I made a DVD and they just fit. It would have taken 8 CD’s… I tried to play the DVD at my parents and both of their DVD players rejected it. Mine liked it, so I finally looked at all the pictures… Well I will. The best picture so far is:
http://www.brantct.com/pics/v/SouthAmerica/105CANON_001/IMG_0575.JPG.html
Well after 14 hours of travel we are back home. Thanks for the ride Frank!!! Out first stop was ROOKIES for lunch. Traveling to foreign countries make you appreciate things in the good old US of A much more. So all those ingrates, get out for a while see how you like other countries :>
We met the family. They are so nice. They welcomed us into their home, fed us good food, and we laughed and talked for hours. The funniest thing is that they thought that I was going to be quiet like Lauren!!! Ba Ha ha… Not so much huh :> The food was good, the conversations was… well … mostly in Spanish! There was a couple of conversations going most of the time with broken Spanish, broken English, and even a little french thrown in. My head hurt :> We took a couple of pictures, but I forgot to take pictures of them!!! Bummer, they were cute. they were both shorter then Marlo. More later… head hurts, no comprendia espaniol….
They have all finally been uploaded. I tried to pick a good photo to highlight the album. the 106LCanon is from Lauren’s camera and the first bunch are from a desert that she visited before she met up with us. I will fix that up.
They are still at http://www.brantct.com/pics…
OK, I have been slacking. I have most of the rest of the notes from Titicaca done, but not published. I have done very little while in Santiago, but hey, I’m on vacation! :> Santiago is very relaxing. Our apartment is awesome. It is in a GREAT part of town. It is about 8 blocks from where Lauren is, right down from the metro, next to gobs of restaurant and two grocery stores!
Santiago Day 1
Crashed at the Holiday Inn. Found our apartment , We met Lauren went out to dinner.
Day 2
We took the tour bus all over and saw the city, out to dinner with Lauren
Day 3
Took a taxi to the other side of the city, had a great lunch, went to the zoo, rode the gondolas, ate a GREAT Argentina steak.
Marlo is FAMOUS!!! She had her picture taken for her Emergency Room reconstruction and there she is on Route 691 West right before exit 7 on the right hand side! Bigger then life! Someone email us a picture of … the picture :>
We have arrived in Santiago, and it is WAY nicer then anything we saw in Peru. We have settled into our apartment and have a great view! Off to eat and explore and as you probalby have come to expect … more later!!!
Someone asked if we were having a good time or was it a pain… It is a great time and a wild adventure. Things are not always easy or exactly right, but we expected that. We also knew that the language would be tough. All that said, a great time!
We are packing up, had a lovely breakfast and talked to some women from Chicago. We have met lots of nice people…
We are flying to Lima for 2:40 and have a 9:40 flight to Santiago. Where is that private jet, where is that TRANSPORTER. whomever said that the journey is the reward did not have to sit in Lima Airport for 5 hours… we will make due and I will catchup on all of the blogs..
peace out..
Puno Friday night.
The flight was uneventful. We landed in Juliaca just fine. We had checked our bags and Marlo asks what is the worst that can happen by checking our bags. I am not thrilled with her mocking the universe like that, but the words were out. I am pretty sure she did not consider what the worst was. Fortunately for us the worst did not happen and our bags made it just fine. The only thing that happened is that there was a flight of grumpy people that arrived at the same time. One woman refused to move her luggage card and another one was yelling at women in the ladies room asking if they were taking a shower in there… I hate to admit it but when the luggage fell off of that ladies cart in the parking lot I laughed :>
Our guide met us after luggage. We decided that for this next leg our guides would be named Julio. We wouldn’t ya know it that WAS his name. We drove through the streets of another part of this half crumbling / half built of Peru. We saw lots of old women sitting in the fields doing something. They looked exactly like the Peruvian women in the movies! Big hat, wrap around poncho, the whole nine yards… I mentioned it to Marlo and she said that they did not used to dress like that UNTIL they watched the movies, what!??? I thought it was hilarious. It could have been the altitude. We peaked out at 12,576 feet. The altitude had little effect on me. Marlo had taken something for it, but it ate her stomach so she stopped taking it.
We had upgraded our hotel from the Casa Andina to the Casa Andina Private Collection. We drive up through Puno and even take a picture from the road with a llama. We get to the gates of the city and there is a check point. Well we don’t make the check point. The policia ask our driver to get out of the car and walk out behind the car. At this time our guide mentions that the polica are corrupt and they may need to bribe them! I have seen this movie and it usually involves a unpleasant stay in non-luxurious accommodations. We sit quietly and wait. We are fully in a no joke zone. Our driver returns no worse for wear and Marlo makes some witty remark. I glare at her a bit as we move out of the no joke zone… we make it fine. It turns out that our hotel is on the lake, actually on the bay. We cruise out of town and up a hill and I see this really nice fancy white building. I hopefully inquire if that is our hotel. He says no, this is yours… he points to a brown building that is unimpressive. I thought that he was joking!!! It turns out that our hotel is very nice. We also visited the hotel that we would have stayed in before the upgrade. It was right in the middle of Puno and there was a Halloween festival going on. We were glad to be out of town. And the bed was fabulous, great king-sized with wonderful linens.
We had a lovely snack at the hotel restaurant and check things out. Later we go into the city to check that out. It was Halloween and the streets are packed with little munchkins begging for candy and crackers instead of sols. They were cute.
We decide to grab dinner at one of the place that the hotel recommended. Not their other hotel either. We did find out that the lesser hotel was selling water and soda for half of what they were charging us… what up with that??? Also you can’t drink the water in Peru. Fortunately they provided us 2 bottles of water. We drank them and asked for more. They said that we only get two… we end up getting a huge thing of water in Puno for half of what they wanted…
We sit to eat. They don’t understand any English and we, well very little Spanish. We manage to get a nice meal. I had more alpaca. We wonder around some more and even found the lesser hotel, but it took us some time. We got the water and I got Maryanne’s post card. then it was time to go home. We successfully hailed a cab and were on our way. Again no English. Fortunately we had a map and just pointed. It took several attempts before he caught on…
Off to sleep…
