empty landscapes, empty calories
I'm sitting here in my best housewife dress (maybe non-stop Mad Men viewing while home with food poisoning rubbed off on me a little) waiting for Alecia to pick me up so we can go make a "Christmas" turkey dinner. An atypical Christmas for both of us, so this will be nice, hopefully.. Not sure a few youtube videos is enough preparation for a bunch of turkey virgins.
Our South American road trip was pretty great success, and a huge adventure. I'm still trying to get caught up on the travel journal a week after coming home, so the best I can do here is probably point form:
- 3 weeks
- YVR to HOU to LIM to LPB
- 1993 Nissan Patrol 4x4 with an extra fuel tank, bed, two spares, tools etc
- documents for 3 countries: Bolivia, Chile, Argentina
- GPS loaded with good 4x4 and city maps and tons of way points
- 4000+ kilometers of driving
- sea level to nearly 5100 metres
- 50 rolls of film shot plus thousands of digital photos
- 14 nights in hotels, 10 nights camping in the Nissan
- 48 hours stuck in the mud
- countless llamas and alpacas, vicunas, flamingos, viscuchas, ostriches, condors, lizards, desert foxes
- warm beaches, desert winds, dust devils, hail storms, dust storms
- the most beautiful starry skies, and the craziest lightning shows
- volcanoes, salt flats, hot springs, mountains, desert pampas, multi-coloured lagunas, geysers, caves, cacti, rain-forest valleys
- pre-columbian mummies, crypts and geo-glyphs
- street markets, women in traditional dress, crumbling colonial buildings, slums built high onto the hill-sides, children begging
- salt-mining ghost towns, campesinos herding llamas sheep or goats, or growing quinoa, living in red brick huts with no power or running water
- sunburns, constant congestion, gashed foot, food-poisoning, but no altitude sickness (phew!)
- A Swiss mechanic and his wiener dogs, a Japanese hotelier, an adorable retired Quinoa farmer turned crypt-caretaker, a flute-playing German student and her mom, a Polish couple traveling the world on their motorcycle, a friendly group of Argentine campers
- a full day of dust and sun watching the Dakar rally in Argentina
- LPB to LIM to HOU to YVR and 36 hours of airport hell to get home
- SECOND best trip ever.
*update: turkey dinner was success :D
Our South American road trip was pretty great success, and a huge adventure. I'm still trying to get caught up on the travel journal a week after coming home, so the best I can do here is probably point form:
- 3 weeks
- YVR to HOU to LIM to LPB
- 1993 Nissan Patrol 4x4 with an extra fuel tank, bed, two spares, tools etc
- documents for 3 countries: Bolivia, Chile, Argentina
- GPS loaded with good 4x4 and city maps and tons of way points
- 4000+ kilometers of driving
- sea level to nearly 5100 metres
- 50 rolls of film shot plus thousands of digital photos
- 14 nights in hotels, 10 nights camping in the Nissan
- 48 hours stuck in the mud
- countless llamas and alpacas, vicunas, flamingos, viscuchas, ostriches, condors, lizards, desert foxes
- warm beaches, desert winds, dust devils, hail storms, dust storms
- the most beautiful starry skies, and the craziest lightning shows
- volcanoes, salt flats, hot springs, mountains, desert pampas, multi-coloured lagunas, geysers, caves, cacti, rain-forest valleys
- pre-columbian mummies, crypts and geo-glyphs
- street markets, women in traditional dress, crumbling colonial buildings, slums built high onto the hill-sides, children begging
- salt-mining ghost towns, campesinos herding llamas sheep or goats, or growing quinoa, living in red brick huts with no power or running water
- sunburns, constant congestion, gashed foot, food-poisoning, but no altitude sickness (phew!)
- A Swiss mechanic and his wiener dogs, a Japanese hotelier, an adorable retired Quinoa farmer turned crypt-caretaker, a flute-playing German student and her mom, a Polish couple traveling the world on their motorcycle, a friendly group of Argentine campers
- a full day of dust and sun watching the Dakar rally in Argentina
- LPB to LIM to HOU to YVR and 36 hours of airport hell to get home
- SECOND best trip ever.
*update: turkey dinner was success :D