Jack – The Blue Van – Overland Travels

Amazon Things

Jack — Sun, 26 May 2013 19:22:11 +0000

The Amazon leg of the trip was a pretty fun and exciting leg. There was lots of drama, nuns, beetles, spiders, hammocks, and pure jungleness. We had a few days left before our flight to Dallas so we decided to go chill in the Amazon because, you know, it’s one of South America’s most famous features. A long time ago, back when we were in Alaska, my mother read to us about this ferry service thing that takes people up and down the Amazon. It was decided that we would take the ferry from Yurimagaus to Iquitos. The coolest thing about the ferry was that you got to sleep in hammocks (ah!). But before we could chill down the Amazon, we had to get to Yurimagaus first. Since Yurimagaus doesn’t have an airport we had to fly into this town called Tarraputo that was a three hourish car ride from Yurimagaus. The car ride there was the one of the coolest car rides I’ve ever been on. I didn’t really know that jungle cliffs were an actual thing but they are.

After our car ride ended it was kind of late so we bought some hammocks and went to the boat but then there was a twist and the boat was gone. There was lots of yelling and boat stuff going on and then we got a hotel room for the night. Hotels are always exciting because they offer tiny soaps.

There were other boats at the port, one was being filled with cows when we were there and the other one was being filled with canned milk. The milk barge would also take us to Iquitos so we decide to ride that one. In the end, the boat didn’t work out but the time spent on board was exciting. Almost all the bugs are nocturnal because the day’s so hot, so as soon as it becomes night there are beetles the size of fifty cent pieces flying every which way and that. A really cool thing is that there’s tons of tiny, apparently harmless, spiders that hide in nooks and crannies during the during the day and make giant webs come night fall. There are also tons of bats.

There were vicious fish that eat anything as soon as it falls into the water. It was scarier than it sounds. Some dude caught one with a fishing hook. It was not a piranha, just to clarify.

The barges were being filled up with cows when we arrived. Other boats were being filled with hundreds of pounds of grain. Guys unloaded like seven trucks of grain by hand. There weren’t any cranes or carts or things of that nature, they just ran onto the boat and threw them down a hole. The guys also unloaded a bunch of really heavy looking hardwood. It was fun to watch. Our boat was taking on some loads of bottled water and we weren’t supposed to leave until it was all on board which takes a long time due to having only kids to unload the water. We had to get off because otherwise we’d miss our flight, but while we were leaving the boat, a gang of Haitians rose up and started to unload the truck which resulted with a ten minute long burst of cooperation where almost everyone joined in and unloaded the truck. The people didn’t really care for the water bottles so a lot of them broke. Eventually everyone stopped except for the three kids who finished unloading the truck. Everyone was angry at the captain and he was somewhere else in town. We were hoping to get our money back from the captain but since he didn’t show, we left and rented a hotel room. My dad left early to retrieve our money the next morning. We took a really awesome trip on an Amazonian feeder river that was pretty cool. We saw birds, snakes, and piranhas. I think the most exciting part of the tour was the food because it was fish.

Flights and things

Jack — Sat, 11 May 2013 17:47:11 +0000

I got to fly on a jet plane again! We flew form Santiago, Chile, to Lima, Peru. The plane we flew on had the coolest chairs ever because the seat in front of you had a screen on the back designed entirely for your entertainment. You could choose between watching movies, TV shows, or music. One of the most exciting things though, was the meal that came with the flight. Airplane food is pretty cool because you get to eat it on your little, fold out, food holder and it comes with forks and spoons and things. I got to eat this nasty sandwich and drink orange juice. I watched 500 Days of Summer on the flight to Lima, I also watched the first thirty minutes of District 9 but then I realized that that was bad flying etiquette due to the gore and myself sitting in an aisle seat. 500 Days of Summer was kind of a depressing movie but that was okay because the flight made me happy. We got to fly during the sun rise which was pretty cool because the sun rose. It took forever to leave the airport due to paper work with the dogs. We rented a driver who drove us to our beach flat. Our beach flat is kind of far outside of Lima so driving back and forth takes forever. Mom, Ryan, and I stayed for a little bit before we left again for the airport to fly to La Paz. I slept through our flight to La Paz so I didn’t get to eat my airplane food or drink my airplane drink. When we landed we had a person from the hotel waiting to drive us there. The drive took a while and since the car was amazingly tiny, my ear was sticking out of the window and semi froze. Our hotel was pretty nice, there were internet problems but other than that it was great. La Paz was built in a canyon with the richer, older section at the bottom of the canyon and the poorer and newer section at the top. There was a really beautiful music instrument museum that had instruments from all over the place. The Andean people liked to combine their instruments with different ones; they had double guitars and pan flute charangos. I got to take a charango lesson there where I learned a few chords and stuff. I actually got to buy a charango while in La Paz which was pretty cool. I got to go out for sushi in La Paz. Every day, there was a massive market outside out hotel that sold lots of sewing things and stuff like that. There were stores all over the tourist section that sold cool old things, like Bolivian currency that isn’t worth anything now and swords. Like lots of cities down here, La Paz’s streets were a lot more intense than San Francisco’s. Our flight to and from La Paz didn’t have anything special like our other one. I can’t think of much else to say. Good bye.

Impulse Buying and Public Urination – Jack

Jack — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:43:07 +0000

Chile is big on a lot of things, skateboarding, Kurt Cobain, smoking, and long passionate kissing on the ground in public (making out) but two of my favorite things is their public urination and their impulse buying. We’ve been at this gas station for a week or two in total, at this gas station there’s a man who sells sets of fake, German cooking knives and there’s a really cool homeless man. I don’t really know why but while people fill their car with gas and/or pee on the side of the gas station, they seem to realize that they really would like a set of fake, crappy, German cooking knifes. This knife salesman told us he sells five sets a day which of course begs the question; is there some store that sells crappy knife sets for cheap? Where does this man keep his knives? If he makes money of them then why doesn’t he shower or buy different clothes? These questions have yet to be answered but what I do know is that Chileans everywhere love impulse buying. We had a for sale sign on the back of our trailer for a while when we drove around people would pass us then pull us over to try to buy it, one man walked past it while we were parked and said he’d run home and grab $10,000 in cash so that we could make a deal that day. I kind of love the impulse buying though. The public urination is big everywhere in South America but it seems to be worse in Chile. The people here just pee everywhere. I don’t know why, I mean they have running water and walls, plus the stores and gas stations here have bathrooms. I guess it’s more efficient to just go where you’re standing than walking into the bathroom. Maybe men who use the bathroom are looked down upon? You don’t see women peeing on the side of the road but they might just be more discrete about it. I also love the how the truck stops in big cities each have their own personal homeless man who lives in the parking lot and ask people for money. The gas station we’re staying at has this really cool, nice, old one who sleeps in a tent and gives away new pairs of shoes that he has for some reason. I like Chile. Chile is like how I always imagined California would be except with less Spanish. The coasts here are actually gold-ish and the water actually has big-ish waves. The air here is also clear and there’s 98% less smog than in So Cal. Also the cities here are sunny and since there’s an ozone hole above Chile, the sun’s really hot. I guess that’s the cause for all the public urination, I mean if it’s so nice outside, why spend time in there at all? The outdoors is pleasant and the grass here is green. If more people lived in cities that were just so nice to stand there and pee in, then I guess more people would do it. If I knew Spanish better then Chile would be the perfect country to be rich in.
Good bye
~Jack

The Atacama – Jack

Jack — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:40:30 +0000

We got into Chile sometime ago. It was a bit of a relief to leave Peru and enter a place where traffic laws were enforced and the water was drinkable. Arica was the first city we got to. Arica reminded me of Anchorage, Alaska but that’s probably just because it had a port and sidewalks. In Peru, if you own a car, they teach you nothing of driving and just show you how to honk the horn which is why crossing streets there was semi terrifying. But now we’re out of Peru and in Chile. The Chilean drivers hardly ever honk their horns or try to see how close they can get their cars to you without killing you. Chile isn’t that wonderful though. Everything is super expensive and northern, coastal Chile is just desert. I’ve had too much desert. Arica had a really cool museum that they built on top of an Indian burial site. You got to walk on top of glass and look at mummies of people who died ever so long ago. We camped at a beach a few miles north of Arica. I am not exactly sure if this is true but I’ve been told that during the night the entire beach turns into a party complete with shoe peeing, car jumping, and vomiting. We left Arica after a few days of eating olives and headed south, west into the Atacama and towards the tourist trap town of San Pedro de Atacama. It took a few days of driving through an unchanging desert landscape to reach San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is in the middle of nowhere. I don’t really know why it’s a tourist attraction because really the only thing to do there is look at the salt lakes and looking at water loses its novelty pretty dang fast. You could also rent a bike and ride a few hundred miles down the road but there’s not much point in that due to identical scenery everywhere. The town of San Pedro its self was nice but expensive. They had this place that was like a bar but they only served beer. The beer only bar was always full of the cool, dread sportin’, dirty clothes wearin’, traveler people. San Pedro also had hundreds of European backpacking people. THIS ONE GIRL ASKED JENNAH AND I TO A PARTY (heart)! Other than that, nothing really exciting happened there. We left from San Pedro and backtracked north a tad bit to try to go on a tour of a mine (Chile is big in the mining industry) but we were too late. We went to this mall that was massive and walked around a little bit. After the town and its mall, we headed south again towards the coast. Not much noteworthy has happened since then. The beaches where I’m at are super rocky and pretty. So far I give Chile three Stars out of five; with that being said, I give south western Peru four Stars out of five. I’m done writing for now.
Peace.
~Jack

Away from Puno – Jack

Jack — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:10:05 +0000

We left Puno a couple of days ago. I really liked Puno. We drove for days over the cold plateaus until we got into a cold desert plateau then we descended into a hot desert with a city. Mom had to work so we stopped at this city for a day or so. The town was nice. Father and I took the children to a park where a fluffy evil alpaca roamed wild. At first the alpaca was a fun loving, sweet animal but once you approached it, it would start to hiss and chase after you. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an alpaca run but they run really, really fast. It cornered Annabelle and almost ate her but she managed to scare it away with her screams. After Annabelle it went after Sylvia and almost trampled her, it was then that the park lady threw a rock at the alpaca and gave us a stick to beat it with. The park lady then followed the alpaca and threw more rocks at it until it laid down and hid. Nothing exciting happened after that. We went to the market and bought bread. It’s really hot outside. The sand burns your feet and the sky burns your body. I have to shed my clothes at night again or else my bed gets wet with sweat and I die of dehydration. We’re going to be in Chile tomorrow. I’m really excited about Chile. After Chile we’re going deep into Argentina. I’m really excited about Argentina. Chile’s going to take all of our vegetables away.
The day before we left Puno I bought myself an instrument called a Mama Quena. It’s just like a quena, only super big. It’s like all bass and I can kind of play it now. I’m going to stop writing for a little bit because I’m in my bed and it’s really hot and making me sweat again.
I’m back. Sylvia’s peeling potatoes and the space in between my fingers is sticky. In Puno they have stores that sell pirated movies and software so I now have about fifteen movies to watch. Most of them make me feel bad though. I haven’t watched the movie Ninja Assassin yet and I probably never will because just looking at the cover makes me scared. I also have all of Adobe now. I’m pretty proud of my CD collection. I also have multiple CDs full of Latin American Samba music. I’m over heating again so I’m going to go. We don’t think that Chile has Inca Cola.
This is over, good bye.

Puno Blog Post 2 – Jack

Jack — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:17:03 +0000

Yo, it’s Jack. Puno continues to be the same, old, lakeside, Peruvian, city that it ever was. I can’t really think of all that much new material to write about my life spent in Puno so I think I’m going to try to describe it a little bit. There’s this plaza called Plaza de Armes with a cathedral next to it. If you take a left at this plaza you’re on this strip where you can only walk. This strip is covered in stores that sell the same jackets and alpaca blankets and chocolates filled with vodka and pisco. On the corner there’s the Peruvian Tourist center with a bench outside. One week ago I saw an old, homeless, lady who wears fifteen hats that have all felted together sit down on that bench. I haven’t seen her move since except last night she got up and walked ten feet to the middle of the street and squatted over a drain to urinate. Other than that the lady has remained immobile. The strip goes on for about three blocks and ends at this other plaza with another church. If you head down the hill a little bit, you’ll get to the central market. The market sells a lot of things: olives, shoes, goat heads. Across from the market there’s a small restaurant called the Snack Café. It calls its self a drive in but I’m pretty sure that’s lost in translation because there’s no where to park and there’s hardly any room inside the Snack Café. If you go to the opposite corner of the market area and head up a road you’ll end up at the salchipaparia. The Salchipaparia only sells salchi papas and salchi papa like things. It’s one of the best places to eat in town because it costs hardly anything and they give you kind of a lot of food.
I just remembered something so I’m going to stop talking about Puno. I have been trying to make worldly friends while on this trip. I haven’t really made any yet because I don’t really like talking to people but I follow groups of tourists around in hopes that they accept me as their own. The other day Jennah and I saw about fifty high school children enter a restaurant called La Casona so naturally we also went to La Casona. La Casona is a lot fancier than I thought it would be. It’s so fancy that they don’t give you a menu and just start feeding you. Jennah and I only had eight dollars with us and we were planning just to get tea and coffee but they put two bowls of soup on our table. We freaked out because we didn’t know how much the soup was and asked for a menu and it turned out that the soup was six dollars each. I faked a trip to the bathroom and went outside to wander Puno in hopes of finding my mother and getting more money. I couldn’t find her so after ten minutes which caused me to freak out even more so after a few more minutes of trying to find money on the ground, I went back inside to join my sister. The whole time this was going on there were fifty high school people feasting on expensive meats and soup. In the end we asked a waited and he told us that our meal of soup would only be six dollars and four cents. The people who work there don’t like us anymore. Jennah and I paid and went outside to find our mother.

Manjar

Jack — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:19:30 +0000

Hello. My last post was about Lima or the Nazca lines I think so I have a lot of days to cover. We headed high up into the Andes and met herds of beautiful llama like creatures. One day we camped on top of the High Plateau and I was almost able to join a herd of bouncing, brown eyed wild llamas. Unfortunately we left before I became one with the llama. We spent a few days in the high plateau looking at chinchillas and getting altitude sickness before descending and heading towards Cusco. When we were right outside of Cusco we found out that the Shining Path was threatening to kidnap America tourists in Cusco and that is why we drove through Cusco. Once we left Cusco we came to a small village with a kind of big Sunday market that we bought pasta and spoons at. The market was full of tiny, old, women cutting giant gourds open with saws and booths made of tarps and sticks selling cubes of sea weed and sacks of coco leaves. When walking around I found a small hole in the wall store that sold this sixteen stringed instrument kind of like a mandolin but every group of strings was a different chord instead of a single note. The shop was full of guys drinking beer and holding instruments. After a few hours spent at the market, we drove on towards Puno. We spent many days and nights in rural Peru going to hot springs and driving past small towns. Eventually we made it to the city of Puno. We stopped in Puno and have remained stopped for a while now. Puno is nice. It’s right on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Puno has a large artisan market but every booth sells pretty much the same things, except this one booth I found that sold leopard pelts and tortuous shells. If you head up towards the center of town there are lots of colorfully dressed women selling hats and gloves. The older ladies here stick coco leaves to their faces, I don’t really know why but I think it’s so that sweat is absorbed into the leaf so when they chew it, the sweat juice squirts out. One of my favorite thing about the people here is that most of the women wear this beautiful hat that is sort of mushroom shaped and doesn’t fit over their heads. Ryan and my mother have started that hat thing that you probably know about but if you don’t I’ll summarize: There are people all over that try to sell you things on the street, a lot of the time the people are so desperate to sell you their wares that they’re near tears. These people sell their things for hardly any money ($4.00 for a hand knitted alpaca hat) so Ryan came up with the idea that people donate money to us so we can buy large quantities of hats from people to stimulate the local economy and make some old ladies week. As I write this I am actually wearing a hat that we bought.
Yesterday we were walking down a street full of booths that the people who live here buy from and we came across a place the sold nothing but herbs and aborted llama fetuses. It was kind of really creepy because, you know, there were two hundred or so dried up, black, unborn llama babies in boxes all over the place. Apparently when you’re making a new house or building your ‘supposed’ to kill a llama on top of the land that your building on for the earth god, but if you’re too poor you can just shove a llama fetus under your house and call it good.
Pastries here are usually stuffed with the scrumptious sludge called Manjar (pronounced man- har). This sludge is brown and can be sold in small tubes as candy I think. When we were over by the fetus’ we came across an old, coco leaf, covered lady who sold large sacks full of small tubes of Manjar for a $1.20. I have no idea what’s in Manjar and it’s probably horrible for you but I’ve ate about a pound of Manjar since yesterday. This last bit is a little unrelated to Puno or South America in general but I can play Come Sail Away by Styx on my pan pipes, bagpipes, and mandolin now which I’m pretty dang proud of.
This blog post is over now. I like Puno. Good bye.

Coco Tea and Mars

Jack — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 02:31:04 +0000

There is absolutely nothing wrong with chewing coco leaves. We bought a large bag of dried coco leaves and the only change I can detect from chewing them is the slight numbing of the mouth. I myself rather enjoy the numbing of the mouth. It reminds me of my time spent at the dentist and the dentist office is my happy land. The drills on my teeth sound like dubstep and the numbing of my mouth makes me feel like a super hero. If I could change one thing about the world it would be total legalization of coco leaves. Now I’m not saying that I’m pro cocaine, in fact, I am far from being pro cocaine and there is hardly any cocaine per leaf. The drinking of coco tea and the chewing of coco leaves is fabulous and it is my dream to share my joy with the whole world. I believe that if coco leaves were legal everywhere, there would be world peace. Heck we’d probably have a colony on Mars if coco leaves were legal. Our colony on Mars would be completely fueled by coco leaves and beans. They would drink coco tea out of bowls and cups carved from coco beans. It would be beautiful but since the world lives in fear of drugs we can’t have our coco powered Marcian habitat. The beautiful thing about coco leaves and beans is that they probably have chemicals inside them that make you a more empathetic and sympathetic person. In that thinking, coco tea could cure our sociopaths and make the world a bit more understanding and pleasant. If only we could experiment with these amazingly powerful tree extensions. A

nyways. The other day we visited the Nazca lines and gazed upon these magical tracks of dark rocks. not many shapes were visible from the small tower we climbed. You could make out one formation called The Hand and a few others. The hand looked like a giant hand carved into the desert floor and I have reason to believe that it was the Nazca peoples idea to make it look like a giant hand. There was also one called The Tree but it really didn’t look that much like a tree. More like a bunch squiggly lines next to each other. It was pretty cool actually. I really don’t know what could have inspired them to make these shapes other than aliens. If you were in a barren desert would you walk over the hot, sharp rocks so you can rearrange more hot rocks for nothing? Probably not and that leaves only one possible answer to the mystery of the Nazca lines: Aliens. The lines were clearly set up to display animals they viewed as sacred to the sky. After time their creativity and skill evolved (probably it was actually aliens who did this) and soon they were carving extremely complex geometric shapes into the ground. My favorite figure is this one called The Astronaut and it’s clearly an alien waving because it was then when the aliens had completed whatever they came to the Nazca Desert to do and left. You guys should research aliens in history because they’re really everywhere.
Jack DeCorso signing out
Bye

Lima and whatnot

Jack — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 02:27:29 +0000

We’re still in Peru. The desert is hot and uncomfortable at times. The night is also pretty hot and I’ve developed a habit of sleeping without blankets or clothing. I long time ago, my headphones broke and I’ve been stuck listening to the sounds of traffic or nonstop Taylor Swift while driving, but thankfully I was able to replace them the other day.
One of the things I love about the desert is its lack of trees or shrubbery, because, it makes it 90% easier to find things on the ground such as: cool rocks, crystals, cool rocks with crystals, and so on. The other day we stopped to camp on a road next to a few, kind of giant sand dunes. The Kind of Giant Sand Dunes were kind of really big and were home to almost nothing living, but festering with stones and pretty rocks. I was out and about during the early hours of the day, looking for fossils and pretty stones and things of that nature, when I came upon a vain of quartz that lay there exposed above the Kind of Giant Sand Dunes. The vain of quartz I found was crumbling apart and many semi large boulders of the stone could be found. Inside a few blocks of this “quartz” I found many quartz crystals molded into the shape that of prisms. I now have a ton of crystals in a bag under my bed from the Kind of Giant Sand Dunes.
We’ve come a long way since the Kind of Giant Sand Dunes. Now we’re in a desert that’s less flattering and much rockier, but that’s okay because those famous lines and shapes of animals and such are here. Tomorrow, it’s possible, that maybe, we might, go flying over top these Nazca lines. It really is impossible to see them from the ground. I always had the impression that you would at least notice long line shaped strands running along the desert but apparently you don’t.
We were in Lima the other day. Back where I come from there’s this city called Anchorage and Lima looked a lot like a bigger, more spread out Anchorage. We stayed in Lima for a few days because our car broke down, right outside of it. It took my father and some mechanic guys a few days to get all the parts and stuff to fix are car, but soon it was ship shape and ready to drive out on the town. We went to a museum and looked at pots and stuff of that sort. The part of the museum that interested me, and that I really cared about was the top floor which was dedicated to pictures about the 1980-1991 Shining Path conflict. I don’t really want to go into detail about that right now. In Lima, we went to this fountain park that had the world’s tallest fountain ever. I like fountains but I don’t like the noise they make and sadly, every single one of these fountains made noise. There was a wonderful laser/water show at the end and that’s about it I think.
Sorry about the shortness of this post. There’s not all that much to write about I think. I mainly write about the landscape and that sort of stuff but the landscape has remained relatively the same since my last entry. We don’t really go into the towns and walk around the towns so it’s hard to write my opinion on them because I really don’t have one most of the time. A lot of the towns do smell really bad though. I don’t know why but when we drive through or by a town there’s always this really bad smell. The people here are friendly and kind but I miss the cool, moist mountains from Colombia; I’m not really all that big on dry and hot areas.
Good bye.

Cuenca Area

Jack — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:19:08 +0000

It’s been a while since my last post and I kind of forgot where I left off last time so I’m just going to post about our recent travels.

A lot happened in Otavalo. Our dog died, I fainted, I bought a few things, bad surgery was performed, and all in all, it was a pretty dramatic and stressful week. Otavalo has a major market that sells things that tourist typically buy, like jackets and blankets and low quality instruments and marijuana cream. The people all wear shawls and ponchos which adds a very authentic atmosphere. We visited a few shops that were outside of the extremely large and vacant seeming market, one of the paces we went was a wool works shop. Everything there was semi expensive and we left without buying anything. Next we headed to this music shop where they make Andean instruments for selling. I bought this flute like thing called a quena and a pan flute like thing called a rondador. I still can hardly play my quena but my pan flute and randador playing has gotten better. We adopted a stray dog and took both her and our remaining male dog to get fixed. The vet who did the job wasn’t very good at neutering animals or giving stitches. I’m a gentle man and the whole thing caused me to faint a little bit, but the vet had a nice wife and daughter who gave me some chamomile tea and took me to their plastic surgery office so I could lie down on their operating table. Our dog is still recovering and has a massive gash on his swim suit area.
We finally left Otavalo and headed towards the town of Banos. Banos is Spanish for bath or bathroom and the town was named this because it was built on a volcano and had several hot springs. We camped outside of a small restaurant that had a few, kind of big spiders on the ground and in the shrubbery. I was slightly disappointed with the public baths, they were extremely developed and were built into pools, plus they were full of the elderly. Banos had a lot of this drink made out of some kind of cane plant. I really wanted some but it probably had alcohol in it so I never got to taste it. One time, during our stay in Banos, I bought lunch inside a giant food building where people would set up small restaurants. I got rice with and egg on top plus a little bit of pork meat.

South America, or at least Ecuador and Colombia, have a really nice attitude towards hitchhikers. People hitchhike everywhere. You don’t even have to put your thumb out you just have to stand on the side of the road and you get picked up. Everyone hitchhikes. Someday, I’m going to come back and hitchhike all over South America.
Right now we’re outside of Cuenca at a gas station. I’m leaving now. Bye.