|
|
|
|
After the thirteen days of non-stop hiking, after the jungle and the coffee truck, I was ready to go back to Cusco, to luxuriate in a hot shower and inject some cake into my fat-starved body. My diet of rice, eggs, potatoes, coffee, yuca and the occasional piece of meat kept me running but did […] The taxi hurtled downhill toward the abuelita and her flock. Sheep scatter and pigs struggle to waddle out of the way. Too late, the driver applies the brakes, and ka-thud-du-kahdada – one of the sows disappears under our wheels. Oh dear god. I’m horrified, expecting a scene, expecting the abuelita to fly at us in […] Cusco, the city of the Incas, the cultural capital of Perú. At 3400 meters above sea level (11,300ft) it sits, spread across a shallow valley: a sea of terracotta roofs at the center; on the outskirts adobe huts lap at the edges of low, green-brown mountains; the steeples and towers of the city’s countless churches […] I’m in Cuzco, Peru. I’m in a tiny, closet-like internet cafe off of a side street paved in stones laid by the Inca. Two small dogs are locked into an intimate embrace on the stoop, and the woman who runs the cafe is using a broom and a bucket of water to chase them off. […] They’re called the Teeth of Navarino. Better they should be called the Fangs. Vicious, merciless, and sharp, these rocks bite. El Circuito de Los Dientes de Navarino is the southernmost trek in the world, a five-days-plus mission into the exposed interior of the island that sits south of Ushuaia, between the water of the Beagle […] Have you ever read the Stephen King novel, Cujo? I haven’t, but I know it’s about a dog. And as it’s a novel by Stephen King, I imagine that the dog turns into a monster, or is a monster in disguise, or is some sort of portal by which monsters are able to enter our […] This is it – this is as far south as civilization gets until that big, white, cold continent. Puerto Williams is situated on the northern shore of Isla Navarino, across the Beagle Channel from Ushuaia, Argentina. Home to 2,200 inhabitants, it’s bigger than McMurdo Station in Antarctica, with more stray dogs and less to do. […] The streets were slippery in the rain. My battered red sneakers slapped against the gray concrete in a steady rhythm, and I twisted my wet hair back behind my ears for the tenth time. Dawn was red this morning. The trees of the park outside the hostel’s front door blocked most of the sky, but […] I went a little bit photo-crazy on the Navimag cruise. I couldn’t help myself – everywhere, everywhere, islands like floating mountains, cliffs sparkling with countless ribbons of water, blinding white and blue glaciers hanging from black peaks, rainbows, dolphins, sunsets…my friends laughed at me because I would bolt my lunch and dinner and then race […] There are few occasions in life when you can actually sense the universe turning around you, interrupting its normal, chaotic, forward flow to sit you gently in place and to organize the elements of time and space around you like the tumbling pins of a combination lock. I was on Isla Tengla, near Puerto Montt, […] |
|