Travel Adventures

St. Croix

nickandlaina — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:54:00 GMT

Well, we made it out of South America, and after 5 months of fun, I definitely have a good impression on the continent. Now we are in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, where we will make this our home for at least a year. Getting here, we moved in with my mom's friend, Jeff, a cool guy who decided to move here 20 years ago. St. Croix is somewhere in between South America and the US. They drive on the left side of the road, and there are lots of tropical plants everywhere. It seems to be a pretty low-lying island, with some tall hills, but nothing like the Andes or Hawaii. As it turns out, St. Croix is not volcanic! It was pushed up from the bottom by the force of plate tectonics. That alone gives this island a different feel then anywhere else I have been. We head to the dive shop where we will spend of our time, since we now work there. Meeting all the employees, we realize that we fit right in, since everyone are travellers! There's Ross from New Zealand, Stina from Denmark, Donald from Iowa, Molly from Alabama, and so many more! Hanging out at jeffs house is a blast since he has 5 animals! He has two dogs, Jethro and Lobo, they are big black dogs, very puppy-like, An African grey parrot, Goose, who likes to start up conversations, often, and two cats, Calvin and Stimey. Since we arrived we've gone scuba diving 15 times, I got my Advanced Scuba Diver Certification, and we both just finished our Rescue Scuba Diver Certification. Over the next few weeks, I plan to do 35 more dives so I can start my Divemaster Certification, which will allow me to take customers scuba diving, and get paid for my boat time. Since we have been pretty much scuba diving every day since we got here, let me tell you a little about the diving here. St. Croix has three big attractions, The Wall, which is a huge reef wall that drops down to between 3000 and 13000 feet. The Wall has big pelagic (open ocean) creatures that visit, and lots of relief. There is also Fredriksted Pier, which is loaded with corals, sponges, octopus, rays and moray eels. And finally there is long reef, which is supposedly the longest continuous barrier reef in the caribbean. Between these three places, there are 80 or so moorings designated for scuba. Just today we were diving on the wall, and I saw a nurse shark, turtle, two barracudas, stingrays, tunicates, and many more cool things. So pretty much we are going to hang out here, get some diving experience, while getting certified, and try to make some money. I will probably be writing these blogs a lot less, maybe one a month, since we dont have internet very often. However, we are doing well, and under the water!!

La Candelaria, Bogota

nickandlaina — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:43:00 GMT

Well I've gotta say, that I love the city of Bogota, it is most likely my favorite city we've come across on this trip! Our last stop in South America, Bogota, is a high mountain city, at 2600 meters(8500 feet) filled with color, cobblestone streets, and a very warm vibe. The air here is crisp and cool, and looking at the mountains surrounding the city they are covered in tall trees, and mist. The city has a young and hip feel, with many cafes, and old buildings that have been renovated for new restaurants. If you thought that Bogota would be hot and dry (from the movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith) you are wrong. Everytime we go out, Bogota has a Portland, Oregon/ Seattle, Washington feel, a nice reminder of home, so far away. There are lots of museums, plazas and colorful, colonial buildings lining the streets.

Our first day in the city we strolled around "La Candelaria" the old-town part of Bogota with many cafes, flags and street food stands. We headed into the Gabriel Garcia Marquez exhibit,with many weird, almost scary paintings. Like I said earlier, since all the streets are cobblestone, and the buildings old colonial, the streets are very warm and friendly. We stopped into a restaurant that was just screaming our names. La Quinoa y Armaranto, an old fashioned style kitchen, and as we entered, there were two table in the entrance just overflowing with green lettuce, spinach, arugala, as well as spices like rosemary, basil, bay leaves and more. The restaurant had two floors and distinctly smelled like pesto and olive oil, a very nice combination. We were ushered to the warm upstairs and all ordered the pesto pasta with italian salad. Looking into the kitchen downstairs, all the cooks were women who looked Colombian/Italian, and definitely knew how to cook some delicious smelling food. The salad was great, arugala, lettuce, spinach and basil, with balsamic, the best salad of the trip, and followed by a delicious pesto covered spaghetti! Leaving the warm, delicous and homely smelling restaurant, we headed to the Museo del Oro, the Museum of Gold. This three floor museum was filled with gold from pre-colombian times(before 1492) and was just jaw dropping. There was so much gold, and some of the pieces were so intricately worked, I was very impressed with the skill of the Native Colombians and their gold working skills. It made me think of how much gold artifacts were destroyed within the first 20 years of spanish colonization. I've heard that the spanish often melted all the pieces into bars to be shipped home.

Leaving the gold, we walked around the markets and vendor stands, and headed home for dinner, before our big salsa dancing night, to celebrate my birthday. Back at Alegria's hostel, we gathered up two Argentines(it was cool to hear their accent, after all this time without it) and headed to a Cuban bar, a Club Havana type deal, for a fun night of good music, and fun dancing. The night life in Colombia ends significantly earlier then both in Argentina and Brasil. I think we were in the cab home by 3:30 or so, when in the latter, it would have been 5 or 6.

The next day we strolled around town, and went into an interesting art museum, where I saw my first Pablo Picasso original. While he has lots of very impressive pieces, the works at the museum were not that great. However, the museum had a great atrium courtyard, where we sat and smelled the fresh air. After the museum, we headed to a restaurant called Cistrola, where they only had two menu options, I got the Paella, and Laina got the chicken breast. With my meal, I got a glass of sangria, which the house refilled three times. It was so delicious! It reminded me of the days we used to make mulled wine, around christmas time, back in Hawaii. Really loving the restaurant, I found that Bogota has so much to offer, and great food to eat. I would highly recommend Bogota has an awesome starting point to anybody's trip. On our last day in town, our friend Benedicte, from PSF in Pisco, showed up and we spent the day together and went our for a great lunch, and later, for dinner.

It seems we have reached the end of the trip (I am writing this in the hostel, waiting for our taxi to the airport) and we have had such an eye-opening and fantastic time. Thank you everybody, for reading the blog, writing comments to keep us updated, and traveling with us.

I apologize for any grammatical/spelling errors I have done over the last 5 months. Just kidding!

You can view my Bogota pictures here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2120935&id=19507860&l=8d0f6cc168

p.s. Don't stop reading, Im about to start the new blog, "Life in the Caribbean"!

Cartagena De Indias

nickandlaina — Tue, 5 May 2009 20:36:00 GMT

Cartagena, Colombia! When you say it, you need to have a strong spanish accent, remember that the "g" is pronounced like a "hey", and is sounds like this, Carta-hey-nah. It is a very cool city.

Our first night in the city, we met up with Jim(Lainas Dad) and BZ, at Edificio Palmetto, in the Bocagrande neighborhood of Cartagena. This building is tall! I think it is actually the tallest building in Cartagena. We quickely went out for dinner, and then home for lots of catching up, and then falling asleep. Our first day we took a cab into the old city, the walled city, and began to learn how much history this city has. We learned that in the 1530s it was built, and then Sir Francis Drake, the English privateer, come in aimed a cannon at the not fully built cathedral, asked for a lot of money as a ransom, and when they didn't pay, he shot the cathedral, and destroyed half of it! They then paid him the ransom. Anyways, this city was attacked many times by the pirates of the Caribbean (not the movie) and eventually they built a huge wall surrounding the city, 170 feet thick in some parts.

We spent a day going to the Islas del Rosario, and saw the aquarium, which was awesome, they even had an exhibit where the guy had trained the sharks(nurse sharks) to respond to their names and come get food! I was totally surprised, the sharks knew which one they were, and they came and went as he called! After the aquarium, we headed to a beach called Playa Blanca, and on the journey our engine broke down no less then 5 times! the captain had to keep fixing and restarting it. Playa Blanca is a beautiful beach, and has such soft sand. They only thing is that there are so many people who want to sell you stuff, a massage, a snorkel set, necklaces, anything, and they get quite annoying after a while. Heading back to Cartagena, I was reminded of the days we were boating around Boston, only because the city is big with skyscrapers, and it goes right up to the water.

The next day we headed to the mud volcano! We jumped on the bus fro our hotel, and after a 1 hour drive, we drove down this small path, and right in front of us, there was a small 45 foot volcano, made entirely out of mud! We climbed up the staircase on its side, and at the top, you can actually get into the mud, and there are some colombian guys that give you a massage for 2000 pesos(70 cents). Once in the mud, they tell you it is over 2000 feet deep! you would hardly believe it because it is nearly impossible to sink past your chest, if you are standing up, and if you are on your back, you float mostly out of the mud. The mud has the consistency of french onion dip (yes, you know the one) and is very smooth and shiny. When you get out, and walk down to the lagoon there are women waiting to clean you off, or if you have partner, you can do it yourself. After cleaning off the mud, my skin felt super soft, and stayed that way for about 3 days, including after swimming in saltwater. When we were done with the mud volcano, we did another tour, this one in the mangrove swamp. On three canoes, pushed by colombian guys with big poles, we silently floated through the channels of the swamp, and sometimes we came out into very large lakes, that were less then three feet deep, even in the middle. We saw many birds, white and grey egrets, frigate birds, turnstones, and more. there were also fish, but the water was not clear whatsoever, so we could only see their ripples. We stopped at an island to learn about the 11 native cultures of the area, but our guide did not speak very good english, and it was very hot, and I got bored quick. Back in the boat, we floated over two more large lakes, and then came up to our van for the ride back home.

The restaurants we have been going to here in Cartagena have been very nice as well. Shrimp cocktail, good pizza, filet of fish, and other delicious food has been filling our bellies. We went to a cafe on the top of the wall, and had an excellent meal. The jugos(juices) here are delicious, and I think I had the best Maracuya(Lilikoi, or passionfruit) jugo the other day at a restaurant, it was fantastic.

The next day we opted to do a tour of the cathedrals and churches of Cartagena, since the city has such old ones, and they are beautiful. It was very interesting, and we learned alot about the history of the city, and pirates. The cathedral was made out of quarried coral bricks!? Can you believe that. The tours were done by these electronic audio things that were really nice, because you could go at your own pace, and the english was spectacular.

After our tour day, we decided to do a SCUBA/Snorkel trip out in the Islas del Rosario. Jim and BZ opted to snorkel, while Laina and I decided to get some more dives in before we start our new careers in the industry. Our first dive, SURPRISE! Wreck dive! What!? We get to dive a wreck, and you didn't even use it as a selling point? I think so! Anyways, we headed out to a cool spot with nice coral and tons of sponges, and dove to 55 feet, and in the distance i saw a big triangle silhouette coming up out of the sand! As we got closer, it was obviously the hull to the 50 foot merchant vessel. It was made out of steel, so it help up pretty well, and was covered in life. I saw many star encrusting sponges, a bristle worm, a whole bunch of baby corals, and loads of fish. It was very exciting, since we have been studying our caribbean fish by the book and now we finally get to see some. Once over the wreck, I got to go in the main hatch and into the boat. It was very difficult to not hit the sides of the boat. I was not wearing any wetsuit whatsoever, so i did hit my arms against the sides, and I was slightly worried about firecoral and stuff like that, but I was fine. Inside the boat, i found a patch of air that was stuck inside, and there was enough of it that I was able to stick my head into it and see around, pretty cool! Laina and i continued to search out the fish and inverts so that we can add them to our mental collection. When we rose to the surface at the end of the dive, we had a nice surprise Ono circleing us, he was like 2 1/2 feet long, and definitely interested in us. I got a real good look at him, a prize fish back in Hawaii, for its delicious texture and flavor. For our second dive, we went to a nice coral area, and followed the low ridges, and saw tons of life. I saw 6 sailors eyeballs, a type of algae, a giant french grunt, Many different sponges and corals, squirellfish, a yellowfin grouper, a moray, and other cool stuff. While we were diving, Jim and BZ got to go on a snorkeling trip, and see lots of life as well. After the dives, we gathered for lunch, Mmm, delicious fish, and soup, and then headed home after an exhausting day.

We were able to meet up with Harry and Hugo, the Brits from peru, and had two days of fun with them, playing cards and checking out all the wild animals in the park next to their hostal. Hugos teeth are all gone now, due to his lack of education in england, over proper tooth care.

The rum here in Colombia is great, we all have been making many rum and cokes, in the afternoon at the beach. There is one rum here thats been aged 6 years, and goes down as smooth as a single malt scotch(well maybe thats an exaggeration, but its good!).

Our friend Jen, from the US, who we met in Pisco, came to town, and we have been hanging out with her and her friend, Sabastian from france. They headed to the Islands today, and we are planing on meeting them tomorrow on Playa Blanca. Jim and BZ leave tomorrow, so they are headed back to Ecuador, and we will be sad to see them leave. We have all had such a great time together, and we did so many things, and saw so much new stuff, what a blast! I really want to thank them for coming and spending so much time with us!

So this is almost the end, with only one more city to see (Bogota), we have finally reached the last week of the trip.

Heres the link for my Cartagena photos,you can see them without facebook!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119214&id=19507860&l=7452f57d75

Warm Caribbean Nights

nickandlaina — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:34:00 GMT

Parque National Tayrona is very close to Taganga, however, it is a climate world away. Taganga is in a scorched, hot desert-like coastland, and Tayrona NP is in a thick, humid, tropical jungle. We took the local bus from Santa Marta(right outside Taganga) and arrived to the park mid afternoon. Hitching a ride to the trailhead, we started our short hike (3.3km) to the beach. The hike takes you through thick jungle, and you can hear many birds and other weird animals as the hollar at each other through the depths of branches and leaves. On the trail also run many mule trains, even though the path is nearly as wide as a hoof in some parts. It seems they export coconuts by the 200 pound mule load from here. At the end of the trail we come to a beach called Arrecifres. Its too dangerous to swim, and the sun is starting to go down, so we head back to the camping area, and with a little chat with a british girl and a kiwi guy, we head to a cheaper spot, further back in the jungle, that has a free kitchen for cooking! Our first night in "Don Pedro" the campsite we stayed, was a tough one. Besides the fact that the site is beautiful, in the middle of the jungle, and laden with coconut trees, it is hot at night. And humid. We now have a tent (got it as a gift in Pisco) and there is just not enough ventilation to keep my body temperature below 100. So, after a hot humid, hard to breathe in this tent, night, I woke up at the first sunlight to see what I thought at the time was a monkey in the coconut tree above the tent, which turned out to be a squirrel! I didn't even know there were squirrels in the jungle! Anyways, I spent the rest of the morning building a coconut juicer ( a metal tent pole sticking out of a log) Which I was able to juice many coconuts for breakfast. During the first day in Tayrona, we headed to the beach called "La Piscina" or the Pool. The water here is pretty warm, just a touch below "very warm" but it is refreshing. We forgot lunch, so we made it a half day of swimming, studying our Scuba books, and laying out in the sun. Now, at this point i didnt realize it, but i believe this is when I somehow touched a plant I shouldn't have, and got some sap on my skin that made me super sensitive to UV. Ill get back to this a little later. We hiked back to camp, started a fire in the kitchen(to cook) and made some delicious hot dogs. We puttered around camp for the rest of the afternoon, studying and chatting with fellow campers. The second night in the jungle was much nicer then the first, and I was able to catch up on my much needed sleep. Our second day in Tayrona, we headed to the furthest beaches away from camp ~an hours hike, mostly on sand beach, nice :). and Came to the double beach of El Cabo, which was very busy with people, and then we continued to "La Playa Nudista", Ill let you do the translation, which was the best beach in the park. Because of it's reputation I felt that it got a lot less traffic then the rest, which made it even nicer. The water at this beach was really nice and warm, and the other beach goers, were not all naked either, which is a plus. It was around this time that i started to get a really bad sunburn on my side, and the worst of it was shaped in a hand print. I didnt think much of it, so we finished off our day at the beach, headed back for dinner, and then had another too hot night, and my sunburns hurt. When we woke up, we did some studying, and packed up camp (our backpacks are much lighter, no water or food!). And then headed out to catch the bus back to Taganga, and spend our last night in town, before heading to Cartagena. Anyways, on the hike out, my hand print shaped sunburn started getting really bad, and by the end, I had 6 big blisters, the biggest about 1.5 cm in diameter, and half that high. Ugh! Colombians, the very friendly people they are, helped my out a lot. There was a couple from Bogota, on our way out, and they decided to help me out by taking us to the doctor in Santa Marta, and doing all our translations! Long story short, we got some antihistimines, and Im not sure if the doctor could do much help. I think the number one thing the burn needs is time to heal. Heading back to Taganga, we find another sweet place to stay on the beach, and go out for some juice and snacks. Tommorow, we will head out to Cartagena, where Jim, Lainas dad will be waiting for us, and we can explore the walled city!

Colombia!

nickandlaina — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:22:00 GMT

I´ve gotta admit, Colombians have style. Getting into a taxi cab, the driver sipping a infinitely small cup of dark black colombian coffee(the first group of south americans who actually drink drip coffe, not instant), nice colombian guitar music in the background, and general cool attitude, Colombian have shown themselves to me within my first week here to be the most outgoing and warm hearted people we have met.

Landing in Bogotá after about a day´s worth of delays, and a free night in the airports Ramada, we were totally stoked to be in Colombia. From what we had heard, all the traveller who were here before us told us that Colombia is a must see, and that as long as you are careful, the country is not much more dangerous then Peru. Once in Bogota, we headed to the bus station and caught the first ride to the Caribbean coast, in the direction of Santa Marta, about 4 hours NE of Cartagena. The drive was beautiful, so much rainforest, greenery and banana orchards. I was in heaven after the 48 days of Peruvian deserts. Once in Santa Marta, we took a taxi to nearby, Taganga, a tropical beach neighborhood with a very strong beach lovers vibe. Taganga is beautiful, and filled with bathingsuit clad travellers, and many Colombians. We met up with Cristiana(if you can remember, she was our host at the very begining of the trip, in Rio de Janeiro) And spent the day drinking fresh squeesed juice, laying on the beach, and swapping travelling stories. The sunsets here are beautiful, but not quite matching the ones in Pisco, Peru.

We all hike over to Playa Blanca, the next beach over, and spent the day in the sun. The water here is slightly chilly, due to all the fresh water input. We watch the local kids fish without a fishing pole, only bait and line, and they caught 4 fish, big ones too! They plan on selling them at the market.

So far we are having such an awesome time here in Taganga, and soon we will split up with cristiana, and head to Parque National Tayrona! It is a National park, in a huge tropical rainforest! Awesome!

Try this link to see my pictures!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2117755&id=19507860&l=2f60c8b7c9

The Begining of the End: The Sacred Valley, Cusco, and Macchu Picchu

nickandlaina — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:20:00 GMT

The rest of our time in Lima flew by, not to mention the arrival of Mom, Holly and Uncle Don! We spent the last few days befor ethey showed up investigating the catacombs underneath Cathedral San Fransisco, exploring the Lima gold museam, and walking around the beautiful streets of Lima. We also did some serious bathing suit Shopping as well as other cheap clothes (getting ready for the move to St. Croix) Mom, Holly and Uncle Don showed up on our last night in town, and we all went out to a nice restaurant, Huacapullana, a archeological dig-turned restaurant. The food was delicious, I got Cuy, the Guinea pig! It was served in cultlet form, not the tradicional smooshed animal, I have seen in so many pictures. We strolled around parque Kennedy, on our way home to the Lima Decopolis Radisson, the nicest hotel laina and I have stayed in our whole trip.

The next morning, we headed into the center of lima to see the plaza de armas, and other beautiful buildings, before we head to Cusco, and the mountainous region of the old Inca empire. We return to hotel, and after a delicious breakfast,we pack up all our stuff, and head to the airport, to begin our Sacred Valley adventure. Flying to Cusco was beautiful, there are knife sharp mountain peaks, that are covered in snow, and they stab through the clouds like upsidedown icicles. Circleing around the valley, we see how green and fertile the land is and unlife the dry desert that lima is in, the people have cultivated nearly every square inch of it, even if the land is at a 60 degree angle on the steep cliffside. Landing in the airport, we are greeted by Gustavo, the guide that will be taking care of us on and off during the week. Laina starts to feel sick, not from altitude, but from the altitude pills, we find out later that week. We all pile into the van that gustavo has chosen to take us to our home for the week, Urumbamba. Driving down into the valley from cusco, is a sight to see, mountains in every direction, covered in snow, green fertile farmlands, and shaggy wolly donkeys walking alongside the road. Arriving to our house, we meet the caretakers, a charismatic peruvian family, with a daughter, Madeline, who just wants to teach Uncle Don fluent spanish. The house is very nice, sort of lacks in the lighting depàrtment, but has lots of cultural decorations, and a very open spacious feel.

Our first day in the valley, we take the bus to the Pisac Market. Between this ride and the one to Cusco I dont think that bus travel is for Mom, holly and Uncle don. The pisac market was filled with lots of food, souviners, and spices. There are all the people from the valley who come to sell their goods at a higher price that they would get in their home towns. Mom and holly are able to find many things they like, and Uncle Don is starting to get the hang of bargaining, even if he isnt trying to. There are so many colorful decorations, and shirts as well as handicrafts and jewlery to be seen here. It seems the food is all grown within 50 miles of the market, and is delicious. we buy enough avocados for abotu 3 kilos of guacamole, for a total of less then 3$.

Back at the house, we all lounge around, and make a little wire jewlery, and then head to a recommended restaurant, Embrujo. The atmosphere was great, and our host was alot of fun. Mom and I split the cheese stuffed chicken covered in elderberry vinegrette, and it was delicious. Uncle don got the Spicy alpaca steak over pasta, and Holly got the curried chicken. All the food was awesome.

The next day in Urumbamba there was a road strike, a protest against the governments beginings to privitize water distributution (an idea the locals find absurd because of their farms). and they blocked all highways, railways, and any way to move about the sacred valley and cusco. so we hung about town, Holly got sick, and Laina I and Uncle Don walked around and got ice cream and such, We had a lazy day in town.

After the big water strike was over, we headed into Cusco, for a day in town and some more delicious food. The plaza de armas in Cusco is a sight to see, with two huge cathedrals, backset by the huge mountains that make up this area, it is quite beautiful. During the day we got delicious assortment of food at Ciccalinas, walked in the market area, Laina and I got massages, and turned up late at the meeting point(sorry!) and got a good feel of cusco. Heading home, we drop Laina off at the Loki hostel, since she didnt want to go to Macchu Picchu.

Ou next day we head to the Infamous Macchu Picchu! We woke up early to catch the Vistadome train from Ollataytambo, to Aqua calientes (macchu piccu town) The train ride was beautiful, we saw tall mountain peaks, steamy tropical jungle, and a huge raging river. Arriving into Aguas Calientes, we scramble about to get our tickets into the Park, and bus tickets to the entrance. It was surprising how difficult it was, considering it is the number one sight seeing event in south america. The place to buy the entry tickets was barely marked, and on the other side of town as the train station. I was surprised.

The ride up to Macchu Picchu was not as terrifying as I imagined. We were seriously off with our calculations as to the high of macchu picchu. We thought it was 1000ft lower then Cusco. It is 1000 meters lower. You do the math. Macchu Picchu is going to be a hard one to describe. I do a little, but you´ll have to do the rest by visiting it!

Up on top of this small mountain peak, there is a beautiful set of ruins, that were never found/hence never destroyed by the spaniards. They whole park has a mystical cloudy sense to it that may be because it was drizziling and foggy. However, the weather just added to the coolness of the place. Old stones placed together without mortar, and with exreme precision mark this location as very important to the Incan culture. There are graineries, Temples and Sundials, and the overall feel is that this place is an important location high in the mountains of the Sacred valley. I´m not good at the desctription part, so you will just have to look at the pictures, and maybe go see it for yourself, to get a real feel of what macchu picchu is.

Heading home, we met up with laina and Gustavo, went out to dinner with another group of travellers, and had a fantastic time. At one point I think I was lecturing about couchsurfing for 15 minutes. not good. We head home, stop by our favorite bar for a few homemade Pisco Sours, by a very peruvian waitress, and then get back fo a few hands of Gin rummy.

Having already reached the pinnicle of the trip, our last day did not have much to speak of, besides the laundry, and occasional jewlery making session. Everyone was exausted by the altitude and rigor of the last few days. HEading to the airport, we all say our sad goodbyes, and Mommy, Holly and Uncle Don head on their long journey back to New England. Laina and I begin our even longer journey(timewise) to Taganga, Colombia, on the Caribbean coast.

We had such a fantastic time with mom, Holly and, Uncle Don, and We want to say a big thank you! because you guys gave us such a great time with awesome opportunities!! Ok, so keep your eye on the blog, because I promise to write the next one a little sooner, and I already have good feelings about it. Colombia!

Try this link to see all my Peru pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2115626&id=19507860&l=0b5a152bc2

Pisco, Paracas, and Lima

nickandlaina — Thu, 9 Apr 2009 22:08:00 GMT

A lot has happened since we were in Huacachina. Pretty much everyone that I wrote about in the last blog left PSF(Pisco Sin Fronteras), and were replaced by a whole new crew. Iva and Irany from Croatia, Cameron from Arkansas, Aden from Korea, Abi from Seattle, Terisa from Sweden!, Damia from Austria, and Matt from Australia were just some of the new crew. During the first week after huacachina, we finished up work at the ladys house, and started on two new projects, building a public playground, and clearing rubble from another womans house. Laina and I also spent a significant time online corresponding with a dive shop in St. Croix, USVI, and found ourselves two jobs as retail workers while training to become dive instructors! If all goes well, we will be dive instructors by September. This is really good news!

After a hard week of work(very dirty and tiring) we headed as a large group to Paracas National Park, on the Paracas Peninsula, just south of Pisco. Aaron, Chester and I headed into the city center to rent out a bus that will take our large group (about 22 people) to the national park. Very quickly we found one, struck a deal, and headed back to the house in victory, and also in the bus. After gathering everyone, and 3 bags of firewood, we headed to the national park. Paracas NP, is a deserty windswept sandy peninsula, that just happens to be on some of the most productive waters in the south pacific. There are hundreds of birds, Caspian Terns, Peruvian Boobies, Inca Terns, pelicans, Gulls, vultures, and many more. From the beach that we camped at you can spend all day just watching the different birds dive into the water to catch fish. The boobies dive from very high, and at the last second they tuck their wings in and turn into a needle. Caspian terns have a much more elegant style of diving, they hold both wings out and practically corkscrew dive into the water, it looks amazing. On the beach there was a dead sea lion, and then next to it a dead sea lion pup. I heard that in the waters of this area, many Peruvians use Dynamite fishing as a way to catch food. What they do is throw dynamite into the water, which kills many fish, invertabrates, and mammals, and then collect the dead food at the surface. Unfortunately in this case, I think that the mom sea lion died, and then the baby followed her until it died as well, very sad. We had an awesome camp and bonfire, and wrapped dough around hot dogs and let it bake over the fire! An awesome idea from Jens, it was delicious.

The next week and a half at PSF we worked on a variety of projects, like digging a foundation to pour concrete for a house, bricklaying a public showerhouse and bathroom, spending time with the local kids at the daycare, and more. We spent a lot of time on the internet as well, arranging everything for our move to St. Croix, and getting very excited. We changed our trip, so that we are no longer flying home from Quito, but we will fly from Bogota, Colombia, to St. Croix, USVI.

In our last days of Pisco, we headed to the Islas Ballestas. Thes islands are a migrating seabird paradise, and are covered in millions of birds, including penguins!! We went on a 2 hour boat tour, and saw many different birds, definitely worth it.

We said our said goodbyes to our family for the last 2 ½ weeks, and headed to the bus terminal to start our trip to Lima, the capital of Peru. Getting into Lime, we saw that it is a huge city, and very beautiful and colonial. We are staying at a hotel called Hotel España, about a block away from the plaza de armas in the center of lima. Walking around lima is a sight to see, so many old building kept in beautiful restoration, and many fountains and palm trees. The climate here is perfect, warm all the time, even at night. Hotel España is everything we thought it would be and more. First of all it is no more expensive then any other place we stay, about 6$ a night(35 soles for the two of us.) We are staying up in the atrium, on the roof. The place is coverened in plants, and vines and it is beautifully green. I was walking around on the roof by myself, and all of a sudden, around the corner comes a tortoise! Small, about 2 foot by 1, and it just looked at me and kept on walking! I couldn’t believe it! The hotel also has many old painting and many chandeliers, as well as lots of statues, every things looks straight out of Mediterranean Spain.

There are tons of things to do in lima, my favourite is eating Ceviche! Mmm, it is so good. In order to make Ceviche, you need fresh fish, lots of lime juice, salt, spicy peppers, seaweed, lots of thinly sliced red onion, steamed yuca and potato. You need to marinate the fresh fish in the lime juice and spice it accordingly, and then wait a little, and the fish will become cooked in the juice, and then you can serve it. make sure to use lots of onions, because they are soo good. Serve the starches on the side, and then you are ready. The ceviche they make here in lima is very good, there is a place right around the corner of our hotel, and they do a great job, 12 Soles, 4$, and it is more then you can eat, as well as high quality. The next day we met some travellers, Laura from Georgia, and another girl from Australia. We all headed to miraflores to see the beach here in Lima.

Miraflores turns out to be a 30 minute taxi ride from the Center, so much for walking. There is a huge difference from Central Lima to Miraflores. The first thing we saw getting out of the taxi was a star bucks, then a burgerking, then a mall with dunkin donuts and pizza hut! Where am I?? Peru? I don’t think so. While Miraflores is very nice, it is so similar to souther California, that I felt like I was in the US for a little. Very interesting. Miraflores is also really pricey, but nice, and it makes the center sem so much cheaper.

Another thing we did in lima, besides shopping for bathing suits for laina, since they are 15 Soles, 5$, here, and we are moving to the Caribbean, is going to museums, and cathedrals. We went to the catacombs below cathedral San Francisco, and they were incredible. Thousands of bones were down there, and hundreds of years of history. It felt like something out of Dan Browns “Angels and Demons”. Today we went into china town, and saw the Chinese part of Lima. We really like this city, it has so much to do, and is so beautiful.

We are very excited, because mom, holly and uncle don are headed down tomorrow!! We will meet them in Miraflores, and then have an incredible time going to Macchu Picchu and seeing Peruvian mountain culture!

Check out the pictures for this story, you can see them even if you dont have facebook!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=33464966&l=1a26184756&id=19507860

Pisco Sin Fronteras

nickandlaina — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:01:00 GMT

After leaving Arequipa, we pretty much headed directly downhill(in elevation) and straight to the coast. After a full day of traveling we found ourselves in Pisco, a medium sized coastal city that was struck by an 8.0 earthquake in 2007, and has lots of rubble, half destroyed building, and lot fo happy excited people rebuilding and spending time on the beach.

We are volunteering with an organization called "Pisco Sin Fronteras" who spend their days working different public projects in the city, all based around construction, demolishing, rubble removal and general help. When we arrived to PSF headquarters, we met the begining of all the volunteers here. We met Karl and Nienm from Ireland, Will and Jen from Australia, Tomas from Belguim, Jens from Denmark, Chester, Paddy, Benedict and Eloise from Canada, Aaron from Austin, Texas, Hopefully I didnt leave anyone out! SO once we got the run down on how we will vonlunteer we need to find a bed!When i took a look in the volunteer dorm, i only saw one bed. Hmm, in the end, laina and I used one of PSF tents, and pitched it on the roof of the building, which is nice and flat, and offers a great view of the city(and sunset).

So our first day at work! We were assigned to work with chester, tomas and jens and we are assigned to spend the first half of the day demolishing a half destroyed building and cleaning up the rubble. We all piled into the truck and got dropped off at the site, whew! it is so hot! At our house(demoilishing house) we are only 100 feet off the ocean and even though it is hot, there ia an awesome sea breeze, and it cools us down. Jens is standing on the roof with no shirt on(jens has a huge beard) and swinging the sledge hammer to knowck down the side wall. We all take turns with the sledge, and eventually knock down the wall! The next step is to take out the doorway, and we need to smash some glass to do it. With everyones help we manage to get all our work done. For lunch, the woman who owns the house, makes us all some soup and a stir fry. After lunch we head to a school, where we need to remove whats left of the roof, so that they can rebuild a new roof. It was difficult work, and we had to remove 2 220lbs iron frames from 15 feet in the air. amazing what a little rope and brain power can do. Once we got the iron down, we asked the principle if we could have the iron, and she gave it to us (these are old rusty iron frames) it took 6 people to move it, and we dragged it to the town market and sold each one for 30Soles, 10$, and donated that money to another project where we are building a house(cement foundation) for a woman who lost hers. At night we went to a birthday party for the child of the owner of the school, and danced, drank chicha(purple corn juice) and had a bast! The family was so nice and excited to meet all these volunteers!

Our first day of work was a blast! for our second day, we went to the house where we are building the womans house, and started mixing concrete to pour the foundation. We did lots of digging, and levelign to get the ground ready for the foundation. I helped alot with the concrete mixing, and now I know a great deal more about the process then before! For lunch the woman and her friend made the lot of us (most of the volunteers were there) pasta and hard boiled eggs, Mmm it was good!

It was about that time that I started to get sick. I have been not feeling so well in the intestine area for the last month and a half, and that night i really started to feel poor. I didnt go to work the next day, and headed to the doctors instead. Betwen the autorickshaw(tuk tuk) and a colectiveo, I got to the doctors for under 1$. When I got there it cost 4 Soles, 1.30$ for my appointment. I got ushered to the front of the line(i didnt know why) and the doctor saw me. She determined i didnt have parasites, but did have travellers diarreah, a bacterial infection in my stomach and intestines. She proscribed cipro, which i wouldnt normally take, but 2 months of diarreah, i wanted it to stop, and some others.

At the Pharmacy, cipro is 1.60sol/pill, about 0.50$ per. I think its a deal! I started taking them and now i feel so much better.

I felt good enough to go out with everyone to the nearby oasis town of Huacachina. on the bus for an hour and a quick taxi ride will get you there. Huacachina is famous for is sand dunes, some of the tallest in the world. We had a fun party night, stayed up late and swam in the pool at the hostel. Waking up the next day, we saw how big these sand dunes were! I would say they are at least 500 feet tall!surrounding Huacachina on all sides amazing! Everyone grabbed lunch, and afterwords, a huge water polo match in the pool, so much fun. Karl from Ireland and Jens from denmark were the champions, and mike from england and I were put on the girls team because of our hair. After we dried off, laina and I climbed the big dune for sunset, and when we look out to the horizon, all there was , was dunes and dunes as far as you could see, it looked like that sahara, truely amazing!

We headed back to pisco for a late night and some dinner. Our next few days here in town has been lots of internet work for laina and I because of our job search and moving arrangements to the Virgin Islands! But back to work soon, there is more digging to do!!

Royal Brittania, Arequipa, and the Condors at Colca Canyon

nickandlaina — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:04:00 GMT

We got into Arequipa, Peru all 7 of us, the 4 british and us 3. We caught two of the super small mini taxis that are everywhere here in Arequipa, and arrived at our new hostel, which apperently, we now own! We were the only people in the whole hostel, which we got for a reasonable price, 15 Soles($5), with a kitchen, that had no sink (they did our dishes.) We were pretty lucky with the location of the hostel, it was right on the main street(a walking street) and within minutes of many good cheap food places. Arequipa is a pretty city, less so the Sucre, but Sucre was beautiful. As you walk down the walking street there is a lot going on. They call Arequipa the most stylish city in Peru, and it seems for a reason (at least in the center). The street is filled with loud music, mall like shops people dressed up fancy, and expensive pharmacies and shops. Also there are tons of fancy glasses stores! Both of us got brand spankin new perscription glasses, very nice, high quiality for 105 Soles, 31 dollars for two sets!! It took 1 day to get them made, and it even included an doctor eye exam, some things are alot easier to do here, then in the US.

Our British friends are a blast, and we are having a great time, all 7 of us. Hugo is the self proclaimed leader. His teeth are aweful, as you would expect, he is british. However, we all know that Connie was the leader, and mother so to speak, the responisble one. Harry... kept us entertained, with his junoir gaucho antics. Roz was mild mannered, and held interesting conversation. All 7 of us, Team Royal Brittania, and the rebels who won(USA), made interesting company during our time together especially in Arequipa.

Corys new nickname, Big C, is very fitting, or you could use Big Loops, which harry made up on account of his rather large loops he uses to tie his shoelaces. Both names are appropriate.

The next day we headed toward Colca Canyn, a popular destination for tourists in the area. Colca canyn is the seconddeepest canyon in the world, or so they say. We started the trip by getting into this really small town called Yanque, and settled in for the night, the people at our hostel took us on a 20 minute walk out of town, to an indoor hotspring, which costs 2 soles(0.66$). It was great! The water was warm, everyone was hapy and telling stories, we had a nice refeshing night. When we were back, we realized that the next morning, we would have to leave from the hostel at 4:30 in the morning, oh no! In order to get to the condor area in time. We ate our spaggetii dinner with a lack of gusto, and headed to bed. Waking up at 4, we caught our bus to Cruz Del Condor, and most of us slept. I got a window seat, and as soon as the sun came up, I was looking out the window the whole time. The canyon was amazing at sunrise. It is so wide and deep, lush green and brown rock, excatly as you would picture Peru to be. At Cruz Del Condor, I woek everyone up and we headeed out into the morning sun. IT took a few minutes for people to realize the beauty of where we were, and it was amazing. Within the first few minutes, we already saw condors circling way down below, trying to get out of the canyon for their daily hunting/scavenging. Everyone collected, and took pictures, and we headed down the trail. The whole area is so senic, and pretty soon, most of the condors were at the lip of the canyon and within 20 feet. On condor flew right over lainas head! But she wasnt paying attention!. We continued the hike, and saw many condors, and beautiful scenery, there is even a mountain in the distance covered in snow so that if you look at it it will hurt your eyes.

We caught the 9 oclcok bus back to Chivay, got a small lunch, played pool with 11 billard balls, and then headed back to Arequipa. Getting back into town was nice, we all got back to the same hostel as before, but now all the renovations we done! We went out for dinner, to a restaurant called tacos and tequila, and then to a club called Deja Vu, and the band was really good, the singer could impersonate anyone! From Bono to mick Jagger to the Who and Sting, I was impressed. We made it home after a very long day and passed out. The next day was our last day with our british friends, and made the best of it by seeing town, chatting and playing some cards. When they left, Cory went with them, he is now headed home to Hawaii, and he will head with them to Cuzco, and then to Lima, where he will catch his flight home.

That night laina and I stayed in Arequipa, we went to a couchsurfers house, where we will stay for a few days. He was super busy so we didnt see him that much, and besides we were actually spending most of our time on the internet. Right now we are searching for a good opportunity for a summer job. Originally our sights were set on Boise, but now we have found a few contacts, and we are going to try our luck in the US Virgin Islands, working at a dive shop, brew pub, national park, or any assortment of the latter. Ie anyone out there has any contacts or friends in the islands, we would really appreciate any advice, tips, or information!

My old camp leader from Buldir, Aleutian Islands, Erik was in town the last few days so it was quite a pleasure to hang out with him and his girlfriend, Joanne. They shared lots of stories of her 2 years in Malawi, and Erik´s time traveling randomly around africa and South america. They headed out to the Colca Canyon, and now we are just getting some internet work done here, before headed to Pisco, Peru, where we will start our volunteer work on the Earthquake restoration in Pisco. If you want to see the organization we are volunteering for, go here: www.piscosinfronteras.org .

I am going to try get some good pictures up here on my Peru photo album, so check them out!

You can also access my facebook album for peru at

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2111353&id=19507860&l=409b35bbbe

La Paz, Copacabana, Isla del Sol and Lake Titicaca.

nickandlaina — Sun, 8 Mar 2009 21:18:00 GMT

La Paz is an awesome city, however let me backtrack to where I left off. After leaving Sucre, we headed to Potosí (I had to pee so bad on the bus ride) to do a tour of Cerro Rico, the richest silver mine in the world. Getting into Potosí it was evident that there was not much air, we are at almost 4000m, around 13,000 feet. Not much of our good ol` friend, Oxygen(O2) up here. We headed into the center of town, awestruck by the huge cathedral and beautiful central plaza, booked our tour to the mine, and headed back to our crappy hostel and passed out in a fitful, oxygen deprived sleep. Laina felt really sick and had symptoms of altitude sickness when we woke up, so we decided to ditch the tour(good thing we didn´t pay yet) and see the town for one more day and head out. After getting some lunch, we headed to another hostel, made a few book exchanges(in which I got "Flashman and the Dragon" which is an awesome book) and then left town. While Potosí is supposedly nice, we were happy to leave after only 24 hours. We caught our night bus to La Paz, and began our fun filed journey.

Getting into town at 5 am wasn´t the best idea, but it was the cheapest. With a few obstacles, we headed to our hostel and took a quick nap. It is really hard to sleep on Bolivian night busses. Headed out of the hostel, La Paz is true chaos. There is market everywhere, people everywhere, and cars beeping, everywhere. Most of the people on the street are indigenous and live in the city. Looking around to see the surroundings of La Paz, you see that the whole city is in a cup chaped valley with the suburbs on the steep sides. It is truely astounding how steep the streets are here, and i though San Fransisco had the steepest streets in the world, how I was wrong! Looking even farther away, there is a huge snow covered mountain that looms over La Paz. when it eventually shows itself, the reflection of the snow (in mid summer, mind you) is almost as bright as the sun.

Later that evening we get in contact with our couchsurfing host, turned good friend, Mallory. We head to her house and go out and meet some friends over drinks. Mal is from California (bay area) and one of the few americans(USA) that we really got to know on this trip. We head back to our hostel, and the next morning we ship our stuff over to Mal´s house. Our first day at the house, we made a huge dinner, it was so much fun cooking in a big kitchen again! We made spicy grated sardines, a very large stir fry, fried rice, and wine. During dinner many Bolivian friends of hers cam over and ate some food, as we got ready for the nights big game, Kings cup.

After dinner, everyone gathered around the living room table, about 12 of us, and started the game called "kings cup". It is a drinking game based on cards and vocabulary. If you can follow, what you do is pick a card from a line of upside down cards in a circle surrounding a big cup, and according to what card you choose, all or some or one of the players has to do something or drink. The fun part of the game was that half the people could not speak english, and the other half spoke very poor spanish! We modified some rules(one player was fluent in both languages so she translated everything) and began. Very quickly a rule was made(when you pick up an "8", you get to make a rule) that you could only speak spanish! Everyone laughed and the game turned into all spanish, and made-up spanish words. We had a fantastic night, except for the fact that sine La Paz is almost at 12,000 feet, the drinks effect you much faster.

The next day we decided to head to the market and buy some things around town. The weather turned sour pretty quickly, and started raining. When the rain started, I started to feel ill, quickly realizing I was hungry, dehyrated and at altitude, i started to feel nauseaous. At the time I was standing on the table, under a tarp, and then everything went white, and I fell off the table, into the street! It was the first time I had ever fainted, At least it was in La Paz at 12,000ft.

Over the next two days I picked up a few fun things from the market to bring back home, and some kitchen utensils for cheap. At mallorys we made some more delicous food, and matched some seinfeld, and relaxed. Hanging out with mallory was fun because, it felt like being back in the US again. Being on the road so long(almost 3 months by now) we didnt meet too many people from the states and it was nice to have some company of your home culture. After we got everything done in La Paz, we said our sad goodbyes to Mal, and headed to the bus station to get on a cheap bus to Copacabana, on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

When we got to Copacabana, we met some British limeys(who we will spend the next week or so with) hit it off with them, and booked a hostel all together. Copacabana is quie nice, very clear and sunny. However it is also at 4000m, 13000ft. and just living is difficult. Over the next two days we had alot of fun with the brits, and talked alot about the similarities of our cultures(compared to Bolivia, of course). On this trip I have learned so much about the UK that I feel like I have practially lived there!

Our third day in Copacabana we headed out to hike on the famous Isla del Sol, surrounded by stunning, Lake Titicaca. The hike was nice, but the altitude made it a little more then a walk in the park. Also, with the elevation the sun is killer, and we all got sunburned. on the hike we saw some very cool Incan ruins, Lake Titicaca(of course) and some beautiful mountians. The hike took us the majority of the day, but we all enjoyed ourselves being hungry and talking about food (english and american). Getting back into town, we got some pizzas and called it a tired, early night. Waking up the next morning we fiddled around town, enjoyed a skimpy full english breakfast, and caught our bus to Arequipa, Peru!

Goodbye Bolivia!

Sucre for Carnaval

nickandlaina — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:42:00 GMT

So we arrived into Sucre right as the sun was peeking up over the mountains. Already from the description, I know that Sucre was described as the “White City”, “La Ciudad Blanco”. Even though is was barely light out, I could tell that all the buildings were the same color, white. In Sucre, the people whitewash all their buildings once a year to give them the white sheen that they all have in common. Sucre is the official capital of Bolivia, and with good reason. Potosi, a nearby mining town, was the silver capital of the world for about 300 years, and most of the money made its way to and through Sucre.

After arriving at the bus terminal, we took a look at our new guidebook, “Peru, Bolivia & Ecuador” by Footprint, to find a cheap hostel in town. We choose “Alojamiento Potosi” near the center, picked up our bags and headed to the taxi arena. As we picked up our bags we were approached by the Bolivian police officer, who might have been a military police, I’m not sure. We was incredibly friendly, and wanted to help us find a good taxi with the right price. We showed him where we were headed, and he took us to a taxi and we headed out of the bus station. The bus station in Sucre is really far away from anything, especially the center of town. The ride took us 20 mins, and cost us 12 Bolivianos(Bs)(about 1.70$). We got to our Alojamiento(a type of cheap hotel) a total of 55Bs per night(7.50$ for all of us). We set up our rooms, and took a much needed nap. Waking up around 12, we could hear the sounds of marching bands and girls shrieking after getting pummled with water balloons. Being extremely hungry we headed out of the hostel, and in search of food. Pretty much immediately after leaving the shelter of the hostel I got hit by 4 water balloons. Then I got hit by 6 water balloons, and looking behind me I see laina get hit in the back by 2 water balloons and then get squirted in the face by a little boy with a massive super soaker leaning out the window of his dads car. Carnaval is in full swing! While we realized it, being in the middle of a Carnaval water fight is a truly wet experience. Before, during and after getting empanadas, we were terrified about getting soaked or hit by a fast flying balloon. Running away from the main square, we headed to the Plaza 25 de Mayo, where we will meet on of our couchsurfing friends, that we arranged to go get lunch with. Ross, our couchsurfing friend is from Ireland, and he is living low in Sucre, and enjoying life and taking it easy. We headed to a big almuerzo (lunch) and ate our fill over fun conversation about travelling around the world and making money on the move. After leaving the restaurant, we headed up the hill, which there are many in Sucre, and got to see a beautiful view of the city and the surrounding hills. Sucre is also in a valley and surrounded by very pretty hills and small mountains.

Leaving Ross, we headed back down into town, and right back into the action of Carnaval and water balloons. More marching bands playing the same song, more water guns, water balloons, and crazy people running around. All the craziness in the town really made doing anything, i.e. sight-seeing, internet, doing ANYTHING! Without getting wet.

Getting back to our hostel we got to meet some of our hostel-mates, Brian from Chicago, Tracy and Allie from Canada, and Jesus and David from spain. We bought a bottle of bolivian Singani, a local spirit, and talked conversation about travelling, geography and other things until late into the night.

The next day we hung out around town, made some phone calls, and then headed to a local bar to meet our next couchsurfing host, Philip from Sydney, Australia. Philip is a very tall guy, same age as us, and he is living in Sucre, working for a volunteer agency based on tourism. The restaurant, Florin’s, is an awesome little spot in Sucre, with international food, and even Chicken with peanut sauce sandwich!! Happy hour at Florin’s is 2 for 1 drinks, and they cost 12Bs (1.70$) for two drinks. Nonetheless, we ended up spending the rest of the evening over drinks and very philosophical conversation. Unfortunately we weren’t able to check out of our hostel that night, so we waited one more day before moving in with Philip.

Early that morning, we headed to Philips house, it was nice to go so early in the morning, because it was not terrifyingly scary, since no one was out with water balloon to soak our painfully exposed packs. Philip is living in a small house with a beautiful courtyard, and beautiful white walls. We moved in, and then headed out into town for the main market. The market in Sucre is really big, and mostly inside. When walking into the market the first thing you smell is meat. And not like roasting meat, but the smell of butcher shop, if the butcher shop had no refrigeration. It is not a good smell. Then you pass through the meat section, and into the fruit section. There is countless varieties of fruit, rivaling but not exceeding the farmers markets on the Big Island of Hawaii. I see huge Papayas, piles of ripe figs, mangoes, Maracuja (Lilikoi, or Passion Fruit), Cherimoya, and many others. We head upstairs, to the restaurant part of the market, where “Almuerzo” is 8Bs(1.15$) and consists of a large bowl of soup, and a big plate with a fried meat, rice and salad, a complete lunch. After lunch we head into the main square and buy some water balloons (1B(0.15$) for 6) and start wailing on all the Bolivians who previously got us soaked. The game is so much fun, everyone on the street is so happy and throwing water balloon everywhere. One young boy threw a balloon at a girl of the same age that was unarmed and as he turned around with a big grin on his face, he was face to face with all 6’5” of Philip with arm outstretched to reach maximum torque for the waterballon directed towards the kid’s chest. It was quite a sight, he got what he deserved. A little later another kid threw a balloon at Philip, and Phil subsequently put a balloon down the kids shirt and soaked him! Phil definitelt had built up anger (in a good way) from the past month of getting soaked by the occasional teenager.

We all had a great dinner that night and then headed back to Florin’s for their party night on the last night of Carnaval. As we walked in we noticed a large difference from the last time we were there, this time it was extremely lively, loud music, and a multi-colored spotlight about to go on. We met up with our friends from the hostel, 2 of Phil friends, and 2 more friends that we met earlier on the trip. Pretty soon, during a second round of happy hour, the music really started going, and the colored lights were on. They started the party with “I’ll tell you what I want” by the Spice Girls! Followed by the safety dance, chicken dance, YMCA, popular indian music, Dutch pirate songs, and other popular music that I haven’t heard in years. The owner came out dressed in a large Christopher Columbus style out fit, wig and all. Pretty soon the outfit got passed to Phil, who in all his glory, claimed to be “Captain Cook” and then the outfit passed to me, and we all danced the night away.

The next day, our last day in Sucre, we laid low, headed back to the market and enjoyed town not being soaked in waterballoon! Nobody was getting wet any more, Carnaval was over! Sucre was so nice, when you weren’t worried about getting soaked at every corner. We headed to the bus station and got some tickets to a nearby town, Potosi, said our teary goodbyes to phil and headed out of town, for the high elevation(4000m) and cold of Potosi.

Sucre was awesome.

Beep! Beep! Uyuni and Horsebackriding!

nickandlaina — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:22:00 GMT

Our first stop in Bolivia, outside the Salar is a little town called Uyuni. We finished off our 3 day trip across the desert and wound up in at a small residencia (like a hostel) in a single room, with a private bathroom right by the main strip in town. We didn´t realize that the town of Uyuni also had really strict water regulations, where water only ran for 3 hours each day, in the morning. After using the bathroom once or twice, it was abundantly obvious that there was no water, and then we found out that there would not be any water until the next day! This ended up being a really tough situation, as the bathroom was attached to our room, and constantly reminded us that it needed water(i wont say how).

Laina was still feeling really down from the altitude sickness, so cory and I went to the main market to pick up some dinner. The main market in Uyuni is one long strip and is absolutley packed with people as you turn down the stree, on there are two lanes to walk down, and each side of both lanes is crammed with metal poles that are holding up tarps to seperate each vendor. As I walk down the lane, looking into the vendors stalls, I see many backpacks, purses and wallets with brightly color idigenous style design, the next stall is all pirated DVD movies, there are literally thousands of movies mostly in spanish, but many are in english, all of them in plastic sleeves with a small piece of printed paper with the movie title on it. We then run into the Hamburguesa stands, and there are about a dozen of them all next to each other, selling the exact same thing. We bought a total of 6 Hamburguesas, 3 for cory, 2 for me and 1 for laina(she still feels sick). A Hamburguesa in Bolivia consists of a roll of bread, a paper thin wafer of meat, deep fried, salt, tomatoes, salt, onions, salt, lettuce, salt, french fries(in the bun too!), salt, mayonaise, salt and salt. Im not even kidding about the salt, she sprinkeled salt in between every item on the burger! Anyways, they are delicious, even if not that nutritious.

Getting into Bolivia(politically) is tough! If you are from the US, it will cost you 135$US just to enter! we had to go to the immigrations office, withdraw money, get photocopies, etc.. not fun.

We left Uyuni the next morning on a bus taking us to the "wild west" town of Tupiza. They bus ride was abosolutley beautiful! There are major exposed valleys and cliffs, and lots of red rock. As we decended into tupiza, the surroundings just got more and more beautiful! There were huge, water carved rocks and green trees and deep red rocks. We are entering Tupiza for the week before Carnaval, but the streets already have people with drums, trumpets, and everyone is dancing, they are all practicing for the fun event coming up at the end of the week. We found an awesome little Residencia, where we got our own double room with 4 beds for 18Bolivianos(Bs) per person. the exchange rate is 7Bs to 1US, so it was about 2.55$ per night. We set up our room and headed to a restaurant, The Alamo, and got soem Bolivian cuisine (fried chicken, rice and salad) and watched "Remember the Divas" or somthing on TV, that was form the US, so it was nice to see some familiar faces, and music.

During our time in Tupiza, we found two great hikes out of town. The first hike is called El Cañyon. We hiked on a road in town, all the way out of town until the road turned into a path, and then we turned into a river bed and followed it all the way up to a giant canyon of red rocks. The hike was beautiful, and only interupted by running into a large bolivian family washing all their clothes in the small trickle of a stream. The plants here are also beautiful, they have large thorns, and many of them are cactuses. The other hike was called Valle de Machos. It is an aptly named hike, due to the very large phalli of water eroded rock that are the major sight on the trail. These hikes are surrounded by other rock formations that are beautiful. for example as you hike into valle de machos, there are two seemingly large rock humps. as you get closer, you realize they are almost 2 dimensional. from the side, these huge hills, about 100 feet tall, are only 4 feet thick! we called them stegasurous plates.

In Tupiza we realized that Bolivians have a real habit for beeping their horns whenever possible, when they pass you on foot, when they see you from 100 feet away, after they pass you, when they come to an intersection, and even if i am sitting on the sidewalk as they pass, they beep. I guess it is just a different culture, but they beep soo much, and it is just so aggravating!

Our last day in Tupiza we vouched to do a horsebackriding tour of the area. Normally, we couldnt afford a hourseback riding tour, however, in Bolivia, we scored out on 7 hours of horseback, lunch, water, and a whole bunch of experience and beautiful scenery. We started out our trip in town, and my horse "Ginger" was already trying to walk away from the group. Laina and Cory got the two brown horses and the guide (a 17 year old) had a small dark horse. Our first stop was rather uninteresting, but we got some much needed food, and then headed back onto the trail and into some real beautiful terrain. We got to ride through rivers on the horses, which was cool, and then we stopped at a beautiful bend in the river with some dramatic rock cliffs. We then headed back into town, and got to ride the horses faster. At one point I was trotting along and my horse suddenly slowed down, once lainas horse caught up(about 1-2 seconds) her horse bit my knee, hard. It really hurt alot. Horses sure can bite hard when they want to. I rubbed my knee for about 20 minutes so that I wouldnt get a bruise! Once back in town, we said bye to the horses, and headed to the hostel. By this time Tupiza is starting to get crazy, Carnaval starts tommorow!

We are headed to the Official Capital of Bolivia, Sucre tommorow, so we should have alot of fun durign Carnaval!

Salar Del Uyuni, Bolivia

nickandlaina — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:23:00 GMT

Waking up at 8 was not too much of a challenge, we are finally headed to Salar Del Uyuni! We walked over to our tourcompany and mat the people who we would spend the next 3 days with. 5 Brasileanos, an Aussi, a Brit, and a girl from the USA. We all piled into the minibus which will take us to the border of Bolivia, where the tour will begin. The Bolivian border was next to pathetic, one small windswept building, surrounded by desert. We got our passports stamped and headed into Bolivia. At the border we switched out of the minibus and into a 4 wheel drive Landcruiser. In the Landcruiser we had 4 Brazilians and us three, quite a crew.

We headed away from the border crossing and down to a lagoon called Laguna Blanca. There were flamingoes in the lagoon!! There must have been arounf 30 Flamingoes there, but these will the first of many Flamingoes I will see on this trip. We got out and walked around, our driver, Louis drove forward about 300 meters, so that we could walk around the area and eventually meet up with him. Laguna blanca was interesting, It was extremely salty, and very shallow. Even the flamingoes in the middle were not in water deeper then your knees. Our next stop was Laguna Verde. As we drove around the Lagoon, It was changing colors. Louis said this was because the cobalt in the water was getting oxidized as the water warmed up. Laguna Verde was an amazing blue color, with deep red mountains in the distance all around. Also, I forgot to mention, that we are at about 4300m.around 14,000ft, taller then Mauna Kea. The elevation I was able to feel and taste in the crisp, cool air. After the Green Lagoon we headed to a Thermal Bath hotsprings with an Awesome view. Looking out of the hotspring, you look over another lagoon and right in the middle, another flamingo! This is soo cool! Once we dried off, back into the jeep we went, this time with some Coca leaves to reduce the effects of altitude which is starting to effect us now. Syptoms of Altitude sickness include, Headache, dizziness, shortness of breath, nausea, and vomiting! I had a few of them, but not the bad ones. Both Laina and Cory were doing well at this part of the trip. The Coca leaves, which you chew, help out a little with making the syptoms much milder. Even though its contravoursy in the US, Coca, and Coca leaves are not a problem at all here in Bolivia, they are part of the culture, and the people.

Our next stop on our first day was the Geysers, which were at 5000m or 16,500 feet. This was when the serious altitude sickness started to grip me. 16,500 feet is taller then any part of the continental United States, it is very high indeed. When we left, the rest of our trip was downhill, (literally). We got to our first hostel for the trip, and had a nice lunch of hotdogs, salad and avocados. Then relaxed a little and headed out to Laguna Colorada to see some more flamingoes and llamas!!

At Laguna Colorada we found a dead flamingo and cory tried to kiss it. I got a picture! We walked around the Laguna and then we found some Llamas!! I love Llamas, they are soo cool. They were big and fluffy and had earrings of red yarn with decorations on them. I followed them around, and at this point my legs were hurting and i had a headache, both common at altitude. Laina and Cory were still holding up well, despite being at 14,000 feet, where we were then. Laguna Colorada has so many colors red, white and green. Also there are giant “saltbergs” that you can use your imagination to figure out. The area is so dry and desolate with harsh sun and wind. The sky is huge, and very blue. When we are crossing the desert, we are not on any roads. Lainas favorite part was the fact that we were just driving randomly over the desert with no road to guide us, It was quite a unique feeling. We went back to our hostel for a nice dinner, however at this time I was feeling ill, and drank a little Bolivian wine, which was definiatly the wrong choice. I slept terribly. I was not able to fall asleep even though I was extremely tired. It must have been the altitude. I was really feeling bad, until about 4 in the morning and I all of a sudden felt much better, and that was that for my altitude sickness, it went away! That was nice.

Our second day on the excursion, we headed to 4 more Lagoons.

Upon waking I felt a much better and ready to head out again. Laina felt really nauseaous and cory didnt get any sleep and was starting to feel the effects of the extreme altitude. We headed to the national park and saw some beautiful lagoons with more flamingos. We went to a large rock tree forest, that looked like somthing out of a salvador dali painting. After climbing up the rocks (and getting very winded, high altitude) We headed out and got some more lunch. Later that afternoon, we rolled into a very small town/communitee on the outskirts of the Salar Del Uyuni ( the actual large salt flat) The town was really astounding, because It was the first time I was every in a small town that was really made entirely out of Mud, Adobe and correguated Iron. All the people were very much indigenous( the majority of Bolivias population is Indigionous) and their was signs of agriculture all over the place. Laina and cory were pretty miserable at this point and headed straight to bed. I stayed up for the best dinner of the trip, and then the terrenchial downpours started and I quickly headed to bed.

Today we are headed to the Salar Del Uyuni!!! We woke up at the late hour of 4:45, to catch sunrise out on the salar. About 45 minutes out of town the ground started to turn white, really white. All of a sudden, as far as you could see in every direction, white. White everywhere. As the sun started to rise, we took a stop to watch the salar in all its whiteness. Snapped a few pictures by a digging hole, where people dug out salt bricks for construction. I tasted the water that was in puddles and immediately regretted my decision! It was so salty I almost threw up! Once the sun reached a high enough declination everything became really white. We went to an Island that was covered in Cactuses. Really cool. They were chargeing us to get in, but laina felt really sick, and cory and I didnt want to fork out the cash, so we walked around it instead! After Desayuno(breakfast) we went out onto the salt to take an array of goofy pictures. I´ll post some here, but most of them are now on facebook. Try this link.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=33245402&id=19507860#/album.php?aid=2106841&id=19507860

After we left the Island, we headed to a Hotel made out of SALT! The building was constructed out of SALT Tricks pulled from the Salar. We then rolled into the town of Uyuni, and that was the end of our 3 day excursión on the salt. Now we are in Bolivia! What a cool place!

Check out the new photos here, and on Facebook!

Markets, Friends and Fun in Santiago, and the Long Trip North (Back to the Tropics!)

nickandlaina — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:57:00 GMT

So our Second day in Pucón started with a rainstorm and we decided not to head to the national park. Our hosts, Kate and Tom gave us directions to the river, and let us borrow their bikes, (only two) to head out there. Pucón is in a beautiful location and as we head towards the river, the tall mountains loom over head. From the road we got onto a bike trail that was absolutley covered in ripe blackberries, we ate so many that my stomach hurt even before we got to our lunch picnic spot. Once at the river, we pulled out corys fishing stuff, and tried to fish, unfortunately we didnt catch anything (and then cory lost his slippers). So we went back to picking blackberries. We decided that we wanted to bake a big blackberry cobbler, so we all dove into the patch (not literally) and picked as many as we could. In the end we picked about 2 kilos, or 4 pounds, maybe even more, but it was alot.

That night Kate made a big dinner cassarole, which was delicious! And for dessert, we ate a perfectly cooked cobbler, with an oatmeal crust.

When we woke up the next morning, we were going to head to national park, and it was a rainstorm again. We got up early anyways so that we could see if the weather gets better, and then we will go to the park. A few hours passed, and the rain did not slow, so we decided to hang around town until our bus picks us up for a night trip to Santiago, the capital of Chile.

Saying our goodbyes to our fun hosts, Kate from the UK and Tom from Chezch, we got onto our night bus to santiago, where we will meet our friends Phillipe and Elodie who we met at the begining of our trip in Rio de Janeiro!

Getting into Santiago, I was able to tell an immediate difference to the other big cities I was in. Santiago is very clean. The sidewalks are full, not cracked, and in the big open spaces, they are generally free of Graffiti! We met up with our friends, and made two more, Shannon from austrailia, and Carlos, her boyfriend, from santiago. All four of them have a very fun couchsurfing house and we were so happy to be there. WE headed out to a large market and saw some really amazing prices. Strawberries, 300 pesos per kilo = 25 cents per pound (and they were delicous!) Grapes, 200 pesos per kilo, even cheaper! Melons, peppers, everything! It was so cheap! We decided to make them a shnitzel dinner, I learned from my dad and Oma. Chicken, 1200 pesos per kilo, 1$ a pound! Back at the house, we filled the kitchen with people and food, and made a feast, 3 kilos of Shnitzel! And we ate it all accompanied with a delicious, cool, fruit salad (mostly strawberries!)

The two swiss girls that left that evening gave us 3 Milka chocolate bars...MMmmm I love Milka! Our next day in Santiago brought us to a large mountain and a cool trolly car which we rode to the top. At the top of this mountain within santiago there is a large statue of a weeping virgin, and a large Chapel. From there we hiked down a long path and saw many sprinkilers that were shooting water either on a telephone pole, or straight out onto the asphault. Once back at the house, shannon made everyone veggie burritios! Delicious! We made plans with Shannon and Carlos, that tommorow we will head to carlos´s families beach house in a nearby town, Algorobba.

Our last day in Santiago before we head up to San Pedro De Atacama was mostly cleaning up and getting together som last minute things, before heading to Algorobba. We grabbed the late bus to the beach town, and got to the house, around 10:30 We started up some fun Cuban music, and lit up the Asado grill. Tonight for dinner is longinis, similar to Chorizo! And some steak! We had a great night of food and fun, and stayed up very late!

The next morning we got to see what the town of Algorobba was like. The beach town is really picturesque, and is surrounded(on one side) by a beautiful pacific ocean(I do love the pacific!) We had deep fried empanadas for beakfast and then caught the bus back to santiago, and packe up our stuff for another 30 hour bus ride to San Pedro De Atacama.

Long story short, we almost missed the bus.

The bus ride to San Pedro is stunningly desert-like. In case you dont know, The Atacama Desert is the single driest place on the earth. I was able to figure it out myself by looking out the window. Some places in the Atacama have not seen rain in 200 years! Many of the weather stations have not recived one drop since the begining of their existance. I know it all sounds cool, but driving through it was actually kind of boring.

We arrived in Calama, Chile around 5 pm, and bought another ticket to get to San Pedro in about 2 hours. Calama was a poor dirty town, so we bought a cheap meal and headed back to the bus station to wait for the bus. Our bus to San Pedro left right as the sun was setting, so I knew that unfortunately we would not be arriving during sunlight hours. As we got off the bus in San Pedro, we struck up conversation with the Chilieano behind us (in english) and he was more then happy to join in our crew and look for a place to stay together.

Entering San Pedro at night was a very cool experience. The town was very dark, and many buildings were made out of mode and adobe bricks. As we walked down a small alleyway, I looked into the buildings and saw fires, and candlelight. I felt like we were entering a mideval village, also because I had a big pack, I felt like I was a traveller from the old days entering a old villiage. San Pedro was easily the most spanish looking town we had been in and I really liked its feel. We found a cheap place to cap for the night, 2000 Chilean pesos, about $3.50 and settled down.

The next day I got to see what San Pedro was like. It was similar to the way I saw it the night before, however, it seemed to be poorer then I thought. There are lots of travellers her looking for a fun excursion out onto one of the surrounding deserts. The town of san pedro only has water from 8 am to 9 pm. I have never been in a place that didnt have 24 hour running water (camping exempt) so for me it was quite an experience of timing! We bought our tickets for our excursion out on the Salar Del Uyuni, which will take us through a large desert, and out onto the salt flats and into Bolivia.

We went to bed early, and excited for our adventure the next day! To Bolivia and the Salar del Uyuni!

Lainas list of things we learned:

Being a Cowgirl in the Austrailian outback.

Making money in Austrailia and New Zealand, as well as what life is like there, and the differences between them

The difficulties of working in tourism in Chile

Work without pay and non-communicative bosses, and really poor pay in Chile

More Sterotypes of english people.

How to live for 10 years while working and traveling

How to fly a really big kite

Update!

nickandlaina — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 18:54:00 GMT

Hey everyone! Everything is going really well for us, however, we are in an area with expensive and poor internet connection. We finished off our Pucon trip, headed to Santiago for a few days, and now we are in San Pedro de Atacama, about to go on a 3 day trip across the Salar Del Uyuni and into Bolivia! Look it up. This keyboard is aweful, so i am going to go, but we are well and will write a long story soon!

Many Lakes, Chile!

nickandlaina — Sun, 1 Feb 2009 21:32:00 GMT

Once we left Puerto Natales, we headed to Punta Arenas for an uneventful 15 hours, and then got on our 30 hour bus ride to the Lake district of Argentina and Chile. Originally we were supposed to go to Puerto Montt, but while we were under way we made the decision to get off at the small town of Entre Lagos, which was not as far south as Puero Montt, so we would not have to back track.

The Bus ride went from very boring, the patagonian pampas, grasslands to some really beatuiful mountains and large lakes of the area just north of Patagonia. As the bus was rounding turns, you could see tall mountain peaks covered in snow as well as crystal clear mountain lakes the size of a small city. There are many trees here, which is a relief for me because in patagonia, there are pretty much no trees at all, and now we are in an area which is not so unfamiliar to me, The lake district is similar to what I think of the rocky mountains, and parts of Idaho.

Getting off in Entre Lagos was Lainas idea, We didnt think much of it, because Entre Lagos is a very small town on a lake that has a large tourist poulation, of all Chilieanos. The lake was beautiful, we set up camp for cheap, (2000 Chilean Pesos, 3.33$US) and headed for a swim. That water was very refreshing, cold, but crystal clear. Later in the afternoon, we rented a Paddleboat, (handmade from plywood) for an hour and goofed off in the middle of the lake. Laina says it reminds her of rivendell, and playing in the lake. We caught a beautiful sunset, soaked up the warm weather, and got ready to head north to our next destination, Pucón.

We started the day out Hitchiking, out of Entre Lagos, to get to Pucón. We waited for 3 hours before we got our first ride, who was a very nice old man whose father owned many acreage in the area and ran a farm. He could speak a little english, and we ended up hitting it off with him, and had a wonderful ride, full of laughter and jokes. Then we decided to catch a bus the rest of the way. We only made it to a small town called, Villarica, about 30 km away form Pucón before we decided it was too late to keep going, so we decided to stop and see this town, Villarica. Once we found camping we headed into downtown and into a festive, summery, touristy night full of energy. Villarica is another destination for many Chileanos during summer. In the town, there was a Mapuche(native americans of the area) exibit, and many handycrafts to look at. We walked around and then Laina saw another festival that we had to pay to get into, but the food inside looked so good! We got entry and headed to the roasted meat stand right away. The smell was so good, meat cooking over a smoky fire. Cory bought a roasted pig shouder, I got a dozen empenadas, and laina got two beef shish kabobs. The food was needed and very savory and delicious. After the food we walked around the fair and looked at all the animals, compared quiality in different meat sheep, got scared by a charging cow and wond up in the honey stand swaping stories of Hawaiian honey. We found out that our friends in the honey stand were selling their version of mead(honey wine) and we bought a bottle. I loved it, the mead was sold in a old 2 liter soda bottle and you could tell they just made it a few days ago, every day since we bought it, it has been getting more alcoholic!

In the morning we caught a bus to Pucón saying our goodbyes to Villarica. Once in Pucón we meet up with some couchsurfers that we will stay with while we are here, Tomas from Chezch, and Kate from the UK. We hit it off with them immediately, and after a quick meal, we headed to the lake to fly tomas´s full size parachute kite. Pucón is a very quiant(is that how it is spelled?) touristy, and fun town. It is full of adventure tours, and Chiliean beachgoers. There are also many more internaitonal tourists then in the last two towns we were in. Oh yeah, Pucón is dominated by a 8000 foot tall VOLCANO! covered in snow at the top, Volcano Villarica is the icon of the area and Pucón. Lake villarica is also a very large lake with very clear, refreshing water and beautiful, dramatic mountains, and one huge volcano!

Tomas´s kite is soo cool. When we first started, the wind was small, and really good for learning how to use it. There are two handles and they can turn the kite each way by movin the handles towards and away from you. A little later in the evening, the wind really picked up and the kite would give you a run for your money! The wind was strong enough to drag you through the sand on your feet about 15 feet. Once the wind got strong enough, you couls jump and the kite would pull you like 5 feet off the ground and pull you like 10-15 feet forward, not very far, but it was quite a rush!

Today we washed all our laundry(much needed) and walked around town. Tommorow we will head to the national park in the area for a fun day hike. On the 3rd, we will head to Santiago, the capital, and spend some time with our friend, Philipe, who we met in Rio de Janeiro, at the beginging of the trip!

On the Road Again

nickandlaina — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:02:00 GMT

Our time in Puerto Natales was mostly reading books, knitting a new hat(this time out of rainbow colored alpaca wool)and studying some spanish. In the end we probably could have hitch hiked out of here, because I did not realize how long the 5 days we were would actually feel.

The grocery store here is full of sweets, and the bakery they have has many large cookies, eclairs, and cholocate covered multi story cookies filled with dulce de leche! We mostly save our money buy getting pasta, sauce meat, hamburgers, and other cheap food. The nice thing about staying here, was that our budget dropped alot per day, because of all the traveling we were doing. busses are expensive here.

Today we are catching the bus to Punta Arenas, for one night, and then in the morning we will catch our bus to Puerto Montt. We will then try to make our way to santiago, with much haste, since the temperature down here is too darn cold. And it is so windy. Not much more to report, but we might be out of contact for a few days, given the bus ride is 30 hours!

$100,000 in Puerto Natales,Chile!

nickandlaina — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:18:00 GMT

Today we will finally start our journey out of Tierra del Fuego! From Rio Grande, we decided to wash laundry get some food, and hitchhike to Chile! After we finished all our preparations, we headed to the highway, a little late, like 4:00 PM. At the highway, the wind was blowing like 50 mph! And it was cold, not the best weather for hitchiking. We waited for 2 hours 45 mins, and our morale got really low. Finally we were about to give up and then we caught a ride with a guy headed to San Sabastian, a small town on the border of Argentina and Chile. The town was pathetically small. There was one restaraunt/hostel and a gas station. The hostel charged 200 pesos for the room(way too much) so we headed to the gas station to ask if we could camp behind it. He pointed at an old abandoned building next to hostel and said that we could camp behind it. We exchanged looks with each other, and we`re like, “Free? All right!” So we set up our tent in what we called “the Junkyard” an old abandoned machanic shop with alot of junk behind it. At least the building was a good windguard. We bought a nice chicken soup for cheap from the restraunt, and then went to bed for our next large day of hitchiking!

First thing in the morning (after getting ripped off for breakfast), we crossed the border out of Argentina on foot, and put up our sign and stuck out our thumbs. After 2 ½ hours of hitching we were starting to lose faith. We finally saw a bus headed to Punta Arenas, Chile, in the general direction we were heading. Laina went up and asked the cost, which turned out to be cheap, and we bought ourselves some tickets for the last three remaining spots on the bus. I dont think that it was a legitímate trade, because they never asked our names and then when we headed into chile, we got off before everyone else and told the crossing that we were hitching across the border. All said and done, everything worked out great. The bus driver was so accomidating to us, he even got in contact with another bus headed to the town we were headed to (Puerto Natales) and we did a bus switch mid-highway!

Arriving into Puerto Natales, we headed to the Cajero(ATM) and withdrew some money. How much did I withdraw, you ask? 100,000$ Chilean Pesos!!! $100,000! I`m rich! No, I`m not really, the exchange rate is 600 Chilean to 1 Dollar. So if you do the math, it is not really that much money.

We got a nice campground in town for US$5 a night, which is pretty cheap, and got some groceries, made ourselves at home, ate some Chilean Chorizo, and had nice sleep after a long day of traveling.

If you know your geography, you might know we are in the vicinity of National Park Torres Del Paines, one of the Premire parks in South America. While it looks beautiful, it is so expensive to enter, that we decided to skip the park and study spanish instead. We tried to buy tickets to head north, instead of hitchhiking, because hitching here is difficult in the cold wind. The earliest we can leave here will be the 29th of January, so we will be here for 5 days and trek around town, and study spanish.

In our campground we met three more guys from the US, and chatted about Obama and the new administration. For me, it seems so far removed, and far away, and I really enjoyed hearing the news they shared, because it is difficult to keep in touch with US news, the time I spend on the computer is pretty much strictly limited to communication with ya`ll!

So I will have more news as it comes, but know that for the next few days we will be trying to lower our daily expenditure and learn some more spanish, also we will be in Puerto Natales, Chile. Look for it down in the south south of Chile, about 250 km north of Punta Arenas!

Check out the updated photo álbum on photobucket!

http://s217.photobucket.com/albums/cc289/Seferovi/Patagonia/

Gnarled Mountain Peaks, Lush Valleys and Tierra Del Fuego

nickandlaina — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:29:00 GMT

Ushuaia is such a nice little town. It reminds me a little of Burlington, Vermont, gut really it is its own city. The main drag is small with many shows on both sides, and colorful and warm looking buildings. The whole city has a the warm feel that you get in a ski lodge ora n alpine town. It is set on the Beagle channel, a straight of water that you can ceoss Tierra del Fuego by boat. I think it was named by Darwin, and the boat he was on was the Beagle. Behind the city lies many huge mountains with snow tops and jagged peaks, similar to the sawtooth mountians in Idaho.

We spent two days walking around town, stocking up on supplies and seeing the sights. For dinner we decided to go ahead and make some Cordero(Lamb)!! At one of the restaurants in town a “top of the line” lamb dinner costs 34$ Pesos, about 10 US$. We decided that it was too pricey so we went to the supermarket ourselves and bought the best cut of cordero(lamb) they had. Lamb costs 14.90$pesos per kilo. If you do the math, mouth-watering tierra del fuego-grown lamb is US$ 1.50 per pound!!!!! Unbelievable! That being said, we bought 2.3 Kilos, a whole leg, for 34 pesos, about 10 $US.

Back at the hostel we lit up the oven and seasoned our lamb with olive oil, rosmary, and salt and pepper. MMmm. We roasted it to a médium rare (some parts very rare) perfection, and accompanied it with two bottles of red wine, both from argentina, a Malbec, and a Syrah/Cabernet. The wine was about 1.50-2.00$US per bottle. Dinner was pure deliciousness…..Mmm

The next day we started our 3 day trek(hike) in Valle De Andorra, the large valley in the mountains behind Ushuaia. The hike starts north of town, and then about 15 mile later comes out on the south part of town, a perfect hike if you only have backpacks. We took a taxi to the start of the hike, we drove out of town, up into the mountains, and up a dirty muddy dirt road. Eventually he dropped us off at a gate, and told us to continue to walk past the gate and on the right we will find a sign for the start of the trail.

Starting the hike, we can see into this deep valley with jagged mountain peacks on both sides.we are hiking in a thick old growth type forest with many trees that look similar to Alder, common in the US. The trail is pretty wide, and starts in some very pasture like land, where we can see far into the valley and the mountain peaks. We hiked for about 4 hours, since we started at 4 oclock in the afternoon, and then set up camp in a nice clearing, with a stream nearby. Once camp was set up we quickly broke out corys fly fishing stuff, and headed to the stream. The creek was about 15 feet wide and the water was very clear. The bottom was slate grey with many rocks and fast moving cold water. Cory was fishing with wet-fly nymphs or somthing, and we didnt even see any fish. Hmm. Alter a while I was wondering if there were even fish in the creek. In case you didnt know, all the trout in Tierra del Fuego are introduced, and maybe there are creeks that did not have any fish, I dont know.

The second day of the hike brough tus out of the trees and above tree line. Once out of the tree I turned around, into the wind, and looked out. On the oppisite side of the valley, there are much more massive mountians then previously, and I could even see a hgih mountain glaciar! Turning around there was a long ridge with peaks more jagged then the Sawtooths, and they looked cold, dead and foreboding, quite a sight. We hiked along the cold jagged ridge, heading uphill for about an tour until we reach the high mountain pass. Boy was it cold and windy. Once all therr of us made it to the pass, we headed down into the valley on the other side. I know we are with 20 miles of Ushuaia by the crow flies, but it felt like we could have been on Antarctica, the wind was so strong, and cold, and the scenery was awesome, dark, and foreboding. Comino down into the other valley, I could see the green cliffs of lichens and algea on the wind protected side, and countless waterfalls dropping into the deep vally leading to the ocean. We stuck to the north side of the valley, very high up, where the trail was easy to hike on, it was all rock, as opposed to mud. And way down the way I was able to see the ocean. Alter many miles of hiking along the side, we re-entered treeline and then headed to the end of the hike. Since the second half of the hike did not have any good spots for camping, we kept hiking to the town. Eventually we got to the outskirts of Ushuaia and looked back. The view was spectacular, however I know that being up there was much harder then it looked from here, in town.

We headed to a campground outside town, set up camp and took some much hended rest. Waking up, we finished off our food, headed into town, which took about an hour or so, longer then I thought. Got back to the hostel took our stuff, said our good byes, and got on the road for Rio grande. Stick our thumbs out, we got a ride from a guy that was driving propane north. He was very friendly, and showed us all the things to see on the ride. The drive from Ushuaia to Tolhuin is very beautiful, if I havent mentioned it before. From Tolhuin, we hended to catch another ride, but now the sun was going down. We waited for about 45 minutes, and when it statred to get dark, headed down the road, and traed to fina place to camp, when another car finally passed, stuck out my thumb, and he stopped!!! Sweet! We jumped in and he took us to Rio Grande. We arrived at 11:30 back to the hostel we were about 6 days ago, they le tus in with open arms, and we were very happy to have a home away from home. We had some dinner, more meat and bread, with a red wine sauce. Then we all went to bed!

Today we are gathering our stuff, and we will head into Chile! Out immediate goal is Parque Nacional Torres Del Paines. The journey may take two days, so we will have to see. From there we will head to Puerto Montt, and then to Santiago. We will just have to see where the road takes us!

Two hitches to Ushuaia!

nickandlaina — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:09:00 GMT

So leaving Rio Grande by bus costs more then our budget allows, so we had to resort to our old way of transport, Hitch hiking! We walked to the edge of town, stuck our thumbs out, and waited.... 1/2 hour went by, and we needed to change our strategy. I got a big peice of sheetrock, and wrote "Amamos Viajar X Argentina" (we love to travel across argentina) and quite rapidly got picked up by a truck, who was headed to town halfway. The ride was boring except for the occasional Guanaco, a llama relative. When we got closer to the town of Tolhuin, the view got much more interesting. We got dropped off and then headed back to the high to start hitching. Tolhuin was significantly colder then Rio Grande, and we could see snow up on the mountains, which was a chilling sign. We got our second ride quickly, because of our fancy sign, and he took us straight to Ushuaia. The last 40 minutes of the drive to Ushuaia are unbelieveable. The mountainous relief is right up next to the road, and at some points you can´t see the top of the mountains right next to you. Alos there is a lake here that is very large, and the water is soo blue, that it is very impressive. The mountains go straight down into the lake, and it is very beautiful. Rounding the final turn, we can see ushuaia, a coastal port town, and supposedly the southernmost town in the world. Ushuaia is tucked away in a pocket of mountiansthat are all snow capped and spikey. Across the bay there are more mountains, and they are also very dramatic. There are many boats in the bay, some sailboats, and some cruise boats that are headed to Antarctica(only 620 miles away). We found a nice hostel, that was absolutley packed, and made a meat filled dinner, and went to sleep.

Today we walked around most of the town, it is cloudy, windy and rainy. I expected this weather, because I read a book about this Tierra Del Fuego, and how inhospitable it can be. We walked down onto the causeway, and ate uch and watched the Kelp and Dolphin gulls. They were picking up mussels and flying into the air, to drop them frmo a height, to crack them for food. From the causeway you can see most of ushuaia, I got a picture, and Ill upload ASAP, and the mountains and dark clouds behind the town.

In our new hostel, there are many Isaelis, in the room i am in right now there are 4, and outside there are at least 4 more. They are very friendly and fun people, and there are many of them. We are yet to run into a person from the US in this part of the world... Interesting..

We will do some hiking in the area for the next few days, I will try to upload the pictures, but mostly we will rest from so much travel.

One Israeli, Three Israelis and the Long Trip South

nickandlaina — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:02:00 GMT

Our campground in Las Grutas turned out to be a quite nice place. There were many people who came top us and talked to us, because we were the only foreigners there. Everyone was friendly, and by the time we left, we had made some new friends. In the morning, we cleaned up and showered for our very long bus ride this afternoon. At 12:30 we got on our bus headed to Rio Gallegos, the southernmost town in Argentina that is not on Tierra del Fuego. On the bus we met an Israeli girl that was vegetarian, and could not understand what the bus attendant was telling her, and the employee got laina to translate. Soon afterwards, we started talking and found out she was on a 10 month trip around SA and she was working with Ocelots (a jungle cat) in Bolivia! We want to work with ocelots! She just finished the army, which is mandatory for guys and girls in Israel, and now she is on her travel time between army and college. Our bus ride took 23 hours to get to Rio Gallegos, and when we got off, we immediately switched to another bus to take us to Rio Grande, because all the busses to Ushuaia had left.

We crossed the border into chile, and then got onto a ferry to Tierra del Fuego. When we were on the ferry, I climbed up to the wheelhouse deck, and I saw many birds, they might have been petrels, we saw some bobbing penguins, and a few black and white Dolphins. The ferry ride was short, and we got back on the bus. Tierra del Fuego! Finally! Also let me comment on how boring the Patagonia looked from the bus. It was the same all the way from las grutas and now even on Tierra del Fuego it is still boring. However, now there is coast and I can see many sheep on the side of the road! I even saw some Guanacos! (a llama relative)

Once we got to Rio Grande, we were beat and headed to the grocery store, and then to a hostel to camp in their backyard, This town is set on the mouth of the a river, and the coast, While it is flat, the people have spent a lot of time making the town look nice. There are lots of planters with flowers, and many arty decorations on either side of the main drag. It is also windy here, and all the trees have windblocks, and they haven’t been able to grow away from behind the windblock, They look rather funny.

In our hostel, which at first seemed empty, 3 more Israelis showed up and we immediately became friends. They are on a 1 ½ month trip around argentina and just got back from El Calafate. We got to talking, and then the barbeque got lit up, and we pulled out some blood sausages we bought at the grocery store and we all shared the meat they bought, with our sausages and bread. The Israelis are in their early 30s, and one of them has been traveling for 10 years. We shared many travel stories, and stayed up later then we should have.

This morning, we are washing our clothes and we are getting ready to head into Ushuaia. Once there we will settle in for a few days to walk off the 30 hours on busses!

Answering some comments: Yes, the distance between Las Grutas and Ushuaia is very large. It took us 31 hours to get to Tierra del Fuego, where we are now, in Rio Grande. Las Grutas is called “the caves” because it has many sea caves along the beach, we took a lot of pictures, and some came out pretty good! Tierra del Fuego differs from ¨Patagonia because of the straight of Magellan, which we crossed on a ferry, Tierra Del Fuego is an Island archipelago at the bottom of South America. We are super excited to hear everyone and what you all are doing!

Dust, Wind and The Atlantic

nickandlaina — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:45:00 GMT

Our last few hours in Buenos Aires we walked around looking for some last minute things, ( a maté kit, train tickets) when we realized our train will not be working until february 6th! Bummer! So our plan to take the train from Las Grutas to Bariloche failed! Anyways, we already have the tickets to Las Grutas and when we get there we´ll figure out the rest of the journey. We got a nice maté gourd with leather from a native pig like animal, the woman who sold it to us told us how to “cure” the gourd so that we could enjoy maté soon. We bought some “super panchos” a foot long hot dog, for a snack, and heade to the bus station.

Right now Laina, Cory and I, have spent the last 3 days in Buenos Aires, practicing spanish, traveling around the city, seeing music, and meeting people. We deemed it time to head down south, to patagonia, and away from the big city.

Getting on the bus, I could tell immediately that it would be a better company then our previous one we took to get to rosario! We were served a large dinner, with meat, rice, potatoes and soda, and then got to match about 17 minutes of the movie, “The Rock”. When it started, it had a skip, and skipped about 30 minutes later into the movie, where all the carácter were already established, and then it skipped again, this time 30 more minutes, to the end of the movie, at the final fight scene, and then skipped again and was over. I was wondering what the other people in the bus thought, since the movie was in english, and it was missing 75% of its content. Eh, they probably were not even watching it anyway.

I took a short nap, since it was a night bus, but i was very excited, we are going to patagonia! Finally! I woke up with the sunlight, and looked out the window most of the way to our destination. Northern Patagonia is very much a open desert. You can see for miles in every direction, with only small hills and rises to obstruct your view. Every now and then I saw a lonely steer eating grass by itself. Gauchos, the term used for the argentine cowboys used to roam these plains much in the same way our cowboys did in the early 1800s. Since the Patagonia is so large, and relatively covered in plant life, it seems that this would be a great place to grow huge numbers of cattle. Gauchos used to live off the land down here, and they would be able to eat whatever beef they wanted, and keep the cattle under control. In the later parto f the century the Argentine government made these gauchos join the military, or obtain work permits, making their way of life much more difficult. Looking around this area, I am trying to imagine the life of the Gaucho.

Laina slept pretty much until we got to Las Grutas, she woke with breakfast, and Cory looked like a giant mat of red hair definately still asleep, I wonder if he got breakfast.. Arriving into Las Grutas, we felt like we were walking into a old western town with a meditteranean coastal feel (if you can picture that). The wind was up, and so was the dust. My eyes quickly got sand in them. We walked around for a little while, and made our way to the ocean! The atlantic! I was missing the ocean and was happy to be back. It was sunny and the water looked warm (Las Grutas is famous for its warm water, due to a very shallow bay) and we hended to find a place to stay. Las Grutas also has awesome sea cliffs, with interesting relief looking down the coast. We got some good photos, I hope to upload them soon.

I found a little niche in the sea cliff that couldn´t be seen by the road and I stached our stuff, and waited there, while cory and laina went to find a place to stay. The first two camping places we expected to work did not have room! So I knit my hat, I am now starting to close the top and finísh the hat. I had a great view of the ocean. Las Grutas has a real awesome landscape. I waited about 45 minutes, and Laina and Cory came back, they found camping for 15 pesos per person, just around the corner!

We camped in a pretty family friendly location, there is a huge glassed in building, to prevent the wind and dust, and incide there is a big kitchen, a huge asado barbeque, and two links, as well as 10 long tables with benches. We ate some pasta for lunch, and headed to the beach. Did I mention it is windy? Very windy? Because it is very windy! and the wind has lots of dust. The beach should have some relief because of the sea cliffs. Once we got to the wate rwe realizad the water had moved back about 100m, or 300 ft.! WOW, big tides here, we probable should have expected that. We found a nice spot, and got in the water. It was about 8 degrees colder then Hawaii, about 3 warmer then cape cod, and similar to the water in lake cascade in late june.

On the beach, there are many people, it is packed. Many beach umbrellas and people walking around selling Helado, or ice cream. We swam a little, then dried off very quickly from the wind, (its not as dusty down here) and headed to check out the tide pools.

Later we went to town, and got some lunch, cervesa, and sándwiches, Then we went to the grocery store to buy food for dinner. We got chorizo, hamburgers, tomato and lettuce. Mmm… We headed back to the campground, which is quite a walk, and on the way we noticed how many parrots there were here! The parrots here are beautiful. The fly in groups of 5,6 or 7 and squawk like maniac parrots. They are a dark blue with a dark read back, and a yellow/greenish patch on their lower belly. I like them alot.

Back at the campground, we went in the tent and saw everything in the tent was covered in a ½cm layer of dust.! I thought it was funny! Then we went to the kitchen, which was packed with familias and tried to make our dinner there wer so many people, and kids pounding the tables and playing tag, it was pandemonium. Also I forgot to say, Las Grutas is not a destination for international travelers. It is a big destination for Argentina tourists. That being said, most people do not speak english. Also in the big kitchen, we are the only people here who are not from argentina, so i think alot of people look at us funny.

We met one argentine guy who spoke fluent english, and he was aloto fun. He first asked us, “Why Las Grutas? Not many foreigners come here. It is almost all Argentine tourists.” We told him that a friend recommended to come here, and that is why we were here. He helped us cook, and later he taught us a fun card game, Truccha, with spanish cards, which we now have a deck of. A little later we headed to sleep.

So where to next?, was the question of the day. We thought about hitching out of Las Grutas, but we decided to take a bus straight to Ushuaia!, we will go to Bariloche later! So we will not be out of communication, and we will be in Tierra Del Fuego!!

La Bomba de Tiempo!

nickandlaina — Fri, 9 Jan 2009 03:37:00 GMT

La Bomba de Tiempo is a really exciting event that happens here in Buenos Aires every monday night in the district, "Once". There is a group of drummers and other percussionists about 15 of them, and each monday there is a new conductor from the country that will lead them.

As we round the block, on our way to the show, we can already hear the tribal sounds of african style drum beat. We meet up with about 20 other couchsurfers outside the area, and head in. Once inside the arena is a large cobblestone parking lot with a huge set of red metal stairs in the middle, where the band is situated. The conducter is coger then the drummers, and they are all playing in an amazing sync. We walked around the backside of the stairs, where we have plenty of room to dance, and still see the band. As the concert goes on the music starts to pick up and become more energetic and faster. As the sun sets and the arena become darker, the music also becomes louder and the people dancing are more spirited. It was a very exciting environment. The last song of the night had an excepcionally good beat, and everybody was jumping/bouncing/dancing like crazy. With two loud, deep bass drum beats, the show was over and everyone screamed and applauded! Whew it was hot, loud and slightly overwhelming!

Buenos aires has a very strong young culture of people who come to these shows, and so pretty much everyone was just starting out their night. We headed to a local bar, and watched some more music, met some more fun travelers (from france, Australia, england, and russia). We alltalked about our travel stories and advice for different places.

The next few days laina and I stayed close to home, studied spanish, and relaxed, nice..

Cory came in on Thursday! It took us 3 hours to get from Ceci´s to the airport, however it only cost about 2.40 pesos! If we took a taxi it could cost up to 100$ pesos. When we got him, he was still dressed in jeans and a flannel from colorado, and refused to change despite the 85 degree summer heat. It was nice catching up with old storues and what not and the return ride back to the city was much faster. Auenos Aires´s airport is 21 miles out of town!

We did some sight seeing, headed to the ecological park, bought some meta sándwiches for cheap, and met up with some couchsurfers. We are all trying to learn spanish, which is a delight for our host, because she is trying to speak to us only in spanish!

Today we had one main chore, buy tickets out of BA. We walked around, and took the subte (subway) and eventually made it to the bus station, and bought our tickets to Las Grutas, our next destination, and our first in Patagonia! 185$pesos later, and 3 tickets in hand, we were ready for our 13 hour bus ride to patagonia! We heade back to town for our last night in BA, and went to see some music of the balkan/gypsy type. We went to the same place that La bomba was, but this time a 6 piece gipsy band was playing! They were great, the croad was wild, and the music was fun. They played many songs with violin, accordion, and saxaphone. They even played the theme song at the beginging of pulp fiction, which everyone went wild and stared a really fast version of a conga line and ran around the stadium barefoot! We went out later for some food and socializing, said bye to manyo f the friend we met here in BA and started to get ready for Patagonia.

Here´s the flight plan: Bus to las grutas, 2 days, then train to Bariloche, then getting down to Ushuaia, and from there we are not sure!

Oh yeah, try this website, i think you can view the picture I uploaded!

http://s217.photobucket.com/albums/cc289/Seferovi/Brasil/

Queramos Apprender Español

nickandlaina — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 15:08:00 GMT

OK... For those of you who think all we are doing is eating/drinking/sleeping/sightseeing, you a very much mistaken. It just seems that those are the easiest things to write about, and even though I mention other things, I fail to go into large detail on them as I did with the peice of meat I ate at new years, which I describe for 1/2 of a paragraph in "Feliz Año Nuevo". I will now focus on the other things, besides the food, drinks, and sleep of Buenos Aires.

We spent the majority of the day after and, the day after new years(Jan 2nd) studying spanish at an awesome bookstore in Buenos Aires. El Ateneo Liberia, is the grandest bookstore in BA, with a humble doorfront on Santa Fe St. in downtown BA. When you walk in , It seems small, however, the back of the first room opens up into a large room with an open middle on an the sides, there are five floors. All the floors are balcony style so you can see the main floor in the middle, and all the bannister are adorned with gold colored plating. Most of the books are in spanish, and all of the Argentina guides are from argentina, meaning, no lonely planet, no rough guides, no guide books that are a) in english, b) international ones from international companies. Right now, we still don´t have a guide book, but we need one for our trip down to patagonia.

After walking through the bookstore a few times, we headed to the back, to a Stage-like floor, that was the café. We sat on a couch arcross the table from a french proffessor, that lived here in buenos aires. We talked with him for some time, He has taught english to people from BA, and now he is teaching french (there is less compitition) and leading tours around the city in french. We started our 4 hour study session, with flash cards, lessons from laina, where I take notes. During our studying a man from BA sat down and we chatted with him for a few moments, he gave us some helpful advice on where to travel to while we were in patagonia! Very helpful. Traveling sure does help you meet many people from around the world.

After our long study session, we headed towards the Obilisk, and saw that there were many people crowding the main avenue. We headed towards the street, and then we realized, after some time, that the international Car Rally Race, "Dakar Rally" which originally took place from Paris, France and went to Dakar, Senegal, was changed to be in south america now, because of political instability in Africa. So we walked back to stef and Caros house, with a stop to study some more flash cards, my spanish is getting better!

As it turned out, the Rally race was going right down Ave de Mayo the street our hosts live on! We were on the other side of the street, so we went to the grocery store, got materials for dinner( we are cooking for our hosts, tonight: loco moco!), and then found a small space to jump across the road, and head to their house. Up on the 7th floor in their apartment, we started to hear horn of the rally cars that are headed into town, they were so loud! and they continued until almost 12, midnight!

The next day we contacted our new host for the next week, Ceclia! She does not speak much english, so our time with her will also be a language exchange! We are staying at her apartment in Palermo Soho, an eastern neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Once we settled in, and exchanged ideas on knitting(she knits too!) We went out see Palermo. This district is very nice, it has lots of trees, old building, parks and statues.

I am starting to realize that my contacts may not be the type you can keep in your eyes for two weeks straight. For the thrid time, about three days after I put my contacts in, my right contact gets blurry. Hmm.

Later that night we head to the bar that Cecilia works at, Maximo. It is a high end bar with high prices. We spent alot of time there with many other couchsurfers we met during our last week here in BA, A jewler from England, a traveler from Austrailia, three porteño (from BA) girls. We have alot of fun, and I am trying to speak spanish as much as possible. I am able to put together full sentances, with proper conjurgation, like, we, you and I, for simple sentances. I get really excited, when I saw a sentance, and they can actually understand what I am saying a few more weeks of this and maybe I can have a conversation!

We got back to the Apartment at 9 in the morning for a quick nap, and then back outside again for lessons on how to make handicrafts, in a park in Recoletta, another district, in BA. When we got to the Park/plaza, we met up with many couch surfers, and we made bracelets, and chatted about our travels. Meeting these people is better then reading a guidebook! Between the whole crowd, we have 2/3 of the world covered, with some good knowledge on most places! We got lots of advice as to getting our divemaster liscence for teaching SCUBA in Honduras, getting a well paying job in England, Teaching school in austrailia, traveling cheaply in southeast asia, and the list goes on! Our couchsurfing friends are very fun, interesting people to talk to and are always positive, with many ideas!

After a few hours we head back to the apartment for a late dinner, and some much needed sleep.

Our plans: We will study spanish until jan 7th when cory gets here. Then we will spend 3 days touring BA, until we catch a bus to La Grutas, Patagonia. Then somehow we will make our way to Ushuaia, by train, bus, or car.

Y por favor; I am interested in who is reading the blog! I see that like 40 people or so are reading them on a regular basis, so If you could just leave a comment with your name, that would be awesome, and you could write what you are up to if you wish, but not nessesary.

Feliz Año Nuevo!

nickandlaina — Thu, 1 Jan 2009 18:19:00 GMT

Finnally! a couchsurfer has found room to host us! It was been very difficult finding a couchsurfer host here in Buenos Aires. I guess it is the time of year, and the craziness of the city. We rounded out our 4th day in Buenos Aires walking around town, and studying spanish. As I have said before Buenos Aires is a very beautiful city. As you walk in the main square, you can look on both sides of you and see old buildings with tall black steeples, white stone faces, old windows with shutters, and many carvings of men holding up the building. Next to the bueatiful old buildings you have normal square modern buildings, and the differnce is quite stark.

Back at the hotel, we got an email from hosts, Stef and Carolina saying we can come stay with them for a few nights! They live in the center part of town, about a 1/2 hour walk from where we were. We quickly gathered our things paid 150 pesos, ~45 dollars for three nights stay at Hotel carly in San Telmo. Then we headed out to the city center. Our walk took us to a street called 9 de Julio, this street has 20 main lanes, and 3 on either side, a total of 26 lanes of traffic! There are three sets of islands that you can rest on during the perilous journey to cross the road. In the middle of the street, looking right you can see a very tall Obilisk, white and square. Then after crossing the street, (whew!) the city gets much more fancy, touristy, and nicer. We hurried up to the apartment of our hosts, and found it without difficulty, and made our way to their aptartment. Stef and Carolina are very cool, he is from the Netherlands, and she is from here, Argentina. After a little while we head out and get some food, see the city, and relax.

The next day we decide to step up our spanish lessons. it is now day 5 in Buenos aires (has it been that long already?) and we are not going to take spanish classes, instead laina will teach me the lessons from the book, and i will study vocab on my own time. We head to Parque Reserva Ecologica Costenera Sur, a beautiful park on the Rio de la Plata, in the eastern of Buenos Aires. It is a ecological reserve, if you couldnt make the difficult translation, and has many beautiful birds. We bought some food at the grocery store before coming, and now it is time to eat. For lunch, we bought rouquefort cheese(a blue cheese), which is dirt cheap here, 32 pesos a kilo, 4.50$ a pound, a smoked chorizo(mmmm..) and a whole weat baguette. Lunch was very good. Then we studied spanish intensely for 1 hour, did some refreshers and took a nap. Heading back to the house, we looked around the riverside, and there are many nice icecream places, and even a TGI Fridays.(ugh) Then we crossed 9 de Julio again, and sat down for delicious ice cream at one of Buenos Aires's famous Heladerias! For 8 pesos,(1.60$) you get three scoops and a waffle cone! We got dark chocolate, come caramel thing, and coffee! It was so good. Very rich,thick and dense, with tons of flavor. Hmm.. I bet some of you want to come to Buenos Aires now...

Now it is time to decide what to do for New Years! We didnt want to sit around bored, so we logged onto the Buenos Aires group on couchsurfing, and found the main event was camping in Tigre, a small river town, about an hour by train away from Buenos Aires, and it lies in the Parana river delta. Sweet! we're in! The girl organizing the event was room in her tent for us, even better! Knowing argentines at least a little by now, we head to the grocery store to buy some food for the inevitable Asado! We bought some wine, 1.12 liters of malbec for 9 pesos($2.80), some carne(meat), one and a half pounds of deliciousness for 8 pesos($2.40), water, empanadas and some lettuce. Later in the evening, we went out for some beer with stef and carolina, had some fun conversation and then got ready for the camping.

In Retiro, Buenos Aires's main transit station, we wait for someone who looks like a couchsurfer(big backpack, tent in hand, big smile, that kind of stuff), to ask them if they are Anna, the girl organizing the event. We found her pretty quick, and then within minutes couchsurfer popped out of everywhere and we soon had a group of 35 of us, from all over the world. There are CSers with us from NYC, England, Canada, Sweden, Colombia, Argentina, Russia, Austria,and Australia. We all got on the train together, and had some fun conversations. These people are great, everyone is positive, most people are geniunely interested in your story, and eveyone is here to make friends.

When we got to Tigre, we took a boat into the river delta to go to our special camp ground. The boat ride is beautiful, there are so many small rivers, and big trees. There are no streets in the delta, the streets are the water. all the houses have boats, and most have docks. Tigre reminds me of what pictures of china's mekong river delta looks like, but not nearly as poor. When we get to the campground, we set up our tents, open the wine, and start chatting, hacky sack, football(soccer), and preparing the Asado. Everyone is sharing their wine, and the people organizing the event gather all the meat, and vegetables. We will combine everything so that everybody will share all the different cuts of meat. The sun sets, and more wine comes out. We have a big fire at the grill getting the coals hot enough to cook the asado, Argentines eat so late!

When the food was ready, Choripan was first! my favorite! Choripan is chorizo and bread. Then some salad, wine, a little Fernet, and the meat. The piece i got (rare, like i asked!) weighed 2/3 a pound and was a very large square of meat. Mmm. Delicious. Eating my fill, we all head to the frount by the river, and get ready to celebrate, Cider seems to be the drink of choice for argentine new years. Feliz Año Nuevo! Thats what all say at 12:00 and everyone hugs, smiles, and drinks some more. There were some good musicans, so we all moved to the dock, and danced and sung to the guitar, over the river. After an hour or so we headed back to the tent, where I immediately passed out, and Laina and the british guys soon followed (we had a big tent).

At 4 or so AM, the strangest thing happened. It seemed the whole campground was underwater. Shaking my head, to clear out all the wine, I still couldnt understand what happened. Why are we in water? it isnt raining! Anyways, the british guys were soaked, Dani, one of the brits said "Im going to get ill if I keep sleeping with my head in the water." we needed to get out of the humongous puddle our tent was in the middle of. Recollecting a little bit, I did rememeber the water was much higher, when we were at the dock a few hours earlier, then when we got dropped off. Hmm. Tides?

We moved everything to dry ground, and fell asleep again. I guess the river rose, or somthing, because all the next day we were there the water stayed pretty high, not the 6 hour cycle that tides run on. Anyways this morning was sunny and nice, everyone at breakfast together, and helped clean up. We grabbed the 11 oclock boat (not so reliable) back to Tigre, and traveled with the british guys back to town.

Buenos Aires

nickandlaina — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:44:00 GMT

If you may have noticed, I posted about 9 more pictures of brasil in the photo album! Argentina pictures will come next! Also, regarding comments made in the christmas blog, Our first priority on the trip if to learn spanish, and then we will volunteer, at a goat farm or something, but we are here mostly to experience the culture of south america, and meet the people here.

The morning after christmas, we decided to sleep in, which was nice, and then we had a nice lunch of spaggeti and meatballs. We hung around in genaro´s house and sunbathed for a little, and then headed to the local pool. We also decided that we would head to buenos aires tonight, we will catch the late bus into town and arrive there in the morning. The pool was alot of fun, there were many people, and the water was pumped up from the aquifer, so it had no chlorine, but it was not excatly clear. In the pool we shared maté with many friends, and watched the surroundings. The pool is in an area surrounded by farmland, about 3 km from the city center. to the right there is the Rio Paraná, thick and brown, moving slowly to the ocean. We walked down to the river, and saw the overflow from the pool making its own little stream going into the Paraná. It is not tropical here as it was when we were in brazil, and that is somthing that keep surprising me. We left the pool and headed back to Genaros house. We had a few glasses of fernet, and then the whole family got together for a cariety of snacks that we ate for dinner, there were empanadas, ever popular here in Argentina, cut up breaded beef steak, cheese and salami, and crackers. arouns 12 45 AM we said our goodbyes, always so sad, and headed to the bus station for our 1 AM departure.

Our bus ride was great, only 6 hours, I managed to sleep a little, and once the sun rose, I was able to see outside, at the urban sprawl the stretches in the direction of rosario for many hours. Once we got into the bus station, we headed to the tourist information center for a map. Tourist information center CLOSED?! on a saturday? all day?! I couldnt believe it. We headed to the internet station got our hotels address down, drew a quick map, and headed to the taxi. We think the taxi driver ripped us off, he charges us 29 pesos to get there, about 9.5$us and it was a very short ride. Eh, only so much you can do. We had a real hard time finding the hotel, but once we did, we were very happy. Right now we are at the Hotel Carly, you can look up their website, it is in San Telmo, the center of the old district in Buenos Aires. It is very beautiful, all cobblestone streets, and old european architecture. Once we settled down in the hotel, which is very old, run down, but has the same feel our house did in Hawaii, we started chatting with the people who were here, and making friends. We met a guy from NZ, a kiwi, two aussies, and a few argentines. One of the kiwis was living in the hotel for 6 months. This place is like a movie! It was quite funny. We went with one kiwi and headed to a cool part of town called Recoleta, and visited a large cemetery that had all tombs that were out of the ground. There was a large colorful market with lots of handicrafts, and many people were playing music, and some were pretty good! We sat in the middle of the market, on a hill, and listened to a guy play giutar and sing, in spanish, he was quite good. Then we left the market, and caught the bus back to the hotel. I think we skipped dinner for lack of food, and hung out with the two aussies, Dan and Heidi, and talked about immigration to australia, and their opinions on world politics. Dan is a rasta guy, with big dredlocks, and he is quite cool, and heidi is a fun traveler with an independent mind. She thinks tango dancing is boring.

The next day we started to wander around San telmo, the district we are staying in. There was a huge fair, "Feria de San pedro Telmo" for about a mile in all directions from our hotel! Wow! we were lucky for such a great location! The fair was fun, I finally bought a T shirt, a green one, that has the fair name on it. Laina got a cool summer dress, and we bought a bag of lentils, and a bag of brown rice, as well as an onion garlic, and some fruit to eat for food. Now that people are not feeding us, we are going back to our more normal diet of rice and beans. after about 20 days of pure meat, white bread, and sweets, it is nice to eat somthing that is easy on your stomach.

We headed back in to the hotel to make lunch, and then we met up with dan and heidi for some more conversation, and then we left to hear the tango that was going on in the square right outside our hotel. Once we left the hotel , the street was packed, and everyone was sitting in the chairs, often marked, Quilmes, the national beer. We were drinking wine, malbec from patagonia. There was a big dance floor, many people were dancing tango, and the music was great. Tango music sounds like 3 or 4 violins, an acordion or two, a piano, and a big standup bass. I love it, it has a real oldfashioned sound, and has great timing. there was a band during the fair, and they were really fun to listen to. Also there was a girl playing digeredoo, and it was soo cool, she was very good. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, and has a many oldfashioned european touches. It is also windy here, and the breeze is a nice refreshment to the very hot air now that it is summer. We will be staying in the city until jan 9th or so, and then head to Pinamar, a beach town south of here, north of Mar del Plata.

Asado, the best meat EVER! and oh.. Christmas!!

nickandlaina — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 03:03:00 GMT

Our last few days in Rosario were a blur of meat, bread and people. Mostly a blur of meat. That being said, This afternoon we went to a hostel with the greek girl, Atanacia, and the swiss girl, Aline, and our Argentine friend, Genaro (notice I started using names?) This hostel is owned by genaros two friends, they bough tan onld house in downtown, cleaned it up, and opened it up as a hostel, pretty cool. The main center of the hostel has huge vaulted walls, and no ceiling, perfect for having a barbeque. At the hostel there were about 15 people, most didnt speak english, but some did, and everone was hungry for Asado. Asado is roughly translated into barbeque, but it is much more. The Asado is a grill used with real coals from wood charcoal, that is burned on the side, and then hot coals are scooped under the grill, and very large cuts of meat are grilled to perfectionon the large grill. Our Asado consisted of chorizo, ribs, and some other cuts of beef that they told me the name, and either the wine willed me to forget the name, or the fact that I cant speak spanish prevented me from remembering what they were called. Anyways, the meat is slow cooked for about 1 hour 15 mins, and is served by first meat done, first meat served. the chorizo and small ribs are done first, then the larger cuts, and finally the gradaddy cut, which tasted like prime rib only better. Onthe table with the meat, is alot of wine, Vino Tinto or red wine, alot of french bread, and a small bowl of salad with lemonjuice and salt as dressing. I think the salad is an excuse to try to be healthy. There were fifteen people, and the salad was pretty small compared to the amount of meat. As the meat is served, you can eat it with your bread, by hand or with your knife. I went with the hand option, and got very greasy. If any of you are questioning our health on this trip, you should be. It is very difficult in Argentina to eat healthy. Their diet is very much a red meat, carbohydrate diet. The next day we went to Parque España for some Maté. Yerba Maté is a tea like drink that you make with Yerba, a dried plant, like tea, hot water, and a metal straw with small holes in it to filter out the water. There is a small gourd that you fill halfway with Yerba, and then add hot water to fill. The person who is drinking, drinks the whole gourd full, then hands it back to the pourer, and the next person gets their own gourd. Its a social, boding thing here in Argentina. I like Maté, It has a dry, strawlike, bitter flavor, like green tea, but dryer and more bitter. On Christmas Eve, we head to Genaros home town, Cruz Alta (tall cross) about 100 kms away from rosario, towards Cordoba. Cruz Alta is a small town, with a little center, and it is in the middle of farmland. It is very hot here, I mean like 95 degrees, its christmas EVE!! We re very thankful that genaro has a pool to swim n. We spent most of Xmas Eve swimming and tanning. Around 9 PM we went to a big family party, where we met alot of genaros family at a big house on the edge of town. Genaros family is all very italian, and they are extrememly friendly. Most cannot speak english, but there were two aunts that were proffessors in english in Argentina, and I could talk to them, and Laina is abe to talk to people that cannot speak english. Pretty quickly we got to know many people and a little about them. At midnight, we open the champagne and everyone cheered Feliz Navidad (not the song, feliz navidad is what they actually say.. I know you thought they say merry christmas). The little kids get christmas presents and all the adults go around huggin and kissing. Another thing I forgot to mention, everyone here kisses hello and goodbye, all the time. After the party ended, we headed to another party by a pool until 5AM. Very different here, we woke up christmas morning at 1PM. That never happens in the US! Around 3 we went back to the house where we got to eat Asado again! this time there was LAMB!!! I was so excited. We had quite a nice time, the weather was hot, and we went swimming tanning and watched the surroundings. Laina enjoyed sweet maté with a cousin, and I took a nice nap under a tree until I got bit by some damn ants that hurt so bad! WHy are they always biting me! it hurts so bad it wakes me up. Christmas here is alot of fun but very different. We miss the cold weather a little, but not for long, and we especially miss the music and eggnog! So Merry Christmas everyone from down here in agentina, and We hope you have a great time with famly and friends!

Argentine Chorizo! Mmm, my cup of tea.

nickandlaina — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:03:00 GMT

Shortly after getting to Rosario, we met our friends parents, the father could speak some english, however the mother couldnt. They were both very nice, even though they were in a rush to get back to their hometown, 100km away from rosario. The apartment hat our friend has is very nice, two rooms, nice bathrooms and a kitchen, Pretty soon after his parents leave we find out that there are two more girl couchsurfers coming! So we walk to the groery store buy some food, including Milka! (a brand of chocolate from europe,very good chocolate) and two big chicken steaks(best way to describe) breaded and fried with potato salad. The groery store is very close to his house which is nice, and it is not very touristy so the people there assume we are Argentinian and we can speak spanish, not true, as you should know. Laina does most of the talking, because she can understand more then I can. I am alright if I can think about what I am going to say, but when they talk to me, most of the time I cant understand one word out of their long sentances! In Argentine spanish, the "ll" sound which sounds like "yeh"(kind of), will now sound like "sh", If you understand what i am saying, it is a big change because the "ll" is in very important words like llamo (name), pollo (chicken) and llegar(arrive). now if these words have the integral part of their sound changed so dramatically, in the rapid speech of a argentine cashier, it is easy to not understand anything she says. So we hed back to the apartment to eat our food, and then take a quick nap. When we wake up a few a hours later, we all go and get the two new girls from the train station. It took some time to find them, and eventually we all found each other. The girsl are very friendly and interesting. one is a GREEK! the other a Swiss. they are ona simular trip to ours, about the same time, and in similar countries, how cool! Getting back to the house, we prepare everything for the barbeque we are going to tonight. We lave the apartment and head to the grocery store again, the grocery stores are diffferent here too, They sell soda in 2.25 liter bottles, a teenagers dream. Many of the snacky foods I have never seen before. And Unlike brazil, their bread comes in many different types and flavors. In the Deli, they sell blue cheese for 36 pesos per kilo, I think that comes out to 5 dollars a pound, a pretty good deal for blues cheese! We head to the meat section, and we order about 4 pounds worth of Chorizo!! If you don't already know, I love chorizo. We bought some more snacky things, 4 bottles of argentine wine, and took our leave. Our friend is taking us to a special barbeque hotspot for argentines, right on the banks of the Rio Paraná. It costs 5 Pesos to get in and the place is packed! After 15 mins we finally find a tabel we will share with a bunch of other local rosarioans. If you can picture this place, It is a barbeque, picnic table area, rectangular in shape, 50 feet wide, 1/4 mile long. right on the river. on the other side oppisite but parallel the river there is a brick wall, 75 feet high, the "sea wall" or river wall to the town. So this place defenatly has a feeling of Isolation, and pure barbeque. In this large recatangle there were about 3000 people. If my numbers dont seem right just think"really crowded". We opened the wine, and bought some liters of Quilmes, the local argentine beer, I dont think you can be in Argentina anyless then a day without drinkng it, it is everywhere. After a few hours some other friends show up, who are from rosario ,and speak a little english, and laina starts practicing her spanish, which is starting to get better, and I am trying to extend my vocabulary past 30 words. After a few hours, around 12 :30 we put the chorizos on the coals, and begin to cook. It will take about an hour for the chorizo to cook. Laina is very hungry, she wants the raw chorizo. I slap her hand, she doesnt get any raw chorizo she has to wait! Afte rthe hour passes, many liters beer and bottle of wine later, everyone is starving. We bought some italian bread, tomatos, and lettuce to go with the chorizo. Making sandiwhiches we also add a argentine condiment called chimmichurri. It is like a salsa/relish that is hard to descibe, but salty and flavorful! Mmmm! I love chorizo, and these (sorry jim and the boise chorizos!) are the best chorizo I have every had!! a perfect pland of beef and pork, the best percentage of fat, not too much, but enough for a moist savory delsious flavor in every bite! Can you tell I like chorizo? I ate two. after we ate dinner, our argentine friends who are sharing their table with us start up a conversation with me. Besides the fact that I have had little beer, and they have had more then their share, our conversation was interesting. One of them could speak very vroken english, and the rest, maybe 10 words. Our conversation was about my favorite futbol(soccer) team, then switched to Obama, then to their own female president cristina kirshner, It turns out thay they all worked at the GM Argentina Plant, and were seriously concerned with my countries bailout. I hadnt thought of GM's interntional employees. We talked for a while longer, they are very cool people, once we established how to converse, and then they left, around 2:10 AM and we started to get ready to go. Our friend wanted to go to the bar, but we knew that tommorow we are going to a really long party, supposedly over the whole night. We decided to get sleep while we could and stay up all nigh ttommorow. We all headed home and went to sleep. We woke up around 11:30AM, and bought some breakfast from the close grocery store. Mostly argentine croissants, pastries, and sweet things. I ate a leftover chorizo! We are going to the beach today! It is soo hot here right now. It is probably around 90 degrees. We hop on the bus, even hotter, an ¡d head to another part of the Rio Paraná which has a beach. When we get there, there are already many people crowding the beach. When I headed into the water, I realized that it was extremely hot! around 88 degrees itself! and it was very muddy, I couldnt see my hand after it was 3 inches underwater, once i waded into deeper water, it got cooler and much more refreshing. Looking around, most of the women, 90% are wearing thong bikinis, and most all of the people are very tan. Another 10% are drinking Maté, an South american drink very popular in Argentina ,out of cups or their own personal gourds. The water we brought got hot very fast, and we bought some bubble water wih ice to refresh. We ate some pasta salad we had made, and it was very nice. Everyone got sunburned to some degree, laina and I the least because we had 30spf, Hawaiian tropic! we grabbed the bus back to the apartment, got ready and headed out to our big party in a rented house, outside rosario. Our friend has friends that work in the poorer sections of rosario, and this party was to help them pay for some of their expenses. For a small price, we get as much beer and Fernet (an herbal alcohol from italy, bitter and spicy, that you mix with coke to get the argentine national cocktail) as we can drink, and they ment it. we got to the party around 11PM and the music was already basting. Many people could not speak english, but many could speak some words. we ordered a pizza, very different from the US, there is no pizza sauce on their pizzas. This pizza was bread, cheese, peppers, ham, green olives, and eggs! Weird, but delicous. The party was very long, I drank alot of fernet, and then took a nap around 4:30 AM I slept onthe porch upstairs in the house, unfortunalty i put my mattress on the floor, and when i was sleeping I got bit by 200 ants, damn those ants! I woke up soo ichym I couldnt fall asleep. at 5:30 I rejoined the party, and got some more drinks. Laina and I were inthe same boat, but she slep on a bed elevated off the ground and subsequently did not get bit by those damn ants. The music got louded are more exciteing as the sun rose around 7 AM. People wer still drinking and dancing, aroun 9AM he sun was rising in the Sky and I was drinkingfernet and looking at the sky! This was a big first for Laina and I, partying all the way until 10;30AM, was a big step into our argentine experience. Once home, we slept for 5 or so hours, and then woke up, starving, for some breakfast. It is raining pretty hard here, not a beach day. We walked around town a little, and then got some coffie and milkshakes. afterwords we met up with some friends, and went to a little fastfood joint for Lomito, a think fried steak with lots of cheese, ham, tomato, and chimmichurri. We met another couchsurfer, from south africa, and germany. He was really cool, had alot of knowlege about argentine history, that I didnt know. Later we went to a tango bar, got some beer, danced a few songs(I am getting good at dancing), and then went home for some more much needed sleep! Hopefully I can buy a t-shirt today, I only brought two for the whole trip, and now i want a new one!

Iguazú

nickandlaina — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:13:00 GMT

Iguazú falls National Park is a true adventure of a park. Upon entering the trail to main falls you are already in rainforest with a walkway suspended about 15 feet over the ground. As you walk there are many openings where you are walking over the RIo Iguazú and are able to look down into the reletively clear water. Coming closer to the falls, I look over the left side of the walk way and there is an Alligator in the water! I got very exctied. I tdidnt think it was a crocodile, but it might have been. I could hear the thunder of the fall from about 2 minutes walk away from the lookover. There is alot of mist coming up out of the hole, that you can see from the side we are at, the Argentinian side. Coming up to the falls, it is a zoo of people trying to take pictures, and they are not all polite people. Iguazú falls is a combination of many falls in the shape of large U and then there are more falls areound the corner. The argentine side has a walkway that goes straight over the falls, and a very large park that goes through rainforest. Iguazú is also taller than niagra, but only 30% the volume. The fact that you are in this dense rainforest and then come out to the magnificent fall is the most spectacular part of the whole falls. From this side, I can see the Brasilian side, further away, but with a nice view of the falls in its entirety. ITs hard to describe the impressiveness of the falls, so you are going to hVave to wait until i can upload the photos! We spent the rest of the day walking in the forest. It is soo hot here, I almost got heat exhaustion. IT is extremely humid, and around 90 degrees I think. There are many pretty birds who are trying to steal my food, and then there were also small racoon like creatures, called Coati, and they also tried to steal our lunch! The Coati looks like a raccon with badger claws, and a pig like nose. Look it up on google, they look cool. Around 5 oclock we called it a day, we were very hot and exhausted. THe next morning, we got our bus tickets to Rosario, Argentina, which didnt leave until 5 in the afternoon, and decicded to see the town of Puerto Iguazu for the day. We quickly discovered there is not much to see, and then headed to the internet cafe, whee we met to Kiwi's(new zealanders) Who were very nice, and since their bus didnt leave until 5 :45 we all headed out for a midday beer, and some food. Good conversation, some food, and 7 liters of Cervesa Imperial later, We walked back into the hot sun, headed to the bus station and caught our 18 hour bus to Rosario. THe bus ride was not that good. Too long, barley any food, too many stops, an hour late... thats enough complaining. Coming into Rosario was great, we met up with an old friend who visited us in Hawaii, and now we will stay with him for 10 days! One of the first things he said to us: " we are in for a very busy weekend!" Sweet!

Coração

nickandlaina — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:47:00 GMT

Coração, Corazón, Heart, or Soul. Whatever word you use, Brazilians have it. Once I was on a bus, and as you know I can´t speak portuguese. The bus driver knew I couldn´t speak and He smiled, and help out with our bags, and gave me a big thumbs up, as is so common here in Brasil. The overall feeling I have gotten from brazilians is a true happiness to be alive, and have a good time. All of our friend we met along the way were always looking for the most fun thing to do that night, even if we were tired. Both of us will really miss Brasil after these last 12 days.

Today we had a slow day, still recovering from the long bus trip from Paraty. We woke up to a delicious breakfast, bread, cheese, coffee, and sweetbread. It was very sunny, and I changed my clothes in to a bathing suit. There is a nice small pool here that I jumped into and took a quick swim. The sun was so hot, that I quickly dried off. Later this evening, we are going to the Rodeo! Feste Country Avaré! After a late lunch (lasgna, steak, rice and beans) and a shower we headed to a city, Avaré, 15 minutes away from Cerqueira César. The Fairgounds were bustling with the typical style, we even have in the US. Even after a while summer in Idaho, and a few trips to the midwest, I have never sat through a whole rodeo! We walked around the fairgrounds, got some wine (which they mixed with sweetened condensed milk!!!) and beer. Then we went to the Crepe stand. They fry crepes with cheese inside on a george forman type of grill, very good, but interesting. We tried to sound the bullhorn trumpets, but were very unsuccessful, I will post pictures. Then the rodeo got started. It is now 10:00 pm! When would a rodeo START at 10:00pm? Only in South America.It was very exciting, many bull riders, and bucking broncos, loud sounds of american pop music (rolling stones, Eric clapton) sung in Portuguese! In between riders small dogs in costumes ran around the stadium. Oh yeah, Of course there is also the fog shrouded jesus, emerging out of a globe... Very interesting. The Rodeo ended and A concert began, It was good, but much more pop then any of the other brazilian music we had listened to (samba, bossa nova). Around 2:20 AM the concert was over, and we headed home. This part of brazil is very much a country side, with many plantations of Soy, corn and Coffee. You can see very far, even at night as we drove home. We went to bed and slept in big time.

We woke up at around 1 pm. Long story short... We said our sad goodbyes to our host family, and got on the very long bus ride(s) to Puerto Iguazú, Argentina.

Brasil was a very exciting, fun country that we would reccommend anybody who has the time to travel to. In 12 days we spent 1500R, about 640$ for two people. In reality it is not that expensive, 320$ per person. We could have spent more, but we could have spent less, we splurged a little. However, if you do go to brazil, plan to spend more time in Rio de Janeiro then 5 days, You could easily spend 10 days without getting bored. Our next trip to brazil will be to Fortaleza, and exploring the north coast, it is supposed to be amazing, for brazilian standards.

So that was the end of Brasil, and now we are in Argentina, and we will be here for about two months, expect to hear more about Argentina as we learn about it!

In response to questions:

It is hot here! very hot! from 80-90 Degrees during the day. We have a few scary times, not that scary though. a guy followed our very large group when we were in rio, but then stopped. We saw a very scary dead snake, but it wasnt poisonous, it was the kind that squeese to death, and it was very small. and thats about it. We have met many people along the way, very excting people who are fun to travel with. Right now we are headed to our friends house to be with his family for christmas. Laina doesnt want to write, she is happy i am. She helps me come up with ideas.

Off the Gringo Trail!

nickandlaina — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:56:00 GMT

So after the internet cafe last night, laina and headed to a restraunt in colonial Paraty, and met up with a new greek guy, the guy from israel, our brazilian frien and the two british guys. Then we headed to the bus station, "rodovario" to catch our 11:30 bus to Sao paulo. The bus was nice, about half the amount of seats as usual, and footrests, a great place to sleep for our 6 hour ride to the biggest city in south america. We fell asleep very quickly, and with only a few disturbances, we woke up in São Paulo. Our friend took us to the metro, and then to another bus station where we caught a 4 hour bus to here hometown, Cerqueira Cesar!

The bus ride was very interesting but my eyes actually kept closing, even though i was interested! Once we left the city proper, the land became shallow and hilly. There are orange fields on both sides of the highway, and some small villiages around them. After a while I saw many miles of eucalyptus plantation, which look like an organized forest. Also there are many cttle pastures, the cows here,"vaca" look different, more wild, and alot thinner then the plump ones we saw in Hawaii on parker ranch. As we traveled I could tell we were leaving the gingo trail.

The Gringo Trail, as i see it is traveling by bus from Rio de janeiro, to são Paulo, adn all the nice beaches betwee, and then to curitiba, and onto foz de iguassu.Since at são paulo, we went to Cerqueira Cesar , we are headed on a high way to the north of the gringo tail, and I was already able to tell this as we were driving on the bus to Cerqueira Cesar.

Coming into the town of Cerqueira Cesar we left the high way and passed through farmland, and then entered a small town with brick streets. It does not seem to be poor here or a great seperation of classes. We got off at the bus station, and our friends mom picked us up in her car! She is very nice, but does not speak english. We all get into her car, a VW Foxchase, (VW has their own line of brazilian cars) and drive through the town ~5 mins to get to their house. Getting out of the car, we were greeted by two very energetic puppies. They are both small lap dogs with energy to rival a hummingbird. The house our friend lives in is brautiful, the ouside walls are a brick red, and the whole house exudes an arizona, we live in a warm climate and have many doors and windows, feeling. The kitchen is half outdoor, and is already warm with smells of rice, beans, bacon, beef, and spices. Mmmmm!! Brazilian cooking!

The family here is great, she lives with her grandparents too, they do not speak any english either, but we seem to do alright with hand gestures, and "Muito Bom/Lindo" (very good/beautiful) and "obrigado"(thank you). I show the grandmother the ht I am knitting, and she gets very excited and took me to her oom to show me al the baby clothes she is kitting! She also a very good knitter. It is very sunny outside, and it is alot dryer here then in Rio de Janeiro. It feels more like souther california, there is a pool and the concrete is warm under my feet. In their backyard they have a trellis with beautiful flowers, and a big Acearola cherry tree, very high in Vitamin C. They also have monstera, and orchids, many plants i miss from hawaii. The mother calls us in for lunch, Mmm, I am very hungry. Lunch is delicious, rice, breans, bacon, beef, eggs and salad. very filling. After lunch laina and I went to take a nap in the guestroom, and we slept for 5 hours. When we woke, it was still sunny! it is summer here!! and we went for a walk around town. We headed to the supermarket and got some snacks, fruit and yogurt drink things. We also bought a fancy christmas bread for the family as a gift. We headed back and stopped at a church shaped like a piramid, and now then sun was starting to set, and we headed home.

Back at the house, we had a diner of delicous pizza, and now we are going to make it an early night, because I expect to have a very full next few days.

Many Greeks, Many Places

nickandlaina — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:35:00 GMT

Ilha Grande´s streets are all sand, and there are no cars that are allowed on the island! I saw a tractor with a few brazilians hanging off the back pass by, but the whole island is traveled by on foot or by boat. So today we slept in and walked around town, bought a few papayas, bannanas and some snacks, and then headed to the boat dock to catch a boat to visit the beach of Lopes Mendes. While we were walking to the dock a few dogs came up to us and wanted to get petted. The dogs here are very nice, even though they might be homeless, they are all very clean, seem to be washed, and they all have collars, even though there are no tags on the collars. Once we got on the boat, two dogs joined us, one of them had a coconut. It was so funny because the puppy would drop the coconut, and since we were no a boat, the coconut would roll away, and the dog would chase it. It could entertain itself for hours. Two more people came onto the boat, they were two kids from the netherlands. Then with the four of us, on a 100 person boat, we set sail to Lopes Mendes, The trip took 40 minutes, and was very beautiful. The rainforest here goes right up to the ocean, and it is very thick. I really enjoy riding on the boat. the water is azure blue, and there are many seabirds wheeling around over head. Once we got to the beach we realized that we had to hike 15 mins to the real lopes mendes, which was a great hike. It felt like hawaii again, i saw many plants i recognized as well as lilikoi, or passionfruit, or maracuja. Once we got to lopes mendes, I saw what all the fuss was about. Lopes mendes, is a huge beach, with incredibly soft sand, and powder white. Laina and I jumped into the water, about 8 degrees colder then hawaii´s water, Brrr. and surfed some waves, and then went to sundbathe. We met up with the three greeks (we met one more, i dont know if i mentioned that befoe) and the two brazilians. Later, we explored the rocks, which were pretty but devoid of life, and then settled down in the shade. On the beach there are vultures eating a dead pufferfish, and in the distance I can see a fishing boat with hundreds of birds following it. Our friends caught their boat at 4, so we waited another hour and went swimming while we waited for ours. Tonight is 2 of the greeks last night befor the head back to rio, so once we got back to the main town (yes, the dogs were on the boat again) We hung out at a restraunt and got some beer while listening to bob marley on the radio. The nightlife picked up a little bit these last few days! not everything is closed! We head back to the hostel, say our good byes, and head to sleep.

The two greeks left very early that morning, so when we woke up, they were already gone. It was sad for them to leave, because they were very friendly, and easy people to travel with. Our bus to Angra dos Reis is at 10:30 so we have a little time to pack up and head out. Once at the dock, we met up with the third greek, and two british guys who will travel with us the next few days. The british guys are on a trip around the world, and they will head to iguassu falls with us! Sweet, more travel companions! Once on the bus we ran into the american girl that we met in rio on the bus ride to ilha grande! We ended up not seeing her at all on the island because we were so busy, and there were alot of people so it wasnt so easy! The ride was much nicer, not so shakey or sunny. Once in Angra, our group(very large at this point) decided to head to a colonial city, Paraty. The bus ride is 2 hours, and leaves soon. We all get on the bus, and head down the coast. The bus ride is fantastic, Brasils coasline is foggy with big mountain peaks, and a beautiful ocean to our left. There are many little villiages and lots of tropical plants growing. In Paraty, we split up a little, the amaerican girl stays in paraty, because she is headed to Sao Paulo the next day, and everyone else heads to a little beach town, thats not in the Lonely planet guide, but the brazilians reccommend, Trindade!

A trip to Trindade is worth it for the bus ride alone. The last 10 minutes of the ride, are very steep down hil with lots of hills and sharp turns, the bus driver decided to speed up during this part of the trip so the ride felt like a true roller coaster. It was amazing, as we cam up on one hill, I looked out through a clearing and could see the heavily forested coastline with many small peninsulas and lots of rocks, It definately looked foreboding, yet like paradise(hmmm). Once we got to villiage, I could tell it was off the beaten path, yet touristy. Our brazilian friend headed out and got us a good deal on a hostel room for us 6. After we settled in , the hostel room was pretty nice, We headed out for some food and to the beach. It started raining. I like the rain here, it is warm and tropical, each drop is very thick, and you can certainly feel it, when the rain gets hard. We headed to the beach anyways, and it was very beautiful, in a scary tropical brazil rainforest sort of way. The coastline on both side of the beach was very dramatic, and you could see quite a ways. The sand is wet from the rain, and the waves are pretty loud. As we headed back to town, the road we walked on had small pastures on both sides, lots of potholes in the sandy road, and it was still raining. It is very pretty, there are banana trees swaying with the rain, and small cars and truck driving by, with brazilians all doing some sort of job, but i am yet to understand what excatly they are doing.

We went out to dinner at a restaurant, and got the typical brazilian plata do dia, or plate of the day for 8R, 3.75$. I got beand rice, fish and a salad, It was very good. As i look to my right across the road the restraunt is on i see a big truck that has many bricks in the bed. There are three men in the truck bed throwing the bricks to the people on the second floor of the buiding they are parked next to. You would think they could rig up a pulley system to get the job done quicker. " but then you couldn´t pay 6 brazilians to do the job" said one british guy.

This morning we headed to waterfalls, The hike was very fun. We saw a dead snake, and I think it was a ball python. The water falls were pretty, and the water was very clear. We headed back and decided to head back to Paraty.

Once we got back to Paraty, we said our good byes to the last greek, he is headed to Rio to catch his plane home. It is sad saying bye to these people, you meet them, spend lots of time traveling and making decisions with them, It is sad to see them go. I think it will be one of the harder things about traveling.

Paraty is a very colonial town, It is touristy, but the buildings are beautiful. Someone said that it is from the 1600s. The buildings are white wash with blue trim.

We decided to go to our brazilian friends house, in a town called Cerqueira Cesar, and we will meet the british guys again in Iguassu. Tonight our bus will leave at 11:30, and it will be 10 hours to get there, via Sao paulo. Our plan is to Head to her house for 3 days, and then go to iguassu falls, spend one day on either side, brazil and argentina, and then head to rosario, and spend 10 days with our friend there. Then cory comes in on jan 6, so that will be fun.

Ilha Grande

nickandlaina — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 21:16:00 GMT

So the camera situation is taking longer then i thought. Its hard since our camera doesnt work with all computers, you need some extra software for PCs, none for macs.

So in the morning after our mangueira samba, we slept in until about 2 oclock. Laina and I headed out into Copacabana for a bite to eat(batatas fritas, french fries) and some coconuts to drink. We had to start packing our bags because tonight is our last night in rio de janeiro. After our last shower and packing our final things(sweet! everything fits!) we headed out to a part of rio called Santa Teresa, an old neighborhood, to go hear some samba music. We took the subway, which in Rio is brand spanking new, and got off near the capital buiding. All the streets of this area are cobblestone, and there is a very old feeling about, similar to some part of boston. we got a very old fashioned train that goes really slow. it is a kind of fun thing to do, take this train because it is very old, and rickety. There is a great view from the train, you can see alot of rio as we drove up on a high bridge, over the district of lapa, on our way to santa teresa. Once we got to santa teresa, we got off the train and headed to a little corner, next to the park, and there were tons of people, and loud, fun, samba funk jazz music playing. /it was dark, and there were many people standing and dancing and overflowing onto the street, it is funny because when a car passes through, it has to stop and wait for poepl to move, and everyone gives the car a hard time. After a little while of the music, we started walkking uphill and met up with some more brazilians and started walking towards the other samba bar. as we got closer to the other one, we could hear the loud singing and fun rythmic beat. I could already tell that these guys were really good. Their music had a distinct flamenco sound, because the guitarist was very eclectic and added his own sound. The singer is a girl, and she has a great voice she is singing in the melodic shout/chant of portuguese in the form of samba. At this bar, the greeks showed up with two of the brazilians we were hanging out with, and we all got some beer, and pizza, however we didnt sit down, to sit down it costs, 5R, and a round of beer, 3R, we went with the beer, and it is more fun to dance while eating anyways.After an hour or so, the samba band was done, and we went out to sit on the curb to eat some more. We were getting these pastries that have shrimp in them, and some with cheese, they are very good, and really go well with the beer. when sitting on the curb, i see a hundred people all around me all outside this restrant/bar where the samba was. every one is energetic, and i think that most are meeting each other for the first time. I see this alot in brasil, people will meet for a few minutes, and given that they speak one similar language between the two of them they will chat for a pretty long time, and it seems they will invite them somewhwere or intoroduce them to more friends. the people here are very friendly. I am sitting in a group of 9 people on the curb, and we are a very lively group, speaking mostly portuguese, and english. most of us are telling stories or planning our next trip to ilha grande, which 5 of the 9 people are going to. around midnight, the greeks head home to get a little sleep before our trip, and we head to lapa for some food. We walked to lapa, 30 mins, and got to see alot of the architecture of rio. It is very old, rubbley in some places, and alot of cobblestone. in lapa, we got hamburgers, juice, and fried cassava(like potatoes). and then headed home, because we realized if we want to go to ilha grande tommorow we need to be at the bus station at 4:30am. around 2 am we made it to the apartment, and did some final packing/reading /we cleaned up and then called a taxi. We vouched for the "no sleep" option before the bus. At 4 we took the bus to the station, since it was 4 am, the driver was able to go a normal pace, and still get there really quick, no traffic. At the bus station we met a girl from oregon who was also going to ilha grande by herself, and once the greeks and the brazilian showed up, she quickly joined our group.

We got on the 5oclock bus to Mangaratiba. This town wil have the ferry to take us to Ilha grande. Once on the bus, I said bye Rio de Janeiro, a city i have truely learned to love, and will return to one day. It was night time as we left Rio, and I watched the city lights for an hour as we left the city. The city seemed to go on forever, similar to leaving NYC. eventually we got into a more mountainous region and saw many tropical plant and tall mountains instead of city. As the sun came up we were in a mountainy/coastal area, and it was very beautiful.the mountains here are very tall and very dramatic, almost liek the ones from Dr. suess. so as i looked at thje sunrise, i saw the ocean surrounded by these mountains, and it was spectacular. after 2 hours we rounded a mountain, and headed downhill into mangaratiba, a small fishing village on the water surrounded by mountains. we bought our tickets and one of the greeks and i waited by our bags while the rest went to the market to buy food for our trip. Soon after, we boarded the ferry and were off. The ferry was loud and vibrated strongly, almost to the point where my teeth fell out. The water was beautiful, I was Brown Boobies, the bird, and more frigate birds and a sooty tern. all the bird were fishing, there must be alot of fish. After 80 mins, we got to Ilha Grande.

Ilha Grande is an old pirate lair (the perfect place for us!!) you can tell why immediately. who wouldnt want to live here?! Im sure Pirates loved it. It is beautiful, mountinaous, totally tropical, and has many peninsulas, coves and beaches. I think that Ilha Grande is what you think of when you think tropical island rainforest/ awesome beaches. More so then Hawaii, Ilha grande is very dramatic, and the overall feeling is much more tropical. Once we got off, our brazilian did some negotionations, and scored us all a room for 20R each, 8$ per day. Quickly we headed our and met up with a friend of a brazilian friend, who is a tour guide and had the day off, and wanted to show us around. We headed to the closest beach, 15 min walk, and stopped at many places, like old buidings/ pirate prisons, and bana patches. the beach was great! the water was definatly colder then hawaii, but just as beautiful as the best. I went straight to sleep, considering i hadnt slept in 36 hours! When I woke, I went for a swim and then packed up to go to the river. We hiked into the rainforest, which is extremely thick, just like hawaii. and we headed to a fun little river opening and then to the ruins of an old aquaduct from the 1700s. When hiking back to town I heard somthing in the trees, a squirell? are there even squirells in south america? a monkey!!! no way! yep, there were a family of 4 monkeysd running sround right above us, they were a little bigger then a squirell but 10 times cooler.I forgot monkeys were here! Then we got back home, took showers, napped, and went back out for the nightlife, and beer. btw. the beer here is not that good. it is very light, like bud light, but that is the only option. anyways we found out quickly that there is no night life here, and then went to bed for some more much needed sleep.

Today we went on a boat trip. The boat was a refurbished two masted schooner. and it had an engine, and no sails. /we had liek 35 people on board and alot of fun. We went snorkeling, and I saw many new fish i have never seen. The coral here is much different, and I am happy to see it. Most of it is encrusting coral so it grows on the rock and not up like a plant. The are is amazing. Ilha grande is just like the island you see in tropical island pictures. Blue lagoons, tall mountians of rainforest, and coconut trees. The boat was a blast. I loved seeing the island from afar. Anywyas, tommorow we are going to hike 6 km to a beach on a well trodden path, so i hope we will have fun then. and I have heard rumors that tonight there will be a fun party on the beach!

P.S. I am in an internet cafe with an aweful keyboard. the backspace key kept getting stuck and deleting large chunks! very frustrtaing!!

Feijoada, Mangueira and Birthdays

nickandlaina — Mon, 8 Dec 2008 04:11:00 GMT

Some responses to the comments(me gusta las commentes): Most of the people we have met have an overall positive outlook on gingos(thats what we are, because we are not technically "Americans" since brazilians are americans too) and they have all been friendly towards us. There are a few people, the greeks and a girl from Sao paulo who will travel with us to our next location, Ilha Grande.

This morning, at about 6:45, Crisitana came home from Lapa, these brazilians are crazy! It was already dawn! We all slept in until about 10 and then started to prepare for our saturday afternoon feast, called Feijoada, here in Brasil. Feijoada is a traditional brazilian meal that originated in the begining of the country and had alot of influence by slave culture. The meal consists of four dishes, aalot of meat and starches. There is a kale and garlic dish, a manioc flour(cassava/yuca/manioc/tapioca(not the pudding)these are all the same thing, different names) with bacon fat, onions and garlic dish, a big pot of black beans, bacon, sausage, salt meats, onion and garlic, and of course rice! It is a very filling meal and we shared it with beer and many friends. In cristianas small apartment, we had many people, 5 brazilians, 3 chileanos, 2 americanos(us), 1 french, 1 bolivian, 1 peruvian, 1 lebenese guy, 2 greeks, and some more south americans. It was very exciting. we were all talking and arguing, joking and laughing in many different languages, mostly spanish portuguêse, and some english. So far everyday i have been learning more and more spanish. As the meal was winding down, we got out the birthday cake for the french girl! It was her birthday! We celebrated and soon it was time to go out to dance.

At 1:15 we left the apartment, went to a streetside restaurant and had some beer over fun conversation, we were alot of people and we raised quite a ruckus. After a little while, we headed out and grabbed 3 taxis to take us over to the place we were going, a very large samba school dance hall located in a very happening part of rio. As we drove there, it felt like a car racing vídeo game the táxi driver was going so fast and slaloming the car infront of us. We drove clear across rio in 20 min,looking out the window, i saw the gas station, and I saw there were two options,alcool, which was 1,63R per liter, or gasoline, 2,54R per liter, wow, a big difference. In case you didnt know, brazil has cut down alot of the rainforest to grow sugar cane for alcool, or alcohol, ethanol, and it has hit US magazines for environmentalists as a big coutravoursy. Finally got to the party that was around around the samba school. Getting out of the táxi, i thought to myself, this is brazil. Both side of the blocked off street were loaded with people and blasting speaker, everybody looked like they where here to dance, and have fun. There did not seem to be that many tourist here. As we got closer to the samba school, which is called, Mangueira, their colors are green and pink, and they will be competeing in carneval 2009, the crowd thickened.the building looked to be of thick concrete, and painted white, with thick green and pink stripes. Once inside, we all held hands as we walked through the crowd, because there were som many people inside. The building is about ½ th size of a football field, and is entirely open. At the frount there is a balcony where the band will play, and to the right there is another balcony where the steelstringed ukulele and three singers will play. We crawled our way to the front of the room, there have got to be 2000 people in this room, and the singers are yelling into the microphone, in portuguese getting everyone pumped up for the upcoming show. Then all of a sudden, as loud as thunder, all 50 members of the school slam on their drums. And then the samba beat starts. Like i mentioned in the last samba story, samba beat is very complicated, and intricate, so it is better just to hear it for yourself, and dance along. It was so loud, that I could not hear anything after we left, at 4 am. I was so tired from dancing for that long and all i wanted was a little sleep. Laina, I and the two Chileanos took a táxi back and got some much needed rest.

Things to look up: Mangueira samba, Feijoada, and Manioc

Favela.

nickandlaina — Sat, 6 Dec 2008 16:42:00 GMT

We'd like to thank everyone for their comments! Answering some questions: Rio is 2 hours ahead of new york city, I(nick) am writing the blog, with help from laina for descriptions, pictures will come soon!, we just need to gather the cameras.

Yesterday we slept in, 3 PM! When we woke up, we headed to the grocery store for some lunch food, mangoes,cachaça (brazilian sugar cane brandy, similar to rum, but sweeter, and with a distinct flavor, the bottle was 4R, or 2$ for a liter) and fresh bread! yum! Then a new couchsurfer showed up at Cristianas house, Phillipe from Chile. He had to carry his bicycle(in a box) 6 blocks, because he got off at the wrong stop.

After strolling the Copacabana strip, we headed home to get ready for our long night ahead. Cristiana is going to take us to a favela, a Brazilian slum, to go to a party at abed and breakfast high up in the favela. She says that this Favela is the "safest" favela in Rio de Janeiro. At about 9:30 two guys show up at the apartment, one is from germany, and the other, france. They have been living in Rio for a long time, and can speak portuguese well. This is the begining of our group of many countries! Around 10 Oclock we head out, to a small restraunt on street side, for some beers and music, Samba! While we were socializing, a brazilian kid came up to us with an empty bag, he was collecting our empty beer cans, unfortunately i still had some beer in mine to finish. At the restaurant one more friend from Argentina showed up to join our group as well as a couple, one from Peru and one from Bolivia. Once we were all together, we headed towards the bus station, but we were slowed down by another restaurant when everyone realized they were hungry. So this is how Brazilian time works, I had thought we were headed straight to the Favela, but now 1 1/2 hours have gone by, and we are still in Copacabana! So in this small Botega, a brazilian fast food joint, I got a Coxhina, which is like spiced chicken wrapped in dough and deep fried! Very Delicious. Laina got an Açai berry smoothie, which she later regretted, but it was very good, but extrememly sweet. So we got on the bus and headed to Catate, the district with the Favela we were headed to.

Once we got off, we walked 15 mins to get to the base of the Favela. Brazilian slums are largely placed on very steep hills that are not occupied by other houses. This results on the streets and alleys being extremely steep and windey. At the bottom of the hill a bunch of brazilians offered to take us up to the top of the favela on the back of a motorcycle, I thought this would be dangerous! Philippe the Chilean, and Marcus the Argentine took the motorcycles, and we all took a taxi to the top.

Driving into the Favela was quite an experience. All the streets are cobblestone, or dirt. They are very steep and very narrow. THe taxi driver sped like a bat out of hell as he flew up the hill. Above the street there are soo many power cables in all directions it looks like a huge black spiderweb. The sides of the street are houses and buildings. All the brickwork was not done proffesionally, and you can tell from the sloppy motar and non symetrical lines, that each person probably built their own house. The colors here are amazing. There are many tile mosiacs of bright colors on the ground, and on walls. Many people are hanging out their brightly colored clothes to dry too! It seems that the Favela is full of culture and color, and that much of brazils flavor comes from these Favelas.

When we got to the top, we went to a club called the Maze hotel. They host big parties once a month and many people from brazil go. Not to many tourists are willing to go into a favela without knowing what they are doing for a party. We are very lucky, Crisitana hase been there 5 times, and here friends know the area too. We would not have gone without them. The maze hotel is an actual favela slum house, that has been slightly renovated but not too much, so you can see what it should look like. The club was packed! When we got there is was totally full. It costs 10R, whis is lke 5 dollars, and the drinks are 7R which is like 3.50$ not so bad. There is a jazz band playing, a keyboardist and a saxophone. They are good, but they are not the reason people are here. As I walked upstairs the brickwork is very narrow and there is hardly any room for your shoulders. when I got to the roof, I could see why this place was such and attraction! It opened up into a circle room without a roof, and it was full mosiac-ed absolutley beautiful. All differenent colors and shapes. There were 5 different openeings to the room, even though it is open air, and I headed out one of them. It opened up to a porch which overlooked all of the Favela, and then flamengo, and also the classic Rio de janeiro landscape, green mountains, beautiful ocean, bays, and marinas with sailboats. keep in mind it is about 1Am now. Its dark, but everything is lit up by street lights. The Favela looks amazing, just like the picture from the movies. Closly built houses, extremely steep terrain, giving the architecture a very dramatic feel, and many colors, and power lines. Inside the club there are 300 people, it is shoudler to shoulder packed, and eveyone is talking singing or drinking beer, out of the 1liter bottles brazilian only seem to have. We stayed until 3:45am, and i was not tired, because nobody else was. 3:45 semmed more like a number then a time, since in the US, there would be nobody anywhere but bed at 3:45, and everyone here was excited. Then crisitana decided to go to the bars in Lapa for some food, and we (laina, phillpe and I) vouched to head back home to rest. Heading out of the favela was a little scarier, because there were more more people that lived there, and less people from the party out and about. We grabbed a taxi home, about 20 mins, and 15R, 7$, got into the apartment and passed out. Very exciting night!!

Things to look up: Favela, Maze Hotel, Coxshina (i think thats how it is spelled)

Samba!

nickandlaina — Fri, 5 Dec 2008 15:39:00 GMT

So last night when we got back from the internet cafe, which was our last stop on the way home, we settled down, and started getting ready to sleep, it had been a long day and our eyes were hardly staying open. After a few minutes, cristiana came home, took one look at laina (I was trying to not look tired, she apparently was not)and asked, "are you too tired to go out tonight?" We were like, Oh, but it is 11 oclock at night, isnt it bed time? Cristiana smiled, and told us there was a samba band playing in the district of Lapa, a 30 min bus ride to the north. We decided excitedly to go, Samba! Sweet! Ive only heard it on CD!

We got on the bus outside Critianas apartment, which i forgot to describe how beautiful the streets of Copacabana are:

As you walk down the street towards the beach, picture a smaller sized city street lined on both sides with huge tropical trees with large thick branches that shade the street heavily, so you feel as if you are in a jungle, and tons of smaller palms all around, at ground level, and then when you look at the sidewalk you see that is it a mosiac of black and white tiles all of broken pieces and it feels like a cobblestone street underneath your feet.

Back to the story, so head head down on of copacabanas streets, catch a bus, 2R, about 90 cents, for 30 mins in to the part of Rio called Lapa. As we get off the bus, i realized that Lapa is a totally hip/individual/really cool place. The buildings look like old european style, maybe italian, they are probably really old, but they have all been converted into bars, and art galleries within the last 10 years, Lapa seems to be the Greenwich villiage(NYC) of Rio. Laina´s favorite part was the plethora of graffiti art over most walls, they were all very well done, and looked good, besides being graffiti. On the next block and a half, we found a new bar that just opened today, saw 1000+ people about my age, and some older, we bought some fresh squeezed fruit juice, I got mango! Laina got Lilikoi, passion fruit, i forget the portuguese word. Delicious! Then we headed to the street where the band was going to play. Actually I was able to hear it already, the band must have started earlier that night. We headed up the street which the band was on, there must have been 1000 people, just on this 200m stretch on cobblestone street.

As we get closer, the sound of Brazilian Samba gets louder. If you don´t know Samba music, it sounds like this: Strong african beat with one or more drums, but it is a difficult beat, and often sounds off-beat. Then there is a guitar, bells, a steelstring Ukelele, more drums, a flute and saxaphone. The band is all sitting around a picnic table, surrounded by listeners, speakers, microphones and assorted instruments waiting their turn to be played. All singing is done in portuguese of course, but i think that the most characteristic part of sampba is the way the singing goes with the drums, anyways you gotta listen to it, maybe type "samba" into youtube or somthing, pick the most brazilian looking video, and maybe you´ll see.

As we approach the music, we meet up with some of cristianas friends, a german, two greeks (self-appointed "greek-gods" and yes, Holly, they are very simular to the greek characters in "The Ruins"), another person from the US, and two more brazilians. As we meet each person we greet with a kiss on both cheeks hello, which is the standard here, and immediately start sharing stories of the last 24 hour trip. The music picks up its rythm, the drums get that irresistable dacing beat, and every starts the samba dance, a typical latin dance involving moving your body in ways that you can´t and watching all th brazilians in their very natural environment.

At about 2:30AM cristiana decided we are all getting tired, and it is time to do some sightseeing. We leave the samba band and head out of Lapa. We walk for a few minutes, and come across a large set of stairs, that are all set in a sort of masiac tiles of brillliant yellow and green (of course, brasil´s national colors) red and blue. The stairs are the work of an artist who is constantly changing them and adding more colors and tiles every day and taking down old ones. We shot some pictures, and decided to head home. We got back at about 3, and passed out. I just woke up around 1 pm, and wrote this letter. Lots of fun!

Things to check out:

Brazilian Samba, Marisa Monte (musician), Lapa, Copacabana

P.S. the plane ticket I bought is fully refundable for 1 year, even after the flight.

Rio de Janeiro!

nickandlaina — Thu, 4 Dec 2008 22:42:00 GMT

So today we made it to Brasil!!It is so wonderful here! It was a struggle to get here , but much worth it!

After 3 Long days of flying and flying we cover about 8k miles to get here. I got the 12 hour flu the day before we left boise, so i was alright. However when laina got the flu, we were going to bed in portland the night before our big flight. So in the morning, our couchsurfing host´s dad, Eric, gave us a ride to the airport(very nice) and Laina was virtually incapacitated as the desk clerk told me I couldn´t go to brazil because i had no proof of my departure from the country! I ended up buying a rufundable ticket on the spot so i could board the plane. As I walked through the airport, my pack on my back and lainas on my chest, with two gigantic purses on each shoulder, I made it to the gate, and took a much needed break, and laina took a long nap. I am knitting a hat out of yarn for one of my upcoming couchsurfing hosts, Its nice way to put behind the thought of customs turning me around in my tracks and sending me back to the states!

Ok so after almost a day of flying from portland, we landed in Rio! Immediately I noticed its simularities to Hawaii! Mango trees! Loaded with fruit! I saw huge, lush green spikey mountains, all over the horizon, palm trees everywhere, and the immistakble sound of portuguese conversation. We quickly gave our friend cristiana a call, headed to the Real oniautobus, and got on for an hour long drive through Rio de Janeiro. The drive was very interesting! At first there were Favelas, the brazilian term for slums, they were numurous, with many people drying laundry, and playing games. Then of course the random castle, im not joking, there in the middle of the favela is a Castle! very interesting. Some of the other architecture is absolutly gourgous, but it has graffiti and a definate sense of brazilian culture. We got off the bus at none other then Copacabana beach, the atlantic ocean, a beautiful stretch of beach culture, hotels and apartments. In the air I saw many Magnificent Frigatebirds, a large seabird that look slike a pterodactyl, an acient dinosaur.

We made our way up one of the smaller streets with the ocean to our backs, and got to cristianas apartment. We settled in and tooks shower to freshen up after the long travel, then we headed out to the beach strip for a better look.

Copacabana is beautiful, In the background you can see the classic Rio horizon, filled with those lush green peaks of mountains far away, the breeze is thick with troical warmth and salt from the ocean. We bought a coconut and took a seat facing the water, admiring the sunset behind us. We are very excited to be in Rio and can´t wait for tommorow.

-Nick

p.s. I worte this in 20 mins. sorry for any errors, grammatical or spelling

Family in Connecticut

nickandlaina — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:30:00 GMT

I had fun with my Family in Connecticut