sorry dog

I just saw a street dog get run over by a car. It has surprised me that I haven't seen it before. Those dogs are everywhere and it's not like the cars look out for them or try to dodge them at all. Well, now I've seen it and I hope I don't have to again. Sad.

I went into the office yesterday, it being Monday an all. The internet was still not working, I'm getting pretty sick of that place.
Me and Dylan are planning on leaving for Puerto Natales tomorrow, to do a 3 or 4 day hiking trip over new years in Torres del Paine National Park. The park and the mountains there is pretty much what this area is known for so we figured we had to go see it before we left. And I think we will be leaving here before too long. We were planning on staying untill the end of January but for different reasons we will probably head out a little sooner than that.

So, unless I don't write again this year; Happy New Year peoples!

Annandag annorstädes

I don't want to be a Grinch, constantly complaining about the summer x-mas, so I will try and just tell you what has been going on without much fuss. Christmas eve, after the caroling, we went back to the little house (where we live with Jaime & Feliepe) and started cooking. The night before me and Dylan had been asked to bring some appetizers to the big dinner, so we made baba ganoush and bacon & palmito rolls. Jamie made three different kinds of desserts and Randy made a Spanish tortilla. We were here cooking untill 9:30 or so, dinner was suppose to be at 8 so we were right on (Chilean) time. Then in the big house we had a huge family dinner, there was so much food some dishes were not even touched. It was all delicious, I didn't eat the lamb or turkey of course but there was plenty of other stuff...potatoes, breads, casseroles, cous cous with corn and avocado....we were all stuffed.

Then it was just like new years, a countdown for midnight. 3,2,1...Feliz Navidad!! And everyone got up and walked around the table, face kissing and huging each other. We had tea and coffee with some cookies and chocolates and then moved into the family room and opned our gifts by the tree. It was all very nice and then we went back to our little house to go to bed around 1:30 am or so.

Yesterday the family had a big get together at their other grandpa's house but me and Dylan decided not to intrude and stayed here. Unfortunatly all the delicious leftovers were locked up in the big house so we missed out on that feast....
It was a long and lonely christmas day and I really wished I had been somewhere else. Anyways, next year.
Basically we had a really good christmas but it was really short. Tonight we might be meeting up with Randy and Juri and hopefully do something fun. I wish I was home though, today is the big homecomming night in Umeå and everybody who's home for the hollidays goes out.

Feliz Navidad!

It's funny, at home Christmas is over and in the US it's not untill tomorrow. I have talked to my family and Dylan has called his grandma. It's 5 pm here and we're cooking, wrapping the last gifts and getting ready for the big dinner. Feliepe brought 5 lambs with him from his work (the slaughter house) and they're just laying out on our floor now, headless, skinless and lifeless. It does not look appetizing to me at all, but other people are drooling all over the carcasses.
Earlier today we did go and watch the choirs, which was nice and did make it feel more like christmas. Feliz Navidad para todos!

Candy and carols

Christmas tomorrow, I hardly expect the long lost Christmas feelings to suddenly appear before then, but I still look forward to dinner and a nice evening with the Twymans. I may even drag Dylan with me to watch an American boys choir that will perform Christmas carols at Plaza del Armas, downtown at noon tomorrow. At home, we always go to church at noon on christmas eve, and I'd like to hear some carols.

We now have all the presents ready, I just have to wrap them. Since we figured Mama & Papa Twyman already have so much stuff and there's not really anything we could get them that they couldn't just get themselves, I brought out my inner Martha Stewart and made candy yesterday. Three different kinds, Polkabark, Dumbo's kisses and peanut&cookie clusters.

The Polkabark is a simplified version of Ataharis recipie since I couldn't find all the ingridients. It's just melted dark chocolate with chrushed candy canes that you spread out pretty thin, let harden and then break into pieces. Dumbo's kisses I made since Dylan really likes peanuts and they turned out nice (I let D try one), but it almost made me sick having to deal with so much peanut smell making them... It's chocolates with peanutbutter inside and chopped peanuts on top. And the clusters I just made since I had left over chocolate, peanuts and crushed cookie pieces in chocolate. I bought a nice white trey to put it all on and red ribbons to go around. I hope they will like it.

time alone, together & apart

My weekend that was to spent all alone has so far presented itself with a surprising amount of company. Friday I went into the office for a few hours, and then ended up having dinner with Dave and Paulina, two of the people who work there and live in the house where Nómadas throw all their little slaves together. We made tacos and I think it was good to get to hang out outside the office and get to know each other a little better. I have so far been under the impression that Paulina doesn’t like me much, but the other night we were talking and now maybe we can chat a little in the office too, which would be nice.

Yesterday I worked at the Hotel. It was slow and peaceful as usual, untill the end of my shift when Pamela (I guess she’s kind of my boss since she’s the only one who knows a little English and therefor the one I take orders from) came in with her son. He was a 24-year old psychology student, just home from the university in Santiago and he spoke English. Pamela made us tea and we sat and talked for about an hour. Afterwards I felt like he had crawled into my brain and taken a big dump. Maybe he was just playing some reversed mind game that is supposed to make people feel 100% unpleasant, but if not I feel truly sorry for whoever is going to seek counseling from him in the future.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactely what it was that made the conversation so disturbing. For example, he asked about my favourite movies, but by stating “Titanic is the best movie ever, yes?” And when I said “you, think so?” he just smiled this freaking anoying smile and said “no, but this is not about me.”
He asked if my face got red or if I got very sweaty when I exercised. He said, not asked, said that my dream job was to be a secretary. And it went on and on. Every time I tried to make the conversation a dialouge instead on an interrogation, he just dodged my question and threw it back in my face.

It was like he was really trying to piss me off, and he certainly did, I just don’t know why. And I really like Pamela, she is the sweetest lady ever who always makes me tea and brings me snacks and refers to everyone as her little angels. So I didn’t want to get in an argument with her son where I would not doubt end calling him an asshole or something worse.

So when I was walking back to the house, I was really looking forward to a night all by myself. But as I’m in the backyard watering the grass, this random guy appears from the house where I live and says “Hello, my name is Jorge and I will be sleeping here tonight” I was definitly surprised, but he had keys for the house and explained he was Feliepe’s friend who was in town for buisness and had an early flight to catch in the morning and Feliepe had offered him to sleep in our (well, his) house. So, instead of quality time with me, I got to learn about slaughter houses (Jorge and Feliepe both work in the meat buisness), family companies and the pressure of being a young boss. Since Pamela had brought me dinner to take home and eat, I just told Jorge to help himself to whatever he wanted in the kitchen and opened a random, cheap bottle of wine. He made a sandwich and then told me he dreamt about opening his own restaurant and that food and wine were his biggest passions in life....”well, you’re welcome for the sandwich and the 4 dollar wine” I said and felt like an excellent hostess.

He was nice though, and it’s always interesting to hear about worlds that are so different from your own.

Today, I am actually alone so far. I plan on taking a walk to the one mall that’s open on Sundays and look for some presents. Dylan and Randy should be back tomorrow. I hope they’re having a good time. I know I said spending a few days apart would be good for me and D, and it probably is. But I was ready for him to come back Friday night.

Don't forget the sun screen

Dylan and Randy left for a weekend hiking trip early this morning. When I woke up, left at the house were: Randy's boots, both their hats, Dylan's sun glasses and the candy bars. The sun screen was gone though, so that's something.

I work at Ilaia (the Yoga Hotel) tomorrow so I'm staying put in Punta Arenas. Also, I think it will be good for the two of them to spend some man time together and me and Dylan a few days apart just to get something new to talk about.

Giving it back to the Twymans

This is post number 100 on this blog! Just wanted to mention it. Now we can stop celebrating.

I just cut Dylan's hair. He's been wanting to get it done for a long time but didn´t want to go to a hair dresser and we didn't have any scissors, untill last night when Jaime presented a pair. So now he is in the shower and it looks like a sheep got naked on our floor.

Yesterday we got Jamie & Feliepe an early X-mas present, a sprinkler for their new lawn which they have to water every night. We bought it at the hardwear store that mr Twyman owns and where Jamie also works. Damn thing broke when Dylan was going to install it, but hey...no big deal, Jamie just took it back with her when she left for work this morning. We also got a nice leash for walking Ljuiba, that is going to be the gift for Christmas day. We bought it at the pet store that the family also owns...this way it's like we're doubble giving.

Gifts, gifts, gifts....

I'm afraid we're going to be recieving some gifts this Christmas. This means we will feel very bad if we don't present gifts for the people giving us gifts. And this, in turn means that with Christmas being less than 10 days away we have to start figuring out what to do about this.

All of this, I realized last night as Dylan and Randy were planning a hiking trip. They went to bed, early this morning after having decided to leave Wednesday (that would be tomorrow) and come back late Christmas eve. Grand plan boys, as always. That would have meant I would have had to do all the gift shopping on my own. Not that I mind the running around in stores part, that's fun. But figuring out what to get for people you don't really know just because you're having dinner at their house and you're afraid they might be getting something for you....that's not fun. But me not going along on this hiking expedition would have been my own choice and therefor I couldn't really complain.

Anyways, now the plans have changed. I'm telling you, it's like everytime someone sneezes in Chile, ten other people change their minds. So I don't know when/if they're going to go, but I want to get moving on this Christmas shopping asap so it doesn't have to be a last minute deal I'm stuck with alone.

And all I really want for Christmas is darkness and snow. Can't wait till next year when I hope to have both these key ingredients. Family, I suppose, would be really nice too... but darkness and snow, that's what I miss right now.

it's better to kill the time than the boss

This has so far been a pretty crappy Monday. Since I worked at the Yoga Hotel Friday and didn’t come into the office, the boss wanted to meet with me “early” Monday morning to discuss future project. In an office at home that would probably mean around 8, so I figured 9 would be considered early in South America. Sure enough, I was here at 9 and got to meet with the scatter brain at 9:30, only to find she was busy so later would be better. I told her I’d be in front of the computer and just to come find me and she said she would. I caught her at 1 pm, as she was rushing off to a meeting. She told me to come back from my lunch early so we could talk before her next meeting at 4. I did so, came back at 3 only to find she hadn’t had her lunch yet. Again, I said I’d be at my desk and to come get me whenever it was a good time for her to have this meeting. She said she would. I sat at my desk and for the first 45 minutes the internet didn’t work. It’s almost 6 now and still no meeting. I don’t really care though, if they want to give me more work, I’ll do it, but if not….hey, that’s fine with me.

I’ve gotten two positive responses from adventure magazines who want to print my features and I also got one interview lined up today. So I guess it hasn’t been an all crappy day.

And come Wednesday, almost everyone at the office (at least all the people in charge) will be gone on a 14 day expedition so then I’m going to start working more from home instead of sitting here waiting for people who only notice you when you’re gone. Dylan was here this morning, 4 hours in front of the computer without anyone saying more than “Buenos Dias” to him. When he didn’t come back after lunch, immediately I get “where’s Dylan?”

Now it probably sounds like I don’t like this place at all, which is not the case. I just feel like it’s their job to keep me busy and if they don’t I will just work on helping myself getting published. In that sense it’s a fair trade I guess….they need me to write their stuff and I need them to get my articles published.

a slow summer saturday

Dylan is still sleeping and I just watered the lawn. It's getting more and like summer every day and I can't really say that I like it...it just feels wrong when you're trying to get in the christmas spirit. My brother called and got me out of bed this morning. I haven't heard from him in a long time, so that was the perfect start of the day. The rest of the day will be slow though, I have a feeling. We went out with Adrien from the office last night and I went home at 3 or so, but Dylan stayed out later. Not sure when he came back. They were having a long and serious discussion about soccer and FIFA when I left, which is also why I left.

But when/if he actually gets out of bed I'm going to try and listen to some of the Spanish DVDs his parents sent us. Their care package arrived yesterday, muchos gracias.

My work day at Ilaia, the Yoga Hotel, yesterday was something else. Basically I have gone from paying for Spanish classes (the two classes I took in Peru) to getting them for free at the coffee shop to actually get paid to learn. Because that's kind of what this job is. Officially I work at the front desk, but since my Spanish is not good enough to be there by myself there is always someone else there too. What they want from me is basically English, nobody there speaks it very well so I have to do some translating, write e-mails, confirm with foreign guests... all the while being served organic tea, home made scones and marmelade. And I'm forced to use my Spanish, however bad it is, so it's good for my learning.

But this place, yeah....it's really out there, spiritually speaking. In a nice and not at all freaky way, but still, very out there. The lady I worked with yesterday said she could tell from my aura that I was a vegetarian because people who consume animals have a more aggressive energy. She also lays a hand on whoever she is speaking to, in order to conect through more than words. When my shift was over she said that my spirit was welcome in the Ilaia family and that my energy would be with them even after I left... maybe that's why I'm tired today, because my energy is left at the hotel?

This is from Monday night´s dinner. Randy, the parents and some friends came over. Jaime is a really good cook and I like helping her out in the kitchen. It´s perfect cause I get to feel like I´m making all these complicated dishes, but really I´m just chopping, peeling and doing what I´m told. I did pretty much make everything that´s on the table though, the couscous, the bread and I set the table. The first dinner with x-mas napkins for this year.

Now I´m on my way to work at the Laughing Yoga Hostel for the first time. Hahahaha....I´m prepared.

(no) X-mas in the sun

Jaime brought in the christmas tree today and now we´re trying to put it together. It´s like a puzzle. The stem has different coloured holes and the branches different coloured ends to go in it. I still have zero christmas feeling, today at the grocery store they did play a funky latino cover of Jingle Bells, but that didn´t quite do it. Summer vacation started Monday and when the sun in still shining at 9:30 in the evening...why put up x-mas lights or light candles?
I hope I´m somewhere dark and snowy next year.

Yesterday we went hiking with Randy and Feliepe up Mount Tarn. It was freezing cold and really, really windy. But hey, if Darwin could do it....
I was kind of hoping to see a carving on a tree or something saying "Darwin was here" but no such luck.

Ok, now I´m going to help decorate the tree.

Squeezed in at the office

Dylan called and talked to people at the immigration office this morning. What’s positive in this big pile of crap is that now, having waited so long and paid so much money, we actually get to talk to people when we call. It used to be answering machines, or at best, people at the wrong office who had no idea who we were or where our case file might be. This morning we got a lady who actually knew her job and explained to us what all was missing from our file. It still feels a long ways away and like we have a lot more hoops to jump through, but, it’s not completely impossible that we might actually get to live in the same country one day, both being able to work. Imagine that.

Dylan decided to stay home today, organizing our paper work and trying to make sure we had copies of all the right stuff. I’m lucky he still has energy to do this; my brain starts over heating just thinking about it.

So I went to the Nòmadas office, where we “work” now, explaining that he had to wait by the phone expecting a very important phone call from the US . I’m working on a press release that should go out this week if I can get their contact lists in order. Non-profits are great, but working for them you have to have a lot of patience as most things are so un-organized they make me feel like the office rain-man.

Tomorrow is a catholic holiday so the office will be closed. I think it’s virgin Mary’s day or something of the sort. I don’t really care, but I will try and think some catholic thoughts. In Sweden, this would have been a "klämdag" a squeeze day, which is a work day squeezed in between two days off. Nobody likes to be squeezed, not even days, so we always let them off. I have tried to explain this concept to both Americans and Chileans, and while they all seem to think it's a great invention, I don't think they quite understand how percectly logical it is.

first no news then bad news

We got an e-mail from the US immigration services today. I used to think there was a possibility, maybe even likely, that I´d have my Green Card in March and be able to go the US with Dylan. But I don´t anymore.
It´s too much bullshit to write it all down, too much to take in. Every single think we send in we have to send in again and now they want the originals. One of the forms we sent in months ago we now have to fill out again because appearantly we didn´t use black or blue ink (!?!) Which of course we did. But it´s too rediculous. Too much.

Dylan is pissed off, walking around slaming doors and waiting for their phone hours to begin so he can call them. I have no anger left. I have been so mad, stressed, nervous about this whole ordeal for so long, that I´m just done. I guess I will start looking for jobs back home. This just doesn´t seem like it´s meant to be. I don´t know.

Laughing all the way to work

So much can change in two days. And it has. Well, the sky is still blue and the water in the toilet still swirls the wrong way so it´s not like we´re not still upside down down here, but there has been some changes.

The people we had Thanksgiving dinner with last Thursday all work for this non-profit called Nomadas whose main focus is to organize an adventure race(http://patagonianexpeditionrace.com/) every year. The French guy who invited us to dinner is doing an internship there and met Dylan playing soccer and well, yeah.....at dinner we met pretty much the rest of the staff. Then I e-mailed them this week, asking if they needed any help, volounters, whatever, and I had an interview yesterday and started today. Dylan had his interview today and starts tomorrow. The arrangements are not really finalized yet. I doubt we´ll get paid, the budget is really tight and any profits made goes directly to a saving the wildlife fund. But the experience and a few lines on my resume together with a letter of recomendation would be enough for me. It´s not like I´m going to commit to a full time, 40 hours a week if I don´t get paid anything, but we both have a meeting with the boss tomorrow morning so we´ll probably figure it out then.
It´s good. Something to do and new people to meet.

And as if that wasn´t enough... Randy came back from Puerto Williams today and I had not been home for 20 minutes before he took me to this Laughing Yoga Spa & Hostel (seriously...) that some old collegues of his have opened down town. I tried to tell him I was not really looking for work anymore, but somehow I ended up leaving there with a promise of filling in for the receptionist when needed. We´ll see what happens with that, maybe they won´t need me at all. Laughing Yoga.... I need to learn better Spanish so I can speak for myself.

Thursday night. We´re about to watch Let the right one in, the Swedish nomine for the Oscars. I kind of liked the book, so I´m excited. Although at this point I would be excited about a documentery about mud as long as it was in Swedish.
And then work again tomorrow. What a strange feeling.

Fancy gifts and cold Swedes

Tuesday night. We´re sitting in the new living room, Dylan is watching TV and Jaime is in the kitchen, trying to find room for all the newly deliverd and unpacked wedding gifts. We always had a living room, but as of this weekend we actually spend time in it since it now has a coach, three comfy chairs, a rug and a wide screen tv. Considering how lavish their wedding was, I shoudn´t be surprised over the gifts they recieved, but it´s hard not to be. Wide screens (I think I already mentioned they got two), furniture (BIG furniture), fancy kitchen apparel, art, electronic stuff...

Yeah, it´s a different world. I´m still very excited about the muffin pan we got for our wedding. When we actually have a kitchen I´m making muffins like nobody´s buisness. Blueberry, cranberry/almond, chocolate, raisin/bran, you name it. And to go with the muffins, smoothies from our new blender. One day, in Ecuador I think it was, me and Dylan were sitting in an internet café, surfing away both kind of tired of the nomadic life style. We had a gift certificate at amazon.com and ended up bying a blender and a vaccum cleaner for our future and hopefully not too distant life in one place. It really cheared us up, too. I never though bying a vaccum clearner would make me so happy. Kudos to Dana and Darryl for storing our stuff...

Today Dylan came with me to the coffee shop for the first time. They have started showing movies there and I brought ginger bread from my care package and we had coffee and ginger bread while watching Angels & Demons. It was pretty good, I think I understood almost 75% of what happened. Subtitels in Spanish and low volume at a café is not the best setting for understanding a plot....

The people at the coffee shop are cool. Sometimes I pay for my tea or coffee, but they never ask me too and when I try most of the time they won´t let me. Being accepted as one of the group gets me free beverages but also requires me to cheak-kiss everone every time I come and every time I leave. I´m getting more comfortable with this Southamerican habit, but it´s still a little akward at times. At heart I will always be a cold Swede uncomfortable with exagerated displays of affection.
And speaking of Swedes. Francesco, one of the guys working at the coffee shop, used to date a Swedish girl....guess from what town? That´s right, Umeå. I don´t know her, though. We don´t even have any friends in common on facebook so that must mean I really don´t know her, all according to Francesco.

can´t quite get this to work

The pictures won´t really load like they should. But at least I got one up. This is me and Ljuiba, walking down Kuzma Slavic, our street, on saturday.

It is warming up. I now only wear my winter coat if we´re going out at night, and some days you don´t even need a scarf or mittens.

no pictures yet...

Damn it, I was going to post some pictures, because yesterday we actually took a bunch, but I can´t figure out how to get them loaded onto Jamie´s computer. Maybe later.
Anyways, yesterday was not too bad weather wise and me and Dylan took Ljiuba (I think that´s how you actually spell Lubob´s name) for a long walk and snapped some pictures along the way.

At night Jamie´s parents had a hot dog party in their BBQ-house (that´s right, they have a house in their yard, the size of a big appartment, used only for BBQ-ing since it´s too windy and cold to be outside) with some aunts and cousins and after that me, Dylan, Jamie and Feliepe went to the casino. The casino is a new and huge building downtown with a roof top bar. That´s where we went first to have a drink and enjoy the view. While waiting to be seated I went to the bathroom and got to enjoy peeing while over looking the city and sea from three directions, magnificent!

However, when we finally got seated, it was in the very corner and then the waitress was rude and said we were too late to order the 2 for 1 drink offers they had. I obviously didn´t pick up on much of that, I don´t go to fancy roof top bars on a regular basis and when I do, I asume that if the waitress is rude to me it´s because she can tell I don´t go to fancy roof top bars on a regular basis.
I was oblivious, trying to figure out the correct grammar for asking wether they had any white wine instead of the listed coctails (I don´t really care for Pisco) when Feliepe suddenly snapped at the waitress, grabbed his coat and marched to the elevators. Jamie was right behind him and after them, me and Dylan, confused and trying to keep up.
So instead we payed a $10 dollar cover to have a drink in the downstairs casino bar. It was a good time, but I don´t think I will be a regular at that place.

Today, a bunch of soccer teams are playing so the guys will be watching games and me and Jaime are going to the store to get what we need for tonights sushi making.

care package

They´re the best. Yesterday my mom´s x-mas package got here. Jamie told us it was from Dylan´s parents and I got really excited because they´re supposed to send us some Spanish discs for self studying. But instead I got some Swedish treats, so I´m not that disappointed. Now it´s Saturday morning and after a couple of sandwiches with egg and Kalles Kaviar, I feel pretty good. On the kitchen counter is a bowl of Gott & Blandat, only it´s not really Blandat any more...for some reason the black pieces never get eaten.

Still no sight of my cell phone, I have a feeling it will get here just in time to take it back home. Now that we have a phone in the house, it´s not that big of a deal though, and a very limited number of friends also helps.

Thanksgiving was fun. There was turkey, asparagus and mashed sweet potatoes with banana and orange. Sounds really funky, I know, but it was a recipie from Rachel Ray and actually tasted pretty good. We also went around the table and gave thanks before the meal. Only once have I been forced to do that before, but I actually kind of like that tradition.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hey, it´s the turkey day! I really don´t care that much, I have only had two real Thanksgivings in my life and two fake ones. The real ones were in Minnesota and Idaho, the fake ones in China and Sweden with Americans who simply couldn´t do without poultry and pumkin pie. I didn´t even know today was the day until Dylan got an e-mail this morning inviting us to this French dude´s house for dinner tonight. He´s like French/American though (I think, I´ve never met him) and Dylan met him playing soccer. But it should be fun, any holiday is a good reason to celebrate. Thanksgiving in Chile with a French twist....I think this will count as another fake one.

Today was the windiest it has been in a long time. Walking down Bulnes avenue to downtown I had to take probably ten pauses where I just stood still, concentrating on staying upright and not letting the wind knock me over. Snot and eyeball juice streaming horizontal from my face I finally made it to Spanish class in more than twice the time it normally takes to walk downtown. It was only my second actual class here, but I try to study on my own, even though it´s pretty hard. Now (since I asked for it) I also have homework to do. For tomorrow I am supposed to write the story of my life in Spanish. I have a feelings it will be very simplified and contain very few details. My favourite word in Spanish as of right now is trabajaba. Any excuse to use that in a sentence.

I just got off the phone with my mother. She has made this years first lussekatter. A year ago I was at home, baking them with Karin and Anette....good times. Sweden and advent seem very far away right now.

something fishy

Just finished dinner, fish in the oven. Didn´t turn out too bad. A lot better then the seafood wok we attempted last week, that was one soggy mess. This weekend when Feliepe is here the four of us are going to have a sushi night and make our own sushi, I haven´t had sushi since I don´t even know when...so I´m excited. Jaime is a fena in the kitchen too (only funny in Swedish) so as long as we let her be in charge, the result should be delicious.

But so far it´s just Tuesday and we just got some bad news. Lech, Feliepe´s dog who got arrested for biting cheep, is dead. He somehow strangled himself on his chain. So that sucks.

I spend my day today at the coffee shop, reading and studying. Dan, my Spanish instructor was there too cause his class got cancelled and we had tea. He asked me to guess his age and I said 30. He is 23. Kind of embarassing, but then he asked for my age first and when I said 27 he said, you´re still a child..... so what the hell does that make him, an infant? he was asking for it.

Back in town

We came back today after three days in Tierra del Fuego. Feliepe lives in a town called Sombrero and if there is a place on earth with less action, I´d like to see it. Now, bear in mind that I´m from Holmsund and Dylan from Rathdrum. It´s not like we have high standards when it comes to activites and stuff to do, but I have never seen a sleepier town, and so far from any other civilization. But, we didn´t go there to be social. We went to visit Feliepe and to go camping and that we did.
Saturday morning the dogs had ran away and we drove around for ever looking for them. Finally they were escorted back to the house by the cops, accused of biting cheep. I don´t know what will happen with them now. Lubob gets off the hook for being a puppy but Lech might be facing death penalty.

So when we finally drove off for the end of the road, that´s where Feliepe wanted to camp "at the end of the road", only Lubob got to go. Lech was chained up and left at the house.
Unfortuntly we didn´t have enough gas to make it to the end of the road, so when we thought we could still make it back on what we had left in the tank, we set camp. The wind was ruthless as always but we stayed clear of the rain and had a very nice evening by the camp fire.
Yesterday we drove back to Sombrero and had a lazy afternoon and night by the tv. Now we´re back in Punta Arenas and today the phone and internet was finally installed in the house, communication with the outside world made easier by a lot of percent, yeah! I don´t know our phone number yet, but when I do, I will inform those who may want it.

Music and Memories

Earlier this afternoon as I was sitting in the coffee shop, studying my Spanish and drinking the cheapest coffee on the menu (instant, no sugar but you do get a tiny cookie) they were playing Cat Stevens and Oasis on the stereo. It´s not like this is the first time music has ever reminded me of times passed, but this was just song after song, and it made it really hard to focus on the vocab I intended to memorize. So finally I gave up and instead started making a little list of songs and music related to certain parts of my life.

Oasis - most all of their songs are simply the soundtrack of (hjalp mig har, Steken, Berta...?) 9th grade I think it was. Akward teenage years, writing on Wonder Walls, gossip in locker rooms, gossip everywhere, make up, push up. I was never really into Oasis (or Blur, Suade, Pulp or whatever they played on Alternative Nation, which I never watched) but my friends were.

U2-staring at the sun. Even though I wasn´t into music I did buy a few CD´s and singles. This one was the summer after 8th grade. Miserable. Still can´t stand this song.

Loop troop, A camp, the Cardigans - my first years of college. Good times.

Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan (and many others) - Dylan introduced me to this kind of music, old folksy stuff, as he introduced himself to my life. Moscow. Probably the best year of my life.

Whitney Huston & Mariah Carey (when you believe?) This song was played every single day at lunch time in Yantian Foreign Language School. If I heard it now I could probably taste the rice and string beans.

Cajsa-Stina Akerstrom (Av langtan till dig) -I don´t know any song with more beautiful lyrics than this one. It was playing in the cab when I was driven out to the airport, leaving for Idaho the first time. I was holding back tears since I didn`t want to cry in front of the cab driver but for various reasons I thought I was making a terrible mistake leaving and looking back I could not have been more wrong. This is also the song me and Dylan walked into at our wedding. I didn´t care that much about any other details about the wedding, but I knew this had to be the song.

Oh, the list could go on and on. But I have to go to the store now and then back to the house and pack my bag. We are going camping in Tierra del Fuego this weekend. Should be fun, and hopefully not too cold since we don´t have sleeping pads.

Anyways, I´m not smart enough to figure out how to check how many people actually read this. I know it´s not many, but I also know that a handful actually do.... sometimes.
So if you would, do leave a comment and let me know what some of your special songs are. It´d be fun to see. Thanks.

Observations

Life is less exciting now. Not necessarily in a bad way. Words are still written but not all words are for all eyes so I go back to pen and paper for the observations I want to keep to myself. Although most of the time I don´t want to keep them at all, just get them out.

I manage to fill most of my days with enough meaning now. If I don´t go to the coffee shop when I´m supposed to, people will wonder where I am. I have Spanish classes. I have people. I miss my friends, but I have people. I have Dylan too of course, but not only him. Isolation is not healthy. Not for me, not for us. He has soccer now, this is good.

This morning I went for a run that came to be much faster and shorter than I had planned. A street dog chased me the whole way. I didn´t even take time to stop and open the gate, just jumped the fence and then he stood there, howling on the street, for ten minutes. Stupid mutt.

Sunday

Sunday, grocery shopping and a walk with the puppy. She´s getting pretty good at "sit" but "heel" is way over her head. I bought two different kinds of doggy treats to help with the learning process but she doesn´t like either of them. Just spits them out.
When she´s good I like to take credit for it and feel like a good step-mom. When she´s a pill, it´s just someone else´s dog and has nothing to do with me.

We´re talking about whether to stay here after x-mas or head to Argentina and do some more travelling. I don´t know. On one hand I would like to see as much of Argentina as we can, now that we´re here. But on the other hand, we have limited fundings and leaving that early means giving up a free place to stay. We´ll see. It also depends on what happens with my helping out at the tourist agency and Dylan´s soccer team. He has his first practise tomorrow and woke up with sore hamstrings this morning, supposivly from the anticipation of actually running.

Where do the days go?

Another friday, the 13th nonetheless. But I believe there has been a lot of them in recent years and I´m not too worried.
I even bought an overpriced piece of goat cheese today, just because it´s weekend (and I really miss cheese)

Since last, the guy did eventually get back to me and I had my first Spanish class with him today. Instead of paying him, I will put in a few hours a week at this café/tourist agency that his friend owns. It seems fair and like a good deal to me. I get to learn some Spanish, I get something to do during the days and if something better comes along it will be easy to quit.

It also seems like Dylan has found himself a soccer team, we went and watched them play a game last night and the coach invited him to come practise with them on monday. So that should be good for him, he´s been really eager to play.
I stick with the gym, I found one here (well, it´s right next door so it wasn´t hard to find) that´s pretty good, pretty cheap and has a few decent classes. Mondays and thursdays I do "Power jump" which is kind of rediculous but still a pretty good work out. And besides, ever since the aerobic classes in China, I don´t think there is a work out routine that could possibly embarass me. I just jump along, sweat and pretend I´m in fluorescent spandex.

Tonight we are going to a birthday party. Randy´s friend Juan is turning something close to 30, possibly even 30, and is having a party. We met him and his wife at Jamie´s wedding (we were actually seated next to them during the dinner) so it should be fun.

Oh, and Lubob´s broken puppy heart is healing pretty fast. She is a lot calmer now that Lech is gone but she has gone from suicidal to tail-wagging and seemingly allright in the last few days.

that is one sad puppy

The guy who sounded so promising about getting me a job and Spanish classes has not e-mailed me back. That was monday, this is wednesday and I have little patience. So now the question is, do I just go back to the office like I figured he accidently gave me the wrong e-mail address or has been really busy or whatever, or do I just wait and hope he eventually gets back to me??

Feliepe and Jamie (the couple we are staying with) came back from their honey moon monday night and unpacked their wedding gifts. They got, not only one, but two flat screen TV:s. This is very good since it means me and Dylan can keep their "old" TV in our room.
Feliepe left this morning to go back to Tierra del Fuego, where he works. He took Lech, his dog, with him, as usual. But since Lubob (the puppy) has gotten so used to always having Lech around, since they´ve been together since before the wedding, she is now grieving the loss of her friend. She started at 6 am, when they took off, sitting right outside our window, crying her heart out. I felt really bad for her, then a little for myself for not getting any sleep. But it´s heartbreaking to see her, she used to always jump around and be the biggest pill ever and now she´s just laying around, sobbing. We´ll have to pamper her with lots of walks and attention these next couple of days. I´ll have to buy new dog treats too. I bought some last week that appearently are not that yummy....they won´t eat them but hide them in the yard.

Now the rain is pouring down, so I´ll linger at the internet café a little longer. I don´t understand why they even have weather forecasts here. Since we got here every day has been the same, some sun, some rain, maybe some hail, maybe some snow...and constant wind. Don´t leve the house without a rain jacket and don´t plan a picknick unless you have a plane ticket to put in the basket. Maybe I should just be the weather girl...?

No case of the mondays

The package my mom sent from Sweden with Jamie and Feliepe´s wedding gift arrieved today, about 3 weeks after she sent it. Perfect timing though, since the newlyweds are due back to Punta Arenas tonight. And I´m glad it did arrive at all, nobody had told us that the regular mail is not to be trusted here ("How did you send it?" "In the mail.." "the regular mail??" "yeah..." "oh, not good, nobody uses the regular mail here") so we were affraid it had gotten stolen along the way. Now I just hope they´ll let my christmas package through too, but I told my parents not to put anything expensive in there, just in case.

Today I found a lead to what might be the answer to my being bored out of my mind and restless like a hamster without a wheel. I probably shouldn´t get my hopes up before it´s all worked out, but it´s way to late for that. Anyways, today has been a good day so far.

The soup took a lot longer to make than we had anticipated, mainly because we didn´t actually read the instruction part of the recipie before we were about to start. It turned out ok though, but too sweet for my taste, not a personal favourite.

Today it seems the wind is even stronger than usual. I can´t believe people choose to live here their whole lives, the weather would drive me nuts. We took the dogs for a walk along the water again this morning, even though the wind is worse along the beach there are less street dogs and less things to sniff there, so walking the two tazmanian devils is a little easier. But today the wind was just too brutal.

Nothing else, over and out.

Long days in the long country

As much as I do enjoy not having to pack and repack my stuff every other day, aswell as carrying my backpack, sleeping on busses and all the other not so cool sides of travelling budget style, I am getting really freaking bored here. Yesterday we had lunch with Juri´s (Dylan´s old room mate from Moscow) dad who has a lot of buisnesses here in Punta Arenas and he is going to try and help us get something to do with our time. I´d be happy with pretty much anything. Fun and money would be a bonus, pretty much I just need a reason for getting up in the morning other than using the bathroom.

Friday today and another weekend coming up. We have no plans though, other than attempting to cook French onion soup tonight and invite Randy over. Jamie has a lot of cook books and we found a recipie that fit our criterias, not too complicated and all the ingredients are pretty cheap and except for bay leaves (lagerblad??) we had heard of all of them before. So, onion soup it is.

I´m excited they have goat cheese that´s really good here, but it´s unfortunatly also really expensive and not something you could eat every day. I haven´t seen any soy milk or other soy products, but they do have lactose free milk and yoghurt which makes my life easier.

I wish I had more exciting things to report, but I don´t. Life is slow.

Laila K till frukost

I wonder what it is with Swedish music in Chile. You hear Abba way more often than you´d wish, Roxette, Europe and Ace of Base are not unfamiliar on the radio and DJ Mendez (who is Chilean, I didn´t know that) is disturbingly enough actually famous here. Yuck.

And then this morning, as I´m making breakfast, Laila K is suddenly in da house. I had totally forgotten about her. She´s like the Amy Winehouse of Sweden, only not talented, and hasn´t been around for years as far as I know. Last I heard about her was a debate on whether she was dead, homeless or making a comeback. And there she is, on Chilean radio. Now the question is, is this acutally a comeback or is Chile just stuck in the 80´s?

Last night we took the dogs for a walk along the shore. I call it a walk but it´s more like forcing them to be on a leash, trying to move in one direction, while we let them out of the yard. And the moon was just amazing, I have never seen anything like it. Of course we had no camera but I´ll be ready with it for the next time. First we didn´t even know if it was the sun or the moon, if someone had told me it was a new, undiscovered planet that would have made more sense. It was dark yellow, full, hanging just above the horizon and absolutely huge. At that point I forgave Punta Arenas for the harsh winds for a while and thought this is actually a really cool place.

Jag kommer inte hem till jul, men sen...

We bought our tickets home yesterday. Home for me and home for Dylan, we are going together though. I can´t believe we were able to find tickets from Buenos Aires to Stockholm to Seattle for just $1100. That´s insanely cheap. But they will get more expensive with time so even though we don´t know if the visa process will be ready by then, or much before then, we bought them. We will leave Buenos Aires for Stockholm (ah, moder Svea) october 3rd and spend a month in the land of ice and snow, then asuming my visa is ready, we will go to the US March 3rd. If it´s not however, I will have to change my flight and stay home longer. I really hope that won´t happen so we have to do more time appart, but there´s no point worrying about it now.

Last night we rented "Gomorra", the Italian mob movie and were really excited about watching it, but it was in Italian with only Spanish subtitles.... so no luck. That sucked.
I have gotten really lazy with trying to learn Spanish since we got here since we are almost always with Randy or people who speak English. I need to change that and try harder.

Randy is trying to find Dylan a soccer team, he says otherwise he´s afraid he´s going to stop getting out of bed in the mornings. I don´t think that would happen, but Dylan is perfectly comfortable staying in a whole day, just reading books and playing with the dogs. I admire that at the same time as it can drive me nuts, cause I can´t do it. I climb the walls. Right now I´m downtown, I was going to call home but can´t get Skype, and also maybe go around to some of the hostels around and see if there´s any need for some help.

Sunday with wolves and dogs

Halloween didn´t really happen. We spent most of yesterday out at Rody and Carina´s at the estancia with Randy´s parents and when we got back Randy still hadn´t found his cell phone so if there was a big party to find out about, well, we didn´t. It was still a good time though, the estancia was pretty cool. Rody drove us around and we saw flamingos, emus (I think that´s what they are...huge, running birds) and of course a lot of sheep. And at night, Randy came over and took us downtown for a while.

We will just have to throw a cosume party sometime later, to make sure the costumes get to be used.

Today we slept in, watched Dances with wolves (Dylan is reading Sacajewea and is having this whole native American hang up for the moment, calling me squaw and stuff....) and then took the dogs for a walk. Jamie and Feliepe has two dogs, a collie named Lech and a German sheppard puppy called Luiba, but we call it Lubob. They are really friendly, hyper and nice dogs, but I don´t think anyone has ever put them on a leash before so walking them is something of a challenge. But we are going to try and do it once a day.

Right now I think our best bet for finding something to do is going to be within tourism, since that´s the season starting now. We have a few ideas. Hopefully something works out.

Only wind this strong and the fact that I´m really far from home could make me buy (and wear) an apricot coloured corduroy coat. But that´s what I found at the thrift store (Dylan can find them everywhere, it´s like they call out for him) and I wear it as soon as I leave the house. The wind never stops, ever.
At the same thrift store though, we found some pretty sweet Halloween costumes, so we got them, hoping there will be some kind of festivities tomorrow. A pumkin for Dylan, an Austin Power suit for Randy and of course a black witch dress for me, to match my hair.

Yesterday I took another hour of my life to fill out another one of the endless forms US immigrations ask for. I swear I have answered every singe question at least five times before. I hope we find something to do here, but more than anything I wish we could get some kind of time frame, how much longer we have to wait.

the best Thriller-dance ever

This morning I went to the gym that is (conveniently enough) located right next to Jamie´s house. I don´t know if I´ll get a membership yet, Randy says there are more gyms in the area and I should compare prices and stuff.... but I got a one time pass to try it out. And the class and the gym was everything you´d expect a gym to be, but what happened after class was the most spectacular thing I´ve seen in a long time.

So after class, into the room with the mirrors and the stereo walks a group of maybe 20 mentally handicapt teenagers. They had some kind of dance class, and did this routine to Michael Jackson´s "Thriller"..... it was so cool, they were all in sync too, even had two people in wheel chairs do all the hand movements with assistants pushing them around on the dance floor. From what I understood they were preparing for a Halloween show. It was really cool.

I don´t know if we´ll do anything for Halloween still, it all depends on other people since we don´t exactly have our own group of friends here. What we do have though, finally, is keys to the front gate. We got them today so now we don´t have to jump the fence anymore, which is nice. People just look at you kind of funny when you have to jump the fence to your own place.

Satan vad det blåser!

We finally made it down to Punta Arenas yesterday, this is pretty much as far south as you can go on this continent and you can tell by the wind. When we were in Santiago a lot of the people from this area complained that their noses and throats felt stuffed and that they missed the breeze. Here, you open your mouth to say something and almost choke on the wind. My eyes are running and I need to buy some warm shoes, pants and a hat.

But other than that, this place seems pretty cool so far and we are hoping we will find something to do here so we can stay a while. Right now we´re living in Jamie and Feliepe´s house since they are on their honeymoon. It´s right next to Randy and his parents so that´s nice. It feels amazing to unpack, do laundry, buy groceries and cook for yourself in a nice, normal kitchen. Not that it was too terrible to constantly be waited on in Limache, but still.

Monday night (when we were still staying with Randy´s friend Tommy) I got an impulse and decided I had to dye my hair. Most things I do with my hair, I unfortunatly do on impulse. My hair has gradually gotten worse and worse since we left Idaho. A lot of sun, crappy schampoo, no time or space for condtioner and then in Ecuador I treated myself to some form of volume perm that completely fried my hair. Terrible decision, terrible result.... it was cheap, though. In Lima, while Dylan was puking his guts out and I was bored, I got a haircut and was almost yelled at by the hairdresser for how bad my hair was, like I didn´t know. I told her to just trim it like half an inch or so and she took off one and a half, which I guess was a good thing. Didn´t look good, though.
And then, to top it off, I decided to go darker since the sun has bleeched my hair so much. I swear the box said "Chocolate" but this is black, very black. I feel like the next step would be to do a Brittney and shave it all off, but I´ll try not too.
Dylan is nice about it too, "hey, at least you can be something really scary for Halloween".
That I can.

craziest wedding I´ve seen

This has been a crazy week. After we met up with Randy in Santiago on Wednesday we headed straight out to Limache, a small town next to Viña del Mar and stayed with the groom´s family on their mansion like property, helping getting things ready for the wedding. And we did help, I mean we worked and did everything we could and that they asked us to do, but they had staff doing all the hard stuff. In fact, hey had staff doing pretty much everything around the house. We had people make our bed, cook us breakfast, clean our clothes.... it was like a real honeymoon. And then yesterday, the wedding and grand final, was so far over the top... it was just ridicoulus. But cool.
250 people, first witnessing the ceremony at the private chapel they have in their garden, then feasting on 12 grilled lams, king crab and just tons and tons of food, cakes, wine, rum and probably every other drink known to man. And that was just lunch.... I don´t know for sure how long the party lasted. I lasted till about 10 or so.

Today we are having lunch at the hotel we´re staying at with the Twyman family and then me, Dylan and Randy will probably go back to Santiago and stay with one of Randy´s friends untill we fly to Punta Arenas on Tuesday. We have to be out of our room in half an hour and we just started talking about where to go next about an hour ago, planning is not a priority here. But we´re having a great time. It´s so good to be among friends and not have to worry about much else than being on time and doing what you´re told.

About to join the wedding mania

One evening, one night and one morning. That will be all the time we spend in Santiago, at least this time around. It seems like a cool city though, so I definitly like to come back. We arrived yesterday and got a hold of Randy, who is flying in today. He basically gave us the choice of either staying in central Santiago by ourselves for a couple of days and see the city, or join him and the wedding party right away to help getting things ready for the big celebration saturday. And that´s what we decided on, that way we can get to know more people and also helping out will make us feel less like outsiders and should be fun.

So now we´re just haning out at our hostel, we just had breakfast and in about an hour we will take the subway to meet Randy who just flew in. We haven´t seen him since way back in the old Moscow days, so I´m really excited.

What sucks though, is (as always) the whole battle with US immigration and my Green Card. It just doesn´t ever end, or make sense. So we pay $70 to file the seccond part of the application, after six weeks they send us a form asking if they have my correct address. Yes, they do, so I cross the box and send it in. Another six weeks pass and they send a new form, if I want them to keep processing my case, that´s another $400. And what have they done in these almost three months...? Made sure they had my correct postal address. If it wasn´t my time and money I´d be laughing. I don´t even want to think about how much money we spent on this ordeal so far, although I kind of wish we would have kept track, cause it´s a lot. A lot more than we spend travelling for weeks in South America.

But so far there´s nothing to do but patiently wait and see what happens. As for right now I´m just going to focus on Jamie Sue´s wedding and having a good time with Randy, Juri and their families.
Problems and headaches never need an invitation to find you.

One last walk-about in Arica

Last day in Arica, we fly to Santiago tomorrow. We actually thought we were leaving today, having no job and minimum responsebilities makes it hard to keep track of days and dates.
The weekend here in dessert Chile has been good and not very exciting as we´re trying to save money and energy for the wedding-filled week to come. Yesterday we went to a local soccer game, the team was not that good but it was fun to see, and we´ve also been checking out the local markets and trying some of the excellent seafood they have here.

Normally empanadas (som piroger fast tusen gånger bättre än Gorby´s) are not for me since they usually stuff them with pork, chicken or the kind of fresh cheese that makes my stomach a factory of pain and gas. Here, however they have seafood empanadas, cheap and delicious. They also have these hot dogs called Completos, which is like a gigant sub sandwich with a small hot dog completly covered in guacamole, tomato, mayo and lettuce. Minus the dog, it´s a great veggie sandwich.

Today we plan on walking up to the view pont overlooking the city and maybe take another stroll along market street. Dylan is on the lookout for a suit or jacket for the wedding. He found one at the market yesterday that supposivly was "money". But it was also too small, so no deal. It´s hard to fill the days with activities in small cities with little to offer while you also try to save your money. We do a lot of walking around.

Bienvenidos a Chile!

We finally made it to Chile, and even though it seems it´s quite more expensive here than other places we´ve been, I don´t care. Just so excited to finally have made it.

Last night after my Spanish class we had Italian food from this small, expensive restaurant called Domino´s... yeah, we spend more money on pizza and cheesy bread than on the hotel yesterday, but the food still wasn´t more than in the US. You can´t eat like that every day travelling, but sometimes it seems worth it and just what you need. Suprisingly enough this was also the first American chain we´ve seen since Colombia. There has been no McDonalds, Subways or KFC´s around. Not like in China where they were everywhere.

So now we have 4 days to spend here in Arica before we fly to Santiago on tuesday. I don´t know what there is to do here, so far we have only made it from our hostel to the internet café down the street where they´re playing Abba in Spanish. I wonder if it´s really them singing or not...? It sounds like the real Anne-Frid and Agnetha... but maybe it´s Agñetia and Fridolita, my music ear has never quite been in tune.

Flight of the Condors

Peruvian time is not like other time. That actually goes for all parts of South America we visited so far. So when we were told they´d pick us up at our hotel at 02:30 am we knew there was no way in hell they´d be there a seccond before 3, unless of course we actually stayed in bed in which case they would be prompt, I´m sure.
3:15 they came and it was well over 4 before we had located all the other gringos and could finally embark on our day trip to see flying condors and the Colca Canyon. It has been a long day, but worth it. The condors were really impressive as they flew back and forth over the canyon and the view points where we were standing. Part of the thrill was lost when I found out that the locals regulary throw dead animals into the canyon to make sure the birds fly and the tourists keep coming.... But it was still cool. They fly fast though, Dylan got a few decent pictures but the best ones (if he posts them on facebook) are actually photos of postcards =)

As for the canyon, it is supposed to be twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, but I don´t know.... Well, I´m sure it is but to me it looked more like a really deep valley and not what I pictured a canyon to look like. At the bottom of the canyon is Colca Village, a small village where locals live off of farming and tourists. They have a school and a doctor, but only a "natural doctor, you know, with plants and herbs" and in case of emergency "yes, then they will of course die". All according to our very informative guide.

Tomorrow we will try to buy our bus tickets to the Chilean border and I also have to do my Spanish homework since I have my seccond class tomorrow. I have already made plans for what coffee shop to go to for my studies and I´m really looking forward to it.
I´m a nerd, I know.

We´ll be flying

We got plain tickets! It only took about 3 hours and visiting the same number or offices, but we got them. My butt says thank you and now we are looking at 3 hours on a plane instead of 48 hours on various Chilean busses, for only about 30 dollars more, if even.
Now I just hope we actually have tickets when we show up at the airport. The lady who sold us the tickets acted like it was her first time making such an arrangement and when Dylan was going to pay with his credit card she freaked out because his signature didn´t look exactly like on the card and had him rewrite it three times.

So now we don´t have to rush out of Arequipa, we plan on being here till Friday. We did move to another hotel though. Cleaner, bigger room, a sink that works and hot water all day, for the same price. What really made me want to get out of "Hostal Lari" though was that they always locked us in there and sometimes there would be nobody around to let us out. Not only is that really anoying, but also not the best in case of a fire or emergency or something. At the place we´re at now, we can come and go as we please.

Wednesday we are going to check out the canyon and the condors, tomorrow I am taking my first Spanish lesson! Mucho exciting.

Arequipa

Yesterday in Hucachina, Dylan´s stomach was no better and I had to head out to the sand dunes by myself (well, with the rest of the group).
It was awful, the single most horrfying thing I have spent money on in a long time. Not the sandboarding itself, that was actually kind of lame since we had super crappy boards with broken straps for bindings, so we just had to go down laying on our stomachs, head first. No, but the dune buggies.... I thought they were for transportation only, but appearantly riding in those monsters on wheel were part of the adventure and our driver was insane. He drove like he wanted us all dead. When we stopped at the first hill, one girl was crying (not me but only because I was in too much of a shock) the guy next to me stole my seat because it was "too scary to sit on the end" and the rest of us were just shaking, wiping the snot, sand and eye ball juice of our faces. The crying girl asked the driver to please go slower, which just made him laugh and blast away even faster to the next hill. It was not fun. Scarier than any roller coaster I have ever been on. And I don´t even like roller coasters. It was probably a really good thing Dylan didn´t go cause it would have made him shit his pants for sure.

But while I was paying money to be scared to death, Dylan headed out for new diarrhea pills and found some that were so effective ("I´m backed up like concrete...") he decided it would be safe to ride the nightbus to Arequipa. So we did. But since we decided to go so late, we could only find tickets to the crappiest bus. They were cheap though, and much to our surprise we actually made it here on time. So now we´re trying to set up a trip out to the Colca Canyon tomorrow and hopefully spot some condors on the way. We´re also debating whether to buss it the whole way to Santiago or get a domestic flight in Chile since they´re pretty cheap.
We´ll see, if we do decide to fly, we´ll probably stay here a little longer and maybe try to take a Spanish class or two. A lot of places offer them, but we haven´t stayed anywhere long enough to sign up yet.... and we´re doing ok with sign language, our limited Spanish and most local´s limited English, but it would be nice to get more of a vocabulary.

A nice place in a dusty maze

One night in Pisco would have been enough, that´s for sure. We bargained pretty hard with the lady at the hotel, though and got two nights for the price of one so we are still here even though we were done with the boat tour (and the only appearant reason to stay here) at about 11 am. The tour was cool though, and well worth the money. We saw tons and tons of birds (pelicans, penguins, gulls etc), sea lions, crabs, sea stars and mussels. A few times the boat was stopped for a long time while the guide was pointing out something to us and everyone was snapping away on their cameras like crazy except for me and Dylan who couldn´t understand what they were looking at. When we booked the tour we were told there would be an English speaking guide, but our 70 year old guide´s English sounded an awful lot like Spanish to me. Still, I probably saw more birds today than I have before in my life, total and it was a good time.

Pisco in itself is, however a broken, dirty shithole of a city. That mostly due to two recent earthquakes and that they just haven´t had the time or money to rebuild. But walking along the streets of the very straight and square blocks you feel like the marble in one of those games where you´re supposed to tilt a board with a maze full of holes to guide the marble from start to finish without it falling into the holes. The people are mostly very nice though, we splurged a little bit for dinner today and went to an Italian place and had sallad and sea food lasanga, very tasty, and talked to the chef who told us about the city and himself and it was a very nice time. Earlier today though, Dylan wasn´t feeling so good. He still/again has an upset stomach and I headad out to find him more medicine. Walking the streets alone is way different than walking with him, that´s for sure. Mostly it´s just a lot of whistling and harmless "hola" and "Buenos tardes" but today I got this ugly teenager stalking me for blocks.

First he wanted money for food. He was being very rude and in my face and if I only knew enough Spanish I would have told him that if claiming to be hungry was going to be his way of begging he should probably slim down a little, since this was a pretty porky little pimpled faced fellow. Instead I just shook my head and tried to walk away, but he kept running after me, now grabbing his crotch and saying things I was only happy not to understand.

Tomorrow we are heading for the sand dunes of Ica. It´s supposed to be cool and it´s only an hour bus ride from here. But before that we have another night at what might actually be the nicest hotel we have stayed at so far on this trip. The room is big, clean and we have our own, also very clean bath room with fresh towels, hot water and little soaps (I love little soaps and Dylan loves to make fun of me for it). We also have a TV, which is good for my dear stomach pained companion who can watch baseball and cheesy soap operas when his tummy hurts too much to marble around these dusty streets.

As you might expect, there are a lot of bars with specials on Pisco Sour here. But both me and Dylan get the chills just thinking of having one of those any time soon. Like Dylan said "I´m not having another Pisco Sour till I get out of this country".

Yeah, Dylan is better and we are leaving Lima today! I had the lady at the hotel´s front desk write me a note in Spanish yesterday, that supposevly said said that my husband was sick and I needed medicine for him. I took it to the pharmacy, got six little pills and now he´s all better =)

Very excited to get out of here. Of course it is unfair to blame the city for what happened, there´s bad people everywhere, but I just rather be somewhere else now. Big cities may have a lot to see, but there´s just no peace and quiet, cars honking, road construction, people yelling and getting in you way.... not for me, although I do like the markets.
We are going to Pisco, down the coast, where there is supposed to be a pretty cool wild life to observe, sea lions, penguins, condors, whales and stuff like that.... should be cool.

That Pisco was Sour

Last night was the worst night of my travelling life. Everything is allright now, we´re fine (well, Dylan is actually sick.. but he´s alive) and from now on it will hopefully just be a story and a lesson to be more careful in the future. But it was pretty horrible. Here´s what happened.

We had bought bread, cheese and olives at the market and decided to just stay in our room and have a cheap, simple kind of dinner to ourselves. At about 8, we decided to go for a walk around the block to maybe grab some dessert or a drink somewhere. As we walked by this kind of shady looking bar on the seccond floor of a building, two men standing on the balcony yelled at us to come upstairs and check out their place, said they had specials, live music and what not. We decided to give it a chance and walked in and up the stairs. The two dudes, one really skinny, gay looking fellow and one older, more stocky guy, came half way down the stairs and practically dragged us up and sat us down at a table. They both spoke decent English, enough to be understod, and were soooo excited we were there. We were the only foregneirs in the place, also (as we realized later) the only guests in the place. The stocky guy asked what we wanted to drink, when we hesitated he said we had to try the Pisco Sour, the Peruvian national drink and the best the bar had to offer. We agreed and Dylan said to order two. Then the gay dude tilted his head and gave Dylan this akward puppy-eyed look and asked if he would "pleeeease order me one too?" That right there was strange enough to get the hell out, but we didn´t. Dylan said "fine, 3 drinks" and the stocky friend jumped up and ran to the bar to order. While we waited, they offered us to buy drugs and even though we were pretty clear about not being interested they were really presistent. They said it was ok, that they had closed the doors downstairs and that nobody would come into the bar for the rest of the night. At this point I was pretty freaked out and really just wanted to leave. But right then the drinks came and they stopped talking about drugs, the waitress brought glasses for everyone and a big pitcher of Pisco Sour. I realized that wasn´t what we ordered, but figured maybe that´s just how they serve them when you order more than two..... but no. Tow more pitchers came in, together with three shots of pure pisco. They wanted us to drink them, we said no and started asking who had orderd them and how much it would all cost. Dylan got up and went to the bar to pay "our" bill, the two guys went after him and since I was too scared to sit alone I went after them too.

Sure enough, it was just one bill, our bill and it was at 300 soles (about 100 US dollars). Dylan was pissed and kept saying how unreasonable it was, that we had ordered 3 drinks not 3 pitchers and that no way in hell was he going to pay. The stocky dude kept giving him these pats on the back, repeating lines from some frat movie like "come on man, it aint that bad", "you gotta pay that shit man" and "just pay up bro´, no biggie" his gay friend who had begged for a drink offered to pay his part, a third of the bill, saying "listen, that´s fair even though you said you´d pay, I pay my drink and you pay your two". It was such an obvious scam and the waitress was pissed, yelling that someone had to pay, in Spanish...she spoke no English. Finally Dylan offered to pay 40 soles, which is more than enough for 3 actual drinks but they weren´t having it. The waitress started talking about the police, which me and D thought was a great idea, but that freked the two guys out and they blocked the way to the stairs so we couldn´t leave. I took the 40 out of my purse and handed it to the waitress who got even more mad, screamed NOOO and grabbed me by the arm so I wouldn´t try to run. Dylan pushed the guys out of the way and headed down the stairs so I pulled loose from the arm grip and went after him, but then one of the guys (I couldn´t see who) grabbed my purse that I had around my shoulders and pulled me down so I fell on my back on the stairs. I screamed, the waitress screamed and they let me go long enough to run away. Out on the street though, I was crying and just wanted to run back to the hotel, we ran into two older men. One was the owner of our hotel, he had recognized us and they stopped a police man for us. Appearantly the same thing had happened to some other of his guests the night before and he was just out to keep an eye on that bar. So there started a long night of questioning, very poor translating and numerous incidents that made loose all faith I ever had in the Peruvian police system. For example, when driving us to the police station they almost put the waitress in the back seat with us. They let a bunch of her friends come along (the two men were unfortunatly long gone) and they waited out side the police station. The poilce men kep coming and going and we had to repeat our story probably ten times to a bunch of people who spoke no English. When they were finally done with us, they weren´t going to drive us back across midnight Lima to out hotel, instead we had to take a cab. I forced a police woman to walk out with us though, and wait till we had gotten into a car since one of the guys waiting for the waitress looked like he ate gringos like us for breakfast.

So all I wanted to do today was get the hell out of Lima. But Dylan woke up puking this morning, so it looks like we are here for at least one more night. Staying in tonight though.... and never again are we going to local bars alone, never again am I ordering something at shady places without knowing what it costs first and hopefully will I sleep without nightmares tonight and Dylan will wake up feeling better tomorrow and we can go on with our travellings in nicer, safer places.

Just made it to capital # 3 - Lima

We have now made it to Lima and so far it´s my favourite capital in South Amrica. This is based on an awesome hotel, right down town in a really cool old building with a bunch of old roman statues and furniture, our room is on the fourth floor with a roof top terrace view over the city....it´s nice, and not at all expensive as you would think. We just took a walk around the neighborhood and had some delicious street food and saw some random street performers... far from Bogota that turned into ghost town at 6 pm. Tomorrow I think we are going to try and check out the central market and I also really need to get a haircut.

The bus ride here was shorter than I had thought, only about 6 hours. But a kid behind us puked all over the floor when we drove through the mountains and so we had to stop to get the bus cleaned up. He puked a lot too, it splashed up on my legs...gross. But it is nice that they cleaned it up, in China they just let it sit on the floor together with the baby pee.

Other than that, not much else is new. Watching TV and sleeping in a real bed last night was everything I thought it would be, wonderful.

back in Huaraz

We just came back into civilisation and decided that after three nights on very questionable sleeping mats in not all waterproof tents, we didn´t want to jump on a night bus tonight. So we got a pretty cheap room at a really decent hotel (with TV, can´t wait to watch!! I don´t even care what´s on) and are staying in Huaraz tonight and taking a morning bus to Lima tomorrow.

The hike, though was really good. We really lucked out with the weather (it only rained the first night and a few hours last night after the tents were already set up) and the scenery was just amazing. Dylan will surely post some pictures on facebook soon. We covered about 56 km I think, and went through a pass at 4750 m. Except for some painful head aches, though we both felt fine the whole time. Hiking without gear is really a lot better than carrying all your own stuff and Dylan now thinks about buying a donkey for future Idaho backpacking.... I vote he then also hires a donkey driver to cook our food and set up our tents.

In our group was (except for the two of us, the guides and the donkey drivers) a French couple that was really quiet (I don´t even remember their names, I just refered to them as Frank and Francis), 8 Isrealis that were really nice, really slow and sang the whole time and Torunn and Travis that we don´t really like so much anymore are now kind of trying to dodge.... It´s not like we got in a fight or anything, I just decided she´s a bossy besserwisser and everytime she opened her mouth I wished she would close it again and Dylan started rolling his eyes and making comments about Scandinavians always being up someone´s ass, which is unfair...she´s Norweigan, don´t blame the rest of us. Anyway, you can´t be best friends with everybody, I guess. Especially not me who may not be the best at cutting people a break....and I know that.

Last night T&T stayed in their own tent and ate their dinner without the rest of the group while me and Dylan joined the Israelis for some Jewish holiday celebration which (in the Peruvian mountains) included eggs, cookies and a lot of singing. What really cracked me up was when they realized I was Swedish, just like Charlotte Perelli and they all started singing "Take me to your heaven" from the top of their lungs.

Out of all the people we meet, the majority is definitly either from Holland or Israel. A lot of Aussies moving around SA too, but I have yet to meet a fellow Swede.

We´re in Huaraz now, and I´m feeling a lot better. I was so nervous for the bus ride here, but it was fine. And the bus was a million times nicer than the one we took two nights before. There was a difference in ticket price of about a dollar and the first one was three hours late, extremly uncomfortable (I swear I was sitting on a metal rod), had no bathroom (as we covered already) and stoped every 15 minutes to pick up more people, chickens, potato sacks and God knows what else. The seccond one had seats that reclined half way to the floor, a bathroom and made no extra stops and was therefor also on time. So yeah, even though we´re trying to do this cheap... sometimes that little extra money takes you a long ways, and it´s so worth it.

Tomorrow we´re leaving for a 4 days trekking trip. Should be fun, even though I´m not exactly the most outdoorsy person, I´m very excited for this one. Dylan kind of wanted to sign up for an 8 days one... which he could have, I would have been happy hanging out in Huaraz. But we don´t really have enough time to be here that long, and when the guide showed us pictures from the hike we´re about to do, it looked really sweet and I think Dylan is pretty pumped for this as well. Also, we didn´t know this till just a few hours ago, but Torunn and Travis (the couple we met in Mancora) are signed up for the same trip and will be in our group. So that´s even better.

Today we went up to a glacier in a national park about a 3 hour drive from here. It was cool. I was very glad I spent about a $30 on a rain jacket yesterday since it was hailing, windy and freezing cold up there. The altitude was 5400 m at the highest part we climped up to and I swear I have never been so out of breath just slowly walking uphill.... the altitude really gets to you. Me and Dylan both had massive head aches and felt kind of iffy, but we still finished the climb faster than the rest of the group =) and the whole day was well worth the spectacular view and the amazing scenery.

Right now we´re just hanging out at the hostel. I´m waiting for the manager to come back to unlock the room where they have their book exchange. I´ve been dying for some new reading material. Dylan is still waiting for "the best English book ever" to get good. He´s persistent, you´ve got to hand it to him. I´ve would have given up a long time ago.

no hot water in jail

We went to bed at 7:30 last night and when I woke up at pretty much that exact same time this morning, it was because the bathroom was calling my name.... So, nope. No signs of improvments on the stomach situation. After a cold shower (there´s no hot water when you´re in jail) we headed out to breakfast, I ordered tea and ate some saltines, figured that would be easy on the system.... but not easy enough, appearantly.
No we´re checking amazon.com for something to buy ourselves for a wedding present since we have a $100 gift certificate to spend. I want a blender. Dylan wants to watch espn.com instead so maybe I will just get the blender.

I am so not in a travel kind of mood right now. When you´re not feeling well, you want to just stay in (your own) bed, watch TV, eat familiar foods and take pepto.... Not rush around a new city, have to panic when there´s no bathroom in sight and argue with people in foreign languages about how much taxis are. It will be better. Hopefully soon. But right now, I wish I was home.

you can´t run from the runs, but run for the bus

It´s my turn to have the upset stomach now, and I´ve got it bad. The bus ride here to Trujillo was horrible, 11 hours, no bathroom on the bus and I was in constant misery. I had to make the bus stop to let me out three times and one time they left without me. I came out of the bathroom just in time to see the bus pull out and figured that with no money, no phone and very limited language skills, I did not want to be left alone in a random Peru-town at 1 am. So I started running.... and ran next to the bus for a while before Dylan (on the inside) could finally convinse the driver to stop and let me back on. And after that sprint, it didn´t take long before I had to go again....

Yeah, it sucks. We went here with Torunn and Travis, a Norweigan-Australian couple we met in Mancora and headed out to the Monchu ruins with them today, but I could only finish half the tour before I had to go hang out in the baños again, so in case I feel better we´ll do the rest of the temples tomorrow, otherwise Dylan will have to go on his own.

There has also been a slight change in our travel plans. It turns out the tickets we bought to fly from Lima to Santiago were in fact never bought at all. The airline company tryed to call Dylan´s cell phone in the US to have him confirm that we actually wanted them, and when they couldn´t get a hold of us, they just cancelled them. But in a way, that works out alright since we were going to have two weeks in Santiago to kill before the wedding, now we might just to southern Peru and parts of Bolivia before Santiago instead. Right now just the thought of getting on another bus makes me want to crawl underneath the covers and hide.... but we already have the tickets to tomorrow´s night bus so all I can do is hope my stomach gets more cooperative and that this bus has a toilet.
The fact that we´re staying in a hostel, described by the guide book in the following way "if you have ever visitied Alcatraz and found it cozy and appealing, this place is for you" also makes it easier to leave and less temting to crawl underneath the covers.

time to leave the beach

Thursday afternoon here in Mancora beach and we just bought our bus tickets, leaving tonight on a 8 hour bus ride to check out some ruins and stuff in Trujillo. Life on the beach has been a nice break but I´m getting really sick of sand everywhere and Dylan is getting really sun burned, so it seems like a good time to move on.

I started this day with yoga by the pool with this guy John, who´s a surf instructor/yoga guru from Hawaii. It was definitly better than the yoga I did in China (since I could understand what the instructor was saying) but I don´t know that yoga is quite my thing still. I just hate that there so much time devoted to focusing on your inner core and spiritual strength... I must not have a lot of that or it´s just really well hidden, because my mind just wanders and I think about breakfast, what I need to buy in the city and places we are going next. But my back liked it after carrying my backpack around.

Yesterday when we walked on the beach I saw this huge, black thing floating in the water just a few meters from shore. First I thought it was a rock but it turned out to be dead sea lion. The thing was huge and just bopping up and down in the waves. When it came closer we saw that someone had cut the head off (appearantly the teeth are worth money or something) but the rest of the body was just left there, intestines and stuff coming out of the neck. Pretty gross. There´s also quite a lot of dead birds and other animals lying around on the beach and voltures and crabs feeding on them. The circle of life.

spf 45

We finally made it to Peru after a border crossing I will definitly call the worst one yet. It was just set up to rip tourists off it seemed like. You get to Peru, oh but this is not where imigration is, you have to go get your passport stamped, no busses go there.....here, get in my taxi... and the most frustrating part was that everyone seemed to be in on it. From the cab driver to the money exchange-guy to the border officers.... no busses, no banks, no other option then going with just your services...? Yeah, right. But what is a gringo to do? We did the walk away a couple of times and managed to get the original price down to about a third of what they first wanted, but I still feel like we were ripped off pretty good.

Now we´re in Mancora, nothern Peru, right on the beach. It´s really nice here, very much surf capital of Peru and very touristy. This also means it´s kind of pricy. A million restaurants but no grocery stores or cheap street food. But it´s the off season and not too busy and it´s good to finally be at sea level and in the sun. The people at the hostel are also really cool, a girl from Norway, some Dutch people and some nice (but somewhat questionable) Estonians mixed with the usual Germans, Americans and Aussies. No Swedes yet, though.

Dylan wants to give surfing another shot, I guess enough time has passed since his last attempt in the Philippines, for him to forget how sore he was the next day and how hard it was. I, on the other hand, may be too much of a wuss to even try it, we´ll see. Either way, that will be a project for tomorrow, today´s agenda is full of getting back to the hostel, jumping on the trampoline in the pool and playing beach volley ball. Oh, and trying to catch the sunset, as I missed it yesterday. It´s a tough life.

Not always honey under the moon

Yesterday was another long day on the bus to get from Baños to Cuenca where we are now. It sucked too because we thought it would only be 4 hours but ended up being 8. It was also the most expensive ticket we have had to buy yet on this trip.
Also, I don´t know what Dylan did to piss Montesuma off, but the God of digestion is not happy with my dear husband so he has to pay a lot of long, frequent visits to the bathroom to pay for his sins. Because of that and the fact that it´s Sunday so Cuenca is pretty much all closed today, we haven´t decided yet if we are going to head out of here tomorrow and go to Peru or stay one more day.
I´m not a fan of the hotel we are staying at here either, it´s the cheapest yet.... but I much prefer sleeping in a clean dorm at a hostel with English speaking staff, a tv-room, a bathroom with toilet paper and towels than getting a private room with none of the above. I was in a really crappy mood this morning and was almost ready to just book a ticket home, but live music for breakfast (and the fact that I don´t even know where I would go) helped.

But yeah, this is no honey moon that´s for sure. In Baños we had a night that was almost a romantic dinner date. We went out to eat and since there was nobody else in the restaurant and we ended up ordering dessert and spending more than we planned on, when we left, we agreed to count it as a romatic dinner for two and eat only street food and crackers the next day.
We get to see and experience a lot of cool stuff and I know I´ll look back at this and be greatful we did it, but some days I really can´t wait to get to Chile and unpack our bags.

It was me Pinto and Hugo...

..and Valeria, Hugo´s horse, but she has little to do with the story.

So when I showed up at the horse renting place, much as I had expected, it was only me who had signed up for riding. My guide, Hugo was a nice older man who smelled of sweat and cigaretts and spoke absolutly no English. He did speak though, a lot. Only, I did not understand a lot. But I had signed up and payed for 3 hours of horse back riding and that was what I was set on doing. The first 2 hours and 45 minutes were great. Pinto, my horse was a nice old man just like Hugo and slowly and quietly took me up the volcano. Every once in a while Hugo would yell at Pinto to speed up and smack his butt, but Pinto was not having it and just looked at Hugo like "hey, when you´re not on my back you can´t tell me what to do" and I didn´t mind the not so rapido tiempo. I figured horses are smart animals and Pinto probably knew I was not a cowgirl and adjusted the speed acordingly.

When we got to the top of the path, we got off the horses and hiked a little ways further up. Hugo told me the volcano errupted two years ago. He told me A LOT of other stuff too, but that´s pretty much all I got. Then we drank water out of a spring with natural gas. That was really cool, I´ve never seen anything like that before. It was just like a little creak but the water was bubbling and when we drank with our hands it tasted just like bottled mineral water.

Then we headed back and had we only stuck to the same track we took up, I think everything would have been fine. But Hugo wanted to treat me to a little something extra. Pinto did not. Almost back in the city, we went up a really steep dirt trail filled with a bunch of rocks. I guess the view from the top was supposed to be good. But Pinto decided not to be a nice but rather grumpy old man and didn´t want to go. He started throwing his head back and forth and tried to bite my hands. I got major Guatemala flashbacks, which is last time I was on a horse and got bucked off, and got off before he could throw me off. Hugo felt super bad and convinced me to get back on. Not once, not twice but five times. But horses are stubborn animals and Pinto said no. Even to Hugo. So finally I road Valeria back to their barn while Hugo walked Pinto, calling him a lot of Spanish names that I think were not so nice....

Back in Baños, me and Dylan (who had a great time water rafting and now wants to be a professional white water rafting guide) went to the hot springs and now it´s pouring down rain and we are using the internet at a place that has Skype so Dylan could make some phone calls. I think we are spending tomorrow here in Baños as well, probably renting bikes or something inexpensive like that.

Even though we´re not looking for jobs before Chile, it´s nice to see that many places are looking for volunteers here. That could be a good way to spend time without spending money and we might look into that later. I think it would also be a good way to actually pick up some Spanish. We are getting by ok, Dylan is so excited he knows more Spanish already than he did Chinese when leaving China, but that does not mean much. I really want to learn it better, but it´s hard when all you have is a dictionary. (The dictionary is great though, thanks Mariah!)

Baños is the Yangshou of Ecuador. Very touristy, every other building is either a hostel, a restaurant or an agency for outdoor activites. Oh, or selling hand crafted goods, of course. But it´s still a cool place and today we are going to try the outdoors... Dylan already left for his rafting trip a little while ago and I have another 20 minutes till I have to go meet my horse and my guide. Later today we plan on hitting the hot springs.

As we got on the bus in Quito yesterday a police man walked through the bus before take off and told us we could not have our stuff in on the shelves over our heads since the vendors walking through the bus so easily could steal it. So we put it on the floor and when we got to Baños the bag was cut open and Dylan´s head lamp stolen. Good thing they didn´t get the money or the camera... But now we need to find a new bag. It´s anoying for sure, but I still feel lucky since they could have taken so much more. And now we now to be even more careful about where we put our stuff.

riots

Today as we walked up to the massive (well, one of them) church here in Quito, an American guy came up to us and asked if we knew what was going on with the riots. We didn´t understand what he was talking about but when he pointed down the street we saw a bunch of police with tear gas, helmets and huge shields. Dylan got super excited and after looking at the church real fast we had to go and try to get as close to the action as possible. More police and military were blocking of a lot of streets and the ones we could walk on had piles of burning coal on them and finally we came close enough to see peole behind fences throwing huge rocks at the police. We walked into a little corner store and bought water and asked the owner if he knew what was going on.. "Problemos" he said. Wise man. Still curious we got a little closer, Dylan was like a kid on Christmas, but then the police started fireing tear gas and we got scared and got the hell out of there.

Now were sitting at an internet cafe a good distance from the riots and from what we have been able to find out I guess the president here just dissolved the supreme court.... that´s why people are pissed.

But other than that, Quito is still a pretty cool place. However, I´m excited to head to Baños tomorrow. From what we hear they have some of the best outdoor stuff in Ecuador, I´m hoping to do some horse back riding and Dylan wants to go rafting. It will hopefully also be cheaper, Quito is somewhat pricy.
Now I´m going to go look for batteries for our alarm clock so we can get up in time mañana.

in Quito

The Ecuadorian capital is a much cleaner and more organized city than Bogota, by the look of it. Although, to be fair we did get here a whole 30 minutes ago so the first appearnce may be decieving.... but I don´t think so. We just dropped our stuff of at our hostel and is about to go explore but first Dylan wanted to see if his old friend from Moscow, Juan Carlos who lives here in Quito had gotten back to him. It would definitly be fun to have someone local show you the city.

It seems we live right next to a bull fighting ring. I doubt they have fights on Mondays.. but Dylan for some reason really wants to see a bull fight so at one point, even if it won´t be here, we might have to go witness one.

Yesterday we did some more hiking around Otavala and both mangaed to get pretty sun burned. Dylan also got to play some soccer on a dirt field on the foot of a volcano.... Gringo Tinto did well, but here is not quite the star he was in China. He´s still a giant though, as am I. South American ladies are pretty short... and I feel really tall walking around here. Tall and red, SPF 45 came out of the bag for the first time today.