Puerto Maldonado, Puno, & Deseguadero

Thurs 11/19 - Cusco Depart

Day was whatever. Market haggle shopping. Got to get out of Cusco. Looking up places to go. Polish girls return from market. Originally wanted to go to jungle, but now are going to Bolivia. I can't go to Bolivia due to US visa restrictions without paying a shit ton of money and getting an impossible vaccine. I buy them a vodka drink and convince them to go to the jungle. We have about an hour to catch the bus. Rushing. Getting shit together. Laundry. A papa relleno which is like a chili relleno, but in a potato. Awesome. Get to the bus station. Polish girls are lagging. Get to get at exact time of departure. Need to pay "terminal tax." Wait in another line. Miss bus. Everyone is shouting in Spanish including Polish, bus station personnel, taxi drivers, and myself. Rush out of station to taxi. Taxi driver is calling someone. Bus is pulled over. Get on bus. Polish are already complaining to bus steward guy about something else. They need the bus to stop again to get something out of the bag they stored. The "give no shit" charm of these girls is wearing off. Shitty B rate Spanish dubbed US films. Pass out.


Fri 11/20 - Puerto Maldonado

Wake up 3am to armed guards and giant guns. Passport and bag check. Sun illuminates thick palm shapes rapped in vines bordered with plastic coke bottles and napkins. Arrive Puerto Maldonado. Someone's economy sized soap bottle has burst all over my bag. Motortaxi downtown. Peruse tour guide shops for best deal. Nothing until tomorrow. Recommended animal sanctuary with monkeys and parrots and shit. Seedy hotel. $7 total four hour round trip dirt road beer in hand mototaxi drive (he waited for us). Drunk. Arrive to cute animals in nice cages land. Lady is sick of us before we get there. Gives us a tour. My great drunk cute animal mood turns sour when she shows us a depressed monkey who sits on the ground and won't look up. Misses family and friends. Probably is going to die. Her seven year project is running out of money. She is guilting us into giving her more money. Passion hopes and dreams die together. Somber motortaxi back to town. Dead inflated dog on a bench. Back to hotel. Totally exhausted. Pass out.

Sat 11/21

5am. Crawl out of bed. Get to tour. Peruvian nice dude tour bro. Just the four of us. Mototaxi. Bus. Walk through small outskirts town. School (shack) hospital (shack) and police station (shack) that has a separate shack just for domestic abuse refuge. Show up to port. Port is just a dozen people crammed on one boat with a million wooden crates and the morning news. Take our own boat an hour up river. Laying in boat soaking in lazy humid jungle air. Parrots flying over head n shit. Monkeys playing in trees n shit. Tie to shore. Walk an hour through the jungle. Monkeys. Crazy looking birds. Crazy huge colorful insects. A slug the size of a softball. One thousand year old, walking, spike, and dick trees. Two tarantulas which apparently was the least deadly out of all of the former mentioned things. Arrive to some cabins. Palm rapped chicken olive tamale lunch. Boat on a lake. Stick string fishing rods tied to hooks of meat. Piranhas everywhere. Catch a Piranha. Fuck with piranha. Boat down river. Stop at sand bank. Swim in warm river in amazon jungle surrounded by monkeys and giant birds while running up shore and floating down river over and over. Not real. Something bites my finger. Return to "port." Some five year old shit of a kid call me a gringo. No taxi. Sit at "Merry Christmas" bar which is a hollowed out house the sells beer and animal crackers in a plastic bags. Taxi back to town. We are going out. Tour guide is coming with us and his motives are not well hidden.

Buy a bottle of rum. Kill entire bottle of rum on bench. Go to club. Never ending Reggaeton. No gringos. Peru racist fuckers won't let me up to the bar to have a drink. Only nice dude to me is a Brazilian guy who sold me a mountain of french fries at some restaurant a few hours earlier. Dancing with Polish. Of course tour guide knows how to dance super good. I dance with Agata. Leave tour guide and other Agata at club. Go to a few other bars. Weird Peruvian band topped with cowboy hats. Agata and I are close. Laughing. Drunk. Touching. I've now been awake for 24 hours. Head back to hostel. Agata turns to stone wall. I try pathetically to "sit down and have a cigarette?" She crawls into her bunk. I crawl into my bunk. She gets back up and heads somewhere without a word. My deflated ego and I pass out.

Sun 11/22

Wake up 830am to Agata twins "You're going to miss breakfast." Force myself out of bed and drag my shit useless hungover body to a table where the classic Peruvian shit roll with jelly and instant coffee awaits. Agatas have met two other Polish and I am sandwiched between their loud screeching burning rotor words which makes the already 90 degree 60% humidity breakfast even worse. Get a message from my friend Karen of Bolivia. Original plan of her meeting me somewhere is not going to happen. I need to get into Bolivia and the only possible way to do it is illegal. Dread. No bus information online. Polish girls go somewhere. I pack my shit and go to the bus station. Never see them again.

Arrive at bus station, my favorite part of Puerto Maldonado: tented restaurants and colorful menus boasting the food of the day. Plastic tables and smiling old folk. $1 noodle soup followed by an upsidedown bowl of rice topped with a fried egg boarded with fried plantains grown from probably down the street. Afterward next door fresh pressed jungle fruit (I have no fucking clue what it was - some sort of shiney golf ball sized chestnut looking thing) against a dirty wall of mototaxi and motorcycle drivers taking a pastry break to chat. One of few places I've seen people laughing.

The bus station itself involves anywhere from ten to twenty company booths sporting signs with the name of whatever bus they found and an out of place little a picture of an Incan ruin or parrot or something. Many buses are going to where I need to be so I pick whatever bus that is leaving at the time I want. While I wait some kid asks me to fill his cup with my water and feeds it to his mom's pet giant casual rat thing. Aboard the randomly chosen bus scene in chronological order: Melting hot jungle breath humidity. Screaming babies. Dude tries to fight some guy (this guy sits next to me). Lady chasing the bus for a half mile. Big shitty machine where my feet need burns my feet. Bus driver is honking at everything not letting anyone sleep. Kid kicking seat. Constant screeching tuned to the RPM outside. Seat only reclines half way for sleep. Smells terrible. When stopped window rattle is deafening (but if hold it just right it stops). Hell is a bus that drives a trash covered jungle road for eternity. Go with brand names.

Mon 11/23 - Puno

Twelve hours later bus arrives Juliaca. Star Wars market scene outside. Dead dog sorta town.  Haven't slept. So upset I have to deal with this shit (privilege). Start asking around. People are very helpful and patient and friendly. A colectivo bus station is one for short distances and is sort of awesome: A random hodgepodge of large vans yelling destinations and people sending you hurried in a direction until you bounce off enough vans and find the one you need. In actuality it's quite efficient.

Arrive Puno. Food is cheap. Landry is expensive. Tinder the ten people match one and make date. Go to 12,500ft altitude indigenous floating shopping mall island. Started as a legit community that used reeds to build everything including houses, boats, and the land they live on - way cool. Now relies completely on tourists to buy made in china gift shop shit - way uncool. Return to hostel. Supposed to meet this girl. Exhausted. Half an adderall to wake up.

Meet girl. Seems fine. She can't drink. Go to rock and roll bar playing Red Hot Chile Peppers. Tells me she loves Oasis and Cold Play. Tells me she won the Puno Beauty Pagent. No one has ever told me anything like this, and I have no idea how to react. I still have no idea what the proper way is to react. But the absolute wrong way to react is say "really???" in pure astonishment. Suddenly she is really upset. I try to back pedal. Leaves within fifteen minutes. I don't care. She was boring and talking about her hair too much anyway. Plus if you can imagine the Puno beauty pageant bar is set real low. Plus Cold Play?? Pass out.

Tues 11/24 - Deseguadero

Wake up a few hours later wide awake from adderall and stress about Bolivia. Colectivo bus station scene again. Yelling the destination out the window the whole way out of the lot grabbing people as we go. Guy selling a photo copied book called "Secretes of Grandma" and announces the entire plot and spicy highlights. Knows his clientele - a small bus full of colorful mothers with bags for selling on the border. Kid plays US top 40s, Evanescence, and Cumbia out of his phone for all the grandmothers. Kid gets off and another guy takes out his laptop and plays music. I realize this is much less "I forgot headphones" and more "music is good."

Border: Arrive in Deseguadero. Dirt and whatever fell out of the truck for sale sorta town. Scope out crossing. Most people who look like they are working or live there just pass over a bridge with occational bags searched. If an obvious gringo attempted to cross, likely would be stopped. Original plan was to watch where boarder patrol stood, wait for them to close for lunch as read on internet, sneak in with the big opening crowd. Turns out internet lies and they don't close for lunch. Way more guards than expected. Sat around for two hours contemplating. Idea #1 - Walk in beside giant load of stuff to block view. But couldn't risk being stopped once. Idea #2 - Give people money to put me in a box. Walked around looking for shady folk, decided not to ask. Idea #3 - bribe the guards. Too many guards. I sit on a stoop getting worried that this won't work. Kid on roof dumps a cup of water on my head to add insult to injury. Idea #4 - I bought a colorful bag to put my backpack in as to pathetically attempt not to look like a traveler/tourist. Hat. Glasses. Waited for gusts of wind, hailed a pedicab, and covered my face with a t-shirt so none of my gringo skin was showing. Rolled through the border passed a dozen guards with my head down. Jumped in a colectivo headed for La Paz.

Unexpected checkpoint: Van stops. Armed troops. Everyone but me and some lady get out. Searching bags. Asking for passports. There's a problem with a bag. Can't understand exactly what. Can't see if it's mine because can't get out of van without all the guards questioning the only gringo. Stopped for twenty minutes. Totally terrified. Guards walking circles around the van. Don't ever look up. Plan is if questioned, act like a cheerful easily excited idiot who doesn't know a word of Spanish. If asked for passport and visa I have it but it's in a very terrible place to get to. If check passport I say I didn't understand and I thought South America was like the United States and you only need one passport and visa. Sweating and out of breath (the elevation doesn't help anxiety). Everyone get's back in van. We are less one person. Take off.

Two hour packed hot van ride. I couldn't care less. I'm so happy. Arrive La Paz. One hour smog traffic taxi ride. Taxi driver is holding down the horn at frozen buses and people with babies. Arrive to Karen. Sweet long embrace. Cable car ride to house. Beautiful city lights spilled into gigantic snow capped mountain bowl. Arrive Karen's house. The nicest house out of any of my friends. Within ten minutes we cross her yard to eat. Enter another house. It's her parents house. Suddenly reeaal uncomfortable. Juxtapose dirty illegal emigration with unknowingly meeting someone's parents you of who you fucked a few times and don't speak their language. Very unsure of formal greeting customs so fuck that up off the bat. Sit down for a meal I've never seen before and fuck up how to eat it off the bat. Trying to hold a conversation and be appreciative and witty and entertaining. Fucked that up right off the bat. Return to Karen's separate but right next to parent's house. Karen needs to go to work. Pass out in her bed.

Cusco & Machu Picchu, Peru

Fri 11/13 - Cusco, Peru

I don’t remember. Arrived in Cusco. I was sick. Stayed in Hostel with occasional walks around cute historic Spanish/Incan hybrid architecture. Walked to the top of a big hill. Very, very good vegan restaurant called Green Point (in my top three). In bed by 9pm.

Sat 11/14

Still feel like shit. Gnarly dragon cough. Walked a huge Saturday market where everyone was selling everything under tarps from used shoes to pictures with a parrot for super cheap. Wanted to take so many more pictures, but you know, exploitation. I learned dubstep reggaeton exits. Saw a ska show with some German guy. Return to hostel. Techno party. A fifty people packed into a tiny room. Some guy has cocaine. I’m smoking cigarettes with a hodge podge of europeans on the balcony talking, and talking, and talking. Look in for a moment and I swear every person is making out with someone. One hundred people. I keep talking. Drinks. Drinks. Talking. Drinks. Everything is a bit blurry… I think I go to some club with some dudes from Lima. We talk to some girls. I go to buy a beer. I turn around and two dudes are being kicked out. I think about following but I have a full beer. And there are cute girls. One girls is cute and asking me questions but it’s way to loud and drunk and my Spanish sucks to me to understand. I break to bathroom. Room starts spinning. Swift exit. Sleep.

Sun 11/15

Treating your body while sick is a bad idea. Stay in bed for most of the day. Trying to sleep. Can’t sleep. Idle times lead to mini existential crisis about what I’m doing this day, days to come, and my life. Go to the market for $1 full meal in these weird little packed bench movie theater style seats where everyone just watches the sassy Peruvian lady slop spoons of rice, eggs, and meat onto a plates. I get double sick. English dude I met previous is still drinking and coked out. Night comes. Hippies show up. One has a didgeridoo. The sit in a circle and listen to the sound of the didgeridoo and make those stupid fake “oh my god  this is the most magical thing I’ve ever heard and I’m vibing” faces. Still drunk coked out English guy steals the didgeridoo and sticks the mouth part down his pants and walks around the bar for a while with the didgeridoo hanging out. Turns corner and gives didgeridoo back to hippes. Hippies, unaware of what happened inside the bar, go back to prancing around in colorful capes blowing into didgeridoo. I’m dying laughing. Get super drunk again like a big idiot dip shit. It’s so hard not to when a bar is ten paces from your bed. Playing pool and talking shit to one of the hippies. Turns out she knows how to talk some shit. Flirty. Touching. She makes out with dark sexy Latin mother fucker. Pass out.

(this, is the drunk English guy, named Michael)

Mon 11/16

I swear I won’t drink today. 10am Free Walking Tour has totally awful tour guide lady who says things like "these are people who make coffee" while showing a huge group of tourists miserable people who are working behind a glass windows and refers to the gays as "the gays." Was supposed to go to Sacred Valley village but thunder storm. Take computer to study and plan trip in commons/bar room. South America, it turns out, is fucking huge, and plane tickets, it turns out, cost a shit ton of money to go anywhere. I ask facebook where I should go. In short - most everyone who has never been to South America says Argentina/Chile. Everyone who has says Ecuador/Columbia. Turn my route around. Heading north to Ecuador/Columbia. Nothing much happens. Except drunk English guy is very influential. We play rock paper scissors for happy hour drinks. I find dice. Get whole bar to play C-low. Very cute Canadian. We play pool drink and gamble. Flirty. Asks me if I have a girlfriend. Enter Ryan Gosling looking/acting/charming mother fucker. Free club wristbands. I say “fuck no I have to be up at 6am to go to Machu Fucking Picchu” she says “come on it will be fun” and touches my arm. I say “okay.” Go to club at 1am with me, her, her gay friend, and Ryan Gosling looking mother fucker. I don’t have to explain how this story ends. Within 15 minutes she is making out with Ryan Gosling looking mother fucker. Swift cursing exit. Pass out.

Tues 11/17

Awake drunk, hungover, and still cursing, I wander to get provisions for the trip to Machu Picchu. No ATM nearby. Grocery store is closed. Have to wait. Taxi pulls up to sketchy bus station. Whoever-and-their-mom “bus company representatives” have a taste for gringo are almost sticking their shouting heads in the window of my taxi. I get out and walk deep into the bus station like a mother fucking Star to find the last quite windowed paparazzi who offers me a ride for fifteen Soles (like, $4) to a town 6 hours away. I walk to the bus whose engine compartment is open and four dudes are looking inside scratching their heads. An hour after the time of departure, less because of engine issues but more because they wanted to fill the bus, the bus departs. Beautiful snaking roads through clouds over mountains. Tiny colorful homes brandishing hanging gardens of food and fish ponds. Multiple landslides opening rivers to flow over the road. Bus arrives into what I can only call the “Jungle” however this is like when the first dip shit American goes to Europe and calls every large stoned building they see a “castle.”

A town called Santa Maria. I meet two small Polish girls both named Agata and we get some food and drinks. Drinks turn into more drinks. Packed drinks. We hop in winding gas-brake taxi that sends us flying around dirt corners with a non-existent guardrail protecting us from plummeting into imminent death canyon while bumping every pop hit of the summer including Taylor Swift and the Selfie song. Show up to what is only a pair of train tracks and a bunch of shops made out of tarps that line the beginning. Some more drinks and we set to walking these tracks. We get lost immediately. Find cute homeless dog. I make a “this is our spirit dog and she will lead us to where we should go” joke. We follow dog. Leads us up a random path to where we are supposed to go. Dog sticks with us for 30 minutes over ratty bridges made of fused together sheet metal. Darkness falls. Polish girls are getting worried we are going to die. I don’t really care either way. Random tiny powered two person train car approaching. We stick our thumbs out. The random tiny powered train thing, no shit, actually stops. We negotiate a price that is about two dollars for all three of us. We pull away. The dog, of which we named Cusqueña, after the beer we were drinking, chases us. We make the train guy stop. Throw the dog in the train. Arrive Aguas Calientes - the base of Machu Picchu. Some guy immediately solicits us for a $4 hostel. We oblige, so long as Cusqueña can stay. He argues, but the Agatas are very convincing. The dog can stay upstairs. We go out for victory drinks. Everything is super overpriced, but we find 4x1 Pisco Sour happy hour, and talk them down even more (the Agatas are very convincing). Drink. Fucking Exhausted. Pass out.

(this is the very beginning of the walk and that's the dog that slipped into my shot)

Wed 11/18

Wake up. 6am. Walk to patio overlooking town. Cool air and unbelievable views of towering vegetation and cloud spotted black rock cliffs. Tube cheese rolls and mango breakfast. Cusqueña is gone. Someone must of let her out in the night. A moment for Cusqueña and we set to hike to Machu Picchu (note: there is a train directly from Cusco to Aguas Calientes, and buses that take you directly to the top of the mountain, but those people are soulless and/or have more money than I). Buy way overpriced tickets ($40!!). Long ass steep hike to top. Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu is like the quarterback of a football team. The best, but steals all the attention and is totally and completely overrated (I stole this analogy). Though utterly spectacular, the amount of selfie-stick wielding tourists and security personnel (we got yelled at seven or eight times) made it as spiritual and awe inspiring as its postcard counterpart. After walking around for about an hour we saw, no fucking shit, Cusqueña hanging around some dumb blonde Europeans. We run to Cusqueña and expect this homeless rat dog to rejoice in happiness to see its loyal owners, but alas Cusqueña turns her cheek and struts back over to her new Euro trash fling. We get upset and feel betrayed, to which we all express to the dog, to which every tourist looks at us like we are fucking crazy, and leave Cusqueña. After some laps of the Incan attractions, Cusqueña shows back up and starts following us. We try not to make eye contact for a while but eventually give into her charm and give her some water. Our last stop before exiting the park is a bunch of alpacas who roam around the corridors, who absolutely are out to kill Cusqueña, and we have to try to save our homeless spirit dog from a rampage of five alpacas, security, and twenty plus very confused and frightened tourists. Cusqueña runs away in terror and we never see her again.

We exist the park. Hike back down the mountain. The first restaurant is pizza and beer. We tell the lady we aren’t sure. She literally counters with “but pizza and beer” of to which my burnt and sweaty body immediately collapses into a chair. Refreshed we are already fighting time. It’s 3pm and we have a long hike ahead. We grab our shit from the hostel, pick up a full liter of Pisco (grape liquor, Peru loves it), fill up some plastic cups, and hit the tracks. An otherwise shit walk after hiking ruins all day was saved when half way down the tracks we polish off the bottle (no pun intended). Drunk I find out the cuter of the Polish girls has only had sex with four people, because she only enjoys sex with people she loves, so being the terrible person I advance. On the dark taxi ride home we canoodle and tangle bit in the back seat, but the taxi ride quickly turns into convenience store cement floor wait for a bus that gets us into Cusco at 4am. They come to my hostel. Completely exhausted, we all pass out.