Mother and Father heard a cover of Dust in the Wind by Kansas played on the pan flute when they went out.  Of course this led to the purchasing of two CDs full of Andean classic rock.

I think I’ve already talked about this but here in Puno there’s a hotel that’s a tower. I don’t know for sure but I’m pretty sure this hotel is the tallest building in Puno. At the top there’s a restaurant and on top of that there’s a bar with windows for you to look through. We’ve been trying to go to this bar for three days now but every night it’s been closed due to the lameness of the bar tender. Maybe tonight it’ll be open. The other night Mom, Jennah, Ryan, and I went out for pizza at the restaurant called Macchu Pizza. This restaurant was kind of really slow but that was okay because their chairs were comfortable. The pizza itself was mostly cheese and very little pizza but I still enjoyed it. I bought a CD with one gigabyte of Samba music on it. My South American music folder is pretty full now.

There’s this alcoholic beverage sold down here called the Pisco Sour. I’ve never had it of course but it’s made from egg whites, a wine called pisco, salt, and other nasty things. I think it’s funny because it’s really, really, nasty sounding. Egg whites don’t taste good. I bought a cup of white foam covered in cinnamon that looked really scrumptious but then it turned out to be egg white and made my hands really sticky. After spreading the egg whites on a few people on accident I found a trash can. While my egg white problem was happening, Ryan bought himself a giant, llama-less blanket and I found a cool pen. When I was younger I used to collect pens but I’ve out grown that now. I had a ton of pens. It was really cool. Everyone would come over just to look at my pens but I lost all of them somehow.

The witches here don’t let people photograph there llama feti so I haven’t been able to get any photos of those, sorry. Not much is happening. We’re still waiting for the phone; still buying hats.
Good bye.

The trailer was in this dirt lot surrounded by semi trucks and broken glass. Someone stole the license plate off of the trailer while it was stationary. After a few minutes of doing something (I forget exactly what we were doing) we were off and heading out of Cartagena.
It took longer than I would have liked to leave the city; in retrospect Cartagena was kind of horrible and nasty. A few wrong turns were made but we eventually we got out onto the country side. The day was starting to turn into the night by the time we got to this one town where a police officer stopped us and almost took my father’s passport away because our windshield was cracked. After taking care of the cop, we pulled out of town and headed towards the next. All along our way we past plenty of military check point things and toll booths. It was now dark and we were pulling into yet another town. We took a few lefts and a few rights and then boom, we were stuck in the middle of the main road. A kind stranger helped us out of our trap and took us to an empty lot where we could rest for the night. This lot was framed by the Pan American highway on one side, and by a small bunch houses on the other. We were parked for about an hour and already a crowed of interested children had gathered right outside our door. Mother invited them in and then the crowd grew from fifteen kids to fifty four mixed aged peoples. We gathered outside and were fed fruits that grew in the area. I am most certainly not fluent in any other language other than English so communicating was difficult. I have loved llamas since the day I was born and when a girl said something about llamas to me, I sort of got really excited and happy, until I learned that ‘llama’ means phone and she really just wanted my phone number. Anywho. The night went well and we were invited to eat breakfast with them tomorrow. We woke up and headed out to meet up with our new friends. Someone took a toucan bird out of their house, you probably don’t know this about me but I have been drawn toucan birds for years so this was also really exciting for me.

The people who were feeding us had a really nice and big sound system. Our breakfast consisted of cheese, bacon, bollos, guacamole, and juice. It was then time for us to go, we went into our van and then headed off for new lands.

The new lands we headed towards were just as painfully hot as the lands before it. We took a wrong turn down a horrible road for a good thirty minutes until we realized what we did. Once back on the right road, we passed through a ton of small, colorful towns. The first five or so had about fifty booths selling hats and baskets, and then the other towns had mostly fruit stalls. That night we camped inside a parqueadero.

When we awoke we started to ascend up the mountains to a cooler, more enjoyable, temperature. The mountain drive was awesome. Houses were built on top of stilts that stuck into the sides of cliffs. The valleys were covered in fog, and the cliffs were covered in thick, green, pretty, jungle foliage. I spent most of the ride looking for monkeys out the window but sadly there weren’t any. Once we made it over the top of the one mountain we were on, we came to a small town which we then drove through. We descended until dark and stopped in Santa Rosa for the night and Santa Rosa is where I am writing this from. I think I’ll go now. Merry Christmas.

We are driving a van with a camper trailer down through Canada and then heading south towards Texas where we will pause for my older brother Ryan to take his SAT.  After our brief side track in Texas, we will head down through Mexico stopping along the way.  After we complete our Mexican exposure we set sail for Guatemala. Once through Guatemala we will continue southern through Honduras and then Nicaragua and then Costa Rica and finally Panama.  Panama marks the end of the Central American part of our venture.  We will have to find a ferry to take our vehicles over, otherwise we will have to fright them across which would be expensive and require lodging.  Once we make it into Colombia we head down into Peru.  All through this there will be loads of fun, shopping and other stereotypical American touristy ventures and hopefully a little bit of monkeys.  The next place we get to is one of the main milestones of this trip and that would be the country of Bolivia but Bolivia is not the end of this journey, for a matter of fact we are considering going as far as Ushuaia.  I kind of hope we go to Ushuaia because penguins live that far south.  After all that we come back to Alaska.

I will be taking with me some clothes and a jacket or two.  I won’t have cell reception but I will still take my phone for entertainment and such.  A few books will also be accompanying me. I play the bagpipes but because the bagpipe is a very expensive instrument I will only bring my chanter for fears that the journey might destroy it.  I have software called Celtic Pipes that allows you to play bagpipe sheet music on the computer, I will be using this as well as a few weekly check ins with my teacher via Skype.

I have most wonderful mother ever, she’s willing to home school me during an epic trip to South America; that gives parenting points.  My mom and I have been through a lot together, I remember when I broke my arm and my mother stayed at the hospital all night while I had surgery.  I also remember the first time my mom let me walk our local fair alone, I was so happy that day because I finally could go be a kid with my friends.  I make sure to stay out of trouble so my mom and I will continue to have a healthy relationship. I love you mommy.