After quitting our jobs, selling our furniture, saying goodbye to our dear families and friends and the wonderful city of Austin, TX, we have set out to travel the world, or at least as much of it as we can. We hope our experiences and photos reach everyone back home.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

New Zealand & a bit more on Peru & Bolivia

Hello mates! As they would say here in New Zealand, where we’ve been now for over two weeks. This beautiful country has kept us so busy with all sorts of outdoor adventures that we’ve barely seen a computer in all our time here (which is probably a good thing). We’ve seen penguins, fur seals, sea lions, volcanoes, and all sorts of amazing landscapes, gone blackwater rafting in a caves filled with gloworms, trekked across a mountain in snow up to our calves, driven ATVs through the rainforest, experienced a traditional Maori concert and dinner, and loads more! But first, we need to catch up on the last of our South American adventures.

Our first stop in Peru was Cusco, a very touristy, but nice city where everyone comes before heading up to Machu Picchu. We felt a bit spoiled there, but happily so, with tons of good restaurants and bars to choose from and lots of shopping. We were especially excited when the French owner of a bar we frequented called Pepe Zeta recommended an Indian food restaurant that of course I can't remember the name of, but it's the only one in town. The food was so good and such a nice change of pace that we ate there twice. After a few days acclimatizing to the altitude and watching the last of the World Cup games, we took the train up to Aguas Calientes, which is the village just below the Machu Picchu ruins. We spent one night there so that we could get an early start the following day at the ruins. One note about Aguas Calientes: they do have hot water, as the name would imply…there are hot water springs that you can take a dip in for a small price. The setting is quite amazing with the Andes hovering above you and lush greenery all around, however, I wouldn’t recommend actually going into the water. Not the cleanest or best smelling water and the locals believe the pools are medicinal, so you’ll see men with huge wounds just plopping right in. Eww. Unfortunately, Mike and I realized this after the fact. No worries though, we are still here and healthy.

But anyhow, as I’m sure you guys have seen in our photos, we made it up to Machu Picchu very early the next day...we took the 5:30am bus, which got us there at about 6am. This is the absolute best time to arrive, as there is no one else there, save for a few llamas. After loading up on photos at the Caretaker’s Hut, which is where you can take the famous shot of the ruins, we headed through to the back of the ruins, where Wayna Picchu is. They allow only 400 people a day to climb this very steep mountain. And steep it was, with ropes to help you along in the more challenging spots. It does quite a number on your legs, but well worth it for the views at the top. If you are heading to Machu Picchu and decide to do the climb, just don’t turn your back to the edge when taking a photo. We were told that a lady did that and starting stepping backward to adjust the view of her photo and she stepped until there was no longer ground under her feet. There’s really not much to save you at those heights. And of course, this is Peru, so there’s no warning signs anywhere.

mike & jen machu picchu shot

We also did the hike to the Great Cave, which we would not recommend as it takes about 3 hours there and back and really isn’t so “great”. We were also out of water by that time and began to greatly despise anything that went even slightly uphill. Nevertheless, we made it back to check out the rest of the ruins, which by midday were packed with tourists.

After one more night resting our sore legs in Cusco, we headed to Arequipa next. Our bus trip there was quite a unique experience (and one that I hope never to have again), but Mike is writing up something about that and will post it a bit later. We quite liked Arequipa, which is located in the southwest part of Peru and is known as "the white city” for its white colonial buildings. They have an incredible monastery there that we took a tour of as well as Juanita, the most well preserved ice mummy in South America…or maybe it was the first. Either way, it was super cool.

From Arequipa, we took a guided tour to the Colca Canyon, stopping for one night in a small, small town called Chivay. We met some really cool girls from Arizona, who you will see in our photos (we met up with them again later in Bolivia and Argentina). We did some Peruvian dancing and ate some Peruvian food, which is basically white rice, maybe some fries and a slice of tomato or two, and meat, either alpaca (llama), chicken, or trout. Gets a bit old as you would imagine. And yes, Mike always opted for the llama, in case anyone was wondering. The next morning, we woke up at 5am and headed out to do some condor watching! These birds were HUGE with a wingspan about the size of an NBA player. We were also at some pretty high elevations throughout this trip, so we stopped often for some mate de coca (tea with coca leaves) or munched on coca leaves and coca candy, all of which are meant to help with altitude. Can’t really say that it did, but we tried it out anyway. When in Rome…

Coca leaves...helps with the altitude (& illegal in most countries)

After leaving Arequipa, we bussed it down to Puno for our final stop in Peru. Puno, unfortunately, was not a very nice city, but it is where everyone comes for access to the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, as well as the floating islands (Islas Flotantes). After a short boat ride, we stepped out onto the floating islands, which are so named because they are made entirely of straw and hence are floating in the lake. And there are people who actually live there, making their living mainly from tourism, of course, as well as selling miniature versions of all the millions of things that they make out of straw. Crazy stuff. Even crazier was that of all places to run into some fellow Austinites, it happened to be there…on islands made out of straw, in the middle of a lake, in Peru. Ha. And they are the only Austinites we’ve met so far during our entire trip.

From Puno, we bussed it again across the border to Bolivia for a look at the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca from a small town called Copacabana. MUCH nicer than Puno and we’d definitely recommend going that route if you have to choose between the two. Also, crossing the border by way of Yunguyo is MUCH better than going by way of Desaguadero. The first time we crossed by way of Yunguyo, it was a mad house (I think most of you saw the photo of me at the Peru border). There were Peruvians and Bolivians everywhere, half of them trying to cut in line for the immigration stamp and the other half trying to sell you pens to fill out your immigration forms. That’s South America for you. There are pens in the office by the way…chained to the wall. Anyhow, lucky for this Canadian guy on our bus that Mike and I happened to have a quick conversation with in the immigration office, because afterwards he walked off for a second to find a restroom and the bus started leaving and we were the only ones who noticed that he had not made it back on the bus. There’s no such thing as a “count”. So, we yelled at the driver to stop and Mike ran off to go find the guy. Whew. One lucky Canadian bacon. Sorry, we have to poke a little fun at Canadians, considering how much they absolutely despise being confused with Americans. So much so in fact, that it’s very common among the traveling community to ask a person with a North American accent if they are Canadian first, because they get HIGHLY offended if you ask them if they are American. Ridiculous.

But back to Copacabana. We splurged a bit here and stayed in a really nice hotel called Hotel Cupola. We had our very own little bungalow with a great view of the lake. A whopping $32 dollars a night for the two of us. Gotta love that exchange rate…8 bolivianos to the dollar. During the day, we headed out to La Isla del Sol, about an hour and half by boat from the shore. There are some truly spectacular views of Lake Titicaca from here. This was where the Incas believed the Sun was born. We hiked across the entire island, about 3.5 hours of nonstop walking…lots of uphill, too, so not so easy. But we met some really nice Brazilian and French people along the way, so it was good fun.

Jen's new friend

Our next stop was La Paz, but unfortunately I’m going to have to save that for our next post as the internet here in New Zealand is quite expensive and we need to head to the airport for our flight to Sydney. Yes! We are already moving on! But don’t worry, we’ll catch you guys up on everything in between when we get chance. By the way, the last of our South American photos are up on Flickr and New Zealand photos will be coming soon. Sweet as.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Back to a more refined section of South America

Ahhhhh!! Back in Argentina and lovin it! As Jen said, we had a good time in Peru and Bolivia and saw tons of amazing sites, but Buenos Aires is now like a home away from home for the both of us and its great to be here. With Leticia being such an incredible hostess (even though she’s thousands of miles away at the moment, we’re still getting check ups and event calendar updates emailed daily) and with the people being as nice as they can be, how could we not be enjoying ourselves?

Since we’ve gotten back to BA we’ve devoted the majority of our time to eating great high quality inexpensive food (namely beef), drinking plenty of fresh brewed coffee (a rarity in Peru and Bolivia) and posting massive amounts of travel photos. I hope everyone has been keeping up because at this point we’ve just made through the near end of our Brasil travels and still have Peru and Bolivia to go.

the bday boy

From here on out we’re going to try and be a bit more specific about the traveling as far as naming, and sort of rating, the modes of transportation, the hostels, bars, restaurants and tour agencies. We’ve found some very useful info on others travel blogs and thought we’d add to the travel info database… plus we have a couple of complaints and don’t want others to make the same mistakes… all and all we’re having a terrific time, have met tons of great people, but still wish we had everyone from home going through these experiences with us. Keep checking back and we miss ya'll.