huaraz, peru

pictured above - a bunch of great stacks of rocks, a beautiful, beautiful flower, views from the santa cruz trek through the white mountains, oisheen in the airport looking like he´s seen god, some organs being sold at the market, an underground maze at some ruins we went to where all of the earth´s energy is rumored to surface. we met a shaman there who does peyote and other crazy cactus drugs on the regular, more views from the trek, a scary doll sticking out on the bus, sex burger, and an example of how freaking weird the manicans are here. and below, im drinking tea in my alpaca hat in the tent after a walking 18 miles.and theres more where these came from. i had a horrible, horrible cold during the trek that was probably made worse by the altitude. basically my throat and chest would burn every time i breathed, and i was breathing heavily all the time at 15,000 feet. there were a lot of firsts for that altitude. other than that it was beautiful, very peaceful. we´d wake up each day around six, eat breakfast, start walking at seven, and then get to the next place to camp between four and six for four days. we temporarily adopted a dog named oliver shortpants. i was snoozing on the bus ride back when the horn on our bus got stuck in a pretty hilarious little miss sunshine-esque situation. i´m taking another bus ride all night tonight to lima, and then flying to the amazon.

lovelovelove,

bianca

pros to wearing overal
-warmth, comfort, general coolness, handy dandy pockets good for holding tools
cons
beeps in metal detector and requires investigation
straps fall in toilet

all i could think about in the airport was how great it would be to have roller skates. and i saw an ipod vending machine! nevertheless, ive arrived in peru safely. they make the limes good down here. i stayed in a nice hostel, where i slept under a rug. i also bought a hat made of an alpaca, which will keep me warm in the white mountains two days from now. there are pom poms that dangle off the ears. im with a group of peoople, a surprising percentage of which have had dreadlocks and/or nipple piercings. our trip leader mailed her dreadlocks to her mom from thailand. she also told me it felt really really good to be bald.
we bought 2 guitars yesterday, and im also working on improving my harmonica (named monica), my flexibility, my spanish, and my guitar. things i want to do hereÑ zipline, motorcycle, ride trains, and go to a sand dune. today i saw a sign that said sea world, but there was definitlly no sea world. i went to the cryupts under the church of sanfransico yesterday, where 25,000 people were buried. there are piles of human bones there, sorted by type of bone.
I SWEAR today i ate dinner at the sketchiest place in ALL THE LAND. im guarenteed to have the motherload of diarrhea tomorrow. it was a cave dripping with germs. im busy climatizing for my white mountain hike. peace

leaving tomorrow for peru!

our leader ben is pretty chillin. he's been a wilderness therapy instructor, a yoga instructor, and he can hack a mean sack. as you can see from guthrie and alison's cool hat below, they're pretty fantastic as well. i've been getting harmonica lessons from a guy named mike, meditation instruction from a guy named john "every thought is like a wave, and you want a serene lake", and CRAZY YOGA PICTURED BELOW from abby. john also does something called death meditation.. i dont really understand what that is but it sounds pretty freaking intense. today the craziest rainbow i've ever seen in my life appeared after the afternoon rain. a crowd of people came outside to point and go "WWOOOOWWW, OH MY GAWWWDDD". you could see the full arc above you, completely bright.

pictures

i spent a hundred million years making a facebook album of the trip so far. but here are some samples.

estes, colorado

continuing where i left off...we dropped jordi and carson at the grand junction amtrak station and my dad and i drove across colorado. we met a bicyclist from Oklahoma, who averages 100 miles a day and was on the 30th day of his trip (100 miles a day is pretty freaking incredible, apparently. i can vouch that he looked quite fit and i was digging his accent. he and grapes of wrath have made me want to wwoof in oklahoma.) he asked us, "are y'all bark rubbers?" apparently aspen trees are velvety in the morning, and theres a group of people really into feeling them. we also met a retired couple who have been on the road around america for the last 30 years. "when i get rid of her i'll use her earrings as fish tackle. we're having a ball! i left her in the mountains and she still found her way back." her being his wife, who was sitting next to him making snide comments while he went on and on and on. we crossed the continental divide, i really want a motorcycle and a guy to drive it so i can ride on the back, and we saw a liquor store called liquid ambitions.

food of the trip so far: pepperjack cheese. i buy it wherever i go.
song of the trip so far: bob dylan buckets of rain

so now i'm at estes national park in colorado, the 4th national park i've been to in the last week. i'm staying at THE BIGGEST YMCA IN THE NATION. there are all sorts of mysterious people here. i've been orienting with the group i'm going to south america with and the group that's going to asia. and then who happens to walk into the room but RACHEL GREENE, who i went to high school with and we played on the same soccer team for 3 years. i had no idea she was doing this program, and the odds out of 28 people, half of them from canada, it was shocking. the lodge we're staying in looks exactly like the shining. brad, the organizer of the trip, looks exactly like spang with the voice of tim gunn. rachel can also confirm this. there's an irish guy coming with us, and i'm loving his slang: "handy" and "savage". i went into town today to buy a pedometer, so that i can keep track of how many steps i take. bolivia is no more, but instead we'll be treking through the white mountains, going through a canyon twice as deep as the grand canyon (booya!), and flying over those crazy huge engravings that are a mystery like stone henge. and i'm surrounded by canadians, which is quite the picker upper. brad gave us a frightening long long long long speech about health, saying things like "diarrhea will be like talking about the weather. a rainy day with partial solid." and advice like "riding in the bus is better than on top of the bus." he also told the people going to india to follow cows when crossing the street. i've printed out a picture of charles darwin (aka chuck) and glued him to the front of my journal to get me excited about the galapagos. he looks like a gnome. pictures to come!
loove bianca

qué un desastre

what a disaster. i was all set to go to bolivia in 4 days, when all my plans got pooped on by the bolivian government: http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2008/09/17/bolivian_governor_arrested_peace_corps_volunteers_evacuated/



flights to bolivia have been cancelled, peace corps evacuated...i was really excited about going to the salt plains, the amazon river basin, and seeing my friend max in cochabamba but NO there's a huge political crisis RIGHT BEFORE i'm about to leave. so now i'm depressed and the future is completely uncertain.

there has been a lot to see in america already though. we spent two nights chillin at the lazy lizard hostel, and met a guy named mason who is THE lazy lizard. he's technically homeless. he camps out every night and works as a cook: "my boss don't know i woke up on a rock!" he says. he also told us a story about waking up in the mornign with a hawk flapping around on his head. jordi was standing around talking with a group of about four or five of the regulars at the hostel, the subject of jail came up, and then it became apparent that jordi was the only one standing there who hadn't been in the can. the people that work there smoked a bowl right outside the door, and then told us then next night "turns out we're not supposed to do that anymore."

we took more hikes (typical) and saw a cowboy boot wedged into a canyon and some petroglyphs aka "pre-Jesus shit" that were very striking. they kinda looked like robots with spiral hands. we went to return our innertubes to Chip at Chip's tired. Chip was a bit offstandish. Luckily, we were warned that he would be a bit offstandish by Mike, a man with a burst of voluminous curls where a rat tail should be who we bamboozled into giving us a ride. we also saw some graffitti:

HIPPIES SUCK

I KILL DEMOCRATS

I LOVE BUSH

every name in moab is a reference to hell (devil's garden, fiery furnace), and i'm beginning to realize that this place kinda does look like hell. it also kinda looks like you're under the sea. we came up with a new activity to entertain ourselves that carson got really into: counting germans and frenchmen. there are SO many! they're everywhere! we also want to visit the landmark on every state's liscense plate. we had some incidents camping out, once when our tent got skunked, and again when a crazy kangaroo rat named Klaus kept running under our tent, onto jordi's foot, and then jordi accidentally whacked klaus with his flip flop.

my dad finally came to meet us (with a car!) we spent a couple days with him visiting arches and such. we saw the Swiss EOW Club (End of Work Club) which my dad desperately wants to join. i've been reading a story about Bianca Casady which is very interesting to me because 1. bianca is the best name on the planet and 2. she never really went to school, which is fascinating. my dad brought me my first pair of glasses, and moab was the best place ever to put them on for the first time. it was like hallelujah, i can see detail in these rocks!

we've seen multiple places advertising that they have the best green chile in utah, and i saw the most incredible shooting star of my life. the moon is so bright that we have shadows at night, bright enough to go hiking at night and see perfectly fine. carson woke me up in the middle of the night screaming ITS LIKE A FLASHLIGHT IN MY EYE! there are a fair amount of creepers, we saw a bumpersticker that said "you looked better on myspace"

i have to go now. more to follow.

we continue to live like bums

constant bad things/concerns: hitch hiking murderers, ghiardia, stuff getting stolen, animals eating our food, rattle snakes, black widows, scorpions



hitch hiking is like waiting for a bus that may never come. the only thing that makes it bearable is listening to carson's impressions of the people in the cars : "pull ova bob! give those poor kids a ride!"

we met a lot of people OBSESSED with rock climbing at the hostel, and a lot of crazies, and a white dog named Buddha with dyed pink spots that is 3/4 pitbul and 1/4 coyote. today we took a hike down a canyon to a waterfall and swimming hole, then went to a music park and jammed with this dreadlock guy who biked up. it looks like mars here, and everyone plants sunflowers everywhere which is really nice. if i could summarize the people of moab in one word, it would be modenuine. modest + genuine. which i think is the ideal personality trait.



to reminisce more on past experiences:

THE TRAIN! we can only fantacize about future train rides across the country (to/from middlebury). i love how shakey it is on the top floor of the train. its entertaining enough to just sit there and watch people try to walk down the aisle, wobbling drunkenly. when we stopped in Elko, Nevada at 10:00 at night everyone got off the train and started running around while they could. one guy actually started WASHING THE OUTSIDE OF HIS WINDOW. hilarious! this is the same guy i caught opening the emergency exit window so he could stick his head out, and he let me do the same. jordi says the train is like watching the travel channel, but even more frusterating because you're actually there but still can't go. we also met a guy on the train going to florida through chicago from oakland, which takes four days. he says he has to ride the train because he lost his ID. why can't he get a new ID??? we can only speculate...whatever the reason is, he definitely doesn't want to be found. also! we saw a train wash! like a car wash, but for trains. we also saw a mobile port o potty on rails, for the workers building a new train track to push along as they go.

another quote from the woman at the gospel church: "In heaven everyone wears white, there are no bills to pay, you never get sick, nothing hurts, and the streets are paved with gold..."

thats all for now. all 3 of us have an inability to listen when people give us directions and such, which continues to cause problems...

MOABmoabMOAB

i've been completely out of touch with the real world for the past 5 days and only have 15 minutes on this computer, but we know that this blog has a loyal following of readers anxiously awaiting our next post who will be upset with us if we dont update regularly.

train ride #2: oakland to green river, utah. more tourists than last time, even more old people if thats possible. there were volunteers on board giving us historical information over the intercom along the way, but the intercom system was broken and kept cutting out and the result was pretty hilarious. we made a friend from minnesota (he had minnesota tattoed to his calf), but the friendship kinda floundered for awhile in the second or third hour when we revealed that the darjeeling alias' we had given him weren't our real names, and that the bandage carson was wearing around his head wasn't really from a bike accident but we just wanted to be like the darjeeling. nevertheless, alex from minnesota was a great friend and the funniest thing he said was "that lady across from me was as nuts as all balls." we made a graphic novel depicting the events of the second 24 hour train ride in greater detail, and if we find a scanner we will try to upload a sneak peak of that for you. also, cow counting competitions were the new thing for us to do on this train, replacing stacking things.

turns out green river is not the sprawling metropolis of opportunity we had hoped. that would have been in opposite world, because the green river "train station" is actually a concrete block platform, with an arrow pointing over to nothing. its such a weird feeling to be standing with just your backpack with nothing but closed stores around.

the theme for the rest of the trip is "i just realized..." or maybe its "adventures in hitch hiking", which i actually promisted my parents i wouldn't do. we've been doing a lot of hiking around and setting up our tent where we can and eating the same thing every day: oatmeal for breakfast, stale baguette with tuna for lunch, rice and beans for dinner. i don't like rice. we are ten miles from all the attractions of arches national park, but everyone who goes there is an old tourist afraid of ride giving and when we tried to hitch hike there park rangers wagged their fingers at us. so we went to the tire store, got 3 intertubes for five bucks and floated on them down the colorado river aka ghiardia river through the canyons for 4 hours. i almost died watching carson 30 feet ahead of me going through the rapids with his feet in the air singing sailor songs. we also did a terrific hike all the way up to the top of a canyon, and at the top i had this thought that it would be a great place to kill yourself, jumping of the canyon. we drank all our water out of "matrimony springs", called that because once you drink out of it you're married to moab and you have to come back.
while we wait for a car to pick us upwe met a guy who lives in wallingford and his girlfriend?/intercontinental affair? from atlanta who's given us a ride. we've learned that there's a lot of kindness out there, and a lot of different types of kind. we stayed at a campsite one of the nights, and the guy at the campsite next to us was playing banjo aka "pickin' and grinnin'". we met a group of germans who literally spoke in the jane schaffer essay format, a guy who is still making his way back from burning man with a tall bike. also got a ride from a guy with an art vw van painted like the playa, and the back was filled with two things: beer and gasoline.
we're staying at the lounging lizard hostel tonight. today the guy there picked up the phone and said "you're looking for alex? he used to work here. he's still here though."

the computer is running out of time, we're alive and well

love,

bianca carson jordi
aka gianca, dr. rhumpus, and lone wolf or knapsack

sorry if we speak in a code of inside jokes

what the freak show is going on?

remember the kilted jesus lookalike from the previous post? we saw him AGAIN, in the Frieda Kahlo exhibit at the MOMA in San Francisco. turns out he's scottish, so the kilt wearing was legit. also, more information has been uncovered about the band that is living with us. see the lead singer's wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jana_Hunter

we finally slept last night, and have since walked around lake timiscal, laid on the beach, drove up into the hills for expensive houses and nice views, rode four different streetcars but only for one stop each time because we didn't want to pay, ate dim sum in china town, ate the best burrito i've ever had in my life in the mission, went to the largest Long's Drugs in the nation, watched the Darjeeling Limited, went to the moon festival in China Town, went underwater on the BART, prayed to Saint Anne, the patron saint of lost objects.

people here drive crazy, wear better clothes, and create reallly long lines in the grocery store.

since it was a fine sunday in oakland, we went to a service at the nearest gospel church. we were warmly welcomed even though we looked like bums. we were absolutely the only white people in the room. the usher talked to us about a lot: "can you see electricity? can you see the wind? you can't see it but you know it's there, just like the lord. i'm just concerned about your souls. have you ever taken communion? no? lordy, lordy." then she encouraged us not to take communion, it's a sin if you don't really believe. but there was so much great energy and singing and music. also, i spotted an art car i know from seattle around the corner from the house we're staying. hooty hooo!

number of times jordi has been found singing:2

number of times carson has been found singing:10000000

number of times carson has been found singing something that isnt paul simon: 2

today we were walking, walking, and carson ran into a bum, shopping cart and all

FIVE MINUTES LATER, Jordi trips over something. turns out to be a pink stuffed poodle

also: we've witnessed many instances of littering, unlike seattle

also spotted: a man with marijuana leaves embroidered all over his pants

sincerely,

bianca, carson, and jordi

24 hours and 30 minutes

is how long we were on the train. there were lots of foreign people, and lots of old people, and lots of really, really, weird people. we sat in the same booth in the lounge car for most of the time, mostly eavesdropping and looking out the window. the lounge car is like a greenhouse. some characters we met/eavesdropped on:
- a gregarious man named Bear, who left his DVD player unattended for long periods of time playing men in black with the volume turned all the way up
- a drunk woman who looked 100 years old and under 100 pounds, who kept demanding wine tasting while drinking beer out of a sippy cup and announcing that on fridays, john takes her dancing.
- a spindly vegan man who turned out to be SEVEN FEET tall when he stood up
- a man who resembled jesus but wore a kilt and a bright orange sweater, doing weird physical exercises while simultaneously making out with his Indian girlfriend
- the Red Hot Society, a "disorganization" whose only purpose is to have fun. they wear purple clothes and funky red hats, and are all over 80
- Scott, the snack bar's top chef, the "Ryan Seacrest of Amtrak culinary delights" says Carson, who made half hourly announcements on his wheareabouts over the intercom, and the current state of the snack bar
other announcements over the intercom:
frequently: "PREPARE TO DE-TRAIN!"
"Mr. Mendes, bring you and your special item to the lounge car"
"I've got the 5 kelsos"
"Mr. P, you need to put your foot stool up"

things to figure out:
why is my nose so stuffy?
why is my backpack so heavy?
who on this train knew each other before?

i've been wearing my dickie's overalls the entire trip, and i'm now obsessed with trains. today we got to oakland, went to the rockridge cafe to eat which is supposedly famous, and a store where every item has chocolate in it. we're sleeping in the garage aka "rompus room" of carson's friend, a pleasant girl named sophie, because a band (from texas?) is occupying the living room. still need to figure out whats up with this band, apparently they're like devotchka. regardless, everyone here is hip and young, quite the opposite of the train. culllturrre shockkk. we have to bring out duffel bags to the grocery store to fill, jordi is making us eat rice and beans only because its more "nutritious" than top ramen. we'll be going to san franscisco, not quite sure what to do but possibly MOMA and a mission burritto. carson is obsessed with paul simon...
our plans for the next 24 hour train ride on monday: go by the names Adrian Whitman, Francis Whitman, and Jack Whitman. bring sleep masks. We've customized some of our luggage with Whitman stickers.

i had this idea

one more thing

i had this idea

you send me a check

Bianca Giaever
2311 Rosemont Pl. W
Seattle, WA 98199

upon the arrival of the check, my parents will be opening my mail, and they'll transfer that money into my account and i'll cash it. then i'll give that money to someone i meet along my way, someone who i think could really use that money, someone who has plans and aspirations and needs to get going. then, i'll take their picture, and email it back to you with a little story about who i decided to give your money to and what they'll be doing with it.

so i dunno, mail me money if you think you can dig this idea

leaving tomorrow

i was talking to my friend carson when a song from the soundtrack to darjeeling limited came up on itunes. we both love the movie darjeeling limited, we both love trains, we both love adrian brody, yada yada yada, we bought train tickets on a whim. my parents found out amtrak tickets are refundable, and have been schemeing all week for me not to leave which is ANNOYING. it just looks better in my head to leave on a train at the beginning of an intense journey.

i'll wake tomorrow at the crack of dawn, take everything in my refrigerator and put it into my backpack like a squirrel packing for winter, and then board the train with my friend carson and my acquaintence jordi. we'll be on the train for 23 hours.


this trip is trying to be as close to the darjeeling as we can make it. i'm adrian brody, carson is owen wilson, and jordi is the other one. we will tell people that we're siblings, even though jordi looks mexican, carson has dark hair and im blonde(ish).
things we will have in common with darjeeling: ace bandage headwrap, stolen items from parents, intimate encounter with train attendant in bathroom, sleeping mask, physical altercations among siblings.
things we might have in common: pain medications (left over from wisdom teeth), pet snake (from petco, not poisonous)
things we won't have in common: a laminator, symbolic for the emotional baggage we'll shed

i spent my last day in seattle interviewing an actor named trick, and i suggest you check out the interview. it will be posted on teentix.blogspot.com shortly. i also hit up tougo coffee to admire my glorious work, and i also suggest you do the same.

future destinations, in chronological order: the streets of oakland, the arches and canyons of moab, the mountains of the denver area, the salt plains of bolivia, the ruins of peru, the galapagos of ecuador

things on my mind: can you ride a llama? what's the difference between a llama and alpalca? will my wisdom teeth become infected?
goals: to eat guinea pig, fall in love with a local, skip college, and retire to the simple life on a shrimp farm

good karma

the preparations for my trip took an uplifting turn today, during an attempt to buy a conservative swimsuit that ended in Fred Meyer paying me for it.

the (very, very, ugly) swimsuit was marked down to 50% off, and then had an additional take 50% off sticker on it. when rung up at the cash register, it showed that my total was $ -0.01 and the confused cashier called the confused manager, we all agreed it was bizarre, they told me today was my lucky day and i must have good karma, and paid me a penny to take the swimsuit. hopefully this is some sort of foreshadowing for good moneymaking ventures yet to come