One year and a handful of months ago, I slowly crept up the wooden stairs of my parents house to wake up my mom and bid her farewell. I was minutes away from leaving the United States for a four month study abroad program in Chile. I kissed my mom and the cheek, said goodbye, and right before I quietly shut her door she looked at me and said, “I think you are going to get the bug.”
I responded, “What?!? Bug?!? What are you talking about?”
She quickly replied, “The travel bug. Son, I think you are going to develop the travel bug.”
As I lay on the cold marble floor of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, DFW, trying to figure out some solution to kill time on my 12 hour layover; I now realize my mom was absolutely right. My day dreams are filled with tropical beaches, city monuments, and international dance parties. My largest expense displayed in my Wells Fargo spending report, is airfare, and my tongue feels deprived and incomplete when I go more than two or three days without speaking Spanish. I have the bug. I love to travel.
This brings me back to DFW, the first and hopefully worst step in my next little adventure.
Frugality always seems to bring me bizarre yet memorable circumstances. To demonstrate I will provide two concrete examples from my prior adventure with hetero-life-mate Devon.
1.The cheapest hostel in Pucon, Chile, which I of course booked because it was low priced, turned out to be an Israeli infested dwelling where within a mere three hours Devon and I felt, awkward, accepted, then loved… I still talk to some of members from the “Jew Crew” at Hostal Limay
2.2. In Ancud, Chile I decided to stay at some old woman’s house because her price per traveler was half of the amount charged at any of the Hostels in the boring, worthless town of Ancud. Well this woman’s house was straight from a Rob Zombie horror film. The bathrooms were covered in black, most likely skin devouring, goo; the kitchen smelled of rotten meat; and the “hosts” of the house were crazy.
Good, Israelis in Pucon, Chile, or bad, Crazy Rob Zombie House in Ancud, Chile, both these cases definitely made a lasting impact on my memory. So in honor of my frugality and memories I decided to save $250 dollars by opting for a 12 hour layover in the one the only DFW airport, rather than flying from Denver to Dallas to Miami, then Costa Rica all in one day. Well this economical idea, which would get me a pat on the back from my sophomore year accounting teacher (Who by the way was great at increasing assets and owners equity), was a big mistake for at least 2 solid reasons.
1.Once a passenger has passed through the seven levels of Homeland Security, DFW has every kind of restaurant one would ever want, Chile’s, Steak Places, Sushi, Mexican, Irish Pubs, Pizza and more; however not one proper food eating establishment exists in their widely spread, pre security terminals. Thank God, my good friend Allison Filderman made me an excessive amount of homemade oatmeal, chocolate, cranberry cookies. Seriously those kept me alive during my unfortunate discovery of DFW’s flaw in food service options.
2.Who designed this airport?!? I want to walk into the architectural firm that drew up this building, storm into the office of the head of the DFW design team, look him square in the eyes and say, “NO!” “No, No, No, No, NO!” Then backhand slap him in the face and walk out.
Who draws blueprints for an airport where each terminal, pre security checkpoint, is separate by miles of highway and spiraling roads? It took me 20 minutes to get from Terminal C to D on a Bus… Those letters are neighbors in the English alphabet shouldn’t anything labeled C then followed by D be close together? Having everything so spread out would be like putting a 60 yard HD TV in a football stadium… it just shouldn’t happen.
What I have learned is… Saving $250 dollars is great, but in Dallas’ rat maze of an airport it is not worth it.
First off, you all might be wondering why, actually I am sure most of you have figured it out by now, the title of this Blog is Buenos Aires Round 5. Bluntly, we have now visited Buenos Aires 5 times; as you can probably tell Devon and I are both quite partial to Buenos Aires. Here is how the rounds went down.
Round 1-- January 9th- 21st: This was the first time we visited Buenos Aires.
Round 2-- January 26th: After spending 5 days in Uruguay we decided to spend one more night in Buenos Aires.
Round 3 --January 30th-31st: After going to Rosario, Argentina for 3 days we decided one last weekend in Buenos Aires would be a good idea.
Round 4 --February 4th: After going to Iguazu for four days we decided we wanted just one more night in Buenos Aires.
Round 5 -- April 6th- 13th: After traveling all over South America, we decided it would probably be a great idea to take a 22 hour bus ride from Santiago de Chile to Buenos Aires. Here is a list of the reasons why we thought taking two 22 hour bus rides during the last week of our trip was a good idea.
The BailaDancers: We met and extremely funky, spunky, nice dance master named Fatima Crespo in a club in Buenos Aires during Round 2, we unsuccessful exchanged information, she thought my name was Nicky, not Mickey, but somehow someway fate decided to jump into my life and we randomly saw miss Faty at a bar during Buenos Aires Round 3.After seeing her… Devon, Faty, and I talked for a while in the bar and decided we were going to create an amazing international dance team called the BailaDancers. Our creed was, Just Dance! After forming our amazing dance squadron she so kindly offered to let us stay in her flat during Buenos Aires Round 4. Sine then we have had a special bond with Faty: So the main reason for us coming back to Buenos Aires was to reunite the awesome, cool, international dance team known as the BailaDancers.
Parties: I knew once the BailaDancers reunited we would do what we do best which is dancing and partying throughout different clubs in Buenos Aires. The partying scene here in BsAs is fantastic.
Yellow Pants, Goofy Shoes, and Empanadas: These were all things I was hoping to purchase in Buenos Aires.
Bomba del Tiempo: A big percussion show held every Monday…. Devon and I really wanted to see this one last time.
Tom/ Robin: These are two guys we met during our travels who are living in Buenos Aires. Devon and I thought it would be a great idea to see them one more time before we went back to the states.
Also, I am holding out on one other reasonito, that means little reason in spanglish, for coming back to Buenos Aires. I may or may not had hopes of“randomly” running into a girl I had actually randomly ran into during Buenos Aires round 3, I put quotations around the first randomly because I secretly wanted to run into this girl… randomly or not, but let’s not focus on that.
Our last go in Buenos Aires could be summed up as a huge rage fest. Devon and I went hard, maybe even harder than Carnaval. Here is a summary of our Rage Fest.
The week Devon and I had in Buenos Aires made me feel a like I was inside a BsAs remix of Welcome To Atlanta because in this song, Jermaine Dupri, he is a producer who is also the best plug man in the rap game, anyways JD lists the days of the week followed by the different clubs he went to in the A-T-L. Although I won’t be rhyming or quite as baler as JD, I am going to use his method, From Welcome to Atlanta to describe the many epic nights we had in Buenos Aires.
Monday: After sitting on a nice comfortable Argentine Bus for 22 hours, Devon and I made our sweet arrival in Buenos Aires. We were greeted by our spunky, awesome, dancer friend Faty, because A. She was nice enough to actually greet us at the bus station and B. She let us sleep in her flat for the entire week.
This is how we slept
Monday night was Faty’s birthday so she had an All-Star partying night planned. First we hit up La Bomba Del Tiempo, which is an amazing percussion show held every Monday night in Buenos Aires. Thousands upon thousands of people fill a cozy outdoor theatre to Dance/ Groove to incredible drum beats. La Bomba Del Tiempo was just as amazing as always, and something happened that made it even better….
While I was grooving away with my boy Devon and a Rando girl from Croatia I felt a light tap and my back. Guess who it was??? The girl whom I was hoping I would, somehow someway, “Randomly” run into. My first night there I managed to complete my secret goal… How Awesome is That? I’ll answer that question: it is pretty awesome. She informed me that she would be out of town the whole week and returning Saturday, by saying something like: "I will be out of town the whole week and returning Saturday." From that information this is what I gathered: she would be leaving Buenos Aires the next day and would be gone for the majority of the week, but most likely returning on saturday. Sad Day.
Anyways, we grooved to Bomba for another hour, and then went to a pizzeria for Round 2 of Faty’s awesome birthday adventure. There were a ton of people there and the Pizza was really good.
After the pizza fun, our gigantic grupo followed the Birthday girl to a near by club. Background: The club we went to Monday night was the same club we met Fatima, pretty Sentimental. The club played Hip-Hop from The States all night long, so I managed to get at least 37 stares and blank looks from people coming from all over the world, because I know just about every chorus/ word to every top 50 hip hop song of the last 6 years. The BailaDancers danced our little hearts out until 4:30 in the morning and decided to call it quits.
Hip Hop Music Makes Me Smile
Tuesday Night: We accomplished another Goal… we met up with our Boy Thomas John Bush, a clever, charming, and well cultured English man who is taking a break from his successful political career in London, England to teach English in Buenos Aires. We ate dinner with Tom and a girl named Natalie, who hails from Australia, then we went back to Fatima’s flat. To stretch out and mentally prepare ourselves for another night of dancing.
Faty got us on the VIP list for a very posh, in proper English that means nice, trendy, hype, cool, fashionable etc., club called Hype. Devon and I spent the first 45 minutes sitting in a trendy black leather sofa in the VIP section talking about how cool it is to actually be VIP. After soaking up all the benefits of VIP such as, sitting in black leather Sofas, watching people dance, and thinking you are very cool, we decided it was time to do what we do best… Dance.
The Bailadancers danced until 5:30 in the morning then decided to head home.Unfortunately there are no pictures of this night, so just picture me and Devon wearing really hype clothes, sitting in really hype couches, in a really hype club...
Wednesday Night: Thomas John Bush cordially invited the Bailadancers and Natalie, our Australian Pirate Friend, to enjoy a nice dinner in one of his two apartments in Buenos Aires. Thomas has two Apartments in Buenos Aires because people easily fall in Love with him, and then they offer him nice things, like a weekend Apartment in Buenos Aires, a free bus ride from Rio de Janeiro to Salavador de Bahia, or a Job in a hostel. Nevertheless he has a house where he lives on the weekdays and an Apartment where he lives on Weekends, he is only paying for the one of the two places. We chatted for multiple hours and indulged in a very nice dinner composed of Pizza and Empanadas until we decided it was time to do what the Bailadancers do best… Dance.
Faty being the dance queen that she is managed to get us on the list to a club called Sahara. The club was full of middle aged salsa dancers, although I am a sub par salsa dancer, I tried my best to show up the middle aged salsa-ers by breaking down low to the floor every time a reggaetone song started pumping through the PA system.
Also, another exciting thing happened on Wednesday, after maybe two hours of convincing from Devon, Tom, and Nat-Dawg, I mustered up enough courage to dance with a nice young Argentine girl named Geovana. She taught me how to salsa and Cumbia, and I tried to impress her by yet again dropping it down low. After dancing with Geo for an hour our grupito decided to leave.
Thursday Night: Devon and I accomplished the other half of reason five for coming to Buenos Aires, which was to see our friend Robin. We had a nice dinner together, then went out to an ex-pat bar called Sugar. After sugar we tried to go to a club called Lost, which plays hip-hop all night long. Unfortunately the line was immense so we took a cap to a place called club 69.
Club 69 was quite a spectacle, people dressed as angels, devils, and other fantasy type creatures ran around the packed club while thousands upon thousands of people nodded their heads to intense house beats. It’s safe to say Robin and his lawyer friend from New York did not like this club, so we called it quits pretty early, @ 4:45 am.
Friday Night: Friday was a fun filled day. Devon and I met with Tom, Natalie, and her crew of Australian pirates at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and we managed to spend 5 hours at the same bar/ restaurant chatting the day away.
After our long chat session, we made plans to meet up later in the evening and parted ways. A few hours later Devon and I picked up Faty from a dinner party then went to a bar, for round four of Faty’s birthday celebration. We stayed at the bar until 2am then a group of 20 went to a club called Lansky, to do what the BailaDancers do best, which is Dance.
8 hours in bars/ restaurants?
Luckily the cute Argentine girl I had met Wednesday night showed up to the club so I spent the first part of the night trying to dance with her, aka mustering up enough courage to just do it and the second part of the night dancing with her. You might be able to tell that confidence is still a small problemito of mine. Unfortunately my dance sesh with the cute Argentine girl was cut a little shorter than I had expected, but we stilled managed to break it down to the floor at least 45 times.
Saturday Night: Can’t stop won’t stop can’t stop. Saturday night our international grupito went to an Asado, BBQ, then Tom, Devon, and I went to a punk rock club and danced the night away to Beatles, Beach Boys, and numerous Posh British Bands. We danced until 6 o’clock in the morning, left, and then talked outside on Faty’s porch until the sun came up.
This is the international grupito
Sunday Night: Sunday marked the end of our dance marathon… : ( , however one exciting thing did occur Sunday night. I decided tell the girl I wanted to “Randomly” run into, who I actually did “Randomly” run into, we will call her RRIG (Random Run Into Girl)from here on out,that Devo and I decided to stay in Buenos Aires until Monday and it would be great to see her if she was back from Mendoza.
Sunday afternoon RRIG, was nice enough to invite us out to dinner with her family and her. I accepted the invitation without much hesitation and we spent out last night in Buenos Aires talking and eating with RRIG and her very nice family. It was a great way to end our 5th and final stint in Buenos Aires.
Monday: We bid farewell to our friends and took a 20 hour bus ride back to Santiago de Chile.I am so glad we decided to actually return to Buenos Aires. Many thanks to Faty for constantly nagging us to come visit her.
When we finally left Buenos Aires it felt like a huge hammer shattered a part of my heat, I love that city and am sure I will be back there soon. Thanks so much to everyone that made our time there so special, Devon and I love you all.
Also, all my goals for Buenos Aires were accomplished minus the yellow pants. I could not find proper yellow pants in BsAs. Oh well.
Two new variables made their way into the Devon/ Mickey adventure. These variables have names so from this point forward I will call variable 1 Allison a best friend of both Devon and myself, and variable 2 Amanda Devon’s squeeze, that means girlfriend in somewhat hip terms.
March 16th Devon and I had a realization; two people were meeting us in Ecuador in the next couple of days and these two people were probably expecting us to have some sort of fun itinerary planned. I am not going to lie on March 16th two days before March 18th the day we would be meeting Allison we had absolutely no idea what we were going to do in Ecuador and I started to freak out. If you are an avid blog reader you probably know by now that Devon and I like to walk, whenever we go somewhere new we walk around a lot then decide to do things based upon what we see while walking around. For instance, right after we arrived in La Paz, Devon and I threw our bags down and walked around the city for 2 ½ hours because we had no idea what else we could do in La Paz.
Luckily we did a little networking in Brazil and on March 16th a nice British girl we met in Paraty, Brazil sent us a Facebook message about great Ecuadorian cities and activities.
By March 17th we had a rough plan of what we were going to do with our new variables.
Here is what went down.
March 18th we met Allison in the airport of QuitoEcuador. It was so great to see AlBalCanal. I have missed that girl a ton. Devon and I took Allison on a small walking Adventure, I paid my dues to my dad’s epic Stache and shaved a small mustache, after shaving my mustache we went out to dinner, then caught up on some ZZZZZZZ’s.
March 19th Thanks to the recommendations from our British homegirl, we decided to go to a little Adventure town called Banos. Our first day there we walked around, hung out with some Isreali’s, ate some Israeli food, then went to a dirty smelly hot spring on the outskirts of the pueblito.
March 20th Here is where things get a little more interesting. On our brief walkabout through Banos on March 19th, I discovered Adventure Tourism Agencies, that sounds so professional, offered an extreme activity called bridge jumping, Salta Puentes, this activity is kinda complex so I will break it down for you. The person who desires to leap from a bridge gets trapped into ropes, then jumps of a bridge. The fall is approximately 45 meters, and the bridge stands 120+ meters above the ground.
Since Devon and I are manly men we decided to fork over the 15 dollars to 2 seconds of exhilaration. While we were waiting for the Adventure Tourism Agents to set up all the ropes, Devon and I kept cracking stupid jokes, which meant we were both really nervous. Since I have less hair on my chest than Devon I decided to prove my manliness by jumping first.
The fall was amazing, the minute I left the platform adrenaline pumped through my veins as I fell freely for 1 second. Yes, the fall lasted for seriously 1 second, before I could take a breath and figure out what had actually just happened the fall was finished. Bridge jumping has increased by curiosity to bungee jump of sky dive by about 47 fold.
Devon jumped next and his experience was real similar to mine. After getting a small taste of free falling goodness, he wants more.
I am going to take you on a brief digression, remember when you were a little kid and you told your parents the only reason you did engaged in a certain activity was “someone told you to.” Generally your parents would combat this logic by saying, “Now if someone told you to Jump off a bridge would you do it?” You would think about that rebuttal for a second then respond no. Well Devon and I told Allison to jump off a bridge and she did it. Goes to show parents aren’t always right.
Allison was a trooper when it came to the jump. She strapped up, walked onto the platform and went for it. I was expecting her to sit on the platform for 5 minutes while we convinced her she was truly going to be okay, but no she just did it. Allison’s parents can breathe easy, because her bridge jump experience did not increase her curiosity to do more extreme falling/ jumping activities. In fact, I think I can safely say Allison probably has retired from extreme falling.
After the jump we went on a nice little hike.
March 21st This was a big day! March 21st was the day I met my BF’s GF. OMgosh it was so exciting.
The GF of my BF is on the left, my BF is on the right
Earlier On March 21st our little grupito took a nice hike in Banos, then headed back to Quito, so my BF could pick up his GF from the airport. While my BF was getting his GF, Allison and I decided to make a gourmet dinner for our group. Not much else happened that day.
Alright I am going to stop doing the activities corresponding with the days and just go over what happened in more prose style wiriting I guess.
Amanada’s arrival made me pretty nervous, that might seem odd to you, because Amanda isn’t my girlfriend thus her arrival should not have been that big of a deal, but in the past I have not done the best job of getting a long with my BF’s GF’s. So this time around I wanted to make a good impression thus causing me to become slightly nervous to meet my boy’s girl. Our first night went well, and minus one very large pothole, the rest of the week went quite smoothly.
The day after the arrival of Devon’s GF we decided, well actually I decided I am a small control freak so I generally make group decisions before consulting anyone, going to a La Mitad Del Mundo, would be a good idea. La Mitad Del Mundo translates to, the center of the world, I am not sure the area we went to is the exact center of the world, because finding the center of a sphere on its surface seems impossible, but I am not a mathematician. La Mitad Del Mundo put more correctly is the equatorial line. After taking a series of buses for a little less than two hours we finally arrived. First we did what everyone does at the Equatorial line which is snap as many cheesy pictures as possible. I also jumped, hopped, skipped, danced, and leaped over the border between the northern and southern hemisphere. Then we went into a stupid museum, if you decide to go to the equator in Ecuador don’t go to the museum. After the museum the chicas decided they were hungry so we looked at a few menus, but me being the economic person that I am decided the food offered on the equatorial line was far too expensive so I made everyone leave and we went to a locals only Dive right outside La Mitad Del Mundo. I guess the girls can say they got a cultural restaurant experience.
This is proof we were truly at the equator
After our really awesome experience on the equatorial line we returned to our hostel, and then took an overnight bus to Puerto Lopez, a nice little Port in south eastern part of Ecuador.
The girls really did not have a good bus experience for numerous reasons.
They couldn’t really sleep.
The Bus was dirty
The Bus played really loud reggaetone the entire trip
The Bus stopped every ½ hour to let people off
Somewhere between the time we left Quito to the time we arrived in Puerto Lopez Amanada’s cash, cards, and cell phone went missing. (This will be elaborated on in just on second)
We arrived in Puerto Lopez at 5:25 in the morning, and I decided that we should take another bus straight to a little touristy surf town called Montanita where the waves were big, the sand was soft, and the Bananas and drink specials were plentiful.
During a nice breakfast Amanda realized her cards, cash, and blackberry were no longer in her purse. After 15 minutes of internet investigation, she found out an Ecuadorian man used her cash and cards, to purchase some tires from a place called Hot Wheels. Luckily her bank said they would take care of it and everything turned out A-okay.
Despite the missing cash, cards, and phone, we had a great time in Montanitas.
Here is a breakdown of what we did everyday.
Woke Up
Ate Breakfast, at the same restaurant
Got Changed
Sat out on the Beach/ Read a book from the Twilight series
Ate Lunch
Sat out on the Beach/ Walked on the Beach/ Took Naps/ Read
Watched the Sunset
Showered
Ate Dinner
Went to Bed/ Went out/ Watched Twighlight
Other than the sun burn I obtained on my shoulders, which has now peeled, thus making my back look like child’s first attempt of a white splatter painting on brown canvas. Life in Montanitas was easy breezy.
After three days of, paráiso, we bid farewell to the surfy, toursity, soft sanded beached town, and took another long bus ride back to Quito.
We spent our final day in Quito on an epic hike around the great tourist attraction of TeleferiQ. TeleferiQ is a large gondola that takes locals and tourists up a mountain side, so they can take nice “view from above” pictures of Quito. I decided I wanted to hike up the mountain behind the big tourist attraction, so that is what our group did. I thought the trek would be a walk in the park, at high altitude, but this was no easy hike our starting altitude was 4,100 meters, roughly 13,510 feet, and the ending altitude was 4,700 meters, roughly 15,510 feet.
The views were cloudy, the ground was muddy, the air was thin, and the temperature was cold, but it was definitely an enjoyable experience + I think that was the highest I have ever hiked.
We ended our last night together with a nice meal, after stuffing our faces Devon and I decided it was time to show off all of our Latin Feva Dance Moves we have acquired during our travels. Our moves are a mix between Tango, Salsa, Cueca, Samba, BialaFunk, Amerian Hip Hop, The Fox Trot, and B-Boy. I am proud to say the girls were dazzled by our multicultural moves.
After completing the Inca Trail Devon and I decided to see heaps, Australians say that word heaps of times when trying to describe something in a large quantity, of cities/ sites in a very small amount of time. On paper this decision was awesome, we were going to knock out a lot of the cities, and natural wonders we wanted to see/ experience in a very short period of time. After deciding to carry out the decision that looked so good on paper, we realized seeing lots of different cities and sites in a small amount of time involved loads, English people employ that word quite often when trying to describe something in a large quantity, nevertheless Austrailians say heaps, heaps more times than English say loads when trying to describe a large quantity of something, anyways seeing lots of different cities and sites in a small amount of time involved loads of our least favorite aspect of traveling, which is traveling. I know that might sound weird to you, I bet you might even be thinking to yourself how can two boys who claim to love traveling so much, hate traveling. I will explain how this strange phenomenon works.
Traveling requires quick movements, not quick movements like AI but going to different places quickly, and long bus rides, Devon and I were never too enthused by long bus rides, after taking a couple long bus rides in Peru and Bolivia our lack of enthusiasm for long bus rides turned into a pure despise for 10+ hour bus rides. Three events lead to my hatred of long bus rides, here is the break down.
Long Bus Ride 1: Cusco Peru---- Puno Peru
This technically wasn’t meant to be a long bus ride, only 6 hours, however I am convinced that punctuality and timeliness are relatively insignificant in Peru thus the bus ride took 8 and ½ hours because the Driver stopped at just about every city between Cusco and Puno with a proper bus station, so the ride took nearly 9 hours, but that didn’t faze me. The activity inside the bus was/ is the main reason I started to hate buses. First, the bus was stinky, it smelled like dirt, fried meat, and nastiness all mixed together then sprinkled on top of Body Odor. The best description of that nasty smell would be dirty meaty, nasty, Body Odor. Second, not only did the bus driver stop in heaps of little cities, he also pulled over for just about every vendor on waiting to peddle their goods on these stinky, crowded, uncomfortable buses. Normally highway vendors wouldn’t faze me, but one duo of bus vendors took it to a new level of straight nastiness. Here is the story…
Devon and I are sitting on the bus pleasantly watching Apocolypto, a masterpiece indigenous slasher movie directed by Mel Gibson, when two Peruvian women dressed in the traditional Peruvian women outfits composed of multiple layers of sweaters, a long skirt, braided hair, some sort of top hat, with a large bag strapped across her back, board our bus. One woman immediately starts selling thin transparent plastic bags filled with strips of meat accompanied by boiled potatoes. Well everyone on the bus goes nuts for this plastic bag filled with nastiness, so bus vendor number two takes off her large bag sets it down right in front of me and Devon, opens the bag, grabs a huge butcher knife and starts straight hacking large strips of meat of the half cow in her bag. I am not even kidding this woman was raising the gigantic butcher knife above her head and crashing the sharp blade into the stinky, juicy flesh of the dead cow in a Peruvian Bag. After she cut a sufficient amount of meat, she would grab the bloody, gooey, drippy, nastiness with her bare hands, stuff it into a plastic bag, then she would reach into another compartment of her bag grab some potatoes with her greasy, bloody hands and stuff the taters into thebloody nasty plastic now somewhat transparent bag.
My eyes were fixed on this odd situation like a rubber neckers eyes are fixed on a car crash in the shoulder of a road, you know you probably shouldn’t be watching, but you just can’t help it.
Anyways this continued for 5- 10 more minutes, and then the Peruvian meat peddling duo finally jumped out of the bus. After this strange bus selling event my stomach never felt 100% for the rest of the journey.
Long Bus Journey Number 2: Uyuni, Bolivia ----- La Paz, Bolivia
Welcome to Bolivia, thanks to Chile and being land locked, the most underdeveloped nation in South America. The lack of development in Bolivia means, lack of paved highways, and adequate buses. Story…
Well I explained most of it, 85% of our bus Journey from Uyuni Bolivia to La PazBolivia was spent on unpaved dirt highways. Unpaved dirt highways = very very bumpy roads = hard to sleep. This formula is already less than ideal, but it gets worse for my boy Devon, his seat did not recline and inch, so a new formula was created for him.
Unpaved Dirt Highways = Very Very Bumpy Roads
+Seat that doesn’t recline an Inch = No Sleep.
I am going to give another Gold star to by Boy Devon for putting up with Bolivia’s underdevelopment in an all-star manner. I don’t think he even complained once.
Long Bus Journey Number 3: La Paz, Bolivia ---- Cusco, Peru
After buying our ticket Devon and I were kinda excited for this bus ride. The woman told me we would have cama seats, which are seats that recline pretty far I would say about 150 degrees, and we would also have a snack and a desayuno. Omgosh that sounded amazing.
The seats were pretty comfy, but 30 minutes into our journey our driver discovered a group of political activists had shut down the highway so they could protest something. I thought countries with socialist presidents didn’t have to protest things, because socialism is the perfect form of government thus everyone is happy and no one protests.I guess I was wrong. Well this protest caused a huge detour for our bus, so we spent 2 hours driving through unpaved back roads trying to find a way around the protest.
Our bus driver was doing work through the back roads until we came across a river… which was actually a very small puddle like thing between to medium sized puddle banks of rocks.
Well our bus driver decided crossing this puddle like body of water was going to be difficult so we had to get off the bus, bajarnos del bus, to lighten up the load. Once the load was lightened he tried to cross this puddle of danger, but his first attempt was unsuccessful. So all the bus experts deliberated for 15 minutes and they decided the best solution to this problem would be to throw medium sized rocks into the puddle of death. Slowly but surely 50 people started tossing medium sized rocks into this puddle because somehow that was going to get the bus across the puddle of death I don’t want to come across as a neoliberalistic meanie face, but I have a theory Underdeveloped nations = somewhat underdeveloped thought process. All I have to say is thank the big man Devon and I had so much practice tossing rocks while playing rock toss in Chiloe, Chile. After we tossed rocks into the puddle for 15 minutes our Driver decided it was time to try and cross the puddle of death. After some skillful driving our driver successfully made it across the puddle of death, woo hoo!!
The rest of the ride was okay but spending more than an hour watching a bus trying to cross a puddle set me off a little bit.
Traveling also means one doesn’t have sufficient time to develop strong friendships within the hostel community. Example, Devon and I stayed in Rio for 11 days, and during these 11 days we accumulated heaps of friends on Facebook, I am talking at least 14+. During our brief stint in La Paz, Boliviawe met a lot of great people, but we didn’t have sufficient time to take our friendship to the next level and become friends on Facebook. We gained zip zero friends on Facebook during our brief stints in La Paz. This may seem insignificant, but let me assure you friends on Facebook = Friends Forever.
Those are the central reasons why my least favorite part of Traveling is Traveling.
Now onto more interesting things, first let me give you a breakdown of where we were and dates that corresponds.
March 6th- 8thCusco, Peru
March 8th-10thPuno, Peru
March 10th-12th La Paz, Bolivia
March 13th-14thUyuni, Bolivia
March 15th-16thLa Paz, Bolivia
March 16th- 18th Cusco Peru
March 18thLimaPeru
March 18th Quito, Ecuador
As you can clearly see we were on the move, hence the Title of this Blog Everybody on Tha Move, which is a song by Michael Franti.
Anyways let me give you some highlights of the many different places we were.
Cusco, Peru- The city served as the Capital of the Incan empire, it’s buildings are gorgeous, there are lots of neat ruins, the nightlife is great, actually I have just heard the nightlife is great Devon and I never actually went out in Cusco, and there is an amazing restaurant called Jacks.
Puno, Peru- This town is freezing cold at night and there really isn’t much to see as far as the town goes, but it is borders Lake Titicaca which is gorgeous. Since the only thing to do in Puno is see Lake Titicaca Devon and I thought it would be a good idea to take a little tour of Lake Titicaca, isn’t that fun to say “Titicaca.” Anyways our tour was quite neat they took us to a little area of the massive lake called Uros. Uros is famous for having floating islands. You might be asking yourself floating Islands what are those… I will explain.
When the Spanish came down on their bloody conquest a group of people fled into Lake Titicaca and they constructed Islands which are made solely out of reeds. A small group of people still live on these 2 meter thick reed islands. Pretty neat huh?
La Paz, Bolivia- The world’s highest city. Gazing down at La Paz from a hill top is fascinating. It appears the city was originally built in a large valley, and when the valley ran out of room, people started constructing buildings along the mountain sides. Now the city looks like a mountain range covered in buildings rather than trees. I am not sure if that explanation makes sense so I will post two pictures of the city so you can see for yourself.
Anyways La Paz does a great job of segregating Gringos, Anglo-Saxon foreigners, from the rest of the city. There are Gringo Hostals, Gringo Bars, Gringo Restaurants, Gringo Clubs, and Gringo Extreme Activities, and Gringo Tourist Attractions.
Example- The map our Gringo Hostel provided us conveniently had numerous tourist attractions marked on it, and somehow all of these tourist attractions were Gringo related. Since Devon and I aren’t really creative do it yourself backpackers we followed the map and went to the different Gringo restaurants, bars, and tourist attractions. We definitely had a nice Gringo experience in La Paz.
Although we did take part in a lot of Gringo activities such as A Bunch of Gringos watch Cholitos wrestling, Gringo vs. Gringo paintball, and consuming Gringo food at Gringo Restaurants. We also, saw a lot of the city on our daily epic walkabout.
The Highlight of walkabout was mos def, that means most definitely but it kinda sounds a little more edgy, the markets in Bolivia. Everything you would ever want is sold in Bolivian street markets, Shampoo, Lotion, Chewy Gobstoppers, Fake Designer Clothing, Alcohol, Soda, Towels, Meat, DVD’s, CD’s, Sunglasses, Books, Electronics, and anything else you may find at a Target or Wal-Mart. Also, the layout of the of the markets are hilarious, one block will be all shampoo, and lotion, then the next block will be all candy/ cookies, to your right is a lane full of nasty meat, then to your left could be 10 different shops selling sneakers. Honestly, it is kind of hard to explain the street market madness in Bolivia, but if you want a more local less Gringo experience in Bolivia mos def check out the street markets.
Uyuni Bolivia: Home of the world’s largest salt flats, Salari. After doing a little bit of research I found out the slat flats were created after a gigantic lake dried up. Honestly, I am glad the lake dried up because the salt flats are stunning. When we finally entered the salt flats, I felt like I was in a desert covered in Snow. It is really hard to describe the Salari so hopefully the pictures do the talking.
The tour of the Salari de Uyuni, was somewhat unorganized and kinda strange but hey I was in Bolivia, what could I really expect. Here is a break down of the tour.
Our Salt Flat group was composed of one Brazilian Man, Two Japanese Girls, Two Argentinean Girls, and Two American Boys, Devon and I.
Stage 1: Our not so friendly Driver took us to a “Train Graveyard” and everyone there took cheesy pictures next to rusty trains.
Stage 2: Our not so friendly Driver took us to a little market where Bolivian ladies sold things made out of Salt.
Stage 3: Our not so friendly Driver took us to the first area of the Salt Flats where locals gather salt to be processed and sold. Absolutely Stunning.
Stage 4: Our not so friendly Driver took us to an area called Isla Del Pescado, which was a big cactus covered land mass in the middle of the Salt Flat Abyss. We sat down around tables and chairs made of Slat and ate a sub par lunch. After lunch Devon and I walked around the huge Cactus covered land mass, and took a bunch of pictures of the slat flats.
Stage 5: Our not so friendly Driver took us back to our hotel.
Doesn’t sound too exciting but it was awesome.
We spent the rest of our time in Uyuni in our hotel room watching an HBO television series called The Wire.
After Uyuni we went back to La Paz, stayed there one night. We slept for a total of 3 hours in La Paz, then took a 16 hour bus ride to Cusco, stayed in the beautiful city of Cusco for one day and two nights. Then took a flight to Lima, waited in the airport for 3 hours then flew on up to Quito. Lots of traveling but lots of good times and great memories.
