another shitty day in paradise

When I was growing up, hamburgers were always such a happy sort of thing. If you think about it, the hamburger is the food equivalent of a big, warm hug. A meaty patty enveloped in warm, doughy goodness covered with all sorts of leafy veggies and salacious sauces. It’s a giant, oral hug. Children, of all ages, beg and whine for hamburgers as their superfood. They pray to the god of McDonald’s where the hamburger is king. They call it a Happy Meal for a reason and afterwards your belly feels like it’s had a giant hug. And often for sometime after.This is why it’s such a wonder to me that, lately, the hamburger has become the loneliest food in the world. I very rarely eat hamburgers. I think I have had 3 or 4 since we left Buenos Aires over 3 months ago. But when I eat one, I eat it slowly, alone, with tears in my eyes. I never finish it. I sometimes vomit afterwards. The hamburger, until future notice, is the food of the brokenhearted.

After months on the road, bouts of sadness hit like bowling balls instead of pellets. It’s inevitable and it happens to everyone that travels together: you begin the quickening and painful process of hating each other. It begins with little cat-fights over bus tickets and where to put things and who is being more cranky and why are we going here. It runs the gamut until the sight of your travel partner’s face makes you want to punch them, or a wall, or someone close by. Every word out of their mouth makes you sick to your stomach. Every word that comes out of your mouth is intended to hurt them and vice-versa. Eventually, all you are left with is a whole bunch of hurt and a stomach that is so in knots it can’t handle deciding what to eat for dinner – so you go for the hamburger. Easy.

People often ask me if Paul and I fight on the road when we travel together. I hope this answers the question beyond a shadow of a doubt. All of the emotions of these crazed fights are amplified when your travel partner is your fiance, lover, best friend, and roommate and you are in the middle of Colombia trying to cross to Panama, maybe the only place on the map where you might feel a bit nervous (however unnecessarily) about going it alone however tough you might be.

But everything about Colombia makes me feel closer to home, like it is the gateway to Central America, the gateway to North America. The jeans have become more designer, the malls more gigantic, the streets cleaner, the Spanish more Mexican-sounding, the blond streaks in the hair more frequent, and the prices higher. Last night we went to a MultiPlex to watch a Nicholas Cage film. I mean, really. It’s just yankee sometimes.

It is true that prior to this came weeks of increasing fighting. Mostly my fault, I will admit. I hate the bus and we are traveling over land to California. The design of this trip and my penchant for claustrophobia and attacks of hysteria are not a great match. 4-6 hours into any bus trip, I lose my shit completely. I start getting a panic attack (for which I have medication, which doesn’t calm me) and feeling like I can’t get out. I think the people on the bus are going to kill me, I think we are going to crash, I think I am going to suffocate, I can’t breathe. I work myself into a frenzy and the only thing that helps sometimes is to scream and fight with someone. Someone, in this and every case, being Paul. So we have been fighting. In our hurry to get to Nicaragua on time we have been taking buses all day long. 3 hours in the morning, followed by a taxi, followed by 8 hours in evening. I know it’s not the end of the world but by the end of it, I feel I’d rather roll around in broken glass and then take a lemonade bath than take another bus again in my life. We arrive in hick towns with no hotel destination after dark. I arrive drugged, confused, scared, and reeling from 3 hours of fighting. These are the moments that are unpleasant.

The last (and worst) of these cases was coming here, to Armenia, Colombia where Paul and I spent a couple of days doing things completely separately and not talking before trying carefully to make friends again and keep the peace until we meet up with Julie in Nicaragua. Paul went to the Parque Nacional del Cafe, I went to the Casino and hit the jackpot on video poker.

After my video poker adventure, I got ravenously hungry. Anyone who has ever watched Sex and the City or been a woman knows that eating alone is a sort of female rite of passage for a woman. It is typically done in stages but I am passed that. No sunglasses, no book, no postcards, no journal, no hat, I stroll into a cafe and order a giant hamburger. I eat it slowly, sadly, feeling the weight of the empty chair beside me, wondering if Paul is having a nice time at the Coffee Park. I have good days when I spend them alone, I chat with crazy, toothless video poker addicts at the casinos, I take the best pictures of my life, I eat every nasty thing they sell in the street, and I smile and sing to myself. But my hamburger is sad. Each time I have had a meal alone after a major blow up, it’s been a melancholy hamburger and each time it has ended in tears.

It’s hard to spend all day, every day with anyone. It’s harder still with someone as fiercely independent as Paul to schlep around a girl who at times is no more than a pile of nerves and an over-sized backpack. Between travel partners there are always fights. People say things they don’t mean. Worse still, they say things they do mean. Then they make up and wonder if they should take them back or if it’s better that these things were said but if they can live under the cloud of them.

I don’t know how The Big Schlep will end. Or if it will. Paul has said that if we split up, our joint Schlep writing project will end for him. In the meantime it continues with good days and bad days. Maybe the Caribbean will be the magic bean that we have been needing to make me less nervous, more happy, and make Paul my partner again and not my psychiatrist. I still laugh and cry every day. That is how these adventures should be, I believe. Fighting, laughing, loving, hurling insults, hating, hugging, feeling terrified, eating, and, very occasionally, hitting the jackpot.

abre los ojos

There are definitely some days I find it easier to open my eyes than others. Like this morning for example. I awoke, eyes closed, resisting the urge to face the day and my new morning routine. My routine lately consists of something resembling the following: I shower, wash my hair, and body. I generally awake excruciatingly itchy from a combination of eczema and a fatal attack of mosquito bites. Showering immediately, is critical. When I am done I put hair vitamins in my hair which is thinning more than ever (likely due to the ravaging that months of malaria medicine has done to my body). I then pull my hair back so that I can cover both ears in Neosporin because they are so sunburned that they look like Van Gogh took his hacks at both sides. Alter this I cover my body in both steroid cream for the eczema and regular lotion to avoid further outbreaks elsewhere. My legs are carefully doused in copious amounts of clear Caladryl to prevent me scratching them to bleed over the course of the morning. I am using about a bottle of Caladryl every 2 days. I take a giant tylenol and another pain killer for the tendinitis in my knees as well as covering my knee with pain relief gel for joints. I take my malaria medicine. Occasionally, I take something for my abnormal level of anxiety. Then, I dress.

 

Sometimes people (and I myself) make comments about my “vacation”. This is not vacation. This morning after my ritualistic preparation, I still found the energy to fight with Paul all morning and he still found the energy to make me a delicious cup of PG Tips tea to calm me down. By the time I felt up to face the outside world, I stumbled out of the door of our room in Lima onto the outdoor, rooftop patio of this gorgeous old converted mansion hotel to see what Paul was up to. Two turtles were cruising around on the cement below and I watched the slow, prehistoric movements, feeling inspired and restless because of them. Behind us a German girl asks an Israeli guy if he has visited Cusco yet (the biggest gringo city south of San Diego). “I was two months in Cusco, man,” he replies. “Really?” the German is surprised, “What were you doing?” He stares vacantly, “Drugs, man. Trance parties every night. Lots of drugs. I went to Machu Picchu, too.” This guy is on vacation.

 

When we returned to Cusco from Choquequirao I was hurting all over, proud, dirty, and feeling so accomplished. But I couldn’t wait to get out of Cusco, to stop hearing about Machu Picchu, to feel like I was on the way home again so we booked tickets for the night bus to Lima from where we could quickly get on our way to Ecuador. Ecuador was beginning to sound like the promised land: much smaller and cheaper than Peru, slightly less traversed, farther north still, mountains, jungles, beaches. It was all set.

 

Our last day in Cusco was brutal. It was census day which literally means that the entire population of the town has to stay home and be counted individually. There are a few businesses that stay open but only those run from people’s homes. This is a big break from the normal, gringo, sports bar, trance party madness. Everything is closed and this is our second trip to Cusco. We wander around all morning through the deserted streets but by the afternoon, waiting for our night-bus, we are tired and cranky, and bored as all hell and have resorted to sniping at each other and multiple trips to the internet. It’s bad.

 

Finally, it’s time for the bus and we jump in a cab to the terminal. As we pull up I nearly die of happiness, as there is an open pharmacy next door. I jump out of the cab, limp into the pharmacy and beg for some help with my flare up of tendinitis. I walk out armed and ready for the 18-20 ride to Lima with my bum knee, jubilant until I realize I have left my camera on the backseat of the taxi.

 

Nah. It can’t be. I keep it with my wallet and I have my wallet in my pocket. But it is. It must have fallen out when I pulled my wallet out to pay for the taxi. It can’t be. I ALWAYS check the backseat when I get out of a taxi. Not this time. I was too preoccupied about my knee. Too excited to see an open pharmacy. A million things flash through my head: my camera is gone, cameras like that cost hundreds of dollars more here, I am the world’s biggest idiot, I just finished writing a story for a magazine in Buenos Aires about how not to get yourself. I got myself. Fuck the camera. Fuck those things. In that camera is just one week of pictures – from our trek to Choquequirao. I would throw myself in front of a bus to get just one week of photos back, and I can’t.

 

Paul goes to check our luggage on to the bus and I stand, tears streaming down my cheeks, on tiptoes, checking every taxi outside the terminal. Maybe someone will find it. Maybe he will come back with it. Hoping, just hoping, that I have not lost my proudest art from this trip. It’s no use. What did the taxi driver look like? Stocky with a black jacket. All the cabs looks the same. All the driver’s are stocky with black jackets. My most beautiful art is gone. I stand alone outside the terminal in Cusco with taxi drivers screaming at me to get in their cabs, searching with empty eyes, desperately hoping, and totally resigned, and crying my eyes out in disbelief.

 

Paul half-heartedly hugs me. He knows it’s my fault. He also knows that nothing he can do can make me feel better. He reminds me of times in his life when he has lost art that is very important to him. He reminds me of Pico Iyer, my greatest literary hero and the first chapter of a book that absolutely changed my life and perspective. In The Global Soul, the first chapter (I believe it’s called ‘The Burning House’), Iyer recounts losing a lifetime of notes in the famous Santa Barbara Painted Cave Fire. It is one of the most heartbreaking and wonderfully hopeful recollections I have ever read. Reminded of this I take a deep breath, turn my back on Cusco, my camera, my photos and art and physical recollections of Choquequirao, and make the decision to take the trip with me in my heart and mind. I shouldn’t have to be reminded but I have to cry to say goodbye to these things. Yes. Llorona.

 

In the morning, after a restless night of sleep on the bus, I awake and eventually find it in myself to open my eyes. I see the Pacific Ocean for the first time in ten months. There it is stretched out before me, waves rolling in just like I remember, expansive and chilling. It looks, as ever, like home. And despite the difficulties and the ups and downs and the sometime resistance to open my eyes in the morning, to steal from one of my favorite authors, as we rode into Lima “All was well.”.

my llorona

The last text message that Paul received on my phone before we left Buenos Aires was, “Tell Clare she is a llorona“. Which is to say, I am a giant cry baby. Maybe so. I thought it was a mildly nasty and extremely strange thing to say anyway and have often thought about that since.

When we arrived in Bolivia, it arrived like a burst of color. Last year someone told Paul that Bolivia is un flash. They were not kidding. Even after getting to know the place a little last year, it hits me like a Pollock painting all smudgy and colored. There is beauty here in every brush stroke. In every painting, store, smile, tear, soda pop, empanada, bag of grain, stray dog, and stranger. Bolivia is a place to feel really alive and really, really dying all at the same time.

Last week we rolled into Trinidad, Bolivia at 6am after another long painful night bus. Paul sleeps well on the night buses and I do not. We begin our schlep around the possible places to stay. The general consensus at 6am being: there is no room at the inn. How un-christian. We settle for the grimiest joint in town; the only joint in town with a room to spare. The proprietor seems too large to get up so he orders one of his esclavitos to show us to our quarters – a windowless prison whose living bacteria is present on all walls, floor, and beds. I maneuver myself carefully into my sleeping bag for a desperately needed nap after some day and a half with no sleep.

Some three hours later I am awake and brutally aware of the reality of Trinidad. I have a migraine like no other. We have arrived during the two weeks of the season where the farmers in the surrounding savanna burn all the crops in order to cultivate the new years harvest. The air is thick with smoke and feels like the LA valley during a heat wave. At times, you can’t see ten feet in front of you. At other times, you just can’t breathe. The windowless room is oppressive so I step outside into the smoke anyway.

In Trinidad, the principle, or rather, only form of transportation is motorcycle. There are thousands of them, all shapes and sizes and the combination of the noise and the sound makes the migraine feel more like someone chainsawing into the side of my mushy skull. I get some coffee and take enough ibuprofen to kill a horse but still no dice. I crawl back to the windowless, grimy room to curl up and die.

My head is killing me. I am dehydrated and disgusted by my surroundings. I feel sick and scuzzy. This, my friends, is the low point of the trip so far. Paul starts trying to motivate me. I fight back. He fights back. He says I complain all the time. I call him an overbearing asshole. We spend all afternoon in a windowless prison cell screaming, cursing, crying, and generally hating each other, the sound of motorcycles, and the relentless dust in our eyes.

I go for a walk. I eat a lonely dinner in the loneliest restaurant in all of Bolivia with the worst food. A nice lady at a farmacia helps me find some migraine medicine and I start to feel a little better.

By the next day Paul and I can speak to each other again. We tell the slave driver good riddance and soon we are on a boat heading down the Río Ibaré on a two day trip into the savannas which generally involves me sleeping in a hammock and trying to feel better.

I spend a lot of time in the hammock writing. Wondering if I am, indeed, a llorona. I often cry. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I laugh all the time and a cry just as hard and just as often. I complain a lot. I use my camera to capture beautiful things around me and I capture them every few seconds. I have 4 fucking GBs of beauty and I’ve only been on the road for a month. If this makes me a llorona, then I suppose so be it. I feel things hard and fast.

Between moments of headaches and heartaches there are moments of swinging in a hammock on an isolated Bolivian river, there is the Cordillera unfolding before me, there is just color and light all around.

When I was 4 years old I had my second surgery on my eye to correct it. I still have a janky eye to this day. I used to wear an eye patch and at the hospital they would give me eyedrops which stung and made me cry and I still have nightmares about. I still remember the doctor saying to me through my tears, “It’s the sting that let’s you know it’s working.” I know that to be true. If this didn’t hurt so much, it wouldn’t be helping. If I only wrote about the beautiful things, the easy moments, about Paul and I getting along and loving each other, about pink river dolphins, and rolling hills, and silliness, it wouldn’t be as fun to write. Those who know me, know I carry the greatness alongside me and closer still than the hardship.

Call me a llorona. I’d like to see you give Trinidad a try.