Traveling Thoughts....

The original author of ¨TTS Girl Problems¨ has written another interesting reflection for her Travel Journalism class. Helen does her best thinking on travel days and decided to compile descriptions a few of our semester´s most memorable moments in motion.... Enjoy!

Four Months, Three Countries, Nine Ways of Getting "There"
By Helen

*February 2, 10:30pm*
*Bus*
My first view of Ecuador came in images illuminated by streetlights
and dimly lit bulbs hanging in curbside tiendas. Glimpses of
late-night street goers flashed by as the bus gathered speed. Leaving
the lights of the Quito airport disappearing behind the glass dripping
with condensation, I sped into the unknown. Hours ago, I stood on
American soil that I would not see again for four months. Sitting in
the privacy the darkness offered, my face collapsed into a combination
of exhausted trepidation. A brief flash of light revealed seats
occupied by fifteen high school girls and four women, my Traveling
School classmates and teachers. Across from me, a face mirrored my
own, wearing an expression of weary excitement. I mentally stumbled
through the nineteen new names I learned only hours before, trying
to match the correct one to her unfamiliar face...

*February 11, 2:00pm*
*Truck *
Packed into the backseat, I gave up trying to avoid the inevitable
collisions with girls on either side of me. With every pothole, dip,
and bump in the road, our ponytails swung and bobbed, imitating the
Piña Colada air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror,
reflecting the tan face of the driver. As the car winds along, bare
concrete hut walls grow sparse. Cows outnumber trees, speckled across
hillsides that grow more barren as we increase in altitude. A woman
wearing a full skirt and characteristically indigenous embroidered
blouse cranes her neck, adorned with strands of gold-painted beads, to
observe the fleet of seven trucks bumbling along her rural road. Rain
comes and goes, but the grating Ecuadorian hip-hop continues to play
on repeat from the truck´s antique radio. Chickens run in front of its
wheels, teasing the flustered driver as we fruitlessly backspin in
knee-deep mud. Between exposed steel cable re-bar roof supports hangs
a clothesline, dripping with colorful garments. Pictures of rural
Ecuador flash before my fluttering eyelids as I fend off
pothole-induced nausea...

*March 4, 1:00pm*
*Bus*
Nothing broke up the valley´s bright green color other than the opaque
brown river and black highway- both twisting into the depths of the
Amazon basin. After weeks of breathing oxygen thinned by the Andean
altitude, the air in the bus felt thick with humidity. As I ate my
afternoon snack, the usual medley of raisins and walnuts, I
contemplated how the thick glass of the bus window and monotonous,
uneven asphalt were the only things preventing me from being swallowed
by the vegetation that filled my vision with green...

*March 11, 12:30pm*
* Inter-tube *
My lower body was cold. The water of the Napo River clung to my
exposed legs as I drifted down with the current. But I decided that
shifting my weight to raise my frigid body was too risky. Doing so
might capsize the black rubber inter-tube I shared with another girl,
the two us precariously perched on opposite rims. Somewhere within the
chain of strung-together tubes, someone began singing an 80s song.
By the time she was able to hit the chorus, we were belting out the lyrics
to "I Will Survive," our voices reverberating off the wall of rain forest
threatening to close in onto the river. It wouldn't be much longer until we
arrived downstream to our next jungle lodge...

*Galapagos Islands, Ecuador- March 18, 6:30pm*
*Boat*
With a resounding clang, the dinner bell of the ¨Golondrina¨ demanded
my presence under the deck. Despite the pangs of hunger growing in my
stomach, I wanted to be no place other than where I was. Frigate
bird´s sharp calls pierced the silence as I sat hand in hand with two
of the girls I have now known for a month and a half. We let the
orange sun´s last light brush our sunburned faces, our hair swept back
by the saline wind as the boat sailed forward. The bell rings again,
and with a last look at Bartolome Island slowly being obscured by
distance and darkness, we descend into the ship´s interior...

*April 2, 8:30am
* Foot*
Nothing but my feet carried me up the pass. Nothing but determination
propelled me against the weight of gravity pressing against my 50-pound
backpack. The pass competed with the horizon above me, rising
impossibly high. Pausing for water, I looked down at the progress I´d
made. What I remembered only as labored breaths and carefully placed
footfalls were dozens of switchbacks winding their way past blue glacier
lakes and black cliffs slick with snow that threatened to creep its way under
my rain jacket...

*April 5, 2:00am
*Night Bus*
The second story of the bus swayed as it turned a corner. We careened
around bends invisible to me for the curtain drawn tight across the
bus´s glass windows. The hum of the engine drowned out the sounds of
its sleeping passenger´s rhythmic breathing. My assumption that we had
many hours left to go was instantly proven with the lit up numbers of
my watch. I closed my eyes and flipped over the complimentary,
scratchy pillow. I lazily shifted with the bus, wishing I had taken a
nap between classes in Huaraz...

*April 13, 10:30am
*Train*
It wasn´t until twenty minutes after we took off that the train
accelerated to a speed faster than a leisurely jog. Gazing out the
window and sipping Coca tea, I watched a woman sitting on a passing
train. Her eyes bright with excitement, she, and her fellow
passengers, fidgeted in their seats, eager to reach their destination.
I had just come from Machu Picchu, but unlike the fresh faces on the
passing train, I arrived to the magnificent Inca ruin unshowered and
with a four day trek´s worth of mud caked into the soles of my boots.
The trains parted once again and I sat back, enjoying the leisure of
not having to carry myself across this
distance...

*April 21, 1:30pm
*Horseback*
Tornado threw her head back impatiently, waiting for my cue. I
responded with a gentle tightening of the reins. Behind us, the rest
of the group picked their way down the hill. A great expanse of land
stretched before me, stretching from Cusco, glittering in the afternoon
sun and curving up to the Andes that rose above the ancient city.
Among farmhouses and
sheep-riddled fields lay Inca ruins squalid with time and isolated
by rope fences and prominent informative signs. Sensing others behind
me, I nudged Tornado on and we rode through the fields separating us
from the next site...

*April 26, 11:00am
*Bus*
My row-mate shifted her weight, stirring me from my light sleep.
Around me, the girls I now knew like sisters propped themselves up on
compressible pillows and fleece jackets. Some slept open-mouthed,
headphones fallen loose from their once-attentive ears. Others read,
their eyes flickering between pages, as the Peruvian countryside sped
by. A sign marked the kilometers remaining until the border. Unable to
resist the temptation of a nap, my eyelids fluttered closed. Soon my
passport would include the ink of a Bolivia stamp...

*April 30, 12:30pm
*Water Taxi*
The bus rocked to a stop. Shaken from my pensive window-gazing, I
registered the lack of road before its wheels. Instead, a thin section
of Lake Titicaca lay between us and the other side of the road.
Bridging the distance was not a bridge, but a ferry resembling an
over-sized version of a raft I built in 7th grade. Led to a water taxi,
another raft, this one smaller but with walls and benches, I watched
in barely masked horror as the heavy bus backed slowly onto rickety
planks and the ferry tipped dangerously to one side. I thought of my
backpack, deep inside the inaccessible bus, stuffed with the items that
had sustained me for the past three months. I had come to think of it
as my little portable home, the one constant and tangible piece of my
life, which always moving, drifting, shifting, traveling. Chugging by
in a cloud of diesel smoke, I shielded my eyes from the sight of the
physics-defying bus that crossed the lake as if it was a perfectly
normal occurrence. Two weeks from this moment, I would be boarding a
plane to the United States, leaving behind the continent that has
become my home. I smiled, wondering what I would do with all the space
in my closet.