Honeymoon Adventures IIX: A little perspective

The entire honeymoon in Peru was wonderful and memorable. But two days were truly unforgettable.
The first was Wednesday, July 23, the day Lynne and Matt visited the Shantytown. It was both humbling and inspiring. When people heard Lynne and Matt were going to Peru, there was always a few raised eyebrows. People had heard about Macchu Picchu, maybe Shining Path. To most people, Peru seemed like an odd choice for a honeymoon. Not very relaxing and not really romantic.
Wednesday was the kind of the day they were talking about: the group took a bus to the poorest part of Lima, the capital city in Peru. Not normal honeymoon behavior. And yet, it was one of the more rewarding experiences of Lynne and Matt's lives.
The day began at 7:30 a.m. when the new tour guide, Jose, took everyone to the fishing village along the ocean. Here, the absolute most poor fisherman head out to the ocean everyday, competing with pelicans for a bit to eat and bit to sell. Some of the fisherman snacked on their bait - small bugs that looked like grubs - rather than eat lunch during the day. Watching the fisherman try to eke out a living, Lynne and Matt felt the first twinges of voyeurism. Some people were friendly, willing to pose for pictures. Others shooed intruders away, or turned their backs on the Americans.
The people in the small fish market knew we weren't going to buy any fish, so they didn't much like us hanging around there. Although the tour group gave them a tip - and some of the fisherman were very friendly - Lynne and Matt couldn't help but feel a bit imperialistic, dropping in to see how the other half lives.
Near the fishing was a traditional market where everything from fresh fruit to soap to underwear was sold in a maze of tiny booths that were virtually indistinguishable from each other. Half of the market was closed because - just like in the U.S. - a megamart down the street had undercut their prices and was much more convenient for shoppers. Although this scenario plays itself out in the U.S. all the time, you had to wonder what will happen to these fisherman and small merchants, who have absolutely no education or skills to fall back on.
Then, the group headed to a sad and marvelous place: Santa Rosa, a huge shanty town on the edge of Lima. The residents had mostly come from the Andes Mountains where natural disaster, poverty, famine or lack of government support had driven them toward the city. These people essentially squat on the edges of a town, at the sides and base of huge hill. With no weather to worry about, they build their houses from cast off materials and garbage. Lynne and Matt saw roofs made from banners that had advertised sales in restaurants. Walls were made up abandoned scraps of wood. Row after row after row - hundreds of "homes" that were really just rooms that housed families of four, five or even six.
Shanty towns are very controversial in Peru. Even though most of Lima started as shanty towns, the established residents don't like the newcomers dirtying up the edges of their city. The shanty towns have been outlawed. Just a week before Lynne and Matt visited Santa Rosa, the government had come through with bulldozers, indiscriminately knocking over homes, crushing beds and school report cards. Miraculously, no one was hurt. A week later, the residents had simply put their homes back together. They were survivors.
The residents have banded together, reasoning that alone they are vulnerable and together they are a force. Even though many of them work the most menial jobs in Peru, they all donate a little of their paycheck to the group kitchen. There, for two soles (about 60 cents), they can eat a full dinner. If you can't pay two soles (because you have no work), you can clean dishes or cook and pay one sole. If you are physically unable to do that, you are sponsored by the other residents. After the bulldozing, the kitchen had saved up enough money to give free meals to the residents for eight days. The sense of community among these people - bond by poverty - is amazing.
The community has carved out a small, dirt soccer field. They hire one of the residents to serve as a "policeman", who is really more of a watchman, keeping an eye out for enterprising thieves and government trucks. (Few of the homes have locks, which are too expensive.) The roads are covered in large rocks the residents carried in an effort to flatten the ground, since they can't afford to pave the roads.
It's important to understand how poor these people are. One woman, Mirabel, invited us into her home. There was no plumbing, no sink, no toilet, no electricity. The home was one room, dirt floor. The roof was a tarp and the walls were reeds. The seven family members slept in two double beds. There were no dressers, because there was not multiple changes of clothes. Just a few items piled in a garbage pail. There was small table in the corner, which doubled as a workspace the crafts Mirabel made and sold.
On the wall, Mirabel had posted some artwork her children had done in school. All of her families money went to paying for her children's schooling so they could have professional jobs (like tour guides) someday. Mirabel started crying when told us about that because her last child had started school recently. It was the tears of someone who is overwhelmed by the idea that there may be hope for her family.
Lynne and Matt realized that standing there with their hiking boots on, wedding rings and digital cameras, they were carrying more wealth than this entire family had. But no one would take donations.
They encouraged everyone to buy the crafts the residents had made: hats, finger puppets, magnets, pins, bracelets. The children learned the crafts as a way to make money and learn a trade. The profits were split between the community pot and the creator. Lynne and Matt happily stocked up on all sorts of trinkets. It hardly seemed enough.
No, it wasn't romantic, but it was eye opening. The people were truly wonderful. They were generous when they had nothing and welcoming when they could have been ashamed. Lynne and Matt were acutely aware of how lucky they are. And while Lynne and Matt felt obtrusive, they never felt unwanted.
And there is proof that these shanty towns can survive and thrive. After Santa Rosa, the group went to Villa el Salvador, a "Stage 2" shanty town. the first squatters came in 1970 and lived in shacks. But they slowly fortified their own reed homes with bricks and wood. They built their own banks and paved their own roads. They started a thriving industry that supplies some of the nicest furniture to Peru at prices that were ridiculously cheap (dining room table and six chairs for $300). The community was still "poor" but it was clearly thriving, growing. And, the residents were nominated for the Nobel Prize for the community efforts.
It was an unforgettable visit, filled with despair, hope and perspective.
That night, after a spaghetti lunch in a Swiss restaurant, Lynne and Matt took a death defying cab ride to downtown Lima. Traffic lanes, signals and patterns were merely suggestions to this driver. Lynne and Matt visited the Inquisition Museum, which looked cool in the guide books but turned out to be a dud because everything was in heavy Spanish and none of the exhibits made much sense. But the pictures look pretty cool.
The entire group had sent their laundry down to a cleaners at our guide's suggestion and collecting all the right clothing was a challenge. ("If I come down wearing too long pants, you will know they are not mine," said one woman.) But everyone headed to bed, grateful for all they had and ready for a flight to Cusco the next day.

Day Eight Summary: Zero flights, zero boat trips and zero bus rides; one humbling visit to an amazing city; one dud Inquisition Museum.
Mustache: Glorious. The mustache was having it's best day yet. It was neither the thin creepy mustache yet, nor the vague not-yet-shaven experience. The mustache was truly in its element this day.
Weird foods eaten: Spaghetti at a Swiss restaurant in Peru is fairly odd
Coming next: Thin air and a famous stone

Honeymoon Adventures VII: Return to Monkey Island!

The Lynne and Matt Honeymoon Adventure was filled with many amazing and wonderful places. Lynne and Matt each had their favorites.
Day Seven of the honeymoon (July 22) was Matt's No. 1, probably of all time.
The day began at 7:30 a.m. with a trip to Monkey Island!! Do you think that font was overdone? It wasn't.
When Matt was a kid, Boys' Life Magazine (the magazine for Boy Scouts) ran a list of different pets that people might have, and the positives and negatives of each animal. There was fish and turtles and hamsters. And a monkey. A monkey!
It had never in crossed Young Matt's mind that a monkey could be a pet. It was perhaps the greatest thing that Young Matt had ever heard, despite the fact that the article mentioned one "negatives" of owning a monkey is that it might be illegal. All Young Matt heard was 'might be.' A Monkey as a pet? Imagine the tricks you could teach a monkey. With training the monkey could learn to ride a bike, speak sign language, maybe even do math homework.
Skipping ahead 20 years and one marriage, Lynne, Matt and the tour group took a short boat trip out to a long, private island in the middle of the Amazon. The island is owned and funded by private donations (no government help!) as a sanctuary for monkeys, which were being over-hunted as food. So, these rescue workers set up Monkey Island!!
As the boat pulled up, Raul the Tour Guide warned everyone not to leave their bags on the boat, which was odd because he had given the exact opposite advice at nearly every other stop. Well, as soon as the boat docked, three monkeys walked down to the boat and climbed on. One big, lazy-looking orange howler monkey laid right on some guy's shoulders!
It was perhaps the greatest thing that Matt had ever seen.
Everyone walked up to a clearing on the island where monkeys everywhere! One grabbed onto Lynne's backpack with his tail and was hanging there. Another one grabbed a guy's hat and tried to run away with it. There were tiny monkeys and red monkeys, screeching monkeys and honking monkeys, lazy monkeys and hyper monkeys. They were all incredibly friendly.
Apparently, they stay in the small, public area of the island until they get a few months old. Then they retreat into the jungle and most are never seen again. But the monkey population is growing, so that's good.



Everyone in the group got to feed the monkeys bananas and Lynne swung one guy named Luis around with a stick. (check out the video!)



Matt fed a monkey and enjoyed but...he was getting a bit jealous. Young Matt couldn't help but show up. He wanted a monkey to sit on his shoulders. But Matt had no idea how to lure a monkey off the other guests shoulders without appearing...obvious...or desperate. Wah.
One of the monkeys was sitting on this girls' shoulders hooting and honking (check out the video). Matt tried to convince the girl that was the sound howler monkeys made right before they went to the bathroom. Alas, she didn't buy it.
But then...the monkey did climb on Matt's shoulders. And you know what? It was better than a
dog, that's for sure. And Matt sort of looked like the monkey, too.
After about the greatest hour ever, the group got back on the boat, for a ride back to the buses and out of Iquitos.
Only one person was left behind: Young Matt was never seen again. He went into the jungle and believed to be living as the treasurer for a small band of spider monkeys.
On the boat ride back to the buses, Matt couldn't help but think that Monkey Island was a cool name for one of those old, 1940s movies. Matt tried to think of the perfect name. Return to Monkey Island? Escape from Monkey Island? The Curse of Monkey Island?
That's when Matt realized what the perfect name was: Honeymoon on Monkey Island. Spooky.
After the monkey island the time in Iquitos was over, sadly. It was time to head to get on a plane headed for Lima. We missed a train, but managed to travel by air, sea and land in one day, which is pretty cool.
The flight was uneventful other than a man threw his crackers and swore at a stewardess, while announcing that was the worst food he had ever tasted. So, that was pretty cool. It felt like being present for a historical moment, or something.
That night we wandered over to Bembos, the Peruvian equivalent of McDonalds. While Matt was eating some fries, a little boy, maybe 5 years old, wandered in selling gum. He was all alone, wandering the streets of one of the largest cities in the world. It was startling.
After that, we sent a few emails, watched some BBC-CNN (Obama was traveling through Europe and people seemed to like him), then watched a little Alf in Spanish. Someone actually had to sit and translate all of Alf into Spanish, then find "actors" to dub the show. That was also startling, in a completely different way.

Day Seven Summary: One life fulfilling trip to Monkey Island!; one perfect name for a future horror movie starring Matthew McConnaughay and Catherine Zeta-Jones; two boat rides; one plane ride, including the worst crackers ever; one bus ride; one-tenth of an episode of Alf, creating a full on episode of embarrassment about American culture.

Mustache: Noticeable. The mustache was really coming full strength now. It wasn't at Mark Hanley levels or anything, but a monkey was able to swing from it.

Weird foods eaten: We ate the fries with mayo at Bembos. And we had those airlines crackers - they're weren't so bad, actually.

Coming next: A humbling learning experience.

Honeymoon Adventures VI: Ceiba and science

Day Six of the honeymoon (July 21) was a day of relaxation, beauty, science and a hint of home.

After a few days in the real Amazon, Matt and Lynne shipped off to Ceiba Tops, the only luxury resort in the Amazon and the high end hotel in the Explorama chain. The group had heard rumors of this place on the third day of the trip. Supposedly, it was very swank - $245 a night, in a country where a dollar goes a long, long way.

It was very odd walking in, like being in Florida. There was cement everywhere, a chlorinated pool, a lounge with board games (did you know Scrabble has extra letters in Peru?), and air conditioned rooms. When Matt and Lynne first saw the people who had been staying at Ceiba Tops, there was a bit of resentment. These people didn't know what the Amazon was really like. Look at them! Lounging by the pool! Going down the slide! Holding a parrot! Puh-lease.

And then...Matt and Lynne fell onto the clean beds - no mosquito netting. They swam in the pool and went down the slide. They took hot showers. Ahhhhh. Sweet bliss, as Lynne would say.

As you can see, this development was exciting for Lynne.

But Lynne and Matt didn't waste all their time at Ceiba Tops having sun in the fun. This trip was not only a chance to relax, it was opportunity to learn. So, Lynne and Matt conducted their own scientific experiment at the hotel, working on a rumor that has circulated for years. The results were recorded for poosterity. Click below to become part of science.



Ahem.

After some morning rest, the group headed back out onto the Amazon for what was supposed to be one of the highlights of the trip. Since Lynne and Matt landed in Peru, people had been talking about the amazing pink Dolphins. The group piled into the boat and Raul, the guide, took everyone to a spot in the river where he thought the Pink Dolphins might be hanging out, like a dolphin soda shop or the dolphin dollar theater. Of course, Raul knew right where to go.

Now, this may be a case where Matt was done in by his own expectations. He got it into his head that the dolphins would be leaping into the air (like Free Willy), dancing around and over the boat. Instead, the dolphins surfaced briefly, providing a fleeting glimpse of their back. Matt saw them, but he really couldn't tell they were pink. Check out this video. Does he look pink to you? Allegedly, at best. (None of the dolphins were that close or that still for Lynne and Matt.)

It's not that the animals were disappointing - they're marvelous and fascinating creatures - but the view wasn't all that spectacular.

After the dolphin viewing, the group took a trip to the towns of Mazon and Indiana. That's right, they traveled half way around the world and ended up in Indiana, Peru. (Not to be confused with Peru, Indiana.) It seems a missionary had come this town years ago from the Hoosier state, so they named the town after the mysterious state that produces horrible, horrible football teams.

The group headed into town on moto-rickshaws that were more or less completely terrifying. It was raining and these moto-rickshaws (it's a motorcycle carrying a rickshaw - very literal) had not been repaired in a while. Matt and Lynne actually ended up crashing into the moto-rickshaw in front of them, but all was well. Ha-ha, nothing to fear. Surely, the driver had everything under control.

After the ride, the group wandered through a local market. Kids followed Matt and he took their picture, then showed it to them on the digital camera, which they thought was hilarious. Then again, they may have been laughing at the mustache Matt was "growing."

The market gave a quick perspective on world economies. Bananas were three bunches for a dollar and men sat in booths stacked ceiling to floor with goods ranging from dish soap to toothbrushes. There were electronics stores, but they sold TVs from 20 years ago and computers that American inner city grade schools would have abandoned. Kids worked in other booths, or just spent the day with their parents.

But everyone was friendly and courteous to the Americans stomping through their city.

After the tour of Indiana, everyone headed back to Ceiba Tops, where they saw the lodge's namesake, the majestic Ceiba tree. The tree can grow over 200 feet tall with a trunk that is almost perfectly straight for 90 percent of the height, then fans out over the other trees in the jungle. Of course, the height and enormous trunk make it very valuable to loggers. The tree on the Ceiba Tops lodge property was basically rescued and protected - the trees are disappearing fast because preservation efforts can't keep up.

It's difficult to describe how massive the tree is. It was difficult to comprehend its enormousness even when you were standing right in front of it. Matt couldn't fit the entire tree in a picture, but to give you some scale check out the horizontal picture on the right. (You may have to click on it to enlarge.) Inside the red circle near the bottom? That's our Mrs. Lynne. It's a big tree, all right?

The day ended with a nice dinner in the lodge with Peter Jensen, the man who founded the Explorama lodges 40 years ago with $5,000 capital. Although he's retired, he was still there, serving up potatoes and filling up watermelon trays. Lynne and Matt found the Explorama experience to be all around top-notch. Good service, good variety and a great appreciation for the natural beauty of the Amazon.

Day Six Summary: One bout of skepticism followed by falling in love with air conditioning; one inconclusive scientific experiment; several brief glimpses of supposedly pink dolphins; one giant tree; one moto-rickshaw accident, non-fatal.

Mustache: Fuzzy. The little guy was really coming in now, starting to make his presence known. Even other members of the American tour group were commenting on how "stupid" and "strange" it looked. And none of them were prompted by Lynne in anyway.

Weird foods eaten: Fish soup is sort of weird, but delicious. That was breakfast.

Coming next: The best place Matt has ever been to, ever.