Nuestra Familia

The last stop on our adventure landed us in Quito, Ecuador. We had the best time EVER! We stayed with a lady who was an exchange student with my (jess) moms family 30 years ago. She and her family were amazing. (Above is Maria and I.) They took us into their home, not only treated us like family, but introduced us as family to everyone we met. They panned our whole trip with great tours and cooked us traditional meals whenever there was a chance.

Our first stop was to Banos, a small tourist town on the border of the Amazon, about 4.5hr south of Quito. We traveled, yet again by bus, however it only cost us 7 dollars, for both of us. We rented go carts and bikes there and had a great time.



We spent the remainder of our trip touring Quito. We visited the Equator, the city center, and Otavalo, a small market town up north. The city center is beautiful, A UNESCO world Heritage site. Ecuador is somewhere we would love to return to sometime.

Us at the Basilica

Jessica and Paula standing in 2 hemisheres at the equator

We have returned to the states and our excited to get back to our lives here. We had an unforgettable experience and are so grateful for our time in South America!

Cusco and the Death Hike

We arrived in Cusco by bus around 630am last Friday. Cusco is located at a headspinning altitude of 11,500ft. Fortunately, coming by bus we slowly acclimated to the altitude and didn't have a lot of trouble. However, on day one, Scott and I could literally walk no more than 50ft without being extremely short of breath and feeling like we were going to pass out. Needless to say, we didn't do too much day one because that whole town is made of hills and stairs. Scott snapped this one before he colapsed on a girl selling chiclets...jk but we did take a rest afterwards.

Overall we really liked Cusco. It had windy cobblestone streets, old churches, Inca everything, and great people who speak much cleaner Spanish than our friends down south. We visited many ruins and outdoor markets where we both bought fashionable llama print gloves, beanies, sweaters, ect. We have become quite the bargainers!

The majority of our trip to Cusco consisted of a 40km trek up to the majestic Machu Pichu. It was called the Lares Trek. Absolutely stunning scenery through mountain villages, lakes, rivers and ending in a relaxing hot springs. The aguas termales were slightly disappointing because the water smelled and looked like metalic urine, but whatever, 3 days of hiking 40km and no shower.....it got the job done.

The most extreme part of our hike was day 2, where we crossed a pass with a staggering altitude of 15, 748ft. I, Jess, had horrible nausea and light headedness, and my hubby had a bad headache. So as exhausted as we were after getting to the top, we just wanted to get down, fast. Did I mention it was raining, the whole time? Good times. Below is us at the pass... half alive.


The last day, we arrived early to Machu Pichu, which was all fogged in at first and we couldn't see anything at all, very disappointing. However, as soon as the fog lifted, it was incredible!


Now we are in Ecuador exploring so we will update you soon!

We´re Alive

Hi everybody! We completed our 4 day trek to Machu Pichu, barely, and had a wonderful time in Cusco. We are now in Ecuador and will be heading home shortly. Unfortunately, we have had very limited internet access, today being no exception. We will try to post some pictures and stories at the end of this week from the rest of our travels. We got some good ones! We will probably still be posting when we are home. Hope everyone is doing great! You´ll be hearing from us soon!

Bus Travel

You will all be happy to know we survived our 46hr bus rides, but not with out a few kinks! Day one.....We show up for the bus, packed and excited for our adventure but the bus doesn't show up. What?! The bus that we were supposed to take broke down some place in the never ending Chilean desert and never showed to the bus station. This was the most important leg of our trip from Santiago to Tacna Peru. Of course we weren't contacted about this until one hour prior to leaving, when we arrived (Man we love doing business down here!). We were directed to a different bus company that had an afternoon bus to a different city up north so we jumped on that bus and headed to Arica (the Chilean border city). From there, we feared crossing the Peruvian border at 11pm but you gotta do what you gotta do. It wasn't too shabby. We hopped in a 1968 caddy and sped across the border, after picking up 2 Peruvian policemen. We spent one night in the border town in Tacna, Peru which we painted to be a dangerous craphole, but surprisingly it was pretty nice. We stayed in a quaint hotel for $25 and enjoyed a delicious Italian food dinner for $11. It was smooth sailing from there. We took 2 more buses and woke up Friday morning in Cusco at 6:30am. We believe that we may have come close to dying several times on our last bus trip from Arequipa to Cusco because we came to screeching halts and herd things hitting the bus. We climbed up to some 11,500 ft, perhaps through a dense jungle. I swear half was on dirt roads.

Jess enjoying a Nesquik chocloate pop in the Tacna Bus depot.

Chile's most southern city: Punta Arenas

On our way back to Santiago, we stopped in Punta Arenas for a day. We really like it but unfortunately, the weather was kinda rainy and cold, but a good change. PLUS we got to wear our sexy ponchos. There was a really quaint town square where Jessica bought an awesome ear warmer-headband. You'll see it in future pics I'm sure. We visited this neat cemetery, with a ton of opulent grave sites.This was our escape from the rainy cold day. Creamy hot chocolate, warm gooey brownies and free wi-fi. Doesn't get much better.

The next post, we will fill you in on our bus adventures! We're writing from beautiful Tacna Peru, the border city between Chile/Peru. So far, we really like Peru. We arrived late last night and ate some really good food and met some really nice Peruvians. Next stop, Cusco.

Torres Del Paine

Hey everybody! We finally acquired some wi-fi at this awesome little chocolate bar that serves up chocolate caliente, yummy sweets and rocking 80's music. Its also warm! Because right now outside its about 5 degrees, celsius that is. Brr. We are now in Punta Arenas, the we closest ever care to coming to Antarctica!

So the past week we were in a national park located in Southern Chile in Patagonia called Torres Del Paine (Click here for mapped location). It was incredible! We stayed in the park and did some extreme activities including a day hike through the Valle de Frances, kayaking down glacier water, and a leisurely horseback ride by the Rio Serrano! We have included some of our favorite pictures of our excursions.

View from our room at the Hosteria Tyndall. You're looking at the famous Torres del Paine of the Chilean Patagonia. The house is where we cooked all our meals.
This pic is of the Glacier Frances. Don't touch the water. I, Scott, challenged myself to the '5 second full hand challenge,' and failed. Waaay too cold!

Our last day, we made plans to kayak. Unfortunately, it had rained all night, the river rose 4 feet and the wind was unexplainable. We experienced all types of weather in the 3 hr tour. Below is before we knew what we got ourselves into.

This is Jess on a calm part of the trip. She looks silly but she is using the paddle and the wind as a sail. We were racing our guides. We lost because I couldn't feel my fingers to get the camera back into my pocket.

We return to Santiago tomorrow and catch a bus to Peru on Tuesday. Looking forward to the 3 day drive!

Goodbye Santiago, hello end of the world

We finished classes Friday and are off to start our adventures. To start things, we are heading to the end of the world, Punta Arenas Chile. There, we will spend a week exploring the beautiful and mysterious glacier park, Torres del Paine. Not sure if we will have any kind ability to communicate with the outside world, not sure what to expect. From there, we will be heading to Cusco, Peru.....by bus!! There, we'll be exploring the city and doing a 4 day/ 3 night trek to Machu Pichu. We will end our travels in Quito, Ecuador in a few weeks.

So those are our travel plans. We'll keep you updated with pics and stories about our adventures!

A Santiago Rarity

Public transportation- Something that we were not familiar with before coming down to Santiago. (Though we are quite excited to ride the light rail when we return!) There are some wonderful things and there are some drawbacks to the everyday use of Public transportation. Scott and I are absolutely proficient using the buses and metro, but at times, it is a pain.

Here are the things we love!
1. Its Cheap
2. Its Easy. We can ride the bus/metro by swiping a rechargeable card at each respective location.
3. Its entertaining, usually. There are musicians, salesmen and people wanting your money 24/7. For example, some guy who sings Frank Sinatra out of tune, ridiculously loud and in a horrible english accent
4. We don't have to drive with the crazy Chilean drivers.
5. It forces us to excersie. Public transportaion doesn't drop us off exactly where we are going, hence, we walk, a lot.

The not so Good:
1. Buses are late a lot, especialy after 10pm. I think the longest we waited was about 35min.
2. The drivers. Now this is up for debate, some are just fine. However, there are some days when we feel we might just end up on top of someone, or smash a child. Which brings us to #3
3. They are crowded. Apparently everyone must get on the bus NOW, when people are already smashed up on the windows. Same as the metro. One good thing is that pretty much no one has BO, and its summer!
4. People asking us for money. 'No, I don't want Celine Dions greatest hits that you burned yesterday. And no, I don't want any of your handmade plastic crap, I mean jewelery. And I'm sorry you're blind/ you have a trach/ you're missing a leg, etc etc.'

Overall, its pretty good. we do miss having the freedom of our own car. For fun we put a picture of me on the bus relaxing. This was the only time when we were the only people on the bus. It was awesome. It was also 1:30 in the morning.


Below we have a challenge for you. When Scott and traveled to Fruitillar last week, we had the previlage of having a TV in our room. Now this was very exciting becuase we dont have one here in Santiago. However, we turned it on and the first thing we saw was the music video below. We dicided that maybe we weren't missing too much. Now the challenge. We searched and searched for this video online and alas, could not find it. If anyone is up for the challenge, see if you can find the video. We'd be much abliged. If you never want to see it in entrity, we also understand. Sorry about the quality, our lauging in the background, and our reflections- its all we got. Winner gets to choose next blog topic! Good Luck

La Familia Horta mas la Familia Morris

So we finally were able to snag a picture with our lovely host family. We just adore them. Are they cute or what?! We feel very fortunate to be staying with such a wonderful family. We're spoiled and we'll leave it at that.

More to come later. Maybe next time we will share with you the painful process of trying to book travel plans in South America. Im talking excruciatingly painful!

Dia de los amantes

Hope you had a great Valentines day. We are in Frutillar this weekend exploring the Lake District. It's about 700 miles south of Santiago. The lake district is German settled. The archituture, food and delicious pastries are a nice change. It's a sleepy town with not much going on unless you're in to swimming in the freezing lake. We're staying at a quainte little hotel pictured above. Note the hearts on the windows.. they went all out for Valentines day.

Last night we had the pleasure of listening to an awesome cover singer out by the lake shore. Well, he thought he was awesome, and sexy. He was sexy though. Anyway, it was a beautiful setting; a free concert, sunset at the lake and a beautiful snow-capped volcano in the distance.

There's a lovley picture of us, however, scott blew it- typical.. see below

We enjoyed some delicious Chilean style hot dogs called completos- spicy hot dogs with mayonaise, diced tomatoes, avocados, sour krawt and pico de gallo. They were monsters and delicous. To finish off our healthy evening, we ordered french fries, pisco sours and watched Hitch, with spanish subtitles.

mmm.. que rico!

Weekend on the coast

This weekend, we took off to the coast and finally got out of the city. Jess' mom was able to come down for a visit this week and we had a great time. We went to Valparasio, Vina del Mar and traveled up the coast to find some beaches.. and a hotel but that's a different story. We found this great local beach where we were the whitest people for miles. The water was FREEZING! This candid pic was taken after we tried to brave the ocean.

Valparaiso is a funky little port town.. well, not too little. It is Chile's 2nd largest city. Houses are piled on top of each other and there is no flat land. There are super steep streets and stairways. There are also these fancy little contraptions scattered though the city. They are 'ascensors' or elevators that were created in the 20's to move people and cargo up these ridiculous inclines. Yes, we took them and yes, we feared for our lives.

After we survived the ascensor, we celebrated by eating at this restaurant with an amazing view. We had some delicious and fresh seafood while recuperating from the death hills. To find out more about Valpo and see more pics of the city, click here.

What's a summer day at the beach without ice cream? We chowed down this treat along with 2 million other visitors in Vina. After this bite, Jessica dropped the cone on her lap... typical.

Superbowl. Santiago Style

Oh Arizona Cardinals! What a heart breaker. Scott and were absolutely ecstatic to be able to watch the Superbowl and watch it in English! However, it was on ESPN espanol so instead of awesome Superbowl commercials, we watched commercials for futbol, futbol and yep, mas futbol! We found a small gringo bar here that showed the game,but we heard it was jam packed. We actually ended up going to some friends of ours and trying to celebrate American style. (Mike and Alissa shout out! Thanks again ) We did pretty good.....Pizza, queso dip with strange tortilla chips, crackers and dip, and beer. Close enough. It was a late night, as the game didn't start until 8:00 here, but fun none the less. Above is the awesome food we enjoyed and below Scott and I about 30sec before the Steelers got that last touchdown (Hence the smiles).

Its Been Awhile. . . .

Its alomst been a month, and we are still getting settled in. We have learned a few things-

We know whats its like to be foreingers, and it is tough!!

Barack Obama is a world icon. People shout his name out to us as soon as they know we are american (which is usually immedialty being blond haired and blue eyed!)
Living down here has been an eye opener, to see how the rest of the world watches the US. We talk more politics here than I think either of us ever have.

We didnt realize how much our life depended on electronics. To have no phone, cell phone, internet, or tv, has been challenging! (But we are making freinds at the internet cafes!)

This weekend we will reconnect with the US by watching LOST and watching the SUPERBOWL! Go Cardinals. We are pretty freakin excited! We will miss hot wings, chips and dip, and all the traditional superbowl party food! (For example, your delicous BBQ pork last year Diana!) However, we are excited to root for our carndials 5000+ miles away with our amigos chilenos!

Concha y Toro

We visited the most popular viña de Chile- Concha y Toro. It was a very touristy spot and pretty over priced for what it was. The wine itself was inexpensive at only $6 a bottle. It made us want to tour other smaller wineries in the area- there are a lot! You can´t find a bottle of wine in the store that is not Chilean. We´re not complaing though, they are all delicious. Below are some pictures from the tour...

Things we miss

One thing that we really miss about the states is coffee. Real, genuine brewed coffee! We finally broke down and went to one of the starbucks here and is was sooo good! We forgot what real coffee tasted like. Apparently though, Im the only Jessica in all of South America.


Next, we miss anything in English. We went to see Si Senor (or Yes Man) in English! It still had spanish subtitles but it was amazing- we bought a Pepsi and had the american experience. Kinda weird though because at times, we were the first to laugh, or the only ones to laugh because of the mis-translation.

O

Cerro San Cristobol

On Saturady, we did toursit stuff. We visited Cerro San Cristoball which is the biggest mountain in the middle of the city. It is a huge parque where you take a cable car to the top and there is a huge statue of la Virgin Maria. You can also look out at the whole city. On a clear day, you can see the Andes in all directions. Unfortuantely, there was a lot of pollution, so you could vaguely see the mountains in the distance. We rode the finicular to the top, and walked back down- after getting lost... twice.

Comida

Food. This post is in response to you aunt Jill and everyone else who is curious about what we eat here. Every day we eat a small breakast, usually of bread, fruit and cafe instante. They eat a lot of fruit here. Lunch is the biggest meal. We usually have a salad, a main dish and dessert, which is almost always fruit. For onces, which is a light dinner, we have something small, like a sandwich. For dinner, we have another snack. We eat tons of avoados here as well.

Saturday, we went out to the trendy artsy district called Bella Vista and ate at a popular restaurant here called Como agua para chocolate. It was delicious. We had ceviche (it was so delicious that we forgot to take a picture until it was almost gone. Below is what was left) and delicous Pisco Sours (The most populat drink- think Maragirta, but better and stronger!) Our main dish was a fillet with mushrooms, onions and a rica vino tinto salsa on a delicious bed of potonos negros.

Espanol, Espanol y mas Espanol

Since we´ve arrived, there has been no break from espanol. It´s spanish all day and all night. If we want something, we have to flip the switch and try and speak. The spanish here is very different than la espanol mexicana we once knew. But I think we´re starting to get the hang of it. We start every day with a delicious breakfast-compliments of abuela, and head off to school around 9:30. We take 2 buses to get to school but it runs smoothly as their public transportation is amazing. The school is located in an upscale area by the business district. It´s a beautiful neighborhood with lots of trees and classic buildings. Below are pictures of when we flew over the 20000 foot Andes (Santiago sits at the bottom of these mountains), our room, one of the many parks where we like to study and a typical jugo de pina customario a Chile.

La Provendicia de Chile

Hola familia y amigos! We arrived safely to our host famlys house sin problemas.  They are a wonderful couple who has taken us in and even given us our own casita in the back.  At this moment they are filling up their pool for us to swim in,  as it is summer here and quite warm! We have taken lots of pictures and will try to post them from school this week.  

In the meantime, for those of you who thought were going to a distant country lacking many things, here are some thoughts 

1.  Ederly people here navagate the web like nobodys business

2. There is a Starbucks on every corner.  

3. Where there is not Starbucks, there is burger king, mcdonalds or KFC.

4.  The Wii is very popular and wii fit is in stock.

5.  Pulic transportation is easy, cheap and safe.

More to come later.  Hasta pronto

All packed

Well... it's finally here. After all the planning, frustration, tears, and more planning, we're hoppin' on a plane soon and flying 5300+ miles to begin our South American excursion. Thanks to our friends the Hills we have two sweet travel packs (we promise we'll take care of them) to bring. We'd like to emphasize, that the picture you're seeing below, is of all our valued possessions for 3 months (yes, 3 months Stievos, take notes). We'll be getting settles con nuestras abuelos en Chile this weekend. More updates to come when we start school next week (as long as there is internet access like promised!) Stay tuned.