February 2019 – SKipp's Trips

February 28, 2019February 18, 2021

House of Dreams and Reality

In the mountain town of Villa de Leyva, Colombia, Amy and I stayed in an Airbnb house that is appropriately called Casa Realidad y Ensueno. That translates to “The House of Reality and Dreams” and is named after a poetry book by the host’s great grandfather. The house covers about two acres and has about twenty buildings, loads of decorations and beautiful art that makes the place feel like a dream. The complex includes the main house, a barn, a Beatles man cave, a glass bedroom on a boulder, a chapel, a breakfast nook and a Fairyland. The place is amazing and I want to tease you with a few pictures.

Here’s a stairwell that uses green-glass bottles for lighting.

This is the outside of Fairlyland at night. Check out the pumpkins, mushrooms and rabbits in the foreground.

Here are some of the fairies in Fairyland with their house in the background.

Here’s the main hallway with a few roosters lined up to greet you.

The Airbnb hosts are Natalia and Juan who have an amazingly cute little three year-old daughter named Mariana. When we arrived on a Thursday afternoon, they barely had time to say hello before they left for Bogota where they were born and went to college. Amy and I were left in the complex wondering how this young couple had collected and decorated the house with so many things. They had told me that they had only lived here for four months after living in Taiwan for nine years and Bogota for two, so I wondered how they got so much stuff and who made the artwork – mainly dioramas.

Here’s a little diorama of unicorns with fairies on them.

Amy and I had most of the crazily decorated house to ourselves for the long weekend. With the owners gone, we had the full grounds to ourselves. We got to enjoy the hammock cabana with beautiful views of the valley and mountain. The house was built to entertain and the kitchen sat eight while the ornate dining room sat ten more. We were the only people in the breakfast nook that seats 16 people inside and 12 more outside. A nice Colombian woman lived on the property and made us breakfast, but she couldn’t explain the crazy house.

Here’s the hammock cabana with views of the mountains in the background.

The stagecoach on the left has its own shelter. Their private chapel has a bell tower in the middle of the picture. Some swings are on the right and they have a full playground for kids.

Here’s the breakfast nook where we were served breakfast every morning. For events, I’m sure this would serve as a great bar.

When Natalia and Juan returned from Bogota on the Monday, they shared a bottle of wine with us and told us how Juan’s parents had decorated the house over the last 18 years. Juan and Natalia started renting out six rooms on Airbnb and had just finished upgrading the property with a commercial kitchen to host events like weddings. Juan’s parents had always entertained lots of guests over the years and many of them had given their parents collectibles, but most of the stuff was bought by them. The collectibles had accumulated to a crazy collection of hearts, crosses, fairies, roosters, Beatles-memorabilia and much more.

Here’s an example of some quirky artwork that is everywhere.

Juan and Natalia were full of energy and told us all about Colombia, South America and their home. The original builder of the house was famous for using green wine bottles in the walls as windows and for lighting. Their neighborhood is full of other artists’ homes and the most famous one is the Casa Terracotta house that is right across the street. (I made this video about that crazy house.) They told us how Juan’s mother had made a lot of the art in the house. She makes dioramas like this manger scene over a boulder that forms part of the foundation of the home. There are too many of these creations to see in one night, so they agreed to show us the property the next night over some more wine and other intoxicants.

This manger scene is on a boulder that is about 15′ long. They have lighting built right into the complex.

The next night, we started with wine, coca tea, local delicacies and some fine aguardiente Nectar Azul. Aguardiente is a distilled spirit and Bogota is known for a special anise-infused one known as Nectar Azul. I’m not into drinking straight, strong spirits like whiskey or brandy, but this Nectar Azul was delicious right out of the bottle. The anise isn’t overpowering like ouzo or Sambuca, and we all agreed that it is refreshing. Juan lined up some shots and they went down really well. With a good buzz going, Juan lead us to some special rooms and buildings that only special guests get to see.

The first stop was Fairyland. Fairyland is a very small shack that features a diorama with all kinds of fairies that Juan’s mother collected and arranged in a landscape. She enhances the base fairies with paints or adds things to them to make them very special. Here’s another picture of Fairyland that doesn’t do it justice.

Here’s a nice shot of the house for more fairies.

After Fairlyland, they took us to the barn that is probably 10’x16’ and full of animatronic farm animals. Animated cows, chickens and pigs are in the barn with sound effects. She even recreates a scene from Charlotte’s Web with a pig climbing on a fence to look up at Charlotte the spider dangling from the ceiling. The barn has a loft with more pigs and chickens clucking away.

You can see the spider Charlotte right above the nose of Wilbur the pig. The cows moved their heads back and forth and wagged their tails.

The next stop was Juan’s father Beatle-themed man cave. The walls of the man cave were covered with custom paintings of the Beatles and thousands of dollars’ worth of memorabilia. It was an amazing tribute to the Beatles with drums, guitars, microphones and more. We should have done some karaoke, but we settled for listening to the Beatles and having some more aguardiente. We hung out there till the wee hours of the morning listening to the Fab 4.

Amy looking up at the disco ball in the Beatle man cave.

I can’t begin to tell you how warm and inviting Natalie and Juan were to us. Amy and I had such a memorable and relaxing stay there that we plan to go back. There is plenty of room at the House of Reality and Dreams, so please come along!

Here we are with Juan and Natalia in the Beatle man cave.

Here’s a drone video of the house that they made. The cover picture is of the glass bedroom that is built right on top of a boulder.

Here’s the kitchen with great lighting and views of the mountains.

Here’s the main entrance to the home and you can see the green glass bottles used in the walls.

Some nice ironwork looking out from the dining room.

Here’s the main living room with a knight.

They have a website here with a lot more photos. Most of these photos were taken by Amy. Thanks!

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February 23, 2019February 18, 2021

The Long Trail to the Paramo

Frailejones sunflowers thrive high in the Andes in the ecosystem known as the paramo.

Amy and I hiked to the legendary Laguna de Iguaque (Iguaque Lake) that local Muisca Indians say is the birthplace of humanity. The grueling hike climbed 2,700’ or 900 meters to 12,500’ high into the Andes. We hiked through rain forest and above tree line to the paramo – a high alpine region where the ancient lake hangs in a box canyon. We hiked all day though muddy trails in the rain forest, up long, steep, rocky falls and above the trees to the hidden lake. This is the first time Amy hiked over 12,000’ and it was worth it! We’re getting closer to being ready to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu that will go over 13,800’.

To get to the trail, we ordered a 4WD truck taxi for seven am sharp – pretty early for me. When we got to the front gate of our Airbnb at 6:58, Caesar, our taxi driver, was backing up his dusty truck to pick us up. Caesar told us how he hiked in the mountains all the time and already did an hour hike that morning starting at 5am. We spoke in broken Spanish and English as we drove along the Andes.

After only a few minutes on bumpy, dirt roads, we got stuck behind an 18-wheeler that kicked up so much dust that it looked like we were driving through thick brown fog. People waiting on the side of the road for the bus held handkerchiefs to their faces as the dust cloud enveloped them. Caesar couldn’t pass and had to back off from the dust cloud so we could see. Now I knew why his truck was covered in so much dust.

After a few minutes behind the semi, Caesar turned onto an even smaller mountain road to Iguaque Sanctuary of Flora and Fauna (SFF Iguaque) that was designed to preserve the historic and unique ecosystem around the lake. We got to the ranger station at 7:40 and had to wait for 20 minutes to pay 52,500 Columbian Pesos ($17) per person to enter the park. A ranger told us that it should take us three hours to get up and three hours to get back. We hit the trail at 8am.

The trail was a cobblestone path for the first mile and difficult to walk on. We crossed over a clear running stream at 2,900 meters or 9,500’ – about the elevation of Breckenridge, CO. The trail turned into hard packed dirt and mud through a high rain forest. The forest was so thick that we could only see a few feet into the trees. Butterflies and a few birds could barely fly though the forest that was a mixture of bamboo, vines and moss covered trees. Ferns, orchids and other arboreal plants were thick in the trees like shown in this picture.

Some arbroeal plants are growing on the tree limb. On the left is some thick bamboo.

We climbed over tree roots and small mud puddles for the next couple miles and the trail always climbed. Amy used her new hiking poles for the first time and they helped her navigate the rough trail. After a couple of hours in the forest, the trees thinned and we reached a rock fall that would be a beautiful cascade if a river ran over it. The rock fall turned out to be the trail and this is where I felt in my element climbing from rock to rock. Amy wasn’t used to this type of climbing at over 11,000’ and she was winded and tired climbing over and around the rocks. The rocky ridge rose at about a fifty degree incline for 800 vertical feet. When we finally reached the top at over 12,000’, we were in the paramo where no trees grow. Without trees, we had expansive views over the surrounding mountain ranges to distant mountain ranges or cordilleras as they’re known here.

These flowers fell on the ground, so I picked them up and put them in my hand.

Amy took this picture of me hiking up the trail surrounded by mossy tree roots.

The high Andes have been separated from the rest of the world for a long time and a unique ecosystem known as the paramo has developed over the eons. The paramo is too cold and windy to grow trees (tree line is defined by the altitude where trees can’t grow anymore because it’s too cold), so special plants grow here that can thrive the cold. The main thing the plants use to survive the cold seems to be fur. Like animals that live in the snow, these plants have a furry texture that helps them trap the sunlight and keep them warm enough to photosynthesize.

The most distinct plant is the frailejones – a perennial sunflower that grows to 10’ tall. We were lucky because these Joshua Tree-like posts were in bloom. Surrounded by furry leaves that look like rabbit ears, each frailejones sported yellow bouquets that teamed with bees. Special bees lives in this high country and pollinate the flowers. Here are a few pictures from the unique environment.

Here’s a video of many of the plants and flowers on the trek.

The trail flattened, and we traversed the mountain towards the lake. We had spectacular views looking down on farmer’s fields thousands of feet below in the valley. The trail wandered into a box canyon where the lake sits.

The lake is very historic because of the Muisca creation myth about the lake. The Muisca people were one of the four great pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas with the other three being the Maya, Aztec and Inca. The Muisca myth says that the goddess Bachue came out of the lake with a boy in her arms. When the boy grew up into a man, she married him and they made passionate love. They loved each other many times and populated the world. When the man got old and it was time for him to die, the happy couple went back into the lake in the form of snakes. Kind of an interesting creation myth like the Garden of Eden.

We ate lunch in the beautiful valley overlooking the lake. We were tired because of the three and a half strenuous hour hike up. It took us a half an hour longer than what the park ranger said, so I began to worry that we would miss our bus back home. If we missed the last bus, we’d have to hitchhike and I don’t think Amy would have liked that! We had four hours to get down to the bus stop – which was an hour below where Caesar had dropped us off at the park entrance.

We made good time until we reached the rock fall. Amy struggled with her short, tired legs to get down some of the rocks. She slipped and fell a few times on her butt, but Amy is persistent and quick. She mustered her strength and kept going to meet the bus. We made it to the ranger station in two and a half hours – an hour faster than it took us to go up. I hoped that someone could give us a ride from there, but no cars were there and they didn’t have a phone to call Caesar. We’d have to walk another hour.

There was little time to rest so we started down the mountain road. The rugged road was much easier to hike than the trail and we made it to the bus stop by 3:30 by hiking the last distance in about 45 minutes. We had 30 minutes to spare. All that worry about missing the bus for nothing. The bus turned out to be 30 minutes late too, so we sat at the bus stop for an hour!

We made it to the main square of Villa de Leyva in perfect time for happy hour. We ate an empanada and drank some German beers while the sun set on the square. Amy did a great job and has changed a lot in the year she has met me. She used to call herself a city girl, but now she’s climbing above 12,000’ to see the shallow lake where humanity began for the Muisca.

Here’s where we had lunch. The lake is seen right above our heads.

Here’s the 9th station out of 10. We were in the paramo and you can see the frailejones scattered across the hillside.

Here’s the last picture of the hike taken from the bus stop. That’s a millstone behind Amy’s head.

Amy crossing the creek at the start of the hike.

February 15, 2019February 18, 2021

A Month In Lima

Diego flew me over the cliffs of Lima in his parasail for about $75. A steady breeze made it easy for us to climb up above the high-rise apartments near where we stayed for a wonderful month.

Amy and I spent an amazing month working, relaxing and exploring Lima, Peru. We took our time to enjoy the best parts of Lima while learning Spanish. The month abroad was my exploration of a new way to work and live in a furnished apartment in a foreign place. We were able to work, relax, write, exercise, learn and have fun in our temporary home in a great city.

Highlights of the month:

Soaring over the cliffs and hihg-rise of Lima in a parasail
Learning Spanish from a professional for $10/hour/person
Great meals in the culinary capital of the Americas for a third to half the price of meals in the US
Great furnished apartment for $1,200/month
Time to read and relax
Great workouts hiking up and down the cliffs of Lima

Here’s some seafood paella and a jug of lemonade that we ate above the esplanade that overlooks the cliffs where I parasailed. A meal and drinks for two that would cost between $50-80 in the US cost about $25-40 in Lima. We could eat a good lunch for $3.

Lima has about ten million people and a rich history dating back to 1535 when the Spanish Conquistador Pizarro claimed it. Lima was the viceroyalty or capital of the Spanish territories in South America and has excellent museums. Lima is set on a plane that ends abruptly in 300’ cliffs that fall to the ocean. High rise apartments tower above the cliffs and a long park or esplanade is a great place to walk and watch Limons walk their dogs and exercise. We rented an Airbnb apartment that was one block away from these cliffs. While we didn’t have ocean views, we had comfortable home with a doorman for about a third of the price that I’d pay in Santa Barbara.

This pic shows the extent of the high-rise in Lima that stretched to the horizon. I think most of the apartments near us were second homes or unoccupied because there weren’t many people on the streets.

The apartment was in the Miraflores district which is considered the nicest part of the city and where most of the tourists go and foreigners live. We were within walking distance of many superb restaurants and interesting places like the Choco Museum where we took a cooking class or John F. Kennedy Parque. We could easily get a taxi for under $5 to nearby neighborhoods like Barranco or downtown. We also took some crowded buses to downtown Miraflores for $0.30, but we got tired of the crowded buses that got stuck in traffic when we could spend $3 on a taxi and miss the hassles. Our Spanish teacher told us that taxi drivers might rob us, so we ended up taking Uber which was even cheaper. The only downside of Uber was that we often had to wait up to 10 minutes to get a ride. We could take longer, express buses downtown, but ended up taking taxis.

We took our Spanish teacher Julio out for some fresh juice in the Buena Vista Cafe that is perched on the cliffs on the edge of Lima.

Our Spanish teacher Julio came to our apartment and taught us in 2-hour stretches for $40. That breaks down to $10/hour for the both of us. Julio was a nice, middle-aged man who had acted and done voice-overs for much of his career. He had lived in Pueblo, Colorado for 8-years and was helpful to get our survival Spanish flowing. We’ve been using Duolingo on our phones to learn Spanish, but Amy and I both tend to freeze when we want to speak to a live Peruvian. While we were pretty good at speaking to the phone, Julio helped us speak to actual people. We still have a long way to go on our Spanish, but I have used Duolingo for 28-days straight now.

I am pretty pleased with how easy it was to get around in our broken Spanish. Spanish is pretty easy to read – especially when we have Google and Google translate when we’re ordering food. I learned to negotiate with taxi drivers before I started using Uber. Conversations were rather limited and most Peruvians spoke English about as good as most people in Taiwan – my reference country. So there was a significant language barrier, but I could read plaques of signs much better than I can Chinese.

Speaking of reading, I started doing that again while I was in Lima. I usually don’t make the time to do such casual things as read, but I found the time in Lima. I enjoyed reading Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and lots of online content. We had excellent WiFi in the apartment and could stream movies on Netflix or Amazon with Amy’s Chromecast or the built in TV apps. We also had good cellphone service via a local carrier for about $25 for the month.

In addition to reading, I also did quite a bit of work in Lima. I finished editing the third and fourth editions of my new novel Beyond the Cliffs of Death. I’ve printed a few copies and I’m sending it out for review. Other work related things I had to do was coordinate repairing my flooded basement in Santa Barbara. While Lima never gets rain – only drizzle, Santa Barbara has had 13 rainstorms since September 1^st and has received their average rainfall for the year with a couple months to go in the rainy season. My basement flooded in the worst storm and several inches of water got into the basement apartment. I had to replace the lower 8” of drywall and put in new baseboards. My property managers handled most of it fir me, but I was able to communicate with them easily with Skype.

The catacombs below the San Francis Monastery in Lima featured bones arranged in this pit where they used to throw the bodies. Lim had tens of museums that we didn’t have time to see.

Besides being wetter, winter in Santa Barbara is also colder than Lima. Every day in Lima had the highs in the upper 70s to mid 80s and lows in the upper 60s to low 70s. Lima is close to the equator and tropical but considered a desert even though it was fairly humid. Santa Barbara has mainly had highs in the 50s and 60s while lows have dropped into the 30s. I won’t even discuss the harsh winter that my family in KC has been going through.

The weather is so moderate in Lima, that the apartment doesn’t have heating or AC. We just opened the window and got mild breezes to blow through. The temperature was fine for the first three weeks, but it got hot enough in the last week that had to sleep in the raw with a fan blowing over us to keep it cool enough to sleep.

The hottest we got was when we would exercise going up and down the cliffs to the ocean. A nice set of 337 steps, or about 250 vertical feet, went down to the beach below our apartment. These steps were similar to the steps of Santa Monica where we used to work out a lot. To get in shape for climbing Machu Picchu in May, I set a goal of climbing the cliffs 50 times. It seemed pretty doable and I initially climbed the stairs two or three times for my workout at the start of the stay. I accumulated about twenty hikes up the cliffs after two weeks when I was hit by traveler’s diarrhea (TD). Most travelers to the developing world get afflicted by this scourge and we were prepared. Amy and I brought a dose of Azithromycin and I decided to use mine after I’d lost about ten pounds and a week. I’d take it earlier next time.

This Venezuelan refugee taught us how to cook ceviche and make the national drink of Peru – the Pisco Sour.

Anyway, the TD set my schedule back and I wasn’t sure if I could make my goal of fifty sets. After I recovered, I had only done twenty sets and had six days to do thirty sets! I was only doing four sets before I got sick, so I had to step up and get it done.

Amy likes doing the steps in the morning while I prefer to work out at sunset when the breezes pick up. I decided to join her one morning and regretted it. The winds weren’t blowing and I started sweating like a dog and overheating in the calm air after only two sets. When the air is still, the humidity really got to me. I had to quit after two sets and I felt like I was hungover while I wasn’t.

Here are the stairs that climbed the cliff below our apartment. I figured that the 337 steps were about 250′, so I climbed over 12,500′ in my 50 sets.

I tried again about 6:00pm and knew the sun would set at 6:40. Each set took about nine minutes, so I figured I’d go until sunset. There was a nice breeze off the ocean and it kept me cool while I watched the sun set over the Pacific. I felt great and did six sets without much difficulty as the lights turned on. In the end, I did eight sets that day or about 2,000 vertical feet up and down. Over the next few days, I reached my goal of 50, met some locals on the steps and got in shape. I feel in much better shape after and know I wouldn’t have hiked that much if I hadn’t set a goal.

To summarize my month abroad, I got to spend some lovely time with Amy in a fairly exotic and lovely city. This was my first visit to South America and we loved it. We did leave Lima for a weekend getaway, but we could have stayed even longer in Lima.

Our next extended stay is 44 days in Cusco!

Here’s a video of me parasailing over the cliffs of Lima.

February 6, 2019February 18, 2021

The Barranco Collection

Have you done any karate yoga lately? They have it in Barranco.

Amy and I have been in the Miraflores district of Lima, Peru for four weeks now and we leave for Bogota tomorrow. We’ve had amazing food in Miraflores and it is very nice and fascinating. We are staying in modern, high-rise apartments in the western section of Miraflores that overlooks cliffs that fall three hundred feet to the ocean. The apartment is very conveniently located, relatively quiet and we have gotten a lot of work done here. I finished the fourth revision of my new novel Beyond the Cliffs of Death and have sent it to the printer.

Besides a lost week of traveler’s diarrhea (TD), we have seen some amazing museums and a promenade overlooking the ocean. I have never seen a more beautiful promenade than the one that goes along the cliffs one block away from our complex. The promenade is well used and so nice that there isn’t much exciting to write about. Talking about nice people walking their dogs, people working out or bicyclists almost running us down is rather pedestrian. I hoped something more exciting might happen and yesterday it finally did.

The district next to Miraflores is Barranco and is famous for its Spanish-colonial architecture. I had to look up the meaning of Spanish Colonial architecture is described as: marked by the contrast between the simple, solid construction demanded by the new environment and the Baroque ornamentation exported from Spain.

I had to look up baroque and I think this description from Wikipedia is appropriate: The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The Barranco neighborhood was built as a resort area near the beach in the early 1900s and was designed to awe. Walking around Barranco made me feel like I was walking by presidential palaces and princely estates. The neighborhood has a Colonial feel to it that is hard to place. The exciting thing about it is that many of the homes have been abandoned so that they are in a state of disrepair and have a lot of character.

This is the Museum of Pedro Osman. Pedro converted his casona into a lovely museum.

Walking by new high-rise after new high-rise in our neighborhood doesn’t inspire me to write much. Walking by a run down and graffiti-covered mansion, known as a casona here, gets my mind dreaming of what was and what could be. In Miraflores, I’m not bored by the white, gray, black and tan apartment complexes with their staged entrances, but they are so similar to what I can see in many cities in the US. Do you want to hear about how they are almost the same as in the US?

Even if you do, I’m not going to write much more about it.

In Barranco, I see a skateboarder riding by worn down casonas and I have to take pictures like this. I’m compelled to tell their story – or at least make one up.

I’m not complaining about staying in a nice apartment where I have a door man and food delivery, but Barranco is romantic and bohemian. Many of the casonas have been converted into museums, restaurants, bars, boutique hotels and quaint shops. I love their high ceilings, covered windows and elaborate constructions. We can walk in many of them and have a drink or coffee and it is very open. It doesn’t ever rain here and it has been in the 80s every day and 70s at night. The apartments here don’t need AC, heating or much of a roof except to keep the birds out.

The casona I want to talk about is a little boutique called Artesanias Las Pallas. Amy found the shop from here extensive research. We walked down a quiet Barranco side street past many nice homes to a shop that looked like any other house on the block. I looked through the green, wrought-iron gate and saw a gray-haired woman sitting inside on the couch. I asked if they were open and she buzzed me in. Amy was a ways behind me taking photos as usual.

The woman told me how she keeps the gate locked, so people can’t just wander in and out. That way, she doesn’t need a security guard. She spoke the Queen’s English and told me she had been living in Peru for 33 years. Her name was Mari and she grew up in Wales. She had met a Peruvian man in Switzerland when she was studying to be a translator. They got married, moved to Peru and had a couple children before he passed. She stayed in Peru and now has grandchildren roaming in and out of the house. She was a rather tall Welsh woman and stood upright with great posture. I expected her to offer me high tea with her accent, but the offer never came.

This collection of chimney toppers is in Mari’s private garden. Her grandchildren found a baby hummingbird in this garden and they were nursing it back to life.

Mari had many of the regular Peruvian souvenirs like portable dioramas, alpaca wool hats, braided bracelets and tapestries – and we would eventually bought many of these items. Mari had very high quality products and told us how she worked with the artist to improve their quality. She said many Peruvian souvenirs are made in China now, but hers were from Peru.

When she saw our keen interest, she took us out of the shop and into her home to show us her private collections. Her collections of relics were packed on to shelves and in cabinets all around her high-ceilinged home. She opened the green cabinet shown below and turned on lights on each shelf to show her collection off well. We’ve been to some fine museums in Lima and her collections were at the same amazing level. She was glad to show us things that she said had collected over the decades. She said you can’t find many of her things anywhere else.

Here are a few pictures of things around her home.

Mari has cabinets chock full of artifacts in her home. She was very proud to display them to us.

Zoomed in verison. Most of these things were carved from soft stone by Shaman.

Mari said the pottery on the upper left were influenced by the African slaves that were imported to Peru.

She told us the significance of many of the items and how shamans carved soft stones into healing stones that they gave to their patients. She showed us African influences on some of the pottery from the imported slaves. She showed us how Spanish and Moorish glazes were used on some pottery. Amy and I got a private tour of museum-quality artifacts with the curator and collector herself. By going to Mari’s shop, we finally got to see inside a casona and how the other half lives.

If you’re ever in Lima, go to Barranco and to Artesanias Las Pallas.