Living in a Powder Keg and Giving Off Sparks

Funny Every Time

2009-10-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things out there that make people laugh. There are fewer things that will make people laugh after the first time you watch it, and there are even fewer things that make people laugh every time they watch it. This classic news report from the 70's or 80's gets funnier every time I watch it. It's got a bit of everything, fantastically bad story telling puns, the "expert' that has no idea what he is doing, and an explosion that could have killed some one. Enjoy!

Leave a comment or link for the stuff that makes you laugh every time...

Back to the Ranch

2009-08-03T06:31:00.000-07:00

I think this is a great little experiment that was done. I hope people enjoy.

http://whoiamisfreedom.blogspot.com/2009/03/joshua-bell-at-washington-dc-metro.html

Things are going really well right now. My first vacation in more than a year is just around the corner after my two week masters course finishes at the end of august. Will be back in the OC until mid-septeber and am stoked to go see as many live sporting events as I can including frootball, baseball, and soccer.

The Panama Ports Project

2009-04-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

This is a short blurb I prepared on the selling points of our project. It is very slanted, but that is what they pay me to do.

The future pier will extend almost to the other shore line in the distance

Surface construction is complete in areas and the client has already made use of it. For perspective of the size look at the right hand side and you will see a white container box which is the size of a container carried on a rail car or semi-truck.

Since June 2006 the Louis Berger Group has provided consulting services to Panama Ports Company in Panama City. Using both Berger/ABAM and local office assets, LBG carried out the design and is in its second year of on-site construction management. LBG has been responsible for the oversight of all phases of the construction process including the dredged removal of over 3.1 million cubic meters of unsuitable materials, reclamation of over 2.8 million cubic meters of densified sand, and the preparation of the yard to receive containers with the full services of water, sanitation, and electricity for the berth cranes, reefer gantries, and the option to electrify all the RTGs in the yard. Two rivers have been diverted around the new container yard and loading berth, and a structure to link an existing berth to the newly reclaimed container yard.

By the scheduled completion of the project in 2011 over 100 acres of new useable yard space and an additional berth will be made available to Panama Ports providing capacity for more than 3-4 million Twenty (foot container box) Equivalent Units (TEU) annually which makes it one of the biggest ports on the western seaboard of the Americas. Once fully implemented, LBG’s design will provide greater port capacity in addition to optimizing traffic flow making it more efficient to travel between the port berths, the Panama Canal Railroad, container storage areas, and the surface road access points.

Political Over/Under

2008-10-31T05:38:00.000-07:00

Okay all you ghosts and goblins. we are officially a hand full of days away from the election and in my free time here at work I have been a political junkie gathering information and looking at raw data of poles collected and posted on line. I really don't care about national poles, because that is not how the president is elected. Those of you who believe we live in a democracy need to go back to High School Government class and realize that we are voting in a Democratic Republic, even for President. It is called the Electoral College and despite popular belief in our nation we actually have 51 elections for President as opposed to just one.

That being said it should be important to analyze the political map in such a fashion. there are plenty of poles, and poles of poles and blah blah blah. Back in the 80's (I think) there were some major union strike with car manufacturers (I think) and the car companies successfully crushed the unions on strike by noting that the average person at their company was earning a hansom salary. This was true, but they also included EVERYONES salary including the CEO. If one were to have looked at the median salary of the company it would have been halved of the number that the companies were implying.

Taking this concept to heart and the sheer quantity of polling data available I have analyzed the results using a median analysis method since June when Hillary Clinton bowed out of the race. Based on the figures I have collected from http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/ the results are in and they are not pretty. According to my analysis Barrack Obama should win the election by more than 2 to 1. He will win all of the Kerry states from 2004. In addition to these states he will also win the following states that voted for Bush in 2004:

Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, and Virginia.

Some easy calculator work shows the final result at Obama 378, McCain 160. I invite the three people that might read this post before the election to submit weather you think that Obama will end up with more or less electoral votes that 378. Everyone who gets it correct will get a virtual "treat" from my left over candy from Halloween.

Final Breakdown on Brazil:

2008-10-15T10:21:00.001-07:00

Country of Origin: Argentina
Total time in country: 21 days
Music: The Samba! Move your feet as fast as you can! It doesn't really seem to matter if it is to the music or not.
People: Beautiful women might distract you from their boyfriends buying the next round with money from your pocket.
Transport: Buses are expensive, no movies AND NO A/C! What a bunch of crap.
Landscape: Green, lush, tropical paradise, quaint colonial areas, beautiful beaches. Yawn, seen it in other places too. The truly original place... Iguazu Falls
Food: My poorness was evident in my food choice in this country. I can tell you that bake ham and cheese rolls on every street corner get old quickly and it is really hard to find peanut butter.
Safety: Carnival had some obvious security issues as discussed, and the countryside is safe as in most countries, and in the big cities you just need to stay in the safe areas like any major city.
Gas prices: gas - 2.57 Reales/ gallon (5.49 USD/gallon), or the sugar cane ethanol for 3.62 USD/gallon.
Surprised by: How big the country is! Brazil is the next smallest country to the USA, and to think that we took a bus half way through it to get to Salvador, then turned around and went back a quarter of the way back to get to Rio, that is a lot of bus time
Final word: The unexpected gem! I had few expectations going into Brazil besides the pandemonium of Carnival. Carnival came through and so did all the other parts of the country. The countryside was beautiful, the beaches clean, and Rio vivacious. The Portuguese was funky for a couple of days but easy enough with the Spanish background, but this doesn't matter much as everyone there speaks body language.
Next stop: USA via Panama

Wrappin' It Up in Rio

2008-10-13T06:01:00.001-07:00

After a week of chasing a bunch of girls through the streets of Salvador, and then getting chased back by several of them that turned out to not be girls; Carnival was over. This meant also that Dave and my traveling time together was done. We shared a special moment in the hostel as he left early one morning to go to Rio a couple of days before I went. There was a twinge of sadness in my voice when I asked him to not forget to turn out the light as he left. Dave wiped the sleep boogers out of his eyes, but it could have well be a tear as he grunt and closed the door. Jon was still dead to the world and said later that it took him a full week to recover from the chaos that was a week in Salvador. Some might say he never did!

Before I could run off to Rio I needed some good R and R from my 3 month and 3 week vacation. I took off to Lençois a nice little mountain town without any mountains to the west of Salvador. I ran into some Irish chaps who like all good Irishmen loved to drink. So we took to getting rid of our week long hangovers though the old Irish method of drinking more which seems to work well enough. Lençois had some fun hikes that we didn't do, some interesting geological formations that we didn't see, and some very pleasant natural hot springs that we didn't swim in. Like much of Brazil the tourism industry gets a little outrageous for the month before and after Carnival, and this being the end of my trip (read: strapped for cash) I was perfectly content to sit creek-side and enjoy a good book about cocaine smuggling.

After the batteries were charged for another go at a major party city we headed back towards Rio. The bus ride took us a few days with a stop at beach town where we enjoyed what most people enjoy at a good beach. A couple of days later we found ourselves in a street party in Rio. I asked some of the locals in my horrible Portuguese if this was still left over from the Carnival party that was now a week old. She laughed and said that this 10 sq block area was always full on a Tuesday night with the hipsters from Brazil and all over the world.

The famous beaches are also quite the sight to see, but like the other beaches around the world there is the sandy part and then there is the ocean part. Ipanema though reminded me of what one might see on Baywatch.

I was really impressed by the Christ Redeemer and the story he's always telling of the best fishing trip ever. It's location atop a rocky bulge in the middle of the city gives awesome presence even in the sprawling suburbs. From the top it is possible to see the Sugar Loaf as seen in the picture in this post, and the Maracana which is the Brazilian shrine to soccer. The Christ Redeemer's fishing trip gives it great presence in the entire city, but its placement in the modern 7 Wonders of the World I find a little cheeky. I was more impressed by the Statue of Liberty; something I alost skipped on my trip to New York but was astounded how impressed I was standing at it's feet. Ms. Liberty's construction was also more difficult and an achievement at the time, but I digress.

I made arrangement so that the last thing I did in country was go see a soccer game in the Maracana. It is the largest stadium in South America, officially holds 95,000 fans and has been reported to have held unofficially around 200,000 fans for a game back in the 1950's. As is the etiquette in all other South American countries the end zones are reserved for the general masses and where the large banners and flares go off. When goals were scored the look of exhilaration at one end was matched only by the dejected look from the opposing end of the stadium. With everyone wanting to sit in the worst seat to be a part of the best atmosphere, we walked into the stadium 3 minutes before the kick-off of the Semi-final match and sat 18 rows behind the teams at midfield, the best seats in the house!
The Irish lads and I tried to wander up into the crazy section, but my poor Portuguese and their non-existent Portuguese did not allow us to talk our way past security. It's amazing how the grass is always greener, and we were put off by our unsuccessful attempt to join the animated areas as we scuffeled back to our seats at midfield.

The game end 2-1 and was back and forth the entire way between to Rio clubs that were both well represented in the stadium. This definitely makes the list as a top three sporting events I've seen in person, and certainly one of the best venues in which to see nearly 100,000 people go crazy at the same time.

After the game I went straight out to the airport where I sat and waited for my red eye flight to Panama and eventually home. Brazil and Carnival did not disappoint as a good place to end a trip of this caliber. Check South America of the places to visit in the world. Next stop... SE Asia. I guess I'd better go get a job so that I can eventually pay for it.

The Job

2008-10-03T09:20:00.001-07:00

So lots of people have asked what it is exactly that I do. To make a baseball reference, I am the utility player. I fill in for others and do all the jobs that no else has time or the patience to do. It's an interesting position because I get to sit in the high level meeting and listen to the people narrate the story of what is happening. In these weekly and monthly meeting I am the one that takes the notes and writes the story. I write the minutes to make my company look good, and then the three bosses edit them to make us look even better.

The basics of the job is construction management for THE major ports company in Panama. It is owned by the largest ports managing company (based in Hong Kong) in the world. As the Panama Canal expansion takes place this port is moving more containers than ever before with only more work on the way. We are building a large transfer station (read Parking Lot) for containers. We have taken a large swamp and are in the process of turning it into a concrete slab. There has been quite a bit of noticeable difference made even in just the past 4 months of my employment.

Picture taken 11 July 08 (looking south) of the area that was dredged and then filled with sand. The river on the left side has been moved to run its present path. Note also the dock construction along the right side of the picture.

Picture taken 15 August 08 (looking north). Notice shipping containers at bottom of screen stacked six high. We are building more storage so that the entire sand area will have capacity to store shipping boxes. Eventually the dock will be extended an additional 500 meters along the east side of the canal to where it will make land fall. It is about 50 m wide.

Picture taken 30 September 08. I estimate the the sand area to be about 18-20 football fields.

An Outsider's Perspective

2008-09-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

As an expat living abroad I feel like I get a perspective on the forthcoming election in November that not many Americans do. There are a thousand ways to breakdown this election, but the most simplistic point of view is an X in one of two columns. If you want your vote to count it will go into the column of either Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin.

Despite the candidates best efforts most of the population and even the voting population will cast a ballot without ever going to see the candidate speak in person, and even fewer get to ask a question never mind a series of questions. So this election boils down to rhetoric and public speaking. This is where my perspective comes in because I don't hear all the spin doctors and don't get annoying photo calls offering to help. All I see is the candidates and listen to their words.

From having listened to both candidates over the past few months several thinks have become abundantly clear. Both sides offer the public what they think the general population wants to hear. Despite saying they are going to get specific both candidates will make one sentence comments about a range of topics and call this specific. I don't blame them for this, and I THANK them for it. I don't care how good of a public speaker Obama is, if he went into specifics details and footnotes of his health plan he would be more boring than McCain to listen too.

So the words they say are very similar, so to me it comes down to speech delivery style. This is one of the largest contrasts between the candidates, and how they try to influence the voters. First you have Obama who speaks like a Monet painting. His broad stroke sweeping comments don't make too much sense if you listen to them one at a time, and if one were to stand too close all that can be seen are the streaks of colors that have no connection. If one steps back and looks at the entire speech the picture comes into focus, is quite elegant but is fuzzy at best. This shows Obama to be thoughtful and to think through problems, let's just hope he doesn't take too long to make a decision.

McCain, in stark contrast speaks like a connect-the-dots drawing. He made a series of short bullet points on a page, then makes comments to try to give the listener the ability to fill in the rest of the drawing. These short comments are sometimes funny and clever which all plays well in the news and to the beer-drinkin'-backyard-BBQin' crowd that most Americans like to think they are. The comments are simple and the delivery is generic enough allow each person to fill in the line drawing how they prefer to view the situation. It may demonstrate the level of sophistication in McCain's thought process.

So there it is! My 22 cents worth up from 2 cents due to inflation. I tried to be impartial in writing this, and I hope my detached location can help the reader to make their own decision about what kind of a person they want their next president to be.

The Beavers in Beaver Staium

2008-09-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

OK, so the beavs got off to a bad start this past Thursday. I'm thrilled to be taking a long weekend and going to Beaver Stadium in Happy Vally on the Penn State Campus. I am going with Dave (with whom I traveled South America) and some of his fellow Penn State Alums. It should be great to go see Joe Paterno in his senile 82 year old self and watch 107,000 fans sit silently as the Beavers gain some redemption.

Last I heard this is going to be the ESPN game of the week, so keep your eyes open for me. I'll be the only one in orange and black (and probably beer) that will be cheering and geering when the final gun goes off.

The Sports Report in Panama

2008-08-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the Saladino Effect has gone a little over the top at this point. He is now in every other commercial, every politician has solicited his endorsement, and every baby - boy and girl - will be named Irving or Saladino or both for at least the next month. So as the Olympics draw to a close coverage once again returns to the America's pass time. As I sit here and watch the sports highlights I can't help but notice the stark differences between the coverage here and back home.

Good ol' ESPN loves their Yankees and Red Soxs, Ozzie Guillen's mouth, Brett Farve's arm, Tiger Wood's knee, whether Boston Celtics will repeat (who thinks about the NBA in August), and the insignificance of preseason football. But guaranteed to be in every hour of Sports Center are some of the best plays in the sports world and an attempt to cover at least most of the games of the day, and then there are the plays of the day and web gems. Most local sports casters have a local and shorter version of this same format.

Contrast that to what you get in this country. The leading story on any reputable sports cast here in Panama is with Mariano Rivera. The likely future Hall o' Famer is probably the most famous sportster to come out of Panama. After watching 7 of his 9 pitches to win, loose, draw or save for the Yankees the focus switches to all the tier two Panamanian ball players. A tier two ball player in Panama is defined here has any player in the Major Leagues that is not Mariano Rivera. One might see Carlos Lee fan twice and hit an insignificant ground ball to the second baseman; or Carlos Ruís catching for the starting pitcher of the Phillies... in the bullpen before the game.

All of the insignificant plays that these and the other Panamanian players make will be well documented, but will they note the great catch made by Ichiro to save extra innings? Not a chance. Will they show Ronaldinho's spectacular bicycle kick goal? Maybe. Will they show any other sport besides baseball and soccer? No way!

I am reminded of the banner that I saw in Costa Rica right before the World Cup 2006 in which Costa Rica lost three out of three games and was eliminated. The banner read: "Congratulations Costa Rica, we made it to the World Cup Tournament!" They were happy just to have made it. In the same way the Panamanians want to see the Panamanian players no matter how significant or insignificant to be able to share in the glory of just making it, and forget the actual great plays, results, and commentary on significance.

And to this I say, rock on Manny Acosta! Carlos Beltran hit the game winning double off you last night, but someone hand to throw the loosing pitch. All of your countrymen (all of whom claim to be related to you by at least a cuña'o) down here will love you for making it onto the mound in the majors and will happily forget the details. We made it!

Us Americans and our Gold Metals

2008-08-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, so Michael Phelps won 8 gold metals to become the most decorated Olympian ever, the Redeem Team is on pace to destroy the competition, the USA as of today leads the overall metal count. These are all great stories of triumph and success, and to be honest they are all a little trite. Swimming hands outs metals like confetti on new years days, and the USA is actually loosing the gold metal race with China which probably means that they are going to roll their red asses across the Pacific and assimilate the the USA into their Borg-like factory system based on a a wierd combination of capitalism and communism.

Is this history in the making? Probably. Is this the best story of the Olympics? Hell no! The Olympics has always been about making a bunch of money off all the people coming to the host country, and a little thing called friendly international competition. I could write a thesis here about how much I love the Olympics as each sport is actually a little society with simple rules, punishments for breaking said rules, and rewards for being the best. For example in the long jump the rules are simple. Run as fast as you can at a pit of sand and jump as far as you can. If you step on the line it doesn't count, you have three jumps, good luck.

My favorite stories are the ones of the underdog; never the ones of the people that are suppose to win. Rooting against the Yankees is more fun than rooting for them, watching the "Redeem Team" kick the crap out of everyone they play against is a little is boring. I want to see the Kenyan or Nigerian runner who historically should be shooting his neighbors for being a different shade of "dark chocolate", but instead decided he was going to take his long legs and start running. No only would he run well, but he would defy AIDS and so much more just to make it to the Olympics. Then he would continue to eat his Wheaties, and run 26.2 miles faster than anyone else in the world. These are the stories!

Panama finally has it's first gold metal in the history of the Olympics, EVER! Before this year Panama had two Bronze metals for basically showing up to the games. With a long jump of 8.34 meters Irving Saladino long jumped his way out of one of the toughest neighborhoods in all of Panama into Panamanian sports history with the first gold metal by an central or south american team this year, and the first gold one for Panama. So the rich countries can celebrate celebrate all their gold metals by taking the winners out for a "good job pizza", but I'll be dancing in the streets on August 21 with the rest of Panama City to the hero's welcome for Saladino as if he had single-handedly stopped the Russian invasion of Georgia.

Survival Guide to Carnival in Salvador

2008-08-15T14:39:00.001-07:00

Many people have asked me to describe what Carnival is like in Brazil. It is not an even that is lived, it is survived! It is an assault on the sense and even for someone who has a space bubble as small as mine there were enough people to make me glad that I didn't have social anxiety disorder. Everywhere celebrates the festivities, but there are two major hot spots in Brazil for the week. Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador da Bahia.

Rio is a great town with some amazing beaches and is know throughout the world as THE place to be for Carnival! From some first hand accounts that I have heard this is very true as many international tourist come here to catch some sun, music, and exotic diseases. Rio has the a stadium built on a stretch of road exclusively for the Carnival Parades. In theory these are the best parts about Carnival in Rio, and these are exactly the reason why we went to Salvador.

While all of the international tourists flock to Rio; all of the Brazilian tourist exit en masse to Salvador. While all those people are in the stadium watching the parades, in Bahia we were people Rio have got nothing on the Guiness Book of World Records largest street party in Bahia estimated at well over 2.1 million people each year. Throughout this post there are pictures from both as we watched the Rio parades on TV as a break from the dancing in the streets in Bahia.

Dave and my Peace Corps from Panama friend, Jon, met us in Bahia for the glorious week of chaotic madness. We spent the days laying on the beach taking momentary dance breaks from our attempts to turn our skin color into that of a lobster. Once it would cool down in the evening we would go out to the streets with several million of our favorite pick pockets to watch all the famous musicians from around the world perform on their moving stage.

We would take turns buying beer in the streets, dancing as the floats went by, and trying to get the other two to look at (in that special way) the pretty girls with five o'clock shadow, hair legs and baritone voice. I will admit to being headbutted by a pair of flying lips from a dude in a pink leotard and bunny ears who was almost a full head taller than me. I had no idea it was coming. After five minutes of laughter Dave said he saw the whole thing coming, could have stopped it, but then decided it would be funnier to let the whole thing play out as he said "naturally".

part of the parades. Lastly all theI wish we could have taken more pictures, but due to security concerns we did not take our cameras out for more than one hour in the week. One is just asking for trouble taking a camera around, even a disposable camera. Everyone is a pick pocket during this time. It is not that they are malicious about it, Brazilians just feel like if they can buy the next round on your dime they will. Being tall and blond is as good as wearing a neon sign that says ROB ME! We never had more than $15 each at any given time, and thought it would be fun to write offensive phrases on bits of paper and stick them in pockets like folded money.

One pickpocket earned himself a cuffed ear from Hospital (aka my left fist), he's lucky I didn't turn the other way otherwise he would have run right in Cemetery. Dave still got the best of one pick pocket by complete accident. He felt the ominous pokes of interested fingers, waited for the smash and grab, and when it happened he turned and pushed the guy right into a line of police that he had not seen. The cops caught the guy as he stumbled back, looked right at Dave and in a language that sounded like the adults in Peanuts asked a question. It did not matter that we do not speak Peanuts Adult-inese, we understood the question perfectly. "Yes," Dave responded and pointed at the guy, "he tried to rob me." and with that the public beating began. Dave and I walked off as the judge, jury, and executioner hauled the would be robber off for a fun night of pissing blood at his local cell.

After a couple of days the quantity of people started to get on our nerves. We were tired of feeling on guard all the time. We didn't get tired of the random girls coming up and kissing us though. We learned the all important lesson that one may not speak the same verbal language, but we learned that all speak body language.

At this point I shall leave the reader to use their imagination to fill in the details...

Road to Carnival

2008-08-05T11:22:00.001-07:00

By going to the Boca/River game we successfully traveled 6 hours in the wrong direction for getting to Carnival. We spent 12 hrs in Mar de Plata to see the game and go to the beach. We spent as much time on the bus as we did in getting there. It is as if we were 19 again and had made a beer run from Portland, Oregon to the Canadian border. Upon leaving on the 2 am bus back to BA we decided to go for the luxury seats so that we might be able to sleep a bit better as there would be four days of hard traveling to make it to Carnival on time.

We soon discovered that after a night on ANY bus you reach Vegetative State 2. This state is recognized by a sore back, and restlessness. We had a few hour to kill in BA so we were able to collect our thoughts and prep ourselves for the 20 hr bus to the Brazilian border. We brought the chess set, books, food, Rubik's cube, and a Portuguese study guide, but by the time we got off the bus at the border we had passed into Vegetative State 3.

Vegetative State 3 is indicted by long periods of lost time, zoning out, unresponsiveness to punches in the arm, and emitting a body odor that no cologne can cover up. We were lucky though because we had to cross the border independent of the long bus systems. Even though we had to think and process information in a country that did not speak English or Spanish, by the time we got back onto the long haul bus we were only back to Vegetative State 1 which is the lack of desire to talk because everything you have have to say that is interesting or uninteresting has already been said.

While at the border we did have to opportunity to jump out to see the famous Iguaçu Falls. No one picture can capture the immenseness of the falls. Interspersed through this blog post are a series of pictures that show parts of the falls, but the quantity of water, shape, and grandness of the falls is unmatched. They are probably 60 meters tall, but over a kilometer long. There are national parks on both the Argentine side and the Brazilian side, and both have their perks. In terms of getting to the water and getting wet, the Argentine side is better, but the Brazilian side is more photogenic. It was nice to just stroll around and have a look at something that was not the inside of a bus.

No movies in any of the Brazilian buses was a huge disappointment and a large part of the reason why I forgot where we transferred. It could have been Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, this memory loss along with with the drool covered shirt indicate that I reached Vegetative State 5 on this bus. Vegetative state 5 is recognized by the desire but in ability to sleep or think. One may feel as though the brain has been removed from the body.

We got to the city about midday, and discovered we had to get across town in 15 minutes to make the bus. As that was not going to happen we ended up with the afternoon in what we discovered was Sao Paulo as we came back down the vegetative state chart. We had lunch and watched a movie, and the back to the bus stop were we got back on the bus for our final and longest leg. All night and the next day and night we traveled on the bus. It is unknown what the final vegetative state was because we had obviously blacked out and thus had been above level 6 (if level 10 is brain dead and breathing machine).

In the bus yard in Bahia da Salvador, after all the passengers had gotten off, the maid came on to clean the bus and found us still there. She freaked out, started screaming and babbling in some strange language that I didn't recognize, and beating us over the head with her mop. That brought us back to life enough to grab our bags, tumble off the bus and start to give human form to the blobs that we called our bodies.

"We're soooo there!" Dave exclaimed.

"Hang on," I said, "I need to sit down for a couple of minutes."

Final Breakdown on Argentina:

2008-07-23T13:58:00.001-07:00

Country of Origin: Chile
Total time in country: 21 days
Music: Tango dancing is the nation dance of pride. This sultry dance has been made illegal in 8 states for being "excessively sexy".
People: 40% of the Argentinian population is three (or fewer) generations removed from their immigrant Italian ancestors. Hmmm what happen three generations ago in Italy that would make them all want to leave Europe...
Transport: Supposedly the airline company that we flew was on strike. They should teach the airline companies in the states how to improve their service by striking.
Landscape: Patagonia might be one of the loveliest places I've ever been, and I will always be looking for jobs now in Mendoza, I could live there.
Food: Dave so eloquently put it that he fell in love will all the grill masters at restaurants where we ate. The Italians don't mess around when it comes to their food and wine. In my opinion Argentinian wine underrated, Chilean wine overrated.
Safety: I don't recommend sitting in the Boca stadium in white and red, but other then that it felt as safe as any European city.
Gas prices: 3.14 Argentine Pesos/Liter (3.98 USD per gallon)
Surprised by: How un-Latin American the place seems. It is the South American anchor point to Europe. You can also tell by the strong (but likable) ego of the Argentinians that they are a little miffed they have to share the continent with the rest of Latin America.
Final word: If I had my way this would probably be the first South American country I return to. I could live in Mendoza, I still have to get to the lake district in the northern part of Patagonia, and I'm not sure I would ever get tired of watching the tango dancing in Buenos Aires.
Next stop: Brazil

Bad Haircuts in Buenos Aires

2008-07-22T08:16:00.001-07:00

Instead of taking two days in a bus to get down to Patagonia we saddled up an airplane and flew both directions. We flew from Buenos Aires down to area which means that upon our return we were actually visiting BA for the second time. The first time wan not much. We had opted to stay in Mendoza for an extra day and just catch the overnight bus to get to the airport in time for our flight. One the way in we had some unexpected bus trouble and found ourselves sweating, not knowing if we were going to make said flight. Finally on the edge of town while the bus was broken down for nth time (where n = more fingers than I have) Dave and I decided to just pony up and take a taxi. At this point in the day it is probably 2:00 and and the flight is at 3:30. We motor through town in the cab, pull the "I'm a lost gringo" trick and walked to the front of the line in the airport. No one even seemed to notice. By 2:15 we were checked in and realize we had not eaten all day and were famished.

I had noticed a stand outside with a grill. We headed back outside the airport to fill our striking stomachs. Unbeknownst to us at the time we accidentally stumbled upon the choripan which wins the best street food of south america award. For three Argentinian Pesos (about a dollar) one can get an excellent sausage (chorizo) packed inside a freshly baked roll (pan), and if you mash chorizo y pan into one word you come up with the above stated choripan. Part of the reason why these stands win this award is because they have more condiments (some of them made fresh daily) then they have items on the menu.

Dave and I shove two into our mouths each, and as we are contemplating a third we look over to see the cook talking with a pretty lady who has a camera man in tow. I turn around just in time to see him point at us and say, "you can interview the gringos too if you want, they speak Spanish well enough." Unable to resist, she came over and started to chat us up. Eventually she wandered into asking for an interview, I looked at Dave and myself and saw nothing but scrubby backpacker who hadn't changed clothes in over 24 hrs, showered recently, and had greasy sausage face as well. Unfortunately while I had thought about saying no, Dave had immediately exclaimed "anything for you pretty lady," with his big cartoon like googly eyes. Somehow I got roped into standing by Dave's side. Before allowing Dave to do the interview i asked what the interview was going to be about. She promised just a couple of easy questions about where we are from and Buenos Aires. My spid-e-senses were going crazy, but I had no real ammo to say no.

The interview went something like this...
What are your names?
Dave and Lane

What are you doing here in Buenos Aires?
Traveling, we are on our way down to Rio Gallegos by plane

How did you like Buenos Aires?
We actually have only been here for about an hour, we will spend more time here on the way back

Aren't you concerned about sicknesses and eating at a dirty sausage stand like this one on the streets?
...

As Dave, startled by the sudden change in question, started to say something about how we had been through all of South America and that this place was probably 100X better than anything in Bolivia, blah blah blah the camera moved in for the portrait on just him. The questions continued and Dave just kept talking. As I slowly stepped away all I could see was in the close-up shot on Dave, all one would see is his unkept self as stated above, and his shirt that had Promotor de Saluda emblazoned across the front and a Peace Corps logo.

In the Peace Corps we are told to avoid the media, but we were out now. Why not do the interview? I knew that she could cut the film to make us look like idiots, and thus the Peace Corps as well. I, like Tom Sawyer after stealing a hunk of bacon, thought that the gods of doing the wrong thing were going to rain hell-fire down upon us, but as I opened my eyes to see the interviewer walking off and Dave saying, we gotta go, and not but blue sky all around, I wiped my brow having escaped fate again and walked off. Dave later admitted to me that he had no idea what he was saying during the interview, he was just trying to speak Spanish as well as he could and make sure that the answer given matched the question asked. Maybe it was a good thing that we didn't see the end result of the interview.

Once we got back from Patagonia we were ready to get down in BA. We had heard so much good stuff about BA, and she did not disappoint. We got a local recommendation for some tango lessons in the basement of a near-by community center. It was mostly locals, and a great experience. The tango is amazing to watch, it is the vertical representation of the horizontal mambo. Dave and I looked at each other and both decided to practice a little, but we really just wanted to watch.

The next day we went down to the El Caminito which is in Boca the blue-collar part of town. This colorful alley has tourist trap written all over it with tango dancers in the street, over priced restaurants, art galleries, and gift shops everywhere. It was quaint, but over the top, the stadium of the Boca Juniors (The South American soccer version of the Yankees) which seats over 100K people was far more interesting for Dave and I. On the way back to our hostel we stopped at the Casa Rosada, the Argentine 'White House' to be able to say we went to the house where Madonna played that famous lady in that movie we never saw. what was that movie called?

To kill an afternoon Dave and I went and got haircuts. I was nervous because Argentina apeared to be the mullet capital of the world. Everyone had one and the style was to see who could make their hair look more greasy and redneck than the rest. Haircuts were mandatory because we would each have an interview on the way home, and we did not want that awkward "I just had a haircut yesterday" look. We made the executive decision to do it in BA because we could speak Spanish and explain what we wanted, who knew what would happen in Brazil where we might not be able to communicate with the hair cutter. Dave went first and came out fine, but when I came out next, Dave stifled his laughter and said, "looks great, no mullet." It wasn't until we met up with Jon a week later at Carnival when he asked "do you know you have a mullet thing going on in the back?"

Dane showed up soon there after. He was headed down to Patagonia to instruct a NOLS course on long distance hiking in Patagonia, but had some time to kill in BA and we just happened to be there at the same time. We strolled around town and went to see Romeo and Juliet styled cemetery. It was full of all the famous families from Argentina that I didn't know, but the Catholic style housing for the dead was quite impressive.

The next morning we clambered onto a train and went down to Mar de Plata. Spent the day on a beach where we had to walk for a quarter mile just to find enough space for three dudes to lay down in the sand. It was PACKED. Why here you ask? Because the beach was secondary for everyone. We were all there to see a football game. It had been a sin to have skipped so many games in the other countries, but we were making up for it here. The three of us were going to see a boca/river game. This is a crosstown rivalry AND a social class rivalry AND the two most well know teams in the country. Imagine Yankees / Red Socks on HGH. People have been killed, and as we got off the train, the riot police made their presence know right away in their full riot gear and dogs. It got better by the minute. We scalped some tickets infront of the summer league stadium, downed a couple of choripans and went into the game. Chaos ensued. Boca won, our prize for standing with the winning team was we were locked us into the stadium for almost an entire hour after the game. Measures that the local authorities had taken to prevent mixing of the fan bases. We walked back to the bus station (over 3 miles), and only had to duck a couple of stones thrown. We survived the game, but I was more worried about what was to come. Dave and I had four days to get to Carnival, and 3 days on buses if everything went well. We didn't have much time to dilly-dally. We parted ways with Dane and started the first night of three on a bus north to the glory of Carnival.

Falling Off the Bottom of the World, Patagonia

2008-07-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

We have officially reached the furthest away from home that either of us has experienced. This is the end of the Americas to the south and it could not be more drastic in it's appearance. The most interesting part of the whole Patagonia experience is the drastic changes in scenery. As is the case with this blog 99.9% of the pictures of Patagonia are of the electric blue glaciers, the huge slabs of granite, evergreen filled valleys, and crystal clear lakes. This area is amazing and during the comfortable (but still cold) it rivals anything I have seen. The irony is that 99% of the land mass in Patagonia is more associated with the picture immediately to the right. That's right, Patagonia is mostly barren, flat, and sparsely populated with sheep. The wind that rips through here in the winter time is fierce, and even now in the summer time it can get bluster through with enough power to let you know it is still around.

Dave and I flew down on tickets that we had purchased a month earlier from Bolivia. This was key strategizing by us as the number of butterflies that flew out of our wallets increased and the number of dollars was drastically diminishing. It is a good thing that we are headed home, our mothers will be much more willing to help us if we have made a solid effort to at least START to come home.

After we made the bus trip to the local tourist town we began the harder than expected search for a place to lay our heads. We ended up in this nice little spot that was full of Israelis. Dave and I looked at each other and knew we were in the right spot, because there would be no cheaper place in town. Now before you get all offended by my thinly veiled jab at the chosen people, it seemed to me that this stigma is worn like a badge of honor to them. On one occasion we were having dinner with a lovely pair if Israelis and on of them launched into a monologue about how he was so proud that he never paid full price for anything. Dave and I played dumb, trying to keep a straight face, while we jabbed each other in the ribs with our elbows as the guy explained to us that it is a characteristic (and a stereotype) that all Israelis are cheap. He even went as far to say as he enjoyed going to open air markets, "to watch the Jews try to 'out Jew' each other." (his words not mine) I feel as though I have dug myself into a hole of digression so deep that I may not be able to write my way back out, so let us get back to not so culturally offensive bits.

We spent an entire day sitting at the Perito Moreno glacier. It is one of the few glaciers in the world that is not in retreat. It is presently holding its size and for every chunk that falls of in a given year it is build back up on the mountain behind it. We spent the day lazing in the sun watching and listening to the huge 60 ft slabs fall off into the water as we drank more wine and ate cheese, and pretending that we were more cultured than we are.

Our next stop on the Patagonia Express was back in Chile. The Torres De Paine has an amazing route that is called the "W" for obvious reasons, and one must take 'Bus #11' (walking). It was a moderate 4-5 day route that we took six days to do, because it was cheaper, prettier, and did I mention cheaper to rent the camping gear and stay in the park. It was nothing but view after view after view.

The last morning before we were to hike out was the finale to the hike, if one is lucky to have a clear morning at sunrise a blur of purple, pink, and orange paint the walls of the granite towers of the actual Torres de Paine, which stretch out like the fingers of God" as it was described by the Rocky Horror Picture Show butler of a receptionist at our hostel back in town. I was sprawled out on a rock looking up at the stars realizing I was laying on "the bottom of the world" and that only a little natural phenomena called gravity was keeping me from floating off into oblivion. I then made me realize that as a sphere every spot on this little dot of a planet is simultaneously the "top" and the "bottom" of the world and it only depends on your ego to create the perspective that each person wants to see.

Unfortunately one obscure cloud blocked the direct sun light, so we did not see the colors in the morning, but the sight was impressive none the less. We hike out in relative silence as I was quite sentimental of the fact that I was now technically on my way home. It was very strong nostalgic feeling of happy to be on my way home, but having also enjoyed the trip immensely thus far. It was rather metaphorical that the sun had not come up in the ideal conditions. It represented the realness of the trip that even though everything had not gone ideally, it was still amazing and worth it. Even though mayhem of Carnival in Brazil lay ahead, I couldn't help but feel that this was the spike of the climax in the trip, and the rest is just the resolution with carnival as the last chaotic scene before the closing credits. I then asked Dave to punch me in the face, which he was more than happy to oblige without even asking why. What is a good guy friend good for if not to help you realize that enough physical pain will suppress the males Achilles's Heel: emotions.

Back In the Saddle

2008-06-12T13:09:00.000-07:00

Alright, alright, alright!

I have been hassled by enough of you that I have finally decided to get back to bloggin'. I really do have every intention of completing stories about South America for publication here but as my father would say, "The road to 'H - E - Double hockey sticks' is paved with good intentions."

To piece together the last 4 months in a paragraph I finished my trip through South America (stories and pictures to follow), went home and had a less than fruitful job search (I concede lack of enthusiasm for seeking), saw a bunch of people that I haven't seen in ages, travel to Alaska, Cali, So. Oregon, climbed, camped, skied, gained 10 pounds, got a 2 day job painting radio towers, and then got a call from Louis Berger Group who wanted me to help with a project back in Panama ASAP. After checking my schedule for the next 20 months of my life and finding nothing of interest or any conflicts at all I said, "ummm, alright" to the job and caught a flight out.

To those reading this in the USA I apologize for my abrupt departure, it wasn't your fault. You didn't smell that bad I promise. To those in Panama I'm back baby, and have very little spare time to hang out, but give me a jingle and we can figure something out.

The most interesting part about starting with a multi-national firm is the cultural mixing that takes place here. There are project managers from Wales, engineers from the USA and Argentina, contractors from Europe, and college educate inspectors to secretaries from Panama. All of which have different expectations for roles played by employer and employee. So as I sit here typing this blog and asking myself the all important Office Space question of, "What is it, you say, ya' do here?" there are five other people in the room making about half what I make and being more productive than I am.

Another good illustration of this is when I was taken to the LBG corporate apartment where I will be staying until I find a more permanent residence. I was given the use of the office's driver and his vehicle to move my stuff from the hotel where I stayed until this could be arranged. I knew the area where the apartment was nice and furnished, so I asked the driver to help me bring up my stuff to the 13th floor where we would be able to see the canal in the distance. He was shocked to see the quality of the apartment, the view, the tasteful decorations, and the number of channels on the tv. It was a whole different world for him, and I still am not sure if he was able to process how much that place costs and put it in to terms of what he makes per month. It's such a fundamental part of his country that he doesn't even know.

The final case study I will provide for the reader is the one involving the LBG President's visit during my first week here. He had come down to visit the several large projects in the area and to give his personal welcome the new entry-level Project Engineer/Inspector. He was even so kind as to invite me and 49 of my new counterparts to a dinner at an up-scale dinner in a trendy part of town. Being the new guy I was relegated to the last seat at the last table with all the secretaries. I made a series of calculations to discover that the dinner was probably going to cost somewhere in range of $2500 which would include a nice tip. When I casually dropped this estimation it was funny to watch reactions as they calculated how much they made per month and then how many months they would have to work to GROSS what the dinner would cost.

Despite my limited knowledge about the size and scope of corporations it has been interesting to watch some eyes get big this week as they begin to imagine the quantity of money that our company makes. Those eyes would begin to glaze over if I tried to expand that quantity to the canal expansion project or the revenue growth that the canal WILL have. I now know that the growth and the potential of the money that will be created is not understood at the end of the last table, I wonder at what point moving towards the head of the first table will people appreciate what is happening, and I wonder about the quantity of Panamanians (or lack there of) who are sitting beyond that point?

Oh No! Who Let These Guys Into the Wine Tasting in Mendoza, Argentina

2008-01-12T03:43:00.000-08:00

Dave ad I together make quite the traveling duo. He's dark skinned and locals often mistake him for at least partially Latino, and there is no mistaking the fact that I am a gringo. If someone walks up to the two of us without fail they will speak to him in Spanish and me in English, always. This has had it's advantages, but one thing that always made me laugh is when I order the bottle of wine with dinner they present the bottle of wine to Dave, because he has no idea what he is doing. Dave is the type of guy that a good selection of beer is Coors Origonal and Coors Light. I adimitedly am not much better but know enough to not look like an idiot (well, any more than usual).

So knowing that we would be going to the wine capital of Argentina Dave and I took it upon orselves to do some research on the finer points in wine tasting. We were very diligent an learned a lot of vocabulary like the five S's: 1) see 2)swirl 3)sniff 4)sip 5)savor. We learned key words that are often used to describe wines that we would be sampling, for instance the Malbec often is described as tasting like violets, fruit, or beer. The Cabenet Souvignon reaks of blackcurrants, eucalyptus, chocolate, and tobacco. Beyond that, we leared other common words in wine tasting descriptions such as mown grass, minerals, pepper, bramble fruits, and (my personal favorite) pencil shavings. Besides our vocabulary, we also took it upon ourselves to practice our pretentiousness. We became so good at the whole gig that we decided that wine tasting was not abiguous and pretentious enough yet and the second day of tasting we needed to up the antee some.

So we dressed in our finest trucker hats, workout shorts, and best socks and sandles combo, rented a couple of bike, and went out to show Argentina how wine tasting should be done. Like any good taster we started with our sparking whites which Dave described as being ¨surprisingly light for its darkness.¨ Not to be out done I decided that there was no adjective that was good enough to describe the sample and thus had to describe it as being ¨violently¨. I tell you, that describes it the best.

Sample two was a good (how we pernounced it) Cab-er-ett So-vig-non, to which I went first. Just the nose of the wine made me want to faint, but I pushed through and tried it only to angrly spray down the server exclaiming, ¨Why would you serve this Nazi boot polish?¨ I bet she learned her lesson. Dave actually enjoyed both his glass and mine, and to quoth him, ¨The Maggotty cheese sensation was balanced quite well with the hysteria of the obviously new barrels. It tasted so angry white boy polka.¨

After making a couple of recomendations to the other impressed tourist for Chared-o-nayse that was comfortably numb or more accurately like Lynn's track cletes (hey sis) we moved on to the next winery. This time we were introduced to a wine that neither of us had tasted. The Pee-not No-ire was quite good. It was so very electric that I had o take my finger out of the light socket. It reminded me of a tropial beach on a fall day, and Dave of the color yellow and Bob Barker's retirement.

The cement our fame into the wine tasting history books, Dave and I pulled a move that was described to me by a wine tasting legend who shall remain nameless (but his might begin with `A´ and end with `dam Pivetta´). After going through all the S´s it was so obvious what the wine tasted like. So I opened my eyes to the gathering crowd and announced, ¨It tastes like, like, like... grapes!¨ As everyone rolled their eyes and walked away, I couldn´t help but think how accurate the description was, nor why the owners has not personally invited me to stay as their permanent wine taster. I guess they just don´t tallent if it hits them on the taste buds.

Final Breakdown on Chile:

2008-01-10T08:54:00.000-08:00

Country of Origin: Bolivia
Total time in country: 56 Hours
Music: Same-same, but different from the rest
People: Very happy to take my money.
Transport: Maybe some of the best in the world.
Landscape: We saw half of the country from the bus window, and it was as if someone was playing a loop of desert scene for the entire time.
Food: Worth every cent we paid, and there were a lot of them
Safety: There were safety belts on the bus
Gas prices: 648 Chilean Pesos per Liter (5.18 US dollars per gallon)
Surprised by: The pride in the voice of a Chileno when he told me that Chile was the second most expensive country in the Americas (second to the USA)
Final word: Damn, and I mean DAMN, get me out of here and step on it!
Next stop: Argentina

A Chile Shaped Chili

2008-01-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered if Chile's namesake came from the fact that it is long and skinny. Not unlike a Chili Pepper. Then Dave ever so crudely bashed the idea to smithereens, reminding me that those who named Chile (a) don't speak English, and (b) spell the country's name differently. I still wonder though...

After living in relative comfort on pocket change in Bolivia, we were brutally awakened to the fact that Chile is in fact NOT Bolivia and prices reflected this. I'm sure there is some economic vocabulary word for the enjoyment that one gets by saving money and getting to do something cool, and therefore the opposite is also true. Case in point, while we walked around the driest desert in the world in Valle de la Luna near San Pedro de Atacama, seeing some of the most amazing countryside in the world, I couldn't help but give it a lethargic ¨yippee¨ and get easily distracted by all the other tourists that could not take enough tacky pictures of the lamest things (including themselves). I know, I know, I know! I am guilty if this as well, but at this time I couldn't help but feel sorry for all of the friends these people have back home that will have to sit through all the awful pictures (and video is worse) as these people share their trip and experiences. To my friends and family I apologize now, well in advance.

I realized though that I can't blame them. They are trying to appreciate the small time they have to appreciate the masterpiece that this country side is. The fact that they show up, say ¨yep this is cool¨, take the tourist photo, mark it off the list, and get back on the bus to go to the next place on the list is too critical. Especially when I considered the fact that I have traveled for almost three months since finishing Peace Corps so to some degree this slump I appear to be in should be normal. The more time one spends admiring something the less impressive the next thing gets. It's like walking through the Louve, the Vatican, or the Smithsonians. Eventually everyone gets to the point where they go, ¨Oh, another masterpiece, who wants a beer?¨

But then I remember what my other options are. Suddenly I feel like I may have missed something, maybe I'll go back for a second look.

Final Breakdown on Bolivia:

2008-01-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

Country of Origin: Peru
Total time in country: 24 Days
Music: The national Andean music was a little hokey and redundent, but all the independent music was great.
People: They are friendly, helpful, and honest. They haven't figued out that they can charge a tourist more than a paisano.
Transport: You pay for what you get. We were only on a paved road for five of the 40+ hours of traveling we did.
Landscape: In the western half we saw all the different regions of Bolivia from marshland/jungle, to beautiful mountains, to high desert salt plains.
Food: As much as I wanted to continue to eat ceviche I thought it may not be the best idea in a land locked country. Llama and alpaca were good, but I still perfer goat to them.
Safety: I think the Bolivians were more worried about our saftey than we were.
Gas prices: 3.50 Bolivian Pesos per liter (2 US dollars per gallon)
Surprised by: It was harder to get an entry visa from the Brazilian Government than it was from the Bolivian Government
Final word: Bolivia (sometimes called the 4th World) is a great place with cheap everything and a range of things to see. It was a good vibe from a people that are still unjaded to the tourist, but I could see it changing within the next five years.
Next stop: Chile

Will You Pass the Pepper With the Salt House in Uyuni

2008-01-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

We made it back to La Paz for the new year. After spending a week trapped there we figured we knew all the ropes to make for a good night out, but due to some bad Cuban food I was sadly in bed at 10:30 pm wondering why it felt like there was a three hundred pound midget sitting on my stomach trying to rip out his circus partner from inside my intestines. Our escape from La Paz was finalized despite the scare of a blockade on the road we were traveling. After the all nigth bus we climbed right onto an SUV and trip through the southern Bolivian salt flats, through the mountains, and finally to grandmother Chile's house.

For the advertised salt flat tour of three days we spent a total of four hours actually on the salt flats. Of these four hours three were spent in the car waiting for the rain to stop. The rest of the trip we spent in the truck doing stupid calculations because honestly there was nothing better to do. According to the guide, the salt flats cover 12000 square km (slightly smaller than Connecticut), and at the deepest points get up to six to seven meters thick (20 ft). That is a lot of salt that is farmed to sell for household use all over South America. How much salt you ask, there is so much salt that they cut it up to use as bricks to make houses, tables, chairs, and gravel sized salt is use floor hotels. It was certainly strange, and the most surreal location we had been since the floating reed islands on Lake Titicaca.

The salt flat is created from two tectonic plates move together, isolating an ocean, elevating and drying it over time. The ocean at the point of being closed off in Bolivia would be roughly the size of all the great lakes put together, or 100 times as big as the Great Salt Lake in Utah assuming they started with the same salinity. It weights roughly 34060 Tg (tetra grams, X 10^12), or enough to give each person on the planet 5500 Kilograms (11000lbs) of salt (almost an H2 Hummer and a half). If you were to farm all the salt for building, it would be possible to build 10,000 Hoover Dams. I realize that salt would not be the best material choice for a dam, but it gives you an idea of the size. Please make all the ¨engi-nerd¨ jokes you want. They are well deserved and very doubtful there would be anything I had not heard before. I really don't know of a better time killer for the rest of the two and a half day trip through the high desert to the border. Honestly I am just relieved we got out of La Paz.

Don't Smile at a Crocodile in Rurrenabaque

2007-12-30T05:07:00.000-08:00

We were standing around with our tickets to Sucre in hand when I says to meself, ¨hey, self, why are you going to another city when you don't like cities all that much and you have spent the last week stuck in one?¨

A good question indeed, and with 15 hours we had sold the tickets to Sucre, and were on our way north to Rurrenabaque by boat. North of La Paz, Rurrenabaque is a horribly hot town that makes most of Panama look like a ski resort, but is on one of the many tributaries that eventually finds its way to the Amazon. The Madidi National Park has original primary forest still, and the pampas (think everglades - I'd imagine) is a highly dangerous tour where if the crocs, anacondas, and piranhas don't get you there are still plenty of mosquitoes, flesh eating diseases, and the every scary candiru that will track you down.

The three day boat trip took place on our luxury cruise liner (read glorified canoe) that I called the Sloop John B, and despite humming the Beach Boys song for three days the name never caught on. The passengers turned out to be quite the mix of galling French Canadians, cute German girls, a South African couple that were great storytellers, and a pair of hilarious English sisters of which one was so scared of everything it makes me wonder how she got started on the trip to South America to begin with.

The boat trip was fun, except that Dave and I were the only ones to actually bathe for the three days. As accustomed as I was to peeing in large bodies of water it was quite painful to have to hold it for fear of the candiru who's common name seems to be the penis fish. The candiru's brain is wired to swim against a given current, so if one is urinating in the river, you may get an unwelcome parasite to swim up your urethra and expand its spines into the inside of your... *OUCH* For those of you who don't believe me I am not smart enough to make this stuff up, so here is the wikipedia link for further research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candiru.

The boat trip would have been a lot more fun with a libation of choice and an innertube. Canoes are not exactly made for white water, and we spent most of the time avoiding all the fun parts of the river. Even this tributary which is probably 1000 miles away from the start of the Amazon river was huge, and pumped serious volume. I cannot imagine the size of the Amazon at the mouth of the ocean.

One afternoon we went piranha fishing which turned out to be anticlimactic. Before I could get a picture of the only one we caught as a group, the Canadian that caught it threw it back in. We also got to go on a jungle hike in the national preserve that was just like anything we saw in Panama, with the exception of the wild boars. The last day of our trip was Christmas Day, and because of the heat and jungle tour did not feel like Christmas at all. To compensate for the lost holiday we went out and had the traditional holiday meal, pizza.

Reason 327 why I love Bolivia... On a given day you find yourself in the middle of town with nothing to do, so you walk up to the motorcycle taxi stand on the street corner and say, ¨I want to borrow your motorcycle.¨ After assuring the owners that I knew how to ride a motorcycle (I didn't), and talking the price down, I took off my very own motorcycle, rented all afternoon for a mere $10. The crazy part is that I left no deposit or anything of value to insure I would return the bike. They just gave me the bike on good faith that I would not drive it back to La Paz to sell it, crash it, or run someone over. He didn't even ask for the name of the hotel we were staying in. I wish I had some jocular remark to make about the situation but to be honest I'm still dumbfounded.
We drove around town like bandits until we realized why they weren't worried. There wasn't exactly any place to go. After a picnic lunch, watching some lassos fly, and scaring at least one old woman out of three years of her life, we returned the motorcycles without a scratch, that the owners found anyway.

During our afternoon tour we took five minutes to get signed up for a tour of the Pampas. Upon arriving the next day in the swampy bog I immediately realize why I have never been to Mississippi. I imagine this place was similar to the quagmire of the bayou and I have seen leach field that look nicer to swim in. It was miserably hot, muggy, and filled with mosquitoes and toothless locals. The allure of the worlds largest snake, the most infamous carnivorous fish, and the age old question: is it safe to smile at a crocodile? were just too much; we had to investigate. The guide would say that we had a successful trip in that we swam with pink dolphins, fed bananas to monkeys, and saw some amazing birds. Blah-blah-blah, I say the guide is full of bull-pucky. In the one full day we had in the area we saw exactly nothing. I won't be sorry that we did not see an anaconda, but only piranha fishing for 30 minutes was just pathetic. Any fool could have driven the boat to a random spot had us throw lines in the water and claimed, "oops they're not biting today." Not to mention the guides total lack of enthusiasm and gregariousness. Make an effort!

All was forgotten when we got back and found that Oregon State showed why they are the number two rush defense in the nation holding Maryland to a mere 18 yards on the ground as they dominated their bowl game in the miserable San Fransisco rain. Oregon finally got a victory without Dixon so congrats to them, and my money is on a USC route of 21 points or more over the Fighting Illini.

Will someone please explain to me why three teams from the Big Ten which actually has 11 teams (idiots need to go to a better conference to actually learn something) got three BCS bids; including Michigan who finished 8-4 (with a loss to Appalachian State, a Div. 1 AA school), and the Pac Ten only got one bid. Any correct answer will include the phrase 'east coast bias'.

So with that as my final beef for this year, Happy New Years everyone! Even to those of you from the Big Ten, congrats on the strong bowl appearance. It's not your fault you live in the east and can't count. I just hope I never have to drive across a bridge in Pennsylvania that is suppose to be eleven meters long if engineers from Penn State helped to design/build it. To everyone else, I hope y'all go out and makes a new years resolution and then promptly break it. The only good thing about a new years resolution is when one discovers that resolutions are crap and forget about theirs. Thus my new years resolution shall be to find a job.

The Internet Wanderings of an Idle Traveler Still In La Paz

2007-12-27T04:31:00.000-08:00

Picture this, Dave and I were running around town for a third day trying to put together the package of information to get our visas for Brazil. We had to show proof of the yellow fever vaccine again, but this time we needed the original. So we are up early on Monday morning to go to the Bolivian health center to get an original document (not a shot) with the same piece of paper that was denied the previous Friday. It didn't pass the Common Sense Test to me, and I had half a mind to tell her that. The most annoying part was that she was not going to keep the original, she only needed to see it. She knew that we had received the shot and could have overlooked the minor discrepancy, but had to be a jerk about the whole thing.

So we went back, ready to do battle the next day. Needless to say she found some other nit-picky things to send us scrabling to get done, so we fix that and went back, oh did I mention we were trying to catch a bus in the morning so that we could get out of La Paz? I ran 14 blocks in the high capital in the world to pay the processing fee, and had all my ducks in a row. I was looking at the clock realizing that the bus was leaving from the other side of town in five minutes. In my optimism I told myself the bus won't leave until 15 minutes late, we are totally fine. As I turn back to the same evil secretary she looks up and smiles in her unique way (uh, this can't be good) and says "I'm sorry but you don't have any pages left in your passport." From the euphoric look on her face I think she may have had an orgasm from the joy in providing such bad news.

¨What about the three pages at the end, there is nothing on them.¨ I reply in my ignorance of passports.

You could see the tingle of pleasure run down her spine as she turned my passport back to me and showed me the three pages, ¨It says right here that I can't put any visas on these pages, (euphoric shutter) you are going to have to go to your embassy first.¨

Bastards! Dave could get his passport processed, but he was going to need more pages as well. Between the two of us we needed to be in La Paz everyday for the next week (for maybe ten minutes). That meant that we were not going to make our bus that day or for the next week, and we were not able to go chasing after alligators, anacondas, and piranhas fishing in the Amazon Basin. Bastards!

The week off gave us an opportunity to do some good ol' fashion college style internet time killing. In the past two years the internet has improved greatly. It has gone far beyond Al Gore's expectations when he discovered it all those years ago. At least he finally got his credit for the discovery this year in the form of the Nobel Peace Prize. A couple of those discoveries I will share since I seem to have nothing better to do with myself than waste the reader's time.

First I started to YouTube (can YouTube be verbed?) the debates for our next presidential candidate. In the process I watched some of the participant's propaganda that they also leave up on the website. Based on one advertisement I have selected my dark horse, and because my candidate as lost every time I have voted for president I have no problem shamelessly plugging former Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson.

There is also a huge sub-culture based around everybody's favorite ass kicking Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris. At http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/ one can get a glimpse of why Chuck Norris is a better man than you. My personal favorite: ¨Every night the boogeyman checks his closet for Chuck Norris.¨

Not to send y'all away from my blog, but there is a button that automatically comes up on most blogs that are affiliated with this website. If you scroll to the top you will discover as I did the ¨Next Blog¨ button. This button will allow you to go to another blog by a random person somewhere in the world. After an hour of mindlessly pushing the button I realized that most blogs are absolute crap. Which begs the rhetorical question, do other people think my blog is as crap as I think their's is? It probably is. Blogs are crap.

The largest waste of time on the internet was done without Lane's knowedge, he would be very disappointed in me if he knew I was search for a... hold on... Ok, he's gone, in search of a (whispered) Jay-Oh-Bee. That's right, I have been reviewing his bank account balance, and by the time he is done with this South America thing he will be more broke than if Chuck Norris would have roundhouse kicked him in the face. That's right a job (gasp!), so if anyone out their is interested (or knows someone that might be) in giving this future-less engineer a job (preferably one that pays more than monopoly money and boild green bananas) let him know, but you didn't hear that from me.

With that I must leave in search of more garbage on the internet. If you have not burned enough time at work yet I recommend starting with the ¨Next Blog¨ button, I wonder how many times I would have to push it to randomly come across the blog of someone that I know? There is only one way to find out...

A Safe Biking Path to Corioco

2007-12-22T17:58:00.001-08:00

I made the mistake of telling my mother about the most dangerous road in the world bike ride before even leaving Panama, but I promised I wouldn't tell her when I was actually going to go. Now that I have survived and have the T-shirt to prove it I can happy jump up and down, fist pumping, and talk about having played chicken with fate and lived to tell about it. Ignorance is bliss, right ma?

In all reality as a biking on the road is not all that dangerous. The infamous road was built in the 1930's by some POWs from Paraguay who put the POW in gun POWder as they blasted the road out of the side of the mountain. The new road that goes through another valley has made the Yungas road obsolete, thus leaving the wide gravel path to a throng of daily tourists. Most of the souls haunting the area are drivers who made the mistake of try to pass another large vehicle at an inopportune moment. It also claimed the lives of several politicians who made the mistake of trusting their political rivals when they said, ¨Hey Vinny, take our friend here fer a ride.¨

That is not to say that the rider can break concentration, and the crosses that line the cliffside are a constant reminder of that fact. The road is very wide for a cyclist even the poorest ones, but if one falls of the road there is no ditch to land it. You might find on the way down the 500 ft straight drop that the helmet is wearing you for protection in stead of the other way around.

Mistakes are also more common at high speed, and of the 60-odd km of the trail all but seven klicks are downhill. Usually the tour begins at the top of the 4700 m pass and ends in Corioco at 1700 meters above sea level which works out roughly to be a 1.5 mile vertical drop. It reminds me of a pearl of wisdom my father gave so many years ago: It's not so important how well it goes, but how well it stops.

The concept, difficulty, and beauty of the ride could be compared to what I did in Huaraz, Perú. That I did all by myself this I did as a part of a tour, and there is no comparing the two. As a part of the tour other people were getting mad at me for taking my time, taking pictures, and generally enjoying where I was. The other two guys in the group just bee-lined staight down the road with the guide leaving Dave and I happily in the dust. They didn't seem to realize that it was not about journey to the goal, but rather the journey is the goal. (insert momentary pause of witty philosphical banter while reader discovers that this may have a parallel to life in general.) So in the end I felt bad for being slow, but not too bad.

That night there was a huge party near our hotel in Corioco. We were going to go to bed early, but there is no such thing as noise pollution in Latin America and one might have thought that the speaker was actually in the room with us. So, for rudely keeping us up that night we did the only logical thing, we crashed the party. Initailly we thought it was a wedding and were wondering how we were going to get ourselves invited in to go bridesmaid hunting. Upon arriving we discovered that it was actually the high school end of year party. One might compare it to prom, only with your entire family, and drinking is allowed. That's right, cultural difference number 48379: it shall be socially acceptable to drink and get drunk at your child's 10th grade graduation party. When in Rome...

Forged Documents and a Bolivian Jail in La Paz

2007-12-20T12:48:00.000-08:00

Beaurocracy is a nightmare. In response to the United States' policy on visas for bolivians, Evo Morales has enacted a policy that went into effect two weeks before Dave and I crossed into the country. In addition to $100 and an invitation from a host country national I needed proof of a yellow fever vaccination. I received the shot in Panama, and had brought a copy of the document knowing full well that I would need it eventually. At some point during the first six weeks of travel the papers grew a pair of legs and walked off to go tour South America by themselves. No problem though, a little work with a copy of Dave's vaccination record, a copy machine, and some white out, and we soon found ourselves on our way to La Paz, Bolivia.

It took only ten minutes of being in Bolivia me to turn to Dave and say, ¨I can already tell that I am going to like this country.¨ I can't say exactly what it was, it could have been the uncomfortable bus, the local music on the radio, the bumper stickers that lined the inside of the bus, the drunk guy wanting to wrestle, or the going into blind curves three cars abreast which turned into a well ochestrated symphony squealing breaks, screams, but no crunching of metal. I can't put my finger on it, but there was something about the creative and unsafe way things were done that just felt right.

Case in point. At one point we had to cross a 500 m section of Lake Titicaca. We grumbled about our seperate uncovered boat until we saw the ¨ferry¨ that carried the bus across the channel. It was made of plywood with a minimal support structure. Just long enough and wide enough for a full size bus to fit on with a foot of clearance all around. As the boat rocked on the wind tumbed water of the lake, I couldn't help but wish I had my camera for two reasons: one to take a picture of the craziness, and two to protect it from the icy water that seemed inevitably sure to tip the boat and consume our ride. I did find this picture on the internet. It is of the same crossing, but our bus was at least twice as big as the truck in the picture.

We arrived late into La Paz, and the next morning we go out to walk around the highest capital city in the world. How high is La Paz? La Paz is so high that FIFA World Cup does not allow world cup games to be played there. In the history of the world cup Bolivia has NEVER lost a game there! In addition to a perfect home record, La Paz is an amazing city.

When inquiring about Bolivia on our way south the response was almost universal, Bolivia is great. But when asked specifically what it is about Bolivia that makes it so geat there is rarely anyone that can come up with anything besides it is cheap. I now understand their problem with being able to describe it, because it is more of a vibe that one gets than specific list of things to do. In general, the major difference though is that we are not treated any differently than any local. We don't have to barter with taxi drivers, no one openly stares, and people have gone out of their way to be helpful and knowedgeable.

One of the attractions(?) to La Paz is the San Pedro Prison. It was popularized by the book Marching Powder about an English drug mule who got caught trafficing cocaine and was imprisioned. In order to survive in a Bolivian prision the inmates must make their own money usually though artisanry. So the intrepid Englishman began to run tours through the prision to buy dinner, and became such a big cult tour that the bolivian govenment has banned tourists from the premesis. Dave and I went and looked in because it is right in the center of town, and though, ¨It's crazy to bribe our way into a prision in Bolivia!¨ and ¨It's not the getting in I'm wrried about, it's the getting out.¨ So we chickened out, and didn't even try to get in which should bring my mother's blood pressure back down to normal levels.

But this might send it back up... I don't think it will surprise anyone to know that the most dangerous road in the world is located in Bolivia. Another strange tourist attraction is to ride bicycles down this road to a near by town.

Final Breakdown on Perú:

2007-12-16T08:30:00.000-08:00

Country of Origin: Ecuador
Total time in country: 19 days
Music: Besides the noise that the locals seem to call music there are also full CDs in most tourist locations that are dedicated to the Andean Flute redition of Beatles songs and old 80's hits. Immagine hearing 'Sweet Child of Mine' without the guitar intro or 'Hey Jude' without Paul McCarney screaming at the end.
People: I think the genuine people are out there, we just didn't find very many of them.
Transport: Decentralized bus terminals suck.
Landscape: Lots of extremes... Extreme mountains, extremely dry desserts, and extremely pathetic looking mud houses, extremely cool reed houses on reed islands.
Food: Besides the cheapest food thus far (a full lunch with soup and plate of food for less than a dollar) the shining star was the Peruvian tradional dish, ceviche.
Safety: Northern Perú is the least safe I have felt, ever! Most of the touristy places have safe areas and non-safe areas. It's good to know where the lines are.
Gas prices: 14.70 Nuevo Soles per gallon (4.90 USD per gallon)
Surprised by: Despite a country that has tourists all year round I still feel like I was stared at, single out, and generally preyed on more than in other countries.
Final word: Perú has some really cool hiking, climbing, ruins, and history to do and see, but afterwards get out.
Next stop: Bolivia

A Lake so Nice They Named It Two Times Twice, Lake Titicaca

2007-12-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

Note: After catching some flack for a historical fiction story on the Galapagos based on a bird species I will be refraining from making comments throughout this article on the name of a certain lake that may or may not be referred to as something that could be construed as hilarious. I will allow the reader to make the appropriate inappropriate joke him/herself.

Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. How high is it? At 3810 m, it's soooooo high that [editor deleted inappropriate joke]. I'm still not sure what make a lake navigable and others not, but I can tell you that this altitude does not allow for casual swimming. I am all about a good polar bear swim, but I got no where near the 'point of no return' when I went wading into the water (it is colder than Crater Lake). Because swimming and lazing in the cold atmosphere did not appeal to us we found ourselves in a pickle until we heard about other peculiarities to explore in the area.

Puno, the town where one stays when visiting the Peruvian side of the lake is NOT one of these peculiarities. It is an uninspiring parched city that does not deserve one red (or any other colored) tourist cent. After touring the inside of several Internet cafes we busted out on a two day tour of some of the nearby islands.

If the foolish man built his house upon the sand and the wise man built his house upon the rock what does that make the people who build their houses upon floating reed islands? That's right, these two meters thick and several thousand square feet islands float on Lake Titicaca made of reed. These people's entire livelihood is based on the large grass that they get from the lake. They use it as cooking fuel, make their houses, boats, artisan goods, eat it, sleep on it, oh and did I mention that their island is made out of it? I have to imagine that this is the most unique place I have ever seen anyone living.

It is assumed that the reason these people are living how they are was to avoid the Inca's as they took over South America. To escape capture, waterboarding (amongst other torture techniques), and an assimilation process that makes the Borg look friendly these people moved onto their boats to live. Eventually they started tying the boats together to make small islands. Today the spongy reed covers a large enough area for them to have a volleyball court complete with net and ball.

There are multiple floating islands and when I asked one of the locals about this phenomena he just smiled and looked at his well used saw. Can you imagine your neighbor inviting you over for a drink one day, and as you walk out of your house the next morning with a wicked hangover you discover that your neighbor is gone. In fact the entire island that you use to live on is gone except for the small portion that your house sat on which fortunately you discover still softly under your feet. Oh well, I guess you would just have to grab your reed paddle and go tie up with another island.

After the morning on the floating islands we went to an earthen island were we stayed with a local family. These host families speak no English, but are still kind enough to invite tourists into their house. I would imagine that the room we stayed in is nicer than theirs, but I didn't get the chance to verify. Dave and I sat in the kitchen very comfortable in the awkward silence between the races because it gave us flashbacks of our days in the Corps.

After dinner we went to a night club in the plaza (read: large spare room in a store) and danced with the host family in their traditional no-rhythm style, and I fit right in. After a while some of the locals who were looking for a laugh came in to watch the gringo dancing mayhem. The guide introduced us, and for the first time in three weeks in Perú we found some real people that like the same three jokes I told in Panama. Things were warming up to be a late night talking and joking around when hour hostesses came up and told us it was time to go. We had no flashlight and even less idea where the house was, so we had to leave. Figures.

The second time around in Puno was no better than the first, but we did go out for one last-ditch effort to find cuy. The little rodent is expensive by local standards, and is only consumed by them on special occasions. It has a dark turkey meat flavor with a hint of gizzard, but the big turn off is it comes in the skin. The skin is chewier than leather, and the fat on the inside is worse than boiled pig fat. In fairness it was not horrible, but I'd rather eat alpaca or lamb any day of the week. With this quest finally accomplished we could finally bit bon voyage to Perú and get into the budget friendly Bolivia.

¨De Thooper Mountan Haykerth¨ on the Inca Trail

2007-12-07T13:20:00.000-08:00

The classic four day trek along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, is (not surprisingly) monumental! The majority of the hike was done on the original path build by the Incan Empire in the late 15th to early 16th Centuries. The ruins along the way teased the senses but do nothing to prepare the hiker for crossing the final pass at the Sun Gate early on the fourth day. December is considered to be the off season, but on the last day I found myself waiting in line to enter the final day with 199 other hikers (200 passes are issued daily). Thus the last day feels more like being herded than a peaceful sunrise walk in the Andes. During the walk down into Machu Picchu all the mooing was gone and there were nothing but smiles lining every face.

The guides took their time in the four day trek to give a prideful and comprehensive history of the Incan culture despite my doubts about their historical accuracy. They spoke English well, but the main guide always spoke with a smooth, sexy, Latin lisp (and a twinkle in his eye), and always called us, ¨the super mountain hikers,¨ which came out phonetically what I titled this blog. For all it's glory and international recognition the militant Incan Empire was only dominant over the Cuzco Valley for about a century, a historical blink of the eye.

Despite the empire's demise the locals are still proud to follow the three rules of the Incan Empire: don't lie, don't steal, and don't be lazy, 500 years after the fall. This was most evident in the porters. The porters on the trail at times would run in their shoes made from old car tires, passing the tourists who were generally struggling with the steep terrain and/or the altitude. Normally Latinos don't walk like they have somewhere to be, and they are generally content to get there when they get there. Being stuck behind a sauntering Latino on a narrow sidewalk was a frustrating experience until I learned how to walk like them. On the Inca Trail I found that the shoe was on the other foot. The 48 km (30ish miles) took us four days to finish, but the fastest porter ever completed it all in only 3 hours and 45 minutes. Note: this happened one year at the annual porter race, he wasn't carrying a pack.

Going up to the highest pass of 4200 m (13750 ft) I tried to pace what appeared to be one of the weaker porters. I kept up and probably could have passed him, but was not interested in getting into a battle of wills with him. Oh, i didn't mention that he was about half my size, his pack was at least twice as big as mine, and he was doing it in sandals. I was impressed, but am still trying to figure out how they still have any cartilage in their knees.

In our group of 13 tourists there were 17 porters. In a given day there are 200 permits for tourists and 300 for guides and porters. I am still trying to wrap my head around why one of them needed to carry a table and stools, another carrying a kitchen tent and mess tent, and yet another carrying three cups per person, full silverware, plates, bowls, napkin holders, and fake flowers for a table setting. My guess is the reason for all the extravagance is to give people jobs at the expense of tourists, but even most five-star hotel managers would be saying, ¨Geez, that's a little over the top.¨

One area where I was glad to have so many porters was when it came to the food. I have not eaten that well in a long time. There were five course meals three times per day, tea and popcorn at 5:00 pm, and daily trail snacks. I still think I was the most impressed by the pizza we ate on day three, but the hot coca tea in bed every morning to start the day was a close second.

On the first morning I was still enjoying my tea as my Irish roommate Eion was out preparing his bag for the hike. One of our Austrailian group members walked by and said, ¨Top of the morning to yeh.¨ (Note: According to Eoin no one actually says ¨Top of the morning to yeh¨ in Ireland. In fact it may be cause for punching someone in the face.) It was hard to watch his reaction while trying to not shower the tent with coca tea through my nose. He looked at me and turned a fire engine red that I did not think was humanly possible. After our hike was done and we were sharing a pint (in an Irish pub ironically enough) some of the others chimed in to get him to say, 'There always after me lucky charms.' Again Eoin turned his bright red and announced, ¨Noo, he'z (and points at me) bean tryin' ter get me to sey dat fer tree weeks nao. I doon't care how many paynts ye put in me I ain't gunna sey't. And we doon't sey, 'top o' de marnin' to yee,' eider.¨

During the hike though we all took turns faking all the accents to the delight of the rest of the group and evidently the Pachamama (Mother Earth) because she smiled fondly upon us all four days of the hike. The great weather meant there were great views. If at anytime the hikers would lift their eye off the shoes in front of them, they would be greeted with the panoramic sight in all 360 degrees. Everywhere you looked there was always another steep mountain or river valley. Therefore there was never a bad picture to be taken. All of the pictures I took came out great, but there is not one picture that can adequately do any justice when 'seeing in surround sound'.

This is most noticeably apparent in Machu Picchu itself. The ruins are situated in the saddle of a ridge line connecting Machu Picchu Mountain and Wayna Picchu Mountain. On both sides of the former religious center the cliffs drop straight away into the steep valley below. On a clear day one can see sheer rock faces and cloud forests that rival Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.

The quality of the stone work in Machu Picchu in mind boggling, and has to be experienced to be believed. Granite was used for to create everything from temples, to retaining walls, to bridges build in cliff faces. Despite not having steel tools to shape the stones the more important building, alters, and compasses were fit together better than most puzzle pieces. In area surrounding the Sun Temple it is claimed to be impossible to slip even a credit card between rocks. After careful exploration and testing I finally found one spot that permitted my credit card to enter. To my surprise a brand new 100 Sol note came out, a gift from the Pachitata (the father spirit) himself. But the god got the last laugh in the end, because when I tried to spend the bill, I was informed that it was counterfeit. It was a good thing I didn't trade real money for the fake currency.

After a morning tour with the guide we were released to do as much walking as our tired legs would permit us. A small group of us bit off a big bit as we attacked and climbed Wayna Picchu. We were going to try to run the steep and narrow assent to try and beat the record until we found out the current standing record for Wayna Picchu: 20 minutes up and 5 seconds down. The view from the top of the bullet shaped hill in the background of the classic Machu Picchu picture did not disappoint. Those who take the time find at the top a panoramic view in every direction. s impressive as the buildings are in Macchu Picchu, Wayna Picchu is that much more extraordinary because of its towering presence like Skeletor's lair on the top Snake Mountain. The rock work is not as fine as in Machu Picchu, but as one squints, focuses, and stares it is hard to tell when the sheer cliff face stops and the Incan rock foundation begins.

The only downer on the whole trip was the torturous four hour train ride home. AIt was like in the beginning of Office Space when Peter is sitting in his car in traffic and gets passed by a man using a walker. The train was painfully slow with no leg room, smelly neighbors, and no hope of getting off (insert maniacal laugh here). I would have rather walked home in four days than have spent the four hours on that train.

The bookends of our the Inca Trail was spent in the tourist staging town of Cuzco. This was the actual center of the Incan Empire and Spanish strong hold for so many years. This means that there are some interesting ruins and combinations of spanish churches on Incan retaining walls. It was here that Dave and I were reunited, and eventually ran into Matt and Drew from PC Panama. We spent a couple of days echando cuentas and reminiscing about the good ol' days. Once back from the trek I ran around doing all the touristy bits in town that I had missed before. The painting of the Last Supper in one of the Cathedral gave me pause. I never knew that Jesus ate chinchilla and mangos at the last supper! Where is that in the communion tradition? Someone has been holding out on me all these years.

Cuzco itself is overly touristy and it is impossible to even sit in the Plaza de Armas and eat breakfast in peace. I couldn't get more than 30 seconds of peace at a time before someone would show up and start bothering me about buying something, donating money, or taking a picture with them. It got old really fast, but there were benefits too. In the evening when wee were ready for dinner we would barter for a lower price, and then go club hopping and drink the one free drink at each place. The whole mood of Cuzco got old fast, it was time to move on.

Perú's litter box, Huacachina

2007-11-30T09:43:00.000-08:00

After a few days up in the cold mountains and knowing that I was going to be hiking through the frigid heights of the Andes to get to Machu Picchu I decided to take a sabbatical to the hot arid desert of southern Perú. On the way south I spent a grand total of 107.24 minutes in Lima, and decided that it was at least 100 minutes too long. I have heard nothing good about the place and saw nothing from the bus or bus station to change my mind. After giving Lima the slip I rocked down to Ica.

I ended up in the little oasis town just outside of Ica called Huacachina. The small community is surrounded by sand dunes on all sides and in the center is a murky looking puddle of water with supposed curative properties. According to the taxi driver that took me out to town people from all over Perú go there to bathe in the water. He claimed that people with AIDS and cancer had both been cured by a quick dip. Fortunately I was in good heath and did not have even a stubbed toe to dip into the tonic water, not that I would have expected anything more than for it to have come out wet.

This is an interesting facet of the rural culture throughout all of Latin America. Because of limited medical support (especially in the rural areas) people have to believe in the holistic cures (i.e. non-medical related cures). I have no problem with the concept, but there is a huge problem when modern medicine and the non-traditional medicines clash. People will believe that their curandero grandmother knows more about medicine than a trained medical professional. There is a large problem with people not trusting doctors or hospitals. for them it ofent comes down to who are they going to believe: a doctor you can't understand because he speaks educated Spanish with words that are too big for the commoner, or a trusted relative and friend that has known you for life. Under those conditions it is easy to see why they often go with the more accessible, cheaper, and friendlier local cure from family.

I will admit having tried some of the local remedies. Most work on a limited basis. The anti-diarrhea worked like a charm for long enough to get me to the doctor's office 4 hours away. Most decongestants are good for a while. The anti-parasite medicine didn't work at all. My beef is when parents give their child non-traditional medicine and it doesn't work, and they still don't go to the doctor . I tried to convince a friend in my site that he had to go to the hospital one time because he was really sick. He looked at me and said that he would never go to a hospital because, "that is where people go to die." Unfortunately there is no way to argue and win (despite perfect logic) with some Latinos on this topic.

In any case, Huacachina was a great place to sit for a couple of days and do absolutely nothing. There was blue skies, comfortable dry heat, good ceviche, and a hammock that swallowed me for more than one afternoon. One of the days I borrowed a sandboard which is made to look like a ghetto snowboard that includes Velcro straps and no edges, and went out on the sand dunes for some action. It turns out that sand boarding is actually quite boring standing up, with little ability to turn or control the general direction. The speed issue was a non-issue because even on the steepest areas it was slow at best.

The last afternoon there I had the opportunity to go out on a dune buggy. This on the other hand was not boring. I had low expectations going in, expecting that some of the taxi/bus/chiva rides in Panama would reign supreme over a ride with a seatbelt in a dune buggy full of finicky tourists. The chiva rides still were scarier, but I have to hand it to our driver, it was brilliant and as fun as most rollercoasters. The sunset was epic and the stars over the never ending sand were impressively bright.

I felt a little bad about going to the area, especially since some may remember that back in August Perú experienced a rather large earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Ricketier Scale. The Ica was on the outer peripheral of the effected area, but due to cheap building materials the quake still had a devastating effect. Thousands died in Ica alone, and the memorial site constructed was rather impressive. In the end I told myself that the money that i was spending was helping people get back on their feet. In all, this time also helped me to relax and get back on my traveling feet as well. We had traveled hard to get down to Perú, and still had quite a ways to go to get to Cuzco. Relaxing on the oceanless beach turned out to be time well spent.

Head in the Clouds in Huaraz, Perú

2007-11-26T17:03:00.000-08:00

Well Dave and I have separated again. I woke up in the bus to Lima to Dave standing over me with a knife I decided it was time for a break. I'm kidding of course, but Dave and I did parted ways as I jumped off in the middle of a town called Nowhere, Perú, clambered on to the next bus that came by, and ended up in Huaraz. Dave continued on to meet a friend who came to hike the Inka Trail with him. I will be meeting up with them in Cuzco in a few days.

Huaraz is the main jump off point for the Huaraz National Park. May-July is the high tourist season for climbing mountains and people from all over the world, especially Europeans, come to this area to take on the Andes. I had a great time wandering around town during local patron saint festival, bathing in hot springs, hiking around some pre-Inca ruins, and the highlight was a mountain bike ride though a glacier covered pass.

I woke up one morning a caught a bus up to the top of the pass headed east from Yungay over to the Amazon Basin. Before starting off on the decent, as is customary for every male, I had to pee on the other side of the pass so that I could race said urine to where the Amazon river meets the sea, where I hope to be in about ten weeks. After writing my name in the dirt (snow was too far away) it was just the gravel road guiding me back the way the bus had brought me. I had nothing but the Andes' glacier covered peaks to keep me company.

The road was all gravel and quite bad in parts. I was very glad to be going down for about 95% of the 45 km because at the top of the pass at 4767 m (15600 ft) just holding onto the bike was a hard enough work out. There was one section that required pedaling, and after three minutes of minimal work I couldn't buy a breath. In all my forearms burned to let go as my mind forced them to work. I was riding the brakes all the way through the 50-some-odd switchbacks, and by the end was ready to sit in the natural hot baths to soak away the pain, cold, and dirt that had collected on me all day.

The thing that was most curious to me about this area is how I was treated by the locals. I am used to being single out and looked at, over-charged whenever possible, asked for money, and generally put in the spotlight. In most tourist locations upon seeing a gringo generally a) don't stare as much or b) better disguise their looking. Not here! One might have thought that they had never before seen someone as white as I am (and I'm about as white as they come). I was asked several times to pose in a picture with random Peruvians, complimented for having blue eyes, yelled at, gawked at (different than staring), had my arm hair rubbed, and chased by kids while on the bike. Most of this stuff had happened to me before. The quantity of times it happened in a short period was what made me notice, because even in the depths of the Panama I was never followed so closely. I guess it is also different when you are familiar with the people staring -as in Panama, and when they are complete strangers -as in Perú. Basically it surprised me that a town with so much gringo tourism would be so shocked by my presence. Enough of me ranting, I'm off to Ica to see some sand.

Final Breakdown on Ecuador:

2007-11-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

Country of Origin: Colombia
Total time in country: 14 days, but only 6 on the main land.
Music: We have now entered the land of Andean music. This means charangos (10 string guitar), reed flutes, and sheep skin drums that the natives play. They could raise the dead to dance with their lively beats.
People: Galapagos people are a little tourist jaded, country folk are the same in all countries, and I think the artisans in the market would have sold their own children at ¨an extra special price just for you¨ (after all the kids are their handy-work).
Transport: Efficient, safe, and comfortable to the point of being boring.
Food: Exotic fruit juices with every meal, grilled potatoes to make a Texan jealous, and a variety of maize, chocho (a bean like food that locals can't get enough of), and the baked goods like bread and desserts are probably not French quality but they beat most of western Europe for sure. Club beer is the best beer I've had in Latin America, and has won several awards in European tastings.
Landscape: Variety is the spice of life and Ecuador has got it.
Safety: People said Quito was not safe, but we had no problem running around town on public transport and taxis. Outside of town the only danger is the old man that will not let you get off at your stop because he wants to talk more. Zero danger on Galapagos.
Gas prices: 1.48 USD / gal (Ecuador uses the dollar)
Surprised by: We did not realize how much there was to do just in the greater Quito area til we got there. There turned out to be quite a bit that we could have done in country but did not get to. 25 roses cost $1, and when they are in season can be found 50 for $1.
Final word: The Galapagos are not cheap, but the rest of the country is. Ecuadorians are use to dealing with tourists, even those that don't speak a word of Spanish. Any biologist, pretend biologist, or person that thinks flowers and animals are ¨pretty¨ could find something to love about Ecuador.
Next stop: Perú

Ecuador, Ferris Bueller Style

2007-11-23T06:47:00.000-08:00

Because the camera worked overtime in the Galapagos I gave it the Thanksgiving Weekend off so that it would not go on strike like the Writer's Guild. In the mean time, there are more Galapagos pictures interspersed throughout this article...

We didn't end up spending a whole lot of time in Ecuador. After the seven nights on the Galapagos we had to get through the rest of the main land in less than a week. This brings me back to an old hero of mine, Ferris Bueller. The guy who worked harder to not go to school than he would have in school would have been proud of what we accomplished in the short time we had. Trying to do Ecuador like Ferris had done to Chicago turned out to be a formidable, nay impossible tasks, but due to previously arranged engagements in Perú, it had to be done.

One of the details that was most striking to me was the variety of terrain in Ecuador. In a country the size of Nevada there is intolerably hot rain forest, active volcanoes, the Galapagos island, steep Andes mountains that collect snow, beautiful tropical beaches, cloud forest, national parks with the highest species density in the world, and all the land is fertile thus food variety is expansive. This is only the tip of the iceberg of the highlights. There are plenty of other places all over the country worth visiting. The following is the short list of the places that we did get to...

Otavalo: A picturesque town at the base of the northern Andes which has a remarkable artisan market. A hagglers paradise, this market literally takes over the town with people selling their goods. One of the refreshing things about this area was that most of the products are made by the artisans themselves. I was recently disappointed in a market (which shall remain nameless) to find tags with 'Made in China'. Otavalo market still seemed remarkably true to its indigenous roots.

Quito: I tend to be rather critical of cities, and Quito is no exception.
There was nothing spectacular about the city itself, with one very large exception. We were put in contact with a family, a friend of a friend, and accepted us into their house not once but twice. Dave and I used the house as a pre and post staging for the Galapagos, and these people gave us food, guidance, a bed, shower, and laundry facilities for no other reason than we share a common friend and they are exceptionally nice people. There is no way we could thank them enough. So as a way of trying I have posted a picture of some of them making funny faces (seems fair to me).

Upon returning to Quito we met up with our Irish friend from the Ciudad Perdida trip -recall if you will ¨tirty tree and a turd¨. He was staging to do the Galapagos and had some questions because we had just finished. After lunch we decided to wander down to the stadium to watch the Perú - Ecuador World Cup Qualifier. We had no tickets, but were not worried about getting in as Ecuador had lost its first three games. Needless to say, we could not get into the game because we were not willing to pay $25 for a scalped ticket (face value $8) to what was most likely a meaningless game. We thought we would just go watch the game at the pub. BUT, the game was not on in the pub! We found this to be a grave injustice and indicative of Latin American backwards thinking. So we spent the next two hours outside the stadium trying to understand why there were empty seats in the stadium, and we were still standing outside with a $20 bill and a beer each.

Saquisilí: After our failure at the game, we packed up early Thanksgiving morning and headed south, Our morning stop was at a market in Saquisilí, which was different to the Otavalo market because it was more centered around local buyers. There were still artisan goods. As I was still feeling the pinch from the last market, I roamed the streets asking about prices of llamas and sheep, and if they came properly documented so that I could send them back to the states (llamas $50, short-hair sheep $25, documentation? -I'm a jerk). We also made our first attempt to find what we wanted our Thanksgiving meal to be, roasted guinea pig (cuy). It is a true delicacy in the Andes, but after striking out we moved on in the afternoon to...

Baños: A popular tourist town for foreigners and paisanos alike. This mountain town is carved into the side of a hill and has natural hot spring baths at the base of a waterfall. It was described by someone in the following way, ¨Well I have been in uglier places,¨ which may be the understatement of the month. Everything about the place was charming to the point of being too perfect. There was not a scrap of garbage to be found, all stores were immaculately decorated, and even the parks and plazas had been nurtured and tended to perfection (for me to notice this is noteworthy, I normally could care less). We spent the afternoon soaking in the hot water, and asking around for our Thanksgiving cuy to no avail.

We move on to Riobamba as one final attempt at a guinea pig Thanksgiving. We also considered having Chinese food until we realize there would be no 'Thanksgiving Carols' for the waiters to butcher (Think: ¨Fa-ra-ra¨ from A Christmas Story). To make a short story shorter we had no luck there either we said, ¨To Hades with this country, we be out. Peace!¨ (We didn't actually say it, but it might have been funny if we did.) With that we jumped on an overnight bus and woke up at the border to bid a fond farewell to Ecuador despite the lack of local cuisine. With that we closed the book on Ecuador, and I on this article.

From the Land of Clockwise Flushing Toilets, The Galapagos Islands

2007-11-22T17:22:00.000-08:00

Like Bevis and Butthead, I could have stood in Quito, Ecuador flushing the toilet for what could have been days just to watch it spin clockwise. After two years without a flush toilet (or water) the novelty of such an invention is breath-taking, not to mention actually watching the Coriolis Effect pull the water in the bowl in the clockwise direction. This opposed to counter-clockwise spin in the northern hemisphere where up to this point I had spent my entire life. Fortunately, Dave stopped me before too long and we swept away to the Galapagos Islands.

Arriving at the Galapagos by plane, and like a Sula Nebouxii plunging after a fish we dropped on to the tarmac of a desert but not deserted island 1000 km from the nearest continent. The Galapagos has been a lot of things to a lot of people over the years, from tortoise hunting ground for whalers, to Charles Darwin's biological wet dream, to WWII strong hold of the USA, to the former Ecuadorian penal colony (hey get your mind out of the gutter), and now is the cornerstone of the Ecuadorian tourism industry.

The biologist's Mecca has proven to be filled with animals (as advertised), but without a masters in biology or a guide who has such a degree (most don't) it can be rather hard to pick out endemic animals or plants. This has not stopped Dave and I from running around growing pretentious beards to fit in and calling each other professor. We kept ourselves busy spending so much time (and money) swimming with the sea turtles, riding bikes and horses through the arid desert countryside looking for tortoises that needed to be saved after wandering into the road (we actually had to carry it), eating cacti fruit, gunless flamingo hunting, carrying a cow skull through lava tubes, and watching boobies; the blue-footed kind... as apposed to the red-footed variety (I told you to keep your mind out of the gutter).

We discovered there is actually an bird species called boobies the genius/species being Sula Nebouxii. There are several different varieties, and are about as common as a seagull along the ocean. As Dave and I were walking along the beach on Isabella (the big island) we may have stumbled across a conversation that Darwin and the first mate of the ship would have had when they were on the island around 150 years ago. As we were walking along there was a whole flock, gaggle, legion, band, or whatever it is you call several hundred boobies in one spot. In any case, they were fishing near shore in a very entertaining way. They would take off from the water little by little, gather together 50 ft off the ground, all tuck wing, and as one unit would kamikaze head first into the water. Dave and I stood mesmerized by the aerobatics for several minutes. I kept thinking, Blue Angels eat your heart our. When Darwin and the first mate saw this the following conversation ensued...

First mate: Have you ever seen anything that cool?
Darwin: Maybe the Coriolis Effect?
First mate: No way man!
Darwin: well... Maybe, boobies.
First mate: Yeah, possibly
Darwin: These guys sure deserve a cooler name than just the trite Sula Nebouxii that they go by now. I think I shall call them boobies.

In all seriousness, the water life turned out to be far more interesting than the land life. The highlight was our trip to Bartolomé. We almost skipped the quintessential Galapagos day trip as over done, but ended up going. It is now easy to see why everyone does it. It's worth doing! There are many large schools of fish, sharks, penguins, the occasional turtle, and and sea lions that are not as jaded to tourists as the locals are. For as lumbering and inept as sea lions are on land they are the exact opposite in the water, and love to play with snorkelers. Their favorite game is chicken. They'd take a breath over 50 ft away and swim directly at someone only to discover at 15 ft that they were going to have to move because we humans are the oafish, ungraceful fools in the water. If someone was floating around it was also common for them to come up and nip at fingers, toes, or fins. It was always playful, like a dog, and it never hurt.

When we got to Galapagos Dave and I both thought it was rather unfortunate that neither one of us was certified to scuba-dive. We thought that being in the Galapagos with only a mask and snorkel was like driving a go cart in the Indy 500, playing the mouth harp in an orchestra, racing the Tour de France on a unicycle, performing a laser light show with a head lamp, sailing a Sunfish in the America's Cup, coming out of the gates at the Kentucky Derby on a rocking horse, or protecting a 'No Fly Zone' with a sling shot. Sorry about the Tom Robbins moment. As it turned out non-divers do miss out, but not much because of the high cost to scuba, also because there were still plenty of people that did not even get into the (albeit cold) water.

The biggest (and I do mean big) exception to that rule is the land tortoises. Decedents of the sea turtle millions of years ago, the land tortoise walked out of the water one day on a deserted island to never return. Whalers used to carry them back to their boats and put them in storage upside down where they could live, unable to flip back over, for over a year. It is speculated that they can live up to 400 years old (right-side up), but this is still a guess at this point. For as large and slow as they are they still get around quite well, and if they ever get tired, they can and do flop down and take a nap wherever.

One of the down sides to the Galapagos is because it is so famous, there are relatively few secrets left there to the casual observer (supposedly important discoveries are made there often, but again, interesting to the specialists in the field). This and the cost of the Galapagos are far higher than most backpackers are willing to pay. The park entrance fee is $100, and the rumor mill is putting out gossip saying that this cost may go up to $250 next year. As it is I spent around $900 to get there, lived for a week, and did something cool every day. Before getting to the Galapagos I had spend maybe $900 in the four weeks since leaving Panama. Darwin's theory of Natural Selection is also valid in economical situations. Many backpackers are selected not to go, and as costs go up the naturally selected are only going to become richer (read: whiter), and ironically not as able to share in all that the Galapagos has to offer as most of the older people were not scuba certified and did not spend much time in the water.

Galapagos is doubtlessly original, the Louvre of the biological world, its kind of ugly, and yet beautiful in its own way. The desert islands are surrounded on all sides by at least 100 km of water, the El Niño effect is just off shore of Ecuador yet the water is as cold as the Oregon Coast in places, penguins live here (on the equator!), animals are stuck on the hostile island terrain created by volcanoes. It is quite a set of contradictions and a dynamic history both before and since man has arrived. Despite no surprises, it should be a list of top five on the places to visit before dying.

Final Breakdown On Colombia:

2007-11-14T15:53:00.000-08:00

Country of Origin: Panama
Total time in country: 19 days (I would have liked it to have been closer to 190 days).
Music: Excellent, vallanato like Guiness is just better in it country of origin.
People: Friendly, we had two different taxi drives stop and appologize for not being able to pick us up (thanks guys, but I think there will be another taxi).
Transport: Standard Latin American late, but clean and comfortable
Food: My God! Sopa with every meal, genius! Papas rellenas are great fried food on the go.
Landscape: The three sharp mountain ranges cut your eyes if you are not careful, but it would be a good way to go blind.
Safety: All locations that were said to be dangerous had Colombian army personal around.
Gas prices: 6,500-6,800 Pesos / gal (3.25 - 3.40 USD/gal) despite neighboring Venezuela being around $0.18 per gallon, cheaper than water!
Suprised by: It was thought that Colombia would be like a volitile stock: High risk with high reward. Colombia was all reward with very little risk.
Final word: Colombia has set the bar really high for the rest of South America. It is a must visit for anyone with survival spanish capabilities.
Next stop: Equador

The Coolest Archeological Site I had Never Heard Of, San Agustin

2007-11-12T04:16:00.001-08:00

As we were riding toward the Equadorian border we decide on a wim to stop in Pompayan because the author of the guide book had really enjoyed it. Dave and I thought it was just mediocre, but we learned about San Agustin a mere 120 km (65 miles) away. Despite the relative closeness the road was horrible, and the town takes 7-8 hours to get to. Upon arriving one immediately notices the throw-back quality to the humble town. Horses are still a major if not the major form of transporation, vaceros roams the streets growling at tourists, and the colonial buildings in the steep mountains give it a truely unique feel.

Our guide liked to call himself Jerry Lewis, and lived up to his name by keeping Dave and I in stiches as we galloped around on horses to some of the known areological sites. The quote of the day was when we passed a guide that had tried to offer his services after we had made arrangements with Jerry. The man glared at us in his machismo way, and after we were out of ear shot Jerry remarked, ¨That guy thinks he has three balls.¨

We had a barn burner troting around the area listening to Jerry to jabber in the seven languages that he spoke and talking about which eight tounges he wants to learn next (and he will learn them). We visited different parts of the World Heritage Site including the Chakira (where the famous singer got the inspiration for her name) , several people's backyards, and the national park that was better groomed than some of the golf courses I've been on.

The major draws to the area are the statues and etchings in rock that Dave and I mocked and for which will probably go to H E Double hockey sticks. There are some that are from the same time as the Egyptian Empire over 5000 years ago. The Incas came to conquer the ancient culture just before the Spaniards landed in the 1500s. The advance culture knew that the Incas were going to destroy their relics so they buried them in order to protect them. This preserved them very well indeed because many of them are still in excellent if not flawless condition. Several still bear the original paint that was put on them hundreds of years ago as the statues still stand guard over the tombs of the people they resemble.

Of the 650 sq km area that the San Agustin area covers, only 10% of the area has been investigated for artifacts. Due to financial restrications there is currently no one working to dig up more, nor are there plans to. With the extended bronco-like bus ride, the alluring counrtyside, and the sui generis people the archeologists -when they do come- might find themselves in the same Hotel California situation asking themselves the same question that Dave and I asked, ¨Do we really want to leave?¨

¨She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie, She Don't lie, Cocaine.¨

2007-11-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

One of the first things people think about when Colombia is mentioned is the world leader cocaine production. It was impossible to move around this country without thinking about it, being offered it, and looking for the influences (good and bad) that it has had on the country. Before leaving on one of the hiking days to the Teyuna there was a ¨double secret tour¨ from a local on cocaine producer. Before reading further I want to make it absolutely clear that although I did see and watch part of the process, this is in no way suppose to endorse using cocaine. If fact, if I have done my job well, the article will uninspire the reader to try the ¨party powder¨.

The history of cocaine is really interesting, and the more I read the crazier it gets. During our hike there were coca (the plant) farms everywhere. They were never immediately recognizable from the paths, but we could see whole hillsides covered with the guandu bean looking bush. Coca itself is not a dangerous substance. Dave and I have both chewed the leaves with lime like the locals all over S. America (it can also be turned into a tea), and the only thing that we noticed was it aliviated hunger, and it feels like you get a boost of energy. The Incas have also used it to help mitigate the effect of altitude sickness, and there are some have compared it to chewing tobacco. From my limited internet research there does not seem like the chewing the plant is dangerous, and there are cosmetic and non-drug chemical uses of coca internationally.

As soon as one begins to add chemicals and process the coca into cocaine is when laws are broken. We were taken to a lab deep in the jungle by a campesino (read: country bumpkin) where we were shown 100% of the process to make cocaine paste, and 95% of the process to make the more recognizable cocaine that is inhaled through the nose. We were told before we left the the price of the tour included a free sample if we wanted it. If I had had an interest in trying cocaine in any form before, I assure you that desire has been quelled. I don't understand all the chemistry that went into the process, but the guy who was making it was drunk to the point of incomprehension. Not to mention all the nasty chemicals that were added incluing: a paint powder base (for the calcium), sea salt, iodine based cleansing agent, caustic soda, bi-carbonate, gasoline, and sulfuric acid (that's right, de-oxidizing of steel, melt your skin on contact, SULFURIC ACID). I will admit that in carefully measured proportions the process could be safe, but when was the last time that a drug producer cared about the safety of the end user (or was sober)?

Most of the farm owners get the cocaine to paste form. The mafia controls the actual cocaine (for the nose) production. The paste sells for $1000-2000 per kilo and after a short process involving either acetone (fingernail polish remover) or ether yields a powdery white cocaine worth roughly 20-30 times the paste price.

Needless to say our guides insobriety was enough to scare me away from trying it right then, and all the poisons used to make the paste (which one must smoke) scared me away from wanting to try ever. It was a sobering experience, and I think I will stick with my drug of choice, beer.

A few facts about cocaine:
-1000 kg of leaves produce 1 kg of cocaine paste.
-95% purity is considered to be the upper limit of cocaine quality (5% of other chemicals listed above).
-Most drug dealers cut in aspirin into cocaine to get more product at a relatively cheap cost.
-Half a million people in the USA use cocaine weekly.
-Over 28-percent of all emergency room visitations for drugs involve cocaine.
-4 out of every 5 $100 bills has trace amounts of cocaine on it (although it is believed to be transfered easily from bill to bill instead of each bill being used to snort coke individually).

Medellin: Where the Women Are Gorgeous and the Men Have Mullets

2007-11-08T18:12:00.001-08:00

Can some please explain me something... The women here in Medellin are world renown for their beauty. I was skeptical at first, but after a short time in the area I discovered that indeed the rumors were true! But what I couldn't get over was how many men had mullets! as Billy Cosby once said, ¨Someone forgot to tell them not to do that.¨ I think the Cos was talking about neck tattoos, but he should have been talkin' bout mullets. Not only were there mullets, but it was a whole class and style of haircut. There were a whole range including the rattail mullet, the ¨it's really short I'm not sure, no wait, defiantly a mully¨, the ¨I'm bring the mullet back into style¨ mullet, the mohawk mullet, and the one that gets creativity points, the dread lock mullets.

There is definitely something in the water because the women generally speaking are jaw-droppingly beautiful. Dave especially heard the Siren's call, and after a long weekend we finally were able to tear ourselves away from the Island of the Lotus Eaters. We stayed at a hostel which was basically a frat house where everyday was game-day and there was actually a dance move call ¨too high¨. Average bedtime was at sunrise, and someone got mad at me for playing the guitar (outside) after 12 noon because ¨everyone¨ was trying to sleep.

Medellin does not have much to offer the average traveler except a heck of a party on a holiday weekend. As the second largest city in Colombia with roughly 2.2 million people Medellin is a city built in a valley as the industrial capital of Colombia. It is at the heart of the famed Colombian coffee (Read: mafia run cocaine) region. How else would one explain the fact that one few metro rail-car in all of South America is located here if it weren't for the textiles and coffee.

All in all, Medellin was a great stopover and probably a good substitute for Bogotá which we will skip. Colombians know how to throw a good party, and I can say in all earnest that I am glad to be out of there with no illegitimate children and more importantly all my hair still in its un-mullet style.

Indiana Olson in the Ciudad Perdida

2007-11-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

Well we figured out within 48 hours of being in Colombia that we may not have come at the right time. Why not you ask? Well, we decided to roll in on a Tuesday before a dry weekend (ie no alcohol - gasp). Why was it a dry weekend you ask? Well, because there was a major election cycle coming due, and they wanted to make sure that no one was drunk when their candidate lost. Drunk Colombians taking out their political rage on the nearest Americans would be bad, but no alcohol is almost equally as bad. So Dave and I decided that if we were going to torture ourselves we were going to do it right and in a safe area. So we signed up without reading the contract and were swept away on a six day trek through the jungle to Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) into the heart of the Paramilitary strong hold. We would find out after the fact from our guide that a portion of the price we paid actually went to make sure we did not get kidnapped by the Paramilitary. How did the guide know that a portion of the money went to the Paramilitary? Because he worked for them of course! But more about that later.

First, an interjection on the current status of the Paramilitary and the Guerrillas in Colombia. Traditionally the Paramilitary is a band of soldiers hired by rich Colombians (read drug lords) as mercenaries to fight anyone including the Colombian government and to police the coca producing areas. The Guerrilla has its roots in politics on the communist side, but these days is basically the same thing as the Paramilitary. The big difference these days is that Guerrilla's drug of choice is heroin instead of cocaine. These two factions are at odds against one another, but mostly keep to themselves.

Enough about politics, the group we went with was awesome! In total there were eleven people on the trip, two of which were host country nationals in our guide (Omar) and cook (Ever). Of the nine on the tour, nine different countries were represented if you include Peace Corps countries (which I do). Canada, USA, Peace Corps Panama, Peace Corps Bolivia, Spain, Germany, Chile, Belgium, and Ireland were all represented, a majority of which spoke Spanish very well. I estimate that 50% of the conversations were in Spanish and a large portion of them were interesting cultural exchanges on vulgar slang. The others topics ranged from how the cook survive a fall down a waterfall, drugs, the likelihood of survival, and how to trick the Irish guy into saying ¨They're always after me lucky charms.¨ We had no luck with the lucky charms quote, but we got a consolation when he mistakenly said thirty three and a third which came out ¨Tirty tree and a turd.¨ In addition to being an interesting group we all turned out to be pretty good hikers reaching Ciudad Perdida in the rain on day three.

When I say it was raining, I'm not talking Oregon drizzle, I'm talking about time to build an ark type rain. Dave and I were lagging behind with the guide asking questions at the base of the city when the PC Bolivia guy comes running up saying Ever (the cook) had fallen down a waterfall and had not been found yet. We went running up and as I looked at the waterfall I immediately though that he was dead. The waterfall has to be crossed to get to the camp where we stayed, but under normal circumstances there is a shallow pool that can be waded through with ease. At this time, with the current state of rain, it was awash with nothing but white water that cascaded back down to the river where we had begun our assent an hour earlier. I stood their dumbfound, knowing that I could not cross where he had tried, and looking down the water knowing that he was dead. After another 15 minutes of searching he was discovered in the middle of the torrent 70 ft below, and still precariously hanging over another series of cascading and rocky waterfalls. If that was not enough, he was in the middle of the whitewater holding on with one hand to a rock and holding on to the 60 lb bag of food with the other. When the rope was thrown to him, he started to tie the bag of food on to the rope. He was told to abandon the food (all the food for the entire party) and save himself, which undoubtedly was the right call to make. He was pulled back up the steep embankment without the food or his pants. I carried back to a house we had passed on the way. He was in obvious shock, injured, and wearing only a tank-top. As I carried him back to the house I asked him how he survived, and between his chattering teeth all he said was ¨I held on to the rock.¨ Back at the house, we stripped him, dried him as best we could, and put him under 4 sleeping bags that we had. After a couple of minutes of watching him in uncontrollable shock, Dave made the ultimate sacrifice and crawled into bed with him to share his body heat. It may not have been necessary to do, but then again, no one knew, maybe it was necessary. Whether or not it was necessary is irrelevant, I think Dave enjoyed it a little too much.

We sat around talking for the next hour about the fact that there was no food, a hurt cook, and a guide who had no idea what to do. Rescue methods were discussed, but amazingly, within an hour of tumbling off the waterfall, Ever was up and walking around. There was another group at the site we were going to, and they were kind enough to share their dinner and breakfast the next day.

Needless to say the next morning we only got the abbreviated version of the tour of Ciudad Perdida. The original name in the native dialect was Teyuna and the first people to rediscover it called the area the Verde Inferno (green hell). Before our stomachs started us back to the previous camp 6 hours away Omar showed us some of the most interesting land marks of the city that was built on a mountain surrounded by primary forrest. It was still interesting to hear about how the indigenous had used the city as a refuge/last stand/hospital as the Spaniards came pushing inland up the mountains. They finally abandoned the city that covered a mountain because they thought it was bad luck and cursed as they could not cure the new diseases that rampaged though killing close to 90% of the population. Because the city was abandoned before the Spanish reached it, the knowledge of its presence was lost to history until 1975. Anthropologists and archaeologists would later discover the entire hillside city that was home to more than 3000 FAMILIES, gold, running water, and mill stones. There is still much more to be discovered in the area, but the descendants that did survive still prise the area as a sacred ground (they alway knew it was there) and are generally opposed to further excavation.

The indigenous that are from this area are a prideful bunch and are generally opposed to ¨westernization¨. They still choose to live in the small primitive communities without any of the creature comforts including cheap clothing, medicine, not to mention electronics. that they could buy in a near-by town. This flabbergasts me because it is the exact opposite reaction all the indigenous groups in Panama.

Fortunately we had left food at all of the camps for our return trip, so in all we only missed maybe two meals (out of a potential 5). On the last night of our adventure, we had found some cold beer, consumed it and were ready for bed. I was in my hammock trying to sleep when the guide Omar showed up with more beer. Not willing o turn down a free beer, Dave, the Irish guy, and myself all got back to drink a beer and echar cuentas. Omar, as we discovered on the first day, is a jovial short Colombian with a quick Scooby-Doo laugh, a jokester, a free talker all rolled into his lovable five gallon beer gut. It was at this point that we extracted the information about a portion of our payment going to the Paramilitary and him having worked for the Paramilitary for several years. The most baffling part of the whole encounter (Dave and I have discussed it at length) was not that he had worked for them, but that he could talk about being in gun battles it so nonchalantly, and the direct follow up was him talking about how he liked to bicycle with his kids to go get ice cream. Personal safety is a whole different ball game in this area of the world. It is something that I don't understand but was happy that $35 was all that it took to keep me from knowing.

There is still a chapter left unwritten about our trip, but my research is still incomplete on the topic, and will come at a later date. All in all it is always interesting to reflect as I tell a story afterwards (especially a true one like this). When all this was happening it did not seem so heart poundingly thrilling, in fact most the time i was numb from the tiredness of walking. There was no background music, narrator, or disembodied voice. There were only the background noise of the jungle and the thoughts in my head which seemed normal, unidealized, and unromantic at the time. I realize only now what an unforgettable experience it really was.

Pirates Never Got Booty In Cartegena, Colombia

2007-10-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

Upon arriving into Cartegena by boat the energy in the city was different than anything i had experienced in all of Central America. By the time we had spent an evening just walking around town Dave said ¨Cartegena is more beautiful than Rome,¨ and I agree with him 100%. The Cafés spill out onto the streets at night, the ruins are maintained well, the gold museum is small but interesting, and the area has the shape feel and friendliness of Europe but with a Caribbean flair which gives it a completely unique style.

Cartegena was the major port town for the Spanish during their reign over most of Latin America. Much of the gold and other precious metals that were taken from the natives were shipped out of Cartegena. Thus the entire old town is built in a colonial style with a huge wall all the way around the city, and a large fort to protect it.

The Spanish designed the water ways entering the town to funnel all ship traffic into a bottle neck. They then built two more forts (one on either side) of the bottle neck to prevent pirates from entering and rampaging the city. One of the forts was built on an island which is called Tierra Bomba. This can be translated as ¨Bomb Earth¨, or how I prefer to translate it, BOOM LAND.

Today we got on a ¨direct¨ bus from Cartegena to Santa Marta, a trip that should take 3-4 hours. Five bus transfers and eight hours later we finally make it to Santa Marta which is not at all what I was expecting. But this is the jump off point for some beaches and Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) which will take a total of six days. We will probably start on Sunday, and be back to civilization by Friday. Until then!

Sailing to South America

2007-10-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Well, it is official. Not only am I no longer a Peace Corp Volunteer, but I have successfully managed to find myself in Colombia after a five-day trip on a sailboat. My travel companion Dave and I pulled an all-nighter partying in Panama City on Wednesday Oct 18, with other people who were leaving at the same time. At 2 A.M. on Thursday morning we left to make our boat named New Morning in Portabelo, Panama by 6 A.M. I now find myself on land in Cartagena, Colombia for the past hour still looking for a bar of soap, a hotel, and my land legs. Who would have thought that we would be more likely to vomit from not being on a rocking ship than being on said rocking ship.

Dolphins playing in the bow wave

We spend two of the five days in the Comarca Kuna Yala (AKA the most beautiful place on the planet) snorkeling, laying on the beach, cleaning the bottom of the sailboat, talking to crazy sailors, talking like crazy sailors, almost buying a boat, and tempted death by swimming 70 ft underwater through a cave in the reef. We then practiced our harpooning skills with the abundant fish to their delight and deafening cackles.

All fish and humans having survived our excursion, Dave and I and our fearless captain Shell (his given name) set off for Colombia on the New Morning. To our disappointment Shell (76 years old) had perfect teeth, both eyes, no peg leg. His first mate, an 18 year old cat named Dylan (named after the lyricist Bob) was ever watchful and distrustful of either stowaway. We were both surprised when both Dylan and Shell survived the trip without any major health complications. Dave only had to remind Shell once that we needed to travel east (instead of the then present heading of west). Shell grew up Jewish in Manhattan, served in the Korean War, went to the original Woodstock, and has been living on a boat since 1986. Despite all this he has maintained his sanity (enough) to make sailors out of Dave and me in a mere two days.

We sailed when there was wind and motored when there wasn't, averaging around 4 knots over the 200+ miles. After the two play days in the islands we traveled continuously for two days and two nights. During the night we would take turns on watch. Dylan ran a tight ship and was quick with the cat-o-nine tails. Lashes were given for falling asleep, and we had to walk the plank if we ran into any cargo ships.

An interesting fact about sailing... When sailing, you do not use the wind to push you from behind, rather you want the wind to pull you from the sides. Think of a sail as a wing on a plane. It is an airfoil creating negative pressure in front of the sail (vertical wing) that pulls the boat through the water. The wind pushing a boat from behind is actually very in efficient. Here is a link for more info on sailing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing, and here is a link for more info on basic airfoil physics http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/fluids/airfoil.html.

So far Cartegena is clean and friendly. I'll update when I know more.