Staying active in Chambana

We had signed up for the Chicago Marathon back in the spring… we figured, what better way to tour the city than on foot. Anu has only seen a small part of Chi town, and we probably won’t make it out there again till the marathon weekend. We are excited to be a part of such a prestigious event. The only problem is, with traveling and moving we are not quite where we should be with training. The marathon is on October 22, and we just started running two weeks ago. So our training program is cut short to 2 months instead of the ideal 4 – 5 months. Hopefully we’ll be able to catch up without getting hurt. We have to be careful not to overdo the runs, which can cause injury, but at the same time build up the strength quickly… tricky!

We found a running group here called the Second Wind Running Club and went on a long run with them this past weekend. We are happy to find such a group here, however after having experienced SDTC’s training program and being with the awesome people over there including Coach Paul and Coach Joe it is a little disappointing. We miss the awesome organization, beautiful courses and overall good cheer and camaraderie we had there! Anyway, Anu ran about 10 and Manish managed to get lost and did about 18. We’ll post details of our training as we progress so we stay motivated.

Also, Manish joined the Illinois Bike Racing Club and is officially the oldest member of the club. The club board seems to be very dedicated group of college students and the first ride with them through the cornfields was awesome!

We’re taking full advantage of the summer, trying to get out as much fun as possible before the weather changes. We go out to hit volleyball around, throw frisbee, stroll around the campus and take it all in.

We’re home!

We have been in Champaign about two weeks now, and we’re doing our best to make ourselves feel at home. The first shock we got was when we actually saw our apartment… it’s so tiny. Guess that’s what you get for renting a place without actually seeing it. The description and pictures online looked so much better. But we did our best to fit all our things into the space we have by doing some clever engineering. Bed raised on concrete blocks frees up a lot of space for storage! Now it’s starting to feel like real home as we’ve added a lot of personal touches.

The location of our place is great though, we are right outside the campus and close to almost everything. Manish’s bldg is just 5 minutes walk… hm… maybe it’s not such a good thing b/c he’s been spending a lot of time there We barely use our car here, which is a huge change from LA living. There’s even a great international market just down the block from us.

Something you can’t miss driving on the highway and just outside of town are the cornfields! Corn, corn everywhere… can’t miss ‘em. They’re really beautiful right now, mostly green and golden… and they spread out as far the eye can see. We went to a BBQ last Friday to a professor’s house, and his beautiful house was located smack in the middle of cornfields. It was quite eerie (or peaceful according to Manish) at night with a silence that we’re not accustomed to. It was awesome to see all the fireflies flying around in the dark.

So guess what they have in a town surrounded by corn – a festival to celebrate them. We went to the sweet corn festival last weekend with D and M and it was fun overall. The corn was yummy, however, we heard that they were actually from CO. Huh! So many cornfields and they have to import edible corn for a showcase festival. Apparently the corn they grow around here are mostly feed corn… go figure.

Manish has started school and has two classes to TA. He is actually enjoying it and says he is “relearning a lot”. Looks like the student life is agreeing with him so far.

Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa and…. Illinois!

After CO our plan was to pretty much drive directly to our destination with short stops for anything that came up. From Rocky Mtn Park we drove northward into Wyoming. While we were crossing the state line into Wyoming, it started to rain and we saw an incredible rainbow. We took a detour to chase the spectacular rainbow and enjoy it. It was so beautiful over the golden summer fields of WY which could be considered a classic American landscape.

We then drove through WY and Nebraska for 3-4 hours on the and reached the town of North Platte which is basically a highway town on the 80. Here we camped at a private campsite right by the freeway for the night and decided to get out of there early in the morning. Manish was in one of his “anxious” moods and Anu could sense that he just wanted to get to Urbana-Champaign. So by the time Anu woke up, Manish was showered and champing at the bit. After this we drove pretty much non stop to Champaign (about 760 miles) theough Iowa with stops for food, gas, and photographs. We reached Champaign at about 9:30 pm on August 14, 2006, a day ahead of schedule.

Rocky Mountain High…

Colorado lived up to its name. Both of us had never really visited Colorado extensively and this was a great first trip. If the whole state of Utah be called a national park (see our earlier post) the entire state of Colorado should be called a national forest. In fact several parts of the I-70 are within a national forest. It was great driving on a green mountainous highway. We passed by Vail which indeed is beautiful and swanky. The condos there looked like they belonged to movie stars. Another curious thing (very exciting for us) was that every two miles there was an exit for a ski area. Some of these were very famous resorts such as Copper Mountain and Breckenridge and many we had never heard of before.

We decided to call the rangers at Rocky Mountain National park to decide what the best way would be for us to get into the park from the west and they suggested that we take CO 40 to Granby and then take CO 34 into the west entrance of the park. We went as far as Winterpark, CO (on the way to Granby) that day and the drive was breathtaking going over a high pass and descending into a wooded area. Winterpark as the name implies is a ski resort but it is right by a lake and very close to forests so it is bustling in the summer as well. Here we decided to splurge and stayed in a nice lodge right by the lake. In the morning we were pleasantly surprised to see everybody on bikes or engaged in some form of physical activity. CO is a place we might consider moving some day!

We drove into Rocky Mountain National Park in the morning and it was beautiful, just as we entered the park a herd of deer darted in front of us crossing the road. It was green as mountains in So Cal never are. We stopped by at some view points and made our way to the visitor center. Here again we hiked up to a viewpoint. Manish was not feeling to well so we decided to get out of the park and hit the road again. The park was very crowded and it seems like to see the real beauty some long hikes are the way to go. We will return!

The haunted campground

After dinner we headed back to the campground, and found that it had another set of occupants. In the dark the campground looked eerie and somewhat ominous. Anu was a little freaked when she saw that the rain fly strap (on the tent) was unstrapped again, something she had corrected the night before. She remarked that this must be the act of some ghost as she had made sure this was fixed. Manish freaked Anu out by pointing out that the trees that populated the site were “Pipal trees” (Bo trees, Ficus religiosa) which in India is supposed to be the abode of unsatisfied spirits that do not make it to their final resting place.

During the night Anu had morbid fantasies of the three girls at the other campsite, who had eagerly offered us their flashlights, coming over and massacring us. She was a little unsettled by the fact that they did not take campground number one which we had chosen early that evening but had not left any evidence of returning, and had strategically chosen number 2, in effect setting a trap for us. After tossing and turning for what seemed like an eternity, listening to these seemingly happy spirits, Anu decided that there was a distinctively evil timbre to their laughter. In the middle of the night she woke up to what seemed like the smell of the pit toilet and was horrified at the prospect of the evil spirits, which are known to trouble gentler souls this way. After a restless night, morning came and Anu could finally gather enough courage to look outside the tent, she was taken back an panicked as the tents of the evil spirits was gone and she hurriedly woke the husband up. The husband opened his side of the tent and showed Anu that the evil camp was still there and profusely apologized for an unusually gassy night!

Hoodoos, arches and canyons

Bryce itself was amazing at first light with different shades of red and the interesting formations (hoodoos) evoking a Martian landscape. We were so excited to be there, we practically ran down the trail that lead to the bottom of the canyon and gave us a great view of the hoodoos from below.

  

After reaching Arches National Park we decided to find a place to stay before exploring the park. We found an isolated campsite surrounded by majestic red mountains next to the Colorado River, off the town of Moab and decided to return here.

In Arches we did a sunset hike to the Delicate Arch which is on the Utah license plate. As we reached the trailhead we heard a thunderstorm coming on. Foolishly and dangerously we decided to push on this 3 mile tough hike. We practically ran up the trail, panting, set on outrunning the storm. We barely made it to the arch and took some pictures when the thunderstorm moved in, with gusts of wind, with which Anu felt like she was going to get blown away. We headed back through some surreal slickrock landscape. We were pretty wet, but enjoyed the hike nevertheless.

Next morning we did a short hike to the Landscape Arch which draws visitors because of its unbelievable span. It is as wide as a football field! After the hike we headed to Canyonlands Nat’l Park which is famous for its great canyons carved the the Green and Colorado rivers. We wish we had more time to spend there, but we had to keep driving in order to make it to Colorado for that night’s stay.

Utah National Park

The entire state of Utah should be a National Park!  This was our conclusion after driving through the state and visiting Zion NP, Cedar Breaks NM, Bryce Canyon NP, Arches NP and Canyonlands NP.  These parks are strikingly magnificent and otherworldly.  However, just driving on some of the backroads (U14 and U89) and interstate 70 is an amazing experience with interesting rock formations everywhere and viewpoints every few miles.

Duckcreek Village, where we camped the first night is a beautiful area but it seems to be that real estate agents have taken over this once sleepy village!  We left early morning for Bryce to catch the sunrise and were surprised at how many deer we saw by the side of the road.

California – Nevada – Arizona – Utah

So we are finally on the road! Our destination for today was Duck Creek Village, Utah. Anu has fond memories of this place from her trip to Utah 5 years ago.

We made good time after we left from S & R’s place in Rancho Cucamonga, zoomed past the barren deserts, rocky mountains, Vegas with its continuous construction projects, short strip of AZ, and reached Utah. This is the only the second time Manish has been to Utah and he is really excited about the scenery. We made a brief stopover at the Kolob Canyon region of Zion National Park and also the Cedar Breaks National Monument. Manish could not stop clicking (with the camera) at the red rocks and Anu was like – wait till you see Bryce (where we will go tomorrow).

 

 

We reached Duck Creek Village, a small a one street village. But the setting is beautiful. We got a campsite close to a lake and found a restaurant (Pinewoods Resort) – the only one serving a full dinner after 7 pm. Surprisingly, this place has free internet and we decided to do what we have become used to, blogging!

Feeling like a tourist in LA

We already feel that LA is a destination rater than home for us. We even took pictures of the LAX sign (imagine that!) as we walked around town with the camera on Sunday. Anybody looking at us would never imagine we actually live here. Manish is working till tomorrow and Anu is enjoying the nice digs offered by Marriot et al. She even had a free manicure yesterday and was complaining that they do not have free pedicures! This after our myriad shared stinking bathroom experiences!

Back in LA – not for long

Figured out the flickr problem, looks like we do need to go pro in order to see more than 200 photos – bummer!

Now that we’re back in LA and Manish working a few days, I’m left with planning our next trip. Looks like the best route from CA to IL would be through Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and then Illinois. We have about 6 days for the drive, and want to cover as many National Parks and cool places as possible. Let me know if any of you have any thoughts on where all to stop. Here is what I was thinking:

Day 1 - Drive straight to Duck Creek Village, UT (450 miles) with a short stop at Cedar Breaks Nat’l Monument which is on the way

Day 2 – Spend some time at Duck Creek, and cover any or all of the following National Parks depending on how much time it will take: Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Arches and stay around Arches Nat’l Park (300 miles). Which one is better? Canyonlands or Arches?

Day 3 - Drive to Denver (350 miles) and stay around there

Day 4 - Drive early morning to Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park, spend a day in the park and stay around there (65 miles)

Day 5 - Drive from Rocky Mtn to middle of Kansas (500 miles or more)

Day 6 - Reach destination! (500 miles or less)

Feel free to comment on our itinerary or suggest a better plan!

More pictures are up and need help with flickr!

We’ve posted more pictures from Ecuador and Costa Rica on flickr, so check them out through the side bar.  If you are familiar with flickr I need some help – when I uploaded the recent pictures the older ones disappered.  Is there a limit on how many pictures you are allowed to have with a regular account?  Do I need to go pro to keep more than 200 photos?  Are my old photos gone or are they archived somewhere?  Help!

We are caught up!

Our blog is finally up to date! We are heading to San Jose in an hour, and back to LA tomorrow All good things must come to an end, sadly.

Our private waterfalls

We did not want to do any more organized tours, so we decided to pack up some things and go on a hike to the San Luis waterfalls. We had no idea how far it was, we only knew that we needed six hours to do the roundtrip. The 6 hours was from a point where the bus would drop you off, but the bus was not due for another couple of hours. So we decided to hike the whole way. It turned out to be quite far, we walked about 20 kms (12 miles) that day. However, we saw a lot of birds, butterflies (including the extremely difficult to photograph Morphos), some small animals, and many varieties of plants and trees.

The waterfalls were definitely worth the long trek. It was deserted and spectacular. It must’ve been at least a 1000 ft crashing into an inviting pool of clear water. It was refreshing to be in the water, and we had a little picnic before heading back.

Me Tarzan you Jane

One of the unique experiences offered in Costa Rica is ziplining. This is where cables are strung between trees over the canopy of the forest and people click in using pulleys and zip from one part of the forest to another. It is an adrenaline pumping experience which we were looking forward to inspite of the price tag ($40 pp). Both of us were a little nervous at first, but we really enjoyed it after the first line. We also had a rappel descent which was more like a free fall from a high tree and many people were did not realize what they had done until afterwards when they were looking at others coming down. The guides accomplished this by hurrying people through and not letting them think too much about it. There were a lot of screams and all in all in was very entertaining to watch as well.

The other hairy part of the adventure was the “tarzan swing” where you got on to an ~30 ft platform and tied into a line and pushed into the forest to swing like Tarzan. Everybody’s face was flushed with excitement when we were done. The ages of the adventurers ranged from 5 to maybe around 60 in our group.

Cloud forest in Santa Elena

We took the guided tour at the cloud forest reserve in Santa Elena. Since we had such a great experience at the merely untouched rainforest in Ecuador, this was somewhat of a let down. We did not see many birds or animals as we were hoping to. It had a theme park vibe to it.

 
Of course, there are a lot of good aspects to this secondary cloudforest which is a unique experiment in preserving lost ecosystems. The land was clear cut for farming until 1977, after which a decision was made by the local populace to regrow the forest so this forest was allowed to grow and in 200 years this will turn into a primary forest when all the flora and fauna of the existing primary forest gets transferred here through natural processes such as pollination and migration. The local people are gainfully employed by the booming tourism created by the forest and hence the pressure to cultivate the land is off.

After this non-exciting morning we really wanted to go back to Tamarindo, but again, the poor bus system and our short stay in Costa Rica did not allow this.

Monteverde

We left bright and early (3:30am) to head to the area known for its cloud forests, Monteverde and Santa Elena.  We had tried to get tickets for the bus the day before, but the agent had shut down the office two hours before the official closing time because it might have been interfering with his pura vida.  Apparently this happens a lot and we faced it a couple of times.  We also had such a hard time figuring out how to take the public buses to Monterverde as everyone was steering us towards the much more expensive option of luxury Grayline bus.  We finally had to look up a website and none of the tourist information centers had the info or were willing to give out what we found on this useful site.

Since we couldn’t secure a ticket and an assigned seat, we had to stand up most of the  4 hours ride as people with tickets got on the bus on the way.  After waiting two hours for a transfer, we finally reached Monteverde at 11 am.

¡Pura Vida!

Pura vida which literally translates to pure life is a tico (Costa Rican) expression which shows the search for pure, most hassle free existence.  The ticos use this expression to greet each other when people see each other enjoying the good life.

  

Pura vida is what we experienced in Playa Tamarindo.  The town itself is becoming more and more touristy but once we got settled in and headed to the beach we felt wonderful!  We were on the beach two full (yet short) days surfing, boogie boarding, and just hanging out.  We even got to play some beach volleyball with the locals.  The surf was great yet mellow and the sunsets were outstanding.  We were a little afraid we would spend too much time inside since it is the rainy season, but it seems to work like clockwork with clouds moving in and out within a few hours in the afternoon.

   

We  found a great place to eat called Frutas Tropicales next to our very basic accommodation of four walls and tin roof.  This place served great food for reasonable prices. Our favorite dish there was the local food of Casados, which is a delicious, simple plate of rice, beans, salad, fried plantains, and your choice of chicken, fish, beef or pork.  Also the fruit juice choices were varied and exotic just like our friend L had told us to try in Costa Rica.

We were very sad to leave and wish we had more time in Playa Tamarindo, but we wanted to check out the cloud forests of Costa Rica.

   

San Jose, Costa Rica

Our time in Ecuador was too short, we really loved it over there.  But now it was time to go to the much touted tourist destination of Costa Rica.  We were a little skeptical when we got to San Jose because on our taxi ride from the airport the roads looked just the like the ones in the US including a huge traffic jam during th rush hour.

We suspected we were in for a tailored tourist experience which we really did not want.  So we decided to head over to the beach town of Playa Tamarindo.  Unfortunately the bus system in Costa Rica sucks!  Especially after the excellent bus system we were used to in South America the infrequent (2 or 3 times a day) bus service to even major destinations seemed like a joke.  So we had to stay overnight in the grimy section of San Jose and catch the earliest bus next day to our destination.

Otavalo

Our last stop in Ecuador was the town of Otavalo which is very well known for its handicrafts and fabrics. The local weaves are exported all over the world and it has been such a success that the Indians in the area are the richest in South America. We got right to business and spent the whole morning haggling and bargaining for their wares.

 

At lunch we met a fellow American and decided to go on a hike to lago San Pablo. This was a short yet beautiful hike through some local roads. Our buddy almost got bit by a domesticated dog and shared his interesting and probably true theory about street dogs vs. domesticated dogs. Street are much more mellow and rarely bark and have a sad disposition, while the domesticated dogs are always yelping and showing off their loyalty to their owners by jumping on to unsuspecting visitors. We also made the observation of how good looking the South American street dogs are. Most of them looked like pure breeds unlike the stray dogs in India which look like they are of indeterminate breed.

Center of the World (Mitad del Mundo)

The only thing we were interested in seeing (and had time for) in Quito was the monument where the equator crosses Ecuador.  This was just a 40 minute bus ride from Quito.  We reached the monument late afternoon, spent some taking pictures and goofing around the orange line that marks the equator around the monument.

We have to say that the public transport in Quito is outstanding.  There is a bus or a trolley to go anywhere in the city.  And many buses to go to other towns (and they smell nice too!).  People are also very friendly and helpful.