Peru, Part 3

Here are Part 1 and Part 2.

This is my last group of photos from the indigenous community of Santa Clara.

Every morning, we woke up at sunrise. It was such a rush I didn't even drink coffee or feel the need for it...miraculous, considering how much I need coffee in the city. And then, at 5pm, as soon as it started to get golden (like in the photo above), I headed inside to Lucy's bed, to take shelter under her mosquito net.

banana trees...

Lucy and Anibal

Lucy's altar, and traditional Shipibo embroidered textiles

Lucy and her brother

Peru, Part 2

Here's Part 1.

Here are some more photos from Santa Clara, the beautiful community (with no running water or electricity!) where I stayed in Lucy's little hut for several days...

Lucy's neighbor making patarashka, which was life-changingly good (like, I eat fish all the time now, and didn't before!). 

From the email I sent home after leaving Santa Clara (unedited and kind of embarrassing in its straight-to-the-point indication of my travel priorities, i.e., animals and food):

I saw an anteater!!!! A big green parrot who is the neighbor's pet (she always antagonizes lucy, enters her hut and poos on her things!!), sparkly green butterflies, banana trees with their fleshy hanging flowers, vultures and hawks, a puppy, gorgeous black birds with big red beaks, enormous spiders. Also, I ate some marvelously weird things. A waxy red cashew fruit, boiled nuts called "pan de arbol," MANY varieties of bananas--so fun to experience the full spectrum of banana possibilities--and best of all, Lucy's indigenous neighbor cooked us this fish, wrapped in a banana leaf and cooked over a primitive grill on the ground, and it was beyond good.

Lucy's wonderful mother and brother visited right before me, and we overlapped for a few days.

Lucy's "baño seco" toilet <3

Evidence of Lucy outside her hut :)

One afternoon, Lucy and I held a watercolor workshop for the local kids.

Such a beautiful painting...and I received it as a gift!

Peru on film, Part 1

Oh, Peru! What can I say? Here are the basics: I went for 9 days to the northern part of Peru, Yarinacocha region, near the equator, to visit my friend Lucy, who was working with the nonprofit Alianza Arkana on sustainable projects in indigenous communities in the jungle. (Here's my little video, with home-made singing, of the trip.)

I flew from JFK to Fort Lauderdale to Lima to Pucallpa. I spent half the time at the Alianza's house, which reminded me in many ways of my old co-op, a ramshackle, screened-in, dark-wood building (compost, compost toilet, spidery shower, holes in the floorboards so you could see straight through to the ground below, a puppy, a cat, and several very thoughtful volunteers from all over the world).

I spent the other half of the time in an indigenous community deep in the jungle. The whole time, I was practically out of my mind with heat, humidity, and mosquitos. It was even hard to read in those conditions (and my clothes/watercolors took days to dry). And so, like everyone I met, I turned to conversation. Lucy and I would sit around for hours and talk about love, art, plants, medicine, and spirituality. Many travelers come to this part of Peru to learn about Shipibo religion and plant lore, and I met many people who were dieting, or eating a very strictly limited diet (no sugar! no salt!!) and focusing on a single jungle plant to gain knowledge of its unique powers. So there was always lots to talk about, and conversations got deep very quickly. I cried more in Peru than I have in three years of New York.

Looking back (my trip was in August), I'm so grateful for those hours and hours of lying on a hammock, swatting mosquitos, and talking, so far from the internet and my helter-skelter New York life. I am also so grateful for all the wildlife I got to see...falcons, hummingbirds, yellow songbirds, monkeys, butterflies of every description. I got very far away from my comfort zone of cold places (I picked Norway for my yearlong travel project for a reason), and I reaped the benefits of that discomfort, as always happens in the end.

I have a lot of photos. For this first group, here are some from the indigenous community where Lucy lived and taught. It's called Santa Clara and only about 50 people live there--at least a third of them children.

Lucy at the door to her hut <3