Catching Up Part 2

Hey all! Here are the rest of my journal entries for the last few weeks!

Monday, November 10, 2008

I have hiked Machu Picchu! It was four days of hiking and biking, some parts definitely harder than others. We went 25 miles or so the first day by bike, then 15 miles hiking through the jungle up and down mountains the next day. The third day was also hiking, but a lot simpler, no mountains! We just followed railroad tracks for 5 hours. I got a pretty good blister somewhere in there. At the end of the second day we stopped at some gorgeous hot springs. It was really nice to relax the tired muscles in the hot water, and it was surprisingly clean and new looking. The third night we spent in Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu. We got up the next morning at 3:45 in order to hike the hour and a half to the top of Machu Picchu to be there when the sun rose. It was quite the hike, let me tell you! Straight up a mountain. There were stairs almost the whole way up, so it was like climbing stairs for over an hour. Oof. Besides our group of 6, maybe 10 other people did the early morning walk. When we got to the top we were excited to see that we just beat the tourists coming by bus, and we were first in line. Ha! Once we got in we raced to the other side of the park to get to the Waynu Picchu entrance before everyone else. They only let in 400 people a day to that part, and we wanted to go up in the morning while it was still cool. I was #20 in the door. Waynu Picchu is the mountain you always see sticking up behind the ruins in the pictures. From the top there is just an amazing view. But it was a pretty tricky hike too, another hour straight up. From the bottom you couldn’t even tell where the path was, it was just straight up there. I managed to twist my ankle on the first step up Waynu Picchu. So close to the end! It swelled up pretty good afterwards, hiking on it probably wasn’t the best idea, but I couldn’t not go all the way. The view was totally worth it, all the ruins were just stretched out below just like in all the pictures. The walk back down was pretty terrifying at times; it was definitely a proceed at your own risk hike! I didn’t think I would be able to do the hiking that day, I had considered taking the bus, and I’m really proud of myself that I could do it. We did take the bus back down, since the weather wasn’t looking great and our legs were like jelly. Monica and I were both pretty exhausted after that, so we just hung out in a coffee shop until our train back to Cusco that evening. Played some gin. Our train was nice, and I sat next to a friendly German physicist. He had a cool gizmo that showed the altitude changing. When we got back to Cusco Monica and I went right back to the hotel and crashed. It was a good sleep, until 8 am when our shower inexplicably turned on. Weird. We had a lazy day wandering around Cusco; did some shopping, sat in the part, searched for a 12 sided stone… We met our hiking friends at a restaurant called Jack’s for supper and exchanged pictures. Also, we finally found the 12 sided stone, it was on the street by the restaurant. It really was a stone in a wall that had 12 sides. Somehow I was expecting more. Left at 8:30 for our night bus to Puno.

I just have a few other comments about the hiking that have come to me now that I’ve written this all out. Johan was a very interesting guide. Very knowledgeable and capable, but still really young and immature in a lot of ways. He had a lot of tall tales and stories to impress us, he liked the praise I think. Apparently his family was pretty poor until someone from the Lonely Planet guidebook stumbled upon them and wrote a good review. Now they’re doing really well I guess. It’s kind of interesting that the one review changed their whole family’s life. Johan was telling me about the religion of a lot of the Andean people in the area. Apparently a lot of them combine elements from Catholicism and traditional Quichua religion. Makes sense. He told me about a ceremony involving coca leaves as an offering to the gods, and about a man who could tell the future. It was interesting, to say the least. Oh, and speaking of coca leaves, I bought some dried leaves at a stop along our hike and we chewed some. Supposed to be good for hiking, makes you not tired or thirsty. I don’t think I really got the same effect, but it did make part of my tongue go numb. Good stuff.

New Word of the Day: coca (cocaine plant leaves)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Today was a day of waiting. But before I get to that, I’ll tell you about Puno and Lake Titicaca. We got into Puno at about 4 am, way earlier than we expected, and didn’t know what to do. It was to early to do anything, and too late to try and find a hotel. We ran into a travel agent who booked us on a tour of the lake for later that day, and knew of a cheap hotel that was open. We were slightly concerned because we had to pay him for everything upfront (scam!), but it was all okay. It would have been the perfect time to scam us though, we were really too tired to care. The hotel was pretty nice. We slept for a few hours there and headed out at around 9 for our tour. Took a bus to Lake Titicaca, then a boat out to see some of the floating islands. The lake is very pretty, and the water itself looked really clean and clear. Apparently it’s the highest lake in the world, cause of the equatorial bulge. The floating islands were very cool; they are islands made out of reeds by the indigenous people. So they’ve made their own islands! It was sweet. They showed us a little model of the process. They actually cut big 10 x 10 meters pieces of land out of the bottom of the lake when the water levels are low, and that land just bobs up to the top. Then they tie them all together and pile lots and lots of reeds on top. They anchor it to the lake bottom, otherwise they would float all over the place. If someone ever wants to leave, they just get a saw and cut off their part of the island. Everything is made out of reeds: houses, boats, they even eat it. Kind of flavorless and starchy. There was a family on the island we visited (it was called Uros) and, of course, they had lots of things to sell. I did buy a little painting off a kid ( I nicknamed him Tubby), he told me it was a picture of a woman who was getting married being taken by boat to her new husband’s home by her father. It seemed appropriate. Tubby threw in a little bracelet for free. The sad thing was that the people weren’t interested in conversation unless you were going to buy something. All the people were overweight, and our guide said it was a result of living on the water. I don’t really know what that means, but I’ll have to look into it further. I can’t imagine their diet is that good, they live off of fish and reeds, with the occasional traded potato and rice. It was very peaceful and pretty on the reed islands; when you were sitting on it you could feel and see the island moving underneath. After our tour of the island we got a little history lesson. Apparently Titicaca means “stone puma” in Quichua, and it has been a very important lake for thousands of years.

After all that excitement we went back to our hotel (after grabbing a quick lunch) and crashed for a few hours. Our bus was at 8:30 pm (another night bus!), so we just hung out until then. Wandered around a local market looking for a plastic satchel for Monica. Unsuccessful. We also FINALLY rode in a Tuctuc, a motorcycle taxi. We’d seen them everywhere and just hadn’t ever taken one. It was fun. We took it to the bus station. And that’s where everything went bad….

So our bus had nice seats. They folded all the way back like tiny beds. Pretty comfortable in the scheme of bus travel. I fell asleep and woke up around 2:30 to find that the bus had stopped. This is not uncommon, so I fell back asleep. Woke up again at 5:30 to see that we were still in the same spot. Well, that can’t be good, I thought to myself. It took another hour for us to get going, there was some problem with the motor. Probably had to wait until daylight to get it fixed. We’re on our way and we get about 30 minutes, and then stop again in a little town. There we sit for 2 and a half hours while they change two tires that were flat. Two! They were the slowest tire changers I’ve ever seen in my life. Honestly, I wanted to go out and do it myself. We finally got to Tacna, our destination, at around 12:30 pm, only 6 hours later than scheduled. Once in Tacna we had to find a way to get across the border to Arica, Chile. There was a bus strike going on, so none of the buses were running. Perfect. We ended up taking a collectivo (a taxi for 5 strangers), which turned out to be okay, but cost a little more than we expected. I’m so sick of being hassled by people; there were about 20 people trying to get us to take their car. Total sensory overload, and we were exhausted, which didn’t help anything. We finally just picked a company and did the 30 minute ride to “la frontera”. It took forever to get into Chile, the line moved so slowly through customs! The nice thing was that we did not have to pay any fee to enter the country, so we avoided the $100 that airtravelers have to fork over. Anyway, we made it, and took another collective to Arica from the border. From there (that’s right, it continues) we had to take the 5 hour hus ride to Iquique on the coast. That’s where our flight was to Santiago. We were hoping to be able to spend the afternoon there, enjoy the coast, find a nice hostal….but no, we didn’t get in until after midnight. We’ve decided to just go to the airport rather than spend money on a hostal for all of 5 hours.

New Word of the Day: paro (strike)

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

We’ve now gone 3 nights without a bed to sleep in. It hasn’t been too bad, but we’re definitely looking forward to getting to Santiago. Showers! Sleeping in a bed! Ah. It’s gonna be good. The ride to the airport lastnight from the bus terminal was actually pretty far, and the taxi driver was going over 125 km per hour for quite a bit of the time. A little scary. When we got the airport it was deserted. There was just the one employee there. It was open, and he said it was perfectly fine to wait and sleep in the lobby. We had some PB&J for supper, cause nothing was open, and settled in. It was kind of cool to have an airport all to ourselves. Later on a manager came in and took pity on us. We must have looked really pathetic, cause he let us go into an office behind the ticket counters to sleep. It wasn’t that comfortable, but definitely better than the uncomfy chairs. The floor was definitely cleaner than some of the hostal beds we’ve stayed in. It was so nice of the jefe to let us sleep there, never would have happened at home. At 7 am we go up, stumbled out from behind the counter and were the first to check in for our flight. Now we’re on our way to the final destination, Santiago! From there we will just do some little day trips. So no more night buses! Yay! I’m so happy. My ankle is pretty swollen from my machu picchu mishap, and all the time on the bus hasn’t been helping.

New Word of the Day: hincharon (swelling)

Friday, November 14, 2008

This is day 3 in Santiago. We arrived at about 11 am on the 12^th. Good flight, they even fed us. We took a ridiculously explensive taxi from the airport ($20!) and tried to get a room at La Casa Roja, but there weren’t any spaces. We went a few blocks down to Backpackers International, which was okay, but a little sterile. Not much atmosphere, you know? Our roomie was nice though, a girl from Australia. In the afternoon Monica and I went to a museum of pre-columbian art. It was very nice, if a little small. We wandered around downtown for awhile, looking at all the big buildings and people watching. Bought some german roasted peanuts, which were awesome. Santiago has such a different feel from Quito! It’s kind of posh feeling downtown, coffee shops and ritzy clothes stores. Even the people look different. There are definitely more European genes at work, although everyone still has dark hair and eyes. Monica and I are cat called less here, although we still get some of it. We went and had good icecream Wed night and went to bed after an hour of tv (that was just to make it a reasonable hour to go to bed; 8 would have been to early!). I slept like a rock. Woke up around 9 and decided we didn’t have time to make it to the nearby winery for their morning tour. We chose instead to do a day of shopping, and hit the winery the next day. The first market we went to was small, over priced, and they wouldn’t bargain. Bad combo in a market. But the second, Santa Lucia, was awesome! It was huge, and there were lots of really really cool unique things. I bought some jewelry mostly. It took us hours to go all the way through. I bought some clothes for myself. Cause I needed more things in my suitcase… It was fun in the market to be able to speak Spanish with the vendors, when there were so many Americans around who couldn’t and just spoke loudly in English. Chilean Spanish is harder to understand though, they slur together a lot of their sounds and go very quickly. For supper we tried a café near the hostal, I had some good pizza and wine. All in all a very good day!

Today we went to the Cousino Macul winery. Their website said that it was very easy to walk to, just a thirty minute walk from one of the subway stops. Ha! There was no sidewalk, and while we were walking a woman came up to us and told us that it was too dangerous for us to walk that way, we should take a taxi. No taxis around. But we made it fine, so I’m not really sure why the road was so dangerous. We arrived for the start of the tour only 5 minutes late. It was a very good tour. I learned that white wines aren’t improved by age, and that they are only made from the juice, while red wines get their flavor and color from the grape skins. Good to know. I bought a bottle of the pricey ($18) “romantic, only to be consumed by couples” wine, hoping I can get that back to Minneapolis safely. We took a bus back, which apparently we got for free because the driver thought we had a pass, then tried to find a place to eat at a big mall by the subway stop. No food. We ended up getting a crappy but cheap lunch at a random diner place. We changed hostals, and are now at the Luz Azul, which I definitely prefer. It’s really cool looking, and has a kitchen! And it’s cheaper, so good all around. We tried to make brownie pancakes in the kitchen, cause there was no oven. They were okay, but not great. Further experimentation is necessary. We met some girls going to Valparaiso tomorrow, we’re going to go with them. We decided not to go to Mendoza, Argentina, because of the bus strikes. We’re slightly concerned that we could get there and then be stuck, which would be bad since I fly back on the 17^th. We’re just chillin in the hostal this evening, it’s a nice hang out place. Note to self: buy more wine!

New word of the day: viñero (vineyard)

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Today was our coastal adventure. Metro to bus, bus to Vina del Mar, bus to Valparaiso, bus back to Vina del Mar, bus to Santiago, metro to hostal. Lots of travel time, but it was really pretty scenery. We got groceries when we got to Vina and ate sandwiches on the beach. The water was beautiful, lots of rocks and birds and pretty blue water. It would have been nice to spend more time there. Kitty, one of our new friends, cut her hand open making her sandwich, got it pretty deep, so we had to go looking for some steristrips. THAT was a fun one to try and explain in Spanish. We took a bus in the afternoon to nearby Valparaiso, and after walking for not that long realized that there was nothing to do there. We did take “el acensor” to the top of one of the big hills in town (it’s like a cable car). Then we walked UP another huge hill to the house of some famous poet. I’d never heard of him, to my shame. We didn’t have the time, money, or modivation to go into the museum part, but we had a really nice view of the ocean from up there. Took a bus back to Vina to get our bus back to Santiago, and got back just in time to make an omlette and go to bed. It was delicious. Oh, and the door to my locker in the hostal broke. Whoopsies. Kitty and Laura (the other new friend) are taking the same flight as me on Monday morning, think we’re gonna share a cab.

New Word of the Day: multa (fine, like the one you pay)

Monday, November 17, 2008

Well, I’m on the first leg of my journey home. I’m on the 7:40 am flight from Santiago to Quito. I changed hostels once again last night, because the Casa Roja was cheaper, and had a cheaper shuttle to the airport. Couldn’t stay with Monica though, which was kind of a bummer. We went to get a bus ticket for her to Mendoza last night, and they informed us that there is a bus strike and she can’t get to Argentina. Hopefully that clears up soon so she can be on her way! I guess it was a good decision for me not to go to Mendoza a few days ago, otherwise I would have been stuck there too. We still had a little celebration of our last night traveling together. Got some wine, which was harder than you might think. Everything was closed. It was a Sunday afternoon, I suppose, but that’s no excuse. We finally found a botelleria open, and got some really very good Chardonnay. Drank that bottle, then went and had some good pizza and more wine. And then we said good bye. It was sad, we’ve been together pretty much 24-7 for the last month. I hope it’s not the last time we hang out, I told her she needs to come to MN in May! With the exception of the sad parting, it was a really good day. We started out kind of lazy like in the morning, packed up our stuff and ate breakfast. Since we were in the dorm room with 10 other people it was a little awkward trying to get packed up, they were all still sleeping at 11! We just woke them up at that point, it was a little ridiculous. We checked out and then went on a walking tour of the city. It was outlined in our travel guide. The walk was a little boring at times, not really all that much to see, but we passed through some markets and festivals that were interesting. There was one that looked like a women’s rights rally. We got a little lost at one point, which turned out to be an awesome thing when we encountered this cool little ice cream café, La Rosa Emporium. They had rose flavored ice cream! It was amazing. I splurged on a triple, honey, rose and blackberry. Oh. My. Gosh. It was like eating summer (thanks for the analogy, mom). After our long afternoon walk we went back to my hostal and soaked our feet in the pool for awhile. Splashed by some cute little kids and inconsiderate Germans. Germans…Then we went on our wine quest, and that about sums it all up!

When I got to my hostal last night after dinner there was some confusion. They had apparently double booked the bed, and it took a while to sort it all out. I did end up with a bed, and met a nice girl from Germany. She let me use her cell phone for an alarm clock, which was really sweet. Monica had the alarm clock! I got up before the alarm even, I think I was really nervous about missing my flight, and was ready to go at 5 am!

New Word of the Day: chaleco salvavidas (life vest)