Stauchy Blog

The Pantanal - The highest density of wildlife in South America, or so the books say.  After our experience there, I don´t doubt that the claim is true, we certainly saw quite a bit of wildlife: caimen (alligators), parrots, toucans, parakeets, hoards of other birds, deer, fox, trantulas (and many other creepies), and even R.O.U.S´s (Rodents of Unusual Size, for those who haven´t seen The Princess Bride).  Unfortunately, it was all a bit overshadowed by a poorly-run tour agency - Gil´s Pantanal Discovery.

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Carnival in Rio is every-bit as impressive as the hype!  It is a pricey experience, but the costumes and the music of Sambadromo are worth the price to see in person at least once! We also had some very friendly Brazilians near us who were happy to share insight into the parade.  They kept us posted on the famous Brazilians in the parade and their favorite schools and why.  It was great!

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Rio wasn´t quite as scary as we were told that it might be.  We had a great time enjoying the festivities around carnival.  We were a little disappointed with the weather-but in general had a great time.  We also enjoyed the company of our college buddy, Mike, and a friend of his (Sami) for the festivities in Rio!

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We spent Tues and Wed settling on a tour agency and preparing for our Amazonian experience.  Given that we had so much time before our flight to Rio for Carnival (more than we expected because of our change in plans in Trinidad, Brazil), we had some very cool individualized options to choose from.  We settled on a private trip through Iguana Tours.  We spent 7 nights/8 days based from their private lodging on Lake Juma and headed into the wilds with Negao, our private guide.  We had some reservations with his lack of ability to speak English, but decided to give it a whirl.  It turned out to be a great decision!

 (a typical picture of our Amazon Adventure)

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We made our way to the port on Thursday morning and negotiated our spot on a cargo/passenger boat that was set to depart on Saturday afternoon for Manaus.  Since it would be sitting in port for a couple of days getting loaded with cargo, we were allowed to sleep on the boat for those 2 nights for free.  We were able to store our luggage with our hotel from Wed night, so this was a great option.  We eventually found an atm that worked and settled out all of the logistics.  As we sat in the hammocks on Thursday evening, watching a beautiful sunset, we saw our first river dolphins jumping out of the water!  Freshwater dolphins!  We had read about them-but it was so crazy to see.  The river wasn´t very wide here and we couldn´t tell if they were the pink or grey…but very cool none-the-less. 

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Even getting out of Bolivia was a bit of a pain.  We were immediately met in Brazil with much more friendly people who seemed to like having us there and continually went out of their way to help us…it was literally a 180deg change of experience just by crossing the border…

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Bolivia is a cheap place to hang your hat for a while…once you pay the hefty $100 visa fee now required of US citizens.  It is understandable given that we demand that much (and have for a while) for folks visitng the US.  It seems quite ridiculous, actually that we require it of such a tiny 3rd world country.  At any rate, if you have time to hang out there and make it worth your while, perhaps your experience might prove to be better than ours.  For us, the $100 per person fee was the icing on the cake for a ¨not worth it¨chunk of our travels.

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The views were lovely.  I wouldn´t have ranked this as one of the most awe-inspiring lakes I have ever seen and in some ways I didn´t think the area met the hype.  We did enjoy a very nice day out and admittedly one of our highlights for the area is the long argument that we had with the “assistant to the secretary general of Isla de Sol”.  If nothing else, it made us realize how much our spanish has improved since our arrival in Lima.

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We took the “tourist” bus from Cusco to Puno which included some stops at ruins and a very good buffet lunch stop. We stayed overnight in Puno, and bused from Puno to Copacabana, Bolivia the following day.  We booked this while in Lima.  Knowing what we know now, we were scammed into this bus and paid more than we should have…Alas life is about living and learning, right? 

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The Chaos in Cuzco seemed to be unending.  We rushed to the hostel where our bus tickets for tomorrow were supposed to be waiting for us.  We checked into room, grabbed our dirty clothes and hit the laundromat next door.  We then went to return Jason´s boot rentals (you may recall we left his in Sydney) and set out for the travel agent that booked our bus tickets.  Noone was there.  We went back to the hotel.  Still no tickets.  We grabbed some mexican dinner (with fabo guac) and went back to grab our clothes.  Alas, all was there except a pair of my underwear.  This, mind you, is a huge deal when you are only carrying 5 (not as big as if one of our 2 pants or 2 shirts were ganked, but still a big deal to us).  After much arguin in Spanish, we paid most of the bill with a promise that the underwear would be returned in the morning when the owner of the machines reopened (they were closing).  We then rushed back to the travel agent who called around and discovered that her runner had essentially forgotten to get our tickets.  She promised delivery by 9pm and gave us her cell phone.  It eventually worked out.  My underwear our now permanent residents of Cuzco as the girl never appeared as promised….oh well…

-LAS