won’t even intermarry. I imagine a Quechua version of Romeo and Juliet set in the weaving and textile capital of the Andes. The indio says “Amantani  es mejor. Hay muchas ruinas” He tells us the island of Taquile has none...

But later I find out that the island of Taquile, the more popular tourist destination, too, has many ruins. I am saddened by the boatman’s zealous misinformation. When will I ever have the opportunity to come here again to bear witness to this place? 

These ancient cultures we seek are swiftly dying from the vicissitudes of tourism. We too are part of the problem, but our varied and sullen art helps us document what we see. I am traveling to the underbelly of the world with my boyfriend, poet and translator, John Oliver Simon—we are on a quest in search of the poets of South America.. This is a side trip. Kavafy's Journey, not the destination.

Small trout and gorgeous large, gold-headed fish swim among the aquatic plants. I sense the movement of something large under the water—what loch monster lives in these depths? The suche, the world’s largest freshwater fish, lives here along with sweet water mackerel, or the pejerrey. Are they truly mackerel? or are we having a cross cultural linguistic conundrum? How did ocean-going fish get into this lake two miles above sea level? If they're really mackerel, an ancient lake, or perhaps even a sea, Titicaca must have risen up from the sea floor with the Andes themselves. The trout were introduced.

“We use small nets, fishing only at night, we fish under a full moon or at dawn—and still we catch nothing,” says a fisherman. “The water’s too deep and cold here. There is better fishing there among the reeds.” This highest navigable lake, as all the guidebooks proclaim, is the largest navigable lake above 2,000 meters in the world. Higher than Lake Victoria. Bernardo O'Higgins launched his dream of the Chilean Navy from here.

Vital statistics in feet or meters mean little to me. I have to experience it though my senses. At nearly 12,600  ft. above sea level, Lake Titicaca, with its 36 islands, not counting the artificial islands of the Uros, is 105 miles long. We’re in open water, buffeted by offshore winds. An incongruous red lateen-rigged sailboat on a long reach makes it seem like we’re in Egypt instead of Peru.

The fisherman talks of the fierce winter storms that ravage this place and how huge waves mercilessly pound the shore. We watch the steamship from Bolivia belch thick black ropes into the painfully thin blue air.  No place for pollution to go in a fragile ecosystem perched at the ceiling of the sky.

The volcanic island of Amantani looms up, like terraced breasts. We manage a rocky beach landing and crawl up from the rocks like antediluvian ancestral ooze over terraces of bright green corn sprouting up like bamboo forests, and eucalyptus. We climb over tilled deep red earth and stone fences, panting from the altitude. No roads, not even a path. No horses, no carts, no automobiles.

We gringos are assigned to a family for the night. The island swallows us up like darkness. I spray our tortora reed bed and blankets with bug spray for fleas. They are busily feeding on my ankles. We take refuge on the wicker bed. But the bed’s so short, we have to sleep diagonally. The local maté, muña works a a flea deterrent.

The outhouse on the cliff, with its raised (Middle Eastern) foot-rests, has a great view of the sunset across the lake. All the terraces are sloped at a 45-degree angle. Though the village of Santa Rosa de Amantani was founded only 20 years ago, the Quechua Incas still live a an ancient lifestyle untouched by the coming of white or mestizo cultures.

Amantani’s whole, like the town of Otavalo in the Ecuadorian highlands. No disease of dominant Euro-culture demanding conformity, has encroached. The thread of craft and pride are unbroken. No electricity, no hot water. Communal water from the ditches. No litter! No usual toilet paper and the ubiquitous plastic, in pink and blue, that is so much a part of Peru.

Children play fúbol in an empty field. Rock arches everywhere. Magical doorways frame lake and sky at every turn. Adobe, brown on brown. A baby cries, its mother exclaims over it in Quechua. I gasp. It literally hurts to breathe up here.

Machu Picchu: Hiking the Inca Trail (article, photos)

MACHU PICCHU  8/11/88

We hiked the fabled Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with a forest fire hot on our heels. Every August, the campesinos set fire to their fields to enrich the soil, to send smoke to the clouds to make rain; every August the selva burns. Wildfires. 

Macchu-Picchu with smoke from massive fires

Peru has a policy of not putting out fires, not because they believe in a natural burn system, but because they don't have high altitude fire fighting planes, or chemicals to combat the forest fires. It's an attitude, a way of life.

Peru is famous for its corrupt government officials. Those in charge of the national monument either don't care, or can't enforce the no-burn policy in the park. Officials also say there's no money to fight forest fires. Canadian and French officials happened to be in Peru at the time of the fire and they put pressure on the Peruvians to do something about it. This, after 17 days of letting the fire burn up one watershed and down another. 

Huailabamba shrouded in smoke

When cloud forest habitats are destroyed, they don't regenerate. The Peruvian  cloud forests are rapidly disappearing due to increased colonization which follows after the selva burns. The rare and exotic plants will eventually be replaced by ichu grass for livestock. Meanwhile, the erosion will be tremendous.

The Andes are unbelievably steep. When the first rains come in September and October, torrents of muddy water will turn the Urubamba river into a conveyor belt of lost soil. Though many of the ancient Incan terraces are still used, sustenance farming at altitudes of 8,000 to 12,000 feet isn't easy. Also the rare plant and animal species are threatened by burning practices. 

The surviving rare spectacled bears, pumas—already threatened species lose their habitat. It's been dubbed an ecological disaster by the Peruvian Civil Defense Committee whose job is to protect the Sanctuary.

The thing is, this catastrophe happens year after year. This year's fire destroyed over 7,000 acres in 17 days and when we left Peru it was still burning. Soon, there will be no more cloud forest left. Each ridge, each valley supports different species—different and unique ecosystems. Every fire destroys and endangers species already on the brink of extinction.

Unless national and international pressure is put on the Department of Civil Defense, the burning will continue, even though it's illegal to burn within the Sanctuary. They have laws to protect the Sanctuary. They just don't see the need to enforce them.

Of course, politically speaking, Peru is one hell of a hot spot these days. The leftist-Maoist Sendero Luminoso, the conservative APRA and other extremist political factions are splitting the country apart. Inflation is rampant—1500% in two months. There are food shortages. Black market powdered milk smuggled in from Ecuador was selling well. Food prices have doubled in six weeks. Those in power continue to gain wealth through these misfortunes. It's a matter of time before civil war and a distinct possibility of a military takeover.

The other sad news is the fabled Inca Trail is utterly trashed. The trail, a major tourist attraction is used primarily by Europeans. Since the 1986 bombing of the tourist train of Machu Picchu, few North Americans are traveling in Peru. The Inca Trail is the filthiest trail I've ever hiked. Toilet paper, plastic cans, Bluet gas canisters. All us first world folks are responsible for this mess. The latrine of Peru.

In a village nearby, there is a festival. The endangered condor, the symbol of the indios rides the bull of Spain to victory—will the Peruvians ever be free of the yoke of imperialism?
 

Mo & Paco, the Alpaca at Machu Picchu © John Oliver Simon 1988

Me & Paco, the itchy alpaca, el major poeta de la ciodad perdida. What you can't see  in the photo is that he's wagging his lips in ecstasy, I found the resident lawnmower's sweet spot.

Santa Rosa de Lima

Blonde haired beauty, Isabela Flores Olivia was the firstborn of 11 children. Her father, was an official of Lima and an honor guard of the Viceroy. When she was confirmed, she was upset by her name change to Rosa. She cried herself to sleep thinking of all the unsaved souls in the mountains, in the jungles in in China. 

She wanted to preach the gospel to the Indians but she stayed in Lima because of a vision of roses. Instead she helped the poor and the sick of Lima. In a bamboo and and banana leaf covered alcove Hermitage Rosa and the nightingale took turns singing. 

Some say she slept two hours a night in a bed made out of two branches and three stones. She hung her hair on a heavy nail so that she wouldn’t sleep. She kept the key to the well on a chain around her waist. She was thirsty, and said Christ gave her a drink from his side.

Hoping to get a palm frond on Palm Sunday, she got to the crowded church too late. instead Jesus said to her, Rose of my heart, be my wife. Rosa de mi corazón, se tu mi esposa. She was 29. She died at 31, in 1617. Her bones on the altar of the church of Santo Domingo like stars glistening in the dark. Her house was turned into a church after her death.

Lima Journal, a rough timeline (3 watercolors)

Not sure of the dates, I’m also missing one Ecuador journal but inside my watercolor block I found three watercolor sketches, one of Ecuador, two unfinished sketches of Puerto Ayora.

Timeline: 

7/3 Equator

When? Galapagos

7/12 Española Island

7/13 Floreana, PO Bay

7/17? Bartolomé 

7/19 

7/25 Ecuador to Lima

7/27 Cuzco

8/8 to 11 Machu Picchu

8/19 Arequipa, Puno

8/22 Paracas

8/29 SFO

We explore the countryside. We visit the Otavalo market to buy Panama hats. Otovaleños still speak Quechua, a hangover from the Inca conquest days but their original language is lost.

No date:

7/26. No dates in my journal…. At the airport we hold a copy of our chapbook of poetry Falling to Sea Level in hopes that the Peruvian poet Carlos Arellano has come to meet us. We’ve been told that Peru is positively dangerous for rip-offs. And we guard each other’s flank diligently.

The exchange rate about 80 intis to the dollar and so we convert money, it’s a much better rate on the black market but we need the intis now. I can’t begin to describe Peru without comparing it to Ecuador. I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico, in Baja California, Guatemala. Mexico City helps prepare for the shock but it’s far worse than that. Any port in a storm just won’t do here. There are limits. 

The city is so dismal. I thought Jesus was a being quaint when he locked us into the car as we left the airport but he was protecting us from the city. He couldn’t protect us from the view. People picking their way through piles of refuge refuge. Mongrels guarding claimed treasure. Cardboard and tin shanties and other building material. 

Where one enters a Third World country one can expect to see buildings in a continual state of growth and repair. When one level is finished, the cement, the bricks, and the mortar are used to add a second or third story onto an insubstantial first story structure. So the skyline is a series of ragged walls and tall spears of rebar. 

Chickens adapt to rooftop living, clothes hang out a long time to dry— difficult in a place where the fog comes in for six months of the year. Small fires along the street, people warming themselves. Numerous street vendors and stalls. On one street the vendors have claimed it in its entirety, so it’s difficult to navigate. It is a street of oranges and shoes and gum and motor oil. 

The only time it rains here is when El Niño, the warm, current comes, changing the weather pattern and the normally cold Humboldt current turns warm. When this happens thousands of fish starve and die. The Antarctic current is one reason why it’s so cold and foggy here. Both it and the Humboldt currents feed La Garúa, the ever present mist.

Our room is $12 a night, pricy after Ecuador, where a bed goes for a dollar a night. Even food is expensive. Meals cost $1 to 2  here. The cost of living is about twice as high as Ecuador, with far fewer services. Our Hotel Colón was $5 a night.

Lima Journal 7/26?

7/26? We walked past the American ambassador‘s residence, one couldn’t call the imposing colonial structure painted Naples yellow, a house. More like a fortress. A soldier at his kiosk stands guard. This place was mortared by the Tupac Amaru liberation front. 

Tupaq Amaru, last Inca King, prisoner, 1572 (Guaman Poma de Ayala)

The first Túpac Amaru was the last Inca king, from Vilcabamba in the 1570s. His name means royal, or shining plus mythical snake, kind of like Quetzalcoatl. Some 40 years after the Spanish conquest, he rebelled against the Spanish and lost. Then the second Tupac Amaru, 1780, also a count of royal Incan descendent, whose likeness is on the $500 inti, led another rebellion and lost. 

And then there’s the current rebellion led by the Sendero Luminoso, the shining path, they seem to be winning. All car chassis and undercarriages are checked with mirrors before they are allowed to park. There is so much unrest here, the air is seething like cicadas.

Soldiers armed with Uzis in a country the size of California and Texas combined, with a total population of 19 million, some 6 million people live in this city where it never rains. There are buildings covered with 2 to 4 1/2 centuries’ worth of grime. Quechua Lima was founded by Francisco Pizarro in 1535 after the conquest of 1533-34. From Colombia to Chile, there were many organized wars led by the Incas in the late 1500s.

Lima Journal 7/25?

7/25, I think…. Lima de Santa Rosa, named after the first woman saint, the only woman saint of the new world. I can’t help comparing Santa Rosa‘s namesake.

From the air one can see the desolate landscape, the mountains of feral sand, tiny irrigated plots along a dry cobblestone riverbed akin to Baja and Southern California. The Rimac, the speaking river, speaks no more. Her mouth is full of garbage and human waste. Ecuador’s prosperity and lushness does not survive this far south.

From the air one can see immense piles of human waste and burning garbage heaps. I did not want the plane to land. From Jorge Chavez International Airport it’s a grim and dismal ride. The waste disposal system in a Third World country is its precious rivers. Ecuador hardly seems Third World by comparison. Slums surround the city, this is much worse than Mexico City or even Guatemala City.

Jesus, our taxi driver, lives up to his name, and becomes a savior indeed when he drives us to yet another full hotel. Our ride through the working class slums along the Rimac, is a horror to behold. The river is a cesspool and garbage dump all at once. No matter how hard you squint, you cannot envision what it once looked like.

Water, this precious commodity by which the Inca, and the pre-Inca civilizations arose, is fouled and dirtied at the nest. This is pollution to the extreme. Garbage burnt by the river shores stinks like a tannery.

John says any port in a storm when the hotels of our choice are filled. But this shitstorm is too much to bear. The alternative, another downtrodden dive, if we reject it, will we have no place to stay? We’re afraid we won’t find lodgings until Jesus delivers us to a residency in the embassy section with classical Greek inspired fin-de-ciclé Edwardian residencies on a tree-lined cul-de-sac, replete with marbled balconies and stained glass windows.

We are told there is no room there either, and this time we truly despair, until Jesus speaks to the manager. Magically, a room appears vacant. We are led to a round room, once a foyer. We say goodbye to Jesus our milagro savior and begin the business of unpacking.

We have trouble squaring our beds in the round room, once a tower. We joke: how to drive a Pollack crazy: put him in a round room and tell him to stand in the corner. This place with its marble floors, bay windows and faux balcony truly is a refuge.

I cannot shake the images of the Rimac, an open cesspool and garbage dump, so like the Russian River.

Flying through the Andes from Quito to Lima, Ecuador Journal

At Guayaquil, the tectonic force of the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate disrupts the land. Isolated dome stratovolcanoes of Ecuador, not how I envisioned the Andes. Such enormous differences in structure, like comparing the coastal range to the Rockies or to the Cascades. Yet the name of our California andesite is derived from the Andes.

The plane takes off between the two ridges barely clearing the volcanoes. I find myself praying for safe passage, heart in throat, such vast girths. I am in awe. Cotacachi, near Otovalo, and sublime symmetrical cone Cotapaxi, Mt. Fuji's twin sister. Cotopaxi means "Neck of the Moon" and is worshiped as the “rain sender,” home of the gods. La Avenida de los Volcanes is aptly named.

One of the world's highest volcanoes, Cayembe shrouded with clouds, is the second highest in Ecuador, at 19,347 feet. But the tallest, Chimborazo at 20,548 feet, is perpetually hidden in cloud cover. Chimborazo is a massive double volcano. It was once thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain on Earth.

Chimborazo means Snow on the other side. In Quechua it's called Urcurazu,  Urcu is mountain of ice. Chimborazo is the Taita (Father) and Tungurahua is Mama, hence Taita Chimborazo and Mama Tungurahua. Pachatata and Pachamama. A reference we'll hear again and again.

At the Equator, snow level begins at 15,000 feet. It is winter here, cold on the equator. We wear our winter clothes, and still we're cold. My blue Ecuadorian sweater weighs several pounds, I am glad for its warmth.

San Francisco de Quito, at 9,350 feet, is nestled between two long Andean ridges, and the páramo, the high semi-alpine grasslands or moors between timberline and snowline—with myriad strange plants that grow nowhere else in the world. Situated north-south in these pockets, is the old city. Quito, with its colonial architecture,  considered to be the most beautiful city in the Andes.

South of Guayaquil, and Ecuador, the terrain changes dramatically from coastal jungle to coastal desert. One bids goodbye to the equatorial Andes and its massive stratovolcanoes.

The contrast between Lima, Peru, and Quito is as startling as the cold weather. Lima sprawls on for miles at sea level along the coastal desert. The Cordillera Niegra at 15,000 feet on north-south block fault,  El Callejón de Huaylas. We are still on the avenue of the gods, la Avenida de los Volcanes. The Cordillera Blanca, long north-south block-fault ridges spreading out.

Escarpments and cirques, vast glacial walls. Cirques in every color of glacial blue imaginable, like blue-eyed tropical water beneath all that white. The Andes begin to look like how I imagine them to be in my dreams.

Beneath the plane, high ridges, eroded desert mountains, infrequent torrents, El Niño leaves scars, memories of riverbeds, and flashfloods, like Baja, like Death Valley, like Los Angeles Basin.

Lima is surrounded by real shantytowns, the Rímac River, the Babbling River, is a pit of burning garbage and devastation. I don't want the plane to land. The city center of Lima is inland. Lima is landlocked, while Miraflores, the place of flowers, is a long beach that we will escape to, and find blood blooming in the gutters of the Chorillos Tunnel. We have descended into the belly of the beast. Into hell. God help us.

7/25/1988
revised, added 10/16

*Rímac from the Quechua, rimaq, meaning "speaking" nicknamed El Río Hablador ("the talking river"). —Wiki

Inside the caldera (drawing)

 

Postcard from the Galapagos, 0° Lat., 8° long.

Sweet potatoes and Taro, Galápagos Journal

In the Galápagos I saw taro plants on old volcanic terraces, and caves are very much like in Hawaii. Sweet potato, a Polynesian staple, how did it get here? Easter Island? According to our guide, José, there's only one variety of sweet potato, related to morning glories. Anthropologists think the Polynesians got the sweet potato from Ecuador, or Peru – or it even came from tropical America, bringing the sweet potato with them to Hawaii—and the plantain too.

no date  7/88
added 10/16

LONESOME GEORGE

LONESOME GEORGE

Poor old Lonesome George,
the last Pinzón Island tortoise,
straddling a tortoise-shaped boulder
in hopes that it was a female.
I noted it was pahoehoe, female lava.
The last of his species, George has a long wait
while biologist yentas frantically search
for a suitable mate. A $10,000 reward
for a female Pinzón tortoise is offered.
Something that even money can't buy.
Rumors of tortoise droppings cited on Pinzón,
but no tortoises. Meanwhile George, 
knowing the end is near, clamorous up his rock
and gives a lovesick moan, has another go at it,
hissing like a hydraulic jackhammer,
thrusting for all he's worth.


7/17? 1988
added 10/16
minor revision

RICE RAT

RICE RAT

One begins to see subtle differences
among each of the islands.

The owner of Solymar shoos away the rat,
saying, She has no fear of man.
And she is a protected species, a rice rat.

He says, You should hear the guest scream
when she comes out at dinner time.
Old habits die hard. You can tell
by her accent she's a Norwegian rat.
Should I tell him that rice rats
are extinct on Santa Crúz Island?

The first family to stay here, were they
lonesome for their Old World rats?
Did they bring them with them?
Or did the rats boldly jump ship?

7/17/1988?
added 10/16
revised

Angermyer's, Puerto Ayora

Pelican Bay, Puerto Ayora

We stay in the upper story of the old water tower at the Angermyer farm outside of town, on Avenida Charles Darwin, as the hotels are full. We were told La Señora*, whom we were told we simply MUST meet, is traveling. I meet Franklin, her son, he looks familiar. Someone I once met. It turns out he married a friend and lived in Sausalito. Temporary residencies. I remember him, with his impossible blue eyes and gold-filled teeth. We used to go down to the dock and admire his boat. We were crazy about the water and desperate to learn to sail. He said, I would have taken you sailing. Why didn't you ask? But we were so young and too shy to speak.

7/17/1988

*Johanna Angermeyer may be Franklin's mother, she lived in California during the 1950s and 60s (Sausalito?), and moved back to Puerto Ayora to meet her uncles, but later married an Englishman and moved to England. She lives in Vilcabamba, Ecuador. 

PENGUINS on BARTOLEME ISLAND

Bartolomé Island.

Yesterday we swam with penguins,

poor, misguided polar birds,

lost enroute from an ice flow 

somewhere in Antarctica, 

who decided paradise 

look pretty good after all.

The water is fricking cold 

for being at 0° latitude, 

in the frigid equator.
No wonder they feel at home.

7/17/1988?

added 10/16

Imps of Darkness (drawings) Galapagos

 

PARADISE

PARADISE

I can't help but think of how this place

must have been like, paradise, 

a Persian word. To die 

with the names of God on your lips 

and go directly to paradise.

Which led me to religion,

and Charles Darwin, son of a preacher, 

who turned Christianity on its ear 

with his finches and theories on evolution.

But he couldn't shake loose 

the bindings of his upbringing. 

The ink black marine iguanas, 

he called them "the imps of darkness."

Was he that contemptuous of those little dragons 

snorting salt sea spray spumes 

as they basked on the hot lava rocks?

Galapagos

7/16/1988

added 10/16

Post Office Bay, Floriana Island, Galápagos Journal

At Post Office Bay, Floriana Island, I collect postcards from strangers addressed to my home town, Lagunitas, and more cards to Tiburon, and Bolinas—to hand-deliver. It is the custom.

One card from an unknown traveler, is addressed to my old biology teacher Al Molina, from the temporary address of 0° latitude. Degrees of separation.

I retrieve mail from an old biology teacher who entrusted a messenger with the postcard, like a baton in a slow race played by ships traveling from one port to port, on airplanes, and by way of the gringo trail, spreading the word.

Some 200 years later, we reenact the whalers' mail system on this barren island in the middle of the Pacific. The garúa,  the winter mist blurs the definition of sea and sky, time and space.

I sent a postcard to my friend. I write on it, the person who delivers this will marry you…

7/13/1988

SWIMMING ALONE, CORONA DEL DIABLO, 2 poems

SWIMMING ALONE

At Santa Fe we learn to swim with seals. 

Fur seals roll and play tag with us, 

one holds a stick in its mouth like a dog. 

They are as curious about us as we are of them.

Their large eyes beckon, and their graceful dance 

is like an underwater ballet.

We keep an eye on the beach masters.

At Corona del Diablo, a jagged crater 

filled with sea creatures and coral caves 

and myriad fish beyond description,

I sneak away from the group, 

and swim under a sea arch to a secluded beach.

Water, an incredible blue that defies description.

I revel and frolic, having escaped my companions,
and the over-crowded boat. A bull sea lion spots me,
hits the water, charges me three times.
Three times I fight him off, rolling in a knot,
with my flippers ever in his face.

In my wetsuit, I look more seal than human.
I can't tell if he's guarding his beach
or if he thinks I'm part of his lost harem.

But I nearly drowned trying to escape.

I tell no one, afraid of reprimand.

And realize there is safety in numbers.

Corona del Diablo 

7/17/1988?

not sure of any of these dates

added 10/16  revised

CORONA DEL DIABLO

Snorkeling in the richest sea garden

Coral, caves, passengers.

A sea lion attacked me three times. 

Either he thought I was a seal, 

or he was defending his turf. 

I kept turning my flippers 

and kicking his face, 

gasping for breath 

hoping that I'll survive. 

7/13/20

In a small boat, adrift, between Islands, Galápagos Journal

Leaving Puerto Ayora in a small boat

Yesterday we saw soaring albatrosses and frigate birds, and fairy-like silver-winged flying fish accompanied the our. I rode the bow of the vessel, more panga, than boat, straddling it like a horse, the chattering dolphins brushed my feet as they surfed the crest of the bow wave.

Suddenly we stopped short, the boat stalled in open water. A rope from a Japanese fishing boat used to catch sharks, had wrapped itself around the propeller. We were adrift in this frigid, Antarctic current. Too many people in an open boat. Too far from shore to even see a horizon, other than water.

There is nothing between us and the invisible equator, there was nothing but water between us and the equator. Nothing but frigid water between us and Antarctica. We were adrift in a small boat between islands. The ocean, a vast bell curve.

How large, the sea, and the connections between two things: a marriage and consummation of rope and propeller. The first mate diving beneath the boat again and again to cut the rope free. I hold onto the rope of the panga, tossing like a small horse and these deeper than blue waters.

The sea rises and troughs valleys and mountains shifting like the aging confidence in the motion faster than the eye can see. These undulations and escarpments.

I think of my high school classmate Jeff Aloha, adrift at sea in that sailboat, The Spirit, waiting for death. Is this how the sea seemed to him, adrift 43 days without water, and five companions, one or two who lived to tell the tale, but not Jeff with those beautiful blue eyes, those Finnish Viking eyes.

And on our boat, The Ancucho, French orthinologist Michel's eyes were startling glaciers, I thought the sea would rob us for that color blue. The jealous sky is bringing in the garúa, the ever-present mist, it surrounds us. And thickens. Not a good thing if we can’t fix the boat. 

We take turns getting seasick, barfing off the other side. As the diver frees the propeller from bondage, we all cheer. One piece of rope firmly wrapped around the propeller, stays, it is a reminder of what could have happened. Tourists adrift in a small open boat. We place all our faith in our Ecuadorian diver.

The boat makes its way to Española Island, about two-and-a-half hours away, we are overloaded with a cargo of gasoline, vapor settles in the cabin. If not death by water, perhaps then, by fire? This whole trip was a mad lark because we couldn’t get on a designated tourist tour boat, so we put our own tour together cobbled with enthusiasm and remorse.

These volcanoes beneath the Nazca plate, the ever present hunger from the belly of the earth. We are only so much bait for the sharks after all. The dolphins that ride air and bow are gone, like the albatross.

There is so much to record, and so little time. As I write this, I look out to sea to keep from getting ill. I write without looking at the pages.

The hieroglyphic fish with what looks like Japanese writing on their sides, have no translation for this. We impose our desire for patterns, desire for order upon this revolution of events and call it a plan. A grand scheme in this need for a god.

Random elements of the universe converge upon us as we carve and withhold the patterns to fit in like the Southern Cross or the Big Dipper, or on the equator you can see both. Polaris is below the horizon. Only by stars or compass, ferrous oxide enlightenment, can we get our bearings?

Shadows fall like clothes about our feet and we stumble along naked at last waiting for the seed to swallow us in dreams, for what is real? The time we spend earning money, too exhausted to go to to some exotic places on the gringo trail?

I was going to say, on the road like Kerouac but he didn't come this far south. We are well out of native waters tracing back the origin of order in the Galápagos, checking out the feasibility of diversification. We have a list to check off endemic species, ourselves, transient as the fish.

We come in big silver planes and then complain about our meals: arroz con pollo day in and day out, while the street children starve. Minute variations of the sea and the sameness of sea, the pale turquoise water.

Every once in a while one can feel the engine miss, our confidence is only skin deep. Like the colors of our skin on this boat, we are well represented nations ride with divergent speciation and adaptability of gene pool. Should we land on a deserted island to begin anew?

I am reminded of a story where a disease struck, nearly everyone died—Earth Abides. A new society formed. The brightest of children of this new society did not survive, only the most able.

The accidental mixture of people on this boat, the brightest of us all going to sea in a small boat, like the owl and the pussycat, who is most able? A strange marriage of sea and sky, the gray on the bell curve of sea and sky is like a toy rope and the shadow of meniscus and if the boat goes down, this  writing will melt off the page, and words will float out to sea to recombine into a new story.

7/12/1988
added 10/16

BLUE-FOOTED BOOBIES, ESPANOLA ISLAND

Blue-footed boobies sky-point
and whistle, reenacting an ancient ritual
in a slow courtship dance
where they majestically wave each blue foot
up and down for optimum exposure
and offer token bits of wood and stone
to their mates for their insubstantial nests.

A scooped out depression, hollow ground.

They eye us, bobbing their heads
like wise professors, or pompous bankers.
And point to the sky as if to say,
See how my feet are like the sky. 

7/12/1988

Española Island
added 10/16 revised