Nazca and Arequipa

Sorry we haven't posted in a few days, but we've been stranded in the desert (no joke). It all started pretty innocently, with a planned night in Nazca to see the Nazca Lines - huge drawings in the desert that are about 1500 years old. Turns out, Peru is pretty popular, so all the buses out of Nazca were booked the day we wanted to leave. Okay, so it was only a day longer than we wanted to stay (about 58 hours instead of 34), but you don't understand this town. Actually, we kind of liked it when we got there. Sure, it was dusty, noisy, and had absolutely nothing going on, but it wasn't without it charms. The town square was nice, and the main tourist street was nice enough for a stroll. It was one of the only street in town that is paved, and I guess they enjoyed it so much that they decided to pave every other street at the same time. The construction added considerably to the dust and noise levels. In retrospect, it was probably just the fact that it was warm that intrigued us about Nazca. We probably would have found some level of charm in Baghdad after coming from cold and foggy Lima. Anyways, we were there for one reason - to do an overflight of the Nazca Lines.

This is Nazca

The technical term for the Nazca Lines are that they are geoglyphs. They are credited to the Nazca people in around 500 AD but, again, they don't really know. There are hundreds of individual figures, from simple triangles to complex animals. I actually think they were created by aliens, for two reasons: one, how on earth could an ancient civilization draw such perfectly formed drawings in the desert with few (and distant) lookout points, and two, how else do you explain the "Astronaut" drawing?

They say this is an astronaut, but I know the truth

Really the only good way to see the lines is with an overflight on a tiny little airplane. We just love those. It cost about $70 each, but when in Rome. We were warned to not eat anything before the flight, but how bad could it be? It couldn't be worse than our crazy, windy flight in New Zealand. Steph took dramamine and had her motion-sickness bracelets on just in case. Turns out, she would need them. The pilots take you on a pre-determined course from one figure to the next, and even though you can see them just fine out the window, they find it necessary to turn the plane completely sideways so you look straight down on each geoglyph. Then, they do the same on the other side of the plane, just in case you can't look over the one person sitting next to you. I consider myself pretty bulletproof in the motion-sickness department, but even I got queasy. Steph with her medicine and black magic managed about the same. Still, it was really impressive to see the drawings first hand. Some of them were surprisingly small, but some as big as 200 yards across. They are perfectly drawn and must have taken very careful planning and coordination...by the aliens I mean.

Monkey

Condor

We survived

So after you get off the flight, your list of things to do in Nazca is pretty much checked-off. There are other tours that they will take you on, of course, but none of them seemed all that great. We had another day and a half until our bus would leave town. Let's just say it was a boring, boring day and a half. The Nazca Lines have been in place for 1500 years without disturbance, and all they did to build them was to dig a little in the dirt. That should tell you how barren this place is. We sat on the computers in the internet shop for hours, read and sat in the square, ate at a desert cafe a bunch of times, and just walked around. On top of all that, our bus was two hours late. Needless to say we had overstayed our welcome and were happy to get out of Nazca.

Not only was that extra day in Nazca a real waste of time, but it also threw a major wrench in our travel plans. We have to be in Cusco on the 1st for our train to Macchu Picchu, and were hoping to visit both Arequipa and Lake Titicaca before then. It took some debating, but due to time and transportation constraints  we decided to skip Lake Titicaca. We arrived in Arequipa this morning, and take an overnight bus (about 10 or 11 hours - don't worry, we have sleeping pills and booked the "first class" seats) to Cusco tomorrow night. That'll give us some time to acclimize and explore Cusco before going to Macchu Picchu. But first, we have about two days in Arequipa. You may not have heard of it before (I hadn't), but it is the second largest and apparently the second most popular tourist town in Peru (behind Cusco). Turns out, as it usually does, that this is no accident. We went into downtown earlier this afternoon and it is really, really nice. Arequipa is nicknamed "the White City" because of it's many colonial-style building made of sillar, a pearly white volcanic rock. It is also framed by 3 big (dormant) volcanoes. We spent a couple of ours walking around downtown - there are many churches, monasteries, markets, and public areas to explore. Steph especially liked the little side alleys that led to charming little courtyards, usually with a fountain in the middle surrounded by cafes and shops.

Arequipa's main square

There are little cafes like this everywhere

The main square with the mountains in the background

We are also really happy with our hostel, which is a pretty new house about 10 minutes outside the city. They have lots of things to do - pool table, ping pong, movie room, video games, plus a nice patio and hammocks outside to enjoy the warm sun. Basically, a good place to recharge out batteries after they were drained in Nazca. (I'm sorry I'm bashing Nazca so much - I would actually recommend a visit, just make sure you have a ticket out before you book your ticket in.) We may decide to take a tour tomorrow, we may just hang out. At the very least, we'll post again on the 31st from Cusco as we prepare for our trip to Macchu Picchu! Can't wait!

Goodbye Mexico, Hello Peru

This is going to be a long, long trip if it continues like it has. We only spent THREE nights in Mexico, and feel like we've done so much and are ready for a rest. Now we've arrived in Peru with a pretty jam-packed schedule for 17 days. Hopefully we'll get 'travel-fit' and fast.

One of Steph's requests for the blog is that we do a "Top 3" list whenever we leave a country, so here goes (along with a few other Best/Worst of...)

Top 3 Things from MEXICO
1) Pyramids. The mystery of past civilizations is fascinating, so standing in an ancient city that is not yet understood and not yet fully discovered was very cool. Plus climbing a pyramid just isn't something you do every day.
2) Walking the downtown areas. This one made the list in large part because we weren't expecting much, but we truly did enjoy the large and varying amounts of architecture, the masses of people, and, though weird at times, being some of the only tourists in the city.
3) Trying to order chicken tacos and getting weird soup. This is obviously a Steph nomination. She apparently delighted in seeing me try to get some decent food and then seeing the disappointment when the lady picked up the soup ladle. This does lead us into another award...

Biggest Disappointment
Surprisingly our biggest disappointment, mainly because I had such high expectations, was the food. Believe it or not, but Mexicans don't eat chicken tacos and big Moe's-style burritos, at least not the way we do. They seem to prefer things like beef hearts, intestines, and eye in their food (yes, I said eye). They do have tacos, as we finally found out our last day, but most of the food they eat is wildly different than what I was expecting and it was surprisingly difficult to find even remotely Americanized Mexican food. If it weren't for that taco stand we found our last day, offering 5 mini-tacos with beef or pork, onion, and cilantro for a mere 18 pesos (like $1.50), I might have cried. Next time, though, we'll know what to expect and what to look for so should come out much better on the food front.

Biggest Dislike
Actually this is kind of a hard one. Not that it was perfect in any way, but nothing really stood out as the worst part of our time in Mexico. Sure, it would have been nice if more people spoke English, but we can't exactly complain about that, now can we? We had a lot of rain our last day. You would run across some nasty smells every now and then. Other than that, we had a good time. If you want to check out all our photos from Mexico, go HERE.

Budget
So we've basically just pulled a number out of the air of $100 per day average for our entire trip as our budget. This should be easily do-able, but it's good to have a goal. We counted 4 days in Mexico, and came out to $65 per day. So far, so good! Unfortunately, I think Peru is about to bust our budget...

Hello, Peru
Again with the overnight flight. This one wasn't as bad, we did score exit row seats somehow, and the hostel we're staying at in Lima (actually Miraflores, sort of a suburb of Lima) let us check-in really early so we got to take a nice nap this morning. Today we took it pretty easy, exploring some of Miraflores around our hostel. The hostel owner, Frances, gave us a really elaborate walk-thru of things to see and do in all of the different areas of Lima (as Steph and I tried to keep our eyes open). He is very nice and helpful but I think we'll try to take it slow our first couple days in Peru. There are a lot of tourists here (many, many Americans), and a lot more people speak English than in Mexico, both of which are both good and bad. There is a big round-a-bout near here that would have you believe you're in any standard American city. Starbucks, Chili's, TGI Fridays, and of course McDonald's are at our fingertips. We didn't go to any (okay, so we went in Starbucks, but Steph didn't buy anything!), but did enjoy the big supermarket located next door. It's kind of like a Super Walmart in that it has groceries plus a lot of household things, but is different in a hard-to-describe way.

what you do during a red light is your business - dude spinning on his head with a hoola-hoop

Later, Steph was drawn like a magnet across town to a huge handicrafts market. There's only about three different types of stalls in the 100+ market, so you could really spend about 5 minutes and see all there is to see, but we enjoyed strolling around and practicing our bargaining skills. Did we mention it's cold here? Not cold-cold but colder than we expected, which duped us into each buying an alpaca wool hat and Steph a pair of gloves. We can only assume it will be much colder in the mountains, even more so in Chile and Argentina, so there is no reason not to plan ahead.

Steph in the market with her new hat

Tomorrow we are going to explore Lima some, go check out the beach (about a mile away), and do some planning for the rest of our trip in Peru. Well, I hope everyone is still reading, because I want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPH! She's an old lady at 26 now, and it may be time for me to start telling people she's younger than she really is. Could she still pass for 23? Only kidding, of course. I hope she had a great birthday, even if most of it was spent in a tired trance. We went to dinner and I got her some candy from the grocery store. I know how to treat a lady. Adios amigos.

Pyramids and Pastries

Yesterday we took a tour to the pyramids of Teotihuacan with about 5 other people from our hostel. We could have gone by ourselves and probably saved a lot of money, but this was only about $30 each, had a few extra stops, plus was much easier to plan (since all we had to do was pay and then show up). Our first stop were the ruins of Tlatelolco, built by the Aztecs and still located right in the city. It used to be a major marketplace for the Aztecs and was one of their last strongholds before being conquered by Cortez. All that was left are small "pyramids" with flat tops that were used a shrines to the different gods they used to worship. The main pyramid was continually being expanded by adding a new "shell" around the existing pyramid every 52 years, or whenever a new leader came into power. Everything is built for a reason, most of it to do with the universe, stars, and resulting Aztec calendar. Once Cortez conquered the Aztecs, their objective was to convert the locals to Catholicism, so they used the stones from the pyramids to build a large cathedral, which still stands today. They believed that since they built the cathedral on what the Aztecs considered to be holy land, they would be easier to convert. As you can see, having a guide gave us a lot more information to pass on to you guys...and more to come!

Our group walking through the Aztec ruins of Tlatelolco

The first Catholic church built by the Spanish in Mexico

Next stop was the Basilica of Guadalupe, a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe and a massive pilgrimage site for Catholics, actually the second most visited Catholic site in the world, after the Vatican. It is near the site where Our Lady of Guadalupe (an image of the Virgin Mary mixed with Aztec symbolism) appeared to a a native indian guy named Juan Diego back in the 1500s. Our guide, Alejandro, told us it was more than just a religious symbol for Mexicans, it was also a symbol of their culture.  Not being Catholics or Mexican, we didn't really get it, but the people were really serious about it and there was a really nice park on a hill nearby with a good view of the city.

Inside the Basilica of the Virgin Guadalupe

The original image of the Virgin Guadalupe from the 16th Century

The gardens at the Basilica

We stopped for lunch at a little tourist trap near the pyramids of Teotihuacan, where they taught us a little about some of plants (mainly agave) and stones used in producing traditional mexican handicrafts. Then, not surprisingly, they tried to sell us some. They had some great obsidian carvings, but who wants to carry a big rock around the world?  They also had lunch waiting for us which, despite being a bit expensive by local standards, was really good and we got to sample all kinds of traditional Mexican foods that we wouldn't have ordered in a restaurant (i.e.: cactus).

By then we were all fueled up and ready to climb some pyramids. The Teotihuacan site is massive, with two big pyramids, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, plus tons of smaller pyramids lining the Avenue of the Dead. Many of the smaller pyramids are still underground and haven't been excavated yet. The most interesting thing about this site to me is that they don't know who built it. There are some theories, but nothing for sure, except that it was abandoned when the Aztec stumbled upon it and decided to stay because it was so impressive to them. They gave it the name Teotihuacan, so they don't even know what the original name was. We had a few hours to walk around and explore, including climbing up several pyramids, namely the top of the largest on site, the Pyramid of the Sun. By the end of the day, we were tired and a bit sun burnt, so we basically crashed in the room when we got back and did some planning for our upcoming time in Peru.

Sitting on the Moon Pyramid looking out at the Avenue of the Dead

Adam on top of one of the smaller Pyramids

One of the original paintings from the site - at one time, all the structures were covered in paintings

Today was a "cheap" day for us. We're over-budget so just took the day to hang out and walk around the nearby Centro Historico. One of the things we've really enjoyed about the city so far is just walking the streets and enjoying the beautiful old buildings and seeing all the people. And no doubt about it, there are a LOT of people. Everybody is constantly moving, and I have no idea where all of them could possibly be going. Most of them don't even sit down to eat. There's very few tourists to be seen, except for one Indian guy and his wife that we keep seeing over and over. It seems as if everyone in Mexico City has something to sell you, and maybe if some of them spoke English we'd be able to figure out what it is and maybe buy it. We did stumble upon a little gem today, a bakery recommended on WikiTravel. It is a huge place with tons of different breads and desserts, where you just grab a big metal tray, some tongs, and go to town. People are absolutely loading up their trays with everything from jello cups to croissants to doughnuts, plus all kinds of stuff that we hadn't a clue what it was. Well, I don't think anybody will be surprised that we loaded up like it was going out of style. Once we got all we thought we could handle loaded on our tray, we went to check out only to find out there was a $5 minimum for credit card payments. We were only at $3. That ought to tell you how cheap it was - Stephanie and I got all the sweets we wanted and were only at $3. We not-so-reluctantly found another $2 worth of extra treats and lugged out our bounty.

The street our hostel is on

The awesome pastry shop - all this was less than 3 bucks!

Arrived in Mexico City

Yeah, at 5 a.m. Somebody tell me why we would book a red-eye flight that is only 3.5 hours for the first flight of our trip. I have no idea, and it's turned us into walking zombies for most of the day. First we had to wait an hour or so in the airport for the sun to come out. Not really had to, but after only hearing DANGER, DANGER about Mexico we figured we'd better not venture around in the dark right away. We eventually took a taxi to our hostel, stored our bags away, and proceeded to pass out on the couches in the lobby for a couple hours, sleeping through breakfast. We woke up just in time for the free walking tour of a few of the better markets in town. Turns out they didn't have enough to go through with the tour, but the guide was really nice and drew us out a map so we could go on our own. Our hostel is located in the historical part of town, which is centrally located, so we were able to walk to the first market - the meat market. They had a bunch of fruit and veggie stalls as well, but the real draw were the meat stands full of all kinds of exotic and not-so-exotic (but still interesting) meats. They had loads of fresh fish, plus sharks, octopus, and just about anything else you can pull out of the ocean. Then there was the whole barnyard available for purchase freshly slaughtered - literally piles of small pigs, goats, whole chickens, and lots of cow parts that I doubt would make it into dog food back home.

brains!!

ALL the little piggies went to the market

Next we took the subway/metro to the largest market in Mexico - something like 3 or 4 full city blocks plus more spilling into the surrounding side streets. Despite all this space and the abundance of different stalls, there wasn't that many different things. Sure there were fruit stalls, veggie stalls, candy, meat, food, grains, beans, pinatas, fake flowers, dog food, even bulk jello mix stalls, but there were many multiples of each. There were literally about 50 stalls that sell the same fruit and veggies. Talk about competition. Anyways, we browsed around for a while, picked up a box of 8 packs of Orbit gum for about $1.50 US (score!), and eventually decided to get some tacos. You would think this would be easy. We could not for the life of us figure out how to order a simple taco. We finally settled on a little stall with 3 old ladies, cooking tortillas on a little stovetop. I tried my best to say "taco pollo", pointing at the tortillas. She acted confused for a minute then seemed to suddenly figure out what I wanted. So, she turns around, grabs a big bowl, plops a boiled chicken leg in it, and filled it with some sort of broth. "Oh no, I'm getting soup." It wasn't exactly bad, just really salty with chickpeas and rice in the bottom. Can't complain though - a big bowl of soup (with chicken leg, don't forget) plus a bottle of Coke for only about $3 US. Needless to say, Steph didn't eat much.

bulk cereal

bulk jello mix!?!

lunch

After the market, we decided to go to Chapultepec Park, which is a giant park in town with a zoo and a bunch of museums. The National Museum of Anthropology is supposed to be really good, so we decided to go check it out and get some background info for our trip to the pyramids tomorrow (spoiler alert). This is where the no-sleep-last-night thing really bit us. When you're dead tired you don't exactly have the energy to read all the little blurbs in the exhibits, so we just wandered around taking pictures of all the cool sculptures and stuff, plus a little nap on a bench in a garden... 

Tonight we're just hanging out in the hostel, trying to catch up on sleep. Tomorrow morning we go out to see the pyramids of Teotihuacan - so we're looking forward to that!

On the Road Again

Well, not quite yet. But, at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, Sunday the 18th, we will officially hit the road again and start our around the world trip!! Woohoo! As you can see, we've taken a bit of a hiatus from blogging while home this summer, but you can now rest easy because today marks our return to blogging. We plan to blog as much as possible over the next 5 or so months of traveling, at least as much as time and internet/power connections warrant. First we'll get you caught up on what we've been up to and give some updates about our upcoming trip.

We'll go all the way back to New Zealand, if that's okay with you, since we never got around to telling you about our last couple days on the North Island. We basically drove around the Coromandel Peninsula, stopping at a few beaches and lookouts along the way. It was surprisingly nice and beautiful with excellent beaches. We'll have to come back sometime when the weather is warmer and we can enjoy the water.

Cathedral Cove

Okay now back to the US. We've had a really good summer. It's been busy, hectic at times, but all in all a really good time. We had 3 weddings, a bachelor party golf weekend at Callaway Gardens, a trip up to Washington DC to visit Steph's brothers who are hiking the Appalachian Trail, a weekend in Destin, a long road trip out to Colorado for my sister's wedding that included rafting, camping, and visiting Mt. Rushmore, plus lots of trips to Newnan to see Steph's family and to Jasper to see mine. In between all of that I did manage to work full-time, which turned out really great as it gave me something to do and some much-needed cashflow. Steph, despite not working, somehow managed to stay really busy (or so she claims) with getting our visas and vaccinations together for our trip, renting out our condo again, and of course lots of shopping. Here's some photos from our summer...

the Hollister clan in DC (Ryan had a swollen eye from poison ivy, hence the uni-bomber look)

Arlington Cemetery - one of our favorite sites in DC

The last week we've been in full-out planning/getting ready mode. Some last-minute vaccinations and visa applications had us pretty stressed, but it's all taken care of and we are ready to go! You may remember that we originally planned to fly to Mexico on the 15th, but quickly realized we weren't going to be ready in time. So, we moved around a few flights and now will fly from LA to Mexico on the red-eye on the 19th, arriving on the 20th. Since we had been postponing everything, we also didn't get around to buying flights to LA far enough in advance, hence the 5:30 a.m. flight tomorrow (hey, it saved us at least 150 bucks). We'll get to spend a couple days in LA visiting Steph's Uncle Bean and then we'll be on the road again.

One of the most common questions we are asked about our trip is, 'How do you pack for a trip like this?' 'Lots of layers' is how we normally respond, but we thought we'd go through our entire packing list just because I'm sure you'll love to read it. First of all, we have these big travel backpacks with detachable day-packs and straps that can be zipped up when checked onto a plane. Mine is bigger than Steph's, so that's all I'm taking, with the plan to carry-on my daypack for flights. Steph is taking her travel backpack plus a huge tote bag to carry-on. That's it. Everything fits, with a surprisingly good amount of room to spare. That's not necessarily a good thing since it takes away my best argument for Steph not to buy something (and there will be plenty of "somethings"). Also, pretty much all of our clothes will go into "packing cubes", which help organize and keep similar items in one place. They are great for packing, but we'll have to see how it goes when clothes start getting dirty and the packing cubes are less than full. Anyways, on to the list...

Steph's Clothes
shorts
bermuda shorts
jeans
jean capris
leggings
2 pair athletic shorts
pajama pants
sleep shorts
athletic pants
3 short-sleeve t-shirts
5 short sleeve shirts
2 long-sleeve shirts
3 tank tops
2 camisols
cardigan
dryfit pullover
long-sleeve baselayer shirt
3 dresses
light jacket
rain jacket
Merrell hiking shoes
Chaco flip-flops
Flats
Bathing suit
3 pair mid-length socks
3 pair short socks
"warm and fuzzy" fleece socks
2 bras
2 sports bras
9 pair underwear
fleece earwarmer headband

Adam's clothes
jeans
REI Adventures khaki pants
2 pair REI shorts (khaki and dark gray)
hiking shorts
bathing suit
athletic shorts
rain jacket
Serious Fun hoodie (for job back in NZ)
lightweight fleece-like jacket
long-sleeve baselayer shirt
long-sleeve t-shirt
7 t-shirts
polo shirt
7 pairs underwear
5 pair short socks
long hiking socks
Chaco flip-flops
Merrell hiking shoes

Miscellaneous

Samsung netbook + charger + protective sleeve

Panasonic ZS6 camera + charger + case

iPod Touch + charger cable

Zune + charger cable

2 pair headphones

Olympus waterproof camera + charger

small flashlight

travel plug adapter

small multi-tool (pliers, scissors, knife, screwdrivers, etc.)

spork

combination padlock

pens

duct tape (wrapped around a pen)

electrical tape

2 travel sheets
2 stuff sacks (for dirty clothes)
2 mesh laundry bags
Ziplock freezer bags
2 inflatable pillows
3 small Kleenex packs
Wet Wipes travel pack
face cleaning wipes
2 eye masks
hair brush
dual-voltage hair dryer
hand towel
washcloth
cosmetics
earplugs
USB flash drive 1GB
2 Tide wash bags
2 water bottles
Steripen Traveler (water purifier)
coffee filters (for pre-filtering water before purifying)
hair bands
extra razor blades
sunglasses
travel towel
golf towel
Shammy towel
packing cubes
sewing kit
Tupperware container (to put crush-able items in)
nylon straps with buckles (to connect things to our bags with)
First Aid kit - medicine, band-aids, neosporin, etc.
Toiletries
all-in-one laundry sheets
sink laundry detergent
re-usable travel shopping bag
book
2 small notebooks
Bible

I'm sure there are a lot of things that we will ditch along the way, and probably a lot of things we wish we had brought or at least brought more of. Maybe when it's all said and done we'll revisit this list and go over what we did and didn't use. That's assuming you all enjoyed this list the first go-around...