We arrived in Lima around 3:00 in the afternoon. As usual, we had a list of hostels from our Lonely Planet Guide and had the taxi driver take us there. To make a long story short, we ended up driving around for almost 3 hours to find a hotel. Everything on our list was full! Luckily our taxi driver was very knowledgeable about Lima and we learned a lot. But I have to say that we totally lucked out on our best place ever! We stayed in our own little apartment in the home of a lovely woman who spoke English. We each had our own bedroom with private bath for $10 each a night. There was a little kitchenette with refrigerator and microwave so we could make our breakfasts.
We quickly learned our way around on the buses. It saves so much money. The only problem is that I arrived in Lima pretty sick. It started a couple of towns back, but kept getting worse and worse until it was clear I had parasites. We went to a pharmacy where they gave me a treatment of medicine that said kills ¨every amoeba, parasite and worm¨ known to man. It also has a few weird side effects, which I won´t get into, so I wasn´t at my best at this time. This first couple of days we did our city walks and learned about the areas of Miraflores (where all the tourists go), Barranco (the Bohemian area) and Chorillos, the beach. All beautiful. Miraflores is very upscale. We walked, ate great Peruvian food like Cuy (guinea pig) and goat, with all their special sauces. The Peruvian food is fabulous and quite different than all the other countries so far. They have a special sauce called aji, which is a little different at each restaurant, but basically a yellow, green, or red sauce that is spicy and tasty. (Talia, Shanna, remember the Peruvian restaurant near our house in San Diego that had the good green sauce?) We also shopped in the artesano markets with all the indigenous crafts from all over Peru. The markets were overwhelming! Too much to see, to much to think about, too much to buy. I´m on a strict budget, so I didn´t get much.
On Saturday night Stacy and I were going to the airport to meet Josue, my next traveling companion. We were told that the taxi to the airport was $40 USD, so we quickly learned how to take the bus for 75 cents each. Of course the bus was an hour and a half ride, but oh well. We waited for Josue for a long while because his plane landed at 8:20 in the evening, but he didn´t come out of immigration until 9:30!!! We were a little worried. Even though we got back to the apartment around 11:00, we quickly ditched Josue´s things and went to a restaurant in Barranco that we had visited the day before. At night they have live music and the restaurant is located inside a refurbished train car. We got some typical Peruvian snacks and I told the waiter that Josue was a musician. After awhile, they invited him up to play and he experienced his first ¨show¨ in Peru! The people were happy with his Nicaraguan folkloric guitar playing and singing and he was happy on his first night in Peru!
The next day we all did another first….we went paragliding over the cliffs of the beaches of Lima! How exciting! I was always afraid to do it in La Jolla, California. For some reason I am much more fearless in Latin America. What a beautiful experience. We went tandem paragliding, in other words, an expert was sitting behind us. But now I know how it feels to be a bird. It was a gorgeous, cloudless warm day with a brisk wind. Perfect for this sport and what a great way to see the city!
Of course we are also dancing our way through South America and Lima was no exception. I just want to comment here that we went for dinner before dancing, and it may not be funny to you, but the waiter told us that they only had chicken. So I said, I want the leg. When our food came we started eating it and it was clearly not chicken, it was pork! So we asked the waiter what happened, we ordered chicken and he said, ¨No, you ordered a leg. And I brought you a leg.¨ It made no sense at all and we were laughing hysterically so we decided to eat the pork. We never really figured out what happened. The three of us went to one of the popular discos in the Marina area and had a blast dancing to our favorite Latin songs. Yes, even Stacy has some now! After all this time visiting me in Nicaragua and traveling with me, she recognizes some of the Salsa, reggaeton and bachata songs. She also dances very well to them!
The night before Stacy left, we had a beautiful dinner hosted by Stacy at a fancy restaurant in Lima (thank again Stacy!). We ate alpaca (wonderful!), rabbit, chicken and pork. We had oysters for an appetizer and a bread basket that would rival any five-star restaurant! And….we had six different types of Pisco sours (the national drink) with flavors like basil, chichi morada (purple corn), maracuya (a fruit we don´t have). All very exotic! Wonderful, one-of-a-kind experience!
On the day Stacy left, Josue and I took a bus to Nazca to see the famous Nazca lines. For those of you who may not know, there are huge shapes in the Peruvian desert around Nazca. They are very old, no one knows who did them or why. But given the time they were made… it was pretty impossible to make such large shapes with such accuracy. And…you can see nothing from the ground, you can only see them from the air. So you go in a tiny 6-seater plane. For those of you who know me, yes, I had to take medicine before going on this one! The lines are amazing….they were made by taking the dark rocks OFF the white sand below and forming a shape, which makes them all the more strange. In the book ¨Chariots of the Gods,¨(which I read years ago and vowed to see these lines one day in my life), his theory were they were signals to the ships (yes, spaceships) that landed there. Who knows? There is really no explanation.
Next, we took a bus to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru and a great place! Very colonial, great food like stuffed peppers with meat inside and a tasty, spicy white cheese sauce over it, or potatoes with greek olives and another spicy sauce. Peru sure likes its sauces! The first day we did our walking tour (always what we do on our first day to get acquainted with the city, the architecture, the views, the streets, etc. )
The next day we looked at the guide book and decided to take a trip that was not in our plans….to the deepest canyon in the world! We took a five and a half hour bus ride to Cabanaconde, our departure point. In the bus we saw snow-capped mountains for the first time since our trip started. The highest one was around 18,000 feet high. Not bad…
Since we left at 5:30 in the morning, we hadn´t eaten anything so we went to a restaurant in the main square to fortify ourselves! We had a great meal of alpaca (now one of our favorite meats) in red wine sauce with fresh steamed vegetables and the great Cusquena beer! We started our trek after that and made our way down into the canyon. Where we walked was not the deepest point of 4800 meters (if it was, I wouldn´t be here telling this story as you will soon see…). We decided walk to the first indigenous village, Sangalle. Already we were happy to see the local people in their colorful clothing, with their babies strapped behind them in blankets. We descended into the canyon. The trail was a mix of sand, little rocks, big rocks and it was pretty slippery. I was wearing sneakers rather than hiking boots and only fell down four times, once falling on a rock that punched me pretty hard in the kidney area. I think the walk took around 5 hours to go down to the bottom of the canyon. We were rewarded for our hard work by spectacular views of mountains everywhere around us! We could look down into the valley and see a raging river curving around the rocks. As we got closer we could hear it. Of course I was so thrilled about this hike that I didn´t stop to think about the fact that the next morning I would have to walk back UP!!!
We were so tired when we arrived at the bottom that we headed for Oasis, a little conclave of bamboo huts and supposedly a restaurant that had Alpaca steaks and Pisco sours, the national drink of Peru. We were ready for that! But no, there were no Alpaca steaks or Pisco sours. Nor was there good service. Some young men and teenage boys were running the place and told us we couldn´t eat until 7:00, two and a half hours later. It had started raining, so we were getting cold and there was no way to dry off. But we waited…
As we waited, tourists from various countries started showing up at the dining table. There was no electricity at this place, but they didn´t start cooking until dark. All of us were tired and hungry and the only available dinner was spaghetti with ketchup for sauce and a vegetable soup in which we couldn´t identify a single vegetable! It tasted like water broth! As you can imagine we were disappointed with the meal, but we had a lively table discussion for two hours with people from Holland, Brazil, France, Sweden and then us, me from the U.S. and Josue from Nicaragua. THAT was great! Everyone decided to speak in English since everyone could understand some level of English. It was a very nice (if dark…we only had one candle) evening.
The next morning we got up bright and early to make our ascent up the mountain. Who was I kidding? Walk up that mountain? Maybe it would take me 10 hours? 15?
We could not walk it in the dark because the path was narrow and the drop over the edge of the trail was probably 2000 feet! We took a few hours and walked up almost half way. Josue was wonderful…no complaining, no nothing, reminding me to drink water and then…he saw an indigenous man coming down the trail with two mules and he said, ¨Hey, how much to rent your mules to take us the rest of the way up?¨ It was very reasonable, about $10, so we said, why not? Well, it sure took the strain off my heart..to a point. The mules liked to walk by the edge, not on the inside by the side of the mountain. There were moments when we both felt that the mule was going to walk right off the cliff. Sometimes I looked over my right shoulder and could just see DOWN a thousand or so feet. But we made it to the top and it clearly was ANOTHER adventure.
Waiting at the top were the two people from Holland we had been talking to the night before – Harald and Marike. We decided to walk back to town together and grab a meal of – yes you guessed it – alpaca steak in vino tinto. We had a nice meal then found out that the five and a half hour bus ride back to Arequipa was sold out for the next few days and the only way we could get back was to stand the whole way!!! Well, we weren´t the only ones doing that, the whole bus was packed with people standing! But this is where the idea of bus travel suits me so well….the Peruvian people who were sitting in their seats made room on the arms of their seats, pulled down their suitcases so we could sit on them in the aisle, and did everything they could to make our ride as comfortable as possible. Everyone communicated in his or her own way and we had many nice conversations with some very lovely people. By the end of the trip, we had created a little ¨bus community¨ and it seemed that we were all good friends. We even took a picture of everyone to remind us of this remarkable experience where we saw just how kind the Peruvian people are and how nice they were with us. These are the experiences that I always remember. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to travel the way I do…with the people of the country.
When we got back to Arequipa, we made plans to see Harald and Merike at 10:30 p.m. We met them at the Plaza de las Armas and went to a restaurant that had local food from Arequipa. Very tasty. Josue brought the guitar and played some nice songs for us. It is always great to listen to him play…he is also giving me guitar lessons! We had a nice time talking to our new friends and since they will be traveling for several weeks around Chile and Argentina, we exchanged emails and are in contact to see if we can meet again somewhere else. It´s terrific to make friends from other countries along the way.
The next day Josue and I were off to Chile…………. To view photos of this part of the trip, click here.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Peru Part 1, Down the Pacific Coast
The first thing I have to say about Peru is that I was shocked that the whole west coast is a desert, and often a desolate one at that….sand dunes, strong winds blowing the sand around, sometimes no vegetation AT ALL! It´s funny how you think of a place as green and lush when you don´t know it and then surprise!!! It´s not what you thought. Anyway, we decided to stop at places along the coast since we were on our way to Lima and we had enough time.
Stacy and I are both ¨beach¨ people, so we tried to pick beach towns. Our first stay was with a lovely couple, Vicky and Joe Vargas, who are the parents of a friend of Stacy´s in San Diego. Stacy had never met Vicky or Joe, but you would have thought that they had known each other forever! Such a gracious, lovely couple. We stayed with them in their beautiful oceanfront home for three nights and joked on the day we were leaving (and Joe said, ¨you can stay longer if you want¨), that they better not say that or we just might stay forever. That´s how comfortable it was. Not only that, but they lived a good drive from the bus station in Chiclayo and our bus was late and their car broke down, but with their son-in-law´s help, they picked up up at about 11 pm and even had dinner for us when we got back!!!! They toured us around Chiclayo, showing us the regular market and the witchcraft market (yes, I bought some more supplies....potions and things....hahaha) and dined with us at a beautiful Peruvian restaurant where we had our first Pisco Sour, Chicha Morado and other food I can´t even remember the name of, but you´ll see in in the photos. We spent a day at the beach, Joe figured out a way to get Stacy´s suitcase fixed GOOD AS NEW and we had a brilliant night learning a Peruvian card game, I think it was called Baranco. We played as partners and Vicky and I had an early lead, then Joe and Stacy started catching up. Vicky brought out her ¨magic bells¨to twirl over my head so we would win, but alas, Stacy had some awesome beginner´s luck and they won. All in fun. Thanks so much to Vicky and Joe for being such lovely hosts. We only hope we can each repay the visit in some way (don´t forget your open invitation to Nicaragua!).
From there we decided to go to another beach, this one on the surf circuit. It´s called Huanchaco and it´s a touristy place with lots of people to watch and lots of food to try. Candied apples (when is the last time you had that?), orange wheat and honey cakes, fresh strawberries with condensed cream, fried lima beans, tamales with chicken and raisins, you name it, we ate it! I´m not sure how many days we stayed there, but I remember great breakfasts, riding in a boat that was made of reed (see photos), and laying out on the beach one entire day on chairs under an umbrella just reading and watching people go by. Nice feeling, even if we are on a vacation. We usually never have time to just sit on the beach all day. We visited a famous ruin near Huanchaco called Chan Chan. Talk about fake! I don´t know how many of you know this, but many of the ancient sites are being ¨rebuilt.¨ In other words, they start with the ruins and then put them back the way they must have looked when they were whole! To me, this totally defeats the purpose! In Belize they use some kind of putty made of fiber glass, mud and cement. In Chan Chan they used mud to make the same bricks that were originally used. When they are finished, they will no longer be ruins, but a new place that looked like Chan Chan once looked. What do you think of that? I don´t like it. (See our photos of Chan Chan).
Next we went to a place that was NOT in our book and NOT on our map named Barranca. Why? Strange thing. In 2002 I was still living in Canandaigua, New York and I read a news report on a new ancient site that was discovered in Peru called Caral. I decided that WHEN I visited Peru to see Machu Pichu I MUST see Caral. Caral is 5000 years old! It is the third oldest civilization discovered on earth. The existence of Caral changes the way we must think about how we all got here, since until now, no one thought there were civilizations this big in the western hemisphere. So it is a really significant site. It is set in the desert, between high sand mountains, with a solitary river running alongside. It is so new that they are still excavating but I have to say it is the most ecologically-thinking, preservation-thinking ruin site I have ever seen! Hooray to the Peruvians! Everything built to support it (bathrooms, shops, restaurant) is build from natural materials, you are not allowed to walk ON any of the pyramids, but you can get close and take good pictures. We spent the entire day there, walked a lot, thought that the ruins were fabulous. It definitely is off the beaten path, but worth seeing.
The town that we stayed in to be near Caral is called Barranca. When we arrived there, the bus just dropped us off in the street because this town wasn´t on their route, they were just taking us to be nice and would get in trouble if the police saw them in town. So we got off in a hurry, grabbed a moto-taxi (we have lots of pictures of those funny little customized taxis) and told him to take us to the beach. We stayed in a nice hotel right on the beach. The beach was gorgeous and reminded us a lot of San Juan del Sur, where I live. It was a bay, it had a Christ statue on one of the cliffs overlooking the bay, had a lot of seafood restaurants lining the beach street and five (yes five!) discos! It was Saturday night so you know where we were headed. We danced up a storm at a couple of the local clubs and got back to the hotel late.
Next day, we decided to go and see a few ¨minor ruins¨ around Barranca. We took a bus out to the first one. They dropped us off, but we didn´t see anything. After asking a few people directions, we walked through the hot, sunny desert to find two monoliths in the sand. That was it...two monoliths and nothing more! No explanation, no nothing. In fact, the sign said that this was an ¨ïntangible ruin.¨ I guess that means that they found those two things there, but they had no clue why they were there. Well, we couldn´t figure it out either. Then we went to the second place our our map and walked around and around and around in this dusty, tiny, dismal little town. Again, after asking questions, we were directed to a pile of rocks. Yes, just a pile of rocks. We laughed again. The third place we went to involved a ride and then a walk down a lonely pathway in the country. When we arrived at the place, there was nothing there!!! Nothing...except a cool, falling-apart bridge that we just felt we had to climb. The bridge crossed a big flowing river and we must like to climb, because the materials weren´t great. The ladder to get up was rickety, the bridge itself had no guardrails and was very skinny, made up of wooden slats and pieces of metal strategically placed so you wouldn´t fall in. There were holes in this construction everywhere. We kept asking ourselves if we were crazy. I say yes! But, we crossed the crazy bridge over the river and neither of us fell in. We were a little disconcerted when a man dressed all in black with black cowboy hat and all crossed the river close by on a black horse (it looked like something out of a Western....the evil guy coming to start trouble) but he didn´t say a word or even come near us. We were more surprised by the two men who came to the bridge to cross it to go to work and carried their bicycles on their backs! If they could do that, we surely could walk across it. And we did! Yes, it was dangerous and yes we were crazy (see the pictures).
Went our for another crazy night of dancing in Barranca.
A couple of days later, we left and took our last bus to Lima, where the Peru Part 2 adventure begins. Click here to see the photos associated with this post.
Stacy and I are both ¨beach¨ people, so we tried to pick beach towns. Our first stay was with a lovely couple, Vicky and Joe Vargas, who are the parents of a friend of Stacy´s in San Diego. Stacy had never met Vicky or Joe, but you would have thought that they had known each other forever! Such a gracious, lovely couple. We stayed with them in their beautiful oceanfront home for three nights and joked on the day we were leaving (and Joe said, ¨you can stay longer if you want¨), that they better not say that or we just might stay forever. That´s how comfortable it was. Not only that, but they lived a good drive from the bus station in Chiclayo and our bus was late and their car broke down, but with their son-in-law´s help, they picked up up at about 11 pm and even had dinner for us when we got back!!!! They toured us around Chiclayo, showing us the regular market and the witchcraft market (yes, I bought some more supplies....potions and things....hahaha) and dined with us at a beautiful Peruvian restaurant where we had our first Pisco Sour, Chicha Morado and other food I can´t even remember the name of, but you´ll see in in the photos. We spent a day at the beach, Joe figured out a way to get Stacy´s suitcase fixed GOOD AS NEW and we had a brilliant night learning a Peruvian card game, I think it was called Baranco. We played as partners and Vicky and I had an early lead, then Joe and Stacy started catching up. Vicky brought out her ¨magic bells¨to twirl over my head so we would win, but alas, Stacy had some awesome beginner´s luck and they won. All in fun. Thanks so much to Vicky and Joe for being such lovely hosts. We only hope we can each repay the visit in some way (don´t forget your open invitation to Nicaragua!).
From there we decided to go to another beach, this one on the surf circuit. It´s called Huanchaco and it´s a touristy place with lots of people to watch and lots of food to try. Candied apples (when is the last time you had that?), orange wheat and honey cakes, fresh strawberries with condensed cream, fried lima beans, tamales with chicken and raisins, you name it, we ate it! I´m not sure how many days we stayed there, but I remember great breakfasts, riding in a boat that was made of reed (see photos), and laying out on the beach one entire day on chairs under an umbrella just reading and watching people go by. Nice feeling, even if we are on a vacation. We usually never have time to just sit on the beach all day. We visited a famous ruin near Huanchaco called Chan Chan. Talk about fake! I don´t know how many of you know this, but many of the ancient sites are being ¨rebuilt.¨ In other words, they start with the ruins and then put them back the way they must have looked when they were whole! To me, this totally defeats the purpose! In Belize they use some kind of putty made of fiber glass, mud and cement. In Chan Chan they used mud to make the same bricks that were originally used. When they are finished, they will no longer be ruins, but a new place that looked like Chan Chan once looked. What do you think of that? I don´t like it. (See our photos of Chan Chan).
Next we went to a place that was NOT in our book and NOT on our map named Barranca. Why? Strange thing. In 2002 I was still living in Canandaigua, New York and I read a news report on a new ancient site that was discovered in Peru called Caral. I decided that WHEN I visited Peru to see Machu Pichu I MUST see Caral. Caral is 5000 years old! It is the third oldest civilization discovered on earth. The existence of Caral changes the way we must think about how we all got here, since until now, no one thought there were civilizations this big in the western hemisphere. So it is a really significant site. It is set in the desert, between high sand mountains, with a solitary river running alongside. It is so new that they are still excavating but I have to say it is the most ecologically-thinking, preservation-thinking ruin site I have ever seen! Hooray to the Peruvians! Everything built to support it (bathrooms, shops, restaurant) is build from natural materials, you are not allowed to walk ON any of the pyramids, but you can get close and take good pictures. We spent the entire day there, walked a lot, thought that the ruins were fabulous. It definitely is off the beaten path, but worth seeing.
The town that we stayed in to be near Caral is called Barranca. When we arrived there, the bus just dropped us off in the street because this town wasn´t on their route, they were just taking us to be nice and would get in trouble if the police saw them in town. So we got off in a hurry, grabbed a moto-taxi (we have lots of pictures of those funny little customized taxis) and told him to take us to the beach. We stayed in a nice hotel right on the beach. The beach was gorgeous and reminded us a lot of San Juan del Sur, where I live. It was a bay, it had a Christ statue on one of the cliffs overlooking the bay, had a lot of seafood restaurants lining the beach street and five (yes five!) discos! It was Saturday night so you know where we were headed. We danced up a storm at a couple of the local clubs and got back to the hotel late.
Next day, we decided to go and see a few ¨minor ruins¨ around Barranca. We took a bus out to the first one. They dropped us off, but we didn´t see anything. After asking a few people directions, we walked through the hot, sunny desert to find two monoliths in the sand. That was it...two monoliths and nothing more! No explanation, no nothing. In fact, the sign said that this was an ¨ïntangible ruin.¨ I guess that means that they found those two things there, but they had no clue why they were there. Well, we couldn´t figure it out either. Then we went to the second place our our map and walked around and around and around in this dusty, tiny, dismal little town. Again, after asking questions, we were directed to a pile of rocks. Yes, just a pile of rocks. We laughed again. The third place we went to involved a ride and then a walk down a lonely pathway in the country. When we arrived at the place, there was nothing there!!! Nothing...except a cool, falling-apart bridge that we just felt we had to climb. The bridge crossed a big flowing river and we must like to climb, because the materials weren´t great. The ladder to get up was rickety, the bridge itself had no guardrails and was very skinny, made up of wooden slats and pieces of metal strategically placed so you wouldn´t fall in. There were holes in this construction everywhere. We kept asking ourselves if we were crazy. I say yes! But, we crossed the crazy bridge over the river and neither of us fell in. We were a little disconcerted when a man dressed all in black with black cowboy hat and all crossed the river close by on a black horse (it looked like something out of a Western....the evil guy coming to start trouble) but he didn´t say a word or even come near us. We were more surprised by the two men who came to the bridge to cross it to go to work and carried their bicycles on their backs! If they could do that, we surely could walk across it. And we did! Yes, it was dangerous and yes we were crazy (see the pictures).
Went our for another crazy night of dancing in Barranca.
A couple of days later, we left and took our last bus to Lima, where the Peru Part 2 adventure begins. Click here to see the photos associated with this post.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Ecuador
Originally the plan was to go to Guayaquil, rather than Quito. But as soon as I got on the bus (which was going through Quito anyway), I looked at the two cities and it seemed there was so much more to do in and around Quito. I took a trip with my family to Ecuador years ago and it was going to be fun to do some comparisons. So Quito it was! We found a quaint little hotel in the Old Town section run by Jaime and his seven-year old son Mikey. It was a wonderful place with hardwood floors, our own bathroom with hot water (sometimes we don´t have one or the other) for $16 USD a night! The first thing on our agenda was a hot, hot shower to get rid of all the powder, paint and foam spray from that crazy fiesta in Colombia! We felt like new afterwards and celebrated by having our one and only fancy dinner on our vacation yet.
We will always remember Quito as the city of colonial churches, monasteries and convents and views. Every time you turn a corner, you look down the street to see an amazing building or park. We were blessed with good weather so our walking tours were full and exciting. Sometimes we left our hotel room at 7 in the morning and got back at 9 pm. (Then we´d shower, get ready and go out dancing!) There was actually a sidebar in our Lonely Planet Guide that listed the best views in Quito. That´s what we decided to do, see the views. Quito is about 8500 feet high, so there is a little bit of breathing challenge if you walk straight up or walk too fast, until you get acclimated to the height. One experience that stands out was the climb up the 315 steps of the Basilica, a gothic church built in the last century. It wasn´t the 315 steps that worried us, after all, we are troopers. It was the ¨type¨ of steps. They started out OK, but after the first 100, they turned into ladders. Each ladder got smaller and flimsier, until they were just made out of metal rods. Sometimes the distance between each rod was too small, sometimes too much. And we had our flip-flops on!!! Not a way to climb slippery metal ladders! The very last ladder to the top of the highest spire was made of rods about a half inch thick. And that´s not all. When you climbed up, you were on a wire platform, not a real floor and some of the wires were broken. If you didn´t pay attention, your leg could actually fall through and would be torn apart by the jagged wire. But that´s still not all. One guy disappeared outside a little window, so Stacy gets it in her head to do the same. She goes out on this tiny platform OUTSIDE the steeple so I can take a picture of her. Then she says, ¨It doesn´t feel so great out here. I think it´s dangerous.¨ Well I had to go out and check. Wow! On that platform with no ropes, ledges, nothing to hold you on there, if there were an earthquake (Quito has lots) or a rogue wind, that would be the end of you. I stayed out 5 seconds, long enough for a picture too. But that was a CRAZY thing to do. Food was interesting in Quito. It was generally good, and sometimes fanstastic, but I also had the worst meal I´ve had in my life when we accidentally wandered into a Chinese restaurant. I like Chinese food, so I don’t know what happened there, but I think I had two sips of my soup and said no. I went to sleep hungry that night. But another day we had an interesting soup made of tripe, potatoes, and avocados in a peanut sauce! It sounds awful, but it was great! Another night we ate at an upscale Ecuadorian restaurant and had a local soup dish, a meat dish, and four glasses of wine for $14.00. The food in Ecuador is really cheap.
One day we took the new cable car up the side of active volcano Pichincha – all the way to over 13,000 feet!!! That´s pretty high and it was VERY cold. During the days each of us had stopped at a store here or there to get warmer clothes, especially me since I only had my clothes from Nicaragua and Nicaragua never gets cold!
On Saturday we went to Otovalo, supposedly one of the largest markets in Latin America. It was beautiful! We went to the Artesania section, where the natives make beautiful woven wall hangings, purses, hand-made sweaters, everything very brightly colored. We stayed at the market the whole day and I did some great negotiating on wool sweaters, hats, gloves and other things to keep us warm in our upcoming countries. Great day! We went dancing that night and had a great time. Finally the club wasn´t filled with only couples, the problem we had in Colombia.
The next day we went to Baños. I had been there before, but I thought Stacy should see it, even if for only a day. I usually don´t like the more touristy places and this place is mobbed with tourists, particularly North Americans. But it´s a cute town, reminded me a bit of San Juan del Sur, only bigger and more upscale. Baños is a hub for extreme sports from ATV riding, hang gliding, white water river rafting, etc. Etc. Years ago when we were there and my daughters were about 8 and 9 years old, the town was so tiny that we let them wander around alone (there were only two streets). Now it has grown to a little mega town with Asian food, American food, and tons of hostals. Baños sits on the side of a volcano that is very active. In 2006, it exploded and wiped out a section of the town right below it. Luckily no one got hurt because each citizen has a backpack ready to go OUT THE DOOR when the sirens go on. Each citizen has a particular evacuation route and no Ecuadorian is scared about this volcano. And guess what? The taxi driver who took us from the bus terminal to our hotel (cute little place, $19 USD a night) was on ¨Volcano eruption call¨ and told us that the volcano had started erupting the day before and he would call us if that happened again. Well, the next morning, just as we were going to breakfast, we got the call. He said ¨Hurry, I´ll take you to see the volcano erupting.¨ Well, that sounded cool to us, so we went TOWARD the spewing volcano. We heard it rumble and grumble, we saw the thick clouds of poison gas coming out and we got some awesome pictures!
Next...we went to Puyo, supposedly a town on the edge of the REAL jungle! On the way we stopped at a beautiful waterfall that fed into a river in a canyon. Years ago I had walked across the swing bridge with my husband and my daughters, but now there was an aerial car that you can take for $1 USD and cross that way. It looked unsafe at first, but we did it anyway and it was great fun! Next, we went to another waterfall and hiked a bit to get to it. My daughters Talia and Shanna may remember this one...we hiked years ago through the dense jungle and had a little picnic once we reached the Devil´s Cauldron. There was no one there, no hint of civilization. But now a wide trail has been created, a restaurant is there and you have to pay to go in. Changes. Good or bad? I don´t know. More tourists, more jobs for the Ecuadorians. More tourists, less Ecuadorian culture. Same thing in Nicaragua. Good or bad? Both, I think.
We reached Puyo and couldn´t really see how it was a town on the edge of a jungle. We were disappointed with our hotel, and the fact that there was very little to do in Puyo. Also, the electricity went out the night we were there and abruptly ended a good Internet session. The next day we did the only thing we could find that was interesting..we visited a monkey farm. This farm had 51 monkeys of different varieties all running around loose and waiting for unsuspecting tourists to come so they can jump on them. See the photos, it was fun enough, though we were filthy from the mud and had to get right on a long bus ride after that!
We decided to take the road less traveled to Cuenca, against everyone´s advice. But how glad we were! Yes, it took 3 hours longer to get to Cuenca, but we saw some views of mountains that cannot be described and experienced some hair-raising turns on the bus where we looked out the window and were so close to the edge that we peered down a few thousand feet into the canyon!
Cuenca is a beautiful city and there´s quite a bit to do there. We had our cheapest hotel here, for $12 USD for BOTH of us! We also had our best, cheapest meal. While we were taking a walking tour one day, we happened upon a beautiful hotel-restaurant that had a fixed price lunch. It was hard to believe, but we went in and sure enough, for $2 USD you got a fresh tamarind juice, home-made onion soup, a beef and rice and cooked carrot dish, and bananas flambee for dessert. I defy any of you to beat that. Of course we ruined the budget when we each got a glass of wine. Each glass was $4 USD, the price of two lunches!!! Ecuador is VERY inexpensive. Other highlights: we had a couple of great dancing nights, I finally found the Panama hat I was looking for (for those of you who don´t know, ALL Panama hats are made in Ecuador!!!). We saw them in Panama, but they told us the same thing, so we waited ´till we got to Ecuador, where they were much cheaper. We enjoyed walking along the river and through the city. One day we took a trip to another little town, also called Baños. We arrived in the middle of a horse parade tribute to the Virgen, so we watched that outside of a brightly painted (blue) church! Then we walked down to some thermal baths, where we soaked away all of our toxins for a couple of hours. In Cuenca you can get books in English, very typical European and North American food, and anything else you are used to. And the city is beautiful.
Then we took the bus to Machala, where we had to get another bus to the border with Peru. After much research, and learning that Peru is much more dangerous for a tourist than Colombia is now, we decided to take a bus from Machala that takes you THROUGH the border and leaves you off in Tumbes, Peru. We were escorted (at night) through the whole immigration process which actually took about 5 minutes. On to Peru...... To see the photos for this section, click here.
We will always remember Quito as the city of colonial churches, monasteries and convents and views. Every time you turn a corner, you look down the street to see an amazing building or park. We were blessed with good weather so our walking tours were full and exciting. Sometimes we left our hotel room at 7 in the morning and got back at 9 pm. (Then we´d shower, get ready and go out dancing!) There was actually a sidebar in our Lonely Planet Guide that listed the best views in Quito. That´s what we decided to do, see the views. Quito is about 8500 feet high, so there is a little bit of breathing challenge if you walk straight up or walk too fast, until you get acclimated to the height. One experience that stands out was the climb up the 315 steps of the Basilica, a gothic church built in the last century. It wasn´t the 315 steps that worried us, after all, we are troopers. It was the ¨type¨ of steps. They started out OK, but after the first 100, they turned into ladders. Each ladder got smaller and flimsier, until they were just made out of metal rods. Sometimes the distance between each rod was too small, sometimes too much. And we had our flip-flops on!!! Not a way to climb slippery metal ladders! The very last ladder to the top of the highest spire was made of rods about a half inch thick. And that´s not all. When you climbed up, you were on a wire platform, not a real floor and some of the wires were broken. If you didn´t pay attention, your leg could actually fall through and would be torn apart by the jagged wire. But that´s still not all. One guy disappeared outside a little window, so Stacy gets it in her head to do the same. She goes out on this tiny platform OUTSIDE the steeple so I can take a picture of her. Then she says, ¨It doesn´t feel so great out here. I think it´s dangerous.¨ Well I had to go out and check. Wow! On that platform with no ropes, ledges, nothing to hold you on there, if there were an earthquake (Quito has lots) or a rogue wind, that would be the end of you. I stayed out 5 seconds, long enough for a picture too. But that was a CRAZY thing to do. Food was interesting in Quito. It was generally good, and sometimes fanstastic, but I also had the worst meal I´ve had in my life when we accidentally wandered into a Chinese restaurant. I like Chinese food, so I don’t know what happened there, but I think I had two sips of my soup and said no. I went to sleep hungry that night. But another day we had an interesting soup made of tripe, potatoes, and avocados in a peanut sauce! It sounds awful, but it was great! Another night we ate at an upscale Ecuadorian restaurant and had a local soup dish, a meat dish, and four glasses of wine for $14.00. The food in Ecuador is really cheap.
One day we took the new cable car up the side of active volcano Pichincha – all the way to over 13,000 feet!!! That´s pretty high and it was VERY cold. During the days each of us had stopped at a store here or there to get warmer clothes, especially me since I only had my clothes from Nicaragua and Nicaragua never gets cold!
On Saturday we went to Otovalo, supposedly one of the largest markets in Latin America. It was beautiful! We went to the Artesania section, where the natives make beautiful woven wall hangings, purses, hand-made sweaters, everything very brightly colored. We stayed at the market the whole day and I did some great negotiating on wool sweaters, hats, gloves and other things to keep us warm in our upcoming countries. Great day! We went dancing that night and had a great time. Finally the club wasn´t filled with only couples, the problem we had in Colombia.
The next day we went to Baños. I had been there before, but I thought Stacy should see it, even if for only a day. I usually don´t like the more touristy places and this place is mobbed with tourists, particularly North Americans. But it´s a cute town, reminded me a bit of San Juan del Sur, only bigger and more upscale. Baños is a hub for extreme sports from ATV riding, hang gliding, white water river rafting, etc. Etc. Years ago when we were there and my daughters were about 8 and 9 years old, the town was so tiny that we let them wander around alone (there were only two streets). Now it has grown to a little mega town with Asian food, American food, and tons of hostals. Baños sits on the side of a volcano that is very active. In 2006, it exploded and wiped out a section of the town right below it. Luckily no one got hurt because each citizen has a backpack ready to go OUT THE DOOR when the sirens go on. Each citizen has a particular evacuation route and no Ecuadorian is scared about this volcano. And guess what? The taxi driver who took us from the bus terminal to our hotel (cute little place, $19 USD a night) was on ¨Volcano eruption call¨ and told us that the volcano had started erupting the day before and he would call us if that happened again. Well, the next morning, just as we were going to breakfast, we got the call. He said ¨Hurry, I´ll take you to see the volcano erupting.¨ Well, that sounded cool to us, so we went TOWARD the spewing volcano. We heard it rumble and grumble, we saw the thick clouds of poison gas coming out and we got some awesome pictures!
Next...we went to Puyo, supposedly a town on the edge of the REAL jungle! On the way we stopped at a beautiful waterfall that fed into a river in a canyon. Years ago I had walked across the swing bridge with my husband and my daughters, but now there was an aerial car that you can take for $1 USD and cross that way. It looked unsafe at first, but we did it anyway and it was great fun! Next, we went to another waterfall and hiked a bit to get to it. My daughters Talia and Shanna may remember this one...we hiked years ago through the dense jungle and had a little picnic once we reached the Devil´s Cauldron. There was no one there, no hint of civilization. But now a wide trail has been created, a restaurant is there and you have to pay to go in. Changes. Good or bad? I don´t know. More tourists, more jobs for the Ecuadorians. More tourists, less Ecuadorian culture. Same thing in Nicaragua. Good or bad? Both, I think.
We reached Puyo and couldn´t really see how it was a town on the edge of a jungle. We were disappointed with our hotel, and the fact that there was very little to do in Puyo. Also, the electricity went out the night we were there and abruptly ended a good Internet session. The next day we did the only thing we could find that was interesting..we visited a monkey farm. This farm had 51 monkeys of different varieties all running around loose and waiting for unsuspecting tourists to come so they can jump on them. See the photos, it was fun enough, though we were filthy from the mud and had to get right on a long bus ride after that!
We decided to take the road less traveled to Cuenca, against everyone´s advice. But how glad we were! Yes, it took 3 hours longer to get to Cuenca, but we saw some views of mountains that cannot be described and experienced some hair-raising turns on the bus where we looked out the window and were so close to the edge that we peered down a few thousand feet into the canyon!
Cuenca is a beautiful city and there´s quite a bit to do there. We had our cheapest hotel here, for $12 USD for BOTH of us! We also had our best, cheapest meal. While we were taking a walking tour one day, we happened upon a beautiful hotel-restaurant that had a fixed price lunch. It was hard to believe, but we went in and sure enough, for $2 USD you got a fresh tamarind juice, home-made onion soup, a beef and rice and cooked carrot dish, and bananas flambee for dessert. I defy any of you to beat that. Of course we ruined the budget when we each got a glass of wine. Each glass was $4 USD, the price of two lunches!!! Ecuador is VERY inexpensive. Other highlights: we had a couple of great dancing nights, I finally found the Panama hat I was looking for (for those of you who don´t know, ALL Panama hats are made in Ecuador!!!). We saw them in Panama, but they told us the same thing, so we waited ´till we got to Ecuador, where they were much cheaper. We enjoyed walking along the river and through the city. One day we took a trip to another little town, also called Baños. We arrived in the middle of a horse parade tribute to the Virgen, so we watched that outside of a brightly painted (blue) church! Then we walked down to some thermal baths, where we soaked away all of our toxins for a couple of hours. In Cuenca you can get books in English, very typical European and North American food, and anything else you are used to. And the city is beautiful.
Then we took the bus to Machala, where we had to get another bus to the border with Peru. After much research, and learning that Peru is much more dangerous for a tourist than Colombia is now, we decided to take a bus from Machala that takes you THROUGH the border and leaves you off in Tumbes, Peru. We were escorted (at night) through the whole immigration process which actually took about 5 minutes. On to Peru...... To see the photos for this section, click here.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Colombia Part 2 Cali, San Cipriano, Pasto and the border
Cali, salsa capital of the world! Also drug cartel cocaine capital of the world and previous kidnapping capital of the world (about 10 years ago). After taking a 20-hour bus ride a few days before, the 10-hour bus ride went so fast we hardly noticed it. Arrived in Cali late, at 10 pm. Did we go to sleep? Are you kidding? We jumped into the shower, got dressed, and took a cab to party central in downtown Cali. The entire street was hopping! There is one salsa night club after another, all the way down sixth street. They take salsa very seriously here. The clubs don´t charge a cover, so you can go from one to the other easily. We did some dancing, but honestly, even with all the salsa dancing I do, I sure don´t dance yet like they do here! Had fun though! The next few days we spent exploring Cali. We don´t go to museums per se, but the gold museum was beautiful! We checked out some more discos and discovered that not only do they just play salsa music (no meringue or reggaeton), but only couples go!!! So the dance scene was a little frustrating for us here.
We went to the bus terminal to try to get a bus to the border. We couldn´t! We are actually trapped in Cali! And this is why...it´s because of the bus system in this town. It´s ridiculous and frustrating and horrible (my opinion). Stacy and I waited in two different lines. There were several bus companies that have buses to the border. We had checked on some and they said there were no buses until January 5th! We couldn´t wait that long, so we were checking out some other companies. The line I was waiting in suddenly stopped moving when the one guy serving about 100 people abruptly got up and left for lunch at noon. Said he´d be back at 2! Everyone just stood there and said they couldn´t leave the line because they would lose their place. I asked many people if you can make a reservation over the phone. They told me that you can, but if there is someone at the window with cash in their hand, the company will sell your ticket! So it was better to wait and pay and have the ticket in your hand. After waiting in line for about two hours, Stacy and I suddenly found out that they were only selling tickets for that day! And we wanted to buy tickets for two days later! We left the bus terminal terribly frustrated and wondering why they did things that way. I guess Cali just didn´t want us to leave. We stayed two more days and that allowed us to visit the interesting town of San Cipriano.
As the bus pulled out of Cali, there were now military guards placed along the entire way to Cordoba. Sometimes one, sometimes many. While it may look like it´s dangerous, I believe that Colombia is trying hard to clean up its act and has used the army to keep the roads safer. The bus was never stopped, we just saw lots of uniforms carrying semiautomatic rifles. We got to Cordoba, it was raining a bit and we walked down the hill. The fun of this trip is that you go to San Cipriano by train. But not a regular train. Actually, there IS a regular train but you don´t take that one. On the same tracks, the natives have invented a new mode of transportation. It´s a few boards thrown together on metal wheels that fit the tracks and a motorcycle that is then attached to the boards and ¨drives¨the ramshackle vehicle down the tracks as fast as the motorcycle driver cares to go, which is sometimes very fast. The vehicle bumps, dips, knocks, makes scary noises as the wheels go around a curve and there is nothing really to hold on to. You are not strapped into the seat (if you can call three planks of board a seat) and the ¨seat¨ is not even attached to the body of the train. It´s free standing and free moving. All of this is on one track. What happens when trains are coming the other way, you ask? You hope that the two trains aren´t going so fast that they slam into each other. They both stop and by some unknown and impossible to figure out protocol one driver gets off, lifts the entire ¨train¨ (motorcycle and all) off the tracks so that the other ¨train¨can go by. On our way back, we had to stop five times. Twice our train was taken down and put back. The destination is San Cipriano which is a tiny town inside a forest reserve, which you wouldn´t really realize is a forest reserve because there are tons of restaurants, some hotels, and not a lot of garbage cans, if you get the picture. However, you arrive at a beautiful crystal clear river that has spots where you can swim. It goes up to about nine feet deep in some places. It was very nice, but we had forgotten our bathing suits. I went in the river with my clothes and Stacy sat on a rock in the river. It was all in all a great day. We got back to Cali around dinner time and had terrific skewers of chicken and chorizo and a special arepa, which was like a thick tortilla made of corn bread stuffed with cheese. Two good beers finished off the dinner.
The next day we did what everyone said we had to do if we wanted to leave Cali: go to the bus terminal at 4 am and buy the ticket when the windows opened. That´s what we did and we finally were on our way to the Ecuador border.
This time we took a cheaper bus and there was no bathroom, it was very small and we got bad seats (and not together). This was for another 10-hour bus ride, so we weren´t too happy. There were lots of little kids on the bus. Suddenly the driver asked for two volunteers to sit up front with him. I jumped up, yelled to Stacy and we got them! Over the next few hours we became friends with the bus driver and as we were driving along he told us of a strange festival in a town called Pasto, about two and a half hours BEFORE the border. This town has its Black and White festival once a year from January 4 – 8. It supposedly honors the ONE day a year when the white slave owners allowed their slaves to have a day off! On that day, the slave owners painted their faces black and the slaves painted their faces white to show that they were in accordance with the day. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of show of respect, but that´s hard to believe. Anyway, to honor this day, Pasto now puts on a 4-day festival and the day we were travelling it was in full force. The bus driver spoke so highly of the festival that we decided then and there to go to it and make our journey to the Ecuador border a day later. In fact, we decided that we would just stay up the rest of the day and night, not get a hotel, probably go out dancing and then just show up at the bus terminal at 4 am like we had done the night before and hop on a bus! Well, not everything is quite as we expected.
We got off in Pasto, did some Internet stuff and the man at the Internet place told us the parades and parties were just in the afternoon and now it was late and we had missed everything. We were so disappointed, but we´ve learned on the trip that not everything people tell us is true. So we decided to take the bus downtown and see what was going on anyway. Well the man was wrong and party central was going on exactly where we got off the bus. We saw everyone wearing lightweight ponchos, so we decided we should get them too so we would fit in. Most people were also carrying plastic cans of something and plastic bags of something else. Others had little bottles. As we got closer, someone came up from behind us and dumped white powder on our heads. The game was ON!!! The plastic cans were spray foam and the little bottles were different colors of paint! It was WHITE day at Pasto´s ¨Black and White¨festival! We heard a great live band so we went in that direction. When we reached the main plaza, there were thousands of people. They immediately started spraying us with foam so of course we had to defend ourselves and we bought our own cans. At first it seemed all in great fun, but it started to get a little crazy. People would spray your face, your hair, everywhere. We went to stand over by a bunch of police hoping to keep listening to the music without being sprayed when suddenly I got sprayed in the ear! We looked around and couldn´t figure out who did it so I could spray him or her back and found out it was one of the policemen who had a can of foam under his uniform coat. So I took my spray and got three of them. Like I said...all in fun. So I have the great experience of spraying three Colombian national police with spray foam and I´m living to tell the story. Didn´t go to jail and didn´t even get a reprimand. Imagine doing that in the U.S.! We wanted to sit down and get out of the way so we went to one of the outdoor places to get a beer. There were no seats, but a nice couple from Bogota (Carolina and Jaime) invited us to sit down with them and we spent the rest of the night with them. Everything was fine for a time, and then things got out of control. We stood up to hear the band and four teenage guys ganged up on me and sprayed me in the eyes, ears, nose and throat. I couldn´t breathe and I was down for the count...literally on the ground. Carolina acted quickly and got the medics who had a place set up right there for such occasions. Stacy, Jaime and the medics picked me up and dragged me gagging over to the temporary clinic where they gave me oxygen and made me relax (I was having a panic attack because I couldn´t breathe!). After that I was fine. We all looked horrible with paint, powder and foam all over us but I said it was time to go out dancing. We went to a nice place (don´t forget – we looked HORRIBLE- see the photos) where they were playing indigenous Andes music and we learned to do a new dance. After awhile our friends left and we made our way to the bus station. We had the great idea of staying up all night, remember? BAD IDEA! First, we were bedraggled and tired and the bus station was freezing! We had to take all of our warm clothes out of our suitcases (I had only one long sleeved shirt. Luckily Stacy was more prepared and gave me a turtleneck and gloves.) We toughed it out until we got our bus at 5:30 in the morning, but we were miserable. When we got to Ipiales, we wanted to see a special sanctuary that was built into the side of a gorge and so we contracted with a taxi driver to take us there and then to the border. The sanctuary was amazing and no one kicked us out for how we looked. We had to go to immigration on the Colombian side (one hour and five minute wait in line for no reason) to get stamped out, then we walked across the border into Ecuador and had to go to immigration (one hour and five minute wait in line for no reason) to get stamped in. But we finally said good-bye to Colombia and we´re in Ecuador!!!!!! Click here for photos of this part of our trip.
We went to the bus terminal to try to get a bus to the border. We couldn´t! We are actually trapped in Cali! And this is why...it´s because of the bus system in this town. It´s ridiculous and frustrating and horrible (my opinion). Stacy and I waited in two different lines. There were several bus companies that have buses to the border. We had checked on some and they said there were no buses until January 5th! We couldn´t wait that long, so we were checking out some other companies. The line I was waiting in suddenly stopped moving when the one guy serving about 100 people abruptly got up and left for lunch at noon. Said he´d be back at 2! Everyone just stood there and said they couldn´t leave the line because they would lose their place. I asked many people if you can make a reservation over the phone. They told me that you can, but if there is someone at the window with cash in their hand, the company will sell your ticket! So it was better to wait and pay and have the ticket in your hand. After waiting in line for about two hours, Stacy and I suddenly found out that they were only selling tickets for that day! And we wanted to buy tickets for two days later! We left the bus terminal terribly frustrated and wondering why they did things that way. I guess Cali just didn´t want us to leave. We stayed two more days and that allowed us to visit the interesting town of San Cipriano.
As the bus pulled out of Cali, there were now military guards placed along the entire way to Cordoba. Sometimes one, sometimes many. While it may look like it´s dangerous, I believe that Colombia is trying hard to clean up its act and has used the army to keep the roads safer. The bus was never stopped, we just saw lots of uniforms carrying semiautomatic rifles. We got to Cordoba, it was raining a bit and we walked down the hill. The fun of this trip is that you go to San Cipriano by train. But not a regular train. Actually, there IS a regular train but you don´t take that one. On the same tracks, the natives have invented a new mode of transportation. It´s a few boards thrown together on metal wheels that fit the tracks and a motorcycle that is then attached to the boards and ¨drives¨the ramshackle vehicle down the tracks as fast as the motorcycle driver cares to go, which is sometimes very fast. The vehicle bumps, dips, knocks, makes scary noises as the wheels go around a curve and there is nothing really to hold on to. You are not strapped into the seat (if you can call three planks of board a seat) and the ¨seat¨ is not even attached to the body of the train. It´s free standing and free moving. All of this is on one track. What happens when trains are coming the other way, you ask? You hope that the two trains aren´t going so fast that they slam into each other. They both stop and by some unknown and impossible to figure out protocol one driver gets off, lifts the entire ¨train¨ (motorcycle and all) off the tracks so that the other ¨train¨can go by. On our way back, we had to stop five times. Twice our train was taken down and put back. The destination is San Cipriano which is a tiny town inside a forest reserve, which you wouldn´t really realize is a forest reserve because there are tons of restaurants, some hotels, and not a lot of garbage cans, if you get the picture. However, you arrive at a beautiful crystal clear river that has spots where you can swim. It goes up to about nine feet deep in some places. It was very nice, but we had forgotten our bathing suits. I went in the river with my clothes and Stacy sat on a rock in the river. It was all in all a great day. We got back to Cali around dinner time and had terrific skewers of chicken and chorizo and a special arepa, which was like a thick tortilla made of corn bread stuffed with cheese. Two good beers finished off the dinner.
The next day we did what everyone said we had to do if we wanted to leave Cali: go to the bus terminal at 4 am and buy the ticket when the windows opened. That´s what we did and we finally were on our way to the Ecuador border.
This time we took a cheaper bus and there was no bathroom, it was very small and we got bad seats (and not together). This was for another 10-hour bus ride, so we weren´t too happy. There were lots of little kids on the bus. Suddenly the driver asked for two volunteers to sit up front with him. I jumped up, yelled to Stacy and we got them! Over the next few hours we became friends with the bus driver and as we were driving along he told us of a strange festival in a town called Pasto, about two and a half hours BEFORE the border. This town has its Black and White festival once a year from January 4 – 8. It supposedly honors the ONE day a year when the white slave owners allowed their slaves to have a day off! On that day, the slave owners painted their faces black and the slaves painted their faces white to show that they were in accordance with the day. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of show of respect, but that´s hard to believe. Anyway, to honor this day, Pasto now puts on a 4-day festival and the day we were travelling it was in full force. The bus driver spoke so highly of the festival that we decided then and there to go to it and make our journey to the Ecuador border a day later. In fact, we decided that we would just stay up the rest of the day and night, not get a hotel, probably go out dancing and then just show up at the bus terminal at 4 am like we had done the night before and hop on a bus! Well, not everything is quite as we expected.
We got off in Pasto, did some Internet stuff and the man at the Internet place told us the parades and parties were just in the afternoon and now it was late and we had missed everything. We were so disappointed, but we´ve learned on the trip that not everything people tell us is true. So we decided to take the bus downtown and see what was going on anyway. Well the man was wrong and party central was going on exactly where we got off the bus. We saw everyone wearing lightweight ponchos, so we decided we should get them too so we would fit in. Most people were also carrying plastic cans of something and plastic bags of something else. Others had little bottles. As we got closer, someone came up from behind us and dumped white powder on our heads. The game was ON!!! The plastic cans were spray foam and the little bottles were different colors of paint! It was WHITE day at Pasto´s ¨Black and White¨festival! We heard a great live band so we went in that direction. When we reached the main plaza, there were thousands of people. They immediately started spraying us with foam so of course we had to defend ourselves and we bought our own cans. At first it seemed all in great fun, but it started to get a little crazy. People would spray your face, your hair, everywhere. We went to stand over by a bunch of police hoping to keep listening to the music without being sprayed when suddenly I got sprayed in the ear! We looked around and couldn´t figure out who did it so I could spray him or her back and found out it was one of the policemen who had a can of foam under his uniform coat. So I took my spray and got three of them. Like I said...all in fun. So I have the great experience of spraying three Colombian national police with spray foam and I´m living to tell the story. Didn´t go to jail and didn´t even get a reprimand. Imagine doing that in the U.S.! We wanted to sit down and get out of the way so we went to one of the outdoor places to get a beer. There were no seats, but a nice couple from Bogota (Carolina and Jaime) invited us to sit down with them and we spent the rest of the night with them. Everything was fine for a time, and then things got out of control. We stood up to hear the band and four teenage guys ganged up on me and sprayed me in the eyes, ears, nose and throat. I couldn´t breathe and I was down for the count...literally on the ground. Carolina acted quickly and got the medics who had a place set up right there for such occasions. Stacy, Jaime and the medics picked me up and dragged me gagging over to the temporary clinic where they gave me oxygen and made me relax (I was having a panic attack because I couldn´t breathe!). After that I was fine. We all looked horrible with paint, powder and foam all over us but I said it was time to go out dancing. We went to a nice place (don´t forget – we looked HORRIBLE- see the photos) where they were playing indigenous Andes music and we learned to do a new dance. After awhile our friends left and we made our way to the bus station. We had the great idea of staying up all night, remember? BAD IDEA! First, we were bedraggled and tired and the bus station was freezing! We had to take all of our warm clothes out of our suitcases (I had only one long sleeved shirt. Luckily Stacy was more prepared and gave me a turtleneck and gloves.) We toughed it out until we got our bus at 5:30 in the morning, but we were miserable. When we got to Ipiales, we wanted to see a special sanctuary that was built into the side of a gorge and so we contracted with a taxi driver to take us there and then to the border. The sanctuary was amazing and no one kicked us out for how we looked. We had to go to immigration on the Colombian side (one hour and five minute wait in line for no reason) to get stamped out, then we walked across the border into Ecuador and had to go to immigration (one hour and five minute wait in line for no reason) to get stamped in. But we finally said good-bye to Colombia and we´re in Ecuador!!!!!! Click here for photos of this part of our trip.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Colombia Part 1 Cartagena and Bogota
Colombia is FABULOUS! I could live here in a second….the first thing I want to say is that the danger factor is really overrated. Yes, it may be bad for those involved in the shadier things, but for regular tourists, no problem! We feel no different here than in any of the other countries we´ve been. The people here explained that the current president has done a lot to improve security in the country. Yes, we see military guards frequently on the roads, but they are there to protect and help. Also, the Colombian people here are fantastic! So helpful, kind and warm…as you will soon learn.
We DID have to fly to from Panama City to Cartagena because there are no buses. You can take a cargo ship (and one of my friends did, but we haven´t heard back from him yet), but they advise against it because sometimes the cargo ships run drugs and of course, if you happen to be on the ship when pirates arrive with their automatic weapons to take those drugs, well, just imagine…..I mean, we like adventure, but that´s a little over the top, even for us! So, I know what you are saying, ¨Bonnie just said that Colombia is not dangerous, yet she and Stacy wouldn´t cross the Panama-Colombia border by land.¨ I didn´t say Colombia was perfect, I said it´s fine for tourists. Of course it is not fine for tourists to wander into known drug trafficking areas. So we didn´t.
We arrived in Cartagena and Tia Monica was there at the airport to pick us up! Tia Monica is my ex-husband Erick´s aunt, both from San Andres island. (San Andres is a tiny little island in the Caribbean closer to Nicaragua, but owned by Colombia. Of course my Nicaraguan friends will protest that comment as it used to belong to Nicaragua.) A more wonderful person than Tia Monica you will never meet. She opened her arms and her home to both of us and treated us like queens! Tia Monica is an energetic 70-year old and the very first woman tour guide in Cartagena.
Cartagena…a gorgeous city sitting on the edge of the Caribbean sea, Latin music playing everywhere, smiling happy people. Colorful buildings, lots to do and see. Our first night we went to a birthday party in a relative´s house. We danced up a storm with the uncles and cousins at the birthday party and had a great time. The next day Tia Monica showed us all the sites, explained all the details and history. We even went to an Inquisition Museum that had all sorts of real torture instruments! Everyone in Cartagena knows Tia Monica and loves her. We got in free to every place because we were with her…what a treat! We went back, ate and went out dancing at a nightclub with Monica´s daughter Luz Marina and her boyfriend Gustavo. EVERYONE dances in Colombia. I believe there is not a man in Colombia who doesn´t dance! Children dance before they walk!
Another day we went with Tia Monica, her daughter Luz Marina and her granddaughter Monica to Playa Blanca, a lovely beach with warm, turquoise water. The adventure was not the beach. The adventure was getting there. After a 45 minute bus ride, we arrived in a small town called Pasa Caballo (I could live here!) to take a ferry. A ferry like we had never seen before! It seemed like just a slab of concrete. But cars, people, motorcycles and even buses could fit on the slab. But how was it going to move? It didn´t have any visible means of motion, not a motor, not an oar, nothing. All of a sudden we started moving! But how? At first we couldn´t figure it out. But then, behind us, we saw one man in a type of native canoe with a little motor pushing the huge ferry with a stick. I hope we have a picture of that, but I´m not sure. Once we got to the other side of the river, we hopped into a broken down, holes in the floor, pieces falling off truck from the last century that spewed gasoline and bumped and bounced and made horrible wrenching noises the next 22 kilometers to the......gorgeous, turquoise water, white sand beach lined with quaint restaurants. Stacy tried her first coco loco at this place and she was quite glad she did. I had tried them on San Andres island and insisted her trip would not be complete without it. For those of you who don´t know what a coco loco is, it is a real coconut, mixed with a lot of aguardiente (the cheapest liquor in the country), the natural coconut juice, and flavourings, in this case pineapple juice and strawberry syrup. They are really strong...but this one seemed to have no effect on Stacy. Not to get too carried away with one story ´cause we have so much to tell, suffice it to say we had a wonderful day here.
We had one especially exciting night in Cartagena. While Stacy was taking a shower, I was drying my hair. I don´t know if it was because I plugged my hair dryer into an extension cord or what, but suddenly I smelled and saw smoke coming from across the room. Next, my hair dryer stopped working! Then.....I saw flames! Stacy´s suitcase was on fire! I guess you never know what you are going to do in a crisis until you are in one, but I didn´t say a word, didn´t yell, nothing. I calmly went over to the fire and stamped it out with my foot. When Stacy came back, I calmly told her what happened. We turned her suitcase over and sure enough.....the fire had eaten a hole through it (fortunately not the most functional part of the suitcase). Good thing I was in the room at the time or the whole house could have burned down. But our gracious hosts took the whole thing in stride and actually told their friends and neighbors and were laughing about it. Speaking of suitcases, both of our roller bags are taking a beating. Stacy´s handle broke upon arrival at the airport. BUT, Luz Marina´s boyfriend, Gustavo, was able to break it more to make it operational, for now anyway.
We moved on to Bogota in a 20-hour bus ride. To be fair, these are not chicken buses. They are huge, plush vehicles where the seats go almost all the way back, you get to see four lousy movies and there is even a bathroom (which you don´t want to have the misfortune of sitting next to). But Stacy and I have learned to love these bus rides. We are finally able to catch up on our sleep because try as we might, they won´t let us dance on the bus! So these bus rides are a wonderful way of slowing us down. We read, we talk, we plan, we get to meet the native people (because we have not run into a single person from the U.S. here, nor many tourists from anywhere for that matter) who are wonderful and helpful and we view the unbelievably gorgeous countryside! Mountains, jungles, cloud forests, raging rivers, waterfalls, sunsets, smiling people in their humble homes, we´ve seen it all. We buy food before we get on the bus because it is never clear whether they are going to stop or not and sometimes they don´t! Supplies include fresh Delicious and Granny Smith apples from Washington state, fresh baked Colombian bread, cheese, coca cola and my little silver flask, which is conveniently filled with the local rum. (Still think Flor de Cana Gran Reserva from Nicaragua is the best).
Bogota is a fabulous place!!! We stayed in the old part of the city, with cobblestone and brick streets. With 9 million people, this is a major city. Nice mixture of old and new. Our little hotel room ($17.50 USD for two people) was a delight with hard wood floors, two little beds with FIVE blankets on each one! Yes folks, Bogota is about 10,000 feet above sea level and it´s cold. Did I bring warm clothes? One jacket, one pair of socks, one long-sleeved shirt and the rest tank tops and crop pants. Did I forget about Peru, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and especially Bolivia, where things are really freezing?????? Guess so. Stacy enjoyed the cool weather, but I will definitely have to buy some things to keep me warm in the rest of the trip. We spent some time in Bogota with my ex-brother-in-law Edgar, his wife Nancy and their adorable little one-year old Hannah. We took the bus to Edgar´s house and have to share this little story with you to show you just how kind the people are in Colombia. We gave the bus driver Edgar´s address, which was very far away. In fact, the bus ride took an hour and 25 minutes and we were in the city the whole time!!! The bus driver told us that when we got off we would have to walk six blocks to get to Edgar´s house. Understand that this was a regular, huge city bus. As the ride continued, the sun set and it got dark out. The driver finally announced that we were approaching our stop. However, he didn´t stop! The driver took the big bus off its route and dropped us off right at Edgar´s house! This is the second time in Latin America (the first time was in Granada, Nicaragua) when the bus driver just decided to drive us precisely to where we were going!
Edgar is part of a musical group called K-Y-O who is just becoming famous. I was once watching Latin MTV in my house in Nicaragua and who did I see on a video, but Edgar!!! Now touring all over South America and just finishing up their first U.S. tour in Florida, it was fun talking to him about his rise to fame and watching his music videos because I knew him, Billy and Sammy (the other guys in the band) 12 years ago when they were just young single guys on San Andres Island with a dream. A dream that is just now coming true. They took us up to Cerro de Monserrate, and I don´t want to keep using the words fabulous, wonderful, beautiful, marvelous, fantastic, but I guess sometimes there just aren´t words to describe a place or person. This location is the highest spot in Bogota, so you get to see the city spread out before you, with the mountains surrounding the city. On top of that, there is a church there and everything was decorated for Christmas in such a great way it just made you smile to see it. We went just before sunset, and saw a sky phenomenon we had never seen before. The combination of sun, clouds, shadows, etc. made a striped sky! Hopefully that photo came out. When the lights came on in the city and in the area where we were, it was magnificent! (See? There I go using boring words again.)
The next day we took a walking tour of Bogota by ourselves using our very outdated Lonely Planet guide. The food you ask? Mixed bag in Bogota. The first day we were in a hurry and ate at a local fast food place. We had a Mexican taco and burrito. They were identical. And they were both horrible. We went to another place that seemed to serve us chicken stew from a can, like the kind you buy from Hormell. However, we did manage to find a couple of great places. Right around the corner from our hotel was a French bistro that had a breakfast of eggs and ham, a fresh croissant, delicious Colombian coffee and fresh juice (made from Colombian fruits that we never recognized like Lulo). For our breakfast dessert we each chose a French pastry, from peach tarts to chocolate éclairs and more. All for $5.00! We also found a special place for lunch on our last day called Antigua Santa Fe. We had a typical Colombian soup called Ajaico Santafereno prepared with chicken, three types of potatoes, corn on the cob, shredded chicken, whipped cream, capers, and ¨guascas¨(green leafy vegetable that we couldn´t identify), and a unique hot chocolate that was laced with cinnamon and other spices served with cheese and butter cookies. Great food finally!
Everyone knows that Stacy and I like to go out dancing. Well, we found ourselves in the dancingest (now there´s a good word) country in the world! So we went out dancing the two nights we were there. But it´s our New Year´s eve we have to describe. I´m sure you want to know exactly what we were doing at midnight! Everyone told us that people from Bogota do NOT go out on New Year´s eve. Many, in fact, leave the city for New Year´s and go to Cali or Medellin to party. The others just stay home with their families. We couldn´t believe that people wouldn´t be out dancing on New Year´s. So we put on our fanciest party dresses and went to a place that had been recommended in our book. We got there and there were two couples. Only two couples. The place was big. OK. It was 11:15, surely others would arrive. The DJ was playing great music, the two couples and Stacy and I were dancing. Sometimes we´d dance all together. Then, lo and behold...the door opened and in walked four Colombian National Police, all decked out in uniforms! They stood there watching us, then two of them came over and asked us to dance. They even brought over their bottle of rum for us to drink! So....at the stroke of midnight, Stacy and I were dancing with two of Colombian´s finest....in Bogota! I asked if they were working, they said yes, but they were about to go off duty. They left after awhile to go change their clothes (they said), but we left shortly after and that was the end of that. At midnight everyone in the place (the two couples, the four police, the DJ and the workers all kissed each other and us Happy New Year). Even though we spent the evening with just a few strangers, we had a great, great time! Our theme song for the trip has become the Spanish version of ¨I know I want you, You know you want me, blah blah....Zoombah, blah blah blah Rumbah......¨ that wonderful reggaeton tune that gets everyone jumping!
Bogota is over and it´s off to Cali, working our way to the border with Ecuador. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.
We DID have to fly to from Panama City to Cartagena because there are no buses. You can take a cargo ship (and one of my friends did, but we haven´t heard back from him yet), but they advise against it because sometimes the cargo ships run drugs and of course, if you happen to be on the ship when pirates arrive with their automatic weapons to take those drugs, well, just imagine…..I mean, we like adventure, but that´s a little over the top, even for us! So, I know what you are saying, ¨Bonnie just said that Colombia is not dangerous, yet she and Stacy wouldn´t cross the Panama-Colombia border by land.¨ I didn´t say Colombia was perfect, I said it´s fine for tourists. Of course it is not fine for tourists to wander into known drug trafficking areas. So we didn´t.
We arrived in Cartagena and Tia Monica was there at the airport to pick us up! Tia Monica is my ex-husband Erick´s aunt, both from San Andres island. (San Andres is a tiny little island in the Caribbean closer to Nicaragua, but owned by Colombia. Of course my Nicaraguan friends will protest that comment as it used to belong to Nicaragua.) A more wonderful person than Tia Monica you will never meet. She opened her arms and her home to both of us and treated us like queens! Tia Monica is an energetic 70-year old and the very first woman tour guide in Cartagena.
Cartagena…a gorgeous city sitting on the edge of the Caribbean sea, Latin music playing everywhere, smiling happy people. Colorful buildings, lots to do and see. Our first night we went to a birthday party in a relative´s house. We danced up a storm with the uncles and cousins at the birthday party and had a great time. The next day Tia Monica showed us all the sites, explained all the details and history. We even went to an Inquisition Museum that had all sorts of real torture instruments! Everyone in Cartagena knows Tia Monica and loves her. We got in free to every place because we were with her…what a treat! We went back, ate and went out dancing at a nightclub with Monica´s daughter Luz Marina and her boyfriend Gustavo. EVERYONE dances in Colombia. I believe there is not a man in Colombia who doesn´t dance! Children dance before they walk!
Another day we went with Tia Monica, her daughter Luz Marina and her granddaughter Monica to Playa Blanca, a lovely beach with warm, turquoise water. The adventure was not the beach. The adventure was getting there. After a 45 minute bus ride, we arrived in a small town called Pasa Caballo (I could live here!) to take a ferry. A ferry like we had never seen before! It seemed like just a slab of concrete. But cars, people, motorcycles and even buses could fit on the slab. But how was it going to move? It didn´t have any visible means of motion, not a motor, not an oar, nothing. All of a sudden we started moving! But how? At first we couldn´t figure it out. But then, behind us, we saw one man in a type of native canoe with a little motor pushing the huge ferry with a stick. I hope we have a picture of that, but I´m not sure. Once we got to the other side of the river, we hopped into a broken down, holes in the floor, pieces falling off truck from the last century that spewed gasoline and bumped and bounced and made horrible wrenching noises the next 22 kilometers to the......gorgeous, turquoise water, white sand beach lined with quaint restaurants. Stacy tried her first coco loco at this place and she was quite glad she did. I had tried them on San Andres island and insisted her trip would not be complete without it. For those of you who don´t know what a coco loco is, it is a real coconut, mixed with a lot of aguardiente (the cheapest liquor in the country), the natural coconut juice, and flavourings, in this case pineapple juice and strawberry syrup. They are really strong...but this one seemed to have no effect on Stacy. Not to get too carried away with one story ´cause we have so much to tell, suffice it to say we had a wonderful day here.
We had one especially exciting night in Cartagena. While Stacy was taking a shower, I was drying my hair. I don´t know if it was because I plugged my hair dryer into an extension cord or what, but suddenly I smelled and saw smoke coming from across the room. Next, my hair dryer stopped working! Then.....I saw flames! Stacy´s suitcase was on fire! I guess you never know what you are going to do in a crisis until you are in one, but I didn´t say a word, didn´t yell, nothing. I calmly went over to the fire and stamped it out with my foot. When Stacy came back, I calmly told her what happened. We turned her suitcase over and sure enough.....the fire had eaten a hole through it (fortunately not the most functional part of the suitcase). Good thing I was in the room at the time or the whole house could have burned down. But our gracious hosts took the whole thing in stride and actually told their friends and neighbors and were laughing about it. Speaking of suitcases, both of our roller bags are taking a beating. Stacy´s handle broke upon arrival at the airport. BUT, Luz Marina´s boyfriend, Gustavo, was able to break it more to make it operational, for now anyway.
We moved on to Bogota in a 20-hour bus ride. To be fair, these are not chicken buses. They are huge, plush vehicles where the seats go almost all the way back, you get to see four lousy movies and there is even a bathroom (which you don´t want to have the misfortune of sitting next to). But Stacy and I have learned to love these bus rides. We are finally able to catch up on our sleep because try as we might, they won´t let us dance on the bus! So these bus rides are a wonderful way of slowing us down. We read, we talk, we plan, we get to meet the native people (because we have not run into a single person from the U.S. here, nor many tourists from anywhere for that matter) who are wonderful and helpful and we view the unbelievably gorgeous countryside! Mountains, jungles, cloud forests, raging rivers, waterfalls, sunsets, smiling people in their humble homes, we´ve seen it all. We buy food before we get on the bus because it is never clear whether they are going to stop or not and sometimes they don´t! Supplies include fresh Delicious and Granny Smith apples from Washington state, fresh baked Colombian bread, cheese, coca cola and my little silver flask, which is conveniently filled with the local rum. (Still think Flor de Cana Gran Reserva from Nicaragua is the best).
Bogota is a fabulous place!!! We stayed in the old part of the city, with cobblestone and brick streets. With 9 million people, this is a major city. Nice mixture of old and new. Our little hotel room ($17.50 USD for two people) was a delight with hard wood floors, two little beds with FIVE blankets on each one! Yes folks, Bogota is about 10,000 feet above sea level and it´s cold. Did I bring warm clothes? One jacket, one pair of socks, one long-sleeved shirt and the rest tank tops and crop pants. Did I forget about Peru, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and especially Bolivia, where things are really freezing?????? Guess so. Stacy enjoyed the cool weather, but I will definitely have to buy some things to keep me warm in the rest of the trip. We spent some time in Bogota with my ex-brother-in-law Edgar, his wife Nancy and their adorable little one-year old Hannah. We took the bus to Edgar´s house and have to share this little story with you to show you just how kind the people are in Colombia. We gave the bus driver Edgar´s address, which was very far away. In fact, the bus ride took an hour and 25 minutes and we were in the city the whole time!!! The bus driver told us that when we got off we would have to walk six blocks to get to Edgar´s house. Understand that this was a regular, huge city bus. As the ride continued, the sun set and it got dark out. The driver finally announced that we were approaching our stop. However, he didn´t stop! The driver took the big bus off its route and dropped us off right at Edgar´s house! This is the second time in Latin America (the first time was in Granada, Nicaragua) when the bus driver just decided to drive us precisely to where we were going!
Edgar is part of a musical group called K-Y-O who is just becoming famous. I was once watching Latin MTV in my house in Nicaragua and who did I see on a video, but Edgar!!! Now touring all over South America and just finishing up their first U.S. tour in Florida, it was fun talking to him about his rise to fame and watching his music videos because I knew him, Billy and Sammy (the other guys in the band) 12 years ago when they were just young single guys on San Andres Island with a dream. A dream that is just now coming true. They took us up to Cerro de Monserrate, and I don´t want to keep using the words fabulous, wonderful, beautiful, marvelous, fantastic, but I guess sometimes there just aren´t words to describe a place or person. This location is the highest spot in Bogota, so you get to see the city spread out before you, with the mountains surrounding the city. On top of that, there is a church there and everything was decorated for Christmas in such a great way it just made you smile to see it. We went just before sunset, and saw a sky phenomenon we had never seen before. The combination of sun, clouds, shadows, etc. made a striped sky! Hopefully that photo came out. When the lights came on in the city and in the area where we were, it was magnificent! (See? There I go using boring words again.)
The next day we took a walking tour of Bogota by ourselves using our very outdated Lonely Planet guide. The food you ask? Mixed bag in Bogota. The first day we were in a hurry and ate at a local fast food place. We had a Mexican taco and burrito. They were identical. And they were both horrible. We went to another place that seemed to serve us chicken stew from a can, like the kind you buy from Hormell. However, we did manage to find a couple of great places. Right around the corner from our hotel was a French bistro that had a breakfast of eggs and ham, a fresh croissant, delicious Colombian coffee and fresh juice (made from Colombian fruits that we never recognized like Lulo). For our breakfast dessert we each chose a French pastry, from peach tarts to chocolate éclairs and more. All for $5.00! We also found a special place for lunch on our last day called Antigua Santa Fe. We had a typical Colombian soup called Ajaico Santafereno prepared with chicken, three types of potatoes, corn on the cob, shredded chicken, whipped cream, capers, and ¨guascas¨(green leafy vegetable that we couldn´t identify), and a unique hot chocolate that was laced with cinnamon and other spices served with cheese and butter cookies. Great food finally!
Everyone knows that Stacy and I like to go out dancing. Well, we found ourselves in the dancingest (now there´s a good word) country in the world! So we went out dancing the two nights we were there. But it´s our New Year´s eve we have to describe. I´m sure you want to know exactly what we were doing at midnight! Everyone told us that people from Bogota do NOT go out on New Year´s eve. Many, in fact, leave the city for New Year´s and go to Cali or Medellin to party. The others just stay home with their families. We couldn´t believe that people wouldn´t be out dancing on New Year´s. So we put on our fanciest party dresses and went to a place that had been recommended in our book. We got there and there were two couples. Only two couples. The place was big. OK. It was 11:15, surely others would arrive. The DJ was playing great music, the two couples and Stacy and I were dancing. Sometimes we´d dance all together. Then, lo and behold...the door opened and in walked four Colombian National Police, all decked out in uniforms! They stood there watching us, then two of them came over and asked us to dance. They even brought over their bottle of rum for us to drink! So....at the stroke of midnight, Stacy and I were dancing with two of Colombian´s finest....in Bogota! I asked if they were working, they said yes, but they were about to go off duty. They left after awhile to go change their clothes (they said), but we left shortly after and that was the end of that. At midnight everyone in the place (the two couples, the four police, the DJ and the workers all kissed each other and us Happy New Year). Even though we spent the evening with just a few strangers, we had a great, great time! Our theme song for the trip has become the Spanish version of ¨I know I want you, You know you want me, blah blah....Zoombah, blah blah blah Rumbah......¨ that wonderful reggaeton tune that gets everyone jumping!
Bogota is over and it´s off to Cali, working our way to the border with Ecuador. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Panama
Bocas del Toro, Panama. Somewhat the competition beach area for San Juan del Sur. The main difference is that there is no beach in Bocas del Toro. All of the restaurants, businesses, etc. are located ON the water. So the views were great, but to go swimming you had to take a bus, taxi or walk to a different beach. But let’s talk about one of those beaches. We took a 45 minute bus ride ($5 round trip per person) to Starfish beach. A bunch of tourists got off and we all walked about a mile and arrived at a small sheltered bay with the clearest water and big orange starfish just lying around smiling at us. They didn’t mind if we picked them up (heck – they let you do that at SeaWorld) and they seemed to enjoy our attention. Great place! Food in Bocas del Toro ranged from very mediocre to fabulous, but currency there is the American dollar and it was pretty expensive. Compare a rum and Coke in Nicaragua at $1.00 to $3.00 in Panama! Luckily we found a really inexpensive hotel. Nightlife music was pretty typical of Latin America….salsa, meringue, bachata, cumbia, reggaeton, a little electronic. We went to one place called Barco Hundido that was built over the ocean. Jellyfish, big fish, swimming right under the bar. You could fall right in…we thought it was pretty dangerous for a bar. Pity the person who parties too hard..probably wouldn’t feel so well falling into a bunch of jellyfish! After three days in Boca, we felt we had seen what there was to see (still loving San Juan del Sur much more), so we decided to move on.
We took our first long bus ride….10 hours from Bocas del Toro to Panama City. Stacy didn’t know if she’d like it too much, but she MUST…we have a 20 hour bus ride from Cartagena to Bogota in Colombia. (Did you know that Stacy?) I actually like the bus rides. They are relaxing, you see the countryside and we can listen to our iPODs. Read, write, think, etc. Ask me in two or three months and see if I still feel the same way. Arrived in Panama City with some mix ups about our hotel. We got there and there were no rooms. In fact, Panama City is pretty packed right now and it’s hard to get a room. But everyone helped us and we found a reasonable hotel not too far from the downtown area.
Stacy had been talking to some informative guys at Bocas del Toro and they told her about a great trip to the San Blas islands and she decided she wanted to go there. So we went the next day! We left our big, huge suitcases at the hotel in Panama City and took small packs with us. We left at 5 in the morning with some other tourists from Argentina and Germany. We picked an island (there are 49, but you can’t stay on all of them) to go to and took a 3 hour ride in a truck and then a one hour ride in a boat to our very own island – Pelicano! This island was tiny…had four little cabins and could only hold 10 people. There’s no electricity in the cabins, no running water on the island at all, very primitive. So the first day we spent our time with an Argentinian couple (and the gal might even loan Stacy a parka for her trip to Antarctica!) and a family of four (father and three kids) from Finland. We spent our time swimming in the ultra clear turquoise water, getting a tan, talking, swimming in the ultra clear turquoise water, getting a tan, talking….you get the picture. The island was so tiny that on our second day (was island fever setting in so quickly?) we decided to explore the island and then do a power walk the island to see how big it was. We decided that it was half the size of a North American football field. We explored it, looking for shells, commenting on interesting things we saw and then did the power walk. Three MINUTES and twenty seconds! That is how long it took us to walk around the entire perimeter of the island. It was tiny! That afternoon we took a boat ride with the Argentinian couple to the Kuna Village. The Kuna Indians are supposedly the most autonomous and not changed by modern society in all of Latin America. The men have abandoned their traditional dress for western T-shirts and shorts, but the women still wear what they have been wearing for centuries. Very brightly colored head scarves, hand-embroidered blouses and skirts. They design beautiful beads that they wrap around their legs from ankle to knee and also do that on their wrists…sometimes up to their elbows. Also, the women draw a black line down the front of their noses, sometimes straight and sometimes it is an interesting pattern. 50% of the people don’t even speak Spanish, but I ascertained that this line on the nose was nothing more than an adornment. It had no special meaning. We had a lecture about the Kuna from our island host, Ricardero. He explained that they have their own laws. For example, if a woman is found to be unfaithful, she is banished for a month. No one can talk to her, she is a pariah. Silly me asked what happens to the man who is unfaithful. Ricardero just giggled and changed the subject. Need I say more? The only time a Kuna is put under Panama law is if he murders someone. The little kids were friendly, yelling “hola” to us all the time. But their parents just kind of stared at us. We weren’t allowed to take pictures as they don’t like that, but I was told that I could take a picture of the women’s traditional dress if I paid $1 per photo. We decided to take two. We just didn’t want to leave there without all of you seeing how interesting the Kuna are. So check out the photos.
Went to bed early. Of course! There’s no light…what do you do? The generator allowed our food to be cooked, lit two lights, illuminated our dinner table and helped us find our way to the outhouse at the edge of the island until 10. After 10, you were on your own. Hopefully you had a flashlight. In our case, hooray Stacy because she remembered hers and I forgot mine. No music. It was so serene and wonderful. I would just have to wait to do my dancing ‘till we returned to Panama City or got to Colombia. No problem! The next day we took an excursion to another island to go snorkeling around a shipwreck. Unfortunately it was pouring rain! I saw a beautiful rainbow and some great fish under the water, but suddenly I got so cold (can you imagine? It was only in the 80s and the water was probably in the 90s) and had to get out. We were pretty wet all the way back to our island, but we still had fun. Back on OUR island, there was still space, so four more people arrived. Two men from Italy and two men from Norway. They kind of stayed to themselves, but at dinner we all had a lively discussion about traveling, health insurance, politics and Panama. The night before, a lively little gecko baby decided to jump onto our dining table and eat the tiny ants. We were all for it. If you can believe this story (also, see photos), we taught the little gecko baby, who we lovingly named George, to jump from one person’s hand to another’s, to another’s and so on. George got so excited about pleasing us with his trick that he showed us that he also liked to jump from the table right onto each one of us! No one had ever seen such a friendly gecko! He took a real liking to one of the Norwegian guys and kept jumping onto him. We’d put him back on the table and he’d jump onto him again. We were hysterically laughing for about an hour over this gecko (island fever again???). Anyway, after all that time jumping from hand to hand and showing us all his other tricks (also liked to climb up water bottles), little George got tired and started just walking from hand to hand rather than leaping. We knew he was tired so we set him down. About a half hour later we wondered what happened to him and suddenly he crawled up the Norwegian’s leg and jumped back onto the table, this time bringing his little sister, Georgina! I kid you not. She was just as happy to jump from hand to hand. George must have taught her this before she met us. But two little geckos jumping all over us suddenly seemed a little weird and we stopped the show. Thanks to George and Georgina for giving us such good entertainment.
The Norwegian guys were going to teach us a card game called “American” and we really wanted to do it, but all that tanning, swimming, snorkeling, talking and attending the George and Georgina show tuckered us out! We went to sleep early again. The next morning we left our beautiful island for Panama City once more.
Well, I didn’t think there would be much to say about Panama City, but I was wrong! When we got back on Tuesday, we spent a couple of hours at an Internet café, ate dinner, etc. That night we went out at about 11:00. We had been given a couple of recommendations of nightclubs to go to, and we had two recommendations for this one place called La Bodegita VIP, so we went there first. We were early, so we took a seat and ordered a drink. A shot of rum was $4.60!!!! Extremely high. As we were sitting there, one young woman after another came in, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs…with skirts or shorts up to there and blouses down to there. Basically, they weren’t wearing much. Stacy and I were trying to figure out if this was the “new look” on young women in Panama, but it seemed strange. Men started coming in and would sit at a table together and invite one female or more to join them. It was when the woman at the next table started making eyes at the three guys at the table next to her, then went to sit with them, then LEFT with them that we finally figured the place out. Silly us! It was a hooker bar! They must have been laughing their heads off when we walked in and sat down, thinking we were going to get in a few dances!! We left quickly (but it took us an entire hour to understand why the bar was filled only with women who hardly had any clothes on – we should be a little smarter, don’t you think?) and walked to another bar close by that was fabulous! There was a group of people celebrating something there and they were so happy and so drunk that they invited us to join them and we danced the whole night with all of them! The night was a dancing success!!!
The next morning we got up early and went straight to the Panama Canal. It didn’t open until 9:00, so we had to wait a bit. We went to the Miraflores locks and watched a huge ship go through, and then a little vacationing sailboat. It was cool. That morning we went to Casco Antiguo, an old colonial section of town. We happened upon a great place for lunch, set in a refurbished building. We felt like we were in Europe! We strolled the narrow brick and cobblestone streets and walked up some steps to a lookout. As we were looking at Panama City from across the water, we hear “Bonnie, Bonnie!” Would you believe that it was my friend German from Guatemala, an artist that I knew in San Juan del Sur!!! How is that for a coincidence? I had no idea he was in Panama…he had said he was going to Costa Rica!
After that we took a taxi to Panama Viejo, where the city used to be located many years ago. There are many ruins there of the old buildings of Panama City. We took a nap, then went out dancing with German at “Moods.” Fun night. And that’s the end of our Panama story.
We’re on our way to Cartagena, Colombia today, where we will spend Christmas with Tia Monica. More later! Merry Christmas to everyone. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.
We took our first long bus ride….10 hours from Bocas del Toro to Panama City. Stacy didn’t know if she’d like it too much, but she MUST…we have a 20 hour bus ride from Cartagena to Bogota in Colombia. (Did you know that Stacy?) I actually like the bus rides. They are relaxing, you see the countryside and we can listen to our iPODs. Read, write, think, etc. Ask me in two or three months and see if I still feel the same way. Arrived in Panama City with some mix ups about our hotel. We got there and there were no rooms. In fact, Panama City is pretty packed right now and it’s hard to get a room. But everyone helped us and we found a reasonable hotel not too far from the downtown area.
Stacy had been talking to some informative guys at Bocas del Toro and they told her about a great trip to the San Blas islands and she decided she wanted to go there. So we went the next day! We left our big, huge suitcases at the hotel in Panama City and took small packs with us. We left at 5 in the morning with some other tourists from Argentina and Germany. We picked an island (there are 49, but you can’t stay on all of them) to go to and took a 3 hour ride in a truck and then a one hour ride in a boat to our very own island – Pelicano! This island was tiny…had four little cabins and could only hold 10 people. There’s no electricity in the cabins, no running water on the island at all, very primitive. So the first day we spent our time with an Argentinian couple (and the gal might even loan Stacy a parka for her trip to Antarctica!) and a family of four (father and three kids) from Finland. We spent our time swimming in the ultra clear turquoise water, getting a tan, talking, swimming in the ultra clear turquoise water, getting a tan, talking….you get the picture. The island was so tiny that on our second day (was island fever setting in so quickly?) we decided to explore the island and then do a power walk the island to see how big it was. We decided that it was half the size of a North American football field. We explored it, looking for shells, commenting on interesting things we saw and then did the power walk. Three MINUTES and twenty seconds! That is how long it took us to walk around the entire perimeter of the island. It was tiny! That afternoon we took a boat ride with the Argentinian couple to the Kuna Village. The Kuna Indians are supposedly the most autonomous and not changed by modern society in all of Latin America. The men have abandoned their traditional dress for western T-shirts and shorts, but the women still wear what they have been wearing for centuries. Very brightly colored head scarves, hand-embroidered blouses and skirts. They design beautiful beads that they wrap around their legs from ankle to knee and also do that on their wrists…sometimes up to their elbows. Also, the women draw a black line down the front of their noses, sometimes straight and sometimes it is an interesting pattern. 50% of the people don’t even speak Spanish, but I ascertained that this line on the nose was nothing more than an adornment. It had no special meaning. We had a lecture about the Kuna from our island host, Ricardero. He explained that they have their own laws. For example, if a woman is found to be unfaithful, she is banished for a month. No one can talk to her, she is a pariah. Silly me asked what happens to the man who is unfaithful. Ricardero just giggled and changed the subject. Need I say more? The only time a Kuna is put under Panama law is if he murders someone. The little kids were friendly, yelling “hola” to us all the time. But their parents just kind of stared at us. We weren’t allowed to take pictures as they don’t like that, but I was told that I could take a picture of the women’s traditional dress if I paid $1 per photo. We decided to take two. We just didn’t want to leave there without all of you seeing how interesting the Kuna are. So check out the photos.
Went to bed early. Of course! There’s no light…what do you do? The generator allowed our food to be cooked, lit two lights, illuminated our dinner table and helped us find our way to the outhouse at the edge of the island until 10. After 10, you were on your own. Hopefully you had a flashlight. In our case, hooray Stacy because she remembered hers and I forgot mine. No music. It was so serene and wonderful. I would just have to wait to do my dancing ‘till we returned to Panama City or got to Colombia. No problem! The next day we took an excursion to another island to go snorkeling around a shipwreck. Unfortunately it was pouring rain! I saw a beautiful rainbow and some great fish under the water, but suddenly I got so cold (can you imagine? It was only in the 80s and the water was probably in the 90s) and had to get out. We were pretty wet all the way back to our island, but we still had fun. Back on OUR island, there was still space, so four more people arrived. Two men from Italy and two men from Norway. They kind of stayed to themselves, but at dinner we all had a lively discussion about traveling, health insurance, politics and Panama. The night before, a lively little gecko baby decided to jump onto our dining table and eat the tiny ants. We were all for it. If you can believe this story (also, see photos), we taught the little gecko baby, who we lovingly named George, to jump from one person’s hand to another’s, to another’s and so on. George got so excited about pleasing us with his trick that he showed us that he also liked to jump from the table right onto each one of us! No one had ever seen such a friendly gecko! He took a real liking to one of the Norwegian guys and kept jumping onto him. We’d put him back on the table and he’d jump onto him again. We were hysterically laughing for about an hour over this gecko (island fever again???). Anyway, after all that time jumping from hand to hand and showing us all his other tricks (also liked to climb up water bottles), little George got tired and started just walking from hand to hand rather than leaping. We knew he was tired so we set him down. About a half hour later we wondered what happened to him and suddenly he crawled up the Norwegian’s leg and jumped back onto the table, this time bringing his little sister, Georgina! I kid you not. She was just as happy to jump from hand to hand. George must have taught her this before she met us. But two little geckos jumping all over us suddenly seemed a little weird and we stopped the show. Thanks to George and Georgina for giving us such good entertainment.
The Norwegian guys were going to teach us a card game called “American” and we really wanted to do it, but all that tanning, swimming, snorkeling, talking and attending the George and Georgina show tuckered us out! We went to sleep early again. The next morning we left our beautiful island for Panama City once more.
Well, I didn’t think there would be much to say about Panama City, but I was wrong! When we got back on Tuesday, we spent a couple of hours at an Internet café, ate dinner, etc. That night we went out at about 11:00. We had been given a couple of recommendations of nightclubs to go to, and we had two recommendations for this one place called La Bodegita VIP, so we went there first. We were early, so we took a seat and ordered a drink. A shot of rum was $4.60!!!! Extremely high. As we were sitting there, one young woman after another came in, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs…with skirts or shorts up to there and blouses down to there. Basically, they weren’t wearing much. Stacy and I were trying to figure out if this was the “new look” on young women in Panama, but it seemed strange. Men started coming in and would sit at a table together and invite one female or more to join them. It was when the woman at the next table started making eyes at the three guys at the table next to her, then went to sit with them, then LEFT with them that we finally figured the place out. Silly us! It was a hooker bar! They must have been laughing their heads off when we walked in and sat down, thinking we were going to get in a few dances!! We left quickly (but it took us an entire hour to understand why the bar was filled only with women who hardly had any clothes on – we should be a little smarter, don’t you think?) and walked to another bar close by that was fabulous! There was a group of people celebrating something there and they were so happy and so drunk that they invited us to join them and we danced the whole night with all of them! The night was a dancing success!!!
The next morning we got up early and went straight to the Panama Canal. It didn’t open until 9:00, so we had to wait a bit. We went to the Miraflores locks and watched a huge ship go through, and then a little vacationing sailboat. It was cool. That morning we went to Casco Antiguo, an old colonial section of town. We happened upon a great place for lunch, set in a refurbished building. We felt like we were in Europe! We strolled the narrow brick and cobblestone streets and walked up some steps to a lookout. As we were looking at Panama City from across the water, we hear “Bonnie, Bonnie!” Would you believe that it was my friend German from Guatemala, an artist that I knew in San Juan del Sur!!! How is that for a coincidence? I had no idea he was in Panama…he had said he was going to Costa Rica!
After that we took a taxi to Panama Viejo, where the city used to be located many years ago. There are many ruins there of the old buildings of Panama City. We took a nap, then went out dancing with German at “Moods.” Fun night. And that’s the end of our Panama story.
We’re on our way to Cartagena, Colombia today, where we will spend Christmas with Tia Monica. More later! Merry Christmas to everyone. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Nicaragua to Panama
Our trip started out with a bang! I met Stacy at the airport in Managua and we went straight to our hotel to rest. We had to get ready for the party our friends were having that night in Managua! We wanted to take a nap, but we had so much to talk about, we never got a chance and Yader and Loli picked us up at 5 o´clock to start the fiesta! We went to two places and got so tired at the second one (Stacy had been up straight for 30 hours), that we never got to see the show or the real festivities. But thanks to Yader, Loli, Josue, Clara and Villanueva and Flora (who showed up on our way out) and Amaru (who was trying to get there but never made it) for making the evening special.
After a good night´s sleep, we flew on a tiny, 12-seater plane to San Carlos, Nicaragua. This town is on the edge of Rio San Juan, a river that flows all the way across Nicaragua to the Caribbean. There has been constant talk of making a canal here, bigger than the one in Panama. Who knows if it will ever happen? Anyway, our guidebook told us we could get a boat to the Solentiname islands on Saturday and it was Saturday. Guess what? Our outdated Lonely Planet guide told us wrong. Only Tuesdays and Fridays. We were out of luck and stuck. But no, I never take ¨NO¨for an answer. So I asked and asked and asked and finally found out that a boat was going at 3 o´clock that afternoon to take one gentleman home to his island. Instead of the $120 USD other people were asking to take us in their private boats to the islands, this boat captain only charged us $5 each. Of course, then we were stuck on the islands until Tuesday, when the next boat left back to San Carlos. We decided to chance it.
Were we thrilled with our decision!!!! The first three days and nights of our vacation were so serene and peaceful. Our cabin was right on the lake (and for only $16 a night for the two of us!!! ). Lake Colcibolca, one of the largest lakes in the world. For those of you who have visited Nicaragua, this is the same lake that houses Ometepe island with the two huge volcanoes. Anyway, Solentiname consists of 36 islands, with only four of them inhabited by people. We stayed on Elvis island, named after a martyr in the revolution. It was perfect, lovely, the food was unbelievably good! One breakfast consisted of eggs, cheese, gallo pinto (beans and rice), cantaloupe and prune fruit salad, toast with homemade guava marmelade, fresh orange-lime juice and delicious Nicaraguan coffee. One day we took a boat to some other islands, one to see birds, the other to see monkeys, and one to see the original culture of the islands. Lovely day. Weather cooperated.
Since we were ¨stuck¨ on the island for three days, we alternated between taking it easy, reading, hanging in a hammock, drinking a beer or a rum, eating, swimming in the lake, looking out on the lake, talking, taking boat rides, your usual tough days. But I´m taking too long to tell the story.
We finally left the islands at 5 in the morning, took the boat back to San Carlos, then took another beautiful boat ride to Los Chiles, Costa Rica. Our plans had been to take a boat ride down the Rio San Juan all the way to the Caribean, but there was no longer a border crossing there (so they said), and even though you could walk across the way right into Costa Rica, I was afraid of leaving Nicaragua without getting a stamp in my passport. Since I´m a legal resident, I didn´t know what would happen when I tried to get back in. So...we had to scrap those plans.
Instead, we got to Los Chiles, Costa Rica, then took a 6 hour bus to San Jose, arriving there in the worst part of town, the bus station at 8 at night. Rather than fuss with trying to find a place to stay and taking a taxi (risky at night), we stayed at a hotel OVER the bus station! Never saw one of those before, probably never want to see one again. We were contemplating what a ¨bus station hotel¨ must really mean, but decided not to think about it too much. We had a wonderful dinner of Ritz crackers, string cheese with slices of Delicious apples from the states and Gator Ade. Didn´t feel like walking around outside the bus station to find a place to eat. Didn´t sleep well, got up at 5 in the morning, took a cab to another bus station and got on another bus to the border of Costa Rica and Panama. We were going to go to Puerto Viejo for a couple of days, but when we got there, there were so many tourists and it looked pretty much like a beach town in the U.S., so we scrapped that and went straight to the border with Panama.
That border crossing was a bit of a disorganized nightmare, where we got ripped off, had to walk across a suspicious bridge over a huge river with all of our stuff (of course I brought too much, my suitcase weighs 77 pounds, way over half of me!), not knowing if we would make it across! But we did! Took another bus for an hour and a half, then a boat all the way to Bocas del Toro, Panama, where we are now. I am making the comparisons (will tell you in a later post) between my town of San Juan del Sur and our big competition here. Hope you are all well. Let´s see what our adventures in Bocas del Toro will be............. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.
After a good night´s sleep, we flew on a tiny, 12-seater plane to San Carlos, Nicaragua. This town is on the edge of Rio San Juan, a river that flows all the way across Nicaragua to the Caribbean. There has been constant talk of making a canal here, bigger than the one in Panama. Who knows if it will ever happen? Anyway, our guidebook told us we could get a boat to the Solentiname islands on Saturday and it was Saturday. Guess what? Our outdated Lonely Planet guide told us wrong. Only Tuesdays and Fridays. We were out of luck and stuck. But no, I never take ¨NO¨for an answer. So I asked and asked and asked and finally found out that a boat was going at 3 o´clock that afternoon to take one gentleman home to his island. Instead of the $120 USD other people were asking to take us in their private boats to the islands, this boat captain only charged us $5 each. Of course, then we were stuck on the islands until Tuesday, when the next boat left back to San Carlos. We decided to chance it.
Were we thrilled with our decision!!!! The first three days and nights of our vacation were so serene and peaceful. Our cabin was right on the lake (and for only $16 a night for the two of us!!! ). Lake Colcibolca, one of the largest lakes in the world. For those of you who have visited Nicaragua, this is the same lake that houses Ometepe island with the two huge volcanoes. Anyway, Solentiname consists of 36 islands, with only four of them inhabited by people. We stayed on Elvis island, named after a martyr in the revolution. It was perfect, lovely, the food was unbelievably good! One breakfast consisted of eggs, cheese, gallo pinto (beans and rice), cantaloupe and prune fruit salad, toast with homemade guava marmelade, fresh orange-lime juice and delicious Nicaraguan coffee. One day we took a boat to some other islands, one to see birds, the other to see monkeys, and one to see the original culture of the islands. Lovely day. Weather cooperated.
Since we were ¨stuck¨ on the island for three days, we alternated between taking it easy, reading, hanging in a hammock, drinking a beer or a rum, eating, swimming in the lake, looking out on the lake, talking, taking boat rides, your usual tough days. But I´m taking too long to tell the story.
We finally left the islands at 5 in the morning, took the boat back to San Carlos, then took another beautiful boat ride to Los Chiles, Costa Rica. Our plans had been to take a boat ride down the Rio San Juan all the way to the Caribean, but there was no longer a border crossing there (so they said), and even though you could walk across the way right into Costa Rica, I was afraid of leaving Nicaragua without getting a stamp in my passport. Since I´m a legal resident, I didn´t know what would happen when I tried to get back in. So...we had to scrap those plans.
Instead, we got to Los Chiles, Costa Rica, then took a 6 hour bus to San Jose, arriving there in the worst part of town, the bus station at 8 at night. Rather than fuss with trying to find a place to stay and taking a taxi (risky at night), we stayed at a hotel OVER the bus station! Never saw one of those before, probably never want to see one again. We were contemplating what a ¨bus station hotel¨ must really mean, but decided not to think about it too much. We had a wonderful dinner of Ritz crackers, string cheese with slices of Delicious apples from the states and Gator Ade. Didn´t feel like walking around outside the bus station to find a place to eat. Didn´t sleep well, got up at 5 in the morning, took a cab to another bus station and got on another bus to the border of Costa Rica and Panama. We were going to go to Puerto Viejo for a couple of days, but when we got there, there were so many tourists and it looked pretty much like a beach town in the U.S., so we scrapped that and went straight to the border with Panama.
That border crossing was a bit of a disorganized nightmare, where we got ripped off, had to walk across a suspicious bridge over a huge river with all of our stuff (of course I brought too much, my suitcase weighs 77 pounds, way over half of me!), not knowing if we would make it across! But we did! Took another bus for an hour and a half, then a boat all the way to Bocas del Toro, Panama, where we are now. I am making the comparisons (will tell you in a later post) between my town of San Juan del Sur and our big competition here. Hope you are all well. Let´s see what our adventures in Bocas del Toro will be............. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.
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