A little of a let down after being in Chile for so long. No more clean places and such.

The first day here was spent getting comfortable and helping Mother, Ryan and Jack to get ready to go to La Paz.

The next couple of days were spent recouporating from our airport shanigan.

It was all very chilled and Dad went out to get hotdogs. We cooked them about was about to eat them when we made the startling discovery that the hotdogs were wrapped in plastic wrappers.

Ah, Peru.

So father used a butter knife and attempted to scrooge the hotdog out in little clumps until we had a big plate of shredded hotdog and made sandwiches.

Luckily, the adjoining nights were better.

The pool has been getting used frequently. Sylvia seems to enjoy getting out, taking a shower and getting dressed then deciding to get back in.

Yesterday we checked out the beach and discovered that it was at the bottom of a cliff/steep hill. There were locked gates and such so we have yet to go there.

We explored the neighborhood a bit, walking about a mile to the nearest ATM.  It was pretty much the same; restaurants, one fancy restaurant and a barren strip of dirt between the roads. How pretty and photogenic it was.

Ryan, Jack and mother got back last night and brought me a wonderful leather jacket. It wasn’t the original one they had shown me, which was garishly red and has a horrible fur collar. It was apparently a joke. Ha. Ha.

They also brought back several bars of Bolivian chocolate, which was quite delicious, some oven mitts that father got endlessly excited over and other things.

Now that they are back, I’m sure adventures shall start soon…

Jennah

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.

Or, like Scuffy the Tugboat: there is only one way to go and that was with the rushing river

On Friday, April 26, we sold the camper.  The man who bought it did not have a vehicle big enough to tow it so we towed it to his work, which was a well drilling company, and spent two more nights in the camper.

On Saturday, we went to Fantasialandia!  Fantasialandia was a great amusement park that was modern, clean, had fabulous rides and there were NO LINES.  We rode rides, had ice cream, generally a fun day.

On Sunday, we began the task of leaving.  Everything came out of the camper and the van.  We made four piles – trash, stuff to give away, things we were shipping in the van and what we needed for the last month in South America.

After a very long, long day, the van was packed up and the camper was empty and 8 different colored LLBean duffel bags were stacked outside.  We went to town and bought champagne and ramen and a cuban cigar for a celebratory dinner!

The next morning, we packed up the van with 8 duffle bags, 8 carry on bags, 2 dogs, 2 dog kennels and 8 people and Mark dropped 6 of us & 2 dogs off at the Santiago International Airport.  We had done some recon there a few days before and Jack had picked out a place that was tucked away in a loft with a wide open space and no people.  We had some kind of flatbed thing as a table and 6 seats. It was perfect.  We carted all the stuff, dogs and children to the spot and promptly made a fort of duffel bags and hung out.  We played travel Monopoly, Quibbler, Memory, Magic and Boggle.  We colored.  We played with little cars.  We played Mother May I and Red Light/Green Light.  We had a picnic lunch.  For 17 hours.

Meanwhile, Mark & Ryan went back to the camper and loaded 8 plastic tubs + all of our blankets Shana made us into the van.  They drove to Valparaiso to meet with Sergio, our freight forwarder.  They spent some time doing paperwork and then drove the van to the staging area so it could be loaded into a container.  The city is built around the shipyard in Valparaiso but the logistics part is through three mountain tunnels on the other side.

The van was supposed to fit in the container with less than 3” to spare wide and 1” to spare on the top (with the front bumper and light removed).  But of course we didn’t really know as we have never driven the van into a container.  At the shipyard, the men didn’t think it would fit.

There was a lot of measuring and then they got a ramp with a long straight run so the van would not hit the container at an angle and Mark drove it in – and it fit!

The van shipped on the NYK Lodestar.  It left Valparaiso on May 2.  You can track it here:

http://www2.nykline.com/ct/containerSearch.nyk;jsessionid=15YVRGdVL5DJ7mL3gFQ8gnLnTbn1mG2P6svPqqCgS12hl1r0Qys5!1874080284!-1759416271?lang=en&country=USA

We could only use a container because we had a back door on the van, otherwise you would be trapped inside the vehicle you drove in. Mark and Ryan made a quick stop at a grocery store for essentials we knew we couldn’t get in Peru (coconut milk and chocolate bars) and then hopped a bus to the airport, which is a 2 hour drive away.  They arrived at the airport around 7pm – it is a 2 hour drive from Valparaiso to Santiago.

Then – it was date night at the Santiago International Airport!  Nescafe and a pastry and 30 minutes of adult conversation.

One problem with the airport was that no internet worked, our smartphone didn’t work and no place had wifi.   We had things we needed to do but we needed internet! At about 11pm, Sylvia began to throw up.  Of course. At 2:25am, we were able to check the dogs and our bags and head to the plane!  We flew on LAN which is a very nice airline with free movies and games and food and drinks and it’s fancy.  Sylvia perked up and seemed to feel better as she ate her entire breakfast.  They let her keep the LAN blanket because she told the flight attendant it was so so beautiful.  It’s solid orange. We arrived in Lima and proceeded smoothly through customs.  We had to wait for the vet, who was late and arrived highly caffeinated.

We found a beach house south of Lima to rent.  But, like all South American things, it was very casual and that was not reassuring.  No deposit.  No confirmation number.  Not even an address.  The woman we rented from, Karina, was very nice and told us someone would meet us at the airport – which is in Callou, 35 miles away. We walked out of customs with 4 carts, 6 kids, 2 dogs and we were exhausted – and a guy was standing there with a sign that said Michel De Corz, and I knew that was us!  He took us to a van, we all piled in and we began a slow, slow, slow drive. Here is a fun fact we learned last time we were in Lima: most taxi drivers don’t know Lima.  They move from very rural places, where they never had a car, to Lima and pay to share a taxi with relatives and they take turns driving 24/7 but they don’t know where anything is.  This was the case with our van driver.  Even we knew shorter ways to get around Lima.

Part II: From Lime to Peace (Lima to La Paz)

We were feeling kind of pressed for time because, well, this is a long story too.  Once we knew we were selling the camper in Santiago, we needed plane tickets back to Lima.  We had already bought plane tickets out of Lima in February.  Plane tickets to Lima were expensive but tickets to Bolivia, which route through Lima, saved us more than $3000.  We bought tickets with a 16 hour layover to make sure we could get all our bags off the plane.  Tricky thinking, eh?  Then we started thinking about actually going to Bolivia.  We decided that Ryan, Jack and Michelle would go to Bolivia for a week, take a bus to Puno, visit Puno friends, take a combi to Juliaca and fly back to Lima.  In order to do this, we needed to make it to the beach house, help everyone get settled, make hotel reservations in La Paz, find a 4cm passport photo for me (required for entry and I didn’t have one but Jack and Ryan did) and get back to Callou at the airport. The beach house was better than we imagined.  It has three bathrooms!  Like a palace, a mansion, so much space, and a pool!

We were so tired, you cannot imagine.  Mark, Ryan and I were now at 30 hours without sleep.  In order to make hotel reservations and find a passport photo place, we needed wifi so Ryan and Mark left to recharge the trusty old Claro stick.  They returned, we checked email but no confirmation on our reservation.  We had to call, which we did. Now there is another little issue with Bolivia.  When I made the reservations, I was only concerned with getting to Lima.  If we get into Lima at 7am and have a 16 hour layover, our plane to La Paz leaves at midnight – and arrives in Bolivia at 2:55am.  This is a bad time to arrive.  Especially since the airport is actually in El Alto, the notorious barrio with more than 2 million people.  I really wanted a hotel reservation, you know? We called our hotel, La Joya. Our conversation went something like this:

“Did you get our reservation?”

“No, we have internet problems.”

“Could we make one?”

“Yes sure see you then.”

“Wait!  Do you need the dates and our name?”

“No it is no problem”

“But we arrive tonight”

“Tonight?”

“Yes tonight”

“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”

“Wait!  We come in very late”

“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”

“We come in at 3am”

“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”

“How do we get to the hotel?”

“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”

“Do we take a cab?”

“No.”

“How do we get there?”

“We will be there”

“At the airport?”

“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”

“OK!  You will pick us up at the airport tonight at 3am?”

“Late tonight or early tomorrow morning?”

“I am sorry. I don’t know what you mean”

“Ok. No problem, see you tonight”

Skype drops the call.

So we took showers in the beach house but there was no hot water.  We called to ask how to turn it on and the Karina’s husband came over.  He said there were no water heaters, was that OK?  I said no, it was very cold water so he said ok, we will put in a water heater.  And they did! As we walked out with our bags, we asked Karina’s husband where to catch a bus to Lima.  He said he would just take us so we climbed into his car and headed to Lima.  Karina’s husband likes to surf.  We talked about surfing.  He took us to his office and called us a radio cab to the airport in Callou.  It took over an hour to drive the 14 miles.  We got to the airport and found an IPeru office where they gave us the address of a photo place.  We put our one bag into bag storage, took a taxi to the photo place and got there just before they closed.  We ate dinner at a little restaurant and then headed back to the airport, retrieved our bag, checked out of Peru and boarded our plane.  38 hours without sleep.

Bolivia is a very interesting place.  The Spanish took all the silver from the mines of Potosi and used it to fund 200 years of Spanish projects, like the Inquisition.  Bolivia got independence in 1825 with the assistance of Simon Bolivar (who would be one person I would love to have dinner with) but civil war erupted and Bolivia has had 198 distinct governments since they got independence from Spain.  Chile took their land that bordered the ocean because they wanted the saltpeter.  You may remember that from the blog post about the battle of Iqueque.  Bolivia appeals every year to the UN to get the land back.  The loss of the sea is a Bolivian tragedy.  They mourn the loss of the sea.  They celebrate the Dia del Mar, a day of mourning and sorrow for the loss of the beloved ocean.  Bolivia now has their first indigenous president, Evo Moreles, who I think is pretty great.  I feel bad for Bolivia, a very disenfranchised country.

La Paz is in a deep canyon at 14,000 feet.  The roads here are very, very, very steep.  The airport is the highest international airport in the world.  Special planes need to land here as there is less oxygen and they need special tires.  Our plane looked unspecial, like a 737.  The guide books say that when you leave from sea level and arrive at 14,000 feet you will get sick.  They say that when the plane lands and they open the door and unpressurize the cabin, people pass out.  Lan carried oxygen for this purpose.  I was not looking forward to landing.  We spent a month in Puno, just a hundred miles away and at 12,800 feet but we got there gradually and I still had some altitude sickness. We fell asleep.  Slept hard.  I tried to wake up Jack right before we landed and he hit me and told me to stop hurting him. The plane landed.  The door opened.  The cabin lost all pressure.  The German tourists all took their sorochi tablets.  And nothing happened.  No one passed out.  Nothing. We went through customs, bought our visa ($135 each), filled out all the forms and they didn’t want my 4cm passport photo because you know what they did?  They bought a camera!  We cleared customs.  We were the last people out, as buying a visa took some time.  Only Americans have to buy a visa because Evo Morales is irritated at the US.  In fact on the second day we were in La Paz, Bolivia kicked out the USAID Program (very dramatically here but on US news it wasn’t even a blip).  The La Paz airport looked a lot like the Bethel Airport but browner, not gray.  Very small.  No place to spend the night if we had to – and it was cold. But there – standing in the airport in the cold at nearly 4am was a man with a sign that said La Joya. I was so happy I actually cried.  We piled into his minivan which had a cholita woman in the front seat and no back window.  They offered us a blanket.  We drove through El Alto and into La Paz and to our hotel where we went straight to our room and went to sleep.

***Update: our international insurance did not know how to deal with an international claim so we paid the guy $200 USD, took photos of the dent and they will reimburse us.  Maybe.  Hopefully.  Just glad it’s over.  And now the man is a friend on Facebook.

The time has come for Team DeCorso to return home.  We started making the arrangements and we were forced to make early decisions that we could not know how they would work out.  For example, in February we found a one-way ticket on American Airlines from Lima to Fairbanks for $478 that routes through Dallas so we bought 6 (Michelle, Jack, Jennah, Max, Annabelle & Sylvia) not knowing how the shipping / dogs would work out.  So now, because of the excellent airfare and the security of knowing we had a way home, we must leave out of Lima.

Departing South America can be divided into sections like this:

• Freighting the van
• Selling the camper
• Finding a place in Lima
• Making arrangements for the Amazon
• The dogs
• Tickets for Mark & Ryan
• Bolivia?
• Dallas
• Camper 2.0
• Other stuff

We are taking advice and suggestions from anyone here so please feel free to help us brainstorm!!

Freighting the van – this is both harder and much easier than you would think.  The hardest part is getting information.  The rest (customs, stuffing, forms, etc) is not so hard.  We started with Peru and got quotes to Houston but the travel time was almost 30 days plus 7 days to offload – too long.  Next we tried Peru to LAX and got a shorter trip (20 days) and 1 day to offload but the cost was quite high, about $4850.  Then, inexplicably, we could no longer contact NYK in Peru.  The phones just rang, emails went unanswered.  In Santiago, we called NYK Chile to ask about Peru and they offered us a better deal ($3000 to freight to LAX) and, best of all, no 2200 mile drive through the desert which saved us at least $1500 in gas and such.  So we settled on shipping the van out of Valparaiso.  The freighter leaves the port on May 1 and arrives in LAX on May 21.  We need to have the van there at 3pm on Monday, April 29.  The stuff it in a container, load it on the NYKLodestar with a crane, it sails to LAX stopping in all kinds of places along the way, places the blue van has already been to (Antofagasta, Arica, Callao, Guayaquil…)

We bought tickets to Lima for all 8 of us & 2 dogs and we leave early Tuesday morning.

Selling the camper was never really an idea until we got here and people were so amazed at the camper that we had people make us offers several times a week since we arrived in Colombia.  We have a book of emails and phone numbers from very serious buyers all over the place.  People would flag us down, drive in front of us and stop, follow us for miles, leave notes on our window…  People were also amazed at the blue van which is the size of three Peruvian combis.  It was not uncommon for men to gather around the blue van looking at its locking hubs and being amazed that it was diesel – and how MANY people could really fit in it!  I was once on a combi that was smaller than my Aerostar minivan with 22 people and a baby.  The combi would have literally fit inside our van.  However, some serendipity led us to camp in a nice truckstop outside Santiago and a man named Patrico drove this way to work every morning and he stopped every morning and every evening to ask us to sell him the camper.  So we are.  We sell it to him and we stay in it until our plane leaves.  This is a little stressful as we have never done anything like this  before and we are taking a leap of faith that it all works out.  Once the van is gone, we can’t move the camper so we are selling it on Friday (tomorrow).  Tomorrow the camper goes to it’s forever home and we will all be a little sad to see it go.

Finding a place in Lima should be easy but it is not.  All of the places are very fancy and for some horrible reason WHITE.  White couches, white carpets, white area rugs, white curtains.  Team DeCorso can deal with a lot of things but white is our nemesis.  Also we had this idea we would rent a typical home, not a luxury vacation rental.  On top of this, the luxury apartments all have luxurious (read fragile) decor like blown glass vases and such.  This is still unsettled.

***update – while the insurance claim was being investigated, I found a perfect place south of Lima on the beach and they will let the dogs stay there.  Most importantly, it has a WASHING MACHINE.  Not a dryer but it is the desert.  It’s not white and it’s not a penthouse in a super earthquake zone with no building codes!  Yippeee!

Making arrangements for the Amazon is something we haven’t yet even started.  

The dogs are also a problem.  White carpeted, white furnitured luxury penthouses don’t want dogs.  We can board them but they will hate it.  They need dog stuff, dog papers to fly and Lucy needs a kennel.  We can’t board them for 21 days so we need to figure this part out.  

***Update – dogs are staying with us at our beach house!!  Yipppeeee!!!

Tickets for Mark & Ryan we still need to purchase from Lima to LAX.  The question now is – who takes the dogs?  Either they do and have to figure out what to do with them while they negotiate the van out of its container or I do and figure out what to do with them in Dallas.  Or I fly home with everyone.  

Bolivia? Just to make things exciting, Ryan and I (and maybe Jack) would like to zip over to Bolivia.  We already have tickets one way.  The way back would be a bus from La Paz to the border, cross to Peru, bus to Puno, overnight in Puno, combi to Juliaca and a plane from Juliaca to Lima.  We can’t finalize Bolivia until we make sure everyone else and the dogs have a place to go in Lima.  Our plane to Bolivia leaves 12 hours after we arrive in Lima so we have some time to help everyone get situated.

***Update: now that we have the Peruvian beach house, Bolivia is a go!  More altiplano! More altitude sickness!  More cholita wrestling!  More PUNO!  More of Oscar’s vegan restaurant!  More hats!

Dallas is where Team DeCorso #1 wants to get off the plane and wait for Team DeCorso #2 to drive 1500 miles and pick us up.  Or we can take a plane.  Or a train. Or, as Ryan constantly suggests because he is on Team 2, a bus.  We could meet half way – Tuscon? Phoenix? Albuquerque? We can only do this if Team 2 has the dogs.

Camper 2.0 is necessary as we just need one to do Alaskan things.  So on the way to fetch Team 2, Team 1 must be searching for an adequate camper -anyone know of any??  Between LAX and Dallas or surrounding Texas?

Other small details include the van needs some transmission work because, turns out, hauling 10000 pounds over the Andes a few times is hard on the transmission.  And brake work because stopping 15,000 pounds on an Andean mountain road is hard on your brakes.  Which needs to happen before the joyous reunion of Team 1 & Team 2.