Biking down the "Worlds Most Dangerous Road"

Hola Amigos!

Finanlly some pictures! Our Ipod is still giving us fits posting pics, but here are some pictures from our trip down the so-called "Worlds Most Dangerous Road." Why does it deserve that name? Because about 100 people on average die on it every year.

(Picture caption: A swig of local booze, then a "sip" for PachaMama, or Mother Earth, for Good luck. Hey, when in Rome...)

The good news for us, is that most die in buses and trucks, and not on bikes. Before you decide that we have gone loco, we are pretty sure we, statistically speaking took the safest way down.

The road starts in La Paz at 14,000 ft in the bitter cold, and ends 5 hrs later in the rain forest, in the Coca producing region of Boliva at 3000 ft, where we were stripping off layers. The road is the main throughway for the transport of Coca, coffee, and other Bolivian produce to the city. As you can imagine, we were not excited to hear our guide say, "Bikes and cars downhill have to stay on the cliff-side because it safe for climbing vehicles to be further away from the edge." (greaaat...) On the way down, we passed US DEA checkpoints for Cocaine-producing chemicals, herds of cows, llamas, and stray dogs. The ride was exhilarating and the scenery beautiful (note from Kristen, exhilerating is a common euphemism for really scary and it was hard to look at the scenery due to the extreme focus placed on NOT falling off the side of the mountain).(Picture not from our ride, but another day on the trail)

By the end of the ride, Kristen had overcome her fear of the side of the road and we were happy to celebrate our survival with a cold Paceña (the LaPaz beer). We spent the night at the bottom of the mountain in a small town called Coroico, where there was a GREAT hostel with a pool, hammocks, and anything else one could ever desire! We spent the next day hiking through the coca farms terraced on the hillside and napping and reading by the pool and in the hammocks....we think we like this travel thing OK:)

Interestingly, although Coca production is officially illegal in Bolivia, as the leaf contains the Cocaine alkaline, which is extracted mainly through the addition of lime, in some regions its cultivation is allowed. In almost all of the altiplano, which is the Andean region of Bolivia, Peru, etc., you can easily find HUGE bags of dried coca leaves at the markets. The leaves are constantly chewed by the locals, who swear by its ability to mitigate altidude sickness, ward off fatigue, and decrease appetite! The levels of cocaine absorbed into the blood from chewing the leaf are negligible in most cases, but an interesting fact of the day: Despite the anti-coca growing policy of the US government, which has devestated many Bolivian communities who subsist on coca cultivation alone, Coca cola uses the coca leaf to this day in Coca cola to enhance flavor. It buys its leaves from Colombia, not Bolivia!

So, there´s the science lesson for the day on the coca leaf!! We are now in Cuzco, Peru, and begin language school tomorrow. We are living with a Cuzceñian famaily here, who have been very good to us, although dinner table conversation remains a comedy show of body language and spanglish. Last night, the family introduced another exchange student to us who is from Holland (in spanish Ollandia). We proceeded to chat with him for 5 minutes about the weather in ORLANDO, FL (we did most of the chatting)!! It was not until this morning that we understood our mistake, when we heard him speak English with a Dutch accent, not an American one! Hope to add more pics and good stories soon....

Chao,

Kristen and Jon

4-26 Stuck in Copacabana, Bolivia

Sorry it´s been so long since our last entry, Bolivia has without doubt been the most challenging country for communication. I was telling Jon at dinner tonight that upon returning to the U.S. I plan on being a much better communicator (as some of you may know i sometimes neglect my cell phone messages). It´s so easy to take the ease of communication we enjoy in the US for granted.

Bolivia has been by far the most underdeveloped country we have visited so far. The style of life here is dramatically different from that we are accustomed to. In more places than not, there is not running water, and one flushes the toilet by scooping a bucket of dirty water from a huge barrel and dumping it down the toilet. This is a fairly practical, yet incomplete method for flushing busy hostal toilets. And since there is no soap or running water in sinks, Purel has become our best friend. Unfortunately for us, it seems a little spoken of effect of altitude (We have been between 3,000 and 5,000 meters for the past 10 days)is that is GREATLY speeds digestion, so the frequent combination of twenty-five travelers and two manually flushing toilets has caused several unpleasant experiences for us.

The Bolivian lifestyle is fascinating, and incredibly hard. Most Bolivians still farm for their livlihood, producing just enough for their families, and there is almost no visible income gap, everyone is just getting by. I have not yet understood how the women here take cold showers in buckets or farm all day while wearing their children in slings on their backs. Interestingly, there have been almost no beggars or homeless in Bolivia, even in the cities, the strength of family and community seem to be alive and well here.

Although different, we have loved Bolivia and its pace of life. We have spent the past few days exploring Copacabana, a town on the shores of Lake Titicaca, a huge lake on the border of Bolivia and Peru. We were supposed to leave today, but our bus was mysteriously canceled, due to unknown circumstance, so we will arrive tomorrow evening in Puno, Peru on the Peru side of the lake to spend a day there before taking off for language school in Cuzco. We are both looking forward to being in one place for a while, and can´t wait to catch up on communication!!

Hasta Cuzco.....

P.S. Happy Birthday Dad/Mike! Wish we could be there!

Happy Easter!

Spending Good Friday today in the Atacama Desert, Chile they say the driest desert in the world--my contact lenses tend to agree. We wanted to post our pictures today, but who knew that a little town of population 2K in the middle of nowhere wouldnt have computers that accept external devices. We are just 40KM from the Bolivian border and on Easter Sunday, we are leaving on in 4x4 car to spend 3 days exploring the salt flats of Bolivia. Bolivia is supposed to be amazing and like nothing else in the world. Next wednesday we should make it to La Paz, the capital which sits at 14K feet above sea level. Hopefully more blogging from there.

The last week we have spent in Salta a northern province in Argentina. Spent lots of time eating Tamales and Humitas. We also rented a car for a day and explored little village north of the bigger city. We were sad to leave Argentina, after great food, amazing people and places (and a fantastic exchange rate!) More on this stuff, with some more interesting pictures a bit later when we get a chance to blog in La Paz

Happy Easter everyone. Wish we could be spending it with you all.

Desde Bodegas a Fincas, Nuestras Viajes en Mendoza y Chilecito
(From Wineries to Farms, our travels through Mendoza and Chilecito)

Since the last post, we have visited both Mendoza, the wine region in Argentina, and Chilecito, a small towm in the Famatina mountains just east of the Andes. Today, we are on our way from Chilecito to Salta, a town in the North of Argentina, but have a 4 hour layover to switch buses--great opportunity to blog!!

Mendoza was a wine extraveganza. We got to meet up with Jon´s second cousin, Kate, who was great to us and helped us get around the city and the surrounding wine regions. She is working for a wine tourism and tasting company, so she set us up on an amazing chauferred tour of one of the four wine regions.

Our experience in Chilecito was the first and prime example of what we had both expected that our trip would be. Up to this point, we had stayed on the well beaten path, where there were lots of travelers and travel was fairly hassle free (with the exception of a few screaming babies and way overheated busses). All we knew about Chilecito came from a 3 sentence blurb in one of our travel books, that ended with "warmly recommended." It specifically referenced a farm called Finca del Paiman, where you could stay, help make jams on the farm (and eat them every morning for breakfast, and book guided hikes in the nearby mountains. I booked a two night stay there and a hike through email in Spanish--not very good Spanish, so we really had no idea what we were going to find!

It was the biggest headache to get to the town, and when we arrived at midnight in a rainstorm after spending three hours on bus that had weird liquids leaking-pouring over my seat, I was beginning to have second thoughts. However, our guide for the next day, Mario, picked us up from the bus, and drove us out to the farm. He told us that it rains about once a year in Chilecito, bad night to arrive! The farm was charming and we stayed in the one bedroom in the main farmhouse as we were the only guests. Jon had a run-in with a fly during the night, who had a "fiesta" on his face, leaving about 14 bug bites (we counted). For now on, he may sleep with a bag over his head.

On Saturday morning, we had homemade bread and fresh jam for breakfast and started our hike, which was gorgeous, although we forgot our camera (whoops). We explored the old cable car stations on the mountain were built in 1904 to bring minerals down the mountain and into the town. We also practiced lots of Spainsh with Mario, who was a great guide. We ate fresh walnuts from wild walnut trees and he showed us naturally growing mint, and several other herbs, the most interesting of which was mañi mañi, a viagra-like stimulant!

We spent siesta time (2:30-6:30pm!!) back on the farm, which grows fruit for jam, olives for olive oil, and lemons, and then explored the town and bought some local products, including a few samples of local wine, and made dinner. The people we met were amazing and friendly, and we learned a ton of cool things about their lives, dailyroutines, etc through talking to them. Overall, we had an amazing time, and are so glad we went--despite the pains of getting there and away! Any town that practices a daily 4hr siesta where everyone sleeps is worth the visit!

More about our day of wine tasting in Mendoza--with lots of good pictures next time we blog (which may be when we arrive in Salta at 3am this morning with nothing to do...)

Hola from Mendoza, Argentina!

Just left Bariloche, Argentina, a town famous for mountains, skiing, lakes, chocolate, and ridiculously cheap and amazing food. Ever been to Fogo de Chao (or a similar Argentinian steak house)? Well, think that, but for about $10-15 per person with wine. Unbelievable. We ate our way through Bariloche and spent our days hiking to gain an appetite to adequately be able to appreciate the food.





Bariloche is also where we met up with our friends Katie and Jim. It has been great to travel together, makes it feel closer to home. Check out our pictures from our hike to the top of a 2,200M moutaintop, where we splashed cold water on our face out of newly melted snow reservoir. Kristen at times thought she was going to die as we scaled steep rock faces, but decided that she and heights are soon going to be good friends.






On our last day in Bariloche. Kristen and I decided to do a 3hr hike to a moutaintop that had a chairlift, where we hoped to be able to get a ride down, since we were getting a late start. Problem with this hike is that we had just finished a 10K run and were running low on food in the stomach. To add fuel to the fire, Kristen started developing some nasty flu-like symptoms. Hike was not going well. Needed water and had none. Took us everything we had to make it to the top. When we got there, we had about an hour left of sunlight and thought the chair lift would be still be open. Here is where we learned a couple of key lessons about South America:

1) Never assume anything is open on Sundays
2) Reasoning and pleading (begging) with someone, when you don´t speak the language is not usually successful. Apparently the "Are you serious?" face doesn´t translate well to spanish.

So after the man told us that the ticket office was closed and we couldn´t get a ride even though the lift was still running, we turned around with our heads between our legs and started the 7KM walk down. Very fortunately for us, this potentially very bad night turned out alright, when we made it to the road-side and found out that the thumb is very powerful communication tool. An amazingly friendly Bariloche couple picked us up in their little four-door and we got to practice our spanish all the way down the mountain and into town.

Next couple of days: wine tasting and hanging out with my cousin Kate in wine country.