Family world travel and volunteering

From Freezing Glaciers to Steaming Cloudforests: El Chorro Trek

2011-07-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

Bolivia has about 736,000 square miles (roughly the size of the U.S. states of Alaska and Washington combined), one-third of which is Andean altiplano and two-thirds is Amazon basin. Were it not for losing its Pacific War with Chile (1879-1884), it would have a coastline as well. (In fact, from 1825 to 1935, Bolivia lost half of its territory to neighboring Chile, Argentina, Peru, Brazil and Paraguay.) The combination of altiplano and jungle make for a very biodiverse country and one of the best ways to experience that is by hiking the El Chorro Trek, just outside La Paz.

The El Chorro Trek in Bolivia

After getting acclimatized in La Paz, we made arrangements to do the El Choro trek, a 43 km trek from the snowy tip of the Andes’ Cordillera Real range to the Yungas, the dense, steamy cloudforest that separates Bolivia’s altiplano from its Amazon basin. The trek starts out at La Cumbre, atop the Cordillera Real, the easternmost border of Bolivia’s altiplano, and goes to Chairo, before a jeep takes you to the relaxing tourist town of Coroico.

The first day we drove straight up out of La Paz, the Bolivian capital which sits in a densely-populated bowl in the altiplano. We headed straight up for an hour until we reached La Cumbre (“The Summit”) at 15,502 feet. The driver dropped the eight of us off (our family of 4 plus our guide, cook, and two porters) amid alpine lakes, glaciers and rocky peaks. We hiked strenuously upward for a half hour until we reached our highest point, Abra Chucura (15,941 ft). From here, it was all downhill on paved Inca stones, past crumbling piles of flat pizara (slate), roaming packs of llamas, and the occasional donkey train transporting goods from the Yungas to La Paz. After an hour we passed pre-Inca, guesthouse ruins, where travelers long before us broke their journey. Over one mountain pass from us was Bolivia’s infamous “World’s Most Dangerous Road”, where an average of 26 vehicles a year disappear over the edges of the road from La Cumbre to Coroico. The road gots its nickname from a recent Inter-America Development Bank report and is a magnet for adrenaline junkies on downhill mountain bikes. Later than afternoon we passed beautifully paved pre-inca stone roads and finished our day at Challapampa (9,268 ft). For dinner our cook served us a delicious quinoa and vegetable soup while we were entertained by a young boy scrambling on the grassy camping area on all fours. The next morning, we brushed our teeth and all visited Challapampa’s village toilet; a makeshift wood platform about 10 feet above a large pit next to the river. This image alone will convince our kids to never drink alpine river water without it being treated.

Day two was a delightful downward stroll through cloudforest dotted with orchids, bromeliads and butterflies. We passed a shack selling Oreo cookies and softdrinks and bought a pack of Oreos. Not far before we reached the next shack selling drinks, we saw about a hundred empty plastic bottles dumped down the cliff next to the trail. For the rest of the hike I intermittently thought about the tourist's responsibilty for such an unsustainable practice. We continued to cross makeshift bridges and small waterfalls and finished the day at the village of San Francisco -- a couple of huts in a level space carved into the trail, surrounded by banana trees.

We started out Day three with sore legs and very quickly descended into a dense jungle area with hundreds of beautiful Amaryllis plants. I recalled working for the Gardener’s Eden catalog over ten years ago where we sold “forcing kits” of Amarylis bulbs with smooth rocks and a glass pot for $30. I mentioned this to my wife and she picked one and put it in her hat. For lunch we stopped and ate at Casa Sandillani (6,725 ft) and spoke with the village patriarch, Tamiji Hanamura. Mr. Hanamura was a 80-year old Japanese man, who had traveled widely for many years and once he reached Casa Sandillana, stopped travelling and never left. He’s been there for 40 years. He showed us his collection of postcards from the United States and we promised to send him a postcard from some exotic place. That afternoon we continued steadily downhill towards the town of Chairo. About an hour before getting there we saw parrots noisily chirping in a tree. We finally reached Chairo, sweaty and exhausted, and jumped in a jeep for Coroico. We reached Coroico and immediately took showers at our hotel. The view from our room revealed densely-covered cloudforest, extending out towards the Amazon basin. The first day of walking by glaciers seemed worlds away.

Bolivian Biodiversity

2011-07-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

The Bolivian "88" butterfly

Whether you are sailing along on Lake Titicaca at 12,500 feet, tramping through the Yungas (steamy cloud forest), walking through glaciers along the altiplano, paddling a dugout canoe through the Bolivian Amazon or taking in the bizarre Salar de Uyuni salt sea, Bolivia has something for everyone. Its biodiversity is staggering.

Bolivia is one of four countries with the highest abundance of butterflies and one of eight countries with the highest abundance of bird species. In belongs to the Tropical Andes, according to biodiversityhotspots.org, is the richest and most diverse region on Earth, with about a sixth of all plant life in less than 1 percent of the world’s land area.

Bolivia has 4 biomes, 14 ecoregions and 199 ecosystems. The main biomes are jungle, forest, savannah, tundra, steppe, desert and wetlands. At the moment, more than 14,000 higher plant species, 325 mammals, 186 amphibians, 260 reptiles, 550 fish species and 1,379 birds are inventoried.

Don't like what you see in Bolivia? Jump on a bus and you'll be in a completely different ecosystem very quickly.

Sleeping On Salt: Bolivia's Salt Hotel

2011-06-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

Our room at the Salt Hotel

On the third night of our Lipez-Uyuni tour we arrived at our salt hotel, an inn made primarily of salt on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni. The hotel was basic with walls of salt, beds made of blocks of salt, tables of salt and chairs of salt. When no one was looking, the kids and I licked the walls to verify that they were indeed made of salt.

The lodge, the Atulcha, had basic rooms with shared bathrooms and salt tables lined up in the communal area for the set course dinner that all guests would share.

Outside, it was cold with stong winds blowing off the Salar -- a flat cold area 19 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the U.S. state of Utah -- such that we had to turn our back to the Salar and look at the run down small village that is supported by tourists staying at the salt lodge.

Dinner that night was quinoa soup, roast llama and potatoes. We shared our meal with a retired Geman man who was riding his bike around the Salar, stopping at various salt hotels (I believe that there are 7 or 8 of them). After dinner we took hot showers before all the lights went out at 8:00 pm. Nestled into our fairly comfortable beds atop salt blocks, I read my book with my miner's headlamp then drifted off to sleep.

The dining area

Bolivia's Stone Tree: Sandblasting As An Art Form

2011-06-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

The Stone Tree in Southwestern Bolivia

We gotten up early to get a head start on reaching the Salar de Uyuni that night, only to get a flat tire on our Land Cruiser within 45 minutes. The wind blew unrelentlessly across the southwestern Bolivian aliplano and we all got out of the vehicle while our driver changed out the tire. I braved the strong wind and took a short walk to find a place to urinate. With winds this strong, a few calculations were required to ensure that I stayed dry during my nature call.

After a successful bathroom break I returned and our driver had finished changing the tire, so we all piled into the car and resumed driving. Within an hour we arrived near some windswept stone sculptures on the edge of the desert. We slowed down and plowed through deeper sand and stopped near a lone tent and two bicycles leaning against a large rock. I guessed that whoever this was had tried a few different spots to avoid the wind until they finally settled on this one. A French couple bounded out and greeted us.

We chatted with them for a bit and asked about their trip. He was going from Tierra Del Fuego to Alaska and she was visiting him for a few months and they'd been slogging through the desert sand for the last month. We gave them some of our candy bars and the man wrote a message and email address on paper and asked that I email it to his friend, which I did two days later.

We wished them well and started driving and within a minute saw an immense stone structure and our driver said "Arbol de Piedra -- Stone Tree." We got out an marveled at its size, its dimensions and the apparent nature of how it was formed: natural sandblasting. It sat in the open where winds could shape it from all directions. It was about 30 feet high and made of solid rock. I wondered why it was so top-heavy; surely it would have been just as easy to sandblast a bottom-heavy pyramid type structure?

We stopped for a few pictures and continued our journey. While there were plenty of interesting sights along the way, we wanted to reach the Salar by sunset.

Swimming With Blind Pink River Dolphins

2011-06-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

Jumping in with blind pink river dolphins

Deep within the Bolivian Amazon, the four of us peered over the sides of our dugout canoe, trying to decide if we should take the leap into the deep brown waters of the Yacuma River. We wanted to swim with river dolphins but the piranha-filled, zero visibility water and the 10-foot long caimans eyeing us from the nearby shore kept us from jumping in. “It’s Okay,” said our guide Wilber, sensing our reticence, “the piranha are too small to hurt you and the caimans are scared of the dolphins.” Our kids weren’t going in unless Mom and Dad went first but we were clearly unsure ourselves. We’d been to a few swimming spots along the river but each time we found a reason not to get in and this would probably be our last opportunity.

Wilber rhythmically banged his open palm on the outside hull of the canoe to attract more dolphins. We had seen their pointy, toothy snouts rise out of the water as they surfaced high enough to expel water from their blow holes. The chance to swim with dolphins in the wild and not in some over-sized Florida swimming pool kept us from backing out. “Well,” said my wife, “We’re either going to do this or were not,” and she jumped in and disappeared into the muddy brown water. My son followed his mother and in a few seconds both were floating and grinning, relieved to not be feeling any nibbles from hungry piranha. The curious dolphins swam circles around them and nudged a basketball to my son. After taking a few photographs of them I jumped in. When I surfaced I was relieved to count the same number of caimans on the opposite river bank. Our daughter was still in the boat. She loves dolphins but she hates swimming in water where she can’t see the bottom. After about five minutes of reassurance and cajoling, she reluctantly eased into the water. While our son threw the basketball for the dolphins to retrieve, my daughter and I hung on the sides of the boat. I felt a nibble around my armpit but did my best to keep this information from her. Just as we were getting confident, there was a splash from a big tail and she screamed “What was that!” and quickly threw her arms around me. One of the dolphins, apparently in a playful mood, had made a big splash with its tail and extinguished her budding confidence. It was as if this river dolphin, with a brain 40% larger than a human’s, sensed her anxiety and was singling her out for teasing.

Flipper of the Amazon

For kids missing a lot of school, ours were getting quite an education on the flora and fauna of the Amazon basin. The stars of our afternoon outing, the river dolphins, were the science lesson of the day. These creatures were relatives of ocean-going dolphins but these river dwellers were very different. Fifteen million years ago sea levels retreated and sealed them off from the ocean and they were forced to adapt to their new environment or face extinction.

Like us, they were faced with adjusting to a new environment here in South America. As they evolved, they gained some things necessary for survival and they lost some things that weren’t essential. They gained long, pointed snouts to reach through branches to find river crabs and they developed unfused vertebrae to allow them to make sharper turns through underwater tree roots. They lost their dorsal fins to make navigating tight spots easier, they lost their eyesight because it was useless in the muddy water and their complexion turned pink due to a lack of sunlight penetrating the dark water.

Chasing the basketball

After about 10 minutes, the dolphins were suddenly gone and we climbed back in the boat. Wilber fired up the outboard motor and we sped back to our lodge, savoring both the breeze from the boat and another great day along Bolivia's Yacuma River.

Attack Of The Bolivian Squirrel Monkeys

2011-06-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Bolivian Squirrel Monkey

We sped through the chocolaty brown waters of Bolivia’s Yacuma River, the breeze giving us respite from the moist and muggy Amazon air. We’d seen a lot in one morning – capybaras, caimans, river turtles, river dolphins – and we settled in for a 45 minute ride back to our lodge for some lunch and a nap in a hammock. Wilbur steered us swiftly in the 20-foot long dugout canoe and then slowed us down, killed the engine and we slowly drifted towards the far bank. We were tiny white specks in a tri-color landscape of green trees, blue sky and brown water in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon.

With no breeze we started sweating and we wondered what Wilbur was up to. Suddenly, the branches of the largest tree from the approaching bank started moving and shaking. A closer look revealed that the tree was filled with about two dozen small Bolivian squirrel monkeys and they were coming our way as our boat now drifted under the branches. The monkeys let their weight bring the branches down to the boat and one boarded near the bow.

Squirrel monkeys live in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America in the canopy layer. They have short fur, olive colored shoulders and yellowish-orange coloring on their backs and extremities. The grow to about 25 to 35 centimeters and their brain mass to body mass ratio is a remarkable 1:17, the largest brain, proportionately, of all the primates. To put this in perspective, you have about a 1:35 ratio.

Our kids were by now anxious and I calmly told them “Don’t move. All they want are the oranges.” My voice was fatherly and authoritarian, laced with a hint of nervousness. I envisioned a worst case scenario of the kids being bitten by the monkeys and having to make the long 5 hour trek back to the closest town. By now, eight of them were on our boat looking for food. My wife was snapping photos and videos and one jumped in her lap. My son moved to the edge of his seat and another monkey jumped on the spot he vacated.

They quickly grabbed the oranges and peels from the bottom of the canoe and started leaving and we were relieved that everyone was safe and no one had been bitten. While I had sweated and worried about the kids safety, I felt that my wife -- who had filmed almost the entire episode -- was more concerned about missing any footage of the event.

Searching for our oranges

Bolivian Coco Leaf: The Red Bull Of The Andes

2011-05-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hoja Sagrada (Holy Leaf)

We’d decided to take the overnight sleeper bus from La Paz to Sucre, given our somewhat rushed itinerary and desire to save time and the expense of a hotel room. We nestled into our reclining seats and went through our overnight bus checklist. Bag locked and secured to the overhead rack…check. Bottled water and toilet paper handy…check. Earplugs secured and bandana fastened over eyes…check. We settled in for a 12 hour bus ride along the Bolivian cordillera.

Overnight bus trips in the Andes always make me a little nervous. The amount of bus crashes in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador that share a disproportionate amount of headlines in the South American International Herald Tribune’s website, caused us to jokingly refer to that site as “Andean Bus Crash dot com.”

We all snoozed as we made our way southward. Every time the driver pumped the brakes to slow down, a part of my brain -- while still asleep -- registered the motion, ready for anything that might follow.

After a somewhat fitful night of semi-sleep, we arrived at 8:30 a.m. in Sucre. We collected our belongings and drowsily made our way out of the front of the bus. Before I turned right and down out of the bus, I looked over to the driver’s area. Below his empty seat were dozens of broken bits of coco leaves scattered over the floor. Now that we’d achieved safe passage to Sucre, I knew that my well-being had been insured by the hoja sagrada, the sacred leaf that has been used for medicinal, cultural and religious purposes in the Andes continuously for thousands of years. It’s been used as a protection against altitude, hunger and cold and in our case, it was a stimulant to keep our driver awake and us alive. Thank goodness for the Red Bull of the Andes.

The Red Bull of the Andes

The La Paz Witches' Market

2011-05-23T22:47:00.000-07:00

Llama fetuses outside a shop in the Witches Market

As I glanced through my Lonely Planet guidebook to Bolivia, I scanned the sights for something that looked interesting until I came to the following: El Mercado de Las Brujas…the La Paz Witches’ Market. Out of all the sights in the world’s highest capital city, the Witches Market instantly soared to number one on our list.

We walked down the main thoroughfare and followed our map, which was unclear and not helped by the location description in the text. After a few false alarms, we found Calle Jiminez and Calle Linares and knew we were in the right place when we saw lots of dried llama fetuses handing from shop windows.

We stopped at one shop and a middle-aged woman looked at us as if sizing us up. I wasn’t sure if she was gauging our interest in buying or surreptitiously seeking signs of good or bad fortune. She sat behind a table that displayed toad talismans, coco leaves, amulets, soaps, many different types of plants, owl feathers, totems, candles and dried snakes. I wondered if her business from people who felt they really needed her products were now outweighed by people like me, who just want a souvenir to show someone back home.

Inside the store, was a colorful collection of boxes that addressed many illnesses and health problems. Usually looking at the cover of the box told you what it was for: a vigorous soccer player suggested more energy, a sultry woman advertised erectile enhancement, a picture of two kidneys targeted renal help and a full head of black hair unmistakably offered a solution to baldness.

The cure for what ails you

We walked from shop to shop but they all seemed to have the same merchandise. I wanted to get some pictures so I awkwardly snapped some pictures while pretending not to. I was careful to hold the camera to my waist which is why the photos here are cropped so poorly. The last thing I wanted was an angry witch casting a spell on me.

Surreality In Bolivia

2011-05-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

The Salar de Uyuni in Southwest Bolivia

The area around the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat in southwestern Bolivia, is an other-worldly landscape of hallucinogenic visions and poses some difficult questions. For example: How did 10 billion tons of salt get here? Why is that lake green? Why are there thousands of pink flamingos living more than two miles above sea level? Why am I looking at steaming geysers and bubbling mudpots while freezing my butt off? Why is that lake red? But the question that I’m struggling with the most is: How is it that I am navigating an island of petrified coral, covered in cactus, in the middle of a sea of salt…at 12,000 feet above sea level?

The Salar de Uyuni is the remains of prehistoric Lake Minchin, which lost all its water via absorption and evaporation over 40,000 years ago. As the water disappeared, it left a perfectly-flat layer of salt covering 4.085 square miles, roughly 25 times the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the U.S. state of Utah. As the Andean altiplano was pushed up by the forces of plate tectonics, the Salar reached its present-day elevation.

Laguna Verde

We took a 4-day jeep safari starting in Tupiza and ending in Uyuni, the town that shares its name with the Salar. The first day was spent riding through the Lipez, a desert-like area in the farthest southwest corner of Bolivia, that resembles many areas of the U.S. southwest. We passed silver, gold, tin and antimony mines amidst thousands of roaming llamas, alpacas and vicunas (and one Andean ostrich). We also saw an odd animal called a viscacha, a rabbit-like creature with a long curly tail. The second day we passed hundreds of pink flamingos traipsing through lakes of swampy ice and borax. Three types of flamingos are indigenous to the swamps and marshes of the altiplano: the Chilean, the James and the Andean flamingos. By late morning, we arrived at Laguna Verde, a lake sitting in the shadow of a volcano, which keeps it’s green appearance due to the high arsenic content of its waters. After lunch and a dip in some thermal hot springs, we passed more volcanoes and flamingos and arrived at Sol de Mañana, an area of intense geothermic activity with steaming geysers and bubbling holes of mud. We carefully walked around the perimeter of the area but had to quickly retreat to the jeep due to the intense wind and cold. We spent that night on the shore of Laguna Colorada, a large lake that gets its red color from the profusion of algae blooms in the water. The third day we traveled past more snow-capped volcanoes and stopped at the Stone Tree, an eroded volcanic rock in the shape of a tree 25 feet high. We spent that night in a salt hotel, an inn made primarily of blocks of salt. Our beds were platforms of salt and the dining area boasted dining tables and block seats made from salt. When no one was looking, the kids and I licked the walls of our room to verify their saline content (trying not to think about how many previous guests had done the same).

My legs form a very long shadow at sunrise

We woke at 6:00 am on the fourth day and drove out to the middle of the Salar to watch the sunrise. The kids and I took pictures of our extremely long shadows, which stretched hundreds of feet to the west. We ate breakfast on the “shore” of Isla Inca Huasi, also known as Fish Island for its fish-like shape. Inca Huasi is an island covered with petrified coral and cactus that was once in the middle of ancient Lake Minchin and now sits in the middle of the Salar. The cacti are relatively new; we’d heard that they grow about 2 centimeters a year, so none could be much more than 1,000 years old. We climbed to the top of the island to see white salt and blue sky in all directions.

Any land of coexisting extremes like this one -- hot, dry, swampy, steamy, salty, windy, cold -- is bound to raise questions. Our 4-day jeep safari through the Salar answered some of them for us.

Lunch In Uyuni, Bolivia

2011-05-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Humorous signs are everywhere in South America and this one is from Uyuni, Bolivia, where we sat down for lunch after completing our 4-day tour of the Salar de Uyuni.

We wondered if the restaurant only catered to men upon reading "We Offer Him the Specialty of the House." We did not try the second item, called "Pasture," so we still have no idea what that was. The heading after the second row of items, "Plates National Meat of He/She Calls or Head" was quite puzzling and looking at the first two plates listed below it confused us more: "Chop Male" and "Mounted Loin."

We decided to go with pizza, figuring that there could be no miscommunication about such a widely known dish and although the taste was not the best, we knew what we were eating.

Travel And Kids: No School For A Year

2011-05-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

Pondering the Temple of Artemis in Turkey

Both our kids have missed an entire school year and our daughter studied under the auspices of the district’s independent study program the previous spring. The three most common questions that we’ve heard from friends and acquaintances were “Will they let you take the kids out of school for a year?”, “Won’t they get behind in school?” and “How do you know what to teach?” As we started to tell our family and friends about our plans, these three questions cropped up more than any others. (One of the more amusing questions we heard was from an administrator at the kids’ school: “How will you carry all those textbooks?” Answer: “We won’t.”)

The first question is an interesting one: "Will they let you take the kids out of school for a year?" All school districts are different, but we had surprisingly little interest or concern from our kids’ middle school. No one from the school, the school district or the State of California has stepped forward and said that we couldn’t do what we planned to do. The school was much more concerned about the minutiae of our daughter’s independent study for the final trimester than for missing the entire next year. The independent Study program allows “distance learning” under a teacher’s remote supervision for a period of up to 60 days. Our daughter’s teachers set up an independent study curriculum with scanned pages from her math, science and language arts textbooks, as well as research reports on both the Andean Condor and the Andean ecosystem as well as a research paper on The Beatles.

The second question, “Won’t they get behind in school?” is a fear that many parents share. It helps that both our kids are very good students so there is no “catching up” or learning issues to deal with. Both my wife and I both think that there is not a lot of learning going on in middle school. It is a time when kids are going through drastic physical and emotional changes and middle schools’ resources are overtaxed just to keep kids from falling off the deep end. Additionally, the time required to homeschool two kids ought to be much less than the time required to teach 20 kids in a school classroom. Finally, when we did a 6-month sabbatical through Central America and Spain in 2005, both kids missed the final trimester of that school year and did not miss a beat upon returning in the Fall.

The third question, “How do you know what to teach?” is easy in theory but hard in practice. The California education standards for each grade are listed in detail at the State of California’s web site. The blueprint is right there on the World Wide Web and all you have to do is print it out. In practice, the act of coming up with problems, exercises and projects that will teach the standards has given us a deeper respect for the teaching profession. Last week both our kids finished 500 word persuasive essays on the question: The Monroe Doctrine: Good or Bad for Latin America?” This week they are writing a 750 word dual biography on the twin liberators of South America: Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin.

Most of this blog entry has been about “keeping up”, but there are many things that they are getting from travel that their classmates aren’t. They are already intermediate-level Spanish speakers and they are acutely aware that most of the world is nothing like the privileged place they call home. They have learned that many simple things that they have taken for granted are luxuries in the developing world. They are much more open to new and different people, foods, customs, experiences and points of view. Perhaps most importantly, they will have a broader view of their responsibilities as global citizens when it comes time to choose their careers. It may be a cliché, but it also happens to be true: “Travel is Broadening”.

Lonely Planet's Blogsherpa Program Produces Its First Photo Ebook

2011-05-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

HOT OFF THE PRESS: Today (May 3rd, 2011) the Lonely Planet Blogsherpa group launched their first photo e-book. AlpacaSuitcase is one of the 40 featured Lonely Planet bloggers. The following is directly from the Lonely Planet website:

In late 2008, Lonely Planet launched its experimental ‘Blogs We Like’ program. We picked our favourite bloggers around the world and featured their content on the Lonely Planet website.

Since then, those bloggers have banded together to form a community of expertise, showcasing the best travel blogging has to offer. We are pleased to feature their ebook, Around the World with 40 Lonely Planet Bloggers, and to support them on their blogging journey. Here’s what Todd Wassel, the book’s project manager, has to say:

The concept is simple – put 40 experienced travel bloggers together, shake and see what pops out. The result is the first ever Lonely Planet Blogger Photo ebook, which explores our beautiful world from street level through the eyes of travel bloggers.

This eclectic group, whose tales range across voluntourism, family travel, expat life, long term backpacking and more, was born out of Lonely Planet’s effort to broaden its content. Lonely Planet wanted to shine a light on the very best travel writing and photography on the planet.

Around the World with 40 Lonely Planet Bloggers is the first book produced by Lonely Planet’s ‘Blogs We Like’ program and introduces readers to the world of professional travel blogging. Lonely Planet knows what it takes to produce amazing travel writing and photography, and these bloggers are producing up-to-date live content from around the world while still managing to travel.

We also know that the internet, like the world, is a big place and it can be difficult to sift through the thousands of journal type travel blogs out there. Lonely Planet has done the work for you. From adventure travel with The Planet D, to family travel with Alpaca Suitcase, to the life of an international conflict management specialist at Todd’s Wanderings, there is something for everyone.

The new ebook shares a collection of stunning photos and descriptions that captures the essence of travel. It walks the reader through almost 70 countries and 40 unique ways of experiencing the world. It lets you research your next destination from a variety of perspectives, depending on your own interests and needs.

I could go on and on describing the book, but it’s better to just dive into 88 pages of colour, excitement and passion for travel. So download the book now!

Don’t forget to visit the each author’s travel blog, and check out the other blogsherpa contributions in the ‘Blogs We Like’ section of each destination page.

Happy travels and see you on the road.

To go to the Lonely Planet Blogsherpa page where the book is offered click here.

A Trip To The Supermercado

2011-04-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

Supermercado Mega

There are plenty of local abarrotes (corner grocery shops) near us, but just like the ubiquitous 7-11 convenience stores back home in the United States, the selection is poor and the prices are relatively high. For bulk shopping we head to a supermercado, just as we would back home. Since there are no supermercados near our San Blas apartment, we shop at the Mega on Plaza Tupac Amaru. This location works for us because can walk over while our kids are at their nightly swim practice at the Piscina Municipal.

There’s a large open-air market near our apartment, where we normally buy our fruits and vegetables, but we have yet to purchase any meat there. While the meat monger seems to do a brisk business, there is something about seeing meat lying on a concrete counter while flies hop all over it that makes us cringe. As such, we buy our beef and chicken from the meat counter at the supermercado, where they even have packaged, boneless chicken breasts. Even though I have no idea where they’ve been previously, I am somehow comforted by seeing chicken breasts that have been wrapped in cellophane. It’s either because of the perceived cleanliness or perhaps it is because I know I can quickly grab a package instead of waiting for a woman behind the counter to help me. The women behind the counter seem pretty disinterested and it is sometimes hard to get their attention.

The delicatessen counter, however, is a different story. It is hard to walk by without one of the women touting their bacon, offering a sample of ham or suggesting a local cheese. It makes me wonder if they are on commission. Despite their hard sell, I tend to avoid the deli counter as most of the meat has a curious orange color and I’ve yet to find a cheese I like. We do like the packaged salami and Serrano ham for sandwiches. Beyond these two items, some of our standbys are the fresh-squeezed orange juice, ciabatta bread rolls and the kid’s favorite -- Piqueo Snax -- a spicy mixture of snack foods. In general, the selection of fruits, vegetables and grains is excellent and – this being Peru – I always have a choice of at least 10 types of potatoes.

I sometimes run into trouble with the ladies that weigh the produce. For example, when I buy the bulk peeled garlic, it is usually for a dish I plan to cook, so I’ll only bag 5-6 peeled clove pieces. When I put the bag on the scale, the ladies shake their head and tell me I need to buy more. The first time I was sent back twice until I had the requisite number. When I asked the lady what I should do with all the extra garlic, she just shrugged. I got my revenge a few weeks ago when purchasing cilantro. The cilantro bin was just about empty but I was able to find a small handful, which was exactly how much I needed. I brought it to the scale and the lady shook her head and said I needed more. When I told her that there was no more she marched over to the herb section and searched it thoroughly while I tried to suppress a grin.

The store is a smaller than we are used to. The aisles are very narrow so I find it easier to park my cart in the back of the store and go back and forth for what I need. There’s also a shortage of shopping carts; weekday evenings my cart is often snatched away just as I pull the last item out to place it on the checkout counter. Once the checkout clerk has rung me up, I find that the bill usually comes pretty close to 100 soles ($33 USD), probably because that’s the amount of food that will fit into 4 bags, the maximum that I can carry back to the swimming pool.

A Visit To The Venta De Repuestos

2011-04-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

Venta de Repuestos (and guard dog)

Not long after finding spare shoelaces in the local market near our apartment, my wife asked me to fix her rolling backpack. The bag, an Eagle Creek Switchback 25, had a telescoping handle that had decided to stop telescoping. I took it apart and found a small part that had broken inside the pack. I needed a fairly thin nut and bolt to secure it so that it would again function properly. After a few failed attempts at finding the right part at some local ferreterias (hardware shops), I decided to check out the group of shops down the street where I found my spare shoelaces.

I walked down to the corner and walked straight to number 9, the Venta de Repuestos (spare parts shop). The shop was like all the others: rusty, corrugate-tin roof, fading blue paint, hand-painted sign, very cramped and parts strewn everywhere inside. This shop had something the others didn’t: a watchdog. I thought about petting him, but up close he looked scarred and mangy -- signs of aggressiveness and disease – so I gave him a wide berth.

The proprietor greeted me and I showed him the broken bolt and I asked if he had something similar. He started looking around his tiny shop, moving aside fuses, screws, coils of wire, gas canisters, bolts, clamps and nails. The interesting thing about his shop was that there did not seem to be any rhyme or reason to his merchandise assortment. It was if each of the parts in his shop arrived there via some unique circumstance and not ordered from a parts catalog. The shop was about 8’ x 4’ and it did not take him long locate a nut and bolt that looked like it fit my needs. I held it up to my broken bolt and it looked like a match. I got home and used the new bolt to fix the telescoping handle. My wife had her backpack fixed and I felt good about using a local resource for the solution.

Searching For Shoelaces In Cusco

2011-04-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

The Master of Shoe Repair

About 30 meters from our apartment in Cusco is a local fruit and vegetable market where we bought our produce a few times a week. Next to this semi-covered market on the outskirts of San Blas, is an open-air courtyard with a dozen small shops offering anything from appliance and shoe repair to the sale of spare parts and second-hand goods. The tiny shops blend into the blue walls and terracotta tiles of the courtyard walls and I walked by them for months before I had occasion to stop by and explore.

The first occasion was to stop by for a pair of shoelaces at the shoe repair place. I stopped by number four, named “Shoe Repair – The Master,” and greeted the 50-year old man working on an antique sewing machine while his adult son hammered tiny nails into the soles of shoe. In front of the shop was a hodgepodge of chairs, spare parts, a metal workbench and a large vice. The roofing was terracotta tile extended by haphazardly-placed metal corrugate sheets. Fortunately it was not raining as the downspout – which looked ready to fall at any moment – was aimed directly at where I stood. Inside, shoes were shelved on the wall, strips of leather, wooden heels were stacked and there were a few dozen plastic containers full of nails, tools and parts essential to shoe repair.

After exchanging greetings, the owner, who peered at me through rheumy eyes, politely asked me what I was looking for: “Senor, que busca?” I held up some shoelaces that were dirty and ready to fall apart and asked if he carried any spares. As he told me that he doesn’t normally carry shoelaces, he started looking under piles of leather squares and in the many bins placed beneath the counter. He kept looking, while explaining that the money was in the service of repairing shoes not in selling spare shoelaces. He kept looking and repeated this to me as if to reinforce that he was losing money just by helping me. Just as I thought he was going to reiterate this idea again, he found a pair of laces that looked to be about the same size. While they were just as dirty as mine, they were in good shape so I said I’d take them. I paid him the equivalent of a dollar. Yes, it was too much for pair of dirty shoelaces in the Andes, but I figured I’d paid for the right not to hear him complain again.

Miguel Angel's Choice

2011-04-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

Wood carving detail on my chair

In some ways, Miguel Angel is much like the city in which he was born. The 28 year old Cusqueño with a cheerful countenance and easy manner seems torn between the same two worlds that divide Cusco: the world of the traditional and world of the tourist.

Miguel Angel was named after his father, the Italian translation of which echoes the name of one of the world’s greatest sculptors: Michelangelo. Miguel Angel’s father is a well-known wood carver and sculptor who makes pieces of wood come alive with intricate and detailed workmanship. The father makes altarpieces, armoires, picture frames, headboards, doors and all types of furniture (see photo). As I write this I am sitting in one of his chairs, a beautifully carved, high-back dining chair. He is particularly well-known for his altarpieces which adorn many churches in Cusco and one of his best sits in a museum in Denver, Colorado in the United States. The father has been able to support a large family through his work and they live very comfortably by Cusco standards. He’s done well enough to build 3 floors above his house to rent out: we live on the third floor. I’m guessing that there is some degree of pressure on his sons to follow in his footsteps: Miguel Angel carries on the Michelangelo name and his older brother is named David, after one of Michelangelo’s greatest works. I occasionally see Miguel Angel working on small pieces, just like his father; the other day he was gold-leafing a small carved picture frame downstairs. He’s also shown me a large painting that he’s done that is pretty good.

Like Cusco, I think it’s been hard for Miguel Angel to resist the allure of tourism and the money it brings in. One of the University of Cusco’s most popular degree programs is tourism, which combines history, language (English), cultural anthropology, archeology and business. The number of travel agencies in Cusco and the number of Cusqueños who speak some English has increased greatly since I was last here 23 years ago. Whenever I talk to someone working in a travel agency and ask them where they learned their English, they usually reply “in university.” Miguel Angel and his cousin have had plans to start a travel agency for some time now, but it has been slow getting off the ground. They have an office space downstairs with desks, phones, printed literature and some large posters of the various sites in and around Cusco. With his personal charm, good looks and ease around people, I think he would be very successful.

One of the pre-requisites of running a successful travel agency is being able to speak English. Miguel Angel was studying at a language school for a while but had to postpone his lessons in order to help his father build out the apartments upstairs. When I asked him about this, he smiled quickly, shrugged and said “My father needs my help.” Now that the apartments are finished and rented out, it will be interesting to see which direction he takes: the world of the traditional or the world of the tourist.

The Best And The Worst Haircut

2011-04-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

Peruvian barber shop

One of the things that I did not have time to do prior to leaving for South America was get a haircut; there were just too many things to do, plus I figured that I could always get a cheap one in Peru. Right about the time we arrived in Peru in late April, I noticed a brand-new hair salon two doors down from our Spanish school. It had 3 barber chairs, a full accompaniment of hair paraphernalia and a large poster with Brad Pitt and Megan Fox grinning and showing off their well-coifed hair. The proprietor was a woman in her late 20’s and when she wasn’t standing in front of the door waiting for customers, she was in the back room taking care of two small kids. I’d walked by each day for a week before impulsively deciding to go for it. I plopped down in the chair and said “Quiero aparacer como Brad Pitt.” (I want to look like Brad Pitt)

Sometimes an impulsive decision in Cusco turns out to be a great story: a chance visit to a non-descript panaderia reveals their awesome onion bread rolls or extreme thirst makes me enter a “hole in the wall” restaurant that serves outstanding chicha morada. This was not going to be one of those stories. She nervously started cutting one side of my head and I could feel her hands shaking while my daughter was documenting the experience with her new camera. I started to wonder whether she had ever given a haircut before. Once the ordeal was over, I surveyed the damage in the mirror: on the left side of my head the hair stood straight up and only copious amounts of water would make it lay down. I left thinking that it was the worst haircut I’ve ever received.

Usually my hair grows back pretty quickly and I often make the following joke “What’s the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut? About 2-3 weeks.” Well, three weeks and then four weeks went by and it still looked bad. After about 6 weeks I stopped thinking about it. A few months later we returned from our vacation in Bolivia and it was time for another haircut. My son accompanied me to a busy barber shop a few blocks from the Plaza de Armas and as we walked in the next available barber motioned me over. Romulo was one of 10 barbers working in the shop and he sat me in his chair and started snipping at my hair. The first things I noticed about him were his severe limp and his forceful way of positioning my head while cutting hair. He grabbed my chin and moved my head to the right while snipping away with dull scissors. The scissors pulled on my hair a bit and I had flashbacks to my earlier experience, but as I watched him at work, I gradually began to realize that he really knew what he was doing. He was very thorough and the haircut took almost 30 minutes. My son was so impressed that he decided to get a haircut as well. I gave Romulo a big tip and my son and I left thinking that we’d just had our best haircuts ever. I found it amusing that both my best and worst haircuts were both here in Cusco. It was no surprise to me that the hair salon run by the woman who butchered my hair was no longer in business.

About a month later, at a point where I had a 3 week growth of beard, I decided I would go back and get a shave from Romulo. I walked in, sat down and made eye contact with Romulo. He let me know that he’d be with me shortly by holding up one finger so I leaned back in my chair and looked around the barber shop. I looked at each barber in the shop and then my eyes rested on the barber working the chair next to Romulo and…it was the woman who gave me my worst haircut. Not only were my best and worst haircuts given in the same South American town, the barbers were now working 2 feet from one another.

Sweet And Delicious Picarones

2011-03-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

Picarones

One of our family’s Cusco traditions is to go out for picarones, which are deep-fried, donut-shaped treats with molasses drizzled over them. Though not the healthiest snack in the world, they are delicious. A while back, we invited another American expat family to join us at our favorite picaroneria and they loved them as well. Their young daughter, who was falling asleep after a long day, rallied when she took her first bite. We all watched her as extreme fatigue dueled with overpowering sweetness, creating what looked like a 4-year old devouring a picarone while fast asleep.

Picarones, a popular dessert in Peru and other Andean countries, are made from squash and sweet potato, along with flour, eggs, yeast and spices. They are sweetened with miel de chancaca (chancaca honey), a sweet sauce made of raw cane sugar. They are frequently paired with anticuchos (marinated meat on skewers) and are often served during the month of October during the procession of Señor de los Milagros. Picarones were created during the colonial period to replace buñuelos, which were too expensive to make. People started replacing traditional buñuelos ingredients with squash and sweet potato and the new dessert rapidly increased in popularity throughout the Andes.

Just as the Incas imported their creation myth and religious traditions from Lake Titicaca, this tradition of ours originated there as well. Coming back from our Bolivian vacation, my wife and daughter decided to visit the Titicaca islands of Taquile and Amantani, while my son and I headed straight back to Cusco. They were hiking to the top of Amantani to see the sunset and some Pre-Inca ruins when they saw a stone cottage with “picarones” written on a chalkboard in front. It was cold, windy and getting dark and the fire inside was inviting. They sat down at one of the two tables and ordered the only two things on the menu: picarones and hot chocolate. They watched the lady knead the dough and place it in the cast-iron skillet filled with hot cooking oil. After frying it, she set them on a plate and drizzled molasses on them. When my wife and daughter returned and recounted the highlights of the trip to the islands, picarones were high on the list.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered our favorite picaroneria in Cusco while walking home from work. The shop is on a corner with a large vat of hot cooking oil right near the door. Inside there are five tables and the back wall is dominated by a large photo of a smiling woman with blue eyes and too much make-up biting into a picarone. Three ladies work there: one kneads the dough, one woman fries it and the other takes orders. While close to San Blas and the Plaza de Armas there seems to be many Cusqueños frequenting this place, a Peruvian version of a blue-collar donut shop in the U.S. For me, this comparison was reinforced about a month ago when a policeman walked in and ordered a dozen picarones to go. Some things transcend borders.

Recipe for Picarones:

Ingredients for picarones:
1/2 kg (1 lb) of peeled sweet potatoes
1/2 kg (1 lb) of peeled buttercup squash
1/2 kg (1 lb) of flour
3 tablespoons of yeast
2 stick cinnamons
4 cloves
2 tablespoons of aniseed
3 tablespoons of sugar
A pinch of salt
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Vegetable oil

Ingredients for the chancaca honey:
1/2 kg (1 lb) of chancaca
1 cup of brown sugar
4 cloves
2 stick cinnamons
2 pieces of orange peel
4 cups of water

Preparation:

Chancaca honey: Cut the chancaca in pieces, put them in a pot and add sugar, cloves, cinnamon, orange peel and water. Boil until it gets a little thick (200º F, 110º C), more or less for 20-25 minutes. Strain.

Picarones: Boil in a pot a lot of water with the cinnamon, cloves and aniseeds for 10 minutes. Strain. In this water, cook the sweet potatoes and the squash. When they’re ready, take them out from the pot and strain. Keep back 2 cups of water and let it cool down.

In a bowl, mix the yeast with this 2 cups of water and the sugar. Go down for 15 minutes.

Mix the sweet potatoes and the squash making a purée. Add the salt, the yeast mix and the eggs, beating and mixing good. Add the flour while you continue beating with energy. You must get a soft and elastic pastry and it mustn’t get stuck to your fingers. Go down for 1 hour or until the preparation doubles its volume.

Heat a lot of vegetable oil in a big frying pan. Moisten your hand in water with salt, take the pastry and let it fall in the hot oil forming a ring. Let them get brown and turn over.

Usually, the portion is 3 picarones topped with miel de chancaca.

A Night At The Cockfights

2011-03-25T17:46:00.000-07:00

Squaring Off at the Cusco Cockfights

For our first seven weeks in Peru, my daughter and I lived with the Chavez family in the Santa Monica suburb of Cusco. The family is very well off by Cusco standards; they own a large 3-story house with a maid in the nicest suburb of Cusco and they also own a 35-acre corn farm in the Sacred Valley. Alfredo, the husband, has a large dental practice and drives a SUV, while Zulma, the wife, is from a wealthy family and enjoys having foreign students stay in their home. They have made a concerted effort to include us in all the family activities.

One Sunday morning at breakfast, Alfredo turned to me and said “Vamos a Gallos?” (Do you want to go to the Cockfights?) Even though Alfredo is a professional and a doctor he definitely has a macho streak in him, so I interpreted his question as “Eres Hombre?” (Are you a man?). Not wanting to disappoint, I agreed. He said to be back at the house by 3:00 pm.

Alfredo and his son Alfredito, along with Alfredito’s friend and I left the house at 3:00 pm and started winding through the suburbs of Cusco. We arrived at the “Coliseo de Gallos”, situated in a dusty area behind the airport. We paid the entry fee and entered a courtyard with food stalls, beer vendors, a smelly bathroom and the cockfighting arena itself. There were about 400 people there, 90% of which were male. The entire arena was about 50 feet in diameter and resembled a pit, with the circular, central fighting area ringed by ascending seating rows. The fighting area itself was a sandy surface about 25 feet in diameter surrounded by a chain link fence. Inside the cage were signs on either side, one saying izquierda (left) and one saying derecha (right). Since most roosters look the same, especially when the feathers start to fly, these signs help during the betting process. Prior to each fight when the betting happens, each trainer stands near one of the signs, poking and agitating their roosters (sometimes biting them on their backs) so that they become more aggressive.

As we arrived I bought four large beer bottles and quickly learned how men in Peru share beer. Despite all the news coverage of the swine flu, everyone shares a glass and drinks one bottle at a time. When the beer bottle is passed to you, just hold on to it and wait until the drinking glass is passed to you. Once it’s passed to you, fill up the glass and then keep the chain going by handing the bottle clockwise. When you finish your glass, hand it to the man with the beer bottle

Once the beer protocol was understood, I watched the trainers carefully tie the sharp blade to the rooster’s right leg and then hold them up to the crowd. Suddenly, the arena went crazy with men shouting bets. Alfredo explained to me that the betting process isn’t terribly scientific…just pick the one that looks stronger and shout out your bet to the crowd and wait for a response. The first round I watched Alfredo as he shouted veinte derecha, held up 2 fingers and scanned the crowd. A young man looked up at him from the first row and held up his 2 fingers and shouted veinte izquierda: Alfredo had just bet 20 soles on the rooster on the right side of the cage.

The fighting was now set to start with Alfredo yelling "vamos derecha!" Most of the fights followed the same pattern as this one: the roosters carefully stalked each other for 4-5 minutes until they got close enough to pounce on one another. Then after a about a minute of flying feathers and blood, one of the roosters stood above the other, the loser with its beak resting on the sand floor. Alfredo’s rooster lost this fight and I watched him settled up with the young man in the first row. After observing Alfredo, I tried a few on my own.

Over the course of the evening’s 15 or so fights, I ended up winning about 15 soles ($5). As the night wore on, more and more cerveza was consumed and the men in the crowd became filled with drunken bonhomie. A man near me affectionately babbled indecipherable Spanish to me throughout the night and I occasionally babbled something indecipherable back, to which he laughed loudly. After almost 5 hours of drinking beer, we all stumbled out of the coliseo and went home.

Tying the blade to the rooster's leg

River Rafting The Chuquicahuna

2011-03-22T06:18:00.000-07:00

Running the "Chuqui"

Our shuttle picked us on Cusco’s Plaza de Armas and we rolled out of town and headed for a point on the Chuquicahuna River, also known as the “Chuqui,” about an hour and a half to the southeast. Our family’s plan was to spend the afternoon running the lower Chuqui and have a relaxing lunch by the side of the river afterwards.

After we got out of Cusco, we followed the river upstream past stands of Eucalyptus trees and corn fields. Once we arrived, we got into our slightly-mildewy wetsuits and took an abbreviated safety course at the spot where we were about to put in. Then we coasted down the river for about 20 minutes before we started to pick up some speed. The terrain was rocky without a lot of indigenous foliage, save for the eucalyptus trees, themselves imports from Australia.

We bumped our way down the river and I thought about how the Chuqui would flow into the Vilcanote (a.k.a. Urubamba), the river that cuts through the Sacred Valley of the Incas and winds past Machhu Picchu. From there it would head to the jungle and flow into the Ucayali, which would feed into the Amazon, which would then gently course into the Atlantic Ocean over 4,000 miles away. The river during this winter day was fairly gentle with a sprinkling of class II and III rapids and fortunately no one fell into the chilly water. The last time the four of us river rafted, my wife was abruptly dumped into a Panamanian river.

After each successfully negotiated set of rapids, we all put our paddles together, high in the air, to celebrate. Our cameraman, in a kayak, paddled ahead of the rapids and set up in the best locations for photos. Towards the end of our two and a half hour run, our guide, a woman in her 20’s from Panama, instructed our kids to “ride the bull” by climbing on the front of the raft holding the rubber handle between their legs and shouting like a cowboy riding a wild bull.

From this point, we soon pulled into camp at the side of the river, showered and had a meal of chicken, potatoes and quinoa soup. It was an uneventful day on the river – the way a rafting trip should be.

Cusco Characters: Senora Melvyn

2011-03-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

Melvyn Douglas: 1940's Hollywood Leading Man

Approximately 60 years ago, a Peruvian couple was anxiously awaiting the birth of their child and in the days leading up to the delivery, they had yet to pick a name. As the due date approached, they went to a Lima movie theater to see a Hollywood movie and to relax. To this day they can’t remember the name of the movie but it starred an enchanting actress who was paired with a well-known Hollywood leading man. They loved the actress’ performance so much they decided right then that if they had a girl, they would name it after the actress. Unfortunately, they left the theater hurriedly and didn’t get the actress’s name and a few days later they gave birth to a baby girl.

When it came time to name the baby girl they had a lasting memory of the actress’ performance but not her name. Under pressure from the doctor who was filling out the birth certificate, they did the next best thing. They named the girl after the film’s well-known leading man: Melvyn Douglas. At that time, Melvyn Douglas was one of America’s finest actors and would finish his career with two Oscars, a Tony and an Emmy award. He won best supporting actor awards for “Hud” and “Being There” during an acting career that spanned six decades.

This is how Señora Melvyn got such an interesting name, not to mention a perfect icebreaker at social events and business meetings. Señora Melvyn’s works at the CTTC (Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco) and spends most of her time working on preparations for a textile convention. She is extremely affable and warm and makes friends quickly. She seems to know everyone in town; when we walk across town for a business appointment, we often have to stop multiple times to briefly chat with business acquaintances, extended family members and friends. After every stop I remind her that she should run for Mayor of Cusco.

Melvyn and I became fast friends when we first started sharing an office. We discovered we shared a joint love for the 40’s Cuban bandleader Perez Prado and I offered to make her a CD of his greatest hits from my digital library. She was thrilled and spent an inordinate amount of time making a detailed and intricately decorated CD case for it. Melvyn thrives on details and she will often spend a good part of her day organizing her office belongings, alphabetizing the business cards of her contacts or re-writing meeting notes.

Melvyn thrives on interaction with people and is very good at getting the information she needs in order to push her project forward. I often hear her on the phone setting up appointments and often, after introducing herself on the phone, there's a pause and she launches into an abbreviated version of how she got her first name. From there the conversation becomes animated and she usually gets what she needs from the person she's talking to. Señora Melvyn has made the most out of a very unique name.

Peruvian Fusion: Salsa Dancing

2011-03-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

One of the things that many foreign visitors to Cusco try is Salsa dancing. There seems to be dozens of Salsa Dance schools and clubs (Mythology, Mama Africa, Kamikase, Roots, etc) clustered around the Plaza de Armas.

Early on when our family was taking Spanish lessons at the Amauta Spanish Language school, we would take their free Dance lessons on Friday nights. My wife and I and our kids would swirl around doing doble enchufles with twenty-something backpackers, while the instructor barked out the rhythm “uno, dos, tres…cinco, seis, siete.” After a few weeks, we started to get pretty good and started to accent our twists and swirls with a little Latino swagger. For us this was great entertainment and exercise and, as the rest of the backpackers headed out to the clubs for more, we’d go out for dinner and then head home to our apartment.

It seems that almost everywhere you go in Latin America, there is Salsa dancing. Salsa dancing originated in Cuba, where the Spanish guitar and the African drum collided to form unique rhythms in the New World. Salsa -- also a word for a sauce with various ingredients -- became popular as nickname to refer to a variety of different music, from several countries of Hispanic influence: Rhumba, Són Montuno, Guaracha, Mambo, Cha cha cha, Danzón, Són, Guguanco, Cubop, Guajira, Charanga, Cumbia, Plena, Bomba, Festejo, Merengue, among others. Many of these have maintained their individuality and many were mixed creating "Salsa".

The more we think about life in Peru – as well as the rest of Latin America -- the more we realize how the fusion of three continents (Europe, South America, Africa) touches almost every aspect of Peruvian life.

Family Travel For A Year: What About The Dog?

2011-03-10T19:27:00.000-08:00

Nacho

Pulling up your family's suburban roots and heading off for some developing country for a year can pose many logistical questions. For example: What will you do with the family dog?

Our dog is a male, 6 year-old shepherd-mix that we got from Smiley Dog Rescue in Oakland, California about three and a half years ago. After a 6 month family sabbatical in 2005, one of the things we decided to do upon returning home was to get a dog. Without a lot of experience with dogs, we evaluated the pros and cons of rescue dogs and decided to get one, figuring that giving an unwanted dog a home outweighed any other considerations. By October of 2005 we had our dog and after a transition period where he would find every possible way out of our fenced yard, he settled in quite nicely. We quickly learned that he had to stay on leash while on walks, as he'd lunge and growl at certain types of dogs while he'd be friendly with others. Around the family he was very good and he was a great dog for us.

When it came time to start planning our suburban exodus, deciding what to do with our dog was not "top of mind" for us. Once we started to focus on it, the first thing we did was to add up a year's worth of kenneling costs At the rates we'd paid previously, we were looking at $9,500 for a year and that's only if he never left a 4'x4' cyclone fence cage with a concrete floor. If we added a daily 45 minute walk, it would cost close to $20,000 for a year for a pretty miserable existence.

Around the time we were starting to wonder where we could possibly place our dog, the woman who was to rent our house suggested that we could keep the dog at our home and she'd take care of him, along with her three poodles. This seemed perfect; our dog could stay in his own home and even have some canine companionship. She and my wife decided to give the idea a test one afternoon. All of our hopes came crashing down as our dog immediately defended his territory and started growling and barking and did not stop for the entire hour they were at our house. With each growl and bark, our dog's chances of a nice comfortable year in his own house slowly evaporated. Both my wife and our tenant agreed that this would not work.

A few weeks later during a dinner party with our best friends, after a few glasses of wine, the wife of the couple said that they'd love to watch our dog while we were away. As we put away a few more glasses, we ended the evening feeling optimistic about this scenario. The next day, in the cold light of day, we all realized that their house was on the market and there was no way of knowing if their future home would accommodate a dog. Back to square one.

A month later, a dog-loving friend of my wife's casually mentioned that she might take our dog for a year. My wife slowly worked up to suggesting a "doggy-sleepover" to see if such an idea might work. With no other options in sight, we awaited the fateful night. Again, our irascible canine could not contain himself. Not being on his home turf, he paced the house all night and just could not get comfortable. Again, it was mutually decided that we would pursue other options.

At this point, my wife even emailed Smiley Dog Rescue to see if there was a possibility that they'd take the dog back, even temporarily, but they said no.

As a last resort, my wife called her sister in Los Angeles. My sister-in-law and her husband don't have kids and have a nice back yard and she told me wife that she'd do it only if all other options were exhausted. My wife assured her that they were. She and my son brought the dog down in May and thus far the match has been very good. Our dog gets a lot more time walking than he did with us and my sister- and brother-in-law seem to genuinely enjoy his company. At one point during a recent walk, one of their neighbors even asked if he was for sale. From being unwanted and possibly having no home to being set up in a perfect environment and being the talk of the daily walk, our dog has come a long way.

Inca Kola: Liquid Bubblegum

2011-03-06T18:45:00.000-08:00

I remember trying Inca Kola when I visited Peru 25 years ago and being unimpressed with the sweet yellow, carbonated cola that is the Peruvian national drink. It has an unusually sweet, fruity flavor that is often compared to bubblegum. Having learned the Spanish words for bubblegum (chicle) and juice (jugo), I often said Jugo de Chicle instead of Inca Kola when talking to Peruvians, which invariably got a polite chuckle. I knew that Peruvians love it when you like their Inca Kola, but I just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for it. Perhaps the most charitable way to describe Inca Kola is to say that it is an acquired taste.

Inca Kola was created in 1935 by José Robinson Lindley, a British immigrant who used the refreshing taste of lemon verbena to anchor the recipe and it became instantly popular. These days Inca Kola is owned by Coca-Cola, who owns the trademark everywhere but in Peru. Inca Cola and Coca-Cola run neck and neck in terms of market share in Peru with each brand capturing about a third of the soft drink market.

When our family arrived in Peru I thought that my 14-year old son and 12-year old daughter would love the bubble gum taste, despite my previous experience. For one of our first meals I ordered them each an Inca Kola and eagerly awaited their reaction. They both took a sip and put their glasses down to a chorus of “yuck.”

Juanita The Ice Princess of Arequipa

2011-03-03T06:39:00.000-08:00

Juanita

On our first day in Arequipa we had two goals: see Juanita, the 12-year old Inca ice princess recently found near a glacier and find a toasted bagel with cream cheese for our 12-year old daughter. Our daughter is keeping a list of the foods that she misses most from home and a toasted bagel with cream cheese is high on the list. Among other things, she has “drink tap water,” “eat real pancakes with real maple syrup,” “eat real cheese” (those of you from France, you can lower that supercilious eyebrow now) and “eat clean and big strawberries.” We went to a place that our guidebook described as a “Starbucks-style” coffee house searching for that elusive bagel, but had no luck. After eating a tasty lunch, we visited Juanita.

Juanita is the frozen body of an Inca girl who lived to be approximately 12-14 years old and she died sometime between 1440 and 1450. She was discovered on Mount Ampato (part of the Andes cordillera) in Southern Peru in 1995 by anthropologist Johan Reinhard and his Peruvian climbing partner Miguel Zarate. Juanita was remarkably well-preserved after 500 years, due to being encased in a glacier for most of that time. In September 1995, during an ascent of Mt. Ampato (20,700 ft), Reinhard and Zárate found a bundle inside the crater that had fallen from an Inca site on the summit. Owing to melting caused by volcanic ash from the eruption of nearby volcano of Sabancaya, most of the Inca burial site had collapsed down a gully that led into the crater. To their astonishment, the bundle turned out to contain a remarkably well-preserved body of a young girl. In addition, they found—strewn about the mountain slope down which the body had fallen— many items that had been left as offerings to the Inca gods; these included statues and food items. A couple of days later, the body and the objects were taken to Arequipa. The body caused a sensation in the scientific world due to its well-preserved condition.

Pointing out the similarities in gender and age to our daughter, we learned about what her life could have been like as Juanita. We summarized the advantages: she would be buried with expensive artifacts and jewelry, could wear a very expensive vicuña wool garment and spend eternity with the gods. As for the disadvantages, well, there’s the death thing. During the height of the Inca Empire, sacrifices were common as way to appease the mountain gods who controlled nature. Children from all over the empire were gathered for selection in Cusco and only the most beautiful, innocent and perfect child would be chosen for the honor of going to live with the gods.

We visited Juanita at the Museo Santury on a beautiful spring day in Arequipa and she was in pretty good shape for a young girl over 500 years old. While her skin was a leathery brown, her hair was shiny and black and pulled into a tight pony-tail. The right side of her face is slightly marred due to a couple of weeks of sun exposure (the time between being jarred loose from the glacier and being discovered). For half the year she sits in the fetal position in a refrigerated glass case in Arequipa; the other half of the year she is on tour.

Anthropologists and historians have deduced that Juanita and the presiding priests walked 150 miles from Cusco and climbed the chilly Ampato volcano for the sacrificial rites. At the summit, she would have been extremely cold and was probably given a libation that put her to sleep. When the ceremony was over, she was struck with one precise blow just above the right eye that killed her instantly.

After learning all this, my daughter respectfully declined consideration for the role of sacrificial virgin. We decided to go hunt for the toasted bagel and cream cheese instead.

Finding A Swim Team In Cusco

2011-02-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

I’d love to take full credit for getting our kids onto the Cusco Swim Team but the truth is I subcontracted most of the job to company in Mountain View, California. Yes, I’m talking about Google.

Piscina Municpal in Cusco, Peru

In the latter half of 2008, I was working for a client that had purchased a bankrupt retailer and I was helping to integrate and move operations from San Francisco to San Diego. Since this transition went pretty smoothly, by November there was less and less for me to do, so I spent part of my time searching for a Peruvian swim team for my kids to join. With very few people speaking English in Peru and the fact that I hadn't spoken my intermediate-level Spanish for the previous four years, it was bound to be a challenge.

I began to spend a few hours a week Googling search terms like "swimming,” “team” and “pool,” along with “Peru”…all to no avail. I searched the same words in Spanish (“natación,” “equipo,” “piscina”), but was unable to find the results I was looking for. I looked though many websites: a Chicago personal trainer who swam competitively for a Peruvian college, a Princeton water polo player who did some volunteer work in Cusco, an American volunteer who was a high school swimmer in Trujillo, etc, etc.

Frustrated with my results, I loaded Google Earth onto my work computer and started systematically scanning the satellite photos of Cusco, Ayacucho and Arequipa – the three towns that we were targeting. While virtually soaring above the Cusco city center one afternoon, I spotted a light-blue, opaque rectangle not far from a train station. Was that a pool? Was that an indoor pool?

I quickly typed in the name of the street and district into the Google search bar along with “piscina” and “natación”. The results quickly came up and displayed a news article and accompanying video newscast about what was indeed a pool. As I slowly read the article and watched the video, I was struck by simultaneous feelings of horror and elation: horror as I read about 17 kids rushed to the hospital for inhaling excessive amounts of chlorine and elation as the newscast showed clips of a beautiful, indoor heated pool in the middle of the Andes. I justified the chlorine accident as something that could happen anywhere and gave in to the elation of finding a pool. More searching failed to turn up a swim team of any kind, however. I decided to check out the pool during my planned Peru visit in February 2009.

By February, we had narrowed our sights on Cusco and I went there for 10 days to set things up for our family. In addition to checking out Spanish schools, jobs and housing, I thought I’d take a look at the pool I’d found. On my second afternoon in Cusco, I went there and asked if there was a swim team and the woman working there gave me a definitive “no”. On the third day, I returned in the morning and a different woman told me there was a “Swimming Academy” and that I should come back at 2:00 pm in the afternoon. At 2:00 pm I talked to yet another woman who said the Swimming Academy meets early in the mornings and that I should return the next morning at 7:00 am.

Thinking that by now I should probably give up, I walked over at 7:00 am the next morning and asked again. This time, the same woman told me to wait while she brought over the coach, whose name was Cristian. I told Cristian what I was looking for and he seemed mildly interested. In colloquial and rapid-fire Spanish, he talked about practice times, swim meets and the twice-yearly TransAndean Youth Games. He asked the kids’ ages and when we would be back in Cusco and we exchanged email addresses.

In my numerous Spanish-language conversations while setting us up in Cusco, I’ve sometimes had exchanges like this that have gone nowhere. I’ve found that if people have something to gain from an interchange (i.e, shopkeeper, innkeeper, tour guide) the motivation and politeness displayed in the initial face-to-face conversation is more likely to be sustained when following up via email or telephone. With Cristian, I just didn’t know if he felt he had something to gain by our relationship.

With this in mind, I sent him an email with some apprehension once I returned home. I sent an email that clearly detailed information about us as well as the many questions we had. I decided to send the kids’ best times from the previous season to hopefully add some incentive.

A few days passed -- with me eyeing my email multiple times per day – with no response. Finally, five days after getting back to California, I received a response with an enthusiastic “hola!” in the subject line. Cristian was indeed motivated to make it happen. We exchanged emails frequently in the weeks leading up to our departure, such that the swim team became a large part of our plans in Cusco.

Why There Are No Movie Theaters In Cusco

2011-02-22T11:40:00.000-08:00

Cusco does not have a single movie theater and for a city of 320,000 people that is downright strange. Perhaps the reason can be found in a makeshift jumble of market stalls on the outskirts of Cusco; a "black market" called El Molino. During my first couple weeks in Cusco, I heard the words "El Molino" more than a few times. My Spanish teacher told me to visit El Molino for inexpensive CD's and DVD's and my landlord told me to go there for household items that we needed for our kitchen. During our first week in Cusco, my daughter and I frequented a restaurant on the Plaza de Armas called Mythology, a salsa bar-cum-restaurant that shows movies. For the price of a couple drinks or a plate of appetizers you can choose from hundreds of new DVD movies to watch while you enjoy your lomo saltado. Many of the titles come out as soon as a few weeks after their U.S. theatrical release. When I asked where they got so many brand new titles, the answer was "El Molino."

El Molino lies alongside a foul-smelling river about a 10 minute taxi ride from the Plaza de Armas. I'm told that much of the merchandise is brought in duty-free from Peru's southern-most port town of Tacna. The market itself is a collection of hundreds of small stalls with corrugated tin roofing that are jam-packed with merchandise. Look down one aisle and you'll see books, bicycles and bootleg CD's. Look down another and you'll see perfume, pinatas and pirated DVD's. Glance to the side and you'll see clothing, cameras and costume jewelry. Turn around and you'll spot hard liquor, housewares and HDTV's.

Obviously, all the DVD's are pirated; how else could you charge only 3 soles ($1) for a brand new DVD movie that just hit the theaters 3 weeks ago. With every movie title on the market available for just a dollar, who needs a movie theater?

This smorgasbord of cheap digital media does have its risks, however. As El Molino veterans, we have learned from experience what to look for when purchasing DVD's. The first thing to look for is: Does the disc have English-language audio and subtitles? Wheny we bought Steven Soderbergh's 2-disc "Che" (Guevarra) biopic and we previewed the first disc to verify that it had English-language subtitles. After enjoying the first disc about Che's role in the Cuban revolution we popped in the second disc to find that it did not have English-language subtitles. The second thing to look for mainly applies to new releases: Is it a disc-to-disc copy or was it filmed in the back row of a movie theater? Pirated versions of new releases get out quickly because someone sits in a movie theater with a digital movie camera and films it. Our kids watched "Ice Age 3" a while back and a baby started crying in the middle of the DVD soundtrack. When we bought "Transformers 2," the excitement of seeing this new release outweighed our concerns about the video and audio quality. We got home and watched about 10 minutes of it before we gave up. The action scenes were impossible to watch and understand. The third thing to look for applies to TV series: Are all the discs present? My daughter has bought four seasons of "The Office" and on two occasions, we found episodes missing.

Even with these risks, the economics of pirated DVD's means that it will be a while before we see a multiplex adorning Cusco's Plaza de Armas.

The Evolution Of A Volunteer Decision

2011-02-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

Spinning alpaca yarn at Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco

The decision to spend 6-8 months volunteering in South America was easy; deciding where and how to do it was more difficult.

Lots of volunteering organizations
My requirements for volunteering included being able to use my intermediate-level Spanish, to use my retail business consulting skills (if possible), to be part of the community that I help (if only for 6 months), and to have a sustainable impact.

Once I’d decided to volunteer in Peru, I searched the web and found various volunteer organizations and researched what they provided, what type of work was available and what costs were involved. I was happy to find that there were lots of organizations working in Peru but I was disappointed to learn that most of them required a fee of between $500-1,000 per week. I found dozens of these “voluntour” organizations, but felt that spending money to work for free didn’t feel right.

Muhammed Yunus and Microfinance
About the time that I started adding up the costs of “working for free,” I read Dr. Muhammad Yunus’ book “Banker to the Poor,” an inspiring memoir about how he created microfinance. I read about Dr. Yunus’ first experiment with $27 lent to a group of Bangladeshi women, a miniscule loan that started an industry.

As I read about Dr. Yunus’ ideas I thought about the money I might be spending at “voluntour” agencies and started to think about what that money could do if lent directly to those in need. In fact, even if they never paid the money back, I’d be no worse off than if I gave the money to a “voluntour” company. I envisioned buying a bunch of food carts for street vendors and setting them up with an initial supply of inventory.

The Idea of Sustainability
The more I thought about this, however, the more I thought about the potential obstacles – locating worthy candidates, getting ripped off, creating community jealousies and getting stonewalled by local bureaucrats -- to name a few. I was worried about sustainability and I wasn’t sure that giving away a bunch of push carts and food and then leaving after 6 months would be consistent with that. It seemed like I needed six months just to get the lay of the land and to avoid getting ripped off.

As I pondered this, I learned about the Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco, an NGO weaving cooperative run by an indigenous woman that helps nine communities in the Cusco area. They needed help with budgeting, grant requests and some financial analysis and I had made my connection with them without the benefit of a paid intermediary. (I was introduced through a Spanish Language school in Cusco). I met with the Director and I liked the idea that I’d be making an impact and that impact would continue to be felt after I left. During our meeting, she hired me and gave me a project to work on immediately.

From pondering a myriad of paid volunteer organizations to contemplating my own microfinance shop to supporting an established NGO weaving cooperative, my road to volunteering was not a straight line but one that worked out well for me.

Shooting Hoops At Two Miles High

2011-02-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

My son and daughter were breathing hard. I was breathing harder. Three-on-three pickup basketball is a good workout but if you are not used to playing at 11,000 feet, your lungs can feel like they are on fire. (more on Sunday morning pickup basketball here) The three of us were playing against three cusqueño men in their early 20’s and we led for the first 10 minutes but then the altitude started getting to us. After my son hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key and my daughter stole the ball and converted it for a layup, we were huffing and puffing and we didn’t score again, losing by a bucket.

Coach Juan talks strategy during time out

We moved off the court to make way for the next team and I plopped myself down on the grass behind the basket. A short man in a track suit came up to me and said, (in Spanish) “Good game. You should have won.” I countered with some altitude-related excuse and he said, “How old is your daughter?” “Twelve,” I replied. He was quiet for a moment and then said, “I coach a team of twelve-year old girls. We will practice in a few minutes. Does she want to join us? My daughter shyly agreed and practiced with the team. She was one of the better players, along with two twin girls. Juan the coach told her to come back for another practice. This is how my daughter joined her basketball team.

For the next few months the pattern was the same. Juan would call me a day before a practice or game and give me the name of some school where we were playing and we would rearrange our schedule to make sure she got there. Once he told us to be at a school that we’d never heard of that was around the corner from our apartment. We walked there and entered a door off San Blas square that we passed by every day and discovered there was a large school inside with a very nice outdoor basketball court in the middle of the interior courtyard.

Usually Juan would give me a time for the games and I found that I could pad those times by as much as 40 minutes. The first few times we’d show up at the time he mentioned only to wait for 45 minutes for everyone else to stroll in. (more on Tiempo Peruano here). Once the games started, it was a great experience for our daughter, who was always the only blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl on the court. Everything was communicated in Spanish so her ability to communicate colloquially improved significantly and she made some new friends. In all, she played in about a half-dozen games and just as many practices.

Within a couple months, we were due to leave Cusco. I never got Juan’s phone number (I’d always wait for his last-minute calls) and we went 2 weeks without a call from him, so we were never able to say goodbye to the team. Despite this, it was a great experience for us and particularly our daughter. She is now proficient shooting hoops at sea level as well as two miles high in the Andes.

Peruvian Fusion: Doña Pepa

2011-02-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

Doña Pepa

During our first few weeks in Cusco, my daughter took Spanish lessons at a school just off the Plaza de Armas. Quite often Patty, her teacher, would take her on walks around the city to learn Spanish through the other senses instead of only her eyes and ears in the classroom. Quite often they’d stop at a small kiosk off the plaza and buy a Doña Pepa candy bar and soon this became a ritual on their daily walks. When my daughter offered me one, I looked askance at the packaged candy covered with sprinkles and said “no thanks.” It was only later that we learned about Doña Pepa and her story.

According to legend, an Afro-Peruvian slave named Josefa Maraminillo lived in the Cañete Valley, south of the Peruvian capital of Lima and went by the name of Doña Pepa. Doña Pepa could not work because of paralysis in her arms so she prayed to the Señor de los Milagros (“Lord of the Miracles”) and traveled to Lima to view that saint's image to supplement her prayers. Allegedly, Doña Pepa was cured of paralysis on the first day of the Señor de los Milagros procession. That night she had a dream that a saint gave her a recipe for a cake. She baked the cake the following day and brought it as an offering to the procession. Since that time Doña Pepa cakes are traditionally eaten each October during the Señor de los Milagros procession.

The cake is also called a Turrón de Doña Pepa, but is different from the Spanish turrón in that it does not contain nougat. The traditional cake is flavored with anise and cane sugar and decorated with sprinkles. The candy bar that my daughter enjoys is basically a two-layered cookie covered in chocolate and dipped in sprinkles, but the wrapper bears the image of Doña Pepa. Sometimes you learn about a country’s culture from the unlikeliest sources. The one sol coin that I gave my daughter each day for her Doña Pepa has turned out to be a good investment.

Doña Pepa candy bar (courtesy of iheartcandy.com)

Why We Left Suburbia

2011-02-02T15:23:00.000-08:00

In late 2008 Congress passed what is commonly referred to as the Fiscal Stimulus Package. I haven’t read the act, but I believe that there is nothing in it that provides stimulus for the sagging spirit of the suburban American family.

Eight feet in the Andes: Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

There are swift and decisive actions in the Stimulus Package to reinvigorate a stale economy, but none to reinvigorate the day-in, day-out staleness of suburban life. There is plenty in the act to address the global financial crisis, but there’s nothing that addresses mid-life crisis. There are measures to get investors excited again about the American economy, but none to put more excitement in the lives of a suburban family from Marin County, California.

Just as the aforementioned legislation is geared to get the economy moving, our family decided to get moving…initially to Peru. Immediately following a family congress in April of 2008 we decided on the cornerstones of the first part of our Stimulus Package: volunteer, work and put down new “roots” in South America. We would later decide on the second half of this trip: a grand tour of the Mediterranean to trace the origins of western civilization.

Our principal goal was to find a sense of community in a completely foreign locale. We decided to try to find work and volunteer opportunities somewhere in the Peruvian Andes and have our two kids become proficient in Spanish. Since both kids are pretty good swimmers, we would also try to find them a swim team, to help build their language skills in a familiar environment and contribute further to a sense of community.

Certainly, the timing was right for an extended sabbatical. The economy hadn’t been this bad in decades and both my spouse and I work in cyclical industries (real estate and retail, respectively). With both of us professionally independent there was a good chance that we might not earn 6 months worth of income in the upcoming year. Some quick math showed us that continuing to toil in this manner left us financially worse off than renting out our house, volunteering and spending the next 12 months traveling the world.

This was easier said than done. Our strategy required renting out the house, home-schooling, or “road-schooling” the kids, finding a home for our dog, selling the car, canceling the cell phones and taking care of the myriad of details that go with an entrenched suburban life. We immediately launched into the planning phase and started ticking things off our list.

Although admittedly not the centerpiece of our Stimulus Package, we started to focus, like virtually every U.S. bank, on selling “troubled assets”. For example, we used Craig’s List to sell the lawnmower that hadn’t been used for 10 years, as well as the dust-covered wicker chairs that were purchased at a Williams-Sonoma sample sale 15 years ago. The government’s Stimulus Package was designed to utilize idle resources; the idea behind our Suburban Stimulus Package was to become more idle -- and less rushed -- in order to enjoy life.

This online journal will record how we made it happen and will document our progress.

Quilting Bee In The Andes

2011-01-31T10:01:00.000-08:00

Weaving Contest at CTTC in Chinchero (note the man in the background dipping into a tub of chicha)

When I’d learned that my non-profit weaving cooperative was planning to host a weaving contest the first image in my mind was a bunch of ladies speed-weaving with backstrap looms, rushing to see who could weave a quality piece the fastest. I later learned that the contest wasn’t about speed; it was about quality and village involvement. Each of the villages we support had a few months to weave a manta (Andean blanket) and many, if not all, of the members of the community were to participate. Basically, we’re talking about an Andean quilting bee.

The contest was in Chinchero and hosted by the Centro De Textiles Traditionales de Cusco (CTTC). My wife, kids, sister-in-law and I walked into the compound to see Andean ladies and gentlemen decked out in their best traditional attire with gorgeous mantas draped all around. Almost all of the mantas were stitched-together squares, a sign that villagers had worked separately on their pieces and had sewn them together at the end. When the director saw me she motioned me over and asked the village ladies to make some room on the front row bench for me while my family watched from the back. A cup of chicha was brought over to me and we watched presentations from each village on what their manta represents and how it was made. Besides the host village of Chinchero, the CTTC supports the villages of Chahuaytire, Pitumarca, Patabamba, Accha Alta, Santa Cruz de Sallac, Mahuaypampa, Santo Tomas and Acopia and each of them had mantas on display.

Each presentation was done in Quechua dialect so I had some trouble deciphering what the ladies were saying. I was impressed with the fact that in addition to supporting these villages with aid, health care and providing a market for their textiles, CTTC was also grooming leaders who could speak up and address a crowd and be an advocate for their village.

After a few more speeches, the director got up and delivered the results, with various categories to ensure that each village won some kind of award. As each village picked up their award, pride was evident on their faces. Nilda the director spoke in Quechhua and Spanish and was a commanding presence on the makeshift podium. She is from the village of Chinchero herself and has been successful at drawing foreign financial aid and volunteers to keep the CTTC going. Perhaps one of the ladies presenting that day will be her successor.

The Pisac Piper

2011-01-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

The Pisac Piper (note the stone steps in the wall)

We began our walk down through the terraced fortress ruins of Pisac and I thought I kept hearing the sounds of pipe music. The ruins are from the time of the Incas and are perched on the top of a mountain above the Urubamba River and the Sacred Valley. The ruin’s most striking feature is the system of steep agricultural terraces that descend and wrap around the mountain, almost all the way to the Urubamba River. The Pisac ruins were built by the Incas for military, religious and agricultural reasons and the terraces were the result of hauling topsoil up from the valley floor. From the height of the ruins to the valley floor is approximately 4,000 feet and it takes 3-4 hours to walk down.

We walked past the baths and temple complex and the pipe music got louder. It was late afternoon and the sun was starting to go down and we were some of the last people walking down the mountain. We took a break and admired the stone work of the terraced retaining walls and the protruding stone steps (see photo above) that enabled moving from one level to the other without undermining structural integrity. Just then the piper appeared to our side. He stood above a stone retaining wall, wore a dirty chullo and poncho and sandals and concentrated on his music. He played a single-cylinder flute and not the pan pipes that are so common in the Andes. His music floated out and seemed to descend to the valley floor.

Pisac is visited by many tourists so despite the beauty of his music, I felt that at some point he would approach us, chullo in hand, looking for money, but he never came near us, nor acknowledged our presence. The Pisac Piper seemed content to simply share his beautiful music.

Moray: The Sacred Laboratory Of The Incas

2011-01-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

Moray Ruins in Peru

Not far from the salt pans of Salinas (see The Salt Pans of Salinas, Peru) are a complex of three large, circular, terraced craters known as Moray, an unusual Incan archaeological site just off the dusty Peruvian plateau. The amphitheatre-like depressions are about 50 kilometers northwest of Cusco, just down the road from the small town of Maras and 600 meters above Urubamba and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. The consensus on the site is that it was some kind of experimental area for improving crop yield. You could call it the Sacred Laboratory of the Incas.

Arriving at the Moray site is quite an experience. We walked to the edge of the plateau and looked down to the lowest, innermost, concentric circle in the largest depression – a distance of about 100 meters. We walked down the crude, stone steps carefully, as the height of each terrace was about six feet. (see short video below) From the top of the plateau to the bottom of the largest depression took us about 30 minutes of walking.

Like the Romans, the Incas conquered and assimilated a great many tribes in their sphere of influence. Much of this was aided by the Inca road network, which helped communication, trade and political administration. In addition to subduing conquered tribes and plundering, it appears that the Incas were interested in science as well.

The site was apparently designed by the Incas to take advantage of the natural depressions below the level plain and duplicate Andean, jungle and semi-tropical environments for the growth of various plant species. Pollen studies indicate that soils from each of these regions was imported by the Incas to each of the large circular basins. In the largest crater, there is a network of water channels that reach the bottom that were used to irrigate the experimental crops. The depth and orientation of the craters with respect to wind and sun creates a temperature difference of as much as 15 °C (27 °F) between the top and bottom. The theory is that the large temperature difference was possibly used by the Incas to study the effects of different climatic conditions on crops. It is believed that the Incas could grow over 250 plant species at Moray.

We climbed out of the main crater and huffed and puffed our way back to the top. We looked back down and in my mind I superimposed vegetation over the terraces and Inca scientists taking measurements and recording observations. The Incas were around for less than 100 years prior to Spanish conquest but they accomplished a lot during that time. Watching tourists climb in and out of the Sacred Laboratory of the Incas, I wondered what Peru might be like today if the Incas had not run into the guns, germs and steel of the Spanish.

The Salt Pans Of Salinas, Peru

2011-01-16T09:34:00.000-08:00

Salinas Salt Pans (Sacred Valley in the background)

We drove along a dusty road high above the Sacred Valley, on our way to visit Salinas, the intricately-terraced, salt pans which have produced hundreds of pounds of salt every month since before the time of the Incas. We slowly bumped along a dusty road lined with large cacti and admired the snow-capped Andes. I’d seen photos of the brilliant-white salt pans but at this moment nothing in this landscape dominated by glaciers, dust and cacti looked remotely like the image in my mind.

We took a left turn and started to descend into a small narrow valley feeding directly into the Vilcanote River and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. With each hairpin turn we lowered into the valley until the salt pans came into view: a couple-thousand, large and bright-white salt pools, cascading and melting down the side of an otherwise brown valley. From the distance, it was as if someone slathered white icing on the sides of the valley with an overloaded cake spatula. We finally arrived and parked near the entrance to the site.

Up close, we could appreciate the engineering details of the centuries-old salt extraction technique. The pools are fed by salty, subterranean water from deep within the mountain plateau. Intricate canals direct the water from pool to pool, allowing the sun to evaporate the water (is it any wonder the Incas worshipped the sun?) and leave thick layers of salt to be extracted by humans. The entire process from filling a pool to extracting salt takes about a month.

We hiked along a path in the middle of the terraces, stopping to admire the pools and allowing our kids to give the salty water a taste. We watched workers with large plastic pans scoop the salt from the dry pools in the hot sun. The pools are on average 250 square-feet in size and each one is a slightly different color depending on where it is in the evaporation process: from muddy brown to beige to off white to a brilliant, eye-popping white.

We spent about an hour walking around the site and climbed back up the narrow valley until we were back on the dusty plateau and on our way to Cusco. For me, the appeal of Salinas is the stark contrast between the salt pans and the surrounding landscape. The blinding white image of sun-dried salt set amongst an arid, dusty terrain is an image that will stay with me.

Volleyball In The Sacred Valley

2011-01-13T10:32:00.000-08:00

When I started my volunteer job in Cusco, Peru I was a bit tentative around the office. My Spanish was fairly good and I had the daily greetings down, but it wasn’t good enough to walk up to someone and “shoot the breeze” for any length of time. In other words, in Spanish I could say “Good morning,” “How are you?” and “How was your weekend?” but if the conversation got beyond that, I ran into trouble. As a result, I tended to keep my head down and do my work and only talk to someone when they talked to me. Over time this improved greatly but early on, it was a challenge. The biggest help in the first couple weeks was an office outing to play volleyball.

At the Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco (CTTC), my role was basically as a pro bono consultant and I worked on projects with the three senior-most people in the office. There were about 20 people in the office, most of them one-person departments working on things like answering the phone (really!), researching natural dyes, accounting, computer technology, shipping & receiving and repairing textiles with the 1950's-era Singer sewing machine.

We combined our teambuilding/volleyball outing with a visit to the El Senor de Huanca shrine to bless the center’s new SUV and an office picnic. The twenty of us, including my daughter, rolled out of Cusco in two minivans and towards the Sacred Valley. After the blessing ceremony and the picnic, we went to Laguna Huacarpay and drove around looking for a flat spot to set up the volleyball net. We drove by indigenous farmers threshing grain on the newly paved road. They didn’t seem to mind us driving right over the grain and perhaps we were unwitting participants in the process.

We found a nice flat spot next to Laguna Huacarpay, with a flat meadow bordered by reeds from the lake. The Andes loomed large behind us, just like the bleachers at a sporting event. In the lake, fisherman in ancient reed boats competed with pintails, coots, gulls and blackbirds for fish. A herd of sheep and goats grazed near our makeshift court.

While we played a half-dozen games in that beautiful setting, the personalities of my office mates began to emerge. The self-assured office manager was a complete klutz, the two men who worked in shipping & receiving wore soccer jerseys and were good athletes and very competitive. The taciturn accountant -- once she was outside the office -- was talkative, positive (“good shot”) and smiled a lot while playing. The camaraderie was fun and “high-fives” were exchanged after every shot.

On Monday in the office, I lingered about the workspace of the soccer players, asking them if they still play soccer and whether they were good enough to make the local professional team. I complimented the accountant on her game, joking that her vocal support on the court warranted MVP consideration. I teased the office manager that she was clearly the worst volleyball player I had ever seen. From then on, I began to know my office mates a little better and could always drop a volleyball anecdote into our conversation when my Spanish faltered.

Top 10 Travel Tools

2011-01-07T12:54:00.000-08:00

Space is a scarce commodity in your backpack if you are traveling for an extended period of time. That means that everything must have a good reason to be there – or, better yet, multiple reasons to be there. Here’s our family’s top 10 list for travel tools.

#1: IPod Touch or IPhone: You don’t need an introduction to this item unless you’ve been a troglodyte for the past 5 years. We don’t carry a phone while traveling, but we do take the IPod Touch. It has all your music in one place, movies to watch on long bus trips, thousands of game apps to keep the kids entertained (Thank you Angry Birds, Pocket God, Cube Runner and Doodle Jump), and a browser to surf the web and email if you find a hotspot. You can even make phone calls using the Skype app. (For more on Skype, read “Skype: Indispensible Travel Tool”)

#2: Swiss Army Knife: Some of the things you’ll find on my favorite 21-function knife are scissors, corkscrew, magnifying glass, pliers, toothpick, flashlight, tweezers, can opener, bottle opener and a knife: all have been used multiple times on our travels.

#3: Bandana: It’s your sweatband for long treks, your tourniquet if case you have a serious laceration, your blindfold if you need to sleep in a well-lit place, your washcloth if your face is dirty and your facemask on long dusty rides in the back of a pick-up truck.

#4: Dental Floss: Not only can you floss your teeth, you can use it as an emergency shoelace, sew a torn article of clothing for a quick fix or dry your clothes on your makeshift clothesline.

#5: Miner’s flashlight: Do you want to read but the overhead light in your budget hotel room is less than 10 watts? Are you sharing a room with others and they all want to go to sleep but you want to read or write? Are you carrying bags in both hands and walking somewhere in the dark? The miner’s flashlight with headband is your answer.

#6: Zip-loc bags: You can keep things organized, clean and separate. They are hard to find in the developing world and if you are self-catering and carrying some food with you, there is no substitute.

#7: Tevas: You can wear your Velcro-strapped sandals in the rain or on the trail. They are lightweight, wash easily and are super comfortable. You can wear them in the shower if it looks like there may be diseases lurking on the bathroom floor.

#8: Earplugs: Is your hotel room on a busy street or next to a mosque? Are you sleeping in a dorm room of a hostel? Have you realized too late that you are sitting directly under the speaker of an overnight bus that plays loud music all night? Are the rest of your family members not tired enough to go to sleep yet? Bring your earplugs and all these troubles melt away.

#9: Immersion Heater: Sometimes nothing will make you feel more civilized than a hot cup of tea. With an immersion heater, you can have boiling water in one minute in a bus station, a hotel room, even on a train. For more on immersion heaters read “Civilization in a Cup.”

#10: Travel cable lock: Are you in a bus station and need to buy snacks for the ride, without worrying about someone snatching your bag? Are you afraid someone might pinch your backpack from the overhead bin on your all-night bus ride when you go to sleep? Do you want to make sure that no one from your dodgy hotel steals your bag while you’re out of your room? Whip out your cable lock and attach your bag(s) to something permanently fastened and get about your business.

What are your favorite travel tools?

Our Top 10 Travel Movies in 2010

2010-12-31T14:39:00.000-08:00

As a companion piece to the last blog entry on our Top 10 Literary Travel Books of 2010, I present our family’s Best Travel Movies of 2010. These are not the best movies we’ve seen, nor are they the best travel movies out there; they are the ten movies that most enhanced our family’s travel experience. (Present-day country in parentheses)

#1: HBO’s Rome (2005 - 24 episodes) (Italy): This two-season HBO series is not a movie but we saw nothing in the last year that educated us more…nor was more entertaining. From Julius Caesar’s rise to the fall of Antony and Cleopatra, we were captivated by every hour of this series that covered the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire. The characters were well-drawn and the acting excellent, with the added benefit that our kids now know their Cato from their Cicero. (For more on why our 14 and 12 year old kids were even watching this, go here)

#2: The Devil’s Miner (2005) (Bolivia): This little-known documentary is the story of 14-year old Basilio who works in the Potosi silver mine to support his family when his father dies. Taking a tour of the Potosi mine is harrowing and claustrophobic but this movie will put a human face on the experience. The movie is hard to find but available from sidewalk pirate-DVD sellers all over Bolivia. The title comes from the manner in which all the miners make offerings to the “devil of the mine,” the shrine that serves as an everpresent reminder that death can happen any at minute.

#3: The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) (South America): Gael Garcia Bernal stars as Che Guevara in his 1952 motorcycle tour of South America with his buddy Alberto. The Andean scenery and Gustavo Santaolalla’s music is a perfect backdrop for Che’s political awakening; the scene where he shares a campfire with Chilean miners and learns of their exploitation is particularly well done.

#4: The Dancer Upstairs (2002) (Peru): Another little-known movie which is directed by John Malkovich and is based loosely on the hunt and capture of Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman.(the movie makes no mention of Peru, Guzman or the Sendero Luminoso) Javier Bardem does a nice job as the lead detective and the movie gives you a sense of the tenseness and terror in Lima in the 1980’s during the time of the Sendero Luminoso.

#5: The Merchant of Venice (2004) Italy): Al Pacino does a creditable job as Shylock in this Shakespeare classic directed by Michael Radford. The story gives you an idea of what being a Jew was like in 16th century Venice, even though Shakespeare never set foot on Italian soil.

#6: Creation (2009) (South America, Galapagos): A recent movie about Charles Darwin’s relationship with his eldest daughter and how her death affected him. The movie portrays his internal conflict between religion and his scientific findings and it implies that his daughter’s death helped push him towards science. Many of his scientific ideas came from his 1835 visit to the Galapagos.

#7: Out of Africa (1985) (Kenya): Less about east Africa than about the colonial experience in Kenya, Redford and Streep play out their star roles amidst the beautiful Kenyan landscape. Based on the very good Isak Dinneson book of the same name.

#8: Roman Holiday (1953) Italy): A fun and light romp through the Eternal City with Gregory Peck as a reporter and Audrey Hepburn as a visiting Princess. Beautiful black and white cinematography.

#9: Alexander (2004) (Greece and Turkey): Not the greatest of movies and I’m not a Colin Farrell fan but it gives a good overview of Alexander’s short life. Alexander’s relationship with his generals (Ptolemy, Antigonus, Antipater, Seleucis, et al. ) who would carve up his empire after his death was of special interest.

#10: Troy (2004) (Turkey, Greece): Again not a great movie but an entertaining way to learn about Homer’s account of the united Greek city-states’ assault on Troy.

Top 10 Literary Travel Books of 2010

2010-12-27T23:45:00.000-08:00

One of the pleasures of travel is reading a good book set in the country you are visiting. A well-written book adds context to the things that you are seeing everyday and allows you to understand more of the culture. David Bennett at Quillcards, left a comment on this blog when talking about how learning about a country enhances your experience of it. He used the phrase “knowledge puts depth into a flat landscape,” which I think is a great way to sum it up. In that vein, I present our family’s top 10 Literary Travel books of 2010, books that most enhanced our travel experience. (present day country in parentheses)

#1: Birds Without Wings, by Louis de Bernieres (Turkey): I can think of few fictional books that combine a great story with a complete history lesson, the lesson in this case, the Ottoman Empire's collapse and Turkey’s entry into the modern world just after World War I. There are twists, turns, paradoxes, dilemmas, contradictions and all of them set amongst story that won't allow you to put the book down.

#2: Midaq Alley by Naguib Mafouz (Egypt): A story of intersecting lives amongst the impoverished class in the heart of Islamic Cairo, Nobel Prize winner Mafouz tells a great story and made us feel like another dimension was added to the people we met while in Egypt. We were inspred to visit the eponymous alley while in Cairo.

#3: The Last Days of The Incas, by Kim MacQuarrie (Peru): A complete story of the Spanish conquest of the Incas. The initial battle scene of Pizarro and Atuhualpa in Cajamarca and the siege on Cusco are fascinating. Almost nothing remains in Cajamarca, so reading this book was essential to understanding this northern Peru city.

#4: The Agony and the Ecstasy, by Irving Stone (Italy): The fictional biography of Michelangelo’s life, Stone does a solid job of giving the reader insight into the mind of a master sculptor. We read this prior to spending a month in Florence.

#5: Pompeii, by Robert Harris (Italy): Harris gives the reader a sense of the chaos, confusion and politics that accompanied the eruption of Vesuvius, told from the point of view of the engineer responsible for the aqueducts. As we walked through the Pompeii ruins, we thought about the widespread panic portrayed in the book.

#6: The Camel Bookmobile, by Masha Hamilton (Kenya): The story of a New York woman who helps bring books to a remote Kenyan village on the Sudanese border. As we drove through the remote Kenyan countryside, we had a better idea of what went on in each of the villages. This book raised a question that our kids had not thought about before: Is literacy always a good thing?

#7: Death In The Andes, by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru): A story about some killings in a remote Andean community. The police are sure it was the work of the Sendero Luminoso but the locals suspect pishtacos (mythological boogeyman). A great introduction to the two main sides of the Peruvian character.

#8: Voyage Of The Beagle, by Charles Darwin (South America, the Galapagos): Darwin’s account of his South American voyage, where many of his ideas about evolution and natural selection were formed. I found it interesting how he relentlessly compared and categorized the things that he saw.

#9: Incantation, by Alice Hoffman (Spain): A story about a young teenage girl who slowly finds out that she is Jewish during the time of the Inquisition. The book gave our kids a good idea of what that would be like.

#10: Julius Caesar, by Phillip Freeman (Italy): A solid biography of Julius Caesar that highlights his military prowess and his ability to motivate his soldiers.

Chullo Confidential

2010-12-22T06:12:00.000-08:00

I really want to like the chullo. The South American woven hat with pointed top and long earflaps is perfect head gear for the frigid Andes and those snowboarders look so cool in them, but unless I'm freezing my butt off, it’s just a little too uncomfortable. Verilyn Klinkenborg, in her New York Times editorial “Season of the Chullo” said, “If there’s a political statement in the chullo, it’s a little hard to decipher. Perhaps it signals indigenousness, international-ness. But what it mostly says is, I don’t care how I look as long as I’m warm.” The chullo may not be the most flattering hat in the world but it does keep me warm.

It keeps me warm but once I move inside, I’m too hot and I’m dying to take it off. This leads to another problem: the after-effects of wearing the chullo. I don’t know the what the literal Quechua translation of chullo is, but I’ll venture to say it means “that which promotes hat hair.” Keep that trendy chullo on for just fifteen minutes and your hair will smashed on one side and pointing straight up on the other and you’ll have no choice but to wear it for the remainder of the day.

I love watching a proud indigenous man wearing his chullo while strolling through Cusco. I want a piece of his certainty, his simplicity, his heritage. I also want others to note my savoir-faire and my been there done that-ness. Since I’ve worked with Andean weavers I know the difference between an authentic chullo and one made for tourists. This knowledge brings a simple equation: the more authentic the chullo, the scratchier it is, as higher end chullos use alpaca wool and the lower end uses sheep wool or synthetic materials.

Basically, it needs to be very cold out for the chullo to make sense. It’s a great hat for cold climes but it doesn’t translate well to warmer weather. Klinkenborg comments in the same New York Times article, “Perhaps the anti-stylishness of the chullo — its simple functionality — is its politics. The fact is that really cold weather eclipses style.”

Bolivian Bowler Hats

2010-12-20T07:26:00.000-08:00

I’m sure Thomas and William Bowler had no idea that the hat they created back in 1849 for English gentlemen on horseback would be a South American fashion statement amongst Andean indigenous women. Walk the streets of La Paz, Bolivia and one of the first things you’ll notice are the cholitas, the indigenous Aymara women with bowler hats perched on their heads. They sell just about anything from street corners; during the first hour of our La Paz walking tour we saw them selling soap, meat, stuffed animals, onions and dried llama fetuses. When we popped in to see a Harry Potter movie that night we bought some popcorn from one of the cholitas lined up in front of the theater. They each wore layers of petticoats over shiny skirts with a shawl covering their shoulders. Each of them had long black hair braided into waist-length pigtails with bowler hat balancing on top of their heads.

There does not seem to be a clear consensus on how the bowler hat got to South America and why these women adopted it. One story relates an accidental surplus of the hats, leading the manufacturer to market them to women. Another story says that they were made for British railway workers here in the early 20th century. Yet another story relates that there was no surplus of the hats, they just made them too small for the Europeans so they were given away to locals. One thing is certain; the hats do not fit properly. They are all too small and must be balanced on the head or if you’re cholita who cheats, a bobby pin can be used.

The Bowler brothers designed the hat 160 years ago so that gentleman horseback riders in the English countryside would have an alternative to the top hat which was often knocked off by low-hanging branches while riding. While the origins of the Bowler hat are steeped in functionality, its current usage in the Andes is not. It does not fit well, it doesn’t provide shelter from sun or rain and the felt is not particularly waterproof. Despite this, the Bowler hat is a Bolivian fashion statement.

Peruvian Fusion: Andean Good Luck Charm

2010-12-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

If you walk through towns in the Andean region around Cusco one of the things you’ll see on many rooftops is a pair of ceramic bulls. It’s said that these bulls bring good luck, keep the house safe and ensure health and wealth for the family that lives there. We’ve seen the bulls all over Cusco and in towns like Pisac, Chinchero and Ollantaytambo.

The bulls come from Pucara, an area between Cusco and Puno, and are called toritos de Pucara. These figurines were originally made as ritual elements of a cattle-branding ceremony. The bull figure, which is also a flask, was used to hold the chicha (fermented corn beer) and mixed with the blood of cattle and drunk by the high priest conducting the ceremony. The bulls are always placed on the roof so that they have a view of the apus, the mountains gods revered by the Incas. Given that Spaniards brought over cattle to the New World, it’s safe to say this ceremony and the toritos are not Pre-Inca and yet another example of New World culture fusing with the Old World.

While two bulls on a roof are pretty consistent, what accompanies them varies quite a bit. Often there is a cross and occasionally a ladder, which will help the family members get to heaven. At various times I’ve seen Peruvian flags, doves, horseshoes, parrots, roosters and even shovels accompanying the bulls.

Towards the end of our stay in Cusco my wife hunted for a pair of these bulls to bring back home and put on the roof our house back home in California, but our search turned up empty. We now have a good reason to come back.

Kids Volunteering In Cusco

2010-12-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

Aside from getting drilled in Spanish five hours a day, doing their homeschooling/distance learning and swimming on the Cusco swim team, both our kids had regular volunteer jobs during our time in Cusco. After their Spanish class, both would walk through San Blas to their jobs at Colibri, a shelter for street kids and children of single-parents with no place to go in the afternoons. Many of the kids worked as shoe shine boys and some of the girls sold gum or woven finger puppets in the Plaza de Armas in order to supplement the family income.

Once our kids arrived each day, they were greeted by Senor Alcides, the director, and his assistant, along with a dozen young kids who come up to hug them and greet them. Our kids’ main role was to play Monopoly or card games with the kids, do art projects, help them with their homework (usually math or English) and play futbol with them. Many of the local Spanish language schools sent adult students over for one or two week stints, so during their three month tenure our 14- and 12-year old kids got to meet and work with people from Australia, Sweden, England, France, South Africa and other countries.

About a month after starting with Colibri, and hearing our kids complain about how tattered and beat up the board games and sporting equipment were, our family had the idea of trying to raise some money for the shelter. There were no basketballs, the monopoly game was missing a bunch of pieces and they were in desperate need of school supplies. The kids wrote up a proposal outlining what was needed and how much it would cost along with a description of the shelter and some photos and we thought about who to send it to. We decided they should send it to my group of neighborhood basketball-playing dads back home who hold a tournament each year and raise money for sports and youth-related causes. Within two days, the group responded and said they would be happy to donate $300 for sporting goods and school supplies.

Here is the body of the thank you letter they wrote:

We are writing to you guys to thank you for your generous donation of $300 dollars to the Colibri Organization, in Cusco, Peru.

Colibri is an after school program for kids when their parents are at work or they do not have parents. It is a police sponsored program designed to give kids a safe place to be off the street. We work at Colibri for two hours a day after Spanish class. When we go to Colibri, we help with homework and often take the kids up to a park five minutes away and play basketball, soccer and games with them. The kids are very smart and are very nice. Their ages range from 5 to 14.

Your donation of $300 to Colibri will be spent on new basketballs, soccer balls, notebooks, pencils, colored pencils, and food. The kids at Colibri don't have very much stuff and it’s really sad to see them playing basketball with a beat-up old soccer ball. We can assure you that your money will be spent on worth-while things. The kids at Colibri are very happy and very grateful.

Once we received the money, we went to El Molino, the discount shopper’s paradise in Cusco, and bought everything, taking care to record how much was spent on each item and giving a full accounting of the donated funds. The kids listed all the expenses in a spreadsheet and sent some photos back to the basketball dads’ group, showing them how their money was spent.

The kids’ time at Colibri was extremely rewarding and the biggest treat for us came whenever our family walked through the Plaza de Armas. Quite often while crossing the main square, we’d hear small children call out our kids’ names, come running over and give them hugs. Who says they weren’t getting compensated for their time?

Drinking Chicha In The Sacred Valley

2010-12-01T18:31:00.000-08:00

We’d been living in Cusco for a while and I had read and heard about chicha, the fermented corn drink that is popular in southern Peru. I’d occasionally looked for it on restaurant menus but never saw it. I'd heard that the locals drank a lot of the pale, milky, straw-colored drink at important festivals and occasions, but for my first month in Peru I never saw anyone drinking it.

One day as we were driving in the Sacred Valley, I noticed that each village had at least a half dozen mud homes with red plastic bags attached to bamboo poles above their doors. There were too many of them not to be some kind of local sign. I asked our driver what they were and he said “chicherias.” So that’s where they were imbibing the chicha! (The picture here is the front of a chicheria in Ollantaytambo) I later learned that chicherias can be identified in southern Peru by either a red flag, a bouquet of flowers, ribbons or plastic bags affixed to bamboo poles. Typically, a family will mix up a big batch, set up some tables in a spare room of the house and raise the bamboo pole for a little extra income. Chicha is prepared from a specific kind of yellow maize called jora and it has a slightly sour aftertaste.

We tried some that weekend, not in someone’s house but at a weaving contest that my NGO was hosting. I steeled myself as they ladled me a glass of the slightly alcoholic drink that looks a lot like, well…spit. I intentionally spilled a bit on the ground as an offering to the pacahmama and tried it. (Okay, maybe it was kind of a big offering) The aftertaste was indeed sour and I vainly struggled to identify any type of corn taste. I proudly downed my cup and brought over some to my family, who each took a sip and wanted no more.

While regular chicha de jora was not to our liking, we all enjoyed chicha morada and towards the end of our stay in Cusco, started making batches of it from boiling purple corn cobs, pineapple rinds, and spices. We did not make chicha de jora.

This post was part of the Lonely Planet Blogsherpa carnival "Toasting Around the Globe" from Orange Polka Dot.

Cusco, Peru: Mate De Coca, Anyone?

2010-11-24T07:08:00.000-08:00

The Red Bull of the Andes

You have just arrived in Cusco, Peru at 10,800 feet, which is probably two miles above wherever you’ve come from. You head straight to the Plaza de Armas, the center of Cusco, which is the center of the Incan Empire, because you don’t want to walk anymore. You’re huffing and puffing up the stairs to a restaurant with a balcony on the plaza and every three or four steps you stop to regain your breath. From your seat on the balcony overlooking the plaza, your waitress brings you your mate de coca, your coca leaf tea. It tastes a little like Japanese green tea with a hint of menthol and it goes down easy, its warmth counteracting the chill in the air. After a few minutes you realize that your heavy breathing has abated and that dull pain in the back of your head is now gone. It’s not an alcoholic buzz, but you definitely feel better, sharper, more yourself. Two women in indigenous dress pull llamas in front of La Catedral down below you. As you look at life go by from above the plaza, you think about how this ritual has been done for centuries here in the center of the Andes. You take another sip and give in to the acclimatization process. There is no better way to spend your first few hours in Cusco.

This post was part of the Lonely Planet Blogsherpa carnival "Toasting Around the Globe" from Orange Polka Dot.

Peruvian Cuy: Pets or Meat?

2010-11-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

In Michael Moore’s 1989 film “Roger & Me” there is a scene in which a woman in Flint, Michigan has a sign in her yard next to a cage of rabbits that says “Rabbits Bunnies Pets or Meat For Sale.” The film blames General Motors chairman Roger Smith for Flint’s economic decline and this scene is supposed to show the desperation that Flint residents have stooped to: they’re so hungry that they’re eating their pets!

Pets or meat? The answer depends on where you are. Take the guinea pig for example. In the United States and Europe the answer is pets. If you are in the South American Andes, the answer is meat. Before the Spaniards arrived with cows, goats, pigs and chickens, the main sources of animal protein in the Andes were llamas, alpacas and cuy, the Quechua name for guinea pig. With animal protein sources scarce, the pre-Columbian indigenous people did what they had to do to survive. If you are invited over to someone's house for a special occasion while in Peru, undoubtedly you will be served cuy.

The picture here is of my plate of roasted cuy over a rocota rellena (stuffed pepper) with some papas (potatoes) on the side. My little fella has an aji (chile pepper) in his mouth and sports a dandy little pepper and huacatay herb hat. Cuy has a chicken-like taste with lots of little bones and I wonder if I lost more calories searching and picking out bones than I gained by eating my dinner.

Volunteering In Cusco: A Day At The Office

2010-11-17T08:46:00.001-08:00

What’s it like to be a volunteer in Cusco, Peru?

A typical day starts with breakfast with the family and out the door by 8:30 am when Patty, the kids’ Spanish teacher arrives for their five hour lesson. I walk along the mortar-less Inca walls towards the Plaza de Armas and observe the day beginning in the ancient Incan capital. The women who work at the produce market push carts with large sacks of fresh fruits and vegetables, a woman in indigenous dress hangs handbags and blouses outside her store and down one alley, a man relieves himself against ancient stones.

I pass by a busload of tourists waiting to visit the famous Korikancha and as I approach my work, the Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco (CTTC), I say hello to the man who sells candy in front of the building and then I’m buzzed into the front entrance. There are about a dozen people who work in the main office which sits above the retail store and museum on Avenida El Sol, and I have to greet each one with a “Buenos dias” and a kiss on the cheek. My office is basically a picnic bench in a communal area that is frequently where indigenous women weave, crochet and spin yarn with their babies eyeing everything from the slings on their backs. The women are genial, speak a bit of Spanish and all smell like they’ve slept in a cornfield. Most of the mothers look like they are 15 years old and will drop everything and lift up their blouse to breastfeed when their babies start crying. Sometimes they let their infants crawl around on the dirty floor and I’ll occasionally be working when I feel a tug on my leg.

I boot up my laptop and inevitably have to re-start the wireless internet router which dangles precariously from a loose nail high on the wall. I’ll then make some manzanillo tea from the tea and coffee station outside the Director’s office. Since I typically leave by early afternoon each day, Jenny or Paula usually come by to tell me what I’ve missed the previous afternoon. My main project is to budget a large conference for weavers that the CTTC wants to host. Everything they want to plan is in a large spreadsheet on my laptop, and every time there is a change of plan, I have to make sure that it is reflected in the budget.

By mid-morning, I’ve done a little work and had a 5-10 minute chat with most of my co-workers and I go outside and walk around the corner to the bakery and buy a dozen warm onion rolls, fresh from the oven. I’ll lay them out in the communal area and they will quickly disappear.

Much of my work is impromptu projects that require financial analysis. Jenny will often come by with a request, like “Senor Jason, we have to ask for money and the foundation wants financial statements. Can you do this?” or “We need an insurance policy for our antique textile collection, but we have no idea how much it should be…can you help us?” The combination of my budgeting work for the weavers’ conference and requests like these always keep me busy.

By one or two O’clock my day is done and pack up my laptop, say my “hasta luegos” and start walking home to my apartment. Typically I will pick up some bread at the bakery or some causa (a delicious savory, potato pie filled with chicken and avocado) at a deli around the corner. As I walk into our apartment for our late lunch, Patty is wrapping up Spanish class with the kids. So goes another working day for a volunteer in Cusco.

Swim Meet in Cusco? Bring Your Lawyer

2010-11-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

The time had finally come. Our kids had dutifully practiced for months without a competitive swim meet and now was their chance. The Campeonato de Natacion, the annual city-wide swim championships, was taking place in Cusco and our kids were ready.

For a while, it seemed like we’d never have a swim meet. In the first few months coach Cristian rattled off a list of swim meets that the kids would be in – Quillabamba, Arequipa, Pisac – but we later realized that without enrollment in the collegio school system, they could not participate. The first swim meet the kids could swim in was the Transandina Youth Games, the international games for the Andean countries of Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile that happen once a year. We had timed our arrival in Cusco to make sure that the kids had a chance to qualify, but the day after the qualifying trials, we were told that the meet was postponed because of Dengue Fever. Six weeks went by and Cristian told us about an upcoming meet in Arequipa and we eagerly made preparations to attend. After making our hotel reservations and only a few days prior to the event, Cristian told us that the meet had been canceled due to concerns over the Swine Flu.

We put all this behind us and enjoyed a long Saturday of swimming at the Piscina Municipal de Wanchaq. Our kids are competitive swimmers so we expected them to do well, but we were here for the sense of community and the chance to meet other parents and improve our Spanish. My son won his 100 meter breast stroke race by half a pool length and received his gold medal on the medal stand while local newspaper photographers took his picture with the silver and bronze medalists. By the end of the day, both kids would earn 3 gold medals each and thoroughly enjoy the day.

Everything went smoothly but there was one incident in the late afternoon that caused a small delay to the proceedings. Two twin girls who also happened to be on my daughter’s basketball team were competing and one was involved in a small controversy. The parents of the twins were both lawyers who were very genial and financially well off by Peruvian standards. The father greeted and bantered with the mayor as he entered and settled into a chair, using his video camera to capture his girls’ successes. After one of the races, in which one of the twins narrowly missed a bronze medal, there was a long discussion between her father, the meet chairman and the mayor, all of whom were studying a playback on the father’s video recorder. While they were talking, the first three finishers stood on the medal stand and received their prizes.

After the awards were given and another 10 minutes of studying the video camera, an announcement was made that his daughter, who originally came in fourth place, was now the third place finisher and they had a separate medal ceremony for her to receive her bronze medal. Apparently, the father had used his video camera to disqualify one of the top three finishers and get his daughter a medal.

Despite this awkward display of favoritism, the meet went very well and it was a long and enjoyable day. We had thought about altering our schedule to have the kids complete in the rescheduled Transandina Games in Argentina, but we were concerned that it might again be cancelled. We considered going but in the end we opted not to and this was a good decision: it was canceled.

Surf's Up! Sandboarding At The Huacachina Oasis

2010-11-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

We arrived in the unattractive town of Ica after a long, hot bus ride along the Pan American highway from Nazca. We planned to completely bypass the town of Ica and take a taxi five kilometers southwest to Huacachina, a picturesque oasis dotted with palm trees and surrounded by huge sand dunes, some of which get to 700 feet in height. As we drove to Huacachina, the hot, dusty commercial landscape of Ica gradually gave way to the sand dunes that lie outside the city. Our plan was to enjoy the oasis, then take a dune buggy tour of the sand dunes and do some sandboarding the next day.

The next morning we organized a tour and got started before the weather became unbearably hot. After cresting a tall dune, we stood above the village of Huacachina and saw nothing but white sand for miles and miles. Peru’s biodiverse terrain never ceased to amaze us: Amazon jungle, Andes mountains, Pacific Ocean coastline and arid desert. We were about 200 miles south of Lima and 30 miles from the ocean but felt like we were in the middle of the Sahara desert. About a hundred miles to the south stood Cerro Blanco, the highest sand dune in the world, some 6,561 feet above sea level.

Huacachina was interesting for its physical geography and contrast to the nearby commercial and agricultural center of Ica, but it was also a little strange. The lagoon in the center of the village was a murky dark green color and smelled a little putrid. I’d heard that many residents had installed wells and the resulting low water level of the lagoon had to be offset by bringing in water from elsewhere. The two days we were there many of the businesses were closed and the entire town was geared towards tourism. It was an odd mix of Peruvian weekenders sitting around a smelly lagoon and backpackers wielding sand boards.

Riding the dune buggy was a blast. Ours was a brand new buggy with a red chassis and bright yellow bars encircling the riders. We sat in protective seats that resembled portable infant car seats with multiple straps that attach in front of the chest. The yellow bars surrounding much of the vehicle made the dune buggy look like a big yellow, egg-shaped cage on wheels. We zipped up and down the dunes and our kids squealed with delight. Our driver climbed up one of the taller dunes, rested for a moment to admire the view then plunged straight down the other side, causing us to tighten our stomachs and hold our collective breath.

The sandboarding was not as fun as riding the dune buggy. Our driver gave us a quick introduction by telling us to lie face down on the board and slide down a dune. After a couple times doing this we tried it standing up with mixed results. Although our driver repeatedly waxed our boards, we just couldn’t get enough speed to make it interesting. In response, we tried shorter, steeper dunes but that ended with us falling over into the sand. After a pound or two of sand in my clothes, I retreated to the dune buggy and watched my son and daughter battle the dunes. They gamely tried more boarding but after about a half hour we were all done. We scooted back to Huacachina and after getting all the sand out of our clothes, took a taxi back to Ica and caught our bus to Lima.

Sunday Morning Pickup Basketball In Cusco

2010-10-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

Since I left university, I’ve lived in a few different places and one of things that gives me a sense of home is having a regular pickup basketball game. A bunch of guys joking around and getting some exercise on a regular basis gives me a sense of connection to a place, so when Miguel, our Cusco landlord, suggested that we play some basketball I enthusiastically agreed. Anywhere that I’ve lived I’ve been able to find a weekly venue for pickup basketball, a habit from my high school and college playing days. When I lived in New York City I played in a league in Harlem on a team of ex-Columbia University players and in Tokyo I was invited to play in an expat recreation league. While living in Los Angeles I found a regular pickup game about a mile from my house and back home in Marin County I’ve been playing with the same group of neighborhood dads for the last 12 years,

Miguel and I agreed to play the following Sunday morning. That day I rounded up my son and daughter and we met Miguel and his brother David and their niece and nephew downstairs. We jumped in two taxis and headed down to Parque Zonal, a large sports complex with soccer fields, basketball courts, a track and field stadium and a 1960’s-era domed indoor arena. We paid our entry fee and walked over to the courts and met Miguel and David’s basketball buddies. We exchanged pleasantries, chose teams and started playing and I quickly realized how much I missed basketball.

Most of my interactions with Peruvians were on a somewhat superficial level due to my limited level of Spanish. That Spanish ability allowed me constant interaction with locals but it was always on a slightly formal level. I missed making jokes and speaking colloquially and above all, bantering with the boys. There’s a level of intimacy on the basketball court that is not language-dependent so I don’t need to be fluent in Spanish to give my teammate a “high five” after a nice shot. Mastering the intricacies of conjugation is not necessary to set a screen for a teammate. Jostling and bumping and laughing with the locals allowed an intimacy that I didn’t get from working in the office. The little language we needed we picked up quickly. My son made a shot from beyond the three point line and Miguel said “Buen punto.” (good shot) David came up to screen my man and said “ventana.” (screen) My daughter eyed the hoop from the top of the key and Miguel said “Tira!” (shoot!)

We played about an hour and a half that first day, fully winded from a half dozen games and the altitude, but I felt energized from the experience. We slapped hands with the guys we played with and said “buen juego” (good game) as we were leaving. We would be back every weekend during our time in Cusco. It was a little slice of home in the Andes.

Death Ride In The Andes

2010-10-18T10:43:00.001-07:00

Our driver picked us up near Cusco’s Plaza de Armas and we headed out of the city center. We turned and moved along the crowded Prolongacion de la Cultura then turned and drove for a few blocks through a residential neighborhood of roosters, dirt roads, barking dogs and concrete-block walls with glass shards sticking out the top. We were let off on a corner and told to wait in what looked like someone’s backyard. My son, daughter and I were here to celebrate my son’s 14th birthday, Cusquena style: riding quadrimotos (ATV’s) through the Andean foothills.

After a few minutes two young men came over and introduced themselves and we began our “training course.” Our guide Juan explained in Spanish how to operate the vehicle and told us to start doing practice runs on the small, uneven oval track in the backyard. After a half dozen loops on the oval, Juan declared us ready. My son would have his own vehicle, my daughter and I would share one and Juan and his assistant would both ride on a small motorcycle. Before we started up the nearby hill, Juan said, “Tenga cuidado. Hay muchos perros en estas calles. Cuando empiezan a correr, no reducir la velocidad.” (Be careful. There are lots of dogs in these streets. When they start running after you, don’t slow down)

I took special note of the fact that he said “when” the dogs start running and not “if,” so I made sure the kids understood this instruction. The five of us took off down the street and within thirty seconds a stray dog began chasing us, keeping up with us, but not quite fast enough to bite our ankles. My daughter raised her feet up to seat level just to be sure. In order to access the road up the mountain, we had to drive on the main De La Cultura thoroughfare for a few blocks, an activity of questionable legality. Once off the main boulevard we started uphill and saw more dogs chasing and nipping at our wheels. In all, we passed by about a dozen snarling mutts on our way to the dirt road that led us away from the residential area and to the hills.

For the next 20 minutes we climbed a dirt road until we reached a crest with a spectacular view of the Cusco valley. In another ten minutes we arrived at a higher plateau and we stopped to take pictures and I gave my daughter a chance to drive the ATV by herself. From here we followed a rutted dirt road past farms and we started to feel raindrops. Juan looked up at the ominous clouds and told us that we would have start back. As the rain started getting heavier, we turned left past a creek and my son caught a rut and his ATV tipped over. He safely jumped off beforehand but with the rain coming down harder, I wanted to get back down the mountain as soon as possible. By now we heard thunder and saw lighting flashes and the dark grey clouds that were previously down the valley were directly overhead. We were completely soaked and I was starting to worry that we would be hit by lightning. The Andes have a rugged, rocky beauty but they are not known for a lot of forests and trees. Most of the trees that I’d seen were transplanted gum and eucalyptus trees and there were not that many. The sound of thunder become louder as we raced across a treeless ridge, racing to get back down the mountain before being stuck by lighting. As the rainstorm turned into a hailstorm, I chided myself for the dangerous position that I had put my kids in.

We started our descent down the same dirt road but now it was filled with mud. The road hugged the side of a valley, so we were now protected from lightning although the rain and occasional hail continued to pelt us. The road was slippery and mud had packed into the crevasses of our knobby tires and Juan looked back every 30 seconds and motioned for us to go slowly. Juan’s tires were completely caked in mud and he was soon unable to control his motorcycle, his assistant falling off every time the back wheel lost traction. At one point it became impossible to drive with two of them and the assistant jumped on the back of my son’s ATV. We eventually made it down the hill, past the angry dogs, and back to our starting point.

We arrived back home completely soaked with our pants and shoes caked with mud. We peeled off our clothes and all took showers, the warm water getting our body temperature back to normal. It was an eventful afternoon. Aside from illegally driving on a main thoroughfare, escaping from the snarling dogs, my son tipping over his ATV, surviving the rain and hail storm, narrowly avoiding being hit by lighting and successfully navigating the dangerously muddy downhill road, it was a fun time. Fun, but we won’t be doing it again soon.

This post was part of a Blogsherpa carnival by Joe at Hello Pineapple called Scary Stories.

Harvest Time In Peru's Sacred Valley

2010-10-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

We pulled to the side of the road in complete darkness, the rapids of the Vilcanote River rushed through the Sacred Valley of the Incas and drowned out any other sounds. Alfredito and Zulma, got out of the car and started yelling across the river, “Alfredo! Alfredo!” My daughter turned to me in the back seat and asked, “What are we doing here?” “We are on our way to the Chavez’ farm but I don’t know why we’ve stopped here,” I responded. After a pause, I said, “It’s an adventure,” which was my way of telling her to not worry and enjoy the uncertainty.

We had not been in Cusco for more than two weeks when our host family suggested that we come out to their chacra (farm) to help with the corn harvest. My daughter and I were staying with them for six weeks while my wife and son were still in California tying up loose ends before joining us. The chakra has been in the Chavez family for a few generations and is ideally located in the Sacred Valley on a bend in the river between Pisac and the town of San Salvador. Our hosts got back in the car, turned it around and we started to go back the same way we came. My Spanish was still rusty and my daughter was just beginning to learn, so we didn’t have a clear idea about why we had stopped, yelled across a river and started back the way we came. After 20 minutes we entered the main plaza of San Salvador and there we saw Alfredo. We got out of our car and got into his 4-wheel drive SUV and started out along an extremely rocky dirt road. From these developments and few clues from Alfredito’s conversation, I surmised that access to the farm was only by 4-wheel drive and cell phone reception was nonexistent in this part of the Sacred Valley. Indeed, the only way to get to the farm was to drive past the town to the point across the river from the farm and yell for a pickup in San Salvador. After a very bumpy 20 minute ride, we pulled up at the farm and saw kids watching an old black and white television outside, while the adults drank Cusqueña beer and prepared for sleep in their tents. After sharing a beer with the family, my daughter and I went to sleep in our guest room.

At 4:00 a.m. we were awaken by extremely loud Peruvian music from a radio just outside our bedroom window. The laborers were getting up for a long day of harvesting. After 20 minutes of hoping they would turn it off, I rifled through my bag looking for earplugs. I found them and my daughter and I eased back to sleep. At around 7:00 a.m. we got up and roamed around the cornfields watching the 70 or so laborers at work. The high mountains of the Sacred Valley dwarfed the flat river plain in an impossibly beautiful setting. Zulma mentioned that they have received offers for their 40 acre lot, mostly from hotels and upscale bed and breakfast developers. While the offers are tempting, Alfredo, who is a dentist by profession, loves getting to the farm on weekends, driving the tractor and enjoying what he calls terapia (therapy).

Women in colorful blouses, long alpaca skirts, felt hats with their hair in long braids separated the choclos (cob) from the husks and placed them in sacks, to be collected by teenage boys who then carried them to the tractor. Younger women carried babies in multicolor slings on their backs while they worked the field. At the mid-morning break, Zulma brought out oranges for a quick snack. The younger kids munched on the dried corn stalks and offered some to us. My daughter and I tried some; they tasted like sugar cane, only less sweet.

While I helped the boys move the sacks of choclos to the tractor, Zulma put my daughter in charges of quality control. The corn would be dried for a few weeks and then sold at auction to the highest Japanese bidder, to be turned into dried corn snacks. Zulma explained that the Japanese were very particular and only wanted pure white corn. My daughter’s job was to find all the purple, orange, pink and red choclos and remove them from the 75 by 40 foot rectangle of dried corn that was laid out on the ground in front of the house.

After the long day, we sat on the front porch with the foreman and drank some warm beer, congratulating ourselves on a productive day. We all shared the same small glass, even though I knew there were plenty more in the kitchen. It was a sign of camaraderie and brotherhood to drink from the same glass and after every turn, we’d leave a bit in the glass and deliberately pour it on the ground, an offering to the Pachamama (“Mother Earth”), the Andean fertility goddess who is responsible for planting and harvesting. It was the least we could do for another successful day at the corn harvest.

Ten Reasons Why Your Family Shouldn't Take A Year Off: Reason #8 "How Will You Communicate Without Speaking The Language?"

2010-10-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

Pulling up your family's suburban roots and heading off for some developing country for a year is foolish. There are lots of reasons not to do it. For example: How will you communicate without speaking the language?

With an itinerary covering thirteen countries and eight languages you might think that language would be a major stumbling block for our family. With half our time in Spanish-speaking countries, it helps that we are all now proficient in that language, but we have spent half our time in places where we don’t speak the local language. Here are some things to keep in mind when you are traveling and you don’t speak the local language.

1) English is (almost) everywhere. The English language is spoken in one form or another in many places on the globe and you’ll continually be surprised by the number of people in out-of-the-way places who can converse in English.
2) Motivation trumps language skills. Most of the people you’ll deal with while traveling are people who want to sell you something: a hotel room, a meal, laundry services, that pretty little artisan handbag. To travel is to be needy on a daily basis; those whose livelihood depends on fulfilling those needs will be more than happy to overcome language differences to close the sale.
3) Context conveys meaning. If you show up at a hotel at midnight with your backpacks, looking tired and desperately in need of sleep, do you really need to speak a common language with the hotel owner to understand what is being communicated?
4) If you really need it, so do the locals. Much of communication while traveling is driven by need fulfillment. Your interactions with locals will be about what you need, not about philosophy or art history. For example, if it is monsoon season in Thailand, there will umbrellas on sale everywhere.
5) Think about who colonized the country. If you are going to Morocco, chances are your high school French will come in handy. In Hong Kong all you will need is English. In central and south America, whatever Spanish you’ve learned in school will help considerably.
6) A smile is worth a thousand words. A smile goes a long way to smoothing over language barriers. 25 years ago I traveled with a young German man who had been in South America for 7 months and had not learned a single word of Spanish. In the interactions that I observed, he spoke English slowly with a huge smile on his face while trying to get his point across. The locals were so charmed with his smile they tried extra hard to understand what he was saying. He usually got what he wanted.

With these things in mind, you will find yourself in situations where there is a language barrier. When you do, here are some tips to help you communicate.

1) Learn the basics. Get a phrase book and learn the basics: “good day”, “yes”, “no”, “thank you”, “please”, “how much”, etc.
2) Use your fingers. While negotiating a price in a market, flash a single finger and then five fingers to convey that your offer is fifteen of the local currency. It’s a market so they’ve seen this before. In a restaurant, point at that tasty meal that the guy next to you is enjoying.
3) Write it down. If you have a pen and paper handy, negotiate by writing down the prices on paper. This has the added benefit of documenting the final price, in case an unethical merchant tries to change it after you’ve struck an agreement.
4) Use a calculator. When haggling, use the merchant’s or your calculator to make sure that you both have the same number in mind. Punch in your offer and hand it to the merchant. He or she will counter by punching in a new number and handing the calculator back to you. Simple head nodding will convey agreement or disagreement.
5) Use your pantomime skills. Once when I was in China, I wanted to order an omelet in a small restaurant. After trying English and quickly exhausting my limited Mandarin, I got my protein with a succession of 4 crude but effective pantomimed movements: flapping wings accompanied by clucking noises >> reaching down for an egg >> breaking the egg >> scrambling the egg. Yes I got an incredulous look, but I got my omelet as well.

I’ve seen many circumstances where two people speak the same language but don’t communicate, leading me to believe that communication is not language dependent. The bottom line is that an inability to speak the language is not a barrier to enjoying a great overseas trip.

Macedonia: There's Something In The Water

2010-09-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

A big part of our kids’ education while traveling the Mediterranean is centered on history: particularly Egyptian, Greek and Roman history with some Ottoman Empire thrown in as well. Throughout their (and our) travel-based history lesson, it has occurred to us that the Balkan area of Macedonia has disproportionately contributed more world leaders than just about any other region in the world, save for the long line of Roman emperors from the Italian peninsula.

Present day Macedonia is a landlocked sovereign country bordered by Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania and is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. Ancient Macedonians lived in the alluvial plain around the rivers Haliacmon and lower Azius in the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula. The Battle of Chaeronea, where the Macedonians defeated the Greeks in 338 BC, marked an end of Greek history and the beginning of the Macedonian Era. The kingdom of Macedon was established by the 8th or 7th century BC and their first ruler of note was Philip II (“Philip of Macedon”) who ruled from 359-336 BC.

Under Philip of Macedon the Macedonians are credited with numerous military innovations, chiefly among them the phalanx (a rectangular mass military formation) and the sarisssa (an extremely long spear or pike). He united Macedonia, Illyria, Thrace and Greece by bringing the various city-states into his empire through military victory, persuasion or by bribes. Probably his greatest legacy was his son Alexander, also known as Alexander the Great. When Philip II was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, Alexander took over.

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) led the Macedonian armies into Asia and conquered the Persian Empire, enabling Macedonia to become the world’s largest Empire, stretching from Europe, to North Africa, to Asia and India. Alexander was tutored by Aristotle (who in another interesting line of succession, was a pupil of Plato, who was a pupil of Socrates) and was influenced by the classical Greek thinking of that era. Alexander’s death led to a Macedonian civil war, as his generals fought over who would succeed him. Ultimately the generals carved up the empire with Antigonus I taking Macedonia and Greece, Seleucus I taking Asia and Ptolemy I taking Egypt. While Antigonus and Selecus formed dynasties on a smaller scale in their respective territories, Ptolemy’s dynasty in Egypt lasted for 275 years (from 305 to 30 BC), taking over what was the grandest and longest-lived empire that man had seen to that point. Over a dozen successions into the Ptolemaic dynasty, Cleopatra VII came to the throne.

Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemys to rule in Egypt and after her death, Egypt became a Roman province. Most Ptolemaic rulers spoke Greek and refused to learn Egyptian, which is why Greek as well as Egyptian languages were used on official court documents (as well as the Rosetta Stone). In contrast, Cleopatra learned Egyptian and represented herself as the reincarnation of an Egyptian Goddess (Isis). While there is some evidence to the contrary, Cleopatra is typically cast as a great beauty and her conquests of the world's most powerful men (eg., Julius Caesar, Mark Antony) are taken to be proof of her allure. French philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that Cleopatra's classically beautiful profile changed world history: "Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed." While she certainly charmed great Roman leaders, other Romans were not so smitten with her, highlighting her Macedonian goatherd family origins in many off-color jokes.

In the 20th century, Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, was born in Salonika (Thessalonika) to an Albanian father and a strong-willed Macedonian mother. It’s pretty amazing that this Balkan pastureland between the high peaks has produced so many great leaders. For a bunch of goatherds, the Macedonians have done pretty well for themselves.

Cairo, Egypt: The Art Of The Scam

2010-09-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

Our Metro train stopped at the Sadat station in Tahrir Square and we walked up the steps, anxious to be spending the day at the Egyptian Museum. As we ascended the last flight of steps, I made brief eye-contact with an Egyptian man in neatly-pressed western clothes walking near us. We now started to walk along Meret Basha, looking for the museum. As we walked I looked down at my map trying to determine if we were on the right track, when the gentleman from the Metro said, “You are looking for museum, yes?” “Yes,” we responded, put at ease by his dress, manner, facility with English and the fact that he, like us, had come out of the Metro and was on his way somewhere and probably not trying to sell us something. “Unfortunately, it does not open for another hour,” he said, with a smile. “Oh, I’m so happy,” he continued, “my daughter gets married tomorrow. She is 22 years old.” We congratulated him and he said, “I am Ahmad…I am so happy…you have a nice family. I’d like to invite your family to my wedding.”

My first thought was: Wedding? That would be awesome! Getting an intimate glimpse of what life is really like in any foreign country is what travelers yearn for. I remember being in Fiji years ago and my taxi driver casually invited me to stay at his home and attend two weddings – one Hindu and one Muslim – and it was a great experience. I remember drinking kava and “getting low” with all his taxi buddies yet never being introduced to his wife. I recall caravanning to multiple stops for the Hindu wedding and eating a small, spicy yellow pepper at the Muslim wedding reception that made me unable to do anything but lay down for 45 minutes afterward.

While I did have my guard up against a potential scam, the thought of attending an Egyptian wedding completely trumped any concerns about getting fleeced. “That would be great,” I said. “Do you have a business card so we can contact you?” Yes, at my uncle’s place, not far from here,” said Ahmad. We walked along the street and Ahmad continued to beam with delight about his daughter’s wedding, talking about the number of guests and the amount of food he had to buy. We arrived at his uncle’s place and he opened the door with a key and said, “Come in please. Have some tea while I find a business card.” “Oh, no thanks,” I said. “We need to get to the museum.” “I insist,” he said. “You must have tea. Besides, the museum doesn’t open for another hour.”

Now that we were in what looked like a shop, my scam sensor was starting to beep more loudly. He led us towards the back of the shop and introduced us to his smiling family: an attractive wife and two pretty teenage daughters. If this was a scam, it was an elaborate one in which the whole family was participating. “Come and have a comfortable seat,” Ahmad said, and led us to a sweetly-scented, dark room with a large comfortable couch. Towards the back of the room an older gentleman sat at a desk, on top of which were what suspiciously looked like perfume bottles. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, went my scam sensor, now ringing very loudly in my head. Yes, we’d been had. We were in the middle of the spider’s web, ready to be shown perfumes until we’d buy a case just to get out of the shop. “This is Ali, my uncle. He has been to Minnesota. He knows your country.” Ali started talking and I muttered to my wife, “We gotta get out of here.”

While Ali talked about how beautiful Minnesota was and Ahmad moved to bring over a tray of perfume bottles, I thought about how we found ourselves in this predicament. Ahmad was indeed artful. He must have been waiting for foreign tourists in the Metro station and I was pretty sure that his information about the museum opening times was a lie. And his daughter’s wedding? I’ll let you decide that one.

If Ahmad’s artistry got us in to the perfume shop it was going to be our steely determination that got us out. I shot a glance at my wife and stood up. “We really need to go. Come on guys,” I said to the kids, who were confused at why we were leaving when we had just sat down. “No, no. You must stay and have tea!” said Ahmad. “No, we need to go now. I’m sorry,” I said, thinking our chances at escaping were better if we did not drink any of his tea. Ahmad reminded us that the museum was still closed, but I repeated our mantra: “We need to go now.” Ahmad’s tone quickly evolved from polite confusion about our impending departure to one of righteous indignation. “But you just sat down! You can’t leave!” he said, standing in front of the door. I reached around him for the doorhandle and brushed by him. He continued to protest, “You must have tea!” as the four of us skulked out the door towards the main entrance. We breezed by one of the daughters as she was bringing the tea tray. We opened the front door, walked outside and did not look back.

As we walked, my son asked why we had left and I explained the ruse to him. When we arrived at the museum we found that it was open, and had been for a couple hours. While we were fortunate to have escaped without buying perfume or having to politely try to leave for an hour, I had to admire Ahmad’s skill in getting some fairly seasoned travelers sequestered in a sales pitch. Ahmad was indeed an artist and the unsuspecting foreigner was his canvas.

Favorite Places: Val D'Orcia in Tuscany

2010-09-16T06:30:00.001-07:00

It’s kind of unfair, really. Italy’s Tuscan countryside is beautiful enough on its own but the Tuscans have to take it a step further. Well, I’m just going to come right out and say it: they don't play fairly. It is not sufficient that the landscape is breathtaking; the Tuscan farmers take it a step further and mow their wheat fields in perfect contour-shaping lines that hug the voluptuous hills and resemble a topographical map. Sophie Redisch at the Lonely Planet-affiliated blog Sophie’s World is hosting the blogsherpa Carnival this time around and her theme is Favorite Places and mine is the Tuscan countryside, specifically the Val D’Orcia region around Pienza between Montalcino and Montepulciano. Yes, it’s my favorite place but I don’t think it’s fair.

We recently drove through the Val D’Orcia and marveled at the harmonious blend between natural beauty and man’s best efforts. The green rolling hills were so lush that the texture resembled a soft baby’s blanket, fresh out of the dryer, left to fall gently on the terrain. From that blanket a patchwork quilt is created. Start with a square of twenty-five trimmed olive trees standing in a perfect 5-by-5 formation, then a wild section of pine, chestnuts, cork oak and myrtle, and then patch in a small vinyard of grapes, the parallel lines wrapping tightly over a small hill. Everywhere you look, man has added to the natural beauty. We saw many straight gravel driveways with perfect lines of trimmed cypress trees on both sides leading to stone farmhouses with vegetable gardens of tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, basil, and sage. And wheat fields everywhere…manicured to perfection.

At the end of our day we stopped for dinner in the hilltop town of Pienza at a place called La Buca Di Enea, for which I’d read a glowing review (here). Even though we were now inside and away from the landscape, its products continued to wow us. I had the best meal since we’ve left home. I enjoyed bruschetta on Tuscan wheat toasts, a garden salad, cinghiale (wild boar pasta) with a glass of Brunello wine, every bit of it echoing the scenery we’d seen that day. Antonio, the proprietor also gave us a complimentary glass of Zibibbo, a fresh and light Sicilian dessert wine that perfectly topped off the meal.

We drove back to our Florence apartment as the sun was setting on the golden wheat fields, reflecting on a perfect day. Even though the Tuscan farmers don’t play fairly, Tuscany is still my favorite place.

Abu Simbel: A Mirage In The Desert

2010-09-14T08:52:00.001-07:00

Our 2:30 a.m. wake up call seemed to shake our hotel room, rousing the four of us from a deep sleep. We dressed and went downstairs to the hotel lobby to join other half-awake guests searching through their complimentary box breakfasts to find something edible. We were herded into a minivan and drove through the Aswan streets picking up more tourists until we had a full minibus. Our driver then took us to a spot south of Aswan where a couple dozen minivans and several large buses lined up ready to start the convoy to the Abu Simbel temples. We sat in the chilly pre-dawn desert for a half hour until someone decided that we had enough minivans and buses to start our convoy.

The convoy is a legacy of the 1997 terrorist attack on tourists at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor. In an effort to reassure foreign tourists, the Egyptian government mandated that all foreigners travelling overland between the country’s main tourist centers to join armed convoys. This visible security was intended to dissuade attacks and reassure visitors, but some argue that the convoys have done nothing more than draw attention to potential targets and make it more difficult for the various tourist attractions to process large surges of people at one time.

If we thought that the logistical procedures necessary to get to the monuments were complicated, learning about how the monuments themselves had to be moved dwarfed it by comparison. The Abu Simbel temples are two massive rock temples in Nubia, southern Egypt on the western bank of Lake Nasser about 230 km southwest of Aswan. The complex is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Nubian Monuments." The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, to commemorate his alleged victory at the Battle of Kadesh, and to intimidate his Nubian neighbors. The temples fell into disuse and were forgotten until 1813 when the Swiss explorer Jean-Louis Burckhardt stumbled upon them while searching for the source of the Niger (yes, Niger) River. (Read blog entry on Burckhardt here) The complex was relocated in its entirety in the 1960s, on a domed artificial hill, high above the Aswan High Dam reservoir. The relocation of the temples was necessary to avoid their being submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser. Starting in 1964, a multinational UNESCO team of archeologists, engineers and skilled heavy equipment operators carefully cut up the site into a 3-D jigsaw puzzle of large stone blocks of up to 30 tons (averaging 20 tons), then lifted and reassembled them in a new location 65 meters higher and 200 meters back from the river, in one of the greatest challenges of archaeological engineering in history.

We arrived after three and a half hours of convoy driving and piled out of our minivan ready for our allotted two hour tour of the site. The façade is of course impressive for its size, detailed carving and its situation overlooking Lake Nasser, the bloated reincarnation of the Nile in Southern Egypt. The interior was well preserved and the fresco of Ramses leading the charge on his chariot in the battle of Kadesh is stunning (photo). The battle of Kadesh featured 5,000-6,000 chariots and pitted the Egyptians against the Hittites in modern-day Syria but there is no scholarly consensus on who won the battle. We visited first the larger temple, dedicated to Ramses, and then the smaller one dedicated to Nefertari, then returned to sit in front of the famous façade, looking for lines where it was cut as well as small tell-tale numbers that allowed its reassembly.

The awe-inspiring sensation of antiquity of this UNESCO World Heritage site was, for me, equally offset by a sense of artificiality. The site is supposed to commemorate a great victory but no one really knows who won the battle of Kadesh, a conflict waged on another continent. The temple’s current location has been barren desert for thousands of years until a 20th century dam was built and the lake behind us, the world’s largest man-made body of water, was not there either. Legend indicates that even the name Abu Simbel is a misnomer. The name has nothing to do with Ramses or Egypt or Nubian history; tour guides regularly talk about a young boy named Abu Simbel who led 19th century explorers to the site and the temples and nearby town were eventually named after him. A tour guide in the desert is a good idea, especially if you are looking for a mirage.

Cairo, Egypt: How Do You Say Motherboard In Arabic?

2010-09-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

Our family travels with two computers so that we can pay bills, keep this blog going, check email, skype back home and most importantly, allow the kids to keep up with their studies. We’d been lucky for most of our travels, although our second, older computer died while we were in Mancora, Peru, succumbing to a deadly Trojan virus that brought it to its knees. (From what I saw in that northern Peruvian party town, our Trojan was probably not the only virus being passed around). Once back in the U.S. for Christmas, we replaced it with a new, smaller mini laptop and set off for Africa. All went well until we arrived in Cairo and the new minicomputer started going berserk: colorful patterns and bars flashed across the screen to form a pyrotechnic display of depixelation where the familiar Windows logo should have been. Great. How will the kids do their homework? How on earth are we going to fix this in Cairo, Egypt?

Options flashed through my head. Throw it away and get by on one computer – not possible. Buy a new computer - nope. Try to fix it – O.K., where? I went to the customer service section of the web site for the company, a well-known brand that rhymes with “hell.” I started a chat session early in the morning with Krishna in India who thought that the motherboard was the problem. She said that if I were in the US she could ship me a new one within 15 days. When I mentioned that I was in Cairo, she said that my warranty was not valid outside the U.S. and there was nothing she could do for me. After an hour and a half chat, trying to find any loophole in their policy, I gave up. I now had a malfunctioning motherboard and a useless warranty. Before the end of the chat session, I got the phone number of the Middle Eastern representative, which happened to be located in Cairo.

Cairo is the most populous city in Africa and virtually no one speaks or writes English and all I had was a phone number. I was desperate and was now thinking in magnitudes of hundreds of dollars in order to get it fixed. I asked Mahmoud at the front desk of the African House Hostel to make the call for me to the service center. Fortunately, he located Tarek, an English-speaking technician who told me to bring in the laptop and he would see what he could do.

Mahmoud wrote down the address for me and said that all I had to do was go to the Behouth metro station, jump in a cab and show them the address that he had written down for me in Arabic. In theory, this sounds like a great plan, but the skeptical side of me viewed this like finding a needle in a haystack. I got to the Behouth station and found a taxi driver who seemed to know the address and we drove off. After 15 minutes and many stops to ask other taxi drivers, it was clear that he had no idea where this authorized service center was. After another 10 minutes and a few more stops for directions, we stopped at a corner. The taxi driver pointed down a street and held out his hand for payment. I paid him and started walking.

There is no doubt that finding your way in countries that don’t use roman script (i.e., Arabic speaking countries, China, Japan, Russia) is a bigger challenge than in Europe, South America and most of Africa. I walked for 4 blocks looking at Arabic scribbles and just as the street was coming to an end I finally saw the boxy blue logo of my computer manufacturer. I went inside and asked for Tarek, who took the ailing machine and looked it over. After fiddling with it for 10 minutes, he said, “I will replace the motherboard. You can come back for it tomorrow.” This was great news, but I also had to ask, “How much will it cost?” Tarek waved his hand and said, “It is under warranty, it is free.” I told him about the type of warranty that I had but Tarek again waved his hand and said, “No problem, we’ll just transfer the warranty to Egypt. See you tomorrow.”

I did get the repaired laptop from Tarek the next day, but at that moment I thought about how in six hours my situation had turned around 180 degrees. I had gone from having a fried motherboard and an invalid warranty, to locating the only English-speaking technician in the Middle-east who happened to have the right part who would replace it for free! How do you say “Needle in a haystack" in Arabic?

The Cairo Metro: Protecting The Booty

2010-09-04T11:41:00.001-07:00

Sometimes a common objective is what brings a family closer together. While in the crowded Cairo Metro during rush hour, that shared goal brought us much, much closer together. The common objective in this case: protecting the derrière of our 12-year old daughter. We squeezed into the crowded subway car, three of us forming a protective triangle around my daughter. Thinking strategically, I took the aft, positioning myself at the area that was most vulnerable while my son and wife formed the other two points of the triangle. We moved through the sea of men wearing grey, beige and black clothing until we found a spot in the corner of the car. We giggled about the absurdity of our mission and I made a few wisecracks about looking out for “pirates seeking booty.” After four stops we exited the subway car and successfully made it up and to the street without incident. Mission accomplished: we had successfully protected the booty.

The reason for all this fuss about my daughter’s hindquarters was a direct result of what happened to her the previous day. We had gathered into a car at rush hour and all grabbed hold of the vertical pole running from the floor to ceiling of the car. There were about 3 dozen hands holding the pole for stability and the male riders who were pressed together either avoided eye contact or gave polite and impassive smiles of acknowledgment. A middle-aged man smiled at us and I greeted him with salaam aleikum and a nod. After a few more stops we got off with no incident…or so I thought.

As we were exiting the Metro station, my daughter whispered something to my wife who said, “What?” My daughter had just experienced a first: her butt had been improperly caressed on the subway car. “Why didn’t you say something?” asked my wife. My daughter, clearly embarrassed by the whole situation said only, “I didn’t know.” Apparently it was the smiling man next to us who had done it. In hindsight, I guess it had to happen. A very attractive, blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl on the verge of womanhood in the middle of a subway car jam-packed with men. Throw in some middle-eastern, Hollywood-spawned stereotypes about the loose virtues of western women and you have a situation ripe for culture clash. And clash we did on the Cairo Metro.

The Cairo Metro is the only full-fledged metro system in Africa. The system consist of two operational lines, which carry around 700 million passengers a year and on average 2 million people per day. On all Cairo trains, the middle two cars (the 4th and 5th) of each train are reserved for women. We learned this after the successful ‘protecting of the booty’ episode described above and the women-only car became our modus operandi going forward; my son and I headed into the mass of people in the mixed car and my wife and daughter going in the slightly less crowded women-only car.

With the booty successfully protected, riding the subways became a more pleasant experience. Looking back on this episode always gives us a laugh and my wife never fails to point out, in mock indignation: “How come no one was after my middle-aged booty?”

Why We Travel

2010-09-01T07:05:00.000-07:00

Travel is a mirror.

In my early 20’s, before I had ever left my country (USA), I watched a French movie called “Le Salaire de la Peur” in New York City. I liked the movie, with its Hitchcock-like suspense turns and stark black and white imagery but I was confounded by the tragic ending where Yves Montand, after successfully completing his mission, accidentally drives off the cliff and the credits roll. “What’s wrong with the French…why so pessimistic?” I asked myself.

(Fast forward through 3 years of backpacking through 40 countries and understanding more about the world and how it views my country)

I watched the movie again in my early thirties and enjoyed it just as much as the first time, but this time the ending didn’t seem out of place. I understood better that I was a product of my country’s culture (and Hollywood “happy endings”) as well as its fortunate geography and short history.

Sometimes you need a mirror to see yourself.

This article was originally written for Denise Pulls, Lonely Planet featured blogger, who has a running feature for travelers and bloggers at Travel With Denden called "Why We Travel."

Lonely Planet Blogsherpa Carnival #7: Internet Connections

2010-08-25T05:32:00.000-07:00

Back when my wife and I were in our late twenties we each spent a couple years backpacking through Asia, Africa and South America. One of our fondest memories was of arriving at various poste restante (held mail) locations after months of overland travel and eagerly opening our mail from home. Family and friends who knew our itinerary would time their letters to arrive just before we did. Letters from home were read and re-read several times to savor news of the familiar, a commodity that was in short supply in exotic third-world locales. These days, that connection to home is more immediate. Instant, 24/7 communication is the norm and the places that you can go to escape the web are getting fewer and fewer.

People stay connected these days by email, instant messaging, skype, chat and many travelers and expats have travel blogs. One of the benefits of my association with Lonely Planet is that I regularly get to read great travel blogs written by bloggers from all over the world. To find them, I didn’t have to slog through thousands of travel blogs on the web…Lonely Planet had already done it for me (list here). These blogs are all connected by quality travel writing and by the Internet. As such, the 7th Lonely Planet Blogsherpa Carnival is fittingly called “Internet Connections.” As your carnival leader this time around, I doff my top hat and say, “Let the carnival begin!”

First up is Liz at “Travelogged,” who is based in New York City and has been writing about her travels and those of others since January of 2009. Drawing on her experiences as a senior editor at Zagat.com as well as other publishers, she incorporates the perspectives of other travel “insiders” to give a fresh and varied perspective on the world. Much of her writing is done on the road but that leads to occasional challenges. When Liz was in Rome she found that her fancy hotel charged an outrageous €25 per day for use of their wireless connection. Read “Finding Wifi in Rome” to find out where she went to get connected. I’ll give you a hint: along with free wifi, they also have great Guiness.

Claire at “First Time Travels” writes from the Philippines and her blog was “created to help first-time travelers as they embark on something different. It is an assurance for every tourist and traveler that even the most seasoned one has started out as a neophyte.” Read her post "Internet Connections" to learn her convoluted yet effective technique of penetrating “The Great Firewall of China” while accessing Facebook and Twitter on her last visit to Shanghai. I’ve read it and I’m still not sure how it works.

Sash at “Barefoot Inked” is an Australian woman living in a tiny muslim fishing village in Indonesia. Sash is adventurous and feels that in order to experience the sand between your toes, you need to take your shoes off. According to Sash,”My office smells like the ocean, tastes like chillied fish and wraps me in the sweet air of the salted sea brushed with coconut leaves. Read her post “A Tough Day at the Office” and you’ll understand why her multiple re-writes are not a perfectionist habit but a technological reality imposed by the constraints of an internet connection “so unreliable that you often can’t upload a simple photo.”

Jen at “The Turkish Life” is a California girl from San Francisco who lives in Istanbul, Turkey and works as an editor for a Turkish publication. Her blog is a rich tapestry of expat life in Turkey seasoned with vignettes of her ongoing battle to learn the Turkish language. Read her post “The Tie that Bonds and Binds” to understand how the internet can be a double-edged sword to the traveler or the expat. Jen muses, “I do wonder how much my experience here has been shaped, and limited, by the ready ability to keep close connections to home. Without them, would I have immersed myself more fully in all things Turkey, improved my Turkish, made closer local friends, spent less time inside?” Jen writes from Turkey, but this idea is universal.

Bret at “I Moved To Africa” is an American marketing and advertising executive from New York City who spends a year in Africa. Bret states, “This blog is about my travel adventures in a country I never heard of before, my experiences within the U.S. Embassy community, the NGO community and befriending expatriates abroad.” Read his post “Internet Connections” to find out why he says “Everyone talks about how wonderful skype is, especially when traveling. Those people have never been to Gabon.” I smile every time I read that line.

Jennifer at “Orange Polka Dot” is a Californian living in Barcelona with her husband and kids. She is the English-language resource for what’s happening in that vibrant Catalan city, especially when it comes to doing things with children. Read her post “Internet Connections” to learn more about staying connected in Spain when the wait for a phone line is measured in months. Jennifer writes, “In the meantime, I sat in the parking lot of my nearest university to bum the free wifi, which by the way, in Spain is pronounced "wee fee." On the weekends, I would bring the kids so they could skype with my parents back in California.”

David and Tamara at “Quillcards” run a combination blog and e-greeting card business. David is English and Tamara is American and they’ve lived in England, the USA, South Korea, Finland, and Israel and have traveled in Europe, Central and South America, India, Japan, Australia, and Morocco. David gives a concise and thorough review of which accessories you should take to the subcontinent to stay connected with your MacBook Air in “Travels With a Macbook Air in India.”

As we close this carnival, it is interesting to note that over the years technology has changed considerably but the human need to feel connected has not. You can still enjoy the previous carnival (#6), titled "Encounters" at “The Brink of Something Else” and the next one (#8) will be hosted by Sash on September 1st 2010 at “Barefoot Inked” and it's called "Love on the Road."

Dahab, Egypt: Incense And Squirt Bottles

2010-08-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Dahab after a long 18 hour overnight bus ride from Luxor and the difference between this seaside scuba haven and the rest of Egypt was immediately apparent. The sea breeze was a welcome respite from the dry desert heat, the men wore T-shirts, shorts and sandals instead of dark-colored robes and skull caps and for the first time we met a woman who was actually in charge of something. Dahab sits on the Gulf of Aqaba directly across from Saudi Arabia and is a laid back corner of Egypt, a virtual paradise…except for the flies and the cats.

We knew that we wanted to have our kids get their scuba diving certification while near the Red Sea but we had to decide between the European tourist hotspot of Sharm el-Sheik and smaller Dahab. Dahab was the easy choice -- it was less touristy, less costly and more laid back – and we set up a dive course for the kids beforehand. While the kids went off to their daily lessons, Mom and Dad each prepared to cross an item off their respective bucket lists: my wife wanted to dive “The Blue Hole” (“The World’s Most Dangerous Diving Site”) and I wanted to visit Petra in nearby Jordan.

Dahab is a small town located on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. When we arrived by bus, a smiling Hosni Mubarak waved to us from a large billbord in the desert that said "Welcome to Dahab." Formerly a Bedouin fishing village, located approximately 50 miles northeast of Sharm el-Sheikh, Dahab is considered one of the Sinai’s most treasured diving destinations. Following the Six Day War, the town was occupied by Israel and is known as Di-Zahav, a place mentioned in the Bible as one of the stations for the Israelites during their Exodus from Egypt. The Sinai was restored to Egyptian rule in the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in 1982.

These days tourists are flocking to Dahab for its warm weather, clear waters and excellent diving. It is a paradise with the two exceptions mentioned in the first paragraph. I remember visiting the Balinese town of Ubud 24 years ago, a town with a reputation as a cultural and artistic center set amongst beautiful rice terraces in the center of Bali. I also remember that the town, for all its beauty and art, was plagued by dogs: dogs digging through garbage, dogs prowling the streets and dogs barking all night. The Balinese just shrugged and said that “Even paradise needs balance.” Perhaps that’s why Dahab needs the flies and cats. Sit down to breakfast or lunch and as soon as the food is set at your table, the flies are everywhere. Kick back on your cushions for dinner and cats will arrive with your meal. In Ubud I never walked anywhere without a large stick for fending off any aggressive dogs and likewise, Dahab has its unique solutions to the fly and cat problem: incense and squirt bottles. The waiters at the seaside cafes bring several smoking sticks of incense with every meal, strategically placed around the table, creating a forcefield that keeps many of the flies away. While occasionally you inhale some frankincense while eating, it does seem to keep the majority of the flies away. At dinner, waiters bring you squirt bottles to keep the cats away from your food; after every few bites you can perfect your aim by hitting a feline between the eyes. Our kids loved the target practice and within minutes water was flying everywhere. After a few minutes we had to insist that they hand over the bottles. Like the incense for the flies, the squirt bottles kept the cats mostly at bay.

Despite these twin nuisances, Dahab was a peaceful and enjoyable stay for us. Our point of contact for our kids’ diving was Hanan, who very competently dealt with all our questions and concerns. Aside from a female doctor working in a Cairo pharmacy, all businesses we'd seen were run and staffed by men and we had virtually no interaction with women. Hanan was from Cairo and moved to Dahab with her husband several years back when she got married. She was drawn to Dahab for the same reasons that tourists love it. If you haven’t been to Dahab, I suggest that you plan a trip there. Just don’t forget the incense and squirt bottles.

Sinai, Egypt: Only Four Camels For Our Daughter?

2010-08-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

After Abdul asked my daughter’s age, he was quiet for a minute. The sun was going down over the rough craggy hills of the Sinai, washing them in a dark reddish hue. Abdul continued, “Your daughter is very pretty. I can pay four camels.” My first response was Marriage? She’s only 12 years old! but I collected my composure and asked, “Why only four?” “Four is a good price,” he said, “I am poor Bedouin man.” I wasn’t sure if Abdul was serious or just playing with me, nevertheless, I countered with ten camels, not having any idea if his initial “bride price” was fair or not.

Like most traditions, the “bride price” is rooted in economics. Bedouin boys have traditionally stayed with their family and tended goats and camels or helped in the family business and girls were married off to join a new family. Girls offered more than cooking and cleaning in terms of economic value…they had the ability to generate more boys, thus more laborers who could work for the receiving family. It made economic sense to be compensated for this loss. In addition to labor and food, the camel is a medium of exchange and it's appropriate that camels would be the basis of the “bride price.”

This was all interesting, but what I was dying to know was had I been insulted? Is four a good price? We knew from our visit to the Birqash camel market outside Cairo that a large camel could be bought for $700 (see Cairo Camel Market blog post), so that would put the monetary value of my daughter at $2,800. Later Internet research told me that anywhere between 2 and 20 camels is customary for the Bedouin but, most importantly, it depends on the potential groom’s ability to pay.

Bedouin people have been traditionally poor, but few live like their ancestors these days, especially those who are guiding tourists for a living. Abdul’s ancestors, those of the Muzeina clan, lived in camel- or goat-hair tents and raised livestock, hunted and raided their neighboring tribes. Bedouins of the Sinai are going through dramatic changes and are forced to rapidly adapt to a new way of life due also to the impact of tourism. Since the rise of Islam, Bedouins have acted as 'tourist" guides, leading pilgrims across the Sinai to places of worship: Mecca, St. Catherine’s Monastery and Jerusalem. The Sinai Bedouins are split into roughly 10 tribes. The oldest tribes inhabiting the Sinai desert are the Aleigat and the Sawalha sharing a territory between Suez and Al Tor reaching into the high mountain region around Wadi Feiran and Sarabit el Khadem. For the last 500 years the Muzeina tribe occupies the territory from around St. Catherine to the Gulf of Suez and from Al Tor covering the southern Sinai from Sharm el Sheikh to Nuweiba. The Tarabin Bedouins are located just north of Nuweiba and arrived to Sinai some 300 years ago.

We sat a while longer enjoying the view of Dahab, a fishing village turned into a scuba diving haven for backpackers, and watched the distant lights of Saudi Arabia across the Gulf of Aqaba. We walked over to where we’d have dinner and Abdul brewed us some strong, sweet mint Bedouin tea as he made dinner. Dinner was roast chicken, vegetable stew, rice, unleavened bread and a tasty taboulleh-like salad. Abdul and I didn’t speak again about the camels. He drove us back to our hotel and we tipped him well for his guide services. My wife and I occasionally make jokes about our daughter’s “bride price” but I still wonder, “Had I been insulted?”

Moroccan Mosaic

2010-08-10T03:58:00.000-07:00

As Published in Hand/Eye Magazine on August 5th, 2010

Putting the Pieces Together in Fes

For centuries, in the Imperial Moroccan city of Fes, mosaic craftsmen have chipped away at ceramic tiles, shaping the tiny pieces that comprise zellij, the art of glazed-and-cut tile pieces arranged in complex geometric patterns. The fruits of their labors can be found everywhere within the 1,200 year old Fes medina: gracing the walled city’s countless water fountains, adorning the tomb of Moulay Idriss II (the founder of Fes) and decorating the Karaouiyine Mosque and University, which vies with Al-Azhar in Cairo for the title of world’s oldest university. About a mile outside the stone walls of the medina is the Poterie De Fes factory, where pottery and mosaic craftsmen continue their work, one small piece at a time.

Late in the 8th century, Fes was founded by Moulay Idriss II, who carried out the wishes of his dying father by moving from the small ancient Roman capital of Volubilis. The new city started as a modest Berber town and grew with the influx of thousands of exiled families from Al-Andalus (southern Spain) and later from Arab families fleeing Kairouan in modern-day Tunisia. The town rose to prominence with the construction of the Karaouiyine University and it emerged as the pre-eminent city in the Maghreb, the North African region comprised by the present day countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania. Within Fes is the walled medina, known as the “the city of ten thousand alleys.” It is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is believed to be the world’s largest contiguous car-free urban area.

Just outside those ancient city walls is the Poterie De Fes cooperative. The factory is easy to find; look for the kilns producing black smoke fueled by olive pomace. This recycled fuel -- pulpy residue from the olive oil process--is what allows the furnaces to get hot enough to fire the clay. Our tour is led by Abdellah Idrissi, who points out that his name is derivative of Fes founder Moulay Idriss II. Abdellah is one of many craftsmen in the cooperative and he starts his tour by showing us large mounds of clay, all with fresh footprints from workers using their feet to work the clay to the desired consistency. We then move to the pottery wheel and watch a craftsman spin out about 7 or 8 pieces in 15 minutes. While the pottery is interesting, it is the mosaic process that is really unique. We walked over to the furmah tiles, the raw materials for the mosaic pieces and Abdellah explains that these tiles are molded from a hardy clay from nearby Jebel Ben Jelliq. Once the tiles are fired they can be scored and chiseled to break cleanly along straight lines. From here we move over to the furnaces, two large bi-level clay kilns. “The first floor is hotter–about 1,200 degrees–because that’s what terra cotta tiles need,” says Abdellah. “The second floor is about 980 degrees because that’s what the coloring and glazing require.” The tiles are fired twice; the first time in the hotter, lower furnace after being glazed and a second time in the upper level furnace after one side has been colored. The principal colors are blue from cobalt, green from copper, yellow from cadmium and red from iron oxide. The temperature is increased by feeding the kiln with more olive pomace.

From the furnace we move over to the craftsmen cutting the furmah pieces. Islamic mosaic work is characterized by geometric multiple-point star, medallion and polygonal figures. Start in the center of a multiple-point star pattern and follow one of the lines radiating outward until your eyes land upon a satellite star figure. From there follow any of its lines and you’ll find yourself in the center of yet another multiple-point star pattern and on and on. This subliminal sensation of movement is what gives the geometric designs their sense of life. Islamic art forbids figures or likenesses, so its artisans have focused on creating stunning graphic and geometric shapes and patterns. We watch craftsmen carefully chip away with hammers at tiles pieces, against an iron anvil and occasionally a terra cotta surface for the more delicate and detailed work. The men working are paid by the shape and in a good day they can churn out over a hundred mosaic pieces. Once the tiny pieces are cut and arranged into beautiful geometric patterns, they are placed face down on the ground. The flat surface keeps the faces of fountains and the tops of tables flat as the patterns are held together with a sand-lime or cement mixture and allowed to dry upside down. The cycles of creation and destruction and re-creation of zellij are time consuming and therefore make it a relatively expensive art form. From the elements of earth, water, and fire furmah tiles are created, only for craftsmen to slowly and skillfully destroy each one. From here it is the zellij designers who re-create, putting the pieces together upside down in brilliant geometric patterns. It is only when the entire process is finished –creating, destroying, re-creating –and the surface has been dried and turned over, can one appreciate the stunning work.

You can purchase zellij tile work and pottery from the Poterie De Fes factory, in the Quartier de Poterie in Fes, Morocco. Their French-language web site is at http://www.poteriefes.ma/

The Cairo Camel Market

2010-08-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

Quite often the journey is as interesting as the destination and getting to the Birqash camel market on the outskirts of Cairo was no exception. The guidebook made it sound easy to get to (by taxi 30-40 minutes north of Cairo) and Mahmoud, one of the men who alternate at the front desk at the African House Hostel, offered to write down the name in Arabic for us as well as his cell number in case we got lost. He scribbled this down on the back of a business card for the hostel and we were set. Just like a Monopoly “Get out of jail free” card, we had our "lifeline." As long as I didn’t lose my little piece of paper we could avoid any problems getting to where we wanted to go.

Clutching our lifeline, we walked out onto the early-morning Cairo streets. The first two taxi drivers we flagged down stopped and looked at our little piece of paper as though they’d never seen Arabic before. After a robust salaam akiekum greeting, we stood and watched each of them silently as they wrinkled their foreheads, looked at us, then gave us an apologetic shrug before handing us our piece of paper and driving off. The third driver who stopped for us took a glance at the paper and instantly invited us into his taxi. We quickly negotiated what we knew was a fair price and sped off through the half-empty streets. Everything seemed to be going well until our driver turned his taxi around and started coming back the way we came. Then he turned off near some large apartment buildings and slowly looked around. We’d read that the market was on the edge of Egypt’s Western Desert so we knew we were not close. Time to pull out the lifeline: I flipped over the little slip of paper and pointed to Mahmoud’s phone number.

We watched while our driver had an animated conversation with Mahmoud that looked like it involved some re-negotiations. After 10 minutes on the phone, the driver grumbled and we drove back the way we came, finally turning north on a freeway and following the Nile for awhile. After 30 minutes, we turned off the freeway and our driver rolled down the window and asked a man driving a horse cart “Souk gamel?” (camel market?). He pointed to the right and for the next hour we drove through small towns, stopping many times to ask the same question: “Souk gamel?” About two hours after leaving our hostel, we finally arrived at the Birqash camel market. If our journey to the market was arduous, the camels’ were far worse. Most of the camels are from the Sudan and are walked up the Forty Days Road across the Egyptian border to a point just north of Abu Simbel. They are then driven north on a 24 hour dash to Birqash and by the time they arrive, they are not in the best of shape.

We paid our entrance fee and entered Egypt’s largest camel market. In the hot, dusty compound there were hundreds of somewhat-scrawny camels with robe-clad men whacking them with sticks. Aside from some women selling drinks and food near the entrance and a few tourists, there were no women at the market. The compound was surrounded by low, flat stucco buildings with stacks of hay and grazing goats on top. The camels were marked with blue spray-painted Arabic script on their sides and their left legs were folded back and tied to reduce their mobility, their protruding knee resembling an amputee’s stump. Little boys, imitating their fathers and older brothers, whacked away at the camels, many of whom let out loud groans. Navigating the market was difficult; if you stopped to take a picture in one direction, invariably a massive camel would be come up behind you from the opposite direction. We stopped to watch an impromptu auction. Men in blue, grey and khaki robes stood on the steps of a building while camels were paraded in front of them. Multiple hands shot up to place bids and each sale took about a minute. I learned later that prices range from $350 to $700 per camel, depending on the size and health of the camel.

We kept walking through the market and I suddenly heard my kids utter a collective groan. Right in front of them, a recently-purchased camel was being held down and its throat slit. Aside from being used as beasts of burden, many of the camels were used for meat, a fact that was made all too plain for our kids. The market had been great but seeing this definitely put a damper on the experience for our kids. It was time to go. We found our taxi driver and headed back towards Cairo. Presumably, getting back to Cairo would be much easier but we had our lifeline just in case.

Barcelona's La Boqueria

2010-07-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

We had the best of intentions while in Barcelona. The Catalonian town boasts some great art galleries – the Picasso Museum, Fundació Joan Miró, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, to name a few. There’s also some interesting museums: the Dali Museum in nearby Figueres and Antoni Gaudi’s La Pedrera come to mind. We were a bit exhausted after a whirlwind 2 week tour of Morocco and we ended up going mainly to places that were walking distance from our apartment near Las Ramblas. Though not an art gallery, the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria is the place where we saw some of the most stunningly artistic displays of fresh food.

I take that back…La Boqueria is an art gallery. The range of bright, vibrant colors is amazing. Rich dark-red chunks of tuna, plump purple-green figs, earth-toned hues of dried fruits and nuts and bright green watermelons cut open to reveal juicy red interiors. It’s also a sculpture gallery. Dangling mobiles of vibrant-yellow bananas, vertical checkerboards of multicolored fruits and candies, neatly-placed rows of crab resembling soldiers in formation and a “fish wheel” of 12 sardines with each eye representing an hour on an analog clock.

I’m just as happy viewing the perfectly-placed pyramids of blood oranges than gazing at Gaudi’s modernist seed pod spires. I find the overlapping arrangement of the fishmonger’s silvery mackerel is as visually arresting as some of Picasso’s early works and the array of colorful fruits and vegetables surpasses the palette range of Joan Miró. How it all happens this way is no accident. Many of the vendors take at least 2 hours to set up their food stalls, spending much of that time carefully arranging displays, lovingly forming pyramids of oranges, apples and peaches.

La Boqueria has been around for several centuries. The first mention of the market was in 1217 when tables were installed near the old city gate to sell meat. Later on it became a pig market, then a straw market and for quite a while it was used for fishmongers and butchers. In 1826 the market was legally recognized and in 1835 a convention voted to build a covered structure to house the market. Construction began on March 19, 1840 under the direction of the architect Mas Vilà. The market officially opened in the same year, but the plans for the building were modified many times. The inauguration of the structure finally took place in 1853. A new fish market opened in 1911, and the metal roof that still exists today was constructed in 1914.

We went to La Boqueria every day. We bought tasty and beautiful green beans from the chatty vegetable merchant. She remembered us when we returned the next day. We stopped at the egg vendor displaying many varieties, all positioned in straw baskets and, after waiting for her to finish her conversation with her boyfriend, purchased a dozen which she carefully placed in a clear plastic bag. We stopped every day and purchased Serrano ham from the meat counter and the baker sold us crusty artisan bread loaves fresh out of the oven. We never made it to the museums that I mentioned above but that was fine with us. Barcelona is fairly expensive, but shopping for food at La Boqueria was an enjoyable way to make the city more affordable.

The Reality Of Traveling With Kids: Routine Can Be Good

2010-07-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I wrote about how we involved our kids in the planning process of our trip. ("A New Beginning") We all voted for the top places we wanted to go and our preferred things to see and do. We also talked about what we didn’t like about our 2005 six-month trip through Central America and Spain. The consensus number one dislike was “packing and moving too much.” We were all in complete agreement that we wanted to slow it down this time, to take a deeper dive into the cultures around us instead of just collecting stamps in our passports. In addition to experiencing more of the culture, we noticed that our kids just enjoy it more when they have more time in one place. They seem to thrive on a little bit of routine.

A 4/29/10 Wall Street Journal article by Nancy Keates observed that “Slow Travel is tied to a burgeoning movement to return to a time when life’s pleasures were savored, to a time when people appreciated the going as much as the getting there.” The article continues, “But slow travel isn’t only about the mode of transportation—it’s also about the way people are traveling. Instead of moving from one big hotel to another and racing to cross off one tourist attraction after another, slow travelers rent a place to stay, often off the beaten path, and focus on interacting with locals and sampling new customs.”

So while we are not alone in slowing down the itinerary, the added benefit to our kids is that they enjoy being one place – even if only for a week – and savoring the things that come with settling into a semblance of routine. We spent 10 days in Cairo and the kids really enjoyed getting to know the hotel staff, ordering their 24/7 complimentary tea like “regulars” and going to our favorite falafel place (Al-Tabeh) just around the corner. It’s hard to have a “favorite place” if you’re only somewhere for 2 days. We spent 6 months in Cusco, Peru and at least once a week my daughter would say, “Let’s go for gelato,” at La Dolce Vita near the Plaza de Armas. There is something comforting in having a favorite place, particularly when you travel frequently from place to place. We spent a month in Florence in a great apartment and the first thing my son did was start rearranging furniture. He knew we weren’t going anywhere for a while and he was setting up his space just the way he wanted it.

There is a great temptation when planning a trip to see as much as possible. Even in the middle of a long one like ours it is sometimes unavoidable: It’s not that far from where we’ll be. We’ll just stay there one night. Famous last words. When we were in Southwestern Turkey we had planned to see two of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World: The Colossus of Rhodes and the Temple of Artemis near Ephesus. My daughter successfully lobbied us to take a detour to go see another “wonder,” the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Bodrum, which would allow us to see six of the seven wonders on this trip. We’re glad we did it but at the time it was not fun racing from town to town. It wasn’t until we got to Athens, where we had an apartment for a week that we felt that we could kick back and relax.

Even though the word “routine” has negative connotations – staleness, boredom, sameness—in the context of traveling around the world with a backpack, it can be a good thing. For us we’ve found that a little bit of routine for our kids is a really good thing.

The Reality Of Traveling With Kids: 24/7 Family Time

2010-07-20T00:18:00.000-07:00

On the surface, traveling the world with your family sounds like a great thing -- and it is – but being together every second of the day for a year can be a challenge. When we describe our travels to our friends back home we get some interesting responses. When commenting that we are together around the clock for an entire year, we’ve heard, “Oh, we could not do that…we just couldn’t.” Another friend said, “No way. We’d all kill each other within the first couple weeks.”

We’ve previously done another long trip – six months backpacking through Central America and Spain back in 2005 -- so we had an idea what to expect. When a family of four travels on a budget, it’s tempting to save money by having everyone stay in one room. The incremental cost of a hotel manager adding a fourth bed to a triple room is often minimal and sometimes there’s no extra cost at all. Occasionally, when there's only a double room with two larger beds available, the only option is for the four of us to double up and share. The saved money adds up over 365 days but it does compound the “togetherness” factor.

A family member’s habits become magnified when you constantly observe them. My son’s frequent whistling isn’t so bad, but when four people are quietly reading in a 15’x15’ room it starts to get on everyone’s nerves. My daughter has a habit of borrowing my things and not putting them back. Whenever I’m packing up and I can’t find my iPod touch or my 21 function Swiss Army Knife, I head immediately for her. When Mom twists at the hair behind her ears or when Dad picks his nose, the others point it out; 24/7 family time means no privacy. Sometimes I like nothing better than to head out by myself to an internet café to check my email. I’m sure my wife and kids do as well.

While each of us have our own idiosyncrasies, we do share one unpleasant yet unavoidable trait. With all of us walking everywhere in hot weather, a wardrobe limited to what’s in our backpacks and no access to a washing machine, the smell of dirty socks is omnipresent. All four of us relaxing in our hotel room with our shoes off is enough to peel the paint off the walls. Not a day goes by without a comment on someone’s particular brand of stench.

Our kids are 14 and 13, respectively and I think that the constant family time must be hard on them. They’ve entered an age where they are increasingly peer-centered, but there are very few peers to interact with. We have to remember this when the “Got You Last” game turns into a slap fest. On the plus side, my wife and feel that being around them 24/7 at a very confusing and fast-changing time in their lives is a positive thing. We are there to discuss things with them that they might be struggling with on their own back home.

On the whole, the 24/7 thing has been an overwhelmingly positive thing for our family. We’ve grown extremely close and have hundreds of travel stories to tell for years in the future. Yes, it’s been great…except for the smelly socks.

Turkish Connection

2010-07-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

As published in Hand/Eye Magazine on May 6 2010

Five generations of carpet salvation at the Grand Bazaar

Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, one of the world’s oldest and largest covered markets, is a living connection between past and present. The Turkish bazaar was a stop on the Silk Road, the ancient trading route that linked East and West and lies steps from the Bosphorus, the strait that both divides and joins Asia and Europe. In the very back of the bazaar, in the Zincirli Han (caravansary), the Sisco Osman carpet business sells beautifully restored Turkish carpets that have literally connected old and new for the five generations since 1898.

“There are 4,000 carpet shops in Istanbul and 400 in the Grand Bazaar,” Says Bilgin Aksoy, the nephew of Osman Senel, better known as business namesake Sisco Osman (pronounced “chish-ko”). “Of those 400, only a handful sell old carpets and kilims that have been restored. Everyone else sells ‘new’ carpets. They just call a factory with a model number and they make it right away. Our carpets are 100% wool. People who sell new carpets claim them to be made completely of wool, but they are more like 30-40% wool…they have to be for the machine looms to be able to work with the carpet fiber.” Bilgin is one of 4 cousins that are the 5th generation of the Sisko Osman business. Osman Senel has handed over the reins to the business but is still involved in procuring the carpets. He scours the Turkish countryside looking for older, often damaged carpets and then has them painstakingly rewoven to look like new. The carpets are typically “dowry” carpets that brides-to-be have woven for their betrothed, a woven symbol of the bride and groom’s lifelong connection.

“My uncle is somewhere in remote Turkey now, acquiring carpets,” says Bilgin. “Often the village women who weave the carpets and kilims initially don’t want to sell them. But we make a note of a good carpet and come back another time and sometimes later they are willing to sell. Often it can be many years later.”

Acquisition of the carpets is a lot of work. For every 100 villagers contacted on a 3-4 week buying trip, perhaps 5 will be willing to part with their carpet. Most of the company’s carpets are between 30-50 years old, with many being as old as 80 or 90 years old. Sometimes they will acquire a beautiful carpet that is 200 or 300 years old from the Ottoman Period; those go in their private collection that now numbers about 1,700 carpets. The Turkish government prohibits the export of carpets and kilims older than 100 years.

Once the carpets are acquired, the painstaking process of restoring them begins. It takes about a year for a Turkish village woman to weave a carpet, but to restore an older one can take twice as long. The old, slightly faded carpet fibers of the original must be matched exactly and in order to repair a 2-inch diameter hole, the warp and weft must be opened twice that amount in each direction in order to seamlessly repair the carpet. An inventory of older carpet and kilim pieces is kept exclusively for this process and twenty artisans work full time restoring the carpets. Obviously with this labor component, restoration is the most expensive part of the process but the results speak for themselves. Bilgin rolls out a recently-acquired wool carpet and then lays a similar restored one over it and the difference is stunning; a harmonious connection between old and new fibers.

Over time, the Sisko Osman principals have seen tens of thousands of carpets but some are more memorable than others. “One older woman remembers when she wove her dowry carpet many years ago,” says Bilgin. “She knew that her husband really wanted an automobile but had no chance of buying one. When she wove her dowry carpet, she wove a red car in each corner.” Bilgin then has his assistant roll out the very same carpet in the showroom -- a shiny wool-on-wool, red carpet that looks like new. “Another carpet design was the view that the bride and her groom would see from the window of their new house once they were married.” Again the assistant rolls out a carpet with the aforementioned landscape -- a village mosque, trees and mountains framed within a floral border.

With Turkish women slowly becoming more modern, dowry carpets are becoming harder to find. Bilgin acknowledges that it’s a dying art. “Yes, it may be harder to find carpets like these in the future, but we have a large inventory of carpets that we’ve acquired over the years. Enough to keep this generation busy.”

You can purchase beautifully restored Turkish carpets from the Sisco Osman company in Istanbul, Turkey. Their showroom is located in the Zincirli Han section of the Grand Bazaar.

Searching The Souk For The Hand Of Fatima

2010-07-10T23:22:00.000-07:00

“Bien sûr, j'ai une main de Fatima pour vous. Venez,” said the young man as he motioned us to follow him. We’d been searching for a Hand of Fatima door ornament in the Fez medina for a few days and we remained hopeful as we followed him through several narrow, shady alleys. It takes no more than ten seconds to get completely and utterly lost in the medina, so I carefully noted landmarks along the way: wood scaffolding holding up an archway, powerful stench of urine down a dead-end alley, woman breastfeeding in front of her home. We arrived at the shop and a man showed us a 3-fingered hand of Fatima, unfortunately not the 5-fingered one that we’d admired on several Fes doors in the medina. Our search would have to continue.

The Hand of Fatima is a flat, decorative iron or brass door ornament and it’s thought that the stylized open hand is a good luck charm and wards off the evil eye. It is also known as Khamsa, which is Arabic for five, referring to the number of fingers of the hand. Archaeological evidence suggests that a downward pointing Khamsa has been used as a protective amulet in the North African region prior to its use by Muslims and Jews. It is also thought to have been associated with Tanit, the supreme deity of the Phoenician client state of Carthage (present day Tunisia), whose hand was used to ward off the evil eye.

Fatima herself was the youngest daughter of the Prophet Mohammed and Muslims regard her as a loving daughter, mother and wife as well as a role model for all Muslim women. Because of her moral purity she is to Islam what the Virgin Mary is to Christianity and she is commonly referred to as “az-Zahra” which means “The Shining One.”

On one of our many rambles through the medina, we passed a Hand of Fatima adorning a large thick cedar door and I made the casual comment “We should get one of those.” For the next few days this idle statement became a quest and we did not leave a shop without asking about a Hand of Fatima. My wife and daughter love nothing better than to spend hours shopping in souks, comparing features, benefits and prices. They enjoy the hunt as much as the prize. My daughter's occasional nickname is "Soukie", a reflection of her enthusiasm for Middle Eastern and North African markets and bazaars. My son and I have a much shorter attention span and we will tire out after about an hour, so the driving force behind this particular quest was the female side of the family. The last couple days in Fes, they asked in dozens of places, but had no luck. I was skeptical.

When my son and I gave up the hunt and retreated to our cool massreiya apartment, the girls continued their mission. On our last full day in Fes, they returned to a shop where they had already purchased glass perfume sprinklers (to be used as oil and vinegar cruets). Realizing that they had not yet asked this particular shopkeeper, they inquired and he ran off saying “Une minute.” He came back shortly with a five fingered Hand of Fatima that was half the cost (after a little bargaining) of the three-fingered one referred to above. When they walked into our massreiya, they couldn't conceal their smiles as they showed off the fruit of their labors. It was a win-win situation; we got to relax in our nice apartment and they had the thrill of the chase...and we all got our Hand of Fatima.

Support For A Traveling Family

2010-07-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder how an itinerant backpacking family that is away for a year gets their letters while on safari in Tanzania? Ever thought about how various checks get deposited in our California bank while we are in the Bolivian Amazon? What about the occasional bills for which checks need to be written…do those pay themselves while we’re snorkeling with sea lions in the Galapagos? And how do we process all the paperwork for my son’s enrolment in high school while we are shopping in the souks of Morocco? The three-letter answer is a familiar one: Mom.

My mom swallowed hard when I told her we planned to take a year off, but -- as always -- she was ready to help in any way she could. The first thing we had to do was to set her up. We gave her our checkbooks, added her as a signatory on our checking accounts and gave her our sign-on and password codes. Once that was done we had to give her a technological makeover in order to make communication easier. We yanked out the dial-up modem cord and fired up a new cable broadband line. We got rid of her 5 year old desktop computer and installed a brand spanking new system complete with webcam to take advantage of Skype video call functionality. I brought over my Canon scanner and hooked it up to her system so she could make digital files of our snail mail.

With the technology in place and us on the road, Mom settled into her bi-monthly schedule. After scheduling a time with our tenants, she would drive over to our house to pick up our two-weeks-worth of mail. Bringing it back home, she would take a first pass through the pile, sending the mail order catalogs, flyers, discount coupons and junk mail to the shredder pile. Her eye became adept at finding the items that required immediate attention. A random sampling from her “mail report” from a few months back reveals several W-2 and 1099 tax forms, registration forms for the kids summer camps, a handwritten letter from the son of my pen pal of 30 years, a check from Hand/Eye magazine, few bank statements, a solicitation to join AARP (how do they know?) and a bill from our gardeners.

As if this weren’t enough, we crammed about 150 cubic feet of storage boxes and a Toyota minivan in her garage. Our silverware was stuffed under her bed, my wife's jewelry was tucked away in her bedroom and my large box of old photos was put in her closet. There are thousands of details to conquer when a family takes off and travels for a year. Fortunately we have the ultimate in logistical support.

Thanks Mom.

Morocco Impressions

2010-07-05T18:05:00.001-07:00

Prior to visiting Morocco my perception of the country was filtered by movies (Casablanca, Babel, The Wind and the Lion) and by music (Crosby, Stills and Nash’ “Marrakech Express”, the Moroccan influence on the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan and others). Now that we are here, it is our experiences in other Muslim countries, particularly Egypt, that have influenced our first impressions of Morocco. We spent 5 weeks in Egypt earlier this year and it’s fitting that the two countries that bookend North Africa are our comparison points.

Even though one of the first Moroccans I met – a taxi driver at the Nador border – had a bruise on his forehead, we saw very few of these “piousness indicators” while in Morocco. In Egypt, many men had these bruises, clearly the result of vigorous prayer when pressing their foreheads to the ground. According to a 2007 New York Times article, “The zebibah, Arabic for raisin, is a dark circle of callused skin, or in some cases a protruding bump, between the hairline and the eyebrows. It emerges on the spot where worshipers press their foreheads into the ground during their daily prayers.” The Moroccans with their blemish-free foreheads could have been from anywhere in the non-Muslim world. The decibel levels of the call to prayer are also lower in Morocco than in Egypt. We were in the heart of the Fes Medina for 2 full days before I heard the muezzin’s call. In Cairo and other Egyptian cities, the call to prayer could be heard from anywhere at full volume. One would think that with a more fervent outlook on Islam, that access to mosques would be tighter in Egypt than in Morocco, but this is not true. Ironically, mosques are closed to non-Muslims in Morocco yet open in Egypt.

Another thing that stood out for us was clothing. In Egypt, men typically wore gray gowns and almost every woman we saw in public wore a black or gray gown and veil and many had their faces covered. In the traditional Moroccan cities of Fes and Marrakech there were definitely some older women dressed that way, but most of the women wore jeans and dresses and did not have their heads covered. The young trendy Moroccans walking through the Medina wearing designer clothing could have just as easily been in New York or Paris.

Perhaps Egypt’s proximity to the Middle East and to Mecca explains why they seemed more intense to us. One thing that Morocco does share with Egypt is the intensity of bargaining inside the souks. The Moroccans may be more laid back when it comes to Islam, but step inside a carpet or leather goods shop and you’ll be lucky to leave without a purchase.

Essaouria: Of Dung, Goats and Argan Trees

2010-07-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

We’d never heard of Essaouria until we started planning our trip to Morocco but the walled medina, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site, with waves from the Atlantic ocean crashing against its ramparts, sounded too good to pass up. We also learned that this arid region around Essaouria was where goats routinely climbed trees looking for food. The bizarre video (below) shows 16 goats munching argan tree fruit 20 feet in the air. As we learned about where to see the goats, we also learned about the very versatile and useful fruit that they eat. We decided to hire a taxi from Essaouria and visit an argan oil cooperative and perhaps along the way see some goats climbing trees.

After negotiating a taxi for the four of us to visit the Marjana cooperative, we sped along the highway to Marrakech keeping an eye out for goats. The argan tree, which only grows in this part of Morocco, clicks all the right boxes when it comes to trendiness, health & beauty, women’s rights and the environment. It’s drizzled on salads in hip, cosmopolitan restaurants and it’s routinely sold in Provence markets alongside designer olive oils. It is high in vitamin E and essential fatty acids and is believed to help all sorts of skin conditions, such as acne, psoriasis, eczema and wrinkles and medical evidence suggests that the oil may help reduce cholesterol and prevent arteriosclerosis. The cooperatives are run almost exclusively by women; usually older women cracking, roasting and grinding the seed-nuts and younger bilingual women leading the tours. The tree is extremely hardy and helps prevent desertification of the region and virtually all the by-products of the production process are recycled (nut shells fuel the roasting process, discarded pith fed to goats, etc.). And if that resume isn’t impressive enough for you, local Berbers also mix it with ground almonds and honey to make amlou, a sweet delicacy reputed to be an aphrodisiac.

We arrived and asked for Fatima, the sister of a man we met near our small riad guesthouse. Fatima took us over to the work area where we were greeted by a loud ululation from one of the older women. The women wore headscarves and sat against the wall, all of them holding a smooth rock between their legs while working at separating pits from almond-like seed-nuts. Fatima explained that the pit must first be separated from the pulpy fruit matter, and then the "almonds" must be extracted by chipping away at the pit. It was at this point I asked about the goat dung. I’d read that as the goats climb the argan trees and ingest the fruit, they poop it out and the nuts are recovered from the goat dung. The goat’s strong digestive juices act to eat away the tough elastic coating over the pit. Fatima smiled and told us that this is the old process and they no longer do it that way.

The sound of rocks chipping away at the hard pits served as our syncopated soundtrack while Fatima continued. “Now, if you are making oil for eating, the almonds must be roasted.” she said. We watched two women in another room fanning the nut-shell-fueled fire to slowly roast the almonds. From there, we walked back to the first work area and watched a woman slowly grinding a roasted almond-and-water mixture until oil started pouring from her stone pestle into a plastic container. From here it was simply a matter of filtering the liquid so that all that is left is a clear golden oil. To make one liter of argan oil it takes 36-40 kilos of fruit, which produce 2.5 kilos of almonds. Fatima tells us that this process takes one woman three days to complete.

At the end of our tour we bought some argan shampoo, olive oil, wrinkle cream and amlou and headed back to Essaouria along the same road. About halfway back I did see a goat standing on a branch about 8 feet off the ground, but nothing like the video I’ve posted above. I’ve since read that there is a concerted effort to keep the goats from eating the increasingly valuable argan fruit. Next time we’ll stop the car and fork over a few dirhams to the goatherd boys and watch them climb up the trees.

Chillin' In The Moroccan Heat: The Fes Medina

2010-06-28T09:33:00.001-07:00

Our entry into Morocco was a long hot, dusty and eventful day (see "Crossing Borders, Crossing Continents") and we were relieved to arrive in Fes before nightfall. My wife usually organizes our accommodations and always does a great job, but in Fez she outdid herself. After 13 hours of travel by taxies, ferries, grandes taxis and an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque first stroll through Fes’ medina, we plopped our bags down at 9:00 pm in a beautiful, cool apartment within a dar, a traditional Moroccan house.

As far as I can tell a riad is a larger, multi-room house with a courtyard and central fountain, many of which have been converted into full-service hotels, and a dar is a multi-family house or apartment building for Moroccans. Our apartment manager described our particular apartment as a massreiya, a Moroccan “newlywed quarters” that each of the family’s sons stay in once they are married. Once the first son and his bride are able to get their own place, the second son moves in, etc. Our lodgings were cool and spacious and decorated with intricate arches, stonework and mosaic tiles. Many tourists stay in similar surroundings in a riad, but with a family of four our massreiya was a more affordable option and we liked the fact that we’d have a small kitchen and there’d be other Moroccan families within our dar.

A large family with many children lived directly across from us, our respective doors facing each other, four feet apart. We saw them often and exchanged salaam aleikums or had short conversations in French. When no one else was around their 6 year old would shake our hand, smile and politely ask for a coin. They had a teenage daughter who occasionally would round up her friends and stand in front of the downstairs door, waiting to get a look at my teenage son. As we’d walk by them and up the stairs to our apartment, we’d hear stifled giggles from the group.

Our apartment was near the center of the Fes medina, believed to be the world’s largest contiguous car-free urban area. It’s like taking a flat city and placing it into the bottom of a trash compactor: scrunching the urban terrain to create hills, transforming wide city streets into narrow lanes and alleys and having the same population in an area about one-tenth its original size. The entrance to our building was a battered, non-descript wood door that led to a dark alley. Occasionally we’d see tourists on a tour of the medina watch us enter our unmarked door in a dark alley and we could almost hear them saying Where are they going? We got to know our mercantile neighbors – the gregarious butcher, the sullen barber, the man who ran the market and sold us fresh baguettes each morning and the fellow who ran an Internet café with the world’s dustiest computer keyboards.

Fes in June is hot and just a twenty minute walk is enough to make you start sweating. We found ourselves gravitating towards the shadows as we moved through the medina’s labyrinthine alleys. As we walked though the heat, our massreiya’s cool stone walls and shuttered windows beckoned us, like a silent call to prayer. Although life in the medina was fascinating, the heat made us come back to our cool refuge repeatedly during our stay.

Venetian Resurrection

2010-06-24T17:36:00.000-07:00

As printed in Hand/Eye Magazine June 17th 2010

Venice puts the Mask back on

Thirty years ago you couldn’t find a mask shop in Venice; today you can’t walk anywhere without seeing one. The colorful masks, usually associated with Carnevale, have been around since the 12th century, but for most of the past two centuries they’ve been largely forgotten. In the early 1980’s Mario Belloni and a handful of other artisans were credited with reviving the Venice mask making tradition. Mario’s Ca Macana mask store is a few steps off the Grand Canal and he offers workshops on the mask making process. His book, Mashcere a Venezia explores the history of Venetian mask making and Stanley Kubrick came to Mario when he needed masks for the movie Eyes Wide Shut.

With the fall of the Venetian Republic at the end of the 18th century, the importance of Carnevale and masks diminished to the point where they all but disappeared for nearly 200 years. In 1979 the municipality of Venice reinstated Carnevale to not only bring back a Venetian tradition but to bring in much needed tourism revenue. Around this time Mario and some of his fellow architecture students started selling papier mache masks in the squares. Was it the love of a time-honored tradition that inspired Mario? “No. I needed the money,” he admits. “There were no mask shops like you see today. We didn’t know about the Venetian mask tradition and that’s why today you see such variety— suns and moons and things like that. Back in those days there was just ten to fifteen of us selling masks made of newspaper papier mache. No shops, just us.”

Obviously a lot has changed. There are hundreds of mask shops now in Venice and the quality runs the gamut from beautiful and expensive handmade masks to cheap, machine-stamped plastic ones from China, Romania and Albania. Mario pulls a mask down from his workshop shelf and shows the layers of paper strips that form the texture inside the mask; the hallmark of its handmade origins.

The workshop is cluttered with half-finished masks, painting supplies, clay busts and large stacks of blotting paper. Mario gives a quick explanation of the mask-making process, “First you make a clay mold of a face and from that you make a plaster cast. Inside the cast you put a little clear grease and then you start laying in strips of blotting paper— about four or five layers brushed with water and flour paste. After drying 45 minutes or so, you remove it from the plaster, trim and adjust it, and then you’re ready to paint.”

While talking, Mario takes out an unadorned, white, sharp-beaked larva mask and puts it on along with a black cape and black tri-cornered hat, one of the most traditional of Venetian costumes. Pointing to his outfit, Mario continues, “This is the bauta. The word bauta originally comes from the black cape but it has come to mean the whole ensemble.” Still in costume, he displays another mask, a muta— a black, oval mask with no mouth hole. He turns the mask to show the string bit that allows the wearer to hold it to her face by biting onto it. “These were used by the ruling class women in their games of seduction. You knew you had won the game if she allowed you to see her face.” Mario moves over to the counter and pulls out some old pen and ink drawings. One of them features the eerie Dottore Della Peste (plague doctor) mask. This white mask with a long curvy beak was used by doctors during the days of the Black Death. The beak was stuffed with medicinal spices and herbs to help prevent doctors from catching the plague while attending to patients.

Born and raised in Genoa, it’s clear that Mario feels at home in his workshop in his adopted city. “I was coming back from Rome and the train stopped at the Venice station at night. I decided to get out and explore the city and I fell in love with it. I got my chance to live here when I was an architecture student and since then I’ve learned a lot about the history. Venice was an amazing place!” exclaims Mario. “Five hundred years of peace! It was a dictatorship by the nobles, and the ruling class was loved. It was an egalitarian society where people left their windows open at night.” Mario sits down and continues, “You must remember 500 years ago, these masks were not just worn for Carnevale, they were worn year round, to court, to parties, at the casino. They let nobles engage in behavior”, says Mario, searching for the right phrase, “that were afraid to try without a mask.” Indeed, wealthy Venetians could afford to indulge their eccentricities but the small, crowded island didn’t offer many opportunities for privacy. The mask was the perfect solution.

Mario looks around the workshop, perhaps reflecting on his journey from architecture student to preeminent Venetian mask-maker. “It was not a gift,” says Mario with a sweep of the hand, referring to what he has built. “It’s been a lot of work but it’s been great.” Many stories about artisans who create things by hand are about a craft endangered by machines and cheap offshore labor. Mario Belloni’s story is not about a dying craft; it’s about the resurrection of one.

You can purchase a mask or Mario Belloni’s book Mashcere a Venezia at his Ca Macana store at Dorsoduro 3172, Venice, Italy. You can also purchase them online at http://www.camacana.com/