Six People, Five Tents and Three Bottles of Rum (2006.06.14)

This past Saturday, some friends and I took our first venture away from Cochabamba on our own to a National Park...really not too far from the city but a trip on our own nonetheless. There were originally supposed to be ten of us, but four people ended up being sick so it got cut down to six. But we didn’t find out about the sicknesses until the morning we left, so everything was all packed up, so we had way too many tents. But it was a good thing there were only six of us because we would have had to start eating peanut butter and jelly out of the jars if there were any more.

I made some trail mix out of M&M’s, granola and peanuts, we packed in two loaves of bread with PB&J and the morning we left we bought a boatload of fruit (25 bananas and 20 oranges for about $0.65 US) and three bottles of rum that were about $2.50 US each. It’s pretty ridiculous how cheap things are here.

We are all currently living at an altitude of about 8500 feet and we still get winded when we run. So as soon as we started hiking up the mountain, it became evident that it was going to be a slow day. It’s amazing how much it really affects you when you need to breathe. So we took a lot of breaks and tried to drink a lot of water. Our goal was to hike 25K to a really plush lake on the other side of a mountain, but at about 12K in we took a wrong turn and took a footpath instead of a road. There were some really beautiful views of the city and of the mountains and it was nice to take frequent breaks and just take it all in. One of the most refreshing things for me was the smell. Living where I live, there is essentially poop everywhere and it’s no secret that it’s quite stanky. Coupled with people burning ALL of their trash and dust producing truffis that drive by constantly, the air I get at home isn’t the freshest. But once we got up on that mountain and there were a million pine trees and no cars, the scent was just amazing. I appreciate smells because they’re something that can’t be photographed...you actually had to be there to really understand what I mean.

There was a little bit of an Oasis about halfway up...a playground with a water spicket and also a zipline that we had a lot of fun playing on. We stopped and filled up our waterbottles and enjoyed a nice lunch of peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Mmmmm!

Katie from DC...nice hat!

Dan from Michigan swinging on the zip line

Katie & Justin at one of the Many Vistas

We spent about three hours climbing up and down, criss crossing over the same mountain a couple of times until we finally found the road again. We tried to bust hard and make it to the top but it became evident that we were too tired and night was coming too quickly to make it as far as we had hoped. So we found a really great camping spot and started unpacking. It was really fun...we all kind of broke down into teams and got some work done. Katie and Dan took all of our waterbottles to the stream and filled them up with nice clean filtered water thanks to my hand pump, Justin and Phil put up the tents (we only used 3) and Noah and I gathered firewood. Luckily I brought along my Ecuadorian machete, which I used to chop up a fallen pine into logs to burn all night long. Once again, I felt like a badass.

Don't make a man angry when he's got a beard, a Gandalf like staff and a machete ...he might start quoting Spaceballs or something...

Our campsite was at about 12,100 feet and was pretty chilly when we first arrived with the wind blowing. But it was protected a little from the wind with trees and by the time night really fell, the wind had completely stopped. We found some logs to sit on around the fire and spent the evening eating tuna with a pocket knife, passing around some rum and recounting stories of previous trips, our families and our Peace Corps hopes and aspirations. It was a really incredible group to be with and was the first chance we’ve had to really chill out and not be around 30 other gringos yelling and shouting at some restaurant in the city. I like our whole group well enough, but I’ve always preferred smaller groups of people I like more. We all brought something different to the table and it made for a really great dynamic. Noah is from New Mexico and has done Peace Corps training before a couple years back in English speaking Guyana (not sure if I spelled that one right) but decided not to serve for personal reasons, so he’s got a pretty interesting perspective having been through this whole process before. Justin grew up in Iowa and spent some time in Berkley being a hippy more or less and has some pretty interesting ideas about...pretty much everything. Phil’s dad was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal many years back and Katie was born and bred in DC and went to UVA...she did a good job of bringing just the right amount of estrogen into the trip. She had never been backpacking or camping before and was pretty excited to be hanging out with such a cool group of dudes. And finally there’s Dan, who grew up outside of Ann Arbor and went to Michigan. He’s an eagle scout and we have a good time giving each other friendly crap about the greatest rivalry in college history. It’s been fun getting to know someone from the darkside. We even (gasp!) shared a tent that night.

We danced around the fire, sang some songs and had a jolly old time. I’d put the whole night in my top 10 fire experiences of all time, which is saying a lot ‘cause lord knows I’ve been around a lot of fires!

We broke camp about 9 am and took about 3 hours to get down (we took the road the whole way)...it had taken us about 7 hours to get where we camped...had we stayed on the road the whole time on the way up we would have easily made the lake...oh well there’s always next time. We got down and the whole hungry sweaty stinky lot of us went to probably the nicest restaurant I’ve been too since being here and all got steaks. Oh man it was so good. And it’s great ‘cause the food was excellent and cost us only about $3 US. Seriously, you could live like a king here on a pretty meager US salary.

The whole trip was a great bonding experience and gave us the opportunity to really get to know each other in a setting we hadn’t previously had. I consider myself lucky to have met so many people that I think I can learn from and who want to spend time with me too. New friends have certainly made the transition easier.

The Camping Crew...from left to right: Dan, Phil, Katie, Me, Noah, Justin

I’m not sure how much more camping I’ll get to do during training, but there is certainly a lot to see around here. A lot of our weekends from here on out are pretty packed, but something tells me we’ll find the time to do something like this at least one more time.

All for now. Hasta Pronto

Ben

P.S. Happy Flag Day to all of you in the US...and of course Happy Birthday to the Best Damn Plasterman in the Land, Joe Ranz. Love you Dad.