Argentina – The New Happiest Place on Earth

It turns out the happiest place on earth is not in Orlando, but is actually Persico Gelateria in Buenos Aires. Since so many Argentines are of Italian descent, BA has developed quite a gelato industry. And, following the Lonely Planet 'Licking your way through Buenos Aires', I sampled many. It was a great pasttime in one of the coolest cities I have ever been to and a great finish to my summer adventures.

Other highlights:

• I went to Uruguay (the playtoy of Argentina) with Alon for an afternoon.
• I sampled dozens of cafes, from outdoor cafes that could have been in Paris to funky art gallery-turned-cafes that could have been in Soho.
• I spent Wednesday night hanging out with Stanford people at Opera Bay, BA's smaller and slightly smooshed version of the Sydney Opera House.
• I ate some unbelievable steaks. Many many steaks, including an all you can eat parilla (grill) where everyone gets up to 1 liter of wine with their choice of whatever meats.
• I bought antibiotics to make change since they were so cheap and I knew I would need them.
• I wandered through all sorts of cool areas - Recoleta, Palermo, San Isidro, Puerto Madero, Microcentro.
• I concluded that Buenos Aries is a city as cool as Paris, but with a 3-1 exchange rate.

[Note from Summer 2007: Buenos Aires still receives a 13 out of 14 city ranking - one of my 3 all-time favorite cities]

Peru - Llamas, Drugs, and Shakira

First, a couple of follow-ups from my previous message.

1. Some reading from CNN on the volcano in Baños
2. I am not sure who started this rumor, but to settle this once and for all - at no point in Colombia did I throw an elbow that made the salsa instructor bleed.

Now to Peru:
Thanks to my 3 new best friends, Cipro, Amoxicilian, and Celebrex, my rapidly aging body is barely hanging on through grueling weeks 10 and 11 of travel.

Since my flight from Colombia to Peru was cancelled, I arrived at 1am Thursday morning instead of 11am Wednesday morning. So I scrambled to find a hostel in Lim, then tried to catch up on lost time by taking a 7am bus to Huacachina, a 'desert oasis' town. I went sandboarding (like in Namibia) and took this crazy dune buggie tour where I swear our driver was trying to kill us flying up and down over the desert dunes. A lot of fun though, and I am still picking sand out of my ears.

The next morning I headed to the little town of Nazca and took a flight (on a tiny 4 person plane) over the famous Nazca lines. Sort of like the Stonehenge of S. America, the lines are designs of monkeys, condors, other animals, and random shapes out in the middle of the desert. No one knows why they are there or who did it. The lines were really cool but flying in a tiny plane dipping and flying sideways to give everyone the best views may have been the best part.

After Nazca, I took a night bus to Arequipa. After a few awkward minutes in the morning deciding if I should exchange phone numbers with the Peruvian guy who I spent 9 hours intertwined with in the tiny adjoining seats, I headed into town. After 3 nights of 4 hours of sleep and then a night bus, I was done. Arequipa is called the white city because there are so many white limestone buildings but for me it was the city of sleep. I managed to see a few cool museums (including a really good one that had an Incan ice mummy nicknamed Juanita), a massive convent that was really cool, and a few churches and plazas. But I slept 20 out of the 30 hours I was there - I guess I am not as young as I once was.

After Arequipa, I headed to Cusco for another week of spanish school. School was good, but Cusco was as fun a little city as I can imagine. The town is pretty touristy, but it's gorgeous with tons of colonial spanish buildings built over and alongside the walls and palaces of the ancient Incan capital. All of this meshes surprisingly smoothly with modern soccer fields, shops, restaurants, and bars full of gringos. It´s pretty international also, and in Cusco I had the best Indian, French, and Australian (breakfast) food I´ve had in a long time. I also met a great group of people at school and spent more time than I thought possible singing and dancing to Shakira. And I got practice for my return to dorm life, but hopefully there will be more hot water in Stanford´s dorms than these in Cusco.

After Cusco, I spent 2 days at Machu Picchu that were absolutely incredible. Many people say how great it is, but I will add my praise también. First, I spent Saturday afternoon hiking 2 hours roundtrip to the Sun Gate for an overview of the site and the amazing views of the area. Then, late in the day, after most of the tourists left, I finagled a private guided tour of all the ruins. Really fascinating. I was so impressed that on day 2 I decided to walk the 8km uphill from town to make it to the ruins for sunrise. Any place that can make me(!) wake up at 5am one day then 4am the next day has to be pretty powerful. But waking up in the dark, putting on my headlamp, and walking on my leg and a half (my knee has still not recovered from the triathlon in May) up Incan stairs for an hour and a half was really amazing. Then I got to the top covered in sweat, and was actually the first one in Machu Picchu, which was even more amazing. And, since I had seen the ruins the day before, I rushed/hobbled immediately up the mountain behind the ruins, Huanya Picchu, and then on an extended trail around that mountain for the next 4 hours (actually I was extremely fast up to the top but got passed by literally hundreds of people going down). By noon, after an estimated 5,000 stairs and 8 hours of hiking, I was exhausted, but it was definitely worth it.

I´m in Lima now with another 8 hour layover. In addition to Lima's pretty decent old town and waterfront areas, I had a nice little adventure in a taxi today. In my cab from the airport, we stalled out in the middle of the road in rush hour traffic. I sat for a second, then said I would get out. The guy said there was no problem and started to push the car. I said, yes there was a problem, and wanted to get out. He convinced me to stay and said that a gas station was only 2 blocks away. So I sat, and he pushed the car to the gas station. Then he asked for the fare so he could pay for the gas. I paid him, he used the money to buy 0.75 gallons of gas, and we continued on our merry way.

Well, it´s time for me to sign off. This internet cafe has had 'Dust in the Wind' on repeat since I sat down (no lie).

Colombia – Bienvenidos al GSB

After a month in Ecuador spending less than $200 a week, it was time to step it up a little (or a lot) and meet some future classmates in Cartagena, Colombia. Little did I know that meant staying up until 6am every night and being a part of a group of 36 that drank 64 cases of beer and 90 handles of liquor. In addition to learning that my future classmates are fellow alcoholics, we had an amazing time in Cartagena.

We spent our first three days in an island resort just off the coast. In addition to hammocks and card games, we had a sunset booze cruise. I also went scuba diving for the first time (before the cruise). Apparently in Colombia you don't need to take a class and can learn everything you need to go down 75 feet on the boat ride out. After finally figuring out how to make my ears stop hurting, it was awesome. Lots of colorful fish, a really cool coral reef, jelly fish, a lobster, and I did not die (despite the lackluster guide).

Back in Cartagena we stayed in the center of the gorgeous old town in a massive house (rarely seen in the ATL real estate market, this was a '12/11.5') with 4 live-in staff.

Some highlights in addition to chilling out at the pool and drinking with new friends:
-A rowdy night out at Mr. Alligator's, a distant cousin of Senor Frogs
-Befriending a guy with a pet sloth (picture a strange looking monkey-like creature with the temperament of a koala). You could just hold him at a party and he would chill while all the girls would come up and pet him. My best bar prop ever
-Going 8 and 1 at beer pong with my new partner from Bain LA
-Tango lessons with 36 new friends. Let's just say that I don't expect to be asked to dance by classmates anytime soon.
-A ride around town in an open-air 'chiva' (loosely translates to booze bus in english)
-After the president was re-elected last week, the government imposed a 4 day 'dry weekend' to ensure people stayed calm. We were not slowed down by the heavy military presence and frequent flyovers by attack helicopters, however, and our staff kept making runs to black market liquor stores and returning to the house with cases of beer and handles of rum hidden in trash bags.
-A surprise 13 hour layover in Bogota on my way to Peru due to a cancelled flight. Struggling to stay awake on 3 hours sleep, it turned out Bogota is a great city. I walked all around downtown, into a few really nice churches, a bunch of free interconnected art museums downtown, up a cable car (ala Quito) overlooking the city, and to the 'best science museum in South America'.
-Learning that our hosts (the Colombian girl who is going to Stanford who organized the trip) no longer actually lives in Colombia. To make a long story very short, her Dad narrowly escaped a kidnapping incident that actually took the life of the current president's brother. So their family made a very quick move to the US.
-Colombia's contrasts. Cartagena and Bogota were both very modern with nice, US-quality infrastructure (with the exception of the occasional llama in the streets and the stray dog sleeping in the airport terminal). The old walled area of Cartagena is one of the prettiest downtowns in the whole world. There is a large upper middle class, and both cities were as nice as any place I've been in South America. Street crime seemed almost none existent, and walking in the streets even late at night was safe (or least incident-free for us). Instead of the minor problems though, there are the occasional giant problems - like kidnappings and fears of missile attacks and bombings from drug lords. But I guess that's what keeps things interesting.

Well that's the really long update from me. Today is day 1 of 2 weeks in Peru, followed by a week in Buenos Aires. I'm off for a dune buggy ride in the desert.

Ecuador - Stunning Contrasts

Two years ago, I was convinced that Namibia was the land of stunning contrasts. Ecuador and Colombia, however, have been trying to make a case for the title - Ecuador, because it has a whole world of nature packed into a tiny country, and Colombia because the contrast between safety and sketchiness or normalcy and lunacy is always evident.

It seems like forever ago that I started towards South America via a broken down Marta system and a hurried cab ride to the Atlanta airport with my college roommate and trusty travel amigo Ian. After a few days acclimatizing in Quito and digesting the guide books we cracked open on the flight, we headed off via rickety bus on windy roads through the cloud forest to the jungle. We had an awesome two days of whitewater rafting through amazing waterfalls, canyons, and dense jungle. We went about 70 km down some of the biggest tributaries of the Amazon. We looked for but did not find any monkeys (apparently since they are eaten by Indians they have learned to avoid people), saw a bunch of birds, and had a brief hike that I quit for good after our guide scared us with a fake anaconda. We also had an unexpected but awesome swim after the 10 foot tall wafleria (waffle iron) rapids capsized our raft.

After the jungle we headed for the relaxing scene of Banos, a town in the mountains known for its hot springs (which were quite nice). A local described it as a good town to 'chill and grab a pizza in'. So we did. But...our R&R was interrupted around 5pm on day two by a massive volcanic explosion! Some quick history, Banos was evacuated for 6 months in 1999. But after there was no actual volcanic eruption, just a lot of lava and smoke, residents were let back in. So when we first heard about our eruption, we immediately booked a night tour up to see the fun more closely. Just as we started to go, however, the local police stopped us and started arguing about taking tourists to an erupting volcano. The news got wind of the conflict, and soon there was a camera crew filming us being stopped. Finally the local police let us go, but within seconds, we were stopped by the national guard. Eventually our guides talked our way up to the lookout. Quite exciting to see the lava but the sky soon become quite cloudy with smoke and ash and after an hour we headed back down. Even when the police shut down our bar (and rather than make us leave, the bar locked us in) we were still not too worried. But around 1:30, there was a huge explosion which rattled the entire bar. All the bartenders and the few remaining locals said adios! and immediately head out. Walking to our hostel, we passed countless cars full of belongings and families headed for safety. But there was really nothing for us to do at 2am. So we decided to go to sleep and catch the first bus out. Around 5:30 we woke up. Neither of us had heard anything through the night, so we briefly thought we were overreacting and decide to snooze. Around 5:31 a massive explosion shook the hostel. So we were out the door and at the bus station by 5:45. We talked to some neighbors who apparently could not sleep because of the eruptions every few minutes. Apparently we just slept through it. The only problem with our escape was that there were no buses. As it turned out, the police blocked off all roads leading to town, so buses could not get through. Around 8:00 we gave up and started to hitchhike to safety. We took a pickup truck to the police checkpoint - like 5 miles - for 50 cents. We then found a chicken truck on the other side who took us to the next village for a dollar. We then caught a small bus to the next major town and a real bus that could take us away from Banos's biggest eruption in 15 years.

After getting our fill of volcanoes, our journey to the coast took us on 2 trucks and 5 buses (the last sharing seats with some argumentative ducks and chickens). As we deftly handled the numerous transportation challenges presented by the volcano specifically and the Ecuadorian transit system in general, it became apparent that we had 'hit our stride' in Ecuador.

We finally settled in a very chill, awesome town called Canoa. We had a 17km beach set among cliffs and jungle to share with about 30 other people. After 4 days without shoes or shirts, countless meals of encocado pescado (local seafood specialty), days spent surfing and hammocking, and nights at 75 cent happy hour and in our $5 cabina in the sand (complete with bucket of water to wash your feet before bed), we had a hard time pulling ourselves away from Canoa´s “tranquilo” lifestyle.

We spent a few more days hopping among coastal beach towns (and spent a day whalewatching and wandering among the blue-footed boobies on the poor man's galapagos) before Ian decided that he had fallen in love with enough teenage latin women for one trip and had to go home. I headed to Quito (my count of unrequited latin love continues to escalate uncontrollably) for a couple weeks on my own.

I took 7 days of pretty intense spanish classes from a great Quichua woman who spoke spanish but no english, an interesting way to learn a language from scratch. I improved from knowing nothing to high beginner proficiency, but my confidence and language skill was tested when we took a field trip to a fruit market and I accidentally tried to order a juice known locally as 'nature's viagra'. Other than a few mishaps like that, which I will optimistically classify as minor, I have gotten along pretty smoothly.

A few highlights from Quito:
-Meeting an Ecuadorian guy who had lived in Norcross, GA for a year, about 10 minutes from my parents house. Also interestingly, he worked as a taxi driver for illegal immigrants. Apparently the risk of being caught with improper paperwork while flying or taking trains is too great, so he charged people as much as a thousand dollars to ride in his taxi to Arkansas, Texas, Florida, or wherever they needed to go.
-Taking the cable car way up over the city and hiking for half a day among the 4600m mountains with a guy from Alpharetta
-Hiking for a surprisingly intense 5 hours (having forgotten to buy water before arriving at the lake) up and down and around the crater of a gorgeous volcanic lake 100 km north of Quito.