Big Ben is very pretty. I didn’t know it was attached to the House of Parliament. 

Instead of a subway there is the tube. At every stop there is a voice that says MIND THE GAP. That means there is a space between the platform and the train.

London Bridge is not actually London Bridge, it is the Tower Bridge.

We went to see the Tower of London where Mary, Queen of Scotts head was cut off. I will say executed because it sounds less creepy. We saw the grave of Anne Boleyn.  Every year, since her head was executed, or chopped off, on the date,  someone sends 2 dozen roses and no one know who sends them or who pays for them, it’s a mystery.  Anne Boleyn is Henry the 8th’s wife and he had a new wife every day and every morning he executed his wife but Anne Boleyn told him stories every night and stayed alive, is that right? Some people say that if the Ravens ever leave the Tower of London, it will fall into dust. They keep some there in a cage because they don’t want the Tower of London to fall into dust.

Buckingham Palace is where the Queen lives. The Queen has a dog, and I really like this kind of dog, it’s called a corgi. There is a princess and a baby princess. Every 24 hours, there is the changing of the guard. A giant parade, men on horses, a ton of men carrying guns and the whole thing is to change the guards protecting the Queen and the princess and baby princess.

We went to a museum and saw real mummies with bodies in them, real bodies. I thought it was kind of creepy. There was one real Egyptian person called Ginger, curled up in the fetal position,  he had ginger hair that’s why he was called Ginger, and he was laid out under a stone and they brought him all the way to England and I thought it was creepy, too.

We took a tram like in a ski resort up into the sky to get across the Thames. It was a beautiful view. I took a ton of pictures. We also went to see a play called Wicked.  It was very, very great.

Smoking kills you.  We all know that, right?  So if you’re smoking, you should stop.    I remember flying from New York to Fairbanks (and vice versa) on a Pan Am 747 .  It was when smoking used to be allowed on planes.  I hated that.  I remember going to the Golstream Cinemas when there was just two theaters and smoking was allowed.  I hated that, too.  Besides my little commentary here, I don’t give smoking a lot of thought.

I certainly didn’t give smoking a lot of thought in South America, that is until we got to Chile.  I don’t really remember anybody smoking in Colombia or Ecuador.  There must have been some.  I just don’t remember.  I do remember that almost no one smoked in Peru.  I thought that was interesting.  I thought maybe it had something to do with the altitude, of the cost of living.  Then we got to Chile.

In Arica, the northernmost Chilean town, a lot of people smoked.  I was such a change from 25 miles to the north.  It was a little shocking.  Especially seeing 14 year girls in school uniforms smoking.  It was a little strange.

There was a lot of nothing in northern Chile, including people, so there wasn’t much smoking going on.  Then we got to Santiago. Wow. EVERYONE smoked.  I mean EVERYONE.  There was one time we were driving down a street through a medical college that was on both sides of the street.  The two lanes of traffic in the street were divided by a green strip in the middle, with benches and trees and such.  It was some sort of break time, and there were like a thousand or so students on both sides of the street and in the middle smoking.  The air was hazy with smoke, like a really smokey bar.  It would just pour in the windows of the van.  It was unbelievable.

It was like this regularly in Chile, tons of people in public places smoking like crazy.  If you have stock in tobacco companies, have no fear.  You’ll be doing fine.  Michelle and I went out for a date to a Jazz club while we were in Santiago.  There were four No Fumar signs on the door.  We walked in and it was pretty smoky.  This turned out to be because they had a smoking room, with no ventilation.  At one point, all 20 people in the bar, including the musicians and bartenders, were all crammed in the little room smoking.

Now this is not intended to be some rant on smoking.  I just cannot describe the amount of smoking that goes on in Chile.  You would not believe it.  And I though it worth mentioning.  Oh yeah, don’t forget, smoking kills you, so stop.

The family has made it back to Lima, Peru.  We sold the camper in Santiago, Chile.  Michelle found a great price on one-way tickets to La Paz, Bolivia from Santiago, Chile that routed through Lima, Peru with a 17 hour layover.  It was much more expensive for tickets just to Lima.  Go figure.  So we bought them.  This was because a month and a half ago, Michelle found an unbelievable one way fair from Lima, Peru to Fairbanks that flew on May 22nd.  We bought six of them because that was all there were.  At least most of us were guaranteed a way out.  So we had to get back to Lima.

We had intended to drive back to Peru and sell the camper, but one day in the parking lot of a gas station about 10 miles south of Santiago I started talking to a guy driving by on his way to work.  He was asking me questions about the trip, Alaska, etc. and I told him how we were going to sell the camper in Lima.  The family didn’t really want to drive back to Lima.  It’s 2200 miles of the most barren desert I have ever seen.  Let me say, that is pretty barren.  Nothing living at all.  Nothing.  At all.

Long story short, the camper is in Santiago forever.  We figured out we could freight the van back out of Valparaiso for a pretty good price  ($3000) with a schedule that we thought could make work.  The van leaves Valpo on May 2^nd and is available for pick up on May 22^nd.  Since it takes 20 days for the van to get to LA, we would be without a car (or home) for that time, and that time had to end with us in Lima for Michelle and the 5 kids (not Ryan and I, yet) to get on the plane.

Michelle (again) found a great place for us to rent about 25 miles south of Lima, so we took it for the final three weeks while the van is on the boat.  After this, Michelle, Ryan and Jack decided to fly all the way to La Paz, Bolivia on the tickets we bought.  The rest of us were happy to stay in Lima at the beach house.  So now Michelle, Ryan and Jack needed to get back from La Paz to Lima.  Are you following?  Isn’t this fun?

So the plan now (up for change at any given moment of any given day) is for the La Paz crew to take a bus from La Paz back to the old stomping grounds of Puno, Peru and meet up with some  (new) old friends.  Then head to Huliaca (where the Puno airport is) and catch a fight back to Lima, where we are all reunited.  THEN we create the IQUITOS plan, where we all fly to the largest city in the world (1mil) accessible only by boat or plane.  And it is on the Amazon.  Because if you go to SA, you better see the Amazon , am I right?

So after the Amazon, we all return to Lima, and six of us head out to the US, hopefully getting off the plane in Dallas instead of flying all the way to Fairbanks.  Ryan and I fly to LAX (tickets yet to be determined) with the dogs to get the van out of customs, etc. and then drive to ???? (Dallas, Houston, Yuma, who knows?) and  pick up the crew.  We also buy a new camper (aka Camper 2.0) along the way and then head North to Alaska!

SO! That is the plan(ish).  Wish us luck, and if you haven’t noticed yet,  there is a link to buy us dinner on the right side of our page.  Really, at this point, it would buy us a drink.  So, thanks, if that is where your inspiration leads you. We (well really, I) could use it.

Mark, Sylvie, Annie, Max & I went to Del Buho for pizza and Jen, Jack & Ryan went to a coffee bar and hung out.  We took separate combis into town as we all do not fit in one combi usually.  (If I had grown up here, I would totally be the woman who hangs out the combi window calling out the destination and collecting the fares.  Probably Mark would be a combi driver and we would occaisionally employ Max as the window caller, since all combi window callers are women or 11 year old boys.)

We arrived into Centro for our first Latin American blackout!  No lights.  All this time, I carried a small LED flashlight for the legendary blackouts but I had given it to Max the night before to look for something in the camper.  It was completely dark but all the restaurants and stores were open, just using candles.  The pizza places had the wood fired ovens so that also helped provide light.  It was actually lovely and places stayed busy and open.  The blackout lasted less than hour and all the lights came back on.  We all met up at the square at 9:30 and walked to the mercado to buy coffee for the morning and bottled water.  Ryan found some coffee in plastic bags in one shop and we bought it hoping it didn’t taste too bad.  But it did.

The next morning, we had an email message from the DIRECCION GENERAL DE CONCESIONES EN COMUNICACIONES INTERNAMIENTO DE EQUIPOS (always in red capital letters in Castellar font) asking us to call.  Not email.  Which is hard when they have YOUR PHONE.  Mark, Ryan & Jack left to call and run a few errands (we are unlocking the Moroccan cell phone, we needed to buy a new paquette for internet and we needed bread, which we buy by the kilo in little bun shapes).  This was a turning point in the saga of the cell phone as it appeared all the forms were complete and had been delivered and confirmed by all involved.  The phone should be here tomorrow.

Tonight is date night, more woodfired pizza, sangria and garlic bread.  Can’t beat that!

SEVEN DAYS LATER

We are still in lovely Puno.  And its date night again!  We have now eaten at our favorite vegetarian restaurant 3 times (https://www.facebook.com/lovinghutperu?fref=ts), tried a few different woodfired pizza restaurants and found a favorite bar, 12 stories above the city with a great view of Lake Titicaca and where there is no bartender so we have to make our own drinks.  Never seen anyone else there, either.  Its like our own private bar, a well stocked bar too.   You can see Ryan’s photos of it on Facebook – I will try to get him to post some here, too.

The phone is not here yet – it is supposed to be here tomorrow.

The Moroccan cell phone was left at a phone unlocking place and they flashed it but could not unlock it so they gave us a white phone.  It is not in Arabic – but it does have the previous owners texts, alarms, music and such on it, we were awakened at 5am by salsa music.

Another Saturday market, Sylvie left her bolsita (teeny bag) on the combi and then dropped her wallet and insisted she had been pickpocketed.  She keeps a sol in her pocket incase she has to travel by combi back home.  We have bought ALL the hats.   Puno is a smallish city and I think we have become rather well-known here.  There are other non-Peruvian people here, we sometimes see tourists but none have children and most just pass through (must have Frommer’s).  We however, live at the Grifo Salsedo by the sheep and have 6 white children, three of which are blonde-ish and the girls get their hair touched all the time.  And we buy all the hats, the white family with all the kids that lives near the sheep by the gas station who buys all the hats.  Also tourists do not take combis, only taxis.  Combi travel is the preferred way to go – fast, cheap and unpredictable.  So much of Peru we used to find so interesting (llama fetuses, drums of sodium cyanide used as seats, the many layers of cholita clothes, Chifa, warm soda) has become so everyday that we don’t even notice.

We took the little kids to Snoopy’s where the restaurant is painted lime green and there is a trampoline and a loud TV featuring Peruvian variety shows with women in bikinis, a lot of hot dancing and a dwarf.  We ordered salchipapas, a tradtional South American delicacy we have sampled in every country however this time, it was exceptional.  Just look at that presentation!  Artful, appetizing and less than $2.

There is not much to do anymore so we have settled into a regular routine of school, work and daily market trips.  We are bringing home very unique potatoes to plant and seeds for strange heirloom plants that seem like they would grow well in Alaska as they grow here in the Andes at 12,000+ feet.

DHL has opened a case and dedicated a Research Team to our cell phone.  It appears that there may be (surprise!) corruption at the DHL office.  DHL doesn’t like that.  We had assistance in the process by the Peruvian government so it was all clearly DHL’s issues.  The DHL woman who was assigned to our phone spammed us, Peruvian Customs and the Ministry of Communications.  We were required to pay $31USD for no apparent reason to DHL.  That was Thursday.  They gave us 9 minutes to get to the bank and deposit the $31 in DHL’s bank account before the code they gave us expired. The code expired because 9 minutes is not enough time, plus they gave it to us an hour after it had expired.  We called back, got another code, tried again but it took 11 minutes.  Tried again.  We were inline at the bank, things are just slow in Peru, took more than nine minutes to type in all the numbers.  We tried 5 times and then DHL gave us a code and did not authorize it so we had to come back the next morning at 8am – then it worked.  DHL asked us to scan and fax and email the receipt to them, which we did right away.  The phone should have been here that afternoon (Thursday) but instead it now will take 5 days to travel to Puno, a one hour plane ride away.  The funny thing is that the Peruvian government was helping us and they reported DHL.  We could not figure out the DHL woman’s emails, we thought our Spanish translation was off but it turns out that the DHL woman made no sense at all to fluent Spanish speakers as well and that irritated the Peruvian government folks.

Hopefully the phone will be here tomorrow and we will depart Puno.  The question now is Bolivia or no Bolivia?  Bolivia is expensive to get into ($1200 in visa fees) and they have water restrictions and (the worst part) we have to beg for gas.  A lot of gas.  The decision is Ryan’s to make and he needs to make it by Tuesday morning.  The phone will require a day of work to unlock it and such so Tuesday morning is the tentative departure date.  We will all miss Puno.