Marcel(a) the Shell(a)

Before reading, you must watch this video.

Mads and I have a soft spot in our hearts for this awkward little shell. And we couldn't help but drop a couple lines from the video when we befriended our own Marcel(a) the Shell(a) this weekend during a trip to Valparaíso. Real Marcel(a) is a native Valpo-ian, fanatic puppeteer (see her some of her creations here), and simply a warm soul. I got her name from a friend who studied in Santiago years ago. It was such a delight to meander around with her in her "ciudad mágica" (magic city) for a few hours.

In honor of the free artistic spirit of Valparaíso, and in honor of the preferred writing style of our dear friend Sarah Estopinal, I'm going to describe our adventures without punctuation or capital letters. And I'll give you some pictures.

And remember, I have a Picasa where you can see much, much more.

colors. ocean. giggle fits. the impersonation game. snuggling. mint chocolate chip ice cream. coconut-manjar-banana kuchen. mosaic lampposts. "open-sky" museums. artsy cafés. pink flowers. pablo. witticisms and wisdom (in the form of poetry). graffiti. bright doors. serenades. cluttered chorrillana joint. alfajores (duh). juice box houses. puppets. playfulness. whimsy. heart-to-hearts with marcel(a). a kind hug in the end. and an invitation to return.

"Do I get the kuchen?"

"I think I do ..."

Flirting with Pablo.

Ah! What work it is to love you like I do!

Museum of the Open Sky. How narrow-minded of us to ask where the building was.

Senior pic!

Everyone in the restaurant knew the words to this song but us.

Leaving a little piece of ourselves in J Cruz (the restaurant, not a knock-off department store).

Networking is apparently big in the puppet world. We stumbled across a friend of Marcela's in the park who makes puppets out of other people's trash.

Goodbye, Valpo. We will return. And we're sorry we didn't visit earlier.

Machu Picchu, Islands that Float, and a Little Lima

After a beauuutiful night's rest in our hostel in Aguas Calientes, we were up at 6am to hop on a bus up to... drum roll please... 

MACHU PICCHU. 

Words can't even describe the excitement in these adventurers' hearts. You see, we're just a little bit obsessed with South America, and Machu Picchu is pretty much the pinnacle of all things South American. To prove that I'm right, please watch this clip from The Motorcycle Diaries when they go to Peru:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvU6FAj70zk

Ok. Moving on to real life.

So we got off the bus at the entrance to Machu Picchu, to meet up with our tour group. When they called roll, we almost missed our name...several times... because they were calling for "Marleny," which was supposed to be me. Duh. Apparently it's a Peruvian thing, because I was called Marleny a few more times over the weekend. Who has ever been named Marleny? That's my question.

See? One of our taxi drivers was holding this sign at some point...

Our brilliant tour guide... Ab, what was his name?

After getting all checked in and stubbornly refusing the English tour, we were off. Our guide led us around the ruins for a couple of hours, telling us interesting factoids about the Inca people and their life in the ancient city.

It started out as a miserable/ rainy/ foggy day, and although we were trying to be glass-half-full-ers, assuring each other that it was just shrouded in ancient Incan mystery, we were pretty bummed that we had gone all that way and couldn't even see the ground beneath our feet.

But don't even worry, guys. By the time our tour was over, the shroud of mystery and bad weather had been lifted, and it was a perfect day to explore Machu Picchu with the remaining hours we had up there.

We found some llamas!!

Around 1pm, to get away from the sandflies (more details to come...), we said adios to that magical place to catch a bus back to Aguas Calientes to catch a train back to Ollantaytambo to catch a cab back to Cuzco to catch a bus down to Puno to catch a boat to the Floating Islands to catch a bus to Arequipa to catch a plane to Lima. Cachai?  (That's Chilean Spanish for "Got it?") Yep. That was about 28 hours of traveling, sitting on any and every kind of vehicle imaginable. 

But let's talk about the Floating Islands of Puno. So worth 28 hours of sitting.

We got to Puno around 4:45am Sunday morning from an overnight bus ride from Cuzco, and we had to be back on a bus by 9am to get to Arequipa in time for our flight to Lima. So there we were, so weary in the bus station (bus stations are our new least favorite place in the world... no soap in the bathrooms...), and as usual, we got super lucky! A friendly tour man walked up to us offering his Floating-Island-touring services, and after explaining our time restraints, he just said "no problemo," and we were off on a boat tour of the Islands, afloat on Lake Titicaca, just after the sun had risen.

Our sweet, trusty boat driver tying us up to the island

These precious ladies let us borrow their outfits during our visit...

And they even took us out for a little boat ride on their boat made of reeds!

From there, we headed to Lima via bus and plane. We arrived around 8pm, checked in to our hostel (which was SO awesome!!) and went to eat some delicious chicken before collapsing into bed. You might have noticed, by the way, that of the four nights of our trip, this was only the second time we slept in a bed. It doesn't get much more adventurous than that. We woke up Monday morning and had an hour or so to explore around Miraflores, the part of Lima where we were staying. Who knew Lima was on the coast? Not us. 

"Parque del Amor," surrounded by mosaic walls covered in quotes about amor

More scenery from our speed-tour of Lima

Oh yeah. And something else we did in Lima... count the bug bites from those ancient Incan sand flies. Grand total between the three of us= 631. That's about 631 too many. You'll be glad to know that at this point, a week later, we're in much better shape. We have plenty of photo documentation, but I don't think the world needs to see that.

Bug bites aside, this trip was just the best, and we're so very grateful for the chance we had to explore such an incredibly unique part of the world. We spoke some Quechua, we chewed some cocaine leaves (some more than others...Abby...), and we even saw some llamas. Just wonderful.

Contrary to popular belief, we actually went to Peru

Over the past week, Madeline and I have received several impatient inquiries about our supposed trip to Peru. Some think it might have been imaginary. Others became rather nettled that Madeline, after two weeks, was still "Missing Squirrels."

The thing is, we actually go to school here. I know, right? Turns out our precious professor Señor Whipple (pronounced whip-lay) is capable of inflicting unbearable pain ... you know, that kind of pain that comes when you have to memorize all there is to know about the Mexican Revolution, but all you really want to do is blog? Maybe Adair Swayze can best relate.

Anyways. To those of you who had faith that we'd eventually deliver, here is a slew of posts and pictures to satisfy your emptiness.

We went to Peru. The journey started with a slumber party in the Lima airport. Madeline is quite capable of sleeping in the oddest of positions. I am not. So I just contemplated how mysteriously wonderful it was that, within a couple hours, we had landed in a whole different country.

From Lima, we headed to Cusco. Luckily, we met a nice taxi man in the airport who ended up organizing for us basically everything we wanted to do during our four days in the country. This was great, especially after being warned by basically everyone ... including the US State Department ... that Peru was a dangerous country; that we shouldn't hop in anything but government-certified taxis or else they'll bind us up, drive us to the desert, and steal our money; that pick-pocketers are about as common the number of times Madeline mentions she wants a pumpkin spice latté, etc. We did have a semi-scary moment, though. Taxi man handed our passports to a sulky teen in the corner of the tourist office and told him to run down the street to make photocopies. And that's how we almost lost our identities. 

Anyways, here's Cusco, via photos.

We knew exactly what this building was from our Quechua class! It's called Coricancha ... pucha! I can't remember now why the Incas thought it was so important.

Forget excessively sugary Nuts-for-Nuts, Santiago. Let the street vendors bring bird eggs!

And we ran into these guys ...

This massive shaking statue of some virgin saint gave me nightmares.

Pretty cathedral.

Cusco is at about 11,000 feet. We were also advised by the hypochondriac State Department to chew on coca leaves (yes, the rudimentary version of cocaine) the second we got off the plane to avoid brain edemas and imminent death due to altitude sickness. So we indulged. 

Yuck. The memory of the taste of the coca is coming back to me ...

And then our trusty taxi driver followed through by sending us a guy to transport us from Cusco to Aguas Calientes, at the base of Machu Picchu. On the way, though, he showed us several hidden gems of the Peruvian countryside.

Gem #1: MOUNTAINS. Maybe the best ever.

Gem #2: A woman who can turn cactus fungi into wool dye.

We met the cutest woman ever. She taught us how to make yarn. And dye it. And she rubbed cactus fungi on our faces.

Just throwing some volcanic ash into our dye brew. You know.

And there's the dyed yarn! Makes me want some spaghetti.

Gem #3: One of the oldest natural salt factories in the world.

Gem #4: Experimental agricultural projects

Each ring signifies a different micro-climate ... the temperature descends about two degrees Celsius on each level!

Those are people in the middle!

Once bidding farewell to our awesome driver (well, awesome to Mads and me ... he might've lost awesome points in Allison's book for picking his nose), we hopped a train to Aguas Calientes. On the train we met a lovely 80+-year-old French couple who could barely speak a lick of Spanish or English ... and all Madeline can say in French is, "I'm sorry I left the milk on the table." So that made conversation super productive (not). The man tried to spray me with bug spray ... but I didn't completely understand why. If only I had known ... I'll let Madeline fill you in on that. Always trust the French.

Missing Squirrels...

Hello, blogosphere.

Just wanted to stop by and say hola before the craziness of this week begins (also, this entry might be an attempt to make my history reading go away...). Why is this week going to be so crazy? Well, because we're going to PERU on Thursday. That's why. We've got hostels, planes, trains, buses, Machu Picchu, and the floating islands waiting for us up there. And we couldn't be more excited to see another country in beautiful South America, practice our Quechua, and eat some delicious Peruvian...something.

What have we been doing in between travel adventures? Besides touch rugby, I think we've both just really appreciated having two weeks to soak up Santiago. Because, in case you're not aware, we are well past the halfway point of our time here! As of today, we're on day 83 out of 155. That just leaves 72! Yikes a million.

So as I said, we're soaking up Santiago. And one of my absolute favorite things about being down here is that we have all kinds of chances to be outdoorsy. So here are some outdoorsy things that I slash we have been doing over the past couple of weeks:

1. Hiking above the clouds. I went with my friend Mary and her Chilean (!!) friend Daniel to climb Alto del Naranjo, a big beautiful hike right near my house. When we started out, it was a cold, foggy day in Santiago. But suddenly, we turned a corner, and the sky was bright blue and so clear, because we had hiked ourselves right above the clouds, the fog, and the esmog. It was so sweet. And it was on this hike that I realized that I haven't seen a squirrel in way too long. Who knew you could ever start missing squirrels?

2. Bike tour of Santiago. It might seem a little late in the game to be going on a bike tour of this place, but CIEE invited us, so we went! Yesterday, we spent 6 hours biking in a group of about 25 all around this place. Sure, we feared for our lives sometimes (ok, most of the time), but it was mostly a cool way to see the city. And a great way to enjoy the beauuutiful spring weather that's been creeping in lately.

3. The Banff Mountain Film Festival. Friday night, a few of us (thanks for the idea, Mr. Hannifan!!) went to one night of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, as it stopped in Santiago on its world tour. We saw 6 documentaries about people doing incredible (sometimes just crazy) things in the great outdoors. I don't have too much to say about it, except to encourage you to check it out next year if it comes to a city near you.

Okie doke. I think that's the last you'll hear from us until we're back from Peru!! Wish us luck!