Belgian Beer and other stuff

Hey everybody,

I don't know why it's taken so long to post from our trip to Europe last October.  I blame global warming/terrorism/the rise of Trump.  At this point all I have for you are some pictures of England, Amsterdam, Belgium and Italy and not much of a story other than I gained a new appreciation of Belgian beer and I got to wear a medieval helmet and wield a broadsword at a museum in a castle.  Those were pretty much the highlights.

So here are some pics that may help tell the story:

In case the photo links to the album don't work try this:  https://goo.gl/photos/13o4yQnsMirAkyK66

Take 'er easy,

Dave

Turkish Delights

Merhaba everybody,

Our story begins with a sad tale.. a tale of a backpack lost in the wilderness.  A backpack that ended up sitting for 17 days in Turkish Airlines storage hall 2 at Ataturk airport, a place where baby strollers go to die.  A backpack that somehow was tagged with the name "Samir Brescic" which will now be my new alias (replacing "Ron Mexico").  A backpack that had all my clothes, shoes, and (most importantly) underwear in it.  In Istanbul, a city which averages 83 degrees and 70% humidity in August.

At the Blue Mosque

I'm not going to pretend that I don't stress out a bit when I set out on a trip, but I would not suggest attempting the following tasks in the two-week period prior to leaving on vacation:  Moving in with your girlfriend (our story's special guest star Dawn), negotiating a move-out agreement with your previous landlord, going on two job interviews, finishing a work contract, and dealing with certain maniacal distant relatives which is a soap opera unto itself.  Let's just say that between all that plus the lost bag plus the crushing jetlag due to 10 hours time difference and 20 hours traveling... I may not have been the best traveling companion for our special guest star during the first couple of days in Turkey.  Thanks to Turkish Airlines' crushing incompetence they could not tell us where the bag was or when it might be found.  "Call back tomorrow.  Call back in 5 business days.  Please fill out the online form.  You need to talk to the baggage department but they don't have a phone number, only email."  I had to buy clothes bit by bit since I didn't know if I'd be getting my bag today or never.  By the way, I found out the hard way that Turkish clothing runs about two sizes too small.  Had I known that from the beginning I would not have started my shopping with underwear, even though the need was dire.  It was a tough lesson to learn.

Istanbul can be a bit of a sensory overload, with 14 million inhabitants plus who knows how many tourists.  It's overwhelming from a historical perspective as well, with buildings and structures dating from Roman through Byzantine and Ottoman periods.  During our first couple of days we weaved through many historic sites such as shopping centers, outdoor clothing bazaars, backpack vendors, and of course the historic alleyways of the power adapter vendor neighborhood.  Thank you Turkish Airways for enabling such a culturally rewarding itinerary!  Oh sure, we visited the Blue Mosque, but that paled in comparison with the excitement of haggling over an undersized pair of knock-off shorts.  We enjoyed a cruise on the Bosphorus,the strait that separates Europe and Asia, for about 15 minutes until we both passed out.  We also enjoyed an extended power outage which rendered the fan in our room useless. For two days, I was a sweaty, anxious, delirious mess.  So even though Istanbul is a fantastic city it was with a bit of relief that we traveled to Selcuk, in search of a clean slate and a true beginning to the vacation.

We found that in the 2000-year-old Greco-Roman ruins of Ephesus.  Maybe it's because ancient Greece and Rome were my favorite subjects in college but walking through what was once the third largest Roman city in Asia Minor felt overwhelming.  These remains are about as close as I'll ever get to being able to visualize how an actual city of that time looked.  We walked around with goosebumps down the original marble-paved roads, through ancient temples, amphitheaters and even a brothel.  From the temple of Hadrian to the ancient terraced houses that are being painstakingly restored by a squadron of archaeologists, it was like stepping back into history... if you could somehow erase the legions of tourists from your perception.  Of course, every once in a while I'd hear "Ooh look a kitty!" and catch Dawn taking a picture of some random cat lying across a slab of marble or ancient Greek carving.  We have about 20 cat pictures in that roll that I had to edit out of my uploads.  Did the ancient Romans have to deal with ADD?  Anyhow, another plus is that Ephesus lent its name to the #1 brand of Turkish beer, Efes, a pleasant reminder of these wondrous ruins every time we cracked open a bottle.

The Library of Celsus at Ephesus

Selcuk also houses a couple of other notable historical ruins namely the Ayasaluk Fortress that was in use up through the mid 14th century and the Basilica of St. John where it's said that his remains are buried.  Supposedly St. John and the virgin Mary retired to this area after that whole crucifixion business went down.  The thing we might remember most about our time in Selcuk however is the conversation we had with the owner of a souvenir shop named Osman.  As is usually the case in Turkey it's difficult to walk down a street without someone trying to wave you into their shop and when you are traveling with a certain Miss Dawn who has been known to enjoy the purchasing of goods it is easy to become ensnared.  The aforementioned Miss Dawn became interested in Ottoman shoes so that's how we ended up partaking in a conversation, or more like a lecture, with our new friend Osman the Kurdish Turk who looked like a klingon.  Suffice it to say that Osman has led a very interesting life... from growing up as an impoverished dirt farmer in eastern Turkey ("We had to burn dried animal shit to stay warm.  If you did not bring animal shit to school they would not let you in.") to his unsuccessful immigration to Italy ("I jumped out of the boat and had to swim 4 kilometers to shore but the police caught me anyway and kicked me out of the country") to his opening of the shop in Selcuk using the money he made selling his dead grandmother's rugs, it has been quite an adventure.  Apparently he also has a cousin that owns a restaurant named Dunya in San Francisco that he insisted we go to, but one thing you find out when you're in Turkey is that everybody has a lot of cousins and they are everywhere and can get you anything.  "Oh, I have a cousin who's a pharmacist right around the corner.  My cousin has a pant store down the street if you need some pants.  Oh yeah, I have a cousin that has a bus that can get you to the coast.  You're Italian?  I have a cousin that lives in Italy!"  Anyhow, 45 minutes later we didn't even end up with a pair of Ottoman shoes.

Side note:  Everyone thinks I'm Turkish.  They get about 5 sentences in before they realize I'm giving them the old deer in the headlights look and then the guessing game begins.  Spanish?  Greek?  Italian?  My ethnically ambiguous features strike again!

Dawn's new calling

From Selcuk we took a day trip to Pamukkale which is a series of travertines and hot springs that date back to ancient Roman times.  It's said that Cleopatra used to bathe in the mineral waters there, which are said to be excellent for your skin.  To be honest, I wish the waters contained bleach considering the number of people that were sharing what is essentially a giant outdoor bath/bacteria broth.  We did discover, however, that Dawn may have a second career  in the spa industry spreading mud over old ladies.  Makes sense.  Sometimes it's hard to reach all the nooks and crannies so you should ask some random person to go ahead and lather you up.  I have to admit, though, that I've never seen anything quite like those blindingly bright white travertines that have formed over millennia through the accumulation of calcium carbonate.

Our next stop was in Fethiye, a coastal boating town that was the jump-off point for our 4-day Gulet cruise along the Turquoise coast.  They used to be sailboats but now work strictly under engine power.  The crew consisted of three guys:  Yusuf, Volken (aka Volcano) and Captain Salami.  Yes, that's his real name.  The pictures will speak more to this experience than any words would do, so the only thing I can say is that at the end of the four days I was ready to jump back on the boat and do it all over again.  It's not called the Turquoise coast for nothing.  The water is absolutely gorgeous and we spent as much time swimming as possible.  The food cooked on board was fantastic and everyone on the boat (mostly Americans and Australians) was friendly and relaxed, although Dawn sprung the classic "Are Australians always this loud?" question on me to which I replied "Yes.  Yes they are."  We would cruise along the waters enjoying bbq and beers then stop for a couple of hours to hike up  the Byzantine ruins of St. Nicholas island.  We waded over the sunken city of Kekova, climbed to the top of the old castle at Simena, then at night were ferried over to a pirate bar that could only be reached by boat and smelled like sewage.  Hey, nothing is 100% awesome all the time.  In that vein, at the end of our cruise we had a couple of days in Olympos, renowned for its bungalows and treehouses among the forest near a rocky beach.  While this village has been set up to give off the hippyish backpacker vibe with its loungy reclined outdoor booths and baggy linen pant-wearing clientele, I still can't get my head around how they can charge $80/night for a "bungalow" which is more like a sweatbox straight out of Cool Hand Luke.  We found some good ice cream though that got served to us in a waffle that had the consistency (and flavor) of styrofoam.

Pottery Kebab

Speaking of which, one of the things we discovered during one of our (many) samplings of Turkish ice cream is that it's made with something called mastic gum which makes it a bit more chewy and strange to eat.  You can't really lick it... it's like licking teflon.  Nothing comes off.  You have to bite the ice cream.  I'm not complaining or anything, it's just weird.  Overall, the food in Turkey was fantastic.  There wasn't any one meal that blew me away, but the quality and freshness at almost every place we ate was superb.  Breakfast featuring dolmas, figs, fresh fruit and yogurt.  Kebabs, more yogurt, pide, eggplant, stuffed peppers and this spicy tomato sauce that's served with bread.  That was one thing that really surprised us, the quality of the bread.  It was fresh-baked and fantastic everywhere we went. There are fresh-squeezed juice stands everywhere you go, usually specializing in orange and pomegranate.  Surprisingly, it was tough to find good coffee.  If you like that thick and spicy Turkish coffee you're ok, but if you want regular coffee most of the time you end up stuck with Nescafe.  And, inexplicably, they charge the same for Nescafe as they do for regular coffee, like Nescafe is a really big deal.  Also, Turks really like plastic bags.  No matter what you buy, they will give you a plastic bag even if you already have one.  Sometimes they give you two.  They have custom sized plastic bags for everything from chewing gum to baby shoes to large backpacks.  Somehow, at the end of the day you end up with more plastic bags than items that you bought.  And I haven't mentioned the Evil Eyes yet.  Every house, car, and miscellaneous vehicle in Turkey has an Evil Eye in it.  You can see them sold everywhere... a flat blue ceramic disc with an eye-shaped pattern in the center.  The idea is that these talismans will protect you from other people's malicious thoughts so you had better put them everywhere you can.  Especially in gift shops for sappy tourists (like me).  Random Dawn quote:  "I love Turkish men's haircuts.  Rat tails make me happy."  There you go, some random shit about Turkey.

Anyhow, we had to take an overnight bus ride from Antalya to get to our destination of Goreme in Cappadocia at the center of Turkey and that's where things really started to head south for our special guest Dawn.  I may have declared at some point in the past that I will never take an overnight bus again because I can't sleep and even the best ones can only aspire to the rank of "shitty", but we had no choice since there is only one flight per week from Antalya to Cappadocia.  Dawn was already feeling crappy and the brutal discomfort and erratic driving of the overnight bus ride just blew it up.  On the plus side my legs were eaten alive by fleas.  Note to self:  Don't wear shorts on an overnight Turkish bus.  The first stop we made once we arrived in Goreme was to the pharmacy where you can get heavy-duty drugs and antibiotics for less than $5, so we pumped Dawn full of pills in order to catch our first tour of Cappadocia.  She's definitely a trooper.

Selime Cathedral

It's really hard to describe the weirdness that encompasses the Cappadocian landscape.  From above it looks like a series of giant brown meringues.  Sometimes you can see formations called "fairy chimneys" that are formed by volcanic rocks of different densities, with basalt on top and tufa underneath.  Cappadocia served as a sanctuary for Christians fleeing persecution in the 3rd and 4th centuries so there are many networks of cave shelters, cave monasteries and even underground cities.  It's truly something that has to be seen to be believed.  Many of these monasteries contained churches with 1500 year old frescoes still visible on the cave walls.  The crazy thing about these setups is the creativity that was exhibited in creating these cave habitats.  Basically, you had to carve out anything you used, but these guys were like the master builders in the Lego movie.  Dining table?  Bam!  Carved out of the rock on the floor, with bench seating.  Oven?  Dug out of the floor.  Recessed lighting?  Check.  Bunks for sleeping?  Done.  I'll bet if they'd had thermal waters we would've seen a jacuzzi in these caves.

The highlight for us was a trip to the Selime Cathedral, a remarkable series of caverns that served as the inspiration for the desert dwellings of the sand people in the first Star Wars movie.  The story is that George Lucas petitioned the Turkish government for permission to film at the monastery.  They wouldn't give him permission, however, so he took a bunch of pictures and reproduced the set in Tunisia.  As I mentioned above, it is a remarkable experience to be wandering through this warren of cave dwellings and imagining what it would be like to live there.  The cathedral reaches to the top of a hill with fantastic views through the cave "windows" onto a valley of fairy chimneys.  Another amazing place was the underground city that we visited, with 8 stories reaching 70 meters below ground level.  Dawn was not so crazy about this one since she is slightly claustrophobic, so it was a bit touch-and-go when we were stuck behind some chubby tourists on a long passageway that was only about 4 feet high.

And no trip to Turkey would be complete without a visit to a hamam, or Turkish bath.  In a traditional hamam like the one in Goreme, men and women are shuffled off into separate areas to be attended by members of the same sex.  I found myself in a sauna wearing only a bath towel and a facial mud mask and accompanied by a couple of guys who did not speak a word of English.  They, of course, did not have the mud mask.  After 15 uncomfortable minutes sweating up a storm and understanding only the word "tourist" as part of the Turkish conversation, the door to the sauna opened and this hairy, beefy specimen who looked like a fatter version of the serial killer from the movie "Manhunter" stepped in wearing only a pair of board shorts, pointed at me and beckoned me to go outside.  Flashbacks of Midnight Express ensued.  He led me into this marbled hall and pointed me to a bathtub where he told me to sit, after which he proceeded to pour buckets of cold then hot water on me.  Then after that he pointed me over to a marble slab and told me to lay down.  The slab was heated, which was nice, but then this guy started to knead me a ball of dough.  After about 10 minutes of that he led me to the tub again for another rinse, then back to the slab.  At this point it got a little weird because he started mixing together this concoction in a mesh bag an then proceeded to squeeze it out on top of me into some sort of soapy solution.  After I was completely covered in soap and bubbles he started massaging me again, which to be honest was not my favorite experience on the trip.  Not that there's anything wrong with a foamy, soapy massage from a beefy dude.

We capped off our time in Cappadocia with the requisite hot-air balloon ride at dawn.  Before you go thinking that this is some sort of extreme sport whimsy, just be aware that there are at least 20 ballooning companies in Goreme and that some of them have been operating for over 25 years.  This is a massive local industry, and one of the surprising early morning sights on the skyline is the sheer number of balloons that are floating in mid-air.  We were unfortunate in the fact that it was a windier than usual morning so our balloon ride turned out to be shorter than normal.  Even so, it was a fantastic experience.  To be honest, the views of the valleys themselves were great but the really amazing thing was being a few thousand feet up in the air along with about 50 or 60 other balloons.  The entire panorama was filled with balloons.  I will try not to mention the fact that I was a bit distracted by the fact that I am somewhat afraid of heights and was trying really hard not to poop myself.  Dawn was as supportive as could be expected, of course.  She tried to look the other way when she laughed at me.

After Cappadocia it was back to Istanbul for a couple of days of final sightseeing and, of course shopping (yay!).  The shopping (yay!) part of our trip is a new and apparently addition to our storied chronicles that was added by our special guest star Dawn.  Shocking, I know.  The only thing I wanted to do in our final two days is to get a Turkish shave from a Turkish barber who would give me a Turkish mustache.  So when we were finally done with shopping (yay!) we found a barber in the old town section of Istanbul and put him to work.  Out came the straight razor and he started with a clean shave on my skull.  Then the clippers came out and he shaped me a modern yet classic Turkish mustache, which of course I have not seen anyone else sporting in Turkey.  Then the straight razor went to work on my face and I thought I was done.  Oh no, I was not done.  Next, he lit this stick on fire and proceeded to hold the flame up to my ears which was apparently done to burn off any ear hairs I might have.  Next came the long shears which were stuck uncomfortably up my nose.  Then he pushed my face into the sink and poured cold water over my head which was followed by a vigorous massage, mostly of my face.  And there was my hot Turkish shave, one of the many highlights of the trip.

So we end our journey there, or in storage area 2 where I finally found my bag.  All I can tell you is... go to Turkey.  It's fantastic and has something for everybody.  It has kebabs.  It has Efes beer.  We should have had 4 weeks for the itinerary we put together but I'm glad we did it all.  Dawn didn't kill me, which is a plus in my book, although she did threaten on separate occasions to a) scoop my eyeballs out,  b) shove horse poop in my face, and c) put a tampon up my butt.  Between the two of us, Dawn and I took over 1500 pictures which I could only condense to about 500 or so (sorry) for your viewing pleasure by clicking on the album link below.  Without further ado:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/46MU5zMC5AeAkYwr6

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Halfway Home

Hey everybody,

It's hard to believe that it's already halfway through the course and I'm going to be back home in just over a month.  I don't have much on the adventurous or interesting side to tell you, unless you want to hear about the various metabolic pathways for brewer's yeast or how to design a HACCP plan for your brewery.  We've been neck deep in course work other than the weekly placements we have working at an actual professional brewery, though when I use the word "professional" it can be applied very loosely to some of these outfits.  It gives me hope, though, because if some of these clowns can produce and sell beer then why can't I?

I did get a two week mid-course break during which I took the opportunity to satisfy my mandatory "One new country visited per year" rule by taking a bus to Edinburgh, Scotland.  Edinburgh is a small, beautiful, and eminently walkable city.  The weather was pretty crappy and rainy during my two days there so I ended up creating my own brew tour of the city.  I did make it up to the top of Arthur's Seat, a hill that was formed from an extinct volcano and has excellent panoramic views of the city.  Other than that, I did the usual touristy stuff like walk around the castle and have a burger.  I tried to get some haggis, but wherever I went that had it on the menu said that they were out of it.  I went down to London for a few days to hang out with my niece (I hope you like baby pictures) and then back up to Belper in Derbyshire for a reunion with Lee, Anna, Mark and Richard.  We try to get together at least once a year for a few days that in retrospect none of us will remember.

Now we're down to the stretch run and I'm trying to focus in like a laser beam.  This is difficult since we are each producing approximately 25 liters of beer per week, most of which ends up back at our dorm.  It's gotten to the point where we're giving bottles away to the security staff.  Here are the pics...

Halfway Home

Take 'er easy,

Dave

Beer School

Hey everybody,

I'm in beer school.  In England.  When I say this out loud it makes me realize how awesome that is.  For the next 10 weeks, I'm going to be studying how to make beer, interning in a brewery, making my own beer and maybe even getting to sell it to some local pubs.  I'm on the Diploma in Brewing Technology course at Brewlab.  No, the other one... in Sunderland.

Around January or February I was actively brewing with a group of home brewers in San Francisco called Brewlab, sending out inquiries to a bunch of brewing schools in the U.S. and in Europe and everyone is telling me that they don't have any availability until 2014 (UC Davis said 2015 at the earliest).  So I'm working part-time and taking some classes and generally trying to figure out what I'm gonna do when I get this email from one of the schools in the UK saying they'd had a cancellation and would I be interested in signing up for the summer 2013 course.  I love British ales.  My work contract ends just before the school's start date.  The school is called Brewlab.  Too... much... serendipity.  Besides, I knew I had to come to England to see my newborn niece Alice.

Of course, summer is a relative term in England.  It's the season where it's slightly less shitty.  I've been here almost two weeks and I've gotten about 6 hours of sun, which I consider above average.  My previous experience had all been around the south, mostly London with a bit of Liverpool and Derby sprinkled in, so when I told my friends that I was going to be spending the summer in the northeast in Sunderland the reaction was universal bewilderment.  One of my English buddies wrote me that, "If you like to shag ugly, illiterate, indecipherable fat birds then it's the perfect place for you."  That sounds like something that should be printed on the cover of the Sunderland tourist brochure.  And when the British are making fun of a people for being ugly, I mean... wow.  Now that I've been here a couple of weeks I can tell you that everything they said was terrifyingly correct.  An incredible percentage of women here enjoy spray tans, which when combined with mascara applied with a paintbrush, neck tattoos, and an apparent disdain for exercise, should give you a typical picture of one of these orange horrors.  The guys aren't much better, with a large contingent of bald mouth-breathers sporting blurry forearm tattoos and wearing England football jerseys.

Okay, all the things I just said are really superficial and snarky (though probably not unfair), I admit that, so let me just say that almost everyone has been incredibly nice and has gone out of their way to make us feel welcome.  The most difficult bit has been getting used to the accent in the northeast, which in Sunderland is Mackem, closely related but not to be confused with the Geordie accent (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhHLmhchLrU) in Newcastle which is about 20 miles away.  A couple of the guys on the course are English and they warned us never to confuse the two and that under no circumstances should we EVER tell anyone in Sunderland that we are fans of the Newcastle football club unless "we want our face kicked in."  Everything in Sunderland shuts down at 6 o'clock except, mercifully, the pubs, so I've been in cask-conditioned ale heaven since my first day in town.

What else?  There are 12 dudes in the class (no women, so you can imagine how quickly things have degenerated), 6 from the U.S., 4 from England, and one each from Norway and Latvia.  A couple of the guys are from Newcastle so they've been giving us the low-down on places to hang out, which has been great, and Newcastle is much nicer and livelier than Sunderland and only about a half hour away on the metro.  We're all living in one building in the university dorms, which is weird, but I have my own room which makes it an upgrade over my usual travel accommodations.  Our head instructor Arthur is a northeast native with 30 years of experience in the brewing industry from micro to big ones like San Miguel, Heineken and Newcastle.  He's a soft-spoken beer encyclopedia with an incredibly dry sense of humor.  I asked him if he'd ever had an accident at one of his breweries where someone fell into one of those giant industrial fermenters and he said only once where a guy committed suicide by jumping in and drowning in the beer.  They didn't discover him until after he'd gone through a few batches in the fermenter, including caustic and acid cleaning. So Arthur says the only difference with those batches is that they had a bit of extra body to them.

Other than that, I've been making myself at home and expect to gain about 10-15 pounds thanks to real ales and Sunday roast.  The northeastern coast is supposed to be beautiful and from what I've seen so far that holds true.  I expect to make quite a few day trips on the weekends so hopefully I'll have some nicer pictures for you going forward.  Here are some pics which admittedly are mostly beer porn...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/nsHpa2vGuWjhNaxu9

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Ending with Machu Picchu

Hey everybody,

As George Costanza once said, it's important to leave on a high note.  The fact that I left Machu Picchu for the end of my trip, though, happened more out of laziness rather than purposeful timing.  I kind of didn't want to go, actually.  Machu Picchu is, by far, the most expensive destination in Peru.  Then I sat down and figured out that during my time here I've spent almost 80 hours on a bus.  To be honest, after six weeks of almost constantly moving around the last thing I wanted to do was to go on another long bus or train ride, but I knew if it ever came up in conversation that I spent a month and a half in Peru and didn't go to Machu Picchu people would give me all sorts of crap about it.  So yeah, I decided to go to one of the seven modern wonders of the world because I didn't want my balls busted.

I almost bailed out on the whole thing during a tour of the Sacred Valley.  We got stuffed into a bus early in the morning and spent the next six or so hours being hurriedly shuttled between touristy handicraft markets and overcrowded Inca ruins.  The guide was a friend of a friend who said he'd get us into the ruins at a discount but as he tried to get us through the ticket office at Ollantaytambo we got busted for trying to jump the line and kicked out.  Then on the cramped train to Aguas Calientes a Brazilian guy sitting across from me spilled a cup of hot coffee on my backpack which happened to be on my lap because there was no place else to put it. So with a moist lap and a backpack full of clothes smelling like French Roast, I pulled into Aguas Calientes thinking screw it, I'm going to enjoy Machu Picchu as much as I can.  And I did.

There are quite a few people that leave Aguas Calientes at 4AM in order to hike up a couple of hours and see the sun rise upon Machu Picchu.  I am not one of those people.  After hopping on the 7AM bus we rode up through the misty morning until we reached the main entrance to of Machu Picchu, where every tour group is for some reason scheduled to enter the city at exactly the same time.  You'd think that the ideal conditions for seeing an Inca city atop a mountain would be a clear, sunny day, but I have to say that spending the morning and afternoon in the middle of clouds and mist gave the deserted ruins a certain haunting quality that made them all the more impressive.  Machu Picchu wasn't formed as a settlement, more like a scientific research community.  It looks like the Incas used the location to experiment with agriculture, biology and especially astronomy.  Many different types of plants and crops were found that are not supposed to grow at these altitudes and the remains of bodies of different animals have been found in various states of dissection.  Observatories litter the ruins along with sun dials and fixed compasses.  From the available evidence it looks like the Incas fled Machu Picchu in a hurry, probably because they started to run out of food.  Since not much was grown up on the mountain they relied on imports from Cusco and the Sacred Valley, and when the Spanish invasion began the imports dried up.  Historically speaking it's lucky that the place was abandoned, however, because it also meant that the Spanish never found it.  If they had, they would have plundered and destroyed it, since that's what they did with every other Inca settlement they came across.  The plundering didn't occur until several hundred years later when Machu Picchu was "discovered" by Hiram Bingham, a professor from Yale.  Connecticut is where you'll have to go if you want to see the majority of treasures that were discovered in the ruins and the tombs back in 1911-1914.

It's difficult to fully absorb the ruins of Machu Picchu though because you never have a single quiet moment alone to appreciate what you're viewing.  There is constant motion and ambient chatter all around you no matter where you go.  There is no quiet corner.  The closest I came to solitude was the climb up to the top of Waynapicchu, the mountain directly behind the ruins.  Only 400 visitors are permitted to climb per day so that keeps the traffic low, and on this day the cold and slippery conditions made it so that people didn't linger too long at the top of the mountain.  The view of the ruins from that high are spectacular, and you can make out the perhaps intentional shape of a condor in the outline of Machu Picchu.  The rains started pouring down at mid-day and most people fled the ruins for the shelter of the lodge or the buses back to Aguas Calientes.  I waited them out for a while so that I could hike down the mountain and finally got my time alone with nature.  I wouldn't say that it was the most spectacular place I've ever seen in my life, but there was something about that place that makes you want to leap out and wrap your arms around the mountains.  I'm not sure how else to describe it.

After that it was a couple more days in Cusco and then Lima.  I don't have much to tell you about these two cities, to be honest.  I think that we had had enough of playing tourist and simply wanted to chill out before leaving town, me to San Francisco and Stefano and Caterina back to Europe.  The last few days we've spent most of our time relaxing, or wandering around looking for a good place to eat or have coffee.  I finally ate cuy (guinea pig) and it was delicious; a lot like rabbit.  I also tried Inka Kola and it was not delicious; a lot like bubble gum.  Peruvian drivers do not yield in any way to pedestrians and in fact seem to go out of their way to try and hit you with their cars.  Stefano and I have spent a large portion of the last couple of weeks daydreaming about pulling drivers out through their car windows and beating the crap out of them.  Peruvian people, while not unfriendly, are generally standoffish or grumpy with strangers though warm and affectionate with friends.  I'll miss taking afternoon breaks to eat Sublime chocolate bars with my brother, and I'll miss Cusquena malta.  Most of all, I have to say that Peru and Bolivia have surprised me.  Maybe amazed is a more correct term.  I had no idea of the variety of natural beauty that was contained in this region, and I've only explored the bottom half of Peru and the southwestern part of Bolivia.  Images of these places will stay with me for the rest of my life.

So now I'm heading home after almost 7 months on the road.  I hope nobody's expecting insightful words of wisdom or that I've had some major epiphany or something because that kind of stuff never happens on a schedule.  I've had a fantastic time and have gotten a lot out of my varied experiences... much more so than I initially thought when setting out.  It's also been nice to be away from a lot of the everyday crap like pop culture, sports, memes, and especially all the presidential campaign bullshit for the last half year.  Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that my hometown team won the world series, but I think I've seen maybe one baseball game this year and I don't feel like I really missed out on anything.  Above all, especially when compared to the other long trips I've taken, I'm returning home even more appreciative of the life I have and the place I live.  In the past when I left I felt like I was running away for a while, but this time I left not to get away but to go toward something... to have an experience... if you know what I mean.  I feel great and am happy to be heading home.  I realize how lucky I am not only to be able to take this time off and visit these places but to have all these fantastic friends that I've met with along the way.  The list is too long to mention but if any of you are reading this then... a big hug and a profound thank you for helping make these last few months so special.

A flower for the reader

I also want to take the time to thank those of you that have been reading my posts (I know there are at least three of you) but there's something about writing and taking photos and keeping up this blog that has kept me going these last 7 months.  I'm not going to deny that there's a little bit of narcissism involved (anyone who posts stories and denies it is a liar) but I want to let you know that it means a lot to me that people are enjoying or appreciating a thing that I'm creating.  I feel that I get a lot more out of writing these posts than people get from reading them for that very reason.  And there have been times where the posting has been what's motivated me when I've been lonely or anxious or whatnot.  Once I got going I ended up doing or seeing something awesome, all thanks to the push I received from people reading my stuff.  So thank you... it's meant a lot to me.

Like I said, I don't have any big words of wisdom with which to leave you.  When you're hiking, take the steeper path since it will probably have a better view.  Always try the street food and the local beer.  At high altitudes, cold showers suck.  Always pack toilet paper.  Other than that, I have a two-page list of stuff to do when I get back, the most important of which is written in bold at the top of the page... "Must Wash Hat"

Here are the pictures from Machu Picchu...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VmaLNwG6MPj554We6

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Andes to Amazon

Hey everybody,

Greetings from Francesco and Claudia's Home for Wayward Italian Volunteers.  We've been using their Cusco home as our Peruvian home base for the last couple of weeks and will be here until our final few days in Peru.  Francesco and Claudia have been working here with the Amici del Peru organization for the last few years and have housed many volunteers from different organizations on the bunk beds in the spare bedrooms.  All I know is that it's only place I've been in weeks where I haven't had to eat rice and/or potatoes or drink instant coffee, it has a sometimes hot shower and a washing machine and simply for that... it is fantastic.

Llamas!

Stefano and I took Francesco's SUV for the weekend in order to travel several hours up into the Andes to visit Livitaca, the village where Stefano and Caterina have been living and volunteering since last December.  It only has about 2000 inhabitants and is pretty much in the middle of nowhere up in the mountains, mostly farmers and herders with their families.  Amici del Peru has been working in the area for several years on different projects from education to health to solar power.  We arrived just in time for dinner at the comedor in the church where Charo the cook put me immediately to work peeling potatoes.  A lot of the young guys that Stefano taught English live in a dormitory at the church so I met about ten of them.  After a year of living there Stefano knows pretty much everybody, so I met most of the shopkeepers, every kid who lives at the church, a bunch of farmers and the mayor.  Most people I've met in Peru give you a really limp handshake and don't look you in the eye when they meet you but the mayor was a notable exception.  I've also found I have about a 33% success rate when cracking jokes in Spanish with Peruvian campesinos, and that's only after I specify that what I just said is a joke.

The next morning Ste and I, along with Rony, Gabriel and Nilo, took the 1982 Toyota Land Cruiser owned by Amici del Peru for a day trip first to climb the Kora, the highest mountain in the area at about 4200 meters, then to Cini Ciri, a pre-Inca burial site.  Climbing a flight of stairs is tough at this altitude, at least that's what Ste and I thought until we went climbing with three guys from Livitaca, each of whom took turns climbing back down to where we were to make sure we weren't lost.  They probably could've climbed the mountain six times in the time it took Ste and I to get up there.  On top of the Kora there is an old dwelling that is uncertain whether it's Inca or pre-Inca but was probably used by someone as an outpost or as a location from which to communicate with the guardian spirits in the mountains.  There were, of course, spectacular views of the valley at this height along with sightings of some condors and the ubiquitous llamas.  Then we climbed back down and got to fix a flat tire on the Land Cruiser, or more like watch the younger guys fix a flat tire.

We then headed to the site of Cini Ciri, an old burial ground that has been freely accessible to the citizens of Livitaca... until now.  A couple of months ago the government of Cusco decided to make Cini Ciri a protected area, which is great because people used to just come and pick up bones and pottery and generally have their way with a burial ground that is at least 800 years old.  We had to sign in as visitors and were escorted by a guide from the University of Cusco who explained a lot of what they know and they don't know about the site.  The mounds are still directly accessible in that you can walk right up to them and take pictures but they don't like you to move things around.  They have to take a picture inventory of everything and in a few months will ship a lot of the remnants to the University for DNA analysis.  Still... I mean... you're walking right among bones in the midst of a pre-Inca burial ground.  It may be the only place in Peru where they allow you to do that.  The mounds are made of adobe and those of nobility or the upper-class are painted in red and white.  The dead were buried in baskets made of hay and dressed in clothes made of alpaca wool.  Above each mound is a small hutch where they would light a lamp with oil made of animal fat after each burial as well as on subsequent occasions.  There are probably a hundred or so mounds inside the cliff face lining both sides of the spectacular valley.

The rest of the time in Livitaca was basically spent cruising around or doing a whole lot of nothing, which Stefano explained to me is how they spent a lot of their year there.  One thing we certainly didn't do over four days was take a shower, because when it's almost freezing *inside* the house and you only have cold water, you don't take showers.  Besides, at this altitude... you don't sweat.  We didn't even sweat climbing the Kora.  Everything is dry, dusty and crackly, including us.  The tomatoes are delicious, though.

After a couple of days back in Cusco we headed to a dramatically abrupt change in climate in Puerto Maldonado in the midst of the Peruvian part of the Amazon forest.  Besides the 3000 meter drop in altitude there is the temperature adjustment to about 35 celsius with 98% humidity... a lot to take in after an overnight bus ride.  Speaking of overnight bus rides, I took a half a sleeping pill after we left the bus terminal and everything after that is a little hazy.  I remember the bus stewardess or bus attendant or whatever got on a microphone and said there was some kind of drawing for prizes happening which is not normal on a bus even in Peru, and she said something about being able to win bottles of water, or a mug or a kangaroo.  I think she said kangaroo.  Then she started calling out seat numbers and you could hear shuffling going on upstairs (it was a two-story bus).  My recollection is a bit syrupy but I remember her saying that the final number was being called and it was asiento #50 and Stefano and Caterina look at me and I'm like "What?" and then I realize than I'm in asiento #50.  So I groggily stand up and walk/crawl upstairs on a bus that is taking curves like an F1 racer and I see this attendant dressed in a bright red dress with a microphone handing me a ceramic mug and then saying in Spanish "Let's have some applause for... [looking at my ticket] David Bresci!" and I look around and the entire second story of the bus is filled with name-tag clad Jehovah's Witness missionaries applauding and staring at me.   It was either a horrible nightmare or I was unknowingly dropped in the middle of a Terry Gilliam film.  I swear that this happened.  I have the mug.

Holding a gator

Anyway... Puerto Maldonado.  We spent four days guided by Victor, a native of the area, cruising the jungle around the Madre de Dios river in the east of Peru about three hours from Brazil.  We stayed at the Monte Amazonica lodge which is home not only to tourists but to two parrots and three monkeys (Lalo, Bruno and Paco), all of whom immediately became friendly with Caterina.  The first night we went on a boat ride to spot caiman alligators and capibara, the world's largest rodent.  Our companions for the first couple of days were a Ukranian couple.  She was nice, he was angry, they fought almost the entire time and they were constantly late.  Stefano loved this.  On the second day we headed for a hike and then a boat ride on Lake Sandoval in a protected natural reserve.  The lake is home to caiman, piranhas, giant river otters, and various species of birds.  There are also a huge number of beautifully colored insects, especially butterflies, all around the reserve.  That afternoon while drinking a cold beer at another lodge we met La Loca, a tarantula-eating Coati that also likes cold beer.

Three monkeys

I don't know why we decided to go visit the native community... as I mentioned in a previous post I normally hate this kind of shit... but maybe the positive outing to Amantani softened us up.  Unfortunately, the visit to the Boras turned out to be the awkward, touristy, uncomfortable experience that Ste, Cate and I had been dreading.  We boated out to a hovel of huts surrounded by a small field of corn and yucca and waited a few minutes for the small family of six to saunter out dressed in rags and feather head-dresses with painted faces. After a welcome and some half-hearted singing by the grandmother and her daughter, the grandfather proceeded to play a tune on a small flute.  The poor old guy looked like he was about 120 years old.  There were about three or four times when he was blowing into the flute where I thought he might keel over.  There were a couple of other short demonstrations, shooting of bows and arrows, and then the hawking of trinkets, a few of which we felt obliged to buy.  They also had a spider monkey... 2 Soles per photo.  Anyhow, once that was over we had a nice, mellow kayak ride back to the lodge, then later that afternoon went for a canopy walk along a bridge set up between two trees atop the jungle.  There were some fantastic views of the top of the jungle and we saw a colorful family of macaws fly by from a distance.  That night Victor led us on a night walk behind the lodge where we saw several nocturnal insects, most notably a couple of families of tarantulas.  They are just as creepy in person as you think they'd be.

Puerto Maldonado was a very different Peru from everything else that we'd seen.  It was strangely reminiscent of SE Asia with the motorbikes and the tuk-tuks and the jungle vegetation and it was a very nice break from the dry altitude of the Andes.  I'm back in Cusco now with Macchu Picchu and Lima on deck, then after that it's back home.  Here are the pictures...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LAKaoA5VKcvUyeCa8

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Unbelievable Uyuni

Hey everybody,

Anyway, as I was saying... altitude.  I spent a large part of the last week above 4000 meters (about 13000 feet) and besides the lack of sleep I think it also makes me constantly hungry.  On top of that there's the lack of moisture mixed with not drinking enough water and I'm thinking I'm turning into Man Jerky.  I'm pretty sure I was designed for sea-level operation.  Other than that I feel great, though.

La Paz

After leaving Copacabana I spent a couple of days cruising around the markets and parks in the Bolivian capitol, La Paz.  The city lies in the middle of a valley surrounded by hills and from a distance looks like a vast, orange sprawl.  It seems like every single building is made out of bricks so all you see for miles around is... orange.  Paris it ain't.  I suppose the upside is that it's big bad wolf-proof.  I don't know if you need to spend more than a day or two in La Paz.  The most interesting parts of the city are easily walkable and if you like items made of alpaca wool... well then you'll be in heaven.  I was expecting the Witches' Market to be something more smoky or foggy with strange old women grabbing at you with withered hands from out of the mist and insisting on telling your fortune.  Instead it's about one square block of small shops selling stone trinkets, herbal remedies, and yes... animal fetuses.  I found a restaurant that served a 4-course lunch for 10 Bolivianos, which is about $1.50, and then took a long walk to a nice little park on top of one of the hills with views on the city.  Love is in the air in La Paz... you can tell by the number of couples making out, especially in the park.  I sat up there for a couple of hours looking at views of the city and listening to music when "Night Prowler" and then "Livewire" came on back-to-back and I realized I was singing out loud .  I looked around and noticed that a couple of older Bolivian women were staring at me.  You know... the ones with the hats.  That was awkward.  Ah, how I miss Colonel Angus!

That night I'm waiting at the station for my bus to Uyuni and making small talk with some of the other passengers before boarding, wondering why there are paintings of the interiors of the buses, including the toilets, in the lobby.  I introduce myself to a Japanese guy named Hiro when a woman in front of me turns around and says, "Your name is Dave?  Did you book this trip through Coca Travel?"
Me:  "Uh... yeah."
Woman:  "Great!  They told us you'd be our Spanish translator!"
Me:  "Wait... what?"
And that's how I met Caroline and Martin.  They immediately warned me about the bus ride.  The first four hours over paved roads are no problem, but the following seven hours are another story.  The road from Oruro to Uyuni has not yet been paved, so it was like spending most of the night on a massage chair set at max power, and not in a good way.

I'm not really sure how to begin to describe the next three days touring around southern Bolivia other than to say that it's possibly the most amazing landscape I've seen anywhere in my life.  We set off almost immediately upon arrival in Uyuni after piling all of our stuff on top of a Toyota Land Cruiser (side note:  If I ever need to do anything off-road, I'm getting a Land Cruiser.  Those things are beasts).  It was me, Caroline and Martin, a Dutch girl named Charlotte and a Colombian couple Laura and Sebastian.  Our driver and guide Cristobal was a man of few words but man could he drive the shit out of a Land Cruiser off-road.  Over the course of the three day/two night tour I got the feeling that Cristobal was sort of a boss among the various guides.  He's older than most and when he flashes his high beams the other 4x4s move out of the way.  I asked Cristobal how long he'd been leading these tours and he said 10 years.  The last three years have been the busiest, however, and there has been a lot more tourist activity in Uyuni.  The town only has 15,000 inhabitants and the main industries are mining, salt processing, quinoa farming, and llama herding.  I asked him if more tourism was a good thing and he said, "Of course.  They're going to pave the road from Oruro to Uyuni."

A lone salt worker in the distance

Our first stop on day one was a train graveyard just outside of Uyuni where old steam locomotives have been left to rust seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  If it wasn't for the 30-odd tourists milling around it would've been one of the creepiest sites I've ever seen.  From there we drove directly on to the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world.  It's a bit disorienting to look out on to a completely white horizon and lose all perspective on relative distance.  If it wasn't for the faraway mountains it would seem like you were on the edge of the world.  Much of the salt processing for human consumption is done by hand with workers digging out piles of salt with shovels and leaving them for pickup later on.  We ate lunch inside the Salt Hotel which, as you can imagine, is made out of salt bricks.  From there we drove to Isla de Pescado which is an island in the middle of this salt plain made of petrified coral and covered with cacti.  That is one landscaping trifecta that I can safely say I've never seen before.  We drove across naturally formed hexagons that have been formed on the surface of the salt plains and spent the first night at another lodging made of salt in Chuvica at an altitude of about 3700 meters.

Desierto de Siloli

The second day I felt like we were traveling across the surface of Mars.  We headed to the small town of San Juan (elevation 3929 meters, 12,890 feet) for a pit stop and from there we never went below 4000 until we headed back to Uyuni the next day.  The terrain seemed to change with every mile.  I was lucky enough to have the front seat so when you see the photos you'll see a lot of the hood of the truck with the Toyota insignia.  I tried to do the best I could to capture what we were seeing but honestly there's no way it can be done through pictures.  We saw several active volcanoes each approximately 5,900 meters above sea level. We traveled to four lagoons, most of which were populated by red and white flamingos.  At Laguna Canapa I trounced across some black mud which, when it dried, formed this sort of dry, grey crust which looked and felt a lot like cement.  I don't know what those flamingos are digging for in that mud.  I don't know what could be alive in that lagoon at that altitude.  We drove across the red surface of the Desierto de Siloli to reach our highest point of the day, about 4680 meters (about 15,300 feet).  By the way, it's not like there are roads up there or anything.  All you can see are the tracks left from years of off-road tours... the drivers do this all by feel and experience.  One of the trucks in our group didn't make it to a scheduled meeting point so we had to double-back for an hour to look for them.  We asked Cristobal why they don't have radios or walkie-talkies or anything like that and he looked at us oddly.  "We have cell phones but they don't work out here so we travel in groups."  And that was the end of that conversation.

Laguna Colorada

As we continued on toward the Arbol de Piedra we stopped to catch a glimpse of a group of animals that are a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel called viscacha.  The arbol itself is a large rock that over the years was formed into the shape of a tree and is surrounded by several other picturesque formations in a rock garden and, luckily, an outhouse.  That's one of the reasons why, as I mentioned earlier, I haven't been drinking enough water... lack places to take a leak.  As many of you know I am a peeing machine so I've got to keep the liquid intake under control.  Anyhow, we ended the day by entering the Eduardo Avaroa national wildlife refuge to a striking view of the Laguna Colorada, literally the Red Lagoon.  We spent the night in an inn at about 4300 meters where the red wine at room temperature was still almost freezing, but they gave us a bottle for free so hey, down it goes.

Sol de Manana

The next morning we awoke at 4:30 to a spectacularly starry night sky.  I tried to capture some shots with slow shutter speed but I don't know if my camera is that good.  You could see some faint traces of what could be the Milky Way and I saw more than one shooting star.  Of course, at 4300 meters before sunrise it's what I would refer to as brutally cold.  I wasn't going to stay out there very long to lose digits in the name of photography but I will tell you that alpaca hats are the shit.  They totally work.  Anyhow, we headed out to catch the sunrise at the geyser plateau known as Sol de Manana at an elevation of a measly 4865 meters (about 16,000 feet).  As I mentioned earlier... Mars.  A field of steamy sulfur across a red rock surface as the sun rises across the horizon.  From there it was on to the thermal pools at the Laguna Polques for breakfast.  Normally I would've partaken of a thermal hot tub but a) I didn't have shorts or b) a towel and c) it was fuckin' freezing.  After breakfast we drove across the plain known as the Desierto de Dali because of the strangely abstract rock formations and then made a stop at the Laguna Verde, which is not actually green.  The upshot of this is that the Vulcan Licancabur casts a spectacular reflection across the surface of the lagoon which, again, I tried to capture in pictures but without much success.  From there it was straight to the border crossing between Bolivia and Chile.  I say border crossing but it's this hut in the middle of nowhere where trucks and buses from each country congregate to shuttle tourists back and forth.  It's cold, windy, desolate and beautiful.  We dropped off Martin, Caroline and Charlotte and picked up a couple of Argentinian women on the way to Uyuni that spoke Spanish at about 200 mph.

Flamingos in flight over Laguna Hedionda

This last day back to Uyuni was probably the least interesting visually but I managed to get some more information on the area from Cristobal and the rest of the group.  Quinoa was the staple food of the Incas because it grows between 3700-4000 meters, is highly nutritious, and only needs dirt and rain.  There are several salt mines across the salars which are used for mining chemical salts (borax, etc).  The miners live on-site without their families for shifts lasting up to 25 days.  There seems to be some sort of child trafficking problem in Bolivia from what the Argentinians were saying.  I got that impression at the bus station in La Paz where on the cctv every once in a while they would repeat a public service announcement warning people to be on the lookout for unaccompanied minors for this very reason.  It also looks like both Peruvians and Bolivians are fairly politically active.  Besides the frequent protests, you can't drive by one house outside of a city that doesn't have one wall completely covered by a slogan for one candidate or another.

Once back in Uyuni I only had a couple of hours left until my bus to La Paz which was then followed by a bus to Cusco, Peru.  I don't know if I can adequately describe how my body felt after three days in a Land Cruiser followed by the overnight unpaved hell ride to La Paz followed by another 12 hours in a bus to Cusco so I'll leave it alone.  Now I'm down to a measly altitude of 3300 meters.  Kid stuff.

Here are the pictures.  I don't think they'll do it justice, but it's the best I've got...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QfZLwdLF7tHqwGpv5

Take 'er easy,
Dave