Why are we nerds? And why are we proud to be nerds?

From my watching of vlog brothers, and it felt like a question that needed an answer.

I guess I choose to be a nerd because I believe the world is an amazing place.  I see the defining feature of a nerd as an obsessive interested in largely intellectual pursuits, usually detailed ones.

To me, the world is full of those kinds of amazing features, and getting really into them, math, the stars, what the future could be, exploring like an adventurer, is like giving the world the attention it deserves. 

So I like the enthusiasm about things, and specifically about things that make my world expand or my mind expand.  I mean that's the game connection right is that you can think about things and make them rich.

I also like being a nerd because I like to optimize my behavior.  Again with the game connection here the idea is with sufficient thought you can figure out the rules by which things work and determine the theoretical best practices for that set of parameters. 

I'm proud to be a nerd because the nerds I know have always been the best people I know.  The most intricate and interesting, the ones most able to bring those exciting mind and world expanding ideas into my life.  So I've been wanting to get into and up in nerd society since other people were doing it for popular society and for a lot of the same reasons.  Those were the people to know.

Pushing the edge of Peru

I am staying by the shores of lake Titicaca.  We arrived last night on the bus.  Our host showed a sadly typical tendency to not actually hold the sign with our name on it, but we found each other, drove an hour out of town, and tucked ourselves in to comforting soup and an extremely awesome little casa. 

They gave us two rooms with an adjoining little living area. External bathroom and no shower are the amenity challenges, but this beautiful well appointed little flat with the lake streaming in your views from both sides charms your pants off.  We're staying 4 nights so we unpacked. 

We are on a peninsula, so you can see the lake from both sides, and the bucolic farmlands and the locals totally wear traditional garb for non tourism purposes and there's livestock and crops.  You can see quinoa ripening and potatoes blooming and baby donkeys and sheep tied up to graze.

Today we walked around some with a local guide and then swam in the lake.  My heavens it was cold.  Like hurts your feet when you step in cold.  But Jes encouraged me and we inched past the point of no return and dove in.  And of course once I'm in I never want to leave.  It was our guide's idea to swim but then he had to be cajoled and shivered like crazy.  The water is really blue. 

You can see Bolivia from here and its snow capped peaks.  We climbed a rock for a better view.  Tomorrow we might go see islands. There's definite plans for a campfire on an island Sunday.

We bussed here from Arequipa, where we were seeing Colca Canyon.  We walked down it and crossed the river and back up it.  And we totally made it and did a great job.  But there were downsides.  It was a lot burnier and dustier than the Machu Picchu trek.  More desert so  less loveliness.  And we were too slow on our last day hiking so our guide left us in the canyon and drove away with the rest of the group.  Hate. 

In good news at the bottom of the canyon we stayed someplace with a pool, so it's this beautiful body of water with fountains flowing into it surrounded by canyon walls. 

We crossed the world's dodgiest bridge to ford the river. I'm serious twigs held together with vines, real bridge washed out in last mudslide. 

On the last day Jes came back for me. She was worried because she knew I was out of water but she was ahead of me so get this that means she had finished climbing this somewhat grueling 5 hour hike and then walked down some of the hill which meant she would have to go back up again.  I was seriously touched.  We got in to town together and home on a 6 hour local bus cause ya know our tour left us so luckily we had the world's best hotel which we rebooked on the way back.

Last day in Arequipa we had a massage in the Roman baths at this hotel (I said awesome right) and enjoyed the steam room and then went and tore my tour company a new one til it was time to go scoring a partial refund.  Then a 6 hour bus to Puno and that's where I came in. 

It's been an intense few days.  I think I even skipped over

We took a plane over the Nazca lines seeing a whole bunch they are cool and planes rule.

I got kind of sick in here somewhere, queasy for like more than a day after the plane and coughing up increasingly uglier stuff on the hike.  Don't worry. I have Tussin.  It gets right to the bone. 

And we're downshifting now a bit. Dinner in an hour and we're curled up with books. 

Ocean at Paracas

Highlights of the sea tour:

Cons- no blue footed boobies. Apparently boobies in Peru have grey feet but I still didn't reliably see them.

Tour liked dragging you around in herds as tours do.  Jes reckoned more than most, but she didn't bear the brunt of Pedro's constant bitching, nagging, and bothering my friends to get me to join the last herd.

Pros- Omg it's seal breeding season.  This means that when you go to see fur seals (sea lions) there are tots seal pups by the swarm on the beach.

The seal pups are like learning the sea by hanging out in the wave wash and getting knocked over.

We saw a mother and baby seal swimming next to each other with periodic barks back and forth to communicate.  It was very encouraging to the worth of all things.

Sea lions when hanging out on a rock or something like to stick their noses in the air and fluff out their really existent manes. 

We saw a sea lion couple chilling on a rock and an actual third sea lion climbed out of the sea with a fish in its actual mouth and like offer it to the others.  This was insane. 

We saw a black volcano beach and a red iron oxide beach. 

The desert meets the ocean on the coast so everything is dry and dead here. My mind rasps for the green of the mountains.

In the lap of the giant

If the mountains of Slovakia are like seeing the world as god, the cup of his hand as creation spread out before you, then the Andes are like sitting in the lap of some great giant, nestled in his massive legs, his strong arms cradling you, caressed by his thick and verdant hands.

The mountains are green to the top like a massive body, it's strong and calm life pulsing through you.  As you climb your rushing heart is a part of the pulse of the mountain, a rabbit's heartbeat.

If you wake up early enough, the cloud lies not at the mountain tops but in the valleys. And if you keep climbing long enough you can watch it uncoil and rise like a sleeping dragon.

Hummingbirds in Cuba are the smallest in the world but in Peru they are larger than the ones I have seen and turquoise not emerald. I saw 9 of them on the trek, in addition to a black bird with yellow feet and beak, several sparrow like birds some with the black throat markings, and a bluebird of happiness with a red breast.

The cloud's movement across the mountain was perhaps my favourite part.  They would start at the foot of the mountains at dawn curled sleeping in the valleys, then crawl up the face of the mountain until they obscured its visage from your sight.  Then you might spend hours walking in a wall of cloud, but don't despair, because that mist nourishes the cloud forest all around you.  Then the cloud lifts her skirts and exposes the mountain's body to the light, but hides his head. At this point you might start to see the distant snow caps, curls of cloud decorating them like ribbons.  From here the cloud never quite leaves you, but dances with the mountain in an embrace. And you can watch them run up the mountain and back down like a sheet billowing, rivers of cloud running down its side, or maybe it will hug the mountain around its neck in a tender embrace.

The cloud forest thrives by the mist that flows over it, and so there is not the supremacy of the sky or the earth. Therefore everything can be coated, five species of moss I counted on one tree.  The first cloud forest I entered (second day) was formed around a crystal brook which splashed through moss covered rocks, hurrying at the speed of gravity. I perched on a rock and bathed in its waters, sipping them from my hand.  It sustained full sized trees, dripping with moss and bromilliads and occasional orchids.

The second cloud forest I entered, on the third day, was surreal in nature.  All the trees, the grass, the flowers were made of moss.  It was like being transported to the moss planet. There was an English style meadow with tiny intricate wildflowers beautifully intertwined.  Then on the trees moss and vines dripped.

I climbed and climbed for hours but when I got to the top of dead woman's pass (second day) I literally ran to the top of a cairn and circled myself in the wind, surrounded and surrounded by the limitless mountains.  I did much the same on the first pass if the third day, scrambling to the truly highest point and then you and the mountain tops are on equal footing.

The ruins, from the watchtower I climbed all over to Maccu Picchu itself... Maccu Picchu is a full city, that's what's special about it.  Not just the castle keep as it were but houses and churches and terraces and military spots and a water system.  All there as though you could put on new roofs and come back to it.  The outposts it's more about being fully in them and fully on the edge of the mountain at the same time.  On the third day, the sun rose and kissed the sun temple as Jes and I climbed.