The South American Explorers Club

By Brendan J. F. Thiessen

Jumping from moving trains, drinking and dancing till the dawn, and exploring the land and culture of the Incan people, while documenting various people from across the globe that he met along the way, The SOUTH AMERICAN EXPLORERS CLUB is a stellar read. A celebration of youth and the uncertainty of the future. This book encompasses long distance trekking in the Peruvian Andes, exploring ancient Incan ruins, the lost funerary burial pits of the Nazca culture, camping in the lake district of southern Chile, the kinship of other travelers, and the joys and hardships that go along with and are intrinsic to long term travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Nov 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781543771428

Brendan J. F. Thiessen

Brendan Thiessen has travelled extensively all around the world, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, the Indian sub-continent, the Caribbean and North America. He documents, records, describes, and reveals his REAL travel experiences; it is interesting, insightful, and poetic. Blending wit and evoking the feelings of writers from the past he manages to create a world where travel is adventurous, risky, and always a unique and individual experience.

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Copyright © 2022 by Brendan J. F. Thiessen.

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In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in

to fill the spaces

where my bodies been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

— Mark Strand

"People who dislike budging from their homes or

walking beyond their own backyards—and they

are always and everywhere in the majority—treat

Herodotus’ sort, fundamentally unconnected to anyone

or anything, as freaks, fanatics, lunatics even."

— Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus

"DO NOT GO WHERE THE PATH MAY LEAD, GO INSTEAD WHERE THERE IS NO PATH AND LEAVE A TRAIL BEHIND YOU.’’ It was written by Ralph W. Emerson. I chose to go to South America. The reason I

chose to go to South America was because I had seen a picture of Machu Picchu in a magazine, or book, or on a television program, and the appearance of this city in the clouds, shrouded in thin veils of mist captivated me; I decided at that moment I would walk upon its ramparts within the next 2 years. I set some goals for myself, save money, buy a ticket, buy the necessary gear, and do the necessary research and reading that would give me a brief introduction to South American history. I worked different jobs, the ones where you stare at the clock waiting to go home the whole time you’re there, thinking in a few months I’ll be down in South America. After doing some research I came across a website that told me about the South American Explorers Club. It was an organization based out of the United States, and had clubhouses set up in different locations across S.A., Cuzco, Lima in Peru, and Quito in Ecuador. You could visit the clubhouses and grab a tea or coffee, and hook up with different travelers, exchange books, buy maps, get advice from other seasoned South American travelers. At least one individual stayed at the club houses at all times. I bought a membership for a year, this gave me access to a wealth of information within the club and also access to the club’s store which had a lot of quite useful maps, and the like. The club also provided up to the date travel advisory warnings, such as places to avoid, rebel army movements, tourist scams, and places of interest to visit. You could also drop off books, and exchange or trade them for others that were left at the clubhouse for that reason. I joined and got my card mailed to me; I could show it to the clubhouse operator when I got to S.A. as proof of my membership. The clubhouse also provided a quarterly magazine with information about hostels, hotels, adventure tour companies, companies specializing in Latin American travel, etc.… Meanwhile, I was saving money and acquiring the supplies and equipment I would need for trekking through the Peruvian Andes. I was a novice then when it came to knowing what kinds of equipment I would need in the alpine above the tree-line outdoor situation. Reading Backpacker magazine and similar publications, I learned that I would need the basics, trekking poles, a sturdy tent, sturdy above the ankle waterproof boots, good socks, base layers, pants, shirts, down jacket, mitts, toque, sleeping bag (summer! mistake!) and a sleeping pad, sun hat, and other things, camera, shorts, chapstick, and so forth. The most important piece of kit that I had purchased was a German made 75l Atlas II Jack Wolfskin expedition size backpack. For fire, I went with the Primus multi-fuel expedition stove, which was able to run on a variable amount of different fuel sources, white-gas, gasoline, butane/propane mix, aviation fuel, even diesel if the need be. The two latter being, arguably, the most crucial parts of any trekker’s kit. I had gathered all my stuff and bought a plane ticket. I would fly into Lima, Peru and then fly out of Santiago, Chile 3 months later. In between I wanted to do some treks in the different mountain ranges of the Andes, the Machu Picchu trek, visit Cusco, Arequipa, and a few other key spots along the way. So, on an august afternoon I boarded a plane and left for Lima, Peru, on the west coast of the South American continent.

During a brief stopover in Dallas, Texas, I grabbed a beer at the bar, waiting for my next flight there was a guy with a portable radio and skateboard doing shots of tequila with a friend, guffawing and having a good old time. They settled their tab and then left. About five minutes later he returns with the bill in his hand, leans against the bar and motions for the girl who served him, and says Hey, you charged us for the premium tequila but we didn’t order that we were just drinking the house tequila! She looked at the receipt and confirmed the mistake and refunded the difference. I looked at him, as he leaned back from the bar and his buddy yelled, Yo dude! Come on, we’re going to miss our flight!, and he replied, Yaa I know, I’m coming". That reminded me of my flight too, and I downed my beer and split towards the gate whatever the number was. We touched down in Lima, at 3 am local time, and I looked for the stranger who was supposed to pick me up and take me to a hostel owned by a Dutch guy, in the city. We connected and soon I was bailing down the highway in a foreign land with a complete stranger, towards the capital of Peru, in a car that was American made but sounded as though it should have been retired fifteen years ago. First impressions…dirty city! Spray painted buildings, garbage everywhere, smelly, the lack of infrastructure was apparent from the start-at least compared to North American and European standards, and this was in the middle of the night. I could hardly wait for what beauty the morning sun would reveal to me. But then again, it wasn’t indicative of Lima, Peru specifically, but any major city across what we humans call planet earth, the modern sprawling urban metropolis, the insect-like colonization of present human habitation. I was glad I would only be there for a few days till I got my bearings together and then could procure transport to the mountain climbing and hiking/trekking capital of Peru, Huaraz. I arrived at the hotel and checked in to an old dark large brick room, and sorted through my stuff showered and lied down, the flight was long and I was feeling anxious and anticipated the challenges of locating the bus terminal to buy tickets to Huaraz, which I would do the day after tomorrow, I would rest and sight see for two days and then leave for the mountains, lying in my bed I turned off the light. Soon I drifted into a much-needed sleep.

The next day I awoke and went for a walk, since my hotel was not on a main street, it was shielded from the noise of traffic, I walked towards the main drag, and off in the distance I could already begin to hear the faint thrumming of buses, cars, trucks, police officer whistles, horns, squealing brakes, abused engines, the slow-moving crawl of mechanical progress in the big city. I rounded the corner and my senses were sonically assaulted by these very sounds-as I stepped into the main street and it was as if someone had just turned the volume up to full level. A monstrous horde of vehicles moving in every direction gushed forth, onward in all directions. The street signs which were, I reckon, at one point white, were now a dirty filthy ashen grey color, the endless clouds of a million myriad vehicles had coated the signs with their toxic smoke, emissions control? I don’t think they had ever heard of it. Distracted by the sheer cacophony of noise that only a city can produce, I went back to my room and figured I’d go back out later in the day when it was less busy. A few hours later, I went to go find some food, which I did the next street over, some french fries and ham sandwiches. Then the man who ran the restaurant said he had a sister who could speak some English, so he called her and invited her over. A little while later she arrived and she introduced herself, and I said Hola. Mi nombre es Brendan. Mucho gusto conocerte. Encantado., and shook her hand. I had studied some Spanish at the local Folk Arts Centre before I had left for South America, it was now coming in handy. She told me that her brother owned a chicken(pollo) restaurant in the other barrio, and that we could go there to eat. But she said El barrio es muy peligroso para el turista de noche. El barrio es Río Rímac. She said we would go later that night, to eat at her brother’s restaurant, in a dangerous part of Lima, where if the tourists go there at night they don’t come out! Wow I thought, this was starting to be exciting already. Presently I suggested we should go see a movie, and she agreed, so I suggested Buena Vista Social Club, it was playing at a local theater. We walked over to the theater and watched the movie. It was good, and it had special significance to me as I was sitting in a movie house in South America watching it. After the movie was finished, we went to her father’s restaurant, and met her brother. We piled into a minivan, and I found myself barreling across the tarmac of Lima, Peru surrounded by strangers going forth into the dangerous neighborhood of the Rio River. We got to the restaurant, ate lots of fried chicken and salads, and french-fries (again), and washed it down with copious amounts of cerveza. If it was a dangerous neighborhood I wouldn’t have never known, I was just sitting in a restaurant with four Peruvians, with a minimum of shared language between us and somehow managing to have a conversation for hours. Eventually I said I had to get back to the hostel, and they said I needed to call a taxi. The reason the neighborhood was dangerous was because Lima proper had been built around the economic center of the city. As a result, with any kind of area that is economically prosperous, it draws more and more people from the countryside to find their fortunes in the city. Lack of space, and the expense of rent in the good locations, causes shanty towns to form in a giant ring around the city. With ghetto-like shanty towns comes, crowding, crime, prostitution, drugs, gangs, and a great economic disparity within the city. I think Rio Rimac was close enough to this outer shanty town that it would have been dangerous, for a tourist, or someone who had not grown up in this kind of neighborhood to wander at night. The locals can tell in your body language, and mannerisms that you’re not from ‘around here’. I’m sure a kid who grew up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro would have no problem walking through this area at night; I, on the other hand, grew up in a mid-sized working-class town in southern Ontario, Canada. I’m sure they could tell I wasn’t from the ‘hood’, and I would have probably gotten mugged, or beaten up and mugged, or beaten up, mugged and killed, or maybe nothing would have happened at all, but I didn’t want to risk it. They offered to drive me back to the hostel, I accepted. I said goodbye to my new friends that I had met that night, and would probably never see again during my time on earth, such is the transitory nature of traveling. As we drove back to the hostel, I was looking out the window at the river, and realized that it wasn’t a river at all (ok maybe during times of heavy rain), but for now it was just a giant dry ditch twenty meters wide that the ‘locals’ had been using as a place to throw refuse and was filled with tons upon tons of garbage at the bottom, as it meandered through the city. Arriving back at the hotel I went to my room and looked around the room for anything amiss. Everything looked in order, so I sat on the bed and looked around the room, I don’t know what compelled me to walk towards the wall and remove the framed picture of Vincent Van Gogh (the owner of the hotel was from the Netherlands) off of the wall but I did, and for some strange reason the hole where the nail was placed to hang the picture, in the old volcanic rock wall, a small opening could be seen and I looked inside and saw the plastic of a small ziploc bag-I pulled it out and examined it and it was a small baggie filled with marijuana! What a surprise! I reckoned that a traveler of some sort must have booked the room before a flight back home and stashed the last remnants of his weed there, so as not to be arrested and get his hand cut off, or be sentenced to twenty years in prison because he had on his body about two grams of vegetable matter, so in his paranoid delusions placed the weed in this very spot for a traveler like me to discover one sunny day! I was stoked. The first thought that consumed my mind was how to move it? I was heading to Huaraz, the mountain climbing center of Peru, tomorrow and was worried about how to smuggle it to that part of the country. I thought of a plan to cut a half-inch hole in the hem of my pants near my ankle and shove the illicit contraband inside, in the hopes that no narcos federales pulled the bus over on my way to Huaraz. I stashed my weed, and went to a room a few doors down the hallway, where two female Mexican university students were staying, and we listened to music and drank some cerveza. In the morning I bailed for Huaraz, on the bus cruising…oh let me not forget this important detail about the city of Lima, I visited the Museo del Convento de San Francisco de Asís de Lima. A beautiful building built in the Spanish Baroque style, where Moorish influences can definitely be seen-as I asked the guide why did the ceiling have arabesque geometric patterns on it? He said that the Moors at the time were conquering parts of Spain, and that they had left their architectural legacies there, and that this influence was transferred to the new World. In 1943, some workers were doing restoration work on the basement of the church, and accidentally broke a floor tile and were met with an unusual stench emanating from the bowels of the cathedral…it turns out that within the basement hidden under the floor, was a catacomb, no way comparable to the catacombs of Paris, but nonetheless, catacombs containing no less than twenty-five thousand bodies of the deceased persons from the area of Lima of the 16th-18th century Peru. It is curious to note that even after death the human race is so quick to differentiate between the rich and poor…the epitome of whoever dies with the most toys wins mentality, the poor unfortunate was placed in three feet by six-foot individual pits whilst the more economically well off were placed in a grand round pit in circles. I discovered that the only parts of the human body not prone to decay if left untouched in their natural state were the skull and femur bones. Accordingly, they were arranged in a massive concentric circle on the floor of the pit vault. We ascended out of the basement back into the cathedral proper and I was able to gaze upon the first image of the Virgin Mary brought to South America by Francisco Pizzaro, a splendid rendering with gold, and pale blue shades, her face gazing down, melancholic, forlorn, accepting the fate of her son. The Cathedral also housed one of the finest libraries in all of South America, it contained books predating colonialism, and a Holy Bible edition printed in Antwerp in 1571-1572, and the first Spanish dictionary as well. After seeing a few more sights, I decided I had seen enough of Seoul/Lima/New York/Amsterdam/Santiago/Toronto/Edmonton/Vancouver, (after all a city is a city, regardless of the name-one city) and wanted to bail to do some treks in the Andes; the reason of which I had come to South America in the first place. I procured a ticket to Huaraz in the Cordillera Blanca. The bus ride was an experience in and of itself, forty km out of the city along the sides of the streets and then eventually the highway, were piles of refuse, old washing machines, derelict cars, tires, scraps of tin and wood, every conceivable obsolescent item invented by man in the twentieth century lay abandoned to the outer ring of the city proper, and then slowly and eventually diminished as we headed up into the mountains, where the urban slums of Lima doggedly gave way to the vast and pristine wilderness of the Peruvian Andes. Along the way we stopped at a market beside the highway and this kid of about 10 years old came on the bus with a handful of oranges and other fruit and asked if anyone wanted to buy some, so I did and gave him about four dollars American for 5 oranges. He left the bus and then a few moments later his sister came back and demanded I show her the oranges I purchased, which apparently the little capitalist had overcharged me for purposefully as he most likely could tell I had just arrived in the country and wasn’t familiar with the different costs of things. He made a one hundred percent markup and charged me twice as much. His sister seeing the money he had when he got off the