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.