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Tomato Soup posted:The main problem for me with food in Bolivia was that it got me really sick That's why you drive!  But seriously Bolivia is not a place for sane people to drive a 95 Buick Regal. It is incredibly entertaining though. This is on the way from Copacabana to La Paz back in 2007.
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Jan 11, 2011 01:53
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I was too scared to eat at local restaurants after that. But yes, it's got good food but you have to look a bit and make sure it's safe (no uncooked veggies and such). I miss saltenas in Bolivia, they were loving amazing. Go for the fried ones, I liked them better than the baked ones.
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Just out of curiosity, what did that boat ride cost you?
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Jan 11, 2011 03:48
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Hadlock posted:Just out of curiosity, what did that boat ride cost you? I don't remember exactly. It was pretty cheap since it was just a little ferry across Lake Titicaca. Copacabana and the Isla del Sol are sort of isolated from the rest of Bolivia by the lake so you have to take these ferries (we came in from Puno, Peru). I want to say it was like the equivalent of $15 bucks but I don't remember exactly. We were pretty stressed at that point because there was some sort of fuel shortage and the 1 gas station in Copa didn't have anything so we negotiated for a few liters out of a barrel from some locals. We also didn't have hardly any money since all the banks were conveniently closed and there weren't any ATMs. I had had a stash of USD but changed them over to bolivianos when we got to Copa from Peru since the bank had decided to not be open ever and, again, no ATM. There's a toll on the way into La Paz that we had to sweet talk our way through because we literally had no money and were just about running on fumes. Really, though, we were pretty short on cash our whole time through since Bolivia seems to specialize in surprising you with extra fees that everybody forgets to mention until you're there while keeping all their banks closed and only having atms in select locations. Also the roads get really really bad in the south and it was an incredibly entertaining yet bad idea to drive the car to the salt flats. That said, Bolivia definitely left us with the best stories, because, you know, constant stress.
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Jan 11, 2011 04:06
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If you guys could only go to ONE place in Mexico for 10 days, where would it be? Girlfriend and I are planning a trip for our anniversary. We both really enjoy food and drink, she enjoys anything art related, and I really enjoy the outdoors. Any suggestions?
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Jan 12, 2011 10:17
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Too Fresh posted:I know but I've spent like the last 2 months being unemployed and sitting on my laptop all day reading somethingawful/facebook so some time away from the internet would be nice!
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Jan 12, 2011 12:40
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Sup guys- Im currently in Salta in NW Argentina. What is some cool stuff to do in this region? Im heading into Bolivia and Peru in like 4 days and I have all that sorta figured out with friends and stuff but I dont know much about Salta.
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Jan 12, 2011 18:02
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mattdev: go to Oaxaca, no question. It's sort of like the California of Mexico - lots of beautiful scenery to walk/lounge around in and a thriving local art scene. Those brightly-painted wood animals they sell all over Mexico are a Oaxacan thing.
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Jan 12, 2011 19:02
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duralict posted:mattdev: go to Oaxaca, no question. It's sort of like the California of Mexico - lots of beautiful scenery to walk/lounge around in and a thriving local art scene. Those brightly-painted wood animals they sell all over Mexico are a Oaxacan thing. That's exactly the place I was leaning toward. Thanks!
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Jan 13, 2011 20:27
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Does anyone have any experience in Barbados, and fun things to do there? I'm not sure if it qualifies as South America, but I'd think it's close enough in the carib. I'm heading there for 7 days in a month and am essentially a tabula rasa. No idea what to expect other than my (light) background knowledge of Barbadian history and its former status as a British colony.
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Jan 13, 2011 23:11
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I just want to thank everybody contributing to this thread. I will be travelling through south america for 6 months beginning this summer. And I got so many good ideas from this thread and I have been writing these down. I am so ready to go.
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Jan 14, 2011 02:04
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Mister Blue Sky posted:That's why you drive! Haha awesome. I met a Dutch couple in Uyuni whose campervan broke down and they had to fly back home to get the parts they needed (they shipped it over) and returned 9 months later to continue their trip. It was pretty crazy and if I do a road trip to Ushuaia, I'm going to take a relatively common car so I don't have to fly back if it breaks down  and seconding the crazy fees in Bolivia, it was kind of funny to see how many small towns had a chain across the only road through it so they could charge a toll to go through. Hadlock posted:Just out of curiosity, what did that boat ride cost you? I did the same crossing, but I was in an actual boat instead of going over with the bus. The boat cost 1.50 bolivanos, but I saw on some blogs that people stayed with their buses when they did the crossing. And this thread needs more pictures! I'll be posting some more later hopefully but here's one of a sunset in Copacabana  
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Jan 15, 2011 12:14
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I´m studying Spanish in the central valley in Costa Rica. Does anybody have any thoughts on the weather? I´m not used to thinking in terms of elevation. A bit higher up, I was told ¨sometimes we don´t have a dry season.¨ Down here, I´ve been told that there´s a weather system causing this constant rain. Information online is a bit sparse. Can I expect a season of this? I´m guessing that nobody really knows.
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Jan 15, 2011 19:35
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Hell, if this thread needs pictures I have tons from Brazil/Argentina/Uruguay.      
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Jan 15, 2011 23:02
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Tomato Soup posted:I did the same crossing, but I was in an actual boat instead of going over with the bus. The boat cost 1.50 bolivanos, but I saw on some blogs that people stayed with their buses when they did the crossing. Our guide said they stopped letting people cross over on the buses after one of them tipped over... yikes. There was a hell of a cross wind when we crossed which made for a hairy as hell ride, watching the water splash around the back of the boat, the cracked windows where it looked like someone had smacked their heads, and closely eyeing both life jackets on board. It's the perfect introduction to Bolivia. When I got to the other side I watched one of the barges undergo some frantic bailing.
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Jan 16, 2011 02:16
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NZAmoeba posted:Our guide said they stopped letting people cross over on the buses after one of them tipped over... yikes.  at the rest though, it pretty much sums up Bolivia perfectly.
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Jan 16, 2011 07:54
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Bagheera posted:There's not much to do in El Progreso. It's a commercial/industrial town: a great place to move to if you're a native, but not too interesting for a tourist. And so I found out. The mall was good for cheap liquor and exchanging money. We actually stayed at a hotel a couple blocks down on the same street, Casa Blanca. I went with a student group, Students Helping Honduras (https://www.studentshelpinghonduras.com) and it was definitely one of the best, if not the best, experiences of my life. They have constructed a village for former shanty town residents and we worked on the second children's home. The residents are chosen through a lottery, are obligated to commit so many hours to projects, the kids must go to the school, and the titles to property are in the kids names. Habitat for Humanity worked somewhere nearby and put the titles in the parents names. The homes were sold almost instantly after they were given away. The children's homes are a revolutionary concept to Honduras because if you're found on the street, you're hosed. You're sent to INHFA which is the state run orphanage and are usually located next to the local jails and look the same. They are poorly staffed, funded, and you see all sorts of kids with terrible situations. One child looked about 7 and was really around 12 or 13. His dad was a local drug lord and his step-mom hated him. His step mom put him in the closet one day and he wasn't taken yet for years until the house was raided in a drug bust. Another kid was brought to Honduras with his dad from Belize and abandoned. Everyone tried speaking broken Spanish to him like the other kids and he tells us "uhhh, I speak English." One child had recently been freed because he drew a map to his home to an American volunteer and said none of the orphanage workers believed him. The American took the map and a few days later set out to find the house. Turns out it was his grandmother's house. The boy had moved to his grandmother's house because of trouble at his parent's house. He wanted to see his mom one night so he left, wandered the streets, and was eventually picked up. The village children's home will be better because the kids aren't going to be kept in rooms all day, similar to cells, no fenced walls, and one mother per house per ten children. It will be much more like a family and they will be integrated into the community. We moved the people of a shanty town (that had just been set up because of getting kicked off their previous land) to a school to be dry during a rain storm with no end in sight. A completely unplanned part of the trip but we were able to raise the money for 150lbs of rice and another 150lbs of beans, candy for the children, and our clothing donations went to this village instead of being donated to the group and distributed later. I could go on forever.
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Jan 16, 2011 22:47
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mattdev posted:If you guys could only go to ONE place in Mexico for 10 days, where would it be? Mexico City and Guanajuato, or Mexico City and Oaxaca City. Mexico City is one of the best cities in the world for eating, and the Mexican art scene is outstanding. If you decide to see Guanajuato also, you could do some outdoorsy stuff by adding on Patzcuaro. Oaxaca is very cultural, in an earth-muffin kind of way. The outdoors activities are along the coast, with surfing at Puerto Escondido, or beach-stoner time at Mazunte or Zipolite.
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Jan 19, 2011 01:46
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Macunaima posted:Mexico City and Guanajuato, or Mexico City and Oaxaca City. Mexico City is one of the best cities in the world for eating, and the Mexican art scene is outstanding. If you decide to see Guanajuato also, you could do some outdoorsy stuff by adding on Patzcuaro. Oaxaca is very cultural, in an earth-muffin kind of way. The outdoors activities are along the coast, with surfing at Puerto Escondido, or beach-stoner time at Mazunte or Zipolite. Funny that you give us the choice between Oaxaca and Guanajuato. Those were the two places that we were trying to decide between!
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Jan 19, 2011 08:11
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mattdev posted:Funny that you give us the choice between Oaxaca and Guanajuato. Those were the two places that we were trying to decide between! Do you have The Fear? Things are dodgy north of DF these days ... might be better to head to Oaxaca. I used to live in Puerto Escondido, in coastal Oaxaca state. If you like water and big fierce waves (Zicatela), go there.
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Jan 19, 2011 14:37
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GreenCard78 posted:Awesome stuff You've done a really great thing. I miss Honduras so much, and I'm happy to hear that someone is going down there to make lives better.
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Jan 20, 2011 02:35
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I lined up a job and am moving from Phnom Penh to La Paz at the end of February, with a brief interlude in Los Angeles. Anyone have advice on a good cheap place to stay in La Paz while I look for an apartment? Also, if anyone happens to know a secret to getting cheap flights from the States to Bolivia I'm all ears. I'd expected it would cost less than flying to Cambodia, but it looks like I was wrong.
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Jan 20, 2011 20:43
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Astian posted:I lined up a job and am moving from Phnom Penh to La Paz at the end of February, with a brief interlude in Los Angeles. Anyone have advice on a good cheap place to stay in La Paz while I look for an apartment? The cheapest way to get to Bolivia would probably be flying to Lima then taking a bus to La Paz, did you check Santa Cruz too?
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Jan 20, 2011 23:31
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I figured after all this time I could finally post some pictures of my trip. Maybe to inspire others considering coming to visit South America. This will be the start of more pictures that I'll post in the future, I'm just bad at getting pictures online in general because the speeds aren't that great here. I'm currently in Caracas, Venezuela and have booked a flight on a whim to Rio in Brazil. I leave in 3 days, CAN'T WAIT! This is Plaza San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador. There's a hostel here for 3.50 dollars a night with private rooms that overlooks the plaza, cheapest place I stayed in in Ecuador other than Montanita, found another one there for 3 dollars.  Main plaza in Quito, presidential palace on the left. I arrived in Quito the exact day that the police went on strike and the president was kidnapped, exciting times.   Plaza in Bogota during Christmas  Same plaza at night with the lights turned on  Medellin, same shot that DD took from the bridge during Christmas  More lights in Medellin   Statues like these are everywhere, the artist is famous and has paintings in museums across Colombia and parts of Venezuela too.  Cartagena, one of my favorite cities in Colombia    Cartagena de Indias in Cartagena, incredible fortress that has tunnels you can walk through.   Sign hanging on the wall in the bathroom, love the translations   Valle de Cocora in Salento with massive palm trees    Sometimes my camera takes not so bad pictures Me by a tree. It looked bigger in person at the time. It's a tree the Mayans used to hang bodies  Jumandy caves in Tena    Sunset over Quito from the Secret Garden  Doing some rapelling down waterfalls in Banos. This is 20 bucks for 6 hours, really good experience at least once.  Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador  Climbing    on top, YEEEAAAHHH MADE IT! passed out after the volcano  If you haven't been to South America, come see it! If any goons are coming to southern Brazil and Argentina let me know and we'll meet up somewhere. I'm bound for Argentina shortly after seeing Rio
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Jan 22, 2011 20:04
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masterfly posted:
I was in Ecuador in October! The Secret Garden was by far my favorite hostel, although not the cheapest. That view was incredible though. The rappelling in Banos was great, and so cheap compared to anything back home. I think every outfitter used those same converse looking shoes. Can you talk a bit more about your Cotopaxi experience? I was planning on doing the trip, but my traveling buddy talked me out of it as he didn't think they were going to supply enough gear to stay warm. I really want to go back and summit though.
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Jan 22, 2011 23:00
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I think that was the most expensive hostel I stayed in on the whole trip, other than the few odd times I got stuck in hotels that arrived around 3am to a new city. Banos has so many adventure activities for cheap, I eventually grew a pair of balls and did the bungee jump. For 12 dollars I couldn't say no. For canyoning the shoes sucked, I had rocks in there and they cut my feet after a while. But Cotopaxi, that was incredible. The highlight of this trip by far, I couldn't believe the intensity and the excitement of that climb. Some people might have climbed it who will read this and say it wasn't THAT bad. SHUT UP! It WAS that bad. No groups had made it to the top for over 2 weeks because of daily snowstorms and avalanches. This was during the rain season which means snow season on the mountains. I knew I wanted to climb it when I first heard about how high it was and how it was an active volcano, I had to do it quick seeing as my visa in Ecuador expired a week later so I booked the tour on a whim. The guide told me it was unlikely we would get to the top and I spoke with the group that had climbed the night before me, they told me they might have been 60m from the top before an avalanche started. They turned back and I was feeling pretty disappointed knowing we wouldn't get to the top. I think we got really lucky, it was a clear sky all night and all morning. I almost passed out a few times and of the original 7 in my group only 2 of us made it to the top. The gear was great, we had an hour of ice climbing practice for that one spot where we had to use picks near the top. After the 4th or 5th hour of climbing the guide told me if we kept a solid pace like this and no other weather conditions affect us then we'll most likely see the top. I'll never forget that climb, walking on the rim first with my guide and collapsing was a special moment.
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Jan 22, 2011 23:48
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masterfly posted:I think that was the most expensive hostel I stayed in on the whole trip, other than the few odd times I got stuck in hotels that arrived around 3am to a new city. I am so envious now. Where did you end up booking it?
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Jan 23, 2011 01:46
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masterfly posted:
It's so clean! Is Colombia really on top of street cleanup or is Cartagena a special case? VVV I suspected as much. My search for the one local neighborhood in Latin America that isn't buried in plastic bags much continue. VVV duralict fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jan 24, 2011 |
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Jan 24, 2011 00:55
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duralict posted:It's so clean! Is Colombia really on top of street cleanup or is Cartagena a special case? haha its funny you say that. The photos he posted are in the most touristy areas of the city. Just about everywhere else has a normal amount of trash on the streets for a developing country.
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Jan 24, 2011 01:02
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To share some recent pictures:    Im currently in San Pedro de Atacama in North Chile and heading into Bolivia again soon towards La Paz. Perchance one of you folk is in that area :O?
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Jan 24, 2011 04:29
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Lemonus posted:
I haven't been to Atacama in years but it was one of my favorite places ever to visit. If they're still there, try to get someone to take you to the geysers at sunrise (when they go off). They were planning to build a natural gas power plant there when I was there in 2007, but who knows if that ever went anywhere.  Also, if you have another night in Atacama, look around for one of the astronomy tours in San Pedro. The best one is run by an old British astronomer who charges people $10 or so to spend a couple hours looking through his extremely high-end telescopes at stuff, along with a shortish laser pointer layout of the various southern hemisphere constellations and the Zodiac. Atacama's the world's driest desert, has no air pollution and very little light pollution, so it's one of the clearest views of the night sky anywhere on Earth and worth it just to look at stuff you usually have to squint to see. Also it's the coldest I have ever been. Here's a photo of Jupiter I took through one of the telescopes.  Anyone else thinking about going to Atacama, do it. It's one of the strangest and most memorable places I've ever been. San Pedro and Moon Valley are overflowing with backpackers but basically everywhere else the visitors are far between, so it's a nice mix of camaraderie and relatively easy access to mostly-isolated Incan villages and crazy desert rock formations.  A volcano that just happened to erupt exactly at dawn my first morning there: 
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Jan 24, 2011 05:22
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duralict posted:It's so clean! Is Colombia really on top of street cleanup or is Cartagena a special case? The older part is always clean except for one district. It was especially clean that day because a cruise ship with 900 people from Canada arrived earlier. I would still say Colombia is much more on top of cleanup than the other places I went to. Peru wasn't great except the tourist areas, garbage for miles and miles in stacks in the north. Ecuador wasn't bad, but Venezuela.. Caracas is a joke, the cleanup crews here don't even try. Broken glass everywhere, water spewing out of sewage drains with chunks of food floating down the road. I won't generalize for all of Venezuela since I've only seen 3 cities in it but crossing the border from Colombia didn't leave much to the imagination. masterfly fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jan 24, 2011 |
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Jan 24, 2011 21:05
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Medellin, Manizales, and Bogota are all fairly clean, depending on the barrio. Places on the Caribbean coast (with the exception of Cartagena - the crown jewel of tourism in Colombia) are filthy. Turbo is an open cesspit.
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Jan 25, 2011 16:11
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What are work opportunities like for foreigners in South America? Is teaching English the only way to go or are there other enticing alternatives?
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Jan 25, 2011 21:05
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Vernacular posted:What are work opportunities like for foreigners in South America? Is teaching English the only way to go or are there other enticing alternatives? What are you qualified to do? I practice US immigration law all over South America, but lawyering isn't exactly entry-level work.
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Jan 25, 2011 21:12
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Macunaima posted:What are you qualified to do? I practice US immigration law all over South America, but lawyering isn't exactly entry-level work. Got my B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from a top university, and have 5+ years of admin./office/management experience in the non-profit sector. In other words...I'm flexible.
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Jan 25, 2011 21:24
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Vernacular posted:Got my B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from a top university, and have 5+ years of admin./office/management experience in the non-profit sector. In other words...I'm flexible. Can you hablar/falar?
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Jan 25, 2011 21:31
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Macunaima posted:Can you hablar/falar? Puedo hablar un poquito...its been awhile since I've been good at Spanish, but I could always get back on the horse if need be.
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Jan 25, 2011 21:49
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Liberal arts BA ... Hello teacher! Thing with arranging work in Latin America is that you really need to be on the ground to do it, even with the ESL stuff. You'll get some mileage on your gringo card if you are credentialed and can speak conversationally, but you're unlikely to arrange anything worthwhile from abroad. People are big on personal connections down there. With a master's or preferably PhD, you can usually find some kind of teaching work at a university (UNAM in Mexico City is a good place to start) for enough pay to scrape by. If you're serious about kicking around South America, Brazil is where it's at these days. You'll need Portuguese for that though. It's tougher than Spanish, but close enough that people will understand you as you gradually move from Spanish to Portunhol to Portuguese. Understanding their responses is significantly more difficult. Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina are all good places to teach. I've heard Chile also has a good ESL scene for foreigners.
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Jan 25, 2011 22:18
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If you're VERY qualified (have Master's/PhD) you can teach at international schools for hella pay.
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Jan 26, 2011 17:42
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a japanese pop icon posted:If you're VERY qualified (have Master's/PhD) you can teach at international schools for hella pay. This is very true. One of my professors in São Paulo was from Greece and barely spoke a word of Portuguese at all. He said he moved down there because the pay was ages better than it was anywhere else. He taught all of his classes in English.
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Jan 26, 2011 20:15
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