Saturday, April 7, 2007
It´s been awhile, hasn´t it, my dear website?
Let´s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
After Panama, we did a bit of sailing.
Somewhere in there we crossed the equator. It was a fancy affair. With King Neptune presiding, we became Shellbacks instead of Pollywogs, according to sailing lore. (It is plainly better to be more turtle-like than wog-like). This involved initiation into The Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of the Deep. I could explain more, but we´d have to be on a boat in the middle of the ocean and I´d have to paint your face with ground-up squid and make you do a cajun walz while in a hand-stand, while spinning a beret with llamas on it on your left foot, while bouncing a rubber ball with your chin and singing, "Sunshine Superman" after inhaling helium from a balloon that you fabricated and filled using only pork products. The choice is yours, but I´d recommend getting some experience before putting yourself out there. Luckily for us, no one aboard had crossed the ecuator before, so there were no unpleasant initiation rituals.
Along the passage to Ecuador, I bid farewell to my evil watch. He was buried at sea in the SS Beep, a paper boat of the shoddiest construction. In the watch´s manual, an alarm isn´t even mentioned, but I assure you one existed. That thing would go off at completely random times during the day and not shut up for many long minutes. Then it would start up again and go off once or twice, then stop and resume ten minutes later. More than likely it had some salt water in its innards, but I´d rather just say it was evil through and through. From its cheap black rubber band to its smug blue face, the thing sustained itself on the breath of my sighs and the scent of my pain ... when it wasn´t just sitting at the bottom of my locker.
After those two momentous events, and a lot of movement over water, we arrived safely and soundly in Salinas, Ecuador.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
2 Unrelated Things
1. When we spent the night in Gatun Lake, in the middle of the Panama Canal, we moored on this giant buoy. Brian took this excellent picture of me, looking like a dead elf, sleeping next to it. I don´t know why it´s so funny to me. Maybe because the buoy sort of looks like a boob.2. Everything´s super dramatic when you´re fixing something at the bow or the mast and that can be amusing.
I was just thinking about this day when we were hove-to and Aaron and I were trying to get the bowlight working. The bow was smashing up and down. We´re getting smashed with waves. The wind is only blowing 30, but I walk like an 80-yr old to the bow, clipped in, hair flying around, arms full of tools. "AAAAARON, TAKE THIS SCREWDRIVEEERRRR," I say. "IT WILL HELP YOUUUU WITH YOUR TASSSSSSSSSSK."
"OKAYYYYYYY," he says. "THANNNNNKS. CAN YOU GET ME A SMALLER ONE, SOME WD40, PAPER TOWELS, A ZIP TIE, AND WAIT, HOLD THIS" "OKAYYYYYYYYY. BE RIIIGHT BACK." ... it´s just that everything´s so noisy and wet that you can´t help but feel like you´re out there saving the world. Same goes for being up the mast. I think the lesson here is: Discomfort plus hard of hearing = drama/extreme feelings of usefulness.
"OKAYYYYYYY," he says. "THANNNNNKS. CAN YOU GET ME A SMALLER ONE, SOME WD40, PAPER TOWELS, A ZIP TIE, AND WAIT, HOLD THIS" "OKAYYYYYYYYY. BE RIIIGHT BACK." ... it´s just that everything´s so noisy and wet that you can´t help but feel like you´re out there saving the world. Same goes for being up the mast. I think the lesson here is: Discomfort plus hard of hearing = drama/extreme feelings of usefulness.
For the record, I think the world could be saved with a zip tie and some WD40.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
I Have a Button Mushroom on My Ankle, or Adventures in the World’s Colon
Today I decided to take action RE: the growing, pussing entity that has camped out just above my left heel. But before I could take care of that pretty little piece of business, I had to revisit the optometrist and his receptionist, Xiorhara. I had assured Xiohara I would be back at 10am, Calle 11 Ave Melendez, Colon, Panama. I had pre-paid.
The reason for my first visit to Optica Sunshine was directly related the swift removal of eyewear from my face and placement of it into the ocean. My glasses were knocked off by an indifferent Mr. Thirsty. I had been wielding our dinghy bailer with brilliant, but needless zeal. His long straw smacked me in the face and sent my glasses into the deep. After two attempts by both Aaron and myself, somebody suggested, “Let’s discontinue our efforts to free-dive 50 feet to look for glasses that have fallen in or around a 70-foot radius of the stern.”
So that had been Wednesday’s adventure – finding an optometrist in Panama. I held my fingers up to my face to look like glasses. I said things like, “lunettes, lenets, lenses, glasses, glass, can’t see, no see.” Ryan said things in Spanish to the cab driver. At some point, we were at a McDonald’s. Then we showed up at Sunshine Optica and I entrusted my vision to Dr. Humberto Schouwe. He looked at the unopened contact lens I had brought. He nodded. He sat me down. I read letters to him in English and he spoke to me in Spanish. He confirmed my prescription and sent me out to Xiohara.
I tried on all kinds of frames. The choices were limited. I could go artsy, or I could go 80s. Ryan suggested basketball goggles. I narrowed the field to two and made Ryan try them on so I could see what they looked like. Then I chose these black ones and paid the $70 it cost for the exam, lenses and frames. I did a little dance in my head and agreed to pick them up Saturday, today, at 10AM.
It was determined, after this remarkable upfront success with the optometrist, that I would be fine to healthcare-treasure hunt in Colon today without a bodyguard or translator. After a $1 cab ride, I showed up at Dr Schouwe’s door and waited to be buzzed in. Part of me wished I had asked the driver to wait until I was let in. There were questionable loiterers all over the place. In a moment, Xiohara buzzed. She rose from her desk to greet me when I walked in. She met me in the middle of the store and hugged me with a large smile on her face. She made a kissing sound by my cheek. She was glad I made it back. I was glad, too, though somewhat alarmed that she would take relief in knowing I had come to retrieve my pre-paid glasses.
After retrieving the glasses, I set off to find a taxi. Hearing “Mack the Knife” in my head, my eyes darted from shady character to shady character. I scuttled along, trying to make myself as invisible and uninteresting as possible, while also searching frantically for a taxi. I waved to two without passengers. Their drivers shook their heads at me and drove past. Confused, I waved down a third. Luckily, he pulled to a stop. “Hola. Central Medical Caribe, por favor,” I said.
I passed off another $1 bill to the cabbie and waited to be buzzed into the emergency room. The inside of the building was typical, as hospitals go, but had an odd sense of being less clean than U.S. ones, though I saw nothing to give me this impression. I presented myself at the desk. In my best charades and broken Spanish, and with a little help from my friend Latin American Spanish Phrasebook, I explained to the receptionist that I needed to see a doctor. Really though, I shouldn’t give myself too much credit for communication. I think the pussing, crusty red welt on my foot spoke the international language of Nasty quite fluently.
The girl walked me down the hall. People talked to one another, looked at me, pointed at me, pointed down hallways. I was sat down in a waiting area. Less than a minute later, Latin American Spanish Phrasebook, a doctor and I discussed my condition.
“Hongo,” said the doctor. “Blahbitty blah ba blah blah hongo,” she said.
I provided her with a blank look followed by a concerted effort to shuffle pages.
“Hongo.” She said again, deliberately. Obviously she was following the classic theory, We Don’t Speak the Same Language, Which Means You Understand My Language When I speak Slowly.
She took Latin American Spanish Phrasebook from my hands and flipped to the Food section. I gestured to the back of the book where the dictionary is, but she found what she was looking for. “Hongo.” She pointed to the English definition: Button mushroom. I immediately pictured a large white plate with one sautéed morel being placed in front of me by Sascha Cohen with a French accent. No, no, button mushroom. … pause… “FUNGUS!” I said. “Si! Si!” Never before had I expressed excitement at the discovery of a fungal infection on my body. Extraneously, never before have I had one.
The doctor wrote a prescription and instructed me to lie down so she could clean the affected area. “Gracias,” I said and looked over the prescription. I wondered if it could have any interactions with doxycycline, my anti-malaria drug of choice. I pulled out Latin American Spanish Phrasebook and went to town for about 5 minutes. Judging from the doctor’s varied, but eager interest in my explanations, I think her responses went something like this. “You are already on this medication?!” “YOU HAVE MALARIA?!?!” “Oh. Si! No, no problem.”
Moments later, I was back in the waiting room, laying down a MasterCard and signing my name to a receipt for $40. They called me a cab, buzzed me out and told the driver to take me to a pharmacy. It was an efficient little operation and aside from the credit card slip, the only paperwork required was printing my name on the prescription pad. The taxi after the pharmacy came quickly and I was soon in the safety of a moving vehicle. We drove through Colon en route to the final destination: home. I had successfully obtained my new glasses and been treated for a fungal infection. Thursday was coming up roses.
In Colon, all of the buildings are in ruins and the gutters carry a stench that smells like real excrement, not just that general bad smell you say is poo when you lack a better description. The street vendors sell what looks to be lottery tickets, in addition to rolls of plastic tablecloths that can be cut to a size of your choosing. The fruit and food stands look like armored trucks, but are buzzing with flies. On another day, I had bought a new bathing suit and handed my $8 to a man behind bulletproof glass. The people don’t seem poor or hungry, but there is desperation between the lines.
My taxi pulled into the yacht club drive. It was around 2pm and the adventure concluded. When I got back to Aldebaran, I climbed aboard, displaying my fungus cream, pills and glasses with triumphant, over-the-head gestures to a crowd of clapping crewmates. Just kidding.
The reason for my first visit to Optica Sunshine was directly related the swift removal of eyewear from my face and placement of it into the ocean. My glasses were knocked off by an indifferent Mr. Thirsty. I had been wielding our dinghy bailer with brilliant, but needless zeal. His long straw smacked me in the face and sent my glasses into the deep. After two attempts by both Aaron and myself, somebody suggested, “Let’s discontinue our efforts to free-dive 50 feet to look for glasses that have fallen in or around a 70-foot radius of the stern.”
So that had been Wednesday’s adventure – finding an optometrist in Panama. I held my fingers up to my face to look like glasses. I said things like, “lunettes, lenets, lenses, glasses, glass, can’t see, no see.” Ryan said things in Spanish to the cab driver. At some point, we were at a McDonald’s. Then we showed up at Sunshine Optica and I entrusted my vision to Dr. Humberto Schouwe. He looked at the unopened contact lens I had brought. He nodded. He sat me down. I read letters to him in English and he spoke to me in Spanish. He confirmed my prescription and sent me out to Xiohara.
I tried on all kinds of frames. The choices were limited. I could go artsy, or I could go 80s. Ryan suggested basketball goggles. I narrowed the field to two and made Ryan try them on so I could see what they looked like. Then I chose these black ones and paid the $70 it cost for the exam, lenses and frames. I did a little dance in my head and agreed to pick them up Saturday, today, at 10AM.
It was determined, after this remarkable upfront success with the optometrist, that I would be fine to healthcare-treasure hunt in Colon today without a bodyguard or translator. After a $1 cab ride, I showed up at Dr Schouwe’s door and waited to be buzzed in. Part of me wished I had asked the driver to wait until I was let in. There were questionable loiterers all over the place. In a moment, Xiohara buzzed. She rose from her desk to greet me when I walked in. She met me in the middle of the store and hugged me with a large smile on her face. She made a kissing sound by my cheek. She was glad I made it back. I was glad, too, though somewhat alarmed that she would take relief in knowing I had come to retrieve my pre-paid glasses.
After retrieving the glasses, I set off to find a taxi. Hearing “Mack the Knife” in my head, my eyes darted from shady character to shady character. I scuttled along, trying to make myself as invisible and uninteresting as possible, while also searching frantically for a taxi. I waved to two without passengers. Their drivers shook their heads at me and drove past. Confused, I waved down a third. Luckily, he pulled to a stop. “Hola. Central Medical Caribe, por favor,” I said.
I passed off another $1 bill to the cabbie and waited to be buzzed into the emergency room. The inside of the building was typical, as hospitals go, but had an odd sense of being less clean than U.S. ones, though I saw nothing to give me this impression. I presented myself at the desk. In my best charades and broken Spanish, and with a little help from my friend Latin American Spanish Phrasebook, I explained to the receptionist that I needed to see a doctor. Really though, I shouldn’t give myself too much credit for communication. I think the pussing, crusty red welt on my foot spoke the international language of Nasty quite fluently.
The girl walked me down the hall. People talked to one another, looked at me, pointed at me, pointed down hallways. I was sat down in a waiting area. Less than a minute later, Latin American Spanish Phrasebook, a doctor and I discussed my condition.
“Hongo,” said the doctor. “Blahbitty blah ba blah blah hongo,” she said.
I provided her with a blank look followed by a concerted effort to shuffle pages.
“Hongo.” She said again, deliberately. Obviously she was following the classic theory, We Don’t Speak the Same Language, Which Means You Understand My Language When I speak Slowly.
She took Latin American Spanish Phrasebook from my hands and flipped to the Food section. I gestured to the back of the book where the dictionary is, but she found what she was looking for. “Hongo.” She pointed to the English definition: Button mushroom. I immediately pictured a large white plate with one sautéed morel being placed in front of me by Sascha Cohen with a French accent. No, no, button mushroom. … pause… “FUNGUS!” I said. “Si! Si!” Never before had I expressed excitement at the discovery of a fungal infection on my body. Extraneously, never before have I had one.
The doctor wrote a prescription and instructed me to lie down so she could clean the affected area. “Gracias,” I said and looked over the prescription. I wondered if it could have any interactions with doxycycline, my anti-malaria drug of choice. I pulled out Latin American Spanish Phrasebook and went to town for about 5 minutes. Judging from the doctor’s varied, but eager interest in my explanations, I think her responses went something like this. “You are already on this medication?!” “YOU HAVE MALARIA?!?!” “Oh. Si! No, no problem.”
Moments later, I was back in the waiting room, laying down a MasterCard and signing my name to a receipt for $40. They called me a cab, buzzed me out and told the driver to take me to a pharmacy. It was an efficient little operation and aside from the credit card slip, the only paperwork required was printing my name on the prescription pad. The taxi after the pharmacy came quickly and I was soon in the safety of a moving vehicle. We drove through Colon en route to the final destination: home. I had successfully obtained my new glasses and been treated for a fungal infection. Thursday was coming up roses.
In Colon, all of the buildings are in ruins and the gutters carry a stench that smells like real excrement, not just that general bad smell you say is poo when you lack a better description. The street vendors sell what looks to be lottery tickets, in addition to rolls of plastic tablecloths that can be cut to a size of your choosing. The fruit and food stands look like armored trucks, but are buzzing with flies. On another day, I had bought a new bathing suit and handed my $8 to a man behind bulletproof glass. The people don’t seem poor or hungry, but there is desperation between the lines.
My taxi pulled into the yacht club drive. It was around 2pm and the adventure concluded. When I got back to Aldebaran, I climbed aboard, displaying my fungus cream, pills and glasses with triumphant, over-the-head gestures to a crowd of clapping crewmates. Just kidding.
Kuna Country
If a picture were drawn from the collective dreams people have of paradise and landscaped from canvas to reality, the earth and water sketched into life would be the sand and palm trees of the San Blas Archipelago. It´s almost a caricature of paradise.
After a weekend with the San Blas’ inhabitants, the Kuna Indians, at their yearly independence festival, life in the islands was demystified. We ate in their huts-- hearty, piles of plantains in white broth, fried fish and lots of coffee. Their children pulled on the Beards’ beards, and we hung out in their hammocks. Even the most brawny of their men came up to our chests. By the end of it, we had friends and we had enemies.
The best part was the independence festival. The Kuna revolution from Panama was in 1925 and we relived nearly every second of it in a three-day reenactment ceremony. At one point, we were herded into a large gathering in one of the big huts. The men and women were split up, so I sat alone on the far side of the room, a literal foot taller than my neighbors. We did not share a common language, and thus had little to say to one another. However, though wrong I could be, I think I felt a bit accepted, maybe even liked by the end of it. I watched with respect and took pictures of them to show them on my camera. They laughed and handed me hand-rolled cigarettes which I accepted, but re-gifted.
Later, we returned to our friend and guide, Raul’s house. We paid him and bought him some drinks. Then he became rather friendly and made many joking comments about leaving his wife to go to Panama City. The neighbors threw breadfruit at our host’s house, presumably angry that he had made more money from us in a few days than they make in two or three months. Things seemed smooth by the time we left, as Raul and his wife embraced and Aaron told her not to worry, we’d ditch Raul and save her if necessary.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
A touch of the 'venge is a small price to pay to see the Ciudad Perdida
There is a different sort of green to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, Colombia. The jungle is bright, but it seems to carry a rich darkness. Below the palm fronds and lazy, fanning leaves are the sounds of tucans, insects and the cracking of dying branches. The guerillas and paramilitary plot and idealize. the Tyrones indians lie mute, their hard work and craftsmanship about the landscape- glanced at, taken home in photographs and memorialized in traveling memmories to be re-told later in emails, on websites, to families and on dates. And the Kogi indiginious people farm the land, cultivating the hillsides for their bounty: coffee, chocolate, pineapple, bananas, plantain and sugar cane. Their children yield machetes, wade about in rubber boots, and carry on the ways of their ancestors. The tourists take it all in.
The Ciudad Perdida is one of the most awe-inspiring places I've ever been. I sat on one of the terraces for hours trying to cement those feelings in my memory forever. Seeing a place and knowing you'll leave it is like seeing a face and knowing you won't see it again soon. You try to study its individual features, what you like about it- the dots that form the painting, but you can almost already feel it fading. I'm really here. This is in front of me right now. For the majority of my life, this will not be facing me, posing. Come home with me, trees. Come a little closer, leaves. Let my brain study your bark and hold it in my taste buds so I'll have this flavor forever.
Monday, February 12, 2007
I want one
I'm not sure if you can tell, but this gear-shift boot is a fuzzy Colombian flag with GOOGLY EYES. When I saw this, I got so excited, I didn't notice that the rest of the cab was made of tin foil, electrical tape and dirt.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
When I heard the news, I almost spewed Oatmeal with pumpkin pie spice and walnuts all over the galley
...but that was because we were in a gale 90 miles off the coast of Colombia. It had nothing to do with the news.
The boat was rocking and rolling, the winds were up to 40 knots and the men were topside, vomiting. (Not really. Only one of them puked and that was in the sink, but you can see how I'd want to say that for effect.) I opened the satellite email to send tidings of safety, and holy smokes, I got an email with HUGE news. It turns out, the man who used to cut my Lego men's heads off with his Lego men's chainsaws has declared himself fit to have and to hold, 'till death do they part, the lovely and amazing girlfriend he's so courted for the past half-decade or so: My brother is engaged! Instead of spewing, I immediately started crying.
Happiness bodyslammed seasickness and I wandered topside to share my thoughts with the crew. "I wonder where they're going to have the wedding," I said. "I wonder what the ring looks like!" "I wonder what color towels they're going to get and if they'll be monogrammed."
"My brother is getting his drivers' license," said Brian. "Oh, what? It's not family news time?"
"What should I get them? I think I'll get them a present from Ecuador instead of The Pottery Barn. What do you think? What about Colombia? Think I'll find anything good in Colombia?"
Feet from my yabbering head, the waves crashed over the deck sending buckets down my jacket. I gasped periodically as cold, wet sea flowed from my neck to my ankles through the complicated infrastructure of foul-weather gear.
"Can you believe it?" I asked. "This is the end of an era! We're really growing up."
"Yep. Wow," said Aaron.
I looked at the black waves and their white hats. A wave crashed into the cockpit, pouring me a salty drink, shutting my valve of useless thoughts. Wow. They're really getting married. Buck-teeth and double-bridged glasses, cuff-links and a white lab coat, kickball with the neighborhoood kids and cycling races-- the years have added together and their sum is somewhere along these waves. It's ever changing, rolling up and down with the wind and the currents. The area under them and the distance in front of them will always evolve.
Aldebaran bobbed around. "Odysseus," said the ocean, "calm your thoughts of forever." Crash. Splash.
"Our whole family is going to be there!" I realized. "And the flowers will be so pretty."
The boat was rocking and rolling, the winds were up to 40 knots and the men were topside, vomiting. (Not really. Only one of them puked and that was in the sink, but you can see how I'd want to say that for effect.) I opened the satellite email to send tidings of safety, and holy smokes, I got an email with HUGE news. It turns out, the man who used to cut my Lego men's heads off with his Lego men's chainsaws has declared himself fit to have and to hold, 'till death do they part, the lovely and amazing girlfriend he's so courted for the past half-decade or so: My brother is engaged! Instead of spewing, I immediately started crying.
Happiness bodyslammed seasickness and I wandered topside to share my thoughts with the crew. "I wonder where they're going to have the wedding," I said. "I wonder what the ring looks like!" "I wonder what color towels they're going to get and if they'll be monogrammed."
"My brother is getting his drivers' license," said Brian. "Oh, what? It's not family news time?"
"What should I get them? I think I'll get them a present from Ecuador instead of The Pottery Barn. What do you think? What about Colombia? Think I'll find anything good in Colombia?"
Feet from my yabbering head, the waves crashed over the deck sending buckets down my jacket. I gasped periodically as cold, wet sea flowed from my neck to my ankles through the complicated infrastructure of foul-weather gear.
"Can you believe it?" I asked. "This is the end of an era! We're really growing up."
"Yep. Wow," said Aaron.
I looked at the black waves and their white hats. A wave crashed into the cockpit, pouring me a salty drink, shutting my valve of useless thoughts. Wow. They're really getting married. Buck-teeth and double-bridged glasses, cuff-links and a white lab coat, kickball with the neighborhoood kids and cycling races-- the years have added together and their sum is somewhere along these waves. It's ever changing, rolling up and down with the wind and the currents. The area under them and the distance in front of them will always evolve.
Aldebaran bobbed around. "Odysseus," said the ocean, "calm your thoughts of forever." Crash. Splash.
"Our whole family is going to be there!" I realized. "And the flowers will be so pretty."
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