January 31, 2005, 8:17 pm
Friday, January 28th - Monday, January 31, 2005
Simone has some time off, so we decide to head to her parents beach house for a couple of days in the sun. Our first stop is in the town of Ubatuba. It’s about three hours by car away from Sao Paulo. The road to Ubatuba is pretty nice (remember, civilization.) She’s got a Renault Clio, which is small and cute, like most cars in Sao Paulo. The one problem, at least on the highway, is the engine. It’s got a 1 liter engine. Next time you get 2 liter soda bottle, figure the piston is about half that size, and powering an car, two peopel and luggage. My motorcycle, my 600 pound motorcycle, has a 1150 CC engine (aka 1.15 liters.) I was trying to figure out what the smallest engine in a car is that you can buy in America. I can’t think of any, but I do know the old VW’s were 1600 CC. Going up hills is slow and difficult. On the freeway it sounded like a hamster on Coca Tea when I tried to go the official speed limit (120K/HR.) On the flip side, the car is cute and red.
Continue reading ‘Ubatuba and Paratai, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil’ »
January 27, 2005, 4:09 am
25 - 27 Jan 5
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Tuesday morning I woke up feeling great. I was leaving La Paz, and with it my sickness. I get up somewhat early for a guy without a job, and head down to have my last bit of Coca Tea and write some more observations in my blog.
I order my Tea, and as I’m waiting, who do I see, but Mette and her brother Jesus. You may remember Mette from such post as “Greg and Lou get drunk on Christmas Day” and “Apparently the Inca trail is hard if you smoke.” It was Mette from Cusco. I give her a hug, not knowing she was as red as a lobster from the appropriately named Island of the Sun. We get a table together, and spend some time catching up on her travels and mine. It was very nice - I hadn’t talked to anyone at length (or felt like it) in a long time, and she and her brother are both very nice and easy to talk to. For her massive sunburn (she’s Danish, blonde, and wasn’t wearing suncreen on a lake at 13000+ ft), I recommend a combination of aspirin, Ibuprofen and a ton of Coca tea. But then again, I recommend coca tea for everything.
Continue reading ‘The Sexy Foreigner’ »
January 25, 2005, 3:11 am
25 Jan 5
La Paz, Bolivia
The night before I was supposed to leave I’m having a hard time sleeping - something to do with my having slept for so many hours when I was getting over the very last of my sickness. On TV there wasn’t a lot, BUT, there was a fashion show. I’d seen a few other fashion shows during my time in La Paz, and in Latin America. It’s apparently something they take very seriously. This one wasn’t a lot different, other than the fact it was on public TV in La Paz., which is something like public access TV in Spokane or Yakima. It was very, very funny, and well, it was late, and there wasn’t anything else on, so I watched. And laughed.
Continue reading ‘Last of Bolivia’ »
January 24, 2005, 12:35 pm
24 Jan 5
I’m leaving Bolivia tomorrow, and I couldn’t be happier. Not because I don’t like Bolivia, but because I’ve been sick the whole time I’ve been here. I’m hoping my next stop (Sao Paulo) will be a new, less congested, chapter in my travels. But before I go, I do have some observations I want to remember.
Chicken. Everybody eats chicken. A lot of chicken. With fries. Lot’s of fries. French Fries. Everywhere you turn, Chicken and Fries. If it’s not fried, it’s still chicken and potatoes. One place I went had a very nice soup with the chicken in a large bowl with broth and potatoes, and even a carrot to spice things up. It reminded me of something my Grandmother (my mothers mother) would make. It was very good, and very cheap. But also monotonous
Continue reading ‘Random Thoughts about Bolivia’ »
January 21, 2005, 2:21 pm
21 Jan 5
La Paz, Bolivia
Today I’m leaving an internet cafe I’ve been to a few times. I like to vary my internet cafe routine, because if someone knew exactly how much time I was spending online, well they might think I’m a loser. Here traveling in a foreign country, and all I can do is go from cafe to cafe, from web site to web site. So I can pretend to be cool by just going from one to another.
Continue reading ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ »
January 21, 2005, 2:07 pm
16 - 21 Jan 2005
As far as I can tell there are three different types of hotels in South America. You’ve got basic - i.e. backpacker hotels. When I see the word backpacker, that should be a clue that something is wrong and I should move one. Then you’ve got the very nice, top end hotels. I don’t even stay in these if I can help it, unless I do what I did in Puno. Then there are mid range hotels. These have generally been very good, and relatively cheap. Oddly, the cheapest place I’ve stayed in - La Paz - had the most expensive mid range hotel ($20/US.) Arequipa was $18, Cusco was $16.
Continue reading ‘La Paz, Bolivia’ »
January 20, 2005, 1:57 pm
20 Jan 05
La Paz, Bolivia
There is one aspect of this trip that I haven’t really touched on yet, and we’ll, maybe I shouldn’t, just in case Lou is reading (I don’t want him thinking I’m French.) There are times, quite often, when this trip is god awful, kill me, please, now, boring. Maybe I’m just more attuned to it since I’ve been sick, and can’t get out of my hotel room. When I get back to the states, if I never play another game of Solitaire on my palm pilot it will be to soon. Again and again I’m thankful that I have my laptop, otherwise I may have ended my life by now.
The problem is that there are limited stimuli.
Continue reading ‘Did I mention….’ »