SwiftRambles

Balinese religion - Bali, Indonesia

One of the aspects that truly strikes a Western visitor to Bali is how religion is infused in everyday life. Most of Indonesia is Muslim, but the majority of the Balinese practice a form of Hinduism.  Celebrations are a huge part of the culture and on our first day we witnessed a religious procession, although I wasn't as quick on the taking the photos as I should have been.





We also got to witness some kind of ceremony that shut down the street we were trying to go down.



These offering boxes were set up for a major holiday that happened right before we arrived and lined many of the streets.

Beautiful views and Bali dancers - Ubud, Bali

In addition to the Enchanted Monkey Forrest, the other main activity to do in Ubud is to see an "authentic" Balinese dance.  We checked out a show one night and it was fairly entertaining even if the music was a little headache-inducing.

This guy looks more than thrilled:



Some dancer shots:

Mekong, Soul of a River - Can Tho, Vietnam

In 2009, Amber and I somehow found a television series on PBS called "Mekong, Soul of a River". The show traced the length of the Mekong river from the origin in Tibet all the way to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. The imagery and stories of the lives that live off the river inspired us (well maybe it was just me) to become enamored with the Mekong. We saw the Mekong in its glory in Cambodia, but the Delta was where most of Vietnam lived and we would be able to see how locals used the river.

After sleepy Phu Quoc, we were surprised at how built up Can Tho was. There were many high rise buildings, tons of traffic, and the place felt a little grimy. Our room at a guesthouse was on the top floor and we had to hike 5 stories to get there ("Inca Trail, here we come!" we would mutter as we took a break half way up). The main attraction in Can Tho is to see the floating markets and so we arranged for a guide to pick us up at 5:45am the next morning. The markets start early on the Mekong...

We got up and to my surprise our guide was bright-eyed and waiting for us ready to go. After getting a Vietnamese coffee to go, we got into our guide's little boat and proceeded down the river.

Our early morning paid off because the sunrise views were spectacular:

Tourist Time - Cusco to Lima, Peru

As we were gearing up and recovering from the Inca trail hike and Machu Picchu, we spent some time in Cusco.  Cusco is the top tourist destination in Peru and you can tell of course by the good and bad aspects.  Bad: the amount of touts, priceyness of the food and accommodations compared to elsewhere in Peru, and lots of tourists.*  Good: much better food than we were used to after the salt flats and Copacabana, decent infrastructure, and a lot of stuff to see. 

Here's the main cathedral in Cusco (there are a lot of churches there).  The flag you see is not for gay pride but is rather a flag for Cusco and represents the indigenous populations.  They get mad if you mistake it for gay pride and after all the rainbow pattern is slightly different.

The historic capital of the Incan empire, Cusco fell into backwater status after the Spanish invasion and establishment of Lima as the new capital.  However, once Machu Picchu was discovered again in the 1911, Cusco again was in the spotlight and tourism started to grow.  It's an interesting city as there are simultaneously Incan sites as well as colonial architecture.  Many of the important Spanish sites were built right on top of important Incan sites to help drive in Spanish religion and values into the indigenous population.

Ok that was way too long of a history lesson.  Are you still with me?  I hope so!  So what did we do in Cusco before and after the hike?

Well, we thought we'd need to practice for the Inca Trail so Tom decided to pick a hostal at the top of the biggest hill in the world.  The hill that is pedestrian only due to the giant set of stairs going up it.  So that was good practice huffing and puffing but since we didn't feel like that was quite enough we decided to climb further up the hill to see the Jesus statue and to visit the Incan site of Sacsayhuamán (pronounced "Sexy Woman" - we had fun asking people how to get there the numerous times we got lost, it probably wasn't the first time Tom went up to a stranger asking how to find a "sexy woman"!). 

Speaking of asking a stranger something, on the way up I asked an indigenous woman picking what looked like weeds along the road if she was going to eat the plants.  She replied it was to eat with "cuy".  Cuy, by the way, is guinea pig.  Seems so strange to eat what we consider a pet until you think about that the Incans were eating the little critters for hundreds of years and guinea pigs probably haven't been pets that long.  I thought this was a charming encounter until she asked me for some money.  I guess every question has a price in such a touristy town!

Stairs, stairs, stairs. 

Bulls for good luck and to ward off evil spirit were found outside many homes along our walk:

Some ink on Incans - Copacabana and Isla Del Sol, Bolivia

After yet another overnight bus, we arrived in La Paz and decided we were not ready for exploring a big, rough city.  So that morning at the bus station we spontaneously bought onward tickets to Copacabana.  No, not the famous Rio beach.  Copacabana, Bolivia, is a town on Lake Titicaca (yes, we made juvenile jokes about the name) where Incans used to live.  We realized that while we saw natural beauty and how Bolivians live today thus far in Bolivia, but we really hadn't seen much on its pre-columbian history. 

We arrived in Copacabana and found that it was filled with tourist-centric restaurants, tour agencies, and crapcraft markets selling Homer Simpson t-shirts - not the quintessential Incan cultural center we were picturing.  They love The Simpsons in South America:

Following in the tracks of dinosaurs and Incans - Sucre, Bolivia

Note: We are way behind on the blog!  No internet access for a long time and our recent quick travel schedule has made updating the blog difficult.  We hope to catch up soon but here's a nice unusually long post in the meantime...

After the hellish lovely time at Ginger's Paradise, we headed to Sucre to soak up some Bolivian culture. 

Actually by "headed" I mean we walked to the restaurant where we supposedly could catch a bus, found out that the bus is full (well, we were offered to ride in the middle of the aisle... for the 12 hour ride), discovered too late that we should have been waving down every bus that we saw in an attempt to get seats, and then headed back to Ginger's Paradise for one more night.  Oh, and by the way, this day was Tom's birthday!  So not making the same mistake the next day, we backtracked a couple of hours to Santa Cruz and took the bus from there... only to stop at the very same restaurant we had waited out the night before to pick up a couple of passengers.  Such is travel in Bolivia.  This doesn't even go to mention the 12 hour bouncy ride on unpaved roads, the extremely smelly guy sitting next to Tom in the middle of the aisle, and the fact that 99% of the bus was comprised of a teenage boy "delegation" who spent the night taking flash pictures of their shaving fight and having rap "battles".  We definitely felt like we arrived in Bolivia with these transportation hijinks.  At least Tom stopped one of the boys from peeing into a bottle in the seat next to us... we didn't want to set a precedent, right?

After arriving to Sucre though, we felt the travel woes were worth it as we viewed the whitewashed city high up in the foothills of the Andes.  At 9,000 feet, Sucre was a good introduction to the higher altitudes we'd be experiencing in Bolivia. 







Known as the cultural heart as well as the constitutional capital of Bolivia, we spent a pleasant few days exploring the city and doing typical touristy things, like visiting a textile museum to learn about the traditions of the various indigenous cultures of Bolivia and seeing some indigenous masks worn at festivals:

Getting to Gnocchi an Argentine Tradition

In Argentina, it´s a tradition to eat gnocchi on the 29th of every month as it´s considered good luck.  Some folks even put a peso underneath their plate to help bring in wealth.

It´s actually so well ingrained in the society that in one (of the many) corrupt governments, the government workers who were on the payroll but weren´t actually working were called ¨gnocchis¨ as they only showed up once a month to collect their paychecks.

Tom and I love gnocchi so this is a tradition that works for us and one we hope to bring back home.  So go ahead and be like the Argentines and have some gnocchi today.

- Amber

5 Neighborhoods - Buenos Aires, Argentina

After Mendoza, we headed to Buenos Aires to enjoy some city life and to work on getting our Brazilian visas.  While we don´t have pictures the lovely three trips we got to make to the Brazilian embassy, believe me, it was something to remember... and not in a good way.

On a brighter note, we did get to explore a few of the 44 neighborhoods that make up the massive city of Buenos Aires. 

We stayed in San Telmo, a bit of a bohemian neighborhood (I think that is just a nice way of saying ¨somewhat crime-ridden¨) known for its tango and Sunday antiques market.  We saw a little tango show and checked out the antiques market on Domingo (that is Sunday in these parts).  We also met up with Virginia and Ron, who we saw in Mendoza. 

Some pictures of the tango show as well as a short video:

And now for some pictures of old shit... I mean of the antiques market...

Poetry from the tent - Copahue, Argentina (Patagonia)

 "Copahue"

We are off the beaten track,
But it is not doing wonders for my back.

In a village known for its cure-alls,
We are stuck in a tent cold as balls.

Geothermic pools pierce the ground
And old Argentines come from all around;

They search for the fountain of youth
And they find doctors with a cash booth.

The pools are green or muddy, cold or too hot -
Picturesque and calming they are not.

Propaganda - Cuba

After about 2 minutes after arriving at the airport in Cuba, one of the most startling things we noticed was the political propaganda. Since the country is socialist and most industry is government-owned, there doesn't seem to be a need for advertisements, so the billboards that do exist are dedicated to government messages. 

Below are some examples of the pieces of propaganda that we saw.  From the homespun to the government sanctioned, it puts what we have in the US to shame right? Many of the themes were about the following:

- Pictures of Jose Marti, Castro, Che Guevara, or other important political figures

- Revolution (what Castro calls taking over the government in the 1960s... so it's been about 50 years of "revolution")

- "Volveran" which means "to return"; pictures of 5 political prisoners that I think are held in the US

- Simply put: "Patriotism or death"

Note: many of these pictures are poor-quality as they are taken out the bus window, and I must apologize in advance for my mistranslations in Spanish. 

Socialism:

He who harbors terrorists is a terrorist: