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A lovely bouquet of Argentinian beef and red wine

June 17th, 2006

I can’t say all that much about Santiago.  I liked the city.  It’s definitely more cosmopolitan than what I had seen for a while.  I stayed in Barrio Brasil, the little bohemian neighborhood, which was cute, and spent the three days I was there walking around the city.  Almost the whole downtown seemed like a pedestrian walkway, lined with all sorts of shops, with music playing over speakers.  The only thing I lamented was not being able to see the Andes in the background because it was mostly cloudy the whole time I was there. Continue reading this entry »

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Super Traveling Allstar

June 9th, 2006

After the girls left, I took the next bus to the border of Bolivia.  When I got off the bus, I was surrounded by bicycle taxis offering me a ride to the border.  “Why would I pay you to take me one block when I could walk it just as easily?”  They had no good answer for me.  I joked and talked with them for a little while, helping one with his English pronounciation, and walked my way to the border.  Once again, leaving Peru, I was stopped by the Peruvian police (this was a different border than I was at before, so the deal I struck for them not to check me next time didn’t apply.) Continue reading this entry »

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just perch yourself here on this large stone erection…

June 8th, 2006

Our hotel in Copacabana was awesome – nice rooms overlooking Lake Titicaca.  I was excited that they had laundry service, and I took nearly everything I had to be clean, including all three of my pairs of socks.  I borrowed a not-so-dirty pair of Shelley’s, so my feet wouldn’t be cold, and found a nice piece of duct tape inside (used on the Inca Trail to prevent blisters).  Mmm…that was nice. Continue reading this entry »

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Circumventing roadblocks and the Peruvian border police

June 8th, 2006

We took the train back to Cuzco that afternoon.  We had walked the Inca Trail, seen Macchu Pichu and were now drinking and celebrating April’s birthday, just having a great time; we had recruited some of our group members to go out with us that night.  All of a sudden, the train came to a screeching halt.  What had happened?  I talked with one of the train attendants, who guessed that we had hit a small animal.  Finally, as time passed, we came to learn that we had actually hit and killed a person who was apparently drunk and laying on the tracks (for whatever reason).  Being one of the few who spoke Spanish, I translated the news to the train car, not good news to have to relay to a group of happy vacationers.  Needless to say, this changed the mood of the group drastically.

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Birthdays on the Inca Trail and Macchu Pichu

June 8th, 2006

So the next day we got ourselves up at something like 4am…as my alarm went off I could still hear some of the clubs in town pumping.  We got our things together and waiting out ont he cold dark street for our transport to pick us up.  Finally it came. We got on, picked up our porters on the way out of town and headed off toward the trail.  Of course, I slept most of the way there.  We stopped in the local town before the trailhead and had some breakfast (where we were the last ones to be served…please, please just bring us some coffee).  We bought some walking sticks from the locals and jumped back on the bus.  Finally we made it to the trailhead, where we took our obligatory group picture in front of the “Inca Trail starts here” sign, waited in line to get our identities checked and passports stamped, and then we were off…walking the Inca Trail.

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Seriously, though. No gracias.

June 4th, 2006

The next day I sat laying by the pool and then headed off to Cuzco…the bus was late in departing and some of my fellow gingo passengers were antsy, although I’m not sure why, since it was an 18 hour bus ride.  What’s the hurry?  I befriended a Czech guy named Adrien on the bus, if that indeed was his name…he turned out to be a bit of a shady character.  I shared a hotel room with him for two nights to save on hotel costs, and he may have stolen money from me.  I say may because I can’t be too sure, but I do suspect it was him…either that or I lost it.  Oh well, these things happen.  To complete the story, I blame myself for not locking it up.  Now, however, I have lost a lot of trust in my fellow travelers, but have likewise learned a valuable lesson to always lock up my valuables (which I normally do, but it’s the one time you don’t…)

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Repeated wiping out on the dunes of Huacachina

May 29th, 2006

The next day I left with Adriana to head south.  We went to a town called Chincha, where I had heard has good Afro-Peruvian music available, and I thought it would be cool to check it out.  Well, we were disappointed to learn that the music is really only popular during certain times of the year, and this was not one of them.  We arrived during the beginning of Semana Santa, or Holy Week, the week before Easter, which is a major vacation time in all of Latin America.  There may have been some music going on later in the week, but we surely weren’t going to wait around for it.  The town had little to offer…we pretty much ate dinner, visited briefly an internet place run by a bunch of lunatic Koreans, and went to bed.  The next day, we headed off to Pisco, where we set up a tour for the next day to go to the Islas Ballestas, islands off the coast nicknamed the “Poor Man’s Galapagos”, which is right up my alley.

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A misplaced llama in Lima

May 26th, 2006

After getting our fix of soaring condors (actually, after the condors left and we had nothing else to look at), we headed back into our van and returned to Arequipa.  I, again, slept a good amount of the ride, but, man, we got up early.  Back in Arequipa, I had a few hours in town and then headed to the bus terminal.  Getting on the bus, they checked me with a metal detector and made me put my thumbprint on a seating chart.  Where’s this coming from?  Then, just before we left, a man came through with a video camera, filming me as he handed me a survey to fill out about the service on the bus.  This was the Presidential Service…I was definitely paying for this!  Music was playing over the intercom as we boarded, and they showed a safety video as we pulled out of the station, like on a plane.  They served coffee and a sandwich, nuts, and some sort of sweet thing.  The attendant set up English subtitles for the movie for the few of us white people (mind you, this was an American movie, dubbed over in Spanish, and now with English subtitles).  I’ve never been catered to like this on a bus; this is definitely not how I imagined buses in Peru.  The best part was that the bus was nearly empty, and I had a whole 2 seats to myself to stretch out on, under a nice blanket, which was provided…pure luxury. Continue reading this entry »

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Smack in the middle of Peruvian election fever

May 23rd, 2006

There were busloads of people at the border, and we all stood in line patiently waiting our turn, until our line was told to move to another window, so our line snaked around into another line.  Man, talk about herding cattle.  Mine was a special case, since I was the only one with a passport, though it was uneventful.  I did have to wake the guy at customs up, though.  “Uh, hello?  Do you want me to put my back through the x-ray machine?”  At the bus station in Tacna, Peru, I got mobbed by people aksing me where I wanted to go.  To the bathroom…leave me alone.  I eventually talked to some kid from some agency and decided to go with the bus he was offering.  The yet-to-shave-his-little-moustache kid was 17 and hitting on me!  I later found out that the agency charged me twice as much for the bus ticket, and I let the kid hear about it.  (These things happen, and while they piss me off, sometimes I forget the breaks I get, like the hotel in Arica only charging me for one night rather than 2, and charging me less than my quoted rate…which of course means they were going to charge me more than the going rate, but, nevertheless, I did get a discount there.) Continue reading this entry »

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Can’t anyone get some hepatitis around here?

May 8th, 2006

I took the night bus to Arica, where I sat next to some dude who smelled like beer (but not excessively) and played his music loudly.  Sometimes he sang along with his music, which was amusing.  Luckily I was not annoyed.  I dumped my stuff at a hotel in Arica and headed out to check out the town.  As I walked onto the main pedestrian walkway, I was greeted by a huge Blockbuster, next to a huge McDonald’s, two places I hadn’t seen for a long, long time.  (After pondering this myself, it was confirmed by another traveler that there, indeed, no McDonald’s in Bolivia, an interesting fact, I think.  There used to be, but they left…don’t know why.) Continue reading this entry »

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