Puerto Rico

I finally had the opportunity this summer to visit the island of enchantment. It was something I had been wanted to do and and experience I will charish for many years. My friend and colleague Hilda, had a destination weeding and that destination became San Juan. I bought my tickets only a couple of weeks before the travel date. When I arrived there I was surprised that a tropical storm was hitting the island. To everyone's surprise, the storm wasn't the strong down pour everyone had expected. In fact, I walked the 45 minutes to Old San Juan and the 45 minutes back to my hotel. The picture opportunities weren't great given the cloudy disposition, but there was Beatle any tourist walking around which made it fun for me. I walked down a deserted Paseo de la princesa and along the fortificad wall. I was surprised at the amount of cats that were roaming the streets of Old San Juan and an aggressive black bird that would get as close to me head as he could and make a tap sound.

Several things surpriced me about San Juan. For one, San Juan haws very much culturally Latinamerican but had a fantastic infrastructure. The streets were padded with colorful blue bricks in the old city and the buildings were well conserved. You could find modern buildings in the adjoining neightbourhoods and a well kept highway system. Another thing that also fascinated me was the use of Spanish. Tourism no doubt is one of the main if not the main industry for the city. You can generally find most signs inmspanish and locals will speak to you fluently in Spanish. Their English is obviously not their native language, but you can code switch as much as you want with your taxi drivers. The only taxis I saw, were white vans. I am not so sure how they came to this norm (possibly the large groups of tourists) but I often felt weird traveling in van by myself. It was easier when you traveled with another 3 people. 

Later that evening I went to my friends wedding. It was a fascinating wedding with cigars, samba music and great people. I happened to meet some friends there and the next day was blessed with fantastic sunny weather so we hit the beach most of the day. The beaches are beautiful for being urban beaches and there you can find plenty of locals and yummy empanadas and of you chose the right location hot people and a bar tender that will bring you drinks right to your beach chair. 

The next day I had to fly out so we took a short trip to Old San Juan and visited the Castillo de San Cristóbal. The fort is a gigantic fortification employed in the defense of the city against pirate attacks and users as barracks and a prison back in colonial times. It was impressive to walk thought the portly lit cells and the spacious rooms. The inside of the building provided a cool relief from the sun outside and provided beautiful panoramic views of the city. 

I rushed to the airport only to find out that my flight was delayed by over an hour late and that spirit airles is possibly the worst airline to fly internationally. They argued that I couldn't travel internationally without a return ticket. So after waiting in line for over an hour, being told that my ticket couldn't be processed in their check in machines and choosing between paying $50 for a check in or $47 for a carry on... I bough a return ticket for my trip. Did I also mention they don't give you complementary snacks! Ends up being that their tickets aren't really cheap... They are just a horrible airline. 

Nonetheless PR was amazing and I hope I can go back and visit again soon. 

Castillo de San Cristóbal 

San Juan de Puerto Rico 

Lago Titicaca

On my second day in Puno, I took a day expedition to the islands in lake Titicaca. First we arrived in one of the Uros Islands. The Uros are a series of floating islands originally artificially created by the ethnic Uros to escape the incas and later the Spanish. The people there have lost the Uro language but they continue to conserve their island way of life in many ways thanks to tourism. The guide Luis, who had lived in Mexico, gave a passionate speech about this love hate relationship between tourism and the Uros. The people there rely mostly on a fee charged to visitors and on the profit from selling crafts and giving boat rides to tourist. The islands are ingeniously built using materials from the lake like the glass and roots of the grass and are constantly replenished with new materials. They also make their boats from the aquatic grass.  

Titicaca is the largest high altitude lake in the world. It get chilly at night and aside from fish and flogs nothing inhabits the lake waters. Well there is a variety of birds. Ironically, due to the low temperatures of the water not many of the lakes inhabitants can swim. The lake is also of significant commercial importance as it is divided among two nations: Peru 60%; and Bolivia 40%. 

After visiting the Uros we went to the Tequile Island. The island is further into the lake and it is populated by some 3k people. The people there have sheep and rely on agriculture and the production of textiles which are considered human patrimony. They people there have a complex set of customs relating to marriage and courting. Among one of them is a hat which is worn in different ways to denote the status of males as it related to relationships. If the hat is all one color the man is married is it is two colors the man is single. If the hat is worn to the right it means the man is dating, if it is worn to the left it means the man is looking for a girlfriend, and it it is worn back it means the man is either not of age to date or not looking. 

For some weird reason our boat back to Puno was very slow and we made it back after sunset. None the less I had an interesting conversation with the guide about literature, whose wife kept calling. He was pretty nerdy but was knowledgable and mention that the indigenous people often made the mistake of giving pity in order to sell their crafts. He argued that they should be proud of their heritage and not resort to such ways to sell things.  

Traditional Uros boats

One of the many Uro Islans

Tequile island 

Tequile Island 

El camino Lares

Day 1- 4:45am 

I have officially become the first victim of the Lares Trail. Only 5 minutes out of our hostel as we walked in the darkish street of Cuzco on our way to our meeting spot to begin our trail; My friend motioned us to look to the yellow tape in the constructions site with the word peligro. As I turned my leg went immediately and entirely into an opening in the middle of the sidewalk. It was a flash back to my Omatepe incident when I fell off the boat in the dock. Fortunately the weight of my backpack tilted me so that I didn't entirely fall in the hole but I did manage to get a nice scare and become momentarily incapacitated. I managed to get up and after making sure I hadn't broke any bones continued on. I guess it gave me a story to tell but it did hurt a bit. Anyways, now that my incident was out of the way the rest of the day was amazing. 

All in all an amazing day. We started off at 8, after an awesome breakfast. I was not prepared for the amount of comfort I would be in; in three night trail. Amazing food; slow pace; tables, chairs, etc. The most exciting part was the awesome views. Inca ruins in a majestic valley with sheep, llamas, and adorable shepherding children. A beautiful river  run the entire length of the valley and recurrent picturesque scenes kept me exited. A plethora of plants also showered the valley walls. At night the sky was illuminated with stars and colorful clouds.

Sheep I'm the Lares Trail

Inca Ruins 

The something valley 

Day 2

Holy smokes it's cold up here in the Andes. Last night was very cold. Very very cold. I managed to sleep enough time but for some reasons kept waking up every now and then. And I refused to go pee pee until the morning. They had told us to bring a water bottle for water. Basically they fill it with hot water and you hug it at night too keep warm. It kept me somewhat warm along with the sleeping bag, supposedly thermal blanket and wool blanket. They woke us up at 5:30 with hot tea; which was awesome. Ate like kings again and then began hiking at 8. We finished climbing up the valley and began going down hill through the pass. 

There were some llama farms and tons of sheep. I did manage to see my first viscacha! The viscacha is a cute Andean rodent that lives in the mountains and takes the sun on top of boulders. That was my favorite event today. The viscacha is in one of Jose Maria Arguedas short stories: El sueño del Pongo.  It is my favorite short story and am glad to finally have met it. At lunch it began to hail and as we made our way towards night camp it began to rain. We then reached a town were some women were selling handmade alpaca clothing. There was a small town there were people grow alpaca and llama. The rest of the way was not so hard in terms of terrain but it kept raining. Our night camp is in a town in a flu vial valley. There is pretty river running near it and there is a fog forest in the hills.

I also just realized what this fog forest means for my clothes; they will never be dry. Even my screen is full of fog and rocio as I type this. It will be an interesting day tomorrow. 

Look from my tent

Andean Lake

Viscacha!

Day 3

Today was easy. We got up late... Or later than any day so far in any case. The night was pretty chill but not too cold. We woke up had breakfast and walked for about an hour to the thermal waters. The thermal waters were pretty nice. First shower in two days. The water was a questionable color in the pool but it felt amazing. A lottle furry dog got into one of the pools. i guess he was trying to escape the hot temperature but ended up in the hottest pool. Then we had lunch and took a bus to Ollataitambo and a train to Aguas Calientes. From there to Machu Picchu! 

This dog started fallowing us on our second day and went with us until we reached the thermal waters. 

My camera was so moist in the morning that the lense couldn't focus for the group pic

Day 4 

Woke up at 4:30 and had a scolding hot shower; is either one or the other here. Then we took a train to the entrance of the historic sanctuary of Machu Picchu. It was an amazing experience. I even managed to take pictures of a viscacha that was running around the ruins. A millipid was not so lucky. I was trying to cross the path when a guide stepped on it. It made the most cruchy sound I haver heard an animal make; I spontaneously covered my eyes and screamed. It was sad I was trying to make sure no one did step on him but the guide was prancing around. 

Anyways Machu Picchu is amazing.  We walked around and went up to the sun gate. There is many rules here. In order to protect the sanctuary due to the high volume of tourist, many things are not allowed. The most obvious being climbing the walls. Which is exactly was an ignorant girl did. I think the guard deleted her pictures. 

Machu Picchu 

Viscacha! 

Travel with friends! 

Aeropuerto Internacional Tocumen, Panamá

After a prolonged delay related to my Greencard, I finally get to journey on my  summer trip to Latin America. I won't get to make it to Salto Angel in Venezuela, but thankfully Machu Picchu is still on the plan. This was a rushed departure since I wasn't sure if I would get the stamp in the passport that says I am a permanent resident in the US. So I am already 18 days behind schedule. The first stop on my trip is Nicaragua. Which is probably hot as hell. 

July 25, 2013

While in Nicaragua I been staying in Leon. The weather is much nicer and by nicer I mean less hot as hell. I had the opportunity to visit a town called Nagarote some 40k from Leon; more or less half way towards Managua. The town is very cute. It is very well kept with basically no garbage anywhere. Alhough the town is overruned by chickens and the occasional black duck. Nagarote has a beautiful plaza and church which is being expanded to include a huge monument with an arch. The town also has a mirador from which you can see the nearby volcano. We also visited the oldest known tree in Nicaragua which is a cenizaro and it's 957 years old. Jose Adan and I had some awesome quesillo in a restaurant next to the highway before returning to Leon. The area around Nagarote is well know for being the birthplace of quesillo and having some of the freshest quesillo in Nicaragua. 

The next spot was Mombacho... Which Cheles tend to call mamba-shoe. Jose Adan and I decided to disregard the tour guide agency and went our way. It did end up costing much less and we had a great time. Unfortunately we didn't see much fauna in the guindes tour inside the park which took about 4 hours. We did see the butterfly sanctuary, a guardabarranco and a black and white rodent. 

Revisiting Masaya was not as exiting. The weather was not on our side and neither was the transportation system. After visiting the market we got rained on our way to the church. Then we waited an exaggerated amount of time for the bus to come in a muddy rainy bus station. We then decided to take a taxi to the highway were we were able to jam ourselves into a sardine packed mini bus. We did manage some cute recuerdos. 

Iglesia de Subtiava 

La taberna de Mau

Sótano de la catedral de León 

Foto enorme usada durante la visita del Papa Juan Pable II

Nagarote, Nicaragua 

Reserva Nacional Volcán Mombacho 

KInd of a blur

The last few weeks of my trip were a bit complicated to say the least. In a way things slowed down and the last week was a streak of bad luck. I fell at the dock, was accused of an illicit entry into Costa Rica and denied entry and just to top things off had to spend an extra x amount of money to purchase a ticket from Managua to NYC which was cancelled because of a tropical storm off the coast of Florida.

So while I had an AMAZING trip it got a little blurred by the series of unfortunate events towards the end of the trip. No trip is perfect, but considering how well things went for the first month and a half, this was overdue.

It is hard to think retrospectively and appreciate the amazing things that happen because I am still in a bit of pain from that fall ja ja but it was actually one of the weird things that happen that makes you appreciate travel. I remember that even though I had just lost my glasses, had gotten my computer and camera wet and had just fallen on murky water the first thing I did was laugh.

From that point on I had to write my blog on paper and hope to eventually upload it here, along with a map of my full trip. Funny that I was able to save my camera's memory card! So I didn't lose my pictures.

Here is my facebook album which should be public

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101519666208617.3149984.8609834&type=3&l=630fdff158

Little Corn Island... The Little Paradise That Is

My stay at Managua was a bit rushed on my way to Corn Islands. I did managed to get some affordable paperback books including Azul by Ruben Dario and Bananos by Emilio Quintana. I had very little sleep as my taxi to the airport arrived at 4 a.m. sharp. So as I manage the strength to get up and drag myself to the taxi, I realize that this was going to be a rough morning. The taxi had not gone more than a couple of blocks when two cops on a motorcycle instruct him to pull over. People make a big deal about Managua being dangerous, but I can probably assure you that it is not as bad as the rest of the CA capitals. But the rush you get from getting your taxi pulled over by two guys on a motorcycle at 4 a.m. is enough to slap you awake. So they pull us over, instruct us to step out and begin taking out everything in our packets... literally digging their hands into our pockets. They also begin to check under the seats. My first thought was that they toughs we had a gun...Once the taxi driver had convinced them we were going to the airport and that we had just left a hotel, they let us go. The cop then said to me "subase chele" which is the word for gringos here ha ha! So, I have been called moreno, indio, and chele. Nicaraguan needs to make up its mind about what label they want to use on me. As we drove off into the pitch black night illuminated only by the silhouette of Sandino at Loma de Tiscapa, the taxi driver told me that they stopped us because they thought we had purchased some drugs. Appaerntly they were for sale near my hotel. And get this... the domestic flights terminal didn't even open until 5! and then they took their sweet sweet time checking people in.

The flight was so fast and convenient. Well I am not sure how long it was, I slept most of it. But it beats the hell out of having to travel by land and boat to the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. Although my budget did get dented by about $180. Loks lek we a gonna it kukunut brid for a wik... ok that was a bad simulation of Caribbean English which is spoken by the majority of native residents of the Corn Islands. After landing, I took a brief boat ride to Little Corn Is. Which was a good idea because it seems so much more charming. What can I say, Lonely Planet gets it right one out of three times.

So as I spend the next couple of days indulging on coconut bread, other meals I can't afford, Victoria beers, the temperad water of the caribbean sea, the sunshine of the tropics, and the poems of Ruben Dario, let me not forget... I forgot.

I Felt a Little Bit in Love with Leon

I crossed the border into Nicaragua from Honduras at Las Manos. Little did I know... It is also recognized as the point of crossing for the maras. Nicaragua is very protective of it's "safety" and I guess they fear violence spilling over from other Central American countries. Which is probably why I was interrogated and made to wait for what seemed and exaggerated amount of time. The immigration officer seemed to be particularly interested on my trip to El Salvador. After questions that only got short of asking the color of my underwear, the officer told me to wait outside and made as many calls as there are volcanoes around Leon (9, 4 inactivos y 5 activos). They finally told me to get copies of my passport id page, all the stamps on it and of my green card. An hour and $12 later I was free to go wait for my bus to Esteli. I meet a cool Nica named Haniel on the bus, who workes in a coffee processing center which made my bus trip after the interaction with immigration much more enjoyable.

Esteli is pretty much cowboy central located in north central Nicaragua. The town is not huge... shaped like a very long rectangle and gained it's place in history as it was bombed during the 1979 Revolution. I stayed at  a hostel and across from it was a charming restaurant where a guy was playing and singing with a guitar. As I went sight seeing before heading to Leon; I got to visit the local museum which has some indigenous artifacts and information on the role of the city during the Sandinista Revolution. People are hard core Sandinista here, they fly the Sandinista flag proudly and have a very intense feeling of their role in history.

I love how this horse was the only vehicle parked outside the university

Nacatamal

León

I probably spent more time in Leon than any other place I visited so far. While here, I got to appreciate a part of Central America, that I haven't seen before. People are charming and nice. I felt like I finally got to connect to some people and learn about the local social aspect of a place. Leon has massive monumental colonial churches and very well preserved houses. It also has awesome wireless internet, and one of the safest night-lives I seen. As it gets dark "guardias" patrol the blocks on their bikes and whistle when they see people.

However, heat in Leon is not just heat, it is calor del infierno.I remember a couple of times when I went outside and came back to my hostel three hours later smelling of sweat with my t-shirt soaked in it. I felt like I could only do so much and found ways to escape the heat as much as I could. You also get this sensation that you are going to be eternally thirsty. I drank so much that it ruined my appetite. 

Museums are awesome here. Ruben Dario's house has been converted into one and it has many of his belongings including the bed where he died and a crucifix given to him by a Mexican poet that he carried his entire life. people are proud of Ruben Dario as well. His tomb is located in the right side of the Gran Catedral and is next to el leon triste (sad lion). The cathedral itself was pretty impressive. Well it needs to be renovated on the outside but the inside is majestic and grandeus. I was a little bit perplexed by seeing a man with a bicycle inside and a dog trying to stay in the shade. I was also pretty impressed by the roof tour. From there one can see all the volcanoes around the city, that are pretty much off sight from the ground. My guide Adan was pretty cool and later also took me on a tour of less seen parts of the city. 

I will miss Leon, we will have to see if Granada (its rival city) can keep up...

Notice the black papel picado to commemorate

Hmmm 

This was from the roof of the cathedral

Volcano Sliding