Lake Titicaca (Bolivian Side)

13-14 July

From Puno, we took the bus to Copacabana in Bolivia. It stops at the border where they charge Americans $135 cash for a visa. Plus you have to give them a photocopy of your passport, yellow fever vaccination card, and a passport photo. They just started it a few years ago. My lonely planet guide is definitely out of date. Well I was well prepared and had everything in order. I had no problems.

Copacabana was a really nice little town. There was a really nice church. People from all over bring their car there to get it blessed. They also had this cave like room where people lit candles. It was a little creepy in there.

From Copacabana, we took a day trip out to an island called Isla del Sol. The boat ride was pretty long, I think about 3 hours, but it was really bumpy. I don´t usually get seasick but I didn´t feel to great once we got there. Kim wasn´t feeling well either. W e arrived on the north side of the island, where you can hike for 3 hours to the south of the island. Well we weren´t feeling to great, so we just hung out in the north side, and just took the boat to the south side.

There was a great beach there. Its really weird to be on a beach with full winter gear on. But there were some crazy French girls in bikinis. I guess the French just like to take their clothes off. There were also pigs roaming around too. Ever seen a pig on a beach??

The south side of the island wasn´t that impressive, unless you wanted to do some hiking. There were some pretty tall hills to tackle. We just hung out on the shore. That night in Copacabana, when we were just glad to have electricity and running water again, (unlike Amantani), there was a blackout! It lasted all night and into the morning. And since the showers were electric heated, no showers. I guess I could´ve taken a cold shower, but it was already cold there!! Oh, and those french girls... Kim was in the internet cafe during the blackout. Those girls left without paying. Stupid. Its not like the internet costs a lot here, maybe 50cents an hour? The people here don´t make a lot of money, and they gip the guy?? Come on. Some travellers are punks.

Lake Titicaca (Peruvian side)

11-12 July

After Cusco I took an overnight bus to Puno with my new travel buddy Kim. Man, the bus ride was freezing. Good thing I bought a winter jacket, hat, gloves, scarf, and blanket beforehand. Puno is located right on Lake Titicaca, which is the world's highest navigable lake, at 3,860 m (12,421 ft) above sea level. That´s why it was so damn cold there.

As soon as we got off the night bus in Puno, we booked a two day tour around the islands. First we went to two of the 40 or so man made floating islands of Uros. The people there speak the Aymara dialect. The islands are made of the reeds that grow in the lake. They gave us a little demo of how it was made. You can also eat the reeds. It tastes kinda like celery. The people were friendly but mostly wanted you to buy their crafts. (There´s always a market everywhere) They do have solar panels there that were given to them by the ex-president Fujimori. We saw a few tvs in those little houses.


After our short visits to those islands we went to another island called Amantaní, where we would spend a night. There are no hotels or restaurants on this island. Once you get off the boat, the "jefe" of the island arranges for each group to stay with a family. There is no electricity or running water. It´s as basic as it gets. Meals were made in the kitchen, a little shack where cooking was done with a fire. There is a candle there at night, but was still pretty dark. The food was very simple- quinoa soup (the pic below has the two kids showing Kim where they grew quinoa), and rice with potatoes and cheese, and coca tea. Our bedroom was nice and lit with a candle at night. A bucket of hot water was given to us in the morning to wash up. Some houses had an out-house out in the back. But our house had a bathroom.... but there was no running water. So you had to dump water from a bucket in the toilet to flush it. I don´t know why there was even a sink there.


After our lunch we hiked to the temple at the highest point on the island. Everyone was there waiting for the sunset. Supposedly when you run around the temple three times, it was good luck- the first time for love, the second time for job or money, and the third time for wisdom. The family takes you back to the house in complete darkness. You had to go back with a flashlight. There were no street lights. And good thing someone takes you back, because everything kind of looks the same- farm after farm. Staying there makes you really appreciate electricity and running water. It was a pretty cool experience.... for one night.


That night there was a party after dinner where they dress up all the tourists in traditional clothes. But we were so tired, we skipped it. Maybe taking the night bus and going directly to the islands and hiking wasn´t a great idea, especially trying to get used to the altitude there and all.

The next day we headed to Taquile island before heading back to Puno. The hike to the main square was pretty nice. But there wasn´t much else to see besides the plaza where of course there was a market. I didn´t even see that many locals. But we had a nice lunch where our guide taught us that you can tell if a man is single or not by his clothes. The red had means he is married. And men knit there also, with 5 needles at a time. After lunch our guide played some traditional music for us.


Here is the one picture I took in Puno. Puno is just like any other city down here. There was a Plaza de Armas. We met up with our friends Ariana and Eric again who were also in Puno. It was the same meeting arrangement in Cusco - meet at 7:30 at the Plaza de Armas. Who needs cell phones?

Cusco & the Sacred Valley

After Machu Picchu I spent about another week in Cusco. I went to a bunch of museums and churches and visited some other ruins in the area in the Sacred Valley. Unfortunately you cannot take pictures in the museums and churches.

Most of the churches are like all the other churches, really really nice, but after awhile it all looks the same. But the main cathedral in Cusco was really different. There were three churches inside with different altars. There was a Last Supper painting with traditional Peruvian food, cuy. There was also a black Jesus statue. It turned black after all the smoke from the candles. It was full of Cusquenan art and was one of thie nicest churches I´ve been to. Its the one on the left in the picture below.


The museums were pretty interesting. I went to Museo de Arte Religioso (religious art), Museo del Sitio Qoricancha (incan and pre-incan pieces from the Temple of Qoricancha), Museum of Contemporary art, and the Incan museum. My fave was the Incan musuem.

I also met up with my friend Kim. We originally met in spanish school in Quito and I had met her in Arequipa a few weeks before. She was heading to Bolivia at the end of the week so we traveled together.... after hanging out and partying in Cusco for a bit.

We ran into Ivan, a Peruvian that lives in Alabama. We shared a cab with him back from Pisac one day. And we also ran into Kim´s friend from spanish classes in Cusco, Matthew, a Belgian. After one of the museum tours, we went to find chicha. They kept mentioning it in the tour. (Tours by the way, are sometimes better to do in Spanish because their English accent is hard to understand). Chicha is an alcoholic drink made from fermented maize. We asked people on the street where to go, and everyone pointed in a different direction. We finally found it. But it was pretty nasty. I think there are better ones out there.


Travelling around Cusco, I ran into other people I´ve met in other cities. Its kind of cool to travel around and recognize people. It´s almost like being home. Okay, not exactly. Everyone generally has the same travel route also known as the gringo trail so you see the same people a lot. Kim and I also ran into our other friends from Yanapuma classes in Quito, Ariana and Eric. They have had some really bad luck with their travels. They´ve been robbed, scammed, and gotten sick several times. This is a picture of them at dinner. They had cuy, or ginea pig, a traditional Peruvian dish. It looked like a rat.


There was also a big protest in Cusco. Apparently it happens a lot. Everything was shut down for a day. I still don´t know exactly what they were protesting. It seemed like they were protesting everything. It looked more like a parade.



We visited the Incan ruins of Pisac, not too far from Cusco. They had a great market. There are markets at every single tourist destination in South America. Pisac had one of the better ones. Oh and the ruins were cool too, but it was no Machu Picchu.


We also went to Salinas de Maras, where they mine salt. They had natural salt terraces of mini salt-pans spread out in the valley.


Moray was also in the Sacred Valley. They had several circular terraces for agriculture. Each level had a different microclimate.


Chinchero..... more ruins. Nothing compared to Machu Picchu.


Ollantaytambo. This Incan site was pretty cool. No Machu Picchu, but it was nice. The tours are interesting, learning about the Incan life. Those guys were so smart the way they built their cities. Its amazing that they are still around.

Machu Picchu

So I finally made it to Machu Picchu. I had been wanting to go there for years and years. I took a train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes. I spent the day in the town. It was pretty small and there wasn´t too much to do besides go to the hot springs, and go to a museum. The museum just had some text on the walls about Machu Picchu. There weren´t any real artifacts or anything. It just made me more impatient about getting to Machu Picchu.

The next morning, I met with the people from the trek I was supposed to be on at 4:30am breakfast at the hotel. There were two other American girls that did the trek. At 5am we lined up to get on the first buses up to Machu Picchu. There was already a huge line. As soon as we got there, we rushed to get tickets to climb Huanya Picchu, the mountain in the background. They give out tickets to the first 400 people.

After we got our tickets for climbing Huanya Picchu, we walked around a bit and waited for our guided tour. Unfortunately we had to leave the tour early because we had our tickets to climb Huanyu Picchu at 10am. The climb to the top of Huanyu Picchu was challenging. There were many steps, and some were pretty small, narrow, and steep. It was a little scary in some parts. It took a total of abot 1hr45min to go to the top and back. It was well worth it because the view of Machu Picchu from the top was amazing.

Okay, a few facts about Machu Picchu. It is 2,430 metres (8,000 ft) above sea level. It is often referred to as "The Lost City of the Incas". The Incas started building it around AD 1430 but was abandoned as an official site for the Inca rulers a hundred years later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. There are different theories as to why the city was abandoned. Luckily it was never found by the Spanish and consequently not plundered and destroyed, as was the case with many other Inca sites. An American, Hiram Bingham, discovered Machu Picchu by accident while trying to find another Incan city, Vilcabamba, in 1911. Since then, Machu Picchu has become an important tourist attraction. The terraces were the agricultural zones. Each level had a different microclimate and grew different crops. The rest of the areas were the urban areas that had plazas, temples, an astronomical observatory, towers, and fountains.

I spent a pretty long time there just thinking, ¨Wow. I can´t believe I´m finally here.¨