From The Death Row

THE TIMELESS JOURNEY, PART ONE

Dear Danarel

I hope that you don’t mind that I am giving titles to my letters. The complexity of the material and the number of details obliged me to do it, otherwise I will go in orbs larger and larger and land into a never ending story. And to be on the safe side let’s better start with the beginning.  The opportunities to go from Peru or Ecuador into the Amazonian jungle, the enchanted and dangerous domain of  fabulous plants and animals, leading to amazing experiences and sometimes to complete disasters – abound. Read More

THE TIMELESS JOURNEY, PART TWO

Dear Danarel,

The other half of the fruit is rotten even if the buildings are one day old. It is born rotten. These are the wood houses, big prismatic crates, giant matchboxes (they may burn sometimes), the fixed ones on posts the floating ones on logs. They are made of wide planks that enclose both the sacred and the lay space, the sleeping and the living room of the family. The box is partially surrounded by a corridor that leads to a veranda from one side and a kitchen and toilet from the other: the whole is more or less open to public vision, the wind, the mind, and the rain. Seasonal cleaning,  I will say.   A more confluence with nature and its elements, including giant-sized mosquitoes, is hard to imagine.  They are painted in luminous colors, and despite the structural unity, they differ very much from the other. Some have thatched roofs, but the corrugated iron is dominant. People are circulating in boats to come in or to go out of this miser Venice. Read More

THE TIMELESS JOURNEY, PART THREE

Dear Danarel,

So, after some hesitations, mosquitoes love me too and a lot, it appeared that the “selva”, the rain forest will be the last station of my journey. I decided to go for it and put some tough conditions on the desk of the travel agent. I do not want to see dancing Indians, rescued animal shelters, bare buttocks of any sex or to experience any form of agro-tourism (that last was a mistake,  justified only by age, I recommend it). What I wanted was  a tour focused on fauna and flora. It sounded smart, they agreed, they will agree to everything and do whatever they want… So,  there we go first by car to Nauta, and from there by boat through an amazing array of rivers  and rivulets, canals and creeks,   channels and tributaries of various colours and names towards our jungle lodge… Read More

The Lady Fear

Dear Danarel

I hope that you don’t mind the fact hat I am using this slickly adjective which during the last century deteriorated because abusive and exaggerate employ. It is not in my intention to look for offenders, taking into account that I like very little mankind in general, but they were the Americans who depreciated the superlative by using it for items  as strikingly plain as  a pair of sun side-up fried eggs or the lobby of five star mammoth hotel or an extremely boring kindergarten reception. Read More

The Steam Fountain

Dear Danarel,

The blessed particularity of the last day was the diversity of its particulars. Officially we left before dawn for the Geyser del Tatio  valley. I was lightly  dressed and the cold was biting into my bones. The valley Read More

In salt we trust

Let’s pretend that I am not completely hopeless and that a slow but noticeable improvement of my behaviour could be registered by a person with especially keen eyes. I decided and succeeded to stick to the decision of a project a day.  It is true that each of my last two expeditions began very early in the morning, what didn’t leave too much opportunity to misbehave. Now that I am thinking again I realize that so much auto-control  was a mistake and because this exaggerate precaution  I got into I missed a night walk  under one of the most beautiful starry sky in the world in which the Crux or Southern Cross gives the replica to the northern Big Dipper or Ursa Major.   If you are a warrior you have to live by the sword, as the ancients said, especially if you have one what with all this gun control became a quite complicate matter…   Being the things what they were at  four o’clock in the morning we (that means the young people and me) boarded a car and drove for an hour or more on a flat and Read More

Baños de Aqua Santa

as its name says, and volcanoes plenty

ex quinta maleta

Dear Danarel,

Children, relative and precious friends

Little by little I will start to curse the day I decided to keep a travelogue and especially to make it public.  At the beginning I want to educate my children, to complete the education, to refine and enrich, relative and friends, later the mankind and finally myself. The last task was really insurmountable. Read More