this is going to be a very special update today. for some reason blogger is in English in this hostel. so i might be able to use spell check. this is a photo of one of the Nazca line drawings called "the hands". the panamerican highway cuts right through the nazca plateau where all the drawing are, and at one point there was an observation tower you could climb up in order to see some of the drawing from the air. most tourists view the nazca lines from hired prop planes because they are too large to view from the ground. not much is known about the nazca line drawings. they are huge geoglyphs created by the Nazca culture between 200 BCE and 700 CE., the largest of which is nearly 900 feet.

i've been riding through the middle of nowhere lately. it's super desolate and i've ended up doing a bit of camping. the winds have also been totally insane. they come off the ocean from the south west, blowing sand into my ears, eyes, nose and mouth. at one point i rounded a corner and sand dunes where literally blowing onto the highway, such that one side of the highway was completely covered with sand. because the wind has been so strong, it's taken me all day to go 60 miles on mostly flat terrain. i'll start cycling around 6.00am and not finish until 5.30 or 6.00 at night. the other night when i looked at my face in the hotel mirror, the side facing the wind was completely covered with sand. because this part of Peru is so sparsely populated, the beaches are pristine sandy shores with crystal, clear, turquoise water. at one point i looked down and saw a giant grey fish. at first i thought it was a huge shark, but when i stopped pedaling to get a closer look, i realized it was a dolphin. there was about 7 of them, and they were so close to shore. i think they were doing dolphin surfing because they would ride the waves in until it got to the point where the sand was getting all churned up with the surf, and then swim out to deeper waters. they did this over and over. it was so cool to watch. i've never seen dolphins so close up before.
january 27th was my birthday. i am now 26 years old. it's funny because the night before i ended up camping between these two abandoned mud huts on a bluff over looking the ocean. as i woke up on my birthday i laughed because waking up alone in the Peruvian desert is such an unusual start to a birthday. i left my campsite and started biking as the sun was rising, and around 7.00am came across a small settlement with a seafood restaurant where i stopped to eat breakfast. i started talking to these two truck drivers and we all ended up eating breakfast together. when i told them it was my birthday they were so excited and went back into their truck to get a jug of Peruvian wine from chincha alta region. it wasn't a totally confidence inspiring thought to imagine these two truckers driving all night and then starting off the day with a jug wine, but i figured they'd be ahead of me on the highway from that point on. these guys were so, so nice, and bought my breakfast, and gave me a bottle of water, and a paperback version of the bible as birthday presents.
today i am taking a zero day in Arequipa, Peru's second largest city. Arequipa is known as "the white city" because many of the buildings in the historic center are made from sillar, a white volcanic rock from the nearby volcanoes. in 2000 UNESCO declared Arequipa a world heritage sight due to it's combination of christian and indigenous architectural design. the ornate pillars on this building interweave Incan symbols of royalty, such as the two headed eagle, with more traditional christian symbols such as saints and angels. today i think I'm going to go check out some museums and convents and then get my bike worked on a bit. they breaks aren't working that great. oh, also, i am riding inland now away from all the wind. Arequipa is up at 7,000 feet, and my next big city Puno, along lake Titicaca, is at 12,000 feet. so i have a lot of climbing to do. i've decided to bike through Bolivia for a little bit before heading to Argentina. ok, hope everyone is good! love,
-jessie

Chincha Alta

i wasn't totally sure how i was going to leave lima and find the panamericana south, but then i ran into these group of old guy cyclists, and i asked
them how to get to the panamericana, and they were all, "well if you wait a minute you can just bike out of here with us." they were so awesome. their leader had a wistle he would blow to warn traffic that we were coming through. in the 20 miles that we biked together, they stopped three times for breaks, and ate all my crackers. ha ha.... charro and pedro are so, so nice. they have a beach house that's 60 miles south of lima, and told me that i could stay there with them. they drove, and i biked, and then about 15 miles before the beach, they caught up with me in their car, and pedro brought a bike, and he rode my bike for the last bit while i got to ride sans panniers. this is a photo of all of us after i've had several vodka drinks and some wine. ha ha... pedro, charro and i went shopping, and they bought me that pink shirt as an early birthday present. so nice, huh?
it's crazy the extrem contrasts in standards of living out here. the beach house was like in a gated community resort area, and then this is how people live just a little further south. the wind has been better lately, which makes everything easier. soon i will get to see "the world's tallest sand dune", and if i go off route, "the world's deapest canyon." ok, hope everyone is doing awesome.
-jessie

Lima

I've been riding through the desert some more. and i'm pretty sure that the wind is ruining my life. you can tell by my hair and the plants behind me, that there is a lot of wind. and it is not going in the same direction i am going. the other day i was working really hard to go downhill, and i stopped pedaling just to see what would happen, and i stopped going forward on a downhill! that's how strong the wind is.

yesterday i rode into lima, which is a giant city of more the 7 million people. riding into big cities is hard on the touring bike, and there is pretty much no way around lima. the outskirts of lima are crazy. shanty towns piled ontop of one another, garbage heaped along the side of the rode with whole families picking through the debris, dogs sniffing out and eating rotten meat. the combination of exhaust and rotting garbage made breathing extremely uncomfortable. my navigational technique for large cities involves asking random people for directions, and then using a combination of pointing and pantomiming to get my point across.
as i'm biking throught the crazyness of downtown lima. this guy on a motorcycle pulls up along side of me end ends up inviting me to his house. he and his wife were both professional bike racers, and are currently training to run the new york marathon in under three hours! they are so, so nice. yesterday the husband Pedro took me to miraflores, the tourist district and we walked around and stopped at this fruit cart, and Pedro bought me imported plums from chile, and figs and this type of fruit called chirimoya. then we got gelato and i got dark chocolate with yellow and red rum rasins and toasted almonds. oh my god it was so awesome. and then we all went out for pizza and sangria, and pedro wouldn't let me pay for anthing. they are so nice!
this morning i told Pedro that my mom wanted to see a picture of all their cycling trophies. he had them all shoved under the stairs, and told the maid to take them all out and clean them bofore i took a photo. they really have a ton of trophies. it's pretty crazy, like first place in the whole country kind of cycling trophies. tomorrow i'll probalby head out and keep biking south. i totally screwed up on my estimate of when i thought i'd be here. alice and everyone is coming out to lima to visit me mid february, so i figure is should be about a week south of la paz, bolivia by then and can just fly back. my organizational skill are impressive as always. love,
-jessie

casma

i`ve been biking through a really intense desert lately. it's flat, which is awesome, but i've been fighting the wind a lot. sometimes it's a head wind, sometimes it's a sideways wind, but as long as it's not a tailwind, it's a challenge. the scenery is pretty awesome though. i haven't been in a desert since baja, and this one looks much different. so... i've been biking by myself since new years, and it's going pretty well. my main so sorce of conversation seems to be meal times. this is somewhere north of trujillo. i was totally starving, and i'm trying to shove down as much food as possible, and this girl, just cannot contain herself. she thinks it's the craziest thing that i am from the US. she wants to know how to say all these words in english. pretty soon she's brought over all of her friends to hear me speak english. all i want to do is cram food in my face, but it's hard to ignore 8 really cute kids. for some reason they think "television" is the funniest word in english. i don't think they got that in the US we speak english and not spanish because they kept asking me how i knew so many english words. ha ha.... this is a really nice family i had lunch with the other day. the guy on the left talked with me for a really long time about puruvian politics and history and wrote down a bunch of places i should visit when my friends come and visit. by the by alice i'm really, really excited you are coming out! only a month!
i think they had elections here sometimes in 2006, and on all the adobe walls and buildings are advertisements for political candidates. i photographed this one because it says "fujimori". each political party and candidate has a symbol, it could be a drawing of a river, or the number two, or a star. then it will say "marca así" and i guess when you go to vote, you have to mark the symbol of the person you want to vote for. crazy, huh?
this is a photo of this ruin i went to see called Sechín in the casma valley. not much to look at i guess, but it's supposedly one of the largest constructions ever built in Prehispanic America. here´s some info my dad found on the internet. "Five plazas extend 1.4 km from the central mound, three with central sunken courts, one of which is about 80 m in diameter. The main mound is 44 m high by 300 m by 250 m., making it the largest single construction in the New World during the second millennium B.C. The mound was faced with granite blocks, some weighing over 2 tons. Sechín Alto's great size may represent a 1000 year span of building." this is one of the carvings at Sechín. for some reason a lot of the carvings looked like they could be prehistoric simpson's characters. my favorite part of the trip was the museum. there was this insane looking mummy, mouth agape, feet tied together.
i couldn't understand all the spanish, but they think that this was a forced sacrifice, and that she died by asfixiation, and that she was burried alive! probably shouldn't have taken a photo, but they didn't have a no photo sign up so......
i asked at my hotel how to get to sechín and the husband and wife who lived there haggled with like three different mototaxi guys before getting me one for $0.60. it was a 20 minute taxi ride, and we were way outside of town. at the museum, i payed the guy and he left, and then i realized i had no idea how i was getting back to the city, or where in the city my hotel was, or what the name of the hotel was. this couple were the only other people at sechín and i asked them if i could get a ride back to town in their mototaxi. they were super, super nice, and we stopped at this mountain and the woman told me this story about how everyone hears singing, and sometimes sees beautiful blond children there, but that if you go after dark, you'll never return. i wish we had legends like this in palo alto. maybe i'll make one up about antonios nuthouse. anyways, they were like, "where is your hotel", and i had to be like, "well.... i'm not sure, but i know it's near this park along the panamerican highway." after checking several parks, they found my hotel. then they totally wouldn't let me pay for the mototaxi ride. people in latin america are so, so nice. ok, hope everyone is awesome! love,
-jessie

blogger is lame again

blogger is not working great again. i can't upload photos. i biked trough a crazy looking sand dune desert today. this internet cafe is blasting reggaeton. if you want to know more about reaggaeton you should read this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggaeton. i love reggaeton, they play it everywhere. wikipedia is so awesome. i've been reading all about peru tonight. i had a really great zero day in chiclayo where i did nothing but hang out in my underwear in the hotel room eating croisants and brioch while watching cable television. i feel a little bad that i didn't check out any of the archeological sights nearby, but i really needed a rest. anyhows, could be in the internet cafe´s fault that nothing is working. hope everyone is awesome. i'm doing really good. love,
-jessie

olmos

leaving ecuador and entering into peru, i cycled through a "dry tropical forest". these kapok trees are totally crazy looking. they are completely neon green all over, even their trunks. i was really enjoying the riding, which was mostly flat, but then i took a smaller road into chulucanas, and i had about 25 miles of dirt road at the end of an 80 mile day. it was definately challenging. what was cool though was i got to ride throught some really interesting small towns. i usually aviod taking pictures of people or their houses because i feel like it's sending a message that their poverty is a tourist attraction to me. people here in peru have constructed some really crazy looking houses out of nothing more than mud and sticks. this is a photo of the cemetary in one of these little towns. while i was taking this photo, there were probably like five people sitting outside their mud houses watching me. dry tropical forests only exist between really specific latitudes, so now i think i'm cycling through some kind of desert. last night in the hotel room there was a sign on the door that says they've been having a severe draught since 1998 and that out of the cities 9 wells, only one remains operational. there's not a lot out here, and today i stopped at the first place i saw for lunch. there were some old ladies in black sitting outside their mud hut, and some guys playing cards. the old ladies told me there was goat for lunch. after i ate my goat, i asked them if there was a bathroom. they took me back through the kitchen. it was a total nightmare. flies everywhere, animal carcases, insane cast iron cookware that looked as if it was from another century. i wanted to scream at the old lady and say, "you fed me food that came out of here? no wonder i am sick all the time!" at that point she grabbed this skinless animal leg hanging from the ceiling and cackled, "el cabrocito!" which mean "the little goat". with out getting into detail, the bathroom was so insane that i just ended up peeing by the side of the highway. i literally couldn't pee there.
as i got into town this evening, this woman beckoned me over from the side of the road. she was super excited to talk to me and i ended up hanging out with her and her extended family for a while. you can kind of see one of those mud houses behind us with political slogans painted on the side. her kids ended up taking me around the town to find a hotel. they were so awesome. also today a bus driver going in the opposite direction slowed down to hand me a mango out the bus window. it was a really good mango. love,
-jessie

macará

tonights accomidations reach an all time budget low at $2 a room. this is a photo of the hotel bathroom. notice the large plastic trash can directly below the showerhead (in the place where one usually stands to shower). i tried to move the trash can, but it is filled with a mysterious dark colored liquid. since the tiolet doesn't flush on it's own, i assume that the plastic jug is supposed to be double duty gravity flusher, and shower water collector. i've slowly been winding my way out of the ecuadorian highlands, and it's been getting hotter and hotter! also, the terrain is much drier than it was before. the climate feels similar to baja. for some reason who ever constructed the road neglected to stabalize the hillsides and i've been riding over frequent landslides. it makes me a little nervous because as i look up, it seems that the mountain could come sliding down at any moment.
i am at the border between ecuador and peru. once i am in peru, there are only three countries left, peru, chile, and argentina. so far i've gone through alaska, canada, the US, mexico, guatemala, el salvador, honduras, nicaragua, costa rica, panama, and ecuador. 9 countries in total. three countries left makes the trip seem almost over.
-jessie

catacocha

i am staying in this little town called catacocha about 60 miles to the west of loja. my hotel room was only $4, and the ladies who work there are so nice! they just cannot believe that today i rode my bike from Loja to Catacocha. i told them i was going for a walk around the town, and one of their husbands poked his head out from another room, and told me to walk up this hill for a "beatiful view of our lord jesus christ." i told him i needed to bring my camera for that, and he was like, "oh, yes! bring your camera! it is beautiful." i'm going to start posting some photos from earlier in ecuador because i didn't get a chance to post them before. this is Cayambe volcano as seen from the town of Ibarra. i never would have imagined that there are snow covered volcanoes at the equator. i literally haven't seen snow since northern canada. crazy, huh?
just north of Quito lies the equator. this is a photo of me with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one foot in the southern hemisphere. i'm not totally sure how exact that line is though because about 50´down the road was another sign and another monument that said "equator". i got my photo taken next to the bigger one. later on that day we stopped at this indigenous village for lunch. i don't know what tpye of meat that is (clyde thinks goat), but it was totally delicious. there were no utencils, and everyone there, including the local police man, was eating with their hands. we each got exactly one napkin.
this photo is of the outskirts of quito. i'm not sure what it is, but you can instanly recognize that you're not looking at a US city. i really liked quito. the new part of town is really clean and nice, and has a shopping mall that made me feel like i was back in the US. the historical center is really cool too and has a lot of beautiful colonial architecture. i needed to replace my chain, rear cassette, and middle chain ring, and asked this cyclist i saw to recomend a bike shop. i ended up at this place called The Bike Shop, and the owner Diego was super nice. they replaced everything on my bike for free, and Diego spoke perfect english. everyone who worked their was really awesome, and i ended up learning a lot about ecuadorian history, and cool places to visit in quito while i waited for my bike! Thank you to eveyone at The Bike Shop!
Tomorrow i will be at Macará, which is the border town to Peru. the cycling has been totally gorgeous, but there is not a lot out here. the other day i had run out of food and was totally starving. i had one last hill (mountain) to summit before the descent into Loja, and i was dreading doing it on an empty stomach. just as i started to climb, this car pulls up next to me filled to capacity with an ecuadorian family. this guy leans out of the passenger window and says, "how are you? where are you going? do you need any water?" i told him i was all set on water, but that i could definately use some food. he gives me a bag of christmas cookies, and then this grandma in the back seat passes up two weird looking pieces of fruit for him to give me. they were about the size of grape fruits with a peel that was dark grean to black in color. i asked them what they were, and they told me "tangerines". i've honestly never seen tangerines that looked like that before, but i don't i'll ever enjoy one more in my life. it was a total miracle that that car stopped when it did, and the cookies and crazy looking tangerines totally got me up the hill. anyways, hope everyone is doing good!
-jessie