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).

FAQs

We recently met a guy from Philly in Chile for eight days on a mission to follow Pearl Jam wherever they tour(people have all sorts of interesting reasons for travel). He was floored by the prospect of our six month trip and had a lot of questions. Not that our trip is so unique, but we have been asked a lot of the same questions, so I thought a little FAQ might be helpful.

How much does it cost?
A lot. We started out with what I thought was a very respectable and upstanding looking budget, but when we got to Chile, the gods of travel got all up in our budget's face and started giving it a hard time. Eventually they beat the stuffing out of our sad, demoralized budget. Poor shlub never had a chance.

In Ecuador, you can get a whole set meal for 3 or 4 bucks. Where we are now, just the entrees start at 14bucks. That said, if you can book a place that has a kitchen,you can save a lot by making your own meals. But forget about the food, it's the costs of seeing these parks that get outrageous. For example, yesterday Torres del Paine park charged $38/person just to enter. Now add that to the $40/person for the day tour. Today's day tour was $80/person not including the entrance fee which was a much more reasonable $18/person. You can skip the tour and rent a car but that isn't much cheaper. When in these situations, you have to battle the "but when will you ever be here again?" logic they must know most tourists are operating on. You don't mind paying that much when you are traveling for just a few weeks,but in our situation these numbers can get you grouchy awful fast. Hopefully, once we finish Patagonia, the biggest expenses will be behind us. Oh, almost forgot, in the last six months Argentina added a $160 "reciprocity entrance fee"/person just for people from US and two other countries. Psshht..Americans are all loaded, they can swing it.

Did you quit your jobs? Aren't you worried about finding jobs when you get back?
Yes, we had to quit our jobs, and that was tough since we both really liked our jobs. This is something we have both always wanted to do, and you only live once (although I know people who would dispute that), and well, you get it..

Yes, to be honest, we are worried about finding jobs when we get back. But we are fortunate to be at the point in our careers where we are pretty marketable and don't expect to have heaps of trouble. Actually finding jobs isn't the main worry, it's finding jobs that we are really excited about that's the bigger challenge. But I've been in this situation before, and I think it will work out fine. I'm very proud of Alex for her leap of faith.

Where do you stay?
We decided that we don't mind hostels as long as we get a private room. The problem there is that they all use hostelworld.com which charges per person,not per room. So it's usually at least $25/person making the room $50. That's often the cost of a hotel which includes a private bathroom and nicer accommodations, so we have been in more hotels than hostels. But it all really depends. The place we are in now calls itself a hostel but its more like a schlocky hotel. We have also looked into couchsurfing.org but most of the options we have found do not have a private room, and we have become too princessy to crash on the sofa. AirBnB.com is also an option. Haven't done any camping on this trip.

Isn't it dangerous?
Not really. None of the places we have been are that dangerous. Pickpockets are the biggest worry. The only place I ruled out for safety reasons was Caracas, that place just sounds like a free-for-all.

How do you know what to see and where to go?
We have at least one guidebook per country (ebook versions), and checkout people's favorite things on tripadvisor.com and similar sites. It does take research, but its interesting. One little rantito: I don't understand why everyone just buys Lonely Planet by default. Some of them are good and some aren't. There are plenty of other guidebooks out there, and getting something else also means you don't end up following the herds to the same places.

As for getting around, info on buses and planes is of course online. It's mostly bus travel and every city has a bus station, so you just go and ask.

How did you plan the whole thing?
You really just figure it out as you go. It's impossible to plan the whole thing ahead of time. We just knew 6 months, six countries we wanted to see = roughly one month per country (Mike and John, aren't you impressed?). You are never quite sure how long you will want to (or have to) stay in each place so we usually don't plan more than a week or two out. That said, if you want to stay in a highly rated place or be sure to get a certain flight, you do have to book things a week ahead or so, so the whole show up and hope for the best philosophy is not recommended.

As for packing, just bring a weeks worth of clothes and hit the lavenderia once a week. This trip includes time at the beach as well as time freezing our tushes off in Patagonia so we had to bring warm stuff too. Toiletries are easy to buy anywhere when you run out. My biggest packing tip is to put your clothes in these special air compression plastic bags that have one way valves. You can save tons of space that way.

6months?
And that still doesn't seem like enough time. We have had to skip over plenty. In my travels I have met lots of people going longer, like practically every Aussie I've met. Personally, I think I would miss home too much though. Our six months is mainly all travel but a lot of people volunteer for part of it. Some people cruise through the highlights and others just hangout somewhere for weeks at a time because they like the town. That's one of the fun things about travel, learning about people's itineraries. You might even meet someone traveling all the way to South America to hear their favorite band play.

Valpo Wonderland

Valpo Wonderland

Valparaiso and Santiago are a couple hours apart in the middle of Chile. We wanted to see both and spent about five days in Valpo and a week in Santiago (we hadn't planned on quite that long but the Semana Santa holiday had flights all booked). Interesting how two cities so close to each other could be so different.

Valpo used to be a major port and the wealthiest city in Chile. The grand, ornate buildings are still there but looking pretty rough these days. The city is built over a few very steep hills, and is unique for its furniculars taking passengers up and down. They are over a hundred years old and usually only about half are in service. UNESCO money is helping to increase these numbers and fix up some of the more historic areas. Valpo is the hip and liberal city with lots of artists in residence and left wing statements scrawled on walls including vegan propaganda (Jen, you read this?). My favorite thing about Valpo was the murals. It was already well known for these, but last November, the government invited street artists from all over Chile to go nuts on a run down neighborhood that could use the tourism dollars. The word must still not be out among the tourists because Alex and I seemed to be the only ones exploring this neighborhood. There was so much variety and creativity and it beat the pretension and stuffiness of a gallery any day. I also loved the element of discovery as there was something new around every corner. I shot dozens but could only include a handful of favorites at the bottom of this post. Apologies for the load time.

Santiago immediately feels different. It is modern, wealthy, and businessy. It has an excellent metro system, some nice parks, and lots of pedestrian malls (I always thought the US needed more of those). Apart from a few mediocre museums and historic buildings, there isn't really much for a tourist, but I could see it being a nice city to live in. Like every city, it has a few of its own oddities.

About a hundred years ago, a businessman who recognized the mediocrity of Chilean coffee had the idea of giving his coffee shops another attraction, waitresses in short miniskirts. "Cafe con Piernas" (coffee with legs) was born. Now in most of the Santiago coffee shops you see the waitresses dressed this way, walking on catwalks behind the counter for a better view. Some shops take the idea a step further with the waitresses in bikinis. We even saw some shops with blacked out windows and decided not to find out what goes on in there. If you think this is contradictory to the conservative Catholic mindset you'd expect, you should see the sex toy shops.

My next post will be about Patagonia.

What time is it in Chile?

When arriving in Arica, an unexceptional beach town in the tip top of Chile, it was time for the daylight savings time change. We weren't sure if it applied to Chile so we asked Google. Google told us to move the clocks forward one hour, so we did. IPad confirmed. Four days later, we get to the bus station to go to the next city on our itinerary and were told we missed our bus by a hour. The country seemed to have changed its clocks either that day or a day prior one additional hour. Wikipedia had no explanation. Who knows.

There isnt much in Arica except an impressive museum with 5000yr old mummies. They go into explanations of how mummification changed over the years, from just wrapping them in cloth to full on gutting them and replacing bones with sticks. It was all kind of macabre and fascinating.

Tonight we will be leaving San Pedro de Atacama on a 23hr bus ride to Santiago (wahoo!). SanPedro is a little city in the northern Chilean desert seemingly created just for tourists to explore the surroundings. The streets here have far more tourists than natives and the adobe and cement structures house endless tour operators, handicrafts, and restaurants. Prices are really high because I'm told that they run everything with generators, pump their own water, must use diesel, etc.

The area has lagoons, interesting rock formations, jagged salty terrain kind of like Death Valley, and a field of geysers(that trip picked us up at 4:30am). The tours around the area remind me a little of Colca Canyon near Arequipa, Peru in that the scenery is gorgeous,but you share it with lots of other tourists.

This is also supposed to be one of the best places on the continent for stargazing because its so remote, high up, and dry. We went on a star tour last night. The Milky Way cloud is easy to see with the naked eye and you can actually see some other galaxy clouds that I had never see before. The tour included a lengthy astronomy lesson and use of ten different telescopes. One of them was pointed at the moon and had an attachment that let me take a photo.

Next stop is a Valparaiso, a bohemian (I know, I get sick of hearing that word too), artsy city known for great murals and other street art.

The Trash Song

We have been in Arequipa Peru for the last couple of weeks and we will be heading to Chile in a few days. We chose an extended stay in order to spend a couple of weeks in a Spanish school. I've learned a lot, but can't say I am as far by now as I thought I would be.  Just being in the country is not sufficient,  there is plenty of practice and memorization necessary too. Having a travel partner I can conveniently switch back to English with doesn't help either.

One nice thing about being in city a little longer is that you start to recognize its unique quirks. Homes here don't have outdoor trash cans(common), because of fear of theft and rummaging. The trash truck that drives around daily to pick up your trash recently switched from a notification bell to playing Fur Elise (famous classical tune, you know it). Everyday around the same time, you here this song over and over as the truck makes its rounds.

 This city is also known for its "queso helado" (cheese ice cream).  There are little stands on the street selling this stuff. I think it tastes like French vanilla with a hint of cheesecake. In fact I've never seen a Latin American city that loves its desserts so much. Lots of ice cream, pastry and chocolate shops. And its all very good to, not like the pastry shops in China that have the most delicious looking items that invariably taste like aged photocopies.

The most interesting thing here must be Santa Catalina Monastery. It's this huge complex that dates back to the 1500s which is almost like a small city with courtyards, a market, cemetery, etc.  It's fun to wander around for an afternoon. Around100 nuns or so still live in one wing.

The area around here is really beautiful. This is one of those times when I feel that photography as a medium is pretty lame. You stand there at the top of this enormous canyon and think "Wow, this is really amazing", and then you look at your photos and feel none of that. Anyway, here ya go.

No escaping Bob

One of the few things that seems to be consistent in almost every country I have visited is that Bob Marley's music will always make an appearance at some point on the trip. I am sitting on a balcony outside our room at Mancora beach in northern Peru and I can hear Bob emanating from a nearby restaurant as has he has done from probably about half of those we have eaten at here. Maybe they think it helps nurture the free spirit, grungy type ethos they are trying to cultivate in this town. Judging by the number of dread-locked heads walking up and down the main drag, I think they are there. Our five days here has been really relaxing, but it's time to move on. We are heading south tomorrow to see the famous Nazca lines. Very excited about that.

4 days later:The Nazca lines were impressive but tough to photograph from a 5person plane doing a quick circuit tour. If only planes could hover like helicopters. Those Nazca folks were a kooky bunch too. Trapezoid, triangle, then monkey and "astronaut"? Its kind of fun too when the anthropologists cant make any more sense out of it than you can. This town does have the branding down. They've got the designs on park benches, bus stops, fountain tiles, you name it.

We also tried sandboarding. Kind of like snowboarding, but after every run you have to rewax the board because sand just isn't snow and you also have to schlep back up the dune each time. Our dune buggy driver seemed to love terrifying the tourists as he flew up and down the dunes. "Low center of gravity, it's not gonna flip", I kept reminding myself.

In case it wasn't prime time news over there, the US embassy in Peru sent out a warning a few days ago that a bunch of cocaine-funded Maoist rebels might just kidnap us if we go to Machu Picchu this month. Naturally just before we plan on going. So we are rerouting and will try to hit up that area towards the end. Hopefully these rebels will have gotten over this nonsense by then. The plan now is to study more Spanish in Arequipa.

Colibri

After the last post, we stayed in an "Eco-lodge" in the rainforest for a few days. Lots of pretty birds, but the hummingbirds were probably the most abundant and interesting. Creatures like that exemplify a working theory I have that time might move at different rates for different species. They move so quickly and make decisions so fast that it just doesn't seem possible otherwise.
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It was a very nice place but of course everything is always damp (including toilet paper which is a little ick).

Next we stayed in a poor village by the water for about four days. The family that owned our "hostel" was very warm and the matriarch a good cook. Lots of little children always bouncing around, having a great time, and I am trying to find another way to say, "poor but happy". I still have a lot of trouble understanding the litter all around. Apparently that's an "education thing", but you actually have to be taught that? It's trash people. In your front yard.

The beach was barely on the map and really nice. I adopted a scrappy dog for those days who I still miss. He never left my side. I wish they could show these animals just a little affection.

We just finished 6 days in Galapagos. It's one of those places people say you must see once in your life and is worth blowing your budget for. I was a little skeptical (surprised?) but I think I was won over. These giant tortoises are pretty amazing and you get to see them in every stage of development. They live to an average of 150 very uneventful years. I wouldn't say the islands have a huge variety of wildlife, but what you see is remarkably docile and each island has a unique terrain. Great snorkeling/diving too.

Next post will be from Peru