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And then there were two

Sarit Reizin — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:47:00 +0000

No Sergey, no Gombergs, only us dos to face the road and – with it – Mexican traffic. We would have set out of Mexico City a day earlier, right after visiting the ruins of Xachicalco with Nadia, but it turned out to be a hoy no circulo day for our GreenGo. In effort to reduce smog and traffic in the city, each day of the week cars with license plates ending in a particular number cannot drive. And our final number 3 meant no go for GreenGo.

( Four day road trip to the coast )

Mexico – The City

Sarit Reizin — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:56:00 +0000

It’s nice to have friends, who have friends (or relatives), who don’t mind trying you in the role of friends who stay over. Especially for as long as a week. The Gombergs (kon_ka,gomberg, and little Masia) have returned from their ten month long sabbatical in Spain the same day we rolled into Mexico City, and in two days were already ready to receive guests! My hat is off to them. Also was my backpack and the rest of our stuff now washed and resting outside the cramped space of our packing-cubes.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Frida Kahlo to Mexico City is like Tango to Buenos Aires – it’s everywhere. You cannot escape it. Our few first days in Mexico City that is all we saw. Even on our first night we managed to grab the twenty last minutes of her exhibition in the Fine Arts Museum, and, I bet, this is just as much as sereshka could handle of her work. His vacation time was ending, and in few days we waved goodbye as he went back to his life in Canada, and we continued to explore Mexico City. It was such a shame he couldn’t stay longer! The Gombergs were not only ready to host, but to take us on the town. We spent day after day chasing Andrey down the streets, multitasking between snapping pictures and listening to his vast knowledge of architecture, politics, and economy.

It’s all a big mess in my head now, but I will not be waiting till the dust settles (places to go, people to see, as you know) and try to at least jot down a photo report of the architecture, crafts, and food we’ve experienced in the past week. One particular segment should be really interesting as it is an excursion to a small local food market where we ate quesadilla with everything from Calabaza Flowers to Corn Mold. Yum.

( seven days in Mexico City )

El Chalten, Argentina

Sarit Reizin — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 04:00:00 +0000

Weird time was spent in El Chalten starting from the bus that brought us there, where we met Genevieve – an Australian born who grew up in Hong Kong and lived alone with her ten year old brother from the age of twelve in a house of their own. Her story is extraordinary, although I don’t think I’m at liberty to tell it. However, I do have her permission to show you a tattoo of hers which is very appropriate for a citizen of the world such as herself.

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Montevideo, Uruguai

Sarit Reizin — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 04:00:00 +0000

Even though Uruguay and Argentina share a border and some cultural features like Tango and Mate, they definitely don’t share the same schedule. Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the capitals, could not be more different. We did hear that Uruguay is laid back, but we could not even start imagining how much. While in BA every day of the week every place around would be open till dark and many restaurants into the wee hours of the night; here, in Montevideo, we could barely find an open place to eat or shop on a weekend afternoon.
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Love to love Buenos Aires

Sarit Reizin — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:00:00 +0000

It has the hustle and bustle of a large city, but at the same time also the charm of a quiet little town. In parts it reminds me of NYC. It’s just that in NYC you most of the time feel some meanness in the air together with its great energy and power, but here you feel calm and vigor, just like anything can happen.

It hasn’t been two days now and just by walking around we have managed to discover a handful of interesting little places like this tiny book-shop where literature of all sort and kind is held down with antics and strange papier-mâché figures emerge from under tables and shelves and hang from the ceiling. In the shop, apart from dusty books and surreal art, we found three men who were interested in anything but selling books. I asked if it was alright to take some pictures of the store, and the next thing we knew we were invited to try the local Mate, a sort of thick tea drunk from a wooden cup through a metal straw with a strainer on the bottom end. Ingenious.

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Oh Huacachina, how will I miss thee

Sarit Reizin — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 02:04:00 +0000

Located half an hour from Ica, Huacachina is a tiny oasis town set deep among the sandy dunes of the Peruvian desert. A few hostels, a few restaurants and artisan shops, all surrounding a beautiful lagoon on the shores of which the local children swim and slide on boards from the nearby dunes. “Tranquilo” they call such places. Tranquil and quiet this place is a real getaway, ten times better then what they try to depict in those vacation retreat commercials.

( Wild Dune Ride )

Most expensive meal

Sarit Reizin — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 06:59:00 +0000

La Paz turned out to be a beautiful city with a huge and busy market where Shurik almost got pickpocketed; very political street art not only in form of highway side graffiti, but also on huge canvases displayed in public parks; and even something called the Witches Market, which turned out to be quite disappointing since, apart from bunches of dried up frogs and lama fetuses, it did not differ from any other market we have seen in South America so far.

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Cuzco, Peru

Sarit Reizin — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 01:18:00 +0000

We arrived at Cuzco, after our 20 hour ride, in the afternoon and decided to take it easy as we didn´t know how will the altitude affect us.

Our Inca Trail trip was going to start in about a day and a half, so in the meantime we were enjoing the city and even took a city tour that turned out to be a waste of time. We should have listened to the “Good Book” and gone to the same sites ourselves by bus.

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Tortoise Day

Sarit Reizin — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 05:35:00 +0000

It might depend on my mood or the company I’m in, but some days are just better then others. On November 22 we ended our seven day long boat trip through many of the Galapagos Islands and once again ended up in Puerto Ayora. Seriously, I have to say, I could not have been happier. Don’t get me wrong, the boat trip was awesome and I truly loved every minute of it, it’s just that I liked the minutes with Dramamine (motion sickness drug) in my system, a bit more than others. I never actually got sick, but I sure was glad to step on terra firma again knowing that tonight I will be taking my hot shower in a non-rocking bathroom and sleeping on a full-size non-rocking bed.

The first day back on land ended up being a tortoise day. It is pretty much the only animal we say the whole day. First we went to the Darwin Station which was a great place to see many tortoises from different islands in the archipelago. As part of the preservation project, tortoises are bred there and then repopulated back to their island of origin. It was a nice place, but we had almost the whole afternoon left with not much to do. So, we went back to the person who so far has been most helpful to us in Port Ayora – Ginny, the owner of Moonrise Travel. In no time, we had a day tour booked with a level 3 naturalist who was no other then Ginny’s husband Steven! You might think that there were some family favors played, but I think we got the best deal. Steven was great to talk to and the whole 5 hours we spent together we didn’t have a dull moment. His parents are American and they were some the first settlers on the Santa Cruz island, but he was born and raised here and knows everybody [interesting] and anything on the islands. Steven took us to several interesting places where we could see magnificent 500 pound tortoises “run” free.

More Pictures

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