QueenPuya

Its way too early and I am on way too little sleep, as our neighbors in Lima hosted a raucous party until three in the morning last night. I’ve got a long day ahead of me as I travel to Chicago, but I’ve got some time to kill at the airport so I will finish off my South America blog. Sniff, sniff…I can’t believe its over. But I am more than ready to come home

Drumroll, please! Announcing my South America awards. I would hate to add tension to already tense situations between Andean nations, so please note that most of these could have gone any number of ways! :)

South America Awards!
Food: (tie) Colombia & Peru, Argentina (Note how the two winners are the places I stayed in actual homes!…but actually the winner is my honeymoon in BA)
Fruit: Ecuador, Chile, Colombia
Capital: La Paz, Buenos Aires, Bogota
Medium Sized City: Cusco (Pe), Cuenca (Ec), Valparaiso (Ch)
Small Town: El Angel (Ec), Villa de Leyva (Co), Samaipata (Bo)
Local Festivity: Christmastime in Colombia, dia de los Muertos in Ecuador, Semana Santa Peru
Historical Center: Quito, Cusco, Bogota
Booze: Argentina, Peru, Colombia
Seafood: Peru, Argentina
Meat: Argentina, Peru
Puya Collecting: Ecuador, Chile, Colombia
Best Herbarium: USM, Lima
National Parks: Iguaque (Co), Podocarpus (Ec), Huascaran (Pe)
Natural Preservation: Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina
Mountains: Peru, Colombia, Chile
Telephone and Internet: Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia
Local music: Brazil(the only thing I will mention about my trip in 2002), Argentina, Peru
Best long-distance bus services: Peru
Worst taxis: Peru
Worst traffic: Bogota
Best public transportation: Quito
Best airport: Lima
Most Catholic: Peru
Best shopping: Peru, Colombia, Argentina
Country I would return to soonest; Colombia, BA for the food
Country I think you should visit: Peru

And so we bid goodbye to Raquel, my South American self. My how she has grown! I remember being absolutely terrified and wanting to go home immediately when I first set foot in Bolivia, less than three years ago. I barely could speak Spanish, I barely knew anything about Puya, I could barely get around. I thought there was no way I could possibly complete my project and collect in all these countries. But thanks to more than a little luck and hard work, now it is my second nature to be here and I feel like I can handle myself traveling and working here with little stress or confusion. I am very proud of myself for coming this far. It is so rewarding to have stretched myself to the limits and see myself thrive. I do hope everyone in their life gets a chance to do the same. Muchisimas gracias to Matt for all his love and support…I miss you and I owe you. And to my family whose attention to and enthusiasm for my work helps enormously.

As for the future, I don’t really know if I will do more plant collecting in South America. I truly love it, but the buracracy involved in collecting and exporting plants frustrates me to no end. Also, all this travel has been a bit taxing at times. Regardless, I know how fortunate I am to have gotten to do all of this and I will always look back fondly on this time in my life. Back to the US (with a trip to Costa Rica to look forward to…just for fun!) and back to the real world. Thanks for reading

Back in Lima again, land of sun and humidity, big lunches and lots of taxi rides. I absolutely love being in the care of Mercedes mom Norma, and she keeps me well fed on potatoes, pumpkin soup, avocados, drinkable yogurt and my favorite condiments in the world- red onions in lime juice and plump purple olives. Both are like drugs for me and I seriously don't think I could ever get tired of them. I have to hide my olive pits so people won't make fun of me for how many I eat! I am also well caffeinated, as they drink Coca Cola (or bright yellow Inca Cola) about 3 times a day and coffee more than that! You can spend a whole day at the table in Peru and people would think nothing of it.
I am extremely please to be working in Lima with Noema, a Peruvian woman who is starting her thesis project on Puya of the departmento Ancash. Undergraduate theses in South America are a really big deal and usually very professional. Perhaps more on the Peruvian education system and how awesome it is later. Noema is working out of the Museo where I take my plants to dry and we have exactly the same opinions on the Peruvian Puya species (both under and over described) and have fantastic plans for future collaborations. Her timing is perfect, as I am starting to dump many of my collecting supplies (it actually makes me a bit emotional!) and she is inheriting my gloves, excess silica gel, Puya-strength plant press straps and even some of my grant money. It is virtually impossible to find funding for fieldwork as a Peruvian botanist and I am very happy that I can help her out. I have been looking for a collaborator of my similar age and experience for years in each country I visit, to no avail and here she is! I think she is committed to the group and very knowledgeable about all aspects of our work. I had so much fun teaching her how to press Puya and examining my new species number 4, from Ancash. The future is bright and the work will go on! An unexpected and delightful surprise.
Now I play the waiting game with INRENA for my permits to take the plants out of the country. So far the Peruvian Environmental beauracracy has been more straightforward and quick than any other country I've dealt with, but today I find out that Bryans permits are done, but mine need two more signatures, even though we submitted them at the same time. It will be fine, I am assured, and I'll return tomorrow to retrieve them and then apply for ANOTHER set of permits for exporting the plants. I will show all this paper to someone at the airport before I leave and all should be good! Ah, to finally be legal! Bryan is alive, we know, and somewhere in Lima. We will find him later today.
Hopefully Mercedes and I will get to go a national Park south of Lima that has flamingos, penguins and sea lions in a few days. She has lots of work still to do here at the International Potato Center and I am enjoying the beautiful facilities and free internet (why is no one online to chat now??) The laboratories here are amazing and they are doing excellent work on protecting the world's supply of potato genetic diversity. Too bad we can't find lots of the potatoes I've eaten here in the States. Some are quite pretty and tasty (unlike different strains of South American bananas...just doesn't do it for me!) I also hope to hit the beach and the salon before trucking home in a few days. Off to work on my South America awards list...

I think I might have officially logged my last collection record of my Ph.D... number 231, Puya macrura. A lovely Puya who can live in dry slopes and has black flowers and very pointy bracts and we found it just across the river from the town we are staying at. But really, it all ends with Puya raimondii, the largest bromeliad on earth and probably the most memorable of them all. They live in the highest, steepest, most desolate places I have seen...I think I set a new altitude record for myself of 4500m (someone translate to feet, I don´t know.) Nothing lives there, except hearty campesinos, their livestock, some grass, and the giant Puyas. They are as tall as buildings and quite plentiful on secluded hillsides, perhaps protected from the wind. I did not hit a flowering year, but many had old inflorescences twice as tall as the leaves, which provide a lovely home for many noisy woodpeckers! Spectacular and fitting to save to the end, but I can´t really be useful at that altitude for long, so I had to take my data as pictures. I´ve got some fun theories about the plants that I´ll explore more later and I´m glad I spent the time and money to see them properly.
We are wrapping things up in Carhuaz now, with a day of long family meals. Siria, the families Quechua servant for some 60 years, prepared cuy, or guinea pig. Unfortunately I saw them out in their pens just as cute and fluffy as in a petstore. They don´t skin them when they fry them, and you are served one cut in half with little legs splayed out. The only way to really remove the meat is to pull it off with your teeth, including hair and skin. It took me ten minutes to brave some thigh meat separated by Mercedes for me, and that was about it. I´m a little disappointed in myself, but fried hair is just too gross. I almost have decided to give up pork for good after seeing the adorable pigs they keep here. I was also kind of appauled to see Mercedes cousin bring in one of his fighting roosters fresh from battle covered in blood. He will nurse its wounds and get it back in shape...it probably gets more love than any of the other animals in the house. We ate some fluffy Inga beans from their tree and ran inside before the rains came. Now I am whiling away the time before our bus to Lima leaves. I just adored Ancash and this valley, with views of the largest, whitest mountains I´ve ever seen, but I am more than ready to start wrapping things up. Work, rest, and fun await for my final days in Lima.

Hola,

Greetings from the final leg of the journey...Ancash and the Cordilleras Blanca y Negra. We took a ridiculously long busride from Lima yesterday, but I enjoyed seeing the transition, albeit slowly through a filthy window, from the starkest desert imaginable north of Lima to the lush, wildflower filled meadows at the base of the mountains. The bus chugged up the final bit of elevation to reveal the stunning white peaks, lush meadows and meandering rivers that for all the world look exactly like the grand Tetons. Except for the llamas and stretches of Puya raimondii. I haven´t seen them yet, unfortunately, but I know they are just beyond in the mist, waiting for me. In a few days we go to graph and photograph them, but no collecting.
This morning we got up super early after a lovely evening in Mercedes´ aunts house...actually, it is part of a giant house owned by her grandparents that was divided up after their death. Mercedes and her mom own a big part, but it is falling down and they have to do a lot of work to rehab it. Extreme homemakover or some such show should come down and help! They would have to watch out for all the baby turkeys and very friendly Rottweiler Roco.
We took a taxi up into the national Park and then started walking along this amazing aquamarine lake, flanked by huge peaks, waterfalls and glaciers. Pure magic and we decided this is what heaven should be like (minus stinging Loasaceae.) Huge Polylepsis forests with peeling red bark (excellent toiletpaper!), enough wild potatos to keep Mercedes more than happy and Puya angusta just starting to bloom! A big white fuzzball with deep green flowers just starting to poke out. I took lots of photos of these cliffhangers over the lake, with lots of nice ducks in the background. We had a delicious lunch of giant corn, edible lupine beans and sweet glass bottled Coke. Truly a magical day and hopefully more of the same (with more species!) tomorrow.
We are now in Mercede´s hometown of Caraz, just off the quaint red and white painted plaza in a big internet cafe. A nice place, but full of scary memories. In 1970 there was a huge earthquake and large piece of a glacier fell off the mountain and started a landslide that buried 30,000 people in the nearby town of Yungay. We drove over their graves today. We also drove past the busstop that was blown up by the Shining Path just seconds after young Mercedes and her mom passed by in a bus on Christmas years ago. Traveling here, Colombia and other places makes me admire the fortidude of the people of this continent and makes me realize that the US, at least recently, really doesn´t know what it is like to suffer terrorism, disorder or loss of life on a scale like many other nations have. Not to diminish any of our current events, but I have been thinking about that a lot lately and feel it is true.
But the US is awesome for so many reasons and now, as happens with any trip in the fourth quarter, I get homesick and reminisce about mis cosas favoritos de los EEUU. Free, thick and plentiful toilet paper that you can flush! Soap dispensers always full! Ample napkins! Decent restaurant service! Showers that have both hot water and decent pressure! Less smog and dirt! Less reggaeton! Less music in general everywhere at once! Less omnipresent soapoperas! REAL, freshground coffee! Less barking dogs...(sorry, Couscous)! Better sidewalks! Better seatbelts! Better quality plastics, hate to say! More cheese! Beer diversity! Faster and more plentiful highways! Doing my own laundry whenever I want! My darling husband and dachshund! Thats the list for now, which may grow. But you all know that I do love it here and I hope to not offend any South American readers. I´ll go off to dream of thick rolls of Charmin now...

Hola,

More of the same today, but this time we did the beach with a big umbrella to protect tender sunburned shoulders. I am practically addicted to Huanchaco and could have easily forgotten my bus tickets to Lima and stayed for more days, but Mercedes promises me fabulous hiking to mountain lakes further south, and I guess that is lovely, too. We had some kind of nasty seafood for lunch, which also helps encourage me to leave the beach. Also, it is not sustainable to buy four new sets of shell jewelry every day, no matter how cheap and clever they are. So we are back in Trujillo, waiting for our bus back to Lima.
We did manage to stop buying jewelry and headed to nearby Chan Chan, a major pre Incan civilization and the largest adobe settlement in the world. It was ravaged and dissolved by El Niño, but still impressive with acres of high walls and beautiful, strong engravings and windows. I ponied up for a guide, which made all the difference and luckily there was cloud cover so labyrinths of sand mazes was a delight and not torture. There is so much history here it baffles the mind...Peru has many times more history and complexity to its past than the US. I would HIGHLY recommend Trujillo and surroundings to anyone who comes here. The weather is much nicer than Cusco, it is more authentic and there are lots of cool things to do and more ways to relax. We saw an impromtu performance of the national Marinara dance last night and I was beyond charmed.
I was going to write a lot about comparing and contrasting South American countries, but think I will save that for the end of my trip. I feel right now, though, that if I had to sum up Peruvians, I would say they are the most decent people I know, using the highest complementary form of the word. More from the tall mountains of Cordillera Negra y Blanca soon!

Well, we were all prepared to leave for Cajamarca after a brief stay in Trujillo, but the newspaper headlines told of massive landslides all along the highway to Cajamarca and major flooding at other places along the way. There are unseasonably major rainfalls happening nearly every day up there and the ground is saturated and slipping down. And these canyons are the exact places I should be going and thus we have decided not to go at all. We collected yesterday just around Trujillo, which was fine, and decided to call it quits. But ´´we¨´ is me and Mercedes. Where was Bryan? Well, we didn´t know for a long time. He left right after we got to Trujillo on a bus north, but the landslides had already happened and they were not selling bus tickets to that location. But he didn´t come back to the hotel. I had to squash my motherly instincts and not worry about him. Two days later we found him in the plaza with quite a tale to tell. He did head north, but not on the main highway...instead, a small, even sketchier road in a very sketchy local bus. They spent hours inching along the road, moving boulders and very giant tree that had fallen down in the dark of night, as they listened to the river raging in the canyon below. Exactly the sort of scenario I am doing everything possible to avoid, but exactly the sort of thing he loves. He became beloved by the bus people for all his hard work and sounds like had some fun wading about in the mud helping people out. He did find his plants and is heading north again to wait until they clear out the road to Cajamarca. And he´ll even collect for me! So, truly, I think we can say I did everything possible within sanity and safety to get those plants...and so there was nothing left to do but hit the beach!
And what a day it was...quite possibly one of the happiest beach days of my life. We took a little collectivo bus for 40 cents to Huanchaco, a few miles west on the coast. We passed fields of corn and giant adobe ruins of the pre Incan Chan Chan civilization, that we promise to visit tomorrow if we can pry our butts off the sand. We spent a lovely day starting the long process of tanning, eating a whole pineapple, several passion fruits and a whole lot of Ceviche and buying way too much cute jewelry. It was the loveliest little fishing village where people still use the skinny reed boats they´ve used for centuries to catch seafood. The sand turns the water a lovely coffee color and the sun turns my skin a lovely rosey color. We are certainly going back tomorrow before we take the night bus back to Lima. This is the kind of place where you could spend several months and not even know what happened. Heavenly. Back to reality, as it is, soon... time to sleep off this Pisco Sour. Peru rocks!

Hola,

Despite Wesley Snipe dubbed into Spanish´s best attempts, I was fully able to sleep through the night on our most comfortable bus last night. We have absolutly nothing like it in the US and I was fully impressed and fully reclined. We pulled into Trujillo, way north of Lima but still on the coast, at dawn and found a lovely hotel that has the best shower I´ve had in weeks and a nice little cafe. Bryan took off right away for random adventures further north...perhaps we´ll find him again tomorrow or maybe not. He´s kind of a lone wolf, but great when he is around. Mercedes and I spent a rather uncomfortable, if productive, day in the herbarium identifying plants. They don´t have an airconditioner in the Trujillo herbarium, so every single specimen was covered in mothballs and the smell in that cramped space about killed me. I was quite successful in essentially rearranging all the specimens and I put my little labels with the proper name and my name on more than half the specimens. It felt great and hopefully will not have to be redone by someone smarter in the future! It occurs to me that probably there is no one else on earth more suited to this task than me (aside from a guy in Florida who is way too busy). We are all set to go on a short morning collecting jaunt up the quebrada from here and then should be set to head north and east to Cajamarca ...six hour busride this time, by day... for the real action.
I got to eat the famous ceviche today....raw seafood marinated in lime juice...and so far, so good. I really, really liked it, despite the texture. The lime juice here is ubiquitous and amazing. This seems like a very cool town and part of Peru and I hear should be recommended to anyone interested in beaches or surfing (or giant adobe ruins...Chan chan, just a bit away from here) One night of walking around and taking pictures of pastel colored churches should about do it fo our tourism, though. Puya calls...and I answer.