Why Yes, You Can Rip Us Off in Front of Our Faces

5/5/10: Puno, Peru

We stood in front of the Desayuno (name changed to the Spanish word for “breakfast” because I can’t remember the real name) bus ticket counter, and an old lady approached. The following conversation took place in Spanish, but I’ll translate it here for those of you who aren’t masters of the Spanish language like I am.

“What time is the bus to Arequipa tomorrow?”
“8:30am.”
“And how much is it?”
“20 soles.” (A little less than $8.)
“Can we see a picture of the bus?”
“It’s right there.”

The old lady pointed to a picture of the Desayuno bus behind the counter . It looked pretty good to us, so we decided to go ahead and buy the tickets. We knew that we could probably negotiate a slightly lower price, but we were fine paying 20.

The old lady was happy to hear that we wanted the tickets, so she motioned for us to follow her. We wound up walking all the way across the terminal… right to the Flores counter. She then began printing our tickets, which cost 13 soles each at this counter. We stood around a bit confused, but decided it wasn’t worth our time to argue. When the tickets came out, the lady – right in front of us no less – took a marker and blacked out the 13 sole ticket price so we would think 20 was the correct value. She then took off around the terminal and found stickers to put on each of the tickets, adding one sole each to the cost.

So we wound up paying 21 soles for tickets that cost 13, and we wound up buying them from a completely different bus company than we originally agreed. You know why this impresses me though? Because now we know how we got ripped off. Eight months ago we would have had no idea what just happened.

In case you’re curious, here are four other previously-undisclosed ways that we’ve improved our traveling game. (We’re now so good at traveling that some people think we’re “crab dribbling.”)

(1) We rarely buy drinks with dinner. Buying sodas, pops, Cokes, soft drinks, Pepsis, colas or gaseosas at restaurants is an easy way to break the daily budget. We usually just wait until after dinner and get a drink at the nearest mini-mart. (Surprisingly there is no difference in taste between a restaurant Coke and a mini-mart Coke.) I won’t say that’s the sole reason we’re several hundred dollars under budget now, but I’d bet it’s accounted for a good deal of our savings.

(2) We don’t even care who got voted off American Idol. We’ll stink it up at our local pub trivia nights when we get back because we’ve lost all touch with American pop culture. But seeing that most celebrities back home are either in debt, marital trouble or a halfway house, that’s probably a good thing. (Don’t worry though, I know exactly what’s going on in the world of sports.)

(3) We’re ultra-aware of our belongings. I find myself subconsciously patting my butt all the time, not because I enjoy it, but because I want to be sure my wallet is there. If it were a real wallet, I could understand my concern, but my wallet contains about $3 in the local currency – an amount that I’m almost asking people to steal.

(4) We know the “expiration date” on our pants. Three weeks in Nepal without a change of pants: too long. Eight days in Argentina: not long enough. Obviously it depends on the weather and what we’re doing, but we now know exactly how long we can wear each article of clothing before the smell of it would cause strangers to tuck their noses in their collars as they walk by. (This doesn’t mean we always do laundry on time though.)
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Picture of the Day: We spent three days in Puno and only have three pictures to show for it. This is one of them.

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Touristy Uros

5/4/10: Puno, Peru

“It’s good, but it’s really touristy. It’s almost ridiculous how touristy it is.”
“It’s definitely worth a visit, but it’s sooooo touristy.”

Sometimes I don’t get what the bad thing is about going to a place that’s touristy. The Great Wall, the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower – all crawling with tourists. But why is that bad? Is it because everyone else had the same idea as you so you don’t feel special? Sometimes I just want to shout, “IT’s OK! You don’t HAVE to be special! I’m Chinese! I’m one of over 1.3 BILLION Chinese people, and it’s ok!”

Anyway. I really like seeing tons of other travelers at the same place we’re at and thinking about how cool it is that one thing could bring so many people from so many different countries and backgrounds together – to one place. Don’t you think that’s amazing?

With that preface, today we went to Uros, one of the floating islands in Lake Titicaca, which had been described to us as “touristy.” I still don’t know what that word means.

Roads.

Approaching the floating islands in our boat that traveled at 5mph.

Our little island.

We arrived at one of the small island communities and hopped off our boat. The “ground” was surprisingly firm. One of the men on the island explained to us how the island was built. It was in Spanish, so we didn’t understand everything, but I think I can explain how it works without too many mistakes. There are these giant peat blocks that float. Each peat block has a big wooden stick sticking out of it, and they get tied together by ropes. There are also ropes from those sticks that stretch out and anchor the island on all sides to the ground (so it doesn’t float away). Then they put massive amounts of dry reeds on top of the peat blocks and build their houses on top of that. It’s crazy.

A model of the island with the president looking on.

Looking at the village through the reeds.

After walking around the village for a little bit, we took a ride in a small reed boat. The boat was so sensitive that when Kevin leaned from his side over onto my side to take a picture, the two women on the boat (including me) screamed and we nearly capsized. Not to worry though, our captain was a pro. He expertly paddled us around, except he didn’t have a paddle – just had a long wooden rod. Either the people on these island are extremely strong or there is hardly any friction between the water and the boat. I’m guessing it’s probably a combination of the two.

Our super captain.

I think the colors indicate what family/island they belong to, but don't quote me on that.

It wasn’t long before we had to say goodbye to our able captain and the island of floating reeds. And so now I can say with pride: I might be one of 1.3 billion Chinese on this planet, but I’ve gone to the floating islands on Lake Titicaca. Take that!

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Picture of the Day: View from our reed boat.

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And Here They Come Down the Home Stretch!

5/3/10: Puno, Peru

It’s funny how life works. Three years of your life may revolve around one giant adventure (read: our round-the-world trip), but eventually it all has to end. I’m not saying our trip is over yet, because we do have nearly two months left. However, today marked a bit of a landmark for me personally – one that says, “Hey! You, living that fantasy life! Pretty soon you’re going to have to get a job and float back to reality!” (That was a metaphorical landmark yelling there. It wasn’t like Machu Picchu or the Eiffel Tower or anything.)

Today was our last border crossing by land. (Bring on the sarcastic sympathetic groans.) In the first 24.5 years of my life, I crossed approximately four borders in a vehicle – twice into Canada and twice back to the States. Today’s cross into Peru made 19 land border crossings in the past eight months. Think about that. That’s more land border crossings than Miley Cyrus is years old. It’s more than the number of wins the Detroit Lions have had in the past five years. It’s more than the number of people in the Gosselin and Jolie-Pitt households combined, assuming both parental relationships didn’t fall apart.

But that isn’t the sole reason why I feel our trip has hit the final stretch. For the next month, we have every single day planned out. We know exactly where we’ll be staying, what we’ll be doing and who we’ll be doing it with. For nearly the entire trip, we couldn’t see more than four days into the future. A lot of the time we didn’t know where we’d be the next day. But for the rest of May, we have nothing to plan. It makes me feel like we’ve already done Machu Picchu, Colca Canyon and the Peruvian Amazon, and the only reason we’re going to do it again is to show our family members what a good time these places provide. (Dad, Steve and Amy: you’ll love them!)

And once May is over, we have about a week in Spain, two in Egypt and one in England, then we’re going home. And you know what? I’m ok with that. Even though there’s a million more places in the world we want to cover and we’re getting used to life without work, school and the need to shave, there’s only so much traveling you can do at once. On the road there is no balance in life. There’s no family, no home, and no routine. When I think about the past eight months, I’m actually quite amazed that we were able to pull off what we did. We haven’t spent more than six nights in a row in the same room, and we only did six nights in one place twice. And both those rooms were dorms, where we couldn’t spread out and make ourselves comfortable.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m seeking anyone’s sympathy. (Really I’m just filling space on the blog for a day where we didn’t do anything.) As I write, I’m realizing how unique this trip is. I suppose I’d always thought we could do it again when we retire – only for that trip we’d stay in nicer places and do more high-priced things. But there’s no way we’ll ever do this again. So for the next two months, I’m going to make sure I enjoy every moment.

We already had one good omen to usher us into the last leg of our trip: the border crossing today was by far the easiest we’ve had on the entire trip. Too bad there’s no more of them.
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Puzzles for Postcards

Rhyme Time! Solve three of these four alphabetically-themed rhymes.

An additional member of a frat
Slang for the low-down or gossip on the upcoming Dave Matthews show
The opposite of imprecise fiction
What Casper is when he has a bunch of people over for dinner
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Picture of the Day: Our hostel is located at the top of a huge hill. The only benefit of this is the nice panoramic view it provided.

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