Wednesday March 9th

Guess what we did today? Yup. Visit Machu Picchu.

It all started at 4am, when we woke up and joined the line of people waiting for the first buses to Machu Picchu. We did this so that we could be some of the first people in the NEXT line, outside of Machu Picchu’s entrance gates, to get an authorization stamp to climb Huayna Picchu (only 400 people get to climb it each day, and it’s first-come, first-served).

Ahh, 4:30. What a magical hour.

Tuesday March 8th-

We spent all day in transit to Aguas Calientes, a.k.a. Machupicchutown. This consisted of a gorgeous 2-hour bus ride from Cusco to Ollyatatambo folllowed by an equally gorgeous 2-hour train ride to Aguas Calientes.

Monday March 7th-

The hills of Cusco are steep.

But really, Inca Wasi Hostel, don’t tell me every day that “we’ll definitely have water tonight”, and then leave me confronted with three unflushed toilets.

Sunday March 6th-

We hiked to the “Christo Blanco” on the hill above our hostel this morning…Benji held a striking resemblance.

Jalen felt the wrath of this group of locals.

Saturday March 5th-

We arrived at Cusco (Cuzco?) this morning and RESTED! A night bus plus 10,000′ elevation will take it out of you.

No fotos, lo siento!

Friday March 4th-

Last night I took the students to a discotheque that Malena (of the Spanish school) told me was hip with all the young’uns in Arequipa. The students reported a much higher incidence of balding middle-aged men. Ha! Too bad.

Today everyone packed up and moved out of their homestays and (staff) hostel in preparation for our night bus to Cusco. We did internet’ing and last-minute city exploring. Julie and Ingmar took Benji, who’s been dying for a good climb, to the lock rock gym, the Cuerva del Mono (¡que divertido!):

Benji was thankful that this happened near the end of the trip. The camera was covered by traveler’s insurance, but there was no tourist police to file a report in the bus station, and police from one district (i.e. Cusco) won’t create a report for a crime that happened in another (i.e. Arequipa), so Benji is SOL in terms of getting compensated. Bummer!

Thursday March 3rd-

[OKAY SO, it’s actually March 14th today. This is the farthest that I’ve been behind on my blog, but I’m determined to catch up.]

The highlight of this morning was tricking not one, not two, but THREE of the students into owing me a frappucino!

I did a classic card trick where they cut the deck, look at a card, put it back in the middle of the deck, and then I flip through the cards and tell them that I’m using my psychic powers to determine when the card is near. I purposefully flip past their card, play dumb, and tell them that the next card I’m going to flip over is theirs. I then get them to bet against this proposal, and then I crush their dreams by flipping over their card from the pile of discards.

Kina and Benji were the first to bet against me (a frappucino each), and Claire later did the same. Here’s me cashing in on my sweet victory with Claire.

Wednesday, March 2-

A shot from our daily morning meet-up at Cusco Coffee:

Tuesday, March 1

This morning our group (minus Quinn, the late-sleeper) walked to Yanahuara’s central plaza and scoped some epic views of the surrounding mountains and volcanoes.

Monday, February 28-

Apparently I neglected to take any photos today! So here’s a picture that Julie snapped of me enjoying some weird ice-cream-like substance in a Yuanahuara park.

Sunday, February 27-

Our two homestay organizers and Spanish teachers are Malena and Pepe of Juanjo Spanish School. They lead classes in two downstairs rooms of their multi-story house in the Yuanahuara neighborhood of Arequipa. Somehow they juggle having four kids, teaching hours of Spanish each day, and running a business. Malena told me that she hasn’t taken a vacation in 10 years!

I caught the students looking a bit weary after their first afternoon of Spanish class with Pepe:

Finally, we found this little bugger on the walk home. Looks like he had a run-in with someone’s boot. I’m glad it wasn’t with my flip-flopped foot.

Saturday, February 26-

Today we went for a hike in the terraced countryside outside of Arequipa. The destination: Sogay. The students had a lot of fun with that one.

Friday, February 25-

Our first week in Arequipa was flexi-week. Now we enter our second week: back to the grindstone! Home stays, four hours of Spanish classes per day, and the occasional group activities in the mornings.

I’m writing this post almost a week late, so I apologize for the lack of details in this and the upcoming posts. They will be spartan.

But you won’t care because…here’s a picture of Julie with a baby!!

Thursday, February 24-

Today is the last day of flexi-week and the students are going hog-wild with their leftover budget! We spent a big chunk of the day touring the Santa Catalina Monastery, the high walls of which we’ve walked by every day. This monastery is OLD—like 500+ years old. Lots of neat photos to be found.

A cloister:

Wednesday, February 23-

More Starbucks this morning. I’m working toward merging my personal website (blakeboles.com), blogging website (currently Zero Tuition College), and a new consulting/guidance service together under one banner. Lots of writing to do.

This afternoon the students got their act together and walked us across Arequipa to find the free art museum.

Unfortunately, it didn’t exist. They walked back to the Plaza de Armas and talked with the tourist information center, where they found about a free archaeological museum nearby. That seemed to be closed too (a sign above it read: “On vacation for February!”), but then a guard opened the door. I’m impressed by the quality of museums thus far in Arequipa, and this one was filled with a satisfying number of cadavers, bones, and artifacts.

Afterwards, the group hung out in Cusco Coffee, which is Starbucks-wannabe with bigger couches. This photo adequately captures their raunchy humor. (Kina was sick, poor girl!)

At night the group played soccer at some sort of empty pond (?) and had a few locals join in. I stayed in town and researched Machu Pichu options.

Tuesday, February 22-

There is a Starbucks that opened just down from the historic Plaza de Armas in central Arequipa. Some call this a blight; I call this awesome.

The drinks cost twice as much as other cafes (S/8 instead of S/4 for a cappuccino), but I still go here every morning.

We ended the day with a delicious student-cooked meal and meeting on the roof.

Monday, February 21-

Today I present you with snapshots of our life here in Arequipa, Peru. The students are keeping flexi-week pretty flexi, with only lunch, dinner, and a museum visit as the scheduled group activities today.

The view from our hostel’s roof:

Sunday, February 20th-

DAY OFF! Wooh. All I can say is, thank god for the Arequipa Starbucks (opened 3 months ago), because it’s the only thing open at 7am in this entire city.

I’ve been waking up around 5:30am each day because we lost two hours crossing the Chilean/Peruvian border…but we only traveled north! Go figure. So the sun rises really early, and I with it.

Today I wrote, wrote some more, watch The Black Swan (El Cisne Negro—in English with Spanish subtitles) at a movie theater (they don’t butter their popcorn!! What’s the point!?), napped, wrote, and ate more Mexican food.

Oh, and Cameron Lovejoy and Tara Dean (two unschoolers who I know from many different places) showed up! They’re traveling around Peru for a month and coordinated their visit to Arequipa to match ours.

That’s all! No photos today—day off 🙂

Saturday, February 19th

In yesterday’s post I omitted a rather important announcement: Friday was the beginning of South America trip’s “flexi-week”, in which the students design the travel. They choose the lodging, buy the food, budget the money, plan the activities, and arrange the transportation (except where border-crossing is involved). On the Unschool Adventures Argentina Trip in 2008, the group did two weeks of student-designed travel, and it was a big hit. On this trip, the students are designing one week of travel in Arequipa, Peru: The White City.

Originally I suggested that the student’s do homestays (which include breakfasts and dinners for a bargain price) for the flex-week, but they weren’t into that idea. So they went online to Hostelbookers.com and found the Bothy Hostel instead.

Hanna went into a little food coma after the first bite of her burrito.

Friday, February 18th-

Border crossing day: Chile to Peru. I was seriously stressing, because Chile has some draconian regulations regarding international child abduction. Prior to the trip I asked all the parents to sign and notarize an authorization form for the Chilean authorities. I had also spoken with the Chilean consulate in San Francisco and a trip leader from a South American adventure kayaking company, and they both indicated that authorization paperwork was definitely necessary. I felt confident that my authorization form (which I drafted myself, in English and Spanish) met all the requirements, but when dealing with bureaucracy…who knows! Thus, I was stressed.

The border crossing was also stressful because the (apparent) best option for crossing was to hire three taxis to take our group across. I don’t like handing out the student’s passports when I don’t have to, and especially not to Chilean taxi drivers who are yelling at me because I don’t understand the intricacies of the Chilean-Peruvian border paperwork. I also don’t like splitting the group up, but Julie, Ingmar and I each had cell phones with unlimited calling time between each other, so that was good.

All this leads to the requisite anti-climax: We got across without problem.

The taxi drivers got us into all the right emigration/immigration lines and blasted through our paperwork. And the Chilean authorities never once asked for a shred of authorization paperwork. We arrived in Tacna, Peru, earlier than expected.

While I’m glad that I was prepared for the worst-case scenario in the Chilean border crossing, I also think that the whole ordeal took a few months of my lifespan. Oh well!

The rest of the day was: a long bus ride to Arequipa, Peru, and arrival at our hostel for the upcoming week. More on that in the next post!

(Sorry, no photos today!)

Thursday, February 17th

Today passed like a dream! We woke up at 7am in the Arica bus terminal and walked to our sweet-ass lodging which I had reserved for one night: The Arica Surf Hostel.

Because yesterday was a bus today, and tomorrow was going to be a bus day, we just rested more today. Everyone in the group needed it. Jonah and Ingmar went surfing, and I poked around the downtown walking promenade. I found a Govinda restaurant (a chain which serves all-vegetarian fare run by Hare Krishnas) and convinced them to open up at 8pm for our group—so we enjoyed a lovely vegetarian fixed-menu in our very own restaurant! A great ending to a restful day.

Wednesday February 16th-

Today we slept late, packed up shop, and said goodbye to San Pedro de Atacama.

Tuesday, February 15th-

This morning we toured the Salar de Atacama (world’s third largest salt flat, after Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni and Utah’s Great Salt Lake) and a few high-altitude lakes. Epic photos below. The rest of the day was spent recovering from the oppression of waking up at 6am. Also: eating incredible veggie burgers (the best we’ve found in South America).

The flamingos eat the krill which eat the minerals produced by the endless volcanic activity in the region.

Monday, February 14th-

This morning I haggled a few companies for a big group discount on tours of the Atacama desert. We ended up with two tours: the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) tour today, and Lagunas Altiplanicas (high-elevation lakes) tour tomorrow.

Valle de la Luna is just outside of San Pedro. It’s a wholllle lot of crazy rock formations caused by violent tectonic and volcanic action over the past six million years.

Sunday, February 13th, 2011-

Our bus from Santiago arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, in Northern Chile near the Bolivian and Argentine borders, at 6:20pm, right on time. The manager of our hostel in San Pedro, a total desert hippie named Roberto, picked us up in his puke-green van. San Pedro is where we’ll spend the next three nights, touring this barren land which is apparently the driest place on earth.

At the hostel, Julie led a four-chord sing-along with Quinn on ukelele. We crashed early, as it’s difficult to sleep well on a long-distance bus (with most of your body at a 30 degree incline).

Saturday February 12, 2011-

What’s more fun than a 24-hour bus ride from Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama? An additional 3-hour bus ride from Pichilemu to Santiago! That’s our Saturday.

Here the students display their endless enthusiasm for long bus rides.

Friday, February 11, 2011-

We’ve reached a nice daily rhythm here in Pichilemu. Too bad we’re leaving it all tomorrow.

This morning our group met after classes, as we always do, on the school’s terrace overlooking the ocean.

Thursday, February 10, 2011-

Not much to report today, except that we are all officially addicted to the fresh, homemade empanadas that two ladies bake all day just outside of downtown Pichilemu. Here are group meets at the backyard oven-plus-eating-area in the afternoon:

This morning I snapped a few photos of stduents in their Spanish classes. 9am is an unknown hour to virtually everyone in sleeply Pichilemu…but not us!

Today I took a day off. No camera, no photos, and lots of quiet time. I walked for an hour and a half between Pichilemu and Punta de Lobos, the famous surf spot. Thank you to Julie and Ingmar for running the show while I was gone.

While the students studied Spanish this morning, Julie and I explored “downtown” Pichilemu and the beach. We spotted a llama that was unquestionably outside of its natural environment.

After Spanish class, group meeting, and lunch with their homestays, we met the students at the surf school. Everyone got fitted for wetsuits.

This was very exciting.

Lani even got a hood!

The exhausted-looking, late-twenty-something Swiss surf instructor led the group in warm-up stretching.

His Chilean counterpart walked them through three basic steps for standing up on a wave. (Paddle hard; do a push-up with elbows tucked at your side; hop one foot forward and crouch low, arms out.)

Each person demonstrated their mad skills for the group.

And I took portrait shots with Claire’s digital SLR camera.

The group headed out into the crowded Pichilemu beginner waves, a beach break with a sandy bottom. Three instructors accompanied them and I kept a watchful eye from the beach (I’ll surf later this week!).

Out they paddled.

Suerte chicos! Tomorrow, we do it all again.

Not much to report this morning. We killed seven hours in Santiago’s Alameda bus terminal, playing cards, surfing the internet, eating expectedly mediocre terminal food, and buying bus tickets for next weekend. Then we boarded yet another bus: three and a half hours to Pichilemu, Chile, where our group will spend the next week doing homestays, Spanish classes (two hours per day), and surf classes.

Chris Wilcox, the owner (with his wife Valerie) of Pichilemu Institute of Language Studies, met us at the bus stop. I had worked with Chris and Valerie over e-mail since last March to organize our group’s lessons and accommodations, and it was a pleasure to finally meet them in person. Chris is a former Truckee and Monterey, CA, resident, so Julie and I immediately started talking favorite California beach and mountain spots with him. Chris is incredibly friendly and a gracious host. He walked us a few blocks to the school where the students met their homestay families.

This week we had five homestays for our ten students, with two students (of the same gender) staying at each house. Julie and I purposefully mixed up the homestay combinations to combine group members who didn’t know each other that well. Many of these families were first-time homestay hosts, which was a refreshing change from the Bariloche families that seemed to host students year-round. (Chris interviewed or had previous relationships with each of the homestay families.) The students departed with their families for the evening. They will be eating three meals per day at the homestays, with lunch being the biggest.

Only the three staffers remained. Chris took us to the local supermarket, which was a mob scene on Sunday (remember, this is summer break for Chile) and then to our hilltop cabaña accommdations. Julie got stoked for the sunset, and we called it an early evening.

It’s good to be on a warm beach, with nice people, in early February. That I know for sure.

Much traveling today. Early this morning we took taxis to the Bariloche bus station and grabbed the 7:30am bus bound for Osorno, Chile. The five-hour-long ride over the Andes passed gorgeous, sky-blue lakes, and endless rocky peaks. I didn’t take any photos because I’m really not a fan of bus-window shots, sorry!

We spent the majority of the day passing time in Osorno, Chile, a large city in Southern Chile with no particular tourist draw. We walked to the Plaza de Armas and napped on the grass.

Our final day in Bariloche. The students said goodbye to their Spanish teachers, we ate our last sandwich lunch, and we said “feel better!” to Lani and Kina, who were feeling under the weather (and went back to their homestay).

Then we went for a hike.

Cerro Campanario is a popular day hike accessible by bus from Bariloche. We hiked up to the Cerro and soaked in the grand views. The beauty drove many to embrace each other:

And look generally adorable:

The whole group, minus Kina and Lani:

Claire, being dramatic:

Just the dudes, being manly:

Just the dudes, being seductive:

We dropped the students at their homestays on the bus ride back. Julie, Ingmar and I grabbed our last hit of Bariloche chocolate and some cena para llevar, and we then ate at the hostel in the company of a group of musicians from Buenos Aires. Much jamming and butchered acoustic versions of American songs.

Julie took the day off to go bike around a peninsula, so today was a lot of solo trip leading for me. I changed dollars (both into Argentine pesos and Chilean pesos), bought pastries for snacks, took lunchtime sandwich orders, and answered business e-mails. Before lunch I snapped a few shots of one of the student classes playing Spanish hangman.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the internet cafe, where the students caught up on blogging. I later caught up on their catching up, and they have some really quality blogs. Both in photos and writing. I recommend that you check them out here:

Jonah: http://implayingcatan.wordpress.com/
Jalen: http://jalenstravels.tumblr.com/
Hanna: http://southamericanstruts.wordpress.com/
Josie: http://josiesouthamericablog.tumblr.com/
Lani: http://fuckyeahlaniinsouthamerica.tumblr.com/
Benji: http://dangersquirrel.tumblr.com/
Claire: http://claireinsa.blogspot.com/
Kina: http://southamericakina.tumblr.com/
Wyatt: http://wyattsouers.blogspot.com/
Quinn: http://quinnistraveling.blogspot.com/

Today was very pleasant because it was my first 24-hour period without sickness in a week. Also because I’m surrounded by very pleasant people in a pleasant place. Here are some of those people waiting for there Spanish class in the morning.

Tuesday February 1-

Here’s our group at Spanish school in the morning. Everyone is chipper.

By 5pm I recovered and was ready for dinner. I’m avoiding caffeine, dairy, and fried foods in my attempt to get well soon. I’m also slowing giving up on my 10 years of vegetarianism as I learn more about the benefits of pasture-raised meats. These factors all conspired in the direction of: El Boliche de Alberto.

El Boliche (for short) is an Argentine steak restaurant that I’ve twice visited but never enjoyed as a flesh-eating customer. The first time was my inaugural backpacking trip around South America with friends Matt and Patrick, and the second time was the Unschol Adventures Argentina trip (where my brother Cooper and fellow students dined). Now it was my turn.

At El Boliche, everything is made out of leather. Ingmar, Julie, and I each ordered the “Bistec de Lomo” after discovering that it was the filet mignon cut. Price: 65 pesos, or roughly $15.

Here our meat sizzled on the Argentine parilla.

On a final note, Julie’s jacket looks a lot like the Via Bariloche bus fleet.

Monday January 31-

All of the students got up around 7 this morning to arrive at the Spanish School early for placement interviews. No one complained (there has been very little complaining whatsoever on this trip), which impressed me, and the group at the far homestay were even more impressive, because they need to take a bus each way, and they were super on-time.

The students did their interviews, were split into three classes (max four people per class), and then went off for there first lessons. And I…got la fiebre again.

I’m pretty sure that I caught something last week—a sort of acute bronchitis that’s been passing around the group—and this week I caught something new. I won’t bore or disgust you with the symptoms, but they’re different from last week’s fiebre. This is an all or nothing fiebre. Either I’m laid out in bed with the grim reaper over me, or I’m walking around fine.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day in or around the bed. And at night I got really loopy—a changed level of consciousness, as the EMT would say. My fever never really gets about 101, so I’m not super concerned, but it’s still strange.

Thanks to la fiebre, no new pictures today. Here’s one that Julie took from the bus ride en route to Bariloche.

Guess what hour 18 of a 22-hour bus ride feels like? Yup, you guessed it. Just like all the others.

The students slept soundly in the wee hours.

To stretch our legs, we decided to walk into Bariloche instead of taking a bus or taxi. Poor Claire came down with the fever bug during the night, but walked the 4km nonetheless. What troopers they are.

Our first epic 22-hour bus journey! How exciting.

This morning we packed and cleaned up our apartments. A representative from the rental agency checked us out and discovered three towels missing in total from two apartments. Where could those towels have possibly gone?? Our students didn’t have them, and we didn’t go walking down the streets of B.A. in them. And when we checked in, no one counted these towels.

Alas, none of this logic worked on the rental lady. US$15 charged. Just another one of those little financial hits that are a part of this kind of trip.

We walked to Retiro bus station and waited for our chariot.

As promised, our double-decker bus was hella posh. The students enjoyed the view

and the fully-reclining seats

while Julie enjoyed the meal service

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the outside of the bus!

We slept as well as you could sleep on a bus. Which for me, wasn’t that well, especially with residual illness.

Latin America gets the worst of the worst American B-movies. That’s what you learn when you’re sick with la fiebre (fever) in Buenos Aires.

Today I suffered from the 48-hour cold/flu/fever bug that our group has been passing around. I stayed in bed all day while Julie and Ingmar took the group to their final tango lesson and grocery shopping for the bus trip tomorrow.

And now, as to not end this post on a low note, here is a picture of delicious Argentine medialunas!

Thursday January 27-

A day of great group photos. Here are the students on the corner outside our downtown Buenos Aires rented apartments.

Wednesday January 26-

Not much to report today. We took it easy in the morning, hung out at my favorite cafe (Confiteria Las Violetas), tango’d, and enjoyed a great soup dinner created by one of our students, Benji.

Tuesday January 25-

This was our first “normal” day of the trip. We walked the shady streets of Buenos Aires toward Recoleta this morning.

Monday January 24-

This morning our group caught up on sleep and e-mail and then enjoyed a brief picnic in Parque General San Martin. We took our first subway ride to tango lessons with Alicia Pons and hit up a gloriously large supermarket on the way home. Unfortunately, even the gloriously large supermarkets don’t have peanut butter, black beans, soymilk, and many other staples that we’re accustomed to. Nonetheless, Julie whipped up a mean Mexican-style dinner. Benji was impressed.

Sunday January 23-

Few of us slept well on the international flight. Arriving at Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport, we grabbed our pre-arranged taxis to our rental apartments, moved in, and then walked to the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, where we found an endless street fair and live tango.

Saturday January 22-

This morning Julie and I found some sleepy students in Miami Int’l Airport. Their red-eye had arrived at 5am. Our int’l flight didn’t depart until 9pm. 17 epic hours in Miami!

Friday Jan 21-

Three flights today: Eugene to Seattle to Memphis to Miami. All were pleasantly on-time and on the third I even got my own exit row! One of those minor traveler’s victories. I carried the final dose of my live oral typhoid vaccines in a tiny styrofoam cup with ice refilled from plane drink carts.

At Miami I found Julie, my South America trip coleader, and we hit up a late-night Honduran restaurant. There was karaoke.