Planned Parenthood, Nicaragua Branch

So I´m sitting in Nicaragua now. Needless to say it´s quite different from the other places I visited earlier this summer. I´ve got several stories, and not much time.

I noticed among the 90 crates or so we brought with us, that one had a sizable amount of birth control pills. However, none of the people coming in for consultations ever asked about them, and as far as I knew, on one was offering them either. So after giving a twenty something mother with 6 kids all of the necessary tylenol, vitamins, antibiotics, antifungal creams, and parasite medication, I, as politely as I knew how, asked if she might possible have any interest in having pills that will keep her from having children. What followed was the most resounding YES that I have heard in quite some time. Needless to say I have continued this tactic, and thanks to me, I bet 30 fewer Nicaraguan children will be born in the next year. I consider that an accomplishment. I hope all of my feminist friends are proud.

Back in the US of A

So I'm back now and gradually getting over my denial. My body finally accepted that it was winter down there, and I got the usual winter sniffles my last week. Now I've still got my winter cold except that it's now summer, so that's weird.

Here are some Bolivia pictures. I took about 100, so if anyone wants to see more just let me know and we'll work something out.

Here's Bolivian immigration at the Border.

This is Regina by the "rock tree" with the colorful mountains in the distance. The minerals there give the land, lakes, and mountains incredible colors that are hard to photograph.

Monica and flamingos.

This watertower was leaking and the water froze during the night and created this surreal frozen waterfall.

Near the salt flat of Uyuni, we stayed in the "hotel de sal." Everything was either made of or covered by salt.

Regina tasted the wall to see if they were telling us the truth. They were.

We drove out to this "island" in the middle of the salt flat. All the white is salt, not snow or ice. You can see a car driving across to get an idea of the scale.

Here's a group shot by the Toyota Landcruiser.

From left to right: Me, Regina, Monica, Catherine, Natalie, and Celine.

Saying goodbye...

I´m sitting here waiting to be picked up for the airport in about two and a half hours. I could be doing something cool or cultural, but I think I finally have no more of that in me. Monica left for her flight about an hour and a half ago. I´m leaving 5 hours later than her and going to a different continent, but I´ll still make it home before she does since I have a direct flight, and she has to change in Buenos Aires then bus from Montevideo to Pelotas. It was definitely sad to say goodbye, but we´ve already got our travel plans. We both need to see Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador now that the Europeans have inspired us while we were barely in Bolivia. Who knows when that´ll happen. I did meet a lot of middle aged British, Australian, South African, and Dutch people who were traveling alone for months on the cheap, so I still can have hopes of being a travel junkie for a while longer.

We went to Valparaiso and Viña del Mar yesterday for a nice day trip. Valparaiso is this really quaint port city built on a bunch of hills. It sort of has the San Francisco thing going in that reguard. It also has the most frightening bus and taxi drivers I´ve ever encountered. They love flying up and down the hills and around the narrow, blind corners. I had to hold on in the bus with both fists clenched so as not to fall down. Seriously. Unfortunately, I was really lazy and didn´t take very many pictures.

I´ll try to post a bunch of stories and pictures from Bolivia next week as much for myself as everyone else. This blog will now become my scrapbook of sorts from this trip. Nicaragua is almost in South America so I´ll hopefully post stuff from there too. I hope someone has found some amusement in my six weeks of schlepping across South America. I know I´ve enjoyed myself much more having had some contact with you all back home. Traveling is so much easier with email, blogs, and AOL instant messenger.

Can´t wait to be able to talk to you all soon.

-Michael

Back from Bolivia

Wow. Yeah. Bolivia might have been the coolest experience of the trip. I have a ton of pictures of the most beautiful and surreal landscape Ive ever come across. I will probably wait to describe it in detail till next week. Im so exhausted now, back in Santiago after a 22 hour journey back from the north of Chile. I just had the most gratifying hot shower in my life after about 3 days (ew, yes I know) of a hygiene free existence. Conditions were basic, but much more tolerable then I had expected. It was in the 80s or so during the day, and well below zero at night. Our first night was at 4300m altitude. I definitely noticed the altitude when I was helping the guide lift or lower all the bags on or off the top of the Landcruiser. (For some reason the girls seemed to magically vanish most of the times this needed to be done.) Monica and I totally bonded with the 3 Belgian girls (Catherine, Natalie, and Celine), and a German girl (Regina). They were all super cool. Regina is my age and was on were way up through Bolivia and Peru then flying over to Brazil and traveling down through to Argentina and back to Chile were she just finished up a semester long study abroad program. Im in awe of a girl with the guts to travel for 3 months alone through those countries.

I am down to the last set of clean clothes I have. Im thinking theyll be good to go till I leave on Saturday. The only pressing thing left now is to figure out how to get the residue of egg yolk and coca leaves out of the pocket of my jacket so as not to be viciously attacked by the dog at customs in Dallas. Ill explain later.

San Pedro de Atacama

After a long eight hour ride back to Santiago, we decided that hopping on a 22 hour bus ride 2 hours later direct to the Atacama made the most since. It did make sense not to waste a night in Santiago (we´re not fond of this city); however, my patience was running a bit thin by the time we arrived in Calama last night. We were accompanied during the 22 hour trip by a small Chilean child named Nicolas. He was a perfect angel (didn´t know he was there) for the first 16 hours of the trip (very commendible), but then he needed to run up and down the bus aisle throwing things the last six hours. The bus service the whole time has been more or less very comfortable. They stop every 2 to 5 hours generally for about 5 to 15 minutes, and you can buy a diet coke or waterever. The last 8 hours or so were of beautiful, rolling, brown, desert hills. It did get very repetitive though, and at times I´d swear we weren´t moving since it was nothing but brown sand anywhere you looked. Nothing at all green, in fact the only signs of life at all were broken beer bottles beside the road.

We wanted a bus direct to San Pedro, but those were full, so we took one to Calama, a nearby town instead. We stayed last night in Calama. It´s a bit grittier, but not too bad for a stop. We came to San Pedro de Atacama an hour and half away around noon today. San Pedro is a very quaint desert town with adobe buildings and dirt roads. (you don´t have to worry about muddy roads since it never rains here, actually, yeah, I mean absolutely never.) The place has about five thousand inhabitants and about that many hippy backpackers from other parts of the world. Five minutes ago this cybercafé was full of people speaking french.

We looked at a map and realized we´re 60 kilometers more or less from Bolivia. We absolutely can´t resist and signed up for a 3 and half day excursion tour in a four wheel drive vehicle into Bolivia across the salt flats, geysers, and flamingo preserves. It includes 3 nights lodging, meals, guide, and transport for 100 dollars. Tomorrow night we´ll basically be camping, then we get real hotels after that. We´ll be accompanied by 3 belgians and a german girl, we´ll see how that goes. I´m already picturing myself trying not to freeze to death in a sleeping back in some hut on a mountain in Bolivia accompanied by a Brazilian, 3 Belgians, a German, and a strange Bolivian guy wondering how the heck I got there from Duncan, Oklahoma.

This little trip across the wilds of Bolivia should be a fantastic finale to my voyage across the continent. I will no doubt have no access to internet for most of the first part of this week, so no one worry.

Mendoza, Argentina

Yes, a 7 hour bus ride later, and I am now in Argentina for the third time. My passport is getting full of stamps. It was not my imagination, it was not that I was getting tired of travelling, the food in Argentina is without a doubt like 10 times better for the same price. The average place here has linen table cloths, well dressed waiters, and great food, while the average chilean place that you would see everywhere looked like an american greasy spoon diner specializing in hot dogs and sandwiches.

Here are some pictures from Chile from this past week. I finally found a place with a USB port.

This is a "palafito", a typical little building on stilts out over the fjord on the island of Chiloé. This particular one is now a very decent seafood restaurant.

This is a seafood vender in Santiago´s central market. The seafood available here was incredible and without a doubt as fresh as it gets. The place is also home to the city´s more acclaimed seafood restaurants. We ate at two of them. Very good, but not great.

This is a shot of the main pedestrian shopping street in Santiago. A lot like Buenos Aires´calle Florida, but not quite as infectiously energetic.

Here´s Santiago´s main cathedral. It´s been destroyed by 4 earthquakes and rebuilt each time a little bigger. Notice the Ultra modern and shiny buiding next to it. This is the general theme of the city. It´s an incredibly attractive city. If it had had more accesible good food options, I would have absolutely loved it, but they´re unbelievably obsessed with hotdogs. It´s ridiculous.

And here we are on a hill overlooking the city. Notice the mighty Andes behind the smog in the background.

Here´s a shot of the general scenery in Argentina on the way over from Santiago yesterday.


This afternoon in Mendoza, I went to a little wineshop contained a very cool wine cellar dating from 1890. They represent a single wine producer that produces very small quantities of artisanal wines. Here I am in the wine cellar.

And here´s Jacky who guided me through the tasting of 2 Malbecs, a Cabernet, and a desert wine. All of which were wonderful. They don´t export anything, and they only sell by direct shipment to other parts of Argentina. I got talked into buying 3 bottles of course, hopefully it won´t be a catastrophe getting it home.


We´re heading back to Santiago tomorrow, staying the night, then trudging up to the Atacama desert in the north.

Happy 4th of July

To celebrate the 4th of July, Monica and I ate lunch at McDonald´s. It was the most American thing I can think of that required no effort on my part. And I can honestly say without a doubt that a Big Mac and fries was incredibly, incredibly yummy.

Odd cultural observation:

It seems no matter where you go in Chile, Coffee=Nescafé instant coffee. Needless to say, those of you who know me at all know that this just doesn´t cut. Yes, Nescafé is like 20 times better than Folgers instant coffee in the US; however, this says absolutely nothing.

On an even weirder note, there are a quite a few places that serve decent espresso and espresso based drinks here in Santiago. These places serve coffee and only coffee, no food, no alcohol. And...the girls working there prepare and serve your coffee while wearing fishnet stockings and miniskirts. Some places are more risqué than others. Needless to say the clientele there are creepy middle aged men who I don´t think are there for the cappucchino. I walked past a "café Kournikova" that had blacked out windows, very creepy, did NOT go in. I find it all very odd. Maybe I´ve been marketing Michael´s Specialty Coffee the wrong way.

I haven´t eaten dinner anywhere that serves wine since I´ve been in Santiago, I am sort of frustrated at the lack of good dining options that seemed so abundant in Argentina. I think the price of the Los Vascos Cab. at the upscale wineshop I was at on Thursday was maybe around 7 or 8 dollars a bottle(versus $12? in the US), other than that it was all a bunch of higher quality stuff I didn´t know which ran from maybe $5USD to $50. I haven´t looked toomuch in grocery stores since i know that´s mostly irrelevant to me. I want to find a good wine bar or something, but monica doesn´t like wine, and goes to bed around 10, so I don´t really have a partner in crime on that.

To tour wineries here you have to make reservations a few days in advance, and they charge upwards of 20-30 dollars for a half day escursion to places in the suburbs. There is some sort of syndicate/mafia controlling local winery tours. Monica doesn´t like wine, and wouldn´t pay that much anyway. I actually have no interest in visiting only1 or 2 wineries in the Winter. I mostly just want to taste some. The upscale place I went to on Thursday next to the hooter´s and starbucks (Monica hadn´t gotten in yet) only had an Argentine wine out to try, so i just sighed really loud and left.

Our plan is to head to Mendoza, Argentina tomorrow. I´m sort of looking forward to spending at least a day on the east side of the Andes.

I don´t think the people here understand what they´re doing to me by making caffeine and alcohol inconvenient.

No, No, it´s not all bad. It´s a really pretty city, I´ve taken a couple good pictures, but I will have to post them from somewhere else.