I'm back to being alone again, after almost a week of traveling with other people, and it feels great. I was worried about traveling alone before I left on this trip, even though everyone (with the potential exception of Trenton) that I talked to beforehand said that it was the way to go. Suffice it to say that I'm over my worrying and am convinced that traveling alone is a great way to travel.
I went into the Elqui valley today. This is where they grow and process all the grapes that will become Chilean pisco. After so many days of desert, it was wonderful to see green things growing in the mountains. There are miles and miles of vineyards along the base of the valley, with a sizable creek running through them. The walls of the valley are steep and dry, covered in cactus and the usual desert plants. The first town I stopped in was Vicuņa, a smalling town of around 30,000 people. I took a short walk up one of the hills surrounding the town, which afforded a nice overlook of the town and the valley. It's hard to describe how good it felt to be seeing green things again, after two weeks of city and desert.
I walked back down the other side of the hill, and found myself at the gates to the city cemetery. Wandering through the cemetery was probably my favorite part of the visit to the valley. It felt so different from a cemetery back home. It was a very vibrant, colorful place. All of the graves had bright flowers -- plastic and real, dried and freshly delivered. There was more than one little plastic Christmas tree like you find in toy shops, endlessly singing one Christmas tune after another. The walls of the cemetery were paneled, with each pannel being dedicated to a different person, and again were brightly decorated. Sometimes it feels like a very different culture here.
I walked from the cemetery back to the center of town, and then out to one of the pisco factories that offered tours. Pisco is a type of grape brandy that's quite popular both in Chile and in Peru. The process of making Pisco looked familiar at first -- they press and ferment the grapes to form wine. Then, after two to three weeks fermentation, they go through a distillation process, leaving behind most of the water. This much stronger extract is then filtered, aged, and mixed before forming the final product. The factory tour was impressive -- the factory can produce as many as 20,000 bottles per hour when operating at maximum capacity.
At the Pisco factory I met another couple from Boulder. One of the two had been living in the south, doing a cultural anthropology project for the past three months. We talked about home for a bit, and traded suggestions about where to go. (They were heading north for vacation for a while, before heading back to Boulder).
As I'm writing this I find myself at the end of my fourth day in La Serena, and at the end of Christmas day. La Serena is a beautiful city of around 300,000 (including the other adjacent cities) and has at least 20km of beach to offer. It's a comfortable city, seeming both clean and very livable. In most ways, it's no different from any other city in the states or Europe. It rains here, though very infrequently, so the buildings tend to incorporate large courtyards, and are very open. It's a style that's only practical in places like here, Florida, and southern California, but I love it.
The hostel that I'm staying in is wonderful. I found it though a little bit of luck -- it was recommended by the taxi driver at the bus station. It's run by a wonderful family, who also live there. Every morning I've awakened to the sounds of children playing, which is a wonderful way to wake up. Last night they had a big Christmas dinner that included both their family and all the visiting tourists. I did my best to make an apple pie for desert, but had a bit of a fight with the oven. In the end, everything worked out, though.
I had a delightful moment with one of the kids this afternoon when she saw my camera. I turned it on, and she loved looking at the LCD. She's point it at her mother or sister, and then try to get them to come look at it. But, of couse, when they're come to the other side of the camera they'd disappear from the display much to the frustration of the budding photographer. She later came up and asked me to play with it again, but I told her that she'd have to let me take a photo of her first. She didn't much care for that deal -- she ran off and hid. She'd make my sister proud.
I've now spent Christmas on three different continents, and each one is different. Christmas everywhere is about the same things, it seems -- being together with family, and buying gifts. Things seem to be very laid back here, which is fitting with the rest of the culture. It's been strange for me because it is warm, and it just doesn't feel like Christmas at all. In large part, that's the warmth, but there also doesn't seem to be the same wealth of Christmas tradition here as there is in Europe or the states. Or maybe I'm just not clued into it. The Christmas markets, for example, sell wrapping paper, but look otherwise just like normal markets. The Christmas markets in Zurich couldn't have been more different, and still have been markets.
The night before last I went for a run along the beach. After two weeks in the Andes, it's great to come down to sea level and run. It felt great to have the beach virtually to myself, running and listening to the waves. I'm very comfortable here -- very relaxed.
The first night here I stayed up 'till 4:00am talking with the different travelers at the hostel. There was a pair of Canadians, one of whom was Chilean; a couple people from the states who were studying in Chile; and a few Germans including Anna, who came with me from San Pedro, and the crazy, alcoholic guy who I first met in San Pedro. It was a very interesting group of people, and I very much enjoyed all of them, with the exception of the crazy guy who became very drunk and somewhat offensive.
We spent a while talking about out different impressions of Chile, and about politics generally. It was interesting to hear the perspective of some Canadians on a lot of the issues in the US, and on Canada's relationship to the US. One of the things that I've found about traveling is that the people you run into tend to be very worldly, and very well informed. Discussions like this are common, and they're quite interesting. I'd like to learn more about economics, as it has a way of coming up quite often, and, from what little I know, I'm not very comfortable with a lot of the usual conclusions people draw based purely on economic reasoning. (I don't remember the specific details now, but I had a number of questions relating to the economics of NAFTA, and what economic theory had to say about the Macinadoras on the boder of Mexico.)
I also got to see a concrete example of something that I'd been talking about with a dutch guy back in San Pedro. He said that he very much liked the internet because it kept him connected to his home, and he had a very strong sense of home. He knew his local (home) history quite well, and would relate other things to it. He said that he needed a goal, and to stay in touch with home, to keep himself sane when traveling. I hadn't thought about that before, but after I heard him say it, I found myself agreeing quite strongly. Having a connection to home -- even though you're not there -- is important. It gives you perspective, and keeps you anchored in reality. I find it very helpful to think in terms of "that's an idea for my blog" or "that would be interesting to the folks back home" when I look at things. It adds perspective. But more than that, it gives me a sense of belonging to somewhere.
I don't think the crazy guy had any such connection, really. He seemed disconnected from the world of responsibility and of real people. He may travel to many places, but it he'll never return. He'll never apply what he's learned to anything else. I don't think I'm in any danger of winding up in the same place, but I can start to see how that would happen.
On a lighter note, I've been to the store every morning to pick up a breakfast of fresh bread and fruit. It's excellent and cheap here. I don't care what the lonely planet says -- I like the food. Fresh bread every day. Who can complain?
Tomorrow I'm planning on heading to Vicuņa, a small town in the Valle del Elqui. It's supposed to be a beautiful valley, and there's a pisco factory that offers tours. (Pisco is a grape brandy, of sorts, and is very popular down here. It's growing on me.) After that, I think I'll head father south again. I'll probably spend New Years in Valparaiso, and then try to do a camping trip in the south before heading to Coyhaique.
I've finally finished getting the pictures from everywhere up to this point together and online.
You can check them all out here. I've fixed all the prev and next links, I think, but if you come across more problems, let me know.
I should also point out the the style sheet is pretty broken for ie5 on windows 98. I don't know how it looks on other browsers; I remember it looking good on mozilla. If anyone is sufficiently bothered by the style sheet to want to fix it, let me know. :)
After a few hours of uploading and labeling, the first set of pictures from the trip is online. Machu Picchu and Augas Calientes can be found here. I also uploaded and posted some photos from my visit to Colorado, before I left the country. The rest of my pictures are on radix now, so they're just awaiting me finding time to name them all.
I haven't been as selective as I should have been with the pictures -- there are a lot there that are almost the same. At some point, I'll go through and pull out my favorites. In the mean time, you get to sort through them and find what you like.
This is going to be a quick update because I'm sitting in a very hot room with 10 other people and computers, all of which are running over what is probably a single modem. So, I type and I type, and then a while later I get to see what comes up on the screen.
Anyway, the past few days in San Pedro de Atacama have been great -- very different from the time I spent in Arica.
San Pedro is a small, laid back town in the middle of the Atacama desert. It's on a small river, so there are lots of trees and it's rather green here, but as soon as you walk out of the town its brown and dry. I sat staring out over the road at some sand dunes for 5 minutes and saw nothing living. At all.
That said, the place is quite beautiful -- the infrequent water and the more frequent wind have made some incredible structures out of the land. Yesterday, I hiked with a friend from San Pedro to the Valle de la Luna (15 - 20km). It was hot and the land totally inhospitable, but beautiful and surreal at the same time. Today we rented mountain bikes and rode to a cave, and then through some of the local canyon country. It was a bit like canyon lands, but instead of sandstone there was primarily crusted sand and mud making up the walls. Very surreal.
I've spent the past few days almost entirely with gringos, so san pedro has been a very different experience than Arica. It's been enjoyable though. My Spanish, though improving, is still not yet good enough that I can have a normal conversation with the Chilenos. The past two nights I've gone up into the hills outside of town to watch the stars and talk with other people. Both nights my company has been two Germans, who are also traveling alone. They have a lot more traveling experience than I do, so it has been interesting talking with them.
Mostly the time in San Pedro has been about relaxing and enjoying what it has to offer. The desert is a trip. The town is great, and there are lots of travelers to talk with.
That said, I'm ready to to be someplace green again.
Tomorrow morning I'm taking a bus down to La Serena, on the coast, with one of the Germans that I met here. I may stay there for Christmas, or I may move on. I don't know yet.
It's really nice, and really strange, having no definite commitments and nop plan. But, its the way to go. Every time I've tried to make a plan, I've changed it.
I wrote this two days ago, but the computer that I was using crashed whenever I logged on to MovableType, so I'm just now posting it.
I'm in San Pedro de Atacama now, after spending 12 hours on a bus rolling through more of the Atacama desert. To be fair, I spent almost all of that time sleeping.
San Pedro de Atacama is a beautiful little town in the middle of the desert. Itīs very laid back, and quite relaxing. I walked a little ways out of town earlier today and climbed up on a hill. All around me was sand and rocks, shimmering with the heat coming off of them. Behind me, though, was an island of green trees and cool water, with Linconbur (a 6000m volcano) in the background. It was quite beautiful.
Yesterday was a fun day. I saw Lord of the Rings in Arica, probably before most of my friends in the states. I really enjoyed it, though it was very strange to realize that I was sitting in Chile, 4000 miles from home (maybe), doing exactly the same thing that I'd be doing if I were in the states.
I was quite emotional when I left the movie. I don't know what name to attach to the emotion, exactly. It was an odd mixture of things, but it was overall quite positive. I had been fairly lonely in Arica, which resulted in a twinge of homesickness. Seeing the movie solved that homesickness -- it was like being home. It also made me feel somewhat lonely, watching how stong and how important the friendships in the movie were. When I walked out into the sun, all I could think was, "what a life!"
I started to realize that traveling is my life for now, and it's different from being on a vacation. Seeing Lord of the Rings was something that I would do at home, but that I wouldnīt normally do on vacation in another country -- I'd rather actually see the country. The thing is, that way of thinking creates a wall, separating home life from vacation life. There's a sense that soon the vacation will all be over and you will go back to things as they were before. With traveling, it's different. You are always home, or never home, but there is no "other life" to go back to. If I didn't see LotR in a foreign country, I wouldn't see it in the theater at all.
There are a lot of different things that get wrapped up in the distinction between traveling and vacation. I think the biggest thing is the perspective from which you view things. I can't yet put into words exactly what is different between the two different paradigms, but it's along the lines of "vacation is observation; traveling is interaction," but that's not quite right.
As I travel, I have no real schedule. No real obligations. I'm here to learn what I can, to teach what I can, and to enjoy what's around me. The same or similar could be said of any of my vacations, but I think that the traveling lifestyle has a much strong commitment to the ideals above. At least, it does for me.
I feel very different about the trip now than I did when I was just starting in Peru, and one of the main differences is this shift from vacation to traveling.
Anyway, that's what's been on my mind a bit over the past day or so. Perhaps its all just semantic nonsense, but I'm sticking by it for now.
I think I'll be here for at least another day or two, then keep on heading south. I want to get to a place where I can do some hiking / backpacking / camping.
I'm back in Arica again, after spending 1 night and two days in PN Lauca.
The visit to Lauca was great, and quite different from the guided tours that I'd taken in Peru. I caught a bus to Putre, outside the park by a little bit, and wandered around there trying to figure out how to get up to the park.
Putre is a small town high in the altiplano, and is a splash of green amidst a landscape of brown hills. There are only a couple hundred people living there now, though at one time there were as many as three thousand. There is a stong military presence in the town, as it's close to the boarder of both Bolivia and Peru. I asked someone if the border politics were friendly. "Not really," was about the only answer I got. Chile has a policy of one year mandatory conscription, and it certainly feels like they have a sizable military as a result. However, the military personal were quite friendly, and generally seemed content to be where they were.
I ended up hiring a car to take me back to the main road, where I waited for a different bus. I took that bus the rest of the way into the park, and got off at the conaf refugio right next to Chungara lake. The view from here was absolutely spectacular -- a large, nicely symmetric volcano was reflected in the lake on one side, and beautiful mountains managed to almost completely encircle it. From behind us, a stream ran down to lake, creating a green vally where domestic llamas and alapacas, as well as wild vicuņas grazed.
I walked down the road alongside the lake for a couple hours. The road was largely empty, save for a big truck passing once every 15 - 20 minutes. The lake was absolutely heaven for birds, as it's very shallow for quite a distance. After about 20 minutes of walking, I saw my first-ever wild flamingo. The lake was full of them!
At the end of the lake was a control station for trucks coming across the border. I spent a little while chatting with one of the truckers from Boliva, who told me that, while Chile was beautiful, Bolivia was even better looking. He offered me a ride back to the refugio, which I was tempted to take (just walking at 15,000 feet is a bit of work) but I decided to walk back instead. I didn't see him pass me during the whole time I was walking back, so I think I did well to decide to walk.
When I got back to the refugio -- a shelter with four beds, and a few camp sites -- I ran into a pair of Swiss birders. They offered to take me out and show me some of the birds, which was awesome. Their excitement at being there and seeing the birds was contagious, and it made for a really fun evening. They had with them a telescope and a couple good pairs of binoculars. They identified the flamingos as Chilean flamingos. It was great to be able to see them through a telescope -- they're truly beautiful birds. They also told me that the bird that I had decided was a cross between a duck and a puffin was a giant coot. The giant coots build little islands for nests, and are quite territorial -- all over the lake there were these 1-2' diameter islands surrounded by 25' of clear water, fiercely guarded by the coots. They names at least 10 more species of birds for me, before it got windy and cold and we headed back.
I decided to camp outside, rather than using a bed, in part to save money, and in part because I wanted to be outside. That was absolutely the right decision. It was one of those magical nights that made me fall in love with camping, and which I want to share with anyone when they ask why I like camping. The sky clear, and the stars of the southern hemisphere were a complete jumble above me. It's strange not recognizing anything in the sky -- I'm surprised at how wrong it looks. The mountains and the lake were visible by the light of the moon, though it was not yet visible above the horizon.
I curled up in my sleeping bag, and for one of the first times on the trip listened to music for a while. Most of the time, I feel like bringing the iPod was a mistake -- I haven't wanted to use it much, and it's a piece of electronics that I need to charge if I'm going to use it and it's likely to be stolen at some point. On the other hand, at the times when I've wanted it, I've been extremely glad to have it. Music has a way of making us feel at home and making us happy, that I haven't found in anything else, really. Yesterday I was feeling a bit lonely and just wandering around Arica (I've spent too much time here, I think) when I heard the new Oreja de Van Gogh album playing from one of the department stores. It was really nice to just wander around the store, listening to music the I knew.
In Lauca, the next morning, I felt a bit of altitude sickness in the morning. I was hoping that I'd be okay, because I had finally adjusted to the altitude in Puno, but spending a couple days on the beach had done me no favors in that department. I decided that I'd be beter off to head back down to Arica than to try to climb one of the 5 or 6,000 meter peaks in the park. The first bus back down was supposed to come by sometime around noon, so I had the whole morning in the park. I spent most of it talking with one of the people that worked for conaf (the equivalent of the national park service, in the states). He made his living selling things (hats, sweaters, etc.) to tourists that stopped by the park, but was working for conaf for a while as a supplemental income. One of the most interesting questions he asked me was what could someone like him -- an intelligent middle aged man without any special education (college or similar) who doesn't speak any English -- do in the US to make a living while learning English? I didn't, and still don't, have much in the way of a good answer to that question.
Tonight I'm heading to San Pedro by way of the night bus. There should be more grigos there, by quite a large margin, from what I gather. Right now, I feel like this will be a welcome change, as I have had only two conversations in English since I arrived in Arica. My Spanish has improved tremendously, though. I'm still missing a lot of vocabulary, and I still have to think to conjugate verbs, but its much, much better than it was when I left.
At present, itīs going to take about 5 hours to upload all of my photos from here. Maybe the solution is to take fewer photos or delete more of them, but I donīt really like that answer.
Anyone have any good ideas about how to hide a process running on a windows 98 box, so that I can start the upload and take off? :)
I'm in Chile now, after 14 hours of traveling from Peru yesterday. So far, Chile seems quite nice. It's much more first-world than Peru, and has a noticeably different feel. To be fair, though, I only visited the most popular tourist destinations in Peru, and I don't think that Arica, Chile has the same sort of tourist draw. I'm curious to see how things are when I get to San Pedro de Atacama.
My visit to Lake Titicaca was quite nice. I arrived in Puno after a 6-8 hour bus ride through the altiplano from Cuzco. I had read descriptions and seen pictures of the altiplano before, but I had no idea of the expanse. It's a bit like driving across the mid-west -- you know the US has lots of agriculture there, but until you've been through it it's hard to comprehend the scale of things. The altiplano is the high plains of the Andes, and it bears some similarity to the great plains of Colorado -- no trees, just brown scrub everywhere, 12 - 14,000 feet altitude, some mountains in the distance. There were adobe houses dotted across the land, and lots of llamas, sheep, and alpacas to be seen from the bus. Tomorrow or the day after (probably the day after) I'm going to try to make my way up to PN Lauca, which is back up in the altiplano.
That night I made reservations from a two-day tour of Lake Titicaca. Given my previous experience with guided tours versus doing them alone, I was a bit worried about the tour aspect, but it actually worked out quite well. There were about 25 people on the boat, doing the same tour, including a couple from Boulder. We fist went to the floating islands of the Uros. These were interesting, and it was really quite an experience to walk on them, but ultimately I felt a little bit like I was walking through a theme park that some people lived in. It did make me a bit jealous of my friends who played volleyball on the islands, though.
After a little time on the floating islands, we began the 4 hour trip to Amantani island. I'm not normally a big sunbathing / beach person, but I certainly enjoyed lying on the deck of the boat in the sun while we went out there. When we arrived on the island we were divvied up into different families, with whom we stayed for the night. They cooked us a traditional lunch and dinner from things grown on the island, and we stayed in their houses. Lunch was quinoa soup, followed by eggs, potatoes, and onions. It was all quite delicious. This island felt less like a theme park to me, though the local economy was entirely focused on tourism.
The family we stayed with was quite nice. At home there was a mother and two of her children. Her husband was in Puno for a few days, and most of her children had left home. She had 7 children in all -- 4 living elsewhere in Peru, 2 in school, and one living on the other side of the island with children of her own. She had never been to visit her children off the island, though they came home for the holidays occasionally. In fact, she said she goes to Puno no more than once a year, and has never been farther from the island than that; however, due to the heavy tourism, she hosts people from all over the world once or twice a week, and she has pictures of people and places from all over the world on her wall. The island has no power, but it is not entirely isolated -- we sat and listened to Cienciano (the Cuzco football team) play Argentina in the finals during dinner (They tied, 3-3. Tune in next week for the rematch in Arequipa). It will be interesting to see how life on the island changes over the next 30 years. I don't think that the younger generations will be as content to remain on the island, especially having grown up seeing so much of the world.
The next morning we went to Taquile island, which was also quite nice. Taquile island sees a lot more people, and has been open to tourism longer, and therefore felt more like an extension of Puno than like a separate place. I took a walk up to the top of the island, where there were beautiful views and relative quiet, which was quite nice.
After that, another relaxing boat ride back to Puno. I managed to sunburn my scalp on the ride -- the sun at that altitude is brutal. In Puno I managed to run into several of the people that I'd met in Cuzco, and spent the evening hanging out with them. The next morning, up and off to the bus station.
Took the bus to Tacna, and then a car from Tacna to Arica. The first half of the bus ride was through the altiplano again, then the second half was through the Atacama desert.
The Atacama desert is dry. And I don't mean dry like California in the summer, I mean only seeing a plant every 5-10 minutes dry. That said, it's also quite beautiful, especially during sunset. Unlike the altiplano, there were no people living in the desert -- just sand and miles and miles of road and power lines.
Arica is, I think, situated next to that desert. It's quite warm here, and I feel silly carrying around a huge backpack full of winter clothing and winter camping equipment. I'm sure, though, that I'll be happy enough to have it when I get to Patagonia.
I'd have to say that the trip is going well. Despite a somewhat rough start, things have turned out well, and I've been having a lot of fun.
When I arrived at the airport in Lima, one of the many people accosting the people getting off the planes (Taxi! 3 Soles! Hotel, Hot Water All Day!) asked if I wanted to go to Cuzco. I said that I did, and was promptly whisked away to the
ticket office, which I had not yet located, and had a ticket handed to me. Then, arrangements for a hotel were made. All fine.
When I got to Cuzco, someone met me at the airport and took me to the hotel. Then sat me down, and told me what he thought I should do for the next 4 days, and gave me a price. I told him I wanted to look around, but he said I had to decide in a few hours as the trains were going to be full, and so on. So, I thought about it for a bit, and bought a bunch of stuff from him. It turned out that the trains were nowhere near full, and I could have saved a bit of money by going it on my own. I was feeling pretty frustrated by this until I got to Machu Pichu.
Machu Pichu was sufficiently amazing so as to make me not care at all that I had paid a little too much to get there. I wandered around myself, rather than sticking with a tour, which I think was a much better option. The ruins, the mountains ... everything about it was amazing, and on a scale that just doesn't translate to a postcard or a picture.
That night I went down to Augas Calientes, 30 minutes away by bus. The highlight of that night was meeting a couple of Peruvian women who worked in one of the restaurants there. I wandered by the restaurants after most people had finished eating (and, it being low season and high competition, this meant that the restaurant was empty) and they invited me to sit down and talk for a while. We ended up talking for a couple hours, me mostly listening and occasionally commenting in my broken Spanish. They were both really nice people, and seemed genuinely interested in telling me about Peruvian life and learning abut the states. And, it was great Spanish practice as neither of them spoke Anglish. We ended up going out to the disco for a while later that night, where I tried for the first time in my life to salsa dance. Needless to day, it didn't work out too well, but it was fun anyway.
I spent the next day in Machu Pichu, then returned to Cuzco. I then spend the next couple days looking at the ruins around there. Many of them are quite impressive, and it was a lot of fun just wandering around.
There was an undertone of a strong desire for money in Cuzco that left me feeling uncomfortable. I didn't feel like I could trust the tour guides or the travel agencies, and as soon as you walked out on the plaza people wanted to sell you postcards or shine your shoes or get you to go to their restaurant. This is not necessarily all bad, and it is a clear consequence of heavy tourism in an impoverished area, but I didn't like the feeling all that much. Odly enough, Puno seems to have a very different feel to it.
I've met a lot of amazing people already on the trip. It's strange, though. To borrow the phrase from fight club, the people that you meet when traveling are usually 'single serving friends'. Because everyone is traveling on a different agenda to different places there is an ephemeral quality to the relationships that you have with people. This is both nice and frustrating -- it's fun to meet lots of people, and the relationships are always pleasant due to their short nature. On the other hand, people tend to disappear before you get to know them very well.
I've met very few other Americans on the trip (and those that I have met have been from the bay area (2 groups) or from Buena Vista, Colorado); most of the gringos seems to be Europeans or Australians. There is clearly some self selection here in the type of people that travel. I've already met one SCUBA instructor, one snowboard instructor, and one person who is sick of working behind a computer all day and wants to travel for a while, then go study geology. Sounds familiar.
Overall, it's been a good time so far but I m only just beginning. Tomorrow I'll be heading out on Lake Titicaca for two or three days. I'm looking forward to seeing the islands.
I'm alive... I'm safe... I'm in Cuzco.
My first day in South America has been a long one, and I'm now totally exhausted. I didn't get much sleep on the plane out, and haven't slept since I landed, so this is going to be brief.
I arrived in Lima at around 5:15am, and left by 9:30am. Clearly, I am now an expert on Lima, and know all there is to know about it. My thinking was that it would be time better spent seeing Machu Pichu, and then heading down to Chile, rather than spending time in Lima.
Shortly after arriving in Cuzco, I lugged my 60lb monster up the stairs to my room on the second floor of the hotel I{m staying at. Guess what? It became really obvious that Cuzco is at 3400m (11,000'). It took a little bit, but I've adjusted to the altitude now, which is good.
I went to see a soccer game tonight -- part of the south american cup. The game was Cuzco )Peru) against somewhere in Columbia. We won, 1-0. Watching the game was a blast, and it was all that much more impressive given the altitude.
Tomorrow I'm off to Machu Pichu for a couple days, via the train. Right now, sleep. Much needed sleep.
Oh, and a disclaimer: keyboards are weird down here, so there are going to be some weird typos that I can't be bothered to fix throughout all of my posts from here.
I just finished packing for the trip. I leave for the airport in over an hour.
I don't know if I've ever been this prepared for a trip. I certainly feel
prepared, if not over-prepared. My backpack weighs in at 60lbs, which is a fair
amount more than I'd like. I'm not sure what I can remove -- the equipment I
need for NOLS is a major part of the weight, and is non-negotiable.
I get on a plane at four o'clock today, and the adventure begins. I feel really
excited, but also rather stressed out. I'm sure that the stress will disappear
as soon as I get to the airport, but right now I feel like I have so much to do
to be ready to leave. However, my bags are packed, my room is clean (sort of)
and I can't think of anything important that I need to do. Irrational? You
bet.
I'm flying to Lima, Peru today. I leave at 4:30 this afternoon, and I arrive at 5:30 tomorrow morning. *yawn*. I'm not planning on spending a whole lot of time in Peru, though there are a few things I'd like to do there. I'm thinking I'll head to Cuzco right away, and see Machu Pichu the tourist way (via the train from Cuzco). After a few days there, I'll head down to Puno and Lake Titicaca for a little while, then cross the border into Chile.
I was intending to post a list of bookmarks that I found useful in planning this trip, but I forgot to grab them off my computer in Berkeley. So, I can't post them all.
There are a few that I've found useful quite recently, though, or that stuck in my head since before I left.
I know that any proper bookmark list should have more than two links, but I don't have any more off the top of my head.