For you chocolate-lovers

The one thing we did do in Cusco so far was enroll in a chocolate-making workshop. We started the workshop by learning about the cacao tree, how it grows and how it is harvested. We learned how the chocolate is made from the bean to the actual chocolate bar. We tasted the bib (contents of the cacao bean) completely raw and then we roasted some and tasted that; both were rather bitter for my taste. After the roasting of the beans, we ground them by hand into a powdering, pasty finish.

We used the grounded beans to make 2 different hot chocolates, one with chili powder and one with sugar and milk.

The last and best part of the workshop was to make your own chocolate. Everyone got their own mold and bowl of 70% chocolate. You could mix different ingredients into your molds, such as nuts, coffee, raisins, salt, chili powder, quinoa, cinnamon, and anis. You could also add powdered milk and sugar to change the sweetness of the chocolate. I made mine with a random mix of ingredients; I forget what I mixed with what. So far, some turned out great and some I wouldn’t recommend others to eat. Jack went with his typical strategic approach, arranging everything with prefect common sense and drawing a diagram to make sure he knew what was what. The workshop turned out to be an awesome way to fill 2 hours.

Roasting the beans

extracting the beans from the shells

grinding the beans

grinding the beans every smaller

preparing our various favours of chocolates

Just a Quick Update

We left La Paz early Tuesday morning by bus, crossed the Peru border and headed into Cusco. Cusco so far seems like an intriguing city full of beautiful buildings and lots of history. We unfortunately have not really explored much of Cusco yet. Both Jack and I contracted some sort of stomach infection (we guess from the Amazon) so we have been a little lazy to take on hours of walking. We have gotten some antibiotics from the local pharmacy and since then we’ve been feeling much better.

We spent a lot of time sitting in the main square, which is the perfect place to people-watch and take in the wonderful cathedrals and building outlining the massive square. The only thing that you have to get used to is being approached every 2 seconds to buy pictures, paintings, massages, tours, drugs, shoe shines and many random knick-knacks. Jack and I had about 100 massage offers in one day.

We leave for a 4-day tour to Machu Picchu on Monday morning. The usual route via the official Inca Trail is sold out so we’ve opted for the “Inca Jungle” tour which includes some mountain biking and trekking through other sections of the Inca Trail for a few days and then spending the last day (Thursday) exploring Machu Picchu itself. We will describe everything in detail when we return.

We return late on Thursday night and stay in Cusco until Monday morning. We plan to jump on a plane to Lima, then a couple hours later jump on a plane to Tumbes. From Tumbes we will take a short bus ride to Mancora. Mancora is a little beach town in the north of Peru where the sun is always shining and there is a great beach where we can hopefully learn how to surf. We would like to rent an apartment there for a month where we can finally enjoy some warm weather for longer than 5 or 6 days.

Pictures from Rio, La Paz and Rurrenabaque

Hey guys,

Here are the pictures from the past couple weeks(finally). Unfortunately, I lost the pictures from Buzios and Sao Paulo.

Enjoy,

BLOG - Rio de Janerio, Brazil

BLOG -La Paz, Bolivia

BLOG Rurrenabaque, Bolivia - 3 day Pampas Tour

Buzios, Sao Paulo, La Paz, and Rurrenabaque

So it’s been a few weeks since we last wrote on this blog. We have been very busy and we have been travelling in areas where there is very limited internet access. We’ve just jumped on a bus for a 12 hour ride from La Paz Bolivia to Cusco Peru, so I’ve got a bit of time now to let everyone know what’s been going on.

When I last wrote we had just left Rio and were planning a few days in a beach town near Rio called Buzios. The town is a couple hours away from Rio and it is quite a vacation town. It is home to the famous Geriba beach which is world renowned for its surfing. We spent a long weekend here and chilled out on the beach watching the surfers and getting a few rays. It was really nice to relax for a while after a busy previous few weeks. The surfing was really neat to watch and I’m really looking forward to learning how to do it in the future. It was a little expensive to do it there unless you had your own board, so our plan is to spend some time in another country (maybe Costa Rica) and learn there.

In order for us to get back on our travel route we needed to head back to Bolivia. Rather than take a 50 hour bus ride across the continent, we opted for a flight from Brazil back to La Paz. Rio was an expensive option to fly from so we jumped on an overnight bus to Sao Paulo, which is just an absolutely huge city. We spend the day in Sao Paulo and then got on our flight. Sao Paulo is really too big to see in such a short time, but we made the best of it. We walked around downtown and visited the huge market there. The market was really interesting. They had all kinds of fish, ,meat, fruits, and vegetable and it was really interesting to walk around. The fruit vendors would offer you samples of weird colorful Amazonian fruit that you’ve never seen before, and I got to eat some oysters and some other good food. The most famous lunch in Sao Paulo is the huge mortadella sandwich. I had seen it before on one of my favorite travel shows (No Reservations) and I knew I had to try it. I counted 28 layers of meat all on a really good baguette. It was as good as I had imagined.

After our flight back to Bolivia, we arrived in La Paz. After our previous experiences in Bolivia we were looking forward to it again, along with the opportunity to speak Spanish again instead of Portuguese. It was as though everything made sense again. We could chat with taxi drivers and ask questions without looking completely incompetent. We were however quite disappointed with the actual city of La Paz. It was a little too big and busy for our tastes. There was also a huge strike going on so there were protests in the streets and people lighting of firecrackers and small sticks of dynamite all over the place. Needless to say we didn’t feel too safe there and we were anxious to get out of the city and on to our next destination which was exploring the amazon basin.

Another thing happened in La Paz that was quite upsetting and made us not appreciate it as much. Joh’s camera got stolen. We were walking around downtown checking out the sights, when a local woman approached Joh and told her that she had noticed two young guys reach into her purse and take the camera. We were pretty pissed off about this. We knew that something like this would happen at some time during the trip, but it is still something that makes you feel quite violated. Joh is in the habit of downloading the pictures every 2 weeks or so, so we didn’t lose everything, just the photos from the last week or so. All the pictures from Buzios and Sao Paulo are gone – so it’s a tough pill to swallow, but there’s nothing you can do except move on, except the loss, and get yourself a new camera. Luckily we found a decent camera for a decent price in La Paz, so we’re back to taking pictures again.

We booked a flight to the small jungle city of Rurrenabaque which is just a short 45 minute flight away from La Paz. The plane we flew in on was really small (it only had room for 18 passengers) and we were all swished in and we could feel every small change in the wind as the plane was jerked to and fro . We landed on a really small landing strip in the jungle and got out and we were immediately overwhelmed with the drastic change in climate. La Paz is one of the highest cities in the world, so there is very little oxygen in the air and it is always quite chilly. Rurrenabaque on the other hand was a jungle city with low altitude and high humidity. It was a nice welcome change. Rurrenabaque is a town that is definitely one of those towns that is quite obviously on the “backpacker trail”. It was fully of other travellers and lots of good restaurants and travel agencies. Typically when travellers come here they use it as a jumping off point for going on jungle safaris. We booked one as well, specifically we booked a 3 day tour of the Yacuma Pampas. We had been recommended this by some of the other travelers we met there.

The tour was really quite interesting. After a 3 or 4 hour Jeep ride we arrived at the launching point and got into our boats. From then on for the next 3 days we were living above the water. We took boats down the river to all sorts of interesting spots. We saw quite a few animals including alligators, crocodiles, capybara, monkeys, sloth, snakes, piranha, pink dolphins, tones of birds, and trillions of mosquitoes and other insects. It was also neat to see the vegetation as well. All kinds of cool trees and vines. We stayed in a small lodge built up on stilts over the river and ate some good food, relaxed in hammocks, and slept in mosquito nets. There were many, many mosquitos. They were really bad in the evening. We all had clothing that covered up as much skin as we could, and we loaded the mosquito repellant on every few hours. We ended up being ok after the trip, but we saw a few other travellers that had thousands of bites all over their bodies. The highlight of the three day trip was definitely swimming with the dolphins. After being assured that there were no alligators or crocodiles around, we jumped into the river and got to swim with the dolphins. We had never known that there were dolphins in the jungle, but there were actually quite a few. They had pink skin, and we saw them all the time swimming in the water near the boats. While swimming, the dolphins would come up to you and bump you or try nibble on your toes. The dolphin ignored Joh and I but many other the other travellers got to feel the dolphins. It was a little scary at times too, because the water is dark and you can’t see much under the water so you never know if there are piranhas or alligators or whatever else there as well. No one got hurt, so I guess it was safe.

After the tour we spent a few days back in Rurrenabaque, while we waited for our departure flight. We had a few nice days to relax in hammocks and get a bunch of reading done. We flew back to La Paz yesterday (Monday) and then booked a bus to Cusco Peru. We plan on being in Cusco for a week and then we hope to start our trek to Machu Picchu on Monday. We’re pretty excited as we’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Should be good. We’ll post when we get back and we’ll tell you all about it.

Rio

After yet another 24 hour bus ride we arrived in the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro. As I mentioned last time, Rio is one of those cities that we were really excited to see. Everyone has seen beautiful pictures of Rio in magazines and on TV, and we couldn’t wait to see those sights in person. Of course Rio also has that other reputation of being extremely dangerous. All the travel advice literature and websites we read seemed to indicate that if you went to Rio you were sure to be mugged, beaten, and shot just for walking around looking like a tourist. Well after spending almost a week here, we can tell you we never once felt the least bit unsafe. We had no problems walking around and all the people we met were extremely polite and helpful. I’d even go so far as to say that Brazilians, and the people from Rio in particular, have been overall the friendliest people of any place we’ve been to so far. Every time we had a question or met someone that spoke a little English they went the extra mile to help us out.

We were also planning on only spending a few days in Rio due to the supposed high costs. But we really enjoyed the city and there was no way we were ready to leave after only two days – so we stretched it to six days instead. The hostel was a bit more expensive than usual, but still within range of or budget. Also, if you walked a lot instead of using taxis and avoided expensive restaurants ii was actually pretty simple to keep costs down. There were some great places to eat where you could get a huge meal that was more than big enough for two for less than 10 dollars. You just have to look were all the locals are hanging out and that’s where you’ll find the good stuff for a good price. A few blocks over on the Copacabana strip the meals were more than 5 times that price.

We had some really good food here. They have small little juice shops all over the place where you can get a smoothie or a big glass of juice. Our favorite was the cup of Acai berries. In Canada, Acai berries are some popular exotic health food, but here they are very popular and you can get them almost anywhere. They usually blend them all up with some granola and serve it to you in a cup or bowl and it has the consistency of a really thick smoothie. We had one or two of these every day and we really enjoyed them. Another popular drink here is guarana juice. It’s a highly caffeinated fruit and the juice is delicious. Aside from the fruit juices, their most popular dish is something called Fejuada. It is black bean dish cooked with pork. It also was really good, and we had it with rice and meat a few times for dinner.

We visited the three must-see locations in Rio. Sugarloaf mountain, Corcovado with the Redeemer monument on the top, and of course Copocabana beach.

Sugarloaf mountain was really impressive. It dominates the view of the ocean coastline in Rio. There is a cable car that goes to the top, but it was pretty expensive so we walked around the base of the mountain on a nice hiking trail and enjoyed the scenery from that perspective.

Corcovado mountain with the Redeemer monument was also a highlight. The monument is visible from many parts of Rio (including the balcony of our hostel), and it is the unofficial symbol of Rio. The image of the Christ statue with his arms spread out over the city is quite a breathtaking site. I’m not a big fan of the idea of a graven image made of our Lord, but there is no denying that the image definitely has big impact on all who look up at it. The monument is on the top of one of the largest mountains in the city, so the view from the top is legendary. We decided that we couldn’t miss that, so we bit the bullet and spent the money to take the train to the top. We were excited to see the view, but we had some bad luck with the weather when we got up there the area was covered in clouds and we couldn’t see much. We were disappointed but it was still pretty neat to be up there and see the monument up close. We waited around at the top in hopes that the clouds would leave, but we had to give up after several hours of waiting.

The next day we spent the afternoon in Copacabana. Copacabana is probably the most famous beach in the world. It is renowned for its great sand, waves, beautiful people, fantastic weather, and fun atmosphere. The beach lived up to the hype. It was very beautiful. The waves were huge and were fun to swim in. They absolutely bowled you over if you tried to stay standing as they crashed up against you. It was also the first beach that we have been able to go to on our trip, and it was something that we have really been looking forward to so we enjoyed it a lot, and we plan to spend more time at the beach over the next few days.

Rio is also really gearing up for some big events over the next few years. The 2014 World Cup will be here as well as the Summer Olympics in 2016. You can really tell that the city is focused on sports. There are sports facilities all over the place and everywhere you look you can see sports and fitness being encouraged. There are running tracks everywhere as well as small fitness areas in all the parks and beaches. They have chinup-pushup-situp stations all over the place and there are gyms and other sports clubs all over the place and they are very busy. Everywhere you go you see people exercising. Rio is definitely the fittest city I’ve been to. Most of the people you see are in fantastic shape. Six-pack abs and muscles everywhere you look. If you ever wanted to go somewhere for a holiday and get fit while you’re there – Rio is the place to go.

We also spent one day here in Rio at the local hospital. Joh has been having some pain in her right foot lately and it wasn’t going away so we figured we should get it checked out. Turns out that it is probably tendinitis. We’re not 100% sure what it is from, although I’m sure that walking around for hours everyday wearing flip-flops has something to do with it. The doctor gave her some medication to reduce the inflammation and she now has to ice her foot three times a day to speed up the healing process. We are both really hoping that it heals quickly, as we both really enjoy walking and hiking a lot. We were also planning on walking the trail to Machu Picchu in a few weeks, so it would be great if it was healed by then. The hospital experience was also quite something. We had to wait for 8 hours in the waiting room while the hospital confirmed our insurance policy. It wasn’t the best way to spend a day in Rio, but we’re glad we know what the problem was with her foot and we now have a plan to get it resolved.

As for the upcoming weeks, we made some changes to our plans. We originally we planning to travel up the coast of Brazil up to the city of Recife where my cousin Karen and her husband Julius and their children live. Unfortunately we vastly underestimated the size of Brazil and the costs of its transportation system. Visiting them from Rio would be like visiting people in Toronto at home and then saying “Oh, while we’re here, we should go visit so and so in Edmonton”. It just doesn’t make sense for us to go at this time. After doing all the calculations we realized that the cost of going up to Recife and then backtracking back to our travel route would cost more than a month and a half of our travel budget. So instead of going north we’re headed back east to go up the east coast where the travel is much, much cheaper. We’ve booked a relatively cheap flight that leaves Sao Paulo in Brazil on Wednesday to go back to Bolivia, to the city of La Paz. When we’re there we plan on exploring the Amazon rainforest from the east side. It is much more cost effective that way, and when we were there last we saw some great options. After that we’ll head north to Peru and hopefully get a chance to go to Machu Picchu. In the meantime we have a few days to relax here before we go to Sao Paulo. We’re currently on a short bus ride to the beach town of Buzios, where we hope to take it easy and spend some time on a beach.