Home sweet home??

I figured since we were home now we should finish off our trip..Basically we spent the last few days touring around santiago, visiting wineries, trying to drink as much cheap wine as we could before we left and of course, eating hot dogs.

END OF STORY.

We have been home a week and as usual, things have returned to normal pretty quickly. Di and Marc are still downstairs and Laura upstairs so its been fun. We will miss the Binks when they move to their house..tonight???!!!! so sad.....

HOW WILL FINN LIVE WITHOUT KENT????

In other unrelated news, Chris has still not cut his hair.

Soccer Game

Last night we went to a soccer game in Santiago between two Chilean first division clubs. It was held in the 80,000 person national stadium, this place used to be a prison during the time Pinocea took control of Chile in the 70´s, there is barbed wire, and heavy metal gates everywhere, its also in the slum district so the place defintily has atmosphere.

Tickets were very resonable at about $6 dollars but they we´re general admission. We were happy about all the police on horses outside the stadium but we´re surprised that they didn´t sell beer at the stadium, we soon learned why.

The game was great in the first half and the home team was leading 1 nothing. The only weird thing was the riot police in full garb ringing the field in groups of 4. These weren´t your parents 60´s riot police either, they were equiped with full lucite shield, helmets, leg and arm protection and tear gas.

During half time the riots started. People started tearing the benches apart, they were wood, and throwing them at the riot police, then they broke through the fence to the field and ran onto it, at that point the riot police poured out of every entrance and chased the fans around. All the while the crowd cheered on the hooligans including the families with children.

Marla wanted to leave if any of the families around us started leaving as well. Thankfully the soccer game started up again and the crowd seemed to loose interest after the home team was scored on and they conceeded an own goal.

After the game, everyone left the stadium immediatly so we followed their lead. We´ve got some really cool video´s of the whole thing, complete with flares and paint bombs going off.

Good times!!!

Touring Santiago

Well we´ve been in Santiago for the last few days. It has been fun. Instead of going from small town to small town around Santiago we have been doing day trips to places and staying in Santiago at night.

Yesterday we went to the beach town of Vina del Mar. Its kind of like Grand Bend for Chileans, or Muskoka if your in Toronto. Evidently all the Chileans flood here in the summer, even the president has a beach house here, we know because we saw it.

We´re busy trying to book some winery tours but this is surprisingly hard for a place that produces so much wine, no one is getting back to us and they all want 2 days notice for a tour so we´re just going to start showing up at places and demanding to drink.

We´ll see what happens!!

Up-to-date Photo´s

Hotdog dinner, surprising popular in Chile

Sweet Comb-over

Marla riding a Chilean cannon

Marla partying with the locals

Photo Redux

Biking in Valle de la Luna, Chile

Laguna Colorado, Bolivia

Salt flat Shadows

Flying Flamingo´s, Bolivia

12 meter tall cactus

Finally Photos

Me wrestling a local

Funny Llama

Spending a night with a local family

Salt flats in the middle of nowhere

Island made of reeds, no dirt necessary

not so clear chile skys

We are back in good ol La Serena..

what a waste! we make reservations for the big observatory here, take a bus to this tiny town all to go to see the stars. Yesterday afternoon we went to the observatory office to make sure all was good for the night tour and they said yes no problem!!
So we go back at 10 pm (strom and richie can attest to this, as we had to sadly leave a messenger session where we were having a good time making fun of strom and loving amy´s harlequin covers). Richie, how is that for detail!

Anyhoo, we go back and they tell us that we were not going to the observatory. They may have given us a reason but as our spanish is very limited we do not know what it was. We figured it was either the sky was not clear enough, there were not enough people, or they did not want to waste time on english tourists.

So basically our trip to Vicuña was a big bust, and because of it we could not get a bus to Valpraiso tomorrow so we have to go to Santiago and backtrack. To make the bus trip tomorrow even more exciting, we got the last 2 seats again, yes, you guessed it right next to the toilets.. good times..

Partying with the locals

Last night we took a local bus from La Serena to Coquimba. Its one of Chile´s biggest parties, called La Pampilla. Its like woodstock or Glaustenberry. There are tents setup to sell everything from hardware to underwear to candy apples.

Evidently all the biggest south american bands come here to play but we didn´t recognize any of them, the bands we heard played almost exclusively local music.

Beers were only $1 a piece and the ticket to get in was $1.50 so it was pretty cheap. They also had almost any meat you´d want to eat there. We´ll post some pictures later of it.

It was fun!

Site seeing in La Serena

After a night bus where we sat beside the bathroom, not the best seats:), we arrived in La Serena Chile. It´s probably the nicest city we´ve been in since we started travelling, it may put some North American cities to shame.

Tonight there is a big tent party, beer tent, for the Independence week so we´ll hit that and then tomorrow we are off to the observatory for a night veiwing!

We were accosted by 2 gypsy girls in Antofagasta who wanted money to read Marla´s palm. But Marla thought they were too aggresive so we had to run from them, we´re OK, don´t worry!!

Waiting in Antofogasta

Well we are in Antofogasta. Its the Chilean Independence week celebration and evidently they travel during this week. Every bus was full and bus companies are scrambling to add new bus´s as fast as they can, oh and hotels and bus companies also raise their rates at this time so things are very expensive.

Originally we got in on Friday night and were told that we couldn´t get out until Monday night so we bought that ticket and prepared for 3 days in this city.

Luckly we met a couple from Chile/US that we befriended who told us to keep going back to the bus companies as they add new bus´s all the time. So we went back againa and again and got the last tickets on a bus to La Serena, half way to Santiago, for tonight at 10:30. We lost 15% of our allready purchased tickets but its better than staying here for 3 nights and paying almost $40 US per night.

Hopefully we can catch some of the independence day celebrations in La Serena!! Only 11 sleeps until we´re home!

We made it to Chile

Well we just completed a 3 day 4x4 trip through the salt flats and nothingness of Southern Bolivia. The scenery was amazing and we´ll post pictures as soon as we can!. We saw lots of salt flats, moutains, pink flamingos and hot springs. The entire trip was above 4000 meters so it was cold and we did our best to stay warm in the very rustic accomidations we stayed at.

We just got into Chile this morning. The small town we are staying at, San Pedro, is expensive but cute, best of all its warm!!! There are no bank machines here so we´re off to book a ticket to any place with money available before we run out of it:)

Time´s running out, only 2 weeks of travel left!!!

Who let the dog in???

SO we are back from Potosi, ironically enough the trip took one hour longer to get back to Uyuni than it took to get there with no flat tires this time:) go figure.

Potosi was a nice city, we visited the mint but not the mines. Potosi used to be the richest city in the world in its mining heyday.

We are back here in Uyuni, and something hilarious just happened..we were trying to get into a tour company's office and it was closed so we tried the door next to it, and it opened up to someones house and courtyard...and there was this stray dog standing there with chris..and chris let him into the house!!! and then we panicked so we closed the door and left the dog in!!! hehehehhehe

anyhoo, just had some great pizza here in the middle of nowhere bolivia and tomorrow we leave for our 3 day salt flat tour into chile!!!!

Some pictures from our bike ride

Us going down the road


Taking a break



Mountain Road


Going around a crazy corner

3 flat tires later

Well Thursday was a travel day, we took the bus from La Paz to Oruro and then boarded a train to go to Uyuni. The train had great scenary, at one point we were driving through a lake with pink flamingo´s.

We spent a night in Uyuni in the coldest room we´ve been in so far. I guess Uyuni has a reputation for being cold. We went to Uyuni as this is where we do our 4x4 trip from in order to cross into Chile, but since it´s not until Tuesday we decided to take a 2 day trip to Potosi.

The bus to Potosi was an adventure, we had 3 flat tires on the trip and we only we´re able to get enough tires to make those changes by removing one of the rear tires, the rear tires are dual, and swapping it for the front tire after it blew for the 3rd time.

Luckily for us we we´re off at Potosi, most of the bus continued onto another town from there on the same bus. We wished them well.

World´s most dangerous road bike tour

For our last day in La Paz we decided to bike( almost all downhill), the ¨world´s most dangerous road¨. Marla figured if Toni could do it then so could we, hehehehe. The road starts at 4600 meters elevation and drops to 1300 meters.

The first hour or so is paved and you can just bomb down this road, our guide figures you get up to around 60 and you could go faster if you didn´t have to stay in a group. After that you get to the dangerous portion, the single lane gravel road that used to be an Inca trail and was converted to a road in 1946 by Parugaian prisoners of war. Since it follows a mountain there are plenty of blind corners with straight down drops of 300 meters or more. One spot they used to use to throw criminals off the edge.

Since its gravel its also very dusty when vehicles drive by and we needed to wear dust masks for most of the gravel portion. We found out at the end that 2 bikers die each year and 100 motorists. The drive up is even worse as the road barely fits a bus at some portions.

Total time down, around 4 hours which included stops for several broken chains, including mine.

So once we got down we showered ate lunch and boarded a bus to get back up. Since some people we´re not going back up they took their time at lunch and we didn´t end up going back up until it started to get dark, it made the ride all that more exciting. My hand still hurts from Marla squeezing it:)

Last days in La Paz

Well with our last few days in La Paz and Marla feeling better we decided to venture outside of the city.

For our second last day we went to a day spa in a town called Urmiri. Marla was looking forward to this for a while but it wasn´t quite as described by their brochures. First of the road there gives the world´s most dangerous road a run for its money you are litterly on the side of a mountain on a single lane road driven by a man who looked about 80. Marla kept pestering me to talkt to the man so he wouldn´t fall asleep on us.

Once we got there we met a bolivian family who spoke great english as they lived in the US. Some of the spa´s pools were not really up to par with what you would expect, the one sauna was a rock with fungus growing on it, but the large hot spring feed pool and other sauna were great!

We figured out quickly that this was a Bolivian vacation spot not a tourist vacation spot:)

A couple of quick notes

First off congratulations to Shayne on her upcoming nuptials and more importantly, her stagette in New York.

And happy birthday to Heather, Jane and Shayne on Friday!

Off to the Spa

Well Marla is feeling well enough to do some day trips so we are going to a spa tomorrow, about 55 km´s outside of La Paz. If all goes well there we will bike the world´s most dangerous road the day after.

We have also book a ticket to go to Uyuni on Friday. From there we plan to goto Potosi, once the richest city in the world, for a couple of days before returning to Uyuni and then taking a 4x4 treck across the Bolivian salt flats to the Chilean border city of San Pedro.

Stuck in La Paz

Well it might have worked out for the best that we didn´t try to cross the strike lines and goto Copacabana. On our bus to La Paz was a Bolivian who also lives in Paris part time. His family also runs a travel agency in La Paz. He looked into getting us a private driver, no buses or taxis will go, to Copacabana but no one is wlling to go to the city.

Even if we had of got through the strike line we would be stuck there and since they don´t have bank´s or atm´s there we would be sitting there running out of money:)

On the good side we´ve met some really nice people from Paris, who introduced us to the Bolivian, and we all went out to a really nice restaurant last night for dinner. The restaurant was started by a chef from Paris and the food shows it. You could have everything from duck to frogs legs to llama steak. Our bill came to 120 Bolivians, or roughly 20 Canadian, or the price of cup of coffee in a good Paris diner as the french people commented.

Looks like we´ll be in La Paz for a bit, Marla´s stomach hasn´t been feeling so well for the last 3 days, but we´re hoping its well enough to bike ride the ¨world´s most dangerous road tomorrow¨.

If not we´ll just ride it out in La Paz, which is one of the nicest cities we´ve seen so far.

Hello from the worlds highest capital

Well we´re in La Paz, Bolivia. For those of you following along you are probably wondering why we aren´t in Copacabana. Well we mentioned the bus strike. Our company cancelled our bus as there is no way to get to Copacabana so we hopped on another bus that goes to La Paz.

We may try to back track to Copacabana later if the strike ends. So far the only company we´ve asked has said there are no buses going there so we may be out of luck.

Stay tuned to see where we end up next

Walking on water

Since we arrived in Puno, we have been busy. We just got back from a trip recommended to us by Andrea and Bruce. We took a boat out to lake titicaca where we spent a few hours on islands made entirely of reeds. Even the houses are made of reeds. Its kind of weird to walk on them.

After that we spent the night on an island at the home of a local. We do not speak much spanish and they do not speak any english. They cooked all our meals and smiled alot, the room was nice but very rustic.

Special Edit: I forgot to mention that the house we stayed at had 5´high door ways. I was playing soccer with one of the son´s of the family we stayed with while Marla went to get the camera. She turned around and hit her head so hard it knocked her flat on her bum. She claims to have had a concusion!!! So far she has no memory loss or slipped into a coma:)

The next moring we toured another island and made our way home to Puno.

We also met some very cool people on the trip including a couple from Whistler!!

Tomorrow we try to goto Bolivia, there are strikes at the border so they told us it might be tough to get to Copacabana and we should go direct to La Paz but we are determined to try our luck. Wish us well.

Congratulations to Jen and Brad

Just a photo of Jen and Brad´s first baby, you can tell its Brads due to the abundance of hair on the thing.

Worldest Funnest Bus Ride

Well after hiking in the canyon, we watched the condors fly out of the canyon the next morning. Thanks to Laura for the recomendation. You stand on the edge of the canyon and the birds fly right out infront of you, its really something to see. Marla got a few photos of it!

After that we got on a local bus again but instead of going back to Arequipa we got droped of on the side of the road, we´re talking 5 houses on each side with no telephone or electricity. There we were supposed to wait for a bus coming from Arequipa going to Puno, which is where we are now.

The only problem is we are going essentially standby on the bus and they are all packed. So we missed the 5 pm bus and by then it was dark, remember no lights out.

We eventually got on a bus that was full but we had to sit in the front with the driver, the buses in Peru have a seperate driver compartment. In there marla was stradling the transmision while I was standing in the door way, with 3 other Peruvian´s in there as well, listening to spanish Bryan Adams songs.

That was ok until we came across an broken down bus. Evidently in Peru when a bus breaks the next bus picks up everybody, which is nice unless your bus is standing room only.

By the time everyone was on we probably had 100 people in a bus with 40 seats and Peruvians don´t travel light, everyone had lugage that wouldn´t have made airplane carry-on standards.

But we made it to Puno even though the bus´ transmission sounded like it was going to die.

What´s going on

Well its been an exciting couple of days. We went hiking in the Colca canyon for 2 days. Its supposed to be one of the worlds deepest canyons so that means alot of up and down.

The trek is pretty cool because its all done with local busses for transportation. Our guide picked us up at 6am and we get to the Arequipa bus terminal and board a bus that is way over sold. We ride that for 6 hours to get the Cabanaconde with atleast 20 people standing in the aisle on road on teh side of the worlds deepest canyon on a road that´s not paved.

From there we hike down 1300 meters into the caynon and stay at a local village, pop 50 people. They made us dinner and then put us to sleep in the thickest alpaca blankest you´ve ever seen, we are in winter at an altitude of 2500 meters here.

In the morning we hike down to the bottom of the caynon to an oasis with swimming pools and bamboo huts. We swim and eat lunch there and then begin our 1300 meter acent out of the canyon. I almost died but marla did very well.

To celebrate the guides opend the local discotech for us where we were treated to all the DJ Tiesto music you could want. They then played the gasolina song over and over again. You´ve probably heard it. It goes something, something gasolina over and over again. All in all good times.

More pics before we leave

Marla infront of the plane we flew over the Nazca lines in

A huge monastary we visted

Chris in traditional garb

Marla with no neck

Time for Pics again

Chris carving in huacachina

on a boat in the peruvian amazon

Look at that hair!!!

Chris getting wet

Last meal with Gina and Andrew, Marla is trying hard to take this photo!

this is an acutal conversation with my youngest sister on msn talking about our sister Ash.

courtney dice:
shes staing wiht her loaded psuedo bf in England right now
mars dice:
she has a pseudo boyfriend???
courtney dice:
yes i think so
courtney dice:
she met him in spain at school
courtney dice:
hje was on exchange too form England
mars dice:
ahh what is this boys name
courtney dice:
and he visted her in greece for 5 days, now shes there
mars dice:
do uyou think they have kissed
courtney dice:
and shes says he may come to Canada sometime
courtney dice:
yeah probably
courtney dice:
shes said he has a tennis court, indoor pool and 9 hole golf course at his house!

Remember Pudd tells all!!!!!!

we are in arequipa

Well we have been in Arequipa for almost a day now. We took the bus from Nazca overnight. The buses they have here are far superior to our greyhound buses. They are more like a big sofa that reclines almost the whole way!

We booked our tickets for hiking in the colca canyon, its the worlds deepest canyon, lots of down and up there. Unfortunetly we are only doing the 3 day hike as our Inca trail guide said we would die if we did the 5 day hike.

Congratulations to my twin sister for having her baby on August 25th, just 2 days short of our aniversary. I am sure I will be his favourite uncle.

We are here for 2 more days then our 3 day hike and then our guide drops us off on the side of the road to catch a bus to puno which is our launching pad for Bolivia. We are down to the last 10 days in Peru!

the nazca lines

It seems we are at the computer a lot these days! That means we have been doing alot of waiting for buses:) Currently we have 9 hours to kill in Nazca before our night bus to Arequipa. Nazca isnt the nicest place but its nice and warm and the food is dirt cheap. (we just had big lunch for less than 1 buck each)

The flyover the lines was really cool, the plane was small but it was not scary at all! There are a ton of lines everywhere and cool shapes, but we both thought they would be bigger and more impressive..hehe its pretty cool to wonder how the hell they made them though.

I guess we have nothing left to do but go sit on a patio and drink 1 dollar cervazas...

We've made it to Nazca

Well after a 2 hour wait at the bus station for a late bus and a 3 hour bus drive, we've finally made it to Nazca.

We had a wait at the bus station to our hotel as there was some confusion about our pick up. We ended up having to phone the airline we're doing our Nazca line flyover with before we could get ahold of anyone who even knew we were comming but all is good now.

Looks like an early evening for us as we're up at 6 to do some flying in a 3 person airplane and then taking the night bus to Arequipa tomorrow, fun stuff!

leaving huacachina

Well we're done our 2 day stint in an oasis town of huacachina and we're of the nasca today. Tomorrow we fly over soemthing called the Nasca lines, which are essentially big crop circles in the form of animals made out of stone.

Its in a 2 person plane!! Marla is excited for that!!

We left Lima at 4 a few days a go so we got into huacachina at night and took a car to the hostel which is outside of town at the oasis, Marla was sure the guy was going to rob us so she pulled out her swiss army knife and was prepared to stab the driver. Luckly for him he was legit and just wanted his 4 soles fare( about $1.50). He'll never know how close he came to dying that night!

Oh and we went sandboarding and dune buggy riding in the desert, it was a blast!

Some Random pictures of the trip so far

Marla and Gina eating Guinea pig


A picture of Machu Picu from the top of its terraces


Us at the pass, 4200 meters, with our guide



Here we are at the start of the Inca trail



At one of the many ¨tombo´s¨, Incan town´s, along the way.

back from the jungle

Right now we're stranded in Cuzco due to a strom. Just got back from the jungle. It was great, say lots of exciting creatures, spiders, snakes, rodents, birds, aligators etc.

One group saw a bush master, big snake, but we were too late in getting there. The huts were very rustic, just candle light but they had solar water so we got to have hot showers:)

Looks like we may have to spend the night in Cuzco and get to Lima tomorrow:) Our upcomming itinerary is to head down the coast to Ica/Huacicina making our way west until we get to Lake Titicacca where we'll cross over into Bolivia.

Oh and would a Holliday let us know when my twin has her baby:)

Chao!

she looked like a viking and he looked like a woman..

Well we survived the Inca trail. It was a lot of fun. The second day is a bit of a pain as we climbed 1400 meters up to 4200 meters of elevation and then down climbed 600 meters to get to camp.

The night before we left we figured we´d try the local delecacy, ginuea pig. We ordered the platter that was supposed to feed 4 people. It came out 1:30 hours later and would have feed about 8 people. We were pretty bloated going into the hike.

That may explain why Chris broke one of our dining chairs on the third night..hehehe it was quite funny..we had just taught our guide how to play yahtzee and then chris broke the chair..
We have also determined that Marla officially eats more than Chris..there is no way that Marla is coming back skinnier..she is a big pig..the food in peru has been great, we eat three course meals for every meal..even breakfast! hahaha

We have also decided that Chris was a llama in a past life as he kicked some ass on the trail...he is considering starting a new career as mountain guide..

Machu Pichu was a highlight as well, (sorry Toni, the sun gate view is pretty great)

We´re off to the jungle tomorrow so we´ll be out of contact for the next 4-5 days.

Oh yeah, if you are wondering about the title of this post, we kept running into an italian couple who would never say hi to us on the trail and she looked liked a viking and he looked like a woman..we thought it had the makings of a great county song..

One more day until the Inca Trail

Well today we made the tour of the ¨Sacred Valley¨. We got up to 12000+ feet and visited 2 of the 3 major cities of the Incan empire, Machu Pichu being the other. I´ve gotten alot of sun from being so high up.

Tonight I think is the night that we try the local delicacy, ginuea pig. Should be fun. So far no one has gotten altitude sickness, which is good, though Marla and Gina have both had headaches that came and have since past.

Will be out of contact for the next 5 days as we´re on the trail.

Just got back from Sexy Woman

Well after a day of drinking coca tea to deal with the altitude we went on our first hike today.

A nice 10 km hike that takes us by 4 ruins, including the final one by a ruin called Sexy Woman. Its shaped like a puma's head with 21 teeth. It used to be an Incan stronghold until the Spanish defeated them and knocked down most of it.

We're hiking again tomorrow and resting on Friday in anticipation of our inca trail treck on Saterday.

we are in cuzco!

So we made it to Cuzco..safe and sound..glad to be done planes for a while (this is Marla). Three days here and then off to the inca trail..so far so good with the altitude...maybe this tea they keep giving us is helping with that.

Well we made it!

We landed in Lima last night. Met Andrew and Gina at the airport, hadn´t seen them in awhile so we were able to catch up for a bit. Also met John Dempster at the airport with a cute blonde. John was heading to Turkey.

We´re off to Cusco for the next few days. We´re hoping this will be just ¨tickìty boo¨, that was for you Shayne.

The bags are packed and we're ready to go. I've got a 75 litre Gregory pack( the red one) and Marla's using a 65 litre Gregory pack.

Marla did all the work researching which packs to get. They both weigh in at around 40 lbs fully packed.

We're ready to go!!!!

Well, we just set out all the clothing we're taking on our trip to Peru, Chile and Boliva. Marla's done a great job of getting everything together. Before we tried packing I never knew why anyone would need a 75 litre backpack, but now I know.

It's amazing the amount of things you need to bring, or perhaps more appropriatly, what Marla thinks we need. Penut butter, for instance. Who knew that in a country that grows so many penuts you couldn't make penut butter.

Other than food, we've brought a plug onverter for the power outlets; down their they have 220 volt power and different plugs. Luckly most power adapter's made these day's will down convert to 110 volt, atleast they claim they do. Otherwise the iPod is going to die a quick death:)

First Post

Our first post. Just a test to see if we set it up right:)

Marla picked me up at work today, my last day for the next 8 weeks. I'll miss it:)

Just an observation: blogspot makes you specify a gender and screen name. I guess they figure only individuals blog, what about families??

Cheers
Chris