Underthecurrent

I don’t remember exactly why I wanted to go into the jungle but it made sense at the time.  I know that I had some notes made long in advance about how to get to this place but that I wasn’t exactly sure it would be there when I arrived.  I had tried to go to another place but it did take bookings and it was full.

More than an hour truck ride down dirt roads and a long hike up a hill, just when I thought I was maybe in the wrong place after all, I walked down a cleared path and was greeted by a long term guest and de facto receptionist who pointed me to a bunk room and told me that I could pay for whatever I owed in beer and accommodation when I decided to leave, which could be whenever I felt like it.

Power was intermittent and could go out for days.  Showers were always cold, not that it matters in a tropical climate. The neighbors were howler monkeys with big eyes and stern looking lips that would urinate on you if you stood under their tree canopy.  The bar was a stockpile of bottled beer, replenished monthly, and a tiny fridge with a notepad to keep track of personal consumption.  The kitchen was a gas burner and plastic bins to stop the ants and other insects from carrying away everything.

The highlight of any given week was the once or twice that the Food Truck would somehow make it to a nearby road, everyone would jump out of hammocks and off the floors and run to catch it.  If you’ve spent a bit of time in Latin America you may be familiar with the grocery trucks, usually produce related, that loudly announce whatever they might have to sell that day to call potential purchasers.  The truck that, somehow, made it up the road to us sounded like CEBOLLAPOLLOPAPAYA and was a flatbed full of fresh groceries that proved to be more than enough to keep everyone living in the trees able to avoid trips to town.

We spent our days in the ocean and wandering around the paths and dirt roads nearby, nights slowly drinking beer, making elaborate meals out of whatever the food truck had produced that week, playing cards, telling jokes and stories, dodging the occasional scorpion.

Sometimes, someone new would arrive, always looking confused about whether this was the right place after all.

It was always the right place.

A year or so after the trip I found a video of all of us from the jungle on a destroyed cell phone.  We’re drinking a bit, dancing a bit, mugging for the screen, content.  I sent it out to everyone at once and we all talked about a return to that place that will never happen.

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I am aware that by most measures this is done wrong.  This should be a report about amazing sights or the people of the country or something more exciting that the man who sells groceries from his truck.

That this is projecting a Beach-like fantasy of a lost world where foreigners go to be largely unproductive, perhaps avoiding much of what they came to see.

Or perhaps there could be some summation about the simple life and a Thoreau-style rhapsody about the joy of living without what we do not need.  But the truth is we did have intermittent wifi and not that far down the road there was an actual high end retreat, also hidden, that served fancy blended fruit drinks and avocado toast, which hosted famous people and which we made fun of mercilessly though some of us snuck in from time to time for a fancy blended drink.

And there are other aspects of this same leg of travel that are omitted from the narrative.  The week spent in an off-season resort recovering from a sick stomach.  The days in a couple of busy hostels questioning my own mortality and the state of travel in a world where everything is passively connected.  Anyone writing about a trip is always omitting from the narrative, rotating a lens to choose what is seen and how close up.

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This is about some travel two years ago, just before the long haul trip.  I’ve been considering writing a late but sort-of contemporaneous set of entries about the long haul trip, now being an optimal time to start.

Inventory, 2017/2018.

Nicaragua – a cheeky singlet, some bikini tops, all from the same obscure surf company where I attended a party once.

California – a loose black shirt from Venice, Abbot Kinney.  Not a crystal given to me by a hippie child (clear quartz!) that was accidentally lost while packing.

Mexico – Santo Cabo lavender moisturizer in a tiny mason jar and some mostly aloe primer in a glass pump from a goop-approved farm stall style shop.

Costa Rica – cheap all black sneakers I wore until they rotted and fell apart.

Panama – a single cowry shell from a far flung beach.

Colombia – Loto del Sur dry oil spray, Ellipse lingerie, a heavy cotton sweater sold on a mountain top with multi-coloured geometric patterns.

Ecuador – a desperate backpack that was made in China and didn’t last a month.

Peru – a bag full of Andean knits and weaves.  Sweater, scarf, gloves, rucksack, belt, tiny bag.  Worries about collecting too much in a fit of holiday souvenir shopping were totally overstated.

Spain – featherweight shorts designed in Spain but made in India.

UAE – fresh underwear from Victoria’s Secret.  Another backpack.

Sri Lanka – clothes: two light dresses, linen shorts. A hand woven pillow cover from a semi-famous fair trade store. Of course, one box of Ceylon tea from a plantation factory.

Malaysia – t-shirts.  Landing in a world of endless spiral vertical malls, emerging with two fairly generic t-shirts from a large chain store.

Vietnam – a single coconut spoon bought on a beach now used every day for dry ingredients, Archcafe instant coffee sachets, a light black sweatshirt.  A woven rattan purse that was purchased after seeing something similar in a museum that had been used decades ago as luggage.  Birkenstock style sandals from Hoi An, a silk robe from Da Nang.

Philippines – an assortment of medication and toiletries.

Japan – a chef’s knife from the people who made it. Shoyeido incense from Kyoto. A couple of unusual knits, a few prizes from vending machines.  Dried soup from 711 and Muji.  A key chain free on a beer can at the bullet train station.  Carved wooden chopsticks from a store that sells specifically only chopsticks.  A (good) fortune from an ancient temple.

These are the things I would have brought a suitcase full of with me if I had twenty suitcases.

Colombia.  Arequipe, specifically the coffee variety that shows up all over Salento.  Honourable mention to tiny Jet chocolate bars and one particular bandeja paisa midday in Medellin.  Runner up is the only arepa I ever loved, a cheese filled one toasted on the outside.

Peru.  All the chicha.  Any of the aji amarillo.  Aji sauce was such a late discovery.  I thought the true love would be in the ceviche and pisco, the ceviches are nice but the aji is amor verdadero.

Spain.  A large part of this short time was spent in the Basque region.  Patas bravas, but in particular the two typical sauces – spicy tomato and aioli.  A particular plate of mejillones at a nothing-special bar, con tomate.  The simplest, best gazpacho recipe – available at any grocery store.

Greece.  Giant caper berries and feta.  A friend from a long time ago moved, for love and maybe a bit for food, to Greece.  She tried to explain the feta; the feta cannot be explained.  No greek salad feels complete anymore without capers, preferably large ones, which require a small loan here.

Sri Lanka.  There are many lamprais that people suggest but only one, prepared close to the true Burgher tradition, sticks for me.  Sambols vary but there is another specific one at a guesthouse, with fresh roti, that I would ask for everyday forever.  The tea and pies leftover from another era, served in a sparse and dignified room with a ceiling that goes up and up.  All of these in Colombo.  A patty, on a train, of fried lentils with whole chili peppers and a single dried shrimp pressed into it.  The roadside restaurants, with their kottu and vegetable curries.  Incredible.

The Maldives, with their own milder, simple sambol at breakfast with rotis and sticks of pressed coconut “chocolate.”

Singapore. Ya Kun Kaya, specifically the kopi and kaya toast combo (Kopi O!), may have ruined my breakfasts forever.  Dipping the buttery, sweet toast in the magical half-boiled cup of egg, cracked before your eyes.  Second, the nasi lemak from Crave, which began a quest for endless tiny crispy anchovies.  These are such stereotypical Singaporean chain foods, maybe, I don’t care.

Malaysia.  There is this one packet of fried chicken curry and rice, wrapped in a banana leaf package with a side of Malay iced tea, haunts me.  I don’t even know the restaurant due to jet leg and being extremely lost when it made sense to follow a steady line into a restaurant behind a market.  The easy assam laksas and varieties of rice I’d never considered before.  It was so easy to fall in love with KL through food, and so hard to know that this was only scratching the surface and that many things would be difficult to replicate at home.

Vietnam.  The Vietnamese food on the West coast of Canada isn’t bad, heading to Hanoi all of the incarnations of basics like pho and bahn mi were easy friends to revisit.  However, the coal grilled bun cha is my newest Vietnamese cooking aspiration after so many satisfying bowls (please send fresh beer).  There was also an unexpected obsession with coconut coffee, and leaving the country meant taking about a month’s worth of Archecafe coconut cappucino sachets, which are proving near impossible to find anywhere but random locations in Vietnam.  Bonus points for Korean-owned Lotte stocking a wide range of Samyang noodles.

Philippines.  I will admit I didn’t really appreciate Filipino food before visiting, assuming I’d eat a lot of no-melt chocolate bars and a few lumpia.  Instead, there were hearty soups and massive a la carte grills with serve-yourself cold beer, and an amusing “secret sauce” that’s always mostly soy, vinegar and chilies.  There’s a family run restaurant in a small town whose chicken adobo, a recipe that could vary day to day but was always excellent with this peppercorn studded sauce, that wins.

Japan.  The most surprising part about Japan was how inexpensive good food was and the unrelenting quality that extends everywhere.  Every yakatori skewer, bowl of tempura udon and takoyaki ball seemed to come with the same care as an expensive yakiniku or sushi lunch.  A suitcase of Japanese groceries wouldn’t be enough.

Hawaii.  Oahu has proven impossible to quit.  If there was one thing, it would be the (now prohibitively expensive) Kona coffee.  There’s a particular shop in Waikiki that sells it, along with reasonable part-Kona blend for those of us who don’t live in USD, that I always go back to.  I also have a soft spot for anything lilikoi, in particular malasadas dusted with lilikoi powder.

England.  The crisps and chocolate, obviously.  The mulled wines from Borough Market, perhaps.  However, the quickest obsession in the UK was the breakfast sandwiches at Costa Coffee.  Herbs, cheese, relatively proper sausage; a true antidote to the November morning damp.  If these seem pedestrian, just know it was a short layover and the line for Padella was truly nuts.

Germany.  A suitcase full of mustard, please.  Add a range of kraut and some fresh brezels.  Some of the mysterious curry powder that helps sauce currywurst.  And all of the light, ultra fresh beer.  Thank you.

So this is some of what happened in the last year.

Ten years ago, in love with any particular place, I’d tell myself I’d be back.  Often, one way or another, I would be.  Not this time.  Some of these experiences, places, will just have to stay as they are, will have to be enough as they have been.