Beach time in Playas, Guayaquil

Well, it's definitely not the most beautiful beach I've seen, but it has it's charms. Playas, Ecuador is about an hour away from Guayaquil which is Ecuador's second biggest city. It's not on the tourist route, so the bulk of visitors are Ecuadoreans coming from the city. That is a plus!  It's very low key here and feels very, very small inspite of lots of grocery stores and a new full size mall and movie theater.  Playas is full of seafood restaurants at every turn. I've already eaten delicious ceviche and today I had some casserole heated in a hot pot made out of some kind of cornmeal with lots of seafood. That cost about $8 and was the most expensive thing on the menu.

The beach water is warm and the sand is gray. There aren't that many shells, but I've found sand dollars and a few other weird things. I post the pictures, just because I think they're interesting looking.  

I'll be here for two full weeks which is nice because I don't have to travel around, figuring out where to go next and can relax into this place. After this I make the trip home.

The four month mark. Last night in Argentina.

It's been exactly four months since I left NY and arrived in Lima. My time there feels like it was long ago.  Since leaving Peru, I traveled around Bolivia for 5 weeks and then another 4 weeks in Argentina.  I'll be sad to leave Argentina tomorrow. 

Though its a much more expensive country than Bolivia, the people here were 100x nicer. It made a huge difference.  It's a much more civilized country. I didn't know, but I guess Argentina is the only country in S. America that has drinkable tap water. They also have a strong enough sewer system, so you can flush toilet paper where it belongs. People are happy here, their economy is strong and it shows. They don't seem to have a problem with homelessness and they even treat their dogs with compassion.

Though Argentina didn't have any incredible or famous sites likes Peru and Bolivia, it was a beautiful country to visit. They have great wine and lots of steak here. Their churches are rich and beautiful, with the new Argemtine pope proudly on display.

I changed my trip around a bit. I had originally planned on going to Chile and visiting the Easter Islands, but after my second credit card fraud issue, more problems with my apartment and a day cold enough for snow, I was ready for something warm and relaxing. So I'm headed for Ecuador tomorrow night. I rented a house by the beach for 2 weeks. After that I'm cutting the trip short 10 days and making a stop home to see my parents before coming back to NYC.

It's all about the wine, Cafayate, Northern Argentina

So I've been in Argentina now about 3 weeks. It was a really hard adjustment after Bolivia.  The prices are alot higher and the exchange is alot lower. I was here about a year ago and the exchange dropped by about 25%.  The way to get around that is by exchanging money on the streets. So I bought one of those pens you can mark the bills with to see if they're counterfeit. Even though things are alot more expensive, the people are alot nicer than the Bolivians.  So, that's a decent trade off.

Everything here is WINE, WINE, WINE. Yesterday I had wine flavored ice cream, which I got a little buzz off of.  There are wine stores all over, vineyards and lots of places to get a good, cheap glass of wine. Today I went to visit a couple of vineyards which are only 30 minutes walking. Harvest was in Feb, so there were no grapes on the vine.  They produce a white wine called Torrontes which is special to this region and very tasty.

They also have a wine museum that I'll go and check out tomorrow. 

The Virgin of Tres Cerritos, Salta, Argentina

 I made my first religious pilgrimage today in Salta, Argentina.  In 1995, a woman was said to have a conversation with the Virgin Mary. For 5 years, the only people that knew about it were her friends and family. The Virgin told her to build a statue on top of the mountain. She described exactly how she should look. 14 years old (the age she was pregnant), white cloak, kneeling and with aquamarine eyes. Now, tour buses, upon tour buses make their way up the hill. Of course, I went the hard way and took a public bus and walked. 

It was very beautiful.  There were people offering water on the walk up, a priest taking confessions and lovely guitar music being played. It made the one hour wait not so bad. Many people brought notes, lots of people brought pictures and there were alot of old people. People were also hanging plastic rosaries in the trees. The Virgin is housed in a little sanctuary. We walked in 2 by 2 and got to see her for probably 1 whole minute. No pne was rushing people out, but there was a long line. She was a beautiful site, alot of people walked out crying.  It was a moving experience.

Rounding out Bolivia. Dark to Light

So, I haven´t had wifi in a few weeks- typical Bolivia, but I´ve had some amazing experiences recently.  First, when I was in Sucre, I watched a documentary about the silver mines in Potosi, called the Devil´s Miner. It was about a 14 year old boy that had to go to work in the mines at the age of 10 to support his family. It was very eye opening and very sad.  Since the documentary is over 7 years old, I just assumed he was either still working there or possibly dead. I was very happy to hear the next day that he studied hard, learned 4 different languages and is thriving as a tour guide.  Knowing more about the mines made my trip there the next day very real. I tried to ignore the little voice in my head telling me not to do it, but I went on a mine tour. It was very, very scary. We went straight in the tunnels with the miners working alongside. I could hear dynamite exploding in the background and I wedged myself into very small areas. I will never ever in my life do this again, but I learned alot about how necessary it is for people to work. The sad thing is that nowadays, there is very little silver to be found.

Next stop was in Uyuni to visit the salt flats. There are other salt flats in the world, but these are the largest. They were really, really amazing. I can´t describe them, so I´ll post pictures soon.  All you could see for miles and miles was white. The salt flats used to be a body of water 15,000 years ago, but all that is left is hard salt on the ground, cracked into some beautiful and interesting patterns.

Today for my last day in Bolivia, I´m in Tupiza. They have beautiful rainbow colored canyons. They compare themselves to the Grand Canyon. I went on a 5 hour horseback ride which was so relaxing, though I think my butt will really, really hurt tonight.

Off tomorrow to cross the border into Argentina. Hope it´s an easier time than it was to get here.

Pink dolphins, caimans and piranhas in Rurranbaque, Bolivia

HappilySo I was a little on the fence about taking a trip to the jungle. It seemed expensive and on general, I wouldn't call myself a jungle person. When I went to the travel agency there was a group of 3 other 

Americans booking their trip and I figured, WTH, I'll book it too. At least this way I'd know how I would be with for 3 days. It turned out to be a lot of fun. The group adopted me and we traveled together for the 3 days of the trip and the days surrounding it.

Being in the jungle felt a lot like being in Miami. The greens, the water that we boated through to get to camp and the mosquitoes. Those mosquitoes literally ate me alive. I counted one hand and had 18 bites on it, I looked like I had some horrible skin disease.  We saw lots of caimans, which everyone loved seeing.  Me, I've seen them before, but it was still a sight. We went hunting for anacondas and found a long 10 foot one and we also went fishing for piranhas.  We weren't as lucky with the fishing, my entire boat of 9 only caught one and we had to throw it back because it was so small.

The highlight was swimming with pink dolphins. They're mostly grey with a tint of pink. They would brush up against us in the water and the babies even bit my toes.

This trip was a good reminder to just go with things and be happily surprised with the outcome.

Bolivia, similar yet different than Peru

So I've been on my own, traveling around for 2 weeks now. It was hard leaving the comfort and routine that I established in Cusco, but I had to move on. My first taste of Bolivia was getting harangued at the border because the money I brought wasn't up to standard. I have to say, that was not a nice welcome.  Next, even though I was surrounded by the beauty of Lake Titicaca, I thought that Copacabana was touristy and expensive. Disappointing since I had heard it was so much cheaper than Peru.

All started to change when I got to La Paz, which I was really hoping would not be like Lima. It's a big city set in a basin, nicknamed the red city because all of the red brick houses are unpainted. It's so beautiful here.  I took a great free walking tour and got to learn about the city, good and bad. Bolivia is over 60% indigenous. You see the "cholitas" everywhere. In Lima, you hardly saw any of them. All the ladies wear little bowler hats and skirts with lots and lots of ruffles, so they purposefully look fat.

La Paz is getting ready to celebrate their Independence Day on Tuesday but I'm going to miss it. I'm leaving on a jungle tour tomorrow for 4 days and then flying straight to Sucre.