How to: Find an apartment in San Francisco

I found an apartment in San Francisco, in 5 days.

This is a true story about apartment hunting in the Bay Area. I swear.

After creating a calendar loaded with apartment open houses it was time to prepare. In order to be successful in the apartment hunt, one must print credit reports, bank statements, FICO scores (yeah, don't know what that is? I didn't either), resumes (yes, your resume is very beneficial!), and pay stubs or offer letters (offer letters are normal because let's be real, everyone is a tech person). You then bring all of these goodies in a Google folder (the Google folder helps advertise how great you are because you or someone you are going to live with, Eric cough cough, works there) and then you put on the charm. I basically tried to shmooze with all of the realtor people as best I could. I smiled, I laughed, I told ridiculous stories about how responsible Eric and I are, and we still got rejected from places. It's so silly, having to sell yourself to someone to get an apartment and yet everyone does it.

The bright side is, after just 5 open houses, we snagged a place! It was in the bag! We got the call the next day, THE CALL, just kidding, but seriously we got the apartment. And let me tell you, it's perfect.

We are in walking distance to all of the greatest things, bars, restaurants, movie theaters (like cute old, historical ones, not an AMC people, although I like those too, I'm not a snob), Bi-Rite ice cream (it's no Molly Moons, but you can't have it all), 3 markets within 2 blocks of your apartment: 1 is like a Madison Market, very organic and fancy, 1 has the best beer and wine selection, and the other I have never been to, we are also conveniently located to lots of great coffee shops that I will later use to job hunt, when my apartment gets too small.

Everyone in our building are SO NICE. Not to mention, our building's dog friendly. What? DOG FRIENDLY. That's right people. My dream dog Muppet, to come later once I can convince Eric or surprise him with a puppy...Anyway, there's a dog named George who is a giant black Great Dane as well as a dog named Jasper who lives down the hall from me. Adorable. I'm basically in love with everything about our building and apartment. We are also located just one block from Alamo Square.

What's Alamo Square, you ask? Well it's our neighborhood and a park. What park, you ask? The one where the Full House houses are! Yep, pretty awesome. There's lots of dogs at the park too. I really like dogs.

Our apartment also has San Francisco bay windows and is a walk-up. This is my dream people, a historic San Francisco walk-up. ALSO, there's a bus stop right across the street from my house! So nice, and even nicer is that it is always late and always packed! That was sarcasm in case you didn't catch that.

In other news, I have begun the job hunt. 6 job applications, 4 networking situations, 1 informational interview, and 1 rejection later, that's where I'm at. I will prevail though! I'm extremely motivated by how poor I am (help me, I'm poor might be where I start in an interview) and how excited I am to get to work! Seriously, I'm excited. Is that weird? Whatever, I love social work and you all knew that sheesh.

I just wanted to write a quick update about my status in San Francisco. If things get real juicy in the job world I will post again. I mean I have plenty of time on my hands, obviously. In the meantime, I will finish unpacking my boxes (Eric is putting me to shame with all of his stuff unpacked and put away and I have 3 boxes left). Fun fact: last year I left one box unpacked the entire year. Nailing it.

With flowers in my hair,

Mandi

Ps. The stories are true. Everyone here is a tech person. I have seen more people wearing Google Glass (that is the dumbest invention in the universe in my opinion because you look like a douche wearing them) and more people out to dinner with their laptop than ever before. Not to mention you can overhear people talking at bars about their "domain names" and other nerd topics. You can throw a rock and someone works at Google or some small start-up that you and I both have probably never heard of. This is a whole different ball game down here people.

The Grand Finale

To preface: We wrote this in the Lima airport before our journey home, but are just now posting it. Sorry for the delay. We also have 1,800+ photos to eventually share, so be patient, but excited!

Our last stop on the South American Sweep was in Peru. Now, if you’ve been following the blog (which sheesh you better be!), then you know that we spent a day in Lima previously on a layover between Bolivia and Ecuador. Lima was nice, we got ceviche, checked out the hot spots, and then called it good. Cusco is an entirely different Universe than Lima.

Cusco, now if you want to imagine Cusco, think back to my description of La Paz (I know; now I’m just testing how many blogs you’ve read, GOTCHA!) Cusco is very similar in structure because it is seated in the center of a whole bunch of mountains and has a pretty high altitude as well, albeit lower than La Paz. Cusco has more flair though, in my humble opinion, plus is more developed than La Paz, likely due to the influx of tourists passing through en route to Machu Picchu. On our first day in Cusco we decided to see the sights, so what did we see you may be wondering? We saw churches silly! What else is there in old cities?! But seriously, churches are like the thing to do, so naturally we saw them all. It’s actually kind of tragic to see the churches because Spain conquered the Incas in Cusco and then forced Catholicism on them so the churches are sort of still a symbol of that harsh reality. Nevertheless, the churches were absolutely gorgeous with these gigantic bricks that are thousands of years old and giant bells in enormous bell towers that make you wonder where the hunchback is. Anyway, churches and that was that.

Let’s get to the main reason why we came to Cusco okay? The funny part is that when we planned this trip I had yet to convince Eric that Machu Picchu was a necessity. I will let you in on a little secret though; there was no way I was leaving South America without going to the big MP, whether Eric was coming with me or not. Not to worry, he was easily convinced by week two and was by my side on what turned out to be one of the most epic hikes we’ve ever been on. After choosing our tour company, which we would highly recommend for any future MP visitors out there, we rested, packed up, and were ready to rock and roll by 5:30am the next day. Now, you might be like “oh my gosh Mandi, did you hike the Inca trail?!” No ya punk, we hiked an “alternative” hike. This couple we met in one of the tour offices was so snotty about calling it an “alternative” hike that we just wanted to punch them in the face, but we didn’t because we have more class than that. ANYWAY, we hiked the Salkantay Trek, which is arguably more difficult and way cooler, although I’m biased as I have only ever done the one. We chose to do 5 days/4 nights, because really how many times are you going to hike to freaking Machu Picchu, plus there’s nothing to do in Cusco so we had some time to kill.

Day 1: We hiked into the Andes up a gradual hill to the base of the Salkantay glacier. It was an easy day compared to what was to come on day 2, but Eric and our guide Frank (seriously, his name is Frank, but he’s Peruvian, how hilarious is that? We called him Puma, but more on that later) convinced me to hike a little extra once getting to camp, to see a lagoon. I was told it would be only one more hour and it was pretty blah blah, so I was a sucker and said “sure”, even though I was pretty wiped from the hike to camp. We then proceed to hike up, up, and further up, to get to this damn lagoon. I literally thought my heart was going to peace out on me because it felt like it was beating out of my chest. My legs felt like jello and I was wishing I had brought myself an oxygen tank with the lack of oxygen up there (seriously, growing up at sea level is really not the bee’s knees). Eventually, after I thought I was going to pass out and die, I saw the lagoon, we had made it! You know when you see people in the desert and they think they see water and then it’s a mirage? I swear that could’ve happened to me the way I was feeling at that moment, but I have pictures to prove there was an actual lagoon, so it really did happen. And let’s be real here people, it was gorgeous and totally worth feeling like I was going to die to make it there.

Day 2: Let’s talk about how we started hiking on day 2 at 7:30am and didn’t stop hiking (except for a brief lunch break) until 5:00pm, WHAT. I know, I know, I’m a badass it’s cool. But seriously. WHAT. So we hiked up to the glacier, sure no big deal, I see it, it looks close, WRONG. We had a joke in our group, “The Cruising Pumas” (because we impressed our guide Frank with our speedy hiking and because Pumas are important animals in Peru), that we always only had “fifteen more minutes” to go. Frank said that sometimes guides will tell people that because they are used to the altitude and it only takes the guides fifteen minutes, but what takes the guide fifteen minutes could take the sea level people up to two hours. Seriously, this is true life at high altitudes. So anyway, once again I thought I was dying, actually I’m pretty sure I did die once or twice. This hill was HUGE. I mean it was basically climbing a mountain to get to this glacier, but it always looked so deceivingly close. Such a bad trick. The end height of the glacier was over 15,000 feet, 15,000 FEET. Yeah baby!!! Taller than Mount Whitney, which we plan to climb in early September, so we’re not even worried anymore. Piece of cake. We even were going so “fast” (I air quote that because we really weren’t going that fast, but considering everyone else’s speeds, we kind of were) that we passed other groups! Nailed. It.

So climbing to Salkantay was only the first half of the day. We climbed through this gorgeous valley after the glacier with just this stream in it that looked like we landed a part in Lord of the Rings (I know nerdy, whatever you love LOTR too don’t lie, Legolas, come on) or wound up in Scotland, it was so green and there were just streams and horses and fog, it was unreal. Here we stopped to have lunch and then carried on where the rest of the day was spent hiking through the jungle. The great thing about hiking to Machu Picchu is that you get a little taste of everything, you get jungle and the Andes, it’s pretty awesome. I mean whatever, I hiked through the Andes mountains, I mean right? That’s so cool! We slathered on bug spray and carried on through the jungle, through some unpleasant muddy parts, and popped out into what I would describe as a new movie set, possibly Tarzan.

Day 3: On day three we hiked down deeper into the jungle and followed a trail along a roaring river. Our treat at the end of this day was hot springs, so needless to say, we were motivated. We hiked through the jungle checking out creepy beetles, swatting away mosquitos, and sweating all of our layers off. It was an easy day compared to the day before, but we still hiked around ten miles just in the morning alone.

Now, let’s take a moment to talk about one of the highlights of our trek, the food. Seriously, the food was the best vegetarian food/any kind of food, I have ever eaten in my life. The trek was just Eric and I and our guide Frank (Puma) and then we had two other HUGE parts of the trek, Guido (I’m not making that up, like Jersey Shore, but pronounced “Ghee-Doh”) and Wilbur. Wilbur was our horseman, the horses, mules rather, carried all of our stuff besides our day packs. This sounds lame, whatever it’s not real backpacking, but I don’t think we could have carried all of our stuff at that altitude. Anyway so Wilbur who just nailed it all the time with the horses and would go way ahead of us to set up camp every time and then there was Guido, our chef. Guido is the best cook in the whole Universe. I’m not even exaggerating. The things he made just got better and better, I didn’t even think it would be possible after the last meal, but then the next meal would come and I would just drool. It was also probably more food than I have ever eaten in my life, but we needed the fuel for the ridiculously long and rigorous hikes we had each day. He made Causa (which is probably my new favorite food), cake, Sangria, empanadas, pancakes, crepes, French toast, rice mixtures, quinoa EVERYTHING, stuffed peppers, etc. I can’t even begin to tell you how this is even more impressive than a normal chef because he was doing this all on the road in little shacks that we would stop to eat at. How is that possible? I have no idea. He is the master. Eric and I told him to move to the US and open up a vegetarian restaurant because he could probably charge insane prices (I’m talking 3-4 price tags on Yelp) for his delicious cooking, everything just melted in your mouth.

Anyway, at the end of day three, we went to relax at these gorgeous hot springs that were literally just sitting at the edge of the roaring river we had just hiked along. They were the most refreshing thing ever on our aching muscles. Eric did make one huge mistake though, he got out of the hot springs for literally no more than five minutes, and was promptly eaten alive by mosquitos. Poor guy, but he really does have more self-control than me with itching so he’s going to survive. After that, we decided we obviously had to celebrate the Fourth of July, Peruvian style, so we had a campfire. Guido made us warm Sangria (seriously, who has ever had Sangria on a backpacking trip before?) and then we went to sit around a campfire, listened to Peruvian, Brazilian, and even American music and drank beers. The only hiccup to our Fourth of July was our scorpion sighting. That’s right, I said scorpion. I don’t think either of us had ever seen one in real life before and it sure didn’t help my sleep that night. I made Eric check and double check our tent and my sleeping bag before I could turn off my headlamp and sleep, but really I just lied awake thinking about how the scorpion was somehow going to claw its way into our tent, with its entire extended scorpion family, and eat me. After all, a spider had tried to share the dinner table with me earlier that evening (I’m talking a spider that scared even Eric and Frank away from the table and had me almost flip the entire table over in fear), it was a rough night for me. Thankfully, we made it through the night and more importantly, to breakfast the next morning.

Day 4: This was our last official day hiking because day 5 was the grand MP. Our goal on day 4 was to end our hike at Aguas Calientes, the town where all of the buses, trains, and hikes meet at the base of Machu Picchu. We hiked a winding, but flat trail along the railroad tracks. It was really beautiful because the whole way we could look up and see bits and pieces of Machu Picchu as we were winding our way around Machu Picchu Mountain.

So Frank, we called him Puma. This all started because he told us he hates his name, this was after I clarified that his name was actually Frank (I mean it doesn’t sound Peruvian, so I didn’t know if he was just trying to make it easier on us, I speak Spanish so I can handle a Spanish name). Anyway, so Frank tells us he hates his name and wished he had a more Quechua name. His brother apparently changed his name (William, apparently their dad loved American names and named Frank after Frank Sinatra and William after a famous American actor) to Amaru. Amaru means snake in Quechua and the snake is an extremely important animal in Incan history. Snakes, pumas, and condors are the three most important animals to Peruvians and we decided that Frank needed a name like his brother. And so, Frank became Puma and our team name became the “Cruising Pumas”.

Once we made it to Aguas Calientes, Eric and I passed out in a three hour coma of a nap. We were exhausted, I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since we left Cusco, and it was a real bed. We then decided to explore the town. There really wasn’t much to see besides a whole lot of tourists and people trying to sell us souvenirs we didn’t want or need. The town basically exists because of Machu Picchu. The trains bring tourists from Cusco, who didn’t choose to backpack, into the town every morning (10:00am is the first one) to see Machu Picchu. The train tracks literally go directly down the center of the town, it really is the weirdest place. We slept, we ate, and then we slept some more to rest up for our big arrival to Machu Picchu in the morning.

Day 5: MACHU PICCHU. No words can even describe the feeling you get when you first see Machu Picchu. We woke up at 4:00am to catch the first bus to Machu Picchu at 5:30am. Note: Eric deserves some acknowledgement for his abilities to wake up insanely early on this trip. For those of you who know Eric, you know that he stays awake until 4, 5, or 6:00am and doesn’t wake up until mid-afternoon. This is his preferred sleep schedule. On this trip, I have been so impressed with his abilities to wake up at 6:00am every morning of the hike (although this has always been easy for Eric as a hike is the only way to even get his butt out of bed), but also at odd hours like 3:00am or 4:30am to catch a flight, or even just 8:00am to have our free breakfasts. Now back to Machu Picchu.

We made it on the very first bus up the mountain to the ruins of the ancient Incan city. Our goal was to see the sunrise and watch as the sun first shines on Machu Picchu, it was absolutely spectacular. I would highly recommend seeing MP in this light; it really is the only way. Not only that, but knowing that we hiked four days just to see it was a great feeling of pride and accomplishment for us. Walking around Machu Picchu has an almost eerie feeling to it, you can imagine the Incas building it, stone by stone, and just how much time and energy it must’ve taken. It’s an incredible place with an immense amount of history that even the smartest of historians can’t figure out. Machu Picchu, to this day, is still a mystery for the most part. Puma did give us a two hour history and tour of MP, but it is all mostly speculation as no one truly knows what Machu Picchu was, how it was built in just 100 years, if it was built in just 100 years, and what happened to the last of the Incas. MP even has the llamas that you can see in pictures of it. Eric almost got killed by one that decided he wanted a closer look at us and leaped from a ledge above us to the one we were standing on.

After the two hour tour that Frank gave us, Eric and I decided to hike a little further up to the Sun Gate, this is the first sighting of Machu Picchu from the Inca Trail. It was gorgeous up there, seeing Machu Picchu as if it was a postcard. We sat up there in awe for a while until we decided that six hours at MP was enough and that we were starvation station, it was lunch time. We said our goodbyes to the magical place, and hopped a bus back to town.

Machu Picchu, I know that was brief, but I really cannot put into words how incredible of a place it is. I’ve seen Tical and I’ve seen Angkor Wat, but Machu Picchu is in a whole different world. It truly did not disappoint.

The ride home was delightful as we got to take one of the trains! I love trains, I think train is my favorite method of transportation. The train follows the river that we had hiked near the previous day and it was nice to just debrief and relax after a long, but memorable, five days.

So that was that. We wrapped up our South American Sweep with an unforgettable and epic trek to Machu Picchu. Now as we sit at the airport waiting for our redeye flight to Houston, we can properly reflect on the last six weeks. The last six weeks have been some of the best of my life and I think I can safely say the same for Eric. We have had the most fun ever together, laughing and being ridiculous, relying on each other as we never really had before. We got to meet so many people from all around the world: Australia, New Zealand, England, Isle of Man, Ireland, Slovakia, Peru, Bolivia, Norway, Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Portugal, Canada, South Africa, and learn all about all of their cultures while immersing ourselves in cultures completely different than our own. I had my Spanish skills tested and even taught Eric some! We tried new foods, new adventures, and tested our limits on how long we can go without showering. We saw some of the most incredible scenery we have ever seen and challenged ourselves in all aspects both individually and in our relationship. We feel so lucky that the death road didn’t kill us, we never got sick from any food, and that nothing really that bad happened to us the entire time we were here. We are not sure how we got that lucky, but are so thankful that it was such a flawless trip, minus the almost-mugging that is. Not to mention how thankful we are that we got to go on such an incredible trip in the first place. It was the most amazing six weeks that we will always remember. Here’s hoping that we have many more like this to come.

And now drumroll please because we have decided to assign each country with an appropriate award as we have experienced it.

Best Public Transportation System: Chile

Best Beaches: Brazil

Most adventurous: Bolivia

Best food: Peru

Best wine: Argentina

Best people: Ecuador

Here's a picture of us with our guide Frank, from the top of the Salkantay Glacier! See how high we were?! Crazy.

Now the tricky part about getting home is dodging the crazy ladies at the airport. This lady working at the Cusco airport asked us about five times if we had anything flammable in our bags. We repeatedly shook our heads “NO”, but that didn’t seem to satisfy her. She then threatened that our bags would be x-rayed and that they would find anything we had that we weren’t supposed to. We must look pretty dodgy in order to get asked repeatedly if we have flammables or matches in our bags, oh well.

Thanks for all of your love and support throughout our trip, we truly appreciate all that you do for us. We are sad to leave South America, but excited to see all of our loved ones, that’s you! Look for our thousands of pictures to be posted on Facebook hopefully sooner rather than later for your viewing pleasure. We look forward to sharing more stories and adventures with you in person!

xoxo,

Mandi & Eric

Ps. I’m not sure if I’ll keep blogging since my year in New York is over and our trip to South America is complete. Stay tuned for possible blogs about the failures and struggles that come with apartment hunting and job searching and life in the real world. Who knows, my blogging career might just be beginning!

Equador

Oh Ecuador, how much I love it there. To get to return after three years was one of the most special things ever. If you didn't know, I spent the summer after my sophomore year in a little town called Cotacachi, Ecuador with three of the best girls, where we did all sorts of volunteering. Anyway, it's already been three years since that amazing summer and I've been itching to return ever since.

Ecuador, what to say about Ecuador. Well first, did you know it's on the equator? Seriously, if you didn't know that I sincerely think you need to enroll in a geography class or just a smart person class since Ecuador sounds like equator, it's pretty basic. A fun fact about Ecuador is that it has the highest point on the equator, which is why the French thought it was so great. I say this because obviously there are other towns and cities on the equator, but Ecuador gets the sweet name because it has the highest point on the equator! Cool beans huh? So we obviously went to the equator, Eric is a science nerd so he was LOVING it. I mean I love it too, I'm pretty nerdy myself, but he is one of those "doesn't believe it 'til he sees it" sort of guys, Santa must've been tough on him. Anyway, so we watched all of the equator experiments like watching water get flushed down a sink and how it doesn't spin either way (thanks physics)! We also went and took silly pictures leaping from hemisphere to hemisphere. I don't know why Mandy Moore didn't go to the equator to be in two places at once in A Walk to Remember, that would've been far more romantic. The journey to get to the Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world) was far from fun though. We took an hour and a half city bus all around town until thankfully we actually made it to the equator, but seriously we thought we were in a different country at this point. Also the extremely rude bus collecting money man, ripped us off. This really upset me because I mean, I have a deep love for Ecuador ever since my summer here and I would like to believe that people aren't mean and wouldn't do that, but in fact, he did. Our experience was saved a bit by the three extremely kind women who tried to stick up for us gringos, but alas we got ripped off nonetheless. Rude.

We also rode the teleferico up the Pichincha Volcano to see incredible views of Quito. Quito is massive so seeing it from above is rather helpful. Plus, the last time I was on the teleferico it was very cloudy and freezing and I could barely get glimpses of the city through the clouds. The day we went it was perfect. It was barely cold and you could see the entire city plus four volcanos, don't mind. Seriously Ecuador has I want to say something like 75 volcanos, WHAT. Now this is scary for me because, have you ever seen Dante's Peak? Let's talk about how I was far too young to watch that movie when I did and I will never watch it again. The grandma has to get left behind in the acid lake?! AN ACID LAKE?! Who wouldn't have nightmares about that? So living in the shadow of Mount Rainier is hard enough for a girl who has an intense fear of volcanos, but then to travel to the land of 75 volcanos?! That's madness. Also sorry, spoiler alert! I might've just ruined the ending to Dante's Peak for you. Go rent it, Pierce Brosnan is the main character so I mean that's a perk, but don't expect to sleep for months.

After spending two days in Quito exploring both Quito's colonial/historical side and its nature side, we hopped on a bus to the town of Otavalo. Otavalo is a 30 minute bus ride South of Cotacachi so it was the perfect place for us to post up for three nights. Not to mention our hostel in Otavalo was freaking adorable. It was on a hill so we got a rooftop view of the whole town. ADORABLE! Our first day there we were recommended to go to this restaurant called, wait for it...Taco Bello. TACO BELLO. Anna Hawryluk are you reading this? You love Taco Bell! Anyway, it wasn't Taco Bell, but it was this restaurant owned by a man who was from California (hands down the best state in the nation, duh) and he moved to Otavalo and so what did he have? Real, California Mexican food. I mean not really, but he tried his best. I ate guacamole if that's what you're wondering, and it was damn good.

The next two days we spent nonstop time with the incredible people of Cotacachi. It was literally the perfect time to visit because my brother Benji, was home for just this week from Aviation School! My Ecuadorian brother, the pilot! So proud. Anyway, so I introduced Eric to the whole family! My Ecuadorian mom made a delicious lunch and then we wandered around the streets of Cotacachi, pointing out various sites, things that have changed, where my favorite empanada lady is, where the internet cafe is that I emailed him from when I was there last, etc. Afterwards we ended up at the church where it just so happened that EVERYONE that I knew was there! So hugs all around and me trying to muster up my best Spanish to hold longer conversations. It was the best. The next day my two brothers, Jhona and Benji took us for a hike around Lake Cuicocha, a gorgeous lake that is in a crater of that's right, another damn volcano (Volcano Cotacachi). We hiked around on a perfect day, snapping pictures of Cotacachi, Otavalo, and Ibarra down below. Then we went to have lunch at Alfonso and Surley's house (this is the home that I spent the most time at when I lived in Cotacachi) and it was quite the party! They had invited over Alfonso's sister and her husband (who by the way we have the same hair, seriously we do!) and Benji and Jhona, and then their kids and Jimmy, and it was just a whole shindig. It was such a blast and I just felt so honored that these people care so much about me and were as excited to see me as I was to see them. Not to mention Surley is basically the best chef in town. She made us an authentic Ecuadorian feast and even remembered that I am a vegetarian! We sat outside and ate and talked and laughed about all sorts of things and just had the best time catching up, I miss everyone already. We ended the day with an evening at the church for youth group. Here we played games, sang Spanish worship songs (Eric naturally, loved this... Keeks, Allyss, and Santiago, we sang Todopodoroso! Do you remember when we sang that?!), and ate pizza. All in all, a magical Ecuadorian day.

We ended our time in Ecuador at the artisan market in Otavalo, where we wandered the streets and made fun of tourists in full-blown alpaca suits. Seriously, I'm not sure if tourists realize how ridiculous they look. Unfortunately, our backpacks are so small that we withheld from purchasing hoards of souvenirs and our own alpaca suits. There's always next time!

I will miss Ecuador dearly, once again having to part with the most gorgeous and green place I have ever been, but I will definitely be back if only to eat an empanada and see my family. In other news, we made it safely to Cusco, Peru and are leaving on a 5 day/4 night trek to Machu Picchu tomorrow! EEK! This is our final week on the South American Sweep so we're sure going to make it count!

Happy birthday America, this year you have a lot to celebrate, like reading our emails, this blog, and my Facebook...le sigh. Too bad we couldn't hang out with Snowdy (our nickname for Snowden) while we were in Quito since he's stuck in Russia! Our last blog post will be coming to you from Seattle. In the meantime, we'll be eating lots of churros (literally the best food on the planet that just so happens to be abundant in Peru), lots of chocolate (Peru is the 13th largest exporter of chocolate, om nom nom), and maybe some healthy food in there too!

Lastly, a photo for your enjoyment! Thankfully, my camera didn't get stolen this time so I actually have a picture of us at the equator! Phew.

xoxo,

Mandi & Eric

unBOLIVIAble

Bolivia, what I now lovingly refer to as the hidden gem of South America. I say this because I mean really, who do you know that goes to Bolivia? Am I right or am I right? But then you go there and it will literally take your breath away (pun intended). It’s this gorgeous city tucked away in a valley surrounded by immense mountains that is at 11,000 feet at its lowest point. So sure breathing was difficult for a few days, but we quickly recovered with no altitude sickness besides exhaustion, nailed it.

Bolivia, let’s talk about it. Man oh man. So you fly there, first going through 4 immigrations, I mean that’s if your us and booked the cheapest flights possible so from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile to Iqique, Chile, to La Paz. It was really quite the treat because we indulged in some Cinnabon and Starbucks at the Santiago airport, well deserved since we woke up at 3:00am okay? So cool your judgments, punk. So anyway, you fly over it and there are just insane mountains covered in snow, like Mount Rainier times a thousand because there are so many Mount Rainiers and their way taller and also they’re not Mount Rainier…anyway I don’t know where I was going with that. And then you see tons of these rivers and valleys and sand dunes and you’re just like, what, where am I!? And then you land and drive from the airport to La Paz with the nicest taxi driver you’ve ever met who stops to let you take a photo of your first glimpse of La Paz, truly incredible. Miles and miles and thousands and thousands of brick houses that dot the mountains all surrounding La Paz. La Paz is interesting because the wealthier live lower and closer to downtown and the higher you ascend in the city, the poorer it gets. This is interesting because in the United States the wealthy typically live high up where all the good views are, but this is not the case in La Paz. It's really because the higher the altitude, the younger people tend to pass away due to the strain on one's body from not having enough oxygen. This is why the rich build their homes in the valley where the altitude is lower. Just a fascinating side note for you.

La Paz reminded me a ton of Ecuador so naturally I was insta-in love. There are the most beautiful indigenous people dressed in intricate outfits with full skirts, top hats, alpaca leg warmers, etc. They carry these insanely heavy loads just on their backs like complete bad asses. I love when women are just nailing it all over the world. So our first couple of days we got our feet wet in La Paz and discovered all of the architecture, the cathedrals, and the vegetarian restaurants that the city had to offer us (seriously so many vegetarian restaurants, but more on that later). We also planned our trip to the Salt Flats or the Salar de Uyuni.

First, the vegetarian restaurants were great! We went to this one with the most incredible fresh squeezed juice ever and I got a quesa-freaking-dilla! WHAT. I was obviously happy as a clam. Eric even got Pad Thai! We both unfortunately had lost our appetites at this point because of the high altitude, but we made our best efforts to eat a decent amount of foods we have been missing. The other one we found was a vegetarian lunch buffet. Okay so basically Eric and I are a huge mess whenever we walk into a restaurant in South America. So you seat yourself, which is confusing enough because it just feels so wrong to do that. I used to work as a hostess and I would be livid whenever a family sat themselves because it’s all an art to seating people while not upsetting servers, but maybe they had just been traveling in South America, who knew? So we get in and we circle the restaurant looking for a place to sit and finally find a place and sit only to realize everyone had trays and it was a buffet so we needed to get the food first, and then sit. Fail. We go up and get all of this food that we literally had no idea what any of it was, thankfully not having to worry if we were accidently eating meat, but to this day we have no idea what we ate. Oh except the broccoli soup, which I hate broccoli more than anything, but was surprisingly delicious! We also had this corn that was probably the grossest corn I have ever eaten, and I love corn so it was extremely upsetting, plus I don’t want to offend anyone by not finishing my meal, but I really had to put my foot down on this one. Anyway, besides that we had a blast being a mess and eating as the locals do! Rather, the local vegetarians? Hm.

Okay so to the salt flats, because who really cares what vegetarian restaurants we ate at? SALT FLATS OMGOSH. Quick, book your flights to Bolivia to see these suckers because they are just absolutely breathtaking (once again pun intended because they’re even higher altitude than La Paz! Tired of that pun? Sorry I’m not sorry). Just imagine miles upon miles (or kilometers rather…) upon miles upon kilometers of the whitest salt ever in these hexagon patterns just absolutely beautiful and huge and I just have no words to tell you how incredible it was. Not only were the salt flats incredible, but we got to drive around in a jeep checking out all of these amazing sights. We got to see the salt flats and the process of the whole salt business. We got to see incredible lagoons that sit at the base of volcanos that are insanely gorgeous and BONUS there are flamingos in the lagoons! FLAMINGOS!? Pink ones! In Bolivia? Where it’s freezing? Who knew!? Literally, who did? Because I didn’t. I thought flamingos were more hot weather kinda guys and gals, but apparently they don’t mind the freezing, hurricane winds in Southern Bolivia. I’m talking freezing people, I could barely feel my face after our 2 day excursion, but it’s alright because I stole Eric’s jacket, naturally I was freezing and he was 100% fine. What’s with that? Anyway, we had this great guide Gonzalez who told us all about the salar and oh we went to this place called fish island, which just had hundreds of Cactu (called Cactu not Cactus in Bolivia) that were 9 meters tall (quick convert meters to feet! It’s a challenge right? Now you see what we’re working with here, you know metric system, the better of the systems). So the salar is neat because it formed "as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes" (thanks Wikipedia) so there’s all of this fossilized coral and these random islands in the middle with cactus and it’s all because it's dried up lakes! Neat huh? We also visited this salt hotel, which had a ton of flags all over one area and guess what flag was missing? That’s right, for once some redneck didn’t bring an American flag to South America! What!? So neither of us are patriotic at all, but what?! Even Canada had a damn flag up, although it was tiny, which I thought was hilarious and representative of cute little Canada…just kidding enough Canada jokes…for now. Okay but seriously. Eric and I decided we have to go back just to bring the American flag, I mean come on, we need to represent! Brazil had like 3 flags up! They’re putting us to shame here people!

Okay so salt flats were incredible, but cold. We also got to spend the night in a salt hotel! Which is neat because our beds were just made out of salt! Oh also we had to take an 11 hour overnight bus to get there, which of all of the insanely long, developing country busses I’ve taken, this was by far the nicest! They served dinner AND breakfast, hot damn! Plus my seat reclined sort of and oh yeah! We even got to change busses somewhere in the middle of Bolivia at 2:00am. Boy was that a fun one! But seriously, besides that little hiccup, super nice bus! And then we got in to Uyuni (where the salt flats are) at like 8:30am and just plowed on through to start our tour at 10:30am. Needless to say, after our 3 day trip from La Paz, we took a day off to sleep.

But after our day of rest, what did we do? Well, I’m sorry to say this to the Thomas, Conant, and Spishak families as I know all of you would have freaked out had we told you that we were doing this, but we took a little mountain bike trip down what is called “Death Road”. Hmm, don’t like the sound of that mom? You always told me to tell you after I do scary things, this is after! We survived! So what this is, is basically a 36 mile mountain bike ride down a really scary, but gorgeous mountain. You start out at La Cumbre, which is like 14,000-15,000 feet (breathtaking…hahaha just kidding this time, unless you laughed, in which case I wasn’t kidding) and then you bike down a road until you get to the actual dirt road. There are just huge rocks and dirt and loose gravel and you just sign up to ride down this crazy road with a huge cliff on the side that you can probably easily fall off, but like I said, we didn’t so no worries! Let me tell you though, I was about to pee my pants a couple times and on the whole bus ride there. I am a terrible, TERRIBLE, bike rider. Seriously, who signs up for this when they’re as bad as me at bike riding? The trick is, is that it was my idea in the first place. Everyone had raved about this trip and so we just had to do it. We are so glad we did because we just had a blast! I was the slowest person in the group, but you know you win some you lose some. I figured it would be safer for me to go at my own pace, so whatever sure my butt is in serious pain today and my hands are like claws from squeezing the brakes and I somehow got a huge bruise on my upper right bicep, my forearms are in a lot of discomfort, and whatever I’ll never mountain bike again, it was worth every second! The views were…wait for it…breathtaking! I couldn’t help myself on that one, but for reals, we descended into the most beautiful jungle ever where you could swear George was living with gorillas and orangutans because it was that kind of jungle. Just beautiful and thank god we didn’t fall off the cliff because I loved the jungle, but I didn’t want to die there you know what I’m saying? I basically alternated between thinking “omgosh, I’m going to fall of this cliff and my mom’s going to kill me” and “I really have to pee” and “ow ow ow, this is killing my hands”. At the end I was so proud of myself though for really conquering a huge fear of mine and had an absolute blast.

Another weird thing that happened was this market called the Witch's Market. Now, I want to note that I did not see a single witch (hhwhhitch) during this walk, but we saw lots of shrunken dead llamas. For reals, it was disgusting, but don't you worry because I took a picture for your viewing pleasure! We also went to this museum that was one of the best I've been to, called the Coca museum. What's coca you ask? Coca is basically cocaine! Well I mean not at its simplest form, but once you do a whole bunch of chemically things to it, it can become cocaine. Anyway, people in Bolivia chew it (think chewing tobacco, but leaves, are tobacco leaves? Hm, I don't do drugs clearly) and even though the US was like we're making coca illegal blah blah blah typical US fashion, Bolivia's like whatever we're doing it and so there's a museum and they chew it on the daily. Also fun fact: coca is still put into Coca-Cola (see the name there? that's a good trick!) and there are several coca processing plants in the US. The last thing, I swear this is so damn long, but there's this prison in La Paz called San Pedro Prison. This is by far the weirdest part about La Paz. It's a prison that is basically a neighborhood in La Paz. Prisoners can buy larger spaces to live in and their wives and children can live there as well, coming and going as they please. The trick is, is that most of the prisoners are locked up due to drug related crimes, but inside the prison many of the prisoners still make cocaine right out of their cells and sell it to tourists and people on the outside. Tourists can pay money (60 USD!! OUTRAGEOUS) to go into the prison and see all of this, but we felt a little uncomfortable going in to look at people living their lives, this is similar to the reason why we didn't go into the favelas in Brazil. These weird tourist activities seem a bit voyeuristic to me. In other news, there's supposedly a great book out about San Pedro Prison, so I might just read that to fulfill my interest.

We truly had an unBOLIVIAble (seriously the puns are killing you right?!) time in Bolivia. Book your flights ASAP, omgosh but don’t go without me, how rude. But on to the next and keeping with the high altitudes from here on out, we’re on to Quito and Cotacachi! I am THRILLED to be returning to this wonderful place. On our way though we got to have a little adventure in Lima, Peru! We had an 11 hour layover in Peru and so what the heck, we left the airport and ventured around the capital city of Lima. Not to mention we got the best Ceviche I’ve ever had, albeit I didn’t touch the octopus or squid that were raw in there (Eric ate it like a champ) and we also got this Peruvian dish called Causa, which was a mashed yellow potato dumpling with various ceviche toppings, one had a super familiar taste and turned out to have an olive sauce on it, but not olive oil, like legit kalamata olives mashed into a sauce! Nom nom nom. We started our day at the historical center of Lima and wandered around and took pictures of old buildings and cathedrals, let’s be real we do this at least once in every city. And then we randomly came upon a parade of sorts in front of the government building. I think the president was standing outside watching. There were military sorts on horses with swords, it sounds bizarre, but seriously was awesome! Like what the heck? I don’t even know how we got so lucky! We then ended our day at the beach watching surfers and marveling in how lucky we are to be having the best six week adventure ever. The end of our day was kind of silly because we flagged down a taxi who decided he didn't want to pay the airport fee and instead dropped us off in some sketchy ally near the airport and pointed towards the airport, and so we went.

Anyway, this has been long as per usual, but I just have so much to say okay!? Also, we finally figured out the hot showers. I told a few of you about my issue with cold showers because our hostel was about 10 degrees below 0 and I refused to take a cold shower because I was already so cold. Seriously, Bolivia you are cold. On our last night I finally turned on the shower and to my pleasant surprise, there was steaming water coming out. I leaped in and did a little victory dance. Now I’m clean as a whistle (what does that even mean?) and I got my dread locks all cleaned up. Not actual dread locks, but I swear if I kept not washing my hair that was where things were going.

And finally, a picture for your viewing pleasure! I was feeling pretty thirsty on the salt flats...

So on to Quito and to the next adventure! Week 5, come at us!

xoxo,

Mandi & Eric

Are we in Paris or Buenos Aires?

Okay wow, I know you've been on the edge of your seats waiting for the Argentina update and I totally left you hanging for far too long, so my apologies senoras and senors. We made it safely to Bolivia, so I am writing to you from 11,000 feet in La Paz, making it the world's highest de facto capital city, Quito being the highest legal capital. Cool huh!? Ugh, but I got ahead of myself because this blog is about Argentina NOT Bolivia...so let's cool it on Bolivia and dive right in to Argentina stories!

First thing's first. Buenos Aires looks like a mix between Paris (although let me be real with you, I've never set foot in Paris, but I really like the movie Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson and plus I've opened a book so I obviously have seen photos of Paris, anyway...) and New York (although New York has no cool buildings like Paris, but seriously there's a section in downtown that you could swear you were in Time's Square, big light up billboards and a Pepsi ball that rotates and lights up). It's a beautiful city steeped in history so our first day there we spent the whole day just romping around the city checking out insanely old churches and government buildings. I also have a little thing for Evita (more specifically, Eva Peron), I find her story so fascinating and she hails from Buenos Aires so naturally we found the famous balcony she spoke on and also went to the cemetery she's buried in!

Okay so that sounds creepy, going to a cemetery, but the cemeteries in Argentina are incredible! They have huge headstones like HUGE, like mini-churches that whole families are buried in. Some are super creepy because the doors are broken and you can just pop your head in and see caskets and one we could see bones, EEK! Seriously, we probably over stepped our boundaries there, but we were enjoying freaking ourselves out. I personally thought that Halloween would be a fun time to go poke around the cemetery...I digress. So we saw Eva Peron's grave and people still leave roses there, it's so great, she's amazing.

We also tried out a TON of cafes! You know why? Because of medialunas. MEDIAFREAKINGLUNAS. The best thing to ever happen to anyone. They're croissants, but better because they put some deliciously sugary topping on it and it just melts in your mouth and pair that with a cafe con leche and your set for the afternoon. We loved them so much, well I'm pretty sure I was more gung-ho about the cafes than Eric, but he loved them too in the end. I've actually successfully turned him into a coffee drinker, sort of. I mean come on, he grew up in Seattle and never drank coffee!? I'm proud to say that he's succumbed, or at least while we're in South America. Anyway, so cafes are everywhere, much as I imagine them to be in Paris! So we lounged around outside and drank coffee and ate more croissants than a normal person should, but come on they were INCREDIBLE.

We also wine tasted! Remember how we missed out on Mendoza? Well to make up for our failed trip we booked a wine tasting with this amazing place called Anuva Wines, started by a guy from none other than, Portland, Oregon! Say what!? So he came to Argentina and fell in love with Lourdes on day 2 of his trip, and well, he never left. So they did this amazing wine tasting with 1 sparkling, 1 white, and 3 reds (2 Malbecs of course, did you have to ask?). They paired each of them with food, SO GOOD. We got this amazing spinach empanada, sorbet, homemade chocolate truffles (DARK CHOCOLATE OM NOM NOM), and some bread and cheeses of course. We were living it up. We also met the nicest people at the tasting! It was a blast to say the least. We also maybe, kinda, sorta bought an entire case of wine (12 bottles = free shipping), it had to be done. If you're extra nice and extra good you might be able to get in on that action, but we're saving one sparkling to pop when we move into our SF apartment. Okay I'm really rambling here. Let's get back to the stories.

So wine tasting was obviously magical, we had the best time. We also learned to Tango! That's right. Eric and I took a Tango class. It was the most fun ever! It's so fun to do new things together even after dating for almost 4 years. We loved it. Okay and I'll be honest, I'm terrible at following. He was really patient with me, but I think we need more practice. I had to close my eyes so I would stop trying to lead. Anyway, we had so much fun! Our teachers were great and there was such a diverse group of dancers. Then, after our Tango class we got beers and watched a LIVE TANGO ORCHESTRA! It was seriously the coolest thing ever. We were both just in a trance amazed at how incredible and how normal that was for Argentinians. All of these people showed up to watch and just Tango the night away! These people were amazing at it too, and just so adorable, just couples came to dance together and enjoy the music. It was by far one of my favorite nights of the trip yet. The orchestra even had 4 accordion players! Accordions! How silly. And they really took themselves seriously, it was awesome. Plus violins and cellos, it was so beautiful and intense. Needless to say we might try to find ourselves a Tango class or two when we return to the states, we just had too much fun!

What else, well we had the most amazing pizza! Buenos Aires has incredible pizza that's like deep dish with a ton of cheese. They're known for this one called a Fugazetta, which is with tons of onions and mozzarella cheese. So we went to this restaurant that is where all the locals go (you know, can't be seen as tourists...which reminds me that everyone in Brazil thought I was Brazilian! Who knew!?) and got a Fugazetta and it was amazing. I mean, I love all pizza so I'm not a tough critic, but still.

Lastly, we almost got mugged! Buenos Aires was probably not the safest city ever, but seriously we were just wandering along a busy street getting to this pizza place and we both notice these three kids following us, keeping up with us, etc. I was like woah there and I think so was Eric so when we got to our street that we were going to turn on we veered off to the side and the kids kind of decided not to mug us, but one kid still asked for money and we just ignored them until they scattered. So it was the closest I've ever come to getting mugged. I was very prepared to not give these 17 year olds any money, but rather a stern Spanish talking too, because let's be real, you're 17!! Stop being a criminal sheesh. But anyway, we were pretty scared after that, but don't worry because we're alive and we're fine and we made it to the pizza place! And then we ran home after, I mean not literally, but basically ran.

Let's see, my brain is having trouble here since I'm so high up, there's less oxygen you know? But I think those are the main highlights. Oh yeah, so I really love dogs (obviously, I mean Muppet come on), but anyway there was this HORRIBLE dog that would bark every morning nonstop until we begrudgingly would be forced to wake up and get out of bed. The bright side was that we woke up and got to have dulce de leche right at 9:00am! What a great way to start the day, with dessert. In my opinion, we should do that in the states. I mean a little dessert never killed anyone...Tonight we leave on an 11-12 hour bus ride over to the Salar de Uyuni to check out the incredible Salt Flats. We're beyond excited, but we'll be out of internet land until Friday so don't expect to hear from us until then. Also, our internet blows at this hostel so if you don't hear from us in general, we're probably still alive so not to worry :)

Oh gosh, you need a picture! Sorry! Here's a picture of us on a little trip to a place called La Boca. So La Boca is where the famous futbol stadium is, La Bombonera and also is where the first settlement was in Buenos Aires so it's super historical, and we're history nerds so anyway we had to go, right? Okay this was one of the weirdest places I've ever been. It was a tourist TRAP. The buildings were neat and all different colors, but there was just weird Tango dancers everywhere trying to get you to watch them and then pay money or take pictures with them and it was just so bizarre. So La Boca is also pretty unsafe, so we didn't really bring much with us in order to avoid getting mugged and at the end of the main road there was a guy literally telling people not to go any further because it was too unsafe. How funny is that?! I think it's funny, my mom and grandparents might not, but it was pretty silly. Don't worry you guys, we did NOT go further! But it was the weirdest place. So I leave you with a picture that we took there, in front of Buenos Aires' flat iron building haha, just kidding kind of. I think you had to be there. Why weren't you?

xoxo,

Mandi & Eric

Real: Pronounced Hay-Ice

Hola amigos! Sorry about the delay in the Rio blog, let's be real, we loved Rio so much that we just didn't have time for internet really. But I will tell you that I'm writing to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina (even though I don't want to mix blog posts and getcha confused), and I just have to tell you something because I want to shout it from the rooftops, I just ate dulce de leche on my delicious slice of soft baguette for breakfast...DULCE DE LECHE ON BREAD FOR BREAKFAST. Buenos Aires is apparently known for their dulce de leche, so sue me if I eat it everyday for every meal until Sunday, because after this breakfast I will be doing that...jealous? I would be too, it's alright to be jealous. Trader Joe's (TJ's) has some pretty good dulce de leche though so now if you're craving it, I'd recommend going out and getting some and putting it on TJ's vanilla ice cream...oh damn now I'm jealous.

Moving on to Rio though...enough about dulce de leche...for now. Are you wondering about the title of this blog? Well, to start you need to know that the money they use in Brasil is called the Real, this is pronounced "Hay-Ice", I am not kidding, this is a fact. WHAT. I know, it's the weirdest thing ever. More on Portuguese to come.

Rio, oh geez le sigh. It's incredible and beautiful and will take your breath away with its magic. You fly over it and you just can't believe it's real life. There are these huge green mound hills that are everywhere and are more beautiful than any picture you can ever take and beaches that are the whitest sand and bluest water with huge waves and it's just unreal. We stayed at a great hostel! We've been nailing our hostels so far, all of them have been nice (there have been 5 total now so that's kind of a lot to nail!) But this time we stayed in a dorm, bleh. Rio's expensive so we bit the bullet and old school, bunk bed style, slept in a room with all men. Talk about bleh haha just kidding kind of. Anyway, it wasn't that bad, I exaggerate. And I digress.

We went to the beach a couple of days here, we chose Ipanema both days because we fell in love with the beach there. Copacabana is great, I mean everyone's heard of it blah blah, but Ipanema had incredibly huge waves (we're talking 6 footers here, which may not seem big to you, but like to swim in those, it's pretty hardcore alright?) and it was also less crowded so it was more enjoyable. It's neat, what you do is you go to a guy on the beach who has chairs and umbrellas and you rent them for 10 USD. It's such a great deal! So we made friends with the guy who rented them to us and went back to him the second day. He even asked us to come back a third day, but we were pretty sunburnt let's be honest, so we had to restrict our beach time. Anyway so Eric almost killed me in a wave on the second day, but luckily I made it. Rude. It's hilarious though, you hang out on the beach and all these guys come by with various food and drink items and just yell it, like you're at a freaking baseball game or something. The second day we got adventurous and bought these things called "Globos", which we still aren't sure what they are, but think chips and funions, but without much flavor? Idk. Our favorite was this guy that would come by and to get people's attention he'd just yell "WOAH!" and then say whatever he was selling. It was a had to be there kinda thing, but still hilarious. Also they were all selling this "acai" pronounced, "ah-sai-ee" and so our new fun thing was to walk around and whenever we saw an "acai" sign we'd say it like the guys on the beach. Okay you probably had to be there to understand where those last two stories were going, sorry...I'm not sorry...lo siento no lo siento.

In other news, we did two major touristy things, the first went really well, the second went horribly, but you win some, you lose some. The first was that we took the tram up to the top of Sugarloaf mountain (check it out on google if you're not sure what that is, it's one of those green hill mounds I was describing earlier), it has the MOST INCREDIBLE VIEW EVER. Seriously, it's amazing. After a full day at the beach we popped over to watch the sunset at Sugarloaf. Seriously, we nailed that. We caught it at literally the most perfect time, sure we ran some people over running to get from the smaller mountain to the second tram to get to the tip top of Sugarloaf, but whatever details...we were excited okay? We get kinda pushy when we're excited. But Sugarloaf was gorgeous. We got to see the Christ the Redeemer statue from it and it was just chilling up there looking all elegant and huge and then we saw it get lit up and then saw all the city lights coming out and it was just a wonderful thing to do, highly recommend if you're ever in Rio.

The second touristy thing we did was go to the Christ the Redeemer (Corcovada). So here's what happened. We decided to go our last day because what an epic way to end our time in Rio, right? WRONG. We went and what happened? The computers were down, the internet? We're still unsure, no one really speaks English and neither of us really speak Portuguese so we're still not exactly sure what was happening. Side note: Portuguese is crazy! They pronounce everything so ridiculously that it is in fact, not AT ALL like Spanish. Although when reading it, it looks a lot like Spanish, but good luck understanding anything anyone is saying ever. But thank goodness we're back to Spanish land. ANYWAY back to the story.. They told us to go buy them online, so we go to an internet cafe to do so and then find out you can't buy the same day? Then they tell us it's sold out? Seriously, it was a mess. So then we go to these sketchy ladies (once again doing one of those things everyone tells you not to, but whatever we're still alive to tell the story) who were selling private van tickets up there. We're like well geez I mean we leave tomorrow, we have to go somehow, so we do it! We buy the tickets and take a sketchy van (I'm sorry, we took 6 SEPARATE VANS, seriously we got transferred in and out of vans it was silly) up to the top. I mean whatever, we got to the top, but we were pretty disappointed because the train that takes you up there (the sold out deal) seemed pretty awesome, whatever we're not still upset about it or anything... Anyway, note to self: buy tickets ahead of time. But then we get there and it's cloudy and foggy and YOU CANNOT EVEN SEE JESUS. Literally, picture everyone up there sitting on the platform deal around Christ the Redeemer statue and the fog is clouding him so hard that you can barely even tell he's there, and then whenever the clouds clear for even just a minute, everyone cheers. It's the funniest thing ever. It actually didn't turn out so bad though because that was such a silly experience. So we got some really cloudy, occasionally clear, pictures of the statue and us in front of it. Talk about timing, sheesh. So you know, you win some, you lose some. We still had a blast, and since Sugarloaf was so awesome, we weren't too heartbroken about it.

Let's see what else, on my birthday it was gross weather (nailed it) so we wandered around the Centro, it's super old and historical and crazy. There are these markets where they sell all these obviously illegal or stolen or fake goods like New York, but you don't have to pack it all up in a second, the police couldn't care less. And there are just these insanely old churches that are gorgeous and you can go inside, and then Eric's favorite church, this dome-like structure, he actually hated it, it's a pretty ugly building and he loves old churches so I think he was disappointed that it was so ugly. Let's be real, it looked like a weird prison from outside, but gorgeous stained glass on the inside! We also walked around this amazing Lagoon one day, think Greenlake, but tropical and bigger. There were even swan boats you could ride around on, we didn't do that don't worry. We also went to Rio's botanical gardens, which are HUGE and gorgeous and tropical and Amazon rainforest-esque. Also, for my birthday Eric surprised me with two nights in a hotel in Copacabana! The hotel was great and the showers were HOT. I just lived in that shower, not actually, but basically. It was such a wonderful birthday present and such a relief to get away from the bunkbeds for a couple nights. What I'm saying is, Eric is the best guy ever and I'm just a lucky lady!

The best was our last night. We had been having a lot of bland food because we're really struggling with being vegetarians here, all people eat is meat I swear. So we'd been just cooking pasta etc. Actually one day we saw all these people eating these empanada looking treats (and I LOVE empanadas, OMGOSH) and I was just like, Eric let's just go eat that, throw caution to the wind, who cares if we get sick!? So we ate one with cheese and it was quite delightful! And bonus! We didn't get sick, phew, street food will not kill us! Anyway, so our last night we went to this amazing restaurant that was basically a treehouse, it was the most beautiful restaurant I have ever been to, we sat outside on these awesome old wood tables among these gorgeous trees, we felt like we were transported to the Amazon rainforest. We ate the most amazing dinner ever, which completely made up for the pretty terrible birthday dinner I had, so this became my birthday dinner instead. We ate Tilapia and tropical fish with amazing Amazonian spices and had fried bananas with chocolate sauce and ice cream for dessert and drank these incredible tropical fruit mixed drinks. Oh man, I will forever dream of that meal. Plus we got a gorgeous view of the city. What a way to end our trip, that's for sure.

Okay this is getting long, I realize that, but seriously we're in love with Rio. I'm already planning our return trip for the 2016 Olympics. Who's coming? We have a great hostel to stay at. We made friends with all the people who worked there (Perez was our fave, aw Perez, he was so sweet and great) so let's do it people! But bring lots of bug spray because for real, I have the most bugbites ever and I'm basically itching my skin off and I couldn't sleep one night because I was convinced I heard a mosquito flying around my head so I obviously hid under my covers until I was like sweating because it's really hot and humid. It was brutal. Eric's better with his, he has more self control than I do when it comes to itching bugbites. Anyway, oh also Futbol is huge there, like people are not exaggerating. The city stops when there's a futbol game on TV and everyone just watches on the streets. Also, people drink a ton in Rio. And they do this neat thing where you get a really large beer and then you get little glasses so it's like a pitcher kind of, but in a beer bottle and you just all share around the table, it's really great. Anyway, we miss Rio already, but we are so excited to start exploring Buenos Aires today. I absolutely love Evita the musical so today I'm on a hunt for Eva Peron's grave and the famous balcony that she gave speeches from. So enough of this, sorry it got so long and rambly...we're off to explore the "Paris" of South America, all we're going to eat is dulce de leche and all we're going to drink is wine! Just kidding, kinda of. And now to end, here's a picture of us at the top of Sugarloaf mountain at the sunset!

Ciao!

Mandi & Eric

Ps. I'd like to dedicate this blog to the amazing, the incredible, the beautiful, and the woman with the most perfect hair Katie O'Brien, my mentor and best boss ever from admissions. This blog is to Katie and her FIANCE Ben :) I am so freaking happy for you two I could die. I also shamelessly just watched your proposal video and majorly teared up. YOU NAILED IT BEN! Weeeeeeeeeeee! So happy!

It's Chilly in Chile

Been sitting around wondering if we made it safely to Chile? Well, good news...we did! After a 9 hour flight to Brazil from New York and then a 4 hour flight from Brazil to Santiago, we landed in Santiago, Chile. We then proceeded to do all of the wrong things. We didn't have a black or blue ink pen so we had to borrow one from the reciprocity fee lady, she was nice, we were embarrassed. Now, picture us both completely exhausted, shell shocked, and wishing we had looked up the exchange rate of US Dollars to Chilean Pesos BEFORE we got to the actual country, plus being up for at least 24 hours, and you get us, saying yes to a sketchy taxi, you know, like the first thing people tell you NOT to do. Well anyway, then we got totally ripped off on our taxi ride, after agreeing to an overpriced ride, we then did the math in our heads and found that indeed we did not need to pay the man almost $40 US Dollars. We're still trying to get over this mistake, so cut us some slack here people.

Anyway, the first 2 days, it was pouring rain, I'm talking torrential downpour. I'm talking, streets became rivers (literally) and rivers became rapids. So, what do you do in a foreign country with no pink Hunter rainboots (I know, I'm in South America, I obviously wouldn't bring fancy rainboots, but still...) and a shitty 4-year-old rain jacket that truly makes me more wet than keeps water out? Well you run around like lunatic Americans with soaking wet everything leaping across the rivers (which prior to this we think, were streets) and laughing with Chileans who were literally picking each other up to make it over the rivers (again, streets). So let's be real, we were pretty lame the first couple of days because we were in a state of shock from the amount of rain happening outside. We did go to a museum called the Museum of Memory and Human Rights and learned all about Pinochet and his dictatorship and the mass tortures and killings that happened in Chile in the 70s and 80s for 16 years. 16 YEARS. It was a terrible, awful, disgusting, horrible thing, but we both learned so much and it was a really impressive and educational museum trip.

Our socks and shoes soaked, we then found out that the pass through the Andes was CLOSED. Do you know what this means?! No, why would you? It means our trip to Mendoza was CANCELLED. It means that all of the torrential downpouring in the city, transfers to snow up in the mountains and makes the windy, curvy, probably dangerous to start, road that we were going to take to get to the beautiful land of Malbec, Argentinian wines, more dangerous and also closed. So there's that. The bright side of this truly tragic situation was that we got to travel to the beautiful Chilean coast and see the beautiful Kelsey Gibbs in a town called Valparaiso. Valparaiso was by far our favorite part of our week in Chile because let me get real with you, Santiago is lame.

So Valparaiso is on the Chilean coast as I just stated, geez stay with me here, and it's just absolutely unreal it's so pretty. Imagine San Francisco with bigger hills and more colorful houses and you get Valparaiso. Plus you get Vina del Mar and some other cute little coastal cities that Kelsey took us too that I now have forgotten the names of. Here we frolicked around town drinking Piscos (the national Chilean drink), climbing giant sand dunes, checking out Pablo Neruda's house (famous poet, check him out), walking through open air art museums, taking crazy buses and fancy metros (subways), watching the sunset over the ocean, and just overall having the BEST time with Kelsey. Valparaiso is a wonderful town and we loved it. Not to mention we stayed in the cutest hostel EVER that just so happened to be near an adorable cafe called Cafe Jardin where we could get incredible mocaccinos with delicious little baby cookies that they really should've given us more of.

We begrudgingly left Kelsey and the beautiful Chilean coast for smoggy Santiago for our last day and a half. Luckily, it had stopped raining long enough for us to actually enjoy Santiago and climb a little mountain to get some incredible sights of the city and the Andes. Here we met some guys from Austin, Texas, who were super strange, very braggy, but had gone to Easter Island, which obviously we're extremely jealous of, but whatever they were braggy and lame. I mean come on, Texas. Just kidding, but seriously...kind of. We found out that although the neighborhood we're staying in seems safe and is cute, it also turned out to be extremely expensive and the hip place to stay...whoops. We accidentally spent $40 US dollars on our first dinner so last night we decided to make spaghetti to make up for our expensive mistake. Oh Santiago, how we will not miss you at all... 

Okay our two best stories: the man we met at a restaurant on the coast who told me I have big feet and said some racist things about rice to Kelsey. Let's get one thing straight here, I wear size 6 1/2, that's small! This guy was so inappropriate, but we decided that he was probably drunk from piscos, or at least we hoped he was or else we probably would've left more offended. But seriously, this guy was out of control. He wanted to give Eric and I his phone number in case we got into trouble in Brazil. What a weirdo. Second best story, showers. There have been many a cold shower...there have been screaming and jumping up and down and mentally preparing ourselves for showers. It's real intense. I think I had some excess soap on my body just for a few days because it was too cold to wash off and I was like, meh, I'm in South America...

Well this has been long enough already, if you made it here then WOW I am sincerely impressed, you're a true friend or extremely bored, I'm not sure which. Off to Brazil in the morning (4:45am to be exact)!

Ciao!

Mandi and Eric

Ps. This post is dedicated to Laura & Amelia, my birthday buddies, happy birthday today to Laura and tomorrow to Meels on Wheels! Love you Geminis!

Pps. Here's a picture of us from Valparaiso so that you know a computer didn't type this and we really are alive...I'd be really impressed if a computer can type how I speak, but whatever anyway details...