Thanksgiving in Machu Picchu

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, so naturally I had to do something really extravagant to make up for the fact that I was missing all of that delicious food. I chose of one the seven new wonders of the world.

It's nearly impossible to describe through mere photos and words how breathtaking the ruins are. A bus takes you on road of switchbacks to the top of the mountain which literally puts you in the sky. Clouds whip past, alternatingly giving you glimpses of the incredible surroundings and blocking views only 5 feet in front of your face.

They are sprawling. We spent about 4 hours touring them and probably could have stayed much longer. It was also made a bit difficult by pelting rain which did not relent, of course, until we were back at the foot of the mountain. The trails were slippery and at some points, a misstep could pretty much lead you to certain death.

key players

Don Cherry, Puerto Lopez - This bumbling Ecuadorian tour guide took $90 from us to visit Isla de la Plata. The transaction took about an hour, because he showed me a map and proceeded to tell me (in Spanish) about every region of his country. That night, he came to dinner at our hostal and regailed us with stories about crazy half-naked European women on his boat. When his son left to go to bed, he stayed and hung out with us and told Tori he has a son who´s an engineer and speaks perfect English.
In Puerto Lopez, there´s one photo used everywhere to advertise whale watching and it is Don Chery´s tour. It wasn´t season, but we were psyched nonetheless. The next morning two teenage girls in matching school uniforms came to our bungalow to lead us to the boat. When we got to the water, the children of the corn bid us farewell. On the boat, we were the only ones who were not French. Don Cherry was nowhere to be found. That night, he came back to the hostal and asked us why we were sleeping on the beach two mornings ago. We asked him where he was all day, but we unable to uncover a reason through his slurry, rapid Spanish, so we just let it go and chalked his absense up to the fact that he probably did something way more interesting that we may someday hear about from Tori´s future father-in-law over a spaghetti and tunafish dinner made by somebody´s grandma.

Ingrid, Rio de Janeiro - This middle-aged South African woman was a staple in our hostal. She wore her pink string bikini all the time and smoked a million cigarettes, waiting for the 25-year-old Argentinian who would get her high and take her dancing. When he did, all she could do was stand on the balcony and smoke more cigarettes.

Every male tour guide, continental South America - Luis, Adan and about 7 Javiers always ask us to dance salsa with them later that night. We went once and have since learned our lesson.

The owner of the first hostal we stayed in, Sao Paulo - Nicest man ever who just opened the place 3 weeks prior to our stay. He let us do laundry for free and gave us pastries made by his mom. We´re very lucky to have this perfect image of him before throngs of ungrateful travelers with dirty feet wear him down little by little.

Cafe owner, Guayaquil - This beret-wearing whack-job kissed by bare legs repeatedly and also tied a red string around my ankle. I think he also tried to set me up with his daughter, who wanted nothing to do with me. He danced around the room, stopping every so often at our bar seats to thank us for coming and to please visit him again. If I ever return to Guayaquil, I most certainly will.

Mr. & Mrs. Hostal, universal - These are the backpacker types. They are usually Austrailian and there´s something about them that´s not quite right. They look at us funny when we shower and put on makeup. Uniform is navy blue striped cargo pants with an elastic waistband and birkenstocks.

Andres, Puerto Lopez - This is embarassing. He is 19. Tori and I shared a not-so-innocent crush on him. We talk about him daily and when we look back on photos, he looks 19. But in person, he was so much more.

Remi, Puerto Lopez - Best bartender ever. Impressive artist as well. He gave us ginormous beers for $1, 50 cents off the normal price. He made us necklaces out of seaglass and recycled cans and said things like, ¨I do not have e-mail, so when I think of you I will know that you are thinking of me.¨ Possibly my future boss.

Chicken lady, Quito - ¨We would like breakfast, what do you have?¨¨For breakfast today, we have chicken.¨¨Chicken?¨¨No.¨10 minutes later she shows up with chicken, while the table next to us gets eggs and fresh juice.

girls, you have a message. city hall called

This is what the hostal owner told us after we had come back from exploring Guayaquil. With the first sentence, I was sure it was my mother. But no, the Ecuadorian government needed our help. We are the only English speakers staying in the hostal. Could we please help the citizens of Guayaquil learn to speak English on national television? Why not?

A crew came a short while later and we filmed simple scenarios in very basic English. I learned that I am absolutely the world's worst actress because I was unable to stifle my laughter every time Tori looked at me with wide eyes and exclaimed, "It's 5 o'clock, Francesca!"

These commercials will be aired in January and by then everyone in Ecuador will know how to say, "Hello! My name is Francesca. I am from the United States and I am a tourist!"

the chronicles of puerto lopez

Chapter 1 - We are dropped off in the early morning dark. Delirious, we double check our location. Puerto Lopez, yup. A swarm of taxi drivers surround us. They wear goggles and helmets because they drive these motorcyle/wagon hybrids. The directions to our hostal said, "we are on the Malecon, just walk around or ask somebody." With no other choice, we jumped into the "cab" and he sped down the dirt road. In 30 seconds, we were there but it didn't seem anyone else was. We sleep on the beach until the employees of the hostal come and find us to check in. We were assigned to Bunglow 8 and our bed had a mosquito net.

Chapter 2 - In daylight, PL is unbelievable. It's off-season, so we are bascially two of ten tourists in a tiny little untouched beach down. It's charmingly delapidated and makes no apologies. It's pretty much one street, with straw huts on the beach side advertising special hot dogs, chicken spaghetti and pina colodas. On the other side, is concrete houses interspersed with general stores. In the street, motorcylces and bicycles whiz, families of 4 piled on top.

Chapter 3 - We go surfing with our new 19-year-old friends. At night, a grandma makes us dinner and we sit around talking for hours in two different languages and somehow understand.

Chapter 4 - Having been there for two days now, we walk down the street and run into about ten different people we know - our favorite bartender, server from last night, the local jewelry maker who has a serious crush on Tori, the tour-boat guy, our baby friends, Carlos who asked us to go dancing and every surfer in town. We buy a bottle of water and the lady doesn't have change so she tells us to come back later when we have smaller bills. When we do, she gives us two bananas that she had grown.

Chapter 5 - By the time we are ready to leave on day 4, we are laden with gifts - necklaces made of sea glass from Remi the bartender and bracelets from Pablo. He offers me a bartending gig that I am seriously considering taking, which also includes a free language exchange.

We came to PL for Isla de la Plata (the poor man's Galapagos), but that isn't even worth writing about compared to the experience of becoming part of this town for a few short days. We literally cried when we left. Now we are in Guayaquil, which is boring in comparison. Tomorrow, we leave for Lima and I absolutely cannot wait to get there and eat.

the jungle gym

For $2 entrance free at the Basilica of Quito, you are given free reign. There are crazy ladders and stairwells everywhere and you can climb, climb, climb as high up as you want to go. This would absolutely not go over in sue-happy United States. We had a blast.

Tori walking above the rafters.

Stairway to the sky.

The floor, if you can call it that.

36 hours

Okay, first of all, yeah, I´ll admit it, I spelled Colombia wrong. Thanks, anynomous, whoever you are. Show yourself! I´ve been writing on the fly recently and blogspot does not have spell check, so cut me and my grammatical mistakes a break.

Anyway, back to the important stuff. Migrating from Bogotá to Quito was quite an adventurous day and half.

Hour 1 - Cab picks us up at our hostal and on the ludicrous route to the bus terminal that includes an accident in which the people just left their mangled cars in the middle of the road, we listen to Mariah Carey´s entire catalog.

Hour 2 - On the bus, our driver chooses some Jackie Chan movie. The previews, in English, were a tease, because of course, the film was dubbed.

Hour 4 - Tori and I wake up from a nap to a man wearing army gear and carrying a machine gun climbing on our bus. He spits something in Spanish, then turns his head a little to catch part of the flick. Everyone is forced to get off the bus and women are pointed in one direction, men to the other. I got a little less scared when I was given a hand to decend the stairs of the bus. They search our bags. Taking advantage of the checkpoint, vendors have lined the side of the road. Drug free, we are permitted to buy some plantains, which are delicious.

Hour 5 - We stop for chicken at a roadside cafeteria. It is salty and again, very delicious.

Hour 6 - Bus stops. For two hours, we are stuck behind an accident on a curvy road. Everyone gets out of the bus and watches the sun set over the banana trees.

Hour 7 - The lights are turned off, forcing us to go to sleep at 6:30pm.

Hour 10ish - The air conditioning is unbearably freezing. Tori wakes up and asks me to throw a pot of boiling water on her face.

Hour 19 - After a terrible night of sleep, I wake up and look out the window for several hours. We are slowly climbing mountains, taking the most circuitous (did I spell that right?) routes and then quickly decending, passing trucks and other slower buses on 1-lane roads. The paths literally melt into the scenery behind us, which consists of rolling hills perfectly divided for crops; cows, goats and chickens; tiny one-horse towns; homemade basket shops; and restaurants with plastic chairs. It´s literally impossible to tell where we´ve come from and, with the front of the bus sectioned off, where we are going.

Hour 20 - Fast and Furious, you guessed it, dubbed in Spanish.

Hour 22 - MASH. Tori marries a sexy Brazilian and rides around in the side car of his motorcyle. I marry my favorite DJ, who has become a trashman. Although, we live in NYC and are taken around in a chauffuered town car.

Hour 26 - We arrive in Ipiales. We run to see a beautiful church built into a ravine overlooking a waterfall while our cab waits.

Hour 27 - Dropped off at the border. Stamps from Columbia. Bags checked. Walk across a bridge. At some point in the middle, we leave Columbia and enter Ecuador. Bags checked again, this time in a little concrete structure. The guard asks us where we´re going and why, where we´ve been, where we´re from. Do we have a map? What´s next? Why? Why? Why? Ecuador stamps. They guy behind the window tries to charge me $96. I think he was joking, but his face was a little too serious.

Hour 28 - Cab to second bus terminal. The driver asks us if we´re trying to go now. We say yes, and he immediately switches it into 3rd gear and starts chasing a bus. We pull over on the side of the road, pay the cabbie and these two guys come running up, grap our suitcases out of the trunk and book it. We follow, laughing hysterically onto a bus with open windows, headed to Quito (we hope).

Hour 29 - The bus plays the best traveling music, loudly. At every stop, people get on and off the bus to sell us stuff. We buy plantain chips (can´t get enough) and water. We are charged $4.50 each for the 4-and-a-half-hour bus ride.

Hour 35 - In a cab in Quito, ecstatic that we are so close. Then the driver tells us we still have another 30 minutes. He also tells us to be careful.
We sleep.
Now, in daylight, Quito is fantastic, a beautiful, bustling town where lunch costs $1.50 and churches are veritable playgrounds. Tonight, we are going to eat at the best ceviche restaurant in the country and then going to see a German electronica DJ in an old historic theatre. Photos and more stories to come...

100% colombian

After going to the wrong airport, getting more than a little shit from the Brazillians about not having a plane ticket out of South America and a 7-hour plane ride, we finally made it out of Brazil and into Bogotà, Colombia.

Like Brazil, it is not what I expected at all. That´s about where the similarities end. The tranquility of our beautiful hostel (clay roof, courtyards with hammocks and Spanish-speaking women dressed in organge making us tea) and the cobblestone roads of the historic old town are in sharp contrast to the constant party in 100 degree weather of Rìo.

Yesterday, we took a tour of the police museum, which is apparrently not a very popular tourist attraction. Honestly, we just wanted to see Pablo Escobar´s bloody jacket from the day he was killed, but we ended up getting our own private tour of the beautiful building filled with artifacts of not only Escobar´s capture, but the whole history of the Colombian police force including bazookas and photos of be-headings. We asked our tour guide why there were police all over the street with machine guns, which we found to be a little unerving, but he explained it´s only because the president´s house is in the historic district and they are there to protect him. After that, we drank the best coffee ever for about 40 cents.

Everyone we`ve come in contact with here has been overly nice to us. One guy took one look at me on the street and said in English ¨Oh my god! Hello! Welcome to Colombia country! How are you?¨ Without my camera and Tori across the street, I have no idea how he even knew I was a tourist. In a small restaurant, we ate a 3-course meal for less than $6 total and the owners animatedly talking to us, shocked that we are Americans here to visit and just kept listing places to go and things to see and telling us to be careful.

Today, day 9, is consisting only of an extremely long 25-hour bus ride to the border of Colombia. There, we will stop in a small town called Ipiales for the day and then take another bus (only 5 hours this time) to Quito, the capital of Ecuador.

rio´s beach

The beach in Rio de Janeiro is unlike anything I´ve ever seen. First of all, it´s insanely crowded. There is a wall of people that makes it impossible to see anthing but umbrellas. And asses. In yet another stereotype proved true, Brazilian bikinis are the smallest things I´ve ever seen and everyone from 6-year-old little kids to 70-year-old woman wears the same size. And let me tell you, one size does not fit all.

Another interesting part of the experience are the beach entrepreneurs who walk around selling food, bikinis, towels, jewelry and shelving units. We drink from coconuts daily and we also bought an açai water ice thing with granola and honey. I´m glad we only discovered it today because it was the most delicious thing I´ve eaten down here and at 5 reals a pop, we easily could´ve dropped 40 in the 4 days we´ve been here.

Obviously, the merchants aren´t the most well-off people in the city, but seeing a kid of not more than 5 with a money belt selling candy was particularly disheartening. It was pretty sad to see him working like an adult. It seems as though the conditions of the life here make it necessary for kids to grow up too fast. The most precarious/disheartening of situations down here has been in interactions with children, including one time we saw a bunch of kids hang from the window of a moving bus to get on for free.

Overall, though, Rio is not as terrible as everyone says and I´m really happy I got to see that for myself. In general, it´s just a really big city on a beach where it´s always super hot and filled with people who came here on vacation and never seemed to have left.

Wonder how this will contrast with the next stop, another notorious city - Bogota, Colombia.

cristo

A 13-story statue of Christ over-looks over Rio de Janeiro, blessing a city that´s ironically rife with crime.

The view from the hill is stunning; Rio is literally built into hillsides along a beautiful beach. The sculpture is striking, although I felt like being so close to it ruined some of the mystery.

days 1-3

Day 1 - Tori and I were miraculously able to meet up in Sao Paulo with nothing more than a few thrown-together plans via facebook. I was so excited I screamed. After settling, we pretended to make plans online for a while, then got dinner. In my rampant quest for sushi, I led Tori to Little Japan, not the best neighborhood at night, we found out. The restaurant the guide book recommended was no where to be found so we ended up in the Brazilian version of Mai Lai Wah.

Day 2 - All the touristy stuff we could pack into a day including a 3-hour walking tour where we saw unbelievable graffiti and tons of churches, some of which even had whores soliciting out front. Tori tripped on a rock and pulled my hair to catch her fall. It was hilarious. Since I´m obsessed with going up, I forced Tori (who later told me she´s scared of heights) to go to the top of the tallest vantage point of the city and I am unable to explain how massive Sao Paulo is. The photos do not even do it justce. Apparently, Sao Paulo has the most helicopter traffic of any city in the world because the rich use them to get around. They even have helicopter-sharing, for the bargain price of $40,000 anually.
We saw about a dozen in a span of less than 5 minutes.

At night, I tricked Tori into going to an expensive sushi restaurant. When we got the $1oo bill, she made me promise to not lie to her for the rest of the trip. Afterwards, we went to an expat bar. We should have stayed away because the only Phillies game I was able to watch since I´ve been here was a disaster.


Day 3 - First bus trip, 6 hours, not too bad for me, pretty bad for Tori as she left half her clothes in the overhead. We are now in a hostel perched high above in the hills with a breath-taking view of Rio de Janeiro and about to meet the famous Spence, a good friend of non other than Brian Sirhal.

Before parting, a few more remarks about Brazil. A fascinating mix of beauty and squallor, the country is infamous for the grand inequality of classes (think gypsies with 3 kids begging, helicopters). Brazilians don´t have a specific look, so it´s a bit odd to see black people, Asian people, German people and every other kind of people speaking Portugese. The juice is the ubiquitous and delicious. They use fruits I´ve never even heard of and every time I just point to some word that has x´s and ç´s in it and I get a wonderful, cold surprise. I even drank straight from a coconut.

chau

It’s officially my last night in Montevideo and I must admit I’m a little sad to be leaving. I’ve gotten very accustomed to my life here and I was beginning to feel very comfortable in my home, my school, my city.

After dinner, Amparo presented me with a notebook she keeps of all the students who have stayed with her. The pages are filled with letters, cards and notes to her from 11 different people, mostly from the states or Europe. In Spanish, I attempted to convey what a lovely person she is and how kind, helpful and hospitable she’s been. I thanked her for waking me up everyday, telling me when to bring my umbrella and for her incredible dulce de leche mousse.

Montevideo was more or less a random decision and I still have difficulty explaining exactly what it was that brought me here. In reality, Anthony Bourdain first gave me the idea and it was later solidified the more I read and heard about the city and country. Finding the school finalized my decision. For taking such a long shot, this experience couldn’t have gone more smoothly. Here I’ve consistently felt safe, welcomed and stimulated. I’ve even begun to see Montevideo as beautiful; it really has grown on me. Leaving my computer and brick of a dictionary under Amparo’s care ensures a return, probably some time in late December.

In addition, last night I was finally acquainted with some Philly girls who'd I'd been e-mailing with for the past few weeks. We were united through mutual friends and they will be here for the next six months. They are wonderful and already, I have a bed and an invitation for Christmas and New Year’s.

Tomorrow, I will brave the humungous metropolis of Sao Paulo alone, before meeting Tori on Tuesday. I’m a little daunted just by the directions I copied in order to get from the airport to my hostel, which includes three different modes of transportation, but I’m up for the challenge. I already have some reales, the Brazilian currency, which is intensely colorful and decorated with fish, birds and cougars and I’m pretty sure I remember how to say “thank you” in Portuguese.

Until soon.