I´M ON A BOAT! (well, a bus first, then a boat)

Since our last post, we spent a day hanging out in Arequipa nursing our altitude sickness and doing laundry at our hostel. Doing laundry included buying a giant bar of soap from the market, washing our clothes in the giant sinks on the roof (little house on the Praire status Mel!) and then hanging them to dry. All in all, a pretty sweet operation, we hope to find more sweet set ups like that one along the way. We are also very thankful for pepto bismol....we´ll leave it at that....

The next morning we hopped on a 6 hour bus ride to Puno. We totally scored these cheap seats in the back of the bus with extra storage and reclining seats...very nice! The 6 hour ride was nice, eventful with some unscheduled stops and random performances by bus passengers.. Ok, lets be real, Jo still can´t sit still at ALL! Aly would like to say ¨Thanks mom, for the long car rides growing up, they have made me a professional bus rider!¨

Upon arrival to Puno, we met up with some fellow travelers from Australia and San Fransisco that had been on the same bus as us. We shared a cab and went hostel searching. We ended up finding an awesome hostel that serves pancakes in the morning (a big selling point for us) and looks deceptively horrible from the outside. However, it´s really cute and awesome....also currently sponsoring this blog! Ambre, our cool new San Fransiscan friend came with us to the hostel.

Yesterday and today we took a boat ride to Uros and Amantani Island on Lake Titcaca. Uros Island was pretty awesome. The people make the islands themselves out of reads that grow on the lake. They call them the floating islands, because when all the reads are attached they do just chill in the water and float around! After we went to Uros, we went back on the boat for another 3 hours to Amantani Island. We were hosted by a super cute family, including a four year old that we LOVE, Ihon (Ee-o). We did spend a lot of time playing crazy games with him!

TOday, after leaving the island, we experienced some intense waves and our boat was a rockin´. The rocking was only intesified when our boat broke down for about half an hour. the waves were almost splashing us, so we decided to climb up to the top of the boat.... about 30 seconds later, we realized this was a horrible idea as the boat was rocking even harder up there. We then proceeded to army crawl across the roof and back down the ladder to safety. Some other passengers thought we were crying, but really it was cackling laughter. No cause for alarm.

We are back in Puno now, and have decided to stay one more night to go to a festival tomorrow. Apparently there is a lot of dancing in the streets... needless to say, we are pretty stoked!

On Monday, we plan to take a bus to Bolivia, and begin a whole other adventure there!

Until Next Time,

Aly and Jo

p.s. love and miss you all!

You might feel a Little Dizzy but that is just normal... try and sleep on the Bus.

"You might feel a Little Dizzy but that is just normal... try and sleep on the Bus." When we first heard this phrase two things came to mind 1. Are they joking? 2. What is going to happen to us? Well as it turns out when you have lived your whole life at sea level you really have no chane in the Andes! So we traveled to the largest Canyon in the world and saw some pretty amazing things!

We started our travels by getting on a bus at 7:40am (which is not our earliest departure to date but still pretty early.) When we started to pick up other passengers we quickly realized we would be speaking five different languages. Most of the people on our bus were pretty cool, some not so cool. We got to hangout with a family from Cusco, who said they would hook us up with a hostel when we got there. They were seriously awesome... we called them our family and took a few pictures with them (which will soon be up as soon as we learn how to put them online.) We also got to chill with this really cool life traveler from Switzerland. She even gave us her leftover sandwiches because we were too cheap and sick to pay for a fancy lunch... we will talk about that more in a sec. So we had a pretty cool bus of peeps and an awesome tour guide, hollar at LEO!

Alright so back to living at Sea level your whole life... ummm you can´t breathe in the Andes and or feel like crap for a while when you first get there. Jo as we started to ascend started to decline in health, but pulled through in a few hours. Due to our cheapness and feeling sick we even sat out in the rain during a fancy buffet lunch because the smell of food made Jo want to puke!

After Jo slept it off we walked around the coolest or "lo maximo" town we have been to as of now, CHIVAY. It is so cute and people still do agriculture bartering. We walked around bartered a little ourselves and now are proud owners of an Alpaca beanie (Jo) and an Alpaca scarf (Aly). We will have to post pictures so you can truely understand the awesomeness that is Chivay.

Later that night we met back up with our bus homies and went out for a little dinner, music and dancing. The place was hopping and we tried Alpaca steak for the first time, which may we say is delicious. Thank you little Alpacas for being so cute and so good to eat! There was a really cool band and dancers that performed traditional music and dance. In the end we couldn´t help ourselves and ended up on the dance floor raising the roof and thunder clapping. All in all freestyle was encouraged and we had a great time.

Though we were tired from dancing the next morning we got up at 5:30 am to have a little bite to eat and then go see the Canyon of Colca and Condors. The Canyon was absolutely beautiful as were the villages and people surrounding it. We hiked for about an hour and Aly experienced Asthma. I, Aly , can honestly say I have never been so scared of passing out in my life! I could not get a full breathe of air... Jo said she would carry me up the mountain and I thought she was going to have to. Luckily we both made it and say four condors today. Which checked one item off Jo's bucket list. It was amazing to see them in real life. We had an awesome day in the Canyon!

On the way back we admired our new favorite animal Vicunas. They look like they would be friends with the Brown Barbaloots from the Lorax. They are so adorable, kind of a mix between a baby deer and Llama(which we also saw and took pictures with). Get excited we will have photos up soon!

Okay so we are off on an adventure of itself to find food that is not delicious street food that will tempt us and make us sick, the temptation is becoming too much no promises! Love you all! Adventure is out there!

P.S. Brian Crater no bugs yet but we are still freaking out about them thanks... say hi to the mountain for us!

Taxis,Hostels, and Parks

So, it´s only been two days since our last post, but so much has happened to us!!



We made it to our hostel in Miraflores after a crazy taxi ride through the city. Everyone drives like it´s their own road here, and we quickly learnt that pedestrians better watch themselves! Our taxi driver was super nice and played American music for us...even "Party in the USA". (Shoutout to Braidy).



Once we made it to our hostel, we decided to walk around the city. We went to the beach, a park with all of these cool bull sculptures and some markets. When we got back to our hostel, we were serenaded by our host Omero, turns out music is a great way to hang out without needing to know a lot of spanish! Luckily, almost everyone could speak a little english and also help us with our spanish... which, we are proud to report is getting better by the day! Also, we taught them a very important word in english...awesome. Roughly tranlated to ¨lo maximo¨ en espanol. The folks at our hostel were interesting, we met a Brazilian doctor, two swedish backpackers, Italian students, and Argentinians on vacation. They were all really lo maximo. They gave us really good travleing advice (We think we are now going to volunteer in an animal reserve in Bolivia there might be Pumas there, that´s Aijah booya) and it was fun listening to music and hanging out on the porch with the evening noise of the city in the background. Let´s just say..... that night we didnt get a lot of sleep....sharing a room with 6 guys was eventful...not sure how we ended up there.. oh the life of a CHEAP hosteler...haha (don´t worry moms¨;))



The next day we took the longest bus ride to date....16 hours to Arequipa, which is where we are now. The bus was actually really fun. While waiting we met the nicest guy ever in this park. We (aka Jo) talked to him for a good fifteen minutes in Spanish.. holla! While Aly stared and smiled... but still looked good doing it! We also shared a pastel de manzana with one of our new friends on the bus. Everyone has been so nice to us here, and we quickly learnt that smiling and making friends, regardless of our lack of spanish skills goes a long way.



We managed to sleep on the bus pretty well.... (aka Aly) Jo on the other hand is not very good at staying still for 16 hours.... woops my bad. !! Aly has promised me benadryl for the next ride though. We hghly recommend CIAL to anyone who travels across SA! They are the bomb. We also got food...which was AWESOME and delicious... including this sweet pudding stuff that we... I mean Jo, couldn´t stop eating.



Today upon our arrival in Arequipa, we took a taxi (don´t worry D, he was super friendly), also for a much lower price, we are learning! OUr hostel, is super cute, colorful, and definitely more chill then the previous one we stayed at. The roof is awesome, and we plan on hanging out there later tonight. Everything is so extreme and beautiful in the city, it´s awesome. We saw lots of churches today and amazing architecture. We spent some time in the city center and watched kids feed pigeons. Also, we went to another park and watched some of the best street performers ever. Sometimes people think that violence is funny....especially in the park. I guess slapstick comedy is the best comparison. We also met a new friend named Johnny who showed us around the park and told us he has dreams of coming to the states.



We love it here so far. Tomorrow we are going to travel to Colca Canyon which is the largest canyon in the world, take that grand canyon! We will be spending one night in this little town called Chivay and then trek to a volcanoe the following day. We are super excited to see what Colca has to offer! We will for sure report back on Colca and trekking (which Jo is super excited for and Aly has decided due to the altitude Jo may have to carry her or rent a mule!)



We love you Guys and know we are loved! Thanks for reading our blogging and checking in on our travels! Until then Adventure is out there! Hasta Luego!

Cowboys,Christians and Ivos

So we started our journey at 5:30 am pacific standard time when we left Downey (woot woot) Shout out to hoops thanks for the ride! From there we got on a plane to Houston. When we landed in Houston we already felt like we were in another country, people seriously wear cowboy hats! When we got off the plane we immediately smelt Barbeque and knew that we had to have it, so we left our gate in search for delicious food! As we sat and ate our barbeque and Wendy´s frosties We said goodbye to the USA!

At our gate we meet our first South American boyfriend Ivos. He is a rock climber from Chile and offered to give us a discounted price on Andes mountain tours if we were in the area. Just thought you all should know... Don´t worry Moms we aren´t going to marry anyone in South America, but we might come back to visit a few! So there you have it we still got it!

Our next and final Layover was in Panama. P.S. Panama was like LAX but with a little more Spanish. As we boarded the plane for the last time we quickly realized that the seats were much smaller and wished we hadn´t eaten everything given to us on the flights and Texas barbeque! Hopefully by the end of our trip we will be able to fit in the seats thanks to some friendly parasites. So after an uncomfortable four hours we landed in Lima Peru.

So as we walked through customs and got our passports stamped we realized we had made it! The Lima airport was crowded with people and our original plan to just sleep on the ground was quickly kabashed by our fears of being kidnapped! As we looked down at the crowd we say some obvious fellow Americans and thought hey maybe they can direct us in the right direction and they did. The group we came across was a group of missionaries from the midwest going to a remote part of the Jungle to give medical care. They were so awesome! They let us hangout with them in the airport and even let us ride on the fancy tour bus to a little beauty of a hotel The Hotel Manhattan, which is an airport hotel. They were seriously a blessing! Thankyou Sandy and Beth if you ever get the chance to read this, you are both amazing!

Now we our sitting in our little jem of a hotel on the lobby computer with empty bellies since we slept through our free breakfast, but all in all we are happy and ready to find a cheaper place to Stay in Miraflores for the night. We miss you all already! Moms we love you, don´t worry we are safe and smart and friendly which is a great combo! Until next time Adventure is out there!