Wrap up: Highlights, Lowlights, and plenty of Sunblock

We are in Acapulco now enjoying a decidedly non-cultural end to our trip. Sometimes it's hard for me to get comfortable in these resorty places. It's jarring how much lighter skinned the Mexicans staying here are vs the help (vendors, custodians, maids). But of course it's like that pretty much everywhere in the world (in India they just applied formality and structure to it). Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with these kinds of places. It's hard to judge when you too are lying back in the infinity pool with a smoothie in hand. 

Favorite Things

Fruit Juices

We loved all the varieties of fruit juices and there were cheap enough that you could order them every meal. 

People

You will always meet travelers that insist the people in _____ are particularly warm and friendly. I dont buy it. I find friendly and unfriendly people everywhere. I don't think it has much to do with the country or city. The only differences being how busy or rural a place is and how novel you appear to them. We enjoyed meeting the locals, but fellow travelers are also interesting. We met plenty off eccentric folks and they probably deserve their own entry. For ex. a week ago we stayed with an "evangelical Jew" who would tell us over dinner how every word of the bible was true and that in 15-20yrs Jesus was returning and we better be ready. 

Speaking of people, one thing I noticed was how often we saw a husband who was much older than his wife. I mean thirty or so years. It's so hard for me to understand. I get that they probably saw it as an even exchange. She may have come from a poorer background and now gains financial stability and no more worries about all things related. He gains a wife who will always be thirty years younger than he is (even if she doesn't always look like she's twenty three). But what do they have in common? What do they talk about? 

Animals

You probably picked up from other entries that we love the animals. We have seen a lot of interesting creatures on this trip. 

Salutations

There are a whole variety of ways people say,"Have a good day" and often when you are eating a meal, someone will walk buy and say "buen provecho".  Bus drivers wave at truck drivers, that sort of thing. 

Learning the Language

I was usually more frustrated with my level of Spanish, but at times often I really enjoyed speaking and learning too. The times suceed in having a full half hour long conversation with someone can be quite satisfying. A lot of the euphemisms were fun to learn too. For example, some common pet names for loved ones translate to,"fatso","skinny","my little life" and "bug". 

These are our favorite places:

Outside

Galapagos, Ecuador

Colca Canyon, Peru

Machu Picchu, Peru

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Torres del Paine, Chile

Iguazu Falls, Argentina

Salta area, Argentina (not really Salta itself)

Senda Verde animal reserve, Bolivia

Cities

Cuenca, Ecuador 

Arequipa, Peru

Cuzco, Peru

Valparaiso, Chile

Not So Favorite Things

Language Barrier

This may have frustrated me more than Alex since my Spanish is worse. I was expecting to be further along by now but quickly learned that brief conversations in Spanish and speaking primarily English between us is not the same as really being immersed and having no choice but to learn. 

When someone approaches you trying to be friendly and just make conversation and says, "Do you think there is a lot of blah blah and the weather blah blah with these blah blah?" you have a few bad options. You could say, "Como?" At which point he will probably repeat the same thing that you didn't really understand. You can smile and nod which is risky if its not a yes/no question. Or you can take a guess and say, "Si, mucho trafico." which is of course embarrassing if you are way off. 

There were plenty of times when something would be explained to us, very quickly, and I would just look at Alex hoping she had better luck parsing it. And it never ceases to amaze me that once it becomes obvious to the speaker that your Spanish isn't great that they should slow down and speak more clearly. Asking yields mixed results. 

Food

You always hear about the US having such poor diets, but South America seems worse. Lots of deep fried foods, and not much veggies on the plate. We enjoyed sampling the typical cuisines, but the universal foods served everywhere were pasta, (bad)pizza, burgers and chicken or beef with rice. 

Foods we miss: bagels, Thai food, salad dressing, veggies on the plate, veggie burgers, French toast. 

Bus Rides

Most of the long distance buses were actually rather nice. It was just the rides that we are glad are behind us. We had to take a bunch of 20+ hour rides, but sometimes the shorter ones were worse because of the terrain. We were on one recently where barf bags were handed out to the passengers before the trip. That's never a good sign. 

General Hassles of Travel

-Having to ask five different people where something is (and not fully understanding them all). 

-Taxi drivers that try to rip you off or dont know where your hotel is. 

-Not knowing where you are. Just yesterday we told the bus driver to stop at such and such place. Twenty minutes in when we ask if we are close he says, "oh, we passed it ten minutes ago". Another bus driver told us to notify him when we are there which is tough if you have never been to the place and therefore can't recognize it. 

"Creature comforts" you can't always count on

Wifi, hot water, ac, etc. 

In case anyone missed an entry(can't imagine) and hasn't been keeping careful notes, this is the complete list of where we've been over the last six months, chronologically (admittedly, this might be more for my benefit because I am already starting to forget):

Ecuador

Quito - 1wk and half

Mindo

Otavalo

Quilotoa

Baños

Riobamba

Alausi

Cuenca - 1 wk

Bellavista

Estero de Platano

Galapagos - 1wk

Guayaquil

Peru

Mancora

Lima

Nazca

Arequipa -2wks, more Spanish courses. 

Colca Canyon

Cuzco

Aguas Calientes - Macchu Picchu

Chile

Arica

San Pedro de Atacama

Valparaiso 

Santiago

Puerto Natales - Torres del Paine

Argentina

Califate

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego

Buenos Aires

Iguazu 

Mendoza

Salta

Bolivia

Tupiza

Uyuni

La Paz

Copacabana

Senda Verde

Colombia

Bogota

Villa de Leyva

Cartagena

Medellin

Armenia - La Zona Cafetera

So that's it! Hope you liked our little travelogue. We will soon be back home getting our lives back in order and looking for jobs. 

Coffee Country

After Bolivia, we headed to Cusco, Peru to see that city and Machu Picchu. We had already visited Peru, but left Cusco for later because it was rainy season earlier and the embassy had also been making noise about some Maoist Rebels being in a bad mood. Last time I visited Machu Picchu on an earlier trip, it had been midday and it was packed, so this time we decided to take one traveler's advice and stay in the town at the base of the ruins and get the first bus up at 5:30am. "You will practically be the only ones there", she said. Well at 5:30am, we were joined by several bus loads of tourists also hoping to be the only ones there. Regardless, you can catch the sun rising over the place at that time. It was all very beautiful. If only I had been aware of the smudge covering a fourth of my camera lens. 

The last country on our South American itinerary was Colombia. We've particularly been looking forward to Bogota because my cousin, Mom's sister's son, lives there with his family. He's my age and we have seen each other on and off over the years, but I had never met his wife and six year old son. We had a great visit, and we found that six year olds tend to speak slowly and clearly which was a welcome change from the rapid-fire, no need for spaces between words, Spanish everyone else seems to speak around here. Colombia has had quite the dramatic transformation over the last fifteen years or so and it's much safer than it was. Bus rides between cities that used to be doable only escorted by military vehicles are now commonplace, and we were able to visit cities we wouldn't have before. 

Alex and I doing a little off-road action with my cousin, Martin. 

This place was really interesting, a large mine converted to a chapel. 

Medellin, the second biggest, is one such city. We did a walking tour, and several times our guide would stop us to mention that this clean, modern, square we were looking at where you might see business people having lunch was very recently a real sketch area and a haven for all sorts of crime. Bogota  and Medellin were the most modern, and US-like cities we have seen on this trip with their high rises, big box stores and American retail brands. But nearby are some timeless colonial towns like Villa de Leyva and Solento. 

Cartagena, a Carribean beach town on the coast

Besides drug running and kidnappings, people also think coffee when thinking about Colombia and fortunately that association is still accurate. As I write this, we are in the heart of it, on the west side of the country near the city of Armenia. Coffee plantations are all around. Today we visited a coffee themed amusement park. The theme didn't carry through very consistently, but the first half of the park took you through the whole process from growth through production. I didnt realize that after picking the beans, they must get through two layers of husks before they get to the seed which is really what they roast. After the log flume today, we decided we will have to visit Kings Dominion when we get back. Amusement parks in South America just can't come close to what we have back home. 

This valley has the tallest palm trees in the world, 60meters

Speaking of back home, I think we are ready to come back (little over two weeks). Yesterday, when we boarded a rickety microbus, a couple teenagers also boarded and began signing folk songs accompanied by their boom box as backup. This is of course is one of infinite ways vendors earn money on these buses, but this time we were grouching at how loud they were while if it had been four months ago, we probably would have found it kind of quaint and typically (fill-in country name)ian. We still enjoy what we are seeing, but we have started the "it's nice, but nothing like ..." sort of dismissal. Jaded travelers I suppose. I think part of it is that Colombia just doesn't offer as much for tourists as other places in South America. Somehow recently this trip has informed a now lengthy list of things we want to do when we get home: blueberry picking, BBQ, go to a diner, Thai food, Montgomery County Fair, picnic at Lake Frank, National Arboretum etc. 

After South America, we will have a week at a resort in Acapulco (thank you Living Social), and then a week in San Francisco to go to my buddy's wedding. My next entry will be the wrap up of the trip including the highlights and all the sagacious wisdom garnered. As Ira Glass says, STAY WITH US. 

Mom's Homecoming

We recently spent over a week in La Paz, Bolivia with my mom. It was great that she was able to join us for this segment. She was born in Bolivia and lived there till she was 11. Except for a brief visit in the late sixties, she hasn't been back since. Her parents ended up there because that country was one of the few open to taking Jews during the Second World War. Back then, there were thousands of German Jews in La Paz and it was a tight knit community. Now there are less than 200 Jews left there and the number is dwindling. We had lunch with a couple of them and sure enough we discovered that their parents knew my grandparents. My mom even recognized a handful of the names. It was bittersweet.

Of course when my mom was in La Paz last, forty-five years ago, there were no skyscrapers and the city was much smaller. There were a few hundred thousand inhabitants then, and now there are close to two million. We found the house she grew up in (or at least what remains), her elementary school,and her aunt's apartment. We also found the graves of my ancestors. When we attended Shabbat services in the only synagogue, she chatted with some of the old timers and one remembered my Grandpa's clothing factory which he had sold when they left in the early fifties. Pretty amazing.

La Paz probably never stopped being the crazy, frenetic place that seems to function despite itself. There are vendors everywhere selling any random thing they could find cheap, "cholas" in their traditional dress interspersed with teens on smartphones, weaving between "collectivos" yelling their destinations. Adjoining the tourisry shops is the witches market where you can find various potions, talismans, and my fave: dried llama fetuses as an offerring to Pachamamma to make sure she is cool with you building your new house.

There is always so much going on. This moment captures it perfectly: we are standing in the main square when we hear really loud fireworks right near us (they go on through the night too and you never get used to them). We turnaround and see a rally of miners heading down the Prado (main drag) protesting their measly pensions. A minute later we hear music in front of the church as dozens of costumed performers gather to celebrate the saint of something or other. Just as we are trying to photograph these folks, we start noticing groups of people in full zebra costumes congregating. These zebras start appearing from all directions until there is a large group of them in front of us. I asked them what this was all about and they explained that the origin of the zebra costumes was to educate people about the importance of using crosswalks (and they still have a ways to go). They also try to teach pedestrians not to litter, cars not to run red lights, etc. Not sure how effective their campaigns have been,but people do seem to get a kick out of them. 

This is Mom making friends. 

This photo is me repelling down one of the hotels. Now if only our country wasn't the most litigious in the world with crazy insurance premiums, I'm sure this would take off back home too. 

The protests happen daily and they can really inconvenience everyone because they block off whole streets. Our taxis often had to find rather roundabout ways to get us where we were going. A jeweler we were speaking with counted 100days total last year that no one could get to his shop. Some protests are on an even larger. The whole city of Sucre was blocked of a few weeks back.

After La Paz and saying "bye" to Mom, we headed into the jungle, staying at an animal refuge for a few days. This was another highlight. This place takes in animals that have been trafficked and abused, many of whom are now free to roam about in this protected space. My favorites are always the monkeys,but there were a decent variety. Some beautiful Macaws hungout in front of our cabana, and we also got to see an ocelot, brown bear, a cayman, and turtles. The downside was all the bug bites. Those devious beasts were thorough and we were glad to return to our hotel afterwards. 

We are now in Cusco, Peru after enduring a 13hr bus ride with some very loud obnoxious Israelis and back to back episodes of Ice Road Truckers on the TV. I think the driver purposely chose the series called, "IRT: The Most Dangerous Roads -Andes". It wasn't the road we were on though. Apparently the producers plop these truckers down on sketchy roads all over the world and film them dealing with (obviously staged) challenging situations. I honestly have no idea why people watch this show.

Tomorrow we take the train to Machu Picchu. W e found Cuzco to be a strikingly beautiful city but I think that every pound of beauty seems to be matched by a pound of tourists. That's usually how it goes though.

Gettin' Silly on the Salt Flats

Finally warm and comfortable again in an actual hotel. The last four days were rough. Our tour of the Uyuni area of southern Bolivia included a lot of lovely scenery, such as a few high altitude lakes, geysers, rock formations, and salty earth, but also freezing temperatures in very "basic" accommodations. Although most people probably thought the shivering through meals and absence of showers was worth it, we are still on the fence because we had seen a lot of similar landscapes by this point. I guess that's the classic "jaded traveler".

On the last night, our hostal was made completely of salt. Really, the walls, floor, bed platform, stools.

Near where our tour dropped us off, is a sort of "train cemetery". In the mid 1800s, after Bolivia lost the War of the Pacific, they no longer had access to the ocean and therefore had no more use for the trains that carried goods to port, so they just left them there, in the middle of the desert.

A small town called Tupiza, that we saw in the south before the tour had some unique sandstorm formations that reminded me a bit of Bryce Canyon.

The unique part of the Bolivia tour was vast salt flats on the last day. Wide open space like that allows, almost insists upon, kooky photos.

What We Won't See in Bolivia

We are now in a small town in southern Bolivia about to embark on a four day tour of the salt flats. Our Internet connection is too slow to upload photos, so I decided to choose a topic. On our tour, we will only have electricity for an hour a day, so I think it's safe to say there won't be wifi.

The weirdness of this country is apparent from the moment you cross the border. We planned on buying our visas at the border crossing, but didn't foresee that they only accept US dollars: a federally run operation that won't accept Bolivian currency. Once across the border, the next thing you notice is these fancy traffic lights on the streets with countdown timers: the poorest country in Latin America and they chose to splurge on the traffic lights. There are lots of "peculiarities", but I have chosen to write about some of the most popular attraction for tourists that we have no intention of seeing.

The Worlds Most Dangerous Road
Biking down this road outside La Paz is the number one attraction on TripAdvisor. It got this name because of the insane number of fatalities that happen along this narrow cliff clinging road with 600m drops. They even sell tshirts stating that you did it. From what I can tell, the main reason for its popularity is so people can tell their friends that they biked down the most dangerous road in the world. Actually, in the last few years, guard rails have been put up but I'm sure the tourists can chose to over look that.

Visiting the mines in Potosi
Potosi is a pretty mining town and one of the highest cities in the world at 4070m. It's nice, but the altitude makes even short walks tough (I was there last time I was in Bolivia). There are of course functioning mines all over South America, but for whatever reason, taking a tour of these has become a big attraction, probably to see first hand the awful conditions the miners work under (many of whom die young). Some tourists give them little gifts like flashlights perhaps to assuage their guilt for essentially doing little to help their situation. Those sorts of photographs I don't need in my collection.

Tinku
Potosi is also known for this bizarre (at least to the outsider) event which takes place in early May, around when we would be in the area. My guidebook politically correctly describes it as "ritualized means of discharging tensions between indigenous communities." It starts with singing and dancing and swigging "puro", aka rubbing alcohol to the point of being seriously wasted. At this point, the men essentially start beating the crap out of anyone they think may have slighted them in the past year, but in a "rhythmic" and "choreographed" way. Stones are also thrown and serious injury and even death can occur. It's not a popular tourist attraction, but apparently two tour companies do make the visit.

San Perdo prison
I have to admit, this really does fascinate me. It's a famous prison in La Paz because it is essentially a self governing little city. At some point, the authorities just left the prisoners to their own devices and what they created is quite interesting. It has its own governing body with elected officials, stores, restaurants, you name it. The prisoners' wives and often children live within the walls too. I recently finished an autobiography about an English drug dealer who ended up there for a number of years called, Marching Powder: The True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail. He started tours of the jail which apparently continue, but besides being illegal, are not always welcome, and are unsafe.

Of course all this said, there are plenty of "curiosities" we will witness and hope to write about.

Wine, Waterfalls, and Weird Animals

I will do this post going backwards. This really could have been a couple posts, but I've been very busy being lazy.

Today is our last day in Mendoza, Argentina. This city is all about wine. They even have fountains in a creepy redish color.

There are vineyards and wineries all around and signs on the sidewalk offering wine specials. Yesterday, Alex and I toured two wineries and an olive oil factory. I had never really given a lot of thought to the way wine is produced, and it was all very interesting. It's a little sad that despite all the explanations of how much goes into each bottle and the tastings, Alex and I still don't actually like wine. I feel like I needed to confess that here. We do love olive oil though, and appreciated trying all the different flavors. I even understand the difference now between Extra Virgin and regular (but I'm not telling).

Mendoza is also big on "adventure sports". We went white water rafting a few days ago. The scenery is beautiful, but the water is straight from the mountain tops so its very cold. There are some hilarious photos of our heroic faces and efforts to keep one another from falling out, but the photos are on CD, Internet cafes don't have machines with drives anymore, and my iPad looked at the plastic disk and started laughing. I will upload them later though.

Before Mendoza, we visited Iguazu Falls. If you are unfamiliar, they are among the worlds most impressive. I might even be so brazen as to say that they were cooler than Niagara because there are a lot of them. The park has two different circuit walks that show different falls and different perspectives. They also have a 50person boat that takes you right up close (second picture). You can't actually see anything though because you are busy being drenched and can't really open your eyes. I was surprised to read that huge waterfalls like these are not a great way of generating electricity. Something about the flow not being consistent enough and air pockets effecting the turbines. Seems a shame.

Iguazu was a mini-trip within the ten days spent in Buenos Aires. I've been to BA a few times, but this was the first trip I had a lot of time to explore and just hangout. The city is very large and probably the only one where our feet and subway were not always sufficient. Taking cabs can make you grumpy because you often get the feeling that they choose the most circuitous route to your destination to better exercise the meter. Makes you almost miss the cities where you had to haggle over the fare before you got in.

Cafes, with their own language for coffee sizes, are ubiquitous. Some are really classic and beautiful. As for restaurants, we would give the mixed reviews. I knew steak is big here, but I had forgotten that they put ham on everything from lasagna to pizza to hamburgers. We've taken to asking now regardless of what we order.

Some neighborhoods still have signage with a typographic style from the turn of the century called "fileteado". Some people who still practice the art form (mostly for tourists) are called "fileteadoras". On my list.

They are very proud of their tango, and Alex and I quickly learned its not the sort of dance you can just sort of "wing". It's nothing like swing and we would really have to take a lesson so as not to step all over each other.

Even though BA is big and busy and frenetic, it has a lot of leafy green spaces that we enjoyed. Renting bikes turned out to be a real hassle but were were successful in Mendoza.
Our next destination, Salta, will be our last in Argentina.

Oh, almost forgot. A couple of the weird mammals we encountered (one of which appears to be pooping a pigeon)..

Penguins!!

Scientific studies have shown that penguins are among the cutest animals on earth. We had the opportunity to observe this remarkable degree of cuteness first hand yesterday. We are in Ushuaia, Argentina right now, the city known as "the end of the world" because it is the southern most city in the world. The island we visited has two kinds of penguins, Magellanic penguins (shorter, b&w) and Gentoo penguins(taller with orange beaks), and one single King penguin that noone understood what was doing there. We were advised not to get closer than seven feet which seemed to be the distance the penguins preferred as well. My only piece of advice would be to remember that an island full of penguins is likely also full of penguin poop, and lying on the ground to get that perfect photo is not such a great idea, especially when you have one jacket and one pair of warm pants.

The day before we hiked around Tierra del Fuego, the main park down here. Little islands, leaves changing color (its fall down here) and snow covered mountains in the background. It's pretty, but not as dramatic as the stuff we saw in northern Patagonia, on the Chilean side.

Up there, we visited Torres del Paine park where the mountains really tower over you and the lakes are an artificial looking pale blue. There is also a waterfall and a lake where big chunks of ice have fallen off a nearby glacier and are just bobbing along.

We also went to Perito Moreno park on the Argentine side to get up close to a glacier. They make it pretty easy with elevated walking paths and even a boat ride that gets you even closer. What we can see is twenty stories high, but some parts are as much as 600 stories deep. Just not the kind of thing you will see in one of the parks back home. Of course, none of this is.

Tomorrow we fly to Buenos Aires (sane people don't attempt the multi-day bus trip).