Home again

Holy cow! Once again, it's been two long weeks since I posted. My apologies. Life's been crazy. In brief:

A matter of hours after I said so long to Pops, I set out on a four-day trek that turned out to be pretty much the most awesome thing I did in my three and a half months of South American wanderings. Watch for a post on that. For now, just let me say that if you ever go to Peru you'd darned well better visit Machu Picchu, preferable by way of the Inca Trail.

So, after various adventures, I'm now back in the US. I stopped in at GFU (the college I graduated from last spring) and hung around for a couple of days, chatting with friends and generally pretending I was still a college student. I caught a ride home to northern california, and 48 hours later headed back up to Portland to look for a job. Which I now have.

And thus, after 4 years of studing chemistry (at a mere $28,000 per year), I find myself serving coffee, earning minimum wage. (Plus tips!!) I like to think of it as furthering my chemistry experience by way of a real-world internship. I mean, baristas are basically chemists... they spend the day mixing things together in precise combinations in order to achieve the desired product. We even get to use crazy machines that shoot out steam through metal pipes and squeeze hot solvents through special powders. Sounds like chemistry to me.

That's really just my side job, though... the one that pays the bills. My real job (the one I'm excited about) is teaching science. Through a really cool program at GFU, college-aged science students get to teach science to home-schoolers, ranging in age from kindergarten to 12th grade. Last year I taught a chemistry class to home-schooled high-schoolers.... this fall is a genetics class, also for high-schoolers. The highlight of my work week, though, is going to be the Star Lab. It's this huge, inflatable planetarium I get to take around to elementary schools. I'll teach them about the stars and constellations, planetary motion, etc. Totally rad stuff. At least, I think so, anyway. ;O)

But both of these are temporary... next fall I'm headed to Boulder, Colorado for chemistry grad school. Four to six more years of chemistry await me. In the meantime, I get to work at GFU, hang out with cool Fox people, and basically enjoy all the benefits of living with/near all my college friends, without the bother of classes or homework. Not a bad deal, really.

For example... yesterday I went to the beach with a few friends (Mark, Dave, Pat) to enjoy the 80-degree weather at the coast instead of the 90-degree weather here in Newberg. On the way we visited the largest glacial rock in Oregon (thrilling!), crossed the shortest river in the US (equally thrilling!), and bought a box of 24 Scooby-Doo push-pops for three dollars at Grocery Outlet.

Oh yeah, and the beach was cool, too. Great tidepools.

A shot of an anemone, taken with my spiffy waterproof digital camera. You can actually stick it underwater. A bit scary at first, but you can get some great shots.

Pat and Mark, debating whose rear end is larger. Just one example of the intellectually stimulating conversations I've been having with my fellow college graduates. Life is great.

So long, Pops...

After two frenzied weeks, three countries, and several hundred (thousand, maybe?) miles of travel, Dad´s time down here finally ran out. Besides some quick sightseeing in a few Peruvian cities and a ridiculous amount of souvenir shopping, all that remained was a visit to some Incan ruins near Cusco.

You might recognize this sacrificial chamber from an earlier post (June 24).... It was in this very spot that I ceremonially offed Nic with the sacred Incan banana, shortly after we tamed the fearsome Incan Guard Beast. Incidentally, this time Dad and I encountered the same IGB... I´m happy to report he was as tame as ever.

The stonework at some of these ruins is pretty phenomenal... somehow the Incan engineers, with just hand tools and lots of labor, managed to chisel the stones so that they´d fit together perfectly, like a massive (a very massive) 3D jigsaw puzzle.

In most places, the seams between the rocks are so tight you can´t fit a piece of paper between them... In a few places, though, you can fit significantly larger objects.

At the Incan wall, with a handmade traditional native cap, I felt I could pass as an average Incan citizen. Just ignore the red beard and pasty white complexion.

Dad, though, was adamant that the modern t-shirt just didn´t fit, and insisted on a more authentic shot.

Nic left me, my own father left me... now who will I take crazy photos with?

Colca Canyon

Ever been to the Grand Canyon? In places, it´s a mile deep. Impressive, right? You aint seen nothin´ yet. Try two-mile deep canyons. When it comes to canyons, Colca Canyon is the head honcho, the big cheese, the whole enchilada, the top dog. It´s the deepest canyon in the world... depending on who you ask. Some say another nearby canyon is a bit deeper, others say Colca wins. I´m voting for Colca. Mostly so I can say I´ve been to the deepest canyon.

As you recall from the last post, we arrived at Colca Canyon at 6 AM, after 60-ish hours of travel. (If you haven´t read the last post, shame on you. Go back and catch up. Don´t worry, it´s short. I´ll wait.)

The spot we got dumped off at is known as the Cruz del Condor... a lookout point that has a family of condors nesting nearby. We, and several busloads of other tourists, were entertained for a while by the huge birds soaring above us, below us, in front of us....

...and, occasionally, even among us.

Eventually the birds floated off in search of roadkill, and we wandered along the rim of the canyon for a while, enjoying the view, enjoying the sunshine, and enjoying not sitting after 60 hours of buses.

Where we were, the canyon was ¨only¨ about a mile deep, but the views were still spectacular.

We also discovered that it is extremely difficult to take pictures of the deepest canyon in the world. Especially if you want to also be in the pictures. Below are some of our best attempts...

My feet, with the river a mile down.

Some of our clothes had gotten wet on the volcano hike, and had been sitting in plastic bags in our packs for the last 60 hours... so, with a hot sun and no one around, we took the opportunity to do a little laundry.

After several hours of wandering (and after our clothes had finished drying), we decided to head back into town. Unfortunately, the busloads of tourists, and, more importantly, the buses, were nowhere to be found. We wandered along the road back to the Cruz del Condor (the most popular tourist stop) and waited for a while. Eventually some park rangers came along in a van and told us that a bus would be coming by... in about 5 hours. Then they were kind enough to give us a lift back to town. Ah, the life of a south american backpacker... sometimes things work out great. Not always, but sometimes.

What´s that smell?

After our volcano adventure, Dad and I returned to our lodgings, tired and very, very sweaty. But it was getting late, and we had some emails we needed to send... so, instead of showering, we just changed clothes quickly and headed into town before the internet cafes closed. A fateful decision.

After finishing with internet, we decided to stop and investigate bus schedules. Our next move was going to be to head up to Peru.... it turned out the perfect bus was leaving in roughly 45 minutes. We rushed back, packed, grabbed a takeout pizza for dinner, and made our bus. No time for a shower, though.

Check out a map of Chile. It´s really, really long. And we taking a bus all the way to Peru. Incidentally, the entire northern section of Chile is occupied by the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world. In this desert, there are placed where rainfall has never been recorded. Ever. After our bus ride, it´s not hard to imagine.

Our volcano trip was on a Tuesday. We caught our bus that evening, and rode the bus all night. In the morning we changed buses. We rode the same bus all day Wednesday, wednesday night, and most of Thursday. Then we got a taxi across the Chile-Peru border. Time for a break? Nope. We caught an 8-hour bus that pulled into Arequipa, Peru at midnight. Rather than calling it quits and getting a hostel, like any sane travelers would, we decided to catch the 1 AM bus for Colca Canyon, our real destination.

And so, at 6 AM on Friday, we arrived at the fabled Colca Canyon. We had been in a bus, taxi, or bus terminal for almost 60 hours. Most of our bus ride had been through a baking desert. Immediately prior to our bus ride, we had climbed a mountain. Where we had bathed ourselves in toxic fumes. The moral of the story? We really, really needed a shower. Really.

Fire and Ice... very nice.

And... I´m back, after yet another long hiatus. Hey, my time is short down here. So much to see... so much to do.... so little time for blogging.

This, my friends, is Volcan Villarrica, seen at sunset. It´s an active volcano, constantly spouting smoke and burping up magma.

And this is myself and my intrepid father, in the act of climbing said volcano.

Crazy? Probably. Fun? Absolutely.

After a full day of slogging uphill, we made it to the smoking, steaming crater at the top (the caldera, for all you budding volcanologists out there). We even climbed down into the caldera, for a better view of the red-hot lava that kept spurting up.

We didn´t stay too long, though... there really were a ton of toxic fumes up there. Every so often you´d get a strong whiff of hot gases belching up from the crater... I´m pretty sure every breath of that stuff took a month or so off of my lifespan.

Going down was great, too... we donned helmets and tough waterproof pants, packed all our loose gear into our packs, and slid down the mountain on our butts. Not quite as awesome as snowboarding, but a heck of a lot better than walking.