Welcome to the Jungle! -Axl Rose

First of all, sorry for the poor spelling/typing...I cannot figure out how to get English spell-check to work on this computer. **while adding hyper links, I fixed the spelling errors...me thinks**

After the much needed day of rest we set off for the Manu. The four of us got into a large van with our two drivers Ruben and Abram, then our guide Marco and cook Roberto, who we just called chef. We completed the 10 hour trip in over 11 hours because we had to help move some large semis that were stuck in the mud and clear some fresh landslides in the jungle. All in all a success because Ruben didn´t kill us.

We arrived by boat to our lodge which was pretty nice, every bed came complete with a mosquito net and we had a great view of the Madre de Dios River. There chef cooked some amazing meals and we slept pretty well. The next day we spend tromping through the jungle looking for plants and animals. We got to swing from jungle vines (Vinnie nearly broke her back when she fell of one and landed on a large root). After lunch we took the boat across the river to an old oxbow lake, which in the jungle is just a swamp. Here we saw spider monkeys and a capybara, the world´s largest guinea pig, and we saw a baby one too!

Here is a sidebar about our guide Marco, he is 24 and grew up in the Peruvian jungle. His family constantly had to run from the army because they grew coca leaves as their cash crop. He had been shot at multiple times before age 14. On our night walk back to the river bank, he spotted a caiman in a stream. He told us to shine a light on it and tell him if it moves...he then stripped to his undies and walked into the river. With water higher than his head and a very weak flashlight he snuck up on the caiman and grabbed it. He didn´t know how big it was or if it was alone, then be brought it to us to play with. Vinnie said, "You just got naked and jumped in a river to catch an alligator, do you normally do that?" He said, "No, it just sounded like fun." That definitely was considered when tipping.

After taking the boat back to camp in the light of a nearly full moon we had a nice dinner and started to drink some very cheap boxed wine. A Canadian girl yelled at us around 9:00 because we were too loud so we continued down at the river bank. Lucky for us, she was getting up at 5:00 the next morning, but slept in. Her guide was yelling at her to hurry up, after being woken by that we should have told him to just leave here there. After another hour of sleep we packed up and headed back to Cuzco, a nice nine hour drive thanks to Ruben´s stellar speeding skills and dry jungle roads.

The nurses put me on the BRAT diet when we were in the jungle, guaranteed to make me regular. It consists of Bananas, Rice, Apple sauce and Toast. I didn´t get to eat cuy in Peru, or anything at all tasty in the past few days, but I feel much better. After one more night in our lovely party hostel, in a dorm called "Crazy Bitch" we worked on our exit strategy to Santiago, Chile. We would bus to Tacna, Peru, cross the border to Arica and fly to Santiago. Flying direct to Santiago is expensive in its own right, plus the $131 entry fee for US citizens, so land crossing was our best choice.

We found flights for $110 from Arica to Santiago and decided to book the next day after getting our bus ticket. Bad idea! We booked the bus in the morning then tried to book the plane online, no go. We called and the ticket price jumped to over $350 per person! So we tried to book a plane the next day that did not work because you have to arrange the ticket over the phone, then go to a bank, pay an account and email the receipt to the airline so they can issue the ticket. Sadly, it was a holiday weekend so no banks were open...we decided to get to the airport and figure it out.

Here is where tensions started to run high. With an hour left before we had to catch our bus to Tacna Josh and I split to run some errands agreeing to meet at 2:30 to catch a taxi to the bus terminal where we had to be at 2:50 for our 3:00 bus. After getting another memory card, stamps and a few things to eat for the 15 hour bus ride I made it back just in time. Josh didn´t show until 2:50, after waiting for his food to be ready at a restaurant. In any case, we paid the taxi driver extra to go fast and we made it to the terminal just to watch the bus leave. The ticket agent yelled at us then called the bus driver, but he didn´t answer. We got in a taxi and chased it down and we both stepped on the bus as it was moving away from a local stop...literally driving away as we stepped onboard. It was a nice ride even though it was 15 hours, but I hope Josh´s food tasted amazing.

We arrived in Tacna and took a taxi to the main bus terminal to catch a collectivo across the border. Here they did our paperwork and crammed 6 people into a 1993 Ford Taurus and we set out for the frontera. We got our exit stamps from Peru and entry stamps from Chile with ease. In the collectivo I did some math in my head and figured that a 30 hour bus ride to Santiago might not be so bad considering the alternatives of not having a plane ticket. After talking to Josh about the costs of a bus ticket versus a plane ticket, the scenery we would see, the discomfort we would have and then talking with every ticket agent in Arica we decided to split again. Josh is going to try and catch a flight to Santiago tomorrow morning and I am taking a 30 hour trip to Santiago via bus in about three hours. I have a front row view on the top floor and all meals included.

Here is the biggest downside to Chile so far. After trying my two different ATM cards in two different banks I still can´t access my funds. I will have to call tomorrow, but unlike Peru, Google Voice works in Chile so I can actually use a phone for free!

I hope all is well at home, I want snow too!

'Roid Rage in Peru

Lots of updates since my last blog. After the wonderful boat trip and great meal of ceviche and roasted fish Josh and I had a beer and went to bed anticipating our great cloud forest adventure the next day. I awoke the next morning with a killer hangover, but after just one beer? At breakfast I decided I couldn’t go on this trip, let alone travel to our next destination. Luckily, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it our guide had to attend a funeral so our trip was bagged for the day. I spent the rest of the day with a headache and kidney pain, sleeping the day away. All I consumed that day was breakfast, water, and 20 hours of sleep.

We awoke the next morning, after cancelling our forest trip the night before, to get on a bus to Guayaquil, a port town in the southeast of Ecuador, one step closer to Peru. Here we would regroup, do some shopping and board a bus bound for the border. Josh spent a ridiculous amount of money on a camera battery and charger, he could have bought a whole new camera! The next morning we boarded a bus for Tumbes, a small town on the Peruvian side of the border 6 hours away. There we planned to catch another bus to Piura where we had tickets to fly to Lima.

The border crossing into Peru was strange, but luckily we had met an English speaking Peruvian who helped us out. Our bus dropped us off at Ecuador customs where we got our exit stamp, here the bus drove off with all of our luggage. It came back, then we drove across the border into Peru. There we got off the bus again to get our Peruvian entry stamp, then boarded the bus bound for Tumbes. Once in Tumbes we made a series of very stupid mistakes of trusting people that were not official representatives of bus companies, or even licensed taxi drivers. After a bit of negotiation we were in a private car with two men headed to an ATM to get local currency so we could drive to Zorritos to catch a bus. This was stupid, the drivers robbed us blind (well not really, we talked them down a lot, but still cost us way too much). The bus we boarded was nothing more than a glorified VW bus packed with people and luggage for our 4 hour drive to Piura.

After the most uncomfortable ride, we arrived in Piura to our hostel that I had booked earlier in the week…for the wrong night. So finally at 12:30 AM we were sent to a hotel with a vacancy. Though we had a private room with a television and hot running water it was the dumpiest and trashiest hotel I have ever stayed in. It even came with shotgun blasts ouside. We got up after about 4 hours of sleep and went to the airport. There we found out there was a problem with my credit card and the tickets were not officially purchased. Luckily there was room on the plane, but we ended up paying almost double to get on it. It was well worth it.

We arrived in Lima where our bad luck finally started to turn to okay. We had a good hostel, a good lunch and bought our plane tickets to Cuzco for pretty cheap. The rest of the day we just bummed around the city and didn’t do much. That night we had our first taste of pisco sours, an amazing drink that has egg whites as one of its main ingredients. I was going to bed in my empty 8 person dorm to find two girls moving in. They had just had a worse 48 hours than us so we swapped stories over a bottle of wine. They were nurses from New York City, about the same ages as Josh and I.

The next morning I awoke at 2 AM to a horrible pain on my backside. I went to the bathroom and went back to sleep. I woke up again at 7 with the same pain so I started my day with a shower. This is where it gets graphic…it turns out I had the largest hemorrhoid ever, about almond size. It turns out that I was so sick I was starting to turn inside out. As I was getting out of the shower one of the girls walked in and started telling me about her crazy dream, so I decided to ask her professional opinion since she was so wiling to share her wierd experiences too. She went with me to the pharmacy to get some ointment and some pills to stop me from being sick and further aggravate my problem.

After sitting around the hostel all day (in very weird positions) I decided to have a few beers with the girls to take my mind off of it. After a while Josh returned from his day out in Lima and we all went out for dinner to a nice little Peruvian style Denny’s. They were on the same flight as us the next morning so we all rode to the airport and shared a hostel in Cuzco. In town we went to Paddy’s Pub, the highest Irish owned pub in the world at 11,156 ft, and have shirts to prove it!

All of us decided to plan a paragliding tour together and met a guide, after much deliberation we saw that the weather was going to be bad so we decided to hire him to take us to a local market on Sunday then arrange our Machu Picchu trip. We celebrated by going to a nice Peruvian restaurant where I had my first taste of Alpaca meat. Some of you might know, that my parents have an alpaca farm. I am happy to report that the meat is tasty and as a burger is amazing!

Our guide met us at the hostel and introduced us to his neighbor Antonio, our driver for the day. We got into his brand new Toyota Corolla wagon with all of our gear and headed off into the hills in search of othe market. The driver introduced us to a group of women who made us coca tea and showed us how they clean, spin, and dye the alpaca fiber and then knit/loom it into products. Then we attended the major market where things were very inexpensive. I got myself a sweater and some gifts for home. All of this while my ‘roid rages on. By day 3, I graduated from sitting on my side to sitting on a towel, to sitting however I wanted, but getting up, sneezing, coughing and just about anything else was insanely painful.

That afternoon we had lunch in Urubamba and caught a train up to Aguas Calientes, the closest town to Machu Picchu. We were put up in a nice hotel where we waited for our guide to show up. We ended up drinking about 3 boxes of wine and playing cards, but he never showed up. After not eating since lunch we went to dinner around 10:00 and our guide found us there. We got a rundown for what we were to do the next day. He recommended getting up around 4:00 and heading to the bus station so we could make it up the mountain in time to climb the large mountain that sits behind the city. Only 400 people per day are allowed and you have to be there before sunrise to get a ticket. We decided to nix that plan and sleep in. Though we were about 2,000 feet lower the elevation was still affecting us.

The next morning we got some breakfast and headed up the mountain, we were met with stellar weather, eventhough it's the wet season! We met our English speaking guide Mario and toured the city for a few hours then were given free reign to see the rest of the park. A group of teachers from Washington College recommended that we go check out the Inca Bridge and the Sungate. Both were amazing short hikes and gave us some excellent scenery. At Sungate my stomach started to rumble and it rumbled hard. I RAN down the trail to the only bathrooms which were at the entrance. I had to fight large groups of tourists speaking all sorts of languages to get there (1 million visitors to MP last year). After paying the entry fee into the bathroom my body unleashed itself. I felt much better and the ‘roid popped so I had some relief, but worried about an open wound in that region.

We made it back to town and tooled around until our train came. We went to the station, then the power went out, and as Vinnie pointed out everyone regressed to 8 years old. Our train was late, which meant we might miss our connecting bus. Exhausted we found ourselves in a first class train, but slept through most of it.

Along the whole MP trip Josh and I toyed with the idea of joining the girls for their jungle excursion the next day…4 days and 3 nights in the Amazon and the Manu Biosphere. We met our guide at the hotel that night around midnight and booked it. We were going to leave at 9:30 the next morning. Operative word being “were.” That night my sickness took a strong hold on my body and sent me sprinting to the bathroom three times. Before going to bed it was recommended that I suppress my diarrhea so I could let the wound heal and not get infected, but I was still sick so it was kind of a Catch-22.

Believe it or not I didn’t have the worst sickness in the morning. Erin could not function, so we tried to cancel the trip. At $250 a head we couldn’t do this, so we said we would try again tomorrow and take a shorter trip if we were healthy. So far I am doing better, but on a water/rice diet and Erin is still deathly ill and Vinnie is pumping her full of drugs. We relocated to a more peaceful hotel, but a bit pricey. So today has turned into a day for healing, laundry, repacking and blogging.

Next we will see if this jungle trip happens, then figure out how to get to Chile.

Finally Onto Our 2nd Country!

We finally coked for ourselves for the first time....a great breakfast of local fruit, eggs, and arepas. Our first whole day in Cali was very lazy including a trip to the mall, watching zombie movies and eating street food. The highlight of the day was eating a burrito and it made me realize some of the things I miss besides people. These things include GOOD spicy food, driving my car, flushing toilet paper down the toilet and being able to say what I want when I want. I don’t mean the last one as a freedom of speech, but just the fact that I am starting to think in Spanish and realizing how limited my vocabulary is.

After our lazy day in Cali, we ventured into the city and it was pretty uneventful. Cali didn’t have much to offer besides some time to relax and a bus station to move onto Ecuador. It was interesting to watch the news during lunch and see that the top stories were The Giants winning the World Series and that it was election day in the US.

Our trip to the border was rather relaxed. We were on a comfortable bus that was searched a couple times by the Colombian army before finishing our 10 hour trip to the border in Ipiales. There we took a taxi from the terminal to the border, went through customs, walked across the border, went through Ecuador immigration, then took a collectivo to the bus station and finally got on a bus to Otavalo, two hours away. Otavalo was great! Nestled between some large volcanoes along the Pan-American Highway it is home to one of the best markets in Ecuador (where we purchased more art) as well as some nice sights.

The first impression of the Ecuadorian people was great, they treated us well and were very helpful. However, while I was alone on a hill overlooking the city I was asked for some help by a stranger. In short, I was asked by a friendly local to help him determine his sexuality…This led to a very awkward no thanks and a quickly planned exit route. Thanks mom, I realized I am naive and a little bit too trusting of new people.

The following day, after the best shower of the whole trip, which included hot water and high pressure we met a fellow American and headed up to see a sacred tree, an Andean Condor park and some beautiful waterfalls. After a 5 km hike up to the condor park, which took to an elevation over 9,000 feet we found out we missed the sacred tree and did not have enough time to see the waterfalls. We took a cab with our new friend back to the city and quickly made our way to the bus terminal for our 2 hour ride to Quito.

Our arrival in Quito was met with welcome arms, by a “hostel” we had found on hostelworld.com. It was not a hostel, it was a guy who thought he could make some cash instead of just having a posting on couchsurfing.com. Thanks Hostelworld for not checking your listings. We arrived so disoriented and late that we didn’t care that he had to take down the decorations from his sister’s birthday party, tell her to go to bed and then clean our room. He hadn’t renewed his internet contract so we had him escort us to the nearest internet café to plan the next day. It didn’t turn out so bad because he helped us navigate the city and his mother made us an amazing breakfast…he just has a poor business plan with good intentions.

We really didn’t want to go to Quito for more than a bus layover, but considering that we are geographers and the monument to the equator was just outside Quito we had to hang out for a day. We took a $0.25 bus to the terminal where we saw the biggest farmers market ever, a few city blocks in area. Then we took another bus for $0.40 for about 30 minutes to the Mitad del Mundo monument where we took lots of pictures of us playing around on the monument. I say monument because the real equator was a few hundred feet outside the monument’s boundaries so we had to use a GPS to find it…then took more pictures. Funny thing happened here, Josh and I were getting some coffee and going through pictures on our cameras. He was wondering how much space was on his memory card and for some reason decided that formatting the card would tell him. Well after he did that, he had ZERO photos on his card, everything from the trip was lost! But don’t worry, we got them back after some good internet detective work on his part.

That day we returned to Quito and hitched a ride with our host to the bus station and caught another 10 hour bus to Puerto Lopez, a bit south and on the Pacific coast of Ecuador. The bus ride started out alright, except the seat in front of Josh leaked and I was in the front row and was almost thrown out of my seat by our driver’s amazing stopping skills. At 3:00 AM, or about ¾ of the way through our trip we started to let people off, so about every 20 min the bus stopped and people started yelling. This went on until we got to Puerto Lopez around 5:15 AM. We got off the bus tired and disoriented and walked to a hostel we emailed, hoping for a room. I rang the bell and a man yelled at us, then came out of his house to let us in. He said he was expecting us and let us into our room, offered us breakfast when we woke up and said he looked forward to showing us around town.

So far our stay in Puerto Lopez has been great. He showed us a few places in the small fishing village and introduced us to some other guests, a couple on holiday from Quito that happened to be going to some beaches at the national park. We tagged along and it turns out they are biologists that have worked at the park and in Ecuador so we had some great guides to show us the botany of the coastal dry forest. Today our host hooked us up with a tour group going to Isla de Plata, essentially the poor mans Galapagos Islands because it is much cheaper to visit and smaller. Josh and I were not part of the large group of German tourists that arranged the trip, so we unfortunately had to tour the more rugged and remote section of the island with our own guide. Not a bad ratio of two English speaking eco nerds to one Spanglish speaking tour guide. On our 6 km walk we saw lots of boobies (the Bluefooted and Nazca types) as well as a large sea lion and a baby albatross. A note about the baby albatross, it was larger than the boobies and this baby stood taller than my knee!

I really need to get some photos up, but I am lazy and we are having enough trouble with them on the computer and memory cards. Technology has been challenging us lately as the wi-fi has low signals, Josh lost his camera battery charger, our UV water purifier has been on the fritz and the beard trimmer that we are sharing sucks. I was so fed up with it that I reduced my beard to a mustache and soul patch for a day, I laugh every time I look in the mirror, tomorrow I will just have a soul patch. Our host is arranging to take us into the cloud forest for a two day camping trip, I hope him and his co-guide get things figured out. In the mean time, I am waiting for some bug bites to heal. In about twenty minutes at the condor park, some small bugs made my legs look like chicken pox and left me with an ankle that is sore and swollen.

Cartagena, Taganga, Tayrona, Cali.

Okay, so I am not blogging as much as I want to or should be, sorry about that. Anyway just FYI, at this point I am writing for myself so I won’t forget some of the finer points of this trip. If you have any comments to improve the blog or questions, please let me know. I probably won’t be posting many photos on here, but they will be on facebook when I have a chance, I will share the public links here. Enough housekeeping, down to business.

It’s day 13 now and a lot has happened. While in Cartagena we visited the famous Bocagrande Beach, complete with resorts, vendors, shopping and an amazing place to watch the sunset. There I had one of the best burgers of all time from a fast food joint on the beach! I don’t know what was in the meat, but there was bacon, cheeses, sauces and all sorts of things between the buns to make me sick, but I didn’t so I think the probiotics are working. On a Brenda note, all is well in the GI department, no horror stories to report as of yet.

We have been sampling the local spirits, namely beers. We have drank Aguila, Poker, Colombian Club, Pilsen and Duff. Yes, the Duff beer from The Simpsons, nothing to write home about there, but all of the beers are light and tasty. So far Pilsen takes the cake, I think it’s the same Pilsen we drank in Costa Rica. The food has been interesting, I have eaten a lot of pizza and pasta because Italian is VERY popular. However, something struck Josh’s stomach and it kept us in Cartagena an extra day because the four hour bus ride would have been pretty uncomfortable. However, the next day we were on a bus to Taganga to set out for our trip to Tayrona National Park on the coast.

I was still cleaning volcano mud from my ears and it coincided with the dirty streets of Taganga. Well not dirty, just dirt streets. It was a lot like an Oregon coast town...kind of run down, but still thriving with tourist activity. The recommended hostel was kind of dumpy so I won’t even name it on here. We only stayed one night and moved to the highly recommended Casa de Felipe. Shortly after arriving in Taganga we were approached on the beach by a man with a binder offering us a boat trip that included fishing, snorkeling, harpoon fishing, visiting beaches and lunch. We of course took the bait and committed the cardinal sin of going with a non recommended guide service...and boy did it pay off!

The morning after our night at the unnamed hostel we showed up on the beach with some sunblock, beer and $45 USD each to set off on a boat with two poles and two setups for harpoon fishing. It was just the two of us and our guide, Capitan Juan (say it cop-ee-tan). We went trolling on our way out of the bay and around an island, then yo-yo fishing near some rocks before being alerted by one of El Capitan’s friend that the police were coming. So we pulled in our lines and red-lined the motor to sneak into a cove. Little did Josh and I know that what we were doing might be illegal, but it was a successful run from the cops. Since open water fishing was out of the question for a while we got out the snorkels and got a 30 second crash course (in Spanish) about harpoon fishing then we were in the water like kids in a candy store!

Underwater we saw that we were hunting for fish that looked like Dory from Finding Nemo...Capitan Juan said to shoot at anything. I also want to add that he didn't speak a word of English. We took the morning’s catch of tuna and something like snapper to his friend’s house for lunch. His friend’s house is a large cabaña on a cliff over looking a private cove. Josh and I sat in hammocks while lunch was cooked and then we drank beers with El Capitan over lunch. We found out that his friend is a plastic surgeon in Medellin that specializes in fake breasts...apparently it’s a good business in Colombian and I have to agree. I am sure we have seen some of his handiwork. After lunch we did some more harpoon fishing and made sure we were heavily sunburned before heading back to town.

After a good night’s sleep in the better hostel, the next plan was to make our exit strategy from Taganga to our next main destination of Cali. First we had one more side trip to Tayrona National Park, AKA paradise! We used a few methods of public transportation to make it to the trail head, but once there we had an hour long trek to the beach that was muddy, but would make the Costa Rica jungle crew jealous. We got to the beach and were in awe, it was like looking at a post card. Then we traveled to the beach we planed to stay at called El Cabo. There we rented a few hammocks on a rock overlooking the water. That night we watched a lightning storm for hours and didn’t hear a single thunder clap. I love the tropics! We also played an Israeli card game Yaniv with two Dutch girls. One of them took a large flap of skin off her foot that afternoon so we got to exercise some first aid skills to start conversation.

Saturday we trekked from the beach back to the parking lot. It was very hard to do, not so much the hike, but leaving the beach. I really want to get married just so I can have a honeymoon there, it was truly paradise. We returned to our hostel to retrieve our packs and hopped on a four hour bus back to Cartagena hoping to stay at the same hostel as before. It’s funny how plans can change so fast...The four hour trip turned into six on two different buses and the bus would not drop us off at any of the hostels in town, just the city center. Once we got off the bus an intense rainstorm started, when I say intense it is the kind of storm that a rookie weather reporter would be in to prove a point. We waited under a two foot ledge with our packs for almost an hour as the driving rain and wind pounded the city. The thunder claps set off car alarms, bank alarms and made our jaws drop.

After the rain we decided to walk to the hostel with our soaked gear. Easier said than done. Cartagena is an old city so its drainage is not the best. We took the long route walking in ankle deep water to avoid the knee deep water. Finally we got to the hostel to find it overrun with a cheerleading group...no beds. So we went to another hostel I won’t care to insult by mentioning its name, there were a few vacant beds, a creepy receptionist, even creepier bunk mates and a computer that could barely help us book a hostel for the next day’s accommodations. Needless to say we were up early for our flight Sunday morning to Bogota and onto Cali and didn’t mind.

After a very easy day of travel and a few hours of sleep on the planes we were refreshed when we hit the streets of Cali. A short bus ride and a quick taxi dropped us at Casa Blanca Hostel. We are in the north part of the city, it feels a bit like Capitol Hill; close to the city center but insulated from the noise, business and complications. We walked to lunch and got an amazing Colombian meal of meats we couldn’t identify while watching Jurassic Park.

Day 2 in Cali: Not starting out as rough (hungover) as I had anticipated. Being in one of the party capitals of Colombia we expected Halloween to be huge, and it was. We walked one of the main strips into the city and it was overrun with baby costumes, devils, zombies, the usual Halloween sort, but nothing too original. The tradition of scantly clad women carries on down here for the festivities. Around 11 we went to a club in the party district. This street looked like it had just sprung up clubs everywhere, even the cabs had a hard time navigating around all the people in the streets and that says a lot for Colombian taxi drivers. We finally made it into a club that we agreed had an affordable cover (about $5 USD) only to find out that inside a beer cost over $7! So after a bit of sober dancing to electronic music we left and came back to the hostel for a beer before bed. Around 3 the city was still buzzing, but we weren’t.

Today we were woken multiple times by loud motorcycles, slamming doors and the last straw for me was the tile work being done across the street with a grinder. Time to make some breakfast and start the day...my one goal is to buy a new watch since trying to dive with mine was unsuccessful, the saltwater killed it.