Peru and Bolivia Highlights

OK so this one is well overdue, but we thought still worth it…

Cusco and the Sacred Valley:

• Machu Picchu/Lares Trek with SAS – This one is of course a classic, but we also have to recommend doing a trek in the area. Most people we know did one of the classic alternative treks and loved it. There are a number to choose from based on your interests, but we were really happy with the Lares Valley and SAS did a great job. The day at Machu Picchu was the most tiring part, so don`t think you can`t do the trek, you can. You have to climb Wayna Picchu when you get there for the best views.
• Jack´s Cafe – Order yourself a ¨gordo¨ and enjoy. Perfect after coming back from a Sacred Valley trek.
• Tratamundo Cafe – On the second floor of the South side of the plaza, this place has great views of the Cathedral and serves up devine sandwiches and cafes…yum.
• Korikancha and the Convent of Santo Domingo – Our favorite sight in Cusco and one of the most impressive Inca structures.
• Pisaq – Our favorite sight in the Sacred Valley (aside from Machu Picchu). There are a number of temples to see, but not are all worth the effort. Do this one first or make sure to leave time because it´s big and worth the time.
• San Blas Neighborhood – The best place to stay in Cusco, without a doubt.
• Alpaca gear – You`ll need it to keep warm and it`s cheap!

Lake Titicaca:

• Reed Islands – It only takes a few hours but they are one of the most unique places we went.
• Quinoa Soup – The lake is almost like the heartland of the Andean experience and it wouldn´t be complete without trying some quinoa soup. Delicious.

Other stuff in Peru:

• Segundo Muelle in Lima – Considered one of the best cebicherias in Peru and it doesn´t disapoint. Absolutely worth going to if you go through Lima.
• Cruz del Sur – Our favorite bus company in Peru, bingo included.
• Monasterio de Santa Catalina in Arequipa – Awesome convent in Arequipa worth wandering around in for hours.
• Fez – Really good falafel house in Arequipa.
• Chicha morena – Special juice made from purple corn and fruit juices.
• Pisco sours – It´s not a trip to Peru if you don´t try one of these. Refreshing and delicious.
• Dunkelvolk – Cool Peruvian surf brand.

La Paz and around:

• Salteña tasting – Heaven in a little pastry. Our favorite place was Pacena La Salteña (get tumbo juice as well).
• Wagamama (not the UK chain) – Get your sushi fix here since we know you´re probably craving it about now.
• Coca museum – Small, but packs a punch. Really interesting museum with cafe for tasting coca products.
• Adventure Brew Hostel – One our favorites so far, this place was big and fun with most of the amenities you could ask for at a cheap price. The free beer every day helped!
• Biking World´s Most Dangerous Road – As if the bragging rights aren´t enough of an incentive, it´s actually a kick ass ride and totally worth whatever you pay. We went with Gravity Assisted and loved ém.

The Jungle:

• Pampas tour - This is a good intro to the jungle with the most opps for viewing wildlife. Whatever you do, the jungle is fun and you get to hang out in hammocks a lot. Getting to Rurrenabaque is an adventure though, so good luck with that one.
• Moskito bar – Good bar in Rurrenabaque with damn good caipirinhas.
• Casa de Campo – Really good restaurant in Rurre with patio seating at someone`s house. The couple cooks everything you order fresh.

Eastern and Southern Bolivia:

• Southwest Circuit and Salar de Uyuni – This was one of the true highlights of our trip. Surreal scenery for three days on a four wheel drive trip you won`t forget. It gets cold, so bring your alpaca purchases along. A definite must see!
• Minuteman pizza – Excellent pizza place in Uyuni that´s warm and cozy and totally yummy.
• Sucre – The white city. This one actually lives up to its billing a bit better than Arequipa in Peru and is worth the one or two day stop when travelling between Uyuni and La Paz.
• Convento de San Felipe Meri - You have to knock on the door to get in, but the courtyard is gorgeous and head to the roof for a view you´ll never forget.
• Para ti chocolates – Divine!

General tips…

• These countries are cheap!! So soak it up while you can…
• Prepare yourself for some ugly bus rides. The system in Peru is pretty good with tourist buses, but there is no real system in Bolivia (meaning lots of random stops and locals crowding on along the way).
• Everyone says everywhere in South America is dangerous, but it`s all exaggerated. Watch your bag at all times, but don`t be scared because its not nearly how it sounds.
• Look up the expected temperatures before you come. It`s cold here, even on the coast. Come prepared.
• Girls, bring toilet paper with you everywhere and get used to peeing behind rocks.
• They speak a little more English here and are more accustomed to tourism, so no problem if you don`t speak the language. No need to book ahead either, you can do almost everything when you arrive (except Cusco).

So that´s the quick rundown on what we liked most in Peru and Bolivia. If you have other questions about the area then drop us a line and we´ll answer what we can.

Lomito Completo

A little something to drool over.

Chels and I aren´t particularly big steak eaters, so we´ve been doing our best to try and appreciate the great beef that they have here in Argentina. One thing that we have found, and love, are the lomito sandwiches. mmmm … lomo, jamon, queso, huevo, tomate (steak, deli sliced ham, cheese, egg, and tomato). perfecto!

Buenos Aires

So while you`ve all been in the dark as to what`s happening down here, we`ve been enjoying the sights (and wine) in Buenos Aires. Cities are cities, so we`ll keep this short, but here are some highlights of our touring (aka drinking) so far.

Meeting up with friends from home and partying with new friends at the SAE social…

Taking in the street fairs and tango performances…

Enjoying the beef (and wine)!!

Marveling at the city scenes…

Buenos Aires is pretty much the New York or Paris of South America with tons of trendy cafes, bars, shops, etc. and a unique scene that blends Argentine culture into a definitively international city. You hear a lot of English here, so it can be more challenging to pull yourself away from the gringos and pubs and into the parillas, but whichever scene you experience, it`s definitely a great city with lots to see and experience… But don`t expect to be on a normal tourist schedule here, the dinner rush doesn`t start until 10pm and the clubs don`t close.

Got a package coming to Argentina?

Good luck getting it out of customs!!

Luckily, I have first-hand experience and can vouch for how much fun it is. It all begins with a 2 hr bus ride to Ezeiza Airport (or you can opt for the more expensive cab), once you find the terminal de cargas, navigate through the buildings to the customs building (dock B)…and don`t forget to get certified first or you`ll have to go back and do it all again!

Then, once you get to the offices with all your paperwork and original passport, WAIT to be helped, but don`t ask for assistance. Once allowed to enter pretend not to speak any Spanish so they take pity on you and follow the directions to offices: 1,2,cargo,2,3,2,1,2,3,cargo. Hopefully after 10 stamps, you`ll get your goods with only having to pay ¨storage fees.¨ The unlucky ones may have to pay more ¨taxes¨ or get more stamps from other offices in different buildings…

here is a map in case you find it helpful:

Finally, you can sleep on the 2hr bus ride back to the city…

My advice would be don`t get anything sent to Argentina unless it`s absolutely necessary…and if it is, embrace the Argentine way. Although curiously strange, it is definitely amusing. Good luck!!!

Happy Thanksgiving from Buenos Aires (day 100)

Well, it’s a monumental day, we’ve hit the century mark for this trip. whoot! and it happened to fall on Thanksgiving day, pretty nifty. So, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We were originally pretty bummed to be missing the holiday season this year in order to be travelling, but things are slowly looking up. Tonight we won’t be enjoying any turkey and stuffing, however thanks to SAE we do get to go to an all-you-can drink Thanksgiving bash here in Buenos Aires, so neener-neener :p

Well, we just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving from Buenos Aires. Eat some extra turkey for us

Argentina 3, Bolivia 0

Unfortunately we picked a time to be in Buenos Aires when there aren´t any normal league games going on for a couple weeks due to an international break for things like Euro Cup and World Cup qualifier matches. Luckily though, Argentina had a World Cup qualifier right here in B.A. and so instead of getting to see Boca Jrs. play we got to see the Argentina national team play (Messi, Tevez, Riquelme, etc) …

The game was held at the River Plate stadium, the largest in Argentina, and ended with a 3-0 result in favor of Argentina, naturally. One fun thing that you are not likely to see at a game in the states is that during the second half it was getting very hot for folks in the sunny parts of the stadium, so the fire department opened up some hoses to cool people off. Luckily we were in a shaded area which was actually quite pleasant =)

Iguazu Falls

So, after saying goodbye to our parents in Rio we hopped a quick 26 hr bus ride (with no tvs or movies!) to get down to Iguazu which lies on a triple border between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Oddly enough this is was one of our least anticipated major stops on our trip because we had this expectation that it would be a bit boring and that we´d just end up looking at some waterfalls for a few hours and be done. Well, we couldn´t have been more wrong.

Iguazu Falls is a massive complex of literally hundreds of waterfalls all kind of chained together along 2 km of river. There is no place on ground level which allows you to see the whole set of falls at one time, so you have to make your way up and down the river to see the whole thing. And to make it more interesting the falls is split mostly between Brazil and Argentina, with each side containing their own interesting vantage points for viewing the falls. So rather than spending a boring couple of hours looking at some waterfalls we spent 2 days hiking around the parks on both sides. I could try and remember some of the details about the falls, but you´re better off just googling or checking on wikipedia, so lets just see some pics …

After our couple days in Iguazu we continued south to Buenos Aires where we are now, unfortunately we haven´t done a whole lot here the past couple days because Chels hasn´t been feeling too well so we are resting up at the moment and should be back on the trail shortly.

Ilha Grande and Rio de Janeiro

okay. been a little while since the last post and we´ve been hitting a few spots here in Brazil before heading into Argentina and making our way down towards Patagonia.

So, from Lima we hopped a flight (overnight, of course) over to the eastern coast of South America and landed in Sao Paolo, Brazil where we then quickly grabbed a bus off to the costa verde and Ilha Grande. Ilha Grande was a nice introduction to Brazil since it was basically deserted until around 10 years ago and since then has slowly been converting into a tourist destination. The appeal now of course is that hardly anyone goes there yet, so the island is large and empty, a good place to relax for a few days before hitting the big city …

After a three good days relaxing on Ilha Grande it was time to meet our parents in Rio for a week. You´d think that a week was plenty of time, but it flew by and we could have spent even more time there. Rio certainly has one of the most unique and interesting locations for a city we´ve ever seen and there is a lot to see. Some of the weeks activities included … biking around the lagoa and Ipanema, watching a soccer game at Maracanã stadium, touring through a couple of Rio´s favelas (ghettos), Sugar Loaf and Christ Redeemer, getting stuffed on feijoada, and of course – lots of caipariñas.

And now we are off to Iguazu Falls and Argentina!

Cebiche

So we are actually off in Brazil now enjoying beaches and tropical fruit juices, but before posting about that we had to say at least something about cebiche. As you may know, cebiche is basically the national dish of Peru and is taken very seriously here. We´ve eaten as much as we could stomach (no pun intended, it hasn´t made us sick yet), but it’s just not always appealing to eat a cold fish dish. In any case, along our way through Peru we made the best of our opportunities and tried cebiche in not one, not two, but three different cities, all with a style of their own.

The photo above is from our first tasting, a mixed cebiche plate we got in Trujillo (northern coast). It has half of a fish cebiche and the other half a mixed seafood cebiche with octopus, squid, etc.

Our second tasting was actually from a cebiche class we had in Cusco where we watched someone actually make cebiche from scratch! This cebiche is a traditional Cusco version made with a lake fish called Kingfish.

And for our final tasting we went all out, a full cebiche sampler plate at one of Lima’s finest cebicherias, Segundo Muelle. What you are looking at above is three different cebiches, one traditional and two mixed. The cebiche on the left is mixed fish and seafood, the center is the traditional style with just fish, and the right is a purely seafood cebiche. Yum!

Arequipa, Colca Canyon, and Nazca Lines

So we´ve made it back to Lima and just about completed the first half of our trip. After leaving Chile, we looped back up north into Peru to visit a few last places on our way to Brazil. First stop was Arequipa, which is another beautiful colonial city, much like the others we´ve seen. This one had one of the best plazas though and a great convent that we wandered in for a few hours exploring coridors and taking colorful photos…

Arequipa is also the starting point for tours to Colca Canyon, which has been declared one of the deepest canyons in the world although it`s still being debated which one takes the crown. The canyon had some of the best agricultural terracing we`ve seen, but the definite highlight of the excursion was the stop at ¨cruz del condor¨- a lookout for condors. Luckily, we got to see some pretty good fly-bys and Allen captured a few of them.

Finally, we made a quick stop to fly over the Nazca Lines, which are ancient patterns carved in the dessert by a pre-Inca civilazation that can only be seen from the air. They were pretty cool to see, although a little strange to wonder what they were for, which is still a mystery despite the many theories.

In a few hours we´re off to Brazil!!