Please sir, is there room at the inn?

It´s holiday season, and I´m wearing a sweaty sundress. Not very typical of my ghosts of Christmases Past, but the air is buzzing with holiday cheer all the same, and I´m feeling slightly Navidad-y. Only here, instead of quiet, snow-covered streets and bundled families hurrying and sliding down icy walkways from car to house, here it´s reggaeton music blasting from moped stereos (I didn´t even know mopeds had stereos), large groups of friends and families lounging at tables outside shaded cafes that surround the main plaza of the city of Tarija, and sprawling open-air markets selling cheap Made in China toys, pirated CD´s, and anything from lampshades to bottle openers to televisions to Monopoly board games to boxer briefs to llama fetuses and other common household items.

I´m enjoying that down here, the 26th of December doesn´t come accompanied with the Christmas hangover of up north yonder. Christmas is celebrated until New Years Day, and so the parties, the street markets, the music, the rush of people in the streets, all of it is holding strong for at least a few more days.

Apparently here in Tarija, the custom is to set off fireworks on midnight of Christmas Eve. Jenn and I experienced this as we sat in our room that night, about to fall asleep. After the first explosion, I jumped and dove under my bed, fearing that we were under attack by the anti-gringa brigade. Soon after I realized that it was simply the way of celebrating baby Jesus. Interestingly enough,  now that we´re 36 hours past the customary firecracker hour, you can´t go more than five minutes without hearing a crackle BOOM somewhere nearby. I guess people must have a secret stash of dynamite stored away. Maybe everyone wants to make sure their firecrackers are the only ones people hear, each with its own explosion, instead of joining the cacophony of surrounding ones--more of an individualist response to a shared holiday tradition.  Either that, or the eastcoast-westcoast rapper warfare has trickled its way down through the borders of many latin countries. I better take off that TuPac bandana I´ve been wearing around my head.

Christmas Eve found Jenn and me wandering the streets of San Lorenzo, a little sleepy town outside the (relatively speaking) bustling town of Tarija. Now, Tarija is a place where everyone takes three hour naps in the afternoon, so please understand the nature of San Lorenzo´s tranquility. We assumed we could just show up, find a little hostel, and hang there for Christmas. Didn´t take into account there would potentially be only one hotel in the entire town. There was. It was booked. We walked around the square like little turtles, lives strapped to our backs, searching for anyone who might know of someone who was renting out a room. No one had any space. Exhausted, deflated, and quite hungry, we decided we´d return back to Tarija after all, but not before we found some grub. It was siesta time, of course, which meant that no one was open. It was like a bad Mary and Joseph reenactment. We swaggered and swayed with the weight of our belongings, enquiring at every little shop we saw if they had anything other than candy and soda. Nope. Nothing. Evenutally, we found a nice old lady who had some leftover cold empanadas, and we ate them in silence, contemplating the way that history will inevitably happen again and again.

Back in Tarija, and Jenn and I are saying goodbye for a little while. She´s heading up to Samaipata to check out this farm that really interests her, and I´m going to hang out here and work on a vineyard in the valley about thirty minutes from here, starting in a few days. I took a wine tour a few days ago and tasted the products from the boutique vineyards in that area, including that from the one where I´ll be working, and to be honest, it´s not the best. Most people are still making their wines extra sweet, almost port-like, and the practice of aging them in oak barrels before bottling has not really caught on, at least at the smaller places. Most of what I tasted was more akin to grape kool-aid and vodka than anything resembling wine, but I´m hoping to at least learn the general practices of cultivating the grapes and creating the juice that eventually ferments and becomes one of my favorite beverages. And if worse comes to worse, I´ll take a bus to the Argentina border (1 hour away) and hole away in one of the vineyards down there.

In Bolivia, por fin!

Well, folks, I've made it to Bolivia. Nine days after leaving Manizales, after 60 hours spent on seven different buses and two airplanes which crossed through four different countries, I am finally in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the city in which my little sister has been studying for the past three months. It is a most welcome pleasure to be able to just spend time in one place for a little while after so many days in motion. It's also great to see Emily, since it's been more than four months!

This entry would be about nine hundred pages long if I were to recount all of what happened in these past days, which is interesting, since most of the bus days have the same format:

- Arrive at bus station fifteen minutes before scheduled departure, as per the recommendation of the friendly bus company employees. You are, of course, the first to arrive, including the bus driver and/or the bus, save maybe one or two other whities with giant backpacks and Velcro sandals.
-All other passengers arrive one to two minutes before scheduled departure time, as does the bus you'll be taking. Bus leaves about 15 minutes late.
-Board bus. If it's a fancy one with TV's, it will inevitably be a D-list, straight-to-DVD feature, which will be either exceptionally violent or crude, or both.
-Stop in dusty town. Pick up more passengers.
-Fall asleep for about 45 minutes. Wake up, paranoid, check bra for the cash you've stuffed there, underwear for the rest of the wallet, reach into shirt to check for passport, pat the inner pocket of your jeans to make sure your ipod is still there. It would be rather unnerving for more than one reason if the ipod were not still there, not so much because you've lost your ipod, but rather since the music is still coming through the headphones you have crammed into your ears.
-Stop in another dusty town. Pick up some more passengers.
-Fidgit. Change position from the traditional upright, feet planted on floor position, to knee-to-chest, right leg out window. Accidentally kick Jenn in the temple in an attempt to stretch out. Hip cramp. Back spasm. Readjust. Invent new sitting positions for an hour or so, finally landing back in the traditional one.
-Sleep a little more. Head slams into window when bus hits a rough spot. Wake up, dry mouth, starting to feel desperate to get off bus. Whimper.
-Begin to obsessively check the time. Wait five minutes. Check again. In fact, forty five seconds have gone by. Good.
-Finally arrive to the bus terminal. Be accosted by taxi drivers. Pretend you know where your hostel is and use that bluff it to talk down the original price of the ride. ("No way, it's only like ten minutes from here. That price is exorbitant!") You've probably still been ripped off, but you're feeling triumphant about arguing the price down to half the original amount.
-Wander around city aimlessly, sleep in hostel, start the same thing over again the next day.

So, now that you know the general format of my last ten days, here's where I've been. I've stopped in Popayan, Colombia; Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador; Tumbes, Lima, and Cusco, Peru; La Paz, Bolivia, and finally Cochabamba. So many border crossings. I thought we were going to get robbed by the police in Tumbes (on the Ecuador border) for sure. Jenn and I hopped into this charming little moto-taxi, which is essentially a motorcycle-drawn buggy, and headed towards the airport (we flew from Tumbes to Lima to break up the trip). The sun was setting over the desert terrain, wind was whipping through our hair, and we were grinning with the feeling of freedom of no more buses for a few days when suddenly we were pulled over by the national police. A John Travolta-like specimen with a harsher face jumped out of the police pickup truck and shuffled his way over to us. He demanded my passport, and I asked him to please show me his ID first, since I had heard about police robbing travelers by the border. He looked incredulous, and not in the mood to play. ''But you see my uniform, my police truck, my GUN. I am a police officer. Now hand me your passport."
''I see all of those things, officer, but I would feel more comfortable if I saw your ID, just to be sure."
"In your country, do you demand to see the police officer's information?"
"Absolutely. It's expected."
"But I have a gun. Do you not see my gun?"
This went on for a few minutes, and the more he refused, the more I was sure that he wasn't really a cop, and at any given moment he would turn his precious weapon on me and take everything I owned. Somehow, though, the seemingly pointless conversation yielded favorable results, and he walked back to his truck, emerged with the ID, and shoved it in my face. He had also put on his police beret while he was back there, which I found charming. He was a police officer, after all. I gave him my passport, and after the customary five to ten minute waiting period in which he radioed into his base to check to see if I was a fugitive, he let us go.

Tumbes was weird. In the airport, we met a man from Lima who spoke beautiful English. He chatted with us about how he had studied in the U.S. in the 70's, went to some great concerts in Boston including Pink Floyd and the Styx. Then, while waiting in the departure lounge, we heard a POP! POP! BANG! which sounded like two shots from a cap gun and then a heavy object thrown into a glass wall. Our Lima friend burst through the doors leading out of the security checkpoint, followed by two or three security guards yelling, "Senor! Senor!" I was reminded of the chicken coop at Cecilia's farm, because this scene caused an eruption of whispering speculations among the seated passengers, and the sound was not unlike the noise the chickens would make whenever a large animal passed by the coop and tried to break in. "awwww que pasaaaaaaaa con ese hombreeeeee awwwwww visteeeeeeee? Awwww..." Anyway, the security guards grabbed him and pulled him into a secret room, where I assumed he would have to stay for hours answering questions, but oh no, as I sat down in my airplane seat, there he was, about ten rows up. I waved.

Since I've already been to Peru, I am okay with not really spending time there, at least on the way to Bolivia. I was just so anxious to get here, and I'm so glad I finally made it. Next week, Emily goes home and I head to Tarija, which is on the Argentine border, and is the winemaking region of the country. I will spend two weeks at an eco-resort on a lake, and then I hope to spend a couple of weeks on a vineyard. I'm itching to get my fingers back into the dirt.

In Quito and over it.

Ok, clearly not really OVER it; it's a gorgeous, cosmopolitan city. But it has definitely been a shock to the Colombia-adapted system. This. City. Is. Expensive. Did you know that Ecuador's national currency is the dollar? I found that out the night before I left Colombia. It was a surreal moment for me when, after crossing the Colombia-Ecuador border on foot with all of our belongings fastened to our backs like pack mules, we were accosted by cherubial Ecuadorian men with official ''money changer'' badges around their necks, fanning thick stacks of U.S. dollar bills. I hadn't seen George or Abraham in a while.

So yeah, this place is expensive. It's kind of funny--upon arrival in Colombia, Jenn and I spent the first week or so using mental math to calculate the pesos we were spending into dollars, to have an idea. Now that we're in Ecuador, we've been calculating our dollars into pesos because they seem more familiar. And clutching our chests everytime we arrive at the total, because every coffee, every little snack, every internet café, everything except breathing in the fresh mountain air, costs exhorbitantly more than it did in any of the cities in Colombia, Cartagena included.

It's also a strange feeling to be within the majority, at least phenotypically speaking. Tall white people run amock, they travel in packs, they fumble with their fanny packs. I have to remind myself, however, I'm much more of a Helga than a Julieta, at least on the outside.

Quito is beautiful, though--don't get me wrong. It's another one of those dreamy mountain cities that rests in a small valley surrounded by fog-covered rolling hills. Classic colonial architecture abound, and the Ecuadorian people are truly beautiful. I think I'm just feeling fatigued after yesterday's 15 hour bus ride. I'm sure if I had more time (and a little more money) I'd be singing Quito's praises.


You know you've been traveling in Latin America for a while when, after being served a coffee with two good quality napkins, you squeal in delight and say ''YES! Toilet paper!'' (and then you stuff it into your already existing plastic bag filled with a collection of similar napkins you've swiped from other restaurants). It should be noted that you are now familiar enough with napkin quality to make a discerning decision. Similarly, yet another indicator is the salvaging of plastic bags (''This would be a GREAT raincoat!'').

More busing tomorrow, hooray.

¡Ay Papito! ¡Ay Mamita!

Greg and Janet Smizer came to Colombia last week. Yes, it´s true! My parents joined the orioles and flew south for a few days (four, no more) to come visit me. The decision was made hastily--in fact, I didn´t even know (and neither did they) that they would be coming until about a week and a half before they arrived. It was delightful having them here, and also pretty hilarious. Those of you who know them will undoubtedly understand the limitless potential for good laughs and awkward moments.

For example. Consider the average sized Colombian and then consider me. Take into account that which I´ve previously written along the lines of size disparity, especially on the farm. Now consider Greg Smizer. Six foot two, solidly built. Petite and delicate? Hardly. Watching him cram his long spindly legs into the back seat of the car upon picking him and Janet up from the airport elicited from me a feeling of empathy and also giggly childish delight. Knees pushed nearly to his adam´s apple, chest heaving slightly to try to make room for limbs that would not rest in their preferred anatomical location, and the strained smile that attempts to convey the idea that everything està bien--we´re in Colombia!

Since their time here was so short, we didn't really do many touristy things. I wanted them to see my day-to-day, and my farming budget doesn't really allow for day trips into the mountains or high-end dinners. They came to the farm, we hung out in the city, we rode the brand new aerial cable, we went to my favorite cafe, and we cooked a delicous meal for all of our friends the last night they were here. I think they enjoyed themselves. I think it's so cool that they wanted to come to Colombia.

Anyway, much has gone on in the life and times of yours truly since I last wrote. After my parents' spontaneous trip to visit me, I took a spontaneous trip of my own. I officially left Cecilia's farm and decided to take a few vacation days before heading out in search of another farm further south. On the morning my parents left, Jenn and I took a road trip up to Cartagena, a city up on the Carribbean coast. Apparently, Gabriel Marquez' ''Love in the time of cholera'' was filmed there, so it seemed more than appropriate to travel to that region, especially since I currently find myself deeply entrenched in that very book. In Spanish, of course. I am reading it at the white-knuckle clip of about 1 page every five minutes.

We drove up there with our friend Maria, who is the owner of the boarding house where we would stay on weekends in the city of Manizales. Twenty three hours in the car. One way. Weirdly, it didn't feel nearly as long as it was, at least on the way up. I must have taken about 500 pictures out the window as we rounded curvy mountain passes, climbed up steep green hills, and joined the traffic caravans of large banana trucks and tractor trailers. The variety in the landscape was astounding. The temperature would climb and drop within an hour, to a point where you could be sweating like you've never sweat before at 1pm, experiencing zero wind and an unrelenting sun, and then by 1:30 you've climbed to the top of a hill where the breeze finally reaches you and the air has dried out, and you find solace in the shadows. By 1:45 you reach into your bag for your sweatshirt, it's actually not warm at all anymore, and you're high up above the valleys, and by 2pm, you're climbing down the mountain and quickly peeling off your layers of clothing once again. The towns through which we passed changed with the climate, too. The hot weather yielded vallenato music, which is that accordion and guitar tropical beat, and the people sat outside their homes in rocking chairs or hammocks. In the cooler weather, we found men in jeans and cowboy hats, cows grazing for miles and miles, and coffee drinkers on patios. I saw so many different shades of green, blue, and yellow, and I also discovered something especially delicious about traveling by land in Colombia: road food.

This is not your Roy Rogers or Sbarro experience. No senor. Think little roadside restaurants which serve heaping portions of freshly made cheese, hot chocolate, coffee, arepas (thick corn patties), avocadoes, savory soups, grilled meats, homemade sweets, and agua panela, which is kind of like really unrefined sugar, maybe a cross between molasses and brown sugar, mixed in with cold water and lemon. Delicious. And you need not travel through thirty miles of nothingness in desperate search of those big blue signs with the fork and knife logo, sponsored by McDonalds, as in my country. The rest stops on the highways of Colombia can be found pretty much every 5 km or so, which means that you never go hungry on the road. And highways are mostly one-lane roads with double yellow lines that everyone ignores, especially when you find yourself stuck behind a donkey truck.

Cartagena was immensely touristy, but also breathtakingly gorgeous. Situated on the ocean, the old part of the city boasts colonial European architecture with balconies overlooking narrow streets illuminated at nightfall by antique lanterns which emit a warming yellow hue. Bright pink and purple bougainvilleas wind whimsically around doorframes, balconies, and banisters, and musicians roam the streets with their classical guitars and it's all enough to make even the most callous of human beings fall in love. Jenny and I were lamenting the fact that not only were we broke in Cartagena, but single as well.

Maria's brother lives in Cartagena, and he let us stay in the vacant apartment over his store. Un. Believable. Also located in the old sector, the most sought-after real estate in the city, with high ceilings and french doors that led out to our very own balcony. We have been shown such generosity in this country.

One of my favorite things about Cartagena was ever-available coffee vendors in the streets. They walk around with thermoses and little cups, and there seemed to be one on every corner. Coffee when and where you want it. Heck, you don't even have to leave your house. The apartment where Maria's brother lives had a little basket with a string attatched to the handle. If you're feeling super lazy, or just too hot to peel yourself off the rocking chair, you can lower the basket over the balcony down to street level with your money, and the coffee vendor will place the coffee into your basket, at which point you just have to pull it back up (ever so carefully so as not to spill it!) and there you are! So much fun. It was like fishing for coffee.

Since realistically Jenn and I couldn't really afford to do this trip, we simply pretended we could, dealt with the expenses we couldn't control (transport, etc) and kept it simple with things we could control (food). We ate a lot of yogurt, bananas, and granola. Good bang for the buck. Punch for the peso. But don't you worry, we still left room for plenty of quality food, probably the best food we could have found, which happened to be some of the cheapest:

Example: Arepa de huevo. Egg arepa. Arepas in Manizales and other landlocked cities are more like thick corn tortillas, cooked over the fire. Arepas in Cartagena are fried, then slit open, at which point a raw egg is cracked and dropped inside, along with a little bit of cooked ground meet, then the arepa is thrown back into hot oil. The egg fries inside the arepa and when it is scooped back out with a slotted spoon, it's ready to eat. They must be eaten straight from the oil, because once they cool they get soggy and flopsy. You squirt some hot sauce or tartar sauce (or both) on it and eat. Delectable. Because what can be better than fried food? Food that is fried TWICE! But the arepa itself is only half the charm of the experience. These arepas cannot be found in standard restaurants in the luxe confines of Cartagena center, oh no. We had to venture out of the tourist area into the neighborhoods, where the arepas de huevo are sold on street corners. A few chairs are set up next to the arepa stand, where a television is almost always mounted on top of an egg crate so that patrons may watch their favorite soccer team while they eat. Good food, good soccer game, good time.

Also, if you go to Cartagena, don't leave without eating arroz de coco. Coconut rice. Sticky, dark brown from being cooked with panela, that molasses/brown sugar stuff I wrote about earlier, and of course, coconut milk. It's more of a dessert than a side dish, which I heartily appreciated. We took some with us on the road trip back to Manizales, but after digging our spoons into it at a rest stop, I accidentally left the box on the roof of the car. We saw a white little box-shaped bird flutter away and bounce down the road, spewing brown stuff, in the rear view mirror as we picked up speed upon driving away, and I had to try really hard not to show how incredibly devistated I was. Tranquila.

Maria's brother, Carlos, was one of the funniest people I've ever met. We spent the day on the beach of the island, Isla Tierra Bomba, and we got silly on beers and rum and gave them an English class. Carlos was convinced that the word for scissors was "chicken," and kept doing the scissors cutting motion with his index and middle fingers and saying "chee-kan, chee-kan!" We taught them the word "scissors," (SEE-zahrs!) of course, as well as "knife," (NYE-eef!) and "I don't understand" (Eye doh nonderstahn), among others. Sometimes, when Carlos spoke too fast and we asked him to repeat, he just repeated the same words at the same pace, just in his version of gringo Spanish. So funny. As if that would help us understand. And so for the rest of our time we all spoke Spanish with this weird harsh "r" sound (eg. "Varrmos ar lar playarr" instead of vamos a la playa), and it never got old. I like accents.

Tomorrow Jenn and I begin what will be the longest series of bus rides of either of our lives. We will travel from here to Bolivia in about one week. Not excited to sit still for a long time, but I am excited for street meat!

Sedentary Sally

This was the week of sitting, and strangely enough, I feel the most sore I've been since my arrival at the farm. Que interesante.

My week began with a violent bout of vomiting. Yep, my first weird stomach thing since this trip has begun. I think I ate some bad ice cream or something in the city the weekend before, who knows. Or maybe it was the rapid influx of raw milk into my diet. All I know is that I awoke on Monday morning with projectile vomit and dry heaves once my stomach finally emptied itself. Felt like someone was wringing out my intestines. Cramps do not begin to describe. Awesome. Jenn was a dear--she made me some herbal tea and intermittently entered my self-imposed quarantine zone to soak the cloth on my head in more cold water. I spent the better part of the day in an intimate snuggle with a medium-sized plastic bucket. Romantic.

Luckily, I found some antibiotics that I had taken with me, just in case, but since I am such a proud traveler who ''never gets sick,'' I had in effect completely forgotten that I had those little magic pills with me, since I never in a million years thought that I would have a sick stomach. They proved effective, though, and in a couple days I was almost one hundred percent better.

This week marked the arrival of two additional WWOOFers on the farm--a sixty year old Colombian woman named Julieta, and a twenty four year old French woman named Judith. Prounounced Hoo--DEET. I was calling her Hoo-LEET for the first few days, and she finally got comfortable enough to correct me.

Originally, the plan was for Judith to come with Julieta´s daughter, who is her close friend from university, but at the last minute, Julieta's daughter found a job and could not come to the farm. So, she sent her mom in her place, which sounds questionable in terms of the workability of a sixty year old, until you meet Julieta. First of all, she looks closer to forty. Second, she is incredibly fit. She has her own little farm outside Bogotà, mostly flowers, and she is a walking botanical encyclopedia. She arrived to the farm and was shocked to find that most of Cecilia's flowers were in rough shape. Clearly, because Cecilia's priority and expertise is food, not flowers. So Julieta spent the entire week repotting, replanting, and redistributing flowers of varying types and stages. By the end of the week, the farm was a different place. Julieta breathed life into the floral landscape, and I hope she's able to come back in the spring once the flowers bloom.

I loved having Julieta and Judith at the farm. They are true lovers of gastronomy, and we ate (and drank) better than we had in weeks. They enriched our kitchen with wine and chocolate, and Julieta baked this heavy, satisfyingly sweet and savory wheat bread, which was a huge hit. She put on a bread-making workshop for a few of the neighbors so that they could learn how to make a tasty yet healthy bread, and she also made homemade marmelade from the oranges from our own trees. So. good. I made more cheese, but to me it tasted even more like the smell of a cow than the previous ones, so I added a ton of garlic and herbs to it to mask the moo, but it was a futile effort. Tasted kind of like shrimp and cow manure. Julieta loved it though, even licked the knife when it was gone. Must be an acquired taste. Philistine as it may be, I guess I just have to come to terms with the fact that I'm more of a pasteurized milk gal myself. The romantic notions I have of sipping a frothy glass of cream straight from the teet may never be realized, and I suppose that's fine.

The week was sedentary partly because we took more coffee breaks, more sweet breaks, more breaks in general. It reminded me not to be such a damn workhorse. Sedentary also because we harvested about 100 pounds of tumeric, and we needed to soak, scrub, and dry all of it. Many hours bent over buckets of these weird little bulbs that look like the love children of a carrot and a ginger root. Scrubbed 'em with toothbrushes. Dyed our hands bright yellow. I took a lot of pictures. I'll show you sometime.

Julieta really made me laugh. She has a weirdly sarcastic sense of humor that I can relate to, and she never ceased to ingnite the belly laugh within me (even when my stomach was not in an ideal state). For example: when she pulled the loaf of bread out of the oven, there was a sprinkling of white flour on the top. She laid the loaf on the table in front of us, pointed to the flour, and said, deadpan, ''Do you guys know what this is? It's coca.'' We laughed, and she kept a straight face. Another time, she emerged from the bedroom with a plastic sac filled with liquid with a hose attached to it. It was one of those Camelback things, kind of like a source of water that you put in your backpack and when you get thirsty, you can just drink from the hose. Cecilia asked her what it was, and she answered,''it's for my infusions. I have to attach it to my vein here [pointed to her inner arm] and inject myself every night.'' Cecilia wasn't sure what to make of that response, and Julieta just walked away. Fantastic.

We drank some good wine this week as well, which is tough to come by in Colombia. It reminded me of how much I love wine, how much I know about it, and yet how much I have to learn. I am absolutely interested in working on a vineyard for a while during my time here, probably in Argentina, where my love affair with the nectar of the gods began.

The Colombiana and Francesa left this morning, and it was sad to see them go, but it was so incredibly ''rico'' to have them here. Good food, good drinks, good laughs. Important.

Sometimes, you just gotta hit the horse.

So, I´ve written before that I´m not a lover of animals (see:post entitled ''Cat Attack''). They frustrate me in the same way that certain humans do; they cannot be reasoned with. They do not follow logic. They cannot understand that, for example, escaping from the chicken coop and running freely down the hill is quite dangerous, and that certain hungry animals, such as our friendly pet dogs Lara and Negro, will be waiting at the bottom with open jaws. I was heartbroken a couple weeks ago when my baby chick, whom Cecilia named ''Ali,'' because I saved it, was eaten alive by Lara. I frequently try to reason with my animal friends, and I even speak to them in both English and Spanish, but so far, no good. Jumeth, our old lady horse, is one of the smartest animals I've ever encountered. She often finds ways to escape through the bolted fence--I'm convinced that she has fingers hidden under those hooves. She escapes onto the lawn where horses typically are not permitted, and at first, when this happened, Jennie and I would try to coax her back into her side of the fence with banana peels (one of her favorite snacks) and whisper sweet nothings into her hairy, twitchy horse ears. Nothing. Then, one day, when Jumeth had escaped yet again, we observed Trinidad, the Dr. Dolittle of the farm, approach her from behind as Jumeth stood munching on some raspberry bushes. Trini is tender and loving with all animals, and I think she really speaks to them. She loves the chickens so much that she refuses to kill them when we need to eat them, leaving the dirty work up to Cecilia (more on this later on). However, this day, she walked right up to the hefty old horse and gave her a big WHACK on the buttocks. The horse whinnied and took off running, towards the hole in the gate from which she escaped. Easy. Jenn and I looked at each other in disbelief. ''Sometimes, you just gotta hit the horse,'' was my first utterance directly following the incident. We've been using this expression ever since. It has many implications; I'll leave it to you to decipher them.

I guess one usage of our new saying is that sometimes you have to do things that might be outside your character, but are completely relevant and necessary for the given moment. This week, for me, was the week of killing things. On Monday morning, when we were feeding the chickens, Cecilia came up to me with a twinkle of plotting things in her eyes and stood over the chicken coop, and appeared to be counting something. I asked her what she was doing, and she said, ''You don't want to know.'' About an hour later, I found two chickens sequestered in the coffee processing hut, underneath baskets which were weighed down by heavy shovels. Jenn and I decided that they were probably going to be arreglado (literally means cleaned; organized), or killed. Oh boy!

I felt conflicted. I eat meat. I am doing this trip so that i can learn about where my food comes from, and I don't just mean plants. So, on one hand, I was elated. On the other hand, I felt sentimental. I have conversations with these chickens, even if they don't listen to me. One of them was selected because she was a ''mala gallina'', or bad chicken, because she laid bad eggs. A bad chicken? You say it like it's a personality flaw! She can't help it if she can't make babies! I had a flash of fantastic childhood urgency, in which I briefly considered lifting the shovels, running out with a chicken under each arm, and setting them free deep below into the coffee valleys. ''Run free, little friends!'' And then I snapped back to reality and realized that this was an important part of the food chain, and that it was a lot more humane than the methods used to raise and butcher the majority of the chickens I've eaten in my life. So, I let them be. I went back to my task of pruning the tomato plants, and I checked back about an hour later. Cecilia had already killed them, boiled them, and was in the process of plucking out their feathers.

I asked Cecilia if I could help, and she was pleasantly surprised. Apparently, most of the foreigners who come to work at her farm are grossed out about this process, and prefer to remain in the dark. Not I. Jenn and I got to work, pulling out feather after feather until all that remained were two naked, sleeping (ok, dead) chickies. After, I helped Cecilia clean one of them out. She saved every single part, most of it for us, and the rest for the dogs. Amazing. Jenn got a little woozy at one point; I turned around and her lips were purple and her face white, and she had to take a few minutes out. I was totally enthralled, brought me right back to high school Biology when we cut open those little pigs and explored their insides. The part that was most nauseating for me was when we plucked the feathers; sometimes, I focused too hard on the little follicles where the hair came out and I would get creeped out (kind of like the feeling I get when I look at the heart of a bell pepper, anyone else, other than Emily, understand this sensation? No?).

We ate the chicken for lunch that same day. So satisfying. So fresh. There is something really peaceful about eating something you helped kill.

Later that week, I bought cow's milk from a neighboring farm, since we only have a goat at ours. I wanted to make cheese. The man who sold me the milk told me to boil it first, because apparently foreigners often get the runs from raw milk. I heeded his advice and when I added the guajo (the enzyme from a cow's intestines that makes the cheese separate), nothing happened. Apparently, this was my second experience with death that week--I had aided in the killing of something again, and this time, it was the bacteria in the milk. So I guess you can't boil milk you intend to use for cheese. I felt sheepish. We did end up with some clotted cream, though, which spreads rather nicely over bread. The remaining milk is similar to skim, which works well for hot chocolate.

We bought more milk later that week, and round two of cheese-making was much more successful. Did not boil it. Did not get diarrhea. Double success.

Jenn taught Ovidio the term, ''OK!'' and now he yells it, seemingly from out of nowhere, at any given point during the day. I'll be squatting over a row of beets, and all of a sudden I'll hear it: OK! I will turn around and see him plodding across the field with a sack of something over his shoulder, grinning and chuckling silently. He's a hoot.

Death and Dying on the Farm. Scene.

What Is This, A Farm For Ants?

With three weeks of farming under my belt, I feel that I can say with confidence that Cecilia´s finca is built for those with slightly more delicate builds than my Norwegian-esque frame.

I think I have finally made my way out of the honeymoon period, and now find myself more settled, and seeing my daily tasks as work (which I enjoy) rather than a beautiful natural gift from Pacha Mama. To be sure, I am still in love with the work I´m doing, but I guess I´m starting to see things from a different (slightly taller) angle. I´ve slammed my head into the doorway of chicken coop countless times, partly due to the fact that I wear a baseball cap and it obstructs my view, and partly because I am by no means a miniature human. Cecilia, on the other hand, is, and as she was the one who built the entire farm from the ground up, I think it´s fair that the size of the animal pens and the holes in the fence that we´re meant to climb through from garden plot to garden plot are more Cecilia-sized than Ali-sized. I frequently get my shirts caught on the barbed wire as I try to wiggle my way under tiny crawl spaces, and my feet hang over the edge of my bed while I sleep. Also, in addition to my title as resident gringa, which I share with Jenn, I have also become the human subsitute for a ladder. Cecilia is thrilled to have a friendly giant at her disposal; I am finding that she more and more often calls me to reach high-up tools in the shed and clear fallen leaves off of rooftops (don´t worry, Dad, the rooftops here are lower than over there) and it´s just funny, I guess, to see oneself as a tool.

I have finally become acquainted with the varying classes of hormigas (ants) that make this region their home. The most common ones are little brown ones, which attack your foot and proceed to crawl up your leg with astonishing speed the moment you step upon the little mound of dirt they call home. These guys crawl into your socks and bite you, but the bite doesn´t really hurt, it´s more annoying than anything else, because you have to roll down your sock and pick them off of you, one by one. And then, there are the big red ones, the ones that latch on for dear life. Their bites burn, real bad. They burrow their antennae´d heads in your sneakers, shoelaces, pants, socks, SKIN, and you have to grab them with concentrated dexterity in order to pull them free from your skin. Plus, they hurt, so it´s almost counterintuitive to be grabbing at something with your bare hands that will probably turn around and bite your finger. This week, they seeemed to be everywhere, and it felt like either Jenn or I were doing the ceremonial ant dance (frustrated grunts and groants, stomping feet, skipping around, hands reaching down to feet and picking, picking). I never thought I´d say this, but I miss our friendly black ants that visit us in Boston in the summertime. They just walk around the house in search of a crumb or two, and you just pick them up with your own hands and show them the door, and nothing happens. They don´t form massive mounds of dirt, dirt which is essentially the same color as the dirt on which their mounds rest, so that they´re essentially begging for some poor unsuspecting traveler to set her feet. Apparently, though, the red ant poop is really good fertilizer.

Poop. I find myself talking about it a lot, lately, both within this blog and in common conversation at the farm. Maybe it´s the ant bites, maybe it´s the relative lack of human contact, maybe it´s the fact that there are few people my own age out on the farm, but I think I´m regressing. Jenny and I make countless jokes around fecal matter, and now that we´re becoming more comfortable with our farmer coworkers, we share them with these guys. Ovidio is a sixty-something machete-toting gentleman whose jobs most of the time entail chopping things down and lugging them from one end of the farm to the other. He is short, stout, and strong, with a slight case of scoliosis (my own diagnosis) so that his right hip is slightly higher than the other, which becomes more pronounced when he walks. His skin has been tanned and tightened from working outside all day, especially on his forearms and face, and he has freckles over the laughter crinkles on the corners of his eyes. His bottom row of teeth jut out from under his top row, and his eyes sparkle with humor and at times mischief. He always wears a sombrero typical of the men of the coffee region, and he´s got a fantastic sense of humor, which is why we have started to joke with him. I don´t know, I feel this sense of childhoodhood freedom when I converse with him, and so the other day Jenny and I were helping him clean out the manmade duck pond and we started chanting ´´Playa de Popo! Playa de Popo! (Poopie Beach, Poopie Beach)´´ and laughed hysterically until we were doubled over with muscular contractions. Ridiculous.

Ok, back to serious stuff. This week, I got to harvest coffee beans, which I´ve always wanted to do, since I´m a coffee fanatic. I took my Ipod down into the coffee trees and searched for yellow, red, and black little granitos, which I tossed with a satisfying PLUNK into the plastic container I wore fastened with twine to my body. It was a fantastic morning, I just rocked out in my little world of playlists and parted branches searching amid the majority of green, young beans for their brightly colored ripe brothers and sisters, bending the trunks back as far as they´d permit without snapping in order to reach the highest ones, which were usually the ripest since they had the twofold advantage of both prime sunlight and were also out of reach of the shorter coffee pickers like Jenn and Ovidio. Later, we ran these beans through a processing maching that de-shelled them, and they are currently laying out to dry. Once completely dry (4-7 days time), we will roast them and grind them and package them! I will save a few for us to roast on our own, over a small fire, so that when I sit down to eventually drink this coffee I will be able to say that I made it. And this will have a much different sentiment than the countless times I´ve said I´ve ´´made´´ coffee before.