Galapagos, NY

This is going to have to be a super-fast post because the wireless connection sucks; uploading pictures is taking forever, and, as usual, arbitrary decisions are being made about picture orientation; I'm supposed to go to the post office to see about adding pages to my now-full passport; I'm supposed to be meeting Charles in less than 45 minutes; and it is heavily snowing. As you can tell from the tone of all this, I am back in New York, and will be here until January 11, 2009 when I set out on the second half of this trip. I was hoping to get in a little analysis of everything I've seen so far, but for the moment I would be satisfied just to show some of the incredible wildlife from the Galapagos, going on about its business, completely oblivious to the fact that a large bespectacled biped is taking pictures of them 5 feet away. If you love PBS nature programs; if you go birding every once in a while; if you think sea lions are almost painfully cute; you need to drop what you are doing RIGHT NOW and arrange to go there. The Galapagos Islands are unbelievable.

Inka Cola

Now that I´m safely back at sea level, (but only for one day, then it´s back up to 3,000M in Quito Ecuador) I think it´s time to explain my week in Cusco and Macchu Picchu. Cusco lies 3,200M, about 11,500 ft, above sea level, so I spent my first two days in the former capital of the Incas completely incapacitated by altitude sickness, despite copious amounts of coca tea. The remaining five days were jam packed with Inca ruins and that lush mountain countryside. See the Incas were a mountain people because it was the easiest part of Peru to farm. The coast is practically a desert. The Amazon is a dense impenetrable jungle. The area around Cuzco is like the bread basket of Peru, lush and productive. Only trouble is, it´s also extremely mountainous. To overcome this the Incas became incredible builders, first of terraces that stabilize the land and provide space for farming. These terraces are absolutely everywhere, testament to a massive program of building. And with the knowledge they learned from this, the Incas became expert builders, creating perfectly cut, dressed, fitted and interlocked walls without using any mortar or metal tools and involving stones up to 150 tons. These buildings and walls also use some nifty tricks to combat the incredible quantity of earthquakes that occur in the area, and a good proof of their masonry skills is the church of Santo Domingo in Cusco, which the Spanish built using stones from other Inca sites held together with mortar, but using the existing Inca Temple of the Sun as a foundation. The church has collapsed twice due to earthquakes, but the Inca foundations have remained unharmed since they were built over 500 years ago.

There are many beautiful archaeological sites in and around Cusco and the Inca Sacred Valley, but it all comes together when you get to Macchu Picchu. Here, at one the craziest and most improbable sites on earth sits an entire Inca city for 1,500 people, intact, untouched, and abandoned for over 350 years. It is so breathtaking and mysterious that it´s hard to leave. Actually, it´s in such good shape I want to move in. I spent 9 hours on top of the mountain at Macchu Picchu, sunburnt, bug bitten, without eating, but I didn´t care. I took over 500 photos and 10 movies. I made friends with several Peruvian classes on school trips. I just did not want to go.

Tomorrow it´s on to Ecuador and the Galapagos. I know I keep saying that this place is amazing and that place is amazing and it sounds like a broken record, but there really is a lot of amazing out there, and I´m definitely having the trip of a lifetime.

I get no kicks from cocaine

I am currently in Cusco, Peru, altitude 3,500 meters, or 11,500 feet. I have the worst case of altitude sickness imaginable: weakness, exhaustion, shortness of breath, constant yawning, no appetite, nausea, vomiting. I have not been able to do anything for two whole days, except try to sleep in between the yawns. In order to combat this, the locals drink a tea made from boiled coca leaves, which works for about an hour or two, and then wears off. Today, Wednesday, I am finally feeling better. I even ate breakfast. So I´ll be joining a guided tour of the town, instead of trying to do it on my own. I finally understand the great usefulness of the guided tour. In a beautiful city like Cusco, which is incredibly hilly and exhausting because of the altitude, a guided tour is a great bonus.
So this post is actually supposed to be about Lima, Peru; and San Jose, Costa Rica. I´ll write about Cusco once I´ve actually done something. Both Lima and San Jose have a reputation for crime and seediness, probably well deserved, but from what I can tell it´s no more crime ridden or seedy than New York in the 1980´s. I am beginning to realise that the tourism industry is geared towards people who don´t travel to cities much, and are more likely to get hurt. As for me, it´s the part about being alone in the middle of nowhere that scares me. No, that´s not true either. Being stuck in a suburb without a car? Sounds pretty scary...
So Lima and San Jose have that same grittiness you see in Hong Kong or New York, but like all cities they both have the advantage of lots of people, and cultural monuments. San Jose less so because it was built in the 1850´s, and for some reason all of the national museums are shut, but Lima, started in the 1550´s, has some incredible 400 year old colonial baroque buildings, and nifty public squares. Only trouble was, while I was there the Asia Pacific Economic Summit was taking place, so the Plaza Mayor, usually the hub of Lima liveliness, was completely locked down for the two days I was there. Its total emptiness says a lot about democracy doesn´t it?

The Storm

Once again the blog software has decided to rotate the format of my journal page. I guess I'm gonna hafta send an e-mail to blogspot.
So, the rain continues for the third day, and the winds, which were quite gusty yesterday reached epic proportions last night. Power was cut to the entire town, and was not back up until around 10 am this morning. It was starting to look like a worthless boring day when Debbie, from San Antonio, who I met on the bus coming up here, showed up; and even though pretty much everything in town was shut, we agreed to try the Jaguar Trail at the Children's Eternal Forest. This was open, and had a beautiful viewpoint. We didn't see much wildlife because of the weather until the last couple of minutes when we stumbled upon three white faced squirrel monkeys, a toucanet, and a motmot. Then we stopped for lunch at Stella's Bakery, and walked the 4 km back to Santa Elena. Considering the way the day started, it turned out quite nice. Oh, and if you were ever wondering what all of those nickels and dimes kids collected to save the rain forest, this would be it, and I think they did a mighty fine job.

It´s frequently cloudy in the cloud forest

It´s Tuesday, Monteverde, Costa Rica, up in the mountains at the edge of the cloud forest. Because it´s a cloud forest it rains pretty much every day. Because it rains pretty much every day, there are hardly any pictures. Because there are hardly any pictures, words will have to do. Because I was suffering from massive jet lag until I finally got 16 hours sleep, I´m not sure the words will do either. For the first time since I started this blog, I actually feel like I have nothing for show and tell. Worse yet, there´s a massive gale today blowing in from the Caribbean, so even though it´s sunny in Monteverde, there´s an incredible wind, and horizontal rain at the same time. As a result, all of the National Parks are shut due to unsafe conditions, so there´s very little left to do. OK, bad post, no tourism, there´s only one thing left: shopping!

Live from New York

OK, so it's Tuesday afternoon and I'm back in NYC for a couple of days as a sort of layover between a flight from Sydney, Australia and one to San Jose, Costa Rica. Apparently the only cheap and easy way to get from Australia to South America is via New York, so here I am. I know I haven't posted in a while, but, would you believe I've been travelling? I know, it sounds kind of lame, but I was back in Bali for three days, then in Sydney for four days, then spent 28 hours flying from Sydney to New York. Since I crossed the Date Line, I arrived only a couple of hours after I left, and now I have the worst jet lag today, not just that my body is set a different hour than local time, it's actually set on a different day too!

Before I go anywhere else, I would just like to say thank you to all of those people who voted for Barack Obama while I was away. My absentee ballot never arrived, and fortunately, it was never needed. Everyone I met in Indonesia and Australia was also rooting for the guy. Poor man though, he's inheriting the worst mess in a generation. Be careful what you wish for.

Two quick comments to finish this post. First, I love Bali. I know I've said that about just about every other place I've visited, but there is something completely magical about Bali. Maybe it's how genuinely friendly the people are. Maybe it's because I didn't stay in Kuta with all of the other butt-head, hard partying Australian surfer dudes that made comments like "It's about f-ing time" in response to an Australian reporter's request for a reaction to the execution of the Bali Bombers. Maybe it's the incredible quantity of cultural options in Bali: traditional dance, gamelan music, sculpting and wood carving, painting; everyone seems to have an artistic hobby aside from their day job. Maybe it's the fact that you can walk 5 minutes outside of Ubud and you're in gorgeous rice fields surrounded by deep river gorges and coconut palms. Of all the places I've been so far, I will find a way to get back to Bali.

Second, the tropics are hot, humid, rainy, tend to have lower sanitation standards, and are cheaper than the temperate zones. All of this was easily made clear to me in Sydney, where I had to put on a sweater every day because it was only 80 degrees, where I stopped drinking 4-6 liters of water every day (and actually had three pints of beer in one night without sweating my ass off), where I did not have to hide behind thick gloppy layers of sun screen just to survive, where I could eat raw vegetables and rare meat without getting sick, but also where I spent more in four days than I spent in three weeks in Indonesia and Thailand. Sydney would have been great just to visit Ginny and her parents, Pam and Ken, who I haven't seen in years, but I'll always remember that night in Katoomba (an otherwise frightening dump of a town that happens to sit right on the edge of some pretty spectacular cliffs in the Blue Mountains) where I had a salad for dinner for the first time in a month and a half. Ah, the benefits of Western civilization.

TECHNICAL NOTE: ONCE AGAIN THE FTP SITE BLOGSPOT USES TO UPLOAD PICTURES HAS MADE CHANGES TO THE PHOTOS AFTER THEY WERE UPLOADED TO THE BLOG, AND THEY ALL UPLOADED EXACTLY BACKWARDS AFTER TWO ATTEMPTS, SO THE PRINTED PAGES READ BACKWARDS, NOT FORWARDS. I'VE ALREADY SPENT TWO HOURS ON THIS, AND FOR SOME REASON YOU CAN'T CUT AND PASTE THE PHOTOS, SO YOU'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH YET ANOTHER TECHNICAL PROBLEM WITH THIS BLOG. I SHOULD ALSO NOTE HERE THAT THE ARIAL FONT CHOICE, WHICH I TYPICALLY USE FOR THIS BLOG, HAS DISAPPEARED BECAUSE I'M EDITING A POST ALREADY PUBLISHED. UGH! BUT WAIT, EVEN THOUGH IT PREVIEW IN TIMES NEW ROMAN, IT ACTUALLY POSTS IN ARIAL. HMM...