Buenos Aires Part Dos!

Back to BA with Nina for the week! No shower sandals necessary this time! Woo hoo! We've rented out an apartment in Palermo Chico.  It feels so nice to just walk around without shoes on, to sit around and watch tv, and it's great not to deal with random people who snore or are annoying. haha.

Our first day started with us getting stopped on the street (within 5 minutes of leaving the apt) by an old lady who was absolutely shocked with our clothing choices. While everyone in BA is dressed for the "fall", Nina and I were dressed like it was summer time (it was like 73 degrees and sunny).  Fitting in in BA on day 1: FAIL. We already stick out bc of our looks, but our clothing choices pretty much solidified our tourist status. lol.

We started every one of our mornings the same way: searching for a breakfast spot for at least 1 hour. For some reason Argentinians love drinking coffee and eating wack little pastries, but what about eggs and fruit and yogurt? I don't think I was ever fully satisfied after breakfast. =/   We explored Recoletta, San Telmo, Mancerat, and Palermo.  We also attempted to go shopping on a Saturday only to discover that it was Labor Day in Argentina, which meant that almost every shopping store, including the massive mall, was closed..on a SATURDAY.  What the shit? Why don't they just give people off on Monday!? The stupid holiday kept us from getting tickets to a soccer game, too. Really depressing.  Just like we spent hours searching for breakfast in the morning, we spent hours trying to figure out how to eat dinner at a decent time.  I didn't realize that restaurants close at 4:30pm and although they reopen at 8:30pm, no one is at the restaurants to actually eat dinner until 10:30 or 11pm. How do people wait that late to eat? Since I didn't eat out at all the first time I swung through BA (I was on an ice cream and guacamole diet), I had no idea this is what happened, and Nina and struggled to wait until late at night to eat dinner, especially since we spent at least 6 or 7 hours a day just walking after a crappy breakfast.

We spent one night at a tango show. WHAT A WASTE!! First we get charged a ridiculous amount to go to this thing (we heard it was good, so we figured why not?).  Second, we show up to this show and there are only TWO other people in the place. Right, so there are only four people at this show and it's Friday night.  We bought a bottle of wine thinking we would need it to get through the show since we were so tired.  The bottle of wine ended up being a mistake since it made us get stuck there when we wanted to walk out.  The Asian girl sitting next to me was falling asleep during the show! She was asleep during some of it, and the people who were working were laughing at her. Then, I got called up by one of the tango dancers to dance with him. Umm..no thanks? That didn't work, obviously.  So now, I'm stuck at a show that is SUPER LAME and BORING, and I'm being forced to dance tango and look like a retard while attempting in front of two strangers, and Nina who was recording the entire thing. Thanks sis. Wait until it's your turn. Sometime during that, one of the girls watching the show managed to escape by pretending she was going outside to smoke. SO LUCKY! We got stuck there until basically the end, but Nina did get pulled up to dance. Unfortunately, the camera battery ended up dying at that exact moment! Ugh! We tried to make a quiet exit after her dance since the Asian chick got pulled up to dance, but one of our shopping bags caught onto something, and Nina ended up knocking over the bottle of wine and our glasses making a massive mess on the floor and all over the white table cloth. So much for a quiet exit. haha.

Overall, BA the second time around was a nice chance to relax and rest up after the Machu Picchu trek. We did get to shop a bit, so I was definitely happy about that, and even though we had some wack food experiences and a ridiculous tango time, it was really nice to re-visit the city.  I realized that the city was not as amazing as I thought it was the first time I went. Not sure I'd want to go back again. lol. Still great to visit though, so you should go!

Next up, my final stop, Lima. :(

The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

I've been trying to think about what to write about my 4 day trek to Machu Picchu, and I don't really know what to say about it, except that it was one of the most amazing things I've ever done, and definitely one of the highlights of my trip.

Twenty-nine miles over 4 days way past sea level--I figured it would be one of the hardest things I'd do physically on the trip, and I figured I would be lagging in the back of the group the whole way. Instead, I was basically in the front most of the time, and I was finishing the day and getting to the campsites before 98% of my group! SWEET! Talk about a self-esteem boost. haha.

Nina was a rockstar during the entire trek too! I was worried when she told me she stopped running on the treadmill and went to bikram yoga classes instead and really improved her breathing. Seriously nina? You opted for bikram yoga instead of building your endurance?  But that bikram yoga is no joke (i know now that i've tried it.)  We became friends with an aussie couple, an irish guy and an english guy, and it worked out so that she had company and i had company any time we were separate from each other since I was like a mountain goat when it came to hills and stairs. I never thought I would be happy to compare myself to a mountain goat, but in this case, DEFINITELY PROUD to be a mountain goat.

Proudest moment on the trek: Finishing the dead woman's pass in less than an hour.
Happiest moment: Getting to the sun gate and seeing MP with Nina for the first time.
2nd happiest moment: eating a snicker's bar while at MP bc 1. we had saved it for days 2. i was REALLY hungry since our breakfast was at 4am, and we trekked for another 3 hours before even getting to MP 3. i knew my dad would appreciate the picture. :)

If you get a chance to go to MP, even if it's via the train, DO IT.  Doing a trek would be my first recommendation bc the views are absolutely stunning while getting there and because the feelings of accomplishment and happiness when you finally get there after days of hard hiking, camping, and being dirty are amazing, and you realize all of the sweating (blood and tears if it happens to you) was totally worth it. The Incas floor you with their craftsmanship, architecture and skill that is hard to imagine hundreds of years ago. And if you have the energy (or if you don't, find it) climb Waynapicchu (big green mountain in my blog picture). It is at least another 45 minutes (35 for me!) of sheer uphill climbing to the top that will really burn your thighs, but the views from the top are amazing and inspiring.

Cusco: Is your mama a llama?

I'm in Cusco, which means that my trip is rapidly nearing its end! boo. I feel like I need to see and do everything and anything to make sure that I maximize on my time down here! And at the same time, I want to do nothing more than lounge around on the sunny lawn at my hostel with all of the other sunbathers so I can get back some sort of tan to show people at home, or to just sit inside and catch up on emails, or take naps in my comfy Loki bed. The smarter decision would probably have been to run out and do a million things, but I chose to go down the lazy road.  I figure, Nina will be joining me in two days, I might as well just rest up before Machu Picchu. So that is basically what I did.  I spent my first day in Cusco sitting around, catching up on emails and getting acquainted with three south african guys who were in my room.  Ended up going out and having a great time with them, and happened to also run into some familiar faces from La Paz.

I spent my second day in Cusco doing something worthwhile.: I went to volunteer at a boy's home that was about 40 minutes outside of the city.  A group of us from the hostel took some taxis out to this random place, and after what felt like ages, we finally got dropped off and then walked another 15 minutes to the actual location.  Unfortunately, I didn't feel like it was a very fulfilling experience.  The intention was the spend the day laughing and playing with young children and helping with school work at an orphanage, but no one in the group knew that it was a boy's home, and that the ages ranged from 9-16. Now, I could be wrong, but my initial thoughts are that young boys only really feel like bonding with older guys.  They don't really see me and think, I want to spend time with her! Boys are way cooler for boys..does that make sense? What I'm trying to say is that is it's easier for young boys to connect with older guys, and our group of 10 only had 2 boys.  And there were actually only 9 or 10 kids, and since there were two other volunteers coming from somewhere else, the ratio of volunteers to kids was too high. Is that even a bad thing? I think it was considering the fact that only 4 of us had any spanish speaking skills and they were still crap in comparison to the spanish we were receiving from the kids. We had to wait almost 1.5 hours just to start interacting with the kids since they were at school when we got there and then had to eat lunch when they got back to the home.  Once all of that was said and done, and everyone realized how hard this was going to be time really slowed down.  I must sound like a horrible person for saying that I basically wanted to go back to the hostel as soon as we got to the home, but when I tell you that the sitting around doing nothing for the first 2.5 hrs was followed by being assigned garden work in the green house, I think you can agree with me.  The most worthwhile thing I did the entire day was weeding in the green house that they had, and let me tell you, I WORKED.  I had a pickax and even though I was in sandals and I had an infected cut on my foot, I was all up in the dirt making sure to get rid of those weeds so they could plant their veggies.  (I did accidentally kill a tomato plant, but don't judge me too harshly! I tried to put it back together again...and failed.)  After we finished the gardening, we all went inside to help the boys with their homework, and somehow I got put next to the boy whose homework was to read. How am I supposed to help someone with their reading homework if it's in spanish? And it was about how the digestive system works. What the shit? I mean, I can sound things out and stuff, but I'm pretty sure the kid didn't need any help from me considering he only had 3 pages to read.  So I ended up just sitting their and chatting with the two other volunteers who weren't with our group. We finally left and ended up spending the next 30 minutes walking into the town and waiting around trying to find a taxi to take us all the way back to Cusco.  Finally settled on taking a 45 min bus ride.  What a GREAT day. No, really, as much as I'm complaining about how unfulfilling the day was, I am happy I went.  After all the time I've spent down in South America and all of the different people I've seen, I needed a day to give back to a community. I think I'm a little addicted to community service anyway. haha.  Even though the most helpful thing I did was to pull out weeds, everyone I was with definitely commented on how much effort I put into it, so at least I can say that I helped provide some sort of food for these boys.

Nina came in super early on my day 3, and instead of letting the poor girl sleep and rest after her 24 hours of traveling, I made her shower and get revved up for a day of walking in the city.  We mostly just hung out in the main plaza in the city catching up since all we've talked about for the last 2.5 months is machhu pichu things, and then we checked out some artisan shops for llama and alpacha gear.  Some random guy took a picture of me while we were walking down the street...creepy.  He did said thanks, but I still think that was weird, and now there is a picture of me at some stranger's home..or on the internet somewhere. She crashed at around 6pm and was out for the rest of the night, and I figured it was my last night to do anything in Cusco, so I might as well go out and make the most of it! I ended up having a bit of a ladies night with two lovely girls I had become friends with in La Paz.  Basically got no sleep since Nina had plenty of energy, so after breakfast and some more time down at the Plaza de Armes, Nina and I spent our last day in Cusco getting ready for our trek to Machu Picchu which was going to start bright and early the next morning with a 5am pickup.

I'm really excited to do the Inca Trail with Nina.  There are some cool people at the hostel coming on our trek with us, so it should be a good time, and it will be interesting to see how hard this trek gets and how much I can handle. I'm a little weary considering my last trekking experience, but I figure since I have someone to carry everything for me except some spare rain gear, snacks, and water, I should be ok.  Hopefully the last few months of being with super in-shape people has whipped me into shape a bit. :)

Copacabana, Bolivia & Puno, Peru: Lake Titicaca is big.

Lake Titcaca is apparently one of the highest navigable lakes in the world, and it's the biggest in south america.  I am not surprised, since everything in Bolivia is the highest something in the world since we're so high past sea level (the lake is past 12,000ft, btw).  We grabbed a bus to Copacabana and were unfortunately seated next to a family of 3 that included a 30-something year old son (at least that's how old he looked) who basically tried to hit on me the entire 7 hour bus ride even though he was sitting right by his parents. Not cool.  I had to ask him a few times to stop saying he couldn't speak around me bc he got too flustered bc my eyes were so pretty (umm, they're just brown), and then I resorted to just putting my headphones in since my friends weren't doing much but laughing when they could get away with it.  You would think that the headphones would be a deterrent to the guy, but nope.  He pretty much tapped me to try to talk to me or "help" me with my spanish every 5 minutes, and despite the annoyed look I had on my face while I insisted that I didn't need his help, he still tapped me and tried to talk to me the entire bus ride. Torturous.

After arriving to Copacabana and escaping our new "friend", we checked into our hotel and decided to take a walk around the town.  After catching up with some people we ran into that we had traveled with on the Salt Flats, we decided to climb up a ridiculously steep mountain to watch the sunset over the lake.  The bad part about that decision was that Scotty and I had just wolfed down a pizza together in less than 10 minutes so we could see the sunset, and while we were climbing this vertical mountain face, my stomach did not appreciate the lack of rest and digest time. I stopped 3/4 of the way up and watched the sunset from my own rock, while the others went up another 200 or so meters.

Next day, we headed to Isla de Sol, birthplace of the Incas..at least that is what they believe.  We spent the day hiking from one end of the island to the other, and along the way, we met fake toll collector people who were trying to tell us we had to pay to walk down the section of the trail.  Umm where did we miss the park entree fee signs? Oh wait, there weren't any.  We had one woman go as far as running after us for at least 100m after we hopped the fence next to her gate and walked past her without paying, and she grabbed my arm to get me to stop walking...so not cool.  Basically after all was said and done, and none from my group paid, each of us would have had to pay an additional $50 bolivianos just to walk from one end of the island to the other.  I only brought $14 with me.

Puno: Home to the floating islands

El Presidente

Puno is pretty much a dump. Okay, that was a little blunt, but the city doesn't have a whole lot going for it.  The main attraction there is heading out onto the lake to visit the floating reed islands that the Uro people have built and live on. They are made out of hollow reeds that grow on the lake and people literally make their houses, kitchens, beds, mattresses, and boats out of these reeds and then they live on the lake. Pretty amazing work putting the islands together. It's a weird sensation to walk on the islands...kinda like being on a waterbed except more stable than that although you know that there is at least 16 or 17 ft of water underneath you if for some reason you step somewhere where the reed would not hold you.  There are 60 floating islands, each with their own president. We took a boat to one of the islands and got a "tour" where we saw how the islands were actually made, we got tours of the homes (which only had one bed and some sitting space on the floor), and got a chance to help out the island dwellers by purchasing some of their handmade artisan crafts.  Pretty wild experience since I never expected anyone to be living on the water like this.  They even have boats that act like grocery stores that zip around to the different islands to sell stuff.

Puno was my last stop with Candace, Scotty, and Chris, so we spent our last night fulfilling a 1.5 month goal of finding a karaoke bar and singing the night away.  I actually only sang once..TLC waterfalls was the choice for me, but it was a lot harder than I thought since I forgot about the rapping part.  A good night overall though. We had the entire day to hang out before our respective buses (mine to Cusco, theirs to Arequipa) so we walked around, and Scott and I randomly found a lookout point right next to our hostel.  We also saw about 50 girls there practicing some sort of hula hoop and poms number for a school competition.  We ended up hanging out their and attempting to speak to 11 and 12 year old girls about what they were doing and where we were from for the next 2 hours while they practiced their dances.  Unfortunately Scotty and I are terrible at speaking spanish, but luckily those little girls were learning english so we could mostly figure out what the other person was saying.  The best part: the screams of surprise and shock and the giggles when we told them how old we were. I never used to feel old, but they made me feel it that day...haha. Lucky for me, Scott is older than me, so his age was an even bigger deal.

I said my goodbyes to my friends at the bus station that night.  A sad moment. I was traveling with them for over a month, and I don't think I even remember how to make friends anymore..haha.  No really, it was so nice to meet such wonderful people and to be able to travel with them and get to know them for so long was really great.  I didn't expect for something like that to happen, especially after the fallout with the idiot irish girl, so I'm really happy things worked out in my favor.  I really hope we can visit each other in the near future..two friends will be in London and that's only 6 hours from nyc. :)

Only two more days until Nina gets to South America. I'm pretty excited! It should be an interesting first vacation together!