2 more days…

We’re nearing the end. We’ve had 4 despedidas (goodbye parties), a final sleepover for Sid, a great trip to the zoo with friends today, and now we’re surrounded by boxes. At this point, we’re giving things away and starting to do things like order the NY Times delivery at home. We’ll be back in Portland on July 3rd.

This is Sid with her friends Johanna, Valentina, Camila, and Sumaq at one of her goodbyes.

Everyone has a job!

Bob and I both recently have accepted jobs back in the U.S.  I´m going to be working at the Immigration Legal Advocacy Program (ILAP) and Bob will be continuing part time with MicroCapital and part time doing technology work for Preble Street.  With Sid in kindergarten, we´ll be all accounted for…

Father´s Day

We had a nice Father´s Day this weekend with Kathleen, Carter, and Lee here.  We went out to our perrennial favorite restaurant across the street (next to this flower stand below).

Then, Sidonia was convinced that what Bob and Lee would want more than anything for Father´s Day was a piñata filled with candy.  Hmmmm… So we made one at home and compromised by buying a little bit of candy and some snacks that the dads might prefer.

Sid´s school also had a field day event for Father´s Day on Saturday.  Each class was a team, and the father´s and kids competed in a bunch of events like popping balloons tied to your ankles, an eating contest (Bob was not the father chosen to represent the class for this event), a scavenger hunt, etc. Sid´s class were bears for the event, as seen below with Sid and her best friend from school, Johanna.

 

A great trip…except for the poisonous spiders

We just got back from 4 days in Cajamarca, which is in the North Central Peruvian Andes.  It was a great trip, in most ways.  We decided to stay outside of the center of town at a hacienda that had a beautiful setting, horses, a playground, fireplaces in all of the rooms, etc.  It really was beautiful.  You can see some of the grounds below.

We all rode horses.  Sid´s was a little pony, led by one of the men who works there, but Bob and I actually rode our own horses, who wanted to trot and had no interest in staying near the pony.  It was fun, but definitely a bit trying, because Bob´s not sure if he had ever ridden a horse before, and I can remember one other time since I was about 8! 

The real adventure started at night though.  It was about 7:30, and Sid and I were playing on one of the beds in our room, near the beautiful fire we had blazing in the fireplace.  All of a sudden, I noticed the spider below on the wall.  Now, that picture doesn´t do it justice (because I was too afraid to get close for a photo, and Sid was sobbing in Bob´s arms).  It was about as big as a fist, very round and furry.  I went to ask the guy who gave us the firewood if there are poisonous spiders in Cajamarca.  He said yes, he´d be right there.  He then confirmed that it was poisonous, squished it with a paper towel, and left.  So, we tried to not make too big of a deal of it.  Sid was too scared to even change into PJs or go to the bathroom, so we just put her in the bed away from the spider and sat with her while she fell asleep.  

About an hour later, I saw another one.  I went to get the guy again, and this time asked him to level with me.  What do you do if one of these bites?  His response, ¨go right to the hospital.¨ He then said they were dangerous.  So we started looking around the room with a flashlight and found about 5 more small ones under the edge of the rug.  Finally I said, ¨I´m really scared, but I don´t want to be crazy about this.  If this were your daughter, what would you do?¨ And without blinking an eye, he said that he would change rooms.  So we did.  Within minutes, however, I was sure that we were changing rooms in the morning into something more urban in town.

The best day trip we did from Cajamarca was to a site called Cumbe Mayo, below.  It was a series of gorgeous rock formations, rock tunnels, and 3,000 year old pre-Incan aqueducts.  We hiked around with a guide for about two hours, and got to squeeze through a pitch black, two foot diameter rock tunnel.  Sid liked it so much that she went through twice!

Anyhow, there are more photos that I don´t have yet, so perhaps I´ll update soon.  We´re waiting now for Kathleen, Lee, and Carter to get in tomorrow night!

 

radishes taste like candy?

For any of you who haven’t heard about the phenomon “flavor tripping,” check out this article in the NY Times from last week.  We want to host this party when we’re back stateside

computer crash

Hey all,

The sad news from Lima is that our hard drive bit the dust on Thursday.  The local Mac guy doesn´t think he can save any of our data.  So, while we´ve saved most of our documents not too long ago, we lost our address books and some other key things, so please be in touch, because we may not be able to find you!

 Luckily, we are 2 weeks within the warranty, so we´re getting a new one shipped from the US.  However, that will probably take 3 weeks, so we´ll be out of the loop. 

More soon!

Sherry and Steve’s “guest blog” on the rainforest

The Rainforest in the Manu National Park Region of Peru The Manu rainforest region is north of Cusco on the other side of the Andes. It is considered part of Amazonia, the Amazon River basin. It is the most remote and most difficult to get to part of the rainforest in Peru. Parts of the Manu Biosphere are closed to outsiders and their indigenous peoples protected by the government from any visitors, including scientists.

The ride over the Andes is on a single-lane, trench-ridden dirt road with hairpin turns and at the edge of a cliff with no guard rails. Andi described our ride to Salinas. Just multiply that by 8 or 9 hours worth of a white knuckle road trip on a narrower and scarier road with trucks playing chicken as they barrel around the curves, stopping inches from our vehicle (forcing us to back up at the cliff’s edge). At a certain point, the road ends and the trip must be made by river in motorized wooden dugouts on the Rio Madre Dios, which is full of rapids, rocks and dead wood. Often our boat guys had to get out and push the boat over shallow rapids.

Our accommodations were considered excellent. This meant we were in thatched-roof wooden cabins where the toilets flushed, but there was no electricity (except a generator for the kitchen) and one sleeps under mosquito nets. Communications in Amazonia is by radio. Tourism is not well developed yet, so we did not run into many tourists.

The weather was sunny and warm, not hot, but extremely humid – a bad hair week for Sherry. Every morning it sounded like it was raining outside, but it was actually the moisture from the vegetation dripping on the ground. However, the remoteness yielded an unbelievable diversity of plants, animals and birds. The vegetation is lush and thick, as you would expect. For example, we saw seven species of hummingbirds in about 15 minutes (see picture of one of them). You can hear all kinds of calls and sounds, but cannot always see the animals and birds making them. Some, like the many species of toucans, live at the top of the canopy, and we could see them only by climbing a 144-step observation tower built against a giant tree that was like a tree house out Jack and the Beanstalk.

Another adventure was seeing a 600-pound male tapir that comes out only after dark to go to a clay lick. We had to hike 2 hours after dark to an observation area and wait to until we heard the sucking noises of the tapir sloshing in mud up to his belly. There was a small female tapir (probably _ the size of the male) named Vanessa who had been treated for a jaguar attack at the Manu Wildlife Center where we were staying and who made visits to snag apples then head back into the jungle. (See photo of Sherry and Vanessa).

We visited a macaw clay lick where we waited quietly as the 2 sentinel scarlet macaws checked out the scene and give the all clear signal to hundreds of other birds. They gravitate toward the huge cliffs of clay and eventually start licking the clay. Macaws lick clay to rid their bodies of toxins from the fruits they eat, but only during certain seasons when the fruit toxicity becomes high. We saw parakeets, rare blue-headed macaws and green parrots at another remote clay lick. The appearance of one circling vulture or hawk can cause the whole flock of birds to leave suddenly. Macaws mate for life and are always seen traveling in pairs. (See macaw picture). Another very cool experience was watching a group of male Andean cocks of the rock (the national bird of Peru) gather for daily practice of their distinctive mating calls. You can see in the picture that they have blunt red “noses” and look like cartoon characters.

Also, on a boat trip in a wooden catamaran on a lake, we saw dozens of bird species and also many monkeys in the trees. The large brown birds with “spiked” hair (in the photo) are called hoatzin, aka “stinky birds” – as they emit a very bad odor to repel predators. We had a wildlife checklist and saw over 100 birds and animal species on it (thanks to our naturalist guide) and heard, but did not see many more.

The trip was quite an adventure with rugged travel, unusual accommodations, diverse wildlife, and a unique jungle setting. But at the end of it, we were glad to get back to “civilization” in Cusco and see Bob, Andi & Sidonia.

Cusco

We just got back from an amazing weekend in Cusco with my Uncle Steve and his wife Sherry. We ate lots of amazing food and ran ourselves ragged visiting ruins, markets, and unbelievable spots in the Andes outside of Cusco.

This is a small corner of market day in Chinchero, a little Andean village about an hour outside of Cusco. We all piled into a taxi and headed out there early yesterday morning. Shortly into the drive, Sidonia became really quiet, which seemed great because the adults could talk. When we got out to explore the market, she asked Bob to carry her. Then, moments after walking into the market, I noticed and commented aloud that she looked rather green. Mere seconds later, she got sick all over Bob and our backpack! Poor thing. It was clearly altitutde sickness. Cusco is about 11,000 feet above sea level, and Chinchero is about 12,000, so it must have just been too much for her. Anyhow, an indigenous woman working at the market rushed over and started to rub some herb all over her face. It may have worked, because within 15 minutes she was smiling, rosy-cheeked again, and happily picking out some hand-woven gloves and a hat to take home to Maine.

Our next stop was Salinas, an amazing place where locals farm salt to sell and feed to their cattle. We had to drive down this treacherous, single-lane mountain road to get there. Several times cars or buses approached us on the descent and we had to back up on the edge of a giant cliff to let them pass. We were all white-knuckled.

After Salinas we went ahead to an archeological site called Moray. Here, the Incas carved 3 circular systems of terraces for agriculture. We hiked down to the bottom, and it was absolutely breathtaking. Sidonia, oddly enough, acquired a large tumbleweed on the hike which she named Mr. Puffy and carried around for half an hour. She almost cried when I told her that she couldn’t bring Mr. Puffy back to Lima with us.

The next photo shows Sid and Bob on the natural rock slide at Sacsayhuaman, other ruins outside of Lima. Finally, we are captured in a photo taken by Sidonia.

Tango

This week is art week in Lima, Buenos Aires, and Bogota.  Each night this week a different district of Lima is having an event then a free, guided tour of various galleries and museums.  We decided to make a late night of it with Sid last night and go into the city center to see the free Argentine tango concert and dance show.

It was great, especially watching the dancers.  They played a range of traditional tangos, then some really weird stuff like a tango version of “Every Breath you Take” by the Police.  It would be great to go to more, but we´re oddly busy this week with Sid´s school show, some friends coming over tonight, and the getting ready for my Uncle Steve and his wife Sherry coming in on Friday.

Islas Ballestas

We went with Hilary, Andy and Henry down to Paracas and to the Islas Ballestas today. It was a fun road trip. We rented a 7 passenger van (which was a terrible car) and drove about 3-4 hours down the coast to what’s sometimes called “the poor man’s Galapagos.” They are the Islas Ballestas, some islands about a 30 minute boat ride off the coast of Peru. It was really amazing. We saw a giant penguin colony, sea lions, and so many amazing rock formations and birds. We have dozens and dozens of photos, but here are some of the fun ones.

Here we are on the boat out to the islands.

These are some penguins walking along on the rocks on one of the islands.

We passed really close to lots of sea lions. At the end we went by this beach with hundreds and hundreds of sea lions, which were bellowing and fighting for territory and swimming around. Bob described the noise as a “cross between a den of lions and a dog shelter.” It really felt like something out of the Discovery channel.

Those are all really penguins up there.