Monday, April 27, 2009
And then we ate Empanadas.....
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Maria's Guest Appearance on the Slingshot!!!
Here I am at the Cerro Santa Lucia Park, we climbed to the top and were able to see all of Santiago! It was pretty amazing. What also was pretty amazing was in every direction you saw cranes, building high-rises, I think I counted 12... no economic slow down here.
Okay... so I'm probably not the best person to write this caption but this is part of the road through the Andes that our double-decker bus climbed. I remember 2 things from this... 1. praying that the crazy bus driver turned the corners and made it up safely. 2. Clay and Kyle talking the ENTIRE time about how they wish they were still on their motorcycles because the twists and turns would have been awesome to ride!!!!
A shot from the Andes. Taking the bus through this mountain range was pretty spectacular. I have never seen anything like it.
Here is Kathryn and I in Mendoza, as the four of us ventured to the bus station to buy our tickets to Buenos Aires. It was quite the feat being on bikes around such crazy drivers, who don't stay in their lanes!
Clay, Kathryn, Kyle and I at the Plaza Independencia in Mendoza. This park is in the center of the city and we are actually standing on top on a modern art museum located in the park. A funny side note: The dog you see in the back ground has been following us around this city. It seems like where ever we go the dog (Kathryn named it Buddy) just shows up. We have been here 3 days and have seen it every where!
A fountain in the biggest park in Mendoza. It was amazing to ride around here, there was a man-made lake where we saw crewers rowing. Plus everyone was outside running or walking, so there was a real feel of local culture.
Here we are at dinner last night, it was a small wine bar where we had some tapas. Kyle loved this place... I think it reminded him of San Fran a bit. Also, this is the nicest the boys have dressed in the past 2 1/2 months! Pretty sharp!
So this shot of Fernet is for all of Kathryn's and Kyle's friends back in San Francisco. They said you all are obsessed with this stuff and there is TONS of it down here.
Here we are on a tour of the Carinae Winery, it was started by a French couple in 2003. They produced their first bottle of Malbec in 2004.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
TACA, Fedex, and the arrival of Mathryn (Maria and Kathryn)
On the 14th of April after the bikes were all sold and the riding gear was shipped home to California our backpacking adventure began. Quickly let me say that Fedex kicks DHLs ass. The package arrived at Clay’s parents place on the 16th!!! Fully intact. Just awesome service. Clay and I arrived at the international airport in Lima by taxi with backpacks in toe. The airport in Lima worked out great! The place was clean and well organized which I was totally was not expecting. But the airline we took from Lima to Santiago, Taca, was outstanding! It was one of the best flights I think I have ever had. While booking the ticket I was a little pissed that I was paying $400 USD for a 3 hour plane flight but it ended up being worth it. The plane was brand new and very clean. Each seat had a complementary blanket and pillow. A meal and movie were also included on the flight, even though the movie was some sucky romantic comedy I thought it was cool that they didn’t charge for the headphones like on the Virgin Atlantic flights to Las Vegas. The other thing that’s dumb about Virgin Atlantic is the purple mood lighting in the cabin, anyways I digress.
So we got into Santiago at like 3am on the 15th and didn’t really have a plan on where we were going to sleep for the rest of the night. Which resulted in us getting the run around from this cab driver who kept taking us to hotels that were already full or way out of our price range. Anyways after about an hour of farting around and about 50 USD later we got to La Casa Roja were we stayed for the last several nights. We had a couple good nights in Santiago, several people we talked to before said there wasn’t much to see in Santiago and that it had a sort of commercial feeling to it, which I think is somewhat true but we had a great time there and there are some nice things to see in Santiago such as the city square, and the catherdral as well as this cool park that is set up on an enomous rock that looks over the city. Clay will post pictures of all this stuff soon. –Kyle
Kyle did a great job of updating you on our travels, and I was just teasing him that he should become a “Business Critic” Writer for Business Week Magazine (with a great Editor of course), somewhat similar to a Food Critic. Although you are now well informed as to Fedex’s and TACA’s outstanding business tactics, he left out the biggest part of the last 4 days: Maria and Kathryn showed up!!! Kyle and I got up the earliest we have the entire trip and met them at the Santiago airport Friday morning. We had a great time on Friday exploring the City and then later we visited the Bella Vista neighborhood for drinks and dancing. It’s been nice to have a little estrogen in the air to mix it up a little over the past few days. So I’m gonna wrap this up but we’re now in Vina del Mar on the Chilean coast and tomorrow we leave on an 8 hour bus ride to Mendoza, Argentina. We’ll post some pictures soon, but not from Maria’s camera, which got stolen from right under our noses today while we were at the beach. Luckily she only had a few pictures on it and it was on the fritz anyways. Til next time…. -Clay
Monday, April 13, 2009
Bikes are Sold, Backpacks are Bought...a Transitional Period in the Slingshot South
This museum was an old Catholic Monastery that doubled as a burial groud underneath the Church. There are thousands of skulls and bones still there that have been excavated after being buried for all those years. Pretty creepy...
That´s all for now. Maybe we´ll have some guest posters on the blog soon as 2 turns to 4 in couple days for the Sling Shot South....
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Possibly Putting the Bikes to Bed and Lima, Peru...
The problem is that we eventually need to do 1 of 3 things with the bikes before we fly home: 1. Sell them 2. Ship them home 3. Light them on fire and ghost ride them off a huge cliff in a sacrificial fire ceremony to the bike gods, with pictures of course. For me (and Kyle is leaning this way as well) the best thing would be to sell them, even though the fire and cliff thing would be so freakin awesome. It would be nice to recoup some of the money we spent on the bikes and for the trip as well. Shipping them home looks like it will be pretty expensive, and we´ve been told that Lima is probably the only place that it will be possible to sell them between here and Santiago, Chile where we meet the girls on the 17th. So we are now here in Lima, the biggest city we´ve seen on our trip at 6.5 million people. In between several other mischivieous activities we´ve been looking into the possibility of selling the bikes. We´re still kinda toying with the idea though, we really don´t want to see these things go. One way I like to look at it is that we dont want to make it all the way on our first try anyways right? That way it leaves another goal to accomplish for Sling Shot South II, The Sequel. Who´s in??? Maybe we´ll do Slingshot East or North...who knows. So we´ll keep you updated but in the meantime enjoy the pictures below!!!
Don´t try this at home. Here´s Kyle with the 5 fingered salute! You have to do something to keep yourself entertained when pounding out miles in the desert...
This was the sunset in the town of Huanchaco, Peru. Huanchaco was such a great little town. We stayed there for 2 nights and rented some surfboards and wetsuits the second day. Kyle took surfing lessons and got up on something like his second try. Pretty talented that guy...
The fisherman in Huanchaco use these crazy little boats called Caballitos, which is an ancient-style fishing boat made from bundles of tortora reeds.
Here´s me trying to be artistic with my photos. Actually I just want to be able to take cool pictures all the time like my sister, I even bought the same camera she has for my trip. She has an incredible eye for finding great shots and using black and white and all that fun stuff. What do you think Megan???
This is what you might call a Peruvian Mansion in the hills. Actually a pretty high poverty level in Peru, good amount of political turmoil in recent years. Hopefully it´s turning itself around.
And me again in Huanchaco with the fishing boats. I have to keep the girlfriend happy with some shots of mysef every once in a while...
More crazy coastal scenery, and of course the Green Machine.
This is the Pan-American Highway a few hours North of Lima, straight through the desert.
We´re staying at the Point Hostel in Lima in a great little section of town called Barranca. It´s actually the first time we´ve done the dorm-style sleeping at a hostel instead of a private room. Not too bad actually. We had the room to ourselves the first night but it pretty full now
A couple shots of us messin around with a little 125cc China bike. Some guy at the Hostel is actually riding this thing across the country or something crazy like that.
Here´s the bar at the Hostel, they were getting ready for the army themed party we attended last night. Pretty good set up they have going at the hostel.