Panama Pic

My latest adventure was to Panama City, and I LOVED it!

Here you can see me at the Panama Canal. I know the canal looks kind of small, but it's not. We saw a giant oil tanker go through. Did you know that some of the biggest ships that pass through the canal pay upwards of $300,000 a trip? And did you know that the biggest container ships that can go through right now hold 5,000 containers, and that the 15,000-container ships have to park offshore, unload everything and send it via rail? But sometime in the foreseeable future, they are going to complete an expansion of the canal so those ships can go through. They are GIANT!!! Also, they can fill and drain the canal lock you see there in the time it takes to fill or drain a bathtub, about 8 minutes. But it holds a million bajillion times more water than a bathtub! (Sorry, can't remember that statistic exactly).

Why else you should visit Panama someday: It is amazing. It is up-and-coming, has a beautiful shoreline/skyline with fantastic skyscrapers, there are great day trips nearby, the city has a low crime rate, great restaurants, and their currency is the dollar, so you don't have to figure out exchange rates and such. Lots of history, lots of good food, lots of roads getting paved and skyscrapers being built, AND it's the only latin american country where you can drink the tap water. I'm telling you folks, you really should go.

Bogota Pic

This is the view after riding the tram up to "Monserratte" in Bogota. Wow! What a cool city.

Argentina Pic

Well, this is kind of ridiculous, but at this moment, I am only able to upload one photo, per one post, at a time. So. This is part of the the "necropolis," Recoleta, in Argentina. Eva Peron was buried in one of these "tombs," just around the corner. Sorry, don't have all the vocab right, probably, but it was a hauntingly beautiful place.

Hello, Buenos Aires! (And Bogota!)

So, as my time here in Venezuela is nearing an end (less than 4 months left, folks), I feel like I've been making a mad dash to try and get the last of my South American trips in -- FUN! Traveling around South America is great, I highly recommend it. Just please register with the Embassy wherever you visit, just in case.

Even though my April trip to Buenos Aires and May trip to Bogota only lasted a few days each, I don't even know where to start with talking about the trip! Food was definitely important. Let's see......

In Buenos Aires, I ate: Proveltta (grilled provolone), submarino hot chocolate (steamed milk with chocolote bars dumped into it), beef (of course), medialunas (croissants), and LOTS of ice cream.

In Bogota, I ate: a Curuba batido (Curuba juice, which I have no idea what kind of fruit that is, mixed with milk, it was AMAZING), a street hot dog with a million things on it, including pineapple (I forwent the Cornish hen egg that could have also gone on top), rhubarb creme brulee (I don't have words to describe its fantastical-ness), pan de bono, several typical Colombian dishes whose names I can't remember, LOTS of hot chocolate, oh -- and hot chocolate with cubes of CHEESE put into it! This is something I've been waiting to try my whole life, since I was 8 years old and would put a hershey bar and a piece of cheese into my mouth at the same time, heaven. Cheese and chocolate are meant to be eaten together. But I digress.

Music is also important, I love when my life has a soundtrack. I loved running around Buenos Aires with songs from Evita in my head. And nearly every restaurant and taxi in Bogota had some great song or another playing, you know, a little Avril Lavigne and Cat Stevens here and there.

Um, I can't get any photos to upload to this post. Let me try creating a new post......hold, please.

25 reasons why I love my mother

The Delta

Went to the Orinoco Delta a couple weeks ago (in the eastern part of the country), and got to experience yet another awesome part of Venezuela. I swear, the adventures never end here.

A lot of it reminded me of the Angel Falls area (which is further south -- here it was much more humid). Loved the windy rivers, that the guides know by heart, and every once in awhile they'll pull over to drop a bag of onions or something off at a neighbors. Lots of cool birds (this time, we saw egrets, kingfishers, flycatchers, and turpials). A few mosquitos (well, enough to make our guide cave and ask to borrow some insect repellant), but PLENTY of natural beauty. I swear, if it weren't for the mosquitos, I would pack up and move to a Venezuelan rain forest.

Turpial nests!

Look, I caught a PIRANHA!!!

And yes, we ate what we caught. Waste not, want not. They were actually pretty good, once you found the little bit of meat that was on them.

OK, so as not to leave you with visions of teethy, bony fish, I give you: "Cacao del agua." It looked like a bean pod our guide plucked off a tree, then he slapped it against his leg, and POOF! The coolest flower ever.

R&R

Funny how living in South America makes you wish with all your heart that it snows while you're on vacation.......and it did, in UT! Great place for a little R&R.

You will find little snippets of what I did below (if you read it like you're singing "We Didn't Start the Fire," I think you'll enjoy it more than just reading it like normal).

Cafe Rio, Krispy Kreme, Grandma's Cookies, Walgreens
Jimmer making lots of 3's, shoveling snow.
Apple Beer, Duck Ponds, brother's Cream Cheese Croissants
Heaps of Pizza, JDawgs, and trying to drive slow.


Cousin visits, sledding fast, 3.15 a tank of gas
Homemade food, and a scoop of (mmm) Graham Canyon.
Aunts and Uncles, Grandma too, (hey, sure do miss all of you)
Singing to the radio, and Ethiopian.

OK, that's all the rhymes I can come up with right now, but also want to say that I have the best little brother ever! He let me borrow his car (which is a big deal, considering I didn't exactly take the best care of my rental last time I was in Utah), and he made sure we hit all of my favorite places while I was there (as evidenced by the rhymings above).

Thanks Michael!

(You know, writing this was a lot of fun.......look for a Caracas version soon! I love rhyming!)