one month later...

i canNOT believe that i've been back for a month now. after two months of doing something different almost every day, it feels like i've done absolutely nothing this past month. it's also rather unsettling how quickly i got back into the swing of things and once again live by my dayplanner.

anyways, so it's been a month and i figured it was time i finally got the rest of the pictures up.

the galapagos islands!!!! this album's big but keep in mind that this was a week-long trip.

Galapagos Islands - November 18-25, 2008

mitad del mundo - the monument built on the equator line (or rather, what they thought was the equator line) in ecuador

mitad del mundo - november 26, 2008

and that's it. my two months in peru and ecuador summed up in pictures. it was a fantastic trip and i'd do it again in a heartbeat. however, as much as i love peru and ecuador, there are SOOO many more places i want to visit and explore.

so...any suggestions for where to go next? ;)

november 6-17, 2008

i'm not sick anymore!! yay!!!! though if this -30C - -40C weather keeps up, i may be sick again. it sucks because there's snow on the ground but it's too cold to go out and play in it.

anyways, here are the next few albums...

montanita, ecuador - november 6-11, 2008

i didn't get any pictures of me surfing because i didn't give my camera to anyone to take pictures of me...oh well...

banos, ecuador - november 12-16, 2008

the day in quito before heading out to the galapagos...

visiting the virgin mary statue in quito - november 17, 2008

up next, the galapagos islands...

october 19-31, 2008

i'm still sick. not impressed with my body or immune system right now. geeze. hoping to be back at work tomorrow because i'm getting bored...

so the next batch of pictures:

my 4-day trip into and out of the jungle - manu national park

in the jungle - october 19-22, 2008

the lares trek

lares trek - october 24-27, 2008

the inca trail

inca trail - october 28-31, 2008

and there's my first month in pictures. all i got left to post is ecuador stuff - montanita, banos, galapagos and quito.

pictures from october 11-18, 2008

i was talking to my mom on the phone the other night and she said that she looked at the pictures from my previous post and loved them. her only complaint: why were there so few pictures? i explained that all those are just from the first ten days of my trip. that seemed to appease her. and so i weeded through another week of pictures and here they are...

biked around the colca canyon with an american couple. they had the good camera and took most of the pictures and I'm still waiting for pictures from them. in the meantime, this is what i got.

Colca Canyon Bike Trip - October 11-13, 2008

lake titicaca is the world's highest navigatable lake. there are artificial islands made of stacked reeds that people live on and i visited one of those islands.

puno and lake titicaca - october 14, 200

instead of just booting it from puno to cuzco, i decided to take the scenic tour.

bus tour from puno to cuzco - october 15, 2008

the few days in cuzco i spent playing tourist.

cuzco, peru - october 16-18, 200

up next: the jungle and my two treks going to machu picchu...

depending on whether or not i'm still sick tomorrow, the pictures may be up sooner rather than later...

a week back...

so i've been back for a week and i am now sick. not super sick but sick enough that it's kept me home for the day and i can't breathe through my nose most of the time. seriously, now. i travel through peru and ecuador for two months and don't get sick. a week back in calgary and this is what i get. oi. maybe that's a sign that i shouldn't be in this city...hm... ;)

anyways, so i've been home all day and got caught up on the current season of 'house' and i started going through my pictures. i haven't gone through all of them yet but here's what i got so far. each picture is a link to a web album for that event/tour/city so click on it to see all the pictures.

from the beginning...

islas ballestas, peru - october 3, 2008

trench digging in pisco, peru - october 4, 2008

huacachina, peru - october 5-6, 2008

arequipa, peru - october 7-10, 2008

so that's it for now. i will get through the rest of my pics and post those soon.

the end bit and back to real life

i didn't make it to otavalo on my last day. but i did go up the TelefériQo - a gondola that takes you up to the top of a mountain where there are GREAT views of quito. unfortunately, the clouds came in before we got to the top, so not much of a view. my last day was pretty mellow. just wandered around quito. and we got hailed on. BIG hail. painful hail. and it came down QUITE hard for an hour or two. at the end of it all, there was a layer of ice/hail a couple centimeters deep on the ground. it almost looked like snow...



so i left for the airport on friday morning to start my way back to canada. i was thinking it'd be a pretty easy, low-key day. little did i know what was to come...

i checked in my two pieces of luggage, was told that i would have to pick up my luggage in miami and then re-check them in and then they would go straigh to calgary, paid the airport tax and went through security and headed towards the gate my plane was leaving from. i passed the duty-free shop and bought a bottle of local liquor (sugar cane alcohol brewed with fruit) for my dad. board the plane, plane leaves, plane lands - a rather uneventful flight, which is totally ok. i have about an hour and a half to get through american customs, pick up my luggage, drop off my luggage again, go through security again, get to the gate that my flight to dallas is at and get on the plane before it leaves or before the airline lady sells my ticket to someone flying standby. an hour and a half isn't a very long time - ESPECIALLY if they're taking digital photos and two sets of fingerprints from EVERYONE. it took an hour for the ten people ahead of me to get through and i'm starting to get a little anxious and then another customs officer comes by to take the current guy off. that took at least five minutes. and when i get to the counter, the customs officer looks at the cover of my passport and tells me that i could have actually gone through the U.S. citizen line-up. he asks me if i know why. because everyone likes canadians? nope. apparently canadians are processed and shuffled through the same way (administratively) as american citizens. so basically i stood in the long line so that he could take two minutes to stamp my passport and customs form. oi.

i look at my watch and boot it to the luggage claim area. i grab my bags and make my way toward the new luggage drop off area with the airline lady telling me to hurry because my flight was boarding. so i drop my bags and run to the next security checkpoint and it's not until then that i realize i forgot to put the bottle of liquor in my backpack into my checked-in luggage. i ran back to the airline desk and asked if it was possible to check it in at that time but it was too late. i didn't even have time to go somewhere to send it back home by post. so U.S. customs got it. boo. to top it off, i had to SPRINT to my gate as my name was called as "final call" about three times. my flight was leaving at gate forty-six. i was at gate one. i ran. when i got to the gate, the airline lady looks at me, "chan?" "yeah." "oh, please wait a moment." and then she types something into the computer and reprints me a boarding pass - she had already taken my name off the list and was selling my ticket to a standby flyer. SOOO glad i made it.

i had a few hours to spend in the dallas fort went airport. like i mentioned in an earlier post, it's a fun airport to be in. i went around the skytrain again. bought overpriced food. and then struck up a conversation with the salesguy at a store and he sat me down in a sweet $4000US massage chair and let me sit there for an hour while we chatted. that was one comfortable chair. best layover EVER. almost missed boarding for my flight to calgary because the chair was so comfy.

so i got back to calgary on friday night. got picked up by a couple friends at the airport and went to peter's for a burger - mmmmm. =) on saturday, i had these grand plans to get stuff organized - oil change for my car, grocery shopping, unpack, put stuff away, get an appetizer ready for the work holiday party that night. so i wake up early to get a start on all this, head down to my car at around eight thirty or so, i turn the key in the ignition to start my car only it doesn't. nothing. no noise, no lights. nothing. my battery was shot. i wander around the underground parking lot to my building, hoping SOMEONE has booster cables. no one has them. so i call a few people - no one's picking up their phones. apparently my friends like to sleep past nine on saturday mornings. so i sent out a mass text message asking who was awake, pleading for help. a few people responded within a half hour or so and one ended up coming over to give my car a boost. he followed me to the shop where i dropped off my car for new oil and a new battery and then he and his girlfriend were SUPER nice and drove me around to run some errands for the next few hours. picked up my car that afternoon and still made it to the party. =)

i was back coaching kids' triathlons on sunday afternoon. back at work in the hospital on monday. i didn't realize how many people at work were following this blog until people started referring to things i've mentioned here or they just told me that they were following it. almost makes me want to go back and re-read all my posts. and i'm finding that i don't know where to start when people ask me how my trip went. there's SOOOO much to tell that i get kind of overwhelmed and then just say, "it was really, really good." i'm not trying to be anti-social and it's not that i don't want to talk about it, i just honestly don't know how to begin... anyways, my first day back was good. a little rusty and slow - but it shouldn't take long to get back into it again.

so i've been back for four days now and i'm already starting to wonder where i'm going to find the time to do everything i want to do. i don't work full time at the hospital but i am still going to coach kids' triathlons once a week. i sent an email out to the volunteer coordinator at the place i'm volunteering at to figure out a regular voluteer shift; looking at registering for a beginners' spanish course at mount royal college for january; wanting to join the masters' swim club again and go to yoga regularly; i'm considering looking at some opportunities to do some consulting work in the community again; there are books i want to read, movies i want to see, friends to catch up with, and snowboarding trips to look forward to - once there's a decent amount of snow that's sticking around. so yeah, i'd REALLY like to have another twelve hours tacked on to each day. or an extra day or two every week. or if i didn't have to sleep...that would work...

AND i still have to sift through all my pictures and whittle it down to something more manageable than two thousand. i don't know if i'll post anymore on here but i will leave a link to a web album where i will eventually upload more pictures - so check back once in a while if you want to see pictures.

a guy i met had emailed me a couple days ago and said that after a week of being back, it'll feel like the trip never really happened. i didn't really believe him at first but now that i've started getting back into the groove of life here, it does feel a bit like i wasn't ever gone for two months - much less on a different continent. it's a little unnerving how easily and quickly i'm settling back into life here...

giant tortoises, sea lions, iguanas, snorkeling with sea turtles, sharks and boobie-watching

oh my WORD the galapagos islands are amazing. it was a full eight days in the islands and it´s absolutely GORGEOUS there. i miss it... =(

so life on a boat while touring the galapagos islands is quite routine. wake-up, eat breakfast, go on a walking tour of an island, go snorkeling, head back to the boat, hang out/nap/chat/read/stare at the ocean, eat lunch, go on a walking tour of another island, go snorkeling, head back to the boat, shower, snack/hang out/nap/chat/read/stare at the ocean, eat supper, hang out/chat/shark-watch, go to bed, repeat. i had my bored moments here and there but considering i did that for a week, i´m impressed that i wans´t bored more often.

my highlights of the galapagos islands:

• i stalked a shark while snorkeling!!! it was a white-tipped reef shark that was about the size of me - so not huge, but they don´t get much bigger than six feet anyway. i really wanted to see a shark while snorkeling but wasn´t sure if i would freak out or not so i was quite glad that all i did when i saw the shark was yell, ¨shark!!!¨ into my snorkel tube and then followed it.
• i also stalked sea turtles while snorkeling. =) i was with three other people from my group the first time i spotted a sea turtle and all four of us proceeded to follow the sea turtle around. the funny thing is that we all found ourselves mimicking the sea turtle´s swimming motions - including when it popped it´s head out of the water to breathe. very graceful, peaceful animals. just goes with the flow of the tide. i also saw a few rays floating along the bottom - those are pretty, too. and i felt like i was in ¨finding nemo¨ at times because there were fish EVERYWHERE. pretty, colourful fish that glew-in-the-dark. yup, i just said glew. gotta brush up on my english before i head back to canada.
• i think most of the world´s population of sea lions live in the galapagos. it seemed liked they were EVERYWHERE. pretty sure they were on every island we visited. baby sea lions are SUPER cute. swimming with sea lions is kind of scary. i had one come at me with it´s jaws open, like it was going to bite me. i just tensed up, closed my eyes and waited for the pain but apparently it was just playing and had no intentions of biting me - or so the guide said. and adult sea lions are HUGE. pretty sure they normally get to be bigger than me so it was quite unnerving to see this massive mass of sea lion show up in front of you or under you while snorkeling.
• i got to drive a speedboat, a motorized raft/dingy, AND the boat we were staying on!!! we ended up speedboating to an island on the second day and it was a doube-decked speedboat with the driver up top. i was sitting in the back and kept looking up at the driver. the guy sitting beside the driver saw me looking so i asked if i could go up just to look and take a couple pictures. i went up and the driver offered me his seat and let me drive us to the island. that was fun. we also got taxied from the main boat to the islands via a motorized raft/dingy. they called them zodiacs. i was fortunate enough that the crew took a liking to me and so they asked me if i wanted to drive. i was conscientious enough to start with just me and a crew member in the boat but i was driving when the zodiacs were full of people by the end. that was fun. and there was one afternoon i was walking by where the captain sits to steer the boat (what´s the equivalent of a cockpit on a boat?) and saw the cook steering. so i just pointed and shook my head (thank goodness they understood my humour) and then he waved me in and let me steer. so i sat down and proceeded to take the boat off course. the cook was nice enough to let me try to fix it but he ended up having to step in and correct it and then let me go at it again. i eventually got the hang of it. the cook left when the captain came in and then he just sat down and started reading a newspaper, glancing up every ten minutes or so to make sure we were still headed in the right direction. that was pretty cool. i didn´t tell anyone on the tour until the day after.
• i get sea sick and i don´t like it. didn´t throw up but definitely fet nauseas and my head span like nothing else. a girl from australia had bought a bottle of a hundred anti-motion sickness pills from wal-mart. i popped two and that put me out for the rest of the night.
• capriniña (not sure if that´s how it´s spelt) - mojitos without the mint and made with sugar cane alcohol instead of rum. i had tried a shot of straight sugar alcohol in baños and nearly DIED because the stuff was so strong - you could run a car on that stuff. so i was quite weary of trying anything that had it. but the bartender on the boat made capriniñas well enough that i had my fair share of them.
• i am continually amazed by the cooks on my tours who are able to whip up good meals in tiny kitchens. my best meals - both in taste and in nutritional value - have all been on my tours.
• never underestimate the bargaining power of chocolate when you´re out in the midde of the ocean. =)
• never underestimate the amount of fun that can be had just by using new terms in an old game to suit the occassion. a group of us came up with galapajack - blackjack galapagos style. seemingly childish and simple but i have never had so much fun playing blackjack before - nor have i ever heard a group of people say ¨boobie¨ more than when we were playing that game.
• this was probably the most educational of all the tours i´ve done. i never knew there was so much you could know about lava until the guide started talking.
• there was a 69 year old lady with me for the last part of the tour and she was open to being a part of everything. she came out with us the last night in santa cruz and just danced her heart away. i want to be like that when i´m 69.
• i think i´m really going to enjoy retirement. there were a few retired folk on the tour and i was chatting with one the morning we were leaving. he asked me where i was off to next and i said home. he asked me if i was starting work again on monday. i said yup. he laughed. i believe that there was a part of him laughing at me for having to go back to work and a part of him that was laughing because he doesn´t have to go back to work. i want to be laughing like him one day - preferably sooner rather than later but we´ll see how that works out for me.
• having physiotherapists on board with you after you just rolled your ankle is super handy - especially when one specializes in sport physio. so i had my rented crutch scrutinized the night before we left, i had orders to ice my ankle and elevate it in the evenings, and she taped it up quite nicely for me. i was feeling like my ankle was doing ok by day three and was told to strap my crutch to my backpack just in case. didn´t use my crutch anymore after day 3. i don´t think a rolled ankle of mine has ever gotten better that quickly before - i´m impressed with it.
• so what´s a bad idea? being too confident in my ankle recovery and kind of forgetting to be careful and kind of rolling it again later in the tour while avoiding being sprayed by a crew member. still not painful to walk on but definitely still a little swollen, even today. oops.
• oh, and i learned that there´s a reason why i´m clutzy and suck at spatial recognition. apparently i score eight out of nine on some hyperelasticity scale - and 4 is where problems start. apparently i have too much collagen...somewhere...maybe it was in my joints(?). anyways, that´s why i never really know where my body is in relation to other things - like chairs, tables, the floor, trees, etc. and everyone who scores higher on this scale has a problem area - mine are my ankles. so there. it´s not because i´m careless or not careful. it´s because i have no idea where my body is. =)
  
• i´m continually amazed by how much fun i can have with people who don´t speak much english, if any. the crew had limited english and i had limited spanish but i had SO much fun with them and even managed to sit around and ¨chat¨ for a couple hours one night. there was definitely a lot of ¨huh?¨ going on and i´m sure a lot of misunderstandings but there were few nights that i laughed that much. good times. =)
• best meal of the trip: lobster dinner with chocolate cake for dessert on my last night. the cook traded chicken for lobster with a fisherman who caught a whole bunch of lobster on another ship. gotta love commodity trading. =)

so i´m back in quito now. went to mitad del mundo (the equator line monument outside of quito) today and visited the REAL equator line (they got it wrong by a bit the first time around and there´s a museum at the GPS determined equator line) - that was fun. got lost on the way back because i hopped on the wrong bus but i got off near what looked like a main road and i lucked out because i was able to find it on the incomplete map of quito that i was carrying and i wasn´t terribly far from my hostel. super glad that i can walk without a crutch.

i´m headed out to otavalo tomorrow for a day trip and then packing my bags for my flight out of here on friday morning. exciting news: i just realized that i get to check-in TWO pieces of luggage. i have picked up more stuff than i thought i was going to and the backpack i´ve borrowed from a friend is definitely full right now. which is ok for bus rides and what not but i didn´t want to put it through three airplane changes packed that full and now i don´t have to! i have a pretty sturdy, large plastic-but-not bag (kind of like the bags you would get twenty pounds of rice in) from a previous tour so i bought packing tape today and will stuff that bag and packing tape the heck out of it and call that my second piece of check-in luggage.

and so the end is near. kind of surreal. all of it. doesn´t really feel like i´ve been traveling for two months. doesn´t really feel like i´ve done all the things i´ve done. doesn´t really feel like i´m going back to canada in a couple days. defintiely doesn´t feel like i´ll be back at work on monday. not really sure when it´s going to hit me but hopefully before i get off the plane in calgary...