Final Month

So I've been home for about three weeks now and I guess I should finish this up with my last month of traveling. My brother Stephan came to visit a couple days after I came back from Colombia and when the majority of my friends had gone back home to the United States. We spent a couple days in Quito visiting the equator, some museums, and some of my favorite sites around the city. After he got a feel for Quito, we took a night bus to Guayaquil. Guayaquil is the biggest city in Ecuador and is very close to the ocean. The main reason we were going there is because plane tickets to Peru were much cheaper from Guayaquil. We walked along the Malecon 2000 which is a nice park built next to the river Guayas. We also went into one of the historical neighborhoods, but it wasn't all that exciting. Our plane left in the evening so we had to figure out how to use the buses. With our bulky backpacks it was quite the experience. Instead of nice big buses, they were more like extended vans with absolutely no room. Furthermore when I asked a guy which stop the airport was, he told us to get off about a mile away. Eventually we did get there though and took a plane to Lima.

We arrived at Lima fairly late and had to take a taxi to a hostal. We stayed near the historic center which was pretty cool. Our hostal was a bit decadent and overdecorated with tons of pseudo Greek sculptures. We also had a terrace with a bunch of exotic animals. The next day was Christmas Eve so we walked around and admired the Christmas decorations. It was fairly American with tons of Santa Clauses and Christmas trees. Even churches joined in the commercialization. They had the usual nativity scenes, but with flashing lights and sometimes they even had electronic beeping versions of jingle bells going on. Lima was pretty cool though. The main square was huge and had some pretty impressive churches and the President's house. We also walked to a water fountain park. They did pretty cool things with the different fountains such as making a tunnel of water that you could walk underneath. For dinner we went to a fairly fancy restaurant where our waiter pretty much ordered for me. I ended up with a huge plate filled with seafood. It was delicious. That night they shot off fireworks for Christmas. It was awesome. We had a nice view from the roof of our hostal.

On Christmas day we walked around and watched a variety of parades going on. People were dressed up in indigenous clothes or animal costumes and were dancing in front of churches. I ended up getting a hug from what I think was a gorilla in a red hat. Other people wore antlers or bird wings as hats. There was also a slow procession where people carried a throne with a baby Jesus on it. They would stop every block or so and people would hand a priest stuff to get blessed. The priest would then take the object (this could be anything from a card to a child) and hold it up to Jesus and mutter some prayers. Then the procession would continue. In the afternoon we had to leave however, so we took a bus to Arequipa. The bus ride lasted about 16 hours. The beginning of the journey was during the day so we could see how we were riding past a big desert on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. It was pretty nice. They showed movies on the bus, but unfortunately they were all chick flicks and/or really stupid comedies. The bus (Cruz del Sur) was pretty comfortable so I got a pretty good nights sleep. We arrived in Arequipa pretty early.

Arequipa is a colonial town where most of the colonial buildings are built out of a white volcanic rock. It was pretty cool, but there wasn't much to do in the town. We spent a night there and we spent our days visiting some of the many churches and museums. They also had some old colonial mansions that were fun to see. The best part of Arequipa was an old convent they had. It was pretty much a miniature city in itself. There were plenty of little houses and alleys one could visit. After Arequipa we decided to head to Cuzco. This bus ride was a bit shorter and was only around 10 hours I think. We found a cheaper option than the first bus company, but this turned out to be a mistake. Although the movies they showed were much better, there was absolutely no leg room for Stephan and me. I hardly got any sleep and was exhausted the first day in Cuzco.

Cuzco was probably my favorite part of Peru. It had tons of churches although they all looked alike. Luckily they all looked cool. Since Cuzco is relatively safe, we didn't have a problem aimlessly wandering around back alleys and streets. We ended up finding a street market where they sold just about every part of animals. This included wheelbarrows filled with sheep heads. Besides that little adventure, we spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how to get to Machu Picchu without spending a fortune. Eventually we figured out how to get there the next day. This was pretty cool because that was also my birthday. The only down side was that we had to get up at 4 to be able to catch a bus to get to the train station in time.

We got to the train station on time and from there took a very scenic train ride to the town of Aguas Calientes. The whole town is based on tourism. They sell tons of overpriced junk and every restaurant in town was a pizzeria. We had to spend the night there because all trains back were full. So we went to the cheapest hostal there and then headed up to the ruins. Machu Picchu was absolutely amazing. In the morning there was light rain, but the ruins were covered in fog and looked pretty magical. Eventually the sun came out and we had great weather the rest of the day. There were tons of llamas hanging around. There were lots of tourists but it wasn't overwhelming. Not too many people go on vacation to Peru during the end of December so it was pretty nice. We spent several hours walking around the ruins. Back in Aguas Calientes we decided to have pizza for dinner, given our many options.

We took the train the next day to Ollantaytambo which is the end station of the train. On the train we met a couple of Argentinians. It was pretty cool because I could recognize their accent which kinda gave me a feeling for how much my Spanish has improved this semester. Anyway, in Ollantaytambo there were several ruins overlooking the town so we decided to visit them and head to Cuzco that night. Apparently, one of the ruins was the site of one of the few victories of the Inca over the Spanish. The ruins were lots of fun because there was virtually nobody there. The town itself was also cool. It had loads of tiny alleys. When we decided to return to Cuzco we ended up finding a taxi driver who had a fixed price which would be cheaper for us if we found two more people. Luckily there we ran into two girls called Rachel and Alba who were also going to Cuzco so we ended up sharing the taxi there. Our taxi driver was called Rolando, and it turned out that he was a guide. He gave us a free tour on the way back where he stopped at several places and told us about them. He also taught us how to chew coca leaves. He then offered us a full tour the next day which we decided to do. We ended up eating guinea pig for dinner, which was, as usual, delicious.

We ended up meeting with Rolando in Cuzco early the next day. We went to a market and bought a huge loaf of bread, a huge chunk of cheese, various fruits, and wine for a picnic lunch later on. Then Rolando took us to various religious sites where we made sacrifices of coca leaves and wine to Pachamama (mother earth). We also went to a sacred stream where we all got healed. Then we visited several other ruins. Since I was the only one of the four of us who could speak Spanish, I ended up being Rolando's translator which was pretty cool. We got done with our tour in the early evening. Since it was New Year's Eve, Stephan and I met with Rachel and Alba later that night to celebrate. In Cuzco, the tradition was to go to the main square and then run around it at midnight. We got there much earlier though, but fireworks were going off starting in the early afternoon. It was packed but loads of fun.

Stephan and I spent the next day visiting other ruins around Cuzco. We took a bus about 8 kilometers away and then walked back, hitting up four other ruins along the way. It was a nice walk and most of the ruins were cool. Since Ecuador barely had any, this was a nice change. Pretty much all of them were more impressive than Ingapirca in Ecuador. The next day we took another bus to Puno. This bus ride was only 6 hours long. Puno is a city right next to Lake Titicaca. We ended up agreeing to a tour of the main sights on the lake for the next day.

Lake Titicaca was pretty cool because of how big it was, but it was way too commercialized for my taste. Our first stop on the lake were reed islands. These were entirely built out of reeds, as were the houses on it. While it sounds really cool, it seemed that the people didn't actually live on them and only pretended to so that they could sell us a bunch of useless junk. From there we took a boat another two or three hours to a different island. This one was inhabited by a bunch of people who wore hats that resembled hats that Santa's elves would wear. Depending on the color you could tell if a guy was married or single. Again, this seemed pretty fake and only there to get tourists to buy their souvenirs. After that island we headed back to Puno. At this point, we only had about two days to get back to Lima in order to catch our plane back, so we had to book a bus back. There were no direct buses so we had a one hour layover in Arequipa. The total bus journey was 22 hours. It actually wasn't as miserable as I would have expected. We ended up with seats at the front of the bus. Since we were on the second floor, we had a huge window where we could see where we were driving. Plus we played a game of bingo, and I'm pretty proud to say that not only am I a Peruvian Bus Bingo Champion, I'm also undefeated in bingo in the Southern Hemisphere.

We didn't do much in Lima besides walk around and get to the airport. We flew back into Guayaquil but immediately took a 6 hour bus back to Cuenca. In Cuenca we did most of the things I did back in November. There was some parade going on the first night there for Epiphany. Almost everyone was dressed in costume, even those who were not in the parade. From Cuenca we took a day trip to Cajas, and then returned to Quito. I said goodbye to my host family and picked up my suitcase, ate an entire box of ice cream with my brother in the park Carolina before heading back to the US. Unfortunately my flight from Miami to Philadelphia was canceled due to bad weather, so I had to spend the day in Miami. I took a bus down to South Beach, but got several weird looks because I was wearing indigenous pants because they are incredibly comfortable and I had no other clothes with me. I ended up sleeping on an airport bench overnight before leaving ridiculously early to catch a different plane to Philadelphia.

That's pretty much it from the last things I've done in South America. I doubt I'll update this again, since my life in the US is much less interesting. Thanks for reading.

The convent in Arequipa

A park in Guayaquil with iguanas chilling

Reed Islands with locals peddling their goods

I am incredibly proud of this picture.

Christmas procession with baby Jesus

Colombia

I went to Colombia this past week so that's the reason for the delayed blog post. I was visiting friends of my mom who had studied at Penn State with her. On Monday we went to a fair with indigenous crafts from across South America. The goods they were selling were different from the usual stuff they have in Ecuador so that was interesting. Bogota itself is huge. I had kind of felt like Quito was pretty big being 1.5 million people, but Bogota has 8 million. The public transportation is pretty awful and there are always traffic jams. At night we went to a park where they had set up lights and Christmas decorations. It was more impressive than it sounds although very Americanized.

On Tuesday I visited the old historic center of Bogota. It was pretty impressive. There were loads of churches. We walked by the president's house and visited several museums including the Museum of Gold which was pretty cool. There were loads of old artifacts and the like. On Wednesday we drove to the department of Boyaca. For those not familiar with South American colonial history, there was an important battle in Boyaca which ended up being the decisive battle where Colombia gained its independence from Spain. The battlefield was pretty neat and there was a cool monument for Simon Bolivar. Simon Bolivar is "el Liberador" or the liberator and is practically worshiped all over South America. After visiting the battlefield we drove to Villa de Leyva which is an old colonial town. All the architecture is colonial and the streets were all cobblestone which I thought was pretty awesome. From there we visited some ponds that were incredibly blue and we also visited a fossil museum with a huge aquatic dinosaur skeleton. For lunch we stopped at an ostrich farm so I ate ostrich. It wasn't all that great. It was more similar to beef than chicken and very chewy.

On Thursday we drove back towards Bogota and visited a sacred lake called Guatavita. Apparently it was the original El Dorado, but there are so many places that claim to be the original El Dorado that you need to take that claim with a grain of salt. The lake was cool though. It was on top of a mountain and surrounded by more mountains. After Guatavita we went to La Catedral de Sal, which is a cathedral carved into a salt mine. I really liked it. It was huge and built with a series of tunnels. Everything was carved out of the salt rocks.

The last day I climbed a mountain called Monserrate which had a view of Bogota. The city was covered in a layer of visible pollution. After that I visited the Quinta de Bolivar which was a mansion where Simon Bolivar lived for a bit. It had a nice garden as well. Apparently Bolivar was really short. He was only about 5'4. I walked through Bogota's main university before leaving for Quito again. The university was pretty big and had a pretty nice campus. There was lots of graffiti everywhere. It was mostly pro-communist stuff. The students named the main square Plaza Che.

In other news, Stephan is coming to Ecuador tonight. We'll be heading to Peru on Thursday so I probably won't update this until I'm back in the states in January.

Catedral de Sal

Guatavita

Villa de Leyva

Battlefield of Boyaca

The Colombian President's house

Fiestas de Quito

This weekend was the Fiestas de Quito. The entire week had events including bullfights. I went to one on Friday. It was pretty cool, but pretty gruesome at the same time. I knew that they were going to kill the bull, but actually seeing them stab it was pretty nasty. I was kind of rooting for the bull at times. The bullfight was cool in part because it was such a big event. Walking into the stadium we got showered with free stuff. Anything from cards, hats to snacks were given to us. It is a pretty high class affair, and everyone there wears a stupid hat. Luckily we got given hats, so we wore them to fit in. The toreadors were pretty good. Apparently they're the best in the world. There were two kinds of bullfights. One was the traditional kind with a guy with a piece of red cloth. First however there was a guy on an armored horse that would stab the bull with a spear while the bull tried to knock the horse down. Then some other guys ran by with hooks and stabbed the bull and then ran away as fast as they could. Finally the actual toreador came out with a sword. He would toy with the bull for a while and then stab it with his sword. Eventually the bull would die. Two of the toreadors did that, while the third one came out on a horse. He would ride around the bull and stab it with various spears and such. I preferred that kind, it was a bit more exciting. It was interesting how the toreadors would taunt the bulls and strut around the stadium in stupid poses. Each toreador went twice so we saw six bulls get killed. I can really see where the people who want to ban bullfighting are coming from.

On Sunday we tried to go to a Liga soccer game, but the tickets were being scalped for ridiculously high prices so we decided against it. Since we were playing one of our rivals from Guayaquil, I had some threats yelled at me by opposing fans because I was wearing my Liga jersey. We went to a bar instead to watch the game then. After the game we went to an indigenous market close to the bar and Rafael Correa (the president of Ecuador) came strolling past us. He said hello to one of my friends there so that was pretty cool. We spent part of the day walking through the park where there was loads of stuff going on. They blocked off a street to hold a concert. At night we went to old town and looked at some of the festivities going on there. There was another concert and it was pretty crowded. Another thing about the Fiestas de Quito is that there are loads of chivas. Chivas are party buses that blare music while people drink, whistle and dance all while the buses drive around town. Afterwards we headed back to the fiestas going on close to the park. People started campfires with cardboard in the middle of the streets which was kinda cool. We had Monday off because December 6 is the day Quito was founded. We went to a concert way in the South of Quito. The Wailers were performing which are the group that Bob Marley used to play with. It was pretty cool.

Cuenca

Three friends and I decided to skip class on Thursday and Friday to go to the colonial town of Cuenca in southern Ecuador. We took a night bus from Quito on Wednesday night. The bu ride was about nine and a half hours. Cuenca is a really cool city. It's much more European than Quito and churches are absolutely everywhere. They have a cathedral that's almost completely made out of marble which is pretty sweet. In our first two hours there we visited 6 churches and one gun shop that was attached to a church. We decided to have a thanksgiving lunch. Since we are in Ecuador, I figured guinea pig made more sense than turkey, so I split one with one of my friends. It was better than the one I had in Latacunga. In the evening, we challenged a group of Ecuadorians to a soccer game. It was fun, although we did end up losing.

On Friday we went to Parque Cajas. Cajas is one of the most awesome places I've been to. It's a huge park with loads of lakes, mountains, and trees to climb. We sort of stayed on the paths, but spent a good portion of the day going cross country and blazing our own trails. There were occasional llamas along the way as well. There were some sweet forests with little rivers going through. We also found a cave, so we went spelunking for a while, which was as awesome as it sounds. At the end of our hike, it started hailing.

Saturday we went to some old Incan ruins called Ingapirca. They were kinda cool, but not as impressive as I had hoped. According to my guide book they were one of the top ten things to do in Ecuador. While they were sort of impressive, we only had two hours to see them, and 5 hours in bus to get there and back, so I did not think it was worth it. However, after having seen them, I only need to climb Cotopaxi (which is planned for in two weeks) and then I've done all ten so that's pretty cool. We took the last bus back home at 9 in the evening. We had to leave Saturday night, because today is the Ecuadorian Censo. The Censo is their census and is really stupid. Everything is shut down and you have to stay in your house all day. Nobody is allowed outside. Supposedly you can get arrested or fined if you are outside your home. Why? I have no idea. It might be to make sure that you're not hiding anyone who's not supposed to be there, but seeing as I was asleep when they came and didn't check, it's not very effective. Anyway, I'm just stuck inside all day so I was catching up on sleep. I got back at four in the morning with the night bus we took.

Ingapirca

The cathedral in Cuenca

Pichincha

This was a pretty eventful week although I didn't actually leave Quito for the first time since early September. Thursday was the first leg of the semifinal of the Copa Sudamericana. Liga was playing against an Argentinian team called Independiente. Tickets are hard to get so a couple friends and I decided to go super early to get them. By super early, I mean that we woke up at 5:30 so we could leave the bus station at 6. We got to the stadium around 6:30 and there was already a pretty long line. The tickets didn't start being sold until 9. Once they started selling tickets the line moved pretty fast. The game itself was tons of fun. It was raining the whole time, but was still really cool. Right before our team was about to come out, two guys came up to us and told us they were going to shoot off fireworks in front of us when the team would come running out. When we asked why where we were, they pointed to the ground at a giant X that was painted right at our feet. Unfortunately, some security guards stopped them, so we didn't get to shoot off fireworks. We were given flares though so that was exciting enough. We ended up winning 3-2.

On Saturday I got a group of my friends to climb Quito's volcano, Pichincha. We took a cable car partly up and then had to hike from there. Although everyone claims that there are roving bands of barbarians waiting to mug tourists at the top, we still decided to go. The hiking was both fun and difficult. The altitude made it pretty hard. It was a cloudy day so we were hiking through clouds. The summit of Pichincha is 4680 meters. It got cold pretty fast, and soon we were hiking through hail. There was also snow around which was cool. Unfortunately, it started thundering while we were hiking, so we figured it probably wasn't too safe hiking through the clouds during a thunderstorm. We did press on to the summit, but we only stayed briefly, and then hurried down. The total hike took about 5 or 6 hours.

Random Pictures

This is the crowds at the quarterfinals of the Copa Sudamericana. We won 1-0

Me being healed by the Huacas at Mama Negra

I didn't actually use the fork and knife

We had Pirate Week on campus one random week, so they built a sunken ship into our pond.

This was before the round of 16 game. Fans climbed the fences and shot off fire extinguishers. We won 6-1

Sigsipamba

I finally made it on my second Andinismo trip this weekend. The trip was to Sigsipamba, which is a rock climbing location, so I was pretty excited. Originally a friend of mine was going to come as well, but he couldn't make it at the last minute. So when I got to the meeting place, it turned out that there were 12 Ecuadorians and me. Before we went rock climbing, we went walking along an abandoned railroad track which had been made into a nice path. We walked about 15 kilometers along it. It was pretty cool. It went through some tiny little villages. There were also tons of stray dogs. Eventually we got picked up by some of the other guides, and we drove to Sigsipamba from there. We had to go along some very rough roads on the way there.

The climbing was pretty cool, but we couldn't go often because there were lots of people there and it got cold pretty fast. I also don't know how difficult it was. They use the French climbing scale in Ecuador, and I'm used to the American. When I asked them what the difficulty was, they told me it was absurdly high, although climbing it wasn't bad. So either they rate them differently here, or the conversion is different than what they thought. We then drove to our campsite which was cool. There were lots of rabbits there which the Ecuadorians found very exciting. One guy mentioned that he had only seen three in his life. The campsite was next to a forest that looked like a miniature Fangorn Forest so that was pretty sweet. We grilled at night. The guides made a little charcoal pit and the Andinismo professor brought a huge slab of meat. We also had some bread so we made sandwiches. They were pretty delicious.

It rained at night, so we weren't able to boulder (climbing without being attached to ropes) because the rocks were wet. I was a bit disappointed, but the alternative ended up being much better. We drove to a small town and took another long walk. This was at another part of the abandoned railroad. There was much more nature there though. We got to walk through old abandoned railroad tunnels which was really sweet. On the side of the path were gorgeous canyons and valleys. Eventually we got to an old railroad bridge where some of the guides had already driven to. They were standing there with harnesses on and ropes attached to the rails. They then told us that we were allowed to rappel down to the bottom structure of the bridge and then climb back up to the top of the bridge. The bridge was 150 meters high, so there was quite a drop. I ended up doing it, and it was really fun. When I got to the top, some old guy was walking by and told us to be careful doing that. Apparently 68 people have died doing what I just finished. If nothing else, this experience in Ecuador has made me feel pretty bad ass.

At the bottom of the bridge

Climbing up

Rappeling down

One view of the surrounding valleys

An abandoned railroad tunnel