Help! I´m locked in a small dark room...

...with half a dozen teenagers playing Counterstrike and Starcraft. Oh this brings me back.

But outside, there are chants, crashes, thuds and other sounds signifying that the huelga (strike) that has paralyzed Puno for the past two days seems to be cresting right outside this Internet place. Hence the sheetmetal door that is locked down, blocking out all sunlight, but not sound.

So I´m in Puno, Peru on the western shore of Lago Titicaca, happily busy with environmental field work focused on the Rio Coata (sewage contaminated) and the Rio Ramis (mining sediments and heavy metals). Of course, I had to get here from Quito, and that turned out to be a delightful week long voyage, highlighted by incredible hospitality at all points along the way.

Over the course of the week ( Saturday May 3 through Saturday May 10) I passed nights in Riobamba, Baños, and Guayaquil (all in Ecuador) and Lima, Peru. I never once payed for lodging. La familia, who own the apartment in Quito, hosted us (El Perezoso y El Guía Perdido) in Riobamba as honorary uncles of the little kiddies.

In Baños, we had been planning to camp out on a mirador (spot with a kick ass view), but discovered it was dominated by a large radio-antennae contraption that hissed menacingly. So we headed up mountain (Tunguruahua, a currently erupting volcano!) looking for a flat spot. After a few hours, it was very dark and we found ourselves in a tiny village. After presenting ourselves as adorable but lost gringos (pretty natural for El Perezoso y El Guía Perdido), we were graciously invited to sleep under the roof of the school´s outdoor concrete play court. We declined, insisting that we preferred to sleep out in the open, because we had a tent, so they let us sleep in a field. As we waited the thirty minutes or so required to boil water with our homemade alcohol stove, two little girls from the village showed off their english skills, learn from a Peace Corp volunteer. We woke up the next morning sopping wet in a perpetual mist, musing that perhaps we should have accepted the roof.

On to Guayaquil, but this time by myself, as Noble returned to Quito. Here I was met by my friend Carlita, a former inhabitant of our apartment. We spent the day hanging out on the river front, and even caught an IMax feature, Forces of Nature, which was absurdly cool, cuz it had volcanoes and earthquakes.

Then I hopped a flight to Lima, where I was met by a complete stranger who greeted me with a huge hug. Her name is Denisse, she met Noble in China in the fall, and was completely happy and excited to host me for a couple days in Lima. Her entire family, it turned out, had driven to the airport to greet me. One day in Lima quickly turned into two, life was just too good with Denisse y familia. Finally, I reluctantly got on a piece of shit bus for a 24 hour bus ride through the mountains to Puno, knowing that I was turning my back on the last warm weather and comfort I would see for the next 6 weeks.

I arrived in Puno the next day after a sleepless night, cold miserable tired achy sore and of course with a hefty dose of altitude sickness ( sea level to 12.5k feet in 24 hours will do that). I made my way to my apartment (courtesy of Professor Heather Williams of Pomo College), and was of course immediately greeted with a steaming cup of mate de cocá, the omnipotent Andean tea made from coca leaves.

Ok, so that´s a nice story, but what´s the point? In our world of motels (in the States) and hostals (when travelling abroad), there is a thoroughly constructed infrastructure of traveler accomodations that spans the globe. No need to worry about where you will sleep when travelling. This is wonderful, it has made traveling cross country and around the world an accesible reality for nearly every American.

But what did people do before, in the days before cars and airplanes and common-place world travel? For that matter, what do people do in parts of the world (such as the remote Andes) where this infrastructure does not exist? I am reminded of stories I heard at some point in my childhood Jewish education, of wandering wiseman in the Pale of Russia. I was always struck by how humble and simple they were; they would invariably travel with nothing more than a small knapsack full of nothing but books. How did they eat, how did they sleep, how did they protect themselves from the elements, I would wonder. My only point of comparison was backpacking in the Cascades with everything I could ever need on my back.

Well, these early travelers relied on the hospitality of strangers. At each town, they would simply go door to door, politely asking for a bowl of soup and a spot in the barn by the cow. In return, they told stories of the outside world and shared their wisdom as the peasant family gathered around. The amount of trust on each side in these exchanges is astounding. It is nearly unimaginable in modern America, although CouchSurfing is fighting the good fight. I can´t quite put it into words, but this type of human interaction reveals something very profound about the best side of human nature.

In contrast, your typical traveler on the Gringo Trail of Latin America is constantly suspicious of being robbed or cheated at each hostal, and the locals view the gringos as a source of cash and absurdity. Yes, a generalizacion, but it will do for now.

I believe this antiquated hospitality and exchange can still be found. One must simply leave the world of modern travel infrastructure. After all, there are still regions of the world where there are no roads and no cars and no hostals, but there are of course people living lives and even travelling.

This is why we three amigos (for those who haven´t heard the good news, El Rojo -- Elihu Bogan -- is joining us in Cuzco on June 2nd) are heading out for the remote Andes, far from Macchu Pichu and the gringo crowds. We are compromising; we will have big packs with a tent and all those other fun backpacking toys. And we also would dearly like to stumble across a previously undiscovered Incan ruin. But, for me at least, I am fascinated by the intimate interactions of complete strangers in a world far removed from our own.



Next up... a detailed description of the otherworldy environment around Lago Titicaca, like nothing I´ve ever seen.