Magic Water Circuit- Day 1 in Lima

July 2, 2015

Today was day number 1!  I rode a llama.

We found me a SIM card and figured out how to call between our phones, since Shay still has a US number.  I found a little panadería to buy a hot chicken empanada at, and we didn't get completely lost.  It was a balmy overcast day and was lovely.  After a nap in the afternoon, we headed back out to visit the Parque de la Reserva, which has the largest collection of fountains in the world.  It was an incredible show with 13 fuentes (fountains), some interactive, all of them lit up with colored lights.

Fuente Arco Iris (Rainbow Fountain)

Finally got the timing on this one right

Fuente de la Armonía

Made of four pipes with directional spouts turning it into a pyramid

Fuente Tangüis

This one focused on the four flower fountains, which changed color and shape.  I think Tangüis (Tangwees) was some sort of military personage though, since he got his name on the building behind the fountain and a statue of himself on a horse.

Random teapot fountain, not one of the 13.  Just water coming out of topiary.

Fuente de la Cúpula Visitable

Many fountains had spouts shooting in the air and the water would land in a grate, meaning there wasn't too much splash from it

Fuente Mágica

The grand one when you first enter the main part of the park.  There is a tunnel that takes you under a street separating the two parts of the park. so we did it slightly out of order.  This fountain reminded me of the one at the Seattle Center, it would change height and shape, spouts would shoot up or out, sometimes it was colored up with lights.  The center one was 80m high.  It was beautiful.

There were smaller fountains all around the edge with little figures sitting near them

Fuente de la Fantasía

This one was one of my two favorites.  It was 120m long, 20m high, and was a light show projected on water, as the water was choreographed to it, changing all the time.  We got there at just the right time as the big show was happening, I got some videos of it.  Hopefully they work, if not expect youtube links later.  The music was hilarious to us, it ranged from traditional Peruvian to 90s American pop.  We got there as some crazy techno was playing and sat down.

UPDATE! YouTube links below each video just in case.

This one starts right after 'We Will Rock You' played

https://youtu.be/J3ACO80oIdI

And then some Backstreet Boys 'I Want It That Way'

https://youtu.be/iD22siIIRSE

https://youtu.be/9xeCBiBMfWo

Other songs included El Condor Pasa, Abbas Waterloo, Beatles I Wanna Hold Your Hand, One of the John Williams themes from Star Wars or Indiana Jones or something (we both recognized it but couldn't place the movie, it was a lesser theme.  Don't worry, I know both those main themes) and it ended with the Halleluja Chorus.  It was like Vegas but different.

Fuente de la Ilusión

nighttime selfie!

Fuente del Túnel de las sorpresas

This one was a tunel of water shooting up and into a grate on the other side 35m long.  I wondered how many friends pushed their other friends sideways through the water.  It would have left you insta-soaked.

Fuente del Laberinto del Ensueño

This one was my other favorite.  Interactive maze of concentric circles with 5 jets around the edge shooting up and in, and the circles were separated by jets also.  They were different patterns and heights at different times, randomly.  So you had to try to make it through the maze without getting wet as the fountain would start up randomly.  We saw a couple people time it wrong and get totally soaked.

Video of me and Shay making it out of the maze

Fuente de la Vida

Fuente de las Tradiciones

The figures in the fountain were indiginous figures

Fuente del Río de los Deseos

This one was under construction and boring.  I think when it's operational there are button stations to control each of the little burble fountains, if it's burbling, being a big plume, what color, etc.  It had a house thing with a river going all the way around it with little waterfalls, so it was still kinda pretty.

Fuente de los Niños

This one had 36 grate squares that shot water, had water land on it, etc.  All lit up and changing, it was another you could play in.  I think you'd get much wetter much faster with this one.  There was a little button pad, though we never fully determined if the buttons did control anything, or if we just pressed them when the fountain was changing on its own.

We found the terribly marked tunnel under the street this time

World record certificate for the largest fountain place.

Then to end off the night we went to a little Bohemian Pub two blocks from the park and had pisco sours, which Peru is known for and a beer to split.  It was a lovely ending to a lovely day.

On the plane right from Florida to Lima I sat next to two travelers from Pittsburg.  At the end the guy told me I was a lovely travel mate, and if their talking bird could meet me, he would like me a lot.  I took it as the higest compliment.

Flying South for the Winter

It's been 1 year and 350 days plus some random hours (as of March 13th) since I returned from 3 months studying abroad in Quito, Ecuador.  I'm so excited and scared to announce that I have purchased a one-way plane ticket to Lima, Peru for June 30th.  I'm going back!

I'll be traveling for a yet-undetermined amount of time in South America and maybe Central America, the first while with my friend Shay from college.  We'll be flying into Peru and then working our way up through Ecuador and Columbia.  I have friends to go see in Ecuador from my study abroad, and three of the gals on my trip two years ago are teaching English in Bogota, so we will have contacts there too.  Both Shay and I have Machu Picchu on our bucket lists, so Peru made the cut also. We plan to do what's called WOOFing, working on organic farms in exchange for room and board, making travel a lot cheaper than a hostel each night, though there will be some of that too.

That will take us through September until she has to return for school in the fall, and then I'll take off on my own, hopefully working my way up through Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica etc. in Central America.  I might have other friends meeting me for the second half of the trip, details yet to be worked out.

Basically I'm going to go see the world for a bit, live in other countries and cultures, and maybe discover something about myself along the way, since that's supposed to happen on trips like this.  I am beyond excited, kind of scared, and flip-flopping between 'I"ve got so much time to plan more details'  and 'HOLY COW I LEAVE LIKE TOMORROW WHY DON'T I HAVE ANYTHING PLANNED'.  Hopefully I'll settle on a happy medium sometime before the end of June.

I'm going to keep a blog again while I'm down there so folks can stay updated on my adventures and misadventures.  I decided to keep using this one made for my study-abroad two years ago so 1. I don't have to figure out making a whole new blog and 2. Those of you I didn't know two years ago can read all about my last adventure if the mood strikes you.

This will probably be all the posting until I leave, so stay tuned.

Now I've got to go get my yellow fever vaccine and buy some travel underwear and a lot of sunscreen.

Here's a llama picture since pictures improve blogs.  Soon that'll be me in the picture.

Wait, no guys.  This one is way better.

Panoramas

Here you have it, a collection of panoramas that I finally stitched together, using MS Paint no less.

(Edit on Feb 25, 2015: This is the only panorama I got stitched apparently, but I'll post it anyway.  I still think it's cool)

Walking home from the botanical garden, this is what Pichincha had to offer.  This picture is looking through La Carolina, and I loved the fact that there was bright on both sides of the volcano and utter storm up top.

Chalk + harness + shoes + Ecuador = happiness

I want to preface this post by giving a big shout-out of thanks to Matt Axling and Bob Warner.  They were the guys that taught me to climb, belay, set and clean routes, lead climb and lead belay, and without them I wouldn't be here today, climbing with people I've just met in a foreign country.  I've paused more than once while climbing on my own to think how lucky I am to have been given the skill set needed for it.  So thanks Matt and Bob, this one's for you.

And now for the main event.

Before heading to Ecuador, I did a little research on the internet to see if there was any rock climbing in the area.  While info was a little scarce, I did find a climbing gym in Quito, and enough about other places nearby that I figured it'd be worth my while to bring my shoes and chalk, and get a harness.  It has been sooo worth it.  Because what looked kind of cool online, turned out to be this:

Yes, it really is as epic as it looks.

This is the Rocodromo, an outdoor gym with an entrance fee of only $3.  It has bouldering and sport climbing.  There is a bouldering area, as well as what I think of as 'the ruins' seen in the front of the picture above, which is a structure made of cemented together rocks.  It has bars at the top to set top-ropes, but I prefer to boulder around the base of it.  Anna and I have the goal of completing the traverse before we leave Ecuador, a goal set the first day we were there.  I think I've got about 75% of it, but there are some problem spots.  It tears up your hands in a good way.

The bouldering area, no routes marked.

View through the center of the ruins

Anna working on the traverse around the ruins

Since neither of us have a rope or draws, but both wanted to get out to real rocks outside the city, we had to make friends.  We found a group of four, Matt (Ecuador and Ohio), Cody (Vancouver, BC), Liv (Australia) and Ale (Ecuador) on our second time there.  Matt knew how to lead belay, so with a (slightly sketchy) rented rope from the gym I did some lead climbing.  My favorite route is on the corner of the pinnacle, and involves a legit head-jam, then a hard pull-down to get past an overhang.

The bottom of the route included some wall-hugging on occasion if there were no holds handy.  Matt is belaying me.

Legit head-jam.

All upper-body to get past the overhang.  I kinda felt like a boss.

So we've been going to the Rocodromo in the mornings about once a week so far.  Then over Carnaval in a bar in Baños, I happened to meet a couple rock climbers who lived in Quito.  An exchange of numbers happened, and this week Anna and I went with my friend Fernando 15 minutes walking outside of Quito, where we found this, Las Canteras de Cumbayá.

The guy climbing was nuts, free-climbing like a monkey.

We spent all morning bouldering and top roping on some pretty sweet chunks of rock.  It also had a spec-tac-ular view of Quito.  I saw La Iglesia de Guapulo from the other side (previously seen in this post) with a river and green type things in the foreground and the skyscrapers of Quito in the background on the hill.  Cumbayá was visible to the East.

The view back towards Quito

 I toasted my shoulders a little (right before heading off to the beach...), but it was worth it.  It was so much fun to get out of the city and climb some real rocks with some good friends.

Anna on one of the crack climbs, soloing like a boss.

Really, can you imagine anything more relaxing than this?  Rocks to climb and to sunbathe on top of?

Fernando, Anna, and I.  Self-timers are awesome, even if they are hard to balance sometimes.

Oh, also.  This is part of the super-sketchy ladder we had to climb down and then back up to get to the Canteras.  Those are kind of steps you are looking at, there used to be more boards I think...  There was one part where you had to step over where the step used to be, but has since ceased to exist.  Viva Ecuador.

And now after pressing 'post' for this blog, I'm off to climb one last time.  The traverse is going down.  This girl isn't taking no for an answer.