I feel the earth move under my feet

ooh, se!
i forgot to tell you that I felt an earthquake on Sunday night! We couldn´t work out why the ouse was shaking and then it stopped so we forgot about it. But yesterday in the papers it said there had been an earthquake in Northern Peru that was felt as far away as Bolivar, which is North of us! Wow! Pretty cool (so long as the earthquake doesn´t come any closer that is!)

the wanderer has stopped wandering for a while

Hello everyone!

I am sitting in the computer lab of my new school, eating chocolate (which maybe I shouldn´t be in a computer lab? still, in this case better to ask forgiveness than permission!) and listening to the afternoon rain storm clatter on the window in a delightfully equatorial fashion. My keyboard, thankfully, is not about to produce wierd and wonderful things from keys thought to be what they say they are.

I have arrived (a week early as it turns out) in Cuenca, Ecuador, my city of residence for the next 6 months while I teach English to Ecuadorians at an International school here called CEDEI. (My arrival should make mention of the bus full of Columbians, who were (every last one of them) so helpful and friendly and wanting to help a poor lost foreigner. Without them I would have taken the absolute longest route to Cuenca possible but they all ushered me off the bus in time to catch another one and then waved goodbye as my new bus left them at the border post. I wish I could have spoken to them more, I wish I could go and visit them, but I don´t even know who any of them are! They were just super kindly people.)
The school is full of people from all over the world, all who speak at least a little English and I feel a sudden disappointment that my plan of full immersion in Spanish may not quite pan out. Still, it´s always nice to have a decent conversation with one´s housemate! My housemate is a girl from Virginia, US, called Rebekkah and we seem to get along very well together, which is probably important in a housemate!

There is room for two more housemates still but these are yet to be found.
Instead, at present, the downstairs half of the house, or property as it is all outside and merely covered by the house, has been rented out to the workman who are paving the street outside. It´s a little hard to describe my new beautifully colonial humble abode but suffice to say it has a hole in the midst of it that no doubt SHOULD look down into a pretty garden below. It does not. It has been covered with a tarpaulin that may shut out visuals but lets through every sound anyone beneath makes as if they were in the house. This is still fine until people start pounding on the metal gate at all unearthly hours wanting to get in, or the drilling starts at 6:30am, or they have disgusting ´"manly" belching competitions! Oh well, the bonus is that the house is right across the street from the school, requiring a mere roll out of bed in the morning and it is a lovely house to be in. They´ll be gone soon enough anyway!

Cuenca is quite different from other towns and cities that I have been in. For one it is more expensive (I really miss Bolivia now!) and it seems a little more jacked up. It lacks the night vibe of other towns, as although they still have their 3 hour lunch break they all lock up again at 6pm! (ooh, now I´m being splashed by rain - where is it coming from? and should it really be raining in a computer lab???) It does have very attractive cobbled streets lined by tall houses with iron-lace balconies full of flowers and it also has a pretty river for nice walks or runs, although I´m not sure "nice" and "runs" should be allowed in the same sentence here...

I tried to go running the other day. I thought that if I could walk around fine here it would be easy enough to run. After ten minutes I thought my lungs would explode and my head was creating rather pretty but nonetheless worrying star-like visions. There´s just no air here! That being said I´m determined to keep trying and have even found a running club to join. Though what to expect from it I am not entirely sure as I can´t really understand a word of what they are telling me! Can´t wait for those Spanish lessons to begin!

Where did I leave you last time? I think La Paz? Well, my brief stay in that infectious, manic city brought me together with a friendly Brazilian couple who I ended up travelling half way through Peru with. Our first stop after La Paz was the enchanting lakeside town of Copacabana. I loved it there, even if it was a bit touristy. Blue skies and sunshine (even if it included a burnt head courtesy of sun-a-la-altitude!). I even managed a 2 hour boat ride to Isla del Sol without getting seasick! (go me!) This Island is said to be one of the most important religious centers of the Andean world: here the sun and moon were created. And Here the first Inca dynasty was born. From this royal and sacred island we had brilliant views across to Peru and Bolivia and the chance to take it all in slowly, enjoying every minute of the three hour walk across it. A welcome change after spending day after day on buses! Copacabana is a tiny town, you can walk around it in 15 minutes slowly, but with a favourite restaurant and lots of sun to soak in, I loved being there!

Soon, however, we were on the road again, leaving Bolivia and on our way to Puno, Peru, with the great blue lake still beside us. In Puno we visited the floating Islands of Uros, a mind-boggling site to behold. Everything is made out of reeds - the boats, the houses, the hospital, the islands themselves! They actually have to anchor the islands when they don´t want to drift off to another part of the lake. Imagine that, going to sleep in Peru and waking up in Bolivia.

Our main attraction of the day, however was the fixed island of Tequile, where the Inca way of life is preserved. The people wear traditional dress and there is no need for police. The Inca Law being: No lying, no stealing and no being lazy. Everyone was full of smiles here. Tradition lives on!

A quick overnight bus dropped us off in Cusco, another town a tad touristy but much to my liking. Lots of music and dancing and lots of people having fun. I used Cusco as a base from which I did an absolutely incredible 5 day hike up to Machu Pichu. Not the original Inca trail, as this was fully booked and rather expensive, but a magical hike nonetheless. In fact it was so memorable and this email is so long already that I will dedicate a separate email entirely to it, with pictures included! For now though I am about to go to a hat-weaving demonstration so you will have to hold your breath for Salkantay another day.

Have to run now as the lab is closing but hope you are all well and happy. I miss you all (probably anyway, there are so many of you after all and I think missing so many people all at once would not be good for me. But I do think of you often and wish each of you could be here...and miss you all in turn at least!)

Lots and lots of love and big hugs to all of you,
Penny.
(And Rainbow and Ned who are happy to at last be out of a suitcase for more than 2 days at a time and not have to face being squashed into one for another few months - yay!)

There she is!

Just so as you know, our lady of adventure is now in Cuenca, Ecuador (that's where she will be teaching), and has phone and postal address! Yay!

Penny, where is Penny?

For those of you who are wondering where our lovely lady is, I heard from her today! So she is alive and well (though she didn't tell me exactly her whereabouts).

Tales from a Restless Wanderer (09/09/05)

Hola mis amigos!

I cant ask questions as cant find the question mark on this highly wierd keyboard! So I hope everyone is chipper and the sun shining after all the rain my trusty informants from home have told me about.

The sun is shining here and I am following my feet across this happyandcolourful continent. When I first started writing this I was waiting for a bus on the Bolivian border and had just realised unhappily that I had crossed a time zone and thus had another hour to wait. Since then I have endured the hair raising and hilariously bumpy 18 hour bus ride to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. I just have to say at this point that the first time the driver let us off for a toilet stop was 10 hours into the journey and anyone who knows me will realise what an accomplishment this was for me and my bladder! When I say he stopped for a toilet break I really meant that he stopped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with no toilets in sight!I dont think I have ever seen such an organised group of people going to the toilet on the side of the road together, but maybe the lack of mass rioting was due to the desperation everyone felt, nice tactics bus driver!

I will try and get onto cleaner topics now...

How did I get to Bolivia in such a short time you may ask. Well after everything I had been told about Buenos Aires I just didn't feel it and had to keep moving. It was probably a combination of the rain, jet lag and a little bit of homesickness and so when I met someone going up to Bolivia I jumped at the opportunity. I still had fun in Buenos Aires,and Im sure it lives up to its reputation under normal circumstances. I am glad that I will have a second chance at it before I leave to come home. In BA I managed to get really lost, walk for hours and not find the sea, see a great fashion show, be entertained in a slightly drugged feeling of jet lag by a brilliant jazz band, get terribly distracted by curious antique shops and quaint cobbled streets, and get totally addicted to coffee, a sad fate as the Bolivian coffee leaves much to be desired after Argentina's!

From BA I took a much more comfortable bus up to Salta, in the North West of Argentina. Salta was really nice. It was very calming and picturesque, surrounded by staggering mountains and filled with culture. It also boasts the best empanadas in Argentina, though there seems to be strong rivalry on this subject. Empanadas are like mini pies, filled with meat or cheese or various things and are very tasty indeed! I took a little tour into the mountains and was completely blown away by their beauty.It all used to be under the sea and so is very rich in minerals. The mountains are streaked with bright greens, reds, blues, purples and oranges. Really, really incredible! We visited a little "has been" town, San Antonio, where we had some lunch. It's a really harsh climate up there, hot and dry during the day and absloutely freezing at night, down to minus 20 degrees! You can see it in the kids faces there, they all have these rosy,chaffed cheeks. I don't know how they manage.It's very poor.

After lunch of goat [uh] we went to see a salt pan.More hard work in harsh conditions. They get 13 pesos [R26] for every tonne of salt they rake up.

My newly found travel companion, Cole [from Oregon] joined me in Salta and then we headed up to LaQuierque on the border with Bolivia and then onto LaPaz. It was really nice to have a friendly, philosophical travel companion who doubled up as a VERY handy interpretor! I have found it quite difficult not being able to speakSpanishand am learning fast! He has just left and I have managed to find a friendly couple to follow around. They are from Brazil and are called Duilio and Daiane and I hope that one day I will not have to look up their names on my little pieceof paper before I can remember them! Tomorrow we head up to Copacabana on Lago Titicaca and then head to Puno in Peru and onto the Inca trail. It's turning out to be a bit of a blitz tour but it is whetting my appetite for when I have more time after March.

La Paz, by the way is an insane city that comes out of nowhere in the desert down a valley and is towered over by the impressive 6045m snow capped peak of Illamani. There are no traffic laws or lanes, there are no pavements to walk on. There are taxis, though, that wolf whistle instead of hoot! That's right up there with seeing "hola kitty" stuff in coolness! There is also anamazing amount of colour. I like it here a lot! Today I visited Tawanaku, which is the site of an ancient civilisation who were very clever indeed. They worked out the most incredible agricultural system by determing the seasons from the stars and were a very rich, earth respecting people. It's also known as the eternal city of the Andes, existing between 1500BC and 1200AD.Very imressive!

The people that I have met her have been heartwarmingly kind and generous. They are so welcoming and caring and happy to help whenever they can. They are also very beautiful and I have been trying to take as many fotos without freaking anyone out!

So that's all my news so far as I settle into this colourful way of life. Please could you send this on to anyone who has an underscore in their address as have not stumbled across that combination of keys yet! [give me a break, I had to work out that @ was a combination of alt, 6 and 4!]. It appears however that I have discovered the ? sign. So how are you all? Also, I am about send a bundle of fotos home so if anyone wants to see them you have to give my folksa friendly visit. Oh and if anyone wants a postcard, please send me your postal address, ta.

Thanks for all the encouragement and email from those who have.

Keep well and keep warm and keep smiling

Big love and hugs,

Penny [and Rainbow and Ned]

What it is

This is actually Penny's blog - all her emails (if I am the good friend that I should be) from her trip to South America. I'll try to remember to keep them all posted, as well as pictures etc if available!