Posts Tagged ‘food’
We had an easy bus trip back from Trindade to Rio and got to spend a couple of days in the city before heading on. We stayed at a hostel in Le Blon, a nice neighborhood in the far south of the city. The only problem with this was that it is a little far from the areas with stuff to do, so when we arrived at the bus station we immediately had to deal with a long trip through town and then out the other side. We made it eventually with the help of a friendly local and got settled into an 8 person dorm. Everyone at the hostel was really friendly, but it was a pretty noisy place, so not so much with the sleeping there.
Our first day in the city we walked up the incredible beaches and just took a good look around. Rio is a beautiful city and the beaches were worth spending some time on. We saw Le Blon beach, Ipanema beach, and Copacabana beach. It was sunny in the morning, but then we had a pretty strong rain in the afternoon. They said the weather was going to improve though, so we signed up for a city tour the next day so that we could see some of the big city landmarks.
We had an amazing sunny day and were picked up at the hostel in a big 16 person van. Our first stop was the famous statue of Christ that looks down over Rio. It is up on a mountain behind the city and was pretty crowded with tourists. We had fun looking out at the views and taking a ton of pictures.
Christ the Redeemer
So Hazel and I have been up to some serious tourism in the most recent months and we decided that we needed some time to relax. Â What better place in the world to lounge around than Brazil?
The Beach
Hazel and I just got back from our trip to the rainforest! We had a blast, and that will be explained in another post, but we also saw and photographed TONS of wildlife! In this post I’ll introduce you to most of the species we saw by name and picture!
We couldn’t have done this without the great help of our guide Carlos, who was working for Amazon Trails Peru our tour operator. He did a really spectacular job!
Even though this post has a TON of pictures, there are many more on SmugMug. Check out our BEST photos, and the REST of them!
Reptiles and Amphibians
I saw each of these on my second night walk in the jungle, except the last two which we found during a daytime walk:
Phyllomedusa Palliata
Phyllomedusa Tomopterna- Oreobates Quixensis
Poison Dart Frog- Juvenile White Cayman!
The bus to Cusco was a pretty smooth ride. Well, except that the kph monitor was malfunctioning and beeped periodcally throughout the night. At least Hazel got to sleep!
Cusco Cathedral
CocawellÂ
From Arequipa we decided to take a two day tour to the Colca Valley to see Colca Canyon. This canyon is one of the deepest in the world, so we thought it was worth a look. We went with a cheap tour that we booked through our hostel and while there was nothing really wrong with it, we weren’t thrilled. The biggest problem was that every time the bus stopped it was for people to try to sell us stuff. Since we weren’t interested in buying anything this left us with big gaps of time in a place we weren’t really interested in with nothing to do but try to avoid buying things! Not ideal.
They were 45 minutes late picking us up and then the first stop was at a shop to buy coca products. Turns out that to get to this valley you have to cross a VERY high pass and they strongly recommended that we buy and consume coca products to help with the altitude. Justin tried “Cocawell” a soda, but we both prefered the coca candies or the coca tea to the soda. For those of you at home, coca products come from the same plant as cocaine, but don’t have any kind of effect like the drug and aren’t processed at all. Seems to help with the altitude and the tea is everywhere here.
The area around the pass was a preserve area and was very scenic! Volcanos, vicuñas, llamas, alpacas, lakes and birds! (more…)
Once again I find myself trying to catch up with the blog. We’re more than making up for taking it easy at the end of our time in Chile by racing around Peru like crazy. We’ve had pretty much zero internet access, so I’ll at least make a start at getting caught up.
We flew from Santiago to Lima and had a nice smooth flight. Honestly, we were a bit more apprehensive about Peru than the countries we have already been to since we have heard more stories about muggings, dangerous bus rides, etc. So far though, it has been really great! We had the hostel we were staying at send a good taxi to pick us up from the airport and were fairly glad we did since the airport is not in the best part of town.
The hostel we stayed at, Link Hostel, was great – helpful with recommendations, advice, booking help, pretty much everything. It is in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima which is a nice area with lots of restaurants and cafes and handicraft stores. It’s also close to the beach.
Miraflores Area
On the way we stopped off at a nature reserve for the first of many birdwatching expeditions. My dad is an avid birdwatcher and we were determined to help him see as many of Chile’s birds as possible. He was full of interesting information. For example, there is less species variation in the southern hemisphere, so in all of Chile there are not many more species than on the small island near Seattle where he lives! We took an informed bet as to how many species we would see in ten days. I guessed 93, my dad guessed 115, and Justin was optimistic with a guess of 119.
This first stop was at the Reserva Nacional Lago Peñuelas and we had some good sightings. There are additional bird photos if you click any of these for the link to the gallery.
Horses in the reserve
We’ve been really busy traveling for the past 2 weeks or so, but will gradually try and get things updated here! When last I wrote we were in Buenos Aires, and from there we went on to Santiago, Chile. It was a quick, pleasant flight and we had a few really nice days of exploring the city.
All of the photos link to our galleries which have more photos and I´ve started adding captions to explain them, so you can get even more about our trip if you click through to those!
- Our first afternoon in Santiago we headed to the Museo de la Memoria, which is in memory of the incredibly difficult time that Chile has been through from the 1970s until the 1990s. It was a very well put together museum and we learned so much about the recent history of Chile, despite not much of the text being in English.
- Museo de la Memoria
Camp
Check out Part 1 here!
Having awakened in camp fully rested, we had a nice breakfast of (you guessed it) oatmeal. However, we had a stroke of genius – prepare it using some of the apple flavored drink powder that’s left over from our water bottles! It was surprisingly good , given that we were just throwing apple sugar on top. Being equipped with our apple juices, we set off for the magnificent Valle Frances, the middle leg of the “W”. This is a day hike of about 3 hours each way, up from the valley floor to a mirador in the center of a circle of mountains.
You might think that a two-day horse expedition was enough. We might have been ambitious to think otherwise, but in fact we began our next adventure on the same day that we had our second horse ride. We decided to trek in the Torres del Paine national park, a very famous place in Chile with some spectacular alpine and glacial scenery. However, one does not simply hike for a few hours in Torres del Paine! The park itself is a 2-hour drive from the nearest town (Puerto Natales) and is too large and varied to see even a fraction in a few hours. So we decided to do a 5 day trek instead!
El Mapa - The "W"
Before we departed for horseback riding, we made some preparations. Our backpacks are a perfect size for us, but our stuff is more appropriate for sleeping in hostels than for camping. We rented some of the equipment that we needed at “The Erratic Rock”, a hostel run by some Canadian ex-pats that runs an informational talk (in English) and rental shop.
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A Year Long Around the World Travel Adventure