June Happenings

So June came and went with a quickness! I felt like I was just saying how I had 6 months left here in Peru and somehow now it is less than 5 months! So what sort of fun crap did I squeeze into the month that was gone in a blink of an eye??? I did a 7.3K run/walk for charity and took a vacation to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Colonia, Uruguay with the hubby!

Let's start with the run/walk.... The hubby and his boss ran it together.... I flew solo.... Now since I didn't exactly train for this, it was probably not my best idea ever, At points during it, I did hate life a little and questioned what I was thinking. Oh I remember, it was for the disabled children of Lima to have a new therapeutic center! I wish I had a camera for when I was jogging across the bridge and the faster people were on their return to the finish were coming down the other side of the bridge. What a great turn out! Anyways here are some pictures that best describe the run.

I know you all have seen this one before and basically is what I would say was the "during" of the run

Immediately following the run picture.... Sunshine and Rainbows bitches! I felt great!

What I felt like by the end of the day and for the next few days.... Since I basically never jog I stiffened probably worse than this old lady!

It was for the kids and that's what matters :)

Ten days after the run, the hubby and I were in Buenos Aires! Now it was cold compared to Lima so I should have brought a couple extra sweaters! What a beautiful city! The first day we walked around and got familiar with the area we were staying. We ate at the hotel for dinner, well more like Scott ate and I took 3 bites of my food and called it good. For some lovely reason I didn't sleep for more than an hour on the plane so I had been up since 9am the day before. I just felt sick and tired (and maybe had a meltdown at the Sao Paolo airport due to Scott's dip passport and the cunt that was trying to deny him boarding cause he didn't already have a visa for Argentina in it. She was not understanding he was traveling on tourist purposes and not official which means he doesn't have to already have a visa.... bitch....) and was ready to fall asleep in my "pumpkin soup". I would more like to call it pumpkin baby food... Didn't taste bad but just didn't have that silky smooth soup thing going on.... After finally getting some sleep in the glorious king size bed (we have got to upgrade our bed when we leave here) I was feeling much better! We did a city bus tour that took us all over different parts of the city and right by the Ferry terminal that we would be going to the next day.  I forget what we did for lunch but for dinner we did an Argentinian grill. Delicious! and also we found a wine that we absolutely love there! Now I was not a smart cookie and I indulged in a bit too much wine and guess what?! Hangover the next day, yay me...... Again that dip passport caused us some problems at customs in the ferry terminal... They get so uppity about how it's an official passport and how he's supposed to already have visas in it even though he's not traveling on official business... Supervisor do wonders though, they just basically say whatever let him through... After a nice little nap on the ferry to Uruguay I felt okay.

We rented a scooter to ride around town on for only $25 for the day. Checked out the beaches on the Rio de La Plata, old town Colonia, and I think we ended up in more of a local residential area but that was cool too. We had this great intention of eating at this burger stand Scott had read about, but the dude wasn't open yet and we were starving... and of course right as our food gets delivered, home dude opens his stand.... If we had known he would open then, I would have starved for the extra time to pay half the price for what we read are totally amazing burgers.... Now if people in Argentina and Uruguay believed in posting hours of operation, then this would not have been a problem and I would have had a great burger instead of an overpriced mediocre burger. Colonia was a nice small town with wonderful colonial autumn charm :) You don't need more than a few hours there though. The ferry ride back was not so pleasurable... Thank the lord riding around bitch on a scooter cured my hangover.... Over half of the "tourist class" (they have different classes on the ferry) was obnoxious loud ass school children that most of the boat wanted to slaughter by the time we docked in Buenos Aires... There was one chick having a "Little Annie Brazilian airport meltdown" over the fact she was asked to move her stuff out of an empty seat to try and get these kids to sit down and the obnoxiousness of the children..... Hate to break it to you chica, but putting on your sunglasses did not hide the fact you were crying... We all knew you were before you put them on, so just own up to your tears and let them sparkle in the sunlight!

Due to late night eating (I mean like places don't open for dinner until around 8 or 9pm), we ended eating at a pretty cool Thai place... yeah yeah yeah... I know... We were all the way in Argentina and ate Thai food.... It was one of the only places open so don't judge... Also we had Argentinian grill the night before and knew that was basically what would be served at the Tango show the next night...

Our last day before we flew back, we spent "shopping". I use the " " because we didn't buy anything. Nothing really jumped out at us as a must have item.... We had lunch at a nice cafe where we received some of the best service we've ever had in South America... Food was delicious as well... We got back to the hotel to hang out and have a bottle of wine before getting ready for the Tango show... That is where I realized these boots I liked were actually $300 and not $400 which meant they were only $100 over my boot budget... I however chose not to slam a bottle of wine just to run and buy the boots so they will be known as "the boots that got away"... I just couldn't do that to the delicious wine though....

The Tango show.... no words for how great it was! We got seated at a great table and had the best view of the show! Dinner was great too, as well as the basically unlimited wine. I can't remember the exact name of the theater but if you are in Buenos Aires, just go to the hotel Elevage and ask them to recommend a tango show with dinner... It was only $140 a person and that included transportation to and from the hotel, dinner, the show and the unlimited wine... Well worth the money.... In fact I even recommend the hotel... Good breakfast, nice rooms, and good customer service....

I think I've basically rambled on enough for the June happenings, so I'll leave you with some pictures of our trip :)

It's all part of the adventure

As I mentioned before, Scott and I were going to Lake Titicaca! We got back Friday afternoon from our little adventure up in Puno. I think getting there was half the adventure. Let us begin!

It was a cloudy and misty morning. I was not inclined to get out of bed at 6am (seriously I hate getting up early). Obviously I got my ass out of bed and got ready. I did a quick run through in my head to make sure we had everything and then Scott and I went down to flag a taxi down to the airport.... He flagged down about 5 taxis before one said they would take us to the airport. Taxi drivers are weird about going certain places at certain times around here. I don't know if Scott had on some blinders but boy oh boy was this a bit of a hoopty wagon. A little dented, faded paint, you know the usual hoopty ghetto wagon taxi. As we rounded the corner from the apartment, I realized we forgot the camera. Who has to run and go get it??? This girl!!!! I would also like to note that I am not a runner, I do not like to do it and I especially do not like to do it early in the morning. Once I acquired the almost forgotten camera and jumped back in the taxi, I started to realize how much more of a hoopty wagon this thing really was. I'm talking rusty metal floor mats, no above the door/oh shit handle bar on my side, speedometer doesn't work, and where the RPM gauge should be there is a clock! Oh man! Priceless!

As we got closer to the airport, our taxi driver needed to use his wipers. Needless to say, good ol' hoopty wagon didn't let us down in the ghetto department. The passenger side wiper started to fall off and our driver had to pull over to reattach said wiper blade.... Quality vehicle right there folks! Now as we actually got to the airport, that's when things got really special. Homie wouldn't actually drive us into the airport. He kept saying something about the police. This leads Scott and I to believe he didn't have legit paperwork for his vehicle and couldn't actually drive in there.... Thanks pal for dropping us off in front of the airport in your hoopty wagon!

Now apparently 300 meters down from where we were was the pedestrian entrance. But F that bullshit kids... No bullshit security guard could stop us from marching on through that damn parking lot and into the airport. Seriously, why would I want to walk 300 meters out of my way just to get into the airport? Thank god that was the last of the weird crazy adventures for the morning.

After a short flight, half a beer (stingy mother fuckers wouldn't give us an entire can each... made us share), the nonstop screaming child and getting bitched at because my seat was broken and wouldn't go all the way up, we arrived at Juliaca airport. They had a lovely van service that takes you from the airport to your hotel in Puno for cheap! Only S./15 per person or for the two of us and in dollar terms, just over $11. Oh and yay us! Little Screamer was sitting right behind us in the van! When silence fell, I had Scott peak behind to see if the little shit fell asleep.... Nope! Kid finally got the boobie.... Momma couldn't have offered that up like 2 hours ago? Seriously if that's all he needed, I may have very well offered up one of mine 2 hours ago just to shut the lil shit up...... Anyways, back to the awesomeness of the adventure!

Arriving in Puno! Look there's the lake!

Our hotel was pretty darn nice and we got a jacuzzi tub bitches! You know I relaxed in that :)

After a little lunch, Scott and I wandered around town a bit and walked down to the lake.

A hotel or as I liked to refer to it, Alcatraz!

A walkway across part of the lake, view towards Puno

After our lovely ride and a not so cold beer at a cevicheria, we decided a fun way to get back to the hotel would be in a pedicab!

Aren't we fucking dicks for making some guy pedal us up a hill to our hotel for only S./5 (that's about $1.85)

We wrapped up that magical cool day and cold night with some dinner, jacuzzi and drink time and an early bed time (although I had a pathetic attempt to stay up and find out who won American Idol). Now sleeping was not the best sleeping either of us have ever done. Scott is a hot body, therefore I need air movement. What did we not have in that room? Air movement.... Also at around 13,000 ft, your breathing isn't that great. Damn you air for being thin! Oh well, still logged a couple okay hours of sleep :)

Another early morning for us! We had a to get up and go on a nice tour of the lake. I made sure I was all sorts of winterized for the morning. Scott thinks I may have over dressed but I was perfectly okay with that since I was all nice and cozy and I hadn't felt temperatures that cold in over a year! This has also made me realize that I will live in multiple sweaters and a coat at one time when I go back to Washington to visit my family in December....

Heading out on our boat tour to the floating islands

What a beautiful morning! (and this is coming from a non-morning person)

Approaching the floating islands

The "Mercedes Benz" of reed boats

Island president demonstrating how the island is made

The cutest little island kids

The water is about 50 feet deep here

See all sorts of winterized :)

Told you we would ride on a reed boat :)

Cheaters!

Yay Peru!

Making yarn on the island of Taquile

Hiking up the island

Recovering from said hike up the island at 13,000ft

Well worth the view!

After lunch and about to walk down 550 steps to the tour boat

Apparently people like to drop their livestock off on very shallow areas to eat reeds

Shortly after that last picture we arrived back in Puno and got dropped off at our hotel. Crawled in the cozy bed for a few and then bundled back up to adventure out for some dinner... Dinner the night before was much better than dinner that night.... We had thought about hitting a couple bars after dinner but the realization of tiredness and knowing we had a jacuzzi tub, plus drinks in our room, changed our minds. I didn't make any pathetic attempts to watch the rerun of American Idol and I just rolled over and went to sleep by 9:30...

In the morning, after breakfast, we walked out to the Plaza de Armas to snag a couple photos of their main church since I had failed to do that the first day.

Now the flight back was a lot more uneventful, aside from Mr. BO sitting next to me... I'm not sure which is worse, the person with body odor or the screaming child. But seriously dude, European or not, a coat of deodorant or a shower won't kill you. In fact, it will help raise your popularity with your fellow passengers. Does anyone think it would be rude of me to have sample size deodorants in my carry-on to hand out if I get seated next to someone with B.O. again?

Even our taxi ride was uneventful. He knew the proper exit to take and got us home in one piece without me having an "Oh dear Jesus" moment about his driving... It was good to be home and at an elevation I could breathe properly at :)

Next adventure is in 2 weeks! Buenos Aires, here we come!

All Sorts of Happenings Going On!

Between this  blog and my cooking blog... I think I am striving for blog slacker of the year! Apparently last time I blogged on here was in February about two of my obsessions... Organization and Pinterest. Well after that I started getting my butt in gear to get this dusty apartment all sorts of sparkly fantastically clean for the arrival of my parents! Yup that's right! mis padres came to Peru! They got here on March 14th and I'm so lucky I didn't throw my Dad's back out when I jumped on him out of excitement... That really could have fucked up the trip! My parents totally messed up my awesome here they come photo by going straight out of the first sliding doors they saw instead of walking down the sea of people in search of Scott and I... So I got this picture instead when we got in the car :)

Excitement combined with tiredness! They had one of the longest travel days of their lives!

We spent a few days here in Lima before taking off on our Cusco and Machu Picchu adventure! What a cool way to spend my 26th birthday! I got to climb all over and explore Machu Picchu! How are you going to top that one Scotty?

Time to get hiking bitches!

After Cusco, we returned to Lima where we had a nice relaxing time. We even took a Mirabus tour of the city. Just so happens our bus plowed into a street light in downtown Lima... We even made the local news!

Way to go Mr. Bus Driver!

Before we knew it, it was time to take my parents back to the airport... Boooo! Two weeks with them just flew by! I did an excellent job of not crying until Scott and I were walking away... Go me! All in all, it was a great trip and could take up entirely too much of my time to blog about it (hence the choppy short version of their visit).

I really can't recall anything of great significance in April other than I swear that I blinked and it was gone. Same is going for May. Although next week, look out Puno/Lake Titicaca! Scotty and I are coming for ya!

Yup I think we need to ride on one of these

Who knows... We might even go jump in that Lake even though it's going to be freezing! Oh well! Mamma needs a little adventure in her life and you only live once right? Don't hold me to this though.

Next month Scott and I are getting on a plane again! To where you might wonder.... Well to Buenos Aires!!!

This just screams big city adventures

Hopefully that's a great fun adventure as well! Most importantly it will reset my 6 month visa allowing me to stay here in Peru with the wonderful husband that I have :)

I think that brings us up to date on the what nots and the who dids of my life... Some day I'll learn to blog about world happenings and my opinions on them... I could always start with a topic loved by all... Gay Marriage! and how gays will ruin the sanctity of the marriage institution but somehow people like Kim Kardashian don't... Till next time!