Concha y Toro

Us on the beautiful Concha y Toro grounds

I'm pretty sure Ryan had more fun eating the grapes than drinking the wine. Aren't they beautiful??

Wine, anyone?

Us eating some wonderful cheese plates and doing A LOT of wine sampling haha. Mom and Dad, your gift below is what you see here in my three glasses. I loved the Merlot.

Gift for Mom and Pops...you can drink the white right away but you have to save the reds for a whole year.

Chile

So since I fell behind quite horribly...I'm just going to start posting pictures from different places with captions.

A big fruit market in the north of Chile. We missed our flight back to Lima in Peru because of fog. This meant that we ended up missing our connection to Santiago. Our solution: we were already in souther Peru so we took a bus ride to the border, a taxi across the border and hopped a plane to Santiago.

One of the first things we did in Santiago was hit up one of Ryan's favorite old haunts...the Chinese food place he used to eat at daily. We at our food with some Watts juice just to keep up tradition.

Santiago has a pretty amazing subway system...Ryan of course had to ride the new lines that they added while he was away.


Martini?

This is a dog -- Poncho--Ryan fell in love with lol

Argen-i-ma-tina

Sorry for falling off the face of the earth there for awhile! I needed to get settled in here in BsAs.

Ryan left on the 15th and I have moved into an apartment here. I'm living by myself and at first it was a bit scary...but I'm ok with it now. I live in hoppin´Palermo. I live in the Soho part where the streets are lined with trees and there are restaurants and shops everywhere. Accessories and shoes here are amazing...talk about temptation!!

The other night Jacque (my main friend here who is from New Mexico) and I went out to dinner at this place with great steak. We sat between three different tables of guys. We definitely got hit on by the old guys next to us who even asked us for our numbers and emails (classy) and offered us personal tours around the city BAHAHA. The best were these two guys next to us that were very friendly and were talking to us about Argentina. They seriously ordered like one of everything on the menu and shared it...this allowed us to ask what the different cuts of meat were etc. EVERY time we asked they would say ¨pruebalo!¨ (try it!). At first we politely declined and then they finally just started plopping stuff on our plates and making us try it. It was a fun experience and we definitely got a lesson about food lol.

Last night I went to my first tango lesson. It was a lot of fun, but I still like salsa a lot better (I hope that an english speaking Argie doesn't read this...they'll hunt me down and hang me). After the lesson, we went out with one of the instructors to a bar that had a live tango band. It was AMAZING.

Interesting things about Argentina:
-people wait for the bus in nice orderly lines that sometimes get so long they wrap around the corners of streets
-there is NO change in this city. If you don't give someone EXACT change they ask if you have anything ¨mas sencillo¨ and then guilt trip you while they scrounge up change.
-Tango is it. People from all walks of life and all ages will squish into a scorching hot bar to get to watch a live tango band.
-They have a store here called ¨Easy¨ that is like Wal-Mart on steriods
-EVERYONE does the kiss on the cheek.
-Starbucks has nothing on the Havana coffee shops that are everywhere here


Me eating my first Argie steak

Arequipa

Hey everyone we´re in Arequipa right now. We head back to Lima and then to Santiago tonight. Unfortunately the plane lands at 2:25 AM. We´re staying at the same place I stayed at during my semester in Santiago, so they remembered me and are cool with us getting there so late.

I didn´t expect to be so excited for getting back to Santiago. But now I am. I know exactly how to get around and what to do, so it will be fun to do so much in such a short time. I can´t wait to see how it has changed, especially regarding their bus system.

Transmilenio

As someone interested in transportation, but especially in bus transportation, I was quite excited to finally be able to get to Bogota, Colombia a couple weeks ago. The city´s segregated bus system Transmilenio is one of the better success stories in recent urban transportation projects.

The idea is this- the city had been trying to figure out the plans for a subway system for 30 years, but obstacles such as finances kept the plans blocked. Subway systems are great, but they are massively expensive. Very few in the world cover their costs, and nearly all require subsidies. Instead cities such as Curitiba, Brazil realized that they have a great answer at a fraction of the bus - urban busways.

The concept is that by using double or triple articulated buses, the buses can handle capacities similar to subway systems. And they can overcome one of the biggest problems of most buses - that they take longer than simply driving a car - by just giving them their own lane. When done properly as in Bogota, they can dramatically increase transportation capacity and benefit the entire city at a relatively low cost.

Now I see why all the transportation experts I worked with at the World Bank often call Bogota a model of a successful project (and it was a World Bank project, as was Transantiago, a related project in Santiago that is being inaugurated on Saturday).

Interestingly, when we rode it, we asked a few local college students what they thought. They said they didn´t like it. Why? Because it was always crowded. But that is just why it is a success.

Couple Costa Rica Pics

Vanessa can drink in Latin America! Us at a bar with our friends Anthony and Isabella whom we met on Tabacco Caye in Belize.
Interesting Store Name. Vanessa bought a shirt.

Quite the day in Aguas Calientes

So after the gorgeous 4 hour train ride (Ryan slept through most of it though I was able to wake him up to see the crazy rapids of the huge river here), we´re here in Aguas Calientes with the rest of the gringos going to Machu Picchu.

From an internet cafe midafternoon, I spotted a sign that said Mexican Food. I really should have known better, but I was really excited. Ryan and went there and ordered a quesadilla with chicken and a chicken enchilada. Talk about a knife to the heart when the waitress brought out two burrito looking things filled with EXACTLY the same chicken and vegetables in red sauce mix. She tried to explain that they were different (though they tasted and looked EXACTLY the same, ok), but even so we were a little hung up on the fact that we ordered two DIFFERENT things and received the same things on our plates -- regardless of what it was. The chef then came out and explained that they were very different things (mine had avocado on top..this obviously makes an enchilada) and the explanation for Ryan´s was that ´algunas personas les gusta la quesadilla sin queso´ (some people like quesadillas without cheese). We couldn´t help but laugh at this as QUESO means cheese and what we ordered was a QUESadilla. Talk about lost in translation or false advertisement on their part. We talked to the waitress after and explained that they need to change the food or change the menu for other tourists who would not have been as nice as we were...she said it happens all the time and people walk out and she was glad that we spoke spanish and someone finally told the chef.

After getting an 80 dollar room overlooking the raging river for 40 dollars, we decided to head to the market (Peru is seriously the coolest place to buy neat gifts and souvenirs). Here, we then caused another commotion when I attempted to buy a necklace for this awesome pendant I bought. After a starting price of 40 soles, Ryan and I talked a lady down to 20 soles. We still weren´t willing to give in as another vendor had the exact same thing and was willing to sell it for 15. Ryan and I are jerks and never take the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th price really and we started to walk away. The lady then gave in and said we could have it for 10 soles...I bought it. Apparently this was against the colluding rules of the market as the other vendor thought we bought it for 8 soles and started freaking out and telling every other vendor in the market. As we were leaving, the lady that sold us the necklace asked me to tell some other ladies in spanish that I hadn´t bought it for ten. She should have just told me to say 15 because I said 10 and then had to back track to cover for her. It was kind of funny to get a clear indication of how those markets work, but I felt bad for the lady.

It´s about Super Bowl time and we found a place to watch it...I just really wish I could have mountains of american chips and dip to go with it. Peruvian food is super bland and it makes me sad...not that chips and dip is some culinary masterpiece, but I´m just sayin.

Cuzco

Vanessa and I are leaving on a train at 6 in the morning tomorrow to get to Macchu Picchu. I´ve been looking forward to going there for a long time and it´s almost here.

We´re in the nearest big city, Cuzco. It´s a very cool colonial town with narrow stone streets. Where we´re staying it is quite dense, possibly because the main market is just around the corner. It makes it more fun to just walk around and see everyone and their hustle and bustle.

Interesting tourist gift: a chessboard with Spaniards vs. Incas instead of black and white. Better yet, some of the boards use gold for the Incas and silver for the Spaniards. Thought that was clever.

A bit of randomness from Cusco, Peru

Still no pictures, sorry. The computers in Peru seem to suck worse than those in rural Ecuador.

The Grocery Store
Almost everyone that knows me at all knows that I hate going to the grocery store. Well, going to a grocery store in another country makes the experience a bit of an adventure and you find yourself laughing when you realize how brand dependent you really are. I wanted to make tuna salad and eat it with saltine crackers...a few problems: 1)there are a MILLION kinds of tuna, but of course known of them have the friendly little whale on them that you know and trust and almost all of them come with aceite y sal (oil and salt). I ended up paying extra for the ONE type I found that came in water. 2)Pickles or relish. I made friends with an Argentino also attempting to shop and we searched everywhere for pepinos. The closest we got was a cucumber. He and I had a good laugh at how stupid we felt about lamenting over which kind of coffee and crackers to buy. 3)Mayo. There are officially 5 different types/flavors of mayo one can buy...I literally mean actual difference in the mayo and not the brand. Needless to say, shopping turned out to be really funny.

Indian Store
I ducked into this little shop on the way back from the grocery store and I thought of Mom and Auntie. It was a store that only sold Indian influenced clothing and jewelry owned and run by Peruvians. There was a Baliwood movie on in the back of the store and everything. I wanted to take a picture, but I had left my camera in the hostal.


Cocaine
There is a bar that is part of the hostal we´re staying at and there was a party here last night. It was a lot of fun and everyone danced a ton. My friend of one day,Molly from Colorado, accidentally punched me in the eye when she got too animated telling a story. I got a free beer out of it as I needed something to make sure the eye didn´t swell. Haha. Beyond dancing and fun, there was also a lot of cocaine at the party. Drugs are totally against the rules here, but every time I went into the bathroom there were like 8 huges lines of cocaine ready to go and plenty of people (more natives than foreigners actually) ready to take em. People were eager is offer it up to others, but no one was like seeking people out to do lines (I obviously declined..just in case anyone wasn´t sure).Coke is so cheap here that it´s definitely not a middle class drug like it usually is in the states. It was an interesting experience.

Off tomorrow at 6:15am for the Inca Trail.

Making Change

Vanessa and I are now officially annoyed at the frequency of time that people don´t have change for even reasonably sized bills. For instance, is giving a 5 when it costs 3 too much to ask? Yet again and again people we end up paying want as close to exact change as possible. I noticed this previously in Chile, but for some reason it seems worse in some of these other countries we´ve been to.

A few hypotheses:

a) the high possibility of theft requires keeping as little change on hand as possible

b) in the US we decry month-to-month budgeters, but in developing countries it is often day-to-day, so they have to begin with an empty drawer each day.

c) They are working with such tight funds that keeping a series of reserves on hand for change is a costly endeavor equivalent to lending money to nobody.

d) a cultural effect. If everyone doesn´t want to change large bills, then people don´t want to accept them for fear they won´t be able to spend them. This cycle of course would perpetuate itself.

e) storeowners want to make you buy more things form their store.

I believe all of these play a role at varying times. I wonder if there´s a pattern that richer countries have less and less of this problem.

Interesting Tidbit of the Day

In our hostel there´s a wall of infamy, including a bunch of embarassing things people have done at the hostel (bringing home ugly girls, being a drunk-ass during the World Cup, etc). There´s one wanted person poster for a guy including his mugshot. The interesting part? It had lots of characteristics listed. They have many more than in the US, including skin color. But the best part: they have a space for nose. His- straight. I guess some people have to face the embarrassment of seeing nose-slanted on their wanted poster.

Or maybe it´s to deter crime.

Waves

We just went to the beach and were in by far the biggest wavs of our lives. Where? Lima, Peru.

Yep, not everyone knows Lima is a coastal city. Most of the beaches are very dirty, and there are dead crabs everywhere (which isn´t that gross in itself until you start wondering why they all died). We found a nice beach by trying to sneak into a country club, which has a better than usual private beach. We weren´t successful, but sat on the fringes for a while. Vanessa befriended a middle aged lady who was pretty friendly and made fun of the exclusivity of the country club. When I have time I´ll try to post about how exclusivity is different in developing countries v the US.

Anyway the waves were seriously huge. You couldn´t even bodysurf them beacause you would get flipped around a couple of times. Good stuff.