Hola!! How are you all in wintery (for most) Australia?!? Well Nick and I are in Nazca at the moment. We have just had a LOOOONG day sightseeing and waiting around today. The South Americas move on South American time - very slowly!!! I won´t go into too much detail on this blog of what we´ve done as we´ll be leaving soon. We´re heading out on an overnight bus to Arequipa. This is where our trip starts to ascend into the mountains and the altitude begins to take effect (EEK!!!) Today we went up into the sky in a tiny plane! [View Full Entry]

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BOGOTA Bogota has plenty to offer. The city center is beautiful, and walking throughout is easy and relatively safe--just "no de papaya" and you will be fine (in other words use common sense). The Plaza Bolivar is a beautiful spot for travellers and tourists alike: the Prima Catedral, el Palacio Narino, the Bolivar Monument, the Palacio de Justicia, and other government buildings can be found here. Around the area, one can find a number of museums. I visited some of them last year--Casa de Botero, Casa de la Moneda. Others, like the Police Museum, are close by. Transmilenio is a great [View Full Entry]

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I am not sure why such landscapes - barren, windswept plains, sometimes guarded by sweeps of mountains, all various shades of browns, golds, and muted greens; endless sky above - make my heart swell so. It's not like I grew up in such an environment. But I felt the tug in the steppes of Mongolia and I felt it this time in the Peruvian altiplano. Of course, these types of places are tough, difficult on human inhabitants. Actually, very like Mongolia, while the high plain is hauntingly beautiful, the few towns eeking an existence out of the hardscrabble environment are astoundingly [View Full Entry]

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What a weekend! First off, as I was told, Montañita is definitely livelier on the weekends. Starting Friday night, a bunch of street vendors set up small shops along one of the main roads to sell one thing: alcohol. Basically, it’s a row of 10 or so stands selling all kinds of drinks throughout the weekend. And this is in addition to the existing bars, restaurants, and stores which all sell alcohol throughout the week. Drinking is such a common thing here that I think people are less inclined to “drink” and more inclined to “sip”. Meaning that since you can [View Full Entry]

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It is amazing how one can take for granted simple luxuries in life. Like for instance when you have an address for a government building you assume that that is where it is. Not so in latin america. We got up early today in order to go to the canadian consulate as well as the ecuadorian department of immigration to register our visa so that we could leave quito and start looking for land. When we got to the what we thought would be the right place all that we could see was a piece of paper that said the canadian [View Full Entry]

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The past four days have undoubtedly been the most interesting and eventful so far. I've gotten the chance to purchase tickets at an Argentine Omnibus station, view Argentine theater, experience the Nativity (complete with light show) in seven minutes at the world's only religious theme park (yes, you read that right), visit yet another country and escape from the bustle of city life, and get a taste of genuine Argentine agricultural life at the Feria de Mataderos. As a side note, we saw Wall-E on Wednesday (15 peso night at the gorgeous theater). The guy who bought the tickets for us [View Full Entry]

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I am just going to pop a few photos from our last trip that was about two or three years ago. During that trip, we spent several days in Lima visiting Rose's relatives and visiting where she was born. After that, we went to the usual touristy places, Cusco, Ollantaytambo (where I could easily spend the rest of my life), Aguas Calientes, Machu Picchu, the Nasca lines, Paracas, Ica and Pisco. We spent a nice week in a cute fishing village called Santa Rosa near Chiclayo/Pimentel area. This is where I first saw the caballitos, or little horses. These are basically [View Full Entry]

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I woke up the next morning trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I didn't get my act together the night before to sign up for any tours or to try and figure out if I wanted to rent a car. That morning, I decided to do the tours instead of getting a car. The receptionist was very nice, and we spoke Spanish as I was trying to figure things out. So I extended my day in Salta for three more nights, and decided see as much of Salta as I could. Considering that I did that with Mendoza, [View Full Entry]

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Went out to the Uros on saturday which are floating islands, and met some very cute families all dressed up for us tourists, then we went for 3 hours until another island, real one this time, and met a lovely family who took us in for the night, ate all kinds of roots and leaves, very very rico (mentiro), and then we got all dresed up in indiginous dress and went to the village party, danced some very interesting dances (pulling each other around in a long handholding line for hours, and i mean hours, on end!), then came the night, [View Full Entry]

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CIAO A TUTTI! Benvenuti nel mio Blog! ...a me fa molto ridere... Ho messo in lista parecchia gente, chi non desiderasse ricevere mie notizie e foto é caldamente pregato di mandarmi un email (pasqualone@gmx.ch), cancellare é molto piú facile che aggiungere. Baci Hallo Mittenand! Willkommen in meinem Blog! Wer es nicht mag meine Nachrichten und Bilder zu bekommen ist wärmstens geboten mir ein email zu schicken, löschen ist viel einfacher als eingeben. Grüsse Salut a tous! Bienvenue sur mon Blog! Si vous n'avez pas envie de recevoir de temps en temps mes nouvelles et photos vous êtes priez de me envoyer [View Full Entry]

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