Mike & Susie

La Recoleta Cemetery

Mike & Susie — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:52:06 +0000

With a good dose of irony we ended our trip in a cemetery.

La Recoleta cemetery is a very famous, very old place in a very expensive part of Buenos Aires. Presidents, generals, scientists, and most famously Eva Peron are buried here.

The architect designed it to look like city streets. Some of the mausoleums are immaculate while others are run down.

Catching up #2

Mike & Susie — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:15:37 +0000

We tried out doing the most “touristy” thing we could do when we were stuck in Puno, Peru. We went to a dinner/show place called Los balcones of Puno. & it was incredible. The musicians (esp. the flutists), the dancers, the costumes & the story & culural history behind each dance & each song. Here’s some pics:

Catching up #1

Mike & Susie — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:02:32 +0000

We are sitting in a cafe in downtown Buenos Aires. Mike is watching futbol & I’m thinking it’s a good time to catch up on some posts I did a while back that were deleted by the iPhone.
Tumbes: The first city we arrived in, in Peru. It was too late to keep traveling that night. So staying in Tumbes was a happy accident. We stumbled on a giant, beautiful, intricate & emotive 3-dimensional mosaic. I have many pictures of it here, including the mosaic writing on the back & the plaque honoring the author & the explanation of the story behind the mural, “When two worlds collided”. As we continued on, we found many more beautiful pieces of public art. This is also where we first saw the Peruvian “mototaxi”. We thought they were pretty cool, so here’s many pictures of them too.

Bikes & Wines

Mike & Susie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:28:26 +0000

We had a wonderful, yet somewhat exasperating day of biking through wine country & visiting vinyards, aka Bodegas. The way these tours work is you show up at someone’s house, rent a bike & try to follow a map that doesn’t bother with major landmarks running through it, like highways, nor with any kind of measurement, so you have no idea of the real relationship between time & distance. The rental place advertises 20 Bodegas you can go to, but there is no way of knowing that it takes about an hour for each place, that there is no food availabe on the route, that some of the bodegas charge extra for tours & tastings, or that all but four of the 20 are completely closed to visitors or require an advanced reservation. In spite of this lack of communication & missing a reserved appointment to our 4th of 5 Bodegas because we didn’t anticipate the 55 min bike ride to be more than 25 min., we were able to learn 4 distinct styles of wine production and understand the intricacies of the process in Spanish. Every Bodega in Mendoza is organic. They are high & dry. Irrigation is fed by streams that come from the grouping of Andes between here & Santiago that contains the highest mountain in the world, that’s not a part of the Himalayas. These factors make them the best for growth & production of Malbec grapes & wine. But in terms of process, taste & style, They are intensely diverse. One had a down home country feel and brAgged about doing everything by hand, while one down the road had a high dollar, golf course perfect image & some of the most sophisticated modern machinery I’ve ever seen. Yet another boasted the wine that has been used for almost every Catholic communion that has been served in Argentina in the last century.
Most importantly we upped our level of wine sophistication a few notches, increased our language skills & got the opportunity to be proud of ourselves for peaddlong through many many miles & handling the communicative shortfalls (& intense hunger) with some grace.
Now we are processing how to handle a last minute hidden additional fee for what we had planned tomorrow. I, Susie, have been steaming about this seemingly pervasive passive bait & switch that appears to be prevalent in this region. Maybe we’ll learn simply how to ask the right questions & find a way around this.
My fav was the Bonafonte 2007, Malbec Reserve. A close 2nd was Norton, who was impressively consistant with quality accross all types & ages that we tried.
In the meantime, here’s some pics:

Made it to Argentina

Mike & Susie — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:57:23 +0000

In an amazing 30 hours skipped the entire country of Bolivia. It’s beautiful there but travel is long and unpredictable and we didn’t want to stress about time, so we’ve moved on to Argentina.
We stayed one night in La Paz in a hostel that could be haunted. Then we took a harrowing bus ride over a mountain pass to the border. We were glad it was a night time ride as the one lane road was terrible and we even got stuck once. We walked across the border and made it to Salta where we are enjoying finer pleasures!

Dear Bolivia

Mike & Susie — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:10:22 +0000

Dear Bolivia,

Thank you for letting us into your country. We waited patiently in cold, wet Puno while your bus drivers had their drunken strike to protest the new drunk driving laws focused on public transit servants.
We understand that Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America. I hope the $290 dollars we gave you for visas and vaccine charges helps you in this regard*.
Finally I would like to say how much we appreciated the journey from Puno to La Paz. I would have caught up on my sleep without the three bus changes. We are still not sure if we had to get off the bus and crowd onto a seperate gas sputtering boat while our bus was ferried across Lake Titicaca. As we had to pay an extra 3 Bolivianos for this pleasure, about 40 cents, I will call it a joy ride.
We might recommend a manual printed in seven languages to help us along next time.

Best Regards,
Susannah and Mike

*To be fair, Bolivia is only charging a recipricol visa fee to US citizens. It costs Bolivians $200 per person to enter the US

Pisac

Mike & Susie — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:43 +0000

Last Fri we went to the small town of Pisac with our new friend, Monica, who imports into Taos. It was neat watching a professional at work inthe markets. We took some pointers & got some great deals. I got 2 earrings, beautiful & elaborate for less than $3 us.
But also, the town was beautiful. It was maintained with care and a lot of attention to detail. The streets would drop right off at the edge of town into fields.
We saw the most flood damage here. & the towns people were working hard to repair it. The big bridge was mostly out & only walkable.
In all our watching of news today we learned that Pisac had major flooding again yesterday, new damage & several deaths. Having just enjoyed this beautiful town, we were sad to hear the news. Here’s our pics, Inc our lunch with Monica, her mom, & freind Willma.

Stranded in Puno

Mike & Susie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:04:35 +0000

We really meant to be in Bolivia by now. Instead we are on a second floor balcony in Puno drinking sangria and Cuba libres waiting for a pizza.

Turns out Peru and Bolivia are shutdown. We turned up at the bus station at 6:30, were told there was no service today, but maybe we could get on a 2:30 pm bus tomorrow. We bought tickets, so we hope it works.
We found a new hostal that met our needs better, after breakfast. Around 11 we heard large amounts of people shouting & went out to look. Large groups were marching together toward the main plaza carrying banners and posters. They were reading chants in unison together from pieces of paper. We asked if we could take a picture & people were so enthusiastically compliant they held out their banner extra nice & more people asked us to take pictures of them. These people were by far dedicated to a cause, rather than an angry mob of protesters.
Going back to our room & watching the news & talking to people a bit, we’ve learned that Peru intends to build a large hydro-electric dam east and between Cusco & Puno. The reservoir would flood over 30 communities and a large variety of plant & animal species.
This protest was scheduled for today and tomorrow and has most of Peru & Bolivia shut down. Here’s our pics:

Once you were my pet, now you are my dinner.

Mike & Susie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:47:24 +0000

Jungle tour

Mike & Susie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:06:14 +0000

We saw a bunch of animals that were hard to photograph…especially monkeys and birds, but here are the highlights we could shoot.
It was pretty awesome to see wooly monkeys & tamrind monkeys. Also there is nothing like seeing a flock of scarlet macaws on flight, bright red & green against the sky.
Our guide was awesome, worked us hard and had us trying all kinds of jungle food, including worms, fried of course.
Here’s some key pics: