mendoza. argentina.

chillin in the argentine desert. enjoying what they do best here. wine. drinking a lot of it. its a pretty nice little city surrounded by lots of country side and the andes are in plain view. we have spent 3 days here with in a lady´s house by the name of mabel. probably the coolest 60+ year old women i´ve ever known. we basically just living in an extra room in her house which is a nice change from the hostels and hotels. we got introduced to her by a guy named peter we met in bolivia who had stayed with her and gave us her email. he said she was awesome, so we came. we spent one day out in the vineyards visiting a bunch of wineries and the others in the city. going to go watch the USA game and then we are catching a bus to santiago, chile where we fly home from on sunday. weird.

in buenos aires

got into buenos aires last night. just in time for the classic of world cup history. were about to head out and find a good place to watch a few of todays games, including argentinas which should be cool to see here but more importantly to see the yanks vs the brits. the island was a real nice relaxing few days, the town was called morro de sao paulo. we didn´t do much other then chill on the beach most of the time. we went back to salvador to spend a night there before hopping plane to BA. all is well. LETS. GO. USA.

ps. i see that chicago won the cup. oh well. better than philly.

brasil. rio de janiero. salvador.

so finally getting this blog up to date, a truly june 5th update. we are currently in salvador brasil, a pretty cool heavily afro influenced city on the atlantic coast in the north east of brasil. brasil has really been a relief in the fact that we both had some doubts at times about being able to even get the visa and also mainly that it isnt la paz. we flew into sao paulo but then grabbed a plane right away for rio. we got into rio and spent two days and three nights there. it is definitely great city. so much different than any where we had been in south america yet, the contrast is truly amazing. but even in rio where it is very modern and clean, there is still a huge economic gap which is highly visable with the enormous favelas (slums) surrounding most of the city. but yea it is a really beautiful city with some beautiful beachs, maybe the most famous being copacabana beach. we spent some time in ipanema and copacabana along with one day heading to the top of sugarloaf mountain to get a view over the entire city. after rio we headed up to slavador which is where we are now, we have just been relaxing on the beach and wondering the city, tomorrow we are heading to an island off the coast called morro de sao paulo for atleast 4 or 5 days until we fly to buenos aires for the start of the world cup. us vs england baby. LETS GO YANKS!

la paz. amazon basin. bolivia.

la paz sucks. lets just get that out of the way from the start. im sorry if you have any ties to it or anything but it is true. the place sucks. the bus lets us off in the middle of the tourist heavy area. we´re not of the bus for more than 5 minutes (mind you we just read before getting off the bus a list of potential scams in la paz, one being where a dude spits on you and then points it out to you to try and distract you so his buddy can take your pockets) and were walking around trying to get our bearing to head in the right direction of a hostel that looks good in one of our guide books and we get stuck in a crowd. some dude starts grabing the waist strap of my bad and mumbling something, hes mumbling so hard that i cant understand or see what he is trying to point out to me. luckily natalie was walking behind me and saw this happening, she saw that the man was pointing to spit and just yelled something to me, we dont really remember but it was something along the lines of watch out, he spit on you. as she yells i turn to my other side and see a guy a few feet away walking away with my passport in his hands. we both yell and run and grab him. luckily with no trouble he just gave me the passport right away and we dipped out of there as quick as possible. now looking back on it im not very happy with myself for not decking him right in the face but it is probably a good thing i didnt. natalie is certainly happy i didnt. but yea so a close call but it worked out and we learned a pretty painful lesson pretty painlessly. the rest of time in la paz it was honestly hard to even relax. most of the food we ate sucked, the city is dirty, there wasnt much to do, and getting our brasilian visas was a pain in the ass. to be fair most of this hate is really just towards the two dudes who tried to rob me.

but as far as good things go, we had some good trips getting away from there. we spent a day and two nights in coroico, a small town in the yungas jungle, very relaxing and did some good hiking. then we also flew to rurrenabaque and spent 3 days 3 nights in the amazon in the madidi national park at an eco lodge called chalalan. it was nice because it is completely run by a jungle community as a way to make money so they can protect what has been there land since someone decided to live there. we got to see a good amount of wildlife, lots of birds, the largest rodent on the planet (dont remember the name), caimans, poisonous frogs, tarantulas, boa snakes, some other crazy insects and toads, and a bunch of monkeys.

after that we hated back to the worst city on the planet, picked up our visas for brasil, another fun 130$ visa, and got on the next plane to brasil.

copacabana. bolivia.

soooo bolivia doesnt like the united states of america. well the country that is, im not so sure most of the people really care that much. but yea on the bus into bolivia, it stops at the border, you get out of the bus and it crosses, while you have to get your exit stamps in peru then walk across and get your visa for bolivia on their side, a sweet 135$, real fun stuff. but anyways at the border you could sense mostly friendly vibes but there was def one dude that wasnt very happy. at one point he asked for a different 20$ because he thought it was fake, luckily we had 1 extra one. but yea our bus driver helped us out through the whole thing, not sure if we needed it or not but it was def a lil comforting as he basically promised us he would get us through.

copacabana is a small town on the south coast of lago titicaca which is another pretty magnificent place. its hard to realize at times your looking at a lake and not the ocean. again the altitude here was killer as your chillin around 3900 meters. one of the days here we got a boat out to the isla del sol, the largest island of the some 70 in the lake, hiked around it for the day seeing some ruins and the whole island and then spent one night on it. the next morning headed back to copacabana but not after begging for our two tickets to get on the boat back. theres no atms or anything in copacabana or on the island so when we were told that the tickets back only cost 10 bolis, we only saved 27, but the tickets turned out to be 20 each. but whatever the guy took my 27 and got us on. we spent another night in copacabana at our amazing german friend martin´s hostel and then got a bus to la paz. all of the germans we´ve meet are awesome so far on this trip. good job germany.

machu pichu

this place is amazing. honestly cant really put it into words and i wish i was able to throw some pictures up on here but as i didnt bring the cord for my computer i cant. we came into aquas calientes around noon and decided to just spend the rest of that day in the town checkin things out. stayed at a great eco lodge. the next morning we got up at about 4 am to start hiking up by 430am. we hiked up in the dark and got up to the entrance to watch the sunrise. the ruins are really something you have to see in person. its really hard to believe and its impressive how much is still there. pretty excited to read more about it and its history. of course we didnt spend the money on a guide or anything but did hitch on the side of a few tours once and awhile to pick up some good info. we spent a few hours there and then headed down to catch the train out. we cut the train to ollantaytambo, then jumped in a collectivo back to cuzco. then we opted to save some hostel money and take an overnight bus from cuzco to puno and then on to copacabana, bolivia.

cuzco

so after lima we flew over to cuzco. the altitude immediately hit us right in the face. every 20 steps we would stop and look at eachother wondering if it was for real. cuzco was a real nice city that we stayed in for two nights as a jumping off point to head into the scared valley of the incas and machu pichu. since its been a lil while since i updated this i dont really have too much to say other than it was beautiful and nice to just relax and roam around.