All the way down South America

OK Blog followers, I know we’ve lost you due to inactivity but we’re going to give you a little glimpse into the last few months and then probably go into radio silence again.

Here's our picasa picture link if you just want to see our pics!  

http://picasaweb.google.com/dghubbard

Our highlights have been spectacular, on Ginny’s first real dive in the open water in the Galapagos she had a Hammerhead shark swim right up to her, take a peek and swim off.  I had already been diving twice in this spot and not seen a shark, go figure, she went and one comes up and introduces himself!  Along with the Galapagos Sharks and White Tipped Sharkes, we saw graceful alien-like spotted eagle rays, sea turtles, tortoises, sea iguanas fighting and then having make-up sex, flamingos, and countless fish.  In another rare event, we got to snorkel with Angel, our host, and help him catch an Octopus, which continued to latch onto our arm with its suction for 30 minutes after it was dead.  We then cooked it up into an amazing ceviche, garnished with cold beer and popcorn.

To squeeze each day out of Ecuador before our 90 days expired we went to Cusco to buy a Panama Hat and run down to Vilcabama the “Land of Longevity” where the Hostel Iztchacumba exists.  This place is a German run Spa for $10 a night, with stone showers, immaculate rooms, phenomenal views, stupendous food, and an $18 dollar one hour massage!  If you ever go to Ecuador, it is a must stay. Here we took a horse back ride through the forest and hiked to a beautiful waterfall.  It was on this trip that Dan was hand picked to ride the "unruly" horse.  Being the biggest guy in the group, the guides wanted Dan to make the horse work a little harder on the ride since it had escaped the night before to have a little romp with one of the mares.  Lisa, you'll appreciate this: on this trip we ate the best mango ever!

We left Ecuador on our 90^th day, avoiding having to pay any visa fees, for Peru.  After 20 or so hours on buses, we caught a quick flight from Lima to Cusco where we were greeted by unprecedented rains that flooded the valley and wiped out the trails that lead to Macchu Picchu. While waiting for the rains to subside and the state of emergency surrounding us to cease, we spent our time in the lovely city of Cusco.  We went to a Coca Shop that demonized America and deforestation, claimed that America was stealing the coca culture from the Andean people only to selfishly profit from it via Coca Cola.   We bought some chocolates made with Coca from the man who ran the shop…..who behaved as if he was constantly on cocaine! 

After hearing that MP had been closed to tourists for three months, we decided that we would have to hit the Inca ruins on the way back from our trip.  Onward we went to the city of Arequipa surrounded by 15,000 foot peaks and home to a convent, more like a Citadel, made for only the wealthiest families chaste daughters.  From there we did a four day trek to Colca Canyon, the second deepest in the world.  On the 1^st day, it was 5 hours of straight downhill under sunny hot skies.  On the 2^nd day, it was 5 hours up, and an additional 3 more to see a majestic waterfall; on the 3^rd day, we climbed for 4 hours down where we saw other travelers for the first time since starting the trek and swam in a super cold pool which you could see the whole sweaty hot hike down, making the swim glorious!  Our bodies were quite fatigued and sore after three intense days of trekking throughout the canyon, and on our final day, our climb was straight up, 1000 meters and 8,000 steps later, (I counted to keep my mind off the struggle) we made it to the top in 2hours40 minutes!  Afterwards, we went to a restaurant, and our guide had Ginny dress up in the local dress, and man she looked gorgeous in that multicolored magnificence!

 

Chile was the next great adventure where we had planned to plunge from the north into the freezing Patagonian south via the driest dessert in the world and the Capitol.  However, Chile kicked us out early with its 8.8 earthquake felt in San Pedro De Atacama where we were asleep at 3:30 in the morning of Feb 27^th.  Due to the craziness brought on by the earthquake, we had to switch gears.  While in the Atacama Desert I went sand boarding while Ginny watched and I firmly solidified my desire to never to do it again!  After a 20 minute walk up the windy sand dune, carrying your board which you have to use a candle to wax before each go, to experience a 10 second tumble down, leaving sand stuck to all the sweaty areas,  and 3 days of sand in the ears, it was determined that ever going again was out of the question.  After sand boarding, we did get to see one of the most majestic sunsets of the trip.  God seems to have made all the mountains and rocks here with salt, even the dirt is a salt mixture. We saw the Tatio Glaciers at sunrise and swam in hot springs, which were anything but hot!  We went to the Salt Flats to see the flamingos fly, which Ginny and I didn’t even know was possible! Yes, flamingos fly!  They also do a Flamenco dance in order to stir up the microscopic shrimp they eat.  When we arrived at the largest salt flat, it was unlike anything we’d ever seen.  The super white, super flat, salt flats looked like a snowy/icy covered beach.  Here we took a great picture, "Ginny in the palm of my hand!" We swam in a lagoon that had 3 times the salinity of the Ocean, making us float like a fishing bobber!  We toasted to the beauty and drank our pisco sours while floating on invisible lounge chairs.  No matter how hard you tried to push your shoulders under the water, they would instantaneously pop back up!  It was wild!  (A Pisco Sour is like a margarita so salt immersion was very convenient.)

Argentina has been amazing!  We took a gondola to the high point of Salta to enjoy the green views and had one of our best meals in the square: a Malbec wine, cheese, and Filet mignon wrapped in bacon, (EVERYTHING is better with bacon), starting our Argentinean experience off marvelously! Cordoba was beautiful with the Che Guevera Museum and a cute little City called Alta Gracia.  Che was quite the Champion of the people.

Buenos Aries had us run into an older gentleman how worked for a pesticide company. Instantly upon asking him his profession he launched into his defense of the importance of his work.  “It’s easy for the people of Argentina to say pesticides are bad but they are not starving in Africa, are they?” He told us to be careful because we had USA stamps on our forehead on account of eating lunch too early…11 am.  He was very nice though. He informed us that we eat way too early in the U.S.  “What, you eat around 6pm or 7pm, right? Here, we don’t eat until at least 9pm, but more like 10 or 11pm.”  We didn’t stay long in B.A, but we will be returning shortly.  We left some of our luggage here, so we could trek with all the new camping gear we bought for the tundra!!!!!

We were greeted by the beautiful Patagonia winds the minute we stepped outside! Although we started our travels in Alaska, we didn’t set up a tent in Alaska, only warm cruise ship cabins.  There is something to be said about pitching a tent in 40 degree weather with high winds and sleep on a ground WITHOUT mats, waking up, walking 3.5 hours and being at the foot of massive peeks with mini glaciers at their feet, of which are feeding into two lagoons with gloriously turquoise water that tastes like snow, to make you feel nature at its best. It wasn’t just the fabulous Fitz Roy that impressed us, it was the huge black woodpecker, a lush valley spotted with lakes and a river running through it all, and chatting with people along the way, always speaking English with an accent.  Prior to our trek to Fitz Roy, we took a bus to see the Glacier Perito Moreno where we got to see massive calving into the glacial lake below it.  The Glacier face was upwards of 240 feet and to see the ice chunks crash down was unreal.  There was even a warning sign posted about 30 people dying from being too close.  We made sure to keep our distance, but we were all ears and eyes awaiting the calving glacier.   

Puerto Natales and Torres Del Paine National Park

We were blessed with excellent weather! My Grandmother keeps saying that she’s praying for us and we haven’t had any major problems, but when one goes to Patagonia, knock down winds, rain, and possibly snow are expected. When we got to Natales, which is about 3 hours from the Park, there were wind gusts of up to 50 mph, pushing you every which way.  When we got to the Park, it was perfect! There was not a cloud in the sky!  We were graced with blue skies and minimal wind and it lasted until our last day.  The hiking was great.  The first day we headed towards the main attraction of “Torres del Paine,” which is the three towers three miles northwest of the first campsite.  It’s a nice hike that follows a river along the sides of mountains and through thick conifer trees, leading you to the side of a rocky mountain that you have to scale for 50 minutes before you get to the awesome towers, looking down at a glacial pool that bleeds off into a huge rushing river.  The water is drinkable and tastes just like snow! We stayed for an hour taking pictures, eating and drinking our plastic water bottle full of Bailey’s, which we brought to celebrate each time we made it to our goal!  Nothing like incentive to help you finish a climb! After our trek, we headed back to our camp site and made a crucial decision to forgo hanging out in our tent and head into the resort style hotel to have beers and a $20 plate of fries loaded with chicken beef and sausage.  We knew that it would be a few days before we could indulge, so we honored our first full day of hiking in style!  We went to our tent to go to bed where the birds had decided to eat the bread in the bag we had hung to a tree to keep the mice from getting into our tent in search of our food.  Sleep that night was interrupted with freezing cold noses and toes!  We woke up the next day and set out to conquer the "W" trek.

The scenery was breathtaking with the granite mountain walls standing tall, protecting everything below, the green perfectly shaped bonzai trees surrounding the lake with such contrasting colors no picture could ever do justice, the turquoise clear glacier water in the lifeless lake forming waves without anything solid detracting from the beauty of the translucent water, and the snow capped mountain peeks with their thundering avalanches, warning everything below of its powerful dominance,  made clear that nothing is more magnificent than God's amazing design.

Greatness in the Galapagos Islands

Hello Family and Friends,

We have not been diligent in our blogging, but we both figure we'll have plenty of time when we return to document our travels, probably while toasting to a glass of wine or an IPA saying, "Man it's great to be home, but that year ROCKED!"

This is our Picasa web page with all of our travel pictures.  We have also copied specific links for the Galapagos Islands.  If you just want to see  our pictures, go here!
http://picasaweb.google.com/dghubbard

November 18th-January 6th GALAPAGOS ISLANDS: San Cristobal until January 2nd and Santa Cruz and Isla Isabella

The following links are to our Galapagos pics only.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dghubbard/123009IslaLoboSnorkle#

http://picasaweb.google.com/dghubbard/GalapagosPics

http://picasaweb.google.com/dghubbard/122909SnorklingPlayaMan#

http://picasaweb.google.com/dghubbard/123009KRChannelScuba#

Holy Galapagos!  We were blessed to experience nature at its best! There are many small islands throughout the archipelago, but the main islands are San Cristobal, which was where we stayed the majority of the time, while also traveling to Santa Cruz, and Isla Isabella.  "Galapagos" means tortoise in Spanish; the islands namesake came from the what used to be abundance of tortoises, but today there are only a handful. Ginny made San Cristobal our home by getting in contact with a man named, "Teacher Willy," San Cristobal's mini-celebrity, known for trying to teach the people of the island English.  He is a really nice man with the best intentions for his community.  He lived in NY for 10-15 years, where he used to be a weight lifting 300 pound stud!  When we met him he was no longer the muscle built man he had once been, but we enjoyed listening to him tell us about himself. With his tatooed covered body, he was one of the only other people within an inch of my height, making him the other giant on the island!

On our travels, we have met several people who have been volunteering while traveling BUT they had to pay for it...at a premium!  (Most of the money going to the company, based in England, and not to the local project)
We both agreed early on that we would not  pay to work for free!  Through William, we were able to get our $100 dollar mandatory per person Galapagos Park fee waived and get introduced to a WONDERFUL family who we we lived with for only $250 a month while on the island. Angel and Jenet let us live with them, use their kitchen, practice yoga on their roof with the Pacific right in front of us, and lay in their hammocks!  Angel taught me how to skin dive, catch octopus bare handed, and make a killer ceviche!  For Christmas, they invited us to a really nice dinner at the house which included a champagne toast, beef, chicken, sausage, blood sausage, and a hot dog!  Who needs veggies and starches for La Navidad?

From Angel's home, we could see the San Cristobal Bay and the closest beach was a 10 minute walk.  We often went snorkeling where we swam with all kinds of fish, sea lions, and sea turtles.  Because there was no warm water in the house, Ginny took to running on the days she taught classes, so she could enjoy her cold shower.  On one route, she would run to a place where she was often met by a sea turtle coming up to the surface for air. I was working on getting my dive master, so many days she would run to see me while I was in the Bay on a shore dive.  Ginny received her open water and saw a hammerhead shark on her first dive, along with Galapagos and White Tip sharks! 

We both worked at the school in the beginning, but  I was busy diving. (Lucky me!)  On Saturdays, we helped out on field trips around the island.  On our first trip, William asked me to teach the kids yoga, after hiking to the top of dormant volcano with a crater filled lake.

With less than 6000 people on the entire island, 50% being under the age of 18, we couldn't walk 100 feet without running into someone we knew.  There was one stop light on the island, which we are certain was only purchased for the novelty of having one!  The cargo/supply ship only came on Tuesdays, so by Sunday/Monday, the main store in town was empty!  By "main store," don't envision a large chain type grocery store.  Rather, it is a locally owned store called, "Esperanza." On one side of the street produce is sold in an open building about 900 sq.feet and on the other side of the street, more packaged type products and bulk items are sold in about an 800sq. ft building. Sunday is the day to go to church and stay home with the family.  Everything is closed until 6pm!  We were pretty hungry the first Sunday we were there when we found out the hard way that nearly everything closes!  Luckily, the money-making shop owner on the beach had his dollar ice cream!  He informed us that he NEVER closes, other than the daily 12-2 siesta.

The dollar is the form of currency throughout Ecuador, and we were often quite annoyed that nobody ever had change!  We would pay with a 20 or a 10 and have to wait while the business owner ran to his neighbor to break the bill!  I began thinking that the reason why they never had change was because the ATMs all have 20 dollar bills,  because all the smaller bills are already with the people, so the new bills are always in quanities of 20, so anything smaller than that had to be brought to the island.  At Esperanza, we realized that the shop owner wrote down an itemized list of what the people bought, item by item!  Afterwards, the people would leave without paying???  We finally realized that these people were running a tab, probably to be paid at the end of the month...with a few 20s! 

Many things were done on the honor system.  In Quito, Ecuador, we had to double lock our doors, switch to a plastic see through bag to carry our things, leaving the thief enticing backpack at the house, and always on guard against the ladrones.  Here though, it was the exact opposite!  Angel advised us to not only leave the door unlocked, but wide open!  We would literally come home to an empty house with the screenless door wide open!  On one occasion, Ginny and I had run out of water, so I went to the store by the house to buy some.  There was nobody inside, and I didn't have exact change, so I just took the jug.  About two days later, I went by the store to pay, and the lady working said with a friendly smile, "Oh yeah, my son told me he saw you come in and get the water!"  There were several times where the people didn't have change or we didn't have enough money, and  the people said, "It's OK, come back later!"  We first thought..."Sweet...Hope we remember ;)"  Yet, we always did, and we gained an appreciaion for the simple system of honesty. 

Our New Years was toward the end of our stay and we spent it with Jennie, a doctor in England, her boyfriend Neil, a pharmacist, Dan K. from Chicago, a sky diving instructor, David, a young guy from Sweeden who had played semi-pro before getting injured, and two other girls.  New Years was crazy!  For the New Year, the locals make paper-mache life size bodies of important people in the year.  there was a Michael Jackson, Bart Simpson, the president, fisherman, singers, etc.  They're elaborate, resembling a float in a parade! They write about the year, both good and bad, and then, at 12, they pour GASOLINE on them and light them on fire!  At midnight, all you smell are the strong fumes of  gasoline and see piles of buring bodies in the streets!

After our New Years festivities we made a quick jaunt to the island of Isabella where we went on a horseback riding trip from the east side of the island to the west side.  Dan was the only one who got to ride a mule. Everyone else got a horse.  He looked just like Sherk riding Donkey.  Along the way we passed the 2nd largest volcanic crator in the world, some volcanic Vents and some recently made (2004) lava flows that have since cooled.  We also went to a little island about a mile from Isabel that was an Iguana colony. There were hundereds of Iguanas and while all they really do is lay there, we were graced with a battle between two big males where they showed dominance by pushing eachother back and forth using their heads. Think rams with out the dramatic charge and chrashing noise!  We also saw a male and female romanically intwinded in a blissful sleep after what we assumed must have been their honeymoon. :)

We will miss many things about the Galapagos, but most of all, we will miss snorkeling and skin diving with our wonderful host Angel, Lydia, the student who no matter where we were on the island, would find us, running full speed to greet us with a kiss on our cheek, the breathtaking views and sunsets over the crashing waves, our daily walks to see the smelly sea lion moms and their babies, whose presence made it clear to the people that the island was theirs first, the wise sea turtles in the bay, the bright Darwin finches, who have taught us that one must adapt in order to survive, the ridiculously weird-eyed hammerhead sharks who think we're an even crazier sight, the majestic and graceful rays that look like something from a sci-fi movie, the tenacious swimming iguanas, and the countless exquistie fish. 

Although eager and excited  to continue our travels, our hearts were heavy as we had to say good-bye to this beautiful place.