We're Back!!!

Well, we're done. We are back! After 281 days of almost non-stop traveling, we have arrived in Temple, Texas, where my family lives. Our six day journey back to the US was fun, with some quick stops back in Bogota and also in Miami where we enjoyed the nice hospitality of the wonderful Amanda Lyons and Bridget Ostronic. Amanda, who was no longer deathly ill (like she was last time) again gave us her bed while she slept on the air mattress and showed us a fantastic time. The highlight was Saturday night and the little known game of Tejo! This game is a gold mine waiting to happen in the US. It's kind of a cross between corn-hole, horse-shoes with gunpowder thrown in. It's a game they play in the villages of Columbia and is just recently catching on in the city of Bogota but it is AWESOME! On each side of a narrow lane is a large wooden stand with about 2 inches of thick, moist clay. In the middle of the clay is a large metal pipe (see pictures):

From Tejo in Bogota

Around this metal pipe you set small paper packets of gunpowder, yep you read that right, gunpowder. Then you go to the opposite side of the lane with heavy metal discs and throw them at the clay! If you get a good shot, you hit the pipe where the gunpowder packets are and CRACK! You get points! Sound fun? It is! The best part is that you don't even have to pay to rent the lane, you just have to buy a case of beer. Ok, no problem! :) Check out the video below and see some of our pictures! :)

From Tejo in Bogota

From Tejo in Bogota

Video:

From Tejo in Bogota

After having a blast there we headed to a salsa club where they had live music and we danced and talked the night away. Overall a wonderful time, thanks Amanda!

Spirit Airlines and Miami

Next we hopped on a plane back to the USA. We discovered a low cost airline for international travels called Spirit Airlines. Man were they cheap! Of course, they charge for everything, including drinks and carry-on luggage but we did the math and we still saved money by using them. Anyway, they fly out of Fort Lauterdale to a whole host of Latin American and Caribbean countries for almost half the price of other airlines. The only catch is they had only one flight out of Bogota and it was in early afternoon, making a connection back to Texas impossible. So, we called on our network of globalized and dispersed friends once again and Suzanne contacted her DP (doubles partner) from high school who now lives in Miami. Neither of us had ever been to Miami though so we thought, why not just stay one extra day so we can say we've been there and see Bridget? So that's what we did! Bridget lives right in South Beach (SoBe is what the cool people call it) with an ocean view. She also showed us incredible hospitality by again giving us her bed while she slept on the couch (just so you know, we always try to not let people do this but they insist). Our day in Miami was spent on the beach trying to get a tan to hide the fact that we spent 10 months in South America but are probably whiter than when we left. We also got to see some obviously fake breasts, girls in bikinis and high heels, and men in ridiculously tight and short swim suits. Sorry everyone, no pictures available. :)

On to Texas!

Miami actually was a perfect place to acclimatize to the USA. It seemed like more than half the people there spoke Spanish and our now customary greetings of “hola” and “Buenas tardes” were never out of place it seemed. I guess Texas is becoming more like that too (actually the whole USA). So now we're on to Texas! Our plan is to spend the month of November in the Lone Star State with my family.

I'll be working on a list of reflections on our trip for the next blog so stay tuned! : )

~Mike

Map of our adventure!

We have updated the map of our trip!

You can check it out here for a bigger view.  The best part is that what you see is only half our trip!  Follow the link above and then scroll down the page and hit "next" to see the rest of it.  This map includes our trip all the way back to Austin TX on the 27th of October.  We hope to augment it in the future maybe with some pictures.

Tomorrow morning we head back to Columbia, then from there to Miami, then to Austin.

~Mike


View South America in a larger map

Iguazu Falls

From Starred Photos

We enjoyed our bus ride out to Puerto Igauzu, it was on a company called Via Bariloche which was the same one we took to Bariloche way back in January. We took it as first-class which was really nice. Thinking about it now, it's the best bus ride in terms of comfort and service that we've ever really experienced in South America. They had personal TVs with headphones allowing you to opt out of the movies if you so chose and they had multiple channels of movies as well. Throw in the fact that they serve wine with their excellent dinner and then top it all off with champagne at the end and you just go a step above every other company we've traveled with. A lot of companies could learn a bit from these guys. :)

We arrived around 12pm still tired from the trip but found our hostel right next to the bus station and after talking with the hotel staff decided to head to see the park right away since the weather was so nice. We hopped on the bus to the falls and arrived at the park.

Iguazu falls is yet another amazing place to visit. It's absolutely huge. We've often gone places in SA where there are really pretty waterfalls but they're always pretty short (height-wise) or not too powerful, but Iguazu falls is another animal entirely. It's waterfall after waterfall, all of which are tall and powerful. It just goes on and on until you get to the crown jewel of the park, which is the garganta del diablo or “the devil's throat”. This waterfall is absolutely huge, we have a video below and some pictures as well. It's kind of like a horseshoe with waterfalls on every side with the main part of the horseshoe being just awe-inspiring. :)

Video (you might have to click the image to play the video):

From Iguazu Falls

From Starred Photos

From Starred Photos

Any waterfalls are a great place to try your neutral density camera filter to get the cool flowing soft water effect, so why not try it here!

From Iguazu Falls

Argentina actually shares Iguazu falls with Brazil but they got the better end of the deal for sure. Their side holds most of the waterfalls and their park has all sorts of trails and walkways that allow you to get up close and personal to the falls. I can't say too much about the Brazil side since we would have had to apply for an expensive visa to get over there, even for a day, but from what we hear all you get is a good panoramic view of the falls.

A Zoo?

The falls were not only amazing in their beauty, but the wildlife that surrounds them is amazing too! Suzanne said right away that the tourist facilities, which were really good, reminded her of the Omaha Zoo (she loves that zoo in case you didn't know) but I had to agree with her after spending our second day constantly running into an amazing variety of wildlife. We found coatie's (see picture), monkeys, giant lizard things, butterflies (so many they would swarm around), toucans, turtles, and alligators!

From Iguazu Falls

From Iguazu Falls

From Iguazu Falls

From Iguazu Falls

After a great two days we got on a bus and headed back to BA. As we were getting on the bus we ran into Ross. Ross was on our galapagos cruise with us way back in May! After 5 months and completely different paths, we happened to be in the same bus station and on the same bus with seats next to one another in a country thousands of miles away from where we spent a week together. Small world...

Anyway, if you want to see all the pictures, (we just couldn't delete too many of them, they were all good!) check out the below slideshow:

~Mike

Livin' it up in Buenos Aires

In my last post I mentioned that we were in Buenos Aires and loving it. That hasn't changed. At all. We stayed in our first apartment for a week in the lovely neighborhood of Belgrano. Then we had to move to a hotel while we found another apartment, which was only a small hassle, but now we are settled into a studio apartment that we will remain in for the rest of our time in BA.

The good life

BA in the spring is just amazing. The weather is cool and when the sun is out its just perfect. Suzanne and I just love walking around the city exploring the different neighborhoods on foot. We both love looking at the buildings and their old architecture that stands out in such contrast to the concrete blocky ugliness that dominates cities of the rest of Latin America (barring the colonial centers of the capitals). We love resting our feet in cool little cafes, sipping a coffee or latte and watching the people go by. We like having the free time to sleep in every day till 11. We love the fact you can get anywhere in the city by subway or bus for less than 50 cents. We love having our friends Ximena and Andres show us around and take us to the authentic places we would never go otherwise. In short, we just love this city!!! So much so that we often stop by the realtor windows where they are selling apartments. Since the country revalued its currency and screwed a lot of its citizens, everyone sells property with US dollar prices. It seems you can buy a great apartment in a fantastic neighborhood for only $100,000! In the US this would be at least $500,000!

So what do we do every day? Well, we have this guide book that the tourism office gave us that has a section on each neighborhood in the city with a nice little walking tour for each one. So we do that during the day and at night we're trying to take in a little culture. We're going to go to the opera, maybe see some ballet, and possibly take in the BA philharmonic orchestra. Additionally, we're going to go to a Tango show and take a week or so of Tango lessons. I think we'll be plenty busy and at the end of our time here we're going to wish we had more. I'm even thinking how great it would be to take a month off of work later on in our life and just come down here and hang out with our future kids. :)

Escaping bad luck?

We've had a bit of bad luck though. A couple of things have gone wrong and we hope that our bad luck has run out. The first thing was our first attempt to go to the opera. The Colon Theater is considered one of the best theaters in the world and was recently fully renovated and might now even be the best! It just reopened in May of this year. We figure, why not go? So we bought our tickets and headed to the theater. Well, we stood in line to go in for awhile while the time slowly ticked closer to show time, but they wouldn't let us in. After curtain time passed we still waited for fifteen more minutes and then everyone started leaving. Turns out the employees of the theater decided to strike. We were assured by several locals standing around us that this had never happened before. Strike 1. Disappointed, we headed back to the subway station to go home, only to have the train stop for some reason for another 30 minutes while we just waited... Strike 2. Strike 3 came while we were staying in a hotel between our apartments. Ximena and Andres came to pick us up for a night on the town and as we were heading outside, we looked out the window and saw several young men with sticks yelling with some other people while our hotel clerk called the police saying “No Salgan!” (don't leave). While we waited for the gang (what else do you call them?) to disperse with the aid of the police, the clerk told us that this had never happened, especially in an otherwise tranquil neighborhood. Strike 3. We sincerely hope that we don't have anymore “This never happens” moments while here!

Next stop, Iguazu falls!

The only out-of-city destination we have planned for the end of our trip is the famous Iguazu falls. The falls are on a lot of people's don't-miss list and were a big reason (besides BA) for coming back down to this part of the continent, especially since we're dissing Brazil. Due to a strange system in Argentina of charging foreigners over four times the price of locals for flights, we decided the only affordable way was to take a bus again. While the prospect certainly does not appeal to us (it's a 15 hour bus ride), we take comfort in the fact that we're going first-class and it will most definitely be the last 15 hour bus ride we will take in many years!!!! My next post will be about the falls.

~Mike

Bogota and my Dad's Visit

Last we left off, we had just come back to Cartagena from the beautiful Playa Blanca. We didn't have much time there though before our journey continued. First we watched the Notre Dame game online and were sadly disappointed when we lost to Michigan. Then we tried to visit any remaining tourist attractions we could before we left Cartagena for good. Finally, the day of our flight arrived and we flew into the capital of Colombia, Bogota.

It was good to get away from Cartagena and get into a real city that doesn't depend on tourism for its existence. And how could it? Bogota has a reputation for kidnappings and crime that make every website we've visited about this country assure us that everything is much better now. Luckily the websites were not lying. The city itself is much like any other capital city we've visited in South America and just as safe or unsafe depending on what you did. Luckily we had a friend in Bogota who welcomed us into her apartment and let us stay with her. Suzanne has a whole blog post on Amanda Lyons in her head so I won't spoil it, but I can say that we absolutely loved staying with Amanda for a couple of days. She took us to some of the nicest places in town and gave us her bed to sleep in. We told her of our plans and she gave suggestions and advice. It was real hospitality.

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Dad's visit

We didn't have long in Bogota till the main event occurred. My Dad, who had been unable to make the journey down when my brother Thomas came to visit was able to reschedule his flight for a long weekend in Bogota with us! We booked a place in the old colonial part of town (named the “Candelaria”) and picked Dad up from the airport. We were amazed at how quickly he seemed at home in Bogota. On the cab ride to the hotel he chatted with the driver the entire time about Colombia, his time growing up in Cuba, and the current state of Latin American politics. His Spanish skills hadn't diminished at all since he had stopped traveling internationally over 35 years ago. In fact, Dad seemed more at ease in Bogota than he often appears in the states! He would often strike up conversations with random Colombians wherever we found them and just chat with them for 10-15 minutes. I usually don't see that in the states. As you may know, my dad spent the first 15 years of his life in Cuba before Castro came into power. His dad was a businessman who had to flee before Fidel nationalized all businesses.

Dad just chatting with a local about Cuba:

From Bogota

Since we only had a weekend we tried to fill it with the major sites. We started out at the Gold Museum. Wow. In a previous post I talked about never seeing so much gold before in my life. This museum beat it by far. It was 3 full floors of gold artifacts from the native peoples in Columbia. The crazy thing is that this is all the gold the Spanish missed! There were frequent quotes from the old explorers about how everyone in a village would have a gold nose-ring or earings. (Gold was admired but not used as a currency). In the end you got tired of all the gold in the room and just went past it. This is in great contrast to some of the museums in the southern countries where the gold breastplate was the prized asset of the museum! Not only was the content amazing but the presentation was excellent. All signs had English sections and the material was excellent. We learned about all the methods used to make these beautiful artifacts, methods which are still used today. In fact, there are no new methods other than the ones these people used, how crazy is that?! Unfortunately, I assumed that there would be no picture taking in the museum so I didn't take my camera, so no pictures. :( You'll just have to go yourself!

Dad and Suzanne looking over Bogota city:

From Bogota

Me and Dad in the botanical gardens

From Bogota

The other big site we visited was the Salt Cathedral. There is a big salt mine just outside of Bogota and the miners constructed a church out of the huge chambers they created. Then the church became unstable and they had an international contest to design a new mine. This is the one we got to visit. It was pretty cool. It holds 10,000 people and is just huge. The way in begins with the stations of the cross which are made out of salt (everything is made out of salt). Then it opens into the huge nave with some absolutely massive columns. Overall, pretty cool. :)

Stations of the cross in the salt cathedral:

From Bogota

From Bogota

From Bogota

From Bogota

We had a great time with Dad and the only regret was that it was so short. However, this was mitigated by the fact that in about a month we will be coming home! Yes, you read correctly. We are going to be done with our adventure in South America in just about a month! Why? Well, its a mix of factors. First, we're going to be out of money in a month. We really should have planned on spending $150 a day instead of just $100, second, we are starting to become tired of traveling. Things that shouldn't bother us (like that massage lady in the last post) really start to become nerve rattling and things that should delight us are just not that interesting anymore. We miss our families and our country and just want to come home! But not yet. :)

We had always wanted to spend time in Buenos Aires, longer than the 3 days we spent there at the very beginning of our trip. Our dream was to spend 6 weeks there originally but we took a look at our money left and decided that one month would work too. We have some friends who live there, plus it's arguably one of the best cities in South America.

The big loser country in our decision to come home early is Brazil. It's not that we didn't want to go, but the combination of the factors above (out of money and getting tired of traveling) plus the facts that it is one of the most expensive countries, speaks a different language, requires you to get an expensive visa, and is absolutely huge all caused us to look at the country and say “we'll try to get back to you”. So sorry Brazil.

We arrived in BA last Thursday and have been living in a furnished apartment since Thursday. We love it! BA is such an amazing city. It's like visiting a European city but without the expensiveness! We are really lucky to have our friends Ximena and Andres here. They are excellent guides, showing us things we never would have seen just using our guidebooks.

Next post will be more about BA and our new life there. :)

~Mike

Playa Blanca

First off we'll start with some pictures of Cartagena that we promised in the last blog post!

From Cartagena

Mike defending the city:

From Cartagena

From Cartagena

Cartagena being on the Carribean Sea makes it very close to some beautiful islands. Given the heat we were anxious to get to a beach that would allow us to get into the water. We headed to the best beach around, Playa Blanca (white beach).  There was a tour that went there that also included a trip to the Isla Rosario islands which are supposed to be cool so we went ahead and booked it.  However, the boat was incredibly slow and while the islands were ok, they were not really worth the trouble.  They did bring you to an open air aquarium however which included some cool sharks, turtles and dolphins!
Shark!

From Cartagena

From Cartagena

After that we headed to the beach.  When we finally arrived (again, the boat was really slow) we were bombarded by local people trying to sell you crap.  Luckily they left us alone to eat in relative peace but the second we got up they began again.  Since we had time we had decided to stay a night on the beach and this was probably the best decision we could make as the tour boat only gave you about an hour on the beach before it started its lumbering journey back.  As an added benefit, after the tour boat left, the hawkers all went home!  However, this was not before one lady who was offering massages decided to give Suzanne a "free" preview of her massage.  After telling her repeatedly "no gracias" and knowing that "free" quickly turns into demands for payment she refused to stop so I lost my patience and told her to go away.  She then got angry saying it was her beach and what right did I have et cetera et cetera...  So we just stopped saying anything and ignored her and eventually she left saying we should buy a massage tomorrow!  :)  Hilarious.  

Anyway, after the hawkers left the beach was transformed from tourist hell into tourist paradise.  We stayed in a little cabana right on the beach and drank delicious pina coladas all night long and watched the sun set over the horizon.  It was so beautiful we couldn't drag ourselves away to take a picture.  Then we dined on delicious lobster and shrimp and then headed to bed, falling asleep to the sound of waves on the beach.  The next morning we woke up with the sun, had a delicious breakfast and went snorkeling on the reef just off the beach!  At 7am the beach was even more deserted and we had the place to ourselves!  The wind hadn't picked up either so the waves were almost nonexistent and the water so clear!  Eventually though the army of hawkers came in to get ready for the tourist boats but this time we were ready.  Then our boat came and we had to bid goodbye to playa blanca.  

From Cartagena

From Cartagena

From Cartagena

Cartagena Columbia

Last we left off we were in Quito trying to decide whether we should take a 30 hour bus ride to Bogota or fly. While the real distances aren't that great (its mostly the mountains that make it 30 hours), the flights were pretty expensive. In the end we decided on the plane trip but used our newly discovered trick to get an extra flight out of it for very little. We arrived on Thursday the 2^nd and have been here since. Cartagena is a beautiful city! It was the place where the Spanish took all their gold they plundered and stored it until the Galleons could take it back to Spain. It therefore became very rich. That richness is shown through the wonderful colonial architecture of the historic center. However its richness was its curse. Everyone wanted a piece of the action and Cartagena became a target of pirates and other nations. Sir Francis Drake sacked the place (before he became a “sir”) and so did a french guy. In response the Spanish set about fortifying the bejeezus out of the place. The old city has very thick walls around it and there are numerous large forts protecting every angle of attack. In the end the fortifications were effective, repelling a huge English invasion that kept Columbia a Spanish colony until they lost it to independence. As I said before all this history and riches truly make Cartagena one of the most beautiful cities we've seen. It's kind of like Venice but with a Spanish-colonial twist. It's really fun just to walk around the old city and marvel at the pretty buildings with their balconies filled with bougainvilleas (we think that's what they are). Pictures to be shown in next post...

Cartagena is also on the Caribbean sea so that makes it hot! This woke us up to an important fact. In all our travels we have very rarely been in any kind of hot climate! Since we've pretty much traveled up the spine of the Andes mountains, we've always been at some altitude or away from the equator far enough for it not to be hot. Not so anymore! We're here and for the first time in months have longed for an air conditioned room!

Mud Volcano

Just a couple miles outside of Cartagena is something I never would have guessed. They call it a Mud Volcano. It's exactly what it sounds like. Apparently its some heat below the earth is mixing with water and dead organic material and pushing up this stuff in one spot. The result is a big cone of mud. Since the heat is pretty far removed, the mud is a nice lukewarm temperature and now a tourist attraction! How many times have you climbed into a mud volcano? I bet its a big fat 0! It was really cool. The mud is thick but very liquid at the same time. It's very dense so you just float in it. If you lay on your back you just float and you can stand straight up in it and you just float there. I tried to push myself down as deep as I could but the most I could get to was my neck. Overall really fun.

From MUD Volcano

From MUD Volcano

It was just a little crowded. :)

Next up we're going to be heading to the most beautiful beach in the area called Playa Blanca. The plan is to stay a night but I'm slightly torn about that because Notre Dame will be playing Michigan on Saturday and I'm pretty sure this beach won't have a high speed internet connection. :) I know, Notre dame plays every year and how often are you going to be on a beautiful beach on the carribean? But I still have a strong desire to watch it! We'll see if we can find some way to do both. Nothing like having your cake and eating it too!

~Mike

ps.  Posted this after our disappointing loss to Michigan.  Stupid Michigan...