Life is grand

Right now I am in a city that should not exist. It makes no sense that so many people live in a place that is so disconnected. There is no road out of here, only boats or planes. It is an island in the middle of land, an anomaly of sorts. The town burst with the rubber boom of the early 20th century, and since then, has only grown. The houses that were built in the rubber boom only attest to the fact that money was in the form of liquid that came from the trees... they can´t compare to houses anywhere else- elaborate stone work and facades covered in beautiful tiles that were probably brought over from Europe. Of course, after the rubber boom ended, all was left to decay and now many of the houses are abandoned or run-down. The rest of the city was built with the resources that were around- wooden houses with palm thatch rooves. There are almost no cars here, only motokars, or motorcycle tricycles that serve as taxis. There are a lot of unusual fruits and TONS of fish.

I arrived here on Thursday morning, after spending five days on a boat called Tuky. The boat had three floors. The first was filled with cargo- anything from blocks of ice to pigs to bananas to furniture and building supplies. The second floor had a large room filled with about 70 people, with hammocks strung about everywhere (you just sleep and hang out in a hammock the whole trip), plus a kitchen that cooked for everyone and a large table and television that usually blasted loud music videos. The third floor had the helm, several cabins and another large room that was half full of cargo. I got a cabin, just since I had no where to put my cello and I was by myself. It cost $50 for five days, with three meals a day... a hammock spot costs $25. The trip was incredible. We stopped in small villages along the way to unload ice, which the fishermen use to store the fish they catch until another boat comes by to buy it (most of the villages had no electricity). The boat also unloaded things, and sometimes picked up bananas or animals to take to the city. Every day, I saw tons of pink river dolphins (bufeos) and lots of really cool birds. The people on the boat were really nice too. I wish that everyone could take this trip at some point, there really are no words to describe it. Here are a few pictures in a feeble attempt to do it some justice.

Logging. Makes me never want to use any tree products ever again. Huge sections of the rainforest, CLEARCUT and nobody bothers to reforest:

A phenomenal sunset EVERY night:

Did I ever mention that I love my life?

Typical houses in the Amazon:

This was somebody´s big oops... might have to do with the depth finders on the boat. They can´t use regular depth finders because there are too many fallen trees and branches in the water, so they have a rope hanging off the side of the boat with knots on it and a weight on the end that they drop into the water. They also have a dingy that goes ahead of the boat with a large stick that they measure the depth with. High tech. As you can tell, accidents happen. This boat will sit here for three months until the rainy season begins again and the river rises. (The difference in water level between rainy season and dry season is about 16 FEET!)

People come in their dug out canoes to the small villages to stock up on supplies and sell their fish and fruit.

And watermelons... in one village the boat was bombarded with people selling watermelons, including this kid who got tired:

Village along the way:

Dropping off blocks of ice for the town to store their fish. This was incredibly surreal.

Another boat in port... check out the hammocks on the third floor. (I think the picture gets bigger if you click on it!)

Kids in a port town:

My favorite crew guys:

They let me drive the boat!

Some times the weather changed from this...

to this, in ten minutes. Impressive walls of rain:

And then back to this at the end of the day:

Arriving to Iquitos. It was a zoo.

Some street art in Iquitos. ¨Time is not gold. Time is art. We are in the street.¨

Bob, an Australian friend that I made on the boat, who is traveling around South America on a bike, decided that it would be a good idea to try to hijack a motorkar. In the back is an Argentinian friend, Luis, who I knew from Cusco and ran into here on the street. On his right is Juan, who is from Korea and lives in his hotel here. We had a great night out on the town and then a trip to the zoo/lake/beach the next day.

Typical floating houses in Iquitos:

Tomorrow I will be getting on a boat that transports fish, which will take me three days to the triple border- Peru, Colombia, Brazil!

Changing gears

After the orchestra trip to Arequipa, it has been a whirlwind of a week, saying goodbyes, finishing projects, and preparing for the transcontinental journey that has officially begun (I´m approximately in mile 600 of 3,000). In Cusco, I had going-away parties with friends from the orchestra and with the guys from my band, and then random meals, cups of coffee and encounters with other friends. It was hard to leave Cusco, it´s always been hard for me to leave Cusco, but it will still be there when I return.

One exciting thing did happen before I left for Arequipa. I went to have a cup of coffee in my favorite cafe (in my opinion, it´s the best cup of coffee in all of South America, with little competition) and as usual, the cafe was full so I sat at a table with some random people. Soon I heard them talking about a friend of mine, Jimbo, and I butted into their conversation. As it turns out, they were trying to get ahold of him, but lost his phone number. I gave them his phone number and we continued to talk. As it turns out, I was sitting at the table of a Brazilian artist, Zenildo Barreto, who had an exposition in the street for the past month and was trying to put together the final details for the closing ceremony, which would also include the burning of a tree in the middle of the street. His work is in protest of the destruction of the Amazon and deforestation in general. They invited me to play a small concert in the closing ceremony, with one piece to be chosen to perform together with a Russian ballerina who is living in Cusco. It ended up being a great concert, I played the prelude from the Bach Suite No. 3, Piatti Caprice No. 9, several movements from the Muczinsky Gallery for Cello Solo and the third movement from the Cassado Suite for Solo Cello. It was great to play a concert in the middle of an important pedestrian street, amplified, and to see all the people who probably wouldn´t have gone to hear a classical recital, but stopped to hear me play.

From Cusco, I traveled to Lima, where I arrived in the middle of the 9th International Chamber Music Festival. I saw two great recitals with Peruvian and American musicians (Joshua Roman and Alexis Sykes) that were fabulous. Among the pieces I heard was the Shostakovich Cello Sonata, Dvorak Piano Quintet, Franck Violin Sonata and Puneña by Ginastera (for cello solo). I also met up with several friends from previous travels... Mauricio, a good friend that I met in Cusco in 2001, also a good friend of my dad´s, a Colombian friend Alexander who I met last year, and my friend Dante, who is an important percussionist in the Peruvian music scene, who I met in a festival in 2006. My friend Alexander brought a bunch of amber from Colombia, and I was able to get some really nice pieces from him that I will make into jewelry. A couple of the pieces have insects and one even has a cricket that looks like it is chasing a fly!

Yesterday afternoon I got on a bus for Pucallpa. The trip was insane. After the first 4 hours, the pavement ended and the condition of the dirt road was really bad. The bus driver did not let that slow him down and he drove like a maniac the whole way. It only took us 16 hours, when it should have taken 18, but I couldn´t sleep a bit because it felt like I was on a bad rollercoaster the whole time. Several times an hour, I flew out of my seat... and that was with my seat belt on!!! My poor cello was buckled up too, but the only way to buckly it up meant that it constantly collided into me! Just part of the adventure! Now I am in Pucallpa, Peru, a small town in the Amazon. Actually, I am staying in a smaller village that is next to Pucallpa and is called Laguna Yarinacocha, for the big lake that it is on. Life is a lot different here than the rest of Peru. Most of the houses are built of wood, as opposed to mud and stick or brick, and many of them are on stilts. The main form of transportation is moto-car, which is a tricycle-motorcyle taxi. This means things are pretty loud all the time, but I suppose it´s more efficient than cars. As usual I have taken my proactive approach to getting food poisoning, which means that I try everything weird and unusual right off the bat, that way if my stomach decides to hate something, it can get over it quickly. So far, I´ve tried a whole bunch of fruit juices, of which I have no idea what most of the fruits look like or even are called, but they are GOOD and I am THIRSTY! I also tried some ceviche made with a white fish from the lake, which I also can´t remember the name of. So far, so good with the stomach. Hopefully no problems develop!

That´s how things are in a nutshell. The day after tomorrow I will probably leave on a boat for Iquitos. First I must buy a hammock and some food and water provisions, as I have been warned that the food on the boat isn´t vegetarian friendly. But for the price, I can´t complain- four days on a boat, with 3 meals a day, only $25. It sure won´t be Princess Cruiseline though! Then I have to start thinking in Portuguese, as I will be entering Brazil in the next 10 days!

Several photos from the last couple weeks

Quillabamba, Peru... ¨brow of the jungle,¨ where the jungle meets the mountains. On my first tour with the orchestra:
A cool tree with a hair cut, in the main square (Plaza de Armas) of Quillabamba:

A view of Cusco main square, picture taken from around the corner from my house:

In Siete Culebras alley, with friends from the orchestra, plus Johann, a very good Peruvian cellist who lives and plays in Germany, who gave me a very good cello lesson! This was after we went out for a bottle of pisco in one of the nicest restaurants in Cusco. (Pol- principal violinist, Johann, Theo- conductor of the orchestra, me, Francisco- principal cellist, my stand partner)

A view from the roof of our hotel in Arequipa, on my second tour with the orchestra to play in the National Orchestra Festival, in the Cathedral of Arequipa:

The organ in the Cathdral of Arequipa, WOW! The Arequipan men love to brag that they have the largest organ in Peru, hahaa.

Inside La Compania de Jesus Church in Arequipa, a very elaborate altar:

Stopping for a drink after sight-seeing in Arequipa, together with Pepe, the guest cellist in the concert and a friend of Theo and Fernando from the Conservatory in Lima. We had to try the local beer, Arequipena, but decided that the beer from Cusco, Cusquena, was better:

The mayor of Arequipa gave us a bus to go sight-seeing around town, which included going to a lot of ¨look-outs¨ which were very scenic:

Some orchestra folk, with Misti volcano in the background (Pol- concertmaster, Theo- conductor, Fernando- violin, me, Francisco- cello, Yuset- cello, Cristian- violin):

The orchestra (minus a couple people who went to visit their families in Arequipa):

Another cool church- they build with a lot of volcanic stone and pumice:

A view from another one of the look-outs that they took us to. This one was really tall:

Yuset and I being goofy:

It´s funny to think that I only planned on staying in Cusco for two weeks, and it´s been over a month now. Normal, really, for me.

Of course, life here continues to be interesting. The little things, really, make Cusco so interesting. Just take, for example, the customs in a restaurant or cafe. Say I show up to eat lunch and all the tables are occupied. Rather than stand and wait for a table, you just sit in an empty seat at someone else´s table. Right away you meet someone new and strike up a conversation. Sometimes, you keep running into that person in the same restaurant and you sit together a couple days a week. It sounds like such a simple thing, but it´s something that never happens in the States, or maybe I just go to the wrong restaurants. It´s a beautiful thing though.

With the orchestra, we took a trip to Quillabamba, a town eight hours away on the ´´brow´´ of the jungle (in other words, it´s the jungle and the mountains together) to play a concert for the town´s birthday. We took two buses and the orchestra sponsors put us up in a nice hotel and took us out for all of our meals. The afternoon after our concert, we went to a place alongside the river that has several pools and small restaurants in the forest. A beautiful place to relax and enjoy the warm weather after several weeks of cold in Cusco. I was also able to get to know better some of the people in the orchestra. On the way back to Cusco, the percussionists took a LOT of beer on our bus and created a big orchestra party. It was pretty comical. Since then, we played a big concert here in Cusco in the Municipal Theater. The concert was for the Peruvian Independence Day, and so we played music that represented many different parts of Peru. There were two songs with very good soloists (singers) and one song that featured four dancers (dancing the ´´marinera,´´ the official dance of Peru). The costumes and dances were beautiful! After that, several of the string players, including myself, got contracted to play in the back-up orchestra for a well known group. It was interesting, to say the least... disorganized, bad arrangements of the music, and the guy who was supposed to ´´conduct´´ us had no idea what he was doing. We are still laughing about the experience.

I´ve also been running a small theater for the past two weeks. My neighbor at the house, Fernando, has been running the theater since February and recently took a trip to Argentina, so I offered to fill in for him. This month has a theme of Spanish movies, so I showed two movies that had to do with the Spanish Civil War. Before the movies, I added my own touch by putting on DVDs of jazz concerts.

There is an ongoing joke in my band that I am from Cajamarca, a city in the north of Peru where there are more light-skinned people. The immigration police have been going after foreign musicians who are playing in bars and making money. They deported a band of Mexicans as well as a couple of Argentinians. So when the guitar player in my band presents everyone, he always presents me as the girl from Cajamarca. So far, thankfully, the immigration police haven´t come after me! I did manage to celebrate Peruvian Independence Day. I went to my favorite restaurant/bar where some friends were playing music. I sat in with them on a few songs and drank some pisco sours (pisco is like a vodka made from grapes, which they blend with lime, ice and an egg). It was funny for me to realize that in the past ten years, I haven´t been in the states for a single July4th, but I have been in Peru during four Peruvian Independence Days!

The past two nights, I have been fortunate enough to see a REALLY good band play. They are a sextet that plays Afro-Peruvian Jazz, lead by a trumpet player named Gabriel Alegria who teaches somewhere in the states. Both shows were phenomenal, all of the musicians are unreal, and one of the percussionists even took tap-dancing solos which were incredible. I recommend that everyone look up this group and listen to their music to get an idea of what Afro-Peruvian music entails...

Within the next ten days or so, I will be leaving towards Brasil. Now I must decide which route to take and pack up somehow the things I have acquired here to leave with a friend until I return.