Our Hike to End Hunger!

Tom and Anna are planning their next adventure: Hiking the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200 mile journey through the woods and mountains from Georgia to Maine. They will begin their journey in March, and, wanting to use their time on the trail for a good cause, they are raising support for Heifer International, a non-profit that is working to end hunger all around the globe.

Had all gone according to plan, Tom and Anna would still be in Bolivia working to provide clean, safe drinking water for the people in their village. Alas, their Peace Corps program was closed due to political unrest, and while Tom and Anna are grateful to be safe and happy back home, they miss Bolivia and want to continue to support the people of the beautiful but impoverished country they called home for the last year and a half.

In order to make a contribution to the Heifer projects in Bolivia, they will collect donations here through their blog and designate them to the Heifer International programs operating in Bolivia. 80% of donations received will be used to fund the five Heifer projects in Bolivia, where they are working hard to provide animals, bees, and trees to families in the poorest regions of the country. 20% of donations will help cover the expenses of gear and food for the trail.

Heifer accomplishes their mission to help end hunger through the generous donations they receive each year. With these contributions they provide community education as well as animals and plants that give ongoing nourishment and income to villages around the world. Families learn how to raise and care for the animals they receive and how to generate income from the wool, eggs, and meat their animals produce. In turn, these families donate the offspring of their animals to neighbors in need. Heifer's sustainable programs promote gender equity, environmental stewardship, and improved nutrition for thousands of families each year.
Your donation will help deliver llamas, cattle, fish, chickens, ducks, bees, and trees to families in Bolivia. In turn these gifts will provide warm wool, food, and a sustainable income for many families in the poorest regions of Bolivia.

Please consider helping Tom and Anna fight hunger in Bolivia. Your contribution will make a difference!

(the donate button is at the top of our blog)

Heifer animals make great presents!

Flock of Chicks: $20
Flock of Ducks: $20
Honeybees: $30
Trees: $60
Sheep: $120
Llama: $150
Heifer: $500

We invite you to donate the cost of an animal that will be sent to a family in Bolivia in the name of someone you love. Heifer's website has great holiday cards that you can print and send to your loved ones to let them know about the contribution you made in their name. Just click the donate button at the top of our blog to donate the amount of the animal you want to purchase, then go to Heifer's website http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.3441339/ to print a card and send it off.

Happy Holidays from us to you!

Here's our little video of all the good things we've been up to this year, plus a preview of the adventures to come. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiGlUxtTPxg

Happy Holidays! Lots of love,

Tom and Anna

homeward bound

Well, next up would have been the beautiful pictures of Macchu Pichu, except that one day while sitting in an internet cafe, I read an email from my mom talking about their plans to go see our friends at the beach over thanksgiving. I got a little nostalgic, entertained the idea of going home for the holidays, mentioned it to Tom, and within four minutes we'd changed our flights to return home that week. Surprise style.

On thanksgiving evening we showed up on the front porch in a refrigerator box wrapped in chritmas wrapping paper and knocked their socks off. It was awesome!

So here we are, home again home again, and loving it! And that there is the end of our travel stories. For now.

It's Christmas eve, and I'd better got off the computer and go spend some qt with my rockin family. It's so great to be here.

the navel of the earth

We crossed Bolivia's border for the fourteenth and last time in mid November, and headed into Peru. We bussed straight to Cuzco, where we planned to hang for a few days while planning our next adventure -backpacking up to Macchu Pichu.


Cuzco is a beautiful city. It was founded by the Incans a few centuries ago after the area was identified as the navel of the earth, and it's the oldest inhabited city in the western hemisphere.



Awesome stonework. These rocks weigh thousands of pounds, and no one knows how the Incans managed to get them in place.


Plumbing systems hundreds of years old that still work perfectly.


These steps on a temple look like poured cement, but they were hand carved out of the face of the rock. Absolutely incredible stonework.

The Spanish ruined as much as they could, knocked down everything they could push over, and plundered most of the structures they came across, but Cuzco's center still has a number of buildings with walls built by the Incans.



And a whole lot of great restaurants. This was a cool irish pub where we watched some rugby and drank some drinkable beer. Bolivia, while wonderful in many, many ways, has the world's worst beer.

the island of the sun

After a few relaxing days in La Paz we said adios to the good friends we'd been traveling with for the last few weeks and headed to Lake Titicaca on the border of Bolivia and Peru.

This gorgeous turquoise lake is the highest navigable lake in the world (have you noticed how into superlatives Bolivia is? -highest city, highest capital, highest lake, most birds and frogs in their park, friendliest, most likely to succeed, etc). Anyhow, Lake Titicaca was the home to a number of ancient civilizations that date back long before the Incans came to town. The history of this place is incredible, and as legend has it, it's also the birthplace of mankind. And it's pretty.


We spent three days on the island, camping and exploring and enjoying the wonderful people who call Isla del Sol (the island of the sun) their home. Quechua is the language the Incans spoke, and many still speak throughout Bolivia; Aymara is a pre-Incan language that is still spoken in pockets in the highlands, including Isla del Sol. The Incans and their predescesors terraced every slope on the island hundreds of years ago, and the people living there still work the fields and live in a way that seems unchanged by the centuries.


We encountered incredibly hardworking, hospitable people throughout the island. Wonderful, friendly folks.


This nice guy rowed us out to the island for a few dollars. You can see the terraces in the background -a true technological feat for its time. And a lot of work.



On the island we came across a number of Incan ruins. These beautiful stone buildings used no mortar to hold them together, and many of them are still in great shape. Tupac, one of the most powerful Incan kings, constructed this temple to the sun.


Man, it was just really hard to find a perfectly flat campsite next to the water with spectacular views and no one else in sight. Oh wait, there's one.





Oh, and there's another.



Small fishing towns dot the island, which is only about six miles long. The buildings are made of adobe (mud and straw) with tile, metal, or straw roofs.


And the kids are so beautiful.







Even the rocks are cute.


















What a great place. After a few great days on the island we headed back to La Paz and said our final farewell to Bolivia. Man, I miss her.

a big time in the jungle

After playing with dynamite in the highest city in the world, we dropped down into the jungle.




The Yungas is the gorgeous, rainy, highland forest of Bolivia where they grow most of the coca.




La hoja no es droga!



The roads down there are a little dicey, but the views are spectacular.







We went down, down, down the mountains to the town of Rurrenbarque, the gateway to Madidi National Park, home of the widest variety of birds and amphibians in the world. Bolivia has over one-third of all the bird species out there. Isn't that groovy?



We did a three day pampas jungle tour, some by foot, mostly by boat.


Our guide, Baldemar (sea bucket) was spectacular. He explained all the wonders of the pampas (the flat, swampy area we were exploring), and because we were in the midst of the dry season, all the animals were concentrated along the banks of the narrow river we followed.



We passed by hundreds and hundreds of alligators and caimen, monkeys, exotic birds, and capybaras, the largest rodent you ever saw.












In the Amazon and its tributaries in Bolivia and Peru swim the pink river dolphins. No joke. They are beautiful, have smaller eyes and dorsal fins than their ocean dwelling cousins and a long prehistoric nose with their teeth showing. And they're pink. Wild. They are shy, but a number of them swam alongside our boat, and we slipped in the water to bathe with them a few times. Rolando assured us that they would protect us from the alligators that lined the shore.


Not a one of us got eaten by a croc, so I guess he was right.



There was such a concentration of animals along the banks of the river, little monkeys and families of capybaras played on the ground and in the water right next to the gators. They seemed to have a peace treaty going on.



By foot we crossed the area around the river that, for half of the year, is covered in water.



Facsinating place.









We spent each night in a cool lodge beside the river.


Where the beer ran warm and the mosquitos got their fill.



Back in Rurrenbarque we chilled out at a groovy little hostel with their pet squirrel monkey.






From there we took the treacherous trip back up, up, up through the Yungas to La Paz, Bolivia's beautiful capital city.




Great swimming hole where we stopped to play along the way.