After being in Lima (a very busy city) and spending weeks at altitude…we were all excited to head to the beach in Northern Peru and take it easy for a few days. We spent 4 days camping on the beach and relaxing. Unfortunately some horrible stomach epidemic swept through our truck. The staff at the camping site had to work so hard restocking the toilet paper. I was pretty lucky compared to most of the truck. Highlights from the 4 days were: Truck Olympics Crab Hunting Swimming Cooking Pancakes BBQing [View Full Entry]

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After our beach bush camp we headed to the Nazca Lines. Basically its an airport surrounded by a few toursity shops in the middle of nowhere. We had to wait a little while in the airport and we were watching the same Nazca video over and over. What I learned from the video was that they dont know why the lines are there and they dont know who made them. While we were walking out to board the plane (I was already a little nervous), I see the airpoirt staff run out with a wheel chair and this women gets out [View Full Entry]

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Chivay is this little city that is the base to Colca Canyon. Colca Canyon is argued to be the deepest canyon in the world. I wanted to do a few day hike in the canyon and while I was drinking a smoothie I met a tour guide that runs the exact tour I want to do. Good smoothie karma. I headed out early in the morning and we drove to the canyon. Condors just sit along the side of the canyon and wait for a gust of wind to come and then fly around. I guess they are too heavy to [View Full Entry]

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Cuzco was a pretty cool city….a really nice square and nice markets and the best lomo saltado I have had so far. French fries seem to be in everything in Peru. Lomo saltado is basically onions, beef, and French fries stir fried. The soup that comes with lomo saltado usually includes some French fires in it too…pretty fancy all for a dollar! This city is where people start and end their Inca Trail hikes on…so its very touristy…but besides that it was a pretty cool place. Our group did the Classical Inca Trail….which is 4 days hiking and you end at [View Full Entry]

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Potosi was our first stop in Peru. And this was our first easy border crossing! We had a day in Potosi before heading out to Lake Titicaca. I spent my time wandering around the markets and finding good smoothie places. Time well spent. Peru seems really cool…still lots of traditional dress and cheap places to eat…but people seem to enjoy having their picture taken here (very different than Bolivia). We have also been staying in more hotels..and now they have tv and showers in the room. Traveling in class! We headed off on an overnight Lake Titicaca and island adventure. [View Full Entry]

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On our way from the salt flats we were driving on some pretty bad roads and our truck got stuck. I was actually glad it happened…the Oasis brochure says ‘you might be asked to dig you truck out’ and we were. We were getting everything we promised. So that was a fun start to our day. Potosi is a big city with a lot going on…and lots of poverty. I haven’t seen much begging on the trip yet…but you did see it here. While I was eating my $1.25 dinner a little girl came in and asked people for some of [View Full Entry]

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So I thought we would be done with the slow border crossings...but I was wrong. We got to the Argentina/Bolivia border and spent nearly three hours there. People kept cutting in front of us in the line, until our driver acted as a bouncer. This was also one of the first days that we were at altitude and some people were feeling bad. Luckily I was feeling fine…I was keeping hydrated…but then the problem was that you had to pee all the time at the nasty border toliet. The other bummer thing about crossing into Bolivia is that Americans have to [View Full Entry]

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Santiago turned out to be a really cool city. I think a lot of people compare it to Buenos Aires and like it a lot less...but I think its just really different and I really enjoyed it. The first day I was here we wandered around and found the markets, ate seafood, and I got my haircut. We decided to make our own sushi, so the next day we got up early and went to the fish markets and bought really fresh fish, and then headed to the other markets to get the rest of the sushi supplies. We ended up [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Chile we headed back to Argentina. The borders between Chile and Argetina are kinda a pain…they make us take our bags out and get them scanned and everything…so we were quite happy that this would be the last strict border that we would be dealing with. The first stop was Mendoza. I was imagining it to be a little cute city, but it turned out to be a relatively big and dirty city. Not one of my favorite stops. The flu had been going around the truck and I wasn’t feeling too hot so I took it pretty easy [View Full Entry]

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Pucon is a small little town…and its main attraction is Villarrica Volcano. There is a volcano alert system and volcano warning charts all around town…kinda entertaining, and luckily not needed while I was there. The main thing tourist do is climb to the top of Villarica volcano and eat ice cream. I managed to do both. It took us about 5 hours to hike up the volcano. Luckily it wasn’t as difficult as I thought, but I was surprised how steep it was in places. When we got to the ice part, we put on our crampons and got a lesson [View Full Entry]

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