Moving on. Fauna: guanacos, cute skinny llamas with Bambi eyes, nandu and thier flock of 6 or more chicks, wild sheep, wild horses and some white looking goose and black neck swans. Latin names pending. And most glorious of it all…it only gets dark here after 10:30 and at 11 pm the sky is still rosy. But again, the winds.  I think we all lost a layer of tooth enamel because of the south wind.  or SW wind.  And to furthermore illustrate the wind’s great power, its hard to pee in the pampas without peeing on ure leg or the closest person around…who can be 10
feet in any direction.  And to illustrate even more the wind’s great capacity for making us miserable, I shall mime it,live and when I get back.

We are now in Punta Arenas, the self titled capital of Patagonia, the on the Chilean side, as Im sure the Argentinias have another and we are pushing on towards Usuaia.  We expect to be there in 1 or 2 days if all goes well.

Oh wait…we saw a glacier..Perito Moreno and it was cool how huge chunks of it fell off into the lake and we saw the Torres del Paine (Blue towers) mountins. Actually we didnt see them per se as it was foggy the entire time, but we saw chunks of them and condors, and more guanacos, and some nandu, and thorny bushes and lazuli colored lagunas with pink flamingos. And we saw great many other things, but its almost 2 pm and I need to rest. Tomorrow we’re waking up like lords, I thing the reveille is at 9 15, which makes me warm and fuzzy and sleepy.Fuken hell…the internet is shitty again.  Ill post in the morning.

Hasta luego, D.

Imagine having mountain lakes, bamboo and acadacia (huge trees) forestes, waterfalls, and a huge ass volcano in ure backyard. U can’t cos none of us mortals have that, but they exist- and lots of rich chilenos seem to enjoy that everyday. The flipside is that there’s a volcano evacuation route for when Villaricco gets pissy. I wonder why Chile doesn’t annex Bolivia…

Back to Chile…my sense is that they have distanced themselves from the S.America, i mean they dont have artisan marketsat every corner, and when they do, u really pay for the lil artisan crap, also none of the S. American traditional foods suck as corn and platains. All the other countries were full of corn on the cob, roasterd, fried boiled and dried corn and green bananas, here, nothing! The rift is more proeminent, they have sweet popcorn at the movies!!! And the girl there was horriefied that i had the poor taste of thinking salty corn. Bah! And we don’t look like tourists anymore, save for when we carry the cameras. And everyone here is so milky white and clean and perfumy…I wish I had more nice clothes..or at least clean. Im joking, we have clean undies for the next 3 days. Not even Serban stands out anymore, the last blanchito is dark as a monkey and with his sombrero nobody takes him for a whitey anymore. With me…i lost my tourista visage back in Quito..

So back to the lake district….visit it. Its like one of the 50 things to do before u die and rot. tru words. Adios fromVillaricco, gtg load stuff in the car. A new day on the road awaits! Arriba, arriba!
D.

p.s Hanta virus warning in the lake district. No joke.

Ahoy! Serban’s pick, Huasco was somewhat of a fiasco, in terms of beauty, comfort and all things tourists like. But I got a chance to try mussels- a mussel soup with some pincers and jelly like meat. I still haven’t broken my puking record (of not puking since I was 5) but it was close. Lili tried to help but she turned green as well shortly after.

The morning was cold and gray so we left for La Serena, cute resort, like a big Mamaia, but very clean and western-like. I spent some time in the sun and we made it to Santiago around 10pm.

The apartment we almost rented was really tiny ( a couple would have slept in the kitchen) so we moved to a nearby hotel which looks more like a modern art museum than a hotel, and its really cheap considering the prices in Chile. Oh, and by the way, now I know where all the fruits from Chile grow- a 100 km’s away from Santiago there re green hills – coming from Atacama, its very easy to spot the green, and everything is cultivated there. We got 2 kg of cherries for $3!!!

Darlings, its 1 am here, so more to come about Santiago when we start exploring.
D.

O sa incerc sa sun din Antofagasta. Sper ca si voi sunteti bine cu toti si mi dor de voi, si pacat ca nu ai fost aici cu noi, macar pentru o zi.
p.s Chile ii civilizat si are malluri!!! sper sa ma duc la mall in antof. ca acolo ii spiritu de craciun adevarat!!!:)
Ok, si ca tot sunt la craciun si stuff, stiu ca ii devreme, dar io o sa fac meniu pt. cand venim.
1. agua de galina de Coco- adica supa de pui
2. Sarmale sau ceva varza acra si iute cu carne din aia buna de pork care o facut Marcel atunci
3. salata buna
4. praji cu mere sau fruhte
Si o cafea buna ca numa nes si cafea din esenta am baut aici si is rele ca naiba.
Ok, va pup ca o venit Serbi cu masina spalata si tre sa incarcam.
Craciun Fericit si va sun!!!
d.

So we were trying to reach Colcha K ( true name) thru the desert by car when we got stuck in salty mud, as we were 7-8 km’s close to the edge of the desert. And just our luck it had been raining for the past three days in the desert- last time it rained was 1 year ago. Initially, Serban tried to dig channels for the tires while the rest of us went deeper into the desert to get the salt tiles and make the car adhere to something else than mud. No luck, the tires dug deeper until they reached black and stinky mud and we needed to come up with another strategy to get the car going…as we feared rain in the evening and we did not have close to enough water to last us for 1 night. Go and I walked 7 km’s, to a lil’ village where we asked for someone with e big truck to come and get us out. That someone was a gold toothed monkey arse who wanted $ 100 for getting us our, after gandiously declaing that “money was not an issue”. We declined and we barganaied down to 70 american, from which 50 was the cost of a car to get us closer to our car, but not close enough so it would not sink in…we got dug out at 11pm after countless attempts by all of us ( the car was by then resting on its belly, wheels deep down in crap).

I wish I had more time to write on how much I dislike Bolivians- its reads bad, but I think in our time there we only met only one person who did not try to steal from us and be a dick. Its Serban’s turn now:) p.s. it all ended well and we are now in Chile and it seems very nice.

D.

So… it’s last nite in Puno. Its rainy and cold. As the days are warm and sunny, the nights are getting colder and colder-like 12C. Today we saw the people on the floating islands on Lake Titicaca and I won a necklace because I guessed how deep was the water below their island- it was 16.5 m deep. What they do is, find little floating reed roots entangled in earth and mud and such, tie them together and cover them with fresh cut reeds constantly (and the new reeds need to be added every week and so as they rot underwater and get dry very fast when on the surface). And they float. But fire is a hazard. It got really lame when the women got together and sang us songs of gratitude because we visited them, they had Allouette, My Bonnie is over the ocean and such, Deutchland uber Alles and we cut them short when they mentioned they could sing in chinese and coreean.

In the afternoon Serban and I visited Sillustani, pre-inca burial grounds. Quite impressive. I think is nice to be important even in death. They built tall, perfectly circular towers where they mummified whole families and their wealth. It was really complicated how they cut the rocks to do that. No sculptures or designs or anything – just massive towers housing the important dead. Then we tried to take pictures of the approaching mega storm, but each time the camera clicked, the lightning was a 0.1 second off – but I was successful in getting a baby lightning in camera.

What else is new… I can tell the difference between an alpaca, a llama and a vicuna and that dehydrated potatoes are not that awful. And we had a full lunch today for which we paid 2.5$ for both of us. And it was totally eatable. More to come. Nity!
D.

So tomorrow we are setting forth to visit Machu Piccu sometime in the morning, and this will be a brief post as we need to rest. Go, Serban and Calin (in this order) drove for 17 hrs straight from Nazca to Cuzco. Hail the heroes and la Reina de Cisne!!! On map, its looks unimpressive, 600 kms which in theory, if the road is good, could be covered in 6 hrs or so. The road was good, however, we didn’t make allowance for driving though the Andes at 5000 meters altitude-try breathing, let alone driving, plus the road was very very wavy and last but not least we encountered neblina, which sounds like a type of pastry but its actually fog, deep and wet fog… at 3 am. We also encountered an upside down car, which had three people by the roadside, all ok, whose first words were “we’re not robbing you, we had an accident”. We left them our flashlight.

We slept for a few hours today and did some sightseeing, Plaza de Armas; I don’t think we’ve been in a city yet that doesn’t sport a Plaza de Armas. I took some pictures of some girls in traditional costumes who had a llama baby to be petted and held by touristas – for a few soles. Later on, looking at the pictures and consulting with the team, I found out the bloody thing was a lamb…

I will end this with a noteworthy mention of my bravery and superior fitness (benchmarking with Serban). I conquered my anxiety and fear and flew over the Nazca lines in the tiniest plane ever made, the team and the pilot only. The stuff dreams are made of, or in my case – nightmares. La lineas de Nazca are really cool, way better than on tv and I felt really special seeking them how they were meant to be seen, from above, and not from Wikipedia pics . I can’t speculate as to why they were made, and there was this German mathematician lady who spent her live measuring and analyzing them and no solid theory. And, to add to my superior fitness of body and mind, I wasn’t sick at all!!!

This is it for this evening, more to come as we trot on. In reduced team from now on as Calin, the photographer, will be leaving tomorrow morning – have a safe flight.
D.

So, this is all my reporting for now, and I hope to get back at least once more before we leave eden. And if not, I heard Guayaquil has some nice beaches.
d.

Asta e un entry educational dedicat celor ce le este neplacut sa zboare. Sau li frica de mor, like me. Anyway, antidotul is as follows: 2 gravol tabs ( dimenhydrinate 50 mg x2), 1 tab Lorazepam ( 1 mg Ativan) and it all should go down with 1 travel size bottle of wine (250 mg or less). N.B. ii preferabli ca concoctia sa fie pt. un zbor lung, dar si mai preferabil sa fie afara din sistem inainte de a ajunge in Quito.

Cheers,

Daria-self appointed medical officer