kickin it

yoooooooooo, well, i kinda dropped away there for a minute. but hey, how can you not when you show up to a little farm in the countryside. anyway, on the bus ride from lima to mendoza what happened was interesting. first we spent about an hour and a half in the middle of the first night pulled off at a truck stop while the bus drivers were assessing a situation with the suspension. well, they didn´t get it fixed then but we were able to go to the next big town along the way the next day and spent several hours at a mechanic trying to remedy the situation. after we got that all fixed up and were heading out of town to the border of chile we started to have engine troubles. so, back to town, and it was late enough at that point that we just had to wait till the next day to get a mechanic and work it out. so they put us up in a hotel for the night and in the morning the hotel manager comes in and tells me that i am to go to the bus at ten. when i get there i find out that i am one of three people on the bus who are going to mendoza rather than buenos aires and that through dumb luck that means that i get to get on a different bus that left about a half hour later. hell yeah, i don´t know what happened with the others, cause they were still working on the bus when we took off. then when we were about to get to the argentinian border a small landslide happened in the andes that had to be cleared before we could pass. but that ended up working out well because it put me in mendoza at six in the morning instead of three in the morning. anyhoo, tunuyan is awesome. its a nice little town with a great ice cream place and a fantastic view of the andes. the sunrises and sunsets are absolutely amazing. i´ll be uploading some great pictures when i get a bit more time. at the moment i am in san juan waiting out a bus layover to barreal. a little camping trip in the mountains with vida and her friend sarah. the other folks that are at the farm right now are wonderful, but by the time we get back almost the entire crew will have switched. it is very hot and the main work that we have been doing is plastering the walls in the house. everyday we go to the ditch to cool off and i can spend the entire day with no shoes......... yes. also exciting is that vida has decided that my mission while i am here is to design and implement an oven/hotwater heater combo for the house. excellent. more to come soon. right now i have to go check out what the guidebooks call ¨scenic butter¨. all my love...............................................

por fin, ya llego en tunuyan

i´ve finally made it to tunuyan. crazy bus ride including a breakdown and a landslide that held us up in the chilean andes. anyway, just wanted to let you know i arrived. gonna go to the farm now and rest for a minute. will post more details when i have not just spent 4 days in transtit. all my love...................

onward to mendoza

hey hey, the strike here in peru was resolved yesterday afternoon, so today i am off to mendoza. i was able to get a bus direct from here to there (60 hrs), which means that i will be in tunuyan on monday. damn right! yesterday was an interesting day, the morning was spent with other travellers trying to figure out the strike situation, since everyone has been somewhat ansy to get outta here. then in the afternoon i went with francis, the guy who runs the hostel i've been staying at, to run some errands. he had to go to the hospital to straighten out some things, and it just so happened that we ended up near the office of my bus company so we were able to straighten out that situation. along the way we went to one of francis' favorite sandwich joints and got a pan con chicharon. this sandwich was the size of my head with thick slices of roasted pork, sweet potatoes, and an onion/pepper relish. our final errand was to a metal shop to get some good hooks for putting up a hammock. it was awesome, these guys just started looking around the shop for different scraps and we watched them make some heavy duty hooks........ bending half inch thick rods into hooks, cutting up scraps into support pieces, welding everything together, the whole nine yards. anyway, it was a nice day for kind of stepping into everyday peruvian life. off to the bus here soon, all my love.....................

lima, lima, and more lima

hey all, sorry it's been so long since my last post. things have been calm, i just haven't put aside the time to post. my travels to lima went smoothly, there are crazy deserts here in peru. the deserts cover damn near the entire western half of the country and just go straight into the ocean. wicked cool. so, when i arrived in lima a transportation strike started for the whole country. all the buses and big trucks have just stopped. anyway, today is day four of the strike and i am still stuck in lima. luckily there is a nice beach here where i can pass the days. lima itself is an interesting city. there are ruins all over the place within the city and the food is fantastic. the bad part is the amount of people and traffic..... 12 million in the lima area. this makes for a fair amount of smog and a lot of congestion on the streets. it has deffinitely been nice to have a break for a moment, recuperate from the past travels and prepare for the next, but after a certain amount of time in a big city you just start to feel trapped and ready to leave. so, i'll be hanging on the beach till the strike ends. i have hope that i will be able to leave tomorrow, but we shall see. all my love...........

ecuador

damn, the andes are (excuse my french) fucking amazing. they are so huge and the canyons and valleys are so deep it is incredible. having spoken with a man on the bus from medellin to quito, i think that on my return trip i will be able to go and help out in an indegenous village in the ecuadorian andes..... how cool is that. this morning i was chillin outside the office of a bus company called ormeno waiting for it to open. while i was waiting a peruvian guy showed up to wait for the same bus. when it opened we found out that the bus for today was full, but we were able to get a different bus to the border and will be able to go to lima later today. he has been extremely helpful and full of information. he is from the amazon, close to iquitos. anyway i will travel with him to lima and then catch a bus to santiago......whoo hoo. only a few more days left to tunuyan. as always, all my love..............

colombia

hey everyone......... i´m in medellin right now waiting for the bus to take me to the border of ecuador. colombia is definitely a tourist destination... fairly modernized and safer than you would think of colombia as. haven´t been able to experience all that much since i have just been travelling through, but it has a range of climates, and so much fruit it´s ridiculous. dad, it´s not that i didn´t like panama, it´s just that i was stuck in panama city, which is very touristy and a party town. nonetheless while i was there i was able to buy local fish, eat lots of coconuts and pineapples and hang out with some good folks. i am getting close enough to the finish line now that i can feel it in my bones. i will be in quito tomorrow, and i think that i can get a bus straight from quito to lima, then lima to santiago chile. if both of those buses actually work out then i will be in tunuyan before i know it. at this point i am ready for that. it will be nice once i arrive to have a place to just hang out for a while. all my love............

fake out

hello everyone. i know i have not posted in several days, but i did not get on a boat when i arrived in panama city. actually, to sail is ridiculously expensive because it has been turned into some kind of tourist thing. it is possible to catch a cargo ship for much cheaper, but i missed it by one day. so, much to my dismay i have been reduced to boarding an airplane from here to cartagena. not too far so i dont feel that bad, but it still sucks. at any rate, i will be leaving tonight and arriving in colombia tonight. being stuck in panama city has been less than ideal, but i have made friends with many travelers while being here. i am very excited for the journey to continue after the flight. all my love..........

off to the south land

hey all, since i last posted i have gone through costa rica to panama. right now i am in david panama and will be getting on a bus at 11 tonight for panama city. i will arrive at 5 in the morning and have all day to figure out my boat situation. a man on the bus told me that he thinks that there are boats that leave from panama city and go across the pacific. if this is true it will speed up my journey a bit through colombia, and i might even be able to get to the coast of ecuador. it all depends, i´ll see when i get there. if i am able to get on a boat in the morning then it may be several days before you hear from me. hope all is going well in this new year for you. i am a bit tired at the moment, but couldn´t be in a better place. i love you all and love hearing your comments. it´s nice to know that i have my family and friends with me no matter how far away i am. all my love..............

in managua

i`m now in nicaragua and off to the costa rican border in the morning. the adventure goes on and i keep meeting locals that are very nice and willing to help me out. central america is a very interesting place. i like it a lot, but the level of poverty in some places is very sad. it is very strange to see people getting by on nothing, washing their clothes in the river, and having a mcdonalds just up the block. that said, the people i have met are awsome. dad, i met a dude on the bus that was a cuban version of you. he and his son were going to el salvador to visit his son`s gilfriend. he was a little firecracker of a guy and when i return i am going to stay with them in mexico on the beach :) all is well and the travels are going by slowly but quickly. i was a little bit stupid and got ripped off at the border of guatemala. didn`t lose much, but learned a lot. i will be able to avoid such situations in the future. i can`t tell you how much i appreciate the support of you all. i think about all of you when i am looking at the moon at night and know that you are looking at the same one. all my love.......

the weary traveller

so many amazing things have happened since i left the bosque. i had the dumb luck of having three locals, maira, elena and pita, take me to the reserva de mariposas. it was a cold overcast day so the butterflies were not in flight, but they were resting in the trees. que chido, there were thousands of butterflies in every tree and thousands of trees full of butterflies. then after the butterflies we went to the tour of legends in morelia for free since we were staying with one of the actresses.....wow, i'm so blessed. anyway, i'm in chiapas now, and off to central america today, then a boat, then the haul across south america. love to you all

mariposas

stayed at the bosque for new years..... concentrated the light of the blue moon on to everyone's third eye! now off to see an incredible butterfly migration..........................