Can you tell which of us has just vomited?

Hola again to my faithful subjects. I trust everyone had a wonderful holiday and is the midst of making their new year resolutions, complete with timetable on how soon to break them.

I am here in Lima, where I spent a nice quiet holiday waltzing around the city and finishing it off with a first run horror movie, that came out in the states about 6 months ago. I don{t really care as A.) it is new to me, and B.) it was the only option in English, unless I was willing to subject myself to Alien versus Predator. Which as you can see, I was not.

A couple of comments on Lima so far. Here I would insert a colon assuming it was working, but big surprise that every key on the keyboard is in fact a big surprise. But anyway, I know that everyone says Lima is a total shithole and the only thing one should really do here is change planes. I do not agree as so far I actually quite like it. The people are friendly (the men as usual are a bit too friendly) the city parks and streets are clean, and I have yet to really encounter the famous pollution. I know it is here somewhere, but also must say that my idea of pollution and other people's ideas are a bit different seeing as how I live in a town already filled with busses spewing black smoke. So this is not a problem. Also, the weather for the time I have been here so far has been really nice. Warm and sunny! Attached you will get to see some pictures!

Anyway, now the family is here and we are going to be doing all kinds of fun things like paragliding over the city, and possibly taking a city tour before heading off to Machu Piccu. There is also some talk of bowling. Again, a smiley face here would be appropriate, but....

I think we left off in Huacachina, the polluted laguna in the desert. I had a lovely stay there, did a dune buggy ride and tried the famous sand boarding. A lot of fun and glad I did it, and am doubly glad I don{t have a broken leg, collarbone, arm, or some other part of my anatomy that people seem to get on a regular basis after participating in this activity.

I did meet some funny local guy who is about 18 and wanted to practice his English, so I walked and talked with him for a while. After a while of the where are you from questions, he wanted me to give him some more slang terms in English to supplement what he has. Then he says "what about nigger?" And I say, "what?" And he wants to confirm that the term refers to black folks and I'm like, "um, we don't really use that term, and I would suggest you don't either". And he says, "but I learned it from the movies and it seems OK, as they are saying it all the time". Now I am assuming that he is refering to some of the either really old 70's films that you see on the busses all the time here and of course all the new hip hop movies that seem to throw that term about. So note to all you movie makers who think you are being hip, don't forget about all the latin americans and people of other countries who are learning our language by watching films! Can you just imagine some latin dude walking up to some black guy in NY saying, "what's up nigger?" because he thinks he is being with it as far as language is concerned? No wonder this world is so full of misunderstandings!

Oh and I think I promised a small discussion regarding latin american dogs. Shannon should feel free to post a comment on this particular subject. Anyway, here are the observations so far--stay tuned at the end of my trip I will add some comments about dogs I have yet to meet. Anyway, here is the roundup thus far

Argentina--these are dogs on a mission. You see them strolling down the street with what looks like actual purpose, like they are on the way to the office or something. The only thing missing is the briefcase hanging from the mouth.

Uruguay--I don't think we really need to comment on these guys.

Colombia--for the most part pretty relaxed. There was a story of some dog bites to hikers, but nothing confirmed. Mostly they kind of stroll around the streets and hang out but aren't too involved in anything.

Ecuador--these dogs are hungry and crazy. They are all hungry and will go running after you, cars, other dogs, doesn't matter. Not sure if they think they are going to eat whatever they catch, but they are trying to catch anything!

Peru--so far these dogs are just as hungry as the Ecuadorian dogs, but they really can't be bothered to get up or even bark. Guess they are smarter than the Ecuadorian dogs in that they realize they might as well conserve whatever engery they have.

OK, think that is going to be it for a while. We are off to Machu Piccu in a few where I think I am going to award myself with a pedicure, since I haven't had one since I left the states in the spring and my feet sure have taken a beating since then. Of course the pedicure lady is probably going to recoil in shock and disgust when she takes a gander at these beasties....

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Lima%20y%20Nazca/

Oh, and the puker? Yeah, you know it was me..and the guy next to me too!

Who said the holy family had to be blonde and blue eyed?

Hola travellers and happy holidays! So here I am relaxing at the laguna in the desert in Huacachina Peru. At an internet cafe listening to Ricky Martin, who was preceded by Wham. Nice here, but apparently the lake is now polluted enough that folks don´t go in it, and the hotel has no water in their pool. Doin the dune buggy ride in the sand dunes today and then the plan is to head off to Lima.....although one of the few hotels in Pisco that is open has written me to confirm that they do actually have tours running to the islands on Christmas...hmm. Maybe I will do that now. Crap, I hate it when new options come up and then I have to turn around and make another decision again! Damn! Think I need a bit of city time though. Anyway, stay tuned for how that turned out.

So, let´s see where we last left off....I had just arrived in Arequipa and totally admit that I really just vegged out there for an entire week in front of cable tv! I did fun things like visit the Santa Catalina monestary, which is almost 500 years old, huge, and painted in all variety of colors. Pretty cool and nice relaxing way to ditch the old Peruvian guy that was trying to get me to meet him for drinks. Not that he wasn´t interesting the first hour I spend talking to him in Spanish, but basically I had run out of vocabulary and also know enough now that to accept that invitation......well, more on that later.

What else...I hung about at the city park and in the Plaza de Armas, again fending off a variety of men and restaurant touts. I admit that is probably about it..did have an amazing salad in Arequipa though, and fresh salad is pretty hard to come by down in these parts for whatever reason.

Then I decided I should go and see the Colca Canyon, which is almost the deepest in the world--outpaced only by the Cotohausi, which is deeper by about 160 meters but another 5 hours away from Arequipa, and the 6 hour ride to Colca was long enough! The Colca canyon is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, if you can wrap your mind around that. Anyway, I decided in my infinite wisdom and apparently since all the sun in the desert here is melting my brain, to do a mountain bike ride down into the canyon, followed by 4 days of trekking. In the desert. In summer. With no one other than the guide.

It was good fun, but really hard work for me, as the descent into the canyon is almost 5,000 feet from where we started. And then we had to climb that back out. Apparently regular mortals can do the climb out in 3 hours, but I was on the 5 hour plan. Oh well, I made it and the guide was really proud of me that I didn´t cheese out and hire a donkey. I admit that was mostly because I didn´t have the 40 soles required to do it!

The mountain biking was fun, but really hard for one who hasn´t been on a bike in more than 10 years. It was also somewhat vertical in places, the dirt path was full of rocks, and after 4 hours of squeezing the brakes where my hands finally felt like they were going to never open again, I had to hike 2 hours uphill to the lodging for the night! Then we had to hike down about 300 feet and back up in the dark in order to go to the hot springs that were down near the river. After that I had about 8 hours of walking each day up and down in the sun, but the views were amazing.

I did try my first Pisco Sour, the national drink of Peru. The guide left me with the restaurant/hostal owner guy (or someone) and he showed me how to make it and then we had some. Unfortunatly (as I have discovered here in SA) if you are a woman travelling alone, the assumption is that of course I want some guy to come home with me. So I kindly let this guy know I was not interested, and he wouldn´t let it go, so I faked that I was throwing up to get rid of him. Then he kept coming by room every 15 minutes to see if I was better and ready to carry on. He then eased the window open an inch and kept coming back and looking in. Thankfully he couldn´t see me because it was dark, but I must say it was creepy.

The word on the street is that to Latin guys, no means yes. So I have to figure out what the story is on that and then find out what exactly does mean no. Those with any input into this situation can feel free to sound off and send me some tips!

And I did actually see some condors! Mostly I saw them from the bottom of the canyon and so not close up. We waited at the lookout for almost 2 hours to see them and they never came. We boarded the bus, took off for Arequipa, and then one did decide to grace us with her presence. The picture is pretty shitty and not close up, but it was an awesome view! They have a 3 foot wingspan.

Well, better run for now. I would say so I could run off to have lunch, but the truth is I have budgeted just enough money here where I can afford one meal today, and think it is going to be dinner.

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Arequipa%20and%20Colca%20Canyon/?start=0

Happy holidays, and in our next installment, we will discuss the observed differences in south american dogs as all countries apparently are not created equal in this regard.

Back to the land of the palta

Hi Folks,

So here I am in southern Peru! I finished up my volunteer work at the black sheep and had a great time. I was suprised to feel as sad as I did upon leaving, but I guess sometimes you never know how affected you are by people and places until you leave them. It was a wonderful learning experience, and one the I am sure may help to lead me in my next professional path in life. Stay tuned at a later date when I actually figure that out. :)

The picture above is from my last foray into the weekly market in Chugchilan (where they had ¨music¨ from Sigchos--turns out to be a bunch of people who have never actually practiced or played before, but all were welcome--kind of like an open-mike night) and heading back toward the inn.

So, back to Peru. Who would have guessed that the Lima airport is a great place to spend the night, as apparently a lot of people are doing it and it never closes. At most you might have to change tables as the cleaners come around and want to mop. Anyway, I arrived in Arequipa at around 5:45 in the morning and was suprprised to see it is really in the mountains but also the desert. Quite different topography than I have been seeing for a while. This is a great town, and yes, the palta is back! This means I must be quite close to Argentina as the apparently northern word for avocado, aguacate, has been replaced with the word I learned in Buenos Aires, which is palta. They are also all over the place, and I have eaten one each day I have been here so far! I am on the hunt now to see if gafas (glasses) have turned back into anteochos.

This is a cool town, and today I discovered what apparently must be cake alley. An entire street with nothing but torte shops trying to outdo the one next door with their cake decorating skills. The street smells of sugar and exhaust, as there are a ton of taxis here. I followed that walk up with a meal in a place totally decked out for Christmas (is it that time already?) and playing Christmas carols alterenated with Air Supply and Bob Marley. Today I also got to meet Juanita, apparently the best preserved mummy of any Incan sacrifice ever. It was cool, although not for her, I am thinking.

The Peruvian people are really nice and helpful--much like all the other South American people I have met so far on this journey. I must say though that these Arequipeños are obsessed with cheap chinese food. It is probably every other store front on some of these streets......

Here are some photos...I am too lazy to label most of them, but they are pictures of the inn and the people who make it such a great place, a couple of the beach, and I think that is about it.

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Beach%20and%20more%20BSI/

The mysterious origins of the gripe pill

Hola again! Here I am back in Quito after an amazing time at the beach, where the ground literally moved. First of all I must say thanks to all those who post comments on the blog. I do read them but rarely respond as I am not sure those who posted check back to see if there is a response. So anyway....if you respond and want a response, please say so and I will send a comment your way!

I am heading back to Chugchilan tomorrow in anticipation of a nice turkey dinner for Thanksgiving, so that is very exciting! Of course I have just found out that I have a task of trying to find some cranberries here, but alas have found out too late and think the likely stores to have it will be closed by the time I get there.......drat.

Anyway, the beach was great although I was really too lazy to take many pictures, so have about 3 and will add them next time. I did get to encounter the earthquake though, and as it has been many years since I felt one, it was like a new experience all over again! The ground literally shook right after I sunk the eight ball at pool (actually on purpose this time!) and everyone went running for the doorway. No major damage, although the bar did lose it´s sign that was swinging outside.

I must say before we move on, that you always find these great little towns and think you could really settle in for a while and take it easy. Unfortunatley, inevitably some local guy takes a shine to me and then starts to stalk me and finally I have to leave town. So sad and this little beach town was no exception....sigh. Oh well.

But let´s get back to the real topic at hand: yes, the gripe pill. Gripe (pronounced gree-pay) is a standard latin american term for everything ill it seems. From a cold, to the flu, to menstral cramps to hemmoroids. The real issue is of course the pill since it treats everything! These pills of dubious origin usually come in a packet that the pharmacist or your good buddy gives you and are never labelled, so it is really unclear how many to take or what they should actually do for you. Which I think is nothing anyway, so guess that where it comes from is no muy importante. Just another latin american ism to ponder on those 7 hour bus rides!

"He was so cute....and delicious!"

OK, before you all freak out, the cuys on the left are not the one on the right! The quote is actually referring to a pic of one of the former sheep at the BSI that I was viewing. Haha.

In all seriousness though, here I am in Quito catching up on some interneting as ours has been out at work for the last couple of weeks. I have to say I was so excited to get here and have an empanada yesterday. Unfortunatley, it had to be one of the most disgusting things I have eaten in a long time. It was supposed to be filled with carne, but had what had to be dog food in it. Fortunately I am not in the habit of eating dog food and so cannot attest to the vailidy of that statement, but it was nasty. And empanadanas are made from flour people, not corn! So disappointing......but thankfully the McDonald{s burger I had today was not!

The day started with a 4 AM bus towards Latacunga, and the discovery in the dark that with all the rain we have had, the road has disappeared down into the canyon. This part of Ecuador is so high in altitude, nothing is growing and it looks a bit like you are on the moon. So in the pitch black, they announce we all have to get off the bus. The driver attempts for about a half hour to see if he can get the bus over enough of the sand road that is left for us to continue on. He is missing about 6 inches of road space, and so finally decides it is not happening. Of course there is nowhere to turn around, so we all trudge after the bus for about a mile while he backs up to a point where he can finally turn it around. We get back on and head the way we have come. We are about an hour and a half from Chugchilan, and I think we have to go all the way back and then around through Sigchos and am not convinced I shouldn{t get off and just go back to bed when we get there. But apparently he has other choices, as we finally pull into Zumbahuaa about 2 hours later. So I get here to Quito a couple of hours late, but it is all good. Well, until the disappointing empanada, but we won{t revisit that.

I am off to the beach for a few days of relaxing and eating fish and getting warmed up as it is damn cold in the Andes. I have been at the BSI for about 5 weeks now and am having a grand time--except for the internet being out. And the phone line has been out more often than not as well, so I am really quite out of touch. But that is actually OK as it makes getting a chance to send some email a bit of a novel experience again!

For a vegetarian place, I admit I am getting to have a bit of meat once in a while. We had a party with the local staff to celebrate the day of the dead, so I got to have some rabbit, which I don{t think I have had before, as well as finally getting to try the guinea pig, the Ecuadorian delicacy we would never think to have in the states. Unless your pet died, I guess. It was rather tasty albiet a bit bony. The dogs love to munch on cuy bones though. :) The cat is disinterested, as she prefers her cuys to be alive when she starts on them. Word on the street is that one of the new babies has apparently been a victim to the cat{s desire for live cuy, but thankfully I was not a witness to this event.

In the past few weeks I have done a bunch of hikes near the inn and gotten lost, as well as finally tackling the big hike from Laguna Quilotoa back to Chugchilan. The laguna is a crater lake about 7 or 8 miles away from the inn, where you take a pickup truck with all of us squished in the back about an hour from the inn and then do the hike back. Included in this episode are a couple of pictures from that day.

I have met some great people during my time at the inn, as well as a bunch of weirdos you only seem to get to meet when working in the hospitality industry. Every day there is something new to laugh at, and I am also getting to learn alot about how to function in a different culture. Very much like the states, there are a bunch of people in the community that want to get things done (Andres is working with the local community to get a new water system in place) but don{t want to actually do anything but talk about how differently everything should be done. And no one wants to take direction from anyone else. So some things are universal!

So here are some of the photos, but coming in our next installment will hopefully be the answer to the burning question--what exactly is in a gripe pill?

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/BSI%20Dos/

Ba Ba Black Sheep!

Hi again my loyal subjects--

So here I am in Chugchilan Ecuador and the BSI. I am writing you whilst looking over the canyon and watching the day's clouds come in, as they usually do at this time of day. Sometimes there is rain and we have even had some thunder and hail! The weather can change here in a New York minute and often does. The sunset lasts about 5 minutes, so when I tell the guests to go check out the sunset, they all run up to thier rooms to grab thier cameras. The sunset is usually over before they get back with them!

Things are going really well here. I am enjoying my time here and am learning a ton of information about hospitality and ecotourism. The owners are one of the coolest couples I have ever met. You people know how impressed I always am with meeting people who are living a life of their own design. These folks are doing just that and have built everything they have here from the ground up with little to no experience. The are also getting to enjoy the trails and tribulations of trying to accomplish anything in a developing country, so those are always fun stories to hear!

I am trying to work on my spanish a bit more and studying a bit each day. I am also climbing hills each day in order to get in better shape for all the walking I will need to do in Machu Piccu, so that is good for me as well. I am enjoying perhaps a bit too much boxed Chilean wine, but in general not doing too bad. The food is yummy, and for a vegetarian place, we (the owners and myself) are sure getting to enjoy a lot of meat for dinner! hehe!

They have about 9 local employees working here and the girls are fascinated with the size of my breasts and scandalized by the fact that I am divorced. And old. And have no children. They are constantly asking why I am divorced, which is a loaded question in English let alone in Spanish! The only answer I can come up with is "no me gusta me esposo". Which translates roughly to "I don't like my husband". I have yet to reach the point of being able to use that verb in the past tense, so they just have to deal with it for now! They are also constantly on the move to try to set me up with every Ecuadorian man in the village, married or not. My heart lies elsewhere, so I am working the smile nod I-don't-understand look pretty often. Often it is actually even true, so not that much of a stretch for me!

So that is all I have time for now--but here are some pics to start with and will write more later!

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Black%20Sheep%20Inn/?start=all

Colombia, New York, North Carolina, Ecuador...I'm so confused!

Hola travellers!

You people will think I deserved it, but there I was, on a 17 hour overnight bus from Santa Marta to Bogota surrounded by children. Thankfully after a while the parents smarted up and drugged them and they went to sleep.....so ended my last trip to Colombia which I have to say is one of the best places on earth and I highly recommend everyone go there if given a chance. I do have some secrets about that trip which I will not divulge here (a girl has to have some secrets!), but suffice it to say it has been a highlight of my trip here to South America.

I know it has been forever, and tomorrow I am off to the Black Sheep Inn www.blacksheepinn.com to do some volunteer work so who knows when I will actually find the time to update this again!

Some thoughts as I sit here at the Papayanet here in Quito before I head out tomorrow. Coming back to the states was a lot of fun for a while, although I probably spent too much time, as now I have to get back in the groove and try to think en espanol again.

I sit here listening to, of course, Culture Club because it is all about the 80's here, and consider the differences 24 hours can make. Last night I was having drinks at some semi ritzy hotel in Manhattan with a friend who flew out all the way to NYC from New Mexico to surprise me, and then not 10 hours ago I was browsing the sky mall catalog on my flight from New York and pondering the real need in the world for an instant doorway puppet stage (complete with working curtains!) and something called the marshmallow shooter, which as you have probably guessed, is a gun that shoots marshmallows. But all is right with the world as not more than a half hour ago I got to through the toilet paper in the trash again. Although in reality I now know someone who would actually probably like the marshmallow shooter (you know who you are, but your secret is safe with me!).

I think we last left off in Cartegena which is very beautiful and very hot. Those folks speak very fast and apparently have collectively decided to do away with the S is all Spanish words. I got to wear the shorts I have been carrying around in my bag for 6 months there and so justified packing them to bring back, although in reality don't think I will wear shorts again for 6 more months. I also got to tour one of the old forts in Cartegena that was constructed to protect the city and see the museum of the inquisiton. Creepy. I did get to have drinks at an awesome outdoor restuarant at sunset, so that was cool. Very romantic and I was there alone, but that is kind of the story of my life...sigh. For my trouble I got to spend 27,000 pesos on a mojito! Preparing me for my reentry into New York, I guess.

I then pressed on to a small town called Taganga which is in the Northeast of Colombia near the Venezuelan border. I did nothing there but look at the amazing view, sweat, and try to think of ways to foil the mosquitos. I took a "direct" bus from Cartegena which turned out to involve sitting in Baranquilla (has to be one of the ugliest cities on the planet, I don't care what Shakira says!) where the same bus then picked me up an hour later to continue on to Santa Marta. I have a total of about 1 picture of Taganga which is the lovely bay picture you will see in the photos.

Other photos are of the statues in San Augustin, which apparently come from a civilization no one really knows anything about, and our horseback ride into the hills to see some of them and Lucas, our guide, demonstrating his horseriding abilities. Of course the guide kind of started stalking me in town after that, but did give me a lovely pair of earrings that I wore on my birthday, so it's not all bad! Weird, but not bad. Before I forget, here are the photos

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Colombia%20dos/?start=all

I am hoping at some point to figure out how to make that a link rather than something you have to copy and paste, but for now you just get to deal with it.

Better run for now as the music has decidedly turned 90's, which I will take as my cue to head back to the hostel, where they even put me in the same room as last time, which is somewhat comforting. It was great to see everyone in New York and North Carolina, and thanks to dad, Cheryl and Kris for coming to see me in North Carolina, and to Maryann for coming to see me in New York. Kudos to Doina for a surprise well done!

Further updates will include the sordid details regarding my realization that it is not only my life that is all about laundry, but it is everyone else's life here too. I finally fit in somewhere as these people can all appreciate my issues!

Love you all!

And on to Colombia....again

As we pulled out of San Augustin the other night, the bus came to a complete stop and I thought, oh no--here it is--maybe I shouldn´t have done the night bus after all! The southern part of Colombia is mostly controlled by guerillas and I know they do bus checks just like the military does. I thought for sure they were going to get on board and see what was going on, but alas, the stop I was feeling a bit fearful of? That´s right...the first traffic light I had seen in what felt like weeks. But anyway, on with our story.

So at this point, the real burning question is: What exactly is it that the Colombians have against the toilet seat? The chances of finding one in any given bathroom are roughly 50% and I have to say even Ecuador has better odds than that! And what is up with the fact that there is no toliet paper? Don´t you people use it?Strange the things that occupy my mind these days.

Anyway, I had a bunch of notes about things I wanted to post on here that of course I forgot in my hotel room--which has two fans blowing and that means the papers are probably all over the floor by now. I have traded in the cold Andean nights for a bit of hot and humid air (just to show solidarity with you folks who are sweating through the US summer) here in Cartegena on the coast of Colombia.

I returned to Colombia a little over a week ago when I found out I am going to be able to do the internship at the Black Sheep Inn in Ecuador. I was due to head to Peru, but needed to reschedule all that so I could return home and grace you folks with my presence for a couple of weeks and let you all take me out to dinner. So the best flight I could find was leaving out of Bogota and figured that since I missed most of Colombia last time, now was as good of a time as ever to return.

This time around I came in via the land border north of Quito by about 5 hours. Of course, with my great idea to try and not pay anymore ATM fees, I came in with about 5 US dollars, which is bad because there were no ATM´s to be found--well, working ATM´s that is. There are none at the border and I had just enough pesos to get myself into town via collectivo and then walk around the town (which is kind of shady) to try to find a working ATM. The Colombians are so great because they are always so friendly and telling you to take care. They will also drop whatever they are doing to accompany you somewhere if you are alone (like in a state park or something) just to walk and talk with you.

I was riding from Quito next to a guy from Peru and you people think my bus schedule is outrageous--check this out. He was going to be travelling for about 30-35 days. All by bus. He had left Lima and gone to northern Peru for a couple of days, then on to Guayaquil, the Ecuador coast and then to Quito. He was going up into Colombia and on to Cali that day (about 10 hours more than the 5 hours we had just done) and then over to Bogota, into Venuzuela, down to Brazil and back to Peru. Anyone that has logged any bus time with me here knows that he was probably looking to spend a good 2 weeks of his time (day and night) into the transport of it all because these distances are massive and for the most part, every one of these trips he was taking was between 12-20 hours just to get from place to place! I hope it was worth it for him, as I am thinking when he returns, all he will really have to tell his friends is what bus is better to go where, etc, than about what he may have seen! Yikes!

So enough of that and back to me. :)

Some of the great things I have seen so far in the last weeks....a bus that went, literally, 10 kilometers an hour from Popyan to San Augustin, with so many bumps in the road that I repeatedly smacked the side of my face against the support of the back window (this is my fault, I choose a really shit bus and my travel buddy says he gets to choose next time as I clearly cannot be trusted). More on him and his opinions of my decision making abilities later!

Other snipets from my memory: horse carts sharing the streets with cars, people go around mostly either barefoot or in those rockin rubber boots, chickens (all over south america!) roam free everywhere and I must say they are rather tasty for getting to live such a carefree life!, crazy geese, Manuel the coke cooker with the funny smile (more on him later as well), indications of bus times--If they tell you 5 hours, it will be 7-8, busses and cars only pass each other on curves in the road it seems, and of course, the 4 person family on the moped--along with dad´s briefcase on someone´s knee!

And the ever important--just like in Ecuador--need for small bills. Everything is done with cash, but there are no ATM´s anywhere, and everyone wants small bills, and no one has change for anything. And if you are lucky enough to get money from the bank or ATM, they will of course only give you 50´s. While in San Augustin, a few of us realized we were going to need money. Of course the only ATM in town wasn´t working, and another girl and myself were able to do a Visa cash advance (after about an hour or two of waiting in line), but the guy with us had to get a bus and go into Pitalito (about an hour) in order to get money from his mastercard and the whole ordeal for him took about 4 hours! So important now to think of wher I am going and when and then get money accordingly!

And the people are so sweet--feel like I was involved in a little bit of a soap opera in San Augustin with the tour guide, which I won´t get into now, but anytime I walked through town, local people that I met would always come up and say hi. My last day there, one of the vendors in the market gave my friend a banana to give to me as a gift--isn´t that sweet! Think I got more gifts in that town than anywhere else...but again, a story for a different time. For now, I think I am going to talk myself into going out into the heat and then tomorrow I am heading off to a beach town to put in a bit of time chilling before getting on another long ass bus back to Bogota and you people.

Coming in our next post: the dates and times I am available in NYC for you folks to take me out, and what my prefered food choices might be. Since there are choices, it will take me about 5 days to make any--so look for that info next time! And don´t forget that my birthday is coming up!

Saludos,
S

The state of Ecuador in our wake

Still standing of course, but not for lack of trying! Haha. So I here I sit guarding my newly washed laundry--half of what I have with me for only $2.60! The best deal yet! Good thing too as I am off to the Cotoapaxi area tomorrow to check out the Black Sheep Inn where I am hoping to do some volunteer work in the fall after my much needed rest in the states. I will then return to Quito for about a week as I signed up for some español lessons and then will be off to Peru. Quite possibly there is a flight in the future there too as it is 24 hours by bus just to the Peruvian border, and these aint no Argentine busses!

So we decided to suck it up and pay the $50 or so more to fly back to Quito from Cuenca, as we just couldn{t stomach another 10 hours on the bus. I have been on a bus an average of once every 4 days for the last 6 weeks and am looking to sign on for a bunch more in the next 6 and so a flight for about 35 minutes (including the fastest food service ever) was totally worth it!

Cuenca is a lovely old colonial town and we were both a bit under the weather, so it was a nice place to relax for a couple of days. We went to visit the largest site of Incan ruins in Ecuador (amazing how much is there since the Incas were only there for 4 years before the Spanish took over) on a private tour with our guide, Diego. He is a wealth of knowledge about Ecuador and we got a lot of info on not just the Incans and Cañar peoples, but also about local politics in Ecuador and things of that sort. Great fun to take the ride in a car too!

It was great fun to have my sister here and travel together as we have never done anything of the sort before. As I write this, she should be in the car on the way back to Spruce Pine and her family and the impending start of the school year! She was too chicken to do the bridge jumping (you know I couldn{t resist), but I did get her to ride a horse while we were in Otavalo! Oh I see as writing this that the apostrophe doesn{t work here either....they must not use them much in español. :)

We did and saw so much it is almost hard to remember what it all was. She probably needs a vacation to recover from her vacation. We started by staying for 2 nights in the old town of Quito, with all the churches and colonial architecture and visited the big theater in Quito that was mostly destroyed by fire some time ago and is being repaired--very interesting tour and the guide got to give her first tour in English. She did very well by the way.

We then went to Otavalo and checked out some local Andean music andalso shopped at the famous market, before moving on to spend a really expensive night in a hacidenda near Otavalo--this would be where the horseriding occured. We then did a roughly 10 hour day on the bus going back to Quito and transferring to the Tena bus. We stayed the night in Tena and I got to bore Mary to tears remeniscing about my time at Jatun Sacha and all the decent meals I got in Tena! Then we went out to the jungle lodge where we did a bosque tour and sweated our way through all the hills we had to climb. Also, I discovered a snake on the hike that our guide missed..much better than the last hike I did at Jatun Sacha! There were resident monkeys at the lodge and Mary has some great pictures of them visiting us on the porch. I am not sure if I have any of those pictures here, but if not will add them at a later date.

We visited a local Kichewa community and learned how they make the chicha (sans the spit), which is an indigineous drink. We did some swimming in the river and visited the animal rescue center at Amazoonico. Not a bad day taking the innertubes down the river back to the lodge either! We also stopped by to visit Jatun Sacha and wow is it damn hot there now!

Then we were off to Baños where we did a chiva tour of the waterfalls and the now infamous bridge jumping occured. We visited the hot springs where I met a very nice local guy and thankfully didnt subject Mary to my attempts to get to know him better.

I am feeling like a lot of this is probably redundant from the last post and apologize for that.....also coming up on the redundancy rader will be my pictures all our of order with those of Mary{s that I downloaded earlier. We returned to Quito on Wednesday afternoon and and stayed in the new town area this time so she could see the difference between the two. This is a funky little area with a lot of bars and restaurants, so some decent meals were had in the last couple of days.

Think that is probably all for now, so I will wrap this up and put the pictures on before I loose all will to do so...where is that waiter with another glass of wine?

Here are the photos, again and as usual in no particular order. I will try to be sure and label them so you know when you are seeing the same thing for the 15th time..

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Ecuador%20con%20Mary/


I wil now wrap this up and head back to my hotel where Mary will be pissed to hear I am now in a junior suite with two huge beds and no one to share either one with..but not for lack of trying. There is a story there for future reference when there is actually something to report. I am planning to louge with the cable Tv and perhaps get to see the Omen! Mary and i have seen all 6 of the Star Wars movies in recent days, so I am sure she will breathe a sigh of relief knowing I don{t have to wathc them again as this is probably the last time I will get TV in a long time. :) Horrifying how excited I am by TV these days....

Two sisters take on the world.......well, Ecuador anyway

Hello again armchair travellers! So here we are in Cuenca! It really is a lovely old city, and if all goes according to plan, there will eventually be pictures of it! Not today though, the only real goal for today is to write enough on this computer where the space bar doesn´t really work before I chuck it out the window. Ugh.

Anyway, Mary got here about a week and a half ago,and we have been damn busy in that time--mostly testing the Ecuadorian bus system and it´s obvious deficeincies. After logging roughly 25 hours on this great system of transport, we have seen of course Quito, (no bus required--so more on that later), Otavalo and the great Andean market, where we foolishly stuffed our backpacks to overflowing with things mostly for ourselves (sorry to the family, not much room left for gifts for you people) and have been having to cart all that stuff around for days and getting black and blue doing it!

We have done some time out in the amazon region and hung with monkeys fighting over our hammocks. I have also added most impressively to my collection of bug bites, while Mary has aquired about a total of 4. It was hot, damn hot, and cloudless in the amazon and at Jatun Sacha as well when we stopped by for a couple of hours--much cooler and rainier when I was there in June!

Then we were off to Baños where we chilled in the hot springs and rode the Chiva bus for a tour of the waterfalls and I tried my hand at swing jumping, which is basically jumping off a bridge over a river with the sincere hope that the bungee cord attached to your waist will work and keep you from plunging into the river. Obviously in this case it worked, huh?

There is a massive volcano roughly 10 kilometers from Baños which has apparently been erupting in some fashion for several years. We didn´t even see it, as it is behind some mountains we were going to climb one day, but when that day came the whole sky was covered in clouds......so we just have to take their word for it that it even exists.

Now we are here in Cuenca after a long and obnoxious day on the bus. I am very excited about the fact that we have a TV in our room!Mary,not surprisingly´, doesn´t really give a shit about the TV, but then she can see it any old time she wants to.
There are Incan ruins here that we are hoping to head off to in the next day or so by....you guessed it, the reliable bus system!

Stay tuned for further adventures as I have just about had it with this keyboard,and also want to be sure to be able to give you people a laundry update. :)

La vida part dos

Hello again folks! Yes,please contain your excitement--two posts in two days! On that note, this is a continuation of what I started yesterday, so if you haven´t tuned in in a while you will want to go to the next one on the page and read it first so that what you see here makes a wee bit more sense.

OK, business being taken care of, we can get back to our story. So there I was in Bogota, trying to figure out where to go because of all the choices and my total lack of preparation, and in general wasting time. Bogota is a lovely city and the people are really great, and I feel that being there a week I got to know it pretty well. One of the highlights was the day I spent with a couple of Colombian women. I met this woman Myriam via the Lonely Planet website, when she responded to a posting I put up about travelling as a woman alone in Colombia. She is a professor at a university in Popyan and also owns bed and breakasts in Popyan and Bogota.

So I met with her and a friend of hers one day for lunch and bit of a tour around north Bogota, which looks very different from La Candelaria, the old neighborhood in which I stayed. Myriam speaks some English but her friend doesn´t, so we spent quite a bit of the day figuring out what we were all saying! We took the Transmelinial (which is kind of a bus line that has designated lanes without car traffic and is their version of a subway--Quito has one as well called the Trolle) from my hostal to her neighborhood, walked around, had some lunch, then ran some errands for things she needed to pick up for her B&B. We then went back to her place where she showed me around (it has a pool!) and had a cocktail. What a fun day and always great to see a city through the eyes of someone who lives there!

So I finally decided on leaving Bogota and didn´t have the time, I felt, to take a 20 hour bus ride to the coast, so went to a small town called San Gil, which is about 8 hours north of Bogota. It is a great little town that you can feel perfectly safe walking around in the middle of the night in. It is also the home of adventure tourism in Colombia. While there, I went paragliding over the tobacco fields, which was great fun as I have never done that before. There are pictures to prove I did it, but unfortunately they are on the camera of a woman I have not emailed yet....so maybe they will appear some other time.

I chilled out there for a couple of days and then went on to Barichara, a small perfectly preserved colonial town about 45 minutes from San Gil, and looks a bit like Tuscany. It was a great place for just relaxing in the park and walking around town, and I also met up with a woman I had met in San Gil who is biking her way through Colombia. This is not to be confused with the man I met at the hostal in Bogota from France who was biking his way across the world and extrememly puzzled when I declined his invitation for sex. But anyway, I met up with this woman and we had some lunch and a really nice afternoon.

I left San Gil at 9 in the evening and returned to Bogota at 3 in the morning. I was prepared to wait a couple of hours for a 9 hour bus to Manizales, but there was one of those minivan things (sin el bano!) leaving right away so I hopped on it. So did 3 very drunk Colombian folks in their early 20´s, so I got to spend the better portion of 6 hours repeating my name and giving puzzled looks when they tried to converse with me in slurring Spanish.

Manizales is in the western part of Colombia, and part of an area where they have been having some guerrila issues..or however you spell that. One thing I can say is there were police everywhere, although I must say I do feel a bit cheated that not once did we have a checkpoint to go through. This apparently happens on every Colombian bus, sometimes several times in one trip, and I didn´t encounter it at all!

Manizales is an OK town, but the truth is I didnt (oops, on to a new computer missing the apostrophe! There is always something missing on these variety of keyboards I use here) do much there. It is a good place to enter the national park and go to the volcano, but several people I met who had done said that due to the relatively constant cloudiness the area had been experiencing, you couldn{t actually see it that well. Also it was 80,000 pesos and I didn{t want to spend 40 bucks to not really see what I wanted to. So I went to an ecoparque in town and went on a canopy tour instead and took a walk through the forest they have.

Similair to my Bogota experience, here in Manizales some guy came into the hostal while I was watching the movie Traffic and proceeded to tell me he lived in Manizales and is Colombian/German. What he was doing in the hostal is really unclear. He started trying to give me a massage and asking me if I wanted coke and sex. Now you people know me, but I have to say the whole thing was rather creepy and thankfully the guy I was sharing a room with came down to watch the film and I didn{t have to search through my limited vocabulary to try and figure out just what the hell was going on. Apparently the assumption when you are travelling alone in Colombia that close to Medellin is that you just lost your way to the nearest brothel where you were due to report for work.

After a day or so there, I was off to Salento, which is probably one of my favorite places on this trip. You can enter the national park, Los Nevados, and it is the highest elevation where the Colombian national tree, the Cera Palma, or wax palm, grows. I went on a rather grueling hike ascending 3,000 feet from the floor of the valley to the top of the mountain that really kicked my ass. It was a lot of mud and rocks and in some places a virtually vertical ascent. Whew! The views, as you will see from the 2,000 pictures I have of it, made it totally worth it. There was a small house at the top of the mountain where the woman there gives you coffee and some sort of home made cheese. Really very nice, and she was very intrigued by my self-made trail mix.

The next day I went to a couple of coffee fincas and got to pick beans, learn how they are shelled, dried, and roasted and then have some delicous coffee. The coffee in Colombia in general seems to be a bit weak for my taste, but whatever. The hostal I stayed at in Salento is called Plantation House and they put me in the second little house they have which has it{s own porch, amazing view of the valley, and house cat, Pablo. I shared the house with a few other people and our last night we all made dinner and sat outside to watch the sunset before moving inside and building a fire. The hostal owner is interested in my interest to look after a place, and so I may be making a return visit to innsit for them in the future.

I met really great travellers in Colombia and must say that for the most part, they seem to be older travellers. Meaning mid 20{s and older rather than the 19 year olds you find in most other places. Many people are too scared to go to Colombia, so maybe it is just those with a bit more experience that are comfortable going there.

There isn{t much English spoken in Colombia, so it was good to have to try to trust my Spanish a bit more to get where the hell I was going. I had a great time there, the people are wonderful, and I venture to say I felt a bit safer there than I do in general in Ecuador. This is probably because Colombia in general has money, so there aren{t as many poor people on the street. Saying that of course, 2 guys in Bogota got robbed on 2 consecutive nights outside the hostel. This probably has to do more with the fact that 2 big hostals are there and the area is known for drunk travellers coming back really late at night and so being a pretty easy target for those that make their living off such folks.

So that about wraps it up for now from these parts. I am off to pick up Mary in a few hours at the airport, so tune in next time for the story of two sisters taking the world by the tail!

Oh, here are the Colombia pics:

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Colombia/?

Que bonita esta la vida! And we are off to Colombia..

Hello again armchair travellers! Pretty sure this is going to be a two parter entry as I have been working for a few hours already this morning getting some pictures uploaded for you people and am not sure how long I can write today before I don´t know what the heck I am talking about anymore!

When we last left off, I think I just arrived in Colombia and spent US independance day in a Colombian museum, hehe. Slightly better than how I spent Colombian independence, which was July 20. In putting my pics up, I see that I have maybe one of me in Colomiba, so the pic you see here is of me and one of my fellow volunteers at Jatun Sacha, Grady, at Mitad del Mundo in Ecuador. It is a cute pic, and since cute pics of me are so rare...here it is!

OK, so back to the story at hand: Colombia is fantastic, and I am so glad I went. Apparently though, the week before I headed to Colombia, the FARC killed some 2 dozen hostages they had been holding for a number of years. I found out about it right before I went, but for obvious reasons (being that the folks read this) I didn´t mention it until my return, lest the parents freak out and be worried about me. On July 5, the nation of Colombia had massive demonstrations against kidnapping and as far as I know at this point, no one has been kidnapped in some time....so hopefully they are on a path of turning it all around.

Colombia is an interesting place to travel as a woman alone, and there is a slight chance that I am now married to a Colombian cab driver, due to my inability to master the language. I can confidently report that I am not carrying anyone´s baby though, so that is a good thing at least!

Due to my completely indecisive nature, I spent a week in Bogota, just figuring out where the heck to go, since there were so many choices! The pictures are of course going to be out of order as well, seeing as how my strong point is not computer literacy. Shannon will be very excited to see that for the first time in a long time, I managed to post the pics to the web all by myself! I did take some 6 hours, but that is another story that I am not going to cry myself to sleep with just yet.

So anyway, in Bogota I managed to visit the city´s tallest building, the Coltopatri, with great views of the city. No pics of course because it was my first day there and I was a little noid about taking such a long walk with my camera. I also went to a street market, where all manner of things were being sold: remote controls of unknown origin, albums of 1960´s salsa music, used batteries, and perhaps an unwanted child or two. In other worlds, just like your average flea market in New York.

Also in Bogota, I saw the house of Simon Bolivar, and you will get to see a lovely Colombian woman posing by the independence stuff in his garden. After that I rode up the teleiferico on a Sunday which was a piss poor decision, as it is half price and all the Colombians go to the church services up the hill in Monserrate, and it was damn hot waiting in line for an hour to go up and another hour to come back down! Up there is only the aforementioned church and some food stalls. All in all not a bad trip, but not worth the 2 hours of transport!

I also went to the Botero museum, the gold musuem (a waste as far as I am concerned unless you are REALLY into gold), and up to Zipiqueira and the salt cathederal. I went with a girl I met at the hostal, and it is a 2 hour trip up there and then you decend some 180 meters into the salt mines where they have carved out this huge cathederal, which they say holds 10,000 people! We did this in July 5, which turned out to be the day of the anti-kidnapping protest, and when we got out of the bus, there were tons of people running around with white flags and honking thier horns. Very interesting, especially since we didn´t know at that point what the heck was going on!

South America in general appears to have made a continental decision regarding the choice to not put signs about anything anywhere, so the bus driver´s directions of ¨just turn left and keep going all the way up the hill¨ were somewhat misleading. We hiked about halfway up the hill, noticed it was starting to look a little shady, and then finally asked a woman who directed us all the way back down the hill to take another left and go that way. We got a cab.

I had seen a street advertisement in Bogota about a Cuban salsa orchestra that was playing at one of the big theaters and that was an amazing show! We spent 40,000 pesos on it ($20) but it was totally worth it. It was filled with Colombians who loved the band and they had dancers on a bandstand behind the orchestra and everything and it was fantastic. After that we did the club crawl in the Zona Rosa, an upscale neighbordhood of Bogota-good night but exhuasting.

OK, better run for now as I am going to meet a friend for coffee. I´ll finish this up later or tomorrow before Mary arrives and put the pics on then!

Saludos!

Jatun Sacha, Quito, and life in the jungle

Buenos dias everyone!

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! I spent it here in Colombia and visited the Colombian National museum. But more about the life and times of Colmbia later as this post is not about that, it is about the pictures and wrap up of my time at Jatun Sacha and Quito--that´s right, more pics are finally in the house!

As for the volunteer work, I am having a bit of mixed feelings about it at this point. While due to the large volume of people, the constant moldy clothes, and lack of actual good work to be done (because of the constant rain and mud) left me feeling a bit disappointed in the whole thing, I must say I really met some great people--both staff and other volunteers--and learned about that part of Ecuador and a way of life of the locals that we could never imagine, so that was good. I also learned about some medicinal plants and what many of the local issues are. So all in all I will call the experience a good one--it definately gave me a new appreciation for the hot shower!

Also of important note is the industiousness of the ants in this part of the world. You will see a couple of pictures regarding this, but these folks work sun up to sun down and never take a day off. Of course since it rains everyday and washes away whatever huge ant condo they are building, they have to work everyday since they must be constantly starting over.

I learned that in honor of our last night they decided to kill the last of the chickens. Unfortunatley they did it right in front of us, as we were working digging a huge whole for the pig shit, which was unexpected and unappreciated. Thankfully we didn´t have to see it, but sure had to hear it.....anyway, a few photos are of the replacement set of chickens. The chickens were originally donated by volunteers in order to have eggs, but apparently the staff dídn´t want to wait for them to start producing eggs, and so would just kill some everyone once in a while for food. Which was a shame and waste since as there were so many people, all you would get would be a wing. Why bother? I made the mistake of donating chicken feed which apparently meant that in their apppreciation I was due a special piece of chicken on my last night. Hard to expalin in my limited Spanish that I donated the feed to feed the chickens so they could start producing eggs, not so I could have a fat piece of chicken on my last night!

Oh well, such as life and communication. Let see...in the pictures, there are lots of photos of the staff and other volunteers. Some dirt here--Pedro is the volunteer coordinator and Rosa is one of the kitchen ladies. Pedro apparently has a wife and kids in Tena, Rosa is married to some guy that kills pigs, and Pedro and Rosa hook up regulary at his cabana, and everyone knows it. Latin American folks have very different ideas about monogomy and it is fun to chat with the volunteers about it, as people´s views about it tend to reflect thier age. Very interesting conversations were had.

Patricia is kind of the girl who does everything: All the cleaning of cabanas, bathrooms and laundry. She lives in the community about 40 minutes away, and so started sleeping in my cabana after my roomie Alison hooked up with Gato, one of the bosque guards. Alison started spending most nights at Gatos place (which has no bathroom) and so Patricia would stay in my room. It was fun and she is a great lady. I think she needs an American or foregin man to get her out of here and she is so wonderful (and had a crush on Steve who is a really shy brit), so if anyone of you know a suitable man, let me know and I will pass the info on!

Lots of pictures of volunteers, a few of Rob, the volunteer who never actually worked. His job seemed to be going to Tena everyday in search of real food. He did work this one time, so I was sure to get a photo of it.

There are also a few photos of our trip to Amazoonico, which is an animal rehabilitation center. Some of the animals roam free, others are in caged environments for either their own safety (they are ill and vulnerable to attack) or for the saftey of other animals. There was one monkey that I don´t have a picture of because he is in a double wired area. Apparently he got out one night and killed 20 other monkeys.

Photos of my time at Jatun Sacha are here:

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Jatun%20Sacha%20y%20Tena/?start=all

and here are some pictures of Quito:

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Quito/?start=all

South Amercian healthcare, part dos

When we last tuned into the trials and tribulations of those foolish, er rather, fortunate enough to test the South American healthcare system, we were able to witness the astonishing medical acumen of Uruguayan medical training.

Today we get to continue the chapter regarding adventures in healthcare. Today´s subject is Allison, a nice young lady from Boulder, Colorado, and also my roommate at Jatun Sacha.

Allison had the very poor idea of contracting some kind of intestinal infection, which I think is South American for "We don´t know what the hell it is, so let´s call it that". She began to get ill on Tuesday morning, mostly throwing up and exciting things like that. She has been dating (if that is what we want to call it) one of the guys who works at the reserve. His treatment involved some sort of medicinal plants in a pee tea. Which Allison drank. Others would not do so, but then, you don´t know Allison. But let´s get back to our story.

Fast forward a day later, she is still sick (imagine that) and the folks at the reserve seem really unconcerned by the fact that she can´t get out of bed, is sweating profusely, and throwing up every 20 minutes. So one needs to take matter into their own hands. I convinced the one person who works there and has a car that she needed to be taken to the hospital in Tena. We were able to accopmplish this given my poor Spanish, so I consider that a victory in itself.

She dropped us off there and we attempted to explain to the doctor what her symptons were and she gave a vomiting demonstration. Meanwhile, he is busy watching the Ecuadorian equivalent of America´s funniest home videos, and answering cell phone calls that last 20 minutes. But anyway, he decides she has this infection and must be admitted overnight for anitibotics and rehydration. The nurse and receptionist (not clear on the receptionist´s job as she oscillates between answeing the phone in her business suit and trying to jab needles in people´s arms) take us into a room where the nurse tries about 4 times to get her blood pressure and then hook her up to the IV. While she is vomiting and falling off the table.

She tries twice to get the needle into her hand for the IV, can´t do it, and so asks me to leave. Closing and looking the door behind her. I find this turn of events rather disconcerting as there is quite a bit of rust in the room, I am not sure where the needles came from, and no one seems concerned about washing their hands of wearing gloves. About a half hour later they all come out and take her upstairs to the room she is going to stay in and proceed to put at least 3 different colored medications in her IV. I am not sure what any of them are as no one speaks English and my Spanish lessons so far have not included things one might need to know in hospital speak.

She seemed to be doing better by the time I left yesterday, and now I am off to the hospital to make sure she lived though the night and try to help her figure out what they are going to charge and how all that fun stuff is going to play out.

Thanks for watching and tune in next time when we discuss strange rashes that come from wearing wet clothes all the time, how to get insect bites directly on top of one another, and the possible explinations for the gecko moving out of our room and the ramifications of his decision.

Volunteer in the rainforest!

Week 2: So here we are volunteering in the rainforest. In the past week we have learned the capacity for alcohol of college students (in case one has forgotten), How many ways one can serve rice (1), and how much mud it takes to pull your boot off when you are hiking in el bosque.

There is now a geicko living in our room. I hear this is a good thing as it eats all the spiders I am currently cohabitating with, but it also shits all over your bed if you don´t cover it with your mosquito net.

Some of the other folks had a tarantula living with them and they kept putting it out, but apparently when they find a place they like, they always come back. It would wait on the steps for them to return at the end of the day to let it in. The two in the room decided to put it on a leaf and send it down the river. When it returns, it is going to be pissed, but thankfully for those folks they have moved rooms and new people will get to deal with it´s wrath.

We have a group of 20 14-15 year olds checking in tonight, so I can regress past college and back to high school! Not sure when was the last time I had this much fun! On another note, one of the college kids (ISV) decided to play a joke on the snake people the other night. The snake people are a bunch from Arizona State U here to study the snakes. Apparently at the bar the other night, one of the ISV group went to them and did the old "I hear you are looking for the one-eyed snake" bit, and wipped his package out on the table. Snake people declined to find it funny, and now the poor boy has been sentanced to staying away at mealtimes and any other time the snake people are around. Ah, summer camp!

Yesterday we worked in the Amazon Plant Center. We cut down trees, which was not really my idea of reforestation, but what the hell. Hopefully it has something to do with bringing back more native species of trees, but didn´t really get the deets on that. I am getting quite handy cutting down trees and weeds with the machete though, so will have to practice this new skill when I return to visit mom.

In related wildlife news: Two of the three showers are inhabited by some wildlife. In one corner we have some very large black spiders, and in the other is one of our tarantulas. In the shower with no inhabitants, the bathroom geiko is a peeping tom. Guess the good news is that if he shits on you, at least you are in the shower and can wash it off right away. Unfortuantly, I have yet to see any other kinds of animals that I was hoping to see here. I hear there is a group of monkeys living down the street though that will take anything you own and barter it for food later.

I have eaten more starch in the week and a half that I have been here than probably in the whole last year combined. We did go into Tena last weekend for shrimp though, so that was fun.

All in all, I am not sure at this point what I am really accomplishing here, but will post it just as soon as it comes to me in a dream. Undoubtably, the most I will learn is how many ways you can fry bread, and how many other starches can be served with it at the same time. :)

Saludos!

All wet, all the time..

That tarantula is hanging out in the bathroom again. I have hung clothes to dry that are now more wet than they were when I put them up. It is possible there are roughly a hundred ways to fry dough and serve it for breakfast.

It is also possible that I have nevr smelled this bad in my life--and very hard to do anything about it when you have to put a wet bra back on after your cold shower because the clothes just won´t dry. It is raining again today, and I was scheduled to work in the organic garden today with the guys. Turns out they were going down to the beach to fill 150 pound bags with sand in order to turn it into cement at some point and there wasn´t enough room in the truck for me. Pedro (the volunteer coordinator) really thinks that I am not strong enough to carry it anyway (mas fuerte! mas fuerte!), so I find myself with a bit of free time and can use the computer!

Yesterday I was actually the Spanish translator for new people who came and were getting the tour of the botainical garden--how do you like them apples! Hard to belive my Spanish is better than most people here, as this is the second time I have acted as translator for a tour.

Some fun things I have seen so far this week: We had a boa constrictor lounging in one of the rain gutters the other night. He had his eye on this massive grasshopper that he was making a slow move for in order to have dinner. Apparently he moved too slow or changed his mind though, because in the morning the snake was gone and the grasshopper had moved to a differnt side.

One of the guys here that works out in the forest looking for people cutting down trees and stuff like that has this pretty amazing snake collection. He keeps them all in a jar of formaldahyde in his cabin. Disturbing to consider where the formaldahyde may have come from.....we will put off determining the origin of it for our next moment of reflection.

I like the preserve, but it does have a bit of a summer camp feel, at least right now. Because of the time of year, most people that are here are school groups and into doing things that 18-20 year olds do. Everyone seems more excited about the bar than anythting else, which I find amusing and slightly sad since I am really just past those days..ah well, such as life. Perhaps the other preserves will have differnt people to offer because I will be there during what is typically the school year.

OK, no wisdom to offer today since I am still sick with a jungle cold. Maybe next time, so stay tuned for what is hopefully a more interesting update in the next chapter of our story!

In a country where everything is green except the lettuce

It´s hot, damn hot....well not so much today as yesterday, I guess. So here I am in the jungle! It has become clear that the computer that is here at the reserve is a pretty hot comidity and the chances of my actually getting on it are probably relatively slim, so here are my thoughts so far.

Ecuador is really a very lovely country. It is not quite as advanced as Argentina, so I am back to remembering not to flush the toilet paper and not to drink the water. The city of Quito looks amazing, although I haven´t had much time to check it out. There will be plently of time for that when Mary is here though and in between my variety of travels and volunteer works. The equator is really near Quito, so I am sure I will drag Mary up there to do the old balance the egg on the nail trick. Will make sure we get plenty of cheesy photos!

Took the bus yesterday to Tena and really had to remind myself to pick my jaw up off the floor once in a while. The scenery is absolutely amazing and the road is often closed due to mudslides. The road is a dirt road for about half the time and there was a spot where the driver was having to steer the bus around all these rocks and mud that are in the road from the most recent rain. That and slowing the bus down so a variety of people can hop on and off to sell you a fruit cup, potato chips, chickens, and white women. Whatever you want I am pretty sure they either have it or can get it.

Then there was the lady who got on the with the mystery animal. These busses run from Quito to Tena, and also at times act as the local bus. It is a bit like riding the M79 from Manhattan to Washington DC. She had a baby slung around her waist and some bag making a variety of chirping, beeping, and mewing sounds. The contents of her bag never having been revealed, I will get to spend the rest of my life wondering....

Anyway, got to Tena and had to hunt around to find the local bus to JS. A very lovely young guy helped me find it and placed my bag on it for me. Turns out he was the one who also hops on and off the bus as it is moving helping folks get on and off. As Shannon I am sure can testify, the idea of safety is a bit negated here. There were a number of children siting on the dashboard in the front window as the bus cruised around town, and everyone´s variety of shopping piled in wherever it can fit. I shared a seat with a couple of children (I know...) and they were pretty suspicious of me and my hair, I think, but very cute. The people have all been really friendly.

Anyway, here I am at the reserve at Jatun Sacha! Things I have learned so far...check the mosquito net before going to bed to make sure the huge evil ants that bite and sting for 4 hours are not in the net with you, Everything you own will be moldy within 2 weeks, no matter what, All the clothes I have are once again inappropriate, My flashlight is crap and hardly helped me find the bathroom last night, These rubber boots I bought in Quito for $5.75 will be the best thing I have probably ever purchased, as the mud I walked in today was halfway up my calves.

Speakiing of today, it is Saturday, so it is todo al bosque, which means everyone goes to the forest. The put us in two groups and the one I went with toured the secondary and primary rain forest, and learned about local trees, the variety of species they have here, etc. It was all in Spanish and I picked up about half of it. A girl in the group was able to traslate though, so that filled in the blanks.
It is raining now, what a shocker, huh? But it is a nice rain and cooling.

On our walk, we ran into a herd of cattle. It was very strange. We are in the middle of the forest, it is dark, and the guide stops us and says to listen. We do, but don´t hear anything, and then we look and a small herd about about 6-8 cattle are stolling up the muddy path from the other direction. They stop and look at us. We look at them. They look at us, trying to decide if we will retreat or they should. The finally decide they should and do so. We follow and I must say that for the next half our or so have to avoid all the cow shit mixed with the mud. A very unexpected experience! After a lunch stop we swam in a small lake in the middle of the forest. OUr guide was great and fed us ants that taste like lemon. Apparently the trick is to make sure you chew them before swallowing or they might crawl back out your nose!

I also just saw my first huge tarantula outside the computer room here. I have one roommate and she is cool girl from Colorado. I am the oldest person here by roughly 15 years, although my roomie is pretty old by standards too--she is 22!

Beter let some others have a turn at the computer, but will try to keep a written log of more things that occur to me and then at some point try to deciipher my handwriting and write it all here! By the way, in case I didn´t mention, it is beautiful here, although a bit more rustic that I thought, but it is all good......more later!

You can´t have lunch without a drink!!!

Hello campers! In this installment of our story, we finish our time in Argentina (for now!) and head to the land of the short people with a fine appreciation for food that can be consumed sans ham. That´s right--we are now in a world where not everything is required to be topped by ham, cheese, hardboiled eggs, and olives, usually simultaneously. But let´s not get ahead of ourselves, since I have only been in Ecuador for 2 days and really am not in the know yet.

Last time on our show, we had just returned to Buenos Aires to spend a disappointing night in a hostal in Palermo where our room was right between the reception desk and garbage truck activity outside. Thankfully only one night was required to determine that it was time to move on, and we left the next day for Mendoza. 12 hours by bus will get you there, and suddenly you are in the Argentine wine capital! We stayed at a great little hotel in Mendoza for about a week called the Hotel Zamora, which came complete with a very non-threatening dog who was there to attempt to restore Shannon´s faith in the species. Think it worked, at least to a certain extent.

While in Mendoza we did such things as drink wine, eat something other than steak, drink wine, continue searching for a solution to the good-looking man conspiracy, and drink wine. Mendoza is a lovley little town right after my own heart: These people believe in the siesta, and it is no joke. The whole town shuts down from 1:30 to 4:30 including stores, internet cafes, banks, travel agencies and any other place you can think of to go during lunch hour. The only places open are of course the restaurants, where one waiter was so offended that we were not ordering wine that the now famous line had to become the title of this post. Not ones to offend cultural sensitivitiers, we of course consented and agreed only a full bottle would be most appropraite.

Other things we enjoyed: A tour of the wineries of course where we drank wine (imagine that) and also got a tour of an olive oil factory and a family operation who make their own chocolates and about 100 different kinds of liquor. We had to get the dulce de leche, because really, where else but in Argentina are you going to find such a liquor? We also went on a tour to the mountains that was entirely in Spanish and therefore probably more informative to Shannon than to yours truly. But the scenery was beautiful, and you can check it all out here:

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Mendoza/?start=0

In the mountains we saw the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, Aconcagua, which tops out at around 21,000 feet, and Punta Del Inca, which is some kind of natural bridge made by the sulfer in the water or something like that. Again, my limited Spanish didn´t really catch any of that story, but at least the pics are cool!

After our relazing week in Mendoza, we returned to Buenos Aires. Shannon returned home and to her real life-and apparently time in the Harlem ER to deal with the real or imagined threat of rabies. So the good news on that end for all concerned is that she is getting treatment for it, which I understand invloves numerous shots given over a period of time. More on that when I find out.

I stayed on in BA to attempt to put a bit more Spanish under my belt, although it is entirely possible all I really did was take money out of my pocket and put it into someone else´s. Ah well, I did get to enjoy BA and lived in another apartment in San Telmo with a fun couple from Virginia No photos of that for a while though because I really have no idea how long it will be before I can download any more photos. Some wrap up pics are here though:

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Buenos%20Aires%20May%202007/

So my time in Buenos Aires has come to an end, and I am left to contemplate such things as:

The disturbing lack of vareity in the diet of such a cosmopolitan city; the thought process of a people who burned down the constitucion train station while we were in Mendoza to protest the fact that the trains never come (apparently not thinking about the fact that now, of course, they can´t come); dulce de leche and what this stuff is really made of; and the gene pool that makes all these people so damn good looking and how one can dip into said pool. Add to all this the puzzling lack of napkins in this country, and I venture to say I will need to spend more time in this country to figure out what it is all about.

Now I am in Quito, where I have spent about 4 hours on the internet and cropped up a bill of roughly 50 cents. Good thing it is so cheap as the days of cheap wine have clearly come to an end here! I am off to the jungle and the start of my volunteer work tomorrow, so will post more when I actually have something to say. :)

Be well my friends and live grandly!

The Argentine preferred method of travel and Iguazu Falls

Bueno. First of all, thank you to those that are posting comments--it is so exciting to know folks are actually reading this thing!

In our last episode, the intrepid young travellers (or not so young, depending on how you look at it) were happy to be returning to Argentina, home of the hot men, from Uruguay, home of nasty dogs and not so hot men. The most exciting thing for us about Urugauay was the coffee service. $42 pesos (about $1.75) gets you your own coffee pot, steamed milk pot, sweet popcorn, juice, and small basket of sweets. Not shabby.

Anyway, we are done with that now. We took the rapid ferry back to Buenos Aires, which takes about an hour. The river was really choppy and it did occur to us that they had not played the safety video upon embarkation and here was a time in which it might be possible to need it. Although the only thing you really learn from the safety video is that if the boat goes down, you are going to drown.

Anyway, we went directly from the ferry terminal to the bus terminal to catch the 18 hour bus that would take us to Iguazu Falls. The bus was actually pretty comfortable and we had gone first class to get the seats that recline all the way (about $60). They serve dinner, wine, played a movie we couldn´t hear, and had a snafu with the reading light that would not go off. The steward guy finally came over and covered the light with luggage stickers to block out the intensity of it. The light finally burned out about a half hour before we reached Iguazu. Not a bad trip though. No comments necessary about the attractiveness of the on board bus steward.

At the bus terminal, there are a bunch of people trying to tell you about thier accomodation and we decided to take one that she said was just a few blocks away. This being only a week or less post dog, it was important that we not have to walk for an hour with our heavy packs to find a place. Of course, with her directions, it did take roughly that long to find it. Anyway, we finally found it, checked in, took cold showers--apparently adverstising caliente agua is more a hope than an actual reality sometimes--and took off for some lunch. Found a little place nearby that we could sit outside, have a bottle of wine for 6 pesos and a milanesa and just chilled out for a while.

That evening, we had arranged to meet with Rosina, a woman I met on the Lonely Planet website, and her friend Pam at the post office in town. We hung around about for about 15 minutes and this van pulled up and an attractive man (imagine that) got off and called my name. Expecting Rosina to be a woman, it took me a few minutes to realize she was in the van and this guy was the tour guide showing them around town! Anyway, we went with them to see the sites of the city and then have dinner. The night was a lot of fun as there were 4 people in the tour group, the others were 2 guys from Canada, and the personalities involved were all very different from each other so the conversation was really very interesting. You can´t ask much more than that as it makes things quite entertaining. I am glad that it worked out that we all got to meet in Iguazu and they were both really great ladies. They were on some kind of blitzkrieg 5 day tour of BA and Iguazu though, and must have slept for about 3 days upon return!

So the next day, we went to the falls. I am not going to really try to bother to describe them, because it is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen and words and pictures do not do it justice. I only recommend anyone who can go in their lifetime should do so! We had the most perfect conditions: The weather was sunny but partly cloudy to keep the direct sun off of you, temp around 68 degrees, no bugs, no humidity, and no tourists! This is the off season, although for the life of me, I can´t see why. Also, there was so much water in the falls that one of the islands was closed and some of the boating excursions were closed due to the embarkation points being under water.

I will attach the pictures here and let them speak for themselves:

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Iguazu%20Falls/

We returned to Buenos Aires on another overnight bus, spent an evening there, and then got on another overnight bus--this one about 12 hours--to Mendoza, which is the wine capital of Argentina. Stay tuned for additional chapters in our continuing saga on why we loved Mendoza, the discovery of food other than steak, ham and milanesa in Argentina, and our attempt to get at the root of the good looking men conspiracy.

"No worries, you´re perfectly safe here"

So sayeth the man we rented the condo in Punta Del Diablo from......

Punta Del Diablo is a small beachside town in Uruguay about 50 kilometers south of the Brazilan border. Apparenlty in the summer it is full of tourists, and since it is mid fall here now, we were only 2 of about 6 tourists in town. Nice. We rented a 2 bedroom condo on the beach with a fireplace, cable tv and a kitchen for around $35 per day. Here we are, all set to enjoy some fine Uruguay wine ($2 for the boxed stuff that is actually decent), cooking some great meals, reading and writing on the beach for a few days, and in general chilling out and relaxing.

Should have known that first night when Shannon said "this is so lovely, perfect, and cheap, what a great time we will have here!"

Never tempt the gods by expressing your gratitude for something good as it all goes to hell after that!

So the next morning, as I am leisurely getting up, getting the coffee Shannon made, and stepping outside to check out the view and fresh air, I hear yelling from the beach. Shannon has left me a note saying she is going for a walk on the beach. I assume for a minute that the yelling is some people playing around and am about to sit down when it occurs to me that this is most likely impossible, since we are, for the most part, the only people in town. I step over to the fence to see what is up and see a small dark head moving and nothing else. I hear my name and recognize the voice as belonging to mi amiga. I run around the house and am getting on to the beach where I can see she is down on the ground with 2 dogs on top of her and a man is just arriving with a 2 by 4 to beat the dogs off her.

Shannon risked the wrath of the gods by expressing her appreciation for our oasis and was rewarded by being mauled by two dogs on the beach. The situation was pretty grave. She was covered in lacerations and there was blood everywhere. A few men showed up to help her, and I ran to find the owner of the apartment to see if they could call for medical help. When we returned a few minutes later the police were already there and quickly loaded her into the car to go for medical assistance. She was pretty much unable to walk, and understandably shaken and terrified. And trying to communicate what had happened in Spanish! Thank god she actually has the Spanish skills to be able to do so!

We went to the medical clinic where they dressed her wounds, which covered the entire backside of her legs and arms, and determined that she needed to go by ambulance to Castillos, the nearest town with a hospital. The ambulance is about a 1964 station wagon which was driven by one of the cops as there apparently is no one else to do so. We were accompanied by this woman Norma, who is some sort of elected official and liason for tourists. She is also the wife of the cop who was driving. In what has now been determined as typical South American behavior, she and her husband were all over each other in the hospital. I was tempted to tell them Shannon and I could wait in the hall if they needed to get a room. Sheesh. There are people making out everywhere around her. I am a little surprised that they even bother to sell clothes down here as presumably no one spends much time in them.

But I digress: We believe we are heading off for a tetnus shot and rabies treatment. Of course Latin America being what it is, we went to 3 different places before finding the right one where they then gave her the tetnus shot and argued about rabies. Apparently Uruguay has been rabies free for 20 years and so they simply don´t have the treatment. Shannon really wanted it for preventative reasons, as that is one of the first things one would do in the States if attacked by animals. After much arguing and discussion, she was told there would be no treatment and so she was left to further ponder whether or not this might be a problem, on top of the all of the bleeding wounds and fact that she could not walk.

We spent the next several days in our little condo watching bad American films, which I must admit was probably good for my Spanish to watch so many subtitles, as she started to recover. She was in a lot of pain and was really considering going back to New York instead of continuing on with the trip.

When we went out for the first time, about a day and a half later, it was raining and windy. Every stray dog in town, which were numerous, came around us and it was really freaky. In fact, ever since then, no matter where we go, she seems to attract dogs like she is carrying a steak around in her pocket. Creepy. Somewhat amusing though was her newfound fame in the town of Punta Del Diablo. People were constantly warning us that a tourist had been attacked by dogs and they could not understand what had happened, although they admited that the tourists feed the dogs all summer and now had been gone just long enough that the dogs were starving. They were simultaneously shocked and secretly thrilled (I think!) to find that they were meeting the victim in the flesh. Shannon´s most frequest phrase for a while became "yo soy ella". I am her.

There was also this political undercurrent of the fact that the police do not have the jurisdicition to get rid of the dogs and there are two opinions of the townspeople: one that they should get rid of the dogs, other that it is cruelty to kill them. We did hear though that they had gotten rid of the two dogs. I guess a posse went out in the middle of the night and made the problem go away...unofficially, that is.

We left PDD and went to Colonia, which is a small conlonial town across the river from Buenos Aires where people go to get their passport stamped when they need to extend their stay in Argentina past the 90 day limit. It is a lovely litte town, and we spent the night there an spent an obnoxious amount of money on a dinner that was average and had no alcohol. Colonia is a weekend getaway destination for porteños, so the prices are understandably inflated. It was lovely though and we are glad we spent a bit of time there.

Shannon decided to go ahead and stay after all as our next plan was to go to Iguazu falls and knew that if she returned to NY, she would no doubt feel better quickly and be really upset that she missed Iguazu. This turned out to be true, and maybe tomorrow I will write about that portion of the trip. For now I am going to act like a local and go take a sietsa!

Here are some photos of Uruguaÿ:

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/sweidmann/Uruguay/

The verdict is in

So we have assesed the situation and at this point have come up with a mutual decision. All the hot guys in Argentina are noticibly missing in Uraguay. Not that they are dogs, but it is much like being home in good old NYC where more often than not you are not going the check out the guy crossing the street towards you.

Yes girls, in case you are wondering, Buenos Aires is where all the attractive men in the world are living. We have decided that we have not seen one ugly one yet, even down to the little old men. We have decided that further investigation into Argentina is called for, so stay tuned for an update.

In other news, Shannon arrived about a week ago and we spent the time kicking around the city and me mostly stressing about my evening Spanish lesson. No studying during the day makes for more than a few dirty looks at night when I reach IBL and attempt to communicate in what passes for Spanish. Shannon is having a field day with all the new words down here though and the Catellano Spanish, assuming I am even spelling that right...but I digress. Yo is pronouced jo, and ella is ejja which to most Spanish speakers is completely foreign. Over several glasses of wine tonight we are going to need to consider whether the pronunciation contributes overall to the attractiveness of the people. Anyone with an opinion on that should feel free to weigh in.

So here we are today in Montevideo, Uraguay. We got here yesterday on the ferry-bus combination to be warned within the first half hour of our arrivial--both by the taxi driver who then ripped us off, as well as the woman at the hotel--to not leave the hotel with our purses and to only walk on certian streets. Today we can understand why. It is primero de Mayo, which is basically Labor Day to all you on the other side of the Equator and NOTHING is open. There are some shady people on the streets though, so at least we were not totally alone. We have found this internet cafe to be open as well as a couple of restuarants. The requirement for open restuarants seems to be that they must sell pizza. We are OK with this and so will probably head off for a pizza in a little while. We need to be heading to the bus station at 5 manaña, so will make it an early night....which is OK since there is nothing to do. Montevideo is cute and interesting, and perhaps it being all closed may contribute to our feelings, but we have decided we have seen all there really is to see.

Tomorrow we are off to Punta Del Diablo, a beach town near the Brazillian border that has come recommended by both my Spanish professor and my compañero, Fabian. It is off season, so we are assured no one will be there and that will be lovely as we want to spend a few days kicking back, reading, and staring at the waves. There will probably be very little email access and no food, so it should be an interesting time. We are looking to lose some weight anyway, and so will send pictures after our time at the beach!

In the company of a Bush twin....oh the shame of it!

And so begins another chapter in our continuing story on life in Argentina. This is a land where the term "live your life today because you could get hit by a bus tomorrow" needs to be taken quite literally. The sidewalks here are roughly a foot and a half wide, and god help you if you need to pass someone. The buses here are all on some sort of race to the finish and will come to within an inch of the curb. So if you step into the street to pass someone on the sidewalk and a bus comes up behind you, chances are quite good that you will not survive the encounter.

Not only do the buses speed through the street, ringing the bell for the bus to stop so that you can get off is more of a suggestion than anything. For the most part, as they reach your stop, they slow down to a crawl, the door opens, and you jump out, hoping that your feet make contact with the street before the door handle hits you on the head as the bus speeds off. If you are lucky, many people will be waiting at the bus stop to board the bus. In that case, the bus will actually stop--which is good. I am certainly learning some new skills for coordination.

What I am not learning, unfortunately, are new skills of observation. That's right friends, your favorite blonde traveller had her purse ripped off at dinner the other night. About a bottle and a half of wine into the evening in a very busy place, I got drunk, lazy, and careless, and stopped paying attention to the activities of my handbag, which took that opportunity to find something else to do. Biggest tragedy of the night is the loss of my little red book, that has all the contact info for everyone I know and everything I need in it. That and the fact that bank of America says it will take 7-10 days to get me a new ATM card. Huh?? What a joke--I would be in real trouble if it was the only ATM card I had as a week is a long time to go without cash! That and replacing my NY DL will be a pain. They will only mail it to me in NYC and it will take a couple of weeks, so by the time it is received up there and sent to me, I will be somewhere in the jungle of Ecuador. Oh well, guess I have to work it out. Biggest loss number two:: the loss of my favorite, and apparently irreplacable, lip balm. Can't find it in Argentina--but Shannon will be coming to my rescue in a few days with a supply.

Small comfort that one of the Bush twins had her purse snatched in Plaza Dorrego, which is here in my hood, right in front of the secret service a couple of months ago.

In related news, apparently the police officer who made the report for me was trying to pick me up, and I was busy living up to the blonde hairdo and totally oblivious. We went to the police late Friday night here in San Telmo and they told me to go to the tourist police on Corrientes Saturday morning to make the report (supposedly for my insurance, but my deductible is too high and I really just want the police report in the event that I end up with an identity theft situation). I got there and he proceeded to tell me in a mixture of Spanish and English that I had two choices. I admit I had a moment where I was wondering if he was going to tell me that for 20 pesos he could make it much simpler.

If I wanted to list the restuarant as the place of the theft, it was in a different district and we would need to make an appointment for later in the afternoon to go there with an interpreter, etc. to file the report. If I didn't care about the location, they would take me now to the closest precinct on Lavalle calle and file a report saying some guy grabbed it from me on the street. Not giving a shit about the location, I opted for the now option. He called in another officer to take me to the police station and there we filled out the report about my "attack", which apparently now had happened at the intersection of Florida and Cordoba streets.

He asked me if I was single, and then proceeded to tell me 4 times that he was too. He also advised that I should have some Argentine friends to help me practice my Spanish. This is true, and he was really attractive :) but somehow after having a hangover and only about 3 hours of sleep this went over my head......sigh. Maybe it is time to start a new blog about my life and the myraid of missed sexual opportunities because I just wasn't paying attention and seeing the signs...sorry mom, don't read that one. :)

OK, I am outta here for now as I have no money and need to buy a handbag--although thankfully I now have a comb! Roger was nice enough to lend me some money so I could comb my hair...pathetic, I know. Worse than all this is the look of disdain I will no doubt get from my Spanish instructor tomorrow while he tries to decide if I am telling the truth about my textbook being in my handbag when it was snatched, or if I am making up a story about why I didn't do my homework.