decisions

many of the decisions that travelers make are probably irrelevant to the real world. of course, as a current traveler, i maintain that traveling is just like life - you have to breathe and eat and make good decisions - only the circumstances are different than what most people are going through. fine. but sometimes, that difference is what separates the traveling lifestyle from others and what gives people reason to use terms like the real world to describe the things that they are going through and/or the thing to which travelers must return. fine. i understand that.

the decisions that are twisting anna and my brains into knots these days are about whether or not we should go to peru via bus or plane, and then, if we should go through bolivia in order to get to chile, or just go through peru to chile. and then, should we take the jobs that were offered to us in cuenca, or should we continue to look for better, higher paying jobs in potentially more intersting places. ok, so the last decision is one that may be made in the real world, though the decision as to what we wanted to do today (i cant find the colon on this computer) hike for a third day in a row, or lay in hammocks and swim in a pool all day, or ride bikes into town to look at a used book store that is supposed to be decent - these are the types of decisions that people want to have to make.

at any rate, weve been staying at this place whose name i cannot pronounce which is located a mile or so (2km) outside of vilcabamba - the valley of longevity, where people live to be 100 years old on a fairly regular basis. clearly these people dont hike much in the surrounding area. in any event, the place whose name i cannot pronounce (henceforth to be called 'our hotel') is really somehat of a resort. beds are $11, which is damn near a fortune, and you get free (included in the price) breakfast of multi grain bread, ham, mueslix, yogurt, fruit, coffee (the first place that doesnt serve nescafe. you see, the coffee is grown here and then exported straight to our american lips. the people here drink nescafe. or, places that serve travelers and only travelers may have real coffee specifically because they know we will appreciate it and enjoy it and blog about it and get free publicity that way. however, as i have forgotten the name of our hotel, their plan, as per the publicity, has been thwarted), and 2 eggs any style. the hotel is perched on a hill, and the restaurant overlooks the town which is especially nice dring dinner, when it is dark and you can look up and see millions of stars and look down and see the lights of the town, which also look like stars. there is a pool, though it is freezing cold. there are bikes that you can take into town, though the gears dont shift - but - the ride to town is completely downhill and the ride from town is completely uphill on some tour de france styles that any normal person would never even attempt to climb even with good gear shifting. there is a bar with hammocks and a tv with dvd capabilities. there is a pool and pingpong table and every morning you wake up to the sound of exotic birds that are i guess not so exotic because they are there every morning.

you can go hiking from this hotel to a few places around the valley. one is a cloud forest in a national park, which anna, vincent and i went to on our first full day here. the vegetation as nice, but our guide was evidently a lunatic who prefers to enter parks illegaly and bushwhack his way through the dense forest, cutting down branches with a machete. that hike was muddy and required the hikers to constantly use their hands for either grabbing branches that would prevent them from slipping down steep slopes, or for scrambling up muddy inclines. at one point there was a clearing and you could see through the ferns and orchids and these leaves called elephant ears and the view was educational in that it alerted us to the fact that we had been walking alongside a cliff, in the mud. no worries though.
the next day, we went hiking up to a lookout point. this point was not in the cloud forest and was nearer to the hotel. this side of the cloud forest sees very little rain and is sprinkled with cactii and fossilized cow crap and other low, dusty type vegetation that would indicate to you that not much rain comes through. so, as opposed to the cloud forest hike, we could actually see with each step that we were walking on a 15 inch wide path that sloped down into a valley on either side. no worries though. rarely does a person just fall to the side for no reason. however, if it were to happen in this situation, ciao hombre, as they would say here in ecuador. still, the views from this ridge were amazing. we were walking along the ridge of a mountain, so there was nothing blocking our view and the andes were all around us on either side. behind the mountains closest to us were others more shadowy and far off. at no point did is seem like mountains were ever going to end. if you turned around you got the same feeling, and if there were no path, there would be no reason to believe that you would ever get back to where you started or that there was a starting point other than the mountains themselves. it was nice, but t could also make you dizzy and disoriented - which is exactly the feeling one has before one accidently falls to the side. just as it was getting to be a bit like 'why am i walking on a ridge?' we came to a point that was an absloute precipice. a 20 foot long strip of the same narrow path that was a ridge with a 90 degree cliff on either side. anna sat down because she had vertigo. i was behind her and everyone we were with was in front of her and made it across the ridge without a second thought. ive always thought that there were ways of dying that are inexcusable and falling off of a cliff because you voluntarily walked along a precipice has to be one of them. at the same time, my ego and traveler instinct was telling me to keep on and that if the others could do it then so could i. but, i wasnt going to leave anna, and i wasnt going to pressure her to go on because truthfully, i didnt want to either. see - isnt that a real life decision?





by the way, it is illegal to eat cuy in new york as of two weeks ago. round up the dietary rights committee.
by the way, i am trying to get pictures up onto the blog, and i will once i find a computer that recognizes annas digicam.