Going up and coming down in the Andes

The Maipo Canyon, El Cajon del Maipo may be most famous for its place on the label of Concha y Toro wine bottles, but it was also an ideal place to spend our first week in Chile. Descending from dramatic 6,000 meter peaks through myriad rock formations and compositions to chaparral valleys and vineyards, the Maipo river defines and has created this marvel at the southeastern stretch of Santiago. Chile is often only around 200 Km wide, the “Long-Thin Country” as Pablo Neruda put it without his usual poetry, and is one of the few places in the world where you can literally be standing on glaciers in the morning and surfing in the afternoon. The top of the Maipo Canyon is a short and beautiful ride 2 hours outside of town, past some of the most accessible rock climbing in the country to the town of Baños Morales, a sleepy mountain town with a mix of cowboys, oddly placed Swiss-style chalets and green fields with grazing sheep. From here to the beaches of Viña del Mar would be around 4 hours. So as for orientation, that should get you here from wherever you are, should be able to place all of us geographically in this edge of the world, and having journeyed with us to the airport where Alejandro (un buen amigo Chileno) picked us up and sped us up the canyon before even having a chance to wave at Santiago we all find ourselves (yes, you reading this too) in the mountains and camped in the High Andes which are below the Southern Cross 30 hours after leaving Denver; are you with us?

So, in the Cajon, on the glaciers and in the presence of such massive mountains, the mind begins to wander, fears creep in, humility takes a strong hold and expectations that were put in place years ago slowly begin to wane. It is time to listen. These are the mountains of my childhood reading articles on climbers, reading book s like Banner in the Sky and imagining myself occasionally in these places, on these glaciers and slopes. And speaking of glaciers, oh sure, they are retreating at a sad and rapid rate but damn they are still big around here. The first lesson is in scale, which, as with all of the world’s great mountain ranges, is humbling. It’s hard to contemplate, hard to gain perspective, but rises that should be easy climbs are actually mountains in their own right; it’s the “mountains beyond mountains” that we’re after but to get there, remember, we must climb mountains. And they are MOUNTAINS, placed in Colorado these would be the range’s landmarks, but here they are simply foothills and guardians of the further mountains. Thus the humility, and true blessing to have the opportunity to be smacked and intimidated by natural forces.

The South Face of El Morado was our first intent and we were swiftly stymied by doubt and prudence, two healthy bits of our conscience we are trying to ride with on this trip. We decided to stay in Central Chile before heading to Patagonia in an attempt to have some sunny days in the mountains in case our time down south is tent-bound. Well, our time in the Cajon was largely tent-bound as well, as we watched black clouds come from the coast and shadow the menacingly black 600-meter south face (notorious for poor rock) and the darkness of the whole scene made us doubt our ability to safely move up it with an impending storm. And so the day consisted of a 3:30 wake up – a climb up to the base of the South Face – a (mis)assessment of the weather – decision to turn back – climb up one of the “mountains before the mountains” – 3 hour nap in the tent – attempt to climb up an easier route on El Morado – being blocked by an 8-meter wide and 10-meter high crevasse – another decision to go down to the tent – a final decision to go all the way back to Baños Morales – a bottle of wine (that we had actually carried with us to our base camp hoped to drink after our climb) in town and an excellent-night’s sleep in a soft and u-shaped bed.

Salud.

We left with a whole load of health and well-learned lessons on the Andes, what moves them and what moves us in them. I write this from Bariloche, Argentina, where we have stopped in our journey south after descending from the Maipo. We are at the cusp of Patagonia, but not Butch Cassidy’s Patagonia, this one is one of t-shirt and chocolate shops, of night cubs and fine Argentine cuisine. While much of the isolation has been paved out of Patagonia, it is still inevitable that time here be an adventure. As you sit looking across a white-capped lake with wind-ripped clouds and vast peaks and then turn around to see the vast pampas with cows, cowboys and bunch grass, wind-swept desolation and smoky barbecues, the magic of Patagonia still hits you. Or, stop sitting and move into the end of the world, the Patagonia of metaphor and myth, move into it, far up into it, to the granite peaks that rip a giant gash into the visual fabric of the world.

Here we go . . .

along with everyone else, from Israel to Sweden to the US and Australia. We’ll chase these wild places while we can.

An Illness and a Cure: Finding Peace in La Paz

Losing It, Finding It, and Peace
Every so often in his explorations Agapito had sudden outpourings of tears. They were more frequent when he was alone and most frequent when he was happy. They were moments of release, moments of ecstasy, moments where his body grew to be the body of the Earth. Some moments his body was the Earth expanded to be the body of the Universe before dissolving to nothing like honey in tea, at which times he would shudder, close his eyes and mumble, “My God, My God.”

He had such an occasion when he arrived at the shore of the Rio Pata Tuichi in Madidi, Bolivia. Upon concluding the mystical outpouring Agapito left his backpack, machete and residual bits of fear on the Western shore of the river and dove in to the rainforest-warm water. The current was swift and he was a Taurus, making for questionable swimming abilities and so the Tuichi carried him down. The river and its many rocks knocked Agapito unconscious within 100 meters. His journey from there to where he was found 100 kilometers further in Rurrenabaque was undocumented except by God who still processed his persistent nerve-synapses.

Whatever happened in his unconscious travel, some said that it must not have been too bad because he was washed ashore with a smile on his face, an erection and the claim, “God and her milk have been good to me!”

At this point Agapito broke into a sweat and the rash enveloped his body. The heat from the rash became unbearable and his fever elevated to 102 for three days. He was put in a jeep and carried directly 15 hours to La Paz, “The Peace”.

In La Paz Agapito had the chauffer drop him off on Sagarnaca where it was rumored that a great Kallawaya named Don Iberio kept a clinic. A single inquiry to a toothless Aymara woman was fruitful. She would not tell them the whereabouts of the clinic, however, until Agapito bought the shirt off her back, literally.

Arriving at the clinic, Don Iberio already had Agapito’s cards and coca leaves laid out on the table with a grin that spoke of expectation. For his rash Don Iberio recommended honey to be applied generously and frequently to all afflicted areas as an immediate remedy while he concocted the healing tea. The sugar of the honey would be cooling to the heat of the rash. In this time he stayed in his hostel naked with a fan blowing directly between his legs in attempt to cool himself.

In Agapito’s cards, Don Iberio read that he had been invaded by evil winds that were now passing, and in the coca leaves he read that Agapito was looking for a love. When told he would be married within the year, Agapito figured he should set to finding a beautiful woman to be his partner. As we shall see below, his search for love and his marriage there-to would be of a much different nature.

On the third day of drinking it, the healing tea drove Agapito to delirium. He fell into what seemed like a dream. Draped in his white sheet he began to float above his bed. The roof disappeared and his ascension went unimpeded higher into the atmosphere. He noticed that as he rose, a giant tower with a flashing red light at the top was rising in pace with him. At the upper extent of the stratosphere the tower stopped growing while Agapito continued into the blackness of space. He cart wheeled upside down and looked back at earth with the flashing light keeping pace to his breath. In an instant, and not because of Agapito’s lucid-will, he was pulled back to earth and began to tumble beside the tower.

His fall accelerated with the increased gravity but the Earth remained at a suspended distance so that his fall became more of a flight. He could not dictate his trajectory but was definitely not pulled straight down by gravity. At times he would drift right or left and at other times he would cut sharp 90-degree turns into the clouds. The Earth kept its distance.

With one final jerk, the Earth pulled heavy on Agapito’s body and he plummeted toward the ocean. As he entered he made no splash. It was a transition from one medium to another, more similar to a person finding the atmosphere increase in density as they move from the mountains to the lowlands.

He swam to the sandy bottom and landed akimbo next to a bubble-mouthed 100-year old leatherback sea turtle. Agapito slowly fell onto his back with a force that initiated a somersault backward and buried him in the sand. The sand washed over him and the gentle sway of the ocean bottom slid the sand side to side. The turtle let out a large bubble and waddled over to him. At that time Agapito could no longer see his body, and when the turtle dug its nose into the sand to release him, only the dust of his bones were released and immediately dissolved into the water.

Agapito no longer had a body. In a strange sensation, there was a field similarly corporeal that encompassed what was left of his existence. The focus of his being at this point, however, was a ball of white light about the size of an orange that sat in his absent chest cavity. This remnant light recoiled into the sand and then shot upward, breaking the surface of the water again without drama and landing on a boardwalk on a popular beach.

It may have been California, Mexico or Cuba, but also could have been Thailand, India, Tunisia or Alaska. The people on the boardwalk were featureless, emotionless and alone. For all the masses scattered along the shore and on the boardwalk, they were alone. His light penetrated the heart of the crowd and not a single face turned. He walked along the boardwalk, away from the shore and moved back onto the land. As he moved people began to give gentle nods, acknowledging smiles and occasional laughter. Their faces would light up and their posture would straighten.

From then on his white ball of light moved agelessly through the world at chest-height. And those that heard of this phenomenon began to call it “Agapito”. For example, you could hear the man Heinrich in Switzerland turn to his wife after a walk into the mountains, “Ahh, I had the most beautiful Agapito today by the lake!” It meant a momentary appreciation, a glimpse of eternity and an acceptance of reality.

He found Don Iberio as he hovered through The Peace one last time and they exchanged acknowledging smiles and a piercing cosmic laugh. Agapito could hear Don Iberio continue the laugh as he hovered his way over to Sao Paulo.

The word was absorbed into the World’s language with a quite literal connotation from the Greek word “agape” and the Spanish diminutive:

A little bit of GOD’S love.

The Amazon by Foot

Into a Womb and Onto a Shoulder

Agapito, by this time, was unstoppable. He did not stop to eat or blink, his eyes began to dry. He brushed his teeth with coca leaves and strolled up and down the cobblestone streets of the nation’s capital laughing his awful new laugh.

He set north with a machete to the mysterious Apolobamba Mountains, abode of the acclaimed Kallawaya medicine men and the most remote corner of the High Andes. The Kallawaya spoke a language of their own, neither Quechua nor Aymara, and claimed the language to descend from the ancient Tiahuanaco of Lake Titicaca. They used this language solely for medicine which involved knowledge of over 1,000 healing herbs collected from the mountains from Argentina to Ecuador and down to the Amazon basin. They were known to wander thousands of miles on trails they had built carrying only a small herb-satchel.

Due to their proximity to the jungle, the Apolobamba Mountains are in a perpetual fog. Agapito walked into this foggy world from Curva, at the southern extent of the range, and did not emerge for 6 days. He walked on a Kallawaya trail that brought him over icy 5,000 meter passes, catching glimpses of native villages that emerged from the mist for an instant only to be engulfed the next. He met colorful figures on the trail, mules, llamas and children. They would emerge and then vanish back into the cloud. For six days figures, places, shapes, trees, rocks and entire mountains would emerge and disappear, like a microcosmic display of the macrocosmic dance between form and space, creation and destruction—manifestation from the white void and subsequent dissolution, a sort of womb.

Out of this womb, six days later, Agapito emerged on a gentle shoulder. Dusk was approaching and the fog around him began to lift. Slowly, larger forms appeared: first the trail stretching out in front, then the slope down the valley to his left, then a river below. As his eyes followed the river to the darkness creeping in from the East, he saw the Amazon basin of Madidi National Park stretching to the horizon: the Amazon born from a damp womb in the heights of The Apolobamba.

The Amazon: Happy with Life, Happy with Death
The transition from the Apolobamba to Madidi in Bolivia is the most biodiverse place in the world, period. It is one of the most beautiful and terrifying place in the world dancing between two opposing poles as all this world does. The extreme poles of the Amazon allow for myriad creations to move within the poles. Madidi is home to the most spectacular life forms and the most frightening methods and quantities of death: bountiful life demands a consumptive feast. Sometimes it was only the beauty and blessing of the place that was in him, other times he was absorbed by pain and fear.

There in Madidi landscapes and mindscapes raced past, and the visual and mental horizons were right in front of his face, cut further by his machete: strangler fig, fern, leaf-cutters, pigs, waterfall, bees, slender yellow snakes, blue-morpho butterflies, fear, inspiration and excess. Everything glittered in his immediate periphery.

As he descended from the mountains the trail began to fade, consumed by the thickening jungle. After three days of stone trails through cloud forest and highland jungle, his path vanished.

Chew your coca. Now move!

Cut, run, slah, duck, dart, snag, rip, sweat, drip, snap, ouch.

Somewhere along the way, a bug peed on him. The urine became a rash. The urine! Agapito’s elbow began to itch, and his waist, and his wrist. He sweated in the heat, and the itch worsened. He dove into a river and showered in a waterfall, cooling the rash.

Ghost Towns, God’s Movie, and a Good Life
Agapito followed no trail for three days straight and in that time stumbled through a half-dozen villages enclosed within the jungle. His rash worsened. He met people pressing sugar cane and picking bananas—he met people that did not know the name of their country—he met a man living in the branches of a ceiba tree and another living in the roots—he met one woman that loved living in the jungle and met a child who didn’t. He spent the majority of his days on a strict diet of coca leaves, coca tea and bananas. Agapito could not stop to eat because as soon as he would stop bees swarmed and stung until he moved again. When he set up his tent at night they stung until he could get his mosquito net set and dive inside.

His skin boiled and his eyes would still not blink yet he was composed. He developed streaks of white hair with each frightening turn he made yet he smiled. These were all signs of his new insight. His perception once moved up into a tree where he swung from branch to branch transformed into a child. At the same time he saw himself as an old man moving slowly through the same jungle. He began to realize that he was not simply exploring the jungle.

Agapito wondered about throwing himself into such desperate situations and the benefit of this behavior to humanity. He had a thought that humans and all other animate and inanimate objects and all their perceptions may be a sensory recorder for God as God attempts to know God. So all possibilities of the world must be explored by creation. This makes some people go to war, other become explorers, others simply fuck their whole lives, while still others despair their whole lives in melodramatic displays. All extremes of sensation and experience made God’s movie that allowed God to understand just what God was. Eyes provided the sight and other sensations such as bee stings, itches, loud noises, bitter tastes, heartbreak, and stubbed toes provide subtler sub-plots to this movie. This is the point of the billions of eyes and infinite nerve connections as well as the myriad macro and micro organisms and non-organisms that are manifest from the jungle-consciousness of God. As Agapito saw and felt these things of the Amazon he reasoned God was happy because now God knew that they existed and—since everything that exists (and doesn’t exist for that matter) is God—this new knowledge gave God a deeper understanding of God. As God grew to know God better, the World was fulfilling its purpose, which was good.

“This,” cried Agapito at the jaguar that was whistling to his South, “was why Geronimo had to fly!” He was almost right.

Agapito laughed his new laugh and a tremor was set in the ground in front of him. As this tremor moved forward he noticed a trail opening in front of him, and as he laughed more the trail was cut further. This continued until the forest opened into the mighty Pata Tuichi and Agapito saw his laugh create a wave that rippled out across the river. He stopped laughing and sat down on the bank and he knew this journey was not coming to an end. On the other side of the river began a road that he could walk to Apolo, from where a shuttle could carry him to La Paz.

Viracocha, Thunupa and Altiplano Magic

God and Her Milky Nipples
On the northern shore of the flat could be seen the cone of Thunupa, wandering mountain goddess of Aymara mythology who was blessed with beauty and magic, finding a home here in the middle of the Altiplano after being impregnated by Huayna Potosi. It was on the northern shore of the present day salt lake that she spilt her motherly milk and inundated the land around her, creating the Uyuni and Coipasa Salt Lakes. Agapito and Pimiento were walking on Goddess Milk, wondering if remnants of this same milk hadn’t been swept up into the Milky Way creating that mystical lactic wisp.

They were shaken awake that night – after drifting off to sleep with dreams of goddess nipples and swimming in bowls of maternal milk, lapping as they liked – by dampness in their sleeping bags and a sloshing all around them. The ground beneath them became liquid s they were lifted above the lake on the back of something great. The object began to take shape and they realized it was a reed-boat like those used on Lake Titicaca. A solitary man was at the helm. He commanded the two groggy-gringos to help him raise the sail. Their sleeping bags were soaked, smelling of raw milk and they realized now that the boat had risen from the lake and was floating on the very stuff they were only minutes before sleeping on. They were flustered.

The man stopped what he was doing and stomped over to them infuriated by their paralysis. Did they not know who he was? As the man approached, Agapito hurriedly dug around inside his bag for the fetus, the rigid, sparsely furred little fetus that the woman had handed him two days before. The man grabbed the emaciated leg of the thing and accepted the offering before him. Without hesitation he laughed as he snatched the fetus and began to dance around the boat. He even set the fetus down, jumped overboard and began to flop in the milky lake. Agapito swore he heard the same laugh from the sun a few days earlier.

As he crawled aboard he said in perfect English, extending his hand for a shake, “I am Viracocha. You’ve met my brother, Quetzalcoatl? Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

“Oh shit,” Agapito and Pimiento replied simultaneously.

“Oh no, please don’t fear. Yes I am a God, well, actually THE God around these parts. Many people are afraid of me but my way is peace I assure you. And, I guess you may be afraid of the fact that my very being here precedes the End Of The World. I am here now, waiting for the waters to rise so I may set sail again. Years are running short, you know? The world should be prepared for it now. We left them plenty of wisdom and prophecies. Humans have gained the wisdom, right? Say, that reminds me of one time when I was in Giza and I said to this guy Ra . . .”

In pre-Incan mythology Viracocha had played the same role that Quetzalcoatl played in Mayan and Aztec: a wise civilizer, a stonemason and a healer. He too was chased off by an evil God after building Macchu Picchu and Tihuanaco with the prophecy he would return. He spoke with a convincing boom.

Agapito and Pimiento looked at each other, let out a scream and jumped overboard, swimming frantically toward the shore of the lake. Agapito heard that same booming laugh and this time Pimiento heard it too. They saw the ship sailing off toward Thunupa and they swam panicked in the opposite direction.

In the next instant they found themselves flopping about on the hard surface of the salt lake in the middle of their camp with their donkeys nowhere to be seen. The moon was full and their hair and clothes were drenched and white, but the ground was solid.

They stayed awake the remainder of the night and packed up their camp in the morning, fitting what they could into their backpacks. Leaving much of the food and climbing gear, they walked toward Thunupa but veered far west. After two weeks of journeying they landed on the northwestern shore of the Coipasa salt lake in the town of Pisiga. Pimiento left the next day for Colorado.

Bolivia and the Altiplano

The Fire of Love and the Love of Fire
The following year, in a pilgrimage to the site in the middle of the Mexican desert, Agapito asked humbly into the fire that was burning entire agave plants, “Just what is meant by love and passion?”

As the fire dwindled to flickering coals, a large coal that was shaped like a heart replied, “Love without fire is cold, fire without love is scalding.” That morning, the scalding sun rose in the house of the peyote daemon Mescalito and singed his puffy green eyes.

Donkeys 101, Laughter and Other Facts of Everyday Life
It was these experiences that led Agapito to Bolivia the following year. He was in San Juan near the Chilean border with his amigo Pimiento, with an ambitious plan to traverse 500 kilometers across the altiplano to “Learn about earth, horizons, the significance of the flying body and just what the hell the fire-heart was talking about.”

Agapito and Pimiento kept open their satchels of coca leaves and simultaneously removed the stems, chewed the leaves and smiled. Oh, the magic green mystery of the Andes that turns white as it moves north—revered for thousands of years, now banned by the very same culture that consume its ugliest face: cocaine. The ticket to American law school and Hollywood super-stardom, the dust that Freud blew into modern psychology, the secret of a Coca-Cola world. For Agapito and Pimiento’s sake they were in no way interested in cocaine. They were interested in coca, the mild herb that is gummed by mine-workers and gringo mountaineers alike.

San Juan was a clay and thatch village at the southern end of the Uyuni Salt Lake in Southwestern Bolivia, the largest in the world. Just outside San Juan they stumbled upon the necropolis of the Lipez people that had populated the land in the 1200’s C.E., 200 years before the Inca arrived; mummies were found buried beneath limestone tufts along with ceramics and llama-wool weavings. It was here, recognizing that the bodies were facing west (a fact actually explained by the toothless and coca-crazed Aymara man that watched over the grounds) that Agapito began to understand death and its relation to the movement of the heavens: for to gaze at the horizon as the sun sets is to experience death each day. This is what the Lipez people hoped would guide their deceased into the afterworld: the sun in its daily death on the western horizon.

Agapito stood in the crepuscular stillness, smiling with bits of green leaves stuck between his teeth and turned to Pimiento, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Pimiento replied.

“Laughter, or kind of like a giddy scream like the ones I’d make as a kid when I’d get to the top of a rollercoaster,” he explained.

“No, I didn’t hear that. Is there an amusement park around here?” They looked around the desolate desert at the roof of the Americas. They counted seventy-two llamas, 108 thatch roofs, twenty-one colorful dresses and infinite space. No amusement park.

“It wasn’t an amusement park,” Agapito affirmed, “unless the sun carries some sort of amusement park on its fiery back. So I really think it was the SUN that was laughing! I think the whole universe heard it.”

“You’re nuts,” Pimiento complained, “let’s get to bed, we’ve got some burros to buy tomorrow bright and early.” Agapito smiled.

The night was filled with menacing thunder and in the not-so-bright but early morning they hopped on a pair of shoddy local mountain-bikes and headed to the neighboring town of Santiago where they hoped to buy three burros.

The first time Agapito went through the Altiplano on a tour four years earlier, he was amazed that they were fed quinoa, the hearty and healthy grain that was gaining popularity in health food stores across the U.S. He thought it was a special exotic vegetarian meal for tourists. His Aymara guide snarled to him that for three thousand years they ate quinoa with potatoes “every maldito day, you ignorant prick.”

Now he knew the truth about quinoa and noticed it growing ubiquitously on the plains below the potato fields that could be found in rock-walled plots through the hills. The combination of quinoa, potatoes, llamas and coca allowed life to thrive at over 15,000 feet. It could be said that the flower of quinoa, growing from a man’s chin, might resemble the bearded god Viracocha, patriarchal God of the Aymara and Incas, father of Pachamama. We will meet with him later, but for now must focus intently on the fact that quinoa and potatoes are carried to this day from fields to towns on the backs of the burros that Agapito and Pimiento were purchasing. Their backs were rubbed raw from the tons of harvest they would move each year from the lofty slopes. To remedy the chafing, locals apply llama lard to the affected area. Agapito and Pimiento knew they had strong burros by how severely their backs had been chafed.

As they loaded their gear, locals asked what they used those sharp points (ice axes and crampons and such) for. They replied with a spit of green saliva, “To measure the stars.” They were sincere too—what else would alpinists do on the steepest, highest and most terrifying pyramids of the world?

The Burden of the Beasts
“One thing to remember, a word to all aspiring donkey wrangler,” counseled Pimiento through the muffle of his coca wad in the plaza of San Pedro, the first town they came to after hiking 45 kilometers, “is that burros are real animals! They need food, rest and companionship just as we do. Treat your beasts of burden well lest your hearts be filled with the burden of the beasts!” The people of that town and almost the entire The Altiplano spoke not a word of Spanish, let alone English, yet they understood.

One short and squatty young lady with a bowler hat, an apron with pink roses, and a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt, walked up and handed a llama fetus to Agapito. “Please give this to Viracocha when you see him,” she pleaded in Aymara. She smiled with two solitary gold teeth in her mouth and a long coca stem protruding from between them. Agapito understood not a word but would know what to do when the time came.

Leaving San Pedro the next day Agapito and Pimiento began to break the boundaries of civilization and peacefully live outside of time. They headed directly across the flat, bleached-white expanse of the Uyuni Salt Lake, 100 km wide—a dizzying spectacle of mirages and celestial landscapes. Agapito later described The Altiplano as “Nevada on steroids and peyote.” It had the desolation of that state but swollen to muscle-bound heights of over 20,000 feet with mountains, valleys and lakes of epic proportions. It was a twisted, warped and melting mineral landscape: bizarre long-necked camellids and oddly placed flamingos – like some kind of bio- and geological circus act. The center-stage of this extraordinary Altiplano circus was the Uyuni Salt Lake. It was the essence of purity, exemplifying whiteness. Horizons disappeared as they moved into its dish and their minds moved into equally hallucinogenic and boundless realms.

This story explained

So if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to interrupt this story, the one about Agapito and his forays south of the border. I need to give you some background about this story and the context for future blogs. These are actually nothing new, the posts I’ve made so far. They are a part of a short story originally published as “Diminutives of God’s Love” in Matter magazine, a local non-profit arts publication in Fort Collins Colorado. The publication is brilliant. Have a look at www.wolverinefarmpublishing.org. The stories thus far and the next few that I will be posting are from “Diminutives . . .”, and are based on a few years traveling through Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Belize and Bolivia, from around 2002 to 2005, and I just felt a need to get it out here, lay it down and let the future build on this. See, I’m heading to Chile and Argentina this Sunday and will have more stories from that but at least want to get this foundation before I do. There will be climbing stories for sure, the desolation of Patagonia, the icy summits and granite stones of the end of the world. Stay posted.

Cuba and Guatemala

Giving up the Bull
Three years ago, Agapito was alone on a pilgrimage to give up The Bull, and drop the weight of the Earth that he had shouldered for so long. His 1992 Ford Taurus sedan was the symbol of this burden.

He drove his Taurus to the navel of the Americas and tried to rid himself of it, both in Chiapas and Guatemala. He plied and pleaded and even offered to pay a Mayan woman in the highlands of the Cuchamatanes Mountains of Guatemala to take it. He tried to convince her that she would be able to drive her children to school and soccer practice. She looked at him amazed and sold him tortillas, mumbling “Hail Mary” in her Mam tongue. Agapito could never have imagined that she lived inside the goal of the soccer field and that her one living child had lost his feet to the war along with his father, three sisters and two brothers.

In San Ignacio, Belize the Taurus found a proper home with a cab driver who bought it as a gift for his large Afro-Belizean wife. She was tending the fryer when they met and responded to her husband’s gift, “Dat be kine, bootzo ah!” There the car must be to this day, with its name changed to “Too-razz” and Belican beer cans molded to the brake pad.

A Brief History of Cuba
Agapito took the money and bought a ticket to Cuba where he happened upon Fidel in the Plaza de la Revolucion. Fidel was a poet. He told him that Cuba was a ship in the Sea of Babylon, and that his forefathers founded Atlantis. He told him that he was the messiah and that he wears his beard to buffer the blinding light that permeates from his face, “so as not to frighten anybody.” Fidel told Agapito that he cuts up hand grenades to put with his cassava and uses cyanide as mouthwash. He lit a cigar.

“No shit?” Agapito replied.

He then pulled Agapito aside and pointed with his cigar to the silhouette of Che Guevara on the Department of Industry building that sits on the northern flank of the plaza next to his famous quote, “Hasta la victoria siempre!” Always to victory! “Che Guevara,” he whispered, “was a Taurus. Although a saint, he was not a savior. You know why?”

“No”

“He had no poetry!” Fidel shouted as a crowd of Germans scurried frightened to the far side of Jose Marti’s monument which stood as a phallic monolith reminiscent of Washington’s Monument, only Cuba’s icon was “terribly communist,” as then President L.B. Johnson proclaimed.

“No shit,” Agapito concurred.

“Che is dead. He left fire, but no poetry. He left ideas, but no melodies. He could never dance, and could barely swim,” Fidel finished, exhaling a plum of smoke.

Fidel then walked out across the waters of the Caribbean for an important meeting with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, “Down south.” When Fidel reached Hispañola he stopped and shouted back to the bewildered group of Germans gathered near Agapito, “At least Cubans can drink their OWN damn rum in their OWN damn country!” He was right. None in the group that witnessed this had any desire to ever visit the Dominican Republic or any other country that lived on its knees to imperialism.

For Agapito’s return from Cuba to Cancun, Fidel had commanded his Minister of Foreign Relations to allow him to ride on the spine of the sacred feathered serpent named Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl was a bearded and pale-skinned shape-shifter who had taught the ancient people of Central America art, architecture, math, agriculture and peace before fleeing from the Yucatan over three thousand years ago. He often shifted shape to a feathered serpent and left behind bewildered Teotihuacán, Olmec, Aztec and Mayan cultures to ponder his words, “I’ll be back” before he was chased off the coast of the Yucatan by an the evil god Tetzcaltipoca.
Cortez was mistaken for Quetzalcoatl and landed in the New World the exact date that had been prophesized for the God’s return, thus allowing him a swift upset in their invasion. Agapito realized that the feathered serpent is the trump that Cuba had up its sleeve! Rumor is they will reveal this secret to the world in 2012 on December 23rd: that Quetzalcoatl had tried to make it to Europe 3,000 years ago to teach the ways of true mathematics and peace, but had been hung up in modern-day Cuba where he fell in love with the women, created rum and cigars and invented salsa music. He was the devil in Fidel’s ear and if he had made it to Europe then they and their offspring would better understand peace. Agapito thanked him and promised, “I won’t tell anyone of this but will tell them your word.”

Desire

It was after a few years that the significance of the flying body became apparent to Agapito. It was not quite apparent as he followed donkeys 500 kilometers across the Bolivan Altiplano, but almost. It really began to show itself in the ensuing weeks that found him slashing his way into the Amazon alone with a machete. What solidified the significance of the flying body was his encounter with the Kallawaya medicine man in his back-alley clinic in downtown La Paz.

But before we put the donkey above the cargo, so to speak, we must give clarity to where the flying body came from and how it came to change Agapito’s life. It is not a story we will soon forget.

THE FLYING BODY AND THE ESSENCE OF DESIRE
A few days prior to the encounter with the flying body, Agapito called out to all things sacred from the middle of the Mexican desert that he be “shown clarity in all desires.” Fasting for twenty-one days gave him the gift of clairvoyance that was shared by his compadres Sencillo, Memo, Roberto and Don Genero. They waited in the middle of the desert until sunrise before returning to their camp inside El Potrero Chico (The Little Portal.)

They returned to the most violent rain and lightning storm that Don Imeñez – a local bandito and vaquero who tended the cattle in the camp – could “remember in 80 years inside the Potrero.” This followed the two weeks of crisp blue that had crowned the days prior to the pilgrimage to the middle of the desert. Thus, even before hearing about the flying body – with their newfound gifts of clairvoyance – Agapito was able to say to Don Genero upon their return, “There is a change coming.”
Don Genero looked at him pitifully and replied, “No shit.”

At that instant the sky was split by lightning and rain came in buckets to splatter the parched Mexican earth. Raindrops bounced like gymnasts off peyote buttons and the coyote didn’t leave his cave for three straight weeks. Not even to play a trick, he threw not even a yelp or an omen into the wet fabric of the world.

It was then that Sencillo learned from his amigo Don Miguel of the flying body. Their mutual friend Don Geronimo had set on an unintentional and ill-fated flight from the top of a mountain the day before; the same day that Agapito had asked that he be “shown clarity in his desires.”

The last time Sencillo had seen his friend was three years prior when Geronimo ran nine days through Venezuelan rainforest to get Sencillo and his two legs – shattered from a fall into a sinkhole – to a helicopter to bring him to a hospital. At that point Geronimo had no illusions of wings, but the two of them had climbed Angel Falls together and maybe then he got the idea he could fly.

Sencillo shared the story of his friend’s death to Agapito and Don Genero back at their camp. The three of them made their own teary rain to match the heavens’ and moaned repeatedly, “A change has come, a change has come again.” The rain persisted through the night, flooding them out of their tents and inside the car. They hunched and huddled and slept to the patter of rain on a cow’s back.

THE FUNERAL

The following morning their tears had cleared while the rain continued and Don Genero looked Sencillo up and down before blurting out, “You look like shit!” It was true, there was snot in his dreadlocks and his shirt had been left out all night to be shat on by a toro. He had a brown cow pie stain that looked like a cinnamon roll spiraling on his belly.
Sencillo smiled and replied insightfully, “Geronimo is dirty, I may as well empathize with his condition.” He hurried off to greet Geronimo’s family who had just arrived from Caracas.

Agapito and Don Genero went to dry out and have a cup of tea. While waiting to hear news of the funeral, Agapito commented that, “Something feminine is coming. First sun, now water. First activity, now reflection. We were five men, now comes the woman. Who else can give such nourishment?”

“No shit,” Don Genero responded just before Sencillo arrived with a new amiga Doña Amparo.

Agapito was enjoying his new gift, so he tried it again, “Next there will be 10 women!” [To this day he is waiting for that prophecy to be fulfilled.]

Agapito, Don Genero, Sencillo, Memo, Don Roberto and Doña Amparo journeyed across the middle of the desert and into the center of La Huasteca, the mountain home of the Huasteca natives. The funeral was at the mythological place of Huasteca creation. There the flying body that landed in death two days before would be sent flying again as the wind carried his ashes into the misty sky that dripped off the limestone ramparts. It was more a celebration than a drab epitaph. Friends and family members would share the gifts that Geronimo had given in life before creating an ear-splitting applause that resonated throughout the canyon walls.

Fiction and fact in this blog

I apologize, first off, that this blog does not fit the mold – does not really give what many travel blogs aim to give. I really hope to not sound pretentious. Truth be told, I was never really made to blog. I don’t like to write about myself directly. I’d rather do it indirectly, with added fiction. I don't want to just tell you what I’ve been up to and how it made me feel, and so that is not what I have set out to do. I don't expect you to care. It’s my inferior ego, my desire to be humble. I have fear of writing about myself, mainly it just doesn’t seem like my life is special enough to be documented in first person. If other folks want to write about me, in third person and find it interesting, have at it. Maybe I’ll write a memoir someday, or if things go really well, someone might find it worth their while to write a biography, about me. I enjoy reading other’s biographies. I also enjoy reading their memoirs, narratives and blogs. It’s just not me to create the same at this point, capiche?

I love to travel, and mostly love movement. I love movement and connecting to people, sharing and creating stories, and learn what this world’s all about and what I am doing in it. Stories in this blog take place all over and as I continue to travel they will take place in other parts of the world. Maybe some of them will take place in my local coffee shop here in Boulder, or at my parent’s house, but they will be seen and perceived by Agapito. Some will take place in the past, or the future. As for me, my name is Tim, another character – a medium sized, Midwest US-raised, Caucasian male that now lives mostly in Colorado – the one putting Agapito’s eye into words. And this blog is more about Agapito than about me, but somewhat about me, you know, stories and updates for friends, information for fellow adventurers, etc.

Agapito’s a character. Actually a real character – the name and the person were inspired by a donkey wrangler that taught my friend Pepper and me the ins and outs of wrangling that allowed us to walk with donkeys in the altiplano of Bolivia. That’s a true story. I mean, truth whatever, it was something I did with a friend. Most of the stories here are made up. I tried writing narratives, documenting things, and also writing pure fiction, and writing about myself in third person but all these approaches came up short. The tarot cards in the picture placed and read by a Kallawaya in La Paz gave birth to the Agapito of these tales.

I want magic, I want the magic that is present in the world to come through in words but not be limited to the factual. This is Agapito’s eye, what he allows. But I do, however, want this to be as informative as possible for folks wishing to travel so the blogs go back and forth. There’s a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I don’t know yet if this is the right medium for this, and I don’t want to be in a place of talking through the origins of the fiction. I don’t know if a blog can really get at it, but I’m giving it a try. Check back in a year or two to see if it’s working.

So, most of these will be stories. They revolve around Agapito. His stories are inspired by and typically include bits of my personal experience but that is mixed with magic and language and returned in the form of fictional stories. Even the purest fiction can’t be separated from experience so I try to let creativity inform my life and my life inform my creativity.

'Agapito' literally means, “a little bit of god’s love.” I see this as a fitting description of all humans, the way we sort of pop out of the world and then slowly are absorbed back into it. As if the entirety of this love, the love that gives life, is the ocean on which each of us little waves ride. So these stories are happening to Agapito as a sort of target at which small arrows of the truth about being human are shot. Those arrows are shot from various moments in my life, some hit the targets and others may hit the wall or fall to the ground. Neither of us may ever be able to tell the difference.

OK, enough metaphors.

Let’s get to it, to the stories and not the incessant justification. Agapito loves you all just as you may grow to love him.