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Top Five, Peruvian Style

Saturday, February 17th, 2007



Hairless dog

Originally uploaded by mebrown06.

1. There is a breed of hairless dog that lives in Peru. It’s kind of blue and its body temperature is hotter than other dogs. It has historically been used as a heating pad for those with pains. Also apparently, its urine cures freckles. When I got a fever, Megan looked on the bright side and said “well, maybe now we can use you like a hairless dog… wanna pee on my freckles? Ha ha ha.” Very funny.

2. Megan ate beer flavored ice cream for breakfast yesterday. She said it tasted like coconut. Go figure.

3. There was a Peruvian teenage girl on our tour of the Cordillera Blanca yesterday. She was wearing a pink sweater that said, simply: “Jeans!” (exclamation point included).

4. One thing that will be a relief about being back in the States is that men will not constantly say (in English) “Hello… hello… good morning” to me on the street, or, if it’s night time “hello… good night… I love you,” or in Nicaragua “Goodbye, goodbye, you’re beautiful.” (Weirdly in Nicaragua people say “adios” instead of “hola” when they greet each other on the street.)

5. When they say that altitude sickness feels like a hangover (and “they” are the people that wrote our little first aid book), they’re not lying. Here at 3100 meters above sea level, we’ve been in a constant state of hung-over-ness for the past few days without the aid of any fun times the night before.

-Sarah (with help from Megan)

Top Ten, Ecuadorian Style

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

Quito is a marvelous city: it has great public transportation (a trolley!), walkable streets, a beautifully kept-up colonial district that has managed to remain a center of daily Quiteño life instead of a tourist trap, and hot showers. But, because it’s so great, nothing very bad or very interesting has happened to us here. So, to continue our great blogging tradition in times of lull, here is a random Top Ten list of interesting tidbits that have not made it onto our blog so far:

1) Riding on a bus to La Mitad Del Mundo, we spotted the following block-letter graffiti, in English: “Black People.” Yup, just “Black People,” nothing else. It reminds me of a kid from Wesleyan who wore a shirt with magic marker-writing proclaiming “Eco-Feminism” (yup, just “Eco-Feminism”) just to, as she said, “let people know it’s out there.” Or, perhaps the “Black People” graffiti is in protest to the used-book shop named “Confederate Books” that is a few blocks from our hotel.

2) At La Mitad Del Mundo (the equator), really funny things happen. For one, you can balance a raw egg on the head of a nail. For two, water will drain directly down without swirling to one side or the other. For three, if you do competitions of strength on the equator line and off the equator line, differences in strength will be magnified the farther you are from the precise middle of the world. For four, you weigh less on the equator. How cool is that?

3) On our travels, we have run into approximately ten Spaniards. Based on our rather limited sample, we have made an observation: all Spaniards have mullets, unless they are from Basque Country. If the Spanish people are on the cutting edge of fashion, you can expect to see innumerable fashion mullets in the coming years.

4) We did not get sunburned in Nicaragua, where the sun was scalding and the temperatures averaged 85-90 degrees. We did not get sunburned in Panama, despite similar heat and sun. We did, however, get horribly sunburned at the equator, where it was cloudy and 65 degrees. Megan’s legs still hurt.

5) When Sarah was in Xela, Guatemala (a little late, but bear with me), she ran into a girl she knew in Ithaca but had not seen for 6 years. This girl was dating a Spanish teacher at Sakribal. Small world…

6) The Sarmat Porter that Megan was so excited about had expired on 1/15/2005. It turns out that Ukrainian beer doesn’t have much of a market in Ecuador.

7) The Panama City Airport really sucks. In addition to not having any magazine stores, they took Megan’s swiss army knife, broke our camera, and made us forget that we had brought Snickers with us. It is the worst airport in the world.

8) However, COPA airlines is great! They serve you an actual snack, consisting of a sandwich and chips, and offer you free alcohol.

9) Within the space of two days, both Megan’s and Sarah’s backpack clasp shattered. Megan’s broke on the cab ride with the Peace Corps girl, and Sarah’s broke in the Panama City Airport (worst airport ever). These clasps are the important waist strap clasps that allow you to heft the weight of your bag with your hips instead of your shoulder.

10) We shared a room with a very strange French guy. He arrived at 5 pm, immediately lay down on the top bunk, and did not move. At some point, he smoked a joint, still lying on the top bunk. He said maybe three words then entire night and left the next morning at 10. At least he wasn’t sporting a mullet.

-Megan (with help from Sarah)

Two Weeks of Cyber Space and Trivia

Sunday, January 14th, 2007
Our lives for the past two weeks have been centered on a specific Internet cafe. They now know us there and surely, must find it strange that two gringas came all the way to Nicaragua just to spend all ... [Continue reading this entry]

Zip-a-dee-doo-da

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
Megan’s birthday was spent on the shores of Lago de Apoyo, a crater lake near Granada. We spent the weekend at a lake-side hostel swinging in hammocks, reading, floating in tubes, kayaking, and jumping off docks again and again ... [Continue reading this entry]

Happy New Year

Thursday, January 4th, 2007
If I do say so myself, this has been a wonderful start to the new year. To think that one year ago today I was in San Francisco, about to start a new job at Lieff, not even able ... [Continue reading this entry]

Burning Piles of Trash

Saturday, December 30th, 2006

flower
Originally uploaded by skavanagh.
There is a ... [Continue reading this entry]

Toma Tu Teta

Thursday, December 28th, 2006
If anyone besides my father has been following our route on a map, they will be surprised to learn that we´re now in León, Nicaragua. It seems like only two days ago that we were two countries away in ... [Continue reading this entry]