29 April 2006 Buenos Aires

Happy birthday, Tom! Today is our last day in Buenos Aires and our last day together for a long time. Ellen flies back to Seattle, Tom to Guayaquil and the boat, and Amy stays in this grand city until July. Tom plans to keep up the blog so stay tuned for more.
Buenos Aires is huge.
We have been staying in an apartment three blocks from Amy, walking, eating great food, staying out very late every night like the portenos, and enjoying beautiful fall weather. The leaves in the tree lined boulevards are turning gold and the goods for sale are dark colors, sweaters and wool. The city is very European, and it reminds me of the Manhattan of my grandparents which I remember well growing up. Lots of noise and unbelievable amounts of entertainment and stimulation.
It has been great to have Amy as a guide to her experiences including learning facilities that are more like strike headquarters than anything else, dulce de leche, yerba mate and Frenet and Coke. (local drinks). We keep trying parillada (the famed Argentinian beef) hoping that it will be the greatest thing ever but it´s not - usually the grilled vegetables Amy orders are better. We have also met up with some family friends who live in BA and it has been very interesting to meet and talk to them.
After many Spanish speaking countries we can only conclude that the language is significantly different in each country. Some Mexican vocabulary is taboo in South America and some is just not understood. The accent here is very distinctive, lots of sh sounds where there are ll and y sounds in other countries. So we leave with months of Spanish under our belts feeling more confused than when we started out. Amy says it just takes time. Oh well.
Last week we were in Bolivia which I loved. Partly, the sun came out and stayed. Lake Titicaca at close to 14000 feet was spectacular. And La Paz located in a steep ravine about 15oo feet below the Altiplano, was beautiful. White capped mountains you can almost touch. Clear skies. A capital city where about the half the population is in indigenous dress featuring women wearing bowler hats. The taller the hat, the richer the lady. If the hat is tilted, it means she is single. We had a lot of help understanding all this from a young man named Paul who works in the French Embassy. Tom met him last year while sailing in Mexico.
So I close out, headed home. Thanks for staying tuned.

Leaving Ecuador, Now in Peru, April 14

We left Ecuador a week ago, traveling the Pan American highway by bus through the Andes. Our first stop after Cuenca was a city called Loja, where I had my first brewed cup of coffee in a week. Though Ecuador is a major coffee exporter, coffee is hot water served with a bowl of Nescafe and a spoon in this country. Dinner at a business class hotel (very different from our business class) was $2.50. The Pan American Highway, the Interstate 5 of South America, was at best two paved lanes with a concrete curb, a divider line, and fog lines. That was at best. In many places it was dirt, no curb (just mountainside) and the bus made its way through a plowed lane through eight foot mudslides (a lot, it had been raining). On the way to the border, we had to get off the bus and get checked by the military, twice. Just us foreigners. This in a country where one reads in the newspaper about ordinary business people getting assassinated daily, along with their armed security guards, which are everywhere. Toms daypack was stolen by a pack of kids who boarded our bus and then jumped out the window - nothing valuable to anyone but him, eyeglasses, prescriptions, a book.
In short, life in Ecuador seems pretty chaotic. Contrast to Peru which seems a world away. A first class bus on a major highway whisked us overnight to Lima from Piura, a city in the northern desert where we watched last minute election campaigning including live music, dancing girls and taxi parades. Lima was splendid - I had been expecting another Mexico City but it was charming, both in the old centro and in the LaJolla like suburb of Miraflores where we stayed and met up with three of my rowing buddies, their husbands and friends. The election was an inspiring experience, people really seem to care and feel their vote makes a difference, that the electorate holds the key to security and prosperity or chaos like Ecuador.
We are now in Cuzco where we visited Macchu Picchu and a lot of other stunning ruins and are in countryside that is remiscent of the Washington cascades. The city itself - and our hotel - are founded on Incan ruins. It lovely except that everywhere you turn a vendor is trying to sell you something from a finger puppet to a tour to a chance to pay to take their photograph in full native costume with either a baby human or baby animal in arms.
Topping it off, Holy Week is much celebrated in this town, starting with the arrival of Jesus in the main cathedral on Monday night. Last night the citizenry rushed around town visiting every church for Holy Thursday. Today, Good Friday, things are all closed up, everyone is home with their family eating twelve different dishes, for the twelve apostles.
The Peruvians are very friendly, there is native music everywhere you turn and the food is, well, fascinating. While pizza and pasta are the tourist staples here, we have had roast guinea pig, grilled alpaca, goat, and lots of trout and quinoa soup. Some of it has been delicious, some is definitely an acquired taste. Tomorrow we take a train to Lake Titicaca.

April 4, Cuenca, Ecuador

Up in the sierra of Ecuador at about 7500 feet in the cities, and quite a bit higher getting between cities by rail and bus. The weather is generally cool and cloudy, mid 50s - mid 60s, but there is occasional sunshine. A lot like Seattle. A lot different from the coast. The Andes are quite spectacular, with deep valleys and steep mountainsides that are cultivated in corn, wheat, and vegetables and grazed by livestock until you get to the treeline. There are snow covered volcanoes, rushing rivers, and indigenous people who wear vibrantly colored wool ponchos and shawls and fedora hats. The colors and styles vary according to community, it seems. The cities seem well built and prosperous. In Riobamba we were fortunate to arrive on the eve of the municipal independence celebration and saw four very colorful parades and numerous street festivals.