TravelStream™ news feed for member andread on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/andread en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:10:46 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/7/1236557100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/7/1236557100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/7/1236557100/tpod.html Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:10:46 -0400 2009 Travels

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Dallas, Texas, United States

After our animal extravaganza we had a quiet night at the hotel with a 6 pack of fruity malt beverages (after a dinner with a gigantic salad bar). In the morning we were ready for some outdoor adventures in Chickasaw National Recreation Area. I think we chose the wrong entrance though, because there wasn't much in the way of walking trails. We walked a bit, saw some water, and headed to our next park.Turner Falls State Park is lovely, and it would be a great place to come back to in warmer weather. They have several natural swimming holes, some with water slides and some with waterfalls (natural). We went for a short hike and Christine tried to lock me in a dungeon.Afterwards it was time to start heading back to Dallas. We tried to stop at Robertson's for lunch because we loved the giant signs advertising various pork products--but they were closed. So instead we opted for truly scary sandwiches (hotdogs with cheese and chili, but the hot dog casings were hot pink) and truly awesome milkshakes.
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Davis, Oklahoma, United States

We started the morning off with a visit to the Crystal Bridge--a botanic garden designed by I.M. Pei. There were many orchids and plants with lots of thorns. Afterwards we went back to Bricktown to take pictures of "flaming lips alley" and a bison wearing a UPS uniform. From there we set out in search of a water tower proclaiming the town as the birthplace of Garth Brooks. We found the water tower, but it did not mention Garth Brooks. We also found a longhorn statue and an awesome diner.Our final OKC stop was at the state capitol. The only capitol with an oil derrick on the grounds. As we were leaving, a very loud and persistant alarm started sounding. It really seemed to be warning us of an impending nuclear attack.The afternoon was spent in an Oklahoma Exotic Animal Park. It was extremely silly. We fed lots of fuzzy things. The highlights were a ridiculously cute donkey, llamas galore, a camel mafia, and the sneakiest attack ostrich ever. Also giraffes, zebras, and bison.
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Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States

We hit Oklahoma City just before dusk. We were stymied in our attempt to find a hotel because a choir competition hd everything booked up. But we found one just outside city limits and then headed back into the city to visit the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. Being there as the day was ending made it even more haunting. It's a powerful memorial.Afterwards we visited Bricktown for dinner and drinks. This is the place to be in OKC apparantly, though we found that in general the entire city was pretty deserted. It was handy since we didn't have a map and could essentially stop in the middle of the street to figue out where we were without inconveniencing anyone. After an enormous, late lunch at Cracker Barrel, I opted for simple chips and guac for dinner and received enough for a small army. But the bar had cider on draft and life was good.
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Dallas, Texas, United States

Work took me to Dallas, so Christine drove up from Austin so that we could both add Oklahoma to our list of states visited. Flights were all smooth and after taking the long way out of Dallas we made good time on our way to Oklahoma City.
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Racine, Wisconsin, United States

A non-profit project I'm working on held a workshop at the Johnson Foundation's Wingspread Conference Center. Wingspread was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Johnsons of Johnson Wax fame. Later the family had a second home built and donated this (and eventually their other home) to the Foundation to be used for conference space. The Foundation later built a guesthouse to house conference attendees. The facility is just a few mintues walk from Lake Michigan, and meetings are held in both houses. Every night we had dinner in the original Wingspread dining room. The house is typical Frank Lloyd Wright--designed the way he wanted and practicality be damned. So not everything worked quite right (and the roof STILL leaks, despite repeated repairs). But it is beautiful.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1222020480/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1222020480/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1222020480/tpod.html Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:09:11 -0400 6 Weeks in South America

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Alexandria, Virginia, United States

Home again, house is still standing and there's a huge pile of mail togo through. Bleagh. But it's nice to be back in my own bed.So, trip recap:Countries Visited: 6 (Ecuador, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru)Flights taken: 15Airports used: 13Airline Miles Flown: 22,043Delayed Flights: 1Lost Luggage: noneBorder Crossings: 9Pictures Taken: ~2000New Foods Eaten: llama, alpaca, turkey testicles, dorado (fish), and a bunch of unnamed fruitsFoods I planned to try but didn't: guinea pigWildlife Spotted: sea turtles, marine iguanas, sea lions, tropicalfish, Galapagos sharks, Black-tipped reef sharks, Galapagos tortoises,frigate birds, finches, bluefooted, redfooted, and nazca boobies,hummingbirds, toucan, potoo, llamas, alpacas, vicunas, coati,butterflies, monkeys, and a lot of dogs.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221677100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221677100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221677100/tpod.html Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:17:34 -0400 6 Weeks in South America

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Aguas Calientes, Peru

Had an interesting day of bus ride to Cuzco on Tuesday (despite an extremely loud and talkative Canadian woman) and arrived at our hotel. It´s called The Niños Hotel and was started by a woman who had adopted 13 street kids as a way to raise money for them and to teach them job skills. It´s been very successful, and they now run 2 hotels and 2 restaurants and provide education, food, training, etc to over 500 kids. We left Cuzco very early yesterday morning (6 am train) to head to Aguas Calientes, the nearest town to Machu Picchu. You can only reach it by train (or on foot). The train ride is beautiful, along a river and through breathtaking mountains. We were sitting with a young man from Wales named Nathan who proved to be an interesting conversationalist. He has done a lot of traveling, and was planning to head to Bolivia next. Aguas Calientes is a strange town, it really only exists because of it´s proximity to Machu Picchu and it´s a town of hotels, hostels, and pizza places. (Ok, they also have other food, but virtually every eatery serves and advertizes pizza). John wasn´t feeling very well, so we found a place to stay and had a lazy afternoon. We had been planning to get the first bus up to Machu Picchu in the morning to see the sunrise (leaves at 5:30), but when we woke up at 4:30 it was pouring rain, so we went back to sleep. The rain stopped eventually and we caught a later bus. Unfortunately, John was still feeling pretty lousy, so we didn´t spend as much time there as we might have normally. But it really is awe inspiring to walk around, both for the technology involved in building it and for the natural beauty of the location. The only downside is the people there. When you buy your ticket for Machu Picchu, they lay out a set of rules, including no disposable bottles, no food, no making loud noises, stay on the paths, etc. But they don´t have any kind of enforcement, and people flagrantly ignore them. There was trash scattered everywhere, people having picnic lunches, people climbing around all over, etc. It´s not unique to Machu Picchu, we saw similar behavior on Easter Island and at Iguassu Falls, but it never fails to dissapoint me. Given the increasing pressure on the Peruvian government to limit access to Machu Picchu because it is rapidly deteriorating, I was surprised at how little effort there was to actually preserve anything. Anyway, I´ll climb off my soapbox for now. We got a bus back to Aguas Calientes and found a cheap hostel where John could sleep for a few hours before our train leaves tonight. We have another day and a half in Cuzco which will be much less strenuous, so hopefully he´ll be rested up and feeling better before we head back to Lima to get our flight home on Saturday.It seems somewhat unbelievable that our 6 weeks are almost up. In some ways, it has flown by and seems like it was very short. On the other hand, Ecuador seems like it was a long time ago!On a different note, it appears our timing with regard to visiting Bolivia was impeccable. The day after we left, the US started organizing evacuation flights for Americans in Bolivia, most commercial airlines suspended flights to and from there, and the Peace Corps moved all its volunteers to Peru. Things in the part of Peru we were in are still pretty quiet, and there´s supposed to be new talks starting agian today so it may all be settling down.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221438540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221438540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221438540/tpod.html Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:35:01 -0400 6 Weeks in South America

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Puno, Peru

John survived his mountain biking adventure (in the rain no less), and we survived our 5:45 am pickup for the bu ride to Peru. We had a 90 minute bus ride, then got on a catamaran for 3 hours until we reached Isla del Sol in the middle of Lake Titicaca ) and yes, I had the Animaniacs song about Lake Titicaca in my head the whole time). On the Island, we hiked, saw Inca Ruins, and went to a cultural center about the Aymara. Then we sailed on a reed boat before getting back on the catamaran for another hour to Copacabana, Bolivia. Ten minutes later we officially left Bolivia, and walked across the border to Peru. Another 2.5 hours driving along the lake shore and we arrived in Puno. We were able to snag the last 2 seats on a tour bus to Cuzco in the morning (our attempts to book in advance had failed). All is well.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221342180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221342180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221342180/tpod.html Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:44:35 -0400 6 Weeks in South America

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La Paz, Bolivia

It's official--I really like La Paz. It's crowded and chaotic, but colorful and beautiful and CHEAP! Yesterday we wandered around and paid for our various tours, saw the Church of San Franciscoand had lunch ($4 each for a 3 course meal with drinks) and walked through the streets of various handicraft vendors. As you walk around, you can see canyon walls in the distance with adobe-style houses clinging to the slopes. Dinner was llama medallions and Andean lamb stew.Today John went off to do his crazy mountain-biking trip, and I spent another day wandering around the city. Started out by visiting a fair-trade craft store, then made my way down to the Cathedral.  There was something going on there, so I didn't get to poke around as much inside as I would have liked. On the way back I walked through the witches market, which is hard to distinguish from all the other stalls but is distinct because it's mostly herbs and dried llama foetuses and baby llamas. After lunch I walked to the Mercado Negro--an amalgam of traditional items, fake brand name clothes, and pirated dvds. To get there you walk up a street where there were a huge number of stores selling toilets and tiles, which then morphed into stores selling various other hardwares. Next to the black market are streets full of stalls selling vegetables, baked goods, grains, and various meats. The women in La Paz tend to wear traditional clothing (except for the young people): braids, bowler hats, ruffled skirts, and shawls. Some of it is absolutely stunning. The men tend to wear more western clothing--I even saw a guy in a Penn State sweatshirt today. There's swarms of taxis (of various types and varying reliability), shared vans, buses, and the occasional private vehicle. The taxis here are even cheaper than in Ecuador (running about 8 bolivianos for a 15-20 minute ride, the current exchange rate is about 7 bolivianos to the dollar) and despite the horrible traffic, you don't feel like you're taking your life in your hands when you get in one. Mostly because everything moves slowly and most roads only have 1 lane of traffic. Very few intersections have lights or even stop signs, so I'm not sure how they work out who gets right of way, but it seems to all keep moving.Tomorrow we leave bright and early (5:45 am) for a trip up to and across Lake Titicaca. That will have us back in Peru tomorrow evening, our last border crossing until we get back home.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221234960/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221234960/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/andread/1/1221234960/tpod.html Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:05:10 -0400 6 Weeks in South America

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La Paz, Bolivia

Arrived safely in Bolivia and had no problems getting our visas at the airport--everyone was very friendly despite the recent "let's kick out each other's ambassadors" actions of Bolivia, Venezuela and the US. The drive from the airport passed pro-Morales graffitti everywhere. Our only drama in getting to Bolivia was discovering that our travel agent hadn't actually booked our tickets, just reserved them. So we had to buy them on the spot, which was not cheap. So that will be a fun headache to fight with them about when we get home. Anyway, need to run off to go deal with logistical stuff (paying various tour companies) but we have wireless internet in the room so more later--and hopefully some pictures.
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