Whoops: CJ has his first hash brownie!

Leah and CJ went for an evening stroll in La Paz (to buy tickets to a Star Wars concert tomorrow night). La Paz is a charming city, and they happened upon a spirited organic market. At one stall, the vendors were offering free brownies. CJ, always hungry, helped himself.

As he munched away, Leah took a closer look at the stall.

We are monitoring CJ's behavior.

Alpaca: It's what's for dinner

I've had alpaca steak, alpaca stir fry, and a fantastic alpaca burger with carmelized onions. (Tastes like buffalo.) However, this cute guy was near the side of the road in a preserve.

CJ was able to capture the all-important selfie with an alpaca.

All of this was part of a trip to Peru's Colca Canyon, which is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. It is a natural habitat for condors. Believe it or not, the Wheelan family was up before 3:00 in the morning to observe the condors not long after sunrise.

And then . . . we hiked down the canyon. We descended 6,000 vertical feet the first day, stayed in a small camp overnight, and then hiked back up (again getting up around 3:00 a.m.).

We've struggled to find decent wi-fi since the canyon, but we've now made it to La Paz, where we have a comfortable Airbnb apartment for some much-needed downtime!

Making chocolate!

This one pretty much speaks for itself. Even more fun than it looks (and delicious, too).

Arequipa, Peru's 2nd largest city, is accessible and beautiful in a way that Lima was not. The architecture is wonderful, and the food is great. The city is at about 8,000 feet, so the climate is warm and dry. We are staying in our first hostel, the Flying Dog. So far, so good.

We leave early tomorrow morning (3:00 a.m. to be precise) on a trek to the bottom of the Colca Canyon. Back in a few days.

The loneliness of the scholar

CJ does his online science homework in a Lima cafe.

We've just arrived in Arequipa, Peru, via the overnight bus.  That was an 18-hour trip, our longest bus voyage so far.  The buses are surprisingly luxurious.  We were in a little cabin, almost like a train cabin, with personal video screens and meal service.

However, Leah and I still hold the record for the longest bus trip ever: 36 hours from Cairns, Australia to Darwin (the outback) in 1989.  

More Amazon (above ground)

We've been in Lima for the past couple of days. It's a nice enough city, but lacking in the charm and friendliness of Bogota. We've spent the bulk of our time doing "travel maintenance": booking onward tickets, getting haircuts, monitoring our cuts and bites from the Amazon.

I'm assuming you don't want pictures of Leah booking online bus tickets, so I'll finish up with just a fraction of the photos from the Amazon. We flew into Tarapoto, one of the bigger cities in the Peruvian Amazon. From there, we took a minibus for three and a half hours to the smaller town of Juanjui. Then, when the road ended, we boarded a boat that took us about two hours upstream to the edge of Abiseo National Park, which has been closed to tourists for 30 years. To give you a sense of scale, the park is almost exactly the size of Rhode Island.

We stayed at a tiny lodge run by Kevin and Maria, retired World Bank officials who formed an NGO to help conserve the park. From the lodge (where we spent a fair bit of time lounging in hammocks), we hiked, scrambled over rocks to giant waterfalls, and swam in the Abiseo River (a tributary of the Amazon). Fortunately, the piranhas are only indigenous downriver.

It's hard to convey the density of the jungle. You don't go looking for wildlife; it envelopes you.

Thanks to Kevin and Maria for inviting us to this extraordinary place!

Farewell Tess!

Tess Kuczun (Leah's niece) joined us for the first month of our trip. Yesterday, when we flew out of the Amazon to Lima, Tess returned to the U.S. (as planned). What a great travel companion! Tess was fun and resilient at every turn. One example: this amazing cave exploration, seven levels underground. When we came to water, it was time to wade in.

And what happened when the water got to deep to wade? We swam.

But wait, how did we get seven levels below ground? First, we followed a trail marked with this sign.

Then we put on miner's helmets, because once you are more than 30 feet into the cave, it's pitch black.

We started climbing down, suppressing the claustrophobia.  Remember, seven levels. And THEN we hit the underwater river.

Tess, the taxis may be less crowded without you, but we'll miss your sense of adventure, your Spanish language skills, and your all around great companionship.  We hope the transition back to school is not too rough!

WE'LL MISS YOU!

Amazon teaser: snakes, spiders, and snails big enough to put on a leash

We are out of the Amazon, though this will be a short post.  We are exhausted and have to catch a flight to Lima.  We also need to tend to our bumps, scrapes, bites, and stings.  The most striking thing about our Amazon experience (on the Abiseo River, a tributary of the Amazon) was the overwhelming density of life.  As Tess said, "Everything grows on everything."  On two occasions, I was photographing an insect, only to have it attacked by another insect.  We knew we were in for an interesting and exciting adventure when our host said nonchalantly over dinner the first night that only one guest had died in the last year.  (That was part of a VERY PERSUASIVE safety talk on life jackets.)

So let's get to the photos!  This guy was found by the workers about 30 yards from my favorite reading hammock.  Yes, it's venomous.  And yes, I used a telephoto lens.

And spiders.

And the snail that one of the kitchen workers kept as a pet.  Seriously, check out the leash.

The tree wider than our family.

This butterfly escaped from the Izula ant (about an inch long with the most painful sting in the world).

The bee was not so lucky.

Of course, there were some beautiful things, too.

Tomorrow, the cave adventure seven levels underground.