Who needs a blog when you've got friends?

Here's the backlog. The photos are far superior to anything I'll be producing.

http://www.flourishingfoodie.com/2011/05/sacred-valley.html#more
http://www.flourishingfoodie.com/2011/05/goodbye-peru.html#more
http://www.flourishingfoodie.com/2011/05/ecuador.html#more
http://www.flourishingfoodie.com/2011/05/galapagos-islands.html#more

In summation: things are awesome.

Fotografías de Punta del Diablo!

Courtesy of Mr. David Burt:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150574647505072.669325.635070071&l=d69c58633e

I'm still terrible at taking photos

After two weeks and change in Punta del Diablo, I've returned to Montevideo. Having the beach in my front yard really encouraged some good habits (yoga and handstands everyday). I managed to slip in some surfing and horseback riding while I was there, and made a lot of new friends that are living/staying in Montevideo + Buenos Aires. Now that I've returned to silks class, I've discovered that I can climb the silks upside-down with a certain lack of grace that only makes me more of a man.

I may not have many photos, but you can't get angry at puppies:

With some weasle-work, I will attempt to snag the albums from other folks I met at the beach. I'm going to semi-promise that I will take a decipherable photo a day, in an attempt to have more than nothing to show you guys.

-Jag

Uruguay!

I have some pictures headed towards the facebook.

Here's the short story:

• Montevideo is pretty, but quiet. I will miss silks in the park, however.
• Punta del Diablo is three flavours of awesome, surfing lessons are coming up in 15 minutes
• I have fancy lenses for my phone waiting for me in BA. It should make my photos a bit more tolerable, but I may never get there if Punta del Diablo is as great as it seems.

Palabra del Día: Bigote

April cools?

Uruguay?

It's been a while since I've posted. Here's the haps:

I'm travelling solo now, my apartment lease is up at the end of the month, and I will dip a toe into Montevideo on the weekend. I'll setup shop if the water's fine, or return to Buenos Aires if it's as filthy as the river in Boca (which is very, very gross -- leather factory chemicals AND old tires abound).

As a result of the country switch, there's some good news for *you*. When in need of a new cellphone and a new camera, there's a perfect solution: a camera phone (how rare!).

Having a camera
+
it being one I am likely to carry
=
more pictures (which should be the spoonful of sugar that makes reading my writing palatable).

I've been hanging out with a lot of locals lately who speak relatively little ingles, which has been great. Recent highlights include:

• a chef student making me a multi-course dinner (candied pears, herb chicken with risotto, grilled/oiled/herbed-up veggies, and more!).
• hanging out a bunch of Brazilians and Colombians while dropping in at my go-to hostel, leading to an impromptu salsa lesson on the rooftop
• being taught Spanish by new friends via children's books, Casablanca with subtitles, and what I can only assume was Spanish comedy

In lieu of pictures, I offer this:

\\___//

 \0_0/

 (*_*)

Enjoy!

Buenos Aires - Summer of '11

Over the past few weeks, we've managed a couple of weekend trips to beat the heat.

The first was to Tigre, a heavily populated delta, that's a delightful network of street-like waterways for small craft (complete with street signs). We only had time for a boat ride, but we'll definitely return here to do some kayak-camping further up in the delta.

I'll be honest, we were too busy gawking to take good photos.

Rivers galore! And you can travel through any of this stuff.

The second trip was to Colonia, Uruguay. This small town's main draw is it's cozy, quaint, colonial, cobble-stone charm. Perhaps I've had my fill of colonial architecture, but I found scootering around the city and hanging out at the beach the more interesting parts of the trip. I suspect I will like the rest of Uruguay for these very reasons.

The drivers in Uruguay are terrible. 

I won the bullfight as a result of a no-show.

Meanwhile, in Buenos Aires, our apartment has been photographed! Hopefully this will make up for the lack of circus pictures (next week, honest!).

The receiving area. I should not that if you don't have your keys you can't leave through the front door. In case of fire, break door.

Our main living space is quite cluttered right now. The bike should give you a point of reference. On the left is the arm of a loveseat. Our breakfast table is in the center (with yellow laundry draped over a chair). This is all Amy's mess, of course (including the white laundry bag to the right). In the back is the washroom (lit up), and the bedroom. Out of frame on the left is the kitchen. 

Entry way to the kitchen. it looks less dank on the inside.

There's a full shower on the left, but it's tough to get everything in one shot. The bidet is unused, but now that I see it there: when in Rome.

Bedroom/Office. Business time?

Basket of Goods. This is what $20 CAD gets you in Buenos Aires. Cost is indicated by visibility. Notice how hard it is to see the cheap wine in the back right.

Our de facto dinner table. Tomatoes here are incredibly tasty. Everything else is as salty as olives. Dying young never seemed so attainable. In the back we have some empanadas (and Amy, my little empanada!). Vino tinto accompanies nearly every meal.

Here are some things I've been up to in Buenos Aires. They're in point form for ease of your reading, and not because of my laziness/the heat:

•  Spanish lessons galore! Also, Spanish movies are great. Volver is excellent, Pan's Labyrinth was good but depressing.
• My bike was totally destroyed by cobblestone streets, but has now been repaired. 4-hour bike ride around Buenos Aires with our building's caretaker this weekend!
• New circus school! It's smaller, but fancier. Pictures of that to come as well.

Buenos Aires

It's been about 2 weeks in Buenos Aires and thing have come together quite nicely. Work is going well, circus is keeping me in shape, and Spanish lessons start tomorrow morning. I believe Amy has some pictures up on facebook, and I'll try to get a link to them soon for those that need it. I have to apologize for taking fewer and fewer pictures. As we settle in and live more and more like locals, we tend to have our camera on us less. Perhaps I need a camera phone.

Over the past two weeks I've come across some things I love, and some things I love less. For example, I love biking in this city. There are no real laws, and bikes compete with cars and motorcycles for space, jockeying for position as if it were Nascar.

Two-wheeled unicycle. I call it a two-nacycle. Fishy.

What I love less is the 4-5 hour journey that was our trip to the international shipping office. It was taken over by the government at some point and went down the tubes. In short, if you're feeling like sending me a gift/package/whatever, don't do it unless you hate me or you think it's worth waiting forever for. What I love is that I consider every day that you each haven't shipped me a package a little gift. Thank you so much, to reciprocate, I have elected to not write you a thank-you letter.

I also love the little cafes that are ubiquitous in this city. What I love less is the feeling that bringing my laptop into them will get marked for a stabbing/robbing if I do it for long enough. On the plus side, it keeps me from living on the Internets.

Medialuna = sticky croissant = lounging

I've just taken some pictures of our current apartment and I'm sure they'll be on facebook soon. Now that we've settled into this place (in the middle of a 2-month stay), we're looking at weekend trips out of Buenos Aires. This last weekend we went to Tigre, an enmorous delta that we'll have to return to kayak to. It's fully populated, with river signs that read like street signs. Next weekend we're aiming to stay at an estancia outside the city for some horse-play, canoeing, and living like a gaucho.

[photo album link misplaced due to time rift]

Backlog: Final Days in Peru to First Days in Buenos Aires

It's been a while since I've posted, so here's a quick rundown of what's been happening.

The end of Peru was delightful. Arequipa was the last city we were in, and it was delightful. At the time, I had remarked that it was my favourite (and largest) city we had seen in America del Sur. I find that the more people you meet (in more than a casual way) the more you feel like the city you met them in is 'awesome', so there may be a bit of bias here. So what happened? Here are the coles notes:

1) The food was awesome and cheap (even for Peru standards!).
2) We went river rafting and did a minor cliff jump in the process. Our guide was the first guy I had a real (mostly) Spanish conversation with and my first friend for partying that was a for-real Latin American.
3) We went mountain biking down El Misti, with quite the cool guide. This is a mountain that's rolls right into the city of Arequipa, we're looking at about 4400m to about 2500m. Stupendous. The guide has some great stories too. (Un)fortunately he was too excited and fluent in English for us to really practice our Spanish with.

After Arequipa, we (foolishly?) decided to bus through Chile to Buenos Aires. The short of it is that we spent around 60 hours on buses, broken up by a night in Arica and Santiago for dinner. On the plus side, we earned passport stamps for Chile!

We've been in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a full week now and I have plenty to say about it, but I'll save it for later. I will say this though, CAD $3 bottles of wine are more than twice as good as CAD $1.50 bottles of wine.

There is a severe drought of pictures from Chile (understandably) and Buenos Aires (less understandably), but here's some more Peru for you:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=322904&id=667531677&l=a9115f53dd

Machu Picchu

A quick note about the last post. We put up some pictures on Amy's facebook, so befriend her if you dare. Otherwise, this link might work:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=319170&id=667531677&l=ae3028f251

We've since been exploring the Sacred Valley (between Cusco and Machu Picchu) for the past several days. There has been good food and good hiking from the mountains to the valley with ruins littered along the way. I will make an effort to take more pictures of food since my skills as a food-writer are lacking. The only reason I haven't turned as plump as a pumpkin is that traveller's D is more common here than other Latin American countries (according to a fellow traveller).

Our first stop was Pisac, which had the best non-Machu Picchu hike. Apparently there's a booming craft market, but it wasn't really our thing. Although they did educate me on fake currency, when I unwittingly tried to dupe a vendor with a fake 5 sole coin (less than $2 CAD). She had a good cackle with her friends about how poor a forgery this coin was.

Next was Urubamba, most notable for its quietness. The hostel we stayed at was among the best, however. It was a giant garden, complete with cuy castillo (guinea pig pen) and a ping-pong table. Also, the best meat-dishes we've eaten Peru were at a restaurant in this city. Not much else going on, though.

The third city on our tour of the Sacred Valley was Ollantaytambo, which is apparently the most Inca-like city in the country. Of note were the cobblestone streets that were too narrow for cars and even mototaxis. A highlight for me was trying to rent a bike to tour around the city. The first place asked for $300 USD or my passport as a deposit. The second place gave me a bike with no collateral, payment, or information. Viva el Peru! The streets qualify as a bonafide mountain biking route in my book.

Our final stop, before returning to Cusco was the Machu Picchu's pit-stop: Aguas Calientes. We split a 4-bed room, which was a great way to meet people and practice our Spanish. To be honest, after seeing ruins all along the Sacred Valley and seeing the typical pictures of Machu Picchu, I thought it would be nice, but not as great as it's made out to be. It turns out that the pictures really don't do the place justice, and the ruins blow away the rest of the Inca sites we've seen. It's fun to explore the ruins and there are a few phenomenal hikes right around the site. This paragraph and the soon-to-be-posted facebook pictures aren't sufficient, but they'll have to do.

To avoid duplicated effort, I'm not posting any photos to this blog, you'll have to survive on facebook albums. Here's the public link for the Sacred Valley photos. We lost a few from Pisac (which included some well-timed, well-placed handstands):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=321456&id=667531677&l=2a4ea72e12

We've just now arrived in Arequipa (bigger than Cusco, smaller than Lima) and we've heard nothing but good things. I'll let you know how it goes.

Arriving In South America

After nearly a full day of travel, we arrived at Lima airport at 10 pm. The plan was to sleep at the airport and catch a 6 am flight to Cusco with Peruvian Airlines.

I should point out that booking flights within Peru online is a small nightmare. After having done some research, I expected to pay somewhere around $50-70 for a domestic flight. It turns out that these fares are now only available to Peruvians and a hefty $180 foreigner-fee is applied if you can't show proof of Peruvian-ness. There are non-Peruvian fares ($350-ish), but they're typically higher than the Peruvian fare even after paying the foreigner-fee. Not to worry though, Peruvian Airlines offers a much more reasonable price of ~$100 with no strings attached.

Our flight was repeatedly delayed due to bad weather, which lasted about 3 hours when it was all said and done. Initially I was going to gripe about the Peruvian Airlines, but I think I was just sour over the unknown wait time and the rapidly spoken Spanish flight announcements that weren't repeated in English (PA was the only airline this was true for -- but maybe it's my own fault for being a gringo). After arriving in Cusco and having no bad experiences apart from the flight delay, I was in a cheerier mood.

[picture of our hotel]

We settled into a classy place that had been recommended to us. Since Cusco is higher than 3300m, altitude sickness, also known by the menacing Spanish name: serroche (sounds like ceviche), is a real concern. Being sensible, and generally less successful at sleeping on planes, Amy decided to nap. Being an idiot jubilant, I wandered the streets, running, jumping, plundering the hilly streets for its delicious treats. Guess who ended up succumbing to the dreaded air-thief, serroche?

Both of us!

Yes, the joys of nausea, headaches, and physical exhaustion belonged to both of us. Initially I caved and tried to get oxygen from the hotel staff, but they were closed. In the morning I felt a bit better and Amy hit the oxygen. In short: I'm the winner.

Today we opted for a humbler approach: massages, plenty of liquids, naps, and a blogpost.