My trip to Chile, Argentina and Peru:
I’m the only one in the six-person dorm I’ve been assigned. I’m sitting here trying to figure out where to begin. I can hear Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly” blaring from the hostel bar across the patio. It seems like an appropriate song for me to be listening to at this moment. The more I travel the more I feel like I’m slowly growing feathers for my ever-expanding wings.
My trip is nearing its end. I can’t believe it’s been a month since I took off from San Francisco on March 28th and touched down in Santiago, Chile 16 hours later. I feel as though I have blinked and all this time has passed. I have to admit part of me is sad to return home. I have loved being on the move, traveling from place to place, serving the gypsy side of my soul. Though the time has passed quickly I feel as though I have seen so much and experienced things I could have only dreamt of.
It was a long trek to get to Chile but the idea of meeting up with Meg and Jess kept me excited and on my feet. I checked into the hostel hazy from the Xanax I took on the plane, I planked onto my bed and passed out while I waited for the girls to arrive later that evening. We rested up that night anticipating the lack of sleep that lay ahead.The next day we set forth to conquer Lollapalooza. 
Lolla was a dream. I could write in detail about the amazing experience I had but that diatribe would drone on for far too long. Have you ever tried to write about a dream? The minute I try to make sense of the details suddenly everything seems too bazaar to have been real. What I can say is that I met some of the most amazingly kindhearted human beings. People that adopted my friends and I into their circle, took care of us, and made us feel like one of the crew. It was a three-day whirlwind of backstage passes, room service, VIP parties, binge drinking, and all around luxury. How it all happened is beyond my comprehension, but it did and I’m humbled and filled with gratitude that it did.
Well at some point we all have to come back down to earth. The festival ended and our new friends went on to continue their circuit. We arrived back at our hostel, haggard and hung-over in time to meet up with Thomas, a friend Jess had made in Bolivia earlier in her journey. We all spent the day recouping and screwing our heads on straight by the pool at the Ritz Carlton. Well the days came and went and eventually the time came to say farewell to Meg. She packed her backpack, waved goodbye and began her solo mission to the salt flats north in Bolivia.
Thomas, Jess and I lingered another day in Santiago, got our wits about us and decided to head north to Valparaiso, a cute artsy town by the coast. We only stayed a couple nights, which ended up being just enough. The nightlife was dead, but the town itself had a lovely creative pizzazz to it. All the walls were adorned with graffiti and there were no shortage of things to look at. We made friends with stray dogs, fed them cheap corner market sausage, drank wine out of plastic cups, ate sushi, fought the wind, did yoga on the beach, ate a sandwich the size of our faces, and decided we had seen all there was to see in Renaca and Valparaiso.
Because we apparently hadn’t had enough beach time we embarked south towards Pichilemu, a tiny surf town on the coast. We arrived expecting warmth but it felt a lot like Mendocino in the fall. The winds were cold and the town was very small. Thomas tested out the freezing cold seawater with his rented board while Jess and I took to horseback on the sand. We got drunk on wine and whiskey and went in search of a party on Easter Sunday but found nothing. After two days of doing a lot of nothing we pulled out the lonely planet books and considered our next move. After much consideration we decided on Mendoza our last stop before arriving in Buenos Aires.
Mendoza was a weird city in all honesty. It seemed like a place you go to buy everything in bulk. There were multiple shops, back to back, all carrying the same items, furniture, lamps, baby clothes, really just lots and lots of crap. The city itself really lacked allure, but it’s what lies outside that city that apparently brings in the tourists. We didn’t want to fork out a bunch of cash for rafting or rock climbing so we decided to go wine tasting on bikes. We got on a bus and thirty minutes later got off at Mr. Hugo’s bike rentals. They provided us with bikes and a map of all the wineries in the area. We imagined riding through vineyards on dirt paths and scenic roads but what we got instead was much more hilarious. We rode along the highway while huge semi trucks whirred past, blowing their black exhaust in our nostrils. Although it sounds somewhat terrible, it really wasn’t. We were graced with beautiful weather, a few picturesque tree lined streets and of course a good buzz. 
By the time we reached Buenos Aires we were relieved to finally have a space of our own. Jess had been living there prior to meeting up with me in Santiago and had continued paying rent on the tiny flat so we would have a place when we arrived. There’s something about living in an apartment in a city rather than hosteling that can make all the difference. We bought our groceries from a small market around the corner. We cooked our food on the small two-burner stove. We got to sleep in to our hearts content. Jess went to circus school while Thomas and I lounged in the park. We went out a couple nights but in retrospect we really could have cut loose a bit more. We ate steak, we went to markets, we saw old people tango, all in all Buenos Aires treated us well. Though not long after we arrived we decided that Peru was calling our names again. After much internal debate we decided to fork out the cash and get a plane ticket. We would spend the last week of our journey back where the travel bug bit me over a year ago.
Getting to Cusco was an utter bitch. Four flights later and after a twelve hour layover in Lima, we arrived bright and early, hearts thumping from the high altitude. The city was just as I remembered it. Some people complain about Cusco being too touristy, and it is, but it holds a special place in my heart. Cusco was the first place I ever travelled to outside of the US. The people are lovely (besides the constant hassling from street vendors). The clouds are some of the most magnificent I have ever seen. Traffic moves in a organized chaos, like the go cart track, drivers weaving in and around each other. I was happy to be back in familiar territory. Jess and I spent a good chunk of time buying inventory for the store she’s planning on opening later this year. But we didn’t just come to Cusco to buy a bunch of fluffy hats; we came for the sacred valley.
We decided to spend a couple days in Pisac, which lies 45 min outside of Cusco. We made an arrangement to meet with a local shaman to do ceremony with him. We showed up at his house at noon to talk about our intentions. We spent the day journaling and fasting in preparation for what the evening was going to hold. That night was one of the most physically painful experiences I’ve ever had. Thoughts rushed through my head a thousand miles per hour. I was freezing cold, even with heavy blankets on. I told myself to relax, but I couldn’t. However once the foul liquid began to leave my body and the pains in my stomach subsided I lay there staring up at the clear night sky through Javier’s glass ceiling. I felt very calm, everything was so quiet. Everyone around me had finally fallen asleep and I was the only one awake. I watched shooting stars move across the sky, I felt so still. Like Rose and that scene in Titanic where she has let Jack sink to the bottom of the ocean and she’s freezing her ass off in the bitter cold water, lying on her back, singing to herself…”come Josephine in my flying machine, up she goes, up she goes”. Those lyrics cycled on repeat through my head.
The next morning when we gathered to talk about our experience it was clear to me that everyone had felt something different that night. Some people had beautiful profound visions, others moved through buried issues, and then there was me, the cursing, quivering, purging girl who found solace on the bathroom floor. Though I wished I could have had visions, Javier told me that my body was ridding me of things I didn’t even know were there, and now, three days later, I feel as though he was right. Though physically that night was excruciating, all the pain passed after a few long hours and I was left feeling as though something had shifted.
So now here I am sitting bundled up in the hostel TV room while Fear and Loathing plays on the flat screen beside me and I reflect on my last month in South America. I would love to write in more detail about every part of the trip, but as time has moved forward my memory has grown hazy. See, what I desire to talk about is not necessarily everything that I saw but more so the moments I felt deeply in my heart. Lollapalooza was one of those moments, getting to know Lorin, Carlos, Sonny and all of their friends was unbelievable. I expected a huge cloud of ego but was instead met by humbled, down-to-earth, considerate, gentlemen.
Thomas has also been an incredible travel partner; there has been no shortage of laughter with his Belgian sense of humor around. He has taken wonderful care of Jess and I and I’ll be sad to close the door of the taxi tomorrow and wave goodbye to him. I leave Peru with an open heart and a very confused mind. I wish the road that lay ahead of me were clear, but it’s so very foggy and I seem to only be able to see a few feet ahead as I progress forward. But that’s life isn’t it? We never really can see THAT far ahead, it’s all very unpredictable. So for now, I head back to Portland stopping off quickly in California to say hello to the sun and the friends I left in Santa Cruz.
“do you have Internet at your house? I haven’t had Internet for three days, I haven’t looked at enough cat photos… That’s why it makes sense that I’m so unhappy.” - Paean
Chelsea: “that was a weird bout of traffic, wonder why that happens?”
Paean: “it’s when two old Asian people drive next to each other and block both lanes.”
