Updated Itinerary

By popular demand (okay, one person asked), here´s our updated itinerary -


July: Bolivia, Chile, Argentina.

August: Portugal, Spain, Croatia.

September: Greece, Turkey.

October: Egypt, Jordan, Israel.

November: Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia

December: We will probably be behind schedule, so we catch up this month.

January: India and Nepal.

February: Hong Kong, Korea

March: Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand

April: Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand

Peru - Lake Titicaca

At over 3000m above sea level, Lake Titicaca is the world´s largest high-altitude body of water. And its name makes Bill giggle like a little girl.

We visited the Temple of Fertility, thought to be an Inca construction. That is NOT a stone mushroom that I am pointing at.

We also visited the Uros floating islands. These islands are man-made from tortora reeds that grow in the lake. The existence of these islands date back to pre-Inca times. Each island lasts about 15 years and then they have to make a new one. (We had a guide for this one, can you tell?)

They have solar panels on the islands, so there is electricity. We passed one hut where a kid was watching Dragon Ball (Japanese cartoon, any one?) on TV.

Peru - Cuzco

Bill was taking above picture of me in the main plaza when the two little girls jumped in the picture (for a tip, of course). Savvy business women, these two, complete with the baby llama for maximum cuteness!

There are rainbow flags everywhere. I was very impressed with how gay-friendly Cuzco was until Bill told me that they are actually the official city flag:

June 24 is Inti Raymi (the Festival of the Sun) in Cuzco, and the week leading up to it is Cuzco week. There were parades and street parties every night:

Inti Raymi, recreation of Inca ceremony, was something of a let-down. If we hadn´t mistakenly gotten there three hours early, we probably would have liked it better. (Those orange chairs are $80 seats. We watched it from the surrounding hills along with other thousands of people.)

Koricancha temple in Cuzco - we could see where the Spanish built a church over the Inca structure:
Inca citadel and terrace farming in Pisaq (a town 30km from Cuzco):

Bonus Item: video clip of me trying to pat a llama.

Peru - Machu Picchu

The four day Inca Trail hike to Machu Picchu is booked solid until July. Yay! Now we can just take the comfortable train & bus all the way up to Machu Picchu, rather than walking it. (This is my sentiment only, not Bill´s).

This is our fifth archaeological ruins visited on this trip (three in Mexico and one in Honduras), so I had a snotty ¨I am sure it´s overrated¨ attitude before going up there. Nope, Machu Picchu is definitely one of the most breathtaking sights I have ever seen.

Since we didn´t get to hike the Inca Trail, Bill made me hike up this Wayna Picchu peak:

We had to crawl through a small cave on the hike - I was not happy.

Bill risking his life for a good picture:

Bill and a llama:

Peru - Arequipa

For the 8 hour bus ride from Nazca to Arequipa, we decided to take the night bus - we figured we´d save on hotel and pass the time by faster by sleeping. It turned out to be a bad idea, because I got the worst motion sickness ever on that bus ride. For the first time on this trip, I was wondering why I was throwing up in the dark in a bus in the middle of nowhere in Peru when I could be home in my own bed. Terrible.

So, we had had big plans for Arequipa. We were going to visit Colca Canyon, the second biggest canyon on the world or something. But we weren´t feeling so good, probably due to the altitude, and didn´t feel up to the supposedly rough road and hiking. So we spent three days in Arequipa sleeping, and booked a flight to Cuzco. Along with Guatemala´s Tikal ruins, I guess Peru´s Colca Canyon will have to be another famous world sight that we ´almost´ visited.

The one thing we did do in Arequipa was to see ¨Juanita¨ mummy - a young girl sacrificed to the mountain gods about 500 years ago. The body was preserved in the glacier until a nearby volcano exploded and melted the ice in 1995. Very creepy looking at 500 year old dead body - her hair and teeth were still intact!

This is a picture of the mummy - it´s not our picture, no photos were allowed in the museum:

Street our hotel was on:

Volcano peaks in the back:

Dinner! Aji de Gallina (shredded chicken in creamy tangy sauce) and trout:

Peru - Nazca

After a long bus ride through the desert on the Peruvian coast, we came to the town of Nazca. Nazca is famous for the Nazca lines - lines drawn into the desert floor by the ancient cultures of the area. Since most of the figures and lines can only really be appreciated from the air (the $40 plane rides are offered by just about every shop in town), and so could not be seen by their creators, there is a lot of speculation about the purpose of the lines -- with explanations running the gamut from a sophisticated astronomical calendar (the most likely) to landing strips for aliens (the most unlikely). Whatever the purpose, seeing these giant thousand year old creations from the air was something else. Of course, Jeeheon was too chicken to go up in the tiny plane, but no problem, you can still hire a guide to take you to a couple of local viewing spots. They have a nice little museum that´s included in the tour as well, but, of course, we wouldn´t really know how nice since they were on strike the day we tried to go.

The plane:

More lines (the monkey):

Jeeheon hiking up the hills with our peruvian guide to get a view of the lines:

Side Entry - Skype

A lot of the internet cafes we go to have at least couple computers with headphones connected to it for Skype phone calls. People were shocked that we had never heard of it. (Have you? I hope not, because I told everyone it isn´t big in the US yet, but maybe it´s just us.)

Anyway, you make phone calls using the computer and internet connection, so all we need is a headphone/microphone and an internet cafe. It is so cheap! Phone calls to Korea are $0.02 per minute! No more hassle of buying phone cards, trying to figure out how it works, locating a public phone after dark (due to the time difference, I am always calling Korea at night.) Now I can call mom whenever we go to an internet cafe! Yay!

I sound like an ad for Skype, but seriously, it´s the best thing since TIVO. Here´s the link:
www.skype.com

Peru - Huacachina

We spent two nights in the oasis town of Huacachina. Huacachina is surrounded by these sand dunes (the white speck in the picture is me sitting on a sand hill, refusing to hike up any further.) :

We took a sand buggy tour of the dunes. This is a sand buggy:

I had imagined that the buggy tour would be a nice ride through the sand hills, enjoying the majestic desert scenery. Alas, it was more like being in a car going downhill on an almost vertical ski slope at 40mph. My whole life flashed before my eyes. After the first especially scary drive/drop down a hill, I told the driver I was going to get off the buggy and walk back to town. He laughed at me and said it would take half a day.

This is Bill sandboarding. We still have sand coming out of our ears:

On a different note, one thing I have been noticing on this trip is that my IQ goes down significantly when I have the heavy pack on my back. The only thought going through my brain is ´HEAVY...MUST PUT DOWN.´ Which explains why I agreed to staying in a hotel room with this disgusting bathroom.

Note the absence of a toilet seat. It was only $12 per night though. We blew the $10 saving (our hotel budget is about $25/night) on beer to help us forget that we are in this room.

Peru - Pisco

There was nothing much to the town of Pisco itself, except that it was cool to drink pisco sour in Pisco. This is pisco sour - it tastes kind of like a margarita with sugared egg-white foam on the top:

The real attraction was the boat tour to Ballestas Islands - ¨the poor man's Galapagos Islands¨ according to the Lonely Planet. (This is true, we didn´t go to Galapagos because it wasn´t within our budget.) After getting on the wrong tour bus, thereby creating some confusion and urgent walkie-talkie conversations, we finally joined our group and got on the speed boat.

The speed boat. The guy behind Bill is not happy to be treated like a five year old:

Ballestas Islands are rock/cave islands, entirely covered with different types of birds, including penguins. (Imagine a scene from the Hitchcock movie, The Birds.) We also saw sea lions and dolphins. Very cool. Would have been cooler if I wasn´t nauseous the whole time (I get sea sick).

Peru - Lima

Lima is nice! After San Jose, Costa Rica and Guatemala City (they were both sorta dumpy), our expectation of big cities was pretty low, but Lima is a nice surprise. It is also a gigantic city, with population of over 8 million. We gave up trying to figure out the city bus system and took cabs everywhere, thus breaking one of the ´backpacker´ commandments and joining the ranks of rich American tourists.

In Mexico, during a fit of temporary insanity brought on by the opressive heat, I almost threw away my thick fleece top. Good thing Bill stopped me, because it gets very chilly here at night. And I swear our hotel room is actually colder than outside.

Yesterday, we were walking back to our hotel from dinner (during which we had sampled the Peruvian national drink pisco sour), and we passed a night club named ¨Canadian.¨ Easily pursuaded in our happy state, we let the bouncer lead us into the small club and seat us. It seemed like an after-work type place, as most of the men were still in their suits. The women, on the other hand, were mostly girls barely wearing tight clothes. Initially we thought they were ´working´girls, but on further observation, decided that they worked for the club. Their job seemed to be to look pretty, occasionally dance with the suits and dance with each other when they got bored. It was fun in a seedy kind of way.

More pictures:

Bonus Item: Inca Kola! Very popular. Tastes like bubble gum.

Costa Rica - Manuel Antonio

We spent one night in San Jose and took a bus to Manuel Antonio. It is the rainy season in Costa Rica right now and they weren´t kidding - it rained non-stop for our first two days here. After that, it has been going from cloudy to sunny to rain, all in about one hour.

We had big plans for our two weeks in Costa Rica. But we found a nice, cheap hotel that´s owned by a Korean lady - I get the Korean discount, plus the lady cooks us meals sometimes (including kimchi!!), takes us to the super market, does our laundry for free... And we have A/C, TV and fridge in our room! So we are spending our entire two weeks here. We needed a break anyways.

Bill´s long-lost twin from the Manuel Antonio national park:

Sarong - dress, beach towel, sheet, blanket in the freezing air-conditioned bus...The uses are endless
I made the mistake of not wearing bug-repellent my first night here and got eaten alive by mutant mosquitos. (Mom, no worries, no malaria in Costa Rica.) By actual count, I have about 60 bites on my body, like so:

Sorry if you were eating. For some reason, I get bitten A LOT more than Bill does - I think it´s because men are more hairy than women. Perhaps I should stop shaving my legs for the duration of our stay here (Again, sorry if you were eating).

Bonus Item - Costa Rica suicide shower. The white thing taped on to the shower head is the ELECTRIC heater for hot water: