There are few things that could make a 27 hour bus ride that ended up in a humid land of 100 plus degree heat worth it, but these falls were. I just can not come up with words to explain how incredible they were. And I am certain that the picture does them no justice. If you get the chance definitely check them out.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
Pulling Teeth
Unfortunatly, unlike the US and France, the revolution failed. One of the leaders of the revolution, Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, took full responsibility for the revolution, and was hung in Rio de Janeiro, in the plaza today named Praça Tiradentes.
Today, the square of his death is named Tiradentes in his honor. It seems that in Joaquim´s life prior to being revolutionary thinker and General, he had been a dentist. Tiradentes is Portuguese for teeth-puller. Thus, all of Brazil refers to him as Tiradentes, and his home town in the gold rush mountains has now been renamed Tiradentes after him.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Down at the Copa... Copacabana
Definitely not the same as the nightclub in NY, our first Copacabana of this trip was spectacularly beautiful, if quite chilly. Lake Titicaca (no longer just a bad childs joke, or the answer to a trivia question) is one of the prettiest lakes we`ve ever seen. And if it`s beauty alone didn´t leave us breathless, 15 miles of hiking at 13,000 feet certainly did.
Salt Flats are Flat
Leaving (Bolivia) on a Jet Plane
After the 15 hour ride, we arrived in Santa Cruz at 6:30am, an hour and a half before the train ticket window was supposed to open for sales, where we found a line of around 300 people waiting to get tickets. We decided to check into a hotel and come back for tickets, but by the time we had checked in and got back to the train station, the ticket seller had called it a day as it was noon and all.
The next day all train tickets were sold out, however we were able to purchase tickets for the following day. When we arrived at the train station the next day, eager to leave Bolivia, there were signs up saying the train was cancelled due to striking villagers, and security told us the train probably wouldn`t be going for the foreseeable future.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
San Francisco Take Note
Behold the Lacerda elevator in Salvador, Brazil. This elevator was originally constructed in 1873 to connect the high and low cities of Salvador. While the initial elevator was hydraulic (and man and rope and pulley) operated, today´s electric elevator transports about 50,000 passengers the 207 feet in around 30 seconds.
There are many a spot in San Francisco that could use such technological brilliance... I for one nominate the hill I used to live on (the Cumberland hill AKA Dolores Park parking lot), California between Montgomery and Powell and I´m sure a few others. I hope some politician is taking note.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Digging for Diamonds
We took a mine tour in Potosi to see first-hand the appalling arsenic and asbestos laden conditions under which miners work in the hopes of earning as much as $250 a month. While $250 a month doesn´t sound like much, consider that it´s about four times that of what a store clerk in Bolivia makes. And a store clerks salary dwarfs that of Bolivia´s rural poor (the average altiplano family of four lives on $11.65 a month). And then when you stop to consider that the average miner has a life expectancy of 45 years and the life expectancy of those in the Altiplano is 46, well... some things here are just too depressing to think about.
Of course it wasn´t all depressing... the day featured several first time in life type of experiences (and, hopefully, last time in life experiences) including:
- Climbing into a still-working 450 year old mine that created one of the largest and richest cities of the 16th century
- Gasping for air in the highest city in the world
- Taking a tour with a guide who didn´t manage to wipe the traces of cocaine from his nose before starting his 100-word-per-minute spiel
- Holding a lit stick of dynamite packed with ammonium nitrate
It may be worth noting that Matt was voted most likely to be the unibomber in his high school year book.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Matt Works and Writes Blog Posts...
Friday, October 19, 2007
Cabybara Cuteness
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Contest!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
It`s a Mullet
You know your Spanish is poor when you can´t explain that you don´t want a 6-inch difference in your front and back hair lengths. Ack.
Cuy!
We tried cuy... and it´s really not that bad. I think I preferred it over the chicha we had to accompany the cuy.
For the uninitiated, chicha is a fermented drink made of corn and drank throughout the Andes. To begin the fermentation process, the corn is first chewed and moistened in the chicha maker's mouth. Wikipedia explains the process, "Naturally occurring diastase enzymes in the maker's saliva catalyses the breakdown of starch in the maize into maltose. (This process of chewing grains or other starches was used in the production of alcoholic beverages in pre-modern cultures around the world including for example sake in Japan.)" Good to know, eh?
Matt Says...
Monday, September 10, 2007
For Dan Quayle
There are over 3,000 different types of potato(e) cultivated in Peru. Imagine what Trader Joe's could do with that as a frozen medley.
The Incredible (long) Journey
We´ve had some arduous journey´s on our trip (six buses to a backwoods Honduran brewery featuring fruit beer, the food poisoning Lagos de Montebello expedition and the 12-hour overnight bus to Palenque in Mexico come to mind), but I think we´ve set a new personal record for complexity.
FromVilcabamba, Ecuador to Chachapoyas, Peru we managed to take 1 bus, two combivans, three colectivo taxis, two colectivo pick-ups, three tuk-tuks, 1 taxi,and 1 long walk across a bridge at the border.
We managed to breakfast on fried pig knuckles with yucca, and have a dinner that we thought was pork ribs but turned out to be chicken, covered countless miles on the wrong side of pot-holed, speed-bumped dirt roads, and saw spectacular scenery from soaring mountains to desert valleys to jungly hills to beautiful sunsets peaking through storm clouds over the Andes. Was it worth it? Definitely. Would we do it again? Not in a million years.
It´s What´s for Dinner
Guinea Pigs were one of the first domesticated animals in the Americas... Not so that every second-grade class could have a mascot, but for its tasty meat with a side dish of potatoes.
We have yet to try this delicacy, but stay tuned for those photos which promise to be a lot less furry and cute.
Friday, September 7, 2007
For Justin
Where the Ladies at?
Friday, August 31, 2007
Signs, Signs, Everywhere the Signs
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Explanation Please?
Mazel Tov!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
A Recap
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Con Photo
(And we´ll post a photo here soon. Promise, promise.)
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The Rainy Season
Costa Rica is Real Pretty
We ran a marathon race through Costa Rica (well, not literally a marathon race, those are only for crazy people) and made it in and out of the country in four days. This was because Costa Rica is expensive and because it seems to have more tourists than Ticas in most places.
However, during our one day spent in Cahuita National Park, we realized why so many tourists come to spend so much money-- because it really is gorgeous and incredible. In our only Costa Rican hike we saw three different monkey species, two two-toed sloths, a 4 foot snake and a live bed of sand dollars.
Real Friends Visit
Carrie came to Nicaragua to share in our joys of hostels without hot water, toilet paper you can´t flush, ceaseless meals of rice and beans, chicken buses, watching children sniff glue, pushing taxis through mud and constant power and water outages.
She claims to still love us, so you know she´s a trooper and an extraordinarily good friend.
California History
Cerro Negro at 20 MPH
Matt`s Version:
Central America has a lot of volcanoes. Some are dormant, and some are very active, but until we reached Nicaragua, none of them had been walked on by the Mary.
I´d tried to get her to come with me, but she had gracefully declined (read: wimped out) several times until I successfully pressured her to climb Cerro Negro outside of Leon in Nicaragua.
We went on a 4am hike with an organization that gives all its earnings to help street children in Leon, and climbed up to the top and into the crater of a volcano where sulfurous steam and heat leaked from the ground.
The countryside was lush and beautiful. The views from the volcano were spectacular. The weather was perfect.
But the thing that made the day was seeing Mary´s face when she saw the 500 foot, 45 degree descent on loose lava gravel, which we were expected to run down.
The real story (AKA: Mary´s Version):
See this photo? It was taken from the top of Cerro Negro, the volcano that we ran down. Hopefully you can appreciate how insanely scary it is to throw your fragile body down a hill full of loose gravel at a million miles per hour. For the record, Matt still has a scar from this activity.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Technical Difficulties
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Caye Bridge Retrofitting
It was always a fun game to guess when the men working on one side of the bridge would dismantle planks and leave you stranded in the middle of the bay. The other fun game was walking the plank after a rum and coke with dinner... thankfully we never fell off.
Diving with Dengue
She said Yes (against her better judgement)
I got up early to pick up baleadas (Baleadas are flour tortillas grilled with beans. After months of corn-based foods, flour tortillas are exotic and gourmet. And, they´re Mary´s favorite thing about Honduras), and then dragged her out of bed for breakfast baleadas on the dock in the above photo. I figured the grogginess of waking up early, combined with the happiness of baleadas and the beauty of the early morning Caribbean would lower her defenses and I was right.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
El Primero Dia de Escuela
So I always thought that if I had high school to do over again I wouldn't be nearly so nervous or insecure... Turns out that it's not true-- I still had all those first day jitters on my first day of Spanish school (look at the tense body language in this photo Matt snuck of me marching into class).
I´m So Not High Maintenance
At the beginning of this trip Matt called me high maintenance for some reason I can´t remember (probably because I wanted a shower or some other high maintenance type activity). Then he took me on this "romantic" hike through mud covered paths and flooded river crossings... For the record, I didn´t complain the entire time, except when I had to wade through this river.