Arequipa

We arrived in Arequipa this morning, it is my favorite town in South America so far. It is Peru´s second largest city, and although it is very busy, it is safe and considerate, I would say. We walked around all day, stopping to get fresh maracuya (passion fruit) that we ate along the way, and chocolates. The plaza is beautiful, it has more trees lining it than any of the other plazas we have seen. I was able to buy really soft alpaca wool so I can make a Peruvian scarf!!
For lunch we went to a restaurant that was recommended to us by the woman at the hostal, we told her that we wanted traditional Peruvian Arequipeno food, and she sent us to a place where we were the only foreigners. We had cuy, which is deep fried guinea pig. It is one of Peru{s traditional dishes, so we had to try it! It is served sort of spread out, like a flying guinea pig. It was pretty good, but nothing I ever need to have again. We had another plate of traditional meats and potatoes, lots of raw onions and rice. And lamb soup, yummy! We drank a sort of fermented cactus flower wine, it was really good too.
Tomorrow we are going on a two day tour of the canyon just outside of Arequipa, we are going to see wild condors, hopefully, hike around and go to hot springs. I{m excited!

The South Coast

We spent last night in Huacachina, it is a true oasis in the middle of incredible sand dunes. It is the only oasis in all of the Americas, and it is so beautiful! The dunes continue on as far as the eyes can see, I have never seen so much sand and I cannot even describe what it was like to be in the middle of it all. The winds mostly came from the west, so the dunes have more gentle slopes on the western sides and then with a lip they become much steeper going down the other side. The wind will pick up and pull the sand over the tops of the dunes, sometimes creating mini tornadoes and gentle avalanches. It was like a complete mountain range, but all made of sand. There were varying colors of the sand, but they were all very soft colors and blended into each other. It{s incredible to think that the dunes don{t shift and cover the little town of Huacachina and dry up the laguna. It is so beautiful when we were out there at sunset yesterday, when the temperature dropped rapidly (it{s a desert) and the shadows and angles of the dunes became more and more apparent.
We went out in these dune buggies that were metal frames painted bright orange with seat belts that must have been used when they first invented airplanes. We drove all over the dunes at about 130 km per hour because any slower and we would have sunk into the sand--it was not tightly packed at all since they are constantly shifting. Our driver would take us to the top of a peak on one side and then we would go down on the other, just like a rollercoaster. It was so incredible, the best ride I{ve ever been on. Some of the dunes were so steep that you almost couldn{t see the ground below you when we went down! We drove all around these dunes, and then stopped at very steep ones and we got to snowboard down them. It was so much fun, but much different than being on snow because of all the sand that came down the mountain with you, weighing down your board. The sand was so warm and moved with you almost as though it were liquid or pancake batter...it was so fun!!! We snowboarded down a few times and then also went down head-first on our stomachs, which was really cool! Luckily we made it out with only a little sand here and there, but we saw a few people take major spills, James Bond villan style.
On Thursday, before arriving in Huacachina, we were in Pisco and we took a boat out to the Islas Ballestas which are a little bit off shore of Paracas National Reserve. We saw the Candelabra, a large candle-stick shaped pattern on the sides of one of the islands that no one knows who made, but it can be seen from very far away. We saw lots of animals: cormorants, Peruvian boobies (although no blue-footed ones), red headed turkey vultures, penguins (amazing that far north), and many many lobos marinos (sea lions). The islas have long been used to extract guano, and there was a lot of it. And, wow, does fishmeal smell awful--the Pisco-Paracas area has many factories to produce it.
Right now we are in Nasca, and we got to see some of the Nasca lines, which are these incredible patterns made in the middle of the arid desert by the Nasca people, who lived in Peru around 200bc-600ad. The lines are amazing because they are so big--they can only really be appreciated by air (although we didn{t spring for the airline trip, we just looked at them from a tower on the side of the Panamericana). The Nasca people made these figures in the shapes of animals (spiders, lizards, fish, whales, monkeys), and also they made geometric figures and also just very long lines that researchers think were used in astrology. All the patterns were made by removing the layer of sun-baked darker stones from the desert, leaving whiter stones beneath that outline the patterns. This was really cool to see. This morning we saw many mummies and pottery in the Regional museum in Ica. Some of the earlier Peruvian cultures were able to do a form of brain surgery where they removed part of the skull to alleviate the pressure on the brain, and we saw skulls of the people who lived long enough for the bone to partially grow back over the missing piece. Very cool.
We are off to Arequipa tonight, another long night bus but we{ll arrive in the morning and have a few days of exploring before heading up to Cuzco to do the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu. We are following the political situation in Bolivia because there have been a lot of road blocks and social unrest and that{s our next stop, we should be there in about two weeks.
Hope all is well!!

Lima

Today has been very relaxed, although Lima is an incredibly busy, huge, loud and crazy town. Annie and I were both almost killed by taxis on two separate occasions--pedestrians absolutely do not have the right of way. In efforts to stop jay walking, the city has people dressed as mimes at each intersection of busy pedestrian streets, stopping people from crossing by...being mimes. It´s pretty funny.
We got to our hostal (this is Spanish, it´s not a typo) early this morning, and headed off to see the weapons and gold museum, which also turned out to have a lot of mummies from way old times. There were gold ornaments (ie huge nose rings and ear plugs) from the Chimu and the Moche people, and a lot of jewelery and art made from Spondylus, the bivalve that I studied in Tahiti. We have been seeing it a lot, all over Peru and Ecuador, and it is interesting because we learned today that it is found only in the waters off Ecuador.
We spent the rest of the day walking around the city, spending a lot of time around the Plaza de Armes and in Miraflores, where our hostal is. We had dinner in a Chifa (Chinese restaurant), which is really good in Lima. Tomorrow we are heading off to Pisco (where pisco sours come from), which is south of here, on the coast. We may have to do a little research on finding the highest quality pisco... We´ll also go to the Reserva Nacional de Paracas, which is a national park of the Paracas people, who were also in Peru around 1300 BC. It should be great!!

Chavin de Huantar

Today Annie and I took a bus tour to the ruins of Chavin de Huantar. There are temples and living areas that were all built underground, with snaking tunnels and an incredible ventilation system so that there is always fresh air coming through. Some of the holes are shaped so that they are vacuums to suck fresh air into the tunnels, and some of them are shaped to push the air out. All of this was constructed with huge heavy stone slabs making the walls and ceilings very thick, and with mathematical precision--nearly everything is in a pattern of 7, even to having the main field outside 49 by 49 meters. There are intricate carvings everywhere, of the dieties which include jaguars, anacondas, bats, caimans, and also humans. In the center of the temple, far underground, is the Lazon de Chavin, a large dagger-like stone that was used for human sacrifice, and in the patterns carved on it, the blood of the sacrificed (usually women) would flow down. Pretty crazy.
The coolest thing about Chavin? It was constructed 1300-400BC, 2000 years before the Incas, and is in incredibly good shape.
It took more than 3 hours to drive there, and the drive was so beautiful. The land is cut by rivers that come down from the glaciers, and this also causes a lot of erosion, and in some places the road was all but washed out. We passed a bus that had a dozen live sheep and pigs standing on top, with a net thrown over them so that they wouldn´t fall off. We stopped at a national park along the way and had mate (tea) made from coca leaves, and saw our first llamas of Peru!!! When we were driving through one of the towns, there was a volleyball game going on in the middle of the street--they had set up the net across the road and we had to go around it.
It was really a perfect day, spent looking out of the windows at amazing scenery, and the occasional enormous Jesus statue on a smaller hill.
We haven´t been able to find any more of the lucuma helado that we had the other day, but I´m not giving up hope! It is ice cream made of this amazing fruit that is grown only in the sierras, and I can´t even descibe the taste it is so good.
Tonight we are heading to Lima. It is a good thing that we got out of Ecuador when we did, because a few days afterwards the President was overthrown and all the borders were closed, I´m glad we didn´t get caught up in any of that!!
Hasta luego, Jules

The Cordillera Blanca

We arrived in Huaraz early in the morning, it was so cold!!! Huaraz is above 3000 meters, and it is so beautiful. After finding our hostal and booking a tour to drive around the sites, the first thing we did was to buy Peruvian wool hats that have the ear flaps. They are so cool--they are knitted in a very chunky style and they have llamas on them. We look like losers. It´s awesome.
We took a bus tour that turned out to be awful, although we did see amazing things. We were bus cattle, but at least we were Peruvian bus cattle--everyone was from different parts of the country, and the guide spoke endlessly, almost for the entire 10 hour tour. We talked with this little cute man from Trujillo who was so proud of his country and told us we would love Machu Picchu, where we will be in a little over a week!
There are over 10 peaks over 5000 meters in this area, for comparison, the US has only 3 and Europe doesn´t have any. All of the peaks are snow covered and blindingly white. They blend in with the puffy white clouds and are so incredible--it can´t even begin to be caught on film. We went to a national park that had this amazing teal glacial lake--freezing but we put our toes in anyways! There were Quechua women who ran up to us and gave us steamed hominy and cheese for about 30 cents so we could eat it while we looked around. The green hills and streams everywhere were so beautiful, and the steep cliffs everywhere--the whole area was carved by glaciers.
Although we ate constantly throughout the day and drank tons of water, the altitude got to us enough that we didn´t think we should hike today, so we are just chilling in Huaraz, planning our next moves. Tomorrow we are going to hike up to this lake (7 plus hour round trip hike) and then take the night bus to Lima. I´m so excited about the hike, but I´m glad we´re giving ourselves another day to adjust first.
More stories to come!!

Mancora to Trujillo

In Mancora we spent another day surfing, after renting two boards from this little hostal on the beach. The owner was this Peruvian surfer who let us hang out at the hostal all day when we weren´t in the water. The water was so warm and the waves were a lot of fun--when they weren´t surfable we body surfed closer to the shore and were thrown onto the beach over and over, it was so much fun!! There weren´t many people in the water and I was able to catch a few really fun waves--surfing in Peru! People were surfing long and short boards, and boogie boarding, and a few were also kite surfing, which I really want to try sometime!!
We took a night bus to Trujillo, which got us there early in the morning. After finding a tour that would take us to the Incan Temples of the Sun and Moon, to Chan Chan and to see the Moche and Chimu ruins, we decided that we didn´t need to stay in Trujillo at all--it is the third largest city, and we have found that we like the smaller cities.
The sites were amazing--we walked through the Temple of the Moon which is still being worked on by archeologists so it was cool to see it as a work in progress. When one of the rulers died, they filled in and sealed that level of the temple and then built another level on top of it, always with the same gods and symbols. The manta ray is a huge symbol in the temple, and other marine things like octopuses were all over too. The Temple of the Sun was closed to visitors so we could only see it from the outside. Our guide said maybe in 5 or 10 years it will be open, so we´ll have to come back! It was very impressive from the outside, though--it was so tall and it was made only of dirt, sand, rocks and water.
There is a ugly looking (not to be disrespectful) Peruvian dog that we have seen everywhere, it looks like a black pig because it has no hair except for a few coarse yellow hairs around its face. We saw a lot of these around the ruins.
We went to the Rainbow Temple which was made in celebration of rainbows, which were thought to be a god because they brought rain to this arid desert. The stone designs at this temple were beautiful, and at the top there was a good view of the area, which is bordered by massive moutains with lots of sand dunes.
Chan Chan itself was made by the Chimu people (I´m pretty sure), and it is incredible. A complete walled city that used to cover 25 square kilometers, complete with temples, cemeteries, and a huge lake-like thing that they found when digging--it came from an underground reservoir. It was so impressive, and the detailing with symbols of sea otters, fish, and geometric shapes was incredible. The city was made between 800-1200 ad.
There were two guys from Lima on our tour who invited us all to get cerviche on the beach at Huanchaco, which was part of our tour stop. Cerviche is raw fish that is cooked by the acid in the lime juice it is marinated in. It´s a lot like the poisson cru we had in Tahiti, without the coconut milk (which is key, I think). Cerviche is supposed to be very spicy (ours wasn´t), and people love it. We are also going to have cuy sometime soon, but i´ll have to explain that later on.
We left that night to go to Huaraz, the town in the Cordillera Blanca. We had to leave Elizabeth in Trujillo--she was heading to Lima (and was able to travel with a girl on our tour from Holland) and Annie and I had more time so we could go to Huaraz on the way. So, sad to lose Elizabeth, but it was so cool to travel with her and we´ll keep in touch with her and hopefully visit her in Yale at grad school!

Into Peru

Annie, Elizabeth and I headed out of Cuenca really early this morning, and boarded a bus for the Ecuador-Peru border. There had been protests in the square that we heard all night long, but luckily the buses weren´t striking and we were able to make it. There are buses that drive across the border, but we weren´t able to take one from Cuenca, so we had quite a time--
The bus stopped at the last town in Ecuador, which was after the bus waited for us to get all of our passports stamped and papers in order. Getting off the bus, we were surrounded by guys trying to get us to exchange our US dollars into Peruvian soles, which we knew was a scam. They followed us the whole way--you have to literally walk across the border of the two countries. They were telling us that we had to take a cab in Peru to get to the first town, and that there were absolutely no banks where we would be able to change money, which we knew was not true. We asked the border guard, and he changed his story to go along with what these guys were saying. Anyways, we found a collectivo driver who agreed to take us to a bank in Tumbes and exchange the money there (atms).
We were planning on taking a bus to Mancora, a little surfing beach town, but we discussed a price and he actually drove us all the way here, stopping for lunch and setting us up at a nice hostel of his friend (yes, he gets commission and yes, we probably paid too much, but for the convenience and stability, it was worth it).
So, we have spent the evening in the water body surfing, and then took showers and had our first Peruvian meal, which was so good--fresh fish and papaya juice, and of course, cerveza. Tomorrow we´re going to surf all day and then we´ll head down the coast on Wednesday to spend a few days at the Incan ruins at Chan Chan and Trujillo.
I miss you guys!

The Amazon Jungle

We just got back from a 5 day trip to the Amazon rainforest, which was such an amazing experience. What made it even cooler was that I was with Annie and Elizabeth, who are both biologists and really into conservation. Annie especially knows a lot about rainforest life because she studied in the rainforest in Costa Rica. It´s really cool the things you notice and question when you´re with people who also are so interested in the processes of the jungle! The tour we went through is working the the Huaorani, an indigenous tribe, to help them man their land without being exploited (as much as other companies do).
The trip started on my birthday. After taking a night bus to Coca, we were picked up by this Ranchera, a sort of open truck thing with attached seating behind the cab that is sort of what you picture to drive you through the jungle. We drove for 3 hours on unpaved roads, getting into thicker forest as we went. It was really sad because we were on roads that the oil companies own (we passed 5 different company´s refineries, including Halliburton, we were so mad!!!). We were always driving alongside the pipelines and passing big trucks. There were a lot of shacks and people just getting by, it was very sad. There were women and children washing their clothes in the river and tending to their properties.
When we got to the bridge that marks the start of the Huaoranis´ land, we were met by a canoe. We went by canoe for 3 more hours, seeing monkeys, macaws, toucans, turtles, kingfishers, herons, and just really lush rainforest. Very big, beautiful trees, including stranger figs and huge buttressed trees, and many different species of palms. Over the next few days we went on hikes, swam in the river (that, yes, has piranhas and snakes), made Huaorani bracelets. On the hikes we had a native guide, Jaime, who showed us many uses for the plants that the tribe uses, like which plants are strong enough to weave into sturdy baskets, what you put on cuts, the ants that you rub on your skin so when they go hunting tapirs they will not smell like humans, and we tasted the poison that they then boil and use on their darts. He showed us a rhinoceros beetle, different species of frogs, centipedes and millipedes, and fired one of the Huaorani´s blowpipes! We went on a night hike and saw a huge spider spinning its web, which was really cool (and terrifying). We ate these ants that taste like lemon and live in these holes in trees and keep the surrounding soil so acidic that no other trees can grow around and crowd the lemony tree. We saw a whole assembly line of leaf cutter ants going to their nest. We saw agouti, which are rodents like capibaras, with really long legs and so cute! We went fishing for piranhas, and caught some which we ate for dinner! We went looking for an anaconda that lives in this lagoon that, when we asked how big it was, the guide made a circle with his arms with just his fingers touching (we didn´t end up seeing it though). We did see many caimans along the river at night, and a snake swimming along the surface. We ate so well there, all traditional Ecuadorian food with lots of green plantains, maracuya (passionfruit) and papaya, and the soups with every meal were incredible!

When we left the lodge we began our 30 hour traveling to get to Cuenca, where we are now. We first had to take the canoe and the ranchera, and then we took a 12 hour bus along unpaved roads to Ambato, a little town up in the andes. During the night we were stopped for 2 hours because there was a large truck stuck in the mud and all the men from our bus and all the buses behind were trying to get it out, but it kept sinking. Finally they brought in this truck with this enormous claw that they were able to grab the truck and pull it out. Then we crossed, and luckily didn´t have the same problem!! We arrived in Ambato at 6am and stayed just long enough to wash our faces and brush our teeth before getting on a 7 hour trip to Cuenca. This was our first daytime bus ride, and it was gorgeous. We were already up in the Andes, and the green rolling hills and steep faces were sometimes covered completely by the clouds, and when we came through the clouds there were towns dotted along the green. It was so beautiful. Although our bus was a direct from Ambato to Cuenca, it stopped along all the little towns where there were Quechua people who wanted to go to the next town over. These people are so beautiful, with their long black hair wound with cloth and then with bowler hats (strangely enough--European influence). They wear bright pinks and greens and blues, and the women carry their babies with cloth tied to their backs. They would all get on the bus with us with all of their vegetables that they would go to sell in the next town.
Today we are in Cuenca and we are exploring the city. There are markets, especially with flowers everywhere. People dry their clothes on the river banks, and there are Inca ruins. There is a big beautiful monastary with blue domes right next to our hostel, and a big square with people everywhere. Tomorrow we´re heading off to Peru, and we will be staying in a surfing village called Mancora. The water may be too cold to surf, but we´ll see how it goes.
And, something very cool--I made it out of the Amazon jungle without a single bug bite!!
I hope you are all doing well!

Touchdown Quito!

I made it to Quito, Ecuador without a problem, which is a beautiful town up in the moutains. It was so cool to fly in and see it through the clouds. Annie and I met up in San Jose, Costa Rica and made friends with Elizabeth, who is traveling alone from Hawaii. We got a hostel with Elizabeth, and for the past day and a half we have explored the city, which is beautiful. There is an old town and a new town and our hostel is right in between. Today we took a bus up to the equator, el mitad del mundo!! it was really cool. The altitude adjustment isn{t bad, although we do get out of breath walking up a hill and are always hungry. Quito is 3,ooo meters.
We are heading out to the Amazon tomorrow, it is going to be incredible. We will take the bus tonight up to Coca, and from there we go by bus for 3 hours and then by canoe for 3 hours, so that we will be deep in the amazon. The Huoarani is an indigenous tribe that live out there and are learning how to have a sustainable ecotourism arrangement all by themselves. They are working with a company that is helping them get it on their feet and then they will run it all by themselves in a few years. We will be able to canoe around and go on night hikes to see all the insects and caymans, and hopefully river dolphins and macaws. Elizabeth had heard of this trip when some of the village elders came to talk at the anthropology department at Berkeley. These are the people that use the frog venom in their poison darts. Hopefully Annie won{t shoot me!
We will be in the Amazon until Sunday, and then we will head straight for the coast and hang out there for a few days on our way south until Elizabeth goes on ahead and Annie and I take our time going down through Peru.
We have been eating great food and so far have not had any problems, and good water is readily available. Everything is great down on this continent, and being in the Amazon will be a great way to spend my 24th!

Off to South America!!

So I am off, on Saturday night! My friend Annie and I
are going to fly into Quito, Ecuador, and make our way
down the continent, flying back from Santiago, Chile
in two months. After South America I am going to be
volunteering in Costa Rica and studying Spanish until
September!! It's going to be so incredible; I'll
definitely have some stories to tell along the way!

hope you're all doing well!!