Cut short

A mugging in Bogota left me without a camera and with an injury, so I'm back in New York prematurely. Since I can only type with one hand for now, tales of Buenos Aires (smitten), Mendoza (tipsy) and Colombia (totally overwhelmed by natural beauty) will have to wait.

So if you're in New York, I'll see you soon, and if you're not, give me a call; I'm just sitting around twiddling my one functional thumb.

I want you all to know that the shitty ending does not take away from how much I loved South America, and how happy and reinvigorated I feel. For now I'm channeling my travel bug toward reacquainting myself with New York.

Much love, and thanks for reading -
Masha

Into Argentina

Salta was our first stop in Argentina. It´s a bustling city, full of students and business people and old colonial buildings. To my delight, they observe the siesta too, so from 1 to 5 men sit around cafes drinking coffee and smoking and looking through papers. Since it was just a stopover point, we did not stick around for long but I did get to take the teleferico (cable car) to the top of a big hill, which was empty and felt like a resort town in winter. The weather has finally evened out now that we are at a lower altitude - Salta smelled wintery and wistful.

From Salta we took a whopping 23-hour bus to Puerto Iguazu on the Brazilian border. Argentine buses are the stuff of legends, so we were all giddy with anticipation for this one. There was an attendant who served us three meals, including wine with dinner, and played shitty American movies. The seat reclined about 150 degrees and was wide enough to sleep on my side. Aah..

Puerto Iguazu is the town closest to Iguazu falls on the Argentine side, so we were expecting a tourist trap with nothing much going for it. But somehow the town manages to accommodate tons of visitors and still keep doing its chill pretty thing. It sits on the intersection of two big rivers, Iguazu and Parana. This intersection, called Tres Fronteras, is the meeting point of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Our first night there, I took a walk along the river over to the lookout to watch the sunset. As it happened, this was the day of the first Argentina game in the World Cup, and the road was lined with groups of people in jerseys pumping music and drinking mate. Everyone, and I mean everyone, had a mate gourd in hand.

It was warm enough to go swimming, so I spent two afternoons at the pool of the fancy hotel in town. And one of the evenings, we stumbled upon an outdoor market selling nothing but cheese, salami, olives, and wine - as we found out, these make up a picada, which is served with crackers and is a typical Argentine snack. There were tables there, so we had a dinner of ham and cheese and salami and chilled red wine.

I've been tiptoeing around the subject of Iguazu Falls, which was of course the whole reason we were to Puerto Iguazu in the first place. That´s because they are difficult to talk about. What I did not realize before I came there was the sheer expanse of the park, and how easy it is to spend a whole day there. You can visit the falls on the Brazil side, where you get to look at them, or the Argentine side, were you get to walk around and up to them and try to wrap your head around what all that power must feel like. They stretch for miles and are surrounded by a lush green forest, which was filled with these amazing creatures. Here again, people were right to insist that it´s a must-see.

It´s been fun being here for the World Cup. The hostels are filled with Europeans sitting around tv´s. Cabbies always want to talk about how the U.S. is doing. There's a big screen set up in one of the squares in Buenos Aires, and people get together to watch matches. Everyone sort of slows down when Argentina is playing, and watching the games is a legitimate excuse to skip work or miss homework.

Whores on Horses

Last stop in Bolivia!

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their demise near Tupiza. It looks like cowboy country there, so we donned the hats we'd been saving for the occasion and went for a ride. It was a slow trot most of the time, but a couple of times the guide set the horses galloping - see the first picture - and on the first attempt, my horse bit Lina's leg. (She still has a horse-mouth-shaped bruise on her calf.) On our way back to town, we came across a very drunk man who went off on us, and the only words we could make out were 'cabalderia' (cavalry) and 'putas' (whores). So that's our new moniker.

Let's get high. And salty

After four juice and pastry filled days in Sucre, we decided it was time to either join one of the convents we'd visited or move on. The convents wouldn't have us, so move on we did, albeit with a heavy heart.

Our next stop was Potosi, the highest city in the world at 4090 meters. There we visited a Carmelite convent and watched 'Enemy of the State'. The main attraction in Potosi are the silver mines, which are still operational and still squalid. Since neither of us had any interest in paying a miner to exlode some dynamite, we swiftly moved on to our next stop, Uyuni.

Uyuni is a real fucking dump. It has all the charm of a post-apocalyptic town: empty streets, stray dogs, and inhospitable climate. All the tourist money flowing through on its way to the Salt Flats seems to have no bearing here. We kept wondering where it all goes.

But not withstanding all of the above, the Salt Flats were definitely worth the effort, just like everyone had told us. Just look at all the fun we had.

... and we´re back

The internet in Bolivia took me back to that ´90s pastime of growing glossy eyed in front of the computer while a webpage loads. But I crossed the border into Argentina so I can get back to blogging. Here are two updates I've been meaning to post for a while now

Things I do differently here

The interesting thing about traveling is that certain things that I´d never do at home become quick habits. For one, I´m speaking Spanish a lot, and occasionally thinking in Spanish too. Today I did yoga in Spanish. I also drink a ton of fresh squeezed orange juice because it´s cheap and abundant. This is where the list of objectively positive things ends. I´m consuming a ridiculous amount of meat, potatoes, and rice - usually all three in one meal. I´m also eating a ton of sweets - chocolates, candy, but mostly cheap packaged cookies that are essential on a long bus ride. I´m catching up on shitty American sitcoms from the last 10 years whenever a TV is around. All of this I do with relish.

Cast of characters

One of my favorite parts of being a backpacker is meeting other backpackers, so I wanted to give you a taste of a few people I've spent time with along the way.
- A 29 year old Japanese man who's been traveling around the world for the past 3 years. He's heading back to Japan next month to get married to a girl he met in Ecuador and knocked up in Rio
- A British couple fresh out of college who are taking a year to travel around the world. Unlike a lot of other British kids here, they were unabashed about having money at their disposal
- An American kid who took a year off from med school in Boston to volunteer at an NGO in Nicaragua
- A lot of Irish couples traveling for a year or two because the economy's bad
- A lot of Australians traveling for a year or two because everyone does it
- A lot of Israelis fresh out of the army doing the Israeli circuit
- For the past two weeks, I've been traveling with an American girl from New York and California who'd been working at Google in London before decisively quitting and taking off to travel. She's doing a Kiva fellowship in Asia starting in July. We have a lot to talk about. And if you want to learn about what I've been eating recently, check out her food blog here.

I will update you on my itinerary soon, I promise! All I can say right now is that my happiness levels have been spiking lately. I'm recently arrived in Buenos Aires, and I'm going out to explore.

Much love
M

Sugar High

I wrote a poem about Sucre:

This city
makes me giddy
with its white washed walls,
juice stalls,

uniformed school girls
in twos and threes,

flower beds´ intricate symmetries,

a saltena for breakfast, alfajor for a snack -
wait for me, Sucre, I´m coming back.

Living la vida Loki

Serendipitously, I ended up in La Paz just in time for the festival of El Gran Poder - the biggest party of the year. It started at 6 in the morning and kept on going until midnight, with a massive parade, coordinated dancing routines, and drinking in the streets. But instead of going out, I was laid up in the hostel all day long, nursing my stomach bug and reading a Russian translation of The Razor´s Edge that I found in the book exchange downstairs. One of the best days so far.

I´ve been staying at the Loki La Paz - a party hostel that took over a respectable hotel in an old colonial building a few years back. There are a few of them on the gringo trail, and they know their market well - there´s a bar which is the focal point of social life; breakfast is served until 1; and leaving the building is basically optional. This one in particular is reminiscent of a Harry Potter movie because there are so many British kids on gap year running around.

So in between altitude weariness, stomach upsets, and sociable neighbors, I´ve gotten to know the hostel a whole lot better than La Paz. But I hear it´s a nice town.

Once More to the Lake

Last night I said good bye to Peru and got on an overnight bus headed to Copacabana - a small lakeside town 8 km past the Bolivian border. Copa feels a lot more like a lakeside resort than does industrial Puno, so it´s a pleasant stop on the way to La Paz. This afternoon I climbed the local lookout point, where I ran into a very pleasant group of Irish, Portuguese, and Australian tourists, who shared their wine and adventures with me as we watched the sun set over the lake. We didn´t quite make it to the sunset because we ran out of wine and it got to be freezing.

You guys are a chatty bunch. If you don´t feel like leaving a comment, drop me a personal note.

"Once More to the Lake" is one of my favorite E.B. White essays.

Machu Picchu and the Festival of Ollantaytambo

.. or, ML <3's>

We spent all day Friday at Machu Picchu.

The archeological site itself is flanked by two mountains - Machu Picchu (old peak) and Huayna Picchu (young peak). At the advice of our newly minted friend with the eco-lodges, we made a beeline for Machu Picchu as soon as we got there. It takes a bit over an hour to get up to the top, so a lot of visitors choose not to climb it - which made for a surprisingly serene morning. On the way up, I developed a crush on Hiram Bingham, the Yale professor who found Machu Picchu back in 1911. We had our picnic at the top, looking down to the ruins and all around at more massive green mountains. Once again we had a bit of magic - there were a group of Peruvian hippies at the very top worshiping the mountain a la Inca rituals. They were singing quiet beautiful songs and playing the recorder - music that I would have smirked at anywhere else.

Reinforced by a Snickers bar and a Coke, we tackled the ruins in the afternoon. To my amazement, they weren't nearly as overrun as I'd expected - there was room to contemplate what it might have looked like once.

For Saturday and Sunday we headed to Ollantaytambo, a small town in the Sacred Valley where Lizz had been volunteering. Ollanta had their annual fiesta in honor of the town´s patron saint and we wanted to be there for the party.

Ollantaytambo is the kind of small town where if you want to talk to someone, you go out on the street until you bump into them (usually takes under 15 minutes). But they really rally for the festival, which as of last year has been designated 'national heritage'. The fiesta is a really curious mix of Catholic worship with local tradition - group dances performed around the clock in elaborate costumes and masks. By Sunday, the party got rowdy - there was a corrida in a local bull ring (we couldn´t stomach it after they thrust a terrified 10 year old boy atop a buckling donkey) and drinking everywhere. The highlight was the cargos - barbeques or massive cookouts - that each dancing troupe organized. They were extremely welcoming, so we hit up three, where we were treated to large chunks of meat, beer, and dancing. A good note to end on.

Chapter II, in which our heroes climb mountains, plunge into rivers, ride horses, and visit an ancient Inca citadel

Last week was so full of adventures that we didn't have time for a write-up. But now that Lizz is en route to hot showers and summer weather, I have time to sit here in my long johns and fill you all in.

Part I. The night that never happened
I'm referring here to the Saturday night in Cusco when we went to bed early instead of meeting a group of Limenos in town for the weekend and staying up at the discoteca until sunrise.

Part II. Choquequirao
Monday through Thursday saw us on a 4 day trek to the ruins of Choquequirao. Choquequirao is only about 30% excavated and is supposed to be what Machu Picchu was in the '60s - i.e. hard to get to and relatively untrampled.
It was indeed a pretty tough hike, with a 1500m descent to a river valley followed by 1500m climb on the other side. The sun was also to be reckoned with - mostly by getting a very early start. All of this was made tolerable by the fact that we had horses to carry our stuff and a cook to keep us well supplied: both left us with time and energy to look around.
What is most awe inspiring about the Andes is sheer scale. I've seen green mountain sides before, and snow covered peaks, and big stretches of sky - but never so grandiose, or extending so far as here. Our last camp site was particularly magical - overlooking the river valley where we had been earlier that day, facing west as the sun set behind the mountains. It was warm enough to take the rain cover off, so we slept with the starry sky over us.
We also met a man from Cusco who was doing the trek with his friends - all of whom, as it turned out, were prominent in some way. One of them is the biggest asparagus exporter in the world. Yep. The other owns eco-lodges throughout the Andes and has served as Dalai Lama's guide in Peru. (I'm hoping he'll set me up with an internship next summer.)

Peruvians in general have been very friendly and willing to help, which makes all the difference to this traveler.

Don´t give me that altitude

Turns out I´m not as immune to altitude as I thought - my body is taking its time adjusting. What that means in practice is that I get to laze around and drink coca tea several times a day, so I´m not complaining. (Actually, Lizz says I complain all the time.)

I arrived in Cusco on Tuesday afternoon after a whopping 24 hours of travel time. Our hostel is up a serious set of stairs which at this altitude is a bitch, but there´s a beautiful view over the city. Turns out that the unofficial Israeli corner is also right near us, so we ended up having dinner among a bunch of twenty-year-old Hebrew speakers eating hummus and shakshouka.

On Wednesday, we went up to the Saqsayhuaman (or, as Lizz calls it, "sexywoman") ruins outside Cusco, where our guide´s name was Vladimir Ilyich - that´s after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, for those of you who don´t know. His brother´s name is Ernesto Che Guevara, and they have a sister named after a Bulgarian communist too. Saqsayhuaman was an Incan temple of the Sun, which the Spanish took apart to use for their own cathedral in the city´s plaza. Vladimir made a point of referring to the Spanish as "invasores" rather than "conquistadores" and told us how chicha is really made.

Highlight of the day - finding the local food market and the hundreds of juice ladies.

Tuesday night we caught a night bus to Puno, a town on Lake Titicaca - the largest high altitude lake in the world (or so we read). After killing a couple hours in the bus terminal, we caught the slowest boat ever to Amantani. To my admittedly inexperienced eye, Amantani looked a lot like an island in the Mediterranean - well groomed, green, nice looking houses amid beautiful blue water. At night our hosts dressed us up in local wear, and we went to the town dance where French tourists outnumbered the locals.

Highlight of the day - seeing an insane number of stars from a whole new hemisphere. We saw the Southern Cross too. (Cathy, all I could think about looking at those stars was BSG - also they have cookies here called FRAC.)

Now we´re back in Puno waiting for our classy cama bus back to Cusco after burning all our money on alpaca sweaters, scarves, hats, and socks.