HeyHEy!

I am chillin with Pachi right fightin the lying Colombian president in hand to hand battle. Its tag team so I have time to write as Pachi uses Venezuelan lechoso grip he learned in the jungle of Barquisimeto.
SOOOOOOOOOOOO...
Things are good here, we hear F 16s and sucoy planes (apparently a new Russan fighter jet that Venezuela owns now) overhead every day BUT we bought ourselves an arsenal of AK 47s and some rocket launchers (Pachi's favorite) in the local black market. I personally enjoy the armored tanks which have the sensation of living in a house, but one that could destroy a neighborhood. CHARLIE'S EVERYWHERE, GIVE THE COLOMBIAN PREZ A OSCAR DE LA HOYA STYLE COÑASO (PUNCH!)!
Joking aside, it was crazy when I came out of the Venezuelan jungle and heard what happened.
Right now there's more talks in D.C. than anything else as you can probably see on the news. One thing that the U.S. seems to be overlooking is that Colombia invaded Equator! This is a huge big deal! Imagine if Canada invaded the U.S. and killed people there and then said "it's all good!".
Besides that, Pachi's coming back to Earlham for one more semester so we get to hang out on breaks on the east coast or in the midwest!
I'm havin a great and stupendous time with Pachi and his mum and pops as well as old friends of his. Apparently I have a Brazilian accent when I speak spanish! I guess that's what a month and a half in Brasil will do to you!
I'm also really exited about coming back home on the 12th and seein everyone! Party at my new house in D.C.!! For All (Forro!!)

Con mucho Cariño (Much love) Nicky boy and Pachito!

Life in Barquisimeto!

sooooooooooooooooooo,

after a 14 hour bus ride that uses freezer technology as air conditioning, very big in venezuela apparently, i landed safe and sound in the great city of Barquisimeto! Pachi was there right as I got off the bus looking quite paranoid since its ¨the worst bus station in Venezuela¨ and then his mom came by in her jeep to pick us up.
Pachi and I had a very interesting conversation on the recent situation conflict with Colombia, Equador, and Venezuela and then Pachi regaled me with the various social programs set forth by Chavez in the last few years including one which Pachi works for currently. Pachi´s program is one that tries to have everyone have a college education, even women in their 50s and 60s who never were able to when they were younger which is the big group that Pachi works with.
The current conflict is on tv 24 hours a day and f16s are flying overhead regularly. basically, its the borders that everyone is very concerned about since Colombia entered Equador without telling them.
Besides that, Pachi is the same as ever (slicked back gelled hair, a t shirt with a revolutionary printed on it, and some stylish facial hair). He showed me around his house which has a garden that grows coffee beans, a mango tree and an ever accompanying dog named Tootsie (same breed as Grandma's old dog Honey!).
I'm going to relex a bit and then hang out with Pachi again when he gets back from work. There might be a beach trip in the works but first we'll investigate the old haunts of Pachi Rodriguez here in his hometown!

Hope you are well and can't wait to share pics and stories in just a few days!

Love, Nick

Hey!

I just got back from Angel Falls and am now heading to Barquisimeto! I`m leaving on bus tonight at 9 and gets into Barquisimeto tomorrow at 11 am. I`m really exited to spend some time with Pachi and his family and get to experience more of the culture of Venezuela besides the tourists, hostal, and tour guide life!
Angel Falls was amazing! I was able to take a puddle jumper plane from paraqua to Canaima. Smallest plane I ever took, 6 people including the pilot! I learned some Pemon from the Kamaracoto people who are the the indigenous group in the area and are only 46,000 people in total! Then we motor canoed all the way up the river to our campsite where the tourists (4 Japanese, 2 Austrians, 2 Americans, 2 Brits, 1 German, 1 Swiss, and me the German-American) where fed and then slept in hammocks. First time I slept in a hammock and it was a lot of tossing and turning. Next day we headed to ¨The Falls¨. It might not be the rainy season but damn! that thing is huge! 1 km high and the water barely makes it to the bottom as a liquid! We swam and trampled through the rainforest and finally headed back. I will post pics when I get home because my words will not do justice to the real thing.
Dangerous motor canoeing back to Canaima because it's harder going down river with low water and lots of rocks but our guides got us back in one piece! Thank you Tony, Chino and Captain who I don't know the name of!

So I will be in Barquisimeto until I have to leave from Caracas on the 11th. Maybe we will do some small trips around Barquisimeto but at this point i will be nice just to relax after traveling for 2 weeks.

By the way, we just heard about the recent conflict between Equador, Colombia, and Venezuela and I have been talking with Pachi and the head office of the tour i just did and they have been saying that the main problems are in Colombia and Equador.

Keep tuned in! I'll write more when I get to Barquisimeto!

Border Hopping!

Hola!

I just crossed the border from Brasil to Venezeula yesterday and am now in the small and relaxing city of Ciudad Bolivar which is about 11 hours north of the border.

My plan is to look for a tour program today for Angel Falls (The highest waterfall in the world!) and then head over to Barquisimeto (The city of Pachi Rodriguez!). I will look for a tour that is about 3 days, 2 nights and then hopefully leave tomorrow.

The area around Angel is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in South America and Pachi has described it as ¨The Lost World¨.

So if I leave tomorrow on the program than I would be back on Monday. Then I`ll probably head out Tuesday or Wednesday for Barquisimeto!

I`ve met some fellow travelers from the boat on the Amazon so we are all staying at a hostel together.

First impressions of Venezuela:

-bright vibrant colors on the buildings

-no problem at the border crossing (thank you German citizenship!)

-Saw the letter that Chavez wrote to the people of Venezuela in 2002 after being captured by a coup which stated that he was not giving up his position of president. (At the border control underneath a picture of him)

-things are very cheap! 11 hour bus cost me $9! A full meal of rice, chicken and egg with a coke was $3!

-the only tricky thing is changing money because the rate is always better with money exchanging places than the banks

I`ll let you guys know what else I`m doing in the next few days! Hope all is well at home, my future home, Europe and in Barquisimeto!

Love, Nick

Brasil meu Brasil Brasileiro

"Dadinho e um caralho meu nome agora e Ze Pequeno POOOOOOORRRA!!!" (cidade de deus)

This is a little out of order but it is what it is when it is supposed to be. I am currently home but I wanted to share my thoughts on what it was like to go back to my country of origin after 14 years of being away.

The first thing was the Portuguese rushing back into my head as we started to enter the country from the south and travel from Chui up to Florianopolis. Since I have been living in the US I did not get a chance to practice my Portuguese because my family is entirely from Chile and so at home we spoke CHILENO and out of the house we spoke ... English. I was having this entire identity crisis because in some way I feel like I am Brasilian and could connect with Brasilians in their jokes and the way they play futbol :) but at the same time my entire family is Chilena and ive been in US for sooo long that im almost entirely a gringo now. wow! if you understood any of that more power to you.

Brasil like the US is such a big country that it should really be several countries. There are the different regions such as the south, the northeast, the north, that are all quite different from each other. The people are different and yet they are all still Brasileiros. But one thing that they all have in common is that they are all quite happy when carnaval comes around and all are dancing and coming together to dance and party days away.

But how can I generalize and begin to talk about a country when Nick and I only stayed there a few weeks. The only thing that I can say for sure is that I loved every moment that I was there. I would love to live in Brasil some day where things happen and people know how to enjoy themselves.

Now I am back home trying to piece my life back together. Not that it was entirely well put when I left but now being back to the place where I once lived seems like such a foreign place right now. It is a strange feeling but I hope to learn from this as well.

Un beso a todos, this will be my last entry as I move on with my life, digest everything we seen and did, and well look for a job cuz im BROKE!

-ric

AMAZON BOUND!!

"Well I taught the weepin willow how to cry, and I told the clouds how cover up a clear blue sky, and the tears I cried for that woman are gonna drownd you big river, and I´m gonna sit down here until I die!"
-Johnny Cash

I a bit sad and depressing but I´m starting to think of songs that are about rivers because the time has come for me to ride the amazon for 5 days straight against the current!
I left my dear buddy of 5 months of traveling in America del Sur back on the 15th as he headed back to Chile and I headed up north 21 hours on the bus to Fortaleza. Luckily I came on a Saturday and there were still the sounds of Carnaval blasting through the streets as I searched for a hostal. Later that night I headed to the Praça Dragoa do Mar where frenzy of people were gathered to hear the sounds of pagodi, bossa nova, forro, axe, and rock and roll! And I didn´t even have to go into one of the numerous clubs! Simply live music of all kinds in the praça (plaza) for all to hear and dance to. I met random group of folk who danced in the plaça and enjoyed to question the random, lone, American about culture and life and all in broken portuguese (me) and broken english (them). Then it was stop at Habib´s (the largest middle eastern fast food chain in the western hemisphere) and a quick stint of learning how to dance to the latest song "creo". Basically the song starts slow and then ends up speeding up to the level of the spanish "r" in the beginning of words. Think of the "chicken song" on steroids!

There was a thought to stay for another night since I had only been in the city of Fortazleza for one night but alas I had a ticket for Belem the next day and I had to catch my boat on the 19th!

And that brings me to my current adventure!
I leave for the boat in less than 2 hours and then "set sail" at 18:00. It´s my 25th birthday and I can´t think of a better way to celebrate the event than to be on a boat for 5 days with 300 people in 50 degrees celcius heat with nothing but trees and water. While all that might be true, I really want to do this because I have a side passion for biology and I´ve learned about the amazon ever since I was in Grammar school! It has 10 times more volume than the mississippi and there´s a point in the middle where 2 rivers meet (the "black" and "white" rivers) and don´t mix until miles later so you see them side by side!

So right now I need more river songs than my depressing Cash song (though I really love that rythm!) so send any ones you know and reply on the blog!

I love everyone out there and I hope you all have an amazing day on my birthday!

Nicolai

Uruguayos son Argentinos en Brasil

... son bromas pero en alguna forma es verdad lo que dice donfu, mi viejo, Manuel Pizarro :)

With the help of our friendly friends Joy and Jillian's similar situation our transition from Passportless Nicolson to celebrating New Years in Punta del Este as planned was smoother than we dramatized it to be. We met up with them in Buenos Aires and traveled together in Buquebus to Punta del Este where we celebrated New Years in the most unreasonable way. Midnight was normal as we had a delicious asado with Pancho's family and celebrated Pancho's father, Jose, birthday. After Midnight Pancho and his brother Nacho drove us to the party Jillian had told me of to meet up and so we looked and looked for over an hour. After not finding anything we headed to the bars where they dropped us off and who is pulling up right there immidiately as we get off the car in a pickup trucks full of girls??? Joy and Jillian and her crazy friends...

New Years and the entire week after it was great spending it in Punta with my sister, Pancho and his family, Joy&Chilli and her amigas de Buenos Aires. It gave us time to relax a bit and catch up on everything we had not eaten before and wash all our clothes we had not washed since the year before...

The part about Uruguay that I like, enjoy, find amusing, observed and so on is its location and its size and the people. The thing that I find so interesting is that because of the size of the country everyone there knows everyone. Nick and I went to see No Te Va Gustar and we knew three people that knew band members personally or grew up with them or was having an asado with them. The geography of the country is also quite strange because it is surround by the two biggest countries of S. America, Argentina and Brasil and the ocean of course. Never as strange or bizarre as Chile but the entire concept of countries and boundaries and people belonging to a region just hit met entirely. You are living in a country and everything on the television or newspapers or what people are talking about are things going on in that country. Two people living nearby each other on the Argentina Uruguay border can have completely different views of the world and where they are and where they think Carlos Gardel is from. I find this topic of countries and borders quite interesting and yet bizarre as we have crossed and seen a lot of different borders and all sorts of forces that keep certain people out of each others countries... Im exhausted, just a thought.

Un saludon de Rio de Janeiro esperando o carnaval chegaaaa. We are with the Janesssss and Katrina enjoying every minute of this great apt in Copacabana and all the sights of this amazing country. I miss Brasil already and I am still here. Un besote,

-ric