Full of Thanks! By: Jess

Though you might not believe it, experiencing Thanksgiving in another country drove home the actual spirit behind the holiday. Once the big meal, and the decorations, the football game and the general atmosphere of the holidays was stripped away, I really saw all that I had to be thankful for. To start the story of our Thanksgiving, it is important to note that Laura and I have been flying solo for a few days. Katy and Susie took off for a few days in Patagonia (to confirm the existence of penguins). As I type, Laura and I are waiting for them in a beautiful little bed and breakfast in Mendoza, Agentina. This is important because Laura and I cannot speak Spanish very well. Italian gets you only so far, but having Katy around (who DOES speak Spanish) is always a plus.

So, Laura and I, non-spanish speakers, had planned to spend Thanksgiving in a city called Cordoba. The second largest city in Argentina (after BsAs), and really the Boston of Argentina as it is famous for its universities and student culture. Our Thanksgiving morning actually started off quite pleasantly ... we woke up on the roof of our accomodations. It was HOT in Cordoba ... in the 90s, and there was simply no air flow in our room, so Laura and I decided to drag the mattress to the roof, and slept soundly and comfortably. We woke up very leisurely on Thanksgiving morning. Our plan for the day involved going to a museum, baking a pecan pie, and then sharing the pie (in true Turkey Day spirit) with a fellow traveller who had offered us dinner and conversation about New Zealand. Upon returning to our room however, we were immediately greeted with some unpleasant news. An Argentine (who, thankfully, spoke Italian) told us that a major bus strike was imminent, and unless we wanted to stay the entire weekend in Cordoba, we had better get ourselves to the bus station. Laura and I did not want to miss the weekend in Mendoza with Katy and Susie, so we packed our packs, sweating profusely in the heat, and grabbed a cab to the bus terminal. Thankfully, the strike had not yet started, and we managed to find the perfect bus out of Cordoba to Mendoza leaving at 10pm that night. We were even able to get a good price on a "cama" bus fare, which means that your chair folds almost flat and is ideal for overnight sleeping.

We bought the ticket, thrilled at our luck of having found someone who spoke Italian, who realized that it might be a good idea to tell us of the impending strike, and then happy with having found the perfect ticket. But. Now what? It was just barely noon and we had an entire 10 hours to kill. We ate a "feast" of bread and cheese and apples and orange soda ... purchased from the very shady supermarket in the bus station. It was NOT the thanksgiving meal we were used to, but luckily, the cheap cheese turned out to be surprisingly good, and we were both full after the meal. Sometime soon after eating, we realized that we had probably sweated away the meal and 10 pounds more just sitting in the airless bus station. Luckily enough, there just so happened to be one of the most famous parks in the city only 2 blocks away and we decided to head there for napping and sunbathing.

So you know exactly what our Thanksgiving "feast" looked like:
2 blocks to a park never sounds like a lot ... untill it is 95 degrees, and you are carrying a 20 plus pound backpack. We crashed in the first shady spot we found. Turns out that the spot was "shady" for a number of reasons. We had been lying around for 10 minutes when a police officer came riding up to us on his cute little bike and looked at us like we were crazy ... he quickly figured out that we werent from the area (surprised!?) and began to speak very slowly so we would understand. We had been lying around in a sort of peligroso (danger danger!) area of the park, and he suggested we move. How lucky for us. The last thing we needed was to lose our entire packs, which conventiently contain our entire LIVES.

We walked on, a little depressed at having to go on in the blistering heat, and wishing that we had cold water. The water in Laura´s bottle was actually close to boiling. LUCKILY, we managed to find the most beautiful rose garden, fenced in, abundant with shade. And would you believe that there was a COLD WATER fountain across the street? Just to make sure we were ok, our friendly police officer came back by on his bike and chatted us up for a few, being patient with our Italian/Spanish.

Around 8pm we decided to grab some dinner before getting on the bus. The restaurant we wanted wasnt open yet, so we went to a bar around the corner. When it came time to pay up, I only had a 100$ bill, and instead of telling me to deal with getting change myself ... the sweet Argentinian woman behind the bar told me to sit down while she walked down the street to get me change. The niceties only continue. When we finally made it to the restuarant, we realized that Laura´s phone was close to dead, and though we were a bit nervous about using our shotty Spanish to ask if we could please plug in our huge charger and phone to one of your outlets somewhere, we got nothing but smiles in response. Finally, after a delicious, dirt-cheap meal, we go to the bus station. We were cutting it a little close and the bus station is always confusing. After waiting in the wrong line a few minutes, someone, LUCKILY, just happened to notice our confusion, and pointed us exactly to our bus, which left maybe 45 seconds after we boarded.

The amount of people who have helped us for no reason on this trip has been incredible. The number of times we describe ourselves as "lucky" does not mean that we are not good travelers. Traveling is hard, and we get things right all the time. But everytime we have gotten something wrong, or had a wrinkle in our plans, someone with a smile has been there.

We realize just how much we are thankful for every single person who has helped us on the trip. People who stop us in the street, just because we are wearing backpacks, and ask us if they can be of assistance. We are also very thankful for the support from our friends and family at home ... who we miss and who we think about every single day.

Pictures of the fabulous sunset on the train from Buenos Aires, to Cordoba:



LOVE,
Jca

ps. marcus, I am clearly kicking the world in the booty. xoxo

Cultural Immersion -- birthday edition by Laura

After ten days of toiling with the Krishnas we returned to Buenos Aires filled with youthful exhuberance and a desire to spend our days and nights in a sliiightly different manner from our time on the huerta. It is true that I have high expectations, yet I will freely admit that the three of us have been doing exceptional work keeping in line with the BsAs way of life. There have been, however, some casualities as all of a sudden, we are now really old...I was the last to succumb with today being my 23rd birthday. I am told memory is the first thing to go with old age, so I will begin the weekly recap with today. Dinner is being prepared to the sound of the Rolling Stones and is a symbolic culmination of our last few days spent in Belgrano -- an area of the city that is a bit quieter and residential, but will forever be known to us as CHINATOWN. For real, we found chinatown and it has served us right in every gastronomical aspect possible -- we not only found the first peanut butter that wasn't an 'import' (overpriced skippy) AND every type of spicy deliciousness possible. We have yet to emphasize our various challenges with the Argentine aversion for spice and our adoration of it. My salt addiction aside, we are all unaccustomed to garlic and black pepper being considered 'spicy'. Alas, for my birthday dinner tonight we are joining the forces of peanut butter and salsa picante to make dleicious Thai noodles (I am being told by the sous chef in the kitchen that it must be mentioned how delicious the smell is around us right now because a) they are cooking with ginger, mint, cilantro, and garlic b) they have talent c) it is springtime here and everything smells good).

Jess being especially excited that we found Chinese 'pasta de mani'

Our new Argentine friend, Juampi, examining his first experience with peanut butter and jelly

skeptical, yet satisfied!

Our culinary achievements aside, we have been engaging with the culture of Buenos Aires' past and present. We have been going to museums almost on the daily and have been putting our degrees to work (again) by discussing the artists, movements, and curatorial decisions made. The 'second most highly regarded fine arts museum of Argentina' is in Rosario and we enjoyed discussing the unique decision to add black shoe prints to the walls, the use of tattered and crooked wall labels, and hanging white paintings on white walls.

Rosario´s attempt at curating a museum show...I know I sound pretensious but that is what my education earned me.

Alternately, the 'most highly regarded fine arts museum of Argentina' here in BsAs had a great collection of Argentine and Latin American art spanning the last 500 years -- we especially enjoyed the contemporary art which lent itself to our better understanding of the local culture and how it differs from that which we are used to seeing in contemporary European and States art.

Two more ways in which we have embraced the Argentine culture is through lounging and dancing, and then dancing some more. Last week we went to a drum circle concert called 'la bomba del tiempo' that everyone (including us) from the States must tell their friends to go to, rightfully so, because we haven't heard so music English spoken since we began our travels. The concert was amazing although we were initially turned off by the idea of paying to go to a drum circle and being surrounded by hordes of dreadlocked kids and the wafting scent of patchouli. We danced and danced and then Jess and I joined in the all-male mosh pit finale because 1) we were the only girls big enough not to be mauled 2) girls that aren´t from the States just don't act like that. It was exhilirating and we emerged triumphant with raspy voices and dirty feet as our only casualities. On Jess' birthday we went to an 'after-office' party which are particularly popular on Wednesday nights and are the perfect place to go if you are interested in having middle aged men in suits breathily whispering sweet nothings on your neck and carressing your hair as you walk by. Needless to say, we soldiered on and danced, danced, danced.

For the weekend we headed West a few hours to Rosario -- a city often preferred over Buenos Aires for its slower pace of life and more manageable size; it is also home to the Stalin-esque monument to the national flag, which was undeniably impressive. Rosario is also well-known as it is situated next to the Rio Parana where we did much lounging in parks and on the beach (just for the cultural immersion, of course). The beach was really beautiful as it sits on the periphery of an undeveloped island on the opposite side of the river as the city. While in Rosario we danced (noticing a trend?), continued to observe that youth culture is pretty much the same regardless of country, and empanadas are easy to make and delicious to eat.

I will abruptly end this posting as we have actually already eaten our delicious dinner and must continue on with our exhilirating lifestyles!

A face that only a mother (and her two best friends, and the world) could love


Looking sagacious (because I am now 23) in a tree that is far older and more impressive than I am

Just before the birthday dinner!

for Marcus: jca 30 world 8!

Oh, Sweet Dirt! By: Katy Jane

(Here is a picture of us and Edith in the bus station leaving Florianopolis. We've been unable to upload photos until now.)


First of all, today is Jess's birthday. She is 23, which oficially makes her a nonna like me. Soon, I will become a bisnonna, but that's not for a few months, so we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Secondly, Obama won!!! We cried and cried and cried and even sobbed a little bit as Fox read us his acceptance speech from her Blackberry as we toiled in the fields under the hot Argentine sun. We're super excited and hope that he makes good on all his promises/ambitions.

Third, we have recently arrived back in Buenos Aires after nearly two weeks of working on an organic farm a few hours northwest of Buenos Aires. With some Hare Krishna's. Ideally, we hope to write a novella chronicling our time at Nueva Vrindana, but we'll give y'all a little taste of what we we've been up to for the last little bit.

We found the farm through a work exchnage program called WWOOF, Willing Workers on Organic Farms. The way the program works is that you buy this cheap booklet over the internet that lists, by country, a bunch of organic farms that want workers. Then you choose which farm you want to go to (some are dairy farms, some are fruit farms, some are vineyards) and then you write to them, tell them when you want to come, and then you get invited and then you go. And then you work. For eight hours a day. Under the sun. In a field. The reason we decided to do this is that in addition a desire to learn about organic farming, WWOOFing is a work exchange program, which means we work in exchange for room and board, i.e. it's free.

So, we decided to farm just outside of Buenos Aires, for proximity reasons, where there were only two farms (both run by radical relicious groups), one by Hare Krishna's and the other by a group called The 12 Tribes. We chose the Krishnas, and made our way our of BA by train, bus, and taxi out to their place. We arrived to find Sol, who ended up being our mama, but didn't speak any English, and she showed us to a little thatched roof casita, which was to be our home for the next few days. Almost immediatly, but only after a delicious vegetarian meal made by Mama Sol, we got to working in the huerta (vegatable garden). And thus began the toiling.

Our duties on the huerta seem pretty standard: desjujando (weeding); ponendo la aqua (watering), cubierto (mulch), y compost (compost); transplantando (transplanting); hacemos heramientos y cartillos (used farms tools and wheel barrows); y apremdemos algo de Castellano (learned some Spanish). Laura, who has never had any Spanish instruction, has put her Italian to use, picked up some key words, and will be soon be able to get by quite nicely in Spanish.

So we worked for four hours in the morning, siesta-ed four hours through the hot part of the day, and then worked for four more hours in the evening. Second to our routine of working and napping was our constant speculation about Krishna life, farm life, and how the two related. We like to think of our near constant specualtion as making good use of our liberal arts degrees, ie, we theorize about a situation, observe said situation, and put together the empirical data to draw some sort of decisive, and credible, conclusion. We win! In such a manner, we were able to answer all our own questions about life at Nuevo Vrindana. For example, why don't the toilets flush/where's the hot water? Is this a monastery, a farm, or a resort? What do the pretty virgins do all day and who are they texting? Is that really Hare Krishna themed rap music we hear? Isn't the food supposed to be delicious? Why are the sunsets so good here? Do they hate us, or just not speak English very well? What is the difference between the biointensive, biodiverse, and permaculture styles of farming? How does one sucessfully herd two large oxen from one space to the next without ruining the nearby playground? Why are puppies SO cute? Why are these Hare Krishnas so different than the ones we've come across in the US?

All of these questions were asked and some answered. Over the two weeks, we were forced to reconsider alot of our judgments, reconfigure our boundries, and reassess many things we thad hitherto taken for granted. One such example is cleanliness. As you might imagine, life on a farm isn't so clean. Life on a farm where you garden in bare feet and there is no soap in the bathrooms is dirty. Life on a farm where the water is sometimes cut off for no reason and you have to flush the toilet with a bucket of water is so far beyond what we generally accept as 'pleasantly rustic' that it actually made me cry one night. Our experience on the farm was not always easy, and we all had low moments where we cursed the farm, cursed the Krishnas, cursed the trip, and cursed our filthy dirty finger nails. Soon after, however, the Krishnas would make us some delicious juice, Sol would take us to her house to play with the 7 darling puppies her dog has just had, and we would sit on the porch of our little casita and watch the fireflies come to life over the garden with such vigor that the sight was like flying into New York City at night - a hundred thousand dancing lights blinking on and off.

Paradox marked our time on the farm, which can be summed up in two words: sweet dirt. When it came time to leave, we were both sad and ready. We learned a ton about biointensive farming, a system where ones puts the most amount of vegatables in the least amount of space to make optimal use of soil and water. We met the neighbors who have a dairy farm and fed us a delicious dinner of pizza with fresh cheese. We learned about Bahkti (devotional) yoga, mud ovens, Krishna-style vegetarian cooking (which, unfortunately, was not exaclty what we ate), some about the philosophical differences between Eastern and Western thought (in the West, we're obsessed with physical matter whereas in the East they are obsessed with consiousness), and of the breadth and variety of Hare Krishna themed music (rap, techno, singer-songwriter, indie, chanting). Also, and often in the forfront of our experience, the ever apparent differences between Northern and Southern American attidtudes on buisness/money management (we don't yet get the system here).

And now, for some pictures!

Here is the thatched roof casita where we lived, napped, and engaged with the local wildlife (ie, flies and mosquitoes, and other unmentionable things that rhyme with smockroaches).


Here we are with our Mama Sol on the last day. Notice our greasy, rugged complexions. We are obviously real farmers now.


Here we are watching the beautiful sunset.

Here we are driving into town ... in the back of a hippie VW van mixed in among the vegetables.
Happy and healthy

More evidence of the beautiful farm ... complete with a shot of the Hare Krsna temple.Jess and Katy toiling in the huerta.
farm life! complete with oxen.



And so goes the trip. More later. We apologize for the delay in posting, but have obviously been away from the internet for a while. We hope everyone at home is well and we love and miss you all. So be in touch! We're in BA for a few more days and then head north to Rosario for the weekend.

Love and hugs and kisses,
j, k, l

ps. for Marcus, us 23, world 7

are you my mommy? by Laura

A successful tactic that we have established on our travels thus far is to cling to a mother figure during the more complicated and/or illogical maneuvers of life. Nasayers may think that this re-establishes our status as novice travelers, but , oh no, it is instead surely the sign of the savvy and efficient backpacker (with our packs this heavy, we cannot afford too many missteps). So in Floripa Edith made our experience not only memorable but possible in many ways, then on the not-so-easy border crossing between Brazil and Argentina another mother figure emerged in a worldly, post-military Israeli woman, and finally an Aussie on our bus into Buenos Aires helped to orient us in this very new city, although he was our age and a male, his mother-like actions were greatly appreciated. This computer is creating issues so the photos, map update, and a high quality post must be suspended for the time being. Today we leave Buenos Aires, of which we have gotten just the smallest taste, to go farming for two weeks at a permaculture farm on the outskirts of this fine city -- we are unsure of the accomodations and thus may be incommunicado for a while, but once we have the chance, we will let you all know what permaculture is, as we are equally curious.

And So Begins Week Two! By: Katy Jane

Today marks not only the 14th day of our trip, but also the birth of Katie Bunny (a new nickname for Katie CA Katie, in order to differentiate her from me, Katy Jane). This morning we arrived in Buenos Aires via overnight bus from Puerto Iguazu. We are staying in a nice hotel for the occasion, plan to go out for dinner, and might even be putting on a little make up. We are joined here by Katie Bunny´s friend Justin, who has also been traveling around South America.

So much has happened since the last post, I´m not even sure where to begin the update! We spent a bit more time in Florianopolis after the last post, the highlights of which were meeting some very fun Brazilian frat boys, hearing an awesome DJ at an awesome club, and meeting our Brazilian grandma, Edith. Florianopolis is a city on an island called Santa Catarina, and has some of the best beaches in Brazil. The boys we met took us to one of them, and it was gorgeous, in spite of the fog and drizzle (which has been following us around until recently). Despite being unable to surf or sun bathe but we were glad to be in a nice, low key beach town.

On our second or third day in Floripa (which is what the locals call Florianopolis), we were at the grocery store shopping for our dinner, when we realized that we were getting side ways looks from an older lady, dressed all in blue. Oh no, we thought. We´re being the loud americans taking up all the space in the vegatable aisle, and we´re making this woman very, very angry. As we go to move and mumble apologies in Portuguese, we hear (with a slight southern twang), "Oh don´t wory about it girls, I´m just interested in hearing you speak English." This is how we met Edith, a smart, savy, worldly, generous and endlessly intersting woman who brought us a ton of sunshine in the middle of a literal rainstorm. In the veggie section, Editth told us of her education, and we of ours. Born in Brazil, but educated in the states, Edith came back to Brazil with a degres in Thanatology (the study of Grief) and a vision to start a church and eventually to open a home for the eldery. Towards the end of our grocery store discussion with Edith, after exchanging hugs and condensed life stories, we were invited to said home for lunch the next day.

Fast forward a bit, Edith picks us up and gives us a little tour of Floripa and takes us to the nursing home, where we are introduced to a ton of lovely, older Brazilians. We eat lunch with Edith and her friend Georgia, an America who followed her destiny, and her husband, to Brazil over forty years before. Lunch was great! Georgia told us all about her world travels, and we shared our travel plans with her. Edith intoduced us to all of her friends at the nursing home, all of whom were so excited to talk and include us in not only lunch, but also their city and to some extent, their lives.

After lunch, Edith invited us back to see her home, a gorgeous converted Azurean cabin (From the Azores, the islands of Portugal. Many came to Brazil and built these funny, sturdy little homes with no windows. Edith and her husband fixed theirs up and put in a TON of windows). We talked about politics in the US and Brazil, travel, Edith´s and her husbands work as missionaries, and ate delicious coffee flavored candies. We were so lucky to be able to sit around a darling living room and talk with smart, eloquent grownups with excelent opinions and wonderful insight. It was very refreshing after the frat boys, and reassuring in general that there are exceptional people in the world that the universe sometimes throws in one´s path. All day we spent with Edith, I kept säying "oh, we´re just the luckiest girls in the wholeworld. " And we are. Aswe finished out political discussion, and Georgia left to go home, Edtih offered not only to take us back to where we were staying, but insisted that we bring our laundry (now soaked after having been left out to dry.. in the rain) back to her house and use her dryer. The sggestion of which made us cry. Actually. There were tears in our eyes! How could someone be so graciosu and kind to 4 strangers! This was a lesson for us all to learn in pay-it-forward, and as Edith drid our wet clothes, she brought out a schmorgasboard of tea, and cookies, and hot choolate, and meat and cheese. And then we really were the luckiest girls in the world.

This serendipitious tea party marked the end out our time in Floripa. Edith helped us call the bus station to make arrangments to get to Iguazu Falls AND THEN she took us to the bus station after having made us a snack pack for the 14 hours overnight bus. Meeting and then leaving Edith were two of the happiest and saddest moments to far on the trip for us collectively. We had more adventures in Floripa, including an epic night at a night club (got in for free, danced all night, met the mayor, got into the VIP section, made some nice funny friends), but encounterng Edith really trumped evertying, in terms of life expereince.

Oh, I just realized I am short on time. We have some museum exploring to do today in Buenos Aires, so I will have to end this post here. We areall happy and healthy and so so so excited to be in the land of yerba mate, delicious breakfast croissants, and the best dulce de leche ever. I apologize for my spelling and typing errors - there is no spell check and I also can´t go back and edit for some reason, so all my mistakes have to stay. Please don´t thinkthat my four years of ocllege are in vain! Hope everyone is well well well!

Love and hugs and kisses,

j,k,k,l, and j

ps for marcus - world 4,us 10

Life Lessons Atop Death Mountain By: Jess

Hello and Ciao to all.

This post has been a long time coming, but for a good portion of the last week we were sitting on buses, shuttling around Brazil. Buses here are actually quite nice - makes Greyhound look like traveling via dumpster.

Our last blog was from Rio de Janeiro the night before the epic party that was supposedly going to happen right outside the door of our hostel. The people at the hostel were not exaggerating. Literally RIGHT outside the hostel doors were probably 2000 people mingling and dancing and eating and drinking and just generally having a good time. They know how to party in Rio.



There was a group of guys on drums and a big dance circle formed around them. I am proud to say that I was the first of our group to jump in on the dancing, and I managed to pull the rest of the girls behind me. We also met two very nice British boys (John and John) , who joined in on the fun and served as excellent bodyguards throughout the night.

I think the cultural highlight of the time spent in Rio was seeing an art project called THE GREAT MADNESS. An artist decided to decorate a staircase with pieces of tile from all around the world. It is very much a living piece of art, because people send the artist tiles and he works them into the stairs. I found a tile from Los Angeles, Katy found one from Texas. Most of the countries from around the world were represented. I thought that the stairs looked familiar and it was driving me crazy where I had seen them before. We walked all the way up the stairs, and on the way down met the artist himself. My mystery deja-vu was solved when he showed us pictured of Snoop Dogg and Pharrell rapping on the stairs, and I remembered the scene from a music video.

I am proud to say that since then we have managed to make it most of the way across the country moving South and have seen two more Brazilian cities. After Rio we took a bus and then boat to the small island of Ilha Grande. The island is so small, there are no cars allowed and boats are the main form of transportation. Now, when Laura Fox (whom I love dearly) initially suggested visiting this quaint island, she mentioned that the main form of activity was "walking" to various beaches around the island. Me, the girl from LA, pictured a 15 minute walk through the sand, letting the waves spalsh on our feet, and then multiple hours of relaxing on the sand with bottles of beer, followed by a walk back to our hostel while watching the sunset.

Well. First of all the weather was not that great when we got to the island. It was misty and foggy and pouring rain, and anyone who knows me also knows that this is not ideal Jess weather, to say the least. Given the weather, I assumed that the plans for the walk and beach would be scrapped, and instead I could look forward to a day spent sleeping in and reading my Che Guevara. Imagine my surprise when Fox jumped out of bed at 8 AM and after a quick breakfast suggested that we get started on our day. We managed to talk her into a few more hours of sleep, but around 1030 she was suggesting activity again. It was decided that the weather was perfect for "trekking."

I would like to take a pause and again emphasize that I am from Los Angeles, CA. I do not use the word "trekking." Ever. Walking up the street to the Coffee Bean near my house is a pretty intense experience in the land of LA where most people would hop in their cars to drive up the block. I would also like to add that though I do a lot of yoga and consider myself fit, I am nowhere near the rowing, lifting weights, running and erging for miles machine that is the wonderful Laura Fox. I also had a serious injury in highschool that limits my ability to run, climb, jump, etc.

So here I am, wearing my brand-new, shiny "trekking" sandals, excited about the possibility of completing such a "trek" early on a misty, rainy morning in Ilha Grande, blindly following my leaders like a lemming. It became clear to me 10 minutes into this experience that perhaps, I was in over my head. The hills were steep and slippery. I was covered in mud and unidentifiable green gunk. I was hot and sweaty until the wind started blowing, then I was freezing. The entire purpose of the trek was to reach a waterfall that everyone on the island had told us was wonderful and worth the walk. After an hour or so of painful toiling, we reached a fork in the road. One arrow pointed up an almost sheer cliff and said "cachoeira" meaning waterfall. The other arrow pointed downhill and said "praia" meaning beach. To her credit, Laura did turn around and ask me if I was ok. In an effort not to be the loser I assured here that I could get up the hill, but it would take me twice as long to get down. We climbed up. I mean REAL climbing - like grasping at roots, scraping your knees, digging your fingernails into the mud for dear life, climbing. We made it to the top of what we dubbed Death Mountain. After continuing maybe another half hour we found the waterfall and after leaving the waterfall the immensity of the problem of getting down became real. It was getting later in the afternoon and the mist was rolling and the air was more damp. My calves were still quivering from the climb up. I was thirsty and hungry and tired. I tentatively took a step down Death Mountain, and nearly toppled over. It was just too steep and I was too top-heavy and it just wasn´t going to happen. But the girls encouraged me, so I decided to turn around and go rump-first down the mountain (feel free to insert any other word to substitute for rump, we already have and trust me the pictures are priceless but they are on a different camera without a proper USB cord unfortch). Things got worse before they got better. There was a moment when I was grabbing a vine with one hand, digging my hand into the ground with the other hand, stepping very close to a hole with TONS of spiders going in and out with one foot and blindly dangling my other foot backward down the slippery side of Death Mountain, there was this moment when I thought that the easier option would be to stay in the jungle forever, build myself a little hut, and eat berries for the rest of my life. But no. Laura Fox stayed no further than 3 feet away from me at all times. And every time I let out an expletive in pure terror, she said something encouraging. If it took 30 minutes to climb up Death Mountain, it took close to an hour to climb down Death Mountain. But, I did it. My parents and no one who knows me will ever believe it, but I really did it. And though I could hardly move the rest of the night, the experience was incredible. The views were amazing. I did some yoga moves on the very top of the waterfall. We saw monkeys, birds, and the tallest bamboo ever. The experience was so positive overall that I told Laura Fox she could force me into one near death "trekking" experience ever two months.

After leaving Ilha Grande (right when the sun came out) we rode buses FOREVER and overnight and got to Florianopolis, Brazil. Personally it reminds me of home. It is a very lively beach town (actually on an island) and the people are all laid back and friendly. We met a fun group of Brazilian boys and they promise to show us the nightlife. We also made friends with a 78 year old woman in the grocery store named Edith who was born in Brazil, raised in Virginia and Oklahoma and moved back to Brazil after college. She has invited us for lunch on Saturday and we are very much loo9king forward to it.

We will leave Sunday-ish for Iguassu Falls, and then bid Brazil goodbye for Agentina.

Hugs and kisses to all.


PS. For Marcus - JCA 7, WORLD 3 - i'm winning!
PSS. Perhaps we should be contacting our manager first, but we would like to pitch our idea to you for a reality game show inspired by the kitchen at our hostel on Ilha Grande. It will be referred to from here on out as "Apokatchen" due to its post-Apocalyptic amenities, ambiance, stench, and overall appearance (please reference photos below). So in this game show, teams will be assigned to a kitchen in such a style as this and will be forced to buy cooking supplies at a local market that consists mainly of mystery foods in a foreign language while only spending roughly 2 US dollars per team member to cook a nutritious, delicious, and filling meal. This game show would clearly pit teams against each other to create the best and most frugal meal possible while keeping their supplies from contracting any air-borne illnesses due to the preceding nuclear fall out. The show will clearly be most riveting when team members turn on each other while buckling under the pressures of accidentally purchasing the salted, rotting, unpackaged meat that is so alluring and omnipresent in Brazilian supermarkets when that weeks challenge was clearly to make a vegan stir fry! Alas, we are hoping to make enough money from this show idea to finance us staying at places not like this -- any takers? -- Laura

actually here!

Yes, we have really started our adventures! we are on our third or fourth day of travel, depending who you ask, and thus far the count of world versus us is in our favor. Being here is surreal-- because the travels have truly happened but also because Rio de Janeiro is like nothing we have collectively known before. It has the touches and tastes of Miami, Italy, Mexico, etc but it is a singularly unique place. The people could not be more friendly -- very willing to help and respond to our mix of Spanish, Italian, and hand gestures. The landscape is beautiful with great beaches and little islands and jutting hills covered in rain forests.
We spent our first two nights on the beach trying to create a bit more of a vision for our time in Brazil and also enjoying the quieter beach neighborhood of Ipanema/Leblon, but today we have haphazardly decided to jump in head-first to Brazilian night life. Our hostel tonight is in Lapa which is in this funny quasi-gentrified neighborhood with decrepit art nouveau buildings directly next to the most unique looking church ever (we spent hours looking for the cathedral and discovered that it was the funny coned shape building just a few blocks away from our hostel -- it is shaped like a ziggarut and is very tall and imposing but inside it is dark and very reflective with brilliantly colored stained glass windows that rose the length of the interior) and filled with people from all different walks of life. So the big event tonight is an outdoor party that may reach 15,000 people, certainly a legitimate form of cultural immersion! There will surely be much to report on. Until then, Laura et al

PS -- we found Jesus yesterday! He is made of reinforced concrete and sits atop the tallest point in Rio