Tales of an accidental backpacker

I´ve been wearing the same shoes every day for nearly six weeks. A pair of hiking boots. When I tie the laces a puff of dust releases into the air. These boots have crossed the world´s driest desert, squashed through muddy jungle, sunk into pampa swamps, braved the frenetic streets of South American metropolises and trekked around some of the world´s highest mountains.

In the past 40 days I´ve learned that it´s possible to live with only two pairs of jeans and two T-shirts. I´ve gotten used to the way my face looks without make-up. My daily routine no longer includes body lotion and perfume. I´ve forgotten how my hair feels when blown out long and smooth with a hair dryer. I´ve gone days without encountering a mirror. Or checking my e-mail or logging on Facebook.

My eyebrows need tweezed, my hair is desperate for a conditioning and my cuticles are a disaster. My back aches from lugging around my heavy backpack, which contains my current livelihood and I therefore protect at all costs. After weeks of traveling between 2,500 and 5,000 meters above sea level, I´m used to gasping for breath. My once oily skin is dry, and my once voluminous hair is almost flat in the thin, dusty air.

Yet through all of this I´ve never gone to bed without washing my face, brushing my teeth, and God bless my orthodontist, putting in my retainers. Sometimes that meant splashing river water on my face, getting out my toothbrush in bus station bathrooms splattered with vomit and diarrhea or scrubbing my retainers in a possibly snake-infested jungle fountain. And, may my dermatologist read this, I never stepped out into the oppressive mountain sun without lathering myself in sunblock and even donning an embarrassing safari hat I bought in the black market on the streets of La Paz before a spontaneous jungle expedition.

I can´t remember bathrooms with toilet paper and soap or with doors that even shut, besides lock. I sigh with relief if water actually flows from the faucet, always cold. I´ve accepted that sometimes baño means a hole in the ground with two footprints in front. I automatically hold my breath when I enter a bathroom and come out breathless like I´ve just finished a sprint. I´ll have to train myself to flush toilet paper again instead of tossing it in an overflowing basket.

Hot showers are a luxurious surprise. A hot shower with good pressure is an extravagance that I´ve encountered only once on this journey. I try to recall what it was like to drink water safe from the tap or buy produce from the market without fearing for my health. Or to accept change without worrying that it´s counterfeit.

I´ve learned to wash my socks and underwear in hostel sinks. I´ve discovered that almost no price is ever fixed, whether it´s a hostel, tour or earrings. I´m now wise enough to request a seat toward the front of the bus after suffering nights bouncing over the wheel on unpaved roads with cold air and exhaust fumes blowing in from the iced-over window that wouldn´t close. And I´ve found out that even if I have my bus ticket, I won´t be allowed to board unless I´ve paid for the right to access the terminal.

I wake up between 6 and 7:30 a.m., sometimes as early as 3 a.m. if an excursion requires it. I go to bed between 9 and 10 p.m., sometimes as early as 7:30 p.m. if I´m exhausted and there´s no electricity. My typical breakfast is bread and jam. My budged lunch and dinner usually consist of soup followed by rice, potatoes and chicken. (However, I tried llama in San Pedro de Atacama and ate lots of fried bananas in Bolivia.)

Every meal is served with coca tea, made from the same leaves as cocaine but sharing none of the illicit drug´s affects. (The people in this part of the world have been planting, chewing and drinking the plant for thousands of years, believing it to possess dozens of medicinal benefits essential for the hostile, high altitude conditions.)

I shake my head at the realization that I´ve been traveling through South America with a backpack for more than a month. It will be 42 days when I fly back to Santiago. Eighteen of them alone. I´ve been in three countries, 12 cities, 14 beds and one tent. I´ve suffered bone-chilling zero-degree temperatures with blustering winds on desert nights and steamy, 90-degree jungle days. I´m 1,667 miles from my home in Valparaíso, Chile with more than 900 photos on my camera´s memory card. I´ve had conversations with people from Sweden, Bolivia, Austrailia, Peru, New Zealand, Chile, Austria, Canada, Germany, England, Poland, France, Scotland, the Netherlands, Spain, Finland, Japan, Belgium, Argentina, Columbia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Israel, the Czech Republic and Brazil.

I crossed the world´s driest desert in a jeep. I went into the jungle. I traveled down the world´s most dangerous road. I´ve seen geysers, volcanoes, lakes of every color, deadly mines, ancient ruins, pampas, some of the world´s highest mountains and deepest canyons and the world´s largest salt flat. I´ve rafted on canyon rivers, trekked in the Cordillera Blanca, canoed on tropical lakes and mountain biked in the Andes.

I visited villages where electricity and running water have yet to arrive, where mules are used for transport and radios for communication. Communities where Spanish is a second language, if spoken at all, and Aymara and Quechua peoples still hold true to their pre-Inca and Inca dress, food and faith.

In six weeks I´ve had no less than five adventures of a lifetime. Please don´t think I´m bragging. I´m just in awe of my blessings. I´m fully aware that I´m utterly unworthy of any of this -- I´m not especially daring or outgoing. I wear makeup and love shopping and read fashion magazines. I don´t know East from West and bought my first big backpack on the street in Chile two days before I left.

Nothing was planned. This has been an unanticipated, undreamed of gift, the most spectacular trip I´ve experienced thus far, just in time for my quarter-of-a-century birthday.

And now I´m left the unrelenting urge to tell you all about it.

Santiago: Week One

I head to class in the morning wearing sunblock and sunglasses. Bikes and strollers pass me on the 20-minute walk up the tree-lined streets of the Providencia neighborhood to my language school. The five of us in the advanced class, two from the United States and three from Brazil, practice conversation in a small classroom on the third floor. The breeze rustles the trees and blows through the open window during the four-hour lesson with our profesora Andrea. I'm learning new things about my South American classmates (while trying not to stare at the hyperactive Brazilian-supermodel-with-an-attitude across from me who's always bringing up the "Latin fire that burns within her"), like how their families beg them not to visit the United States because it's dangerous -- too many news reports about mass shootings and terrorist attacks.

I come home to my room in the Munoz family's house. It's a small rectangle with blue walls, high ceilings and wood floors. I sleep in a vintage twin bed and my door opens to the patio. Nine family members live in the house, including two kids and a Cocker spaniel named Coni who likes to doze in my room. My first night we ate completos, hot dogs with avocado, tomatoes, and mayonnaise. Last night we had pastel de choclo, a Chilean version of shepherd's pie baked in a clay bowl topped with creamed corn and and filled with olives (have to watch out for the pits), beef, boiled eggs and chicken.

In the evenings the school has activities -- My first night was cooking class. We made cancon, salmon fillets with tomato, cheese, oregano and sausage, and terremotos, white wine with pineapple ice cream. The next night we went to a futbol match, La Universidad Catolica de Santiago versus Colón de Argentina. When a student asked if it was safe, the director said that it wouldn't be dangerous like the games in Italy and England.

The giant stadium sits at the foot of the Andes mountains that loom over the city of Santiago making for a dramatic sunset. The fans sang and barked chants throughout the game, spewing giant confetti and waving flags. I really tried to pay attention to the field, but the men still in their work clothes who jumped up and down and embraced one minute and nearly shed tears the next before spitting out a string of obscenities rivaling that of a delinquent adolescent were more entertaining.

Last night we had salsa lessons in a Cuban club with a dynamic teacher dressed like an Abercrombie model. I was getting into the steps in the wedding reception-esque setting and thinking how this was the coolest dance class I'd been to and how I'd finally gotten the hang of Latin rhythms after all these years. That is, until during a dance circle in which we exchanged partners every minute when one of the pros (invited to compensate for our group's lack of men) told me to stop jumping and move "más suave."

Today when we twisted into a deep and delicious stretch in my yoga class I had the same dreamy sensation I had earlier that afternoon, when I was biting into my empanada Napolitana and looking at the water shooting from the fountain that sparkled in the sunlight as I sat in a grass with my new friends from school. I keep reminding myself to savor this -- because winter always comes and school always starts and reality always sets in.

Spring break 2008: 10,800 feet above sea level

My roommates in Charleston don't get it. Fly to South America alone? Am I out of my mind? “She's always locking herself out of the house. She can’t even drive off the peninsula without getting lost,” one of the Southern belles says. “Now she announces that she's flying off to the Third World.”

Ten days later I hike up Wayna Picchu, gasping for air and peeling layers. At the peak I gaze down at Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, inducing a wave of vertigo. I recognize the view from advertisements and postcards and sit on a rock near the ledge just long enough for a stranger to take my picture. The rush of having made it on my own and the conflicting urge to share the experience with someone overwhelms me.

It's spring break my senior year of college, and I've booked a $450 flight to Lima on a whim. At the airport gate I wait in a crowd of brown Latinos in scruffy clothes who whisper in Spanish and cradle small children on their laps. I feel like a lone Caucasian diva and start to worry about more than the two days of classes I'll miss.

That night at the Lima airport my friend Julia, ultra-tanned and wearing teeny shorts, waits for me. "You need some sun!" she squeals and hugs me. "This is Pedro," she introduces a short guy dressed like a Hollister model. Of course she’d try to set me up with one of her friends. On the one-hour drive to Julia's house her Mazda speeds around sand mountains looming over deserted beaches. She's the only one of her friends with a car, and they say she thinks she's the Paris Hilton of Lima. "Hola niñas," her family’s live-in maid, a tiny woman in a nightgown, greets us from the kitchen where she watches a telenovela.

The next day we lounge on the beach before lunch in the bohemian Barranco neighborhood. We sit on a terraza and eat fresh ceviche, chunks of fish marinated in lime juice, anticuchos, grilled marinated beef heart, and papas a la huancaína, boiled potatoes with creamy spiced cheese sauce.

“You should talk to Pedro,” Julia winks a few days later when I tell her I want to travel outside of Lima before I leave. “He studies turismo.” We both know I should go to Machu Picchu, one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, a remote archaeological masterpiece 8,000 feet above sea level. But with only four days left I don’t have time for the 24-hour, cliff-hugging bus ride through the Andes.

Julia touches her heart whenever she mentions Cuzco, the entry city to Machu Picchu and the capital of the ancient Inca Empire. It combines her two favorite things – a perpetual party scene with lots of foreign men. "Tienes que ir," Julia says. “You can’t come to Peru and not go."

At 3 a.m. the next morning Julia shakes me awake. My taxi is here to take me to the airport for my 5 a.m. flight. As the plane descends in Cuzco the majestic peaks of the Andes jut above the clouds. We’ve gone from about 1,000 to 11,000 feet above sea level in 45 minutes.

On the ride into town my taxi driver asks where I’m staying. “That place is full of drug dealers,” he says when I name the hostel. He suggests I stay at another pensión instead and parks in front of an office. I’m confused until I realize we’re at a travel agency. His friend has a deal on a trip to Machu Picchu for me, he says. “No necesito un paquete,” I try to explain. I’ll get to the pre-Columbian enigma on my own.

I arrive to the main Plaza de Armas at 7 a.m. It’s 40 degrees and empty. I feel like death and circle the square until I find an open kiosk selling Diamox, altitude sickness pills. I head to the train station to get a ticket to Machu Picchu for the next morning, praying they're not sold out. I snag a departure trip on the budget Backpackers train. The agent tells me that it leaves at 5 a.m. from Ollantaytambo, a village on the way to Machu Picchu. That means I’ll have to go there tonight. Bussing to a remote village without a map or hostel reservation terrifies me. A wave of nausea strikes again as she writes the address of the bus station.

As the sun rises and warms the air I start to feel better. I go on to visit to a colonial church built over an Inca sun temple and watch a parade of Quechua women in colorful traditional costumes break into song and dance. I wonder if it’s a performance for tourists or if life in Cuzco is like a real-life musical.

That afternoon I give a taxi driver the bus station address. He drops me off on a gritty side of town in front of a crowded dirt yard littered with trash. This can’t be it. I’m the only tourist. Everyone is Quechua. The indigenous women have braided hair and bowler hats and carry babies wrapped on their backs in colorful shawls. The word baños is spray painted on a cinder block wall where men urinate, barely concealed by a low ledge. “Éste es la estación de autobus?” I ask.

“Si, Si,” everyone says. Still I’m sure there’s a mistake. I run down the street looking for a taxi, but there are none in this part of town. Half an hour later a bus pulls in. I wait in the long line, panicking as the sun lowers. The little man in front of me, Luis, assures me that this bus will take me to Ollantaytambo. "You just have to change líneas once," he says. “What? Change buses?” I ask. I pay the 20-cent fare and squish my way on. I feel suffocated under the backpack in my lap, inhaling the stench of unwashed bodies. Passengers stand crammed in the aisles, hugging their belongings in garbage bags.

We curve up into the mountains. We’re flying along the cliffs, winding through peaks and valleys of gargantuan proportions. Luis in the seat beside me senses my fear and occasionally makes reassuring comments on our progress. I’m having a minor nervous breakdown, imagining that I’ll freeze in the mountains or bandits will kidnap me. No one in the world knows where I am right now. I am alone in the Andes with a backpack.

What seems like hours later it’s pitch black, and we’re deep in the Sacred Valley of Urubamba. Finally, we come to a town. “Vamos! Rapido!” Luis nudges me. The last bus to Ollantaytambo is leaving. He pushes aside his wife and baby and jumps off the bus while clutching my arm. He runs with me across the dark parking lot to a white van ready to pull away. Inside sit an old man and a couple with a baby who gawk at me. It feels like midnight when the driver pulls down steep gravel driveways to let passengers off in front of what look like shanties in the darkness.

Eventually we turn on a road guarded by an original Inca stonewall. I climb up the hill to Ollantaytambo to a plaza where children play tag and teenagers flirt. Adults chat outside storefronts. Relieved, I find a hostel listed in my Lonely Planet. I’m the only one in the cold, dark, two-story building. I wash my face with the icy water but skip a shower. I try to sleep in the silence but think about Julia and Pedro back in Lima. Pedro showed me around Lima all week, but it doesn't matter now. "You've already ruined it," Julia told me before I left. I replay the scene in my mind.

"Are there no attractive men in Peru?" I'd said to Julia at a dance club. When Pedro glanced toward me and walked away I knew he’d heard.

My alarm goes off at 4 a.m. I look in the mirror and see that my eyes have nearly swollen shut. I imagine I've been bitten by an exotic bed bug. Outside I get disoriented in the rainy night. My train leaves in 10 minutes. I’m panicking. I see headlights ahead and wave. “Dónde está la estación del tren?” I ask the handsome driver with a mustache. He nods to the teenage boy in the backseat and says he’s dropping him off there. He tells me to hop in, and I do.

On the four-hour train ride into the Amazon basin my exhausted head throbs to the blaring laughter and German conversation of the women beside me. We hear the violent Urubamba River rushing down the mountains in the darkness as the train climbs up the steep tracks. Finally dawn breaks, revealing the Andes in all their mystic glory. My classmates are sitting listening to a Media Law lecture right now, and here I am in deep in the South American jungle.

Our train journey ends at the little town of Aguas Calientes where I join a bus with a group of perky visor-wearing and Nikon-toting Japanese tourists. We ziz-zag for 30 minutes up a narrow dirt road to Machu Picchu. I shiver in the dense fog that shrouds the mysterious city. Its isolation protected it from invaders until a British historian rediscovered it in 1911. It lies between two mountains, with its edges dropping down a cliff into the surrounding Urubamba River 1,500 feet below. The self-contained city is invisible from beneath and guarded by a formidable mountain from behind. The fading fog reveals the Indiana Jones-worthy ruins -- houses, temples, and staircases. Llamas graze between the agricultural terraces and aqueducts. Crowning the city is the Intihuatana stone, an astronomic timepiece that aligns with the sun during equinoxes.

Back in Aguas Calientes I follow the signs to the eponymous hot springs when a hole rips in my backpack. My things spill so I hold everything to my chest like a giant baby. When I pay to enter the thermal pools the toothless man wearing a fitted gray cap at the counter offers to sew my backpack. I ask him how much he’ll charge. "Nada," he says. I hesitate, unsure if I should trust him but hand over my backpack.

The pools have a muddy look and the faintest sulfur smell but are soothing and warm. South American women wearing T-shirts and shorts in the water whisper among themselves. “Que bonitas y bronceadas,” one says, admiring a gaggle of bronzed French girls in bikinis.

Back at the counter the toothless man presents me with my sewn-up backpack. "Mil gracias. Un milagro," I say and offer him a few soles, but he flashes his gums and shakes his head. I run to the station in a rainstorm of Biblical proportions.

I join middle-aged American couples wearing designer hiking boots who’ve just trekked the Inca Trail on the tourist train this time. I notice the big diamond rings on the fingers of the women and wonder how they’ve maintained manicured nails. "Why do the parents allow this?" they say when village children chase our train. "They're as bad as the suicidal bus drivers."

At dawn the next morning a taxi drops me off at Sacsayhuamán, a prehistoric walled fortress forming the head of a jaguar overlooking Cuzco. No one is there. When it starts raining I wrap my pink scarf around my hair and wander the ruins alone in the wet silence. From Sacsayhuamán I walk along a deserted, muddy roadside and imagine Pedro and Julia lazing on the beach in Lima and my friends in Charleston hustling to class. I veer off the road to a maze of unmarked ruins in a valley. Then I ask the clerk at a desolate orange store how to get to Puku Pukara and Tambomachay. He points across the road and tells me to wait there for a bombi. While I wait a shepherdess in colorful indigenous dress leads her herd and two dogs up the road. Soon I realize that bombi means another Volkswagen van like the one I rode to Olllantaytambo. This time, I climb in with confidence.

I catch my overnight flight home to the States from Lima two days later, arriving so discombobulated that I circled the long-term lot almost an hour before I find my car. I nod my way through the three-hour drive home. A nasty waterborne bacteria keeps me in bed the next day.

Still, for weeks I walk around campus glowing with my big secret: Who’d believe that the shy girl with the lip gloss and pink scarf just got back from backpacking in the Andes?