ericandtracy

After a long month of school Eric and I decided to take a break by going into the sky lakes basin wilderness for three days. Not really knowing much about it we left with our trusty GPS and enough food for three days. Our hike in was relatively easy. It was about five miles until we reached the first lake. We found our campsite pretty quickly, but decided to put down our packs and hike around for awhile just in case we found another one. We hiked for about half a mile until we found the next lake. After searching we decided to go back to the first site we saw. We quickly put up the tent then headed to the lake for a swim. We were the only humans for miles so we decided the ... read more

Taganga is the sort of place that you get "stuck", which is exactly what happend to us. Our plan was to stay for a couple of days and we ended up staying for almost a week. Taganga is a small beach town on the northern coast. We were really interested in diving so the first thing we did was look into it. Apparently it is one of the cheapest places in the world to get certified so we figured if we don't do it now we never will. The first day we signed up for the coarse and got started. The first thing we did was watch these really boring videos. We tried to watch as many as possible that first day so we didn't have to watch them later. By the time we were finished ... read more

After 16 months in South America without seeing any family(besides Tracy of course), it was very nice to see some familiar faces when my Mom came to visit us with her best friend Janet. We did some more exploring around Cuzco for the first couple days, going to museums, ruins, and some very nice restaurants(also something we haven’t seen in 16 months). Apparently my Mom and Monica had conspired to surprise us with her presence when she arrived unannounced the next day. After a short reunion, we left for the Valle Sagrada, the Sacred Valley of the Incas. This was a very important central location of the Incan Empire where there are hundreds of ruins all over the valley. Ollantaytambo - We first went to Ollantaytambo where lies the Temple of the Sun. A massive pyramid-like ... read more

Oh how we loved Sucre! It is a beautiful town nestled by surrounding mountains. Sucre is a very modern town for Bolivia. We were still traveling with our new friends so we were able to explore the town with them. The first day we arrived we walked around the city a little, then went up to a wonderful viewpoint. It was quite a climb because this was our first stop at high elevation and we were not use to the low oxygen level. Once we arrived at the top we could see everything. There are very nice buildings in Sucre, a colonial town so most of the buildings are painted white. On our way back into town we witnessed a school riot going on. It consisted of angry college students mad about the high tuition prices. ... read more

The Pantanal, one of those things that I am glad I did, but will never do again. The pantanal is a swampy area full of animals and lots of insects. We decided to do a three-day two-night tour. The first day it took us a while to get out there and we didn’t arrive until dinnertime. When we got close to arriving we learned that the pantanal has been flooding and we had to take a boat to our campsite. This consisted of fitting ten people in a tiny boat and having a guide try to push us through the water. When we finally arrived on our island we had dinner then went out for our first adventure, a night boat ride. During this ride we saw many different kinds of animals including alligators, or caimans ... read more