Other notes ...

One more for the bathroom list:

11. If you touch the water knob of an electric shower AND the running water at the same time, it makes a complete circut and you get shocked. Turn the knob, take your hand off, THEN test the water. Repeat as necessary.

Other things that are a priviledge not a right:

12. Free glasses of water at resturants. Actually, really, this is a pipe dream in Peru. In Argentina if you know just how to ask, though, you can accomplish it. Sometimes.

13. Microphones in internet cafes.

14. Microphones that work in internet cafes.

14. Computers that work in internet cafes (I tried out at least 5 computers today before I got to this one).

Some travel-related things that are especially wonderful (because I realized that in being so amused by everything else, I forgot to tell you!!)!!!:

1. Hotels and hostels that let you leave things for days on end for free if you want to take off for a few days without your million pound backpacking backpack. This, wonderfully, has been every hostel Ive been to so far.

2. Coca tea. Because if youre me and caffine doesnt work you should absolutely turn to the origin of cocaine. Works like a cha-cha-charm.

3. The food, Oh-My-God, the food. I have been sick so many times now my stomach is made of iron and I can eat most street food with relatively little fear. Highlights: Lucma ice cream, fried plaintains (banana relative), unusual fruits- LOVE fresh passion fruit, FRESH CHEAP ORANGE/PAPAYA/PASSION/BANANA/ECT JUICE, picarrones (these are like fried sweet potato doughnuts and are AMAZING and I will make them when I get home), cerviche (raw seafood cured in lime juice), the freshly-caught grilled kingfish and trout from lake Titicaca, fried squeaky cheese made by Titicaca islanders, quinoa (its a grain), dulce de leche, corn/cheese/tuna empanadas, breaded eggplant, and apparently there is some kind of bug-grub street food here in Puerto that I will have to try now that Ive decided officially that my vegetarianism does not include bugs. I am an ovo-lacto-pesca-insectatarian.

4. Other travellers. Are. So. Wonderful. Last night I dropped into a pizza place for dinner alone and got adopted by a group of about 20 Americans working on a project to build an orphanage. They wouldnt let me pay for my own dinner. They were SO SO SO sweet!!!! The woman running it invited me to go horseback riding with her to ruins in the jungle ...!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope she was serious because I really really really want to go.

5. Friendly Peruvians. With how friendly Carla is I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN ... theyre especially wonderful here in Puerto with the small-towny feel. I stick out like a sore thumb and everybody Ive met has been so open and truly kind. In three days I have recieved one invitation to dinner and one to lunch, one to coffee and picarrones, one of acompaniment to visit a nearby town (so I would be safer and I wouldnt have to go alone). One elderly man told me repeatedly that I was welcome to stay at his house for the rest of my stay in Puerto. Another guy who took me from ATM to ATM all over town until I could find one that would take my debit card. ... And not to mention all of the people that not only give me directions but personally walk me to wherever Im going so that I dont get lost. Even if its blocks away. They are protective over me when they find out that I am alone.

6. The animals. Are. Everywhere. I was almost too distracted petting the kitty in my lap to eat breakfast this morning. There are chicks (like the baby chicken) everywhere! I went out boating from the port of a nearby mining town yesterday to a jungle town up the river and they had a town parrot that they loaned me to play with while I wandered around. Im going to monkey island today, too, which is exactly what it sounds like.


.... ahhh no more time I have to go to lunch before I meet the woman who will take me to the port to go into the jungle!!!! Im staying at a jungle lake lodge (for $20 US a night!) for three nights (all food included) ...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (BY THE WAY add her to the list of wonderful people ... shes letting me use her husbands name so that I wont have to pay too much to get into the national park!!)!!!!!!!!!!!

Bathrooms: Shitters and Showers

This topic is near and dear to my heart. It is a lengthy subject. There is always something new and unusual to discuss. I have come to learn many things about bathrooms here in South America ... so here is my newest list ...

Ten things you need to know about bathrooms in South America:

1. Toilet seats are a priviledge not a right. Pop a squat, sit in the rim, whatever ... you have to pee so get over it.

2. The same goes for shower curtains.

3. And toilet paper.

4. Also for sinks being securely attached to the wall.

5. Wait ... that toilet FLUSHES??? What ARE you complaining about?????

6. When you dont scoop enough water into the toilet in the middle of the night (using your standard half-a-carton jug from the freestanding bucket full of water in the corner of the outhouse) when there is no light and you have no idea what youre doing ... the toilet does not flush, you do not realize it, and bad things happen.

7. A bare-lightbulb-directly-above-the-shower floorplan makes more sense than moving it over a foot outside of the stall. After all, its more fun to wash your hair thinking youre going to start an electrical fire any moment.

8. Electric "hot" showers mean that the water is not totally freezing (just mostly).

9. Also, dont even think of making any sudden movements in electric showers because if you touch the showerhead, you get shocked.

10. When the shower only has one water knob, you know youre in for it.

Im actually in the jungle now, but ....

Goodbye Cusco, city of endless stairs. Hilliest city in the entire world. One Giant Mountain. Its an official Allison-statistic that Peru has more stairs than any other place on earth. And the thing about stairs is (I dont know if you knew) they go up. And up. And up and up for ever and ever, Amen. And when youre at roughly 12,000 feet altitude it is a law that when you ask for directions to your hotel (when youre tired and aching and carrying everything you own) the helpful stranger will nod and point UP and kindly tell you that no, it never ends.

I have neglected you all sorely over the past few weeks. I always seem to just barely have sat down at a computer when PJ wanders by and prods me because whatever destination we had decided upon next was about to close (or maybe the shopkeeper was about to go out for a 2 hour beer break ... equally likely). If you can believe it of me ... Im a little bit of a space ... and his sense of time (as opposed to my "eventually") is probably half of what kept us together and moving this entire trip.

The night we got back to Cusco from our Machu Pichu hike we had a 10:30 night bus to Lake Titicaca. I have vivid memories of PJ checking my cell phone anxiously as our Machu Pichu tour bus ambled into Cusco at around 10 pm, trying to figure out the best place to have us dropped off so that we could go racing up and down the hills of Cusco in the dark and cold to reach our hotel, grab all of our stuff, make reservations for the 24th, and frantically hail a taxi to the bus station. Fortunately both of us had enough common sense NOT to try to tell the weaving, honking, typically lawless taxi driver to hurry up.

I have no idea how we actually made it.

The bus to Puno (the town next to the lake) is hereafter known as The Coldest Six Hours of My Life. I shivered, shook, huddled next to PJ, and scratched my million bugbites until we got dropped off alone with our bulky backpacks on a deserted street at four in the morning with no idea of where we were. We were saved by a rickshaw taxi.

Rickshaw taxis. Motocarros. These are, quite possibly, my favorite things about South America. Or at least the parts of Peru remote enough to have them. They consist of a motorcycle and a sort of attached buggy (I sort of feel like Im in the big-kid version of a burly cart). Our luggage gets strapped onto a little platform at the back and we crawl into the little bench seat. Hold onto your backpack and purse because the doors have a habit of sliding open while youre racing along ... not to worry, though, sometimes theyre tied closed with a bit of rope.

But back to Puno and our taxi driver rescuer. After negotiating the price (in Peru, there are no meters in taxis, you negotiate everything before you get in) he helpfully drove us to the hostel we had picked out of our Lonely Planet Peru book (also affectionatly referred to as "LP" or "Lonely"). Wherein we negotiated something which seemed to define the whirlwind night-bus-filled second half of our trip. Namely, "Do we have to pay for this night (at 4 am) or can we only pay for tomorrow? (because the bus was SO cold/hot/uncomfortable/loud/rough/smelly that we didnt sleep more than an hour and we really, really, really want to go to bed) ..."

Finally, as per usual, after a small amount of discussion whoever is behind the desk takes pity on us and just gives in and points us to a room. Where aching, dirty, exhausted, thirsty, hungry and itching we set the cell phone alarm to way earlier than were going to get up and fall into bed.

Welcome to Puno.

pictures

Exhaustion.

My legs are so sore ... and my feet have so many blisters that I can hardly walk. My sneakers are Satan in a shoe. I can´t even wear my Rainbows without socks to soften the pain.

I had the most amazing five days of my life.

Have to go get my laundry done. I have never had dirtier clothes in my entire life. Will let the pictures do the talking (will post more later, no time now) and write more later.

Love,

Me.

Late night wackiness and general bathroom destruction ...

Okay, so, while I have 20 minutes to spare, I need to get this down. PJ and I leave Monday for our 5 day trek to Machu Pichu, and while we´ve been waiting, we´ve been walking all over Cusco and testing out every resturant that the guidebook said was supposed to be good (and ducking into a couple random ones full of locals too, of course). So far, I have tried desserts and tea made of coca leaf (you know, like the cocaine plant), passion fruit cheesecake ... and alpaca and guinea pig ... guinea pig tastes like chicken.

We´re staying at a funky inn-hostel place that´s doing a lot of renovations, so we got a sweet price (20 soles a night/person ... which comes out to something like $7 dollars). The charming side effect is banging and loud radio from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. But, hey, beggars can´t be choosers. And we got our own room with a bathroom and two beds ... one featuring a Winnie the Pooh bedspread (much to PJ´s dismay, I left this one to him and took the horse spread-- but, as he said, there was really no winning there for manliness, anyway).

Our first night in town, we were wandering through the main square thinking of going to an internet café when we noticed a line of people coming out of a building and a cluster of unusually-dressed kids. I asked what was going on, and they said that there was a music show for 1 sole. Of course we went in (of course!), stopping at the bake sale table to pick up cookies and cakes made with coca.

The show, it turned out, was an informal (but very entertaining) affair. The first group was a bunch of students performing an ancient 3000 year old altiplano musical style with wind flutes, drums and dancers. This seems to be what kids learn in school here, if they learn music-- not violin or saxaphone or anything like that. I saw a group of uniformed school boys in the plaza dancing something similar the other day too. The highlight of the performance was an 8 year old boy dressed in a complicated black, white, and gold outfit with an enormous feather hat (almost as tall as he was) playing his wind flute, tapping his feet, and shaking his little body like there was no tomorrow.

Yesterday we woke up at 9:00 (or, I woke up at 9:00 and finally hit PJ around 9:30) and went on a wild goose chase looking for a tour company that had moved. We were hoping to skip town and stay with a Quechua family for a night, but by the time we found out where the tour company had moved to, it was all the way across town and we didn´t have time to look into it before check out.

Disconcerted, we walked through town-- up and down the narrow cobbled streets with our little map. The city is REALLY hilly and sometimes the only way up is a narrow flight of stone steps almost straight up. The buildings are cobblestone and plaster, and all of the doors are painted bright colors (usually an intense blue or green). We came across a live concert with local college singers and little girls reading poetry in Quechua.

Finally, we walked back to our hotel to take a pee break and plan our next attack. I crashed on the bed to wait for PJ when all of a sudden an immense CRASH comes from the bathroom. I sit up.

"PJ are you okay?"

-Silence-

Then, without warning, water starts shooting out of every crack in the bathroom door with pressure like a hose with a thumb over it. PJ starts yelling, "GET HELP!!!!!!! GET HELP!!!!!!"

"PJ ARE YOU OKAY???????"

"GET HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The entire sink came OFF OF THE WALL and flooded our entire room.

Welcome to Cusco, Perú.

Love,
Me

PS:
Some pictures ...


Cusco ... view of the hills and the buildings around the Plaza de Armas ...



Me at Qorikancha -- originally a huge Inca mecca, but, when the Spanish came, they converted it into a church (Convento de Santo Domingo del Cusco). Now the structure is a museum with a bunch of Inca ruins mixed with 15 and 16th century Spanish architecture and artwork.


PJ five seconds after complaining about how much he hates tourists ... Also check out the shapes in the grass ...!!!

Cusco ...

I´m in Cusco right now in a locotorio ... and honestly ... I´ve run out of brain power to leave a long post. I will write it out by hand and type it up later. Suffice to say that Cusco is amazing and that there´s so much to say I don´t even know where to start.

Love,
Allie

IN PERU

PJ and I are here in Lima, Peru. Lima is way better than I expected ... I was waiting for a dirty, noisy, sprawling city that would make me feel trapped and nervous. And that is exactly what Lima is ... and I LOVE it.

The buildings are every color and style and they run right up against the narrow streets like protective relatives. Little doorways cut into sheets of metal lead down to hidden resturants and bakeries as cars drive by you on a tiled sidewalk. We walked two blocks from our hostel this morning and evetything opened up to a huge plaza with enormous baroque-esque buildings and clusters of middle-school age school children in uniforms moving with their field trips.

Maybe its the air ... which smells like the ocean. Or at least feels like it ... my nose is pretty stuffed up. After the sharp cold of rainy Buenos Aires, the thick, humid marine layer hit us both like a wall as we left the airport at 1 30 am last night (last morning?) to get into a taxi going to a hostel for which we had no reservations at all. But we read it in our Peru book. And they said it had hot water.

The hostel is tall and narrow with wooden staircases and painted walls. Our beds have little wooden frames and bright, striped woven bedspreads. Our shower smells, our pillows are lumpy, and the yellow curtains block almost no light ... and certainly no sound when they start playing music at 8 30 in the morning.

BUT. Hot water.

I LOVE IT.

Love,
Me.

Mendoza my love

After saying goodbye to all of my friends as they take off back to the states or travelling, I have to say goodbye to Mendoza. I´m leaving tomorrow for Perú, and even though I´ll be back in a month or so with Dad, it´s surreal ... knowing that my time truly living here is ending.

It´s been so weird, the goodbyes to my friends in the program. They aren´t real-- all of these people are still here ... there is a huge part of me that´s sure that if I could pick up my cell phone (yes, I finally lost it) and send a text message ... everybody would be in the same place as before. In my brain, I still have music class tomorrow and I´ll see everybody in the "comedor" for lunch at one.

I never knew it was possible to secretly want finals week to last just a little longer.

And I know it´s a little random, but I don´t want to be depressing, so I´m going to honor this moment with a list ... my ideas for it have been in a memo in my gmail for over a month ...

Things Mendoza/Argentina in general do more/better/crazier than the States:

1. [CRAZIER] Driving. Especially backing up. Most of the streets are one-way, so when you take a taxi, if if the driver can´t conveniently turn down your street to drop you off, he will turn the other direction (to face the right way), put the car in reverse and floor it straight back for the whole block. You and your O-shaped mouth will arrive at your doorstep in record time.

2. [MORE] Eating crackers. This was confusing for me at first. I didn´t know it was possible to have a cultural habit built around crackers. My family eats them by the package with every meal, with their tea, and any time in the middle of the day. Putting the crackers on the table for dinner is as normal as setting out forks and knives.

The first day I got here, when I had gone without sleep for almost two days, I stumbled into my host family´s house disoriented and practically incoherent. They offered me crackers, and I was slightly puzzled, but so grateful to sit down and not think too hard, I accepted. Ten crackers into our cultural differences, they were bewildered when I asked for a glass of milk. Milk on it´s own? Plain? Without coffee? Are you sure you don´t want it with chocolate? What about heated up? You really want a whole glass? Cold?

3. [MORE/BETTER] Staying up later. Argentina is ahead of the States by four hours literally ... and by four hours culturally ... which makes it weird, because if I were talking to a friend in CA, we´re four hours apart on the clock but doing the same things at the same time.

When I´m talking to people from the states around 10 pm my time and 6 pm theirs, both of us are about to take off to dinner. Normal time to leave to go out here is 2 am, so if I were to talk to somebody in Davis it would be 10 and they would be getting ready to go too. In Davis, 2 am is when I´m ditching the party to go home and crash, and here I got in at 6 this morning from bar hopping. Four hours. It´s trippy.

4. [MORE] Exercise. Forget blacks, whites, asians, hispanics-- they don´t have any of that here. Argentinians are prejudiced against fat people. The anorexia rate here is flat-out staggering. (So, is, I should add, the percentage of psychatrists. The number of shrinks here is second only to the states.)

5. [SO MUCH MORE] 80´s pop. Especially bad 80´s pop. When we were in the Andesmar bus going to the Chile border in Patagonia, the CD of BAD 80´s POP got stuck on the same song for almost a half hour while everybody in charge was inside trying to figure out our visas. If ever there was a time that I wanted to kill myself ...

6. [CRAZIER] The busses. Because God-forbid there be a bus schedule. The official bus schedule of Mendoza is "get there early and hope you catch it". Because if there´s a strike, you´re walking. If it´s too full, it won´t stop. If you happen to glance the other way and don´t have time to throw yourself into its path and MAKE it stop, it powers by. And if you DO manage to stop it, jump on fast because half the time it takes off again before you´ve got that second foot down all the way.

When I think of the bus system here, my head is full of images of little old men standing (literally) in the middle of the road to stop their bus. They´re so old, they don´t care if they live or die ... just as long as they make it to wherever they´re going.

Not to mention the fact that the drivers decorate them. And that they occasionally decide to race.