Monday, September 01, 2008

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Recap

Recapping a three-month trip in one post is quite a daunting task. Luckily, there aren't any space limitations (I wrote this in Wod, and it came to about eight pages single spaces. So take your time with this one). As a way to live my dream of actually holding a press conference, I will answer reader-submitted questions/Ian-submitted questions to provide some final mass e-mail thoughts on my summer.

Just as I did with my Israel recap post, I have written this dispatch from a Canadian highway (the last one was written between Jasper and Edmonton. This one is coming to you from between Petrolia and Etobicoke). Coincidence? Probably.

Well, before I open it up to your questions, I'd like to offer a brief opening statement about my summer.

Ian: It wasn't until I loaded all of my pictures onto my computer that I realized exactly how much I did this summer. I had the opportunity to see so many incredible things, from Galapagos to Macchu Picchu to Iguazu Falls to the beaches in Brazil and everything in between. But when you travel, you realize that the most memorable experiences or new perspectives don't come from being at major tourist sites. They come from the journey between. It's the locals you meet, overnight buses, the cab drivers, the interesting travelers you meet, the cultural differences, and immersing yourself in new culture that make this type of trip so memorable.

Peter Piper (of picking a peck of pickled pepper's phame): Give me a three-word alliteration to summarize your trip.

Ian: So, I'll break this one up into two parts. I have an alliteration that brings together the entire trip, and then I will have one for each country. There are repeats, because, well, I can't think of any other words right now that start with the same sound. At times, I went to the Phil Brickma School of Alliteration and Smart Travel.

For the entire trip: Cascao, Kwame, Cashapampa, kosher (the same thing as "vegetarian"), -quile (as in tranquilo")

Now, I'll break that one up by country.

Brazil: Cascao, Queijo con banana, Ceni, Cataratasq, Couchsurfing

Uruguay: Pony Pisador, Pleasant (I only spend 22 hours here, but I still have an alliteration, even though it's only between two items)

Peru: Huascaran, One-dollar lunches, Wonder

Ecuador: Tortuga, Tang, Tranuilo, ,

Argentina: Parilla, Papa, Palermo, Plaza de Mayo (just the madres), Paraguay? No,

Chile: ATM?, Atacama, Omellete, "On-time"

Me: What fears did you overcome?

Ian: Fire and bunk beds.

It's good that I've overcome my fear of bunk beds now. You know, so that I can sleep on the top bunk when I start going to overnight camp.

And, if I ever think about opening a hot dog cart, I would be comfortable lighting the flame. I have had no issues transferring fire, but the problem has been igniting it. But now, I don't have no issue with it

Rosie: Which country has the cutest old women?

Ian: This one is a tie. In Peru buses, you see these old native wmen, dressed in their traditional garb, missing teeth, and carrying about five hundred pounds worth of potatoes. If I were to choose one old woman as the cutest, it would be the woman in the bus station in Puno, Peru who tried to sell me her gloves. The only problem is that they were the gloves she was wearing and, fully extended, fit in my palm.

I also really like old, Brazilian couples dancing samba.

TMZ: Brushes with famous people?

Ian: While I was visiting the former presidential palace in Rio, I met some locals who helped translate the Portuguese from the exhibits. I really enjoyed talking with them and asked them what they were doing that night. They said that they always go to this bar with their friends, and that I was invited to come along.

I went back to my hostel and told the staff the name of the bar. They said that was mostly a gay bar, which worried me (not that there's anything wrong with that). Either there was something I didn't know about these two girls I met at the museum or they were playing a horrible trick on me. With a back-up plan in place if I felt horribly uncomfortable at this first bar, I set out to meet up with my new friends.

It turns out that my new friends are actors in Brazilian television, movies, and theater. I shmoozed it up with them and some of their other acting friends and had a great time.

I also met the son of an English parliament minister.

Everybody: How often did you shower?

Ian: At the beginning of my trip, I was showering at about the same rate I was sending out mass emails. As the trip wore on, I was showering much more frequently than I was sending out emails. It probably became about at 2:1 shower to email ratio.

Safire: What are your favorite new words?

Ian: Mochilerim. It is a Hebrew word for people who backpack in South America. In Spanish, "mochilla" means backpack. And "im" is the Hebrew suffix to pluralize something.

Successo – Protuguese for "success!"

Tudo ben. In Portuguese, it means :everything is all right." But In Brazil, It is a popular greeting, along the lines of "what's going on?" or "what's up?"

Tranquilo – Yes, this word means what you think it means. But it's much more frequently than it's English cognate. In Brazil, it's a common response to the "what's going on?" question. Actually, one of the friends I made in Brazil said that, when she first traveled in America, she responded to "how's it going?" with "tranquility." Now, she laughs about it.

But more than that. Throughout South America, tranquileo is how I would describe the mindset. Very laid back, take it easy, don't rush kind of attitudel.

Black and white cookie baker: Did you throw up?

Ian: My streak is still intact. As of today, I have been vomit-free for 760 days and over 3,000 days before that unfortunate morning in Jerusalem. Ruby…

Baklava guy: Who was your favorite vendor?

Ian: They guy from whom I bought my jeans in the street market in Chiclayo, Peru. Not only is it the largest street market in South America, but the guy was also very friendly. He allowed me to try on my pants in the makeshift fitting room (more of a fitting curtain along the main walkway of the market), cut a hole in the pants for the button, put my stin-ridding, hole-covered, not-so-pleasant smelling, old jeans in the garbage, and took a picture with me. (If this were a blog, I would put that picture right here). He had a charm that only the best street-market salesmen have.

There was another vendor who I really liked, but I didn't buy anything from her, so I don't know if she qualifies for this question. Since no one asked me about the favorite vendor I didn't buy anything from, I will include a profile here.

When you go on hikes in Peru, it is common to find old women selling beverages and snacks along the trail, snacks that they had carried in tradition Incan blankets/capes depending on how they are folded. This woman's spot is on the ascent from the deepest canyon in the world. She wakes up at 3:00 a.m. every morning to catch the first wave of hikers doing the hike in the middle of the night. Because it's cold in the morning and hot in the afternoon, she brings warm and cool drinks.

After the midnight hikers pass, she finds a shaded spot behind a rock and spends the morning reading her bible and listening to folkloric music until the afternoon hikers arrive. She has mastered her job because, even at 3:00 p.m., the pop is still cold, and bananas are still yellow. She leaves her spot at about 6 p.m. to cook for her family, goes to bed at 10 p.m., and wakes up at 3 to start the next day.

Shuuummmmmmmmmuuuuuuuun: What's it like to turn 22 in Rio?

Ian: Pretty great but I didn't treat it much differently than my other day in Rio. I went out both nights, spent the afternoon at the beach, and went to capoeira in the evening.

BNL: If you had 100 more dollars, you would….

Ian: This is a tough question because I feel that I did almost everything I wanted to and if something cost a little bit more money but greatly enhance my experience, I didn't have a problem paying a little more. The only thing I can think of is doing the Nazca Lines.

These are mysterious rock carvings on the Peruvian coast that you can only see from an airplane., I didn't go on the airplane because I had heard that it is dangerous/nausea-inducing but if I might have used this extra money to pay for a more reputable company.

Khamotkha: If you had more time, you would…

Ian: If I had more time, I would have visited Bolivia. As I talked about in my previous email, I was seriously going to Bolovia because everybody says it's their favorite country. I worried that the week and a half I would spend in Bolivia wouldn't have been enough time to fully do Bolivia. But if I had another week or week and a half, I would have spent it in Bolivia.

Kippy, your neighborhood porcupine: What are two places you spent too much time?

Ian: I can't really think of any place that I spent too much time. For three days, I tried hard to get out of Buenos Aires and make my way to Uruguay, but, in the end, staying more time in Buenos Aires was probably a good thing. I got to enjoy more meat and spend more time with the friends I met.

Any time you spend in Lima, Peru is too much time.

Jane Goodall: What animal would you have liked to bring home?

Ian: This is probably the easiest question I'll field in the press conference. Giant sea turtle.

Sallah Shabati: Which countries or parts of countries did you miss and would like to go back to?

Ian: If I learned one thing in my South America trip (aside from everything else I learned on this trip), it's that I need to return to South America and not only to see the friends I made while traveling. This trip revealed that I need to come back to this continent to visit Bolivia, Patagonia, and northeast Brazil.

Guy walking aimlessly in the corner: What kind of people did you meet on the road?

Ian: I met very few Americans in my travels. The majority of people I met on the road were from Great Britain, Canada, Israel, or Australia. There are a few reasons for this. First, there is a mentality in these other countries to travel and see the world. Plus, there is so much to see in America, and it's expensive to travel internationally. In these other countries, there isn't the same diversity of landscape. In order to see different things, you need to travel to other places. And the American dollar sucks right now.

If I met Canadians on the road, they were typically college-aged kids traveling over the summer. If I met British people, there were typically post-university/pre-real world people. The Australians I met were mostly in major life transitions and one more extensive travels or over a year. Israelis were, well, Israelis.

John Williams and the Boston Pops: What did you do for Olympic opening ceremonies?

First off, I watched them live. In your face people America. I was sitting in the TV room of Che Legarto Hostel in Copacabana. I really enjoyed watched the parade of nations in this opening ceremonies because you didn't know which country would walk next. With the Chinese alphabet, I had no idea what kind of order the countries would walk out in, so you had to try and guess based on the flag in the background.

Eli Roth (director of the movie Hostel): What was your favorite hostel?

Ian: I spent the final week and a half of my trip in the Che Lagarto Hostel in Rio (site of my opening ceremonies viewing). Maybe the breakfast at this place wasn't up to the standards of other Carioca hostels but the staff was as helpful and caring at this place as they were at any place I stayed at.

Eli Roth: And your least favorite hostel…

Ian: I don't really want to think too much about the hostel we stayed at in Guayaquil, Ecaudor. Our guidebook described the place as a clean, safe, popular backpacker hostel, with a friendly staff and not the kind of place that bosses and their secretaries pay by the hour. Well, the book was wrong in all three aspects.

Our room had a bit of a cockroach issue (ooohh, las cucarachas). The guy at the front desk was angry with us when we tried to buy bottled water. And, standing in front of us in line when we checked in were an older man and a much younger woman (I'll save you the rest of the details).

Mitch Murphy (or whoever the neighbor kid from Home Alone was): What was your favorite souvenir?

Ian: Whenever I buy gifts and t-shirts from my travels, I always avoid the traditional touristy gifts. I like to buy shirts that reflect an aspect of my experience there or some part of the local culture. This is why my favorite souvenirs from the summer I spent in Israel were my sej (upside down wok used to cook pita) and t-shirt from the community garden I worked at.

I spent two and half weeks in Rio, so walking away with a t-shit of Sugar Bread Mountain and Corcavado would have been unacceptable. On my final day there, I came across the public school uniform t-shirt. On all buses, I saw kids wearing this t-shirt with the orange municipality logo. After I bought the shirt, I showed it to my friends. They got a great laugh out of it and told me that if I wore it on a city bus, I wouldn't have to pay the fare. That is advice I shall pass on to other backpackers.

Yes, you can borrow my t-shirt if you are planning a trip to Rio.

Fred "The Crime Dog" McGrifff: Were you ever mugged

Ian: Yes. It happened on a sunny morning at about 11:00 a.m. on one of the major streets in Copacabana on my walk to the beach (six prepositions. Beat that.). As I walked past a church, a 13-year old came out of my blind spot (if you didn't know, I don't have right peripheral vision) and said something in Portuguese. I told him that I don't speak Portuguese and tried to continue walking, but he put his hand out and wouldn't let me walk past him. I tried to go around him but his friend (Well, I'm not sure if their friends, They might just be business partners) came out of my blind spot and shouted in bad, Brazilian English "give him your money." The first one reached behind his back to grab something but I reached into my pocket and gave him my money (a wad of bills, the equivalent of $20) quickly enough that I didn't see what he was reaching for. They asked if that was everything. I told them it was and ran off to enjoy a day at the beach.

It might have sucked to lose 20 bucks, but it did make for great conversation with people at the beach. I learned how to say "today, I was robbed" in Portuguese (hoje, eu estaba robado).

Luckily, it wasn't a horrible experience. I think I was more unlucky than stupid because I was wearing the same thing and carrying the same amount of stuff as other people going to the beach. But you can live and travel safely in South America (or anywhere in the world) if you just use common sense and aren't stupid.

Euphegenia Doubtfire: How many times did you do laundry?

Ian: Three times. Once in Galapagos. Once in Cuzco. And once in Buenos Aires. Judging by my capoeira nickname, I probably should have done it once in Brazil.

Wow, three times in three months. I nevert thought about it like that. That seems disgusting and probably is. But I did clean my underwear in the shower to make sure things were fresh down there.

I knew things were getting really bad when the cleaning lady at the hostel told me that I looked like a homeless person.

Spider: What items did you bring but didn't need or need by didn't bring?

Ian: Every item in my bag served a purpose, and I wouldn't remove anything if I were to do this again. Yes, I did meet some people who only had one or two changes of clothing for yearlong trips. I could've done that if I needed to, but I was very happy how I packed. Because I had to prepare for all types of climates and activities, I could not bring too much of anything.

The only thing I am still debating about whether or not I should have brought is my iPod. As I sat on a six-hour bus from Puno to Arequipa, Peru listening to the same six folklorico songs played on repeat struggling to find a comfortable position to sleep in but couldn't because the bus was cold and the music was loud, I thought that iPod would have been a great idea. Then I thought about the kid sitting across the aisle from me yoinking the iPod at the end of the ride and thought that keeping at home was a smart decision. By the way, I hate Sonia Morales's music (She might be related to Evo.)

Plus, I am traveling in South America to experience and different culture and bringing an iPod with me would be defeating that purpose. In the end, I think I am happy with my decision.

Shuk guy: What was your favorite new fruit?

Ian: In Ecuador, I was in much more of a fruit-sampling mood than I was in Brazil (I was more into fruit-juice sampling). I would say my two favorite fruits I had were the babaco (melony fruit) and maracuya, and not just because of their names but mostly..

Ira and Barry Shalowitz: We've never seen you at Stuccchis or Ben and Jerrry's...

Ian: When I am in the United States, I'm not a big ice cream consumer. But when I am in a country known for its dairy products, like Argentina, I eat ice cream almost everyday.

Ira and Barry Shalowitz: A follow up. Do you have any ideas for new ice cream flavors?

Ian: The Japanese population of Sao Paolo has this mastered but I've never seen it done elsewhere in the world. The honeydew is a great fruit to nosh on, but I've never seen anything honeydew-flavored. That was until I got to the Liberdade neighborhood in Sao Paolo, where I came across their sea green-colored glory

Zohan Dvir: Who was your favorite Israeli you met?

Ian: I really like the independent Israeli. The Israeli who is doing the post-army trip like all other Israelis, but unlike other Israelies, this Israeli doesn't stay at the Israeli-only hostels, doesn't eat at Israeli restaurants, doesn't only travel with Israelis, and actually interacts with other people.

Also, watching the "Don't Mess with Zohan" with Brazilians who don't speak English, don't understand the Spanish subtitles from my bootleg copy, and don't know too much about Israeli humor is a lot of fun.

Ms. Frizzle: What was the longest bus ride of your journey?

Ian: Twenty hours from Lima to Cuzco with one stop. We watched Three to Tango, Keeping the Faith, Pearl Harbor, 27 Dresses, and Something's Gotta Give.

Ms. Frizzle: A follow up. How would you rate bus quality between countries?

Luckily I went from the country with the worst buses to the ones with the best. In Ecuador, buses are essentially mayhem. You don't really know if you will get a seat, if the door will close, if the road is paved, if the breaks will work. When you ride the buses, you're essentially playing a game of chance.

In Peru, the buses were of a little higher quality. If you were willing to pay a little more, you would get a more secure ride with fewer on-bus vendors yelling that they are selling "gelatinas" than in Ecuador.

In Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, the buses were really good,. The food was good and the seats reclined to great angles.

In Brazil, buses were top of the line. On my ride from Lima to Cuzco, we only stopped once. On my four hour ride from Sao Paolo to Parati, the bus sopped twice, just for a break. Yes, this might be a little slower but it feels great to walk around a little bit and to know that the driver will be fresh.

But I am very proud of the fact that I made it all the way from Quito to Rio on buses, except for the boat from Buenos Aires to Uruguay and a mistake by the Chilean bus company that resulted in a bus company-sponsored van ride from San Pedro de Atacama to the Argentine border.

That is all for this dispatch. I hope you have enjoyed my emails as much I have enjoyed writing them. Much of this has been a one-sided conversation of me sending emails to you. I look forward to talking to you and hearing about your summer.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

There is no river here

So, the city is called Rio de Janeiro. Most people would then assume that there is a river nearby that the place was named after (In Portuguese and Spanish, "rio" means "river."). They would be wrong -- no rivers in Rio.

I have heard two explanations why Rio has its name. This first is that the explorer who discovered (and named) Rio thought that the large bay there was actually the mouth of a big river. The other is that "rio" used to refer to any body of water. Either way it's very misleading for anybody who comes to Rio expected a river.

Luckily, most people come to Rio for the beaches and aren't too disappointed. I wasn't.

I'm writing this e-mail from Franklin, Michigan (From the couch). After this dispatch, I will write a final summer recap to put a fitting end on my adventure. For that email, I am looking for some reader assistance. If you have any questions about my summer travel, send them to me in the next day and I will answer them in the email. (You can ask anything you want. If you want some help on questions, below you will find the link to the recap post from the summer I spent in Israel)

Without further ado, my two weeks in Rio.

My capoeira nickname

When you play capoeira, the other members of the group don't refer to you buy your traditional name. Instead, everybody in capoeira has their capoeira nickname. For example, my teacher's name is Scarecrow (Espantalho). On my last night of capoeira, I received my capoeira nickname - cascao (pronounced caSh•cowng).

They wouldn't explain to me what it meant but they told me that it is the name of a Brazilian cartoon character. They told me to look it up on Google when I got back to a computer. Here is what I found:

It is the name of a character in the cartoon Matilda's Gang. Cascao is known as the charater who has never showered or taken a bath. He is afraid of water and always carries an umbrella in the case that it rains and he gets cleaned. I think that I earned this nickname by wearing the same white shirt (by the end, it was a brown shirt) to capoeira every night. When you are a backpacker and have limited clothing, it is easy to lable your clothes for a specific purpose - such as beach shit or bar shirt. So, my white shirt was my capoeira shirt. In English, Wikipedia translates cascao to mean smudge. You can learn more about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smudge_(Monica%27s_Gang)

This used to be The Big House

If one thing is abundantly clear in Brazil, it's that everybody loves soccer (futebol, pronounced Foo•Chee•Ball). And everybody has their team. In Rio, there are four big teams, and everybody identifies with one of them. The center of soccer in Rio (and Brazil, for that matter) is the Maracana Stadium.

Built for the 1950 World Cup (which Brazil lost to Uruguay in one of the most disappointing moments in the country's history), the Maracana had a maximum capacity of over 200,000 people although official attendance numbers are impossible to know for sure. The stadium has undergone some renovations to make it safe and ready for modern sports competitions (like the 2007 Pan-Am Games and the 2014 World Cup). Now, the capacity is about 95,000.

During the week, I went on a stadium tour that allows you to visit the locker rooms (they are very basic) and step on the field (an awe-inspiring experience).

Then, using my Michigan Daily sports writer credentials and the connections of a sports writer friend I made in Rio, I had the opportunity to sit in the press box for a game and go down to the press conferences afterward. I only understood one line from the press conference, which was when the Internacionale coach complained about having to play three road games in six days. It was a truly memorable experience.

It's like Welcome Week (except every weekend and without the cops breaking it up at midnight)

In addition to its beaches, Rio is known for its nightlife. The epicenter for much of this nightlife is the Lapa street party, which happens every weekend night. People gather in the street and have a good time. There are carts selling alcohol and other people walking around with bottles of Jose Cuervo and little cups. Every Carioca (person from Rio) that I talked to said they go to Lapa almost every week. So, in addition to being a great party, it really brings the city together.

It is a great people-watching spot. And if you know me, you know how much I like people watching. Actually, if Rio is good for anything, it's good for the people watching. Whether it be the street party, the beaches, the centro, or the Metro, you will always see interesting people. Some of the best people watching questions were: man or woman?, foreigner or Brazilian? Carioca or just Brazilian? and homeless or favela?

Poverty tourism?

Before getting to Rio, I read about favela tours where you go with a guide into the squatter settlements to see how they live. Favelas are famous for being some of the poorest and most dangerous places, where you can't even walk inside the gates without being harmed. Plus, the idea of paying to see poor people didn't really interest me.

Once I got to Rio, I talked to a few tourists about their experiences in the favela tour, and they said it was one of the most rewarding experiences of their trips to Brazil. They said that the guide was great, sensitive to the community's needs. Further, the money from the tour goes to support a day care center in the favela. It would be wrong to spend two weeks in Rio and not see all sides of society (especially, if you have a safe, socially responsible opportunity to do so). So, I went. The favela I visited was Rocinha (Ho•Seen•Yuh). It is the largest favela in Latin America with 200,000 residents.

It was an eye-opening experience. Having worked in Detroit for the last five summers, I have seen plenty of poverty. What interested me the most was how the favela operated. The favelas started in the early 20th century when low-wage laborers moving to Brazil's largest cities moved into government-owned land, cut down the trees, built their homes, and settled there without paying any taxes. The government never evicted these people, and the favelas developed into slum cities. People from the favelas work in the upper class neighborhoods and live in the favelas. Aside from labor, however, there is very limited interaction between people in the favelas and those outside. In the favelas, all of their social needs are fulfilled. There are health centers, schools, post offices, stores, markets, night clubs, and even concert halls (JA Rule played there a couple of months ago). But living conditions are really poor. There is trash everywhere and the scent of sewage is strong in the street (Street is loosely defined. It is more of a narrow, uneven alley with shit everywhere, literally). Very few people wear shoes.

Because the favelas developed as squatter settlements, the residents did not receive any services from the city or utility companies. All the electricity is stolen by people connecting their own wires to the power lines (it looks like a jungle). People don't have addresses in the favela. There is just a central post office there. There is some water availability but for people without access to water, the water company leaves a hose running for three hours a day so residents can collect all the water they will need.

There is some form of elected government in the favelas that communicate with the municipality, but these people are essentially just pawns of the drug gang which control the favelas. Despite the gangs (actually, because of the gangs), favelas can be some of the safest places in Brazil. The gangs want to make sure that the police don't have any further reasons to enter into the favelas. So there is very little crime between people in the favelas.

Throughout the tour, the tour guide said it was cool if we took pictures of the neighborhood. I felt a little (I mean, really) weird taking pictures in the favela, but some things were very interesting and there were some cool views. When I looked over at some people in my group who were smiling in pictures, I was amazed. There were a few times, like when we walked by the guy with the machine gun, when one of the heads of the gang, or when you walk by the lookout guys at the favela entrance that the tour guide told us to put our cameras away.

I have a lot more stuff about the drug gangs in favelas, police raids, and other favela info but this post is gettting really long.

My first motorcycle ride

Nothing against people who ride motorcycles, but they have never struck me as the safest form of transit. But when I went on the favela tour, we got out of the vans at the bottom of the favela and the tour guide told us to get on the back of the motorcycle taxi that will take us to the top of the favela.

It was a pretty interesting feeling. I don't know if it was being in the back of the motorcycle or the fact that I was riding a motorcycle in the middle of the largest favela in South America, it was a very cool experience.

Sugar bread

I arrived in Brazil, I was taken aback by the name of the market and bank Pao do Acucar. Translating it to English, it sounded like Sugar Bread. It sounds very fairytale-ish. If it were in America, it would be called Ginger Bread Bank.

Then I asked someone about it, and they told me that that was the name of Sugar Loaf Mountain - one of the top landmarks in Rio. Now, it makes sense. I'm sure that there are American institutions that are equally ridiculous. But Brazilians are lucky that Pao do Acucar translated to English means Sugar Loaf instead of Sugar Bread. If it meant sugar bread, people could not take that landmark seriously.

By the way, it was a gorgeous view from the top.

Wonder-ful view

One of the most famous vistas in the world is from the top of Corcovado in the shadow of the Cristo Redeemer statue. In fact, the statue was recently named one of the seven modern wonders (not to take away from that honor but I heard that Brazil and Brazilian companies spent millions of dollars on a campaign to get Cristo on the list).

Corcovado was a favorite hiking spot of Brazil's first emperor Don Pedro I. It became of popular vista and, in the late 19th century, there was a movement to get a religious monument to crown the mountain top. In 1921, the statue of Cristo was completed.

Among the people who have visited the statues, aside from me, are Pope John Paul II, Albert Einstein, Princess Di, and 300,000 people per year.

Everybody takes the obligatory picture with Cristo in the background. I found some Israeli tourists to take said photo.

I only trusted authority once in Brazil

When you travel to Brazil, everybody warns you not to trust law enforcement. You hear stories about how the police are dirty, corrupt, and can always be bought off. So, throughout my time in Brazil, I was always wary of people in uniform. This was until I had a run in an army training exercise.

A friend of mine had told me that one of the most rewarding views in Rio comes from the top of Pedra de Gavea (it is the largest seaside boulder in the world at about 900 m). On a clear day when the view would be the best, I decided to embark on this journey. After an hour and a half of hiking, I made it to what I thought was the peak. Then I walked around a bend and saw that there was a mountain I would need to climb, rather than hike. I haven't actually climbed since I went to Planet Rock (Ruby thinks I last went there in 1997). Then I arrived at this ascent.

When I made it around the bend, I saw a guy in a camouflage uniform carrying his gun. But he wasn't alone. He was with an entire company of soldiers doing a training exercise. When they saw that I wasn't an expect mountaineer, they offered me to use the rope that was already in place. Having already seen a few soldiers ascend the same rope, I trusted that it would hold my weight. As I climbed up the rope, my leg accidentally bumped into the butt of one of the soldier's guns. It was the only time in my entire trip that I came into physical contact with a gun.

Brazilians are proud to be from Brazil

It is very refreshing to see how proud Brazilians are to be Brazilians. In Rio, it is really common to see people wearing clothes with the Brazilian flag. It could be a towel, swimming suit, t-shirt, or anything else, you always see Brazilians wearing Brazilian gear.

In America, you see some people gear wear clothes with the American flag, but you don't see too many people in NYC wearing American flag. In both Sao Paolo and Rio, it was common to see the yellow, blue, and green of Brazil.

They are also proud of their national music. I didn't find a Brazilian who dislikes samba. I can't think of a traditional music style that is so universally loved and unites a population like samba does in Brazil. At a samba club, you see people of all ages enjoying the music. It's just very refreshing.

Hey, Super. Hey, Juicy

One thing that I really like about Brazil is the availability of exotic fruits. (there are quite a few things that I really like about Brazil) Given the countries size and tropical location, there is a large variety of unique and delicious fruits for me to try. On nearly every street corner, there is a juice bar that serves these interesting fruits in juice form.

Having two weeks to spend in Rio, I made it my duty to try as many of these juice flavors as I could. I focused in on one juice bar between my hostel and the Metro station - Bigbi (no relation to the formerly offensively named coffee shop). Because of its location, I passed it numerous times per day. After sampling a few of the juices, I decided that before I left Brazil, I would try all of the juice flavors offered on the menu. And I don't even know what half of the fruits are called in English (neither did the Brazilian I asked to go over the menu with me). But by the end of my trip, I had tried each of the fruits offered on the menu.

Some of my favorite juices on the menu were acerola, abacaxi, and caju. My favorite names for fruits were camu camu, umbu, and maracuja.

English swear words aren't swear words in Brazil

Sitting in the back seat of a Rio cab, I was enjoying (or just listening) to PIMP by 50 Cent. I was following along and, as they got to the chorus, I realized that they didn't get rid of the swear words or use a radio-friendly version. They don't face the same restrictions or English-understanding audience that they do in the United States. So they can play all the swear words they want.

An aside: In my three months in South America, I never heard one Kanye song. But I heard 50 Cent at nearly every bar, club, or cab I was in. If the "PIMP" and "In Da Club" are now popular in Brazil, I say that Kanye will become popular here in two years.

Eu so aprendo portugues no bar e mar

When I crossed the Argentinian border in Brazil, I didn't speak a lick of Portuguese. After three weeks of intensely studying the language (i.e. bringing my Brazilian Portuguese Phrasebook to the beach and the bar), I can now handle a conversation in Portuguese, especially if they speak slowly. (editor's note - i don't know how to write the portuguese accents on this keyboard yet).

To translate the title of this bullet, it says "I only learn Portuguese at the bar and on the beach." And I think that I studied a lot of Portuguese while I was in Rio.

Friday, August 08, 2008

One in a Million Chance. No, make it 20 Million

Sorry for the lack of any updates in the last couple of weeks. My internet
time has been taken by my nightly capoeira classes. Instead of regaling you
with tales of my journey, I have been busy doing handstands, cartwheels, and
break dancing. But I have found a bit of time here, so I will offer you some
tidbits about my time between Iguazu Falls and Rio de Janeiro (I have been
in Rio for about a week and half now).

Who´s laughing now? I am

Among backbackers, there are a few standard conversations. They typically include the ´´where are you going?´´, ´´where have you been?´´, ´´how long are you here?´´ , ´´how long are you traveling?´´ variety of questions. Most people, whether they are interested or not, act excited and intrigued by your travels. That was until I finished my stay in Argentina.

Because the first place in Brazil that I would be visiting was Sao Paolo, I naturally answered the ´´where are you going next?´´ question by saying ´´Sao Paolo.´´ In response to this answer, some people laughed and others asked ´´why?´´ Most suggested that I go directly to Rio and bypass Sao Paolo.

Logistically, it didn´t make sense but more importantly, 20,000,000 people live in Sao Paolo (actually, only about 11 million in the city itself but many more in the metro area). It is the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere. If nothing else but to see such a massive metropolis, there must be something interesting in Sao Paolo.

And I found it. In fact, I would probably say that my experience in Sao Paolo was the best of any city I have visited in my travels. I stayed with and hung out with some locals, who showed me around Sao Paolo. I went for a walk around the downtown, went to shul, walked around the central park, visited the central fruit market, attended a soccer match, went to see Batman and experienced the nightlife.

I´m going to be the subject of a documentary

After arriving in Sao Paolo, I went to lunch with the guy whose apartment I was staying at. While eating, one of his coworkers, a 50-something Jewish mother, walked into the cafe. We started talking, and it turns out that she is in the middle of making a documentary about Jewish foods.

I told her about kugel-offs, my mom´s challah, hotdog carts, assorted other Shmooze topics. Two days later, I was braiding challah in her kitchen. I will pass along the link to the video when she puts it on YouTube.

What are the odds?

The common phrase when something unexpected happens is that is was a ´´one in a million´´ chance. But when you walk into someone who you know in Sao Paolo, I would describe it as more of a ´´one in 12 million´´ chance.

With great population comes great congestion: In Detroit, there are problems with traffic and fewer than a million people live there. Imagine how bad it would be in Sao Paolo.

The municipality of Sao Paolo has an interesting solution: make it illegal for people to drive. Depending on the last two numbers of your liscense plate, there is one day a week that you cannot drive.

Zero tolerance

In Brazil, there is a zero tolerance law when it comes to drinking and driving. If you have any trace of alcohol in your breath, you get in trouble. Many people are made about this, saying that you could eat a chocolate with a bit of liquor inside and get ticketed.

This law has really hurt the bars in Brazil because people aren´t going out as much. Some bars even offer to pay for cabs within a 10 km radius so they don´t lose that much business.

True love

The first thing that I was told when I got to Brazil was: ´´In Brazil, you can change your religion, you can change your wife, but you can´t change your football team.´´ They kind of take that sport seriously down here.

When I was in Sao Paolo, I went to a Sao Paolo FC game with a friend. Sao Paolo won the game 2-1. Despite a lackluster effort for the first 30 minutes of the second half, I saw enough to commit myself to Sao Paolo. Now, I´m Sao Paolo fan for life.

Parati on, Wayne

After Sao Paolo, my next stop was the colonial beach town of Parati. The downtown area is gorgeous and so are the beaches. It was my frist real beach vacation experience.

The cool thing about Parati is that it is built right on the water. When the tide comes in, it floods the streets of the city. Because of this, the streets are made of stones, making them unfriendly to pedestrians, bikes, and cars. Actually, I can´t think of a mode of transit that they are friendly to, so I would just describe them as unfriendly.

The beach was gorgeous but I can´t take too much sitting at the beach and doing nothing. I have to be active, whether it be running, talking Portuguese, playing soccer, etc.

While I wanted to tell you about my experience in Parati, I mostly wanted to make the outstanding Wayne´s World reference in the notebook slug.

Brazilian foods I like

Like any country, Brazil has its unique cuisine. In Brazil, I have developed a few favorite items. The top of the list would be the queijo con banana sandwich, which is essentially a grilled cheese and banana sandwich. It´s very good and available at most street corner cafes.

I´ve also fallen in love with Guarana. It´s a fruit juice/energy boostin drink. It´s best served chilled, on ice with an orange slice.

My name is different down here

When a word begins with ´R´in Portuguese, it is pronounced with an ´h.´ So, my last name would not be pronounced Robinson down here, but rather Hobinson.

That means that whenever you say the name of Brazil´s famous soccer players Ronaldo or Ronaldinho or Romario, the words should begin with an ´h´ instead of an ´r.´ Rio de Janeiro is called Hio de Janeiro. as well.

I could be a soccer player

With my name, I have everything it takes to be an outstanding soccer player in Brazil, except for soccer talent. Imagine the story: student journalist/hotdog salesman/usher turned world class soccer player (actually, I would accept mediocre soccer player. I don´t need to be world-class).

Friday, July 25, 2008

Get Me My Barrel

I´m writing this blog from Ilha Grande, an island off the Brazilian coast between Sao Paolo and Rio (Brazil = awesome). To give you a sense of the setting, yesterday I was told by a local: ´´If you don´t pass a monkey on your way to the beach, it would be a disappointment. Oh, and beware of the snakes.´´

Now, I will regale you with stories of my experience at Iguazu Falls.

Niagara * 1000 = Iguazu

Iguazu Falls is on the border between Argentina and Brazil. Unlike Niagra Falls, which is just one huge waterfall, Iguazu includes 270 distinct large falls. While Niagara is in the middle of the city, Iguazu Falls is in the middle of the jungle. You don't have loads of hotels, casinos, restaurants, ferries, bridges, etc blocking your view. Mostly, it's just the falls and nature.

Apparently, when Eleanor Rooseelt saw Iguazu Falls, she said ´´Poor Niagara.´´ So, did I. At Niagara, they love telling stories about people going over the falls in a barrel. Maybe it´s because I don´t know the Spanish or Portugese word for barrel, but I never heard one.

This is one of the locations where the accompanying photo explains much more about it that what I can write, but there are a few good stories to mention.

Normally, everybody laughs at people who swim with t-shirts on

One of the options for activities at the falls is to take a boat ride next to them. You get to see the falls in their majesty and get really wet. Everybody said this was very cool, so I signed up. I didn't realize exactly how wet you would get, but when I saw people walking around the park who were completely drenched, I knew that I was in for a shower (which is good because it had been five days). I also only have one pair of pants on this trip, so I couldn't really afford to have them soaked. I decided to go on the boat trip without any pants, and because it would just look awkward to be in a t-shirt without any pants, I put that in my bag as well. Interestingly, there was a sign that said you couldn't go into the boat barefoot. So, there I was standing in my underwear, Tigers hat, and running shoes (went straight to the falls from my overnight bus and didn't change into sandals). I wore the fewest clothes of
anybody on the boat.

Whenver someone goes swimming with a shirt on, they look funny. If someone takes a shower in their clothes, it looks weird. But why do people strangely look at someone who goes on a ride into the waterfalls in standard swimming attire?

This is when it pays to know the lunar calendar

In preparation for my trip to Iguazu Falls, I looked into what activities I could do there. One of them piqued my interest: falls by moonlight. You can go to the largest of the falls in the middle of the night and witness its awesomeness by moonlight. But you can only do these tours in the four days around the full moon. Knowing that the 17th of the Hebrew month of Tamuz was in three days, I knew I came to the falls at the right time. (The Hebrew calendar follows the moon instead of the sun. The month is 30 days long and the 15th day of the month is the full moon.)

The falls were very cool by moonlight (Sorry if the photo is unclear. The light wasn´t great for photos and my camera isn´t a miracle worker). I can now add that to the list of things I´ve done by moonlight in my life: volcano watching, biking in the Chilean desert, watched a movie featuring Doc Graham.

No duty

On the bus from Puerto Iguazu, Argentina, to Iguazu Falls, I noticed the girl sitting behind me was wearing a Duty Free jacket. Either, she bought the jacket from the store and I would ask where I could get one or she works there. She works there. I´d never talked to a Duty Free shop employee before, except to say ´´not interested.´´ Nothing to interesting about this bullet point except I can make the comment. Do you know what they say about girls who work at the Duty Free shop?

No duty.

My Duty Free experience was much more pleasant (and legal) than that of the B´nai Sakhnin soccer team in Israel. As the team was leaving for a match in Spain, some of the players decided to stop at the Duty Free shop at Ben Gurion to pick up some cologne and perfume. They also decided not to pay for said products.

Iguazu is natural awesomeness. Itaipu is manmade

In addition to being the home of Iguazu Falls, Foz du Iguazu, Brazil is also the site of one of the largest dams in the world. Depending on who you listen to or what metric you follow, it is either the largest or second largest in the world. After completing my tour of the falls, I had seven hours before my bus to Sao Paolo. So I hopped on a bus for a tour of the dam. I've never really toured a hydroelectric facility before. Most of my knowledge of how they work came from Sim City 2000. Well, this was quite an impressive site.

I missed the part of the video that talked about how the dam was constructed, but I learned that it took nearly 30 years. I did catch the part about how the company tried to correct the environmental effects of its project (large national park, big lake that is used by fishing industry, channel that connects both parts of the river and allows fish to continue to spawn, corporate social responsibility awards won by the company, etc.).

At the peak of its construction, Itaipu Dam employed nearly 40,000 people. Before the dam, the town Foz du Iguaçu was just a small town. Because of the boom created by dam construction, 250,000ish people live there now. (All of this is according to the University of Illinois-educated engineer I met on my Itaipu tour.

Was I in Paraguay?

Itaipu Dam is built on a river that divides Brazil from Paraguay (actually, the dam was one of the main reasons I wanted to go Paraguay and I didn't know that I could see the dam from the Brazil side.). The dam is constructed on a sort of binational/neutral territory between the two countries. I didn't have to get my passport stamped Paraguay to go to the dam, but the side of the river that I was on was the Paraguay side of the river.

Because I don´t see myself visiting Paraguay ever again (odds are, because I wrote this sentence, the Peace Corps will add a Paraguay program next year), I´m leaning toward claiming I was there.

Stay tuned for my next entry when I bake a challah, try and prove 20 million people wrong, make a great Wayne´s World reference, and find my true love. Depending on whether I can take an entire day of sitting on the beach, I might send this email out in a few hours.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

El Gaucho Judio

I wanted to do this blog chronologically so it would be the easiest for you to follow, but if you want to skip to an incredible story (probably the most) go to the last notebook slug.

Trapped in Buenos Aires - and loving it

Saturday morning, I went to the boat terminal in Buenos Aires to catch a ship to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. The staff at two different youth hostels told me that it would be no problem to get a ticket the day of the ship. I arrived three hours early just to be safe.

Well, after waiting twenty minutes in one line, fifteen in another, and half and hour in a third, I finally spoke to ticket salesman. He told me that there were no tickets available (in the tourist class) until Monday morning. If I was going to go to Uruguay, I wasn´t going to take the eight-hour bus from Buenos Aires to Montevideo. I was going to do this crossing like every other tourist does - by water. I kindly thanked the salesman for giving me reason to spend two more days in Buenos Aires, purchased my ticket, and went in search of a place to stay.

My taste buds love me, but arteries are about to go on strike

Why was I most excited about the opportunity to spend two more days in Buenos Aires? The two more steaks that I would eat for dinner. In my three meaty meals in Buenos Aires, I sampled three cuts of meat. Do you know that feeling of meat melting in your mouth? Yeah. (Back to being vegetarian)

Some people go to London to shop, others to Paris

I go to Buenos Aires. I have my store, as well. It´s the Coto across the street from the mall with the McDonald´s in it. In two trips to Argentina, it is where I found the best deals. Becuase my bag didn´t have too much space in it, I had to restrict my purchases a little. I bought a really soft, zip sweatshirt for equivalent of 10 bucks and a three pairs of socks for two dollars (I don´t want to go into how necessary it was for me to get new socks. Dire straits is how I would define the situation).

Missed My Tiger - or Tigre

Last time I was in Bueos Aires, I passed on the opportunity to visit the suburb of Tigre. It´s about 20 km from Buenos Airest on the Parana River Delta. Many people from Buenos Aires have homes in this area. The main form of transit in this region is boat. I would say that not going to Tigre last night was a mistake. Luckily, I had this chance (Don´t worry about the water being brown. It´s because of sediments in the river, plus I didn´t drink any of it).

U R Gay. Ha, ha, ha

The first 21 years of my life, the most I knew about Uruguay is that Homer Simpson doesn´t know how to pronounce - or read- the country name.I also knew that they won two World Cups in soccer (including the first) and that a player with one arm scored a goal for Uruguay in the 1930 World Cup.

Well, Uruguay is probably the most tranquil country in South America. There is a relatively high standard of living, a stable currency, and great beaches (in the summer). It is a great change of pace from the cosmopolitan lifestyle in Buenos Aires on the other side of the River Plate. Yesterday morning, I took the boat from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacramento, as I had planned on Saturday, and ambled through the towns enchanting old streets before catching a 4:30 bus to Montevideo. I went to dinner in Montevideo before a midnight bus to a town on the Argentine border.

My stay in Uruguay was brief, but there is very little to do there, especially off-season. I can tell people that I was in Uruguay, but the lady at border control messed up when stamping my passport and you can barely read that it says Uruguay.

Probably the best story of my trip

I arrived in Concordia, Argentina at 9:00 a.m. this morning with no clue of what there was to do in this border down except smuggle stuff. The city isn´t really covered in my Lonely Planet book except for the fact that it exists as a border crossing with Uruguay. I went to the municipal tourism office to see if they had any ideas for how someone could occupy 11 hours here. They gave me a map and sent me on my way. I perused the map and something caught my eye - Museo Judío. Then, I checked my dictionary to make sure there wasn´t another meaning for the word Judío that I was unaware of. I checked and the only listed meaning was ¨Jew.¨

Off I went. My expectations were minimal. After all, I was in the middle of the pampas. I knock on the door and the curator, Adolfo (but he prefers Nito), welcomed me in. As has been my strategy with other Jewish institutions in South America, I started talked Hebrew so the people there know you are Jewish and don´t confuse you as a threat. He said that he doesn´t speak English (not even recognizing the Hebrew. maybe my Hebrew is just that bad), but then I told him that I understood Yiddish. That one sealed the deal.

Her might have been the curator of the museum, but he had more questions for me than I had for him. It is also that he was such a good curator and didn´t leave much unanswered.

The museum, which opened last year, tells the story of how the Jewish population in the fields of Argentina became the Jewish community in the fields of Argentina. It started with the pogroms of 1882 in the Pale of Settlement (Poland and Russia). In response to these, the Jews of France petitioned to Baron Mauricio Hirsch to help the embattled communities.

He assisted in getting thousands of Jews out of Poland and Russia and into the developing agricultural communities of Argentina. He set up agricultural collectives (very kibbutzy) where the Jews lived, farmed, went to school, went to shul (synagogue), etc. All the collectives were named after Hirsch or his family members. The settlements were throughout northern Argentina. In the schools, the children learned Spanish and Yiddish (which explains Adolfo´s language situation). Half of the day in Yiddish and half in Spanish. They also welcomed non-Jewish students to the school, as well.

A couple years ago, when the Jewish community was raising money to build the museum, a 100 year old man came to them with a check. He wasn´t Jewish, but he spoke perfect Yiddish. He wanted to thank the community for what it had for him in providing an education.

Adolfo, whose grandfather was sponsored by Hirsch to come to Argentina and who was born on one of the settlements (the settlements don´t exist anymore), said that the people in the community had a saying about how successful the Jewish communities were. ¨They grew wheat and turned it into doctors.¨ He says it's a testament to the value that the communities placed on education that the youth became successful professionals.

He just published a book all about the settlements that I bought (It´s in Spanish, so I should finish it in the next decade)

In the temporary exhibition room, there was a display about Rambam in honor of his 800th birthday.

Next door to the museum is the JCC. I sat in there with the guy at the office for a while, just shmoozing. There are about 200 families in the community in Concordia and just one of them keeps kosher. Services are held Friday night and Saturday morning. Like many cities (including my own), the Jewish community is plagued by the exodus of the youth to the big cities.

Well, that´s it for now. I am off to catch my bus to Iguazu. Hope you found this tale as interesting at I did. If you ever want to borrow Adolfo´s book, let me know.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Food Coma

Before reading this blog, I suggest that you get some visqueen or something to cover your keyboard from the saliva that might drip out of your mouth.

I am writing this dispatch from an internet cafe in Once, the Jewish neighborhood in Buenos Aires. If you know anything about Argentina´s reputation as one of the best places in the world for meat, you know exactly where I am going with this one.

As someone who keeps kosher, I have had very few problems being a vegetarian in South America. You might have to walk to a few different restaurants to see if they have a vegetarian dish, but it´s not that bad. And, to be honest with you, the meat that I have seen so far hasn´t been that unbelievable appetizing looking. That was until two days ago in Salta, the first city I went to in Argentina.

I went to a restaurant with three other backpackers. They all ordered large portions of meat. I ordered the vegetarian pizza (which, for some odd reason, came with ham). Just looking at the meat on their plates, I couldn´t resist the urge for meat that much longer (The only meat I have eaten in two months was lukewarm piece of chicken at the JCC in Quito). So I booked a bus ticket to Buenos Aires, one of my favorite cities in the world and a place I knew I could find tongue-hanging-out-of-my-mouth good meat.

My original plan was to take a bus to a city north of Argentina, but I reasoned that a great steak is worth going six hours out of my way.

I spent the day visiting some of my favorite Buenos Aires sites from my Spring Break trip to this outstanding city last year (Teatro Colon, a protest of the madres de la plaza, the most beautiful water company building in the world, the only kosher McDonalds outside of Israel). I took someone I met while traveling on the Ian Robinson Reality Tour. Then, when dinnertime hit, I booked it to the Mi Parilla Restaurant on Tucuman in Once. (For those who were on the trip last year, it is the meat restaurant around the corner from Hotel San Luis. The waiters carried huge knives on their belts.).

I sat down at the table and skipped over all parts of the menu but one: the meats. Looking at my choices for meat, I would not be able to take myself seriously if I didn´t order a large piece of meat. There was no time to fool around with burgers or sausages. I ordered a ¨tiro de asado¨ (cut of roasted meat) and waited anxiously.

After I finished ordered, three unkempt Israelis walked into the restaurant speaking Hebrew well above the restaurant´s noise level. We exchanged pleasantries as they passed, and they asked me where I knew my Hebrew from and where I was from. The next thing I know is I´m talking Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball (truly a shame that Moni Fanan left the team last week. He´s a Maccabi institution) and about the Red Bull boycott of Israel.

We fill the time between ordering and dinner with conversation, but when the food arrived, I was all business. No fooling around with ketchup. Just attack, and appreciate, meat. I did a number on this animal.

Because I rarely eat meat at home, I understand what it´s like to be a vegetarian. Aside from shabbat dinner, I would almost consider myself a vegetarian. But what differentiates me from vegetarians is that I still crave, and can eat, meat. So, if I were a vegetarian and I saw my friends dig into that meat in Salta, I wouldn´t have the same desire for beef.

Is it weird that I have more photos up about a meal than for Galapagos and Machu Picchu? No, it´s not.

A brief recap

Well, while the photos load, I´ll give you a bit of an update on what I´ve done lately and what the next step is in my journey. Before Salta, I had spent three days in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. It is the driest place on earth, has the second largest salt flat in the world, and is close to the highest geyser in the world. From there, I took a 12-hour bus ride to Salta, Argentina. Actually, it was a nine-hour bus ride because the bus forgot to pick up seven passengers, including me, at San Pedro de Atacama. So, they paid for a van to take us from San Pedro de Atacama to the the Argentinian border, where the bus had been waiting for an hour as the passengers enjoyed the John Wayne classic ¨Trails of Hate.¨

That night, July 8, we arrived in Salta. The next day was Argentinian Independence Day. So, we (all the backpackers in the hostel, collectively) thought it would be a pretty happening bar night. Even though people were out in the middle of the week, there were no signs that people were out to show their pride for Argentina´s independence. We did go to a bar named after Barney Gumbel from The Simpsons. That was pretty cool.

The next day, I walked through the center of Salta to observe the Independence Day festivities. They´re more into gauchos, Barney the Dinosaur, smiling suns, and blue-and-white ribbons than fireworks. But there was still quite a bit of life. At 1:00, I boarded a 20-hour bus to Buenos Aires.

Jimmy John´s day-old bread is to Ann Arbor as Salon de Té is to San Pedro de Atacama

Like any tourist city, San Pedro de Atacama is obviously going to be more expensive than other places in Chile. And, given it´s desert location with limited natural resources and direct access to fresh food, food will obviously cost more there. But, for a backpacker trying to live on a budget, San Pedro de Atacama is a place where you expect to go over your budget (I did).

But that doesn´t mean you can´t try to stick to your budget.

After completing a thorough check of the city´s restaurants, I struggled to find a vegetarian, or any, meal under 2500 Chilean Pesos ($5) [On a backpacker budget, that translates to gourmet. In Peru, I had gotten used to a three-course meal for $1]. I did find one restaurant that cost just $3 for a vegetarian omelet, toast, and jam.

In the course of my stay in San Pedro de Atacama, I went to this restaurant five times. In fact, when my friends wanted to find me, they looked at the restaurant first before checking to see if I was at my hostel.

Well, I´m being kicked out of this internet cafe.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Machu Picchu. G'zuntheit

I´m writing this dispatch from Arequipa, Peru. It is the country´s second largest city and the launching point for journeys into the deepest canyons in the world (something I will begin tomorrow morning). When we last left off, I was asking you to say a r´fuah shalemah (prayer of healing) for my camera. I am happy to report that she is back to full health.¨Now, the picture viewing and uploading on this computer leaves something to be desires, so I will try to have a photo email with pics from the end of Galapagos and more from Machu Picchu when I return from the my trek (We´re gonna need a montage).

The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is one of the most famous hikes in the world. The four-day, three-night adventure on the stonepath crosses ruins and high mountain pass on the way to Machu Picchu. For those who complete, it is an unrivaled experience. For those of us who didn´t plan three months ahead (I fall into this category), you have to do an alternative to the traditional Incan trail.

In the highland city of Cusco, the former capital of the Incan empire and my favorite Peruvian city, you can´t even leave your hostel without someone trying to sell you on an Incan Trail alternative. I decided to take the five-day, four-night Salkantay Trek, which takes you under the summit of one of the holiest and most beautiful mountains in the Incan Empire.

Let me give you a brief overview of the trek before I get into the play-by-play. After waking up at 4:00 from your hostel in Cusco, you take a three-hour van ride to a small village for the beginning of the trek. The first day of the trek rises slowly through a forested mountain landscape. There are awesome views of the valleys below and condors flying overhead. You camp the first night at the base of the 6,200 meter Salkantay, Quechua for ¨savage mountain.¨ The next morning, you climb to about 4,700 meters (It´s difficult to tell the exact altitude because the signs that are supposed to tell you the altititude give about three different readings) before spending the rest of the day descending into the cloud forests. On the third morning, you continue to descend into the jungle regions before arriving at a small village for lunch and a one-hour bus ride to your campsite. On the fourth day, you walk 20 km to Aguas Calientes, the city below Machu Picchu, and spend the next day exploring the ruins. (Wow, that reads like I took out of a travel brochure. I didn´t try to do that or copy it from another site.

From class pet to dinner

In Peru, guinea pig (or cuy) is considered a delicacy. In Mrs. Drewes´s first grade class, it was the pet that you took home for a weekend when nobody was at school to take care of it.

On the first day, we ate breakfast in a small, family-owned restaurant at the base of the trek. The barn behind the restaurant was filled top to bottom with guinea pigs, or, as the family refers to them, dinner for the next three months.

Trekking, in luxury

Normally, when someone says they are going on a trek, it means they will be carrying all of their gear and cooking equipment. I searched for an Inca Trail alternative of this variety but couldn´t find one.

On this trek, a horse carried my backpack and a chef prepared all of the food. Hey, in my defense, I still walked the entire trail - well, except for when we took the van.

You think that´s cold ...

The first night of the trek, it got very cold. We were sleeping in an exposed valley at about 3,800 meters. By about 5:00 p.m., I was already in my long underwear. A few minutes later, I looked like I was ready to go to class in the middle of February. Judging by my water bottle, the temperature dipped below freezing that night.

I slept in all of the clothes I brought and was fine. The Dutch guy in our group was not. He was what I would define as hilariously cold. Not only did he sleep in all of his clothes in his sleeping bag, he also slept with his hiking boots on (and was still cold).

The Dutch guy also had trouble figuring out our guide´s name, for the entire five day trip. So, he just gave up and started calling him by a pet name. Our guide, Urbano, doesn´t have the most difficult name in the world. But Rob could never quite figure it out. So, he just called him Ubu - the entire time. Ubuuuu!!!

¨The point is not to feel your face¨

Peru has a reputation for being one of the world leaders in cocaine production. But in addition to being used in narcotics, coca leaves have been used by natives as a way to ease the adjustment to high altitudes. Either chewed or infused with tea, the medicinal power of the leaves is released.

So, obviously, when we were approaching the highest pass on the second day of our trek, the Peruvian guides pulled out a small pile of coca leaves (it felt like the chewing tobacco scene from Sandlot). You´re supposed to chew it by biting into the léaf´s veins to release the juices. After a little while, it will have a similar numbing effect as novacaine at the dentist office.

Or as one of the other guides so correctly put it: The point is not to feel your face.

Standing on my head

I like playing soccer, but I like playing soccer more in remote locations. So, when we finished the trek on the second day, after climbing 1000 meters and descending 1800 more, the locals at the village we were staying challenged us to a soccer match. (Village is a bit generous. It was a collection of five houses about a two-hour walk to the nearest road that a car would drive on).

In a game up to four, we fell behind 2-0 out of the gate. This was mainly because they didn´t explain that we could have a goalie. So, I stepped between the pipes, or, in this case, rocks.

From that point on, we hung tough. It was a pretty even match, never mind that two of their players were about 11 years old (those two were still better than 80 percent of our team). I was seeing the ball well and made, what I thought were, some tremendous, game-saving blocks and catches. I never think I have cat-like speed and reflexes but on the pitch in Collapata, I did.

At that moment, I thought back to the Michigan Daily Sports Broomball team´s playoff victory over the School of Social Work´s team. When our goalie went down early and I had to fill in. Although I was criticized on the blogs, I gave our team a chance. And as Michigan hockey coach Red Berenson says, that´s all you can ask from a goalie.

Back to the Peruvian wilderness. The sun had already set and the game was tied at four. Next goal would win. After fending off the rush, I pounced on the ball and looked for an open teammate. The only one I could see (or barely make out in the limited light) was the Dutch guy standing near the other team´s goal. I tossed it up in the air, and it tipped of his foot.

If you´re keeping track of my great soccer triumphs, this would rank second to the Jewish Academy´s win over the Kibbutz Ketura preschool about four years ago.

And if you´ve ever talked goaltending with me, you know how much I like the phrase ¨stand on his head.

Hidden from the Spanish

While the Spanish conquistadors defeated the Incan Empire they were famous for taking the Incan gold and stones to build cities and cathedrals. One place the Spanish never conquered or exploited was Machu Picchu. This allowed it to remain intact and become the major tourist destination that it is.

It was not until 1910, when Yale professor Hiram Bingham was searching for the last city of the Incas (Vilcabamba) that Machu Picchu was known to the Western world. Perched on a hilltop between two mountains at the edge of the Andean highlands as they fall off into the jungle, Machu Picchu is one of the beautiful settings. In fact, when Bingham ¨discovered¨ Machu Picchu, there were two native families living in the ruins.

Because the Incans didn´t write anything down, nobody knows exactly what the purpose of Machu Picchu was (beyond general awesomeness, of course).

Nothing like it

With words, I can´t really capture what it´s like to see clouds around Machu Picchu. Luckily, my camera can capture the light at that moment and relay it to you in a picture. It reminded me of the scene from Motorcycle Diaries when they arrive to the fabled ruins at dawn. Probably, because it was almost exactly that moment.

Right in time

Currently, there is no park entrance fee to do the Salkantay Trek. The only registry of any sort is a guy in a cowboy hat who carries around a clipboard with a notebook and speaks broken English. Apparently, the government just announced that it will charge 140 soles for people to enter Salkantay.

This fee will make the trek much less popular, and Urbano predicts that the horsemen might organize to boycott the new policy because horsemen are all from the villages at the start and finish of the trek. Their livelihoods depend on the trek, but if there is a 140 sole fee (about 45 dollars), their income is going to go down.

Well, I´m off to pack from my trek. Great to see the Tigers back on track. My friend in Minneapolis says the Tigs are rallying. So hopefully we don´t fall back to .500.

I´ll spare you the details about how great it feels to take a piss in the middle of the wilderness, in pitch black, when it´s below freezing outside. Damn. I didn´t.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

What is the Secret of the Ooze?

I grew up on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Behind Travis Fryman, Joe Dumars, and a Case 580K Operator, they probably had the biggest influence on me as a child). Every day, after preschool, I would go back to my friend´s house and watch the cartoon. At my 6th birthday party, Leonardo (himself) showed up and taught us some awesome moves. When the first movie came out, it was probably the most anticipated day of my young life. That meant expectations for the second Turtles movie (The Secret of the Ooze) were about as high as the expectation for the Tigers offense this season.

Most thought that the Turtles movies and television shows were pure fiction. Just a scheme to make some money and provide entertainment to the world´s youth. I was in that camp, too. (notice the past tense) After going to Galapagos, I now believe in the secret of the ooze.

(Warning: only two pictures because my camera decided to seizure halfway through uploading (When you go to the dunes, put your camera in a case; not your pocket). It´s a very tense situation here, but I just want everybody´s thoughts to be with my camera. I hope we can recover and send pictures next time I have internet access)

Nature´s joke on everybody

The Giant Turtle is the most hilarious species on this planet.The combination of size, shell, slow movement, Darth Vader-like noises when it moves its head or legs, and general lack of proportionality make it impossible to take it seriously. (Look at the attached picture and try not to laugh It´s impossible) When people were first landing at the Galapagos, they weren´t taking the tutle population seriously, either. Because the giant turtles are huge and can go more than a year without eating (adding to its hilarity), pirates would take them from the islands and store them on the boats for long voyages (both for food, tortoise rides, and to turn on their backs and knock around like green Mario shells). The problem is that the pirates took almost all the giant turtles from Galapagos and put the species on the brink of extinction.

At the Charles Darwin Center and the Giant Turtle Breeding Center, they are trying to reintroduce these creatures back into the wild.

A few fun facts about the Giant Tortoise before we continue:
-At its maximum speed, the giant tortoise can move 300 meters/hour. That's a forty-yard ¨dash¨ of about eight minutes.
-Most of the turtle shell contains the animal´s liver. So if an animal has a liver that big, it must have a high tolerance.
-Turtles can live for over 170 years
- Other than Galapagos, giant turtles are only native to Seychelles (off the African coast)

The world´s most famous and eligible tortoise

His name is Lonesome George. He is on the only surviving member of the Pinto Island Turtles (A new species evolved on each island). He is 100 years old and is expected to live a full 170 year life. There are no females of his species remaining.

They tried to bring in female turtles of similar species to see if he would breed with them, and the guy who cloned Dolly the sheep spent a few years at Galapagos. But George remains lonely.

I think that they made a mistake by naming him George. From what I know from Seinfeld, things with the name George are very complex.

The pushke at the Darwin Center is in the shape of Lonesome George.

What are the odds that I see another erupting volcano?

I could run some type of simulations using Excel and probabilities, but I think I already know the answer: slim. After watching the volcano in Baños, I thought that I had seen enough lava flows for my entire life. But the night that we arrived in Isabela (after the Galapagos cruise, Ari and I spent three days in the most remote of the inhabited Galapagos islands), one of the two active volcanoes on the island erupted.

It´s far enough away that it doesn´t pose any threat to the island´s inhabitants, but close enough that you can get a pretty awesome view. But Ari and I went to sleep before it started erupting, and no one woke us up to see this ¨once in a lifetime¨ event. The next day, it was cloudy, so we couldn´t see if it was still erupting.

The next night, as we were walking through town after dinner, Ari noticed an orange/red light in the direction of the volcano.We also noticed the entire town transfixed on the volcano. We weren´´t going to pass up this opportunity. We had to get the best view we could.

Everybody said the best possible view was from a lookout point seven kilometers from town. We put on our bug spray and pants and got our flashlights and headed down the road, hoping we could hitch a ride with one of the locals who was also going to the lookout point, unfortunately everybody went the night before and wasn´t as ambitious on the second night.

We didn´t know exactly where the viewpoint was but because there is only one road on the island, it would be nearly impossible to get lost. We stopped at every viewpoint along the way, until we finally arrived at the last one. To get there, we had to pass through Muro de Las Lagrimas (Wall of Tears), whch is a wall constructed by prisoners of the Ecuador jail that operated on Isabela in the 1950s. The prisoners were put to work to construct their own jail without the assistance of concrete of anything to hold the rocks together. After starting our excursion at at least 10:00, we finally arrived to the viewing spot.

From there, you could clearly see the lava flowing and bubbling up, but we were far enough away that you couldn´t really hear it.

I´m 21 years old, and I´m yelling ´moo, cow´ in a river

Now, I wasn´t actually driving the herd. I was simply riding a horse. But for me, any opportunity to make a City Slickers reference will be seized (and probably abused). On our first day in Isabela, we went for a horseback ride to the Sierra Negra Volcano, which erupted a few years ago and you can see the lava flows.

My horse´s name for the adventure was Puropaso, and no matter how much I tried to control him, he just seemed to do whatever he wanted. He would only listen to our guide, Carlos, or to the guys from the stables.I´m glad that he had a pretty calm demeanor because one of the people from our group got bucked off.

It was my first time back in the saddle (literally) in at least a decade. And I could feel it after.

The other name I was considering for this email section was: Everyone, this is Puropaso.

Wait, the internet is on computers now?

There is no internet on the island of Isabela. It is the only place in the world that I have been that does not have an internet connection. The municipality maintains a website, but I think it has an office on one of the other islands.

There is even a building that claims to be an internet cafe, but it just has computers in boxes.

A car quota

As the city of Isabela started to sprawl out (it´s a relative term), the citizens started bringing cars to the town. But as more cars arrived, traffic, congestion, and noise accompanied it. The municipal government of Isabela decided to put a stop to this by imposing a quota on the number of cars that can be in the city (65ish).

People can exchange their old cars for new ones, but they can´t buy a new one. It makes for a really pleasant, pedestrian-friendly town. But this policy would only work on islands. Otherwise, it would be nearly impossible to manage.

Mystery, Alaska in Galapagos

Now, I don´t really remember too much of the movie except that the New York Rangers traveled to some remote town in Alaska to play an exhibition game against the local pond team. Why the Rangers would travel for such a ridiculous game is beyond me, but that is unrelated to the message of this bullet point.

On Friday afternoon, when everybody was done with work for the week, a bunch of men from Isabela gathered on the municipal soccer pitch for a game of pick up futbol. In one of the most remote places on Earth with limited connection to the outside world, the beautiful game is the most popular sport. And at that time, nothing mattered more to them than the pride (and few dollars) of winning the afternoon´s game.

Now, all they need is for a professional soccer team to come play an exhibition on Isabela. I´m pretty sure every MLS team would lose (That makes two MLS digs in the blog, Ian. Come on.)

Is that a sea lion? No, it´s my guide

On our last day in Isabela, we had the chance to go snorkeling with sea lions and penguins. As I said in the previous email about Galapagos, the animals here aren´t afraid of people; they´re curious. It´s the same on land and in the sea.

When you are snorkeling near a sea lion, they want to swim near you and play with you. All of a sudden, you turn your head and there are three sea lions within a few feet of you. At one point, I confused our guide, Carlos, for a sea lion. He has the same body shape, and when he´s wearing flippers and I´m not wearing my glasses, it´s easy to confuse them. Carlos got a good laugh out of it.

Penguins are very quick animals. They will swim within a few feet of you and then quickly bolt away.

Galapagos Triage

When the volcano erupted a few years ago, the tortoises living on the island were airlifted to safety. Some of the best animal research and treatment in the world is available to the Islands´oldest (and slowest) citizens.

At the same time, there is no hospital for humans on the Galapagos. It might take up to 10 hours for a human to get treatment because they would have to fly to the mainland.

There was once an oil spill in the islands. Environmental organizations would pay locals a lot of money to assist in the clean-up effort and save the animals. Because these organizations offered a lot of money, the locals didn´t really care what safety precautions were being taken. But the environmental organizations didn´t properly protect the locals and many got sick from assisting in the oil-spill cleanup.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

I saw snow today. Did you?

I don´t really know what the weather is like back in Detroit, but I´m pretty sure that people were using the golf courses for golfing instead of cross-country skiing or snow-shoeing (or walking on tennis rackets as the Israeli I met in the bus put it). In Cashapampa, Peru, it´s a different story. Although I don´t know whether or not they have golf courses, if they were to, they would have kept the clubs in the bag today.

(By the way, Cashapampa might be one of the greatest names for a city I have ever come across)

To get out of the chronological order of these email journals once again, I would like to give you a recap of the 3-day, 31-mile trek I completed this morning in the Andes (My guide book says the trek is typically completed in 4-5 days and, even at that time, lists it as a moderate-to-difficult venture). While I´m not a natural-born mountain man, I wouldn´t consider myself a greenhorn when it comes to the outdoors (staffed a trip to Algonquin Park, family hiking trip to Canadian Rockies, plenty of skiing experience, two brothers with Ramah tripping staff experience, seen ¨Alive¨).

I organized the trip with a guide from the Casa de Guias in Huaraz on Thursday morning (aka met two Canadians who were planning on doing the same trek and a guide) and prepared to leave the next day. The trail that we were on is the most famous trek in these parts and is considered one of the most beautiful in the world (it´s called Santa Cruz Trek). Now, there is a lot that happened on this trek, and telling you about everything would take too much time (plus the internet cafe is going to close soon and I have a bus to Lima to catch).

A cross between Curly, Smeegel, and Drake Savage

By far, the most interesting and controversial figure of our quartet of trekkers was the guide (what´s controversial about two French Canadiens who don´t support separatism?). Let me give you a little bit of background on Victorino.

He´s been a guide in these mountains for thirty years. He was part of the first graduating class of official guides and worked as a porter and donkey driver before that. In 1984, he and guide friend of his scaled the 6,700+ meter Huascaran Mountain in 12 hours and made it home for lunch. When he takes tourists on this mountain, it takes seven days. (He says it´s a world record and that he has the newspaper at home to prove it. I´m not going to doubt him on this one.).

He said that his father, grandfather, and uncle all died while climbing mountains in this range. He has three sons, but his wife won´t let them become guides because she doesn´t want them to die in the mountains. She´s already accepted that Victorino is going to die in the mountains.

He also likes repeating the same thing over and over again. I heard the same story about how he set a world record about six times. He also repeated the same joke about how he goes at a Guide pace while the tourists all go at at Gringo pace (guide pace is about 70 times that of a Gringo pace). The first time it might have been funny. But at the end of the trip it got demeaning.

He also likes thinking about what Victorino wants and not what the clients want. Like when he goes off on his own 400 meters ahead of me, when he doesn´t really explain anything about the trail or mountains, and when he decides to burn his plastic trash in a camp fire (part of the zero trace policy involves carrying a trash bag for your waste).

Here´s the line that I have been saving up to close this section. I thought of it as soon as I saw him: He knows these mountains better than he knows his sons. He said he has done the Santa Cruz Trek about 400 times in his life.

Hypox-Ian

I am so happy I got to use that pun in this blog. So, I don´t really know what elevation we were at in Baños, but I set a new record for heights I climbed to. At 4,750 meters (over 15,000), I now know what it feels like to be in thin air. When I go skiing, I have never really felt the different in oxygen at altitude. As I neared the top of this mountain, I did.

I would have to stop every few steps just to catch my breath. But, using the one-step-at-a-time philosophy, I reached the summit.

I´ve never seen so much livestock in a national park

I don´t think I´ve ever seen any livestock in a national park. In the United States and Canada (places where I have national park experience), I don´t recall seeing cows grazing in fields as campers trek through the wilderness.

In Huascaran National Park, it would be unusual if you didn´t come across a cow or donkey every 400 meters. That´s actually what helped keep me on the trail. And these animals roam on their own and aren´t really tended to by any type of human or herder.

It´s also popular to have donkeys and horses go along with trekking trips to carry equipment and be there in the case of an emergency.

I don´t care if I am lying in shit

I´m not sure if my body has been pushed like it has the last few days. When I completed hiking for a day, I would be so relieved that I would simply collapse. However, I had to fall over in a way to avoid the manure and cowpile that dots (more than dots, actually) that campsites. Two days, I was so exhausted that I told the Canadians: ¨I don´t care if I am lying in horse shit because it feels so good.¨ Also, given how numb my body was from all the walking, I probably wouldn´t have noticed it.

I threw a snowball today

Nothing really to add to that one, except that it missed its intended target.

Ruby would be proud

We spent two nights in tents and both nights we were in our tents before sunset.

Wanna get higher

So we passed a campsite near the peak of Punta Union called Taulipampa. My obvious reaction was: wanna get higher? (Towlie from South Park if you don´t understand)

Well, that´s about it so I don´t miss my bus.

Monday, June 09, 2008

"These birds are so silly they forgot how to flee¨

Finally, the much-awaited-for post on Galapagos (well, actually two posts).

I was thinking of how to title this post, and I decided this quotation from the Bishop of Panama´s unintentional 1535 visit to the Galapagos would work (He was trying to go Peru but got lost). The other title I was choosing between was ¨We need a montage,¨mainly because of how many photos I plan on including in this message. I was trying to think of something Darwinian, evolutionary, tortoise-y, finch-y, or booby-y, but I couldn´t think of any.

For a little context: I am writing at an internet cafe in Loja, Ecuador. Tonight, I will end my Ecuador adventures and take a bus from here to Pirua, Peru (a town about 40 minutes across the border). So will begin my Peruvian ones. I expect them to be very similar.

On with the Galapagos.

A bit of information of how we booked our trip before I delve in. The mother of the family I stayed with in my first few days in Quito has a friend who is a travel agent. She talked to her friend and hooked us up with an eight-day, seven-night, four of those nights on a cruise ship trip. Our boat, the Encantada, is one of the oldest and smallest tour boats still operating in the Galapagos. Because there is a limit to the amount of tour boats that can be in Galapagos, there has been a shift ..to bigger ships that can fit more people.

The Galapagos Islands are special for a variety of reasons. They are a collection of volcanic islands in the middle of the Pacific that didn´t break of any continent, so any animal or plant that resides there had to travel there at some point and then evolved. Several ocean currents lead directly to the Galapagos. Because of these currents, there are sea turtles and penguins from Australia (think Finding Nemo) in these equatorial isles. Also, because there has been limited human presence on the islands, the animals do not show the fear of humans that other animals show. Therefore, you can walk within feet of a bird without it flying away or swim within meters of a shark without it biting you.

I don´t really know how to structure this e-mail because I have so much information about the islands, the animals, and my experiences. I warn you that it might be difficult to follow but I will try my best to make it reader-friendly.

Hallo, Polly. You for SCUBA?

We booked out trip through SCUBA Tours, and our guide for the cruise, Juan, is very similar to Claude from Along Came Polly. He grew up on the islands and just exudes island lifestyle. He was born in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, the biggest city on the Galapagos (16,000 people). There are three islands where there are cities on the Galapagos and there are about 40,000 Galapageños. On the first day and for a few days after that, Juan wore a Michigan basketball jersey he bought on a vacation to the United States (from the looks of the shirt, it was about 17 years ago).

In 1998, the Ecuadorian government passed a law to curb the amount of people living in Galapagos by saying that, in order to reside there, you must be born in the Galapagos or marry someone who is a citizen of Galapagos. Because of this law (and genuine love between the couples), there are many foreigners married to native Galapageños. Juan didn´t answer our question of whether there is a high divorce rate in the Galapagos. (Also, to be a tour guide on Galapagos, you must be a citizen of Galapagos. We passed someone on a trail whose first visit to Galapagos was on one of Juan´s tours. She married a tour company owner and is now a tour guide.)

He also has a pretty sweet work schedule. He takes cruises out for four weeks in a row and then gets two weeks off. Those two weeks don´t count to his vacation time, either. He says he likes to escape paradise during his time off, so he goes to the big cities.

He also says he wears shoes once a week: Sunday at church. Otherwise, it´s barefoot or, when he was lounging on the ship, some flip-flops. We walked on some volcanic surfaces which I thought were pretty jagged rocks, but Juan had no issue walking on them barefoot. He received some ooohs and aaaahs from tour groups we passed.

A hint of the Galapagos

As I walked off the plane at the Baltra Airport (A U.S: airbase in WWII that is now the main airport in Galapagos), a grasshopper jumped onto my shirt. And even when I try to get it off, it stayed there. This just shows you how trusting and friendly Galapagos animals are.

After we got on the boat and navigated for a few hours, we all unloaded onto a motorboat to go on a water safari in Black Turtle Cove off Santa Cruz Island. The brief trip, we saw red crabs, red mangrove, white mangrove, sea turtles, frigots, sea iguanas, black-tipped sharks, jumping mallet fish, and a feeding frenzy of birds on tuna fish. I´ll highlight a few of the facts that our guide told us about the animals we saw.

- Juan used to eat the crabs after church on Sundays as a treat. They are now a protected species on the Galapagos and can´t be eaten. He says they were delicious.
- Sea turtles will only eat red-rooted mangroves - not white-rooted - even though they grow in the same areas.
- Sea turtles can spend over an hour underwater before coming up. Darwin discovered this in one of his experiments.
- People used to mix the blood of the sea turtle with Coca Cola and go diving in the water believing that drinking the blood of a sea turtle will allow you to stay underwater longer.
- There is no such thing as a black and a green sea turtle. It´s the same species. It just depends on the amount of algae.

Organic shit

The next morning, we went for a short hike on Rabida Island to observe the cactus forests. Juan told us that the French once put a bid down to buy all the guano (bird crap) from the Galapagos for fertilizer, but the Ecuadorians said no, but this allowed Ari and I to make numerous jokes about Galapagos guano being organic because of the limited human presence and plenty of comments about the French also ensued.

Afterward, we went snorkeling along the beach there. Also hanging out on the beach were a bunch of sea lions. They´re pretty friendly, and the fathers make great yelping/heaving noises if you get too close. After snorkeling, we took a walk along the red beach (it´s red because it older and has a higher iron content than other beaches) and saw a group of pelicans just chilling. Now is when I insert my obligatory mixing cement in a pelican´s mouth comment.

If Russell Crowe attacks hotel employees with phones, what does he use in the middle of Galapagos?

On our second day on the cruise, we passed a spot where they filmed Master and Commander. I´ve never seen the film, but one of the Australians on our boat was really excited when we passed the spot. It is actually one of the most famous sites in all of Galapagos (the picture with beaches on the right and left divided by an isthmus). It looks out onto an island that was formed less than 200 years ago. A guy named Sullivan was in Galapagos when he witnessed a volcano erupt. He documented the event and watched the island form (the island in the background is known as Sullivan´s Island).

When you are in Galapagos, you can really see how volcanoes shaped the landscape. On many islands, you can see in what direction the lava flowed and dried (in some places, you can walk in tunnels formed by how the lava dried). When you walk on newer lava landscape (hundreds of thousands of years old), you feel as if you are walking on Mars).

My first penguin and booby

If you think that I have just been being really immature but repeatedly saying booby, you are right. but i have actually seen plenty of booby birds. they are what Galapagos is very famous for (I have purchased two I Love Boobies shirts). We also saw a manta ray, but it´s not nearly as hilarious to say that I saw a manta ray as it is to say that I saw a booby.

While walking around the next day, a booby came up to Rolf (a Swedish guy on our boat) and started pecking at his foot. It was more of a getting to know you peck than a get the hell off our island peck. Remember: that type of peck doesn´t exist in Galapagos.

Frigots are hilarious

The frigot is another type of bird that is very common around Galapagos, and if I would´ve come to the islands at any other time of year I would not have appreciated their hyjinx (sp?). We came during mating season, which means that that male frigots are doing everything they can to woo the females, chiefly among them is showing off their huge breasts (or protrusion coming from their chests). To impress the females, the males blow up these giant red air pockets on their chests and shake their body to make a funny clicking/clucking noise.

We went to a place on Genovesa Island that looks like a scene from The Birds. There are thousands and thousands of birds just flying around and perched on whatever they can be perched on. In the Hitchcock version of the Galapagos, these birds would then attack unsuspecting tourists. Luckily these ones remained peaceful and didn´t kill.

Streak still alive

Before my trip to the Galapagos, I had never been on a tropical, island-traveling vacation. One thing I worried about beforehand was how my digestive system would handle an extended period at sea (the majority of my nights on water before this were spent in the Petoskey harbor). With the ocean waves and constant movement, I thought my body might succumb to seasickness. And the boat that we were on was one of the smallest cruise boats in all of Galapagos. So when there are big waves, everybody feels it.

But I came out victorious. I can´t say the same about the other 12 people on the Encantada. At one dinner, only six people came to the table and just four ate anything substantial. The chef made rice pudding for dessert, but nobody remained to eat (He already served the black and white cookie). My stomach felt a bit out of sorts at that meal, but it might have been how unbearably warm the dining room was. One person on our boat threw up directly on the equator (We had the GPS coordinates to prove it). I didn´t take an official tally of people on our boat but I would say that fewer people kept all their food in than didn´t.

My vomitless streak that started July 25, 2006 will remains intact. Refer to this link for more information about how much pride I take in keeping my food down. http://hearyoni.blogspot.com/2006/07/i-think-it-was-black-and-white-cookie_26.html

So that will conclude the first of two Galapagos e-mails. The next one will include our time off the boat and on land. Subjects to be covered include: watching another erupting volcano, a bachelor with no hope, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mystery, Alaska, and Pleasantville.