Our last few days in Buenos Aires was spent watching free tango shows (they are EVERYWHERE - Argentinians are all about the tango!), visiting the Recoleta Cemetary (where Evita is buried, quite impressive actually) and doing all sorts of touristy things. The cemetary is in a pretty swanky part of town ... where all the rich people live (the people who looked at us like we were homeless bums as they walked by with in their Armani suits and purebred dogs) ... they have Ralph Lauren, Cartier, and Armani stores on the streets. The cemetary was opened in 1822 and has [View Full Entry]

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Sooo we have not fallen off the planet, or gotten lost, or eaten by sharks ... we have been camera shopping in Buenos Aires and have been busy! We arrived here last Monday (Nov 19) and spent the first 3 days hunting for a new camera, as we had no luck in either Ecuador or Peru. We heard that Argentina has great shopping deals ... but apparentlly not for cameras! They are MOTHER expensive here! We were after a Canon ... a NEW one (not one that came out a year ago) ... and after much frustration we settled on one [View Full Entry]

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Here is what happened ... Our hostal has huge bird cages near the front door, and we had just gotten home. When we walked by the cages the birds started to flip out. Like really REALLY flip out. We couldnt figure out what we had done to startle them. At the same time there was a man sitting on a couch watching a movie and we asked him what movie he was watching, and he jumped up and said EARTHQUAKE!, but in our dumb Canadian ness, we looked at him like Huh? We havent heard of a movie called earthquake before??? [View Full Entry]

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Our time in the Galapagos was awesome!!! It is true what they say about feeling like you have landed on the moon... because the islands are located on the Equator, we imagined them to be tropical and jungle like ... but there is a crazy amount of diversity ... both from island to island, but also on any one island itself. Sometimes we would be looking at beautiful turquoise colored water ... and would expect to see palm trees on the shores ... but instead we would be looking at cacti and lava rock in the surrounding area. Other times we [View Full Entry]

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And it really really sucks! The ironic thing is that our last blog was about how we are feeling safer and that even though Quito has a nasty reputation for muggings and such, we did not feel threatened at all. This is what happened ... On Monday night (the day we did our last post), we dropped some laundry off at the lavendaria and took the memory card out of camera so that we could update the blog. We left the camera in our room (which has a door with a little padlock that we got from the hostel manager upon [View Full Entry]

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¡¡¡Hola from Quito!!! We have been here since Saturday evening, and the hope was that we would be able to book our cruise to the Galapagos first thing on Sunday ... but ... NOTHING is open on a Sunday in Ecuador!!! The city is sort of divided into two sections - Old Town, where all the history and charm seems to be, and New Town, aka the travellers ghetto. Accomadations are reeaaallly cheap in New Town ($5 each for a room with a double bed and ensuite bathroom - no complaints from us!!), the catch is that the neighborhood closes down [View Full Entry]

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Soooo.... onto ANGEL FALLS!!! To our PLEASANT surprise, the tour we paid for turned out to be legitimate and actually quite nice. We bused from Caracas to Cuidad Bolivar overnight, and caught a flight to Canaima early the next morning. The plane was a little 6 seater and it was a clear day, so we got an awesome view of Venezuela. Upon arrival at Camp Wey Tupuy, we were debriefed and told to pack ourselves a bag for 1 day and 1 night in the jungle. Oh God, Kristena hates bugs. We left right away for the falls ... taking a [View Full Entry]

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After arriving in Manaus on Monday evening, we flew to Caracas to spend a few days in Venezuela. Our flight was an overnighter (we arrived about 6am Tuesday morning) ... and being that we were waken up by sweet little children on the boat at 5am and couldnt sleep on the plane, we arrived rather cranky and wanting to just be on our way. The goal was to get to Angel Falls ... the worlds tallest waterfall ... and we set about to arrange the tour through one of the booths at the airport. It didnt go so well ... we [View Full Entry]

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We made it!!!!!!!!! The boat ride from Belem to Manaus lasts exactly 5 days... 5 LONG DAYS, almost to the minute! Our experience on the Cisne Branco started off on the wrong foot and was... interesting (to say the least!) Here is a rendition of our Amazon "cruise" ... We arrived at the boat later than we had hoped (there was a kerfuffle about what boat we were supposed to be on) and when they say to be there early to get a good spot they mean it!!! It was a struggle for us to find an "acceptable" place to hang [View Full Entry]

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We are in Belem right now, a city in the north of Brazil where the Amazon meets the ocean (sortof, I think, I don't know for sure though because geography is not my favorite, but that is what it looks like on the map). We leave tonight at 6pm for our trip through the Amazon River up to Manaus. The trip is supposed to take 5 days ... and we are taking one of the boats the locals would take ... it carries about 230 people and the mode of sleep is a la hammock on the deck with all the [View Full Entry]

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