Home!

We have been home for about two weeks now, haven’t moved back into our house as of yet, and are still sort of travelling.  In fact I am in Boston right now visiting with my friend Tony.

Our flight back was long but uneventful, amazingly on time for all but the last leg and that arrived on time.  Congratulations to TACA for this, especially considering that we had no more than 30 minutes between flights in both Costa Rica and El Salvador on our trip from Quito (Ecuador) back to San Francisco.  Entering the US was a breeze,  no hard questions, no going through the luggage and so on.  A blessing since it was 2am.  TACA is a great airline to travel with, all new planes, always on time (in our experience with 6 flights), frequently the cheapest tickets, well-sorted web site…need I say more? Fly TACA.

We spent the rest of the night with Darcie’s family in Millbrae, got the car battery charged and went out for our first American meal, a GIANT (even by US standards) and delicious breakfast.  I had eggs and bacon (cooked soft not crispy as is the usual US way) with home fries.  Sounds reasonable until you find out it also comes with two normal size pancakes as well!!!  I couldn’t quite finish, lol.

The rest of the day was spent back in Oakland getting new phones (same old numbers), visiting our house and spending a few hours with friends, drinking lovely IPA’s (India Pale Ale) until it was time to meet up with our friend Miekle who had kindly offered to put us up in his lovely apartment right on the Bay in Alameda.

The following day we went to the bank to let them know we were back in the US and to put a hold on any new charges that might occur from places like Peru or Ecuador etc (although nothing of the sort had occurred during our travels) and to change the various financial arrangements we had made in our absence.  We also went to the gym and re-started our membership and immediately went for a spin-flogging with Jackie.  We have been going to the gym every day since which has been good after 7 or 8 months of absence.  Now all we have to do is get back into yoga although I think I need a job first since all this exercise costs money (damn!).

Overall we would say our favorite countries were Peru and Mexico with Peru edging out Mexico for top place for Darcie but she can’t say why.  Perhaps it is because our Spanish was better by the time we got to Peru or maybe because the food was more to her liking than in Mexico and then again it could have been that we spent more time traveling and doing things in Peru whereas in Mexico all we did mostly was study Spanish.  Probably it is some combination of the three.

Both Mexico and Peru offer so much, a wealth of archeology, lovely people, great food, amazing views…  They are places that can’t really be seen in a month or two, they really need a year dedicated to each otherwise you are scrambling from one place to the next and not really absorbing the local flavors.  It is possible, of course, to come as a tourist and have a great time and this is what we will have to do on our next visits since it is unlikely that we will be able to repeat this sabbatical trip any time soon (poverty being the main reason). 

We want to go back to Oaxaca and spend some time travelling around there since we really spent the whole month in our language school and didn’t get out much to see the local area.  Mexico in general is so huge and has so much that a lifetime of visits wouldn’t be enough (as with most countries when you get right down to it).  Peru is mostly unexplored for us, we only had the time to go to Lima, Arequipa and Cusco and the associated sites nearby.  Ecuador got short changed by us as we were at the end of our trip and eagerly anticipating both the Galapagos cruise and our return to California.  It is not high on our list of places to go although that has more to do with Quito being a pit I think.  We had so many people extol the virtues of Argentina, Chile and Brazil that we will be putting them on the list for places to visit next time we have a chunk of time and money. 

Our challenge for now is to keep practicing our Spanish.  And I need a job…lol