CÓRDOBA: Place of Dreams

After Mendoza we spent a few days in Córdoba, Argentina´s second-largest city. It is a big college town and we did a lot of sight-seeing and several tours. It was a fun place, and we had a really nice hotel with an AWESOME view of the main square! The cathedral is in awful shape, and we were dismayed by this until we saw that it is undergoing extensive renovation, so that´s why it looks so bad right now. There were street performers and carnies throughout the cobbled alleys. We spent two days there before bussing to our current location: BUENOS AIRES!!! Expect a blog entry on this awesome town in the next day or so. Enjoy the pics and captions of Córdoba below!


The view out our hotel window. Top floor facing the main plaza!!



Pictures of the Jesuit Crypt that is now under the busy downtown streets. It was destroyed in the 1800s to make room for a road, then rediscovered in 1989 when the phone company was laying wires. It is really cool and nowdays serves as a museum and cultural center (art gallery, small concert hall, etc.).



Depressing run-down concrete square that just smacks of something one of Argentina´s dictators built, probably in the 1970s. It was deserted, except for a few booths selling souvenirs and textile products. It was truly a study of the grotesque.


Dog asleep in main squre with a mass of pigeon feathers scattered around it. Methinks someone is napping after tucking in to a meal of twitching delights...



Ride at an amusement park in the downtown park. The whole park was really cute, except for this ride. Basically it was a gigantic circle and you sit inside it, with no straps or restraints. It then tilts at an angle and thrashes up and down, back and forth, slowly rotating. We couldn´t stop laughing at it when we heard the metallic heaving and screams.



Pics from another really cool hotel we stayed at in Córdoba. It was more of a tourist-attraction hotel with personal garages and stuff. We were really glad that we came here. VERY nice and super-fancy, with room service, too!



Pictures from an interesting church built in the 1920s. It is missing one of its steeples on purpose - to remind us that, unlike God, humans are imperfect. It had multi-colored stone columns in front and gargoyles and other interesting things carved inside. The outer columns and carvings included all sorts of animals. It sort of reminded me of the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, but on a smaller and less-crazy scale.


We are now off to Uruguay for the day! We missed the first ferry (blow) but will be leaving shortly to spend about 7ish hours there in the town of Colonia. Expect an update on that and on BUENOS AIRES in the next few days!!!

Keep the posts coming!!! :)

-- Chris

STILL ALIVE!!! ...and Blog Contest #1 winner...

We´ve had a busy few days since the transfer to Argentina, but never fear - we´re still alive! Machu Picchu pictures are still coming, but will not be updated today. Sean is busily cranking out the blog post for the past few days since coming to Argentina, so I thought I´d make my own little post to announce that the winner of our first Blog Contest (about two weeks ago!) is none other than MRS. CAROL OWENS!!! (In case you forgot what the first blog contest was, here is the link to it: http://chrisandsean.blogspot.com/2008/06/blog-contest-1.html .) We took the pictures at an ancient burial site in Nazca. The area is so dry that the things that were buried there two thousand years ago have remained in decent condition. Looters tore up the place over the years and now it´s a protected site with some recreations of the burial pits, complete with skeletons and fabrics as they were found (all the valuables had been stolen years ago). The most bizarre aspect of the place was that it was still littered with human bones! Walking along the paths in the sand, we saw hundreds of bone fragments all over the place - some very close to the path. Also just kind of jutting up from the sand was llama wool used in the Nazca´s weavings, and sections of their cloth. It would just sort of blow lazily in the wind across the path. It´s kind of in the middle of nowhere and has not been tended to meticulously. It´s just kind of been left in its natural state, aside from the paths and recreations. As we walked we came upon so many bone fragments and cloth strips that we eventually decided to take pictures of them and make it the first blog contest.

Anyway, I´ll try to put a few pictures of the site up on here tomorrow or the day after so you can all see what a desert covered in human bones looks like. It was truly surreal. For more information on the site, read this article: http://www.vivatravelguides.com/south-america/peru/peru-articles/cementerio-de-chauchilla/ .

Congratulations, Mrs. Owens!!! You will win a Perú trinket for your correct response!!! :)

Tomorrow is the transfer from Córdoba, where we are now, to BUENOS AIRES!!! There has also been talk of adding a third country to our adventures before the return home: URUGUAY. More details coming soon!!!

Much love,
Chris

We´re not dead yet...

Sorry for the lack of posts. Several people have already emailed wondering if we´re still alive. Things have just been rather crazy these last few days as we´ve moved from Peru through part of Argentina, but we´re working on several posts as I type.


When last we wrote, we were in Ollantaytambo, Peru for filming of the next Indiana Jones film. From there, we made our way by bus back to Cusco and caught a flight back to Lima. After several hours of delays, we finally flew a red-eye from Lima to Santiago, Chile. In our original plans, we were going to spend a few days in Santiago, but Chile requires residents of the U.S. to pay $130.00 just to enter the country as payback for the U.S. charging Chilean citizens a comparable amount for tourist visas. Thus, rather than blow that much money just to set foot outside the airport, we caught a third flight straight to Mendoza, Argentina. It was an awesome 48 hours.

On the roof of Mendoza´s city hall overlooking the city.

Mendoza is in the heart of Argentinean wine country. Argentina is now the 5th largest producer of wine in the world, with almost half a million acres of vineyards, 70% of which are in the Mendoza region. After a day spent recovering from the jump from Peru we spent a day seeing the various cultural sites in Mendoza city, whic included a run down amusement park (the use of the word "amusement" is pretty generous) called the Happy Boy Fun Park and a snake house dubbed the local aquarium, which one of our guidebooks accurately described as an "underwater freak show" that doesn´t appear to have changed at all since its opening in 1945.

Note the ride is powered by nothing more than an electric fan.

In what appears to be a whimsical display of copyright infringement, Prince Charming is sporting a South American style mustache and Snow White is cross-eyed.

A shot from the opening credits of our upcoming sitcom. It´s Will & Grace meets The Odd Couple. Look for it this fall.

The next two days we visited a few vineyards (called "bodegas" in South America), including one which had an interesting collection of antique wine making equipment and paraphernalia. By the end of it, we´d sampled (and purchased) some wonderful, wonderful wine for next to nothing, several bottles of which we now have safely stashed in our packs.

It´s winter down here, so the vineyards aren´t terribly lush and green. We´ve been assured that it´s breathtaking in the summer.

An antique barrel from Bodega La Rural.

Barrel storage at Bodega Familia Zuccardi.

The bottle cellar at Bodega Norton, with room for 500,000 bottles.

From Mendoza, we took an overnight bus to Cordoba. That´s where we are now, so stay tuned.

-Sean

INDIANA JONES PHOTO SHOOT

So yesterday we left Machu Picchu (update on that coming soon) and returned to Ollantaytambo for a few hours. It is a quaint, small town with a really famous Incan fortress on the cliffs above the city and I really wanted to see it. It is pretty impressive, as you can see from the picture to the left.
















We climbed the 16 terraces to get to the top and pretty much had the site to ourselves. It was then that I realized that it sort of looked... almost... fake. Too perfect, too "archeological" to be true. It had the look of a Hollywood movie set - something that would be constructed on one of the studio back lots for the next big blockbuster. Almost like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, like the production stills and behind-the-scenes pics of the actors on set used to promote an upcoming film, such as the ones included here.



















The photo shoot that followed after this realization needs no additional introduction. Enjoy the pictures and captions that follow!! Click the pics to get the full-sized versions - I had to enlarge them and lower the quality to make the blog layout work, but when you click them the quality is much better and they´re bigger!





INDIANA JONES V PHOTO SHOOT


SCREEN CAPTURE SHOTS




























































Escape from the temple with the Stone of Light in hand after triggering a booby trap, seconds before the spikes and blades shoot up from the ground.



























Attempting to unlock the sacred niche using the stones he found by deciphering the temple´s glyphs.

Discovery of human skeletal remains. There may be traps ahead just like the one that killed this sorry bastard.























Spying on the villians who´ve come to loot the place for their own personal gain and/or evil plans.


















































Scenes from the finale escape sequence (after the villians have died due to their own selfishness), as the entire complex collapses and is swallowed up by the earth.



PROMO SHOTS

BEHIND THE SCENES
































Teak taking in the awesome set constructed by the Universal design team.































Reginald, preparing himself on day one of the shoot of the critically acclaimed staircase chase sequence. Set designer María Saavedra can be seen in the background, giving crew members some last minute directives.





































Crew adjusting the hidden snap-release spikes for a chase scene to take place early on in the film.































Teak taking a break during the temple escape shoot.




























Reginald reviews his lines during rehearsal for the dramatic double-cross reveal and pulley scene.
































Reginald and Teak going over the next day´s schedule before heading off to their trailers.

Moray, Salineras, Urubamba, and Ollantaytambo

The day before yesterday we transferred from Cuzco to Urubamba, a WRETCHED little town that is the first step into the Sacred Valley of the Inca. I had read varied reviews of the town, and wasn´t sure what to expect. It SUCKED. Tons of industrial stuff and really nothing else. And our taxi-motoscooter driver tried to scam us on fare. Nice. Also, the two kind of interesting-sounding restaurants we chose for dinner were inexplicably closed. Awesome. However, it´s a necessary transit hub and jumping-off point to Moray and Salineras, so we really didn´t have a choice in going. The hostel we stayed in was really nice, but the people, and the town itself, had no character and were kind of depressing. Moray and Salineras, however, ROCKED!!!

I recommend clicking the pics of Moray and Salineras in order to best appreciate them. Salineras especially is mind-blowingly intricate!

We hired a taxi for the afternoon to take us to the two sites, both of which were build by the Inca and are pleasantly off the beaten path. Salineras was our first stop. It is a shockingly huge series of "salt pans" - big pools - through which the waters of a salt water spring flow. The Inca discovered that if they collected the water from this spring in pools (the salt pans), the water would evaporate and pure salt and other minerals would remain that could be harvested for use. They constructed about three THOUSAND salt pans on a cliffside, all connected by little channels that can be easily blocked, obstructing the waters to other pools. The sight is amazing and probably one of the most unique and awe-inspiring things I´ve ever seen. For a small entrance fee visitors can walk along the top ridge of pans, and Sean and I had a blast doing it! Pictures don´t do the scale of this site justice.

After the visit to the Salineras site, we were off to Moray, about 45 minutes away. Moray is the site of what is considered to be an Incan agricultural laboratory. They constructed three "coloseums" into the ground, with many terraced levels in each one. Each level had its

own micro-climate, in which different kinds of crops could be grown and developed. The largest of the three coloseums is still in use. The site was almost completely deserted and it was really cool to be in such a strange place all alone. I especially liked the Indiana Jones-esque stairs sticking out of the terrace walls, which we had to use to get to the bottom and back up again. Again, a truly unique sight and something I´ll never forget!

We were ecstatic to get the heck out of Urubamba and on to Ollantaytambo, where we spent a relaxing day catching up on emails and walking through the old town. We will return there tomorrow and tour the Incan fortress in the mountains overlooking the town. It is the last town that still retains the original Incan street layout, and it had a lot of fun character! While there, we also fulfilled one of my trip goals......we ate cuy. Cuy is a common traditional Andean dish - FRIED or ROASTED GUINEA PIG. The g-

pigs are kept in a pen at the restaurant and (as I found out after I ate it) are killed to order. It is gutted and fried in several differnt oils and differnt temperatures and then served whole - head, claws and all. I knew going in to this trip that I wanted to try it - it is cultural, after all. I shared the cuy with Sean and he shared his alpaca steak with me. It tasted like chicken, but was VERY difficult for us to eat, since it still kind of looks like a guinea pig! As Sean pointed out, the problem is all in the presentation. The g-pig is literally just slapped down on the plate over a few french fries. Definitely a meal to remember.

That´s all for now. Tomorrow or the day after we will post an entry on where we went today............

-- Chris