goodbye baja, hello mainland

so much stress for nothing! i got tiago on the boat without a problem. and he put up with the 18 hours in a cage pretty well, he didn´t cry, didn´t have any accidents.

such a good boli, yes you are.

i feel like my blog has become overstuffed with my stress, i mean.. i went to some of the most beautiful beaches in la paz and didn´t even mention them. then again what´s the point of mentioning "white sand, clear, turquoise water, bright sun..." cause i mean, a beach is a beach, right? the boys (ale and mau) tried to get me on a surfboard but that didn´t work out too well. i wish i had pictures of that.

in the meantime, here are some stolen pictures of baja beaches, where ale, mau and i spent a lot of our time.




el tecolote. gegena free.




balandra bay. famous place, full of gegenas.




balandra, again.
somewhere, in pachuca, there exists a phone belonging to a certain alejandro in which there is a photo of a cat and a mau hugging in front of this beach.
hurry up, mamon, i want that picture.



anyway so la paz is behind me now, snif, kind of, now i´m alone again in a new city. i met some people on the boat, a francophone from Switzerland named Christophe (OMG FRENCH IT´S BEEN SO LONG) and some Mexican guys who were a hoot. One of them offered to come around later on to find me and he´s going to try and find me a place to stay, which is cool, but for some reason I have an aching feeling I´mma be sleeping on the beach again. 18 hours on a ferry is looong, but we got dinner and breakfast, and everyone kept buying beer for me so that was cool beans. not quite worth the 85$, although that ferry was the most luxurious ferries i´ve ever seen, then again i´m used to ones that take a few minutes to a couple hours at most. i still feel like i´m on it, still feel the rolling of the boat.
so just got into mazatlan about an hour ago, tried to find the spot where the artesanos go but apparently i need a permit to sell on the street here which makes me angry cause in order to buy said permit i need to sell said artesanias, it´s like a snake biting his own tail thing. ugh.

some days i feel like my expectations are too high, that i´ve set the bar too high for myself and i´m sinking, other days i feel like everything is riding high and i have luck on my side. today i´m a little from column a, a little from column b. just feels like the universe is trying to tell me something. something along the lines of ...

"hey you, yeah you, the freak with the 50 lb backpack, bolivian canine and travel cage on your head, you heard me, what the hell do you think you´re doing?"

umm. fufilling my destiny?

"bullshit! you´re digging your own grave! hello, reality check!"

umm.

i think my energy and my force of will to survive and overcome these obstacles should be stronger than all of these things. after all this is only a test.

it´s weird, there´s so much i want to see and do and right now i´m just stuck in a rut of i can´t do this when the entire point of this trip was proving to myself that i can do this, but it´s just getting harder and harder as time goes on. there were days in venice beach (LA) where i wouldn´t make a dime and people flying a sign that said "FUCK YOU" could make 40$ in 10 minutes. that used to depress the hell out of me. i´m sitting here knotting away and trying to make an honest living and i have to be thigh deep in a dumpster to eat (and what terrific dumpsters) and these dudes run around and say "fuck you! i´m hungryy, gimme some cash!" and make more than i do. jesus christ what is wrong with the world.
or maybe it´s what i make? granted i´m not very good yet, well i´m good at the knots that i do know and people seem to like what i do, but i´ll admit it´s not yet varied. i really want to be working with leather more than hemp but i do what i can with what i have and i think that´s the important thing. when i get to d.f. i´ll stock up on stones and seeds and leather so i can start making other stuff to add to my puesto de venta.


it´s the first time in a week that i´ve woken up to something other than mau saying mija come smoke a joint, wouldn´t mind the joint right about now, wouldn´t mind getting my morning hug either. need to find me some new friends. shouldn´t be hard. i´m a happy shiny bouncy ball of joy with multi coloured dreads and a nicotine stained smile that will melt your heart or make you want to buy me a different brand of toothpaste.

off to find the artesanos and figure out where the loophole in the system is, hope i make some $$$, hope you all are safe.

i am.

incoming grey hairs! zomg!

"Catalina."

"Catalina."

"Catalina."

"MUUUUUH?"

"Wake up and come smoke a joint with me, mija."

"Muh."

(for those who know me, you know that MUH is morning speak, especially when following a night of tequila shot upon tequila shot upon... good gracious Natalia! You are my new hero.)

I woke up and went in the kitchen and smoked a joint with Mau. So last supper style.

"I`m sad you`re leaving. You`re a nutcase, but you`re also a great person. You always have a home in La Paz, if you ever come back. Will you ever come back?"

Biting my lip.

"Maybe. I don`t know."

"Well if you do, you have a home with me. Don`t ever hesitate, my door is always open for you. And maybe you won´t get out today, La Paz has a funny way of keeping people stuck here."

No mames!

And then something really funny happened but I`m not going to broadcast that to the world. A hug, a kiss, a cuidate mucho, and goodbye.

Poof. Goodbye, Mau. You´re beautiful. Really. Maybe in another life.


---

Ok. Day on. Run to Baja Ferries, buy ticket (85$ what!) ask woman at counter if dog can come, she says yes in cage. Run back to Mau´s, get stuff, get dog. Run to buy cage, go to bus station, but ticket for Pichilingue. All is good. Look at ferry ticket. Oh noes.

"NO ANIMALS ALLOWED."

oh. god. no. que pinche pedo.


So. I´m freaking out. 30 new grey hairs have elected my head as place of residence along with the other 500 that have popped out since I started this trip. Stress! ARGH! OUT OF MY LIFE!

Options? Get ticket paid back and prey that I can afford a plane ticket from San jose del Cabo to Guadalajara? Hitchhike back up to TJ and go down through Mexicali?

Hop a cargo? Seems like the best option. Cargo. Yes. Cargo. There is always cargo in a port, right?


In other news that isn´t cat`s raging case of stress (tm), i`ve found an artist for my next skar (if i can afford it) who also offered to do suspensions in some pyramids out near oaxaca. QUE CHIDO! especially since the skar i want to get is the symbol for caminante del cielo which is mayan, so having it done in such an incredibly spiritual place and on mayan land would just be so beautiful.

que buena onda.


alright. bus leaving in 30 minutes. in one hour my fate is sealed... let`s hope tiago doesn`t fuck up yet another thing (i love my dog, but damn it`s difficult.)

tacos for breakfast

"Good morning Catalina"

"Good morning Mau"

"You hungry? Want breakfast?"

"Sure... what do you suggest?"

"Tacos."


(●ω●)

eeeh... what?! tacos... for breakfast?!

crazy mexicans.

Still no bag, probably not until tonight, anyway. Dammit. I walked around for a few hours last night, and finally this cute little mexican girl with a mohawk (!!!) comes up to me and says, "you´re so beautiful! I love your hair! Where are you from girl?" and turns out she works at a bar, so she called me in and gave me some free shots cause no one was in there yet. Her name is Natalia and she´s originally from TJ (tijuana), and I stayed and chatted with her for a good 2 or 3 hours until I figured I should probably haul ass back to Mau´s and feed Tiago. She told me to come back tonight cause it´s free tequila for girls, I asked what kind of music they´d be playing and she rolled her eyes.

"Reggaeton"

I am SOOOOO there, girl. See you tomorrow.


Got back to Mau´s, he kept trying to force feed me an omelette cause he says I don´t eat enough, which is probably true but then again i´m used to eating a meal a day from being dirt broke. I conceded and ate the stupid omelette (which was full of garlic mmm, garlic, stop feeding me aphrodisiacs, fool!) while he howled away making the dogs go crazy (El cantador de perros oue), i swear that man is crazy. I made a few necklaces cause I have hemp again (yay), listened to him screaming over his video game "A HUEVOOO!!! CHINGOOOON!". I fixed a necklace for him, something a Japanese friend gave to him which didn´t look like it needed to be fixed but he´s been asking me to make a new braid for it so I did. He seemed really happy with the result and gave me a bone crushing hug saying, "Now I have something to remember my cosita francesa!"

Awww. At least everything is less.. awkward than it was. Cause it was awkward for a few days. Now it seems like it´s back to normal, minus a few things, ha.
This should be a lesson to me.. like a crash course in Traveling 101:

"Never sleep with the people who are letting you stay with them, even if they look like they walked out of a Calvin Klein ad when they`ve just stepped out of the shower, even if they have the most amaaaaaazing dark green eyes and cheek bones you could cut yourself on, even if they have lips like whoa and pretty dulce de leche coloured skin, even if they smell like lavender and pepper, and ESPECIALLY even if they say, you can sleep on the floor or with me."
Hrm.
Bed versus cold tile. Gorgeous Mexican surfer boy versus hairy Bolivian canine. Hrm.

Hard to pick which sounds more appealing.

Ever been to an all you can eat buffet chock filled with all of your favourite foods, and have your mouth screwed shut? I haven't, but I have had to sleep in the same bed as a Mau and not be able to touch the Mau, and that is torture.

So the floor it is for me.

/end bitterness. Not really bitter. But still. I`d have preferred a different ending. I WALK OUT ON YOU, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. GRR.

And speaking of endings...

I know I keep talking about leaving people behind and such but it is something that´s been on my mind for a while. There are so many people who I love and care for immensly and I haven´t seen a lot of them in a long time. My mother, for example, and my father, but there´s also all of my wankers back in Montreal.. I feel so selfish for having taken off the way I did, but I think I need to elaborate a little on why I left so abruptly.

"So I’m up at dawn putting on my shoes
I just want to make a clean escape
I’m leaving but I don’t know how soon
I know I’m leaving but I don’t know where to"

First, imagine going from the Amazon to concrete jungle, fluorescent lighting, traffic, white skin. Shock, complete and utter shock. Imagine going from living day to day to stagnant sedentarism. It´s like an iron fist to the jaw.
I broke down. I spent 2 weeks crying. I spent 2 weeks bashing my head against the wall wondering why the hell I´d gotten on that plane, why I didn´t stay. So I left for the West coast and tried to make money but failed. I got bored. I wasn´t getting any news from Montreal, and all the news I was getting kept breaking my heart, over and over. I miss my family, really, but all I could imagine going back there was not being able to find any work, being miserable, and having to go through another winter too cold for people of sound mind.

"it only gets worse when i´m stuck in one place.. i´m always pacing around or walking away..."

So I went south, and kept on going. And I´m going to keep on going. Even though I miss my parents, my friends, my family, even though with every new city I love and lose, even though I hate saying goodbye, I am going to keep on going until I get tired, until my feet are bleeding and broken. like they sing in my favourite song..

"Je ne sais pas ou je vais, oh ca je l'ai jamais bien su,
Mais si jamais je le savais, je crois bien que je n'irai plus..
Aujourd'hui je t'aime, oui mais demain, on ne peut jamais etre sur de rien, on va toujours seul sur la route, je continue coute que coute.."

I feel like I need to apologize for living my life this way, because when I left I left a lot of things untended. My apartment is gone now, my stuff is at a friend´s (merci crevette), but I left without saying goodbye. I left without saying I love you, take care, I´m sorry I´m so unstable and can´t live like this anymore. I´m sorry I want to walk alone with my dog, and be myself, and wander through this life like the mayan caminante del cielo. That is my purpose, and it was my choice, but that does not mean that it doesn´t hurt me every time I have to say goodbye.

"and it all boils down to one quotable phrase ´if you love something, give it away´"


But I shouldn´t have to apologize for wanting to live my life the way I live it, for loving people, for loving cultures, for loving seeing something new everyday, meeting new faces, speaking another language than my own, and wanting to discover the world.

" "if you're still free, start running away... cause we're comin' for ya!"

I´m sorry that I haven´t seen my mother in almost a year, and that the last time I saw Sarah was for her mother´s funeral; that Amelie and Crevette are stuck in Montreal when I´d rather have them here on the road with me, that Niko needs to go back to France and I don´t know when I´ll ever see my big brother again (on a eu nos differences mais dans mon coeur, tu es et sera toujours mon hermano), that Aprille is going to Thailand and not Buenos Aires (HERPASSO SECORRO).


Anyway. Thought I should clear some things up. And I leave you with Bright Eyes, Landlocked Blues. It´s a good summary. That, and it will always make me remember Aeon and Courtney who picked me up in Garberville one rainy day, and who I left in LA two weeks later. Hope you guys are well.



(quotes from Landlocked Blues (Bright Eyes) and Ou je vais (La rue Ketanou))

p.s. this blog entry was edited 10 000 times. Hope you like it. I think it´s very entertaining.

la concha de la lora....

universe, please stop sending me signals that force me to stay in la paz. please stop, ok?

now that i´ve found a cage (within 3 blocks of the bus terminal, oh thank the lord), i left my bag at a friend´s house and he was supposed to bring it back around 2 but didn´t. so i have to wait to get my bag so i can leave. what the hell, man!

anyway! last night met a bunch of great people, pedro and renée, awesome people and we sat around while ale played some traditional mexican songs (la llorona goes on and on and on...) and drank a shitton of mezcal and i ate the worm and now i think i am the worm, or that i have an amoeba or some intestinal parasite.

enough about bad things my god! i´m in mexico! it´s hot out! there´s no snow! yay.

well i guess if i manage to get my bag back tomorrow i´m off to pichilingue and then mazatlan... makes me sad, kind of. ale left this morning and invited me to come see him in pachuca, and tomorrow i´ll have to say goodbye to mau who has been so good to me, cooking for me, and never letting me buy my own beer.

i wish things had been different. we don´t have much to say to each other these days, but it´s also cause i´m always running around trying to figure stuff out and he´s always passed out from smoking too much weed and cause he gets up at ungodly hours for his school (marine biology go figure). in any case i hope he hasn´t minded having a crazy french girl and her even crazier dog in his house for a week.

now just cross your fingers that i manage to get my bag, the cage, and on the ferry for mazatlan before i do something stupid.

puto boli

tiago decided to escape on me for 4 days, leaving me in a state of shock, which lead to complete despair and finally me trying to beat the shit out of a banana tree.

needless to say the tree won.

so this is me wandering through la paz at 7 am, at noon, at sunset, in the middle of the night, barefoot, whistling. crying hysterically, calling out to my dog. tiago. tiago. por donde andas amorcito?

this morning when i heard something fidgeting with the front gate, then the sound of something metallic, and a run. i lept out of bed and ran out the door and lo and behold, was the puto boli himself, tiago la terreur. a little burnt on his nose but other than that he`s fine. i`m so happy he came back, i couldn`t imagine life without him. in fact, life without him was terrible. he`s annoying as all hell but i wouldn`t give him up for anything.

the past 4 days haven´t been so great, therefore, what with me looking for my dog and not noticing the situation with m. going from whee! to meh in .5 seconds. we had a little chat last night which ended with me saying something along the lines of, such a shame, you`re a pretty little thing, but i`m used to it by now, i always end up leaving, so i try not to get too attached. it`s cool man, no worries. i`ll be out tomorrow, to which he said no no, it`s cool, you can stay.
i wonder if this reaction(*cough* rejection *cough*) came from me being a wreck or if it`s because i´m leaving...
or that i`m trying to, anyway, cause everything seems to be holding me back these days.

now i have to buy a transport cage, but i can`t afford the cage and passage to mazatlan, so i`m not sure of what to do. i am going to need a cage. this is fact. however, a 200$ cage is not necessary. in fact, i could buy the 200$ cage but then i`d have all of 2$ to my name and that won`t get me to mazatlan.
a vet has an old beaten up one for 70$ but it has no door, but she said she could fix it up for me. the thing is i want to leave like, now, right, cause i`m not sure how much longer i want to stick around. actually, i have 30 days to get to buenos aires, so that doesn´t give me much time to hang around staring at the ceiling, or walk around this boring city that i know by heart now.

i leave you with this heartwarming self portrait taken 2 months ago, the day i embarqued on this crazy trip, in rock island, washington.
´



we`re just one big happy family.

te deja con buen sabor en la boca oue

ahhh, peace at last.

now i`m living in a cockroach and meth free environment with a guy from michoacan so it seems like a more mexican deal than the previous one which was living with a gringo in a meth motel (what else were we expecting for 25$ a week?).

the story as follows:
i got rid of the gringo and got the hell out of the motel inhabited by cockroaches and methheads.. the gringo was talking about robbing some old man and getting tons of money so i walked out, sorry man but i can`t be around someone like that. took tiago for a stroll on the beach and there i met two artesanos (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL WEEK?!) who i hung out with for a while until they brought me over to mauricio`s where i`ve been living ever since. he heard about the gringo and the hotel and asked me if i was ok and i said not really, i want to leave la paz, so he offered a place to stay so i`d change my negative ideas about baja.
and now i feel like this huge weight has lifted off my shoulders, no more brad, no more meth neighbours, my stuff is in a secure spot and tiago is happy cause he has a new friend named kaiser (yet another pitbull). and mauricio is a really nice person, in fact he`s a beautiful person with a lot of heart and he`s radiant, he just has this crazy glow and amazing energy flow. and just as beautiful to look at, man how do i find these guys i´ll never know, but thank whichever god you pray to, cause i`m not complaining.

which gets me to my next topic: the bane of the traveler`s existence.
the thing about wandering around is that you meet a lot of wonderful people, a lot of assholes as well, but let´s focus on the positive. and i´ve met a lot of incredibly kind people, interesting conversations and fun times were had. and i´ve had to leave all of them behind me, which is always sad. it breaks my heart everytime when i have to say goodbye to them ..this means you, arica, and you, buenos aires, and you, lima, and you, ushuaia, and you, samaipata, and now it also means you, la paz. so many friends, travel companions, lovers, i miss them all and this time i know it´ll be no different.
i guess it´s just the way it goes, i always end up leaving wonderful people behind me, never knowing if i´ll ever see them again, or what could have been.

màs alla del sur!

(sorry Diego, I stoled your book title)

HI!

I´m alive!

So where to start? Cherry season ended and I found myself without a cause. What to do? I chased BC around for a while and then finally hitchhiked down to California to a festival to see my sister, and then hitched up and down the coast until getting to Venice Beach where I stayed for 2 weeks, making necklaces and hairwraps to survive up until Halloween, when I found a ride that dropped me off some 300 kilometres into Baja California. Between Venice and San Quintin my wallet disappeared, so although my bank card is no longer in my possession, donations are still appreciated and will always find their way to me, so please guys, remember your favourite adventurer cannot survive on filtered water and tacos alone.
Since parting ways with the ride, I´ve been hitching through the desert, accompanied although I would rather be alone, but here is our last stop together - he goes back to Alaska and I go north, which should put a stop to creepy guy staring at me when I wake up. We´ve been sleeping in abandoned ranches, behind Tecate factories and for a week in a palapa on the beach where I met Giulia, a wonderful woman, ageless, who´d been living on this beach for a few months. She inspired me to keep on going. If you read this contessa, I wear your strachi with pride (and the Mexicans love it, skeezes), I hope you love your tresses still, and that they´ll still be in when we (inch´Allah) meet up in Colombia.

Now I´m in La Paz, Mexico. It´s beautiful, it´s sunny, it´s hot, i´m browner than brown, but no one will buy anything from me, and it seems like hair wraps went out of fashion along with dayglo spandex. I also have a wisdom tooth making kits way through my cheek which always makes for great times, thank god for penicillin.

The adventure, hopefully, should follow to Puerto Vallarta and from there... a boat to Costa Rica? A bus to Tapachula where the Ticabus will take me to Panamá? Continue hitchhiking through such hair raising places as Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador? I hope not. I like adventure, but I like being alive too.

Maybe if someone sponsored me I´d do something crazy like that, maybe even go through the Darian Gap like this dude I met who is doing it on a bike (but am i that crazy? I´ll leave that to the next blog entry....)

In the meantime I continue attempting the life of an artesana so that I may one day see the Buenos Aires penis once again (the Obelisk, you perverts) and that Tiago might one day see his birthplace once more and happily frolick through heaps of trash with his parents.

More to come soon from the crazy chick with the crazy hair, crazy love to all and remember... DO WHAT YOU´RE AFRAID OF!

anticipation

suffering from a large dose of culture clash, and seriously empty pockets, i high tailed it out of montreal (rather abruptly might i add) and crossed canada to come pick cherries in the okanagan valley.
i'm mentally preparing for my return down south which i hope will happen sometime in october. i've decided to go down to mexico and go through central america to panama, where i'll jump on a boat for columbia, and from there make my way back down to argentina.
i'm deciding against taking the plane for tiago's sake, also because i want some more adventure in my life :)
stay tuned for updates in the coming months!

the long road home

This was my original itinerary:



This is what I ended up doing:



Here are the stats:

hours of travel:

bus: 275 hours
train: 63 hours
hitchhiking: 32 hours
boat: 8 hours
plane: 1 hour (+ 21 hours to and from lima)

total: 400 hours

total kilometres:

19 290 kilometres

countries visited:

Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil.

diseases contracted:

1: strange skin eruption. possibly dengue.

number of freak accidents:

1. Carmen de Patagones, stupidly walking through low tide while playing accordeon
2. Buenos Aires, stupidly waltzing on flat surface.
3. Isla del Sol, stupidly slipping on gravel surface, but miraculosly unscathed.

No young marginalized white chicks were harmed during this trip.

Involuntarily, at least.

(Buenos Aires, I'm looking at you.)

Many bottles of beer, however, lost their contents.



I'm back in Montreal now after two weeks and it's hard. It's really hard. But, in keeping with the joyous, uplifting spirit of this blog, I would rather not talk about the hell that was Atlanta, or getting Tiago on the plane. Let's keep it happy.

My bag is officially dead - the zippers are busted, the ties are gone, and I found the contents exploded all over the plastic bag that it was held in when I went to retreive it on the belt at PET. I'm sad, but el Monstro lasted 12 years, which is an honorable lapse of time for a backpack. Although I'm not retiring him completely, he has indeed made his last long scale trip, but for short periods and small loads he should handle it fine.

Bookmark this blog, and check back in the fall, for the new installment of the adventures of a girl and her (new and improved) backpack.

Thanks for reading.

jungle fever - the shaman and la madre

we left lima last saturday direction tingo maria, after one of my "brilliant" last minute ideas about going onto yurimaguas instead of iquitos, thinking we could get there from tingo maria. turns out that while tingo maria is really beautful, in the high jungle in the cordillera azul, the roads out of there are terrible and to get to yurimaguas you need to take a taxi to toroche (35 soles) and then a 4 x 4 to tarapoto (25 soles) and then a micro to yurimaguas. um, no.
so we hopped on a bus for pucallpa and upon arriving tried to figure out how to get to iquitos, do we boat it (3 days), oops no boats leaving today, or do we fly it (45 minutes), shit we missed the plane. we wandered back out to town figuring we´d sleep on it when we met a basque who told us about a community he knew some 5 hours by boat where he´d been before. we figured well why the hell not? so the next morning at 8 am we hopped on a crowded boat down the ucayali river towards massisea.

the shipibo who live in the jungle seem more southeast asian than peruvian, they look filipino or indonesian, with fine, graceful features and beautiful smiles. they are a bueatiful people, living with their traditions, without electricity or running water, living off of exchanges and sharing the wealth with the community.

we were not to stay in massisea, though, and walked the 3 kilometres separating massisea from the small community of nuevo ceylan further down the river. when we got to the last bend some 10 children came running out towards us, all sñiles, hola, hola! and led us down the dirt path towards the house of the shaman.

he was not there, though, but his wife was, and she fed us a delightful plate of spaghetti, rice, plantain and chicken, with the most delicious glass of lemonade my taste buds have ever experienced.

teo arrived and greeted us all warmly, with a kind smile, ustedes son muy especiales para mi, como mi niños, and told us we would go see la madre ayahuasca the following day, eat a bit, and then do our first ceremony, relax the next day, do another ceremony on thursday and on friday we would leave.

perfect.

we walked around the village greeting the locals, children following us and running around, playing with tiago, beautiful smiles and ragged clothes leading the way down a muddy path lined with papaya trees and plantain, all the way to the chocolate coloured river.

we slept in the adjoining room in teo´s house, before going to sleep drinking coca and yerba maté, exchanging our stories.. a 20 year old american boy named riley was there with us an ex intravenous heroin and cocaine user now afflicted with hepatits c, he had been there for 2 months on a cleanse, he told us his story and i felt bad for this young boy with so many demons.

the next morning we woke up and drank our "medecine" before trekking some 12 kilometres to see la madre, a vine about 15 metres high that grows from the ground to the sky, an impressive tressed bark that seemed hundreds of years old, the energy emanating from this plant was amazing. we sat in the clearing for an hour or so, butterflies swirling all around us, coming to rest on our bodies, fluttering off to explore another body, probably thinking we were some sort of malformed flower.

the night arrived and we prepared ourselves for the ceremony, drinking this brick red karkadet tasting liquid - the minute i drank it i could feel it rushing troughmy body, shivering, wrapping myself in blankets to warm myself up. i sat there listening to the sounds of the jungle (at night it really comes alive out there) and thechants of the shipibo who were assisting in the ceremony, trying to concentrate on the plant working inside me.. but nothing. no visions. just the impression that i was covered in filth, scraping a my arms and my face trying to clean myself.


i took the huasca three times over two ceremonies and always the same - sleepy, filthy, sad.

after 5 days spent in the jungle living peacefully with this jungle tribe, teo lent us his boat and we sped back towards pucallpa where we met... a phenomenon. a fabulous maricon, a drag queen not in drag, with the most obvious cocaine addiction i ve seen in a long time, who dragged us from bar to bar begging us to dance with him, us laughing at this force of nature before us.

i jumped on a plane back to lima where i ve been for 2 days, hanging out with my juggler friends and fighting with the artisan who lives in the dorm i m sleeping in ' the asshole was feeding my dog HALF A BURGER this morning wen i woke up and couldnt understand why i was mad. i dont want strangers feeding my dog, even less human food, case then he learns to beg and wont eat his food, and the asshole started insulting me, assuming things about me, and as i was packing my bag all i could say was, dude you dont know me, so what you think means nothing, because you ae a judgemental prick. and hes going on saying shit to me and all i want is for him to STFU and leave me alone so i grabbed my dog and walked out, and here i am.


i leave tonight and i dont want to, im not ready, i cant leave yet. i ve spent 4 months with stars in my eyes and hope and this life i ve been living means so much more, the people ive met and the things ive seen are incredible, and to think that tonight it all comes to an end breaks my heart.

argentina, i miss you, you are my heart and soul. (and my libido. HOHO!)
peru, you made me angry and scared, but now i ve started to get to know you, and you are magical.
chile, i barely know you, but what i know is that you have a huge heart.
bolivia, you are the heart of south america, but you need to cherish your ressources.
brasil, you are expensive as fuck.


when i get back to montreal i will write the wrap up: kilometres done, hours of transportation, yadda yadda.