Traveling

I felt like a hippie at work surrounded by my colleague engineers. And I felt like an engineer whenever I found myself in the hippie crowd. I looked down on the hippies for not being responsible enough, and looked down on the engineers as being too serious. I rejected both and felt rejected by both. I envied all my married friends with their families. I felt myself out of place and very alone. I was very bored at work and wrote poetry to pass the time. I got fed up with everything and sold my house and everything I had. I got my nose operated on, quit my job, and in the spring of 1978, I decided to finally realize my lifetime dream of flying free like a bird and seeing a bit of the world. I was also hoping to find a lady doing the same.

I wanted to taste a bit of the fascination I had with India and Tibet. I longed to meet a girlfriend with similar fascinations and hoped that perhaps I would meet her on the road. I had visions of hitchhiking around the world with nothing but a backpack and looking for nothing but adventure and someone to share it all with. So in the summer I painted some "House for Sale" signs and placed them around my neighborhood. I put some ads in the newspapers and had a few Open House weekends. I had a good response, and by the end of summer I had sold the house and my car.

With a few banana boxes filled with papers, books, and memorabilia I could not part with, I moved into the basement apartment of Magdalene’s house. The room reminded me of a castle cellar room. It had an electric simulation fireplace and was very spacious with all kinds of shields and decorations on the wall. With the basement windows looking up into the big garden situated on the banks of the Elbow River, the white sunbeams made the room seem darker and bigger than it actually was. I had a nose operation to try and correct a deviated septum that has given me a lifelong chronic stuffy nose. The doctor suggested that he could change the shape of my nose during the operation and I stubbornly refused even when he kindly offered to do it without extra charges.

I had enough money to last me a few years. Remembering the culture shock I experienced on my visit to Tijuana 2 years ago, I thought it prudent to acclimatize myself for my big plunge into the Far East. I decided to return to Mexico and see a bit of Latin America. I bought an army jungle survival hammock tent, space blanket, sleeping bag, special clothes, lantern and books. With my wok, camping stove, air mattress, and harmonica all somehow held together by my extra-large backpack that was home for the next couple of years. I felt more like a snail than a bird.

Julia offered me her cabin near Banff for a few weeks in December, so I said my good-byes and went with my skis and my over filled backpack for a few weeks of final preparation and last bit of skiing. I settled into Julia's mountain cabin and got all the national geographic books on Latin America and a book to learn Spanish from the local library. The next couple of weeks I alternated between reading about the places in South America, cooking, studying Spanish and skiing. On my last day I skied up the old fire road to Banff and bumped into Julia and her mother. They drove me back to their cabin and I had the opportunity to invite them for one last farewell dinner in their own cabin. 

The next day, I locked up the cabin and put on my over-packed backpack which contained all that I had. The phrase „“freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose“ suddenly made sense. I felt totally free for the first time in my life. As I was heading out to the highway to hitchhike to Vancouver, I passed this quaint church and followed my urge to enter. There was a service going on and I decided to stay. They used clear plastic cups to serve the syrup and cubes of white sliced white bread during their communion. Some of the congregation recognized me from having seen me around the past couple of weeks and introduced me. I was invited for coffee and cakes and they prayed for my trip. I felt blessed.

For the next 2 years I traveled mostly by bus meandering deeper and deeper south. I took my time sometimes staying for a few months in one place. I stayed with locals and had great adventures with them. I entered their churches, and I was captivated by their culture, their dress, and how happy they seemed. I searched for places off the beaten track and got totally immersed in the local sounds, rhythms, and pace. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. 

British Columbia

My first stop was to a friend of a friend whom I never met. They had just built their house in a jungle setting in the back roads of British Columbia. The entire area was covered by gigantic ferns under a constant light drizzle and shrouded in patches of thick white mist. It was very difficult to find the house. For luck he and his family were at home and they were very nice and happy to have some contact with their friend thru me. He told me that he had just dug his well and that he used the services of the local water diviner. He handed me two wires from coat hangers bent in the shape of an "L" instead of the traditional willow stick the professionals use and sent me walking around his house in the rain to see if I could repeat the findings of the water diviner. I got consistent readings at two definitive places. I was amazed to find that those points turned out to be right over the stream crossing under the house. I felt bewitched. 

California

My next stop was to visit Ben and Terry, the daughter of Marie from Carlton Place. They had moved to San Diego. On arriving, I was amazed by the magnificence of the giant redwoods and the grandness of the Golden Gate Bridge. Terry and her partner Ben had their custom-made motorcycles dismantled in pieces in their garage for their annual maintenance. They had a big sheep dog and we would stay up all night and take the dog for walks thru the deserted streets and parks of San Diego, and watch the sun rise. Ben had a gun and he took me to the outskirts and we had fun shooting down tin cans and bottles.

We went to see the elephant seals that were on the coast nearby. As we were looking for them, I nearly walked into one, mistaking it for a 2m high and 4m long boulder that I was going to climb on for a better look. I had never seen that kind of seal before. They are as big as elephants. Fortunately for me, it saw me first, and grunted and moved to send me jumping back. Ben told me that you can swim with the gray whales who swim down to Mexico from Vancouver to give birth in January. I stayed to celebrate Christmas and New Years with them before leaving to visit the gray whales that I saw off the coast of Vancouver a few years before that came down south to the coast of California to mate. 

Mexico

I hitchhiked down to Mexico and got picked up by a group of Americans in a camper. They had a canoe and were on their way to see the whales, and they invited me to join them. The whales come from the arctic and spend their 13-month gestation time traveling down to the Lagoon to give birth. The mothers are the size of a bus and the newborns are like VW Beatles. We paddled out and the whales were as curious about us as we were of them. A few of us jumped in to swim with them. I was happy to stay dry and was able to touch a mother's fin as it came up just by the side of the canoe as if to shake my hand.

We continued to a remote beach that required some adventurous desert driving. There was just enough light rain to bring out the beautiful colors of the desert. I saw a small dead dolphin on the beach that at first I mistook for a rubber toy. My new found friends had to return back home and so we said goodbye and parted ways.

Anxious to meet some Mexicans, I hitchhiked and was picked up by Lorenzo and his daughter. It was a memorable moment as it was my first time having to use my Spanish dictionary. Despite my not knowing Spanish, we amazingly got along well and ended up laughing very much. As I understood, Lorenzo was driving to La Paz and stopping by to see his brothers and sisters along the way. Four days later when we finally arrived in La Paz I realized that Lorenzo was a preacher and a part time mechanic, and that all his brothers and sisters along the way were members of his church. When we arrived in La Paz, he invited me to stay to meet his real brother Jorge and his family. Jorge, a part time mechanic, was also a preacher in the same church. His wife and his five children lived with him in a windowless shack with an outhouse and an outside stove. The only water he had was from a garden hose. His shack was in the middle of his car dump. He reassembled and fixed broken junk cars and was building his church that was half built. The three days I spent there were filled with friends and visitors dropping by. He played the guitar and I was happy to accompany him on my harmonica. Guadeloupe, his wife was very nice and fed us a staple diet of beans, tortillas, meat and vegetables, in all variety of different ways that were all delicious.

On my last night Jorge gave his sermon in his church and showed me the power of his preaching. It was extremely theatrical and reminded me of the game “charades” with all that body language and gestures. Jorge's slow drawn whispering to his rapid repetitive shouting exclamations and all combination of fast slow high low intonations of his words that I did not understand was like listening to a rap artist which became mode 20 years later. The congregation interacted with intermittent shouts of Alleluias, outbursts of monologues that looked and sounded like they were preaching for a while themselves. Lorenzo and his daughter eventually had to return back home, and by the time I said all my good-byes, I felt blessed and confident in taking my plunge deep into Mexico.

I took a ferryboat across to the mainland and directly went to my next stop; Mexico City. I settled down for a few weeks in a room and soon got down to a routine of getting up late, and going down to the market for fresh eggs and vegetables, and cooking a big breakfast. During the day I alternated between site-seeing, studying Spanish, reading, and just living like a retired man with lots of time on his hands. In the evening I walked around and enjoyed the street entertainment. I wondered how the day went by so fast. Mexico City’ subway is the very same as the one in Montreal, and I got to explore all of the many buildings and public squares littering the bustling city of 14 million. The city has mountains all around, and Aztec tombs nearby.

The Aztecs were northwestern American Indians who migrated south at about 1000AD. They adopted the local culture of the Mayas. The Aztec civilization was at its zenith when the Spaniards came in 1500AD. The Aztecs intermarried with the Spaniards to produce your typical fat greasy and lazy Mexican. The Mayan culture predates to 2000BC and attained its zenith at around 900AD. It was centered around Guatemala with many cities in the jungles that were covered by centuries of jungle growth. They did not use the wheel except in toys for children. They farmed corn and were prosperous enough to develop their civilization to great heights as shown by the ruins of their cities. They developed a calendar with accuracy rivaling that of ours. Then without anyone knowing why, they suddenly stopped building their cities and the ones they had were abandoned and left to be grown over and covered by the jungle. The Mayas lost their civilization but kept their culture. They did not intermarry with the Spaniards and were able to maintain their way of life right up to the present. I wanted to see them so I packed up and took the bus to Yucatan.

The buses are all privately owned and they are all painted in their own personalized style, and blessed by their own saint. The windows have lace curtains adorned with hanging beads. The front of the bus is decorated like an altar with hanging crosses and religious figures hanging in a curtain obstructing most of the view from the small pitted and scratched broken front glass. They are there to bless the bus and keep it running and protect it from going off the road. The buses usually break down in the middle of the trip, and are ingeniously repaired and kept intact on the spot by belts, ropes and bits of wire that happen to be around.

The steep winding roads zigzag up the cliffs with crosses and flowers commemorating previous unfortunate accidents. The big accidents are marked by miniature altars. At night, bus drivers turn off their headlights at the turns so they can see the lights of approaching traffic.

The buses were very small and so were the hard seats. They were always over filled with people going to and from the markets with their babies, children, luggage and chickens. Whenever it was not raining, I was usually able to convince the driver to let me stay up on top of the luggage piled high up on the roof of the bus. I had a wok tied to my back pack and most people thought I was panning for gold.

At Palenque I visited the famous Maya ruins with their famous magic mushrooms. I exchanged my heavy uncomfortable ugly expensive army survival jungle tent hammock for a light comfortable beautiful cheap local string hammock. I felt like a caterpillar turned into a butterfly. I settled down in a place with other backpackers there to experience a bit of the Mayas for a few weeks. We hung our new hammocks on the patio and spaced out in wonderment. The vast rolling grassy hills growing the mushrooms were all around with gringos walking around staring at the ground, and local children collecting the mushrooms to sell to the spaced out gringos.

My next Maya ruin was Tulum with the coral reefs. I settled down in a cabin right on the beach and got a mask, snorkels and fins and explored the coral reefs for a few weeks. I was amazed by the beauty of it all. All kinds of colors and shapes of exotic fish were swimming around.

Some fish were so curious that they even approached me and nibbled on my legs. I was also amazed by how beautiful the local people were. They maintained the purity of their Maya blood to the present, and I find them to be one of the most attractive I have ever seen, with big white teeth behind their big bright smiles, their black shiny hair and big glancing eyes. I was there in March and the beach was so deserted that we swam and sunbathed in the nude. The lay back life I was leading on the beach was getting boring and I was getting hungry for some excitement and new adventures. I read a lot about Belize and had an urge to taste a bit of its Caribbean flavor.

Belize

Belize until 1964 was a British colony. Now it is one of the poorest countries around. But the people seem to be one of the happiest. They speak Creole and have a Caribbean way of life. Funerals are processions along the main street led by the widow or widower who is given alcohol till they cannot walk any more. They are supported on each side by the closest and strongest who act as crutches. Around the coffin, friends of the deceased celebrate in memory of their forever gone friend. They joke, laugh, dance and have a good time. 

The English dialect the speak is called Creole. It has words cut short, abbreviated or even at times totally omitted. Listening to it can be fun as it sounds like rap, but trying to understand it can be very stressful and tiring, especially when they try to talk as fast as they can. Just as they talk like they sing, they walk like they dance. And when they are not talking or walking, they seem to be humming and swaying. They keep their child nicknames as adults, smile and laugh a lot, and are very friendly to each other. Hitchhiking is one of the only ways of getting around, and you have to pay. Everyone with a car picks up people as a way of making money. Usually the transportation is very regular, door to door and overcrowded.

I visited the university and a professor informed me of a cave nearby containing a lake with a Maya cemetery. He drew me a map showing where to find the entrance. I felt like I was on a treasure hunt. I found the entrance 500m from the road over a jungle road going thru a meadow filled with wild flowers and butterflies of all sizes and colors. The entrance was guarded by a swarm of dragonflies. In front of the 10m high entrance were hollow stalagmites of all sizes hanging like organ pipes. When banged with a rock, they gave off different tones sounding like bongo drums. The sound resonates in the mouth of the cave producing a most beautiful eerie sound. The mouth of the cave was 30m high and lit by sunrays. There was a 3m wide stream rushing out. The cave followed the steep flowing stream covering it like a10m wide pipe. Along the rocky edge are sandy beaches, little ponds and waterfalls, and with my lantern fully lit, it looked like a midnight walk up a mountain creek. The lake was about 1km upstream, and about half way I dropped my lantern and found myself in pitch darkness. I imagined the worst. Nobody knew where I was. The thought was terrifying. I managed to find my lighter and found the lantern a roll and tumble away from the stream. I suddenly lost my urge to have a swim in a dark cold lake in the middle of a mountain and instead got a stronger one to get back out to the warm sunlight.

Guatemala

Tikal, one of the largest Maya ruins was next on my list of destinations. It is in a jungle setting with lots of varieties of wild life and tourists. Most tourists fly in and out for a one-day excursion, as the site is so remote. I took the land route taking the entire day to make the journey. The buses are very small and crowded and uncomfortable and hot. Animals like chickens and pigs travel with the people inside, and are like kids, constrained and under control, or running around wild wreaking havoc. I helped the bus driver load up the baggage and tie it on the roof. I was then able to convince him to let me sit on top of it during the entire trip. Spread out over a bulging pile of soft baggage on top of the bus with the magnificent view made me feel special. Especially when I could see sweaty heads leaning out thru the small bus windows trying to get some fresh air. There were facilities for camping and hanging up hammocks. Monkeys, Toucans and other colorful birds seemed to be attracted to the tourists. There was a muddy pond nearby that we swam a lot in to cool off. The ruins were magnificent. There were some newly discovered ruins some four-hour walk away on a jungle trail that I went to see. I don't remember the ruins so much, but my first solo walk thru the jungle was unforgettable.

Easter was approaching and I wanted to witness the Easter parades in Guatemala that I read so much about. The Mayans, like the Hebrews, built altars and sacrificed life to try and please God. They advanced the concept of sacrifice and instead of using sheep, they used man who they believed to be the highest form of life. Human sacrifice alienated the Christian church so much that they tried to eradicate the culture by burning all their books. The many common aspects binding the two religions such as baptism, confession, sacrifice and heavenly rewards allowed the Spanish church to easily convert the Mayas to Christianity. Those same common bonds ensured that many of the Mayan rituals were maintained and practiced. This mixture of the two rituals is most visible during the Easter Holidays when everything closes except for the church, and they put on a carnival type of parade lasting a long weekend. They parade intricate carved statues on floats to music played on homemade instruments and drums.

I took a boat trip up the Passion River to get to Antigua for the parades and got stuck in a beautiful isolate jungle village when the boat service stopped for Easter. The boats are long wooden motorized gondola-shaped boats. They come in all sizes and the bigger ones can transport up to 20 people and their cargo. I was not the only gringo, and the locals took pity on us stranded tourists and took us in and fed us well. The moon was full, and the jungle sounds were extreme, loud and musical with crickets, birds and frogs almost seeming to be in tune with each other. We had our meals in candlelight among the chickens, pigs, cats and dogs looking for leftovers under the table. I felt wonderfully happy.

The roads are barely wide enough for the bus, and zigzag up very steep slopes. I continued to ride on top with the luggage, and the views were breathtaking. The locals always wear their traditional dress so every day looks like a fiesta day. I did some hiking around the region and then I decided to take a Spanish course. Before I could enroll in a class, I met Cristobal from Xela, an unemployed teacher my age. I hired him for private lessons instead of taking a course from the school. He invited me to stay at his home with his wife Lucy and their three months old Percy. Lucy was a fantastic cook and made great tasting dishes. She played chess quite well and we had some really great games. After a couple of weeks of this intensive live-in study, I felt I learned not only a lot of Spanish, but also a lot of politics, history, and culture and the struggle of the campesinoes. 

In May, Cristobal took me up to the crater near San Martin to witness a ritual dating back thousands of years to the original Maya forefathers. The locals travel up the volcano to make little altars around the 300 meter wide crater lake and to pray for a good summer. They set up little crosses of all sizes and burn candles. They make a small fence around it to shelter it from the wind and place flowers inside. The reflection in the mirror smooth water was magnificent. The two-hour walk around the top of the cone is breathtakingly beautiful as you can see many neighboring volcanoes smoldering. The Lake alternates from being crystal clear to totally immersed in fog in a matter of seconds. The region is very isolated, and I saw for the first time how difficult the women in South America had it. One common sight I saw repeatedly in areas off the main track was women walking overloaded with piles of firewood on their backs pulling the donkey carrying the husband sitting on top smoking. Another was women overloaded with piles of laundry walking a few km down to the stream to do their laundry. And all of them carrying their babies at the same time. It made me appreciate the comforts of a stove and washing machine.

On the riverboat I met a local girl who gave me the address of her family in Antigua. As I wanted to meet her again, I went to Antigua. She was not at home, but her mother was very kind and invited me to stay for a few weeks. We ended up having such a funny time together that most days all we did was sit around and talk and laugh. On her birthday I described a joke that I saw in Canada once where you burn a candle underside of a plate until a layer of soot builds up. Fill the plate with water and have a victim unintentionally mark their face with soot. They first rub their finger on the top to wet it, then on the bottom to cover it with soot and then on their nose and chin. When they eventually see themselves all painted in the mirror, it makes great laughs. One of the daughters Sara thought it was a joke befitting of the family reputation. When her brother Valentino arrived, she tried it on him. Valentino thought it was so funny that he insisted on trying it on her sister Mirasol, who just arrived. Finally when their mother arrived, we all did the joke on her. She also got a good laugh out of it, and being the mother of all these jokesters, she actually insisted on trying it on some of the guests. Later the joke turned on me. When it came out that it was really my joke and that I started it all, they cornered me and covered me with lipstick.

Antigua is a very beautiful city with fascinating architecture. All the ruins from past earthquakes give it a historic atmosphere and it is interesting to walk around. Volcanoes are all around, and one active one is occasionally smoldering. I was able to use her place as a base and see many of the nearby tourist attractions like Lago Antigua with the 12 villages around its shore. I was warned about pickpockets and I used a safety pin to pin shut my pockets. A big fat lady ran into me one day at the busy market and disappeared into the crowd of fat ladies. My first reaction was to protect my pockets, but it was too late. The safety pin was neatly left open and the wallet was gone. For luck I didn't have too much money to lose. I did learn that having safety pins on your pockets were like hanging a note saying ”steal me“. 

There was political tension brewing in the region, and it was not even possible to enter El Salvador. Sometimes entire villages would be abandoned by most of the men. And the buses were constantly halted and searched with all men going thru a body search. But generally the atmosphere is peaceful. The markets are interesting with the colorful goods spread out on a blanket on the street. Everyone is smiling and laughing. They meet their relatives and friends from the adjoining villages, gossip, compare, bargain and simply just have a good time. Chickens try to fly away as they are inspected for their feathers. Little pigs huddle out of sight, and skinny dogs of all sizes and races scrounge the garbage silently. The infants carried on the mother's back are miniature replicas of their parents. The older sisters mimic their mothers by carry their younger siblings on their back.

Columbia

Females are advised to remove earrings because of the probability they would be ripped out. Travels are also warned to remove finger rings as they are forcibly removed by desperate bitter fathers trying to feed their hungry families. And when they have trouble getting it off your finger, they usually cut off the finger. When you see such extreme poverty, right next door to such extravagant luxury, the bitterness required for such violent actions are easier to understand. Not having earrings or rings, I felt I had nothing really to worry about.

I wanted to experience the other southern cousins of the ancient Mayas, the Incas. Like the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru also took on the ancient Maya culture and adopted it as their own. They also prospered and reached their height when suddenly they were conquered by the Spanish conquerors. I also had the urge to recuperate a bit and just get stuck on some peaceful island somewhere for a while. So I compromised and took a short cut to Colombia by flying to one of their islands in the Gulf of Mexico, San Andres. I rented a bicycle and rode the 32km around the island. I recuperated on the white sand beaches of the island and soon found myself in the middle of the Wild West of Latin America, Columbia.

I met a fellow who wanted to do a backpacking trip thru a national park between Popayan and San Augustine crossing a beautiful deep canyon. We were invited and fed by the lonely warden at the entrance of the park, as well as by the warden at the exit. In Popayan I was befriended by group of young leather workers making and selling and fixing sandals. We had a party and went dancing and got to know each other really well. Two of us got chased by a group of young thieves one evening. We split to try to get away. The gang followed my friend, and surrounded him. I ran for a crowded restaurant a few blocks away where I saw a policeman standing at the corner in front.

As I approached, the policeman turned and left. As I was asking for help in the restaurant, the gang walked in with knives and wrestled me to the ground. One of the four youths seemed to be angrier and bitterer than his friends and want to do more than just rob me. Fortunately for me he was held back by his three friends. They cut my pant legs and pockets open with their knives looking for my wallet that I was not carrying. The locals inside the restaurant were passively watching as if it was a regular occurrence. The thieves frustratingly could not find anything except my expensive mountain boots. I felt lucky when they left me barefoot but intact.

By next day I was walking around in my new sandals that my friends made for me during the night. The soles of the sandal were made from car tires and were so sturdy and well-made that I was able to climb up like the locals to one of the snow-capped volcanoes that were smoldering. Now that my pants were destroyed, I started to walk around in my shorts. It seems like the locals have not seen too many barelegged men. It got all kind of attention. Many got carried away and had to apologize when they caught themselves staring at my legs, making double looks. The kids of course were more open and they came up giggling to touch and pull at the hairs to make sure they were real.

San Agustin was just like a town out of a western movie. Everyone rode horses, and the only cars to be seen were the military or police cars. I settled down for a while and met Maria-Elena, a devout Catholic who was to become a nun, but her desire for normal life held her back. She formed her own mission where she volunteered herself to organizations. She was working in the local orphanage. Maria was with a girl friend who she was working with. We rented horses and explored the ruins nearby. 

Huge boulders carved in interesting shapes and designs dot the countryside. They were dragged from the valleys below 1500 years ago. They are graves to mark burial sites. Other ruins were room sized burial chambers dug out of the rock under the rolling hilltops. After a week of horseback riding around the surrounding ancient cemetery sites, I was able to gallop without having to hold on. I felt one with my horse and felt like a cowboy, just like I felt in Calgary a year ago.

On our last day together, we rented a small cabin and late into the evening Maria asked me to walk her jealous and deeply disappointed friend back to the orphanage so we could explore each other in privacy during a most passionate night.

I climbed a smoking volcano and backpacked to a village 4 hours walking from the road. There was a catholic mission there and they were not too used to seeing outsiders. I slept in one of the classrooms and they gave us a nice meal. The following day I walked 4 more hours to Bellacazar. I was walking around, and found myself suddenly surrounded by giggling 15 year old school girls in purple uniforms. They showed me all around and practiced their English on me all evening.

I went back to Cali where I stayed with a young family I met thru my leather working friends. By this time, I was beginning to realize that my hairy legs were starting to attract gay men. The family had a sewing machine and I sewed some zippers onto the legs of my shorts and made extensions to my shorts to cover my hairy legs. I visited their friend Humberto, living nearby with his young daughter upon a high mountain cabin that reminded me of the story of Heidi from Switzerland. From his cabin you can see Cali 40km away, and the night site of the Milky Way was spectacular. Humberto was an accomplished butterfly collector with his collections displayed in various museums and universities. Friends kept on sending me on to their friends and I met a lot of people who invited me to taste a bit of their private life. One had a little hobby farm where he harvested his own coffee beans and I got to see them being harvested and laid out on the ground to dry. 

Ecuador

September arrived and I felt the urge to move on, so I headed south to Ecuador where I met an American shrimp farmer who lived there for the past eight years. He used a tractor to carve out square shaped bays the size of football fields to cultivate his shrimps. The beaches were overtaken by the shrimp farms and he advised me to go to Bahia if I was looking for a nice beach. 

I arrived in Bahia late at night in an open sided bus that reminded me of something you would see in Disneyland. My hotel room was right over the band that was playing Samba all night long. The music was so loud that the thin floors were shaking like a drum. I decided to camp out on the beach for a while. The town is sheltered in a bay, and the beach, waves, wind and everything else gradually opened up getting bigger and wilder the farther away from town. It was an unforgettable feeling to suddenly go from a crowded jungle like atmosphere, to a vast open empty one. And before I knew it I was settled down swimming naked in the big rolling waves for the next week. 

Then it was time to see the Amazon, and the Auca Indian tribe that have resisted white-man’s efforts to modernize and integrate them into the modern society and the oil industry to take over their lands. The ones resisting are too far and dangerous to visit, but the tribes living closer have given up their resistance and they welcome tourists and got dependent on tours to come and visit them. It is a 4-day trip to one of their villages. They hunt monkeys and birds with their poison tipped darts using a 3m long blowgun. They let me try their blowgun and to their and my amazement, I got a bull's eye on my first shot. They make net bags that are very beautiful and functional. The way they are knit and the fibers that are used to make a very flexible rope makes a bag that fits in your pocket when empty and takes the shape and form of whatever is inside. It expands to a size where it can contain more than a backpack and where it is easier to find things inside because you can see inside thru the net. But it was sad to see them so lethargic, and one man was actually bartering for a tourist's underpants.

I met some travelers and we spent some time together. We got some truck inner tubes and played in the river rapids. We went on a 5-day climbing expedition and climbed a 5000m active volcano near beautiful resort town Banos that reminded me of Banff. The grand view made the landscape into a tilting optical illusion where it was difficult to determine which way the land was tilting. I can still vividly hear the lady underneath my window chanting as she was trying to sell eggs early in the morning.

I had a very passionate night with an elderly lady who was looking for a room at the hotel at the same time I was. We decided to share a room. We were both so hungry for love that we made love in the showers, went for a walk and did it in the woods later on our walk. We made love all night, and next morning she had to get back to her tour group that she escaped from for a few days.

Peru

In November 1979 I finally arrived in Peru and my first destination was Huancabamba and their world renown witches who regularly gather at a 4,000m high lake a day walk away. The bus ride was very exciting as the road slowly climbs up from the coastal desert flats to the northern sierra foothills that are 2,000m high. People worldwide come up here to get healed by the local witches. The ritual site takes place a day walk or donkey ride from the city. Huancabamba is known as the walking city as the gradual earth movement has moved and turned the houses in random directions. I settled down in a hotel and got to know the owner of the local store, Sr. Bolognesie.

He told me that as he saw me walking in, he was reminded of himself some 20 years ago. He recited his story of how he arrived as a tourist with a backpack just like me. He ended up staying. He fell in love with the place and never left. He introduced me to many people, and it seemed like he knew everyone and that everyone was related to each other. They were all very interested about Canada, and I felt that I was attracting everyone to me like a magnet. At one local dance, I had all the girls asking me to dance with them. There was a group that claimed that Huancabamba was a site for UFOs and I was invited to some of their meetings. The Jehovah Witnesses invited me as well to their meetings, so I was always with the locals.

I walked up to the lake where the local witches have their healing ceremony. It happened to be during a holiday where all the locals were celebrating with their chichas, a local potent drink fermented from corn. At each house along the way, they insisted not only that I try their chicha, but that I drink it the right way, all in one gulp. I tried to explain that I would get very sick if I did that. The women seemed to understand my problem and suggested just a token friendly toast with just a courtesy sip to taste the home made brew that they are so proud to share. It all tastes like apple cider, and by the time I reached the lake, I felt very drunk. At the end is the little village of Salalah where many of the witches live. It is like a living museum. The women spin wool while they walk and the men drink all day. Three hours from Salalah, is the magic lake where the witches have their cold water therapy for curing their ills. During the night, they drink a bitter tea brewed from the San Pedro cactus that grows wild around there to help diagnose the patient. I bought some at the local market and it made me sick to my stomach. Then they prepare a special herb preparation used with the bathing ceremony at the lake.

Julio, a teacher from Trujillo working a year or so in the region in a one class school house invited me to spend Christmas and New Year with his family in Trujillo so I eventually packed up and left. During my 3-week stay I got to know the locals very well. The beauty and magic of the place so captivated me that it was difficult to leave and I almost got a teaching job and stayed. Julio's grandmother was a senile invalid with flies crawling on her eyes and in her opened mouth. She could not brush them away herself and I don't know why they did not put a net over her head. Julio’s younger sister was a master chess player. There was the live-in maid that was a known kleptomaniac. I really just wanted to get out of there, but they insisted that I keep staying always a bit longer and longer. I saw some of the ruins nearby and I was eventually able to get away. When I unpacked at my next destination, my harmonica, binoculars, and an alarm clock calculator were missing.

I went to Cajamarca and Bambamarca and met a German girl and I traveled with her for a while. We bathed in the hot pools and saw the room that the Incas had to fill with gold to save their leader. She invited me to a couple working for a church organization trying to teach the local weavers to use natural wool and natural dyes. Thru them we met many other workers in the same church group. It was nice to see the church get involved in setting up projects to help the exploited locals. 

One project was setting up clinics to teach preventive health care and family planning. According to the workers, the Peruvian government with the support of Americans was selectively sterilizing women showing up at clinics whenever they could without their permission or knowledge. 

Another struggle was against a company polluting the local water supply with mercury. Then there was the Nestle episode, where salesmen dressed in white like doctors and scientists set up sales booths that resembled clinics. They sold baby infant formula convincing the woman that it was better than breast milk. Unfortunately as the people could not read that they had to boil the water first, and were not used to the extra sterilization needed for bottle-feeding, 1000s of infants died. And the practice was being continued. I was at first surprised to hear church members advocating violent uprising, but after hearing some of the exploitation, what else can the locals do. 

Chile

Chile has a very noticeably higher standard of living compared to Peru. San Pedro, in the desert surrounded by snow-peaked volcanoes is impressive. It is an oasis of 1600 people growing all kinds of fruit in the middle of the desert. I met a couple, Martin and Eugene from Santiago. They were on holidays and they invited me to join them. Martin was an architecture student and Eugene was an unemployed medical doctor. Although there is a shortage of doctors, there is a greater shortage of money to pay them their meager salaries. We camped underneath a pear orchard of a family that came 60 years ago to setup a fruit farm. Now they have a cow, a flock of sheep, two horses and the usual chickens. We arrived right at the start of carnival.

Tribes of families dress up in their distinct tribal dress and dance and sing their tribal dance and songs. They feast during the day and get drunk with their homemade brew during the night. Some wear masks and chant to the beat of drums and dance around in circles, reminding me of the Indians of Canada. As we were hitch hiking back, the annual one hour rain shower bid us farewell. It was very dry making the night sky spectacular. I saw the Southern Cross for the first time in my life.

When I arrived in Santiago, as I was looking around for a cheap hotel, a taxi driver offered to help me find a suitable room. I told him that I did not have so much money and preferred just to walk around and find a cheap one nearby. He told me that he had finished work for the day and that he would drive me to the cheapest hotel nearby at no cost. But all the hotels he tried were filled. After running out of hotels to go to, he introduced himself as David and invited me over to stay with his family. He lived with his mother and drove her taxi for work.

He was a real macho and was very proud of all his girlfriends. He wanted to go to Canada, but was not able to get a visa without an invitation, so I offered to help him get one. I went to the Canadian Embassy with him and as a Canadian citizen, I wanted to invite him to Canada. They explained that I must be a resident to invite foreigners for visits. I wrote my family back home and asked them to write him an invitation letter to come to Canada to visit them on my behalf. A few weeks later, which was immediately in those times, I received an angry reply of refusal and a disbelief that I could ever ask them to invite a strange man from Chile. I only thought that they would enjoy his visit and have some news from me thru him. He was a very ambitious guy and managed to enter Canada. From there he went to the states and from there to Europe. 

It was getting toward April, and the winter season was approaching. So I packed up after a few weeks stay and headed south. In March 1980, I went to Puerto Montt to start a boat voyage taking four days of glacier-covered mountain fiords that mirror those on the Northern Hemisphere up the British Colombian coast. I met Anita there. She had descendants from Germany, and wanted to get to know Puerto Montt, which was founded in the 1800s by Germans. We met on the beach one evening and liked each other's company. We decided to spend some time together the following day just walking around and talking. Anita worked at the psychiatric hospital in Santiago, as an occupational therapist working with children and teenagers. It was her last day of her holiday and we both felt sorry that the time passed so quickly. As I was planning to go up thru Santiago on my way back home, we exchanged addresses before parting.

Argentina

I wanted to take the boat down to Tierra del Fuego, but to my disappointment, there were no boats until the middle of April so I decided to change directions and headed East to Barilloche, Argentina. The sudden increase of prices was shocking. I went for a day walk up to a mountain hut, and met two geologists who invited me to join them. We climbed a volcano where we were able to see 200km away. Beautiful alpine plants, condors flying, glaciers all around. It was just like being in the Rocky Mountains back home.

My next destination was the petrified forest nearby that I read about, but the bus going there was in a few days. As I was looking at a map glued on a wall of a posh hotel, a couple came up to me and started a conversation. They told me they were driving to a place very close to the park and they offered to drive me there. When we got there, they decided to see the park themselves for the day. As we were the only tourists there, the park warden gave us special attention and took us around. He offered to let me stay so that I could have more time to explore the park. 70 million years ago, the area was overgrown by a jungle with trees up to 4m thick and 65m high. It also housed monkeys and dinosaurs. Then it was flooded by the Atlantic and lay on the bottom of the ocean for a while. The Andes formed, the volcanoes erupted and it all got covered by volcanic dust. The area became a desert and the buried trees, flowers, leaves, animals, and everything petrified. Then it got covered and lay buried for ages. Some parts got partially uncovered by erosion and a petrified forest was discovered. The really impressive chunks were already gone, looted by the tourist, but most of it still laid buried, he happily added.

Then I started hitchhiking and saw ostrich, fox, rabbit and lots of birds, and got introduced to Matte, a caffein rich herb that the local cowboys brew and drink to help them cope with the stresses of their life. Over spiced with sugar, it is claimed to give them needed energy to keep them going till their next meal. A mug with a metal straw with a filter to keep the leaves from being sucked up is passed around a circle of drinkers like it would be a joint, making the experience especially friendly.

From Commodore Riviera to Rio Gallos took three days on a slow truck giving me a really good taste of Patagonia. From Rio Gallos, military flights were cheaper than the trains, so I flew to Califate to visit the spectacular ice fields nearby. 

The glacier empties into Lago Argentina and is advancing at quite a rapid pace. Huge chunks of ice the size of skyscrapers continually break off and fall into the lake. The advancing wall of ice is 70-100m high and 3km long. It is a mind-boggling site to see and hear. 

The leaves were already changing color and it was starting to snow. It all reminded me of Canada and the last time I saw falling snow when I left a year and half ago.

I flew to Ushuaia, the most southern city in the world. I crossed Tierra del Fuego toward Punta Arenas by bus and crossed over the Magellan Channel on a ferry accompanied by playing dolphins most of the way. Then I went to Torres del Paine National Park. There are mountain cabins all over the park but most were already snowed in. The wild life was spectacular with condors and llamas in a windswept glacier-covered rocky mountain setting dotted by crystal clear lakes. It is very windy and the trees grow in all kinds of interesting form. It is all very much the same as the Rocky Mountains, except there are no bears. It took me to get all the way down here to finally learn that there are no bears anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. Nearby are huge caves 20m high 50m wide and 200m deep that were very impressive, especially when they were supposed to have been used as homes to prehistoric man.

Chile

I stayed at the Youth Hostel in Puerto Natales. I went for a walk one night just before our community diner. A family that saw me walking by their house unexpectedly invited me inside for diner. He was a policeman and had two daughters. We talked until about midnight and near the end of the evening the subject of horoscopes came up and to my surprise, as well as theirs, it was my birthday. They gave me a birthday party that lasted into the morning. The next morning at the youth hostel, they were wondering where I had gone to, as they were expecting me. They had a party and told me how they got some beer normally not permitted on the facilities by telling the matron that they were having a party for me.

I read about Darwin’s famous boat voyage on the Beagle and wanted to have a taste of it myself, so I got on a small cargo boat with 30 other passengers. The trip took six days and nights and was one of the highlights of my entire trip. The weather was exceptionally fine and the scenery of the Chilean Archipelago was breathtaking. Glaciers, waterfalls, rock formations, thousands of islands, shipwrecks, fiords, and the most eerie blues. We stopped over in Puerto Aysen for a whole day so I got a chance to go to Coyhuique 65km inland. We had only one day of rough seas with the boat wobbling in 4-5m waves.

I met a Dutch girl Willamine in Puerto Montt who put a spell on me. We traveled a few days, but despite a few times of passionate love making, we both found that we had different tastes and soon parted. I went to Chiloe, known for its mythology and witches to look for some magic. I heard of a place nearby where some witch ritual of some magical importance was supposed to have happened, and I developed an urge for some excitement to freshen the frustrating after taste of Willemine, so I went witch hunting for two weeks. I met many interesting people along the way that finally led me to the willow tree under which a legendary witch ritual was supposed to have taken place. The countryside is very green with rolling hills. They have garlic with bulbs the size of large onions. 
NEXT: Anita
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