Is there such a thing as one raby? I think I have at least two.

There’s really nothing quite like the experience of being very sick (or potentially very sick) in a foreign country. Like if you think you might have rabies, for example. I recently had such an experience in Vietnam. I visited an island in the very picturesque Ha Long Bay called Monkey Island. What no one told …

The Inscrutable World of Buddhism

I raised the stick high and tried to look threatening. Dogs can smell fear, an unidentified person whispers to me from the dark recesses of my memory. Maybe it was true. But what about the geese? I’ve heard they’re vicious. I was so close to my destination - a meditation center where I would be …

The Great California Green Rush

Disclaimer: All views expressed in this post are my own. For privacy purposes, no names or specific locations have been mentioned. There I was on the Greyhound bus, nervously fiddling with the $2,000 cash in my bra. Once I confirmed that my earnings were still nestled between “the girls,” I went through the ritual of …

Thank you Mother Ayahuasca, for the peek under the hood

“There’s got to be a better way,” I thought to myself as I carried the fifth bucket of water to the raging fire out in the parched yucca fields. The Shipibo locals were hurried but surprisingly relaxed about the situation, accustomed as they were to renegade fires while burning the fields for crop rotation; but …

Thoughts from San Pedro

I write this at the tail end of a San Pedro trip and the tail end of nearly a year in Latin America. As I look forward to my flight back to California, I cannot think of a better way to end this segment of my travels than on a self-reflective, mescaline-fueled journey into my …

This is not the story I meant to write, but it’s the one that needed to be written.

On the hard clay shore of the Río Villano in the Ecuadorian Amazon, me and another volunteer jump around, shaking our limbs and wiggling our bodies to keep the tiny biting flies, known as chuspies, from leaving more angry red welts on our skin. We have also partially covered ourselves in the clay upon which …

The most complex smoothie I’ve ever had.

In a restaurant in Tulum with a guy from Canada and a girl from Switzerland, I make a joke about my dinner order. You see, this particular restaurant serves chips and a generous portion of pickled carrots, peppers, garlic, and onions with every meal. My joke is that, if I only order a smoothie, I’ll …

Evidence of foul play on a Thursday morning.

Chichicastenango, Guatemala. Thursday morning, market day. 9:31AM. I wake up on the tiny couch and stretch my cramped muscles. Most of the woolly blankets I had piled on the night before are now bunched up on the floor next to my overflowing backpack. I often marvel at how much it resembles a drunkard, vomiting up …

Anxiety is just another tool.

Sometimes I feel like slipping out of my skin for a second. Sometimes I feel like sinking comfortably into the cool, calm waters of someone else’s psyche and ditching mine for a just a few moments. Sometimes I need a vacation from the exhaustion that is a lifetime of anxiety. Sometimes I’m left hollow and …

Different Worlds

I’m half-asleep in the back of a parked bus in Maravilla. It’s the middle of the night on a journey from Camitán, to Palenque, Mexico, and the driver has stopped the bus to catch some shut-eye before the long haul in the morning. The other passengers have found accommodation in the little town while I …