Iguacu Falls

Here goes another after the fact posting. It's really February 28th and I'm in Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon), Vietnam but we've been too busy and having too much fun to post to the blog. Iguacu was hot and nice the end.... Ok, so Iguacu was actually ungodly hot. Ballpark 100 degrees farenheit and really, really humid. However, the falls were truely breathtaking. I've not yet been to niagra but the local Brazilians and Argentines who share the claim to the falls are more than happy to quote Eleanor Roosevelt when she first laid eyes on the falls..."Oh, poor Niagra." If the niece of the President who created our National Parks can sit there and disrespect our natural wonders then that's a statement for you (kind of twisted side note... her husband and her uncle were cousins per www.whitehouse.gov). Ewa had been to the falls already so I had my own personal tour guide at my beckon call. We started on the Brazilian side for the panoramic view of the falls which includes getting soaked from the spray as you look down the "Devil's Throat".

The next day we headed back to the falls only this time we hit the Argentine side. Here you can walk pretty close to some of the falls which is fun to hear the roar, feel the spray and realize just how powerful a force water can be. During the heat of the day we signed up for a boat ride. This boat looked like something the Navy Seals would use as a fast attack boat and it's used only to run you quickly into and out of the bottom of the falls taking you as close as they can safely do. Pretty cool! Needless to say, you are SOAKED when you get off the boat.

I'll let the pics do more talking. As always, check out our pics on Snapfish - there is a link to the right hand side of our blog page.

Sucre - Bolivian sweets capital for Christmas

... it was not as sweet time as we have hoped but... it definitely made us appreciate Christmas at home a whole lot more since James was not feeling well in Potosi and was worried that it could be due to the elevation we decided to go to Sucre ahead of schedule. and we were in for a nice surprise. Sucre was a beautiful, white stone washed, ¨happening¨ town which was a great retreat from the last two towns that were dark, gray and very ¨worn-out.¨ It was great to go to different cafes, pubs and James loved the fact of not always receiving soup with your bland meal. We had nachos, great pizza, pastas, middle eastern food and lots of different juices... great but... James was not feeling all that well. The Potosi bug followed him and would just not let go... Poor Sweetie had to stay home one day all day just to relax and feel better. This time however we slept in style. After spending one night in a very basic youth hostel we did our research and visited several other lodgings. We found just the right spot! The Grand Hotel - not only had a the cutest courtyard with lots of plants, wicker benches and tables, spacious colorful rooms, but it also included breakfast and offered cable TV in the room - all for about 17 dollars per night.

So when I went with with our new friend Lilly to an out-of town market (here experiencing the best api ever) - James was soothing his body with movies in ... English.

And as for appreciating Christmas at home. Here respectively are our traditional Christmas Eve Dinner (sweet and sour soup with a leg of chicken and a chunk of beef in it) and Christmas Day Dinner (sandwich - airline style)

... just a small honorary mention to a great breakfast on a run - you can buy one during a quick check point stop from a window of a bus, from a local girl ... some type of jerk meat, corn and a potato - quite nice and plenty filling - did I mention the 30 cents price... - presentation is not a strong point here

Happy Holidays

Dear Friends and Family, As the holiday season is upon us, we would like to share with you all a few highlights from this past year. Since the beginning of the year we have both worked our buts off; in March/April we were both promoted at work; we rushed through the planning of our wedding; had a blast at our wedding (or so James is told as he can´t remember half the night); after the wedding we became homeless by moving our of our apartment and putting our things in the new Todd & Joy mansion; Ewa had to quit her job; PwC gave James a 6-month sabbatical; all this to be able to pursue our dream honeymoon - the trip around the world (well...kind of). We left in November and since have explored Peru, lots of Bolivia and tomorrow we are heading to Argentina. We hope that your year has been great and wish each of you a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year! See you all in May 2007 when we return from our trip. Love James & Ewa

Here we are ready to party with the people of Amantani - 12/3/06

D Y N A M I T E

You´ve probably already read about the start of our Potosi adventure on our last posting (Uyuni). There are three reasons people go to Potosi:

1. See the highest city in the world (yawn),
2. Take a tour of the oldest, richest silver mine in the world (getting warmer)
3. They let tourists buy dynamite and blow stuff up! (ding-ding-ding we have a winner!!!!).

So anyway, when the Spanish came and decimated the native culture they enslaved the locals and forced them to work mining silver from Cerro Ricco (Rich Mountain). The locals had been mining silver for generations but it was only used for ceremonial purposes and had no monitary value and tribal life was a more socialist society (you worked for the king and the king provided what you didn´t have for your basic life). About 20 years ago the then Bolivian government (they´ve only had about 80 presidents in their 180 years to our 43 in 230 years with the longest president serving about 10 years and the shortest serving for only a couple of months) repossed the mines from the evil and rich foreigners and gave the right to mine Cerro Ricco to about 50 different cooperatives. Each of which consists of 20 to 200 miners and many of which allow tourists to explore the mines with a guide.

So, we took a very enlightening tour. The tour starts by suiting you up in some rediculous yellow clothing with huge boots. This is simply to keep your clothing from being destroyed by the dust, mud and other pleasant gunk that is in the mines. Then they take you to a refinery where they separate the valuable silver, zinc and some other minerals from the useless rock. This was pretty cool as Ewa and I are basically large children and like to see big machinery working. They also gave us each a small rock of "pure" silver.

Next they take you to the miners market where you get the opportunity to buy gifts for the miners to say thanks for letting us see your office (coca, soda and explosives). And if you so choose you can buy some supplies for your own personal pyrotechnic show! So cool!

Then we head to the mine. Before we entered the mine, our guide instructed us on how to properly make a bomb.

1. Unrap your dynamite and roll it into a ball.
2. Stick the fuse into the ball
3. Stick the ball and fuse into the plastic bag of fertilizer
4. Lite the fuse
5. RUN LIKE HELL!!!!

I might add that the mountain was really tall. We entered the mine at about 4500m. High enough to be seriously winded running from your personal bomb which is about to blow up! Then again, I´d be seriously winded from that at sea level too, i just would have moved faster at sea level. It was really fun to blow up the dynamite but it´s nothing like the movies. I wanted fire and stuff flying everywhere. Nope. Just a lot of dirt, smoke and a really loud noise (next time I´m buying a gas can and taping the bomb to that!)

The jokes and fun end here...at least for me. As I mentioned we entered the mine at about 4500 meters which is high enough that I was short of breath (I was fine for the first three weeks at altitude but had developed a persistant shortness of breath in Uyuni). The mine shaft that we entered was about 4.5 feet tall so everyone was bent over making it harder to breath. Add in a bunch of silica dust, granite dust, explosive residue and you really can´t breath well even with your mask on. This is why the average miner is only expected to live about 15 years from their first day in the mine per our guide book and about 20-25 years per our guide. These guys (only men) work in what is the most miserable of conditions I´ve ever seen. All for the oportunity to make about US$100 per week (about double the national average) on a bad week to the sky is the limit on a good week. It´s russian rulet and it made me ill to see. I´ve seen mining conditions before in a large Alabama coal mine and they look 100x better. Here everything is manual, there is large scale use of small explosives without any manner of communicating with those around you so you periodically just feel the tunnel shake and a rush of air past you. NOT FUN!!!

Legally you have to be 18 to work in the mines but that does not stop some fathers from pulling their eldest sons from school and making them work in the mines at age 14. We were shocked by how young some of the miners were and when asked they replyed that they were 14. Nothing like a good education.

The miners have an interesting ritual of paying their respects to their "Uncle Jorge". This rituals go back to the lovely spaniards who told the natives that they would be punished by god if they did not do his work. They took the message that if there is a lord above and a devil below they must be stealing from the devil. So they build a statue of the devil, or "Uncle Jorge" as they believe it is bad luck to refer to the devil directly and every friday they stick cigarettes in his mouth and light them, throw coca leaves at his feet and poor booze near him or leave a cup of it for him to drink.

We made it out of the mine and other than some bumps and brusies from crawling through the smaller tunnels or hitting our helmets into the short tunnel.

Uyuni

Uyuni has to be one of the most run down towns I´ve ever been to. But it´s where you set off on the 3 or 4 day jeep trips through the amazing solar de uyuni. Your travelers (that´s us) started this adventure with a 9 hour overnight bus ride from La Paz to Uyuni where we arrived at 7am. As soon as you step off the bus you are swarmed by a half dozen guias (guides) speaking in Spanish, English and it must have been either Aymara or Quechua as I have NO idea what that person was saying! Anyhow, we signed up for a trip which started that morning which in hindsight was not a good idea ( we shoulkd have given ourselves a bit more time to explore different options or at least rest from the buys ride) Day 1: Our trip consisted of 6 travelers a guide and a cook. The six were us, a French couple who are making a documentary about Cochabamba, a Finnish woman, Lilly, who lives in London (who we ran into in the next 3 cities) and Bruno, a Brazilian who just finnished the Brazilian military academy. As I am an accountant by training not a poet, I´m going to let the pictures do most of the talking. The day´s travels consisted of about 4 hours of driving around the actual Solar de Uyuni which is Bolivia´s largest salt flat and an active salt "mine". The mining takes place by scraping the top layer of salt off the ground, then drying it over a fire, crushing it, mixing it with some iodine and then selling it to the public. Not a hygenic process but nobody seems to care (this is not for export so don´t worry about this back home).

Then we drove to the Isla Pescado where we had our first meal of the trip on this little oasis in the middle of the solar. From there we drove to the place where we would spend the night. There were some freaky 1000 year old mummies about a 10 minute walk away from our lodging and there was one of the most amazing sunsets we´ve seen so far over the hills. If you didn´t know better, you might think you were in southwest Colorado or Utah based on the arridness of the mountains.

Day 2: We started the day with a few hours of driving to get to the famous lagunas and flamengos. The lagoons were stunning. Each one was a different color and the flamengos were everywhere. Back home when we see flamengos it´s in places like Miami or Orlando. Nope, these birds were a bit hardier. They live at over 4000m of elevation and live there year round. I wouldn´t even want to live there in the winter and I´ve got way more insulation than those little things.

We stopped by the Petrified tree or really a rock formation carved by wind (not as impressive) on our way to the laguna colorada and its stunning red color. Day 3: Rise and shine at wonderful 4am for the 4:30 start. We drove about an hour to get to the geysers which were at just under 5000m of elevation and the sun rose while we were there. It made the place look like the pictures we´ve all seen of the moon. Really cool! (I´ll add a pic later) From there we drove to the incredible Laguna Verde and then headed 6 hours to Uyuni.

Day 4 - Back in Beautiful Uyuni: We wanted to take the 10am bus out of this hole so we approached Diana tours (recommended by Lonley Planet) and asked the gentleman how many seats on the bus. He told us 27 so we knew it would be a smaller bus without a bathroom for our 6 hour trip. We also made an assumption (the mother of all fuckups!). We assumed that there was only one person to each seat. Well, we were in the last row which had 5 seats accross the back of the bus and when I got to my seat, there was a woman with 2 kids sitting next to me. This wouldn´t be a problem if she had the other three seats across the back but that wasn´t the case . She had only the middle seat and she put the little one on my lap. I was less than thrilled with the prospect of this for 6 hours. Oh, and I didn't mention the 5 people in the isle and the fact that many of the two seaters had 3 or more people. I did what most people who are accustomed to decent busses would do and got off the bus and demanded our money back. The guy working the desk and I didn´t see eye to eye. I wanted my money back and he didn´t want to give it. Our voices escallated as did our tempers (mine in particular). While this argument was occuring the bus started to pull away with our bags still strapped to the roof. This REALLY escallated things and I was ready to kill the guy. I ran out to stop the bus it didn´t immediately stop. Once it stopped I climbed onto the top of the bus to get our bags. As I did this the the guy working the desk supposedly called the cops. When I got inside with my bags he told me that he called the cops and that in order to get my money back I´d have to wait for them to arrive. Whether he called them or not I wasn´t about to stick around to find out. Bottom line, I paid for two tickets that we never used and I didn't get arrested. I was pissed off for quite some time though.

Rurrnabaque - Amazon Basin Jungle in Bolivia

Jungle!!!!! For real!!!! We got to spend 4 days in a real jungle with the real "jungle communities" learning about them, their lives and of course about the jungle. it was an awesome and very personal experience as since it is the rainy season there and not many tourists make it, James and I were the only visitors at the time with our personal guide 50+ year old Pancho and our own translator about 23 year old activist from a different community. We were catered to by a mother and daughter team and the rest of the community was showing us how some local basics are done (anything from separating the rice from the grain, to weaving baskets, making thread, to making arrows, building a roof to a hut and floating on a hand made raft down the river). The things that you normally take for granted require so much effort! We had a blast doing it all! After 4 days and too many mosquito bites to count, the jungle experience was done and headed up to La Paz.

Denver has nothing on La Paz!

All of a sudden the mile high city isn´t that impressive. La Paz is at a 11,811 feet while Denver is only at 5,280 feet as marked on the steps of city hall. We saw a flyer for a golf course which said that "you´ll never hit the ball this far anywhere else" and I´m sure it´s true. Walking up stairs has never been so hard! The city of under a million people was much nicer than Lima. We guessed it had a lot to due with the smaller size of the city which made it seem more managable to us and more friendly. The fact that you could see the snowcapped peak of Mt. Illumani from downtown was really impressive to me.

It seemed as if the amount of poverty was about the same. There were women, men and children spending their days selling their wares on the street. Everything from the freshest of fruit to nails and screws. All of these people working on the streets lead to parts of the city being quite dirty (still better than Lima) as the kids used the sidewalk for their toilets. We´ve seen this before and continued to see it in several other cities. Begging was also a huge problem. I woudl guess that 1/3 of the people on the stree weren´t trying to sell you stuff, they just had their kids break your heart but begging you for money.

The city was truly and experience.

Island of Sun - You bet I wanted to see where sun was born

Island of the Sun is a beautiful little island on lake Tititaca where Incas and some of the older cultures believed Sun was born. You get there by a pleasant 2 hour boat ride from Copacabana. And then we were there...

We were lucky to find a cute new hostel with a room overlooking the water. It even came with ¨cama matrimonial¨ (matrimonial bed) - nice feature during your honeymoon. Normal rooms offer beds smaller than an ordinary twin - can you imagine that with our height and size? Matrimonial is about the size of American FULL bed - still not the KING that we normally ask for in the States but on this trip it is just perfect. After a nice lunch overlooking the lake I was anxious to go and explore the mythological place...and we went... only James thought that we were going to explore the ruins on the southern part of the island (close to our hotel) and the place I wanted to explore was on the northern tip. Instead of the 15 minute walk we hiked 4 hours well reminded that the Sun was still well present at its birthplace.

The ruins and rock formations were quite nice however without a good guide we probably have missed out on more spacial stories about the place... Que pena. We missed another thing... the only boat that travels between northern and southern part of the island. Luckily (or so we thought) I met a local family that was also enjoying the ruins. The father was happy to offer us a ride back on on a their boat for a small fee.

Quite happily we boarded the boat with them as we were short on water, James was getting quite hungry (bad boy skipped his soup and potatoes at lunch) and we were tired. It was a cute adventure as James assisted the local man with the boat take off and I interacted (mostly smiled back and forth) with the rest of the family. Things seemed to be perfect, but not for long. Storm was coming our way and in minutes the lake developed waves that were becoming bigger and bigger. Fortunately for us - seasickness does not normally get us. The women of the family were not so blessed. As the wife was starting to feel sick we were getting close to our port. We were told that because of the large waves it will be impossible for our boat to stop there and that instead we will approach the island on the western side. James seemed to think that there was another port close to the hotel there and we assumed that this was were were going to be dropped off. Don´t ever assume!

We were dropped off next to a cliff and told that our place is right on the other side of it and we should just try to climb it. The family took off right away - the women and the baby were not feeling well at this point and we...started climbing. After a few seconds I called off this attempt.

It was insane! We are no rock climbers, we did not know the area, had no gear - it was no time or place to feel brave... So we decided to walk the rocks along the water until the hill gets less steep. It was a good decision as we passed a lot of bones and full dried up animals that obviously also did not agree with the hill.

It was about sunset when we got to some stepped fields that we started crossing. This is when a dog showed up - the annoying barking thing was actually an encouragement that we were getting closer to some kind of inhabited place. We followed him. Only to be met by an older men with a machete in his hands. As we just passed a small plot of coca James was super quiet. I naively did not see the coca and just said hi to the man and explained that we were dropped off by a boat... The older man smiled and just pointed us a way up. We kept on hiking. Finally James noticed what appeared to be some trail in the distance... Not only has my husband an awesome eye, a great sense of orientation, but also nerves of steal for putting up with my last minute adventure planning... Thirsty , hungry, and exhausted we made it back to town using headlamps that we luckily always carry in my back pack. The dinner that night in the only open establishment was delicious ... or at least it seemed so.

Copacabana

... no not the famous one from Brazil - we visited that city on another trip and will be happy to discuss it with anybody over a couple of cold caipirinhas... This is the Bolivian Copacabana - a cute town on the shore of lake Tititaca. It was nice just to stroll the streets and relax for a day. Besides the lake and cafes there really isn´t much to do there. ... and if you ae looking for a cork screw - good luck! restaurants say that ¨these things¨you buy in La Paz! However, there is an interestng ritual performed every day- which we could not miss - it is a ¨car baptism¨ We kid you not! This is a form of Bolivian Auto Insurance. You ¨dress up¨ you new ¨baby¨ (the car), pay a priest about 10 Bolivianos (1.25 USD) and he blesses your car for you to ward off any bad luck!... we are just not sure if it is supposed to protect you or the person that you hit....

Puno and the Islands of Lago Titicaca

Puno itself is a D-U-M-P but it's the jumping off point to visit the floating city of Uros and the islands of Amantani and Tequile. We took a boat tour which brought us to these islands and spent the night with a family on Amantani. The floating islands were incredible. These people moved onto the islands centuries ago in order to avoid the wars that were occurring on land. The islands are essentially 4 feet of reeds stacked on top of each other. Pretty incredible!

Amantani was great with the exception of the food. I never knew that someone could survive on potatoes only. Our lunch was a soup. What was in the soup? 5 different types of potatoes boiled in the water which became the broth. No chicken...nothing! There are about 1000 people living on the island and most of the animals are used for milk, eggs etc and are not eaten. I wouldn't have lasted a week. That evening we took a walk down to the school where they held a dance in our honor. It was fun to see everyone dressed up like a fool but the dance was a little repetitive (read - same move over and over and over and over again).

It was fun but a long time ago so excuse the lame posting.