The beach, the lake, and the Swami: A story of Uruguay in three acts

As tempting as it was to keep looking at photos of tiny homes, I promised Ike that I would write our Uruguay blog post while he was back in the States for his grandpa’s memorial. But he’s coming back in a few hours and I haven’t started yet. Eeek! Have I become a procrastinator during this trip? I sure hope not. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t finish before he returned.)

We boarded the Buquebus ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Uruguay, with Sweetcakes in tow. The ride was uneventful, and after just over an hour we were arriving in a new country! When we returned to our car to disembark from the ferry, we decided to whip up some quick sandwiches for lunch in case customs would confiscate our fresh food items. Suffice it to say we’ve become a bit lazy/lax in researching our border crossings by this point. We pulled off the ferry and followed the other cars a couple hundred meters, then waited at the back of the line for the customs inspection. Quick! Grab the grapefruit! We popped it in our mouths, with juice all over our hands when the customs officers came over for our vehicle inspection. Victory! (??) They did end up taking a few very obviously placed produce items, but didn’t do a thorough search of our vehicle, so our losses were minimal.

The custom officials then told us that, unlike the Argentinians, we had to go “over there” and get a temporary import permit. We drove in the general direction that he waved, parked the car, and set out on foot, a look of confusion on our faces. Eventually we found our way to the customs office. We pulled out all our paperwork and handed it to the nice lady who was helping us. The first question she asked was, “Can I see your proof of insurance?” My heart sank. We had tried to purchase last minute insurance for Uruguay during our one day stay in BA, but were unsuccessful. Reports from other travelers said they had never been asked to show it while in Uruguay (not at the border, not at any police stops). We had decided to roll the dice, and now it was the very first question she asked us? Whomp whomp.

Luckily we had a sneaky plan B. Our other insurance policy covers a handful of countries in South America, but Uruguay is not on the list. I handed this policy to the woman and she spent a few minutes scanning through it. Eventually she pointed out that it did not cover Uruguay. “Oh, really? I thought it covered all of the Mercosur countries…” She probably didn’t believe my ruse anyway, but I think I deserve an A+ for effort. I’m no good at fibbing. Instead of making us board the next boat back to Argentina (as I feared), she informed us there was an insurance office 3 blocks from the port. She gave us very vague directions and we set out on port, Sweetcakes locked in the port. After heading off in the wrong direction and asking to buy a policy from an office that offers personal security services (oops), we found our way to the right insurance office.

With all of the paperwork to take care of, it was time to pay for the policy. They didn’t accept Argentinian pesos (I don’t blame them), and since we were fresh off the boat we didn’t have any Uruguayan pesos. We set out to find an ATM, but it was unable to process our transaction. Say what!? We were certain we had enough funds in our account to pull out a couple hundred dollars worth. We found another ATM, but it was out of service, of course. We asked the security guard at the bank where we could find another ATM. He referred us back to the first one we had tried. We ended up going to a money exchange house and exchanging Argentinian for Uruguayan pesos at a brutal rate. I wondered what was wrong with our bank card and already had visions of us having to eat our “emergency” meal that night (pasta, canned tuna, canned peas, and sauce). Ugh…

Back at the port we walk up to the security guard and explain our situation, and that we need to re-enter the arrivals area so we can speak with the customs. He tells us to have a seat and wait. We noticed another ATM in the ferry terminal and this time we were successful in pulling cash. If only we had noticed that ATM an hour ago… We waited twenty or so minutes, then a customs official comes through the doors, looks around, then sees us and asks if we are the ones needing the import permit. Yup, that’s us. She tells us to wait just a few minutes for her to help a few other customers with their Duty Free purchases. Eventually we walk into the room. She doesn’t ask to see our insurance. (Obviously) She then proceeds to ask us where we are from. “Estados Unidos,” we reply. “Ahhh, ooooo-sa!” (They pronounce “USA” like it’s all one word instead of saying each of the letters individually.) She spends a few minutes looking confusedly at her computer screen, then admits to us, “I see Sweeden on here, but I don’t see ooooo-sa.” “Maybe try looking under EEUU,” I suggest. She gives me a puzzled look. “It’s the abbreviation for Estados Unidos.” “Ahhhhhhhh…..” she responds and I think I literally saw a light bulb turn on inside her head. How can this woman be a customs official? A few minutes later we had our paperwork in hand and headed back to Sweetcakes. We hopped in the car and drove right out of the port, no one stopping to look at any of our documents. Welcome to tranquilo Uruguay!


“This is the beach where Eric, Ariel, and I went skinny dipping!” -Bethany


Growing, buying, and selling Cannabis is legal in Uruguay.  You can tell, because all the graffiti is like this: “Don’t forget to smile! :)” or “Life is short, be happy.” 



We drove down the road to a nearby grassy area along the water where other overlanders have wild camped previously. It was a gorgeous spot right on the water and tucked behind a little hill so we even had a bit of privacy. Probably the best “urban” camping we’ve had the whole trip. I made Ike walk over town with me, reminiscing about my short trip to Uruguay during my BA study back in college. He’s such a dear to put up with me.  


Fall colors, no fall temperatures. YAY



Bethany’s weakness from this trip: photographing street art. 



The next morning we set out on Uruguay’s very nice highway, passing through what could easily be mistaken for the American Midwest: gently rolling hills and agriculture all around! We drove through the capital city of Montevideo and headed for another urban wild camp. This one was on a small peninsula on the far side of the city, near one of the light houses. The spot looked good enough for us, so we pulled in, locked up, and set out to walk to the historic part of the city to get ourselves a big parrilla for lunch. It was something like a 4 mile walk, but it was a beautiful day and there was a nice pedestrian sidewalk that hugged the coast the whole way there. When we were most of the way there we both looked at each other and agreed we would catch a taxi back to our campsite after lunch. (Did I mention that Ike is a dear for putting up with my whims?)

We were headed to the Mercado del Puerto (Port Market), where the whole area is packed with parrillas serving enormous quantities of grilled meats to hungry patrons. We eventually chose a restaurant and settled in for the mountain of meat. It was decent, but honestly nothing to get excited about. We’ve had better in Argentina!

Sure, we’ve had better, but this was still pretty darn good.


Better than my grill.

Our taxi dropped us back at our campsite. By now it was early evening and the fishermen and others hanging out near the lighthouse were starting to pack up and head home. We moved Sweetcakes closer to the water and settled in for the evening. It didn’t take us long to realize we might have many visitors that night. Looking down at the ground, it was covered in, ahem, condoms. Yes, it was disgusting. Needless to say, we slept in our car that night. We poured ourselves a drink and enjoyed the sunset behind the city skyline, doing our best to forget what was staring up at us from the ground. We’ve said it before: the overlanding life is super classy!


Not pictured: dozens of condoms


Staying positive




Sunsets don’t mess around in Uruguay

We weren’t feeling the city thing, so we headed further along the coast the next morning. Since it is now fall down here, this is the off season for Uruguay, meaning there are absolutely no crowds, but also that many of the official campgrounds are already closed. We were in the mood for a shower, and eventually found one that was open. Queso, the campground cat, welcomed us to our spot and was basically our BFF the entire time we were there. The weather turned windy and cold, and we started to sour on the idea of beach camping for a couple of weeks as we had initially intended. I found us an apartment on airbnb in nearby Punta del Este and we headed there the next morning, looking forward to a week of relaxing in style!



Our new best friend we nicknamed ‘Queso’

The apartment was nice and had a beautiful view overlooking the harbor. The downside was that it came with a quirky owner, Claudia. We had rented one of the rooms in the 2-bedroom apartment. After we arrived and checked in, Claudia informed us that she would be arriving that evening to stay in the other bedroom. A bit creepy, but ok. Soon after we heard a very loud banging noise. And I mean LOUD! It turned out that the unit right next to ours was being completely remodeled. Bang bang BANG mixed with errrrrrrrRRRRRR (serious drilling noises), soon had me about to lose my mind. We went out for a quick walk and to buy some groceries, hoping the noise wouldn’t be so bad when we returned. But it was. The next morning we emailed Claudia, explaining that if the noise continued we wouldn’t be able to stay the entire week. She didn’t respond. We went on with our day, trying to make the most of it since this was a mini vacation for us. Later that evening we had just poured ourselves a glass of wine and a batch of oatmeal cookies were in the oven when we heard a knock on the door. Surprise! It’s Claudia. By that time we had just assumed she wasn’t coming to stay anymore, so it was a bit awkward to say the least.

We had just moved the TV out of the second bedroom and into the living room (per her suggestion), and Ike was excited to be able to watch one of the NBA playoff games. Five minutes after she arrived, Claudia asks us if we intended to watch TV that evening. Ike said yes, he was going to watch a basketball game that started in 10 minutes. “Well, I was hoping to watch a movie on the TV in my bedroom, but I guess if you want the TV, you can have it…” she pouted. “It’s just that I usually live in a cabin in the woods without electricity, so when I stay here it’s like vacation and I like to watch TV.” Tough luck, lady. We live out of our car, oh, and BTW, we are PAYING YOU! Of course we didn’t say that, but man was it hard to bite my tongue. A few minutes later Claudia left, and when she returned she had a clunky old TV in a shopping cart. “Oh, I remembered I had another TV in my car.” WTF? In response to our complaint about the construction, she instead offered to let us go out to her cabin on the ecological reserve where she spends most of the year. For the same price. “You have to pump your own water and there’s no electricity, but it’s very peaceful!” This was my response. It ended up becoming a running joke with Bethany and I because Claudia kept bringing up the place and asking us if we wanted to stay out there.

Luckily Claudia only stayed in the apartment for 2 nights and she was out most of the daytime. But when she was around she wanted to talk our ears off! I understand, she’s lonely, but we rented this place to relax! She told us about how her mother died and her brother and sister were both murdered. (!!!???) [“My brother was murdered in Brasil, and then a man came to me and said, ‘Pay me $1000 to kill the man who killed your brother.’ But I didn’t like my brother!” Lord, have mercy.] As she was getting ready to leave, I asked her about the process of us paying for the electricity before we left. (Unlike most properties on airbnb, Claudia’s description mentioned that the renters had to pay additional for the electricity and telephone use during their stay. I figured that wouldn’t be a big deal since we didn’t use much electricity.) “Well, it’s usually around $100-150,” she informed us. “For a week!?” “Yes, well, it’s $25 for a bottle of gas, no matter how much you use. And then it’s $4/day for the cable, and then about $50-$100 in electricity.” WHAT???? First of all, we know how much propane we use and how much it costs. We had just filled our 20lb tank for $13 (half of what she was quoting us), and that has lasted us since northern Peru! We have only filled our tank twice since leaving the US. Secondly, when we weren’t heating or cooling our apartment in the states, our monthly electric bill was around $30. So her charging $50+ for a week of electricity was absurd. Again, I bit my tongue. After giving this some thought, I think there is a good chance she is scamming people and charging tenants for the total electric usage since the previous tenants, however long that period might be.

Me being me, of course I let this stupid utilities charge (=scam) get under my skin, but we still enjoyed our time in the city. We went for walks along the coast, bought fresh fish from fishermen, and soaked up the sunshine (and internet). My favorite part was watching the sea lions and seagulls fighting for fish scraps in the harbor as the fishermen cleaned their catch.




View from the full wall window


Can’t imagine this place during high season


What was I just saying about those Uruguayan sunsets?




GELATOOOOOO


Then we found out the place is only open on the weekend during low season.  Which made us sad.  But then we saw that they sell off the extra gelato really cheap the last hour they’re open on Sunday night.  So we bought a kilo (2 pounds). And ate it all in 24 hours.  So then we felt happy.


Lime on Sushi was new and amazing.


Uruguay’s national dish: Chivito! “Someone….someone is better than me at making burgers.” – Ike


They knew where the free food came from.


Extreme seagull surfing on a sea lion



would drive

Trying to keep up our tradition of visiting a mechanic in (nearly) every country, we took Sweetcakes in to a mechanic to have the rear wheels checked out (one had overheated when we were fleeing from the volcano and we noticed something was leaking fluid). Of course we became BFFs with Horacio and he was super interested in our trip (and Sweetcakes). Turned out that one of the repairs we had done in Belize was done incorrectly, using a piece that was too narrow, and as a result something broke and we lost all of the fluid in the rear diff. Oops. He fixed it right up and also taught us how to replace the brake pads. As a bonus he sent us to the parts store to pick up the new pads and this place was plastered with awesome hand written cardboard signs and political cartoons. Horacio jokingly asked us to stick around and help him out in his shop. “So, we start at 8am tomorrow!” :)


Conjugation of the verb, “to vote”:
I vote
You win
He loses
We f*** ourselves
You [guys] get rich
They go on strike


Dear client: If you need the doo-hickey for the thingy, please bring us the thingy where the doo-hickey goes. :-)


That’s what 35,000 miles of overlanding will do to your brakes…



Bethany and my new boss, Horacio.

After our week long vacation (Note I’m not saying “vacation from our vacation” because our trip really isn’t a vacation. It’s an adventure. And it takes a lot of work!), we continued further along Uruguay’s coast. We took the scenic route, hugging the coast while the main highway headed inland a bit. We had some beautiful views and even got to take a tiny ferry. We stopped in a tiny fishing/tourist village called Punta del Diablo, a mere 30 miles from the border with Brazil! We pulled into a small parking area right near the beach where we had intended to camp that night, but there really was no privacy. Instead we spent a couple of hours meandering around town and watching the giant waves break along the rocky coast. Once the sun became low in the sky we headed towards our plan B campsite at nearby Laguna Negra.


Along the way, we found this abandoned church.


They started construction in the early 20th century but gave up after twenty-ish years in the 1930’s.




We’re just happy humanity defeated the giants.






Still looks seaworthy to me cap’n



dat winch





Sweetcakes looking rugged




I loved this graffiti covered building in Punta del Diablo




little more relaxed than Punta del Este




Rainbow waves!







Meandering back along a dirt road with the lake on one side and pastures of cows on the other side, we wondered what we were getting ourselves into. When we reached the end of the road, we saw another truck driving out of the trees. They saw our Wisconsin plates and one of them exclaimed that he was from Michigan’s upper peninsula. A Yupper! “The campsites are better further in,” they explained. “If you guys are sticking around tomorrow night, we’re going to come back for some night fishing!” Excited at the possibility for social interaction (hey, after spending a year with just yourself and your spouse, you take what you can get), we both nodded in agreement that we would stick around for a second night.




We parked Sweetcakes and walked along the path further into the trees and down toward the lake. It was a little gnarly in places, with large boulders sticking out of the ground and some narrow parts of the path, but we knew Sweetcakes could do it.


And she could, but it was fun!


tight fit :)



treebeard?

We had a perfect spot overlooking the lake. That night we watched a beautiful sunset and decided to sleep without the tent’s rain guard for the first time in months. Ahh, the little things. We enjoyed this place so much that we ended up staying for 4 nights. We went for dips in the shallow lake, watched the resident flock of parakeets, and read in the hammock. It’s amazing what good weather will do for your morale when you are on an extended camping trip.



Unreal!







This is opening of Lion King good.






At the barbershop


Lazy afternoon


we said the lake was shallow!


not a bad view to wake up to

On our second to last morning camped near the lake, I was woken up early by what sounded like a remote controlled toy car encircling our tent. We’d had to put the tent’s rain guard on the previous evening because it had started to drizzle, so I wasn’t able see what was causing this strange noise. “Ike, Ike! What is that sound?” I nervously asked as I poked him awake. “It sounds like flies…” He got out of the tent to go to the bathroom and in the pre-dawn haze we could just barely make out a swarm of flies hovering about 15 feet off the ground, just beneath the tree branches. They were like an army staged for battle, ready to charge. Eeeep! After about 15 minutes they all flew away. Maybe they were hovering just beneath the trees while waiting for the temperature to warm up a bit. Somehow Ike managed to go back to sleep, but I just couldn’t for fear of having nightmares of being swarmed by flies.

After waking up and making some coffee, I saw the group who said they were coming back for fishing was hanging out down near another campsite. Walking down the rocks, I introduced myself. Nathan [the Yupper] and Melissa [from Portland, OR] are a chef and baker who are immigrating to Uruguay from the states. They took off for their new home without learning Spanish, because “It’s easier to just immerse yourself in it to learn.” [Amen!] And I thought we were brave for doing our trip! They were hanging out with their friends Claudio and Leticia, all four of them now living in Punta del Diablo. I admired the huge fish they had hanging from a line, impressed that there actually was real fish to nab in the lake. 

At one point, they asked us about other places in Uruguay we hoped to visit. They started telling us about a trip they’d taken to a protected park. They ended up finding this creepy abandoned house that was becoming overgrown with moss. The uncle of theirs they were traveling with lit a fire on the front porch but it was so moist and overgrown they weren’t worried. Exploring around inside they saw Disney VHS tapes, photos of some weird Swami who was Christian/Buddhist and wore a rhinestone belt. There was officially licensed Swami incense in the house, but the place was abandoned and the group began speculating and making up a story in their minds about the person who lived here and ended up running off to join a cult. We spent several minutes reveling in the insanity of this place they’d seen. The uncle even asked around and the people were like, ‘oh yeah, crazy lady lived there.’ “What was the name of that place again?” I asked as Bethany came back up after stepping away. “La Laguna ecological reserve.” Claudio replied. Bethany’s eyes widened. “That’s where Claudia said her other residence was.” Now Claudio and Leticia’s eyes shot open. “CLAUDIA! That’s the name of the lady!” “That’s the crazy lady we were staying with!!” AHHHHH! Basically we realized we were lucky we didn’t end up as fish food in a lake.

Finally our blissful time along Laguna Negra had to come to an end. We woke up early and drove all the way back to Colonia, taking a more inland route and passing tons more agriculture. Someday I hope we can return to Uruguay and explore more of the country.

I bore the burden of taking Sweetcakes through customs and loading her onto the boat, since Ike had done it leaving Argentina. We pulled into the port area and were told to park the car in the parking lot since we didn’t have our boarding passes yet. We went inside, checked in, waited in line and were stamped out of the country by immigration, and were told to wait in the boarding lounge until they announced that drivers should go to their cars. Our departure time was approaching and they hadn’t made the “drivers to their cars” announcement, so I approached an employee and asked about it. They told me to go through the boarding doors and I could walk outside to my car. Great! I went downstairs and out into the port area and a few seconds later a lady started screaming at me. “What do you think you’re doing?” “I’m… going to get my car?” “Your car is over there.” (She pointed to a group of cars) “No, my car is out front in the parking lot.” She told me I’d have to go back upstairs, backwards through immigration, and get my car.

So that’s what I did, and I pulled Sweetcakes around to the security gate to let me pass into the port area (where they other group of cars were). The woman working the gate asked to see a document, so I showed her the car’s boarding pass. “No, you have to keep that.” I showed her my own boarding pass. “Nope, not that either.” Finally I thought to show her the vehicle import permit we received when we first entered the country. “Ok, great,” she responded without even looking at it. “Pull your car next to the others, then you need to go wait inside the building.” I was confused. “But, aren’t we going to board the cars soon?” “Yes…” “So, shouldn’t I stay out here so I can drive the car onto the ferry?” “Sure, if you want.” I don’t know what other option she was implying, so I stayed with Sweetcakes. Five minutes later she told me I had to go inside the building and go through immigration. I told her I had already done that. “No, what you did was the check-in.” “No, I did the immigration,” I said as I showed her my stamped passport. “But, how did you already do that?” “Well, we parked out front, we went inside to check-in, proceeded through immigration, then I went upstairs to the boarding lounge. Then, they told me to come downstairs and outside to get to my car, but then some lady yelled at me and said I had to go back inside and then out to get my car from the front, and then I drove through the gate, and now I’m here.” “Uh-huh,” she nodded, a bit confused. But she let me stay with my car: win! Good thing I was the one going through all of this because if Ike had tried to stumble through with broken Spanish, we might still be in Uruguay! :)




=============================
It’s been awhile since we’ve reported our expenses, so here you get a double feature!

Uruguay budget recap:
Phew, we blew our budget in Uruguay! We were surprised how expensive it was; many times prices were near those in Chile (see expense report below; most expensive country since Canada?). We also opted to rent an apartment for a week, which cost a pretty penny, and our original budget did not include the cost of the ferry tickets from BA to Uruguay.
Expected days in country: 14Actual days spent in country: 16
Daily budget: $53 Actual expenses: $83 (excluding car repairs)Difference: +$20 (+58%)
Average price for gas: $5.92/gallon (40.6 pesos/liter)
Good thing Uruguay is a tiny country.
Expected miles driven: 400Actual miles driven: 812Difference: +103%
Our original plan was to drive along the coast and continue in to Brazil. But plans change, and so we drove along the coast and then had to back track all the way to get back to Argentina.
Average miles driven per day: 51
A big relief after many long driving days in Chile and Argentina.
Biggest daily expenses ($/day): 
#1 – Lodging ($27.25/day): We spent 8 nights in a cushy apartment. Thankfully we offset this by only paying to camp one night, and wild camping the rest of the time.
#2 – Food ($26.50/day): Groceries were expensive! And we opted to eat out a few times; pricey but worth it.
#3 – Gas ($11.54/day): They gotta pay for their free healthcare and higher education some way…

=============================
Chile budget recap:
I’m shocked that we managed to stay under budget in one of the most expensive countries of our trip! We wild camped a lot in Chile and this kept our lodging costs extremely low (averaged $9/day). Gas was cheaper than anticipated, which helped offset the additional miles we traveled and the exorbitant tolls.
Expected days in country: 30Actual days spent in country: 30How’s that for accuracy?
Daily budget: $76Actual expenses: $66 (excluding car repairs)Difference: –$10 (-13%)
Average price for gas: $4.43/gallon (720 pesos/liter)
We budgeted $6/gallon for gas in Chile, so this was a pleasant surprise and helped us keep our expenditures below budget.
Expected miles driven: 2,100Actual miles driven: 2,740 Difference: +30%
Average gas mileage:  20.4 mpg
This has been fairly steady throughout our trip.
Average miles driven per day: 91
Higher than we prefer, but not outrageous.
Biggest daily expenses ($/day): 
#1 – Gas ($19.88/day): Even though gas was cheaper than we budgeted, we drove a lot!
#2 – Food ($18.77/day): I’m shocked we kept it this low. Groceries were expensive, but we did a good job of buying cheaper, non-perishable groceries in Argentina and bringing them across the border with us.
#3 – Tolls & Ferries ($10.85/day): Chile’s main highway runs the entire length of the country, but you have to pay for convenience, folks. Tolls were frequent, and at ~$6 each, they added up quickly. We also took several ferries while on the Carretera Austral and to get to Chiloe.

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Chile & Argentina Part 1: Red wine, White wine, Blue skies

After spending several weeks above 3,000 meters, we left the altiplano and descended into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Country #14 of the trip. And by descended, I mean descended.Ike put Sweetcakes into 4LO and we engine-braked our way down the long, constant descent to the desert… from nearly 5000 meters the day before down to a mere 2400 meters (7900 feet). Side note: it’s cute that Denver is considered “high altitude” at 1600 meters).

The long descent into Chile


At the bottom of the descent, we had the pleasure of experiencing Chilean customs for the first time. Welcome to Chile, please dispose of all your delicious foodstuffs here. All fresh veggies/fruits/meat, dairy, uncooked eggs… yup, they can go right in the garbage. Luckily we had been warned by other travelers about this, so had tried to consume most of perishable food before the border. The customs agents asked us to bring all items from our car into the building to pass through the scanner, but after informing them that our car was jam-packed with stuff, they were happy to do a visual inspection of the vehicle. Easy peasy. Just had to wait around a bit as the workers finished their Sunday siesta.

We had been warned by other travelers that Chile was expensive, but it was still shocking to roll into our hostel and have to pay US$11 per person to camp at a hostel in San Pedro. Sheesh, is the toilet paper made of gold or something? (Spoiler alert: Nope) These were prices we hadn’t encountered since the US and Canada. We sauntered into town to fill up on expensive Chilean gas, exchange the rest of our Bolivians to Chilean Pesos, and attempted to find a laundromat to wash our mountain of dirty laundry (at $15/load, we opted to wait…). We spent the night licking our wallets’ wounds, basking in the hot shower, making friends with a French couple traveling through Chile in a rental truck, and soaking up the sweet, sweet internet.

The next morning we hopped back on the road, climbed back up into the altiplano and through the Paso de Jama, and arrived at our second border crossing within 24 hours. Bienvenidos a Argentina! Please remove all your belongings for the customs inspection. Yes, all of them. After going through immigration and taking care of all the paperwork, we rapidly unloaded all of our gear from Sweetcakes in a record-setting 5 minutes. The customs manager then turned around and saw all of our crap siting on the sidewalk and said “no mas, no mas!” Well, we warned you we had a lot of stuff. He did a cursory review of our items, then offered to help us load everything back into Sweetcakes. Thanks, but we got this.

Well…they asked for it!


We continued on through the beautiful scenery, multicolored mountains and down into Purmamarca, at a meager elevation of 2300 meters. I had visited Purmamarca and the 7-colored mountain back in 2007 during my study abroad in Buenos Aires and it was fun to return and see the changes to the small, touristy town. We spent the night enjoying wine for the first time in months. Oh, and on the way there, our skid-plate came loose again, so we miraculously found a scrap piece of wire along the shoulder of the highway and wired that baby back up along the side of the highway. #Scavengers

At least the roads are paved! 





 Approaching the 7 colored mountains.  Switching back and forth and back and forth and….


Our silk sleeping bag liner finally ate it.  RIP Mummy sheet





Several of the 7 colors visible




The next morning we continued south towards the city of Salta, one of the largest cities in NW Argentina. En route we were stopped no fewer than three times by Argentinian cops during random police checkpoints. Each time we were a bit nervous, as we’ve heard stories of corrupt Argentinian cops, but we had absolutely no problems. After a quick review of our documents and verification of where we were headed, the police wished us “buen viaje” and we were on our way.

Our main reason for visiting Salta was to change some of our US dollars to Argentinian pesos on the “blue market.” Argentina’s economy is in crisis mode and their currency is very weak. It’s difficult for Argentinians to obtain foreign currency (especially dollars and euros), so many of them try to obtain it through unofficial markets and convert their savings into US $100 bills or large euro denominations. Hence, the “blue market”… not quite the “black market,” but not entirely… how do you say…. legal. We had heard from other travelers that you can just go to the main plaza in Salta and ask around about changing dollars and locals will point you to “the guy.” If you know Ike and I very well, you know that we are a couple of fairly straight-laced kids, so this was a bit of an uncomfortable situation for us. We approached the main plaza, looked around for a bit, spotted a guy carrying a large canvas wallet/bag and thought perhaps he was “the guy.” So we nonchalantly sat down on a nearby bench and observed “the guy” talking with a tall, blonde woman. Then they disappeared around the corner. Hrm, maybe they went off to take care of “business” in a more private location? We didn’t ask questions. 



We stood up and walked to the other side of the plaza and down a side street where we saw some official money exchanges. A dozen or so middle-aged men stood along the sidewalk, leaning up against the exterior walls of the buildings. We awkwardly stood across the street observing the situation (heaven help us if we ever try to do legitimately sketchy business deals…), and eventually Ike noticed one of the men explicitly holding a wad of cash out. We sheepishly approached him, asked the rate, and proceeded to count out US$1000 in Argentinian pesos. At an exchange rate of 12.6P:$1, we had to use both sets of fingers and toes. Ike’s wallet wouldn’t close, so we shoved the cash into several pockets and anxiously walked back to Sweetcakes to stash our cash in the lockbox.

Cash. Money.


After running a few more errands we made our way to the municipal campground. Argentinians are big on camping, and we’ve found that many towns and cities have official municipal campgrounds. Something we haven’t seen since the US. Having an official campground, with hot showers, mediocre wifi, and all the other amenities was nice. But this one was fairly run down, and full of some apparently long-term residents, which made for some awkward walks to the bathrooms. One night there and we were ready to move on.

 So, these drives aren’t that bad….


throat of the devil.  Clever names! A little terrifying, but clever!


 View from one of the wineries outside Cafayate


Next stop: Cafayate, one of Argentina’s wine regions. Rolling into Cafayate was pleasantly uneventful. We found the campground easily [one of several] and parked Sweetcakes. Hopping out, we started making our way back towards downtown to run several errands. First we wanted to find a mechanic to get the tailpipe welded, as well as the skid-plate bolted back in, despite our totally rad baling wire job. Walking through town we got distracted as we found the local hardware shop. The nice guy behind the counter got us what he could [but not all we needed], and directed us further down the street to the moto repair shop to find the fuses we wanted for the fridge electrical plug. We were able to get what we needed, then meandered over to the mechanic’s shop that was listed on our GPS map. Strolling up, we were equal parts confused over not seeing anyone there and amazed by the incredible overlanding vehicle / tourist vehicle that was parked next to the shop.

 Remodeling idea for us back in Madison?


 Would drive. 


“$1000 for it as is!” yelled a man to us from across the street. Intrigued [sorry Sweetcakes!], we went up to him and asked if it would be possible for us to get work done on our vehicle at this shop. The man told us of course, and we scheduled time for the following morning. Dusting our hands off and slapping each other on the back for hard work done [scheduled?] we proceeded to start the important part of our time in Cafayate: wine tours. (Also, we’re basically wine tasting pros. We were in Napa in September, prime harvest time, and now March in Cafayate, also prime harvest time.)

 Not a bad $3. Torrontes is our new favorite white grape!


Our first stop was the Hermanos Domingo winery three blocks from our campsite. We strolled in, and hopped into the first tour that was going on. It reminded us of Napa, particularly the part where we made our way to the front to buy wine and saw the prices: 12, 25, 50. And then we remembered the price was in Pesos, so we should divide by 12.6 to find the price in USD. Bottles of wine for $.90? I’ll take it! We settled for just a couple of bottles since we needed free hands for wine tastings at the other wineries we were heading to.

 Hahahhha those prices!


So America….why don’t we do 5 liter wine bottles more often???









A short time later we were having trouble holding all the wine and were making our way to another shop when we hear a sound off to the side of the alley. Walking over, we found the cutest little black kitten sitting next to a concrete pipe mewing away. Bethany was instantly in love: petting it, hugging it, cradling it, asking me if we could keep it. “Where’s its mommy?!?” she kept asking me. I convinced her that it had just snuck outside and that we should leave it so it could go home. We visited the next winery up the street, and Bethany had to broach the issue with the man there. He unfortunately informed us that people do indeed leave pets at wineries in Cafayate, hoping they’ll have a nice home, but the wineries can’t keep them because it’s not hygenic. Bethany promptly wrapped things up so we could go find the kitten again. Luckily [thankfully?] it was nowhere to be found, hopefully back with its family.

 Bethany’s bestest friend.  


Our last winery stop had us outside the front, wondering if we wanted to wait around for the last tour of the day. “What else are we going to do?” Bethany asked me. “Great point” came the reply from the other man standing out front biding his time. Amit told us he was from Ireland, but with the Irish accent, we initially thought he said ‘Arlington’ with a southern drawl. Le sigh, we’re so American. The tour was nice and we continued trying new wines, touted in Cafayate because of the high altitude: 2300 meters, or 50% higher than Denver. This leads to very vibrant colors and strong flavors, not to mention the high alcohol content (some were 15-18%!). We discovered Torrontes and Tannatto add to the Malbecspectrum of amazing Argentinian wines.

 Blocks of pressed grape skins and seeds


That evening we made our way to a nearby restaurant that did Argentinian grill. We rolled in at 8:45 pm and were the first people in for dinner. Bethany and I have a long ways to go until we’re used to the schedule here. The food was incredible, though, and we found ourselves loving the seasoned intestine, and wondering how feasible it would be to fry it up back home in Wisconsin.

 Argentina, I like your spirit.


The next morning saw us at the mechanic’s shop; “we’ll be ready in 15 minutes!” we were told at 10 minutes after 10, after being told to arrive at 10am. 45 minutes later they told us they weren’t equipped to do welding, and would show us another shop in town that could do it. Turns out that was fine, though, as the new mechanic not only was happy to do the work, but after finding out about our trip wanted to talk about all the amazing places in western Argentina we could [should; WOULD] visit. He also explained that he would have to remove the muffler to do the welding work so the gas tank wouldn’t go, “Boom!” (All this after what appears to be the standard Argentinian shake-down: How old are you? What were your previous jobs? [sidenote: it’s not fun to try to explain healthcare IT and energy efficiency consulting in spanish] You don’t have kids?!?)

 Never a dull moment with Sweetcakes! Although she sounded like a monster with this off.


Mechanic at ease; his assistant looking quite formal.


 Anything to get rid of squeaky bushings!


Several days and numerous wineries later, we were ready to leave Cafayate, but only after Bethany verified that the kitten couldn’t be found and scuttled away with us. We also had filled our fridge completely with wine [11 bottles or so], and it was with grins that we drove away along Route 40, through beautiful valleys and mountains and….right into a road block.

 $9 for the tasting…but it’s waived if we buy a bottle of wine for $5? I….I think you guys are doing it wrong.


 Life is good


 Wine making being in family? not a bad idea….FYI, these three lines are sold in California. Keep your eyes out for ‘em!


The road we approached was blocked with a half-assed cone and sign. In America, this means the road is closed. In South America, this means, “You look brave. Don’t chicken out. Also, we’re not liable.” We looked around ,but no one was there to verify for us, so we soldiered on as we saw another vehicle a mile or two ahead climbing into the mountains. Driving up, we appreciated the view and couldn’t figure out what the deal was as the road was nicely paved tarmac. Then it turned to loose gravel and one lane construction. We passed a motorcycle coming down and stopped him to verify we could go through. Pausing, he looked at Sweetcakes dramatically, and then said we’d be fine. We continued on, through the construction zone and the sheer cliffs. We then pulled up short behind the vehicle we’d seen meandering up the road ahead of us. Three vehicles were pulled up short waiting. Hopping out, we asked what the deal was, and found out the road was closed and wouldn’t open until the next morning at 7 am when the construction workers returned. “The road looks good over there!” we said, pointing around the next bend. We found out it was indeed good, but that they’d blocked the road with a pile of dirt to keep people from using the road on the weekend so they didn’t need to keep people there to guide traffic through the one-lane construction zone.Several people from the truck we’d been following were petulantly kicking rocks and half-heartedly moving some of the larger ones out of the way along the roadside, implying they still wanted to get through. FINALLY THE PREPARATION WAS COMING TO FRUITION. Striding back to the vehicle, I pulled out the trenching shovel we’d purchased for our bug-out bag and came walking back purposefully. I then started heaving dirt out of the way. The effect was immediate: everyone else jumped in, helping remove rocks to make it easier to shovel dirt, taking turns shoveling. 20 minutes later we felt comfortable to try and get a vehicle across….but we were going to be the test case since we had 4×4. Putting it in 4LO and coming up to the entrance, one of the bystanders waved his hands and started yelling advice to me in Spanish. I turned to Bethany, confused. “He…he says make sure to use ‘double traction’.” she said, confusion and hilarity in her voice. “Oooo…oook.” I replied. DOUBLE TRACTION ENGAGE [said no one ever.] We made it across to cheers and clapping. Next up was the guy in the FWD mini cargo truck. With assistance from people pushing, he made it across as well. We loaded up, washed our hands, and hopped back on the road.



Teamwork! Comradarie! Anything to stick it to the construction workers!


We made our way towards the mountains and the Paso de Agua Negro, the highest pass between Chile and Argentina, at just over 4700 meters. Near the base we stopped at Argentinian migration, checked out, and were told we’d be stopped again in 40 km’s for customs. Customs came, and with it a pretty intense questioning from the bored guys working there, not so much interested in what was in the vehicle but more in our setup. They also quite enjoyed sniffing things in the car, like the pipe tobacco and the lavender air freshener we had left over from Monica’s wedding in September. The pass itself was fantastic; great views greeted us, with a fun drive that wasn’t too nerve racking. Or rather, no longer nerve racking by our new standards of insanity.





And…we’ll be going right up and over those huh?


Life at 14,000 feet








Can’t help feeling a little intransigent with that background behind our dinky little man-made border.  Feels kinda arbitrary.













Coming out of the pass, we made our way towards Pisco Elqui, a valley along a river that ends with a village famous for it’s Pisco [a brandy made from Moscato grapes] The valley itself is surrounded by desert, but the water coming down off the mountains provides enough for irrigation out of the steam, so the valley itself is quite green and plastered with vineyards.



The villages through the valley had numerous campsites [Chile and Argentina seriously love camping], but the first place we stopped at we were turned away because the owners weren’t returning until tomorrow. But the gate was left open. Bravo team. We found a nice place tucked down a small street that was a converted farm / hippie commune. It had a natural pool [too cold to swim in] and nice facilities. We strode out into town that evening for dinner, first going to an empananda shop…that was closed for the day. No one was out…and all of the restaurants appeared closed. We found a place that was open to tourists though, and went inside. The food was extremely expensive. I got exactly what I ordered….which wasn’t what I thought it would be. Dried beef was quite literally a small bowl of shredded jerky. We finished our food, angry at the price, the low quality, and how hungry we still were. Most places didn’t even open until 7:30, so we figured we’d stop by the empanada place again now that it was 9pm and see if they were open. Huzzah! They were! We promptly ordered 8. “They’re quite big” the woman advised us. “That’s fine!” we replied, thinking of all the delicious leftovers. The variety she had was quite good, and we excitedly ate two, one of which seemed like an odd combination: Queso and Choclo. Chocolate and cheese seemed odd, and it was! Choclo is actually the word for corn kernals, so it was a bit of a surprise as we bit into that one.

We awoke the next morning excited to visit the Pisco distillery, but instead we had a flat tire. Thankfully it was one of the old tires, and after taking it off, we attempted to plug the hole using our plug kit. We did this with a puncture way back in Mexico during our second day in the country, but this hold turned out to be more of a split and less of a puncture. Despite cramming two sticky plugs into the crack, the air continued to hiss out, so we threw in the towel. We put the full-size spare on and proceeded to try and wash the copious amount of caked on mud off the tire. The pisco distillery was open, but we were an hour out from the next tour…and the cost was over $10 per person with a tasting. So we decided to skip the tour and buy a couple bottles of pisco instead. Checkmate, distillery.

Wine’s so cheap here we use it for finding holes in tires!


Several hours later we were along the coast. Chile is skinny. We rolled into the city of La Serena and found a shop that did tires, but naturally they were closed for siesta. They reopened at 3, and we were first in. The woman helping us was nice, but it seemed like it was her first day on the job. Eventually, we had the paperwork done, and went out to have the vehicle worked on….but a big truck had just pulled in blocking access to the car ramp. “How long until they’re finished unloading tires?” Bethany asked. “45 minutes.” was the reply. WOOOOOF. But thankfully they took a quick break to get another car off the ramp and ours on. After the balance and swap, we attempted to put our spare back up under the car….and the retractable wire got bound up on itself in it’s mechanism. “We seriously can’t get 5 minutes without something breaking,” we exclaimed. The mechanic attempted to lube it and get it back in, but we just weren’t having luck. Eventually one of the side walls of the box for the wire to wind up into broke off and allowed Bethany to look into it. From there she could tell what we needed to straighten out a kink in the wire, and with the assistance of the mechanic we got it fixed.

A couple hours later we were back along the coast and out of the mountains. Ioverlander didn’t have many camp options, but our GPS has several listed. The first place we checked out was charging $80/night for camping. Laughing, we turned around and left it, not at all surprised it was empty. We passed several other places for camping, clearly in a tourist zone. Most were closed however, but upon finally finding an open one, we rolled in and parked before we could hear differently. Walking up to the admin building….we found no one around but an open bottle of wine with perspiration on it. Figuring they’d be back shortly, we took a stroll over to the ocean and took a long walk along the beach, thereby fulfilling the prophecy as intended.

Returning, no one was still around. I took a walk around the campsite to see if we were actually on an abandoned Indian burial ground, and at the back found a house with a light on. Seeing someone through the window, I waved and they came out. Asking if they were open, I received the answer that they were not, but the lot across the highway was, and was part of the same park. We thanked them, and as we walked over to the other side, I told Bethany we weren’t moving the car until we verified they were open. “Why’d you have to go poking around?” Bethany asked. Seeing no one on the other side, we crept back to our vehicle and decided we would plead if needed, but keep a low profile and hope we weren’t bothered again. And that’s exactly what happened. We happily took off the next morning, pleased at our stealth camping success.

The next day we arrived on Pichicuy beach bright and early. We drove past the town of Pichicuy to the open beach, sparsely populated with a few fisherman. Stopping, we aired down our tires like we had for the salar in Bolivia, but this time actually taking them down to sand level: ~14 PSI down from 36. Nice and squishy like, we made our way out over the sand and found a nice spot hidden behind some dunes. The day was a rough one of reading and listening to waves and music.










After relaxing on the beach, we made our way into Valparaisio along the coast again. As we approached the city, we kept wondering when we’d begin the descent, as we were getting awfully close to the sea…but still were over 1000 meters. Then we crested the hill:

Going down?



We were thankful yet again to have a small [by overlanding standards] vehicle, as the narrow steep roads wouldn’t have been fun to navigate in anything bigger. We wound our way down, eventually finding the hostel we had been looking for, and the bonus was they had secure onsite parking! We pulled in, checked in, and snapped a picture of the great view we had.



From there, we celebrated being in a city by asking where the sushi restaurant was that was on the bird’s eye map of Valpo. “Oh it’s right up the street!” came the reply from our sassy young hostel boss. We stepped outside and started up the street; immediately stopping because the sushi place was literally next door. With a successful lunch under our belts, we read away the afternoon and built up a strong appetite, making our way to Cafe del Pintor for dinner. We basically stumbled to the place because we once again were trying to get dinner too early. It worked out quite well though, as this place had a friendly owner who spoke English and a set menu that KILLED. Smoked salmon fettuccine for me and lemon rockfish with mushroom risotto for Bethany. Love the culinary options in real cities.

I call this: Thursday



I loved all the street art and couldn’t stop taking pictures. Here are a few of the inspiring scenes we found while roaming around the city.




Valpo is full of steep stairways, but thankfully the have acensores (funiculars) sprinkled throughout the city. They are a cheap and easy alternative to navigating the city’s inclines.




Even their port is spunky.




Well this is just the best thing in the history of ever








The view afforded us the opportunity to look out over the densely packed houses and spot the cats frolicking on the roofs






Going down!


Beautiful sunset overlooking the port.




We’d thought about spending another day in Valparaiso, but there weren’t a ton of “sites” to see. The charm in Valpo is walking around, soaking up the grungy/artistic atmosphere. We could have easily stayed another night, but Patagonia was calling.  The real kicker though was being able to get our reservation for the hotel in Santiago updated to 5 nights for the cost of 4, at the cost of all the remaining points we had. We didn’t care though, and rushed towards Santiago, stopping in Casablanca valley to do some additional wine tours en route since we had time to kill. We were in for a rude awakening.

After what amounted to a background search trying to get into the winery, we quickly strolled into the lobby to try and catch a tour the security guard told us was just starting. “Do you have a reservation?” “No, but we hear a tour just started?” “Yes, sorry, you’ll need to wait two hours without a reservation.” “Ooook? How much for a tour?” “Without a tasting, $12. With a tasting: $20 or $30 depending if you want the reserve wine or not.” It took every fiber not to burst out laughing or say, “Great! I’m looking forward to trying wine that’s thirty times better than the Torrontes in Argentina- oh what’s that – it’s not you say? GOOD DAY MA’AM!” Instead we politely told them we’d return in two hours, driving past a BMW and people arriving to taste in suits. I don’t think we were a good fit for them anyway.

Instead we gave Sweetcakes a quick bath at a gas station to get the seaspray off, and again found ourselves trying to contain laughter when the attendant told us their oil change service was $50 and didn’t even include enough oil for our vehicle. We parked next to our hotel in Santiago, making our way over to the mall area and people watching with our ice cream. It felt like any mall in the states, which was a little weird after the rural areas we’d been in the last few weeks. Moseying over to the hotel at check-in time, we were ecstatic to hear about the exec lounge on the top floor we’d be spending our time in, as well as the access to the lounge for breakfast and cocktail hour. We were going out with a bang! We found ourselves leaving the hotel twice over the next 5 days: for a lunch one day and a dinner downtown another.

Bethany in planning mode.  When you have a bed, take advantage of it!


 Breakfast at the hotel can be unintentionally beautiful


 Wine flight; sure, we could have made our own, but this is good too.





“You are in one of the 25 best ice cream shops in the world.” It was indeed pretty tasty. 


With that time finished, it’s now time to head back out into the world and see if we forgot how to camp or not. It’s going to be a whirlwind couple of weeks though, as we push towards Ushuaia before it gets much colder. The chase is on!

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Bolivia: Life in the sky.

Coming into Copacabana, we found a road that looked passable to take us down to the lakeside. The steep incline ended with us in a swarm of cars along the lakeside. Following the GPS, we turned away from the edge of downtown and the swarms of food stalls and cars, and drove along the wide dirt road. “This…this is a waysout,” we muttered, wondering if we’d be able to find the hostel. After passing a very fancy hotel, we indeed found our place. We had been warned it was a tight fit for vehicles, but we made it inside without a problem. We were immediately struck but the sheer volume of Argentinian hippies that were calling this place home. We were to learn over the coming weeks that Argentinians like to travel on the cheap, and its basically the 60’s down here. Most of them are carrying musical instruments or things to juggle. We settled in and set up camp, spending half of our time answering questions about our camping process from the 9 year old daughter of the proprietress. 




Seems secure


The hostal owner would periodically let their pet parrot loose and he curiously gave Sweetcakes a good look-over.


We strolled into the town afterwards and grabbed a big plate of rice, potatoes, and fried trout (a specialty on the shores of Lake Titicaca)from an old lady selling it lake-side. Saddling up and asking for food, she proceeded to uncover the food from beneath some blankets to keep it warm. We paid our $5 for the meal after thanking her for it, and continued to run some errands: cell phone, fruit and snacks. After stocking up on a kilo of figs, we munched on them and fried banana chips as we walked back. On the way, we bumped into a huge parade for carnaval, and took some time to just enjoy the amazing costumes and people having to awkwardly dance without music because they were too far ahead of the bands. We made our way back into town later that evening, hoping to find some good food and cheap drinks; we found one! At Nemo’s bar that evening we hopped in and found they had from-scratch pisco sours at 3x50BS [$7] We did that, and I snagged an IPA from Bolivia. As we enjoyed our drinks, we also enjoyed getting to know Aaron from Vancouver – a cool dude who’s retired after busting his butt and is now taking 6 month trips every year to a new part of the world and getting his exploration bug worked out. We shared tips on places to see and gave cheers over travel at any age.

Note to self: potential Halloween 2015 costume confetti monster. This group was too far ahead of the band so they were silently doing their thing. Rock on. 










“They said the boats were slow, but this is f—-n’ ridiculous.” I muttered to Bethany the next morning as we sat on the boat taking us out to Isla del Sol, said to be the birthplace of the sun by the Incans. We sullenly sat as the boat made its way through the water at what was essentially idle speed. After finally arriving at the island [over 2 hours later, for a 10km trip. AWFUL.] We departed and realized that the reason our hostel wasn’t crammed to the brim was that dozens of other hippies were strung out along the beach here on the island. We couldn’t walk ten feet without tripping over a drum circle or a guy and his acoustic guitar. We made our way up to some of the sacred sites and braced ourselves against the strong wind and cool air. We were hiking around 4k meters, and there was a fair amount of up and down. I found myself acclimated pretty well and the cool air kept me moving hard, but we paused as needed for Bethany. We were hiking from the NE to SW ends of the island, and wanted to make sure we got to the end before the last boat left at 4pm. We were making great time though and stopped for some lunch, then made our way down to the docks to catch the 3pm.


What a great time we’re having



Argentinian hippie tent town along the beach.








Observe! The…the stone table of stone!


Not quite up to Machu Pichu standards







We had been straddling the spine of the island along our hiking path, and descended the 400 meters to the water side, and upon getting there realized that while it had boats, they were ones that needed repairs and we had descended to the wrong side of the island. Furious at the lack of signs, we now had to blast back up the 400 meters and get down to the other side before the hour was up. We miraculously made great time (but about died in the process). As we waited to board the boat, I heard a couple next to us speaking English. I walked over and asked them where they were from. “Miami!” came the answer from Cris and Tanya. Cris’ family is from Bolivia and he and his girlfriend Tanya were visiting and exploring Bolivia. We chatted for a while, and agreed to meet up again after it turned out we were on different boats [despite what the woman who sold us tickets said]. We met that evening for some more drinks and food, agreeing to meet up for the bike ride down the death road in a couple of days. They were taking off for La Paz first thing the next morning as Cris lost his passport and needed it replaced to get home. But alas things weren’t meant to be.

Ike was thrilled after we realized we hiked down the wrong side of the mountain.


The local villages charge “tolls” for passing through on the trail that spans the length of the island. So many tickets! 


We forgot to take a pic together, but here’s a cute polaroid of our new friends Cris & Tania. 


I awoke the next morning sick, most likely from altitude and the hard hiking from the previous day. I was down and out the entire day, with Bethany nursing me back to health. Cris and Tanya also spent the entire day at the consulate trying to get the passport issue resolved, so they weren’t able to do the bike tour either. We rolled out to La Paz the following morning, after taking a couple of hours to explore the back roads of the peninsula near Copacabana.

#nofilter




I spy a Sweetcakes!


If it’s good enough for a bus, it’s good enough for us!


We stopped here for lunch en route to La Paz. I love how all the Bolivian lunch ladies pack up their homemade deliciousness in these little lunch carts and serve a plate up fresh for you.


A highly recommended Swiss hotel for overlanders was our destination. Rolling in, we decided to celebrate Bethany’s birthday [a few weeks prior] by having fondue. Asking how big the portions were, the waitress told us you would need to be very hungry to finish both the meat and cheese fondues with just two people, but she assured us we could combine the two. Well, we learned that by ‘combine’, she meant order both of them. So as natural scavengers, we ate all we could and proceeded to scrape the rest into a carry-out box.

Is there such a thing as too much fondue?


Taxi-ing into the city the following morning, we enjoyed the view of La Paz rising up to meet us as we descended through the mountains to the city. We gave up on taking a colectivoafter waiting unsuccessfully for one for over half an hour. We arrived at one of the main plazas and hopped out, waiting for the tour van that would have a bunch of bikes on top. Hopping in, we met Edwin from Quito and Fernando, our guide. We spent the next hour winding up roads on the way out of La Paz on the other side of the city. We started to see snow capping the bits of mountains we were passing, and then crested and moved into a new valley where a fresh layer of snow covered everything except the road.


Hopping out, we began suiting up and unloading the bikes, looking around wide eyed at life at 4400 meters. We got a brief rundown from Fernando on safety, took the bikes on a little spin around the gravel lot to make sure we felt comfortable in them, and then we were off.







Let’s all be honest with each other for a moment here: riding a bike downhill is lots of fun. Riding a bike on pavement downhill is even more fun. Doing it for 17 km’s straight, through a valley with snow, wisps of clouds, and passing engine-braking trucks is just the best. Being over 200 lbs while you do all of that though? That’s just icing on the cake. See, there’s this amazing thing called momentum, and it means that you start kissing the high 40 mph range on your bike. Fernando was all about speed, and would crouch down over the handlebars to lower his wind resistance and would zip out ahead. And then I would lean myself forward over the handlebars, and all of a sudden he’s not going so fast.





A few short minutes later we stopped for a snack, and then made our way onto the death road proper. We were stoked for this part, as we’d seen clips from it when the Top Gear crew made their way along theroad in their Bolivia special nearly a decade ago. With the completion of the paved road, though, traffic on the old gravel road is almost exclusively tourists who want the thrill of driving it, with less death than used to be standard. Riding along the road, it was hard to imagine traffic going two-ways along it, much of that traffic large trucks. We felt cramped enough with the bicycles. As the bikes ate up the 54kms we descended, we noticed the change in air temperature, eventually stopping to shed our cold-weather gear. A little while later, we were at the end of the road and stopped for some lunch. And then we waited. And waited some more. And spent 3 hours twiddling our thumbs as we waited for Fernando and the driver to eat, and shower, and flirt with the teenage Argentinian girls wearing lingerie instead of swimsuits in the pool. [can’t fault him on that one] We eventually found ourselves back in downtown La Paz later that evening and hopped into a cab to get back out to the hotel, pretty well worn-out.



We didn’t die!!


The next day we made our way into the city for errands. We’d heard it was possible to purchase auto insurance that would be valid in most of the rest of South America. After some confused wandering around and asking locals, we finally tracked down the company, and were pleased to see that the coverage would nearly take us through the rest of our trip. We were told to stop back at the end of the day to finish the paperwork. We then made our way to a Moneygram to swap all of our US$20’s to US$100’s to get better rates of exchange when we hit up the blue markets in Argentina. We celebrated all this hard work with an absolutely huge lunch of authentic Korean bibimbap. We walked it off, got our insurance, and made our way back towards the campsite via the new funicular over the city. The views were great, and given the topograghy of the city, the funicular is actually an efficient mode of public transit.

We put the FUN in—aww nevermind

Glad we avoided driving through downtown La Paz traffic…


After getting back, we met Chris from Austria, another overlander who has a killer Land Rover rig. We swapped information about great spots as he was heading north.



I encountered this massive beetle stuck on his back and, after many tense attempts, successfully rescued him. Paying it forward! (Does that work with bugs?)


“Suspicious autos will be burned.” Eep, keeping a tight leash on Sweetcakes.


The city of La Paz is built in a stunning valley of crumbling mountains. We don’t know why the city is located here, and were amazed by the houses that were built right up to the edge of the eroding cliffs.




“Ok, so first we ask for gas, but then if they say no to us because we’re foreigners, then we say we don’t need a receipt. Then if they say something about the cameras, then we say the cameras don’t see the license plates, right?” I asked Bethany. We were about to attempt to purchase gas, and we’d read online about how much of an ordeal it is to buy gas in Bolivia as a foreigner. We were running through the checklist of reposites to convince the attendant to sell us gas. Arriving, we went through the list with her, to no avail. We asked where we could get gas then, and she told us. We whipped out the map, and she showed us. We told he were weren’t going that way though, and we needed the gas! She finally relented and told us it would be the foreigner price of 7 bolivianos a liter. Coming in at less than double the local cost, that was a decent price, so we readily agreed.

The hassle for gas was so great that I drove with a very light foot, trying to coax every MPG out of Sweetcakes. We followed our way along smooth highways south towards the border with Chile and the outskirts of Sajama national park.





After checking into the park, we took the gravel road back into the park, making our way back towards some hot springs, enjoying the wide valley dominated by several mountains on the horizon, including the behemoth volcano that’s the tallest peak in Bolivia and is the park’s namesake. We arrived later in the afternoon and verified we could just camp in the parking lot that led back to the hot springs. Since the tickets were only valid for a single day, we said we’d be back the next morning. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching clouds bunch up on the mountain, then turn into scattered thunderstorms that dropped frequent bolts of lightning among the foothills. Looking around, I quickly realized that Bethany and I were among some of the tallest things around. We finished setting up our tent and hopped in Sweetcakes and her rubber tire protection to continue watching the bolts. The night air quickly plummeted in temperature as soon as the sun moved behind the mountains, and it was with all of our layers that we laid down in the tent that evening. 











Waking the next morning, we noticed that the snowfall on the mountains was much more extensive than it had been the day before, extending down into many of the foothills that didn’t look all that far away. [We learned that distances are deceptive in these huge valleys. Frequently things look quite close but then you drive towards them and realize they’re 5-10 miles away, or more.] We moseyed over to the hot springs, settling into them with signs of happiness as the heat soaked the cold out of our limbs. We’d periodically stand up and hop out of the springs when we got too hot, letting the cold brisk wind cool us off before retreating to the hot water again.







The afternoon involved making our way over to a nearby lake and walking around the outside of it trying to snap photos of the flamingos that inhabited it. We’d make our way around part of the lake, gradually getting closer to the birds, which would then fly to the opposite end of the lake. Our dance continued the entire time we were walking. Really, I was just happy for any excuse to drive around the park because it meant we got to keep fording the stream near our campsite. 







We’ve seen flamingos in the wild a couple of times, but seeing them against the snow-capped twin volcanoes was otherworldly. 


The rest of the afternoon was rainy and windy, with more storms to watch. Later that evening a group of travelers [two young french men, and a family of a Portuguese / Swiss and their son] came back to the parking lot and we chatted for a bit. Again a cold night greeted us, and before we left the following morning an older man who ran the hot springs swung by and chatted with us. Before long we had another offer to buy Sweetcakes! On our way out we went to the other side of the valley where the group we met the previous evening had been camping to see the geysers. Unlike Yellowstone, there were not railings or walkways, so we gingerly made our way around, trying to minimize our footprints [literally and figuratively].

Beautiful little church in the town of Sajama.






Driving out of the park, we were stopped by the guys running the entrance gate and they promptly tried to extract some more cash from us, saying there were additional fees. Frankly, the attempts at bribes in Bolivia are adorable. It’s like they’re sheepish about asking for them, and after the stiff attempts we had in Central America, we found these attempts easy to sidestep. After they quickly relented, we made our way near the Chilean border to fill up with gas. Due to the proximity with the border, the attendants were having none of our attempts to barter down the price, but thankfully they didn’t turn us away either. Unfortunately that meant we were paying over $5/gal for gas, and then came the formal receipt process, where we had to provide our name, passport #, license plate # and country. It took longer for the attendant to fill out the receipt than it did to fill up with gas.

The roadside to Sajama was dotted with chullpas, or funeral towers. The indigenous would bury their family in urns and place them in these towers.


Trying to capture the hardworking, Bolivian campesino way of life as we drive by.




Attempting to cover lots of ground towards the Salar de Uyuni after stocking up on gas, we were making good time. On the outskirts of Oruro though, the traffic thickened up then came to a stop. Hopping out into the rain, I began walking forward through the stopped buses and trucks to see what was up. We had a sneaking hunch that there could be a roadblock, as most of the vehicles still on the highway were larger rigs, the cars all sneaking out via the shoulders. Unfortunately, we hadn’t planned ahead for this eventuality and were wedged between other huge vehicles. As I approached the front, I saw the lamest roadblock ever: a short truck that didn’t even block all of the lanes, some small rocks strewn across the road, and 6 guys standing around a burning tire on the shoulder trying to keep warm. Along the center median, lots of women huddled under cardboard to keep dry. “We could blast through this, no problem.” I said, frustrated. “Uh, we’re not breaking through a road block in a foreign country unless they let us through.” Came Bethany’s measured reply. Asking around, we were told the road block would be breaking up soon, as the protesters felt they’d made their point. It did indeed wrap up, but darkness was quickly coming, and the wild-camp spot we were hoping to make it to said it could be difficult in the rain, and coupled with the approaching darkness we didn’t like our odds. Instead we opted to stay at a hotel that was pretty nice [and pretty pricey]. We spent our evening eating cheap roasted chicken and watching the Hobbit.

JEALOUS OF OUR WAY OF LIFE NOW?


Enjoying the pristine highways before we rattle ourselves crazy on the gravel roads.


Our goal was to reach the edge of the salar [salt flats] the next day. Progress was great, until the GPS decided to go bonkers and take us along some roads that were little more than rock paths or roads under construction. We realized that we ended up taking the long way around the large mountain, and spent several hours blasting through tough roads, eventually ending up behind a grater that was putting the first real level into the new road that had been dug out. The path was so rough that our skid guard that protects the underside of the engine shook loose, and it was time to break out the baling wire again. We camped along a rock wall to help break the wind, looking out into a vast sea of salt, excited for the next day.










Parking near the edge of the salt flat, I took off my sandals and tentatively stepped out into the film of water over the salt flat. The water over the salt flat made beautiful views, but also made travel on the salt flat much more difficult. We’d heard stories of people getting stuck for a couple of days in the soupy mixture that the salt and water created. The salt flats are slightly conical, so the edges are the most likely places to get stuck. The water was quite cold, which was actually a boon, so I quickly could no longer feel the sharp crystals of salt poking into my bare feet. Satisfied that the water wasn’t too deep [always a good rule to walk any section you’re planning to 4×4], I made my way back to the car and we began airing down our tires. From there we put it in 4LO, crossed our fingers, and hesitantly made our way out onto the flat. After about a KM the water was just a thin reflective film on top of the salt, and we were clear! From there we basically just picked a direction, tried to find some other tracks, and followed them. 

Good morning guys!







First time airing down. Not the last though!



The flats are basically God’s zen garden, with outcrops of rocks sticking up like little islands among the vast expanse of salt. Some parts of the salar were wet and we were a bit nervous about getting stuck, but we saw that the tires weren’t really breaking through the top crust of salt, and felt better. As it dried out we could open the speed up a bit more, a few times topping 60, but nothing really crazy. We’d heard of others trying to push 90, but that seemed a little kooky to us. 



Let the winds take her where they will – Sailor Ike


We had to stop and attempt some perspective pictures, famous on the salar. We had some issues with the focus on our camera, so some are more successful than others.

Ike squishing Sweetcakes.


Bethany giving Sweetcakes some love.


Sweetcakes takes revenge. 


And then Bethany fell off the fruit mountain.


And Ike fell into the (blurry) beer bottle.

Eventually we found our way to Fisherman’s island, circling around to the back side of it and finding a nice spot to camp nestled against the island. Setting up, we broke out the sunshade, as the strength of the sun was outstanding. This was great for the solar panel though, as we could run the fridge and inverted and still have volts to spare. We spent some additional time that afternoon hiking to the top of the island. We’d put on sunscreen, but that wasn’t enough. I burned my lips for the first time ever, and I could feel the spots on the back of my legs I’d missed. Yowza! (My arms are still peeling from that day as we write this blog several weeks later.) The hike was enjoyable to see the vast salar from above, and we paused for a few minutes to watch a large bus make its way across our view, quite possibly using the salar as it was the fastest route from points A to B. Sunset that evening was incredible, with a huge storm front building up around the edges of the salar, so the rich hues were offset with flashes of lightening.





Rolling into the town of Uyuni the next morning after leaving the salt flats, we found a car wash to remove the thick coat of salt from poor Sweetcakes. Asking to verify they used agua dulce [literally ‘sweet water’, aka not salt water], we got her cleaned up and then proceeded to head towards the Lagunasroute, also known as Bolivia’s southwest circuit. 

Sky reflecting in the layer of water covering the salar.






Time for a much needed bath to wash away the salt.
As we made our way along the gravel / dirt mixed roads, we quickly lost our clean car as I blasted through mud on an alternate ‘road’ as we tried to bypass additional road construction on the main road. We hit strong washboard again and realized that our tailpipe that we’d had soldered in Quito had shaken loose again. Looking under the car, we saw the break was on the other side of the plate that joins the muffler and tailpipe. We called it a day early, stopping in the picturesque Valle de Rocas, and proceeded to wire up the tailpipe again while the weather was nice, just barely finishing it before the storms came rolling in with a strong wind. 











#NoFilter


The following day we continued on, seeing some of the famous colored lakes, and making our way up to 5000 meters to have the Bolivian aduana stamp Sweetcakes out of the country. We had heard that the customs officer’s presence at the actual border was somewhat spotty, so it was best to take care of the paperwork in the middle of the park, even though we still had one or two more days left in the country. The customs agent took our paperwork. “Do we get a copy to give the men at the border to Chile though?” Bethany asked. “Oh, you don’t need it!” came the bright reply. “Really??” Bethany said with doubt in her voice. The agent looked over at the man working across from him. A doubtful frown and shrug greeted him from the other employee. “Ok, let’s make a copy.”

Flamingos in the Laguna Colorada. “Lake” is a generous term, since its average depth is under 1 inch.








At 5033 meters (16,512 feet) this has to be the world’s highest customs office.


From there we parked at another hot spring, and slipped into the warm water, watching storms on the horizon, chatting with a middle-aged German couple who were biking the route, and a group of hippies who were heading north on their bicycles. We thanked our lucky stars once again to have a car and called it an evening. We awoke the next morning with the vehicle surrounded by a swarm of LandCruisers. We’d seen the tour groups blasting through the roadways periodically the previous day, but as all the groups stayed on roughly the same time-frame, we were now in their midst. 

Hot springs and cold air; great combination. 


So I’m looking for a Land Cruiser?
We fled the hot springs, forgoing our planned morning dip and instead moving on to another lake and attempted to make some breakfast, but it turned out we had just moved ahead of the rush, and as we were setting up breakfast the fleet began to arrive and the spot we’d picked out, which was touted as being above and beyond the tour groups’ route instead began to flood with them. At one point one of the tour drivers attempted to kick us off the mirador, telling us that a park ranger would be along shortly and would ticket us if he saw us up there. We found a spot along the lake edge down in the valley and called that home for breakfast, spitefully hoping we were ruining the photos of the tourists. [Yes, we were feeling vindictive.] But the anger quickly melted as we continued on the road, the scenery replacing the frustration with awe. As we approached the border with Chile, grins were on our faces as we marvelled at the drive that had seemed like we were traversing mars, instead being on earth, but at 15,000 feet. This had been another part of the trip I had eagerly anticipated for months, and after a bumpy start, it still met [and exceeded] my expectations.




Mountains peering through the morning fog.






The mountains reminded me of  sand art.


Laguna Blanca.





Bolivia budget recap:
Our budget was ambitiously low for Bolivia; additionally, visas & car insurance (not included in our daily spending budget) were both expensive. This meant we completely blew our budget, but it was totally worth it.
Expected days in country: 14Actual days spent in country: 14
Daily budget: $41 (Hah!)Actual expenses: $78 (excluding car repairs)Difference: +$37 (+90%)
Ouch! We blew our (ambitiously small) budget in Bolivia. Here are a few of the contributing factors: 1) Gas was much more expensive than we had budgeted (see below); 2) We spent a lot more on tours and entrance fees than we budgeted for, but it was totally worth it; 3) Our budget doesn’t include things like visas and auto insurance, two big ticket items for Bolivia.
Average price for gas: $4.50/gallon (8.08 Bolivianos/liter)
Buying gas in Bolivia as a foreigner is hard work! The government subsidizes gas for locals, but taxes the hell out of it for foreigners. The “international” price is about 2.5 times as much as the local price. Ok, so gas is expensive. We can deal with that, but the problem doesn’t stop there. Many gas stations refuse to sell to foreigners because they have to fill out additional paperwork. Thankfully we were only refused gas once, but of the 4 times we filled up in Bolivia, twice we paid the full international price and twice we were able to barter for a lower rate (which means the attendant pretended we were locals, and pocketed the difference between the local price and the price we agreed to). All in all the experience wasn’t as bad as we had anticipated, but we are happy the days of Bolivian gas hassles are over.
Expected miles driven: 1000Actual miles driven: 1,143Difference: +14%
If you haven’t guessed by now, when we budgeted for miles driven it was really a shot in the dark. We picked a few cities or locations in the country and asked Google to calculate the mileage.
Average gas mileage: 22.6 mpg
We attribute the better than normal average to Bolivia’s excellent highways and our driving at slower speeds. That being said, our last few days in Bolivia were on some very rough gravel/dirt roads that probably hurt our average.
Average miles driven per day: 62
I’m surprised how low this is. We spent several non-driving days in both Copacabana and La Paz, and our last few days spent driving rough roads equated to lots of hours but few miles.
Biggest daily expenses ($/day): 
#1 – Food ($18.84/day): When we weren’t wild camping we ate out a lot! Including a splurge for Bethany’s birthday that included cheese and meat fondue at a Swiss restaurant. Noms.
#2 – Entertainment ($17.92/day): This includes the $150 we spent on our bike tour of the “Death Road” and several park entrance fees. All totally worth it, just more than we had included in our budget.
#3 – Visas & Insurance ($15.75/day): Our budget doesn’t include things like visas and car insurance, but they were both significant in Bolivia. Single-entry visas are currently $55 USD per person. We purchased a 6-month car insurance policy that covers us in Bolivia and all surrounding countries (Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay), basically everywhere we plan to go except Uruguay.


Is this the first time gas didn’t make the top 3? Shocker!

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El Salvador to Honduras border crossing

We arrived fairly early to the Amatilo crossing from Tortuga Verde and helpers flooded us basically stepping on my toes at the El Salvador side. By now I have built […]

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Peru: The perfect place to prove the perks of overlanding.

The crossing from Ecuador to Peru was exactly what we’d hoped for: low key. Rolling up to the single row of shacks, we came to a stop and hopped out to see a single officer come out from behind his desk. The road was empty minus a single backpacker who wasted no time in lighting a joint. We were in and out in 5 minutes after a stop to the other station at the border, and like that we were driving on the bridge over the river that served as the border between Peru and Ecuador. Except the gate to get into Peru was down….and no one was around. Hopping out of the car, we walked to the nearest building, and found two men inside, who told us we were at the right place. They’d get started on our import permit, and we could go take care of immigration. This was exactly what we wanted from the border! Making our way over to immigration, we were greeted by a worker who was just crushing it with his boom box. He sent us to the police station to get a stamp and signature. Sitting inside the police station, I looked outside to see three chickens make their way by. “This is our life now,” I thought to myself. After we had all the ‘t’s crossed and ‘i’s dotted, we made our way back to the import station. And the guys there said it would be a bit longer. We quickly realized they hadn’t even started our paperwork yet. They finally get around to it, after blaming it on the ‘system being down’ [classic line], then use a dot matrix printer to get our work printed. Bethany takes a look at it, and sees that they have Sweetcakes listed as yellow. I mean, how is that even close? They don’t even start with the same letter. We sigh, hand it back to them and they hastily redo it. I spent the time standing on the pavement stepping on ants.

With everything taken care of, we made our way out from the border and immediately fell in love with the paved highway. Ecuador did a great job with it’s paving, but the rural areas still were lacking in places, and this change of pace made us quite happy. We zipped down the road, enjoying the scenery and the open sky. The police checkpoints were more frequent than we had initially expected, and at our second one, after handing over our documents, we received a request for our ‘Luna certificate.’ Confused, we asked for clarification. The police officer informed us that cars in Peru need permission to have tint on the windows. This is actually a true law, but we quickly pointed out to the police officer that the national police at the border didn’t say anything to us, but we’d be happy to obtain one if they’d let us know where we could get one. He let us know, and we soldiered on.



celebratory lunch

“This is the place, right?” I asked Bethany, who was looking at the GPS. “Yeah, but no one answered. I think they’re closed.” “Well, no one answered because you knocked like a kid who’d hit a baseball through the neighbor’s window.” Knocking harder, the little metal peep-square slid open and we asked the man at the propane factory if we could refill our tank. We handed it over to him and he took it in to check. Happily, he was able to refill it…all 4.4lbs we’d used in the last four months. When you only use it to cook, it lasts forever!

A bit further on, we pulled into a thermal bath. Asking the man who came out, he informed us that the bath wasn’t working currently, but we could check a house a bit further down and see if it was up. Wierded out, we instead made our way to a wild-camp spot along a river back in the middle of nowhere. But we realized that spot would be awful to get out of if it rained, and there were threatening clouds on the horizon. Bagging it since it’d been a long day, we drove to the town of Bagua Grande to stay in the grass lot of a hotel. Passing through a toll along the way, we were informed that a huge landslide earlier that day had shut down the road and several people had been killed. With it being so late, we decided we would reevaluate our route options the next morning. Getting to the hotel, the woman at the front desk informed us she’d need to check with her manager about us being able to stay. We twiddled our thumbs, worried that we didn’t really have any other options. The manager showed up and was all smiles and helpfulness. He told us we were welcome to stay back on the grass instead of in the parking lot, but told us we should probably sleep in our car since we were so close to the river and alligators had been spotted recently.
The following morning, weighing our options, we realized that with Bethany’s parents coming into Peru in just five days, we should try and cover some ground, and opted to retrace our steps and break for the coast. We made our way to a hacienda and met a British guy who was volunteering at the ranch. We walked around the town, and Bethany had a great moment of catching a young boy peeing beside the town church. His friend didn’t let him forget it, and spent the next few blocks giving him grief. The following day we visited the nearby Tucume ruins of a pre-Inca society that made their huge buildings out of mud-bricks. The museum itself was extremely high quality, paid for by recent grants.






More of this in my everyday life please




spot the lizard with a blue head?


This is why you build with stone instead of mud. DID WE LEARN NOTHING FROM THE THREE LITTLE PIGS?!?




This pig literally can’t even

Making our way into the city of Cajamarca, we attempted to find the Hacienda that had great reviews, but was supposed to be kinda hard to find. Driving along the steep roads, we weren’t having any luck, continually getting turned around and frustrated. Driving up a mud path, we turned around as it led into…well…who knew where. I finally parked the car and said we would find it on foot. Walking around, we found some locals standing on a roof looking out over the city. Asking them, they pointed us back in the direction we’d just come from. We walked back along the mud road, and lo and behold, there was the place! We talked to the guy working there, then picked up Sweetcakes and came on back. The hotel/hacienda was fantastic, and they were very accommodating of letting us camp, going so far as to open up a large event room with a wall of windows looking out over the city for us to set our tent up in to stay out of the rain. The next day we explored Cajamarca and relaxed back at camp. Sunday, we awoke, broke camp, and prepared to make our way through the mountains towards Lima, as Bethany’s folks were arriving Wednesday.

Cajamarca


Bethany: decisions, decisions   Ike: oh god my wallet





But before leaving town, we wanted to stop at the Tourist police station. We’d been told at a previous police stop, where we’d again been told we needed to obtain a Luna certificate, that we could pick it up in Cajamarca. The station was difficult to find, and as we were making our way there, I noticed that the battery light had come on. That was a bit worrisome, but I thought it could just be a loose connection, but a few minutes later the ABS light came on. “I think our alternator may be going…” I said to Bethany. We found a nearby parking lot for a mall and pulled in. Hopping out, we put the voltmeter to the battery, and sure enough it was already getting low. “It’s a problem, but since the car is on, if the battery runs out, we should still be ok…” I said to her. Bethany asked the parking attendant about the sign advertising mechanic work for those who have car problems at the mall. “I called, but since it’s Sunday, he didn’t answer.” The attendant told us. A few minutes later, the car putted to a halt and died.


BAMF LVL: MAX

Realizing that the alternator being dead meant the car couldn’t run on it’s own, I started swearing to myself. Verifying over phone with Bethany’s dad that we’d need to jump it for about 10 minutes to get the battery to a place where we could drive back to the hacienda. We found a cabbie who was willing to jump us, but was unwilling to stay connected for 10 minutes. We explained his alternator would keep the battery charged, but he was having none of it. Fed up, we turned the car off, and said ‘screw it’ and wired the solar panel leads directly to the car battery. We spent the next hour and change monitoring the charge state of the battery, and once it got back to the 12V range, we crossed our fingers, turned it on, and high-tailed it back up the hill to the hacienda. Luckily, the light never even came on our way back. Upon returning, we explained to one of the workers our predicament. He verified that we meant alternator, and told us he’d be happy to take us to an auto-electrician the next morning. We verified with him that the place wasn’t too far away, as we only had around 15-20 minutes of battery life in the car before it’d die. And Cajamarca wasn’t a city you wanted to have your car die in with all the little paved streets.


In the ghetto! In the GHETTO!!!

8:30 am rolled around the next morning; the man showed up and we took off for the mechanic’s. We made our way to downtown and continued past it. The battery light came on around this time, but he assured us we were close. Manuel seemed a smidge lost, but shortly thereafter he told us to stop and ran up a street. He then came back, hopped on his phone for a minute, then hopped in the car. He informed us that the place had moved, but it wasn’t far. I told Bethany to tell him we hoped he was right, because our spedometer and tachometer had just died and we had, oh, 5 minutes of battery life left if we were lucky. The next few miles was a wing and a prayer [but the wing was on fire, and the prayer had been answered by Satan], but we miraculously made it to an auto-electrician’s shop. Pulling in, the electrician had us pull up and within 5 minutes had the alternator out after he verified it was the issue. Another 5 minutes later, he had it open and showed us the melted leads that were preventing it from recharging the battery. Asking him if we needed a new one, he told us, “All the new ones are Chinese made and are cheap but fall apart quickly. These original Toyota ones last forever and I can fix it for you.” He the proceeded to find another Toyota alternator, make some quick cuts to it, file the leads, and have it back together within another 15 minutes. He popped it back into the car, and we got a jump from another car there getting work. Tested with the voltmeter, and then handed over our $30 for the work. We dropped Manuel off and handed him some cash that he refused several times before my adamant pleas of ‘por favor!’ made him accept.



“That’s the tourist police station, right?” We verified with each other, and then Bethany went up to ask the female officer standing guard how we could obtain our Luna permit. “We’re all out, so we can’t give you one,” the female officer told me. “But what are we supposed to do then?” “Take down the window tinting,” she replied. Since our tint was original and not the stick-up kind, this was a hilarious suggestion. I informed the officer that the policemen on the road said we should be able to get a temporary permit since we were only planning to be in Peru for a month. “Come back at 6pm tonight when the boss is here, because there are a ton of requirements before we can hand out a permit,” she responded. Since we were on our way out of the city, that obviously wasn’t feasible for us. She just shrugged in response. I hopped back in the car and Ike and I decided we would tell the next policeman that stopped us that we had visited the tourist police in Cajamarca (true) but they said we didn’t need one (false). After lots of discussion with other travelers, it seems likely that our temporary vehicle import permit allows us to drive our vehicle legally in the country, no Luna permit required.

Following the battery catastrophe, we decided we didn’t want to wait a whole lot longer to purchase new tires, and rolled up to a Goodyear store just up the street. Checking with them, we saw their prices were about the same as what we’d pay down in Lima or over in Cusco. We opted for two, with a balance and alignment. We had a sneaking suspicion one of the old ones was starting to leak pretty heavily, and were happy to be rid of it. At the same time, we figured they were going to get reused on other vehicles. The alignment was also really needed, and it was obvious as the guys worked on the car that it was pretty far out of kilter. With these done, we happily hopped in the car and took off for the coast. We had to skip a lot of beautiful and interesting places in northern Peru, but between our tight schedule and the mudslides, it just wasn’t in the cards for us this time. We hope to return and properly explore the northern part of this wonderful country!



And by off for the coast, I mean spend an entire afternoon driving through mountains, in fog, around sheep, along muddy single lane roads. Yep, our GPS took us through a “short cut,” which was actually a treacherous mountain pass. Total navigator fail… oops! One stretch had particularly dense fog, and Bethany had to call out the turns ahead of time for me like a rally car driver to help make sure we didn’t go off the side of the mountain. I think it was better that it was foggy, because if I had seen how high up we were I probably would have been even more upset. At one point, I came upon a bunch of large boulders strewn across the road, and was ready to start swearing as we’d now have to turn back, but then I realized it was a flock of sheep just chilling out on the road. We finally came down out of the fog and were greeted by a verdant, deep valley with rows of mountains and a glow of the coast off in the distance. We continued on, at one point having to maneuver past a bus that was going up the one-lane mountain road.


WE SURVIVED! LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!



We came down out of the mountains and entered the desert. The coast of Peru along its Pacific side is a thin band of desert maybe 15 miles wide before leading into the foothills of the mountains. Despite this, the ample rain in the mountains flows out, leading to what I imagine the Nile delta looks like, with heavy flowing streams and tons of green irrigated land near it in the middle of the valleys, but the outside edges of the valleys brown and sandy. We drove through these, continuing our decent along with the river toward the coast. Eventually we found ourselves in the coastal town of Huanchaco outside of Trujillo. We pulled onto the beach just as the sun was setting. The beach was still pretty full of people, but we’d heard that tourists were allowed to spend the night on the beach, although Peruvians were not. We parked and immediately went to find some dinner. Coming back, one of the police cars that patrols the beach and makes sure the drunkies keep it in line came up to us. We chatted with him and he said we were fine to spend the night. We climbed into Sweetcakes for the evening, eventually having to pop in our earplugs after a car full of drunk kids rolled up and started dancing to music they were pumping through the speakers. A short while later we awoke to another cop asking us what we were doing sleeping in the car. Bethany groggily explained to him that we’d already spoken to a police officer and he said it was ok to spend the night. The rest of the night was decent after that. We awoke early, though, as we had a long day of driving ahead of us to get to Lima. We waved to some other tourists on the beach as we pulled out around 6:45am.


Worse places to spend the night! [OR ARE THERE?!]

The drive to Lima was uneventful, lots of straight clean tarmac and desert (and garbage! The most we’ve seen yet on this trip. Nasty, Peru, get your act together!), minus a stop for a car that was burning along the side of the road. The workers who were there to deal with it had no idea how to handle traffic. Many of the cars turned around and jumped a sand dune to get to the other side of the highway, and drove in the left lane with their hazards on. We attempted to do the same, but as we approached a bus got stuck in the median, and a road worker had come up to prevent other cars from going through. So we turned back and drove back up to the car on fire, eventually driving past it [on the shoulder] in the left lane, zipping through the huge cloud of billowing smoke.


Dem dunes


“A car fire isn’t picture worthy….” -Green shirt man


And he’s stuck

Lima itself was a quick re-acquaintance to driving in big cities in South America. While not nearly as large as Bogota, it tried to make up for it with crazier drivers. We miraculously made it to our hostel without killing anyone or being killed. We did some quick errands, including going to a very bougie store that reminded us of Whole Foods.


View from Miraflores neighborhood



The following morning we chatted with some of the other overlanders at the hostel, went for a brief walk along the beautiful park that spans part of the coast, and treated ourselves to a scrumptious Peruvian-sushi fushion lunch. Then we made the grueling trek 2 miles over to the JW Marriott where we were spending the night. Checking in, we immediately felt out of place, but loved how nice the place was. We made our way to the room, enjoyed the amenities up in the executive lounge, and ended up meeting a couple from Missouri who were taking a trip to Peru. We told them about our trip, but then had to bid an early farewell so we could pick up the folks.

We hopped in Sweetcakes and set off for the airport, driving along the coastal bypass road as the sun was setting over the ocean. A beautiful site, but it didn’t last for long. As soon as we turned off the bypass road, we had to wind our way through Lima’s dark streets, jam packed with crazy drivers, tuk tuks (moto taxis), people, and basically anything you can imagine. A good reminder for why we never drive at night (except in extenuating circumstances). A solid hour later we pulled into the airport and saw there was a police checkpoint to get into the parking area. “Quick, roll down all 4 windows so they don’t bug us about our Luna permit!” The police officer thoroughly inspected all our documents, but never asked for our Luna permit. Bethany’s quick thinking: 1, Peruvian police: 0.


par for the course, or: why we never drive at night

Making our way to the customs exit where we would meet my folks, a man came up to us speaking German. We must have given him puzzled looks, because then he asked “English?” Yup! He proceeded to tell us his story (true or not, we’ll never know), about arriving in Lima the day before and his taxi driver taking off with all of his luggage. He had contacted the German embassy and they were working on new documents for him and paid for his lodging for 2 nights, but wouldn’t cover anything else. So he was at the airport begging for some money for food. Tough! We gave him a couple of bucks and wished him luck.

Soon we saw my parents come through the customs doors, looking a bit weary from the long journey, but exited to be in Peru. Big hugs all around, then we all piled into Sweetcakes for a crazy drive back across Lima to the hotel. Except when Ike tried to insert our parking ticket so we could pay and leave the airport, we were told by the security guard that we had to pay at the pay station back on the other side of the parking lot. Oh, naturally. I hopped out, eventually found the pay station and paid, then we were on our merry way. Luckily the traffic had calmed down a bit, meaning it was “tolerably crazy” instead of completely crazy. Miraculously we made it back to the hotel all in one piece. Mom unloaded bags of snickers and milky ways for us and we all pigged out a bit!




The next morning we headed upstairs to the executive lounge for the breakfast buffet, complimentary for our room because of Ike’s status. I suggested that we just send my parents up since the room only had 2 registered guests, but Ike was confident that all 4 of us could eat there for free. We all waltzed into the lounge and were immediately asked for our room number. “All four of you?” “Yup!” After loading up our plates, the woman who was “working the door” approached Ike and informed him that since only 2 guests were registered in our room, we would have to pay $20/breakfast for the additional 2 guests. BUSTED! It was a delicious breakfast, though.

Thoroughly stuffed, we hailed a cab and headed for the historic downtown of Lima. We enjoyed the beautiful colonial architecture, Mom spotted a small market and we purchased a few items, then we took a guided tour of the San Francisco Monastery, which included a beautiful church, the monastery buildings, and catacombs. All Catholics were buried in the catacombs until the first cemetery was built, so there were lots of bones down there! We were surprised to see most of the bones appeared to be femurs and skulls, but our guide informed us that most of the other bones were fragile enough that they broke down over time. The church and monastery quarters were covered with intricate wood carvings and many of the walls were covered in frescoes, and they were discovering new frescoes every year.



After the tour we hailed another taxi and headed in the general direction of the car rental office. We knew which avenue it was on, but not exactly where. We zig-zagged across the city and miraculously ended up a half block from the office. We entered the building and were told to wait “for a few minutes.” Ike and I both knew what that meant, and sure enough “a few minutes” turned into an hour. The workers finally finished processing the paperwork for the 2 groups ahead of us, one of which was a group of guys with a gazillion surfboards that they loaded on the roof of their rental truck and then realized it was barely too tall to get out through the gate. A couple of the guys hopped on the tailgate to weigh the truck down, and dad was quick to get in on the action; all 100 pounds of him! :)

With the long delay at the rental car office, we were a few hours behind schedule. Ike and I wanted to make sure we were out of Lima before the rush hour traffic hit. We hustled back to the hotel, Mom & I hopped in Sweetcakes, and off we set. Sweetcakes and the girls led the way, with the boys following behind in the rental car. I was pretty nervous since I hadn’t driven south of the US border. But we made it out of the city with only a couple of close calls. We stopped for a very late lunch as soon as we got out of the city, introducing Mom & Dad to Peru’s “typical” (and very cheap) lunches.

We cruised south along the coast, admiring the giant sand dunes and the desert landscape. The road became crazier and crazier as the sun set, another brutal reminder of why we typically don’t drive at night. We stopped near the town of Pisco to purchase a SIM card for Dad’s phone and a couple of bottles of the area’s famous liquor: pisco! While I was busy playing frogger across the busy highway to jump through all of the bureaucratic hoops of getting a SIM card, Ike was being hazed by the pisco shop owner. He insisted Ike try a dozen of his infused piscos before making his purchase. Ike begged for mercy and explained that he had to drive. He ended up with two bottles, one mint-infused and another infused with “snot fruit” (see our Ecuador blog).

We were all tired from the long day’s drive when we rolled into Huacachina that evening. Our hotel turned out to be quite nice, and even had a swimming pool! We played a quick round of Hand and Foot (our favorite card game), had some mojitos, then called it a night. The next morning we were stunned to see the giant sand dune that went right up to the hotel’s back gate. Since we had arrived in the evening, we had no idea just how large and near the sand dunes were. Mom & I went for a quick dip in the pool while Ike and Dad checked Sweetcake’s brake pads, in preparation for all the mountain driving ahead of us. Later that morning the 4 of us loaded into one of the giant dune buggies, the driver barely waiting for us to fasten our 6-point harnesses before taking off (he didn’t wear his the entire ride!). We drove out onto the dunes and were shocked by their scale, sand stretching as far as you could see in every direction. We were in for quite the ride – without warning, our driver plummeted off what seemed like a sheer sand dune and we were all thankful for the 6-point harnesses as we caught air. Dad was pulling out his phone to take a video when we went over the cliff and before he knew it he was flying out of his seat! After a few thrilling drops, the driver stopped and pulled out some sandboards for us. Dad tried to cut across the dunes, using his snowboarding skills, but the sand is much slower than snow. The rest of us opted to ride down on our bellies, a much quicker way! The sandboarding was fun, but the sand was brutally hot in the mid-day sun and burnt our feet, so after a few rides on the boards, we were back in the dune buggie for more thrills.


Overland ready vehicle right here


Sand fo days….


Professional


Man I look cool. shame I have NO idea what I’m doing



We stopped for a delicious lunch of ceviche and paella, then continued south along the highway. We tried to visit a winery in Ocucaje, but were told it was no longer open for tours. A bit further down the road we pulled over to a mirador to see the Palpa lines. Similar to the Nazca lines, but much smaller in scale. There were a half dozen designs visible from the mirador.

This is what happens when we can’t tour wineries!!



We continued down the road and eventually came to the mirador for the Nazca lines. The Nazca lines are still a complete mystery. The designs cover an area of about 500 acres and the designs are so huge that you really can’t appreciate them from the ground. Instead, most people fly over the lines in small airplanes. We had heard that many people get sick, since the pilots have to bank sharply, so we opted to just appreciate the designs as best we could from the miradoralong the road. Some people believe the lines are the work of supernatural beings, since the designs are geographically perfect (lines and circles), which seems impossible to do without a bird’s eye view.





That night we stayed at a Swiss hotel near the airport. It was OK, but they over charged and the staff were not very helpful. We ventured back into town for dinner, buying 2 pounds of fresh figs at the market (which we promptly forgot about and went bad in our car, doh!) and feasted on a whole chicken and a mountain of french fries that evening. The next morning the hotel staff didn’t have breakfast ready at the designated time and told us it would be “just a few minutes.” Since we had a long day’s drive ahead of us, we munched on fruit and yogurt from our car and jumped on the road. Soon we were climbing up and up into the mountains.

We were going from sea level up to over 4000 meters that day. The elevation change was very quick! Soon the road disappeared into think fog and mist, and we showed our parents the joy of blind-passing semis on South American mountain roads. They were good sports, though. A couple hours in we came to a toll booth. We pulled over to use the restrooms and stretch our legs, and we immediately felt the altitude. We were around 3800 meters already. There was a new cafe by the toll booths and they asked us to pose for a photo drinking instant coffee in their cafe. Sure, why not. Immediately after we finished the photo shoot, Dad started to feel ill. He sat down on the side of the road. We tried to get him to drink water and eat a couple of crackers, but he was already very nauseous.

Don’t mind us!


Life at 13,000 feet

He was able to make it halfway to the restroom before he had to sit down, and promptly lost his stomach. From there, it was another 7 hours of driving with Denny trying to keep down water and some crackers as we soldiered on, eventually peaking at 4400 meters and Bethany and I hitting the highest altitude yet on the trip. 4K+ meters reminds us of northern Canada – the trees begin to thin out, the landscape rolls along with lots of rocks and moss. There’s a stark beauty to it that we really enjoy. Lunch for the four of us was in a tiny town: 3 entrees and soda for 19 soles [$6], although the soup had chicken feet and hearts in it. [the hearts were edible at least!]  We returned to the vehicles to have the rental car’s battery dead after the lights were on for 30 minutes. With a jump, we were back on the road, but not before Denny noticed our brake line was leaking fluid. Never a dull moment! As the sun set, we continued to push forward as fast as we could, with us getting passed by trucks clearly having the same thought as us, but with engines with a few hundred more horsepower than ours. The switchbacks leading into Abancay along the mountains included some gravelly water crossing that Sweetcakes ripped through without any issue and miraculously the little Renault Logan made it through too, although I definitely gunned it in 2ndgear and held the accelerator down as we crossed.


GNARLY OFF ROADING! [not pictured: the teeny Renault doing it 5 seconds later]

We quickly called it a night after getting in to our hotel, as we needed to drive for most of the next day as well. The next morning we hopped in the car and took off, with clouds and rain taking us most of the way into Cusco. Luckily Denny was starting to feel quite a bit better. En route, we stopped at a large Sunday market in a town. The place was almost completely packed, over 100 meters long each way, and full of some of the craziest niche vendors. Yep, there’s the lady selling mint, herbs, and goat heads. There’s the other lady who exclusively sharpens knives and scythes. Bethany and Janis picked up some fabric pieces while Denny and I tried to one-up each other with services being offered.


Bodes well…. (Believe it or not, Sweetcakes was rescuing the rental here)


“Get yer Goat guts! get yer goat guts and mint right heeeerrre!!!”


Wallet feeling lighter already…..

Coming into Cusco, Janis and I attempted to navigate our way to the hotel we were staying at and we got to share what it’s like driving through steep colonial towns with them. After some back and forth, we found ourselves out front, got parked, and went inside where the guys running the place told us to take a seat and enjoy some Coca tea. We happily obliged. Shortly thereafter we made our way to Fuego, a restaurant specializing in burgers and steaks. Bethany and I killed the alpaca burgers, onion rings, and pisco sours for all. [happy hour!] They didn’t skimp on the pisco either, and as we made our way back to the hotel, Denny, Janis, and I made our way into the tienda next to the hotel and promptly spent $20 on junk food. #noregrets


And the talking just starts to speed up!


Pisco Sours are just the best guise


These are a bit easier to ride than the live ones


Ohhhh boy. Girls whipping the guys

The next morning was errands first and foremost, as we needed to zip around and take care of tickets for Maccu Piccu and the Via Ferrata. We finally got data set up on Denny’s phone, and our tickets purchased. To celebrate, we had an amazing lunch of pizza, pasta, and sangria. From there, we visited a couple of churches in Cusco, but were bummed because so many of them either had a steep entrance fee or were flat out closed. That evening was more Hand and Foot, and a dinner of street burgers for Bethany and I. It was early to bed though, as the next morning was a packed day.

Central square of Cusco







Aren’t they the cutest! Bethany and Janis look good too.



We loved looking at the perfectly cut Incan stones that still abound in Cusco.

“The map says the entrance is across from the train station, across the river. I don’t think we cross the river, as the train station is past it over there.” Driving around, we were trying to find the small entrance to the Via Ferrata [Iron Walk] we were doing. After back tracking, we found the little road leading up. We waited for a few minutes, then the bus pulled up with the guides and the two other participants. Sebastian and Katie, from Frankfurt. The six of us got suited up in our harnesses with the help of Cesar and Cynthia, our guides. We walked over to the start, and Cesar scaled the rock wall up to the folded ladder. “Ok, just like that!” he said with a grin before unfolding the ladder. Looking up, all I saw was sheer rock. Somehow I thought the walk would be harnesses and walking along some iron bridges that were stuck to the side of the mountain. I think I’d seen something like that in China before, but I did NOT expect it to be a 400 meter ascent up the side of a mostly sheer rock face. I’m not….the bestwith heights, but it was too late to back out now. It was cloudy and had been raining up until we started, which seems awful, but good hiking boots and ridged iron rungs made our grip pretty sure. It also kept it cool which was nice considering the workout we were getting. The ascent was going well, and then Bethany turned back to me and said, “Look up over there!” and I looked up to see a ‘bridge’ consisting of a couple of wires for the walkway and another strung up about chest height for holding on it. “AWW F—” was the first and only thing I could say. With three people and nearly three hundred meters behind and below me, the only option was forward. I made sure to only really focus on where my feet were [the wire was kinda slippery from the rain] and either looked at my feet [but not past them] or at some distant rocks so I wasn’t thinking about being suspended. The hardest part is that you have to lean forward onto the guide rope to keep better balance, but when you’re taller the rope is more chest level then above your head, so your center of gravity is out over the edge. Weeeeiiirrrddd [read:awful] feeling. Thankfully I had cheerleaders backing me up the entire time [so they say, all I was really doing was saying, “Ok…ok…ok…ok….ok” to myself every two seconds] to get me across. As I reached the other side, I slumped against the rock wall as my arms and legs started trembling uncontrollably from adrenaline, tension, and fear.


ohgodohgodohgodohgodohdon’tlookdowndon’tlookdown


Oh hey!


Bethany: smiling  Ike: rictus of terror


I didn’t die!

That was the most difficult mentally, but technically there were a few other spots that really worked the quads or triceps [all of us but Denny were sore for a few days afterwards], and a few more that made you think [or in my case, say] “I don’t think I can do this….” But in each case, Cesar or Cynthia provided helpful advice to make sure you placed your hands and feet just where they needed to go and in the right order so you surprised yourself.

We crested our 400m climb [still only about 2/3 of the way to the top] and broke for lunch, then hiked along the side of the cliff [or side-climbed in some cases] up past the three capsule rooms that you can sleep in overnight. Cesar informed us how he spent every day for two months helping install the capsules, starting at 4am every day and going until dark. He was suspended alongside the capsules as they winched them up from the ground, and then suspended them using 12 anchor points each, drilled a meter into the rock. He certainly earned the ‘fun’ part his job is now.

With the hard part over, the next hour and a half was spent ziplining back down the 400m. Compared to the climbing, this was a nice, relaxing ride to the bottom. The longest of these was half a kilometer long, and afforded us plenty of time to enjoy the view of the valley below us.




We rested as we rode the train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes, a short 30-40 kilometers but an hour and a half. We rode alongside the river, through the valley and looking up at the mountains and clouds between turns of hand and foot. Arriving, we left the station through a maze of vendors [how clever!] and then camped on a side street as Bethany and I bopped between hotels and asked to see rooms, prices, and if they had wifi [most important question]. We found a great hotel on the cheap, with nice hot water and clean new rooms. It had a view right over the central stream of Aguas Caliente, and we got to enjoy watching the buses turn around in the middle of the street, more of an art form than anything else.

   ALL OF THE GRINGOS

Making our way around town for dinner, we had our hopes set pretty low. We heard the touts were pushy, the food wasn’t good, and the prices were high. We settled for a restaurant that had mexican food. All of them claimed to have 4x20S drinks; but they were each about 4oz and took 15 minutes to come out. Our restaurant had a neon sign proclaiming free wifi, but when we inquired, our waiter/tout looked confused and said they didn’t have it. He also told us about ‘free nachos!’ but turns out they come with the meals [of only some of the entrees]; but at least those were good.

We planned to play it loose with getting to Maccu Piccu depending on the weather and having our return tickets set for 6pm. The next morning though it was beautiful and we decided to head out around 7:15; not super early but allowing us to beat the rush of day-trippers from Cusco. We split up in lines for bus tickets, waiting in line for about 20 minutes and learning that morning that we totally could have purchased tickets the day before and saved ourselves quite a bit of time. We quickly appreciated our decision to bus up to Maccu Piccu instead of hiking up, as upon arrival it was immediately obvious who had hiked and who hadn’t. We ran into Justin from Washington as we went into the park, and spent most of the morning with a +1. After entering we continued straight on up to the ‘Caretakers Hut’ for the famous view of the ruins, then made our way back to the Inca Bridge path after briefly admiring a Japanese dude using his phone to adjust his go-pro-selfie-stick while posing with an alpaca. The Inca Bridge path was pretty sparse [on the way up we heard a ton of middle-aged Americans bitching about the hike up, and upon summit-ing several more saying that they were ready to leave after seeing the view. WTF PEOPLE?!] and we enjoyed the flat hiking instead of climbing stairs. There was a close brush-in with some alpacas galloping down the path too. The bridge is now closed after some moron fell off it and died a decade ago or so. Past the bridge the restoration work stopped and we all were flabbergasted at what the path actually looked like. It was a simple narrow footpath along the side of the mountain! “How many bones do you think are down along the bottom?” I asked Denny, while we admired the cojonesof the people who trekked in that way. They’ve found six seperate points of ingress to Maccu Piccu, no doubt all of them as pants-filling as this one.






Perfection. The Incas were master stone cutters.


This is why we can’t have nice things


The line of green is the trail. Nope! Nope nope nopenopenope.


Blerg?!


Kindred spirits?




Agricultural terraces surrounded the ancient city






Billipede! – Bethany


We returned to Aguas Caliente ahead of schedule, and were luckily able to change our tickets to an earlier train for free! We hopped on, played some more hand and foot, and spent n

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