Where I've Been Map

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Salty, I shrunk the French!

Before heading to Bolivia we dipped into Chile one last time and picked up a passenger, our new friend the Afro-portuguese Londoner. Though we have only been friends with the lovely Carina for little over a week, there are few people I can reminisce about the sand, salt and candle wax surfacing in places that they shouldn’t. Our friendship started with sandboarding in Chile, crossed the train tracks to get to the customs office at the boarder, and survived multiple crazy-french-headlamp-candlelight-card-games in Bolivia (with interspersed, open-minded discussions of gun control and veiling in french schools).
After arriving in Uyuni, Bolivia, having the best pizza ever (yay for crazy Bostonians who marry Bolivians and move down to the middle of nowhere to make really good pizza for tourists), we were fortunate again to pick up two more random friends (yay for adorable French couples) and set off on a private 4 day adventure into the salt flats. It was just the five of us--Hueona stayed behind under the care of the Bostonian.
Our driver was 16---just kidding Mom! He was 21. Haha, that didn´t make us feel much safer until the cooks (his young wife and 5 month old daughter) hopped in the car with us! (Yay for the big happy multi-ethnic family we became!)

Though we had only known our new family for a few hours we broke the ice like many do: with food. First I ate my brother. Then my brother tried to eat the girls. Then the condor tried to eat us all.
Of course, you all know that my happiness would not be complete without lots of cute little kids running around the salt hotels, which are made entirely--walls, beds, tables, chairs--of salt. Learning that playing hand-games is universal was the icing on the cake.


Oh, did I mention the flamingos in the red laguna the primordial soup and the 10,000 year old mummies (this creepy pic thinks it´s too good to load)? Nuff said.
Yipee!

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Don´t cry for me Argentina!

(Note: being able to stop at random wineries composed of a small shack and courtyard = the reason we decided to do this trip by car! )


We combined celebrating our last few days in Argentina and the beginning of our training for the Inca Trail by ditching our comfy 4Runner and getting our butts on bikes. Granted, the real intention for the bikes was to ride to 7 wineries scattered at the foot of the Andes outside a beautiful little town called Cafayate. We sampled a FEW wines and bought a FEW bottles ;) Our favorite was the organic wine…though I will admit it was the last bodega we entered, so there is no guarantee my taste-buds were sober. I’ll let your imaginations give you the giggles with images of me tipsy on a bike.

Alas, the next day we traded in our bikes again for the comfort of our beautiful Hueona (now heavy with wine bottles) and headed along a beautiful dirt road with varying landscapes. Although I hate to equate the unique beauty of a landscape to any other in the world, this small corner of Northern Argentina really made me reminisce about our Eid vacation 4-wheeling in the desert in Egypt (here’s another shout-out to my anti-struggle partners in crime). Though, it was a bit windier.



We had to make a pit stop in the city of Salta to patch our first flat, rotate our tires (10,000 mile marker, baby, yeah!), and refresh our spirits with much-needed Chinese food. Then it was off to spend our last night in Argentina at the base of the Cerro de Siete Colores. We think whoever named it was as bad at counting as Matt (hint to this inside joke: refer to my Antarctica blog).
But don’t cry for me Argentina…my brother fell in love with your Buenos Aires. I’m sure I’ll use him as an excuse to return sometime very soon!








Friday, April 11, 2008

One bug Two bug, Red guts Blue guts






Again, sorry this has been so delayed, friends! The last few weeks have been characterized by lots of changing scenery! Since I last wrote about our drive from the south of Chile and into Uruguay we have done a lot more driving and seeing! First we spent a week in Buenos Aires brushing up on the Spanish that I lost years ago and getting involved in the Mafia (Fooprints Guide hit it spot on when they described the Tango show we went to as äuthentic¨!....see pics here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2148655&l=adf2c&id=606158).

The finale to this awesome week was the arrival of our lovely parents with whom we spent a relaxing week on the beach in a quiet town--made quieter by the fact that it was the off-season and absolutely NONE of the restaurants or shops were open...suffice it to say it is a good thing mom brought us a lot of Easter candy! (I miss you already Mamita!) Shout out to all you PEEPS lovers out there!

After returning them to the Buenos Aires airport and getting lost trying to leave the city (only and hour detour, or so!) we had our longest driving day yet: 14 hours through farmland and getting lost in more urban centers! Slowly, but surely we started to see the scenery change (even the color of bug guts on our windows went from boring black mosquito to rainbow-sparkly butterfly...I am absolutely not exaggerating, ask my bro!). Even the road-kill started to change...from dogs and foxes we started to see coatie (a racoon-like species that we could have sworn was a monkey from behind!) and toucan (okay, that wasn´t road-kill but for all that know my mother I just had to add it in!). We stopped by some awesome Jesuit missions with these cool trees that some call parasites but they are more like Anacondas as they wrap themselves around other things and suffocate them (pic: trying to suffocate the stone pillar of a Jesuit mission). Then we came upon our goal: the CATARATAS (waterfalls) of Iguazu (as you can imagine....the number of bird and insect species here were enormous!)I think I will let the pics speak for themselves (the one with me squinting in the sun is next to the appropriately named GARGANTA DEL DIABLO (devil´s throat) portion of the part. Technically it was on the Brazilian side (which we didnt go to because the VISA was too expensive and they didn´t have the right gasoline for our car), but the Argentinians have taken advantage of an awesome walkway over the river and through the woods....to this awesome mirador (viewpoint).

The next fews days showed another change in scenery (that is, of course, after we got around the our second 2 hour demonstration), this time from east to west instead of south to north. Starting in the sub-tropical climate of Iguazu (meaning BIG WATER....touche).....through farmland and chaco (wetlands)--talk about two inch long grasshopers!....to what I am going to go ahead an stereotype as typical Mexico. Of course it is just the dry climate and enormous cacti that gave me this initial impression. We also got to explore the ruins of a city that resisted both the Inca and the Spanish for 130 years before being marched to Buenos Aires on their own Trail of Tears. (Beware of the donkeys that will beg at your car window=.We camped a little. Stopped to futbol a little.And we museumed a little. (I am going to take it as a benevolent sign that I decided to pose under this statue, considering I later found out it was the figure of a Shaman. At this point the bugs were not Kamakazi-ing our windshield, but rather our headlamps. (Did I mention Matt killed a bird?).

I think that´s about it for the last three weeks.