Walking with another

I am not alone…

literally.

After a long drought without the pleasure of a walking companion, the skies rained down my great friend, Marieke of the Lowlands.  You can’t hold it against her that she comes from a country that consciously decided to build a large chunk of their infrastructure below sea level (think New Orleans but on a country-wide scale) or that her native tongue has about 40 friggin’ vowels so that the process of learning it requires frequent visits to the “New Oxford Dictionary of Dutch Vowels” (and even then it’s a crapshoot whether or not you’ve got the right sound).

I met Marieke (pronounced mah-ree-kah) back in Cusco at a series of salsa lessons.  We ended up getting partnered for much of the course and realized that four left feet are better than just two (for the feet of the other students anyway).  We met up again when I came back to the area to do the Salkantay trail to Machupicchu with a group of five Dutch, three Unitedstatesians, and two Isrealis.  During that trip, she decided that it might be fun to stroll along with me for the latter part of her stay in South America…

and Voila, here she is…just now catching a glimpse of what the hell she got herself into. (no showers, monotonous food, blisters, merciless sun, sore muscles, brainless truck/bus drivers, rabid dogs, cold nights, and….well…my company 24/7) 

We just finished up a five day jaunt from the mountain city of Huancayo in the central Andes of Perú to the wacky, otherworldly town of La Oroya, the crossroads for Lima, the jungle, and mountains both North and South.

It’s been great getting another perspective on the walk.  I’ve had to change certain habits (everything from just peeing wherever the urge hits me to trying to make the dinners at least palatable to human beings). 

Having someone alongside during the walk has brought on several changes in my routine.  I don’t know if they’re temporary or if they might actually find their way into the walk as a whole.  First of all, we started out slowly, averaging about 25km per day for the first 5 days, taking a ton of breaks along the way…something I almost never do walking alone…and now I find myself worryingly attracted to every little shady spot or grassy area I see along the road.  “hmm…just a little nap there would hit the spot.” etc.  Secondly, I’ve improved my diet about tenfold in this last week, eschewing my usual austere, slightly wacko walking formula of some bread+lots of oreos+a bit of water=a lean, mean fighting machine (and a guy a lot more susceptible to colds, fevers, etc.) instead opting for a veritable cornucopia including local honey, fat raisins, homemade cheese, eggs, apples, the most incredible mandarins and tangerines I’ve ever had, bananas, brown sugar and toasted wheat, peas, lentils, mashed potatoes, soy sauce (not straight, mind you…as a condiment), and other normal-food-to-normal-people but strange-and-exotic-delights-for-Ian.

Strolling along with Marieke, I’m beginning to see how my normal walking routine actually pushes me unhealthily close to my physical limits.  Unfortunately, I really, really enjoy nearing those limits, I unconsciously revel in finding myself further along the road in a day than I had thought possible.  I love feeling my body fine-tune itself, keeping nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary to the act of propelling myself northward.  Maybe I can find a way to mesh some of the ”Marieke Era” ideas into my own twisted approach to walking. 

It’s a bit strange sometimes, as I’m lost in my thoughts, wending along the shores of a river, or through a narrow valley, to realize that there’s someone there with me.  A ton of questions surge to the forefront: What do I do?  Is she bored?  Does she want conversation?  How is she doing?  Am I walking too fast?  Did she just smell my fart?  Does she want to take a break?  Should I say something, or will I break into her daydreams/concentration/contemplation?  Is she having fun?  Does she think I’m ignoring her?  Should we stop for the day soon?  along with a ton of other queries important and banal.  As a result I’ve found myself occasionally asking her how she is about seven times in 10 minutes, or prattling on about this or that or the other without hardly taking a breath, probably boring her into a near coma (a tough state to reach while walking).  But those thoughts only come around now and again.  For the most part we’ve passed our days afoot in quiet comfort, listening to music for a couple hours here and there, commenting on this mountain, on that river, on those sheep, on that toothless guy. 

We’ve also begun to give eachother language classes…Spanish for her, Dutch for me.  It’s been great fun.  I quiz her on vocab and sentences dealing with stuff we see as we walk along, give her little grammar tips.  And in return I’ve begun to delve into being able to “meet and greet” someone in Dutch.   Hoe is het?  “how’s it going?”  I have to admit that it’s a strange language, absolutely riddled with vowels…learning them has made me sound like an indecisive cave man what with all the “ui, eu, oe, oo, ei, uu, aa, ee, au, ou, ÿ” and other little grunting sounds that comprise about 90% of the language.  And actually spelling words in Dutch?  Please…I’ll learn a word out loud that sounds really close to something in english and when I go to write it, Marieke’s over my shoulder with a “um…nope, that has a double “a” and three “e’s” and don’t forget the ÿ, the four d’s and the silent “j” “…for the love of all that is holy, could they make it any harder to spell?  Anyway, it’s great fun.  I’d forgotten how interesting it is to puzzle out the rules of a language, to be able to come up with that first intelligable sentence (which in my case was “ik wil soep eten met een lepel” “I want to eat soup with a spoon” …I have no idea why or how that became my first phrase, I am admittedly strange…)

So, tomorrow we head out for a long climb to well over 14,000 feet, sharing our perspectives on the landscape and the people, teaching one another languages, walking in silence, contemplating our pasts, presents and futures…and freezing our asses off before we hang a sharp left and descend down to the Peruvian coast and the Panamerican Highway, a hopefully less up-and-down, frozen-ground world…

Stay tuned for some more updates, pics, and hell, even a story/reflection or two.