Día del Niño seems to have made Argentina a little bit crazy.  Toy and candy stores are packed out with frantic last minute parents (apparently this holiday is sort of a big deal).  We’ve seen couples sneaking bikes around to surprise unsuspecting children.  It´s all a little out of control.  But other than that, we´ve been having a fantastic time.  We went on a wine and olive oil factory tour on our last day in Mendoza, and it was great; we learned a lot of fun trivia about the production of it all, got some good pictures, and of course enjoyed the tasting portion of the tour.  We conquered our last bus ride (14 hours, no big deal) to get to Buenos Aires and we had a nice day walking around the city and spending too much money.  We’re staying with Megan’s host family from her days sudying here, which is really nice.  We’ve had some good hostels, and some less than good hostels, but it’s nice being in a place that actually feels a little bit home-ish.  And I know Megan is thrilled to be back with her old B.A. family (but from the looks of things not as excited as her family is to have her back for a few days).  We plan to hit the shopping scene a little more tomorrow just to ensure that we are in fact completely out of money when we return home.  Megan is going to be our tour guide and show us everything else we absolutely need to see in Buenos Aires – everything that one can see in 1.5 days of couse.  I think that’s it for now.  The trip is winding down nicely and we’ll be seeing you all soon!!  Love and miss you all. 

Best,

Marion

Upon arriving at the bus station we were looking for a bus to take us half way to Santiago so we could have a break from buses for a day before continuing on the entire way to Santiago, 28 hours from Arica. Well, it doesn´t work that way. These buses go straight to Santiago, all 28 hours, no need to stop! WHAT? So we found ourselves buying tickets for that same day on a bus leaving in just a few hours. We decided to kill the time grocery shopping because if we are driving through the desert, you don´t want to get caught on a broken down bus with nothing to eat right?

Little did we know that this short break would be our only for quite some time. We are just amazed that people do this here all the time, 28 hours on a bus! We were pretty bad off because after all we had just gotten off our 17 hour ride. Anyway, it actually didn´t turn out to bad. We made it and Santiago was well worth it. I sat next to a really nice guy, far from Lindsay and Marion, who bought me juice and cookies. By the way, the bus ride turned out to be 30 hours long. So thats right 47 hours in a bus with a total break of about 5 hours…4 of those not included in the total count. We are crazy huh? We had pretty much nothing but the Atacama as our view out the window. We went to bed that night on the bus to the view of sand everywhere and woke up the next morning, about 17 hours into Chile, to the same thing. Pretty amazing. I didn´t realize it was so big, but it spans the entire norther half of this country.

We stayed in a cute hostel called La Casa Roja in Barrio Brasil in Santiago. The street was called Agustinas, how fun is that? The building was old and pretty elaborate. We liked it.

We wandered around Santiago like we do most big cities, we just started walking. We ran into a few shops here and there and found a cute outdoor market. Across the street from the market was a park that was made out of a building. Hard to explain, there was a building in front with different levels of patios going up the hill. At the top was a lookout over the city. We loved it! It was kind of secret gardenish and very romantic, there were couples everywhere. The view from the top is awesome. Santiago is situated in a valley and therefore surrounded by snow covered mountains.

The next day we bought our bus tickets and found a mall. More shopping…haha, now that we are getting near the end we can evaluate how much we have to spend and how much room we all have left! After lightening our pockets and making our luggage more heavy, we met up with a Chilean friend of mine that studied with me in Buenos Aires. We were excited to see more of the city especially with a local who knows it. We walked through a pretty neighborhood called Latarria and found several parks and both the museum of Bellas Artes and the museum of Arte Contemporanea. It was so good seeing her again and we had fun walking around getting to see a little bit more of the city than we would have solo. We have all decided that we need to return to Santiago because two days isn´t nearly enough time for such a large and great city!

The next day we found ourselves on our second to last bus ride of the trip…bus hour total thus far, 171 hours! We took a bus through the Andes and boy was it cold! It was interesting because up the mountain there were different people skiing. Some of the lifts were over the highway even! The entire way we had such a pretty view. It took us about an hour in total to cross the border into Argentina. We were standing outside for the most part too! brrr. After the border crossing and a slight overheating bus situation we have arrived in Mendoza! A 9 hour bus ride in total. Today we are headed on a wine tour! When in Mendoza drink wine right? Tomorrow we are taking our last bus ride, 14 hours to our final destination Buenos Aires. We miss and love you all! See you guys soon!!!

Megan

Hello family and friends,

So we have some really excellent news.  Well, it’s not excellent for us, but we have a feeling that you (or at least all of you who parented one of us) will be excited about it.  We’re coming home much earlier than expected.  Like in roughly two-ish weeks.  We’re broke.  I don’t think we really anticipated just how many awesome things there are to spend money on in these countries.  So after various and sundry robbings, shopping sprees, travel tickets, etc. we’re spent and ready to come home.  We’ve been enjoying a few lazy days in Cusco, sleeping late and walking around the city without much of an agenda.  I’ve been hearing loads about the street food that my posse enjoyed during my absence (my grandparents, shockingly, do not eat on the street).  There’s corn with queso, papa rellena (some sort of deep fried mashed potato stuffed with things?), and tamales, but since we’ve been back in Cusco all the vendors seem to have taken a break, so I haven’t gotten to see any of it first hand.  But I hear it’s top notch.  We’ll be leaving on a bus tomorrow night to head to Santiago, Chile.  From what we’ve read, it’s about 50 hours of busing from here to there, which makes me nervous because if it gets much colder I don’t know if I can survive.  I was with my grandparents for a few days in Puno, and I forgot how lovely it is to have central heating and cooling, until I didn’t have it anymore.  I’m wearing pretty much every article of clothing that I brought each day to prevent freezing.  But apparently Chile is a lot lower altitude so it shouldn’t be so bad, at least that’s what I’m letting myself believe so I’ll still want to go. 

Lindsay and I will be arriving in Atlanta on August 13th.  Megan is still waiting to see which day she is flying out, but it should be around then.  We’re having fun and cherishing these last days of our trip.  We love and miss you all, and we’ll be seeing you soooooon!

Best,

Marion

The highlight of Puno was the island tour that we took.  We visited the floating islands, Uros, and a natural island, Tequile, in Lake Titicaca.  The floating islands were amazing.  They are built upon the natural reeds that grow in the lake.  The reeds have roots that are really dense and about 3 m deep.  They tie the reed roots together underwater to fuse them together.  Then they stake the islands down with eucalyptus trees and rope.  The island floor is literally reeds and when you walk on it you sink a little.  It is so cool! It takes about 6 months to make a new island.  There about 40 of them and a few hundred people live on them.  Everything is made out of reeds, their houses, their boats, toys, etc.  It is amazing.  We got to ride on one of the reed boats to reach another one of the floating islands.  It was so cool….riding a man made reed boat in Lake Titicaca, check!  Before we left the islands we were each gifted a little reed boat necklace, perfect christmas tree ornament! 

The next island we visited was a 2 and a half hour boat ride away.  It is really cool.  Everyone there speaks Quechua.  They are famous for their weaving, which even the men participate in.  We caught a parade, the 28th is Peru´s independence so Tequile is celebrating the Fiestas Patrias from July 25 to August 5th.  It was interesting to see and there we so many cute kids!!!  The attire was really cool too.  The women wear really full shorter skirts full of bright colors, with a special woven belt of the Incan calendar and a certain hat indicating whether or not they are married.  The men also have special hats indicating whether or not they are single, how convenient haha.  The men also each have a really sturdy belt that they weave using their wives hair.  It is suppose to symoblize the unity of the two.  On Tequile we ate lunch at one of the islanders houses.  They served up trucha de la plancha or grilled trout from the lake.  It was delicious!  Before we knew it was time to head back to Puno.  We are enjoying Cusco for the next few days and they we are on our way to Chile this Friday.  We love and miss you all!!!!!  See you all soon : )

Megan

EXCITING NEWS: There are new pictures from ziplining in Costa RIca. Check the link on the right side!

So Megan, Andrei, and I are in Puno on Lake Titicaca right now, and Marion is in Juliaca with her grandparents. We saw Machu Picchu over the last couple days, and it was completely AMAZING!!! We took a two-hour cab ride from Cuzco to Ollantaytambo and then a two-hour train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes and found a hostel. We went out to go to a pharmacy for random forgotten items, when we stumbled upon the cutest parade I have ever seen. They were celebrating Peru´s independence day, and the streets were lined with children starting at maybe four or five years old all holding giant paper lanterns on sticks. The best part was that the lanterns were lit with candles, and random lanterns would periodically catch on fire. The teachers would quite calmly put out the fire and then relight the lantern–no big deal. I don´t know who thought it would be a good idea to give kindergarteners paper lanterns with an open flame, but it made for a great show.

Machu Picchu was fantastic and quite a hike. It ended up being a lot hotter than any of us had anticipated, since we´ve been enjoying absolutely frigid weather in Peru, especially at night. Did I mention that none of the hostels ever have hot water? We saw lots of llamas and a strange rabbit-esque creature with shorter ears and a long, floppy tail. We spent about four hours touring the ruins and stealing random bits of information from passing tour guides. We took the train back to Cuzco afterwards and then left this morning bright and early for the lake. We´ll be here for a few days (potentially freezing to death) and then head back to Cuzco for a bit before moving along to country number 8. We have approximately 1,000 pictures to put up, but that´s going to be awhile because fast internet is hard to come by these days. We love and miss everybody and will post again soon!

*Lindsay

We had a great time walking around Lima yesterday.  We walked to a few cool central plazas in our neighborhood of Mira Flores before heading to some really cool parks.  Lima has gone through a major face lift in the past 5 years so everything is really beautiful.  We walked and took in the city.  There were about 4 parks in a row that we just kept walking through.  They were right on the Pacific coast!  There were people surfing and paragliding everywhere.  We found one park thanks to lonley planet called the love park.  There is a huge mosaic wall with different quotes from literature about love and in the middle of the park is a large stature of a man and woman kissing.  It was really interesting.  I hadn´t ever seen anything like it…the wall that is. 

We headed to the big main plaza, Plaza de las Armas.  We walked all around the plaza and down some cool pedestrian streets.  We were in the heart of the shopping district however, everything was far to expensive for us so we enjoyed just looking.  We found a nice little place to eat along the way.  On a whim since it was still Happy Hour we decided to try the local drinks.  Pisco is the name of their native liquor.  It is everywhere here.  We ordered Pisco sours that were pisco, lemon, and raw egg.   However, it gets weirder, we tried a nocturnal gentelman that was a mix of beer, pisco, and milk!  The crazy thing is that it was actually good! 

Earlier this morning we arrived in Cuzco!  It is really cool here!  The town seems really old, the buildings are all older giving it an even more European feel.  We found an awesome hostel that is really just like a hotel!  We could really get used to all of this flying and awesome hostels.  It is the little things that count in this trip!  haha.  The first thing the owner of the hotel did was to sit us down for some coca tea for the altitude.  It is really good too!  It is literally leaves that you pour hot water over. 

After getting settled in we headed out to explore the city.  We walked really far too because the taxi ride back actually took a while.  We saw the main plaza and stopped in a bunch of stores.  Today is Peru´s independence day so a lot of places were closed but what we did find were souvenir jackpots.  We can all tell we are going to be picking up a lot here.  We found lots of plazas and like I said cute stores.  We are really excited for tomorrow because we have plans to head to the market!  During our walk we caught a religious procession that I am not sure had anything to do with independence but still cool.  We can´t wait to explore more of our new favorite town tomorrow.  We love and miss you all!!!!!!!

Megan

So we have just arrived in Lima, Peru. We have been in three countries in the past four days. It is almost three in the morning, so this is probably going to be a bit short, but I have to fill everyone in on our amazing day. We saw the Panama Canal yesterday, and we got there right in time to see a huge cargo ship from Korea go through with about 30,000 giant containers, including a few from Cosco. Evidently they had to pay $265,000 just to go through the canal. Random fact from Marion/Lonely Planet: The cheapest anyone has ever paid to pass through the canal was 36 cents by some guy in the 1930s who SWAM the whole thing! Anyhow though, all in all, we had a great experience in Panama. We got a great hostel for really cheap that actually sort of resembled a hotel and had an actual hot-water heater. Until you´ve had as many cold showers as we have at this point, you might not be able to appreciate the significance here…

So we slept in today because we spent something like fifteen hours on buses the day before, and then we walked to this amazing crepe restaurant and sat there all day eating crepes and ice cream. Sounds like a productive way to see the city, right? We then headed off for the airport after hanging out in a fast-food chicken joint for an hour or so after checkout at the hostel. Our flight was AMAZING!!! I hate to fly, but I just realized that I might officially despise buses just a little bit more. Our airline (Avianca) was fantastic and served real food and had blankets and television and all the amazing little things you don´t get on international bus rides. There was somebody waiting at the airport to pick us up, and now we´re sitting at a great hostel in Lima. Love you all, and we´ll keep you posted on Peru happenings.

*Lindsay

We have enjoyed walking around and getting to know the town.  The best thing about this place is the food.  There is delicious food at every restaurant, the only down side is that is a bit more expensive.  Lindsay and Andrei have explored the beach and town throughly while Marion and I took a day off reading and lounging.  We did go on a 3 hour walk though so we weren’t completely locked up all day.  The differences between this town and the other two we have been to in Costa Rica are completely different.  Costa Rica has many faces.  There is a lot of Bob Marley and Jamaican pride here, making for an interesting experience and a cool spanish/jamaican accent.   

Today we all went out to a town near by called Cahuita.  It is a national park with a really cool nature trail.  The trail was about 8 kms long and took us about 5 hours to complete.  We had so much fun.  It is part trail part beach all mixed in.  We saw lots of cool plants and trees but most exciting of all….we saw a sloth and a TON of howler monkeys.  Well worth a cool trip.  We took tons of pictures.  We also saw woodpeckers, orange crabs, huge grasshoppers, some pretty butterflies, and cool heron.  Neat walk huh? 

Tomorrow we are headed toward Panama entailing an 11 hour bus ride!  We love and miss you all.  Sorry again that this post is so late. 

Megan*