Hitchhiking in Nicaragua

This entry is going to be a weird one: it's out of sequence. I have been meaning to write about what has been happening since I left Oaxaca but even my hard-copy journal is three days behind. I had an amazing time in Guatemala. I climbed up to the mouth of a volcano. It was certainly a once in a lifetime experience and I know for a fact that will be my first short story when I come back.

The second one will be this: hitchhiking in Nicaragua.

According to the guide, Nicaragua is very poor. One out of two people is below the poverty line. You can tell by the quality of the roads. There are some stretches of the road we went to that were broken up at the sides, unpainted, and riddled with gargantuan potholes every foot or so forcing the bus to go a mind numbing 15-20 mph. It is so poor, shoeshine boys here beg to have your shoes shined with them or ask for what little soda is remaining in your soda can. It's heartbreaking.

But let's get to the hitchhiking part.

We woke up this morning to the sound of chickens and exotic birds crowing and squaking outside. The wind was whipping from the nearby Lago de Nicaragua cooling the humid air. I took a quick shower and slathered on SPF 45 sunblock. We then went out to catch a lancha to the lago. Problem was, we didn't know where to catch the lanchas (ferryboats) so Walt walked up to one of the locals and asked them. It was 2 kilometers down the road.

... We took a lancha to this beautiful but rather slipshod made/third-worldy restaurant and had one of the most authentic meals I've ever had in my life: it was the plato tipico called Tostones con Queso Y Carne Mixto. It had fried plantains (NOT Cuban style), cubed beef, queso frito, and salsa. I'm telling you, I've dissected it, asked about it, savored it, and in fact, at the time of this writing, still digesting it. We then took the lancha back to our starting point.

... But the road out of our starting point was rather deserted with cows and people on bicycles. We decided to use our thumbs then. Two people in cars didn't stop. We waved away the taxis in the blazing sun. But one guy in a pickup truck with landscaping plants in the back stopped. We stepped into the back, sat on the wheelwells and enjoyed our open-topped ride through the little streets off the lago shore and Granada. Nothing beats the wind in your hair, listening to Spanish music, the sun being blocked by leaves of towering mango trees dripping orange and green fruit, and hitchhiking! The air was nice and clean and smelling slightly of cow dung. We asked if we can go to the Parque Colon. The very friendly man wearing a white guayabera shirt didn't mind at all. In fact, after he dropped us off, he said to us: "Es un placer haber compartido el viaje con ustedes." It's a pleasure to have shared a ride with you.

God, I love Nicaragua. Who would've known!

Until next time!

Exerpts From Paula's Hard-Copy Journal: Guadalajara Marketplace, Mexico City Blues, Breaking Into Our Own Hotel Room in Oaxaca

... Guadalajara is a colonial city in its finest. If you walked around the historic area of the city, you would see buildings older than the United States. In fact, one of the restaurants we ate in, The Hotel Frances, was built in 1610 and still stands today despite many past earthquakes. The building is built in the classic European style: triangular face, large wood-framed windows with little balconies/awnings, and its 5-story bulk was painted a washed out yellow. But beyond the building is a little alley used only by pedestrians. There, street vendors sold anything from trinkets to fruit to potato chips in plastic bags. We went into the central marketplace, a place that resembled the old markets of Manila where you can purchase beef entrails on one side of the wet tiled market to dry good such as leather on the other side. On the way to the toilet, in which we had to pay two pesos, we passed by decapitated heads of cow in a pile, skinned and ready to be sold. Walt couldn't look at them while I stared, mystified at the glassy eyes that stared back at me.

... You know you are in a poor country when little things such as the food vendors bother you. In a few instances, I saw street vendors as old as my grandfather, dirty, sweating, and carrying little baskets of cigarettes or candy in smoggy intersections. It broke my heart to see them trying to get the attention of customers indifferently passing by. I couldn't imagine my own 87-year old grandfather doing what these old men and women were doing. I couldn't bear to look nor buy from them, fearing that I was perpetuating some kind of first-world arrogance. Then there was the littlest of the street vendors at the market, she was short and sold potato chips and duritos. For a moment, I looked at her and wondered if she were Kat's age, my little godchild in LA. I broke down and asked her what her age was, in Spanish. Shyly she said she was eight years old. I felt sick to my stomach. She should be at home doing homework or something. Now I understand what Che Guevarra was feeling when he saw the poor around him. Speaking of which, I got a poster and a shirt with Che's profile on it from the same marketplace.


... Mexico City was grungy. From the bus, I saw an expanse of squat homes looking unfinished without paint, naked with exposed cinderblocks. Mile after mile, these squat homes clung to the edges of hills strewn with trash. Political ads and businesses were painted on the side of buildings with Mexican flag colors: green, white, and red. I couldn't wait to get out of this dirty, smoggy city. As the bus rolled down to Oaxaca, the scenery changed back to dry piney woods upon hills like Northern California. Homes were spaced further and further apart with old tires as fencing. I could see why Mexico was so smoggy, even in the countryside: people burned their garbage in the backyard, their plumes like smoke signals in the clear sky. What a strange road that was, the road to Oaxaca. After the pine forest, the background changed back to the southwestern desert I was used to, with yellow sand, Nopales and Yucca cacti, later, the widest expanse of Saugauro cacti I had ever seen. Windy roads flanked by walls of white, then red rock, showed us wide-eyed wanderers herds of white wild goats, domesticated cows and even the occassional burro...

... We got to Oaxaca in the early afternoon. We had no idea where we were going to stay so we walked around the historic downtown area and asked the tourist bureau for places we can stay within our budget. We were told to go to the Hotel Santa Clara where we got the last room in the hotel. It was a triple and we got it for the price of a double. Our room was on the ground floor overlooking a quaint little plazuela with trees and lawn chairs in the middle inviting us to sit and lick helados all afternoon. But as we slipped the key into our room, the door wouldn't open. We asked the receptionist to let us in but she couldn't. She then called a couple of men who started to pick at the window lock from the inside. One of the men went up the ladder and had the window open. But there were bars going horizontally across the window to deter thieves. One of the men volunteered to go through the bars to open the door from the inside. Walt looked at my small frame and volunteered me. I didn't mind. I stepped on the first step of the ladder, eased my legs through the bars just like I was doing the limbo and went through the window through much laughing by the guys and myself. I jumped onto the floor and opened the door from the inside. We now had a fully functioning room door!...

Until next time!

Exerpts From Paula´s Hard-Copy Journal: The 36-Hour Bus Ride To Guadalajara, Jalisco, MX

... During the night, people disembarked the bus and more and more seats opened up in the back. At Mazatlan, only a handful of us were left and Walt decided to move to a row of empty seats further from me to stretch out. With only 8 hours of the trip or so left, we were sick of the smell of the inside of the bus: the toilet in the back reeked of shit and the lemony disenfectant used to mop down the bus back in Culiacan was long ago defeated. We were sick of the smell of our own unwashed bodies. My hair was matted from natural oil and tied up under a bandanna. La Turista (diarrhea) hadn´t paid us a visit despite all the stuff we ate at the various bus stations we stopped at.

I stuffed my day pack on the overhead compartment but during the night, it fell smack on my face. I instantly woke up, yelped, feared that my spare glasses broke, and cursed the fact I had two books in there. My face and glasses were okay. I laid my bag next to me and promptly fell asleep again.

When we woke up, it was cold in the outskirts of Guadalajara. We were greeted by the news that there was a giant 7.6 earthquake in Mexico City during the night. We didn´t even feel it rolling along in that bus. Outside, we were in a garbage-strewn area near the bus terminal of the city of Tlaquepaque resisting the urge to ride a taxi. We wanted to take a bus just like the locals do but we didn´t know which one to take and after we asked a few locals the same question: will this bus take us to El Centro (de Guadalajara). We got there, found a cheap hotel, and showered. I had never been so happy to shower with lukewarm hot water and cheap hotel soap. Removing my travel pack felt so good too. It was beginning to bite into my shoulders.

... Walt and I discovered the joys of owning walkie-talkies with the two-mile range. At the Plaza de Liberacion, a beautiful square littered with people, green gardens, street vendors, with two cup-like fountains with the Greek-building-like Teatroand the yellow-domed Cathedralon the each end of the plaza, we decided to test them. He went down to the men´s room in a subway-like are a floor below the plaza and I went to buy bottled water at a nearby shop. Unfortunately for me, I ran out of Mexican pesos and my translator/food order was nowhere near me. I asked the girl if she took dolares because that´s all I had. The huge cold bottled water I had cost exactly $1. She took my dollar anyway especially when she saw how exasperated I had become when I began to tell her in severely broken Spanish that I don´t have any more pesos. By the time Walt got done using the men´s room, I had my bottled water and was greedily guzzling it down. The walkie-talkies worked as we told each othe which way we were going as met, yet again, in front of the Plaza de Liberacion ...

How was that for a teaser? More to come in the days ahead! This is Paula signing off from an internet cafe in Guadalajara! Adios!

Interview With A Post-Coital Monster

The title of this entry is the title of one of Joel Tan's poems from his debuted chapbook, Monster. It seems fitting. I just wanted to let everyone know that I had a blast being part of the Monster crew. I am honored to have been given the chance to read. The night after Monster, I can now concentrate on being Paula the Traveler, the one going with one of my best buds Walt, to Central and South America.

I was so excited last night, I barely slept.

Last night, after Monster, I found myself talking with Aleks F. and Ryan outside Arts In Action. We had a blast talking about art, travel, and what makes us happy. As they chugged beer, and even gave free ones to other folks on the street, and I looked on (jealously, of course), we were glad that artists like us can get together and that our bonds with each other and our art have become nothing but stronger.

Also, hanging out by the swapmeet, post event, drinking beer in a seedy part of Los Angeles is kinda cool in a beatnik sorta way, isn't it? ;)

My thanks to my editor Chris for the support. Thank you for understanding that your coming to this event means a whole lot to me. Nitin, thanks bud! And use that phone number well! Mike, Leo, and Susan, thank you! For my family, you guys rock!

Pictures speak a thousand words so without further ado...

Pictures from Monster Ball! http://www.paulaworld.com/images/MonsterBall/

Hormones and Timelines

Wednesday I hate my sister. I only have one sister but she is the most ungrateful little cunt in the history of sisterhood. Her computer has high speed internet and for many months, since the account for her high speed internet was in my name, she didn't even want to share the bandwidth with me knowing full well I have departed from my geekish ways and only use the internet for email and blogging. Her excuse is because she "runs a server" serving anime music and videos, a very illegal thing and quite honestly, something one outgrows by age 25. I have volunteered to network the place we share with wireless high speed internet so we can all share. No. She insists. The connection is all mine.

So here I was Wednesday morning, right as she was about to get ready for work, working on her machine that was online so I could check my messages from the night before. I had been waiting for some information from Walt. She snaps at me and talks to me as if I was her chattel, voice raised, all attitude, demanding like the bitch that she was. I told her I'd be done in a minute but she continues to shriek like a banshee. I have my own machine on a dialup. I'd use it but it's slow, especially when I am downloading documents from my editor Chris and from Walt. I remind her to be a little patient and to show some gratefulness, after all since her immature ass can't drive, I drive her around upon her demand. She tells me I always throw the past at her. The past? The day before she borrowed money from me to buy a money order that she asked me to get for her! She bought some anime stuff online that only takes postal money orders. My mom hears us arguing. In the end, that little cunt does something that irks the shit out of me: she locks her computer in administrator mode, the cursor blinking on the empty password field. I am livid and I yell at her. I told her that I hope her conscience rests well knowing that I despise her mentally ill ass (she was depressed for 10 years and didn't seek help--just sat around the house vegetating) and if I die in South America, I will haunt her every night. I haven't spoken to her since then and she hasn't spoken to me since. Her computer is still locked out. I promise never to give her a ride anywhere again. If her boy-toy 21 year old boyfriend she met on the internet (my sis will turn 29 in two months) uses my car in my absence, I will both tear them new assholes.

I know this sounds so petty but my sister and I never get along even when we were kids. My friends have been around her and don't like her at all. It's her fucking attitude, that's why. Oh yeah, she thinks me and my writer friends are pompous bores who are all full of ourselves. I can expect her never to attend any of my book readings.

When I come back, I will plot to move out so I don't have to deal with her ass. My mom will be disappointed since I did leave home for 8 years. Oh well, it'll put a damper on my travel plans for a few years but I think my sanity should come first.

Needless to say, I started off the day pissed. I am also suffering from PMS.

However, I was writing and running errands all day at my cousin's house who has high speed internet on two computers and doesn't give me shit. I bitched to her about my sister and she said I should do the older sister routine and let it go and be patient. Fuck, no! I ain't no bitch's doormat. She shook her head. I'm incorrigible too.

I bought the things I needed for the trip. Now I am only missing one white t-shirt, one pair of Tevas or flip-flops, and one white tank top.

Later that night, I talked with Walt until 1:30 AM, yes A-M, about our revised timeline and itinerary. We noted the futility of the whole thing since we know damn well our itinerary will change. Then I slept.

The next morning, I received my travel pack in by UPS. Mine's a beautiful navy blue travel pack that converts into a backpack. It's beautiful and comfortable fully packed! I'm 8/9th packed! It's manufactured by MEI and it's the Voyager model. Worth every penny of the reasonable price of $130.00.

Monster's Ball then South America. I have four days to go.

Paula Turns 30 At Last

I did nothing on Friday except shop for almost disposable clothes to bring to South America. It's going to be tropical summer over there and the closest to tropical I've been to was August 2001 in New Orleans. I recall suffering from a migraine and sweating profusely in that city. I bought light (but not see-through) rayon and easy-care cotton blends.

I have one flower-print mid-calf skirt, one black button down shirt, one white button down shirt, one white t-shirt, one pair of lightweight jeans, a pair of shorts, a bathing suit, a pink party shirt, and one pair of hard-core hiking boots.

I need one white tank top, one more white t-shirt, a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of Tevas, and a pair of black dancing shoes.

These will be my clothes in South America for 50 days. Ah! What a meager closet I will be dragging along!

Had lunch with Rob, who wasn't going to be at my party and I won't see until after I came back, and Nitin. Ah! Just like olden times! I almost didn't have time to get my finances in order because I forgot to bring the papers I needed to make a trade. About one minute before the closing bell in New York, I dumped some stocks and replenished my bank account. Ah! Some people splurge on cars, their kids, or jewelry. I'll willingly spend money on travel. No doubt about it.

Saturday That is officially my birthday. Thirty years ago that day, my mom popped me out bloodied and screaming in a hospital, ironically enough, in the Frisco (San Francisco) section of Quezon City, a suburb of Manila. Back in the here-and-now, I was failing as a domestic goddess tending hors d'oeuvres in Chris's Studio City kitchen while he and our buddy Nitin were watching football in the living room.

Yeah, that sounded so disgustingly domestic, didn't it? I shudder to think that I actually lived a life like that in a house in Pennsylvania with a white picket fence. God bless the institution of Divorce!

People didn't start streaming in until after 8:30 PM, of course, because I warned them against Filipino time. ;)

We had a great time! Everyone got liquored up except for me, the allergic one. Nitin, Mike, Leo, Ryan, his bro, Seth, Chris's friends Oscar and Maria, Teresa and Suzete, and even Lara and her friend Deb showed up. My phone was ringing off the hook from well-wishers who left voicemail when I didn't pick up the phone.

Ryan and Chris took up an inebriated literary conversation about jazz and beat writers, as expected, which of course made me feel small and insignificant since I just was more familiar in writing my comfort genre of Filipino-ethnic fiction. *sigh* Understanding genres and then writing in different kinds of genres takes time, practice, and research! I'm also trying to write poetry which is something new for this normally prose writer...

The party wrapped up in the wee hours of the night, my guests staggering out into the streets of the Valley of the Stars.

Sunday E was back from London and gave me presents. I'd talk about it more but he has expressed his concern about my talking about him and what we do in a public forum. I told him that he'd been warned since I was 16 years old, and he 18, that I was a writer and I would write anything. In fact, I have to tell all my friends, as if friendship with me automatically came with fine print, that I was a writer and many of my writings may or may not be derived from real life with the names changed to protect the guilty. But I will respect his wishes and the wishes of all who are concerned about the shock value and real-life proximity of the things I write. So to the private, hard-bound journal this all goes...

Monday My last shrink appointment for two months. I'm going to miss her. I'm going to miss the mental/emotional massages. However, she did tell me that I certainly grew up a lot in the two years we'd been having sessions. That was two years already? Wow! Time flies. I picked up chairs from Chris's place, which were borrowed from Mike, and went home.

Tuesday Yucky banal tasks: got my car smogged. Bought more stuff for the trip. Read books. Rewrote a story.

Paula and Walt's South American Itinerary

I'll talk later about my birthday party and this past insane weekend. For now, here's a graphic illustrating the general itinerary Walt and I will be following. We'll be gone for 50 days starting in January 20, 2003 (the day after Monster's Ball) to 11 countries with 24 stops. The Peruvian cities of Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and Puno will be side trips I'm taking alone while Walt takes care of family business in Lima. ;) Enjoy!

Click to enlarge map.

Recovery Effort

I didn't know how insistent my body was in attempting to recover from the long, tumultuous, New Years Week. For the first time in many weekends, I decided not to do a thing last weekend except to make a quick dinner for a friend, a trend, it seems, that started during the first day of the New Year when I made Walt breakfast. I like making meals for my friends actually. It's one of the indirect ways I show them that I care.

Monday I got my required Yellow Fever vaccination with much consternation. Apparently, not all hospitals in the LA-area have all the vaccines required for travel immunizations. During that very banal task, I had managed to get myself a blind date with the nephew of the nurse who gave me the shot. The date was set for later in the week. I laughed at myself again and attributed these strange circumstances of people just openly talking with me as residual "traveler's mystique" from San Francisco. Later that night, I talked with my shrink and asked her about my recent inability to "feel anything" for all these guys lately. Strangely enough, I had found myself a desired commodity amongst the opposite sex and I have dates lined up from all sorts of guys that before a few months ago wouldn't have given me a second glance. I don't think I had changed my attitude in life that drastically other than an appreciation of the aura of joie de vivre that I allowed myself to be enveloped in recently. She said that some men find that attractive actually. I told her it seemed like a natural progression in me since I had been very uptight, a worrywart, and neck-deep in very involved relationships before. She said to enjoy the feeling of being the polar opposite of the old me and learn from it. I deserved it, she said. She and I also talked about Walt and how there are very few people in the world I could really be myself with. She said that the feeling I have when I'm with Walt, the unconditional acceptance of one's self, should be the feeling we strive for when choosing a future mate. We also talked about perhaps renewing my desire to be in personal attachments again. I thought about it for a few moments and laughed. My current state of mind wasn't really ready for it. Maybe someday. But dear God, not now. Gimme a couple of years of fun first.

Tuesday The feeling of unattachment and indifference was certainly evident on Tuesday. I just wasn't feeling like being affectionate to anyone, really. I was running errands and that was what I wanted to do, nothing else. Strange.

Wednesday Nothing to write home about other than reading and doing South America research. I was going to go to an art-group meeting until my car betrayed me by going on a barrage of light flashing to indicate some malfunction in my engine along with a worrisome burning smell. Needless to say, I didn't go to the art-group meeting. I was totally bummed. We needed to meet very badly and I felt I let the group down. However, earlier in the day, I did get a free massage from the same massage therapist the old woman I was helping got albeit a short session on my shoulders. Then I got a free facial as a present from the woman I get facials from when I told her that it was my birthday on Saturday. My appointment was for something else. :) I went home and watched the movie Contact on cable, the Jodie Foster movie about the first human contact with extraterrestrial beings. I could feel my skin explode in goosebumps when her character was rendered speechless from the overwhelming feeling of extraordinary discovery. I know that feeling. I want to feel it again.

Thursday I finally got a chance to go to the Brazilian Consulate to get a visa. They didn't give it to me. Apparently, I needed proof that I was going to enter the country. The proof I had was a printout of my Travelocity itinerary saying I will be leaving Rio De Janeiro on March 10th via Continental Airlines. The old lady behind the plexiglass counter, with the series of lines criss-crossing her face like the great Amazon River and all her tributaries, gaudily painted face, and fucshia-pink pursed line that barely qualifies for lips, gave me the worst attitude about my inland journey. She told me that I will need to get my Brazilian visa via Argentina, the country I will be coming from to enter Brazil. It would take two days (two Latin days means 3-4 business days in America was my assumption). I went ballistic. I called the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco and got the same information. I walked back into the Flynt Building (where the Brazilian Consulate was) and went through the doors of the Administrative office and the pretty Brazilian woman with a bit of an attitude and blonde hair in a pony-tail and brown eyes gave me the same information. She said that many people who visit Iguazu Falls in the border of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil need a visa to go to the Brazilian side of the falls, where the view is the most spectacular, in Buenos Aires. With raised eyebrows, she asked me if I was going to spend time in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had to bite my tongue from all the attitude I had been getting all morning and said (mentally: "Duh lady!") "Yes, I will be spending a couple of days in Buenos Aires." She said I will need those few days to wait for my visa. Then, I called Walt and told him of my predicament. He told me to snap out of my OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) American attitude and take the advice of the Brazilian Consulate folks. After all, they would know. If not, there's more than one way to smuggle a girl across the border. After all, this is Latin America we're talking about, Walt said mischievously. Bribery goes a long way over there. I smiled. I like the way he thinks. I'd do the same thing anyway in the Philippines if push comes to shove. My date was dull. Remind me never to go on blind dates again. However, I got some excellent information about Rio De Janeiro. Also, I discovered a place where new songwriters can feature their new songs without ridicule.

So far, this is my week in review. To be continued in the next few days.

Year-End in Miles Up and Down The 5

Sunday, December 29, 2002 to Wednesday, January 1, 2003: 1177 total miles

Tijuana, MX
I had a task to do Sunday morning so I asked my mother, who spoke some Spanish, to come with me to Tijuana. In the 16.5 years I've lived in this country, I've never set foot into Mexico. Neither had she. But this was no pleasure trip: it was a fact finding mission to find out how much it would cost to take a trans-Mexican bus from Tijuana to Mexico City. Not only that, I needed to find out where the Tijuana bus station was. My Uncle Bernard, recently of the Philippines, came too. We figured we needed a man with us, albeit him being slightly deaf. Besides, I'm sure he was curious about Mexico even if Tijuana wasn't really representative of what the real Mexico was like.

After we crossed the subway-like turnstiles into Mexico, we asked the man behind the Visitor Information Center where La Central Camionera, the central bus station, was. He said we should take a taxi, a twenty minute ride, into downtown. It should cost US$10. I sniffed. Being the suspicious tourist that I am who hates being ripped off, I convinced my mom and uncle to travel my way, spontaneously without a map and just asking questions. They trustingly agreed.

After pricing some prescription drugs at the pharmacies, we decided to ride a reconditioned school bus into El Centro, Downtown Tijuana. The ride cost US.55 cents per person. The bus driver even made change for me in dollars when I handed him a $5. But silly me, when we got to el Centro, a place that looked and smelled like the Philippine mercantile urban section called Quiapo with its rancid-smelling open drains and sidewalk vendors, we were told with much questioning (in Spanish) that La Central Camionera was on the other side of town, truly 20 minutes away, and that we must take a cab. My mom was frustrated with me and was convinced that my commando traveling style was going to get me in trouble someday. We took a cab. The driver didn't speak a word of English.

Through Mexican freeways flanked by shanty-town houses, we knew we were in a foreign country. Sterile San Diego seemed a million, not 15, miles away. When we finally got to Central de Autobuses de Tijuana, we were greeted by a bus station that resembled a Greyhound bus station in Anytown, USA except that the people milling about were Mexicans. The cab fare was a measly $5. Bus passengers lugged around giant bags of belongings and sat on fiberglass chairs bolted to the ground. I walked up to the counters for Elite and Pacifico bus lines, pricing their fares: MX$1313 to Mexico City and 48 hours on a bus that would go through the freeway-speed toll roads down the Pan-American Highway. Thankfully, I have a penchant for remembering numbers that I care to remember. I saw the fare to Guadalajara for MX$845. Walt, my travel buddy, mentioned Guadalajara as a possible stopping point also. With my information, including bus schedules written on my blue journal, we decided to head back to el Centro.

Never take the first cab on the line of cabs in La Central Camionera. They are part of some strange bus/cab union-racket and they will charge you an arm and a leg especially if you ask "How much in dollars?" They told me $15 for three people and I walked away visibly angry. But at the end of the line of cabs, we approached a man who was willing to take us to el Centro for $12, then $10 from my mom's haggling (it's a throwback from her Philippine days). We hopped on his cab to el Centro where we decided to take another reconstructed school bus ride to la Linea Internacional, the street where the border crossing was. I handed the bus driver US$2. He handed me MX$35, the equivalent of US.35 cents.

After suffering through an hour and a half, with two diabetic people (my mom and uncle) whose blood sugar they swore was plummeting by the second, on a painfully long line back to the US, I proceeded to drive the other half of the Tijuana>San Fernando Valley commute. The round trip up and down the 5 was 335 miles.

Vallejo, CA
The next day, I had to head out to San Francisco up the 5. With a late start, I got to Tejon Pass and started to call people to let them know I was going down the Grapevine. This was my traditional calling spot because this was the point where I started getting bored driving alone despite the variety of CDs I brought with me. Besides, when I travel more than 2 hours one way, I let people know I'm getting there safely. I felt the trip to and from Tijuana the day before was a mere appetizer in my road-tripping smorgasbord. I gave quick accounts of the flat, green, farming fields of the Central Valley to those who cared to talk with me. But unlike I who was on the road, they had to work so the chatting didn't last long.

I don't know what it is about me that my blood turns effervescent and prickly-cool through my veins when my car's wheels glide upon the dark, warm, asphalt arms of America's highways. My grip on the steering wheel on cruise control never rendered me an unfeeling automaton with my right foot just babysitting the brakes. No. In fact, the high caused by forward motion is something I always seek out every few months. To me, going 90-100 mph to somewhere caused a tingle on my scalp more exhilarating than drinking the strongest espresso. It's almost like rolling on E (being on Ecstacy) really, when the lines of the road bleed together like tracers on gliding glowsticks. Addictive. Mesmerizing. Relaxing.

To get to my buddy Walt's Vallejo home is easy: 5>580>680>780 yet I managed to get lost on the 780. But I didn't really mind. All throughout the 5 and 580, in the rain for about 150 miles, I was listening to my 80s mix, No Doubt, Norah Jones, and a few other CDs doing repeat play on the songs I liked the most. My poor, second Norah Jones CD (what happened to the first one was a story in itself) sounded like it was on a perpetual loop on songs 5,1, and 3 in that order. Those are my favorites in that album.

When I got to Vallejo, it was 4:15 PM. I was two hours late from my promised time. Yet again I fell into another traveling habit: if I'm having too much fun, I forget to call or email people when I get to my destination. I didn't call people until an hour later to let them know I got to Vallejo safely. Walt and I started planning our trip by poring through maps, laughing, and having wonderful conversation. I was done driving that night. The total that day was 371 miles.

After running some errands, Walt's neighbor Darrell needed tech support from his brother and I got to ride in his new, yellow, Hummer H2 as part of the computer tech support team, we had a very late dinner with his family. I had gone to Disneyland with Darrell's wife and kids that past Easter with my godchild Kat and Walt's nieces. We all knew each other and I was glad to see them again. We talked with them about our impending South American trip. They thought we were insane for even attempting to do it. We loved their reaction. Then it was off to bed. Outside, it felt like Vallejo was being torn asunder. Drizzle and high winds whipped the trees around us. I could just imagine the sailboats at the marina a half mile down the road rocking in the wind's wake. If I looked hard enough outside the darkened window, I knew I could see their sails dangerously leaning in their slips from the room I was in. I sent out a challenge to Fate: go ahead and send away 2002, this disgusting drama-filled and conflicted year, in a violent tempest. Whip negative energy up and away from me. Do your worst. Then I slept soundly.

Good Karma on New Years Eve
I spent the morning designing my birthday invitation. I brought my laptop, zip drive, and digital camera up from Los Angeles. Being the ex-geek that I was, I wasn't going to be caught without my portable home office if I had to work. Woe upon me if I brought my lightweight scanner. That would've been overkill. Besides, after I came home from Tijuana, I quickly zipped by my editor Chris's retro pad to scan images of 50s ads. Our consensus was to use an old Winston cigarettes ad, a totally tongue-in-cheek concept we wanted to convey. Also, both of us had an affinity for campiness. After the final draft was tested and the invite list finalized, I bid everyone a Happy New Year and our literary tour down The City began.

I've been to San Francisco many times in the past three years but I've never been down to The Haight. When Walt heard this he looked at me incredulously. How dare I call myself a writer when I haven't visited the literary haven of perhaps the most literary city in the United States? We tried to look for parking, a task more daunting than finding parking in Los Angeles, and scored when some actor from LA (I don't remember his name but I recognized the face.) pulled his high-end Volvo with Irvine plates out of a sweet parking space right on Haight Street. We eased the little black BMW Z3 into place, rolled up the top, and walked to Ashbury. The Haight, as the section of the city was called, is a place in a time warp. Shops with tie-dyed t-shirts on the windows were everywhere. There were many smoke shops with glass pipes where characters with fuchsia hair and leather pants browsed. Punks, frilly-girls, gay men, and tourists walked around on the street resembling a cross between Philadelphia's quaint South Street with its claustrophobic narrowness, Venice Beach boardwalk in its eclecticness, and Los Angeles's Melrose in its hip-urban neon glow. But the Haight still had in it an air of homey neighborliness, a feeling that the shop owners there had been doing business on that street since it became hip back in the 50s and 60s. Then we went to the famous intersection of Haight and Ashbury. I was disappointed. All four points of the street intersection didn't have signs save for one that showed "Ashbury." I had a feeling those street signs were the most stolen signs in all of San Francisco. The City probably got sick of replacing them. Walt took my shameless tourist photo and we split.

We then took a drive to Downtown to our next literary spot: City Lights Books. Chris had told me Jack Kerouac street was around there somewhere. After finding yet another sweet parking structure three blocks from City Lights, we got to our destination. This bookstore couldn't be in a more San Francisco-type street if it tried. It was in a five-point intersection of Columbus, Kearney, and Broadway. In one corner, you can see the bookstore with the TransAmerica Building in the background-a modern pyramid, Chinatown on one side bustling with mercantile activity, and lighted North Beach on the other. My skin prickled with excitement.


The floors of City Lights creak when you walk on them, the wooden planks worn from over 50 years of use. We proceeded down the Basement where Walt made a comment about the chipped black paint on the bookshelves: many writers have touched these shelves; many writers have touched these smooth wooden banisters. I caressed the wood hoping to transfer energy through my skin. Oddly enough, I never felt this comfortable in a bookstore in my whole life in the many cities I've visited. Despite the new books on the shelves the Basement still had in it an old-tome smell. If you closed your eyes, you could almost feel the loving spirit of writers of old milling about talking about books and their latest works. Every breath that entered my nostrils carried the scent of literary history. Borders or Barnes and Noble would never smell like the Basement even if they canned the old-book smell and released it through the air conditioners. In the Basement, I found a door with a hand painted sign. It is perhaps the most photographed old door in San Francisco. Being the shameless tourist that I was, I asked Walt to take a photo of me sans flash, to avoid being spotted by the other bookstore patrons. I leaned on the door with arms crossed across my chest, a pose many famous writers have taken, and my digital camera beeped.


The section for the Beat Poets takes up the entire small third floor. Walt didn't want to go up there because he could tell by my frenetic movements that I was barely containing my excitement. As I bounded up the creaky stairs, the walls lined by sepia photographs of Beat Writers, I sadly imagined my long-gone father. I thought that since he and I were practically the same person, he would've felt the same excitement bounding up the steps to the same little room where perhaps his literary heroes did their poetry readings. He would've been the coolest best-friend/dad a writer-girl could've asked for.

Yet again, I was the only girl on that floor. There were a handful of guys there of varying ages perusing the worn shelves. I picked out a few items and sadly went down the stairs after a few minutes. If I didn't leave at that point, I would never have left as I pulled out books and read poems. Walt would've had to come up there and drag me downstairs. Besides, we were getting hungry and he wanted to have dinner with Kent for New Years Eve.


San Francisco has more awesome restaurants per square block than Los Angeles. I've never had a bad meal in San Francisco in the many times I've been there, even when I bought stuff from out the window of little holes in the wall. Walt called Kent but he had dinner already and we decided that we weren't going to go up to Vallejo to get dressed to party. We were just coming as we were. With a few minutes thought, we decided to go to this reasonably priced Peruvian restaurant called Limon on the Mission District. Walt said he had the best Ceviche in his life there and he had many Ceviches from restaurants all over the country and Peru.

After getting yet another to-die-for parking space on the Mission district, an area resembling ethnic East LA, we went to the bright-yellow building that marked Limon. We were told that the wait would've been 35 minutes. We decided to wait outside.

Walt and I have the same traveling style: commando. Both of us just ask locals for directions to the places they hang out in. So at the corner of 17th and Mission, we asked a man for directions to a bar so we could wait in warmth. He directed us to a curtained sushi restaurant around the corner.

We walked in and the place was packed. The restaurant was in a narrow, converted rowhome that was longer than it was wider. Platforms elevated 10 inches off the ground were covered with threadworn tatami mats and flattened colorfully embroidered mix-and-match cushions. Low grafitti-scrawled Japanese dining tables stood in the middle of the platforms where young people our age, yuppies and strangely dressed and painted bohemians, sat next to each other eating reasonably priced sushi. The walls were covered with eclectic artwork, Kitaro posters, hand-painted menus, and various folk trinkets from all over the world. Spanish music filtered through speakers above. The waiters/sushi chefs wore tight t-shirts and jeans. We asked a young Japanese waiter for a table, seats at the bar, or a space on the floor to get out of the cold and for a drink. He was apologetic so he sat us down on a platform where our backs collided with a girl and her date as they ate sushi. After a few minutes of waiting, the waiter gave us a flask of hot sake with two white ceramic shot-glass sized cups. Walt very rarely had hot sake before and commented on its bitter before-taste. Being allergic to alcohol, I took one shot of sake. Bitterness and heat exploded in my palette. I swallowed. As the bitterness disappeared, the heat coursed down my throat and settled nicely into my stomach. San Francisco's famous chill left my bones and a familiar tingle blossomed on my cheekbones.

"You're getting red." Walt said after we bore of talking about our impending trip.

"That's the allergic reaction. Watch. My whole face, arms, and body will turn red and splotchy soon." I replied, extending my arms to display red rashes. I didn't disappoint him after I took another shot and the smell of alcohol reeked out of every breath that came out of my nose. "It'll go away if I eat something."

After a few minutes, Walt's cell phone vibrated. Our table at Limon was ready. We walked up to the waiter who gave us the sake and asked for our bill.

"Oh no!" he said. "I made you wait for a while. Forget it. On the house. Happy New Year!"

Walt and I looked at each other, my face flushed, disbelieving what we just heard.

"On the house?" Walt asked.

"On the house." the waiter replied.

We asked him for a card and told him that he was the coolest waiter we'd ever encountered and that we were going to tell all our friends about his place. We said this with much flourish, attracting the attention of the other restaurant patrons. I'm sure by the way he was giving out free drinks, he wasn't a mere waiter. So here's the shameless plug for the cool sushi place: Country Station Sushi Cafe, 2140 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94110. (415)861-0972. ;)

At Limon, we had a chance to speak with the owner of the restaurant, a short man with a thinning pate of dark hair, who spoke wonderful things about Peruvian cuisine, spurning my curiosity for the food I will be encountering on the road. I see food as an essential part of traveler's trust and adventure. After all, it takes emotional and intestinal fortitude to place foreign food in one's mouth. As a foreigner, one has a preference for familiar flavors and ingredients. Going to another country means you'd have to surrender to the unknown and expect different flavors and ingredients. In my trust, I have eaten Lebanese-style lamb and French Escargot. In fact, 90% of the time I have been handsomely rewarded for my epicurean ways EXCEPT for English food. I'd rather eat crabgrass first than haggis or tattie scones.

Trustingly, I had Walt order for us. We had Ceviche Limon, (Peruvian) Tamales Carnitas, Papa a la Huancaina, bubble-gum flavored, yellow, Inca Cola, and for dessert, Helado de Lucuma.

The tamales tasted like Mexican tamales with Peruvian chili only instead of being wrapped in corn husks, they were wrapped with banana leaves, a concept not unfamiliar to me since the sweet Filipino rice dessert suman, is wrapped similarly. Papa a la Huancaina is a dish of boiled potatoes in a yellow cheese sauce with orange Peruvian chilies that tasted like pimento. The crowning glory was the Ceviche Limon. As a person who wasn't a big fan of raw seafood and sushi, one might think I wasn't going to eat the Ceviche. But Walt and I gobbled it up, almost licking the lemony, raw seafood, chile, and onion achara (the Filipino version is made with sour/sweet, pickled, julienned, unripe papaya, carrots, and onions) juices from the plate. It was exquisite. We learned that the Ceviche recipe came from Eduardo's mother (Limon's owner) who hailed from the region in Peru known for the most authentic Ceviche. I told Walt that he and I must stop there for some Ceviche by the seaside. Never mind that I will be eating Peruvian sand while the squid, octopi, and fish still wriggled in their death throes when lemon and chili were being splashed upon their delectable bodies on banana-leaf plates.

The three appetizers we ordered were enough to make us full even when we shared them. However, we didn't pass up dessert. We shared a martini glass of Helado de Lucuma which is an ice cream made out of some passion fruit-type fruit that in the wild would've been creamy with a peach-colored inner flesh but tasted like yam. I took a spoonful and let the very subtle-sweet flavor play upon my taste buds. I said that the texture was gritty and starchy. Walt said that the Lucuma was dehydrated into flour format to make the ice cream. The fresh-from-the-fruit version wouldn't have survived the trip to San Francisco. But eaten ripe, the Lucuma would've tasted like yam and had the texture of papaya. The food catalog in my mind went through every yam variety I've tasted from sweet potatoes to Philippine ube. Nothing tasted like Lucuma. No match was found.

"Lucuma is Lucuma." Walt shrugged. "Wait until you have some crazy Amazonian fruit that have no North American equivalent." My eyes grew to the size of saucers from excitement.

After our wonderful meal, we paid the bill and proceeded to go to the Castro. I love the Castro. Never have I seen so many characters in one section of the city than in bright, flamboyant, je ne sais quoi, killer-cool vibing Castro. However, parking was hard to find. But we found parking within a few yards of the club we wanted to get into.

Before going into this one club, we tried others: leather-bar (I was the only woman there.) Daddy's, another club, and yet another club. But no club was jumping the most than The Cafe. At 11:20 PM we went to the end of the line that went out the door and around the corner. The normally no-cover club had a $10 cover for each person. Our thoughts hovered between dismay of possibly not getting in to hope as the line marched toward our destination. At 11:50, I was feeling dismayed until a huge lurch rendered us second in line to get in! As we paid our $10 each and got stamped, we bounded up the beer-soaked steps and tried to make our way to the bar as we inched our way through the skin-to-skin crowd. At 98 seconds before midnight, we had little plastic shot glasses of champagne and bounded down the steps to the dance floor. In my short stature, I was amazed I didn't collide into the jutting elbows of the tall, beautifully dressed gay men packed like sardines around me. At 10 seconds before midnight, champagne in hand, ecstatic, praising our luck, we got to the dance floor and as all heads looked toward the large-screen television above. I turned my cell phone on to greet the New Year to the last person who left a message on it. I knew they would hear nothing but the joyous cheer of the crowd but that was the point; it would be great to hear the roar of the thickest crowd in San Francisco from someone's living room in Los Angeles, another reward from a happily traveling fool to a friend who shared the same passion.

We counted down, the crowd screaming every number further and further away from 2002 until at last we reached 1. The crowd exploded into whooping and cheers! Auld Lang Syne was heard in the background as people, including myself, wrapped their arms around their friends and lovers. I kissed Walt on the cheek and said Happy New Year. He replied with the same warmth because honestly, as I clutched my meager shot of champagne, I couldn’t ask to be with better company to start the New Year with. I was with my best travel buddy, my partner in crime in our aimless wanderings of the world. I was with one of the very few people whom I can talk with complete honesty from topics ranging from food to sex to family to writing and literature. I was with a good friend of 6 years and I know of many more. I was with one of my very precious long-time friends. The equivalent of Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac of our writing cohort were back traveling once more in San Francisco and anticipating a grand trip to South America, both of us, after all, were writers albeit mine was of fiction and he of journalism. 2003 was being welcomed warmly indeed.

We then danced into the New Year, letting sweat and adrenaline bathe our bodies in delirious pleasure. After 40 minutes of this, we bought bottled water and retreated to the balcony to watch characters outside and to get some fresh air.

Traveling with Walt lowers my shyness 10 clicks down and heightens my spontaneity 10 clicks up and this while sober. That was evident at City Lights when I talked with the cashier about how I thought he had the best job in the world in a legendary bookstore. When Walt and I are together we exude that very appealing traveler’s mystique that makes people want to talk with us and vice versa.

At the balcony, I found a spot near a straight couple. The young man with short brown hair was rolling a cigarette between fingers shaking from inebriation. He was talking with a girl with straight, honey hair and light eyes; I’m assuming a friend of his. He overheard Walt and me talking about passage through Mexico. He piped up and told us he grew up in Mexico City, his light eyes attempting to stare straightly at us. We got into a conversation with him about the possibility of perhaps crashing at a place he had there. No such luck. After a few minutes of talking and I was truly disappointed that what he was rolling was indeed just tobacco, they left but not before the okay-looking young man reached over, patted my shoulder, and leaned over to plant a kiss on my cheek.

You see, for me to allow myself to be kissed by a stranger is a very unusual thing to happen. It’s my shyness. I am convinced it’s that traveler’s mystique that conquers shyness. What were the chances that I was going to be kissed, albeit only on the cheek, by a straight man in a gay bar in the Castro? Very slim indeed. If this were happening to me in little ole San Francisco, what would happen to me in San Jose, Costa Rica or Panama City or Lima, Peru or God forbid at the biggest party on the planet: Carnaval in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil?

We shall see.

We left the balcony and went to the dance floor again. There, we saw the characters walking on the street: The Orange Man who wore a bright-orange suit and fedora hat and The Boa Vinyl Woman who wore a black boa with her sequined black skirt and tank with stiletto heels and sunglasses. The Boa Vinyl Woman danced on the dance floor as The Orange Man hovered by the bar, watching us gyrating dancers. Over the techno music, last call was being called, then the closing thanks, then a few minutes later, the last song played and the lights came on. Boo! The party was over.

We all filed like cattle out the door as all the clubs let out. Ah! The Castro! While we walked down the street, passing the gayest hardware store in town with frilly window dressings and mannequins bent over provocatively out the window, we saw leather guys holding hands, smartly dressed black men from the black gay club, and even a man wearing black chaps with his butt cheeks jiggling in the cold air as he held the hand of his boyfriend. He got a lot of looks and even jeers from the obnoxious drunk straight people on the street. I just stared, smiled, and enjoyed the freakiness of it all.

A few people asked us if we knew of any after-party. We didn’t. As we walked back to the car, I even heard someone let out a cat-call about how if I got into the sleek, black BMW Z3 I was going into, I would never get out it was so cool. I smiled. Hell yeah! Don’t these people know that when I party, I get to go out styling?


By the time we got to the Bay Bridge back to Vallejo, my body betrayed me. My head was still swimming with the thoughts of an after-party when I let out a yawn whose origin came from somewhere deep inside me. It was the release of the tiredness stemming from the bustle of family holiday parties, art-group meetings, attending dinner parties, hanging out with friends, Tijuana, and now driving to San Francisco in the past few weeks. I relented to exhaustion and slept as the forward motion of the car cradled me.

We got back to Vallejo and I quietly washed the make-up from my face, waking me up a little bit. My phone rang and after talking with a friend for another hour after settling in the guest room, I finally fell asleep at around 5:00 AM.

I woke up four hours later at 9:00 AM, feeling lack of sleep planting its indelible sign as stiffness on my neck. Walt had to work on the first day of the year and I had to drive back to Los Angeles. But before we left, I offered to make breakfast. He being the non-cooking person that he was gladly accepted my offer.

The day before we made a pit stop at Trader Joe’s to pick up some olives, wine, and other vegetables. So my New Years Omelet turned out to be a very tasty concoction of 5 medium eggs and freshly milled peppercorn, more than enough cheddar cheese, a handful of sliced white asparagus spears, a handful of mushrooms in garlic, and a few halved olives with hand-stuffed garlic in them, with toast, cranberry waffles soaked in Vermont maple syrup, and brewed coffee. We talked about our breakfast eating styles and how when we travel, he must have starch for breakfast while I must have protein. With that in mind, we envisioned breakfasts as a shared event. Coffee, on the other hand, was a must to start the day.

Then we were off. He was off to work in Emeryville and I drove back to Los Angeles.

Well, not quite. I made a wrong turn somewhere and went around the East Bay to get back onto the San Mateo Bridge. Granted, I could’ve kept on going over the 680 to the 580 and onto home on the 5 but I said to myself that I needed to make a pit stop in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Besides, it’s been ages since I’ve gone over the San Mateo Bridge. That bridge is something else: for a few miles, the bridge is level to the water of the San Francisco Bay so one could see the low-water plants on the side of the bridge. Then it towers over the bay at a distance close enough that you could see the buildings of San Francisco to your right if there wasn’t any fog.

After getting lost yet again, I finally got to Chinatown. The problem with getting lost in San Francisco is that you really can’t. San Francisco is like a thumb and when you get to the tip of the thumb you have a choice of going east or west. The eastern part of the thumb is where downtown is. Remembering that, you will never get lost in San Francisco if you wanted to find sections of the city. Streets on the otherhand...

I found Stockton Street in mere seconds and parked. There, I bought steamed pork pao, tangerines, Chinese broccoli, prickly durian for my mom, and other things. Then I left.

Driving my usual 90-100 and even 105 miles per hour down the 5, I got to Los Angeles at 8:00 PM. I went to my cousin’s house and gave them hugs and kisses. Then after dropping of some pao, I went home and, despite my desire to further party, the four hours of sleep I had the night before haunted me. I passed out and slept like a log by 9:30 PM. The total distance driven that day: 471 miles.

So this was how I spent the last days of 2002 and the first day of 2003. Happy New Year, everyone!

(All photos taken by Walt. He rocks! Cropping and color correction by me on Adobe Photoshop.)