It has been a coon's age since I have had the time to write anything in the blog. Long overdue for an update I think.
Where did I leave off? Oh yeah, all the way back in Colombia almost a month ago now. Well, the last few days of the trip were pretty sweet, except for being deathly ill for a few nights. Cartagena, although really, really hot, was an amazing city. The architecture there was some of the coolest I have seen. Glenn and I only had a half of a day there, but I would venture back for a week or more if I could. It was a great mix of old world with new city. It was a little (ok lets be honest a LOT) hot, but definitely manageable. We stayed at one of the nicest hostels that I have stayed at anywhere. Luckily, we splurged the extra dollar for an air conditioned room. That night I unfortunately felt Montezuma's wrath, but not as bad as the following night. It just wasn't any old wrath...this one was like when the Spanish were invading and he was hating on them like none other. I was up pretty much the whole night. I'll spare you the gory details, but after about 4 hours I literally had nothing left in my body. Finally, at 6 am, I headed down to the pharmacy to pick up some OTC Cipro. Luckily, it seemed to do the trick and I was feeling mostly better by midday, which was lucky since I had to fly home later that night.
After getting back from the SA excursion, I spent a few days jazzing around NYC with Suzie. We hit up some Vietnamese (don't go for the spicy noodles or they will tear you up) and Indian food (chicken masala = delicious). I mad it back to State on the megabus, which was surprisingly on time this time. I went to lunch with a bunch of awesome Penn Staters...Mella decided that TGIFridays would be a good spot, pretty much because she had a coupon and wanted to use it before going to Iowa...and, as adam knows, you never tell a pregnant woman no when it comes to anything to do with food. It was a great lunch, but almost immediately after I tried to head out to Lake Erie where mom and dad were fishing with my grandparents. Lucky for me, I had not been smart enough to unplug a few things from my cigarette lighter, and it completely burned my battery out. Even with Grave's help, we couldn't jump it. $115 and a new battery later, I was headed on my three hour drive through beautiful country to the lake. You don't really realize until you leave PA and come back that we really do have a nice state. Rivers, forest, lakes, rolling hills. Especially through the north central part that I drove through.
When I made it to the lake, I was welcomed how a man who hasn't been in the US for a while should be welcomed: with an ice cold Keystone light from my grandpa and grandma. A bunch of their friends were up there fishing the same derby that my parents were in, and I sat around and listened to them reminiscing about old times. They talked about old fishing tales and traveling out west. I think I finally realized then where I got some of my sense of travel adventure. It was awesome to hear some stories that I have never heard about my family. It was a great night with the family catching up. The next day we went out fishing. Not the best day out, rainy, windy, and not much sun, but still a day on the water! I wound up wearing pants and a fleece all day, which is not what you should wear during the summer at the lake. We finished up the day with a fish fry and I headed out back to State early the next morning for a GREAT campfire with some more awesome people in the backyard.
The next day, Becky and I headed out to Williamsport for the Shoales/Keim wedding. The wedding was freaking fantastic! I got to catch up with some of the mirabile ivenut MI7-007 crew. Just like the old times, lots of laughs, jokes, and sarcasm. It was great seeing Hannah, Emily, and Kristen. We decided on the next reunion in the Florida Keys. It better not be 2 years in the making though. The sooner the better.
The last 3 weeks have been a blur. Starting work, trying to find a house to live in, traveling on weekends, trying to catch up on sleep. It has been pret-ty nuts. But, everything seems to be working itself out. I started up with IBM to find out that I would be assigned to a project in Springfield, VA. Today was the start of my third week and I am settling in a little bit. It is a little bit slow at times and super fast at times, and pretty challenging because I don't know very much about the programs that I am using. I am learning a lot, but I am still lacking in human interaction. A lot of my day is spent in front of the computer screen. I know it is necessary to do analysis and I enjoy doing that for part of the time, but I also need to be able to use my people skills. Most of you who know me know I like and am good at interacting with people, so hopefully soon down the road I'll be able to make it happen. On the home front (literally) I found a place to live in the Clarendon area of Arlington, VA. It s a house with a few other guys. It is great. I'll have a lot of space, a place to store a kayak in the basement, a back yard, front porch, and all the sports channels available. I think all of the roommates will be on about the same level work/still wanting to get out and have some fun, so I am pretty pumped about that. I move over there on August 1st and will finally, finally be settled back into a place after 3 months of moving around and crashing on couches. Speaking of, I thought it would be fun to list all of the places that I have slept in the past 3 months:
1. Guayaquil, Ecuador
2. Cuenca, Ecuador
3. Riobamba, Ecuador
4. Banos, Ecuador
5. Quito, Ecuador
6. Cotopaxi base camp, Ecuador
7. Bogota, Colombia - old center
8. Salento, Colombia
9. San Gil, Colombia
10. Taganga, Colombia
11. Colombian jungle
12. Santa Marta, Colombia
13. Cartagena, Colombia
14. Bogota, Colombia - Zona Rosa
15. NYC - Elmhurst (Suzie's new apartment)
16. NYC - Astoria (Suzie's old apartment)
17. Barcelona, NY (Lake Erie)
18. State College, PA (out spare bedroom)
19. Williamsport, PA (Days Inn - hot breakfast, oh yeah)
20. Washington, DC - Shaw (Chelsea's house)
21. Baltimore, MD (Lindsay's house)
22. Clarion, PA (tenting at Jon's campsite)
23. Clarion, PA (Lindsay's house)
I think that rounds it out. So - as you can see - it has been freaking busy but great. Over the past 4 months I have got to see and have fun with a lot of family and close friends that mean a lot to me. As an italian guy in a restaurant in NYC's little italy once told me - "I'm jealous to this guy!!" In other words, I'm one lucky man.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Ciudad Perdida
This is from a REALLY long time ago, but I finally had some time to post it after writing it a month and a half ago.
The Ciudad Perdida hike is a 5 day-4 night hike through the northern Colombian jungle/mountains. Glenn and I scheduled our tour with Magic Tours, and wound up getting one of the best hiking groups I have ever been a part of. Jordan and Jono (who we met in San Gil) are an American and a Kiwi that went to grad school together in Boston, Dave, Tristen, Megan (Burra), and John (Pequena J) who were together in language school in Cartagena, and Rumer (Boom), a Dutch guy traveling South America. All of the people on the hike were awesome, and it made the experience so much better. (Side note: we started the group with one more guy, but he decided that he wanted to pretty much run the entire hike and left us after the first morning. I saw in the hostel later after we had all finished the hike and he said that he wasn't all about the "not having electricity." Really? You are out in the middle of the jungle, what do you expect?)
Some general thoughts from the trip:
1. I couldn't believe how luxurious the accomodations were. Real, clean toilets and showers and mosquito nets. Awesome!
2. They only allow 2 groups to set out hiking each day, which keeps the number of people on the trail at one time pretty low. Most of the time, you feel like you are out there all alone. Really cool!
3. The food was awesome. Each meal was a comida tipica prepared by the cook that hiked along with us. Our particular cook made some mean lentils and beans and had the most loyal little dog that I have ever met. He was always within 5 feet of the guy!
4. The mosquitos were not as bad as I had thought they were going to be. I tried to control the bites by wearing high socks for hiking. It worked pretty well, and I wound up only getting maybe 10-20 bites the whole time.
5. Temperatures were not as hot as I thought they would be. By 4 or 5 each afternoon, I was in a long sleeve underarmor shirt and long pants to help keep mosquito bites to a minimum. I had thought I would be way too hot in that, but I was perfect.
6. Our guides, Mauricio and Luis were incredible. They had out best interest at heart and wanted to make us the happiest that they could. 2 of the best guides that youd could ask for. If anyone goes there, head to Santa Marta and search out Mauricio. He works out of a travel agency in Hotel Miramar. 100% highly recommended.
Here is some day-by-day breakdown:
Day 1: Right along with Colombian time schedule, magic tours was 45 minutes late in picking us up from our hostel in Taganga. They finally came and shuttled us in to meet up with all of the other kids in the group in Santa Marta. We were all piled into a big old jeep (literally piled) for the 2 and a half hour ride to where we would start hiking. The jeep driver out there was pretty much awesome. He may have been a little bit drunk by the way he was crazily laughing at everything (we are not sure), but he got us there safe and sound. It was interesting to see that there were really no gas stations along the way, but there are stops along the side of the road where men come out with a big jug of gas and siphon it into the tank. Talk about throwback! The last hour of the ride was along an unpaved, washed-out road. It was a pretty rough ride, but pretty fun in the old jeep. We got to the village, which was literally out in the middle of nowhere. I was astounded about how they actually got building materials there to construct the buidlings with how bad the road was. We ate a small lunch and then set out on the trek at around 1:30 or 2. After about an hour of walking, we hit our first uphill of the hike - and probably the hardest uphill of them all. It took us about an hour to reach the top. We were all sweating like pigs at that point because of the humidity, but I didn't think it was overly difficult. Unfortunately, before we made it to camp for the night, it began to downpour, making it slippery going on the downhills where the path was clay. When we made it to the first camp, I was really impressed with how luxurious it was! We had running water, electricity, hammocks with mosquito nets, showers, and toilets. I hadn't expected to have all of this out in the jungle, but it was a nice surprise! We hung out that night and taught people in the group who didn't know how to play asshole, which became the go-to game throughout the hike. We hit the sack pretty early to get ready for hiking the next day.
Day 2: We woke up fairly late and sety out to start hiking at about 9. This day was only about 3.5 hours of hiking, so we took it easy for the most part. The worst part about the day was the morning where we had to put on our wet clothes and hikers from the day before. The landscape that we hiked though was impressive, crossing little rivers and streams along the way. The second camp was right along the major river that we followed the whole time. Because we made it there pretty early, we had some time to swim in the river and hang out on the rocks. I think that day was when our guide realized that putting us in a swimming whole made everyone really really happy. From there on out, anytime we got a chance to swim we took it. Instead of having hammocks, the second camp actually had mattresses and bunk beds to sleep in. This night was one of the best nights of sleep that I had on my entire trip. The temperature was perfect and the sound of the river was something right out of what you would hear on one of those soothing sound CDs people play to sleep to.
Day 3: An early wake up call. We got up at around 5, ate breakfast, and set out for out longest day of hiking. Mauricio gave us the optilon of making it to the ruins on day 3 instead of 4 so that he could show us a really special waterfall that is not really on the tour and not many people get to go to. With our love for water, we didn't have a 2nd thought about doing that, so we trekked to the ruins in the afternoon. To get to them, we hiked up hundreds of steps for about 30 minutes. The ruins themselves are not as incredible as some others I have seen, but the setting is spectacular. When we reached the highest tier of the 1,500 year old ruins, you could see jungle-covered mountains all around us. Pretty amazing scenery! On the way back to the camp from the ruins, we used a river route, which entailed a lot of wading through fast moving water - great times! After the ruins, Mauricio sat down with us and explained some of the history of the hike and of Colombia. Really interesting stuff to learn about how, as late as 1991, murders, disapperances, and car bombs were the norm throughout the country. He also told us about the kidnappings that happened at the ruins in 2003 when the ELN came to the ruins and kidnapped 9 tourists for up to 3 months for negotiations with the Colombian government. Mauricio also told me that as little as 4 months ago, the first camp that we stayed out still had a demonstration of how to make cocaine due to its importance in the history of the country. Getting all of this information is another reason why going with Mauricio was a blessing. It really enriched the experience of the hike.
Day 4: We woke up early again for another day of long hiking. We had about 6 and a half hours of walking to make it back to the first camp where the waterfall was. Luckily, we got great weather for the day and had no problems making it back in time to get to the waterfall. Getting to see the waterfall was amazing - one of the highlights of my whole trip. It was about a 20 meter waterfall cascading over ribbed rocks. We actually got to climb down the side of it, and once we got to the bottom we cimbed under the water and let it pound our backs. One of the best massages of my life!! The water was so strong that you actually had to cover your head with your hands so that it didn't hurt. After playing in the waterfall for a while, we climed back up to a another smaller waterfall with a big pool where we could jump and dive off of the rocks. Luckily, Jordan had out her good camera and took a bunch of pictures of us. I'll be getting those in an email soon I hope! Like I said, this was one of the best parts of the trip and something special because it is a hidden gem.
Day 5: A quick hiking day to end the trip. I was really sad to have to say goodbye to the lungle and the people on the trek. It was suck a great 5 days that I didn't want it to end. But, alas, all good things come to an end I guess. The transport back was a little bit rough for me in the back of the jeep. I felt like I was going to hurl a couple of times because of the hotness and rough road, but I made it back to Santa Marta alright and had one of the best showers I have had. I had been wearing the same set of hiking clothes for the whole hike, so it felt good to get out of them and into something a little bit more clean. Everything still smells really, really bad...but that is a minor byproduct of trekking through the jungle for 5 days.
As any good tour group would do, we decided that we needed to take our guides out for a dinner and drinks to celebrate making it to the city and back. It wound up being a great night of drinking, dancing, laughing, and me translating spanish to english. An appropriate end to what was one of the best 5 days of my trip!
"Jungle love, is drivin' me mad, is makin' me crazy."
The Ciudad Perdida hike is a 5 day-4 night hike through the northern Colombian jungle/mountains. Glenn and I scheduled our tour with Magic Tours, and wound up getting one of the best hiking groups I have ever been a part of. Jordan and Jono (who we met in San Gil) are an American and a Kiwi that went to grad school together in Boston, Dave, Tristen, Megan (Burra), and John (Pequena J) who were together in language school in Cartagena, and Rumer (Boom), a Dutch guy traveling South America. All of the people on the hike were awesome, and it made the experience so much better. (Side note: we started the group with one more guy, but he decided that he wanted to pretty much run the entire hike and left us after the first morning. I saw in the hostel later after we had all finished the hike and he said that he wasn't all about the "not having electricity." Really? You are out in the middle of the jungle, what do you expect?)
Some general thoughts from the trip:
1. I couldn't believe how luxurious the accomodations were. Real, clean toilets and showers and mosquito nets. Awesome!
2. They only allow 2 groups to set out hiking each day, which keeps the number of people on the trail at one time pretty low. Most of the time, you feel like you are out there all alone. Really cool!
3. The food was awesome. Each meal was a comida tipica prepared by the cook that hiked along with us. Our particular cook made some mean lentils and beans and had the most loyal little dog that I have ever met. He was always within 5 feet of the guy!
4. The mosquitos were not as bad as I had thought they were going to be. I tried to control the bites by wearing high socks for hiking. It worked pretty well, and I wound up only getting maybe 10-20 bites the whole time.
5. Temperatures were not as hot as I thought they would be. By 4 or 5 each afternoon, I was in a long sleeve underarmor shirt and long pants to help keep mosquito bites to a minimum. I had thought I would be way too hot in that, but I was perfect.
6. Our guides, Mauricio and Luis were incredible. They had out best interest at heart and wanted to make us the happiest that they could. 2 of the best guides that youd could ask for. If anyone goes there, head to Santa Marta and search out Mauricio. He works out of a travel agency in Hotel Miramar. 100% highly recommended.
Here is some day-by-day breakdown:
Day 1: Right along with Colombian time schedule, magic tours was 45 minutes late in picking us up from our hostel in Taganga. They finally came and shuttled us in to meet up with all of the other kids in the group in Santa Marta. We were all piled into a big old jeep (literally piled) for the 2 and a half hour ride to where we would start hiking. The jeep driver out there was pretty much awesome. He may have been a little bit drunk by the way he was crazily laughing at everything (we are not sure), but he got us there safe and sound. It was interesting to see that there were really no gas stations along the way, but there are stops along the side of the road where men come out with a big jug of gas and siphon it into the tank. Talk about throwback! The last hour of the ride was along an unpaved, washed-out road. It was a pretty rough ride, but pretty fun in the old jeep. We got to the village, which was literally out in the middle of nowhere. I was astounded about how they actually got building materials there to construct the buidlings with how bad the road was. We ate a small lunch and then set out on the trek at around 1:30 or 2. After about an hour of walking, we hit our first uphill of the hike - and probably the hardest uphill of them all. It took us about an hour to reach the top. We were all sweating like pigs at that point because of the humidity, but I didn't think it was overly difficult. Unfortunately, before we made it to camp for the night, it began to downpour, making it slippery going on the downhills where the path was clay. When we made it to the first camp, I was really impressed with how luxurious it was! We had running water, electricity, hammocks with mosquito nets, showers, and toilets. I hadn't expected to have all of this out in the jungle, but it was a nice surprise! We hung out that night and taught people in the group who didn't know how to play asshole, which became the go-to game throughout the hike. We hit the sack pretty early to get ready for hiking the next day.
Day 2: We woke up fairly late and sety out to start hiking at about 9. This day was only about 3.5 hours of hiking, so we took it easy for the most part. The worst part about the day was the morning where we had to put on our wet clothes and hikers from the day before. The landscape that we hiked though was impressive, crossing little rivers and streams along the way. The second camp was right along the major river that we followed the whole time. Because we made it there pretty early, we had some time to swim in the river and hang out on the rocks. I think that day was when our guide realized that putting us in a swimming whole made everyone really really happy. From there on out, anytime we got a chance to swim we took it. Instead of having hammocks, the second camp actually had mattresses and bunk beds to sleep in. This night was one of the best nights of sleep that I had on my entire trip. The temperature was perfect and the sound of the river was something right out of what you would hear on one of those soothing sound CDs people play to sleep to.
Day 3: An early wake up call. We got up at around 5, ate breakfast, and set out for out longest day of hiking. Mauricio gave us the optilon of making it to the ruins on day 3 instead of 4 so that he could show us a really special waterfall that is not really on the tour and not many people get to go to. With our love for water, we didn't have a 2nd thought about doing that, so we trekked to the ruins in the afternoon. To get to them, we hiked up hundreds of steps for about 30 minutes. The ruins themselves are not as incredible as some others I have seen, but the setting is spectacular. When we reached the highest tier of the 1,500 year old ruins, you could see jungle-covered mountains all around us. Pretty amazing scenery! On the way back to the camp from the ruins, we used a river route, which entailed a lot of wading through fast moving water - great times! After the ruins, Mauricio sat down with us and explained some of the history of the hike and of Colombia. Really interesting stuff to learn about how, as late as 1991, murders, disapperances, and car bombs were the norm throughout the country. He also told us about the kidnappings that happened at the ruins in 2003 when the ELN came to the ruins and kidnapped 9 tourists for up to 3 months for negotiations with the Colombian government. Mauricio also told me that as little as 4 months ago, the first camp that we stayed out still had a demonstration of how to make cocaine due to its importance in the history of the country. Getting all of this information is another reason why going with Mauricio was a blessing. It really enriched the experience of the hike.
Day 4: We woke up early again for another day of long hiking. We had about 6 and a half hours of walking to make it back to the first camp where the waterfall was. Luckily, we got great weather for the day and had no problems making it back in time to get to the waterfall. Getting to see the waterfall was amazing - one of the highlights of my whole trip. It was about a 20 meter waterfall cascading over ribbed rocks. We actually got to climb down the side of it, and once we got to the bottom we cimbed under the water and let it pound our backs. One of the best massages of my life!! The water was so strong that you actually had to cover your head with your hands so that it didn't hurt. After playing in the waterfall for a while, we climed back up to a another smaller waterfall with a big pool where we could jump and dive off of the rocks. Luckily, Jordan had out her good camera and took a bunch of pictures of us. I'll be getting those in an email soon I hope! Like I said, this was one of the best parts of the trip and something special because it is a hidden gem.
Day 5: A quick hiking day to end the trip. I was really sad to have to say goodbye to the lungle and the people on the trek. It was suck a great 5 days that I didn't want it to end. But, alas, all good things come to an end I guess. The transport back was a little bit rough for me in the back of the jeep. I felt like I was going to hurl a couple of times because of the hotness and rough road, but I made it back to Santa Marta alright and had one of the best showers I have had. I had been wearing the same set of hiking clothes for the whole hike, so it felt good to get out of them and into something a little bit more clean. Everything still smells really, really bad...but that is a minor byproduct of trekking through the jungle for 5 days.
As any good tour group would do, we decided that we needed to take our guides out for a dinner and drinks to celebrate making it to the city and back. It wound up being a great night of drinking, dancing, laughing, and me translating spanish to english. An appropriate end to what was one of the best 5 days of my trip!
"Jungle love, is drivin' me mad, is makin' me crazy."
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