Mendoza, Argentina

Oh, the beef. So much beef. Our introduction to Argentinian cuisine has been a good one, at least for me. In our first two nights in Mendoza, I almost certainly ate more steak than I had in the entire previous year. No joke. The first night we said we would do it right. There was an all-you-can-eat place down the street from our hostel, so we figured 'What better way to try all different types of Argentinian food at once?' There was one flaw with this reasoning, and a major one - we couldn't tell what half the food was and couldn't even ask if we wanted to. So, we cautiously dove into whatever food looked edible. Some of them didn't turn out to be, including some kind of meat dish I had that certainly wasn't beef and I'm afraid to think what it might have been, as well as what we think was squid tentacles (we purposefully tried these) that tasted like cheese of all things. They did, however, have plenty of beef. I only knew of two different cuts - lomo (tenderloin) and bife de chorizo (sirloin). So, I got lots of these and only these, both because I didn't know how to order anything else and was to afraid to accidentally order the dreaded morcilla, or blood sausage. I know people swear by that stuff, but I'll pass. Maybe I should have mentioned that most of the restaurants in Argentina, at least one's serving steak (which is most), have large wood-burning grills, or parillas, in the front window. On the parillas they have all different cuts of steak, chicken, sausage, you name it. It's amazing. Anyways, the lomo was fantastically tender and charred, and the chorizo was pretty good too. Steph pretty much filled herself up with pasta and dessert, we especially liked the caramel-filled crepes with ice cream. We could get used to this! The second night, however, was the real meat-fest. Despite our (read: my) overindulgence from the night before, we decided to take part in a cookout that our hostel was having, if for nothing more than to socialize with some other travelers. For about 10 bucks each we were promised "meat, beef, salad, wine, juice" and some other stuff. Turns out it's really just wine and beef. There was a bowl of lettuce with vinegar dressing and some sliced tomatoes, a pitcher of tang, a couple bottles of wine, and lots and lots of beef. I'm not sure what cut it was, but it was delicious and the guy kept bringing more and more of it. Even Steph, avid red-meat hater, ate about the equivalent of a 12 oz steak! It's not even like she had a sauce to drench it in - this was straight beef seasoned with nothing more than salt and pepper. We shared our meal with a couple from England. The wife ate even less steak than Steph, so me and this guy sat there and ate 3 or 4 huge plates of steak. No kidding I ate at least 2.5 pounds of steak. It was so good. Even Steph ate it! Come on, you know that's good steak!

Even more than Argentina is known for steak, Mendoza is known for it's wine. Outside of Europe and California, it's probably one of the premiere wine-producing regions in the world. I could care less, of course, since I don't like wine, but as the saying goes "when in Rome"...so we decided to take a wine tasting tour one day. We forgot our camera, unfortunately, but actually had a really fun day. The tour was only about $15 each and included transportation and a tour guide in Spanish (so basically just transportation). We visited a little family-owned vineyard, what I would call a corporate vineyard that bought grapes elsewhere and made mass amounts of wine, an olive oil factory, and a liquor/dulche de leche (caramel)/marmalade/chocolate/ anything-else-they-felt-like-making factory. I was a little mad since we told ourselves we weren't going to buy anything and instead bought at least one thing from each place, but all of it only cost another 15 bucks so I couldn't really complain.

Mendoza park - notice the canal behind the bench, used to flood the city with water for irrigation (it's in a desert)

Our last day in Mendoza we went for a walk - an epic day-long walk around and through town and out to a huge park called Park San Martin, just outside of town. This park was massive and we were enjoying our meandering-around as we made our way across to the zoo, that is until we got lost. It was the map's fault, to be sure. Even so, we got lost and we turned around and headed what we thought was the right way. Then we realized we were lost again and headed back the other way again. We only had to get lost one more time until we finally found the zoo. We had been nowhere close. I had apparently underestimated the size of this park.

entrance to Park San Martin

Steph's favorite "twiggy flowers" in the park

Anyways, we made it to the zoo and began what would be an interesting, sad, funny, fascinating, depressing visit. The zoo had an amazing variety of wildlife - monkeys, chimps, lions, tigers, pumas, bears, leopards, baboons, elephants, hippos, birds, etc etc. But, many of them were in cages that were just depressingly small. The zoo had tons of room - why do you have to put a lion in a cage the size of a hotel room? And the animals that did have open-air "habitats" were treated to nothing more than concrete and rocks and an empty moat. The sight of an animal pacing their enclosure in a trance-like state makes me sick.

poor elephant had the most barren enclosure of all - and not a friend to share it with

lion enclosure

Despite all that the zoo was pretty interesting. The small cages did allow us to get almost frighteningly close to some of these amazing creatures. We could have reached in and touched a lion if we wanted. I got to hold hands with a monkey again (I think they wanted to pull my finger in the cage to bite me). They had some animals from South America that we wouldn't normally see at a zoo like some ugly condors. We came to find out that their security wasn't so good. We're standing there looking at about a hundred baboons stuffed into this big enclosure when a lone baboon walks up the hill towards us. At first we assumed he had escaped and was on the lam. We were debating whether we should let them know or risk harboring a fugitive. Then we see that he's not alone. There's a bunch more baboons and a lot of monkeys running loose around this place. So I guess the zoo staff (none of which were ever seen in the park) was aware, maybe there was just nothing they could do. Every trash can in the place was emptied and looted.

monkey want camera

who knew condors were so ugly

never seen one of these before - it's but was like florescent

some weird cretures. the middle pig/elephant is a tapir and the hairy things on left and right are capybars - thelargest rodents in the world

a whole herd of white deer

We knew that right outside the zoo you could catch a bus to that would take us all the way back into town. Problem was, you could only pay with coins. We didn't have enough coins, so we tried to get change at the little corner convience store. No dice. We tried with the zoo ticket booth and then the parking lot attendant. Still no go. So we decided to walk and sure enough, we walk the wrong way. We walked about half a mile into what can only be described as the ghetto before realizing we were going the wrong way and turned around. Turns out the convience store lady had change she just wouldn't give it to me, so we bought two lollipops in separate transactions to get the change we needed for the bus. Then we accidentally did something wrong and never ended up paying for the bus. Sheesh.  We ended up back to the hostel to get ready for our bus to Buenos Aires! Which brings us to now. We are in Buenos Aires (and have been for two days but are still really behind in blogging). Tomorrow we head north to Iguazu Falls so we will try to post again before then, though our bus claims to have wifi. I'd be surprised.

Sunny in Santiago

We're in a bit of a blogging rut at the moment, so are going to try to catch up. It's not really that we've been all that busy, though I guess we could use poor internet access as an excuse. Either way, we're currently in Mendoza, Argentina after earlier today taking a bus up and over the Andes mountains from Santiago. We spent only 3 days in Chile but really enjoyed Santiago. Sure, there isn't anything all that famous or even very interesting to see, but it had just what we were looking for - a clean, safe city with just enough "American" feel to it to shelve any homesickness we were feeling. To be honest I'm not sure how we might have felt about it if we had come straight from the US, but after spending a month in "dangerous" and often dirty cities, it was nice.

One thing we need to get better at when visiting some of these cities is to learn some history, culture...something. In three days exploring the city we unfortunately did very little learning - no museums, art galleries or shows. We did walk around and see some really nice buildings and monuments, but we have no idea what they were or meant. They sure were pretty though.

appears to be some government building

another nice official-looking place

Let's see...one day we walked all around the city but forgot the camera. The next day we walked around the city some more, went to a real cool park on a hill (Charles Darwin had even been there before), but did bring the camera. The next day we went to a giant shopping mall. I know this doesn't sound that great, but we liked it. Santiago is surprsingly clean, modern, and the weather has been much better (read: warmer) than expected. We've covered a large part of the city and have only seen nice parks and plazas, old buildings that have been restored into offices and department stores, lots of pedestrian-only streets, and street vendors that sell delicious sugar-coated almonds instead of whatever weird animal parts they prefer in other areas of South America (ok, there were also vendors selling some strange drink that looked like beer with beans in it). We even felt safe enough to venture out at night! It's probably hard to imagine what it's like to not constantly be worried about getting mugged or pickpocketed. Sure, I am still paranoid of getting pickpocketed, but at least I'm  not so worried about getting mugged.

Steph at the park with some nice fountains

view from park over Santiago

looking back up hill in the park towards old castle that serves as lookout

some "street art" near our hostel

Like I said earlier, we are now in Argentina, but I'll leave the journey here plus Mendoza for a later post. We'll need to do a 'Best of' for Ecuador' and a budget, but again I'm going to procrastinate. Be well.

No More Soup

This time we didn't even mean to order soup, Steph specifically asked for "Spaghetti with vegetables" in her best Spanish, and the waiter repeated it. Sure enough he comes out with what appeared to be vegetable soup - corn, broccoli, cauliflower, and scrambled eggs soaking in a weird broth. It was better than my literally dripping-with-grease chicken sandwich though.

We went to the beach today (which was really nice) and got sunburned, and aren't going to be able to take a shower for at least 36 hours. So we're all salty, sunburned, hungry, tired and about to get on a night bus back to Quito. Oh, and maybe a bit cranky too. So ready to get out of this town and back to civilization - here's hoping Santiago has some good food and at least some people speak English (or our Spanish magically gets a whole lot better over the next 48 hours)!

Puerto Lopez

Unfortunately, that is not our picture. We were not fortunate enough, nor nearly fast enough with our camera to get a shot like that. We did, however, see some pretty similar things today during our day tour from Puerto Lopez to Isla de la Plata, otherwise known as "the Poor Man's Galapagos." You don't even have to be poor for the Galapagos to be out of your price range. Flights and a few nights on a dinky boat would have easily set us back over 2 grand. Isla de la Plata, on the other hand, only cost us $55 bucks for an 8 hour tour including whale watching, guided tour of the island, snorkeling, and lunch, and that's including the $20 park fee. Not a bad deal at all.

I've been trying to think of something funny to say about these guys, but just can't...

Above is the famous Blue-Footed Booby. What a great name, and a cool bird to boot. It's probably the animal I have always most wanted to see from the Galapagos, and since Isla de la Plata doesn't have the Galapagos' most famous animal - that being the giant tortoise - I was happy that it does have the blue footed booby in abundance. They nest all over the island, sometimes right in the middle of the trail, and aren't really scared of you. They wouldn't let you walk up and pet them, but you can walk by with a couple feet space and they don't mind. Maybe the guide explained why their legs are blue, but we couldn't tell because he only spoke spanish. I think it's got something to do with finding a mate. We took tons of pictures of these guys. They were everywhere.

As with most offshore islands, Isla de la Plata is home to lots of different bird colonies.  Besides the blue footed boobies, the only other nesting sites we saw were the Nazca boobies and the Waved Albatross (only saw one bird deep in a bush). There are also Maginificent Frigates, Red-billed Tropic birds, Red-footed Boobies, and pelicans nesting on the island, though we only saw these in flight. 

Nazca booby nesting

booby in flight

The snorkeling that we did (or I should say "I did" since Steph sat in the boat), was only alright. Saw a little corral, schools of little fish, some big fish that weren't terribly interesting, and some starfish. There were a bunch of sea turtles that hung around the boat and LOVED watermelon, so we got to feed them by hand, but I didn't see any while snorkeling. 

The real highlight of the trip was the whale watching. Every year between June and September humpback whales come to the waters between Puerto Lopez and Isla de la Plata to mate and calf. We're here near the end of the season, but still there were loads of whales to be seen. Neither of us have even seen a whale before, so the first spoat?? from the blowhole was really exciting. I'd say we saw about 15 fairly close from the boat between the trip to and from the island, and many more in the distance both from the boat and from land. That was the really amazing part - you could look off into the distance and almost routinely see a big black object rise out of the water and then make a huge white splash. Even as we're walking around the island a couple times we'd look out and see a whale jump one, two, three times in a row. Unfortunately we never got to see one jump (aka "breach") really close up, except this little baby that was playing around by itself jumping again and again out of the water. He never could quite make it all the way out. Then we got to see him swim off with his huge mother that made him look so small, even though he was probably the size of our boat. 

a wee baby out for a play

We also got to see a lot of splashing around and a few tail shots.  We really enjoyed it and are thinking of going out again tomorrow for a few hours just to do some whale watching. Don't tell Steph but I think I might jump in the water if they are real close and try to swim with them...

On our way here we had an overnight stay in Guayaquil, not because there is anything interesting there but because we couldn't take 12 hours on an Ecuadorian bus in one day. Turns out our hostel had a cage of pygmy marmosets that they were raising as part of a reintroduction project. They were shy little buggers but really unlike any monkey we had ever seen.

not a great pic thru the chicken wire but you can see momma and baby

Another interesting tidbit about our journey here was the town of Jipijapa. Since Steph would never allow a future baby to be named this, I think I'll call my next pet Jipijapa. A 'j' is pronounced like an 'h' in spanish, so it sounds like "hippi-hoppa". Tomorrow hopefully we'll do some more whale watching and plan to visit the mainland part of the national park (of which we already have $20 passes for), which is supposed to have some really good beaches. Tomorrow night we have an overnight bus back to Quito, where we'll spend the day before an overnight flight to Santiago. Gonna be a long next few days...

Where Banos Gets It's Name

Earlier I mentioned that Banos (with a little ~ over the 'n') is a term for "bathroom" in Spanish. That part is true. The town of Banos, however, its actually named from the literal translation of 'banos' being 'bath.' Actually the town's official name is Banos de Agua Santa which I think means "bath of the holy water." Anyways, the town is known for it's hydrothermal springs near town. Jeez, what am I getting at? Nothing really, except to say that we did visit a little spa yesterday where instead of soaking in hot pools we went for an Ecuadorian specialty - Banos de Cajon, or as I like to call it "the steam coffin." I had no idea what I was getting into, only that you sit in a little box, that it costs 7 dollars and would hopefully prevent Steph from getting a $35 massage. Turns out all of that was right, and much more. First you strip down to a bathing suit and they put you into your own little box with just your head sticking out. I wish we had taken the camera, but it looks a whole lot like this...

It's actually quite nice, even if a little uncomfortable. There is a lever inside where you control the amount of steam that enters your box, and there are some herbs inside there that smell nice and I suppose are good for your skin. Anyways, we're just sitting there relaxing, occasionally getting the guys working there to  get the big mug of tea sitting next to our head and direct the straw into our mouth for a drink. That was a bit awkward, but okay. I was relaxed and enjoying the view out the window, while wondering what these little baths of water in front of us was for. I figured it must be the water that they use for the steam. No idea why you would have a bath of it instead of just pipe it right in, but whatever. After about 15 minutes of relaxation, the guy comes and opens the door to your box, turns around and gets a big bucket of water from the bath in front of us, and proceeds to poor this impossibly cold water all over us! I did not expect that.  Steph was almost screaming and begging them to stop, but they were pretty adamant that everyone had to be doused a couple times with the freezing water. More refreshed than we ever wanted to be, they eventually closed the doors back and we cranked up the steam to warm ourselves up as quickly as possible. Another 15 minutes later and the same thing, except this time they changed it up a bit and made us sit down in the little bath of cold water, then took a pitcher and dumped water over our heads a couple times, then told us to continue dumping the water on ourselves. They stood there and watched to make sure you did it, but Steph would just pretend to pour it over her head but would really just pour it on her ponytail. They bought it, and once we stopped steaming let us back into our boxes. I was beginning to think they were steam coffins after all...

So again we steamed and again they doused us with cold water, this time making us stand in front of the baths and dousing us from behind.

No idea why they had a different method of freezing you out every time. By this time it appeared they had called in every worker in the place to watch and laugh at Steph's reactions to the cold water. It was hilarious. She would scream and dance around and have to fight her hands from instinctively pushing the bucket away. After one final steam and a spray down with a hose, we were finally invited to take a cold shower. Huh? We'll pass. I know I'm making this sound awful but it actually made you feel great, plus was really funny. They finished us off with a mud mask for our faces and a half a pineapple. What an amazing deal for 7 bucks! You wouldn't want to do it every day, but maybe once or twice a month when you need a good steam and a good laugh.

We've liked our stay in Banos so much that we are staying an extra night, even if all we've done is sit around all day. It has been raining off and on, so that's our excuse to do nothing. There is a lot of planning to be done, so it's been good to get a lot of that taken care of. Plus, we are probably delaying the 8 hour bus ride we have to take tomorrow to get out to the coast. Good beaches and whale watching await us, so it should be worth it.

One of the things I've worked on today is a map of where we've been and are going. The best I could come up with is Google Maps, but if anybody knows a more specialized website for this I'd be happy to hear it. As it stands, I've put in all our major airports into the map and drawn a line to show the order in which we visit them. Then I'm putting little "pins" on the places outside the main cities that we have visited (red pins) and will visit (green pens). That way, if you want to know where the heck Banos, Ecuador is, you can go to this map and click on the pins or on the list on the left to find Banos! Productive day! I'll put a permanent link on the right column of the blog that you can use to get to the map and will try my best to update it as we go along. So, for example, the map below is a screen shot of Ecuador, with the plane symbol being Quito, the red pin being Banos, and the green pins being Guayaquil (where we stay tomorrow night) and Puerto Lopez (where we'll end up the next day). The red line is our flight from Lima to Quito and the green line is our upcoming flight from Quito to Santiago, Chile.

Banos

First thing's first. We were robbed. I guess it was bound to happen at some point, but it still sucks. Apparently sometime between checking our bags in at the Lima airport and picking them up in Quito, somebody opened my bag, found a little sack we keep our chargers and power cords in, and decided to steal the chargers for both of our cameras. Who steals camera chargers?? Not only are these things practically worthless to whoever took them, but they are impossible to find in South America. We searched a little around Quito with no luck, and figured that while we maybe could find one in Santiago, it'd be best to order one on Amazon and have my mom ship it to us in Chile. Literally about 30 seconds after we ordered a new charger online, the owner of our hostel here in Banos came up and gave us a new charger! Apparently an Australian guy had gotten his Panasonic camera stolen on his way here and didn't have any use for a charger without a camera or battery. Sucks for him, but super lucky for us! The other camera we don't use anyways so we'll probably just ship it home when the battery runs out.

So yes, we are in Banos. You'll want to hear about how we got here. It started with about a 30 minute cab ride to the main bus station in the south of Quito. That cost about $11, which is a lot for around here, but pretty good for how long of a ride it was. We then bought bus tickets for the 3.5 hour journey south to Banos for $3.50 each! Now we're talking. We were assured that this bus would be "direct", but I guess they use that term a little more loosely than we would. It's true that we never technically had to change buses before arriving in Banos, but it certainly didn't go directly there. It was about a quarter full when we left the station, and I'd say we made about 25 stops along the way to pick people up whenever and wherever somebody wanted to get on. They run a two-man team, with a driver and a "door guy" (as I call him), who hangs out the door yelling "BANOS! BANOS!", or wherever the bus is heading, then comes around to collect money from whoever got on. It's an old coach bus, so fairly comfortable seats, but they'll pick up as many people as possible and have the entire aisle lined with people standing if they can. Not only that, but there are constantly vendors getting on and off trying to sell any kind of snack or drink you could want. Some of them even have little companies with matching uniforms that will bombard the bus with a conga line of snacks - ice cream, yogurt, water, coke, oranges, apples, chips, candy, plus all kinds of weird little snacks that they enjoy around here. At one stop a company wearing baby blue uniforms had a rotation of about 12-15 different vendors get on the bus 3 at a time, ride for a minute as they try to sell their goods, then get off for the next group. It was so strange. The only thing we have bought are ice cream cones for 25 cents - and they were pretty good! (except for the weird raisin-like fruit in my ice cream) If you've never ridden a local bus in Ecuador, it's worth experiencing, if only once... What should be a 3-hour trip was more like 4 hours in the circus that was our bus, but we eventually made it.

The hostel we are staying at here is amazing. It's an Aussie-Kiwi couple that own and run the place. It's easily the nicest hostel we've stayed at and the breakfasts are great. Normally around here if you got anything more than coffee/tea with bread and jam you'd be happy, but they also have muesli, juice, fresh fruit, and lots of options for the fresh baked bread. The Australian owner even smuggles in Vegemite, but of course we won't touch that stuff. We've had a good time talking Aussie-Kiwi relations with them, which we really enjoyed following while in New Zealand. Banos is a pretty nice town as well, at least by local standards. It's touristy, with heaps of little souvenir and trinket shops, and is mostly known for it's outdoor activities. There is mountain biking, canyoning, rafting, bungee jumping, and guided trips to nearby mountains, volcanos, and rainforests. If I'm not being too harsh, it's kind of the third-world version of Queenstown. Being touristy, there's lots of good restaurants for pretty good prices. For $5 you can get a huge plate of food plus a coke for an extra buck.

One of the more popular things to do in Banos is a bike ride toward the town of Puyo, which is about 60 kilometers away. You don't actually have to go that far, and it's supposed to be a scenic, mostly downhill,  ride. We were slightly interested, then we heard that bike rentals are only like $5 and we were in. I was a little ticked when we showed up and the bikes were $10 or $7, but the guy read our minds and showed us the $4 bike rack. Now there's a deal. For $4 each we got a decent mountain bike for the day, helmets, a repair kit and chain with lock. The ride toward Puyo can be charcterized in two different ways - about 3/4ths of what we did were on a narrow, 2-lane road with cars and huge trucks and buses zooming past you. I will say that they were pretty good about giving you a lot of room and waiting for traffic to clear before passing you, but it was still very nerve-racking nonetheless. The other 1/4th of the trip was along these bypasses of tunnels where you had a one-lane road with no traffic. You could breathe fresh air, hear the birds, stop for pictures...these parts were really nice and made the whole trip worth it. Most of the ride is downhill, through this gorge with a river down below you. There's a bunch of waterfalls along the way that you can stop and look at. Many of them you can see from the road across the gorge. Pretty much all of these had a little restaurant at the lookout where you can get in a cable car and ride across the gorge. We stopped at the first one we saw and, thinking this sounded pretty cool, gladly paid a $1.50 each to ride across the gorge and back. We didn't know until later that every waterfall would have this and the other one's only charged a dollar. Can't fault the first place for charging $1.50, that's just good business. Some of the waterfalls you had to hike to, and while we couldn't quite figure it out, it appeared that people wanted you to pay to walk down a trail to see the waterfall. It was only a dollar or 2, but why should we have to pay to see a waterfall? We skipped most of these and just kept on biking. We were feeling pretty good until we actually had to pedal up a hill, and not long after that we decided we'd had enough and stopped. For a dollar we hopped onto a bus back with a bunch of weary travelers on their "direct" route to Banos...

Goodbye Peru, Hello Ecuador

Was that really 17 days? It seems like we've been in Peru forever, yet not very long. Here are our Top 3 and some other notes from Peru...

Top 3 in Peru:

#1 - Machu Picchu. Obvious choice. If you have a bucket list, add this to it. Just get there early.

#2 - Amazon. Our blog about our time in the Amazon was pretty quick, and I don't think we really elaborated how much we enjoyed it. Sure, the monkeys were really fun (see a video of us with the monkeys HERE), and we got to see some cool things that we were hoping to see, but we were both really surprised by the beauty of the river. It's huge, flat, and not all that dramatic, but the size, people, wildlife, and surroundings truly were amazing.

Steph loves taking these "artsy" shots -  this one actually turned out good!

#3 - The first two were easy choices, and it's not to say that we didn't like Cusco, Arequipa, and Nazca, but as a "wildball" (as Steph calls it), our number 3 favorite thing in Peru was Inca Kola. Everyone I've ever known that went to Peru came home talking about this stuff, usually with a souvenir t-shirt. If you haven't had it, it's a really sweet, almost tutti-frutti flavored soda. It's almost too sweet to drink alone, but I had it with almost every meal while here. Over our last few days I went on overload because it would be my last chance to have it for years, then I got to Ecuador and they have it in the little shop across from our hostel. 

Thoughts on Peru:

- The Food: We are still getting used to eating food from street vendors and dirty little restaurants, so for most of Peru we stuck with what we know and thus didn't try too many Peruvian dishes. It was cheap at least - you could usually get a 2- or 3-course meal with drink for about $3-5. We tried some different soups that were okay, but the only Peruvian food that is worth mentioning is called Lomo Saltado. I read about it on WikiTravel, so I tried it and it was pretty good! It's beef tips (at the cheap places we ate, usually just strips of flank steak) sauteed with tomatoes, onions and spices, then served over french fries with a side of rice. Yeah, the french fries seemed a strange choice for me too, and didn't really seem to add anything to the dish. And wouldn't you serve it over rice with a side of french fries? Not in Peru, apparently. So, if anybody is wanting "a taste of Peru" (and come on, this isn't exactly exotic cuisine), maybe you should try Lomo Saltado for dinner tonight! I even looked up a recipe for you HERE.

- Speaking of the food, they do something kind of weird when eating at restaurants. When the meal is over, and the time comes to get the check, the server is nowhere to be found. You practically have to hunt them down to ask for the check - they will NOT bring it to you without asking. Apparently this is a South America thing and not just Peru, but it made our first few meals out very long...

- We were a little disappointed with how pushy all the people are that want you to eat at their restaurant or to sell you something. It's crazy. Pretty much every restaurant we walked by, there'd be somebody outside showing you the menu and trying to misdirect you to walk into their restaurant. Taxi drivers honk at every person they pass on the off chance that they actually want a taxi but haven't realized it yet. No telling how many times we said "no gracias" in 17 days...500?

- If we were to do a "Most Disappointing thing about Peru" it would probably be that we didn't get to see Lake Titicaca. It's supposed to be beautiful, with some really interesting native culture - some people (as I understand it) live on man-made islands of reed and even float around on reed boats and stuff. Surprisingly 17 days just isn't enough time to do even the highlights of Peru, so it'll give us an excuse to come back.

Budget  
I really don't even want to think about it, because we went way over. In fact, I'm not even going to calculate it out exactly, but by our estimations we averaged about $150 day. 50% over budget. Ouch. Over 17 days. Double ouch. But, we're not really that upset because we did two things that we knew were "splurges" but just had to do them - Machu Picchu and the Amazon. Both we did realtively cheap, but they are going to be pricey no matter what. Plus, we had to make 3 internal flights to make it all work, which we won't be doing most other places. We're confident we can make it up in Ecuador, Egypt, and Southeast Asia.

Hello, Ecuador

We've been in Quito for about 24 hours now and have really enjoyed it. We heard a lot of bad things about muggings and petty crimes, so have been taking extra precautions, but so far haven't had any problems. It's a really pretty city, set at a high elevation (about 10,000 feet) in a valley surrounded by mountains and even volcanos. Today we walked around the "Old Town", with some really nice cobblestone streets and old churches, then took public buses out to the "Mitad del Mundo" - the middle of the world! That's right, we joined most of you for lunch in the northern hemisphere! Actually I'm not sure we ever technically made it to the northern hemisphere, since the monument and little tourist trap that is Mitad del Mundo is actually a couple hundred meters off. Opps! I guess that's why you don't let missionaries do geography(??) for you. Supposedly the natives had already picked out a different spot, which eventually turned out to be right! We took a couple of the obligatory pictures strattling the equator, had lunch, and were out of there.

Old Town Quito

It's been a long time since Steph has gotten to shop at a real mall, so after the equator trip we visited the "new town" to see if we could find one. Sure enough we did, but it was straight out of the 70's and had nothing interesting to see. Sorry, Steph. Maybe in Santiago. We browsed around a craft market for a while, walked around a park where some old men were playing some weird version of bocce ball and a huge crowd had gathered to watch some overweight guys play some really pathetic volleyball (at least the old guys were good at bocce), then picked up a couple things at the grocery store and came back to the hostel. We're too afraid to go out at night so we're having Froot Loops for dinner! Just like home... Actually speaking of home, Ecuador uses the American dollar as it's currency. It's so nice get a break from trying to divide everything by 2.82. It's especially nice since everything is so cheap! Peru was pretty cheap, but this is even better. We had a really expensive lunch today in a touristy place for about 12 bucks. You can easily get a meal at a little mom and pop restaurant for under 2 dollars. I had a chocolate croissant thing this morning for 25 cents  (didn't say it was good..) and bottled cokes at the little store across the street are 30 cents. We can get used to this! Tomorrow we are going to somehow try to catch a bus that may or not take us the 3 hours to Banos, though we're hoping it will since it sounds great and we have 3 nights booked. They call their restrooms "banos" so we're really hoping there is no correlation...

these guys sucked at volleyball, so why did everyone want to watch?

Iquitos and the Amazon

Well we just got back from our 4 day, 3 night excursion into the Amazon rainforest. What an amazing place! We weren't but about 20 miles from Iquitos, in an area that 100 years ago would have been decimated from the logging and rubber industries. You'd have to go at least 100 miles in either direction to get to the real virgin jungle, but even still we were able to see lots of cool flora and fauna from our base at Cumaceba jungle lodge. First, lets start with Iquitos. We will spend just 2 nights here, and have pretty much no time to do any exploring, but it doesn't look like we're missing much. First thing you notice when coming to Iquitos is the motorcycles. The only way to get vehicles here is by boat, so motorcycles make up probably 95% of the traffic. Imagine if an entire town of 500,000 people was overrun by a Harley Davidson motorcycle gang, only instead they ride dinky, noisy little motorcycles. About half of them have little carts attached to the back and serve as taxis. Unfortunately we haven't gotten the privilege in riding in one of those. The second thing you notice here is the trash. Just really dirty, especially along the river, which is quite sad. The main Amazon river doesn't pass by here, but a large tributary does and it is extremely polluted and gross. Needless to say we were happy to spend most of our time in the jungle.

Lots of motorcycles, few cars

For our "jungle experience" we picked Cumaceba lodge mainly because (surprise!) they were the cheapest. For just over $200 each we got transfers to and from the airport (20 minutes and don't have to ride in a rickshaw), transfer to and from the lodge (45 minutes by boat), all food, excursions, and a little bungalow all to ourselves. We thought it was a great deal, especially since the other places were from about $300 to $600 for the same package. We were just happy to have someone pick us up from the airport and not have to face the crazy, yelling taxi drivers. The main thing the I wanted to see on this trip were the pink river dolphins, and it only took about 5 minutes after getting on the boat to see our first ones. They like to hang out near the mouths of tributaries as the run into the main Amazon river, so are surprisingly easy to see. There was a group of them really close to our lodge so we got to watch them pretty much every day, and even saw a baby one jump completely out of the water on a couple different occasions (if only we got a picture of that!).

hard to get a good shot of these guys

Every day consisted of breakfast, an excursion, lunch, excursion, dinner, then maybe a nighttime excursion (sweet!). We got to go out on a little canoe in complete darkness and look for baby caimans. Unfortunately we didn't catch any, but still a cool experience nonetheless. Other excursions included fishing for piranhas...

We both technically caught one, but Steph's was much bigger than mine

...swimming in the Amazon river...

...boat rides to bird-watch and see the giant lilypads...

these were only 3-4 feet wide but can get as big as 10 feet across

...trip to a native tribe's village...

me showing the chief how it's done

...but our favorite trip of all was to a nearby "zoo" that was nothing more than a little farm with all sorts of animals roaming around. The birds had clipped wings so couldn't exactly escape, but there were lots of monkeys and other animals that were free to go but stuck around for one reason: tourists with bananas. Our guide tipped us off to bring a couple extra, so we were able to lure a bunch of them and bribe them to hang out with us. You should have seen Steph playing and holding these monkeys. It was hilarious. Most of them were pretty shy and would grab some banana then leave, but there were some Wooly monkeys that were really friendly and liked you to hold them or to play with you. One of them was kinda the baby of the bunch and would just hug on Steph for 15 minutes at a time like she was its mom (and Steph acted like it was her baby). Another one I guess liked to lick the bug spray off of me, and couldn't be pried away from licking all over my neck and face...I can now say I have received a wet-willy from a monkey.

Steph and her baby

There were all kinds of other animals we got to hold there. A baby caiman, anaconda, toucan, macaw, but after the monkeys our favorite was the three-toed sloth. They really live up to their reputation by being incredibly slow to do anything. We couldn't get over just how slowly the little guy was "making a run" for a bigger tree to get away from all the people. He didn't make it. Not only that, but they have the cutest little face you've ever seen.

Overall our jungle experience was incredible. Aside from the animals at the zoo, we saw bats, tarantalas, lizards, wild(er) monkeys, colorful butterflies, some giant fish and lots of cool kinds of birds. We loved it. It'd be really cool to go back during the rainy season when the river can be over 50 feet higher and the entire lodge compound is flooded (it's built on stilts), so you have to do basically everything by boat but apparently get better wildlife viewing. Go to our Peru pictures to see the rest of our pics from the Amazon jungle and everything prior in Peru (scroll down to the bottom to see the Amazon pics). Tomorrow we fly back to Lima then on to Quito, Ecuador for 10 days at the middle of the world!

Cusco

Two posts in one day! Don’t get used to it. We’re not sure when we’ll be able to get internet again, so we’re going to go ahead and post about our time in Cusco. If you missed the Machu Picchu post, it’s below. We’ve spent two days in Cusco, on either side of our Machu Picchu trip, and have managed to do very little in that time. There is a lot to do actually, we’ve just been either too lazy or too cheap to take advantage. It’s a pretty town, though, with interesting enough things to see for free (or maybe one sol).

Above is the main square in Cusco, called Plaza de Armas. It used to be the center of the Incan capital city, and many of the walls of the city are Incan walls, which have been built on top of. In the plaza there’s a couple big churches, and of course tons of shops, restaurants, and tour operators everywhere you look. We spent a little time just sitting in the plaza people-watching, and would probably have spent more if it weren’t for the touts that constantly come up trying to sell you paintings, jewelry, or the little kids who try to clean your shoes. It’s certainly a tourist’s city, and the locals are happy to take advantage. Being the suckers that we are, we couldn’t help but fall for the oldest trick in the book. Locals would dress up in traditional clothing, bring along some kind of animal, then charge you to take their picture. First, Steph spotted an old lady and a little girl with a tiny little lamb wearing a hat. She took the bait, but not at first. We walked around some more, and there were lots of little girls with lambs, but none with a cute hat. The next time we passed that spot there were about 2 other little girls with their own lambs. How much? One sole (about 35 cents). Of course it wouldn’t be that easy, so after we took the picture every one of them came up asking for one sole. We negotiated them down to about 20 centimos each, though they were not happy, and we left vowing not to be suckered anymore.

Well that lasted about 10 minutes, until I saw a little boy struggling with his llama, trying to get it to lay down on the steps next to him. I was a good 60 feet away, so figured I’d be safe to take the picture from distance. These kids are good, and he spotted me right away, and was instantly in front of me with his hand out. This kid wanted 2 soles, I said no. “1 sole,” he said. I still refused, so he said “Okay, how much?” I gave him 50 centimos and he begrudging left to sucker another tourist.  Next time I’ll be extra sneaky. (If you are thinking right now that we are cheap jerks, refusing to give some poor little kid as much as a quarter, you are somewhat right. But, these kids are forced to go out all day and beg by their parents, so we don’t really want to encourage it.)

That’s really about all we have to report from Cusco. It’s a cool city, with plenty of narrow cobblestone streets to explore. There seems to be always something going on - there was a small parade today, a concert a couple days ago, or just random fireworks that are set off every 30 minutes or so. If we had more time there are tons of things to do outside the city, such as many more Incan ruins, outdoor activities like mountain biking and rafting, or big handicrafts markets.

An old Incan wall - notice how they didn't use mortar but cut the stones exactly right

Tomorrow we head back to Lima for about 10 hours before flying to Iquitos, which is set along the Amazon River and the largest city in the world that isn’t reachable by road. It’s either fly or take a boat. Since the boat takes at least 2 days we opted for the flight. We have a total of 5 nights there, with the middle 3 nights at a jungle lodge in the Amazon Basin. Apparently wildlife is pretty hard to come by, but we’re hoping to at least see pink river dolphins, monkeys, anacondas (ok, just me), and some cool birds. Hopefully we get a chance to post again before heading to Ecuador on the 9th!