Yippie! Today is Joel´s birthday...it´s not panning out excatly how I wanted it to, but it´s still swell. It is raining in El Bolson. First rain we´ve seen since leaving Cochabamba, Bolivia about a month ago. And it has to be today! Why?
But a little rain isn´t going to stop me from giving Joel a fantabulous day. I went out venturing in the rain to the grocery store, found the closest thing to bacon (appently Canadian Bacon is a Canadian thing), some eggs, cheese, and freshly baked buns. Then I made us some yummy egg-bacon bunwiches. I think it´s the best breakfast I´ve had since leaving Canada. Aaaannnddd, to top it all off, I did all the dishes. Special Joel.
I also bought him some handmade fudge, because baking a cake is just too hard with a Wisper Lite stove! And a bracelet made by some rad hippie who told me El Bolson is a magical place. It sure is.
So all in all, a fantastic day for us, despite the rain. I think we´ll be going out for a steak dinner tonight, which is a big treat because we haven´t had steak since Millie and Jim took us out in Cochabamba.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
More Bliss
Last night when we got back to our dirty, noisy campsite in San Martin, I realized what I forgot to write about yesterday.
We saw a Tarantula! It was the second time we hiked up to Los Lagos, and there he was, just chillin on the side of the path. He just sat there. Joel went to get the camera out...and the batteries died. Of course, eh? But we saw him (or her), it was sooo huge and furry. Eeww. I´m getting shivers just thinking about it.
And, we spent the night of the 23rd in Pucon and stayed at a campground on Lago Villarrica, it was a cloudy day making for the coolest sunset ever. Pucon has Volcan Villarrica in the background, and the snow and steam off the top from the Volcan turned pink! Amazing. We have pictures I´d love to share, but unfortunately this computer doesn´t recognize our memory card.
Tomorrow we take a bus to El Bolson (6 hours) and will probably be there for a bit.
It doesn´t look like we´ll be going too much futher South. Bus tickets get too expensive. For us to get to and from Torres del Paine it would be over $700. Ouch. I guess it waits for another trip (Hanna & Craig - you in?). Joel is sooo dissapointed. But staying in one place for a few weeks will help the budget and my back from carrying my backpack around.
It has been another language twist for us here. Just as I was starting to understand some Chilian Spanish we come to another country that has their own ways of saying things. The ´ll´ isn´t a ´y´ sound anymore, it´s a ´jy´ or something like that. And the number 8 isn´t pronounced ´ocho´ it´s like ´hoacho´ or something. We dropped of lanundry (yea! no more funky smell!) and the woman said something with ´hoacho´ but we had no idea what she said. We replied ¨no entiendo [I don´t understand] ´hoacho´¨ and she looked at us really funny. She wrote down 8:00 on a paper, and we exclaimed ¨oh, ocho!¨ and she said ¨sì¨. Oh boy. I miss Bolivia and Peru with their phonetically correct speaking.
¡Ciao!
We saw a Tarantula! It was the second time we hiked up to Los Lagos, and there he was, just chillin on the side of the path. He just sat there. Joel went to get the camera out...and the batteries died. Of course, eh? But we saw him (or her), it was sooo huge and furry. Eeww. I´m getting shivers just thinking about it.
And, we spent the night of the 23rd in Pucon and stayed at a campground on Lago Villarrica, it was a cloudy day making for the coolest sunset ever. Pucon has Volcan Villarrica in the background, and the snow and steam off the top from the Volcan turned pink! Amazing. We have pictures I´d love to share, but unfortunately this computer doesn´t recognize our memory card.
Tomorrow we take a bus to El Bolson (6 hours) and will probably be there for a bit.
It doesn´t look like we´ll be going too much futher South. Bus tickets get too expensive. For us to get to and from Torres del Paine it would be over $700. Ouch. I guess it waits for another trip (Hanna & Craig - you in?). Joel is sooo dissapointed. But staying in one place for a few weeks will help the budget and my back from carrying my backpack around.
It has been another language twist for us here. Just as I was starting to understand some Chilian Spanish we come to another country that has their own ways of saying things. The ´ll´ isn´t a ´y´ sound anymore, it´s a ´jy´ or something like that. And the number 8 isn´t pronounced ´ocho´ it´s like ´hoacho´ or something. We dropped of lanundry (yea! no more funky smell!) and the woman said something with ´hoacho´ but we had no idea what she said. We replied ¨no entiendo [I don´t understand] ´hoacho´¨ and she looked at us really funny. She wrote down 8:00 on a paper, and we exclaimed ¨oh, ocho!¨ and she said ¨sì¨. Oh boy. I miss Bolivia and Peru with their phonetically correct speaking.
¡Ciao!
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Bliss.
After Pichilemu (last post) we continued our jouney south. Straight to Temuco to the Sandvigs. A comfortable bed and yummy food. A good time with *sorta* family (sister-in-law´s husband´s family). The Sandvig´s were amazing to us, they picked us up from the bus station at midnight (thanks Eric and Tim!) and brought us back to their place, fed us, and we slept in their guest cabin. The perks of having missionary family is that they all seem to have guest cabins on their property. They took us on a tour of Temuco, let me shop to my hearts content (and wallets pain) in the plaza, and found us white gas for our camp stove. Then they took us to Parque National Huerquehue, where we did a 7km hike upto tres lagos (three lakes). On route we saw a male and female red headed woodpecker, two parrots (Chile has parrots!), and tons of lizards. It was a great hike, sort of like hiking in BC, but all the flora and fauna is different. At the top we could see the infamous Monkey Puzzle trees. I´ve seen some planted in gardens in Victoria, but it takes upwards of 400 years for them to mature, so they look nowhere´s near as cool!
The Sandvig´s left after the hike, leaving Joel and I and our 7 days of food to chill out (we bought groceries in Temuco). We had this rad little private campsite, down from the trail where no one could see us. We spent 8 days there (grabbed some avacados and some home made bread from a provision store by the park for the extra day). We did lots of swimming - I have missed swimming in a fresh water lake soooo much, Victoria is definately lacking for fresh water. We suntanned, I actually have some colour to myself...but I´m still pretty white. Sometime mid stay we hiked up to the lakes again, swam and suntanned up there. Everynight we played Backgammon and Cribbage. Joel beat me almost every game. *tear* We also had to wash our laundry up there. It was the first time having to do all our clothes by hand. I suck at handwashing. My clothes still have a bit of a funk to them. Oh well.
We caught a bus from Pucon, Chile to San Martin de los Andes, Argentina today. The border crossing went smoothly (finally, hurray!) We´re just stopping through here for a couple of nights before continuing south to El Bolson. I think we´ll be spending a few weeks around El Bolson, it looks like a lovely little town of homemade bread and homebrewed beer. I would like to settle down somewhere for a bit. The bus has gotten tiring and expensive.
Oh - wait. I haven´t talked about how I LOVE that it´s fruit season here. Mmmm. I´ve been eating avacados, peaches, nectarines, and blueberries everyday. Bliss. Hopefully by the time peaches come into season at home I´ll be ready to can some....
The Sandvig´s left after the hike, leaving Joel and I and our 7 days of food to chill out (we bought groceries in Temuco). We had this rad little private campsite, down from the trail where no one could see us. We spent 8 days there (grabbed some avacados and some home made bread from a provision store by the park for the extra day). We did lots of swimming - I have missed swimming in a fresh water lake soooo much, Victoria is definately lacking for fresh water. We suntanned, I actually have some colour to myself...but I´m still pretty white. Sometime mid stay we hiked up to the lakes again, swam and suntanned up there. Everynight we played Backgammon and Cribbage. Joel beat me almost every game. *tear* We also had to wash our laundry up there. It was the first time having to do all our clothes by hand. I suck at handwashing. My clothes still have a bit of a funk to them. Oh well.
We caught a bus from Pucon, Chile to San Martin de los Andes, Argentina today. The border crossing went smoothly (finally, hurray!) We´re just stopping through here for a couple of nights before continuing south to El Bolson. I think we´ll be spending a few weeks around El Bolson, it looks like a lovely little town of homemade bread and homebrewed beer. I would like to settle down somewhere for a bit. The bus has gotten tiring and expensive.
Oh - wait. I haven´t talked about how I LOVE that it´s fruit season here. Mmmm. I´ve been eating avacados, peaches, nectarines, and blueberries everyday. Bliss. Hopefully by the time peaches come into season at home I´ll be ready to can some....
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Catch up.
So much to write. So many adventures. Too little time.
I´ll work forward.
Bolivia: Oruro to Uyuni
We should have listened to the guide book. It said not to take the bus from Oruro to Uyuni, but we didn´t think to check the train schedule before leaving Cochabamba. Bad idea. The only seats left on the train were third class of the second class train. We decided to take the bus, it had to be better, right? Probably not, I´m sure the train wouldn´t have had a flat tire, forded 4 large rivers, backed up a half dozen times, drove through a few farmers fields, tried to help another bus that was suck (that took an hour, and it didn´t get unstuck), all equalling a 7 hour ride turned into 12. Oh, and Joel and I booked seats at the very back, where instead of the usual four seats (two each side of the aisle), there were five. The bus had an extra seat placed in the middle, which wasn´t the size of a regular seat (much smaller). Of course it had to be the smelliest (manure - gross), largest old man ever. I tried to protect my bubble by holding my elbows out so he got a jab in the kidneys every bump (note that Bolivian roads are actually a series of potholes). He then tried to get even by pretending to fall asleep - half on me. Soooo uncomfortable. I´m trying to purge my mind of this bus ride, but I´m still haunted. Anyways, lets never speak of this again.
Salar de Uyuni and Lagunas Tour
I looooveeeddd the 4x4 tour! See pictures on Facebook. And this is a small number of them, I think Joel took 500 or so photos. The tour cost $70 each, for 48 hours (3 days, two nights) of travel, food (some questionable) and accomidations (also questionable). We were told that our tour guide would speak English (he didn´t) and it would be a newish silver Landcruiser (definately wasn´t). But Pedro, our guide, ended up being a rad Bolivian guy with a great sense of humor, who spoke slow enough Spanish that Joel and I could understand. When we didn´t catch what he said one of the 4 other people in our vehicle (all multi-lingual) would translate. We ended up with a great group, two other couples, one Swiss pair, and an Argentinian-Swiss couple. Everyone was up for exploring, chasing llamas, climbing rocks, and playing cards at night. We couldn´t have asked for a better group.
I have a hard time putting into words what we saw. The first day was the Salt Flats, thousands of hectares of a dried up inland sea covered in salt. It´s the rainy season right now, so most of it´s submursed, but we were able to see parts of it. The water creates a perfect reflection for the snow capped mountains and dazzles the eyes with the suns rays. We had a fun time playing with optical illusion shots, with people being big and small since the land is perfectly flat and no vegetation. But it hurt to walk on! Like I said, the ground is covered salt, which are crystal forms. It was like walking on little shards of glass. And our legs were covered in dried salt after. *yum*
Next was the laguna tours, we visited 5 or 6. They´re all very different from each other due to different chemical or biotic make ups. On is borax, another is red coloured planton (that the flamingos eat, making them pink), and some other stuff that I can´t remember. There was one lagoon with hundreds of thousands of flamingos, which made me very very happy (and Joel´s photography happy).
Chile
The trip had the option of hopping over the border to Chile at San Pedro de Atacama. Us and another couple chose this route...what a culture shock, and budget shock! Everything was the same price as Canada, cars stopped at intersections, the baños were relatively clean. We caught the bus the next day for Santiago, 24 hours. That bus ride was mostly pleasent, as pleasent as 24 hours on a bus can be, really. The seats reclined almost the whole way, and were huge and cushy. They showed videos, in Spanish, with Spanish subtitles. Oh well. I still think I caught most of Shrek 3.
Then we spent 2 nights in Santiago in a rambling old mansion. We went on a mission to find Nalgene water bottles (we brought 3 down and lost all of them *grrr*) and English books. However, Chile has a 19% tax on books (lame) so 2 cost us over $50. We tried to find white gas for our stove, but mission unsuccessful. No one seems to know where to find it down here (Craig! Help!) I don´t know what we´ll do if we don´t find any.
So now we are in a little surf town called Pichilemu. But we haven´t surfed yet due to sunburns, but for once it´s not me! Joel crisped himself quite nicely yesterday on the beach. I remembered my sunscrean, Joel didn´t. We hope to get out on the water tomorrow, but a sunburn and rubbing wetsuit don´t match well. We are camping at a little campground, well, really a woman´s yard. She takes her role as a hostess very seriously and boils me water for tea (no stove, remember). It´s very cute.
Sorry for the novel. That´s all for now.
I´ll work forward.
Bolivia: Oruro to Uyuni
We should have listened to the guide book. It said not to take the bus from Oruro to Uyuni, but we didn´t think to check the train schedule before leaving Cochabamba. Bad idea. The only seats left on the train were third class of the second class train. We decided to take the bus, it had to be better, right? Probably not, I´m sure the train wouldn´t have had a flat tire, forded 4 large rivers, backed up a half dozen times, drove through a few farmers fields, tried to help another bus that was suck (that took an hour, and it didn´t get unstuck), all equalling a 7 hour ride turned into 12. Oh, and Joel and I booked seats at the very back, where instead of the usual four seats (two each side of the aisle), there were five. The bus had an extra seat placed in the middle, which wasn´t the size of a regular seat (much smaller). Of course it had to be the smelliest (manure - gross), largest old man ever. I tried to protect my bubble by holding my elbows out so he got a jab in the kidneys every bump (note that Bolivian roads are actually a series of potholes). He then tried to get even by pretending to fall asleep - half on me. Soooo uncomfortable. I´m trying to purge my mind of this bus ride, but I´m still haunted. Anyways, lets never speak of this again.
Salar de Uyuni and Lagunas Tour
I looooveeeddd the 4x4 tour! See pictures on Facebook. And this is a small number of them, I think Joel took 500 or so photos. The tour cost $70 each, for 48 hours (3 days, two nights) of travel, food (some questionable) and accomidations (also questionable). We were told that our tour guide would speak English (he didn´t) and it would be a newish silver Landcruiser (definately wasn´t). But Pedro, our guide, ended up being a rad Bolivian guy with a great sense of humor, who spoke slow enough Spanish that Joel and I could understand. When we didn´t catch what he said one of the 4 other people in our vehicle (all multi-lingual) would translate. We ended up with a great group, two other couples, one Swiss pair, and an Argentinian-Swiss couple. Everyone was up for exploring, chasing llamas, climbing rocks, and playing cards at night. We couldn´t have asked for a better group.
I have a hard time putting into words what we saw. The first day was the Salt Flats, thousands of hectares of a dried up inland sea covered in salt. It´s the rainy season right now, so most of it´s submursed, but we were able to see parts of it. The water creates a perfect reflection for the snow capped mountains and dazzles the eyes with the suns rays. We had a fun time playing with optical illusion shots, with people being big and small since the land is perfectly flat and no vegetation. But it hurt to walk on! Like I said, the ground is covered salt, which are crystal forms. It was like walking on little shards of glass. And our legs were covered in dried salt after. *yum*
Next was the laguna tours, we visited 5 or 6. They´re all very different from each other due to different chemical or biotic make ups. On is borax, another is red coloured planton (that the flamingos eat, making them pink), and some other stuff that I can´t remember. There was one lagoon with hundreds of thousands of flamingos, which made me very very happy (and Joel´s photography happy).
Chile
The trip had the option of hopping over the border to Chile at San Pedro de Atacama. Us and another couple chose this route...what a culture shock, and budget shock! Everything was the same price as Canada, cars stopped at intersections, the baños were relatively clean. We caught the bus the next day for Santiago, 24 hours. That bus ride was mostly pleasent, as pleasent as 24 hours on a bus can be, really. The seats reclined almost the whole way, and were huge and cushy. They showed videos, in Spanish, with Spanish subtitles. Oh well. I still think I caught most of Shrek 3.
Then we spent 2 nights in Santiago in a rambling old mansion. We went on a mission to find Nalgene water bottles (we brought 3 down and lost all of them *grrr*) and English books. However, Chile has a 19% tax on books (lame) so 2 cost us over $50. We tried to find white gas for our stove, but mission unsuccessful. No one seems to know where to find it down here (Craig! Help!) I don´t know what we´ll do if we don´t find any.
So now we are in a little surf town called Pichilemu. But we haven´t surfed yet due to sunburns, but for once it´s not me! Joel crisped himself quite nicely yesterday on the beach. I remembered my sunscrean, Joel didn´t. We hope to get out on the water tomorrow, but a sunburn and rubbing wetsuit don´t match well. We are camping at a little campground, well, really a woman´s yard. She takes her role as a hostess very seriously and boils me water for tea (no stove, remember). It´s very cute.
Sorry for the novel. That´s all for now.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Greetings from Chile
Hi everyone, internet is really expensive here so Im just keeping it short. We are in santiago after a wonderful tour of southwestern bolivia. This is better shown in the pictures on face book which are posted on jens profile or under my posted items on my profile, than with words. Not to say that words wont be coming soon. We are safe and we are healthy. We need to get out of chile as quickly as possible because it is well damaging to the budget. We here argentina is much cheaper. Being here is like being in Canada in terms of development and expense. Except that we cant understand a word these people say. Peru and Bolivians talk much slower and dont sound like hummingbirds. No offense to the chileans in the family, but this is ridiculous. other countries dont pronounce cocacola like cocoa. We use the same words that we use in other countries down here but they dont seem to work...oh well its kinda entertaining. much love for all. Joel.
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