balpo
Ben and alana Joined: January 2nd 2005
Logged in: October 22nd 2007
Logged in: October 22nd 2007
Travel Blog Posts
well we made it to tikal after spending a couple of nights in san ignacio. Tikal is right up with there with some of the most amazing places that I have seen in my life. The spread of buildings involves 6 major temples, the tallest of which shoots into the sky at well over 200 ft. Although the temples are incredible it may be the setting that truly makes Tikal so special. It is crazy to walk through the dense jungle and suddenly.....BAMN there is huge temple in front of you. It just smacks you in the face. Then you travel down the trail and .....BAMN there´s another one. Monkeys - Tikal is just flush with them. Mostly squirrel monkeys that you see swinging from tree to tree but it is the howlers that you hear. ... read more
Hello - Well it has been about 6 months since our last trip. We spent about 6 months at home recharging the batteries and pulling together a little money. We are only doing a short three week trip starting in mexico and then heading into belize, to guatamla, back to belize then back to mexico. We spent 2 glorious days running the white sands of tulum. We had an incredible beach front cabana that allowed us unending access to the beach which we took full advantage of. We had a couple of nights with a little too much of the drink and then finding ourselves rolling in the night time waves. After tulum we headed into belize. That has proved to be an adventure as the biggest bus company (novelos) closed down yesterday. That has meant ... read more
the bones
this is without spell check and was written a blistering speed so please excuse the numerous errors. We just watched the sunset over Lake Titicaca, colors painted rapidly before our eyes. New shades with every sip of beer. It´s our second sunset here, and our second in Bolivia. And we are enjoying being on top of the world. Although, we have felt this high (13000+ ft) at least for the past few weeks.... After leaving Cusco and the excitement of the Inca Trail we headed way down to sea level; Lima. We spent a few days enjoying the city and the oxygen. But it was a little weird to be in a big city again. We toured the San Francisco church and saw huge old catacombs! We walked through a museum where tortures were held during ... read more
horse riding in salta
it has been a while since the last entry and much has happened. we headed north through argentina and have made our way into peru. some highlights: horse riding in san lorenzo, traveling up to tilcara a magical little village in the north, mountian biking with giant cactus, an epic bus journey from argentina to chile to peru over 40 hrs straight, seeing a convent that has been closed to the public for 4 centuries, and finally arriving in cusco to see the famous machu pichu!! salta - a beautiful city of little colonial squares dotted with churches and other historic buildings. the whole city is surrounded by beautiful green covered hills. we started our discovery of salta by riding a cable car up to the top of a morro (means mountian). it was sort of ... read more
ben and alana and the third largest ice field in the world
sorry about the false one the other day. blog to come but until then here are photos.... read more
bariloche
to continue from before...we spent 3 or beautiful days in bariloche. it is a magically gifted city surrounded by a huge lake to one side and then rising up to a section of the andes that is about picture perfect. we had many plans for trekking, biking, horseback riding, and kayaking. unfortunately the weather was not being very supportive. we set out the first day with big plans but spent the day wondering the town with some english chaps we had met on our epic boat journey. there was no heartbreak for alana, bariloche is the chocolate capital of the argentina and the streets were lined with shop after shop. the day was filled with alana suddenly disappearing and returning with a little bag treats. the following day after submitting to the rain we decided to ... read more
puerto moreno glacier
so we have been a bit lax on updating our little bog. we have been traveling all over and have found little time to sit down and write up whats been happening south of the equator but today from Bariloche we felt was finally time to tell you what has been happening. we got into bariloche last night at about 9pm then I sat down to watch the ncaa championship game. I am an avid illini fan and had to witness a wonderful season come to a disappointing end as my team was defeated in a hard fought game. we watched the game with a couple of new friends we had mad from england and Australia. it made for a lot of interesting questions as none of them had much a grasp of the game. by ... read more
alana taking a break
alana typed up a fantastic little thing but it doesn´t seem to be posting. so in the interim I am going to to post a bunch of photos from puerto moreno glacier and parque nacional torres del paine. ... read more
I am writting fast so sorry for the spelling errors. we just spent three beautiful but cold days in el calafate. it is basically a gateway town to parque nacional las galciers, the home of perito moreno glacier. it is difficult to imagine what the glacier looks like except to stand in front of it, open mouth, gasp, say a couple of explatives, repeat. the glacier rises up out of the water 180 feet and is roughly 20km deep. for those who have been to the grand canyon and looked over the edge and sort of felt humbled by the experience, same thing. we have some great pictures that we will put add to this latter but I didn´t bring the stuff to load them this time. From el calafate we got on a bus, said ... read more
