Peeling Carrots into the Ocean Makes Me Feel Free

[About this picture: the sun was inspired by Rothko, or more accurately, a seat cushion.]


Life on land is different from life at sea. For example, when you park your car you don´t have to think about tides. Here´s another example: on land, you can walk more than 43 feet in one direction. In sailing, everything is always moving and often in a direction which may hurt you. Also, you can throw aluminum cans right into the ocean because they rust so fast it´s better for the environment than a landfill.

Well I was sitting around on our last passage, mulling these incredible thoughts, when Aaron came down below after a satellite phone call with his parents. (I´m a terrible daughter and rarely shell out the $1.20/minute. Sorry guys, but now you´ll think twice about raising a daughter with a respect for money. Ooooh, zing.) (Aaron also has a respect for money, but that doesn´t help my case). ANYWAY, Aaron came down, and I looked up as he was replacing the gigantic receiver on the wall and he said to me, "My mother is cleaning the basement."




Ordinarily, this kind of news wouldn´t shock anybody. But this was an extraordinary situation. "NO WAY!" I thought. Right at this very second, while we are skimming about the waves in the Pacific, lacking ordinary creature comforts, a real live person is certifiably wandering about a basement in Virginia vacuuming, throwing things out, labeling things, (hopefully color-coding), and just generally existing in a completely different environment to ours. I guess maybe I was just hungry for a run or some fresh fruit or any number of things unavailable on the open water, but for some reason, I just loved the immediate novelty of land life at that particular moment.

ANYWAY (world´s longest intro), I do really like being at sea. As it fascinates me that somewhere in Bangkok, someone is walking up stairs while I type at an absurdly small desk in the Galapagos, I thought maybe it might, just might be somewhat sort of interesting to hear what life is like on a boat...

So, here is a 24-hour period, in my real life, aboard Aldebaran on this past passage: (I actually wrote this on passage; that is how authentic it is.)

Today, I:
1. Started writing this week’s article
2. Emailed Heather our position (She emails it out to friends and family so they know we’re alive) (and in the case of my parents, so they can plot us out on their wall-sized map.) (How cute!) (Come to think of it, if anyone wants to be added to the forward list, let me know)

3. Chatted with crewmates. We went over “What it means to be on watch” which was a frank plea for people not to watch DVDs at night because it endangers everyone’s lives. Everyone was okay with that. We also refreshed our “Abandon Ship Procedures” because there are a lot of killer whales in these parts that sometimes ram boats. I am in charge of passing out life jackets and bringing the ditch kit and medical kits into the life raft. (I briefly wrote about shopping for ditch kit items in one of my first posts—Hmm store brand, or name brand enema kit?)

4. Made dinner: coconut shrimp with pineapple sauce, rosemary potato bread, broccoli, brownies (I started the bread in the early afternoon) (Gosh that was an important clarification)

5. Made myself available for the 50-hour engine check because I keep missing the checks and really had no idea how to check the oil level and was growing quite embarrassed of this fact. I also changed the Racor and primary fuel filters. At last, I have been illuminated.

6. Read 4 pages in The Wealth of Nations. (Easily distracted. Vowed to read more tomorrow).

7. Finished up my day watch (Which is from 5pm-8pm). This usually includes a stunning sunset. Today there was a wide banner of purple, red and yellow as the sun simmered over the horizon. It was warm, composed and happy.


8.Took a gander at, OMIGOD, the Southern Cross AND Polaris upon George’s urging. I was steering, listening to my iPod, when I saw his head poke up the companionway. He loves to point out that the Southern Cross and Polaris are both visible in the sky from where we are. I think he’s mentioned it the last three nights. It’s still pretty cool though.

9. It’s getting late, it’s around 9pm and so I had better hit the sack. (I’m not kidding). My night watch is from 4-6am. (Shouldn’t it be morning watch?!?!) I am already starting to think of what to listen to. I’ve been trying to mix it up from the usual. Last night, I listened to Christmas music, Avril Lavigne, Weezer and The Sea and Cake. I guess you could say the night started out low and reached a significant elevation. I have really no idea how the Christmas music got in there. (Good god how embarrassing. And in April, nonetheless). I think it was on shuffle, and some Harry Connick Jr. song came on or something. After that, the obligatory Mariah Carey All I Want For Christmas is You (except in this case, it was All I Want for Christmas is Poo, because I can´t take that song seriously) induced a really stunning lip-synch with a flashlight microphone that I’m sorry to say only a few phosphorescent plankton managed to catch.

10. Instead of, let’s say, pondering some way to solve global poverty, this is what I thought about during my night watch:
(PREFACE: Being on watch, listening to music, steering while everyone is sleeping… It’s a big blank space out there, an endless white room from a dream…. And watches provide 5 hours a day for thinking about THE MEANING OF LIFE, PRECISELY HOW QUICKLY I WOULD DIE WITHOUT CONTACTS, WHAT TO MAKE FOR DINNER TOMORROW. Not very often in normal life do you have two solid blocks of hours to sit and stare into nothingness. So much thinking can be dangerous. This is a very up-close and personal look at what I think about when I’m alone for hours and hours. Are you ready?)

Okay. I amused myself by:

1. Planning out a play list and menu for a party I may or may not have in the far-distant future.
2. Singing sailing-related renditions of Britney Spears’ songs:
“But wait a minute, isn't this the screw I dropped into the ocean?"
"Yeah, yes it is,"
"But I thought when it fell into 2-mile deep water, that was the end of it."
"Well baby, I went down and got it for you."
"Aww, you shouldn't have."
“OOPS I ... DID IT AGAIN. I played with your mind, oh baby baby, oops, you think that was the last 5/8ths in screwwwww, that I lost it foreeever…”

3. Getting excited for all these things I want to do at home like play more viola, create several large and impressive paintings, go to more shows, make a nicer easel, take Spanish, or maybe Chinese, take salsa, go to cooking classes, learn more about engines, study and dropkick the shit out of the GMAT, read more of gosh darn everything, read that damn book on Pi I never finished, sail more, windsurf more, do sweet things with the RTW program, think about buying another bike, make a dress out of this sweet fabric I got in Saba, save money for more travel, and on and on... and then realizing there´s no way I´m going to have time... :( :( :( :( :(

AND

3. Picturing fanciful variations on the scene at O’Hare airport when we arrive home.

a. Running over to the Hudson News stand, tearing the newspapers off, ripping apart magazines, throwing them all over, rubbing them together, sitting in a stew of current events, then yelling, “OH MY GOSH, what’s happened!?!?!”

b. Showing up wearing a combination of every indigenous costume we’ve seen on our trip, but acting as though this is just a change I have undergone. I am just worldlier now and there’s nothing funny about it. Sorry family, but if you think I’ll go back to jeans after the beaded leg-wraps of the San Blas and green leprechaun-like hats from the Ecuadorian Andes, think again.

c. After somehow managing to capture and retain a Galapagos Tortoise, attempting to pass through customs while riding it.

d. After somehow managing to capture and retain a Galapagos Tortoise, moving it in to my new apartment, casually introducing it to the roommates when they inquire. “Oh Fluffy? Yeah, he’s a tortoise. You don’t mind, right?”

e. After somehow managing to capture and retain two Galapagos Tortoises, having long-since set up a “tortoise- friendly” environment in my apartment, searching the Internet with “getting tortoises to mate,” “songs that put tortoises in the mood,” “tortoise mating in captivity”, “how to raise captive Galapagos tortoise babies”.

Yep. Yep. That’s it. Nooo string theory. Just ridiculous daydreams. I’ll think of something useful tomorrow…


Whew, so I guess the secret´s out: passages can get sliiiiightly boring.

Ecuador, Pretty Piece of Life

We should be in the Galapagos, but we haven´t gotten our alternator yet ... but who cares about that when there´s a whole country to discuss.

A day after we arrived, we hopped on the night bus from Salinas to Quito. Aside from sitting with my knees around my chin for 12 hours, the ride wasn´t too bad. My favorite part was snacktime. At 4am, I woke up as a packet of cookies was tossed in my lap. A man poured a glass of apple soda and handed it to me. He turned to Ryan. Ryan was very much asleep. "Señor!" he said. "SEÑOR!" Ryan´s eyes opened and he was quickly handed a cup of soda. There was no sleeping through snacktime. Sorry. On this bus, you eat your cookies at 4am, no excuses. I think at that point, I took some really uneventful video footage to add to my collection.

After a night in Quito, we headed to The Otavalo Market. The Otavalo Market is supposedly the largest market in South America. This means that they have enough alpaca sweaters, blankets, wall-coverings, scarves, tableclothes, table-runners, napkins, diapers and technicolar dreamcoats to build every person in Ecuador a three-story alpaca mansion. Yes. Three soft, sweatery stories of knit house per person. There is just that much alpacaness at the Otavalo Market. There were dozens of other wares for sale. You could buy an Inca vs. Spaniard chess set, hammocks, pigs, five trillion kinds of beans, jewelry, soap, cell-phone cases and armadillo-backed guitars. It was quite an experience. Bargaining was a lot of fun.

Then we returned to Quito. We toured some churches, took some photos and hiked up to a volcano called Cayumbe. The hike was great except the altitude made me sick. I took a really nice nap on the side of the glacier while everyone finished the hike. It was tough to admit defeat, but the strawberry yogurt I spewed towards a particularly scenic vista was argument enough. I settled in on a nice dry patch and cuddled up with my "when in Rome" alpaca sweater. There was something very soothing about sleeping on the side of a gigantic volcano. I felt like I was on the back of a dragon or something. Actually, a dragon is almost too close a parallel. I felt like I was curled up in the mouth of a lion; it was a dry and arid mouth surrounded by tundra and unprotected from sunburn.

Then we traveled by bus to Zumbahua, a small town in the Andes. I like that, in South America, a taxi is a person with a car and a restaurant is anywhere that has a table and some extra food. Riding in truck beds has quickly become my favorite activity. Watching the world go by from the comfort of a bouncing, speeding truck, sometimes in the company of large bags of onions or livestock, is just so terribly authentic I can barely take it. Oh my gosh! PIGS, llamas and mules just wander around the towns. My own delight and amusement at such normal parts of daily life fascinate me. Is it that novel to see a child herding a group of sheep up a mountain? I can´t inhale the experiences quickly enough.

After that, we checked out the nearby, Laguna Quilotoa, an alarmingly green lake nestled between volcanoes. It was a lovely little trek. Then I went to Baños for some white-water rafting. The guide, Fabricio, was a card-carrying lunatic. "From here, easy," he´d say. Then we´d turn around to see bubbling water, rocks, cliffs, waterfalls and ominous overhanging rocks ahead. It was pretty tame overall, but Fabricio liked the flavor of danger, or at least, propagating fear among the nice family that accompanied us.

I returned to Salinas to prepare to leave, but we´re still here.

With no alternator and most boat projects under control, we took off to Montanita for the last two days. I had not expected to go at all. It was pretty cool. Most of the tourists were from other parts of South America and they liked taking pictures of us. Being white and carrying a gigantic surfboard that shouts, "I have no clue what I am going to do with this thing when I get to the water" seemed to pique the interest of the South American tourist. I'm pretty sure I heard the Spanish for, "Let's get a photo of the gringos before they die surfing," on multiple occasions.

Surfing was okay. I can't really claim to have "surfed" per se. I would say I did a great job of swimming after my board. Of course, it was attached to my left ankle at all times, but I assure you, loads of skill were involved in its retrieval, namely breathing before getting smashed by more waves. I kind of almost got up once or twice. I'll have to try again some other time. Maybe a lesson would be a good idea, too. It got slightly tiring to be thrown around in the salt water like a sock on the spin cycle, but the water was wonderfully warm and the experience was worthwhile.

Other highlights of Montanita include this bar with really cheesy music videos. In one, there were two backup guitar players who leaned forward and backward in unison while playing the same chord over and over again. It was awesome.

I´m back in Salinas now and it´s almost time to set sail.  I could stay for awhile, roam around and travel in truck beds, but the ocean is calling.

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.

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.

For the record, I think the world could be saved with a zip tie and some WD40.

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.

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.

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.