Journey to Joburg

This summer I will be doing HIV research in South Africa.  To get there as cheaply as possible, I spent about 48 hours traveling on 5 flights.  It turned out much less painful than expected.  Hydration is key.  The nicest bathroom was definitely in Rome.

Nashville
Monday 12:04pm

Newark
Monday 4:35pm

Lisbon
Tuesday 1:47am

London
Tuesday 3:02pm

Rome
Tuesday 8:47pm

Johannesburg
Wednesday 9:34am

My plane arrived the same time as that of the South Africa national soccer team coming home from Paris after the World Cup.  There were lots of people and news cameras waiting for them, singing and chanting, which was a fun welcome for me.  I waited for the rest of my team from Hopkins—two other men in my med school class and one woman getting her MPH—and then we rented a car to drive into Johannesburg.  Immediately we had to get used to driving a manual car on the left side of the road…which means hitting the windshield wipers every time instead of the turn signal.

We’re in Joburg only briefly, mainly to meet with the team at Baragwanath Hospital under whom we’ll be doing research.  Additionally, we toured the Apartheid Museum and watched the sunset from a nature reserve lookout over the city.

I’m still wrapping my mind around South Africa as a country.  Even Johannesburg feels like no city I’ve ever been.  There are parts that are so developed and Westernized, they feel like the United States.  There are parts that are so green and lush, with cool weather (it’s winter here!), that it doesn’t feel like Africa.  I look forward to exploring beyond the city.

Hiking Peru

On a layover in Heathrow airport so it's time to finally write a post about my spring break trip with my parents....

Cusco was a small historic city with a main cathedral and plaza nestled among mountains plastered with houses that often had rebar still jutting from the top.  There were stray dogs everywhere.

My mom, my dad, and I spent one day climbing into the hills of Cusco via cobblestone alleyways so as to see more churches and views of the city, while eating street churros and drinking pisco sour, a classic Peruvian cocktail.

We spent one night in a youth hostel with a beautiful courtyard filled with people who partied all night. (Of course I was the only one in the family to sleep wondrously.)  The next day we took a van with our team of guides across the countryside into the mountains.

Eating tamales along the way

Traditional weather vanes found atop many houses in the mountains

From there we began our seven day hike that would culminate at Machu Picchu.  The mountains were so gorgeous, and we could often see rivers below us.  On any given day we would hike downhill for a while, cross a river, scale the mountain ahead, summit, and then hike a bit downhill to our campsite.  The daily elevation change that we could see before us was sometimes disheartening but being in the zone felt amazing.  For one of the more grueling hiking days, my mom did ride (and bond with) the mule, which was following us for that purpose.  She and our guide Marcos were constantly at odds; he would tell her we were almost there and then it would take us another four hours.  Often he would say today was a flat day, but he only ever used the word in the Incan sense.  Our highpoint was 4643 meters.  The landscapes reminded me of Kashmir, which followed by the Grand Canyon are the most beautiful natural places I’d ever been before.

We stayed at the most incredible campsites, arriving in the afternoon and leaving early the next morning.  Our guides made us delicious local Peruvian cuisine, vegetarian by request.  We had soup with every meal, as well as plenty of quinoa and local produce like tomatillos and passion fruit.

 

"Incan flat"

A couple days brought brief rainstorms, and we had to hike in “poncho plastic” as Marcos called the disposable rain ponchos, which trapped heat in a very stifling way.  Eager to keep us happy, he would always tell us to “please have a rest!”.

Choquequirao--
not sure my parents pronounced this correctly once despite trying all trip

I was blown away by how uniquely strong the indigenous culture still is in Peru.  Many of our guides didn’t even speak Spanish, only Quechua.  The Incan presence felt very much alive as we hiked through extremely small mountain villages right next to ruins like the amazing Choquequirao.

We did a final surreal descent through lush terraced fields into the mountain village where our mule driver lived.  After a final night in the tent, we caught a precarious van ride to Hydroelectric.

All the drivers blasted local Wayna music, which sounds vaguely like Beijing opera, rather shrill and whine-y, but I love it.

Partway along the road of switchbacks, there was a small recent avalanche making the road impassable.  This slowed us down more than the horde of cows of the road.  Luckily, there was another van stopped going the other direction, so all the passengers got out, climbed over the debris and switched vehicles.  Little did we know, we’d soon come to a much much larger avalanche.  We had to scramble along scree for several hundred yards to get across where we waited for another van to come along.  At this point, my period started since we’d stopped hiking for a minute, and I had to put in my menstrual cup while squatting on boulders around the corner from all the construction crews surveying the avalanche.

Machu Picchu under clouds, view from Huayna Picchu

By the time we reached Machu Picchu town (via a 5 hour walk rather than pay for the train), the number of tourists was suddenly overwhelming.  The ruins were a bit underwhelming when compared to the quite mountains from which we had just emerged.  We did an extra hike up Huayna Picchu mountain to get an aerial view.

(Photo of llamas)

The alpacas of Machu Picchu

Huayna Picchu Mountain

Huayna Picchu Mountain