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“Like you’re riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it’s sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely for a few moments.”

August 2, 2012

The humidity of the last few days has prompted an early hibernation for me. I started out with doors and windows opened then raced to close them and turn the AC on. Today and the next few days will be in the 80’s, warm for us, so I’ll hunker down and enjoy the cool air.

On with the travelog!

First, I apologize for the oversight so I’ll introduce the other half of the we I keep using. It was my roommate Francie, who had traveled only once out of the country on a guided tour of Italy with a bunch of high school kids, so this was, for her, a huge risk. She was the best of companions.

In Cuzco, we went to the market and bought some fruit and some coca leaves. We had read that chewing them allows the Peruvians to work at high altitudes without getting overly fatigued or hungry. We figured they’d help so we gave chewing them a try. The leaves weren’t worth the chew. We found out later they are mixed with something or better consumed in tea.

In those days, there was no tourist train to Aguas Calientes, the stop nearest the road to Machu Picchu, so we got up early and took the local. It was filled with Peruvians with their produce and reminded me of travel in Ghana. All that was missing were the goats and chickens. It was an amazing train ride. We traveled on rail so twisty we could see the front of the train from the back. I hung my head out the windows many times to see the train and the view along the way. We passed through Pisac and Ollantaytambo in the valley of the Incas and could see terraces up the mountains, places where the Incas planted their crops including potatoes and quinoa. After about four hours on the train, we arrived at the station where we had to buy bus tickets to get to the ruins. The road to the ruins was an amazing back and forth twist of a road, a zigzag switchback allowing travel up the steep hill.

All the pictures I see of the site now are filled with people roaming around. I didn’t find that. There were few people so I could take pictures without anyone in them. Machu Picchu is easily recognized as it sits between two mountains. The first view I saw of the ruins was from the hill which overlooks all of Machu Picchu. I don’t think I could move for a bit, astonished as I was by the sight. Finally I headed into the ruins where I walked around for hours. I went up to the sundial whose corners each point to a different direction. I took pictures through windows of the same view the Incas must have seen. I walked up and down the terraces. I took picture after picture of the ruins, the mountains and the ruins across from us on another mountain. I sat and just looked all around me. I think I forgot to breathe.

On the way down to the train, small boys raced the busses which had to negotiate the twisty road. The boys beat us to the bottom. We boarded the last train and headed back to Cuzco where we’d spend one more day exploring other ruins including an Incan foundation which still runs with sweet cold water. Then we took the train to Puno, a regular train back then. The ride was magnificent with the snow-capped Andes beside us for hours, the stops at small stations where we saw Peruvians in bright colors sitting in the sun, and in my mind’s eye, I still see the small children dressed in colorful clothes, red shawls are what I remember the best, who waved at us as the train passed. We always waved back. The second part of the trip was over the Andean plains, an amazing contrast from the mountains but no less beautiful. There we saw llamas, herds of llamas, shepherded by boys who followed behind them.

The trip to Puno took about 11 hours. We found a hotel and then wandered. Puno is right on the shores of Lake Titicaca. When I was a kid, that name always made us giggle when the nun said it. It was as if she were swearing somehow. We bought dinner from a stall along the street, and I bought a small, woven woolen wall decoration from another stall. The cloth was green and on it were appliquéd people who looked like all the Peruvians we had seen. One of them was playing Andean pipes. I still have it.

The next morning we went to the lake and booked passage on a hydrofoil guided tour which would stop at three islands on the lake then take us across to the Bolivian border where we’d board a bus to La Paz.

The journey continues!

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If no man could become rich in Peru, no man could become poor.”

July 30, 2012

No movie last night: it was “spitting rain” as my mother would have said so my friends and I played games, ate inside and watched the Olympics. Today is still a bit damp, but I think the sun is making a decided effort to appear. The morning is a lot lighter than it’s been.

We’re still in South America, in Guayaquil, Ecuador. We got here on a small boat from Duran where the auto-bus had finished its run after scaring the heck out of us while showing us the most amazing sights. Guayaquil was hot, and the hotel we found had no screens so I was a mosquito magnet. I don’t remember anything about the city. I just remember swatting and scratching all night. We stayed only a day as the city was really planned as a transit stop. The next day we took another local bus toward the border, and the people were again most accommodating in the passport transfer from the back to the front. We got to the Ecuadorian/Peruvian border too late to cross so we had to stay in Ecuador overnight. That border town reminded me of something out of an old western movie. People were walking out and about all night, and the cantinas were all open and crowded, mostly with men. Our hotel was right on the main drag, a cheap hotel right near the border. For a bathroom it had a hole which necessitated good aim. The hole was out back.

Because I had not slept the night before, I fell sleep right away and heard nothing. My friend was awake most of the night because of the noise and the people walking by our room right on the street. She was a bit frightened by the thought of our room being so central so I think staying up was really a sort of guard duty for her. The next morning we got breakfast and changed dollars into Peruvian sol as the rate was so much cheaper in Ecuador. We got double what we would have gotten into Peru, and knowing we were heading to Machu Picchu, we changed a lot of money. The two of us walked through the border into the first building, passport control. Signs were all over about the amount of Peruvian money you could bring into the country. We were way over the limit. We noticed clothes flung over a screen and realized someone was really being searched. My friend immediately started to panic as we had hidden a lot of money in our bras. I told her to write down on the entry form an amount of money above the limit so we looked honest. That worked. We got a lecture but that was all. The next building was to prove we had a ticket out of Peru before we could come into Peru. Anyone who didn’t was directed to a small building where they were forced to buy bus tickets they’d probably never use. I realized the guy checking tickets spoke no English so I gave him the sheaf of plane tickets, and he flipped through the pile and let me go. I told him my friend was with me, and he hand gestured her a wave out of the building as well. We boarded a bus to Lima.

More tomorrow if you don’t mind.

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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.”

July 29, 2012

Last night it poured. Lightning jigsawed in the sky outside the north window in my den and gave the room sudden bursts of bright light. The rumbles of thunder were like growls. The rain fell in giant drops which thudded against the roof and the eaves. Rivulets of rain water ran down my hilly driveway as if in a race to reach the bottom. I watched  from my backdoor. Today is cloudy and has a chilly breeze magnified by the dampness left by the storm. No movie tonight.

I was going to give you more of my travelog every couple of days, but the response was enough to know I wouldn’t bore you if I continued. It’s fun for me to remember.

We got a bus to Quito over the border when we left Colombia. It resembled a school bus. My friend and I were the only non-Ecuadorians. On that bus I saw Indians for the first time. Women wore colorful clothes and had shawls wrapped around their shoulders. They all wore hats which reminded me of the fedora my father used to wear. The bus was stopped a few times by police doing checks. Each time it was stopped, the people in front of us passed up our passports then passed them back to us. When we arrived in Quito, we decided to stay in the old city. Our hotel, a small one on a side street, was one block from the monastery in the center and a few blocks from La Ronda, the old street with colonial houses, a narrow street with some of the oldest buildings in the city. We wandered all over that part of the city and ate in some of the small restaurants. We took busses to the different markets outside the city. We went to Otavalo Market. Back then it wasn’t the tourist attraction it has become. We wandered all over. I bought a few pieces of hand-stitched Indian patterned cloth and walked all through the donkey market. I stopped to buy food from the women who reminded me of the African women who sat along the sides of the road selling fried plantain or yam. I don’t even know what I ate there. I just know it was good.

When we got back to Quito, it was quite late but we still went out to eat dinner. I tried Guinea pig, a national dish in Ecuador.  I was not going to be put off by eating something small and cuddly. I had gotten pass queasiness a long time before that dinner. The pig came roasted with all its parts though cut into pieces. I’m not big on the head and feet of any animals and was even less enthused by the Guinea pig’s. There wasn’t much meat, but it tasted like chicken. I swear it.

The next day we took a bus to the equator. A small shack was the only indicator we had arrived. Where was that black line I always see on globes? Just kidding! I stood right at the line with one foot in each hemisphere. It was an amazing feeling to be there. The small shack sold postcards which were stamped with 0 degrees latitude and 0 degrees longitude so I bought a few. I sent my family a postcard from each country so they could keep track of where we were, and I thought this was special.

We left Quito to go to Guayaquil on the auto-bus, called that but really a train. It was the most amazing train ride of my life. We had seats in the front, big mistake. Animals that didn’t get off the tracks were hit off the tracks. I stopped watching. The center aisle of the bus-train was filled with standing people who scrunched down whenever we went through a town. The train traveled through tropical areas where I saw banana trees filled with fruit. The train went up Devil’s Nose, a zig-zag section of track where the train goes forward and backward to reach the next town; it was both frightening and wonderful. We rode alongside the snow-capped mountains of the Andes. The train finished its trip in Duran where we took a boat across to Guayaquil. One of the few Americans we met came running up to us just as we were getting on the boat saying he had given his luggage to a taxi driver who disappeared. We commiserated. That was all the help we could give.

Tomorrow we’ll arrive in Guayaquil!

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“To travel is to possess the world”

July 28, 2012

Clouds have descended permanently. The day is damp and grey. Thunder showers are predicted for later. I hope so as it is really dry.

Today I’ll harvest a few tomatoes. Okay, I’ll harvest two. They are red and beautiful on the vines in the raised garden I had built this year. My cucumbers are also growing. I expect they’ll be ripe when I’m gone.

Birgit asked about my trip to South America. I guess I’ll give you a few highlights. I did all the planning from all sorts of books, and my roommate and I left for Venezuela toward the end of June in 1976. She spoke no Spanish, but I spoke enough to get us by. I joked and said if we played our cards right, I could sell her, and we could come home with more money than we left with-she was not amused. We stayed in Caracas a few days then took a bus to Merida, in the foothills of the Andes. Back then, there were few tourists in South America, and we were the only non-Venezuelans on the bus. On the way we saw a crashed bus which had missed a hairpin turn and gone over the mountain. I heard muerte when the driver stopped to talk to one of the police along the road. I didn’t translate for my friend. We stopped once in a small mountain town and were told to try the fish. It was the most amazing trout I’d ever tasted.

We went to Merida because we wanted to ride the world’s highest cable cars. The next morning we were in line and waiting for the car to come back down the mountain when the wind started. It was fierce enough that they stopped the cars from going up the mountain, and those already there were stranded. We walked around Merida and went to the market but ended up leaving a couple of days later. The cars still had not gone up the mountain. We took a bus to Colombia and ended up at a small town near the border. The hotel was disgusting. I swore I was dirtier after my shower than before it. We left the next morning for Bogota where we stayed in a relatively expensive hotel compared to what we had been paying for the other hotels, and that start our pattern. We’d stay in dumps for a few days then in really nice hotels for the next few days.

I’ll give you the highlights of each country as I remember them.

In Bogota we went to the Gold Museum. The most striking memory I have of visiting that museum is being closed into a dark vault with thick doors. Nobody moved in the dark. When they turned on the lights, we were surrounded by cases filled with Incan gold. Every one gasped.

Another stop was the cathedral in the salt mine in Zipaquíra, about an hour or two from Bogota. I was amazed that the salt was black and asked a guard how the salt got white. He went away then came back and said we had permission to tour the factory. Off we went in his official car. We donned hard hats and walked all over the factory. I remember two things: how awful I look in a hard hat and how my mouth was salty the whole time from the dust. He gave us a chunk of salt more black than white which I still have.

I found the English-bookstore in Bogota, and we ate some great local food in hole-in-the-wall restaurants. I don’t know other than carne what we ate. It was good, and that’s all that mattered.

We took another bus and were on our way to Ecuador. The travelog will continue another day.

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“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”

July 27, 2012

It rained last night. I didn’t hear it, but I saw the street still wet along the edges when I went to get the papers. Back inside the house again, I opened the door for Gracie who dashed into the yard. I followed but only stood on the deck for a while to gauge the day. Nothing is moving and the sky is cloudy, but the sun seems not so far away.

I have a doctor’s appointment in Hyannis today. I dread the ride. On cloudy days the roads are jammed with cars filled with tourists looking for something to do. Hyannis is a prime destination with its Main Street filled with stores, candy and ice cream shops and t-shirt emporiums. You can even play miniature golf.  Some of the restaurants have outside tables where tourists can sit and eat their hamburgers and watch the crowds pass by. All of those attractions beckon tourists, but they make Hyannis the last place to be on a day like today.

I’ve become insular. I used to go to Boston all the time to see plays or to have dinner, but now I seldom go. I am content to sit on the deck with friends, play a few games and enjoy a barbecue or even just some appetizers. Most nights I watch baseball though that has become painful this summer. When the Sox are down by 5 or more, I have no guilt about changing the station. HGTV and the Food Channel are my escapes from endless reruns and a disappointing season. I even find myself talking HG. My master has no en suite!

I am traveling, and that will give the summer a bit more dimension. When I was teacher, I used to travel every summer usually for at least five weeks. When I become an administrator, I had to work summers so my travel was limited to a week or two at most and usually to only one country. Now I have all the time in the world to see the world. I just need to win the lottery!

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“Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful”

July 26, 2012

The last few days were lovely, but now the air is thick with humidity. I could feel it as soon I woke up so I closed the upstairs windows, came downstairs, closed the rest of the windows and turned on the AC. I gasped when I went outside to get the papers. Gracie, a bit of a barometer herself, spent little time outside this morning. She came in quickly and collapsed on the couch in the AC. She is now deep asleep and snoring.

The older I get the more my life seems, in different ways, to get easier. When I first lived here, I didn’t even have a fan. When it was really hot, I just slept downstairs with the back door opened all night. When I bought a standing fan, I used it down here and then carried it upstairs so I’d have a breeze all night. I couldn’t sleep without it. It was just too darn hot. Finally I got a window air conditioner for my bedroom. The afternoon sun pours in there, and because it is on the third floor, it stays really hot. I used it at night all summer and many times in the afternoons if the heat felt unbearable. On those afternoons the dog and I would go upstairs in the cool air where I’d stretch out and read. The both of us usually napped. Now I just turn the thermostat and the whole house gets delightfully cool.

My lawn gets mowed every week by my landscaper’s crew. I used to mow it myself on a late afternoon or a Saturday. It is amazing how many chores and errands I used to squeeze in on a weekend when I worked. Now I don’t even enough time over the course of a seven-day week to do everything. I keep telling myself I’ll do it tomorrow. My house gets cleaned every two weeks though I do some spot cleaning in the meantime. I used to clean my house every weekend. The only chore I still consistently do is the washing but no longer do I need to iron a single thing. Wrinkles are perfectly acceptable. I do turn on the dishwasher, but most days I hand wash the few dishes I use. I look out the window as I wash and I do some of my best thinking. Most days I make my bed. It makes my bedroom look neater, but if the cats are sleeping on it, I wait, and if they sleep on the bed all afternoon, I don’t make it at all.

I make no apologies for my sloth. I earned the right to do nothing after all those years of working and getting up at 5 in the morning. My new motto is whatever makes my life easier is just fine with me.

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“Hot July brings cooling showers, Apricots and gillyflowers.”

July 23, 2012

The sun just arrived. The morning had been cloudy, and I was hopeful for some rain, but then I noticed the sunlight. The paper said low 80’s for today. If the breeze stays, though, it will be a lovely day. Last night was chilly for a while then the night breeze disappeared and the evening got warmish again. We dined on the deck. I barbecued a pork loin, and we had potato salad and fruit salad then finished with chocolate chip cookies made by my friend Clare. It was a perfect summer meal.

I don’t remember summer suppers when I was a kid. In the winter my mother cooked everything, meat, potatoes and a vegetable, but our kitchen was small and would get really hot on a summer day if the stove and the oven were used so I figure we had hot dogs or hamburgers and maybe ears of corn. We were big lovers of corn. My dad was the best corn eater, and we loved to watch him mow down the rows as if he were a typewriter. As he ate, small pieces of corn would fly in the air. That always made us laugh. If records for finishing an ear of corn in the quickest time were kept, my father would be high on the list.

After we moved to the cape and had a big backyard, my father barbecued most weekend summer nights. We had your usual menu: potato salad with hot dogs and hamburgers, and for the first time my mother added chicken with barbecue sauce. My father used to take orders for cheeseburgers. My mother made great potato salad. Those were always the best of summer meals.

When I was an adult, my parents no longer lived on the cape. If I visited them in the summer, my father always barbecued. He would sit outside on a lawn chair with a highball in one hand and a cigarette in the other and keep watch on the meat. Over the years the meat menu had changed. My father would barbecue sausages, including Chinese sausages, or steak tips and once in a while pork and chicken. One thing didn’t change: my mother still made her potato salad. I remember those dinners when the table was filled with food and the meat was cooked perfectly. After dinner, we’d sit around the table and play cards, usually High-Lo Jack, until it was really late. I remember the kitchen filled with cigarette smoke, glasses on the table and my father dropping his trump with a flourish and a grin. “Made my bid,” he’d say.

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“I’ve long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime ‘associates,’ food, for me, has always been an adventure”

July 22, 2012

 

Another beautiful day today: it’s cool and sunny and bright. I was up early and even had time for a dump run before I went out to breakfast. I need to do a few errands later as it is movie night, and we’re out of malted milk balls. They are essential for movie viewing. We’re going to watch the one we didn’t see last week: The Night of the Hunter.

It is so quiet today. I don’t know where everyone has gone. I don’t hear a single kid or even a barking dog. Gracie just came inside the house. I think it must be morning nap time. Fern is already asleep in the sun from the front door. She is stretched out in the way only cats can stretch. I don’t know where Maddie is, but I suspect she’s on my bed. That is her favorite nap place.

My breakfast spot is busy every Sunday. All the breakfast spots are busy every summer Sunday. I go early to snag a booth as my friend doesn’t believe in waiting. She’d drive right through at the sight of a line. Today for breakfast I had dropped eggs on toast as my mother always called them. I didn’t learn until I was older they’re called poached eggs, but I still prefer calling them dropped eggs. It is far more descriptive and leaves no doubt as to how the eggs will arrive.

Other than in England and Ireland, my father hated breakfast in Europe. He thought cold cuts and cheese were lunch, never breakfast. I remember once in the Netherlands when an egg arrived in an egg cup. My father’s delight was evident in his smile and he immediately went for the egg. He tapped it with his knife the way he always did when served a boiled egg. Nothing happened so he tapped it again. Nothing happened the second time either. My father picked up the egg and tapped it on the table. That was when he found out it was hard-boiled. He put it on the table and never touched it again.

On many of my trips I had no idea what I was eating. I didn’t know the language so I couldn’t read the menus or the signs. Sometimes I had a book of English to whatever language, but usually I didn’t carry one as it was just extra weight in my back pack. I pointed and hoped for the best. Luckily I don’t remember ever hating what was placed in front of me. I also think not only probably had its advantages.

 

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It’s not like Massachusetts, where they’re baptized Democrats.”

July 21, 2012

It’s another gorgeous morning, cool and sunny. A breeze is blowing. The leaves, dappled in sunlight, are gently swinging from the ends of their branches. I stood on the deck for the longest time this morning just taking in the day. I watched Gracie roaming what I call the back forty. I watched the birds taking seeds from the feeders then I sat down for just a bit and heard the fountain, the songs of the birds and the crunch of the leaves when Gracie ran over them as she circled the yard. I smelled the flowers and the freshness of the air. The morning filled all my senses.

Today I have errands, and I’m not even complaining. It’s a perfect day for a ride even if it is to the grocery store and the pharmacy. I’m thinking after my stops I might just keep going on the back roads and travel a bit down-cape. I haven’t done that in a while, but then again, I have a new book and comfy deck chairs. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll put off the errands until late afternoon and sit outside with my book, a cold drink and Miss Gracie. I like having choices.

I have lived in Massachusetts for the whole of my life except, of course, for the two years in the Peace Corps. I wouldn’t think of living anywhere else. We have four seasons: two I love and two I tolerate because of their extremes. We have mountains, albeit small ones, and the seashore. History oozes all around us. We can visit Plimouth Plantation and Plymouth Rock and be whisked back to 1620, and we can stand where the revolution unfolded on Lexington Green. Paul Revere’s house still stands as does the steeple where he watched for the lanterns. We can ride the pedal-driven swan boats on the small lake in the Boston Public Garden just as people did over a hundred years ago. Here on the cape, whales spend the summer and a few great white sharks make headlines. Nothing tastes better than steamed clams freshly dug from the sand flats. I still take pride that this was the only state which voted for McGovern. We love our sports teams, sometimes even rabidly, and they have thanked us by winning championships. White churches on hills are still parts of small Massachusetts towns. Nothing is prettier than fall when bright red and yellow leaves decorate trees and shade roads. I may complain but falling snow is lovely.

I have always considered myself lucky for living here.

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Mum Day!!

July 19, 2012

When I posted cake songs the other day, Hedley, with tongue in cheek, wondered about MacArthur Park. I told him it was one of my mother’s favorite songs. He said I should play it and then suggested a mum day, and I love the idea. Tell me what song you remember most associated with your mothers and maybe a little anecdote. I’ll play the song and post the story. I’ve talked about my mother so many times I figure it’s your turn. You can send it to me at katry@comcast.net or comment here.

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