Get Ready, Set… Go – Page 14 – Two Travelin' Chicas…

Inca Trail Day Two: Personal Hell

This day was a day of personal hell for all the hikers on the trail. We started out at 5am and literally walked straight up flights of uneven stairs for 5 hours for an elevation gain of 4500 feet.

As I passed each climber you would make small talk… if you had enough breath. About two hours in you just looked at each other and tried to smile as we all leap frogged up the mountain. After 3 hours you reached a false high as you reached the half way point to cheers from your group who were all waiting for the final push, like runners at the starting line. You could see the end point far in the distance and a few climbers ahead. The trail looked like a line of ants as they would move and stop, move a bit more and stop.

P.S. As much as I resented the idea of using my iPhone and earphones on the trail they were my saving grace. When I finally was ready to succumb to the pain and nausea of altitude sickness I pulled out my music and it took my mind away from the mental cues from my brain saying ‘are you f#%+ing insane?’ It put me into a type of trance that allowed me to control my anxiety, breathing and pace. God bless technology!

By 4 hours in you were swearing and cursing the trail and each step. You would turn around and look at the absolutely stunning views, convince yourself this is why you are doing this, turn and push on. Step by step. At one point a rain shower rolled in and the path of ants both in front and behind me all at once turned from yellow, white blacks and blues, to brightly colored plastic coated ants in a row. And I push on.

As I got closer to the top I had made friends with other hikers from around the world. I was wearing my Ravens jersey and I became “Hey Baltimore” as I was passed up and passed. Five hours later the the top was in close proximity and I could see Alejandro waving me on. The last 15 minutes seemed like hours, three steps, breathe, three more, breathe. Five steps to go, I wanted to run up and be done but my legs felt like cement. Five hours and 20 minutes summit.

The view was spectacular but we couldn’t stay long due to the altitude. I thought that Fayzee would’ve liked the view so I left a bit of her there with a view that can only be achieved by plenty of sweat, pain and tears. Unfortunately, what goes up must come down.

The path down was almost as fun as the ascent. The difference being you were trying not to break an ankle or fall on the slippery rocks, oh yes I forgot to mention it began to rain. It was a 3500 feet descent, most of which was the same incredulous stairs as going up this insane mountain.

At the bottom of the first set of stairs a porter appeared and gave us a note from Alejandro. The note said “Hello Girls. I have sent this porter to help you any way he can. Let him carry your backpack so you arrive safely.” At first Chris was hesitant. Normally these guys are running up and down. Michaelandro stayed with us for the whole time until Chris saw the next set of stairs and surrendered her backpack. He stayed with us for the next hour as we hiked into camp. We arrived to the same lineup of porters and Alejandro cheering as we entered camp.

Daily Word Prompt

So Your Here… Now What?

After spending 12 hours in airports and on airplanes we arrive at our destination, Peru. When everything goes as planned it makes for a lovely journey. Of course I ate too much and sat still for way too long.

Arriving at Lima Airport our bags arrived in as timely a fashion as we did. Walked through customs without issue and were whisked off by our driver to our quaint hotel. Checked in and off to dreamland for us weary travelers.

La Castellana Hotel is a small boutique hotel with solid plaster walls, dark wood accents and as few creature comforts as needed to be fairly comfortable. This is what true “locally owned” establishments look like. The room rate is reflective of the sparseness. There is no “European” frills here. The beds are small, there is dark wood accents with years upon years of dark paint spilling over the edges of the panes of glass in the windows. A small squeaky oscillating fan is mounted to the ceiling and moves the damp air around nicely for a bit of comfort. The only thing in the room that doesn’t fit is the 28″ flat screen TV chained to a small shelf in the corner of the room.

The sounds of the city of MiraFlores at night consist of nothing but the dull hum of the street lamps and an occasional cat fight on the tin roofs of the tightly packed buildings. The morning light arrives at 5:30 and the streets wake up to the bustle of cars, traffic cop whistles, impatient horns and the street vendors selling the fresh produce and catch of the day.

It is warm and muggy today, with a slight mist in the air. Our trip commences tonight with our CEO meeting us in the lobby. We have a “free” day today… What to do?

Part 2: Pisco Sours and Dirty Streets

We had a breakfast of bread and thee best damn coffee made on Earth! Back to the room with the normal get ready things which fortunately included a HOT shower and fluffy white towels. Put away everything of value and out the door for a “walk about town”.

In a country you are not familiar with there is a battle that arises between fit in and be safe but not look like a tourist. The things you see are so unfamiliar and yet hold a beauty of their own. You want to capture every moment with the camera, not necessarily the physical but the one of the mind. I only wish my mind had the memory of a camera.

We came upon a Central Park that was the home of at least 50 stray cats all lounging about. There was a circular pit that posed as the meeting point for college students, lovers, travelers, musicians and cats. We all sat around the pit and listened to the musicians sing and play, watched the lovers cuddle, petted the strays vying for whomever would give them a scratch, and the travelers and locals, faces planted I cell phones, share their deepest experiences with the unseen world around us…and a smaller world it is becoming.
Cultural Immersion

The Inka Trail: Day Minus One

As hard as it has been to shut up the brain the last few nights last night gave me a good night peaceful sleep. The trip ahead has a few things laid out on the line. #1, leaving the business to Kara and believing in her and our crew to pull this off. #2, can we pull this off?

Well honestly we don’t believe 7 business days will break us. Kara has been training for the last few months, intensely the last few weeks. She is ready but has a doubt about her abilities that we don’t share. She is very familiar with our business. How we do things, how our customers usually are and finally how the whole process works. Of course there is always the unknown and the hard to deal with customer. We have a great team!

Chris and I, of course, have some trepidation of our preparedness. Will we have the stamina to complete this journey? Not like we have another alternative. Have we thought of every last nuance of what is needed to complete such an epoch journey? “The proof is in the pudding” as the saying goes. We will be traveling into another hemisphere to answer this question, a crystal ball would be helpful.

Tonight we need a good night sleep. Not freak out about this or that. Make mental notes without solving world peace in our time made for sleeping. Tonight the journey begins.

Two Middle Aged Women Travel Alone

So I always ask myself… What’s the worst that could happen? Next thing I know my mind is off on a nervous stream of random thoughts… and I promise they are not all good. There is always the flat tire in the middle of the desert while four wheeling, the blown hose when there is no service station or parts store within a hundred miles, being held up, car stolen by some rogue police men in a far away country… hell any of these things can and have happened right here in the US.

Some people think we are crazy! What on Earth are two middle aged women gonna do out there on the road, over-landing in “third world” countries… if something happens? I have never let my fears and nervous thoughts dictate where I am going to go, what I am going to take, what might happen to me. Quite the opposite. I let the fears keep me safe. I proceed with caution and good common sense. If I let the nervous jitters stop me I would never set foot outside my own house… hell maybe not even get out of bed.

Our plans for the end of this year are slowly gathering momentum and we are beginning to make lists, planing our financial well being, checking and double checking supplies. I spend at least an hour of everyday online, asking questions to those who are out there living the LIFE we only are dreaming of… gathering tid-bits on how to rig our Adventure Cruzer for over-landing… learning from others misfortunes. The best part is compiling the “BUCKET LIST”.

Everyday someone comes up to one of us and asks us if we are sure this is really what we want to do? The answer is simply, “yes or the stress is going to kill us”. Face it we are not getting any younger. The things we like to do take good health and strong bodies and time. Our life now is so stressful, we have so much “stuff”and so little time. We have been locked in the same career for over 25 years… it is time for a change.

Doubt

There is no bigger obstacle than doubt. If the mighty explorers of the past ever listened when their peers doubted them… we might all be living on a very small and overcrowded continent. Planes would not streak across our skies everyday. The moon might still be made of green cheese. We might all still be using oil lamps and yelling from mountain tops to get our messages out.

When I was young, people including myself had doubts I’d make it to my 21st birthday… say hello now to 54! My life has been full of doubts, mostly from those around me, and like those explorers, I took on those doubts as a personal challenge.

In my present life we are starting to sell off everything we own and planning our getaway. Doubt?! OMG our minds are full of doubt… and on some days we have to pinch ourselves and slap ourselves out of the funk surrounding this doubt. We have planned carefully. Never in 25 years together has anything that challenged us, not been surmounted, conquered and accomplished with a little faith and hard work. We live for our dreams… as dreams are our stepping stones into our futures.

Doubt can be healthy or a huge detriment. It depends on how you approach it. We all have a grand purpose in our lives… it’s in our DNAs. We can choose to let doubt run our life or we can choose to take it in stride and take little steps forward around it. Doubt is a thought, an opinion, but don’t let it become a lack of action or something so powerful that you’re life stops

Rise-n-Shine

I open one eye… blurry is the world I see.
I open the other… the light is slowly growing.
I slowly turn over and look at the clock… 6am.
The pink hues of the pale morning light add a rosy glow to the parting night sky.
The grey sky turns bright blue and my heart quickens… my senses become alive.
The birds summon the day as the sun summits the mountain peaks and warms the still air.
The life cycle begins again… I rise to embrace it.
I stretch to the sky and offer up myself to it’s bidding.

Liebster Award

Special thanks to Retrato https://retratonz.com/ for the nomination! What an honor…

The Liebster Award 2017 is an award that exists only on the internet, and is given to bloggers by other bloggers. The earliest case of the award goes as far back as 2011. Liebster in German means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome.

And rules if you choose to accept

Post about the award, thank the person who nominated you and link to their blog.
Answer their questions about yourself.
Nominate 5 –10 people with fewer than 1,000 followers, let them know via social media.
Write your own set of questions for your nominees.
Feel good about yourself for winning an award and pass it on.

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My questions from : https://retratonz.com/

What inspires you to write a travel blog?

I find myself somewhere in the world where I’ve never been and all these thoughts flood into my head. I started writing them down back in 1991, in a time before laptops, iPhones and iPads… good ole’ pen and paper. The inspiration just comes… again more like a feeling that just comes over my entire being. I find it an escape. I find it’s a chance to share with others what I am seeing and feeling in the environment I am traveling through. In some instances I feel it is my obligation to be honest about a particular place that is maybe painted as an awesome place to travel and yet has so many things that are never disclosed about the reality of those places. Of course everyone has opinions. My blogs are my personal opinions I guess.

What’s your most unforgettable travel experience?

The Inca Trail, Camino Inka, Peru 2015. My partner and Inhad trained for 3 months for this epic hike. It is 27 miles of stairs pretty much up and down all over 10,000 feet. The experience was amazing, hard, at times hopeless, invigorating, and maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It taught me about patience within my own mind and body. It was humbling. The thing is… one doesn’t get the chance very often to walk on the same path that an ancient society built and used for commerce, spirituality, escape and pilgrimage. On the forth and final day of the trek we arrived at the Sun Gate overlooking Machu Piccu. The sight was breath-taking. I had been carrying my “moms” ashes with me the whole trek and it was here that I left her to have an everlasting view of an ancient city hidden high in the Andes.

Have you had any Anthony Bourdain-like food experiences?

Oh yes… The first was in Ethiopia. Warm cows milk out of a decorated gourd and injera. The second was in Bolivia… there was a group of ladies that was serving us some sort of soup out of wheel barrows. I was told it was made with beef esophagus. Thank goodness I found that out after I had eaten it. In Ecuador… it was Guinea Pig, and something we call “weevil soup”. Unfortunately I have a few stomach issues so I always seem to come home with “something”.

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If you were to live somewhere else, which place would that be and why?

I have been to many places that I would love to “live” in the near future. “Live” in the near future, of course, will be different than what “live” means now. Stress removed, no time limit like a vacation, no excess funds going out to frivolous government over priced insurances. Perhaps Mexico for a year… Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, a year or two in each. We seem to really like Cotacachi and the community there… so maybe that will be our travels end in 20-25 years for a home base. There is just so many places I really would love to spend a lot of time in the near future. Take a trip around the world on a round the world ticket. I am just entering into the next quarter of my life. As long as we can stay healthy we will travel as much as possible, but as a traveler, not a tourist.

What advice can you give travel bloggers?

Be honest. We have an obligation to tell it like it is, the good with the bad. Our followers may plan a trip based on an advertiser’s rosy picture of a place… if we don’t tell it like it is, we let them believe the fairy-tale. Every rose has a thorn.

We need to boost indigenous villages with our travels and bring others in and educate them on their way of life and their customs. Often times “privileged tourists” travel and stay in chain hotels, eat at common name food establishments (such as McDonald’s), never venture into the reality of a destination, mostly out of fear. We need to teach them to be travelers and not tourists.

Be informative. We are the National Geographic back door bloggers. The WikiTravel infomercials. Take photos… lots of them. Speak your mind and be brilliant.

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Thanks again for the nomination!

I now nominate:

http://www.janzjourney.wordpress.com

http://www.mysurfblog.com

http://www.missxooley.wordpress.com

www.frantraveltales.com

http://www.retiredrambling.com

http://www.swedeinbarca.wordpress.com

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My questions to you are:

Why do you blog?
What’s been the scariest thing in your travels?
As a blogger, do you feel a sense of responsibility for blogging “how it is”?
What was your favorite blog?
If you had to describe yourself as an animal… what animal would it be and why?

Aren’t We The Luckiest Laziest Race?

The one thing that has always struck me when traveling abroad is how lucky… lazy we are. I envy the native peoples in the countries I’ve traveled in. They make a party out of gardening, laundry, cooking and playing. They are not glued to TVs. They do not have the luxury of a dish washer, a clothes washer or dryer, sometimes not even a true stove as we know it. For sure they can’t set a timer on their sprinkler system and forget about the garden.

I have traveled to Ethiopia on a humanitarian mission and helped build stoves, drip watering system, water filtration systems. Traveled to Bolivia to help build toilets and teach them about hygiene. Just as a traveler to other Central, South American and Caribbean countries and experienced the joy of neighbors doing laundry, cooking food in wood kindled ovens outside, and gardening together. The sense of community and neighbors is only some fake notion we have in the US

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I have noticed over the last few years the youth of these countries have embraced cell phones, computers and eating out. The sense of family seems to be splintering… if only just a bit. It is almost sad.

I live in a country that our kids go to schools with cell phones, the avgerage home has two TVs, every individual in a family has a computer. In my dealership I see teenagers come in with their parents and turn up their nose at a great first car… and the parents give in. What are we doing?

I know that I am not any better than the people described above. My first car was $500 and I bought it myself. I do own a Smart phone and a computer and a tablet. I have four TVs in my house. I own a washer and dryer and a professional gas stove, two fridges and a chest freezer. Yes I am comfortable but when I travel I envy the people I see that have something I don’t… real friends, community and a life that has real meaning instead of just getting ahead, keeping up with the Jones… and intimate relationships with my family and neighbors. Are we not the luckiest laziest race…

The Desert Silence

Here I am sitting on a rock in the middle of the NV desert. A minute ago I was driving and found myself just wanting to “get there”. I thought to myself, “why can’t you just stop?” Surrounded by all this beauty and the grandeur of the desert in all its vastness, emptiness, and its own beauty. Why can’t I stop? I finally pulled over and found this rock and had the desire to write. Writing makes me stop, turn inwards and listen. It tunes out the outside, complicated world and makes me calm down.

I hear the breeze blowing thru the dry brush. I feel the vastness of the blue sky. I feel the warmth of the sun contrasting the coolness of the rock I am sitting on. I hear my inner demons and the battle that I am waging on the inside. I feel the sadness of being alone, but not lonely. I feel the struggle of an inner peace scratching and clawing its way to the surface of my being.

It is a perfect 72 degrees. The sun shining brilliantly in a near cloudless sky. The desert surrounding me shows off billions of years of weathering the turmoils of life. Life of a desert. There are hundreds of colors if you look close enough. Birds sing their songs of the day if you stop and be still. When all stops the silence is deafening. I can hear the tapping of the keyboard, the rush of blood in my ears, my heartbeat and every breath I take. A car passing by breaks my trance and I must move on. A bit calmer and more centered than just a short time ago.

I found a trail that lead to the top of a ridge for some 360 views. Again the silence is broken by the sound of the wind in my ears and the sound of the passing cars below. Winding thru this landscape is a black ribbon that allows even novices into this stark landscape. I take a sip of water and am reminded that is this one element that is lacking here. It is the one thing that brings life and death to the desert. A gentle burst of rain is quenching. A sudden downpour can equal death and destruction as it upsets the tiny microclimate, causing run off, flash floods and great land disturbances that shape the ever changing dynamics of the desert.

The mountains of the desert are like folds in the earth’s ancient crust. Others are like ancient sea reefs. Others are great monoliths of long extinct volcanoes. They all loom high above the desert floor and are haloed by the true blue of the desert sky. They stand like monuments, thrusting out of the flat sandy bottoms to touch heaven itself.
I venture further into the ever changing landscape and come to my favorite, red rock. The red rock is the womb of Mother Nature. The wind and rain carve into this sand stone and give it its unique characteristics of color, carvings and caves. The caverns that are created remind me of a womb. This rock has pushed up from deep inside Mother Earth and survived years of punishing to create these eerie formations that hold a history lesson in fossils and primal composition. The layers reveal stories of years gone by before man and memory. Every sound echoes through its strange formations. I could sit here for hours and pick out faces, shapes and become entranced by is stark beauty.

A small lizard just ran past me and broke me from my daze. The desert has a way of stealing you away. It lulls you into a trance of sun, rock and heat. Transfix your gaze on an object and hours can go by without notice. The desert soothes the mind and rocks the soul into a blissful existence. The shadows grow longer and the sun moves slowly, methodically across the sky. These rocks and sand have seen the same path over and over again, but the visitor to this realm, is transformed with each moment spent in its splendor. Tread lightly and take only pictures and leave only footprints in this land of history and intrigue.

As The World Turns

We’ve been back now from our vacation to Bocas del Toro Panama for a week. We are still moving forward with our plans to liquidate and become minimalists travelers. Our business has a for sale sign in front of it now. It doesn’t seem to deter the customers.

The list has been compiled for the reconditioning of the house to get it ready to sell. Items of little or lost worth are piled in our basement waiting for the weather to break so we can get some yard sales in.

I find this preparation very exciting, and as things go away, freeing! Our goal is still August. If things come together before that… well that would be ok too.

The fun part is the planning and investigating where to go, how to get there, and whether or not to camp, drive from hostel to hostel, house sit? Fly? The cool thing is we have at least 15-20 years to accomplish it. The excitement of the future drives me forward through the present.