Catching up in San Marcos

This is a typical house in the pueblo...we buy health liquors here as well as things I can't pronounce or spell.

This is the playground in the Plaza del Pueblo with the Sierras in the background.  This must be during siesta time since usually there are lots of children.

Another cool car....

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This is a bus stop in a nearby town of Rincon

This is a common site...sometimes they have a cart. 

The tourist information booth as you come into town.

A rare bird.

The San Marcos River in the canyon west of the town.

Nate's new passion, the alto sax made from a gourd and bamboo.  The sound is amazing.

Another picture of the playground...

Wacky Stuff

Argentina is where old Ford Fairlanes go to be restored.  They are everywhere.

Yes, There is a Hippie Museum and this is what you can expect to find there.

The first completed wall of vina paz.

Nate's message in a bottle.

Steady...steady....

San Marcos' own Hippie Museum

Pizza oven design-built at Shambala Farm.  It's grrrrrrrreat!

The Land of Meat and Honey

Ok, Ok, I don't have any pictures right now.  That's because Dan and Nate are off exploring a permaculture farm near here with the camera and I'm at our current residence nursing a cold.  Where is here?  The land of meat and honey...San Marcos, Argentina.  This town was the last stop on our bus ride from Cordoba.  We went through numerous cute towns and I couldn't wait to see what San Marcos was going to look like.  All of a sudden, the paved road stops and dirt road begins, lined with trees and a small craft show, we'd arrived in hippyville.

It's been known as a hippy town since the 70's, in fact we went to the Hippy Museum yesterday and had an amazing tour of a small, handbuilt cottage that housed very well loved 60's and 70's roll and rock memorabilia.  Yes, that's roll and rock. Most of the memorabilia was from Latin American folk artists, which I didn't recognize and a couple of old Beatles albums, with ragged edges mounted behind plexiglass.  We learned about where the peace sign came from and looked at display cases housing pieces of the Berlin Wall and jewelry from the good ol days.

Out behind the little hut was an enormous wall of wine bottles, each with a hand written note inside. Each carefully siliconed and then cemented in place to form a large peace sign from the green and clear glass. Nate filled out his note and stuck it in the bottle, placed it on top of the wall and went off to do another.  He had a lot to say.  The note is our communication to future generations, our message in a bottle.

Back in town we ate our first vegetables, other than potatoes, since we left Buenos Aires.  Most of the food is local and organic.  San Marcos is located in a nuclear free zone and also a GMO and pesticide free zone.  Fantastic!  They are also known for their incredible honey.  The stores are lined with it and most people here make their own honey.  Their other export is olives, which are delightful!

If you want to open a business where you barely have to show up, here's your place.  Shops open sometime about 9 or 10, close around 1pm and reopen sometime around 5 or 6pm.  Siesta is serious business here. 

It is winter here now, so tourism is low.  We basically have the town to ourselves and our choice of bungalows to live in.  Given the sheer amount of rentals, it must get really busy here in the summer.  The two rivers that are close by are mostly dry now, but evidence shows by the steeply arched bridge, that it must get pretty high come rainy season.  But right now it's sunny and in the 60's during the day and in the high 50's at night.

It's past siesta time, so I must sign off.  I think that's a rule here.

Ahhh, beautiful Buenos Aires.

Parrilla ...for....3?

     As we are about to land in Argentina, Nate looks out the airplane window and says..."It looks like Pennsylvania."  He couldn't have been referring to the flat landscape so I had to probe deeper.  It was the houses, perfectly placed along orderly paved streets by highways with signs and traffic that seemed to stay in their respective lanes.  So different than what we'd gotten use to in Peru. 
     Buenos Aires reminds me of so many different cities rolled into one.  Beautiful architecture, lots of shopping and cafes, quaint neighborhoods, fantastic food and wine, subways and bars that never seem to close and amazingly affordable.  I wouldn't say it's the polar opposite of Peru, but more like the prince and the pauper, brothers separated at birth, even speaking differently.
     We've had some great meals...with vegetables...green ones...hard to find in Peru or dangerous to actually eat.  Here we took a picture of the grilled meat from our neighbors table.  This was after they'd finished a good portion of it.  They eat a lot of meat here!  And it's tasty!  The wine has been great and sometimes the same price as a bottle of water con gas.  For breakfast we have croissants with butter and dulce de leche which is a creamy, thick caramel that I can't stop myself from licking off the plate. 
     We will most likely leave here tomorrow for Cordoba and then, if there's time, down to Patagonia.   Another 10 hour bus ride that will show us the interior of the country.   I love to see the city but quickly want to get out into more open spaces and see life in the small towns.  Buenos Aires doesn't have many green spaces, in fact according to the tourista map, they call either side of the train tracks a green space.  We will look for a park today and let Nate run off some excess energy. 
     There's been no decision yet about returning mid-June, we'll see how things progress here.  I hope you are all well and eating your seaweed.  I miss you all.
Jenny
    

Drying Coffee -Road to Tarapoto

Sea of Moto-Taxis.  Sounds like being in the center of a beehive.

Gocta and other Falls after a rain in Cocachimba. You can see that the falls are in two parts.  If they were just one, it would be the 3rd tallest waterfall in the world.

Almost at the base of the Gocta Falls

The Chachapoyas Fortress of Kuelap

Hidden bones in the walls of Kuelap.  Friend or Foe? Hmmm.

Every house had its own Guinea Pig runs.  Keep your food close!

A view of the falls from our balcony.

With the exception of after a rain, Gocta's waterfall just becomes mist at the bottom.  This mist is what kept villagers from ever visiting the falls thinking an evil Mermaid lived at that base.  Discovered by a German hiker in only 2006, it's now the 16th tallest waterfall in the world.

Reconstruction of a typical circular house in Kuelap.  The Chachapoyas built circles as opposed to the Inca rectangles.

The Fortress is thousands of years old and has housed many different civilizations and used for many different reasons until the Spanish banned living at such high altitudes.

Nate at Kuelap overlooking the crazy road to get there. Directly opposite Nate, on that road, is about 1.5-2 hours away by car. Two minutes by hang glider. Kuelap sits up 2600 meter high, approx.

Nate's Picture of Turkey Lurky

The stairs of Kuelap. Enemy soldiers would have to stand on another's back to get up the tall steps and as they did, they got picked off one by one allowing the fortress to be defended by only a handful of warriors.

Pressing Sugar Cane.  The juice comes out quite brown.

Nate's Picture of Tortoise

 Yeh, that's the stinger!  Leaves a welt like being hit with a baseball.  Nate kept two as pets...don't want to talk about it....

 Hike to glacier at the base of Nevado Huandoy, second highest mountain in the Cordillera Blanca Range at 6395m....but you start the hike at almost 4k meters.  Nate is hiking with Aisa, a girl from Lima that we met at the Lodge.

 Nate took this picture.  He says he fits more in on the diagonal.

 Bridging the gap in the trail.

 This is Charlie, the owner of Llanganuco Lodge and a great hiking guide!

 You can see Nevado Huandoy in the background.  This is the lake and pre-Inca ruins located just behind the lodge. You can also see the trail, just above Dan's head, that leads to the glacier.

 This picture does the mountain no justice.

 Here we are in Huanchaco after an 8 hour overnight bus.  Nate loves this game of tide tag.

 Reed boats still used by fishermen for thousands of years and also called caballitos de tortora (little horses). They only last a few months and then they need to make a new one.

 Nate fishing off the pier with line, two hooks and some sand crabs as bait.

 Don't worry....we threw this little guy back.  Most of the others on the pier kept them, however.

The tortoise and the hair.