whitbob en sud america

to quiet the mind, go down, then go high

2008-03-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

what could possibly follow patagonia and the galapagos, but machu picchu of course! my parents and i headed straight to cusco after dealing with that terrible, left-over rocking-back-and-forth sensation for a day in quito. it was great fun returning to cusco and being able to show off my little city of love and parasites. it really did feel a bit like coming home and i realized that i missed quite a bit about the place. in the three days we spent there, i made sure to eat at all of my favorite spots for a final time and to get the most out of those butt-kicking hills.

after cusco, we headed to a house outside of urubamba, where we would stay for three days in order to fully explore the sacred valley. this girl can't get enough livin' in the sacred valley, that's fo sho. it was wonderful having our very own little abode and we made our touring plans better than any guide could! we visited the agricultural ruins (terraces) at moray and the salt flats of salinas. we wandered around the markets of urubamba and hiked the ruins of pisac. and finally, traveling at roughly the speed of light, swerving to barely miss random potholes, dogs and innocent peruvian pedestrians, the taxi came to a screeching halt in ollantaytambo, the departure point for the train to machu picchu. (i'm not exactly sure how i came to survive the many taxi rides i had in peru, but i'm here to tell you those men need to make their way to nascar. i think it might pay a little better than the going rate between cusco and urubamba).

the train was fun, simply because i had yet to travel by train during my 2.5 months in south america. the ride through the valley was lovely, alongside the roaring and very brown urubamba river, which eventually meets up with the amazon. as we approached aguas calientes, the jumping-off point for machu picchu, i was surprised to watch the landscape go from green velour-covered mountains to dense jungle. the mountains remain impressive, but the vines, moss, ferns, orchids and hummingbirds are everywhere. totally unexpected.

we had a beautiful sunny day for our arrival at machu picchu (we stayed up at the only hotel up at the ruins) and we were able to enjoy waynapicchu (the tall, steep mountain overlooks the ruins and is a great hike) in the afternoon sunlight from our back yard garden. luckily we soaked up that sun because at 5 am when we awoke for our first-at-the-gates visit to machu picchu, it was totally cloudy and raining. thorskie and i did the super early morning thing so that we would be one of the first up waynapicchu, a steep ass-kicking hike that they limit to 400 people per day. we got to the bamboo gates of the trail a half hour before they opened and were second in line. the rain stopped and we had brief glimpses of the valley as we trudged straight up the mountain. it was worth the early start (even though the top was totally socked in) because we shared the entire mountain with only 6 other people. absolutely divine...and so indiana jones!

our exploration of machu picchu itself was in keeping with our first glimpses - simply wonderful. the sun came out in the afternoon and because we were staying at the hotel, we could escape to our rooms at the height of squawking, fanny-pack-laden group time and then return and remain in the ruins until closing time - hours after the bulk of the tourists had departed. the evening sunlight across those structures and the distant valleys really is awe-inspiring and we all took our moments to gaze out and wonder at the magnitude of it all. herds of tourists led by little raised flags can ruin a lot of things, and probably might have put a damper on the majesty of m.p., but eliminate two thirds of them and you've got yourself a once-in-a-lifetime experience. i'm pretty sure on that day i figured out the meaning of life, my true purpose, how to achieve world peace and a cure for chafing, but of course i didn't have my notebook with me, got hungry and i forgot it all on the way down.

so, i've had amazing interaction with local south americans, an on-location education of latin american spanish, a new york state of mind in buenos aires, tranquil and amplified-UV times in uruguay, mind-blowing (and i say that literally) communion with nature in patagonia, a privileged glimpse of evolution and marine-life-cavorting in the galapagos and enlightenment in temples on high of the greenest valleys you ever did see.

not too shabby for a winter season (as minor payback, those of you who actually had a winter can still get a pang of jealousy out of me - however irrational - when you tell me about the killer skiing you have had the past three months)

aaah, me falta sudamerica. me falta mucho. y es cierto que voy a regresar en el futuro. cierto. hasta luego, mi nuevo amor.

once upon a time...

2008-03-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

...in a land far, far away, is a family of islands populated by marvelous and unimaginable creatures. they scurry across even the most remote and illogical nooks and crannies and they look upon their tall two-legged visitors with either friendly curiosity or absolute indifference.

the most notable thing about the galapagos for me, was the opportunity to witness a world without fear. it's quite striking and it got me extrapolating to what it might be like to live in a land where most behavior is not driven by fear. from what i saw on the islands, it would be pretty amazing, but alas, we're human and we are dangerous, so we must have our little bundles of trepidation to keep us alive and cruising intact. (and not to say that the islands are 100% idyllic...not when i learned about how the blue footed boobies let their extra booby babies die right in front of them if they have more than one chick; and when i had to avert my eyes when the frigate birds were circling, ready to pick up one of the exposed chicks for dinner...) it's a pretty harsh landscape of desert and lava flows, so you don't forget that the living ain't easy out stranded in the middle of the pacific ocean.

it was an amazing 10 days, only tarnished by the total ass-kicker of a bug that i caught on day 5 of the trip. i was 5th to catch it (damn germ-trapping boats) and it was, to put it mildly, the worst couple days i've had in a long long time. figures that i make it through a month of living in parasite-ridden peru and a month of low-budget traveling in argentina, uruguay and chile only to get obliterated on a beautiful cruise in the galapagos! i missed one full day of action, but then pulled the biggest suck-it-up move i could muster so that i could partake in the following days of fun. once you taste the sweet nectar of swimming with sea lions, you're addicted and need more immediately (that should explain the tank i will be building in my seattle apartment to house the babies that i smuggled in.)

so, yes, it's amazing. everything you've heard. the down part of keeping a place amazing and pristine is that it is a highly, highly, controlled environment. you have to be on a boat with other tourists (luckily we got on one of the smaller boats out there) and you always, always have to be accompanied by a naturalist on land. you have a three-foot wide trail that you must stay on at all times. and the routes of the boats are highly regulated, as are the visiting/snorkeling/kayaking sites, so it's common to have other boats at the same site, either leaving or waiting to follow. that type of herding is far from my style, and it was sometimes a bit disappointing. i can't complain too much because most everybody would prefer to have these islands to themselves and if they had their wish, nothing would be preserved. and i was lucky enough to be with a company that is partnered with national geographic, so there was a great focus on education and conservation.

snorkeling was my favorite time spent in the islands because that's when we had the most freedom. experienced swimmers and divers could go off to deeper waters or around rocky points and there's no telling what you would get to experience. i was swimming around a point and looked down to see a 6.5-ft white-tipped galapagos shark swim out of the darkness right underneath me. (i always said i'd be totally cool if i saw a legitimate shark -i've seen the paltry 3-ft. reef sharks in hawaii- but let me tell you the actual experience is slightly breath-taking....maybe a little pee-making... i'm not gonna lie...i had a tiny panic in my core. that sucker was big!)

during my snorkeling time (we went out three different days) i saw a million different types of tropical fish, sea turtles foraging for food, penguins darting by me like torpedoes chasing fish, groups of juvenile sea lions playing with me and with each other (at one time they were batting around the fat trunk of broccoli that a boat must have dropped and i got to catch it and toss it back to them. it was just the three of them and me having a grand time), flightless cormorants swimming to catch fish, the cousin of the man of war jelly that floated by like an air bubble at the top of the water and the tiniest, most brilliant blue fish taking shelter in the stinging tentacles streaming long below it (that one was cool for about a minute until my mom got nailed on the arm and had to get out of the water). we had one day that was pretty much all jellies all the time. that, my friends, was not fun in the slightest. my legs were covered in little red welts from all the stings. the water was solid with little squishy, see-through jelly forms. some of them were so tiny and so beautiful, but it was hard to focus on them as i was getting peppered by stings. didn't stay too long in the water that day!

good stuff, those critters. i found myself walking around peru the following week expecting to see iguanas at every turn. life is rather boring without piles of iguanas.

ready for chapter 5?

2008-02-29T07:17:00.000-08:00

back at one of the best internet cafes of the trip, here in punta arenas. we left our little home-away-from-home, erratic rock II hostel in puerto natales, at 7 a.m. (after enjoying our last bowls of frosted flakes there) and bussed back to punta arenas, the town perched at the straights of magellan.

kayaking amongst the glaciers was good fun, though sincerely over-priced for what we got. very expensive, not so much kayak time and of course, i had idealized visions of me paddling in a maze of icebergs, which was not to be. but it was cool...paddling next to a glacier in patagonia could never be less that pretty awesome.

now, i´m soaking in my last hours of patagonian wind-powered, rain-saturated fresh air. in the afternoon, we will go partake of the penguin colony nearby. very exciting. i´ve already been tickled by all of the birds i´ve spotted, including the black-necked swans, chilean flamingoes and andean condors, now i get to enjoy the little flightless bundles of joy.

i´ve got the most recent pics posted and hope to get los penguinos up before departing at the early hour of 5 tomorrow morning and making my long, long way up to ecuador...and thus, beginning chapter 5 of my south american adventure. so happy that my visit to the galapagos is next, because i can´t imagine very many destinations that could follow patagonia.

i have no idea what the internet world will be like up there, but when surrounded by the land of darwin´s creatures, who wants to be on one of those blasted computer machines??? i will update when i can though, and try to share the racy photos of me and the giant tortoises. i think the footage of me and the iguanas will be a little too graphic for this crowd, but if the people demand it, i can deliver.

let´s all raise a glass to the end of the world and, heck, let´s raise one more for evolution!!!

all about the elements

2008-02-26T08:23:00.000-08:00

greetings once again from the little southern outpost known as puerto natales! i scripted a fabulous entry packed with amazing literary sensibility and titillating description and then the computer ate it. por lo eso, i had to retreat for a day, fatigued and slightly heartbroken, unable to re-concoct my thoughts for ya´ll. but i´m back, refreshed and ready to give a little picture of what it was to backpack through the torres del paine.

firstly, it would be impossible to capture the impact of this land simply with words. so, check out the photos and you can see what cannot be written.

the torres is a land of severe incongruities...the weather, the land, the people...we approached through the grassland desert with sun shining and brown grasses blowing gently. in the distance, you see the paine massif explode from the land and it is so immense and attractive that you are too caught up in awe to be befuddled about how and why these mountains landed in the middle of arid flatland.

they create their own weather, as all respectable mountains do, and the few peaks we could see coming in were encircled by grey clouds. the valleys were filled with shadows and snow.

the first views of every peak we came upon never ceased to be the best-moment-ever for me. i´m a sucker for craggy peaks, and these guys always took my breath away. just a simple change in the light or our proximity made them new and worthy of long gazes (and multiple shutter snaps - as is evident from what could be called exhaustive representation on my flicker page). but know that the photos don´t do these peaks justice. i could never quite put my finger on what was lacking in the photos, but every time i was depressed that the full majesty of the moment was never quite present in the pics.

so, you have the obvious awe. then you have the confusion.

confusion due to the fact that directly to your left could be a 5,000-ft. vertical wall of granite and slate with clinging glaciers and torrential glacial rivers wrapping around the base. and directly to your right is an endless vista of desert oranges, yellows and browns intermixed with the brightest turquoise lakes you ever did see.

sun and blue skies to your right. to your left, the angriest winds. the only ones that could carve a mountain majesty like this. they blow with a great white´s mouthful of teeth and with scary speed. typically from their source are the blackest clouds and the next storm waiting. there is always "a next storm".

i sat and watched the sky for an unknown amount of hours and i equate the weather to the tidal sets of the ocean. when you devote enough attention, the inherent rhythm reveals itself to you...and then you know exactly when the waves are going to come, how far apart they will be from each other and which will be the strongest. after watching one valley (and every valley had its own set of rules) i could see the storms lined up like airplanes. the wind would introduce them every time...with insane force and then there would be the snow and the rain.

then a little break...the best time to ascend a pass...a momentary view of peaks...and then the next one rolls on through.

even when it is sunny in patagonia, it´s raining. totally bizarre, but i guess it´s always raining somewhere here, so even if you´re in full sun, it´s so windy that you get rained on from the side or the back or some secret place that pitches rain.

and then...then there are the people. so many people. backpackers coming in high season, beware. they are not kidding. and nobody told me...not adequately enough...what the act of backpacking really resembles here. i thought my biggest enemy would be the weather, and while it provided some interesting challenges, i revise my earlier statement to say that the frickin´overpopulation of the park was my biggest enemy. such a tease to be in the most awe-inspiring lands i´ve walked in a long time...only to be surrounded by not what you would call your true outdoorsmen. no.

take yellowstone national park in the dead of summer, if you will. take every single one of those folks, but remove them from their RVs and road-trip vans and give them backpacks. but keep the jeans. and the cigarettes. lots of cigarettes. then drop them on the trail with me. trail etiquette is non-existent. i can count on one hand for 8 days of backpacking how many times i was thanked for letting teams and teams of people pass. i can also count on one hand how many times someone stopped for us. i cannot, however count on anything the amount of goddamn toilet paper i saw everywhere. when i find myself with that pile of disposable income i´m bound to have one of these days, i am getting educational signs made and i am donating them to this park. because, there actually is no magical forest fairy that picks up your toilet paper for you. and, despite popular belief, biodegradation is not a magic fairy either. i have this rage in the states as well, but here...here there is absolutely no attempt - no matter how feeble - to try and bury or hide the toilet paper. no, just dropped right there. on the trail? no problem. just drop it right there. scurried up to the most brilliant vista you´ve ever seen? yeah, drop it right there. lovely white squares everywhere. drop it there for the people. drop it for posterity.

the last of my people rant focuses on the sleeping part. yes. when they say "campground" a vision of a large plot of land with "camp sites" in it comes to mind. but here, they mean a swatch of land (differing in size depending where you´re at) where an unlimited number of people pitch their tents. it didn´t take us long to realize that we would not, for the entirety of our trip, be sleeping more than 5 inches from somebody else. make that 10 somebodies on every side. it was funny really. we caught on early to our curse, as well. somehow, we angered the torres gods because we were cursed with having the largest and loudest groups of hikers always pitch their tents on top of ours. and when i say loud...please understand that i cannot accurately describe the pitch and volume with which large groups of israelis and chileans feel the need to communicate with each other. it apparently doesn´t have anything to do with proximity...or, say, an obvious hearing impediment.

wrap them all up and this is the picture...

after an 8 mile climb to the top of a breath-taking granite outcropping you are being snowed on and blown over while the sun is shining about a mile away on the desert. you sit, careful to center yourself in between the two squares of toilet paper, to put on extra layers and enjoy some raisins while taking in the surrounding majesty. just then, the group of highly jocular chilean boys that encircled your tent the night before and stayed up until 3am take their last steps to the summit and light their cigarettes.

(don´t mean to sound too snarky, but people can be a real pain in the ass...most especially at the almost literal end of the world)

end of the world, anyone?

2008-02-13T14:00:00.000-08:00

greetings from way down here in the wonderful world of patagonia. i don´t think i can explain to you the immensity of the terrain down here. the plane ride (which i captured on film and will post in 12 days or so) was jaw-dropping. i never removed my forehead (much to the dismay of the cleaning crew) from the window because the view was always different and dramatic. fields of volcanoes. crumpled mountain ranges. glaciers tumbling into valleys and massive lakes and rivers. huge rivers and wide open tundra. it´s all here. currently, i´m in the tundra part, right on the edge of the land of peaks, glaciers and fjords.

little puerto natales is a cute little city and i´m slightly enamored because it´s filled with my kind of tourists - adventure-seeking folks from all over the world. tomorrow, christine and i head into the Torres del Paine national park for 10 - 12 days of backpacking. we´ll return to puerto natales after that, unpack for a day and then embark on a two-day kayaking/camping trip in a fjord, amongst the glaciers. should be absolutely spectacular...if you don´t dwell on the ridiculous winds and rain they have here. perfect kayaking conditions. you can all comment on my arnold-sized biceps after this paddle.

the backpacking will be somewhat of a new experience for me because you must camp in campsites and there are refugios that have showers and some even with restaurants along the way, so i won´t have my ultimate wilderness experience that i usually strive for when backpacking. this spells disaster for my competitive side as the little european bastards, with their tiny backpacks, are going to fly right past us as we lumber along with our 10-days worth of food, tent, stove, and sleeping bags... but no copping out and taking shelter in refugios! we´re hard core. and we will love every single moment of hiking in the wind-driven rain and chilly temperatures. the mileage won´t be the main challenge here. it´s absolutely the weather conditions, which change instantly...they say...though since i got here, it hasn´t been anything but wind and rain :) maybe they mean it changes from wind to rain back to wind again...and then a little of both to make it interesting.

ok. off to enjoy night #1 of the banff film festival. nothing like some extreme-sporting movies to get you ready for the patagonian wilds!

back in a flash...

i spoke too soon

2008-02-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

photos are up! get em while they´re hot!!!
on my defeated walk home, i found another internet cafe with actual USB capabilities! de-lux.
...and almost three hours later whitbob is still here. but i´m at 45% completion of the final batch and then i can be free to go home and sleep!

good airs

2008-02-06T14:48:00.000-08:00

¡amigos! hola from this little spot they call buenos aires. it´s been a fine couple days settling in, but sadly my photos are held hostage. this might be the swankiest town this side o´ the equator, but hell if i can find a computer from later than 1990. i´ve captured my jaunts in uruguay as well as my little apartment, but alas, i cannot share them. i scour the big (and i´m not kidding when i say big) boulevards and all i find are these crappy little locutorios. fabulous for checking email on the fly, but no good for jumping on board the information super highway!

i have highlights from b.a., but first i must mention my revelation from uruguay...

many of you have enjoyed a sky bursting with stars that you never knew existed - while camping or traveling in remote lands with few people - but it took me a moment to figure out what was extra special about the billion stars that revealed themselves to me one night in punta del diablo. i´ve had the pleasure of seeing a pregnant night sky and appreciated all of those little bits of light that aren´t around the night skies of the city, but i had never, until last week, sat in awe of such a star harvest coupled with the soundtrack of crashing waves. the stars, all zillion of them, just tumble right into the ocean. and that, my friends, was cool. i´ve spent some pretty killer nights in my time star gazing on the beach, but there has always been some sort of a city relatively close by to keep some of the good stuff at bay. but not in uruguay. it´s so dark there and the skies so wide, that the stars of the milky way just pour directly into the ocean. amazing.

b.a....turn ons:

1. alfajores
chocolate-loving people of america, may i introduce you to the alfajor! a tasty delight that is the sweet of choice for the region. they are everywhere (instead of candy bars in the stores, they have these)... it´s basically a sweet sandwich made up of either two round chocolate cakes or two vanilla-ish cakes. then, in the middle, you find a layer of dulce de leche (also to appear on the turn-ons list). then you coat the whole shebang in chcolate, wrap it up and put it in whitney´s hand. even oreo and chips ahoy are in on the game...but yet they keep it from us. so unfair. i tried the oreo one. smashing. pretty much a big oreo (these things are a little smaller than a ding dong) coated in chocolate. not your classic alfajor, but i have to taste em all for my research. i´m not going to say they´re on the list of all-time favorite sweets, but fun to discover something i had never seen before.

2. dulce de leche
while i´m on the topic, might as well get this one over with. i´m not as nutzo over this stuff (on every table at breakfast and would be approached the same as nutella) as the entire country seems to be, but it is quite a treat on a sliced apple (they thought i was crazy for doing this. apparently they only put it on bread here. leave it to me to bring a revolution to the people.) and, i do love it swirled in some of their famous gelato.

3. straws
when you buy a bottle of anything...water or soda... from the mini marts they give you a straw. it´s a strange little behavior, but one i´ve come to appreciate. i think it´s because they´re used to sipping the maté from their metal straws. (still don´t get what´s so great about the maté that you´d be willing to haul around a thermos, a little ceramic pot, a metal straw and a tupperware of maté leaves everywhere you go.) but water and soda always through a bendy straw is tremendous fun!

b.a....turn offs:

1. dog shit
well, all the feral dogs of cusco are gone, but they´ve been replaced with more dog shit than i´ve ever seen in a city.
people actually own dogs here apparently.
and walk them all around the city.
and leave their shit, like little potent, slippery mines every five inches.
it´s unbelievable. for as fabulously european and sophisticated as porteños insist they are, someone needs to tell them that one of the steps to class would be not having a city (and shoes) covered in dog crap.

2. wet drops from above
picture yourself walking happily along the sidewalk - intensely focused on weaving your way safely through the poop bombs - and you feel a few wet drops of something land on your head and shoulder. once the surprise passes, you keep your pace steady and your head high, sincerely hoping that there´s not a huge smattering of bird dropping all over your head. luckily, the culprit usually is not poop from above. it´s currently 96 degrees here and all of the apartments have their air conditioners going, so you can´t walk a block without getting dripped on. i know about the a.c., i´ve been dripped on, but it still doesn´t alleviate that tense moment of prayer as you casually brush your hand through your hair and sneak a glance at your palm. the stress of simply making it safely down a block justifies the quick trip into one of their gelato places!

3. shhhh with the ¨sh¨
oh argentinians, why must you deny the existance of my friend "y" and its spanish cousin "ll"?? why must you deny their turn on the tongue? i say the "s" and "h" have plenty of time in the sun and need not be given even more power and popularity. i hold strong. i walk along a "calle" not a "cashe". i lost my first three layers of skin on the "playa" not the "plasha". i´d like a "botella" de agua, no "botesha".
and me "llamo", dammit, es whitney.... wheet-nee. si. como, whitney houston. si.

draggin´

2008-02-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

well, i officially forgot what day it was and had big plans for tonight to upload all of my photos since leaving cusco, but it´s sunday in montevideo! and nothing is open on a sunday in montevideo!

so, the wait will continue until i find an adequate internet cafe once i´m settled in my little recoleta apartment in b.a.

today, i´m not gonna lie, feeling a little sluggish. sad to leave my little beach paradise, but a little tired of trying to get my head around this dialect of spanish.
and just a little tuckered all together. i would like a little magic time/space machine that could take me home to my friends and my home for just one little night. a secret night of familiarity. and then i´d be refreshed and ready to hit the pavement tomorrow!

i´m going to guess, though, that a magic night not in a hostel will pretty much do the same thing (especially when i get tv with hopefully some movies with the english dialogue still intact and spanish subtitles...that´s been my favorite way of learning random new words...speaking of tv.., happy super bowl sunday to you all! i will have no idea what happens for a good 24 hours.)

until i ride the wild wave the interweb again...

it ain't called punto del diablo for nuthin

2008-01-30T17:17:00.000-08:00

so, um, remember that line about my big white squishy body? well, after 2.5 hours on the beach here...well...let's just say i hurt. i hurt all over and i look retarded. i'm a joke. how can a girl from los angeles, land of sun and surf, make this classic rookie mistake???

well, i was confounded too, but there is an answer, folks, and it's not that i'm as dorky as i look right now. i lathered on sunscreen. it's no mystery to me that my thigh meat is blinding when looked at directly. i juiced it up. really i did. and my arms, chest and face even had two doses, one in the morning and one before going out to the beach. and still...i resemble, if not could totally pass for, the red lobster right now. at first i thought it was only a few blobs that i missed, but no, it's el todo cuerpo. i started to think that i got ripped off and bought fake sunscreen...a stretch, but remember i'm coming from cusco where they can figure out really creative ways to rip you off.

but then my saving grace came into the hostel. her name is jane (i suppose if her name was aloe, then she'd really be my saviour) and she's british living in ireland (my first hostel friend). she got the crap burned out of her two days ago...all while sporting a healthy coating of spf 30...
a guy told her yesterday after she was commenting with confusion, that apparently there is little to no ozone directly above uruguay. so now i know why this town has the name it does...because it's hell here. hot and about as good to your body as the grills at carl's jr. at least i have an answer, because i have never had this happen after 2 hours in the sun with sunscreen. man o man. sort of puts a cramp in my "ain't leaving the beach for 5 days" plan! now i guess i have to stay on my little balcony in my hammock overlooking the beach all day :)

i feel you cursing me again. trust me, i suffer enough right now. always...there is a fine balance to the universe.

anway, brief recap, so i won't be the asshole who stays on the computer too long:

b.a. was totally daunting and i felt pretty alone in such a huge city that really couldn't give a crap about tourists and whether we can find cash or internet. i was at my second atm that had no cash to dispense when i ran into matt from colorado. he's traveling alone around s. america and was also alone and cashless in b.a. so, as desperate lonely american travelers do, we bonded and hung out for the day. it was welcome company for me! he had been in town for a few days, so he showed me around a bit and then we met again for dinner in cute little palermo. good stuff. he's exactly my age (unheard of in peru!) and was easy company. exactly what i needed that day.
yesterday i left early for uruguay and went straight for montevideo, where i walked around and enjoyed my first gelato of the argentina/uruguay area. delightful! not quite as good as that of rome, but a fine, fine second. i wish i had a tub of it right now and i would sleep in it.

this morning i took a 3.5 hour bus ride to punto del diablo and immediately proceeded to burn my skin off. the swim in the atlantic was good stuff, though. the atlantic across from africa no less! this little town is delightful. my perfect tiny beach town and if i lived closer, this would totally be my family's vacation spot. absolutely my speed and size.

i hope to take a bus and then hike 3 miles to a nearby beach outpost that has no roads to it, but has been on my list of things to visit for months now. apparently it's an even more delightful little beach town that sports its own huge sea lion colony to boot. going to try for that place tomrorow or friday. maybe friday so my skin can heal tomorrow...

sunday i bus back to montevideo, spend one last night there and then make my way back for a week's visit in b.a. on monday. should be a good visit...much less daunting than my first night because there will be a guy from work (bob payne from our sports web dept.) there visiting and is an old pro at b.a. planning on meeting up with him on wednesday for a little tour and, even better, one of my new argentinian friends from my random meeting that night in ollantaytambo wants to try and tour the graphics department of clarin (the b.a. newspaper with the kick-ass graphics) with me. he's studying graphic design in college and was excited that i had a visit to the paper planned. seems he'll be in b.a. next week too and wants to try to do the visit with me. that's the kind of fun travel-inspired reunions that i like! i want more of that!!!

ok. it hurts my skin to be in contact with itself right now. i go lube and recline.

(and i think i already officially became the asshole who won't get off the computer)

later, my opus about how hostels kind of suck. and that the correct spelling is actually hostile methinks...at least for the inhabitants. so freaking cliquey!

ain´t no looking back!

2008-01-26T14:54:00.000-08:00

ok, here goes nothing folks...
just when i´ve got this place figured out, secured some pretty great peeps and had a satisfying argument in spanish i have to leave! and go to a land that´s big, unfamiliar and oh so daunting!

i had a slight heart attack while trying to secure housing for myself in b.a. tomorrow night...yes, i had no plans secured yet. yes, i leave in 12 hours. yes. and i was this close to paying dearly for my procrastination, but it all worked out! ha! and i now have my first two nights in palermo, b.a. secured and the following 6 nights in uruguay. i´ll be settling this soggy, white body of mine on the beaches of punto del diablo in three days time and i´m not moving it, save for acquiring beverages and comestibles, for five days. staying at a hostel near the beach and i have my fingers crossed that i will encounter good people, good weather and friendly sea lions. don´t know when i will check in next. do they have computers in buenos aires? ;)

about to step into the unknown...about to be heckled by really beautiful argentinian people with robust wardrobes...

wish me luck.
vaya con dios y hasta luego, cusco!

hay mas!

2008-01-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

back from the jungle.
back from the valley.

and cusco is here just as i left it, full of touristas, massage peddlers and slippery cobblestone streets.

first,i start with the jungle experience. it actually began quite similarly to our favorite disney jungle book boat ride. we boated up the rio in a standard long boat and were promptly and awe-inspiringly pampered from the minute we arrived. i can easily say that was some of the best money i´ve ever spent. after many many hectic days in cusco, a warm and lux visit to the rain forest was just what the doctor ordered. wow. now it seems long ago, but last weekend, i was the embodiment of bliss. i even perfected a three-ingredient concoction of lotions and potions and managed to escape without a single mosquito bite.
· we walked among the jungle creatures (jumped when what we thought was a fake tarantula on a tree trunk darted into it´s web nest...a substantial heart attack, of which there were many in the depths of creepy crawly land.)
· we lolled in our personal hammocks at the front of our cabana. we took three showers a day (the shower was one of my happiest places) and promptly dressed in the light, cotton robes they provided for us.
· we ate three freakishly tasty meals a day in the beautiful dining room, where i encountered a dulce de leche/vanilla wafer dessert that actually gives chocolate a run for its money. oh my god. and the juice! would it be me in south america if i didn´t mention the juice?? it was better than in cusco...and who thought that was possible!? the passion fruit juice. the honeydew melon juice. my new loves. i dream of them. when i get home i´m buying the best blender you can buy and i will figure out the secret to this juice. oh yes i will.
· we walked along a 100-ft high jungle canopy walk and it was the greatest! it titillated my tree-house lover like you don´t even know...and raised the bar for my future tree house as well! so much fun. not a lot of life up in the canopy when we were up there, but of course when we were down on the forest floor again, we looked up and next to the rope bridge we were just on, was a toucan. all i wanted was to see a real, live toucan at some point, so i was happy (though a little peeved that he waited till i was so far away to show himself).
· we visited a beautiful butterfly preserve and saw fabulous little flutterers. dazzling.
· i met my new peruvian boyfriend, sherlock (yes, not your average peruvian name)who heralds from lima and is a bartender and waiter at the resort, on the boat and had a great time speaking in spanish with him the entire weekend. he was our first and very valuable connection to the dining room crew (almost all of whom were our best friends by the end of the weekend). it was fun, because you could tell that the crew isn´t used to tourists who can speak spanish...much less who are single girls under the age of 65. so every time i went up to the buffet, whoever was up there would ask me tons of questions and speak to me in spanish. it was pretty wonderful and great practice! and getting complimented on my spanish wasn´t bad either ;)

the dream vacation, of course, was as fleeting as my glimpse of the monkeys in the jungle and fizzled to just a faint memory at exactly 2:30 pm last sunday when we arrived by taxi back in the plaza de armas. and the traffic dodging and ¨no gracias¨ fun recommenced.

later sunday afternoon i taxied a little ways past pisac to the little pueblo of taray. the school´s house was pretty cool, but - as is par for the course here in peru - a bit rough around the edges. i shared a room with three other girls, two of whom were my new good friends: larissa, 26 from brazil studying to become a p.t. (and who has been in my spanish class for the past three weeks and quickly became my campañera. we share a log of the same sensibilities, but she immediately posed a great challenge for me to keep up with her rapid banter (a mind-addling mix of portuguese and spanish). it´s possible i´m the only american in the school who can understand her. and audrey, 28 a doctor in chicago who has become my music-loving counterpart here in s.a. we bonded initially over a freakishly similar taste in music and continued to share tasty details of our lives over the past week. fine, fine roommates indeed.

we banded together along with a few other sensible individuals and, with a healthy diet of mockery and judgement, managed to survive the week with the young partygoers. it was extra amusing when the batch of them got so wasted that they didn´t make it to class the next day...despite being about 10 feet away from the living room where classes were held...
they did their partying the in their little rooms in a little, native pueblo in the peruvian countryside. ´twas quaint.

i did my best to soak up my last chance at learning tenses and practicing spanish with my new professors. it was a great week of classes and i got in two last tenses, though i think my spanish is actually getting worse. it´s possible that i reached my saturation level and i´m overflowing with information. now, when i open my mouth, i just don´t know whether future, conditional, subjunctive, progressive etc. is going to come out...not to mention whether it will be appropriately male or female, singular or plural. aaaaaahhhh. and leaving for argentina might just complicate the situation further. we will see. one thing is for certain, my dream of waltzing back into the u.s. fluent in spanish ain´t happening! i think i might have been overestimating my 32-year old brain.

the highlight of studying in the sacred valley was, hands down, the insane, ass-kicking, purely will-driven hike/scramble that 6 of us went on after class yesterday. we left the house at 1 pm and returned at 7:58...2 minutes to change for dinner. i´m uploading photos now, but i don´t know if they´ll do the experience justice. i have no idea how high or how far we traveled, but looking back on it today, it looks impossible.
we started out with the simple, but logistically challenging goal of climbing and summiting one of the surrounding mountains. didn´t matter which one because there aren´t really trails. we basically followed the main road west away from pisac and picked a spot to start the scramble/climb. the vegetation was pretty forgiving, but the ridiculous degree of incline was interesting and sketchy enough that i was wondering how the hell we were going to get down. but we persevered (and at the altitude we´re at here, that is no small feat) and we climbed and climbed and climbed straight up. (background: one of the cool things about the peruvian mountains is that no matter how high they are and how crazy steep, you find crops growing all over...growing at a 60 degree angle...) so when we reached our false summit and took a break we were next to a section of crops and there were animal tracks all around. we followed a few of those until we encountered the trail that the farmers must use - that is one hell of a commute to work...

we decided to just follow the trail instead of attempting the true summit and to our greatest enjoyment, the trail just kept going and climbing and going and climbing until we had traversed the entire wall of mountains that i had been admiring for the past week. we wanted to climb one, but we managed to climb many and we ended up all the way past pisac, looking down on the mountain where the pisac ruins are. (i thought the pisac ruins were insanely high up, so my surprise at being that much higher looking down on the entire mountain was immense. and captivating.) it was a long day of countless ascents and descents, some sprinkling and a slightly scary 5-minute thunder storm/downpour, followed by a full rainbow across the valley, a cross-country descent through mountain farmland, jaunts through sudden eucalyptus forests, packs of grazing goats and summit views...
we were all worked...some a bit more than others, but they hung in there and ended up being pretty proud of themselves. (i was ready with my safety-first WFR skills to save them...except for the part about the sketchy scramble climb.) it was a breathtaking hike on a magical trail that took us everywhere we ever wanted to go and it fulfilled my reason for going to taray in the first place. perfecto!

ahora, i am in a hotel near my school and the plaza de armas and am in for a whole ´nother kind of scramble. i have one day to figure out my next two weeks in b.a. and uruguay and to get all my last cusco experiences in. should be interesting. i´ll be back tomorrow to finish the photo upload and secure my next chapter!

hace tres semanas y una mas

2008-01-17T18:29:00.000-08:00

tomorrow marks the end of week three in mis clases de espanol and i reward myself with (hopefully) a remarkable trip 200 miles east to the peruvian rain forest. mi amiga, christine, y yo will fly tomorrow (yes, playing hooky from school! - that´s the best part of going to school, right?) and will enjoy three days in a jungle lodge that is accessible only by boat up the river. i´m not going to talk it up just yet, for fear of returning with only tales of bird-sized mosquitoes and brand new bouncing babies named malaria and yellow fever.

tomorrow also marks the end of my time with mama and papa cusco (yoni & fernando). my dreams of entering a lively and crowded latin american household were dashed by this fairly quiet home. it was only me and yoni for every meal this week...except for my final lunch today! there, in the living room decked out in black trousers, a black button-up shirt and a black sport coat, was fernando...or, as i called him then, fernando el mysterioso.
he was a fairly intimidating sight at first. someone i quickly likened to a latin american mafia boss, but after a moment or two with him, i found that he´s actually fairly good natured and absolutely cracks himself up. appropriately sexist and bold, he certainly made for interesting and lively conversation! we chatted for an hour and a half over lunch and the icing on the cake was his final question to me...¨La ultima pregunta, si, la ultima pregunta,¨ he kept repeating (before and after asking more and more questions) but the absolute ultima pregunta was this: "why do you think there are gays in the world?"
ha! delightful. i asked if they were unfamiliar with homosexuality here in peru and he answered no, they exist here, but he´s interested in my thoughts.
what a question for a liberal-minded people-lover from seattle! oh, fernando...
he did tell me something interesting though, if you´ve looked through my photos on flickr, you might have seen the cusco flag (it´s a striped rainbow flag) well, as one could imagine, many foreigners come here and mistake the city flag for the similarly rainbow-striped gay & lesbian flag. the city is actually considering altering their flag slightly to try and alleviate the confusion. i say they should join forces and cusco could become the main vacation spot for the gay and lesbian vacation tours out there. it really is a great vacation destination! and that way, los pobrecitos como fernando might be able to get some answers to their burning questions.

next week i have decided to switch up my housing once again and am going to study my last week of spanish in my school´s sacred valley location. just a 20 minute walk from my beloved pisac, the new home looks pretty amazing, with a comfortable living room with a fireplace and a big bonfire area outside. it´s very quiet there and nestled in amongst those awe-inspiring mountains. i have a couple new good friends who have also chose to study there and we plan to hike every day, read, listen to music and work on our spanish. it will be a wonderful change of pace from cusco. sadly, the rabid pack of yonggins at my school have signed up to go as well. we older, wiser, and far more fabulous ones are rolling our eyes and hoping that we will survive a week in the same house as these voracious partiers. and by voracious, i am not exaggerating...we´re talking up partying and dancing until 7 in the morning every day. needless to say, spanish is far from their first priority here in cusco. none of us can figure out why these creatures are interested in going to a house in the middle of nowhere...near no real towns...with no discotecas and no bars... perhaps i am judging them too quickly. perhaps, in the more subdued environs i will get to know these humans more intimately and they will expose to me some humanity...their sensitive and intelligent underbellies.
or, perhaps i will kill them in a sleep-starved rage.

update in one week.
(which, incidentally, will be two days before i head to buenos aires...oh my!)

outside a cafe, san blas neighborhood, 14:00

2008-01-14T13:13:00.000-08:00

the three women, heavily armed in tasteful travel gear, stopped at the top of the stairs to admire the paintings the young boy thrust in front of them. and as if pigeons descending upon dropped bread crumbs, the other roaming tradespeople closed in around them.

the encroaching crowd, however, didn´t seem to bother these ladies. with designer sunglasses and their blond hair - one short and in curls, two straight and pulled back - they instead, seemed to be invigorated by the attention of these exotic locals. with the help of their large-brimmed sunhats varying in pattern from leopard print to striped, they stood about six inches taller than their pride of suitors.

One woman flipped through the paintings, musing at the sweet peruvian scenes depicted, as the other in the striped black hat snapped photos with her noticeably large camera and its extra large lens. the local woman with the necklaces and the child strapped to her back pushed forward on the left, while the little girl selling finger puppets appeared on top of the wall. the older woman with the belts was forced to wait on the outskirts.

the blond trio had smiles spread wide as they continued on their buying safari. the locals: they were so close they could touch them. and they did. black-brimmed-hat captured every moment shared between the necklace lady´s baby and short-curls-blond. the tiny brown hand wrapped tightly around the larger, manicured white finger. necklace lady smiled as she tried to direct the attention back towards her velvet board of jewelry. once black-brimmed-hat caught the appropriate number of shots with the baby local, short-curls was able to wiggle free of the grasp.

kodak moments abound as they chose a painting from the boy and posed for a picture with the brown paper tube. the finger puppets were also quite cute - though not as precious as the girl selling them. they touched her hair. it was long, black and smooth.

it was time, then, for blond-ponytail to expose her own well-endowed camera so she could capture the frenzy - the zest - with which these locals wanted to interact with them. the older, sun-baked woman lifted belt after belt under the three noses, but by this time they had had enough of local visiting. the old woman and her woven belts weren´t quite as sweet as the children and their various goodies.

stowing their purchases, snapping their last photos and straightening their convertible khaki capri pants, they moved to part the sea of admirers. they descended two steps and looked back at their people. flashing white smiles, they waved goodbye and disappeared to the bottom of the stairs.

whitbob gettin´connected!

2008-01-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

well, i survived my first solo outing to ollantaytambo and it was just plain perfect. i ended up going straight there and straight back without any stops in the valley. i stayed at the sweetest `ole b&b you ever did see in the old train station right on the train platform (so i knew when each new batch of tourists headed out for machu picchu - fanny packs, ¨sacred valley¨ sunhats and all!)
the hostel was wonderful, though. tranquil and full of charm.
without losing a minute, i dumped my bag and headed directly for the ruins before more tourists could beat me to it. the fortress, as they call the ruins there, were pretty cool, but i wasn´t as impressed as i was with the ones at pisac. they weren´t nearly as crowded, though, which is a big plus. i explored the extent of the site and then proceeded to follow a steep little trail that shot out behind one of the walls. i climbed it far far up the mountain until i reached a very high, old incan wall that afforded me a great and sincerely private view of the entire ruins and the valleys beyond. it was my little secret way up high and the kind of solitude you long for, but never tend to find in these places.

after getting my fill of ruins (and trust me, i´m juuust about done with the ruins now) i wandered back to the plaza where there was a big town meeting taking place with all of the local gov´t officials and townspeople gathered. i listened for a bit and then snuck down the small roads beyond the plaza to explore. ollantaytambo is quite unique in that it is built entirely on the original incan foundation, streets and all. so, the streets (though no cars can drive down them) and the community itself, is quite small - as the original incan settlement was. the people, also, are mostly direct descendants of the incans so, quechua is the more popular language spoken. walking the streets was fascinating, as the original drainage systems are still in use and the walls of the houses are of that distinctive incan masonry. very cool and very laid back. even the stray dogs are chill.

i returned home to my happy place after exploring and proceeded to indulge myself... i took a nap in a hammock in the most delightful back yard i´ve seen in a while. the sun was dappled just the right amount. the birds were singing. the river babbled and gurgled next door. the wind swept through the eucalyptus trees above me. and there was absolutely not one other sound to disturb me. it has been a long time since i´ve experienced quietude like that. methinks not since my last afternoon nap in montana. and after living on the loudest street in the loudest little city in peru, i was so thankful!
after hammock time came eucalyptus sauna/steam time :) i know, there are those of you who hate me right now, yes? i realize this. forgive me. and remember that you presently have the freedom not only to go to the bathroom without the fear of catching typhus, but you also get to put your toilet paper down the toilet, where i feel it is happiest.

best part of the trip, as it turned out, wasn´t the naps and the peace and quiet, it was the fancy new latin american friends i made! i ended up running into a guy from my spanish school in town that evening and we proceeded to talk with four argentinian college students who are traveling around for their vacation. my new best friends: pablo, frederico, fernando and enzo, along with michael-of-mighigan from my school, and i chatted it up for about an hour in the plaza and then had a very entertaining dinner before parting ways. we let them practice their english (which was practically perfect) on us and they coached me on the ridiculous way the argentinians speak spanish. just when i think i´m getting somewhere and then there´s argentina! it was comical trying to understand them when they spoke fast. great fun though, indeed. so i´m covered in argentina when i visit in the future. and, after my impromptu decision to take a taxi home this morning instead of the bus, i now have a new best friend, fabiano, in brazil! fabiano and his godfather were on their way back to cusco after visiting machu picchu. thankfully, he could speak spanish quite well (his godfather could only speak portuguese) so we spoke the entire 2-hr. ride back in spanish (cue the massive applause and cheering for our little spanish-speaking whitbob) he´s a high school history, sociology and philosophy teacher and is now my contact in brazil! it´s a fine little collection i´ve got going, don´t you think? and it has made travelling quite fun indeed! i thought i´d be the lame duck who could go three months without meeting people, but i see it´s impossible not to. and it´s such a treat to have these encounters, however brief. they´re like little dashes of herbs that spice up my travels and my perspective.

okay, they are kicking me out now! only 8 photos into the upload! blasted sundays...
otay, i go now and await my family. more later.
yours,
the latin-american whisperer

ollantaytambo ho!

2008-01-10T14:07:00.000-08:00

we´re rapidly approaching the weekend and i´m scurrying to make plans to explore the sacred valley. i have the unfortunate luck of arriving the week that nobody else arrived and now, this week, everyone wants to do what i did last weekend instead of jumping on board my overnight ollantaytambo excursion. i can´t blame them for wanting to go in the same succession i did, but i feel screwed out of the true travel experience when all the lone souls band together and travel places. for about 12 hours i had two people on board with me, but then they decided they wanted to see pisac instead. (damn me for talking up pisac! i should have told then about the pukey bus ride and the dirty river!!!) so, now i go to it by my lonesome...but i found a pretty cool lodge down the valley, which should offer up some amazing views and the potential for some fun excursions. so, i´ll report back on that after the fact. i´m going to mix it up by taking the backpacker train there and then busing back on sunday through the many towns of the sacred valley. the bus is risky business, for sure, judging from the 45-minute nausea fest christine and i suffered on the bus ride to pisac last sunday. but i´m going to pack my own personal barf bag and hope for the best! on the bright side, the train is about $45 american(and that´s the super early, cheaper backpacker train), while the bus is about $3. so i´m going to say that my motion sickness is worth the $42 savings...i say that now...

i forgot to mark the day, but i started dreaming in spanish on jan. 7...three days ago. i think that´s an important step in my journey to becoming a true latin american. i speak really well in my dream, too! aaah to dream...perchance to communicate...

i also completed step two of the process...salsa lessons! last night i accompanied my little chili-pepper of a 19-yr-old-swiss-roommate to her favorite discoteca for free salsa lessons from 9 - 11. we will return tonight and hopefully i will be able to complete chili-pepper 101. right now i´d say i´m a green bell pepper at best. andrea (chili-pepper) leaves saturday to continue on her year-long travels, so i have to bask in her youth for our two remaining evenings together.

much to my tickled-pinkedness, i finally learned a super basic future tense yesterday (i knew it already, but at least we´re on the road to conversational freedom) and today we tackled two of the many past tenses! whoohooo! i have waited two long weeks for these days and now my brain hurts because i can´t absorb all this information, much less have it instantly accessible when i´m talking on the street. (the down side to finally getting to the stuff i don´t remember is that i no longer feel like the smart kid. i feel like the kid who sniffed glue and tried to eat a towel) but, i have hope that one day i will be speaking like a fully functioning spanish human. pray for me. if you need assistance, i captured a good shot of jesus on my flickr page.

oooh, and at 6 on sunday my new family picks me up at the school and they will take me home, swaddled in the traditional peruvian blankets, and feed me and love me forever. or...more likely, place me in the center of the living room, gather round and stare at me, wondering what the hell the strange noises i´m uttering could mean...

"no gracias"

2008-01-10T13:58:00.000-08:00

i hear that there´s a t-shirt for sale somewhere around here that has ¨no gracias¨ printed on the front. i don´t think i can express to you how badly i need this shirt. i´ve never seen it, and if it doesn´t exist, i´m going to move here and start selling them. i don´t know how long i can last with the niceties. soon, i´ll just start shoving these people -so many people!- into the road. there´s a street that leads to the san blas neighborhood that i will go far to avoid...i call it massage alley...and you can go approximately 6 inches until you´re approached by yet another girl trying to sell massages. they cover the entire street - both sides - and they make me angry. i´ve figured out a round-about way now that i can avoid them, but i´m sure soon enough, they´ll find me.

random musings...finally

2008-01-06T16:47:00.000-08:00

well here i go wearing my new blogger pantalones! i could use a new pair of pantalones, actually. two pair of pants just aren't much fun anymore.

randoms:
mi escuela - amauta school - ain't so shabby. i got slightly shafted when they put me in a fairly beginner class with two korean girls who could barely speak english much less an ounce of spanish. i was going to say something, but then it was kind of nice being the super smart one every day. in an effort to inflate my ego to illogical proportions, i remained in the class for the week. it turned out ok, though, because i got to review a few of the oldies but goodies and the girls left a day early so i had two classes all to my self on friday. this coming week will be my golden week...they'll go over the past, future and reflexive, which will really enhance my conversation skills. i'm getting kind of sick apologizing to random people that i don't remember the past or future tense, therefore i can only speak to them in the present. it really impedes my general goal of sounding fairly intelligent and sometimes funny..."yesterday, i go to the ruins. and tomorrow i go the museum. when i am nine years old i go to spanish classes, i here later to buy this..."

a girl in my residence was taken to the hospital on friday with not one, but count them, two infections. seems she picked up a tasty parasite, most likely from the children she has been volunteering with, along with a twist of typhoid. yes...good old typhus. i scoffed when i heard, thinking she was negligent not getting a shot before travelling, but it seems that she did get vaccinated...and still the little bugger persisted! needless to say, this has turned me into a bit of a paranoid hand-washer now, if i wasn't already. gotta love developing countries! she's fine, though and out of the hospital now. she has been here for four weeks, traveled a total of four months in s. america, and she gets sick the week before returning to germany.
stay tuned to the biological adventures of whitbob...

that makes a fine segway to the discussion of food here in cusco. i came expecting to eat a depressing menu of potatoes and rice, all the while staying as far away as possible from the dreaded guinea pig, but it turns out that the food here is actually pretty lovely. from the touristy places, to the artsy places, to the basic mexican places...everything has been delightfully tasty! and might i take the time here to say, "long live the avocado...long live peru!" here, a sliced avocado is a salad! this is music to these ears...and i have partaken of my friend, the avocado, like a good peruvian citizen should. they're big, perfectly ripe and always delicious! and there's no guilt! this will be a behavior i take back home with me - except that avocados are about 5 times more expensive at home. the juice here is also some sort of magic juice. i'm partial to the pina con naranja - pineapple and oragnge juice, but really, they're all freakishly good. i don't know how they do it, but they've mastered the art of fresh juice. every morning the nice lady at my house whips up some fresh orange, mango, banana, pineapple, papaya juice that is the tastiest of treats! how do they do it? no se, but it doesn't really matter. when you come here, have the juice! yay, juice!

ok, that's enough random bits for one day. i'm collecting more, so we'll not be lacking in times to come.

a quick action update: no photos posted yet, but we had a good couple days o' ruins. today being the best by far. we took an early bus to pisaq where - after a solid bout of motion sickness passed - we walked around while the locals set up their huge open-air market. we were absolutely the only tourists in the whole place and i can't describe how great that was. the variety of produce was astounding - and a bit tortuous since we can't eat it on our tourist bellies. all of the locals were gathered around tables eating homemade chicken stew with potatoes and spices while the local dogs sat anxiously waiting for dropped morsels. deep in the textile/tourist part of the market, vendors were still setting everything up, so they weren't interested in hussling us. we merely smiled and chatted with them as they were working. getting up at 5 definitely paid off at the market, and at the ruins, where for an hour, we had the place to ourselves. i'll post pics tomorrow...it was pretty amazing. if the pisaq ruins and the surrounding valley could knock our socks off, i can only imagine what machu picchu will be like!

now i go home and nurse this blasted cold i've picked up. manana, aprendo el pasado tiempo!

my new dispatch home

2008-01-06T16:31:00.000-08:00

here's what i had posted on my initial dispatch page...

DEC. 29: LIMA, PERU
no quiero lima. no sir. true, i didn´t leave the airport grounds, but there was an unsettling air there that was compounded while looking out the next morning through the haze over the bizarre, barren coastline. (and i´m not even getting into what the thick, hot and humid air did to my face and hair the few minutes they were exposed to it!) maybe one day i´ll give it half a chance, but no, i don´t think so. sorry, lima.

DEC. 31: CUSCO
here i am in my new hometown of cusco! it´s a different world, but i can say that all of my newly-birthed doubts and second thoughts a la lima melted away as we flew towards the green, uplifted mountains that surround cusco and the sacred valley. of course, the poverty still exists here and the people are desperate for the tourist dollars that pour through here. i´m growing my thick skin to rebuff the countless husslers. they hustle you for everything - taxis, handmade goods, restaurants, tourist agencies, discos... but it´s impossible not to have sympathy for these people and that gives me a little more patience as i push past them. and one of these days i´ll break down for some handmade items. the women here make some amazing scarves, sweaters and carved guords. it´s hard to turn down someone peddling such craftsmanship - a far cry from some imposter watches on a street corner. eeenyhoo, most importantly, it´s new years´eve! tonight we will all gather en la plaza de armas where everyone runs in a circle and there are fireworks and other festivities. i´m getting the feeling they take big holidays seriously here and make sure everyone has a good time. for those of you hungry for a new tradition - here, you must buy something yellow before the new year so you´ll have good luck. more specifically, yello underwear. i asked if it could be pants or a shirt, but no, it must be undies. if you prefer to have more money in the new year, you buy green underwear and if you have your priorities straight and want more sex, then, of course, you buy the red underwear. i plan on buying all three!

JAN. 2: ¡FELIZ ANO NUEVO!
well i survived new years in cusco! i didn´t really have any time to meet people before the big night, so i put all pride aside and leached onto my 19-year old swiss roommate, andrea. we began the night in a foreign neighborhood where her friend, a girl from new zealand, was staying with a family. turned out that her friend wasn´t home yet, but that didn´t stop the german guy who opened the door to invite us in! turns out this family has 9 students living with them, so after five minutes just sitting in these people´s living room, i saw more people than i had in my entire school for the past two days. the group we met was made up of 5 americans, one scotsman, one german, one new zealander and one brazillian. so, of course we made fast friends, enjoyed some cocktails and then the lot of us made our way to the plaza de armas for the big celebration. there were thousands of people and fireworks everywhere. there was no countdown, which was a little strange, but at midnight all of the cathedrals that surround the plaza rang their bells. then the fun began! everybody started to run in a circle around the plaza, including my group, arms entertwined so we wouldn´t lose each other forever. after some good midnight aerobics, we headed into Mythology, a discoteca en la plaza, for some more aerobics complete with strobe lights, techno music and an industrial fan that would turn on to cool the hot hot dancers. i was by far the oldest person in my group - i´m pretty sure i´m the oldest person travelling in south america - so i had to show the youngsters that even old people can rally on new years. granted, i didn´t make it to 6 a.m. like the rest of them, but i held out until 3 before heading home for a deep sleep. conveniently, the club was just down the street from my house, so i was quickly in bed with my ears ringing.new year´s day was a sleepy one here, as the entire city was out partying until the wee hours of the morning. i met christine, my friend from seattle, upon her arrival at her hotel and proceeded to show her around this crazy land of cusco. today it has rained constantly and it seems that cold, rainy weather affects me exactly the same in south america as it does in seattle! i had my 4 hours of escuela and have taken refuge in a cafe and internet cafe since. it´s too cold and wet to care about some churches and historical nonsense! yo quiero un fuego, un cafe y un libro! i want every single one of you to go take a hot shower and enjoy every single moment of good water pressure and warm water. let´s just say there is little incentive for me to shower here! yum.

JAN. 4: RANDOM MUSINGS
the day that mac officially let me down and made me become a "blogger" with a "blog". damn you, .mac, damn you.