Rio - Christ the Redeemer

Today, we went to Christ the Redeemer. That´s the statue of Jesus that´s above Rio. It was pretty cloudy but when there was a break in the clouds we were able to see Rio.

Rio - Futbol and a Favela

Yesterday was a busy day for KF and me. We did a tour of a favela, which is the poor living areas in Rio that are run by drug lords and we went to a soccer game at night.

We went to the favela that´s called Rocinha. It was just west of Leblon here in Rio. People just build their houses on top of other houses. You can buy a roof top and that´s what you build on. These places are run by drug lords. This one is run by a 24 year-old, according to our guide. We were left untouched when we went through the place but were told not to take any photos of guys with guns. There were a couple with some machine guns. The police have a nominal presence because they are normally on the take if they work there. On our tour, we stopped at a school which is supported by the tour company. The tour company is allowed to take people into the favela because they donate money to the community. About 60% of what we paid goes to the community.

Then we went to a Brazil Cup game, Fluminense of Rio vs. Figueirense. It ended in a 1-1 draw with a last minute goal by Fluminense, the home team, to tie up the game. (We thought this was the final game but I guess they play one more game to see who the winner is.) The game was awesome because the fans are nuts. They love their fireworks and flares as shown in the photo above. I´ve also never seen fans so into the game. Everyone had an opinion of what the players should do. It was a pretty sloppy game and a lot of people were throwing up their hands in disgust at the players. Also, they had cheers for everything. We had no idea what they were saying but enjoyed cheering nonetheless.

Rio - Ran into an obelisk

Our motley travel crew made it to Rio. After walking around for about 2 hours yesterday, on our way back to the hostel, I managed to run into a cement obelisk. I´ll try to post a photo later, but these things are in the sidewalk to prevent cars from parking on the sidewalk. I was admiring the architecture when Wham! I rammed my knee right into it. Man, it hurt.

Nothing much to report about Rio just yet because I fell asleep right after dinner last night. Weak, I know.

Campo Grande - Movie and McDonald´s

The Lonely Planet doesn´t say much about Campo Grande but we had a pretty good time yesterday. It was alsmost like being back in the states. KF and I went for a jog in the morning and managed to get a good feel of the city. Then on a separate walk to the grocery store I saw a sign for Carrefour. Later that afternoon we hiked all the way to Carrefour which was connected to a shopping mall. VC and AA went into Carrefour to do some shopping while KF and I checked out the mall and found a movie theater. After tracking down the other two, we decided to see Piratas do Carribe. Luckily ittheyt had the english version with Portuguese subtitles. After enjoying the movie, which was ok, we went to the food court in the mall and had some McDonald´s. I ordered a number 8 but the guy didn´t understand English. Luckily this other guy in line understood what I was trying to say and helped out. I chatted with him briefly afterward and got the low down on the town. We headed out to Cafe Mostardo based on this guy´s recommendation later on that night. KF and I were pretty impressed with the place. It was like Cheers where everyone knows each other´s name but the people were much, much better looking.

Pantanal - Wildlife abundant

Just got back from our adventure in the Pantanal. We´re stuck in Corumba until the next bus at 11 pm at night. We had to come back to Corumba to get our entry stamp into Brazil. Two of us had to run into town to get money out of the ATM and we had misjudged the line in immigration. We didn´t think there was a line but there sure was and a long one at that. KF and I got to cut into the front of the line because our tour operators were there to help out. We kinda had a stroke of bad luck. We didn´t get our stamps in time, missed our bus and a bird took a shit on my shoulder. KF cleaned it off, hats off to him...

The Pantanal was fun. It was like going to camp. Groups of people were from all over and we all ate at the same time. Every evening we got a run down of the next day´s activities (even though our touts in Corumba laid out a detailed schedule we did whatever the people at camp told us.) And the food was magnificent. Rice and beans. And sometimes spaghetti. Yummy.

The first day we did a car safari and a walking tour. We saw some aligators, king fisher birds, monkeys (spider and howler), wild pigs, a deer and an armadillo to top it off. This was more wildlife than we had seen on our jungle tour so we were all impressed.

The next day we did a horsebike riding tour where we mainly just got to see a big stork. The ride was fun but there was this Swiss guy who figured out how to get his horse to gallop real fast and he proceeded to get the rest of our horses into a gallop as well. He´d always ride up from behind like he was herding our horses and they responded. I didn´t care for the guy too much because he had no idea of what he was doing.

That afternoon we did a boat tour. More aligators but nothing too crazy. They also have an animal that looks like a nutria (big rodent like thing). This tour wasn´t too special having gone to school in Louisiana. We did a night walk at night and KF got to hold an aligator by it´s head. The picture will be coming soon.

This morning we did some piranha fishing. For some reason, I was the only one with any luck and I managed to catch two of them. We fished with beef (which was probably better food than we ate ourselves).

We got a good kick out of the whole adventure because there are two tour operators in Corumba and they send you both to the same place. We booked with Ecological Expeditions and when we arrived at the camp we met people from the other tour company in Corumba, Indiana tours. It made me chuckle. Let this be a lesson for all you travellers... They´re all the same.

Sorry, still no photos. Apparently USB connections are hard to come by here in South America.

Corumba - Stepping off into the Pantanal

We made it to Brazil, but the border crossing was closed. That may cause some complications later but our tour operators tell us we should be just fine. We´ll see how it goes. These tour operators are a little sketchy. The Lonely Planet didn´t list too many operators and we searched online to find more. Now that we are here we have learned that a couple of operators went out of business or moved their offices to Campo Grande.

Santa Cruz

Today we made it to Santa Cruz. We´re staying at the Residencial Bolivar where they have two toucans. Here´s one of them. The owner placed them on VC and my´s arms earlier today and let them walk all over us. It was kinda funny and a little scary with their beaks. However, they can´t really bit too hard with the beaks. We know because they got us pretty good.

This is a shot of September 24 Plaza in Santa Cruz. Anyone know how to rotate these photos??

It took us two flights from Rurrenabaque and these were some small planes. you could look out the pilots windshield because there was nothing between you and the pilot. On our flight from Trinidad to Santa Cruz, we served as a quasi-ambulance. There was someone on the flight who got into a bad accident. He was in a neck brace and had blood all over his face. I guess the closest hospital was in Santa Cruz because they loaded him on the plane and had an ambulance waiting when we landed. For some reason or another, he was the last person the got off the plane.

We´re staying at a pretty cool hostal that has a pet toucan hanging out in the courtyard. VC doesn´t want to sleep in the hammocks out there because he´s afraid the toucan will dump on him.

Santa Cruz is pretty cool. It´s a little weird with all the shops closing at noon and then everything reopens around 3 or so. The temperature is much more moderate than the jungle and we´re looking forward to relaxing tonight. KF and I hope to hit the bars tonight. Our route across South America hasn´t really taken us to the best night life areas but Carlos from Lima said Santa Cruz would be good. We´ll see.

Rurrenabaque - The Amazon Jungle

Rurrenabaque was definitely an interesting experience. I learned a lot about the area and the people I am traveling with.

We flew into Rurrenabaque from La Paz on a plane that sat about 10 people and that you could look through the windsheild of the cockpit. We landed on a dirt runway and the pilots both pulled back on the throttle to reverse the engines when we landed. Tehy moved pretty quickly and it looked like it took a lot of effort. We also managed to skid side to side a little bit on the landing.

Then we took a bus into town. This bus had a busted up windshield and it was the only way into town. The airline ran the bus as well.

When we got into town, our group visited a bunch of different tour operators to find the best one for us. I had e-mailed a couple of them before but none replied. Prices ranged from $19/day to $50/day. The $50/day option was more of an eco tour. The others were pretty much rough and tough jungle adventure where you boat up the river and hike around. Most of these involved 5 hour hikes with our packs. After visiting the places we sat down in a restuarant and pretty much debated our options. We had a clear split in our group. KF and I wanted more of the rough and tumble type of trip and AA and VC wanted the eco tour. We decided on two operators, Fluvial ($20/day) and Majapa ($50/day). I told the rest of the group to visit Fluvial and see if they were comfortable with the operator. I was totally fine with either one but preferred the cheaper one. After waiting about 2 hours, they came back with the decision to go on Butterfly tours. This threw me for a loop but it all worked out.

Our first day on the tour involved a stop at a ranch. This ranch had all kinds of animals, pigs, dogs, chickens, horses, and cows. Mainly it was a cattle ranch. Hernand, the ranch hand took us on a walking tour where we say coca trees that they use to make chocalate. The fruit was pretty good. We also saw ant trails that were slowly but surely dismantling trees. On the walk back to camp, I got bit by a smaller ant on my ankle. That sucked. We went for a horseback ride in the afternoon. VF almost fell off his horse when a big truck went by us. That night we hung out at the ranch and went to bed early. I taught everyone how to play Rummy, a card game. Sleeping on the ranch was crazy because there were all kinds of animals running around at night making all kinds of noise. I didn´t sleep too well.

The next day, Javier, our guide, joined us and we hiked about 2 hours up into the jungle. On the way, Javier pointed out plants that could cure just about anything. We even found something to put on my ant bite. We were about 15 mintues away from our camp site and then it started to rain. It came down hard and continued to come down for the rest of the night. Not much happened that night. More card playing. We also had spam for dinner. Lee, you would have loved it. We also decided to try ot head back early to get out of the ran. Plus another ant bit my other ankle on the hike up there. That sucked even more. For some reason, the plant stuff that they put on my previous ant bit was not as abundant as they had promised. They couldn´t seem to find it anymore.

The next day it cleared up a bit and we hiked up to see 3 waterfalls and did some swimming. The water falls were cool but not too awe-inspiring. We decided to return to town that night. On the hike back, Javier found Jaguar paw prints in the mud. We suspect that perhaps the cook might have mde those imprints on the way back just to make us feel like we got our money´s worth. She was always about a good 10 minutes ahead of us on the trail.

Sleeping in the hotel in Rurrenabaque was rough because the rooster started crowing at about 3 am. They´re clocks were way off.

The next day we went on a boat ride down the river. It was pretty cool to see the jungle from the river and see how the locals lived on it but we didn´t see any animals.

Rurrenabaque was a fun town. It´s amazing how many Israelis are there. Most are right out of the army and according to the locals they like to party out in the jungle. They didn´t seem to crazy in town but they certainly loved the tour operator named Ananconda. Just about every Israeli has a t-shirt from them.

I can´t seem to connect to my hard-drive on this computer so I will try to upload some photos later.

La Paz - Had some oxygen with Kory, Steve´s Friend

After a 3 hour bus ride, we arrived in La Paz. KF headed out right away to do some shoppìng, a backpack and some malaria pills. He´d been using a roller bag before this. I have no idea why he didn´t think about bringing a pack before. He took care of that but is still working on his malaria pills.

Last night, we met up Kory, a friend of Spaulding´s from the Peace Corp. He owns an oxygen bar called Ozone: the World´s Highest Oxygen Bar. It´s located in another bar called Ramjam. Th oxygen was definitely needed especially for AA was really suffering from the altitude.

More later. Gotta run to the airport to head to the jungle.

Lake Titicaca - Isla del Sol and Copacabana

After taking an overnight bus to Puno and then another bus to Copacabana, we arrived at Isla del Sol only to be welcomed by a spitting llama. This llama was spitting and sneezing all over the place. The lady holding the llama grabbed it by the ears and really hit it hard. Sadly I didn´t take any photos of this animal as I was just trying to get away from it.

More later. Gotta run to the airport.

Macchu Picchu

Today we went to Macchu Picchu. We woke up at 520 am and got there early in the morning. Because we didn't get to see the sunrise because we got there late and it was all clouded in. However after some time, the cloud cover burned off and we had a great day. We got to see some llamas which AA loved. We walked around Macchu Picchu and then climbed up Hyani Picchu. From this vantage point we were able to look down on Macchu Picchu.

The internet is really slow here so I wasn't able to post photos. More to come later.

Tonight we're heading to Bolivia via a train to Cusco and then an overnight bus onto Bolivia. Somehow I don't think the internet will be any faster there.

Lima, Cusco and Aguas Calientes

So I made it to Lima on a plane with tape on its wings but it worked. I has able to meet up with my travel companion, KF "el chinito", VC and AA at the Flying Dog hostel. The hostel did not allow slappers!!!

We met up with Carlos and his wife Patricia on our first day in Lima and he showed us all around town. He took us to a swanky restaurant overlooking the beach where we had excellent civiche (and I am not a big fan of seafood so this is big for me).

Later on that night we went to Carlos's parent's house and met up with an admit to grab dinner on the beach again. Then we partied until 230 am. We slept for an hour and then caught our flight to Cusco.

We slept most of the day in Cusco but did manage to get out at night. We got to see a dog dodge two cars only to get nailed by the third. AA let out a big scream while KF and I chuckled. The dog didn't seem phased at all and went about it's merry way.

Today we woke up early to catch out 7 am train to Cusco. We got into Cusco around noon and then the 4 of us set off to hike up a little hill called Putucusi. We think it was 2500 m above sea level but we're not sure.

It was pretty steep in some areas and we had to climb up these ladders. the climb was rough but some of us were determined to make it to the top. The hostel told us the hike should only take 60 minutes but it ended up being much longer.

Only 2 of us made it to the top of Putucusi and it was definitely worth it because it overlooked Macchu Picchu.

Tomorrow, we're waking up early again to head to Macchu Picchu. Should be fun...

Made it to Lima with a hole in the wing

I made it to Lima, Peru. I already had my first road bump on my trip and it happened in the States. My flight from Atlanta to Lima was almost canceled. The pilot found a hole in the wing and they had to figure out how they were going to fix. He announced to everyone that we might get a new plane because the repair normally takes 24 hours. Then, 45 minutes later, the pilot announces that we will take our original plane after the maintanence people put a piece of tape over the hole. Then he clarified that the tape was actually "special tape" and we shouldn't have anything to worry about. It was a pretty comforting announcement. The English speakers in the group looked a little puzzled and confused but the Spanish translation must have omitted the part about the special tape and all. The Spanish speakers didn't seem bothered at all.

I have some photos to upload but I can't figure out how to connect my camera. More photos later...

Departure Day

My bags are packed and I'm ready to go.

Dave Good, thanks for the suggestion on compression sacks. We'll see how they hold up.

First stop is Lima, Peru.

Departure Day - 1

I just got back from Chicago where I got my chinese visa. Thanks to Heather and Ken for driving me out there from Cleveland And as always thanks to David Lee for showing me around.

It's almost 7 pm the night before I take off. I finally made a blog one day before I leave.