Cartagena
So... we last wrote to you from Cartagena which may be the prettiest city we've seen in our entire trip. We spent a few days there and met up with Sarah, a British girl we volunteered with way back in Ecuador. The old city was an old Spanish settlement that used to be attacked by pirates all the time so it was eventually surrounded by huge walls (not unlike those in San Juan). As a matter of fact, San Juan and Cartagena are remarkably similar with their walls, fortresses, beautiful old towns and very modern new towns. However, Cartagena's old city is probably a bit bigger and quite a bit prettier than San Juan's.

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Continuation from previous blog posting....

So Lee (Janelle typing now) updated you on the Lake District and Bs.As., but forgot to mention one thing…mate. When talking about Argentina, you can’t leave out mate as it’s a true part of the Argentine experience.

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Yikes... I guess it's been a while. Sorry.

First off- with the website all screwed up we'd been unable to receive email at our leeandjanelle address. So... if you've sent us an email in the last 6 weeks or so... we haven't gotten it. It's back up and running now though. Also... we've uploaded a bunch more videos here.

Another update... we decided we're going to take our original flight back after all. So... April 30th... here we come. That give us about 4 weeks in Colombia before we head home. We decided not to go to Brazil, didn't see any more volunteering opportunities and were missing some of you (though most of you we dislike now more than ever)... so that's that. Hopefully we can see you all soon after we get back.

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Sorry for all the blog issues... hopefully it has been mostly resolved. Here's a blog from about a week and a half ago that we had been unable to post.

Well... they say bad things happen in threes. First, the Hoosier basketball program has probably the worst day in its history, then... CC Sabathia announces he won't negotiate with the Tribe until after the season (bye bye CC), then... in the "safest big city in South America"... we get robbed in broad daylight. We'll come back to that in a sec.

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These are a few of the things that happened to be top of mind all day while living and volunteering in the jungle. Wow, what an experience. As many of you know, Lee and I volunteered deep within the jungle of Madidi National Park in Bolivia for three weeks, helping an indigenous community build a sustainable ecotourism project.

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Our volunteer experiences in Ecuador and Peru were so great that we now have heightened expectations for Bolivia. We've had our hearts set on volunteering deep in the jungle in Bolivia, but didn't know how to make this happen. While there's already various ecolodges in the jungle in Madidi National Park that receive lots of tourists and are looking for volunteers to help, we wanted something a little more off the beaten path. And guess what, we think we found it, and without even really trying. But first, Lee would like to give you a quick update on his Huayna Potosi climb.

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Well, we've made it to our third country: Ecuador, Peru and now Bolivia. We've been here about four and a half months in total and wanted to share some of our thoughts (and complaints) about volunteering and/or traveling down here. But first...what've we been up to in the last couple of weeks? Here's a quick rundown:

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Yet again, it's been a little while since we updated the blog. I always think we're going to get it posted way before we actually do. Sorry about that.

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We're currently in Lima going shopping for backpacks, school supplies, toys, etc. After a lot of discussion with the moms of the kids in the Ludotecas, we decided to add a few toys to the backpacks. With Christmas coming up, we realized that most of these children would not be receiving gifts.

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Alright... alright... I know I've pushed the blog back a little bit... just chill. We've been busy. So.... we spent a week and a half in the tiny pueblito of Con Con/Ramadilla trying to get this water filtration plant up and running. Yikes... way more work than we originally thought. It turns out that when they built the thing about 9 years ago, they never really had it set up correctly.

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