spanish culture lessons and the jungle!

i went over to oliver´s on saturday night to hang out with him and his friends and ended up with an educational evening on spanish culture - i.e. food, drink and games.

• the only proper way to eat bread is to rub a sliced tomato on it so that there is some tomato juice soaked onto it and then pour olive oil on top
• spanish omelettes (a.k.a. tortilla omelettes) - there was GREAT dismay from the three spanish boys when i looked VERY confused when they told me they were going to make tortilla omelettes. who puts tortilla chips or tortilla shells in omelettes?!? i don´t. but it´s not tortilla chips or shells that they were refering to but the final shape of the omelette. apparently this is a popular dish in spain that is made of potatoes, onions and eggs. basically, you fry the potatoes and onions until they´re cooked, put them in a bowl and add enough beaten eggs in until all the potatoes and onions are covered and then you put it into a pan to cook and then flip it so that the completed product is like a cake. it´s quite thick and heavy. they made a salad on the side, too. both were tasty but it was REALLY heavy. my stomach didn´t feel too good after eating it...or maybe it was the calimocho (see next point)...
• calimocho (or kalimotxo) - apparently a popular drink in spain consisting of a one to one ratio of red wine and coca-cola. apparently the cheaper the red wine, the better - but i think it´s just so that it makes it somewhat palatable. i drank some that night but i don´t know if i´d have it again.
• spain has a completely different set of playing cards. the suites are clubs (as in the type that bam-bam from the flinstones uses), swords, gold, and cups. there are no queens, just jacks and kings. most card games use a deck of forty cards so i think all the eights and nines were taken out.
• chúpate un par (literal translation they told me: lick a pair) - spanish version of uno with more complicated rules. 2´s you pick up 2 or add on if you have a 2, as well. 10´s can change suits. 2´s and 10´s can be played whenever regardless of what suite is in play. 7´s are change direction. 11´s are skip the next person. and you pick someone to drink when you play a 12. basically if a special card is ever played, someone has to drink. when you are down to your last card, you have to say ¨ultima carta¨ (last card). and after you have played your last card, you have to say ¨acabé¨. first person to play their last card wins.
• pedro almodóvar - again, all three spanish boys were aghast that i had no idea who this man is. apparently he´s a very well known spanish director who has been nominated for a handful of oscars. i had to promise that i would at least watch ¨talk to her¨ when i got back to canada. am i the only one who hasn´t heard of him?
• qunito - spanish game of bluff involving two die rolled in a covered container. ¨quinito¨ is when you roll either a six and a five or a two and one - this is the highest roll you can get. from highest to lowest rolls after quinito are: double sixes, double fives, double fours, double threes, double twos, double ones and then sum of ten, nine, eight and seven. the worst roll you can get is a three and one. so the point of the game is to roll, you have the option to look or not, and then pass the covered die to the next player and call it any of the above rolls listed. you can either say it is one of them or ¨one of them or more¨ - meaning that you could be calling it less than it actually is. it´s up to the next player to call your bluff and reveal the roll or believe you. if they reveal the roll and you were right, they drink. if they revela the roll and you were bluffing, you drink. if they believe you, they can either re-roll or pass on the roll but they need to call a higher roll than you had called. i know, it´s all quite confusing. and that´s not even including what happens when someone rolls quinito. if you roll quinito, you can either reveal it right away and challenge someone to roll another quinito in three tries. if they succeed, you can either drink or try to roll another quinito and make them drink. there was other stuff going on during quinito that i didn´t quite understand but that´s the gist of quinito.
  

my teachers of spanish culture, two locals and myself with our meal of spanish omelettes, salad and calimocho




stories and lessons learned from the manu rainforest/jungle:

• the jungle is far away and therefore involves a LOT of traveling via bus, boat and walking.
• there are 1000 known bird species and 200 known mammal species and who knows how many insect species in manu. so the likelihood of seeing different birds and insects are MUCH greater than seeing other animals. if you don´t like birds or insects, probably not the most exciting trip for you.
• as long as the guide is excited about his job and showing and teaching me things, i can get excited about what he´s showing and teaching me - even if it is birds. seriously, i showed up for a 0530 walk only to find our guide and another guide giddy as kids on christmas morning looking at birds through binoculars and flipping through their bird books. i want to find a job that gets me THAT excited!
• sleeping in on a jungle tour means waking up at 0630 for breakfast at 0700
• the soundtrack to my four days in the jungle all came from disney´s ¨tarzan¨ - i know, it´s kind of sad.
• ALWAYS apply insect repellent before going to bed. the one night i didn´t, i woke up with half a dozen bites.
• i took a shower with a frog in the corner. it didn´t jump into sight until i had just started my shower and showed no signs of moving, so i just kept an eye on it the entire time and carried on. i was close to freaking out (i don´t like slimey things touching me unless it´s sushi that i´m about to eat. or certain fruits) but am proud of myself for not freaking out.
• first near major injury/death experience - we walked out onto a platform to look at some birds. i walked off the platform to try to take some pictures by the railing but my foot slipped and i was hanging off the railing with my left hand, camera in my right hand, feet dangling over maybe a ten meter drop. didn´t really know what had happened or what to do from there but thank goodness a lady from my group helped pull me up.
• if you ever go visit the jungle, bring binoculars. it´s grand that we can see animals close up in zoos where there are barriers between the animals and you, but there are no barriers in the jungle so you don´t actually get all that close to the animals - which, in my opinion, is a good thing.
• white-water rafting in peru is sketchy - we were given old, water-logged lifejackets that are probably less helpful than you would like to think and the only instructions given were what to do when the guide said forward, back or stop. no instructions on what to do if you fall out of the boat. no instructions on how to pull someone back into the boat. no query of how comfortable everyone was in water or how well everyone could swim. just forward, back and stop.
• second near major injury/death experience - our rafting guide asked who wanted to jump of a rock into the river. it was maybe a 15-20 foot jump. i´m not sure why but i said i would - i hate heights and i hate the feeling of falling so i REALLY don´t know why i said i would. so the guide brings the raft over to the rock, ties it up and bring myself and another lady (the lady who pulled me up from my first incident) up to the top of the rock. the instructions given: jump, swim back to the boat and don´t go too far down the river. now, i had gone cliff jumping into a lake in jasper with friends before and i would say that i´m a decent and confident swimmer so perhaps i got a little too confident and figured this´ll be fine, i´ve done it before. the other lady goes first because it takes me a couple minutes to work up the guts to jump off this rock. so off i go, screaming the entire way down until i hit the water and i feel like i´ve gone down pretty deep. i start swimming up, not thinking that i am being pushed by a pretty strong current and so i´m going up at an angle - not straight up - so i run out of air sooner than expected and still haven´t broken the surface. and then panic sets in. and then FINALLY i get air but have NO idea where i am. my contacts are blurry, all i hear is water rushing by me, i´m trying to find the boat and finally see that it´s behind me so i start swimming toward it. AGAINST the current. my GOSH i have never been so tired in my life nor have i ever felt my efforts so futile. then lifeguarding training that i had never had to use in the eight years that i´ve lifeguarded kicks in and i swim with the current at an angle towards the shore and wait on the side with the other lady. SO tired and feeling rather stupid for not thinking the whole thing through before jumping. ok, so maybe not near major injury or death, but i felt like i was going to die for a while there. anyways, get picked up by the boat and off we went. now that i think about it, i don´t remember there being a rescue rope in the boat or anything else that could be thrown out to anyone who might need it. oh, gotta love peru.
• zip-lining in the jungle - um. just glad no one got hurt. no rescue bags, old ropes, ropes that looked like they were bought from canadian tire, carribeaners that weren´t locked... i didn´t do much work on the high ropes course at the camp i worked at the summer of 2005, but i think i picked up enough to know that things definitely weren´t up to canadian standards. however, i did feel safer on the zip lines than when i was rafting...
• i was chatting with our guide on the bus ride back and he asked me what spanish words i knew. so i started throwing them out there and he got a few good chuckles out of it. apparently whenever i´ve been asking for a drink, i´ve been asking for babies. and whenever i´ve ordered trout, i´ve actually been asking for ¨a female´s intimate parts¨ - as he so delicately put it. i am SO taking spanish lessons when i get back...
  

so there are SO many more stories i could tell - a yellow flower the guide told me to eat that made my tongue go numb; monkeys; more card games (asshole/president); good food; our bus getting stuck on a bridge and blocking the ambulance; a parade to promote aid for disabled people in this small jungle town where most of the women are still in traditional dress (it was SO weird to see such a progressive event in a poor town); passing other vehicles on sketchy roads (mountain on one side, cliff on the other) that are the size of one-lane in alberta; fun people... i could go on but i´m hungry and need to try out this restaurant that my guide recommended.

three weeks and still no injuries nor have i lost anything! i´m off on two 4-day treks to machupicchu back to back and then on a bus back to arequipa so no updates until november!

cuzco and more new friends and lots of walking and planning

i´ve decided that i want to take spanish lessons when i get back. i know, it would have been more helpful to have learned more spanish before i came to south america. hindsight´s 20/20, eh? but yeah, i would have really liked to chat more with the locals and other spanish speaking travelers. hanging out with alberta and, later, other guys from spain who speak limited english, as well, has been fun but it would have been more fun if i could have taken part more in the conversation. so i´m gonna look into spanish lessons when i get back. that or work on improving my mandarin...

anyways, so i said bye to alberto on wednesday morning at the bus terminal in puno and hopped on a bus that stops at important cultural points along the way to cuzco. i got over my ¨i don´t want to look like a tourist¨ thing and ended up taking somewhere around 100 pictures that day. the mountains here are beautiful - but i think i still like the rockies more. i was chatting with an east indian lady who now lives in hawaii with her husband and she agreed that mountains are different depending where you are and the rockies were just majestic. i agree with her. so i´m excited to head out to the rockies when i get back. we stopped at a couple cathedrals (no matter how small or poor the town, there will always be a well constructed church on the main plaza) and wandered through some inca ruins. it was interesting. arrived in cuzco wednesday night.

and since then, i´ve continued to meet more people - some more randomly than others. two incidences of note:

• oliver and his two other spanish friends whose names i cannot remember - alberto and oliver went to school together in spain so alberto gave me oliver´s number and i called him and we met up on thursday night. him and his friends are hilarious! everyone´s trying to sell you something in cuzco and that includes food. oliver and his friends are fast-talking bargainers who got guys from two different restaurants trying to up the other´s offers. i felt like i was in hong kong for a while there. it was definitely a different experience as i had NO idea that you could bargain meal prices and ask for free food (like appetizers) and drinks. so for 10 soles that night, i got a three course meal, a free appetizer and a free glass of wine. i don´t think it gets much better than that.
• federico and aldo - i went to a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant by myself for lunch on thursday but there were no free tables when i got there. a couple invited me to join their table and it turns out that the guy is from a town north of vancouver. so we chatted a bit about canada and how he likes living in cuzco more. anyways, they finish their meal and leave just as my meal comes. and then two older men come into the restaurant and ask if they can sit with me as there were still no free tables. they sit down and one guy - federico - asks me where i´m from. federico is visiting from lima but lived in england for almost a decade so his english was more than decent. his friend, aldo, is from cuzco and speaks very little english (much like my spanish) so we end up talking through ferderico. these guys were super nice and friendly. they told me where the good markets were, where the touristy things i had to do were, how much a cab ride from point a to b should be, where cuzco oktoberfest was going to be - they even drew me a map of all this! we talked some more and then they offered me a ride to some nearby ruins (Sacsayhuaman). they had rented an old-school vw bug and were excited to drive it around. so off i went with them and had my first ride in an old vw bug! and when i say old, i mean old. we had to push it to get it started. anyways, they dropped me off at the ruins, made sure that they didn´t overcharge me, and told me how to get back to town when i was done. and they gave me the address of their store and told me to find them the next to go for lunch. and i went looking for them the next day and we had lunch at an italian restaurant that doesn´t serve italian food - that was a little odd. anyways, i feel like i have a grandpa in lima and an uncle in cuzco who are looking out for me. =)

what else has been going on in cuzco. oh, i met another irish guy in the hostel the night i got into cuzco and we started chatting. turns out he´s volunteering in cuzco right now - teaching english at a boys´ shelter. we chatted a bit about that and the next thing you know, i´m inviting myself along the next day to see if they need anymore help. so i went with raymond to the shelter thursday morning and had a blast! it was like teaching english in china again! only this time i REALLY couldn´t understand what they were saying when they weren´t speaking in english. and one boy picked up a guitar and started playing ´wonderwall´ (oasis)! i was quite excited about that and took a video of him playing. so that was fun. and apparently there are a lot of similar types of volunteering opportunities in quito (ecuador) so i´m going to look into that and maybe volunteer for the week before i head out to the galapogas islands.

other than that, my time in cuzco has included a lot of wandering around, visiting inca ruins, cathedrals, and figuring out the next two weeks of tours i´m doing. i leave tomorrow morning for a four day trip into manu (part of the amazon jungle) - which i found out includes whitewater rafting and zip lines!!! then i come back to cuzco for a day to get ready for a four day hike through some villages leading to machu picchu and then a four day hike on the inca trail up to machu picchu.

and that´s it for now. i´ll blog a bit on thursday when i´m back cuzco. =)

rodents, swedes, more people, mountain bikes and speed

it´s only been five days since i last posted but i don´t even know where to start. so at the risk of sounding boring, i´m just going to list what happened after i watched the sunset on friday.

but before i do that - so i neglected to mention that i have met some seriously FUN swedes in arequipa last wednesday. i met up with lisa for lunch on wednesday and we obviously didn´t mind each other as she invited me to join her and her other swedish friends for supper that night and i went and had a LOT of fun eating and chatting and being completely rude (well, as rude as a canadian can get) and blunt (mostly at nik´s expense). and the food was SOOOO good. yummy sauces. weird colours - but super tasty. anyways, there were two german girls who are also traveling that joined us and we decided that we would try the local specialty - cuy or, for those of us who don´t speak spanish, guinea pig - on friday night and all the swedes (there are four of them in total that i met) said they´d bring us somewhere. now maja can´t complain about me not having mentioned the swedes in my blog. you guys got a WHOLE paragraph - and there is more to come as i need to tell people about the cuy experience.

• so later friday night we all go to a restaurant so that i could try cuy. oh, and two canadians from ontario (katie and mike) who were staying with lisa came along. the original plan was that the german girls and two of the swedes (simon and nik) were in on the experince, too. however, simon and nik spent the day petting guinea pigs and couldn´t bring themselves to eat one and the german girls just bailed on the whole idea. so i still ordered cuy - which was described as ¨smashed fried guinea pig¨on the menu. i don´t have my memory card with me but those of you on facebook, lisa took a picture of me and the rodent so it´s the most recently tagged photo of me. it was kind of creepy at first but as long as i didn´t touch it with my hands, i was ok. so with a fork and knife i started cutting meat off. it was deep fried and it actually tasted pretty good. a lot of work for not a lot of meat, though. and the left all the insides and i don´t do well with insides that are still inside the animal so i left all that. nor did i do anything with the head - that stayed in tact. overall, it wasn´t bad. and now i can say that i have eaten a rodent.
• the plan was to call it a somewhat early night to wake up at 0700 to start my three-day bike ride around the colca canyon - one of the deepest canyons in the world but we were just going to be biking around the rim. but as i´ve mentioned before, plans are made to be deviated from. a few arequipians that the swedes know came out and i had my first non-asian dominated karaoke experience - and what an experience it was. long story short, i didn´t make it to bed until 0430.
• colca canyon - with two and half hours of sleep under my belt, i got picked up by the tour guide and driver on saturday morning for the bike trip. driver´s name is lucho - super fun guy with limited english. i imagine if he knew more english or if i knew more spanish, we would have had a hoot together! bike guide was a local arequipian named roy who does some serious high altitude climbing on a regular basis (i think he does a 6800 meter climb on a regular basis as a guide) and is somewhat new to mountain biking but was in FAR better shape than any of us. and ¨us¨ was me and an american couple (jen and mark). i´m not really sure how to sum up the entire trip but let´s just say that i TOTALLY love the idea of bike tours where you can do all the downhills and hop into a van for all the uphills. our first leg on the bike was a 32 km paved road that started at 4900 meters and ended at 3500 meters. i think we did it in something like 30-40 minutes. lucho said that he clocked us going somewhere between 70-80 km/hr while he was following us down. and all roy said at the bottom was, ¨wow, that was fast.¨ SOOOOOO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!! that was probably the highlight. there were a lot of other downhills but none quite as steep. and it got rather technical at times as roads were very rocky - and at those times, i thanked the people from my dragonboat team this year that took me out to canmore to do my first real mountain bike ride. there was a wicked 20 minute uphill climb through SAND on the second day. ok, so it wasn´t all sand but i´ve never biked in sand before and had to walk my bike up a good chunk because my tires were spinning whenever i hit a sand patch and my bike would just stop. so that was probably the not-so-fun part of the whole trip. other than that, no one had to throw their bike into the van before it was time to. oh, and we biked through a tunnel!!!! no lights, super dusty, a little wider than a tour bus. so we biked through two-by-two and lucho followed behind with the high beams - until he decided that it´d be funny to turn off the lights completey for a few seconds. we all yelled at him. so he turned them on again. and then turned them off again. oh, and the food on this trip was SO good. mmmmm. nothing but good food so far in peru. =) so yeah, no injuries on my part. mark wiped out three times on the first day, though. i guess he wiped out enough for all of us.
• alberto - my spanish friend who took it upon himself to make sure that i found a place to stay in puno ok and that i will get out of puno ok. he was my seatmate on the bus ride from arequipa from puno this morning and though his english is limited and broken, he thought he´d be friendly and started chatting. conversation was limited but he seems to be a nice guy. so he basically found us a hotel to stay in tonight, got the tour for the floating reed islands booked for us today, helped me get my bus ticket to cuzco tomorrow and has offered to go with me to the bus station tomorrow to make sure i get on the right bus. very sweet guy from spain who is studying agriculture in a small town in peru. his visa expires today so he has to cross the border into bolivia tomorrow and then come back into peru to get a new visa. i´m VERY thankful to have met him as he has been SUPER helpful today. and he might be able to hook me up with cheap accomodations in cuzco!

and speaking of alberto, he´s just waiting for me to finish up right now before we head out and explore more of puno. so that´s it from me for now. it´s been...two weeks now and STILL no injuries (yay!!!!) and STILL haven´t lost anything (yay again!!!!)

¨vacation¨ mode

ten days. it´s taken me ten days to finally figure out that i´m on vacation. i´ve been in arequipa for four days now and i think i could get use to this place. cool mornings hanging out in a hammock with my journal and a book. hot, sunny days. three-course lunches at a nearby restaurant for six soles (that´s like, $2.50CDN!). good food is easy to find and not necessarily pricey. everything i need is within walking distance (except for a job). buses aren´t that scary. people are friendly and helpful. i´m always outside unless i´m in a store or in my room. i like this place.

so i didn´t think i´d be posting photos all that often but i did the most vacation-y thing tonight and it´s just made me quite happy. i walked over to the main plaza and headed up to a rooftop restaurant. ordered fresh papaya juice, ceviche, had my journal, a book and my camera with me and i waited for the sun to go down.

that made me happy. and i realized that i spent an hour and a half doing absolutely nothing productive and just enjoyed the sunset, papaya juice, ceviche and teresa time. i didn´t feel like i wasted time. i´m on vacation. i´m allowed to do stuff that just makes me happy. heck, i need to do more stuff that makes me smile like that when i´m back in canada - i just need to remember that. so yeah, i finally realize that i´m on vacation and i wanted to share that realization. that´s all.

i leave tomorrow morning to do a three day bike trip around the colca canyons with a hike down to the bottom and back up in the middle. i think i´ve adjusted to the altitude alright now but it has been a while since i´ve done a long bike ride - so please think happy thoughts for me and send well wishes my way. i should be alright - we have a van that´ll be with us. and really, we´re just biking the downhill parts and driving the uphill parts. so yeah, it should be alright.

i´m back in arequipa monday night and got a bus ticket for tuesday morning to take me to puno (peru). i´ve heard some interesting stories about crossing the peru/bolivian border but i do want to cross over and see lake titicaca from copacabana (bolivia) as i´ve heard that it´s MUCH nicer than from the peruvian side. we´ll see how that works out. it´s looking like i might be able to cross into bolivia with an australian couple but i might be heading back into peru alone. or maybe i´ll meet people in copacabana who are headed into peru. eh, it´ll sort itself out when it needs to be sorted out.

i think i´m going to miss arequipa...

bus rides, feeling sick and PICTURES!!!!!

i know i said that i probably wouldn´t be updating or emailing or be online much - but when all you wanna do is chill out and talk about what you´ve done so far AND there´s free internet access where you´re staying...well, i´ve updated more than i thought i would - not that i think anyone´s complaining. ;)

first off, i want to say that i now understand what motion sickness feels like and i empathize with those of you who suffer from it (*cough*melyong*cough*). i was on the bottom deck of a double decker bus coming out to arequipa and while i´ve never experienced motion sickness before, the driver was going fast enough through the twists and turns of the road (and there were many of those) that i was sliding around in my seat. so sleeping kind of happened but it wasn´t very good sleep. or it´s altitude sickness. calgary´s somewhere around 3700 ft while arequipa is up at 7500 ft. either way, i feel gross.

and first-class bus rides are definitely first class bus-rides. blanket, pillow, food, drink, footrest, reclining chair, roomy (easily could have fit one and a half of me in that seat), movies. if greyhound or red arrow did first class like they do here, i´d definitely take the bus up to edmonton more often...

anyways, so pictures:

here´s the half the trench i helped dig on saturday. i didn´t get a picture of it but i also glued all the piping together to fit the length of the trench.

the kids i ended up playing with that afternoon while the rest of my team continued with the trench digging and pipe laying

the oasis that is the centre of huaccachina - the plaza/shops are built around this oasis

the dune buggy my group was in - our driver was CRAZY. i swear we were airborn a few times for a few seconds each time. SO much fun!!! and the driver just laughed whenever we screamed.

the sand dunes of huaccachina - it was very cool being surrounded by sand ALL OVER THE PLACE

my first sandboarding run of the afternoon. we went down about a dozen dunes - the last one being the biggest and steepest. i went down on my tummy and the ride lasted at least 10-15 seconds and i picked up some pretty impressive speed. the bump at the bottom? not so fun.

a few us didn´t realize we´d be driven to other hills to sandboard down and hiked back up this first one - it was ridiculous how out of breath i was. however, i´m saying that it´s the altitude (even though it´s not as high as arequipa) and NOT the fact that i haven´t been running regularly the past couple months.

oh, and i found sand EVERYWHERE when i took a shower that night. i was scraping it out of my ears. there was a small but distinct pile of sand on the bathroom floor when i was done...

we spent too long sandboarding and only caught the tail-end of the sunset but it was still pretty.

ok. pictures take FOREVER to upload. so i don´t know how often i´ll be uploading pictures from here on in.

í´m in arequipa now. gonna stay a few days and then head out to the colca canyons. there´s a mountain bike trek i can do - gonna look into that this afternoon. yay!!!!

turning twenty-six

i had FULL intentions of posting pictures but left the requisite hardware (i.e. memory card reader) at the hostel so there will be no picture posting today. oops.

so i was going to let my birthday come and go without any fanfare - as i do most years - until the irish guy i´ve been traveling with found out it was my birthday and announced it at the morning meeting. anyways, i went out with a couple other guys into a community to dig a trench to lay piping to get running water for a family. so i spent the morning digging through sand and then ended up playing with the kids for the rest of the day while everone else continued digging. i don´t think the kids understood that i didn´t speak spanish becase they would yammer away and ask me questions and i´d tell them, ¨no comprendo. no entiendo (i don´t understand)¨ but they would just throw out more questions and talk louder. a couple of the older girls got it and just started playing charades with me. but despite the language barrier, it´s amazing how much you can have just jumping back and forth over a trench and counting to ten. and then i became the amusement park ride and span kids around. and then they all thought it´d be fun to just jump on top of me. and then they thought it´d be funny to put sand down my pants. yeah, that last one - not so fun. even after taking a shower i was still sandy. anyways, went back to headquarters, hung out, built a fire, drank and chatted with people for the rest of the night.

i left pisco yesterday and came to huaccachina all by myself! didn´t get lost. i´m a little impressed with myself. anyways, it is HOT here. hostel´s got a pool and i spent the afternoon by the pool reading. and burning. chatted with a guy from holland and ran into a couple of american guys who were on the same tour as us in pisco. pretty mellow day yesterday. and i hate to admit it, but my arms and shoulders were definitely sore from digging the day before. heck, they´re still a little sore today.

so i´m going on a sand dune tour this afternoon. huaccachina is surrounded by massive sand dunes. i took pictures and will post them at a later date. gonna go sandboarding, as well. gonna head into town and see if i can catch a bus tonight or tomorrow to arequipa. some locals say that there´s a general country-wide strike tomorrow. so hopefully i´ll get on a bus tonight...

that´s it for now. i´m twenty-six. can´t say it feels all that different yet...

day three

things i´ve learned so far:

• the whole concept of time is lost when you don´t really have anywhere to be or anything to do. how is that i´ve only been here for three days and yet i find it absolutely ridiculous to think that i was at work in calgary just five days ago? i feel like i´ve been gone forEVER... and even though i no longer have to think about weekends, the rest of the world still does...
• $0.30CDN ice cream!!!!! not sure how i forgot that in my last post.
• plans were made to be deviated from
• it´s handy traveling with people who know more of the local language than you do
• it´s fun talking to strangers and making these strangers your friends and then hopping on buses with them to random places that you´ve never heard of
• apparently i do a very convincing, 'yes, i understand what you´re saying' look because even though i tell people,´no espanol´ they still talk to me in spanish
• apparently i look canadian - not sure what to think about or say to that
• apparently being canadian negates the fact that i am born of chinese heritage - a tour guide made some interesting remarks about chinos in a conversation
• speedboats are fun
• i´m ok with birds as long as they have more interesting things to do other than attack me - i was on a tour of some islands with a million and two birds and i didn´t freak out
• a million and two birds all congregated on the same island results in a very stinky area
• i predict that i will be sick of long bus rides by the end of my trip
• moving large amounts of grass/weeds mixed in with dirt from point a to point b is a very dirty and dusty job - but so much fun! i´ve not been this dirty/dusty...ever.
• if there´s no hot water available, you´d be surprised by how willing you are to forego a shower - regardless of how dirty or dusty you are; especially if you´re very likely going to get dusty and dirty again the next day
• and i haven´t taken a lot of pictures. don´t really want to look or feel like a tourist even though i am fully aware of the fact that i am, indeed, a tourist. maybe i´ll get over it in the next little while
• still don´t feel like i´m on vacation but i think i´m actually looking forward to hitting the next town and hanging out on a hammock on the rooftop with a beer (or four) and not doing anything - who would thunk i´d actually WANT to do that on another continent?
• and i realize that i´m in south america right now and that in and of itself is pretty sweet much less the fact that i´m here for two months. but still, i´m choked that it looks like friends back in calgary are snowboarding already...i wanna go snowboarding...

that´s all i really got for now. i´m probably going to hang out and volunteer for another day and then be on my way again.

i´m alive. haven´t lost any body parts. haven´t lost anything (yet). i´m ok. yay!!!! =)

day one

i arrived in lima at 0430 this morning and it´s been fun so far. there´s so much i could write but a lot of it is just story telling and i can´t hog the computer for that long. so here are some random thoughts so far:

• did you know that lima has a potato research institue? met a guy from the netherlands who was coming to lima to do an internship term at the PRI. apparently it´s a very well known centre within the potato research world. who woulda thunk.
• dallas fort worth (?went) airport is VERY entertaining. my two and half layover flew by. they have five terminals right now (with room to expand to six) that are connected by a sky-train type of deal thing. so i went around the whole thing once. and then walked through each terminal once. and there were SO many food options. had a super tasty yogurt smoothie. good times at the dallas airport.
• the miami airport - not very amusing. was bored out of my brains and not a lot of places to get food. i was not impressed. but finished a book (¨the reader¨ and i can´t remember the author´s name. it was interesting)
• my hostel is in miraflores (just outside of lima). wandered around miraflores for a while. found a sweet bubble tea place (no, nessa, not the one you told me about - i´m gonna look for that one tomorrow). and bbtea was only four sols! that´s like, not even $1.50CDN. SOOO cheap. and yummy. AND the guy who owned the place looked at me and said, ¨ni hao?¨ i was SO excited and chatted with the guy in mandarin for a bit. asked him about chinatown in lima (it´s the biggest one in south america, i think). he told me how much the cab ride there should be and made me promise to leave by 1700 as it gets more dangerous. so i wandered around some more and then found me a cabbie who would take me to barrio chino.
• driving here is INTENSELY crazy and aggressive. i´m tempted to say it´s even a little more crazy than china but it´s been a while since i´ve been in china, so i may just not remember properly. anyways, thought i was going to die a few times.
• some car horn beeps are friendly (i.e. just letting other drivers know you´re there) while others are angry
• using your signal lights is just a gesture. if you really want to change lanes, you just keep inching toward the car you´re trying to cut off and then it becomes a game of chicken
  
• i can jaywalk here and not get ticketed!!!!!!
• slight flaw with plan to just find chinese speakers - there weren´t that many chinese people in chinatown. seriously. i saw MAYBE half a dozen in chinatown today. all i heard was spanish. no chinese. so i was a little choked. wandered around. got lost. but found my way back.
• should remember to bring a map with me on my trips into town instead of just looking at it before and then thinking ¨i should bring this with me¨
• ceviche - a fish dish and the fish is raw! SOOOO yummy. mmmmmm...
• beer is cheaper than water
• i didn´t take as many pictures as i wanted to because i didn´t want to look like a lone tourist and then get jumped (i know, i´m being paranoid, but still...)
• apparently i do blend in quite well here. i had a handful of people start talking to me in spanish and another guy was asking me for help and all i could do was look at him with a regretful look on my face, shrug my shoulders, shake my head and say,¨lo sientos. no espanio.¨
• trying to communicate in a language that you know all of a dozen words in (and not all of them are used together) is super tiring and frustrating. my brain hurts.
  

and that´s it. i was planning on busing it down to arequipa tomorrow but met an irish guy who is stopping by...i can´t remember the name of the town...but some town that was demolished in a recent earthquake. anyways, might join them and help clean the place up or do something. plans aren´t set in stone. so hopefully it works out.

k, someone else needs to computer now. until next time...