Where are Ron and Ellen?
Latin America, 10 November 2008 - 3 March 2009
Ron and Ellen (and llama) at Machu Picchu, Peru, December 2008
Peru wrap-up for Ellen and Ron, 17 December 2008
Peru wrap-up
17 December 2008
Afton, Virginia, USADear Family and Friends,
I am at home in Afton. Despite the fact that it is cold an rainy (36F, 2C), I am happy to be home, and am enjoying small pleasures the most: brushing my teeth with tap water, tea with lemon (lemons simply don't exist in either Central America or Peru, and I really don't like my tea with lime!), and a down comforter instead of very warm but very heavy alpaca blankets. Thanks to Chris, our dear friend of 34 years, now living in California, who stayed in our house during his extended visit east to family and friends, everything (including Josie, our remaining elderly dog) was in fine shape when I returned. I am bracing myself to deal with the two very large boxes of mail from the past 5 weeks! Ron reported briefly yesterday from La Paz, Bolivia, where he'd arrived via overnight bus from Cusco. He has two things he needs to accomplish there: get pages added to his passport (you may remember that we were unsuccessful in our efforts to do this in Lima at the beginning of our trip), and get his visa for Paraguay, his next destination. He would also like to get his Brazilian visa, but may end up doing that in Paraguay. He says he went to the American embassy as soon as possible after his arrival in La Paz, but was too late for citizen services. The office for such services is not open on Wednesday, will be open Thursday morning and Friday afternoon. So he is hoping to get the pages in his passport in time to take it to the Paraguayan embassy on Friday afternoon, but probably won't get it back with that visa until early next week. I've appended below an update from Steven (titled "Reevaluation") as he and Laurie consider revisions to their approach based on what they have been learning. I brought home on DVD copies of our 1350 Peru photos (as well as 188 photos from Laurie and Steven, mainly of the kids in Sipascancha), and will soon start going through them to prepare for posting on the Web page -- but only after wrapping Christmas presents and dealing with that mountain of mail!
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
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Last updated: 3 January 2009
