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