Trek Feet

Sometimes we
wander off.

Here is our letter home.
Tue Jul 14
At this altitude, you don´t sleep well….even though you´ll lie in your top bunk, in the log and clay bunkhouse and try, not really minding. Your head will ache and every step at incline feels like a life challenge. But: You will wake up to fresh mango and local coffee, homemade granola and eggs from the chickens that roam 10 meters up the hill. Your first view will be of a snowcapped active volcano, impossibly grand and close. At night, when the hacienda is lit by candles and wood stove, you will wander outside, away from the laughing group still around the kitchen table. The wind has died down and the stars shake out like a rug, spread across this infinite sky that arches from one peak to another, that watches over a million miles of hard ranched plains.  You want so badly to capture it and send this urban legend of a night sky to everyone back home. Despite how much harder it is to do everything here, you will hike slowly up to the volcanic glacier and watch — feel! — the clouds drift in around you. You will clamber up through farmland and thickets with four dogs as company to find a modest waterfall, hidden from the world.  You will fall down and laugh in the thick sweet clumps of grass after every next impossibility is somehow achieved. The bus rides will be brutal, if we’re being honest.  Hot, nauseating, packed past capacity and - for you - windowless.  Two Ecuadorian farmers will sit on your arm rest and lean against you for four hours as you try not to vomit and make a list of things for which you have to be grateful:  Not having to shave your legs, trading in underwire for sports bras, the fact that you didn’t feel the need to shower today, the glory of this place, the bag of fried bananas in your bag, time to read, the destination that awaits you half a day up into the mountains. When you arrive, town will surprise you. Tiny, dusty and the sole source of commerce seems to be the fried pork stand outside the church and a woman who sells you a popcicle and toilet paper. There is no bus to your next home so you and your pack set out to walk. One foot comes slowly and deliberately after the other at this height. You think this is probably an apt metaphor for life and stop to press the Eucalyptus leaves to your nose.  Eventually, you will arrive.

At this altitude, you don´t sleep well….even though you´ll lie in your top bunk, in the log and clay bunkhouse and try, not really minding. Your head will ache and every step at incline feels like a life challenge.

But: You will wake up to fresh mango and local coffee, homemade granola and eggs from the chickens that roam 10 meters up the hill. Your first view will be of a snowcapped active volcano, impossibly grand and close.

At night, when the hacienda is lit by candles and wood stove, you will wander outside, away from the laughing group still around the kitchen table. The wind has died down and the stars shake out like a rug, spread across this infinite sky that arches from one peak to another, that watches over a million miles of hard ranched plains.  You want so badly to capture it and send this urban legend of a night sky to everyone back home.

Despite how much harder it is to do everything here, you will hike slowly up to the volcanic glacier and watch — feel! — the clouds drift in around you. You will clamber up through farmland and thickets with four dogs as company to find a modest waterfall, hidden from the world.  You will fall down and laugh in the thick sweet clumps of grass after every next impossibility is somehow achieved.

The bus rides will be brutal, if we’re being honest.  Hot, nauseating, packed past capacity and - for you - windowless.  Two Ecuadorian farmers will sit on your arm rest and lean against you for four hours as you try not to vomit and make a list of things for which you have to be grateful:  Not having to shave your legs, trading in underwire for sports bras, the fact that you didn’t feel the need to shower today, the glory of this place, the bag of fried bananas in your bag, time to read, the destination that awaits you half a day up into the mountains.

When you arrive, town will surprise you. Tiny, dusty and the sole source of commerce seems to be the fried pork stand outside the church and a woman who sells you a popcicle and toilet paper.

There is no bus to your next home so you and your pack set out to walk. One foot comes slowly and deliberately after the other at this height. You think this is probably an apt metaphor for life and stop to press the Eucalyptus leaves to your nose.  Eventually, you will arrive.

Sun Jul 12
Well Ecuador, you are winning my heart in record time. Have jammed in a ridiculous amount in my first couple of days. I´ve wandered the gorgeous Old Town, dodged kamikaze pigeons in the Grand Plaza, hiked atop a mountain overlooking Quito, visited the Equator (Which was so much more awesome than it sounds. I balanced a freaking egg on the head of a nail and earned a certificate. There is no piece of paper of which I am more proud!) and got talked into going out with hostal mates…a decision that somehow ended up with a group dance off and shared whiskey in an Ecuadorian club.  Headed off this morning to the mountains, Cotopaxi National Park, and I´m more than ready for the slowed pace and peace.

Well Ecuador, you are winning my heart in record time.

Have jammed in a ridiculous amount in my first couple of days. I´ve wandered the gorgeous Old Town, dodged kamikaze pigeons in the Grand Plaza, hiked atop a mountain overlooking Quito, visited the Equator (Which was so much more awesome than it sounds. I balanced a freaking egg on the head of a nail and earned a certificate. There is no piece of paper of which I am more proud!) and got talked into going out with hostal mates…a decision that somehow ended up with a group dance off and shared whiskey in an Ecuadorian club. 

Headed off this morning to the mountains, Cotopaxi National Park, and I´m more than ready for the slowed pace and peace.

Thu Mar 12
Wed Dec 3

Rhymes with Toilet.

When I was heading over to cross the border from Thailand to Cambodia years ago, everyone I met told me: Just remember, Poipet rhymes with Toilet.

For good reason.  Last time, the streets of Poipet were crowded with renegade teenagers.  Sulky youth with beat-up cars, who spoke no English but would drive you into Cambodia for $30 and a possible mugging:  The local version of public transport.  I got sick in a shanty town, waited several stubborn hours at immigration refusing to pay a bribe and wandered through a town strewn with naked children, limbless Cambodians, sewage and casinos. 

Pleasant memories.

But as we’ve remarked over and over on this trip, a sweet, easy air of peace and good humor seems to be contagious now.  The foreboding we felt last time is entirely absent. So entirely, impossibly erased that I can’t shake the feeling it must be hiding…must still be here somewhere just beneath the smiles and calm, waiting like a rebellion.

We’re heading out for the border this morning; making the reverse commute back to Bangkok this time. And I feel certain - if this safety and happiness translates to Poipet, it really is a new era in Cambodia.

Here’s hoping…

Tue Dec 2
Kraab, looking very war correspondent-ish. He’s taken to the native scarf nicely.

Kraab, looking very war correspondent-ish. He’s taken to the native scarf nicely.

Bayon, Angkor Wat

Bayon, Angkor Wat

Angkor Morning

Angkor Morning