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Live Octopus

2011-12-20T18:24:00.000+09:00

It's no secret that Korean food contains a lot of seafood. In fact, I have just learned to avoid most soup dishes because 9 times out of 10, the broth is made with anchovies, which gives it a fishy taste. There are also many different kinds of sea creatures inside that I didn't even know were edible! However, I've become more adventurous in my eating, so I decided to go to the local fish market and try a Korean specialty, "live" octopus.

Masan is located on the water so there is a fish market there with fresh sea creatures. Most of them are still alive until you buy it. So one cold winter evening, we headed down to the fish market to pick out our octopus and eat some huey, aka raw fish. The octopus is plucked from the water and quickly chopped up and served on a plate. All of it's tentacles are still moving, and they continued to move for over an hour after it was served to us. Eating the octopus was very interesting because it was quite challenging trying to pick up the moving tentacle pieces. They would wrap around the chopsticks, and suction onto things. Once you've picked up the octopus piece, it is then dipped in a delicious sesame oil and quickly placed into your mouth. You have to chew the octopus before swallowing, otherwise it might suction to your throat. Our octopus was presented to us already chopped up. However the more adventurous can eat the octopus whole. However this is more dangerous and several people die each year because they don't chew it enough and the tentacles suction to their throat and choke them! I was surprisingly not grossed out by the octopus moving, and it actually tasted pretty good. The texture was interesting, and anything dipped in sesame oil is bound to taste delicious!

Picking out my octopus

Octopus and other sea creatures

Live octopus

Still moving...it suctioned onto my finger!

Hiking Mania to see fall foliage

2011-11-10T21:55:00.000+09:00

Warning: This is a picture heavy post. I could have probably written several posts, but I've become lazy so they are all condensed.

After experiencing winter, spring, and summer, I was ready for the fall! I've decided that fall is hands-down my favorite season here in Korea. Having grown up in California, where there aren't 4 distinct seasons, I have come to really appreciate the changing weather. Just as I start to become sick of the weather, a new season comes. It's great for someone who gets bored with monotony. Anyway, I've been on a health kick lately, or rather, I came to the realization that going to the gym a few times a week might be in my best interest because I'm not getting the same kind of exercise as I did in Peru. The 5 minute commute to work isn't really the same as living at 10,000 feet and hiking up and down mountains for "work." So, with the ideal weather and my newfound stamina, I decided to explore some more of Korea and join in on the "hiking mania" that exists here.

My first big trip was a 3 day trip over a holiday weekend to Seorak Mountain, one of the most famous national parks in Korea. It was quite a trek from where I lived (3 hours from Seoul, on the eastern coast close to the border with North Korea), but definitely worth it. One of the advantages of being an English teacher in Korea is that there are thousands of us, so there are a variety of foreigner-friendly groups that plan outings to explore parts of Korea on the weekends. These all-inclusive trips make the logistics easy in a country where the language barrier can often be a problem. So on this trip, I had the opportunity to spend 3 days exploring and hiking around the mountains. The weather was PERFECT, dry and sunny and just cool enough to be comfortable hiking. On the second day we did a "big" hike that took us to the peak of around 1700m (the highest mountain in Korea is 1800m and change). The leaves were just starting to change colors at the top, and the views were fantastic. However, hiking is extremely popular here, so I spent most of the hike passing hikers left and right who were struggling with their hiking poles on the rocky trails. Hiking poles are definitely useful sometimes, but descending on large rocks and boulders with minimal dirt is NOT one of those times. It just made it harder to pass people, and and led to congested lines of people on the trails. But hiking here is about appearance, so large packs, hiking poles, and bright technical outfits make one appear more legit, so that is what everyone wears!

Up in the clouds!

Hiking up Ulsan Bawi rock

At the summit overlooking the rest of Seoraksan and the ocean

Sooo many people trying to get a picture with the marker at the top

After spending 3 days hiking around Seoraksan, I came down with a case of hiking mania (a konglish term someone used that I liked), and decided to go back two weeks later to witness the peak fall colors, and tackle one of the longest day hikes on the mountain. This time we left Seoul at midnight and spent 3-4 hours in traffic in the middle of the night! We started hiking at 3:30am, and it was a human traffic jam for 4 hours up the mountain to the peak! There were sooo many people this time that it was IMPOSSIBLE to pass anyone. It was actually stop and go for a large part of the hike. Keep in mind that this was in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! and it had rained the day before, and rain was forecasted for later that day! That is just how insanely popular hiking is here.

Once we got to the top there was so much fog that you couldn't see anything. Luckily, I had reached the summit just 2 weeks earlier so I wasn't too disappointed. Then our group headed partway down the slippery mountain to tackle what is known as "Dinosaur ridge." Dinosaur ridge is a 4 hour hike of ups and down along a mountain ridge. This is what apparently set apart the hardcore hikers from the semi-hard core hikers because there were hardly any other hikers once we reached the trail. While the weather wasn't as great as before, it was still another great day of hiking until the end. We ended up hiking 26km that day! Our group was in the front of the pack and we missed the sign heading down the mountain so we ended up taking almost a 2 hour detour back up the mountain! By the time we realized our mistake and turned around, we were able to catch up to the stragglers. However, it started to get late and we ended up hiking the last hour in the darkness, and in a downpour of rain! I didn't come prepared, and although my softshell jacket is water repellant, after about 30 minutes, the water seeped through and soaked everything. Plus once we got to the bottom, there was an hour line to get on the shuttle bus back to our bus. Everyone was freezing, and I think that is definitely the coldest I've been in a long time! Luckily I was able to stay in a jimjilbang once I got back into Seoul.

The traffic going up the mountain

That is what awaits us!

The uncrowded up and down trail of Dinosaur ridge

Playing with leaves!

I love fall colors

After Seoraksan, I continued my hiking around the fall peak colors in the southern part of Korea. Both Jirisan and Naejangsan offered spectacular scenery, but were a little less intense, hiking wise. I've come to really enjoy hiking because not only is it a great social activity but it beats running on the treadmill in a stuffy room like a hamster on a wheel!

Hiking up Jirisan, stopping for photo shoots

The hiking group. The bright clothing makes for colorful pictures!

Enjoying food at the shelter. Part of the reason that Koreans hike with such large packs is because they are carrying up stoves and food to make real meals. I'm not complaining though because it sure tasted better than my smushed peanut butter sandwich!

Hiking/walking around Naejangsan, arguably the best place to view fall foliage in Korea

Cat Cafe

2011-10-19T17:44:00.000+09:00

There are some things in Asia that never cease to amaze me. When I first heard about the cat cafes in Seoul, I already put it on my "list" of things to see while in Korea. Themed cafes are common here. There are board game cafes where you can play board games, wedding dress cafes where you can dress up in wedding gowns and have fun photo shoots, and dog cafes and cat cafes. At this particular cat cafe, you pay a set fee to enter the cafe for an unlimited amount of time, and that fee includes a complimentary drink of your choice. Once inside the cafe, you are free to pet and play with any of the 20 or so cats that call this place home. There are a set of rules you should follow so you don't bother that cats. The cats also have their own cubbies where they can go to rest and cannot be disturbed.

When I first walked into the cat cafe it must have been nap time, because all of the cats except for one were sleeping. It was no surprise that the fellow cat cafe crowd consisted primarily of young women. It was a cat lady's dream come true. The only problem was that everyone wanted the cats to come snuggle next to their table, and anyone who is famiilar with cats, knows that cats tend to do the opposite of what people want. I easily spent a good 3-4 hours in the cafe just watching the cats and people. It was amusing watching the cats strut their stuff and teasing patrons by walking over to them, and then walking away when they decided they had enough. The cats were totally pampered, and loving all the attention. I think I may have to add working in a cat cafe to my list of possible future jobs!

Jinju Lantern Festival

2011-10-12T20:55:00.000+09:00

Last weekend I made my way to the town of Jinju, about an hour away, to view their famous lantern festival. According to my internet research (ie Wikipedia), Jinju was the site of an important battle during the Japanese invasion. Many people died defending their country. So to honor this, they have started to light lanterns, and this has evolved into a touristic festival with up to 50,000 lanterns lit on both the river and banks near the fotress in Jinju. I mostly just went to see the pretty lanterns because I had heard that they looked spectacular all lit up. I wasn't disappointed, and it was definitely worth the trip. Plus, festivals have lots of knick-knacks to buy, and street food to eat. I had some delicious turkish ice cream, and bought a pair of hiking gloves for my new hiking obsession! There was EVEN an Ecuadorian man playing and selling Andean music. He was busy trying to see things to the massive crowds, but I did get to practice a bit of my spanish, which is a rarity here.

Lantern tunnels!

Lanterns on the river

Lantern display reenacting the battle with the Japanese

Elaborate peacock that moved and breathed fire. This one was a crowd pleaser

I couldn't figure out if the lanterns had a theme...

Random teletubby lantern

Cute!

Lanterns on the river with a fireworks show

My favorite lantern

Seonyudo: Island: Camping and S'mores!

2011-09-27T18:23:00.000+09:00

Going along with my effort to explore more of Korea, I took a quick weekend trip with some friends to the island of Seonyudo off the Western Coast of Korea. It actually took half a day to get there, so we spent almost as much time in transit as we did on the actual island. However, our efforts were well rewarded. The island was gorgeous, uncrowded, and the weather was PERFECT! Not too hot, not too cold. We spent most of our time exploring the island, having a campfire on the beach, eating s'mores, and camping on the beach. It's been way too long since I've been camping but hopefully there will be more camping in my future. There isn't too much else to say, so as always, I will leave you with some pictures.

Enjoying the nice weather on the ferry. I was a little cold!

Ferry ride to Seonyudo island

Island scenery

Short hike around the island

Camping on the beach

Watching the sunset

Digging for clams

A trip wouldn't be complete without a jumping photo of course!

Campfire and s'mores!

Tiny island only accessible during low tide

Little town on the island

Biking around the island

Tongyeong, exploring the scenic side of Korea

2011-09-17T23:06:00.000+09:00

The weather is finally starting to cool down just a bit, so I decided it's time to start expanding my horizons and go places other than the beach. My friend Zach from Peace Corps recently moved to Korea so I decided to go visit his neck of the woods. He was also in possession of my new camera, so that was another incentive to visit!

Transportation in Korea is so cheap and easy. I haven't had a car since high school, and I hope to continue to live places where I can I don't need one. While Masan doesn't have much going for it, it is conveniently located and a great transportation hub. In fact, there are actually 3 different bus terminals here! After a quick one hour bus ride, I arrived in the "quaint" town of Tongyeong. While Tongyeong has a population of over 100,000 people, it had a different vibe to it than other places I've been in Korea. Sure there was still a new part of town that was sprawling with high rise apartment buildings (a staple in Korea), but there was also a significant portion of town that was older, and buildings were only a few stories high. Tongyeong is on the water, and is a great jumping off point to visit many of the islands off the coast of Korea. I was slightly envious of Zach's new home because it was such a nice change of scenery to see that Korea does indeed have beautiful landscapes and nature.

Overlooking the islands off the coast of Tongyeong

So green and pretty!

Took a ferry to the island of Saryangdo

We encountered these strange sculptures many times on our hike.

We realized we were hiking the less popular path when we didn't see a single soul and were plowing through spiderweb after spiderweb.

Markers! We made it back to the popular hiking trail.

More hiking

Enjoying the late summer day

That's all

Korean Thanksgiving

2011-09-15T02:09:00.003+09:00

No, it's not Thansgiving yet, but here in Korea they just finished celebrating Chuseok, aka the Korean Thanksgiving. Chuseok is one of the biggest holidays in Korea and during this time, everyone gathers at their families' houses and pays respect to their ancestors. If you want more information about Chuseok, feel free to wikipedia it. Anyway, Chuseok is a 3 day holiday, but this year part of it fell close to a weekend so I had a 4 day weekend. Like other Korean holidays such as the Lunar New Year, it is customary to give presents. So for several weeks before Chuseok, the supermarkets and convenience stores brought out the typical overpriced gift boxes that they seem to use for all the holidays. Popular gifts include 10 cans of spam, or 10 tubes of toothpaste...just what I need! I wasn't expecting any gifts, but I was pleasantly surprised when my work gave me a gift box that I could actually use. I received a bottle of canola oil and 2 boxes of seaweed, or roughly 40 sheets of seaweed. I was ecstatic because I love seaweed and I snack on it plain like one would potato chips.

My Chuseok gift...canola oil and seaweed! Delicious!

Better than potato chips!

Edit: I am ashamed to admit that one week later, I have devoured all of the seaweed. All that is left are the seaweed remnants on my computer screen and around my apartment.

Beach Season!

2011-08-25T01:19:00.000+09:00

One of the first things that I read about Korea was that it had 4 distinct seasons. I'd like to propose that it actually has more seasons than that. The month of August is what I like to call Beach Season. The rain finally died down, and the beaches in Korea were packed to full capacity. I ended up going into Busan at least once a weekend for a month straight. What better way to beat the heat than to lie at the beach? Right?

I've probably mentioned that Korea can be crowded at times. Beach season was no exception. Pretty much anything worth going to will have crowds. But crowds can make things interesting so I decided to embrace the beach season and I freqented Haeundae Beach every weekend, the most popular beach in all of Korea. Going to the beach here is a very different experience. Many people avoid the sun, so every square inch of sand was covered with umbrellas that you rented for the day. This also included a mat, and you could rent beach chairs as well. This makes going to the beach easy because you don't have to lug everything around. Plus, there are also lockers everywhere on the beach. Bikini's aren't too popular here, so many people go to the beach fully clothed, even in the water. It helps keep the skin nice and white! Many people can't swim, so you could rent inner tubes as well. In fact, you weren't allowed to go out far in the water. If someone got close to the buoy, a jetski came over and a whistle was blown signaling that you had gone out too far. Fashion is always a priority here so many woman still wear their stilettos to the beach. It's pretty hard to walk on sand with high heels on, but Korea seems to think of everything so they solved that by installing mat runways down sections of the beach from the boardwalk to the ocean. That way you could walk down to your umbrella without sinking into the sand!

Most importantly, I received my first, and most likely only visitor here in Korea. My cousin Tomas and his girlfriend came to Busan for a weekend, before continuing their vacation in Thailand. I hadn't seen Tomas in 9 years, but it was still great to see a familiar face and show someone around part of Korea.

Haendae Beach during the beach season. A colorful sea of umbrellas!

Many people avoid the sun, hence all the fully clothed bathers and umbrellas.

Personal space is nonexistent.

Summer time means that the parasols are out.

My cousin Tomas came to visit. Here we are at a temple along the water in Busan.

Exploring Gwangalli beach

Enjoying Korean BBQ

We found a stretch of sand at the end of the beach. They didn't rent umbrellas there so it wasn't crowded and it was mostly full of westerners trying to get a tan.

Taiwan?? Why not!

2011-08-10T23:42:00.000+09:00

One of the downsides to working in a hagwon (academy) is the limited vacation time. I don't get to pick any of my vacation days, but I was lucky enough to have an entire week off this summer. I debated where to go but I couldn't make a decision. China? Too big, too little time, expensive visa. Japan? Too expensive. Somewhere in Southeast Asia? What's the point when I am already planning to travel Southeast Asia for several months at a time when I finish here. Ultimately I decided not to go anywhere because I couldn't make a decision, and it was peak travel season in Korea so flights weren't cheap. I thought about maybe exploring some coastal cities and spending more time in Seoul. It seemed like a good idea until the rain came back again. and DIDN'T STOP!! Seoul literally flooded. The thought of wasting an entire week off and not doing anything seemed awful so I randomly started looking at plane tickets the day before my vacation started. To my amazement, I found a direct and reasonably-priced ticket to Taiwan leaving in 2 days! I am embarrassed to admit that my knowledge of Taiwan up until this point was absolutely zero. I don't think Taiwan really even crossed my radar. But I knew this deal wouldn't last and I NEEDED to escape the rain in Korea. So after a 5 minute quick google search on all things Taiwan, I booked the plane ticket.

While I have traveled a lot by myself, it was mostly to places where I spoke the language and had an established gringo trail. So I was still a little nervous about going to Taiwan. I wasn't sure what the backpacker scene would be like, and I hadn't done much research. After spending just under a week there, I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Taiwan. It was a much needed break from the monotony that was my life in Korea, and it re-ignited my travel bug. The people that I encountered in Taiwan were extremely friendly and it had a very laid back vibe. It was extremely hot and humid but I think I've developed a better tolerance for humidity after traveling through Central America. Most importantly, it didn't rain at all! While I didn't get to see all of the country, I did keep very busy. I saw some sights by myself, met up with a Taiwanese girl from COuchsurfing, met up with one of my good friend's sister who happened to be in Taiwan at the same time, and spent a few days exploring with other English teachers living in Korea who were on vacation as well. All in all, it was a great trip and I can't wait to go traveling again.

Taipei 101 pretty much dominates the skyline. It was the tallest building in the world until last year. It was designed to resemble bamboo.

Night markets are a must-see in Taipei. Great food and bearable temperatures.

Eating my favorite food ever: snow ice. It's shaved ice sometimes made with milk water. The texture is so fine that it remind me of snow. You can get a variety of toppings on it...this one was mango but I was also a fan of chocolate and oreos. It's a refreshing snack (or meal) that I luckily discovered my first night in Taiwan and may or may not have had it at least once a day for the remainder of my trip.

Inside Taipei 101: This is a big damper at the top to help stabilize the building. Next to it is the damper mascot.

Damper baby mascot! EVERYTHING had a mascot in Taiwan.

Taking a cable car to the outskirts of Taipei

Themed restaurants are very popular in Asia. This restaurant was called the Modern Toilet. I purposefully ordered the curry for the visual effect that it would have.

Ice cream in a squat toilet!

You ate your meals while sitting on toilet seats

Day trip outside of Taipei to Yehliu

Strange rock formations on the water.

I had the place to myself because most people came on tour buses and didn't have time to explore the whole place. That, and the sun was so hot and strong and it was difficult for people to scramble on rocks while holding an umbrella.

Famous LOVE sculpture outside Taipei 101

I met up with Sujue via Couchsurfing. She was a great help in navigating the night market and recommending all the different foods to try. Here we are drinking bubble tea. It was my first time drinking bubble tea and I probably ruined all future consumptions of bubble tea by drinking it from the place that it originated.

Another themed restaurant: Hello Kitty!

So many options! Notice that most of the patrons are adults.

The Hello Kitty Burger!

A trip to Taroko Gorge. A 16km scenic hike down the gorge

After the gorge we hitchhiked a ride back into town and they bought us wine sausages!

The changing of the guard was an elaborate synchronized 10 minute display every hour.

Traveling super light enabled me wander around the city before my flight left.

Festival Time!

2011-07-25T00:26:00.001+09:00

I don't write too much about my work here in Korea, but I thought I'd share a few things from the last festival we had. Twice a year the kids put on a festival for the parents to watch. It's basically an excuse to wear ridiculous costumes, and watch the kids sing songs and recite memorized scripts. We practiced, and practiced, and practiced for weeks leading up the festival. Of course, the kids are as young as 3 years old, so you never know what they will do during the actual performance. Overall it went pretty well, besides the 3-4 year old class discovering their microphones in the middle of their skit. They decided to take turns blowing into the mics, amazed at the sound it made. Then when it was time to leave, one little boy decided to say his favorite word, "fart, in Korean" before leaving the stage.

What to wear in the rain?

2011-07-16T00:01:00.001+09:00

I didn't do too much in June and July because it proceeded to rain for A MONTH STRAIGHT! And I am not exaggerating! This wasn't the cold rain that makes you want to curl up inside with a book. It also wasn't the monsoon rain-for-one-hour-then-clear-sunny-skies rain either. It was the hot sticky rain that leaves you not wanting to do anything active, and it left me extremely puzzled as to what to wear when leaving the apartment. It was way too hot to wear shoes, but flip flops were also out of the question because the streets were flooded so I was afraid they would wash away. I finally settled on buying my first, and probably only pair of shoes in Korea. (My feet are about 2 sizes too big for any women's shoe sold here). These cheap crop/sneaker combos are hideous, but very practical when it comes to tackling Korean rain.

Coming to a runway near you soon!

Ok well enough talk about my awful fashion sense, and onto my life here in Korea. I could talk about all the time I spent in department stores and stationery stores but that is pretty boring.

But in all honesty, that is pretty much how I spent a good chunk of my summer: trying to find a way to escape the rain and the heat. I will leave you with a picture of me trying to enjoy the rare sun and relax during my lunch break. Relaxation is pretty much impossible with all the little kids running around!

Trick Art in Seoul

2011-06-10T22:47:00.001+09:00

I decided to take advantage of the 3 day weekend and take another trip up to Seoul. Every time I go up there, I like it more and more. It was a busy weekend and Seoul can be tiring because I am always moving! While I was there I decided to check out the Trick Art exhibition. Trick Art is this exhibition that is touring all around Korea. You can take pictures and pose in the paintings, creating optical illusions that you are actually interacting with the painting. It is very gimmicky, and there are even spots that tell you where to stand to take the "right picture." However, I love taking weird pictures and I have a mild obsession with optical illusions, so it was the perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon. After spending the day taking goofy pictures, we decided to go biking along the Han river. It was such a nice day out, and there are tons of beach cruisers and tandem bikes available to rent by the hour. When we were done, we had fried chicken delivered to us in the park. I love Korean efficiency!

Biking along the Han river.

Boseong Green Tea Festival

2011-05-16T08:10:00.000+09:00

With the weather warming up, I've made more of an effort to see some sites around Korea. This past weekend I went with a couple of friends to the Boseong Green Tea festival. Boseong is the main green tea leave producing area in Korea, and it's tea fields account for 40% of the green tea production in Korea. It was actually quite a long journey for Korea standards, and it took over 5 hours to get there! I don't actually like Green Tea, and most of the activities there involved tasting Green Tea flavored things. However, we also got to walk around the tea leaves. It must not have been peak season because many of the leaves were brown, but it was still an impressive site. Unfortunately this will be a rather short and boring blog post, because the trip was short, and the weather was just so-so. Below are a few pictures from the trip.

Cherry Blossoms Galore!

2011-04-17T07:35:00.004+09:00

Spring is finally here! That means that I can actually stand outside and be comfortable for longer than 5 minutes at a time. It's been a while since I've experienced actual seasons (2007) and I had forgotten how nice it is when everything starts blooming. Perhaps the best indication that spring is coming is the cherry blossoms. Although they only bloom for a few weeks in the early spring, it was pretty amazing seeing so many trees bloom overnight into a sea of pink and white flowers. Korea has a lot of cherry blossoms, and of course they have festivals to commemorate the blooming of these trees. One of the most famous cherry blossom festivals in Korea is actually located in the neighboring town of Jinhae. Jinhae is a small and sleepy town where the Korean naval base is located. However once a year, over a million people visit this town to view the spectacular cherry blossoms that line every street. While you might associate cherry blossoms with Japan, Jinhae actually holds the record for the highest concentration of cherry blossoms in one area. (The Japanese actually planted the trees in this town over 400 years ago).

Once I heard about the cherry blossoms, I knew it was something I definitely wanted to see. There were cherry blossoms in Masan, but they paled in comparison to the cherry blossom in Jinhae. As we drove into the city, I couldn't get over the thousand upon thousands of pink trees that lined the mountains and the streets. They were literally everywhere! Of course as with anything in Korea, there were crowds. Crowded is probably an understatement because it was more akin to sardines in a can. However, one thing that I love about Korea is that even with so many people pushing and touching you from every direction, petty theft is practically nonexistent. While living in Peru or traveling, crowds of this magnitude would leave me gripping my slr camera, or not even taking it out. Here slr cameras are a dime a dozen and hung loosely around people's neck and even in their hands. Back to the point though. Besides the great photo opportunities of the cherry blossom trees, I used the crowded streets to my advantage and took some people pictures. People watching is a favorite pastime of mine, but I always feel self-conscious taking pictures of people. Plus, my slr camera isn't exactly discreet. With cameras practically outnumbering people at the cherry blossom festival, it was easy to quickly snap a few people pictures. When I wasn't looking up at the beautiful trees, I entertained myself by counting all the matching couples that I saw. In Korea it is quite common to see couples in matching or coordinating outfits, and they even have stores dedicated to selling couple and family outfits. Cherry blossoms are supposedly romantic, so the cherry blossom festival was a prime location to document this phenomenon.

View of Jinhae

Man capris are quite the norm. Same with man purses.

While they aren't matching from head to toe, I enjoyed their sweatshirts.

Sometimes I think that they ONLY sell tiny white dogs in Korea because they are that popular. Plus, with a white dog, you can dye their hair!

Seoul is very very big.

2011-04-02T21:28:00.000+09:00

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to Seoul, the capital of Korea. Getting a job in Seoul is relatively competitive and because I didn't do any research before coming here, I didn't care where I ended up. After visiting Seoul I completely understand why so many people want to live there, and I would too if I wasn't trying to save money.

Korea is a small country and it only took 3 hours to downtown Seoul from my apartment door on the fast, but expensive KTX bullet train. I met up with a college friend, Esther, who has been living in Seoul for almost a year. Esther is Korean American so it was very nice having a tour guide that knew the city, but also spoke the language. I have a lot of questions, and I loved being able to order food and finding out exactly what was in it!

We spent all day walking around many different parts of Seoul that I don't remember the names of. It was so westernized with so many things in English, and so many people spoke decent English. Nobody ever speaks English to me at any of the stores in Masan. I couldn't get over how many people there were. Some fun fact about Seoul. It is one of the largest cities in the word with over 10 million people. It is the second largest metropolitan area in the world at over 24.5 million people. Half the people in Korea live in the Seoul metropolitan area. Their subway system is massive and the 3rd largest in the world. Thank you wikipedia.

While in Seoul I also went to a returned Peace Corps party located on the American military base in the center of Seoul. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps, there were parties all over the world. I was unsure of how many people would be attending this party but I decided to go anyway. It wasn't heavily advertised among the English teacher communities, so most of the people there were slightly older and either worked in the embassy or were teachers on the military base. It was still a great experience and I really enjoyed meeting and talking to other RPCVs. There was also a potluck with many people bringing dishes from their country of service, so that was delicious!

It was an extremely busy weekend and I hope it's not the last time I visit Seoul. Here are a few pictures from the weekend:

Esther and I dressed in the traditional hanboks and took some photos in a sticker photo booth.

Posing with the guards and their awesome facial hair.

At Seoul tower many lovers put lockets with messages on them.

Below Seoul tower, more of the lovers lockets.

View of Seoul from Seoul tower. Not the clearest of days. California is very far away.

Shopping

Dr. Fish. You put your feet into the water and the fish swarm up to you and suck off all your dead skin. It's amazing but feels very weird at first.

Penguins!!!

2011-03-15T22:24:00.003+09:00

In Korea it is customary to take off your shoes before entering a house. In my school, all the students and teachers take off their shoes and wear slippers, or indoor rubberized shoes. For the first two months, I have been borrowing the flimsy slippers that the school provides for guests. I have been looking to get my own slippers, but none of them were fun enough, especially with my gigantic feet. So, after a few days of contemplating, I decided to get some animal slippers sent to me. These penguin slippers are very comfortable, and the kids went crazy for them. It was hilarious to see their reaction. The older kids just laughed hysterically. They probably thought I was crazy. The little kids were fascinated and couldn't help but throw themselves on the ground and play with them. I don't blame them because it looks like I have two stuffed animals on my feet that walk. They were actually a little distracting when I first walk into the classrooms because they all leap at my feet to pet them. There was a little too much yanking on them, so hopefully they last! I am sure the novelty will wear off soon enough, but for now I am having fun. I mean, most likely I won't get to wear slippers to work again, so I might as well enjoy it! It will be hard to resist buying more. How fun would it be to have a whole collection of animals.

Hello Penguins!

Kissy Penguins! The kids had a hard time staying in their seats once they finished their worksheets. Here they are under the table.

I am being attacked

It's hard to walk with little kids attached to your feet.

Inappropriate touching and Kpop

2011-03-05T10:28:00.004+09:00

These past few weeks have been pretty interesting at work. There was some teacher drama, and the kindergarden let 3 teachers go at the end of the school year (last week), and there are now 3 new teachers. After a week break, Kindergarden classes resumed. When I came here in January, the kids were already in their routine, and had been in school for 10 months minimum. Now, with the new school year, there were two new classes of 3-4 year olds who had never been in Kindergarden before. After a few days of classes, I have to say that they have adapted pretty well. One little boy upon meeting me thought it would be appropriate to grab my boob. He no longer does that, but still likes to grab my arm in the middle of class and say "my arm, my arm." Another little girl refused to sit down in class and whenever I would look at her, she would burst into tears. I found that by ignoring her, she eventually warmed up to me. Another little boy refused to be given an English name. Every time we suggested a name, he would just shake his head and say no, no, no. I'm not sure how, but they finally reached an agreement, and he is now named Carle, after the ever popular children's book author/illustrator Eric Carle. However, these kids are so young and easily entertained that all I have to do is make a funny face, and they will fall on the floor laughing.

I am very proud of my clay snowman. I get to play with clay at work and I get paid for it! It is a childhood dream come true.

I should probably share a little bit of the Korean culture with you. So without further adieu, I would like to introduce you to the music genre, Kpop. Kpop, which stands for Korean Pop is a very popular music genre here. It is very poppy, cutesy, and colorful. Think Backstreet Boys/Spice Girls era. Here are two of the songs that I hear EVERYWHERE. Watch at your own risk because they are very catchy and can get stuck in your head. They sing in English and Koran, but often times I have a hard time differentiating.

Cemetery, the highlight of my month.

2011-02-21T23:37:00.000+09:00

The weather started to warm up again, and we went on a hike with the director this past weekend. I might have mentioned that hiking is EXTREMELY popular here. So popular that busloads of hiking clubs go to the mountains on the weekends. Everyone is decked out head to toe in the latest hiking gear, and if the jackets match, that's even better. Most people carry hiking poles and large backpacks carry the fish and rice that they will eat at the top of the mountain. I don't have the pictures to do it justice, so I will have to expand on the hiking culture in another post.

Anyway, it was nice to go outside and get some fresh air. I need to accept the fact that the sky will probably never be as blue as it was in Cajamarca, and the air quality is considerably poorer. However, I'm sure once there are leaves on the trees again, it will be pretty.

Eating "poor man's sushi" aka the Korean sandwich at the top of the mountain.

It's not really a sandwich. But it's what they serve in situations where you would probably eat a sandwich in the states. It's quick and easy food and travels easily.

Bridge to connect the two peaks

Yeah, the mountains aren't that high here. I'm almost at 500meters.

The highlight of the little excursion occurred on our way back home. Brown, the director, asked if we wanted to go see a "buried apartment." Now his English isn't amazing, so we were curious as to what he meant by this. Well, it turns out that we were going to see a pretty amazing cemetery. I had been wondering where they buried people, and this cemetery was built in the mountains. It was gigantic, and so organized. It reminded me of Incan ruins!

Lots and lots of graves.

And it keeps going. Doesn't it look like the terraces that the Incas used?

Tombs and fake flowers. Everything is so organized!

Snow! Finally!

2011-02-14T22:45:00.008+09:00

Record snow hits the east coast of Korea! Part of the east coast got over 3 feet of snow. I'm closer to the east coast than the west coast, but I'm actually on the south coast so I wasn't expecting any snow. I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I looked out my window and I saw snow that was actually sticking! Snow in the city is fun in theory, but makes for messiness because it melts a lot faster. Plus there isn't really open space near me, just buildings, so I wasn't able to make a snow angel. Anyway, it snowed all day long and we took the kids to the roof to have a snowball fight after lunch. It was hard to take pictures with little kids yelling "teacher come here!" and pelting me with snow, but I managed to get a few.

Playing with Linda and Grace

Nao getting ready to throw a snowball at me!

Tiffany trying to build a snowman

The chaos!

Here is a short video of the snow. Sorry for the movement...I was dodging snowballs!

(The embedding option isn't working right so until I figure that out, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPyl8Idy7NE)

Two weeks in - The Honeymoon Phase

2011-01-25T23:11:00.000+09:00

I have now been in Korea for two weeks. I now have internet in my apt, curtains, a cell phone, and a warm blanket and bedspread. I don't have much else but at least I have the essentials. The apartment is really nice when I compare it to where I was living in Peru, but that is obvious! I even have a washing machine in the bathroom! It's only a 5 minute commute from my apartment to the school so that is pretty awesome. The weather here has been soooo cold. I didn't prepare much when coming here and for some reason I thought that the lowest temperature would be in the 30s. It has mostly been hovering around the teens here, and when you factor in the wind chill, it is unbearable. I also didn't bring a winter coat so I am forced to layer all the warm clothes that I brought. I haven't done much yet for a number of reasons. I work a lot, it's too cold to do anything, and I don't have any money to do things. But I will get paid soon, and hopefully it will warm up so maybe I will be more motivated to be social.

Speaking of working, the kids I work with are adorable. I didn't realize that I would be teaching kindergarden. The youngest kids that I teach just turned 3 years old, and the oldest kids are in after school and are 9 years old. The clases are very small and range from 3-8 students. So far it's been pretty easy. I do teach a lot, nine 40 minute classes a day. However, it isn't that bad because I don't have to prep for my classes so I am only there from 10-5:30. For the 5 kindergarden classes that I teach the Korean teacher will give me the book or worksheet that I will do with them once I walk in the door. It might get a little repetitive but the kids are so young that they learn by repetition and they are like parrots, repeating everything I say. For the most part their level of English is very good and they understand so much of what I say. They aren't afraid to talk in English and I even have 4 year olds that can read and write in English.

The food here has been pretty good so far, as long as it's not fishy or too spicy (unfortunately that is the majority of the food here). I am still trying to master chopsticks. I am getting a little better but my hands still tire after a while. That will be one of my goals while I am here.

Quite possibly one of my favorite things in Korea. Buzzers at the table.

When my hands get tired, I've found that stabbing at the meat with one chopstick is very effective.

Kimchi - fermented spicy cabbage served with every meal

McDonald's does delivery. Scooters don't have to follow traffic laws and are allowed on the sidewalks here.

I've eaten larvae, roasted ants, and grasshoppers, but I couldn't bring myself to eat this bar treat. It's silk worm larvae and it smells awful and I'm told that it tastes as bad as it smells. Maybe someday I'll try it...

I have arrived

2011-01-11T21:09:00.000+09:00

My first day in Korea was a looong one. I arrived in the Busan airport and there was no one there to meet me. Luckily I had my recruiter's phone number saved in my iphone and the tourist desk was able to call him and he got ahold of the director who was running late. Just 45 minutes late. Anyway after I finally got picked up, we drove to Masan where I will be living and teaching and met up at the English academy. I also met up with the other English teacher who has been there for 10 months so that was nice to be able to talk to her. The direct or's English is ok, but very broken so only basic communication is possible with a lot of sign language. I am beginning to get the feeling that this will be the norm.

We went to eat some delcious food. Like I mentioned before, I had never really eaten Korean food before, but at many Korean restuarants they bring you the food raw and you cook it yourself. It definitely makes eating more enjoyable because it takes longer and one can't just inhale their entire plate. Some of the more traditional restaurants involve sitting on a mat on the floor and leaving your shoes by the door.

After lunch we went to check out the apartment. They hadn't done anything yet so the apartment didn't even have a bed. I mistakenly thought that the apartment might have a few things, but nope. Luckily they bought me a bed, but I had to buy everything else.

The director dropped us off at a big store called Home Plus and Jen, the other English teacher, helped me get things for the apartment. I am very glad she was there because it was very overwhelming. Every little thing was an ordeal. First of all there was so much variety, but I coudldn't read any of the labels so I had no idea what it meant. When in doubt, I would buy the cheapest thing. Laundry detergent, that took a good 15 minutes to decide what to get, same with cleaning supplies. It's no secret that I am not the best cleaner in the world, and in Peru I never bought cleaning supplies. It's been a long time since I had to buy any cleaning supplies so I was having a hard time imagining what I would need to clean.

I didn't even bother with food yet because I have no idea what I will be cooking. I don't really know how to cook, and then throw in foreign ingredients, and this should be interesting. I did buy some very expensive milk and cornflakes so I might be having that for breakfast and dinner.

The biggest problem I had was how expensive everything was. I heard that Korea was cheap, but in terms of actual household supplies, it was way more expensive than in the states. In Peru I never bought anything from the big department stores because I knew I could get it much cheaper at the market. I was having a hard time accepting the fact that Korea doesn't have those cheap markets, at least that I know of. So my room so far is definitely lacking in decorations. I need to get curtains asap because there are huge windows that bring in a lot of light. My bed is all white, and even the sheet is white as well as the comforter and bed because I was too cheap to buy a duvet cover and pillow case. I have one bowl, one plate, one fork, spoon etc. I'm sure by the end of my time here I will have aquired a lot of stuff but for now it's just the bare minumum.

One thing that I like is that the apartment has heated floors. So I might just spend a lot of time laying on the floor to stay warm. Tomorrow I begin teaching, should be interesting.

Below are some pictures from my apartment building. High rise apartments are EVERYWHERE here.

Proof that I am in Korea.

Korea...airport impressions

2011-01-10T21:03:00.000+09:00

So a few people have asked me if I will continue my blog. I will try, but I need to think of a new blog name rather than AlexinPeru. I am stumped, so please send your suggestions my way! Like in Peru, I'm sure my first couple entries will be rather detailed and lengthy and then after things become more normal, I will have less to say. Also, unlike Peru, my job here will be pretty routine and writing about my life as an English teacher probably won't be that exciting. Anyway, my trip to Korea will be the first time I've ever traveled to a country where I didn't speak the language. I guess I traveled to Ecuador before I spoke Spanish but I could at least understand a lot, and read it as well. I know absolutely no Korean, and so far it's driving me crazy. I am a very curious, and some might say nosey person, so the inability to read and listen to what is going on around me can be frustrating. In addition, I am awful at languages, and my job will be to teach English, so I don't anticipate actually learning too much Korean while I am here.

The flight over here was a long 13.5 hours. I had a middle seat, and the people on either side of me were probably ready to kill me because I kept moving around. I was able to get up a few, ok more like 5 times and walk around and brush my teeth. I just bought a new electric toothbrush so I was super excited to use it. I finally watched The Social Network, and this other movie with Izzy from Grey's Anatomy but the flight landed so I missed the last 10 minutes. I hate when that happens! The guy to my left was an Indian who had lived in the states for 15 years, but I would have never guessed that with his accent! On my right was a Korean who had very limited English, but that didn't stop him from showing me all this Chinese that he is learning as well as thrusting his earbud in my ear so I could listen to the Chinese music. I had an awful headache that didn't go away, even after I got tylenol from the flight attendants two different times. I'm sure the various screaming children didn't help the situation.

Shortly after take off they served us a dinner. I wasn't going to eat it because it was about 2am California time, but I guess they wanted to get us used to Korean time right away. I'm still not quite sure what I ate, but while it was tasty, a few hours later the thought of it wanted to make me vomit. For breakfast I opted for the pancakes instead of fish and rice and that was definitely a smart choice. I think another thing that is going to be very frustating is not knowing exactly what is in the food. I think I am going to have to do some serious googling to learn what all the different foods are. My only experience with Korean food is when they would have the Korean BBQ at Bowdoin, and that's only because Juleah loved it and would tell me to go.

I am currently in the airport waiting for my connecting flight. I had to change airports and now I have a few hours to kill before flying to Busan. I am not very organized and I don't even know who is picking me up, but I'm sure things will work itself out. It's currently snowing out and I am super excited to see snow. Too bad it doesn't snow much in the southern part of Korea where I will be.

Belize...go slow maaaan!

2010-08-09T09:58:00.000+09:00

From Tikal, I continued on the tourist trail and headed to Belize, Caye Caulker to be exact. Belize is notorious for being expensive, so unfortunately I wasn't able to explore too much. I only ended up spending 4 days in Belize, but I easily spent as much as I had in a week elsewhere.

Caye Caulker is one of the "cheaper" Cayes off the coast of Belize. It was nice to be back on a Caribbean island. They actually speak English in Belize, and the locals often speak Creole amongst themselves which is broken English with a few African words thrown in. The only thing I didn't like in Caye Caulker was the harassment by the locals. There is basically one main street on the island. I would stroll up and down it several times a day, and whenever I was by myself, I got harassed all the time. I think the unusual thing about it was that I was being harassed in English rather than Spanish. Spanish can be a little easier to tune out.

The main reason that I decided to stop in Belize was to do a snorkeling tour that I had read about it. It was an all day tour out in a sailboat and we went snorkeling in three different spots. We were told that there was a chance we would see manatees but it was not guaranteed. There was a separate manatee tour offered, but because it went to a protected zone it was prohibited to swim with them, and you could only look at them from the surface. Well luck was on our side once again because there were 2 manatees just floating in the water. Because this wasn't an official protected area, we were able to swim right next to them. They are pretty funny animals because they kind of just float there like blobs in the water. I tried to keep my distance, but at one point I dove down to get a good picture and the manatee started to drift right into me! After that we went to stingray alley, a place that is teeming with sting rays and nurse sharks. The tours go there everyday and they feed the sting rays and sharks so they are pretty tame. Our guide even picked up a few sting rays and sharks and we got to pet them. On the last stop of the tour, we did a snorkeling tour of the reef and we saw an eel right away. There were a bunch of other fish, and I got to practice my free diving and swam down 15 feet to go through a cave. No one else decided to try it besides the guide, so of course I don't have a picture.

Island life can really draw you in, and it was tempting to just stay there for a while and hang out in the water and read in the hammock. Unfortunately, like I mentioned earlier, Belize is difficult to do in a budget, so that put a time limit on my stay there. There is supposed to be amazing diving there, but for now, the snorkeling had to do. I ended up taking a round about way to Mexico and got ripped off on the process, something that is always frustrating. There were boats that went to the border of Mexico in half the time, but it appeared to be 20 dollars more than going by land. I found out later, that if you go by boat you don't have to pay the 15 dollar Belize exit fee, so in case any of you ever find yourself in that situation, 5 dollars more is definitely worth saving 4 hours of travel!

The main street on Caye Caulker

Hang out spot at the split in Caye Caulker

Face to face with a manatee

Manatee floating

Swimming with a manatee

Sharks feel like sand paper

Holding a sting ray...it's slimy

Bothering the animals

Eel

Crush!

Guatemala lived up to it's hype

2010-08-05T23:16:00.000+09:00

In order to get to Antigua, Guatemala, I had to take another series of school buses. After walking 1km uphill (with all my stuff in the heat!) from the border of El Salvador to Guatemala, I was relieved to find a nice big air-conditioned bus waiting at the border. However, I was devastated to learn that this bus had come from San Salvador was going direct to Guatemala, so I would be forced to take the local school bus that was waiting on the side of the road. So five buses later and a trip through Guatemala City, I finally arrived in Antigua, aka the Cusco of Central America. The amount of tourists was ridiculous, especially the number of American tourists. It was still summer break, so many people come to Antigua to go to a language school. Antigua was full of super nice restaurants, great ice cream, and they even had a bagel shop! In addition, they offered shuttles to every tourist destination in Guatemala so that no tourist would ever have to ride the dreaded chicken buses (aka school buses). While I normally don't mind taking public transport, all of the public transport from Antigua required going through Guatemala city and changing buses at least once. When I had come from El Salvador, I spent an hour in traffic going through Guatemala city. So not only is Guatemala city dangerous, but it also just takes way longer to go through. So I definitely took advantage of the "quickness" of the shuttles, plus they weren't overpriced like in Costa Rica.

My first stop after Antigua was a trip to Lago Atitlan. I had heard amazing things about the lake, and it definitely didn't disappoint. The cooler climate and pine trees was a welcome change. It's the rainy season so I was afraid the weather would be awful, but I definitely lucked out and had gorgeous weather the whole time I was there. I stayed one night in San Pedro, which is the backpacker mecca, with super cheap rooms under $4 dollars a night. After that I met up with some girls and we went to a hostel across the lake. There wasn't too much to do there but it was a nice place to relax, with views of the lake. Because of the isolation, the place had "family style" dinners, and we spent the nights playing games such as Apples to Apples and Catch Phrase, both which are America-centric, the later which can be hard to play if English isn't your second language! I could have stayed at that place longer, but unfortunately I left my only sweatshirt in another town on the lake, so I after a few days of freezing, I went back to the other town to see if it was still there. Luck was on my side, and I was able to recover my sweatshirt, and from there it was off to the next tourist destination.

The traditional dress of the Mayans in San Pedro, on Lago Atitlan

Lago Atitlan with a Volcano in the background

The view from where we stayed on the lake

A mere 8 hours from Antigua (via uncomfortable tourist/shuttle vans), there lies a magical place called Semuc Champey. The nearest town, Lanquin, just consists of one or two streets. However, several vanloads of tourists come each day to see the beauty of Semuc Champey. Semuc Champey is a natural limestone bridge that runs over a river. The bridge has several turquoise colored pools that are great for swimming in. In addition to the limestone bridge, there is also a cave to explore. I unfortunately went with a tour group, so there were about 20 of us in a single file line with candles for light, exploring the cave. This cave experience was different than the one in Colombia because the water was higher so it was lacking the yuck factor of the Colombia cave. There wasn't mud, and we got to go under a waterfall, and jump off a ledge in the cave into a pool. I don't think it was all that safe though, and one of the girls fell while climbing the ladder up the waterfall and had to go get stitches. Needless to say, it was still fun; almost anything that involves water is fun.

Semuc Champey from the viewpoint that we had to hike up

Turquoise pools over limestone

Going for a dip

Navigating through the caves

After a day of fun in the water, it was off to Tikal, a large Mayan site in Guatemala. Again, another full day on a crowded tourist van, and we finally arrived in Flores late afternoon. After scrambling around to find a hostel that wasn't full, it was time to relax before visiting the ruins the next day. I'm not really a big ruins person, but everyone had hyped up Tikal so much, so I had to go. We woke up before the sun was out to catch a 430 bus to the ruins, and I spent the entire morning climbing up and down pyramids and temples while the guide explained the significance of the stuff. The cool thing about Tikal is that the majority of it is still not excavated. It is in the middle of the jungle, so when you are on top of a temple you can only see the tops of a few other temples peeking out from the dense vegetation. I personally enjoyed seeing tarantulas, and we also heard howler monkeys and saw toucans. All in all, it was definitely worth the visit, and Guatemala lived up to all the hype.

Tikal

Resting after climbing up a very steep temple

On top of another high temple. You can see the other temples peeking out in the background.

Don't skip El Salvador!

2010-07-26T05:43:00.004+09:00

Back in Utila, I ended up splitting up with the people I had been traveling with. We were all pretty much going in the same direction, but they had plane tickets out of Mexico earlier than I planned to leave, so if I had stayed with them I would have had to rush things. I wanted to see more of Honduras, and I also wanted to check out El Salvador, the country most people tend to skip. Getting to El Salvador from the Copan Ruins in Honduras ended up taking longer than I thought. I took 6 different buses and was in 3 different countries before I finally ended up in Santa Ana, El Salvador. I didn't want to go there but I was tired of traveling by that point and I knew that there was a hostel there. There was actually only 2 other people in the hostel, a British girl who was traveling with a guy from El Salvador that she met on couchsurfing. I was only there one day, and I was having trouble trying to decide what to do in El Salvador. I wanted to give the country a shot, but it's not very backpacker friendly. There aren't too many hostels with dorms, so it can get expensive and lonely if you're by yourself. However, I ended up calling a hostel in San Salvador, the capital, to find out how much a dorm costs and they gave me the Peace Corps rate, so 15 minutes later I found myself on a bus headed to San Salvador. The bus ride was an hour, and I couldn't get over how close everything was in this country. The hostel in San Salvador was right next to the biggest mall in Central America, so I had some fun exploring and then I went and watched Eclipse in the theater. My hope was that by going to a hostel in San Salvador, I might meet other travelers who had recommendations or might be headed in the same direction as me. I met a few other travelers, but the ones I met were a little interesting, and not necessarily traveling in my direction, or for the same purpose. A few were only traveling to party and hook up with the locals, and that's not really my scene. I did end up meeting a lot of different EL Salvador PCVs, because apparently I was staying in the hostel that they frequent. It's always interesting to swap Peace Corps stories and compare countries. El Salvador is so small the the volunteers can travel to see other volunteers whenever they want, and they all meet up in the capital city as well. Very different than Peru, where you are pretty much stuck with the volunteers in your department. Whenever I meet other volunteers in Central America, they always say how lucky I was, and how they had wanted to go to Peru. While I agree, Peru was a great country to serve in, after talking to the El Salvador Volunteers, it seems that they have it pretty good as well, and it wouldn't be a bad place to serve either.

After a few more nights in San Salvador, where I enjoyed the cooler weather and watched Toy Story 3 in Spanish (so good!), I decided it was time to move on. While there were several places that seemed nice to visit, I decided that even though El Salvador was small, I didn't want to do much backtracking, and I headed up to Juayua, which is on the Flower Route. There is a beautiful hostel there, that was cheap, but didn't have many other guests. Juayau is a small quaint town and there are a few others nearby that are worth visiting as well. On the weekends the place fills up because there is a food festival. While I did try a plate at the food festival, I actually fell in love with the pupusa lady down the street. A pupusa is a typical El Salvadorean food, and it is basically a corn tortilla that is stuffed with beans and cheese. While I wanted to like the corn pupusas, I wasn't ready to rave about them. However, then I tried ones that were made out of rice dough instead of corn. Those were AMAZING! They were cheap, about 30 cents each, and the rice ones you could get stuffed with vegetables and cheese. I think all I ate in Juayau was pupusas, they were that good. After Juayau, I decided to continue on to Guatemala. I regret not going to the beach in El Salvador and I think that is probably where most of the tourists go because they offer tourist shuttles from Antigua, Guatemala, directly to the beach in El Salvador. However, it was rainy and I just couldn't be bothered to take more buses, even though it was only about an hour from the beach! Oh well, just another reason to go back and visit.

The only pictures I took in El Salvador were actually in Juayau. I wish I had taken pictures or filmed some of the bus rides here. The only buses that I took were old school buses, and I learned fairly quickly why the front of the bus is always empty. People were constantly getting on the bus to sell things or preach. They tend to stand in the front of the bus, so it's hard to ignore them, and often times they are so close that they are spitting on you. I usually just try to zone them out, but my favorite person was this clown that came on the bus and was preaching the word of God. It was hard not to watch him because he kept doing different tricks, and I'm a sucker for magic tricks! I don't understand how they do it! Unfortunately he noticed me watching him, so then he came up to me and wanted me to participate in his magic show. At least the bus ride was entertaining.

Waterfalls/Hydroelectric plant

After going for a dip

Juayau

Murals in town

I heart rice pupusas

Mural in Ataco, another town en La Ruta de Flores

Learning to Scuba dive and other adventures in Honduras

2010-07-18T23:04:00.001+09:00

Our first stop in Honduras was Utila, one of the Bay Islands off the northern Atlantic Coast. It was a pretty long journey from Nicaragua and it involved sitting all day on a bus. We actually stopped in San Pedro Sula for the night just to break up the journey. I ended up passing through San Pedro Sula 4 different times in Honduras but I couldn't really tell you what was there because I only saw the Bus Terminal and a mall. Nevertheless, I talked to some people who were working there and even they told me there wasn't much to do there and that it was dangerous. Dangerous big cities seem to be the theme in Central America. Anyway, back to Utila. Utila is the backpacker budget friendly version of Roatan, but it doesn't have the beaches that Roatan has. Basically all there is to do in Utila is scuba dive and drink. It is one of the cheapest places to get scuba certified, and not a bad place to do it because it has crystal clear water with 30m visibility. I didn't plan on getting scuba certified on this trip, but after talking to a bunch of travelers, it appeared that it was the thing to do. I figured it would be nice to be certified anyway because that means if I ever go somewhere with good diving, I can dive...although diving isn't exactly a cheap hobby! Anyway, I spent the next 6 days on the island taking the course and diving. While scuba diving was pretty cool, it wasn't very hard at all. I guess I'm just used to being in the water so breathing underwater seemed oddly natural. It was still nice being able to breathe underwater and stare at fish longer. It's pretty cool to just hover in one spot and watch all the fish swim right next to you and they don't even notice you! On the island of Utila there is a weird mix of people. There are some people that speak Spanish, who come from the mainland. There are also people who speak Creole and Garifuna, and just plain English. Then you have the crazy expat population who come to dive and love it so much they just stay there. It was a little confusing trying to figure out what language to use when talking to people!

Scuba diving is pretty odd looking with all that equipment on

While my camera is waterproof, it can only go down to 10meters, so this is the only picture I have before we descended.

On the boat with Martin, my 12 year old dive buddy!

After getting my open water, I was tempted to stay and do my Advanced, but I decided to move on. Most backpackers only go to the ruins in Honduras and Utila, but that isn't really representative of Honduras. So, I went on Couchsurfing and found a Peace Corps Volunteer and asked if I could go visit her in her site. She actually lived in the middle of nowhere and it was quite an adventure getting there. I thought she would only be an hour or two from San Pedro Sula, but she was actually 5 hours. I didn't have any time constraints, so I figured I would just suck it up and go out to visit. However once I got to SPS, I couldn't find the bus that was going to her site. I didn't know where her site was on a map, so I couldn't figure out what other town I could get to go there. Everyone kept telling me different answers, trying to get me to go on their bus. Apparently the afternoon bus didn't leave, so I was told that I could get on a bus to a different town and get off at the fork in the road and from there it would be a short 15 minute car ride. I was a little hesitant to get off on the side of the road especially with all my stuff, but I didn't have too many other options. So I hopped on the school bus and stared at the rolling green hills for 5 hours. Once it was time to get off, this other man on the bus was also going in the same direction and told me he would help. There were no cars, and it was getting dark so we decided to just start walking in the direction of town. Luckily after about 20 minutes of walking I was able to hitch a ride into town. Once I met up with the PCV in town, she told me that the area where I was dropped off isn't a good place to hang out and that a few months ago there had been some gang shootings there. Oops! Anyway, it was interesting visiting the volunteer. She had a nice big house and while her town was in the middle of nowhere it was a decent size. I went with her to the school while she taught English classes and realized that kids everywhere are cute. There wasn't too much else to do but we had some fun swapping Peace Corps stories. After talking to her, I am definitely glad that I was placed in Peru, because it seems like one of the better countries to be in.

I forgot to take pictures of my venture into the middle of nowhere Honduras, so this is the only one I have. Typical Central America: green and hilly

Two nights in the middle of nowhere was enough for me, so I decided to continue on my travels to Copan Ruins, a Mayan ruin site in Honduras near the border of Guatemala. I arrived later in the day on a weekend and unfortunately all of the dorms and hostels were already full! I wasn't sure what to do, but I finally splurged (12 dollars) and got a single room in a nice hotel that had wifi. I could have found rooms for half that price, but I figured if I wasn't going to stay in a hostel where I could meet people, I at least wanted wifi. The ruins were nice, but I didn't hire a guide so I kind of just wandered around aimlessly, and took a few pictures here and there. I was back early so I explored the cute town until the downpour started that turned the streets into rivers. I didn't have too much else to do there so I decided to get my laundry done and get a haircut. I hadn't had my haircut since January, so it was definitely time for a cut. The haircut cost 2 dollars and they completely butchered it. It was reminiscent of my pyramid haircut that I had in my awkward preteen years. Ever since going to Peru, my previously curly hair has become less and less curly. I was hoping that my cutting off some of the weight, the curls might come back. Unfortunately this was not the case, and I was left with hair lopsided, and just a little too short to pull back, and it has a weird wave that is neither straight nor curly. When I had curly hair it didn't matter if it was too short because I could just shower and air dry it and it was curly. Not so much the case anymore!

My first Mayan ruin site!

These birds were more entertaining than the actual ruins. It's eating a tortilla.

Nicaragua, too hot!

2010-07-07T05:29:00.000+09:00

I was excited to get to Nicaragua. Costa Rica was too expensive that it wasn't even tempting! They had all these great restaurants and activities but they were so far out of my budget range that I didn't even consider it. Instead I found myself eating street food, which usually consisted of fried chicken, and after a week of that I was ready to move on. My first stop in Nicaragua was Isla de Ometepe. There is this huge lake in Nicaragua, called Lake Nicaragua, and in the middle is an island that has two volcanoes on it. It was a pretty nice place, and it was a welcome change after the tourists in Costa Rica. I felt like I didn't really get to see the culture in Costa Rica, and I'm sure that's partly my fault for going to the most tourist spots, but it was still nice to get to Nicaragua and actually speak Spanish. I stayed in Hacienda Merida, which is this former ranch on the far side of the island. Whle the island has a few main towns, most of the tourists stay in haciendas that a spread out, throughout the island. The haciendas are hidden and most have their own restaurants, so while there are a lot of tourists on the island, it doesn't feel super touristy and the people in the towns go about their everyday life, and don't rely solely on tourism. In fact, there was actually a Peace Corps Volunteer in the town near the hacienda but she said she hardly ever interacts with tourists.

One of the popular things to do on the island is climb this extinct volcano. The island is extremely hot and buggy, and I heard that the climb is really tough and the view wasn't even that rewrading. So, I decided not to make myself miserable and settled for hiking 3 hours each way to a waterfall. The waterfall was nice, but it wasn't one you could swim in, and I had decided to wear my Chacos sandals because I've been carrying them around with me forever and hardly use them. Unfortunately they gave me the worst blisters ever and I didn't think I was going to make it back to the hostel!

The next day my Irish friends that I was traveling with in Costa Rica had arrived and we decided to rent bikes and bike across the island to a beach and watering hole. The roads are awful and full of rocks, so the bike ride was pretty rough. After about an hour and half we finally arrived at our destination, Ojo de Agua. It was a pretty cool pool that was half-manmade half natural. I think it's fed with natural stream water, but it is cemented in so you can swim in it. Nevertheless it was very refreshing after our bike ride. None of us was really looking forward to biking back. We stopped by the beach and had some food and slowly made our way back. We were still on the beach when we realized that there might be a storm coming. All of the sudden there were whitecaps on the previously calm lake and there was really strong winds. We accepted the inevitable and it downpoured on us on our way back but at least it was refreshing.

After Ometepe, we picked up one more traveler, a German girl also by herself, and we headed to Granada. Granada is a very pretty city because it is colorfully painted. Bright colors always make everything prettier. Because there was 4 of us, it made things a little easier. One day we hired a guy to drive us around to several different spots outside the city. Normally you can do tours to each of these spots, but not all in the same day. First we went to this lookout spot over a crater lake and then we went to some small towns and a famous souvenir market. After that we drove up to this volcano crater where you can look down at into the crater at the smoke coming out. We ended the day swimming in the volcano crater lake while watching Ghana lose to Uruguay with a bunch of drunk Nicaraguan men.

Next stop on the trip was Leon, which is not as colorful as Granada but it supposed to have a good nightlife because of the large student population. We didn't do too much in Leon because it was extremely hot and then it would rain. It was a nice town to walk around and I enjoyed sampling the different street food. We were actually stuck there an extra day because the bus to Honduras was sold out.

\What kind of bug is this?

Waterfall that took 3 hours to get there, not very rewarding!

Biking on the island I encountered something familiar, a baby cow!

Ojo de Agua, half natural pool

Isla de Ometepe's beach

Laguna de Apoyo, nice place to escape the heat that is Nicaragua

Standing next to a volcano crater

Looking into the crater

Central America is where American school buses go to die. Panama's buses were by far the coolest, but this one in Nicaragua will have to do.

Costa Rica, sloths made everything ok!

2010-06-27T23:58:00.000+09:00

I've heard a lot about the infamous Costa Rica. It seems like most long term travelers just skip it completely because it is a budget breaker. However, for Americans, you've either been there or know someone that's been there. So, while I didn't really want to spend much time there, I was a little curious as to what the big fuss was about Costa Rica, and I couldn't really justify just passing right through it. I wasn't really sure where to go in Costa Rica, so I ended up going to probably the 3 most heavily visited tourist spots in Costa Rica. Right away I noticed that Costa Rica had a different vibe to it. In South America I ran into a lot of solo travelers, and the majority were not from the United States. However in Costa Rica, it was almost a given that everyone I saw was from the States. On top of that, most people were traveling with groups of friends, families, or large school groups...all for about 1-2 weeks. Costa Rica is not very backpacker friendly. First of all, the buses suck. There aren't too many direct routes, and the buses don't leave that frequently. Many of the tourists rent a car, or pay 40 bucks to take a shuttle, when the local bus would only cost 5 bucks. That is perfectly understandable when time is money, because a shuttle or private car takes half the time, the buses are that bad. However, for me, time is not money and it's hard to justify spending more than an entire's day budget, just to get somewhere faster.

So I got into San Jose and I really wasn't sure where to go next. It wasn't just raining in San Jose, it was a downpour. The next morning I got up and still really wasn't sure where to go, but I figured I'd head to the beach because that is what Costa Rica is famous for. So I went and got the local bus to Manuel Antonio. 4 hours later I arrived in Quepos, the town outside Manuel Antonio. I wasn't sure where I was going to stay but I asked the bus driver if he knew the name of this hostel and if he could let me out when we pass by it on the way to Manuel Antonio. Well I'm looking for the hostel on our way to Manuel Antonio but I didn't see it and next thing I know, I'm in Manuel Antonio and told that it's the last stop. I asked him where the hostel was and he was an asshole and claimed he couldn't understand me. Now my spanish isn't perfect, and I tend to talk fast, but I hardly ever have someone say they can't understand me. He basically saw that I was a tourist and decided to be a dick. Anyway, that was one more negative point for Costa Rica.

The thing to do in Manuel Antonio is to go to the national park. The national park is basically the same as the town was before they strung up all these houses, and they charge you 10 dollars to enter. When I was in the park I just wandered around and took my time looking at the animals. I saw a bunch of sloths way up in the trees, that I only noticed because the tourists that had hired the guides were pointing them out. However, at one point I started to walk away from the crowds and I saw a sloth relatively low and it was MOVING! Since I had nothing better to do, I probably stood and watched the sloth move for a good hour. I would even point out the sloth to every person that walked by, but nobody stayed and watched it as long as me. I got a pretty good picture of it finally, so I was happy and continued on my walk.

dI was pretty pleased with this picture

After doing one of the trails for an hour or so, I came back to where my buddy the sloth had been and noticed two people standing on the beach staring at a tree. That usually indicates some kind of wildlife, so I ran over to see what they were looking at. I ran over just as the sloth was lowering himself off the hanging tree branch onto the beach! It was pretty cool to watch that sloth army crawl across the beach back to the safety of the trees. Sloths move so slow so I had plenty of time to take some cool pictures of it. While I had been able to hold a sloth and it's baby in the jungle of Peru, it had been sopping wet and I was disappointed that I didn't get to see a dry one. Although I was tempted to pick up this sloth, I had a feeling the park rangers in Costa Rica wouldn't approve, so I resisted and just watched it inch back to safety.

My friend. Fun fact...he looks green because he has a layer of algae growing on him

The park is also full of monkeys, but they aren't afraid of humans at all. It was a little sad to see the monkey's dig through the trash, but it was also incredible to watch how smart they are. I saw one monkey go through the trash and he knew exactly what he was looking for. He would sort through the trash until he found all the juice boxes. Then he would drink through the straw if there was enough liquid still in the box, otherwise he would toss out the straw and open the box and let it drip into his mouth.

I really lucked out and saw this two-toed nocturnal sloth come down, defecate, and climb back up. Fun fact, two toed sloths move really fast compared to their three toed relatives.

Baby monkey wants food!

While in Quepos, I actually ran into an Irish girl that I had briefly met back in Bogota, Colombia. In Colombia we had spent the morning going up to the mirador because I woke up early, and she had just arrived off an overnight bus. I left Bogota that same day so we didn't keep in touch, but it was nice to run into her again. Her brother had now joined her for the last part of her travels, and they were going to rent a car for a few days in Costa Rica. So, they generously offered to let me come with them and I chipped in for gas and we went to La Fortuna to see the Arenal Volcano. It was really taking a car instead of a bus because you could just stop and go wherever you wanted. We didn't spend too much time in La Fortuna and the next day we went to Monteverde. Monteverde, or Santa Elena, where we stayed, was actually pleasant. The air was cooler, so it was a nice escape from the heat. While I didn't actually spend the money to go into the reserve, I did splurge on my one and only activity and did some pretty cool ziplining. I had wanted to go ziplining for a while, but I decided that the best place to do it was in Costa Rica because that's one of the things they are famous for, so they had a better variety. After a night or two, my friends decided to continue on to the beach. I guess that is the only downside to having a car, you feel like you need to get your money's worth, so you have to see as much as possible in a little time. I didn't feel like going back to the beach so I decided to stay in Monteverde, but we knew we'd probably see each other later because we were both headed to Nicaragua eventually.

Climbing up a tree. This is a strangler tree that basically wraps around another tree and kills it so it left the inside where the tree used to be hollow.

Trying to see how high I could go

Ziplining in Monte Verde

Panama...the land of American stuff

2010-06-19T00:01:00.001+09:00

If someone was to ask me what I thought of Panama, I am sure that my view of Panama would be very different than that of the average traveler. For me, Panama city was amazing. They had a BAGEL shop, with real variety of bagels and cream cheese. They also had some amazing malls. Actually the first thing I did when I got to Panama City was go to this mall that had 4 food courts. The mall was so big that I actually got lost, and I had trouble deciding where to eat with all the American food chain options that existed. The supermarket was an adventure as well. It looked like a supermarket in the states, and the prices were the same as the states, expensive by Panamanian standards, but cheap compared to the 7 dollar a bag chocolate chips they sell in Peru. I couldn't decide what to buy because everytime I got excited about something they had, I found something else they had, and I knew that I couldn't possibly eat that much food. I settled on getting bagel chips, poptarts, and chewy granola bars, but I was definitely exercising self control there not to buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's. My mission was to try to find something that you couldn't buy, and I think I succeeded because although they had 15 differnet kinds of peanut butter, I was not able to find string cheese. So when I wasn't obsessing over all the food options that Panama city offered, I did go out and explore a little bit. I went to the old part of Panama, which was nice, but honestly, I'm not really a city person. I went to the Panama canal, because that is about the only other thing to do in Panama. Unfortunately I got there and found out that the big ships weren't coming for 4 more hours, but there would be small ships coming through in an hour or so. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Small ships coming through the canal move very slowly and it's not very exciting. They come in, the gates close, the water rises, the ships rise, they open the gate, and I imagine the same thing happens. I kind of wish I had stayed to see the big ships go through because that probably would have been more impressive. I actually didn't even stay to see the tiny ships go through the entire Miraflores locks because I was being attacked by some kind of invisible bug. I don't know what it was, but after standing outside in the heat waiting for boats to pass, I ended up with about 100 bug bites on each leg that itched like crazy. It looked like I had the measles or something.

So after a few days of American luxuries, I decided to explore a little more of Panama. I took a night bus to Boquete, only after watching my little brother run in the NCAA finals of the steeplechase via internet. Live-streaming is pretty cool. Hi Julian, do you ever read this? Boquete is higher up in the "mountains" so it has a cooler temperature. Cooler temperature meant an escape from the sandflies and mosquitoes that were attacking me, so I was all for it. I think there are things to do in Boquete, like climb some volcano, but I was actually there for 4 nights and didn't do anything. In all fairness, I came down with an annoying cold and felt miserable, so I decided to just chill in Boquete before moving on. The hostel was comfortable, the people were nice, and I wasn't being attacked by bugs or sweating. Being sick is miserable enough, so why make things worse by traveling to a party location that is hot and humid. However, after 4 nights there I sucked it up and decided to move on. I haven't really spent more then 4-5 nights in one place, and I usually only spend 2 nights in each place, so I was getting antsy. My next destination was Bocas del Toro, which is a 6 hour bus ride, plus a boat ride away. Bocas del Toro lies on the Caribbean side of Panama, right near the border with Costa Rica. I had heard great things about Bocas del Toro, but the beaches can be a little annoying to get to because you have to take a boat everywhere. Honestly, the San Blas Islands have spoiled me, because I don't think many beaches will ever compare to those. Bocas was fine, but I still wasn't feeling 100%. I did a little snorkeling, saw some dolphins, and tiny red frogs and that's about it. It was time to move on to Costa Rica. I was a little disappointed with what I had done in Panama because Panama actually has several large indigenous populations. I would have liked to see more of the culture in Panama, but tourism really isn't developed there, and because I was traveling by myself, I really didn't feel like wandering too far off the beaten path, especially when I was feeling sick.

The ships are entering the Miraflores Locks at the Panama Canal

The ships rose

The thing that impressed me the most in Panama, was the presence of water fountains. I love water, especially free cold water.

Casco Viejo...the old part of Panama City

At red frog beach you find....red frogs

Kids at red frog beach

Underwater garden

Welcome to Paradise

2010-06-10T10:54:00.000+09:00

It was now time to say goodbye to South America and head to Panama. I could have flown, but doesn't it sound cooler to say that you sailed from Panama to Colombia? Actually this option used to be a better deal, but now with all the flight deals, it probably would have been cheaper to just fly. Going by car was not an option because of the infamous Darien gap, about 40miles of pure jungle connecting Panama to Colombia that is filled with guerillas and doesn't have a road. I read about some guys that bikes from Alaska to Argentina and kayaked from Panama to Colombia. That sounded pretty cool, but a little too hardcore for me, especially by myself. So, boat it was. There was only one boat leaving that day I wanted to leave, so I didn't have too many options unless I wanted to hang around Cartegena. So we set off for Panama, and our crazy Colombian captain informed us that it would be 40-48 hours of sailing until we reached the San Blas islands. Normally he can take up to 8 passengers, but this time there were only four of us, myself and 3 Aussies. I'm definitely glad that there were less people because the 40ft sailboat was pretty cramped as it was. The first two days were not really that fun. My only experience with sailing had been when my dad took the family out on a sailboat and we lasted about 10 minutes before my mom freaked out and convinced all of us that we were going to tip because my dad didn't know what he was doing. So we went back to shore and watched my dad sail around the lake without us. Anyway, for anyone who hasn't been sailing on the open sea, picture one of those baby wobble toys. You know, the ones that are weighted at the bottom and no matter how hard you try to knock it down, it just keeps popping back up. That was pretty much our experience for two days straight. There were big swells, and at first I was convinced that the boat was going to tip. It was hard to sleep because I kept rolling off the bench, but luckily our sail boat never tipped. We actually lucked out in that we didn't encounter any storms on our journey, although we could definitely see them in the distance. I'd say the hardest part of the trip was when we had to steer the boat. There were 4 of us plus the captain, so we all took 2 hour shifts steering the boat. That meant that we had to wake up in the middle of the night and stare at a number for two hours straight, sometimes while wrestling with the steering wheel so that we wouldn't go off course and end up in Jamaica. It's also pretty boring staring at an illuminated number while everyone else onboard is sleeping! Our boat didn't have autopilot, so it was very important that we all did a good job steering.

After the two second longest nights of my life (I think the first is still the canoe ride from hell to Iquitos), we finally saw land! Now the fun could begin! We were going to spend the next 3 days hanging out on a few different San Blas Islands. The San Blas Islands is an archipelago consisting of more then 370 tiny little islands off the coast of Panama. The Kuna Indians live on the islands and are an autonomous group, so no outsiders are allowed to live on the islands. Now my experience with Caribbean islands is pretty much limited to a swim team trip to Puerto Rico, but I don't see how it could get much better than this. The first day we anchored and swam to a deserted island. It was just vegetation, palm tree, coconuts, and white sandy beaches with crystal clear water. It got pretty hot so I just sat in the water and read, pretty soon the others followed suite. The water was so calm and warm, that it was like sitting in a pool. The next day we sailed to another island that is inhabited by 3 Kuna families. While the other island was gorgeous, this one was even more picturesque, if that's even possible. I was really mad that my polarizing filter had broke, because this would have been one place where it would have come in handy. The coolest thing about this beach was that there were a ton of starfish in the shallow water. There were so many and they were so big and colorful! Anyway, I was definitely impressed. We spent two days at this island, and the only thing that would have made it more perfect was if I had found a palm tree that jutted out over the water so I could climb it. We found one but it didn't have a top, and the other ones were too hard to climb, or rather easy to climb but too hard to climb down. Yeah, life was rough. I was tempted to actually stay on this island longer and catch my own ride back to Panama. They offered basic accommodations (cot in a stick hut) with 3 meals a day for $15 bucks a day. Not too bad. We ate a lot of seafood after we got to the islands because the fishermen would just row up to our boat and sell us huge lobsters and crab, and fish (yuck). While there was plenty of drinking water available, there was no freshwater on the boat so after 5 night my hair and whole body was pretty much coated in salt. If I had to say anything negative about the San Blas Islands is that there actually was a decent amount of trash that had washed up on shore in some parts of the islands. I think the storms and it's proximity to the mainland resulted in all the trash. The trash was very random, ranging from crocs, beer cans, and tupperware. Anyway, if you don't require luxury accommodations, I would definitely recommend the San Blas Islands as a place to visit. Who knows how much longer it will remain this way!

My first starfish!

Reading and cooling off

Tiny little islands!

I love starfish

I love palm trees

Fresh seafood

Starfish beach

Palm trees make excellent chairs

Our mighty vessel

At the wheel. Looking a lot happier than I was.

Humidity and Mosquitoes...Welcome to the Coast!

2010-06-05T08:02:00.001+09:00

One of the interesting and sometimes frustrating things about traveling and staying in hostels, is that I don't really get the chance to interact with the culture of the country that I'm visiting. Tourism in Colombia is really picking up, but it is still mostly limited to backpackers who stay in hostels. The majority of the people that I met in the hostels were traveling by themselves, usually for several months at a time like myself, and usually not from the states. I was talking to a Dutch girl and she said while her Spanish really hasn't improved that much in her travels, her English has improved a ton. I ended up traveling with a few people that I met in San Gil up to the Caribbean coast. After yet another overnight and absolutely freezing bus ride, we ended up in the "sleepy" beach town of Taganga. Now a lot of people rave about Taganga but we weren't big fans. There didn't seem to be too much to do there, and the beach was not nice at all. Taganga is a very popular diving hangout and a party scene. However, it was just too hot to do anything. We stayed in a hostel that had a fan, but I don't think the fan was actually moving the air. So after one night in Taganga, we decided to head to Tayrona National Park. Tayrona National Park is basically this park that has pretty beaches, most of which you are not supposed to swim in due to dangerous rip tides, and involves a lot of hiking around in the humid heat. After a few hours of hiking we ended up at this beach with white towels and lounge chairs and were a little confused. We had meant to go to the popular party backpacker beach, but we turned the wrong way and ended up at the luxury private beach that had these little cabanas to say in for 300 bucks a night. At that point we were so hot and tired that we just jumped in the water anyway. It was like bath water so it wasn't that refreshing. After cooling off, we hiked back to the main beach and rented hammocks to sleep in. We wanted to continue to the other beach, but it had started to pour and the rain didn't really let up all night. The next day we hiked in the right direction to some more pretty beaches but then we had to turn around because it was starting to rain. We hiked the several hours through the jungle back to the main road and headed back into town. This night we decided to stay in the city of Santa Marta instead of Taganga because there was a hostel with AC. All we could think about was how nice it would be to sit in the AC. We were extremely disappointed to arrive at this hostel only to find out that yes they had beds available with AC, but the AC only turned on at 10pm! The next day I parted ways with my travel buddies and headed to Cartegena. The others were staying in the area to do a 6 day trek through the jungle to the Lost City. While the trek sounded cool, I kept reminding myself how miserable I am when I am hiking through the jungle. I remember in Peru how gross it was walking around, and that was only for an hour or so. Mosquitoes seem to love me, so I decided to not torture myself for 6 days in the jungle.

I arrived in Cartegena 4 hours later and headed straight to my air conditioned hostel. Unfortunately this hostel also only put the AC on at night, but at least it started at 8pm instead of 10pm. I also went and found a boat leaving for Colombia in two days, so I knew my time in Cartegena would be limited. I really didn't do too much in Cartegena except find ways to escape the heat. I went to this mud volcano that involved shoving as many tourists into this tiny pit of mud on top of a mini volcano. It was definitely touristy, but it was still a weird, and kind of gross experience. The mud is so dense that you can't sink and everyone was just floating around in the mud. The mud is super deep, so you can't touch the bottom, even if you tried. It was hard to control yourself in the mud and stay upright so there was definitely a lot of unintentional groping. There was a little girl there with her mom and she took one look at everyone and started to scream. Thirty people covered in mud probably look more like aliens so I can see why she was scared! This whole volcano thing ran pretty smoothly. There were guys at the top that took pictures with your camera, other guys in the mud pit that would massage you, and then there were ladies that washed you off in the lagoon nearby. You tipped them all $1, but it really was worth it. However, when the lady went to wash me off, she just yanked my bathing suit top off without saying anything and I was only sitting in shallow water. I think this is pretty common because one other girl had on a one piece and the lady started to undress her as well! A little violating, but I did get pretty clean. One day I walked around the old town but after a while I had to duck into a restaurant to cool off. Cartegena is a really pretty city, and the old town is still surrounded by the walls that they had built to ward off pirates. The coast of Colombia also had a very different feel. Cartegena is more used to tourists because it was deemed "safe" to go to long ago, and many cruise ships also make a stop there. For the first time in Colombia, I felt like I was back on the coast of Peru with all the men making kissing sounds and catcalling. It was definitely more lively and I think I still prefer the more temperate, less in-your-face, atmosphere of the mountains in the San Gil area.

After several hours of sweating and trekking through the jungle we were greeted with this view, the Caribbean, por fin!

Let's cram 30 strangers in a tiny pool of mud.

This was the ultimate mud mask.

Canons guarding the walled city of Cartegena

Yes, Cartegena is pretty and colorful

The only risk is wanting to stay...

2010-05-31T13:33:00.001+09:00

I know my last blog post was pretty negative, but I honestly wasn't impressed with Colombia at that point. It is expensive compared to Peru and Bolivia, especially the transportation. However, I was determined to give Colombia a second chance, so I headed 7 hours north to San Gil to check out the adventure capital of Colombia. Luckily I wasn't disappointed because I LOVED San Gil! Actually the first hostel I stayed in was the recommended one, but it was a shithole and there were tons of mosquitoes and smoke and it wasn't comfortable. However, after one night I changed hostels to this amazing hostel right on the plaza. If you come across this because you are googling San Gil, you must check out Sam's VIP hostel. It was only a couple months old so it wasn't in the guidebooks but it is becoming very popular by word of mouth. This hostel was a converted penthouse apartment with a super nice kitchen (even I cooked, I never cook!), comfortable chairs, a great friendly owner, and it just felt like home. When you are constantly moving around, it is always nice to find somewhere that is so comfortable. In fact I ended up staying 5 nights in San Gil because I didn't want to leave.

San Gil is a small little town that is known for it's adventure sports. However a lot of tourists still don't go there so there was probably only about 20-30 foreign tourists in the whole area at any given time. This was great because I was still able to see what a typical Colombian town looks like, before tourism takes over. While I was there I went paragliding one day. I had never been and it was definitely a cool experience. Another day I decided to go caving. That's another thing I had never done before. It basically involved 3 hours underground walking through water and mud. There were parts of the cave that the water was so high that there was barely enough room for your head, and other parts where the ceiling was so low that you had to army crawl for 50 meters. Our guide told us that he's done 14 day expeditions underground in the cave, because it is at least 35 kilometers long. While caving was cool, a few hours underground was definitely enough for me! When I wasn't doing adventure activities, I went out and explored the surrounding towns. San Gil is in the mountains but at a lower elevation so it was warm and really pleasant with some rain in the afternoon. The towns were really pretty but I didn't see the level of poverty that I had experienced in Peru. I could definitely live there. I was able to explore some waterfalls and there was a really cool river that had a bunch of natural swimming holes and rock water slides. It's in the list of things do to there, but we were the only none locals that went there. It would have been great to have had something like that near my town in Peru! This area of Colombia is also known to eat ants as a delicacy. They don't eat just any kind of ant, but rather this queen bee gigantic ant, aka hormiga culona, literally big-ass ant. After eating larvae in Peru, I definitely needed to try the ants. So we bought a bag of roasted, salted ants, and tried a couple. Well actually it took me a while to eat one, but once I did it wasn't too bad. I tried to swallow it whole at first, but that didn't work and it came back up. It was a little crunchy and kind of reminded me of popcorn kernels. Also, the subject of my blog comes from the Colombia tourist saying. After spending a week in the San Gil area, I definitely understand it!

About to bite into a crunchy big-butt ant (hormiga culona)

Want ants?

Yup, that's me. First time paragliding and I get to paraglide through a rainbow.

It was hard to take self-photos.

Using my feet as proof that I was up in the air

When the water level rises, they pull you across underwater with a rope...

We had to army crawl for about 50 meters...it was a tight squeeze.

Natural pools of water and rockslides, so much fun!

Going down the rock slide...it went really fast!

The little towns in this area were gorgeous!

I like big butts...

2010-05-25T09:16:00.001+09:00

So I recently began the long solo part of my journey. I was a little hesitant to leave Ecuador, because once I left, I was definitely heading into the final part of my journey. I wouldn't have the familiarity of Cochan, or relatives in Ecuador to fall back on, and I definitely wouldn't have any planned travel partners along the way. For all the traveling that I've done these past 3 years, it's always been with friends from Peace Corps, family, or friends from home. Anyway, after spending a little more time in Ecuador than I planned, I decided to just go for it, and woke up at an insanely early hour and headed on a bus to the border of Ecuador. It was a long day ahead, but I couldn't take a night bus (my fav) because the road in southern Colombia isn't safe to travel at night because there is still some FARC presence and bandits. So in order to not travel that road at night, I had to leave on a bus at 6am from Quito. I was the only gringo on the bus, so I befriended a Colombian that lives in Ecuador on the bus. The border crossing was pretty uneventful, and after that we hopped on another bus that would take me all the way to Popayan, 2 hours south of Cali. I didn't really do anything in Popayan, I just used it as a stopping point after spending 15 hours on the bus. So after walking around Popayan and realizing that Colombian food sucks, and that Colombia was more expensive than Peru and Bolivia, it was time for another night bus up to Medellin. I had heard great things about Medellin so I was excited to get there. Medellin is a really nice city, and the area that all the hostels are in is super posh. The nightlife there was great, and there are tons of bars with patio seating, and drinking in the park is always popular among both the locals and gringos. However, Medellin was also a very weird city. Colombia is know for having renowned plastic surgery, and Medellin is probably the capital of it. Let's just say that all of the women had very unnatural big boobs and big butts. On top of that, there was only one other girl in the hostal I stayed at, so all of the Colombian woman that worked there just hung out at the bar and were all over all the guys there. I can see why guys like Medellin so much. I was only in Medellin a few days and then it was off on another overnight bus to Bogota, the capital. I hadn't heard too many great things about Bogota, but I decided that I had to go visit the capital if I was in Colombia. I don't really think I'm a city person, so I wasn't really impressed with what I saw. I believe there is a nice area in Bogota, but all of the hostels are in the old town area, which is pretty but extremely sketchy. There were homeless people and drunks passed out across from the hostel, and when I tried to get some food at night, there was nothing open except for a hot dog stand. I don't really like hot dogs so I must have been desperate if that's what I ate. I really couldn't walk too far because it was raining and not so safe, esp at night. I went to a museum there, and I don't even like museums! I don't really think I gave Bogota a chance, but after one day there I decided to move on and head to San Gil, a smaller town in Colombia.

Botero my new favorite artist who is known for his portrayal of fat figures. I wonder if this has anything to do with the obsession with big butts in Colombia? It's only fitting that Medellin has an outdoor park of his sculptures as well as a whole museum dedicated to his work.

Even Botero's kitties are fat!

Fun fact about this photo: It took about 10 minutes before the lady figured out how to take it. The weather was muggy in Medellin so the view from the cable car was crappy.

Medellin has cable cars as part of their public transport system in order to reach the poorer neighborhoods up in the hills. Awesome!

Across the street from my hostal in Bogota

Playing in Ecuador's Volcanoes

2010-05-18T10:02:00.001+09:00

The past month I've spent in Ecuador, mostly in Guayaquil, with a short trip to Cuenca. The plan is to travel onto to Colombia and after that continue north. However, once I got to Quito, there was some problems with the indigenous striking and closing the roads to the north, so I decided to take advantage of the great weather Quito was having, and climb some volcanoes. I've wanted to climb some snow-capped peaks for a while now, but I'm not really quite sure why because I am scared of heights and extremely clumsy. Nevertheless, I gave it a try, climbing a few "smaller" volcanoes, and ended with trying to climb Cotopaxi, an active volcano that is almost 5900m high, just under 20,000 feet. After climbing the first two volcanoes, 4200m and 5200m, I was a little nervous about the climb on Cotopaxi. I don't really enjoy hiking straight uphill and I am not in the best shape of my life. I'd spent the last month reading in a hammock in Guayaquil, sitting in a canoe in the jungle, and riding around in a jeep in Boliiva, not exactly the most active lifestyle!

So we get to the Cotopaxi parking lot, and we have to walk uphill in sand for about an hour with all our stuff to reach the refuge. I was a little worried at how tired I already was! Going to the Cotopaxi refuge is actually a really popular day trip, and I saw many people huffing and puffing sans backpacks and when they saw our group and figured out that we were climbing, they gave us a sympathetic look. We finally get to the top and then we have go up another hour to practice walking on the glacier. Most of the Cotopaxi climb involves walking on ice, and none of us had prior experience ice climbing, so they figured we should learn some basics before we headed up. After that it was time to eat dinner and go to "bed" around 7-8pm. I said the word "bed" because it was pretty hard to sleep at that altitude. I don't know if it was nerves or what, but I hardly slept a wink before it was time to get up at 1130pm to get ready to climb. We ate a snack and put on all our gear and headed out of the refuge at 1230am. There were a bunch of other people leaving as well, but we were one of the first groups out because I didn't want to run out of time. I was feeling a little nauseous so I was pretty convinced that I would have to turn around, but I decided to give it a shot. There was two hours of hell that involved walking up more sand to reach the glacier. It was one of those things were you walk 2 steps forward, slide one step back. The glacier actually used to start at the refuge, but thanks to global warming, it is now quite a ways up. Once we got to the start of the ice, it was time to strap on those cramp-ons. It was super steep right away and I couldn't get the hang of the ice climbing. So I watched everyone pass us and I was ready to throw in the towel, but I didn't want to let my climbing partner down. Finally I realized that the trekking pole was getting in my way, and as soon as I got rid of that, I was able to climb like normal. Well by now we were pretty far behind so we weren't sure that we'd make it up. It was dark out so you couldn't see much but we decided to just try to climb as high as we could go. Climbing on ice was a lot easier than climbing the sand, but it was still tough. The normal route up the mountain was not an option because one of the ice bridges over a crevasse collapsed, so we had to take pretty tough detour that added an hour of climbing time.

Now for the first part of the journey, I didn't realize that we were skirting around massive crevasses. It wasn't until one point when our guide told us that if he fell, we would have to launch ourselves into the ice, planting our ice axes so we wouldn't fall as well (we were all connected by a rope). After that I became a little more nervous. We probably crossed about 10 different crevasses on the way up, and in addition to the crevasses there were huge icicles that were amazing to look at, but a little scary once the wind picked up and they started to break and blow in my direction! We were the last ones attempting the summit because everyone else that was still behind us had turned around at the glacier. You have until 8am to reach the summit, because after that the weather makes it dangerous to go back down. We actually passed two of the guys in our group that were turning around because one of them felt altitude sickness. At this point we had been walking for the past 6 hours, and amazingly my altitude sickness had gone away. I could see the summit and I was pretty determined to make it. The weather was perfect, no clouds, but this also made it a little scary to look down! We got within an hour of summit, the last 100m was basically straight uphill. We stopped for a breather and ran into another guide going back down after summitting. The girl I was with wasn't feeling so hot from the altitude and wanted to go back. I pretty much didn't' have a say because if someone doesn't feel good and you are sharing a guide, you have to turn back. I might have tried to convince her to keep going but I overheard the guides talking about how strong the sun was and how he was hurrying to get back because he was afraid that the sun would melt the very thin ice bridges over the crevasses. Tht was enough to change my mind, because going back down was a real fear of mine. So while we didn't get to the very top, we still made it over 5700m, and the view was still incredible. The way back down was pretty scary because now that it was light out you could see all the cracks and holes in the glacier. I let the other girl, Ester, take most of the pictures because I was way too clumsy to take my camera out. Getting down was definitely something that involved a lot of concentration. I remember thinking to myself that I would never ever do this again. However, looking back, it's amazing how quickly the mind forgets, because sometimes I find myself wanting to do it again!

We turned around at the top right corner, so close, damn it!

I'm more scared than I look

Awesome views of the whole valley

Pretty steep!

That's me descending, surrounded by 10 feet icicles!

The crevasses are pretty deep.

Scary but beautiful crevasse

Resting in our ice cave!

Cotopaxi doesn't look so big in this pic. This is the view from the parking lot. The yellow dot is the refuge.

Hasta la vista Cochan

2010-04-29T01:26:00.006+09:00

After the Amazon adventure, it was time to head back to the campo of Cochan, for one last visit. It was only a 10 hour detour each way, so why not. The time spent in my site was pretty uneventful, but relaxing. It was nice to see people, but weird not having anything to do. When I came to visit in March, I had my cousin with me, so I spent the week showing him around. I've pretty much seen all there is to see in Cochan at least 3 times. I went blackberry picking twice, something that I never actually did when I lived there. For some reason whenever we tried to go, the blackberries weren't ripe. This time, we came back with pounds and pounds of wild blackberries. I never knew blackberries could be so delicious.

Kim and Matt, the volunteers in nearby San Miguel and Llapa, came by for the day. We set off to hike to the district of Tumbaden, where they have some ventanillas. I'd been there before, but only once, so it was still somewhat new to me. This was a different hike because for once I didn't have 10 million kids tagging along. We went on a school day, and it was nice to be able to speak english without feeling guilty, and not have to take a thousand modeling photos. Tumbaden is an ambitious hike, and last time I went there we got lost, and it took us over 4 hours to get there. So we got an early start by running through town at 630am in order to try to catch the milk truck. I'm not quite sure how the milk truck didn't see the 3 gringos sprinting down the street, but it managed to take off just as we arrived, and left us behind in a cloud of dust. We tried to look around for another ride, but decided to just start walking. The walk isn't too bad, but luckily a pick up truck passed through 10 minutes into our walk, and dropped us off after the river, saving us 2 hours of walking. Looking back, it's really amazing how far Cochan has come in the past 2-3 years. When I arrived it was a ghost town and there were never any cars that came through. With the improvement of the road, cars pass through both ends of Cochan at all hours of the day. It was a nice hike, not too muddy, and the cloudy morning turned into sunny skies. After going to the ventanillas, we wandered a little farther into the town. I had to wonder what the people there must have thought, because this town is pretty isolated, and doesn't see many cars coming through (kind of like Cochan was when I got there, but smaller). In walk 3 gringos, without a car, speaking English, and without any Peruvians. I'm sure they were wondering where we came from, I would at least! We stayed in a the plaza for a while and sure enough, slowly the entire school started to come out and stare at us. Class was still in session, but that didn't make a difference. After entertaining the locals, we made our way back by foot to Cochan.

I spent the next week in Cochan eating my favorite foods, and pretty much doing nothing. I was putting off leaving because I am sure it will be awhile before I visit again. A good majority of my time was spent outside reading Twilight and watching the 13 chickens go up and down the street. I started to reflect on this, and thought that maybe it meant it was time to leave. However, once someone asked me to take pictures at a birthday party a month from now, I realized that it was definitely time to leave. Leaving is always hard, because Peruvians are great about laying on the guilt. "Una semanita mas..." Then they tried to convince me to stay for my birthday, but I told them that I had already spent two birthdays too many in Cochan, and wasn't about to spend another one. So 24 hours later, and 6 different cars, I arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador at 4am.

I really didn't take any pictures when I was in Cochan, but below are some of Kim's pictures from our hike.

I already miss the Cajamarca sky

Peru 9, 11, and 13 representing the province of San Miguel

Eating breakfast (avocado and bread) in a ventanilla.

Finally mastering the self-timer.

In the plaza of Tumbaden before the kids started gawking at us and taking "discrete" pictures of us on their cell phones.

Kim: "The mud isn't too bad over here, it's not soft"...then she sinks into the mud and can't get her foot out.

Close up of the mud. I can't even count how many times this has happened to me.

Delicious lunch of tuna and bread

Jungle Adventures

2010-04-12T21:24:00.015+09:00

So I've been meaning to write about my travels for a while now. I actually have several posts ready to publish, but rather than backtracking, I'm going to write about my latest adventure, and post the rest later. I am currently in Lima, Peru, after flying in from Iquitos this morning. I went to the Jungle of Peru for Semana Santa with a few peace corps volunteers, a trip that I had wanted to do in my service but didn't have the vacation days to do. It was a memorable trip to say the least, and soooo many things went wrong.

The bus ride from hell

It all started the day we left. We had a bus from Chiclayo to Tarapoto, and the bus ride was 15 hours and scheduled to get in at 930am. That's a fairly long bus ride, and we were only on semi-cama seats. We were on a reputable bus company, but it was definitely no cama-cama Linea bus. There were no blankets, and I wasn't prepared for the cold and therefore was freezing the entire ride. We kept stopping throughout the ride, and at 1am they told everyone to get out and walk across a landslide. Our entire bus gets out, walks across, and waits. Our bus makes a pathetic attempt to cross, but then decides to wait. The landslide wasn't even that big, and we were waiting there for an hour in the rain getting soaked, while every other bus passed no problem. Finally our driver calls us back to the bus, and says that we can't cross and will have to wait until 5am until they clear the road. 5am comes, and no one is coming to clear the road, but bus after bus is going through no problem. Finally the driver decides to try again, and we cross with no problems. That was slightly annoying, but I figured we'd only be a few hours behind. However, we ran into 2 more rock slides along the way, and didn't end up getting into Tarapoto until 10pm, 28 hours after we left. We lost a whole day in Tarapoto and were starving on the bus because none of us had brought snacks. The driver was kind enough to stop for 15 minutes to get food at 3pm, but because all the buses stopped at the same spot, the only food they had left was cow stomach. I opted to eat a chunk of cheese instead.

One of the many rockslides we encountered.

Tarapoto

Once we were in Tarapoto, we had already lost a whole day so we didn't head to the jungle the next day. Instead we spent a day in Tarapoto just relaxing, and going to a nearby waterfall where you can jump off very slippery rocks. It was good friday, so pretty much everyone was closed.

Jumping through the waterfall!

Hammocking into the Amazon

We had to leave at 4am the next morning to head to the jungle so we made the stupid decision of staying out until 315am. 15 minutes of sleep on a very windy speedy road was not one of the best decisions in my life. Once we got to the port town, our group of 4 was joined with another group of 4 PCVs that were also doing the same length jungle tour. They strung up our hammocks on the boat, and we prepared for our 12 hour boat ride to the town of Lagunas which was to be the jumping off point for our jungle tour. The hammocks were actually very comfortable, and I was able to sleep for a portion of the ride, so nothing really went wrong there, except for the fact that I felt sick.

Relaxing in the hammock.

It was just a tad crowded.

Pacaya Samira Reserve

When we arrived in Lagunas, we met up with the guy in charge of the trip and we met all the guides that would be going with us on the reserve for the next 3 days. We left the next morning for our jungle trip into the Pacaya Samira reserve. We spent 3 days sitting on canoes and observing all the wildlife around. There are many different species of monkeys but it was hard to photograph them because they move so fast, and were up high in the trees with lots of darkness. The guides found us a mama sloth with it's baby wrapped around it's neck, a baby caimon/crocodile, a baby anaconda snake, some turtles, piranhas, pink river dolphins, frogs, tarantulas, and lots and lots of bugs. We got rained on, slept on hard wooden planks, went to the bathroom in the dark in the jungle, and the mosquitos feasted on us. It wasn't the most comfortable trip, but it was definitely a cool experience. After the three days ended, we got ready to wait for the large 3 story boat to pass to take us to the large city of Iquitos.

To get to the reserve, we had to go on a very muddy road.

3 days in a canoe with our eagle eye guide named Gil

Sleeping arrangements continued to get worse and worse throughout the trip

But we got to hold cute animals, like this baby sloth!

Mama sloth...it was raining so she's all wet.

Baby crocodile

Piranha!

Spider monkey

We (well our guide) was just paddling down the river, when all of the sudden he reached out and stabbed this gigantic fish! It was awesome.

Baby anaconda snake, I discovered that I don't have a fear of snakes.

Lagunas to Iquitos...where everything went wrong

Well, when we got into Lagunas we were in for a surprise. The boat didn't leave that day, so it looked like we were going to have to spend another full day in Lagunas. There isn't much to do in that town, and the electricity goes off at 1130pm, but we ended up finding a sketchy cantina that had a generator and managed to have some fun there until the generator went off, where we proceeded to move the gathering to the dark stoop of our hotel until 4am. Our hotel there the hotel from hell and it was full of mosquitos and a dungeon, so no one wanted to spend much time inside. The next morning we went to find out more info about the boat situation, and the bad news got worse. They thought that the boat would leave early the next morning from the town 12 hours away, but there was a landslide so there were no passengers and the boat hadn't left yet. It was a good 30 hour boat ride to Iquitos once the boat came through town, so at this point, it looked like not only would we not have any time in Iquitos, but people might miss their flight. There were a bunch of PCVs, 14 in total, our 2 groups of 4, and another group of 6. I bought the plane tickets for my group on a different airline, Peruvian airlines, and it was cheaper and when I called them I found out that I could easily change the date without any penalty, so I wasn't too worried. However, the other groups couldn't change theirs and had things they needed to get back to so they scrambled around looking for any kind of boat that would leave for Iquitos. They finally found a boat that would go to Iquitos but we each had to pay 230 soles. The normal hammock cargo boat only costs 40 soles, so this was a big difference in price. However, we heard that the speed boat would only take 8 hours, so we would actually get into Iquitos that night. So all the volunteers agreed to shell out for the boat to get out of the boring town of Lagunas, and we went to the dock to see our boat. We see this tiny boat and wonder how this could be a speed boat. Our biggest concern was the bathroom situation, and whether or not we could string up hammocks.

This is the boat we thought we were going on, not quite a speed boat, but spacious enough.

We were confused when they took the motor off the big boat, and put it on this canoe.

Apparently we were going in the canoe. This is the "speed" boat.

Little did we know, but that boat wasn't our boat, but instead, we would spend the entire ride crammed in a large dugout canoe with a lawnmower motor attached. At that point we were all set on leaving, so we piled all our stuff in there and crammed in there like sardines. I was actually rather lucky because after about 30 minutes of sitting down in the back, I discovered that the luggage behind me was rather cushiony and spent some time enjoying the breeze and sun. 8 hours was a long time to be on that, but after the 28 hours on a bus, I didn't think anything could be worse. However, I have always been really antsy on car rides, and I'm one of those people who ask, "are we there yet," so I decided to ask the driver behind me if there was any chance we'd get there in less than the quoted 8 hours. He laughed at me, and said he didn't know when we would get there, but once we got to this one town, it was 8 more hours from there. This was already 3 hours into the ride, so reality hit that this boat ride would be at least 11 hours. That put us into Iquitos well into the middle of the night. There was nothing to do but make the best of the situation, and we all started to fantasize about this Texas BBQ restaurant that was open 24 hours a day in Iquitos. It rained a bit on the boat, and once that happened we were given this large tarp that we put over everyone and it was a little claustrophobic. We finally reached that town after 6 hours, and from there were quotes 6 more hours to Iquitos. It was now dark, and everyone was starting to get cold, and many people towards the front of the boat were wet and sore from sitting on the hard planks. I tried to sleep on the lumpy luggage but we kept hitting logs in the river, and I thought I was going to fall off. There was no bathroom on the boat so some people opted to pee in a bucket or off the side of the boat. Around 1am they turned off the motor and started asking passing fishermen for directions. We spent a good 2-3 hours turning around and getting lost in the Marañón river, the river that leads into the Amazon river. It turns out the drivers had never actually taken a boat so they didn't know the way, and the rain and logs made it hard to navigate. I was convinced we were going to capsize, and I debated putting my laptop and camera in my dry bag so I could save them, in case of disaster. We finally got into the port town of Nauta at 630am, 18 hours after we left, 10 hours later than we thought we would. The whole town came to see 14 gringos pile out of this canoe. Even though the awful boat ride was over, we still had 2 more hours in a bus to get to Iquitos.

Getting "comfortable"...before I realized that the luggage behind me was a better option.

When it rained, this smelly tarp covered us.

Before we were lost, before it rained.

Cold, and wet, and Not happy!!

Iquitos, Por Fin!

Once we got into Iquitos, we spent a few days eating lots and lots of good food, and seeing some of the sites. I tried some roasted larva, which is pretty adventurous for me. Iquitos is a cool but very weird city. It is on the Amazon river, and it is the largest country in the world that is inaccessible by road. So basically the only way in is by boat or plane. We were not about to return by boat, so I arrived in Lima today after a quick one hour flight.

The floating houses in Belen

Eating some grubs. I'll admit, I basically just swallowed it whole.

Readjusting

2010-02-03T04:19:00.000+09:00

My brother, getting ready to surf up at UCSB.

Obligatory Family Christmas Foto

Visiting my sister in Chicago

Chicago in the winter

After the Peace Corps I spent a month at home. At first it was really weird, and I wished I was back in Peru. However, after the month had ended I had become pretty comfortable in my routine of not doing anything and playing with my cats all day. Scary! Good thing I had plans, even if they were just traveling.

While I was home, I was pretty busy the first couple weeks. I got home on Christmas Eve, and then my friend from college, Juleah, finally came out to visit. I haven't really lived in Orange County since high school, so coming up with things to do that didn't involve eating was a struggle, but the weather was great and it was a good time. I also took advantage of some frequent flyer miles and visited my sister in Chicago, during a cold snap. While it was exciting to see snow, the extreme cold wasn't ideal for sightseeing around the city. 20 to 30 degree temperatures are perfect, but when it gets to below 0, a face mask becomes necessary (which I didn't have).

As for re-adjustment, I didn't think it would be a problem. I had been back to the states twice before, but both times were less than a week each. When I went home for Christmas last year, I pretty much didn't leave the bubble of my home, so there wasn't anything to readjust to. When I went back to my college reunion, that was just weird because it was like we had never left college, so I didn't have to deal too much with readjusting. However, when I actually left my house, there were little things that I kept noticing.

For example, when I was introduced to new people, I found it incredibly rude to shake their hand instead of give them the typical cheek kiss. Whenever I would enter a room, I would glance at the walls to make sure there weren't any gigantic spiders on the walls. This is pretty unlikely since my mom is a neat freak, but I found myself doing it repeatedly. I went on a bike ride up in Santa Barbara while visitng my brother, and I was a nervous wreck whenever we passed by houses because I was convinced that a wild dog would come running out and chase me. I also found myself frustated at the concept of having to cross at crosswalks. I was used to crossing the street wherever and whenever I pleased. My family laughed at me for bringing my water bottle into church on Christmas EVe, and then they pointed out that I didn't need to bring it into the restaurant. I was so used to not knowing when there would be clean drinking water available in Peru, that I had gotten into a habit of carrying my water with me wherever I went! There were a lot more things that I noticed, but they are probably only interesting to me, plus I lost the place where I documented them. I also spent a lot of time catching up on celebrity gossip and music. While I had heard of Lady Gaga, the only thing I knew about her was that it was the most popular halloween costume of 2009 for girls. I had never heard her songs, so I downloaded them and played them on repeat and now I'm obsessed :) While I thought that I was relatively up to date on a lot of things that were going on in the United States, it's easy to miss things that happen in between trips to the internet.

So, just as I started to get comfortable, it was time to travel again. Good thing too because for some reason, I kept forgetting that the food wasn't going anywhere. In Peru, I was used to eating whatever I wanted on my trips into Cajamarca, because I knew that all I'd be eating once I got back to site would be potatoes,some rice, and more potatoes. That trick doesn't really work at home when the food options exist everyday!

My House Video

2010-01-14T04:20:00.002+09:00

Now that I have fast and reliable internet I can upload some videos that I meant to do a long time ago. Below is a video that I made of my house. I meant to film it over again with my new camcorder, but my room was too messy so I never got around to doing it. It's a little awkward because I am basically talking to myself because the girls that are filming it don't understand what I'm saying. Nevertheless, it gives you a better idea of how I lived. Please keep in mind that this is one of the "nicer" houses, and don't forget to listen to all the rooster noises in the background.

Finishing Up

2010-01-11T10:20:00.000+09:00

So the last month in my site was ridiculously stressful. They extended the school year so I was still trying to teach classes in the primary school up until two days before I left my site. Besides my classes, there were promotions (graduations) to go to. I went to the pre-school graduation which was much more elaborate than the year before. There were 18 kids graduating, and every single one of them had a dance partner, and they even danced the waltz. It was very cute, and the party ended with barney and winnie the pooh coming to dance and play with the kids for the last few hours. Three days before I left was the high school graduation. This was a huge graduation, with 37 of the 40 kids deciding to take part in the graduation. Each kid also got to bring a dance partner, as well as 4 family members. They don't have a big auditorium, so it was very crowded in there. The promocion was fun, and I even danced. My host brother doesn't like to dance either but he went as the partner to my host sister who was graduating so he had to dance. I told him that I would dance at 2am. When 2am rolled around, he reminded me of what I said so I had to dance. Well, once I started dancing, it was non-stop until the party ended at 5:30am. I'm sure I've mentioned before how the dancing works here but I'll explain it again. In general the guy asks the girl to dance, and after every song, you usually take a seat and wait for someone else to ask you to dance. Once everyone saw that I was dancing, it didn't take long for all the high school boys to start asking me to dance. Dancing is tiring, but I think I finally got the hang of the cumbia dance, which is basically just a shuffle. However, after 2.5 years in Peru, I still haven't mastered huayno. I was attempting to dance huayno, which is basically hopping and skipping around, but I was also playing around because the floor was so slippery. Everyone just dumps the beer foam on the ground before they pass the cup to someone else, so by the end of the night, if you also taken to account the party fouls, the floor is one big slip and slide. So there I was, skipping around and I ate it right in the middle of the dance floor. There wasn't too many people dancing at this point, so everyone saw me fall! It was a little embarrassing, but shortly after, one of the moms fell as well. This was actually the second time I fell that night. Once again (i think this happened last year or the year before) I fell in the mud outside after going to the bathroom and trying to avoid the fountain of men peeing from the balcony above. Falling aside, it was a fun night, and a great way to end my service here in Peru.

So, the mistake I made here was that I was too nice. As you may know, I've been taking and developing photos for people for the past year. It got a little out of hand, and I was developing 400 fotos every week. Well after my last trip into Cajamarca, I was relieved because I wouldn't have to develop anymore photos. However, people wanted photos of the promotion and when they realized I was leaving they all wanted me to take some more photos of them because once I left, there wouldn't be anyone to take photos. I figured out if they paid me in advance, I could develop the photos the day I left my site, and then send them back with my host family. I wanted to do them a favor, because before I came, people would charge 3 times more than what I charged for a photo. Unfortunately, my last week in site was ridiculously busy. People were looking for me nonstop asking me to develop fotos, asking me for a keychain (i'll explain later), or giving me a handcrocheted lacelike tapestry. I was burning DVD after DVD of photos to give to all the kids that graduated. I hardly slept, and I didn't' even really get to enjoy my last days. Two peace corps friends came by a few days before I left, and I hardly got to see them. Someone was ALWAYS looking for me. And on top of all this, my room was a disaster of all the stuff that I had accumulated, and I hadn't even packed yet. My final day in site, I ran into the problem of being invited to too many places. I am just one person, and it felt like EVERYONE wanted to talk to me. So the day I actually left, I had stayed up most of the night trying to fit everything in my suitcase. Once the suitcases were full, I finally gave up. I called over some of the kids that are my friends in site, and told them to go at it. I gave away so much stuff, it was like an early christmas present. Most of the stuff I gave away was stuff that I would still use, but it was impractical to take with me because it wouldn't fit. Some of the stuff that I would have thrown away, the kids also wanted. They went away with bags full of "presents" including, old magazines, markers, movies, towels (I had like 10 b/c I would always forget to bring one and then have to buy one if the hotel didn't have a towel), market bags, paper, cans of tuna and other food, plastic water bottles that aren't BPA free, shoes, most of my toiletries, perfume, make up, and even my plastic twisty ties. So in the end, I packed everything up and left site. I really lucked out because my host family was also going to Cajamarca so we just loaded everything up in their pick-up truck, and I was able to leave the stuff at their house until my bus left. Leaving site was hard though. I was definitely holding back tears as the kids started to cry. It also felt a little unreal because while most people knew that I was leaving, I was so busy that I didn't even get to say goodbye to a lot of people. What made it easier, is that I plan to go back and visit in a few months. I bought a roundtrip ticket home for christmas, and I'll be in the states for a month. After that I'm going to Ecuador to go to the galapagos, and then I want to travel around for a little bit. I'm not sure where I'll go or how long I'll travel for, but I definitely want to go to Bolivia. I promised everyone that when I pass through Peru I'll come by and visit since I'm already there. It made leaving easier because I told them that I'd come back in a few months, but just to visit. After this next visit, it might be a while until I visit again, but hopefully it won't be as hard to leave, because everyone has already gotten used to me not being there.

As for the future of this blog. I'm not really sure. I'll update it at least one more time. I haven't decided yet if I'll continue it during my travels, but I'm thinking yes. I guess you'll just have to check it to see.

I made over 350 of these keychains to give to people in my site. They love that stuff. They also double as bottle openers.

The parrot that my host family brought back from the jungle

Most of my host family

She was scared

Teaching Guisela how to swim in a manmade reservoir that is freezing.

Preschool graduation

Promo Trip 2009 - Chachapoyas

2009-11-29T02:55:00.001+09:00

So one of the reasons that the kids really wanted me to stay until the end of the year, was that so I could go on their promocion trip. However, this year there was a conflict, because the primary and secondary school BOTH wanted me to go on their trips, and they left back to back and we essentially going to the same place. Up until a few days before they left, the colegio didn't even know if they were going to be able to go on the trip. Luckily, the trip didn't conflict with Camp VALOR and I decided to go on the colegio trip, and then see how I felt before I decided to go on the primary school trip. Everyone told me that the primary school trip was "better" because they were going farther (Tarapoto versus Chachapoyas). I haven't actually been to Tarapoto, but these paseos aren't the best way to see places for the first time. Here they think farther is better, even if they only end up spending half a day in the place. I'm very close with most of the kids in the 5th grade of the colegio, so that made the trip a lot of fun. It was pretty much what I expected after last year, lots and lots of time on a bus, and disorganization. However, we did make it to our final destination, although we lost a day in the process. .

I bought a spray bottle top for 1 sol, about 30 cents. It was the best investment ever. EVERYONE was jealous, I just told them I was smart like that. Then I had to go around spaying everyone down because the heat was unbearable.

Entertaining themselves on the bus without air conditioning.

Jaen. It's part of Cajamarca, but at practically zero elevation so it's very hot. Here is the Plaza where we spent 2 hours taking photos.

No trip would be complete without a trip to the beach. Only one swimmer amongst the group (me), but luckily it wasn't deep.

The whole group in front of Kuelap....before the rain.

If we look uncomfortable it's because it's pouring rain and we are soaked.

Eating menú at a truck stop. But, they had fried PLANTAINS!!!!! I was very excited.

Definitely not the bus-cama-cama that I'm used to!

Camp VALOR, take 2

2009-11-20T23:33:00.000+09:00

This past weekend the Volunteers in Cajamarca put on another kids camp. This camp, Camp VALOR, was for teenage boys. This was the 3rd camp I've participated in, and the second one involving boys. I am probably biased, but it's so much easier to entertain girls! Luckily I wasn't one of the people in charge of planning this camp so it was nice to not have all the pressure of running the camp. Nevertheless, the camp was a success, and all three boys that I brought from my site had a great time.

Field game activities

Everyone at VALOR

The 3 boys that I brought to VALOR

sLearning the Michael Jackson - Thriller dance

more maps

2009-11-14T06:30:00.000+09:00

Last year I painted the world map with a bunch of kids in my site. This year I decided to change it up a little bit and paint a map of Peru in the primary school. I had the kids draw the map of Peru using the grid method, but then I had the good luck of finding someone who had a rented projector in my town. Since this was the only time I've ever found a projector in my site, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and used the projector to draw maps of Cajamarca, San Miguel, and Cochán. Ideally, Peru would have been the first map, but since I had already drawn it, I wasn't able to change the order. Peru is broken down into departments (Cajamarca), and then in Cajamarca there are provinces (San Miguel), and each province has districts (Cochán). Furthermore, each district consists of various caserios. So in the end, I ended up with 4 maps along the entranceway. While the world map was cool, I think the kids were way more interested in these maps, because it consisted of places they actually knew. It was very cute watching all the 6 year-olds trying to sound out the names, and then running their hands all over the map of Cochán to show everyone what caserio they lived in. The only problem with it being in the primary school was that the 10 and 11 year olds that I recruited to paint aren't that careful, and I was constantly having to stand guard during recess to make sure the kids didn't run their dirty hands all over the wet paint. Below are a few pictures of the painting process, and the finished project more or less. It's still missing a few finishing touches such as labels for each map, but I think you'll get the idea.

In order: Cajamarca, Peru, San Miguel, and Cochán

Basura!!

2009-10-21T19:13:00.000+09:00

One of the most frustrating things about living here is the trash situation. While there are a few garbage cans in town, most people just burn their trash, or throw it on the street, grass, or whoever they are. Whenever I go on a hike, the kids want to leave the trash in the middle of nowhere, and I have to convince them to put it in a bag and carry it back to Cochán. Even in Cochán, they have people that sweep the streets, but they just dump all the trash into the stream that runs through town. The garbage cans are taken around the corner and dumped in plain site. There isn't any kind of hole or garbage dump. Anyway, the doctor in my site had a friend from Cajamarca that works with waste and decided to come to Cochán to raise awareness of the trash situation. When I heard about this, I jumped at the opportunity to help, because this is one of the things that bothers me the most. We decided to have the 4th and 5th grade of the colegio participate in a clean up of the river that runs through town. There were incentives such as prizes for the group that gathered the most trash, and they were taught how to separate organics from inorganic. Apparently the doctor tried to clean up the river with kids from the primary school the year before, but the parents were outraged and put out a denuncia. We figured that by working with the older kids there wouldn't be a problem, but there is always a problem. Even though we had the permission of the director, the day of, the same father who had a problem in the escuela, and happens to be the head of the parent committee, decided that it was hazardous and the children would not participate. Luckily, there was some negotiating, and they made the event optional. We ended up with 39 kids out of the 65, which ended up being perfect because there were only 40 t-shirts.

I had seen the trash from the river, but I never realized how disgusting it was. You would be amazed at what was found in there. Even though we were cleaning the river, people around still had a negative attitude. They told me, there's no point in doing that because people are just going to continue to dump things in there. They don't realize that while you can't expect a change overnight, hopefully little by little you are able to reach a few people and make a difference. People don't think it's a problem to dump things in the stream because once rainy season comes the water level rises and washes it all "away." Out of sight, out of mind apparently. While I've been doing my part to ingrain the importance of not littering on the kids, it would really be nice to do a whole campaign. Unfortunately I have little time left, and this problem is bigger than me. There is no support from the authorities in town, and no progress has been made to build a landfill. Once we had all the trashbags of trash, there was nowhere to put them and we were forced to put them around the corner, where all the other trash is thrown.

At first they weren't so eager to dig in.

Getting dirty

They found a mattress in the river.

The crowd that gathered to watch from the street (the middle of town). Apparently watching people pick up trash is interesting.

This group of 4 girls won, picking up 25 bags of trash!

Picking up trash is fun!

Lots of trash

After the clean up with their new t-shirts.

Hiking and more hiking

2009-10-19T08:55:00.001+09:00

One thing I'm really going to miss when I leave here, is all the hiking that I've been able to do. There isn't much to do in town, and even less to do in my room, so I try to get out and see as much of the mountains that I can. While the little kids are adorable, I am lucky to also be friends with many of the older kids, thus I always have hiking partners. It's getting to the point where I've seen more of Cochán than most people in my town, and I've seen several tourist spots more than once. Condác is a waterfall that is about an hour and a half to two hour walk away. Most people in my town have never been but are always talking about going. I'd actually been twice before, but I offered to go again since a lot of people wanted to go. It also helps that I have a camera, thus I am always invited on these little outings. Kim, a volunteer in the nearby provincial capital of San Miguel, mentioned that she likes to hike, but there aren't that many places to go hiking in San Miguel. Now that there is relatively easy transport between our sites, I asked her if she wanted to come to Cochán for the day and go on a hike. She came over on the early combi, helped make empanadas and we were ready to go, or so we thought. The little group of 8 or so that I had planned to come somehow grew to 17 people. It was a very random group, but it was still a nice hike, and it didn't rain too much. There was very little water compared to when I went before, but this enabled us to cross the river and actually enter where the water fell. Crossing the river was still scary and on the way back when I jumped from rock to rock, my precious metal water bottle fell out and sunk to the bottom of the river. It was very sad, but luckily I still had my camelbak to hold me over.

The next weekend we planned to go on another hike, to some ventanillas in the neighboring district of Tumbaden. I had seen these ventanillas from across the mountain, but i had never actually been there. This was going to be a long hike, so many of the kids's parents wouldn't let them go. We ended up with a good group of 7, but two of the kids went on ahead. They were supposed to wait up for us on the road, but just as I called them my credit on my phone ran out. We were already out of town so there was no way for me to get credit. There was only about a minute of credit between the other four people I was with. One of the girls that went on ahead actually knew the route, and I was the only other person that had any idea where these ventanillas were because I had seen them from a distance. Well, we tried calling but Peruvians tend to be vague about where they are. I ask her where she was, and she told me was "por abajo" which basically means down there. We ended up going another route because one of the kids I was with thought that was the way, and we realized it wasn't when we called the girl again. This time she said she was at the bridge, which isn't very helpful considering there are a million bridges. She then clarified what bridge, and we realized that we were still an hour away from there because of our little detour. We told them to wait for us but we failed to mention that we didn't know the way. When we finally reached the bridge, they were nowhere to be seen. We used the last of the credit to call her, only to find out that she was already up the mountain at the ventanillas. We asked her where the path was and she responded "por alli por alli" which means over there, over there, before our credit ran out for good. I knew the general direction of the ventanillas, but since we couldn't find the path, we spent the next hour climbing and crawling up 1,000 feet in an effort to get up the mountain. All in all, we spent over 4 hours walking, in what should have been a 2 1/2 hour hike. Once we were there, we eventually met up with the two kids that went ahead and enjoyed the ventanillas. I had been to the ventanillas in Cochán, but these were much cooler. After some picture taking and lunch, we walking another 30 minutes to the pueblo of Tumbaden. It started to rain so we took shelter in this little veranda like structure on the plaza. All was good until the town drunk that had been sitting below decided to climb up the stairs and enter our little party. He stumbled up there and took a seat next to us with his belt in his hand. He looked at us and kept whipping his belt around. One of the local kids told us to be careful because he hits, so we gave him an empanada to keep him busy and got out of there as fast as we could. When we were in Tumbaden, we ran into 3 other girls from Cochán, and we all met up and decided to walk back together. We had a 3 hour hike ahead of us, and it was getting late and starting to rain. This time the hike was easier because we actually found the path, and we got back into Cochán just as it was getting dark.

Oooh - Ahhhh

Kim and I, entering the frigid water.

The group in front of the waterfall.

I present the ventanillas of Tumbaden

Lots of ventanillas.

There are some pretty cool and very random ventanillas.

On top of the ventanillas in a Tinaja. See those hills behind me? We had to go down the mountain, up the next one, back down, and up again.

We reached our final destination, Tumbaden, a district capital even smaller than Cochán in the neighboring province of San Pablo.

Music Videos

2009-10-06T08:37:00.001+09:00

I recently purchased a small camcorder to capture some of my last few months on film. The girls in my site had fun with the camcorder, and one weekend we spent the whole day filming different "shoots" for their music video in and around Cochán. I was supposed to edit the video some more but I got lazy. So here is "Amiga" by La Factoria, starring Karla, Paola, Susan, and Cori.

Argentina

2009-09-30T07:21:00.000+09:00

So this is a way overdue post. I mostly blame it on my internet being crappy and not letting me upload pics. A few weeks ago I went on a vacation with my friend Melissa to Argentina. Because I extended for a few more months, I had just enough vacation saved up for this little trip. This was definitely a splurge vacation, and one of the few vacations that I have taken that haven't involved seeing family. We only were in Argentina for 11 days but I think we were able to see alot of the country. First stop was El Calafate, which is way down south where we were able to see one of the few growing glaciers in the world. It was pretty cool to be able to walk on the ice. The one thing that I didn't really realize before this trip was how far south Argentina was. We went at the end of their winter, and since I've been in Peru for the past 2 years, I forgot what real cold felt like. It was very refreshing to feel that cold crisp air of winter. After going to the glaciers we hopped on a flight to Puerto Madryn where we were able to see what the coastal part of Patagonia has to offer. We went whale watching and luckily we weren't disappointed. I had never been whale watching before so I wasn't that excited before. However, we lucked out with sunny skies, and tons of whales really close to shore. We also went to go see the sea elephant colonies. Unfortunately there weren't too many yet because the season had just begun. They are very lazy and just lay there in the sand.

After spending a few days in Patagonia it was back to Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is a very modern city and it reminded me much more of Europe than of South America. The people there are all very tall and pale, especially in comparison to Peru and Ecuador. We actually were able to spend a fair amount of time in Buenos Aires, most of it which was spent on a mission to taste as many different ice cream shops as possible. No one told me before, bt Buenos Aires has incredible ice cream. It is more like the Italian gelato because of all the Italian immigrants. Some people might think that Argentinian food is bland, but for me it was perfect. There was sooo much pasta and gnocchi, great steak, and amazing empanadas. It's a good thing I was only there for a short time!

We were also able to make it up to Iguazu falls which is in the northern part of the country. Unforunately we had cloudy weather for this part of the trip, but the falls were still pretty impressive. We visited both the Brazilian and the Argentinian sides of the falls. When we went to the Brazilian side, I was a little nervous because I was going to use my Ecuadorian passport for the first time. I was so nervous that I was an idiot and left my US passport in the hotel room. The border was only a few minutes drive away, but once we got to the border, we encountered someone on a power trip who detained me because I was illegally in Argentina according to my Ecuadorian passport. Melissa had to go back to the hotel to get my other passport, while I waited at the border. When we crossed into the Brazilian side, I was worried they were going to say something because it's kind of odd giving someone a brand new blank passport. I mean, how did I get to Brazil, if I had no stamps. But they stamped me in no problem, and I didn't have to get the visa to enter Brazil.

The Brazilian side of the falls is cool because you are able to see a panoramic view. It was a little weird because they spoke Portuguese. I'm awful at languages, and I get really confused when I go somewhere where I don't understand the language. On the way back there was a little confusion with out taxi driver who tried to overcharge us a ridiculous amount for when he went back to get my passport. He was half an hour late picking us up though, so I was firm and refused to give in. He decided to haunt us the rest of our stay at Iguazu though, up until we got in the shuttle to leave for the airport. When we went to the Argentina side of the falls, we could really sense just how powerful those falls were. The water level was high so the water was brown, so again, pictures really don't do it justice.

After getting back from Iguazu, we spent a few more days bumming around Buenos Aires. We did take a little day trip into Uruguay, to visit the quaint little town of Colonia. It was a nice little day trip, but let's be honest, we really just went there to say we've been to Uruguay.

So, there's my trip in a nutshell. Hopefully this won't be the last of my travels, but it will be the last until I finish my service in December.

Iguazu Falls

La Boca in Buenos Aires

Practicing my jumping skills in Patagonia

Walking on el Perito Moreno glacier

Lots of ice, yum!

Sea elephants are cute!

Male sea elephants, not so much!

Lucky shot of a whale jumping.

Awkward Huayno Videos

2009-08-30T23:11:00.001+09:00

A few months ago, the engineer that comes and hooks up the internet in my site came by with the huayno singer, El Gallito de Oro, who resides in the nearby provincial capital of San Miguel. This huayno singer, who happens to be a teacher in his spare time (if you've read anything I've written about education here, you'd understand that I'm being completely literal), came to Cochán to film part of his 3rd music DVD. Anyway, they came up to me and asked me if I could help them with the filming of the video. I assumed it was some kind of technical help, but I couldn't understand why. Little did I know, they actually wanted me to be IN the video. Well, I wasn't prepared at all and told them that unfortunately I couldn't dance. I don't like dancing, although I've learned to get by here stomping my feet around and calling that huayno. However, there was no way I was going to have my terrible dancing documented on a DVD that would be sold on the streets in Cajamarca. I thought I was able to get out of the video when I told them I couldn't dance, but they said, that's ok, you can just stand there. So we went out into the grass field and filmed two videos. In the first video he gave this rose and told me to stand there while the huayno singer serenaded me and danced around me. He told me to bop my head up and down to the music, which is something I found challenging because I have no rhythm. He also told me to smile at the camera. To make this even more awkward, a crowd of people from my town who were around decided to come watch me make a fool out of myself. There are no dress rehearsals in these huayno videos, and it was improvisation. Once the first video was done, I thought I was good to go. Unfortunately they wanted to film another song. This time I sat on an 3 wheeled ATV while the huayno singer once again serenaded me and danced around me. Once again, I was told to sway back and forth and move the handle bars and bop my head, while smiling at the camera. Anyway, I think this description is good enough. To capture the true awkwardness of this whole event, I've uploaded a link to one of the videos below. The DVD is currently wrapping up production, but given that I'm a star, I was given a sneak preview. For all those that are interested, the video should be for sale by September 15th, just in time for the San Miguel fiestas. (hey I'm just passing la voz.)

Ancash

2009-07-30T03:26:00.007+09:00

Ancash. I've been meaning to go there for a while, so this year I decided to spend Fiestas Patrias there instead of staying in site for my town's fiestas. My trip down involved two overnight buses and spending the day in Trujillo. I met up with a few other volunteers and we saw the ruins of Chan-Chan. I'm not a big ruins person but I figured that if I had a day to kill, I should see something. These ruins are pre-incan and made out of adobe so the rain washes them away. Nevertheless they were pretty cool. After doing our cultural activity for the day, we mall hopped between 2 malls and had starbucks and McDonald's. Trujillo is almost like Lima. After that was the highlight of my day. I was able to see Harry Potter 6 in English with spanish subtitles. In Cajamarca they were only playing it in Spanish so I wanted to wait to see it in English. It would be been fine in Spanish, but it's WAY better to watch it in English. After that it was an overnight bus ride to Huaraz where Arianna met me in the bus station. I didn't really have any plans for Ancash, except to eat good food and go on a hike to see this glacier lake that I had seen pictures of. There were a lot of Volunteers in Ancash, but I was the only one from my group because almost everyone is COS-ing in the next few weeks. The cool thing about Huaraz is that it is a trekking mecca. Right now it's the high season so there are a ton of tourists coming through to go on treks, climb some mountains, etc. As a result there are a lot of great restaurants that cater to tourists. This includes two coffee shops that have wireless internet and serve American Breakfasts all day. This could have easily been the highlight of my trip, and I definitely probably spent half my time just hanging out in the coffee shops trying to order as much food as possible. They had real Belgian waffles, french toast, pancakes, and bagels. I haven't really even been able to find these foods in Lima! When I wasn't sitting around stuffing my face, I was able to get out and see a little of Ancash. I stayed in Ari's site, which is located 11km outside the city. One day a big group of Volunteers went and saw Pastorouri, which is this rapidly receding glacier. It's normally closed but they opened it up for Fiestas Patrias. Several people had trouble with the walk, and for once I appreciated living at 10,000 feet because I didn't have to acclimitize. The next day we convinced two other volunteers to go on a hike with us to Laguna 69. This is a day trek located several hours walking from the popular Llaganucho. I had seen pictures of this laguna and it was really the only thing I wanted to do in Ancash. The hike was a few hours, but it really wasn't that bad. I think it's because I'm used to hiking with kids in my site who run ahead and like to go on trails that don't exist. Compared to that, it was a cake-walk. The walk was definitely worth it and at the top we reached this laguna that was so blue it looked like they dyed it. It reminded me of cool-aid or blue raspberry flavor. Once I was able to get out of Huaraz, I was really able to appreciate the beauty of Ancash. There was snow-capped mountains everywhere, and we were able to get pretty close to them.

Chan chan ruins

Some special kind of gigantic plant that only grows up there. Puya raimondi or something like that.

SNOW!!

The rapidly receding glacier

The first glacial lake

The beginning of the hike

On the way up.

The water looks like it is dyed. It reminds me of the stuff you put in your toilet, that or a blue raspberry otter pop!!

So excited to arrive at Laguna 69!!!

This was the one of the only signs marking the trail.

Another lake, on the way up to Laguna 69

Damn Swine Flu

2009-07-24T07:17:00.003+09:00

So remember the swine flu? The thing that everyone was panicking about back in the states a few months ago? Well, they are still panicking about it here in Peru. I came back from Lima a few weeks ago, ready to finish up my classes before winter break started. Unfortunately they decided to move vacations up, and cancel classes early because of the swine flu. I believe in the middle of July there were 7 cases in Cajamarca, but over 2,000 in Lima. It was all anyone could talk about and the stories just kept getting more and more blown out of proportion. I laugh at their paranoia but then again, I have the advantage of having great health care, as well as my peace corps issued Tamiflu medicine (and mask, that I lost) in my site. Anyway, life has been kind of boring lately. Well the first week of vacation was perfect, because I was able to finish working on the final edition of Pasa La Voz, the Peace Corps Peru magazine, that I have to edit. I sent it out on Monday and while there are still errors in it, it's done, and turned out pretty awesome in my opinion. After I turned in the magazine, I have spent the past few days trying to get my computer to charge. I literally sit there for hours plugging and unplugging my computer. It's very fickle and has just gotten worse. My charger is fine, the battery (old as it is) is also fine, so I'm a little worried that something else more costly is wrong with it. The only Apple authorized repair dealer is in Lima, and I don't have any plans on stopping by there until September. So here is to hoping that it will last that long!

This weekend we have a five day weekend for Fiestas Patrias - celebrating Peru's independence. Last year I was just coming back from a long vacation in Ecuador with the family so I decided to stay in site. It also happens to be my town's fiesta that weekend. Last year a pretty well known band called Agua Marina came, as well as a day of bullfights. This year they didn't really get their act together and for a while it was unsure if the fiesta would even happen. I didn't want to stick around and waste that free vacation so this weekend I'm going to head over to Ancash. It's one area of the country that I still haven't seen, and it's on my list so I'm pretty excited. It's supposed to be beautiful with snowcapped mountains. I'm sure I'll have plenty of pictures next entry.

On a final note, my host family just told me that they heard that they were extending vacations another week because of the swine flu. I was about ready to scream! I'm not too surprised though. There is always a reason not to have school. For those of you who are counting, I should be just about done with my service. In fact, some people in my group are leaving tomorrow! Assuming I get my act together and get my visa approved, I'm going to stay a few more months to finish out the school year here, and leave in December.

The last post was pretty picture heavy I'll leave you with just one photo. I really do love my

newly purchased hat, but unfortunately it's been raining these past few days so I haven't had many opportunities to wear it.

Centros Turisticos de Cochán

2009-07-12T23:37:00.009+09:00

These past few weeks I've been pretty busy. I agreed to help a teacher in the colegio with a project on the tourist locations in Cochán. Yes there are tourist locations in Cochán, but the only people that go visit them are people that live in Cochán. Anyway, for this project, we divided the 5th grade of the colegio into 4 groups of 10. On Tuesday and Thursday for two weeks, we went on 4 different paseos to get to know the tourist spots in Cochán. We borrowed a camcorder and I came along to take pictures of the different tourist spots. I think I also came along to take pictures of the kids because the kids definitely used this opportunity to have some photo shoots. Some of these spots I had already been to, while others were new. Each paseo we had to get up before dawn to cook our lunch that we were bringing. Most of the time the kids made me chicken, but on one of the paseos I volunteered to get up and help the kids at 3 in the morning. They made cuy and empanadas. I think I really must enjoy cuy now because by the time we ate cuy it was cold and there was still hair on it, but I still ate it, and liked it. The concept of sack lunches doesn't really exist here. On every paseo the kids brought rice, potatoes, cheese, meat, etc. I was amazed at the amount of food they brought. For all the food they brought, they almost never brought anything to drink. I warned the kids ahead of time that I would be bringing over two liters of water, but I wasn't going to share. They still didn't listen to me and most would watch in envy as I drank water from my camelbak during all the climbs uphill. All of these paseos involved at least 6-7 hours hiking a day. I can keep up for the most part but I start to fall behind when we leave the trails and go climbing up and down steep and dangerous parts. Luckily in almost every group, there were a few kids that live in the actual town of Cochán, and don't walk 2 hours daily to get to school. I could always count on these kids to be behind me. We are supposedly in summer here, but on all but one of the paseos, it rained on us. I almost always somehow stepped in a huge puddle of mud, and my shoes and clothes just got trashed. After the 4 paseos, we took one last paseo with anyone that wanted to go. We ended up with a group of 20 kids and went to the upper limits of the district of Cochán and 4,000 meters. There were a bunch of big rocks up there, but unfortunately it was rainy and freezing so the pictures didn't turn out that great. I should probably mention that the kids had to do reports on each of their paseos and we are going to develop the best photos, and edit a filim and have an exhibition. It was supposed to be during the school anniversary, but classes were cancelled two weeks early because of the gripe porcina. But I'll save that for another post. Below are a ton of pictures, but if for some reason you are dying to see more, I posted an album on facebook.

In front of condac

Down by the river

in front of some ventanillas

surrounding the tinaja

Tinaja

Ancient drawings

In some cave with drawings

Walking

Paseo #3 in front of el catillo

Nowhere to go but up

Paseo #3 in front of the ventanillas

Some ventanillas

In front of the fallen man.

Paseo #4 in search of the Inca Trail

Still working on the jumping

Abandoned ruins

We got hailed on

Kids climbing rocks

Rocks at 4,000 meters

Sapo - do you see it?

Some cave

Trying to make Pyramids

Education and Bees

2009-06-27T01:31:00.008+09:00

It is now June and my classes are up and running. The schedule is pretty much set and the kids go full day (at least until October when it might start to rain again). Of course now that it's summer time, the fiestas have started. There are always teachers or students missing school for a fiesta or to go play volleyball or soccer in the anniversary of some far away school. However, I do that best i can and I am pretty busy teaching during the weekdays. I'm teaching a bunch of different classes in the escuela, two of them being english to the 6th graders, aka 11 year olds. This is the first time I've really attempted to teach English since arriving in Cochán. I've helped out with a bunch of different classes, but I had never before taught from the beginning. These kids didn't know anything so it's hard to figure out where to begin, especially when it's only 1.5 hours a week. Here in Cochán, the teachers teach the same class from 1st grade until 6th grade. One their class graduates, the teachers then return to the 1st grade and follow the new group of students around until they graduate. I can definitely see the benefits of this because the kids don't have to get used to a new teacher, and the teacher can see their progress. You also don't have to worry about lack of information because each teacher knows what they've taught. However, after teaching English classes to both 6th grade sections, I'm starting to think that this system might not be the best idea. For example, after I gave the first English exam, one section had an average of 12 (out of 20), while the other class averaged 6 (out of 20). Since then, the other class has studied more, but one section consistently outscores the other section. I'm sure there are many factors for this, one being that the kids in the higher scoring section are mostly girls that know me better and therefore are more motivated to study. However, that section also always turns their homework in on time, whereas the other section frequently turns it in late. I'm not saying that one teacher is better than the other, but 6 years with the same teacher is a lot. I think one of the teachers is stricter so the kids know that it's important to turn their homework in on time and study for the exams. So maybe these kids are more used to my style of teaching and that is why they score better on their exams. I think that could be another reason why so many kids struggle once they reach the colegio. They learn how to read and write from the same teacher and only have one teacher up until high school. Then when they reach high school they are suddenly in classes that two or three times the size, and on top of that, they have to deal with several different teachers and teaching styles. I might have mentioned this before, but last year 18 kids repeated the first grade of the colegio. So this year in the first grade of the colegio there are 18 kids who are in the first grade for the second time, and 17 kids who are new. Well I think that ends my thoughts on education here in Peru. Please remember that these are just my thoughts and opinions, I have a lot of free time to think about this kind of stuff!! And now onto the pictures...

One of the things that I love about the Peace Corps is that every day is different. Even when I'm teaching, I have several different kind of classes that I teach, so I don't get bored with teaching the same things. Now that I have switched host families, I am finding that there are more things to do on the weekends. My old host family was very busy working the store, so they hardly ever left. My new host family has older kids, and are teachers so they are free on the weekends. Last weekend their uncle asked if we wanted to go to his house to get honey. I of course, jumped at the opportunity. His house is in one of the caserios about an hour's walk away, and I love to get out of town and walk when it's possible. This was my third time going to this caserio, but the first time without boots. It's amazing how much easier and shorter the walk can seem without boots. Once we got to his house we pretty much just spent the day chewing on honeycombs and viruses.

What' this you ask? VIRUS of course. It's the best thing about choclo season. All around town everyone, young and old, can be seen munching on virus. It kind of has the same flavor as watermelon, it's the cheap Peruvian candy.

Preparing the honey.

Yummy Honey

More honey

One of my favorite meals here. I love that everything is so natural. The corn and potatoes they just picked from the fields, and the quesillo, something in between milk and cheese, they made from the cows that they just milked that day.

Doing my best to keep the bees away. I've also decided that after almost two years here it's about time to invest in a sombrero. Now I just need to find one that fits my enormous head.

Camp ALMA

2009-06-16T23:55:00.008+09:00

Last weekend was Camp ALMA in Cajamarca. Last year we had a VALOR camp which was a leadership camp for boys, and this year it was ALMA, the leadership camp for girls.

Last year when it came time to pick the boys from my site, I didn't even know where to begin. The school year had just begun and while I knew a bunch of girls in the school, I hardly knew ANY of the boys. I ended up doing a survey without names to pick people fairly. Once I found out who won, the names didn't mean anything to me because I didn't know who they were. This time around it was a lot tougher. I've been here a year longer so naturally I know a lot more people. But what was even harder is that I know ALL of the girls in the 4th and 5th grade, especially the 5th grade. Everyone was begging to go, so I knew the only way to choose people was through a survey without reading the names. In a town this small it would be easy for people to accuse me of just picking my "friends." In the end two of the girls that ended up winning I know extremely well, one of them is actually my new host sister. Three of the girls that ended up going are in the 5th grade of the colegio, and then one girl ended up going from the 4th grade. The three girls in the 5th grade have not only been to Cajamarca before, but they all have houses there and spend their vacations there. The girl in the 4th grade is extremely poor, lives with her grandmother, has an identical twin, but was one of m top students in computer classes during both vacations. This camp is a once in a lifetime opportunity for most girls in general, but this one girl had never been to Cajamarca before, or even left Cochán. I can't imagine what was going through her head. Unfortunately we didn't have much time before or after the camp to explore Cajamarca, but I tried to squeeze in some time so that she could see the Plaza de Armas and the mall. The other girls all wanted to make sure that she could go to the mall so that she could ride the escalator and the elevator, the biggest attractions in Cajamarca, didn't you know?

Going back to the actual camp, I think it turned out to be a success. I had a bigger role this time in the planning and I, along with a fellow Peru 9er was basically in charge of the whole thing. It was a little stressful and unfortunately that meant that I couldn't interact with the girls much because we constantly had to be making sure that everything was going as planned. The camp was basically like any other camp and there were games, crafts, yoga, dancing, and small group discussions. We also had an obstetriz come talk about sexuality and I think that was one of the best parts of the camp. It usually tends to be because sexuality isn't something that is taught in schools, and kids aren't usually given the opportunity to ask many questions. Going along with that whole theme, we also gave the kids eggs that they had to carry around all weekend as if they were their children. They got pretty into it and I was very impressed at how well they were able to decorate their eggs. Because this is Peru, there were definitily some things that didn't go as planned, including the unforseen wedding that was booked where we were staying that resulted in music blasting until 4 in the morning. However, like I said before, and especially after talking to the girls that I brought to the camp, I think the camp turned out very well.

Tye-dying the tshirts

The girls learning yoga

The girls and the Volunteers

Their baby eggs

The 4 girls I brought from Cochán at the mall were we rode the escalator ate indulged in a lot of ice cream.

Bowdoin 5 Year Reunion

2009-06-05T23:09:00.000+09:00

So right after my COS conference, I went to the states for 5 days. This was my second trip back to the states, but both trips were less than a week. This trip was completely different than my first trip back. My first trip was home for Christmas and I didn't see any friends, and mostly just hung out with my family and played games. It felt like any other holiday back at home for the past 8 years or so, when I went away to college. However, this trip was very different because I was going to my 5 year college reunion at Bowdoin. It's weird enough to pretend you are back in college again, but the added factor of living in the middle of nowhere in Peru makes it a little odder. Nevertheless it was great to go back and see all my friends. Most of my friends from college are all spread out so I haven't seen a lot of them in a long time. Unfortunately I didn't win the award for coming the farthest, that would have to go to my friend Jen who came from Hong Kong. Being back at college was great. I forgot how beautiful Maine is when it's sunny. The food was wonderful as usual, and it was hard deciding what to eat! I hit up the outlet stores, and bought way too many smart wool socks and fleeces, but I don't know when I'll be back! After the reunion ended, I headed to Boston and got to see a few more friends and spent the next day running around doing some last minute shopping before heading back on a plane to Peru. Once back in Peru I got to spend the entire next day at the dentist's office getting 8 cavities filled. My poor poor teeth!

Hanging out at the beach

I heart Maine

GO U BEARS!!

Eating CANADIAN lobster, yeah, I know.

Sand and COS

2009-05-24T23:27:00.009+09:00

A few weeks ago I finally moved host families. So far everything is great, and I even have a stove so I can cook omelettes, because that is pretty much all I know how to make. I'll try to take a picture and post it when I get back from my trip. Speaking of trip, I am currently in Lima. We had our Close of Service (COS) conference this week because my group officially ends their service this August. It's the last time that everyone from Peru 9 was together as a group. Before the COS conference started, 10 of us went down to Huacachina in Ica, a 5 hour bus ride south of Lima. Huacachina was a natural oasis in the desert but now all of the wells have depleted their natural water so they have to pump the lake with water. It is basically gringo land but it was nice to spend a day in the sun and by the pool. The main attraction there is to go out on dunebuggys and go sandboarding. Sandboarding is the same concept as snowboarding but we all heard it was quite hard and dangerous, so almost all of us just went down headfirst on our belly, which was a lot of fun! The COS conference was spent about half an hour south of Lima and it addressed the logistics of the process of finishing our service. After the conference ended we all get to spend one last night in Lima together. I am still in Lima because tomorrow I will be spending 3 days working on editing the Peace Corps Peru magazine, Pasa La Voz, and then I will hop on a plane to the US to go to my college reunion!

The dunebuggy

I love sand

It's like sledding!

Sanboarding

The oasis of Huacachina

After our guide took 3 failed jumping attempts, I took over the camera.

The entire Peru 9 group

The rest of April

2009-05-01T09:28:00.000+09:00

After Semana Santa, my APCD came for her second site visit. It was pretty much a disaster due to my host family telling lies. I was already thinking of moving, but that pretty much gave me no choice. I still like my host family most of the time, but it's just frustrating how much they try to take advantage of me, especially when my bosses come. The move is slowly happening because the room I was going to move into was occupied and we had to wait for the man to come back from Cajamarca to move his stuff into the downstairs room. I am going to miss my old room though just because I've been there for over a year and a half. My new room is bigger so I can cook in it, but it doesn't have a window or balcony facing the street. I'm very nosy and I love to stare out my window onto the street, so I'm going to miss that! I'm currently in Cajamarca buying stuff for my new room. It seems kind of silly to buy stuff when I have so little time left, but I need to be able to cook and have a place to put my clothes. I went to the grocery store today with the intention of buying food to cook. I forgot that I don't really know how to cook and I came back with marshmallows, chocolate milk, pam spray, nesquick, sillao (I don't even know what that is!), and clavo del olor (I don't know what this is either, all I know is that you use it to make dulce de berenjena). I also bought some avocados and onions to make guacamole. The only thing I can think of cooking are eggs and desserts. Hopefully I'll be inspired once back at site.

Besides waiting to move, things at site are finally starting to pick up. The escuela started going full day so I marched over there and made my schedule with the teachers. Of course it rained the next day so they decided to only go half day the rest of the week and the next week, but luckily all of my classes are in the morning. For now I'm doing a self-esteem taller to both 5th grades, and I gave in and agreed to teach English to both of the 6th grades. I am probably going to work with a few other grades but I need to figure out my schedule in the colegio first. The colegio was still only going half day until this week!

Another birthday passed, my golden birthday in fact so now I am 27. I never understood why people didn't like to say how old they were, but the older I get the more I understand. I wasn't expecting much yet even with low expectations you can still be disappointed. In the morning one of the families invited me over for a surprise breakfast of cake and empanadas, my favorite! That was really nice and unexpected. Another lady invited me to my favorite dessert of dulce de berenjena. I didn't tell my host family this year because last year they knew and didn't even wish me a happy birthday. They found out though and my host mom did wish me a happy birthday, but I still went to bed hungry because they didn't make an egg for dinner, just rice. Let's just say I'm glad this was my last birthday in Peru.

I haven't taken too many pictures lately because I haven't been entering the colegio. I don't want to get bombarded like last year, with everyone posing for pictures! The other day I was finally able to check something off my list of things I wanted to do. I finally saw a cow give birth. I was really lucky because this cow lives super close, gave birth in the afternoon, and it wasn't raining! I was a little camera happy.

Cutting the sac with scissors to get the process going. Those are the little legs sticking out.

The cow was like this for a good half hour. We finally had to go hide until she started pushing some more. Apparently cows get embrassed too.

It's head emerged.

Coaxing the cow to push.

Just hanging.

One last push and it came flying out.

It's a girl!