Alliteration, as always, answers few questions. I imagine interesting things would happen if someone used alliteration to answer annoying askings, as an animal attacks. Lima is a big city, crossing the city can cause crashes and collisions concerning careening cars. To stop alliteration, I will tell people more about the city of our residence for the next 5 hours. The city is on the western side of the continent of South America, on the Pacific coast, and is on a peninsula jutting out into the sea. It is a large commercial and industrial city that has fishing boats and cargo ...
For those of you who are not up-to-snuff on your Greek mythology, Hermes is the god of travel, the road, merchants, messengers, and other sorts of things. Today we saw a bank truck that was probably full of money in the middle of Lima with the name of Hermes. I pointed out to my family that, ironically, Hermes is also the god of thieves. Interesting. Last night, after some time and debating, we decided to move to a different place to stay the night because of the brown stuff on the floor of our rooms and so went a couple ...
My father has just told me not to complain about how he didn’t get me a hostel with a pool because of all of the cesspool in the main lobby. The reason for that is because of all of the rain that fell down tonight and burst the sewage system, showering the rooms with, er, things that we thought we had left behind. We woke up this morning and had a regular morning, going to the Meeting Place Café for breakfast. When we finished with our game of Scrabble and our waffles, we left and went back to the hostel ...
…let the caiman do it. That was Reve’s favorite line to say during our time in the Amazon basin. He said that a lot whenever we were getting out of the boat and it was muddy outside, which was most of the time. Our cook during the trip had the name of Palta, or avocado in English, which was sometimes lengthened to Paltacha. I am not sure if that is a sobriquet or something, but it is what everyone called him. The boat driver had the same name as his son that accompanied us on our trip. The captain got ...
I look out from my nest of branches in the Amazonian rain forest and understand for the umpteenth time why it is called the rain forest; it rains a lot. I am the Red-and-Green Macaw that everyone wants to see during their time in the Amazon. I am waiting for the rain to clear up-if it will-so that I can go out over the water and a hide to eat some clay. The reason that we as macaws need to eat clay is that 80% of our diet is made up of unripe fruit nuts, and the trees have developed ...
…almost. The reason for that was because he might have fallen into a stream that was across the path that we were taking through the rain forest near his father’s house on our way to a clay lick that attracts tapirs and other animals to drink, snort, and bathe in the mineral rich soil. All of that, however, was after a day full of boating and other activities that mainly focused around the water. We had an early start this morning to be ready to leave in the boat at five from the place where we had been staying for ...
When one gets stuck on the edge of a muddy banked river and has a machete, what one could do was hack away at the mud for a while until there was a nice set of stairs going up the bank so that the crew and passengers could do what they wanted to do. What we wanted to do in that situation was go on a walk to see an oxbow lake from a tour and to look at a large tree. Once we could walk up the bank, we walked on a trail to the edge of the lake ...
Getting right up close to a caiman is interesting, especially in a small wooden boat. The caiman might bolt, attack, or just sit there, waiting for something to happen. The last option was what happened to us today as we sat in a lake after dark on a catamaran. The catamaran was something like two canoes tied together with planks laid across the top, and in the back ends, the captain and his helper paddled with large paddles while we looked for caimans and otters. We eventually saw a family of 8 Giant River Otters from our boat before docking ...
There are only 100 days left on this trip, and we are doing some interesting things to spend those days. We are in the Amazon basin still, and have ridden a boat for most of the day. The title of today’s post is saying how tarantulas do not ever need vacation, as they live in interesting places like Columbia, Costa Rica, and most importantly: Peru. We took a night walk tonight to use up some time, and saw 4 tarantulas of two different varieties. Averaged out, that would be two of each kind, but we saw three of one kind ...
With rain, there comes mud. Not with the rain exactly, but the mud forms into its squelchy little self when rain falls from moisture in the air and wets the ground, causing it to be slippery, slimy, and sucking. On dirt roads, the rain and mud can cause mudslides, making the roads nearly or really impassable. We rode on a road that was the former, not the latter, and were able to make it to where we are now to stay for the night. The place where we are now staying is called Bambu Lodge, built by a carpenter and ...
Today was the day were we finally packed up everything into our backpacks and our small duffel bag to take down to the Amazon tomorrow morning. But first, there was an important thing to do before we left: go to the chocolate museum and make our own chocolate. At the chocolate museum, we learned about the different stages of chocolate from bean to bar. There are three main different types of bean. Two are grown in South America, one in Africa. In Africa, the main producers are the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where there are a lot of beans grown. In South ...
Pronounced ‘sexy woman,’ Saqsaywaman is an Incan fortress overlooking the Incan city of Cusco. We did not go into the fortress because of the admission cost, but we did climb up and see the white Christ that is lit up at night and overlooks the city. It was a long ways up, and looking down over the city, we realized that the city ended very abruptly. There is the main square, a small suburb, and then…nothing. The rolling fields of green, separated from time to time with sprinklings of dark green trees, went on forever over and beside the hills ...
That is what we are hoping to see on our 7-day tour in the Amazon basin starting on Monday. We went to the office of the tour company this morning to be briefed on our physical fitness and to sign that we will not hold the company accountable if we get injured or killed. Another thing that we did during our interview was try on rubber boots. When we finished with all of that, we went to the Plaza de Armas. From there, we went up the hill to our hostel and I worked on schoolwork for a long, long ...
Breaking rocks is hard. We as modern day humans are still are astonished by how the Incas could put rocks together seamlessly without mortar to survive for hundreds of years. One of the methods of cutting the rock was pounding it with harder rocks, while another was drilling holes, putting in sticks, and then soaking the wood to make it expand and crack the rock. The moved the rocks from the quarry 50 km away using wooden rollers to go across a river and up the hill. Using alpaca and straw ropes, the dragged the rocks up the ramps. There is ...
Some people call the fountain in the ancient city of Machu Picchu the ‘Fountain of Eternal Life,’ but now, it is dirty and there is not enough oxygen in the water, so it is now the fountain of eternal diarrhea. We did not partake of that water, though we did see it a lot. We left Aguas Calientes this morning and rode the bus up to Machu Picchu. At Machu Picchu, we immediately went across the city to the trailhead for Waynapicchu. We walked up and down and then up some more, gripping the steel cables tightly when needed, before ...
Well good morning Ethan. Are you warm yet? The high here today will be 63 with showers. By the end of next week it will finally be almost warm here. Did you enjoy your flight? Laters, Love Grandma
It’s pretty warm here ( as in I sweat when I stay outside for 10 minutes) and the flights were long and very annoying
Good Morning Ethan. Your body will adjust to the heat. Give it time.
Be very vigulant while there. The pick pockets are very good at what they do!
Its in the 50’s here this morning and raining.
I would like some of you heat. Love you
I would gladly trade this weather for your weather, because I prefer cold to warm. Also, we have not gotten pickpocketed yet, so that is good.
Good Morning Ethan. Sorry we wern’t home yesterday to take your call. We went to the Rodeo to watch Bull Riding. The sun was strong so was pretty hot because we went early so we could get a parking place close in the handicapped area. There was one bull that was full of trouble. He’d dump his rider fast and then run to the other end of the arena. Three guys on horseback were susposed to push him back to the open gate that he was suposed to go through. But instead the bull chased the horses and anybody too close to the fence. He was having a lot of fun. Finally they let a big black bull in to have a talk to the unruly one and lead him out the gate. A couple minutes of excitement.
On the 4th of July we went to the Island Park in Springfield. Again we went early for close up parking. We acheived that but I was ready to go home by 7 pm! Fireworks don’t start ’til 10 pm. We stayed. Luckily I brought a book to read and my puzzle book! It was cold too after the sun went down.
Summer arrived on Thursday. Todays in the mid 80’s tomorrow in low 90’s.
I’m glad you’re having a good time and seeing and experiencing a lot of different things. Sounds like a place much different then you’re used to. ENJOY!!!!
Love You and Eyrn
Grandma
Hey all the food sounds sooooooo good im camping right now but when i get home for I am going to try to mango banna pancakes. Yum
Our thermometer says that it is 102 degrees farenheit, so we are staying inside……
Sounds like you had a lot of fun at the Rodeo. Did you like the fireworks?
Ethan
Thats really neat that you get to go to another country. Is that because you are waiting for the visa to India? You said the food was better. Why is it better? Oh what fun! Love you
I’m sure glad you enjoyed holding that cobra. He looks kinda harmless!! Glad you were careful tho.
We’re having summer today. 98 or 99 degrees. Its to start cooling down tomorrow. I had forgotton how hot this really was!
Grandpa is having a grand time in California. Today he’s enjoying Tony and Jack. Well Brittany too and the rest of them. They were getting ready to go swimming.
I went and had lunch with Barbara at the Stage Coach Restaurant. Too warm to do much. Thought of going to the beach today. Its actually nice there today.
Love You All.
Grandma
I think the cobra was harmless because I heard one of the handlers talk about the cobras not having fangs. It sounds like it is hotter there than here, but soon we will be in the desert where it will be over 100 every day.
Ethan