Portland

I arrived in Portland smoothly this morning, already back at Lindsey's house and ready to take a nap.

Returning Home

Tomorrow I will be flying out of Guatemala City Airport just after 2 pm here. I first go through Miami, and then fly to Las Vegas where I have an 11 pm - 7am layover, and finally will arrive in Portland at 9 on Wednesday, just a few hours after Lindsey gets back from Alaska. After spending some time there I will go up to Seattle for a bit before continuing on to Wenatchee for a little while. I dont have any solid time frames yet, just that I have a rotation in Spokane starting July 7th, and am hoping to spend the 4th of July in Wenatchee.

This past week I went to Semuc Champey, a beautiful natural limestone bridge over the river that is 300m long and forms gorgeous pools that you can swim through. There was a very exciting cave exploration as well. You go about 1 km back into this cave with just candles, swimming through deep water, climbing up waterfalls, and having to make a few leaps as well. Definitely not something I would ever have been able to do back home.

Semuc Champey

I worked it out to leave for Semuc Champey tomorrow morning, will spend Thursday and Friday there then come back to Guatemala City on Saturday. The weather looks like it might rain a lot, but hopefully not too much.

Here are some pictures from my trip to Tikal

Update

We just came back to Guatemala City last night at midnight. The majority of the Guatemalans returned on Saturday but a few of us went with the group here up to Tikal, which was very cool to see. Its quite spread out in a humid joungle, with big stone pyramids all over the place. Very cool to walk through. It started absolutely pouring rain when we got back to the hotel to shower and load up to leave, and so loading the pickup with equipment under the tarps was quite interesting, hah.

The trip to the villages near Puerto Barrios was great. We visited two different villages, the first one was about 1.5 - 2 hours by pickup into the jungle, and the second was a half hour closer. it was interesting to see the difference, the first village we went to was a relatively new clinic location, they have only been going there for a year or so and the people were much more reserved. The other village has been site for about 10 years and the people there were much more eager and seemed happier to see us. It was incredibly humid as well as quite hot, basically as soon as the pickups stopped moving and I got out of the back I would start sweating and not stop until we left, often drenching through my scrubs entirely. Virtually everyone had parasites or amoebiasis. The group that came from the US was a bunch of high schoolers that had just graduated, maybe 17 of them or so, so when I first met them all I was a bit worried about how things would go but they turned out to be great and worked quite hard without any complaining.

Now I am hoping to arrange to go up to Semuc Champey this week, maybe Wednesday or Thursday, nd stay for a few days. Trying to get that all figured out now but it looks like it should be really fun. I think the other interns here are hoping to join me, which should be good.

Panajachel

Here's some pictures of what the daily heavy rains can do to the streets here.

We finished our last clinic day today, and will head back to Guatemala City tomorrow, before heading back out on Monday.

Cerro de Oro

On the way over to our site for the second day. Yesterday was just a warm-up apparently, today the work really begins.

Kodiak Pictures

Highlights from my trip to Kodiak:

Kodiak Pictures

Guatemala City

I made it to Guatemala City today. Bryan from La Mision met me at the bus station and now I am back at the house. Tito's family has moved to a new house in a nice neighborhood here. Tomorrow the group from Nashville arrives,  and we leave for Panajachel on lake Atitlan on Sunday. Coincidentally, Mike's friend Ben Ross's younger sister Jill from Whitworth is here working with La Mision too.

I changed my ticket to come back 6 days earlier to have a bit more time at home. After the 2 weeks here with La Mision I think I will go to Semuc Champey for a few days then either finish up in at Lake Atitlan or Antigua.

Things are looking kid, will post any updates here.

Nepal Pictures

Here is a link to an online album with the edited, highlight photos from my trip to Nepal:

Nepal 2014 Highlights

Guatemala

I am a bit late in getting this up, but I have arrived in Guatemala safely and am now in Xela at language school. I go to class from 8 am - 1 pm, taking a "pausa" from 10:30-11. I am liking my teacher. So far a lot of things are coming back to me very rapidly, though as I do review things I had learned in Peru I realize there are substantial pieces I have forgotten. Still, things are moving quickly. Apparently they normally cover 1 tense per week here, and go in depth on all the irregular verbs. We are doing the same but with 3 tenses per week as well as additional grammatical points, general and medical vocabulary to mix things up a bit. The hostel where I am staying is working out alright. Im paying less than $30 per week for a large private room with a desk and a decent view over the city, a huge improvement over spending the same amount per night for a shared room in Nepal. I am a bit concerned that there may be some bed bugs however, I am using the REI permetherin treated sleeping bag liner but I still seem to wind up with a few new bug bites each morning... hopefully not a problem, hah. On the topic of bugs, I went to the pharmacy today and picked up a pack of albendazole for parasites. The same prescription I tried to pick up in the US was not covered at all by insurance, and was going to cost me $1,140. Here I got it for 7 quetzales, just under 1 USD. Xela is a nice enough small town, not terribly scenic but the people all seem to be quite friendly. I get smiles and waves from little shop proprietors as well as shotgun or fully-automatic toting guards in front of the banks and richer businesses, hah. Virtually none of the local people speak anything approaching functional English, so its a great place to practice. My Spanish teacher is so far the teacher who knows the least English out of all the ones I have had so far, we communicate basically entirely in Spanish and I simply google  word if we can't figure out the translation. Its going quite well. I ran into a bit of a problem with my computer over the past few days. The microSD memory card I use for running my programs, storing my documents, pictures, and just about everything else (since the tablet's internl hard drive is almost entirely filled just with the Windows operating system) stopped working. Fortunately it will still let my computer read it, but I cant make any changes to anything on it, no new files, no new pictures, no deleting files, no changing my documents, etc. After some extensive trial and error I have basically decided it is shot, and moved my critical files over to the card I had in my camera (half the size but still bigger than anything I can buy here), and Ill try to pick up a cheap card for my camera before doing anything exciting. This weekend I am planning to go on a day trek up the volcano Santa Maria. Apparently we leave at 4:30 am in order to get up to the viewpoint by sunrise...

With regards to my plans while here, I am finishing this week of school and staying for one more here in Xela. Next Friday afternoon or Saturday morning I bus to Guatemala City to meet up with Tito, and join him for 2 weeks of rural medical clinics. Three different volunteer teams will be coming down during that time, and he is hopeful we can visit Tikal during that time. Afterwards I had initially thought to return to Xela, but now I am thinking I may go spend a week at Lake Atitlan for more language school. After that I would like to go to one of the local places I have been told is a must visit, Semuc Champey, which is a bit of a journey so may take a few days.

That's about all for now.

Homeward Bound

I'm at the Kathmandu airport now and way able to gain access to the executive lounge here - it is head and shoulders nicer than any place I have been in the past weeks, hah.

Its a four hour flight to Guangzhou with a two hour layover to clear customs. Then a flight to Beijing with a 5 hour layover, then an 11 hour flight  to Seattle, a 4 hour layover there then a quick jump to Wenatchee.  Very excited to be heading home.

Chitwan National Park

Thade pati

The trek is going well. Today we reached the apex of our trip. I hiked back a bit to a spot I noticed had signal to check my messages. After lunch we are going to try a day hike to see if we can reach the summit here. Its a bit chilly up here (~3,600 meters) but my gear is keeping me plenty warm. I can't get a picture online now, but I've been getting some good ones.

Trek

We finished our first day of trekking and are in Chisipani now, tomorrow is supposed to have even more altitude change.

Nepal Update

Hello everyone, things are going well here. We have been in Dhulikhel visiting the health sciences school and hospital here, which is an extension of Kathmandu University. There have been some fairly interesting interactions, including PBL with the residents here, going on rounds in the hospital, and having some lectures on tropical medicine. Tomorrow we are travelling by Jeep to one of their outreach clinics. Monday we will head back to Kathmandu, and we leave for our trek in Helendu I believe on Wednesday.

I had some computer problems, after some of the group had problems with a virus I decided to run a thorough scan and followed the recommendations for what to remove, but then my computer wouldnt start anymore. Luckily I was able to get it reset and back up and running without any real problems. Also, I was finally able to unlock my phone and get a sim card from one of the local networks into it, so now hopefully I will be able to get online and possibly skype more reliably.

Nepal Pictures

Here are some pictures I have taken from around Kathmandu

Dulikhel

Tomorrow we are packing up and leaving our hotel in Kathmandu. We are stopping by the leper hospital here on our way out of town to visit, then will be going to Dulikhel where we will spend a week. We are going to spend some time in the hospital there and working with their medical students. On the following Monday we will return to Kathmandu for a day before departing again for our 6 day trek in the Helendu region, where we will stop by a couple of the remote health posts in the village. So fr the trip has been great, I'm getting a lot of pictures I like working on putting them together to upload, though the internet makes that a bit tough to do!

Kathmandu

Hello everyone, yesterday was my first day here in Kathmandu in Nepal. I'm staying at Hotel Vajra with the group. It is a fairly nice hotel with a good breakfast. The power is not on during the day however, which means no charging or WIFI. The group seems pretty good, there are the two physicians leading the trip, an OBGYN and EM physician from UNM, 2 residents from UNM in EM and IM, 2 med students from UNM, me, and  4th year from Georgetown. Yesterday we met with the Ministry of Health here which was interesting, and then went to the US embassy to meat with the USAID. In the evening we had a touristy traditional Nepali dinner with dancers etc. I slept like a rock, still trying to get caught up on sleep. Though I was pretty fortunate on the way over, I had a whole to myself to stretch out and sleep on during the flight from Vancouver to Guangzhou. In Guangzhou I did not have to clear customs or anything, just was bused around on a convoluted international transfer. Basically just walked off the plane, onto a bus, up some stairs and onto the next plane, since my flight had been over 2 hours late leaving. Today we are going to meet with some NGOs, which should be interesting.

Nepal

I'm on my way to Nepal today, just got through security at the Seattle airport and will be flying to Vancouver soon, then on to Guangzhou (China) and finally to Kathmandu, arriving tomorrow at 10:10 PM local time for a total of 26 hours. It appears Nepal is 12 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Seattle. I will be meeting with my group the following morning and will find out more about what the trip entails then. I'm looking forward to it.

Kodiak

I arrived in Kodiak yesterday and Lindsey met me at the airport. She showed me around some of the main places on the island. It is quite small. There is only 100 miles of road on the island all put together. We went for a hike at Fort Abercrombie which was pretty interesting. Apparently there were multiple military installments here from back in World War II.

USA

Back in the US now, waiting in San Francisco for my connection to Seattle, I actually really lucked out here they were able to bump me up to an earlier flight with my checked bag and put me in an exit row, and waived the fee for all this. This morning I just barely made my flight in Lima by 5 minutes, every time I think for sure I have seen the extent of how slow a process can be my trip managed to surprise me, hah. Lima was a good two days at the end of my trip. I spent a fair amount of time hanging around with friends, one from University who is living there and her flat mates, the guy I met while traveling with whom I stayed, and a French couple I met in Huanchaco who I really enjoy chatting with. I also managed to squeeze some surfing in and find a few souvenirs.

I will be going through my pictures over the next week or two and putting some more up. I leave for Kodiak AK on Wednesday, and who knows perhaps there will be interesting things to write about or photograph up there. I'm planning to keep up the Spanish studies using duoloingo.com, flash cards from various vocab lists of medical, idioms, and phrase lists online, possibly a few lessons over skype, and also trading e-mails or chatting with some of my traveling friends who speak fluent Spanish but want to improve English.

Santa Cruz and Lima

I arrived in Lima at 5 this morning. I will stay with a friend from here I met while in Huanchaco. Ive just been hanging around the park here at the viewpoint over the sea, where ironically I have found the best wifi of the entire trip, by at least 10-20x. I will meet up with one of my university friends in the next day or two to possibly do some surfing and see different parts of Lima, then fly home Saturday morning.

I went on the Santa Cruz hike through the Andes, specifically the Cordillera Blanca (White Range), which was quite beautiful, though I do think the Cascades are far more spectacular. The group consisted of 11 people and it was very fun to hike with them. Possibly in part because the guide company messed up so many things it was best just to joke about it. But I did survive and saw some beautiful mountains. Myself and 3 germans returned on the third day instead of the fourth, which introduced another layer of complexity the company had said would be fine but apparently was not equipped to handle. In any case, we went to the agency after returning to Huaraz and managed to procure a reimbursement for 1 day, which shocked me. The hike was great though, the first day is spent going up up up a hill which "tiene mucho caido" (is very steep). It was not too physically demanding, but was simply slow going having only arrived at 10,000 feet from sea level 24 hours prior. We hiked into a mountain pass which opened into a valley with a river where we made camp. Luckily the rain didnt hit until after we had made camp, which is pretty unusual for this time of year. The next day we continued to hike through the valley to a teal milky glacial lake into which I led the swimming charge. Then we went across a flood plane with a multitude of little rivers we had to hop-scotch across, searching long and hard for possible routes. Then we continued up to a glacial lake, with the glacier sliding down into the bowl. It was pretty amazing, and while there I saw/heard three avalanches. Hiking back we found some large boulders and some of us practiced climbing. With my reach I was the only one to succeed on the route, much to the local guide's chagrin. Then the rain hit as we hiked another couple hours, everyone being thoroughly drenched. I really should have seen this coming that when the Peruvian lady where I made the booking told me they have "all the gear you need included" and "the equipment is excellent", she meant that they would give me a smelly old sleeping bag and leaky tent. After already having paid, the size 48 hiking boots I was promised were proven to not exist, so there I was walking through the downpour in my mesh running shoes, oops. At this next campsite we were literally invaded and attacked by cows. There were 4 surrounding my small shared tent when I tried to go to bed, 2 with their heads (and horns) lowered right at the entrance eating the grass. I was able to scare them off by beating my poncho at them for just long enough to sneak inside. In the night a couple times they ran into our tent and tripped over the fly lines, pulling them out, worsening an already less-than-water-tight situation, haha. We could hear them running through the camp and simply hoped not to be trampled. The next day those of us leaving woke up at 3 in the morning to begin the hike back, the guide disappeared after about 100 yards and we ended up needing to take a taxi when the arranged transport never showed. But as I said, we made it, and afterall it was a pretty fun adventure.

Ive been importing all my photos (here's a tip, if ever you take a water-tight camera, such as the GoPro, to 14,000 feet, leave the case cracked open before you descend back to sea level) and will be attempting to sort them and post some more in the next week or two.

Huaraz and the Mountains

Im in Huaraz now and will be leaving tomorrow morning for a 3 day mountain trek through the Andes here. Its called the Santa Cruz trek, and supposed to be pretty amazing. I get back late Wednesday and will take a night bus to Lima that night to spend 2 days there before flying home.

Update from Huanchaco

Ive been around Huanchaco for a bit now and thought Id write an update. Nothing particularly exciting has been going on, its been a nice little vacation here on the beach. I really enjoy the ceviche here, I have it most days. Ive been continuing to practice surfing most days, though on the second day I was stung by a malagua (jellyfish) which turned out to not be too much of a problem. I have been continuing spanish lessons here with a couple different teachers and have found a way to make flashcards out of all the previous notes I typed up which has been very helpful. The hostel I have moved to is right across the street from the beach and has quite a nice atmosphere mainly catering to backpackers; I am meeting many travelers mostly from all over Europe. I am the only North American that has been here for the last week or so, so myself and the one British fellow are the local experts on English when any of the Europeans encounter an English phrase they do not understand the nuances of, which is kind of an interesting experience to describe what distinguishes one phrase from another, such as why someone "making a call" has a slight contextual difference than "making a decision". Once it gets out that I am studying medicine I keep getting asked for medical advice about GI problems and even to extract the sea urchin spines from one German fellows foot, hah. I had planned to go to some of the local pyramids with a group arranged from the hostel but when I woke up I was told it had been canceled ... the Peruvians can be quite a flaky people at times.

Youll have to excuse the odd pictures, I have been using the GoPro camera and the pictures it takes are a bit distorted into a round shape.

Heres a picture from the room in the new hostel I moved to, I have been liking it mostly,

They had some kind of festival with a parade that went through the night, and below you can see a picture of a "Castle" which is just a big wooden structure they build with fireworks attached all over.

Some pictures from the beach.

In order to fit in here I have had to adopt some of the local surfer attire, much like Keanu Reeves in Point Break, a film one of the other traveles here insisted I watch. 

I booked a bus ticket to Huaraz for this Saturday. Its up in the mountains and is supposed to have some great treks. I am not sure if I will do a multi-day trek or not yet. I think I will plan to return to Lima either this next Thursday or Friday, then fly home Saturday.

Huanchaco

I arrived in Huanchaco yesterday morning. The bus was a couple hours late leaving Lima but it didnt really matter because I would have had to wait at the hostel anyways. Its pretty nice here, yesterday was a bit cooler and cloudy than usual but still nice. I took a surfing lesson for a couple hours and today I think I will just rent a board for the afternoon to practice. Ive also been shopping around for some of the Spanish teachers here and will keep doing some lessons. Unfortunately, it appears I left my camera in Iquitos, which is actually kind of funny because I  kept telling people it was so old I didnt care if I lost it when they would say not to take it to whatever place in the jungle or to some of the markets. However, Im pretty sure I left it between some of the cushions at my hostel in Iquitos. Anyways, not too big a deal but youll have to settle for this internet image of Huanchaco instead of one of my own:

Machu Picchu Pictures

Here are my belated pictures from Machu Picchu, I managed to upload them while waiting for the bus in Lima and am now on the bus to Trujillo (then Huanchaco) with spotty wifi, but good enough to add some text. I was at Machu Picchu on Jan 11th, a Saturday, and had a nice sunny day in the middle of a week that had been full of rain. In fact it was so sunny I got quite a sunburn that lasted for about another week following, though its a bit unclear how much came from Machu Picchu and how much from Lake Titicaca..

Heres a picture from the peak of my hike at the top of Montaña de Machu Picchu.

Heres the train to Machu Picchu in Ollataytambo

Looking up from the riverside trail while walking between Aguas Calientes and the Machu Picchu trail.

Above you can see the switchbacks which lead up to Machu Picchu, with little trails cutting between them for people who are walking.

And everyone that day was walking, as there had been a "rumba", or landslide, from all the rain which knocked out the road in two places. It was actually a fair bit of walking especially at altitude, and was quite clogged with people. I saw many I thought might keel over dead at any moment.

Looking out from one of the switchbacks on the way up.

Found a nice spot to drink coffee and wait for the tour to start, which was running behind because of the lack of bus access.

If you take an immediate left upon entering theres a staircase which takes you to this overlook which is the classic photo people get. Now the Franz brand has made it up here, and into the Amazon Jungle too.

Below are some shots of the ruins. The ones with better color were taken after my hike when the sun was providing more favorable lighting.

In the above two pictures if you look closely you can see the terraces are all linked together, some via stairs at their ends and others via small stone steps forming a ladder that juts out from the wall. By doing various backtracking and ups and downs you can get to pretty much any terrace.

The above two pictures show the main entrance to Machu Picchu. The doorway was quite tall, indeed it cleared my head by quite a bit, which was purportedly for two reasons. First so the Incan king could be carried through. When he came from Cuzco he was carried the entire way, which is quite a bit more impressive to me now having seen how long it takes to drive, train, and finally hike up there. Second, supposedly it was to intimidate anyone who might come to fight them, as they would see how tall the door was and think the Incans to be giants. In the lower picture youc an see two holes, one on either side of the entrance way. There used to be a wooden gate that could be fitted across this doorway with a crossbar secured using the small hand-sized stone posts inside each of those holes.

The guide is pointing out that there is an intricate water collection system built into the city. Above you see a natural rock sticking out of the wall which the Incans built around rather than moving. Below in the corner to the left you see a small area where water runoff is collected and channeled into the citys water system.

Above you can see the rounded masonry, which indicates a structure of significance to the Incans. Almost all of the stonework at Machu Picchu is square, but this is one of their temples.

They point out that the Incans could make stonework fit together quite well without mortar when they wanted to, as they did for important structures like temples, etc. Many of the other buildings arent quite so exactly fitted together and so have a clay like mortar holding the bricks together, which is pretty impressive to have stood up to over half a century of the elements.

Above is a picture from the area used as a stone quary, kind of an oddity among the well built ruins its just a maybe pool sized area with a bunch of big rocks laying around in various stages of being shaped. They apparently used a lot of water and sand to shape rocks. Also, in order to break the rocks they would find small cracks and jam pieces of dry wood into them, then pour water over to make them swell and crack the rock.

Heres an unfinished doorway to one of the temples. On the front you can see the place where a horizontal beam would have been put to complete the entryway giving a structure to build the roof from. On the left face you can see small little stubs sticking out of the rocks. These were used for handles in order to lift the stones up into place, and once the building was reaching completion would be sanded away.

The repair work these days is not what it used to be.

There are 3-5ish llamas which roam freely eating the grass. They are enormously fat and entitled.

There are some strange rodent-esque mammals running around in some of the lower off-limit grassy areas. They almost looked like chinchillas, I was kind of curious what they are.

I had to cut my guided tour short to make the last part of the entrance window for the Montaña de Machu Picchu hike. It took maybe 1.5 hours each way including stopping for lunch and to admire the views. The trail is originally part of the Inca trail which led through the mountains to Cusco, but the Incans destroyed its connection before abandoning the city.

Here I am at the summit of Machu Picchu the Mountain (the original picture from this post was taken just a few yards away). The hike lands you up on the top ridge of the mountain, with spectacular views all around. I actually enjoyed watching the clouds the most up here. They appear out of nowhere as they come up the mountain slopes, then disappear again as they get higher. Sometimes if a particularly strong cloud forms it pushes itself up over the ridge and moves onward.

Machu Picchu on the left and way out to the right you can see the tip of Aguas Calientes (below too), where the train from Ollataytambo deposits you and most people stay overnight.