bolivia, and the final weeks of peru

Well here I am blogging again. Liz sitting next to me starting at me making sure I type things into the computer. She is such a slave driver... no, that was a joke. Seriously though. :)

Bolivia was awesome. My favorite thing about Bolivia is that a super high class meal will cost around $10 dollars US. We took advantage of this and did not spend much during the day on non neccessity items and decided to splurge a little on food. We ended up going to so many nice restuarants - european, local bolivian, japeneese sushi, and pizza. All these resturants would cost at least $100 dollars in the US but in Bolivia we were getting away with $20 bill. It was awesome. The food, deliscious. The service, extrodinary. The beer, tasty. The company I was with, medium. Ok, the company was great.

La Paz was definitelly my favorite city. So many fun things to do. The main plaza contained more pigeons that I had ever seen before. I decided to take advantage of Liz´s fear of birds and get some birdseed and then have my pigeon minions attack! I have some great pictures of Liz being ¨pigeon bombed¨ where I threw some birdseed at her feet and my pigeon friends followed. For a visual, think of 100 smelly, dirty birds flying at you out of nowhere to land all over your body. It was so so much fun. Pictures will follow but I will have to sneak them on the blog.

South America loves their parades. Due to perfect timing on the genius trip planners part... COUGH. We ended up seeing both the Peruvian independance day and the Bolivian independance day, along with Arequipas biggest festival of the year. During Bolivia´s independance day, we witnessed 8 parades and much partying and bands playing in the streets. These were fun to watch and we spent a few hours watching marching bands and dancing. However, at the time we did not realize the blatent awesomeness of the parade that we would soon see in Arequipa.

Two words for this such parade - Wicked Sick. There is a story here so bear with me.

We started the day in Arequipa as normal. Waking up and touring a few local places downtown around the central plaza de armas in the middle of the city. We saw the old Santa Catalina monastary in Arequipa, it was colorful, fun and the tour was very informative. We then booked a tour the next day for the nearby Colca canyon and decided to get some lunch. On the way to lunch, I noticed things had changed from a few hours earlier. The first thing I noticed was that there were more people... many many more people. They were lining the streets along the parade route that I was unaware of before. The problem was the parade route went directly between us and our hostel, the other museums we wanted to visit and the resturant we were trying to get for lunch. We were cut off. Alone. Scared. Ok, maybe not scared.

We attempted for about an hour to try to get through the parade. Our first attempt ended up in an epic fail as we walked parrallel to the parade to try to find the beginning and cut through. That attempt ended up getting us stuck near a dead end wall with a sea of people on both sides of us blocking us in. I was accosted by many drunk peruvians and even a few westerners tried to pick a fight with me.

Our second attempt turned out to be a little more successful as in terrible spanish we asked some police how to get to the plaza. The police argued for a few minutes then gave us a ¨strategic´route to get there. This turned out to be moderatly successful. We first pushed through a sea of people and then crossed the parade in the middle of a float. Then we navigated through local drunk peruvians, viscious packs of wild dogs roaming the city, and scary mime robot men to get to the plaza. (Liz was scared, erm) The parade was centered around the plaza so it was packed with people. By packed I mean packed like fitting my giant self into the back seat of a small vehicle. Liz at that time was very hungry and when Liz gets hungry, you feed her right away, or bad things happen, very bad things.

We started looking for a restuarant around the plaza on the second level so we could watch the parade. We found out soon everywhere was filled up. We then hit a jackpot. Finding a corner right by the cameras and the epicenter of the entire parade we found a little resteraunt with a reserved balcony where we could sit and watch the parade in peace. We payed about $20 (so worth it) for a perfect table right about the parade. We then spent four glorious hours watching the parade go by. We have hundreds of pictures of the parade and there is so much to talk about so I will highlight my favorite floats in strategic countdown order below.

5 - The ecudorian dancing brigade. Colors. Dancing. Awesome music.

4 - Any Brazililan float. I love the feather headresses and the upbeat music.

3 - The massive bubble float. Shotting millions of bubbles into the air.

2 -Inka Cola vs Coca Cola. Owned by the same people, and throwing out large bottles of coke.

1 - The local Pisco mobile. Why you ask? Because they sprayed liqour at the crowd out of a long firehose. They did not only spray the crowed, they covered thousands of people with liquor. Blatent awesomeness.

It was so much fun to watch the parade for hours. Never in my life have I seen so many colors, dancing or fun. It was a good day.

The end

Jungle Pics

Our little plane into the jungle

Our jungle home

cayman at night in the lake

squirrel monkeys

a tarrantula

Parana fishing

An orphaned spider monkey

Scarlet Macaw

One of the many giant trees

One of the lakes we canoed on

The River Beni

Welcome to the Jungle

I think I might have a new favorite part of the trip. After a few days in La Paz we took a 40 minute ride on a very small propellor plane down to the jungle town of Rurrenaboque or Rurre as many people call it. We landed on a small air strip in the middle of the forest and then bused into the town. It was a very laid back place. Being significantly lower in elevation it was much warmer and easier to breathe than most of the places we had previously been.

We signed up for a 3 day Amazon trip through a non profit organization called Madidi Travel. The woman who started this organization is indigenous to the area and helped to form the Madidi national park many years ago. Madidi is a highly diverse section of the Amazon in Bolivia. The area we were going was called the Serere Reserve which is just a little outside the main park. The cool thing is all the money from tourism to their ecolodge goes directly back into the conservation work that is happening in the area.

So the next morning we boarded a boat and took a 3 hr ride down the Rio Beni then hiked in for about 30 minutes to our ecolodge. It was a very cool place. We had our own little cabin which had mosquito netting for walls and made you feel like you were really sleeping right in the middle of the forest. There was another building the Casa Grande that was right on a little lake and was were we ate all our meals and hung out in several hammocks. I know it sounds rustic, but it was actually a pretty up scale place.

We were in a group of 5 and spent our days hiking around the forest and canoeing on the five lakes in the reserve with our guide Chaco. We saw a ton of monkeys, some wild pigs, coati, acotis, oppossums, an armadillo, crazy huge ants, giant spiders, big trees, vines, and colorful birds. One of the highlights was going out on the lake at night and spotting the eye shine of cayman (very similar to crocodile). We also spent an evening fishing for parana. I caught one very puny fish, but it was a lot of fun. All in all it was an amazing experience being out in the forest and learning about the plants and animals of the area. It reminded me a bit of IslandWood for adults.

We ended up liking Rurre so much that after our jungle trip we spent an extra day just relaxing around the small town. However, we had to continue on and have now made it to Arequipa in Peru. We´re back at high elevation, but luckily not quite as cold as other places we´ve been. Tomorrow at 3 am we leave for a two day trek in Colca Canyon one of the deepest canyons in the world. I can´t believe we are in the final week of our trip. It´s been quite an adventure!

Pictures to come soon!

Forced to blog by the evil Liz ;)

OK, here I am sitting in La Paz waiting for the plane and I have decided to blog a little. Since this is my first blog I am going to just write about everything so far that has happened on the trip and I will give you the gory details unlike Liz.

The first being - The saga begins..-.

Day 1 - First let me say.. the hike was amazing. As we began the trail we were hiking along the river and stopping by Inka sites every hour or so. It was great to meet other travellers and form a ¨band of cool kids¨. While travelling, I throughly enjoy getting to know other travellers and then making temporary friends and this was the first time that I could get to know some on a personal level.

Day 2 - Things start to get crazy...

Day 2 of the Inka Trail is the hardest day. When I woke up I was feeling a little funny. My stomach was churning and I had pretty bad gas. However, I thought nothing of it and focused on conquering the mountain. We hiked up to the top of the pass at 12,000 ft ish above sea level I was totally fine. Besides the constant bad gas, I was doing well. Out of all the hikers, we made it to the top 2nd as Liz and I were in pretty good shape from hiking all around the United States. From the top of the pass we rolled down to our campsite and the crazyness began. My stomach started cramping and I knew bad things were going to happen. I stopped eating food as I lost my appetite and then during the night I lost all my body fluids. The worst part was not being sick but the stomach cramping that first night.

Day 3 - The Day of Death

This day was one of the hardest of my life. I woke up and was in terrible condition. I still could not eat and did not have any water left as I was so thirsty during the night I kept drinking it but it would not stay in my system. The guide gave me some rehydrating salts and told me I had 30 minutes to get up and get ready to go. I got ready and was still extremely sick. I was lucky, as when I started the hike, my stomach stopped cramping and I was left with continuatlly losing my body fluids along the trail. This was awkward as so many people are hiking the trail. I really did not care at this point though. The first part of the day we had to hike 1200 ft uphill to the top of the pass. That was defitelly the hardest part of the day. I took it extremly slow as every step was agony. To tell you the truth, I really do not remember much of that first morning. I was extremly out of it just trying to get through. All I remember, is Liz being super awesome and helping me along the trail. If it was not for her I do not know what I would have done. Sadly, the third day we skipped all the Inka sites as we were just focused on getting to the end. We managed to make it to the lunch point at which while everyone was eating I slept. Then it was downhill for three hours where I started dry heaving every mile or so from exhaustion. Finally at around 6:00PM we got to camp and I then slept until the next morning.

Day 4 - Macchu Picchu

Day four made up for the crazyness of Day 3. We hiked up to Macchu Picchu and watched the sunrise over the ruins. It was extremly beatiful. We then set out to explore the old Inka capital. The ruins were amazing, to glimpse a city set up so high in the mountains made of stone I feel so lucky.

More details to follow including a story about a drunken blind man accosting me and my personal favorite story story of Liz vs the pigeons.

Adios Peru Hola Bolivia

Well after surviving the Inca Trail and a day on Lake Titicaca we decided to cross the border into Bolivia. So far I must say I really enjoy Bolivia, it´s a bit less touristy than Peru and about half the price. But I´ll back up a bit. After returning to Cusco we took a bus down to Puno a town on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. From there we took a day trip out to the Uros floating islands which are islands made by the Uros people out of tortta reeds. The are actually floating and walking around them was a weird sensation. Theres about 50 of the islands in total each housing a few people. Tourism is the life blood of these communities, so it was a little cheesy at times, but still interesting. After that we went to Taquile a real island out in the lake. It was a scenic island with an interesting culture slightly less affected by tourism. After that we bused across the border and into La Paz. La Paz is a very busy city, but we´ve enjoyed having two relaxing days here. There are tons of markets and and since today is Bolivia Day there have been tons of parades and celebrations. La Paz feels more like a city where real people actually live then other places we´ve been. And because it´s so cheap here we´ve enjoyed some really nice meals. Today we went for an adventurous climb up a mountain that was over 17,000ft. We cheated a bit and took a bus most of the way. Our bus was a bit sketch with super squeaky breaks on a really steep narrow dirt road. At one point it got stuck and we all had to get off, but we made it. The hike itself was dizzingly high and even though we´ve been at high altitude for a while we were both short of breath and laboring to the top. Tomorrow we´re leaving this alititude behind and taking a 15 seater plane down to the jungle town of Rurrenabaque.


One of the houses on the floating islands



Looking over Lake Titicaca from Taquile Island


Me being attacked by pigeons in La Paz thanks to Derrick and his bird seed


We´re on top of the world!

I survived the Inca Trail!

When we first checked in with our trek company for the Inca Trail we recieved T-shirts that said ¨I survived the Inca Trail¨ little did we know we were going to really have to work for those shirts. The Inca Trail is a 4 day, 26 mile hike from the small town of Ollatambo to Machu Picchu. The entire trail is at very high elevation with Dead Woman´s Pass, the highest point in the trail reaching nearly 14,000 ft. We were up for the challenge and had a great first two days. Then, the food poisoning began. The second night on the trail Derrick and I both ended up with some serious stomach rumbling which resulted in full blown food poisoning. I´ll save you the gory details, but trust me it was pretty bad. Derrick had it the worse, and several other people out of our group of 15 had various degrees of it as well. Day 3, the longest and most beautiful day of the trek was also the most difficult for us as we struggled to keep hiking over 9 miles to our next campsite. Our guides and porters carried our packs for the day and set up rest stops for us along the trail. After many hours of slowly trotting along we finally made it to our last camp site and pretty much went straight to bed. The last day, we made it to Machu Picchu for sunrise, we were feeling better, but still not 100%. We felt like we really earned those shirts after that adventure.

It was a challenging few days and a real bummer to feel sick on such a beautiful trek, but all in all we still managed to have a good time. It was a stunning hike with giant mountains, impressive Inca ruins, deep river valleys, and a suprisingly tropical ending. Machu Picchu is amazing, so big and dramatic. So I will still look back on the trip fondly, despite the sickness. Now we´re back in Cusco relaxing for the day and then heading to Lake Titticaca tomorrow. I´m also including some pictures from the trip so far.