Images

The prevalent challenge in the blogosphere is integration. I’m sure there is an awesome plugin to ad Flickr images to a WordPress blog.. but this is how I roll: hyperlink baby! (and an unattractive URL to boot!)

 

http://gallery.me.com/mctrout#100039

Espiritu de Anaconda

It´s been interesting trying to keep an electronic journal from the Amzonian rain forest, maybe should have gone with pen and paper. The village we´re staying at is great, pretty much exactly what I envisioned a rain forest village to be. My living space for the week is a wall-less shelter called a Tambo, a palm leaf roof propped up on four posts. I have a hammock and a table to keep my things off the dirt.

We´ve been taking the traditional diet of the indigeonous Shapibo people we are staying with and it is not very good at all. No sugar, salt, milk, citrus. Typical breakfast is plain oatmeal with some almonds. By plain oatmeal I mean oats and water, nothing more. Lunch is usually some unseasoned fish, we´ve had pirannahs from the river. They grill the fish whole and serve it crispy and starring at you. Dinner is equally unimpressive. Everyone has mudbutt.

I´ve learned a lot about plant medicine, like the inside of a banana peel can be rubbed on your skin as an anti-itch medicine. I had a slight distaste for commercial drugs before coming to the Amazon which has now been magnified several times. The cultural thought on drugs in America is just absurd – how does it make sense to persecute people for smoking marijuanan and then stuff kids full of Ridilin? That´s disgusting and irresponsible.

The convergance of people here may very well be the most interesting aspect of the experience. To right this I left the village with a girl from Oslo, Norway named Eda. We walked 2.5km to the road and then hitched a ride into Iquitos in search of internet. Sharing experiences with people from around the planet has been wonderfully unifying. Eda and I were talking about how we wholly believe that our lifetime will witness a dramatic change in the evolution of human consciousness. I cannot wait for a world that embraces the simple beauty of unconditional love and tolerance for one another. It has to start somewhere and I think our generation will be the one to spread this love across the globe.

The ayahuasca cermonies have been something I´ll remember for a lifetime. We held the ceremony under the unabused night sky of the Amazon. Sitting in a huge circle around the shaman we went up one by one to take our drink, returning to our matt to settle in for a magical journey. The shamans sang ancient chants passed down through hundreds of years of tradition. The chants are said to activate the medicine in your body. Once the medicine took hold it was like separating from our confined reality into a dream world with no limits. My terrestrial consciousness narrated the adventures of my dream. Overcome by intense feeling of love and gratitude for the people of my life, I beamed beautiful energies to everyone I know. I floated through a genuine Utopia on my magical balloon where everything was care-free and the only thing that mattered was experiences and interpersonal connections. I explored the infinite complexities of my own consciousness until my magic balloon landed and I fell asleep.

more adventures to come…

Iquitos, Peru

Yesterday I continued touring Lima after missing my flight to Terrapoto. I sat in on a class at Universidad de Lima with Francisco which was great, university campuses are always interesting places to explore. Francisco was hosting another couch surfer named Jim from Chicago who decided to stay in Lima and now pays rent for Francisco´s second bedroom, great story of finding what you love and running with it! Jim and I visited the bohemian district of Lima, Barranco, with a Peruvian friend of his named Nelly. Barranco is a neighborhood built in a small canyon, a couple hundred meters wide at the top. There were multiple street levels and the architecture was very interesting. The best part of Barranco is a gorgeous cliff overlooking the Pacific at the end of the canyon. We stopped into a cafe in Barranco and had a Peruvian dish, anticucho, which is grilled cow heart – delicious! I ordered a vegetable tortilla and was delightfully surprised to be served a vegetable omalette, but flat not folded over. Apparently this is an Espana tortilla (no clue where that nutty n key is on this keyboard.) From anticucho we stumbled upon some live raggaeton music and ended up in Barranco until early morning.

Today I grabbed a taxi at 6:15a to be sure I didn´t miss another flight. My 9a flight to Iquitos departed around 9:30. The airport here is very different than the United States. There is no jetway, we walked out onto the tarmac to board the plane. We had a stop over somewhere; half the plane got off (including me) and the other half just stayed on. I didn´t realize the stop over was not the final destination and I was supposed to stay on the plane. Had the stewardess not been looking out for me I would have been lost in some jungle city between Lima and Iquitos. I did arrive in Iquitos though and met up with my new friend, Gerson. We took a motokaro into the city to find a hostel. There are no cars here, only motorcycles. The motokaro is a rickshaw, but a motorbike instead of pedal bike. The traffic in Lima was tame comparred to here, complete disorder but some how Gerson swears they never “crunch.” Crossing any intersection is a 4-way game of chicken! A bunch of Colorado kids are coming into Iquitos tonight so I´ll meet up with them and we will prepare for the convergence!

 

peace on! (thanks Kyle)

Lima, Peru

I arrived in Lima shortly after midnight Sunday morning. I was happy to see my bag made it from Denver and I bought some local currency. I contacted my couch surfing host, Francisco, via payphone and received directions to his apartment in Miraflores. My mobile phone is useless here, but that parallels my reason for being here. I had no trouble getting a taxi, negotiating a fair price based on what Fracisco told me is normal, and finding the apartment. There are nice expensive taxis right outside the airport door (gringo taxis) but I followed a tip from a fellow traveller and walked out to the road where I acquired a ride for nearly half the cost of the gringo cabs. The taxis here are way chea,  I paid 20 soles (less than 10 dollars) for a 20-ish km ride. Francisco and I stayed up until a little after 3a talking about various things that two young people from different cultures talk about including education, politics, drugs, economics, etc. Francisco speaks some self-taught English so we had fun sharing our languages. After not sleeping Friday night and spending an entire Saturday in planes and ports I decided to take a nap.

Its winter in Peru and the temperature drops to about 30 degress Celsius at night. I slept well and woke up recharged. I ate some trail mix and headed out in the general direction of the Pacific, which I identified by standing on Francisco’s roof and noting where the buildings stop. I got a good taste of Miraflores walking to the beach. Even though it is my first time here I could definitely feel the South American vibrations in the neighborhood. Miraflores is a fairly popular tourist area and the locals welcome our monetary contribution. I meandered through small streets, buildings 3-4 stories high on each side, until I found the coast. I was a little surprised and delighted to find a large cliff right on the beach, a couple hundred meters high. I laid in the grass on the edge of the cliff and read for a couple hours while soaking in the Pacific Ocean and the equatorial sun. After having my fill I walked down a path to the beach, where I discovered that it is not actually a sand beach but small rocks. I would expect that the ocean waves would wear the rocks to sand but this beach was the same texture as an Appalacian stream bottom – very fun and interesting. I sat and meditated on the rocks for a bit. The waves make an amazing sound as they retreat from the rocks back into the Ocean - it sounded like nature’s version of surround sound, it was all around me! Winter on the Pacific means the water was cold so I didn’t explore beyond dipping my feet in. There were a considerable number of wetsuit clad surfers enjoying the Sunday morning waves.

Around 2p I headed back to the apartment to meet up with Francisco. He gave me a more guided tour around MIraflores and we stopped for lunch at Punta Sol, a Peruvian seafood restaurant on the beachcliff. We got a sampling plate of the restaurant’s offerings which turned out to be a great way to experience the excitement of many meals in one. Everything was delicious, my favourite was the sweet potatoe, by far the best I’ve had. We also had some corn; the kernals were huge, the size of my thumb nail or larger! Francisco and I strolled back to the apartment where I grabbed my bag and headed down to get a cab back to the airport for my Lima to Terrapoto hop. I was running a little short on time, leaving the apartment at 3:45p for a 5p flight. The taxi was slow, I think he was lost for a moment, and I arrived at the airport to find an insanely long check in line. I waited in line for over an hour and then heard a final boarding call for my flight. I skipped the line and headed to the counter which was not welcomed from a non-Spanish speaking gringo. I received no acknowledgement other than to wait in line and missed my flight. Back to the taxi, back to Francisco’s. Now I sit in Lima, Peru with no agenda for the next 4 days! More adventures to come!

 

love, mark,

imminent departure

its 3:26a and I’m almost ready to leave home. unfortunately I have to catch a 4:53a bus to the airport. looks like little to no sleep tonight, hopefully I can catch up during tomorrow’s travels. I will have a full day lay-over in Lima, hoping to escape the aeroporto to Miraflores, we shall see. buen viaje!

memex

science fiction writer william gibson said: “the future’s already arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

in july of 1945 physicist vannevar bush described a machine he was working on: “consider a future device for inividual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. it needs a name, and, to coin one at random, memex will do. a memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. it is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

what future is here today that we are not exploring?

airfare > rent

step 1: establish interweb based income stream, geographical independence

step 2: vacate apartment

step 3: arrange air travel to strange new places

step 4: repeat step 3 perpetually while generating funds via step 1

welcome

hey, this is the new me. here we go!