Five sunsets....

We´ve been in Peru for just over a week now...

This will be my first blog post, just so you all know, my writing style is much less colorful than Tony´s...so bare with me.

Spent the first couple of days in Lima, I was sick...which I`m mostly better from now, just a residual cough and...some ear issues. Last Thursday was tough, spent most of it chilling in our hostel...it`s really hot and humid in Peru, much more so than Chile. Tony made us some potato leek soup in the hostel, while I watched Zodaic in the livingroom. Friday I felt a bit better, so we ventured out into Lima and ended up making a flight reservation for the following day to Tumbes. Had lunch at a krishna restaurant that gave me a massive heap of yummy veggie fried rice. Went to a pretty epic dinner at a place called Las Tejas. For some odd reason (paranoia) we didn´t bring our camera out with us, so there aren´t any photos. My meal consisted of veggies, some potato dumpling thing, yucca fries, fried banana and some crazy corn on the cobb, the kernals were way bigger than what we have in the states and much sweeter, super good. Tony had some fish and veggies. After our meal, we went to see The Watchmen at the movie theater....ummm...yeah, not really sure what to say about that.

Saturday we went to a lunch not really worth mentioning...then caught a cab from our hostel to the Lima airport. Our short flight from Lima to Tumbes was relatively uneventful, aside from the last bit being a bit painful...for me anyway. When we arrived in Tumbes, it was hot, really hot and really humid...and there were these maniacle mosquitos that are truly out for blood. After getting our packs we took a hair raising two hour cab ride to Mancora. About fifteen minutes into the cab ride my right ear finally popped and could really hear....the left one still hasn´t fully recovered. The cab ride was INSANE! I was very relieved when we finally arrived safely in Mancora. We stayed at a Hostel International affiliated place called La Posada, the room was clean and very dark. Woke up on Sunday morning, knowing we wanted to find another place to stay, we went out to find some breakfast grub...the first place we see is called ¨Chill Out¨, we take this as a sign. I must share something and if any wonderful Chileans are reading this, please don´t take offense....Peruvians know how to cook some eggs! With the exception of one fabulous omelette we had at Tinquilco Refugio in Huequehue Parque in Chile, prepared by the owner Patricio, I didn´t have very good egg experiences in Chile, Peru has been an entirely different story. After having a great breakfast we walked along the beach in search of somewhere new to stay, we found a place right next to where all the surfers were catching waves, we negotiated a price and went to fetch our bags. We spent one night here, as it´s a surfers paradise...and not so much for the non-surfer. The beach here is over-run with pushy vendors. The next day after another fantastic breakfast at a place called Green Eggs and Ham, we went to another, (much more secluded), part of the beach, which is reached by a five minute taxi ride from the town of Mancora. We´re now staying at a place called Sunset, it´s a bit more expensive than we typically pay for accomodations ($60 per night), but totally worth it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tonight will be our sixth night at Sunset, we´ve made a point to catch each sunset, each one spectacular and unique. The view from our second story room private balcony is awesome, there´s a very small wading pool outside and supposedly the best restaurant in all of Mancora, which we´ve yet to experience. We have had two lunches at the hotel, Tony had some fried seafood thing which he raved about, I´ve had a couple salads there and some rice, which I believe one of the salads (from Thursday) made me sick. We won´t be having lunch there again. The first sunset we saw in Mancora was exceptional, it´s the one with Tony and I together, there´s no way pictures do it justice, of course, I´m very happy to have had that experience. Mancora has a lot going for it, The beach is amazing, the people are quite friendly and there are good food options. There´s a vegetarian restaurant called Angela´s Place, Angela is an Austrian woman who´s been living in Mancora for eight years, we eat at Angela´s often. The mexican food place in town, El Aji is decent and there are two fancy pants restaurants we´ve been to, one for Tony´s birthday, El Tuno and the other we ate at on Thursday night, Sirena.

As I´m sure many of you know, Tony´s birthday was on Tuesday...in order to make his birthday somehow more special, I woke up in the middle of the previous night and spelled out ¨Happy Birthday Tony¨ in toothpaste on our bathroom mirror. Unfortunately there aren´t any photos of this, as we believed we had to move that morning to another room, Tony quickly wipped it away when the cleaning people arrived...turns out we don´t have to move and get to spend all ten nights at Sunset in the same room. It´s been great getting to put clothes away in closets and not be living out of our packs for awhile. Tony´s birthday was spent much like the other days we´ve had here....relaxing, watching the waves, swimming and then going out to a great meal at El Tuno. Tony had tuna (their specialty) cooked in a fig balsamic reduction, with asparagus, glazed baby carrots and a potato soufle, I had gnocci with pesto. Yep, I tried out eating some wheat...and nothing happened. I´m not going to make a habit of it, I don´t want to push my luck, but it´s nice to know that I can, on occasion, wander into the world of wheat. Baby steps... Tony finished off his dinner with mango cheesecake.

The morning after Tony´s birthday we spent hanging out next to the ocean, reading, listening to music, and generally relaxing in what we thought was a very shady area. Heading into town for lunch, I looked down at my legs and felt betrayed by the coconut trees that I thought were providing us with shade, let´s just say I spent a large portion of the rest of the day with cold compress towels on my legs, they´re still a bit achey, but nothing like I imagined they would be. That same day Tony booked our next and last flight in Peru. We leave Mancora next Thursday, April 2nd, flying to Lima. We´ll be leaving Lima the following day, flying to Cusco, where we´ll spend seven days taking in The Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, flying back to Lima on the 10th. We were hoping to spend more time in The Sacred Valley, but Easter threw a wrench in our plans, turns out it´s a really big deal here and all the flights out Easter weekend or the Monday afterward are either booked or very expensive. So we opted to spend a couple extra days in Lima. We fly out of Lima, back to San Francisco very late on the 14th...we´ll be home on the 15th, after a layover in Miami.

Well that´s all folks...hope all´s well with you all.

love,

melanie and tony.

bye bye Chile.......

We just arrived in Lima this morning, had to say farewell to one of our favorite new countries, but we know we will be back someday. Not too much to report but I figure I would close the Chile chapter in a post so we can focus on Peru.

From Pucon, we ventured out to Parque Nacional Huerquehue (pronounced ´ear-kay-way´) for a 3 day, two night visit. We took the morning bus from Pucon, it was only an hour´s journey, half it down yet another dusty dirt road. The bus was pretty full of hikers heading to the park for a day trip, and along the way we picked up many kids on their way to school in their uniforms. The single person seat in front of us was occupied by a dutch traveler with dirty curly hair and comfortably sleeping with his head rolling about on the seat in front of him. There was a young kid of maybe 5 that was just mortified by this and could not keep his eyes off the wayward traveler. It was quite amusing watching the kid behind his spectacles with a look of shock.

The kids jumped off for school, we really enjoyed the last part of the ride into the park with great views of nearby mountains and volcanoes. We had to hike about a mile into the park with our heavy packs on to reach our refugio. Melanie had a bit of back pain so it was a little difficult but she pulled through like a champion. Refugio Tinquilco was our secluded forest paradise. A beautifully built lodge owned by the boisterous and kind Patricio, and staffed by a mountainous chileano version of Lucille Ball, Ingrid. Ingrid greeted us when we pulled our packs off our sweaty backs and entered the living room area of the well decorated cabin. Old typewriters, paintings, electronics, and photographs lined the walls. Ingrid didn´t speak of word of english, but that didn´t slow her down from talking to us like we were having our hair permed at an 80´s Jersey salon. She is a wildy animated person and the keeper of the refugio. She spends all day, every day, 9 months out of the year (she gets the snowy winter off), cooking and cleaning like a stout Martha Stewart in the woods. They have a great wood fire stove that continuously has a giant kettle of hot water bubbling, and lots of enormous cooking pots and pans for big meals.

She showed us to our room and Melanie rested for a bit before we hit the trails. The popular route for the day trippers is a 3,000ft steep climb up a mountain with a several mile loop trail at the top circling around 3 high altitude lakes. The maps they give for the park are terrible, as well with the overall lack of assistance of the park rangers and information area (we actually didn´t even have a map, they are not available at the park at all, you have to buy one in Pucon). The park doesn´t receive alot of funding despite getting a goog amount of visitors. The trails are poorly marked and apparently hikers getting lost in the woods is not an unusual occurance. We heard all of this from Patricio, I´ll get to his introduction in a bit.

The trail was a butt kicker. Hiking 3 hours straight up can dampen the spirits, but there was rays of sunshiney hope as there were several miradors (lookout points) along the dense forested trail that provided views of the lower volcanic lake near our refugio. At the highest mirador we met some Chileano hikers with a map, we had been jack rabbiting back and forth with along the trail. According to their map, it seemed we were only half way up to the first of the three lakes. I had a feeling that it was incorrect by the amount of time we had hiked and elevation climbed, but it was hard to see the top as the steep trees were blocking the view. The Chileanos opted to head back, I sweetly convinced Melanie through her curses and gritting teeth that we were close, and she agreed to 30 minutes more at the very max. 20 minutes later we arrived to Lago Chico.

The lake was still and stunning. The quiet surrounding the lake and high rocky gorge was deafening. The gorge sprouted up over the edge of the lake like a giant ugly andean potato dropped from the sky. The beat in our feet and rumble in our bellies told us it was enough for the day and headed back home, hiking while the sun started to go down and hoping our knees wouldn´t give out. We happen to witness an ant carrying a dead scorpion, witness the photo!

We made a nice simple meal from the food we hiked in. We were to later find out that Ingrid was upset (fake upset, not genuine upset) for bringing our own food to cook because she wanted to cook for us. Next time, and there will be a next time, we will have ingrid cook for us and not hike 3 days worth of food into the park. Later in the evening we finally met Patricio briefly before going to bed. We had some trouble with his email, as we thought he never responded to our inquiry but it turns out his email had been acting wonky. He thanked us for being persistent and went to bed. Melanie and I had an epic game of dominoes, only Melanie doesn´t really care about games so I was left to scream about it´s insanity (or my own) by myself.

Looks like this post is going to be a little longer than anticipated, oh well, I´m sure we will all get over it.

The next morning we had a breakfast along with strong coffee before venturing out to our hike. Patricio caught up with us on the sheep filled lawn before we embarked. We were going to climb up Mt. Sebastian, or at least go as far as we could, it being the biggest mountain in the area and all. He warned us about the bad marking of trail signs, a person died on the same trail the previous month for underestimating the amount of time it would take and trying to hike down in the dark. Apparently he has been arguing with the rangers for years, they had once posted a sign about a hike to the hot springs in the park being a 3 hour hike, when in actuality it was closer to a 7 hour hike each way. Many people got stuck in the woods without food and shelter, Patricio ended up cutting down the sign.

This Mt. Sebastian trail was barely used, especially in comparison to the lakes trail. It was overgrown with a variety of bamboo that isn´t hollow in the inside and is great to use for buildings. This was a much steeper hike, and the great views didn´t come until we reached a high point clearing, and we had a clear line of sight to the Villaricca volcano which was covered with snow and is where people ski in the winter. Off the trail in the woods we found a set of chairs and a small table carved by a chainsaw. Nice place to picnic and take a rest. There were many arrucanyo (not sure if this is spelled correctly) trees that had many medevil looking spikes and were very cool to look at. You can see Melanie trying to eat one of the branches in the photos, I had to tackle her to keep her away, she was hungry.

Back at the refugio we met a girl from Maine who´s accent made her sound european (I thought she kinda sounded like Dorothy from the wizard of oz, Melanie didn´t hear it). Patricio made us one of his legendary Pisco sours and joined us for cocktail hour. He opened a bottle of wine, then forced Melanie and I to drink straight pisco, a very unexpected event on our last night there. Lot´s of good conversation into the quiet night, the nearby cows didn´t even keep us awake. Did I mention there was tons of cows along the trail?

note - The Bull in the photos is not from Huerquehue, but from the bumpy bike ride. It was right in front of us and we had a brief freak out hoping we didn´t have to hone our matador skills.
Ingrid was in tears as we left, we really wanted to take her with us. She knew one of the fews things we knew how tos say was ¨hola¨, and she would say it to us after being gone for only a minute. Then she would go about the act of talking to herself and making herself laugh while rolling big sheets of dough for bread and meticulously cleaning the wood fire stove.

We took a brief swim in the lake via Patrico´s private trail to the only beach on lake Tinquilco. Back in Pucon we took is easy and tried to hit the sack early for the early flight back to Santiago. Nothing too new to report on the cuisine, I guess I did have some ravioli´s stuffed with apples and blue cheese in a pesto cream sauce. I was told about an atlantic krill empanada which was the reason we tried the restaurant with the ravioli´s, but the empanada was made with a whole wheat dough which didn´t blend well with the rich krill and cheese. Should have brought the tapitio for that meal.

Back in Santiago we were picked up by Joce, our saviour, again from the airport. The four of us (Saulito was with us) went to the really old sky tram thingabob, you know, those things they have at amusement parks that slowly carry you across the park and enable a great view? Yup, just like that, only it´s way up above the city and you can see for miles. Saul was mesmerized, he was so busy staring he would blindly bite his giant cookie.

The following day Melanie and I got another good walk around the city, stopping at the big library, Santa Lucia, and got to visit a cafe con piernas. That night I made a typical Tony meal for Joce, Ari, and thier two friends. Coconut green curry with veggies, spicy fat noodles with egg and peanuts, buttery garlic mushrooms, coconut butternut squash soup, and Joce talked me into cooking baby octopus for the first time.

We went to bed and watched 24, did I mention Melanie and I are now hooked on this tv show? A great way to spend time in between Peru planning and packing.

On our last night in Santiago, Ari took us out to a really good meal at the best Indian restaurant in town. We hadn´t had Indian food in over a month and were dying to sink our teeth into some spicy Indian goodness. I got to have Indian style conger, which would be my last conger dish for hopefully not too long. I do love that fish-eel. Our hosts had really been wonderful, and they really made it easy to have as a home base in between locations with such great hospitality. We love Chile, if you didn´t already guess.

We flew into Lima this morning, and we yet to have any concrete plans. We know what we want to do, basically two weeks at a beach up north and two weeks around Cuzco and Machhu Pichhuu. The gist of our conundrum is that the better time to go to Cuzco would be at the end of our trip because there would be less rain. On the other hand, it would be much nicer to end our trip with two weeks at the beach. Thats the gist, there are other little details that don´t seem like much but do add up. Melanie just became sick as of yesterday, her throat is sore and feels pretty down. Taking a bus or flying to an extremely high altitude somewhere is not sounding good. Hopefully we will know more by tomorrow, and be assured that I will have heapfuls of fish in my belly, as the cuisine portion of this trip is about to summit. First meal today, which seemed like a touristy place and was not expecting much more than nutrients, had some great shrimp risotto with marinated red onions and pepers on top. Melanie had some spicy lentils and basmati rice cooked in raisins and arabic spices, yummy. Tommorrow we go ceviching!

Hope all is well back home

T&M inc.

Yo Quiero Comer........

Whew! It´s been a little too long and I´ve got a little too much to report. Hoping to avoid some finger cramping on this post, I will attempt some mild hand yoga and hopefully all will be fine.

Let´s see, well, we left Punta Arenas and arrived late last Tuesday in Santiago. Brandon and Annie had arrived earlier in the day and took a bus to Valparaiso. We meet our new good friend Jocelyn and her husband Ari. These two extremely nice people picked us up from the airport at 10 even though they had to wake up early for work. They live in the Santiago hills and have a great house near a creek and lots of countryside to view, it does not feel like you are in a big city at all. Ari had to take their two year old son Saul (hopefully I´m spelling that right) to school in the morning, and would be back at their house around 11 to leave for work downtown and could give us a ride. Compared to our last time in Santiago, we took a very extended walk around the neighborhoods and got alot accomplished, completing alot of errands. I stupidly left our copy of the Peru guidebook on our plane ride down south and it needed to be replaced. Luckily we found a copy (paid double what we would in the states but it´s worth it), and I had a lovely visit to the Mercado Central. I say ¨I¨ because it is mainly a fish market, and Melanie was plugging her nose from the strong stench and visual feast of fishies. There were dozens of restaurants in between vendors, all had aggressive salesmen at the front of each establishment, doing all they could to get your business. I found a nice non-touristy place and ordered a small bottle of chilled wine for us. Our waiter was talking fast, looking to get our order in so he could get back to attacking the aisles for more potential customers. He recommended something, I said yes and I´m still not sure exactly what it was. I can say that it was one of the best pieces of fish I´ve ever had (I should also mention early in this post that there are more ¨best of´s¨ coming in this long winded post, and my taste buds have been hula-hooping in ecstasy). It may have been a tuna steak but seemed a little different. The texture was perfect, and it was served with a little bit of browned butter and salt. I could have kissed my waiter but his modern jheri-curl was dripping and I didn´t want to ruin the flavor that was still in my mouth. After we found a vegetarian restaurant for Melanie, food was decent, good enough to return in a pinch. The restaurant had been around for roughly 80 years, which is the oldest vegetarian restaurant we´ve ever encountered.

We meet up with Ari who had our bags in his car at work and he dropped us at the metro station. We caught a late bus to Valpo and called ahead to have the hostel let B&A know that we would bed a little late but still wanted to do dinner with them. Jocelyn and Ari happened to have an extra cell phone and lent it to us for our Chilean portion of the trip, score! Definitely has been very handy so far.

We arrived in Valparaiso and took a taxi up some very windy roads on the way to our hostel. The town is very reminiscent of a coastal Italian town, only with more variety in culture and an open art scene that is both beautiful and has a hair of squalor. The combination makes the city unique and worth visiting. After several near death experiences in the taxi, and him cursing out some would-be horrible drivers, we made it safely to our temporary place of rest. We were greeted by their adorable staff, they sat us in their living room and chatted with us for thirty minutes about the town and some other juicy stuff. Brandon and Annie arrived, and even though it had been less than 24 hours since we saw them, it was a welcome reunion. We were only going to have a few more nights together and we wanted to make the best of it while we could. There were several restaurants we wanted to try but many were closed (not really sure why either). We hit the streets, gallivanting downhill and taking in all the art painted on the buildings. After lots of ¨ooohhing¨and ¨aaahhhhing¨ we found an old timey restaurant at the bottom of the hill, the name was good enough convince me.

We entered Cinzano (yup, just like the drink, and the logo was exactly the same, and no they are not owned by them) and it was like entering a Chilean time machine. Lot´s of antique furniture, old black and white photos plastered the walls in between small animal heads and other figurines, a small cloud of smoke traipsed along the ceiling, and the music coming from the back of the cavernous room was tickling my ears. There was a small trio hammering out old Chileano folk tunes. We couldn´t see the piano or guitar player, but the women in her mid-fifties was belching out some latin goodness as we planted ourselves at a table in the rear. Our waiter was very kind, and luckily the advanced spanish student Annie helped us navigate our food order over the loud music. We arrived at a good time, the place filled up soon after we arrived. The food was decent, nothing to write home about (I suppose that is a bad metaphor since I am technically writing home about it right now), but I can say for the record that this is the first time I had my new favorite fish. It´s called Congrio aka conger and is pretty much like an eel. For visual enhancement, look here.

http://pescabenaluense.es/Images/Congrio/congrio3.jpg

It tastes pretty similar to cod, but is generally thicker and fatter. Pablo Neruda´s favorite dish is a Conger soup, I haven´t tried it yet but I hope to do so before we leave the country. I order it every time it´s on the menu and people here love it deep fried. We started a conversation with the table next to ours, two guys and a woman eating a pile of char-broiled sausages and steaks that was served over a small bed of flaming coals to keep it warm. They spoke some english and we some spanish, after several pisco sours and two bottles of wine you´d have thought we were best friends. They taught me a very important phrase, forgive me if my spelling is totally incorrect as I am an ignorant gringo, ¨bakativa de la casa¨, which effectivly means the ¨house¨ will give you a free digestive after a large meal. After practicing several times with our admiring teachers, I conjured up the courage to ask the waiter and it worked!

We slept in till at least noon and had a great breakfast of fresh fruit and home-made bread at our hostel. They even had real coffee rather than the norm which is Nescafe. Several games of cribbage and three large beers later (Brandon and I finally got some good cribbage time in), we hit the streets for a daylight walk around the city. We walked to the opèn air museum, which is pretty much like a barrio within a barrio with exceptional art and cobblestone streets. We walked all the way to the bottom of the hill and then hired a boat to drive us around the bay. The view was stellar from the water, and we got a close up and personal look at the massive cargo ships and navy boats parked off the coast some ways.

We walked up the steep roads to our hostel, stopping by a small mercado for some dinner groceries and a cheese empanada to hold us over. We had a simple risotto with lots of zucchini and a heaping pile of basil. Oh, I forgot to mention that we stopped by a an outdoor vegetable market earlier in the day, mostly uneventful except the really tan and hairy guy working the corner while blaring Bob Dylan said Brandon and I looked like the beach boys.

We went to bed early so we could wake up and rent a car. We headed north along the coast, our plan was to hit up one of the small sleepy beach towns which promised less people and cheap accommodations for a beach cabana. We landed in Maitencillo (I´m pretty sure I got this name wrong, please don´t quote me), and it had everything we were looking for. We found a nice little two bedroom place with a kitchen and a patio with view, and it was less than a 5 minute walk to the beach. The waves were roaring and perfect, the sand was soft in our toes, and guacamole never tasted so good while being kissed by the sunshine. The fierce cribbage action continued, I ended up beating Brandon 6-2 with alternating dealers (for those who care). We had leftover risotto with avocado and hard boiled eggs for lunch, sounds gross but believe me it was awesome at the time. I´m not sure if I mentioned our Tapitio situation, but Brandon and Annie had an extra water bottle full of Tapitio for us and we´ve been ravaging through it. You can see the bottle in some of the photos, bare in mind that the bottle was full just a few days before, I will continue to post updates on the situation as it is dire. We´re hoping that we won´t need it as much in Peru as they tend to eat spicier food in general.

We drank pisco and watched the sunset, our balcony providing excellent views. We cooked up a feast, shrimp cocktail with avocado and home-made sauce from Annie (we went through 4 avocados in our one day at the beach), Roasted taters with corn (notice the gigantic corn I´m playing with in the photo) in a peanut chili sauce, and refried beans made of fresh purplish beans we got from the Bob Dylan produce dude, and the first tortillas we´ve had in weeks. We played cards late into the night, it was our last night together (potentially, B&A might rejoin us in Peru if they are smart) and it was very special.

It was hard to leave the beach house the following day, we could have easily spent another week there doing nothing but cooking food and having some serious beach time. We drove back south around 1pm, we were meeting up with Ari and Joce in Vina Del Mar where we would be getting dropped off to stay with them for several nights. Brandon and Annie joined the group for lunch before heading back to Santiago. We were joined also by Ari´s parents and Saulito, and I got my second helping of conger served fried with slices of lemon. Ari let me try his plate of Macha, which is mussels that had their shells removed and then cooked in white wine, cream, and cheese. We said our goodbyes to B&A, the headed to Ari´s parents beachside apartment on the 17th floor. The apartment was immaculate, and had more great views of the beach and Valparaiso in the distance. Ari, Saul and I left the girls at the pool to try and attend a nearby soccer time, which had a big team from Santiago and the local team in Valparaiso. It was going to be Saul´s first soccer game ever (mine too for that matter) and he is mad about the sport. The game ended up being sold out which was a bummer, we could hear the crowd a mile away from the stadium of 10,000 going crazy after the first goal.

Later in the evening just the two couples went out to dinner in Valparaiso. Caruso´s ended up being one of the best meals I´ve ever had, and the cuisine was Peruvian influenced. We started off with some mixed seafood empanadas along with some type of raw fish with maybe a spicy saffron something or other sauce on it, damn good. The mouth watering entree was a type of strudel, a puff pastry wrapped around a giant serving up crab meat, nestled on top of a bed of sauteed spinach and lightly covered with hollandaise. The picture above does not do it justice.

Ari had to leave with his parents the following day, leaving Joce, Saul, Melanie, and I all by ourselves. We spent most of the day walking around the beach front, I had a had a fresh churro stuffed with dulce de leche. We talked until the sunset and went to bed early. The following day on the way back to Santiago we stopped and did a wine tour at a beautiful winery that was built over looking the casablanca valley. They were in the middle of harvest, and the smell was strong all around. The wine was decent, we grabbed a bottle to bring with us on our next leg of the trip. It really is too bad we can´t bring home a few cases with us, some extraordinary wines down here.

We drove back to Santiago and chatted, Melanie and I barely able to keep our eyes open after the wine tasting and the sleepy afternoon. Back at their house we got a chance to regroup, repack, and rethink our remaining days here in Chile. Ari and Joce highly recommended the City of Pucon as a great place to visit. We had a great meal with them at their house, it was great to have something home-cooked after eating out so many meals. We had some simple fish, veggies, mashed potatoes, and some great habanero hot sauce out of Ari´s stash. We tried some delicious little fruits that were green, very seedy, tasted very melon like, and no I can´t remember the name. Then we had some great ice cream, chocolate with fudge and another kind with a type of fruit that was delicious and has a name that I can´t remember either.

We caught a flight down to Temuco, then took a few hour bus ride out to Pucon. Had a brief layover in another town, we got off the bus and thought we were in the right spot, nope. Pucon is a great little town, looks alot like tahoe, very cabin like and lots of little shops. It sits right next to a large lake, and there is a gigantic active volcano that casts a shadow over the town, the perpetual smolder is omnipresent and creepy. But since we are close to a volcano, there are over 20 different hot springs around here, hopefully we will get a chance before we leave, our time seems to be disappearing rather quickly and we still have alot of Peru planning to do. Tomorrow we leave for a two night stay in Huerquehue national park. Lots of hiking to be done, only right now we are recovering from a 10 mile bike ride earlier this afternoon. It was epic in both beauty and butt pain. We got to a very private part of the lake that was great for a relaxing dip along the black sand beach, little chickens from a nearby ranch danced around us while we had a snack. The road was unforgivable bumpy, the rental moutain bikes were awesome and definitely helped us get there and back in one piece, only one of our pieces feels like it needs to be soaked in thermal water for several hours. We´ll have to settle for beer and nachos for the time being.

Whew! Didn´t think I was going to make it through that one. I´ve been having to split these suckers up in two days as it is quite the time sucker. Thankfully our hostel has beer on tap and happened to play some Parliment while I´m writing this.

Keep your fingers crossed for us dear readers, tonight we have to buy groceries, buy two plane tickets (on a peruvian website that has beeen giving us challenges), pack our bags, and feed ourselves within the next 70 minutes so the stores don´t close and we can get enough sleep to catch our early morning bus to the park. Gotta ask ourselves in this situation, what would George Clinton do?

-T&M

p.s. check out the Yerba Mate section at the grocery store, intense!