Icebergs and Llamas

I started writing this in El Calafate, Argentina, but I was taking too long and had to finish in Bariloche, 30 hours north of there. So this is a new intro, which I am writing from Bariloche, the biggest city in the lakes region of Argentina. I just arrived in Bariloche at noon today and I don´t want to do anything here except catch a trout, clean it, and eat it. It is brown trout season and I intend to catch a huge one. If you´ve ever been to Lake Tahoe, then you have a pretty good idea of what Bariloche is like. The only thing is, except being surrounded by desert, Bariloche is surrounded by hundreds of other amazingly beautiful lakes with NO development on any of them. Its a good thing to still be able to see in 2009. I hope very few entreprenouial Americans come here to see this and ruin it. On the other hand, I think Calafate is pretty much made to cater to older American tourists. I think it is for this reason that I enjoyed taking some time off to regenerate here before going up to the 3rd world madness of the Peruvian Andes. The prices here for everything suck, and every tourist activity is owned by one company that charges retarded prices, compared to EVERYTHING else in South America, and a lot of North America.

Since the last entry I went to Puerto Natales, Chile, on a bus, across the Patagonian plains. This is probably the most desolate area I have ever seen. It is worse than driving across Kansas 3 times with a Fran Drescher recording stuck on repeat. We made the best of it by making fun of the tourists that actually thought it was worth taking 500 pictures of. One girl literally took pictures for the whole 6 hour ride. There were maybe three things worth taking pictures of, and those were the llamas, sheep, and mini ostriches. So we finally get to Puerto Natales after 2 more stamps in the passport, and our hostel is overbooked. Great. We get put in the¨annex¨ which is really just the hostel accountants house. She later robbed me, but we will get to that later. You may think that wouldn´t be a bad thing but this place didn´t have the heat on or any furniture other than our beds. The beds were wood frames with a 5 inch thick piece of that shitty old yellow foam that is available in sheets from a hardware store. I was so tired that I just crawled into the crap bed under 5 blankets to keep the Patagonian cold off of me.

The next day we went to the hostels lecture on doing the W. The W is the trail that weaves throughout Torres Del Paine National Park in the shape of an upside down M. We were pretty excited after the talk, other than the guy giving the lecture trying to be too cool for school. Some high points from the talk to focus on were:

• "You should be wearing running shoes, not waterproof shoes.....oh me?....I wear boots because I´m stubborn"


• "Don´t step over rocks, walk through the creeks"


• "If you´re not miserable then you´re not having fun."


• "You could die"


• "I don´t wanna ruin anyones extreme vacation, but Patagonia is NOT extreme"

All quotes from Extreme Trekker Guy giving the lecture. (I had a blast not doing any of these retarded things)

So pretty much the guy thought he was a badass. I didn´t think patagonia was supposed to be extreme anyway. I just came to see some icebergs, penguins, and to take some good pictures. This guy just wanted you to think he was more extreme than anything ever. So after the talk we go and rent a tent, some trekking poles, a cooking kit (consisted of a bunsen burner from someones chemistry class and a pot), some sleeping bags and some mats. My poles didn´t match and it was difficult to get them the same length the entire hike. No big deal. We figured out how to do the tent on the second try without any instructions. Then came shopping for food. We made some pretty rookie mistakes here and paid for them later. Oh well, shit happens. We went back and got our packs packed up with the camping shit and food for 5 days and one change of clothes. I guess the packs were about 12-14 kg each, which is pretty heavy. All of the other clothing and stuff from our packs got stuffed into a huge sack that was left at the hostel while we were in the park. I finished packing 2 hours before Lauren and crawled back into my ice bunk for an attempt at sleeping one last night in a bed.

Day 1.
The hike (or trek if you are "extreme"). We arrived at the park on a bus with a bunch of other unexpecting tourists and took a catamaran across a glacial lake to the place where we would start the hike. We get the bags situated with some nuts and dried fruit accessable so we could get on the trail for the opening leg, up to the gray glacier. This was uphill halfway and STEEP downhill the other half. It was a nice hike through a small canyon to start and then ended up at a beautiful lake that looked like an infinity pool with edges that seemed to drop off the mountain. A few more steps and we see a giant, electric blue iceberg sitting in a cove of the lake. This is the kind of scenery I came to see. We gawk and then hike on. After what seemed like forever, we got to the viewpoint of the gray glacier and the access point to the Patagonian Ice Field. This was such an amazing view that I forgot about the bruises that were starting to form on my hips from the pack and tossed my backpack down and started snapping pics at 100 pics per second. Lauren was pretty miserable at this point from the heavy pack, so according to the lecture guy, we were doing just fine! We started heading down the downhill part to where we would camp at the foot of the glacier on the shore of the lake. The campsite never seemed to come with all the breaks we were taking so Lauren could rest her back! We finally arrived and the site was worth every step. Little mini icebergs kept floating by and we could see the glacier extending up into the patagonian ice field. We pitched the tent, made dinner and headed to bed at the earliest hour since we got to South America. The beautiful weather on day 1 was enough to spoil us because it rained like crazy all night.

Day 2.
We wake up to the worst rainstorm we would see the whole hike and decide to stay in the tent till it subsided enough to take the tent down and re-pack. That happened really late in the morning so we had to burn it up on the trail, in horrible weather. When you are snuggled up next to a block of ice the size of nebraska, it tends to affect the weather in mostly shitty ways. We started back the way we had come the day before which was the \ part of the W. Some of the wind at the viewpoint for the glacier was knocking people down. It took me by the pack and spun me around once or twice and threw me into some bushes. No big deal. We made it back to the place we took the catamaran to the day before and saw the most amazing rainbow sprawled across the lake immediately in front of us. Snapped a few hundred more pictures. We then continued down the trail to the bottom of the middle part of the W. This was only 2 more hours and 11km more. Due to the rain it was super muddy. Lauren slipped off a rock and got her shoes soaked so she took to walking through the ankle deep mud and streams. She was now miserable again, so we were doing it right according to the guy at the hostel. Because of our late start we made it to the campamento really late and were lucky to find a spot next to some of the israelis. It was FREEZING cold so Lauren curled up in her sleeping bag and I sat out in the dark making dinner on the bunsen burner. I was glad to end day 2.

Day 3.

Pretty easy day, we just went up the middle of the W and back down. It was called Valle Frances and had some really nice views. It was straight up the whole way but the weather was sunny again. Luckily we didn´t have to bring our packs with us for the view since we would be going back to the campsite before moving on to the other side of the W. We got our packs and tent and headed on to the next campsite. Along this path were some of the best views I saw. There were huge granite towers shooting up above us and bright turquoise lakes below us. The wind was actually so strong that it was blowing the water out of the lake in huge sheets. We watched for a while but couldn´t get any good pictures. The waterfall above the campsite was really tall, but the wind would blow hard up the mountain and completely stop the water from falling for a few seconds. That need we had planned on eating at the refugio and we did and drank some much needed beers and met a Dutch kid that is my age, 23. He was doing the 9 day circuit but was about as unprepared for it at we were. He´s a pilot for KLM Airlines and flies 747s. He´s still traveling with us until tomorrow and then we´re gonna meet up in two weeks in Valparaiso, Chile, to hang out at the beach before Lauren and I do Macchu Picchu. Anyways we headed to bed after a little walk through pitch black wilderness to find our tent. I happened to look up and see the most impressive night sky I may ever see with my own eyes. Patagonia has to be one of the least light polluted places in the world and it just happened to be clear for one night on the trail. We all stared in amazement for quite a while. The stars seemed huge and you could actually see the wavy white blurs behind the stars that I guess make up the galaxy.

Day 4.

Thank god, more good weather. This day was the longest part of the hike and took us to within 45 minutes of the end of the trail. 1 hour into our 21km hike, I slid off a rock and completely soaked my shoes. since I had no blisters so far, I decided to do the rest in my flip flops. It was´nt as bad as you may think since I have some of the Chaco flip flops with quite a bit of arch support and vibram soles. Either way, the extreme trekkers on the trail and at the campsite were pretty impressed. We hiked this part with Florentyn, the Dutch one, and an Austrian girl and another guy from Belgium. We were a pretty ragtag group but we were all sick of the hiking part and ended being the first ones at the camp! The only casualty that day, other than the temporary demise of my shoes, was my Appalachian hat. A sudden glacial wind hit me like a wall at the top of the canyon and ripped my hood off my head and my hat out from under it. It flew forever and is now a part of the Patagonian scenery. Luckily I lost my hat near the end of the trek and wouldn´t need it much more anyway. I was upset for the rest of the day because its the hat that I bought to wear to the Michigan game two years ago. At least I still had my App sweatpants to wear around the camp at night. After losing the hat, I had another hour and a half left so we kicked it into high gear in order to be the first at camp. While taking a break during this leg, a couple passed us and Lauren thought she had taken a spanish class with the girl. We all didn´t believe it and wrote off the idea as crazy. Well we got to camp and set up tent and while sitting around with the crew we had met on the trail, this couple walked up. To everyones dismay, Lauren and the girl did have spanish together in the fall. This is pretty amazing considering we´re within spitting distance of Antarctica and we haven´t met any other Americans in this part of chile, not to mention, we´re five days deep into the woods. So they recognize eachother and out of complete coincidence the four americans in the group of 50 people at camp, all graduated from ASU in December 2009. Hows that for crazy? This night we decided to eat our last pasta dinner. We had saved macaroni for last and we were both looking forward to it. I cooked it up on the bunson burner and as soon as I opened the cheese packet, I knew something was horribly wrong. The smell was beyond toxic. I threw it in anyway and thought maybe there would be some sort of chemical reaction with the noodles that would make it smell and taste amazing. Wrong again. I ate one noodle and gave the rest away. Everyone wanted to try a bite and after tasting it only one person was brave enough to eat the whole pot. The morrocan uber hippy killed it in a few heaping bites. Time for bed.

Last Day.

We slept like shit all night because it got really cold and rained really hard. Around 3 or 4 AM I noticed the rain had quit so I poked my head out of the tent and noticed that it hadn´t really quit but actually had turned to a full on patagonian blizzard. I had nearly been sunburned and walked in flip flops and shorts the day before, now my -17º sleeping bag was leaving me with frozen toes. I decided not to worry about it and went on with the plan to wake up at 5 am and hike up to the top of the mountain, where the view of the towers were best at sunrise. A 1 hr vertical hike in the dark through new snow was quite the experience. Us, Florentyn, and some old guys were the first to arrive. It was clear for around 3 minutes before the sun came and then it turned to clouds and more blizzard. After everyone else from camp arrived we had fun talking shit about the weather and admiring the experience and then we all descended very quickly. After gathering everything from camp and eating a little more oatmeal, we hauled ass down the mountain for 3 hours to end at the last stop, where the bus would pick us up. The motivation to leave was uncontrollable. We arrived at Hosteria Las Torres, the last stop, laid the tent out to dry, and went inside to eat meat and drink beer while we waited for the bus. Another amazing experience had come to an end and we were headed back to civilization for the first time in a week.

In all, Torres Del Paine was an impressive place. I liked the blue glaciers and the icebergs in the lake the best. Next time I come back I will either have a porter to carry my bag or I´ll rent a tent each night at the refugios to cut down on carry weight.

After the trek we had already booked a room back in El Calafate to chill out and recover. We ended up having a few too many celebratory beers with Kristoff, Florentyn, an English guy, and the Austrian girl that night and Florentyn convinced us to stay in Puerto Natales for another day and then go to Calafate the next day with him. We didn´t need our arms twisted too hard but we had already asked for the bus tickets for the day before. Well the accountant/bus booker/ thief never confirmed our bus purchase with us and it was now like 1Am. No note on the door or anything and we had wanted to leave at 7Am so we figured we didn´t have tickets. We sleep in and wake up to the accountant bitch screaming about how she couldn´t find us the night before with our bus tickets and how we had to pay for them even though we missed the bus. I argued pretty heavily in spanish and cussed in English and eventually got Lauren to go to the bus station to see if we could switch our tickets for the next day. Nope. I gave Accountant Thief the money to get her to shut up and go back to her freezing ass cold cave of a house. The guy that ran the hostel was on our side but said he was a separate entity from the old hag so he gave us a fifty percent discount on our rooms and let us stay an extra night to recoup our losses from the hag womans theivery. Glad to leave the town of Puerto Natales.

Before Torres del Paine, we went to the Perito Moreno glacier in Glacier National Park, Argentina. This place was so amazing that I literally sat in the rain, watching it for 4 hours. It is one of the only advancing glaciers in the world. Its a huge mass of blue ice that ends at a turquise lake full of icebergs. Every twnenty minutes or so, the front of the 200 ft wall of ice will send out a barrage of cracks louder than a machine gun, and the face will fall into the water, sending a title wave through the lake and giving birth to another iceberg to float around in the turquoise lagoon. This was blowing my mind every few minutes so I took about 400 pictures while walking around the viewing area with my jaw completely dropped. I can´t explain it any ther way than that so you´ll just have to wait for the pictures, which should be up by the time I leave Bariloche.

Until then, I hope the tar heels lose tonight, like my blue devils, so I don´t have to hear from the fans for another year about how great they are. Go to hell Carolina, RIP Duke 2008/9 Season.

Buenos Aires and Ushuaia

Since I las wrote, a lot has happened. Most of the time was spent in Buenos Aires, with exeption to three days in Ushuaia. I just got to El Calafate, Argentina last night.



Buenos Aires ended the way it began, rather eventless and relaxing. We were supposed to fly to Ushuaia on March 4, but we missed our flight with a priceless bonehead move. I thought the flight was 7 at night and it was really at 7AM. Oh well. I ended up convincing the owner of our apartment to give us the monthly rate since we had to stay there an extra week. This made a big difference because now we didn´t have to pay for the extra 6 days. It must have smooth talking because I would have never let anyone do that.

Anyways, we ended up hanging out with Ilona and Cornelis, the Dutch couple quite a bit for the next couple of days. We found a take-out parilla, that was insanely cheap, so we ate dinner there almost every night. At the parilla, for Lauren and I, we would get 2 HUGE prime steaks, a huge order of potatoes prepared any way you like, and some other kind of protein, desert (we normally got the amazing flan), and a 2.5 litre soda. All of this cost a whopping 12 American Dollars. The soda was good. We need something like it in the USA. Its generic name is pomelo, which means grapefruit. All it is, is grapefruit juice and a little carbonated water with a little extra sugar. It was like 96% grapefruit juice so I felt alright drinking it! The two nights we didn´t eat at the parilla were the nights we decided to set out to find chinese food. Cornelis and I decided this at about 4 AM one morning before bed. We were pretty burnt out on steak. Also, argentines don´t use any spice other than salt when they cook so we were really looking forward to some curry or something exotic like PEPPER! We looked up ¨best chinese food in Buenos Aires¨ and chose a place called Buddha Garden or some crap. After recruiting the new English guy, Glen, and rounding up Lauren and Ilona, we went for our food. It was in China town and we were all salivating on the walk there because we could smell the egg rolls cooking in all that tasty grease. After walking past all of the ¨ghetto¨ chinese places that were all packed, we arrived at the Buddha Garden, which was chic decor, PF Changs type of chinese place. It wasnt really what we had expected but we decided to trust the reviews we found on google. It turned out that it wasn´t even chinese. It was that fusion type of asian food, which I could care less about. We all pretty much felt that way. It ended up being too expensive and we decided that we would do the ghetto chinese food the next day. Ghetto chinese food was one of the best things we decided to do in Buenos Aires. It ended the longest streak of no chinese food ever experienced in my life!

We did a few things other than eat and go to soccer games in Buenos Aires. We explored the different neighborhoods and saw the tourist sights. I really enjoyed the parks in Palermo. Other cities could really take some notes from the expansive parks down there. They stretch for miles and miles. I also liked the Puerto Madero area, which is main port.

Ushuaia is badass. After our extra week in BsAs we got our flight to Ushuaia. It was really cool because its about like Alaska. The southern most town in the world (all the way at the bottom of South America, on the island of Tierra del Fuego) was exciting from the get go. Flying in, it was super cloudy, like you´d expect, and we came out of the clouds and were practically on the ground. That was a little nerve racking, with all the recent plane crashes and all. We stayed at a beautiful hostel overlooking the Beagle channel. There was a pool table and leather couches and a nice sound system on the top floor lounge, with panoramic windows around the whole room, for views of the channel. We spent quite a bit of time up there planning our attack of the pacific coast of South America. We hiked up the Marital Glacier while we were here, which gave great views of the town and the Ushuaia bay. We were going to go to the National park but it was insanely expensive, so we saved our money and ate a ton of the local king crab that night!

For the trip, we decided to head up the atlantic coast, on the paved road, then over to El Calafate to do some hiking and see some ENORMOUS glaciers. I´m in El Calafate now, getting ready to sit down with someone to plan my treks through Torres del Paine and my trip up to the Perito Moreno Glacier. It is one of the few advancing glaciers in the world. It moves toward the lake every day and huge, 60 meter tall, walls of ice fall into the lake when it reaches. I wish I had about $5000 more to do everything I wanna do down here in Patagonia! Unfortunately we´re gonna have to make it back to North Carolina within budget, so that means bussing it up to Peru ASAP after Patagonia. Hopefully we´ll be able to spend a week in Mendoza, to try some wines and tour a couple vineyards.

After my expeditions through Parque Nacional Los Glaciares and Torres del Paine, I´ll update again! See you guys soon. We´re on the home stretch!

Club Atletico Boca Junior

Well holy shit. Today I woke up the earliest I have been up yet in Buenos Aires in an attempt to get tickets to the famous Boca Juniors soccer game. This proved semi-successful, since we got tickets, but less successful in the fact that we got Populare seats. Porteños don´t wake up before noon unless they actually have a job, which some do, I think. We were up at 9 am catching the deserted subway up to the bus station where we take an airbrush painted and chrome rimmed bus up to the barrio de La Boca. The working class neighborhood isn´t as bad as everyone says it is, but I think that is just because I´ve been to La Paz before. We found the line to get tickets after a few minutes of gazing at the stadium. It only wrapped around 2 and half city blocks. We waited in the 90 degree heat for what seemed like an eternity to get to the boleteria, where you buy your billetes. I asked for Platea seats, which are where the rich people sit and they pay about $20 for this privelage. The very direct ticket seller only said NO. I explained in my amazing spanish that we would sit anywhere as long as it was safe. He said ok and that would be 9 dollars. We got our tickets and realized they were in the INfamous seccion populare. At first we were thinking it would be ok and that we could handle a rowdy crowd but then we got home and did a google search for some advice and found this epic piece of blog literature on an American experience in the populare

Part I
Going to a Boca Jrs. futbol game for the first time is a lot like going to Buenos Aires for the first time: you wanna find out what it's like, what's gonna happen. If you get out of there alive, you're going to do it with new memories and a new you. That's the hope.On the day of the Big Game, my internet was still down. I don't know my home phone number so hadn't given it to anyone else. I was basically unreachable. I had Cory's number but our landline here won't dial out to cells. The local locutorios (phone and internet joints) around here were all closed because it was a Sunday and this is a God-fearing (the Judeo one more than the Christo one) barrio, god damn it!So during one of those moments when I could cop some free wireless from the farmacia down the road I dropped him a line saying I would meet him and Chris at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Boca, which is 1/2 a mile or so from the stadium, around 2:30PM.Fortunately my roomie The Kellness showed up with her cell phone and I was able to reach Cory, because he had emailed me that he and Chris had different plans: we'd hook up at the Catedral subte (subway) station at 3 and taxi from there. I wouldn't have got (received) that email, so all praise be to The Kell and her magic phone

We did meet at Catedral, got a taxi at Plaza de Mayo and descended into Boca. If you've been to Boca, and I don't mean the little painted houses caminito part of Boca but more that bad-ass Tony Bourdaine smirking and chowing on a choripan (chorizo on bread) kind of Boca, then you know that Bronx-like (lots of cool restos, lots of shirtless guys who've got those major working-class [stoner] eyes) feeling (I've never been to the Bronx but I've seen it from a bridge and it looked pretty urban; so having La Bombonera in the middle of this scene feels a bit Yankee-esque or I guess Fabulous Forum-esque for all my homies out in Inglewood).So the stadium seems to have several mini-barrios to itself, and there are huge fields near it where one can score some grilled meats, weed, and scalped tickets. And it was this tickets aspect more than the meat or weed aspect, that took up the first 1.5 hours. We did not buy weed and later this proved sentient: the herb-to-air ratio in our section was far higher than that, of, say, a reggae concert in San Francisco.There were three of us with somewhat differing ideas about what constituted a successful ticket score. The variables were price and location, and the location variable ran from the popular to the platea alta (high plateau areas are places where people with more dough and whiter skin can sit on actual seats and rarely if ever be showered in the urine of the opposing team's fans) . We couldn't always tell from the tickets what we were looking at. But we knew one good thing, strong and true: DO NOT END UP IN THE POPULAR SECTION!I won't even play. We know, y'all know, we totally ended up in the mas popular section possible.We talked to maybe 20 different "scalping crews," over an area of several square miles of field and barrio, trying to hustle--under a scalding sun and in a thick smog of BBQ--in our case, the worst possible tickets for the highest price. We are bad-ass gringo sports fans, scalper bitches. Step off.So now that we had our awesome billetas (b-jettas) it was time to find our way into the forbidden section popular. We had to move through several mini barrios, street by street, crowd by crowd of horse-mounted and boot-mounted 45mm-packin' police, horde by horde of roving hoodlum-esque groups of scary (locally colorful) chanting stoner hooligans, talking to cop after cop to find out which street to go down to access puerta 6 and the mysteries that lay behind it.There were multiple security barricades in the streets that we had to pass through, being checked for guns, bombs, that kind of deal. Too bad those guys didn't do a slightly better job.

Eventually, four barricade-levels in, we found our entrance gate where we would soon learn whether our totally fake-looking scalped tickets would get us through the turnstiles or not. Fake-looking in that the dot-matrix print job of the ticket info was totally crappily printed and smearing off. Happily, our scalper guy had not been bullshitting us when he said that smeared ink and crappy printing was proof these tickets were legit. We were permitted to enter the Amazing Stairwell of Urinating Hombres.

Part II
The stairwell up to the popular bleachers is a fifteen-foot-square four-story gray brick rectangle. When we enter it, there are three or four men on each level, urinating either towards the wall, or in the more classic Latin American style, facing away from the wall and pissing into the middle of the walking area.People had been entering La Bombadera for a couple hours before this time, so the floors of the stairwell landings were nicely humidified with their first coats of fresh piss. The smell was not yet overwhelming.We came to the first door out into the bleachers, and I had a sense we should keep ascending in the stairwell to a higher level, but my companions pushed on through this first door and into the already totally jammed bleachers. This may have been a mistake. If we had gone higher up, we could have ended up in the shade under the upper deck, with a better view, and out of the throw/spit/urinate line of the enemies in the opposing-team's-fans section above us. As it was we were in direct sunlight, watching through a barbed-wire fence, and in danger.Next time you are heading into La Bombadera's popular section, keep going as high as you possibly can.The popular bleachers are made of cement, nine ten inches front to back, eighteen inches from butt level to foot level. When we first got in about an hour before kick-off, though we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other fans--actually there was shoulder overlap--you had a place for your feet and a place for your butt. But by the time the game started, you only had one place: you could either stand there, or sit there and pull your knees up to your stomach with your feet on the same level as your butt, in a roughly 9-inch-square area.

Each team is sponsored by a company and the company name is the dominant thing on their jerseys--the pro ones and the fan ones. On the Boca Juniors jerseys the word MEGATONE blazes across the front and back in blue on yellow. Independiente's colors are red and white, and these are also the colors of their sponsor's logo. I will not mention who their sponsor is because for some months I am a Porteno, not some sub-human Independiente-loving scumball who throws wet and or burning things onto my body while I try to watch fut.The opening proceedings have a lot to do with promoting the sponsors' stuff, plus some sports-for-kids stuff, then some cheer leading stuff. Our cheerleaders were lead by Batwoman, as you can see in in this video.

All of this involves yellow-and-blue related things around the periphery of the field, but the whole time a big red and white logo for the opposing team sponsor is spread out dead-center in the field and beautiful young (but probably subhuman) women stand around the logo holding red and white flags unmoving for the full hour-plus.When the match finally starts, it takes a minute or two for the popular section to get into full roar, but by the time they do the volume is unbelievable

They sang and chanted at least thirty different songs in perfect unison and it was like having icepicks reamed into my ears it was so freaking loud. They must be half deaf after a few games of that and are now insensate to the ridiculous decibels.Immediately I could see this was a higher level of soccer than I am used to seeing on TV in the States where I am watching American, Mexican, some European, and some international matches. I was dazzled by the skills, and it looked like Boca was going to dominate, they were so creative, precise, and fast. Yet I know it can be very hard to get a small ball through eleven guys and into a small net, and one bad moment on your end, and you're screwed.I learned at that match that soccer is not as boring as it seems. Being in a psychotic horde of deranged maniacs who have nothing to live for but the game, you start getting a feeling for what it's all about: appreciation for skills, bravery, and heroism. Every time something skillful happens, the crowd flips out with applause and songs and hoots in appreciation, even if it ends up in "failure." One guy taking on six defenders and getting THAT CLOSE! got nearly as much applause as if he had scored a goal. A player stealing the ball from another who had just beat three other guys: roaring cheers! An unbelievable spin move followed by a precision-lofted ball to a downfield attacker, pandemonium of chanting and screaming and clapping and cursing and taunting at the enemy above us. Even if we had not put a number on the scoreboard, we had just smote the enemy to our own everlasting (one or two seconds) glory.On TV you don't get that. You don't hear it or feel the continually changing pulse of the crowd as it reacts constantly to what is happening on the field, second by second.

And then BOOM. Boca own-goaled themselves, right in front of us, right in the goal not forty feet down to our left. I saw it in my mind over and over: our defender sliding in on his knees trying to block the ball in the frenzy of action at the net, and the ball clearly coming off his grass-sliding knees and into our own goal. You see this in the first part of the video linked to below, from television broadcast of the match.But there was no sense of fan anger against this poor sap. Everyone in the stadium knows the sports gods are unfathomable. Some pats on the back, the ball was taken to the center line, kicked and the game continued.And the first half-stick of dynamite came down from the upper deck, landed five feet from me, and blew about twenty of us off our feet. I could feel my rib cage bend inward with the blast, I was momentarily deaf and all I could see was white.I had to clear up a bit before I could determine if I was injured. I wasn't, really. Sort of an unusual blast-radius sensation in my chest and legs, but that's all. Others around me were checking themselves, laughing nervously, and trying to continue watching the game, but with frequent furtive glances to the upper deck that would continue until they let us out of there.The bombs seemed to be a ploy to get us into a situation where we were continually looking back into the upper deck, from which the spitting and tossing of cups of scary substances then commenced. This was responded to by our section with explosive torrent of abusive screaming, the most common and recognizable word of which was PUTA!!! whatever that means.During the rest of the match, only one more bomb came down. Our senses were so heightened by this time that we could almost hear the thing flying down at us and so we covered our ears, spun away from the likely explosion point and curled away from the explosion.The spit, though, and cups filled with scary unknown liquids mixed with cigarette ash, continued to rain down the whole time. Huge viscous spit wads hit our backs, heads, shoulders, chests, faces, depending on which direction we were facing. We were constantly glancing up and behind for fear of more bombs coming down, and then we'd see a rain of phlegm descending from the sky and there was really no way to avoid it if it was coming down at you, because there was no space to move. You could see these guys were used to it: a huge wad would hit their shoulders, and they'd just reach back with their shirt and scrape it off, often without taking their eyes off the game if something exciting was happening.Earlier I had noticed that most of the shirtless guys around me had pretty large bruises on their legs and arms and torsos and massive scaps on their elbows and knees. I have to reckon these guys were season pass holders, because those bruises could easily have come from both being bombed and from being knocked down on these sharp-edged cement bleachers.

At 1:46 in that video, upper left, is the moment where I first got bowled over by a tidal wave of humanity and and injured my pelvis pretty decently. At least I seem bruise- and scab-free even if I can barely walk more than a week later and my back is killing me. On the plus side, the powder burns on the right side of my neck from that first bomb seem to be healing really well.So the game ended a 1-1 tie (both goals unfortunately scored by our team) and there was a lot of scary threatening going on between guys in our area and guys above. I decided, after several hours of putting aside my intuition to get the hell out of there, to get the hell out of there now and I got about thirty feet closer to the exit when I realized we weren't going nowhere. The doors were locked.They kept us locked in the popular area for more than an hour while the entire rest of the stadium completely cleared out. So we sat on beer- and Coke-soaked cement, staring through barbed wire, in 100F heat, for an hour while the animals above us threw cups of wet grossness down upon us and the "security" dudes stood around and didn't do squat. You couldn't move from your position if you were in a particularly rich line of fire because we were all just crushed in there like 12 people in a 5-man elevator. We just simmered, stewed, and got abused, while maybe a hundred of us hung on the barbed-wire cursing and gesturing at the people above.Once they got all the rich white folks out out of the rest of the joint, they finally opened our doors and the mob flood started. I was hot to get out of there so I sort of aggressively pushed my way into the stairwell.Guess what! It was not TWO FREAKING INCHES DEEP IN PISS! It was an un-partable Sea of Urine that soaked through our tennis shoes as we slowly herded ourselves, inch by inch, through the airless tunnel.But not just airless. There was actually an honest-to-god piss fog in there. The heat and the moisture and the vast quantities of urine had turned the stairwell into a full-on toxic urine gas chamber. I held one hand over my nose and mouth and tried not to breath too much; meanwhile the sticky cloud stuck to my flesh and burned. Eventually I got out and stood on the sidewalk waiting for Chris and Cory. When they came out they both had their shirts wrapped around their faces. They pulled them away and gasped for air. Their shoes were soaked to the ankle.When I got home after 2 hours of trying to catch a taxi later--we finally snagged the 29 bus back to Plaza de Mayo--I got on the internet and bought a ticket to another match. I will be returning to the section popular.Surely the fans of Colón de Santa Fe cannot be as debased as those of Independiente.

Written by some other guy on google blogs

This was hilarious to me. We decided to go ahead with the popular section for some reason. We made it to the stadium and after trying to trade for better tickets we decided to just bribe the cop into letting us in to the more "tranquilo" popular section. It worked and we didn´t have to bribe. We made it up to our concrete ledge and sat under the roof provided by the visitors section above us. This was a good call because we didn´t get spit on like the guy in the previous story. We did see all of that stuff happen though. about 20 rows below us, people were getting hit with all kinds of stuff from the angry opposing fans from above. We enjoyed it as part of the show since we knew what to expect. We never really felt in danger, except for the 2 inch piss pool that was the baño. I did think my ears were going to explode in the second half when Boca started scoring a lot. The popular on the other end of the stadium was so loud that I was literally looking around for a fighter jet that I thought was circling the stadium. It was sustained noise that was so loud my ears hurt. Simply Amazing. The first half was a 0-0 tie and I almost fell asleep. The noise was so loud in the second half that I missed the fact that the opposing team scored a goal. I found that out a few minutes ago when I got home.

I wish I were going to be in BA another week so I could go to another soccer game. I can´t even go to a movie for what I paid for that game in the US.


Link to original story I found!

Buenos Aires, Soccer, and Mullets

I don´t really know where to start with this one. Since I have last written, I have spent about two weeks in Buenos Aires, in an apartment we rented. The apartment is pretty cool because other people our age have rented the other rooms and they are pretty normal, for the most part. Staying with us here at the apartment is a Dutch couple that speaks perfect english, an American girl from Seattle, Colombian sisters, and Alejandra, the older lady. We all get along pretty well, with exception to the Colombian sisters who don´t speak to us....even when we are speaking Spanish. So I guess its kind of like two factions of guests, english speakers and the Colombians. Anyways, the apartment is beautiful and was probably built in the early 1900s or late 1800s. It is really pretty and the elevator is a little scary, as you can see out of the thing on all sides because the walls are iron mesh! Lauren and I got a great room that has a ceiling like 20 ft high. It was really hot for a few weeks but now it rained and has gotten down in the 50s at night! I have gone from waking up at 8am every morning to hardly waking before 1 in this city!

I sleep horribly late due to the culture in this crazy city. Breakfast and lunch time is normal but a break for mate (Mah Tay) is between lunch and dinner pushing dinner back to about midnight or 1 am. This really messes with my timing since Lauren and I haven´t gotten into the whole Mate thing.

Some more notes on Porteño culture are that they love mullets. Here a mullet is called a Cubano and it is a huge part of Buenos Aires life. I see probably between 100 and 300 on any given day here. The typical one is a sleek euro soccer mullet, paired with some stunna shades (sunglasses that rappers wear), and a skin tight soccer jersey. Its a pretty horrible sight. The next most common type is the disguisting rats nest dredlock mullet. These are really popular for the hippie types here. They wanna make me vomit. Last but not least is the rat-tail, which is HUGELY popular everywhere in Argentina. These are not centered on the head and in no way do they demand respect. The Argentine variety comes off the backside of the head at any location desired and may or may not be a dred lock. In most cases it is just a separated group of hair strands that are coupled together with any kind of cloth or rubber band found laying around. Most of them look like they have been growing since a young age. I have seen these coupled with the mullet on many occasions here. They come shooting out of the most un-suspecting of hair cuts just to shock the unprepared!



Now that the Argentina mullet epidemic has been discussed I wanna share soccer experience number 1. There are two huge club teams in Buenos Aires, Boca Juniors and River Plate. We chose to go see River Plate first and we´ll see Boca on March 1. These games are incredible. We went up to the neighborhood where the River Plate stadium is a couple days before the game and decided to familiarize ourselves with the area and get our tickets. To our surprise it was a really nice neighborhood with huge houses. We bought our tickets from the stadium for about AR$120 each. This is funny because the tour companies want AR$500 to take you to a game. When you go with a tour company you get a baby sitter for the game and a ride to and from the game. For face value and a $0.30 subway ride I got to go to the game like a big boy. I know its probably really hard for some tourists to go and buy your own tickets and take the amazingly efficient subway, but I thank them anyway because they were sitting right below us where we could laugh knowing that they paid nearly 5 times what we did for the same thing. So we get to the game neighborhood on game day about 3 hours early to be ready for masses of people. This was a good idea because I wanted to find some beer to drink on the street before the game. Lauren wasn´t real big on this idea so she made it her goal to make sure I was miserable and that I had the worst time possible at the soccer game. After walking around the stadium for about an hour we realized that due to a government order, no alcohol is sold anywhere near the stadium on gameday! I guess I´ll have to bring a backpack for the March 1 game at Boca! We got pretty hungry right before we headed in the gate so we stopped over by a chorizo stand and got a HUGE chorizo on a bun. It was really good and it fit the sport event mood. Lauren started to come out of her little mood once we got the chorizo, even though she claimed hers was undercooked. We got into the game with a full belly and completely sober and watched the raging fans in the Popular section hang flags, sing, and destroy things. The popular is a section of fans behind the goal. It goes all the way up to the top of the stadium. Thses are the fans you see on the news causing riots. They are locked into the stadium in order to separate them from other fans. They aren´t allowed to leave till all the other fans are gone! The barriers keeping them in their area are concrete walls with barbed wire on top. They sang and raged in here until kickoff, when these fans then started chanting. It was unreal. I had never been to a soccer game in a foreign country before so this was quite an experience. Since we didn´t get the babysitter service, we sat with a group of locals that sang and pumped their fist in a hitleresque manner the entire game. I still can´t believe those sucker tourists paid that much for a babysitter! After halftime the fans started chanting for their newest player to be put in the game. The Ogre. He was promptly added to the lineup at right forward and almost immediately scored! He was funny to watch because he is really tall and overweight. A few minutes later he assisted a beautiful goal and the entire crowd donned their shrek masks that were given out before the game. After the game we missed the last subway back to our neighborhood because the damn thing closes at 10pm, which is a pain in the ass since dinner isn´t until midnight! We got to try our skill on the public busses to get home! We did a great job and made it first try. When we got home Lauren said she wanted to skip the tango show and go to another soccer game because she forgot about being pissed at me and had a little bit of fun at the game! So now we are going to Boca together!

We spent some time in the upscale Palermo neighborhood when we first got here just because it felt safe. Its actually kind of lame. The big attractions here are modern art galleries which Lauren and I both, have decided we don´t care for. They are really confusing and the art can be really gay. I mean gay both ways, literally and the way that teenagers use it when they don´t like something they don´t quite understand. When we left the first AND last museum we visited, we both said at the same time, "I´m glad that was free!" A little more on modern art before I stop my rant. Anyone can take a lot of drugs and then throw paint at something and give it a retarded abstract title. Half the damn exhibits were UNTITLED. If you are doing some wierd ass thing where you are clearly trying to make a social or political statement, then title it or explain it please. Taking a picture of something in black and white is not art. Thanks for listening to that, I wish I could get the time back I spent in that place.

Palermo also had tons of gardens and a zoo. The zoo was cool and we got to see some different animals than you would in a North American zoo. I think the polar bear wanted to drown itself because it was 100 degrees outside. The gardens are probably nice but we´re gonna try those out right before we leave.

Puerto Madero is another district of the city. I really like this part because it is genuinely Porteño (of or relating to BsAs) but it has all the things you need! This is where all of the ports are for the bay on which BsAs sits. They have converted all of the huge brick wearhouses into restaurants, offices and upscale apartments. They are still original brick and sort of look like a turn of the century wearhouse, but they are styled with tinted glass and modern trim materials. Since Porteños eat their food with no spice at all, we were more than pleased to find a Hooters down here. Lauren had never been to one and we were both CRAVING spicy food, so we spent the afternoon eating wings and drinking 2 for 1 beers. The happy hour here is great. Nobody eats dinner before midnight so happy hour runs from off work time til dinner time, just like at home.......except here that is 5pm until 10pm or midnight!!! I think Lauren enjoyed her first experience at hooters. The girls were actually hot at this one too! You can´t go wrong with South American girls in a hooters!! I think I´ll bring her perception of hooters back down to earth by taking her to one in Hickory or Myrtle Beach when we get back!

Recoleta is the nicest neighborhood in town and we had a great time visiting this place. This is where the cemetary is that houses all of the famous Argentines! The memorials were like castles and you could look in and see the coffins in most of them. The guide there said that most of the mausaleums cost about the same as mid range apartment in the city! We went and saw the graves of the few famous argentines we´d heard of. So we saw Evita, and then we left.... Just kidding, recognized some of them from the names of streets in town! After the cemetary we walked around Recoleta and saw nothing but older American Tourists following around english speaking guides, dodging culture as best they could! There was Hard Rock cafe up here and the Recoleta Hippie Street Market. It is really called the Hippie Market. It is just a bunch of handicrafts, bums, hippies, and dumb Americans thinking they are buying something really ethnic. Its really just shit the hippies bought at the flea market across town that they are now selling in the rich part of town to tourists at 500% mark-up. All of the restaurants were about twice as expensive as the rest of the city and all were some kind of chain! We opted to hit some Mcdonalds instead, which we have done way too often here!!, and then head back to our neck of the woods. I feel guilty about all the Mcdonalds I have eaten but it doesn´t bother me too bad since Lauren and I can both eat for for under $10!! There are tons of cafes from the Buenos Aires good ol days, so we are trying to eat at as many of those as we can. We ate at the most famous one, it opened in like 1837. My burger was good but sent me running for the subway to get back to my apartment and Lauren´s milkshake cost more than my burger! The atmosphere is really cool because they have changed nothing other than the kitchen since it opened! They have live tango in the dining room every night!

The last place we visited was La Boca, a working class neighborhood by the docks, and home of the world famous Club Atletico Boca Junior! We headed up here to see the brightly painted houses, which were a lot more artistic than that shitty museum! The houses are all covered in corugated metal from the shipyards, and then painted in many bright colors! It makes for a really cool look that I have seen nowhere else! Lining the streets are restaurants and stages with live tango for free as long as you´re eating! We chose this as the alternative to a hundred dollar tango show downtown. The tango was good and food was horrible, but Lauren go to see some dancing so we were happy! Next we walked up to La Bombonera, the Boca Jr stadium! It is HUGE and it is covered in yellow and blue paint! They couldn´t decide on colors when the team was born in the 1900s so they decided to take on the colors of the next passing ship out by the docks. It was a Swedish ship so to this day the colors are yellow and blue. Tickets weren´t on sale yet for the game we wanted so we headed back to the touristy area. We were told Boca was a sketchy neighborhood but I think that is just for people who have never been anywhere else in South America. It seemed fine to me after visiting La Paz, Lima, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro!!! I have to go up there Sunday morning to get our tickets before the game. I can´t wait because these games are supposed to be crazy!!

Í´ll put the pictures up soon from this city! We have a lot of them. We are on the home stretch of the trip now and both of us are ready for something new. We head to Ushuia on Wednesday and then start heading north all the way back up to Lima. Ushuia is the southernmost city in the WORLD. Like Sara Pailin, maybe we´ll be able see Antartica from our back porch, like she can see Russia..... We´ll keep an eye on ém, Sara! It will be nice to be back in small towns after the 11 million person metropolis of BsAs. It is about the loudest city in the world.

For those of you who missed out on the Uruguay and Iguazu pictures..... heres the links!

Uruguay
Iguazu - Argentina
Iguazu - Brazil

-John

Iguazu Falls and Uruguay

These two places are really incredible. We started the trip to Foz do Iguacu, Brazil about 9 days ago and it was a pretty standard bus ride. Not really anything interesting to look at on the trip. We got to Foz with no problems and decided to take a nap because the bus trip was another all nighter. We had decided in Curitiba to take a good bus company so the air conditioning would be strong the whole way to Foz but at the first rest stop on the route, the bitchy old hag behind us complained to the bus driver that the bus was too cold. This wreaked havoc on every other passenger for the remaining 9 hours aboard the bus. Lauren and I gathered our portuguese together in an attempt to get the air conditioner turned back on but the old hag lady went back up and complained again. Everyone on the bus just thought the air conditioning had broken but Lauren and I were in the front row so we knew what was going on. So we didn't sleep a bit that night on the bus so a nap was in order as soon as we got to Foz do Iguacu. Our hostel was ok and a little bit of a walk from the bus station. The people spoke english and the internet was broken, as usual. After a 3 hour nap we hopped on the bus outside our hostel and rode 30 minutes to the national park at Iguazu Falls. It was pretty cheap to get in and then we had to get on another bus up to the falls themselves. We got off at a fancy hotel and could immediately hear the roar of the falls. I had read about these falls in the guide books but I really had no idea what to expect. It was a million times more than what I had pictured! These dwarf Niagara! From the Brazil side you really cannot get very close to the falls but you can see the damn thing, which is difficult. There are 275 waterfalls total. The biggest was La Gargantua and it was perfectly named. We got pretty close to it and got SOAKED! It was worth it because it was extremely hot outside.



The next day we hopped on another public bus that took us to Puerto Iguazu, Argentina. Time for another passport stamp. I had lost the piece of paper that the Brazillian immigration officer had given me 3 weeks before, which is punishable by a fine of $90 USD. They won't give you an exit stamp if you don't have that piece of paper! You only get a citation and then you have to go to the embassy in your home country when you get back, pay them the $90, and then they give you your exit stamp. I knew all of this before heading to the border. Well for me playing dumb at the border wasn't too difficult since I don't know any portuguese AT ALL. The officer held up the paper I was supposed to have and I just made some grunts and random english words, followed by shoving my passport towards him and saying 'STAMP'repeatedly! After pointing at the paper a few more times and saying some other angry portuguese back to me he laughed at my lack of Brazilian culture and stamped my passport and let me go free! I don't know how it worked but it did and that I am thankful for!



Once in Puerto Iguazu, we chilled out at our amazing hostel, which had air conditioning, and then went to bed so we could explore the Argentina side of the falls the next day. Next day we woke up to the worst thunder storms we had seen since we started our trip! It didn't let up all day so we just lounged around the hostel and looked for a plane ticket to Buenos Aires for the next day. We ended up getting a night bus to Buenos Aires because we learned that bus travel in Argentina is an art form. We'll get to the bus later. It didn't leave until 2pm the next day so we had to get up early to see the falls before the bus left. It was worth every bit, except the exorbitant fees they charge to go in a national park if you are a foreigner. It was bullshit in my book. It was $5 for people from Argentina or $20 for anyone else! I got over the price scheme pretty quick as we headed straight for La Gargantua. We walked through the woods on a path where we saw a family of Coatis, a little racoon like anteater, then found the cat walk that took us over the river to the biggest waterfall I have ever seen and may ever see. As we walked up all I could see was mist rising and water being sucked down. I am not even going to try to describe the Argentina side of Iguazu Falls because it is impossible to do it justice. It is the most incredible natural site I have ever seen. On the Argentina side you can walk around the bottom of the falls and around the top of the falls on a very extensive system of cat walks. The whole time our mouths were open in awe. I took a ton of pictures and should have them up on Snapfish soon. I haven't totally figured out how to use that site very well so if anyone has any idea how to share my whole library, let me know please!!

I haven't spent a lot of time in Argentina yet, but so far the food kicks ass. I got a "simple cheeseburger" the other day and it had burger, ham, and fried egg on it!! I called it the gaucho burger and when I spend an extended period of time in Buenos Aires I will find the best one there!



So about the bus... We had 3 companies to choose from that offered Cama Suite, or Bed Suite, service to Buenos Aires. This was a must as it is an 18 hour trip. Two companies offered free wifi on the bus but we decided to go with another company that had a promotion for $60 US. For that price we got a leather seat that reclined into a bed like a first class international flight. As for meals, we were served three in 18 hours, including a 3 course dinner with salad, cold dinner, and hot dinner. Full bar service, for free the whole ride, and Argentine wine during dinner! We both stuffed ourselves and I had plenty of wine and whiskey. I think it was the best I had slept in 3 weeks! Anyways, bus service in this country is the best ever. I can't wait to take another bus in March.



Once in Buenos Aires we spent one night before heading to Uruguay for a week of exploration of a country I had never thought of before!



Uruguay is a manly country. I watched the Anthony Bourdain No Reservations on Montevideo a couple weeks before I left the states, so I knew I was in for a treat. First we went to a little town called Colonia de Sacremento. It was cool little town set up by the Portuguese to smuggle stuff across the bay into Buenos Aires! It looked like a mini Charleston or Savanna and we spent a day taking pictures of the old buildings and antique cars all over the streets. One of the restaurants we ate at had cars parked in the lot all around it that had been converted into booths. The engine was removed and replaced with speakers, which was really pretty cool.



I think Montevideo might be my favorite city I will visit in this continent! Everything about it is perfect! Low crime, extremely clean, good people, and the best food ever. I wish we had spent a week here because two days was not enough. We started the trip by going to our hostel in the upscale Pocitos neighborhood. It was cool place with a lot of character. We immediately headed up to the end of the block to the place where Anthony Bourdaine ate his first Chivito!

YouTube about Chivito Creation at the restaurant we went to by our hostel!!

The next day we headed on a tour of the city on some bikes we rented from the hostel. These were some badass cruisers that we were about to put to the test on a 12 hour adventure around Montevideo. Montevideo is unique because it has the "Rambla". The rambla is a road and sidewalk that stretches around the whole city like a belt inclosing all of the buildings and separating them from the ocean. The development of the city stops about 500 yds from the ocean to make room for parks, beaches, golf courses, fishing clubs, and one or two exclusive restaurants! The rambla walk way is two lanes, one for walking and one for bikes! It is perfect. We rode like 5 miles, or about an hour, up to the ciudad vieja neighborhood. For my dad, that means old city. This is where I started to love this city. The main avenue downtown terminates into a huge plaza flanked by ancient Portuguese Government buildings on all sides and the main avenue continues on the other end as a pedestrian street. It has all the nice cafes and shops and upscale apartments mixed with buildings and theatres from colonial times and the turn of the century. It was impressive and we took lots of pictures in anticipation of Montevideo's crown jewel, Mercado del Puerto. It is a market built at the turn of the century to house the bars and parillas down by the port! It is similar to what I think Heaven might be like. There are nearly 20 restaurants that are like none I've ever seen before. The typical layout is bar surrounding coolers full of meat or beer and the grandaddy of all grills covered in all sorts of meat, entrails, veggies for skewers, and all heated by wood fire. It was a spectacle of manlyness. Lauren and I both got filets and shared a beer that was 970ml. It was only $20!!! My filet didn't even fit on my plate and came with a salad and side and bread. We had an appetizer of spicy chorizo, fresh off the grill. An American girl doing the same thing we were came and sat down next to us and told us of a bar at the end of the market that invented a wine called media y media, or half and half. It is part dry white wine and part semi sweet white wine. Its really good and we drank a lot of it at the bar that invented it. The first glass is always on the house at that place. After this amazing afternoon exploring the city we rode our bikes back down the rambla and had to stop at the movie theatre because our asses were so sore from the hard plastic bike seats. We saw Changeling which is creepy and a little depressing but really good. 12 hours after first setting out for the market we made it back to the hostel, still full, skipped dinner and went to bed.

YouTube about Mercado del Puerto... not the same stand we went to but it was identical!!

So now we are back in Buenos Aires where we'll spend the rest of February and I'll get some practicar on my espanol. There should be another update soon enough.

A Special Treat

Today marks the day that I got off my lazy ass (and got on it again for a long time) to upload ALL of the pictures up to this point! They are on Snapfish.com so you have to create a login. It´s worth it though because I can upload them at full quality this way!

So heres how to see them:

1. Go to My Pictures
   
2. Create a login
3. Look at my pictures

I´m hanging out in the bus station right now waiting to go to Foz do Iguaçu, the Brazilian side of Iquazu Falls. My bus doesn´t leave for 10 hrs so now is a good time to wrap up my thoughts on Brazil.

Things I noticed here:

• Brazilians like sweet tea as much as southerners. You can get Nestea and Lipton anywhere.
• Politically Corectness is not a priority. I loved this fast food place called Habib´s.... it had a fat cartoon arab on the sign. hilarious
• For a country where they´re the only ones who speak the language, nobody knows any other language. Portuguese is wierd and hard
• Fake Boobs everywhere
• Everyone is consumed by trying to look American. If it has an American company logo on it, they´ll wear it.... no matter what logo that may be
• I´ve seen enough soccer to last the rest of my life.
• This is the most beautiful country in South America so far. It is incredible and everyone should visit here. From the rain forest to the incredible beaches to the pantanal. You should visit this country. Bring a translator if you do.
  

The Update About Brazil (excluding Iguazu Falls)

So I´m gonna wait before I ever give Wake any praise again. Oh well. So we´re in Brazil now and it is amazing, but expensive on my backpacking budget! The luxuries of being in a developed nation are very welcome after Bolivia. Immediately upon crossing the border I knew we were in for a pleasant change of pace and scenery!

We crossed the border into Corumba, Brazil from Puerto Quijarro, Bolivia after the bumpiest ride of my life on my first ever passenger train. During meal time I had more rice and chicken in my lap and on the floor and seat around me than in my belly. This attracted some attention and stares from the Bolivianos around us. The train was fairly uneventfuly other than seeing a few Toucans as we bounced on down the line.

During the train ride we had sort of met the old lady sitting across the isle from us. She was from Uruguay and spoke English and was pretty funny. She reminded me of an old New Yorker widow that was full of wisdom and one liners. She also ate all of the food that I could not manage to man up for! Anyways, at the border, she came over to us after getting our exit stamps from Bolivia and hurried us into a taxi with her because she said it would be cheaper if we went into Corumba together. Lauren and I exchanged skeptical glances and asked if our Australian friend we had just met could ride with us. No was all she as she rushed us towards the taxi. It was amazing to ride in a taxi that would probably pass US inspections. This was a first in this continent. When we zoomed past Brazillian immigration Lauren and instantly started to worry that we were being smuggled into the country illegally. We both watch entirely too much Locked up Abroad to think that skipping immigration was a good thing. At this point we thought we were both going to have to do a lot of explaining to the Brazillian immigration officers. As it turned out you don´t have to get a stamp until you´re there for more than 24 hours so we were ok, but the awkwardness of the strange Uruguay lady, the speedy taxi driver, and Bolivia in general, made us really question our decision!

We got settled into our DUMP of a hostel in Corumba. Lauren took a nap and I flooded the bathroom trying to take a shower. The shower here was in a bathroom not made to have a bath or shower, but Hostelling International decided it best to just throw up a shower curtain and a electronic shower head to section off a 3ft by 4ft section of bathroom. There was nothing stopping the water from going into the rest of the bathroom. I don´t know why, but my whole life I have been the type to get water everywhere when I shower so I have to make sure I´m sealed in wherever I shower. Well between the shower and shaving in the sink that was as big as a cereal bowl, I managed to cover the floor in a 3 inch layer of water. Pretty amazing. After that I tried to go to sleep in the 100 degree dorm room that Lauren and I had to ourselves. 10 minutes into laying there, wondering when my brain was going to start boiling, I convinced Lauren that we needed to upgrade to and A/C room. It was the best $2.50 I ever spent. The following are a few more highlights of Hostelling International Corumba:

• Kitchen was infested with winged red ants. Looked deadly
• First non a/c room was infested with small ants until I unloaded a whole can of OFF around the door and floor. Problem solved
• John and Lauren´s combined portuguese vocabulary= not a damn word....The hostel workers english= non-existant
• claimed to have internet and cable. nope
• Most expensive hostel we stayed in so far
• Saving grace = they have frozen pizza in the grocery stores

We decided that the Pantanal of Brazil would better be seen on another trip, not during the dengue fever season, so we headed off to Sao Paulo. We traded a Dengue fever epidemic for the worst AIDS crisis outside of Africa. This is due to the high concentration of bisexual men here. Neither of us knew this before but we quickly learned when the majority of the couples we saw included two men. We stayed at a really cool ´Pousada´in the Italian area of Sao Paulo. This city is HUGE. There are 17 million people here. Thats twice as many as NYC+1 million. I kind of wanted to stay another day here to check out one of the largest gothic cathedrals outside of Europe and to take a tour of the Bovespa, Brazil´s stock exchange. Niether of us could wait to get to Rio so we hopped the shuttle up to the beach.

This was a beautiful ride. When we finally got off the interstate and started descending down into Rio de Janeiro, we came down a huge green rain forested mountain. There were waterfalls and natural orchids and huge banana trees. It was pretty amazing. Once into the outside of Rio we were met with a horrible looking city and we started to question the greatness we had expected here. After an hour or so of staring at slums, called favelas here, we made to the Bus station. This was also in a seedy area. We figured that taking a taxi would be the best bet to get to our hostel since we had our huge backpacks. Wrong! The asshole basically robbed us. 48 Reais to get to our hostel that we were only staying at for one night!!! Thats like a $24 taxi ride that only took 10 minutes. It was easily our shortest ride in all of Rio. That first night we stayed in the bohemian district, Santa Teresa. It was pretty cool because it was flanked by favelas but inhabited by the Asheville crowd. It was up in the hills with cobblestone streets running through the district. It had a real trolly cable car that ran through the street up past our hostel. I was pretty glad to only stay here one night as I don´t get along real well with the peaced out hippy crowd. There´s only so many times you can tell the bros you don´t wanna smoke with them or try some of their gnarly homemade vegan food.

The next morning we went to the Apartment we had rented for the week in Copacabana beach. This was the best score yet! Valeska, the lady that owned the apartment lived there and rented out bedrooms. She was an amazing host and arranged us a tour of the city for that day. A tour of the city in one day in Rio is a big task. There is sooooo much here to see. It really is an incredible city. First we went to the Christ Redeemer. A huge statue of christ that looks over the beaches, perched high on a mountain. This thing is incredible. It was named one the 7 wonders of the world in 2007. We also saw one of the biggest spiders I hope to ever see in the wild again. Next we went to Marancana stadium. Its a soccer stadium that was built for the World Cup in the 50´s. At the championship game that year, Brazil hosted Uruguay and 199,000 people were there in the stadium. Its a world record for a sporting event. They its the day Brazil went quiet because Uruguay won in the final minutes. They have since installed safety features and it now seats just under 100,000. The next stop on the tour was the Cathedral. Not really what I expected but extremely unique. It is a giant concrete pyramid. Meade Willis would be impressed with this giant hollow structure. It had stained glass going all the way to the top from the ground level. Definitely a wierd Cathedral. It was designed in the 60´s so who knows what they were thinking. The next cool stop was the Pao de Acucar, or Sugarloaf Mountain. I was realy excited to go here because I had heard so much about the views from up here. Upon arriving I saw the cable car that hung what looked like 1000 feet off the ground from a little cable and started having second thoughts! I´ve been on some cable cars I haven´t really liked before at ski resorts (squaw Valley, California and every single lift apperatus in the Alps) but this was different. I don´t know why, I am just skeptical of foreign safety precautions. I went up anyway and it was incredible. It made me realize that there is no other major city like this in the world. Giant green mountains, skyscrapers, rainforest, tropical beaches, 8 million people, I even saw some howler monkeys, all living harmoneously together. I´ll post some of my pictures I took from up there.

Next day we did the beach thing. We spend a couple hours down on Copacabana beach. It was really cool and I just kept thinking about how beautiful it was and amazing it is to sit in a city the size of NYC and feel like I´m in Hawaii. Rio de Janeiro should be on everyones´bucket list. Don´t stay too long though. The beaches up north are much more secluded and more tropical.

Christ Redeemer





Sketchy Cable Car to Pao de Açucar....probably 1000ft off the ground






Pao de Açucar








The strange Rio de Janeiro Cathedral







Huge Maracana Stadium





We are now in Curitiba, which is a pretty modern city with very clean architecture. We are going to Iguazu falls from here. We´ll have a new update soon. Leave some comments so I can know what you guys think and what kind of stuff ya´ll might wanna hear about.

-John

Bye bye Bolivia

I think a few days were plenty of Bolivia. I guess I should start by saying that I didn't really wanna come here in the first place. After realizing it was the most direct path to where we wanted to go, we decided that we might as well traverse the lovely country. It started in Lake Titicaca, as I described earlier. Next came the bus to La Paz, the mighty steed it was! Lauren and I were lucky enough to sit behind two Indians and their daughter. I threw up a little in my mouth when the mom started digging away in the little girl's nose with her fingernail! We started climbing out of Copacabana in our mighty 1970 Toyota minibus, a daring drive with steep Andean cliffs on each side with not even a hint of a guard rail or road repair. Soon we made it to a part of Lake Titicaca that we had to cross. I figured it would be a bridge that we would drive over. The bus was driven onto a wooden barge to ford the river, Oregon Trail style (for those of you from my generation). I included a picture of another bus making the same crossing. I was hoping we were going to get to hunt for buffalo at the next stop!

After the lake crossing, we finally made it to La Paz, Bolivia. It was raining and cold out and the city is pretty intimidating. The bus driver tried to drop everyone off at the cemetary but everyone kinda refused to get off until he took us to the bus station, which was designed by the same person that did the eifel tower. We made it to the hotel pretty quickly and watched the Obama innaugeration. It really made me think of how badass USA is and that we really are better than every other country. Being in Bolivia will do that to you. Even Lauren was feeling pretty pro-America that day.

The next day, the sun came out, against warnings of rain from the news, and we decided to explore La Paz by way of finding a way to buy plane tickets out of there!! We walked down to the main street, which is huge, and it was completely blocked off by armies of chanting protesters who were shooting firecrackers. We knew they were about to vote on a new constitution, we just didn't know it was happening the day we were spending in La Paz! Naturally we found the nearest American chain (in order to avoid food poisoning and have someone to sue if we did become ill) and sat and watched the 3rd worlders riot themselves silly.

La Paz was really not a bad place. We ended up having quite a good time walking around the city, especially when the clouds cleared and we could see the 16,000 ft snowcapped volcanoe that towers over the city. It was so amazing that we just started following the street down which we could see the thing until we could see all of it. It was pretty cool because they say there is about a 5% chance of seeing it this time of year.

Food in La Paz..... still horrible! We ate all American chains except one. First night was Hard Rock Cafe. Easily the coolest Hard Rock in the world, worst food though! I didn't think veggie lasagna would be too hard to screw up but it tasted like they poured a whole box of mortons in it! Burger King the next day was incredible. I ate more than 3 bites for the first time in a couple weeks. Later on we tried a monsterous local chain. Brosso was everything. Playplace for the kids the size of chuck e cheese, full bar, fireplace, two stories with easily 800 seats, a grand piano, a menu that rivals in size with Denny's combined with a Mcdonalds and Baskin Robbins. It was incredible. I had the sneakers, snickers icecream. The place was full of the upper end La Pazians. Overall a pretty hilarious experience. If you look at the picture we sat in the table you can see right by the 'O' in Brosso, near the tangle of electrical wires.... what a view.

La Paz is also famous for it's shoe shine boys. They dress like terrorists with black ski masks over their heads. We were pre warned so wern't alarmed by them.

I felt bad not supporting the cause for $0.30, but I don't think he could have done much to the Merrells.

Next we strolled throught the witch's market. It is exactly what it sounds like. There are millions of old Andean women selling potions, carcasses, and other lucky trinkets. They stand there all day chewing coca leaves and moaning strange andean phrases at you with coca blackened teeth, trying to get you to buy a horribly stinky dried Llama fetus for good luck. No thanks the smell was all the luck I needed. There was nice array of other exotic, probably endangered dead things to add to the standard Llama fetus.

The last part I have about La Paz is a bit about the municipal bus system. I wouldn't know how to ride this thing (or be brave enough to attempt) if I had lived in La Paz for 20 years. It consisted of a fleet of bluebird or Thomas school busses inherited from more well-to-do 3rd world nations, half a century ago. The paint jobs on them tipped you off first. Whatever neon color was found in the garbage that day, got used. Then it was styled with any religious sticker or American brand name sticker that could be found and placed all over. Next they must make sure the catalitic converter or any other emission reducing enhancement is removed make for maximum pollution. The blacker the better with this exhaust. The final touch is to find a teen that can speak as fast as an auctioneer to stand in the missing door or window of the bus screaming at mach speed which route the bus covered. I was able to understand one word one time one of the kids said. I was freakin proud. If that was too much to consume, here is another picture to help.

This ends the recap of La Paz. Our flight this morning to Santa Cruz started the official trek to Brazil. Expect a post whenever we get to a firm destination on the East Coast of Brazil. For now, I have to catch a train, my first passenger train experience ever, for 14 hours across the Dengue fever region of Bolivia. I miss everyone, but especially the food! I hope you're enjoying reading about my adventure.

Sincerely,

John

Cuzco and Peru side of Titicaca

Cuzco and Lake Titicaca! We´ll start with the Cuzco side of things. As I said earlier, the hostel was amazing. I can only hope that we´ll stay in another this nice on this trip. In addition to the hostel, the town is great. Its the first town that I could even maybe think about living in. The town surrounds a beautiful plaza,(where the last inca was killed) containing 4 churches. We toured the churches and they were pretty incredible. Their is probably enough gold in these churches to completely take Peru out of poverty and make it a player in global commodity trade. Even more impressive than the gold is the solid wood carved pulpits. If I had been allowed to take pictures, I would have. So pretty much we toured a lot of cathedrals here and set up our second trip to Cuzco at the end of the trip. We are hiking to Macchu Pichu from here in April, when it is considerably drier on the Inca Trail.

The worst part about Peru is easily the food. The best part about Cuzco is a McDonalds. I´ve never been happier to eat a big mac. I had to beg Lauren to go with me but she gave in after one more shitty pasta dish and a couple more indians trying to get us to eat Guinee Pig. Speaking of Guinee Pigs, in order to better explain the Catholic gospel, in all of the Catholic art, they are eating guinee pig and riding llamas!! The funniest is in all of the biggest cathedrals, there is a painting of the last supper, done by a local Inca during the conquests, and they are always eating guinee pig in the last supper!!

On the "touristic bus" from Cuzco to Titicaca, we were immediately met with an exciting surprise. The farmers and train workers decided to go on strike the night before and that meant for tourists taking the train to macchu pichu, they´d have to wait til next time they were in Peru! For me, on a bus, it meant that we would have to weave around boulders, rocks, and trees lying across the the Pan American Highway. The farmers tried to block the roads for the tourists to get in and out of cuzco!! Luckily our driver had plenty of experience driving on the wrong side of the road at high speeds, like all Peruvanos.

Now in Titicaca, the food in this 3rd world country still sucks. They have no refridgeration hardly anywhere! I am so afraid to eat this gross food! They say the trout and King Fish is good but if you saw the water outside Puno, the town I´m in, you´d go for the Pizza. Even pizza is sketchy. No refridgeration means everything is sketchy. I would kill an innocent kid for a velveeta shells and cheese dinner! Theres only so much pan this gaucho can eat! Next time I come to South America I´m gonna bring a whole backpack full of kraft mac and cheese dinners. On the bright side, I did find gatorade at a little bodega today. I bought all they had.

So Titicaca can´t be all bad right? Nah, we went on a boat ride on Gilligan´s salvaged vessel to the "Uros islands", a bunch of indian made floating islands that indians still live on. They make them out of reeds tied together and they are about the size of a football field. I can´t believe people live like this. I have included a picture because I didnt understand what they were till I saw them. These people live a very hard life here. Most people, that aren´t farmers and actually work for pay, make about $3000 per year. One was complaining about how much the private university was in nearby Juliaca.... It was $800 per year.

Anyways, tomorrow we are going to the Bolivia side of Titicaca, which is supposed to be a lot nicer. Right now I just wish I had saved the money and gone to Tahoe instead!! Just joking, but Tahoe is much prettier.

All for now,

-John

Made it to Cuzco

Just a short update.

We made it to Cuzco, base camp for treks and trains to Machu Pichu. It was a horrible 14 hour bus ride. The bus smelled of human feces the whole time. I was so sick with some sort of food poisoning that I could not sleep. I actually kept from having to use the bathrooms on the bus for the whole 14 hours. I dont even want to know how bad they smelled if the rest of the bus smelled that bad. I think were gonna fly from here to Titicaca on Saturday!

My fever is gone so today we are going to go check out the town. Our hostel is amazing. It has a perfect view of the central plaza.

I will have more later on the Cuzco experience.

Earthquakes

So from Lima, we decided we needed a huge change of pace and that we would head to the beaches in the south of Peru. The people at the South American Explorers club failed to mention that the whole region was FLATTENED by a 7.9 mag earthquake in 2007. The first town we went to looked a little like Bagdad in April 2004. Almost every building was knocked down. people were living in shanty huts and wild packs of gnarly dogs roamed freely around the city. It made me want to go to some sort of resort. Also, I never realized how much desert there is in Peru. Its really rocky and dirty. At the beach in Paracas, Peru, we took a boat out to Isla Balletas. Here they have over 2 million birds on the island. It smelled like bird shit. They harvest the bird shit here every couple of years and it is a huge export item. In the colonial days Spain fought them for the poopy islands. I got to see penguins, boobies, pelicans, and TONS of sea lions here. Penguins were easily the coolest. Sea Lion in spanish translates to Fine Sea Wolf in english! After the beach came to Nazca, the city from which I am typing this. Its a little better in terms of 3rd worldness. Still it has a lot of earthquake damage. This town is famous for it´s ancient lines and artwork that is sprawled across the desert. We took a small Cessna airplane about 200 meters up to fly over the Nazca Lines. There are tons of them. They are pre Inca......so really really old. Nobody knows how they got there or what they are for. You can only see them from planes so it´s really hard to understand why they would be there. I´ve included some pictures of my favorite ones I saw.

Tonight we are taking a bus up to Cusco. This is the tourist capital of Peru. Its where you do the hike to Machu Pichu. We are going to wait till our trip back up the coast in april to do the hike. It will be less rainy then. I´m still having trouble with uploading pictures that I have taken but the place we are staying at in Cusco has a good computer and I´ll get it figured out there.

From here looks like this until Carnaval on Feb 20.

-Cuzco, Peru

-Lake Titicaca, Peru/ Bolivia

-La Paz, Bolivia (capital)

-Sucre, Bolivia

-Santa Cruz, Bolivia (newest big city.... very modern and safe) ¨Esta seguro para gringos¨ is my favorite phraze I have learned here. It means ïs it safe for gringos¨

-La Pantanal, Brazil (train here from Santa Cruz. There are two. One train is called the death train. We are taking the other one. They call it the death train because all the smugglers ride it with their contraband and they put their goods in the cabins and then sit on the roof of the train. The one we are taking is brand new and kind of luxury. Luxury here means really nice but its only like $25 for a ticket!!!

-To the beaches south of Rio de Janeiro

-Rio de Janeiro

Needless to say, we have an exciting month of travel ahead of us. We are on budget for the most part. I´m looking forward to updating in cuzco with some pictures. Also, I put a link to Lauren´s blog at the bottom of this one.

Adios

-John

P.S. I was a little sick in my stomach until my dad told me Carolina is now 0-2 in the ACC. Guess psycho tard couldn´t handle little ol´Wake. Feeling better now though!!!

Lima Pictures

Sorry no pictures yet, the computer didn´t wanna upload them! We had a full day of being tourists today. We had a 3 course lunch for $2.50 each. included drink and all. I tried the local beer and cola, cuzqueño and Inka Kola respectively. Inka Kola is pretty bad. It tastes like bubble gum. In all I spent with taxi, museums, and lunch, about $11!!!!!! Now that you know how cheap it really is here, maybe soon you´ll be able to take a look at some of what we saw!

Made it to Lima

Im going to keep this one short and add some more tomorrow because I am really having a time with this keyboard! I can write all kinds of neat letters with it though. Look: ñ ç,¿....

Anyways, I am in Lima finally. This city is huge. About as many people as NYC! The flight here was fine other than getting stranded in Miami for the night. Our hostel is really cool. I paid $5.80 for two nights for both of us in the really nice Miraflores district. We walked around for a little while but decided we would save the tourist stuff for tomorrow... I´m off to get some dinner (good fresh ceviche about $3!!!!) Look for some pictures of the tourist excursion tomorrow.

-John

I hate Packing

Welcome to my first post to a blog ever.  I still don't like the name blog.  It seems like one of those words that gets tossed around in starbucks way too often! 

Anyways, I just set this thing up and I'm going to try to update it as often as I can while on my trip around South America.  I will try to include as many pictures as this thing will let me.  

For now I have to quit procrastinating away my precious packing time and actually do some laundry!  I look forward to updating everyone as soon as I get to Lima, Peru on Thursday, January 7, 2009. 

-John