Brian & Bridgid

It was just yesterday morning that we arrived in Buenos Aires on a night bus, but we’re already registered for classes and have a place to stay. Bridgid found classes through the University of Buenos Aires that are way cheaper than the classes offered by private schools but they started today. We missed the first class but took placement tests and will attend class tomorrow. The classes go for two months.

I placed into level 2 or 3 and Bridgid placed into level 1 or 2, but we’re both taking level 2 as suggested by the professor that interviewed us. She said that we can switch up or down in the first week if it isn’t going well. The school is really cool and is right in the center of downtown. It takes less than 10 minutes to get there from where we’re staying in San Telmo on the Subte, which is the totally awesome subway system that they have here.

Tomorrow we’re moving into a room with an older couple named Mary and Julian. We’ll be staying there for at least one month. Yesterday, while walking around the neighborhood, we saw a sign on their door advertising rooms so we checked it out. The place is a bit crusty and old but is way cleaner than the hostels we’ve been staying at. And we get a good vibe from Mary and Julian, although they are a little intense. They are very loud and dramatic and enthusiastic. We’ll see how it goes. If nothing else, it will be nicer than a hostel and save us money while we look for the perfect place. For those that are interested, we’re paying a total of 1,000 pesos per month for the place.

Also, thanks to the fast Internet connections here we’ve uploaded a bunch of photos and videos. Check out our album of photos on our trip from Lima to Salta and our climbing trip to La Ola.

Best weather of the trip

We headed out to rock climb at La Ola, near Cordoba, on the evening of Monday, May 27. I was pretty stoked that one can easily take public transportation to climbing areas in the mountains here. And after visiting Huaraz, where many of the rock climbing areas have reputations for armed robbery (and a few murders too), we were stoked when the guy at the climbing shop said, “no, of course not” when asked if there were problems with crime in the area.

We bought the climbing guide book from Nunatak, a climbing shop in Cordoba. It has all of the information that one needs about buses, camping, approaches, and the routes. The bus ride took about 2 hours. It’s always a strange experience taking a bus to a remote destination. The bus driver pulled over at what appeared to us to be some random spot along the highway in the middle of nowhere and told us that it was our stop. We got off and watched the bus drive off into the fog.

We saw some bolted routes on a large rock near the highway so we knew we were in the right place. A sign on a gated road advertised camping for 5 pesos a night, so we headed that way. An old couple lived on a farm there and they had a place to camp in back. They had a little hut, a herd of sheep (including the cutest 5 day old lamb ever), some chickens, and some dogs (including the mangiest dog ever).

On Tuesday, we headed to Torres Gemelas to climb. The weather was cold and windy. While getting ready, we were approached by a friendly horse. Then, we were also greeted by a very old and toothless woman who came and tried to lasoo the horst and take it home. The horse wasn’t in the mood for this and snorted and sauntered off. After seeing that the horse was faster than the woman I offered to help and she gladly accepted.

It always freaks Bridgid out when I pet random and potentially dangerous animals that I don't know, but the horse seemed nice

At first, I was not aggressive enough with my horse corralling technique since I was worried about scarring the horse and making it run, and we pretty much just followed the horse on a slow walk around the rock. Then, I sprinted ahead and got in front of the horse. This worked well and I petted the horse while the woman attached the rope.

With the horse distraction finished, we got back to the climb. We climbed a route rated 4+ in the French ratings that are used here (equivalent to a 5.7). I found the route to be very stiff for the grade, which may have had something to do with my numb hands or maybe it was due to the insecure nature of the climbing. The rock here is a rough granite which is reminiscent of Joshua Tree in southern California. There are almost no positive holds and one must trust in balance and friction.

Due to numb hands, we decided to only climb one route and wait for better weather the next day. Little did we know that this day was going to have the best weather of the trip. We took a circuitous route through the hills on the way back to camp, passing herds of sheep and climbing stone walls between farms.

On Wednesday, we were greeted by intense wind, cold, sleet, and snow. We decided to bail since there obviously wasn’t going to be any climbing happening. Unfortunately, after tearing down the tent in the horrible weather we found out that buses weren’t driving the pass that day. Rather than heading back out into the storm, we rented a room in the farm hut. I appreciated having a wind free place to cook and eat.

View of the hills from the walk out to Torres Gemelas

The following day we headed out. We caught a ride to a nearby town called Mina Clavero with some climbers from Buenos Aires who were also camping at the farm. It was more convenient to catch a bus from the terminal there than it would have been from the side of the highway in the rain and fog. Unfortunately, we didn’t check how direct the bus was and we ended up going for a four hour tour of the region before returning to Córdoba.

Once in Córdoba, we immediately bought bus tickets to Buenos Aires and got a quick shower and meal before another ride on a night bus.

Salta! What a wonderful place!

After Peru, Brian and I were looking forward to a little luxury in Argentina, and we found it. Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed our crazy bus/travel/53 hours of fun; it was an experience…and I will be sure to write another ode to the bus system at some point. Suffice it to say, if you’re going to be traveling for 53 hours, then the bus system in South America is the way to go.

But, for now, back to Salta.

We arrived in Salta late one night, tired, hungry, and hoping for a place to relax (before getting back on the bus). Within two hours, we had a bed in a (slightly sketchy) hostel and a glass of wine in hand. It was perfect.

Our two days in Salta were spent wandering around, primarily looking for food, but also just exploring and soaking up the atmosphere of one of Argentina’s coolest cities. The city holds about 1 million people, but somehow keeps a small and comfortable vibe. Most of the architecture is old, with tall doors, intricate scaffolding, and peeling paint jobs. It doesn’t look run down though, just scruffy. Kind of like what I’d imagine an older Italian man to be – rough around the edges, a little cranky, but with plenty of charisma and charm.

Salta has beautiful parks that are thoroughly enjoyed day and night. People hang out in the parks at all hours, which was something I love to see. The parks are so alive, and have such great energy. Brian and I hung out on park benches a bit, and it was interesting to watch all of the action. There was always so much going on: Kids play in the parks, day and night, while their parents look on and chat with friends. Old and young couples hang out on park benches, snuggling or sitting, holding hands and giggling. Teenagers hang out with friends, laughing, chatting, playing soccer, and flirting. I loved to watch it all take place, especially with some amazing gelato in hand (another of Salta’s plus factors!).

The main plaza in town, Plaza 9 de Julio, is surrounded by shops, restaurants, a church, the theater, and many, many cafes with outdoor tables that spread well into the street. One morning, we had breakfast at one of the cafes, The New Time Café.

The New Time Café in Plaza 9 de Julio

Many of the cafes have special breakfast deals, much like the menus in Peru (set lunch). Brian and I tried the desayuno completo – which included coffee with cream, two sweet croissants, seltzer water, and orange juice – all for about 7 pesos, or less that 2 US dollars (using the current 3.7 exchange rate). The coffee was amazing. Seriously amazing. The rest of the meal wasn’t bad either. And, the experience – hanging out beneath an umbrella while people watching – was perfect.

The second day we spent in Salta, we stretched our legs a little and took a hike up the big hill in town, Cerro San Bernardo. We walked up 1070 stone steps to the top, where the teléferico (gondola) dropped off passengers to a fancy restaurant. It was a beautiful day for a hike, sunny and warm, and a great way to get a feel for a city. You can check out our photos from the hike here.

We’re moving to Argentina. We did a 52 hour straight marathon bus trip from Lima to Salta, Argentina and now we are in Córdoba. We spent a few days in Salta, which is a beautiful city (Bridgid will write more about that later). We are way happier here and the new plan is to eventually head to Buenos Aires (after some fun stops along the way) and study Spanish there.

So you are probably wondering what happened to the plan involving Huaraz. To make a long story short, Huaraz just didn’t jibe with our goals for the next few months. It wasn’t a place where we felt like we could live, study, and work. There wasn’t the selection of Spanish schools that we were hoping for and we weren’t comfortable using the laptops in public places (except Cafe Andino) due to crime. Also, it was more difficult than I had expected for us to cope with the challenges of living in a developing nation, like horrible air quality, poor sanitation, and sickness. We both feel that we want to return to Peru or Bolivia later to volunteer when we have improved language skills, direction, and motivation, but for now we just weren’t happy settling there.

Currently, we’re enjoying what feels more like a vacation than a stressful move. We’re eating lots of delicious food and drinking amazing wine and coffee. Since our huge bags were a burden to haul around, we sold our mountaineering equipment yesterday. Mountaineering is huge in Argentina and the prices for new stuff is insanely high. This made it easy for us to sell our stuff for nearly the same price at which we purchased it. We sold it through word of mouth. We talked to a guy at our hostel and a guy at the local gear store. They both called some friends and before we knew it we found a guy that wanted nearly everything.

I need to run. We’re going to head out to a climbing area called La Ola, where we’re going camp and climb. I’ll post again when I get back to town.

Church in Marcará

We’ve been pretty quiet on the blog and don’t have many photos up yet (although I just uploaded our photos from Huaraz). This is due in large part to the fact that we haven’t done much yet. Our first few days in Huaraz were spent getting our bearings in what was supposed to be our new home for a few months, and then we got sick.

But there is another reason for the lack of photos that has nothing to do with lack of content. In Huaraz and the surrounding areas, at least one-third of the people were dressed in traditional dress (check out this image search for some examples). This includes the people from which we bought food, rode in collectivos with, asked for directions from, etc.

This would certainly make for some interesting photos and lots of tourists will bust out their cameras and stick them in people’s faces, but Bridgid and I aren’t comfortable doing that. We will certainly try to get some photos of people when we can do so discretely, but until then most of our photos will be of scenery, architecture, or of one or both parts of a certain wandering couple. Also, we’ll try to do a better job of painting a picture of the people and the places we see with words.

We both got sick. The Brian iron-gut prevailed and my sickness lasted all of one day, required no drugs (although I drank some electrolyte drink), and consisted of a few bouts of diarrhea and a little nausea. Bridgid got sick the day after me and it was bad. It started Thursday afternoon as nausea and an all-night diarrhea marathon. She started some antibiotics on Friday morning. Since I had experienced the aftermath a ciprofloxacin gut-nuke and it wasn’t fun (months of worse than usual gas), I decided to see what the local pharmacies were recommending for travelers diarrhea. Both of the pharmacies that I visited suggested Trimesulfin, so we went with that.

On Saturday, things got scarry. Bridgid had a stabbing pain localized to the lower-right quadrant, bloating, and periods of bad nausea. The pain got worse when palpated and she jumped with pain when the palpation was released. I was concerned about an appendicitis so I set out to find more information. I went to a pharmacy and described the new, concerning symptoms and she started throwing drugs over the counter. Apparently diagnosing before medicating is a novel idea here.

Next stop, Cafe Andino to get a recommendation of a doctor. One of the waitresses sent me to a doctor that was upstairs in a pharmacy. We went and paid the going rate for a checkup (S/20 or about $6.70 US). He suggested that she keep taking the Trimesulfin and some other drug for stomach pain.

By the evening she got a mild, but continuously rising, fever and the pain got continuously worse to the point that she was in tears. I headed back to Cafe Andino with the little laptop and made some calls back home for advice. We determined that the situation was concerning enough to head immediately to better health care. I spoke with Isabel, the wife of the gringo owner of Cafe Andino, and she made some calls (no answer) then headed back to the hostel with me since she was closing up.

After a complicated discussion with the owners of the hostel, their daughter the pharmacist, and Isabel we decided to head to a doctor who was the daughter’s husband. He actually seemed knowledgeable (but his facilities were medieval) and did some blood tests in his “lab” (aka home chemistry set). He ruled out a few other illnesses and found that Bridgid’s white cell count was high, but not extremely high. He said that he felt the chance of appendicitis was 20% and that Bridgid should start taking cipro and if it got better, good, and if it got worse steadily then it’s probably an appendicitis. He also said that the antibiotics that Bridgid was taking were for children and that the pain drug Bridgid was taking would be dangerous if she had an appendicitis.

By morning Bridgid’s fever was gone (probably thanks to the cipro), but the chance of appendicitis combined with our experience with medical care in Huaraz was enough to convince us to head to Lima on the first bus. During the bus ride Bridgid got continuously better, which was a good sign.

Now we are in Lima, Bridgid is feeling way better, and we’re taking advantage of Lima’s amazing restaurants to exercise Bridgid’s newly recovered appetite. We’re going to hang out here for a bit until Bridgid is completely better, regroup, and figure out what’s happening next.

This Wednesday, May 13th, we packed into a van about the size of a VW bus with seventeen of our nearest and dearest, and headed to the small town of Chancos, northeast of Huaraz.

The bus hurtled, literally hurtled, down the windy, pothole-ridden roads. Not only did the van not slow down for potholes, but it also didn’t slow down when oncoming traffic happened to be in our lane. I’ve noticed this in our cab drivers too, the lanes seem to be taken as suggestions rather than the rule. In fact, we’ve probably spent an equal amount of time in both the right and the left lane – when you count all of the various taxis and buses we’ve taken.

At some point, we made it to our first stop, Marcará, and then caught a cab to Chancos. We shared the cab with five other people, which felt very luxurious after the bus. There were two couples, and the women wore the traditional indigenous dress – many layers of skirts, with wool leggings beneath, a brightly-colored cardigan sweater over a blouse, and a beautiful felt hat to top off their plaited hair. The men wear a more mellow outfit, usually dark pants with a white shirt, and a hat.

The people of Chancos were well into a party when we arrived. A brass band played in the town square, and a crowd of people were dancing. The hot springs were just a caged off area with caves and a couple of pools, so we skipped that and wandered around the town a little instead – the party was far more intruiging.

We decided to walk back to Marcará, and it was wonderful – farms and trees, with rolling hillsides in every direction. The farms looked very small, compared to what I am used to, consisiting of one or two cows, a handful of sleepy pigs, and every once in a while chickens. The houses were also very small, made of concrete and sometimes roofed with tin. Small touches made the homes beautiful – flowers in the window sill, grazing sheep in the yard, children sorting corn kernals with their grandmas…it was a good walk, and a great escape from the city.

Presently (written a couple of nights ago), I am sitting in an uber-gringoriffic (the technical term) cafe, listening to American music while fireworks blast outside. We are at the tail-end of the city’s celebration of their patron – El Señor de la Soledad (The Man of Solitude). Every night, we’ve fallen asleep to crowds laughing, yelling, caterwauling, singing, dancing, playing music, and every day we’ve been passed by innumerable parades.

It’s been quite the introduction.

Huaraz is a bustling city. We’ve gotten lost many, many times on the wild roads – where dodging cars is close to a professional sport. While Brian and I duck and run like frightened rabbits (or guinea pigs, to fit with the local theme), women in the traditional Peruvian dress hike up their skirts with one hand and secure their slung babies with the other before shooting across the streets like rockets.

It doesn’t help that the sidewalks are raised at varying heights from the street – one foot, or two, sometimes with steps – and are very skinny. They leave little room for error. The sidewalks are also pockmarked with gaping holes, so that just in case you happen to make it across the street, you might wipe out once you achieve the relative safety of the sidewalk. And these aren’t little potholes, of course. The holes are deep, and usually partially filled with…unsavory scents and items.

My favorite place so far has been Plaza Ginebra, which is a quiet oasis in the midst of the bustling city, and well worth the gauntlet of cars, curbs, and holes to get there. Although we found it in a search for a hostel (which was closed), we felt triumphant, as the quiet plaza also holds a restaurant boasting vegetarian food at excellent prices (about $1 for a veggie burger…Peruvian-style). Not bad!

In Lima, we found a nice hostel to stay for a couple of nights, after a long, long night of misadventures. A wonderful taxi driver took us to four different hostels before we arrived at this one. Apparently, reservations are a good idea for your first night in Lima. Good to know.

The lucky hostel we ended up staying at in Lima is called Stop and Drop. Although a little short on charm, the place has wifi, a great location in the relatively safe Miraflores, and a very enthusiastic director who speaks excellent English. We spent our time exploring Miraflores, but also managed to make it to a ceviche restaurant in San Isidoro – Segundo Muelle. Brian can tell you more about that…

I hung out with a Pisco Sour – Peru’s national drink, unless you believe Chileans, who also call it their national drink. ; ) Pisco Sours are made from grape brandy (pisco), sugar, lime juice, bitters, and egg white, and the one I tried was strong and sweet enough to occupy me while Brian enjoyed his award-winning seafood dish. San Isidro is an affluent area, lots of boutiques and shops, gardens, and expensive restaurants. It was quite a change from Central Lima.

We spent most of our time in Miraflores, an area more affluent than Central Lima, and less fancy than San Isidro. We took it as a good sign that there were plenty of people walking around the night we arrived. Plus, our hostel was right next to two parks, and close to plenty of restaurants – which was our main focus during our two day stay.

In Miraflores, we tried two vegetarian restaurants – Govinda and Bio Leben. Govinda is a Hare Krishna-style restaurant, and apparently has restaurants all over Peru. Our cheap lunch included a veggie soup, rice with fake meat in a spinach/curry sauce, and a gelled fruit desert (too sweet for us, but cool all the same). It was a pretty impressive meal, and not what I was expecting in Peru.

Bio Leben had a deli counter and a restaurant. We never caught the restaurant when it was open, but we visited the deli counter enough times for the ladies to get to know us. (I think they started laughing even before they saw us.) We tried their quiches (amazing!), pizza (eh, not too good), empañadas (sweet and savory, not a favorite), and juices (wonderful!). All very inexpensive too.

And my favorite meal so far? The two mangoes we shared on the rooftop of our hostel. They were fresh and juicy, and better than any mango I’ve had, including the ridiculous amount I consumed in Costa Rica.

Even with the yummy mangos, I think that we were both happy to hop on a bus (with our luggage), and head to the mountains.

We survived the trip to Lima but our bags didn’t make the connection in San Francisco. That’s okay though. It was a little stressful finding a hostal and dealing with taxis last night and it was nice not having to deal with bags. We got a call from the airline earlier and supposedly they have arrived but we have to go get them at the airport. We’ll pick them up this afternoon.

After all of the stress of getting ready then traveling we’re cool with just chilling for a bit.