It has been way too long since I have posted so I will give you a
quick update: Since my last post we have been doing a lot of traveling. We
finished our last month teaching in Arequipa, Peru and headed to Colca Canyon
(the 2nd deepest canyon in the world). From there we headed to Puno to check
out Lake Titicaca. I have never seen water and sky embrace each other with such
shades of blue. We took a boat tour and saw the floating reed villages. We then
set sail for Taquile Island, 45 km offshore of Puno. This place was ancient and
beautiful.
After Puno, we headed to La Paz, Bolivia to buy more alpaca items
than humanly neccessary. We then took a 3 day tour of the Salt Flats (Salar)
where the emptiness, vastness, and whitness were all blinding. Nothing else can
compare.
We exited Boliva into Chile in the middle of nowhere in the
desert. It was the top two silliest borders I´ve ever seen. The other
hilariously seemingly nonexistant border was the border of Bolivia and Peru. I
would describe Bolivia as beautiful and sloppy. All we saw of Chile was San
Pedro de Atacama. It is a beautiful little adobe and dirt town in the desert
with great food, friendly travelers and lots of ourdoorsy activities. They also
had beers in 1.2 liter bottles which was kind of both awesome and crazy. The
bottle deposit on it was $1. We spent our day there by renting bikes and
sandboards and biking to the dunes.
After coming back across the border into Peru, we left Arequipa
for good and said goodbye to some incredible people. We will meet again. We
headed to Cusco on an overnight bus and checked out the city. After a day we left on the 5 day Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu.
From that incredible view, we headed on a nightmare back to back night bus trip to Huanchaco, Peru on the northern coast. We had heard Huanchaco was great for surfing and I really want to learn. From Huanchaco we headed 8 hours north to the well known beach town of Mancora. We were not overly impressed and made an impromptu decision to make our way even further north and see some of Ecuador. I heard Montañita was one of the best surfing spots in the world with a beach break so no rocks of reefs to be smashed into. So now we are up to date. I am heading out for day 3 of surfing here in Montañita, Ecuador and the conditions couldn´t be better. This town is amazing with tons of food, music and friendly people and its possibly less expensive than Mancora.
I´ll have to post pictures of all of these travels in time. I have enough photos to keep me busy for a while. Which is a good thing because sadly my camera was stollen from me on a night bus on the way here. Pretty devastating. I´m trying not to kick myself for letting it happen, but those guys are some sneaky professionals.
I´ll post pictures from our adventures in time and in order of our visits and see if I can work on a camera solution for sharing what lies ahead. From here we will head back down south to Peru where we will stay in Tarapoto at an ecolodge on the river. From there we´re heading to Iquitos in the northeast jungle of Peru and we will take a 3 day boat to colombia and sleep on hammocks (why not?). We´ll then fly to Cartagena to meet up with Alex´s sister, Mags from NYC. After a nice caribean beach vacation from our pacific ocean beach vacation we´ll finally make our way to Medellin, Colombia where we intend to settle down for a few months and look for jobs teaching English.
I wanted to catch you up to speed because I have been slacking and I have to get back into the swing of writing especially now that I am fancy-camera-less. Love to all. Pictures soon. Get excited.
