Our Triptastic Trip

Back to the grindstone...

2010-02-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

Before we start complaining about having to go back to constant rain, temperatures 40 degrees lower than here, it getting dark 4 hours earlier, or dare I say the word... work, we need to write about what went on for our last two weeks in Buenos Aires.

We left off the last post saying we were going dancing. Well we did and it was so awesome. For 200 pesos (~$50) per person we got picked up, an hour tango lesson, a 3 course meal, a bottle of wine, and a 1.5 hour tango show with a live orchestra. Why can’t we get stuff like this in the US? The dancers were incredible, the music was awesome, the class was fun, and the food was good. It was perfect and so much fun.

We finally got to La Cabrera again; this time we went with another student from our Spanish classes, Julian. This is the steak place I mentioned in the previous post. We attempted to eat here three times before finally finding them open.

You already know how good the food is so I don’t need to go into that, but it does lead into a little discussion about time. Argentineans have no concept of it. Good for them, not for the average consumer. Things are just randomly closed or opened it feels like whenever they want. Virtually everything is closed on Mondays too; I guess they are too tired from being out til 8am on the weekends. We tried once on a Monday and they were closed. We tried in the late afternoon (5pm) and they were closed. We tried one other time as well. No hours posted, no signs, just randomly closed. The same thing happened to us just this last weekend. We had plans to try out this club; even on their website they advertised that Saturday night had a special DJ etc etc. Guess what? Closed. A club closed on a Saturday? Two restaurants we tried to eat at several times we found just randomly closed. One was “on vacation” the other just had no hours posted and always seemed to be closed. I don’t see how they can ever make any money. Anyway, just a rant.

Our Spanish classes ended on the Friday before we left. We both feel like we learned a lot, but it was very difficult especially with only two weeks. It was super fast-paced, focused a lot on speaking, and was intense with 4 hours per day. Plus we were always half asleep since we had to be there by 10am. Yeah you’re at work at 8; so what? We were on vacation and you just don’t go to sleep there until after 2am. :O) Our last day we went out for a beer and a milanesa (country fried steak) with German (pronounced Her-mawn) our teacher. We talked about all the weird stuff that happens in the US versus Argentina. It was pretty interesting. Now that the classes are over, though, we can order lots of enchiladas all in Spanish! Hahaha

We left class a little early one day to attempt the bike tour again. If you remember last time, we got rained out and Coraleigh crashed. This time I didn’t bother even trying to get a reservation since they never respond to you anyway. Also, on their website it just said to show up and they will get you a bike. Well that day must have been a special day because they were all full. Foiled again. They don’t deserve our money the a-holes. So after careful deliberation we decided to visit an Irish pub tour after another failed attempt at bike tour

We took another trip to Vicky's house in the suburbs, Adrogue. This time we just were hanging out and watching movies. Her mom made us some pizzas with homemade pizza sauce and non-gross cheese, haha. It was the best pizza we had in Argentina. It was her mom's birthday so we brought some serpentinas y globos! Streamers and balloons for the non-Spanish speakers. We also got a cake and some candles that said 30, even though she was turning 50. Then we watched a movie and missed our bus back to the city. We were able to take a remis, which is like a preset price taxi. This place is like an hour away and we thought it was going to be really expensive. A full $20. I think it costs that much to go from my house in Maple Leaf just to Wallingford. It was a good time and our last visit there :O(

Another night that week the owner of our Spanish school set up an outing to a Folklore show. It was really cool and only like 2 blocks from our apartment, just Coraleigh and I, Julian (an Australian student from our class) and the owner of the school, Ana. The singer was super passionate and almost seemed like she was crying during some songs. It wasn't all folklore music, which is the typical music of most of Argentina (Tango is only in Buenos Aires), but most of it was. She did a few Bossa nova as well and a tango song. It was interesting and we got to drink lots of "Salta" beer. Thats just the beer from Salta, but its actually really good. Coraleigh had empanadas of course, and I had these baked potatoes with meat on top. That was our Thursday night.

Friday night was pretty laid back since we were tired from doing all the stuff that week. We made it bed early at like 3:30am. haha Saturday was a different story. We first met up with the Germans, Daniel and Christian, to try to watch the Sherlock Holmes movie. It, of course, was completely sold out for multiple shows in advance. It's weird there, they give assigned seats, which is actually kind of cool now that I think about it because they warned us that they only had crappy seats in the very front left over. I wish they did it that way here. So since that was all sold out we made our way to this really awesome place called Milion. Milion is an old mansion that was purchased in 1999 for only $1 million. The location of this place and how huge it is makes that a total steal. It is three stories with ornate twisting staircases and a really cool backyard area. It has a huge grand staircase leading down to the courtyard which was all lined with lights. Very neat. We had two bottles of wine and several other drinks and our total bill was like $40. Man, I will miss that. That's where we parted ways with the Germans as they had a flight the next morning back home. Hopefully we'll see them again someday.

So from there we made our way to a hostel that the Brazilians we met earlier were staying at. We hung out there for a while and finally went out to go to a club called Shampoo. Buuuuut, just like I said earlier, they were closed randomly. Luckily, we were close to other places. We ended up at one called Sahara. It was 4 levels and outside it was themed like Indiana Jones. Pretty dorky, but the club itself was fun. On each level they had different music playing. Etc etc etc and then the sun came up through the windows of the club and we parted ways with the Brazilians. haha Turns out one of them was an exchange student in Woodland, WA. She comes up to the US sometimes to visit and said she'd come to Seattle to see us. Something like 2011 or 2012 is her next visit, but who knows we may stay in touch!

We rolled out of bed around 2pm and we eventually made our way downtown for another visit to San Telmo market. We wanted to pick up a few last minute gifts and souvenirs. We ended up with a knife for my dad, some cool tango music, and Coraleigh got some jewelry. We also saw some really cool tango dancers, and got fresh-made orange juice for $1.

For our final night in the city we did the BA Pubcrawl. It sounds pretty dumb, but it was actually really fun mostly because we met so many people. Some from Boston and Australia and England. We ended in this really fun dance club that played all 90s music. It was a perfect end to our stay in Buenos Aires. That has pretty much been the theme of the trip, meeting people, having fun, and seeing amazing things.

It was an awesome three months so thanks for sharing it with us. Hope you enjoyed the stories. Adios!

Me gusta Buenos Aires!

2010-01-05T18:42:00.000-08:00

11 days later

We've got a lot to write about. Christmas and New Year's eve both passed. We are in Spanish classes. Staying out until 4am is now "calling it an early night"...

We've been here over two weeks already. Our apartment is great and we've saved a lot of our now near non-existent money (after 2.5 months of traveling) by buying groceries and eating meals at home. We've spent several days on the rooftop at the pool. We've spent a lot of time walking miles around the city shopping and just seeing the sights. We've had ice cream delivery at 1am. I don't really know where to start.

I guess with Christmas eve. I mentioned in a blog way back when we were in Buenos Aires for a few days in November that we met this girl at our hostel named Vicky. Well she was so nice that she invited us to her family's house in the suburbs for Christmas eve. She knew we had nowhere to go and nothing really to do. The city practically shuts down at 4pm and doesn't come alive again until December 26th. I guess that isn't all that much different from home, but what is different is how they celebrate. In the US its all about presents and Santa and lights and huge fancy dinners. Here its totally different. The commercialism surrounding Christmas is practically non-existent. A few places have a tiny fake plastic Christmas tree up, but not many. There aren't 3 different Santa Clauses in each shopping mall, and they don't even do presents on Christmas morning. We had someone say that Christmas and New Year's here is like our 4th of July. It really is. The typical Argentine Christmas eve is a dinner at home with family, but they eat cold foods since its normally really hot out. Then at midnight, they all toast and everyone lights of fireworks (they also have these funny miniature hot-air balloons. Its basically a balloon made out of paper with a flaming ball inside that makes it rise. Seems crazy and we saw a lot of them burst into flames and fall into trees, but apparently they aren't illegal... yet). Its really strange because its not like at home when fireworks are kind of going off sporadically. Literally the clock strikes twelve and boom, thousands of fireworks are going off everywhere. Its really insane. After some more drinking of wine, all the younger people go out around 2:30 or 3am to bars, street parties, or house parties. We first went to a bar then went to a house party. It was really strange, this house had very high ceilings inside and there were strangely dressed mannequins all around, some with fans for heads to keep the rooms cool. One room had a huge projection screen showing a weird old silent film. Music was blaring in all the rooms. It was a blast. We stayed out until the sun came up, and finally went to sleep after 7am there at Vicky's house. We woke up around 1pm, and after a long bus ride, subway trip and some walking we finally got home around 4pm. It really just felt like we never slept or that day didn't happen. That day nobody really does anything. They may meet up for brunch or something, but thats pretty much it. We watched movies :O)

We had such a great time. Vicky's family was super nice and welcoming like we'd known them for years. Her grandma had a crush on me too and said I was "muy lindo" and for Coraleigh to hold on to me. hahaha. Vicky's mom was so nice too and even gave us a ride to the bus station in the morning. Her cousin and sister, Carola, who both came out with us are awesome. Hopefully we can see them again sometime.

So what comes after Christmas? Bike crashes! Haha well there's a little story there obviously. We tried to go on a bike tour of some famous neighborhoods of the city called Puerto Madeo, La Boca, and San Telmo. San Telmo and La Boca are known for being the birthplace of tango. Bike tours are usually pretty cool because you cover a lot of ground, they aren't boring, and the tour guides a lot of times are more geared toward fun. It started out really fun and we had a big group of around 25 bikes. It was a strange weather day, though, and when we went into the subway it was sunny. When we came out it was cloudy and looking nasty. They decided to send us off anyway. Of course after 5 minutes it started to rain and we eventually took shelter under a parking garage entrance. We tried to wait out the rain, but they decided it was going to stop. It definitely didn't. On our way back it started absolutely pouring. I hit a bump and my chain fell off so I was on the side of the road fixing a greasy chain. The rain made traffic horrible and it was close to rush hour. We had to take a shortcut back so we were crossing major streets or riding on the sides of them which is nuts in this city. Then when we were crossing a street with some railroad tracks Coraleigh went through a puddle in which were some railroad tracks and into which her tire fell. Her tire was stuck and she ate it right in the middle of the street in the pouring rain. We were soaked, she was bleeding, it all seemed a failed day.

Later, though, we found a cafe and she cleaned out her cuts and we had some submarinos (hot milk with a chocolate bar that melts to make hot chocolate) to warm us up. Then we went to this mall that is painted something like the Sistine Chapel on its roof. It was pretty cool to see. By that time the sun came out and we finally dried off by the time we got home. haha

So on to New Year's eve. What a hassle that was trying to find a place to go. Of course we didn't know about it beforehand, but Buenos Aires is not really the place to be when the clock strikes 12. Maybe because its summer or because no one really goes out that "early"? The only things open are for tourists because, just like Christmas, everyone spends the night with their family until around 3am when the finally go out. Restaurants all have fixed price menus with just limited options of their normal food, but they charge quadruple or more over their normal prices. Its a real scam. All the fancy hotels host parties, but they are really expensive too. The cheaper ones are around US$200 per person, but those were "all sold out weeks ago". Some we found were over $400 per person. We ended up eating here in our apartment. Tacos. Weeee!

Oh well, we had some good wine and then went to this party that was organized last minute by a local company that runs pub crawls. Sounds lame, but it was actually pretty good because they said that everyone had to be dressed up and so they were. It also meant that everyone there was travelers from all over the world because they had nowhere to go on New Year's eve. We met people from Japan, Israel, Australia, the US, and other places. The party was at a place called Koh Lanta which is like a trendy Asian restaurant with an open terrace and rooftop bar. That's where we spent almost the entire night and from up there we had a good view of the fireworks (which are like 10x what Christmas eve is!).

Since we had to dress up and Coraleigh already had a nice dress, I was "forced" to buy myself a new suit. AAaannd, since we are in basically the shopping mecca of the southern hemisphere of course I was able to find something awesome. We looked online and found that Christian Dior and Christian Lacroix both have outlets here in Palermo. (Palermo is completely packed with small shops with original designs). We went to both, Lacroix sucked and nothing fit right. I think it was suits for fat guys or something; they were all huge with short sleeves. Christian Dior was another story, the first suit I tried on fit perfectly and was way nicer than Lacroix. The place was really weird, just a small unmarked door where you had to ring a bell and were ushered in. The salesman was awesome and had me in and out in about 20 minutes. That's my kind of shopping. A Christian Dior suit for just over $350? I'll take it. That's less than they charge at like Men's Wearhouse. Retail is almost 2g's on these. Woohoo, go Captain Thrifty.

Yada yada yada and it was sunrise. Time for bed. Happy New year! hahaha. We went home early; people were still at it in the bars. Someone told us today that they woke up early on January 1st and went to breakfast around 10am and people were still in the bars drinking and partying. Crazy.

January 1st was another dead day and so were we. I think Coraleigh finally rolled out of bed around 4pm and finally finished getting up at 8pm. Does that even count as a day?

On the 2nd we went to a town called Tigre which is about 30km north of the city. We tried to meet up with our German friends Christian and Daniel there, but they had taken a boat to a restaurant so we never crossed paths. Tigre is a town on a delta at the mouth of the Parana and Tigre Rivers. It was really nice and very touristed, but not really by tourists like us. They were tourists from Buenos Aires looking to get out of the city. It was really really busy with lots of families taking boat rides and stuff around the twisted channels of the delta. It reminded us of something like Georgia with lots of colonial homes on the waterfront of a brown river. We took the boat ride; Coraleigh fell asleep. Boooooooring. The market, Puerto de Frutos, was huge. It spanned several blocks and had everything from wicker baskets to housewares to huge wooden dollhouses. It was more directed to Argentinians so that was interesting to see instead of millions of mate gourds and leather belts like usual. The train ride back around 9pm was horrible as we were packed in like sardines standing for an hour and then had people boarding with tons of bikes to make it even worse. Apparently its quite the popular place to go; we thought it was ok.

I guess while we're on the topic of markets we can talk about the San Telmo Sunday market we just went to. I thought the market in Tigre was big. Holy crap this puts it to shame. 15 blocks long, plus offshoots on side streets. 1.5 miles of market crowded with thousands upon thousands of people. Original art, antiques, everything. It really was the biggest market I've ever seen. I bought myself a handmade mate gourd and bombilla for only 50 pesos ($13). Coraleigh got a cool hand painted tea box and she also found what she's been looking for forever. An antique necklace. It's called a cameo and we tried doing some research online. We think its from around 1850, maybe, but still pretty awesome. The two stones on the sides are dark purple (maybe amethyst or something?) Anyway, she loves it and is ecstatic. It was only $80 too and similar ones online are around $400 or more.

Let's see what else... Oh we went out with Christian and Daniel a few times which was totally fun. We went to dinner at this place called La Cabrera. They only take reservations for 8:30 and those fill up like 2 days in advance so we just put our names on the wait list and showed up at 10 when the first group should have been leaving. We arrived to a huge crowd outside the restaurant like it was a nightclub. We waited for an hour and a half before we finally got it, but they had free champagne out front on a cart so it was ok. Haha. I can see why the wait was so big, though. The food was incredible. It was one of the best steaks I've ever had, better than all the previous ones we'd had in Argentina even. The entire table was completely covered in food and all these little side dishes. The steak was a good 3 inches thick. Coraleigh and I split it and were still totally full. We must go back there. All the great food is in Palermo too; I'm really glad we are staying here. Anyway, they left on Monday so we went out Sunday night for an early night (4am). Lets just say waking up for a 10am class may sound easy, but not on Argentina time.

Our Spanish class is going really good so far too. I know we are doing it in reverse order with the vacationing in Spanish speaking countries first then learning it right before we go back to America, but we still want to learn anyway. Plus it helps having learned previously; the course is pretty fast paced. We are doing 2 weeks, 5 days a week, 4 hours a day at a place called the Lucem institute. We are in the class with just one other person, this guy from Australia so its a good way to learn. Coraleigh is being a good girl and doing her homework as I type this.

Finally I will just leave you with some tips for visiting here.
-Eat steak, duh.
-Watch out for dog crap. It's on the sidewalks EVERYWHERE. Walking in the dark is not scary due to people, its due to dog crap.
-Get ice cream, or have it delivered. We did and it was fantastical. Chocolate temptation with brownie chunks, walnuts, and dulce de leche (an Argentine obsession, basically soft caramel). Mmmmm

-Get your groceries delivered from the store to your house, free.
-Drink wine, but the grocery stores sell almost pure crap. Buy it from a wine store.
-Book early, especially in summer (Nov-Mar)
-Learn as much Spanish as you can beforehand
-Go shopping in Palermo
-Go to the San Telmo market on Sunday
-Stay up late
-Don't eat the Argentinian-style pizza. Its gross. They love it, you will likely not. No tomato sauce, weird toppings like onions, eggs, and watery cheese. I can't even look at the pictures of it anymore without gagging.
-Use the subway and stay close to it, its great just like in New York. Cabs are cheap too, though.

-I'm sure everyone is saying "Tango!!" We haven't done that yet. That's tomorrow :O)

Movie links:

Public Tango Dancing in Plaza Dorrego

Bariloche chocolate and back to Buenos Aires

2009-12-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

Bariloche is Argentina's chocolate capitol. That's pretty much all we did. Well I guess that's a bit of an exaggeration, but we did do a lot of chocolate eating and sitting in cafes drinking mate and reading. We later found from people that live in Argentina that you should visit Bariloche BEFORE going to Patagonia. That way it all seems amazing and beautiful, then Patagonia does it to you again. However, we did it in the reverse order and were slightly disappointed. I mean you saw the last post, right? Those places were unbelieveable. Bariloche just couldn't stack up. Yes the mountains and lakes were nice, but it was just underwhelming. I guess we were a bit jaded. The town was all cutesy in the main square with alpine architecture, log buildings, even St Bernards with barrels around their necks posing for pictures (most of them looked maltreated, so we refused over and over to have our picture with them, it was so sad to see them all dirty and the sales guy constantly yanking on their chain moving them around, they looked so tired, and one dog just peed where he was sitting.) Bariloche seemed like it was nice in 1975. All the buildings were a bit ragged around the edges and past their prime. Now it's a touristy town and popular with graduating high school students. The town is set on the edge of beautiful Lago Nahuel Huapi, but you can hardly see it because of all the tall buildings vying for a view.

Literally the chocolate was the best part. We bought chocolate 3 of the 5 days we were there. Mamushka and Benroth were by far the best although we visited like 8 shops.

Mint cream, cashew, peanut butter, hazelnut, cherry, peanut, almond, orange peel, white chocolate, hot chocolate, etc etc. We tried all those and some I'm sure I forgot to list. We ate too much and I think we got drunk on chocolate or something. Each day we ate chocolate we took a different picture with Mamushka's webcam kiosk. We titled these pictures Mine!, Reverence, and Drunk. haha

Coraleigh also bought this really nice mate gourd and bombilla from a local artisan.

One day we decided to risk renting a car again. Haha this time I used Avis and was a little more careful with the car. We drove into the national park Nahuel Huapi and up to Cerro Tronador and by some lakes and waterfalls. It was, overall, a good day, but again it was a little underwhelming. It was still better than just hanging around in Bariloche, though, so we were glad to get out. The lakes are another different color here and they vary from dark blue to crystal clear with easy visibility to 20-30 feet deep to a light blue color. It all depended on the depth and how the light shined on them. It made for a good drive. Cerro Tronador (Mt Tronador) was pretty interesting because it had glaciers sitting on top with waterfalls coming down its sides. There was also a black glacier that we stopped at (picture below, I'm obviously not impressed). The ice was just really dirty so it looked black. We did a few small hikes too.

One definite cool thing were the flowers along the roads. They were loaded with lupines and these yellow flowered bushes that looked like snapdragons.

Something else we did constantly while in Bariloche was hit the ATMs. We needed to pay for our entire apartment's rent and damage deposit with CASH! The ATMs here have a limit for around $200/withdrawal and about $500/day. Let's just say I'm glad I got a debit card from Charles Schwab before we left. I did some research and found they don't charge for international withdrawals and they refund 9 ATM fees charged by the machine per month. If I'd used Bank of America (where I normally bank) it would have cost over $300 just in fees. Bank of America sucks; I didn't even bring their card.

We did not wait in this ATM line...

After we finally got all the cash we needed we were ready to leave Bariloche, but not for the bus ride. It was another long one at 25 hours. Another one where we couldn't get the seats that lay flat. It was really awful, but at least our dinner wasn't ham and cheese. Lunch was, but we loaded up on medialunas (croissants) from this awesome bakery and ate those instead of the chalk sandwiches.

We finally got into Buenos Aires 25.5 hours after leaving Bariloche 1600km before. Traffic was horrible as we arrived at 6:30pm. We got a remise since they charge a flat rate instead of a taxi which uses a meter and went to our new apartment in Palermo. Its only about 3 miles away, but it took 40 minutes, so we were glad we got the flat rate of 40 pesos (~$10). We arrived at our apartment to a confused security guard that didn't speak English and didn't have our names on the roster. Finally the bonehead from the apartment place showed up and we went upstairs to our place. This building is literally brand new. There are only a few units occupied in the whole place and we are the second renters of this one (before us was only a week rental). It is on the 5th floor and is soooo nice. Hardwood floors, a large balcony running the length of the apartment overlooking the courtyard, all modern furniture and kitchen, two bathrooms, walk-in closet, huge rooftop pool with an amazing view over the city, wifi, jacuzzi tub, etc etc. We are paying about $50 a night. Sure beats a hostel for the same price!

Our neighborhood is really cool and reminds me of the upper east side of Manhattan. There are lots of restaurants and small shops selling their own designs of clothes, shoes, lamps, and art. We haven't done a lot yet except do what we've most missed. That is eat something we're used to. We found SALAD DRESSING! It was almost 10 bucks and there was only one flavor in the special import section of the store, but it was totally worth it. It is Newman's Own light italian dressing, so its still leaning toward the oil and vinegar that you get at restaurants but it has so much more flavor. We were pretty excited about that. We also bought chips and salsa from the special section as well as a cheddar-like cheese. They only seem to have watery white cheeses or super dry hard cheese here. We also bought this powdered tomato soup packet (it tasted like the top ramen of tomato soup) and had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch today. We got cereal and milk too; they only had about 4 different kinds to choose from. I got the Choco-Krispies with a weird elephant on the box. They also had Kellogg's Zucaritas with Tony el Tigre. haha The milk comes in plastic bags in either 3% or skim so we had to buy a container for that. We bought lots of things missing from the apartment like black pepper, TP, paper towels, and laundry soap. It was all relatively cheap except for the import products; probably around half price of home. It is so nice to be able to cook for ourselves and not have to rely on restaurants for everything.

We did some shopping for new shoes in Palermo too since both our flip-flops were falling apart. I got some Quiksilver ones and Coraleigh got really cool Hush Puppies. They are both nice, but were still cheaper than home even with American labels. The malls were so packed, but I think its because of Christmas. Although, people here shop like you wouldn't imagine. They even offer payment plans in clothing and grocery stores. "3 cuotas sin interes!" is posted everywhere which means 3 installments with no interest. Crazy to buy like that, but they seem addicted. They all wear the latest fashions just like New York or Paris. The amount of shoe stores was insane. People here love shoes.

We were invited out tonight to a friend's house in the suburbs. She knew we were alone here in the city so she's bringing us to her house with her family and friends for dinner and going out on the town tonight. The traditions aren't the same as home and apparently going out drinking is a big thing on Christmas eve. This is my kind of country, haha. It should be interesting. :O)

Torres del Paine, El Condor, and rental car fun

2009-12-16T11:15:00.000-08:00

We woke up to rain the morning we were supposed to head to the Torres del Paine. Our hostel was more like a bed and breakfast and had really poofy blankets so it was about impossible to get out of bed. The rain was not much motivation either, but we only had one day and drove all the way to Chile just to see this national park so we slowly made our way out the door. I am so glad we did. The clouds sat at a height just skimming the tops of the mountains we were there to see and we never once got rained on except for on the way home.

The park is actually around 1.5 hours from Puerto Natales. We took a shortcut through some gravel roads because we were mad at the stupid car rental car company that nobody should ever rent from called On rentacar in El Calafate. The car was a piece of crap VW Gol (like a Golf) and was loud and rattled like crazy, lights flickered, and the driver’s side door would barely unlock and open. It also had a problem keeping dust from inside the car so plumes would always come puffing through the doors and trunk at every bump. To add to that we were limited to 1000km and each additional km was $AR0.80; oh and the wiper fluid didn’t work so it was almost impossible to see by the end of the day. I literally beat the crap out of this car. I gained some satisfaction in knowing that the wheels were likely to fall off in another 1000 miles after we returned it. Unfortunately, in the process I broke the rear bumper and had to pay 100 bucks. Haha oops. See video links…

Back to the good part; Torres del Paine national park is completely awesome. We spent the first part of the day driving the roads past glacial lakes and waterfalls with amazing mountain backdrops.

We then started making our way toward the trailhead to the Torres del Paine mirador (lookout). We were informed that it was a 4 hour hike in and another 4 hours back out. We started at 2pm… The trail was only 9km long, but gained 2500 feet in elevation about 2000 feet of which was in the last 1km. It was so steep at the end that we both felt like we were going to die. We were hiking lightly, though, so we didn’t take as long as the signs indicated.

It took us around 3 hours to reach the mirador. On the way we walked through meadows, crossed rivers on rickety bridges, went through strange forests, and climbed rock slides. It was an amazing sight at the top.

The mirador was basically the top of a rock slide and looked across a weird green-colored high mountain lake at the base of the towers. They are literally towers too, granite, and nearly straight vertical on the sides. We stayed up there for about half an hour before we were half frozen and began the trek back down. Don’t worry I wasn’t too cold to take plenty of retarded pictures. Coraleigh’s were at least normal. P.S. Thanks mom for the sweaters! It couldn’t have been more than 35 degrees up there.

Torres del Paine translates Towers of Paine; aptly named except for that extra “e”, because we were definitely in pain.

Our trek back down was shorter as you would expect. Overall the entire hike took 7 hours including stopping at the top. It was a relief to reach the bottom and get back into the car. We made the drive across a few super narrow wood plank bridges and through more gravel roads until finally connecting with the main highway back to Puerto Natales. We got there around 11:30pm and went straight to this restaurant called Afrigonia which was a mix of African and Patagonian food. I had mint flavored lamb and Coraleigh had curry chicken with yogurt. We both were falling asleep at the table. I don’t even remember falling asleep that night.

The next day we headed back for Argentina and up to Estancia El Condor (The Condor Ranch). Again, supposed to be a 10 hour drive, we did it in 6.5 hours. Poor car. Hahaha. The last 125km was the worst; it was all gravel, if you can call fist-sized rocks gravel, and was so rough. No wonder I broke the bumper. We had to cross a total of 11 streams and rivers, literally rivers, in this tiny rental car. The water was deep enough to come in the doors if we stopped, but I just got a big run at it. Check out the video. They told us later it was because of the warm weather melting the glaciers that the rivers were high. Ok thanks, good to know now!

That last 125km took over 2 hours. The first part was through boring scrub brush, but later we came to Lago San Martin. It is a huge turquoise-colored glacial lake that our estancia was on the edge of much further down the road. Actually, it was at the very end of the road and only 30km from Chile. It was founded in 1912 by a Chilean fleeing the law; it’s very remote location was a perfect hiding spot. It originally was a cattle and sheep ranch, but when it was purchased by a company they did an environmental study and found that the cattle and sheep were too damaging to the fragile high mountain environment. Also the pumas ate too many sheep! In an attempt to restore the native flora and fauna they spent the next six years rounding up all the (now wild) cattle and putting them on a small peninsula. Once a month the gauchos (cowboys) go to the peninsula, 2 days ride, and butcher a cow for food at the estancia.

The guesthouse looked really simple from outside, but was really nice on the inside. It had a mix of old wood and tile floors, wood ceilings, old stone fireplaces, etc. The lane leading to the guesthouse was lined with poplars and surrounded with faded wood fences and corrals. When we arrived we found two warm fires burning, warm brownies and cups of tea, and that we were given the suite with a giant bed and bathroom. Later we also found out that the cook was actually a chef and every lunch and dinner was amazing with at least 3 courses. Breakfast was more typical Argentinean, but still included homemade bread and choices of jams and honey, cereal, tea, juice, and all that good stuff.

The first full day there we went on a horse ride to the Condoreras or Condor Rocks. It was just Coraleigh, the gaucho guide Marcos, and I. This was like no horse riding I have ever done. We crossed deep and swift rivers, climbed steep narrow and rocky paths, and crossed near cliff faces. The horses were not like horses we’re used to either. They were huge, with strong legs and big ankles; built for the mountains. We started out at 10am and headed straight up the first steep hill away from the estancia. It was a perfect day with no wind which apparently is extremely rare for the area. Unfortunately that meant a million mosquitoes, but once we smeared our faces with OFF it was ok. It was mostly sunny and about 55 degrees. The Condoreras are a set of rock cliffs that are home to many condors. We saw several soaring on the updrafts. Our first stop was at the first set of rocks and we just took a break here and took some pictures. It took around 2 hours to reach that point.

We continued on to the second set of rocks and stopped there for a lunch of… not ham and cheese! Amazing right? It was still salami and cheese, but way better than ham. We also had these vegetable cakes and brownies, wine, and we shared a mate(pronounced like “mah tay”) with Marcos. Mate is the traditional tea here in Argentina. It’s drunk out of a gourd through a filtered straw called a bombilla. Its super popular and even more so with gauchos. Marcos said he drinks 4 liters per day. Their diet literally consists of wine, meat, and mate. That’s all they eat, period. No vegetables at all. We were told that mate has a bunch of vitamins in it and that’s how they survive.

It was a pretty cool experience sitting up there drinking mate with a gaucho and watching condors soar over the mountains and turquoise lake. After our picnic lunch we were asked if we wanted to return the same way we came or to take the “exciting” route back to the estancia. We of course chose the latter. The route traversed down steep hills thick with brush and trees. You had to really lean back on the horse and just kinda wait for them to make their way down the slippery trail. Then we came to the rivers. My horse already didn’t like water so it acted a bit spooked at the sight of this really fast flowing river with a small waterfall just to the left of where we were crossing. I was in third position because Coraleigh’s horse was lazy and slow so she went second. The two horses in front made it across fine, but as I was crossing my horse started to hop to the left in the current toward the waterfall. It then slipped with its left leg over the waterfall and I went underwater to my waist. I held on like a super champ stud horseman and the horse finally recovered without falling down completely. When we got back we saw the horse had some cuts on its legs from falling down, but it was nothing major. Pretty crazy, though; I thought I was going for a swim.

Overall the ride was about 7 hours long so we were pretty sore when we got back. I rented a fishing pole and tried to fish in the lake, but it was already in shadow so all I caught was a cold. We had a huge dinner that night prepared by the chef and then passed out. The next day I planned to spend fishing in a nearby river. We woke up and the wind was howling, but the river was supposedly protected so we went out anyway. The walk to the river took 45 minutes because we had to climb up a big steep hill to a place where a bridge crossed a narrow canyon. When we got there we mostly found fast flowing areas (this was the river my horse fell in), but a few pools. It was so crazy because you could see the trout just swimming there. There were tons of them and all you had to do was toss the lure in front of them and watch them chase after it. These were some of the brightest rainbow trout I’ve ever seen. Perfect brilliant shiny silver, blue, and green metallics. It was heaven for about 10 minutes until I snagged my lure in a bush across the river. In my attempts to break it loose all I did was break the lure off and snap the rod in half. It was a real piece of crap; I’ve never broken a rod before, but I broke this one somehow. Ten minutes was all I got in this fishing heaven. Dumb.

Since that was over with we headed back to the estancia. We decided this time to follow the lake shore instead of making our way through the brush on horse trails. It turned out to be a mistake. We had to battle literal gale force winds. I’ve never felt wind this powerful. It was blowing the heavy sand so hard that when gusts came up we had to crouch down and cover any exposed skin because it hurt so bad. It felt like we were going to be pushed over or picked up by the wind. Then when we came to the river we had crossed earlier via a bridge over a narrow canyon we found no way across. We searched every point possible and the estancia was right across the river, but nothing was possible. It was way too deep and swift everywhere, even near the lake. We had to hike all the way back up the hill, across the bridge, and then back down. It took an hour and a half to get back, all in the howling wind. I think even our faces were chapped after that. I tried to get another pole and lure later, but I lost the last lure they had. No more fish for me :O( I lost my $25 deposit for the pole too and the cold and wind finally pushed me over the edge of a cold I’d been fighting. Not a successful day for me. Coraleigh was content with just reading her book by the cozy fire so she was ok. Haha.

We left early the next morning in order to return the car in El Calafate by 11:30 so the $%&#heads at On Rentacar didn’t charge us any more money. For the gravel road portion we were asked to give an employee from the estancia, Guillermo, a ride to the gas station 2.5 hours away. The nearest sign of civilization was that far. During the ride in my morning hazy stupor I ran over a big rock that bounced under the car. It apparently cracked the rear bumper so I ended up having to pay $125 extra to replace the bumper. AGHH!! I know they aren’t going to replace the bumper they just want my money. They are such scammers. As I was leaving the office I saw another couple arguing over their secretive policy of tacking on 10% for using a credit card instead of cash. Who uses cash to pay for a rental car?!

At any rate, they at least took the car back. I guess it was lucky that we just had a cracked bumper after:

1. Testing the car’s max speed and then holding it there for an hour just so we could be sure and make dinner time at the estancia.
2. Flying down gravel roads at 85mph.
3. Barreling across 22 streams and rivers.
4. Taking roads where the guy wrote a huge “NO” on the map.
5. E-brake sliding around corners.
6. Running over a wascally wabbit.
7. Filling the entire car with dirt.
8. Driving over fist-sized rocks that were constantly being kicked up sounding like hammers under the car.
9. And finally, running over a huge rock that broke the bumper.

Funny thing is that I didn’t even mean to do the last one. Stupid On rentacar. Screw you guys.

Yes that's a parrot. There are some weird animals in Patagonia. There are parrots, rheas (almost like an ostrich), guanacos (basically wild llamas), pumas which are like cougars, and tons of rabbits. We saw all of them except the puma. The rheas looked really goofy running through the sagebrush in the desert.

Today was just a travel day. As you already read we drove from the estancia back to El Calafate. Now we’re on a flight to Bariloche – the chocolate capital of Argentina. Our flight was delayed over an hour, but luckily it was our first experience with the notorious delays of Aerolineas Argentinas. As I write this I’m staring down at another dry ham and cheese sandwich supplied to by the same airline. Coraleigh took one bite and made the “it tastes like chalk” face. I didn’t even take mine out of the plastic. I guess you really wouldn’t need to, though. It would probably taste the same. Haha
We plan to spend the next few days relaxing in this mountain town and eating lots of chocolate. We don’t really have much else on the agenda, but that’s good since we’ve been going constantly for weeks now. We’ll let you know how the chocolate tastes…

Video Links:

Hiking to the Torres del Paine Mirador

Inside view of the guesthouse at the estancia

Horse riding

Horse riding - At our first break spot

This horse hated the saddle

Crossing the river in our rental car

Two ham and cheese sandwiches later... El Calafate

2009-12-11T04:20:00.000-08:00

We caught a flight from Puerto Iguazu to El Calafate because the bus ride would literally take 3 days! Haha. So about 6 hours, two flights, and two disgusting and dry ham and cheese sandwiches later we arrived in El Calafate's tiny airport.

It was a really strange landscape. I guess I didn't really know what to expect, maybe a forest and trees since we were so close to the mountains. It wasn't; it was completely dry and dead nothingness with hardly a bush over 2 foot tall sparsely placed around the hills. The mountains in the distance were an amazing sight, though, and the lake that ran from well beyond the airport, another 23km to town, and then all the way up to the mountains was the strangest turquoise gray blue color. It is all glacial melt lying in the carved out valleys of extinct glaciers. Glaciers are the reason to visit El Calafate. The town reminds me of something like Whistler, but not quite as perfectly set up. Cars still drive through the middle of it, but its still probably as touristy. Nearly all the shops sell either hiking gear or tours to the glaciers and surrounding areas.

Captain Thrifty wasn't about to fall for that business. In our hostel they offered a "tour" of Glaciar Perito Moreno, which is the most famous glacier because it advances around 6 feet per day and is constantly dropping house-size chunks of ice into Lago Argentino. They wanted $AR130 per person and it said something like, "Your guide will take you to the glacier..." and blah blah. After knowing how loosely they use the term "guide" I asked exactly what it meant. I found out that the "guide" is really just a bus driver and they drop you off at the park, same as if you drove there yourself. $AR130 is about $34. Car rentals are $60/day. Easy decision there. No set schedules, no crowded crappy buses, stop whenever you want to take pictures. We got online and had a car from Avis within about 15 minutes. Then, while walking to dinner, we saw some people looking out the window of our hostel and talking. I also knew they were in one of the double rooms so it would just be two people, probably a couple. This is what makes hostels so much better than hotels... If you were in a hotel people would think you are going to rob them or something, but in hostels its totally different. I decided to just walk up to the window and ask if they were going to the glacier tomorrow. They told us they wanted to, but the tours were all booked up. Perfect. So we asked them to split the cost of the car rental with us and that was that. They turned out to be this really cool couple from San Francisco that was traveling Argentina and Chile for 5 weeks. It was also pretty nice talking to some people that spoke English AND we could talk to about home.

The drive out to the glacier followed the shores of Lago Argentino and had amazing views against the Andes. We stopped for pictures several times along the way.

Then while just driving along and chatting we came around a corner and were all suddenly stunned by the sight of the Perito Moreno glacier. It seemed to come out of nowhere and was massive. Its true dimensions are 5km wide, 30km long, and 70m high which is still impressive even just by numbers. In person its even more amazing. The park has walkways that come within just a few hundred yards of the face of this monster. The strangest part is that you can hear its advance. There are constant explosive cracking sounds and pieces of the glacier "calving" almost iridescent blue icebergs into the lake with a thunderous crash. Its really pretty awesome. There was one crash we missed seeing directly (I have a video attached below of a smaller one we saw) because we were around the other side of the glacier, but we could hear it. We could see the waves it created, though. There was a boat in the water nearly directly in front of where a big section of the front wall sheared off and dropped into the water. The wave it sent out was so huge the boat immediately flipped around and took off as fast as it could to avoid being capsized. I'm sure they are used to it; it seems to happen pretty often by the number of icebergs floating in the lake.

We spent about 5 hours there at the park just walking around to all the viewing platforms and eating lunch. We did not get the lunch available from the hostel, but instead opted to buy stuff from grocery store. I'm sure you can guess why. Ham and cheese! It started to get windy and cold later in the day so we headed back to the hostel around 7pm. The light is long down here. Sun up is around 5am and sunset after 10pm. The sunsets are amazing too.

Our dinner was at a place called La Tablita which was completely packed. We got there at 9:15, which is early by Argentina standards, and we still couldn't get in until after 10pm. The sunset picture from above was taken while we were waiting so it actually turned out good. It was totally worth the wait anyway. We had grilled chicken and steak, mashed pumpkin and potatoes, and a bottle of Malbec from Mendoza. It was so good and I can see why it was so popular. They even had a big fire pit with lamb placed around it ready for eating!

We were headed out of El Calafate the next day so we needed money to cover everything for the next 5 days. It seems that nobody here accepts credit cards. The stupid thing is that the ATMs have a withdrawal limit of $AR650 which is like $175. When you're paying for car rentals, hotels, food, park entries, etc all with cash $175 is nothing. It's really pretty dumb because everyone was making multiple consecutive withdrawals. Its also what I had to do, but check out this line! This is just showing what is outside, there were another 10 or so more people inside. Take a hint Argentina, up your limits and start taking credit cards.

Our drive to Puerto Natales, Chile took about 4 hours across a very windy Patagonian steppe. It was scenic, but I felt sorry for the bicyclists out there bucking that wind. I even saw a tandem bike covered in luggage climbing a hill in a biting 40mph cross wind. No thanks.

Our border crossing into Chile was a lot faster and less intimidating than entering and exiting Nicaragua. We had to stop on the Argentina side and get an exit stamp and have our car papers stamped as well. Then another stop in Chile to have our car inspected for fruits and animal products. They are apparently pretty strict about that here. Overall, it was super easy. Also, when you drive in you don't have to pay the $120 entry fee that you do when you fly.

Puerto Natales is surrounded by some huge mountains and by water. Its really pretty. Man its cold, though. The high is only around 50, but with the wind blowing off that cold water it feels way worse. We warmed up with some really awesome stone oven pizza and Puerto Natales' own microbrew, Baguales. Luckily here they accept credit card more often, because after hitting those ATMs this morning my card wouldn't let me withdraw any Chilean pesos!

We are headed to see the Torres del Paine tomorrow. Lets hope for a slightly warmer and clearer day.

Video Links:

Ice calving

Short clip from our road trip to see Perito Moreno glacier

Sunset over El Calafate

Bus ride from hell to see the Devil's Throat

2009-12-06T21:20:00.000-08:00

We left off the last post before we left for Tucuman in our rental car. It was a relatively uneventful trip back south to another spanish influenced pronvincial capital city with a nice square and some cool architecture. This time we decided to stay in a hotel and it was pure bliss. We "splurged" on a $57/night room that included A/C, WiFi that actually worked, and a bathroom with true hot water. It even had little shampoos, but they came in plastic packets. I guess the bottles only come with $60+ rooms. Tucuman was mostly a resting/stopping off point after our extensive drives in the northwest. It was a good break and we got a few things done that needed either good internet or a big city. The latter being me getting a haircut. It was pretty interesting trying to explain in broken retard Spanish how I wanted my hair, but luckily we brough a picture with us basically showing what I wanted. That helped and she used only scissors and a dry straight edge to get the job done in 15 minutes flat. I was surprised, but I like it. I had it done in a fancy salon, complete with shampoo for only $8. Gotta love the exchange rate. Other than that Tucuman was a hot city, and it rained hard one night too. The food and especially service was great, though, compared to that of the smaller towns. We had one of the best steaks we've ever eaten there and the waiter even came back to the table to ask if everything was good after he brough the food. That NEVER happens here.

We traveled for what was supposed to be 20 hours from Tucuman to Puerto Iguazu on an overnight bus. It left at 11:30am, but didn't get here until 12pm the following day making it a 24.5 hour ride. To start, the bus was about 45 minutes late so we spent a while waiting at the bus terminal. Our first meal consisted of loose ham and cheese, a ham and cheese sandwich, an additional smaller ham and cheese sandwich, and a piece of bread. I guess that was to make a ham a cheese sandwich if you wanted. I swear I'm going to vomit if I see ham again. Out of some kind of miracle our dinner did not contain ham, but cheese was definitely in there.

When we first boarded someone was sitting in our seats and apparently stole our blankets and pillows because we had none. We asked the attendant for some and he said he'd be right back. About an hour later we finally tracked him down as he was chatting with his buddies and he acted all irritated and finally gave us some. Not that blankets should be necessary at 11am, but when they are attempting to cryogenically transport you from Tucuman to Iguazu they are. The A/C must have been set to 45, and thats not celsius. Our bus stopped about 15 times to get gas, drop off random people at gas stations, stops at major terminals, to pick up dinner, and of course at each of these stops they turned on the lights and made announcements no matter if it was 3pm or 3am. Then at 4am once we finally were getting a little sleep the bus stopped at a terminal apparently about to break down and we had to switch to another bus. Luckily no one tried to steal our blankets this time. However, since we were originally scheduled to arrive at 8am we had no breakfast. Fine if you could sleep through it, but someone decided it was a great idea to blare music over the bus speakers at 7am like it was time to wake up or we were close to arriving. Only we were getting no food and we were still 5 hours away. They apparently realized they were morons about 2 hours later and we finally slept another few semi-restless hours until about 11am. All-in-all the bus ride from hell.

Worth it all just to see the Devil's Throat. Garganta del Diablo, the Devil's Throat, is the main cataract at Iguazu Falls, our reason for coming all the way up here to the intersection of the borders of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. The Rio Iguazu drops off a basalt shelf over 80 meters high forming Iguazu Falls. Its actually 275 separate waterfalls spanning 1.7 miles of the river and has the highest volumetric flow per year of any waterfall in the world. Its average flow is lower than Niagara Falls and Victoria Falls in Africa, but when the water is high (like it was today) it flows higher than both of those. Funny thing we found out is that Celilo Falls used to be higher volume until it was covered up by dam construction. Garganta del Diablo is the largest in the group at Iguazu, a 490 foot wide and 2300 foot long U-shaped waterfall.

We didn't make it over the Brazil side, 1 because you need a visa, and 2 it didn't really matter because the water was so intense the mist blocked most views of the falls. The Argentian side has walkways that go right out to the edge of a lot of the falls. It's absolutely incredible. It was a perfect day for viewing the falls today. The sun was shining and it apparently had been raining a lot in Brazil so the water was very high (the reason for the brown water in the pictures).

We did everything from get blasted by spray at the bottom of a large waterfall to hang over the edge of one of the largest waterfalls in the world. Very cool. Check out the videos to get an idea of the amount of water going over this thing.

Being back in the jungle there were a lot of animals roaming around, but since this place is highly touristed they were mostly there to eat the garbage I think.

We saw a tailless iguana eat a sucker, stick and all. The Coatimundis (cousins of the raccoon) learned how to pull the garbage bags up out of the sealed cans with their claws to get food out.

The butterflies were nice, though, and they were everywhere! I had what I called a Huskies butterfly (purple and gold) land on my hand and not come off until I walked into a blasting waterfall and it blew away. I think it was there to make me feel better that I had to miss watching the Huskies kick the crap out of WSU. Sorry to any Cougs reading this... wait no I'm not. Woohoo we finally won more than 2 games in the season!

To top everything off in a day of grand scales, we ordered a steak that was enormous. Named "baby beef" in the menu, it was anything but. A rib steak about the size of a sheet of paper and around two inches thick came to our table on a sort of portable heating tray with a lower tray filled with red hot coals from the wood fired grill. It was so great after a day of only eating an orange and a popsicle. It had to weigh 3 pounds and we ate all of it. I wish I had a picture. The pure de papas (mashed potatoes) were also awesome. I'm starting to get used to this Argentinian steak eating thing.

Tomorrow we fly down to the Patagonia to a town called El Calafate. There we plan to visit the Perito Moreno glacier, jump over to Chile for the Torres del Paine, then travel north for a stay at an Argentinian sheep ranch set on a blue-gray glaciar-fed lake in the Andes. I know this sounds funny and you probably hate us for it, but we need a break from the heat!

Video Links
Garganta del Diablo 1
Garganta del Diablo 2
Iguazu Falls

Northwest Argentina

2009-12-02T20:56:00.000-08:00

Again it’s been forever since our last post. It’s a product of several things. One, when we were in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, it got dark at 5:30pm and no one stayed out late. Dinner was at 6pm. Here its light until 9pm and dinner is at 11pm with people out even on weekdays until 5am. Therefore, we never have the downtime we did in Central America to write a post because we’re, ummm, busy. :O) Two, the places we’ve been have had horrible internet. Three, we have been spending every spare minute trying to plan the rest of our trip because everything is so booked up here in Argentina this time of year. Yeah, so that’s our excuse!

Final days in Mendoza

The time we didn’t spend trying to plan the rest of our trip was spent just walking around town or tasting wine at this place called Vines of Mendoza. Not having a car here basically sucks. Everything is so spread out an inaccessible by bus that wine tasting is all but impossible unless you want to pay for a ridiculously expensive tour that only visits like 2 wineries. It was all kind of disappointing. The wineries, especially in Mendoza, are not nearly as organized as they are in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. They don’t have winery maps and most of them require reservations just to taste. It makes it so you can visit maybe 3 wineries in a whole day if you plan well. So that is the reason we spent our time in the tasting room in Mendoza.

The Vines of Mendoza is owned by an American so he understands what people want to do when it comes to tasting. Unfortunately, he also understands that he is the only place in town that does it and can charge whatever he pleases. It was overpriced by American standards, but for here it seemed expensive. However, the quality of wines we tasted was top notch and we were getting the cheap flights ($18). There were some reserve tastings (5 tastes per flight) that cost $175. Yikes, no thanks. This “cheap” stuff was really good. We did the Malbecs flight and the general regional wines flight. They were both excellent. The Malbec we both loved of course was the most expensive ($12/glass). We bought a glass of it afterward anyway and had a great cheese plate to go with it with several types of cow and goat cheeses. It was like heaven compared to the swill they offered for tasting on the bike tour. The other flight had Torrontes (a regional white that smells and tastes sweet but is very dry), Rose Malbec, Cab, Petit Verdot, and another red that I can’t remember right now. The Cab was my favorite in this flight and we came back the next night for half price wine night and had a few glasses of that. It was a lot cheaper, especially at half price. Four glasses of wine that night came to only $9.

The tasting room was really cool inside as well. It had lights under the bar for checking the color of the wine, it was air conditioned, and the staff was really knowledgeable AND spoke English which is a rarity here it seems. The outside patio/courtyard area was covered by a huge vine so it made it seem more like it was indoors. It kept out the hot sun and the ambiance was great. Even $9 for several glasses of wine is still relatively expensive.

The grocery store has a huge selection of all Argentinean wines for mostly under $10 a bottle, even the good stuff.

Another honorable mention for Mendoza is the food. Since this is a wine town resembling a larger Sonoma there are many great restaurants. We had everything from caprese empanadas (Coraleigh is becoming an empanada monster) and skirt steak to lamb in a Malbec reduction and pork in raspberry sauce. Another great night was dinner at a small Italian restaurant near our hostel that had homemade fresh pasta in the best puttanesca sauce I’ve ever had (since they have tons of olive farms there everything was fresh). The picture below is from a lunch where I had a giant beer and pizza. All the beer is giant here because it’s typically shared from one bottle rather than several beers from a six pack. They don’t really sell six packs or larger cases of small bottles here, just giant individual ones. This does not make me sad. :O)

On a lower note our hostel here was a little sketchy. Since we only booked a few days in advance most of the good hostels in Mendoza were taken so we were left with this one. The room and bathroom we had were pretty good, though fairly dated, and the bed was super comfy. However, the kitchen was pretty nasty, they blared retarded Spanish butt rock all day, and the breakfast consisted of rock hard pastries and Tang. We are starting to find that bad breakfast is a trend here in Argentina; I guess they don’t really eat breakfast. The best part was the people we met there who we actually ran into again in Salta at our hostel by coincidence. More on that later…

We caught a relatively short 3-hour bus ride to San Juan to line us up for a visit to Parque Provincial Ischigualasto.

San Juan and Parque Provincial Ischigualasto

San Juan is a pretty small town resembling Yakima. Again, there are many wineries in the area though mostly unreachable unless you have a car. Another small disappointment, but our main reason for coming here was to visit Parque Provincial Ischigualasto duly entitled Valle de la Luna or Valley of the Moon. Our hostel here was pretty uneventful, though it was cheap, clean, and had AC which was a requirement in this scorcher of a town. It hit 95 every day. Bleh. The people here, and everywhere outside of Buenos Aires, love the siesta. At 1pm all shops close and the streets look like a ghost town. Nothing reopens until around 6pm when people start showing up again. They are packed at 10pm with families, shoppers, and diners. It can be frustrating because people basically don’t eat here. They have a piece of bread for breakfast, maybe a nasty ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and wait until 10 or 11pm for dinner. They of course supplement with tons of cigarettes and espressos or mate (strong flavored green tea).

Our tour (we were the only two who signed up so it was just us and the driver) to Ischigualasto left at 6am. We woke up, got ready, and were on the road before sunrise. I know you’re thinking we’re lying, but we have photo evidence! It was a loooong drive out there too. Four hours through some desolate high desert country and across an almost comically undulating and twisting road. The road was like a roller coaster with constant periods of weightlessness. I wish I’d have gotten a video, but we were too tired and out of it to care. Hahaha

We finally arrived at the visitor center 330km later. It was as bright and dusty as you imagine a desert could be. It felt like the sun was weighing us down. You are only allowed to enter the park accompanied by a park ranger and we had just missed one by a few minutes so we sped off down the dusty road to catch them at the first stop. There were five main stops on the 50km loop around the park. The first was called “The caterpillar.” It was a highly eroded sandstone layer formation that contained fossils of plants and fish visible right on the outside of the rock. The next stop was a canyon of eroded mounds of colorful rock and sandstone. We spent most of that stop running from the giant desert wasps (avispas!). The third stop had two interesting things.

The first was a sphinx-shaped formation and the second they called the Concha de Bochas or Bocce Court. It had about 100 very out of place round rocks that were formed by a strange underground process and were exposed by wind and water.

The fourth stop was a formation called El Submarino which was probably our favorite. Finally was El Hongo or the Mushroom. It’s location next to huge red cliffs made it a good spot for surrealistic pictures.

Speaking of pictures… the sun kinda got to our heads so we took these super dorky ones. Valley of the moon… get it? :O/

Another four hour ride back led us through an area that was really a weird sight. It was a shrine for saint-like figure called Difunta Correa. This woman, in the 1840’s, followed her sickly conscript husband through the deserts around San Juan during the civil war.

She carried her newborn child, and some meager supplies. Once the supplies ran out she died of exhaustion and dehydration. When a passing military regiment found her, the baby was still alive and nursing. They considered this the first of many miracles ascribed to her and now this huge shrine, and thousands of small roadside shrines are dedicated to her. Especially devoted are truckers who believe she can bless their travels, cars, houses or whatever else. At the main shrine were thousands of license plates, thank you plaques, miniature houses, pictures of cars, wedding dresses, sports jerseys and trophies. Anything and everything you can think they would want blessed is here. This picture doesn’t come close to describing the enormity of the shrine or how devoted these people are to her. No matter where we go we always see bottles of water next to small roadside shrines meant to quench her thirst. The funny part is that the Catholic Church is completely against it, but it doesn’t seem to stop anyone. Quite the weird cultural phenomenon.

The next day we caught an overnight bus to Tucuman, north of San Juan.

Rental car, Quebrada de Cafayate, and Salta

Our bus arrived in Tucuman around 11am the next morning. Guess what? More ham and cheese EVERYTHING meals. We walked to the Hertz office and picked up our sweet car. A Chevy Corsa with a cracked windshield. We made our way out of Tucuman and decided to take the scenic route to Salta. The first leg wound through mountainous rainforest toward a town called Tafi del Valle. It’s a high mountain town in a misty valley. We stopped there for lunch and had empanadas, locro (a corn, bean, and meat stew), and steak. It was delicious. We gave our leftover fatty pieces to the local dogs who had gathered and were salivating nearby.

The drive from here climbed a steep traversing hill out of the valley into the high mountains and then dropped down the other side into a dry desert area. We stopped at a gas station and picked up some candy for energy. :O)

Next we drove through a large valley where there were lots of vineyards toward a town called Cafayate. It was another wine town, this time more similar to Sonoma except all the buildings and houses were adobe. We stopped at a market there and bought a few souvenirs. This area appeared to be better organized for the wine tours because there were signs everywhere pointing out vineyards and the “Salta Wine route.” We would have loved to have stopped and sampled, but it was already after 5pm so they were closed. The valley was beautiful; surrounded by mountains and filled with vineyards.

After leaving Cafayate we experienced one of the best drives we’ve ever done. We went through the Quebrada de Cafayate (Cafayate Canyon). I can’t really describe what we saw here with words. It was simply amazing. Every other second, “Oh wow look at that,” with our mouths hanging open. The pictures don’t capture how awesome this area was. It was all eroded, varying shades of red, with a green river valley running through the middle. We seemed to stop every 100 yards for pictures.

We finally made it out of the canyon and it was starting to get dark so we drove straight through to Salta. Driving in a city in Argentina is quite the adventure. There are basically no stop signs or traffic control. The intersections are honk, block the cross-traffic with an aggressive move, and then go. It’s insane. Luckily we didn’t get lost and drove straight to our hostel, Inti Huasi, without incident. We arrived just in time to drop our bags in our room and join the rooftop asado (BBQ). There we ran into our German friends we met back in Mendoza that we had done the bike wine tour with. After an amazing grilled feast and way too much wine we headed out for some Salta nightlife. (EDITED FOR CONTENT and MOM FACTOR). Hahaha… It was fun :O) Let’s see… we woke up the next “morning” around 1:30pm. Bars close at 5am here and no one leaves early. It was busier at 6am in the streets than at any other time of the day, especially siesta.

We spent the day roaming Salta (at night the churches looked the best, though) and checking out the sites. There is a lot of colonial architecture here surrounding one of the best plazas we’ve seen. It’s very European with several large ornate cathedrals.

We also meandered through a Sunday craft market which sold the typical northern Argentina goods like leather, llama wool items, silver jewelry, and mate accessories. The market was massive and spanned blocks of the city closed to vehicle traffic. It was pretty interesting; plus it was in the same area as the bars we had visited the night before. We spent part of the time trying to remember the places we’d visited. Haha. Salta is, so far, one of our favorite cities. The next day we boarded our trusty steed and headed for Tilcara. Once again we decided to take the scenic route…

Desolation, salt flats, and the Quebrada de Humahuaca

We headed west from Salta toward a small town called San Antonio de Los Cobres. This decision was another last-minute thing so we had no good maps, just our Lonely Planet book. It’s not exactly made for driving. We missed our turnoff out of Salta due to bad signage, but found our way back pretty quickly. Then the road, hanging on a cliff, turned to gravel and wound through a river valley. It often turned to one lane around blind corners. It was kinda freaky, but we only had to dodge a semi-truck once. Luckily it turned back to asphalt after about 25 miles. That’s when we started climbing and climbing. This road we took almost exactly followed the Tren a las Nubes track which is a tourist train “to the clouds.” We did the carro a las nubes. Haha. We finally reached the dusty half-deserted mining town of San Antonio de los Cobres and bought more candy! We tried to eat at a restaurant, but it was 1:30pm. Siesta. From here the drive got interesting.

We headed north via the gravel Ruta Nacional 40. It’s a famous road due to its isolation, scenery, and long stretches through expansive valley and mountain landscapes.

It was exactly that, complete desolation. In the four hours it took to meet the next paved highway we passed maybe 3 cars, a guy holding a baby goat trying to hitch a ride, and 47 llamas.

We also saw some guanacos which are the wild cousins of llamas. Oh and a few disproportionate donkeys with huge heads just standing there, eyes closed to the wind. When we stopped, all you could hear out here was the wind. It was pretty eerie. Sometimes a large whirlwind would kick up dust in the distance looking like a small tornado.

After a brief scare that we somehow missed the only turnoff and multiple scares with almost getting stuck in huge sandpits in the road, we made it to Route 52. Here we detoured west a few miles to visit the Salinas Grandes which are some huge salt flats sitting at about 10,000 feet in elevation. They are the result of an ancient lake, now dried up in the desert heat. It was WINDY out there, but a very cool sight to see. We took some more dorky pictures (this time we blame it on the elevation and low oxygen levels) and headed on our way toward the Quebrada de Humahuaca and Tilcara.

Another awesome drive through very high mountain passes, we went through a pass at 4170 meters (almost 14,000 feet!). The weird part was that it was still like a desert landscape with grasses and the occasional cactus.

We were looking DOWN at the clouds, and they were not low clouds.

The moon was also near full and for some reason magnified to something like a harvest moon. It looked awesome rising over the colorful mountains. The pictures can't really show how large it looked in person.

We descended down a very steep and winding road into another canyon, the Quebrada de Humahuaca.

This is an area populated by descendants of Incas that still live in adobe huts and hold on to a lot of tradition. It is pretty highly touristed so they mostly sell their handicrafts, but we still saw many of them in traditional clothes herding sheep and goats in the desolate landscapes.

We arrived at our hostel in Tilcara, one of the towns in the Quebrada de Humahuaca, at around 9pm.

Our room in our hostel was actually a small adobe cabin with a rock floor. It sounds bad, but was super clean and nice and is one of the best places we’ve stayed. The rock keeps it cool during the day when temperatures hit 90 degrees+ and keep it warm at night when they plunge to around 45 degrees.

We spent the remaining time here exploring the area, the small dusty high desert towns, and more markets. The towns are surrounded by beautiful red rock formations and mountains.

A common thing here for the locals is to chew “coca-bica.” They actually just chew cocaine leaves and it’s sold in the streets and in stores, sometimes in tea form. The lady in the picture was just shouting “Coca! Coca!” Literally, “Cocaine! Cocaine!” It was kinda weird, and it’s illegal in Argentina, but apparently tolerated up here in the far northwest.

We are only 60 miles or so from both Bolivia and Chile. We are also right near the Tropic of Capricorn so the sun is almost directly overhead at noon this time of year. We stopped at a sundial marking the line and took a few pictures.

Of course we ate well with more empanadas, llama steaks, and local wine. Some of the best restaurants in town, very nice with good service and excellent food, cost around $20 in total. I’ll never be able to eat out in the US again without complaining about how expensive everything is. Now we are going to make the long drive back to Tucuman to return the car. Next stop, the amazing Iguazu falls (picture in the background of this blog’s title). Unfortunately, this also comes with a 23 hour bus ride. Wish us luck that there will be no ham and cheese!

Video Links:

Northwest Argentina desolation

Jump around... we're retarded

Salinas Grandes

Buses, airplanes, ham, cheese, and wine

2009-11-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

Yeah yeah I know it’s been a week and we haven’t written anything. I can’t even remember where to start. It’s been travel madness. To start I’ll just give you a summary of what the past week has been. We’ve taken a taxi from San Juan del Sur to Rivas and barely caught our bus in time for San Jose, Costa Rica. We got off the bus in Alajuela, Costa Rica (near San Jose airport) and took a taxi to our hotel there. We stayed there two nights there, and then caught a very early flight to Buenos Aires through Panama City. We took a cab from the airport to our hostel in Buenos Aires. A few days later we took an overnight bus to Mendoza, Argentina and that’s where we are now. Phew!

Nothing extremely exciting has happened except that yesterday was really fun. I will write about that later, though. First I’ll start with our trip from San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua down to San Jose, Costa Rica. In our standard style we slept as late as possible before catching the cab to Rivas. We had to do this because the bus to San Jose stopped there and not in San Juan del Sur. Our bus was supposed to be there around 9am and we left San Juan around 8:15 after running down the street with our bags. The cab tried to stop and pick up another person on the way and half out of fear of robbery and half in urgency we started yelling at him “No tiempo! No tiempo!” He kept going and we got to the bus stop half confused on where to go. We walked toward some other tourist looking people as the bus rolled up. Talk about good timing.

Our bus was nice. TicaBus is a Central American bus company that travels from Mexico to Panama and they are surprisingly clean, comfortable AND on time which is a rarity. Well they are on time when they can be. We got stuck at the border for 3 hours. It was Sunday and the lines were massive, especially the way they have it set up. You have to get an exit stamp from Nicaragua and pay a couple bucks, then board the bus go about 100 yards through the border to Costa Rica and go through the whole process again.

Only Costa Rica is much stricter because they don’t like Nicaraguans and really watch for illegal immigrants. They also searched our bags so that took another half hour or so. It was a really slow process, but this time it was much better because it was nice weather, we had direction from the bus operators, and we were not alone. I even changed my leftover cordobas for some Costa Rican colones with one of the crazy cambio guys. The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful except they showed “The Bodyguard” in Spanish. Haha

We got off the bus at the airport in Alajuela since we heard it was a little nicer and we already knew San Jose sucked. Plus it’s close to the airport and our flight was at 6am. Since the flight was so early we didn’t want to risk not making it due to some unknown delay so we actually traveled to Costa Rica on Sunday even though our flight wasn’t until Tuesday morning. After the bus ride went so smoothly, despite the border, I was regretting our decision because there was not much to do. That was before the Montezuma’s revenge kicked in. While we were on the bus a guy came aboard and was selling food and drinks. Everyone was buying it and it looked pretty good. MISTAKE. Never buy food from a random dude with a cooler. I’m just now feeling better.

At any rate we hung out in Alajuela the next day just picking up random stuff like shampoo. It was so much nicer than San Jose so we were glad we chose to stay out there rather than in the city. Our hotel in Alajuela was owned by this German couple and everyone at the hotel was German too. It was kinda weird, but the owners were super nice and helpful. Breakfast was pretty good too with fresh blended juice and all kinds of different jams to choose from for the toast.

We caught a cab at 4:30 in the morning to the airport and everything went off without hitch. I’m just glad it wasn’t busy because there are extra steps you have to do when leaving Costa Rica which translates to more lines. You have to pay this “departure tax” of $26 in a separate line. Once that is paid you have to do the usual airport lines and waiting. Our flight to Buenos Aires was also pretty uneventful. We stopped in Panama City which is a really strange airport. The place is like a mall, but almost entirely filled with electronics stores. I don’t know why; they weren’t a good deal, but people were going crazy and buying everything.

We arrived in Buenos Aires around 11pm via a taxi from the airport. The car was new, the road was smooth, there were no potholes, and no weird smells. It’s amazing the things you take for granted, but it was a really nice change. Our hostel in Buenos Aires was in the San Telmo neighborhood and called Ayres Portenos. It’s a tango themed hostel with lots of cool paintings and decorations. The pictures to the right is of the common area right outside our door and of our door itself. However, and this is the reason that I’m writing this post now instead of back in Buenos Aires, the internet was slow there. Imagine AOL dialup, but shared across 10 computers. It was that bad. Top that off with us trying to book an airline ticket to fly to El Calafate (southern Argentina) using websites that are constantly crashing or going down. It was a joke. One day we literally spent 5 hours trying to book stuff. It turned out that all flights to El Calafate were either ridiculously priced ($1000) or sold out. We had to try to plan an entirely different trip using this horrible internet. It took forever and was so frustrating. We finally decided to head to Mendoza first (wine country). We booked a ticket on the AndesMar website which coincidentally went down in the middle of trying to book our ticket. We switched to another website that was horrible and all in Spanish. After struggling through that forever the AndesMar website came back online and we booked through there. I’m having a hard time conveying how frustrating this process was. Things would happen like you’d type all your information into an online form, then it would just randomly erase. Type it again, erase. You didn’t even press a button or touch the computer and the website would erase stuff or crash all while taking 5 minutes to load a single webpage of only text. Their programmers must be serious idiots. Another frustrating thing is that hostels are booked up everywhere along with airlines. Of course half the time their websites are down, so we spent some time in offices in Buenos Aires only to find out things like the planes are owned by the Air Force and they are being used so there are no flights. AGHH!!! FINALLY we were able to book a bus from Buenos Aires to Mendoza AND find a place to stay that was not booked up.

The remainder of our time in Buenos Aires was just spent walking around checking out San Telmo (the kinda edgy artsy neighborhood our hostel is in) and the surrounding areas.

The city is really beautiful and cosmopolitan, kinda like a cross between New York and Paris. Everything is so much cleaner than in Central America and the people also dress really nice. Of course this means everything is more expensive so in Buenos Aires we found prices only about 25% cheaper than the US. There are so many people there, though. Everybody walks as parking seems pretty crazy so the streets are sometimes packed. There is a subway, but we never rode it.

We walked several miles the last day we were there and went through different neighborhoods (we ate lunch near the giant tree in the picture above). We came across this huge hydraulic operated flower that closes at night using solar panels in its petals. The sign was in Spanish, but it said something about Lockheed Martin so that was kinda interesting.

Near there was the Recoleta Cemetery where Eva Peron is buried. This place was a sight, massive, and filled with huge ornate mausoleums dating back to the 1800s. We didn’t really stress about seeing too much there this time around so we didn’t do a whole lot. We will be back for an extended period come Christmastime. Plus, I couldn’t really drink or go out thanks to the Montezuma’s revenge from Costa Rica.

The bus terminal… Haha well this is mostly our fault due to poor planning, but it was an experience. Luckily the people working at AndesMar were so helpful. We arrived there via taxi 20 minutes later than we wanted. Our bus left at 7:55pm and we got there around 7:30 thinking “how difficult can this be? It’s a bus.” This was more like an airport, it had four separate terminals, its own ramps from the road just like an airport and over 90 offices of different bus companies. Holy crap. We were running around trying to find the AndesMar office; when we finally did find it they asked us where our tickets were. I said I didn’t have any because we booked online and they said I should have printed an email. Come to find out that this pure text, poorly formatted email I got that was all in Spanish informed me somewhere in the middle of it that I had to print it and show it in order to board. We got around that and they sent us on our way to the AndesMar bus. We ran through the throngs of people and found our bus which was almost done boarding. It said it left at 7:45, not 7:55. I was a little confused, and thought something was wrong. At that instant the girl from the AndesMar office came running up screaming “No bus! No bus!” What had happened was that we booked using AndesMar, but they are partners with other companies so we were actually on a bus operated by CATA. We had to run BACK upstairs to the offices and go to CATA, get our tickets printed, then run back down to the terminals and board the bus. Once again we literally sat down and the bus rolled out. Another close call.

If any of you have ever traveled to Argentina you know that the buses here are awesome. Each seat on this two level bus had a nearly full reclining seat, its own private LCD screen, curtains, blanket, pillow, wine, dinner. Everything! It’s basically like flying international first class, but on a bus. We still slept like absolute crap so we were pretty tired when we arrived in Mendoza at 9am.

Ham and cheese. I have to add this. People in Argentina have some sort of obsession with ham and cheese. Our dinner on the bus consisted of the following: a small ham and cheese sandwich, a ham and cheese wrap, ham and cheese quiche, loose ham and cheese, ham and cheese pieces on a small skewer, and the main course? Chicken cordon bleu, which guess what, is filled with ham and cheese. Literally the only items not containing ham and cheese in our meal were the roll and chocolate dessert. We suspected otherwise… Breakfast: ham and cheese sandwich. What the heck people? Are you addicts or something? I suspect a pig farmer conspiracy. We’ve been trying to avoid the ham and cheese sandwiches that are everywhere and in every café and restaurant here. Ham and cheese pizza, ham and cheese quesadillas, ham and cheese empanadas, ham and cheese on ham and cheese. I’m telling you they love the crap. Gross.

Finally on to where we are now, Mendoza, wine country of Argentina. We didn’t waste any time either. After taking a heavenly hot shower (first consistent hot water in weeks), we decided to do this bike riding wine tour. We rode a cab to Maipu and were dropped off at Mr. Hugo Bikes.

We recognized some people in there and found out they were from our hostel as well, two guys from Germany and another girl from Bermuda. We did the tour with them. Mr. Hugo, the owner, is just trying to get you drunk I think. He kept pouring us big cups of wine before we even left! We headed out and rode to the end of the line first.

It was kinda far, about 5 miles heading right into the wind. It was a little annoying because the tastings were not free and you just about were required to do the tour before you could taste. I don’t care that barrels are stored here and your grapes are picked there. That’s nice, give me wine. Haha. This bike tour was like torture, but not because it was boring or the wine wasn’t good. It was a blast and the wine was awesome. The reason it was torture was because we couldn’t buy the wine! They said it would cost about $150 to ship two bottles back to the US! We can’t carry it with us either because we are weight limited by the airlines.

We ended up splitting a really good bottle with the group to drink at dinner. It was their special reserve Malbec, each signed by the wine maker and covered in dust from years of storage. Only 4167 bottles were produced and it was considered a collection wine. It cost 95 pesos or about $25. It was their most expensive wine. Crazy right? All the wines were so cheap; normally they were priced around $7. Another reason it was so torturous. We made our way through a few other stupid tours and good tastings. We drank a bottle of some good stuff at our last stop before the chocolate factory. Mmmm chocolate. This place had handmade chocolate, stuffed olives, liquors, jams, and sauces. We got to taste a majority of them and they were all so amazingly good. We bought some chocolate. It’s gone already :O)

Today we are planning on planning. Haha. We are forced to plan ahead here because everything is so booked up. We need to book bus tickets, hostels, etc. We are going to stay a few more days here and probably do some more wine tasting. Next we are headed to Salta which is in the northwest of Argentina. From there we are going over to Iguazu Falls which is the picture in the title of this blog. Next, we fly from there to El Calafate to do some hiking in the Patagonian Andes. We make our way from there up to Bariloche which is famous for its chocolate and amazing views and lakes. Finally from there we will go back to Buenos Aires just before Christmas and spend about a month there. Better get to work!

The sunset on San Juan

2009-11-14T18:33:00.000-08:00

Coraleigh got stung in the ass by a jellyfish! hahaha. She won't let me post the picture on here, but it resembled a hundred mosquito bites all grouped together. Before we get to that, lets move back to the beginning of day 3 here in San Juan del Sur. While we were waiting to take off on our turtle watching thing, we were asked by the reception at Casa Oro (the hostel organizing the turtle tour) if we wanted to go sailing tomorrow. Apparently a few people had cancelled and there were some other people that really wanted to go out. We didn't really have any plans and had already spent two days on the beach so we figured it would be a nice change in scenery. We signed up and it turns out that the two people really wanting to go were a couple from Chicago (Bob and Janet) that we had met in our hotel in Granada. Pretty strange coincidence and even stranger when I found out his son works for Lockheed Martin. Anyway with us, the two from Chicago, and 3 other girls from London we had a full boat.

The boat we went out on was called the Gypsy. For those of you out there who know Dan's boat, it was the exact same with a few upgrades. They told me they recently had it in dry dock for a month doing major repairs. The owner is a civil engineer that now works down here doing land engineering for developments and houses. His two buddies, who were actually from Olympia, ran the sailing trips. They had been doing it about a month and sounded like they were having a good time. Pretty sweet job just sailing around all day drinking beer and making a few sandwiches for people.

The day was perfect for sailing; a good offshore wind of about 15 knots and all the sunshine you needed. We sailed south from San Juan del Sur and actually passed Playa La Flor where we had seen the turtles the night before. We saw several in the water during the day. They also had a line out the back and let me bring in what they called a Jack fish. Pretty lifeless for how big it was; I was able to bring it in by hand.

We hooked up to a buoy in a little cove near the Costa Rica border and went swimming (and floating in tubes) and had a lunch. Lunch was just bean dip and some sandwiches, but it was perfect for a hot day and went good with the Victorias I was drinking. Coraleigh started with Flor de Cana, Nicaragua's rum, and Sprite. Then she started to add orange juice to that concoction. As we were floating around out in the water I kept feeling tiny twinges on my legs that felt like someone was twisting my leg hair. About two minutes later Coraleigh started jumping around and saying that something stung her. Of course this happens to the person who is most afraid of the ocean and its creatures. I swam her back to the boat and she got out and I finally saw what she was complaining about. There was a huge sting on her butt and legs where a jellyfish had been stuck between her leg and the tube. The boat guys soaked a napkin in rum and she held that on there for a little bit. Also, Bob from the Chicago couple had a first aid kit with him and some sting/burn cream. She was back to her rum in no time, although that incident pretty much cleared the water of all swimmers. When a guy from the boat jumped back in the water he also got stung on the arm slightly so we were done. haha

We sailed back north toward San Juan del Sur as the sun was setting. Afterward, we went to pizza with the girls from London (Claire, Hazel, and Gemma) and had too much to drink. It pretty much rendered the next morning useless. We ate breakfast at the Barrio cafe around 11am. We've been doing pretty good on the breakfast side of things. We get the house breakfast which includes two eggs, toast, a pile of sauteed potatoes, orange juice, and coffee for 50 cordobas (a little over $2).

Last night we were idiots, though. We went this place called Piedras y Olas Pelican Eyes, the nicest hotel here, to have some drinks at sunset. When we got there they were setting up for some kind of concert so the restaurant and bar were not open. We were just thinking, oh well screw it, lets buy tickets and see what this is like. They were only $7 anyway and this place is really nice. It turns out we bought tickets to this Nicaraguan comedian. That still may have been ok, but on top of that this guy is famous for impersonating Nicaraguan politicians and TV shows. Think Frank Caliendo of Nicaragua. We had no freakin clue what was going on. DURP. We left early.

Today we booked our bus tickets for our return trip to San Jose. We are staying near the airport this time since its pretty pointless to stay in San Jose (its a craphole, remember?). We are taking TicaBus from Rivas to the main airport in Costa Rica and then catching a quick cab to our hotel, Coconut House. Its owned by a german couple, got really good reviews, includes breakfast, and was only $32 a night. The rest of today was just filled with little things like eating ice cream on the beach, and going to a book exchange place to get a new book for Coraleigh before our long trip. We also had some really good mexican food for lunch; strangely enough Mexican food is basically non-existent in Nicaragua.

Every single one of the sunsets here has been amazing. So I'll end the post with pictures from the last three nights. Today was our last one from north of the equator. See you all in Argentina.

Movie Links:
Sailing South - short clip
Swimming around the boat

Busy days in San Juan del Sur

2009-11-11T23:59:00.000-08:00

Just like Laguna de Apoyo this is another busy place. We just can't seem to find the time to write a post between laying on the beach, swimming, and having drinks while watching the sunset. hahaha

The ferry trip from Ometepe was uneventful except for more weird music videos in the taxi van like I mentioned. When we arrived on the San Jorge side (mainland) we, of course, were mobbed by taxi drivers. I told them I did want a taxi and they said quinientos cordobas ($25) and I told them to take a flying leap. Coraleigh was also happy because she got to use her new word "demasiado" which means too much. The taxi driver, funny enough, agreed and said ok cuatrocientos ($20) to which I still said no. We eventually got him down to 315 cordobas or just at $15. He was just trying to rip us off. He swore it was "un buen precio", yeah sure it is buddy. We were told by our hotel owner on Ometepe and our guidebook that it costs $15.

San Juan del Sur is a small town. So small you could walk every street in town in one morning, but its real nice. The nicest and cleanest we've seen in Nicaragua and the beach is beautiful. The sand is so fine its like powder and the protected harbor makes for a nice half-moon shaped beach. The hostel we originally attempted to stay at was doing construction and had no double rooms, just dorms. We're too picky for dorms, haha. So we went to another hostel and they only had one with this crappy foam mattress on the floor and the door was curtains. Finally we came to our hotel called Encanto del Sur, which funny enough is very similar to our hotel on Ometepe called El Encanto. We were so happy to find the hotel to be clean and bug free, and it comes with A/C all for $25. Still no hot water, but that'll cost you $50+ at least. We blew our budget in Costa Rica so now we're trying to make up for it here.

The hotel owner informed us that a corner room with more windows would be available in one day so we decided we would move there after one night. Its a good thing because our dreams of bug freeness were shattered when we came home late that night to find a weird giant worm thing, a cockroach, AND a scorpion in our bathroom. Its a good thing we were both drunk. haha, of course Coraleigh made me smash all of them. The worm and cockroach were fine, but I dropped a big water bottle on the scorpion because I didn't want to attempt to step on it for fear of its stinger coming up over the edge of my flip-flops. The thing was big, about 4 inches long. We figured they came through the wall through the sink holes which were too big; we were glad to see our new room's bathroom was more remodeled and had a new pedestal sink instead of a rotting wood base. No more bugs since.

We spent the first few days just roaming town; Coraleigh bought a new beach dress, an awesome cat towel(see my manly pic), and we stocked up on some essentials (we've almost been on the road a month now). We spent a lot of time on the beach too playing in the waves and reading. Today the weather was blazing hot and we both got weird burns in the spots were sunscreen was forgotten. I have a circle right around my belly button and Coraleigh has a blotch on the back of one leg.

We've been eating well here since there are a lot of options. Funny thing is that this pizza place right by our hotel is excellent and we've already eaten there twice. The owner is a retired Italian expat and makes a truly authentic pizza for only $7. Delicious. We've also ordered wine with our pizza both nights, Italian Sangiovese and Cab for under $15 each and they were great. Drinks at a bar: glass of wine, a beer, and a rum and soda for Claire (this English girl we met) came to $5 and thats at the busiest beachfront bar here. It makes it hard to control yourself. :O)

Tonight was really awesome and I never thought it would be like this, but we decided to do this turtle expedition. It just so happens that yesterday was the beginning of the biggest "arribata" of the year for the Olive Ridley turtle (about 2 feet across and 3 feet long). Last night alone on this one beach over 10,000 females came ashore to make a nest and lay eggs. This beach is protected by La Flor wildlife refuge and we went there tonight. It was incredible even in the dark (the turtles only nest at night). There were so many turtles on this 1km stretch of beach that you literally had to watch your step for fear of hitting an adult or stepping on a baby. The rangers had some babies (tiny! about 3 inches long) they were going to release, but there were so many adults they kept them for a later time for fear of them getting squished by all the adults coming ashore.

There was some lightning in the distance and when it lit the sky the sight was amazing; thousands of turtles in the surf and on the beach. We watched one dig its nest, lay eggs, and cover the hole. It then did circles and kinda kicked and dug in areas slightly away from the nest so as to conceal its location from predators by creating a false nest. We used these special red lights since turtles are sensitive to white light so my pictures didn't come out, but I got some cool videos. Also the picture in the dawn hours we got from the internet, but it gives you an idea of what we saw. There were literally that many turtles on the beach. Luckily the turtles were so cool because the ride there and back completely sucked. We (us and 8 other people) crammed into this 4x4 van and it took over an hour to go only 10 miles. The road, once again, was horrible; we even forded two small rivers.

Tomorrow we signed up for some sailing where lunch is included and drinks are free all day. A nice change from the beach so we'll let you know how it goes!

Movie Links:

San Juan del Sur beach panorama
Baby turtles
Turtle laying eggs
Dinner video

Ometepe Omegod there are so many bugs here

2009-11-10T00:06:00.000-08:00

Ometepe. Is that native for creepy crawlies everywhere? It should be. I can’t even begin to count how many centipede things I’ve squished in our room (probably ~50). Spiders too. The one on our door tonight was so fast it was impossible to smash it. We think we have everything out tonight so we sprayed OFF along the underside of the door and stuffed it with a towel. Haha. The centipedes are the worst. Luckily they are small ones at less than an inch. Still it’s gross. Both Coraleigh and I slept like crap the first night having bug attack dreams.

I spent a good hour before bed searching the room with our flashlight and smashing about 30 centipedes. They like the concrete on the patio for some reason so they just wander under the door I think and were congregating in the corner. The one corner had about 15 of them. So nasty.

We asked the owner about it and he said he hadn’t noticed and that bugs are everywhere here. He said it changes day to day, which it did. Tonight there were basically no centipedes (I must have wiped out their race, haha). Last night at dinner there was like an ant parade going on along the wall so he moved these people’s table away. He also mentioned that it was “nothing” and that sometimes they come in billions. So many that the walls look like they are a different color, then you come back 10 minutes later and they are gone. I’m just glad I don’t live here. It’s pretty, but Ometepe is about as remote as it gets in Nicaragua. It took us 1.5 hours to get to our hotel from only about 20 miles away. The roads are horrible. The power is constantly going out or fading in and out. Last night we had no water. When you walk the roads you have to walk around pigs, chickens, mud holes, smoking banana trucks, cattle herds, and horses. There is also massive poverty and some people live in shacks made of metal roofing and logs. We heard some statistic like 70% of Nicaragua lives below the extreme poverty level and the average income is around $2000 a year. Still though, everyone is super nice and always says “hola” to you when you’re passing by.

First thing I have to talk about beside the bugs is the ride out here. As I mentioned, it was a long bumpy ride; the funniest part was the music. We rode in this 4x4 van, but it had a video screen and the guys driving popped in a burnt DVD. We were trying to see what they were watching so they flipped down the screen for us in the back. It was all music videos, but they were seriously retarded. Here these guys were jamming out to this music like it was the newest and best thing, but it was MC Hammer, Ace of Base, Milli Vanilli, and other awesome early 90s videos I had never even seen. We were cracking up so I had to mention it. Addition: On our ride back to the ferry today it was such a contrast. Guns and Roses and Metallica videos mixed with Celine Dion and Toni Braxton. Weird.

The room here at El Encanto is clean and looks pretty cool, and the food in the restaurant is good. We picked it based on tripadvisor reviews and everything they said is right. I don’t think the bugs are worse here than they would be anywhere else; it’s just the island. Once again we are the only people in the hotel. There were some super weird Canadian “accoontants” here the first night, but they left in the morning. Being the only people is getting old and I think we are going to try and meet up with some people we met at Laguna de Apoyo when we get to San Juan del Sur.

The “ferry” here was more like a crappy converted fishing boat. It smoked and chugged across the lake on a luckily calm afternoon in about an hour. This lake is massive and it feels like you are in the ocean when you’re on it or look from the island. Upon arriving at and upon exiting the ferry we were mobbed by taxi, tour, restaurant, hotel, you name it hawkers. It was super annoying and something that is very different from Costa Rica. In Costa Rica you will almost never find a hand out begging, a guilt trip for a tip, or people trying to annoyingly sell you crap or get you in their hotel. Of course Nicaragua is far poorer, but just the culture is different between the two. It’s more like Mexico here, but still not as bad since tourism is still relatively new.

Anyway, there are some nice things here on Ometepe too. With all the creepy crawlies come lots of good things like butterflies. They are also everywhere and have such varying colors. We’ve seen lots of birds and lizards as well. More Jesus lizards, geckos, salamanders, green ones, brown ones. The views of the volcanoes are also pretty cool, although they’re covered in clouds most of the time. Apparently Concepcion is nearly perpetually cloudy because it emits hot sulfur gas and that mixes with the air forming its “hat”. It was nice and clear yesterday afternoon, though.

The first day we walked to the Ojo de Agua. It was a pretty long walk from here, about 6k, and it was blazing hot. It felt that much better to jump into the clear and fresh spring water pool when we got there. Ojo de Agua means eye of water and just describes the pools of water there, although they are kinda manmade now with concrete sides. The bottom is still rock and sand, though, and the water comes straight from a cold mineral spring under the volcano. They have a little area built around it with a restaurant and some chairs. It was beautiful and not what we were expecting. When we finally made it there (we followed this gross dirt/mud path through a banana farm and fields) it seemed like we had come across an amazing oasis. We were expecting Ojo de Agua to be a dirt hole with some nasty green water. It was not, as you can see from the pictures.

If you don’t mind the bugs, then Ometepe is a neat place with a lot of history. We have petroglyphs right in front of our room that are 2300 years old. Also if you like hiking there are 2 big volcanoes, one being active and extremely steep. If you’re into the rustic hiking nature thing, this is your place. If you can’t deal with insane amounts of bugs, then don’t come here. Haha. It feels like we’ve seen more species of bugs in the past two days than in our entire lives. Huge flying beetles that sound like airplanes, swarms of hundreds of dragonflies (the second picture on the right below), ants, centipedes, wasps the length of your pinky finger, termites, tons of annoying spiders floating on webs that are constantly getting stuck to your face or legs, jumping spiders, fast spiders, hairy neon blue spiders, flat super fast spiders, praying mantis, grasshoppers, giant black bees as big as silver dollars, dung beetles, moths, butterflies, and then of course your standard gnats, flies, and mosquitos. I’m sure there are a bunch here I missed, but you get the idea.

Today we went a place called Finca Magdelena which is an old coffee farm and now hostel as well. On the way there it started to rain a little bit, but we thought it would pass in a few minutes since it’s hardly rained here. It dumped on us and we were soaked like we jumped in a pool by the time we got there (over 2 miles walking). The people there gave us towels luckily, and of course it stopped raining right when we got there. We sat down and had some chocolate cake and Coraleigh bought some locally made organic honey in a rum bottle for only 2 bucks. Overall, pretty boring. I guess it’s OK if you’re a guitar toting smelly hippie. They seemed to enjoy making residence there. We walked back and spent the afternoon reading and taking some pictures down at the lake around sunset.

Overall impression is that if you’re looking to do some hiking and want a truly rustic experience (yes the old lady is trimming her toenails with a machete) with absolutely no tourist traps, then Ometepe is for you. We have mixed reviews to say the least, but it’s still a very beautiful and nearly untainted and authentic place.

This post is coming from San Juan del Sur since we had no internet on Ometepe… More on San Juan del Sur tomorrow.

Busy at the Laguna de Apoyo

2009-11-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

Its out last day at Laguna de Apoyo and we are just writing the first post about it. We've been really busy... Ok, not really, but its just really hard to get out of the hammock and get the computer. haha

We're at a place called the Crater's Edge owned by a Canadian lady. Its like a terraced property down toward the lake with a small beachfront and a cool covered patio by the lake with a bar and hammocks all surrounded by jungle. We eat lunch down there each day all prepared by the staff here. Its been really good so far as has dinner. The desserts are also great. Its so quiet and nice out here which is a good change from the excessive honking cabs and constant church bells and fireworks in Granada.

Yesterday was the best weather since we've been here. Not that the other days were bad, but yesterday was dead calm most of the day and the sun was out the entire time. Not bad for the "rainy" season.

The lake is in the crater of a volcano that erupted 23,000 years ago and is filled with mineral water that is a clear aquamarine color. It is the cleanest lake in Central America and is perfect for swimming at around 80 degrees. Its good for your skin as well. Our hostel here has a floating dock, innertubes, and kayaks you can check out. We spent some time on the tubes floating around yesterday. Very busy day. I read a 750 page book in 2 days. There's not much else to do here, haha.

Oh yesterday I also spent about half an hour playing with the floating rocks. Yes I'm easily amused, but floating rocks are pretty weird.

There are people here from all over the world. We also met a temp worker here that is from the Tri-cities. Small world. Some people here now are from San Diego and Belgium. We also met some from Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland.

We're heading back to Granada tonight on the 4:30 shuttle and staying the night there. Then we are on to Ometepe tomorrow which is an island in the middle of lake Nicaragua formed by two volcanoes. Central America has A LOT of volcanoes. It seems like every mountain is not just a mountain, its an active volcano, but 100% safe for all you moms out there :O)

Fun at the market(s)

2009-11-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

Today we wanted to head back to the Masaya market because we didn’t get to spend much time there last time. We wanted to slowly look around and see if there was other cool stuff to blow money on. Hahaha. We decided to be adventurous (aka cheap) and take the local bus to Masaya from Granada. The bus station was only a few blocks from our hotel. “Bus station” = muddy parking lot. There was a guy screaming, “MASAYA MASAYA MASAYA!!!” over and over so we kinda figured we were in the right spot. We got on the bus and just sat there for like 30 minutes while the MASAYA MASAYA guy tried to round up more people. The local buses are old American school buses from the 70s. They are huge pieces of crap complete with grinding gears and ripped seats. They still had the English rules of the bus sticker all surrounded in sparkly Jesus and Mary stickers. I could also see the ground passing underneath my feet; not that we were going that fast. We maybe hit 25 mph tops and the road to Masaya is a highway. In town, 5 mph and they would just randomly stop and sit there for no apparent reason. They also stop for every Pedro, Steve, or Maria who happens to raise a finger. I think they’d even stop to pick up a dog if it looked at the driver and had 9 cordobas. This bus ride, maybe 15 minutes by taxi, took 1.5 hours. No wonder it only costs 40 cents. We probably stopped 40 times. Coraleigh wanted me to add that she thought it was amazing when we stopped next to some sketchy hospital and this girl slowly limped across the road with her family and boarded the bus. Her mom was carrying the obviously brand new-born baby. She said she can’t imagine having to ride a dirty, bumpy, smelly bus packed with people home just after giving birth.

(This picture isn't mine, but imagine mudholes, rain, and more garbage)

After the long trip we arrived at the Masaya bus terminal. “Bus terminal” = Muddy garbage-filled pit of hell. We had no idea where we were because the owner at our hotel told us that the bus terminal was right next to the market. Well it technically was, but it was the local market not the art market. This place was insane. Narrow, muddy and trash-filled aisles filled with everything you can think of. Bras, oranges, flowers, shoes, chickens, beans, rice, toys, deodorant. Whatever. We stuck out like white giants. It was a literal maze and it took us forever just to find the street which was also muddy and trash-filled. In hindsight it was actually pretty cool and I wish I would have got more pictures or video or something to show you just how crazy it was. The pictures I got really do not do it any justice. Just at the time we were not prepared and we were lost so we were pretty freaked out and I didn’t get many pictures. We eventually gave up on asking people where the Mercado Viejo (the name of the art market) was and got in a cab. He drove us there for $1. After several applications of hand sanitizer we had lunch in the art market along with some tasty cacao con leche; it is almost like a chocolate milkshake, but made with fresh cacao from local trees and mixed with milk. Its soooooo good. So while sitting there eating we see the shops start toting their stuff inside. Apparently they close at 3. DUMB! We took all that time getting there so we could have more time to look around and once again we only have a few minutes. I haggled on this painting and then they tried to rip me off so I didn’t get it. We bought a few other things quickly before they closed and then got in a cab back to Granada. This time the ride only took 15 minutes and cost $9 after tip. Totally worth it, even for Captain Thrifty.

Tonight we had dinner at the restaurant in our hotel. It was so great. The owner is a retired professional chef and he does all the cooking in the small restaurant. I had mackerel with saffron and lime and Coraleigh had chicken breast in guava-rum-chili sauce. We also had a Greek salad, fresh guava juice, a Toña (Nicaraguan beer), and this amazing chocolate terrine in mandarin orange sauce. All topped off with a glass of vintage port (real stuff from Portugal). Mmmmm. Only $28 for everything. :O)

2 days in Granada

2009-11-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

Ok we're finally making a post for Granada. We've been here for 2 full days now and this our third. We decided to extend our stay here by a day since we have so much extra time. What a problem, huh? hahaha. Where to start...

Day one we basically explored the city. We went into the San Francisco convent and church, walked down the main strip La Calzada with all kinds of restaurants and bars, and went along the lakefront into something called the Centro Turismo.

I'll go in reverse order here and first talk about the Centro Turismo (Tourism Center). It is definitely not that and if you ever come here save your 25 cents and don't go in. Yes, its really not even worth 25 cents. Its just a bunch of really crappy bars that aren't even open and some crappy parks and garbage. We found out later that this is the really seedy part of town, fine during the day when we were there, but everyone said to never go there at night. Fine by me, it sucked. The Centro Turismo is along the lakefront, but part of the lake front is not in there. Its an area called the Malecon and it also sucks.

There were random horses and cows standing in the basketball courts and the water was polluted so much that they had skull and crossbones signs warning you not to swim. Of course there were a bunch of kids swimming anyway.

La Calzada connects the central park and main cathedral to the lakefront. It is all lined with bars, restaurants mostly blaring annoying music over crackling speakers, and some shops. Its a nice street, regardless, and looks really pretty (Coraleigh added that part).

The San Francisco convent is connected to the San Francisco church which is the oldest church in Granada at almost 500 years. It was mostly restored and the convent had an art gallery and antiquity museum. It was a good way to spend an hour or two.

After that we ate some pizza and got ice cream (only 50 cents for a scoop) on La Calzada and walked around a bit more. It started to rain so we came back to our hotel and then went out for dinner. It was Halloween, but its not much of a holiday here. Some American kinda bars were having parties, but they were just filled with punks like they would be in Yakima. Dinner was pretty disappointing because we went to a highly recommended place and it was not a good experience. The waiter acted annoyed we were there, we got seated in the smoking section without being asked, and the food except for the steak was awful. We wrote them a bad review on tripadvisor.com :O)

One thing we've been wanting to talk about is all the different kinds of natural juices they have here in Central America. So far we've had pineapple, guanabana, passion fruit, blackberry, calala, dragon fruit, raspberry, and lemonade. They usually only cost $1 and are blended with ice almost like a smoothie. Delicious.

On day number two, after recommendations from our hotel's owners, we decided to take a tour. We usually don't like tours, but this was so highly recommended and cheap we decided to do it. It also was going to all the places outside of town that we wanted to see. It went to the Masaya volcano, a lookout over Laguna de Apoyo, the Pueblos Blancos, and the Masaya craft market all for $30.

We left at 8:30 and went to the volcano first. This active volcano is constantly spewing gas and steam and you can drive right up the edge. This would never happen in the U.S. The park required you to have your car facing the exit "just in case". The volcano was a massive hole you could not see the bottom of that was billowing clouds of sulphur smoke and steam so thick they looked solid. We got to walk and hike around there a little bit and take pictures of the various active and inactive craters. Our guide was really knowledgable and also gave us a really interesting history of Nicaragua's corrupt politics and basically the reason they are so poor. Apparently Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country in the Americas preceded only by Haiti so its pretty amazing that according to INTERPOL it is considered the 3rd safest country in the same group. The top two were Canada and Chile. "In North America, the US murder rate is 7.1 per 100,000, yet its famously violent cities weigh in at 14.8 per 100,000 for Los Angeles, 21.9 for Chicago, 31.7 for Atlanta, with Washington, D.C. at 41.8 and New Orleans at 43.3. Little Costa Rica, the “oasis of peace”, is at 7.2, the same as the US and significantly safer than most other Central American republics. What about Nicaragua? Nicaragua suffers only 3.4 per 100,000, making it the least violent country in Central America and one of the safest in all the hemisphere."

After the volcano we went to the Masaya craft market which was totally awesome! Masaya is considered the cultural capital of Nicaragua so all the best artisans from around the country sell their stuff there. Everything was so cheap too. High quality and hand made everything. Leather boots, cigars, paintings, pottery, hammocks, wood work, and jewelry. We bought too much, haha.

Once we left the market we headed for the mirador (lookout) from one of the Pueblos Blancos called Catarina. The Pueblos Blancos, or white towns, are named for their once white houses and churches and are each historically famous for a different type of art or skill. Catarina had plant nurseries everywhere with all kinds of beautiful tropical plants. The mirador over Laguna de Apoyo was amazing. Laguna de Apoyo is an extinct volcanic crater filled with mineral water that is the purest in the country. Just look at the picture, there's not much else I can say. You can see all the way to Granada and beyond.

The next of the Pueblos Blancos we visited was called San Juan de Oriente. There we were taken to a pottery school where we were shown all the steps in the 15 day process required to make one piece. Our guide translated because our Spanish sucks, haha. All the tools and processes were very primative. A foot spun pottery wheel, tools made from rocks, seeds, and bamboo of varying textures, and natural clay paint.

It was a very time intensive process and the prices of the pieces definitely did not reflect the work that went into them. Large pots with intricate carvings and detail were only about $20. Of course these prices were direct from the maker so the prices were higher at the market in Masaya. We were also told that many people from Costa Rica travel to this Pueblo and buy unmarked pieces so they can be rebranded "Made in Costa Rica" and sold at 10x the cost. We saw them and its true. We also bought a lot here, too much again, haha, but it was so beautiful and high quality that we couldn't restrain ourselves.

That was the last stop on the tour and we headed back to the hotel after that. The rest of the day we spent walking around Granada more and we climbed the belltower in the church right by our hotel to watch the sunset over the city. It was so amazing.

To top it all off we ate dinner at a place called Jardin d'Orion that is a french international fusion restaurant. I thought it sounded dumb, but we went anyway. It was some of the best food we've had on our trip so far and had the coolest atmosphere as well. We sat in a large courtyard of a beautifully restored Spanish colonial house that was likely over 400 years old. The service was perfect, the food was perfect. It was like a 5 star restaurant; our bill? $25 including wine.

Tomorrow we are heading out to Laguna de Apoyo and staying at the Crater's Edge hostel for one night. More swimming and relaxing is needed after being in the city. Then we come back to Granada for another night on our way to Ometepe.

Nice ride into Crazyland

2009-10-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

So this was a bit of a crazy day. Last night Coraleigh started complaining of her ear hurting and not being able to hear that well. After looking at it I saw that her ear canal was nearly swollen shut. We went to el doctor de medico in Samara (the next town over) and he asked if she had been swimming or gone to hot springs. We have done both so he took a look in her ears. She definitely had an infection in one ear and both were clogged up with wax. He said it was common for people from cold climates to come down to Costa Rica and get ear infections. I forget why, but still seems kinda weird. Anyway, he flushed her ears with an alcohol and water mixture and out came “the most [wax] I’ve ever seen in my life.” The doctor and I were just laughing. Coraleigh loves the Q-tips a bit too much I think so it got all jammed up in there, then when she went swimming the water just stayed in there and it got infected. She got drops and pills and we paid and went on our way. Gotta review the travel health insurance policy tonight…

The drive in our rental car to the border was easy. It rained quite a bit, but we never got lost or anything. We drove straight there and it was a beautiful drive through forests and small towns. When we got close to the border there was this huge line of trucks. Literally it was about 2 miles long. Since I’d seen our interbus drivers do it I just drove in the opposite lane all the way to the front of the line and they just let me pass. The Alamo return place was in this muddy craphole and the guy in the office wasn’t even there for the first 15 minutes. He finally showed up and we got our car returned. He was nice and drove us the rest of the way to the border and kinda pointed us in the right direction. We first had to go inside this building and get our Costa Rica exit stamp. Luckily we were exiting and not coming in because that line was huge. We got back into the rental car and he dropped us right at the border where he couldn’t go any further. We just walked across and it was raining and everything was muddy and puddles everywhere. We had to squeeze by semi trucks and then stop at a random tent thing and show some police our passports. They let us through and that’s when the vultures attacked. Cambio, taxi, bus, blah blah blah. Guys waving money around and everything. Then we got approached by this guy that was like an official border process guy. He led us to all the proper booths and lines, gave us forms to fill out, told me who was trying to rip you off and who was good, etc. So first we had to fill out our entry forms and pay the $7 entry fee. Our passports were stamped again and we received our tourist card and $2 exit receipt as well (to be paid when we leave). I got some Nicaraguan cordobas from the ATM and paid all that stuff. We also had to pay some random $1 fee thing and got a little ticket for that when we passed through the gate. All a very confusing process that we would have never known how to do had it not been for this border guy. He, of course, worked for tips but he was so helpful that I didn’t mind paying him. He made everything go very fast. He also got us a taxi for only $40 from his friend to Granada (a 2 hour ride). I think this was a really good deal because the price listed to get back to the border at our hotel was $80 here in Granada.

Let me tell you, though, that it was all a pretty freaky process. The border area was chaos and we stuck out like a sore thumb. Everything went OK, though, as the guy informed us that they like and want tourists so the police are watching out for you.

This place is definitely 3rd world. On the way here we saw oxen pulling banana carts and donkeys pulling trailers like it was 1880, and random cows and horses just on the sides of the road or walking down the middle of it. The view to Ometepe was awesome, though. Two huge volcanoes side by side just were poking up out of the massive Lake Nicaragua. I can’t wait to get out there. We drove into Granada and our retarded taxi driver couldn’t figure out where to go even though we had a map. We even got our bearings and were telling him where to go before he knew where he was. What a bonehead. Our hotel is really nice and clean and the A/C is also nice. It’s pretty hot here. I can’t wait to take a shower since the water was out this morning in Carrillo. Coraleigh jumped in the pool to rinse after the water went out since she’d already put shampoo in her hair. Hahaha.

Granada seems like a nice city. It’s all Spanish colonial architecture with cathedrals, plazas, and brightly colored buildings with tiled rooftops. We climbed the belltower in the church right near our hotel to get a view over the city around sunset. We then walked to a restaurant called Dona Conchi. It was really cool inside with candlelit courtyard all filled with plants and a fountain where we could see the moon. Coraleigh said it was romantical, haha. I had shrimp in garlic and wine sauce (and like in Greece it came with French fries even though the presentation was fancy) and Coraleigh had vegetable lentil soup and some kind of special salad with watermelon, pineapple, cantaloupe, cheese, olives, lettuce, cucumber, tomato, and a yogurt dressing. It looked pretty interesting; she said it was good. This is considered a nice restaurant I think and after everything including some fruit drinks and water was about $25. Well we are here and made it through all the craziness, over 200 miles, a rental car, a chaotic border, a confused taxi, and a new city. Time for a good shower and sleep.

Nicaragua here we come

2009-10-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

While yesterday was all about relaxing and enjoying doing nothing, haha, today was about making arrangements for our next destination. Granada, Nicaragua. :-)

We’ve booked our hotel, Terrasol Hotel, which got really good reviews on tripadvisor.com, an awesome site we use all the time. Our room includes A/C (super important in 95 degree Granada), WiFi, breakfast (supposedly made by one of the owners who is a really good professional chef), and laundry service (we reeeally need laundry service now, haha) for $40 per night.

We also spent some time today figuring out our mode of travel options. Up till now we’ve been using this fantastic bus line here called Interbus which picks you up at your hotel and drops you off at your next one at your next destination. It’s really quick and comfortable and costs about $40 per person. Unfortunately it doesn’t go anywhere near where we need to go next. :-) Our only options to get to the Nicaraguan border from here are a Taxi, the local bus, or a rental car. A taxi we found out today would cost $180 so that was obviously out, haha. The local bus would require 3 transfers, has no A/C, would probably take a lot of extra travel time, and the seats are so tiny that Tyler’s legs would be all uncomfortably jammed up against the next seat up, picture a sweating 6’1” man in fetal position (we tested this out today) hahaha. A rental car amazingly cost only $80 at Alamo and they have an office in Penas Blancas (the border town), so we can just drop it off when we get there! It’s a very comfy efficient little Toyota Yaris and Tyler and I are SO happy that it’s so affordable as it will really make our lives easier tomorrow. I know $80 sounds like a lot for a rental, but compared to other companies this was the best deal (they all charge between $50-$100 to drop off at another location). We still will have to take the bus (a nice larger direct to Granada type one) once we cross into Nicaragua up to Granada but at least we will have avoided what would have been the worst part of the travel.

So we were just looking through our photos taken yesterday and there were only 3 taken, haha shows you how much we did. Two of the photos were of this scary looking huge cat (larger than any house cat I've ever seen) that I call Demon Cat, hahaha I seriously think he’s part tiger or something. The other photo was of the towel art that we came back to in our room. At the end of our trip I’m going to make a blog post showing all the hilarious and awesome towel art that we’ve gotten in our hotel rooms. :-)

We also tonight caught our last Costa Rican sunset on camera.

I now know where saline nose spray comes from

2009-10-27T19:42:00.000-07:00

Another gorgeous day in Carrillo bay (see the video link below). We started off the morning like we said in the last post, eating breakfast with an amazing view of the bay. We then decided to take another walk down to the beach cause it was like 93 degrees out with clear skies. The water felt so good that we jumped in and spent the next two hours or so trying to body-surf the waves, some of them were kinda too big though so Tyler and I got some pretty thorough sinus cleansing. Haha.

After we got cleaned up in the hotel, salt water makes you super sticky, we found out when the local bus leaves (it wasn’t on time and we walked probably for 30 min, haha) and hopped on that to go to Samara, the larger next town over, about 7km away. We walked around and explored for bit and had some late lunch. Lunch was the typical Costa Rican fare, fish, rice, beans, fried plantain, salad, and mystery salad which this time was potato and beet which was pretty good. Samara is a nice clean town with abunch of shops and has its own half moon bay as well with a beach almost as nice as Carrillo, though much more populated. After that we caught the bus back to our hotel and found that our lizard was back in our room eatin our bugs. :-) Oh also on the walk up the driveway to the hotel we must have seen about 100 lightning bugs! It was so cool, it was so dark out (it gets dark here at about 6pm year round), that we just kept seeing light flashes all around us like a field of falling stars. Anyways, we’re in our room now and kinda tired, and its only 8pm, haha, so Hasta Manana!

Video links:

Panoramic view of Playa Carrillo

We just got the pictures from whitewater rafting the Rio Pacuare from the CD today in Samara. They are added in the "We're back..." post below.

Pacific Ocean paradise

2009-10-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

We made it to Carrillo. It is the most pristine beach area we’ve ever seen. There are no houses or condos or anything on the beach at all except palm trees. The sand is white, the water is warm and clear, and the sunsets are amazing. Our hotel is set off to one end of the half-moon shaped bay overlooking the beach and ocean. We are literally the only guests here at the hotel so we got the best room with a great view (and A/C for once, so nice!). Check out the video of our room here. We can hear the waves at night and we had another in-room lagartija (lizard) to eat bugs for us. The town of Puerto Carrillo is tiny; there are only a few buildings with a couple hotels and restaurants. Most of them are closed, this place is deserted this time of year. I don’t understand why because it’s so nice, pushing 90 degrees and sunny for a majority of the day. It still will usually rain in the afternoon, but not like it was at Arenal. It only last for about 30 minutes.

The view from our breakfast spot was perfect this morning and we are still sitting there now typing this post. It has a completely unobstructed view of the bay and palm trees.

Dinner last night was great. We ate at a place up the hill called Hula Jungla. We were also the only ones there. We had a homemade pizza that they cooked in a wood-fired pizza oven for us. It had tomatoes, mozzarella, and olives. Delicioso. We also ate there for lunch, haha, like I said its one of the few places open. We had homemade fajitas and lime margaritas with these weird limes that are orange inside instead of green. We could hear them in the back slicing everything up. The fajitas were only $4. Well this isn’t going to be a long post because there just isn’t much going on here. This is not a bad thing after our busy past week of traveling, rafting, ziplining, etc. Its beach time. Adios.

We're back! 3 days in Arenal

2009-10-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in a land far, far away... We went white water rafting! Haha, it was so amazing. We got picked up really early, 6am, from our hotel in Puerto Viejo. We then rode a couple hours half asleep to Exploradores base camp near Siquirres. There we were served breakfast which consisted of eggs, rice and beans, toast, fruit juice, granola and yogurt, and the usual pineapple, papaya, and watermelon. Pretty standard stuff, but tasty. They had good facilities there and places to lock up our bags. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a waterproof case or anywhere to put my camera so I couldn’t take it along. A girl in our raft had a camera, though, and we bought the professional pictures because they looked pretty good. Hopefully those pictures will be coming soon. And the ones from the CD we bought did, we just got them from off the CD today in Samara. They are added below.

This is going to be a long post so be ready. 3 days of awesomeness all in one!

If you ever to come to Costa Rica, we both highly recommend doing this rafting trip down the Rio Pacuare. It was seriously incredible, and it also made Captain Thrifty happy because they provided transportation on to your next hotel. To take the Interbus (like we took from San Jose to Puerto Viejo) would have cost $49 each to get to Arenal. The rafting trip including transportation was only $115 each and it included breakfast and lunch so it was a really good deal. Anyway, back to the rafting. The Rio Pacuare is listed as one of the top 5 best rivers in the world for rafting. It ranks up there with the Colorado and the Nile and with good reason, because you feel like you are in an Indiana Jones movie all while hitting class 4 rapids or higher if it’s rained the night before. You travel through 18 miles of primary rainforest, canyons and valleys. We had four people in our boat plus 2 guides, one was in training which was interesting and we’ll talk about that later. After breakfast we got in a small bus and took the half hour ride through this insanely steep and twisting mountain road. I swear half the time our rear tires were locked up and we were just sliding down the hill. The guides were just chatting away like nothing was going on. We made it, though, and after getting all geared up hopped in the boats. There were two boats and hardly anybody on the river because it’s the slow season. Yay slow season! Oh and we also had some safety kayakers come along with us. We started off with some wimpy stuff and the guides were messing with us trying to send us through rapids sideways so I wasn’t really holding on and fell right out of the boat like an idiot. Coraleigh rescued me :O) (Tyler now owes me his life haha –Coraleigh). The next few hours were amazing. We went through all different kinds of awesome rapids surrounded by steep mountains and waterfalls straight out of Romancing the Stone; all this covered in the lushest vegetation you’ve ever seen. We even got to go under the waterfalls in our raft. It was totally unspoiled rainforest. We saw several blue morpho butterflies, some more Jesus Christ lizards, and a few different kinds of herons, but just the scenery was enough to leave you in awe. We stopped for lunch at a cool spot that was kept up by some indigenous people of the area. The lunch was pretty good, especially all the fresh fruit. We sat on a split log bench overlooking the river to eat. The weather was perfect as it has been every morning since we’ve been here. We went swimming several times in the river; it was so nice to just float down with the current in the calmer areas. The guides tried to convince us there were crocodiles and piranhas, but once they said you had to stick the oar in the crocodile’s mouth cross ways when “dey come atchoo like dis” (as he spread his arms like giant jaws) we knew they were lying.

For the second part of the trip the main guide sat to the side and let the trainee take over. That was interesting, as I mentioned earlier, because he screwed up a bunch. Several times we went through rapids sideways and one time we ran through this rapid that kinda rolled up a rock wall. Yeah he ran us straight into that and our raft went up to about a 75 degree angle. Coraleigh and I were on the low side and got knocked out of the boat by the people on the other side falling on us. I ended up downstream and a kayaker picked me up. Coraleigh ended up next to the boat and two other people also fell out. Basically the entire boat except the guides. It made for a more interesting trip, though, so we didn’t care. It was fun! After that we went through an area that looked just like Indiana Jones with a narrow canyon, an old rotting suspension bridge, vines hanging down, and waterfalls coming down both sides. The water flowed slowly through there so we got to jump out and float around while drifting through the canyon. Amazing (kinda overusing that word, but it just was). Toward the end of the trip the clouds started to get darker and you could hear thunder in the distance. About 15 minutes from the end the rain started to come down HARD. This was no Seattle rain, this was serious rain, good thing we were already soaked so it didn’t matter. Who would have thought it rains in the rainforest? Haha. After unloading they had good places to shower and change there at the base camp. My shirt that I left in the bus (since they said we would be taking the same bus to Arenal) drove away somewhere and they still say I will get it back. I doubt it. All in all an amazing trip, awesome scenery, exciting rafting, just minus a shirt. Haha

It was a long drive, about 4 hours, to Arenal and it rained really hard almost the entire way. The road was pretty slow going through all the hills. Plus trucks and cars seem to enjoy randomly stopping in the middle of the road and everyone has to go around. At one point there were four lanes of traffic on a two lane road, haha. We were both starving by the time we got here after all the hard work rafting; they really make you paddle hard. Anyway we got dinner in the overpriced restaurant here at the hotel, but our table was right next to the wall of windows with a direct view of the volcano. It erupted while we were eating dinner and you could see red hot rocks tumbling down the mountainside. Very cool. Our hotel is actually an observatory built by Smithsonian scientists studying the volcano in the 70s. It became popular so they fixed it up and started having tourists here. It’s nothing fancy, but the grounds are all protected rainforest with trails and suspension bridges;

you actually have to walk over a suspension bridge to get to our room from the main buildings. Right around the hotel is all very well manicured with tropical plants. Right in front of our deck is a row of this sweet smelling flower that’s so strong we can smell it inside our room and it attracts hummingbirds like crazy.

There are so many that they look like bees buzzing around instead of birds. All different colors, there are supposedly 27 different species of hummingbirds just in this area. A huge list of birds in the area is in our room, hundreds and hundreds on several pages and that’s just around here! We can hear howler monkeys screaming in the afternoon off in the distance. This place is really awesome. Our room has a big picture window with chairs set both inside the room and outside on the private porch looking directly at the volcano (see the video link at the bottom of the post). It’s so close, only a few miles away, you can only see the top if you go out on the deck or crouch down in front of the window. It’s that close. You can literally see the rocks rolling down the side, crashing and breaking apart with steam and ash flying. Last night I was woken up by what I thought was thunder at 5:30 in the morning. I was mad because I thought we would get rained on for our ziplining, but I opened the blinds and saw nearly the entire side of the volcano was on fire with rocks and lava rolling down the side. I was so out of it and it was dark so I couldn’t find the camera. Still it was a sight to see that’s for sure. I got a picture of it afterward still smoking and it smoked all morning too.

Yesterday we took a tour around the property here. Like I mentioned it’s a large area of rainforest so it was quite a hike; it took three hours and that was with a ride back on a tractor. The tour was free and our guide told us the history of the volcano and took us to see a waterfall and a bunch more rainforest. The waterfall was straight from a postcard.

That afternoon we went to Tabacon resort. It’s a veritable thermal wonderland and an amazing place. Its waters come straight from a diverted spring and are naturally heated by the volcano. Very hot, probably 106-108 degrees in some pools.

I can’t even describe how awesome this place is. Waterfalls, private pools and streams, tropical plants everywhere on winding trails;

we spent about 5 hours just sitting in different pools alternating between hot and cool, letting the powerful hot waterfalls massage our backs and shoulders. We ate dinner there as well which was delicious Mexican food.

Finally onto Sunday, I told you this post would be long… (We just heard a loud eruption from the Volcano and the sound of tumbling rocks, but it’s raining so we couldn’t see it… darn). Today was also really great. For any of you that have ever done ziplining you know what I’m talking about. These lines were insane, some of them over ½ mile long and 1/8 mile above the ground at around 35mph. We took a 15 minute ride on a Doppelmayr lift up to the first platform for a few practice runs on very short cables. Once that is done, they don’t mess around. The next cable is 650 feet off the ground. There were amazing views of Arenal Lake and the volcano was very close as well. Pretty freaky at first, but so much fun. Coraleigh got a little twisted on her first run and it slowed her down so she didn’t make it all the way to the platform and was just hanging out there so she had to hand over hand it up the platform, but she handled it really well and didn’t even care. I thought she was going to freak out. I’ve got some videos attached from ziplining at the bottom of the post.

After the adrenaline fix in the morning we went to La Fortuna to just hang out, get lunch and find an internet café to book our next hotel. It’s a pretty small town with not a lot besides tour agencies and restaurants. We ate lunch at a good pizza place and I found out I am probably going to lose at fantasy football this week with their wifi :O( We also bought some granola bars and water at the “MegaSuper”. We found an Interbus office where the guy didn’t speak English and were able to book a bus to Playa Carrillo on the Pacific Ocean and 3 nights in Carrillo Club hotel. It looks amazing and was only $50/night thanks to off-season rates. It has a view over a completely non-developed half moon shaped bay with a white sand beach. (More big rocks tumbling down the mountain… damn rain). So that was our last three days. What did you do? Hehehe

Video links:

Coraleigh Ziplining

Our room at the Arenal Observatory Lodge

Camera attached to my back on the zipline

The first line, 650 feet high

I'm in heaven...

2009-10-22T22:09:00.000-07:00

I know I'm probably going to say this a lot, but what a day and some amazing pictures! We started early with breakfast at our new hotel, La Isla Inn. We both slept like the dead after our long day yesterday. Breakfast was cooked to order and really good. I had desayuno tica tipica (beans, rice, toast with butter and jam, and eggs. Coraleigh had un panqueque. It was like a huge fluffy pancake. After some rushing then waiting and more waiting we finally made it to Cahuita National Park for our wildlife tour.

I usually don't like tours, but this was totally worth it. We would not have seen even half the stuff we did had we not had the guide. Luis, our guide, was really knowledgeable and spoke pretty good English. He pointed out two and three-toed sloths, howler monkeys, giant iguanas, lizards that run on water, herons, butterflies, bullethead and leaf-cutter ants, white-faced monkeys, an eye lash viper, blue crabs, hermit crabs, huge termite nests and weird tunnels, and a lot of cool trees and some more of those closing ferns. I took tons of pictures and some video too. So many cool things that are not shown here too; babies latched on to howler monkeys and sloths. A giant iguana perched on the skinniest little branch a good 100 feet up a tree flapping his neck fat around attempting to court the female the next tree over. A curious white-faced monkey about 2 feet away from Coraleigh's head just eating berries. Oh and this great howler monkey almost crapped on us and then he showed his sack. lol.

At the end of the trail we came to a point with the nicest clear blue Caribbean water that we've seen yet. It was close to a reef too so there were lots of coral pieces on the beach. One piece I picked up had about 5 little hermit crabs in it! There is life crawling in every crevice of everything here. So we spent about 45 minutes waiting there at the point for our boat to come (so we didn't have to hike the same trail back). We had some fresh pineapple and watermelon and went swimming on the beach there. I took some pictures straight out of a postcard or calendar. They were everywhere! Finally we took off in the boat and got red eyes because of the sea spray over the edge of the boat from the wind; our tour guide hunkered under some life jackets. The tour place dropped us back at our hotel and we got changed and went to explore the "downtown" of Puerto Viejo.

Our hotel is on Playa Cocles which is great; it seems a little more popular for surfers. We thought it was the nicest, cleanest and least buggy around (the sand fleas can be bad on other beaches like Punta Uva). After some walking there we headed into town which was about a 15 minute walk. There we wandered through little local art tents, Coraleigh bought a nice silver bracelet and we had lunch at Mojos. It seemed popular and was run by two guys, one American and one Australian, one hyperactive and one dreadlocked surfer. Food was ok, not the best we've had, but it was food. And of course, like we've been getting anywhere we had jugos naturales. Natural juices, they are so good here. Coraleigh had passion fruit (maracuya) and I had strawberry (fresa). They blend it fresh and it costs like $1.50. Mmmmm. Not much after that; we're getting ready for dinner now and are packing up. We have a really early morning for our whitewater rafting trip down the Rio Pacuare tomorrow.

We're going out of internet range for about 4 days starting tomorrow; the Arenal Observatory Lodge has no internet. They're out in the middle of nowhere, but only about 1 mile from the base of this Volcan Arenal. The room we reserved has huge picture windows with great views of the volcano and its lava flowing and ejected rocks the size of cars tumbling down the slopes (for all you moms out there, 100% safe and bandito free). The area is supposed to be some of the most picturesque and lush in the country. Hopefully its clear enough to see!

Update: While we were out waiting for all the pictures to upload we found the best place for dinner. It's just down the road from our hotel and its called Bar Sol del Caribe. Another strange combination just like dinner last night. Louis Armstrong playing on the radio, gourmet-style fish dinner, freshly blended pineapple juice, all served up by a guy in flip flops in an open air sand floor bar with a banana leaf roof. hahaha. The food was amazingly good. Great last night in Puerto Viejo, now we don't want to leave!

Video links:

Manzanillo bike trip

2009-10-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

Today felt like our first real day of vacation. :-) We weren't on a plane or a bus or waiting for a plane or bus. haha We woke up kinda late, had a leisurely breakfast, said goodbye to Erin and Shannon who were continuing down to Panama, and then set out on our $5 bicycle rentals to find a hotel for the next two nights since Banana Azul was all booked up. It was such an amazing beautiful ride its so hard to describe. We started out with the goal of going down to Punta Uva but were enjoying the ride so much that we decided to continue down to Manzanillo. (side note - Tyler is looking up how to say "fart" in spanish, apparantly you have to say 'throw a fart', which if you're interested, haha, is "me tiro un pedo", he is cracking me up right now. He just ran the spanish through a translator and it said "I shot a fart", hahaha omg. its been a loooong day). Ok anyway back to our ride..

We bicycled down the main road here, which was an adventure in itself since most of it was either really rough and unpaved or full of muddy potholes or huge puddles; it took us both beside the ocean and through the jungle. At Punta Uva we stopped at the beach, which is one of the most gorgeaous beaches I've ever seen, SO warm and clear, and walked about a mile down it. We were feeling pretty good and the weather was great so then we decided to ride further south to Manzanillo. This part of the road took us mostly through jungle and it was so awesome, at one point we heard monkeys, they were super loud but not near us, and the sounds of the birds were almost deafening. It was stifling hot too so we were super happy whenever we could fly down a hill or when it would rain a little, it felt so good. :-) In Manzinillo we had a really good lunch of fish, salad, rice, beans and fried plantains and I had a delicious fresh passion fruit juice. yummm On the way back while we were stopped for a moment Tyler noticed something on the side of the road so we both looked closer and found this amazing plant that was closing its leaves whenever rain hit it. It doesnt sound like much me telling you but it was crazy! It closed its leaves so fast we almost thought it was a bug or something. We got it on video to show you here. You can also hear the birds and jungle noises. Pretty cool.

So on the way back we managed to find a new hotel for tonight and tommorrow night which is nice and a good deal. Its called Isla Inn and is on Cocles Beach. Its not as nice as Banana Azul but meets our needs. After we booked it we continued on back to Banana Azul to return the bikes and pick up our bags. We had riden all in all about 16 miles! haha, so we were thrilled when the Banana staff invited us to jump in their pool. They also have a pretty good tours reservation desk there so we took the opportunity to book two things that we wanted to do in the next two days; a 4 hour guided wildlife jungle hike through Cahuita reserve and an all day class 3-4 river rafting trip down the Rio Pacuari. The rafting company is also going to drop us off at our next location we plan to stay at, Volcan Arenal.

Tyler wanted me to add something about "leafy bug". When we got back from dinner, which was really delicious authentic italian pizza set to reggae music, there was a weird looking bug on our door. After looking closer we realized it looked exactly like a leaf with the veins and everything. Very strange.

Interbus a Puerto Viejo

2009-10-20T22:45:00.000-07:00

Today we rode the Interbus from San Jose to Puerto Viejo. It was really convenient and it picked us up right from our hotel and dropped us off at our place in Puerto Viejo. We left at 7:40am and got here around 12:30pm. What a crazy ride, but for you moms out there it was totally 100% safe with no banditos :O) We picked up four other people before leaving San Jose. A local dentist going to a clinic, a local businesswoman traveling to a hotel, and an Australian guy that was looking to study Spanish in San Jose for 6 months, but changed his mind after 2 days there. hahaha. Along the way we passed all the major banana farms like Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte. We drove on some twisty roads through the mountains and rainforest, and along gravel roads by the beach. This place is really out here in the middle of nowhere.

Our hotel here, Banana Azul, is really, really cool. We are staying in a Sloth cabina and we have two big wooden doors that open up onto our balcony overlooking the restaurant and pool area. You can also see out to the ocean through the trees and hear the waves crashing; we're right next to the beach.

We spent a few hours out there today watching these weird little curious crabs dart in and out of their holes in the sand. I tried to get one of them to eat a piece of pineapple. He just came out and stared at me for a while contemplating my intentions...

We got some drinks from the bar; I had a mojito and Coraleigh had a pina colada. It took the guy like 20 minutes to make the drinks, but he cut the pineapple fresh and hand made everything. Muuuuy delicioso! The beach was pretty much deserted except for us and our friend Erin (who we mentioned in the previous post) and her friend Shannon. They ended up being at the same place as us and we got here literally at the exact same time. Pretty good timing. So after a while on the beach and some wading in the warm ocean it started raining at its usual 3pm time so we headed for cover. Not like usual, though, it poured all afternoon and is still coming down. Hopefully nicer tomorrow for our bicycle ride south down the coast. The rest of the night we just kinda hung around, ate the hotel dinner of tuna steak, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, and ice cream for dessert, and then sat in the hammock under the gazebo next to the pool and frog ponds.

Erin and Shannon are leaving tomorrow to Bocas del Toro, Panama, but we wanted to stay here since we just got here today. We may go meet them if things sound great there, but we also want to do some hiking and whitewater rafting around here first. As for now, we're trying to get another night's stay here at Banana Azul, but they are all booked up for tomorrow.

Coraleigh made me check under the bed for "monsters" since we are pretty much in the jungle here and she's deathly afraid of culebras (snakes). We had a little visitor come through the lattice window in the bathroom and start eating bugs. Go gecko! Eat those bugs. Mosquitos aren't bad here at all, they're worse in Yakima or pretty much anywhere else. I only saw one. Now just listening to the sounds of the jungle outside our window and getting ready for bed. Hasta manana.

Another Day in San Jose

2009-10-19T20:15:00.000-07:00

…Too many as far are we’re concerned, but we leave tomorrow morning. :-)

Today was ok, we somehow managed to wake up in time for the complimentary hotel breakfast (before 9am) haha, which was pretty good standard fare. We ate by the pool’s waterfall and watched a hummingbird hover over this really pretty flower bush.

It was a clear warm morning so we went for a walk through the large park nearby called Sabana Park which seemed like maybe 10 or 20 years ago was probably pretty nice, but had since fallen into some disrepair. Nevertheless the trees, flowers and birds were pretty cool, and there were massive bamboo trees everywhere!

It got pretty hot during our walk so we took a dip and laid by the pool for about an hour which was fantastico. :-) Must get some sunscreen though cause I almost got burned just from the brief sun exposure here, and I never usually burn.

Hahaha Tyler is watching Football in Spanish here right now, it’s super funny. “TooochDowwn!” Don’t worry Tyler’s Fantasy Football League, he is fully on top of making sure his players are chosen perfecto via the fantasy football machine aka our netbook. Hahaha He keeps cracking up listening to the Spanish announcers Pablo and Raul.

So we finally found the restaurant we were looking for last night, La Granja, and it was totally worth finding. Muy delicioso and only about 8,000 colones which is about $14 dollars! We each had the special which was a typical Costa Rican dish including steak, rice, beans, this yellow potato salad stuff, a kind of a coleslaw but yummier, tortillas, and fried plantains. It was a huge plate and we loved all of it. :-) We also each had bottled water and a beer La Cerveza Costa Rica Imperial, which was much like a Pacifico so I was pretty happy.

Tomorrow we’re catching the “Interbus” (costs $39 US each but is air-conditioned), at 8am, for Puerto Viejo which is a supposedly beautiful Caribbean beach town in the south east of Costa Rica. It arrives at about 12pm and then we’re checking into a super nice hotel called Banana Azul that we found online for a special price ($55, including breakfast). Then we’re meeting up with my friend Erin who happens to be there and at the same hotel! Tomorrow is going to be awesome. :-)

Kinda crappy

2009-10-18T22:16:00.000-07:00

Sooooo... San Jose is kinda crappy. If you ever come here just do what we are doing and only spend about a day or skip it all together if you can. The main "attractions" are the theater (picture at right, supposedly the inside is really nice but it was Sunday so... closed), bank, and post office. Weeeee! Lots of shoe stores which all have the same shoes, but they're pretty cheap (may be cheaply made as well, though). Pretty dirty and crowded overall. After our walking around downtown we hopped in a cab to try to find this restaurant called La Granja the hotel recommended. We couldn't find much about it online so it must have been pretty small, and the cab driver couldn't find it either. It was pretty funny trying to explain in Spanish what I could remember about where it was. Anyway, after some driving around, which didn't really matter because cabs are dirt cheap here, we finally asked him for his recommendation for "comida buena".

He dropped us at at a place called Restaurante Churrascaria Fogo Brasil. It looked pretty nice and I thought I recognized the name from when I was looking through reviews on trip advisor for dinner places. It was a Brazilian-style steakhouse where they come around and cut meat right off a skewer onto your plate and you can eat as much as you want (see pic at left, I didn't take it, but just wanted to show how the steak is served). It also had an all you can eat buffet with all kinds of good sides like shrimp, beans, rice, salad, bread, cheese, and even sushi. We were thinking, "Wow this is a good deal for only $8 like the guy said." Yeah turns out he kinda mumbled $38 so we had our first expensive meal. Also turns out this was one of the nicest and most expensive restaurants in all of Costa Rica; not to say the food wasn't excellent. The wine was awesome, Malbec from Argentina; the desserts were unbelieveable, 60% pure chocolate brownie cake; this weird brazilian blender passion fruit milkshake kinda thing we had was so good; and the service was really great too. Obviously we ate a ton and in the US this meal would have been like $200 with drinks, dessert, wine, dinner, tax, tip. We paid about $120 after everything. Still sucks, but man what a dinner. Guess we better check the menu a little closer next time... At least the cab ride home was only $1 :O)

Do you know the way to San Jose?

2009-10-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

So we made it! Everything went very smoothly, no delays, no troubles at immigration or anything. A bit tired... We slept a few hours on the plane, but it was only a 4 hour flight and landed in Houston at 4am PST. Bleh... We went and found a somewhat abandoned gate area and made bed on the floor since all the chairs in the entire airport have fixed armrests. That floor was not soft. Slept there for about an hour,then another hour or so on the plane to San Jose, Costa Rica. About 5 hours total all broken up so we're pretty tired.

We got some money from the ATM (100,000 colones = $175), caught a cab from an eager and helpful taxi driver to our apartotel which is really clean and nice for only $50/night and includes a good breakfast.

Our address is "Sabana Norte, 150m north of the Rostipollos Restaurant, San Jose" hahaha. Now just getting settled in, cleaning up and waiting for the afternoon rain to quit before we head out for some food and shopping. Adios!

Blog name troubles

2009-10-16T00:53:00.001-07:00

It literally just took us two hours to come up with this stupid name. My suggestion was "Traveling within continents", but Coraleigh said it was too gross. Hahaha (or for those of you who habla espanol, jajaja). Oh well, at least I get to take credit for the greatest blog name ever.