Before and After!

Thought this was pretty funny!
Day before we left:

Day we got back:

Quito to the Jungle - our last Adventure!

Our first day in Quito we toured around some the city´s squares and looked at a few churches - the city has tons of them! As we were walking around we came to the main square and is was swarmed with police in riot gear. We asked a local what was going on and apparently Hillary Clinton was inside the Presidential Palace. We never saw her but still pretty random!

Since it was our last week we decided to take one last adventure and booked a jungle tour. We went by bus/boat deep into the Amazon jungle and stayed at an ecolodge. It was great! On the boat ride to the lodge we saw an Anaconda, troop of squirel monkeys, and lots of birds. That night we went on a night hike and checked out the various insects and spiders of the forest. Many of the trees, etc are similar to what we saw on the Bolivian jungle trip we took, but this was surrounded more by the river. In the morning we took the boat to a local community and learned how they live. Ripped up one of their Yucca plants to make Yucca bread and they let us have some of their hot peppers so we could make salsa later on. It was interesting to see and even more interesting to visit their shaman. He was traditionally dressed and described what he used the various plants for; including one that apparently causes someone never to have the flu. After he explained all the plants around his hut, he went through a typical ceremony of curing someone. They have something called ayahuasca which allows them see what is wrong and determine whether or not them can fix it. It causes people to get really sick and hullucinate - sounds like great healing huh?

We ended up spending the rest of the days touring around the various laguanas and hiking. Ended up seeing 4 Anacandas; a few pink river dolphins; 3 types of monkeys; lots of birds, spiders, and insects. Our guide even took Ben and I fishing for peacock bass since Ben was really excited that our guide killed one with a paddle one night. Unfortunately we didn´t catch any when we went fishing for them, but got some pirhanas.

That was our last adventure! Now its back home to the good ole USA!

Our mini Galapagos

Our first stop in Ecuador was Puerto Lopez. It has a decent amount of wildlife and since we are not going to the Galapagos this trip, we decided this would be our mini version! It was raining a bit when we arrived so we just checked out the town a little - doesn´t take very long as it is mainly a fishing town. It is right on the coast in a horseshoe shaped bay with lots of fishing boats tied up around the beach. In the morning we headed out for a day trip to La Isla de la Plata. On the way we saw some humpback whales coming up out of the water. They travel from Antarctica during June - October for mating. Normally the mating season is mid June so we mainly saw them spray the water. If we were just a week later we could have heard them singing and jumping out of the water. Still cool to see them. When were almost to the island we were surrounded by the largest school of dolphins running on top of the water I have ever seen in my life! There were hundreds of them jumping all along the boat and doing tricks in the air. We got some good videos of it on our Flikr page. On the island they have blue-footed boobies, red-footed boobies, and frigatebirds - to name a few. The blue-footed boobie is the funniest looking bird with bright blue feet. The frigatebirds were in mating season so we got to see the males blow up their red pouches and make a deep drumming sound. Really cool trip, and deserves the poor man´s Galapagos name.

Pisco, the Capital, and the Beach

We travelled up the coast to a town called Pisco to set up a tour of the Ballestas Islands which are supposed to be the `poor man´s Galapagos´. When we arrived we noticed most of the buildings where destroyed and learned later that a huge earthquake hit in 2007 and the town is still slowly trying to rebuild. We headed to the boats at about 8 am with out group - it was raining and visibility on the sea wasn´t very good so we sat around for about an hour and a half before they told us they would have to cancel the tour. Bummed, but what can you do. A guy in our group was signed up to help rebuild houses in the area for a month; personally we could not imagine spending a month there and actually decided just to hop a bus from Pisco to Lima that day.

Lima is huge - much bigger than I ever imagined and fairly spread out. We stayed in Miraflores which is right next to the coast. There are quite a few parks around the city and a fountain park in the city center we checked out. The same guy that designed the Bellagio´s did all the fountains in Parque de Reserva which is pretty cool but really weird to have in the middle of the city. At night they play a bunch of music and have a laser light show to go with the fountains. Basically shopped around a bit and went to some really good restaurants. Ben bought a cookbook on Peruvian food and we tried some of the places it recommends in the back, including a buffet lunch at El Senorio del Sulco. It was amazing but we both regretted eating as much as we did before getting on our bus from Lima to Mancora. Not really what you should do prior to an overnight bus!

We stayed in Mancora for 2 days. It is a great beach that most people come to hang around for the surfing. We just relaxed with all the fresh seafood and got roasted on the white sand beaches. A really nice change of pace from the city!

That´s it for our Peru trip and now we are off to Ecuador!

Sandboards and Dune jumping!

After we left Cusco, we headed to a tiny town, which is really just an oasis in the middle of the desert near the coast. The town is outside of Ica called Huacachina, and about the only thing you do there is rent sandboards and surf the huge dunes they have around the oasis. The place truly is an oasis - a tiny pond outlined by palm trees surrounded by huge sand dunes. We took the tour where they take you in a dune buggy, and drive you to the top (much easier than trying to walk up dunes). The dune buggy was just as fun as the boarding, as the drivers are crazy and go real fast over huge dunes, getting airborne on occasion. The boarding was hard compared to snowboarding, but very fun. At the end we went to the top of a huge dune and watched sunset before lying face down on the boards and skidding to the bottom of the biggest dune of the day! Naturally Ben offered for me to go first in this venture out of the group, but I set a fast pace for everyone else. Tons of fun!

Rafting down the Apurimac!

Took a 3 day white water rafting trip down the Apurimac river from Cusco. Our first day was a 5 hour drive to the river then about 1-2 hours on the river before camping on the bank. We had a group of about 21, everyone was from Israel except one other American. The second day we got to spend a lot more time on the river hitting class 3, 4, and 5 level rapids. Our guide was awesome and I think the best one. He was super nice - got in the cold water with me to practice my kayak roll, travelled all over the place guiding, and was really knowledgeable about the river. It gets pretty narrow at some points and you can see how high it gets along the gorge during the rainy season - a huge difference. The canyon is pretty deep but we could still see some condors flying high above the peaks as we rafted along. At some parts we had to walk around a chunk of the rapids because they were too dangerous for commercial rafting, but we got to watch our guide and some of our groups´ kayakers go down them - crazy to watch! Throughout the day we didn´t have too many swimmers, but one raft did flip which meant that guide had to buy all the others 6 beers - one for each passenger he dunked. That night we roasted marshmallows over the fire and explained to everyone what a s´mor was, even though we didn´t have any chocolate. On the third day we hit our biggest class 5, and jumped off a cliff into the water (not very high though). Ben and I determined that river kayaking is more fun than rafting, but we still had a really great time.

Salkantay Trek, Machu Picchu and The Sacred Valley

From Bolivia we traveled to Cusco to sign up for a trek up to Machu Piccu. We decided on the Salkantay Trek that lasts 4 days and was amazing!! The hike took us up to 4600m in plain veiw of the Salkantay Mountain and then decended to tons of bananna plantaions and fruit trees - we were able to pick our own avacados and oranges for our breakfast, delicious. On the fifth day, Kristin´s birthday, we met Tom and Becky at the top of Machu Picchu. The ruins are absolutely gorgeous surrounded by mountains and live up to every and any expectation you might have. After spending the day taking a tour of the ruins, the four of us spent the night in luxury at the Sanctuary Lodge; sipping Pisco sours in the hot tub and enjoying a great dinner where the staff actually baked a cake and sang Happy Birthday to Kristin.

From Machu Picchu we travelled to Urubamba. We toured the market and the Maras Maray ruins while stopping to take some really great landscape shots. Back at the hotel we indulged in a foot massage and then had dinner in front of their fireplace. Man we can really get used to this type of travel!!! After Urubamba we took a bus to Cusco to spend our last night together. While there we saw Sacsayhuaman and the nearby ruins as well as the Cathedral. For dinner we went to ChiCha´s from a local tip we got from our guide and they had some amazing ceviche (something Ben has officially become addicted to since we have been here).

In the morning Tom and Becky had to fly out to begin their Amazon trip. We had so much fun together, and I must say that we had a hard time adjusting to hostel life after we left them but managed!!!

Welcome to the Jungle!

After our trek, we had one day of relaxation before we were supposed to fly out for a pampas tour, and then a jungle tour. Well, in typical Bolivia fashion, they call us 8 hours before our flight and say it is cancelled, until the next day. This causes us to cancel our pampas tour. Oh well, the next day we flew out on a very sketchy twin prop plane to the town of Rurrenbaque. When we get to Rurrenbaque, the company tells us we won´t be leaving the next day as planned but the day after....we are used to this by now. We were OK with that, b-c the town looked pretty relaxed and fun. We go to check into our hostal, and ask for an AC room since it is about 99 degrees in the middle of the jungle. We were quickly laughed at and told, that we could have an AC room, but it wouldn´t do much good because the miner´s strike the we told you about in the earlier blog, has caused a gas shortage, and there is no electricity. We had a good time anyway, and paid a couple of bucks to have access to this pool on the top of a mountain overlooking the city, and hung out in the shade the next day!

After all this, the next day we took a 4 hour boat ride(twice as long as normal due to gas shortage) to the jungle camp. It was absolutely amazing. We have been to jungles in India, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos...but nothing like this. This was thick and lush jungle. About 30 meters after getting off the boat, on the walk to the campsite, Ben spotted a 6 ft. yellow snake right by the path. The next 2 days were spent on hikes through the jungle, seeing some amazing plant and wildlife. We both fell in love with this jungle. There were tons of monkeys, insects, spiders, snakes, caiman and we even found a fresh 9 ft. Anaconda skin. The guide said the skin could only have been hours old, because the ants would have eaten it if it was any older. The next day we went pirahna fishing, and spotted caimans at night. We had a good group and a great time!

La Paz and the El Choro Trek

We made it to La Paz without any problems - a truly direct bus which was nice. Our bus was freezing cold but they gave us blankets. We arrived in La Paz at 5 am (all Bolivian buses drop you off at either 2 or 5 am, not sure why) and shared a taxi with Johnny to a hotel. We crashed for a bit then toured around town. La Paz is huge and situated in a valley with all the streets either going up hill to the outskirts or down hill to the city center. It is a much cooler town than Santa Cruz!! After getting our bearings bit, we went to eat lunch at a Western restuarant - we were craving some good food after our Salt Flat tour- and caught a movie, Clash of the Titans. Just walking around the town has so much character with street vendors selling food, little stands with clothes, or just fruits and vegtables. The next day we had a huge shopping spree. Things are so cool and cheap here we splurged on a lot. Luckily we are meeting Becky and Tom at Manchu Pichu and might pawn some stuff off on them - thanks Mom and Dad!
Our plan was to take a bus the next morning to Rurrenbaque where most jungle and pampas tours leave from. So we checked out of our hotel and caught a cab to the bus station only to find out that there is a strike south of Rurrenbaque which has blocked the road...no car can get there from La Paz until the strike is over. Back to the hotel to re-visit our plan. It was apparent we can not do much in this country on our own so we decided to sign up for a tour that included a flight to Rurrenbaque and eneded up spending more money on it than anything else we have this entire trip. Oh well, atleast we know that we have something planned for 6 days. Since our tour didn´t start until Wedneday we decided to go do the El Choro trek which you can do on your own.

We left to do the trek at about 9 am, after a long day of celebrating with our buddy Johnny, whose soccer team is suppose to be the Gamecocks of the English premier league(read:they never quite make it)...not the best idea before starting a trek at 4900 m or 16,000 ft. It was sleeting when we began the hike and neither of us felt very good after the night before. We walked for about 4 or 5 hours before we decided to camp at the first site and see if tomorrow the weather, and our stomachs, would be better. When we woke up the sun was out which was a good sign. So we packed up and headed out enjoying the mountain scenery with cows, sheep, and tons of llama grazing around the trail. After about two hours of walking my feet began to kill me and I noticed that the inner sole of my boot was pretty much gone. Thank you Keens!! As we continued to hike the weather just gets hotter and hotter as we move lower in altitude and the scereny becomes more tropical. Both of us were fairly sore by the time we stopped at 5, a good 7 hour day of hiking. We realized we screwed ourselves over by stopping early the first day since when we looked at the map that night we had about 8 hours to do the next day. At our site there was a little girl that was really cute. She kept talking to us - no clue what she was saying - and we gave her some Oreos we brought with us. Might have been a mistake because after the third she was so hyper and chasing her cats around. Eventually her mom called her in but I think the mom was secretly cursing us. That night we slept with horses grazing, pooping, and peeing all around our tent - a great way to fall asleep!! In the morning we both could hardly move we were so sore. We gave the woman a bottle of wine, more oreos and some chips we brought with us to lessen the weight even a little. Then we pushed on. The landscape is gorgeous but it was hard to appreciate all the green mountains, colorful butterflies, plumeting waterfalls, and wild flowers all around us...we were in pain. After 5 hours we stoppped for lunch at a place that is 2 and half hours from the bottom of the trek. The guy that ran the site kinda laughed at us because we just looked wiped out and struggles. After lunch we gave him the rest of our gas and rice just to purge more. He was really happy about the gas so I think we made his day. 3 more hours, 2 popped blisters, lots of music and we were finally at the bottom. There was a minibus driver there that we gladly paid 400 Bolivians, about $50, to take us back to La Paz without stopping. It was a nice drive and even nicer to be off our feet.
They say you can do the El Choro in 2 days, but that is if you are not carrying anything and hauling ass. If you do it in 3 days, don´t skimp on the first day! It is a beautiful trek that is 70 kms long and would be enjoyable by doing 6 - 7 hour days. Even more if you have 4 days!

The Salt Flats

Getting to Uyuni from Santa Cruz was a rude awakening to the Bolivian bus style. We purchased our tickets from one vendor and were told that it was a direct bus to Uyuni that left at 4 pm. Needless to say, 4 different buses later we arrived in Uyuni. Oh well, such is life.
Luckily we met some Brits on the bus to Uyuni from Potosi that hadn´t signed up for a tour yet either so when we arrived we went to the same hostel to get a few hours of sleep before trying to sign up for a tour. We hit two agencies at about 8 am and were determined to find one that left that day - Uyuni is not a town you want to spend time in! We signed up with an agency that left a 10 am which gave us about 30 minutes to pack up our stuff and buy enough water for the trip. We had a good group- 3 Brits and an American from NYC. Our first day was spent at the actual salt flats which are really amazing. It is just like a huge desert of nothing but salt, compeltely flat and white as far as you can see. Because the landscape is so flat, and just the two colors, white salt, and blue sky, you can take some really cool looking pics becausee there is no depth perception. We attempted a few, but were not that successful. We then went to fish island which is in the middle of the salt flats and someone had the idea of stranding a poor imu out there was not much to do but pick at leftover lunches from tourists. We stayed that night at a hotel made entirely of salt and you could see where some of the rain was eroding the salt bricks but overall a sturdy little house. For dinner we had soup and a native dish that is basically like french fries nachos - the best I can do at an explaination!
The next day we spent travelling to various lagoons that had flamingoes, a volcano, and the famous tree rock in the middle of the desert. The lagoons were cool and we got to see different types of flamingoes walking around in the water. At one I saw a small cyclo form across the lake, travel over the water, and then form again on the other side. It was crazy! We viewed the volcano from far away and while we were there one of our Brits, Johnny, set his camera bag down to take some pics. While he was snapping photos another car pulled up, let its passengers out, and then continued to drive on. Ben jumped in front of the car as the front tire was hitting the corner of his bag (he had about 6 cameras in it). The tire busted the screen of his most expensive camera which put a damper on the morning, but atleast he didn´t run over the entire bag - Ben to the rescue! The tree rock was not that great, it is just a rock in the middle of the desert that sort of resembles a tree. They had the whole thing roped off probably from someone climbing it or writing their names on it previously. That night we stayed in a ¨hotel¨ where all of us had beds in the same room. There were a few snorers in our group! . We all expected the last day to be exteremly awful since we were told you basically are in the car all day. But it wasn´t that bad. We rode to 2 more lagoons and then had breakfast at a hot springs which were really nice against the cold air. Then we loaded up and headed to some more rock formations in the middle of the desert where Ben and I chased a Viscacha which is like a rabbit that lives in the Andes but hops like a kangaroo with a long tail. They were cool and definately scared of us. We ended our trip in Uyuni at about 6 and had some dinner before catching our 8 pm bus to La Paz. For this bus trip we made sure we booked a direct non-stop bus straight there!!