Sunday, December 23, 2007

Multi-media extravaganza


Hello to anyone who may still be faithfully haunting these pages.
We have good news for you, we have downloaded, uploaded and organized our pictures and videos.
So, you can see, as we did, things like Iguazu Falls straddling the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay:



Or Gaucho drummers and dancers in Northern Argentina:



Click on"rhiacat" to the right of the video to see others.

And over at http://flickr.com/photos/rhia/collections/72157603384554677/ you can peruse our full collection of photos, organized by country and city...if you have a couple months to spare yourselves.

If not, check out the highlights here: http://flickr.com/photos/rhia/collections/72157603415109779/


So, we've been back for most of a month now. I've been working odd hours and finding it hard to get into a routine, but I think part of the reason we want to travel is to break out of routine, so that's not a bad thing.
After carrying all we needed on our backs for two months, we now find our apartment overwhelmingly full of stuff and our drawers and closets crammed with more clothes than we can wear. We're making an effort to pare it all down.
Pumpkin, our cat, hid for about an hour after we walked back into our apartment, but he's been more affectionate than ever since then.
The snow and cold arrived in Halifax with us, and I don't mind that one bit--I enjoy the changing seasons.
So, Christmas is almost here and we're feeling especially blessed this year. Rhia and I both have good work, a sturdy home we love and the prospect to soon get a place of our own. We're no Conrad Blacks (thank goodness), but after seeing how hard so many people work for the little they have, and the pride so many take in it, we feel very wealthy.
Even here at home, where in the last few days I've been writing about local people experiencing awful diseased, tragic deaths and unimaginable violence, we are ever grateful for our family, our friends and our good health.

We're home for a while now, but we'll be happy to share tales from the road whenever you like, and encourage you to hit the road yourselves. There are a lot of amazing and beautiful things out there, and wonderful people all over.
We wish you hope, peace, joy and love now and in 2008.
--John

Monday, December 3, 2007

Home sweet work!

Hello all!

Taking a quick coffee break here at work just to let you know that New York was amazing and that we made it home safe and sound! Unfortunately the internet at home is completely refusing to work, so that's why this update has been delayed. We're also having some trouble with the card in the camera, so the pictures will be further delayed. More news soon though! Promise!

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

!

Last post before Halifax!

John didn´t give you much information on Arequipa!

We arrived there from Cusco on an only moderately comfortable overnight bus. Taxis fought over us at the bus terminal, and the hostel didn´t have our double bed ready so they checked us into a twin room. We showered and napped on top of the covers so as not to mess it up too much.

In our two days in Arequipa we had an over-rushed and slightly unenthusiastic tour of an immense and decadent dominican convent, sampled some pisco, had a two-course lunch for two, with a litre of coke for about $2.50, visited another pre-incan mummy, thought about going to the movies but discovered everything sold out when we got there, and had a delicious gourmet dinner and a few drinks in a Montreal-themed bar.

The next day, being Sunday, everything was closed, but we managed to book ourselves a private city tour, checked out a bunch of lookouts and the founder´s mansion. Then I had pork adobe, a regional specialty, for lunch, and John at last ate his guinea pig. There is photographic evidence. I found the whole thing distateful.

Then we bummed around Arequipa with nothing to do til it was time to catch our much more (very long distance) bus to Lima.

Got here around 10, cabbed to the very nice hostel and crashed.

When we got up we wandered Miraflores, a very chi-chi suberb of Lima, visited a pre-inca pyramid, looked at he beaches. Realized I was getting a cold.

On the way in, we met our super friendly and helpful hostel host, borrowed a dvd and set out for bed. Took nighttime cold medicine and managed to miss the movie.

Yesterday we took a good look at a collecion of pottery dating from 1000 b.c. to the conquiest, including an interesting selection of érotic´pots. There are photos of this too. We bussed back downtown, got sort of lost and cabbed to chinatown for lunch. Followed that up with a very disappointing tour of an inquisition museum(friggin giudes) then miraculously encountered hostel host Francis mid-tour. Tagged along for the end of it, then headed from there home, then out to famous restaurant Astrid y Gaston. Delicious!

Today, I think we´ll go to the Catacombs, then maybe to the beach, if the weather shapes up.

So this is it! But stay tuned, as we´ll surely have more lists and summaries and wrapups and I know I´ll work on the photos this weekend!

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

We´ve been confused about when we actually land home...we were thinking we flew on Wednesday, but that was wrong. The definitive story is: we get home on Friday afternoon. Lots of time to sleep before Hockey Night in Canada.
Shame about those Bombers.
We´re in Lima with the friendliest hostel owner in the world. Took it very easy yesterday after a long bus trip up the coast. It´s been nice to see the Other (aka Pacific) ocean for the third time ever, but I don´t think the weather is in favour of a beach trip.
We had lunch inChinatown and are looking forward to some Peruvian haute cuisine tonight. I think we´ll try to do NYC on the cheap!
See you soon Halifax.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Lima bean

Just a super quick note right now to say that Arequipa was great, the overnight bus to Lima not bad, and that we don't get home til about 3 on Saturday after all, so Sunday brunch could be a stretch.

kisses!

Friday, November 23, 2007

planes, trains and automobiles

The other day we came up with a list of different modes of transportation we´ve used in the past few weeks. I´ll try to remember it:

foot
mum´s car
airplane
taxi
metro
mototaxi
bicycle taxi
water taxi (aka small fishing boat)
snorkel/dive boat
van
collectivo (a glorified VW van that typically contains about 25 passengers)
buses of various shapes and sizes (city transit, long distance, luxurious, ramshackle)
ferry (municipal passenger ferry, provincial passenger ferry, barge)
elongated wooden motorboat
vine
horse

Jungle boogie!

Holy Hannah but we´ve been busy since we got to Cusco. John´s caught you up on most of it, but there were three days of Inca ruins, salt pans, Machu Picchu of course, with insane roads to get to it and rude Peru Rail employees to boot. On the way back from the ruins there was the cutest kid who ran all the way down the hill meeting the bus at each switchback (did John write that part?). Then we had one short night´s sleep and were on a bus at 6 a.m. to head for Manu National Park. The crew we were with was great, and we saw all kinds of wildlife ove the course of things.
A partial list: Quetzal, Oropendulo, Toucan, Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, Wooly Monkey, Red Howler Monkey, Egrets, Cormorants , Turkey Vultures, Squirrel Monkey, ´night´ mokeys, Agouti, Maccaws, Wild Turkey, Sun Bittern, Caiman (eyes), Wolf Spider, Scorpion Spider, Red Tarantula, Cane Toad, even bigger toad, all kinds of giant grasshoppers and crickets, Hawk, Armadillo, Capybara, and a few more I´m sure.

After John wrote last, our guide, after dinner, regaled us with tales of moths that lay eggs in your dirty clothes and then, when you wear them again, their larvae burrow into your skin to grow, and ones about ants attracted to food in your room, that can then get on your bed and in your ears where they quite happily eat and sting you.

It was really easy to fall asleep.

At five the next morning we got back on the bus for a short ride to the boat landing. We made a quick stop at a small coca plantation on the way where William showed us a few other native plants, including one that has a red substance inside that people paint on to repel mosquitos. It´s also used as an ingredient in some lipsticks, and William decorated most of the party in war paint, just to set the scene.

We helped move the load from the bus to the boat, then settled in for our ride down the river. About 90 minutes after starting, we scrambled up a steep muddy bank and down to a small stream. Above the stream there was a small collecting pool for really toasty hot springs. At one point there were about 15 of us in a pool the size of your average hot tub, but half as shallow and less efficiently shaped. It was quite fun. I only fell once climbing up to the damned thing, scraping my arm, and surely engendring a bruise, though it has yet to show up. As we slipped down to the main cooler pool, where butterflies, including great big blue ones, fluttered around the sides, William, our guide appeared with his arms full of sandy mud. We were instructed to rub it all over ourselves, and were soon a bunch of muddy savages. Much photography ensued. We let the mud dry off and washed up, feeling much smoother with all our dry skin sloughed off, then back to the boat for a delicious lunch of chicken and rice.

A few more hours in the boat, and we disembarked near the Bonanza lodge. We shouldered our bags and helped to unload, slipping and sliding along the muddy path to the compound. I decided not to carry the eggs, being unsure of my footing. Only one person, Oscar, actually fell, and aparently it was spectacular. I´m sorry to have missed it.

We settled in to our cabins, had a snack, and were issued rubber boots before heading out on a late afternoon and early evening walk. We scrambled through all kinds of rainforest, saw the family farm, all kinds of birds... At one point William and his friend Alex were hacking apart a fallen tree to try and get at some bugs we were to eat for supper, but there were none to be found. Quelle dommage.

We were into the forest to seek out insects at this point, so John went back to the lodge with Alex so as not to be faced with the reality of spiders. The bugger took the light with him too, which left me at a medium disadvantage. Fortunately, my companions were very sweet and took good care of me. It was a great walk, except for the part where the giant grasshopper got on my ass and no one would remove it.

Supper was delicious, and we hung out for a good while afterwards, talking and laughing, before retiring to our beds.

Another early morning ensued, and was met with pouring rain. After breakfast we kitted back up in our boots and rain ponchos and everything and set out for a longer walk through the jungle. We´d been issued with little plastic bags of snacks, and banana-leaf-wraped lunches. The selection of animals was pretty low due to the rain, but we looked at a bunch of cool plants, including one with a flower called Inca´s braid, whose blooms can be cut off to make parrot noses. There was also a garlic tree, a few kinds of ficus, John got to hack into a rubber tree with a machete, a walking tree, an ´´erotic tree´, whose roots look like phalluses, that comes with its own set of beliefs. We scrambled over all kinds of fallen trees, walked through rivers, many of which were well above the tops of our boots, and eventually reached a bigger river, which we were to swing across using a liana. Knowing there were Caimans in the river did not make this an enticing prospect. A couple of people swung across quite well, and then William went over to cut down some foliage that was making the landing a bit dangerous. Our Irish companion, Barbara, swung across next, and landed quite well, but was too nervous to let go of the liana, and so fell in. Then it was my turn, and I was decidedly nervous, not least because both my hands and the vine were very wet and slippery. I fulfilled my own nervous prophecy, as usual, losing my grip and sliding down the vine until my feet were eventually in the water, at which point I had no chance to let go. I was swimming towards the bank, wet and unhappy, but fine, until I got stuck in a tree just before the bank, and couldn´t get out. William then came to save me, and I clambered over the tree, but I was a big mess by then.

Once everyone else had swung across and I´d emptied out my boots, William announced that we were all just too wet and that it was a long way back the way he planned to go, so it was probably better to just go back to the ranch for lunch, and that we could cross back over the river on a bridge.

The bridge turned out to be a very slippery tree across the river, and by then my glasses were so wet and muddy and steamed up that I couldn´t see, and I was all full of complete panic. William helped my edge gently across the log and I was finally ´safe´. Thank goodness for William.

We trudged back, damply, along the same route, stripped, showered (in lovely cold water) and changed, then sat down to eat our (now very damp with river water) lunches. The rest of the afternoon was spent in hammocks, playing cards, talking and laughing. We had barbecued chicken straight from the firepit for dinner, some beer and wine and a mini dance party.

Bedtime still came pretty soon though, as we had a 4:30 a.m. wakeup call.

Yesterday was a long day full of transportation. Four hours and breakfast in the boat, then nine hours with super-formula-one driver Americo in the bus. We made it back to Cusco just fine though. Everyone moved out to their hostels to shower and change and nap, and then we went out to celebrate the birthday of Mase, the one female Spaniard. We had a lovely dinner full of hysterical laughter about the trip, red wine, and email exchanges. The rest went off to get a drink after that but John and I peeled off to call his parents and go to bed.

We´d sacrificed a double bed for a good shower, but ended up both in one single halfway through the night, as the room was FREEZING. Today we´ll get some Inka massages and see a bit more of Cusco before heading to Arequipa on a night bus. We´ll spend one night there, then overnight again to Lima.

We start our journey home on the 28th, overnighting in New York (tired), and then hit Halifax around 3 on the 29th. I don´t know if we´ll be much up for company on the weekend, but John´s thinking about brunch on Sunday. We´ll let you know!

Monday, November 19, 2007

John of the Jungle

So, it turns out there is internet in the jungle. There´s also cell phone service at Machu Picchu. Just a quick update before dinner then.
Machu Picchu was amazing, though getting there involved some frustration and expense. It rained most of the time we were up there too, but no bother. I was amazed you could just walk wherever you pleased. And it really is like a city on the top of a mountain, so there is lots of wandering to do. We skipped scaling the highest point on account of the rain, but managed to see all the significant buildings and centres. It´s really an indescribable site, so I´ll leave it at that for now.
We were home to Cusco late and up early to get our jungle bound bus this morning. There are four Spaniards and an Irish woman in addition to us, our guide William and our (medium-mad) driver today Americo.
The first couple hours involved some now customary terrifying high speed rides around mountain switchbacks. We stopped at a pre Inca burial site where we were swarmed by girls selling trinkets and carried on to Manu national park.
The drive through the clouds was a different kind of terrifying and a different kind of beautiful. There was another quick pit stop to help haul the cargo of a truck that had gone down the hill back up the embankment--the truck itself was too far gone. Driver´s okay, apparently. We stopped for lunch by a waterfall where it began to pour. Once we got into the cloudforest proper, we got out to walk for a while.
Almost right away William said he´d spotted some woolly monkeys and sure enough, there were a dozen of them swinging from tree to tree on the other side of the river. Zonkey trip people: these are the same kind of monkeys that we watched playing tag in Avon Valley.
It was incedible to watch them in their own environment. They seemed to be heading from high ground to lower, but then stopped and just kind of hung out in a tree for a while.
I don´t think the pictures will do it justice.
Not long after, one of our party spotted a Cock of the Rock, the Peruvian national bird. We descended a slippery bank to get a better spot to watch three of them sing and dance. They´re a bright pink/red colour on top with a strange crowned head.
Here´s hoping the next few days will have a lot more amazing sites.
We´re all the way down at 600 metres tonight and aiming not t get eaten by mosquitoes.
Salud.