http://leeandjanelle.com/ Our trip to S.A. to volunteer and travel en-us Nucleus CMS v3.23 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://leeandjanelle.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://leeandjanelle.com/ http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=29 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.We stayed just outside of the walled city in the Getsemaní neighborhood which is a lot like the old city except the buildings haven't been maintained at all and it's kind of a ghetto at this point. Still pretty though. Each night we'd meet up with Sarah and have a few beers. It's been nice to get back to a country cheaper than Argentina or Chile (though still a little bit more expensive than Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia).

After a couple of sightseeing days we took a day trip to Isla Rosario and Playa Blanca, a series of islands located a few hours by boat from Cartagena. It ended up being a little too much time on the boat and not enough time on the islands but we had some fresh Caribbean lobster and a nice fish lunch and had some great views of Cartagena from the water.

Parque Tayrona
From Cartagena we bussed it over to Santa Marta (also on the Caribbean coast) before heading off to Parque Tayrona. We didn't spend too much time in Santa Marta, though it's a very pretty city right on the beach.

Parque Tayrona is a beautiful and relatively inaccessible national park located right on the ocean. Though it's only an hour bus ride from Santa Marta, you then have to take a 20 minute jeep ride to the entrance and then hike about 45 minutes to get to the first accomodations area. Most people just sleep in rented hammocks but we had our tent with us so we camped about 50 feet from the beach.

Funny.... though we've been on "vacation" for the last 8 months, this was the first time we actually sat on a beach for more than a day and the first time we swam in the ocean (outside of snorkeling in the Galapagos). It was pretty nice.

In total we spent 3 relaxing days there. We'd wake up, have some quick breakfast, walk about 20 minutes to the nearest beach where you could go swimming (the undertow at the beach we were on has claimed over 200 lives), and then chill out and swim, read and eat coconuts. You could walk for a good hour and a half and just encounter white sand beach after white sand beach with these huge boulders in between... all while coming across very few other people.

Medellín
From Parque Tayrona, we headed back to Santa Marta and then flew to Medellín, former home of Pablo Escobar and Colombia's largest drug cartels. Though not an overly pretty city, Medellín has got some pretty unbelievable nightlife and is way more modern than either one of us was expecting. We went out a couple of nights in the Zona Rosa, a 10 square block area that is jammed pack with bars, restaurants and clubs. And... these are upscale places with U.S.-ish type prices. Nice cars everywhere... etc. It was pretty crazy to think that we were in the middle of Colombia and seeing such wealth. Then... you could go a few miles down the road and see such poverty.

A day after briefly checking out the historical center of the city, we took a day trip to the small town of Santa Fe de Antioquia, the capital of the region until it moved to Medellín in 1850 or so. It's a really cute little town and we had a nice huge lunch in the main plaza with some amateur boxing matches going on a few feet away. Kinda strange.

Coffee Region
From Medellín we made our way to Manizales, Pereira and finally to a working coffee farm called Finca Villa Maria. This place had been recommended to us by the owner of our hostel in Medellín and it certainly didn't disappoint. The finca is located on a beautiful site surrounded by steep hills covered with coffee plants and banana trees (the banana trees give needed shade to the coffee plants). We were the only people staying there at the time and got a great tour from the caretakers and an overview of the coffee process. The food was unbelievable and every hour they'd ask: "Cafecito?" And... we never turned 'em down. The place is surrounded with beautiful flowers and is not a place for people who hate birds (sorry DrJLP-R) as the hummingbirds and parrots are all over the place. We spent some time hanging by the pool, playing with Damian (the dog) and just relaxing.

Thoughts on others' thoughts on Colombia
Which brings us to an interesting subject.... When we started our trip and told people we were going to the countries we were going to, pretty much everyone replied with: "Yikes... you're going to Colombia?! Watch out and please be safe." Now.... certainly our experiences are very anecdotal, but you tend to get a good sense of the general danger of a place by the numerous other travelers you meet. Sure... there are the morons who say: "I stumbled around Rio de Janeiro at 4:00 in the morning drunk and never felt unsafe! So... Rio is actually pretty safe." These people are idiots... they must be avoided. We've learned that it has nothing to do with how safe you feel... it has to do with whether or not something actually happens. Pretty much everyone we've met that has had something stolen has felt safe a moment or two beforehand. When they're being kicked or thrown to the ground they don't feel so safe any more. That's how thieves are successful... the important element of surprise.

So... we get a pretty good sense of how dangerous things are by talking to many different travelers. We met a few people who had minor things stolen in Peru and Bolivia, though they were more crimes of opportunity than anything (a few minor things you left out in the open go missing from your hotel room, etc.). And... to a lesser extent... Argentina and Chile.

Now... we've only been in Colombia for a couple of weeks but already we can tell... this is NOT the most dangerous country we've been in. By far and away... that's Ecuador. Yet... not one person back in the States said: "Don't go to Ecuador... it's too dangerous." Strange how the information we receive back home doesn't really jibe with what's really going on down here.

In addition to our bag being stolen, I would say about 90% of travelers that we met in Ecuador got something stolen from them. And.... it's the only place we know of where somebody we personally met was a victim of violent crime. And.... we met three separate people (one was mugged and attacked on the street, another was taken by border policemen to an ATM at gunpoint, and the third was robbed and beaten while trekking in the mountains by a gang of semi-automatic toting thugs)!

Colombia was certainly a dangerous place during the 80s and 90s but President Uribe has done an unbelievable job of controlling the FARC, the group that wants to overthrow the government and install a socialist government. Even five years ago, many of the country's highways were unsafe to travel due to politically motivated kidnappings and crimes. Now, every highway and the overwhelming majority of the country is safe and Colombians are starting to explore their own country in droves. On our boat trip in Cartagena we were the only Gringos! The other 40 or so people were all Colombians traveling in their own country. Can you imagine not being able to travel from Chicago to Milly-wah-kay because the roads are unsafe? Crazy....

This country has modern cities, much better infrastructure than the Andean nations and an overall higher standard of living for its citizens (though there are still WAY too many poor people). Once word really gets out, this country is going to explode with tourists. This isn't Joan Wilder's Colombia anymore.

Bogota and beyond
We just arrived to Bogota yesterday and are pretty impressed so far. It's quite a bit higher in elevation than Medellín and certainly Cartagena so it's a bit cooler but so far it's pretty cool.

From here we'll probably head down to the town of Popayan in Southern Colombia and make our way to Quito from there. I don't think either one of us can really get our heads around the fact that we'll be in Chicago 12 days from now. It's going to be kinda weird settling back into it all (in a new place no less). At least the economy is booming... so we have that going for us... which is nice. Also kind of weird to think that, out of Janelle's and my 8 years together, we've spent almost a quarter of the time outside of the States.

On our next (and probably last) blog post we're going to list all of our highlights and lowlights along with the details of our last 12 days. ]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=29 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:51:06 -0400 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=28 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.Mate Time
Mate, similar to tea, but different. It is made with brewed herbs and is the national drink in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. It is served with a metal straw from a shared hollow calabash gourd (some really beautiful gourds). The straw, or bombilla, acts as both a straw and a sieve. The taste is interesting...definitely more of an acquired taste. It has a pungent taste like a cross between green tea and coffee, with hints of tobacco and oak. It's a neat tradition and something different that we really enjoyed. Down here you always see Argentinians walking around with their thermoses of hot water ready to sit down in a nearby plaza and enjoy mate with friends and family...it's everywhere.

Patagonia
After Bs.As., we headed down to the region of Patagonia, the southernmost portion of South America mostly located in Argentina and partly in Chile, with the Andes mountains to the west and south.

El Calafate
We started out in El Calafate, where we visted Perito Moreno Glacier. Wow, what a spectacular sight, sitting an impressive 60 meters above the surface of the water. We spent a couple hours there, standing in awe of this huge river of ice and the incredibly blue icebergs that sat in the water…the colors were amazing. Every once in a while you’d hear a thunderous sound when a huge piece of ice would collapse into the water…we tried to capture it on camera a few times, but were unsuccessful. However, we still got some great photos that you can view on our site.

El Chaltén
From El Calafte, we took a bus up to El Chaltén, small mountain village located within Los Glaciares National Park at the base of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy, where we spent a few days hiking and camping. We spent one day hiking to the Cerro Torre mountain and the next day hiking to the Fitz Roy mountain…wow, definitely one of the highlights of our trip and from what we’ve heard, one of the most spectacular mountains of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in South America.

Cerro Torre was amazing. It stands behind a beautiful lake at 10,280 feet, has snow-capped peaks, and part of the mountain is enveloped by a beautiful glacier. Absolutely breathtaking! Never seen anything quite like it. We had lunch near the lake, directly across from the mountain, and sat there as long as we could to take it all in. If you’re into trekking, we’d definitely recommend this. Also, there’s a campsite near the mountain where you can hike in with your pack and camp for the night. We’re too old to hike in with our big packs and camping gear (or maybe I should speak for myself…I just can’t handle hiking for 8 hours with a 30-pound pack on my back while going up hills), so we made a day trip of it instead and hiked the 4 hours (8 hours total) back to our campsite in town.

The next day, we hiked to Fitz Roy…another great hike, but definitely more difficult. It was another 8 hours of hiking but this trail was much steeper than the Cerro Torre one. Anyway, this was equally impressive as Cerro Torre. At Cerro Torre you were a little further away from the actual mountain and had an unbelievable panoramic view. At Fitz Roy, you were closer to the mountain itself, which was a different perspective and very cool. Again, we had lunch near the lake while taking in the beautiful views. We walked along the lake a bit to find another, smaller lake on the left side of the mountain with the most amazing blue-green water I’ve ever seen.

Our feet ached a bit by the time we got back to our campsite, but we treated ourselves to a nice dinner and beer at a little microbrewery and then went straight to bed.

I almost forgot to mention one of the coolest things about our trekking. You only have to bring one little bottle of water that you can refill along the way. Yes, you can drink the water here. Patagonia houses some of the purest water sources on the globe. We came across tons of glacier-formed streams and rivers from which we’d refill our bottles. How often can you walk by a water source and actually drink it…pretty neat. And the water tasted amazing…so fresh and crisp; what a treat! Isn't it strange that that's an odd thing? Should the overwhelming majority of fresh water in the world really be undrinkable?

Two thumbs up for El Chaltén…muy impresionante.

Puerto Natales and Torres Del Paine
After El Chaltén, we took a bus back to El Calafate where we spent the night camping, and left early the next morning to head down to Puerto Natales in Chilean Patagonia where you can visit Torres Del Paine, a Chilean National Park comprising mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers. The landscape of the park is dominated by the Paine massif, which is an eastern spur of the Andes located on the east side of the Grey Glacier.

The national park is a popular hiking destination. There are clearly marked paths and campsites, as well as many refugios which provide shelter and basic services. Hikers can opt for a day trip to see the towers (which is what we did), walk the popular "W" route in about five days, or trek the full circle in 8-9 days. Unfortunately, we only had 2 days in Torres Del Paine, and were unable to hike with our big packs as we don’t have the right gear and probably just aren’t fit enough anyway. Two days is nothing here, so in order to maximize our time and see as much of the park as we could, we had to take a tour the first day where we saw lots of amazing lakes, glaciers, waterfalls and mountains, walked along a really cool beach with shiny blue icebergs where we were able to hold some glacier ice, and saw lots of animals…foxes, guanacos (similar to llamas), condors, eagles and ñandu (ostrich-like birds).

The end of our tour dropped us at Laguna Amarga where we caught a transfer to Los Torres campsite where spent the next two nights camping within the national park. We were close to a refugio that has a restaurant and a little tienda, but everything is really expensive within the national park, so we brought our own food. We had a nice fire our first night there and a really exciting meal of bad tuna and pea sandwiches, accompanied by some cookies. We had to bring all non-perishable food with us and the supermarket in Puerto Natales had limited options.

The next morning we set out on our hike to Los Torres (The Towers…3 big mountains). It was another day hike of about 8 hours, in which almost half of the 8-hour trip is uphill…great hike through beautiful valleys and forests, and across streams and rivers with nice views of white, granite mountains with black-capped peaks. The last hour of the hike was a steep uphill climb, most of which you are actually climbing up a boulder field…good exercise. I actually love going uphill and hate going down. The down scares me.

Anyway, on our way up it started raining some and was very cloudy, which was rather worrisome. You hate to make the trek up there and not be able to see anything. Upon reaching the top, we were able to see the three impressive towers, but the top of the tallest one was a bit cloud covered. Most everything is a much better view when there’s a touch of sun, but it was still spectacular. (I know I’ve been using that word too much to describe this Patagonia section, but it truly is SPECATCULAR). Again, there was a lake surrounded by these mammoth towers. Due to the rain and cold we only spent enough time there for Lee to skip some rocks…for those of you who don’t know Lee, skipping rocks is one of his favorite passtimes and he’s really good at it. I got some good shots of him skipping rocks with the mountains in the background.

We saw a a huge woodpecker and a cool raven-like bird on the way down. We made good time back to our campsite from Los Torres, and treated ourselves to a dinner of canned raviolis heated over our campfire. We were actually really excited for the ravioli after having plain bread for each meal. And it was pretty decent. And hey, I’ll take plain bread and canned ravioli any day over white rice.

The nights camping in Torres Del Paine were definitely the coldest. I think it got down to 30 degrees both nights we were there…burrrrrr. That was all the time we had for Torres. We headed back to Puerto Natales the next day to rest up before making our long 36-hour journey to Colombia.

Patagonia…what a trip. A definite highlight. We’d like to go back there someday as there’s so much to see. We didn’t even make it down to Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world before Antarctica. We’d love to visit Tierra del Fuego and maybe someday, although crazy expensive, take an Antarctica cruise. You really need a full month to properly see Patagonia. We only had 10 days.

Colombia
And now we’re in Colombia for the last leg of our trip. As Lee told you, we decided to stick to our original return flight home of April 30, so we’ll be home soon enough.

Our trip here was looooonnnnnggggg. We woke up early on the 1st of April, took a 6-hour bus ride to El Calafate, sat in the airport for 6 hours, took a 3-hour flight to Buenos Aires, sat in that airport for 4 hours, took a 7-hour flight to Panama City, sat in THAT airport for 7 hours, then took an hour flight to Cartagena. Yikes....

Our next blog will be all about Colombia. Everyone we’ve met on this trip raves about Colombia so we’re excited to experience what they’re all talking about. So far (have only been here 2 days) it has been all that and more. Cartagena is beautiful and charming, the people are friendly, and it’s got a great vibe. We already have a feeling that it may be tough to leave this place…as their tourism tagline goes…"Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay!"

All for now. Stay tuned for our next blog. We promise not to wait too long to post the next one.

Hope it’s warm by the time we get home. It’s 85 degrees and sunny here.]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=28 Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:40:52 -0400 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=27
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.Anyway... we arrived yesterday in Cartagena, Colombia after a long 36 hour journey from Southern Chilean Patagonia. First impressions... Cartagena is one of the coolest and most charming cities we've ever been to.

So... where were we? After leaving Mendoza and drinking a lot of tasty Argentinian wine... we took a long bus to San Martin de los Andes, a small town nestled in the mountains amongst a bunch of huge, beautiful lakes. We had picked up a tent and a couple of sleeping bags and decided to spend a week and a half in the Lake District camping and hiking.

Our first night in San Martin we picked up a huge slab of beef and some firewood and cooked on the grill. For those of you who aren't familiar with Argentine beef... it's good... really good... and cheap. The nicest cuts cost about $3 per pound!

We ended up meeting an Argentinian couple from Buenos Aires at the campsite and hung out with them for the next few days. There was a lunar eclipse one night at about 1:00 a.m. so the four of us walked to the beach and watched the eclipse sitting by the most pristine lake you can imagine.

We bought bus tickets to Bariloche but ended up going through a cute little town called Villa La Angostura and decided to jump off the bus and stay there. Well... we went to the tourist office... found a place to camp near town... went there... and who was as the site literally right next to us? The same couple as before. So.. we hung out with them for a couple of more days.

In Villa La Angostura we rented bikes and biked through the Bosque Nacional Arrayanes. We also did some pretty cool hiking. Then we headed on to Bariloche, the biggest city in the lake district and a city famous for its chocolate (for good reason). We basically bummed around Bariloche for a few days and took a day trip to the hippy town of El Bolsón which has a cool crafts market. We also spent some time on the beaches. It was a perfect temperature (around high 70's during the day and low 50's at night) for hiking and outdoors activity. The water from the lakes comes straight from the mountains and is crystal clear but very chilly... nice to take a dip... but only for a sec.

Overall, we spent about 11 days in the lake district and it couldn't have been nicer. It only rained once, we camped every night and grilled unbelievable steaks, hung out with cool Argentines and spent pretty much all of our time outdoors. Very cool.

So... then we took a 20 hour bus ride on a bus with broken tv's and got there early on the morning of March 2nd exhausted. That night, we met up with a buddy of an Equis friend of mine who is an IU grad at a bar to watch the IU basketball game via slingbox. We know this now... but at the time we were a top 15 team and playing some great basketball (despite the fact that we just fired our coach). So... in the only IU game I get to watch all year... what happens? We get blown out by 30-something points and we look like a below average high school team. Needless to say... the way we played the rest of the season and our first round tourney exit was not much of a surprise. Oh well. There's always baseball....

Now... let me stop to tell you about the Buenos Aires nightlife. We've heard from a ton of travellers that Bs.As. is one of the best places in the world for going out... we just didn't realize just how hardcore it was. When we asked our buddy at the bar how late he had been out the night before (it was Sunday), he replied: "I got home early... like 6 a.m." And we realized... he wasn't kidding. It's crazy.

The following night we went out with Mariano and Mariel (the Argentinian couple we met camping) and their friends for dinner. They took us to a nice but cheap parrilla restaurant where they cook meat on a barbecue. The six of us split two parrilladas, a grill of mixed meats including two different types of steak, two chicken breasts, some sausage and then the organ meats. Now... if I didn't tell you what the organ meats are you'd think they were pretty tasty. But... once you know... it sort of changes things. They included chinchulines (intestines), morcilla (congealed pig's blood sausage) and kidneys. The morcilla is particularly tasty but also particularly revolting when you realize you're eating blood.

Well... it was a Monday night and we quickly understood why it's so normal for everyone to stay out so late. We sat down for dinner at about 10:00 (a little early for dinner in Bs.As.) and left the restaurant at about 3:00 a.m. We split a couple of appetizers, the parrilladas, some sides, were drinking wine the whole time, then had some dessert, some coffee, some after dinner drinks, some more wine, and then champagne. The greatest part: the whole thing cost us about $40 (for both of us)! Where else can you go out for a 5 hour dinner with a ton of good food and drinks for $40?

A couple of days later my mom and brother (this is Lee typing here) came to stay for 6 days. Though they had taken an all night flight, they were troopers and we went over to Mariel's family's house for a real Argentinian parrilla. They live on the top floor of an old medical building where Mariel's father is a janitor and handyman. This family keeps crazy hours: up at 7:00 a.m. - lunch at 3:00 p.m. - dinner at 1:00 a.m. - bedtime at 3:00 a.m. with a nap in between somewhere. That's supposedly a pretty typical Argentine schedule.

We had a great time at Mariel's house and ate a bunch more of the organ meats along with some good chicken, steak, beer and wine. They were incredibly generous and we all had a blast though they don't speak much English.

The next couple of days were spent doing a ton of sightseeing. We walked around San Telmo and La Boca, went the the amazing Recoleta Cemetery (where Evita is buried), saw the Plaza de Mayo and Casa Rosada (where Evita gave speeches from the balcony) and saw a pretty average tango show. One night we went out to a Spanish restaurant where Mariano is a cook and had some great seafood paella.

The next day Janelle, my mom and I headed off to Iguazu falls located on the border between Argentina and Brazil (Ari didn't come due to his life-long fear of rare, tropical, communicable diseases). I haven't been to Niagara Falls since I was little but based on what everyone says, Iguazu puts Niagara to shame (though... in Niagara's defense... Superman never saved anyone there... to my knowledge [Superman 2 anyone?]). And... I'd have to believe that. Iguazu was AMAZING. We were expecting it to be cool... but there are so many different falls and views... the power of the water is crazy. We spent a day and a half there, seeing the different falls from all different angles, saw some cool animals (coatimundis, birds and crocodiles) and flew back the afternoon of the second day. A HUGE thanks to my mom for taking us there... it was one of the coolest things we've seen down here.

We spent a couple of more days in Bs.As. with my mom and brother before they took off on Tuesday the 11th. We had a little less than a day to relax before our friends Scott and Alex came to visit for six more days. They also flew all night (it's about a 12 hour flight from Chicago) and I figured it'd be a good idea to try and tire them out as they can party like they were 21. So we went to this ecological reserve on the river and walked around for a while in the heat. Doctors have actually concluded that Alex's skin is made up of about 72% mayonnaise so I figured the sun would tire him out. On our way back we stopped for some tasty beer and whisky flavored ice cream and took a nap. We had dinner at Campobravo (the same place we ate with Mariano and Mariel), then went out to a couple of bars in the Palermo neighborhood and... before we knew it... it was 4:30 a.m. That's when we knew that this week was going to be tough... really tough.

I'm not really sure what we did or saw during the day as the whole week is a bit of a haze... but our schedule was basically:

1:00 p.m. - Wake up
2:00 p.m. - Meet Scott and Alex at their hotel
2:00-6:00 - Sightsee
6:00-9:00 - Sleep
9:30 p.m. - Meet Scott and Alex for dinner
This part's kinda hazy...
4:30ish a.m. - Go to sleep

Seriously... neither Janelle nor I have ever done this in our lives. I mean... a couple of nights here or there.... but never 7 nights in a row. Friday night we all went out for dinner then to a bar where we met Mariano and Mariel at about 3:00 a.m. Janelle and I then continued with them to a techno dance club (seriously... that is so me) and hung there until about 8:00 a.m. Then we went out for breakfast. We got home Saturday morning at about 9:00 a.m.! Never in my life...

Anyway... we had a blast with Scott and Alex here as well but needed a few days of rest and detox once they left. It was a blast having people come down to visit us but it was also nice to get back on our own schedule and get out of Bs.As. after being there for almost three full weeks.

But... before we left... I had to make good on a promise I made to Janelle at the beginning of the trip.... so... we took a tango class. And let me tell you... we'd make those losers on Dancing with the Stars look like total fools. We rocked. And it was kinda fun... but don't tell anyone.

Everything since Buenos Aires will be in a separate blog tomorrow (Friday).]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=27 Thu, 3 Apr 2008 19:36:50 -0400 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=26 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.
So... what've we been up to since we've been out of the jungle? Lots of long and exhausting travel. We've now been gone a little over six months and are still loving it. We're estimating a mid-June return, putting our trip at about 10 months total. We've missed quite a bit personally, culturally and... most importantly.... pop-culturally. Just a quick question... is Britney Spears still the cute and well-adjusted person she was when we left?

Anway... after leaving La Paz we headed off to Potosí, a town at over 4,000 meters above sea level and freezing at night. We had planned on doing a mine trip (the job conditions these guys work under make our US mines look like the Ritz) but most things were shut down as it was the week of Carnaval. Basically... that meant that we got to walk around the city and have teenagers shoot squirtguns at us, dowse us in shaving cream and hit us with water balloons. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so cold and if they wouldn't have thrown the water balloons so hard at our heads. Oh well... when in Bolivia...

So... we hung out in Potosí and saw some sights before heading off to Sucre, the judicial capital of Bolivia. They were celebrating Carnaval in the same way but at least it's only at about 2,000 meters elevation, making it much warmer. We can now say definitively that elevation does not change the force of water balloon impact on skulls. So... we've got that going for us.

In Potosí and Sucre we made sure to get a room with cable tv as we wanted to watch the Super Bowl (go Giants... way to wipe that Republican smirk off of Tom Brady's beautiful face) and the Super Tuesday (Super Martes here) coverage. Plus... due to Carnaval nothing was open at night so it was good to be able to watch that stuff.

Sucre was nice but... again... most things were closed so we shipped off to Uyuni to book a three-day tour of the southwest circuit of Bolivia. This area's a lot like the Southwest of the US in that there are a ton of cool natury things to do. Our first day we went to the Uyuni salt flat which, in the month of February, is totally covered in about 6 inches of water. Usually, it's just white as far as the eye can see but during this month you get the reflection of the sky and clouds and it seems like you're in some weird area between the land and the sky. Really kinda freaky.

Pretty much everything in the towns bordering the salt flats is made out of salt. Buildings, furniture, statues, electronics... weird. Ok... maybe not electronics... but that other stuff is true.

Then we headed off to see the train cemetery, a ton of weird and colorful flamingo-filled lagoons, strange wind-shaped rocks and geyser-filled active volcanoes. All in all... it was a great trip though it's tough to spend so much time in a Land Cruiser in areas where there are no roads. But we had a good group of people. There were a whole bunch of fast-talking Argentinians (they spoke quickly... they didn't try to dupe us or anything) that formed an improv percussion group. It's going to be interesting in Buenos Aires because their Spanish is SO much different than the rest of the continent.

Anyway... our trip ended in the very southwest corner of Bolivia and we took a quick 45-minute bus ride over the Chilean border to San Pedro de Atacama. It was kinda funny leaving Bolivia because it had been a long time since we'd been on a paved road. As soon as we crossed the border into Chile, there was a nice, new, paved, striped road with signs on actual pieces of metal instead of painted on rocks. Hadn't seen a road like that in a while.

San Pedro is a very pretty small tourist town at the north end of the Atacama desert. Unfortunately... our first impression was that it was CRAZY EXPENSIVE! Coming from Bolivia, you'd be amazed the prices you get used to. It turns out that there are a ton of Chileans on vacation right now and we had a lot of trouble finding a place to stay. We finally settled for a double room with shared bathroom for $38 per night! The same room in Bolivia would've cost us $7!

The day after we got there we rented bikes and headed out to the desert to explore. We checked out a couple of different ruins, the Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley) and the Garganta del Diablo (Devil's throat), a cool maze of natural rock formations. We had a picnic and, outside of the bikes being crap, had a blast.

Getting out of San Pedro was interesting. There are only 3 buses per week to Salta, Argentina and we missed the first one. Then, each time we'd go to buy them, the office would be closed. So... we finally decided to take a 23-hour bus ride to Santiago and cross over to Argentina after a brief visit there. We got to the bus company office and found out there was a semi-cama bus direct to Santiago the following day at 8:30 in the morning for about $60. Just as we were about to book it... their system went down. Then... a few minutes later... the electricity went out. A half hour later everything was up and running but... the tickets were no longer available. So we had to get a slightly later and nice, but WAY more expensive, bus. That power outage cost us $80. Oh well.

This was our first experience with a nice, long-distance bus in South America. And... let me tell you... I could get used to that kind of travel. There's an attendant that brings decent meals and nonstop movies. We watched 5 of the best movies of all time: You Me & Dupree, Music & Lyrics (was that Drew Barrymore's first romantic comedy?), School of Rock, Spot (starring the talented and normal David Arquette and a dog) and Rocky Balboa. I got a full 8 hours of sleep and we got to Santiago around 11:00 the following morning.

We'd heard that, while extremely safe, Santiago isn't a very pretty or culturally rich city. But we figured we'd check it out for a day or so anyway to break up the trip to Argentina. I was excited to check out the architectural qualities of the Estadio Olimpico and the beautifully designed towers nearby (just curious here... how many people get that?). We enjoyed our first day as we walked around, saw some sights, and just got used to being in a first world country again.

So... just as we were saying that Santiago was a nice city (though lacking culturally), it happened. We had been hanging out in this huge park reading, relaxing and playing cards. Just as were were about to leave to grab some dinner....these two younger guys walked up to us as we were sitting in a huge park surrounded by a ton of families and other people. One of the guys said something under his breath, walked up slowly and grabbed Janelle's backpack from beside her.

Quick sidenote: I'm pretty sure I now understand their plan. They were trying to get my backpack and the guy that took Janelle's was basically luring me away from mine.

Anyway... I immediately got up, grabbed my bag and started after him as he was jogging away. Just as I was about to catch up to him, he turned and hit me/threw at me a large piece of wood. Luckily, I got my hand up in time because it would've gotten me straight in the head and done some serious damage. I picked up the piece of wood and kept going after him. Once he saw I had the wood and was still coming for him, he dropped the bag. I picked it up (along with mine) and tried to chase after him while yelling "ladron, ladron" at the top of my lungs. I realized I couldn't keep up with him as I was only in socks so... in the moment that I will regret for the rest of my life... I threw the piece of wood at him from a distance of only 10-15 feet.... and missed.

That's right... the guy who plays softball all the time... who has spent half of this South American trip throwing rocks and skipping stones... missed badly when it really counted. Ugh...

Anyway... a bunch of people came over to help out afterwards and we got all of our stuff back. Then I looked down and realized that the piece of wood did some damage to my hand. The fleshy area under my thumb had already swelled to the size of a softball (only a 12 inch... not 16). We decided to go to the hospital to have it checked out. After waiting for 2 hours, we had to get out of there as we had a bus to catch at 10:30 that night and still had to get back to the hostel to get our bags. Plus... I figured it was only really badly bruised as I could move all my fingers without too much pain. So... we jumped in a cab... went back to the hostel... got some ice.... jumped back in the cab and were taken straight to the bus station with only a few minutes to spare. Only... it was the wrong bus station so we had to run a few blocks to the right one. We made it with just enough time to buy a few things to eat (we still hadn't had dinner). Anyway... we took a 7-hour bus ride to Mendoza, Argentina with a 2-hour stopover at the border at 2:00 in the morning which basically meant we got no sleep. So... that was our Valentine's Day. Romantic, huh?

So we got to Mendoza a few days ago and met up with a friend of ours from volunteering in Pisco. He stayed with the project until close to the end and then started travelling. As we had heard from others, they shut down the Pisco project a few weeks early due to an increasing amount of violence towards the volunteers. There had been a couple of muggings while we were there but they started happening with more frequency and during the day in public areas. Within a matter of a couple of days, 2 volunteers had been physically attacked (one was stabbed with a rusty screwdriver in a bar by a guy trying to steal his coat) so they decided to shut down. It's really sad because there are so many people that need the help but too many bad ones that want to take advantage of the "rich" gringos. It's strange though... the "rich" gringos are mostly younger backpackers that don't have much to their name. So... when they get mugged at knifepoint and are forced to hand over money, their camera and their shoes.... it's kind of a big deal. In the other Hands On deployments (Thailand, Louisiana, Indonesia) the volunteers are basically considered saints by the locals and violence simply never happened. The choice to pull out was probably the right one but sad nonetheless.

So... here we are in Mendoza, the home of 70% of Argentina's wine. We did a wine tour and tastings which was really cool.

We're heading off for the Lake District at the foot of the Andes tonight and plan on doing a week and a half of camping before heading to Buenos Aires to meet up with family and friends.

Now that we've been here for six months.... it's a good time to look back and realize how good of a decision this has been for us. Though we write a lot about the bad and annoying stuff (more for your entertainment value), the truth is we're having a blast and enjoying just about every minute. For instance, we were laughing about the whole incident in the park about 3 minutes after it ended. It can be tough at times... the travel... the language... the bland white rice. But it can also be amazing at times.... the travel... the language.... the food... the friendships... the experiences only we share. My only regret: that I didn't hit that guy square in the back with that piece of wood.

Well... my hand is feeling a bit better and, though still really black and blue, is fine. We hope all is well with everyone back home and hope you guys are coping with the nasty winter weather well.
]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=26 Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:11:18 -0500 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=25 About Torewa
Ok, where do I even begin? We’ll first tell you a little bit about the community itself. Torewa is a beautiful jungle community surrounded by rivers and a pristine forest full of birds and mammals. Located three hours upstream from Rurrenabaque on the Beni River in Madidi National Park, Torewa is a community of 12 families originally from the town of Apolo where they worked in the mines…extremely hard and dangerous work for very little money. In search of a better way of life, they moved to the jungle in 1994.

The community lives fully off the land. Everyday they walk 45 minutes, crossing two rivers, to work in the fields where they grow crops…everything from fruits and vegetables to nuts and rice. As for meat, the community regulates their hunting and fishing activities to help protect the environment, and only hunt the numerous chancho – wild peccary (pig). The meals were delicious, all made with locally grown food. The only items they receive from town are cooking oil, salt and sugar. We really enjoyed the masaco, smashed plantain or yucca with corn, cheese or dried chancho meat…very tasty. They also made a lot of tamales, empanadas and rice with beans, meat or veggies. We had boiled plantains with each meal, as well as fried plantain chips or bananas…yummy. The food was always great!

We also drank a lot of tea with local leaves and leche de majo. We spent one afternoon hiking in the jungle with the leader of the community to collect nuts from a majo tree. The nuts are then squeezed and the subsequent nut juice is mixed with water and sugar to make leche de majo, always a nice treat.

As a self-sustaining community, the people here don’t make much money. In several respects this is troublesome as they are three hours upstream from Rurrenabaque, the nearest town, WITHOUT a boat. Often they have to walk an hour to the main river and sometimes wait there for anywhere from two hours to two days for a boat to pass by and pick them up. As you can imagine, this can be dire during medical emergencies. Accessibility to proper health care and eduation are two big issues for this community. They have a little school for grades one through five, but they lack the money to bring in a proper teacher. Kids who continue school beyond the fifth grade need to leave home and go live with extended family or friends, sometimes as far away as La Paz, which is 18 hours by bus on the world’s most dangerous road. And kids who are unable to leave home remain uneducated.

The Ecotourism Project
To help sustain their way of life and culture, the community is working to develop an ecotourism project. The vision of the project is to provide an affordable and real jungle experience for travelers in Bolivia. Unlike other ecolodges in Madidi that cater towards older, wealthier individuals, Torewa will provide an authentic and affordable jungle experience, where visitors can live among a real jungle community (anticipated project launch date: May 2008).

In turn, the money earned from this project will allow the community to buy a boat and have better access to health care. It will also allow them to hire certified teachers and build a proper school for all the kids in the area to attend.

Torewa is a very warm, open and friendly community of people – some of the nicest people we have ever met. Lee and I spent most of our time with the leader of the community, Emilio, who is an incredible man with a wonderful family. These people were so much fun, very hospitable and eager to welcome us to their homes and way of life. As the first volunteers to Torewa, it’s been exciting to be a part of a very promising ecotourism project that will solely benefit the inhabitants of the community in the form of improved and much needed access to health care and education. This was a unique opportunity…helping to build a new tourist destination in Madidi National Park, living with a real jungle community, and having a direct influence on the well being of the Torewa community for generations to come.

Our Work
Ok…now that you know a bit about the community, we can begin to recount our exerience. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot for us to do while in the community as they weren’t ready to start building any of the tourist infrastructure. Instead, they needed help with ideas of what tourists want and need, how much they’re willing to pay, what they’d like to do on a three-day jungle trip, etc. That being said, we spent a lot of time talking through ideas.

The two of us and most of the men of the community rented a boat to take an overnight trip upriver to check out additional sites to which they could bring tourists. We ended up staying in an abandoned camp for the night. The next day, we visited a Moseten family that lived on their own on the banks of the Rio Beni. These people lived about as basic of a life as you can imagine. Only the father spoke Spanish, the rest spoke the Moseten indigenous dialect. There were four kids... unfortunately the mom had died giving birth to the last one. None of them had any education whatsoever. They were roasting some wild peccary they had hunted but it was covered in maggots and quite nasty. They had no beds, only straw mats on the ground under a very basic shelter surrounded by several nests of huge red army ants. Because they are located within the community's territory, they will benefit greatly from money coming in. All in all, quite an interesting yet sad experience.

Emilio and I (Lee typing now) took an overnight trip to the surrounding area to scout out new sites and take pictures. We visited a huge salt bed where tons of animals go to eat the salt-rich dirt, saw three different types of monkeys, saw turtles and tons of other things. We wanted to find a dry spot to set up camp by about 5:30 or 6:00 to give us time to set up and perhaps go for a dip in the river and catch some fish for dinner. Unfortunately, we ended up walking through ankle or knee deep water (due to the rainy season) until 7:30, just before the sun went down. I was getting really nervous that we were going to end up sleeping in a little bit of water. We just ate some stale fried plantain chips and called it an early night. I couldn't go to sleep immediately because when it got really dark, the animals started crawling all around us (we were just sleeping on the ground with some leaves under us and our mosquito nets strung up). Quite unnerving but ended up getting some sleep.

I also (still Lee here) got up at 3:00 a.m. to take a two hour hike with Damian, Emilio's younger brother, to try to spot and take photos of nocturnal animals. Outside of hearing a tapir, we didn't see anything too impressive. Just some sort of opossum and tons of huge bats that liked to buzz by my ear. Halfway through, we turned off our flashlights, sat down and just listened. It's crazy how many sounds there are in the jungle in the middle of the night. We could hear a ton of animals but never were able to get a good look at them. (Back to Janelle now...)

We also taught English classes every night. (And Lee was a great teacher; I’m trying to convince him to switch professions.) This proved to be rather difficult without any training, in addition to the fact that not only did our students not know any English, but also had very little education to begin with. It was great fun though, and by the end they were certainly making progress. They were singing "Da Doo Ron Ron" and everything. This is the type of work we did during our three weeks in the jungle. We’re actually doing the majority of work remotely from La Paz, which we’ll talk about more later.

Living in Torewa
As for our living experience in the jungle, I’ll begin by saying that while it was one of the coolest experiences of my life, it was also extremely difficult. Great volunteer work, difficult living situations…seems to be the theme of our travels and work to date. While we worked in the jungle for one month in Ecuador at the beginning of our travels, this was much more hard core. In Ecuador we were at the beginning of the Amazon basin, close to a main road and only an hour away by bus from the nearest town. Here, we were deep within the jungle and three hours away by boat from the nearest town, with no boat. A little different.

Anyway, we slept in the little school…dirt floors, a few walls around us and a roof, although it leaked a bit. We each had an actual bed made of wood slabs with a blanket as our matress, not incredibly confortable but no big deal. The most important thing is that we had mosquito nets, an absolute MUST due to the crazy amount of insects. The bathroom, if you can call it that, was certainly less than desirable…just a hole in the ground off in the woods. Every time you dropped your pants you were guaranteed a couple handfuls of bug bites in places you don’t want to be itching. Anyway, these are things you get accustomed to rather quickly. The local people don’t even have a “bathroom,” but rather pick a different place in the woods each time they have to go and use leaves to wipe. We stayed away from the leaf wiping as some of the leaves are poisonous.

We bathed in the river, like the locals, which wasn’t bad aside from the many pirahnas that would nip at you. Bathing was the highlight of my day as the heat and humidity were unbearable. The only annoying part was having to run up to our room from the river after bathing, trying to quickly dry off while simoultaneously getting your clothes on as the mosquitos and marigui (little sand flies) are quick to act on any exposed piece of skin, let alone a whole naked body. The mosquitos weren’t too bad, it was the little sand flies who were awful…the bites itch like crazy, last for weeks, scab up and sometimes leave scars. My body from neck to toe is still covered in bites from these little bast—ds. (Excuse my french, but they are!) And unfortunately, 10 minutes after bathing you’d be sweating again. It was probably over 100 degrees Fahrenheit each day with the humidity. Too hot to do anything. It also rained a ton as we were there during the rainy season. The only mildly comfortable days were when it was cloudy, with no rain. You’d be surprised how easy it is to live without running water or electricity, but the heat, humidity and bugs were awful.

We also drank boiled river water. It was ok, but certainly had an interesting taste and brown color, with plenty of yummy chunks. Again, something you get used to pretty quickly.

Lee and I had an interesting first few days. It rained our second day and the smaller tributary river the community lives on quickly began to rise. The bridge to cross the river here is basically just a flat log resting in the water, so when it rains it doesn’t take long for the bridge to get submerged with water. You still cross it the same way, but without shoes and your pants hiked way up. Halfway across the log (and it was dark out) Lee asked how I was doing, and just as I said, “I’m fine,” I completely fell in the water. I was able to quickly get myself out, but was drenched. I guess I needed a bath anyway.

Day three, as we’re going down to the river to take our first bath I say to Lee, “I think there’s something in my boot.” I take my barefoot out and sure enough there’s a huge tarantula. For some unknown reason, I remained completely calm as if it were no big deal…not sure where that came from. Supposedly, those things can pack a mean punch…10 hours of agonizing pain. I was extremely lucky that he didn’t bite me.

We also had a tarantula hole right in between our two beds where we saw a couple more. We then decided it might be a good idea to put a stick in that hole and prevent the creatures from getting out. The nights were a bit eerie as we’d always see lots of crazy insects: huge beetles, spiders and cockroaches, but felt very safe under our mosquito nets.

Also on day three, one of the community members killed a deadly snake right near our “bathroom.” Throughout the remainder of our stay we proceeded to see a half-dozen more snakes…a bit unnerving. Although they are not aggressive and no member of the community has been bitten in 15 years, they’re still a little scary. Especially when you could be a day or two away from medical attention (read: dead). Lee and I ventured out on our own little jungle trek one day, and about 20 minutes in I heard Lee scream and jump back. Just off the trail there was a yellowish-brown, 9-foot cobra. He quickly escaped in the opposite direction, and we decided to cut our walk short and quickly ran back to the community.

After the snakes, the scariest things around were the bunas or bullet ants, 1.5-inch long, black ants that pack a punch that can, according to several sources, "make a grown man wail like a little girl" for 9-12 hours. These guys were all over the place. The locals get stung all the time working in the fields (they are often hanging out on the bottom of the leaves of weeds they pull out). We gave out quite a bit of our ibuprofen and paracetomol after they'd get stung. In addition, the locals would always be wearing flip flops which means they'd get stung by a bunch of different things, including the bunas.

In addition to getting stung by bees, we got stung by probably five different types of biting or stinging ants, several horse flies that also pack a mean punch, and a few other things. We saw a few lizards that can do some harm and a huge centipede that's supposed to be pretty painful as well. As I mentioned before, this was nothing like our volunteer experience in Ecuador. It seemed like nothing wanted to hurt us there. In Torewa, it seemed like everything was out to get you.

One night, as we were teaching English, we heard something fall from the roof of Emilio's house (also where we taught) and smack the ground with a thud about 3 feet away from where Lee was teaching and where I was sitting. Turns out it was a huge mouse that was stunned from his fall. Emilio stomped on him quickly (if you think stepping on a 4-inch cockroach or a huge tarantula make a loud crunching noise.... think again). The students would always be entertained by how freaked out we'd get from all the things crawling around.

Animals
Aside from all the scary creatures in the jungle, there are so many amazing animals. Wildlife watching is plentiful, and during our three weeks saw a wide variety of bird species (macaws, parrots, other colorful birds), reptiles (lots of snakes), tons of wild peccaries and various primate species (monkeys, etc.).

In all, we saw four different types of monkeys (squirrel, capuchin, red howler and titi). The red howler monkeys lived not too far from the community and you could hear them every morning. We went to see them one morning and one of them tried to urinate on us. He missed.

Other animals that live in the area that we didn't see include tapirs, tigers (yes... they have proper, large tigers here... I didn't know that), jaguars, nocturnal monkeys, spectacled bears, anteaters etc. All animals are difficult to see because of their sensitivity to humans and the amount of plant life everywhere. We saw about 4 or 5 different herds of 50-200 wild peccaries and were hardly able to get a decent picture!

Are there fish in the U.S.?
As I mentioned before, we ate all of our meals with the leader of the community and his family. His wife, Gladys, was so nice and cooked amazing meals. However, during our meals she’d ask us some pretty crazy questions. For example, “Do you have rivers in the U.S?” Another, “Do you have fish in the U.S.?" (Well yes, if we have rivers, we have fish.) And maybe the best question…“Do robots or people work in restaurant kitchens in the U.S.?” Maybe their life is a little bit sheltered.

Some families leave the community regularly to go back to Apolo or La Paz and are relatively comfortable with city life. Others don't enjoy leaving the community and consider it somewhat of a haven. Though their life is incredibly difficult, they prefer it to working in the mines all day and not making enough money to feed their families.

Final Thoughts on Torewa
Aside from the bugs and heat, we had a great time. From the property, we were able to enjoy Madidi’s exceptional scenic beauty, fish, learn about medicinal plants, venture out on jungle treks and boat rides, observe wildlife, practice Spanish, relax, spend quality time with community members and play with the children. I had a great time playing with four of the community girls: Sandra, Carmen, Maria and Frida. We’d play Uno and draw, engage in Spanish and English languge exchanges, observe the interesting bugs, chat, swim and make jewelry. They were an absolute highlight of my time there and such cute girls. Sandra was very curious about the U.S.; Maria had a smile that could stretch from LA to NY; Frida never let go of me; and Carmen was quick to correct my Spanish. They were wonderful people, and we hope we can continue helping them by finding additional volunteers and helping them market their tourism project.

Post-Torewa
We left Torewa with Emilio on the 21st of January with the idea of getting to La Paz by the 22nd or 23rd. Well, we weren't about to take an 18-hour bus to La Paz on the world's most dangerous road so we opted to buy plane tickets for the earliest we could (the 23rd). But, as is likely to happen in the jungle in the rainy season when the airport has a grass runway.... our flight was cancelled. Emilio wanted to get to La Paz where all of his 5 kids live so he opted to catch a bus out. We decided to stay and do a three-day Pampas tour and meet Emilio in La Paz by the weekend.

The Pampas is on the other side of Rurrenabaque from the jungle. It is a flat, more wide open area where wildlife viewing is much easier. Typically, tours go down the Rio Yacuma and view wildlife along the way. Because we were there in the rainy season, the river expanded to basically the entire flat area and we went by boat everywhere. Because there are no more banks to the rivers, wildlife viewing is much more difficult but we still saw tons of monkeys, some HUGE and wacky birds, capybaras and caimans. We went "anaconda hunting" (basically anaconda searching) in waist deep water but didn't find one (darn). We also went swimming with pink river dolphins... quite a cool experience. At our camp (cabañas built on stilts over the rising water) there was a semi-domesticated lizard named Rene (they called it a lizard but it was about 7-feet long and looked like a crocodile) that would eat our leftovers.

The Pampas trip was great but it definitely would've been better during the dry season. The mosquitos there were even worse than the jungle and basically meant that you couldn't be outside of your mosquito net around dusk. They were brutal. We got back to Rurre Saturday afternoon and couldn't wait to get back to the cool and mosquito-less La Paz the next day. We were delayed for about 7 hours as they waited for the runway to not be so muddy before we actually got there.

Since getting back to La Paz, we've been spending almost all of our time trying to help the community by building a website, trying to find additional volunteers and speaking with travel agencies to find out how we can get them to send tourists to Torewa. We spent quite a bit of time with Emilio during our first two days. He has since gone back to Torewa. We got a basic website up and running for them (www.torewa.com), posted about 35 flyers around hotels and cafes in La Paz, and posted the information on several different websites. Hopefully they'll be able to find more people to go there. When May comes around and they're ready to receive tourists, we'll be building them a better and more informative website.

What are our plans now?
Well, we leave for Potosí tonight on a night bus and plan on spending a few days there before heading off to Sucre. From there, we'll be doing a three-day trip of the Salar de Uyuni, supposedly stunning salt flats. After that.... we're not really sure as we're waiting on some other things (cough... Momma Schwartz... cough... Howie Schwartz) to figure out our plans.

Anyway, we've got most of the pictures from climbing Huayna Potosi and Torewa up on Flickr... should have the rest soon. Thanks to all of those who have posted on the blog... we love getting the comments and really appreciate it! Hugs to all and we miss you!
]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=25 Fri, 1 Feb 2008 17:07:00 -0500 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=24
Anyway... after thinking I wasn't quite going to make it, I finally made it to the summit at about 5:45, just in time to see the sun come up. That was definitely the pinnacle of the trip (no pun intended). From there on out, it basically sucked. Getting down was awful... I was exhausted, hungry, had a headache, my rented boots were killing me, way too hot now that the sun was out, and mentally ready to be done. Unfortunately, it was still about 4 more hours to the bottom. Anyway... I finally made it back down but not without considering living there for the rest of my life to avoid the descent. But I had no way of contacting Janelle, so I figured I'd keep descending. There's no doubt, taking a chairlift up a mountain and skiing down is WAY more fun than climbing up in the middle of the night and then sleepily stumbling down. Either way, I was lucky that I was able to summit (two out of seven in our group couldn't) and can't even imagine what my opinion of mountain climbing would've been if I hadn't.

Knew he'd have no problem making it to the top. I'm glad I decided to sit this one out. Ok, back to our next volunteer site. Upon inquiring about the "World's Most Dangerous Road" bike ride at several tour agencies, Lee and I began talking to one guy about our travels and volunteer experiences in Ecuador and Peru, and how we'd like to volunteer in the jungle in Bolivia. Another woman working there overheard our conversation and was extremely excited to hear of our interest as she knew of a community in Madidi who need help. She made contact with the leader of the community and the rest is history.

So, what will we be doing? We are going to help an indigenous community start building some sort of tourism infrastructure. We are going to be working with the Torewa, a community of 7 families who live 4 hours away by boat from the nearest town (Rurrenebaque) and then some more time travelled by foot. It's a remote place within Madidi and is certain to be a VERY UNIQUE (I did that for you Papa Schwartz) experience.

No electricity, no running water, we even have to haul some of our own food in (rice, beans, eggs, etc.). Supposedly, we're the first volunteers to set foot there. Should be interesting!

I'm sure you're wondering how we're going to pull this off not having any experience in the tourism industry, let alone working with indigenous communities. We're wondering the same thing. It sounds like they really just need to help get steered in the right direction. We're probably going to help them with the basics, such as: better understanding of what tourists, like ourselves, want and expect; teaching English; and marketing. But really, we don't know what to expect. At the very least, we're going to teach them to play basketball and how to store their food in tupperware for the upcoming monsoon season. We're meeting with the leader of the community over the next couple days and will know more then.

This community doesn' have any money as they trade for everything. The economic benefits of tourism will allow the community to eventually improve their lives through things such as: building a potable water system, access to better healthcare, etc. In addition, responsible tourism in these areas allows for more environmental protection.

Anyway, we're now in the jungle town of Rurrenebaque, and our departure date was pushed forward to tomorrow morning (New Year's) at 7:00 a.m. Considering there's no electricity or running water in this community, it's safe to assume there's not much contact with the outside world via phone lines or Internet. That being said, we're going to be out of touch with all of you for the next month. We're going to try to get back to the jungle town of Rurrenebaque at some point to check email, but until then and if that happens, you may not be hearing from us over the next month.

Until then, we wish you all well and will be in touch as soon as we can. Try not to forget about us. Happy New Year and our next blog should definitely be worth reading.

Over and out...

Lee and Janelle
]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=24 Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:56:57 -0500 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=23 Arequipa, Peru - Spent three days trekking in the world's second deepest canyon (Colca Canyon). Stayed in very basic bungalows in the bottom of the canyon for two nights and woke up at 2:00 a.m. (yes... a.m.) to climb out of the canyon for three hours in the pitch dark, have breakfast, and take a bus in time to see the Andean condors, the largest condors/vultures in the world.... perhaps the universe.

Puno, Peru (Lake Titicaca) - Spent a couple of days adjusting to the elevation at the world's highest navigable lake. Janelle keeps insisting on calling it Lake Boobpoop but frankly I think that's immature. The lake itself is at 3850 meters (12,361 feet) and makes walking up even the slightest of inclines difficult. We took an overnight trip to visit the floating reed islands, spent the night with a family on Isla Amantaní­, then visited Isla Taquile the next day. It gets relatively warm during the day when the sun is out (70 or so) but it frequently hails.

Copacabana, Bolivia (still Lake Titicaca.... oops... sorry Janelle...Lake Boobpoop) - Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia and buddy of Fidel and Hugo, decided it would be a great idea to make it as difficult for Americans to get into Bolivia as it is for Bolivians to get into the U.S. So... starting December 1, U.S. citizens need to get a visa and pay a $100 entry fee. You really have to wonder about a country like this.... it's one of the poorest on a pretty poor continent and some of their biggest income comes from tourism. Now thousands of young American backpackers are going to avoid this beautiful country because their president is an idiot (and a Coca grower... that's a different story). Anyway... we paid it and realized during our huge first lunch of sauteed trout with soup, french fries and salad for about $1.20 that we were going to make that money back pretty quick. Though... we had cheese and chocolate fondue with a bottle of Concha y Toro wine for a total $25 that night at the hotel restaurant so I guess they cancel each other out.

We took another overnight trip to Isla del Sol, which is where the sun was born according to legend. We hiked a ton and tried to catch a row boat back to the mainland to hike back to Copacabana. Instead, we ended up playing hide and seek with a couple of kids at the deserted Pulkakaina Ruins, a millenium old complex from the Tihuanaco culture. Pretty cool.

When we got back to our hotel, they had somehow lost our reservation and put us in the nicest room they had for the same price. So... for the very first time on our trip... we had our own kitchen at our disposal. We made a beeline for the market, picked up some veggies, chicken, pasta, and two bottles of Chilean wine and cooked for ourselves for the first real time in four and a half months while listening to tunes on the iPod player. It was a pretty cool treat.

La Paz, Bolivia - So... here we are now in the highest capital city in the world. We spent the first couple of days just getting to know the city and walking around (though yet again walking ain't the easiest considering it's a city located in a valley and there's no way to avoid walking up huge hills). We're staying in an area called the Witches' Market where all sorts of strange Aymara ritualistic items are sold. For instance, just outside our hotel door there's a stand selling dead llama fetuses for people to bury in the ground before building a new house as a gift to Pachamama (Mother Earth). I guess she likes that stuff.

A couple of days ago we biked down the "World's Most Dangerous Road" (WMDR). We started from La Cumbre at 15,400 feet and descended for about 4 hours and 64 km to the village of Yolosa at 3,600 feet. A vertical drop of over two miles! Anyway... it's called the WMDR because about 26 vehicles fall over the edge each year. The dirt road isn't really wide enough for two cars and there are no guard rails. Did I mention there are cliffs of 1,000-3,000 feet? Oh yeah... and did I also mention that Bolivia has a HUGE problem with drunk driving? Yeah... basically if you go over the edge... you're going to die of a heart attack before you hit the bottom. Anyway... the trip is much safer on bikes than in cars and there is a newer paved road that opened this year so there's much less vehicle traffic on the road now, making it much safer. Either way... it's kinda scary when you pass a cross on the side of the road and see that there are a hundred names on it. These crosses are all over the place. But the views are amazing and neither one of us died so it was pretty cool.

I'm booked to climb Huayna Potosi on Thursday, a peak nearby La Paz of 19,976 feet (just a hair lower than Mt. McKinley). It's supposed to be a relatively easy climb for a peak of its height but there are still a couple of ice walls to climb and deep crevasses to avoid. It's a three day trip and I'm (obviously) going with a guide so it should be interesting. Just got to hope to avoid altitude sickness.

We were lucky to find a couple of restaurants open last night for Christmas Eve and had a nice little feast. Christmas isn't nearly as commercialized down here as it is back in the States.

Anyway.... we'll probably be heading to the Amazonian jungle area in Bolivia right after New Year's.


Traveling in South America

Porcelain Goddess - First let's start with the most basic necessity of day-to-day living, toilets. Very different. First, you cannot flush toilet paper or paper products of any kind down the toilet. Everything needs to go in the garbage, so if your hotel/hostel doesn't have regular house cleaning, the garbage starts to get real disgusting real fast. Now imagine the buildup of paper products smeared with fecal matter in public toilets! Sorry, don't mean to gross you out. However, this is something you get over pretty quickly.

Additionally, most public toilets, unless you're at a nice restaurant, NEVER have toilet paper. That being said, we always have toilet paper on us -- toilet paper, don't leave home without it! Also, you usually have to pay a small entrance fee to use public toilets, and in return, you receive a receipt and a few squares of tp - never enough if you have to do the deed, once again underscoring the importance of always having tp in your back pocket. All standards for toilet cleanliness are quickly lost down here, but it really doesn't matter, because when you have to go you have to go, and relief trumps all else.

In fact, we've become so accustomed to the bathrooms down here that upon returning to the states, it may take a couple weeks before we're ready to leave home without tp and flush paper products down the toilet.

Keepin' Clean - Second, is the variety of showers in your average hostel. The showers are usually separated from the rest of the bathroom floor by a small 4-inch wall and often times there's no shower curtain, or if there is a curtain it's way too short, so after showering the bathroom floor quickly becomes a small wading pool or place where you can sit on the toilet and soak your feet. Oh wait, but you can't really sit comfortably on the toilet because there usually aren't any toilet seats. Supposedly, the seats often get stolen or they refrain from putting the seats on the toilets in the first place to prevent them from ever getting stolen. Squatting has become a pretty common practice for me - more pleasant to be a male at these times, but at least my quads are getting a good workout. Definitely better than squatters though. While we've come across a few of these, the squatters seem to be much more widespread in Italy.

Ok, back to showers. There are lots of electric showers down here. While this may be good in the sense that they draw water directly from a cold water supply and heat it as it is used so you don't need to have a stored hot water supply, the idea of electrical currents and water seems a little bit hazardous. But, what do I know.

Overall, the hostels down here have been really decent, especially for the price we're paying.

Crampin' Our Style - Third, is the limited space. Sorry Brian Garlock, but it would be extremely difficult for you to travel down here. It's often terribly uncomfortable for Lee and me, and as you all know, we're short people with really short legs. I'll start off with the buses (number one means of travel here for locals and tourists), where a person like myself (5' 4") typically has about 4 inches of legroom before the person in front of you reclines their seat. Depending how far the seat gets reclined, your legroom quickly diminishes to anywhere from 2 inches to no legroom, and I'm short. I can't imagine what it's like for someone who's tall. Then factor in the amount of people standing in the aisles on local buses. Down here they like to pack as many people as possible on buses, so in addition to no legroom, you often have someone with terrible b.o. practically sitting on your lap. And when I say local buses, I'm talking about long bus rides (a few hours) that stop in every town, opposed to tourist buses that are more direct.

Got anything smaller? - Fourth, imagine using a 5 dollar bill to pay for something that costs a few bucks, and the store attendant saying, "Do you have anything smaller? I don't have change." Now imagine this happening to you on a daily basis. Down here, making change is a daily obstacle, especially when the ATMs are only spitting out big bills. We often have to go to a pharmacy or a decent size store or supermarket (if they exist, depending where you are) to buy something and receive change in smaller currency for our daily spending. Too often, you know you're going to end up getting stuck with a big bill, much like when you're holding on to the queen of spades in hearts. There's really no chance you're going to be able to get rid of it.

You're a pizzeria... you don't have pizza?!?!- Fifth, going out to eat - you simply cannot be a picky eater down here. There's no asking to hold the mayonnaise or onions - you eat things how they're meant to be served. Good thing Lee and I aren't picky eaters. It's to the point where you can't be at all particular about what you're eating, because often times what's listed on the menu doesn't exist, and your only choice is to eat whatever it is they have that day. Again, fine by us as we'll eat almost anything. Just so funny how things are advertised outside the restaurant or on the menu and then the person working at the restaurant looks at you like you're crazy when you proceed to order it. However, if we're really in the mood for something like a sandwich, we've started asking whether they have it before sitting down.

For instance, we went into a photo shop to get our Bolivian visa photos taken. This store's entire purpose is to take and/or process photos. When we asked for our photos to be taken, they laughed and said that they can't do that. Either the machine was broken or they simply didn't know how to operate the camera. Seriously... every day something like this happens to us.

Going in Circles - Lastly, directions - while we usually refer to our guidebook and map, we often have to ask for directions as well. No matter how far away a place is, it's always described as being only a few minutes away. And no matter if it's down the street and to the left, or down the street and to the right, it's always described as being just down the street. And then they never tell you the name of the place so you never really know what you're looking for, unless you've asked how to get to a specific place. We recently learned that you have to ask a good 2 or 3 people directions before venturing on to that locale, as most people like to be helpful and will give you directions even if they have no idea where it is.

Beep, Beep - While there are many other travel quirks, the last item of note is honking. Essentially... there are three rules to honking in South America. Please understand these are followed RELIGIOUSLY...

1. One must honk when they see someone they know
2. One must honk when they see someone they don't know
3. One must honk if they see nobody at all

This means getting a room on the second or third floor of a hostel on a main street will allow you absolutely no sleep. Also... it's important for drivers down here to be original... so very few standard car horns. A lot of sirens, tunes, high-pitched whistles, etc. It's awesome.

This isn't meant to be negative, as we love traveling down here, just little happenings in our day-to-day travels that we thought would be fun to share. We've definitely learned to be more patient, quickly laugh things off, temper our expectations a bit and be thankful for what we have.

Anyway... Merry Christmakuh, Happy Hannumas and Happy New Year!]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=23 Tue, 25 Dec 2007 13:27:53 -0500 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=22 Thanksgiving
So, we left off just before Turkey Day. Unfortunately, we didn't end up getting the monster bird we thought we would. The owner wanted a king's ransom for it, so I headed back to the market to try and find someone that could sell us two 20-25 pound birds. I finally got it figured out Wednesday afternoon and thought we were all set until the woman that was going to get us turkeys called at 10:00 Wednesday night and said she needed to talk to us immediately. She came to meet us at the new hamburger stand down the road where a bunch of us were hanging out and having a couple of beers. I was pretty nervous because if she said she couldn't get us the turkeys we couldn't really have a real Thanksgiving, and the birds were the only things for which I was responsible. It turned out she didn't have the exact size birds she thought she did and they were a little more expensive than she originally quoted, but it worked out fine.

Janelle and I went to the market at 7:30 Thursday morning to pick up the turkeys. Though they were already dead and plucked, you could tell they hadn't been dead long. They were still warm and we hung out while the woman cut off the head, feet, and took out all the organs. It's pretty interesting seeing almost the whole process instead of just thawing a turkey a day beforehand. One of them had a nice big egg inside that someone ate for breakfast on Friday morning. She said it was really good.

Anyway, while Janelle and a few others were taking care of the mashed potatoes, stuffing, pies, etc., I headed off with Nancy (a local Pisqueña who is sort of our house mom) to a bakery where we'd get them cooked. Everybody and their mother insisted that cooking a full turkey takes 2-2.5 hours. Seriously, eight different people said they cook turkey for Christmas every year and it always takes a couple of hours. So.... we put the turkeys into this huge brick bread oven at about 2:00 in the afternoon so that we'd have plenty of time to feed the hungry crew of volunteers by 6:00 or so. Well... you know where this is going.

Even though there's no such thing as a meat thermometer here, it was pretty obvious that the turkeys were nowhere near ready at 4:00. By 5:30, I was starting to freak out a little bit. You'd be amazed how hungry a crew of volunteers who have been knocking down houses and shifting rubble all day can get. I was pretty sure they weren't cooked yet but really needed to get them going. So we took them out of the old bread oven and put them in this huge modern oven at about 370 degrees. By about 6:30 they seemed like they were getting there, but I didn't want to have a Frank Costanza moment and find out that I had given my entire regiment food poisoning, so I waited it out a little longer and finally got the turkeys back to HODR HQ in a taxi by about 7:30. Five and a half hours... just like I thought.

Though I was pretty nervous, the meal turned out great and the turkey wasn't too bad. Out of the 70 volunteers, about half were having their first ever Thanksgiving. Another volunteer did a great job making a couple of pies including one made from a green squash/pumpkin that was pretty tasty. Though not like Thanksgiving at home, it turned out great and it was nice to at least celebrate the day.

Sand Dunes of Huacachina
Alright, enough about Thanksgiving. I had gotten pretty sick the last couple of days in Con Con and was suffering from exhaustion pretty badly. So... though we had a ton of work to do, we took off the Saturday after Thanksgiving and headed to Huacachina, a beautiful oasis about an hour away from Pisco. It's located next to a little pond surrounded by gargantuan sand dunes for miles. We hung around the pool all day Saturday and then the groups from HODR started coming in Saturday night and made for a crazy night. But we hung out by the pool most of the day Sunday and went on a dune buggy ride that afternoon.

Holy moly... the dune buggy ride was way crazier than I was expecting. They go crazy fast up these huge steep sand dunes and then head straight down the other side. It was like a 45 minute long roller coaster ride. We stopped a few times along the way to try sandboarding, with some pretty painful consequences. While Janelle mostly went down on her tummy, I, like the idiot I am, insisted on going down standing up. The only problem is.... I don't know how to turn. Oh yeah... the other problem is.... the dunes they take you to get steeper and steeper. Oh yeah... yet another problem is that they start putting more and more wax on the bottom of your board. It may not seem like it, but sand is really, really hard if you decide to bang your head against it while sandboarding way too fast. That hurt kinda bad. We headed back to Pisco that Sunday night.

Shopping in Lima for Backpacks
We headed off for Lima (a four-hour bus journey if your bus doesn't break down.... ours did) on Tuesday morning with the $1,223 we raised through family and friends back home, and spent the afternoon and evening comparing prices of school supplies, backpacks, toothbrushes, toys, etc. By late Tuesday night we had figured out that we could purchase enough for 120 stuffed backpacks (enough to give to each kid at both of the ludotecas we go to).

We headed out first thing Wednesday morning to start buying everything, and as we should always expect, things here in Peru (and all over South America) move v e r y v e r y s l o w l y. It was quite nervewracking walking around with that much money on me. Everywhere we go here, the locals warn us how dangerous it is (though the dangerous areas are mostly limited to areas outside of Miraflores and Central Lima), but everything was fine. We bought all the supplies by about 4:00 p.m., but then had to worry about picking it all up. We purchased everything near the Mercado Central in downtown Lima. However, with Christmas season heating up, many of the streets are closed off to allow for more foot traffic. So... we spent the next couple of hours in a cab trying to get over 450 pounds of supplies over to the bus station. After a whole lot of hassle, we finally managed to do it and then were told by the bus company that they were going to charge us $75 just to take it on the bus!

After talking them down to about half that, we got the stuff loaded, prayed for the bus not to break down and headed back to Pisco. We finally got everything back to HODR HQ at about 11:30 p.m. and passed out soon thereafter.

Backpack Project
We went to our respective ludotecas the next day to make sure they were prepared to hand out the backpacks on Friday. Unfortunately, the representative from CEDAPP (the Peruvian group that runs the ludotecas for UNICEF) said that we couldn't do it at Alameda because it would be too dangerous and chaotic. Nice…the day beforehand, they tell us we can't do it at the ludoteca I've been going to for six weeks!

So... let me explain a little about the differences between our two ludotecas. Janelle goes to CAP which is an organized and relatively clean refugee camp located in the old athletic center of Pisco. It is contained within walls and has constant security. The families there, though still lower class, were more "middle-lower class" and all have tents to live in. The kids are pretty well behaved and don't cause too much trouble.

Then there's Alameda. Take out everything good I said in the above paragraph and that's Alameda. The actual neighborhood itself was known to be the poorest and most dangerous before the earthquake.... it's that much worse now. One of the aid organizations had tried to give out relief supplies and tents just after the earthquake but their truck was robbed so most relief organizations don't go in there anymore. That means that the poorest neighborhood in Pisco hasn't really received much in the way of relief. The refugee camp itself is located in an abandoned city block and has no way of keeping people out. Most of the temporary homes in there are extremely basic structures with a sort of thatch as the walls. The kids are incredibly dirty and have no real way of bathing.

So... the concern with handing out the backpacks at Alameda is that, once words spreads, there are going to be kids running from all over to come get one and a mini or maybe not so mini riot could happen. Though they were trying to get as many parents at CAP to attend as possible, the idea is to get the parents at Alameda to stay away. There's an incredibly high alcoholism rate in the neighborhood and the parents are a bigger concern than the kids. According to the CEDAPP woman, the ludoteca is used on Friday and Saturday nights to have parties with prostitutes and underage girls. Needless to say, Alameda has some issues. That being said, we needed a few more days of preparation at Alameda to make the backpack distribution process as orderly as possible. No biggie, our new plan was to distribute the packs to CAP on Friday (11/30) afternoon and to Alameda on Tuesday (12/4) morning.

The Thursday evening before CAP, we solicited the help of 8 volunteers to help us stuff the backpacks with the following supplies:

Notebook
Folder full of drawing paper
Ruler
Pencils
Pencil sharpener
Eraser
Colored pencils
Crayons (younger kids)
Coloring books (younger kids)
Scissors (middle kids)
Paints and paint brush (middle and older kids)
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Play-doh (younger kids)
Playing cards (younger and middle kids)
Tower of Hanoi; OR 3 in 1 games; OR Connect Four (middle kids)
5 in 1 games (older kids)

Then on the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 30, we and five other HODR volunteers went to CAP (Janelle’s site) to distribute the backpacks. We were greeted by about 100 anxious kids and their parents…it was a bit overwhelming, but so neat to see the excitement in their eyes. The CEDAPP representative explained the process for getting the packs, in which each child’s name was read out loud and they had to come sign for their packs (must be accompanied by an adult if under 5 years of age). At the conclusion of explaining the process for receiving the backpacks, the CEDAPP woman then passed the mike over to me (Janelle) to say a few words about where the packs came from, my experience at CAP and a formal goodbye...yikes, it’s difficult enough to be put on the spot in English, let alone Spanish! But I gave my little speech, which was fun, and didn’t botch up my Spanish too badly.

I then proceeded to individually hand out the packs to each of the 70 kids, ranging in age from 1 to 17 years of age. It was so neat…the kids were so excited and thankful, giving me kiss after kiss. It was very special, a moment I will never forget. I was touched, amazed and truly inspired by these kids, who after losing so much are so resilient and find such joy in the simplest things. Most of the parents were really great as well, constantly thanking me for our efforts. I spent a long time afterwards speaking with the parents, exchanging contact information and getting carried in the air by some Peruvian moms and a grandma – similar to the chair lifting that goes on at a Jewish wedding during the horah. It was pretty neat. We couldn’t have asked for a better day…everything ran smoothly, and most of all, we were embraced with loads of kindness, smiles and laughter. However, it was a little bitter-sweet as I also had to say goodbye to all my kids. This was hard, especially saying goodbye to little Luis – a 6-year-old boy who I became very close to…going to miss them all like crazy. What a freakin GREAT day!

Wrapping up in Pisco
The next day, Saturday, was our last work day at HODR. I (Janelle) ended up leading the Playa Rubble team which was pretty cool. On Saturday night we went to a party thrown by our cooks with great food and music. The proceeds from the party will be used to help the cooks’ family rebuild their house. It was a great last night with HODR friends.

On Sunday morning (12/2), after 6.5 straight weeks of hard work in Pisco, we left for the oasis town of Huacachina for some much needed R and R. Aside from the hard work, after a while it’s mentally draining to be in a place that’s experienced so much destruction.

We relaxed by the pool on Sunday and Monday and had some nice meals that didn’t consist of white rice...I think I’ve had my fill of white rice for a while. Then on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 4, we headed back to Pisco for the final time to hand out the rest (50) of our backpacks to the kids at Alameda (Lee’s site).

More Backpacks
Surprisingly, it ended up being less crazy than CAP since there were fewer kids and very few parents (a good thing). Lee gave a really nice speech in Spanish and then handed out the packs. The kids were so excited and Fernando Ramos Peña couldn’t get enough of Lee – cute, 5-year-old boy who became pretty attached to Lee. Unfortunately some of Lee’s regular ludoteca kids were at school, so he didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to everyone, but nonetheless, it was another amazing day. The kids banged on their drums at the end, and Lee did his little dance along with Fernando and a 10-year-old girl who could shake her hips better than J. Lo. I was also coerced into dancing…a bit embarrassing when a 10-year-old can outshake you, but it was fun. Lee pulled out some moves I handn’t seen before – not bad for a guy who claims to have two left feet. Once again, the goodbyes were hard. The kids made Lee a really cute Christmas card, signed with all their names – nice, little keepsake from the kids at Alameda. Another great day and the completion to a VERY SUCCESSFUL backpack project.

Thanks again to all those who made donations. The donors are listed below (please let us know if your name should be on this list but isn't). Your money went a long way down here and brought huge smiles to many little Peruvian faces.

Keith Blair
James and Anita Hayes
John and Barb Hayes
Ryan and Kelly Hayes
Richard and Michele Katz
Joel and Nancy Kay
Dena Linker
Pat and Jan O'Connor
Christine Petersen
Marcie Schwartz
Debbie Shapiro
David and Jessica Swerdloff

For pictures of the backpack project, please click here. We've also updated all of our pictures from Pisco and Con Con so you can find those on our Flickr site as well.

Goodbye to Pisco, More Hucachina and 3rd Wedding Anniversary
After Alameda we headed back to HODR to say our final goodbyes to the other volunteers and Pisco, and then returned to Huachachina to find a restaurant to celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary. We ended up going to Ica (5-minute cab ride from Huacahina) as it’s an actual real town where we thought there’d be a few more dining options. We first had a drink and then headed to a restaurant called El Otro Peñoncito. The fact that no one was at the restaurant should have been a sign, but it looked cute enough. However, our ambience was disrupted a bit when the owner's kids started watching cartoons on the TV directly behind us. Anyway, we made the most of it and ordered a bottle of white wine, a shrimp and avocado salad for a starter, and fish and beef for our entrees. As most of you know, Lee and I aren’t wine connoisseurs, but this was the most awful bottle of wine we’ve ever had. After a few sips, which burnt like crazy, I started to experience serious stomach pains and heart burn and had to do all that I could to keep from throwing up in my mouth. I stopped drinking it immediately and opted for water instead. However, in true Lee fashion, he continued drinking the fire water since we were paying for it, but eventually had to switch to water as well. In addition to bad wine, the shrimp salad was doused in mayonnaise, and while the entrees were ok, they were unfortunately accompanied by a huge pile of white rice. Not a great dinner, but lots of fun with a few extra special laughs over our comedy of errors.

Arequipa
The next night we took a 12-hour bus ride down south to Arequipa (Peru’s second-largest city), an old colonial city that’s very beautiful, has a metropolitan feel and is surrounded by three spectacular mountains (one of which is a volcano). We visited an old mansion on Thursday and had a nice dinner with a great bottle of wine (Concha y Toro – my favorite) to retoast our anniversary. In total, our meal (starter, entrée, dessert, wine) cost $18…not too bad.

Yesterday we slept in and then went to Santa Catalina Monastery, which was super cool. It’s a cloistered convent that was built in 1580 and enlarged in the 17th century. It occupies a whole city block, guarded by imposing high walls. The over 20,000-square-meter monastery is beautiful, containing narrow twisting streets, tiny fruit-filled plazas, hidden staircases, beautiful courtyards, numerous living quarters and vividly painted walls. There are approximately 30 nuns currently living in the northern corner of the complex; the rest of the monastery is open to the public. It was a really neat place to wander around with the mazelike architecture. Expensive, but worth it.

Today we secured our trip to Colca Canyon, and leave tomorrow for a three-day, two night trek. Colca Canyon is located about 100 miles northwest of Arequipa, surrounded by colorful Andean valleys and towns. It is the second deepest canyon in the world – second to Peru’s Cotahuasi Canyon – and more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Should be a cool hike, which we’ll be sure to blog about afterwards.

After Colca, the plan is to return to Arequipa on Tuesday evening and head to Lake Titicaca on Wednesday (12/12). The Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca will mark the end of our travels in Peru. Then on to Bolivia.

De nuevo, muchas gracias a todos por ayudarnos con las mochilas (backpacks). Your efforts have gone a long way and we couldn’t have done it without you. Be sure to check out our updated photos.

Hasta luego,

Janelle and Lee]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=22 Sat, 8 Dec 2007 17:39:29 -0500 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=21
By the way, Thanksgiving here was awesome (though not quite like home). We'll write about that, the backpack project, last weekend in Huacachina (including sandboarding down huge sand dunes) and our overall experience volunteering in Pisco. Until then, thanks go out again to all of those who donated to our volunteer efforts. You'd be amazed how far your money goes down here!

Lee and Janelle]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=21 Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:44:17 -0500 http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=20
The system basically works like this:

• Some water from the Rio Cañete gets diverted into an irrigation canal
• The irrigation canal diverts water into two identical large tanks (about 6' x 15' x 8') that should be filled with large gravel to filter out the big stuff
• The water that comes through the large tanks then goes into two smaller tanks that should be filled almost entirely with a very particular size of sand
• The filtered water is then pumped up into a large cistern near the top of a big hill/mountain which then connects to the 20 or so houses in the area

Ok... simple enough, right? Except, when they set up the system years ago they didn't really bother with any of the "shoulds" (probably why the thing didn't work for very long). What does that mean for us? Basically it meant taking out ALL of the rocks and gravel (yes... all 24 cubic meters of them)from the larger pits, sorting it, cleaning it, putting it somewhere out of the way, and then putting it back in when it was all over. Another little problem with the above scenario (this might be news to some of you desk jockeys)..... rocks are heavy. No... like really heavy. So it's kinda slow going.

Sometimes we were just sifting sand and other times we were doing some really physical work but at then end of every day we were absolutely exhausted. Daily schedule:

6:00 -- Wake up
6:30 -- Breakfast (made by the family)
7:00 -- Start walking to work site
7:45 -- Finally get to the work site
7:45 - 12:00 -- Work hard and get bitten by bugs
12:00 - 1:30 -- Lunch (made by a different local family - usually including some type of intestine, stomach, etc.)
1:30 - 3:45 -- Work hard and get bites on top of the morning bites
3:45 - 4:30 -- Walk back to house
4:30 - 5:00 -- Relax/try not to die from exhaustion
5:00 - 5:30 -- Bathe and swim in the river
7:00 -- Dinner
8:30 -- Time to go to sleep!

Really... the only negative (besides the heat, difficult work, unsanitary conditions, uncomfortable sleeping, lack of running water, etc.) was the bugs. The little sandflies were absolutely unbearable and seemed to think that Off! spray was a tasty appetizer. The only option was wearing long pants which gets a little uncomfortable in the midday desert heat.

In all seriousness... the work was good, the host family was really nice and the other 10 or so volunteers in our group were a great bunch. Though exhaused at the end of the day, we always felt like we accomplished a lot and for a great reason. It was definitely one of the highlights of our volunteering so far.

Oh yeah... and there was a big ceremony and party to celebrate the completion of the fixing of the irrigation canal a few weeks earlier. Many HODR volunteers and pretty much the entire local community and politicians came out to give their thanks to everyone helping out. It was really nice and you could tell how thankful the community was.

The only drawback was James Bledsoe, the "rocker" from New York that somehow was performing at this party. He certainly looked like a Mick Jagger/Steven Tyler type of guy and claimed that he had played with Eric Clapton and Chuck Berry but now spends most of his time in Peru to write music. He was obviously a liar because I can't explain how bad he was. I have some video of him trying to sing a Billy Joel song that I'll have to post. He cleared out the room even faster than Janelle would've. No... really... he was that bad. He had just a smallish keyboard and would use the basic drum beats, try to follow along on the guitar, and then sing the wrong words horribly off key. Somehow he thought he was going to get out of Con Con and back to Lima at 9:00 on a Saturday night (that would've involved hiking down to the river in the dark, crossing the "bridge" which is basically a few logs strung together and difficult enough to make across in the middle of the day, hiking for another 20 minutes through the caña forest to the road, taking a minibus for 45 minutes to Cañete and then taking a 3 hour bus ride to Lima). We all laughed hysterically.... until he slept on the floor next to all of us.

We had a couple of bonfires on a beachy part of the island in the river at night and made s'mores. Janelle and I slept out under the stars one of those nights and got a great night's sleep under one of the clearest skies we've ever seen. It was pretty sweet and, though it gets Africa hot during the day, it's quite chilly but very comfortable in a sleeping bag at night.

But...we're back in Pisco now and settling back into our old routine. I've taken on the task of trying to procure enough turkey for 70 volunteers for Thanksgiving. Today we found a 60 pound turkey that it looks like we'll be able to get. The thing can barely walk it's so big. We're going to try to get a local bakery to cook it in their oven for us. The owners told us that its first birthday is on Friday so we've been telling it that we're going to throw it a big birthday party even though we'll be eating his leftovers by then. I don't think he suspects a thing.

The backpack project is moving along well. We haven't had the response from teachers that we'd like but our friends and family have been very generous and we have quite a little sum ready to put towards the kids here. Thanks again to all of those who have contributed in any way. Your help is really appreciated.

This is one of those times where it's difficult to be away from home. My Hoosiers are bowl bound and the basketball team is looking mighty strong. Oh yeah... and it's the beginning of the holiday season. Our best wishes go out to you all. It's difficult for us not to be there with you. Please enjoy your Thanksgivings and eat several extra slices of punkin pie for me.

Lee

]]> General http://leeandjanelle.com/index.php?itemid=20 Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:35:39 -0500